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Edinburgh

Edinburgh ( ; ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. The modern city is located between the rivers Almond and Esk on the southern shore of the Firth of Forth, in the historic region of Lothian, bounded on its southern side by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh is Scotland's second most populous city and the seventh most populous city in the United Kingdom. Recognised as the capital of Scotland since at least the 15th century, Edinburgh is the seat of the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament, and the highest courts in Scotland. The city's Palace of Holyroodhouse is the official residence of the British monarch in Scotland. The city has long been a centre of education, particularly in the fields of medicine, Scottish law, literature, philosophy, the sciences and engineering. It is the second-largest financial centre in the United Kingdom, fourth largest in Europe and thirteenth largest internationally and the city's historical and cultural attractions have made it the UK's second-most visited tourist destination, attracting 4.9 million visits, including 2.4 million from overseas in 2018. "Time Out" magazine rated Edinburgh the best city in the world in 2022. Edinburgh's official population estimates are (mid-2020) for the locality, (mid-2019) for the City of Edinburgh council area, which takes in some outlying villages in the western part of its territory, and 1,384,950 (2019) for the wider Edinburgh and South East Scotland city region which also includes East Lothian, Fife, Midlothian, the Scottish Borders and West Lothian. The City of Edinburgh Council is the current local authority. The city is the annual venue of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. It is home to national cultural institutions such as the National Museum of Scotland, the National Library of Scotland and the Scottish National Gallery. The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1582 and now one of three in the city, is considered one of the best research institutions in the world, most recently placing 15th in the "QS World University Rankings" for 2023. The city is also known for the Edinburgh International Festival and the Fringe, the latter being the world's largest annual international arts festival. Historic sites in Edinburgh include Edinburgh Castle, the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the churches of St. Giles, Greyfriars and the Canongate, and the extensive Georgian New Town built in the 18th/19th centuries. Edinburgh's Old Town and New Town together are listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which has been managed by Edinburgh World Heritage since 1999. Etymology. "Edin", the root of the city's name, derives from "", the name for the region in Cumbric, the Brittonic Celtic language formerly spoken there. The name's meaning is unknown. The district of Eidyn was centred on the stronghold of Din Eidyn, the dun or hillfort of Eidyn. This stronghold is believed to have been located at Castle Rock, now the site of Edinburgh Castle. A siege of Din Eidyn by Oswald, king of the Angles of Northumbria in 638 marked the beginning of three centuries of Germanic influence in south east Scotland that laid the foundations for the development of Scots, before the town was ultimately subsumed in 954 by the kingdom known to the English as Scotland. As the language shifted from Cumbric to Northumbrian Old English and then Scots, the Brittonic "din" in Din Eidyn was replaced by "burh", producing "Edinburgh". In Scottish Gaelic "din" becomes "dùn", producing modern "Dùn Èideann". Nicknames. The city is affectionately nicknamed "Auld Reekie", Scots for "Old Smoky", for the views from the country of the smoke-covered Old Town. In Walter Scott's 1820 novel "The Abbot", a character observes that "yonder stands Auld Reekie—you may see the smoke hover over her at twenty miles' distance". In 1898, Thomas Carlyle comments on the phenomenon: "Smoke cloud hangs over old Edinburgh, for, ever since Aeneas Silvius's time and earlier, the people have the art, very strange to Aeneas, of burning a certain sort of black stones, and Edinburgh with its chimneys is called 'Auld Reekie' by the country people". 19th-century historian Robert Chambers argued that the sobriquet could not be traced before the reign of Charles II in the late 17th century. Instead, he attributed the name to a Fife laird, Durham of Largo, who regulated the bedtime of his children by the smoke rising above Edinburgh from the fires of the tenements. "It's time now bairns, to tak' the beuks, and gang to our beds, for yonder's Auld Reekie, I see, putting on her nicht -cap!". Edinburgh has been popularly called the "Athens of the North" since the early 19th century. References to Athens, such as "Athens of Britain" and "Modern Athens", had been made as early as the 1760s. The similarities were seen to be topographical but also intellectual. Edinburgh's Castle Rock reminded returning grand tourists of the Athenian Acropolis, as did aspects of the neoclassical architecture and layout of New Town. Both cities had flatter, fertile agricultural land sloping down to a port several miles away (respectively, Leith and Piraeus). Intellectually, the Scottish Enlightenment, with its humanist and rationalist outlook, was influenced by Ancient Greek philosophy. In 1822, artist Hugh William Williams organized an exhibition that showed his paintings of Athens alongside views of Edinburgh, and the idea of a direct parallel between both cities quickly caught the popular imagination. When plans were drawn up in the early 19th century to architecturally develop Calton Hill, the design of the National Monument directly copied Athens' Parthenon. Tom Stoppard's character Archie of "Jumpers" said, perhaps playing on Reykjavík meaning "smoky bay", that the "Reykjavík of the South" would be more appropriate. The city has also been known by several Latin names, such as "Edinburgum", while the adjectival forms "Edinburgensis" and "Edinensis" are used in educational and scientific contexts. "Edina" is a late 18th-century poetical form used by the Scots poets Robert Fergusson and Robert Burns. "Embra" or "Embro" are colloquialisms from the same time, as in Robert Garioch's "Embro to the Ploy". Ben Jonson described it as "Britaine's other eye", and Sir Walter Scott referred to it as "yon Empress of the North". Robert Louis Stevenson, also a son of the city, wrote that Edinburgh "is what Paris ought to be". History. Early history. The earliest known human habitation in the Edinburgh area was at Cramond, where evidence was found of a Mesolithic camp site dated to c. 8500 BC. Traces of later Bronze Age and Iron Age settlements have been found on Castle Rock, Arthur's Seat, Craiglockhart Hill and the Pentland Hills. When the Romans arrived in Lothian at the end of the 1st century AD, they found a Brittonic Celtic tribe whose name they recorded as the Votadini. The Votadini transitioned into the Gododdin kingdom in the Early Middle Ages, with Eidyn serving as one of the kingdom's districts. During this period, the Castle Rock site, thought to have been the stronghold of Din Eidyn, emerged as the kingdom's major centre. The medieval poem "Y Gododdin" describes a war band from across the Brittonic world who gathered in Eidyn before a fateful raid; this may describe a historical event around AD 600. In 638, the Gododdin stronghold was besieged by forces loyal to King Oswald of Northumbria, and around this time control of Lothian passed to the Angles. Their influence continued for the next three centuries until around 950, when, during the reign of Indulf, son of Constantine II, the "burh" (fortress), named in the 10th-century "Pictish Chronicle" as "oppidum Eden", was abandoned to the Scots. It thenceforth remained, for the most part, under their jurisdiction. The royal burgh was founded by King David I in the early 12th century on land belonging to the Crown, though the date of its charter is unknown. The first documentary evidence of the medieval burgh is a royal charter, , by King David I granting a toft in to the Priory of Dunfermline. The shire of Edinburgh seems to have also been created in the reign of David I, possibly covering all of Lothian at first, but by 1305 the eastern and western parts of Lothian had become Haddingtonshire and Linlithgowshire, leaving Edinburgh as the county town of a shire covering the central part of Lothian, which was called Edinburghshire or Midlothian (the latter name being an informal, but commonly used, alternative until the county's name was legally changed in 1947). Edinburgh was largely in English hands from 1291 to 1314 and from 1333 to 1341, during the Wars of Scottish Independence. When the English invaded Scotland in 1298, King Edward I chose not to enter the English controlled town of Edinburgh but passed by with his army. In the middle of the 14th century, the French chronicler Jean Froissart described it as the capital of Scotland (c. 1365), and James III (1451–88) referred to it in the 15th century as "the principal burgh of our kingdom". In 1482 James III "granted and perpetually confirmed to the said Provost, Bailies, Clerk, Council, and Community, and their successors, the office of Sheriff within the Burgh for ever, to be exercised by the Provost for the time as Sheriff, and by the Bailies for the time as Sheriffsdepute conjunctly and severally; with full power to hold Courts, to punish transgressors not only by banishment but by death, to appoint officers of Court, and to do everything else appertaining to the office of Sheriff; as also to apply to their own proper use the fines and escheats arising out of the exercise of the said office." Despite the destruction caused by an English assault in 1544, the town slowly recovered, and was at the centre of events in the 16th-century Scottish Reformation and 17th-century Wars of the Covenant. In 1582, Edinburgh's town council was given a royal charter by King James VI permitting the establishment of a university; founded as "Tounis College" (Town's College), the institution developed into the University of Edinburgh, which contributed to Edinburgh's central intellectual role in subsequent centuries. 17th century. In 1603, King James VI of Scotland succeeded to the English throne, uniting the crowns of Scotland and England in a personal union known as the Union of the Crowns, though Scotland remained, in all other respects, a separate kingdom. In 1638, King Charles I's attempt to introduce Anglican church forms in Scotland encountered stiff Presbyterian opposition culminating in the conflicts of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Subsequent Scottish support for Charles Stuart's restoration to the throne of England resulted in Edinburgh's occupation by Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth of England forces – the New Model Army – in 1650. In the 17th century, Edinburgh's boundaries were still defined by the city's defensive town walls. As a result, the city's growing population was accommodated by increasing the height of the houses. Buildings of 11 storeys or more were common, and have been described as forerunners of the modern-day skyscraper. Most of these old structures were replaced by the predominantly Victorian buildings seen in today's Old Town. In 1611 an act of parliament created the High Constables of Edinburgh to keep order in the city, thought to be the oldest statutory police force in the world. 18th century. Following the Treaty of Union in 1706, the Parliaments of England and Scotland passed Acts of Union in 1706 and 1707 respectively, uniting the two kingdoms in the Kingdom of Great Britain effective from 1 May 1707. As a consequence, the Parliament of Scotland merged with the Parliament of England to form the Parliament of Great Britain, which sat at Westminster in London. The Union was opposed by many Scots, resulting in riots in the city. By the first half of the 18th century, Edinburgh was described as one of Europe's most densely populated, overcrowded and unsanitary towns. Visitors were struck by the fact that the social classes shared the same urban space, even inhabiting the same tenement buildings; although here a form of social segregation did prevail, whereby shopkeepers and tradesmen tended to occupy the cheaper-to-rent cellars and garrets, while the more well-to-do professional classes occupied the more expensive middle storeys. During the Jacobite rising of 1745, Edinburgh was briefly occupied by the Jacobite "Highland Army" before its march into England. After its eventual defeat at Culloden, there followed a period of reprisals and pacification, largely directed at the rebellious clans. In Edinburgh, the Town Council, keen to emulate London by initiating city improvements and expansion to the north of the castle, reaffirmed its belief in the Union and loyalty to the Hanoverian monarch George III by its choice of names for the streets of the New Town: for example, Rose Street and Thistle Street; and for the royal family, George Street, Queen Street, Hanover Street, Frederick Street and Princes Street (in honour of George's two sons). The consistently geometric layout of the plan for the extension of Edinburgh was the result of a major competition in urban planning staged by the Town Council in 1766. In the second half of the century, the city was at the heart of the Scottish Enlightenment, when thinkers like David Hume, Adam Smith, James Hutton and Joseph Black were familiar figures in its streets. Edinburgh became a major intellectual centre, earning it the nickname "Athens of the North" because of its many neo-classical buildings and reputation for learning, recalling ancient Athens. In the 18th-century novel "The Expedition of Humphry Clinker" by Tobias Smollett one character describes Edinburgh as a "hotbed of genius". Edinburgh was also a major centre for the Scottish book trade. The highly successful London bookseller Andrew Millar was apprenticed there to James McEuen. From the 1770s onwards, the professional and business classes gradually deserted the Old Town in favour of the more elegant "one-family" residences of the New Town, a migration that changed the city's social character. According to the foremost historian of this development, "Unity of social feeling was one of the most valuable heritages of old Edinburgh, and its disappearance was widely and properly lamented." 19th and 20th centuries. Despite an enduring myth to the contrary, Edinburgh became an industrial centre with its traditional industries of printing, brewing and distilling continuing to grow in the 19th century and joined by new industries such as rubber works, engineering works and others. By 1821, Edinburgh had been overtaken by Glasgow as Scotland's largest city. The city centre between Princes Street and George Street became a major commercial and shopping district, a development partly stimulated by the arrival of railways in the 1840s. The Old Town became an increasingly dilapidated, overcrowded slum with high mortality rates. Improvements carried out under Lord Provost William Chambers in the 1860s began the transformation of the area into the predominantly Victorian Old Town seen today. More improvements followed in the early 20th century as a result of the work of Patrick Geddes, but relative economic stagnation during the two world wars and beyond saw the Old Town deteriorate further before major slum clearance in the 1960s and 1970s began to reverse the process. University building developments which transformed the George Square and Potterrow areas proved highly controversial. Since the 1990s a new "financial district", including the Edinburgh International Conference Centre, has grown mainly on demolished railway property to the west of the castle, stretching into Fountainbridge, a run-down 19th-century industrial suburb which has undergone radical change since the 1980s with the demise of industrial and brewery premises. This ongoing development has enabled Edinburgh to maintain its place as the United Kingdom's second largest financial and administrative centre after London. Financial services now account for a third of all commercial office space in the city. The development of Edinburgh Park, a new business and technology park covering , west of the city centre, has also contributed to the District Council's strategy for the city's major economic regeneration. In 1998, the Scotland Act, which came into force the following year, established a devolved Scottish Parliament and Scottish Executive (renamed the Scottish Government since September 2007). Both based in Edinburgh, they are responsible for governing Scotland while reserved matters such as defence, foreign affairs and some elements of income tax remain the responsibility of the Parliament of the United Kingdom in London. 21st century. In 2022, Edinburgh was affected by the 2022 Scotland bin strikes. In 2023, Edinburgh became the first capital city in Europe to sign the global Plant Based Treaty, which was introduced at COP26 in 2021 in Glasgow. Green Party councillor Steve Burgess introduced the treaty. The Scottish Countryside Alliance and other farming groups called the treaty "anti-farming." Geography. Cityscape. Situated in Scotland's Central Belt, Edinburgh lies on the southern shore of the Firth of Forth. The city centre is southwest of the shoreline of Leith and inland, as the crow flies, from the east coast of Scotland and the North Sea at Dunbar. While the early burgh grew up near the prominent Castle Rock, the modern city is often said to be built on seven hills, namely Calton Hill, Corstorphine Hill, Craiglockhart Hill, Braid Hill, Blackford Hill, Arthur's Seat and the Castle Rock, giving rise to allusions to the seven hills of Rome. Occupying a narrow gap between the Firth of Forth to the north and the Pentland Hills and their outrunners to the south, the city sprawls over a landscape which is the product of early volcanic activity and later periods of intensive glaciation. Igneous activity between 350 and 400 million years ago, coupled with faulting, led to the creation of tough basalt volcanic plugs, which predominate over much of the area. One such example is the Castle Rock which forced the advancing ice sheet to divide, sheltering the softer rock and forming a tail of material to the east, thus creating a distinctive crag and tail formation. Glacial erosion on the north side of the crag gouged a deep valley later filled by the now drained Nor Loch. These features, along with another hollow on the rock's south side, formed an ideal natural strongpoint upon which Edinburgh Castle was built. Similarly, Arthur's Seat is the remains of a volcano dating from the Carboniferous period, which was eroded by a glacier moving west to east during the ice age. Erosive action such as plucking and abrasion exposed the rocky crags to the west before leaving a tail of deposited glacial material swept to the east. This process formed the distinctive Salisbury Crags, a series of teschenite cliffs between Arthur's Seat and the location of the early burgh. The residential areas of Marchmont and Bruntsfield are built along a series of drumlin ridges south of the city centre, which were deposited as the glacier receded. Other prominent landforms such as Calton Hill and Corstorphine Hill are also products of glacial erosion. The Braid Hills and Blackford Hill are a series of small summits to the south of the city centre that command expansive views looking northwards over the urban area to the Firth of Forth. Edinburgh is drained by the river named the Water of Leith, which rises at the Colzium Springs in the Pentland Hills and runs for through the south and west of the city, emptying into the Firth of Forth at Leith. The nearest the river gets to the city centre is at Dean Village on the north-western edge of the New Town, where a deep gorge is spanned by Thomas Telford's Dean Bridge, built in 1832 for the road to Queensferry. The Water of Leith Walkway is a mixed-use trail that follows the course of the river for from Balerno to Leith. Excepting the shoreline of the Firth of Forth, Edinburgh is encircled by a green belt, designated in 1957, which stretches from Dalmeny in the west to Prestongrange in the east. With an average width of the principal objectives of the green belt were to contain the outward expansion of the city and to prevent the agglomeration of urban areas. Expansion affecting the green belt is strictly controlled but developments such as Edinburgh Airport and the Royal Highland Showground at Ingliston lie within the zone. Similarly, suburbs such as Juniper Green and Balerno are situated on green belt land. One feature of the Edinburgh green belt is the inclusion of parcels of land within the city which are designated green belt, even though they do not connect with the peripheral ring. Examples of these independent wedges of green belt include Holyrood Park and Corstorphine Hill. Areas. Edinburgh includes former towns and villages that retain much of their original character as settlements in existence before they were absorbed into the expanding city of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Many areas, such as Dalry, contain residences that are multi-occupancy buildings known as tenements, although the more southern and western parts of the city have traditionally been less built-up with a greater number of detached and semi-detached villas. The historic centre of Edinburgh is divided in two by the broad green swathe of Princes Street Gardens. To the south, the view is dominated by Edinburgh Castle, built high on Castle Rock, and the long sweep of the Old Town descending towards Holyrood Palace. To the north lie Princes Street and the New Town. The West End includes the financial district, with insurance and banking offices as well as the Edinburgh International Conference Centre. Edinburgh's Old and New Towns were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995 in recognition of the unique character of the Old Town with its medieval street layout and the planned Georgian New Town, including the adjoining Dean Village and Calton Hill areas. There are over 4,500 listed buildings within the city, a higher proportion relative to area than any other city in the United Kingdom. The castle is perched on top of a rocky crag (the remnant of an extinct volcano) and the Royal Mile runs down the crest of a ridge from it terminating at Holyrood Palace. Minor streets (called closes or wynds) lie on either side of the main spine forming a herringbone pattern. Due to space restrictions imposed by the narrowness of this landform, the Old Town became home to some of the earliest "high rise" residential buildings. Multi-storey dwellings known as "lands" were the norm from the 16th century onwards with ten and eleven storeys being typical and one even reaching fourteen or fifteen storeys. Numerous vaults below street level were inhabited to accommodate the influx of incomers, particularly Irish immigrants, during the Industrial Revolution. The street has several fine public buildings such as St Giles' Cathedral, the City Chambers and the Law Courts. Other places of historical interest nearby are Greyfriars Kirkyard and Mary King's Close. The Grassmarket, running deep below the castle is connected by the steep double terraced Victoria Street. The street layout is typical of the old quarters of many Northern European cities. The New Town was an 18th-century solution to the problem of an increasingly crowded city which had been confined to the ridge sloping down from the castle. In 1766 a competition to design a "New Town" was won by James Craig, a 27-year-old architect. The plan was a rigid, ordered grid, which fitted in well with Enlightenment ideas of rationality. The principal street was to be George Street, running along the natural ridge to the north of what became known as the "Old Town". To either side of it are two other main streets: Princes Street and Queen Street. Princes Street has become Edinburgh's main shopping street and now has few of its Georgian buildings in their original state. The three main streets are connected by a series of streets running perpendicular to them. The east and west ends of George Street are terminated by St Andrew Square and Charlotte Square respectively. The latter, designed by Robert Adam, influenced the architectural style of the New Town into the early 19th century. Bute House, the official residence of the First Minister of Scotland, is on the north side of Charlotte Square. The hollow between the Old and New Towns was formerly the Nor Loch, which was created for the town's defence but came to be used by the inhabitants for dumping their sewage. It was drained by the 1820s as part of the city's northward expansion. Craig's original plan included an ornamental canal on the site of the loch, but this idea was abandoned. Soil excavated while laying the foundations of buildings in the New Town was dumped on the site of the loch to create the slope connecting the Old and New Towns known as The Mound. In the middle of the 19th century the National Gallery of Scotland and Royal Scottish Academy Building were built on The Mound, and tunnels for the railway line between Haymarket and Waverley stations were driven through it. The Southside is a residential part of the city, which includes the districts of St Leonards, Marchmont, Morningside, Newington, Sciennes, the Grange and Blackford. The Southside is broadly analogous to the area covered formerly by the Burgh Muir, and was developed as a residential area after the opening of the South Bridge in the 1780s. The Southside is particularly popular with families (many state and private schools are here), young professionals and students (the central University of Edinburgh campus is based around George Square just north of Marchmont and the Meadows), and Napier University (with major campuses around Merchiston and Morningside). The area is also well provided with hotel and "bed and breakfast" accommodation for visiting festival-goers. These districts often feature in works of fiction. For example, Church Hill in Morningside, was the home of Muriel Spark's Miss Jean Brodie, and Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus lives in Marchmont and works in St Leonards. Leith was historically the port of Edinburgh, an arrangement of unknown date that was confirmed by the royal charter Robert the Bruce granted to the city in 1329. The port developed a separate identity from Edinburgh, which to some extent it still retains, and it was a matter of great resentment when the two burghs merged in 1920 into the City of Edinburgh. Even today the parliamentary seat is known as "Edinburgh North and Leith". The loss of traditional industries and commerce (the last shipyard closed in 1983) resulted in economic decline. The Edinburgh Waterfront development has transformed old dockland areas from Leith to Granton into residential areas with shopping and leisure facilities and helped rejuvenate the area. With the redevelopment, Edinburgh has gained the business of cruise liner companies which now provide cruises to Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands. The coastal suburb of Portobello is characterised by Georgian villas, Victorian tenements, a beach and promenade and cafés, bars, restaurants and independent shops. There are rowing and sailing clubs and a restored Victorian swimming pool, including Turkish baths. The urban area of Edinburgh is almost entirely within the City of Edinburgh Council boundary, merging with Musselburgh in East Lothian. Towns within easy reach of the city boundary include Haddington, Tranent, Prestonpans, Dalkeith, Bonnyrigg, Loanhead, Penicuik, Broxburn, Livingston and Dunfermline. Edinburgh lies at the heart of the Edinburgh & South East Scotland City region with a population in 2014 of 1,339,380. Climate. Like most of Scotland, Edinburgh has a cool, temperate, maritime climate which, despite its northerly latitude, is milder than places which lie at similar latitudes such as Moscow and Labrador. The city's proximity to the sea mitigates any large variations in temperature or extremes of climate. Winter daytime temperatures rarely fall below freezing while summer temperatures are moderate, rarely exceeding . The highest temperature recorded in the city was on 25 July 2019 at Gogarbank, beating the previous record of on 4 August 1975 at Edinburgh Airport. The lowest temperature recorded in recent years was during December 2010 at Gogarbank. Given Edinburgh's position between the coast and hills, it is renowned as "the windy city", with the prevailing wind direction coming from the south-west, which is often associated with warm, unstable air from the North Atlantic Current that can give rise to rainfall – although considerably less than cities to the west, such as Glasgow. Rainfall is distributed fairly evenly throughout the year. Winds from an easterly direction are usually drier but considerably colder, and may be accompanied by haar, a persistent coastal fog. Vigorous Atlantic depressions, known as European windstorms, can affect the city between October and May. Located slightly north of the city centre, the weather station at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) has been an official weather station for the Met Office since 1956. The Met Office operates its own weather station at Gogarbank on the city's western outskirts, near Edinburgh Airport. This slightly inland station has a slightly wider temperature span between seasons, is cloudier and somewhat wetter, but differences are minor. Temperature and rainfall records have been kept at the Royal Observatory since 1764. Demography. Current. The most recent official population estimates (2020) are for the locality (includes Currie), for the Edinburgh settlement (includes Musselburgh) and for the local authority area. Edinburgh has a high proportion of young adults, with 19.5% of the population in their 20s (exceeded only by Aberdeen) and 15.2% in their 30s which is the highest in Scotland. The proportion of Edinburgh's population born in the UK fell from 92% to 84% between 2001 and 2011, while the proportion of White Scottish-born fell from 78% to 70%. Of those Edinburgh residents born in the UK, 335,000 or 83% were born in Scotland, with 58,000 or 14% being born in England. Some 13,000 people or 2.7% of the city's population are of Polish descent. 39,500 people or 8.2% of Edinburgh's population class themselves as Non-White which is an increase from 4% in 2001. Of the Non-White population, the largest group by far are Asian, totalling 26,264 people. Within the Asian population, people of Chinese descent are now the largest sub-group, with 8,076 people, amounting to about 1.7% of the city's total population. The city's population of Indian descent amounts to 6,470 (1.4% of the total population), while there are some 5,858 of Pakistani descent (1.2% of the total population). Although they account for only 1,277 people or 0.3% of the city's population, Edinburgh has the highest number and proportion of people of Bangladeshi descent in Scotland. Over 7,000 people were born in African countries (1.6% of the total population) and nearly 7,000 in the Americas. With the notable exception of Inner London, Edinburgh has a higher number of people born in the United States (over 3,700) than any other city in the UK. The proportion of people born outside the UK was 15.9% compared with 8% in 2001. Historical. A census by the Edinburgh presbytery in 1592 recorded a population of 8,003 adults spread equally north and south of the High Street which runs along the spine of the ridge sloping down from the Castle. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the population expanded rapidly, rising from 49,000 in 1751 to 136,000 in 1831, primarily due to migration from rural areas. As the population grew, problems of overcrowding in the Old Town, particularly in the cramped tenements that lined the present day Royal Mile and the Cowgate, were exacerbated. Poor sanitary arrangements resulted in a high incidence of disease, with outbreaks of cholera occurring in 1832, 1848 and 1866. The construction of the New Town from 1767 onwards witnessed the migration of the professional and business classes from the difficult living conditions in the Old Town to the lower density, higher quality surroundings taking shape on land to the north. Expansion southwards from the Old Town saw more tenements being built in the 19th century, giving rise to Victorian suburbs such as Dalry, Newington, Marchmont and Bruntsfield. Early 20th-century population growth coincided with lower-density suburban development. As the city expanded to the south and west, detached and semi-detached villas with large gardens replaced tenements as the predominant building style. Nonetheless, the 2001 census revealed that over 55% of Edinburgh's population were still living in tenements or blocks of flats, a figure in line with other Scottish cities, but much higher than other British cities, and even central London. From the early to mid 20th century, the growth in population, together with slum clearance in the Old Town and other areas, such as Dumbiedykes, Leith, and Fountainbridge, led to the creation of new estates such as Stenhouse and Saughton, Craigmillar and Niddrie, Pilton and Muirhouse, Piershill, and Sighthill. Religion. In 2018, the Church of Scotland had 20,956 members in 71 congregations in the Presbytery of Edinburgh. Its most prominent church is St Giles' on the Royal Mile, first dedicated in 1243 but believed to date from before the 12th century. Saint Giles is historically the patron saint of Edinburgh. St Cuthbert's, situated at the west end of Princes Street Gardens in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle and St Giles' can lay claim to being the oldest Christian sites in the city, though the present St Cuthbert's, designed by Hippolyte Blanc, was dedicated in 1894. Other Church of Scotland churches include Greyfriars Kirk, the Canongate Kirk, St Andrew's and St George's West Church and the Barclay Church. The Church of Scotland Offices are in Edinburgh, as is the Assembly Hall where the annual General Assembly is held. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh has 27 parishes across the city. The Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh has his official residence in Greenhill, the diocesan offices are in nearby Marchmont, and its cathedral is St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh. The Diocese of Edinburgh of the Scottish Episcopal Church has over 50 churches, half of them in the city. Its centre is the late 19th-century Gothic style St Mary's Cathedral in the West End's Palmerston Place. Orthodox Christianity is represented by Pan, Romanian and Russian Orthodox churches. There are several independent churches in the city, both Catholic and Protestant, including Charlotte Chapel, Carrubbers Christian Centre, Bellevue Chapel and Sacred Heart. There are also churches belonging to Quakers, Christadelphians, Seventh-day Adventists, Church of Christ, Scientist, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and Elim Pentecostal Church. Muslims have several places of worship across the city. Edinburgh Central Mosque, the largest Islamic place of worship, is located in Potterrow on the city's Southside, near Bristo Square. Construction was largely financed by a gift from King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and was completed in 1998. There is also an Ahmadiyya Muslim community. The first recorded presence of a Jewish community in Edinburgh dates back to the late 18th century. Edinburgh's Orthodox synagogue, opened in 1932, is in Salisbury Road and can accommodate a congregation of 2000. A Liberal Jewish congregation also meets in the city. A Sikh gurdwara and a Hindu mandir are located in Leith. The city also has a Brahma Kumaris centre in the Polwarth area. The Edinburgh Buddhist Centre, run by the Triratna Buddhist Community, formerly situated in Melville Terrace, now runs sessions at the Healthy Life Centre, Bread Street. Other Buddhist traditions are represented by groups which meet in the capital: the Community of Interbeing (followers of Thich Nhat Hanh), Rigpa, Samye Dzong, Theravadin, Pure Land and Shambala. There is a Sōtō Zen Priory in Portobello and a Theravadin Thai Buddhist Monastery in Slateford Road. Edinburgh is home to a Baháʼí community, and a Theosophical Society meets in Great King Street. Edinburgh has an Inter-Faith Association. Edinburgh has over 39 graveyards and cemeteries, many of which are listed and of historical character, including several former church burial grounds. Examples include Old Calton Burial Ground, Greyfriars Kirkyard and Dean Cemetery. Economy. Edinburgh has the strongest economy of any city in the United Kingdom outside London and the highest percentage of professionals in the UK with 43% of the population holding a degree-level or professional qualification. According to the Centre for International Competitiveness, it is the most competitive large city in the United Kingdom. It also has the highest gross value added per employee of any city in the UK outside London, measuring £57,594 in 2010. It was named European "Best Large City of the Future for Foreign Direct Investment" and "Best Large City for Foreign Direct Investment Strategy" in the "Financial Times" fDi magazine awards 2012/13. In the 19th century, Edinburgh's economy was known for banking and insurance, publishing and printing, and brewing and distilling. Today, its economy is based mainly on financial services, scientific research, higher education, and tourism. In March 2010, unemployment in Edinburgh was comparatively low at 3.6%, and it remains consistently below the Scottish average of 4.5%. Edinburgh is the second most visited city by foreign visitors in the UK after London. Banking has been a mainstay of the Edinburgh economy for over 300 years, since the Bank of Scotland was established by an act of the Scottish Parliament in 1695. Today, the financial services industry, with its particularly strong insurance and investment sectors, and underpinned by Edinburgh-based firms such as Scottish Widows and Standard Life Aberdeen, accounts for the city being the UK's second financial centre after London and Europe's fourth in terms of equity assets. The NatWest Group (formerly Royal Bank of Scotland Group) opened new global headquarters at Gogarburn in the west of the city in October 2005. The city is home to the headquarters of Bank of Scotland, Sainsbury's Bank, Tesco Bank, and TSB Bank. Tourism is also an important element in the city's economy. As a World Heritage Site, tourists visit historical sites such as Edinburgh Castle, the Palace of Holyroodhouse and the Old and New Towns. Their numbers are augmented in August each year during the Edinburgh Festivals, which attracts 4.4 million visitors, and generates over £100M for the local economy. As the centre of Scotland's government and legal system, the public sector plays a central role in Edinburgh's economy. Many departments of the Scottish Government are in the city. Other major employers include NHS Scotland and local government administration. When the £1.3bn Edinburgh & South East Scotland City Region Deal was signed in 2018, the region's Gross Value Added (GVA) contribution to the Scottish economy was cited as £33bn, or 33% of the country's output. The City Region Deal funds a range of "Data Driven Innovation" hubs which are using data to innovate in the region, recognising the region's strengths in technology and data science, the growing importance of the data economy, and the need to tackle the digital skills gap, as a route to social and economic prosperity. Culture. Festivals and celebrations. Edinburgh festival. The city hosts a series of festivals that run between the end of July and early September each year. The best known of these events are the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the Edinburgh International Festival, the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, the Edinburgh Art Festival and the Edinburgh International Book Festival. The longest established of these festivals is the Edinburgh International Festival, which was first held in 1947 and consists mainly of a programme of high-profile theatre productions and classical music performances, featuring international directors, conductors, theatre companies and orchestras. This has since been overtaken in size by the Edinburgh Fringe which began as a programme of marginal acts alongside the "official" Festival and has become the world's largest performing arts festival. In 2017, nearly 3400 different shows were staged in 300 venues across the city. Comedy has become one of the mainstays of the Fringe, with numerous well-known comedians getting their first 'break' there, often by being chosen to receive the Edinburgh Comedy Award. The Edinburgh Military Tattoo, occupies the Castle Esplanade every night for three weeks each August, with massed pipe bands and military bands drawn from around the world. Performances end with a short fireworks display. As well as the summer festivals, many other festivals are held during the rest of the year, including the Edinburgh International Film Festival and Edinburgh International Science Festival. The summer of 2020 was the first time in its 70-year history that the Edinburgh festival was not run, being cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This affected many of the tourist-focused businesses in Edinburgh which depend on the various festivals over summer to return an annual profit. Edinburgh's Hogmanay. The annual Edinburgh Hogmanay celebration was originally an informal street party focused on the Tron Kirk in the Old Town's High Street. Since 1993, it has been officially organised with the focus moved to Princes Street. In 1996, over 300,000 people attended, leading to ticketing of the main street party in later years up to a limit of 100,000 tickets. Hogmanay now covers four days of processions, concerts and fireworks, with the street party beginning on Hogmanay. Alternative tickets are available for entrance into the Princes Street Gardens concert and Cèilidh, where well-known artists perform and ticket holders can participate in traditional Scottish cèilidh dancing. The event attracts thousands of people from all over the world. Beltane and other festivals. On the night of 30 April the Beltane Fire Festival takes place on Calton Hill, involving a procession followed by scenes inspired by pagan old spring fertility celebrations. At the beginning of October each year the Dussehra Hindu Festival is also held on Calton Hill. Music, theatre and film. Outside the Festival season, Edinburgh supports several theatres and production companies. The Royal Lyceum Theatre has its own company, while the King's Theatre, Edinburgh Festival Theatre and Edinburgh Playhouse stage large touring shows. The Traverse Theatre presents a more contemporary repertoire. Amateur theatre companies productions are staged at the Bedlam Theatre, Church Hill Theatre and King's Theatre among others. The Usher Hall is Edinburgh's premier venue for classical music, as well as occasional popular music concerts. It was the venue for the Eurovision Song Contest 1972. Other halls staging music and theatre include The Hub, the Assembly Rooms and the Queen's Hall. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra is based in Edinburgh. Edinburgh has one repertory cinema, The Cameo, and formerly, the Edinburgh Filmhouse as well as the independent Dominion Cinema and a range of multiplexes. Edinburgh has a healthy popular music scene. Occasionally large concerts are staged at Murrayfield and Meadowbank, while mid-sized events take place at smaller venues such as 'The Corn Exchange', 'The Liquid Rooms' and 'The Bongo Club'. In 2010, PRS for Music listed Edinburgh among the UK's top ten 'most musical' cities. Several city pubs are well known for their live performances of folk music. They include 'Sandy Bell's' in Forrest Road, 'Captain's Bar' in South College Street and 'Whistlebinkies' in South Bridge. Like many other cities in the UK, numerous nightclub venues host Electronic dance music events. Edinburgh is home to a flourishing group of contemporary composers such as Nigel Osborne, Peter Nelson, Lyell Cresswell, Hafliði Hallgrímsson, Edward Harper, Robert Crawford, Robert Dow and John McLeod. McLeod's music is heard regularly on BBC Radio 3 and throughout the UK. Media. Newspapers. The main local newspaper is the "Edinburgh Evening News". It is owned and published alongside its sister titles "The Scotsman" and "Scotland on Sunday" by JPIMedia. Radio. The city has two commercial radio stations: Forth 1, a station which broadcasts mainstream chart music, and Forth 2 on medium wave which plays classic hits. Capital Scotland, Heart Scotland and Eklipse Sports Radio also have transmitters covering Edinburgh. Along with the UK national radio stations, BBC Radio Scotland and the Gaelic language service BBC Radio nan Gàidheal are also broadcast. DAB digital radio is broadcast over two local multiplexes. BFBS Radio broadcasts from studios on the base at Dreghorn Barracks across the city on 98.5FM as part of its UK Bases network. Small scale DAB started October 2022 with numerous community stations onboard Television. Television, along with most radio services, is broadcast to the city from the Craigkelly transmitting station situated in Fife on the opposite side of the Firth of Forth and the Black Hill transmitting station in North Lanarkshire to the west. There are no television stations based in the city. Edinburgh Television existed in the late 1990s to early 2003 and STV Edinburgh existed from 2015 to 2018. Museums, libraries and galleries. Edinburgh has many museums and libraries. These include the National Museum of Scotland, the National Library of Scotland, National War Museum, the Museum of Edinburgh, Surgeons' Hall Museum, the Writers' Museum, the Museum of Childhood and Dynamic Earth. The Museum on The Mound has exhibits on money and banking. Edinburgh Zoo, covering on Corstorphine Hill, is the second most visited paid tourist attraction in Scotland, and home to two giant pandas, Tian Tian and Yang Guang, on loan from the People's Republic of China. Edinburgh is also home to The Royal Yacht Britannia, decommissioned in 1997 and now a five-star visitor attraction and evening events venue permanently berthed at Ocean Terminal. Edinburgh contains Scotland's three National Galleries of Art as well as numerous smaller art galleries. The national collection is housed in the Scottish National Gallery, located on The Mound, comprising the linked National Gallery of Scotland building and the Royal Scottish Academy building. Contemporary collections are shown in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art which occupies a split site at Belford. The Scottish National Portrait Gallery on Queen Street focuses on portraits and photography. The council-owned City Art Centre in Market Street mounts regular art exhibitions. Across the road, The Fruitmarket Gallery offers world-class exhibitions of contemporary art, featuring work by British and international artists with both emerging and established international reputations. The city hosts several of Scotland's galleries and organisations dedicated to contemporary visual art. Significant strands of this infrastructure include Creative Scotland, Edinburgh College of Art, Talbot Rice Gallery (University of Edinburgh), Collective Gallery (based at the City Observatory) and the Edinburgh Annuale. There are also many small private shops/galleries that provide space to showcase works from local artists. Shopping. The locale around Princes Street is the main shopping area in the city centre, with souvenir shops, chain stores such as Boots the Chemist, Edinburgh Woollen Mill, H&M and Jenners. George Street, north of Princes Street, is the preferred location for some upmarket shops and independent stores. At the east end of Princes Street, the redeveloped St James Quarter opened its doors in June 2021, while next to the Balmoral Hotel and Waverley Station is Waverley Market. Multrees Walk, adjacent to the St. James Centre, is a recent addition to the central shopping district, dominated by the presence of Harvey Nichols. Shops here include Louis Vuitton, Mulberry and Calvin Klein. Edinburgh also has substantial retail parks outside the city centre. These include The Gyle Shopping Centre and Hermiston Gait in the west of the city, Cameron Toll Shopping Centre, Straiton Retail Park (actually just outside the city, in Midlothian) and Fort Kinnaird in the south and east, and Ocean Terminal in the north on the Leith waterfront. Governance. Local government. Following local government reorganisation in 1996, the City of Edinburgh Council constitutes one of the 32 council areas of Scotland. Like all other local authorities of Scotland, the council has powers over most matters of local administration such as housing, planning, local transport, parks, economic development and regeneration. The council comprises 63 elected councillors, returned from 17 multi-member electoral wards in the city. Following the 2007 City of Edinburgh Council election the incumbent Labour Party lost majority control of the council after 23 years to a Liberal Democrat/SNP coalition. After the 2017 election, the SNP and Labour formed a coalition administration, which lasted until the next election in 2022. The 2022 City of Edinburgh Council election resulted in the most politically balanced council in the UK, with 19 SNP, 13 Labour, 12 Liberal Democrat, 10 Green and 9 Conservative councillors. A minority Labour administration was formed, being voted in by Scottish Conservative and Scottish Liberal Democrat councillors. The SNP and Greens presented a coalition agreement, but could not command majority support in the Council. This caused controversy amongst the Scottish Labour Party group for forming an administration supported by Conservatives and led to the suspension of two Labour councillors on the Council for abstaining on the vote to approve the new administration. The city's coat of arms was registered by the Lord Lyon King of Arms in 1732. Scottish Parliament. Edinburgh, like all of Scotland, is represented in the Scottish Parliament, situated in the Holyrood area of the city. For electoral purposes, the city is divided into six constituencies which, along with 3 seats outside of the city, form part of the Lothian region. Each constituency elects one Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) by the first past the post system of election, and the region elects seven additional MSPs to produce a result based on a form of proportional representation. As of the 2021 election, the Scottish National Party have four MSPs: Ash Denham for Edinburgh Eastern, Ben Macpherson for Edinburgh Northern and Leith and Gordon MacDonald for Edinburgh Pentlands and Angus Robertson for Edinburgh Central constituencies. Alex Cole-Hamilton, the Leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats represents Edinburgh Western and Daniel Johnson of the Scottish Labour Party represents Edinburgh Southern constituency. In addition, the city is also represented by seven regional MSPs representing the Lothian electoral region: The Conservatives have three regional MSPs: Jeremy Balfour, Miles Briggs and Sue Webber, Labour have two regional MSPs: Sarah Boyack and Foysol Choudhury; two Scottish Green regional MSPs were elected: Green's Co-Leader Lorna Slater and Alison Johnstone. However, following her election as the Presiding Officer of the 6th Session of the Scottish Parliament on 13 May 2021, Alison Johnstone has abided by the established parliamentary convention for speakers and renounced all affiliation with her former political party for the duration of her term as Presiding Officer. So she presently sits as an independent MSP for the Lothians Region. UK Parliament. Edinburgh is also represented in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom by five Members of Parliament. The city is divided into Edinburgh North and Leith, Edinburgh East, Edinburgh South, Edinburgh South West, and Edinburgh West, each constituency electing one member by the first past the post system. Since the 2019 UK General election, Edinburgh is represented by three Scottish National Party MPs (Deirdre Brock, Edinburgh North and Leith/Tommy Sheppard, Edinburgh East/Joanna Cherry, Edinburgh South West), one Liberal Democrat MP in Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) and one Labour MP in Edinburgh South (Ian Murray). Transport. Air. Edinburgh Airport is Scotland's busiest airport and the principal international gateway to the capital, handling over 14.7 million passengers; it was also the sixth-busiest airport in the United Kingdom by total passengers in 2019. In anticipation of rising passenger numbers, the former operator of the airport BAA outlined a draft masterplan in 2011 to provide for the expansion of the airfield and the terminal building. In June 2012, Global Infrastructure Partners purchased the airport for £807 million. The possibility of building a second runway to cope with an increased number of aircraft movements has also been mooted. Buses. Travel in Edinburgh is undertaken predominantly by bus. Lothian Buses, the successor company to Edinburgh Corporation Transport Department, operate the majority of city bus services within the city and to surrounding suburbs, with the most routes running via Princes Street. Services further afield operate from the Edinburgh Bus Station off St Andrew Square and Waterloo Place and are operated mainly by Stagecoach East Scotland, Scottish Citylink, National Express Coaches and Borders Buses. Lothian Buses and McGill's Scotland East operate the city's branded public tour buses. The night bus service and airport buses are mainly operated by Lothian Buses link. In 2019, Lothian Buses recorded 124.2 million passenger journeys. To tackle traffic congestion, Edinburgh is now served by six park & ride sites on the periphery of the city at Sheriffhall (in Midlothian), Ingliston, Riccarton, Inverkeithing (in Fife), Newcraighall and Straiton (in Midlothian). A referendum of Edinburgh residents in February 2005 rejected a proposal to introduce congestion charging in the city. Railway. Edinburgh Waverley is the second-busiest railway station in Scotland, with only Glasgow Central handling more passengers. On the evidence of passenger entries and exits between April 2015 and March 2016, Edinburgh Waverley is the fifth-busiest station outside London; it is also the UK's second biggest station in terms of the number of platforms and area size. Waverley is the terminus for most trains arriving from London King's Cross and the departure point for many rail services within Scotland operated by ScotRail. To the west of the city centre lies Haymarket station, which is an important commuter stop. Opened in 2003, Edinburgh Park station serves the Gyle business park in the west of the city and the nearby Gogarburn headquarters of the Royal Bank of Scotland. The Edinburgh Crossrail route connects Edinburgh Park with Haymarket, Edinburgh Waverley and the suburban stations of Brunstane and Newcraighall in the east of the city. There are also commuter lines to Edinburgh Gateway, South Gyle and Dalmeny, the latter serving South Queensferry by the Forth Bridges, and to Wester Hailes and Curriehill in the south-west of the city. Trams. Edinburgh Trams became operational on 31 May 2014. The city had been without a tram system since Edinburgh Corporation Tramways ceased on 16 November 1956. Following parliamentary approval in 2007, construction began in early 2008. The first stage of the project was expected to be completed by July 2011 but, following delays caused by extra utility work and a long-running contractual dispute between the council and the main contractor, Bilfinger SE, the project was rescheduled. The completed line is in length, running from Edinburgh Airport, west of the city, to its terminus at York Place in the city centre's East End. Phase two of the tram project, which sees the existing section of Line 1 (Airport to York Place) tram line extended down Leith Walk to Ocean Terminal and terminate at Newhaven, adding an additional eight new tram stops and connecting Leith and the waterfront to the tram system. As of August 2022 this project is currently nearing completion, and is scheduled to open to passenger use in spring 2023. Should the original plan be taken to completion, trams will also run from Haymarket through Ravelston and Craigleith to Granton Square on the Waterfront Edinburgh. Long-term proposals envisage a line running west from the airport to Ratho and Newbridge and another connecting Granton Square to Newhaven via Lower Granton Road, thus completing the Line 1 (North Edinburgh) loop. A further line serving the south of the city has also been suggested. Lothian Buses and Edinburgh Trams are both owned and operated by Transport for Edinburgh. Despite its modern transport links, in January of 2021 Edinburgh was named the most congested city in the UK for the fourth year running. Education. There are three universities in Edinburgh: the University of Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt University and Edinburgh Napier University. Established by royal charter in 1583, the University of Edinburgh is one of Scotland's ancient universities and is the fourth oldest in the country after St Andrews, Glasgow and Aberdeen. Originally centred on Old College the university expanded to premises on The Mound, the Royal Mile and George Square. Today, the King's Buildings in the south of the city contain most of the schools within the College of Science and Engineering. In 2002, the medical school moved to purpose built accommodation adjacent to the new Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh at Little France. The university is placed 16th in the QS World University Rankings for 2022. Heriot-Watt University is based at the Riccarton campus in the west of Edinburgh. Originally established in 1821, as the world's first mechanics' institute, it was granted university status by royal charter in 1966. It has other campuses in the Scottish Borders, Orkney, United Arab Emirates and Putrajaya in Malaysia. It takes the name "Heriot-Watt" from Scottish inventor James Watt and Scottish philanthropist and goldsmith George Heriot. Heriot-Watt University has been named International University of the Year by "The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2018". In the latest Research Excellence Framework, it was ranked overall in the Top 25% of UK universities and 1st in Scotland for research impact. Edinburgh Napier University was originally founded as the Napier College, which was renamed Napier Polytechnic in 1986 and gained university status in 1992. Edinburgh Napier University has campuses in the south and west of the city, including the former Merchiston Tower and Craiglockhart Hydropathic. It is home to the Screen Academy Scotland. Queen Margaret University was located in Edinburgh before it moved to a new campus just outside the city boundary on the edge of Musselburgh in 2008. Until 2012, further education colleges in the city included Jewel and Esk College (incorporating Leith Nautical College founded in 1903), Telford College, opened in 1968, and Stevenson College, opened in 1970. These have now been amalgamated to form Edinburgh College. Scotland's Rural College also has a campus in south Edinburgh. Other institutions include the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh which were established by royal charter in 1506 and 1681 respectively. The Trustees Drawing Academy of Edinburgh, founded in 1760, became the Edinburgh College of Art in 1907. There are 18 nursery, 94 primary and 23 secondary schools administered by the City of Edinburgh Council. Edinburgh is home to The Royal High School, one of the oldest schools in the country and the world. The city also has several independent, fee-paying schools including Edinburgh Academy, Fettes College, George Heriot's School, George Watson's College, Merchiston Castle School, Stewart's Melville College and The Mary Erskine School. In 2009, the proportion of pupils attending independent schools was 24.2%, far above the Scottish national average of just over 7% and higher than in any other region of Scotland. In August 2013, the City of Edinburgh Council opened the city's first stand-alone Gaelic primary school, Bun-sgoil Taobh na Pàirce. Healthcare. The main NHS Lothian hospitals serving the Edinburgh area are the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, which includes the University of Edinburgh Medical School, and the Western General Hospital, which has a large cancer treatment centre and nurse-led Minor Injuries Clinic. The Royal Edinburgh Hospital in Morningside specialises in mental health. The Royal Hospital for Children and Young People, colloquially referred to as "the Sick Kids", is a specialist paediatrics hospital. There are two private hospitals: Murrayfield Hospital in the west of the city and Shawfair Hospital in the south; both are owned by Spire Healthcare. Sport. Football. Men's. Edinburgh has three football clubs that play in the Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL): Heart of Midlothian, founded in 1874, Hibernian, founded in 1875 and F.C. Edinburgh, founded in 1966. Heart of Midlothian and Hibernian are known locally as "Hearts" and "Hibs", respectively. Both play in the Scottish Premiership. They are the oldest city rivals in Scotland and the Edinburgh derby is one of the oldest derby matches in world football. Both clubs have won the Scottish league championship four times. Hearts have won the Scottish Cup eight times and the Scottish League Cup four times. Hibs have won the Scottish Cup and the Scottish League Cup three times each. Edinburgh City were promoted to Scottish League Two in the 2015–16 season, becoming the first club to win promotion to the SPFL via the pyramid system playoffs. Edinburgh was also home to four other former Scottish Football League clubs: the original Edinburgh City (founded in 1928), Leith Athletic, Meadowbank Thistle and St Bernard's. Meadowbank Thistle played at Meadowbank Stadium until 1995, when the club moved to Livingston and became Livingston F.C. The Scottish national team has very occasionally played at Easter Road and Tynecastle, although its normal home stadium is Hampden Park in Glasgow. St Bernard's' New Logie Green was used to host the 1896 Scottish Cup Final, the only time the match has been played outside Glasgow. The city also plays host to Lowland Football League clubs Civil Service Strollers, Edinburgh University and Spartans, as well as East of Scotland League clubs Craigroyston, Edinburgh United, Heriot-Watt University, Leith Athletic, Lothian Thistle Hutchison Vale, and Tynecastle. Women's. In women's football, Hearts, Hibs and Spartans play in the SWPL 1. Hutchison Vale and Boroughmuir Thistle play in the SWPL 2. Rugby. The Scotland national rugby union team play at Murrayfield Stadium, and the professional Edinburgh Rugby team play at the nextdoor Edinburgh Rugby Stadium; both are owned by the Scottish Rugby Union and are also used for other events, including music concerts. Murrayfield is the largest capacity stadium in Scotland, seating 67,144 spectators. Edinburgh is also home to Scottish Premiership teams Boroughmuir RFC, Currie RFC, the Edinburgh Academicals, Heriot's Rugby Club and Watsonians RFC. The Edinburgh Academicals ground at Raeburn Place was the location of the world's first international rugby game on 27 March 1871, between Scotland and England. Rugby league is represented by the Edinburgh Eagles who play in the Rugby League Conference Scotland Division. Murrayfield Stadium has hosted the Magic Weekend where all Super League matches are played in the stadium over one weekend. Other sports. The Scottish cricket team, which represents Scotland internationally, play their home matches at the Grange cricket club. The Edinburgh Capitals are the latest of a succession of ice hockey clubs in the Scottish capital. Previously Edinburgh was represented by the Murrayfield Racers (2018), the original Murrayfield Racers "(who folded in 1996)" and the Edinburgh Racers. The club play their home games at the Murrayfield Ice Rink and have competed in the eleven-team professional Scottish National League (SNL) since the 2018–19 season. Next door to Murrayfield Ice Rink is a 7-sheeter dedicated curling facility where curling is played from October to March each season. Caledonia Pride are the only women's professional basketball team in Scotland. Established in 2016, the team compete in the UK wide Women's British Basketball League and play their home matches at the Oriam National Performance Centre. Edinburgh also has several men's basketball teams within the Scottish National League. Boroughmuir Blaze, City of Edinburgh Kings and Edinburgh Lions all compete in Division 1 of the National League, and Pleasance B.C. compete in Division 2. The Edinburgh Diamond Devils is a baseball club which won its first Scottish Championship in 1991 as the "Reivers." 1992 saw the team repeat the achievement, becoming the first team to do so in league history. The same year saw the start of their first youth team, the Blue Jays. The club adopted its present name in 1999. Edinburgh has also hosted national and international sports events including the World Student Games, the 1970 British Commonwealth Games, the 1986 Commonwealth Games and the inaugural 2000 Commonwealth Youth Games. For the 1970 Games the city built Olympic standard venues and facilities including Meadowbank Stadium and the Royal Commonwealth Pool. The Pool underwent refurbishment in 2012 and hosted the Diving competition in the 2014 Commonwealth Games which were held in Glasgow. In American football, the Scottish Claymores played WLAF/NFL Europe games at Murrayfield, including their World Bowl 96 victory. From 1995 to 1997 they played all their games there, from 1998 to 2000 they split their home matches between Murrayfield and Glasgow's Hampden Park, then moved to Glasgow full-time, with one final Murrayfield appearance in 2002. The city's most successful non-professional team are the Edinburgh Wolves who play at Meadowbank Stadium. The Edinburgh Marathon has been held annually in the city since 2003 with more than 16,000 runners taking part on each occasion. Its organisers have called it "the fastest marathon in the UK" due to the elevation drop of . The city also organises a half-marathon, as well as 10 km () and 5 km () races, including a race on 1 January each year. Edinburgh has a speedway team, the Edinburgh Monarchs, which, since the loss of its stadium in the city, has raced at the Lothian Arena in Armadale, West Lothian. The Monarchs have won the Premier League championship five times in their history, in 2003 and again in 2008, 2010, 2014 and 2015. For basketball, the city has a basketball club, Edinburgh Tigers. People. Edinburgh has a long literary tradition, which became especially evident during the Scottish Enlightenment. This heritage and the city's lively literary life in the present led to it being declared the first UNESCO City of Literature in 2004. Prominent authors who have lived in Edinburgh include the economist Adam Smith, born in Kirkcaldy and author of "The Wealth of Nations", James Boswell, biographer of Samuel Johnson; Sir Walter Scott, creator of the historical novel and author of works such as "Rob Roy", "Ivanhoe", and "Heart of Midlothian"; James Hogg, author of "The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner"; Robert Louis Stevenson, creator of "Treasure Island", "Kidnapped", and "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde"; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes; Muriel Spark, author of "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie"; diarist Janet Harden; Irvine Welsh, author of "Trainspotting", whose novels are mostly set in the city and often written in colloquial Scots; Ian Rankin, author of the Inspector Rebus series of crime thrillers, Alexander McCall Smith, author of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, and J. K. Rowling, author of Harry Potter, who wrote much of her first book in Edinburgh coffee shops and now lives in the Cramond area of the city. Scotland has a rich history of science and engineering, with Edinburgh producing a number of leading figures. John Napier, inventor of logarithms, was born in Merchiston Tower and lived and died in the city. His house now forms part of the original campus of Napier University which was named in his honour. He lies buried under St. Cuthbert's Church. James Clerk Maxwell, founder of the modern theory of electromagnetism, was born at 14 India Street (now the home of the James Clerk Maxwell Foundation) and educated at the Edinburgh Academy and the University of Edinburgh, as was the engineer and telephone pioneer Alexander Graham Bell. James Braidwood, who organised Britain's first municipal fire brigade, was also born in the city and began his career there. Other names connected with the city include physicist Max Born, a principle founder of Quantum mechanics and Nobel laureate; Charles Darwin, the biologist who propounded the theory of natural selection; David Hume, philosopher, economist and historian; James Hutton, regarded as the "Father of Geology"; Joseph Black, the chemist who discovered Magnesium and Carbon Dioxide, and one of the founders of Thermodynamics; pioneering medical researchers Joseph Lister and James Young Simpson; chemist and discoverer of the element nitrogen Daniel Rutherford; Colin Maclaurin, mathematician and developer of the Maclaurin series, and Ian Wilmut, the geneticist involved in the cloning of Dolly the sheep just outside Edinburgh, at the Roslin Institute. The stuffed carcass of Dolly the sheep is now on display in the National Museum of Scotland. The latest in a long line of science celebrities associated with the city is theoretical physicist, Nobel laureate and professor emeritus at the University of Edinburgh Peter Higgs, born in Newcastle but resident in Edinburgh for most of his academic career, after whom the Higgs boson particle has been named. Edinburgh has been the birthplace of actors like Alastair Sim and Sir Sean Connery, known for being the first cinematic James Bond, the comedian and actor Ronnie Corbett, best known as one of The Two Ronnies, and the impressionist Rory Bremner. Famous artists from the city include the portrait painters Sir Henry Raeburn, Sir David Wilkie and Allan Ramsay. The city has produced or been home to some very successful musicians in recent decades, particularly Ian Anderson, front man of the band Jethro Tull, The Incredible String Band, the folk duo The Corries, Wattie Buchan, lead singer and founding member of punk band The Exploited, Shirley Manson, lead singer of the band Garbage, the Bay City Rollers, The Proclaimers, Boards of Canada and Idlewild. Edinburgh is the birthplace of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair who attended the city's Fettes College. Notorious criminals from Edinburgh's past include Deacon Brodie, head of a trades guild and Edinburgh city councillor by day but a burglar by night, who is said to have been the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's story, the "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde", and murderers Burke and Hare who delivered fresh corpses for dissection to the famous anatomist Robert Knox. Another well-known Edinburgh resident was Greyfriars Bobby. The small Skye Terrier reputedly kept vigil over his dead master's grave in Greyfriars Kirkyard for 14 years in the 1860s and 1870s, giving rise to a story of canine devotion which plays a part in attracting visitors to the city. International relations. Twin towns and sister cities. The City of Edinburgh has entered into 14 international twinning arrangements since 1954. Most of the arrangements are styled as "Twin Cities" but the agreement with Kraków is designated as a "Partner City", and the agreement with Kyoto Prefecture is officially styled as a "Friendship Link", reflecting its status as the only region to be twinned with Edinburgh. For a list of consulates in Edinburgh, see List of diplomatic missions in Scotland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9904

England national football team

The England national football team has represented England in international football since the first international match in 1872. It is controlled by The Football Association (FA), the governing body for football in England, which is affiliated with UEFA and comes under the global jurisdiction of world football's governing body FIFA. England competes in the three major international tournament contested by European nations: the FIFA World Cup, the UEFA European Championship and the UEFA Nations League. England is the joint oldest national team in football having played in the world's first international football match in 1872, against Scotland. England's home ground is Wembley Stadium, London, and its training headquarters is at St George's Park, Burton upon Trent. Gareth Southgate is the current manager of the team. England won the 1966 World Cup final on home soil, making it one of eight nations to have won the World Cup. They have qualified for the World Cup 16 times, with their best other performances being fourth place in both 1990 and 2018. England has never won the European Championship, with their best performance to date being runners-up in 2020. As a constituent country of the United Kingdom, England is not a member of the International Olympic Committee and so does not compete at the Olympic Games. England is currently the only team to have won the World Cup at senior level, but not their major continental title, and the only non-sovereign entity to have won the World Cup. History. Early years. The England men's national football team is the joint-oldest in the world; it was formed at the same time as Scotland. A representative match between England and Scotland was played on 5 March 1870, having been organised by the Football Association. A return fixture was organised by representatives of Scottish football teams on 30 November 1872. This match, played at Hamilton Crescent in Scotland, is viewed as the first official international football match, because the two teams were independently selected and operated, rather than being the work of a single football association. Over the next 40 years, England played exclusively with the other three Home Nations—Scotland, Wales and Ireland—in the British Home Championship. At first, England had no permanent home stadium. They joined FIFA in 1906 and played their first games against countries other than the Home Nations on a tour of Central Europe in 1908. Wembley Stadium was opened in 1923 and became their home ground. The relationship between England and FIFA became strained, and this resulted in their departure from FIFA in 1928, before they rejoined in 1946. As a result, they did not compete in a World Cup until 1950, in which they were beaten in a 1–0 defeat by the United States, failing to get past the first round in one of the most embarrassing defeats in the team's history. Their first defeat on home soil to a foreign team was a 2–0 loss to Ireland, on 21 September 1949 at Goodison Park. A 6–3 loss in 1953 to Hungary, was their second defeat by a foreign team at Wembley. In the return match in Budapest, Hungary won 7–1. This stands as England's largest ever defeat. After the game, a bewildered Syd Owen said, "it was like playing men from outer space". In the 1954 FIFA World Cup, England reached the quarter-finals for the first time, and lost 4–2 to reigning champions Uruguay. Walter Winterbottom and Alf Ramsey. Although Walter Winterbottom was appointed as England's first full-time manager in 1946, the team was still picked by a committee until Alf Ramsey took over in 1963. The 1966 FIFA World Cup was hosted in England and Ramsey guided England to victory with a 4–2 win against West Germany after extra time in the final, during which Geoff Hurst scored a hat-trick. In UEFA Euro 1968, the team reached the semi-finals for the first time, being eliminated by Yugoslavia. England qualified automatically for the 1970 World Cup in Mexico as reigning champions, and reached the quarter-finals, where they were knocked out by West Germany. England had been 2–0 up, but were eventually beaten 3–2 after extra time. They then failed to qualify for the 1974 World Cup, leading to Ramsey's dismissal by the FA. Don Revie, Ron Greenwood and Bobby Robson. Following Ramsey's dismissal, Joe Mercer took immediate temporary charge of England for a seven-match spell until Don Revie was appointed as new permanent manager in 1974. Under Revie, the team underperformed and failed to qualify for either UEFA Euro 1976 or the 1978 World Cup. Revie resigned in 1977 and was replaced by Ron Greenwood, under whom performances improved. The team qualified for Euro 1980 without losing any of their games, but exited in the group stage of the final tournament. They also qualified for the 1982 World Cup in Spain; however, despite not losing a game, they were eliminated at the second group stage. Bobby Robson managed England from 1982 to 1990. Although the team failed to qualify for UEFA Euro 1984, they reached the quarter-finals of the 1986 World Cup, losing 2–1 to Argentina in a game made famous by two highly contrasting goals scored by Diego Maradona – the first being blatantly knocked in by his hand, prompting his "Hand of God" remark, the second being an outstandingly skilful individual goal, involving high speed dribbling past several opponents. England striker Gary Lineker finished as the tournament's top scorer with six goals. England went on to lose every match at UEFA Euro 1988. They next achieved their second best result in the 1990 FIFA World Cup by finishing fourth – losing again to West Germany after a closely contested semi-final finishing 1–1 after extra time, then 3–4 in England's first penalty shoot-out. Despite losing to Italy in the third place play-off, the members of the England team were given bronze medals identical to the Italians'. Due to the team's good performance at the tournament against general expectations, and the emotional nature of the narrow defeat to West Germany, the team were welcomed home as heroes and thousands of people lined the streets for an open-top bus parade. Graham Taylor, Terry Venables, Glenn Hoddle and Kevin Keegan. The 1990s saw four England managers follow Robson, each in the role for a relatively brief period. Graham Taylor was Robson's immediate successor. England failed to win any matches at UEFA Euro 1992, drawing with tournament winners Denmark and later with France, before being eliminated by host nation Sweden. The team then failed to qualify for the 1994 FIFA World Cup after losing a controversial game against the Netherlands in Rotterdam, which resulted in Taylor's resignation. Taylor faced much newspaper criticism during his tenure for his tactics and team selections. Between 1994 and 1996, Terry Venables took charge of the team. At UEFA Euro 1996, held in England, they equalled their best performance at a European Championship, reaching the semi-finals as they did in 1968, before exiting via another penalty shoot-out loss to Germany. England striker Alan Shearer was the tournament's top scorer with five goals. At Euro 96, the song "Three Lions" by Baddiel, Skinner and The Lightning Seeds became the definitive anthem for fans on the terraces. Venables announced before the tournament that he would resign at the end of it, following investigations into his personal financial activities and ahead of upcoming court cases. Due to the controversy around him, the FA stressed that he was the coach, not the manager, of the team. Venables' successor, Glenn Hoddle, took the team to the 1998 World Cup  in which England were eliminated in the second round, again by Argentina and again on penalties (after a 2–2 draw). In February 1999, Hoddle was sacked by the FA due to controversial comments he had made about disabled people to a newspaper. Howard Wilkinson took over as caretaker manager for two matches. Kevin Keegan was then appointed as the new permanent manager and took England to UEFA Euro 2000, but the team exited in the group stage and he unexpectedly resigned shortly afterwards. Sven-Göran Eriksson, Steve McClaren and Fabio Capello. Peter Taylor was appointed as caretaker manager for one match, before Sven-Göran Eriksson took charge between 2001 and 2006, and was the team's first non-English manager. He guided England to the quarter-finals of the 2002 FIFA World Cup, UEFA Euro 2004 and the 2006 FIFA World Cup. England lost only five competitive matches during his entire tenure, and rose to number four in the world ranking under his guidance. Eriksson's contract was extended by the FA by two years, to include Euro 2008, but was terminated by them after the 2006 World Cup. Steve McClaren was then appointed as manager, but after failing to qualify for Euro 2008 he was sacked on 22 November 2007 after 18 matches in charge. The following month, he was replaced by a second foreign manager, Italian Fabio Capello, whose previous experience included successful spells at Juventus and Real Madrid. England won all but one of their qualifying games for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, but at the tournament itself, England drew their opening two games; this led to questions about the team's spirit, tactics and ability to handle pressure. They progressed to the next round, however, where they were beaten 4–1 by Germany, their heaviest defeat in a World Cup finals tournament match. In February 2012, Capello resigned from his role as England manager, following a disagreement with the FA over their request to remove John Terry from team captaincy after accusations of racial abuse concerning the player. Roy Hodgson, Sam Allardyce and Gareth Southgate. Following Capello's departure, Stuart Pearce was appointed as caretaker manager for one match, after which in May 2012, Roy Hodgson was announced as the new manager, just six weeks before UEFA Euro 2012. England managed to finish top of their group, but exited the Championships in the quarter-finals via a penalty shoot-out against Italy. In the 2014 FIFA World Cup, England were eliminated at the group stage for the first time since the 1958 World Cup, and the first time at a major tournament since Euro 2000. England qualified unbeaten for UEFA Euro 2016, but were ultimately eliminated in the Round of 16, losing 2–1 to Iceland. Hodgson resigned as manager in June 2016, and just under a month later was replaced by Sam Allardyce. However, after only 67 days in charge, Allardyce resigned from his managerial post by mutual agreement, after an alleged breach of FA rules, making him the shortest serving permanent England manager. Allardyce's sole match as England manager was a 1–0 victory over Slovakia, which made him the only permanent England manager ever to leave with a 100% win rate. Gareth Southgate, then the coach of the England under-21 team, was put in temporary charge of the national team until November 2016, before being given the position on a permanent basis. Under Southgate, England qualified comfortably for the 2018 FIFA World Cup and came second in their group at the tournament. They defeated Colombia on penalties in the first knock-out round, and then beat Sweden 2–0 in the quarter-final to reach only their third World Cup semi-final. In the semi-final, they were beaten 2–1 in extra time by Croatia and then were beaten by Belgium for a second time, 2–0, in the third place match. England striker Harry Kane finished the tournament as top scorer with six goals. On 14 November 2019, England played their 1000th International match, defeating Montenegro 7–0 at Wembley in a UEFA Euro 2020 qualifying match. At the delayed UEFA Euro 2020, England reached the final of a major tournament for the first time since 1966 and their first ever European Championship final appearance. After finishing top of a group including Croatia, Scotland and Czech Republic, the Three Lions would subsequently defeat Germany, Ukraine and Denmark to advance to the final. In the final held at Wembley, England were defeated by Italy on penalties after a 1–1 draw. At the 2022 World Cup, England defeated Iran and Wales in the group stage to qualify for the round of 16. In the round of 16, England defeated the reigning African champions Senegal by 3–0, however, England were eliminated by the reigning world champions France in the quarter-finals, 2–1. Harry Kane's goal against France was his 53rd for England, equalling the all-time record. However, he would later miss an 84th-minute penalty with the chance to level the match. Team image. Kits and crest. Crest. The motif of the England national football team has three lions "passant guardant", the emblem of King Richard I, who reigned from 1189 to 1199. In 1872, English players wore white jerseys emblazoned with the three lions crest of the Football Association. The lions, often blue, have had minor changes to colour and appearance. Initially topped by a crown, this was removed in 1949 when the FA was given an official coat of arms by the College of Arms; this introduced ten Tudor roses, one for each of the regional branches of the FA. Since 2003, England top their logo with a star to recognise their World Cup win in 1966; this was first embroidered onto the left sleeve of the home kit, and a year later was moved to its current position, first on the away shirt. Colours. England's traditional home colours are white shirts, navy blue shorts and white or black socks. The team has periodically worn an all-white kit. Although England's first away kits were blue, England's traditional away colours are red shirts, white shorts and red socks. In 1996, England's away kit was changed to grey shirts, shorts and socks. This kit was only worn three times, including against Germany in the semi-final of Euro 1996 but the deviation from the traditional red was unpopular with supporters and the England away kit remained red until 2011, when a navy blue away kit was introduced. The away kit is also sometimes worn during home matches, when a new edition has been released to promote it. England have occasionally had a third kit. At the 1970 World Cup England wore a third kit with pale blue shirts, shorts and socks against Czechoslovakia. They had a kit similar to Brazil's, with yellow shirts, yellow socks and blue shorts which they wore in the summer of 1973. For the World Cup in 1986 England had a third kit of pale blue, imitating that worn in Mexico 16 years before and England retained pale blue third kits until 1992, but they were rarely used. Umbro first agreed to manufacture the kit in 1954 and since then has supplied most of the kits, the exceptions being from 1959 to 1965 with Bukta and 1974–1984 with Admiral. Nike purchased Umbro in 2008 and took over as kit supplier in 2013 following their sale of the Umbro brand. Home stadium. For the first 50 years of their existence, England played their home matches all around the country. They initially used cricket grounds before later moving on to football club stadiums. The original Empire Stadium was built in Wembley, London, for the British Empire Exhibition. England played their first match at the stadium in 1924 against Scotland and for the next 27 years Wembley was used as a venue for matches against Scotland only. The stadium later became known simply as Wembley Stadium and it became England's permanent home stadium during the 1950s. In October 2000, the stadium closed its doors, ending with a defeat against Germany. This stadium was demolished during the period of 2002–03, and work began to completely rebuild it. During this time, England played at venues across the country, though by the time of the 2006 World Cup qualification, this had largely settled down to having Manchester United's Old Trafford stadium as the primary venue, with Newcastle United's St. James' Park used on occasions when Old Trafford was unavailable. Their first match in the new Wembley Stadium was in March 2007 when they drew with Brazil. The stadium is now owned by the Football Association, via its subsidiary Wembley National Stadium Limited. Rivalries. England's three main rivalries are Scotland, Germany and Argentina. Smaller rivalries with France, Wales and the Republic of Ireland have also been observed. England's rivalry with Scotland is one of the fiercest international rivalries that exists. It is the oldest international fixture in the world, first played in 1872 at Hamilton Crescent, Glasgow. The history of the British Isles has led to much rivalry between the nations in many forms, and the social and cultural effects of centuries of antagonism and conflict between the two has contributed to the intense nature of the sporting contests. Scottish nationalism has also been a factor in the Scots' desire to defeat England above all other rivals, with Scottish sports journalists traditionally referring to the English as the "Auld Enemy". The footballing rivalry has diminished somewhat since the late 1970s, particularly since the annual fixture stopped in 1989. For England, games against Germany and Argentina are now considered to be more important than the historic rivalry with Scotland. England's rivalry with Germany is considered to be mainly an English phenomenon—in the run-up to any competition match between the two teams, many UK newspapers will print articles detailing results of previous encounters, such as those in 1966 and 1990. However, this rivalry has diminished significantly in recent years. Most German fans consider the Netherlands or Italy to be their traditional footballing rivals, and as such, usually the rivalry is not taken quite as seriously in Germany as it is in England. England's rivalry with Argentina is highly competitive. Games between the two teams, even those that are only friendly matches, are often marked by notable and sometimes controversial incidents such as the hand of God in 1986. The rivalry is unusual in that it is an intercontinental one; typically such footballing rivalries exist between bordering nations. England is regarded in Argentina as one of the major rivals of the national football team, matched only by Brazil and Uruguay. The rivalry is, to a lesser extent reciprocal in England, locally described as a "grudge match" although matches against Germany carry a greater significance in popular perception. The rivalry emerged across several games during the latter half of the 20th century, even though as of 2008 the teams have played each other on only 14 occasions in full internationals. The rivalry was intensified, particularly in Argentina, by non-footballing events, especially the 1982 Falklands War between Argentina and the United Kingdom. However, England and Argentina have not met since a friendly in November 2005. Media coverage. All England matches are broadcast with full commentary on talkSPORT and BBC Radio 5 Live. From the 2008–09 season until the 2017–18 season, England's home and away qualifiers, and friendlies both home and away were broadcast live on ITV Sport (often with the exception of STV, the ITV franchisee in central and northern Scotland). England's away qualifiers for the 2010 World Cup were shown on Setanta Sports until that company's collapse. As a result of Setanta Sports's demise, England's World Cup qualifier in Ukraine on 10 October 2009 was shown in the United Kingdom on a pay-per-view basis via the internet only. This one-off event was the first time an England game had been screened in such a way. The number of subscribers, paying between £4.99 and £11.99 each, was estimated at between 250,000 and 300,000 and the total number of viewers at around 500,000. In 2018, Sky Sports broadcast the England Nations League and in-season friendlies, until 2021 and ITV Sport broadcast the European Qualifiers for Euro-World Cups and pre-tournament friendlies (after the Nations League group matches end), until 2022. In April 2022, Channel 4 won the rights for England matches until June 2024, including 2022–23 UEFA Nations League matches, UEFA Euro 2024 qualifying games, and friendlies. 2022 World Cup rights remained with the BBC and ITV. Results and fixtures. The following is a list of match results in the last 12 months, as well as any future matches that have been scheduled. Players. Current squad. The following 24 players were named in the squad for the UEFA Euro 2024 qualifying match against Ukraine and the friendly match against Scotland on 9 and 12 September 2023, respectively. Trent Alexander-Arnold and Jack Grealish both withdrew from the squad due to injury on 4 September 2023. "Caps and goals are correct as of 12 September 2023, after the match against Scotland." Recent call-ups. The following players have also been called up to the England squad within the last twelve months. SUS INJ Withdrew due to injury PRE Preliminary squad / standby RET Retired from the national team SUS Serving suspension WD Player withdrew from the squad due to non-injury issue. Competitive record. "For the all-time record of the national team against opposing nations, see the team's all-time record page" FIFA World Cup. England first appeared at the 1950 FIFA World Cup, and have subsequently qualified for a total of 16 FIFA World Cup finals tournaments, tied for sixth best by number of appearances. They are also placed sixth by number of wins, with 32. The national team is one of only eight nations to have won at least one FIFA World Cup title. The England team won their first and only World Cup title in 1966. The tournament was played on home soil, and England defeated West Germany 4–2 in the final. In 1990, England finished in fourth place, losing 2–1 to host nation Italy in the third place play-off, following defeat on penalties, after extra time, to champions West Germany in the semi-final. They also finished in fourth place in 2018, losing 2–0 to Belgium in the third place play-off, following a 2–1 defeat to Croatia, again after extra time, in the semi-final. The team also reached the quarter-final stage in 1954, 1962, 1970, 1986, 2002, 2006 and 2022. England failed to qualify for the World Cup in 1974, 1978 and 1994. The team's earliest exit in the finals tournament was its elimination in the first round in 1950, 1958 and, most recently, 2014. This was after being defeated in both their opening two matches for the first time, against Italy and Uruguay in Group D. In 1950, four teams remained after the first round, in 1958 eight teams remained and in 2014 sixteen teams remained. In 2010, England suffered its most resounding World Cup defeat, 4–1 to Germany, in the round of 16 stage. UEFA European Championship. England first entered the UEFA European Championship in 1964, and have since qualified for ten finals tournaments, tied for fourth best by number of finals appearances. England's greatest achievements at the UEFA European Championship have been to finish runners-up the in '2020' championship in 2021, and in third place in 1968. The team also reached the semi-finals in 1996, a tournament they hosted. Additionally, the team has also reached the quarter-final on two further occasions; in 2004 and 2012. The team's worst results in the finals tournament, to date, have been first-round eliminations in 1980, 1988, 1992 and 2000, whilst they failed to qualify for the finals in 1964, 1972, 1976, 1984 and 2008.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9946

Ed Sullivan

Edward Vincent Sullivan (September 28, 1901 – October 13, 1974) was an American television personality, impresario, sports and entertainment reporter, and syndicated columnist for the "New York Daily News" and the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate. He was the creator and host of the television variety program "The Toast of the Town", which in 1955 was renamed "The Ed Sullivan Show". Broadcast from 1948 to 1971, it set a record as the longest-running variety show in U.S. broadcast history. "It was, by almost any measure, the last great American TV show", said television critic David Hinckley. "It's one of our fondest, dearest pop culture memories." Sullivan was a broadcasting pioneer during the early years of American television. As critic David Bianculli wrote, "Before MTV, Sullivan presented rock acts. Before Bravo, he presented jazz and classical music and theater. Before the Comedy Channel, even before there was "The Tonight Show", Sullivan discovered, anointed and popularized young comedians. Before there were 500 channels, before there was cable, Ed Sullivan was where the choice was. From the start, he was indeed 'the Toast of the Town'." In 1996, Sullivan was ranked number 50 on "TV Guide"'s "50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time". Early life and career. Sullivan was born on September 28, 1901, in Harlem, New York City, the son of Elizabeth F. (née Smith) and Peter Arthur Sullivan, a customs house employee. His twin brother Daniel was sickly and lived only a few months. Sullivan was raised in Port Chester, New York, where the family lived in a small red brick home at 53 Washington Street. He was of Irish descent. The family loved music, frequently playing the piano, singing and playing phonograph records. Sullivan was a gifted athlete in high school, earning 12 athletic letters at Port Chester High School. He played football as a halfback, basketball as a guard and track as a sprinter. With the baseball team, Sullivan was a catcher and the team's captain, leading the team to several championships. Sullivan noted that, in the state of New York, integration was taken for granted in high-school sports: "When we went up into Connecticut, we ran into clubs that had Negro players. In those days this was accepted as commonplace; and so, my instinctive antagonism years later to any theory that a Negro wasn't a worthy opponent or was an inferior person. It was just as simple as that." Sullivan landed his first job at "The Port Chester Daily Item", a local newspaper for which he had written sports news while in high school and which he joined full-time after graduation. In 1919, he joined "The Hartford Post", but the newspaper folded in his first week there. He next worked for "The New York Evening Mail" as a sports reporter. After the newspaper closed in 1923, he bounced through a series of news jobs with the Associated Press, the "Philadelphia Bulletin", "The Morning World", "The Morning Telegraph", "The New York Bulletin" and "The Leader". In 1927, Sullivan joined The "New York Evening Graphic", first as a sports writer and then as a sports editor. In 1929, when Walter Winchell moved to "The Daily Mirror", Sullivan was named the "New York Evening Graphic"'s Broadway columnist. He left the paper for the city's largest tabloid, the "New York Daily News". His column, "Little Old New York", concentrated on Broadway shows and gossip, and Sullivan also delivered showbusiness news broadcasts on radio. In 1933, Sullivan wrote and starred in the film "Mr. Broadway", in which he guided the audience around New York nightspots to meet entertainers and celebrities. Sullivan soon became a powerful force in the entertainment world and one of Winchell's main rivals, setting the El Morocco nightclub in New York as his unofficial headquarters against Winchell's seat of power at the nearby Stork Club. Sullivan continued writing for the "New York Daily News" throughout his broadcasting career, and his popularity long outlived that of Winchell. In the late 1960s, Sullivan praised Winchell's legacy in a magazine interview, leading to a major reconciliation between the longtime adversaries. Throughout his career as a columnist, Sullivan had dabbled in entertainment, producing vaudeville shows with which he appeared as master of ceremonies in the 1920s and 1930s, directing a radio program over the original WABC and organizing benefit reviews for various causes. Radio. In 1941, Sullivan became host of the "Summer Silver Theater", a variety program on CBS, with Will Bradley as bandleader and a guest star featured each week. Television. In 1948, producer Marlo Lewis convinced CBS to hire Sullivan to host a weekly Sunday-night television variety show, "Toast of the Town", which later became "The Ed Sullivan Show". Debuting in June 1948, the show was originally broadcast from Maxine Elliott's Theatre on West 39th Street in New York. In January 1953, it moved to CBS-TV Studio 50 at 1697 Broadway, a former CBS Radio playhouse that in 1967 was renamed the Ed Sullivan Theater (and was later the home of the "Late Show with David Letterman" and "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert"). Television critics gave the new show and its host poor reviews. Harriet Van Horne alleged that "he got where he is not by having a personality, but by having "no" personality." (The host wrote to the critic, "Dear Miss Van Horne: You bitch. Sincerely, Ed Sullivan.") Sullivan had little acting ability; in 1967, 20 years after his show's debut, "Time" magazine asked, "What exactly is Ed Sullivan's talent?" His mannerisms on camera were so awkward that some viewers believed the host suffered from Bell's palsy. "Time" in 1955 stated that Sullivan resembled "Yet," the magazine concluded, "instead of frightening children, Ed Sullivan charms the whole family." Sullivan appeared to the audience as an average guy who brought the great acts of show business to their home televisions. "Ed Sullivan will last", comedian Fred Allen said, "as long as someone else has talent." Frequent guest Alan King said, "Ed does nothing, but he does it better than anyone else in television." A typical show would feature a vaudeville act (such as acrobats, jugglers or magicians), one or two popular comedians, a singing star, a figure from the legitimate theater, an appearance by puppet Topo Gigio or a popular athlete. The bill was often international in scope, with many European performers appearing along with the American artists. Sullivan had a healthy sense of humor about himself and permitted and even encouraged impersonators such as John Byner, Frank Gorshin, Rich Little and especially Will Jordan to imitate him on his show. Johnny Carson also performed a fair impression, and even Joan Rivers imitated Sullivan's unique posture. The impressionists exaggerated his stiffness, raised shoulders and nasal tenor phrasing, along with some of his commonly used introductions, such as "And now, right here on our stage...", "For all you youngsters out there..." and "a really big shew" (his pronunciation of the word "show"). The latter phrase was in fact in the exclusive domain of his impressionists, as Sullivan never actually spoke the phrase "really big show" during the opening introduction of any episode in the entire history of the series. Jordan portrayed Sullivan in the films "I Wanna Hold Your Hand", "The Buddy Holly Story", "The Doors", "Mr. Saturday Night", "Down with Love" and in the 1979 television movie "Elvis". Sullivan played himself, parodying his mannerisms as directed by Jerry Lewis, in Lewis' 1964 film "The Patsy". Sullivan inspired a song in the musical "Bye Bye Birdie" and in 1963 appeared as himself in the film. In 1954, Sullivan appeared as a cohost on the television musical special "". Legacy. Sullivan was quoted as saying: "In the conduct of my own show, I've never asked a performer his religion, his race or his politics. Performers are engaged on the basis of their abilities. I believe that this is another quality of our show that has helped win it a wide and loyal audience." Although Sullivan was wary of Elvis Presley's image and initially said that he would never book him, Presley became too big a name to ignore; in 1956, Sullivan signed him for three appearances. Six weeks earlier in August 1956, Sullivan and his son-in-law, the producer of the show, Robert Precht, were in a near fatal car accident near Sukkivan’s Connecticut country home in Southbury, Connecticut, and missed Presley's first appearance on September 9, when Charles Laughton introduced Presley. After Sullivan came to know Presley personally, he made amends by telling his audience, "This is a real decent, fine boy." Sullivan's failure to scoop the TV industry with Presley made him determined to book the next big sensation first. In November 1963, while at Heathrow Airport, Sullivan witnessed the Beatlemania spectacle as the band returned from Sweden and the terminal was overrun by screaming teens. At first Sullivan was reluctant to book the Beatles because the band did not yet have a commercially successful single in the U.S., but at the behest of his friend, the legendary impresario Sid Bernstein, Sullivan signed the group. Their initial Sullivan show appearance on February 9, 1964, was the most-watched program in TV history to that point. The Beatles appeared three more times in person and submitted filmed performances afterwards. The Dave Clark Five, who claimed a "cleaner" image than the Beatles, made 13 appearances on the show, more than any other UK group. Unlike many shows of the time, Sullivan asked that most musical acts perform their music live, rather than lip-synching to their recordings. However, exceptions were made, such as when a microphone could not be placed close enough to a performer for technical reasons. An example was B.J. Thomas' 1969 performance of "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head", in which water was sprinkled on him as a special effect. In 1969, Sullivan presented the Jackson 5 with their first single "I Want You Back", which ousted Thomas' song from the top spot of the "Billboard" Hot 100. Sullivan had an appreciation for black talent. According to biographer Gerald Nachman, "Most TV variety shows welcomed 'acceptable' black superstars like Louis Armstrong, Pearl Bailey and Sammy Davis Jr. ... but in the early 1950s, long before it was fashionable, Sullivan was presenting the much more obscure black entertainers he had enjoyed in Harlem on his uptown rounds — legends like Peg Leg Bates, Pigmeat Markham and Tim Moore ... strangers to white America." He hosted pioneering TV appearances by Bo Diddley, the Platters, Brook Benton, Jackie Wilson, Fats Domino and numerous Motown acts including the Supremes, who appeared 17 times. As the critic John Leonard wrote, "There wasn't an important black artist who didn't appear on Ed's show." Sullivan defied pressure to exclude black entertainers or to avoid interacting with them on screen. "Sullivan had to fend off his hard-won sponsor, Ford's Lincoln dealers, after kissing Pearl Bailey on the cheek and daring to shake Nat King Cole's hand," Nachman wrote. According to biographer Jerry Bowles, "Sullivan once had a Ford executive thrown out of the theatre when he suggested that Sullivan stop booking so many black acts. And a dealer in Cleveland told him 'We realize that you got to have niggers on your show. But do you have to put your arm around Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson at the end of his dance?' Sullivan had to be physically restrained from beating the man to a pulp." Sullivan later raised money to help pay for Robinson's funeral. He said: "As a Catholic, it was inevitable that I would despise intolerance, because Catholics suffered more than their share of it. As I grew up, the causes of minorities were part and parcel of me. Negroes and Jews were the minority causes closest at hand. I need no urging to take a plunge in and help." At a time when television had not yet embraced country and western music, Sullivan featured Nashville performers on his program. This in turn paved the way for shows such as "Hee Haw" and variety shows hosted by Johnny Cash, Glen Campbell and other country singers. The Canadian comedy duo Wayne and Shuster made the most appearances of any act throughout the show's run with 67 appearances between 1958 and 1969. Sullivan appeared as himself on other television programs, including an April 1958 episode of the Howard Duff and Ida Lupino CBS situation comedy "Mr. Adams and Eve". On September 14, 1958, Sullivan appeared on "What's My Line?" as a mystery guest. In 1961, Sullivan substituted for Red Skelton on "The Red Skelton Show". Sullivan took Skelton's roles in the various comedy sketches, with Skelton's hobo character Freddie the Freeloader renamed Eddie the Freeloader. Personality. Sullivan was quick to take offense if he felt that he had been crossed, and he could hold a grudge for a long time. As he told biographer Gerald Nachman, "I'm a pop-off. I flare up, then I go around apologizing." "Armed with an Irish temper and thin skin," wrote Nachman, "Ed brought to his feuds a hunger for combat fed by his coverage of, and devotion to, boxing." Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly, Jackie Mason, and Jim Morrison were parties to some of Sullivan's most storied conflicts. For his second Sullivan appearance in 1955, Bo Diddley planned to sing his namesake hit, "Bo Diddley", but Sullivan told him to perform Tennessee Ernie Ford's song "Sixteen Tons". "That would have been the end of my career right there," Diddley told his biographer, so he sang "Bo Diddley" anyway. Sullivan was enraged: "You're the first black boy that ever double-crossed me on the show," Diddley quoted him as saying. "We didn't have much to do with each other after that." Later, Diddley resented that Elvis Presley, whom he accused of copying his revolutionary style and beat, received the attention and accolades on Sullivan's show that he felt were rightfully his. "I am owed," he said, "and I never got paid." "He might have," wrote Nachman, "had things gone smoother with Sullivan." Buddy Holly and the Crickets first appeared on the Sullivan show in 1957 to an enthusiastic response. For their second appearance in January 1958, Sullivan considered the lyrics of their chosen number "Oh, Boy!" too suggestive, and ordered Holly to substitute another song. Holly responded that he had already told his hometown friends in Texas that he would be singing "Oh, Boy!" for them. Sullivan, unaccustomed to having his instructions questioned, angrily repeated them, but Holly refused to back down. Later, when the band was slow to respond to a summons to the rehearsal stage, Sullivan commented, "I guess the Crickets are not too excited to be on "The Ed Sullivan Show"." Holly, still annoyed by Sullivan's attitude, replied, "I hope they're damn more excited than I am." Sullivan retaliated by cutting them from two numbers to one, then mispronounced Holly's name during the introduction. He also saw to it that Holly's guitar amplifier volume was barely audible, except during his guitar solo. Nevertheless, the band was so well-received that Sullivan was forced to invite them back; Holly responded that Sullivan did not have enough money. Archival photographs taken during the appearance show Holly smirking and ignoring a visibly angry Sullivan. During Jackie Mason's October 1964 performance on a show that had been shortened by ten minutes due to an address by President Lyndon Johnson, Sullivan—on-stage but off-camera—signaled Mason that he had two minutes left by holding up two fingers. Sullivan's signal distracted the studio audience, and to television viewers unaware of the circumstances, it seemed as though Mason's jokes were falling flat. Mason, in a bid to regain the audience's attention, cried, "I'm getting fingers here!" and made his own frantic hand gesture: "Here's a finger for you!" Videotapes of the incident are inconclusive as to whether Mason's upswept hand (which was just off-camera) was intended to be an indecent gesture, but Sullivan was convinced that it was, and banned Mason from future appearances on the program. Mason later insisted that he did not know what the "middle finger" meant, and that he did not make the gesture anyway. In September 1965, Sullivan—who, according to Mason, was "deeply apologetic"—brought Mason on the show for a "surprise grand reunion". "He said they were old pals," Nachman wrote, "news to Mason, who never got a repeat invitation." Mason added that his earning power "...was cut right in half after that. I never really worked my way back until I opened on Broadway in 1986." When the Byrds performed on December 12, 1965, David Crosby got into a shouting match with the show's director. They were never asked to return. Sullivan decided that "Girl, we couldn't get much higher", from the Doors' signature song "Light My Fire", was too overt a reference to drug use, and directed that the lyric be changed to "Girl, we couldn't get much better" for the group's September 1967 appearance. The band members "nodded their assent", according to Doors biographer Ben Fong-Torres, then sang the song as written. After the broadcast, producer Bob Precht told the group, "Mr. Sullivan wanted you for six more shows, but you'll never work "the Ed Sullivan Show" again." Jim Morrison replied, "Hey, man, we just "did" the "Ed Sullivan Show"." The Rolling Stones famously capitulated during their fifth appearance on the show, in 1967, when Mick Jagger was told to change the titular lyric of "Let's Spend the Night Together" to "Let's spend some time together". "But Jagger prevailed," wrote Nachman, by deliberately calling attention to the censorship, rolling his eyes, mugging, and drawing out the word "t-i-i-i-me" as he sang the revised lyric. Sullivan was angered by the insubordination, but the Stones did make one additional appearance on the show, in 1969. Moe Howard of the Three Stooges recalled in 1975 that Sullivan had a memory problem of sorts: "Ed was a very nice man, but for a showman, quite forgetful. On our first appearance, he introduced us as the Three Ritz Brothers. He got out of it by adding, 'who look more like the Three Stooges to me'." Joe DeRita, who worked with the Stooges after 1959, had commented that Sullivan had a personality "like the bottom of a bird cage." Diana Ross, who was very fond of Sullivan, later recalled Sullivan's forgetfulness during the many occasions the Supremes performed on his show. In a 1995 appearance on the "Late Show with David Letterman" (taped in the Ed Sullivan Theater), Ross stated, "he could never remember our names. He called us 'the girls'." In a 1990 press conference, Paul McCartney recalled meeting Sullivan again in the early 1970s. Sullivan apparently had no idea who McCartney was. McCartney tried to remind Sullivan that he was one of the Beatles, but Sullivan obviously could not remember, and nodding and smiling, simply shook McCartney's hand and left. In an interview with Howard Stern around 2012, Joan Rivers said that Sullivan had been suffering from dementia toward the end of his life. Politics. Sullivan, like many American entertainers, was pulled into the Cold War anticommunism of the late 1940s and 1950s. Tap dancer Paul Draper's scheduled January 1950 appearance on "Toast of the Town" met with opposition from Hester McCullough, an activist in the hunt for "subversives". Branding Draper a Communist Party "sympathizer", she demanded that Sullivan's lead sponsor, the Ford Motor Company, cancel Draper's appearance. Draper denied the charge, and appeared on the show as scheduled. Ford received over a thousand angry letters and telegrams, and Sullivan was obliged to promise Ford's advertising agency, Kenyon & Eckhardt, that he would avoid controversial guests going forward. Draper was forced to move to Europe to earn a living. After the Draper incident, Sullivan began to work closely with Theodore Kirkpatrick of the anti-Communist "Counterattack" newsletter. He would consult Kirkpatrick if any questions came up regarding a potential guest's political leanings. Sullivan wrote in his June 21, 1950, "Daily News" column that "Kirkpatrick has sat in my living room on several occasions and listened attentively to performers eager to secure a certification of loyalty." Cold War repercussions manifested in a different way when Bob Dylan was booked to appear in May 1963. His chosen song was "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues", which poked fun at the ultraconservative John Birch Society and its tendency to see Communist conspiracies in many situations. No concern was voiced by anyone, including Sullivan, during rehearsals; but on the day of the broadcast, CBS's Standards and Practices department rejected the song, fearing that lyrics equating the Society's views with those of Adolf Hitler might trigger a defamation lawsuit. Dylan was offered the opportunity to perform a different song, but he responded that if he could not sing the number of his choice, he would rather not appear at all. The story generated widespread media attention in the days that followed; Sullivan denounced the network's decision in published interviews. Sullivan butted heads with Standards and Practices on other occasions, as well. In 1956, Ingrid Bergman—who had been living in "exile" in Europe since 1950 in the wake of her scandalous love affair with director Roberto Rossellini while they were both married—was planning a return to Hollywood as the star of "Anastasia". Sullivan, confident that the American public would welcome her back, invited her to appear on his show and flew to Europe to film an interview with Bergman, Yul Brynner, and Helen Hayes on the "Anastasia" set. When he arrived back in New York, Standards and Practices informed Sullivan that under no circumstances would Bergman be permitted to appear on the show, either live or on film. Sullivan's prediction later proved correct, as Bergman won her second Academy Award for her portrayal, as well as the forgiveness of her fans. Personal life. Sullivan was engaged to champion swimmer Sybil Bauer, but she died of cancer in 1927 at the age of 23. In 1926, Sullivan met and began dating Sylvia Weinstein. Initially she told her family that she was dating a Jewish man named Ed Solomon, but her brother discovered it was Sullivan, who was Catholic. Both their families were strongly opposed to interfaith marriage, which resulted in a discontinuous relationship for the next three years. They were finally married on April 28, 1930, in a City Hall ceremony. Eight months later Sylvia gave birth to Elizabeth ("Betty"), named after Sullivan's mother, who had died that year. In 1952, Betty Sullivan married the "Ed Sullivan Show"'s producer, Bob Precht. The Sullivans rented a suite of rooms at the Hotel Delmonico in 1944 after living at the Hotel Astor on Times Square for many years. Sullivan rented a suite next door to the family suite, which he used as an office until "The Ed Sullivan Show" was canceled in 1971. Sullivan habitually called his wife after every program to get her critique. The Sullivans regularly dined and socialized at New York City's best-known clubs and restaurants including the Stork Club, Danny's Hide-A-Way, and Jimmy Kelly's. His friends included celebrities and U.S. Presidents. He also received audiences with Popes. Sylvia Sullivan was a financial advisor for her husband. She died on March 16, 1973, at Mount Sinai Hospital from a ruptured aorta. Later years and death. In the fall of 1965, CBS began televising its weekly programs in color. Although the Sullivan show was seen live in the Central and Eastern time zones, it was taped for airing in the Pacific and Mountain time zones. Excerpts have been released on home video, and posted on the official Ed Sullivan Show YouTube Channel. By 1971, the show's ratings had plummeted. In an effort to refresh the CBS lineup, CBS cancelled the program in March 1971, along with some of its other long-running shows throughout the 1970–1971 season (later known as the rural purge). Angered, Sullivan refused to host three more months of scheduled shows. They were replaced by reruns, and a final program without him aired in June. He remained with the network in various other capacities and hosted a 25th anniversary special in June 1973. In early September 1974, Sullivan was diagnosed with an advanced stage of esophageal cancer. Doctors gave him very little time to live, and the family chose to keep the diagnosis secret from him. Sullivan, a lifelong smoker, believed his ailment to be yet another complication from a long-standing battle with gastric ulcers. Sullivan died on October 13, 1974, at New York's Lenox Hill Hospital. His funeral was attended by 2,000 people at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, on a cold, rainy day. Sullivan is interred in a crypt at the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. Sullivan has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6101 Hollywood Blvd. In 1985, Sullivan was welcomed to the Television Academy Hall of Fame.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10049

Eric Clapton

Eric Patrick Clapton (born 1945) is an English rock and blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He is regarded as one of the most successful and influential guitarists in rock music. He ranked second in "Rolling Stone"s list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" and fourth in Gibsons "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time". He was also named number five in "Time" magazine's list of "The 10 Best Electric Guitar Players" in 2009. After playing in a number of different local bands, Clapton joined the Yardbirds from 1963 to 1965, and John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers from 1965 to 1966. After leaving Mayall, he formed the power trio Cream with drummer Ginger Baker and bassist/vocalist Jack Bruce, in which Clapton played sustained blues improvisations and "arty, blues-based psychedelic pop". After four successful albums, Cream broke up in November 1968. Clapton then formed the blues rock band Blind Faith with Baker, Steve Winwood, and Ric Grech, recording one album and performing on one tour before they broke up. Clapton then toured with Delaney & Bonnie and recorded his first solo album in 1970, before forming Derek and the Dominos with Bobby Whitlock, Carl Radle and Jim Gordon. Like Blind Faith, the band only lasted one album, "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs", which includes "Layla", one of Clapton's signature songs. Clapton continued to record a number of successful solo albums and songs over the next several decades, including a 1974 cover of Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff" (which helped reggae reach a mass market), the country-infused "Slowhand" album (1977) and the pop rock of 1986's "August". Following the death of his son Conor in 1991, Clapton's grief was expressed in the song "Tears in Heaven", which appeared on his "Unplugged" album. In 1996 he had another top-40 hit with the R&B crossover "Change the World". In 1998, he released the Grammy award-winning "My Father's Eyes". Since 1999, he has recorded a number of traditional blues and blues rock albums and hosted the periodic Crossroads Guitar Festival. His most recent studio album is "Happy Xmas" (2018). Clapton has received 18 Grammy Awards as well as the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. In 2004, he was awarded a CBE for services to music. He has received four Ivor Novello Awards from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, including the Lifetime Achievement Award. He is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist, and separately as a member of the Yardbirds and of Cream. In his solo career, he has sold more than 280 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling musicians of all time. In 1998, Clapton, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, founded the Crossroads Centre on Antigua, a medical facility for those recovering from substance abuse. Early life. Clapton was born on 30 March 1945 in Ripley, Surrey, England, to 16-year-old Patricia Molly Clapton (1929–1999) and Edward Walter Fryer (1920–1985), a 25-year-old soldier from Montreal, Quebec. Fryer was drafted to war before Clapton's birth and then returned to Canada. Clapton grew up believing that his grandmother, Rose, and her second husband, Jack Clapp, Patricia's stepfather, were his parents, and that his mother was actually his older sister. The similarity in surnames gave rise to the erroneous belief that Clapton's real surname is Clapp (Reginald Cecil Clapton was the name of Rose's first husband, Eric Clapton's maternal grandfather). Years later, his mother married another Canadian soldier and moved to Germany, leaving Eric with his grandparents in Surrey. Clapton received an acoustic Hoyer guitar, made in Germany, for his thirteenth birthday, but the inexpensive steel-stringed instrument was difficult to play and he briefly lost interest. Two years later he picked it up again and started playing consistently. He was influenced by blues music from an early age, and practised long hours learning the chords of blues music by playing along to the records. He preserved his practice sessions using his portable Grundig reel-to-reel tape recorder, listening to them over and over until he was satisfied. In 1961, after leaving Hollyfield School in Surbiton, he studied at the Kingston College of Art but was expelled at the end of the academic year because his focus had remained on music rather than art. His guitar playing was sufficiently advanced that, by the age of 16, he was getting noticed. Around this time, he began busking around Kingston, Richmond, and the West End. In 1962, he started performing as a duo with fellow blues enthusiast Dave Brock in pubs around Surrey. When he was 17, he joined his first band, an early British R&B group, the Roosters, whose other guitarist was Tom McGuinness. He stayed with them from January until August 1963. In October of that year, he did a seven-gig stint with Casey Jones & the Engineers. Career. The Yardbirds and the Bluesbreakers. In October 1963, Clapton joined the Yardbirds, a rhythm and blues band, and stayed with them until March 1965. Synthesising influences from Chicago blues and leading blues guitarists such as Buddy Guy, Freddie King, and B.B. King, Clapton forged a distinctive style and rapidly became one of the most talked-about guitarists in the British music scene. The band initially played Chess/Checker/Vee-Jay blues numbers and began to attract a large cult following when they took over the Rolling Stones' residency at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, London. They toured England with American bluesman Sonny Boy Williamson II; a joint LP album, recorded in December 1963, was issued in 1965. Yardbirds' rhythm guitarist, Chris Dreja, recalled that whenever Clapton broke a guitar string during a concert, he would stay on stage and replace it. The English audiences would wait out the delay by doing what is called a "slow handclap". Clapton's nickname of "Slowhand" came from Giorgio Gomelsky, a pun on the slow handclapping that ensued when Clapton stopped playing while he replaced a string. In December 1964, Clapton made his first appearance at the Royal Albert Hall in London, with the Yardbirds. Since then, Clapton has performed at the Hall over 200 times, and has stated that performing at the venue is like "playing in my front room". In March 1965, Clapton and the Yardbirds had their first major hit, "For Your Love", written by songwriter Graham Gouldman, who also wrote hit songs for Herman's Hermits and the Hollies (and later achieved success of his own as a member of 10cc). In part because of its success, the Yardbirds elected to move toward a pop-orientated sound, much to the annoyance of Clapton, who was devoted to the blues and not commercial success. He left the Yardbirds on the day that "For Your Love" went public, a move that left the band without its lead guitarist and most accomplished member. Clapton suggested fellow guitarist Jimmy Page as his replacement, but Page declined out of loyalty to Clapton, putting Jeff Beck forward. Beck and Page played together in the Yardbirds for a while, but Beck, Page, and Clapton were never in the group together. They first appeared together in 1983 on the 12-date benefit tour for Action for Research into multiple sclerosis with the first date on 23 September at the Royal Albert Hall. Clapton joined John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers in April 1965, only to quit a few months later. In June, Clapton was invited to jam with Jimmy Page, recording a number of tracks that were retroactively credited to The Immediate All-Stars. In the summer of 1965 he left for Greece with a band called the Glands, which included his old friend Ben Palmer on piano. After a car crash that killed the bassist and injured the guitarist of the Greek band the Juniors, on 17 October 1965 the surviving members played memorial shows in which Clapton played with the band. In October 1965 he rejoined John Mayall. In March 1966, while still a member of the Bluesbreakers, Clapton briefly collaborated on a side project with Jack Bruce and Steve Winwood among others, recording only a few tracks under the name Eric Clapton and the Powerhouse. During his second Bluesbreakers stint, Clapton gained a reputation as the best blues guitarist on the club circuit. Although Clapton gained fame for playing on the influential album, "Blues Breakers – John Mayall – With Eric Clapton", this album was not released until he had left the band for the last time in July 1966. The album itself is often called "The Beano Album" by fans because of its cover photograph showing Clapton reading the British children's comic "The Beano". Having swapped his Fender Telecaster and Vox AC30 amplifier for a 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard guitar and Marshall amplifier, Clapton's sound and playing inspired the famous slogan "Clapton is God", spray-painted by an unknown admirer on a wall in Islington, North London in 1967. The graffito was captured in a now-famous photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall. Clapton is reported to have been embarrassed by the slogan, saying in his "The South Bank Show" profile in 1987, "I never accepted that I was the greatest guitar player in the world. I always "wanted" to be the greatest guitar player in the world, but that's an ideal, and I accept it as an ideal". Cream. Clapton left the Bluesbreakers in July 1966 (replaced by Peter Green) and was invited by drummer Ginger Baker to play in his newly formed band Cream, one of the earliest supergroups, with Jack Bruce on bass (Bruce was previously of the Bluesbreakers, the Graham Bond Organisation and Manfred Mann). Before the formation of Cream, Clapton was not well known in the United States; he left the Yardbirds before "For Your Love" hit the US top ten, and had yet to perform there. During his time with Cream, Clapton began to develop as a singer, songwriter and guitarist, though Bruce took most of the lead vocals and wrote the majority of the material with lyricist Pete Brown. Cream's first gig was an unofficial performance at the Twisted Wheel Club in Manchester on 1966 before their full debut two nights later at the National Jazz and Blues Festival in Windsor. Cream established its enduring legend with the high-volume blues jamming and extended solos of their live shows. By early 1967, fans of the emerging blues-rock sound in the UK had begun to portray Clapton as Britain's top guitarist; however, he found himself rivalled by the emergence of Jimi Hendrix, an acid rock-infused guitarist who used wailing feedback and effects pedals to create new sounds for the instrument. Hendrix attended a performance of the newly formed Cream at the Central London Polytechnic on 1966, during which he sat in on a double-timed version of "Killing Floor". Top UK stars, including Clapton, Pete Townshend and members of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, avidly attended Hendrix's early club performances. Hendrix's arrival had an immediate and major effect on the next phase of Clapton's career. Clapton first visited the United States while touring with Cream. In March 1967, Cream performed a nine-show stand at the RKO Theater in New York. Clapton's 1964 painted Gibson SG guitar – The Fool – a "psychedelic fantasy", according to Clapton, made its debut at the RKO Theater. Clapton used the guitar for most of Cream's recordings after "Fresh Cream", particularly on "Disraeli Gears", until the band broke up in 1968. One of the world's best-known guitars, it symbolises the psychedelic era. They recorded "Disraeli Gears" in New York from 11 to 15 May 1967. Cream's repertoire varied from hard rock ("I Feel Free") to lengthy blues-based instrumental jams ("Spoonful"). "Disraeli Gears" contained Clapton's searing guitar lines, Bruce's soaring vocals and prominent, fluid bass playing, and Baker's powerful, polyrhythmic jazz-influenced drumming. Together, Cream's talents secured them as an influential power trio. Clapton's voice can be heard on Frank Zappa's album "We're Only in It for the Money", on the tracks "Are You Hung Up?" and "Nasal Retentive Calliope Music". In 28 months, Cream had become a commercial success, selling millions of records and playing throughout the US and Europe. They redefined the instrumentalist's role in rock and were one of the first blues-rock bands to emphasise musical virtuosity and lengthy jazz-style improvisation sessions. Their US hit singles include "Sunshine of Your Love" (No. 5, 1968), "White Room" (No. 6, 1968) and "Crossroads" (No. 28, 1969) – a live version of Robert Johnson's "Cross Road Blues". Though Cream were hailed as one of the greatest groups of its day, and the adulation of Clapton as a guitar legend reached new heights, the supergroup was short-lived. Drug and alcohol use escalated tension between the three members, and conflicts between Bruce and Baker eventually led to Cream's demise. A strongly critical "Rolling Stone" review of a concert of the group's second headlining US tour was another significant factor in the trio's demise, and it affected Clapton profoundly. Clapton has also credited "Music from Big Pink", the debut album of The Band, and its revolutionary Americana sound as influencing his decision to leave Cream. Cream's farewell album, "Goodbye", comprising live performances recorded at The Forum, Los Angeles, on 1968, was released shortly after Cream disbanded. It also spawned the studio single "Badge", co-written by Clapton and George Harrison. (Clapton had met and become close friends with Harrison after the Beatles shared a bill with the Clapton-era Yardbirds at the London Palladium.) In 1968, Clapton played the lead guitar solo on Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", from the Beatles' self-titled double album (also known as the "White Album"). Harrison's debut solo album, "Wonderwall Music" (1968), became the first of many Harrison solo records to include Clapton on guitar. Clapton went largely uncredited for his contributions to Harrison's albums due to contractual restraints, and Harrison was credited as "L'Angelo Misterioso" for his contributions to the song "Badge" on "Goodbye". The pair often played live together as each other's guest. A year after Harrison's death in 2001, Clapton was musical director for the Concert for George. In January 1969, when the Beatles were recording and filming what became "Let It Be", tensions became so acute that Harrison quit the group for several days, prompting John Lennon to suggest they complete the project with Clapton if Harrison did not return. Michael Lindsay-Hogg, television director of the recording sessions for "Let It Be", later recalled: "I was there when John mentioned Clapton – but that wasn't going to happen. Would Eric have become a Beatle? No. Paul [McCartney] didn't want to go there. He didn't want them to break up. Then George came back." Clapton was on good terms with all four of the Beatles; in December 1968 he had played with Lennon at "The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus" as part of the one-off group the Dirty Mac. Cream briefly reunited in 1993 to perform at the ceremony inducting them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. A full reunion took place in May 2005, with Clapton, Bruce and Baker playing four sold-out concerts at London's Royal Albert Hall, and three shows at New York's Madison Square Garden that October. Recordings from the London shows, "Royal Albert Hall London May 2-3-5-6, 2005", were released on CD, LP and DVD in late 2005. Blind Faith. Clapton's next group, Blind Faith, formed in 1969, was composed of Cream drummer Ginger Baker, Steve Winwood of Traffic, and Ric Grech of Family, and yielded one LP and one arena-circuit tour. The supergroup debuted before 100,000 fans in London's Hyde Park on 1969. They performed several dates in Scandinavia and began a sold-out American tour in July before their only album was released. The LP "Blind Faith" consisted of just six songs, one of them the hit "Can't Find My Way Home". Another, "Presence of the Lord", is the first song credited solely to Clapton. The album's jacket image of a topless pubescent girl was deemed controversial in the US and was replaced by a photograph of the band. Blind Faith dissolved after less than seven months. Delaney & Bonnie and first solo album. Clapton subsequently toured as a sideman for an act that had opened for Blind Faith, Delaney and Bonnie and Friends. He also performed as a member of Lennon's Plastic Ono Band at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival in September 1969, a recording from which was released as the album "Live Peace in Toronto 1969". On 30 September, Clapton played lead guitar on Lennon's second solo single, "Cold Turkey". On 15 December that year, Clapton performed with Lennon, Harrison and others as the Plastic Ono Supergroup at a fundraiser for UNICEF in London. Delaney Bramlett encouraged Clapton in his singing and writing. Using the Bramletts' backing group and an all-star cast of session players (including Leon Russell and Stephen Stills), Clapton recorded his first solo album during two brief tour hiatuses, titled "Eric Clapton". Delaney Bramlett co-wrote six of the songs with Clapton, also producing the LP, and Bonnie Bramlett co-wrote "Let It Rain". The album yielded the unexpected US No. 18 hit, J. J. Cale's "After Midnight". Clapton also worked with much of Delaney and Bonnie's band to record George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass" in spring 1970. During this period, Clapton also recorded with artists such as Dr. John, Leon Russell, Billy Preston, Ringo Starr and Dave Mason. With Chicago blues artist Howlin' Wolf, he recorded "The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions", that also included long-time Wolf guitarist Hubert Sumlin and members of the Rolling Stones, Winwood and Starr. Despite the superstar line-up, critic Cub Koda noted: "Even Eric Clapton, who usually welcomes any chance to play with one of his idols, has criticized this album repeatedly in interviews, which speaks volumes in and of itself." Other noted recordings from this period include Clapton's guitar work on "Go Back Home" from Stephen Stills' self-titled first solo album. Derek and the Dominos. With the intention of counteracting the "star" cult faction that had begun to form around him, Clapton assembled a new band composed of Delaney and Bonnie's former rhythm section, Bobby Whitlock as keyboardist and vocalist, Carl Radle as the bassist, and drummer Jim Gordon, with Clapton playing guitar. It was his intention to show that he need not fill a starring role, and functioned well as a member of an ensemble. During this period, Clapton was increasingly influenced by The Band and their 1968 album "Music from Big Pink", saying: "What I appreciated about the Band was that they were more concerned with songs and singing. They would have three- and four-part harmonies, and the guitar was put back into perspective as being accompaniment. That suited me well, because I had gotten so tired of the virtuosity – or "pseudo"-virtuosity – thing of long, boring guitar solos just because they were expected. The Band brought things back into perspective. The priority was the song." The band was originally called "Eric Clapton and Friends". The eventual name was a fluke that occurred when the band's provisional name of "Del and the Dynamos" was misread as Derek and the Dominos. Clapton's biography states that Tony Ashton of Ashton, Gardner and Dyke told Clapton to call the band "Del and the Dominos", since "Del" was his nickname for Eric Clapton. Del and Eric were combined and the final name became "Derek and the Dominos". Clapton's close friendship with George Harrison brought him into contact with Harrison's wife, Pattie Boyd, with whom he became deeply infatuated. When she spurned his advances, Clapton's unrequited affections prompted most of the material for the Dominos' album "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs" (1970). Heavily blues-influenced, the album features the twin lead guitars of Clapton and Duane Allman, with Allman's slide guitar as a key ingredient of the sound. Working at Criteria Studios in Miami with Atlantic Records producer Tom Dowd, who had worked with Clapton on Cream's "Disraeli Gears", the band recorded a double album. The album contained the hit love song "Layla", inspired by the classical poet of Persian literature, Nizami Ganjavi's "The Story of Layla and Majnun", a copy of which Ian Dallas had given to Clapton. The book moved Clapton profoundly, as it was the tale of a young man who fell hopelessly in love with a beautiful, unavailable woman and went crazy because he could not marry her. The two parts of "Layla" were recorded in separate sessions: the opening guitar section was recorded first, and for the second section, laid down a few weeks later, drummer Jim Gordon played the piano part for the melody, which he claimed to have written (though Bobby Whitlock stated that Rita Coolidge wrote it). The "Layla" LP was actually recorded by a five-piece version of the group, thanks to the unforeseen inclusion of guitarist Duane Allman of the Allman Brothers Band. A few days into the Layla sessions, Dowd – who was also producing the Allmans – invited Clapton to an Allman Brothers outdoor concert in Miami. The two guitarists met first on stage, then played all night in the studio, and became friends. Duane first added his slide guitar to "Tell the Truth" and "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out". In four days, the five-piece Dominos recorded "Key to the Highway", "Have You Ever Loved a Woman" (a blues standard popularised by Freddie King and others) and "Why Does Love Got to be So Sad?" In September, Duane briefly left the sessions for gigs with his own band, and the four-piece Dominos recorded "I Looked Away", "Bell Bottom Blues" and "Keep on Growing". Allman returned to record "I Am Yours", "Anyday" and "It's Too Late". On 9 September, they recorded Hendrix's "Little Wing" and the title track. The following day, the final track, "It's Too Late", was recorded. Tragedy dogged the group throughout its brief career. During the sessions, Clapton was devastated by news of the death of Jimi Hendrix; eight days previously the band had cut a cover of "Little Wing" as a tribute. On 1970, one day before Hendrix's death, Clapton had purchased a left-handed Fender Stratocaster that he had planned to give to Hendrix as a birthday gift. Adding to Clapton's woes, "Layla" received only lukewarm reviews upon release. The shaken group undertook a US tour without Allman, who had returned to the Allman Brothers Band. Despite Clapton's later admission that the tour took place amid a blizzard of drugs and alcohol, it resulted in the live double album "In Concert". Recording of a second Dominos studio album was underway when a clash of egos took place and Clapton walked out, thus disbanding the group. Allman was killed in a motorcycle accident on 1971. Clapton wrote later in his autobiography that he and Allman were inseparable during the "Layla" sessions in Florida; he talked about Allman as the "musical brother I'd never had but wished I did". Although Radle remained Clapton's bass player until the summer of 1979 (Radle died in May 1980 from the effects of alcohol and narcotics), it was not until 2003 that Clapton and Whitlock appeared together again; Clapton guested on Whitlock's appearance on the "Later with Jools Holland" show. Another tragic footnote to the Dominos story was the fate of drummer Jim Gordon, who had undiagnosed schizophrenia and years later murdered his mother during a psychotic episode. Gordon was confined to 16-years-to-life imprisonment, later being moved to a mental institution, where he remained for the rest of his life. Personal problems and early solo success. Clapton's career successes in the 1970s were in stark contrast with the struggles he coped with in his personal life, which was troubled by romantic longings and drug and alcohol addiction. Still infatuated with Boyd and torn by his friendship with Harrison, he withdrew from recording and touring to isolation in his Surrey residence as the Dominos broke up. He nursed a heroin addiction, which resulted in a lengthy career hiatus interrupted only by performing at Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh benefit shows in New York in August 1971; there, he passed out on stage, was revived, and managed to finish his performance. In January 1973, the Who's Pete Townshend organised a comeback concert for Clapton at London's Rainbow Theatre, titled the "Rainbow Concert", to help Clapton kick his addiction. Clapton returned the favour by playing "The Preacher" in Ken Russell's film version of the Who's "Tommy" in 1975. His appearance in the film (performing "Eyesight to the Blind") is notable as he is clearly wearing a fake beard in some shots, the result of deciding to shave off his real beard after the initial takes in an attempt to force the director to remove his earlier scene from the film and leave the set. In 1974, Clapton started living with Boyd (they would not marry until 1979) and was no longer using heroin (although he gradually began to drink heavily). He assembled a low-key touring band that included Radle, Miami guitarist George Terry, keyboardist Dick Sims (who died in 2011), drummer Jamie Oldaker, and vocalists Yvonne Elliman and Marcy Levy (also known as Marcella Detroit). With this band Clapton recorded "461 Ocean Boulevard" (1974), an album with an emphasis on more compact songs and fewer guitar solos; the cover version of "I Shot the Sheriff" was Clapton's first number one hit and was important in bringing reggae and the music of Bob Marley to a wider audience. The 1975 album "There's One in Every Crowd" continued this trend. The album's original title, "The World's Greatest Guitar Player (There's One in Every Crowd)", was changed before pressing, as it was felt its ironic intention would be misunderstood. The band toured the world and subsequently released the 1975 live LP "E. C. Was Here". Clapton continued to release albums and toured regularly. Highlights of the period include "No Reason to Cry" (a collaboration with Bob Dylan and The Band); "Slowhand", which contained "Wonderful Tonight" and a second J. J. Cale cover, "Cocaine". In 1976, he performed as one of a string of notable guests at the farewell performance of The Band, filmed in a Martin Scorsese documentary titled "The Last Waltz". Continued success. In 1981, Clapton was invited by producer Martin Lewis to appear at the Amnesty International benefit The Secret Policeman's Other Ball in London. Clapton accepted the invitation and teamed up with Jeff Beck to perform a series of duets – reportedly their first ever billed stage collaboration. Three of the performances were released on the album of the show, and one of the songs appeared in the film. The performances at London's Drury Lane theatre heralded a return to form and prominence for Clapton in the new decade. Many factors had influenced Clapton's comeback, including his "deepening commitment to Christianity", to which he had converted prior to his heroin addiction. After calling his manager and admitting he was an alcoholic, Clapton flew to Minneapolis–Saint Paul in January 1982 and checked in at Hazelden Treatment Center, located in Center City, Minnesota. On the flight over, Clapton indulged in a large number of drinks, for fear he would never be able to drink again. Clapton wrote in his autobiography: After being discharged, it was recommended by doctors of Hazelden that Clapton not partake in any activities that would act as triggers for his alcoholism or stress. But it did happen. Clapton would go back to the Hazelden Treatment Center in November 1987. He has stayed sober ever since. A few months after his discharge from his first rehab, Clapton began working on his next album, against doctors' orders. Working with Tom Dowd, he produced what he thought as his "most forced" album to date, "Money and Cigarettes". Clapton chose the name of the album "because that's all I saw myself having left" after his first rehabilitation from alcoholism. In 1984, he performed on former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters' solo album "The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking", and participated in the supporting tour. Since then Waters and Clapton have had a close relationship. In 2005, they performed together for the Tsunami Relief Fund. In 2006, they performed at the Highclere Castle, in aid of the Countryside Alliance, playing two set pieces of "Wish You Were Here" and "Comfortably Numb". Clapton, now a regular charity performer, played at the Live Aid concert at John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia on 13 July 1985, playing with Phil Collins, Tim Renwick, Chris Stainton, Jamie Oldaker, Marcy Levy, Shaun Murphy and Donald 'Duck' Dunn. When offered a slot close to peak viewing hours, he was apparently flattered. His album output continued in the 1980s, including two produced with Phil Collins, 1985's "Behind the Sun", which produced the hits "Forever Man" and "She's Waiting", and 1986's "August". "August" was suffused with Collins's trademark drum and horn sound, and became Clapton's biggest seller in the UK to date, matching his highest chart position, number 3. The album's first track, the hit "It's in the Way That You Use It", appeared in the Tom Cruise–Paul Newman film "The Color of Money". The songs "Tearing Us Apart" (with Tina Turner) and "Miss You" continued Clapton's more angry sound. This rebound kicked off Clapton's two-year period of touring with Collins and their "August" collaborators, bassist Nathan East and keyboard player/songwriter Greg Phillinganes. While on tour for "August", two concert videos were recorded of the four-man band: "Eric Clapton Live from Montreux" and "Eric Clapton and Friends". Clapton later remade "After Midnight" as a single and a promotional track for the Michelob beer brand, which had also used earlier songs by Collins and Steve Winwood. Clapton won a British Academy Television Award for his collaboration with Michael Kamen on the score for the 1985 BBC television thriller series "Edge of Darkness". At the 1987 Brit Awards in London, Clapton was awarded the prize for Outstanding Contribution to Music. In 1987, he played on George Harrison's album "Cloud Nine", contributing guitar to "Cloud 9", "That's What It Takes", "Devil's Radio" and "Wreck of the Hesperus". Clapton also got together with the Bee Gees for charity. The supergroup called itself the Bunburys, and recorded a charity album with the proceeds going to the Bunbury Cricket Club in Cheshire, which plays exhibition cricket matches to raise money for nonprofit organisations in England. The Bunburys recorded three songs for "The Bunbury Tails": "We're the Bunburys", "Bunbury Afternoon" and "Fight (No Matter How Long)". The last song also appeared on "The 1988 Summer Olympics Album" and went to No. 8 on the rock music chart. Clapton played at the cricket club's 25th anniversary celebrations in 2011, which were held at London's Grosvenor House Hotel. In 1988, he played with Dire Straits and Elton John at the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute at Wembley Stadium and the Prince's Trust rock gala at the Royal Albert Hall. In 1989, Clapton released "Journeyman", an album that covered a wide range of styles, including blues, jazz, soul and pop. Collaborators included George Harrison, Phil Collins, Daryl Hall, Chaka Khan, Mick Jones, David Sanborn and Robert Cray. The song "Bad Love" was released as a single and later won the Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance. Son's death, "Tears in Heaven". The 1990s brought a series of 32 concerts to the Royal Albert Hall, such as the 24 Nights series of concerts that took place around January through February 1990, and February to March 1991. On 1990, Dire Straits, Clapton and Elton John made a guest appearance in the Nordoff-Robbins charity show held at Knebworth in England. On 1990, fellow blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, who was touring with Clapton, and three members of their road crew were killed in a helicopter crash between concerts. Then, on 1991, Clapton's four-year-old son, Conor, died after falling from the 53rd-floor window of his mother's friend's New York City apartment at 117 East 57th Street. Conor's funeral took place on 28 March at St Mary Magdalene's Church in Clapton's home village in Ripley, Surrey, with Conor buried in the church graveyard. In 1991, Clapton appeared on Richie Sambora's album, "Stranger in This Town", in a song dedicated to him, called "Mr. Bluesman". He contributed guitar and vocals to "Runaway Train", a duet with Elton John on the latter's "The One" album the following year. Clapton's grief was expressed in the song "Tears in Heaven", which was co-written by Will Jennings. At the 35th Annual Grammy Awards, Clapton received six Grammys for the single "Tears in Heaven" and his "Unplugged" album, for which Clapton performed live in front of a small audience on 16 January 1992 at Bray Film Studios in Windsor, Berkshire, England. The album reached number one on the "Billboard" 200, and is certified Diamond by the RIAA for selling over 10 million copies in the US. It reached number two in the UK Albums Chart and is certified four times platinum in the UK. On 9 September 1992, Clapton performed "Tears in Heaven" at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards, and won the award for Best Male Video. In 1992, Clapton received the Ivor Novello Award for Lifetime Achievement from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors. In October 1992 Clapton was among the dozens of artists performing at Bob Dylan's 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration. Recorded at Madison Square Garden in New York City, the live two-disk CD/DVD captured a show full of celebrities performing classic Dylan songs, with Clapton playing the lead on a nearly 7-minute version of Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" as part of the finale. While Clapton played acoustic guitar on "Unplugged", his 1994 album "From the Cradle" contained new versions of old blues standards, highlighted by his electric guitar playing. In 1995, Clapton for the first and only time appeared on a UK No. 1 single, collaborating with Chrissie Hynde, Cher and Neneh Cherry on a solo to a cover of "Love Can Build a Bridge" released in aid of the British charity telethon Comic Relief. On 12 September 1996 Clapton played a party for Armani at New York City's Lexington Armory with Greg Phillinganes, Nathan East and Steve Gadd. Sheryl Crow appeared on one number, performing "Tearing Us Apart", a track from "August", which was first performed by Tina Turner during the Prince's Trust All-Star Rock show in 1986. It was Clapton's sole US appearance that year, following the open-air concert held at Hyde Park. The concert was taped and the footage was released both on VHS video cassette and later, on DVD. Clapton's 1996 recording of the Wayne Kirkpatrick/Gordon Kennedy/Tommy Sims tune "Change the World" (on the soundtrack of the film "Phenomenon") won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year in 1997, the same year he recorded "Retail Therapy" (an album of electronic music with Simon Climie under the pseudonym TDF). On 15 September 1997, Clapton appeared at the "Music for Montserrat" concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London, performing "Layla" and "Same Old Blues" before finishing with "Hey Jude" alongside fellow English artists Paul McCartney, Elton John, Phil Collins, Mark Knopfler and Sting. That autumn, Clapton released the album "Pilgrim", the first record containing new material for almost a decade. In 1996, Clapton had a relationship with singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow. They remain friends, and Clapton appeared as a guest on Crow's Central Park Concert. The duo performed a Cream hit single, "White Room". Later, Clapton and Crow performed an alternate version of "Tulsa Time" with other guitar legends at the Crossroads Guitar Festival in June 2007 as well as Robert Johnson's blues classic "Crossroads" at London's Hyde Park in August 2008 with John Mayer and Robert Randolph. At the 41st Annual Grammy Awards on 24 February 1999, Clapton received his third Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, for his song "My Father's Eyes". In October 1999, the compilation album, "", was released, which contained a new song, "Blue Eyes Blue", that also appears in soundtrack for the film, "Runaway Bride". Clapton finished the twentieth century with collaborations with Carlos Santana and B.B. King. Clapton looked up to King and had always wanted to make an album with him, while King said of Clapton, "I admire the man. I think he's No. 1 in rock 'n' roll as a guitarist and No. 1 as a great person." Collaboration albums. Clapton released the album "Reptile" in March 2001. One month after the 11 September attacks, Clapton appeared at the Concert for New York City, performing alongside Buddy Guy. An event marking the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II in June 2002, Clapton performed "Layla" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" at the Party at the Palace concert in the grounds of Buckingham Palace. On 29 November 2002, the Concert for George was held at the Royal Albert Hall, a tribute to George Harrison, who had died a year earlier of lung cancer. Clapton was a performer and the musical director. The concert included Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Ravi Shankar, Gary Brooker, Billy Preston, Joe Brown and Dhani Harrison. In 2004, Clapton released two albums of covers of songs by bluesman Robert Johnson, "Me and Mr. Johnson" and "Sessions for Robert J". Guitarist Doyle Bramhall II worked on the album with Clapton (after opening Clapton's 2001 tour with his band Smokestack) and joined him on his 2004 tour. In 2004, "Rolling Stone" ranked Clapton No. 53 on their list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time". Other media appearances include the Toots & the Maytals Grammy award-winning album "True Love", where he played guitar on the track "Pressure Drop". On 22 January 2005, Clapton performed in the Tsunami Relief Concert held at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, in aid of the victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. In May 2005, Clapton, Jack Bruce, and Ginger Baker reunited as Cream for a series of concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Concert recordings were released on CD and DVD. Later, Cream performed in New York at Madison Square Garden. Clapton's first album of new original material in nearly five years, "Back Home", was released on Reprise Records on . A collaboration with guitarist J. J. Cale, "The Road to Escondido", was released on 2006, featuring Derek Trucks and Billy Preston (Preston had also been a part of Clapton's 2004 touring band). He invited Trucks to join his band for his 2006–2007 world tour. Bramhall remained, giving Clapton three elite guitarists in his band, allowing him to revisit many Derek and the Dominos songs that he hadn't played in decades. Trucks became the third member of the Allman Brothers Band to tour supporting Clapton, the second being pianist/keyboardist Chuck Leavell, who appeared on the "MTV Unplugged" album and the "24 Nights" performances at the Royal Albert Hall, London in 1990 and 1991, as well as Clapton's 1992 US tour. On 20 May 2006, Clapton performed with Queen drummer Roger Taylor and former Pink Floyd bassist/songwriter Roger Waters at Highclere Castle, Hampshire, in support of the Countryside Alliance, which promotes issues relating to the British countryside. On 2006, Clapton made a guest appearance at the Bob Dylan concert in Columbus, Ohio, playing guitar on three songs in Jimmie Vaughan's opening act. The chemistry between Trucks and Clapton convinced him to invite the Derek Trucks Band to open for Clapton's set at his 2007 Crossroads Guitar Festival. Trucks remained on set and performed with Clapton's band throughout his performances. The rights to Clapton's official memoirs, written by Christopher Simon Sykes and published in 2007, were sold at the 2005 Frankfurt Book Fair for . In 2007, Clapton learned more about his father, a Canadian soldier who left the UK after the war. Although Clapton's grandparents eventually told him the truth about his parentage, he only knew that his father's name was Edward Fryer. This was a source of disquiet for Clapton, as witnessed by his 1998 song "My Father's Eyes". A Montreal journalist named Michael Woloschuk researched Canadian Armed Forces service records and tracked down members of Fryer's family, and finally pieced together the story. He learned that Clapton's father was Edward Walter Fryer, born 1920, in Montreal and died in Newmarket, Ontario. Fryer was a musician (piano and saxophone) and a lifelong drifter who was married several times, had several children, and apparently never knew that he was the father of Eric Clapton. Clapton thanked Woloschuk in an encounter at Macdonald–Cartier Airport, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. On 26 February 2008, it was reported that Clapton had been invited to play a concert in North Korea by government officials. Clapton agreed in principle and suggested it take place in 2009. Kristen Foster, a spokesperson for Clapton, said that he regularly received offers to play abroad and that there had been no agreement for him to play in North Korea. In February 2008, Clapton performed with his long-time friend Steve Winwood at Madison Square Garden and guested on his recorded single, "Dirty City", on Winwood's album "Nine Lives". The two former Blind Faith bandmates met again for a series of 14 concerts throughout the United States in June 2009. Clapton's 2008 Summer Tour began on at the Ford Amphitheatre, Tampa, Florida, and then moved to Canada, Ireland, England, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Poland, Germany, and Monaco. On 2008, he headlined Saturday night for Hard Rock Calling 2008 in London's Hyde Park (previously Hyde Park Calling) with support from Sheryl Crow and John Mayer. In March 2009, the Allman Brothers Band (amongst many notable guests) celebrated their 40th year, dedicating their string of concerts to the late Duane Allman on their annual run at the Beacon Theatre. Eric Clapton was one of the performers, with drummer Butch Trucks remarking that the performance was not the typical Allman Brothers experience, given the number and musical styles of the guests who were invited to perform. Songs like "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" were punctuated with others, including "The Weight", with Levon Helm; Johnny Winter sitting in on Hendrix's "Red House"; and "Layla". On 2009 Clapton appeared at the Royal Albert Hall, playing "Further on Up the Road" with Joe Bonamassa. Clapton was scheduled to perform at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 25th anniversary concert in Madison Square Garden on 2009, but cancelled due to gallstone surgery. Van Morrison (who also cancelled) said in an interview that he and Clapton were to do a "couple of songs", but that they would do something else together at "some other stage of the game". "Clapton", "Old Sock" and "I Still Do". Clapton performed a two-night show with Jeff Beck at the O2 Arena in London on 2010. The two former Yardbirds extended their 2010 tour with stops at Madison Square Garden, the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, and the Bell Centre in Montreal. Clapton performed a series of concerts in 11 cities throughout the United States from to 2010, including Roger Daltrey as opening act. His third European tour with Steve Winwood began on and ended , including Tom Norris as opening act. He then began a short North American tour lasting from to , starting with his third Crossroads Guitar Festival on at Toyota Park in Bridgeview, Illinois. Clapton released a new studio album, "Clapton", on 2010 in the United Kingdom and 28 September 2010 in the United States. On 2010, Clapton performed as guest on the Prince's Trust rock gala held at the Royal Albert Hall, supported by the house band for the evening, which included Jools Holland, Midge Ure and Mark King. On 24 June 2011, Clapton was in concert with Pino Daniele in Cava de' Tirreni stadium before performing a series of concerts in South America from 6 to 16 October 2011. He spent November and December 2011 touring Japan with Steve Winwood, playing 13 shows in various cities throughout the country. On 24 February 2012 Clapton, Keith Richards, Gary Clark Jr., Derek Trucks, Doyle Bramhall II, Kim Wilson and other artists performed together in the Howlin' For Hubert Tribute concert held at the Apollo Theater of New York City honouring blues guitarist Hubert Sumlin who died at age 80 on 4 December 2011. On 29 November 2012, Clapton joined The Rolling Stones at London's O2 Arena during the band's second of five arena dates celebrating their 50th anniversary. On 12 December, Clapton performed at Madison Square Garden, broadcast live via television, radio, cinemas and the Internet across six continents. In January 2013, Surfdog Records announced a signed deal with Clapton for the release of his forthcoming album "Old Sock" on 12 March. On 8 April 2013, Eric and Hard Rock International launched the limited-edition Eric Clapton Artist Spotlight merchandise programme benefiting Crossroads Centre Antigua. Clapton toured the US and Europe from 14 March to 19 June 2013 to celebrate 50 years as a professional musician. On 28 February 2013, Clapton announced his intention to stop touring in 2015 due to hassles with travel. On 15 October 2013, Clapton's popular "Unplugged" album and concert DVD were re-released, titled "Unplugged: Expanded & Remastered." The album includes the original 14 tracks, remastered, as well as 6 additional tracks, including 2 versions of "My Father's Eyes". The DVD includes a restored version of the concert, as well as over 60 minutes of unseen footage from the rehearsal. On 13 and 14 November 2013, Clapton headlined the final two evenings of the "Baloise Session", an annual indoor music festival in Basel, Switzerland. On 20 November 2013, Warner Bros released Crossroads Guitar Festival 2013 in CD/DVD/Blu-ray. On 30 April 2014, Clapton announced the release of "" as an homage to J. J. Cale who died on 26 July 2013. This tribute album is named after the 1972 single "Call Me the Breeze" and comprises 16 Cale songs performed by Clapton, Mark Knopfler, John Mayer, Willie Nelson, Tom Petty and others. On 21 June 2014, Clapton abruptly walked off stage during a concert at the Glasgow Hydro. Although he did return to perform one final song, thousands of fans were upset by the lack of explanation from Clapton or the venue and booed after the concert ended around 40 minutes before advertised to finish. Both Clapton and the venue apologised the next day, blaming 'technical difficulties' for making sound conditions 'unbearable' for Clapton on stage. A week later he confirmed his retirement plans attributing his decision to the road being "unbearable" in addition to "odd ailments" that may force him to put down his guitar permanently. In a 2016 interview with "Classic Rock" magazine, Clapton revealed that he had been diagnosed with peripheral neuropathy in 2013, a condition involving damage to peripheral nerves that typically causes stabbing, burning, or tingling pain in the arms and legs. Clapton performed two shows at Madison Square Garden in New York on 1 and 3 May 2015 followed by a 7-night residency at London's Royal Albert Hall from 14 to 23 May 2015 to celebrate his 70th birthday on 30 March. The shows also mark 50 years since Clapton first played at the Royal Albert Hall – his debut was on 7 December 1964 when he performed as part of The Yardbirds for the BBC's "Top Beat Show". The concert film, "Slowhand at 70 – Live at the Royal Albert Hall", was released by Eagle Rock Entertainment on 13 November 2015 on DVD, CD, Blu-ray and LP. The 2-night concerts in the US marked the 46th anniversary since Clapton, with Cream, opened the "new" Madison Square Garden on 2 November 1968. Clapton has performed more times at Madison Square Garden than any other US venue, a total of 45 times. On 20 May 2016, Clapton released his twenty-third studio album "I Still Do". On 30 September 2016 the live-album "Live in San Diego" was released. In August 2018, Clapton announced that he had recorded his twenty-fourth studio album, "Happy Xmas", which consists of blues-tinged interpretations of Christmas songs, with the album released on 12 October. Between April and September 2019, he played 17 concerts in Japan, Europe and the Southwestern United States. He returned to the road in September 2021, playing eight shows in the southern United States. In May 2022, Clapton announced a run of seven US concerts in September with Jimmie Vaughan. In May 2023, Clapton performed at the Jeff Beck tribute concerts held at the Royal Albert Hall, sharing the stage with Rod Stewart, Ronnie Wood, Kirk Hammett and Johnny Depp among others. Influences. Clapton cites Muddy Waters, Freddie King, B.B. King, Albert King, Buddy Guy, and Hubert Sumlin as guitar-playing influences. In his 2007 autobiography, Clapton refers to Muddy Waters as "the father figure I never really had". Until his death in 1983, Waters was a part of Clapton's life. "When I got to know Muddy, unfortunately, my drinking career was in full sway." In 2000, Clapton collaborated with B.B. King on their album "Riding with the King". The music video for the title track shows Clapton as the chauffeur, with one of his idols in the back seat. Clapton has said that blues musician Robert Johnson is his single most important influence. In 2004, Clapton released "Sessions for Robert Johnson", containing covers of Johnson's songs using electric and acoustic guitars. In an essay for the 1990 boxed set of Johnson's recordings, Clapton wrote: Clapton also singled out Buddy Holly as an influence. "The Chirping Crickets" was the first album Clapton ever bought; he later saw Holly on "Sunday Night at the London Palladium". In his autobiography, Clapton recounts the first time he saw Holly and his Fender, saying, "I thought I'd died and gone to heaven ... it was like seeing an instrument from outer space and I said to myself: 'That's the future – that's what I want. In the 2017 documentary film, "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars", Clapton cites Bismillah Khan as an influence, adding that "I wanted my guitar to sound like his reed instrument." In the same documentary he also cited harmonica player Little Walter as an influence: "The sound he made with the harmonica playing through an amplifier. It was thick and fat and very melodic." Legacy. Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important and influential guitarists of all time. Clapton is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist, and separately as a member of the Yardbirds and Cream. He ranked second in "Rolling Stone" magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" and fourth in "Gibson's" Top 50 Guitarists of All Time. In 2011, "The Guardian" attributed the creation of the cult of the guitar hero to Clapton, ranking it number seven on their list of the 50 key events in rock music history; Elias Leight of "Rolling Stone" writes that Clapton "influenced recording techniques as well as guitar-playing technique". During recording sessions with John Mayall's group, Clapton was frustrated by technicians "that just came up to your amp with the microphone and just stuck it two inches away from the front of the amplifier. It seemed to me that if you wanted to get the atmosphere we were getting in the clubs, you needed it to sound like you were in the audience 10 feet away, not three inches". Clapton then moved the microphones, with Pink Floyd's Roger Waters stating, "That changed everything. Before Eric, guitar playing in England had been Hank Marvin of the Shadows, very simple, not much technique. Suddenly we heard something completely different. The records sounded unlike anything we had heard before." In 2012, Clapton was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his artwork – the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album cover – to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life that he most admires to mark his 80th birthday. Indelibly linked to the Royal Albert Hall in London, a venue he has played at more than any other in his 50-year plus career, Clapton was inducted into the Royal Albert Hall's Walk of Fame in 2018, making him one of the first eleven recipients of a star on the walk, thus joining Muhammad Ali, Winston Churchill, the Suffragettes, and Albert Einstein, among others who were viewed as "key players" in the building's history. Robert Christgau, in a dissenting appraisal of Clapton's legacy, writes: Guitars. Like Hank Marvin, the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, Clapton exerted a crucial and widespread influence in popularising particular models of electric guitar. With the Yardbirds, Clapton played a Fender Telecaster, a Fender Jazzmaster, a double-cutaway Gretsch 6120, and a 1964 Cherry-Red Gibson ES-335. He became exclusively a Gibson player for a period beginning in mid-1965, when he purchased a used sunburst Gibson Les Paul guitar from a guitar store in London. Clapton commented on the slim profile of the neck, which would indicate it was a 1960 model. Early during his stint in Cream, Clapton's first Les Paul Standard was stolen. He continued to play Les Pauls exclusively with Cream (one bought from Andy Summers was almost identical to the stolen guitar) until 1967, when he acquired his most famous guitar in this period, a 1964 Gibson SG, dubbed "the Fool". Clapton used both the Les Paul and the SG to create his self-described "woman tone". He explained in a 1967 interview, "I am playing more smoothly now. I'm developing what I call my 'woman tone.' It's a sweet sound, something like the solo on 'I Feel Free'." Writer Michael Dregni describes it as "thick yet piercing, overdriven yet smooth, distorted yet creamy". The tone is achieved by a combination of tone control settings on the guitars and Clapton's Marshall JTM45 amplifier. "Vintage Guitar" magazine identifies "the opening riff and solo of 'Sunshine of Your Love' are arguably the best illustrations of full-blown woman tone". Clapton's "Fool" acquired its name from its distinctive psychedelic paint job, created by the visual art collective also known as the Fool (just before Cream's first US appearance in 1967, Clapton's SG, Bruce's Fender VI, and Baker's drum head were all repainted in psychedelic designs). In 1968, Clapton bought a Gibson Firebird and started using the 1964 Cherry-Red Gibson ES-335 again. The aforementioned 1964 ES-335 had a storied career. Clapton used it at the last Cream show in November 1968 as well as with Blind Faith, played it sparingly for slide pieces in the 1970s, used it on "Hard Times" from "Journeyman", the Hyde Park live concert of 1996, and the "From the Cradle" sessions and tour of 1994–95. It was sold for US$847,500 at a 2004 auction. Gibson produced a limited run of 250 "Crossroads 335" replicas. The 335 was only the second electric guitar Clapton bought. In July 1968 Clapton gave George Harrison a 1957 'goldtop' Gibson Les Paul that been refinished with a red colour, nicknamed Lucy. The following September, Clapton played the guitar on the Beatles' recording of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". Lucy was stolen from Harrison, though later tracked down and returned to him – he lent it to Clapton for his 1973 comeback concert at the Rainbow. His SG "The Fool" found its way into the hands of George Harrison's friend Jackie Lomax, who subsequently sold it to musician Todd Rundgren for US$500 in 1972. Rundgren restored the guitar and nicknamed it "Sunny", after "Sunshine of Your Love". He retained it until 2000, when he sold it at an auction for US$150,000. At the 1969 Blind Faith concert in Hyde Park, London Clapton played a Fender Custom Telecaster, which was fitted with "Brownie"s neck. In late 1969 Clapton made the switch to the Fender Stratocaster. "I had a lot of influences when I took up the Strat. First there was Buddy Holly, and Buddy Guy. Hank Marvin was the first well known person over here in England who was using one, but that wasn't really my kind of music. Steve Winwood had so much credibility, and when he started playing one, I thought, oh, if he can do it, I can do it". The first—used during the recording of "Eric Clapton"—was "Brownie", which in 1973 became the backup to the most famous of all Clapton's guitars, "Blackie". In November 1970 Eric bought six Fender Stratocasters from the Sho-bud guitar shop in Nashville, Tennessee while on tour with the Dominos. He gave one each to George Harrison, Steve Winwood, and Pete Townshend. Clapton assembled the best components of the remaining three to create "Blackie", which was his favourite stage guitar until its retirement in 1985. It was first played live 1973 at the Rainbow Concert. Clapton called the 1956/57 Strat a "mongrel". On 2004, Clapton sold "Blackie" at Christie's Auction House, New York, for US$959,500 to raise funds for his Crossroads Centre for drug and alcohol addictions. "Brownie" is now on display at the Experience Music Project. The Fender Custom Shop has since produced a limited run of 275 'Blackie' replicas, correct in every detail right down to the 'Duck Brothers' flight case, and artificially aged using Fender's 'Relic' process to simulate years of hard wear. One was presented to Clapton upon the model's release and was used for three numbers during a concert at the Royal Albert Hall on 2006. In 1979, Clapton gave his signed Fender Lead II guitar to the Hard Rock Cafe in London to designate his favourite bar stool. Pete Townshend also donated his own Gibson Les Paul guitar, with a note attached: "Mine's as good as his! Love, Pete". Signature guitars in Clapton's honour are made by Fender and C.F. Martin & Company. In 1988, Fender introduced his signature Eric Clapton Stratocaster. Several signature-model 000-sized acoustic guitars made by Martin. The first, of these, introduced in 1995, was a limited edition 000-42EC Eric Clapton signature model with a production run of 461. For the single "Change the World" (1996) and the album "Pilgrim" (1998) he used a Martin 000-28 EC Eric Clapton signature model, which he subsequently gave to guitarist Paul Wassif. His 1939 000-42 Martin that he played on the "Unplugged" album sold for US$791,500 at auction. Clapton uses Ernie Ball Slinky and Super Slinky strings, gauge .10 to.46. His guitar technician for over thirty years was Lee Dickson. Other media appearances. Clapton appeared in the movie version of "Tommy", the first full-length rock opera, written by the Who. In the movie version, Clapton appeared as the Preacher, performing Sonny Boy Williamson's song, "Eyesight to the Blind". He appeared in "Blues Brothers 2000" as one of the Louisiana Gator Boys. In addition to being in the band, he had a small speaking role. Clapton has appeared in an advertisement for the Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen. In March 2007 Clapton appeared in an advertisement for RealNetwork's Rhapsody online music service. In 2010, Clapton started appearing as a spokesman for T-Mobile, advertising their MyTouch Fender cell phone. Clapton also appeared in the 2011 BBC documentary "Reggae Got Soul: The Story of Toots and the Maytals", which was described as "The untold story of one of the most influential artists ever to come out of Jamaica." When asked to describe God by their minister, the characters Eric Forman and Steven Hyde both drew an image of Clapton in the episode "Holy Crap!" of season two of "That '70s Show". Clapton appeared on the BBC's "Top Gear" in 2013, during Series 19 Episode 4 and was involved in testing the new Kia Cee'd. He was called upon to test the Cee'd's auxiliary input, which he tested by plugging in one of his guitars and playing several bars of his most famous hits. He was introduced by "Top Gear" host Jeremy Clarkson as a "local guitarist". In 2017, a documentary film titled "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars" was directed by Lili Fini Zanuck. Clapton wrote the film score for Zanuck's 1991 film "Rush" and the two remained friends. In an interview for BBC News, Zanuck said that Clapton only agreed to participate if she directed it: Personal life. Relationships and children. Clapton's partner from the late 1960s to 1974 was Alice Ormsby-Gore, a British aristocrat; they were often wrongly reported as engaged. He briefly dated funk singer Betty Davis. He married Pattie Boyd on 27 March 1979, in Tucson, Arizona, but their marriage was marred by his infidelities and domestic violence. During a 1999 interview with "The Sunday Times", Clapton admitted to raping and abusing her while they were married and he was a "full-blown" alcoholic who felt entitled to sex. In 1984, while recording "Behind the Sun", Clapton began a relationship with Yvonne Kelly, the manager of AIR Studios Montserrat. Although both were married to other partners at the time, they had a daughter named Ruth Kelly Clapton in January 1985. Ruth's existence was kept from the public until the media realised she was his child in 1991. Clapton and Boyd tried unsuccessfully to have children, even trying in vitro fertilisation in 1984, but were faced instead with miscarriages. He had an affair with Italian model Lory Del Santo, who gave birth to their son, Conor, on 21 August 1986. Clapton and Boyd later divorced in 1989 after she was "utterly devastated" by his confession to impregnating Del Santo during this affair. Conor died on 20 March 1991 at the age of four after falling out of an open bedroom window on the 53rd floor of a Manhattan apartment building. In 1998, Clapton, then 53, met 22-year-old administrative assistant Melia McEnery in Columbus, Ohio, at a party given for him after a performance. He quietly dated her for a year, and went public with the relationship in 1999. They married on 2002 at St Mary Magdalene church in Clapton's birthplace, Ripley. They have three daughters, Julie Rose (born 2001), Ella May (born 2003), and Sophie Belle (born 2005). Political opinions. Racism and August 1976 drunken rant. "Keep Britain White". On 5 August 1976, Clapton provoked an uproar when he spoke out against increasing immigration during a concert in Birmingham. Visibly intoxicated on stage, Clapton voiced his support for the right-wing British politician Enoch Powell. He addressed the audience as follows: "Keep Britain White" was, at the time, a slogan of the far-right National Front (NF). This incident, along with some controversial remarks made around the same time by David Bowie, were the main catalysts for the creation of Rock Against Racism, with a concert on 30 April 1978. Clapton's response. In an interview from October 1976 with "Sounds" magazine, Clapton said that he did not "know much about politics" and said of his immigration speech that "I just don't know what came over me that night. It must have been something that happened in the day but it came out in this garbled thing." In a 2004 interview with "Uncut", Clapton referred to Enoch Powell as "outrageously brave". He said that the UK was "inviting people in as cheap labour and then putting them in ghettos". In 2004, Clapton told an interviewer for "Scotland on Sunday", "There's no way I could be a racist. It would make no sense." In his 2007 autobiography, Clapton said he was "deliberately oblivious" to racial conflict. In a December 2007 interview with Melvyn Bragg on "The South Bank Show", Clapton said he was not a racist but still believed Powell's comments were relevant. After watching unedited footage of the 1976 outburst, which is included in "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars"—a documentary which also covers his daily alcohol and drug abuse prior to his sobriety—in 2018 Clapton stated he was "disgusted" with himself for his "chauvinistic" and "fascistic" comments on stage. He added: "I sabotaged everything I got involved with. I was so ashamed of who I was, a kind of semi-racist, which didn't make sense. Half of my friends were black, I dated a black woman, and I championed black music." Opposition to fox-hunting ban. Clapton supports the Countryside Alliance, which promotes field sports and issues relating to the British countryside. He has played in concerts to raise funds for the organisation and publicly opposed the Labour Party's ban on fox hunting with the 2004 Hunting Act. A spokesperson for Clapton said, "Eric supports the Countryside Alliance. He does not hunt himself, but does enjoy rural pursuits such as fishing and shooting. He supports the Alliance's pursuit to scrap the ban on the basis that he disagrees with the state's interference with people's private pursuits." COVID-19. In November 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Clapton and Van Morrison collaborated on an anti-mask, anti-lockdown single entitled "Stand and Deliver", the profits from which were donated to Morrison's Lockdown Financial Hardship Fund. Morrison's stance was criticised by Northern Ireland Health Minister Robin Swann. In July 2021, Clapton wrote that he would "not perform on any stage where there is a discriminated audience present", in response to Boris Johnson mandating that concert attendees be vaccinated. Clapton had by then taken both doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine and said he had had severe reactions to both injections. Whether the symptoms he reported were actually vaccine-related was called into question by an NBC News editorial, given that Clapton previously reported suffering the same symptoms as early as 2013 due to nerve damage. In August 2021, Clapton released the single "This Has Gotta Stop" and an accompanying music video. It was described as a protest song against COVID-19 lockdowns, vaccinations, and contains lyrical and visual statements against what Clapton sees as the erosion of civil liberties as the result of lockdown policies. Clapton tested positive for COVID-19 in May 2022 causing him to cancel some concerts in his tour schedule. Assets and philanthropy. Wealth and assets. In 2009, "Surrey Life Magazine" ranked Clapton as number 17 in their list of richest Surrey residents, estimating his fortune at £120 million in assets. This was a combination of income, property, a £9 million yacht, "Va Bene" (previously owned by Bernie Ecclestone), his back music catalogue, his touring income, and his holding company Marshbrook Ltd, which had earned him £110 million since 1989. In 2003, he purchased a 50% share of gentleman's outfitters Cordings Piccadilly. At the time, owner Noll Uloth was trying to save the shop from closure and contacted Clapton, his "best client"; within five minutes, Clapton replied with "I can't let this happen". Car collection. Since the 1970s, Clapton has considered himself a "car enthusiast" and has often stated his passion for the Ferrari brand. Clapton currently owns or has owned a range of Ferraris, and when asked about his Ferrari collection in 1989, he said he liked the touring cars the company produces for road use and commented "if I had more space and if I had been wise I would have a huge collection by now and I would be a multi-multi-millionaire". In 2010, he explained that for him "Ferrari has always been the number one car" to own and drive, and that he always supported Ferrari on the road and in Formula One motor racing. In 2012, Ferrari honoured Clapton with the one-off special project car, the Ferrari SP12 EC. In July 2013 Clapton displayed it at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in England in the Michelin Supercar Run. In 2014, Clapton explained that Ferrari is still his favourite car brand. Among the other vehicles Clapton owns or has owned are a vintage Mini Cooper Radford that was a gift from George Harrison. Charitable work. In 1993, Clapton was appointed a director of Clouds House, a UK treatment centre for drug and alcohol dependence, and served on their board until 1997. Clapton also served on the board of directors for The Chemical Dependency Centre from 1994 until 1999. Both charities subsequently merged to become Action on Addiction in 2007. In 1998, he established the Crossroads Centre in Antigua to help others overcome their addictions to drugs and alcohol and is active in its management oversight and fundraising to the present day. Clapton has organised the Crossroads Guitar Festival in 1999, 2004, 2007, 2010, 2013 and 2019 to raise funds for this centre. In 1999, Clapton auctioned off some of his guitar collection to raise more than US$5 million for continuing support of the Crossroads Centre. A second guitar auction, including the "Cream" of Clapton's collection – as well as guitars donated by famous friends – was held on 2004. His Lowden acoustic guitar sold for US$41,825. The revenue garnered by this auction at Christie's was US$7,438,624. In 2011, he auctioned off over 150 items at a New York auction with proceeds going to his Crossroads Centre. Items included his guitar from the Cream reunion tour in 2005, speaker cabinets used in the early 1970s from his days with Derek and the Dominos, and some guitars from Jeff Beck, J. J. Cale, and Joe Bonamassa. In March 2011 he raised more than £1.3 million when he auctioned off 138 lots, made up of 75 guitars and 55 amps from his personal collection, including a 1984 Gibson hollow body guitar, a Gianni Versace suit from his 1990 concert at the Royal Albert Hall, and a replica of the famous Fender Stratocaster known as "Blackie", which fetched more than $30,000. All proceeds again went to Crossroads. Clapton has performed at the "Secret Policeman's Ball", a benefit show co-founded by Monty Python member John Cleese on behalf of Amnesty International. He made his first appearance at the 1981 show held in London's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and he subsequently became an activist. Clapton has collaborated with The Prince's Trust, the leading UK youth charity, which provides training, personal development, business start up support, mentoring, and advice. He has performed at the charity's rock concert numerous times since the 1980s, most recently in 2010. In 2008, he donated a song to Aid Still Required's CD to assist with the restoration of Southeast Asia after the devastation inflicted by the 2004 tsunami. Football. Clapton is a fan of English football club West Bromwich Albion. In 1982, he performed a concert before West Brom player John Wile's testimonial game at The Hawthorns. It has been reported that the club rejected his offer to invest cash in the club around this time. In the late 1970s Clapton positioned a West Brom scarf on the back cover of his album, "Backless". In the 1978–79 season Clapton sponsored West Brom's UEFA Cup home game against Turkish club Galatasaray. Clapton's music in film and TV. Clapton's music has appeared in dozens of movies and television shows as far back as 1973's "Mean Streets", which included the Derek and the Dominos song "I Looked Away" and a performance of "Steppin' Out" by Cream. Other appearances in media include in the "Miami Vice" series ("Wonderful Tonight", "Knock on Wood", "She's Waiting", and "Layla"), "Back to the Future" ("Heaven Is One Step Away"), "The Color of Money" ("It's in the Way That You Use It"), "Lethal Weapon 2" ("Knockin' On Heaven's Door"), "Goodfellas" ("Layla" and "Sunshine of Your Love"), "Freaks and Geeks" episode "I'm With the Band" ("Sunshine of Your Love", "White Room" and "Crossroads"), "Friends" episodes "The One with the Proposal, Part 2" ("Wonderful Tonight") and "The One Where Rachel Has A Baby" ("River of Tears"), "School Of Rock" ("Sunshine Of Your Love)", "Men in Black III" ("Strange Brew"), "Captain Phillips" ("Wonderful Tonight"), "" ("Lay Down Sally"), "Good Girls Revolt" episode "The Year-Ender" ("White Room)", "Rick and Morty" episode "The Vat of Acid Episode" ("It's in the Way That You Use It") and "Joker" ("White Room"). Both Opel and Vauxhall used the guitar riff from "Layla" in their advertising campaigns throughout 1987–95. In addition to his music appearing in media, Clapton has contributed to several movies by writing or co-writing the musical scores or contributing original songs. These movies include "Lethal Weapon" (co-written with Michael Kamen), "Communion", "Rush", "Phenomenon" ("Change the World"), and "Lethal Weapon 3" (co-wrote and co-performed "It's Probably Me" with Sting and "Runaway Train" with Elton John).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10088

Eastern Caribbean dollar

The Eastern Caribbean dollar (symbol: EC$; code: XCD) is the currency of all seven full members and one associate member of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). The successor to the British West Indies dollar, it has existed since 1965, and it is normally abbreviated with the dollar sign "$" or, alternatively, "EC$" to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies. The EC$ is subdivided into 100 cents. It has been pegged to the United States dollar since 7 July 1976, at the exchange rate of = .70. Circulation. Six of the states using the EC$ are independent states: Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. The other two, Anguilla and Montserrat, are British Overseas Territories. These states are all members of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union. The other two associate members of the OECS do not use the Eastern Caribbean dollar as their official currency: the British Virgin Islands and Martinique. The British Virgin Islands were always problematic for currency purposes due to their proximity to the Danish West Indies, which became the United States Virgin Islands in 1917. Officially, the British Virgin Islands used to use sterling, but in practice the situation was more complicated and involved the circulation of French francs and U.S. dollars. In 1951, the British Virgin Islands adopted the British West Indies dollar which at that time operated in conjunction with the sterling coinage, and in 1959 they changed over officially to the U.S. dollar. Martinique, as part of France, uses the euro as its currency. British Guiana and Barbados had previously been members of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union but withdrew in 1966 and 1972, respectively. Trinidad and Tobago had been a member of the earlier British West Indies currency union, but withdrew in 1964. The combined population of the EC$ area is about 613,000 (2014 census and estimates), which is comparable to Montenegro or the American capital city of Washington, D.C. The combined GDP is 5.46 billion US dollars, which is comparable to Bermuda. The late Queen Elizabeth II appears on the banknotes and also on the obverse of the coins. She was the head of state of all the states and territories using the EC$, except for Dominica. Dominica is nevertheless a member of the Commonwealth of Nations which now recognizes King Charles III as Head of the Commonwealth. History. Queen Anne's proclamation of 1704 was the first attempt to introduce sterling currency to the British West Indies, however it failed to displace the existing Spanish dollar currency system right up until the late 1870s. In 1822, the British government coined , , and fractional 'Anchor dollars' for use in Mauritius and the British West Indies (but not Jamaica). A few years later copper fractional dollars were coined for Mauritius, Sierra Leone, and the British West Indies. The next attempts to introduce British sterling silver coinage to the colonies came with an imperial order-in-council dated 1825. This move was inspired by a number of factors. The United Kingdom was now operating a very successful gold standard in relation to the gold sovereign that was introduced in 1816, and there was a desire to extend this system to the colonies. In addition to this, there was that the supply of Spanish dollars (pieces of eight) had been cut off as a result of the revolutions in Latin America where most of the Spanish dollars were minted. The last Spanish Dollar was in fact minted at Potosi in 1825. There was now a growing desire to have a stable and steady supply of British shillings everywhere the British drum was beating. The 1825 order-in-council was largely a failure because it made sterling silver coinage legal tender at the unrealistic rating in relation to the Spanish dollar of = 4 shillings 4 pence. It succeeded in Jamaica, Bermuda, and British Honduras because the authorities in those territories set aside the official ratings and used the more realistic rating of = 4 shillings. The reality of the rating between the dollar and the pound was based on the silver content of the Spanish pieces of eight as compared to the gold content of the British gold sovereign. A second imperial order-in-council was passed in 1838 with the correct rating of = 4 shillings 2 pence. In the years following the 1838 order-in-council, the British West Indies territories began to enact local legislation for the purposes of assimilating their monies of account with the British pound sterling. Gold discoveries in Australia in 1851 drove the silver dollar out of the West Indies, but it returned again with the great depreciation in the value of silver that followed with Germany's transition to the gold standard between 1871 and 1873. In the years immediately following 1873, there was a fear that the British West Indies might return to a silver standard. As such, legislation was passed in the individual territories to demonetize the silver dollars. Even though the British coinage was also silver, it represented fractions of the gold sovereign and so its value was based on a gold standard. During this period, and into the nineteenth century, accounts could be kept in either dollars or sterling. Jamaica, Bermuda, and the Bahamas preferred to use sterling accounts whereas British Guiana used dollar accounts. British Guiana used dollar accounts for the purpose of assisting in the transition from the Dutch guilder system of currency to the British pound sterling system. In the Eastern Caribbean territories the private sector preferred to use dollar accounts whereas the government preferred to use sterling accounts. In some of the Eastern Caribbean territories, notes were issued by various private banks, denominated in dollars equivalent to 4 shillings 2 pence. See Antigua dollar, Barbadian dollar, Dominican dollar, Grenadian dollar, Guyanese dollar, Saint Kitts dollar, Saint Lucia dollar, Saint Vincent dollar and Trinidad and Tobago dollar. In 1946, a West Indian Currency Conference saw Barbados, British Guiana, the Leeward Islands, Trinidad and Tobago and the Windward Islands agree to establish a unified decimal currency system based on a West Indian dollar to replace the current arrangement of having three different Boards of Commissioners of Currency (for Barbados (which also served the Leeward and Windward Islands), British Guiana and Trinidad & Tobago). In 1949, the British government formalized the dollar system of accounts in British Guiana and the Eastern Caribbean territories by introducing the British West Indies dollar (BWI$) at the already existing conversion rate of per pound sterling (or = 4 shillings 2 pence). It was one of the many experimental political and economic ventures tested by the British government to form a uniform system within the British West Indies territories. The symbol "BWI$" was frequently used and the currency was known verbally as the "Beewee" (slang for British West Indies) dollar. Shortly thereafter in 1950, the British Caribbean Currency Board (BCCB) was set up in Trinidad with the sole right to issue notes and coins of the new unified currency and given the mandate of keeping full foreign exchange cover to ensure convertibility at .80 per pound sterling. In 1951, the British Virgin Islands joined the arrangement, but this led to discontent because that territory was more naturally drawn to the currency of the neighbouring U.S. Virgin Islands. In 1961, the British Virgin Islands withdrew from the arrangement and adopted the U.S. dollar. Until 1955, the BWI$ existed only as banknotes in conjunction with sterling fractional coinage. Decimal coins replaced the sterling coins in 1955. These decimal coins were denominated in cents, with each cent worth one halfpenny in sterling. In 1958, the West Indies Federation was established and the BWI$ was its currency. However, although Jamaica (including the Cayman Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands) was part of the West Indies Federation, it retained the Jamaican pound, despite adopting the BWI$ as legal tender from 1954. Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, and the Turks and Caicos Islands were already long established users of the sterling accounts system of pounds, shillings, and pence. In 1964 Jamaica ended the legal tender status of the BWI$ and Trinidad and Tobago withdrew from the currency union (adopting the Trinidad and Tobago dollar) forcing the movement of the headquarters of the BCCB to Barbados and soon the "BWI$" dollar lost its regional support. In 1965, the British West Indies dollar of the now defunct West Indies Federation was replaced at par by the Eastern Caribbean dollar and the BCCB was replaced by the Eastern Caribbean Currency Authority or ECCA (established by the Eastern Caribbean Currency Agreement 1965). British Guiana withdrew from the currency union the following year. Grenada, which had used the Trinidad and Tobago dollar from 1964, rejoined the common currency arrangement in 1968. Barbados withdrew from the currency union in 1972, following which the ECCA headquarters were moved to St. Kitts. Between 1965 and 1983, the Eastern Caribbean Currency Authority issued the EC$, with banknotes from 1965 and coins from 1981. The EC$ is now issued by the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, based in the city of Basseterre, in Saint Kitts and Nevis. The bank was established by an agreement (the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank Agreement) signed at Port of Spain on 5 July 1983. The exchange rate of = £1 sterling (equivalent to the old = 4s 2d) continued until 1976 for the new Eastern Caribbean dollar. For a wider outline of the history of currency in the region see Currencies of the British West Indies. Coins. Until 1981, the coins of the BWI$ circulated. In 1982, a new series of coins was introduced in denominations of 1, 2, 5, 10 and 25 cents and 1 dollar. The 1 and 5 cent coins were scalloped in shape while the 2 cent coin was square. These three were struck in aluminum. The 10 and 25 cent coins were round and cupro-nickel. The dollar was aluminum bronze and also round. The round, aluminum bronze dollar coin was replaced in 1989 with a decagonal, cupro-nickel type. In 2002 new and larger round-shaped 1, 2, and 5 cent pieces were introduced, along with a new 1 dollar coin which was also round. The effigy of Queen Elizabeth II was also changed that same year on all coin denominations to the Ian Rank-Broadley design, making it the last commonwealth currency up to that date to discontinue the Arnold Machin portrait. Their compositions remained aluminum and cupro-nickel, respectively. Higher denominations exist, but these were issued only as medal-coins. 1 and 2 cent coins were withdrawn from circulation in July 2015, and remained legal tender until 30 June 2020. Banknotes. In 1965, the Eastern Caribbean Currency Authority issued banknotes in denominations of 1, 5, 20 and 100 dollars, all featuring Pietro Annigoni's 1956 portrait of Queen Elizabeth II in regalia of the Order of the Garter. The first issues in the name of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank in 1985 were of the same denominations, with the addition of 10 dollar notes. The last 1 dollar notes were issued in 1989 and 50 dollar notes were introduced in 1993. On 1 April 2008, the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank issued a new series of banknotes which are like the preceding issues, except for omitting both the barcode and the country code letters which form part of the serial number on current notes. In 2012, the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank issued a series of banknotes with Braille features in an effort to provide notes which are easier for blind and visually impaired persons to use. The raised Braille characters on the upgraded notes feature a cricket theme in the form of balls and stumps. These characters have been added to the 10, 20, 50, and 100 dollar notes. In 2019, the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank is set to introduce a new family of notes produced in polymer substrate and are to be presented in a vertical format. Previous issues. The 2012 issue included raised braille elements for the visually-impaired in the form of a cricket ball and stumps. These were added to the EC$10, $20, $50, and $100 banknotes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10257

Essendon Football Club

The Essendon Football Club, nicknamed the Bombers, is a professional Australian rules football club. The club plays in the Australian Football League (AFL), the game's premier competition. The club was formed by the McCracken family in their Ascot Vale home "Alisa", and while the exact date is unknown, it is generally accepted to have been in 1872. The club's first recorded game took place on 7 June 1873 against a Carlton Second 20. From 1878 until 1896, the club played in the Victorian Football Association, then joined seven other clubs in October 1896 to form the breakaway Victorian Football League (later changed to AFL in 1990). Headquartered at the Essendon Recreation Ground, known as Windy Hill, from 1922 to 2013, the club moved to The Hangar in near Tullamarine in late 2013 on land owned by the Melbourne Airport. The club currently plays its home games at either Docklands Stadium or the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Zach Merrett is the current club captain. Essendon is one of Australia's best-known and most successful football clubs. It has won 16 VFL/AFL premierships, which, along with Carlton and Collingwood, is the most of any club in the competition. The club won four consecutive VFA premierships between 1891 and 1894, a feat unmatched in that competition's history. Essendon also hold the distinction of being the only club to win a premiership in their inaugural season (1897). However, Essendon has struggled to remain competitive in the 21st century, having won its last premiership in 2000 and not winning a final since 2004. During the early-to-mid 2010s, the team was the focus of an investigation by the AFL and independent regulatory bodies into their alleged use of illegal substances during the 2012 season, which led to 34 two-year suspensions, a $2 million fine, and disqualification from the 2013 finals series (among other penalties). Three Essendon players—John Coleman, Bill Hutchison, and Dick Reynolds—and one coach, Kevin Sheedy, are classified as "Legends" in the Australian Football Hall of Fame. Essendon also fields reserve men's and women's teams in the Victoria Football League and VFL Women's, respectively. Since 2022, it has a team competing in the national AFL Women's competition. History. Formation and VFA years (1871–1896). The club was founded by members of the Royal Agricultural Society, the Melbourne Hunt Club and the Victorian Woolbrokers. The Essendon Football Club is thought to have been formed in 1872 at a meeting it the home of a well-known brewery family, the McCrackens, whose Ascot Vale property hosted a team of local junior players. Robert McCracken (1813–1885), the owner of several city hotels, was the founder and first president of the Essendon Football Club, and his son, Alex McCracken, its first secretary. Alex later became president of the newly formed VFL. Alex's cousin Collier McCracken, who had already played with Melbourne, was the team's first captain. The club played its first recorded match against the Carlton Second Twenty (the reserves) on 7 June 1873, with Essendon winning by one goal. Essendon played 13 matches in its first season, winning seven, with four draws and losing two. The club was one of the inaugural junior members of the Victorian Football Association (VFA) in 1877, and it began competing as a senior club from the 1878 season. During its early years in the Association, Essendon played its home matches at Flemington Hill, but it moved to the East Melbourne Cricket Ground in 1881. In 1878, at Flemington Hill, Essendon played its first match on what would be considered by modern standards to be a full-sized field. In 1879, Essendon played Melbourne in one of the earliest night matches recorded when the ball was painted white. In 1883, the team played four matches in eight days in Adelaide: losing to Norwood (on 23 June) and defeating Port Adelaide (on 16 June), a combined South Australian team (on 18 June), and South Adelaide (on 20 June). In 1891, Essendon won their first VFA premiership, which they repeated in 1892, 1893 and 1894. One of the club's greatest players, Albert Thurgood, played for the club during this period, making his debut in 1892. Essendon (18 wins, 2 draws) was undefeated in the 1893 season. Founding of the VFL to World War I (1897–1915). At the end of the 1896 season, Essendon, along with seven other clubs, formed the Victorian Football League. Essendon's first VFL game was in 1897 against Geelong at Corio Oval in Geelong. Essendon won its first VFL premiership by winning the 1897 VFL finals series in a round-robin event. Essendon again won the premiership in 1901, defeating Collingwood in the Grand Final. The club won successive premierships in 1911 and 1912 over Collingwood and South Melbourne, respectively. "Same Olds". The club is recorded as having played at McCracken's Paddock, Glass's Paddock, and Flemington Hill. It is likely that these are three different names for the one ground, given that McCracken's Paddock was a parcel of land that sat within the larger Glass's Paddock, which in turn was situated in an area widely known at the time as Flemington Hill. In 1882, the club moved home games to the East Melbourne Cricket Ground (since demolished) after an application to play on the Essendon Cricket Ground (later known as Windy Hill) was voted down by Lord Mayor of the City of Essendon, James Taylor, on the basis that the considered the Essendon Cricket Ground "to be suitable only for the gentleman's game of cricket". The club became known by the nickname "the Same Old Essendon", from the title and hook of the principal song performed by a band of supporters which regularly occupied a section of the grandstand at the club's games. The nickname first appeared in print in the local "North Melbourne Advertiser" in 1889, and ended up gaining wide use, often as the diminutive "Same Olds". This move away from Essendon, at a time when fans would walk to their local ground, didn't go down too well with many Essendon people; and, as a consequence, a new team and club was formed in 1900, unconnected with the first (although it played in the same colours), that was based at the Essendon Cricket Ground, and playing in the Victorian Football Association. It was known firstly as Essendon Town and, after 1905, as Essendon (although it was often called Essendon A, with the A standing for association). Return to suburban Essendon (1921–1932). After the 1921 season, the East Melbourne Cricket Ground was closed and demolished to expand the Flinders Street Railyard. Having played at the East Melbourne Cricket Ground from 1882 to 1921, and having won four VFA premierships (1891–1894) and four VFL premierships (1897, 1901, 1911 and 1912) whilst there, Essendon was looking for a new home. It was offered grounds at the current Royal Melbourne Showgrounds, Ascot Vale; at Victoria Park, Melbourne; at Arden St, North Melbourne; and the Essendon Cricket Ground. The Essendon City Council offered the (VFL) team the Essendon Cricket Ground, announcing that it would be prepared to spend over £12,000 ($1,009,066 in 2021 terms, according to the Retail Price Index) on improvements, including a new grandstand, scoreboard and re-fencing of the oval. The club's first preference was to move to North Melbourne—a move which the North Melbourne Football Club (then in the VFA) saw as an opportunity to get into the VFL. Most of Essendon's members and players were from the North Melbourne area, and sportswriters believed that Essendon would have been taken over by or rebranded as North Melbourne within only a few years of the move. However, the VFA, desperate for its own strategic reasons not to lose its use of the North Melbourne Cricket Ground, successfully appealed to the State Government to block Essendon's move to North Melbourne. With its preferred option off the table, the club returned to Essendon, and the Essendon VFA club disbanded, with most of its players moving to North Melbourne. The old "Same Olds" nickname fell into disuse, and by 1922 the other nicknames "Sash Wearers" and "Essendonians" that had been variously used from time to time were also abandoned. The team became universally known as "the Dons" (from EssenDON); it was not until much later, during the War years of the early 1940s, that they became known as "The Bombers" due to Windy Hill's proximity to the Essendon Aerodrome. In the 1922 season, playing in Essendon for the first time in decades, Essendon reached the final four for the first time since 1912, finishing in third place. In the 1923 season, the club topped the ladder with 13 wins from 16 games. After a 17-point Second Semi-Final loss to South Melbourne, Essendon defeated Fitzroy (who had beaten South Melbourne) in the 1923 Grand Final (then known as a "Challenge Final" due to its different finals format): Essendon 8.15 (63) to Fitzroy 6.10 (46). Amongst Essendon's best players were half-forward flanker George "Tich" Shorten, centre half-forward Justin McCarthy, centre half-back Tom Fitzmaurice, rover Frank Maher, and wingman Jack Garden. This was one of Essendon's most famous sides, dubbed the "Mosquito Fleet" due to the number of small, very fast players in the side. Six players were 5'6" (167 cm) or smaller. In the 1924 season, for the first time since their inaugural premiership in 1897, there was no ultimate match to decide the league's champion team – either "Challenge Final" or "Grand Final" – to determine the premiers; instead, the top four clubs after the home-and-away season played a round-robin to determine the premiers. Essendon, having previously defeated both Fitzroy (by 40 points) and South Melbourne (by 33 points), clinched the premiership by means of a 20-point loss to Richmond. With the Tigers having already lost a match to Fitzroy by a substantial margin, the Dons were declared premiers by virtue of their superior percentage, meaning that Essendon again managed to win successive premierships. But the low gates for the finals meant this was never attempted again, resulting in Essendon having the unique record of winning the only two premierships without a grand final. Prominent contributors to Essendon's 1924 Premiership success included back pocket Clyde Donaldson, follower Norm Beckton, half-back flanker Roy Laing, follower Charlie May, and rover Charlie Hardy. The 1924 season was not without controversy, however, with rumours of numerous players accepting bribes. Regardless of the accuracy of these allegations, the club's image was tarnished, and the side experienced its lowest period during the decade that followed, with poor results on the field and decreased support off it. There was worse to follow, with various Essendon players publicly blaming each other for a poor performance against Richmond, and then, with dissension still rife in the ranks, the side plummeted to an unexpected and humiliating 28-point loss to VFA premiers Footscray in a special charity match played a week later in front of 46,100 people, in aid of Dame Nellie Melba's Limbless Soldiers' Appeal Fund, purportedly (but not officially) for the championship of Victoria. The club's fortunes dipped alarmingly—and persistently. Indeed, after finishing third in the 1926 season, it was to be 14 years later—in 1940—before Essendon would even contest a finals series. Dick Reynolds years (1933–1960). After the malaise of the late 1920s and early 1930, the 1933 season proved a turning point in morale despite no finals entries for the entire 1930s. Essendon saw the debut of the player regarded as one of the game's greatest-ever players, Dick Reynolds. His impact was immediate. He won his first Brownlow Medal aged 19. His record of three Brownlow victories (1934, 1937, 1938), equalled Fitzroy's Haydn Bunton, Sr (1931, 1932, 1935), and later equalled by Bob Skilton (1959, 1963, 1968), and Ian Stewart (1965, 1966, 1971). Reynolds went on to arguably even greater achievements as a coach, a position to which he was first appointed, jointly with Harry Hunter, in 1939 (this was while Reynolds was still a player). A year later he took the reins on a solo basis and was rewarded with immediate success (at least in terms of expectations at the time which, after so long in the wilderness, were somewhat modest). He was regarded as having a sound tactical knowledge of the game and being an inspirational leader, as he led the side into the finals in 1940 for the first time since 1926, when the side finished 3rd. Melbourne, which defeated Essendon by just 5 points in the preliminary final, later went on to trounce Richmond by 39 points in the grand final. The Essendon Football Club adopted the nickname The Bombers in April 1940. 1941 brought Essendon's first grand final appearance since 1923, but the side again lowered its colours to Melbourne. A year later war broke out and the competition was considerably weakened, with Geelong being forced to pull out of the competition due to travel restrictions as a result of petrol rationing. Attendances at games also declined dramatically, whilst some clubs had to move from their normal grounds due to them being used for military purposes. Many players were lost to football due to their military service. Nevertheless, Essendon went on to win the 1942 Premiership with Western Australian Wally Buttsworth in irrepressible form at centre half-back. Finally, the long-awaited premiership was Essendon's after comprehensively outclassing Richmond in the grand final, 19.18 (132) to 11.13 (79). The match was played at Carlton in front of 49,000 spectators. In any case, there could be no such reservations about Essendon's next premiership, which came just four years later. Prior to that Essendon lost a hard-fought grand final to Richmond in 1943 by 5 points, finished 3rd in 1944, and dropped to 8th in 1945. After World War II, Essendon enjoyed great success. In the five years immediately after the war, Essendon won 3 premierships (1946, 1949, 1950) and were runners up twice (1947, 1948). In 1946, Essendon were clearly the VFL's supreme force, topping the ladder after the home-and-away games and surviving a drawn second semi-final against Collingwood to make it through to the grand final a week later with a score of 10.16 (76) to 8.9 (57). Then, in the grand final against Melbourne, Essendon set a grand final record score of 22.18 (150) to Melbourne 13.9 (87), featuring a 7-goal performance by centre half-forward Gordon Lane. Rover Bill Hutchinson, and defenders Wally Buttsworth, Cec Ruddell and Harold Lambert were among the best players. The 1947 Grand Final has to go down in the ledger as 'one of the ones that got away', with Essendon losing to Carlton by a single point despite managing 30 scoring shots to 21. As if to prove that lightning does occasionally strike twice, the second of the 'ones that got away' came just a year later, the Dons finishing with a lamentable 7.27, to tie with Melbourne (who managed 10.9) in the 1948 grand final. A week later Essendon waved the premiership good-bye, as Melbourne raced to a 13.11 (89) to 7.8 (50) triumph. The club's Annual Report made an assessment that was at once restrained and, as was soon to emerge, tacitly and uncannily prophetic: "It is very apparent that no team is complete without a spearhead and your committee has high hopes of rectifying that fault this coming season." The 1949 season heralded the arrival on the VFL scene of John Coleman, arguably the greatest player in Essendon's history, and, in the view of some, the finest player the game has known. In his first ever appearance for the Dons, against Hawthorn in Round 1, 1949, he booted 12 of his side's 18 goals to create an opening-round record which was to endure for forty-five years. More importantly, however, he went on to maintain the same high level of performance throughout the season, kicking precisely 100 goals for the year to become the first player to kick 100 goals in a season since Richmond's Jack Titus in 1940. The Coleman factor was just what Essendon needed to enable them to take that vital final step to premiership glory, but even so it was not until the business end of the season that this became clear. Essendon struggled to make the finals in 4th place, but once there they suddenly ignited to put in one of the most consistently devastating September performances in VFL history. Collingwood succumbed first as the Dons powered their way to an 82-point first semi-final victory, and a fortnight later it was the turn of the North Melbourne Football Club as Essendon won the preliminary final a good deal more comfortably than the ultimate margin of 17 points suggested. In the grand final, Essendon were pitted against Carlton and in a match that was a total travesty as a contest they overwhelmed the Blues to the tune of 73 points, 18.17 (125) to 6.16 (52). Best for the Dons included pacy aboriginal half-back flanker Norm McDonald, ruckman Bob McLure, and rovers Bill Hutchinson and Ron McEwin. John Coleman also did well, registering six goals. A year later, in 1950, Essendon were—if anything—even more dominant, defeating the North Melbourne Football Club in both the Second Semi-Final and the Grand Final to secure consecutive VFL premierships for the third time. Best afield in the 1950 Grand Final, in what was officially his swan song as a player, was captain-coach Dick Reynolds, who received sterling support from the likes of Norm McDonald, ruckman/back pocket Wally May, back pocket Les Gardiner, and ruckman McLure. With Reynolds, aka 'King Richard', still holding court as coach in 1951, albeit now in a non-playing capacity, Essendon seemed on course for a third consecutive flag, but a controversial four-week suspension dished out to John Coleman on the eve of the finals effectively destroyed their chances. Coleman was reported for retaliation after twice being struck by his direct Carlton opponent, Harry Caspar, and without him the Dons were rated a four-goals-poorer team. Nevertheless, they still managed to battle their way to a 6th successive grand final with wins over Footscray by 8 points in the first semi-final and Collingwood by 2 points in the preliminary final. The Dons sustained numerous injuries in the preliminary final, and the selectors sprang a surprise on Grand Final day by naming the officially retired Dick Reynolds as 20th man. Reynolds was powerless to prevent the inevitable; although leading at half-time, Geelong kicked five goals to Essendon's two points in the third quarter to set up victory by 11 points. Essendon slumped to 8th in 1952, but Coleman was in blistering form, managing 103 goals for the year. Hugh Buggy noted in "The Argus": "It was the wettest season for twenty-two years and Coleman showed that since the war he was without peer in the art of goal kicking." Two seasons later, Coleman's career was ended after he dislocated a knee during the Round 8 clash with the North Melbourne Football Club at Essendon. Aged just 25, he had kicked 537 goals in only 98 VFL games in what was generally a fairly low-scoring period for the game. His meteoric rise and fall were clearly the stuff of legend, and few (if any) players, either before or since, have had such an immense impact over so brief a period. According to Alf Brown, football writer for "The Herald": Somewhat more colourfully, R.S. Whittington suggested: Without Coleman, Essendon's fortunes plummeted, and there were to be no further premierships in the 1950s. The nearest miss came in 1957 when the Bombers (as they were popularly known by this time) earned premiership favouritism after a superb 16-point Second Semi-Final defeat of Melbourne—only to lose by over 10 goals against the same side a fortnight later. 1959 saw another grand final loss to Melbourne, this time by 37 points, but the fact that the average age of the Essendon side was only 22 was seen as providing considerable cause for optimism. However, it was to take another three years, and a change of coach, before the team's obvious potential was translated into tangible success. Post-Reynolds era and the "Slugging Seventies" (1961–1980). John Coleman started his coaching career at Essendon in 1961, thus ending the Dick Reynolds era at the club. In the same year, Essendon finished the season mid-table, and supporters were not expecting too much for the following season. However, the club blitzed the opposition in 1962, losing only two matches and finishing top of the table. Both losses were to the previous year's grand finalists. The finals posed no problems for the resurgent Dons, easily accounting for Carlton in the season's climax, winning the 1962 Premiership by 32 points. This was a remarkable result for Coleman, who, in just his second season of coaching, claimed the ultimate prize in Australian football. As so often is the case after a flag, the following two years were below standard. A further premiership in 1965 (won from 4th position on the ladder) was also unexpected due to periods of poor form during the 1965 season. The Bombers were a different club when the finals came around, but some of the credit for the improvement was given to the influence of Brian Sampson and Ted Fordham during the finals. Coleman's time as coach turned out to be much like his playing career: highly successful but cut short when he had to stand down due to health problems in 1967. Only six years later, on the eve of the 1973 season, he died of a heart attack at just 44 years of age. Following Coleman's retirement, the club experienced tough times on and off the field. Finals appearances were rare for the side, which was often in contention for the wooden spoon. Essendon did manage to make the 1968 VFL Grand Final, but it lost to Carlton by just three points and did not make it back to the big stage for a 15 years. During the period from 1968 until 1980, five different coaches were tried, with none lasting longer than four years. Off the field, the club went through troubled times as well. In 1970, five players went on strike before the season even began, demanding higher payments. Essendon did make the finals in 1972 and 1973 under the autocratic direction of Des Tuddenham (Collingwood), but they were beaten badly in successive elimination finals by St. Kilda and did not taste finals action again until the very end of the decade. The 1970s' Essendon sides were involved in many rough and tough encounters under Tuddenham, who himself came to loggerheads with Ron Barassi at a quarter-time huddle where both coaches exchanged heated words. Essendon had tough but talented players with the likes of "Rotten Ronnie" Ron Andrews and experienced players such as Barry Davis, Ken Fletcher, Geoff Blethyn, Neville Fields and West Australian import Graham Moss. In May 1974, a controversial half-time all-in-brawl with Richmond at Windy Hill and a 1975 encounter with Carlton were testimony of the era. Following the Carlton match, the "Herald" described Windy Hill as "Boot Hill" because of the extent of the fights and the high number of reported players (eight in all—four from Carlton and four from Essendon). The peak of these incidents occurred in 1980 with new recruit Phil Carman making headlines for head-butting an umpire. The tribunal suspended him for sixteen weeks, and although most people thought this was a fair (or even lenient) sentence, he took his case to the supreme court, gathering even more unwanted publicity for the club. Despite this, the club had recruited many talented young players in the late 1970s who emerged as club greats. Three of those young players were Simon Madden, Tim Watson and Paul Van Der Haar. Terry Daniher and his brother Neale came via a trade with South Melbourne, and Roger Merrett joined soon afterwards to form the nucleus of what would become the formidable Essendon sides of the 1980s. This raw but talented group of youngsters took Essendon to an elimination final in 1979 under Barry Davis but were again thrashed in an Elimination Final, this time at the hands of Fitzroy. Davis resigned at the end of the 1980 season after missing out on a finals appearance. One of the few highlights for Essendon supporters during this time was when Graham Moss won the 1976 Brownlow Medal; he was the only Bomber to do so in a 40-year span from 1953 to 1993. Even that was bittersweet, as he quit VFL football to move back to his native Western Australia, where Moss finished out his career as a player and coach at Claremont Football Club. In many ways, Moss's career reflects Essendon's mixed fortunes during the decade. Kevin Sheedy era (1981–2007). Former Richmond player Kevin Sheedy started as head coach in 1981. Essendon reached the Grand Final in 1983, the first time since 1968. Hawthorn won by a then record 83 points. In 1984, Essendon won the pre-season competition and completed the regular season on top of the ladder. The club played, and beat, Hawthorn in the 1984 VFL Grand Final to win their 13th premiership—their first since 1965. The teams met again in the 1985 Grand Final, which Essendon also won. At the start of 1986, Essendon were considered unbackable for three successive flags, but a succession of injuries to key players Paul Van der Haar (only fifteen games from 1986 to 1988), Tim Watson, Darren Williams, Roger Merrett and Simon Madden led the club to win only eight of its last eighteen games in 1986 and only nine games (plus a draw with Geelong) in 1987. In July 1987, the Bombers suffered a humiliation at the hands of Sydney, who fell two points short of scoring the then highest score in VFL history. In 1988, Essendon made a rebound to sixth place with twelve wins, including a 140-point thrashing of Brisbane where they had a record sixteen individual goalkickers. In 1989, they rebounded further to second on the ladder with only five losses and thrashed Geelong in the Qualifying Final. However, after a fiery encounter with Hawthorn ended in a convincing defeat, the Bombers were no match for Geelong next week. In 1990, Essendon were pace-setters almost from the start, but a disruption from the Qualifying Final draw between Collingwood and West Coast was a blow from which they never recovered. The Magpies comprehensively thrashed them in both the second semi-final and the grand final. Following the 1991 season, Essendon moved its home games from its traditional home ground at Windy Hill to the larger and newly renovated MCG. This move generated large increases in game attendance, membership and revenue for the club. The club's training and administrative base remained at Windy Hill until 2013. Following the retirement of Tim Watson and Simon Madden in the early 1990s, the team was built on new players such as Gavin Wanganeen, Joe Misiti, Mark Mercuri, Michael Long, Dustin Fletcher (son of Ken) and James Hird, who was taken at No. 79 in the 1990 draft. This side became known as the "Baby Bombers", as the core of the side was made up of young players early in their careers. The team won the 1993 Grand Final against Carlton and that same year, Gavin Wanganeen won the Brownlow Medal, the first awarded to an Essendon player since 1976. Three years later, James Hird was jointly awarded the medal with Michael Voss of Brisbane. In 2000, the club shifted the majority of its home games to the newly opened Docklands Stadium, signing a 25-year deal to play seven home matches per year at the venue, with the other four remaining at the MCG. The season was one of the most successful by any team in VFL/AFL history, and the club opened with 20 consecutive wins before they lost to the Western Bulldogs in round 21. The team went on to win their 16th premiership, defeating , thereby completing the most dominant single season in AFL/VFL history. The defeat to the Bulldogs was the only defeat for Essendon throughout the entire calendar year (Essendon also won the 2000 pre-season competition). Essendon was less successful after 2001. Lucrative contracts to a number of premiership players had caused serious pressure on the club's salary cap, forcing the club to trade several key players. Blake Caracella, Chris Heffernan, Justin Blumfield, Gary Moorcroft and Damien Hardwick had all departed by the end of 2002; in 2004, Mark Mercuri, Sean Wellman and Joe Misiti retired. The club remained competitive; however, they could progress no further than the second week of the finals each year for the years of 2002, 2003, and 2004. Sheedy signed a new three-year contract at the end of 2004. In 2005, Essendon missed the finals for the first time since 1997, and in 2006, despite a first-round 27-point thrashing of defending premiers , in which newly appointed captain Matthew Lloyd kicked eight goals playing on Leo Barry, and a season-ending hamstring injury he subsequently suffered just two rounds later, the Bombers were uncompetitive for the majority of the season, recording only three wins and one draw from twenty-two games to suffer its worst season since 1933, as well as recording the least number of votes collectively as a team at the 2006 Brownlow Medal count. In Lloyd's absence, David Hille was appointed captain for the remainder of the season. The club improved its on-field position in 2007 but again missed the finals. On-field woes and subsequent relocation to Melbourne Airport (2008–2013). Sheedy's contract was not renewed after 2007, ending his 27-year tenure as Essendon coach. Matthew Knights replaced Sheedy as coach, and coached the club for three seasons, reaching the finals once—an eighth-place finish in 2009 at the expense of reigning premiers . On 29 August 2010, shortly after the end of the 2010 home-and-away season, Knights was dismissed as coach. On 28 September 2010, former captain James Hird was named as Essendon's new coach from 2011 on a four-year deal. Formpremiership-winning dual-premiership-winning coach and Essendon triple-premiership-winning player Mark Thompson later joined Hird on the coaching panel. In his first season, Essendon finished eighth. The club started strongly in 2012, sitting fourth with a 10–3 record at the halfway mark of the season, but won only one more match for the season, finishing eleventh to miss the finals. In 2013, the club moved its training and administrative base to The Hangar, a new facility in the suburb of Melbourne Airport which it had developed in conjunction with the Australian Paralympic Committee. Essendon holds a 37-year lease at the facility and maintains a lease at Windy Hill to use the venue for home matches for its reserves team in the Victorian Football League as well as for a social club and merchandise store on the site. ASADA/WADA investigation (2013–2016). During 2013, the club was investigated by the AFL and the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) over its 2012 player supplements and sports science program, most specifically over allegations into illegal use of peptide supplements. An internal review found it to have "established a supplements program that was experimental, inappropriate and inadequately vetted and controlled", and on 27 August 2013, the club was found guilty of bringing the game into disrepute for this reason. Among its penalties, the club was fined A$2 million, stripped of early draft picks in the following two drafts, and forfeited its place in the 2013 finals series (having originally finished seventh on the ladder); Hird was suspended from coaching for twelve months. Several office-bearers also resigned their posts during the controversy, including chairman David Evans and CEO Ian Robson. In the midst of the supplements saga, assistant coach Mark Thompson took over as coach for the 2014 season during Hird's suspension. He led the club back to the finals for a seventh-place finish but in a tense second elimination final against archrivals North Melbourne, the Bombers led by as much as 27 points at half time before a resurgent Kangaroos side came back and won the game by 12 points. After the 2014 season, Mark Thompson left the club to make way for Hird's return to the senior coaching role. In June 2014, thirty-four players were issued show-cause notices alleging the use of banned peptide Thymosin beta-4 during the program. The players faced the AFL Anti-Doping Tribunal over the 2014/15 offseason, and on 31 March 2015 the tribunal returned a not guilty verdict, determining that it was "not comfortably satisfied" that the players had been administered the peptide. Hird returned as senior coach for the 2015 season, and after a strong start, the club's form severely declined after the announcement that WADA would appeal the decision of the AFL Anti-Doping Tribunal. The effect of the appeal on the team's morale was devastating and they went on to win only six games for the year. Under extreme pressure, Hird resigned on 18 August 2015 following a disastrous 112-point loss to Adelaide. Former West Coast Eagles premiership coach John Worsfold was appointed as the new senior coach on a three-year contract. On 12 January 2016 the Court of Arbitration for Sport overruled the AFL anti-doping tribunal's decision, deeming that 34 past and present players of the Essendon Football Club, took the banned substance Thymosin Beta-4. As a result, all 34 players, 12 of which were still at the club, were given two-year suspensions. However, all suspensions were effectively less due to players having previously taken part in provisional suspensions undertaken during the 2014/2015 off-season. As a result, Essendon contested the 2016 season with twelve of its regular senior players under suspension. In order for the club to remain competitive, the AFL granted Essendon the ability to upgrade all five of their rookie listed players and to sign an additional ten players to cover the loss of the suspended players for the season. Due to this unprecedented situation, many in the football community predicted the club would go through the 2016 AFL season without a win; however, they were able to win three matches: against , and in rounds 2, 21 and 23 respectively. The absence of its most experienced players also allowed the development of its young players, with Zach Merrett and Orazio Fantasia having breakout years, while Darcy Parish and Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti, impressing in their debut seasons. Merrett acted as captain in the side's round 21 win over the Suns. The club eventually finished on the bottom of the ladder and thus claimed its first wooden spoon since 1933. Post-investigation (2017–present). Essendon made their final financial settlement related to the supplements saga in September 2017, just before finals started. They also improved vastly on their 2016 performance, finishing 7th in the home-and-away season and becoming the first team since in 2011 to go from wooden spooner to a finals appearance, but they ultimately lost their only final to . The 2017 season was also capped off by the retirement of much-loved club legend and ex-captain Jobe Watson, midfielder Brent Stanton, and ex-Geelong star James Kelly, who later took up a development coach role at the club. Midfielder Heath Hocking, who played 126 games for the club, was delisted. Expectations were high for the 2018 season, with the club having an outstanding offseason. The recruitment of Jake Stringer, Adam Saad and Devon Smith from the Western Bulldogs, Gold Coast Suns and Greater Western Sydney Giants respectively was expected to throw Essendon firmly into premiership contention. After beating the previous year's runner up (which went on to beat reigning premiers the following round) in round one, Essendon's form slumped severely, only winning one game out of the next seven rounds and losing to the then-winless Carlton in round eight. Senior assistant coach Mark Neeld was sacked by the club the following Monday. The team's form improved sharply after this, recording wins against top eight sides Geelong, GWS, eventual premiers West Coast and Sydney, and winning ten out of the last 13 games of the season. However, the mid-season revival was short-lived, with a loss to reigning premiers by eight points in round 22 ending any hopes they had of reaching the finals. The 2018 season was capped off by the club not offering veteran Brendon Goddard a new contract for 2019. Essendon acquired Dylan Shiel from in one of the most high-profile trades of the 2018 AFL Trade Period. The Bombers had inconsistent form throughout the 2019 season but qualified for the finals for the second time in three seasons, finishing eighth on the ladder with 12 wins and 10 losses. The Bombers, however, were no match for the West Coast Eagles in the first elimination final and lost by 55 points to end their season. The defeat extended their 15-year finals winning drought, having not won a final since 2004. Following the end of the 2019 season, assistant coach Ben Rutten was announced as John Worsfold's successor as senior coach, effective at the end of the 2020 AFL season. Rutten effectively shared co-coaching duties with Worsfold during the 2020 season. 2020 was a particularly disappointing year for the club. The Bombers failed to make the finals, finishing thirteenth on the AFL ladder with just six wins and a draw from 17 games. Conor McKenna became the first AFL player to test positive to COVID-19 during the pandemic. A number of players also left the club at the end of the 2020 season including Joe Daniher, Conor McKenna, Adam Saad and Orazio Fantasia. With Rutten solely at the helm in 2021, Essendon improved significantly from the previous year and returned to the finals, finishing eighth on the ladder with 11 wins and 11 losses, and despite having beaten the Western Bulldogs towards the end of the regular season, the Bombers would lose to the same team by 49 points in the first elimination final. Season 2022 was the club's 150th anniversary, and hopes were high, with some even predicting Essendon to break their 21-year premiership drought. However, these predictions proved drastically wrong as the Bombers went on to finish 15th, winning only 7 games with a percentage of 83.2%. This poor performance placed Rutten's position under scrutiny, and after a late attempt to lure former Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson failed, Rutten was unceremoniously sacked. He was replaced by former AFL General Manager of Football and North Melbourne coach Brad Scott. As a result of the 2022 season's turmoil, board members such as former CEO Xavier Campbell, former president Paul Brasher, former player Simon Madden, and Peter Allen left their roles. Campbell was replaced by Andrew Thorburn, who was pressured into resignation after only one day in the role due to his simultaneous position as a board member of the conservative City on the Hill Church Movement—whose controversial teachings conflicted with Essendon's progressive values—was made public. Craig Vozzo replaced Thorburn in November 2022. Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti, Devon Smith and Michael Hurley announced their retirements at the end of the 2022 season, however Tipungwuti revoked the announcement on 10 November 2022. Tipungwuti again announced his retirement at the end of the 2023 after playing only two games at senior level. In 2023, reports emerged claiming that the club was reconsidering its logo. These included rumours that the current bomber logo was insensitive, given the operation of bomber jets in conflict. These reports were denied by then-captain Zach Merrett. At the end of the 2023 season it was announced that former West Coast and Gold Coast player Matt Rosa would join Essendon as Talent & Operations Manager and that Adrian Dodoro will step back from his position of recruiting manager after the upcoming trade and draft periods. In Brad Scott's first season as coach, Essendon sat in fifth position after round 17, but form fell off later in the season to finish 11th with 11 wins and 12 losses. Club symbols. Guernsey. Essendon's first recorded jumpers were navy blue ("The Footballers", edited by Thomas Power, 1875) although the club wore 'red and black caps and hose'. In 1877, "The Footballers" records the addition of 'a red sash over left shoulder'. This is the first time a red sash as part of the club jumper, and by 1878 there are newspaper reports referring to Essendon players as 'the men in the sash'. Given that blue and navy blue were the most popular colours at the time, it is thought that Essendon adopted a red sash in 1877 to distinguish its players from others in similar-coloured jumpers. Clash jumpers. In 2007, the AFL Commission laid down the requirement that all clubs must produce an alternative jumper for use in matches where jumpers are considered to clash. From 2007 to 2011, the Essendon clash guernsey was the same design as its home guernsey, but with a substantially wider sash such that the guernsey was predominantly red rather than predominantly black. This was changed after 2011 when the AFL deemed that the wider sash did not provide sufficient contrast. From 2012 to 2016, Essendon's clash guernsey was predominantly grey, with a red sash fimbriated in black; the grey field contained, in small print, the names of all Essendon premiership players. Before the 2016 season, Essendon's changed their clash guernsey to a predominantly red one, featuring a red sash in black. Similar to the grey jumper, the names of Essendon premiership players were also printed outside the sash. Yellow armbands. Following Adam Ramanauskas's personal battle with cancer, a "Clash for Cancer" match against was launched in 2006. This was a joint venture between Essendon and the Cancer Council of Victoria to raise funds for the organisation. Despite a formal request to the AFL being denied, players wore yellow armbands for the match, which resulted in the club being fined $20,000. In 2007, the AFL agreed to allow yellow armbands to be incorporated into the left sleeve of the jumper. The 'Clash for Cancer' match against Melbourne has become an annual event, repeated in subsequent seasons, though in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2016, (twice), the Sydney Swans and Brisbane Lions were the opponents in those respective seasons instead of Melbourne. In 2009, the jumpers were auctioned along with yellow boots worn by some players during the match. Club song. The club's theme song, "See the Bombers Fly Up", is thought to have been written c. 1959 by Kevin Andrews in the home of player Jeff Gamble at which time Kevin Andrews was living. The song is based on the tune of Johnnie Hamp's 1929 song "(Keep Your) Sunny Side Up" at an increased tempo. Jeff Gamble came up with the line 'See the bombers fly up, up' while Kevin Andrews contributed all or most of the rest. At the time, "(Keep Your) Sunny Side Up" was the theme song for the popular Melbourne-based TV show on Channel 7 "Sunnyside Up". The official version of the song was recorded in 1972 by the Fable Singers and is still used today. The song, as with all other AFL clubs, is played prior to every match and at the conclusion of matches when the team is victorious. Songwriter Mike Brady, of "Up There Cazaly" fame, penned an updated version of the song in 1999 complete with a new verse arrangement, but it was not well received. However, this version is occasionally played at club functions. In 2018, Andrews revealed that there was an error in the lyrics, in which in the line "The other teams they don't fear", the word "they" was supposed to be "we". Logo and mascot. The club's current logo was introduced in 1998, making it the second oldest AFL logo currently in use, behind St. Kilda's logo, which was introduced in 1995. Their mascot is known as "Skeeta Reynolds", and was named after Dick Reynolds. He is a mosquito and was created in honour of the team's back-to-back premiership sides in the 1920s known as the "Mosquito Fleet". He was first named through a competition run in the Bomber magazine with "Skeeta" being the winning entry. This was later changed to "Skeeta Reynolds". He appears as a red mosquito in an Essendon jumper and wears a red and black scarf. Headquarters, training and administration base. The Essendon Football Club primary training and administration base has been at The Hangar since 2013. prior to this, the primary training and administration base of Essendon Football Club was based at Windy Hill Oval from 1922 until 2013. prior to this, the home ground of Essendon Football Club was at the East Melbourne Cricket Ground from 1882 until 1921. Rivalries. Essendon's biggest rivals are , , and , as these teams and Essendon are the four biggest and most supported clubs in Victoria. Matches between the clubs are often close regardless of form and ladder positions. If out of the race themselves, all four have the desire to deny the others a finals spot or a premiership. Essendon also has a fierce rivalry with Hawthorn, stemming from excessive on-field violence in the 1980s, perhaps reaching its zenith with the infamous Line in the Sand Match in 2004. Additionally, Essendon has a three-decade rivalry with the West Coast Eagles. Organisation and finance. Board. David Barham has served as chairman of the board since August 2022. Essendon's board members are David Barham, Andrew Welsh, Melissa Verner Green, Dorothy Hisgrove, Andrew Muir, Kate O'Sullivan, and Kevin Sheedy AO. Sponsorship. The club's apparel is currently produced by Under Armour. The club's apparel has also been produced by Reebok, Fila, Puma, Adidas and ISC. Honours. "See Essendon Football Club honours." Team of the Century. To celebrate the 125th anniversary of the club, as well as 100 years of the VFL/AFL, Essendon announced its "Team of the Century" in 1997. Champions of Essendon. In 2002, a club panel chose and ranked the 25 greatest players to have played for Essendon. Hall of Fame. Essendon Hall of Fame Legends (year inducted): Bill Brew (2013), Bill Busbridge (1996), Jack Clarke (1996), John Coleman (1996), Bill Cookson (1996), Wally Crichton (2010), Terry Daniher (1996), Barry Davis (2006), Ron Evans (2012), Tom Fitzmaurice (1996), Ken Fraser (1996), Allan Hird Sr (1996), James Hird (2011), Harry Hunter (2015), Bill Hutchison (1996), Matthew Lloyd (2013), Simon Madden (1996), Alex McCracken (1996), Michael Long (2010), Howard Okey (2012), Frank Reid (1996), Dick Reynolds (1996), Greg Sewell (2009), Kevin Sheedy (2008), Albert Thurgood (1996), Tim Watson (1998), Neale Daniher* (2018), Dustin Fletcher*, Dr Bruce Reid* (2014), Gavin Wanganeen* "*denotes recent elevation to Legend status" Essendon Hall of Fame members (year inducted): Noel Allanson (2015), Fred Baring (2013), John Birt (2010), Reg Burgess (2015), Wally Buttsworth (2010), Barry Capuano (2014), Kevin Egan (2015), Alec Epis (2014), Ken Fletcher (2011), Keith Forbes (2010), Garry Foulds (2010), Darryl Gerlach (2013), Mark Harvey (2014), Bruce Heymanson (2013), Jack Jones (2012), Ron Kirwan (2016), Harold Lambert (2018), Scott Lucas (2013), Roy McConnell (2013), Don McKenzie (2010), Roger Merrett (2018), Joe Misiti (2012), Hugh Mitchell (2012), Graham Moss (2012), Gary O'Donnell (2014), Dr Ian Reynolds (2018), Paul Salmon (2012), David Shaw (2011), Arthur Showers (2010), George Stuckey (2010), Hugh Torney (2011), Paul Vander Haar (2015) Reserves team. The Essendon reserves are the reserves team of the club, playing in the Victorian Football League. History. The team first competed in the Victorian Junior Football Association (later the AFL reserves) when the competition was established in 1919. Similar to Carlton District and Collingwood District, the team was initially known as Essendon District. The team enjoyed success in the form of eight premierships between 1919 and 1999, including the last year of the reserves competition in 1999. From 2000 until 2002, the club's reserves team competed in the new Victorian Football League competition. At the end of 2002, the club dissolved its reserves team and established a reserves affiliation with the Bendigo Football Club in the VFL. The affiliation ran for ten years from 2003 until 2012, allowing reserves players from the Essendon list to play with Bendigo. For all but the final year of the affiliation, Bendigo was known as the Bendigo Bombers. The club re-established its reserves team in 2013, seeking greater developmental autonomy. The team plays its home games at Windy Hill. The team is made up of senior-listed AFL players and VFL-contracted players. The side has been coached by former Essendon AFL player Brent Stanton since the start of the 2022 season. Runners-up (10). Essendon refused to play the Grand Final in Geelong, so the premiership was awarded to Geelong. Women's teams. AFL Women's team. Essendon fielded a team in the AFL Women's (AFLW) competition from its seventh season. In March 2022, former AFLW player and Essendon VFLW captain Georgia Nanscawen was announced as the club's first AFLW player signing, and AFLW assistant coach Natalie Wood was announced as the club's first AFLW coach a week later. The club's AFLW coaching panel was finalised in late June. VFL Women's team. Essendon has fielded a team in the VFL Women's (VFLW) competition since the 2018 season. The league is the highest-grade competition for female footballers in Victoria and one of three second-tier female competitions underneath the national AFL Women's. VFL Women's season summaries. "" Other ventures. In December 2017, Essendon entered e-sports by acquiring Australian "League of Legends" team Abyss ESports. This made them the second AFL team to acquire an e-sports division after Adelaide acquired Legacy ESports in May. On 2 December 2019, it was announced that the Bombers' OPL slot had been sold to Perth-based internet provider Pentanet, marking Essendon's exit from the e-sports arena. In 2018, the Essendon Football Club, along with four other AFL clubs, entered the Victorian Wheelchair Football League. Activism. Aboriginal support. Starting with Norm McDonald in 1947, Essendon has a proud history of fostering Aborignal talent at the top level. This came to the fore during the 1990s with players such as Michael Long, Derek Kickett, Gavin Wanganeen, and Dean Rioli rising through the ranks and being fostered by Kevin Sheedy. Dreamtime at the 'G and the Long Walk are two prominent annual events staged to help promote and support Aboriginal culture. The Long Walk, specifically, is designed to raise money for Indigenous education programs across the country. Additionally, Essendon is a supporter of the Voice to Parliament. Same-Sex Marriage. During the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey, Essendon supported the Yes vote.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10289

Emsworth

Emsworth is a town in the Borough of Havant in the county of Hampshire, on the south coast of England near the border with West Sussex. It lies at the north end of an arm of Chichester Harbour, a large and shallow inlet from the English Channel, and is equidistant between Portsmouth and Chichester. Emsworth had a population of 9,492 at the 2011 Census. The town has a basin for yachts and fishing boats, which fills at high tide and can be emptied through a sluice at low tide. In geodemographic segmentation the town is the heart of the Emsworth (cross-county) built-up area, the remainder of which is Westbourne, Southbourne and Nutbourne. The area had a combined population of 18,777 in 2011, with a density of 30.5 people per hectare, and shares two railway stations. Etymology. According to Richard Coates the meaning of Emsworth is derived from the Old English , which translates as 'Æmmele's curtilage'. Similarly, Eilert Ekwall says that "Emsworth" was derived from "Amils worth", with "worth" meaning the fence around the property (owned by Amil). It is popularly thought that Emsworth derived its name from the River Ems, but this is not true; before the 16th century the stream was actually called the Bourne. The river was renamed by the 16th century chronicler Raphael Holinshed: Holinshed writes that the Emille flows in to the sea at Emilswort or Emmesworth. Therefore it appears that the river was named after Emsworth and not the other way round. History. Pre-Roman. In prehistoric and early historical times the River Ems was tidal as far as Westbourne and the Westbrook creek reached to Victoria Road, leaving Emsworth almost isolated at high tide. A coastal route developed that led from Hayling Island through Havant and Rowlands Castle to the Downs. A part of the coastal route followed the Portsdown ridgeway and from Chichester to Belmont Hill in Bedhampton probably skirted the heads of the various creeks which entered the harbour, passing through country still covered with the original thick forest of oak and beech. Roman. In Roman times a villa existed to the south of the road to Noviomagus Reginorum in the fields of what is now Warblington Castle Farm. Archaeological finds show that the building was a sizeable brick and stone edifice, with floors paved with red brick and coloured sandstone and a view of the harbour and wooded shores of Hayling Island. The fertile landscape suggests the area to have been under continuous cultivation for 1500–1800 years. Anglo-Saxon. Saxons began settling the area after AD 500. Charters were granted by Kings Æthelstan and Æthelred in AD 935 and AD 980 establishing and confirming the boundaries of Warblington. From AD 980–1066 the manor was held by Godwin, Earl of Wessex and his son Harold Godwinson. Medieval. After the Norman Conquest, the Manor of Warblington was given to Roger de Montgomery, Earl of Shrewsbury as part of the manor of Westbourne. The Domesday Book lists the latter with two churches, a mill, 29 families and two slaves (about 120 people). There were also seven plough teams, indicating about 850 acres of land under cultivation. The first recorded mention of Emsworth as a separate entity was in AD 1216, when King John divided the manor of Warblington, accepting annual rent of ‘a pair of gilt spurs yearly’ from William Aguillon for land at "Emelsworth". In AD 1239, Henry III granted the town a weekly market on Wednesdays and an annual fair on 7 July. The town was mentioned in a patent roll of a hospital in the Hermitage area in AD 1251. In AD 1341 Emsworth was designated as one of five English towns required to provide a ship for defence of the Channel Islands. It was designated as a customs landing for Chichester in AD 1346 and in AD 1348 was investigated by a special commission for smuggling. 18th and 19th centuries. During the 18th and 19th centuries, Emsworth was still a port. Emsworth was known for shipbuilding, boat building and rope making. Grain from the area was ground into flour by tidal mills and transported by ship to places such as London and Portsmouth. Timber from the area was also exported in the 18th and 19th centuries. The River Ems, which is named after the town (not, as often believed, the town being named after the river), flows into the Slipper millpond. The mill itself is now used as offices. In the 19th century Emsworth had as many as 30 pubs and beer houses; today, only nine remain. At the beginning of the 19th century, Emsworth had a population of less than 1,200 but it was still considered a large village for the time. By the end of the 18th century, it became fashionable for wealthy people to spend the summer by the sea. In 1805 a bathing house was built where people could have a bath in seawater. The parish Church of St James was built in 1840 to a design by John Elliott. It was expanded in the late 1850s this time to a design by John Colson. Colson's designs were again used in an expansion of 1865. A final round of building took place in the early 1890s this time to a design by Arthur Blomfield. The reredos added in the 1920s features a painting by Percy George Bentham. Queen Victoria visited Emsworth in 1842, resulting in Queen Street and Victoria Road being named after her. In 1847 the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (now the West Coastway line) came to Emsworth, with a railway station built to serve the town. Hollybank House to the north of the town was built in 1825 and is now a hotel. Emsworth became part of Warblington Urban District which held its first meeting in 1895. The Urban District was abolished in 1932. Emsworth subsequently became part of Havant Urban District. Modern. By 1901 the population of Emsworth was about 2,000. It grew rapidly during the 20th century to about 5,000 by the middle of the century. In 1906 construction began on the post office, with local cricketer George Wilder laying an inscribed brick. The renamed Emsworth Recreation Ground dates from 1909 and is the current home of Emsworth Cricket Club, which was founded in 1811. Cricket in Emsworth has been played at the same ground, Cold Harbour Lawn, since 1761. In 1902 the once famous Emsworth oyster industry went into rapid decline. This was after many of the guests at mayoral banquets in Southampton and Winchester became seriously ill and four died after consuming oysters. The infection was due to oysters sourced from Emsworth, as the oyster beds had been contaminated with raw sewage. Fishing oysters at Emsworth was subsequently halted until new sewers were dug, though the industry never completely recovered. J D Foster, an oyster merchant, who had for many years been in occupation of the oyster beds sued Warblington Urban District Council (the owners of the sewers) for nuisance. This was a test case as he could not prove title to the land. However, the Court of Appeal held that Foster had a right to sue, as exclusive occupier of the oyster beds, whether or not he had acquired an interest in the land itself. The judges view was that: Foster went on to win his case. Recently, Emsworth's last remaining oyster boat, "The Terror," was restored and is now sailing again. But the oyster industry is again under threat, because the reproductive rate of the oysters has plunged, as they now contain microscopic glass spicules that are shed into the water from the hulls of the numerous plastic fibreglass boats in Chichester Harbour. During the Second World War, nearby Thorney Island was used as a Royal Air Force station, playing a role in defence in the Battle of Britain. The north of Emsworth at this time was used for growing flowers and further north was woodland (today Hollybank Woods). In the run up to D-Day, the Canadian Army used these woods as one of their pre-invasion assembly points for men and materiel. Today the foundations of their barracks can still be seen. In the 1960s large parts of this area were developed with a mix of bungalow and terraced housing. For a few years (2001 to 2007), Emsworth held a food festival. It was the largest event of its type in the UK, with more than 50,000 visitors in 2007. The festival was cancelled due to numerous complaints of disruption to residents and businesses in the proximity. A Baptist church was constructed in North Street in 2015. The harbour is now used for recreational sailing, paddle boarding, kayaking and swimming. The town has two sailing clubs, Emsworth Sailing Club (established in 1919) and Emsworth Slipper Sailing Club (in 1921), the latter based at Quay Mill, a former tide mill. Both clubs organise a programme of racing and social events during the sailing season. Culture and community. Emsworth Library was considered for closure in 2020 but following public consultation, was reprieved. Emsworth Museum is administered by the Emsworth Maritime & Historical Trust. The town is twinned with Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer in Normandy, France. In 2014 retired Royal Navy Captain Clifford "John" Caughey drove his car into the clubhouse of Emsworth Sailing Club, causing an explosion and requiring thirty firefighters to put out the fire. Politics. The town is part of the Havant constituency, which since the 1983 election has been a Conservative seat. The current Member of Parliament (MP) is Alan Mak MP. The town is represented at Havant Borough Council by councillors Richard Kennet and Lulu Bowerman of the Conservative Party and Grainne Rason of the Green Party. The local Hampshire County Councillor is Lulu Bowerman. The town has branches of the Conservative Party, Liberal Democrats, the Labour Party, the United Kingdom Independence Party and the Green Party. Transport. Emsworth railway station is on the West Coastway Line. It has services that run to Portsmouth, Southampton, Brighton and London Victoria. Stagecoach South operates the number 700 bus, which runs between Brighton and Southsea. Havant Borough Council claims local bus services are provided by Emsworth & District, First and Stagecoach.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10568

Association football

Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players each, who primarily use their feet to propel a ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is to score more goals than the opposing team by moving the ball beyond the goal line into a rectangular-framed goal defended by the opposing team. Traditionally, the game has been played over two 45-minute halves, for a total match time of 90 minutes. With an estimated 250 million players active in over 200 countries and territories, it is the world's most popular sport. The game of association football is played in accordance with the Laws of the Game, a set of rules that has been in effect since 1863 and maintained by the IFAB since 1886. The game is played with a football that is in circumference. The two teams compete to get the ball into the other team's goal (between the posts and under the bar), thereby scoring a goal. When the ball is in play, the players mainly use their feet, but may use any other part of their body, except for their hands or arms, to control, strike, or pass the ball. Only the goalkeepers may use their hands and arms, and only then within the penalty area. The team that has scored more goals at the end of the game is the winner. Depending on the format of the competition, an equal number of goals scored may result in a draw being declared, or the game goes into extra time or a penalty shoot-out. Internationally, association football is governed by FIFA. Under FIFA, there are six continental confederations: AFC, CAF, CONCACAF, CONMEBOL, OFC and UEFA. Of these confederations, CONMEBOL is the oldest one, being founded in 1916. National associations (e.g. The FA or JFA) are responsible for managing the game in their own countries both professionally and at an amateur level, and coordinating competitions in accordance with the Laws of the Game. The most senior and prestigious international competitions are the FIFA World Cup and the FIFA Women's World Cup. The men's World Cup is the most-viewed sporting event in the world, surpassing the Olympic Games. The two most prestigious competitions in European club football are the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Women's Champions League, which attract an extensive television audience throughout the world. Since 2009, the final of the men's tournament has been the most-watched annual sporting event in the world. Name. Association football is one of a family of football codes that emerged from various ball games played worldwide since antiquity. Within the English-speaking world, the sport is now usually called "football" in Great Britain and most of Ulster in the north of Ireland, whereas people usually call it "soccer" in regions and countries where other codes of football are prevalent, such as Australia, Canada, South Africa, most of Ireland (excluding Ulster), and the United States; in Japan, the game is also primarily called (), derived from "soccer". A notable exception is New Zealand, where in the first two decades of the 21st century, under the influence of international television, "football" has been gaining prevalence, despite the dominance of other codes of football, namely rugby union and rugby league. The term "soccer" comes from Oxford "-er" slang, which was prevalent at the University of Oxford in England from about 1875, and is thought to have been borrowed from the slang of Rugby School. Initially spelled "assoccer", it was later reduced to the modern spelling. This form of slang also gave rise to "rugger" for rugby football, "fiver" and "tenner" for five pound and ten pound notes, and the now-archaic "footer" that was also a name for association football. The word "soccer" arrived at its final form in 1895 and was first recorded in 1889 in the earlier form of "socca". History. Kicking ball games arose independently multiple times across multiple cultures. ' and ' were Greek ball games. An image of an ' player depicted in low relief on a stele of in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens appears on the UEFA European Championship trophy. Athenaeus, writing in 228 CE, mentions the Roman ball game '. ' and ' were played involving hands and violence. They all appear to have resembled rugby football, wrestling and volleyball more than what is recognisable as modern football. As with pre-codified mob football, the antecedent of all modern football codes, these three games involved more handling the ball than kicking it. The Chinese competitive game ' (, literally "kick ball"; also known as "tsu chu") resembles modern association football. ' players could use any part of the body apart from hands and the intent was to kick a ball through an opening into a net. During the Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE), ' games were standardised and rules were established. Other East Asian games included ' in Japan and ' in Korea, both influenced by "cuju". ' originated after the year 600 during the Asuka period. It was a ceremonial rather than a competitive game, and involved the kicking of a "mari", a ball made of animal skin. In North America, was a ball game played by the Algonquians; it was described as "almost identical to the kind of folk football being played in Europe at the same time, in which the ball was kicked through goals". Association football in itself does not have a classical history. Notwithstanding any similarities to other ball games played around the world, FIFA has described that no historical connection exists with any game played in antiquity outside Europe. The history of football in England dates back to at least the eighth century. The modern rules of association football are based on the mid-19th century efforts to standardise the widely varying forms of football played in the public schools of England. The Cambridge rules, first drawn up at the University of Cambridge in 1848, were particularly influential in the development of subsequent codes, including association football. The Cambridge rules were written at Trinity College, Cambridge, at a meeting attended by representatives from Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester and Shrewsbury schools. They were not universally adopted. During the 1850s, many clubs unconnected to schools or universities were formed throughout the English-speaking world to play various forms of football. Some came up with their own distinct codes of rules, most notably the Sheffield Football Club, formed by former public school pupils in 1857, which led to the formation of a Sheffield FA in 1867. In 1862, John Charles Thring of Uppingham School also devised an influential set of rules. These ongoing efforts contributed to the formation of The Football Association (The FA) in 1863, which first met on the morning of 26 October 1863 at the Freemasons' Tavern in Great Queen Street, London. The only school to be represented on this occasion was Charterhouse. The Freemasons' Tavern was the setting for five more meetings of The FA between October and December 1863; the English FA eventually issued the first comprehensive set of rules named Laws of the Game, forming modern football. The laws included bans on running with the ball in hand and hacking (kicking an opponent in the shins), tripping and holding. Eleven clubs, under the charge of FA secretary Ebenezer Cobb Morley, ratified the original thirteen laws of the game. The sticking point was hacking, which a twelfth club at the meeting, Blackheath FC, had wanted to keep, resulting in them withdrawing from the FA. Other English rugby clubs followed this lead and did not join the FA, and instead in 1871, along with Blackheath, formed the Rugby Football Union. The FA rules included handling of the ball by "marks" and the lack of a crossbar, rules which made it remarkably similar to Victorian rules football being developed at that time in Australia. The Sheffield FA played by its own rules until the 1870s, with the FA absorbing some of its rules until there was little difference between the games. The world's oldest football competition is the FA Cup, which was founded by the footballer and cricketer Charles W. Alcock, and has been contested by English teams since 1872. The first official international football match also took place in 1872, between Scotland and England in Glasgow, again at the instigation of Alcock. England is also home to the world's first football league, which was founded in Birmingham in 1888 by Aston Villa director William McGregor. The original format contained 12 clubs from the Midlands and Northern England. Laws of the Game are determined by the International Football Association Board (IFAB). The board was formed in 1886 after a meeting in Manchester of the Football Association, the Scottish Football Association, the Football Association of Wales, and the Irish Football Association. FIFA, the international football body, was formed in Paris in 1904 and declared that they would adhere to the Laws of the Game of the Football Association. The growing popularity of the international game led to the admittance of FIFA representatives to the IFAB in 1913. The board consists of four representatives from FIFA and one representative from each of the four British associations. For most of the 20th century, Europe and South America were the dominant regions in association football. The FIFA World Cup, inaugurated in 1930, became the main stage for players of both continents to show their worth and the strength of their national teams. In the second half of the century, the European Cup and the Copa Libertadores were created, and the champions of these two club competitions would contest the Intercontinental Cup to prove which team was the best in the world. In the 21st century, South America has continued to produce some of the best footballers in the world, but its clubs have fallen behind the still dominant European clubs, which often sign the best players from Latin America and elsewhere. Meanwhile, football has improved in Africa, Asia and North America, and nowadays, these regions are at least on equal grounds with South America in club football, although countries in the Caribbean and Oceania regions (except Australia) have yet to make a mark in international football. When it comes to national teams, however, Europeans and South Americans continue to dominate the FIFA World Cup, as no team from any other region has managed to even reach the final. Football is played at a professional level all over the world. Millions of people regularly go to football stadiums to follow their favourite teams, while billions more watch the game on television or on the internet. A very large number of people also play football at an amateur level. According to a survey conducted by FIFA published in 2001, over 240 million people from more than 200 countries regularly play football. Football has the highest global television audience in sport. In many parts of the world, football evokes great passions and plays an important role in the life of individual fans, local communities, and even nations. Ryszard Kapuściński says that Europeans who are polite, modest, or humble fall easily into rage when playing or watching football games. The Ivory Coast national football team helped secure a truce to the nation's civil war in 2006 and it helped further reduce tensions between government and rebel forces in 2007 by playing a match in the rebel capital of Bouaké, an occasion that brought both armies together peacefully for the first time. By contrast, football is widely considered to have been the final proximate cause for the Football War in June 1969 between El Salvador and Honduras. The sport also exacerbated tensions at the beginning of the Croatian War of Independence of the 1990s, when a match between Dinamo Zagreb and Red Star Belgrade degenerated into rioting in May 1990. Women's association football. Women's association football has historically seen opposition, with national associations severely curbing its development and several outlawing it completely. Restrictions started to be reduced in the 1970s and the first official women's World Cup was the 1991 FIFA Women's World Cup in China with only 12 teams from the respective six confederations. By the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup in France, this had increased to 24 national teams, and a record-breaking 1.12 billion viewers watched the competition.Women may have been playing football for as long as the game has existed. Evidence shows that a similar ancient game ("cuju", or "tsu chu") was played by women during the Han dynasty (25–220 CE), as female figures are depicted in frescoes of the period playing "tsu chu". There are also reports of annual football matches played by women in Midlothian, Scotland, during the 1790s. Association football, the modern game, has documented early involvement of women. In 1863, football governing bodies introduced standardised rules to prohibit violence on the pitch, making it more socially acceptable for women to play. The first match recorded by the Scottish Football Association took place in 1892 in Glasgow. In England, the first recorded game of football between women took place in 1895. Women's football has traditionally been associated with charity games and physical exercise, particularly in the United Kingdom. The best-documented early European team was founded by activist Nettie Honeyball in England in 1894. It was named the British Ladies' Football Club. Honeyball is quoted as, "I founded the association late last year [1894], with the fixed resolve of proving to the world that women are not the 'ornamental and useless' creatures men have pictured. I must confess, my convictions on all matters where the sexes are so widely divided are all on the side of emancipation, and I look forward to the time when ladies may sit in Parliament and have a voice in the direction of affairs, especially those which concern them most." Honeyball and those like her paved the way for women's football. However, the women's game was frowned upon by the British football associations and continued without their support. It has been suggested that this was motivated by a perceived threat to the "masculinity" of the game. Women's football became popular on a large scale at the time of the First World War, when female employment in heavy industry spurred the growth of the game, much as it had done for men 50 years earlier. The most successful team of the era was Dick, Kerr Ladies F.C. of Preston, England. The team played in one of the first women's international matches against a French XI team in 1920, and also made up most of the England team against a Scottish Ladies XI in the same year, winning 22–0. Despite being more popular than some men's football events, with one match seeing a 53,000 strong crowd in 1920, women's football in England suffered a blow in 1921 when The Football Association outlawed the playing of the game on association members' pitches, stating that "the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and should not be encouraged." Players and football writers have argued that this ban was, in fact, due to envy of the large crowds that women's matches attracted, and because the FA had no control over the money made from the women's game. The FA ban led to the formation of the short-lived English Ladies Football Association and play moved to rugby grounds. Association football continued to be played by women since the time of the first recorded women's games in the late 19th century. In December 1969, the Women's Football Association was formed in England, and in 1971, Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) members voted to officially recognise women's football. Also in 1971, The Football Association rescinded the ban that prohibited women from playing on association members' pitches. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, women's association football was organised in the United Kingdom, eventually becoming the most prominent team sport for British women. Women's football also faced bans in several other countries, notably in Brazil from 1941 to 1979, in France from 1941 to 1970, and in Germany from 1955 to 1970. Women's football still faces many struggles, but its worldwide growth has seen major competitions being launched at both the national and international levels, mirroring the men's competitions. The FIFA Women's World Cup was inaugurated in 1991 and has been held every four years since, while women's football has been an Olympic event since 1996. North America is the dominant region in women's football, with the United States winning most FIFA Women's World Cups and Olympic tournaments. Europe and Asia come second and third in terms of international success, and the women's game has been improving in South America. Gameplay. Association football is played in accordance with a set of rules known as the Laws of the Game. The game is played using a spherical ball of circumference, known as the "football" (or "soccer ball"). Two teams of eleven players each compete to get the ball into the other team's goal (between the posts and under the bar), thereby scoring a goal. The team that has scored more goals at the end of the game is the winner; if both teams have scored an equal number of goals then the game is a draw. Each team is led by a captain who has only one official responsibility as mandated by the Laws of the Game: to represent their team in the coin toss before kick-off or penalty kicks. The primary law is that players other than goalkeepers may not deliberately handle the ball with their hands or arms during play, though they must use both their hands during a throw-in restart. Although players usually use their feet to move the ball around, they may use any part of their body (notably, "heading" with the forehead) other than their hands or arms. Within normal play, all players are free to play the ball in any direction and move throughout the pitch, though players may not pass to teammates who are in an offside position. During gameplay, players attempt to create goal-scoring opportunities through individual control of the ball, such as by dribbling, passing the ball to a teammate, and by taking shots at the goal, which is guarded by the opposing goalkeeper. Opposing players may try to regain control of the ball by intercepting a pass or through tackling the opponent in possession of the ball; however, physical contact between opponents is restricted. Football is generally a free-flowing game, with play stopping only when the ball has left the field of play or when play is stopped by the referee for an infringement of the rules. After a stoppage, play recommences with a specified restart. At a professional level, most matches produce only a few goals. For example, the 2005–06 season of the English Premier League produced an average of 2.48 goals per match. The Laws of the Game do not specify any player positions other than goalkeeper, but a number of specialised roles have evolved. Broadly, these include three main categories: strikers, or forwards, whose main task is to score goals; defenders, who specialise in preventing their opponents from scoring; and midfielders, who dispossess the opposition and keep possession of the ball to pass it to the forwards on their team. Players in these positions are referred to as outfield players, to distinguish them from the goalkeeper. These positions are further subdivided according to the area of the field in which the player spends the most time. For example, there are central defenders and left and right midfielders. The ten outfield players may be arranged in any combination. The number of players in each position determines the style of the team's play; more forwards and fewer defenders creates a more aggressive and offensive-minded game, while the reverse creates a slower, more defensive style of play. While players typically spend most of the game in a specific position, there are few restrictions on player movement, and players can switch positions at any time. The layout of a team's players is known as a "formation". Defining the team's formation and tactics is usually the prerogative of the team's manager. Laws. There are 17 laws in the official Laws of the Game, each containing a collection of stipulations and guidelines. The same laws are designed to apply to all levels of football for both sexes, although certain modifications for groups such as juniors, seniors and people with physical disabilities are permitted. The laws are often framed in broad terms, which allow flexibility in their application depending on the nature of the game. The Laws of the Game are published by FIFA, but are maintained by the IFAB. In addition to the seventeen laws, numerous IFAB decisions and other directives contribute to the regulation of association football. Within the United States, Major League Soccer used a distinct ruleset during the 1990s and the National Federation of State High School Associations and National Collegiate Athletic Association still use rulesets that are comparable to, but different from, the IFAB Laws. Players, equipment, and officials. Each team consists of a maximum of eleven players (excluding substitutes), one of whom must be the goalkeeper. Competition rules may state a minimum number of players required to constitute a team, which is usually seven. Goalkeepers are the only players allowed to play the ball with their hands or arms, provided they do so within the penalty area in front of their own goal. Though there are a variety of positions in which the outfield (non-goalkeeper) players are strategically placed by a coach, these positions are not defined or required by the Laws. The basic equipment or "kit" players are required to wear includes a shirt, shorts, socks, footwear and adequate shin guards. An athletic supporter and protective cup is highly recommended for male players by medical experts and professionals. Headgear is not a required piece of basic equipment, but players today may choose to wear it to protect themselves from head injury. Players are forbidden to wear or use anything that is dangerous to themselves or another player, such as jewellery or watches. The goalkeeper must wear clothing that is easily distinguishable from that worn by the other players and the match officials. A number of players may be replaced by substitutes during the course of the game. The maximum number of substitutions permitted in most competitive international and domestic league games is five in 90 minutes, with each team being allowed one more if the game should go into extra-time; the permitted number may vary in other competitions or in friendly matches. Common reasons for a substitution include injury, tiredness, ineffectiveness, a tactical switch, or timewasting at the end of a finely poised game. In standard adult matches, a player who has been substituted may not take further part in a match. IFAB recommends "that a match should not continue if there are fewer than seven players in either team". Any decision regarding points awarded for abandoned games is left to the individual football associations. A game is officiated by a referee, who has "full authority to enforce the Laws of the Game in connection with the match to which he has been appointed" (Law 5), and whose decisions are final. The referee is assisted by two assistant referees. In many high-level games there is also a fourth official who assists the referee and may replace another official should the need arise. Goal line technology is used to measure if the whole ball has crossed the goal-line thereby determining whether a goal has been scored or not; this was brought in to prevent controversy. Video assistant referees (VAR) have also been increasingly introduced in high-level matches to assist officials through video replays to correct clear and obvious mistakes. There are four types of calls that can be reviewed: mistaken identity in awarding a red or yellow card, goals and whether there was a violation during the buildup, direct red card decisions, and penalty decisions. Ball. The ball is spherical with a circumference of between , a weight in the range of , and a pressure between at sea level. In the past the ball was made up of leather panels sewn together, with a latex bladder for pressurisation, but modern balls at all levels of the game are now synthetic. Pitch. As the Laws were formulated in England, and were initially administered solely by the four British football associations within IFAB, the standard dimensions of a football pitch were originally expressed in imperial units. The Laws now express dimensions with approximate metric equivalents (followed by traditional units in brackets), though use of imperial units remains popular in English-speaking countries with a relatively recent history of metrication (or only partial metrication), such as Britain. The length of the pitch, or field, for international adult matches is in the range of and the width is in the range of . Fields for non-international matches may be in length and in width, provided the pitch does not become square. In 2008, the IFAB initially approved a fixed size of long and wide as a standard pitch dimension for international matches; however, this decision was later put on hold and was never actually implemented. The longer boundary lines are "touchlines", while the shorter boundaries (on which the goals are placed) are "goal lines". A rectangular goal is positioned on each goal line, midway between the two touchlines. The inner edges of the vertical goal posts must be apart, and the lower edge of the horizontal crossbar supported by the goal posts must be above the ground. Nets are usually placed behind the goal, but are not required by the Laws. In front of the goal is the penalty area. This area is marked by the goal line, two lines starting on the goal line from the goalposts and extending into the pitch perpendicular to the goal line, and a line joining them. This area has a number of functions, the most prominent being to mark where the goalkeeper may handle the ball and where a penalty foul by a member of the defending team becomes punishable by a penalty kick. Other markings define the position of the ball or players at kick-offs, goal kicks, penalty kicks and corner kicks. Duration and tie-breaking methods. 90-minute ordinary time. A standard adult football match consists of two halves of 45 minutes each. Each half runs continuously, meaning that the clock is not stopped when the ball is out of play. There is usually a 15-minute half-time break between halves. The end of the match is known as full-time. The referee is the official timekeeper for the match, and may make an allowance for time lost through substitutions, injured players requiring attention, or other stoppages. This added time is called "additional time" in FIFA documents, but is most commonly referred to as "stoppage time" or "injury time", while "lost time" can also be used as a synonym. The duration of stoppage time is at the sole discretion of the referee. Stoppage time does not fully compensate for the time in which the ball is out of play, and a 90-minute game typically involves about an hour of "effective playing time". The referee alone signals the end of the match. In matches where a fourth official is appointed, towards the end of the half, the referee signals how many minutes of stoppage time they intend to add. The fourth official then informs the players and spectators by holding up a board showing this number. The signalled stoppage time may be further extended by the referee. Added time was introduced because of an incident which happened in 1891 during a match between Stoke and Aston Villa. Trailing 1–0 with two minutes remaining, Stoke were awarded a penalty kick. Villa's goalkeeper deliberately kicked the ball out of play; by the time it was recovered, the clock had run out and the game was over, leaving Stoke unable to attempt the penalty. The same law also states that the duration of either half is extended until the penalty kick to be taken or retaken is completed; thus, no game can end with an uncompleted penalty. Tie-breaking. In league competitions, games may end in a draw. In knockout competitions where a winner is required, various methods may be employed to break such a deadlock; some competitions may invoke replays. A game tied at the end of regulation time may go into extra time, which consists of two further 15-minute periods. If the score is still tied after extra time, some competitions allow the use of penalty shoot-outs (known officially in the Laws of the Game as "kicks from the penalty mark") to determine which team will progress to the next stage of the tournament or be the champion. Goals scored during extra time periods count towards the final score of the game, but kicks from the penalty mark are only used to decide the team that progresses to the next part of the tournament, with goals scored in a penalty shoot-out not making up part of the final score. In competitions using two-legged matches, each team competes at home once, with an aggregate score from the two matches deciding which team progresses. Where aggregates are equal, the away goals rule may be used to determine the winners, in which case the winner is the team that scored the most goals in the leg they played away from home. If the result is still equal, extra time and potentially a penalty shoot-out are required. Ball in and out of play. Under the Laws, the two basic states of play during a game are "ball in play" and "ball out of play". From the beginning of each playing period with a kick-off until the end of the playing period, the ball is in play at all times, except when either the ball leaves the field of play, or play is stopped by the referee. When the ball becomes out of play, play is restarted by one of eight restart methods depending on how it went out of play: Misconduct. On-field. A foul occurs when a player commits an offence listed in the Laws of the Game while the ball is in play. The offences that constitute a foul are listed in Law 12. Handling the ball deliberately, tripping an opponent, or pushing an opponent, are examples of "penal fouls", punishable by a direct free kick or penalty kick depending on where the offence occurred. Other fouls are punishable by an indirect free kick. The referee may punish a player's or substitute's misconduct by a caution (yellow card) or dismissal (red card). A second yellow card in the same game leads to a red card, which results in a dismissal. A player given a yellow card is said to have been "booked", the referee writing the player's name in their official notebook. If a player has been dismissed, no substitute can be brought on in their place and the player may not participate in further play. Misconduct may occur at any time, and while the offences that constitute misconduct are listed, the definitions are broad. In particular, the offence of "unsporting behaviour" may be used to deal with most events that violate the spirit of the game, even if they are not listed as specific offences. A referee can show a yellow or red card to a player, substitute, substituted player, and to non-players such as managers and support staff. Rather than stopping play, the referee may allow play to continue if doing so will benefit the team against which an offence has been committed. This is known as "playing an advantage". The referee may "call back" play and penalise the original offence if the anticipated advantage does not ensue within "a few seconds". Even if an offence is not penalised due to advantage being played, the offender may still be sanctioned for misconduct at the next stoppage of play. The referee's decision in all on-pitch matters is considered final. The score of a match cannot be altered after the game, even if later evidence shows that decisions (including awards/non-awards of goals) were incorrect. Off-field. Along with the general administration of the sport, football associations and competition organisers also enforce good conduct in wider aspects of the game, dealing with issues such as comments to the press, clubs' financial management, doping, age fraud and match fixing. Most competitions enforce mandatory suspensions for players who are sent off in a game. Some on-field incidents, if considered very serious (such as allegations of racial abuse), may result in competitions deciding to impose heavier sanctions than those normally associated with a red card. Some associations allow for appeals against player suspensions incurred on-field if clubs feel a referee was incorrect or unduly harsh. Sanctions for such infractions may be levied on individuals or on clubs as a whole. Penalties may include fines, point deductions (in league competitions) or even expulsion from competitions. For example, the English Football League deduct 12 points from any team that enters financial administration. Among other administrative sanctions are penalties against game forfeiture. Teams that had forfeited a game or had been forfeited against would be awarded a technical loss or win. Governing bodies. The recognised international governing body of football (and associated games, such as futsal and beach soccer) is FIFA. The FIFA headquarters are located in Zürich, Switzerland. Six regional confederations are associated with FIFA; these are: National associations (or national federations) oversee football within individual countries. These are generally synonymous with sovereign states (for example, the Cameroonian Football Federation in Cameroon), but also include a smaller number of associations responsible for sub-national entities or autonomous regions (for example, the Scottish Football Association in Scotland). 211 national associations are affiliated both with FIFA and with their respective continental confederations. Other national associations may be members of continental confederations but otherwise not participate in FIFA competitions. While FIFA is responsible for arranging competitions and most rules related to international competition, the actual Laws of the Game are set by the IFAB, where each of the UK Associations has one vote, while FIFA collectively has four votes. International competitions. International competitions in association football principally consist of two varieties: competitions involving representative national teams or those involving clubs based in multiple nations and national leagues. "International football", without qualification, most often refers to the former. In the case of international club competition, it is the country of origin of the clubs involved, not the nationalities of their players, that renders the competition international in nature. The major international competition in football is the World Cup, organised by FIFA. This competition has taken place every four years since 1930, with the exception of the 1942 and 1946 tournaments, which were cancelled because of World War II. As of 2022, over 200 national teams compete in qualifying tournaments within the scope of continental confederations for a place in the finals. The finals tournament, held every four years, involved 32 national teams (expanding to 48 teams for the 2026 tournament) competing over a four-week period. The World Cup is the most prestigious association football tournament as well as the most widely viewed and followed sporting event in the world, exceeding even the Olympic Games; the cumulative audience of all matches of the 2006 FIFA World Cup was estimated to be 26.29 billion with an estimated 715.1 million people watching the final match, one-ninth of the entire population of the planet. The 1958 World Cup saw the emergence of Pelé as a global sporting star, a period that coincided with "the explosive spread of television, which massively amplified his presence everywhere". The current champions are Argentina, who won their third title at the 2022 tournament in Qatar. The FIFA Women's World Cup has been held every four years since 1991. Under the tournament's current format that was expanded in 2023, national teams vie for 31 slots in a three-year qualification phase, while the host nation's team enters automatically as the 32nd slot. The current champions are Spain, after winning their first title in the 2023 tournament. There has been a football tournament at every Summer Olympic Games since 1900, except at the 1932 games in Los Angeles. Before the inception of the World Cup, the Olympics (especially during the 1920s) were the most prestigious international event. Originally, the tournament was for amateurs only. As professionalism spread around the world, the gap in quality between the World Cup and the Olympics widened. The countries that benefited most were the Soviet Bloc countries of Eastern Europe, where top athletes were state-sponsored while retaining their status as amateurs. Between 1948 and 1980, 23 out of 27 Olympic medals were won by Eastern Europe, with only Sweden (gold in 1948 and bronze in 1952), Denmark (bronze in 1948 and silver in 1960) and Japan (bronze in 1968) breaking their dominance. For the 1984 Los Angeles Games, the IOC allowed professional players to compete. Since 1992, male competitors must be under 23 years old, although since 1996, three players over the age of 23 have been allowed per squad. A women's tournament was added in 1996; in contrast to the men's event, full international sides without age restrictions play the women's Olympic tournament. After the World Cup, the most important international football competitions are the continental championships, which are organised by each continental confederation and contested between national teams. These are the European Championship (UEFA), the Copa América (CONMEBOL), the African Cup of Nations (CAF), the Asian Cup (AFC), the CONCACAF Gold Cup (CONCACAF) and the OFC Nations Cup (OFC). These competitions are not strictly limited to members of the continental confederations, with guest teams from other continents sometimes invited to compete. The FIFA Confederations Cup was contested by the winners of all six continental championships, the current FIFA World Cup champions, and the country which was hosting the next World Cup. This was generally regarded as a warm-up tournament for the upcoming FIFA World Cup and did not carry the same prestige as the World Cup itself. The tournament was discontinued following the 2017 edition with its calendar slot replaced by an expanded FIFA Club World Cup. The UEFA Nations League and the CONCACAF Nations League were introduced in the late 2010s to replace international friendlies during the two-year cycle between major tournaments. The most prestigious competitions in club football are the respective continental championships, which are generally contested between national champions, for example, the UEFA Champions League in Europe and the Copa Libertadores in South America. The winners of each continental competition contest the FIFA Club World Cup. Domestic competitions. The governing bodies in each country operate league systems in a domestic season, normally comprising several divisions, in which the teams gain points throughout the season depending on results. Teams are placed into tables, placing them in order according to points accrued. Most commonly, each team plays every other team in its league at home and away in each season, in a round-robin tournament. At the end of a season, the top team is declared the champion. The top few teams may be promoted to a higher division, and one or more of the teams finishing at the bottom are relegated to a lower division. The teams finishing at the top of a country's league may also be eligible to play in international club competitions in the following season. The main exceptions to this system occur in some Latin American leagues, which divide football championships into two sections named Apertura and Clausura (Spanish for "Opening" and "Closing"), awarding a champion for each. The majority of countries supplement the league system with one or more "cup" competitions organised on a knock-out basis. These also include the domestic cup, which may be open to all eligible teams in a country's league system—both professional and amateur—and is organised by the national federation. Some countries' top divisions feature highly paid star players; in smaller countries, lower divisions, and many women's clubs, players may be part-timers with a second job, or amateurs. The five top European leagues – Premier League (England), Bundesliga (Germany), La Liga (Spain), Serie A (Italy), and Ligue 1 (France) – attract most of the world's best players and, during the 2006–07 season, each of these leagues had a total wage cost in excess of €600 million. These leagues also generated a combined €17.2 billion in revenue in the 2021–22 season from television contracts, matchday tickets, sponsorships, and other sources.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10653

Fantasy sport

A fantasy sport (also known less commonly as rotisserie or roto) is a game, often played using the Internet, where participants assemble imaginary or virtual teams composed of proxies of real players of a professional sport. These teams compete based on the statistical performance of those players in actual games. This performance is converted into points that are compiled and totaled according to a roster selected by each fantasy team's manager. These point systems can be simple enough to be manually calculated by a "league commissioner" who coordinates and manages the overall league, or points can be compiled and calculated using computers tracking actual results of the professional sport. In fantasy sports, as in real sports team owners draft, trade, and cut (drop) players. History. Early simulations. The history of fantasy games can be traced to the 19th century. The tabletop game "Sebring Parlor Base Ball", introduced in 1866, allowed participants to simulate games by propelling a coin into slots on a wooden board. Later games featured outcomes determined by dice rolls or spinners. In 1930, Clifford Van Beek designed the board game "National Pastime", which contained customized baseball cards of Major League Baseball (MLB) players. After rolling a pair of dice, participants would consult the card of the MLB player "at bat" to determine an outcome, which could range from a single, double, triple, or home run to a strikeout, putout, walk, or error. Players with better statistics in the previous season were more likely to receive favorable outcomes; this allowed "National Pastime" to become one of the first games to try to simulate the performances of real-life MLB players. An example of such games was APBA, which was first released in 1951 and also contained cards of MLB players with in-game outcomes correlated to their stats from past seasons. Participants could compose fantasy teams from the cards and play against each other or recreate previous seasons using the statistics on the cards. Individual player cards and dice roll simulations were also emulated in the Strat-O-Matic game, which was first released in 1961. Daniel Okrent, who would later be credited with developing modern fantasy baseball, was an avid Strat-O-Matic player, telling "Sports Illustrated" in 2011 that "if there hadn't been Strat-O-Matic, I still think I would have come up with rotisserie, but unquestionably it helped." In 1961, another early form of fantasy baseball was coded for the IBM 1620 computer by John Burgeson, then working for IBM. A user would select a team from a limited roster of retired players to play against a team randomly chosen by the computer. The computer would then use random number generation and player statistics to simulate a game's outcome and print a play-by-play description of it. While some of these fantasy games produced outcomes based on the performances of real athletes, they were not designed to be played out over the course of a season, nor did they take current statistics into account, relying instead on those from previous years. The first leagues. In the 1950s, Oakland, California businessman and future limited partner in the Oakland Raiders Wilfred "Bill" Winkenbach developed a fantasy golf game in which participants would select a roster of professional golfers and compare their scores at the end of a given tournament, with the lowest combined total of strokes winning. He also created a baseball game in which players drafted hitters and pitchers, comparing their real-life statistics against each other. These early experiments, however, failed to spread to the general public. In 1960, sociologist William A. Gamson developed the Baseball Seminar league, in which participants would draft rosters of active MLB players and compare results at the end of the season based on the players' final batting averages, earned run averages, runs batted in, and win totals. Gamson would go on to play the game as a professor at the University of Michigan, where another competitor was Bob Sklar. One of Sklar's students was Daniel Okrent. According to Alan Schwarz's "The Numbers Game: Baseball’s Lifelong Fascination with Statistics", Sklar told Okrent about the Baseball Seminar league. Two years later, in a New York City hotel room during a 1962 Raiders cross-country trip, Winkenbach, along with Raiders public relations employee Bill Tunnel and "Oakland Tribune" reporter Scotty Stirling, developed the rules that would eventually be the basis of modern fantasy football. The inaugural league was called the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League (GOPPPL), and the first draft took place at Winkenbach's home in Oakland in August 1963. One of the league's original members, Andy Mousalimas, owned a sports bar in Oakland called the King's X, where the first public fantasy football league was founded in 1969. The idea spread by word of mouth when the patrons of other Bay Area bars visited the King's X for trivia contests. Rotisserie League Baseball. Modern fantasy baseball was developed and popularized in the 1980s by a group of journalists who created Rotisserie League Baseball in 1980. The league was named after the New York City restaurant La Rotisserie Française, where its founders met for lunch and first played the game. Magazine writer-editor Daniel Okrent is credited with introducing the rotisserie league concept to the group and inventing the scoring system. Players in the Rotisserie League drafted teams of active MLB players and tracked their statistics during the season to compile their scores. Like the Baseball Seminar league, rather than using statistics for seasons whose outcomes were already known to simulate in-game outcomes, team owners would have to make predictions about the statistics that MLB players would accumulate during the upcoming season. Rotisserie baseball, nicknamed "roto", proved to be popular despite the difficulties of compiling statistics by hand, which was an early drawback to participation. Okrent credits the idea's rapid spread to the fact that the initial league was created by sports journalists, telling "Vanity Fair" in 2008 that "most of us in the league were in the media, and we got a lot of press coverage that first season. The second season, there were rotisserie leagues in every Major League press box." According to Okrent, rotisserie baseball afforded sportswriters the opportunity to write about baseball-related material during the 1981 Major League Baseball strike, saying "the writers who were covering baseball had nothing to write about, so they began writing about the teams they had assembled in their own leagues. And that was what popularized it and spread it around very, very widely." Growth and early participants. Before the advent of the Internet, fantasy sports grew through print publications, such as magazines and newspapers. In 1987, "Fantasy Football Index", the first national magazine dedicated to fantasy football, was launched by Ian Allan and Bruce Taylor. "Fantasy Sports Magazine" debuted in 1989 as the first regular publication covering more than one fantasy sport. In 1990, a pair of nationwide fantasy games, Dugout Derby and Pigskin Playoff, were launched in a variety of newspapers across the United States, including the "Arizona Republic", the "Hartford Courant", the "Los Angeles Times", and the "Miami Herald". Players chose their teams by calling a toll-free phone number and entering four-digit codes for each of their player selections. The games served as an early version of today's daily fantasy sports by rewarding each week's highest-scoring participants with prizes. In 1993, the magazine "Fantasy Football Weekly" was launched. Also that year, "USA Today" added a weekly fantasy baseball columnist, John Hunt. Hunt started a league among sports personalities called the League of Alternate Baseball Reality, which first included Peter Gammons, Keith Olbermann and Bill James, among others. Internet expansion. The growth of the Internet during the 1990s brought a "broad demographic shift in fantasy sports participation" because it enabled fantasy sports participants to instantaneously download tabulated statistics, rather than having to search for box scores of individual games in newspapers and keep track of cumulative statistics on paper. In 1995, ESPN launched its first entirely Internet-based fantasy baseball game, with other major sports and entertainment companies following suit in the ensuing years. In October of that year, a fantasy hockey website was released by Molson Breweries as part of the company's "I am Online" marketing strategy centered around its I am Canadian advertising campaign. The site focused on music, entertainment and hockey in general in addition to fantasy competitions. It allowed users to register accounts and participate in fantasy leagues of nine teams. The site included updates of National Hockey League (NHL) statistics and provided content from the Hockey Hall of Fame. CBS Sports began offering fantasy football leagues in 1997, the same year that the fantasy news website now known as RotoWire was launched. In July 1999, Yahoo began offering its fantasy football product for free, a decision that gave the site an advantage over its competitors. The creators of "Fantasy Football Weekly" launched Fanball.com later that year. While some sites abandoned a paid model in the wake of Yahoo's decision, some smaller sites, such as RotoWire, began offering paid products as they started losing business to larger competitors. CBS, which had transitioned to a free model for its league commissioner services, switched back to a paid model before the 2002 MLB season. A trade group for the industry, the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, was formed in 1998. Now known as the Fantasy Sports & Gaming Association (FSGA), the organization estimates that in 2003, there were 15.2 million fantasy sports players in the United States and Canada. During the first decade of the 2000s, fantasy sports started to become a mainstream hobby. In 2002, the National Football League (NFL) found that while the average male surveyed on its website spent 6.6 hours a week watching the league on television, fantasy players surveyed said they watched 8.4 hours of NFL football per week. "This is the first time we've been able to demonstrate specifically that fantasy play drives TV viewing," said Chris Russo, the NFL's senior vice president at the time. As a result of the survey's findings, the league made fantasy offerings more prominent on its website and produced television ads for fantasy football featuring active players. Prior to these developments, fantasy sports were largely viewed negatively by major sports leagues, with Russo later recalling that "there were concerns about whether it would be right for the fans or could it be construed as gambling." However, leagues began to embrace fantasy sports as their value towards increasing fans' consumption of sports became more evident. Daily fantasy sports. Daily fantasy sports are accelerated versions of the traditional fantasy format in which contests are conducted over shorter periods than a full season, often lasting one week or even a single day. Daily fantasy games are typically subject to an entry fee, a portion of which funds a prize pool that is distributed among the game's winner or winners. In June 2007, Fantasy Sports Live, one of the first daily fantasy sites, was launched. In November 2008, NBC launched a daily fantasy site called SnapDraft, and FanDuel was founded in 2009 as a spin-off of a Scottish prediction market company. DraftKings was founded in 2012. Following venture capital investments from various firms, including from professional sports leagues such as MLB and the National Basketball Association (NBA), DraftKings and FanDuel launched an aggressive marketing campaign prior to the 2015 NFL season. At its peak, the two companies collectively ran an ad on national television in the United States once every 90 seconds. In addition to receiving direct investments from sports leagues, the two companies have reached sponsorship deals with several leagues and teams. In November 2014, DraftKings entered into a multi-year sponsorship deal with the NHL. In April 2015, after the NFL began to allow daily fantasy providers to sign multi-year team sponsorship deals, FanDuel reached deals with sixteen teams for placements on team-oriented digital properties, radio broadcasts, and within their stadiums. DraftKings has also received investments from Jerry Jones and Robert Kraft, who own the Dallas Cowboys and New England Patriots, respectively. The legality of daily fantasy sports has been questioned, with critics arguing that they more closely resemble proposition wagering on athlete performance than a traditional fantasy sports game. However, following the 2018 United States Supreme Court decision in "Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association", which allowed states to legalize sports betting, questions surrounding the legality of daily fantasy sports, as well as fantasy sports in general, within the United States have largely been settled. As of May 2023, while 33 US states have operational legalized sports betting, 45 states have legalized daily fantasy sports. As of May 2023, DraftKings and FanDuel operate daily fantasy contests in 44 states each. Only one state, Montana, has officially banned online fantasy sports. Industry overview. Size of the industry. In May 2015, Australian market research firm IBISWorld reported that fantasy sports comprised a $2 billion industry in the United States, experiencing 10.7% annual growth and employing 4,386 people in 292 businesses. According to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, in 2016, the size of the fantasy sports industry reached $7.22 billion, per research by Ipsos. The study estimated that there were 59.3 million fantasy sports players in the United States and Canada as of 2016. Industry growth. The Fantasy Sports & Gaming Association estimates that the number of fantasy sports players in the US and Canada grew from 500,000 in 1988 to 15.2 million in 2003, declining slightly over the next few years before growing to 29.9 million in 2008 and 59.3 million in 2017. In 2015, "Forbes" estimated that the number of yearly non-betting fantasy sports users had grown 25% since 2011. This growth encouraged hundreds of millions of dollars in investments into emerging daily fantasy sports leagues, such as FanDuel and DraftKings. Outside of North America, the fantasy industry has also experienced a recent period of growth. The development of daily fantasy sports has encouraged growth in European markets. ESPN Super Selector launched in 2001 for fantasy cricket and had 500,000 users during the 2003 Cricket World Cup. By 2017, there were 40 million fantasy sports players in India. In 2019, the number had grown to 90 million, and in 2020, an estimated 100 million Indians participated in fantasy sports. The market leader in fantasy sports in India, Dream11, signed a four year sponsorship deal for the IPL in 2019. Trade associations. The Fantasy Sports Trade Association was formed in 1998 to represent the growing industry in the United States and Canada. Now known as the Fantasy Sports & Gaming Association, the organization aims to support fantasy sports, sports gambling in general, and its associated businesses and participants. The Fantasy Sports Writers Association was formed in 2004 to represent the growing numbers of journalists covering fantasy sports exclusively. The Fantasy Sports Association was formed in 2006 as a rival trade group. However, the organization folded in 2010. Demographics. According to the Fantasy Sports & Gaming Association (FSGA), of the 59.3 million people who played fantasy sports in the US and Canada in 2017, 43.2 million were American adults. In 2019, 45.9 million American adults participated. The FSGA estimated that 19% of American adults played fantasy sports in 2019, compared to 13% in 2014. A 2019 FSGA survey found that 81% of fantasy sports players were male, 50% were between the ages of 18 and 34 (with an average age of 37.7), 67% were employed full-time, and 47% made more than $75,000 per year. A 2015 analysis found that 89.8% were white and 51.5% were unmarried. According to the FSGA, the most popular fantasy sport in the US and Canada is gridiron football, which is played by approximately 78% of fantasy participants. The next most popular sports are baseball (39%), basketball (19%), ice hockey (18%), and association football (14%). Research has shown that fantasy players are also generally stronger consumers alcoholic beverages, fast food, airline travel, video games, sports periodicals, athletic shoes, and cell phones relative to the general population. The FSGA reported in 2019 that fantasy players were also far more likely to use Instagram or Snapchat, visit a sports bar, and get food delivered than the general population. Fantasy sports television programming. Due to the popularity of fantasy sports, major sports networks such as ESPN, NFL Network, and Fox Sports have created dedicated weekly fantasy programming to analyze player performance and predict outcomes in relation to particular scoring systems. ESPN's on-demand streaming platform ESPN+ offers a fantasy program called "The Fantasy Show" hosted by long time staff writer Matthew Berry. "The Fantasy Show" utilizes puppets and comedy to present statistical information about NFL players. ESPN also aires a show on Sunday mornings during the NFL season called Fantasy Football Now. "Fantasy Football Now" airs live on Sunday mornings during the NFL season, a time when fans are making last-minute roster moves and need the latest news from around the league. Providing the latest info are analysts Matthew Berry, Field Yates and licensed physical therapist Stephania Bell, who gives injury updates. NFL Network aires "NFL Fantasy Live" as an hour long program containing a consistent weekly segment list that viewers can count on to help them manage their team. "NFL Fantasy Live" is hosted by Cole Wright and features Michael Fabiano, Adam Rank, Marcas Grant, Akbar Gbaja-Biamila, Graham Barfield and statistics analytics expert Cynthia Frelund. Fox Sports Net aires Fantasy Football Hour on a weekly basis during the NFL season hosted by Katy Winge and features industry experts Brad Evans and Nate Lundy. Legal issues in the United States. Fantasy sports are generally considered to be a form of gambling, though they are far less strictly regulated than other forms of sports betting. Unlike traditional sports betting, fantasy sports are generally viewed as "games of skill," rather than "games of chance," thus exempting them from gambling bans and regulations in many jurisdictions. Federal law related to fantasy gaming. The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA), was enacted as part of the "American Values Agenda" of 2006 and was added as an amendment to the unrelated SAFE Port Act. The UIGEA generally prohibits funds transfers to businesses engaged in unlawful internet wagering. However the UIGEA does not itself define unlawful internet wagering, and expressly refrains from altering the legality of any underlying conduct other than funds transfers. While the act does not alter the legality of any particular activity permitted or prohibited under other laws, it does contain some express exemptions to its funds transfer prohibitions. One of these exemptions from the UIGEA prohibitions is for fantasy sports that meet certain criteria. Specifically, fantasy sports that are based on teams of real multiple athletes from multiple real world teams, that have prizes established before the event starts, that use the skill of participants to determine the outcome, are exempted from the definition of a bet or wager that is the basis for requiring banks to identify and block funds transfers. According to Congressman Jim Leach, an author of the UIGEA, exemptions, particularly one for fantasy sports, were included to relieve the burden of enforcement on banks and the UIGEA does not make fantasy sports legal. Because the UIGEA exempted fantasy sports from its definition of a bet or wager, there is a misconception that fantasy sports were made legal by the UIGEA. However the UIGEA is not a criminal gambling statute, and it specifically does not alter any criminal gambling laws and thus does not make fantasy sports legal. Federal criminal gambling statutes are found in Title 18 of U.S. Code, such as the Federal Wire Act 18 U.S. Code § 1084 (which prohibits interstate sports wagering) and the Illegal Gambling Business Act 18 U.S. Code § 1955 (which prohibits the interstate conduct of wagering activity prohibited under state law). By contrast, the UIGEA is found in Title 31 with other anti-money laundering and financial crimes statutes. State laws related to fantasy gaming. Whether state laws can regulate fantasy sports conducted across state lines depends on whether fantasy sports are a form of sports wagering under federal law. This is because the Federal Wire Act prohibits the conduct of sports wagering in interstate or foreign commerce. With regard to intrastate sports wagering, in 2018 the United States Supreme Court in "Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association" struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, which had prohibited states from authorizing any wagering, lottery, betting, sweepstakes or other wagering scheme that is based directly or indirectly on games in which professional or amateur athletes participate or on the performance of any athletes in such games. Where states have not expressly authorized fantasy sports contests, usually general gambling laws prohibit lotteries or wagering if three elements are present: an entry fee (known as "consideration"), a prize (a "reward," in legal terms) and chance. Whether fantasy sports are legal under these laws hinges on the definition of "chance" that the state applies. For some states, if skill dominates the outcome of the event, then the contest is legal, and passes what is called the "dominant factor test." Other states with a stricter definition of chance, called "any chance test," have made fantasy football illegal. Several states have clarified that paid fantasy sports contests are games of skill and exempt from gambling laws, beginning with Maryland in 2012. One exception is the state of Nevada, which has an exemption in PASPA to allow for sports betting. The Nevada attorney general issued an opinion that found Daily Fantasy Sports to be a form of sports wagering, similar to the current wagering offered by Nevada Sports Books. The opinions states that Daily Fantasy Sports are not illegal in Nevada; however, a sports pool license is required to conduct the activity in Nevada. Several Attorneys General have also issued opinions that Daily Fantasy Sports are a form of sports wagering. A Florida state attorney general's opinion in 1991 called into doubt the legality of fantasy football contests, but companies have operated in the state without any legal action. Since then nine other AGs have issued options, statements or formal opinions that equate DFS with gambling. However, several other Attorneys General have issued opinions that DFS are legal games of skill. In August 2015 in Kansas, due to uncertainty with the state's Racing and Gaming Commission position, the state's attorney general issued an opinion that daily fantasy sports was a skill game and thus permitted under state law. Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback signed legislation a month later authorizing fantasy gaming. The Attorneys General of West Virginia and Rhode Island have also issued opinions that clarified the legality of DFS and paid fantasy sports. As of January 2022, online fantasy sports are legal in 49 of the 50 US states. The only state with a ban on online fantasy sports that is codified in statute is Montana. As of January 2022, daily fantasy sports are legal in 45 US states, with 23 of those states explicitly passing legislation legalizing the practice. Legal cases related to use of player statistics. There have been other legal cases involving fantasy sports and the use of professional athletes' statistics for purposes of scoring. STATS, Inc. vs. NBA. In 1996, STATS, Inc., a major statistical provider to fantasy sports companies, won a court case, along with Motorola, on appeal against the NBA in which the NBA was trying to stop STATS from distributing in game score information via a special wireless device created by Motorola. The victory played a large part in defending other cases where sports leagues have tried to suppress live in-game information from their events being distributed by other outlets. The victory also accelerated the demand for real-time statistics amid the growth of the fantasy sports industry. CDM vs. MLBAM. The development of fantasy sports produced tension between fantasy sports companies and professional leagues and players associations over the rights to player profiles and statistics. The players associations of the major sports leagues believed that fantasy games using player names were subject to licensing due to the right of publicity of the players involved. Since the player names were being used as a group, the players had assigned their publicity rights to the players association who then signed licensing deals. During the 1980s and 1990s many companies signed licensing deals with the player associations, but some companies did not. The issue came to a head with the lawsuit of Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM), MLB's Internet company, vs. St. Louis-based CBC Distribution and Marketing Inc., the parent company of CDM Sports. When CBC was denied a new licensing agreement with MLBAM (they had acquired the rights from the baseball players' association) for its fantasy baseball game, CBC filed suit. CBC argued that intellectual property laws and so-called "right of publicity" laws don't apply to the statistics used in fantasy sports. The FSTA filed an amicus curiae in support of CBC, also arguing that if MLBAM won the lawsuit it would have a dramatic impact on the industry, which was largely ignored by the major sports leagues for years while a number of smaller entrepreneurs grew it into a multibillion-dollar industry, and a ruling could allow the MLBAM to have a monopoly over the industry. "This will be a defining moment in the fantasy sports industry," said Charlie Wiegert, executive vice president of CBC. "The other leagues are all watching this case. If MLB prevailed, it just would have been a matter of time before they followed up. Their player unions are just waiting for the opportunity." CBC won the lawsuit as US District Court Judge Mary Ann Medler ruled that statistics are part of the public domain and can be used at no cost by fantasy companies. "The names and playing records of major-league baseball players as used in CBC's fantasy games are not copyrightable," Medler wrote. "Therefore, federal copyright law does not pre-empt the players' claimed right of publicity." The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision in October 2007. "It would be strange law that a person would not have a First Amendment right to use information that is available to everyone," a three-judge panel said in its ruling. The Supreme Court upheld the circuit court's decision by declining to hear the case in June 2008. In 2009, CBS Interactive won a lawsuit against the NFL Players’ Association over whether CBS had a First Amendment right to use players’ names and playing records in its fantasy sports offerings without paying licensing fees.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10707

Fiji

Fiji ( , ; , ; Fiji Hindi: फ़िजी, "Fijī"), officially the Republic of Fiji, is an island country in Melanesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies about north-northeast of New Zealand. Fiji consists of an archipelago of more than 330 islands—of which about 110 are permanently inhabited—and more than 500 islets, amounting to a total land area of about . The most outlying island group is Ono-i-Lau. About 87% of the total population of live on the two major islands, Viti Levu and Vanua Levu. About three-quarters of Fijians live on Viti Levu's coasts, either in the capital city of Suva, or in smaller urban centres such as Nadi (where tourism is the major local industry) or Lautoka (where the sugar-cane industry is dominant). The interior of Viti Levu is sparsely inhabited because of its terrain. The majority of Fiji's islands were formed by volcanic activity starting around 150 million years ago. Some geothermal activity still occurs today on the islands of Vanua Levu and Taveuni. The geothermal systems on Viti Levu are non-volcanic in origin and have low-temperature surface discharges (of between roughly ). Humans have lived in Fiji since the second millennium BC—first Austronesians and later Melanesians, with some Polynesian influences. Europeans first visited Fiji in the 17th century. In 1874, after a brief period in which Fiji was an independent kingdom, the British established the Colony of Fiji. Fiji operated as a Crown colony until 1970, when it gained independence and became known as the Dominion of Fiji. In 1987, following a series of coups d'état, the military government that had taken power declared it a republic. In a 2006 coup, Commodore Frank Bainimarama seized power. In 2009, the Fijian High Court ruled that the military leadership was unlawful. At that point, President Ratu Josefa Iloilo, whom the military had retained as the nominal head of state, formally abrogated the 1997 Constitution and re-appointed Bainimarama as interim prime minister. Later in 2009, Ratu Epeli Nailatikau succeeded Iloilo as president. On 17 September 2014, after years of delays, a democratic election took place. Bainimarama's FijiFirst party won 59.2% of the vote, and international observers deemed the election credible. Fiji has one of the most developed economies in the Pacific through its abundant forest, mineral, and fish resources. The currency is the Fijian dollar, with the main sources of foreign exchange being the tourist industry, remittances from Fijians working abroad, bottled water exports, and sugar cane. The Ministry of Local Government and Urban Development supervises Fiji's local government, which takes the form of city and town councils. Etymology. The name of Fiji's main island, Viti Levu, served as the origin of the name "Fiji", though the common English pronunciation is based on that of Fiji's island neighbours in Tonga. An official account of the emergence of the name states: "Feejee", the Anglicised spelling of the Tongan pronunciation, occurred in accounts and other writings by missionaries and other travellers visiting Fiji until the late-19th century. History. Early settlement. Pottery art from Fijian towns shows that Fiji was settled by Austronesian peoples by at least 3500 to 1000 BC, with Melanesians following around a thousand years later, although there are still many open questions about the specific dates and patterns of human migration. It is believed that either the Lapita people or the ancestors of the Polynesians settled the islands first, but not much is known of what became of them after the Melanesians arrived; the old culture may have had some influence on the new one, and archaeological evidence shows that some of the migrants moved on to Samoa, Tonga and even Hawai'i. Archeological evidence also shows signs of human settlement on Moturiki Island beginning at least by 600 BC and possibly as far back as 900 BC. Although some aspects of Fijian culture are similar to the Melanesian culture of the western Pacific, Fijian culture has a stronger connection to the older Polynesian cultures. The evidence is clear that there was trade between Fiji and neighbouring archipelagos long before Europeans made contact with Fiji. In the 10th century, the Tu'i Tonga Empire was established in Tonga, and Fiji came within its sphere of influence. The Tongan influence brought Polynesian customs and language into Fiji. That empire began to decline in the 13th century. Fiji has long had permanent settlements, but its peoples also have a history of mobility. Over the centuries, unique Fijian cultural practices developed. Fijians constructed large, elegant watercraft, with rigged sails called "drua" and exported some to Tonga. Fijians also developed a distinctive style of village architecture, consisting of communal and individual "bure" and "vale" housing, and an advanced system of ramparts and moats that were usually constructed around the more important settlements. Pigs were domesticated for food, and a variety of agricultural endeavors, such as banana plantations, existed from an early stage. Villages were supplied with water brought in by constructed wooden aqueducts. Fijians lived in societies led by chiefs, elders and notable warriors. Spiritual leaders, often called "bete", were also important cultural figures, and the production and consumption of "yaqona" was part of their ceremonial and community rites. Fijians developed a monetary system where the polished teeth of the sperm whale, called "tambua", became an active currency. A type of writing existed which can be seen today in various petroglyphs around the islands. Fijians developed a refined "masi" cloth textile industry, and used the cloth they produced to make sails and clothes such as the "malo" and the "liku". As with most other ancient human civilisations, warfare or preparation for warfare was an important part of everyday life in pre-colonial Fiji. The Fijians were noted for their distinctive use of weapons, especially war clubs. Fijians used many different types of clubs that can be broadly divided into two groups, two handed clubs and small specialised throwing clubs called "ula". With the arrival of Europeans in the 17th century, and European colonization in the late 19th century, many elements of Fijian culture were either repressed or modified to ensure European – specifically, British – control. This was especially the case with respect to traditional Fijian spiritual beliefs. Early colonists and missionaries pointed to the practice of cannibalism in Fiji as providing a moral imperative justifying colonization. Europeans labelled many native Fijian customs as debased or primitive, enabling many colonists to see Fiji as a "paradise wasted on savage cannibals". Authors such as Deryck Scarr have perpetuated 19th century claims of "freshly killed corpses piled up for eating" and ceremonial mass human sacrifice on the construction of new houses and boats. In fact, during colonial times, Fiji was known as "the Cannibal Isles". Modern archaeological research conducted on Fijian sites has shown that Fijians did in fact practice cannibalism, which has helped modern scholars to assess the accuracy of some of these colonial European accounts. Studies conducted by scholars including Degusta, Cochrane, and Jones provide evidence of burnt or cut human skeletons, suggesting that cannibalism was practised in Fiji. However, these archaeological accounts indicate that cannibalistic practices were likely more intermittent and less ubiquitous than European settlers had implied; it appears that the cannibalism may more often have been nonviolent and ritualistic. Early interaction with Europeans. Dutch explorer Abel Tasman was the first known European visitor to Fiji, sighting the northern island of Vanua Levu and the North Taveuni archipelago in 1643 while looking for the Great Southern Continent. James Cook, the British navigator, visited one of the southern Lau islands in 1774. It was not until 1789, however, that the islands were charted and plotted, when William Bligh, the castaway captain of , passed Ovalau and sailed between the main islands of Viti Levu and Vanua Levu en route to Batavia, in what is now Indonesia. Bligh Water, the strait between the two main islands, is named after him and for a time, the Fiji Islands were known as the "Bligh Islands". The first Europeans to maintain substantial contact with the Fijians were sandalwood merchants, whalers and "beche-de-mer" (sea cucumber) traders. The first whaling vessel known to have visited was the "Ann and Hope" in 1799, and she was followed by many others in the 19th century. These ships came for drinking water, food and firewood and, later, for men to help man their ships. Some of the Europeans who came to Fiji in this period were accepted by the locals and were allowed to stay as residents. By the 1820s, Levuka was established as the first European-style town in Fiji, on the island of Ovalau. The market for "beche-de-mer" in China was lucrative, and British and American merchants set up processing stations on various islands. Local Fijians were utilised to collect, prepare and pack the product which would then be shipped to Asia. A good cargo would result in a half-yearly profit of around $25,000 for the dealer. The Fijian workers were often given firearms and ammunition as an exchange for their labour, and by the end of the 1820s most of the Fijian chiefs had muskets and many were skilled at using them. Some Fijian chiefs soon felt confident enough with their new weapons to forcibly obtain more destructive weaponry from the Europeans. In 1834, men from Viwa and Bau were able to take control of the French ship "L'amiable Josephine" and use its cannon against their enemies on the Rewa River, although they later ran it aground. Christian missionaries like David Cargill also arrived in the 1830s from recently converted regions such as Tonga and Tahiti, and by 1840 the European settlement at Levuka had grown to about 40 houses with former whaler David Whippey being a notable resident. The religious conversion of the Fijians was a gradual process which was observed first-hand by Captain Charles Wilkes of the United States Exploring Expedition. Wilkes wrote that "all the chiefs seemed to look upon Christianity as a change in which they had much to lose and little to gain". Christianised Fijians, in addition to forsaking their spiritual beliefs, were pressured into cutting their hair short, adopting the sulu form of dress from Tonga and fundamentally changing their marriage and funeral traditions. This process of enforced cultural change was called "lotu". Intensification of conflict between the cultures increased, and Wilkes was involved in organising a large punitive expedition against the people of Malolo. He ordered an attack with rockets which acted as makeshift incendiary devices. The village, with the occupants trapped inside, quickly became an inferno with Wilkes noting that the "shouts of men were intermingled with the cries and shrieks of the women and children" as they burnt to death. Wilkes demanded the survivors should "sue for mercy" and if not "they must expect to be exterminated". Around 57 to 87 Maloloan people were killed in this encounter. Cakobau and the wars against Christian infiltration. The 1840s was a time of conflict where various Fiji clans attempted to assert dominance over each other. Eventually, a warlord named Seru Epenisa Cakobau of Bau Island was able to become a powerful influence in the region. His father was Ratu Tanoa Visawaqa, the Vunivalu (a chiefly title meaning warlord"," often translated also as paramount chief) who had previously subdued much of western Fiji. Cakobau, following on from his father, became so dominant that he was able to expel the Europeans from Levuka for five years over a dispute about their giving of weapons to his local enemies. In the early 1850s, Cakobau went one step further and declared war on all Christians. His plans were thwarted after the missionaries in Fiji received support from the already converted Tongans and the presence of a British warship. The Tongan Prince Enele Maʻafu, a Christian, had established himself on the island of Lakeba in 1848, forcibly converting the local people to the Methodist Church. Cakobau and other chiefs in the west of Fiji regarded Maʻafu as a threat to their power and resisted his attempts to expand Tonga's dominion. Cakobau's influence, however, began to wane, and his heavy imposition of taxes on other Fijian chiefs, who saw him at best as first among equals, caused them to defect from him. Around this time the United States also became interested in asserting their power in the region, and they threatened intervention following a number of incidents involving their consul in the Fiji islands, John Brown Williams. In 1849, Williams had his trading store looted following an accidental fire, caused by stray cannon fire during a Fourth of July celebration, and in 1853 the European settlement of Levuka was burnt to the ground. Williams blamed Cakobau for both these incidents, and the U.S. representative wanted Cakobau's capital at Bau destroyed in retaliation. A naval blockade was instead set up around the island which put further pressure on Cakobau to give up on his warfare against the foreigners and their Christian allies. Finally, on 30 April 1854, Cakobau offered his "soro" (supplication) and yielded to these forces. He underwent the "lotu" and converted to Christianity. The traditional Fijian temples in Bau were destroyed, and the sacred "nokonoko" trees were cut down. Cakobau and his remaining men were then compelled to join with the Tongans, backed by the Americans and British, to subjugate the remaining chiefs in the region who still refused to convert. These chiefs were soon defeated with Qaraniqio of the Rewa being poisoned and Ratu Mara of Kaba being hanged in 1855. After these wars, most regions of Fiji, except for the interior highland areas, had been forced into giving up much of their traditional systems and were now vassals of Western interest. Cakobau was retained as a largely symbolic representative of a few Fijian peoples and was allowed to take the ironic and self proclaimed title of "Tui Viti" ("King of Fiji"), but the overarching control now lay with foreign powers. Cotton, confederacies and the Kai Colo. The rising price of cotton in the wake of the American Civil War (1861–1865) caused an influx of hundreds of settlers to Fiji in the 1860s from Australia and the United States in order to obtain land and grow cotton. Since there was still a lack of functioning government in Fiji, these planters were often able to get the land in violent or fraudulent ways such as exchanging weapons or alcohol with Fijians who may or may not have been the true owners. Although this made for cheap land acquisition, competing land claims between the planters became problematic with no unified government to resolve the disputes. In 1865, the settlers proposed a confederacy of the seven main native kingdoms in Fiji to establish some sort of government. This was initially successful, and Cakobau was elected as the first president of the confederacy. With the demand for land high, the white planters started to push into the hilly interior of Viti Levu. This put them into direct confrontation with the Kai Colo, which was a general term to describe the various Fijian clans resident to these inland districts. The Kai Colo were still living a mostly traditional lifestyle, they were not Christianised, and they were not under the rule of Cakobau or the confederacy. In 1867, a travelling missionary named Thomas Baker was killed by Kai Colo in the mountains at the headwaters of the Sigatoka River. The acting British consul, John Bates Thurston, demanded that Cakobau lead a force of Fijians from coastal areas to suppress the Kai Colo. Cakobau eventually led a campaign into the mountains but suffered a humiliating loss with 61 of his fighters being killed. Settlers also came into conflict with the local eastern Kai Colo people called the Wainimala. Thurston called in the Australia Station section of the Royal Navy for assistance. The Navy duly sent Commander Rowley Lambert and to conduct a punitive mission against the Wainimala. An armed force of 87 men shelled and burnt the village of Deoka, and a skirmish ensued which resulted in the deaths of over 40 Wainimala. Kingdom of Fiji (1871–1874). After the collapse of the confederacy, Enele Maʻafu established a stable administration in the Lau Islands and the Tongans. Other foreign powers such as the United States were considering the possibility of annexing Fiji. This situation was not appealing to many settlers, almost all of whom were British subjects from Australia. Britain, however, refused to annex the country, and a compromise was needed. In June 1871, George Austin Woods, an ex-lieutenant of the Royal Navy, managed to influence Cakobau and organise a group of like-minded settlers and chiefs into forming a governing administration. Cakobau was declared the monarch ("Tui Viti") and the Kingdom of Fiji was established. Most Fijian chiefs agreed to participate, and even Ma'afu chose to recognise Cakobau and participate in the constitutional monarchy. However, many of the settlers had come from Australia, where negotiation with the indigenous people almost universally involved forced coercion. As a result, several aggressive, racially motivated opposition groups, such as the British Subjects Mutual Protection Society, sprouted up. One group called themselves the Ku Klux Klan in a homage to the white supremacist group in America. However, when respected individuals such as Charles St Julian, Robert Sherson Swanston and John Bates Thurston were appointed by Cakobau, a degree of authority was established. With the rapid increase in white settlers into the country, the desire for land acquisition also intensified. Once again, conflict with the Kai Colo in the interior of Viti Levu ensued. In 1871, the killing of two settlers near the Ba River in the northwest of the island prompted a large punitive expedition of white farmers, imported slave labourers, and coastal Fijians to be organised. This group of around 400 armed vigilantes, including veterans of the U.S. Civil War, had a battle with the Kai Colo near the village of Cubu, in which both sides had to withdraw. The village was destroyed, and the Kai Colo, despite being armed with muskets, received numerous casualties. The Kai Colo responded by making frequent raids on the settlements of the whites and Christian Fijians throughout the district of Ba. Likewise, in the east of the island on the upper reaches of the Rewa River, villages were burnt, and many Kai Colo were shot by the vigilante settler squad called the Rewa Rifles. Although the Cakobau government did not approve of the settlers taking justice into their own hands, it did want the Kai Colo subjugated and their land sold. The solution was to form an army. Robert S. Swanston, the minister for Native Affairs in the Kingdom, organised the training and arming of suitable Fijian volunteers and prisoners to become soldiers in what was variably called the King's Troops or the Native Regiment. In a similar system to the Native Police that was present in the colonies of Australia, two white settlers, James Harding and W. Fitzgerald, were appointed as the head officers of this paramilitary brigade. The formation of this force did not sit well with many of the white plantation owners as they did not trust an army of Fijians to protect their interests. The situation intensified further in early 1873 when the Burns family was killed by a Kai Colo raid in the Ba River area. The Cakobau government deployed 50 King's Troopers to the region under the command of Major Fitzgerald to restore order. The local whites refused their posting, and deployment of another 50 troops under Captain Harding was sent to emphasise the government's authority. To prove the worth of the Native Regiment, this augmented force went into the interior and massacred about 170 Kai Colo people at Na Korowaiwai. Upon returning to the coast, the force was met by the white settlers who still saw the government troops as a threat. A skirmish between the government's troops and the white settlers' brigade was only prevented by the intervention of Captain William Cox Chapman of , who detained the leaders of the locals, forcing the group to disband. The authority of the King's Troops and the Cakobau government to crush the Kai Colo was now total. From March to October 1873, a force of about 200 King's Troops under the general administration of Swanston with around 1,000 coastal Fijian and white volunteer auxiliaries, led a campaign throughout the highlands of Viti Levu to annihilate the Kai Colo. Major Fitzgerald and Major H.C. Thurston (the brother of John Bates Thurston) led a two pronged attack throughout the region. The combined forces of the different clans of the Kai Colo made a stand at the village of Na Culi. The Kai Colo were defeated with dynamite and fire being used to flush them out from their defensive positions amongst the mountain caves. Many Kai Colo were killed, and one of the main leaders of the hill clans, Ratu Dradra, was forced to surrender with around 2,000 men, women and children being taken prisoner and sent to the coast. In the months after this defeat, the only main resistance was from the clans around the village of Nibutautau. Major Thurston crushed this resistance in the two months following the battle at Na Culi. Villages were burnt, Kai Colo were killed, and a further large number of prisoners were taken. About 1,000 of the prisoners (men, women and children) were sent to Levuka where some were hanged and the rest were sold into slavery and forced to work on various plantations throughout the islands. Blackbirding and slavery in Fiji. The blackbirding era began in Fiji in 1865 when the first New Hebridean and Solomon Islands labourers were transported there to work on cotton plantations. The American Civil War had cut off the supply of cotton to the international market when the Union blockaded Confederate ports. Cotton cultivation was potentially an extremely profitable business. Thousands of European planters flocked to Fiji to establish plantations but found the natives unwilling to adapt to their plans. They sought labour from the Melanesian islands. On 5 July 1865 Ben Pease received the first licence to provide 40 labourers from the New Hebrides to Fiji. The British and Queensland governments tried to regulate this recruiting and transport of labour. Melanesian labourers were to be recruited for a term of three years, paid three pounds per year, issued basic clothing, and given access to the company store for supplies. Most Melanesians were recruited by deceit, usually being enticed aboard ships with gifts, and then locked up. In 1875, the chief medical officer in Fiji, Sir William MacGregor, listed a mortality rate of 540 out of every 1,000 labourers. After the expiry of the three-year contract, the government required captains to transport the labourers back to their villages, but most ship captains dropped them off at the first island they sighted off the Fiji waters. The British sent warships to enforce the law (Pacific Islanders' Protection Act of 1872), but only a small proportion of the culprits were prosecuted. A notorious incident of the blackbirding trade was the 1871 voyage of the brig "Carl", organised by Dr. James Patrick Murray to recruit labourers to work in the plantations of Fiji. Murray had his men reverse their collars and carry black books, to appear as church missionaries. When islanders were enticed to a religious service, Murray and his men would produce guns and force the islanders onto boats. During the voyage Murray shot about 60 islanders. He was never brought to trial for his actions, as he was given immunity in return for giving evidence against his crew members. The captain of the "Carl", Joseph Armstrong, was later sentenced to death. In addition to the blackbirded labour from other Pacific islands, thousands of people indigenous to the Fijian archipelago were sold into slavery on the plantations. As the white settler backed Cakobau government, and later the British colonial government, subjugated areas in Fiji under its power, the resultant prisoners of war were regularly sold at auction to the planters. This provided a source of revenue for the government and also dispersed the rebels to different, often isolated islands where the plantations were located. The land that was occupied by these people before they became slaves was then also sold for additional revenue. An example of this is the Lovoni people of Ovalau, who after being defeated in a war with the Cakobau government in 1871, were rounded up and sold to the settlers at £6 per head. Two thousand Lovoni men, women and children were sold, and their period of slavery lasted five years. Likewise, after the Kai Colo wars in 1873, thousands of people from the hill tribes of Viti Levu were sent to Levuka and sold into slavery. Warnings from the Royal Navy stationed in the area that buying these people was illegal were largely given without enforcement, and the British consul in Fiji, Edward Bernard Marsh, regularly turned a blind eye to this type of labour trade. Colonisation. Despite achieving military victories over the Kai Colo, the Cakobau government was faced with problems of legitimacy and economic viability. Indigenous Fijians and white settlers refused to pay taxes, and the cotton price had collapsed. With these major issues in mind, John Bates Thurston approached the British government, at Cakobau's request, with another offer to cede the islands. The newly elected Tory British government under Benjamin Disraeli encouraged expansion of the empire and was therefore much more sympathetic to annexing Fiji than it had been previously. The murder of Bishop John Patteson of the Melanesian Mission at Nukapu in the Reef Islands had provoked public outrage, which was compounded by the massacre by crew members of more than 150 Fijians on board the brig "Carl." Two British commissioners were sent to Fiji to investigate the possibility of an annexation. The question was complicated by maneuverings for power between Cakobau and his old rival, Ma'afu, with both men vacillating for many months. On 21 March 1874, Cakobau made a final offer, which the British accepted. On 23 September, Sir Hercules Robinson, soon to be appointed the British Governor of Fiji, arrived on HMS "Dido" and received Cakobau with a royal 21-gun salute. After some vacillation, Cakobau agreed to renounce his "Tui Viti" title, retaining the title of "Vunivalu", or Protector. The formal cession took place on 10 October 1874, when Cakobau, Ma'afu, and some of the senior chiefs of Fiji signed two copies of the Deed of Cession. Thus the Colony of Fiji was founded; 96 years of British rule followed. Measles epidemic of 1875. To celebrate the annexation of Fiji, Hercules Robinson, who was Governor of New South Wales at the time, took Cakobau and his two sons to Sydney. There was a measles outbreak in that city and the three Fijians all came down with the disease. On returning to Fiji, the colonial administrators decided not to quarantine the ship on which the convalescents travelled. This was despite the British having a very extensive knowledge of the devastating effect of infectious disease on an unexposed population. In 1875–76 the resulting epidemic of measles killed over 40,000 Fijians, about one-third of the Fijian population. Some Fijians allege that this failure of quarantine was a deliberate action to introduce the disease into the country. Historians have found no such evidence; the disease spread before the new British governor and colonial medical officers had arrived, and no quarantine rules existed under the outgoing regime. Sir Arthur Gordon and the "Little War". Robinson was replaced as Governor of Fiji in June 1875 by Sir Arthur Hamilton Gordon. Gordon was immediately faced with an insurgency of the Qalimari and Kai Colo people. In early 1875, colonial administrator Edgar Leopold Layard had met with thousands of highland clans at Navuso to formalise their subjugation to British rule and Christianity. Layard and his delegation managed to spread the measles epidemic to the highlanders, causing mass deaths in this population. As a result, anger at the British colonists flared throughout the region, and a widespread uprising quickly took hold. Villages along the Sigatoka River and in the highlands above this area refused British control, and Gordon was tasked with quashing this rebellion. In what Gordon termed the "Little War", the suppression of this uprising took the form of two co-ordinated military campaigns in the western half of Viti Levu. The first was conducted by Gordon's second cousin, Arthur John Lewis Gordon, against the Qalimari insurgents along the Sigatoka River. The second campaign was led by Louis Knollys against the Kai Colo in the mountains to the north of the river. Governor Gordon invoked a type of martial law in the area where Arthur John Lewis Gordon and Knollys had absolute power to conduct their missions outside of any restrictions of legislation. The two groups of rebels were kept isolated from each other by a force led by Walter Carew and George Le Hunte who were stationed at Nasaucoko. Carew also ensured the rebellion did not spread east by securing the loyalty of the Wainimala people of the eastern highlands. The war involved the use of the soldiers of the old Native Regiment of Cakobau supported by around 1,500 Christian Fijian volunteers from other areas of Viti Levu. The colonial New Zealand Government provided most of the advanced weapons for the army including 100 Snider rifles. The campaign along the Sigatoka River was conducted under a scorched earth policy whereby numerous rebel villages were burnt and their fields ransacked. After the capture and destruction of the main fortified towns of Koroivatuma, Bukutia and Matanavatu, the Qalimari surrendered "en masse". Those not killed in the fighting were taken prisoner and sent to the coastal town of Cuvu. This included 827 men, women and children as well as Mudu, the leader of the insurgents. The women and children were distributed to places like Nadi and Nadroga. Of the men, 15 were sentenced to death at a hastily conducted trial at Sigatoka. Governor Gordon was present, but chose to leave the judicial responsibility to his relative, Arthur John Lewis Gordon. Four were hanged and ten, including Mudu, were shot with one prisoner managing to escape. By the end of proceedings the governor noted that "my feet were literally stained with the blood that I had shed". The northern campaign against the Kai Colo in the highlands was similar but involved removing the rebels from large, well protected caves in the region. Knollys managed to clear the caves "after some considerable time and large expenditure of ammunition". The occupants of these caves included whole communities, and as a result many men, women and children were either killed or wounded in these operations. The rest were taken prisoner and sent to the towns on the northern coast. The chief medical officer in British Fiji, William MacGregor, also took part both in killing Kai Colo and tending to their wounded. After the caves were taken, the Kai Colo surrendered and their leader, Bisiki, was captured. Various trials were held, mostly at Nasaucoko under Le Hunte, and 32 men were either hanged or shot including Bisiki, who was killed trying to escape. By the end of October 1876, the "Little War" was over, and Gordon had succeeded in vanquishing the rebels in the interior of Viti Levu. Remaining insurgents were sent into exile with hard labour for up to 10 years. Some non-combatants were allowed to return to rebuild their villages, but many areas in the highlands were ordered by Gordon to remain depopulated and in ruins. Gordon also constructed a military fortress, Fort Canarvon, at the headwaters of the Sigatoka River where a large contingent of soldiers were based to maintain British control. He renamed the Native Regiment, the Armed Native Constabulary to lessen its appearance of being a military force. To further consolidate social control throughout the colony, Governor Gordon introduced a system of appointed chiefs and village constables in the various districts to both enact his orders and report any disobedience from the populace. Gordon adopted the chiefly titles "Roko" and "Buli" to describe these deputies and established a Great Council of Chiefs which was directly subject to his authority as Supreme Chief. This body remained in existence until being suspended by the military-backed interim government in 2007 and only abolished in 2012. Gordon also extinguished the ability of Fijians to own, buy or sell land as individuals, the control being transferred to colonial authorities. Indian indenture system in Fiji. Gordon decided in 1878 to import indentured labourers from India to work on the sugarcane fields that had taken the place of the cotton plantations. The 463 Indians arrived on 14 May 1879 – the first of some 61,000 that were to come before the scheme ended in 1916. The plan involved bringing the Indian workers to Fiji on a five-year contract, after which they could return to India at their own expense; if they chose to renew their contract for a second five-year term, they would be given the option of returning to India at the government's expense, or remaining in Fiji. The great majority chose to stay. The Queensland Act, which regulated indentured labour in Queensland, was made law in Fiji also. Between 1879 and 1916, tens of thousands of Indians moved to Fiji to work as indentured labourers, especially on sugarcane plantations. Given the steady influx of ships carrying indentured Indians to Fiji up until 1916, repatriated Indians generally boarded these same ships on their return voyage. The total number of repatriates under the Fiji indenture system is recorded as 39,261, while the number of arrivals is said to have been 60,553. Because the return figure includes children born in Fiji, many of the indentured Indians never returned to India. Tuka rebellions. With almost all aspects of indigenous Fijian social life being controlled by the British colonial authorities, a number of charismatic individuals preaching dissent and return to pre-colonial culture were able to forge a following amongst the disenfranchised. These movements were called Tuka, which roughly translates as "those who stand up". The first Tuka movement was led by Ndoongumoy, better known as Navosavakandua, which means "he who speaks only once". He told his followers that if they returned to traditional ways and worshipped traditional deities such as Degei and Rokola, their current condition would be transformed, with the whites and their puppet Fijian chiefs being subservient to them. Navosavakandua was previously exiled from the Viti Levu highlands in 1878 for disturbing the peace, and the British quickly arrested him and his followers after this open display of rebellion. He was again exiled, this time to Rotuma where he died soon after his 10-year sentence ended. Other Tuka organisations, however, soon appeared. The British colonial administration ruthlessly suppressed both the leaders and followers, with figureheads such as Sailose being banished to an asylum for 12 years. In 1891, entire populations of villages who were sympathetic to the Tuka ideology were deported as punishment. Three years later in the highlands of Vanua Levu, where locals had re-engaged in traditional religion, Governor Thurston ordered in the Armed Native Constabulary to destroy the towns and the religious relics. Leaders were jailed and villagers exiled or forced to amalgamate into government-run communities. Later, in 1914, Apolosi Nawai came to the forefront of Fijian Tuka resistance by founding Viti Kabani, a co-operative company that would legally monopolise the agricultural sector and boycott European planters. The British and their proxy Council of Chiefs were not able to prevent the Viti Kabani's rise, and again the colonists were forced to send in the Armed Native Constabulary. Apolosi and his followers were arrested in 1915, and the company collapsed in 1917. Over the next 30 years, Apolosi was re-arrested, jailed and exiled, with the British viewing him as a threat right up to his death in 1946. World War I and II. Fiji was only peripherally involved in World War I. One memorable incident occurred in September 1917 when Count Felix von Luckner arrived at Wakaya Island, off the eastern coast of Viti Levu, after his raider, , had run aground in the Cook Islands following the shelling of Papeete in the French colony of Tahiti. On 21 September, the district police inspector took a number of Fijians to Wakaya, and von Luckner, not realising that they were unarmed, unwittingly surrendered. Citing unwillingness to exploit the Fijian people, the colonial authorities did not permit Fijians to enlist. One Fijian of chiefly rank, a great-grandson of Cakobau, joined the French Foreign Legion and received France's highest military decoration, the Croix de Guerre. After going on to complete a law degree at Oxford University, this same chief returned to Fiji in 1921 as both a war hero and the country's first-ever university graduate. In the years that followed, Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna, as he was later known, established himself as the most powerful chief in Fiji and forged embryonic institutions for what would later become the modern Fijian nation. By the time of World War II, the United Kingdom had reversed its policy of not enlisting natives, and many thousands of Fijians volunteered for the Fiji Infantry Regiment, which was under the command of Ratu Sir Edward Cakobau, another great-grandson of Cakobau. The regiment was attached to New Zealand and Australian army units during the war. Because of its central location, Fiji was selected as a training base for the Allies. An airstrip was built at Nadi (later to become an international airport), and gun emplacements studded the coast. Fijians gained a reputation for bravery in the Solomon Islands campaign, with one war correspondent describing their ambush tactics as "death with velvet gloves". Corporal Sefanaia Sukanaivalu, of Yucata, was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross, as a result of his bravery in the Battle of Bougainville. Responsible government and independence. A constitutional conference was held in London in July 1965 to discuss constitutional changes with a view to introducing responsible government. Indo-Fijians, led by A. D. Patel, demanded the immediate introduction of full self-government, with a fully elected legislature, to be elected by universal suffrage on a common voters' roll. These demands were vigorously rejected by the ethnic Fijian delegation, who still feared loss of control over natively owned land and resources should an Indo-Fijian dominated government come to power. The British made it clear, however, that they were determined to bring Fiji to self-government and eventual independence. Realizing that they had no choice, Fiji's chiefs decided to negotiate for the best deal they could get. A series of compromises led to the establishment of a cabinet system of government in 1967, with Ratu Kamisese Mara as the first Chief Minister. Ongoing negotiations between Mara and Sidiq Koya, who had taken over the leadership of the mainly Indo-Fijian National Federation Party on Patel's death in 1969, led to a second constitutional conference in London, in April 1970, at which Fiji's Legislative Council agreed on a compromise electoral formula and a timetable for independence as a fully sovereign and independent nation within the Commonwealth. The Legislative Council would be replaced with a bicameral Parliament, with a Senate dominated by Fijian chiefs and a popularly elected House of Representatives. In the 52-member House, Native Fijians and Indo-Fijians would each be allocated 22 seats, of which 12 would represent communal constituencies comprising voters registered on strictly ethnic roles, and another 10 representing national constituencies to which members were allocated by ethnicity but elected by universal suffrage. A further 8 seats were reserved for "general electors" – Europeans, Chinese, Banaban Islanders, and other minorities; 3 of these were "communal" and 5 "national". With this compromise, it was agreed that Fiji would become independent. The British flag, the Union Jack, was lowered for the last time at sunset on 9 October 1970 in the capital Suva. The Fijian flag was raised after dawn on the morning of 10 October 1970; the country had officially become independent at midnight. Independence. 1987 coups d'état. The British granted Fiji independence in 1970. Democratic rule was interrupted by two military coups in 1987 precipitated by a growing perception that the government was dominated by the Indo-Fijian (Indian) community. The second 1987 coup saw both the Fijian monarchy and the Governor General replaced by a non-executive president and the name of the country changed from "Dominion of Fiji" to "Republic of Fiji" and then in 1997 to "Republic of the Fiji Islands". The two coups and the accompanying civil unrest contributed to heavy Indo-Fijian emigration; the resulting population loss resulted in economic difficulties and ensured that Melanesians became the majority. In 1990, the new constitution institutionalised ethnic Fijian domination of the political system. The Group Against Racial Discrimination (GARD) was formed to oppose the unilaterally imposed constitution and to restore the 1970 constitution. In 1992 Sitiveni Rabuka, the Lieutenant Colonel who had carried out the 1987 coup, became Prime Minister following elections held under the new constitution. Three years later, Rabuka established the Constitutional Review Commission, which in 1997 wrote a new constitution which was supported by most leaders of the indigenous Fijian and Indo-Fijian communities. Fiji was re-admitted to the Commonwealth of Nations. 2000 coup d'état. In 2000, a coup was instigated by George Speight, which effectively toppled the government of Mahendra Chaudhry, who in 1997 had become the country's first Indo-Fijian Prime Minister following the adoption of the new constitution. Commodore Frank Bainimarama assumed executive power after the resignation, possibly forced, of President Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara. Later in 2000, Fiji was rocked by two mutinies when rebel soldiers went on a rampage at Suva's Queen Elizabeth Barracks. The High Court ordered the reinstatement of the constitution, and in September 2001, to restore democracy, a general election was held which was won by interim Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase's Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua party. In 2005, the Qarase government amid much controversy proposed a Reconciliation and Unity Commission with power to recommend compensation for victims of the 2000 coup and amnesty for its perpetrators. However, the military, especially the nation's top military commander, Frank Bainimarama, strongly opposed this bill. Bainimarama agreed with detractors who said that to grant amnesty to supporters of the present government who had played a role in the violent coup was a sham. His attack on the legislation, which continued unremittingly throughout May and into June and July, further strained his already tense relationship with the government. 2006 coup d'état. In late November and early December 2006, Bainimarama was instrumental in the 2006 Fijian coup d'état. Bainimarama handed down a list of demands to Qarase after a bill was put forward to parliament, part of which would have offered pardons to participants in the 2000 coup attempt. He gave Qarase an ultimatum date of 4 December to accede to these demands or to resign from his post. Qarase adamantly refused either to concede or resign, and on 5 December President Ratu Josefa Iloilo signed a legal order dissolving the parliament after meeting with Bainimarama. Citing corruption in the government, Bainimarama staged a military takeover on 5 December 2006 against the prime minister that he had installed after a 2000 coup. The commodore took over the powers of the presidency and dissolved the parliament, paving the way for the military to continue the takeover. The coup was the culmination of weeks of speculation following conflict between the elected prime minister, Laisenia Qarase, and Bainimarama. Bainimarama had repeatedly issued demands and deadlines to the prime minister. A particular issue was previously pending legislation to pardon those involved in the 2000 coup. Bainimarama named Jona Senilagakali as caretaker prime minister. The next week Bainimarama said he would ask the Great Council of Chiefs to restore executive powers to the president, Ratu Josefa Iloilo. On 4 January 2007, the military announced that it was restoring executive power to Iloilo, who made a broadcast endorsing the actions of the military. The next day, Iloilo named Bainimarama as the interim prime minister, indicating that the military was still effectively in control. In the wake of the takeover, reports emerged of alleged intimidation of some of those critical of the interim regime. 2009 transfer of power. In April 2009, the Fiji Court of Appeal overturned the High Court decision that Bainimarama's takeover of Qarase's government was lawful and declared the interim government to be illegal. Bainimarama agreed to step down as interim prime minister immediately, along with his government, and President Iloilo was to appoint a new prime minister. President Iloilo abrogated the constitution, and removed all office holders under the constitution including all judges and the governor of the Central Bank. In his own words, he "appoint[ed] [him]self as the Head of the State of Fiji under a new legal order". He then reappointed Bainimarama under his "New Order" as interim prime minister and imposed a "Public Emergency Regulation" limiting internal travel and allowing press censorship. On 2 May 2009, Fiji became the first nation ever to have been suspended from participation in the Pacific Islands Forum, for its failure to hold democratic elections by the date promised. Nevertheless, it remains a member of the Forum. On 1 September 2009, Fiji was suspended from the Commonwealth of Nations. The action was taken because Bainimarama failed to hold elections by 2010 as the Commonwealth of Nations had demanded after the 2006 coup. Bainimarama stated a need for more time to end a voting system that heavily favoured ethnic Fijians at the expense of the multi-ethnic minorities. Critics claimed that he had suspended the constitution and was responsible for human rights violations by arresting and detaining opponents. In his 2010 New Year's address, Bainimarama announced the lifting of the Public Emergency Regulations (PER). However, the PER was not rescinded until January 2012, and the Suva Philosophy Club was the first organisation to reorganise and convene public meetings. The PER had been put in place in April 2009 when the former constitution was abrogated. The PER had allowed restrictions on speech, public gatherings, and censorship of news media and had given security forces added powers. He also announced a nationwide consultation process leading to a new constitution under which the 2014 elections were held. The official name of the country was reverted to "Republic of Fiji" in February 2011. Since 2014. On 14 March 2014, the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group voted to change Fiji's full suspension from the Commonwealth of Nations to a suspension from the councils of the Commonwealth, allowing them to participate in a number of Commonwealth activities, including the 2014 Commonwealth Games. The suspension was lifted in September 2014. The FijiFirst party, led by Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, won outright majority in the country's 51-seat parliament both in 2014 election and narrowly in 2018 election. In October 2021, Tui Macuata Ratu Wiliame Katonivere was elected the new President of Fiji by the parliament. On 24 December 2022, Sitiveni Rabuka, the head of the People's Alliance (PAP), became Fiji's 12th prime minister, succeeding Bainimarama, following the December 2022 general election. Geography. Fiji lies approximately southwest of Hawaii and roughly from Sydney, Australia. Fiji is the hub of the Southwest Pacific, midway between Vanuatu and Tonga. The archipelago is located between 176° 53′ east and 178° 12′ west. The archipelago is roughly and less than 2 percent is dry land. The 180° meridian runs through Taveuni, but the International Date Line is bent to give uniform time (UTC+12) to all of the Fiji group. With the exception of Rotuma, the Fiji group lies between 15° 42′ and 20° 02′ south. Rotuma is located north of the group, from Suva, 12° 30′ south of the equator. Fiji covers a total area of some of which around 10% is land. Fiji consists of 332 islands (of which 106 are inhabited) and 522 smaller islets. The two most important islands are Viti Levu and Vanua Levu, which account for about three-quarters of the total land area of the country. The islands are mountainous, with peaks up to 1,324 metres (4,341 ft), and covered with thick tropical forests. The highest point is Mount Tomanivi on Viti Levu. Viti Levu hosts the capital city of Suva and is home to nearly three-quarters of the population. Other important towns include Nadi (the location of the international airport), and Lautoka, Fiji's second largest city with large sugar cane mills and a seaport. The main towns on Vanua Levu are Labasa and Savusavu. Other islands and island groups include Taveuni and Kadavu (the third and fourth largest islands, respectively), the Mamanuca Group (just off Nadi) and Yasawa Group, which are popular tourist destinations, the Lomaiviti Group, off Suva, and the remote Lau Group. Rotuma has special administrative status in Fiji. Ceva-i-Ra, an uninhabited reef, is located about southwest of the main archipelago. Fiji contains two ecoregions: Fiji tropical moist forests and Fiji tropical dry forests. It had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 8.35/10, ranking it 24th globally out of 172 countries. Climate. The climate in Fiji is tropical marine and warm year round with minimal extremes. The warm season is from November to April, and the cooler season lasts from May to October. Temperatures in the cool season average . Rainfall is variable, with the warm season experiencing heavier rainfall, especially inland. For the larger islands, rainfall is heavier on the southeast portions of the islands than on the northwest portions, with consequences for agriculture in those areas. Winds are moderate, though cyclones occur about once annually (10–12 times per decade). Climate change in Fiji is an exceptionally pressing issue for the country - as an island nation, Fiji is particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels, coastal erosion and extreme weather. These changes, along with temperature rise, will displace Fijian communities and will prove disruptive to the national economy - tourism, agriculture and fisheries, the largest contributors to the nation's GDP, will be severely impacted by climate change causing increases in poverty and food insecurity. As a party to both the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Climate Agreement, Fiji hopes to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 which, along with national policies, will help to mitigate the impacts of climate change. The governments of Fiji and other climate other island states at risk from climate change (Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, 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. Government and politics. Politics in Fiji normally take place in the framework of a parliamentary representative democratic republic wherein the Prime Minister of Fiji is the head of government and the President the Head of State, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government, legislative power is vested in both the government and the Parliament of Fiji, and the judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. A general election took place on 17 September 2014. Bainimarama's FijiFirst party won with 59.2% of the vote, and the election was deemed credible by a group of international observers from Australia, India and Indonesia. In the 2018 election FijiFirst won with 50.02 per cent of the total votes cast. It held its outright majority in the parliament, winning 27 of the 51 seats. The Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA) came in second with 39.85 per cent of the vote. In the 2022 election FijiFirst lost its parliamentary majority. Sitiveni Rabuka of People's Alliance party, with the backing of the Social Liberal Democratic party (Sodelpa), became Fiji's new Prime Minister to succeed Frank Bainimarama. Armed forces and law enforcement. The military consists of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces with a total manpower of 3,500 active soldiers and 6,000 reservists, and includes a Navy unit of 300 personnel. The land force comprises the Fiji Infantry Regiment (regular and territorial force organised into six light infantry battalions), Fiji Engineer Regiment, Logistic Support Unit and Force Training Group. Relative to its size, Fiji has fairly large armed forces and has been a major contributor to UN peacekeeping missions in various parts of the world. In addition, a significant number of former military personnel have served in the lucrative security sector in Iraq following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. The law enforcement branch is composed of the Fiji Police Force and Fiji Corrections Service. Administrative divisions. Fiji is divided into four major divisions which are further divided into 14 provinces. They are: Fiji was divided into three confederacies or governments during the reign of Seru Epenisa Cakobau, though these are not considered political divisions, they are still considered important in the social divisions of the indigenous Fijians: Economy. Endowed with forest, mineral, and fish resources, Fiji is one of the most developed of the Pacific island economies, though still with a large subsistence sector. Some progress was experienced by this sector when Marion M. Ganey introduced credit unions to the islands in the 1950s. Natural resources include timber, fish, gold, copper, offshore oil, and hydropower. Fiji experienced a period of rapid growth in the 1960s and 1970s but stagnated in the 1980s. The coups of 1987 caused further contraction. Economic liberalisation in the years following the coups created a boom in the garment industry and a steady growth rate despite growing uncertainty regarding land tenure in the sugar industry. The expiration of leases for sugar cane farmers (along with reduced farm and factory efficiency) has led to a decline in sugar production despite subsidies for sugar provided by the EU. Fiji's gold mining industry is based in Vatukoula. Urbanisation and expansion in the service sector have contributed to recent GDP growth. Sugar exports and a rapidly growing tourist industry – with tourists numbering 430,800 in 2003 and increasing in the subsequent years – are the major sources of foreign exchange. Fiji is highly dependent on tourism for revenue. Sugar processing makes up one-third of industrial activity. Long-term problems include low investment and uncertain property rights. The South Pacific Stock Exchange (SPSE) is the only licensed securities exchange in Fiji and is based in Suva. Its vision is to become a regional exchange. Tourism. Fiji has a significant amount of tourism with the popular regions being Nadi, the Coral Coast, Denarau Island, and Mamanuca Islands. The biggest sources of international visitors by country are Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Fiji has a significant number of soft coral reefs, and scuba diving is a common tourist activity. Fiji's main attractions to tourists are primarily white sandy beaches and aesthetically pleasing islands with all-year tropical weather. In general, Fiji is a mid-range priced holiday/vacation destination with most of the accommodations in this range. It also has a variety of world-class five-star resorts and hotels. More budget resorts are being opened in remote areas, which will provide more tourism opportunities. CNN named Fiji's Laucala Island Resort as one of the fifteen world's most beautiful island hotels. Official statistics show that in 2012, 75% of visitors stated that they came for a holiday/vacation. Honeymoons are very popular as are romantic getaways in general. There are also family-friendly resorts with facilities for young children including kids' clubs and nanny options. Fiji has several popular tourism destinations. The Botanical Gardens of Thursten in Suva, Sigatoka Sand Dunes, and Colo-I-Suva Forest Park are three options on the mainland (Viti Levu). A major attraction on the outer islands is scuba diving. According to the Fiji Bureau of Statistics, most visitors arriving to Fiji on a short-term basis are from the following countries or regions of residence: Fiji has also served as a location for various Hollywood movies starting from the "Mr Robinson Crusoe" in 1932 to "The Blue Lagoon" (1980) starring Brooke Shields and "Return to the Blue Lagoon" (1991) with Milla Jovovich. Other popular movies shot in Fiji include "Cast Away" (2000) and "" (2004). The U.S. version of the reality television show "Survivor" has filmed all of its semiannual seasons in the Mamanuca Islands since its in 2016. Typically, two 39-day competitions will be filmed back to back, with the first season airing in the fall of that year, and the second airing in the spring of the following year. This marks the longest consecutive period that "Survivor" has filmed in one location. Before the airing of the 35th season (")", host Jeff Probst said in an interview with "Entertainment Weekly" that the Mamanucas are the optimal location for the show and he would like to stay there permanently. Transport. The Nadi International Airport is located north of central Nadi and is the largest Fijian hub. Nausori International Airport is about northeast of downtown Suva and serves mostly domestic traffic with flights from Australia and New Zealand. The main airport in the second largest island of Vanua Levu is Labasa Airport located at Waiqele, southwest of Labasa Town. The largest aircraft handled by Labasa Airport is the ATR 72. Airports Fiji Limited (AFL) is responsible for the operation of 15 public airports in the Fiji Islands. These include two international airports: Nadi international Airport, Fiji's main international gateway, and Nausori Airport, Fiji's domestic hub, and 13 outer island airports. Fiji's main airline is Fiji Airways. Fiji's larger islands have extensive bus routes that are affordable and consistent in service. There are bus stops, and in rural areas buses are often simply hailed as they approach. Buses are the principal form of public transport and passenger movement between the towns on the main islands. Buses also serve on inter-island ferries. Bus fares and routes are regulated by the Land Transport Authority (LTA). Bus and taxi drivers hold Public Service Licenses issued by the LTA. Taxis are licensed by the LTA and operate widely all over the country. Apart from urban, town-based taxis, there are others that are licensed to serve rural or semi-rural areas. Inter-island ferries provide services between Fiji's principal islands, and large vessels operate roll-on-roll-off services such as Patterson Brothers Shipping Company LTD, transporting vehicles and large amounts of cargo between the main island of Viti Levu and Vanua Levu, and other smaller islands. Science and technology. Fiji is the only developing Pacific Island country with recent data for gross domestic expenditure on research and development (GERD), with the exception of Papua New Guinea. The national Bureau of Statistics cites a GERD/GDP ratio of 0.15% in 2012. Private-sector research and development (R&D) is negligible. Government investment in research and development tends to favour agriculture. In 2007, agriculture and primary production accounted for just under half of government expenditure on R&D, according to the Fijian National Bureau of Statistics. This share had risen to almost 60% by 2012. However, scientists publish much more in the field of geosciences and health than in agriculture. The rise in government spending on agricultural research has come to the detriment of research in education, which dropped to 35% of total research spending between 2007 and 2012. Government expenditure on health research has remained fairly constant, at about 5% of total government research spending, according to the Fijian National Bureau of Statistics. The Fijian Ministry of Health is seeking to develop endogenous research capacity through the "Fiji Journal of Public Health", which it launched in 2012. A new set of guidelines are now in place to help build endogenous capacity in health research through training and access to new technology. Fiji is also planning to diversify its energy sector through the use of science and technology. In 2015, the Secretariat of the Pacific Community observed that "while Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Samoa are leading the way with large-scale hydropower projects, there is enormous potential to expand the deployment of other renewable energy options such as solar, wind, geothermal and ocean-based energy sources." In 2014, the Centre of Renewable Energy became operational at the University of Fiji, with the assistance of the Renewable Energy in Pacific Island Countries Developing Skills and Capacity programme (EPIC) funded by the European Union. From 2013 to 2017, the European Union funded the EPIC programme, which developed two master's programmes in renewable energy management, one at the University of Papua New Guinea and the other at the University of Fiji, both accredited in 2016. In Fiji, 45 students have enrolled for the master's degree since the launch of the programme and a further 21 students have undertaken a related diploma programme introduced in 2019. In 2020, the Regional Pacific Nationally Determined Contributions Hub Office in Fiji was launched to support climate change mitigation and adaptation. Pacific authors on the frontlines of climate change remain underrepresented in the scientific literature on the impact of disasters and on climate resilience strategies. Society. Demographics. The 2017 census found that the population of Fiji was 884,887, compared to the population of 837,271 in the 2007 census. The population density at the time of the 2007 census was 45.8 inhabitants per square kilometre. The life expectancy in Fiji was 72.1 years. Since the 1930s the population of Fiji has increased at a rate of 1.1% per year. The median age of the population was 29.9, and the gender ratio was 1.03 males per 1 female. Ethnic groups. The population of Fiji is mostly made up of native Fijians, who are Melanesians (54.3%), although many also have Polynesian ancestry; and Indo-Fijians (38.1%), descendants of Indian contract labourers brought to the islands by the British colonial powers in the 19th century. The percentage of the population of Indo-Fijian descent has declined significantly over the last two decades through migration for various reasons. Indo-Fijians suffered reprisals for a period after the coup of 2000. Relationships between ethnic Fijians and Indo-Fijians in the political arena have often been strained, and the tension between the two communities has dominated politics in the islands for the past generation. The level of political tension varies among different regions of the country. About 1.2% of the population is Rotuman – natives of Rotuma Island, whose culture has more in common with countries such as Tonga or Samoa than with the rest of Fiji. There are also small but economically significant groups of Europeans, Chinese, and other Pacific island minorities. The membership of other ethnic groups is about 4.5%. 3,000 people or 0.3% of the people living in Fiji are from Australia. The concept of family and community is of great importance to Fijian culture. Within the indigenous communities many members of the extended family will adopt particular titles and roles of direct guardians. Kinship is determined through a child's lineage to a particular spiritual leader, so that a clan is based on traditional customary ties as opposed to actual biological links. These clans, based on the spiritual leader, are known as a matangali. Within the matangali are a number of smaller collectives, known as the mbito. The descent is patrilineal, and all the status is derived from the father's side. Demonym. Constitutionally, citizens of Fiji were previously referred to as "Fiji Islanders" though the term "Fiji Nationals" was used for official purposes. However, the current constitution refers to all Fijian citizens as "Fijians". In August 2008, shortly before the proposed People's Charter for Change, Peace and Progress was due to be released to the public, it was announced that it recommended a change in the name of Fiji's citizens. If the proposal were adopted, all citizens of Fiji, whatever their ethnicity, would be called "Fijians". The proposal would change the English name of indigenous Fijians from "Fijians" to "itaukei", the Fijian language endonym for indigenous Fijians. Deposed Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase reacted by stating that the name "Fijian" belonged exclusively to indigenous Fijians, and that he would oppose any change in legislation enabling non-indigenous Fijians to use it. The Methodist Church, to which a large majority of indigenous Fijians belong, also reacted strongly to the proposal, stating that allowing any Fiji citizen to call themselves "Fijian" would be "daylight robbery" inflicted on the indigenous population. In an address to the nation during the constitutional crisis of April 2009, military leader and interim Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama, who has been at the forefront of the attempt to change the definition of "Fijian", stated: In May 2010, Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum reiterated that the term "Fijian" should apply to all Fiji nationals, but the statement was again met with protest. A spokesperson for the Viti Landowners and Resource Owners Association claimed that even fourth-generation descendants of migrants did not fully understand "what it takes to be a Fijian", and added that the term refers to a legal standing, since legislation affords specific rights to "Fijians" (meaning, in legislation, indigenous Fijians). Languages. Fiji has three official languages under the 1997 constitution (and not revoked by the 2013 Constitution): English, Fijian (iTaukei) and Fiji Hindi. Fijian is an Austronesian language of the Malayo-Polynesian family spoken in Fiji. It has 350,000 native speakers, and another 200,000 speak it as a second language. There are many dialects of the language across the Fiji Islands, which may be classified in two major branches—eastern and western. Missionaries in the 1840s chose an eastern dialect, the speech of Bau Island to be the written standard of the Fijian language. Bau Island was home to Seru Epenisa Cakobau, the chief who eventually became the self-proclaimed King of Fiji. Fiji Hindi, also known as Fijian Baat or Fijian Hindustani, is the language spoken by most Fijian citizens of Indian descent. It is derived mainly from the Awadhi and Bhojpuri varieties of Hindi. It has also borrowed a large number of words from Fijian and English. The relation between Fiji Hindi and Standard Hindi is similar to the relation between Afrikaans and Dutch. Indian indentured labourers were initially brought to Fiji mainly from districts of eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, North-West Frontier and South India such as from Andhra and Tamil Nadu. They spoke numerous, mainly Hindi, dialects and languages depending on their district of origin. English, a remnant of British colonial rule over the islands, was the sole official language until 1997 and is widely used in government, business and education as a lingua franca. Religion. According to the 2007 census, 64.4% of the population at the time was Christian, while 27.9% was Hindu, 6.3% Muslim, 0.8% non-religious, 0.3% Sikh, and the remaining 0.3% belonged to other religions. Among Christians, 54% were counted as Methodist, followed by 14.2% Catholic, 8.9% Assemblies of God, 6.0% Seventh-day Adventist, 1.2% Anglican with the remaining 16.1% belonging to other denominations. The largest Christian denomination is the Methodist Church of Fiji and Rotuma. With 34.6% of the population (including almost two-thirds of ethnic Fijians), the proportion of the population adhering to Methodism is higher in Fiji than in any other nation. Fijian Catholics are administered by the Archdiocese of Suva. The archdiocese is the metropolitan see of an ecclesiastical province which includes the Dioceses of Rarotonga (on the Cook Islands, for those and Niue, both New Zealand-associated countries) and Tarawa and Nauru (with see at Tarawa on Kiribati, also for Nauru) and the Mission sui iuris of Tokelau (New Zealand). The Assemblies of God and the Seventh-day Adventist denominations are significantly represented. Fiji is the base for the Anglican Diocese of Polynesia (part of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia).These and other denominations have small numbers of Indo-Fijian members; Christians of all kinds comprised 6.1% of the Indo-Fijian population in the 1996 census. Hindus in Fiji mostly belong to the Sanatan sect (74.3% of all Hindus) or else are unspecified (22%). Muslims in Fiji are mostly Sunni (96.4%). Education. Fiji has a high literacy rate (91.6 percent), and although there is no compulsory education, more than 85 percent of the children between the ages of 6 and 13 attend primary school. Schooling is free and provided by both public and church-run schools. Generally, the Fijian and Hindu children attend separate schools, reflecting the political split that exists in the nation. Primary education. In Fiji, the role of government in education is to provide an environment in which children realise their full potential, and school is free from age 6 to 14. The primary school system consists of eight years of schooling and is attended by children from the ages of 6 to 14 years. Upon completion of primary school, a certificate is awarded and the student is eligible to take the secondary school examination. Secondary education. High school education may continue for a total of five years following an entry examination. Students either leave after three years with a Fiji school leaving certificate, or remain on to complete their final two years and qualify for tertiary education. Entry into the secondary school system, which is a total of five years, is determined by a competitive examination. Students passing the exam then follow a three-year course that leads to the Fiji School Leaving Certificate and the opportunity to attend senior secondary school. At the end of this level, they may take the Form VII examination, which covers four or five subjects. Successful completion of this process gains students access to higher education. Tertiary education. The University of the South Pacific, called the crossroads of the South Pacific because it serves ten English-speaking territories in the South Pacific, is the major provider of higher education. Admission to the university requires a secondary school diploma, and all students must take a one-year foundation course at the university regardless of their major. Financing for the university is derived from school fees, funds from the Fiji government and other territories, and aid from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United Kingdom. In addition to the university, Fiji also has teacher-training colleges, as well as medical, technological, and agricultural schools. Primary school teachers are trained for two years, whereas secondary school teachers train for three years; they then have the option to receive a diploma in education or read for a bachelor's degree in arts or science and continue for an additional year to earn a postgraduate certificate of education. The Fiji Polytechnic School offers training in various trades, apprenticeship courses, and other courses that lead to diplomas in engineering, hotel catering, and business studies. Some of the course offerings can also lead to several City and Guilds of London Institute Examinations. In addition to the traditional educational system, Fiji also offers the opportunity to obtain an education through distance learning. The University Extension Service provides centres and a network of terminals in most regional areas. For students taking non-credit courses, no formal qualifications are necessary. However, students who enroll in the credit courses may be awarded the appropriate degree or certificate upon successful completion of their studies through the extension services. Culture. While indigenous Fijian culture and traditions are very vibrant and are integral components of everyday life for the majority of Fiji's population, Fijian society has evolved over the past century with the introduction of traditions such as Indian and Chinese as well as significant influences from Europe and Fiji's Pacific neighbours, particularly Tonga and Samoa. Thus, the various cultures of Fiji have come together to create a unique multicultural national identity. Fiji's culture was showcased at the World Exposition held in Vancouver, Canada, in 1986 and more recently at the Shanghai World Expo 2010, along with other Pacific countries in the Pacific Pavilion. Sport. Sports are very popular in Fiji, particularly sports involving physical contact. Fiji's national sport is Rugby sevens. Cricket is a minor sport in Fiji. Cricket Fiji is an associate member of the International Cricket Council ("ICC"). Netball is the most popular women's participation sport in Fiji. The national team has been internationally competitive, at Netball World Cup competitions reaching 6th position in 1999, its highest level to date. The team won gold medals at the 2007 and 2015 Pacific Games. Because of the success of Fiji's national basketball teams, the popularity of basketball has experienced rapid growth in recent years. In the past, the country only had few basketball courts, which severely limited Fijians who desired to practice the sport more frequently. Through recent efforts by the national federation Basketball Fiji and with the support of the Australian government, many schools have been able to construct courts and provide their students with basketball equipment. Vijay Singh, a PGA golfer from Fiji, was ranked the world number one male golfer for a total of 32 weeks. Rugby union. Rugby Union is the most-popular team sport played in Fiji. The Fiji national sevens side is a popular and successful international rugby sevens team and has won the Hong Kong Sevens a record eighteen times since its inception in 1976. Fiji has also won the Rugby World Cup Sevens twice – in 1997 and 2005. The Fiji national rugby union sevens team is the reigning Sevens World Series Champions in World Rugby. In 2016, they won Fiji's first ever Olympic medal in the Rugby sevens at the Summer Olympics, winning gold by defeating Great Britain 43–7 in the final. The national rugby union team is a member of the Pacific Islands Rugby Alliance formerly along with Samoa and Tonga. In 2009, Samoa announced their departure from the Pacific Islands Rugby Alliance, leaving just Fiji and Tonga in the union. Fiji is currently ranked eleventh in the world by the IRB (). The national rugby union team has competed at five Rugby World Cup competitions, the first being in 1987, where they reached the quarter-finals. The team again qualified in the 2007 Rugby World Cup when they upset Wales 38–34 to progress to the quarter-finals where they lost to the eventual Rugby World Cup winners, South Africa. Fiji competes in the Pacific Tri-Nations and the IRB Pacific Nations Cup. The sport is governed by the Fiji Rugby Union which is a member of the Pacific Islands Rugby Alliance, and contributes to the Pacific Islanders rugby union team. At the club level there are the Skipper Cup and Farebrother Trophy Challenge. Rugby league. The Fiji national rugby league team, nicknamed the Bati (pronounced [mˈbatʃi]), represents Fiji in the sport of rugby league football and has been participating in international competition since 1992. It has competed in the Rugby League World Cup on three occasions, with their best results coming when they made consecutive semi-final appearances in the 2008 Rugby League World Cup, 2013 Rugby League World Cup and 2019 Rugby League World Cup. The team also competes in the Pacific Cup. Association football. Association football was traditionally a minor sport in Fiji, popular largely amongst the Indo-Fijian community, but with international funding from FIFA and sound local management over the past decade, the sport has grown in popularity in the wider Fijian community. It is now the second most-popular sport in Fiji, after rugby for men and after netball for women. The Fiji Football Association is a member of the Oceania Football Confederation. The national football team defeated New Zealand 2–0 in the 2008 OFC Nations Cup, on their way to a joint-record third-place finish. However, they have never reached a FIFA World Cup to date. Fiji won the Pacific Games football tournament in 1991 and 2003. Fiji qualified for the 2016 Summer Olympics men's tournament for the first time in history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10783

History of film

The history of film chronicles the development of a visual art form created using film technologies that began in the late 19th century. The advent of film as an artistic medium is not clearly defined. However, the commercial, public screening of ten of the Lumière brothers' short films in Paris on 28 December 1895, can be regarded as the breakthrough of projected cinematographic motion pictures. There had been earlier cinematographic results and screenings by others, like the Skladanowsky brothers, who used their self-made Bioscop to display the first moving picture show to a paying audience on 1 November 1895, in Berlin, but they had neither the quality, financial backing, stamina, or luck to find the momentum that propelled the cinématographe Lumière into worldwide success. Those earliest films were in black and white, under a minute long, without recorded sound, and consisted of a single shot from a steady camera. The first decade of motion pictures saw film move from a novelty to an established mass entertainment industry, with film production companies and studios established all over the world. Conventions toward a general cinematic language also developed, with editing camera movements and other cinematic techniques contributing specific roles in the narrative of films. Popular new media, including television (mainstream since the 1950s), home video (mainstream since the 1980s), and the internet (mainstream since the 1990s), influenced the distribution and consumption of films. Film production usually responded with content to fit the new media, and with technical innovations (including widescreen (mainstream since the 1950s), 3D, and 4D film) and more spectacular films to keep theatrical screenings attractive. Systems that were cheaper and more easily handled (including 8mm film, video, and smartphone cameras) allowed for an increasing number of people to create films of varying qualities, for any purpose (including home movies and video art). The technical quality was usually lower than that of professional movies, but improved with digital video and affordable, high-quality digital cameras. Improving over time, digital production methods became more and more popular during the 1990s, resulting in increasingly realistic visual effects and popular feature-length computer animations. Various film genres emerged and enjoyed variable degrees of success over time, with huge differences among, for instance, horror. Precursors. The use of film as an art form traces its origins to several earlier traditions in the arts such as (oral) storytelling, literature, theatre and visual arts. Cantastoria and similar ancient traditions combined storytelling with series of images that were shown or indicated one after the other. Predecessors to film that had already used light and shadows to create art before the advent of modern film technology include shadowgraphy, shadow puppetry, camera obscura, and the magic lantern. Shadowgraphy and shadow puppetry represent early examples of the intent to use moving imagery for entertainment and storytelling. Thought to have originated in the Far East, the art form used shadows cast by hands or objects to assist in the creation of narratives. Shadow puppetry enjoyed popularity for centuries around Asia, notably in Java, and eventually spread to Europe during the Age of Enlightenment. By the 16th century, entertainers often conjured images of ghostly apparitions, utilizing techniques such as camera obscura and other forms of projection to enhance their performances. Magic lantern shows developed in the latter half of the 17th century seem to have continued this tradition with images of death, monsters and other scary figures. Around 1790, this practice was developed into a type of multimedia ghost show known as phantasmagoria. These popular shows entertained audiences using mechanical slides, rear projection, mobile projectors, superimposition, dissolves, live actors, smoke (on which projections may have been cast), odors, sounds and even electric shocks. While many first magic lantern shows were intended to frighten viewers, advances by projectionists allowed for creative and even educational storytelling that could appeal to wider family audiences. Newly pioneered techniques such as the use of dissolving views and the chromatrope allowed for smoother transitions between two projected images and aided in providing stronger narratives. In 1833, scientific study of a stroboscopic illusion in spoked wheels by Joseph Plateau, Michael Faraday and Simon Stampfer led to the invention of the Fantascope, also known as the stroboscopic disk or the phenakistiscope, which was popular in several European countries for a while. Plateau thought it could be further developed for use in phantasmagoria and Stampfer imagined a system for longer scenes with strips on rollers, as well as a transparent version (probably intended for projection). Plateau, Charles Wheatstone, Antoine Claudet and others tried to combine the technique with the stereoscope (introduced in 1838) and photography (introduced in 1839) for a more complete illusion of reality, but for decades such experiments were mostly hindered by the need for long exposure times, with motion blur around objects that moved while the reflected light fell on the photo-sensitive chemicals. A few people managed to get decent results from stop motion techniques, but these were only very rarely marketed and no form of animated photography had much cultural impact before the advent of chronophotography. Most early photographic sequences, known as chronophotography, were not initially intended to be viewed in motion and were typically presented as a serious, even scientific, method of studying locomotion. The sequences almost exclusively involved humans or animals performing a simple movement in front of the camera. Starting in 1878 with the publication of "The Horse in Motion" cabinet cards, photographer Eadweard Muybridge began making hundreds of chronophotographic studies of the motion of animals and humans in real-time. He was soon followed by other chronophotographers like Étienne-Jules Marey, Georges Demenÿ, Albert Londe and Ottomar Anschütz. In 1879, Muybridge started lecturing on animal locomotion and used his Zoopraxiscope to project animations of the contours of his recordings, traced onto glass discs. In 1887, the German inventor and photographer Ottomar Anschütz started presenting his chronophotographic recordings in motion, using a device he called the Elektrischen Schnellseher (also known as the Electrotachyscope), which displayed short loops on a small milk glass screen. By 1891, he had started mass production of a more economical, coin-operated peep-box viewing device of the same name that was exhibited at international exhibitions and fairs. Some machines were installed for longer periods, including some at The Crystal Palace in London, and in several U.S. stores. Shifting the focus of the medium from technical and scientific interest in motion to entertainment for the masses, he recorded wrestlers, dancers, acrobats, and scenes of everyday life. Nearly 34,000 people paid to see his shows at the Berlin Exhibition Park in summer 1892. Others saw it in London or at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.Though little evidence remains for most of these recordings, some scenes probably depicted staged comical scenes. Extant records suggest some of his output directly influenced later works by the Edison Company, such as the 1894 film "Fred Ott's Sneeze". Advances towards motion picture projection technologies were based on the popularity of magic lanterns, chronophotographic demonstrations, and other closely related forms of projected entertainment such as illustrated songs. From October 1892 to March 1900, inventor Émile Reynaud exhibited his Théâtre Optique ("Optical Theatre") film system at the Musée Grévin in Paris. Reynaud's device, which projected a series of animated stories such as "Pauvre Pierrot" and "Autour d'une cabine", was displayed to over 500,000 visitors over the course of 12,800 shows. On 25, 29 and 30 November 1894, Ottomar Anschütz projected moving images from Electrotachyscope discs on a large screen in the darkened Grand Auditorium of a Post Office Building in Berlin. From 22 February to 30 March 1895, a commercial 1.5-hour program of 40 different scenes was screened for audiences of 300 people at the old Reichstag and received circa 4,000 visitors. Novelty era (1890s – early 1900s). Advances towards projection. In June 1889, American inventor Thomas Edison assigned a lab assistant, William Kennedy Dickson, to help develop a device that could produce visuals to accompany the sounds produced from the phonograph. Building upon previous machines by Muybridge, Marey, Anschütz and others, Dickson and his team created the Kinetoscope peep-box viewer, with celluloid loops containing about half a minute of motion picture entertainment. After an early preview on 20 May 1891, Edison introduced the machine in 1893. Many of the movies presented on the Kinetoscope showcased well-known vaudeville acts performing in Edison's Black Maria studio. The Kinetoscope quickly became a global sensation with multiple viewing parlors across major cities by 1895. As the initial novelty of the images wore off, the Edison Company was slow to diversify their repertoire of films and waning public interest caused business to slow by Spring 1895. To remedy declining profits, experiments, such as "The Dickson Experimental Sound Film", were conducted in an attempt to achieve the device's original goal of providing visual accompaniment for sound recordings. Limitations in syncing the sound to the visuals, however, prevented widespread application. During that same period, inventors began advancing technologies towards film projection that would eventually overtake Edison's peep-box format. Multiple inventors including Wordsworth Donisthorpe, Louis Le Prince, and William Friese-Greene experimented with prototype motion picture projection devices in the pursuit of creating and displaying films. The scenes in these experiments were usually filmed with family, friends or passing traffic as the moving subjects. Most of these films never passed the experimental stage and their efforts garnered little public attention until after cinema had become successful. In the latter half of 1895, brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière filmed a number of short scenes with their invention, the Cinématographe. On 28 December 1895, the brothers gave their first commercial screening in Paris (though evidence exists of demonstrations of the device to small audiences as early as October 1895). The screening consisted of ten films and lasted roughly 20 minutes. The program consisted mainly of actuality films such as "Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory" as truthful documents of the world, but the show also included the staged comedy "L'Arroseur Arrosé". The most advanced demonstration of film projection thus far, the Cinématographe was an instant success, bringing in an average of 2,500 to 3,000 francs daily by the end of January 1896. Following the first screening, the order and selection of films were changed often. The Lumière brothers' primary business interests were in selling cameras and film equipment to exhibitors, not the actual production of films. Despite this, filmmakers across the world were inspired by the potential of film as exhibitors brought their shows to new countries. This era of filmmaking, dubbed by film historian Tom Gunning as "the cinema of attractions", offered a relatively cheap and simple way of providing entertainment to the masses. Rather than focusing on stories, Gunning argues, filmmakers mainly relied on the ability to delight audiences through the "illusory power" of viewing sequences in motion, much as they did in the Kinetoscope era that preceded it. Despite this, early experimentation with fiction filmmaking (both in actuality film and other genres) did occur. Films were mostly screened inside temporary storefront spaces, in tents of traveling exhibitors at fairs, or as "dumb" acts in vaudeville programs. During this period, before the process of post-production was clearly defined, exhibitors were allowed to exercise their creative freedom in their presentations. To enhance the viewers' experience, some showings were accompanied by live musicians in an orchestra, a theatre organ, live sound effects and commentary spoken by the showman or projectionist. Experiments in film editing, special effects, narrative construction, and camera movement during this period by filmmakers in France, England, and the United States became influential in establishing an identity for film going forward. At both the Edison and Lumière studios, loose narratives such as the 1895 Edison film", Washday Troubles," established short relationship dynamics and simple storylines"." In 1896, "La Fée aux Choux" ("The Fairy of the Cabbages") was first released. Directed and edited by Alice Guy, the story is arguably the earliest narrative film in history, as well as the first film to be directed by a woman. That same year, the Edison Manufacturing Company released "The May Irwin Kiss" in May to widespread financial success. The film, which featured the first kiss in cinematic history, led to the earliest known calls for film censorship. Another early film producer was Australia's Limelight Department. Commencing in 1898, it was operated by The Salvation Army in Melbourne, Australia. The Limelight Department produced evangelistic material for use by the Salvation Army, including lantern slides as early as 1891, as well as private and government contracts. In its nineteen years of operation, the Limelight Department produced about 300 films of various lengths, making it one of largest film producers of its time. The Limelight Department made a 1904 film by Joseph Perry called Bushranging in North Queensland, which is believed to be the first ever film about bushrangers. Proliferation of actualities and newsreels. In its infancy, film was rarely recognized as an art form by presenters or audiences. Regarded by the upper class as a "vulgar" and "lowbrow" form of cheap entertainment, films largely appealed to the working class and were often too short to hold any strong narrative potential. Initial advertisements promoted the technologies used to screen films rather than the films themselves. As the devices became more familiar to audiences, their potential for capturing and recreating events was exploited primarily in the form of newsreels and actualities. During the creation of these films, cinematographers often drew upon aesthetic values established by past art forms such as framing and the intentional placement of the camera in the composition of their image. In a 1955 article for "The Quarterly of Film Radio and Television," film producer and historian Kenneth Macgowan asserted that the intentional staging and recreation of events for newsreels "brought storytelling to the screen". With the advertisement of film technologies over content, actualities initially began as a "series of views" that often contained shots of beautiful and lively places or performance acts. Following the success of their 1895 screening, The Lumière brothers established a company and sent cameramen across the world to capture new subjects for presentation. After the cinematographer shot scenes, they often exhibited their recordings locally and then sent them back to the company factory in Lyon to make duplicate prints for sale to whoever wanted them. In the process of filming actualities, especially those of real events, filmmakers discovered and experimented with multiple camera techniques to accommodate for their unpredictable nature. Due to the short length (often only one shot) of many actualities, catalogue records indicate that production companies marketed to exhibitors by promoting multiple actualities with related subject matters that could be purchased to complement each other. Exhibitors who bought the films often presented them in a program and would provide spoken accompaniment to explain the action on screen to audiences. The first paying audience for a motion picture gathered at Madison Square Garden to see a staged actuality that purported itself to be a boxing fight filmed by Woodville Latham using a device called the Eidoloscope on May 20, 1895. Commissioned by Latham, the French inventor Eugene Augustin Lauste created the device with additional expertise from William Kennedy Dickson and crafted a mechanism that came to be known as the Latham loop, which allowed for longer continuous runtimes and was less abrasive on the celluloid film. In subsequent years, screenings of actualities and newsreels proved to be profitable. In 1897, "The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight" was released. The film was a complete recording of a heavyweight world championship boxing match at Carson City, Nevada. It generated more income in box office than in live gate receipts and was the longest film produced at the time. Audiences had probably been drawn to the Corbett-Fitzsimmons film en masse because James J. Corbett (a.k.a. Gentleman Jim) had become a matinee idol since he had played a fictionalized version of himself in a stage play. From 1910 on, regular newsreels were exhibited and soon became a popular way of discovering the news before the advent of television the British Antarctic Expedition to the South Pole was filmed for the newsreels as were the suffragette demonstrations that were happening at the same time. F. Percy Smith was an early nature documentary pioneer working for Charles Urban when he pioneered the use of time lapse and micro cinematography in his 1910 documentary on the growth of flowers. Experimentation with narrative filmmaking. France: Georges Méliès, Pathé Frères, Gaumont Film Company. Following the successful exhibition of the Cinématographe, development of a motion picture industry rapidly accelerated in France. Multiple filmmakers experimented with the technology as they worked to attain the same success that the Lumière brothers had with their screening. These filmmakers established new companies such as the Star Film Company, Pathé Frères, and the Gaumont Film Company. The most widely cited progenitor of narrative filmmaking is the French filmmaker, Georges Méliès. Méliès was an illusionist who had previously used magic lantern projections to enhance his magic act. In 1895, Méliès attended the demonstration of the Cinematographe and recognized the potential of the device to aid his act. He attempted to buy a device from the Lumière brothers, but they refused. Months later, he bought a camera from Robert W. Paul and began experiments with the device by creating actualities. During this period of experimentation, Méliès discovered and implemented various special effects including the stop trick, the multiple exposure, and the use of dissolves in his films. At the end of 1896, Méliès established the Star Film Company and started producing, directing, and distributing a body of work that would eventually contain over 500 short films. Recognizing the narrative potential afforded by combining his theater background with the newly discovered effects for the camera, Méliès designed an elaborate stage that contained trapdoors and a fly system. The stage construction and editing techniques allowed for the development of more complex stories, such as the 1896 film, "Le Manoir du Diable" ("The House of the Devil"), regarded as a first in the horror film genre, and the 1899 film "Cendrillon" ("Cinderella"). In Méliès' films, he based the placement of the camera on the theatrical construct of proscenium framing, the metaphorical plane or fourth wall that divides the actors and the audience. Throughout his career, Méliès consistently placed the camera in a fixed position and eventually fell out of favor with audiences as other filmmakers experimented with more complex and creative techniques. Méliès is most widely known today for his 1902 film, "Le Voyage Dans La Lune (A Trip to the Moon)", where he used his expertise in effects and narrative construction to create the first science fiction film. In 1900, Charles Pathé began film production under the Pathé-Frères brand, with Ferdinand Zecca hired to lead the creative process. Prior to this focus on production, Pathé had become involved with the industry by exhibiting and selling what were likely counterfeit versions of the Kinetoscope in his phonograph shop. With the creative leadership of Zecca and the capability to mass-produce copies of the films through a partnership with a French toolmaking company, Charles Pathé sought to make Pathé-Frères the leading film producer in the country. Within the next few years, Pathé-Frères became the largest film studio in the world, with satellite offices in major cities and an expanding selection of films available for presentation. The company's films were varied in content, with directors specializing in various genres for fairground presentations throughout the early 1900s. The Gaumont Film Company was the main regional rival of Pathé-Frères. Founded in 1895 by Léon Gaumont, the firm initially sold photographic equipment and began film production in 1897, under the direction of Alice Guy, the industry's first female director. Her earlier films share many characteristics and themes with her contemporary competitors, such as the Lumières and Méliès. She explored dance and travel films, often combining the two, such as "Le Boléro" performed by Miss Saharet (1905) and "Tango" (1905). Many of Guy's early dance films were popular in music-hall attractions such as the serpentine dance films – also a staple of the Lumières and Thomas Edison film catalogs. In 1906, she made "The Life of Christ", a big-budget production for the time, which included 300 extras. England: Robert W Paul, Cecil Hepworth, The Brighton School. Both Cecil Hepworth and Robert W. Paul experimented with the use of different camera techniques in their films. Paul's 'Cinematograph Camera No. 1' of 1895 was the first camera to feature reverse-cranking, which allowed the same film footage to be exposed several times, thereby creating multiple exposures. This technique was first used in his 1901 film "Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost". Both filmmakers experimented with the speeds of the camera to generate new effects. Paul shot scenes from "On a Runaway Motor Car through Piccadilly Circus" (1899) by cranking the camera apparatus very slowly. When the film was projected at the usual 16 frames per second, the scenery appeared to be passing at great speed. Hepworth used the opposite effect in "The Indian Chief and the Seidlitz Powder" (1901). The Chief's movements are sped up by cranking the camera much faster than 16 frames per second, producing what modern audiences would call a "slow motion" effect. The first films to move from single shots to successive scenes began around the turn of the 20th century. Due to the loss of many early films, a conclusive shift from static singular shots to a series of scenes can be hard to determine. Despite these limitations, Michael Brooke of the British Film Institute attributes real film continuity, involving action moving from one sequence into another, to Robert W. Paul's 1898 film, "Come Along, Do!". Only a still from the second shot remains extant today. Released in 1901, the British film "Attack on a China Mission" was one of the first films to show a continuity of action across multiple scenes. The use of the intertitle to explain actions and dialogue on screen began in the early 1900s. Filmed intertitles were first used in Robert W. Paul's film, "Scrooge, or Marley's Ghost." In most countries, intertitles gradually came to be used to provide dialogue and narration for the film, thus dispensing the need for narration provided by exhibitors. Development of continuous action across multiple shots was furthered in England by a loosely associated group of film pioneers collectively termed "the Brighton School". These filmmakers included George Albert Smith and James Williamson, among others. Smith and Williamson experimented with action continuity and were likely the first to incorporate the use of inserts and close-ups between shots. A basic technique for trick cinematography was the double exposure of the film in the camera. The effect was pioneered by Smith in the 1898 film, "Photographing a Ghost". According to Smith's catalogue records, the (now lost) film chronicles a photographer's struggle to capture a ghost on camera. Utilizing the double exposure of the film, Smith overlaid a transparent ghostly figure onto the background in a comical manner to taunt the photographer. Smith's "The Corsican Brothers" was described in the catalogue of the Warwick Trading Company in 1900: "By extremely careful photography the ghost appears *quite transparent*. After indicating that he has been killed by a sword-thrust, and appealing for vengeance, he disappears. A 'vision' then appears showing the fatal duel in the snow." Smith also initiated the special effects technique of reverse motion. He did this by repeating the action a second time, while filming it with an inverted camera, and then joining the tail of the second negative to that of the first. The first films made using this device were "Tipsy, Topsy, Turvy" and "The Awkward Sign Painter". The earliest surviving example of this technique is Smith's "The House That Jack Built", made before September 1900. Cecil Hepworth took this technique further by printing the negatives of the forward motion in reverse frame by frame, producing a print in which the original action was exactly reversed. To do this he built a special printer in which the negative running through a projector was projected into the gate of a camera through a special lens giving a same-size image. This arrangement came to be called a "projection printer", and eventually an "optical printer". In 1898, George Albert Smith experimented with close-ups, filming shots of a man drinking beer and a woman using sniffing tobacco. The following year, Smith made "The Kiss in the Tunnel," a sequence consisting of three shots: a train enters a tunnel; a man and a woman exchange a brief kiss in the darkness and then return to their seats; the train exits the tunnel. Smith created the scenario in response to the success of a genre known as a phantom ride. In a phantom ride film, cameras would capture the motion and surroundings from the front of a moving train. The separate shots, when edited together, formed a distinct sequence of events and established causality from one shot to the next. Following "The Kiss in the Tunnel", Smith more definitively experimented with continuity of action across successive shots and began utilizing inserts in his films, such as "Grandma's Reading Glass" and "Mary Jane's Mishap". In 1900, Smith made "As Seen Through a Telescope." The main shot shows a street scene with a young man tying the shoelace and then caressing the foot of his girlfriend, while an old man observes this through a telescope. There is then a cut to close shot of the hands on the girl's foot shown inside a black circular mask, and then a cut back to the continuation of the original scene. James Williamson perfected narrative building techniques in his 1900 film, "Attack on a China Mission". The film, which film historian John Barnes later described as having "the most fully developed narrative of any film made in England up to that time", opens as the first shot shows Chinese Boxer rebels at the gate; it then cuts to the missionary family in the garden, where a fight ensues. The wife signals to British sailors from the balcony, who come and rescue them. The film also used the first "reverse angle" cut in film history. The following year, Williamson created "The Big Swallow". In the film. a man becomes irritated by the presence of the filmmaker and "swallows" the camera and its operator through the use of interpolated close-up shots. He combined these effects, along with superimpositions, use of wipe transitions to denote a scene change, and other techniques to create a film language, or "film grammar". James Williamson's use of continuous action in his 1901 film, "Stop Thief!" stimulated a film genre known as the "chase film." In the film, a tramp steals a leg of mutton from a butcher's boy in the first shot, is chased by the butcher's boy and assorted dogs in the following shot, and is finally caught by the dogs in the third shot. United States: The Edison Company and Edwin S. Porter. "The Execution of Mary Stuart", produced in 1895 by the Edison Company for viewing with the Kinetoscope, showed Mary Queen of Scots being executed in full view of the camera. The effect, known as the stop trick, was achieved by replacing the actor with a dummy for the final shot. The technique used in the film is seen as one of the earliest known uses of special effects in film. The American filmmaker Edwin S. Porter started making films for the Edison Company in 1901. A former projectionist hired by Thomas Edison to develop his new projection model known as the Vitascope, Porter was inspired in part by the works of Méliès, Smith, and Williamson and drew upon their newly crafted techniques to further the development of continuous narrative through editing. When he began making longer films in 1902, he put a dissolve between every shot, just as Georges Méliès was already doing, and he frequently had the same action repeated across the dissolves. In 1902, Porter shot "Life of an American Fireman" for the Edison Manufacturing Company and distributed the film the following year. In the film, Porter combined stock footage from previous Edison films with newly shot footage and spliced them together to convey a dramatic story of the rescue of a woman and her child by heroic firemen. Porter's film, "The Great Train Robbery" (1903), had a running time of twelve minutes, with twenty separate shots and ten different indoor and outdoor locations. The film is seen as a first in the Western film genre and is significant for the use of shots suggesting simultaneous action occurring at different locations. Porter's use of both staged and real outdoor environments helped to create a sense of space while the placement of the camera in a wider shot established depth and allowed for an extended duration of motion on screen. "The Great Train Robbery" served as one of the vehicles that would launch the film medium into mass popularity. That same year, the Miles Brothers opened the first film exchange in the country, which allowed permanent exhibitors to rent films from the company at a lower cost than the producers that sold their films outright. John P. Harris opened the first permanent theater devoted exclusively to the presentation of films, the nickelodeon, in 1905 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The idea rapidly took off and by 1908, there were around 8,000 nickelodeon theaters across the country. With the arrival of the nickelodeon, audience demand for a larger quantity of story films with a variety of subjects and locations led to a need to hire more creative talent and caused studios to invest in more elaborate stage designs. In 1908, Thomas Edison spearheaded the creation of a corporate trust between the major film companies in America known as the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC) to limit infringement on his patents. Members of the trust controlled every aspect of the filmmaking process from the creation of film stock, the production of films, and the distribution to cinemas through licensing arrangements. The trust lead to increased quality filmmaking spurred by internal competition and placed limits on the amount of foreign films to encourage the growth of the American film industry, but it also discouraged the creation of feature films. By 1915, the MPPC had lost most of its hold on the film industry as the companies moved towards the wider production of feature films. Continued international growth (1900s–1910s). New film producing countries. With the worldwide film boom, more countries now joined Britain, France, Germany and the United States in serious film production. In Italy, production was spread over several centers, Turin was the first major film production centre, and Milan and Naples gave birth to the first film magazines. In Turin, Ambrosio was the first company in the field in 1905, and remained the largest in the country through this period. Its most substantial rival was Cines in Rome, which started producing in 1906. The great strength of the Italian industry was historical epics, with large casts and massive scenery. As early as 1911, Giovanni Pastrone's two-reel "La Caduta di Troia (The Fall of Troy)" made a big impression worldwide, and it was followed by even bigger productions like "Quo Vadis?" (1912), which ran for 90 minutes, and Pastrone's "Cabiria" of 1914, which ran for two and a half hours. Italian companies also had a strong line in slapstick comedy, with actors like André Deed, known locally as "Cretinetti", and elsewhere as "Foolshead" and "Gribouille", achieving worldwide fame with his almost surrealistic gags. The most important film-producing country in Northern Europe up until the First World War was Denmark. The Nordisk company was set up there in 1906 by Ole Olsen, a fairground showman, and after a brief period imitating the successes of French and British filmmakers, in 1907 he produced 67 films, most directed by Viggo Larsen, with sensational subjects like "Den hvide Slavinde (The White Slave)", "Isbjørnejagt (Polar Bear Hunt)" and "Løvejagten (The Lion Hunt)". By 1910, new smaller Danish companies began joining the business, and besides making more films about the white slave trade, they contributed other new subjects. The most important of these finds was Asta Nielsen in "Afgrunden (The Abyss)", directed by Urban Gad for Kosmorama, This combined the circus, sex, jealousy and murder, all put over with great conviction, and pushed the other Danish filmmakers further in this direction. By 1912, the Danish film companies were multiplying rapidly. The Swedish film industry was smaller and slower to get started than the Danish industry. Here, Charles Magnusson, a newsreel cameraman for the Svenskabiografteatern cinema chain, started fiction film production for them in 1909, directing a number of the films himself. Production increased in 1912, when the company engaged Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller as directors. They started out by imitating the subjects favoured by the Danish film industry, but by 1913 they were producing their own strikingly original work, which sold very well. Russia began its film industry in 1908 with Pathé shooting some fiction subjects there, and then the creation of real Russian film companies by Aleksandr Drankov and Aleksandr Khanzhonkov. The Khanzhonkov company quickly became much the largest Russian film company, and remained so until 1918. In Germany, Oskar Messter had been involved in film-making from 1896, but did not make a significant number of films per year until 1910. When the worldwide film boom started, he, and the few other people in the German film business, continued to sell prints of their own films outright, which put them at a disadvantage. It was only when Paul Davidson, the owner of a chain of cinemas, brought Asta Nielsen and Urban Gad to Germany from Denmark in 1911, and set up a production company, Projektions-AG "Union" (PAGU), that a change-over to renting prints began. Messter replied with a series of longer films starring Henny Porten, but although these did well in the German-speaking world, they were not particularly successful internationally, unlike the Asta Nielsen films. Another of the growing German film producers just before World War I was the German branch of the French Éclair company, Deutsche Éclair. This was expropriated by the German government, and turned into DECLA when the war started. But altogether, German producers only had a minor part of the German market in 1914. Overall, from about 1910, American films had the largest share of the market in all European countries except France, and even in France, the American films had just pushed the local production out of first place on the eve of World War I. Pathé Frères expanded and significantly shaped the American film business, creating many "firsts" in the film industry, such as adding titles and subtitles to films for the first time, releasing scrolls for the first time, introducing film posters for the first time, producing color pictures for the first time, taking out commercial bills for the first time, contacting exhibitors and studying their needs for the first time. The world's largest film supplier, Pathé, is limited to the U.S. market, which has reached a saturation level, so the U.S. seeks additional profits from foreign markets. Movies are defined as "pure" American phenomenon in the United States. Film technique. New film techniques that were introduced in this period include the use of artificial lighting, fire effects and low-key lighting (i.e. lighting in which most of the frame is dark) for enhanced atmosphere during sinister scenes. Continuity of action from shot to shot was also refined, such as in Pathé's "le Cheval emballé (The Runaway Horse)" (1907) where cross-cutting between parallel actions is used. D. W. Griffith also began using cross-cutting in the film "The Fatal Hour", made in July 1908. Another development was the use of the Point of View shot, first used in 1910 in Vitagraph's "Back to Nature". Insert shots were also used for artistic purposes; the Italian film "La mala planta (The Evil Plant)", directed by Mario Caserini had an insert shot of a snake slithering over the "Evil Plant". By 1914 it was widely held in the American film industry that cross-cutting was most generally useful because it made possible the elimination of uninteresting parts of the action that play no part in advancing the drama. In 1909, 35mm became the internationally recognized theatrical film gauge. As films grew longer, specialist writers were employed to simplify more complex stories derived from novels or plays into a form that could be contained on one reel. Genres began to be used as categories; the main division was into comedy and drama, but these categories were further subdivided. Intertitles containing lines of dialogue began to be used consistently from 1908 onwards, such as in Vitagraph's "An Auto Heroine; or, The Race for the Vitagraph Cup and How It Was Won". The dialogue was eventually inserted into the middle of the scene and became commonplace by 1912. The introduction of dialogue titles transformed the nature of film narrative. When dialogue titles came to be always cut into a scene just after a character starts speaking, and then left with a cut to the character just before they finish speaking, then one had something that was effectively the equivalent of a present-day sound film. During World War I and industry. The years of the First World War were a complex transitional period for the film industry. The exhibition of films changed from short one-reel programmes to feature films. Exhibition venues became larger and began charging higher prices. In the United States, these changes brought destruction to many film companies, the Vitagraph company being an exception. Film production began to shift to Los Angeles during World War I. The Universal Film Manufacturing Company was formed in 1912 as an umbrella company. New entrants included the Jesse Lasky Feature Play Company, and Famous Players, both formed in 1913, and later amalgamated into Famous Players–Lasky. The biggest success of these years was David Wark Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation" (1915). Griffith followed this up with the even bigger "Intolerance" (1916), but, due to the high quality of film produced in the US, the market for their films was high. In France, film production shut down due to the general military mobilization of the country at the start of the war. Although film production began again in 1915, it was on a reduced scale, and the biggest companies gradually retired from production. Italian film production held up better, although so called "diva films", starring anguished female leads were a commercial failure. In Denmark, the Nordisk company increased its production so much in 1915 and 1916 that it could not sell all its films, which led to a very sharp decline in Danish production, and the end of Denmark's importance on the world film scene. The German film industry was seriously weakened by the war. The most important of the new film producers at the time was Joe May, who made a series of thrillers and adventure films through the war years, but Ernst Lubitsch also came into prominence with a series of very successful comedies and dramas. New techniques. At this time, studios were blacked out to allow shooting to be unaffected by changing sunlight. This was replaced with floodlights and spotlights. The widespread adoption of irising-in and out to begin and end scenes caught on in this period. This is the revelation of a film shot in a circular mask, which gradually gets larger until it expands beyond the frame. Other shaped slits were used, including vertical and diagonal apertures. A new idea taken over from still photography was "soft focus". This began in 1915, with some shots being intentionally thrown out of focus for expressive effect, as in Mary Pickford starrer "Fanchon the Cricket". It was during this period that camera effects intended to convey the subjective feelings of characters in a film really began to be established. These could now be done as Point of View (POV) shots, as in Sidney Drew's "The Story of the Glove" (1915), where a wobbly hand-held shot of a door and its keyhole represents the POV of a drunken man. The use of anamorphic (in the general sense of distorted shape) images first appears in these years when Abel Gance directed "la Folie du Docteur Tube (The Madness of Dr. Tube)". In this film the effect of a drug administered to a group of people was suggested by shooting the scenes reflected in a distorting mirror of the fair-ground type. Symbolic effects taken over from conventional literary and artistic tradition continued to make some appearances in films during these years. In D. W. Griffith's "The Avenging Conscience" (1914), the title "The birth of the evil thought" precedes a series of three shots of the protagonist looking at a spider, and ants eating an insect. Symbolist art and literature from the turn of the century also had a more general effect on a small number of films made in Italy and Russia. The supine acceptance of death resulting from passion and forbidden longings was a major feature of this art, and states of delirium dwelt on at length were important as well. The use of insert shots, i.e. close-ups of objects other than faces, had already been established by the Brighton school, but were infrequently used before 1914. It is really only with Griffith's "The Avenging Conscience" that a new phase in the use of the Insert Shot starts. As well as the symbolic inserts already mentioned, the film also made extensive use of large numbers of Big Close Up shots of clutching hands and tapping feet as a means of emphasizing those parts of the body as indicators of psychological tension. Atmospheric inserts were developed in Europe in the late 1910s. This kind of shot is one in a scene which neither contains any of the characters in the story, nor is a Point of View shot seen by one of them. An early example is when Maurice Tourneur directed "The Pride of the Clan" (1917), in which there is a series of shots of waves beating on a rocky shore to demonstrate the harsh lives of the fishing folk. Maurice Elvey's "Nelson; The Story of England's Immortal Naval Hero" (1919) has a symbolic sequence dissolving from a picture of Kaiser Wilhelm II to a peacock, and then to a battleship. By 1914, continuity cinema was the established mode of commercial cinema. One of the advanced continuity techniques involved an accurate and smooth transition from one shot to another. Cutting to "different" angles within a scene also became well-established as a technique for dissecting a scene into shots in American films. If the direction of the shot changes by more than ninety degrees, it is called a reverse-angle cutting. The leading figure in the full development of reverse-angle cutting was Ralph Ince in his films, such as "The Right Girl" and "His Phantom Sweetheart". The use of flash-back structures continued to develop in this period, with the usual way of entering and leaving a flash-back being through a dissolve. The Vitagraph company's "The Man That Might Have Been" (William J. Humphrey, 1914), is even more complex, with a series of reveries and flash-backs that contrast the protagonist's real passage through life with what might have been, if his son had not died. After 1914, cross cutting between parallel actions came to be used more so in American films than in European ones. Cross-cutting was used to get new effects of contrast, such as the cross-cut sequence in Cecil B. DeMille's "The Whispering Chorus" (1918), in which a supposedly dead husband is having a liaison with a Chinese prostitute in an opium den, while simultaneously his unknowing wife is being remarried in church. Silent film tinting, too, gained popularity during these periods. Amber tinting meant daytime, or vividly-lit nighttime, blue tints meant dawn or dimly-lit night, red tinting represented fire scenes, green tinting meant a mysterious atmosphere, and brown tints (aka sepia toning) were used usually for full-length films instead of individual scenes. D.W. Griffiths' ground-breaking epic, "The Birth of a Nation", the famous 1920 film "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", and the Robert Wiene epic from the same year, "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari", are some notable examples of tinted silent films. "The Photo-Drama of Creation", first shown to audiences in 1914, was the first major screenplay to incorporate synchronized sound, moving film, and color slides. Until 1927, most motion pictures were produced without sound. This period is commonly referred to as the silent era of film. Film art. The general trend in the development of cinema, led from the United States, was towards using the newly developed specifically filmic devices for expression of the narrative content of film stories, and combining this with the standard dramatic structures already in use in commercial theatre. D. W. Griffith had the highest standing amongst American directors in the industry, because of the dramatic excitement he conveyed to the audience through his films. Cecil B. DeMille's "The Cheat" (1915), brought out the moral dilemmas facing their characters in a more subtle way than Griffith. DeMille was also in closer touch with the reality of contemporary American life. Maurice Tourneur was also highly ranked for the pictorial beauties of his films, together with the subtlety of his handling of fantasy, while at the same time he was capable of getting greater naturalism from his actors at appropriate moments, as in "A Girl's Folly" (1917). Sidney Drew was the leader in developing "polite comedy", while slapstick was refined by Fatty Arbuckle and Charles Chaplin, who both started with Mack Sennett's Keystone company. They reduced the usual frenetic pace of Sennett's films to give the audience a chance to appreciate the subtlety and finesse of their movement, and the cleverness of their gags. By 1917 Chaplin was also introducing more dramatic plot into his films, and mixing the comedy with sentiment. In Russia, Yevgeni Bauer put a slow intensity of acting combined with Symbolist overtones onto film in a unique way. In Sweden, Victor Sjöström made a series of films that combined the realities of people's lives with their surroundings in a striking manner, while Mauritz Stiller developed sophisticated comedy to a new level. In Germany, Ernst Lubitsch got his inspiration from the stage work of Max Reinhardt, both in bourgeois comedy and in spectacle, and applied this to his films, culminating in his "die Puppe" ("The Doll"), "die Austernprinzessin" ("The Oyster Princess") and "Madame DuBarry". 1920s. Golden years of German cinema, Hollywood triumphant. At the start of the First World War, French and Italian cinema had been the most globally popular. The war came as a devastating interruption to European film industries. Throughout the early 20th century, screen artists continued to learn how to work with cameras and create illusions using space and time in their shots. This newly introduced form of creativity made way for a whole new group of people to be introduced to stardom, including David W. Griffith, who made a name for himself with his 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation. In 1920, there were two major changes to the film industry: the introduction of sound and the creation of studio systems. In the 1920s, talent who had been working independently began joining studios and working with other actors and directors. In 1927, The Jazz Singer was released, bringing sound to the motion picture industry. The German cinema, marked by those times, saw the era of the German Expressionist film movement. Berlin was its center with the Filmstudio Babelsberg, which is the oldest large-scale film studio in the world. The first Expressionist films made up for a lack of lavish budgets by using set designs with wildly non-realistic, geometrically absurd angles, along with designs painted on walls and floors to represent lights, shadows, and objects. The plots and stories of the Expressionist films often dealt with madness, insanity, betrayal and other "intellectual" topics triggered by the experiences of World War I. Films like "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (1920), "Nosferatu" (1922) and "M" (1931), similar to the movement they were part of, had a historic impact on film itself. Movies like "Metropolis" (1927) and "Woman in the Moon" (1929) partly created the genre of science fiction films and Lotte Reiniger became a pioneer in animation, producing animated feature films like The Adventures of Prince Achmed, the oldest surviving and oldest European made animated movie. Many German and German-based directors, actors, writers and others emigrated to the US when the Nazis gained power, giving Hollywood and the American film industry the final edge in its competition with other movie producing countries. The American industry, or "Hollywood", as it was becoming known after its new geographical center in California, gained the position it has held, more or less, ever since: film factory for the world and exporting its product to most countries on earth. By the 1920s, the United States reached what is still its era of greatest-ever output, producing an average of 800 "feature" films annually, or 82% of the global total (Eyman, 1997). The comedies of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, the swashbuckling adventures of Douglas Fairbanks and the romances of Clara Bow, to cite just a few examples, made these performers' faces well known on every continent. The Western visual norm that would become classical continuity editing was developed and exported – although its adoption was slower in some non-Western countries without strong realist traditions in art and drama, such as Japan. This development was contemporary with the growth of the studio system and its greatest publicity method, the star system, which characterized American film for decades to come and provided models for other film industries. The studios' efficient, top-down control over all stages of their product enabled a new and ever-growing level of lavish production and technical sophistication. At the same time, the system's commercial regimentation and focus on glamorous escapism discouraged daring and ambition beyond a certain degree, a prime example being the brief but still legendary directing career of the iconoclastic Erich von Stroheim in the late teens and the 1920s. In 1924, Sam Goldwyn, Louis B. Mayer, and the Metro Pictures Corporation create MGM. 1930s. Sound era. During late 1927, Warners released "The Jazz Singer", which was mostly silent but contained what is generally regarded as the first synchronized dialogue (and singing) in a feature film; but this process was actually accomplished first by Charles Taze Russell in 1914 with the lengthy film "The Photo-Drama of Creation". This drama consisted of picture slides and moving pictures synchronized with phonograph records of talks and music. The early sound-on-disc processes such as Vitaphone were soon superseded by sound-on-film methods like Fox Movietone, DeForest Phonofilm, and RCA Photophone. The trend convinced the largely reluctant industrialists that "talking pictures", or "talkies", were the future. A lot of attempts were made before the success of "The Jazz Singer", that can be seen in the List of film sound systems. And in 1926, Warner Bros. Debuts the film "Don Juan" with synchronized sound effects and music. The change was remarkably swift. By the end of 1929, Hollywood was almost all-talkie, with several competing sound systems (soon to be standardized). Total changeover was slightly slower in the rest of the world, principally for economic reasons. Cultural reasons were also a factor in countries like China and Japan, where silents co-existed successfully with sound well into the 1930s, indeed producing what would be some of the most revered classics in those countries, like Wu Yonggang's "The Goddess" (China, 1934) and Yasujirō Ozu's "I Was Born, But..." (Japan, 1932). But even in Japan, a figure such as the benshi, the live narrator who was a major part of Japanese silent cinema, found his acting career was ending. Sound further tightened the grip of major studios in numerous countries: the vast expense of the transition overwhelmed smaller competitors, while the novelty of sound lured vastly larger audiences for those producers that remained. In the case of the U.S., some historians credit sound with saving the Hollywood studio system in the face of the Great Depression (Parkinson, 1995). Thus began what is now often called "The Golden Age of Hollywood", which refers roughly to the period beginning with the introduction of sound until the late 1940s. The American cinema reached its peak of efficiently manufactured glamour and global appeal during this period. The top actors of the era are now thought of as the classic film stars, such as Clark Gable, Katharine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, Greta Garbo, and the greatest box office draw of the 1930s, child performer Shirley Temple. Creative impact of sound. Creatively, however, the rapid transition was a difficult one, and in some ways, film briefly reverted to the conditions of its earliest days. The late '20s were full of static, stagey talkies as artists in front of and behind the camera struggled with the stringent limitations of the early sound equipment and their own uncertainty as to how to use the new medium. Many stage performers, directors and writers were introduced to cinema as producers sought personnel experienced in dialogue-based storytelling. Many major silent filmmakers and actors were unable to adjust and found their careers severely curtailed or even ended. This awkward period was fairly short-lived. 1929 was a watershed year: William Wellman with "Chinatown Nights" and "The Man I Love", Rouben Mamoulian with "Applause", Alfred Hitchcock with "Blackmail" (Britain's first sound feature), were among the directors to bring greater fluidity to talkies and experiment with the expressive use of sound (Eyman, 1997). In this, they both benefited from, and pushed further, technical advances in microphones and cameras, and capabilities for editing and post-synchronizing sound (rather than recording all sound directly at the time of filming). Sound films emphasized black history, and benefited different genres to a greater extent than silents did. Most obviously, the musical film was born; the first classic-style Hollywood musical was "The Broadway Melody" (1929), and the form would find its first major creator in choreographer/director Busby Berkeley ("42nd Street", 1933, "Dames", 1934). In France, avant-garde director René Clair made surreal use of song and dance in comedies like "Under the Roofs of Paris" (1930) and "Le Million" (1931). Universal Pictures began releasing gothic horror films like "Dracula" and "Frankenstein" (both 1931). In 1933, RKO Pictures released Merian C. Cooper's classic "giant monster" film "King Kong". The trend thrived best in India, where the influence of the country's traditional song-and-dance drama made the musical the basic form of most sound films (Cook, 1990); virtually unnoticed by the Western world for decades, this Indian popular cinema would nevertheless become the world's most prolific. ("See also Bollywood.") At this time, American gangster films like "Little Caesar" and Wellman's "The Public Enemy" (both 1931) became popular. Dialogue now took precedence over slapstick in Hollywood comedies: the fast-paced, witty banter of "The Front Page" (1931) or "It Happened One Night" (1934), the sexual double entendres of Mae West ("She Done Him Wrong", 1933), or the often subversively anarchic nonsense talk of the Marx Brothers ("Duck Soup", 1933). Walt Disney, who had previously been in the short cartoon business, stepped into feature films with the first English-speaking animated feature "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", released by RKO Pictures in 1937. 1939, a major year for American cinema, brought such films as "The Wizard of Oz" and "Gone with The Wind". Color in cinema. Circa 80 percent of the films of the 1890s to the 1920s had colours. Many made use of monochromatic film tinting dye baths, some had the frames painted in multiple transparent colours by hand, and since 1905 there was a mechanized stencil-process (Pathécolor). Kinemacolor, the first commercially successful cinematographic colour process, produced films in two colours (red and cyan) from 1908 to 1914. Technicolor's natural three-strip colour process was very successfully introduced in 1932 with Walt Disney's animated Academy Award-winning short "Flowers and Trees", directed by Burt Gillett. Technicolor was initially used mainly for musicals like "The Wizard of Oz" (1939), in costume films such as "The Adventures of Robin Hood", and in animation. Not long after television became prevalent in the early 1950s, colour became more or less standard for theatrical movies. 1940s. World War II and its aftermath. The desire for wartime propaganda against the opposition created a renaissance in the film industry in Britain, with realistic war dramas like "49th Parallel" (1941), "Went the Day Well?" (1942), "The Way Ahead" (1944) and Noël Coward and David Lean's celebrated naval film "In Which We Serve" in 1942, which won a special Academy Award. These existed alongside more flamboyant films like Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" (1943), "A Canterbury Tale" (1944) and "A Matter of Life and Death" (1946), as well as Laurence Olivier's 1944 film "Henry V", based on the Shakespearean history "Henry V". The success of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" allowed Disney to make more animated features like "Pinocchio" (1940), "Fantasia" (1940), "Dumbo" (1941) and "Bambi" (1942). The onset of US involvement in World War II also brought a proliferation of films as both patriotism and propaganda. American propaganda films included "Desperate Journey" (1942), "Mrs. Miniver" (1942), "Forever and a Day" (1943) and "Objective, Burma!" (1945). Notable American films from the war years include the anti-Nazi "Watch on the Rhine" (1943), scripted by Dashiell Hammett; "Shadow of a Doubt" (1943), Hitchcock's direction of a script by Thornton Wilder; the George M. Cohan biopic, "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (1942), starring James Cagney, and the immensely popular "Casablanca", with Humphrey Bogart. Bogart would star in 36 films between 1934 and 1942 including John Huston's "The Maltese Falcon" (1941), one of the first films now considered a classic film noir. In 1941, RKO Pictures released "Citizen Kane" made by Orson Welles. It is often considered the greatest film of all time. It would set the stage for the modern motion picture, as it revolutionized film story telling. The strictures of wartime also brought an interest in more fantastical subjects. These included Britain's Gainsborough melodramas (including "The Man in Grey" and "The Wicked Lady"), and films like "Here Comes Mr. Jordan", "Heaven Can Wait", "I Married a Witch" and "Blithe Spirit". Val Lewton also produced a series of atmospheric and influential small-budget horror films, some of the more famous examples being "Cat People", "Isle of the Dead" and "The Body Snatcher". The decade probably also saw the so-called "women's pictures", such as "Now, Voyager", "Random Harvest" and "Mildred Pierce" at the peak of their popularity. 1946 saw RKO Radio releasing "It's a Wonderful Life" directed by Italian-born filmmaker Frank Capra. Soldiers returning from the war would provide the inspiration for films like "The Best Years of Our Lives", and many of those in the film industry had served in some capacity during the war. Samuel Fuller's experiences in World War II would influence his largely autobiographical films of later decades such as "The Big Red One". The Actors Studio was founded in October 1947 by Elia Kazan, Robert Lewis, and Cheryl Crawford, and the same year Oskar Fischinger filmed "Motion Painting No. 1". In 1943, "Ossessione" was screened in Italy, marking the beginning of Italian neorealism. Major films of this type during the 1940s included "Bicycle Thieves", "Rome, Open City", and "La Terra Trema". In 1952 "Umberto D" was released, usually considered the last film of this type. In the late 1940s, in Britain, Ealing Studios embarked on their series of celebrated comedies, including "Whisky Galore!", "Passport to Pimlico", "Kind Hearts and Coronets" and "The Man in the White Suit", and Carol Reed directed his influential thrillers "Odd Man Out", "The Fallen Idol" and "The Third Man". David Lean was also rapidly becoming a force in world cinema with "Brief Encounter" and his Dickens adaptations "Great Expectations" and "Oliver Twist", and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger would experience the best of their creative partnership with films like "Black Narcissus" and "The Red Shoes". 1950s. The House Un-American Activities Committee investigated Hollywood in the early 1950s. Protested by the Hollywood Ten before the committee, the hearings resulted in the blacklisting of many actors, writers and directors, including Chayefsky, Charlie Chaplin, and Dalton Trumbo, and many of these fled to Europe, especially the United Kingdom. The Cold War era zeitgeist translated into a type of near-paranoia manifested in themes such as invading armies of evil aliens ("Invasion of the Body Snatchers", "The War of the Worlds") and communist fifth columnists ("The Manchurian Candidate"). During the immediate post-war years the cinematic industry was also threatened by television, and the increasing popularity of the medium meant that some film theatres would bankrupt and close. The demise of the "studio system" spurred the self-commentary of films like "Sunset Boulevard" (1950) and "The Bad and the Beautiful" (1952). In 1950, the Lettrists avante-gardists caused riots at the Cannes Film Festival, when Isidore Isou's "Treatise on Slime and Eternity" was screened. After their criticism of Charlie Chaplin and split with the movement, the Ultra-Lettrists continued to cause disruptions when they showed their new hypergraphical techniques. The most notorious film is Guy Debord's "Howls for Sade" of 1952. Distressed by the increasing number of closed theatres, studios and companies would find new and innovative ways to bring audiences back. These included attempts to widen their appeal with new screen formats. Cinemascope, which would remain a 20th Century Fox distinction until 1967, was announced with 1953's "The Robe". VistaVision, Cinerama, and Todd-AO boasted a "bigger is better" approach to marketing films to a dwindling US audience. This resulted in the revival of epic films to take advantage of the new big screen formats. Some of the most successful examples of these Biblical and historical spectaculars include "The Ten Commandments" (1956), "The Vikings" (1958), "Ben-Hur" (1959), "Spartacus" (1960) and "El Cid" (1961). Also during this period a number of other significant films were produced in Todd-AO, developed by Mike Todd shortly before his death, including "Oklahoma!" (1955), "Around the World in 80 Days" (1956), "South Pacific" (1958) and "Cleopatra" (1963) plus many more. Gimmicks also proliferated to lure in audiences. The fad for 3-D film would last for only two years, 1952–1954, and helped sell "House of Wax" and "Creature from the Black Lagoon". Producer William Castle would tout films featuring "Emergo" "Percepto", the first of a series of gimmicks that would remain popular marketing tools for Castle and others throughout the 1960s. In 1954, Dorothy Dandridge was nominated as the best actress at the Oscar for her role in the film Carman Jones. She became the first black woman to be nominated for this award. In the U.S., a post-WW2 tendency toward questioning the establishment and societal norms and the early activism of the civil rights movement was reflected in Hollywood films such as "Blackboard Jungle" (1955), "On the Waterfront" (1954), Paddy Chayefsky's "Marty" and Reginald Rose's "12 Angry Men" (1957). Disney continued making animated films, notably; "Cinderella" (1950), "Peter Pan" (1953), "Lady and the Tramp" (1955), and "Sleeping Beauty" (1959). He began, however, getting more involved in live action films, producing classics like "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" (1954), and "Old Yeller" (1957). Television began competing seriously with films projected in theatres, but surprisingly it promoted more filmgoing rather than curtailing it. "Limelight" is probably a unique film in at least one interesting respect. Its two leads, Charlie Chaplin and Claire Bloom, were in the industry in no less than three different centuries. In the 19th century, Chaplin made his theatrical debut at the age of eight, in 1897, in a clog dancing troupe, The Eight Lancaster Lads. In the 21st century, Bloom is still enjoying a full and productive career, having appeared in dozens of films and television series produced up to and including 2022. She received particular acclaim for her role in "The King's Speech" (2010). Golden age of Asian cinema. Following the end of World War II in the 1940s, the following decade, the 1950s, marked a 'golden age' for non-English world cinema, especially for Asian cinema. Many of the most critically acclaimed Asian films of all time were produced during this decade, including Yasujirō Ozu's "Tokyo Story" (1953), Satyajit Ray's "The Apu Trilogy" (1955–1959) and "Jalsaghar" (1958), Kenji Mizoguchi's "Ugetsu" (1954) and "Sansho the Bailiff" (1954), Raj Kapoor's "Awaara" (1951), Mikio Naruse's "Floating Clouds" (1955), Guru Dutt's "Pyaasa" (1957) and "Kaagaz Ke Phool" (1959), and the Akira Kurosawa films "Rashomon" (1950), "Ikiru" (1952), "Seven Samurai" (1954) and "Throne of Blood" (1957). During Japanese cinema's 'Golden Age' of the 1950s, successful films included "Rashomon" (1950), "Seven Samurai" (1954) and "The Hidden Fortress" (1958) by Akira Kurosawa, as well as Yasujirō Ozu's "Tokyo Story" (1953) and Ishirō Honda's "Godzilla" (1954). These films have had a profound influence on world cinema. In particular, Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" has been remade several times as Western films, such as "The Magnificent Seven" (1960) and "Battle Beyond the Stars" (1980), and has also inspired several Bollywood films, such as "Sholay" (1975) and "China Gate" (1998). "Rashomon" was also remade as "The Outrage" (1964), and inspired films with "Rashomon effect" storytelling methods, such as "Andha Naal" (1954), "The Usual Suspects" (1995) and "Hero" (2002). "The Hidden Fortress" was also an inspiration behind George Lucas' "Star Wars" (1977). Other famous Japanese filmmakers from this period include Kenji Mizoguchi, Mikio Naruse, Hiroshi Inagaki and Nagisa Oshima. Japanese cinema later became one of the main inspirations behind the New Hollywood movement of the 1960s to 1980s. During Indian cinema's 'Golden Age' of the 1950s, it was producing 200 films annually, while Indian independent films gained greater recognition through international film festivals. One of the most famous was "The Apu Trilogy" (1955–1959) from critically acclaimed Bengali film director Satyajit Ray, whose films had a profound influence on world cinema, with directors such as Akira Kurosawa, Martin Scorsese, James Ivory, Abbas Kiarostami, Elia Kazan, François Truffaut, Steven Spielberg, Carlos Saura, Jean-Luc Godard, Isao Takahata, Gregory Nava, Ira Sachs, Wes Anderson and Danny Boyle being influenced by his cinematic style. According to Michael Sragow of "The Atlantic Monthly", the "youthful coming-of-age dramas that have flooded art houses since the mid-fifties owe a tremendous debt to the Apu trilogy". Subrata Mitra's cinematographic technique of bounce lighting also originates from "The Apu Trilogy". Other famous Indian filmmakers from this period include Guru Dutt, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Raj Kapoor, Bimal Roy, K. Asif and Mehboob Khan. The cinema of South Korea also experienced a 'Golden Age' in the 1950s, beginning with director Lee Kyu-hwan's tremendously successful remake of "Chunhyang-jon" (1955). That year also saw the release of "Yangsan Province" by the renowned director, Kim Ki-young, marking the beginning of his productive career. Both the quality and quantity of filmmaking had increased rapidly by the end of the 1950s. South Korean films, such as Lee Byeong-il's 1956 comedy "Sijibganeun nal (The Wedding Day)", had begun winning international awards. In contrast to the beginning of the 1950s, when only 5 films were made per year, 111 films were produced in South Korea in 1959. The 1950s was also a 'Golden Age' for Philippine cinema, with the emergence of more artistic and mature films, and significant improvement in cinematic techniques among filmmakers. The studio system produced frenetic activity in the local film industry as many films were made annually and several local talents started to earn recognition abroad. The premiere Philippine directors of the era included Gerardo de Leon, Gregorio Fernández, Eddie Romero, Lamberto Avellana, and Cirio Santiago. 1960s. During the 1960s, the studio system in Hollywood declined, because many films were now being made on location in other countries, or using studio facilities abroad, such as Pinewood in the UK and Cinecittà in Rome. "Hollywood" films were still largely aimed at family audiences, and it was often the more old-fashioned films that produced the studios' biggest successes. Productions like "Mary Poppins" (1964), "My Fair Lady" (1964) and "The Sound of Music" (1965) were among the biggest money-makers of the decade. The growth in independent producers and production companies, and the increase in the power of individual actors also contributed to the decline of traditional Hollywood studio production. There was also an increasing awareness of foreign language cinema in America during this period. During the late 1950s and 1960s, the French New Wave directors such as François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard produced films such as "Les quatre cents coups", "Breathless" and "Jules et Jim" which broke the rules of Hollywood cinema's narrative structure. As well, audiences were becoming aware of Italian films like Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" (1960), "8½" (1963) and the stark dramas of Sweden's Ingmar Bergman. In Britain, the "Free Cinema" of Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson and others lead to a group of realistic and innovative dramas including "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning", "A Kind of Loving" and "This Sporting Life". Other British films such as "Repulsion", "Darling", "Alfie", "Blowup" and "Georgy Girl" (all in 1965–1966) helped to reduce prohibitions of sex and nudity on screen, while the casual sex and violence of the James Bond films, beginning with "Dr. No" in 1962 would render the series popular worldwide. During the 1960s, Ousmane Sembène produced several French- and Wolof-language films and became the "father" of African Cinema. In Latin America, the dominance of the "Hollywood" model was challenged by many film makers. Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino called for a politically engaged Third Cinema in contrast to Hollywood and the European auteur cinema. In Egypt, the golden age of Egyptian cinema continued in the 1960s at the hands of many directors, and Egyptian cinema greatly appreciated women at that time, such as Soad Hosny. The Zulfikar brothers; Ezz El-Dine Zulfikar, Salah Zulfikar and Mahmoud Zulfikar were on a date with many productions, including Ezz El Dine Zulfikar's "The River of Love" (1960), Mahmoud Zulfikar's "Soft Hands" (1964), and "Dearer Than My Life" (1965) starring Salah Zulfikar and Salah Zulfikar Films production; "My Wife, the Director General" (1966) as well as Youssef Chahine's "Saladin" (1963). Further, the nuclear paranoia of the age, and the threat of an apocalyptic nuclear exchange (like the 1962 close-call with the USSR during the Cuban Missile Crisis) prompted a reaction within the film community as well. Films like Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove" and "Fail Safe" with Henry Fonda were produced in a Hollywood that was once known for its overt patriotism and wartime propaganda. In documentary film the sixties saw the blossoming of Direct Cinema, an observational style of film making as well as the advent of more overtly partisan films like "In the Year of the Pig" about the Vietnam War by Emile de Antonio. By the late 1960s however, Hollywood filmmakers were beginning to create more innovative and ground-breaking films that reflected the social revolution taken over much of the western world such as "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967), "The Graduate" (1967), "" (1968), "Rosemary's Baby" (1968), "Midnight Cowboy" (1969), "Easy Rider" (1969) and "The Wild Bunch" (1969). "Bonnie and Clyde" is often considered the beginning of the so-called New Hollywood. In Japanese cinema, Academy Award-winning director Akira Kurosawa produced "Yojimbo" (1961), which like his previous films also had a profound influence around the world. The influence of this film is most apparent in Sergio Leone's "A Fistful of Dollars" (1964) and Walter Hill's "Last Man Standing" (1996). "Yojimbo" was also the origin of the "Man with No Name" trend. 1970s. The New Hollywood was the period following the decline of the studio system during the 1950s and 1960s and the end of the production code, (which was replaced in 1968 by the MPAA film rating system). During the 1970s, filmmakers increasingly depicted explicit sexual content and showed gunfight and battle scenes that included graphic images of bloody deaths a notable example of this is Wes Craven's "The Last House on the Left" (1972). Post-classical cinema is the changing methods of storytelling of the New Hollywood producers. The new methods of drama and characterization played upon audience expectations acquired during the classical/Golden Age period: story chronology may be scrambled, storylines may feature unsettling "twist endings", main characters may behave in a morally ambiguous fashion, and the lines between the antagonist and protagonist may be blurred. The beginnings of post-classical storytelling may be seen in 1940s and 1950s film noir films, in films such as "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955), and in Hitchcock's "Psycho". 1971 marked the release of controversial films like "Straw Dogs", "A Clockwork Orange", "The French Connection" and "Dirty Harry". This sparked heated controversy over the perceived escalation of violence in cinema. During the 1970s, a new group of American filmmakers emerged, such as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Woody Allen, Terrence Malick, and Robert Altman. This coincided with the increasing popularity of the auteur theory in film literature and the media, which posited that a film director's films express their personal vision and creative insights. The development of the auteur style of filmmaking helped to give these directors far greater control over their projects than would have been possible in earlier eras. This led to some great critical and commercial successes, like Scorsese's "Taxi Driver", Coppola's "The Godfather" films, William Friedkin's "The Exorcist", Altman's "Nashville", Allen's "Annie Hall" and "Manhattan", Malick's "Badlands" and "Days of Heaven", and Polish immigrant Roman Polanski's "Chinatown". It also, however, resulted in some failures, including Peter Bogdanovich's "At Long Last Love" and Michael Cimino's hugely expensive Western epic "Heaven's Gate", which helped to bring about the demise of its backer, United Artists. The financial disaster of "Heaven's Gate" marked the end of the visionary "auteur" directors of the "New Hollywood", who had unrestrained creative and financial freedom to develop films. The phenomenal success in the 1970s of Spielberg's "Jaws" originated the concept of the modern "blockbuster". However, the enormous success of George Lucas' 1977 film "Star Wars" led to much more than just the popularization of blockbuster filmmaking. The film's revolutionary use of special effects, sound editing and music had led it to become widely regarded as one of the single most important films in the medium's history, as well as the most influential film of the 1970s. Hollywood studios increasingly focused on producing a smaller number of very large budget films with massive marketing and promotional campaigns. This trend had already been foreshadowed by the commercial success of disaster films such as "The Poseidon Adventure" and "The Towering Inferno". During the mid-1970s, more pornographic theatres, euphemistically called "adult cinemas", were established, and the legal production of hardcore pornographic films began. Porn films such as "Deep Throat" and its star Linda Lovelace became something of a popular culture phenomenon and resulted in a spate of similar sex films. The porn cinemas finally died out during the 1980s, when the popularization of the home VCR and pornography videotapes allowed audiences to watch sex films at home. In the early 1970s, English-language audiences became more aware of the new West German cinema, with Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Wim Wenders among its leading exponents. In world cinema, the 1970s saw a dramatic increase in the popularity of martial arts films, largely due to its reinvention by Bruce Lee, who departed from the artistic style of traditional Chinese martial arts films and added a much greater sense of realism to them with his Jeet Kune Do style. This began with "The Big Boss" (1971), which was a major success across Asia. However, he did not gain fame in the Western world until shortly after his death in 1973, when "Enter the Dragon" was released. The film went on to become the most successful martial arts film in cinematic history, popularized the martial arts film genre across the world, and cemented Bruce Lee's status as a cultural icon. Hong Kong action cinema, however, was in decline due to a wave of "Bruceploitation" films. This trend eventually came to an end in 1978 with the martial arts comedy films, "Snake in the Eagle's Shadow" and "Drunken Master", directed by Yuen Woo-ping and starring Jackie Chan, laying the foundations for the rise of Hong Kong action cinema in the 1980s. While the musical film genre had declined in Hollywood by this time, musical films were quickly gaining popularity in the cinema of India, where the term "Bollywood" was coined for the growing Hindi film industry in Bombay (now Mumbai) that ended up dominating South Asian cinema, overtaking the more critically acclaimed Bengali film industry in popularity. Hindi filmmakers combined the Hollywood musical formula with the conventions of ancient Indian theatre to create a new film genre called "Masala", which dominated Indian cinema throughout the late 20th century. These "Masala" films portrayed action, comedy, drama, romance and melodrama all at once, with "filmi" song and dance routines thrown in. This trend began with films directed by Manmohan Desai and starring Amitabh Bachchan, who remains one of the most popular film stars in South Asia. The most popular Indian film of all time was "Sholay" (1975), a "Masala" film inspired by a real-life dacoit as well as Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" and the Spaghetti Westerns. The end of the decade saw the first major international marketing of Australian cinema, as Peter Weir's films "Picnic at Hanging Rock" and "The Last Wave" and Fred Schepisi's "The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith" gained critical acclaim. In 1979, Australian filmmaker George Miller also garnered international attention for his violent, low-budget action film "Mad Max". 1980s. During the 1980s, audiences began increasingly watching films on their home VCRs. In the early part of that decade, the film studios tried legal action to ban home ownership of VCRs as a violation of copyright, which proved unsuccessful. Eventually, the sale and rental of films on home video became a significant "second venue" for exhibition of films, and an additional source of revenue for the film industries. Direct-to-video (niche) markets usually offered lower quality, cheap productions that were not deemed very suitable for the general audiences of television and theatrical releases. The Lucas–Spielberg combine would dominate "Hollywood" cinema for much of the 1980s, and lead to much imitation. Two follow-ups to "Star Wars", three to "Jaws", and three "Indiana Jones" films helped to make sequels of successful films more of an expectation than ever before. Lucas also launched THX Ltd, a division of Lucasfilm in 1982, while Spielberg enjoyed one of the decade's greatest successes in "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" the same year. 1982 also saw the release of Disney's "Tron" which was one of the first films from a major studio to use computer graphics extensively. American independent cinema struggled more during the decade, although Martin Scorsese's "Raging Bull" (1980), "After Hours" (1985), and "The King of Comedy" (1983) helped to establish him as one of the most critically acclaimed American film makers of the era. Also during 1983 "Scarface" was released, which was very profitable and resulted in even greater fame for its leading actor Al Pacino. Probably the most successful film commercially was Tim Burton's 1989 version of Bob Kane's creation, "Batman", which broke box-office records. Jack Nicholson's portrayal of the demented Joker earned him a total of $60,000,000 after figuring in his percentage of the gross. British cinema was given a boost during the early 1980s by the arrival of David Puttnam's company Goldcrest Films. The films "Chariots of Fire", "Gandhi", "The Killing Fields" and "A Room with a View" appealed to a "middlebrow" audience which was increasingly being ignored by the major Hollywood studios. While the films of the 1970s had helped to define modern blockbuster motion pictures, the way "Hollywood" released its films would now change. Films, for the most part, would premiere in a wider number of theatres, although, to this day, some films still premiere using the route of the limited/roadshow release system. Against some expectations, the rise of the multiplex cinema did not allow less mainstream films to be shown, but simply allowed the major blockbusters to be given an even greater number of screenings. However, films that had been overlooked in cinemas were increasingly being given a second chance on home video. During the 1980s, Japanese cinema experienced a revival, largely due to the success of anime films. At the beginning of the 1980s, "Space Battleship Yamato" (1973) and "Mobile Suit Gundam" (1979), both of which were unsuccessful as television series, were remade as films and became hugely successful in Japan. In particular, "Mobile Suit Gundam" sparked the Gundam franchise of Real Robot mecha anime. The success of "" also sparked a Macross franchise of mecha anime. This was also the decade when Studio Ghibli was founded. The studio produced Hayao Miyazaki's first fantasy films, "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind" (1984) and "Castle in the Sky" (1986), as well as Isao Takahata's "Grave of the Fireflies" (1988), all of which were very successful in Japan and received worldwide critical acclaim. Original video animation (OVA) films also began during this decade; the most influential of these early OVA films was Noboru Ishiguro's cyberpunk film "Megazone 23" (1985). The most famous anime film of this decade was Katsuhiro Otomo's cyberpunk film "Akira" (1988), which although initially unsuccessful at Japanese theaters, went on to become an international success. Hong Kong action cinema, which was in a state of decline due to endless Bruceploitation films after the death of Bruce Lee, also experienced a revival in the 1980s, largely due to the reinvention of the action film genre by Jackie Chan. He had previously combined the comedy film and martial arts film genres successfully in the 1978 films "Snake in the Eagle's Shadow" and "Drunken Master". The next step he took was in combining this comedy martial arts genre with a new emphasis on elaborate and highly dangerous stunts, reminiscent of the silent film era. The first film in this new style of action cinema was "Project A" (1983), which saw the formation of the Jackie Chan Stunt Team as well as the "Three Brothers" (Chan, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao). The film added elaborate, dangerous stunts to the fights and slapstick humor, and became a huge success throughout the Far East. As a result, Chan continued this trend with martial arts action films containing even more elaborate and dangerous stunts, including "Wheels on Meals" (1984), "Police Story" (1985), "Armour of God" (1986), "Project A Part II" (1987), "Police Story 2" (1988), and "Dragons Forever" (1988). Other new trends which began in the 1980s were the "girls with guns" subgenre, for which Michelle Yeoh gained fame; and especially the "heroic bloodshed" genre, revolving around Triads, largely pioneered by John Woo and for which Chow Yun-fat became famous. These Hong Kong action trends were later adopted by many Hollywood action films in the 1990s and 2000s. 1990s. The early 1990s saw the development of a commercially successful independent cinema in the United States. Although cinema was increasingly dominated by special-effects films such as "" (1991), "Jurassic Park" (1993) and "Titanic" (1997), the latter of which became the highest-grossing film of all time at the time up until "Avatar" (2009), also directed by James Cameron, independent films like Steven Soderbergh's "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" (1989) and Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs" (1992) had significant commercial success both at the cinema and on home video. Filmmakers associated with the Danish film movement Dogme 95 introduced a manifesto aimed to purify filmmaking. Its first few films gained worldwide critical acclaim, after which the movement slowly faded out. Scorsese's Goodfellas was released in 1990. It is considered by many as one of the greatest movies to be made, particularly in the gangster genre. It is said to be the highest point of Scorsese's career. Major American studios began to create their own "independent" production companies to finance and produce non-mainstream fare. One of the most successful independents of the 1990s, Miramax Films, was bought by Disney the year before the release of Tarantino's runaway hit "Pulp Fiction" in 1994. The same year marked the beginning of film and video distribution online. Animated films aimed at family audiences also regained their popularity, with Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" (1991), "Aladdin" (1992), and "The Lion King" (1994). During 1995, the first feature-length computer-animated feature, "Toy Story", was produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Disney. After the success of Toy Story, computer animation would grow to become the dominant technique for feature-length animation, which would allow competing film companies such as DreamWorks, 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. to effectively compete with Disney with successful films of their own. During the late 1990s, another cinematic transition began, from physical film stock to digital cinema technology. Meanwhile, DVDs became the new standard for consumer video, replacing VHS tapes. 2000s. Since the late 2000s streaming media platforms like YouTube provided means for anyone with access to internet and cameras (a standard feature of smartphones) to publish videos to the world. Also competing with the increasing popularity of video games and other forms of home entertainment, the industry once again started to make theatrical releases more attractive, with new 3D technologies and epic (fantasy and superhero) films becoming a mainstay in cinemas. The documentary film also rose as a commercial genre for perhaps the first time, with the success of films such as "March of the Penguins" and Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" and "Fahrenheit 9/11". A new genre was created with Martin Kunert and Eric Manes' "Voices of Iraq", when 150 inexpensive DV cameras were distributed across Iraq, transforming ordinary people into collaborative filmmakers. The success of "Gladiator" led to a revival of interest in epic cinema, and "Moulin Rouge!" renewed interest in musical cinema. Home theatre systems became increasingly sophisticated, as did some of the special edition DVDs designed to be shown on them. "The Lord of the Rings trilogy" was released on DVD in both the theatrical version and in a special extended version intended only for home cinema audiences. In 2001, the "Harry Potter" film series began, and by its end in 2011, it had become the highest-grossing film franchise of all time until the Marvel Cinematic Universe passed it in 2015. More films were also being released simultaneously to IMAX cinema, the first was in 2002's Disney animation "Treasure Planet"; and the first live action was in 2003's "The Matrix Revolutions" and a re-release of "The Matrix Reloaded". Later in the decade, "The Dark Knight" was the first major feature film to have been at least partially shot in IMAX technology. There has been an increasing globalization of cinema during this decade, with foreign-language films gaining popularity in English-speaking markets. Examples of such films include "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (Mandarin), "Amélie" (French), "Lagaan" (Hindi), "Spirited Away" (Japanese), "City of God" (Brazilian Portuguese), "The Passion of the Christ" (Aramaic), "Apocalypto" (Mayan) and "Inglourious Basterds" (multiple European languages). Italy is the most awarded country at the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, with 14 awards won, 3 Special Awards and 31 nominations. In 2003, there was a revival in 3D film popularity the first being James Cameron's "Ghosts of the Abyss" which was released as the first full-length 3-D IMAX feature filmed with the Reality Camera System. This camera system used the latest HD video cameras, not film, and was built for Cameron by Emmy nominated Director of Photography Vince Pace, to his specifications. The same camera system was used to film "" (2003), "Aliens of the Deep" IMAX (2005), and "The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D" (2005). After James Cameron's 3D film "Avatar" became the highest-grossing film of all time, 3D films gained brief popularity with many other films being released in 3D, with the best critical and financial successes being in the field of feature film animation such as Universal Pictures/Illumination Entertainment's "Despicable Me" and DreamWorks Animation's "How To Train Your Dragon", "Shrek Forever After" and "Megamind". "Avatar" is also note-worthy for pioneering highly sophisticated use of motion capture technology and influencing several other films such as "Rise of the Planet of the Apes". 2010s. , the largest film industries by number of feature films produced were those of India, the United States, China, Nigeria, and Japan. In 2010, the first woman to win the Best Director Award in Oscar history appeared. Katherine Bigelow's The Hurt Locker won six awards. In Hollywood, superhero films have greatly increased in popularity and financial success, with films based on Marvel and DC comics regularly being released every year up to the present. , the superhero genre has been the most dominant as far as American box office receipts are concerned. The 2019 superhero film "" was the most successful movie of all-time at the box office. In 2020, "Parasite" became the first international film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. 2020s. COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the closure of film theatres around the world in response to regional and national lockdowns. Many films slated to release in the early 2020s faced delays in development, production, and distribution, with others being released on streaming services with little or no theatrical window.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10886

Field hockey

Field hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport structured in standard hockey format, in which each team plays with eleven players in total, made up of ten outfield players and a goalkeeper. Teams must move a hockey ball around a pitch by hitting it with a hockey stick towards the rival team's shooting circle and then into the goal. The match is won by the team that scores the most goals. Matches are played on grass, watered turf, artificial turf, or indoor boarded surface. The stick is made of wood, carbon fibre, fibreglass and carbon, or a combination of carbon fibre and fibreglass in different quantities. The stick has two sides; one rounded and one flat; only the flat face of the stick is allowed to progress the ball. During play, goalkeepers are the only players allowed to touch the ball with any part of their body. A player's hand is considered part of the stick if holding the stick. If the ball is "played" with the rounded part of the stick (i.e. deliberately stopped or hit), it will result in a penalty (accidental touches are not an offence if they do not materially affect play). Goalkeepers often have a different design of stick; they also cannot play the ball with the round side of their stick. The modern game was developed at public schools in 19th century England and it is now played globally. The governing body is the International Hockey Federation (FIH), called the in French. Men and women are represented internationally in competitions including the Olympic Games, World Cup, FIH Pro League, Junior World Cup and in past also World League, Champions Trophy. Many countries run extensive junior, senior, and masters club competitions. The FIH is also responsible for organizing the Hockey Rules Board and developing the sport's rules. The sport is known simply as "hockey" in countries where it is the more common form of hockey. The term "field hockey" is used primarily in Canada and the United States, where "hockey" more often refers to ice hockey. In Sweden, the term "landhockey" is used. A popular variant is indoor field hockey, which differs in a number of respects while embodying the primary principles of hockey. History. According to the International Hockey Federation (FIH), "the roots of hockey are buried deep in antiquity". There are historical records which suggest early forms of hockey were played in Egypt and Persia , and in Ethiopia . Later evidence suggest that the ancient Greeks, Romans and Aztecs all played hockey-like games. In Ancient Egypt, there is a depiction of two figures playing with sticks and ball in the Beni Hasan tomb of Khety, an administrator of Dynasty XI. In Ancient Greece, there is a similar image dated , which may have been called () because it was played with a horn (, in Ancient Greek) and a ball. Researchers disagree over how to interpret this image. It could have been a team or one-on-one activity (the depiction shows two active players, and other figures who may be team-mates awaiting a face-off, or non-players waiting for their turn at play). Billiards historians Stein and Rubino believe it was among the games ancestral to lawn-and-field games like hockey and ground billiards, and near-identical depictions appear in later European illuminated manuscripts and other works of the 14th through 17th centuries, showing contemporary courtly and clerical life. In East Asia, a similar game was entertained, using a carved wooden stick and ball, prior to 300 BC. In Inner Mongolia, China, the Daur people have for about 1,000 years been playing "beikou", a game with some similarities to field hockey. A similar field hockey or ground billiards variant, called "suigan", was played in China during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644, post-dating the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty). A game similar to field hockey was played in the 17th century in Punjab state in India under name "khido khundi" ("khido" refers to the woolen ball, and "khundi" to the stick). In South America, most specifically in Chile, the local natives of the 16th century used to play a game called Chueca, which also shares common elements with hockey. In Northern Europe, the games of hurling (Ireland) and ' (Iceland), both team ball games involving sticks to drive a ball to the opponents' goal, date at least as far back as the Early Middle Ages. By the 12th century, a team ball game called ' or "", akin to a chaotic and sometimes long-distance version of hockey or rugby football (depending on whether sticks were used in a particular local variant), was regularly played in France and southern Britain between villages or parishes. Throughout the Middle Ages to the Early Modern era, such games often involved the local clergy or secular aristocracy, and in some periods were limited to them by various anti-gaming edicts, or even banned altogether. Stein and Rubino, among others, ultimately trace aspects of these games both to rituals in antiquity involving orbs and sceptres (on the aristocratic and clerical side), and to ancient military training exercises (on the popular side); polo (essentially hockey on horseback) was devised by the Ancient Persians for cavalry training, based on the local proto-hockey foot game of the region. The word "hockey" itself has no clear origin. One belief is that it was recorded in 1363 when Edward III of England issued the proclamation: "Moreover we ordain that you prohibit under penalty of imprisonment all and sundry from such stone, wood and iron throwing; handball, football, or hockey; coursing and cock-fighting, or other such idle games". The belief is based on modern translations of the proclamation, which was originally in Latin and explicitly forbade the games "Pilam Manualem, Pedivam, & Bacularem: & ad Canibucam & Gallorum Pugnam". It may be recalled at this point that "baculum" is the Latin for 'stick', so the reference would appear to be to a game played with sticks. The English historian and biographer John Strype did not use the word "hockey" when he translated the proclamation in 1720, and the word 'hockey' remains of unknown origin. The modern game developed at public schools in 19th century England. It is now played globally, particularly in parts of Western Europe, South Asia, Southern Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, and parts of the United States, primarily New England and the mid-Atlantic states. The term "field hockey" is used primarily in Canada and the United States where "hockey" more often refers to ice hockey. In Sweden, the term "landhockey" is used, and to some degree in Norway, where the game is governed by Norges Bandyforbund. The first known club was formed in 1849 at Blackheath in south-east London, but the modern rules grew out of a version played by Middlesex cricket clubs as a winter activity. Teddington Hockey Club formed the modern game by introducing the striking circle and changing the ball to a sphere from a rubber cube. The Hockey Association was founded in 1876. It lasted just six years, before being revived by nine founding members. The first international competition took place in 1895 (Ireland 3, Wales 0), and the International Rules Board was founded in 1900. Field hockey was played at the Summer Olympics in 1908 and 1920. It was dropped in 1924, leading to the foundation of the Fédération Internationale de Hockey sur Gazon (FIH) as an international governing body by seven continental European nations; and hockey was reinstated as an Olympic game in 1928. Men's hockey united under the FIH in 1970. The two oldest trophies are the Irish Senior Cup, which dates back to 1894, and the Irish Junior Cup, a second XI-only competition instituted in 1895. In India, the Beighton Cup and the Aga Khan tournament commenced within ten years. Entering the Olympics in 1928, India won all five games without conceding a goal, and won from 1932 until 1956 and then in 1964 and 1980. Pakistan won in 1960, 1968 and 1984. In the early 1970s, artificial turf began to be used. Synthetic pitches changed most aspects of field hockey, gaining speed. New tactics and techniques such as the Indian dribble developed, followed by new rules to take account. The switch to synthetic surfaces ended Indian and Pakistani domination because artificial turf was too expensive in developing countries. Since the 1970s, Australia, the Netherlands, and Germany have dominated at the Olympics and World Cup stages. Women's field hockey was first played at British universities and schools. The first club, the Molesey Ladies, was founded in 1887. The first national association was the Irish Ladies Hockey Union in 1894, and though rebuffed by the Hockey Association, women's field hockey grew rapidly around the world. This led to the International Federation of Women's Hockey Association (IFWHA) in 1927, though this did not include many continental European countries where women played as sections of men's associations and were affiliated to the FIH. The IFWHA held conferences every three years, and tournaments associated with these were the primary IFWHA competitions. These tournaments were non-competitive until 1975. By the early 1970s, there were 22 associations with women's sections in the FIH and 36 associations in the IFWHA. Discussions started about a common rule book. The FIH introduced competitive tournaments in 1974, forcing the acceptance of the principle of competitive field hockey by the IFWHA in 1973. It took until 1982 for the two bodies to merge, but this allowed the introduction of women's field hockey to the Olympic games from 1980 where, as in the men's game, the Netherlands, Germany, and Australia have been consistently strong. Argentina has emerged as a team to be reckoned with since 2000, winning the world championship in 2002 and 2010 and medals at the last three Olympics. In the United States, field hockey is played predominantly by girls and women. There are few field hockey clubs, most play taking place between high school or college sides. The sport was largely introduced in the U.S. by Constance Applebee, starting with a tour of Seven Sisters colleges in 1901 and continuing through Applebee's 24-year tenure as athletic director of Bryn Mawr College. The strength of college field hockey reflects the impact of Title IX, which mandated that colleges should fund men's and women's games programmes comparably. Hockey has been predominantly played on the East Coast, specifically the Mid-Atlantic in states such as New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. In recent years, it has become increasingly played on the West Coast and in the Midwest. In other countries, participation is fairly evenly balanced between men and women. For example, in the 2008–09 season, England Hockey reported 2,488 registered men's teams, 1,969 women's teams, 1,042 boys' teams, 966 girls' teams and 274 mixed teams. In 2006, the Irish Hockey Association reported that the gender split among its players was approximately 65% female and 35% male. In its 2008 census, Hockey Australia reported 40,534 male club players and 41,542 female. Field of play. Most hockey field dimensions were originally fixed using whole numbers of imperial measures. Metric measurements are now the official dimensions as laid down by the International Hockey Federation (FIH) in the "Rules of Hockey". The pitch is a rectangular field. At each end is a goal high and wide, as well as lines across the field from each end-line (generally referred to as the 23-metre lines or the 25-yard lines) and in the center of the field. A spot in diameter, called the penalty spot or stroke mark, is placed with its centre from the centre of each goal. The shooting circle is from the base line. Field hockey goals are made of two upright posts, joined at the top by a horizontal crossbar, with a net positioned to catch the ball when it passes through the goalposts. The goalposts and crossbar must be white and rectangular in shape, and should be wide and deep. Field hockey goals also include sideboards and a backboard, which stand from the ground. The backboard runs the full width of the goal, while the sideboards are deep. Playing surface. Historically the game developed on natural grass turf. In the early 1970s, synthetic grass fields began to be used for hockey, with the first Olympic Games on this surface being held at Montreal in 1976. Synthetic pitches are now mandatory for all international tournaments and for most national competitions. While hockey is still played on traditional grass fields at some local levels and lesser national divisions, it has been replaced by synthetic surfaces almost everywhere in the western world. There are three main types of artificial hockey surface: Since the 1970s, sand-based pitches have been favoured as they dramatically speed up the game. However, in recent years there has been a massive increase in the number of "water-based" artificial turfs. Water-based synthetic turfs enable the ball to be transferred more quickly than on sand-based surfaces. It is this characteristic that has made them the surface of choice for international and national league competitions. Water-based surfaces are also less abrasive than sand-based surfaces and reduce the level of injury to players when they come into contact with the surface. The FIH are now proposing that new surfaces being laid should be of a hybrid variety which require less watering. This is due to the negative ecological effects of the high water requirements of water-based synthetic fields. It has also been stated that the decision to make artificial surfaces mandatory greatly favoured more affluent countries who could afford these new pitches. Rules and play. Overview. The game is played between two teams of eleven, 10 field players and one goal keeper, are permitted to be on the pitch at any one time. The remaining players may be substituted in any combination. There is an unlimited number of times a team can sub in and out. Substitutions are permitted at any point in the game, apart from between the award and end of a penalty corner; two exceptions to this rule is for injury or suspension of the defending goalkeeper, which is not allowed when playing with a field keep, or a player can exit the field, but you must wait until after the penalty corner is complete. Play is not stopped for a substitution (except of a goalkeeper), the players leave and rejoin the match simultaneously at the half-way line. Players are permitted to play the ball with the flat of the 'face side' and with the edges of the head and handle of the field hockey stick with the exception that, for reasons of safety, the ball may not be struck 'hard' with a forehand edge stroke, because of the difficulty of controlling the height and direction of the ball from that stroke. The flat side is always on the "natural" side for a right-handed person swinging the stick at the ball from right to left. Left-handed sticks are rare, as International Hockey Federation rules forbid their use in a game. To make a strike at the ball with a left-to-right swing the player must present the flat of the 'face' of the stick to the ball by 'reversing' the stick head, i.e. by turning the handle through approximately 180° (while a reverse edge hit would turn the stick head through approximately 90° from the position of an upright forehand stroke with the 'face' of the stick head). Edge hitting of the ball underwent a two-year "experimental period", twice the usual length of an "experimental trial" and is still a matter of some controversy within the game. Ric Charlesworth, the former Australian coach, has been a strong critic of the unrestricted use of the reverse edge hit. The 'hard' forehand edge hit was banned after similar concerns were expressed about the ability of players to direct the ball accurately, but the reverse edge hit does appear to be more predictable and controllable than its counterpart. This type of hit is now more commonly referred to as the "forehand sweep" where the ball is hit with the flat side or "natural" side of the stick and not the rounded edge. Other rules include; no foot-to-ball contact, no use of hands, no obstructing other players, no high back swing, no hacking, and no third party. If a player is dribbling the ball and either loses control and kicks the ball or another player interferes that player is not permitted to gain control and continue dribbling. The rules do not allow the person who kicked the ball to gain advantage from the kick, so the ball will automatically be passed on to the opposing team. Conversely, if no advantage is gained from kicking the ball, play should continue. Players may not obstruct another's chance of hitting the ball in any way. No shoving/using your body/stick to prevent advancement in the other team. Penalty for this is the opposing team receives the ball and if the problem continues, the player can be carded. While a player is taking a free hit or starting a corner the back swing of their hit cannot be too high for this is considered dangerous. Finally there may not be three players touching the ball at one time. Two players from opposing teams can battle for the ball, however if another player interferes it is considered third party and the ball automatically goes to the team who only had one player involved in the third party. The game. A match ordinarily consists of two periods of 35 minutes and a halftime interval of 5 minutes. Other periods and interval may be agreed by both teams except as specified in Regulations for particular competitions. Since 2014, some international games have four 15-minute quarters with 2 minutes break between each quarter and 15 minutes break between quarter two and three. At the 2018 Commonwealth Games, held on the Gold Coast in Brisbane, the hockey games for both men and women had four 15-minute quarters. In December 2018, the FIH announced rule changes that would make 15-minute quarters universal from January 2019. England Hockey confirmed that while no changes would be made to the domestic game mid-season, the new rules would be implemented at the start of the 2019–20 season. However, in July 2019 England Hockey announced that 17.5-minute quarters would only be implemented in elite domestic club games. The game begins with a pass back from the centre-forward usually to the centre-half back from the halfway line. The opposing team cannot try to tackle this play until the ball has been pushed back. The team consists of eleven players, usually aligned as follows: goalkeeper, right fullback, left fullback, three half-backs and five forwards who are right wing, right inner, centre forward, left inner and left wing. These positions can change and adapt throughout the course of the game depending on the attacking and defensive style of the opposition. Positions. When hockey positions are discussed, notions of fluidity are very common. Each team can be fielded with a maximum of 11 players and will typically arrange themselves into forwards, midfielders, and defensive players (fullbacks) with players frequently moving between these lines with the flow of play. Each team may also play with: Formations. As hockey has a very dynamic style of play, it is difficult to simplify positions to the static formations which are common in association football. Although positions will typically be categorised as either fullback, halfback, midfield/inner or striker, it is important for players to have an understanding of every position on the field. For example, it is not uncommon to see a halfback overlap and end up in either attacking position, with the midfield and strikers being responsible for re-adjusting to fill the space they left. Movement between lines like this is particularly common across all positions. This fluid Australian culture of hockey has been responsible for developing an international trend towards players occupying spaces on the field, not having assigned positions. Although they may have particular spaces on the field which they are more comfortable and effective as players, they are responsible for occupying the space nearest them. This fluid approach to hockey and player movement has made it easy for teams to transition between formations such as: "3 at the back", "5 midfields", "2 at the front", and more. Goalkeepers. When the ball is inside the circle, they are defending and they have their stick in their hand, goalkeepers wearing full protective equipment are permitted to use their stick, feet, kickers or leg guards to propel the ball and to use their stick, feet, kickers, leg guards or any other part of their body to stop the ball or deflect it in any direction including over the back line. Similarly, field players are permitted to use their stick. They are not allowed to use their feet and legs to propel the ball, stop the ball or deflect it in any direction including over the back line. However, neither goalkeepers, or players with goalkeeping privileges are permitted to conduct themselves in a manner which is dangerous to other players by taking advantage of the protective equipment they wear. Neither goalkeepers or players with goalkeeping privileges may lie on the ball, however, they are permitted to use arms, hands and any other part of their body to push the ball away. Lying on the ball deliberately will result in a penalty stroke, whereas if an umpire deems a goalkeeper has lain on the ball accidentally (e.g. it gets stuck in their protective equipment), a penalty corner is awarded. "* The action above is permitted only as part of a goal saving action or to move the ball away from the possibility of a goal scoring action by opponents. It does not permit a goalkeeper or player with goalkeeping privileges to propel the ball forcefully with arms, hands or body so that it travels a long distance" When the ball is outside the circle they are defending, goalkeepers or players with goalkeeping privileges are only permitted to play the ball with their stick. Further, a goalkeeper, or player with goalkeeping privileges who is wearing a helmet, must not take part in the match outside the 23m area they are defending, except when taking a penalty stroke. A goalkeeper must wear protective headgear at all times, except when taking a penalty stroke. General play. For the purposes of the rules, all players on the team in possession of the ball are attackers, and those on the team without the ball are defenders, yet throughout the game being played you are always "defending" your goal and "attacking" the opposite goal. The match is officiated by two field umpires. Traditionally each umpire generally controls half of the field, divided roughly diagonally. These umpires are often assisted by a technical bench including a timekeeper and record keeper. Prior to the start of the game, a coin is tossed and the winning captain can choose a starting end or whether to start with the ball. Since 2017 the game consists of four periods of 15 minutes with a 2-minute break after every period, and a 15-minute intermission at half time before changing ends. At the start of each period, as well as after goals are scored, play is started with a pass from the centre of the field. All players must start in their defensive half (apart from the player making the pass), but the ball may be played in any direction along the floor. Each team starts with the ball in one half, and the team that conceded the goal has possession for the restart. Teams trade sides at halftime. Field players may only play the ball with the face of the stick. If the back side of the stick is used, it is a penalty and the other team will get the ball back. Tackling is permitted as long as the tackler does not make contact with the attacker or the other person's stick before playing the ball (contact after the tackle may also be penalised if the tackle was made from a position where contact was inevitable). Further, the player with the ball may not deliberately use his body to push a defender out of the way. Field players may not play the ball with their feet, but if the ball accidentally hits the feet, and the player gains no benefit from the contact, then the contact is not penalised. Although there has been a change in the wording of this rule from 1 January 2007, the current FIH umpires' briefing instructs umpires not to change the way they interpret this rule. Obstruction typically occurs in three circumstances – when a defender comes between the player with possession and the ball in order to prevent them tackling; when a defender's stick comes between the attacker's stick and the ball or makes contact with the attacker's stick or body; and also when blocking the opposition's attempt to tackle a teammate with the ball (called "third party obstruction"). When the ball passes completely over the sidelines (on the sideline is still in), it is returned to play with a sideline hit, taken by a member of the team whose players were not the last to touch the ball before crossing the sideline. The ball must be placed on the sideline, with the hit taken from as near the place the ball went out of play as possible. If it crosses the back line after last touched by an attacker, a hit is awarded. A 15 m hit is also awarded for offences committed by the attacking side within 15 m of the end of the pitch they are attacking. Set plays. Set plays are often utilised for specific situations such as a penalty corner or free hit. For instance, many teams have penalty corner variations that they can use to beat the defensive team. The coach may have plays that sends the ball between two defenders and lets the player attack the opposing team's goal. There are no set plays unless your team has them. Free hits. Free hits are awarded when offences are committed outside the scoring circles (the term 'free hit' is standard usage but the ball need not be hit). The ball may be hit, pushed or lifted in any direction by the team offended against. The ball can be lifted from a free hit but not by hitting, you must flick or scoop to lift from a free hit. (In previous versions of the rules, hits in the area outside the circle in open play have been permitted but lifting one direction from a free hit was prohibited). Opponents must move from the ball when a free hit is awarded. A free hit must be taken from within playing distance of the place of the offence for which it was awarded and the ball must be stationary when the free hit is taken. As mentioned above, a 15 m hit is awarded if an attacking player commits a foul forward of that line, or if the ball passes over the back line off an attacker. These free hits are taken in-line with where the foul was committed (taking a line parallel with the sideline between where the offence was committed, or the ball went out of play). When an attacking free hit is awarded within 5 m of the circle everyone including the person taking the penalty must be five meters from the circle and everyone apart from the person taking the free hit must be five meters away from the ball. When taking an attacking free hit, the ball may not be hit straight into the circle if you are within your attacking 23 meter area (25-yard area). It has to travel 5 meters before going in. 2009 experimental changes. In February 2009 the FIH introduced, as a "Mandatory Experiment" for international competition, an updated version of the free-hit rule. The changes allows a player taking a free hit to pass the ball to themselves. Importantly, this is not a "play on" situation, but to the untrained eye it may appear to be. The player must play the ball any distance in two separate motions, before continuing as if it were a play-on situation. They may raise an aerial or overhead immediately as the second action, or any other stroke permitted by the rules of field hockey. At high-school level, this is called a self pass and was adopted in Pennsylvania in 2010 as a legal technique for putting the ball in play. Also, all players (from both teams) must be at least 5 m from any free hit awarded to the attack within the 23 m area. The ball may not travel directly into the circle from a free hit to the attack within the 23 m area without first being touched by another player or being dribbled at least 5 m by a player making a "self-pass". These experimental rules apply to all free-hit situations, including sideline and corner hits. National associations may also choose to introduce these rules for their domestic competitions. Long corner. A free hit from the 23-metre line – called a long corner – is awarded to the attacking team if the ball goes over the back-line after last being touched by a defender, provided they do not play it over the back-line deliberately, in which case a penalty corner is awarded. This free hit is played by the attacking team from a spot on the 23-metre line, in line with where the ball went out of play. All the parameters of an attacking free hit within the attacking quarter of the playing surface apply. Penalty corner. The short or penalty corner is awarded: Short corners begin with five defenders (usually including the keeper) positioned behind the back line and the ball placed at least 10 yards from the nearest goal post. All other players in the defending team must be beyond the centre line, that is not in their 'own' half of the pitch, until the ball is in play. Attacking players begin the play standing outside the scoring circle, except for one attacker who starts the corner by playing the ball from a mark 10 m either side of the goal (the circle has a 14.63 m radius). This player puts the ball into play by pushing or hitting the ball to the other attackers outside the circle; the ball must pass outside the circle and then put back into the circle before the attackers may make a shot at the goal from which a goal can be scored. FIH rules do not forbid a shot at goal before the ball leaves the circle after being 'inserted', nor is a shot at the goal from outside the circle prohibited, but a goal cannot be scored at all if the ball has not gone out of the circle and cannot be scored from a shot from outside the circle if it is not again played by an attacking player before it enters the goal. For safety reasons, the first shot of a penalty corner must not exceed 460 mm high (the height of the "backboard" of the goal) at the point it crosses the goal line if it is hit. However, if the ball is deemed to be below backboard height, the ball can be subsequently deflected above this height by another player (defender or attacker), providing that this deflection does not lead to danger. The "Slap" stroke (a sweeping motion towards the ball, where the stick is kept on or close to the ground when striking the ball) is classed as a hit, and so the first shot at goal must be below backboard height for this type of shot also. If the first shot at goal in a short corner situation is a push, flick or scoop, in particular the "drag flick" (which has become popular at international and national league standards), the shot is permitted to rise above the height of the backboard, as long as the shot is not deemed dangerous to any opponent. This form of shooting was developed because it is not height restricted in the same way as the first hit shot at the goal and players with good technique are able to drag-flick with as much power as many others can hit a ball. Penalty stroke. A penalty stroke is awarded when a defender commits a foul in the circle (accidental or otherwise) that prevents a probable goal or commits a deliberate foul in the circle or if defenders repeatedly run from the back line too early at a penalty corner. The penalty stroke is taken by a single attacker in the circle, against the goalkeeper, from a spot 6.4 m from goal. The ball is played only once at goal by the attacker using a push, flick or scoop stroke. If the shot is saved, play is restarted with a 15 m hit to the defenders. When a goal is scored, play is restarted in the normal way. Dangerous play and raised balls. According to the Rules of Hockey 2015 issued by the FIH there are only two criteria for a dangerously played ball. The first is legitimate evasive action by an opponent (what constitutes legitimate evasive action is an umpiring judgment). The second is specific to the rule concerning a shot at goal at a penalty corner but is generally, if somewhat inconsistently, applied throughout the game and in all parts of the pitch: it is that a ball lifted above knee height and at an opponent who is within 5m of the ball is certainly dangerous. The velocity of the ball is not mentioned in the rules concerning a dangerously played ball. A ball that hits a player above the knee may on some occasions not be penalised, this is at the umpire's discretion. A jab tackle, for example, might accidentally lift the ball above knee height into an opponent from close range but at such low velocity as not to be, in the opinion of the umpire, dangerous play. In the same way a high-velocity hit at very close range into an opponent, but below knee height, could be considered to be dangerous or reckless play in the view of the umpire, especially when safer alternatives are open to the striker of the ball. A ball that has been lifted high so that it will fall among close opponents may be deemed to be potentially dangerous and play may be stopped for that reason. A lifted ball that is falling to a player in clear space may be made potentially dangerous by the actions of an opponent closing to within 5m of the receiver before the ball has been controlled to ground – a rule which is often only loosely applied; the distance allowed is often only what might be described as playing distance, 2–3 m, and opponents tend to be permitted to close on the ball as soon as the receiver plays it: these unofficial variations are often based on the umpire's perception of the skill of the players i.e. on the level of the game, in order to maintain game flow, which umpires are in general in both Rules and Briefing instructed to do, by not penalising when it is unnecessary to do so; this is also a matter at the umpire's discretion. The term "falling ball" is important in what may be termed encroaching offences. It is generally only considered an offence to encroach on an opponent receiving a lifted ball that has been lifted to above head height (although the height is not specified in rule) and is falling. So, for example, a lifted shot at the goal which is still rising as it crosses the goal line (or would have been rising as it crossed the goal line) can be legitimately followed up by any of the attacking team looking for a rebound. In general even potentially dangerous play is not penalised if an opponent is not disadvantaged by it or, obviously, not injured by it so that he cannot continue. A personal penalty, that is a caution or a suspension, rather than a team penalty, such as a free ball or a penalty corner, may be (many would say should be or even must be, but again this is at the umpire's discretion) issued to the guilty party after an advantage allowed by the umpire has been played out in any situation where an offence has occurred, including dangerous play (but once advantage has been allowed the umpire cannot then call play back and award a team penalty). It is not an offence to lift the ball over an opponent's stick (or body on the ground), provided that it is done with consideration for the safety of the opponent and not dangerously. For example, a skilful attacker may lift the ball over a defenders stick or prone body and run past them, however if the attacker lifts the ball into or at the defender's body, this would almost certainly be regarded as dangerous. It is not against the rules to bounce the ball on the stick and even to run with it while doing so, as long as that does not lead to a potentially dangerous conflict with an opponent who is attempting to make a tackle. For example, two players trying to play at the ball in the air at the same time, would probably be considered a dangerous situation and it is likely that the player who first put the ball up or who was so 'carrying' it would be penalised. Dangerous play rules also apply to the usage of the stick when approaching the ball, making a stroke at it (replacing what was at one time referred to as the "sticks" rule, which once forbade the raising of any part of the stick above the shoulder during any play. This last restriction has been removed but the stick should still not be used in a way that endangers an opponent) or attempting to tackle, (fouls relating to tripping, impeding and obstruction). The use of the stick to strike an opponent will usually be much more severely dealt with by the umpires than offences such as barging, impeding and obstruction with the body, although these are also dealt with firmly, especially when these fouls are intentional. Warnings and suspensions. Hockey uses a three-tier penalty card system of warnings and suspensions: If a coach is sent off, depending on local rules, a player may have to leave the field for the remaining length of the match. In addition to their colours, field hockey penalty cards are often shaped differently, so they can be recognised easily. Green cards are normally triangular, yellow cards rectangular and red cards circular. Unlike football, a player may receive more than one green or yellow card. However, they cannot receive the same card for the same offence (for example two yellows for dangerous play), and the second must always be a more serious card. In the case of a second yellow card for a different breach of the rules (for example a yellow for deliberate foot, and a second later in the game for dangerous play) the temporary suspension would be expected to be of considerably longer duration than the first. However, local playing conditions may mandate that cards are awarded only progressively, and not allow any second awards. Umpires, if the free hit would have been in the attacking 23 m area, may upgrade the free hit to a penalty corner for dissent or other misconduct after the free hit has been awarded. Scoring. The teams' object is to play the ball into their attacking circle and, from there, hit, push or flick the ball into the goal, scoring a goal. The team with more goals after 60 minutes wins the game. The playing time may be shortened, particularly when younger players are involved, or for some tournament play. If the game is played in a countdown clock, like ice hockey, a goal can only count if the ball completely crosses the goal line and into the goal "before" time expires, not when the ball leaves the stick in the act of shooting. If the score is tied at the end of the game, either a draw is declared or the game goes into extra time, or there is a penalty shoot-out, depending on the format of the competition. In many competitions (such as regular club competition, or in pool games in FIH international tournaments such as the Olympics or the World Cup), a tied result stands and the overall competition standings are adjusted accordingly. Since March 2013, when tie breaking is required, the official FIH Tournament Regulations mandate to no longer have extra time and go directly into a penalty shoot-out when a classification match ends in a tie. However, many associations follow the previous procedure consisting of two periods of 7.5 minutes of "golden goal" extra time during which the game ends as soon as one team scores. There are many variations to overtime play that depend on the league or tournament rules. In American college play, a seven-a-side overtime period consists of a 10-minute golden goal period with seven players for each team. If the scores remain equal, the game enters a one-on-one competition where each team chooses five players to dribble from the line down to the circle against the opposing goalkeeper. The player has eight seconds to score against the goalkeeper while keeping the ball in bounds. The game ends after a goal is scored, the ball goes out of bounds, a foul is committed (ending in either a penalty stroke or flick or the end of the one-on-one) or time expires. If the tie still persists, more rounds are played until one team has scored. Rule change procedure. The FIH implemented a two-year rules cycle with the 2007–08 edition of the rules, with the intention that the rules be reviewed on a biennial basis. The 2009 rulebook was officially released in early March 2009 (effective 1 May 2009), however the FIH published the major changes in February. The current rule book is effective from 1 January 2022. Local rules. There are sometimes minor variations in rules from competition to competition; for instance, the duration of matches is often varied for junior competitions or for carnivals. Different national associations also have slightly differing rules on player equipment. The new Euro Hockey League and the Olympics has made major alterations to the rules to aid television viewers, such as splitting the game into four-quarters, and to try to improve player behavior, such as a two-minute suspension for green cards—the latter was also used in the 2010 World Cup and 2016 Olympics. In the United States, the NCAA has its own rules for inter-collegiate competitions; high school associations similarly play to different rules, usually using the rules published by the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS). This article assumes FIH rules unless otherwise stated. USA Field Hockey produces an annual summary of the differences. In the United States, the games at the junior high level consist of four 12-minute periods, while the high-school level consists of four 15-minute periods. Many private American schools play 12-minute quarters, and some have adopted FIH rules rather than NFHS rules. Players are required to wear mouth guards and shin guards in order to play the game. Also, there is a newer rule requiring certain types of sticks be used. In recent years, the NFHS rules have moved closer to FIH, but in 2011 a new rule requiring protective eyewear was introduced for the 2011 Fall season. Further clarification of NFHS's rule requiring protective eyewear states, "effective 1 January 2019, all eye protection shall be permanently labeled with the current ASTM 2713 standard for field hockey". Metal 'cage style' goggles favored by US high school lacrosse and permitted in high school field hockey is prohibited under FIH rules. Equipment. Field hockey stick. Each player carries a hockey stick that normally measures between ; shorter or longer sticks are available. The length of the stick is based on the player's individual height: the top of the stick usually comes to the player's hip, and taller players typically have longer sticks. Goalkeepers can use either a specialised stick, or an ordinary field hockey stick. The specific goal-keeping sticks have another curve at the end of the stick, to give it more surface area to block the ball. Sticks were traditionally made of wood, but are now often made also with fibreglass, kevlar or carbon fibre composites. Metal is forbidden from use in field hockey sticks, due to the risk of injury from sharp edges if the stick were to break. The stick has a rounded handle, has a J-shaped hook at the bottom, and is flattened on the left side (when looking down the handle with the hook facing upwards). All sticks must be right-handed; left-handed ones are prohibited. There was traditionally a slight curve (called the bow, or rake) from the top to bottom of the face side of the stick and another on the 'heel' edge to the top of the handle (usually made according to the angle at which the handle part was inserted into the splice of the head part of the stick), which assisted in the positioning of the stick head in relation to the ball and made striking the ball easier and more accurate. The hook at the bottom of the stick was only recently the tight curve (Indian style) that we have nowadays. The older 'English' sticks had a longer bend, making it very hard to use the stick on the reverse. For this reason players now use the tight curved sticks. The handle makes up about the top third of the stick. It is wrapped in a grip similar to that used on tennis racket. The grip may be made of a variety of materials, including chamois leather, which improves grip in the wet and gives the stick a softer touch and different weighting it wrapped over a preexisting grip. It was recently discovered that increasing the depth of the face bow made it easier to get high speeds from the dragflick and made the stroke easier to execute. At first, after this feature was introduced, the Hockey Rules Board placed a limit of 50 mm on the maximum depth of bow over the length of the stick but experience quickly demonstrated this to be excessive. New rules now limit this curve to under 25 mm so as to limit the power with which the ball can be flicked. Field hockey ball. Standard field hockey balls are hard spherical balls, made of solid plastic (sometimes over a cork core), and are usually white, although they can be any colour as long as they contrast with the playing surface. The balls have a diameter of and a mass of . The ball is often covered with indentations to reduce aquaplaning that can cause an inconsistent ball speed on wet surfaces. Goalkeeping equipment. The 2007 rulebook saw major changes regarding goalkeepers. A fully equipped goalkeeper must wear a helmet, leg guards and kickers, and like all players, they must carry a stick. Goalkeepers may use either a field player's stick or a specialised goalkeeping stick provided always the stick is of legal dimensions. Usually field hockey goalkeepers also wear extensive additional protective equipment including chest guards, padded shorts, heavily padded hand protectors, groin protectors, neck protectors and arm guards. A goalie may not cross the 23 m line, the sole exception to this being if the goalkeeper is to take a penalty stroke at the other end of the field, when the clock is stopped. The goalkeeper can also remove their helmet for this action. While goalkeepers are allowed to use their feet and hands to clear the ball, like field players they may only use the one side of their stick. Slide tackling is permitted as long as it is with the intention of clearing the ball, not aimed at a player. It is now also even possible for teams to have a full eleven outfield players and no goalkeeper at all. No player may wear a helmet or other goalkeeping equipment, neither will any player be able to play the ball with any other part of the body than with their stick. This may be used to offer a tactical advantage, for example, if a team is trailing with only a short time to play, or to allow for play to commence if no goalkeeper or kit is available. Tactics. The basic tactic in field hockey, as in association football and many other team games, is to outnumber the opponent in a particular area of the field at a moment in time. When in possession of the ball this temporary numerical superiority can be used to pass the ball around opponents so that they cannot effect a tackle because they cannot get within playing reach of the ball and to further use this numerical advantage to gain time and create clear space for making scoring shots on the opponent's goal. When not in possession of the ball numerical superiority is used to isolate and channel an opponent in possession and 'mark out' any passing options so that an interception or a tackle may be made to gain possession. Highly skillful players can sometimes get the better of more than one opponent and retain the ball and successfully pass or shoot but this tends to use more energy than quick early passing. Every player has a role depending on their relationship to the ball if the team communicates throughout the play of the game. There will be players on the ball (offensively – ball carriers; defensively – pressure, support players, and movement players. The main methods by which the ball is moved around the field by players are a) passing b) pushing the ball and running with it controlled to the front or right of the body and c) "dribbling"; where the player controls the ball with the stick and moves in various directions with it to elude opponents. To make a pass the ball may be propelled with a pushing stroke, where the player uses their wrists to push the stick head through the ball while the stick head is in contact with it; the "flick" or "scoop", similar to the push but with an additional arm and leg and rotational actions to lift the ball off the ground; and the "hit", where a swing at ball is taken and contact with it is often made very forcefully, causing the ball to be propelled at velocities in excess of . In order to produce a powerful hit, usually for travel over long distances or shooting at the goal, the stick is raised higher and swung with maximum power at the ball, a stroke sometimes known as a "drive". Tackles are made by placing the stick into the path of the ball or playing the stick head or shaft directly at the ball. To increase the effectiveness of the tackle, players will often place the entire stick close to the ground horizontally, thus representing a wider barrier. To avoid the tackle, the ball carrier will either pass the ball to a teammate using any of the push, flick, or hit strokes, or attempt to maneuver or "drag" the ball around the tackle, trying to deceive the tackler. In recent years, the penalty corner has gained importance as a goal scoring opportunity. Particularly with the technical development of the drag flick. Tactics at penalty corners to set up time for a shot with a drag flick or a hit shot at the goal involve various complex plays, including multiple passes before deflections towards the goal is made but the most common method of shooting is the direct flick or hit at the goal. At the highest level, field hockey is a fast moving, highly skilled game, with players using fast moves with the stick, quick accurate passing, and hard hits, in attempts to keep possession and move the ball towards the goal. Tackling with physical contact and otherwise physically obstructing players is not permitted. Some of the tactics used resemble football (soccer), but with greater ball speed. With the 2009 changes to the rules regarding free hits in the attacking 23 m area, the common tactic of hitting the ball hard into the circle was forbidden. Although at higher levels this was considered tactically risky and low-percentage at creating scoring opportunities, it was used with some effect to 'win' penalty corners by forcing the ball onto a defender's foot or to deflect high (and dangerously) off a defender's stick. The FIH felt it was a dangerous practice that could easily lead to raised deflections and injuries in the circle, which is often crowded at a free-hit situation, and outlawed it. International competition. The biggest two field hockey tournaments are the Olympic Games tournament, and the Hockey World Cup, which is also held every four years. Apart from this, there is the men's and women's Pro League held each year for the nine top-ranked teams. Of the men's teams, Pakistan has won the Hockey World cup four times, more times than any other side. India has won the Hockey at the Summer Olympics eight times, including in six successive Olympiads. Of the female teams, the Netherlands has won the Hockey World cup the most times, with six titles. At the Olympics, Australia and the Netherlands have both won three Olympic tournaments. India and Pakistan dominated men's hockey until the early 1980s, winning eight Olympic golds and three of the first five world cups, respectively, but have become less prominent with the ascendancy of Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, and Spain since the late 1980s, as grass playing surfaces were replaced with artificial turf. Other notable men's nations include Argentina, England (who combine with other British "Home Nations" to form the Great Britain side at Olympic events) and South Korea. The Netherlands, Australia and Argentina are the most successful national teams among women. The Netherlands was the predominant women's team before field hockey was added to Olympic events. In the early 1990s, Australia emerged as the strongest women's country, though retirement of a number of players has weakened the team somewhat. Argentina improved its play in the 2000s, heading IFH rankings in 2003, 2010 and 2013. Other prominent women's teams are Germany, Great Britain, China, South Korea and India. Four nations have won Olympic gold medals in both men's and women's hockey: Germany, Netherlands, Australia and Great Britain. the Australian men's team and the Dutch women's teams lead the FIH world rankings. For a couple of years, Belgium has emerged as a leading nation, with a World Champions title (2018), a European Champions title (2019), a silver medal (2016) followed with a title (2021) at the Olympics, and a lead in the FIH men's team world ranking. This is a list of the major international field hockey tournaments, in chronological order. Tournaments included are: Defunct tournaments: Other international tournaments include: Variants. Indoor field hockey. A popular variant of field hockey is indoor field hockey, which is 6-a-side (5-a-side during 2014–2015) using a field which is reduced to approximately . Although many of the rules remain the same, including obstruction and feet, there are several key variations: players may not raise the ball unless shooting at goal, players may not hit the ball, instead using pushes to transfer it, and the sidelines are replaced with solid barriers, from which the ball will rebound and remain in play. In addition, the regulation guidelines for the indoor field hockey stick require a slightly thinner, lighter stick than an outdoor one. Hockey5s. As the name suggests, Hockey5s is a hockey variant which features five players on each team (including a goalkeeper). The field of play is 55 m long and 41.70 m wide—this is approximately half the size of a regular pitch. Few additional markings are needed as there is no penalty circle nor penalty corners; shots can be taken from anywhere on the pitch. Penalty strokes are replaced by a "challenge" which is like the one-on-one method used in a penalty shoot-out. The duration of the match is three 12-minute periods with an interval of two minutes between periods; golden goal periods are multiple 5-minute periods. The rules are simpler and it is intended that the game is faster, creating more shots on goal with less play in midfield, and more attractive to spectators. An Asian qualification tournament for two places at the 2014 Youth Olympic Games was the first time an FIH event used the Hockey5s format. Hockey5s was also used for the Youth Olympic hockey tournament, the Pacific Games in 2015 and at the African Youth Games is 2018. In 2022, the FIH staged its first senior international Hockey5s event, with a men's and women's event being held in Lausanne. The FIH Men's Hockey5s World Cup and FIH Women's Hockey5s World Cup are set to debut in 2024. References. NOTE: Many of the sources here are suspect and may be unreliable. indicates a reference has been reviewed and is approved. All ticks will be removed when the article reconstruction is complete.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11040

First-class cricket

First-class cricket, along with List A cricket and Twenty20 cricket, is one of the highest-standard forms of cricket. A first-class match is one of three or more days' scheduled duration between two sides of eleven players each and is officially adjudged to be worthy of the status by virtue of the standard of the competing teams. Matches must allow for the teams to play two innings each, although in practice a team might play only one innings or none at all. The etymology of "first-class cricket" is unknown, but it was used loosely before it acquired official status in 1895, following a meeting of leading English clubs. At a meeting of the Imperial Cricket Conference (ICC) in 1947, it was formally defined on a global basis. A significant omission of the ICC ruling was any attempt to define first-class cricket retrospectively. That has left historians, and especially statisticians, with the problem of how to categorise earlier matches, especially those played in Great Britain before 1895. The Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians (ACS) has published a list of early matches which are believed to have been of a high standard. Test cricket, the highest standard of cricket, is statistically a form of first-class cricket, though the term "first-class" is mainly used to refer to domestic competition. A player's first-class statistics include any performances in Test matches. Initial usage under MCC ruling, May 1894. Before 1894 "first-class" was a common adjective applied to cricket matches in England, used loosely to suggest that a match had a high standard; adjectives like "great", "important" and "major" were also loosely applied to such matches, but there tended to be differences of opinion. In the inaugural issue of "" on 10 May 1882, the term is used twice on page 2 in reference to the recently completed tour of Australia and New Zealand by Alfred Shaw's XI. The report says it is "taking" the first-class matches to be one against Sydney ("sic"), two each against Victoria, the Combined team and the Australian Eleven, and another against South Australia. In the fourth issue on 1 June 1882, James Lillywhite refers to first-class matches on the tour but gives a different list. The earliest known match scorecards date from 1744 but few have been found before 1772. The cards for three 1772 matches have survived and scorecards became increasingly common thereafter. At the beginning of the 1860s, there were only four formally constituted county clubs. Sussex was the oldest, formed in 1839, and it had been followed by Kent, Nottinghamshire and Surrey. In the early 1860s, several more county clubs were founded, and questions began to be raised in the sporting press about which should be categorised as first-class, but there was considerable disagreement in the answers. In 1880, the Cricket Reporting Agency was founded. It acquired influence through the decade especially by association with "Wisden Cricketers' Almanack" ("Wisden") and the press came to generally rely on its information and opinions. The term acquired official status, though limited to matches in Great Britain, following a meeting at Lord's in May 1894 between the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) committee and the secretaries of the clubs involved in the official County Championship, which had begun in 1890. As a result, those clubs became first-class from 1895 along with MCC, Cambridge University, Oxford University, senior cricket touring teams (i.e., Australia and South Africa at that time) and other teams designated as such by MCC (e.g., North v South, Gentlemen v Players and occasional "elevens" which consisted of recognised first-class players). Officially, therefore, the inaugural first-class match was the opening game of the 1895 season between MCC and Nottinghamshire at Lord's on 1 and 2 May, MCC winning by 37 runs. "Test match" was another loosely applied term at the time but the first list of matches considered to be "Tests" was conceived and published by South Australian journalist Clarence P. Moody in his 1894 book, "Australian Cricket and Cricketers, 1856 to 1893–94". His proposal was widely accepted after a list of 39 matches was reproduced in the 28 December 1894 issue of "Cricket" magazine. The list began with the Melbourne Cricket Ground match played 15–17 March 1877 and ended with a recent match at the Association Ground, Sydney played 14–20 December 1894. All of Moody's matches, plus four additional ones, were retrospectively recognised as Test matches and also, thereby, as first-class matches. Formal definition under ICC ruling, May 1947. The term "first-class cricket" was formally defined by the then Imperial Cricket Conference (ICC) on 19 May 1947. It was made clear that the definition "will not have retrospective effect". The definition is as follows: A match of three or more days' duration between two sides of eleven players officially adjudged first-class, shall be regarded as a first-class fixture. Matches in which either team have more than eleven players or which are scheduled for less than three days shall not be regarded as first-class. The Governing body in each country shall decide the status of teams. For example, MCC was authorised to determine the status of matches played in Great Britain. To all intents and purposes, the 1947 ICC definition confirmed the 1894 MCC definition, and gave it international recognition and usage. Hence, official judgment of status is the responsibility of the governing body in each country that is a "full member" of the International Cricket Council (ICC). The governing body grants first-class status to international teams and to domestic teams that are representative of the country's highest playing standard. Later ICC rulings make it possible for international teams from "associate members" of the ICC to achieve first-class status but it is dependent on the status of their opponents in a given match. Definition. According to the ICC definition, a match may be adjudged first-class if: A Test match is a first-class match played between two ICC full member countries, subject to their current status at the ICC and the application of ICC conditions when the match is played. Recognised matches. In 2010, the ICC published its "Classification of Official Cricket" which includes the criteria with which a match must comply to achieve a desired categorisation. In the section on first-class cricket, there is a list of the types of match that "should" qualify. It is important to note, given the differences in opinion about what constitutes a first-class match, that the ICC clearly stipulates that its match type list "is not exhaustive and is merely indicative of the matches which would fall into the first-class definition". For example, the list includes matches of recognised first-class teams "versus" international touring teams; and the leading domestic championships (using their then-current names) such as the County Championship, Sheffield Shield, Ranji Trophy, etc. Retrospective classification of matches played before the definitions. The absence of any ICC ruling about matches played before 1947 (or before 1895 in Great Britain) is problematic for those cricket statisticians who wish to categorise earlier matches in the same way. They have responded by compiling their own match lists and allocating a strictly "unofficial" first-class status to the matches they consider to have been of a high standard. It is therefore a matter of opinion only with no official support. Inevitable differences have arisen and there are variations in published cricket statistics. In November 2021, the ICC retrospectively applied first-class status to women's cricket, aligning it with the men's game. Issue for statisticians. A key issue for the statisticians is when first-class cricket for their purpose is deemed to have begun. Writing in 1951, Roy Webber argued that the majority of matches prior to 1864 (i.e., the year in which overarm bowling was legalised) "cannot be regarded as first-class" and their records are used "for their historical associations". This drew a line between what was important historically and what should form part of the statistical record. Hence, for pre-1895 (i.e., in Great Britain) cricket matches, "first-class" is essentially a statistical concept while the historical concept is broader and takes account of historical significance. Webber's rationale was that cricket was "generally weak before 1864" (there was a greater and increasingly more organised effort to promote county cricket from about that time) and match details were largely incomplete, especially bowling analyses, which hindered compilation of records. According to Webber's view, the inaugural first-class match was the opening game of the 1864 season between Cambridge University and MCC at Fenner's on 12 and 13 May, Cambridge winning by 6 wickets. Important matches list. When the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians (ACS) published its "Guide to First-Class Cricket Matches Played in the British Isles" in 1982, it tentatively agreed with Webber's 1864 start date by saying that "the line between first-class and other matches becomes more easily discernible about that date". A year earlier, the ACS had published its "Guide to Important Cricket Matches Played in the British Isles, 1709–1863" in which it listed all the known matches during that period which it considered to have historical importance. The ACS did stipulate that they had taken a more lenient view of importance regarding matches played in the 18th century than they did of matches played in the 19th century. As they explained, surviving details of 18th century matches are typically incomplete while there is a fairly comprehensive store of data about 19th century matches, certainly since 1825. Earlier startpoints suggested. Subsequently, Webber's view was challenged by Bill Frindall who believed that 1815 should be the startpoint to encompass the entire roundarm bowling phase of cricket's history, although roundarm did not begin in earnest until 1827. In Frindall's view, the inaugural first-class match should have been the opening game of the 1815 season between MCC and Middlesex at Lord's on 31 May and 1 June, Middlesex winning by 16 runs. Notwithstanding Frindall's reputation, Webber's view has been revived and reinforced in recent times. For example, the ACS researchers Derek Carlaw and John Winnifrith begin their 2020 study of Kent cricketers since 1806 by stating: "Part One is confined to players who appeared for Kent in important matches from 1806 to 1863 and first-class matches from 1864 to 1914". On the internet, the "CricketArchive" (CA) and "ESPN Cricinfo" (CI) databases both say the earliest first-class match was Hampshire v England at Broadhalfpenny Down on 24 and 25 June 1772. At that time, cricket matches were played with a two-stump wicket and exclusively underarm bowling, although other features of the modern game had been introduced. The opinion of these databases has been repudiated by both "Wisden" and "Playfair Cricket Annual". "Wisden" agrees with Frindall by commencing its first-class records in 1815. "Playfair" supports Webber and begins its records in 1864. The status of earlier matches, including many in the ACS' "Important Matches" guide, which have left no scorecard and for which only a brief announcement or report exists, must be based on other factors. Contemporary importance was often measured by the amount of money at stake and the fact that a match was deemed notable enough to be reported in the press. The 18th century matches in the ACS list were primarily compiled to assist historians. The earliest match known to have been accorded superior status in a contemporary report (i.e., termed "a great match" in this case) and to have been played for a large sum of money was one in Sussex between two unnamed eleven-a-side teams contesting "fifty guineas apiece" in June 1697, a match of enormous historical significance but with no statistical data recorded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11228

Fulham F.C.

Fulham Football Club is a professional football club based in Fulham, Greater London, England. The team competes in the , the top level of the English football league system. They have played home games at Craven Cottage since 1896, other than a two-year period spent at Loftus Road whilst Craven Cottage underwent redevelopments that were completed in 2004. They contest West London derby rivalries with Chelsea, Queens Park Rangers and Brentford. The club adopted a white shirt and black shorts as its kit in 1903, which has been used ever since. Founded in 1879, they are London's oldest professional football club. They joined the Southern League in 1898 and won two First Division titles (1905–06 and 1906–07), as well as two Second Division titles and a Western League title. Elected into the Second Division of the Football League in 1907, Fulham would win the Third Division South in 1931–32, four years after being relegated. They won the Second Division title in 1948–49, though were relegated after three seasons. Promoted back to the First Division again in 1958–59, the form of star player Johnny Haynes helped Fulham to remain in the top-flight until consecutive relegations occurred by 1969. They were promoted in 1970–71 and went on to reach the final of the 1974–75 FA Cup. Fulham drifted between the second and fourth tiers until being taken over by Mohamed Al-Fayed in 1997. They went on to win two divisional titles in three seasons to reach the Premier League by 2001. They won the UEFA Intertoto Cup in 2002 and were beaten in the 2010 final of the UEFA Europa League. However, thirteen consecutive seasons in the top-flight culminated in relegation in 2014. Since that time, the club have moved between the first and second tiers under new owner Shahid Khan. Fulham had changed divisions in five successive seasons between 2017–18 to 2021–22, being relegated after winning the 2018 and 2020 EFL Championship play-off finals. They then won the 2021–22 EFL Championship title, finally settling in the Premier League, where they have played since 2022. History. 1879–1907: Formation and Southern League years. Fulham were formed in 1879 as Fulham St Andrew's Church Sunday School F.C., founded by worshippers (mostly adept at cricket) at the Church of England on Star Road, West Kensington (St Andrew's, Fulham Fields). Fulham's mother church still stands today with a plaque commemorating the team's foundation. They won the West London Amateur Cup in 1887 and, having shortened the name from Fulham St Andrews to its present form in December 1888, they then won the West London League in 1893 at the first attempt. One of the club's first ever kits was half red, half white shirts with white shorts worn in the 1886–87 season. Fulham started playing at their current ground at Craven Cottage in 1896, their first game against now defunct rivals Minerva. Fulham are one of the oldest established clubs in southern England currently playing professional football, though there are many non-league sides like Kent side Cray Wanderers who are several decades older. The club gained professional status on 12 December 1898, the same year that they were admitted into the Southern League's Second Division. They were the third club from London to turn professional, following Arsenal, then named Royal Arsenal 1891, and Millwall in 1893. They adopted a red and white kit during the 1896–97 season. In 1902–03, the club won promotion from this division, entering the Southern League First Division. The club's first recorded all-white club kit came in 1903, and ever since then the club has been playing in all-white shirts and black shorts, with socks going through various evolutions of black and/or white, but are now normally white-only. The club won the Southern League twice, in 1905–06 and 1906–07. 1907–1949: Football League. Fulham joined The Football League after the second of their Southern League triumphs. The club's first league game, playing in the Second Division's 1907–08 season, saw them lose 1–0 at home to Hull City in September 1907. The first win came a few days later at Derby County's Baseball Ground by a score line of 1–0. Fulham finished the season three points short of promotion in fourth place. The club progressed all the way to the semi-final of that season's FA Cup, a run that included an 8–3 away win at Luton Town. In the semi-final, however, they were heavily beaten, 6–0, by Newcastle United. This is still a record loss for an FA Cup semi-final game. Two years later, the club won the London Challenge Cup in the 1909–10 season. Fulham's first season in Division Two turned out to be the highest that the club would finish for 21 years, until in 1927–28 when the club were relegated to the 3rd Division South, created in 1920. Hussein Hegazi, an Egyptian forward, was one of the first non-British players to appear in The Football League, though he only played one game for Fulham in 1911, marked with a goal, afterwards playing for non-league Dulwich Hamlet. During this period, businessman and politician Henry Norris was the club chairman and curiously he had an indirect role in the foundation of Fulham's local rivals Chelsea. When he rejected an offer from businessman Gus Mears to move Fulham to land where the present-day Chelsea stadium Stamford Bridge is situated, Mears decided to create his own team to occupy the ground. In 1910, Norris started to combine his role at Fulham with the chairmanship of Arsenal. Fulham became the first British team to sell hot dogs at their ground in 1926. Fulham had several high-profile international players during the 1920s, including Len Oliver and Albert Barrett. After finishing fifth, seventh and ninth (out of 22 teams) in their first three seasons in the Third Division South, Fulham won the division in the 1931–32 season. In doing so they beat Torquay United 10–2, won 24 out of 42 games and scored 111 goals, thus being promoted back to the Second Division. The next season they missed out on a second consecutive promotion, finishing third behind Tottenham Hotspur and Stoke City. A mixed bag of league performances followed, although the club also reached another FA Cup semi-final during the 1935–36 season. Fulham were also to draw with Austria in 1936 before Anschluss. On 8 October 1938, Craven Cottage saw its all-time highest attendance at a match against Millwall, with a crowd of 49,335 watching the game. League and cup football were severely disrupted by the outbreak of World War II in 1939, with the Football League split into regional divisions temporarily, with a national Football League War Cup and a London War Cup up for grabs. Craven Cottage was used like many grounds for fitness and training of the army youth reserves. Post-war, a full league programme was only restored for 1946–47. In the third season of what is now considered the modern era of football, Fulham finished top of the Second Division, with a win–loss–draw record of 24–9–9 (identical to that which won them the Third Division South 17 years previously). John Fox Watson made a pioneering transfer to Real Madrid in 1948, becoming one of the first players from the United Kingdom to sign for a high-profile side abroad. 1949–1970: First Division Cottagers. Promotion to the top tier of English football saw the club perform poorly, finishing 17th in their first year and 18th in their second. In only their third season of First Division football, Fulham finished rock bottom of the 22-team league in the 1951–52 season, winning only eight of 42 games. On 20 May 1951, Fulham played one of their first ever games in North America in an exhibition match against Celtic at Delorimier Stadium in Montreal in front of 29,000 spectators. Possibly the single most influential character in Fulham's history is Johnny Haynes. "Mr. Fulham" or "The Maestro," as Haynes later came to be known, signed for The Cottagers as a schoolboy in 1950, making his first team debut on Boxing Day against Southampton at Craven Cottage in the 1951/52 relegation season. Haynes played for another 18 years, notching 657 appearances (along with many other club records too), his last appearance for Fulham coming on 17 January 1970. He is often considered as the greatest player in Fulham history, and never played for another team in Britain. He gained 56 caps for England (22 as captain), with many being earned while playing for Fulham in the Second Division. Haynes was injured in a car accident in Blackpool in 1962, but by his own admissions never regained the fitness or form to play for England again, missing out on England's victory in the FIFA World Cup 1966 for which he would have stood a chance of being selected. The Stevenage Road Stand was renamed in his honour after his death in a car crash in 2005. Fulham reached the 1957–58 FA Cup semi-finals, the best cup run of Haynes' career and nearest he came to a major trophy win playing in England. They were eliminated in a replay by the remnants of Manchester United's Busby Babes team that had been decimated in the Munich air disaster the month before. United were the first top division team Fulham played in that cup run. Fulham won promotion back to the First Division in the following season by finishing second to Sheffield Wednesday. Also joining Fulham in 1958 was Graham Leggat, who went on to score 134 goals in 277 appearances, (making him the club's fifth all-time top scorer). In the 1959–60 season, they achieved tenth position in the First Division, which until finishing ninth in the 2003–04 season was their highest-ever league position. This accompanied another appearance in the last four of the FA Cup in 1962. By this time, the club were regularly playing in front of 30,000 plus crowds at Craven Cottage, despite struggling in the league. The club earned a reputation for constantly battling against relegation most seasons, with numerous narrow escapes; none more so than in 1965–66. On the morning of 26 February 1966, Fulham were bottom with just 15 points from 29 matches. The last 13 games saw Fulham win nine and draw two to reach safety. Eventually, however, the club suffered relegation in the 1967–68 season, having won just ten out of their 42 games. Even that, however, was not as catastrophic as the calamity of next season. Winning only seven in 42, the club were relegated to the Third Division. 1970–1994: Mixed fortunes outside the top flight. The aforementioned Third Division hiatus lasted only two seasons before the club was promoted back to the Second Division as runners-up in 1970–71. This spell also saw Fulham invited to the Anglo-Italian Cup, which saw the club draw four out of four games in 1972–73 season. This preceded a period of high-profile signings for the club under Alec Stock in the mid-1970s, including Alan Mullery and Bobby Moore. Fulham reached their only FA Cup final to date in 1975, having won their first semi-final in five attempts. The club lost 2–0 to West Ham United in the final at Wembley Stadium. This gained the club qualification for another European tournament, the Anglo-Scottish Cup, where they reached the final, losing to Middlesbrough. George Best played 47 times for the club in the 1976–77 season. Rodney Marsh, who having grown up with Fulham in the 1960s went on to play First Division football and play for England, rejoined the club in the same season, playing only 16 games. This capped one of the most successful eras in Fulham history. The club were relegated again after winning only 11 in 42 matches in the 1979–80 season, which eventually resulted in Bobby Campbell's dismissal in October 1980, to be replaced by Malcolm Macdonald. With a strong squad during his 1980–1984 period in charge (with players such as Ray Houghton, Tony Gale, Paul Parker, Gerry Peyton and Ray Lewington), they won promotion again in 1981–82 back to the Second Division, although the promotion was overshadowed by the suicide of former defender Dave Clement a few weeks before promotion was sealed. In 1980, Fulham founded the rugby league club that is now London Broncos designed to be an extra stream of income for the football club, but which made financial losses every year while linked to Fulham F.C. Then called "Fulham Rugby League," they played at Craven Cottage until moving away from the parent club in 1984. In 1978, Fulham had signed Gordon "Ivor" Davies who, during two spells at Fulham, became the club's leading goalscorer of all time with a total of 178 goals in all competitions; the record still stands. Fulham narrowly missed out on back-to-back promotions to the First Division, losing 1–0 to Derby County away on the last day of the 1982–83 season – although the match was abandoned after 88 minutes due to a pitch invasion and inexplicably never replayed or finished. The side which had shown so much promise was quickly sold off as the club were in debt, so it was little surprise when the club were relegated again to the Third Division in 1986. The club nearly went out of business in 1987 via an ill-advised merger attempt with Queens Park Rangers. It was only the intervention of ex-player Jimmy Hill that allowed the club to stay in business by formation of a new company, Fulham FC (1987) Ltd. In 1987, the club took part in what was then the longest penalty deciders ever recorded – it needed 28 spot kicks to sort out a winner between them and Aldershot following a Football League Trophy match. In 1992, the foundation of the Premier League, and the resignation of 22 clubs from The Football League, restored Fulham to that league's Second Division. However, the club were relegated to the new Third Division after a poor 1993–94 season, following which Ian Branfoot was appointed as team manager. 1994–1997: Fulham's lowest ebb. After an eighth-place finish in Branfoot's first season in charge, the club hit its lowest-ever final league position in the 1995–96 season, finishing 17th out of 24.<ref name="Final 1994/1995 Football League Two Table"></ref><ref name="Final 1995/1996 Football League Two Table"></ref> Branfoot was dismissed as manager, but remained at the club in other capacities for a short while. In February 1996, Micky Adams became player-manager. Adams oversaw an upturn in form that lifted the side out of relegation danger. The next season, he engineered a second-place league finish, missing out on first place because several years previously the league had dropped the old "goal difference" system in favour of a "goals scored" tally, meaning Fulham finished behind Wigan Athletic. The club's chairman Jimmy Hill had argued in 1992 that goals scored should decide places of teams tied on points, and the Football League clubs had voted the system in. 1997–2001: Al-Fayed takeover. Egyptian businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed bought the club for £6.25 million in the summer of 1997. The club was purchased via Bill Muddyman's Muddyman Group. Al-Fayed had Micky Adams replaced in the aftermath of a mid-table start to the season. He installed a two-tier management "dream team" of Ray Wilkins as First Team Manager and Kevin Keegan as chief operating officer, pledging that the club would reach the Premier League within five years. After an argument over team selection, Wilkins left the club in May 1998 to hand over the full managerial duties to Keegan. Keegan then helped steer the club to promotion the next season, winning 101 points out of a possible 138, after spending £1.1 million to sign Paul Peschisolido from West Bromwich Albion. Peschisolido was top scorer and captained by Chris Coleman – then the most expensive footballer outside the top two divisions of the English league. In 1999, Keegan left Fulham to become manager of England, and Paul Bracewell was put in charge. Bracewell was dismissed in March 2000, as Fulham's promising early season form dwindled away to a mid-table finish. Frenchman Jean Tigana was put in charge and, having signed a number of young stars (including French striker Louis Saha), he guided Fulham to their third promotion in five seasons in the 2000–01 season, giving Fulham top-flight status for the first time since 1968. Fulham once again amassed 101 points out of a possible 138 in their scintillating title run, which was crowned with an open-top bus parade down Fulham Palace Road. They are the only team to have twice reached 100 points in a season. During the season, Chris Coleman was involved in a car crash that put him out of action for well over a year and eventually ended his playing career after he failed to make a sufficient recovery. Fulham's run through the divisions saw a large turnover of players, with the only player to play for the club in all four leagues being Sean Davis. 2001–2007: Early Premier League years. Fulham returned to the top division of English football, and competed in the Premier League for the first time. The club finished the 2001–02 season in 13th place. Fulham were the only team to host top-flight football with some standing areas in the 21st century, but due to restrictions on standing, this was not allowed to continue; clubs promoted from the second division had only three years to make their ground all-seater. Fulham were forced to groundshare with QPR at Loftus Road during the 2002–03 and 2003–04 seasons while Craven Cottage was rebuilt as an all-seated stadium. There were fears that Fulham would not return to the Cottage, after it was revealed that Al-Fayed had sold the first right to build on the ground to a property development firm. In 2002–03, Fulham spent most of the season in the lower half of the table. Chairman Al-Fayed told manager Jean Tigana that his contract would not be renewed at the end of the season. However, with five games left to play and relegation still possible, Tigana was dismissed, and Chris Coleman was temporarily put in charge. Fulham won 10 points from a possible 15 and managed to avoid relegation. Coleman was appointed manager on a permanent basis in the summer of 2003; despite predictions that the inexperience of Coleman would result in Fulham's relegation, he kept the club well clear of relegation, guiding them to a club record ninth-place finish in his debut season. This might have been greater had the club not come under significant financial pressure to sell Louis Saha to Manchester United, for whom they received a club record £13 million. Fulham lost a legal case against former manager Tigana in 2004 after Al-Fayed wrongly alleged that Tigana had overpaid more than £7 million for new players and had negotiated transfers in secret. Coleman notched up another satisfactory performance in the 2004–05 season and guided Fulham to a secure 13th-place finish. The following season Fulham improved by one place, finishing 12th – the high point of the season was a 1–0 win over local rivals and reigning champions Chelsea in the West London derby – Chelsea had only lost two games in two and a half years. The 2006–07 season proved to be Coleman's last, as on 10 April 2007, Fulham terminated his contract with immediate effect. His replacement was Northern Ireland manager Lawrie Sanchez. Fulham only gained four points from five games with Sanchez as caretaker manager. They ensured top-flight survival that season by defeating a weakened Liverpool side 1–0 in the penultimate match of the season, and Sanchez was appointed manager. 2007–2010: Hodgson's transformation. Sanchez received strong financial backing from the board and made a number of signings during the summer break, but, after just two league wins in the first five months of the season and with Fulham in the relegation zone, he was dismissed on 21 December 2007 after a defeat to Newcastle United. Roy Hodgson was named as the new manager of Fulham on 28 December 2007 and took up his contractual duties on 30 December, just two days before the January transfer window opened. Hodgson's tenure did not start well and it took a month to secure his first win, against Aston Villa, courtesy of a Jimmy Bullard free-kick. Fulham continued to struggle and a 3–1 home defeat in April at the hands of fellow strugglers Sunderland left Hodgson on the verge of tears in the post-match press conference and many pundits writing off Fulham's survival chances. Despite the negative press, Hodgson continued to believe survival was attainable. The turning point of the season came in the third-to-last match, against Manchester City. Fulham trailed 2–0 at half-time and had the Premier League scores at that time become results, they would have been relegated. However, the introduction of Diomansy Kamara heralded the start of a fantastic comeback—Kamara struck twice as Fulham registered an amazing 3–2 victory. Fulham then won a crucial match against fellow strugglers Birmingham City at Craven Cottage, leaving survival in the club's own hands. Barring a goal-rush from fellow strugglers Reading, a win against a Portsmouth side looking ahead to their fourth FA Cup final would guarantee survival. With 15 minutes to play at Portsmouth, Fulham were drawing, and with Birmingham City and Reading leading comfortably against Blackburn Rovers and Derby County respectively, they looked likely to be relegated. However, Fulham earned a free-kick with 76 minutes played; Jimmy Bullard's delivery found Danny Murphy, who headed home the decisive goal, sparking manic celebrations from the travelling fans. Hodgson had ensured survival against all odds, breaking several club records in the process and cementing his place in Fulham folklore. Fulham narrowly missed out on a UEFA Cup place via Fairplay by a dubious 0.8 of a point behind Manchester City, who lost 8–1 at Middlesbrough. In the 2008–09 season, Fulham finished seventh, their highest-ever league placing, earning qualification for the inaugural UEFA Europa League, the second time that the club had entered a UEFA competition. 2009–10 was arguably the most successful season in the club's history. They were eliminated from the FA Cup in the quarter-finals for the second year running, and finished 12th in the Premier League, despite fielding weakened teams in the last few matches. In the inaugural Europa League season, however, Fulham reached the final, meeting Spanish club Atlético Madrid, who had dropped down from the Champions League, at the Volksparkstadion in Hamburg. In their first European cup final, the Cottagers were beaten 2–1 after extra time, having drawn 1–1 after full-time. The achievement of taking Fulham so unexpectedly far, beating famous teams like Hamburger SV, Juventus, holders Shakhtar Donetsk and Basel in the competition, led to Roy Hodgson being voted the LMA Manager of the Year by the widest margin in the history of the award. The home match in the round of 16 was arguably Fulham's greatest result in the history of the club. Despite losing 3–1 in the first leg at Italian giants Juventus and falling behind minutes into the second leg at Craven Cottage, Fulham scored four goals with no reply from Juventus. At the end of the season, Hodgson left Fulham to manage Liverpool. 2010–2013: Established in the Premier League. On 29 July 2010, Mark Hughes was named the successor to Hodgson, signing a two-year contract with the club. Hughes had previously managed Manchester City, the Welsh national team and Blackburn. Hughes' first match in charge was against Bolton Wanderers at the Reebok Stadium. The highlight of the season was a 4–0 win in the FA Cup over London rivals Tottenham Hotspur, all goals coming in the first half. Hughes resigned as manager of Fulham on 2 June 2011, having spent fewer than 11 months at the club. The Whites had an encouraging finish in eighth position and qualified for the Europa League via Fairplay. On 7 June 2011, Martin Jol signed a two-year contract with Fulham, becoming successor to Hughes. Jol's first match was a 3–0 Europa League win against NSÍ Runavík of the Faroe Islands on 30 June. Fulham then navigated their way with some ease to the group stage in the Europa League through late summer. However, the Cottagers were knocked out with the last seconds of the group stage matches, Odense Boldklub equalising to make a draw, leaving Fulham in third place, with Polish side Wisła Kraków instead progressing to the next round. Fulham's Premier League form in the 2011–12 season was mixed, with the continuing away-record hangover of previous seasons dragging on. In October 2011, Fulham had an emphatic 6–0 home win over neighbours QPR, with Andrew Johnson scoring a hat-trick for Fulham in the match. The January 2012 transfer window saw Bobby Zamora move over the Hammersmith flyover to Loftus Road, with Russian striker Pavel Pogrebnyak coming in place from VfB Stuttgart. The New Year saw two further hat-tricks scored by Clint Dempsey. On 11 February 2012, Progrebnyak scored on his debut in the 2–1 win over Stoke City. In March 2012, a 5–0 win against Wolverhampton Wanderers saw a hat-trick from Pogrebnyak. The Cottagers broke their historic drought on Merseyside with a 1–0 win over Liverpool at Anfield on May Day and another win against Sunderland in the last home game meant Fulham were only one point short of equalling their largest points haul in the Premier League, with just one game remaining. However, they failed to achieve this after losing their last game away at Tottenham. In the 2012–13 season, Fulham ended a seven-match winless run by beating Swansea City 3–0 away at the Liberty Stadium on the final game of the season on 19 May 2013. Fulham finished the season in 12th place. 2013–present: Shahid Khan's ownership. Shahid Khan took over as chairman in July 2013, but after a poor start to the 2013–14 season, having only amassed 10 points from 13 games, Martin Jol was dismissed as manager in December 2013, with René Meulensteen taking charge as head coach. Meulensteen was replaced by Felix Magath after just 17 games in charge following no upturn in form, but fortunes did not improve, and Fulham were eventually relegated to the Championship after a 4–1 defeat away to Stoke on 3 May. Fulham broke the Championship transfer record that summer in a restructuring of the squad by Magath, but after a disastrous start to the new season, amassing just one point in seven games, Magath was dismissed in September 2014, with Kit Symons appointed as caretaker manager. Fulham eventually finished the season in 17th place. The team suffered an inconsistent start to the following season and after a 5–2 loss at home to Birmingham City, and lying in 12th place, Kit Symons was dismissed as manager in November 2015. It paved the way for Serbian Slaviša Jokanović to be appointed on 27 December 2015. Fulham's fortunes did not improve greatly following Jokanović's appointment, but the team finished the 2015–16 Championship season in 20th place, avoiding relegation by 11 points. The 2016–17 season saw huge improvements in both results and performances. Despite an inconsistent start, the team saw a significant improvement from October onwards which saw them secure a 6th-place finish. They entered the play-offs, but lost to Reading 2–1 on aggregate in the semi-final. During this time, club owner Shahid Khan's son Tony Khan was named as Vice Chairman and Director of Football Operations, and he also holds the roles of General Manager and Sporting Director. Despite a slow start to the following season, the club went on a club-record 23 game unbeaten run in the league which led to a 3rd-place finish, narrowly missing out automatic promotion. The team went on to win the EFL Championship play-off final against Aston Villa to return to the Premier League on 26 May 2018. During the season, the club signed Aleksandar Mitrović, initially on loan until the end of the season. Mitrović would go on to score more than 100 goals for the club, becoming the eighth player in Fulham's history to do so. Following a poor start to life back in the Premier League, Jokanović was dismissed in November 2018 and replaced with former Leicester manager Claudio Ranieri. Results ultimately did not improve under Ranieri, as well as him alienating several key players, and he left the club in February 2019. He was replaced by Scott Parker as caretaker manager who could not save the club from relegation on 3 April 2019. Parker was appointed as manager on a permanent basis on 10 May 2019. In a season that was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, Parker led the club straight back to the Premier League on 4 August 2020, defeating London rivals Brentford 2–1 in the play-off final after a fourth-place finish. However, the club would once again be relegated after just a single season back in the top flight after a 2–0 defeat to Burnley on 10 May 2021. In the aftermath of relegation, Parker left the club by mutual consent and was replaced by former Everton manager Marco Silva. After relegation, Fulham under Silva earned promotion back to the top tier with four games to go, winning the 2021–22 Championship title. Fulham started the 2022–23 Premier League season much better than prior years. At the halfway point, Fulham sat in 6th place, had tallied a 2–1 win over West London rivals Chelsea, whom they had not defeated in nearly 16 years, and collected a string of four consecutive top-flight victories for the first time since April 1966. Grounds. Between the years 1879 and when Fulham had a ground to call their own in 1896, they played at a number of stadiums, only some of which were recorded and this should not be regarded as a full or complete list. Only rivals and former landlords Queens Park Rangers have played at more home stadiums. Some of the early grounds listed below are likely to have been parks and parkland, which have now been developed. Even when the club purchased Craven Cottage and the surrounding land in 1894, they had to wait two years before they could play a game there. Club identity. Kit. Fulham's sponsorship by Betfair in 2002–03 was the first gambling sponsorship in English football, and came before the Gambling Act 2005 permitted the industry to advertise on television and radio; within fifteen years half of Premier League teams were sponsored by such companies. On 27 July 2021, it was announced that World Mobile would become the official principal partner for the next three years. In July 2022, it was announced that the gambling company W88 would sponsor the team in a kit deal for the 2022–23 season. The deal saw the betting firm's logo placed on the front of both the men's and women's kit. The confirmation of the deal came during a decrease in gambling sponsors for Premier League teams. In June 2023, it was announced that betting company SBOBET would replace W88 as the team's main sponsor for the 2023–24 season. Mascot. The Fulham mascot is Billy the Badger, who was the winning design sent in by Kyle Jackson after an online competition by the club. Billy the Badger wears the number 79 Fulham shirt, in reference to the club's year of founding, 1879. Controversy first surrounded Billy when he tried to cheer up Chelsea manager Avram Grant during a home match in front of the television cameras. Secondly, Billy was seen on television being sent off during the home game against Aston Villa on 3 February 2008 for break-dancing in the corner of the pitch after the referee had commenced the game. Billy blamed his badger hearing and eyesight for the incident, and apologised to referee Chris Foy. On 11 March 2009, Billy walked across the goal during a match although it was not spotted by the referee. The former mascot for Fulham was Sir Craven of Cottage, the Knight. The cheerleaders were known as the Cravenettes. Rivalries and supporters. Fulham fans consider their main rivals to be Chelsea. Despite this fixture not being played that often in the years preceding Fulham's ascent to the top division, this is a clear local derby as Chelsea's ground, Stamford Bridge, is within Fulham and only 1.8 miles from Craven Cottage. Fulham consider their secondary rivals to be Queens Park Rangers. Fulham beat QPR twice in the 2011–12 Premier League season. They won 6–0 at Craven Cottage, and also 1–0 away from home at Loftus Road. The two clubs have played each other several times since in the Championship. Fulham's third closest rivalry is with Brentford, who they defeated 2–1 on 4 August 2020 in the Championship play-off final. Fulham also have rivalries with several other London clubs to a lesser extent, such as Crystal Palace. Outside of London, Gillingham are still considered rivals to some Fulham supporters despite the two clubs not having played in the same division since the 2000–01 season. Fulham and Gillingham were involved in several ill-tempered matches in the lower leagues, including the death of a Fulham supporter. Fulham's fan base has fluctuated over the years, with high crowds coinciding with the club's success in the Premier League. Fulham supporters have played a vital role in the club's long term stay at Craven Cottage. When the club moved temporarily to Loftus Road, a committee known as Back to the Cottage was formed, committed to ensuring the club continued to play at their traditional home. Fulham fans have traditionally come from the Fulham and Hammersmith areas, and also from other areas in South-West London, such as Putney, Richmond, Sutton and Worcester Park. In July 2012, the club website asked supporters using Facebook and Twitter to pick their best FFC Premier League XI from 2001 to the present. The supporters picked their favourite goalkeeper, full-backs, centre-backs, wingers, centre midfielders and forwards in a classic 4–4–2 formation. In August 2022, the club asked fans for an updated all time Premier League XI as part of the Premier League's 30th anniversary celebrations. Records and statistics. Fulham in Europe. Fulham are a member of the European Club Association, having qualified four times for European Competition, firstly the UEFA Intertoto Cup after their inaugural season in the Premier League, then the UEFA Cup as a result of winning that, and then the UEFA Europa League twice. Fulham are unbeaten at home in European competition, in 23 games, with a record of 17 wins and six draws. In 2010, Fulham reached the UEFA Europa League final, which they lost 2–1 to Atlético Madrid. Club management. Managerial history. Fulham have had 37 managers in 114 years. Prior to the appointment of the first manager at the club (Bradshaw in 1904), the duties normally assigned to a modern-day manager would have been shared between club secretary, captain, and other officials. Managerial records: Temporary managers at the club have included: Ownership. Fulham Football Club is owned by Shahid Khan. Khan completed his purchase of the club from Mohamed Al-Fayed on 12 July 2013 for a reported £150–200 million. During his ownership of Fulham, Al-Fayed had provided the club with £187 million in interest-free loans. In March 2011, Fulham posted annual losses of £16.9 million, with Al-Fayed stating that he would "continue to make funds available to achieve our goals both on and off the pitch" and that "the continued success of Fulham and its eventual financial self-sustainability is my priority." As of January 2013, Fulham were effectively debt-free as Al-Fayed converted the loans into equity in the club. Honours and achievements. League Cup Minor titles

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11513

Fort William, Scotland

Fort William is a town in Lochaber in the Scottish Highlands, located on the eastern shore of Loch Linnhe. At the 2011 census, Fort William had a population of 10,459, making it the second largest settlement in both the Highland council area, and the whole of the Scottish Highlands; only the city of Inverness has a larger population. Fort William is a major tourist centre on the Road to the Isles, with Glen Coe just to the south, to the east, and Glenfinnan to the west. It is a centre for hillwalking and climbing due to its proximity to Ben Nevis and many other Munros. It is also known for its nearby downhill mountain bike track. It is the start/end of both the West Highland Way (Milngavie – Fort William) and the Great Glen Way (a walk/cycle way Fort William–Inverness). Around 726 people (7.33% of the population) can speak Gaelic. Origins. The earliest recorded settlement on the site is a Cromwellian wooden fort built in 1654 as a base for the New Model Army to "pacify" Clan Cameron after the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The post-1688 revolution fort was named Fort William after William of Orange, who ordered that it be built to control some of the Scottish clans. The settlement that grew around it was called Maryburgh, after his wife Mary II of England. This settlement was later renamed Gordonsburgh, and then Duncansburgh before being renamed Fort William, this time after Prince William, Duke of Cumberland. There have been various suggestions over the years to rename the town (for example, to Invernevis). The origin of the Gaelic name for Fort William, "", is not recorded but could be a loanword from the English "garrison", having entered common usage some time after the royal garrison was established, during the reign of William of Orange or perhaps after the earlier Cromwellian fort, History. Historically, the Fort William area of Lochaber was old Clan Chattan and then Clan Cameron country, and there were a number of mainly Cameron settlements in the area (such as Blarmacfoldach). Before the building of the fort, Inverlochy was the main local settlement and was also the site of two battles—the first Battle of Inverlochy in 1431 and the second Battle of Inverlochy in 1645. The town grew in size as a settlement when the fort was constructed to control the population after Oliver Cromwell's invasion during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, and then to suppress the Jacobite risings after the 1688 overthrow of the House of Stuart. During the 1745 Jacobite Rising, known as the Forty-Five, Fort William was besieged for two weeks by the Jacobite forces, from 20 March to 3 April 1746. However, although the Jacobites had captured both of the other forts in the chain of three Great Glen fortifications (Fort Augustus and the original Fort George), they failed to take Fort William. In 1934, the Laggan Dam on the River Spean was completed as part of the Lochaber hydroelectric scheme by Balfour Beatty for the British Aluminium Company. The supervising engineers were the firm of C. S. Meik and William Halcrow, now known as the Halcrow Group. The dam was built to power the aluminum smelter. During the Second World War, Fort William was the home of , which was a training base for Royal Navy Coastal Forces. On 2 June 2006, a fire destroyed McTavish's Restaurant in Fort William High Street along with the two shops which were part of the building. The restaurant had been open since the 1970s and before that the building had been Fraser's Cafe since the 1920s. Development work began in 2012 on new hotel accommodation and street-level shops, which opened in 2014. Liberty House Group. In November 2016, Sanjeev Gupta's Liberty House Group purchased the Lochaber aluminum plant from the Rio Tinto Group. On 3 April 2021, it came to light during Gupta's financial troubles involving Greensill Capital that the Jahama Highland Estates (formerly the "Alcan Estate") had been purchased in 2016 as part of the Rio Tinto Mines deal for the Lochaber aluminium plant, because the furnace requires so much power that the smelter is located near a hydroelectric plant, which drains the basin of the Estate. The Estate includes the north face of Ben Nevis. According to reports, the Scottish National Party mandated that the Estate never be split from the hydro plant and aluminium smelter, but Gupta ignored them and placed ownership of the Estate in a company that is domiciled on the Isle of Man. The 2016 deal was worth £330 million and was guaranteed by the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer. Conservative finance spokesperson Murdo Fraser was critical of the alleged breach of the SNP agreement and urged the SNP to "take whatever steps are necessary to protect public funds". Proposed development. A "Waterfront" development was proposed by the council, but failed due to lack of public support. The development would have included a hotel, shops, and housing. The proposed development was slated to take 7 years by the local council, but opponents of the project said that it was unlikely to be completed before 2020. It was announced in April 2010 that the project had been abandoned. Geography. Originally based on the still-extant village of Inverlochy, the town lies at the southern end of the Great Glen. Fort William lies near the head of Loch Linnhe, one of Scotland's longest sea lochs, beside the mouth of the rivers Nevis and Lochy. They join in the intertidal zone and briefly become one river before discharging to the sea. The town and its suburbs are surrounded by mountains. It is also on the shore of Loch Eil. It is close to Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in the British Isles, Glen Nevis, and the town of Achnaphubuil, which is on the opposite shore of the loch. The original railway station, which was opened on August 7, 1894, was at the south end of the town. The consequence of this decision was that the town was separated from the lochside by railway tracks until the 1970s, when the present by-pass was built, and the station was re-located to the north end. The town is centred on the High Street, which was pedestrianised in the 1990s. Off this, there are several squares: Monzie Square (named after the Cameron Campbells of Monzie, Perthshire, former landowners in the town); Station Square, where the long-since demolished railway station used to be; Gordon Square (named after the Gordons, who in the late 18th century owned land where the town now stands, when the town was named Gordonsburgh); and Cameron Square—formerly known as Town Hall Square. There is also Fraser Square, which is not so square-like, since it now opens out into Middle Street, but which still houses the Imperial Hotel. The main residential areas of the town are unseen from the High Street and from the A82 main road. Upper Achintore and the Plantation spread steeply uphill from above the high street. Inverlochy, Claggan, An-Aird, Lochyside, Caol, Banavie and Corpach outwith (i.e. outside) the town are the other main residential areas. These areas are built on much flatter land than the town. Fort William is the northern end of the West Highland Way, a long-distance route which runs through the Scottish Highlands to Milngavie, on the outskirts of Glasgow, and the start/end point of the Great Glen Way, which runs between Fort William and Inverness. Glenfinnan, away, is home of the Glenfinnan Monument (Jacobite era) and the famous Glenfinnan Viaduct (as seen on a Bank Of Scotland £10 note). The viaduct has become known to millions in recent years as the "Harry Potter Bridge" after it featured in the films of the books by J.K. Rowling, specifically "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets". Glenfinnan has also been used in "Charlotte Gray" and "Highlander". Just outside the town is a large aluminium plant once operated by Alcan and powered by the Lochaber hydroelectric scheme, in its day the biggest tunnelling project in the world. This was formerly served by the Lochaber Narrow Gauge Railway better known locally as the Puggy Line. Climate. Fort William has an oceanic climate ("Cfb") with moderate, but generally cool, temperatures and abundant precipitation. Fort William is one of the wettest locations in the British Isles, with December being the wettest month. Transport. The West Highland Line passes through Fort William. Owing to the difficult terrain in the area, the line from Glasgow to the south, enters from the north-east. Trains from Glasgow to Mallaig, the terminus of the line, have to reverse at Fort William railway station. An overnight train, the Caledonian sleeper, has its terminus at Fort William; this service is known colloquially as "The Deerstalker". The stands for local buses and express coaches are on MacFarlane Way adjacent to the railway station. The Caledonian Canal connects the Scottish east coast at Inverness with the west coast at Corpach near Fort William. The Corran Ferry crosses Loch Linnhe, connecting the A82 to A861. Fort William is located on the A82. The closest motorway access is at junction 12 of the M90 near Perth, to the south-east. Sport. Mountain biking. Just outside the town, parallel to the Nevis Range Gondola, there is a large downhill mountain bike track which attracts thousands of visitors every year, including international competitors and fans. Each year since 2002, Fort William has hosted a round of UCI Mountain Bike World Cup and, in 2007, it hosted the UCI Mountain Bike & Trials World Championships ('The Worlds'). Also a trials competition is held at the various courses at the bottom. Fort William has hosted the World Endurance Mountain Bike Organisation (WEMBO) solo 24 hour championship in 2014 and again in 2018. The event consists of riders racing for a full 24 hours and is won by the rider who has completed the greater number of laps. Motorcycle trials. Fort William is the home of the Scottish Six Day Motorcycle Trial (SSDT); it is held annually in the first full week of May. It attracts many competitors from all across the globe and, in 2011, the event celebrated its centenary year. Others. Fort William has two major shinty teams: Fort William Shinty Club and Kilmallie Shinty Club. It also has a football team, Fort William F.C., that competes in the Scottish North Caledonian League and plays home games at Claggan Park. There is also a cricket club at Fort William that participates in the North of Scotland Cricket Association league (NoSCA). In addition, the town is home to Lochaber Rugby Club and to the Lochaber Yacht Club, a Community Amateur Sports Club that was founded in 1954. The town also has one golf club, called Fort William Golf Club, which has eighteen holes and is open all-year-round; it also hosts weekly competitions. As a film location. Movies filmed in or near Fort William include "Being Human", "Braveheart", "Highlander", "Restless Natives", "Harry Potter" and "Rob Roy". The TV series "Rockface" was filmed mainly around Fort William and some scenes of "Monarch of the Glen" were filmed around Lochaber, although mostly near Newtonmore. "Local Hero" shot the internal Houston scenes in Fort William. Festivals. In a celebration of mountains and the culture that surrounds them, and in recognition of the importance of climbing and walking tourism to the town, the Fort William Mountain Festival is held there each year. For a number of years, this volunteer-led festival has concentrated mostly around film but, starting in the Year of Highland Culture – Highland 2007, its scope was widened, and it dropped the word 'film' from its title. Education. Lochaber High School is the local high school and serves a large catchment area which includes the surrounding villages. West Highland College is part of the University of the Highlands & Islands. It hosts the School of Adventure Studies (SOAS) offering both FE courses & HE honours degrees.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11715

McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle

The McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle is an American twin-engine, all-weather tactical fighter aircraft designed by McDonnell Douglas (now part of Boeing). Following reviews of proposals, the United States Air Force (USAF) selected McDonnell Douglas's design in 1969 to meet the service's need for a dedicated air superiority fighter. The Eagle first flew in July 1972, and entered service in 1976. It is among the most successful modern fighters, with over 100 victories and no losses in aerial combat, with the majority of the kills by the Israeli Air Force. The Eagle has been exported to numerous countries including Israel, Japan, and Saudi Arabia. Although the F-15 was originally envisioned as a pure air-superiority aircraft, its design included a secondary ground-attack capability that was largely unused. It proved flexible enough that an improved all-weather strike derivative, the F-15E Strike Eagle, was later developed, entered service in 1989 and has been exported to several nations. Several additional F-15 variants have been produced. The USAF had planned to replace all of its air superiority F-15s with the Lockheed Martin F-22 by the 2010s, but the severely reduced F-22 procurement forced the USAF to operate the F-15C/D into the 2020s. The F-15E Strike Eagle is expected to continue operating in the USAF into the 2030s. The F-15 is in service with numerous countries, with production of enhanced variants continuing. Development. Early studies. The F-15 can trace its origins to the early Vietnam War, when the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy fought each other over future tactical aircraft. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was pressing for both services to use as many common aircraft as possible, even if performance compromises were involved. As part of this policy, the USAF and Navy had embarked on the TFX (F-111) program, aiming to deliver a medium-range interdiction aircraft for the Air Force that would also serve as a long-range interceptor aircraft for the Navy. In January 1965, Secretary McNamara asked the Air Force to consider a new low-cost tactical fighter design for short-range roles and close air support to replace several types like the F-100 Super Sabre and various light bombers then in service. Several existing designs could fill this role; the Navy favored the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk and LTV A-7 Corsair II, which were pure attack aircraft, while the Air Force was more interested in the Northrop F-5 fighter with a secondary attack capability. The A-4 and A-7 were more capable in the attack role, while the F-5 less so, but could defend itself. If the Air Force chose a pure attack design, maintaining air superiority would be a priority for a new airframe. The next month, a report on light tactical aircraft suggested the Air Force purchase the F-5 or A-7, and consider a new higher-performance aircraft to ensure its air superiority. This point was reinforced after the loss of two Republic F-105 Thunderchief aircraft to obsolete MiG-17s attacking the Thanh Hóa Bridge on 4 April 1965. In April 1965, Harold Brown, at that time director of the Department of Defense Research and Engineering, stated the favored position was to consider the F-5 and begin studies of an "F-X". These early studies envisioned a production run of 800 to 1,000 aircraft and stressed maneuverability over speed; it also stated that the aircraft would not be considered without some level of ground-attack capability. On 1 August, General Gabriel Disosway took command of Tactical Air Command and reiterated calls for the F-X, but lowered the required performance from Mach 3.0 to 2.5 to lower costs. An official requirements document for an air superiority fighter was finalized in October 1965, and sent out as a request for proposals to 13 companies on 8 December. Meanwhile, the Air Force chose the A-7 over the F-5 for the support role on 5 November 1965, giving further impetus for an air superiority design as the A-7 lacked any credible air-to-air capability. Eight companies responded with proposals. Following a downselect, four companies were asked to provide further developments. In total, they developed some 500 design concepts. Typical designs featured variable-sweep wings, weight over , included a top speed of Mach 2.7 and a thrust-to-weight ratio of 0.75. When the proposals were studied in July 1966, the aircraft were roughly the size and weight of the TFX F-111, and like that aircraft, were designs that could not be considered an air-superiority fighter. Smaller, lighter. Through this period, studies of combat over Vietnam were producing worrying results. Theory had stressed long-range combat using missiles and optimized aircraft for this role. The result was highly loaded aircraft with large radar and excellent speed, but limited maneuverability and often lacking a gun. The canonical example was the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, used by the USAF, USN, and U.S. Marine Corps to provide air superiority over Vietnam, the only fighter with enough power, range, and maneuverability to be given the primary task of dealing with the threat of Soviet fighters while flying with visual engagement rules. In practice, due to policy and practical reasons, aircraft were closing to visual range and maneuvering, placing the larger US aircraft at a disadvantage to the much less expensive day fighters such as the MiG-21. Missiles proved to be much less reliable than predicted, especially at close range. Although improved training and the introduction of the M61 Vulcan cannon on the F-4 did much to address the disparity, these early outcomes led to considerable re-evaluation of the 1963 Project Forecast doctrine. This led to John Boyd's energy–maneuverability theory, which stressed that extra power and maneuverability were key aspects of a successful fighter design and these were more important than outright speed. Through tireless championing of the concepts and good timing with the "failure" of the initial F-X project, the "fighter mafia" pressed for a lightweight day fighter that could be built and operated in large numbers to ensure air superiority. In early 1967, they proposed that the ideal design had a thrust-to-weight ratio near 1:1, a maximum speed further reduced to Mach 2.3, a weight of , and a wing loading of . By this time, the Navy had decided the F-111 would not meet their requirements and began the development of a new dedicated fighter design, the VFAX program. In May 1966, McNamara again asked the forces to study the designs and see whether the VFAX would meet the Air Force's F-X needs. The resulting studies took 18 months and concluded that the desired features were too different; the Navy stressed loiter time and mission flexibility, while the Air Force was now looking primarily for maneuverability. Focus on air superiority. In 1967, the Soviet Union revealed the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25 at the Domodedovo airfield near Moscow. The MiG-25 was designed as a high-speed, high-altitude interceptor aircraft, and made many performance tradeoffs to excel in this role. Among these was the requirement for very high speed, over Mach 2.8, which demanded the use of stainless steel instead of aluminum for many parts of the aircraft. The added weight demanded a much larger wing to allow the aircraft to operate at the required high altitudes. However, to observers, it appeared outwardly similar to the very large F-X studies, an aircraft with high speed and a large wing offering high maneuverability, leading to serious concerns throughout the Department of Defense and the various arms that the US was being outclassed. The MiG-23 was likewise a subject of concern, and it was generally believed to be a better aircraft than the F-4. The F-X would outclass the MiG-23, but now the MiG-25 appeared to be superior in speed, ceiling, and endurance to all existing US fighters, even the F-X. Thus, an effort to improve the F-X followed. Both Headquarters USAF and TAC continued to call for a multipurpose aircraft, while both Disosway and Air Chief of Staff Bruce K. Holloway pressed for a pure air-superiority design that would be able to meet the expected performance of the MiG-25. During the same period, the Navy had ended its VFAX program and instead accepted a proposal from Grumman for a smaller and more maneuverable design known as VFX, later becoming the Grumman F-14 Tomcat. VFX was considerably closer to the evolving F-X requirements. The Air Force in-fighting was eventually ended by the worry that the Navy's VFAX would be forced on them; in May 1968, it was stated that "We finally decided – and I hope there is no one who still disagrees – that this aircraft is going to be an air superiority fighter". In September 1968, a request for proposals was released to major aerospace companies. These requirements called for single-seat fighter having a maximum take-off weight of for the air-to-air role with a maximum speed of Mach 2.5 and a thrust-to-weight ratio of nearly 1:1 at mission weight. It also called for a twin-engined arrangement, as this was believed to respond to throttle changes more rapidly and might offer commonality with the Navy's VFX program. However, details of the avionics were left largely undefined, as whether to build a larger aircraft with a powerful radar that could detect the enemy at longer ranges was not clear, or alternatively a smaller aircraft that would make detecting it more difficult for the enemy. Four companies submitted proposals, with the Air Force eliminating General Dynamics and awarding contracts to Fairchild Republic, North American Rockwell, and McDonnell Douglas for the definition phase in December 1968. The companies submitted technical proposals by June 1969. The Air Force announced the selection of McDonnell Douglas on 23 December 1969. The winning design resembled the twin-tailed F-14, but with fixed wings; both designs were based on configurations studied in wind-tunnel testing by NASA. The Eagle's initial versions were the F-15 single-seat variant and TF-15 twin-seat variant. (After the F-15C was first flown, the designations were changed to "F-15A" and "F-15B"). These versions would be powered by new Pratt & Whitney F100 engines to achieve a combat thrust-to-weight ratio in excess of 1:1. A proposed 25-mm Ford-Philco GAU-7 cannon with caseless ammunition suffered development problems. It was dropped in favor of the standard M61 Vulcan gun. The F-15 used conformal carriage of four Sparrow missiles like the Phantom. The fixed wing was put onto a flat, wide fuselage that also provided an effective lifting surface. The first F-15A flight was made on 27 July 1972, with the first flight of the two-seat F-15B following in July 1973. The F-15 has a "look-down/shoot-down" radar that can distinguish low-flying moving targets from ground clutter. It would use computer technology with new controls and displays to lower pilot workload and require only one pilot to save weight. Unlike the F-14 or F-4, the F-15 has only a single canopy frame with clear vision forward. The USAF introduced the F-15 as "the first dedicated USAF air-superiority fighter since the North American F-86 Sabre". The F-15 was favored by customers such as the Israel and Japan air arms. Criticism from the fighter mafia that the F-15 was too large to be a dedicated dogfighter and too expensive to procure in large numbers, led to the Lightweight Fighter (LWF) program, which led to the USAF General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon and the middle-weight Navy McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet. Further development. The single-seat F-15C and two-seat F-15D models entered production in 1978 and conducted their first flights in February and June of that year. These models were fitted with the Production Eagle Package (PEP 2000), which included of additional internal fuel, provisions for exterior conformal fuel tanks, and an increased maximum takeoff weight up to . The increased takeoff weight allows internal fuel, a full weapons load, conformal fuel tanks, and three external fuel tanks to be carried. The APG-63 radar uses a programmable signal processor (PSP), enabling the radar to be reprogrammable for additional purposes such as the addition of new armaments and equipment. The PSP was the first of its kind in the world, and the upgraded APG-63 radar was the first radar to use it. Other improvements included strengthened landing gear, a new digital central computer, and an overload warning system, which allows the pilot to fly up to 9 g at all weights. The F-15 Multistage Improvement Program (MSIP) was initiated in February 1983 with the first production MSIP F-15C produced in 1985. Improvements included an upgraded central computer; a Programmable Armament Control Set, allowing for advanced versions of the AIM-7, AIM-9, and AIM-120A missiles; and an expanded Tactical Electronic Warfare System that provides improvements to the ALR-56C radar warning receiver and ALQ-135 countermeasure set. The final 43 F-15Cs included the Hughes APG-70 radar developed for the F-15E; these are sometimes referred as Enhanced Eagles. Earlier MSIP F-15Cs with the APG-63 were upgraded to the APG-63(V)1 to improve maintainability and to perform similar to the APG-70. Existing F-15s were retrofitted with these improvements. In 1979, McDonnell Douglas and F-15 radar manufacturer, Hughes, teamed to privately develop a strike fighter version of the F-15. This version competed in the Air Force's Dual-Role Fighter competition starting in 1982. The F-15E strike variant was selected for production over General Dynamics' competing F-16XL in 1984. Beginning in 1985, F-15C and D models were equipped with the improved P&W F100-PW-220 engine and digital engine controls, providing quicker throttle response, reduced wear, and lower fuel consumption. Starting in 1997, original F100-PW-100 engines were upgraded to a similar configuration with the designation F100-PW-220E starting. Beginning in 2007, 179 USAF F-15Cs would be retrofitted with the AN/APG-63(V)3 Active Electronically Scanned Array radar. A significant number of F-15s are to be equipped with the Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing System. Lockheed Martin is working on an IRST system for the F-15C. A follow-on upgrade called the Eagle passive/active warning survivability system (EPAWSS) was planned, but remained unfunded. Boeing was selected in October 2015 to serve as prime contractor for the EPAWSS, with BAE Systems selected as a subcontractor. The EPAWSS is an all-digital system with advanced electronic countermeasures, radar warning, and increased chaff and flare capabilities in a smaller footprint than the 1980s-era Tactical Electronic Warfare System. More than 400 F-15Cs and F-15Es will have the system installed. In September 2015, Boeing unveiled its 2040C Eagle upgrade, designed to keep the F-15 relevant through 2040. Seen as a necessity because of the low numbers of F-22s procured, the upgrade builds upon the company's F-15SE Silent Eagle concept with low-observable features. Most improvements focus on lethality including quad-pack munitions racks to double its missile load to 16, conformal fuel tanks for extended range, "Talon HATE" communications pod to communicate with fifth-generation fighters, the APG-63(v)3 AESA radar, a long-range infrared search and track sensor, and BAE Systems' EPAWSS systems. The 2040C upgrade for the F-15C/D was not pursued, owing to the airframes' age, but some of the components such as EPAWSS were continued to upgrade the F-15E fleet as well as new-build F-15EX. Design. Overview. The F-15 has an all-metal semi-monocoque fuselage with a large-cantilever, shoulder-mounted wing. The wing planform of the F-15 suggests a modified cropped delta shape with a leading-edge sweepback angle of 45°. Ailerons and a simple high-lift flap are located on the trailing edge. No leading-edge maneuvering flaps are used. This complication was avoided by the combination of low wing loading and fixed leading-edge camber that varies with spanwise position along the wing. Airfoil thickness ratios vary from 6% at the root to 3% at the tip. The empennage is of metal and composite construction, with twin aluminium/composite material honeycomb structure vertical stabilizers with boron-composite skin, resulting in an exceptionally thin tailplane and rudders. Composite horizontal all-moving tails outboard of the vertical stabilizers move independently to provide roll control in some flight maneuvers. The F-15 has a spine-mounted air brake and retractable tricycle landing gear. It is powered by two Pratt & Whitney F100 axial compressor turbofan engines with afterburners, mounted side by side in the fuselage and fed by rectangular inlets with variable intake ramps. The cockpit is mounted high in the forward fuselage with a one-piece windscreen and large canopy for increased visibility and a 360° field of view for the pilot. The airframe began to incorporate advanced superplastically formed titanium components in the 1980s. The F-15's maneuverability is derived from low wing loading (weight to wing area ratio) with a high thrust-to-weight ratio, enabling the aircraft to turn tightly without losing airspeed. The F-15 can climb to in around 60 seconds. At certain speeds, the dynamic thrust output of the dual engines is greater than the aircraft's combat weight and drag, so it has the ability to accelerate vertically. The weapons and flight-control systems are designed so that one person can safely and effectively perform air-to-air combat. The A and C models are single-seat variants; these were the main air-superiority versions produced. B and D models add a second seat behind the pilot for training. E models use the second seat for a weapon systems officer. Visibly, the F-15 has a unique feature "vis-à-vis" other modern fighter aircraft; it does not have the distinctive "turkey feather" aerodynamic exhaust petals covering its engine nozzles. Following problems during development of its exhaust petal design, including dislodgment during flight, the decision was made to remove them, resulting in a 3% aerodynamic drag increase. The F-15 was shown to be capable of controlled flight with only one wing after an Israeli F-15D suffered a mid-air collision that removed most of the starboard wing; the pilot quickly learned how to fly the aircraft and land it safely. Subsequent wind-tunnel tests on a one-wing model confirmed that controllable flight was only possible within a very limited speed range of +/- 20 knots and angle of attack variation of +/- 20 degrees. The event resulted in research into damage adaptive technology and a system called "Intelligent Flight Control System". Avionics. A multimission avionics system includes a head-up display (HUD), advanced radar, AN/ASN-109 inertial guidance system, flight instruments, ultra high frequency communications, and tactical air navigation system and instrument landing system receivers. It also has an internally mounted, tactical electronic warfare system, Identification friend or foe system, an electronic countermeasures suite, and a central digital computer. The HUD projects all essential flight information gathered by the integrated avionics system. This display, visible in any light condition, provides the pilot information necessary to track and destroy an enemy aircraft without having to look down at cockpit instruments. The F-15's versatile APG-63 and 70 pulse-Doppler radar systems can look up at high-flying targets and look-down/shoot-down at low-flying targets without being confused by ground clutter. These radars can detect and track aircraft and small high-speed targets at distances beyond visual range down to close range, and at altitudes down to treetop level. The APG-63 has a basic range of . The radar feeds target information into the central computer for effective weapons delivery. For close-in dogfights, the radar automatically acquires enemy aircraft, and this information is projected on the head-up display. The F-15's electronic warfare system provides both threat warning (radar warning receiver) and automatic countermeasures against selected threats. Weaponry and external stores. A variety of air-to-air weaponry can be carried by the F-15. An automated weapon system enables the pilot to release weapons effectively and safely, using the head-up display and the avionics and weapons controls located on the engine throttles or control stick. When the pilot changes from one weapon system to another, visual guidance for the selected weapon automatically appears on the head-up display. The Eagle can be armed with combinations of four different air-to-air weapons: AIM-7F/M Sparrow missiles or AIM-120 AMRAAM advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles on its lower fuselage corners, AIM-9L/M Sidewinder or AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles on two pylons under the wings, and an internal M61 Vulcan Gatling gun in the right wing root. Low-drag conformal fuel tanks (CFTs) were developed for the F-15C and D models. They can be attached to the sides of the engine air intakes under each wing and are designed to the same load factors and airspeed limits as the basic aircraft. These tanks slightly degrade performance by increasing aerodynamic drag and cannot be jettisoned in-flight. However, they cause less drag than conventional external tanks. Each conformal tank can hold 750 U.S. gallons (2,840 L) of fuel. These CFTs increase range and reduce the need for in-flight refueling. All external stations for munitions remain available with the tanks in use. Moreover, Sparrow or AMRAAM missiles can be attached to the corners of the CFTs. The 57 FIS based at Keflavik NAS, Iceland, was the only C-model squadron to use CFTs on a regular basis due to its extended operations over the North Atlantic. With the closure of the 57 FIS, the F-15E is the only variant to carry them on a routine basis. CFTs have also been sold to Israel and Saudi Arabia. Upgrades. The McDonnell Douglas F-15E Strike Eagle is a two-seat, dual-role, totally integrated fighter for all-weather, air-to-air, and deep interdiction missions. The rear cockpit is upgraded to include four multipurpose cathode ray tube displays for aircraft systems and weapons management. The digital, triple-redundant Lear Siegler aircraft flight control system permits coupled automatic terrain following, enhanced by a ring-laser gyro inertial navigation system. For low-altitude, high-speed penetration and precision attack on tactical targets at night or in adverse weather, the F-15E carries a high-resolution APG-70 radar and LANTIRN pods to provide thermography. The newest F-15E version is the F-15 Advanced, which features fly-by-wire controls. The APG-63(V)2 active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar has been retrofitted to 18 U.S. Air Force F-15C aircraft. This upgrade includes most of the new hardware from the APG-63(V)1, but adds an AESA to provide increased pilot situation awareness. The AESA radar has an exceptionally agile beam, providing nearly instantaneous track updates and enhanced multitarget tracking capability. The APG-63(V)2 is compatible with current F-15C weapon loads and enables pilots to take full advantage of AIM-120 AMRAAM capabilities, simultaneously guiding multiple missiles to several targets widely spaced in azimuth, elevation, or range. The further improved APG-63(V)3 AESA radar is expected to be fitted to 179 F-15C aircraft; the first upgraded aircraft was delivered in October 2010. The ZAP (Zone Acquisition Program) missile launch envelope has been integrated into the operational flight program system of all U.S. F-15 aircraft, providing dynamic launch zone and launch acceptability region information for missiles to the pilot by display cues in real-time. Operational history. Introduction and early service. The largest operator of the F-15 is the United States Air Force. The first Eagle, an F-15B, was delivered on 13 November 1974. In January 1976, the first Eagle destined for a combat squadron, the 555th TFS, was delivered. These initial aircraft carried the Hughes Aircraft (now Raytheon) APG-63 radar. The first kill by an F-15 was scored by Israeli Air Force (IAF) ace Moshe Melnik in 1979. During IAF raids against Palestinian factions in Lebanon in 1979–1981, F-15As reportedly downed 13 Syrian MiG-21s and two Syrian MiG-25s. Israeli F-15As and Bs participated as escorts in Operation Opera, an air strike on an Iraqi nuclear reactor. In the 1982 Lebanon War, Israeli F-15s were credited with 41 Syrian aircraft destroyed (23 MiG-21s and 17 MiG-23s, and one Aérospatiale SA.342L Gazelle helicopter). During Operation Mole Cricket 19, Israeli F-15s and F-16s together shot down 82 Syrian fighters (MiG-21s, MiG-23s, and MiG-23Ms) without losses. Israel was the only operator to use and develop the air-to-ground abilities of the air-superiority F-15 variants, doing so because the fighter's range was well beyond other combat aircraft in the Israeli inventory in the 1980s. The first known use of F-15s for a strike mission was during Operation Wooden Leg on 1 October 1985, with six F-15Ds attacking PLO Headquarters in Tunis with two GBU-15 guided bombs per aircraft and two F-15Cs restriking the ruins with six Mk-82 unguided bombs each. This was one of the few times air-superiority F-15s (A/B/C/D models) were used in tactical strike missions. Israeli air-superiority F-15 variants have since been extensively upgraded to carry a wider range of air-to-ground armaments, including JDAM GPS-guided bombs and Popeye missile. Royal Saudi Air Force F-15C pilots reportedly shot down two Iranian Air Force F-4E Phantom IIs in a skirmish on 5 June 1984. Anti-satellite trials. The ASM-135 missile was designed to be a standoff antisatellite (ASAT) weapon, with the F-15 acting as a first stage. The Soviet Union could correlate a U.S. rocket launch with a spy satellite loss, but an F-15 carrying an ASAT would blend in among hundreds of F-15 flights. From January 1984 to September 1986, two F-15As were used as launch platforms for the ASAT missile. The F-15As were modified to carry one ASM-135 on the centerline station with extra equipment within a special centerline pylon. The launch aircraft executed a Mach 1.22, 3.8 g climb at 65° to release the ASAT missile at an altitude of . The flight computer was updated to control the zoom-climb and missile release. The third test flight involved a retired P78-1 solar observatory satellite in a orbit, which was destroyed by kinetic energy. The pilot, USAF Major Wilbert D. "Doug" Pearson, became the only pilot to destroy a satellite. The ASAT program involved five test launches. The program was officially terminated in 1988. Gulf War and aftermath. The USAF began deploying F-15C, D, and E model aircraft to the Persian Gulf region in August 1990 for Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. During the Gulf War, the F-15 accounted for 36 of the 39 air-to-air victories by U.S. Air Force against Iraqi forces. Iraq has confirmed the loss of 23 of its aircraft in air-to-air combat. The F-15C and D fighters were used in the air-superiority role, while F-15E Strike Eagles were used in air-to-ground attacks mainly at night, hunting modified Scud missile launchers and artillery sites using the LANTIRN system. According to the USAF, its F-15Cs had 34 confirmed kills of Iraqi aircraft during the 1991 Gulf War, most of them by missile fire: five Mikoyan MiG-29s, two MiG-25s, eight MiG-23s, two MiG-21s, two Sukhoi Su-25s, four Sukhoi Su-22s, one Sukhoi Su-7, six Dassault Mirage F1s, one Ilyushin Il-76 cargo aircraft, one Pilatus PC-9 trainer, and two Mil Mi-8 helicopters. In addition, the F-15E achieved its first-ever air-to-air kill on 14 February 1991, destroying an Iraqi Mi-24 "Hind" helicopter with a GBU-10 laser-guided bomb. Air superiority was achieved in the first three days of the conflict; many of the later kills were reportedly of Iraqi aircraft fleeing to Iran, rather than engaging American aircraft. Two F-15Es were lost to ground fire, and another was damaged on the ground by a Scud strike on King Abdulaziz Air Base. On 11 November 1990, a Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF) pilot defected to Sudan with an F-15C fighter during Operation Desert Shield. Saudi Arabia paid US$40 million (~$ in ) for return of the aircraft three months later. RSAF F-15s shot down two Iraqi Mirage F1s during the Operation Desert storm. One Saudi Arabian F-15C was lost to a crash during the Persian Gulf War in 1991. The IQAF claimed this fighter was part of two USAF F-15Cs that engaged two Iraqi MiG-25PDs, and was hit by an R-40 missile before crashing. They have since been deployed to support Operation Southern Watch, the patrolling of the Iraqi no-fly zones in Southern Iraq; Operation Provide Comfort in Turkey; in support of NATO operations in Bosnia, and recent air expeditionary force deployments. In 1994, two U.S. Army Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawks were mistakenly downed by USAF F-15Cs in northern Iraq in a friendly-fire incident. USAF F-15Cs shot down four Yugoslav MiG-29s using AIM-120 and AIM-7 Radar guided missiles during NATO's 1999 intervention in Kosovo, Operation Allied Force. Structural defects. All F-15s were grounded by the USAF after a Missouri Air National Guard F-15C came apart in flight and crashed on 2 November 2007. The newer F-15E fleet was later cleared for continued operations. The USAF reported on 28 November 2007 that a critical location in the upper longerons on the F-15C was the failure's suspected cause, causing the fuselage forward of the air intakes, including the cockpit and radome, to separate from the airframe. F-15A through D-model aircraft were grounded until the location received detailed inspections and repairs as needed. The grounding of F-15s received media attention as it began to place strains on the nation's air-defense efforts. The grounding forced some states to rely on their neighboring states' fighters for air-defense protection, and Alaska to depend on Canadian Forces' fighter support. On 8 January 2008, the USAF Air Combat Command (ACC) cleared a portion of its older F-15 fleet for return to flying status. It also recommended a limited return to flight for units worldwide using the affected models. The accident review board report, which was released on 10 January 2008, stated that analysis of the F-15C wreckage determined that the longeron did not meet drawing specifications, which led to fatigue cracks and finally a catastrophic failure of the remaining support structures and breakup of the aircraft in flight. In a report released on 10 January 2008, nine other F-15s were identified to have similar problems in the longeron. As a result, General John D. W. Corley stated, "the long-term future of the F-15 is in question". On 15 February 2008, ACC cleared all its grounded F-15A/B/C/D fighters for flight pending inspections, engineering reviews, and any needed repairs. ACC also recommended release of other U.S. F-15A/B/C/Ds. Later service. The F-15 has a combined air-to-air combat record of 104 kills to no losses . The F-15's air superiority versions, the A/B/C/D models, have not suffered any losses to enemy action. Over half of F-15 kills have been achieved by Israeli Air Force pilots. On 16 September 2009, the last F-15A, an Oregon Air National Guard aircraft, was retired, marking the end of service for the F-15A and F-15B models in the United States. With the retirement of the F-15A and B models, the F-15C and D models are supplemented in US service by the newer F-22 Raptor. During the 2010s, USAF F-15C/Ds were regularly based overseas with the Pacific Air Forces at Kadena AB in Japan and with the U.S. Air Forces in Europe at RAF Lakenheath in the United Kingdom. Other regular USAF F-15s are operated by ACC as adversary/aggressor platforms at Nellis AFB, Nevada, and by Air Force Materiel Command in test and evaluation roles at Edwards AFB, California, and Eglin AFB, Florida. All remaining combat-coded F-15C/Ds are operated by the Air National Guard. As of 2006, the USAF was upgrading 178 F-15C/Ds with the AN/APG-63(V)3 AESA radar, and equipping other F-15s with the Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing System. In 2007, the USAF planned to keep 178 F-15C/Ds along with 224 F-15Es in service beyond 2025. As part of the USAF's FY 2015 budget, the F-15C faced cuts or retirement in response to sequestration. In April 2017, USAF officials announced plans to retire the F-15C/D in the mid-2020s and press more F-16s into roles occupied by the F-15. In December 2018, Bloomberg Government reported that the Pentagon, not the USAF, in its 2020 budget request, would likely request US$1.2 billion for 12 new-built F-15Xs to replace older F-15Cs operated by Air National Guard units. Newly built Eagle IIs will replace F-15C/Ds, as the older airframes had an average age of 37 years by 2021; 75% were beyond their certified service lives leading to groundings from structural issues, and life extensions were deemed too expensive. In 2021, 144 Eagle IIs were planned to primarily fly ANG homeland defense missions, as well as carry outsized standoff weapons in combat. In 2022, it was announced the USAF plan to retire their fleet of F-15C/Ds by 2026. The Air Force Magazine stated in 2007 that the F-15E was projected to remain in service for many years because of the model's primary air-to-ground role and the low number of hours on the variant's airframes. Yemen Civil War. During the Yemeni Civil War (2015–present), Houthis have used R-27T missiles modified to serve as surface-to-air missiles. A video released on 7 January 2018 also shows a modified R-27T hitting a Saudi F-15 on a forward-looking infrared camera. Houthi sources claim to have downed the F-15, although this has been disputed, as the missile apparently proximity detonated, though the F-15 continued to fly in its trajectory seemingly unaffected. Rebels later released footage showing an aircraft wreck, but serial numbers on the wreckage suggested the aircraft was a Panavia Tornado, also operated by Saudi forces. On 8 January, the Saudi admitted the loss of an aircraft but due to technical reasons. On 21 March 2018, Houthi rebels released a video where they hit and possibly shot down a Saudi F-15 in Saada province. In the video a R-27T air-to-air missile adapted for surface-to-air use was launched and appeared to hit a jet. As in the video of the previous similar hit recorded on 8 January, the target, while clearly hit, did not appear to be downed. Saudi forces confirmed the hit, while saying the jet landed at a Saudi base. Saudi official sources confirmed the incident, reporting that it happened at 3:48 pm local time after a surface-to-air defense missile was launched at the fighter jet from inside Saada airport. After the Houthi attack on Saudi oil infrastructure on 14 September 2019, Saudi Arabia tasked F-15 fighters armed with missiles to intercept low flying drones, difficult to intercept with ground-based high altitude missile systems like the MIM-104 Patriot with several drones being downed since then. On 2 July 2020, a Saudi F-15 shot down two Houthi Shahed 129 drones above Yemen. On 7 March 2021, during a Houthi attack at several Saudi oil installations, Saudi F-15s shot down several attacking drones using heatseeking AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles, with video evidence showing at least two Samad-3 UAVs and one Qasef-2K downed. On 30 March 2021, a video made by Saudi border guards showed a Saudi F-15 shooting down a Houthi Quasef-2K drone with an AIM-120 AMRAAM fired at short range. Variants. Prototypes. Twelve prototypes were built and used for trials by the F-15 Joint Test Force at Edwards Air Force Base using McDonnell Douglas and United States Air Force personnel. Most prototypes were later used by NASA for trials and experiments. Operators. This article only covers the F-15A, B, C, D, and related variants. For the operators of other F-15E-based variants, like the F-15E, F-15I, F-15S, F-15K, F-15SG, or F-15EX, see McDonnell Douglas F-15E Strike Eagle. Notable accidents. A total of 175 F-15s have been lost to non-combat causes as of June 2016. However, the F-15 aircraft is very reliable with only 1 loss per 50,000 flight hours. Aircraft on display. Although the F-15 continues to be in use, a number of older USAF and IAF models have been retired, with several placed on outdoor display or in museums. Germany. F-15A Netherlands. F-15A Japan. F-15A Israel. F-15A Saudi Arabia. F-15B United Kingdom. F-15A Notable appearances in media. The F-15 was the subject of the IMAX movie ', about the RED FLAG exercises. In Tom Clancy's nonfiction book, ' (1995), a detailed analysis of the Air Force's premier fighter aircraft, the F-15 Eagle and its capabilities are showcased. The F-15 has also been a popular subject as a toy, and a fictional likeness of an aircraft similar to the F-15 has been used in cartoons, books, video games, animated television series, and animated films.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11741

Fantasy film

Fantasy films are films that belong to the fantasy genre with fantastic themes, usually magic, supernatural events, mythology, folklore, or exotic fantasy worlds. The genre is considered a form of speculative fiction alongside science fiction films and horror films, although the genres do overlap. Fantasy films often have an element of magic, myth, wonder, escapism, and the extraordinary. Subgenres. Several sub-categories of fantasy films can be identified, although the delineations between these subgenres, much as in fantasy literature, are somewhat fluid. The most common fantasy subgenres depicted in movies are high fantasy and sword and sorcery. Both categories typically employ quasi-medieval settings, wizards, magical creatures and other elements commonly associated with fantasy stories. High fantasy films tend to feature a more richly developed fantasy world, and may also be more character-oriented or thematically complex. Often, they feature a hero of humble origins and a clear distinction between good and evil set against each other in an epic struggle. Many scholars cite J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" novel as the prototypical modern example of high fantasy in literature, and the recent Peter Jackson film adaptation of the books is a good example of the high fantasy subgenre on the silver screen. Sword and sorcery movies tend to be more plot-driven than high fantasy and focus heavily on action sequences, often pitting a physically powerful but unsophisticated warrior against an evil wizard or other supernaturally endowed enemy. Although sword and sorcery films sometimes describe an epic battle between good and evil similar to those found in many High fantasy movies, they may alternately present the hero as having more immediate motivations, such as the need to protect a vulnerable maiden or village, or even being driven by the desire for vengeance. The 1982 film adaptation of Robert E. Howard's "Conan the Barbarian", for example, is a personal (non-epic) story concerning the hero's quest for revenge and his efforts to thwart a single megalomaniac—while saving a beautiful princess in the process. Some critics refer to such films by the term Sword and Sandal rather than sword and sorcery, although others would maintain that the Sword and Sandal label should be reserved only for the subset of fantasy films set in ancient times on the planet Earth, and still others would broaden the term to encompass films that have no fantastic elements whatsoever. To some, the term Sword and Sandal has pejorative connotations, designating a film with a low-quality script, bad acting, and poor production values. Another important subgenre of fantasy films that has become more popular in recent years is contemporary fantasy. Such films feature magical effects or supernatural occurrences happening in the "real" world of today. Films with live action and animation such as Disney's "Mary Poppins", "Pete's Dragon", "Enchanted", and the Robert Zemeckis film "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" are also fantasy films although are more often referred to as Live action/animation hybrids (2 of those are also classified as musicals). Fantasy films set in the afterlife, called Bangsian fantasy, are less common, although films such as the 1991 Albert Brooks comedy "Defending Your Life" would likely qualify. Other uncommon subgenres include historical fantasy and romantic fantasy, although 2003's "" successfully incorporated elements of both. As noted above, superhero movies and fairy tale films might each be considered subgenres of fantasy films, although most would classify them as altogether separate movie genres. Fantasy movies and the film industry. As a cinematic genre, fantasy has traditionally not been regarded as highly as the related genre of science fiction film. Undoubtedly, the fact that until recently fantasy films often suffered from the "Sword and Sandal" afflictions of inferior production values, over-the-top acting, and decidedly poor special effects was a significant factor in fantasy film's low regard. Since the early 2000s, however, the genre has gained new respectability in a way, driven principally by the successful adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" and J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series. Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy is notable due to its ambitious scope, serious tone, and thematic complexity. These pictures achieved phenomenal commercial and critical success, and the of the trilogy became the first fantasy film ever to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. The "Harry Potter" series has been a tremendous financial success, has achieved critical acclaim for its design, thematic sophistication and emotional depth, grittier realism and darkness, narrative complexity, and characterization, and boasts an enormous and loyal fanbase. Following the success of these ventures, Hollywood studios have greenlighted additional big-budget productions in the genre. These have included adaptations of the first, second, and third books in C. S. Lewis' "The Chronicles of Narnia" series and the teen novel "Eragon", as well as adaptations of Susan Cooper's "The Dark Is Rising", Cornelia Funke's "Inkheart", Philip Pullman's "The Golden Compass", Holly Black's "The Spiderwick Chronicles", Nickelodeon's TV show "", and the "Fantasia" segment (along with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's original poem) "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" Many fantasy movies starting in the 2000s, such as "The Lord of the Rings" films, the first and third "Narnia" adaptations, and the first, second, fourth and seventh "Harry Potter" adaptations have most often been released in November and December. This is in contrast to science fiction films, which are often released during the northern hemisphere summer (June–August). All three installments of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" fantasy films, however, were released in July 2003, July 2006, and May 2007 respectively, and the latest releases in the "Harry Potter" series were released in July 2007 and July 2009. The huge commercial success of these pictures may indicate a change in Hollywood's approach to big-budget fantasy film releases. Screenwriter and scholar Eric R. Williams identifies fantasy films as one of eleven super-genres in his screenwriters' taxonomy, claiming that all feature length narrative films can be classified by these super-genres. The other ten super-genres are Action, Crime, Horror, Romance, Science Fiction, Slice of Life, Sports, Thriller, War and Western. History. Fantasy films have a history almost as old as the medium itself. However, fantasy films were relatively few and far between until the 1980s, when high-tech filmmaking techniques and increased audience interest caused the genre to flourish. What follows are some notable Fantasy films. For a more complete list see: List of fantasy films 1900–1920s. In the era of silent film, the earliest fantasy films were those made by French film pioneer Georges Méliès from 1903. The most famous of these was 1902's "A Trip to the Moon". In the Golden Age of Silent film (1918–1926) the most outstanding fantasy films were Douglas Fairbanks' "The Thief of Bagdad" (1924), Fritz Lang's "Die Nibelungen" (1924), and "Destiny" (1921). Other notables in the genre were F.W. Murnau's romantic ghost story "Phantom", "Tarzan of the Apes" starring Elmo Lincoln, and D. W. Griffith's "The Sorrows of Satan". 1930s. Following the advent of sound films, audiences of all ages were introduced from 1937's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" to 1939's "The Wizard of Oz". Also notable of the era, the iconic 1933 film "King Kong" borrows heavily from the Lost World subgenre of fantasy fiction as does such films as the 1935 adaptation of H. Rider Haggard's novel "She" about an African expedition that discovers an immortal queen known as Ayesha "She who must be obeyed". Frank Capra's 1937 picture "Lost Horizon" transported audiences to the Himalayan fantasy kingdom of Shangri-La, where the residents magically never age. Other noteworthy fantasy films of the 30s include "Tarzan the Ape Man" in 1932 starring Johnny Weissmuller starting a successful series of talking pictures based on the fantasy-adventure novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs and the G. W. Pabst directed "The Mistress of Atlantis" from 1932. 1932 saw the release of the Universal Studios monster movie "The Mummy" which combined horror with a romantic fantasy twist. more light-hearted and comedic affairs from the decade include films like 1934s romantic drama film "Death Takes a Holiday" where Fredric March plays Death who takes a human body to experience life for three days and 1937s "Topper" where a man is haunted by two fun-loving ghosts who try to make his life a little more exciting. 1940s. The 1940s then saw several full-color fantasy films produced by Alexander Korda, including "The Thief of Bagdad" (1940), a film on par with "The Wizard of Oz", and "Jungle Book" (1942). In 1946, Jean Cocteau's classic adaptation of "Beauty and the Beast" won praise for its surreal elements and for transcending the boundaries of the fairy tale genre. "Sinbad the Sailor" (1947), starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr., has the feel of a fantasy film though it does not actually have any fantastic elements. Several other pictures featuring supernatural encounters and aspects of Bangsian fantasy were produced in the 1940s during World War II. These include "Beyond Tomorrow", "The Devil and Daniel Webster", and "Here Comes Mr. Jordan", all from 1941, "Heaven Can Wait" the musical "Cabin in the Sky" (1943), the comedy "The Horn Blows at Midnight" and romances such as "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" (1947), "One Touch of Venus" and "Portrait of Jennie", both 1948. An astonishing anticipation of the full "sword and sorcery" genre was made in 1941 in Italy by Alessandro Blasetti. "La Corona di Ferro" presents the struggles of two imaginary kingdoms around the legendary Iron Crown (historically the ancient crown of Italy), with war, cruelty, betrayal, heroism, sex, magic and mysticism, a whirl of events taken from every possible fairy tale and legend source Blasetti could find. This movie is unlike anything done before; indeed, considering that it was finished fifteen years before the publication of Lord Of The Rings, its invention of a vast, national epic mythology is an act of genius. And while the storytelling is rough - due to the need to insert everything - and the resources limited, Blasetti shows how to make a little go a long way through beautifully staged and designed battle and crowd scenes. Although it's not classified as a fantasy film, Gene Kelly's "Anchors Aweigh" had a fantasy sequence called "The King who Couldn't Dance" in which Gene did a song and dance number with Jerry Mouse from Tom and Jerry. Because these movies do not feature elements common to high fantasy or sword and sorcery pictures, some modern critics do not consider them to be examples of the fantasy genre. 1950s. In the 1950s there were a few major fantasy films, including "Darby O'Gill and the Little People" and "The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.", the latter penned by Dr. Seuss. Jean Cocteau's Orphic Trilogy, begun in 1930 and completed in 1959, is based on Greek mythology and could be classified either as fantasy or surrealist film, depending on how the boundaries between these genres are drawn. Russian fantasy director Aleksandr Ptushko created three mythological epics from Russian fairytales, "Sadko" (1953), "Ilya Muromets" (1956), and "Sampo" (1959). Japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi's 1953 film "Ugetsu Monogatari" draws on Japanese classical ghost stories of love and betrayal. Other notable pictures from the 1950s that feature fantastic elements and are sometimes classified as fantasy are "Harvey" (1950), featuring a púca of Celtic mythology; "Scrooge", the 1951 adaptation of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol"; and Ingmar Bergman's 1957 masterpiece, "The Seventh Seal". Disney's 1951 animated film "Alice in Wonderland" is also a fantasy classic. There were also a number of lower budget fantasies produced in the 1950s, typically based on Greek or Arabian legend. The most notable of these may be 1958's "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad", featuring special effects by Ray Harryhausen and music by Bernard Herrmann. 1960s. Harryhausen worked on a series of fantasy films in the 1960s, most importantly "Jason and the Argonauts" (1963). Many critics have identified this film as Harryhausen's masterwork for its stop-motion animated statues, skeletons, harpies, hydra, and other mythological creatures. Other Harryhausen fantasy and science fantasy collaborations from the decade include the 1961 adaptation of Jules Verne's "Mysterious Island", the critically panned "One Million Years B.C." starring Raquel Welch, and "The Valley of Gwangi" (1969). Capitalising on the success of the sword and sandal genre several Italian B-movies based on classical myth were made, including the "Maciste" series. Otherwise, the 1960s were almost entirely devoid of fantasy films. The fantasy picture "7 Faces of Dr. Lao", in which Tony Randall portrayed several characters from Greek mythology, was released in 1964. But the 1967 adaptation of the Broadway musical "Camelot" removed most of the fantasy elements from T. H. White's classic "The Once and Future King", on which the musical had been based. The 1960s also saw a new adaption of Haggard's "She" in 1965 starring Ursula Andress as the immortal "She who must be obeyed" and was followed by a sequel in 1968 "The Vengeance of She" based loosely on the novel "" both produced by Hammer Film Productions. The musical fantasy film "Mary Poppins" was released in 1964, and 1968 saw the release of "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" based on a story by Ian Fleming with a script from Roald Dahl. 1970s. Fantasy elements of Arthurian legend were again featured, albeit absurdly, in 1975's "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". Harryhausen also returned to the silver screen in the 1970s with two additional "Sinbad" fantasies, "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad" (1974) and "Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger" (1977). The animated movie "Wizards" (1977) had limited success at the box office but achieved status as a cult film. There was also "The Noah" (1975) which was never released theatrically but became a cult favorite when it was finally released on DVD in 2006. Some would consider 1977's "Oh God!", starring George Burns to be a fantasy film, and "Heaven Can Wait" (1978) was a successful Bangsian fantasy remake of 1941's "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" (not 1943's "Heaven Can Wait"). A few low budget "Lost World" pictures were made in the 1970s, such as 1975's "The Land That Time Forgot". Otherwise, the fantasy genre was largely absent from mainstream movies in this decade, although 1971's "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" and "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory" were two fantasy pictures in the public eye the former being predominantly from the same team who did "Mary Poppins" the latter again being from Roald Dahl in both script and novel. 1980s. 1980s fantasy films were initially characterized by directors finding a new spin on established mythologies. Ray Harryhausen brought the monsters of Greek legends to life in "Clash of the Titans" while Arthurian lore returned to the screen in John Boorman's 1981 "Excalibur". Films such as Ridley Scott's 1985 "Legend" and Terry Gilliam's 1981–1986 trilogy of fantasy epics ("Time Bandits", "Brazil", and "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen") explored a new artist-driven style featuring surrealist imagery and thought-provoking plots. The modern sword and sorcery boom began around the same time with 1982's "Conan the Barbarian" followed by "Krull" and "Fire and Ice" in 1983, as well as a boom in fairy tale-like fantasy films such as "The Neverending Story" (1984), "Ladyhawke" (1985), "The Princess Bride" (1987), and "Willow" (1988). The 1980s also started a trend in mixing modern settings and action film effects with exotic fantasy-like concepts. "Big Trouble in Little China" (1986), directed by John Carpenter and starring Kurt Russell, combined humor, martial arts and classic Chinese folklore in a modern Chinatown setting. "Highlander", a film about immortal Scottish swordsmen, was released the same year. Jim Henson produced two iconic fantasy films in the 80s, the solemn "The Dark Crystal" and the more whimsical and lofty "Labyrinth". Meanwhile, Robert Zemeckis helmed "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", featuring various famous cartoon characters from animation's "Golden Age," including Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Droopy, Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner, Sylvester the Cat, Tweety Pie, and Jiminy Cricket, among others. 1990s. The 90s saw the Disney Renaissance in which many successful adaptations of written fantasy works were released by Disney Animation. 2000s. The 2000s saw a boom in the genre. This was compounded by the success of Lord of The Rings and Harry Potter, which spurred a movement in film adaptations of fantasy literary works including The Chronicles of Narnia, Tales from Earthsea, Eragon, Inkheart, and The Golden Compass. The Star Wars prequel trilogy and Pirates of the Caribbean also saw success at the box office. 2010s. The early 2010's saw a continuation of the book to screen adaptation fad of the 2000's. Also prevalent in the decade were remakes of older fantasy films especially from Walt Disney Pictures. 2020s. The 2020's as of 2023 have shown an increasing interest by studios to adapt games into film with "Monster Hunter", "Sonic the Hedgehog", The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11998

Godzilla vs. Megalon

is a 1973 Japanese "kaiju" film directed by Jun Fukuda, written by Fukuda and Shinichi Sekizawa, and produced by Tomoyuki Tanaka, with special effects by Teruyoshi Nakano. Distributed by Toho and produced under their effects subsidiary Toho–Eizo, it is the 13th film in the "Godzilla" franchise, and features the fictional monster characters Godzilla, Megalon, and Gigan, along with the mecha character Jet Jaguar. The film stars Katsuhiko Sasaki, Hiroyuki Kawase, Yutaka Hayashi, and Robert Dunham, alongside Shinji Takagi as Godzilla, Hideto Date as Megalon, Kenpachiro Satsuma as Gigan, and Tsugutoshi Komada as Jet Jaguar. "Godzilla vs. Megalon" was released theatrically in Japan on March 17, 1973. It received a theatrical release in the United States in the summer of 1976 by Cinema Shares. Due to this release and subsequent home media, the film has become one of the most well-known kaiju films in the United States. The film's popularity might also be a major contributor to western perceptions of kaiju films as comedic or campy. The film received revived recognition after an appearance on Mystery Science Theater 3000 in 1991. The film was followed up by "Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla" on March 21, 1974. Plot. In the first part of 1971 (197X in the Japanese version), the second of series of underground nuclear tests is conducted, near the Aleutians, sending shockwaves as far as Monster Island in the South Pacific, severely damaging the island paradise and sending Anguirus plummeting into the depths of the Earth, with Godzilla narrowly escaping the fissure into which his friends tumble. For millions of years, Seatopia, an opulent undersea civilization that resides in vast cities reminiscent of those of Ancient Greece and Rome, has existed in relative peace, ruled by Emperor Antonio, but nuclear tests in recent years have severely affected the cities via the earthquakes the tests produced. With the Seatopian capital badly affected by the most recent test, the Seatopians plan to unleash their civilization's beetle-styled god, Megalon, to destroy the surface world out of vengeance. On the surface, an inventor named Goro Ibuki, his little brother Rokuro, and Goro's friend Hiroshi Jinkawa are off on an outing near a lake when Seatopia makes itself known to the Earth by drying up the lake the trio was relaxing nearby and using it as a base of operation. As they return home they are ambushed by agents of Seatopia who are trying to steal Jet Jaguar, a humanoid robot under construction by the trio of inventors. However the agents' first attempt is botched and they are forced to flee to safety. Some time later, Jet Jaguar is completed but the trio of inventors are knocked unconscious by the returning Seatopian agents. The agents' plan is to use Jet Jaguar to guide and direct Megalon to destroy whatever city Seatopia commands him to do. Goro and Rokuro are sent to be killed, while Hiroshi is taken hostage. Megalon is finally released to the surface while Jet Jaguar is put under the control of the Seatopians and is used to guide Megalon to attack Tokyo with the Japan Self Defense Forces failing to defeat the monster. Eventually, the trio of heroes manage to escape their situation with the Seatopians and reunite to devise a plan to send Jet Jaguar to get Godzilla's help using Jet Jaguar's secondary control system. After uniting with Japan's Defense Force, Goro manages to regain control of Jet Jaguar and sends the robot to Monster Island to bring Godzilla to fight Megalon. Without a guide to control his actions, Megalon flails around relentlessly and aimlessly fighting with the Defense Force and destroying the outskirts of Tokyo. The Seatopians learn of Jet Jaguar's turn and thus send out a distress call to their allies, the Space Hunter Nebula M aliens (from the previous film) to send the alien monster Gigan to assist their allies. As Godzilla journeys to fight Megalon, Jet Jaguar starts acting on its own and ignoring commands to the surprise of its inventors, and grows to gigantic proportions to face Megalon itself until Godzilla arrives. The battle is roughly at a standstill, until Gigan arrives and both Megalon and Gigan double team against Jet Jaguar. Godzilla finally arrives to assist Jet Jaguar and the odds become even. After a long and brutal fight, Gigan and Megalon both retreat and Godzilla and Jet Jaguar shake hands on a job well done. Jet Jaguar bids Godzilla farewell and Godzilla returns to his home on Monster Island. Jet Jaguar returns back to its human size, and returns home with Goro and Rokuro. Production. Development. The origins of Megalon can be traced back to 1969's "All Monsters Attack", as the original working idea for the film's antagonist Gabara was initially envisioned as a giant mole cricket called Gebara. The character was later reworked into Kaoru Mabuchi's 1971 treatment for "Godzilla vs. the Space Monsters: Earth Defense Directive", a precursor to 1972's "Godzilla vs. Gigan". The proposal called for Megalon to be paired with Gigan and King Ghidorah under the command of the hostile alien invader Miko, only to be defeated and driven off by the combined might of Godzilla, Anguirus, and a brand new monster called Majin Tuol. The next draft of the script, titled "The Return of King Ghidorah!", retained the core villain cast of Gigan, King Ghidorah, and Megalon, but replaced Anguirus and Majin Tuol with Varan and Rodan. However, most of the proposed monsters were cut, leading to the final version of "Godzilla vs. Gigan". Contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence "Godzilla vs. Megalon" was originally planned as a Jet Jaguar solo film, and no Japanese sources have surfaced which claim otherwise. Rather, the creation of Jet Jaguar was the result of a contest Toho had for children in mid-to-late 1972. The winner of the contest was an elementary school student, who submitted the drawing of a robot called Red Arone. Red Arone was turned into a monster suit, but when the child was shown the suit, he became upset because the suit did not resemble his original design. The boy's original design was white but the costume was colored red, blue and yellow. Red Arone was used for publicity, but Toho had renamed the character Jet Jaguar and had special effects director Teruyoshi Nakano redesign the character, only keeping the colors from the Red Arone suit. The Red Arone suit had a different head and wings. According to Teruyoshi Nakano, "Godzilla vs. Megalon" was a replacement project for another film that was cancelled at the last minute, and evidence suggests this cancelled film was "Godzilla vs. Red Moon", slated for 1973. As a result, the project was postponed during pre-production. Screenwriter Shinichi Sekizawa had no time to write out a full script, and instead thought out a general story. Director Jun Fukuda ultimately ended up writing the screenplay. The film had three early treatments, each written by Shinichi Sekizawa, one was titled "Godzilla vs. The Megalon Brothers: The Undersea Kingdom's Annihilation Strategy" which was completed in September 1972. The second was titled "Insect Monster Megalon vs. Godzilla: Undersea Kingdom's Annihilation Strategy", which was turned in on September 5, 1972, and the third draft was submitted on September 7, 1972. The production time totaled nearly six months from planning to finish. Creature design. According to Teruyoshi Nakano, the Godzilla suit used in this film (nicknamed "MegaroGoji" メガロゴジ ) was made in a week, making it the fastest Godzilla suit ever made to date. They did not have time to make the eyes work correctly, something they had more time to fix for Godzilla's five appearances on Toho's superhero TV series "Zone Fighter" (1973), which was produced around the same time. The Megalon suit was one of the heaviest suits produced since the 1954 "Godzilla" suit, which made it even more difficult to raise the Megalon suit via wires in certain scenes up to the point where Nakano almost decided to scrap those scenes altogether. Since the film was shot in the winter, Katsuhiko Sasaki stated that director Jun Fukuda gave him and Yutaka Hayashi a shot of whiskey to warm them up. The Gigan suit is similar to the previous design, but the suit was made thinner, less bulky, the horn on the head was less pointed, and the buzzsaw didn't move, since it was made of static pieces. This suit also has different-sized back fins, a more circular visor, scales running up the back/sides of the neck and longer legs compared to the original version. Filming. Teruyoshi Nakano recalls how the film was rushed and that it took three weeks to shoot, stating, "It went into productions without enough preparation. There was no time to ask Mr. Sekizawa to write the script, so Mr. Sekizawa kind of thought up the general story and director Fukuda wrote the screenplay. The screenplay was completed right before crank-in". The film also heavily employs stock footage from previous films such as "Mothra vs. Godzilla", "Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster" (both from 1964), "The War of the Gargantuas" (1966), "Ebirah, Horror of the Deep" (1966), "Destroy All Monsters" (1968), "Godzilla vs. Hedorah" (1971), and "Godzilla vs. Gigan" (1972). English versions. In 1976, Cinema Shares gave "Godzilla vs. Megalon" a wide theatrical release in the United States and launched a massive marketing campaign for the film, along with the poster, buttons with one of the four monsters' faces on them were released. Given away at theatrical showings was a comic that told a simplified version of the film, which incorrectly named Jet Jaguar as "Robotman" and Gigan as "Borodan". These incorrect names were also featured in the U.S. trailer. Cinema Shares originally planned to use the uncut Toho international English version, but to ensure a G rating, several minor cuts were made, which resulted in the film running three minutes shorter than the original version. These cuts included a majority of the opening titles, several mild obscenities and some shots of barely-visible pornographic magazine clips when the main characters are kidnapped in a truck. "Godzilla vs. Megalon" is the first Godzilla film to receive an American prime time network television premiere, where it was broadcast nationwide at 9:00 PM on NBC on March 15, 1977. However, to accommodate commercials, the film was only shown in a one-hour time slot, which resulted in the film being cut down to 48 minutes. John Belushi hosted the broadcast where he did some skits, all in a Godzilla suit. Mel Maron (who was president of Cinema Shares at the time) chose to release "Godzilla vs. Megalon" because he saw Godzilla as a heroic figure by that point and felt the timing was right to show children a hero who was a friendly monster and not Superman. The U.S. rights for the film eventually fell into the public domain in the late 80s, which resulted in companies releasing poorly-cropped, fullscreen VHS tapes mastered from pan and scan sources. This also led to the film being featured in "Mystery Science Theater 3000". In 1988, New World Video intended to release the original uncut version of the English dub but, declined the project, due to a lack of budget that was required for a full release. However, despite this, the film was released uncut and in widescreen in 1992 by UK company Polygram Ltd as a double feature with "Godzilla vs. Gigan". In 1998 the film was again released by UK company, 4 Front Video. As of now it appears those are the only two VHS tapes on the film that are unedited and in high quality. It was also released on DVD by Power Multimedia in 1999 in Taiwan. Originally the Sci-Fi Channel (now SyFy) showed the cut version, until finally in 2002 as Toho regained ownership of that title alongside "Godzilla vs. Gigan" and "Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla" (both of which also were released by Cinema Shares) and broadcast the film fully uncut for the first time in the U.S. Release. Box office. In Japan, "Godzilla vs. Megalon" sold approximately 980,000 tickets. It was the first "Godzilla" film to sell less than one million admissions. It earned ¥220 million in Japan distribution income (rentals). The film was a success in American theaters, earning $383,744 in its first three days in Texas and Louisiana alone. The film grossed about worldwide. Critical reception. "Godzilla vs. Megalon" was released theatrically in America on May 9, 1976, though the "San Francisco Chronicle" indicates that it opened there in June, and "The New York Times" indicates that it opened in New York City on July 11. "The New York Times" film critic Vincent Canby, who a decade before had given a negative review to "Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster", gave "Godzilla vs. Megalon" a generally positive review. In his review on July 12, 1976, Canby said, ""Godzilla vs. Megalon" completes the canonization of Godzilla...It's been a remarkable transformation of character - the dragon has become St. George...It's wildly preposterous, imaginative and funny (often intentionally). It demonstrates the rewards of friendship, between humans as well as monsters, and it is gentle." "Godzilla vs. Megalon" has attracted the ire of many "Godzilla" fans in the decades since its original release. The film contributed to the reputation of "Godzilla" films in the United States as cheap children's entertainment that should not be taken seriously. It has been described as "incredibly, undeniably, mind-numbingly bad" and one of the "poorer moments" in the history of kaiju films. Author Stephen Mark Rainey's critique of the film was strongly negative, published in Japanese Giants, issue four. 1977. Edited and published by Bradford G. Boyle. In particular, the special effects of the film have been heavily criticized. One review described the Godzilla costume as appearing to be "crossed with Kermit the Frog" and another sneeringly compared it to "Godzilla vs. Gigan", stating that it did "everything wrong that "Gigan" did, and then some." However, most of the criticism is of the lack of actual special effects work, as most of it consists of stock footage from previous films, including "Godzilla vs. Gigan" and "Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster", but a few pieces of effects work have garnered praise, specifically a scene where Megalon breaks through a dam and the draining of the lake. The other aspects of the film have been similarly skewered. The acting is usually described as flat and generally poor, and as not improving, or sometimes, worsening, the already weak script. One part of the film, on the other hand, has garnered almost universal praise: Godzilla's final attack on Megalon, a flying kick. It has been called the saving grace of the film, and was made famous by the mock exclamations of shock and awe displayed on "Godzilla vs. Megalon"'s appearance on "Mystery Science Theater 3000". Through the end of season three to the middle of season five, that clip would be shown at the opening of each show. Despite all this, the film is also one of the most widely seen "Godzilla "films in the United States — it was popular in its initial theatrical release, largely due to an aggressive marketing campaign, including elaborate posters of the two title monsters battling atop New York City's World Trade Center towers, presumably to capitalize on the hype surrounding the Dino De Laurentiis remake of "King Kong", which used a similar image for its own poster. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, approval rating of 38% based on 8 reviews, with an average rating of 4.7/10. Home media. The film was released numerous times in the VHS format, mostly as videos from bargain basement studios that featured the edited TV version (which was wrongly assumed to be in the public domain for many years), while PolyGram and 4 Front released the unedited version of the film in 1992 and 1998, respectively. Some rumors have circulated that the film's original VHS releases in the States were uncut, but there is no evidence confirming or denying this.   Media Blasters acquired the DVD rights to both "Godzilla vs. Megalon" and "Destroy All Monsters". Both films were released under one of the company's divisions, Tokyo Shock. Media Blasters originally planned to release "Godzilla vs. Megalon" on DVD and Blu-ray on December 20, 2011; however, due to technical difficulties with the dubbing and Toho having yet to give its approval for the release, the DVD/Blu-ray release was delayed. Media Blasters finally released the film on August 14, 2012, but only on a bare-bones DVD and Blu-ray. Despite this, a manufacturing error led to several copies of the originally planned version featuring bonus content to be released by accident. These special features versions are incredibly rare and are not labelled differently from the standard version, making them nearly impossible to find. This release was commercially the first to remaster the film to its original full-length version. In 2019, the Japanese version and export English dub were included in a Blu-ray box set released by the Criterion Collection, which included all 15 films from the franchise's Shōwa era.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12108

Greece

Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe, situated on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula. Greece shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the east. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of the mainland, the Ionian Sea to the west, and the Sea of Crete and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the longest coastline on the Mediterranean Basin, featuring thousands of islands. The country consists of nine traditional geographic regions, and has a population of approximately 10.5 million. Athens is the nation's capital and largest city, followed by Thessaloniki and Patras. Greece is considered the cradle of Western civilization, being the birthplace of democracy, Western philosophy, Western literature, historiography, political science, major scientific and mathematical principles, theatre and the Olympic Games. From the eighth century BC, the Greeks were organised into various independent city-states, known as "poleis" (singular "polis"), which spanned the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Philip II of Macedon united most of present-day Greece in the fourth century BC, with his son Alexander the Great rapidly conquering much of the known ancient world, from the eastern Mediterranean to northwestern India. The subsequent Hellenistic period saw the height of Greek culture and influence in antiquity. Greece was annexed by Rome in the second century BC, becoming an integral part of the Roman Empire and its continuation, the Byzantine Empire, which was predominantly Greek in culture and language. The Greek Orthodox Church, which emerged in the first century AD, helped shape modern Greek identity and transmitted Greek traditions to the wider Orthodox world. After the Fourth Crusade in 1204 Latin possessions were established in parts of the Greek peninsula, but most of the area fell under Ottoman rule in the mid-15th century. Greece emerged as a modern nation state in 1830 following a war of independence. Over the first hundred years, the kingdom of Greece sought territorial expansion, which was mainly achieved in the early 20th century, during the Balkan Wars and up until its Asia Minor Campaign ended with a catastrophic defeat in 1922. The short-lived republic that followed was beset by the ramifications of civil strife and the challenge of resettling refugees from Turkey. In 1936 a royalist dictatorship inaugurated a long period of authoritarian rule, marked by military occupation during World War II, civil war, and military dictatorship, as well as record economic growth from 1950 through the 1970s. Democracy was restored in 1974–75, and Greece has since been a parliamentary republic. Greece is a democratic and developed country with an advanced high-income economy. Its economy is the second largest in the Balkans, where it is an important regional investor. A founding member of the United Nations, Greece was the tenth member to join the European Communities (precursor to the European Union) and has been part of the Eurozone since 2001. It is also a member of numerous other international institutions, including the Council of Europe, NATO, the OECD, the WTO, and the OSCE. Greece has a unique cultural heritage, large tourism industry, and prominent shipping sector. The country's rich historical legacy is reflected in part by its 18 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Name. The native name of the country in Modern Greek is ("", pronounced ). The corresponding form in Ancient Greek and conservative formal Modern Greek (Katharevousa) is (, classical: , modern: ). This is the source of the English alternative name "Hellas", which is mostly found in archaic or poetic contexts today. The Greek adjectival form (, ) is sometimes also translated as "Hellenic" and is often rendered in this way in the formal names of Greek institutions, as in the official name of the Greek state, the "Hellenic Republic" (, ). The English names "Greece" and "Greek" are derived, via the Latin ' and ', from the name of the Graeci (, ; , ), who were among the first ancient Greek tribes to settle Magna Graecia in southern Italy. The term is possibly derived from the Proto-Indo-European root "", "to grow old", more specifically from Graea (ancient city), said by Aristotle to be the oldest in Greece, and the source of colonists for the Naples area. Premodern history. Prehistory and early history. The oldest remains of humans in Greece is a well-preserved skull of "Homo heidelbergensis" from Petralona Cave in Macedonia, dating to around 250–300,000 years ago, though the estimates are highly uncertain. The Apidima Cave in Mani, in southern Greece, has been suggested to contain the oldest remains of anatomically modern humans outside of Africa, dated to 210,000 years ago. However, this has been contested, with other authors suggesting the remains represent archaic humans. All three stages of the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic) are represented in Greece, for example in the Franchthi Cave. Neolithic settlements in Greece, dating from the 7th millennium BC, are the oldest in Europe by several centuries, as Greece lies on the route via which farming spread from the Near East to Europe. Greece is home to the first advanced civilizations in Europe and is considered the birthplace of Western civilisation, beginning with the Cycladic civilization on the islands of the Aegean Sea at around 3200 BC, the Minoan civilization in Crete (2700–1500 BC), and then the Mycenaean civilization on the mainland (1600–1100 BC). These civilizations possessed writing, the Minoans using an undeciphered script known as Linear A, and the Mycenaeans writing the earliest attested form of Greek in Linear B. The Mycenaeans gradually absorbed the Minoans, but collapsed violently around 1200 BC, along with other civilizations, during the regional event known as the Late Bronze Age collapse. This ushered in a period known as the Greek Dark Ages, from which written records are absent. Though the unearthed Linear B texts are too fragmentary for the reconstruction of the political landscape and can't support the existence of a larger state, contemporary Hittite and Egyptian records suggest the presence of a single state under a "Great King" based in mainland Greece. Archaic and Classical period. The end of the Dark Ages is traditionally dated to 776 BC, the year of the first Olympic Games. The "Iliad" and the "Odyssey", the foundational texts of Western literature, are believed to have been composed by Homer in the 7th or 8th centuries BC. With the end of the Dark Ages, there emerged various kingdoms and city-states across the Greek peninsula, which spread to the shores of the Black Sea, Southern Italy (the so-called "Magna Graecia") and Asia Minor. These states and their colonies reached great levels of prosperity that resulted in an unprecedented cultural boom, that of classical Greece, expressed in architecture, drama, science, mathematics and philosophy. In 508 BC, Cleisthenes instituted the world's first democratic system of government in Athens. By 500 BC, the Persian Empire controlled the Greek city states in Asia Minor and Macedonia. Attempts by some of the Greek city-states of Asia Minor to overthrow Persian rule failed, and Persia invaded the states of mainland Greece in 492 BC, but was forced to withdraw after a defeat at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC. In response, the Greek city-states formed the Hellenic League in 481 BC, led by Sparta, which was the first historically recorded union of Greek states since the mythical union of the Trojan War. A second invasion by the Persians followed in 480 BC. Following decisive Greek victories in 480 and 479 BC at Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale, the Persians were forced to withdraw for a second time, marking their eventual withdrawal from all of their European territories. Led by Athens and Sparta, the Greek victories in the Greco-Persian Wars are considered a pivotal moment in world history, as the 50 years of peace that followed are known as the Golden Age of Athens, the seminal period of ancient Greek development that laid many of the foundations of Western civilization. Lack of political unity within Greece resulted in frequent conflict between Greek states. The most devastating intra-Greek war was the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), won by Sparta and marking the demise of the Athenian Empire as the leading power in ancient Greece. Both Athens and Sparta were later overshadowed by Thebes and eventually Macedon, with the latter uniting most of the city-states of the Greek hinterland in the League of Corinth (also known as the "Hellenic League" or "Greek League") under the control of Philip II. Despite this development, the Greek world remained largely fragmented and would not be united under a single power until the Roman years. Following the assassination of Phillip II, his son Alexander III ("The Great") assumed the leadership of the League of Corinth and launched an invasion of the Persian Empire with the combined forces of the League in 334 BC. Undefeated in battle, Alexander had conquered the Persian Empire in its entirety by 330 BC. By the time of his death in 323 BC, he had created one of the largest empires in history, stretching from Greece to India. Upon his death, his empire split into several kingdoms, the most famous of which were the Seleucid Empire, Ptolemaic Egypt, the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, and the Indo-Greek Kingdom. Many Greeks migrated to Alexandria, Antioch, Seleucia, and the many other new Hellenistic cities in Asia and Africa. Although the political unity of Alexander's empire could not be maintained, it resulted in the Hellenistic civilization and spread the Greek language and Greek culture in the territories conquered by Alexander. Greek science, technology, and mathematics are generally considered to have reached their peak during the Hellenistic period. Hellenistic and Roman periods (323 BC – 4th century AD). After a period of confusion following Alexander's death, the Antigonid dynasty, descended from one of Alexander's generals, established its control over Macedon and most of the Greek city-states by 276 BC. From about 200 BC the Roman Republic became increasingly involved in Greek affairs and engaged in a series of wars with Macedon. Macedon's defeat at the Battle of Pydna in 168 BC signalled the end of Antigonid power in Greece. In 146 BC, Macedonia was annexed as a province by Rome, and the rest of Greece became a Roman protectorate. The process was completed in 27 BC when the Roman emperor Augustus annexed the rest of Greece and constituted it as the senatorial province of Achaea. Despite their military superiority, the Romans admired and became heavily influenced by the achievements of Greek culture, hence Horace's famous statement: "Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit" ("Greece, although captured, took its wild conqueror captive"). The epics of Homer inspired the Aeneid of Virgil, and authors such as Seneca the Younger wrote using Greek styles. Roman heroes such as Scipio Africanus, tended to study philosophy and regarded Greek culture and science as an example to be followed. Similarly, most Roman emperors maintained an admiration for things Greek in nature. The Roman emperor Nero visited Greece in AD 66, and performed at the Ancient Olympic Games, despite the rules against non-Greek participation. Hadrian was also particularly fond of the Greeks. Before becoming emperor, he served as an eponymous archon of Athens. Greek-speaking communities of the Hellenised East were instrumental in the spread of early Christianity in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and Christianity's early leaders and writers (notably St. Paul) were mostly Greek-speaking, though generally not from Greece itself. The New Testament was written in Greek, and some of its sections (Corinthians, Thessalonians, Philippians, Revelation of St. John of Patmos) attest to the importance of churches in Greece in early Christianity. Nevertheless, much of Greece clung tenaciously to paganism, and ancient Greek religious practices were still in vogue in the late 4th century AD, when they were outlawed by the Roman emperor Theodosius I in 391–392. The last recorded Olympic games were held in 393, and many temples were destroyed or damaged in the century that followed. In Athens and rural areas, paganism is attested well into the sixth century AD and even later. The closure of the Neoplatonic Academy of Athens by the Emperor Justinian in 529 is considered by many to mark the end of antiquity, although there is evidence that the academy continued its activities for some time after that. Some remote areas such as the southeastern Peloponnese remained pagan until well into the 10th century AD. Medieval period (4th–15th century). The Roman Empire in the east, following the fall of the Empire in the west in the 5th century, is conventionally known as the Byzantine Empire (but was simply called "Kingdom of the Romans" in its own time) and lasted until 1453. With its capital in Constantinople, its language and culture were Greek and its religion was predominantly Eastern Orthodox Christian. From the 4th century the Empire's Balkan territories, including Greece, suffered from the dislocation of barbarian invasions. The raids and devastation of the Goths and Huns in the 4th and 5th centuries and the Slavic invasion of Greece in the 7th century resulted in a dramatic collapse in imperial authority in the Greek peninsula. Following the Slavic invasion, the imperial government retained formal control of only the islands and coastal areas, particularly the densely populated walled cities such as Athens, Corinth and Thessalonica, while some mountainous areas in the interior held out on their own and continued to recognise imperial authority. Outside of these areas, a limited amount of Slavic settlement is generally thought to have occurred, although on a much smaller scale than previously thought. However, the view that Greece in late antiquity underwent a crisis of decline, fragmentation and depopulation is now considered outdated, as Greek cities show a high degree of institutional continuity and prosperity between the 4th and 6th centuries AD (and possibly later as well). In the early 6th century, Greece had approximately 80 cities according to the Synecdemus chronicle, and the period from the 4th to the 7th century AD is considered one of high prosperity not just in Greece but in the entire Eastern Mediterranean. Until the 8th century almost all of modern Greece was under the jurisdiction of the Holy See of Rome according to the system of Pentarchy. Byzantine Emperor Leo III moved the border of the Patriarchate of Constantinople westward and northward in the 8th century. The Byzantine recovery of lost provinces during the Arab–Byzantine wars began toward the end of the 8th century and most of the Greek peninsula came under imperial control again, in stages, during the 9th century. This process was facilitated by a large influx of Greeks from Sicily and Asia Minor to the Greek peninsula, while at the same time many Slavs were captured and re-settled in Asia Minor and the few that remained were assimilated. During the 11th and 12th centuries the return of stability resulted in the Greek peninsula benefiting from strong economic growth – much stronger than that of the Anatolian territories of the Empire. During that time, the Greek Orthodox Church was also instrumental in the spread of Greek ideas to the wider Orthodox world. Following the Fourth Crusade and the fall of Constantinople to the "Latins" in 1204, mainland Greece was split between the Greek Despotate of Epirus (a Byzantine successor state) and French rule (known as the "Frankokratia"), while some islands came under Venetian rule. The re-establishment of the Byzantine imperial capital in Constantinople in 1261 was accompanied by the empire's recovery of much of the Greek peninsula, although the Frankish Principality of Achaea in the Peloponnese and the rival Greek Despotate of Epirus in the north both remained important regional powers into the 14th century, while the islands remained largely under Genoese and Venetian control. During the Paleologi dynasty (1261–1453) a new era of Greek patriotism emerged accompanied by a turning back to ancient Greece. As such prominent personalities at the time also proposed changing the imperial title to "Emperor of the Hellenes", and, in late fourteenth century, the emperor was frequently referred to as the "Emperor of the Hellenes". Similarly, in several international treaties of that time the Byzantine emperor is styled as "Imperator Graecorum". In the 14th century much of the Greek peninsula was lost by the Byzantine Empire at first to the Serbs and then to the Ottomans. By the beginning of the 15th century, the Ottoman advance meant that Byzantine territory in Greece was limited mainly to its then-largest city, Thessaloniki, and the Peloponnese (Despotate of the Morea). After the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453, the Morea was one of the last remnants of the Byzantine Empire to hold out against the Ottomans. However, this, too, fell to the Ottomans in 1460, completing the Ottoman conquest of mainland Greece. With the Turkish conquest, many Byzantine Greek scholars, who up until then were largely responsible for preserving Classical Greek knowledge, fled to the West, taking with them a large body of literature and thereby significantly contributing to the Renaissance. Venetian possessions and Ottoman rule (15th century – 1821). While most of mainland Greece and the Aegean islands was under Ottoman control by the end of the 15th century, Cyprus and Crete remained Venetian territory and did not fall to the Ottomans until 1571 and 1670 respectively. The only part of the Greek-speaking world that escaped long-term Ottoman rule was the Ionian Islands, which remained Venetian until their capture by the First French Republic in 1797, then passed to the United Kingdom in 1809 until their unification with Greece in 1864. While some Greeks in the Ionian Islands and Constantinople lived in prosperity, and Greeks of Constantinople (Phanariotes) achieved positions of power within the Ottoman administration, much of the population of mainland Greece suffered the economic consequences of the Ottoman conquest. Heavy taxes were enforced, and in later years the Ottoman Empire enacted a policy of creation of hereditary estates, effectively turning the rural Greek populations into serfs. The Greek Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople were considered by the Ottoman governments as the ruling authorities of the entire Orthodox Christian population of the Ottoman Empire, whether ethnically Greek or not. Although the Ottoman state did not force non-Muslims to convert to Islam, Christians faced several types of discrimination intended to highlight their inferior status in the Ottoman Empire. Discrimination against Christians, particularly when combined with harsh treatment by local Ottoman authorities, led to conversions to Islam, if only superficially. In the 19th century, many "crypto-Christians" returned to their old religious allegiance. The nature of Ottoman administration of Greece varied, though it was invariably arbitrary and often harsh. Some cities had governors appointed by the Sultan, while others (like Athens) were self-governed municipalities. Mountainous regions in the interior and many islands remained effectively autonomous from the central Ottoman state for many centuries. Prior to the Greek Revolution of 1821, there had been a number of wars which saw Greeks fight against the Ottomans, such as the Greek participation in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, the Epirus peasants' revolts of 1600–1601 (led by the Orthodox bishop Dionysios Skylosophos), the Morean War of 1684–1699, and the Russian-instigated Orlov Revolt in 1770, which aimed at breaking up the Ottoman Empire in favour of Russian interests. These uprisings were put down by the Ottomans with great bloodshed. On the other side, many Greeks were conscripted as Ottoman citizens to serve in the Ottoman army (and especially the Ottoman navy), while also the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, responsible for the Orthodox, remained in general loyal to the empire. The 16th and 17th centuries are regarded as something of a "dark age" in Greek history, with the prospect of overthrowing Ottoman rule appearing remote with only the Ionian islands remaining free of Turkish domination. Corfu withstood three major sieges in 1537, 1571 and 1716 all of which resulted in the repulsion of the Ottomans. However, in the 18th century, due to their mastery of shipping and commerce, a wealthy and dispersed Greek merchant class arose. These merchants came to dominate trade within the Ottoman Empire, establishing communities throughout the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and Western Europe. Though the Ottoman conquest had cut Greece off from significant European intellectual movements such as the Reformation and the Enlightenment, these ideas together with the ideals of the French Revolution and romantic nationalism began to penetrate the Greek world via the mercantile diaspora. In the late 18th century, Rigas Feraios, the first revolutionary to envision an independent Greek state, published a series of documents relating to Greek independence, including but not limited to a national anthem and the first detailed map of Greece, in Vienna. Feraios was murdered by Ottoman agents in 1798. History of modern Greece. Greek War of Independence (1821–1832). In the late eighteenth century, an increase in secular learning during the Modern Greek Enlightenment led to the emergence among Westernized Greek-speaking elites of the diaspora of the notion of a Greek nation tracing its existence to ancient Greece, distinct from the other Orthodox peoples, and having a right to political autonomy. One of the organizations formed in this intellectual milieu was the Filiki Eteria, a secret organization formed by merchants in Odessa (Odesa) in 1814. Appropriating a long-standing tradition of Orthodox messianic prophecy aspiring to the resurrection of the eastern Roman empire and creating the impression they had the backing of Tsarist Russia, they managed amidst a crisis of Ottoman trade, from 1815 onwards, to engage traditional strata of the Greek Orthodox world in their liberal nationalist cause. The Filiki Eteria planned to launch revolution in the Peloponnese, the Danubian Principalities and Constantinople. The first of these revolts began on 6 March 1821 in the Danubian Principalities under the leadership of Alexandros Ypsilantis, but it was soon put down by the Ottomans. The events in the north spurred the Greeks of the Peloponnese into action and on 17 March 1821 the Maniots declared war on the Ottomans. By the end of the month, the Peloponnese was in open revolt against the Ottomans and by October 1821 the Greeks under Theodoros Kolokotronis had captured Tripolitsa. The Peloponnesian revolt was quickly followed by revolts in Crete, Macedonia and Central Greece, which would soon be suppressed. Meanwhile, the makeshift Greek navy was achieving success against the Ottoman navy in the Aegean Sea and prevented Ottoman reinforcements from arriving by sea. In 1822 and 1824 the Turks and Egyptians ravaged the islands, including Chios and Psara, committing wholesale massacres of the population. Approximately three-quarters of the Chios' Greek population of 120,000 were killed, enslaved or died of disease. This had the effect of galvanizing public opinion in western Europe in favour of the Greek rebels. Tensions soon developed among different Greek factions, leading to two consecutive civil wars. Meanwhile, the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II negotiated with Mehmet Ali of Egypt, who agreed to send his son Ibrahim Pasha to Greece with an army to suppress the revolt in return for territorial gain. Ibrahim landed in the Peloponnese in February 1825 and had immediate success: by the end of 1825, most of the Peloponnese was under Egyptian control, and the city of Missolonghi—put under siege by the Turks since April 1825—fell in April 1826. Although Ibrahim was defeated in Mani, he had succeeded in suppressing most of the revolt in the Peloponnese, and Athens had been retaken. After years of negotiation, three great powers, France, Russian Empire, and the United Kingdom, decided to intervene in the conflict and each nation sent a navy to Greece. Following news that combined Ottoman–Egyptian fleets were going to attack the Greek island of Hydra, the allied fleet intercepted the Ottoman–Egyptian fleet at Navarino. A week-long standoff ended with the Battle of Navarino (20 October 1827) which resulted in the destruction of the Ottoman–Egyptian fleet. A French expeditionary force was dispatched to supervise the evacuation of the Egyptian army from the Peloponnese, while the Greeks proceeded to the captured part of Central Greece by 1828. As a result of years of negotiation, the nascent Greek state was finally recognised under the London Protocol in 1830. Kingdom of Greece. In 1827, Ioannis Kapodistrias, from Corfu, was chosen by the Third National Assembly at Troezen as the first governor of the First Hellenic Republic. Kapodistrias established a series of state, economic and military institutions. Soon tensions appeared between him and local interests. Following his assassination in 1831 and the subsequent London conference a year later, the Great Powers of Britain, France and Russia installed Bavarian Prince Otto von Wittelsbach as monarch. Otto's reign was despotic, and in its first 11 years of independence Greece was ruled by a Bavarian oligarchy led by Joseph Ludwig von Armansperg as Prime Minister and, later, by Otto himself, who held the title of both King and Premier. Throughout this period Greece remained under the influence of its three protecting great powers, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom, as well as Bavaria. In 1843 an uprising forced Otto to grant a constitution and a representative assembly. Despite the absolutism of Otto's reign, the early years proved instrumental in creating institutions (improving those established by Ioannis Kapodisrias) which are still the bedrock of Greek administration and education. Important steps were taken in areas including the education system, maritime and postal communications, effective civil administration and, most importantly, the legal code. Historical revisionism took the form of de-Byzantinification and de-Ottomanisation, in favour of promoting the country's Ancient Greek heritage. In this spirit, the national capital was moved from Nafplio, where it had been since 1829, to Athens, which was at the time a smaller town. Religious reform also took place, and the Church of Greece was established as Greece's national church, although Otto remained a Catholic. 25 March, the day of Annunciation, was chosen as the anniversary of the Greek War of Independence to reinforce the link between Greek identity and Orthodoxy. Pavlos Karolidis called the Bavarian efforts to create a modern state in Greece as "not only appropriate for the peoples' needs, but also based on excellent administrative principles of the era". Otto was deposed in the 23 October 1862 Revolution. Multiple causes led to his deposition and exile, including the Bavarian-dominated government, heavy taxation, and a failed attempt to annex Crete from the Ottoman Empire. The catalyst for the revolt was Otto's dismissal of Konstantinos Kanaris from the Premiership. A year later, he was replaced by Prince Wilhelm (William) of Denmark, who took the name George I and brought with him the Ionian Islands as a coronation gift from Britain. A new Constitution in 1864 changed Greece's form of government from constitutional monarchy to the more democratic crowned republic. In 1875 the concept of parliamentary majority as a requirement for the formation of a government was introduced by Charilaos Trikoupis, curbing the power of the monarchy to appoint minority governments of its preference. Corruption, coupled with Trikoupis' increased spending to fund infrastructure projects like the Corinth Canal, overtaxed the weak Greek economy and forced the declaration of public insolvency in 1893. Greece also accepted the imposition of an International Financial Commission to enforce the repayment of the country's debtors. All Greeks were united, however, in their determination to liberate the Hellenic lands under Ottoman rule. Especially in Crete, a prolonged revolt in 1866–1869 had raised nationalist fervour. When war broke out between Russia and the Ottomans in 1877, Greek popular sentiment rallied to Russia's side, but Greece was too poor and too concerned about British intervention, to officially enter the war. Nevertheless, in 1881, Thessaly and small parts of Epirus were ceded to Greece as part of the Treaty of Berlin, while frustrating Greek hopes of receiving Crete. Greeks in Crete continued to stage regular revolts, and in 1897, the Greek government under Theodoros Deligiannis, bowing to popular pressure, declared war on the Ottomans. In the ensuing Greco-Turkish War of 1897, the badly trained and equipped Greek army was defeated by the Ottomans. Through the intervention of the Great Powers, however, Greece lost only a little territory along the border to Turkey, while Crete was established as an autonomous state under Prince George of Greece. With state coffers empty, fiscal policy came under International Financial Control. Alarmed by the abortive Ilinden uprising of the autonomist Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) in 1903, the Greek government, aiming to quell Komitadjis (IMRO bands) and detach the Slavophone peasants of the region from Bulgarian influence, sponsored a guerrilla campaign in Ottoman-ruled Macedonia, led by Greek officers and known as the Macedonian Struggle, which ended with the Young Turk Revolution in 1908. Expansion, disaster, and reconstruction. Amidst general dissatisfaction with the seeming inertia and unattainability of national aspirations under the premiership of the cautious reformist Theotokis, a group of military officers organised a coup in August 1909 and shortly thereafter called to Athens Cretan politician Eleftherios Venizelos, who conveyed a vision of national regeneration. After winning two elections and becoming Prime Minister in 1910, Venizelos initiated wide-ranging fiscal, social, and constitutional reforms, reorganised the military, made Greece a member of the Balkan League, and led the country through the Balkan Wars. By 1913, Greece's territory and population had almost doubled, annexing Crete, Epirus, and Macedonia. In the following years, the struggle between King Constantine I and charismatic Venizelos over the country's foreign policy on the eve of First World War dominated the country's political scene and divided the country into two opposing groups. During parts of WW1, Greece had two governments: A royalist pro-German one in Athens and a Venizelist pro-Entente one in Thessaloniki. The two governments were united in 1917, when Greece officially entered the war on the side of the Entente. In the aftermath of World War I, Greece attempted further expansion into Asia Minor, a region with a large native Greek population at the time, but was defeated in the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922, contributing to a massive flight of Asia Minor Greeks. These events overlapped, with both happening during the Greek genocide (1914–1922), a period during which, according to various sources, Ottoman and Turkish officials contributed to the death of several hundred thousand Asia Minor Greeks, along with similar numbers of Assyrians and a rather larger number of Armenians. The resultant Greek exodus from Asia Minor was made permanent, and expanded, in an official Population exchange between Greece and Turkey. The exchange was part of the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne which ended the war. The following era was marked by instability, as over 1.5 million propertyless Greek refugees from Turkey had to be integrated into Greek society. Cappadocian Greeks, Pontian Greeks, and non-Greek followers of Greek Orthodoxy were all subject to the exchange as well. Some of the refugees could not speak the language and were from what had been unfamiliar environments to mainland Greeks, such as in the case of the Cappadocians and non-Greeks. The refugees also made a dramatic post-war population boost, as the number of refugees was more than a quarter of Greece's prior population. Following the catastrophic events in Asia Minor, the monarchy was abolished via a referendum in 1924 and the Second Hellenic Republic was declared. In 1935, a royalist general-turned-politician Georgios Kondylis took power after a coup d'état and abolished the republic, holding a rigged referendum, after which King George II returned to Greece and was restored to the throne. Dictatorship, World War II, and reconstruction. An agreement between Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas and the head of state George II followed in 1936, which installed Metaxas as the head of a dictatorial regime known as the 4th of August Regime, inaugurating a period of authoritarian rule that would last, with short breaks, until 1974. Although a dictatorship, Greece remained on good terms with Britain and was not allied with the Axis. On 28 October 1940, Fascist Italy demanded the surrender of Greece, but the Greek administration refused, and, in the following Greco-Italian War, Greece repelled Italian forces into Albania, giving the Allies their first victory over Axis forces on land. The Greek struggle and victory against the Italians received exuberant praise at the time. French general Charles de Gaulle was among those who praised the fierceness of the Greek resistance. In an official notice released to coincide with the Greek national celebration of the Day of Independence, De Gaulle expressed his admiration for the Greek resistance:In the name of the captured yet still alive French people, France wants to send her greetings to the Greek people who are fighting for their freedom. The 25 March 1941 finds Greece in the peak of their heroic struggle and in the top of their glory. Since the Battle of Salamis, Greece had not achieved the greatness and the glory which today holds. The country would eventually fall to urgently dispatched German forces during the Battle of Greece, despite the fierce Greek resistance, particularly in the Battle of the Metaxas Line. The Nazis proceeded to administer Athens and Thessaloniki, while other regions of the country were given to Nazi Germany's partners, Fascist Italy and Bulgaria. The occupation brought about terrible hardships for the Greek civilian population. Over 100,000 civilians died of starvation during the winter of 1941–1942, tens of thousands more died because of reprisals by Nazis and collaborators, the country's economy was ruined, and the great majority of Greek Jews (tens of thousands) were deported and murdered in Nazi concentration camps. The Greek Resistance, one of the most effective resistance movements in Europe, fought vehemently against the Nazis and their collaborators. The German occupiers committed numerous atrocities, mass executions, and wholesale slaughter of civilians and destruction of towns and villages in reprisals. In the course of the concerted anti-guerrilla campaign, hundreds of villages were systematically torched and almost 1 million Greeks left homeless. In total, the Germans executed some 21,000 Greeks, the Bulgarians 40,000, and the Italians 9,000. Following liberation and the Allied victory over the Axis, Greece annexed the Dodecanese Islands from Italy and regained Western Thrace from Bulgaria. The country almost immediately descended into a bloody civil war between communist forces and the anti-communist Greek government, which lasted until 1949 with the latter's victory. The conflict, considered one of the earliest struggles of the Cold War, resulted in further economic devastation, mass population displacement and severe political polarisation for the next thirty years. Although the post-war decades were characterised by social strife and widespread marginalisation of the left in political and social spheres, Greece nonetheless experienced rapid economic growth and recovery, propelled in part by the U.S.-administered Marshall Plan. In 1952, Greece joined NATO, reinforcing its membership in the Western Bloc of the Cold War. Military regime (1967–1974). King Constantine II's dismissal of George Papandreou's centrist government in July 1965 prompted a prolonged period of political turbulence, which culminated in a coup d'état on 21 April 1967 by the Regime of the Colonels. Under the junta, civil rights were suspended, political repression was intensified, and human rights abuses, including state-sanctioned torture, were rampant. Economic growth remained rapid before plateauing in 1972. The brutal suppression of the Athens Polytechnic uprising on 17 November 1973 set in motion the events that caused the fall of the Papadopoulos regime, resulting in a counter-coup which overthrew Georgios Papadopoulos and established brigadier Dimitrios Ioannidis as the new junta strongman. On 20 July 1974, Turkey invaded the island of Cyprus in response to a Greek-backed Cypriot coup, triggering a political crisis in Greece that led to the regime's collapse and the restoration of democracy through Metapolitefsi. Third Hellenic Republic. The former prime minister Konstantinos Karamanlis was invited back from Paris where he had lived in self-exile since 1963, marking the beginning of the Metapolitefsi era. The first multiparty elections since 1964 were held on the first anniversary of the Polytechnic uprising. A democratic and republican constitution was promulgated on 11 June 1975 following a referendum which chose to not restore the monarchy. Meanwhile, Andreas Papandreou, George Papandreou's son, founded the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) in response to Karamanlis's conservative New Democracy party, with the two political formations dominating in government over the next four decades. Greece rejoined NATO in 1980. Greece became the tenth member of the European Communities (subsequently subsumed by the European Union) on 1 January 1981, ushering in a period of sustained growth. Widespread investments in industrial enterprises and heavy infrastructure, as well as funds from the European Union and growing revenues from tourism, shipping, and a fast-growing service sector raised the country's standard of living to unprecedented levels. In 1981, the election of Andreas Papandreou resulted in significant reforms during the entire 1980s. Among others, he recognised the national resistance during WW2, the civil marriage, the dowry was abolished, while education system and foreign policy doctrines changed as well. However, Papandreou's tenure has been associated as well with corruption, double digit inflation, stagnation, budget deficits that caused problems in the Greek economy later on. In the nineties, as well the 2000s, Greek influence in the Balkan countries was on its apogee. The country adopted the euro in 2001 and successfully hosted the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens. Beginning in 2010, Greece suffered substantially from the Great Recession and the related European sovereign debt crisis. Due to the adoption of the euro, when Greece experienced a financial crisis, it could no longer devalue its currency to regain competitiveness. Youth unemployment was especially high during this period. In the two elections of May and June 2012, there was a major change in the political landscape of Greece, with new parties emerging out of the collapse of popularity of the two main parties of the past, PASOK and New Democracy. In January 2015, Alexis Tsipras was elected as prime minister, being the first prime minister of Greece outside the two political parties. This Greek government-debt crisis, and subsequent austerity policies, resulted in protests and social strife. The crisis is generally considered to have ended around 2018, with the end of the bailout mechanisms and the return of economic growth. Simultaneously, on June 2018, the leaders of Greece, Alexis Tsipras, and North Macedonia, Zoran Zaev, signed the Prespa Agreement, solving the naming dispute that strained the relations of the two countries and eased the latter's way to become a member of the EU and NATO. In July 2019, Kyriakos Mitsotakis became Greece’s new prime minister, after his centre-right New Democracy party had won the election over ruling leftist Syriza. In March 2020, Greece's parliament elected a non-partisan candidate, Katerina Sakellaropoulou, as the first female President of Greece. During the 2020s, the Greek economy continues to rebound, as a result of post-COVID economic recovery, robust investments, and an increase in tourist revenues and consumer spending. On 28 February 2023, the collision of two trains in Tempi caused the death of 57 passengers and crew of the passenger train, which was heading for Thessaloniki and carried 350 passengers overall. It also resulted in the injury of tens of other people. It is one of the deadliest train accidents in the last decade in Europe, and the deadliest train accident in Greece as well. It also sparked a major wave of anti-government protests. In June 2023, conservative New Democracy party won the legislative election, meaning another four-year term as prime minister for Kyriakos Mitsotakis. Geography. Located in Southern and Southeast Europe, Greece consists of a mountainous, peninsular mainland jutting out into the sea at the southern end of the Balkans, ending at the Peloponnese peninsula (separated from the mainland by the canal of the Isthmus of Corinth) and strategically located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Due to its highly indented coastline and numerous islands, Greece has the 11th longest coastline in the world with ; its land boundary is . The country lies approximately between latitudes 34° and 42° N, and longitudes 19° and 30° E, with the extreme points being: Eighty percent of Greece consists of mountains or hills, making the country one of the most mountainous in Europe. Mount Olympus, the mythical abode of the Greek Gods, culminates at Mytikas peak , the highest in the country. Western Greece contains a number of lakes and wetlands and is dominated by the Pindus mountain range. The Pindus, a continuation of the Dinaric Alps, reaches a maximum elevation of at Mt. Smolikas (the second-highest in Greece) and historically has been a significant barrier to east–west travel. The Pindus range continues through the central Peloponnese, crosses the islands of Kythera and Antikythera and finds its way into southwestern Aegean, in the island of Crete where it eventually ends. The islands of the Aegean are peaks of underwater mountains that once constituted an extension of the mainland. Pindus is characterised by its high, steep peaks, often dissected by numerous canyons and a variety of other karstic landscapes. The spectacular Vikos Gorge, part of the Vikos-Aoos National Park in the Pindus range, is listed by the Guinness book of World Records as the deepest gorge in the world. Another notable formation are the Meteora rock pillars, atop which have been built medieval Greek Orthodox monasteries. Northeastern Greece features another high-altitude mountain range, the Rhodope range, spreading across the region of East Macedonia and Thrace; this area is covered with vast, thick, ancient forests, including the famous Dadia Forest in the Evros regional unit, in the far northeast of the country. Extensive plains are primarily located in the regions of Thessaly, Central Macedonia and Thrace. They constitute key economic regions as they are among the few arable places in the country. Rare marine species such as the pinniped seals and the loggerhead sea turtle live in the seas surrounding mainland Greece, while its dense forests are home to the endangered brown bear, the Eurasian lynx, the roe deer and the wild goat. Islands. Greece features a vast number of islands—between 1,200 and 6,000, depending on the definition, 227 of which are inhabited—and is considered a non-contiguous transcontinental country. Crete is the largest and most populous island; Euboea, separated from the mainland by the 60 m-wide Euripus Strait, is the second largest, followed by Lesbos and Rhodes. The Greek islands are traditionally grouped into the following clusters: the Argo-Saronic Islands in the Saronic gulf near Athens; the Cyclades, a large but dense collection occupying the central part of the Aegean Sea; the North Aegean islands, a loose grouping off the west coast of Turkey; the Dodecanese, another loose collection in the southeast between Crete and Turkey; the Sporades, a small tight group off the coast of northeast Euboea; and the Ionian Islands, located to the west of the mainland in the Ionian Sea. Climate. The climate of Greece is primarily Mediterranean (Köppen: "Csa"), featuring mild to cool, wet winters and hot, dry summers. This climate occurs at most of the coastal locations, including Athens, the Cyclades, the Dodecanese, Crete, the Peloponnese, the Ionian Islands and parts of mainland Greece. The Pindus mountain range strongly affects the climate of the country, as areas to the west of the range are considerably wetter on average (due to greater exposure to south-westerly systems bringing in moisture) than the areas lying to the east of the range (due to a rain shadow effect), resulting to some coastal areas in the south falling to the hot semi-arid climate (Köppen: "BSh") category, such as parts of the Athens Riviera and some of the Cyclades, as well as some areas in the north featuring a cold equivalent climate (Köppen: "BSk"), such as the cities of Thessaloniki and Larissa. The mountainous areas and the higher elevations of northwestern Greece (parts of Epirus, Central Greece, Thessaly, Western Macedonia) as well as in the mountainous central parts of Peloponnese – including parts of the regional units of Achaea, Arcadia and Laconia – feature an Alpine climate (Köppen: "D", "E") with heavy snowfalls during the winter. Most of the inland parts of northern Greece, in Central Macedonia, the lower elevations of Western Macedonia and East Macedonia and Thrace feature a humid subtropical climate (Köppen: "Cfa") with cold, damp winters and hot, moderately dry summers with occasional thunderstorms. Snowfalls occur every year in the mountains and northern areas, and brief periods of snowy weather are possible even in low-lying southern areas, such as Athens. Biodiversity. Phytogeographically, Greece belongs to the Boreal Kingdom and is shared between the East Mediterranean province of the Mediterranean Region and the Illyrian province of the Circumboreal Region. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature and the European Environment Agency, the territory of Greece can be subdivided into six ecoregions: the Illyrian deciduous forests, Pindus Mountains mixed forests, Balkan mixed forests, Rhodope montane mixed forests, Aegean and Western Turkey sclerophyllous and mixed forests, and Crete Mediterranean forests. It had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 6.6/10, ranking it 70th globally out of 172 countries. Politics. Greece is a unitary parliamentary republic. The current Constitution was drawn up and adopted by the Fifth Revisionary Parliament of the Hellenes and entered into force in 1975 after the fall of the military junta of 1967–1974. It has been revised four times since: in 1986, 2001, 2008 and 2019. The Constitution, which consists of 120 articles, provides for a separation of powers into executive, legislative, and judicial branches, and grants extensive specific guarantees (further reinforced in 2001) of civil liberties and social rights. Women's suffrage was guaranteed with an amendment to the 1952 Constitution. The nominal head of state is the President of the Republic, who is elected by the Parliament for a five-year term. According to the Constitution, executive power is exercised by the President and the Government. However, the Constitutional amendment of 1986 curtailed the President's duties and powers to a significant extent, rendering the position largely ceremonial; most political power is thus vested in the Prime Minister, Greece's head of government. The position is filled by the current leader of the political party that can obtain a vote of confidence by the Parliament. The president of the republic formally appoints the prime minister and, on their recommendation, appoints and dismisses the other members of the Cabinet. Legislative powers are exercised by a 300-member elective unicameral Parliament. Statutes passed by the Parliament are promulgated by the President of the Republic. Parliamentary elections are held every four years, but the President of the Republic is obliged to dissolve the Parliament earlier on the proposal of the Cabinet, in view of dealing with a national issue of exceptional importance. The President is also obliged to dissolve the Parliament earlier if the opposition manages to pass a motion of no confidence. The voting age is 17. According to a 2016 report by the OECD, Greeks display a moderate level of civic participation compared to most other developed countries; voter turnout was 64 percent during recent elections, lower than the OECD average of 69 percent. Political parties. Since the restoration of democracy, the Greek party system was dominated by the liberal-conservative New Democracy (ND) and the social-democratic Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK). Other parties represented in the Hellenic Parliament include the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA), the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), Greek Solution and MeRA25. PASOK and New Democracy largely alternated in power until the outbreak of the government-debt crisis in 2009. From that time, the two major parties, New Democracy and PASOK, experienced a sharp decline in popularity. In November 2011, the two major parties joined the smaller Popular Orthodox Rally in a grand coalition, pledging their parliamentary support for a government of national unity headed by former European Central Bank vice-president Lucas Papademos. Panos Kammenos voted against this government and he split off from ND forming the right-wing populist Independent Greeks. The coalition government led the country to the parliamentary elections of May 2012. The power of the traditional Greek political parties, PASOK and New Democracy, declined from 43% to 13% and from 33% to 18%, respectively. The left-wing SYRIZA became the second major party with an increase from 4% to 16%. No party could form a sustainable government, which led to the parliamentary elections of June 2012. The result of the second elections was the formation of a coalition government composed of New Democracy (29%), PASOK (12%) and Democratic Left (6%) parties. SYRIZA has since overtaken PASOK as the main party of the centre-left . Alexis Tsipras led SYRIZA to victory in the general election held on 25 January 2015, falling short of an outright majority in Parliament by just two seats. The following morning, Tsipras reached an agreement with Independent Greeks party to form a coalition and was sworn in as Prime Minister of Greece. Tsipras called snap elections in August 2015 after resigning from his post, which led to a month-long caretaker administration headed by judge Vassiliki Thanou-Christophilou, Greece's first female prime minister. In the September 2015 general election, Alexis Tsipras led SYRIZA to another victory, winning 145 out of 300 seats and re-forming the coalition with the Independent Greeks. However, he was defeated in the July 2019 general election by Kyriakos Mitsotakis who leads New Democracy. On 7 July 2019, Kyriakos Mitsotakis was sworn in as the new Prime Minister of Greece. He formed a centre-right government after the landslide victory of his New Democracy party. Foreign relations. Greece's foreign policy is conducted through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its head, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, currently Nikos Dendias. Officially, the main aims of the Ministry are to represent Greece before other states and international organizations; safeguard the interests of the Greek state and of its citizens abroad; promote Greek culture; foster closer relations with the Greek diaspora; and encourage international cooperation. Greece is described as having a special relationship with Cyprus, Italy, France, Armenia, Australia, the State of Israel, the United States and the United Kingdom. Following the resolution of the Macedonia naming dispute with the Prespa agreement in 2018, the Ministry identifies two remaining issues of particular importance to the Greek state: Turkish challenges to Greek sovereignty rights in the Aegean Sea and corresponding airspace and the Cyprus dispute involving the Turkish occupation of Northern Cyprus. There is a long-standing conflict between Turkey and Greece over natural resources in the eastern Mediterranean. Turkey does not recognize a legal continental shelf and exclusive economic zone around the Greek islands. Additionally, due to its political and geographical proximity to Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, Greece is a country of significant geostrategic importance, which it has leveraged to develop a regional policy to help promote peace and stability in the Balkans, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. This has accorded the country middle power status in global affairs. Greece is a member of numerous international organizations, including the Council of Europe, the European Union, the Union for the Mediterranean, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the and the United Nations, of which it is a founding member. Military. The Hellenic Armed Forces are overseen by the Hellenic National Defense General Staff (Greek: Γενικό Επιτελείο Εθνικής Άμυνας – ΓΕΕΘΑ), with civilian authority vested in the Ministry of National Defence. It consists of three branches: Moreover, Greece maintains the Hellenic Coast Guard for law enforcement at sea, search and rescue, and port operations. Though it can support the navy during wartime, it resides under the authority of the Ministry of Shipping. Greek military personnel total 364,050, of whom 142,700 are active and 221,350 are reserve. Greece ranks 28th in the world in the number of citizens serving in the armed forces. Mandatory military service is generally one year for 19 to 45 year olds. Additionally, Greek males between the ages of 18 and 60 who live in strategically sensitive areas may be required to serve part-time in the National Guard. As a member of NATO, the Greek military participates in exercises and deployments under the auspices of the alliance, although its involvement in NATO missions is minimal. Greece spends over US$7 billion annually on its military, or 2.3 percent of GDP, the 24th-highest in the world in absolute terms, the seventh-highest on a per capita basis, and the second-highest in NATO after the United States. Moreover, Greece is one of only five NATO countries to meet or surpass the minimum defence spending target of 2 percent of GDP. Law and justice. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature and comprises three Supreme Courts: the Court of Cassation (Άρειος Πάγος), the Council of State (Συμβούλιο της Επικρατείας) and the Court of Auditors (Ελεγκτικό Συνέδριο). The Judiciary system is also composed of civil courts, which judge civil and penal cases and administrative courts, which judge disputes between the citizens and the Greek administrative authorities. The Hellenic Police () is the national police force of Greece. It is a very large agency with its responsibilities ranging from road traffic control to counter-terrorism. It was established in 1984 under Law 1481/1-10-1984 (Government Gazette 152 A) as the result of the fusion of the Gendarmerie (Χωροφυλακή, "Chorofylaki") and the Cities Police (Αστυνομία Πόλεων, "Astynomia Poleon") forces. Administrative divisions. Since the Kallikratis programme reform entered into effect on 1 January 2011, Greece has consisted of 13 regions subdivided into a total of 325, from 2019 332 (Kleisthenis I Programme), municipalities. The 54 old prefectures and prefecture-level administrations have been largely retained as "sub-units" of the regions. Seven decentralised administrations group one to three regions for administrative purposes on a regional basis. There is also one autonomous area, Mount Athos (, "Holy Mountain"), which borders the region of Central Macedonia. Economy. Introduction. According to World Bank statistics for the year 2013, the economy of Greece is the 43rd largest by nominal gross domestic product at $242 billion and 53rd largest by purchasing power parity (PPP) at $284 billion. Additionally, Greece is the 15th largest economy in the 27-member European Union. In terms of per capita income, Greece is ranked 41st or 47th in the world at $18,168 and $29,045 for nominal GDP and PPP respectively. The Greek economy is classified as advanced and high-income. Greece is a developed country with a high standard of living and a high ranking in the Human Development Index. Its economy mainly comprises the service sector (85.0%) and industry (12.0%), while agriculture makes up 3.0% of the national economic output. Important Greek industries include tourism (with 14.9 million international tourists in 2009, it is ranked as the 7th most visited country in the European Union and 16th in the world by the United Nations World Tourism Organization) and merchant shipping (at 16.2% of the world's total capacity, the Greek merchant marine is the largest in the world), while the country is also a considerable agricultural producer (including fisheries) within the union. In October 2021 unemployment stood at 12.9% and youth unemployment at 33.2%, compared with respectively 7% and 15.9% in the EU and in the Euro zone. Greece has the largest economy in the Balkans, and an important regional investor. Greece is the number-two foreign investor of capital in Albania, the number-three foreign investor in Bulgaria, at the top-three of foreign investors in Romania and Serbia and the most important trading partner and largest foreign investor of North Macedonia. Greek banks open a new branch somewhere in the Balkans on an almost weekly basis. The Greek telecommunications company OTE has become a strong investor in other Balkan countries. Greece was a founding member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC). In 1979 the accession of the country in the European Communities and the single market was signed, and the process was completed in 1982. Greece was accepted into the Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union on 19 June 2000, and in January 2001 adopted the euro as its currency, replacing the Greek drachma at an exchange rate of 340.75 drachma to the Euro. Greece is also a member of the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization, and is ranked 24th on the KOF Globalization Index for 2013. Debt crisis (2010–2018). The Greek economy had fared well for much of the 20th century, with high growth rates and low public debt. Even until the eve of the financial crisis of 2007–2008, it featured high rates of growth, which, however, were coupled with high structural deficits, thus maintaining a (roughly unchanged throughout this period) public debt to GDP ratio of just over 100%. In 2009, after an election and change in government, it was revealed that Greece's budget deficit had for years been considerably higher than the officially reported figures. In the years before the crisis, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and numerous other banks had developed financial products which enabled the governments of Greece, Italy, and many other European countries to hide their levels of borrowing. Dozens of similar agreements were concluded across Europe whereby banks supplied cash in advance in exchange for future payments by the governments involved; in turn, the liabilities of the involved countries were "kept off the books". These conditions had enabled Greece as well as other European governments to spend beyond their means, while still technically meeting the deficit targets set out in the Maastricht Treaty. The Greek crisis was triggered by the turmoil of the 2007–2009 Great Recession, which caused Greece's GDP to contract by around 2.5% in 2009. Simultaneously, the higher-than-believed budget deficits in the preceding years were revealed to have been allowed to reach 10.2% and 15.1% of GDP in 2008 and 2009, respectively. This caused Greece's debt to GDP ratio (which had been high but stable at just over 100% until 2007, as calculated after all corrections) to spike to 127%. In addition, being a member of the Eurozone, the country had essentially no autonomous monetary policy flexibility. Consequently, Greece was "punished" by the markets which increased borrowing rates, making it impossible for the country to finance its debt since early 2010. In May 2010, the Greece's deficit was again revised and estimated to be 13.6% the second highest in the world relative to GDP. Public debt was forecast to reach up to 120% of GDP in the same year, causing a crisis of confidence in Greece's ability pay back loans. To avert a sovereign default, Greece, the other Eurozone members, and the International Monetary Fund agreed on a rescue package which involved giving Greece an immediate € in loans, with additional funds to follow, totaling €. To secure the funding, Greece was required to adopt harsh austerity measures to bring its deficit under control. A second bail-out amounting to € ($) was agreed in 2012, subject to strict conditions, including financial reforms and further austerity measures. A debt haircut was also agreed as part of the deal. Greece achieved a primary government budget surplus in 2013, while in April 2014, it returned to the global bond market. Greece returned to growth after six years of economic decline in the second quarter of 2014, and was the Eurozone's fastest-growing economy in the third quarter. A third bailout was agreed in July 2015, after a confrontation with the newly elected government of Alexis Tsipras. Partly due to the imposed austerity measures, Greece experienced a 25% drop GDP between 2009 and 2015. This had a critical effect: the debt-to-GDP ratio, a key factor defining the severity of the crisis, would jump from its 2009 level of 127% to about 170%, solely due to the shrinking economy. In a 2013 report, the IMF admitted that it had underestimated the effects of so extensive tax hikes and budget cuts on the country's GDP and issued an informal apology. The Greek programmes imposed a very rapid improvement in structural primary balance (at least two times faster than for other Eurozone bailed-out countries). The policies have been blamed for worsening the crisis, while Greece's president, Prokopis Pavlopoulos, stressed the creditors' share in responsibility for the depth of the crisis. Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, asserted that errors in the design of the first two programmes which led to a loss of 25% of the Greek economy due to the harsh imposition of excessive austerity. Between 2009 and 2017 the Greek government debt rose from €300 bn to €318 bn, i.e. by only about 6% (thanks, in part, to the 2012 debt restructuring); however, during the same period, the critical debt-to-GDP ratio shot up from 127% to 179% basically due to the severe GDP drop during the handling of the crisis. Greece's bailouts successfully ended (as declared) on 20 August 2018. Agriculture. In 2010, Greece was the European Union's largest producer of cotton (183,800 tons) and pistachios (8,000 tons) and ranked second in the production of rice (229,500 tons) and olives (147,500 tons), third in the production of figs (11,000 tons), almonds (44,000 tons), tomatoes (1,400,000 tons), and watermelons (578,400 tons) and fourth in the production of tobacco (22,000 tons). Agriculture contributes 3.8% of the country's GDP and employs 12.4% of the country's labor force. Greece is a major beneficiary of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy. As a result of the country's entry to the European Community, much of its agricultural infrastructure has been upgraded and agricultural output increased. Between 2000 and 2007, organic farming in Greece increased by 885%, the highest change percentage in the EU. Energy. Electricity production in Greece is dominated by the state-owned Public Power Corporation (known mostly by its acronym ΔΕΗ, transliterated as DEI). In 2009 DEI supplied for 85.6% of all electric energy demand in Greece, while the number fell to 77.3% in 2010. Almost half (48%) of DEI's power output is generated using lignite, a drop from the 51.6% in 2009. Twelve percent of Greece's electricity comes from hydroelectric power plants and another 20% from natural gas. Between 2009 and 2010, independent companies' energy production increased by 56%, from 2,709 gigawatt hour in 2009 to 4,232 GWh in 2010. In 2012, renewable energy accounted for 13.8% of the country's total energy consumption, a rise from the 10.6% it accounted for in 2011, a figure almost equal to the EU average of 14.1% in 2012. 10% of the country's renewable energy comes from solar power, while most comes from biomass and waste recycling. In line with the European Commission's Directive on Renewable Energy, Greece aims to get 18% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. In 2013, according to the independent power transmission operator in Greece (ΑΔΜΗΕ) more than 20% of the electricity in Greece has been produced from renewable energy sources and hydroelectric powerplants. This percentage in April reached 42%. Greece currently does not have any nuclear power plants in operation; however, in 2009 the Academy of Athens suggested that research in the possibility of Greek nuclear power plants begin. Maritime industry. The shipping industry has been a key element of Greek economic activity since ancient times. Shipping remains one of the country's most important industries, accounting for 4.5 percent of GDP, employing about 160,000 people (4 percent of the workforce), and representing a third of the trade deficit. According to a 2011 report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the Greek Merchant Navy is the largest in the world at 16.2 percent of total global capacity, up from 15.96 percent in 2010 but below the peak of 18.2 percent in 2006. The country's merchant fleet ranks first in total tonnage (202 million dwt), fourth in total number of ships (at 3,150), first in both tankers and dry bulk carriers, fourth in the number of containers, and fifth in other ships. However, today's fleet roster is smaller than an all-time high of 5,000 ships in the late 1970s. Additionally, the total number of ships flying a Greek flag (includes non-Greek fleets) is 1,517, or 5.3 percent of the world's dwt (ranked fifth globally). During the 1960s, the size of the Greek fleet nearly doubled, primarily through the investment undertaken by the shipping magnates, Aristotle Onassis and Stavros Niarchos. The basis of the modern Greek maritime industry was formed after World War II when Greek shipping businessmen were able to amass surplus ships sold to them by the U.S. government through the Ship Sales Act of the 1940s. Greece has a significant shipbuilding and ship maintenance industry. The six shipyards around the port of Piraeus are among the largest in Europe. In recent years, Greece has also become a leader in the construction and maintenance of luxury yachts. Tourism. Tourism has been a key element of the economic activity in the country and one of the country's most important sectors, contributing 20.6% of the gross domestic product as of 2018. Greece welcomed over 31.3 million visitors in 2019, and around 28 million in 2016, which is an increase from the 26.5 million tourists it welcomed in 2015 and the 19.5 million in 2009, and the 17.7 million tourists in 2007, making Greece one of the most visited countries in Europe in the recent years. The vast majority of visitors in Greece in 2007 came from the European continent, numbering 12.7 million, while the most visitors from a single nationality were those from the United Kingdom, (2.6 million), followed closely by those from Germany (2.3 million). In 2010, the most visited region of Greece was that of Central Macedonia, with 18% of the country's total tourist flow (amounting to 3.6 million tourists), followed by Attica with 2.6 million and the Peloponnese with 1.8 million. Northern Greece is the country's most-visited geographical region, with 6.5 million tourists, while Central Greece is second with 6.3 million. In 2010, Lonely Planet ranked Greece's northern and second-largest city of Thessaloniki as the world's fifth-best party town worldwide, comparable with cities such as Dubai and Montreal. In 2011, Santorini was voted as "The World's Best Island" in "Travel + Leisure". Its neighboring island Mykonos, came in fifth in the European category. There are 18 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Greece, and Greece is ranked 16th in the world in terms of total sites. 14 further sites are on the tentative list, awaiting nomination. Transport. Since the 1980s, the road and rail network of Greece has been significantly modernised. Important works include the A2 (Egnatia Odos) motorway, that connects northwestern Greece (Igoumenitsa) with northern Greece (Thessaloniki) and northeastern Greece (Kipoi); the Rio–Antirrio bridge, the longest suspension cable bridge in Europe ( long), connecting the Peloponnese (Rio, from Patras) with Aetolia-Akarnania (Antirrio) in western Greece. Also completed are the A5 (Ionia Odos) motorway that connects northwestern Greece (Ioannina) with western Greece (Antirrio); the last sections of the A1 motorway, connecting Athens to Thessaloniki and Evzonoi in northern Greece; as well as the A8 motorway (part of the Olympia Odos) in Peloponnese, connecting Athens to Patras. The remaining section of Olympia Odos, connecting Patras with Pyrgos, is under planning. Other important projects that are currently underway, include the construction of the Thessaloniki Metro. The Athens Metropolitan Area in particular is served by some of the most modern and efficient transport infrastructure in Europe, such as the Athens International Airport, the privately run A6 (Attiki Odos) motorway network and the expanded Athens Metro system. Most of the Greek islands and many main cities of Greece are connected by air mainly from the two major Greek airlines, Olympic Air and Aegean Airlines. Maritime connections have been improved with modern high-speed craft, including hydrofoils and catamarans. Railway connections play a somewhat lesser role in Greece than in many other European countries, but they too have also been expanded, with new suburban/commuter rail connections, serviced by Proastiakos around Athens, towards its airport, Kiato and Chalkida; around Thessaloniki, towards the cities of Larissa and Edessa; and around Patras. A modern intercity rail connection between Athens and Thessaloniki has also been established, while an upgrade to double lines in many parts of the network is underway; along with a new double track, standard gauge railway between Athens and Patras (replacing the old metre-gauge Piraeus–Patras railway) which is currently under construction and opening in stages. International railway lines connect Greek cities with the rest of Europe, the Balkans and Turkey. Telecommunications. Modern digital information and communication networks reach all areas. There are over of fiber optics and an extensive open-wire network. Broadband internet availability is widespread in Greece: there were a total of 2,252,653 broadband connections , translating to 20% broadband penetration. According to 2017 data, around 82% of the general population used the internet regularly. Internet cafés that provide net access, office applications and multiplayer gaming are also a common sight in the country, while mobile internet on 3G and 4G- LTE cellphone networks and Wi-Fi connections can be found almost everywhere. 3G/4G mobile internet usage has been on a sharp increase in recent years. Based on 2016 data 70% of Greek internet users have access via 3G/4G mobile. As of July 2022, 5G service is accessible in most of major Greek cities. The United Nations International Telecommunication Union ranks Greece among the top 30 countries with a highly developed information and communications infrastructure. Science and technology. The General Secretariat for Research and Technology of the Ministry of Development and Competitiveness is responsible for designing, implementing and supervising national research and technological policy. In 2017, spending on research and development (R&D) reached an all-time high of €2 billion, equal to 1.14 percent of GDP. Although lower than the EU average of 1.93 percent, between 1990 and 1998, total R&D expenditure in Greece enjoyed the third-highest increase in Europe, after Finland and Ireland. Greece was ranked 47th in the Global Innovation Index in 2021, down from 41st in 2019. Because of its strategic location, qualified workforce, and political and economic stability, many multinational companies such as Ericsson, Siemens, Motorola, Coca-Cola, and Tesla have their regional R&D headquarters in Greece. Greece has several major technology parks with incubator facilities and has been a member of the European Space Agency (ESA) since 2005. Cooperation between ESA and the Hellenic National Space Committee began in 1994 with the signing of the first cooperation agreement. After applying for full membership in 2003, Greece became the ESA's sixteenth member on 16 March 2005. The country participates in the ESA's telecommunication and technology activities and the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security Initiative. The National Centre of Scientific Research "Demokritos" was founded in 1959 and it is the largest multidisciplinary research center in Greece. Today, its activities cover several fields of science and engineering. Greece has one of the highest rates of tertiary enrollment in the world, while Greeks are well represented in academia worldwide; numerous leading Western universities employ a disproportionately high number of Greek faculty. Greek scientific publications have grown significantly in terms of research impact, surpassing both the EU and global average from 2012 to 2016. Notable Greek scientists of modern times include Georgios Papanikolaou (inventor of the Pap test), mathematician Constantin Carathéodory (known for the Carathéodory theorems and Carathéodory conjecture), astronomer E. M. Antoniadi, archaeologists Ioannis Svoronos, Valerios Stais, Spyridon Marinatos, Manolis Andronikos (discovered the tomb of Philip II of Macedon in Vergina), Indologist Dimitrios Galanos, botanist Theodoros G. Orphanides, and scientists such as Michael Dertouzos, Nicholas Negroponte, John Argyris, John Iliopoulos (2007 Dirac Prize for his contributions on the physics of the charm quark), Joseph Sifakis (2007 Turing Award, the "Nobel Prize" of Computer Science), Christos Papadimitriou (2002 Knuth Prize, 2012 Gödel Prize), Mihalis Yannakakis (2005 Knuth Prize) and physicist Dimitri Nanopoulos. Demographics. According to the official statistical body of Greece, the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT), the country's total population in 2021 was 10,482,487. Eurostat places the current population at 10.6 million in 2022. Greek society has changed rapidly over the last several decades, coinciding with the wider European trend of declining fertility and rapid aging. The birth rate in 2003 stood at 9.5 per 1,000 inhabitants, significantly lower than the rate of 14.5 per 1,000 in 1981. At the same time, the mortality rate increased slightly from 8.9 per 1,000 inhabitants in 1981 to 9.6 per 1,000 inhabitants in 2003. Estimates from 2016 show the birth rate decreasing further still to 8.5 per 1,000 and mortality climbing to 11.2 per 1,000. The fertility rate of 1.41 children per woman is well below the replacement rate of 2.1, and is one of the lowest in the world, considerably below the high of 5.47 children born per woman in 1900. Subsequently, Greece's median age is 44.2 years, the seventh-highest in the world. In 2001, 16.71 percent of the population were 65 years old and older, 68.12 percent between the ages of 15 and 64 years old, and 15.18 percent were 14 years old and younger. By 2016, the proportion of the population age 65 and older had risen to 20.68 percent, while the proportion of those aged 14 and younger declined to slightly below 14 percent. Marriage rates began declining from almost 71 per 1,000 inhabitants in 1981 until 2002, only to increase slightly in 2003 to 61 per 1,000 and then fall again to 51 in 2004. Divorce rates have seen an increase from 191.2 per 1,000 marriages in 1991 to 239.5 per 1,000 marriages in 2004. As a result of these trends, the average Greek household is smaller and older than in previous generations. The economic crisis has exacerbated this development, with 350,000–450,000 Greeks, predominantly young adults, emigrating since 2010. Cities. Almost two-thirds of the Greek people live in urban areas. Greece's largest and most influential metropolitan centres are those of Athens (population 3,744,059 according to 2021 census) and Thessaloniki (population 1,092,919 in 2021) that latter commonly referred to as the (, ). Other prominent cities with urban populations above 100,000 inhabitants include Patras, Heraklion, Larissa, Volos, Rhodes, Ioannina, Agrinio, Chania, and Chalcis. The table below lists the largest cities in Greece, by population contained in their respective contiguous built up urban areas, which are either made up of many municipalities, evident in the cases of Athens and Thessaloniki, or are contained within a larger single municipality, case evident in most of the smaller cities of the country. The results come from the preliminary figures of the population census that took place in Greece in May 2011. Religion. The Greek Constitution recognises Eastern Orthodoxy as the 'prevailing' faith of the country, while guaranteeing freedom of religious belief for all. The Greek government does not keep statistics on religious groups and censuses do not ask for religious affiliation. According to the U.S. State Department, an estimated 97% of Greek citizens identify themselves as Eastern Orthodox, belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church, which uses the Byzantine rite and the Greek language, the original language of the New Testament. The administration of the Greek territory is shared between the Church of Greece and the Patriarchate of Constantinople. In a 2010 Eurostat–Eurobarometer poll, 79% of Greek citizens responded that they "believe there is a God". According to other sources, 15.8% of Greeks describe themselves as "very religious", which is the highest among all European countries. The survey also found that just 3.5% never attend a church, compared to 4.9% in Poland and 59.1% in the Czech Republic. Estimates of the recognised Greek Muslim minority, which is mostly located in Thrace, range around 100,000, (about 1% of the population). Some of the Albanian immigrants to Greece come from a nominally Muslim background, although most are secular in orientation. Following the 1919–1922 Greco-Turkish War and the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, Greece and Turkey agreed to a population transfer based on cultural and religious identity. About 500,000 Muslims from Greece, predominantly those defined as Turks, but also Greek Muslims like the Vallahades of western Macedonia, were exchanged with approximately 1.5 million Greeks from Turkey. However, many refugees who settled in former Ottoman Muslim villages in Central Macedonia, and were defined as Christian Orthodox Caucasus Greeks, arrived from the former Russian Transcaucasus province of Kars Oblast, after it had been retroceded to Turkey prior to the official population exchange. Judaism has been present in Greece for more than 2,000 years. The ancient community of Greek Jews are called Romaniotes, while the Sephardi Jews were once a prominent community in the city of Thessaloniki, numbering some 80,000, or more than half of the population, by 1900. However, after the German occupation of Greece and the Holocaust during World War II, is estimated to number around 5,500 people. The Roman Catholic community is estimated to be around 250,000 of which 50,000 are Greek citizens. Their community is nominally separate from the smaller Greek Byzantine Catholic Church, which recognises the primacy of the Pope but maintains the liturgy of the Byzantine Rite. Old Calendarists account for 500,000 followers. Protestants, including the Greek Evangelical Church and Free Evangelical Churches, stand at about 30,000. Other Christian minorities, such as Assemblies of God, International Church of the Foursquare Gospel and various Pentecostal churches of the Greek Synod of Apostolic Church total about 12,000 members. The independent Free Apostolic Church of Pentecost is the biggest Protestant denomination in Greece with 120 churches. There are no official statistics about Free Apostolic Church of Pentecost, but the Orthodox Church estimates the followers as 20,000. The Jehovah's Witnesses report having 28,874 active members. Since 2017, Hellenic Polytheism, or Hellenism has been legally recognised as an actively practised religion in Greece, with estimates of 2,000 active practitioners and an additional 100,000 "sympathisers". Hellenism refers to various religious movements that continue, revive, or reconstruct ancient Greek religious practices. Languages. Greece is today relatively homogeneous in linguistic terms, with a large majority of the native population using Greek as their first or only language. Among the Greek-speaking population, speakers of the distinctive Pontic dialect came to Greece from Asia Minor after the Greek genocide and constitute a sizable group. The Cappadocian dialect came to Greece due to the genocide as well, but is endangered and is barely spoken now. Indigenous Greek dialects include the archaic Greek spoken by the Sarakatsani, traditionally transhument mountain shepherds of Greek Macedonia and other parts of Northern Greece. The Tsakonian language, a distinct Greek language deriving from Doric Greek instead of Koine Greek, is still spoken in some villages in the southeastern Peloponnese. The Muslim minority in Thrace, which amounts to approximately 0.95% of the total population, consists of speakers of Turkish, Bulgarian (Pomaks) and Romani. Romani is also spoken by Christian Roma in other parts of the country. Further minority languages have traditionally been spoken by regional population groups in various parts of the country. Their use has decreased radically in the course of the 20th century through assimilation with the Greek-speaking majority. Today they are only maintained by the older generations and are on the verge of extinction. The same goes for the Arvanites, an Albanian-speaking group mostly located in the rural areas around the capital Athens, and for the Aromanians and Megleno-Romanians, also known as "Vlachs", whose language is closely related to Romanian and who used to live scattered across several areas of mountainous central Greece. Members of these groups usually identify ethnically as Greek and are today all at least bilingual in Greek. Near the northern Greek borders there are also some Slavic–speaking groups, locally known as "Slavomacedonian"-speaking, most of whose members identify ethnically as Greeks. It is estimated that after the population exchanges of 1923, Macedonia had 200,000 to 400,000 Slavic speakers. The Jewish community in Greece traditionally spoke Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), today maintained only by a few thousand speakers. Other notable minority languages include Armenian, Georgian, and the Greco-Turkic dialect spoken by the Urums, a community of Caucasus Greeks from the Tsalka region of central Georgia and ethnic Greeks from southeastern Ukraine who arrived in mainly Northern Greece as economic migrants in the 1990s. Migration. Throughout the 20th century, millions of Greeks migrated to the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and Germany, creating a large Greek diaspora. Net migration started to show positive numbers from the 1970s, but until the beginning of the 1990s, the main influx was that of returning Greek migrants or of Pontic Greeks and others from Russia, Georgia, Turkey the Czech Republic, and elsewhere in the former Soviet Bloc. A study from the Mediterranean Migration Observatory maintains that the 2001 census recorded 762,191 persons residing in Greece without Greek citizenship, constituting around 7% of the total population. Of the non-citizen residents, 48,560 were EU or European Free Trade Association nationals and 17,426 were Cypriots with privileged status. The majority come from Eastern European countries: Albania (56%), Bulgaria (5%) and Romania (3%), while migrants from the former Soviet Union (Georgia, Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, etc.) comprise 10% of the total. Some of the immigrants from Albania are from the Greek minority in Albania centred on the region of Northern Epirus. In addition, the total Albanian national population which includes temporary migrants and undocumented persons is around 600,000. The 2011 census recorded 9,903,268 Greek citizens (91.56%), 480,824 Albanian citizens (4.44%), 75,915 Bulgarian citizens (0.7%), 46,523 Romanian citizenship (0.43%), 34,177 Pakistani citizens (0.32%), 27,400 Georgian citizens (0.25%) and 247,090 people had other or unidentified citizenship (2.3%). 189,000 people of the total population of Albanian citizens were reported in 2008 as ethnic Greeks from Southern Albania, in the historical region of Northern Epirus. The greatest cluster of non-EU immigrant population are the larger urban centers, especially the Municipality of Athens, with 132,000 immigrants comprising 17% of the local population, and then Thessaloniki, with 27,000 immigrants reaching 7% of the local population. There is also a considerable number of co-ethnics that came from the Greek communities of Albania and the former Soviet Union. Greece, together with Italy and Spain, is a major entry point for illegal immigrants trying to enter the EU. Illegal immigrants entering Greece mostly do so from the border with Turkey at the Evros River and the islands of the eastern Aegean across from Turkey (mainly Lesbos, Chios, Kos, and Samos). In 2012, the majority of illegal immigrants entering Greece came from Afghanistan, followed by Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. In 2015, arrivals of refugees by sea had increased dramatically mainly due to the ongoing Syrian civil war. There were 856,723 arrivals by sea in Greece, an almost fivefold increase to the same period of 2014, of which the Syrians represent almost 45%. The majority of refugees and migrants use Greece as a transit country, while their intended destinations are northern European Nations such as Austria, Germany and Sweden. Education. Greeks have a long tradition of valuing and investing in "paideia" (education), which was upheld as one of the highest societal values in the Greek and Hellenistic world. The first European institution described as a university was founded in fifth-century Constantinople and continued operating in various incarnations until the city's fall to the Ottomans in 1453. The University of Constantinople was Christian Europe's first secular institution of higher learning, and by some measures was the world's first university. Compulsory education in Greece comprises primary schools (Δημοτικό Σχολείο, "Dimotikó Scholeio") and gymnasium (Γυμνάσιο). Nursery schools (Παιδικός σταθμός, "Paidikós Stathmós") are popular but not compulsory. Kindergartens (Νηπιαγωγείο, "Nipiagogeío") are now compulsory for any child above four years of age. Children start primary school aged six and remain there for six years. Attendance at gymnasia starts at age 12 and lasts for three years. Greece's post-compulsory secondary education consists of two school types: unified upper secondary schools (Γενικό Λύκειο, "Genikό Lykeiό") and technical–vocational educational schools (Τεχνικά και Επαγγελματικά Εκπαιδευτήρια, "TEE"). Post-compulsory secondary education also includes vocational training institutes (Ινστιτούτα Επαγγελματικής Κατάρτισης, "IEK") which provide a formal but unclassified level of education. As they can accept both "Gymnasio" (lower secondary school) and "Lykeio" (upper secondary school) graduates, these institutes are not classified as offering a particular level of education. According to the Framework Law (3549/2007), Public higher education "Highest Educational Institutions" (Ανώτατα Εκπαιδευτικά Ιδρύματα, "Anótata Ekpaideytiká Idrýmata", "ΑΕΙ") consists of two parallel sectors:the university sector (Universities, Polytechnics, Fine Arts Schools, the Open University) and the Technological sector (Technological Education Institutions (TEI) and the School of Pedagogic and Technological Education). There are also State Non-University Tertiary Institutes offering vocationally oriented courses of shorter duration (2 to 3 years) which operate under the authority of other Ministries. Students are admitted to these Institutes according to their performance at national level examinations taking place after completion of the third grade of "Lykeio". Additionally, students over twenty-two years old may be admitted to the Hellenic Open University through a form of lottery. The Capodistrian University of Athens is the oldest university in the eastern Mediterranean. The Greek education system also provides special kindergartens, primary, and secondary schools for people with special needs or difficulties in learning. There are also specialist gymnasia and high schools offering musical, theological, and physical education. Seventy-two percent of Greek adults aged 25–64 have completed upper secondary education, which is slightly less than the OECD average of 74 percent. The average Greek pupil scored 458 in reading literacy, maths and science in the OECD's 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). This score is lower than the OECD average of 486. On average, girls outperformed boys by 15 points, much more than the average OECD gap of two points. Healthcare system. Greece has universal health care. The system is mixed, combining a national health service with social health insurance (SHI). Per a 2000 World Health Organization report, its health care system ranked 14th in overall performance of 191 countries surveyed. In a 2013 Save the Children report, Greece was ranked the 19th out of 176 countries for the state of mothers and newborn babies. In 2010, there were 138 hospitals with 31,000 beds, but in 2011, the Ministry of Health announced plans to decrease the number to 77 hospitals with 36,035 beds to reduce expenses and further enhance healthcare standards. However, as of 2014, there were 124 public hospitals, of which 106 were general hospitals and 18 specialised hospitals, with a total capacity of about 30,000 beds. Greece's healthcare expenditures as a percentage of GDP were 9.6% in 2007, just above the OECD average of 9.5%. By 2015, spending declined to 8.4% of GDP (compared with the EU average of 9.5%), a decline of one-fifth since 2010. Nevertheless, the country maintains the highest doctor-to-population ratio of any OECD country and the highest doctor-to-patient ratio in the EU. Life expectancy in Greece is among the highest in the world; a 2011 OECD report placed it at 80.3 years, above the OECD average of 79.5, while a more recent 2017 study found life expectancy in 2015 to be 81.1 years, slightly above the EU average of 80.6. The island of Icaria has the highest percentage of nonagenarians in the world; approximately 33% of islanders are 90 or older. Icaria is subsequently classified as a "Blue Zone", a region where people allegedly live longer than average and have lower rates of cancer, heart disease, or other chronic illnesses. The 2011 OECD report showed that Greece had the largest percentage of adult daily smokers of any of the 34 OECD members. The country's obesity rate is 18.1%, which is above the OECD average of 15.1%, but considerably lower than the American rate of 27.7%. In 2008, Greece had the highest rate of perceived good health in the OECD, at 98.5%. Infant mortality, with a rate of 3.6 deaths per 1,000 live births, was below the 2007 OECD average of 4.9. Culture. The culture of Greece has evolved over thousands of years, beginning in Mycenaean Greece and continuing most notably into Classical Greece, through the influence of the Roman Empire and its Greek Eastern continuation, the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire. Other cultures and nations, such as the Latin and Frankish states, the Ottoman Empire, the Venetian Republic, the Genoese Republic, and the British Empire have also left their influence on modern Greek culture, although historians credit the Greek War of Independence with revitalising Greece and giving birth to a single, cohesive entity of its multi-faceted culture. In ancient times, Greece was the birthplace of Western culture. Modern democracies owe a debt to Greek beliefs in government by the people, trial by jury, and equality under the law. The ancient Greeks pioneered in many fields that rely on systematic thought, including logic, biology, geometry, government, geography, medicine, history, philosophy, physics, and mathematics. They introduced such important literary forms as epic and lyrical poetry, history, tragedy, comedy and drama. In their pursuit of order and proportion, the Greeks created an ideal of beauty that strongly influenced Western art. Visual arts. Artistic production in Greece began in the prehistoric pre-Greek Cycladic and the Minoan civilizations, both of which were influenced by local traditions and the art of ancient Egypt. There were several interconnected traditions of painting in ancient Greece. Due to their technical differences, they underwent somewhat differentiated developments. Not all painting techniques are equally well represented in the archaeological record. The most respected form of art, according to authors like Pliny or Pausanias, were individual, mobile paintings on wooden boards, technically described as panel paintings. Also, the tradition of wall painting in Greece goes back at least to the Minoan and Mycenaean Bronze Age, with the lavish fresco decoration of sites like Knossos, Tiryns and Mycenae. Much of the figural or architectural sculpture of ancient Greece was painted colourfully. This aspect of Greek stonework is described as polychrome. Ancient Greek sculpture was composed almost entirely of marble or bronze; with cast bronze becoming the favoured medium for major works by the early 5th century. Both marble and bronze are easy to form and very durable. Chryselephantine sculptures, used for temple cult images and luxury works, used gold, most often in leaf form and ivory for all or parts (faces and hands) of the figure, and probably gems and other materials, but were much less common, and only fragments have survived. By the early 19th century, the systematic excavation of ancient Greek sites had brought forth a plethora of sculptures with traces of notably multicolored surfaces. It was not until published findings by German archaeologist Vinzenz Brinkmann in the late 20th century, that the painting of ancient Greek sculptures became an established fact. The art production continued also during the Byzantine era. The most salient feature of this new aesthetic was its "abstract", or anti-naturalistic character. If classical art was marked by the attempt to create representations that mimicked reality as closely as possible, Byzantine art seems to have abandoned this attempt in favour of a more symbolic approach. The Byzantine painting concentrated mainly on icons and hagiographies. The Macedonian art (Byzantine) was the artistic expression of Macedonian Renaissance, a label sometimes used to describe the period of the Macedonian dynasty of the Byzantine Empire (867–1056), especially the 10th century, which some scholars have seen as a time of increased interest in classical scholarship and the assimilation of classical motifs into Christian artwork. Post Byzantine art schools include the Cretan School and Heptanese School. The first artistic movement in the Greek Kingdom can be considered the Greek academic art of the 19th century ("Munich School"). Notable modern Greek painters include Nikolaos Gyzis, Georgios Jakobides, Theodoros Vryzakis, Nikiforos Lytras, Konstantinos Volanakis, Nikos Engonopoulos and Yannis Tsarouchis, while some notable sculptors are Pavlos Prosalentis, Ioannis Kossos, Leonidas Drosis, Georgios Bonanos and Yannoulis Chalepas. Architecture. The architecture of ancient Greece was produced by the ancient Greeks ("Hellenes"), whose culture flourished on the Greek mainland, the Aegean Islands and their colonies, for a period from about 900 BC until the 1st century AD, with the earliest remaining architectural works dating from around 600 BC. The formal vocabulary of ancient Greek architecture, in particular the division of architectural style into three defined orders: the Doric Order, the Ionic Order and the Corinthian Order, was to have profound effect on Western architecture of later periods. Byzantine architecture is the architecture promoted by the Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, which dominated Greece and the Greek speaking world during the Middle Ages. The empire endured for more than a millennium, dramatically influencing Medieval architecture throughout Europe and the Near East, and becoming the primary progenitor of the Renaissance and Ottoman architectural traditions that followed its collapse. After the Greek Independence, the modern Greek architects tried to combine traditional Greek and Byzantine elements and motives with the western European movements and styles. Patras was the first city of the modern Greek state to develop a city plan. In January 1829, Stamatis Voulgaris, a Greek engineer of the French army, presented the plan of the new city to the Governor Kapodistrias, who approved it. Voulgaris applied the orthogonal rule in the urban complex of Patras. Two special genres can be considered the Cycladic architecture, featuring white-coloured houses, in the Cyclades and the Epirotic architecture in the region of Epirus. Important is also the influence of the Venetian style in the Ionian islands and the "Mediterranean style" of Florestano Di Fausto (during the years of the fascist regime) in the Dodecanese islands. After the establishment of the Greek Kingdom, the architecture of Athens and other cities was mostly influenced by the Neoclassical architecture. For Athens, the first King of Greece, Otto of Greece, commissioned the architects Stamatios Kleanthis and Eduard Schaubert to design a modern city plan fit for the capital of a state. As for Thessaloniki, after the fire of 1917, the government ordered for a new city plan under the supervision of Ernest Hébrard. Other modern Greek architects include Anastasios Metaxas, Lysandros Kaftanzoglou, Panagis Kalkos, Ernst Ziller, Xenophon Paionidis, Dimitris Pikionis and Georges Candilis. There is an emerging need to secure the long-term preservation of the archaeological sites and monuments of Greece against the growing threats of climate change. Theatre. Theatre in its western form was born in Greece. The city-state of Classical Athens, which became a significant cultural, political, and military power during this period, was its centre, where it was institutionalised as part of a festival called the Dionysia, which honoured the god Dionysus. Tragedy (late 6th century BC), comedy (486 BC), and the satyr play were the three dramatic genres to emerge there. During the Byzantine period, the theatrical art was heavily declined. According to Marios Ploritis, the only form survived was the folk theatre ("Mimos" and "Pantomimos"), despite the hostility of the official state. Later, during the Ottoman period, the main theatrical folk art was the "Karagiozis". The renaissance which led to the modern Greek theatre, took place in the Venetian Crete. Significal dramatists include Vitsentzos Kornaros and Georgios Chortatzis. The modern Greek theatre was born after the Greek independence, in the early 19th century, and initially was influenced by the Heptanesean theatre and melodrama, such as the Italian opera. The Nobile Teatro di San Giacomo di Corfù was the first theatre and opera house of modern Greece and the place where the first Greek opera, Spyridon Xyndas' "The Parliamentary Candidate" (based on an exclusively Greek libretto) was performed. During the late 19th and early 20th century, the Athenian theatre scene was dominated by revues, musical comedies, operettas and nocturnes and notable playwrights included Spyridon Samaras, Dionysios Lavrangas, Theophrastos Sakellaridis and others. The National Theatre of Greece was opened in 1900 as "Royal Theatre". Notable playwrights of the modern Greek theatre include Gregorios Xenopoulos, Nikos Kazantzakis, Pantelis Horn, Alekos Sakellarios and Iakovos Kambanelis, while notable actors include Cybele Andrianou, Marika Kotopouli, Aimilios Veakis, Orestis Makris, Katina Paxinou, Manos Katrakis and Dimitris Horn. Significant directors include Dimitris Rontiris, Alexis Minotis and Karolos Koun. Literature. Greek literature can be divided into three main categories: Ancient, Byzantine and modern Greek literature. Athens is considered the birthplace of Western literature. At the beginning of Greek literature stand the two monumental works of Homer: the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey". Though dates of composition vary, these works were fixed around 800 BC or after. In the classical period many of the genres of western literature became more prominent. Lyrical poetry, odes, pastorals, elegies, epigrams; dramatic presentations of comedy and tragedy; historiography, rhetorical treatises, philosophical dialectics, and philosophical treatises all arose in this period. The two major lyrical poets were Sappho and Pindar. The Classical era also saw the dawn of drama. Of the hundreds of tragedies written and performed during the classical age, only a limited number of plays by three authors have survived: those of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. The surviving plays by Aristophanes are also a treasure trove of comic presentation, while Herodotus and Thucydides are two of the most influential historians in this period. The greatest prose achievement of the 4th century was in philosophy with the works of the three great philosophers. Byzantine literature refers to literature of the Byzantine Empire written in Atticizing, Medieval and early Modern Greek, and it is the expression of the intellectual life of the Byzantine Greeks during the Christian Middle Ages. Although "popular" Byzantine literature and early Modern Greek literature both began in the 11th century, the two are indistinguishable. Modern Greek literature refers to literature written in common Modern Greek, emerging from late Byzantine times in the 11th century. The Cretan Renaissance poem "Erotokritos" is considered the masterpiece of this period of Greek literature. It is a verse romance written around 1600 by Vitsentzos Kornaros (1553–1613). Later, during the period of Greek enlightenment (Diafotismos), writers such as Adamantios Korais and Rigas Feraios prepared with their works the Greek Revolution (1821–1830). Leading figures of modern Greek literature include Dionysios Solomos, Andreas Kalvos, Angelos Sikelianos, Emmanuel Rhoides, Demetrius Vikelas, Kostis Palamas, Penelope Delta, Yannis Ritsos, Alexandros Papadiamantis, Nikos Kazantzakis, Andreas Embeirikos, Kostas Karyotakis, Gregorios Xenopoulos, Constantine P. Cavafy, Nikos Kavvadias, Kostas Varnalis and Kiki Dimoula. Two Greek authors have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature: George Seferis in 1963 and Odysseas Elytis in 1979. Philosophy. Most western philosophical traditions began in Ancient Greece in the 6th century BC. The first philosophers are called "Presocratics", which designates that they came before Socrates, whose contributions mark a turning point in western thought. The Presocratics were from the western or the eastern colonies of Greece and only fragments of their original writings survive, in some cases merely a single sentence. A new period of philosophy started with Socrates. Like the Sophists, he rejected entirely the physical speculations in which his predecessors had indulged, and made the thoughts and opinions of people his starting-point. Aspects of Socrates were first united from Plato, who also combined with them many of the principles established by earlier philosophers, and developed the whole of this material into the unity of a comprehensive system. Aristotle of Stagira, the most important disciple of Plato, shared with his teacher the title of the greatest philosopher of antiquity. But while Plato had sought to elucidate and explain things from the supra-sensual standpoint of the forms, his pupil preferred to start from the facts given to us by experience. Except from these three most significant Greek philosophers other known schools of Greek philosophy from other founders during ancient times were Stoicism, Epicureanism, Skepticism and Neoplatonism. Byzantine philosophy refers to the distinctive philosophical ideas of the philosophers and scholars of the Byzantine Empire, especially between the 8th and 15th centuries. It was characterised by a Christian world-view, but one which could draw ideas directly from the Greek texts of Plato, Aristotle, and the Neoplatonists. On the eve of the Fall of Constantinople, Gemistus Pletho tried to restore the use of the term "Hellene" and advocated the return to the Olympian Gods of the ancient world. After 1453 a number of Greek Byzantine scholars who fled to western Europe contributed to the Renaissance. In modern period, Diafotismos (Greek: Διαφωτισμός, "enlightenment", "illumination") was the Greek expression of the Age of Enlightenment and its philosophical and political ideas. Some notable representatives were Adamantios Korais, Rigas Feraios and Theophilos Kairis. Other modern era Greek philosophers or political scientists include Cornelius Castoriadis, Nicos Poulantzas and Christos Yannaras. Music and dances. Greek vocal music extends far back into ancient times where mixed-gender choruses performed for entertainment, celebration and spiritual reasons. Instruments during that period included the double-reed aulos and the plucked string instrument, the lyre, especially the special kind called a kithara. Music played an important role in the education system during ancient times. Boys were taught music from the age of six. Later influences from the Roman Empire, Middle East, and the Byzantine Empire also had effect on Greek music. While the new technique of polyphony was developing in the West, the Eastern Orthodox Church resisted any type of change. Therefore, Byzantine music remained monophonic and without any form of instrumental accompaniment. As a result, and despite certain attempts by certain Greek chanters (such as Manouel Gazis, Ioannis Plousiadinos or the Cypriot Ieronimos o Tragoudistis), Byzantine music was deprived of elements of which in the West encouraged an unimpeded development of art. However, this method which kept music away from polyphony, along with centuries of continuous culture, enabled monophonic music to develop to the greatest heights of perfection. Byzantium presented the monophonic Byzantine chant; a melodic treasury of inestimable value for its rhythmical variety and expressive power. Along with the Byzantine (Church) chant and music, the Greek people also cultivated the Greek folk song ("Demotiko") which is divided into two cycles, the akritic and klephtic. The akritic was created between the 9th and 10th centuries and expressed the life and struggles of the akrites (frontier guards) of the Byzantine empire, the most well known being the stories associated with Digenes Akritas. The klephtic cycle came into being between the late Byzantine period and the start of the Greek War of Independence. The klephtic cycle, together with historical songs, "paraloghes" (narrative song or ballad), love songs, mantinades, wedding songs, songs of exile and dirges express the life of the Greeks. There is a unity between the Greek people's struggles for freedom, their joys and sorrow and attitudes towards love and death. The Heptanesean kantádhes (καντάδες 'serenades'; sing.: καντάδα) became the forerunners of the Greek modern urban popular song, influencing its development to a considerable degree. For the first part of the next century, several Greek composers continued to borrow elements from the Heptanesean style. The most successful songs during the period 1870–1930 were the so-called Athenian serenades, and the songs performed on stage (επιθεωρησιακά τραγούδια 'theatrical revue songs') in revues, operettas and nocturnes that were dominating Athens' theater scene. Rebetiko, initially a music associated with the lower classes, later (and especially after the population exchange between Greece and Turkey) reached greater general acceptance as the rough edges of its overt subcultural character were softened and polished, sometimes to the point of unrecognizability. It was the base of the later laïkó (song of the people). The leading performers of the genre include Vassilis Tsitsanis, Grigoris Bithikotsis, Stelios Kazantzidis, George Dalaras, Haris Alexiou and Glykeria. Regarding the classical music, it was through the Ionian islands (which were under western rule and influence) that all the major advances of the western European classical music were introduced to mainland Greeks. The region is notable for the birth of the first school of modern Greek classical music (Heptanesean or Ionian School, Greek: "Επτανησιακή Σχολή"), established in 1815. Prominent representatives of this genre include Nikolaos Mantzaros, Spyridon Xyndas, Spyridon Samaras and Pavlos Carrer. Manolis Kalomiris is considered the founder of the Greek National School of Music. In the 20th century, Greek composers have had a significant impact on the development of avant garde and modern classical music, with figures such as Iannis Xenakis, Nikos Skalkottas, and Dimitri Mitropoulos achieving international prominence. At the same time, composers and musicians such as Mikis Theodorakis, Manos Hatzidakis, Eleni Karaindrou, Vangelis and Demis Roussos garnered an international following for their music, which include famous film scores such as Zorba the Greek, Serpico, Never on Sunday, America America, Eternity and a Day, Chariots of Fire, Blade Runner, among others. Greek American composers known for their film scores include also Yanni and Basil Poledouris. Notable Greek opera singers and classical musicians of the 20th and 21st century include Maria Callas, Nana Mouskouri, Mario Frangoulis, Leonidas Kavakos, Dimitris Sgouros and others. During the dictatorship of the Colonels, the music of Mikis Theodorakis was banned by the junta and the composer was jailed, internally exiled, and put in a concentration camp, before finally being allowed to leave Greece due to international reaction to his detention. Released during the junta years, "Anthrope Agapa, ti Fotia Stamata" (Make Love, Stop the Gunfire), by the pop group Poll is considered the first anti-war protest song in the history of Greek rock. The song was echoing the hippie slogan "make love, not war" and was inspired directly by the Vietnam War, becoming a "smash hit" in Greece. Greece participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 35 times after its debut at the 1974 Contest. In 2005, Greece won with the song "My Number One", performed by Greek-Swedish singer Elena Paparizou. The song received 230 points with 10 sets of 12 points from Belgium, Bulgaria, Hungary, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Albania, Cyprus, Serbia & Montenegro, Sweden and Germany and also became a smash hit in different countries and especially in Greece. The 51st Eurovision Song Contest was held in Athens at the Olympic Indoor Hall of the Athens Olympic Sports Complex in Maroussi, and hosted by Maria Menounos and Sakis Rouvas. Cuisine. Greek cuisine is characteristic of the Mediterranean diet, which is epitomised by dishes of Crete. Greek cuisine incorporates fresh ingredients into a variety of local dishes such as moussaka, pastitsio, classic Greek salad, fasolada, spanakopita and souvlaki. Some dishes can be traced back to ancient Greece like skordalia (a thick purée of walnuts, almonds, crushed garlic and olive oil), lentil soup, retsina (white or rosé wine sealed with pine resin) and pasteli (candy bar with sesame seeds baked with honey). Throughout Greece people often enjoy eating from small dishes such as meze with various dips such as tzatziki, grilled octopus and small fish, feta cheese, dolmades (rice, currants and pine kernels wrapped in vine leaves), various pulses, olives and cheese. Olive oil is added to almost every dish. Some sweet desserts include melomakarona, diples and galaktoboureko, and drinks such as ouzo, metaxa and a variety of wines including retsina. Greek cuisine differs widely from different parts of the mainland and from island to island. It uses some flavorings more often than other Mediterranean cuisines: oregano, mint, garlic, onion, dill and bay laurel leaves. Other common herbs and spices include basil, thyme and fennel seed. Many Greek recipes, especially in the northern parts of the country, use "sweet" spices in combination with meat, for example cinnamon and cloves in stews. Koutoukia are an underground restaurant common in Greece. Cinema. Cinema first appeared in Greece in 1896, but the first actual cine-theatre was opened in 1907 in Athens. In 1914, the "Asty Films Company" was founded and the production of long films began. "Golfo" (Γκόλφω), a well known traditional love story, is considered the first Greek feature film, although there were several minor productions such as newscasts before this. In 1931, Orestis Laskos directed "Daphnis and Chloe" ("Δάφνις και Χλόη"), containing one of the first nude scene in the history of European cinema; it was also the first Greek movie which was played abroad. In 1944, Katina Paxinou was honoured with the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for "For Whom the Bell Tolls". The 1950s and early 1960s are considered by many to be a "golden age" of Greek cinema. Directors and actors of this era were recognised as important figures in Greece and some gained international acclaim: George Tzavellas, Irene Papas, Melina Mercouri, Michael Cacoyannis, Alekos Sakellarios, Nikos Tsiforos, Iakovos Kambanelis, Katina Paxinou, Nikos Koundouros, Ellie Lambeti and others. More than sixty films per year were made, with the majority having film noir elements. Some notable films include "The Drunkard" (1950, directed by George Tzavellas), "The Counterfeit Coin" (1955, by Giorgos Tzavellas), "Πικρό Ψωμί" (1951, by Grigoris Grigoriou), "O Drakos" (1956, by Nikos Koundouros), "Stella" (1955, directed by Cacoyannis and written by Kampanellis), "Woe to the Young" (1961, by Alekos Sakellarios), "Glory Sky" (1962, by Takis Kanellopoulos) and "The Red Lanterns" (1963, by Vasilis Georgiadis) Cacoyannis also directed "Zorba the Greek" with Anthony Quinn which received Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film nominations. Finos Film also contributed in this period with movies such as "Λατέρνα, Φτώχεια και Φιλότιμο", "Madalena", "I theia ap' to Chicago", "Το ξύλο βγήκε από τον Παράδεισο" and many more. During the 1970s and 1980s, Theo Angelopoulos directed a series of notable and appreciated movies. His film "Eternity and a Day" won the and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. There are also internationally renowned filmmakers in the Greek diaspora, such as the Greek-French Costa-Gavras and the Greek-Americans Elia Kazan, John Cassavetes and Alexander Payne. More recently Yorgos Lanthimos (film and stage director, producer, and screenwriter) has received four Academy Award nominations for his work, including Best Foreign Language Film for "Dogtooth" (2009), Best Original Screenplay for "The Lobster" (2015), and Best Picture and Best Director for "The Favourite" (2018). Sports. Greece is the birthplace of the ancient Olympic Games, first recorded in 776 BC in Olympia, and hosted the modern Olympic Games twice, the inaugural 1896 Summer Olympics and the 2004 Summer Olympics. During the parade of nations, Greece is always called first, as the founding nation of the ancient precursor of modern Olympics. The nation has competed at every Summer Olympic Games, one of only four countries to have done so. Having won a total of 110 medals (30 gold, 42 silver and 38 bronze), Greece is ranked 32nd by gold medals in the all-time Summer Olympic medal count. Their best ever performance was in the 1896 Summer Olympics, when Greece finished second in the medal table with 10 gold medals. The Greece national football team, ranking 12th in the world in 2014 (and having reached a high of 8th in the world in 2008 and 2011), were crowned European Champions in Euro 2004 in one of the biggest upsets in the history of the sport. The Greek Super League is the highest professional football league in the country, comprising fourteen teams. The most successful are Olympiacos, Panathinaikos, and AEK Athens. The Greek national basketball team has a decades-long tradition of excellence in the sport, being considered among the world's top basketball powers. , it ranked 4th in the world and 2nd in Europe. They have won the European Championship twice in 1987 and 2005, and have reached the final four in two of the last four FIBA World Championships, taking the second place in the world in 2006 FIBA World Championship, after a 101–95 win against Team US in the tournament's semi-final. The domestic top basketball league, A1 Ethniki, is composed of fourteen teams. The most successful Greek teams are Panathinaikos, Olympiacos, Aris Thessaloniki, AEK Athens and P.A.O.K. Greek basketball teams are the most successful in European basketball the last 25 years, having won 9 Euroleagues since the establishment of the modern era Euroleague Final Four format in 1988, while no other nation has won more than 4 Euroleague championships in this period. Besides the 9 Euroleagues, Greek basketball teams (Panathinaikos, Olympiacos, Aris Thessaloniki, AEK Athens, P.A.O.K, Maroussi) have won 3 Triple Crowns, 5 Saporta Cups, 2 Korać Cups and 1 FIBA Europe Champions Cup. After the 2005 European Championship triumph of the Greek national basketball team, Greece became the reigning European Champion in both football and basketball. The Greece women's national water polo team have emerged as one of the leading powers in the world, becoming World Champions after their gold medal win against the hosts China at the 2011 World Championship. They also won the silver medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics, the gold medal at the 2005 World League and the silver medals at the 2010 and 2012 European Championships. The Greece men's national water polo team became the third best water polo team in the world in 2005, after their win against Croatia in the bronze medal game at the 2005 World Aquatics Championships in Canada. The domestic top water polo leagues, Greek Men's Water Polo League and Greek Women's Water Polo League are considered amongst the top national leagues in European water polo, as its clubs have made significant success in European competitions. In men's European competitions, Olympiacos has won the Champions League, the European Super Cup and the Triple Crown in 2002 becoming the first club in water polo history to win every title in which it has competed within a single year (National championship, National cup, Champions League and European Super Cup), while NC Vouliagmeni has won the LEN Cup Winners' Cup in 1997. In women's European competitions, Greek water polo teams (NC Vouliagmeni, Glyfada NSC, Olympiacos, Ethnikos Piraeus) are amongst the most successful in European water polο, having won 4 LEN Champions Cups, 3 LEN Trophies and 2 European Supercups. The Greek men's national volleyball team has won two bronze medals, one in the European Volleyball Championship and another one in the Men's European Volleyball League, a 5th place in the Olympic Games and a 6th place in the FIVB Volleyball Men's World Championship. The Greek league, the A1 Ethniki, is considered one of the top volleyball leagues in Europe and the Greek clubs have had significant success in European competitions. Olympiacos is the most successful volleyball club in the country having won the most domestic titles and being the only Greek club to have won European titles; they have won two CEV Cups, they have been CEV Champions League runners-up twice and they have played in 12 Final Fours in the European competitions, making them one of the most traditional volleyball clubs in Europe. Iraklis have also seen significant success in European competitions, having been three times runners-up of the CEV Champions League. In handball, AC Diomidis Argous is the only Greek club to have won a European Cup. Apart from these, cricket is relatively popular in Corfu. Mythology. The numerous gods of the ancient Greek religion as well as the mythical heroes and events of the ancient Greek epics ("The Odyssey" and "The Iliad") and other pieces of art and literature from the time make up what is nowadays colloquially referred to as Greek mythology. Apart from serving a religious function, the mythology of the ancient Greek world also served a cosmological role as it was meant to try to explain how the world was formed and operated. The principal gods of the ancient Greek religion were the Dodekatheon, or the "Twelve Gods", who lived on the top of Mount Olympus. The most important of all ancient Greek gods was Zeus, the king of the gods, who was married to his sister, Hera. The other Greek gods that made up the Twelve Olympians were Ares, Poseidon, Athena, Demeter, Dionysus, Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, and Hermes. Despite her humble status within the hierarchy of the Olympians, Hestia, the goddess of the hearth and sacred flame, was likely the most prayed to of all gods. It is believed that essentially all home offering ceremonies and most public festival offerings began and ended with an invocation and offering to Hestia. Apart from these 13 gods, the Greek pantheon was filled with dozens of other gods, demigods, and mortal and immortal beings which varied by local and over the evolution of Greek culture. A variety of other mystical beliefs and nature spirits such as nymphs and other magical creatures were foundational to the ancient Greek understanding of the world around them. Public holidays and festivals. According to Greek law, every Sunday of the year is a public holiday. Since the late '70s, Saturday also is a non-school and not working day. In addition, there are four mandatory official public holidays: 25 March ("Greek Independence Day"), Easter Monday, 15 August ("Assumption or Dormition of the Holy Virgin"), and 25 December ("Christmas"). 1 May ("Labour Day") and 28 October ("Ohi Day") are regulated by law as being optional but it is customary for employees to be given the day off. There are, however, more public holidays celebrated in Greece than are announced by the Ministry of Labour each year as either obligatory or optional. The list of these non-fixed national holidays rarely changes and has not changed in recent decades, giving a total of eleven national holidays each year. In addition to the national holidays, there are public holidays that are not celebrated nationwide, but only by a specific professional group or a local community. For example, many municipalities have a "Patron Saint" parallel to "Name Days", or a "Liberation Day". On such days it is customary for schools to take the day off. Notable festivals, beyond the religious fests, include Patras Carnival, Athens Festival and various local wine festivals. The city of Thessaloniki is also home of a number of festivals and events. The Thessaloniki International Film Festival is one of the most important film festivals in Southern Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12166

Guernsey

Guernsey (; Guernésiais: "Guernési"; ) is the second largest island in the Channel Islands, located west of the Cotentin Peninsula, Normandy. It forms the major part of the jurisdiction of the same name, which also comprises three other inhabited islands (Herm, Jethou and Lihou) and many small islets and rocks. The jurisdiction has a population of 63,950 and the island has a land area of . Guernsey was part of the Duchy of Normandy until 1204, when the Channel Islands remained loyal to the English crown, splitting from mainland Normandy. In 1290, the Channel Islands were divided administratively and Guernsey became part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey. During the Second World War, Guernsey was invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany. After five years of occupation, the island was liberated on 9 May 1945, which is celebrated annually as Liberation Day. Guernsey is administered as part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, a self-governing dependency of the British Crown. The island is thus not part of the United Kingdom, although the UK government has certain responsibilities for the Bailiwick. The British monarch is the head of state and the head of government is the President of the Policy and Resources Committee. The jurisdiction's parliament and government is the States of Guernsey. The island is divided into ten parishes. Guernsey's largest industry is financial services, followed by tourism and agriculture. The island is particularly well-known for its cattle. Guernsey's culture is strongly influenced by Britain, evident in its use of the Pound sterling and the status of English as the primary native language. Norman and French culture also have an impact, such as the island's traditional language, Guernésiais. In addition, French writer Victor Hugo spent fifteen years in exile in Guernsey, where he wrote some of his best-known works. Toponymy. The island's name, "Guernsey", like that of neighbouring "Jersey", is of Old Norse origin. The second element of each word, "-ey", is the Old Norse for "island", while the original root, "guern(s)", is of uncertain origin and meaning, possibly deriving from either a personal name such as Grani or Warinn, or from "gron", meaning pine tree. Previous names for the Channel Islands vary over history, but include the "Lenur" islands, and "Sarnia"; Sarnia for Guernsey, or "Lisia" (Guernsey) and "Angia" (Jersey). History. Early history. Around 6000 BC, rising seas created the English Channel and separated the Norman promontories that became the bailiwicks of Guernsey and Jersey from continental Europe. Neolithic farmers then settled on its coast and built the dolmens and menhirs found in the islands today, providing evidence of human presence dating back to around 5000 BC. Evidence of Roman settlements on the island, and the discovery of amphorae from the Herculaneum area and Spain, show evidence of an intricate trading network with regional and long-distance trade. Buildings found in La Plaiderie, St. Peter Port dating from 100 to 400 AD appear to be warehouses. The earliest evidence of shipping was the discovery of a wreck of a ship in St Peter Port harbour, which has been named "Asterix". It is thought to be a 3rd-century Roman cargo vessel and was probably at anchor or grounded when a fire broke out. Travelling from the Kingdom of Gwent, Saint Sampson, later the abbot of Dol in Brittany, is credited with the introduction of Christianity to Guernsey. Middle Ages. In 933, the Cotentin Peninsula, including Avranchin, which included the islands, were placed by the French King Ranulf under the control of William I. The island of Guernsey and the other Channel Islands represent the last remnants of the medieval Duchy of Normandy. About the year 1030, the fleet of Robert, Duke of Normandy, which was to support the claim of his cousins Alfred and Edward to the English crown against Canute, was scattered by a storm, and was driven down the Channel to Guernsey. The Duke was taken to St. Michael's Abbey. In gratitude for the abbot's hospitality, he gave all the lands within the Close of the Vale to the abbot forever as fief of St. Michael, with permission to extend this to the northwestern part of the island as soon as settlers could be found to clear and cultivate the land; and he gave them engineers and workmen to complete the castle of St. Michael and to erect such other forts as were deemed necessary. Around the middle of the eleventh century, Guernsey was beset by a new breed of pirates who built a castle called Le Château des Sarrasins in the centre of the island near the present church of Catel; Duke William of Normandy (later the Conqueror) commissioned his Esquire Sampson d'Anneville to fight them. As a reward, in 1061 he received half of the western part of the island under the title of Fief d'Anneville . Sampson attracted a number of emigrants from Normandy to settle on his feudal estate, and Duke William distributed lands in Guernsey to other Norman landowners, such as the estates of Sausmarez, Les Bruniaux de St. Martin, Mauxmarquis, Rohais, etc. Most of Guernsey was soon cultivated, and around this time the island was divided into ten parishes. Each free fief had a manorial court to hear disputes between tenants, and the Abbot of St. Michael and the Seigneur d'Anneville had the right of high jurisdiction and the privilege of trying and executing criminals, respectively, so that the civil order of the island was fully regulated even before the Norman conquest of England. In 1204, when King John lost the continental portion of the Duchy to Philip II of France, the islands remained part of the kingdom of England. The islands were then recognised by the 1259 Treaty of Paris as part of Henry III's territories. During the Middle Ages, the island was a haven for pirates that would use the "lamping technique" to ground ships close to the island. This intensified during the Hundred Years War, when, starting in 1339, the island was occupied by the Capetians on several occasions. The Guernsey Militia was first mentioned as operational in 1331 and would help defend the island for a further 600 years. In 1372, the island was invaded by Aragonese mercenaries under the command of Owain Lawgoch (remembered as "Yvon de Galles"), who was in the pay of the French king. Owain and his dark-haired mercenaries were later absorbed into Guernsey legend as invading fairies from across the sea. Early modern period. As part of the peace between England and France, Pope Sixtus IV issued in 1483 a papal bull granting the "Privilege of Neutrality'", by which "the Islands, their harbours and seas, as far as the eye can see," were considered neutral territory. Anyone molesting Islanders would be excommunicated. A royal charter in 1548 confirmed the neutrality. The French attempted to invade Jersey a year later in 1549 but were defeated by the militia. The neutrality lasted another century, until William III of England abolished the privilege due to privateering activity against Dutch ships. In the mid-16th century, the island was influenced by Calvinist reformers from Normandy. During the Marian persecutions, three women, the Guernsey Martyrs, were burned at the stake for their Protestant beliefs, along with the infant son of one of the women. The burning of the infant was ordered by Bailiff Hellier Gosselin, with the advice of priests nearby who said the boy should burn due to having inherited moral stain from his mother. Later on, Hellier Gosselin fled the island to escape widespread outrage. During the English Civil War, Guernsey sided with the Parliamentarians. The allegiance was not total, however; there were a few Royalist uprisings in the southwest of the island, while Castle Cornet was occupied by the Governor, Sir Peter Osborne, and Royalist troops. In December 1651, with full honours of war, Castle Cornet surrendered—the last Royalist outpost anywhere in the British Isles to surrender. Wars against France and Spain during the 17th and 18th centuries gave Guernsey shipowners and sea captains the opportunity to exploit the island's proximity to mainland Europe by applying for letters of marque and turning their merchantmen into privateers. By the beginning of the 18th century, Guernsey's residents were starting to settle in North America, in particular founding Guernsey County in Ohio in 1810. The threat of invasion by Napoleon prompted many defensive structures to be built at the end of that century. The early 19th century saw a dramatic increase in the prosperity of the island, due to its success in the global maritime trade, and the rise of the stone industry. Maritime trade suffered a major decline with the move away from sailing craft as materials such as iron and steel were not available on the island. Le Braye du Valle was a tidal channel that made the northern extremity of Guernsey, Le Clos du Valle, a tidal island. Le Braye du Valle was drained and reclaimed in 1806 by the British Government as a defence measure. The eastern end of the former channel became the town and harbour (from 1820) of St Sampson's, now the second biggest port in Guernsey. The western end of La Braye is now Le Grand Havre. The roadway called "The Bridge" across the end of the harbour at St Sampson's recalls the bridge that formerly linked the two parts of Guernsey at high tide. New roads were built and main roads metalled for ease of use by the military. Infrastructure was funded by creating money debt-free starting in 1815. Contemporary period. During the First World War, about 3,000 island men served in the British Expeditionary Force. Of these, about 1,000 served in the Royal Guernsey Light Infantry regiment formed from the Royal Guernsey Militia in 1916. From 30 June 1940, during the Second World War, the Channel Islands were occupied by German troops. Seventeen thousand people from Guernsey's total population of 41,000 were evacuated to England prior to the German occupation. The evacuees included 80 per cent of Guernsey children who lived with relatives or strangers in Great Britain during the war. Most children returned home after the war ended in 1945. The occupying German forces deported over 1,000 Guernsey residents to camps in southern Germany, notably to the "Lager Lindele" (Lindele Camp) near Biberach an der Riß and to Oflag VII-C in Laufen. Guernsey was very heavily fortified during World War II, out of all proportion to the island's strategic value. German defences and alterations remain visible, particularly to Castle Cornet and around the northern coast of the island. Guernsey and Jersey were both liberated on 9 May 1945, now celebrated as Liberation Day on the two islands. During the late 1940s the island repaired the damage caused to its buildings during the occupation. The tomato industry started up again and thrived until the 1970s when the significant increase in world oil prices led to a sharp, terminal decline. Tourism has remained important. Finance businesses grew in the 1970s and expanded in the next two decades and are important employers. Guernsey's constitutional and trading relationships with the UK is largely unaffected by Brexit. Geography. Situated in Mont Saint-Michel Bay at around , Guernsey, Herm and some other smaller islands together have a total area of and coastlines of about . Elevation varies from sea level to at Hautnez on Guernsey. There are many smaller islands, islets, rocks and reefs in Guernsey waters. Combined with a tidal range of and fast currents of up to 12 knots, this makes sailing in local waters dangerous. The very large tidal variation provides an environmentally rich inter-tidal zone around the islands, and some sites have received Ramsar Convention designation. The tidal flows in the area are remarkable, owing to the flatness of the ground for nearly 32 km (20 mi) westward. Guernsey is the westernmost of the Channel Islands, and the jurisdiction is at the greatest distance from the coast of Normandy than any of the other islands. Climate. Guernsey's climate is temperate with mild winters and mild, sunny summers. It is classified as an oceanic climate, with a dry-summer trend, although marginally wetter than Mediterranean summers. The warmest months are July and August, when temperatures are generally around with some days occasionally going above . On average, the coldest month is February with an average air temperature of . Average air temperature reaches in August. Snow rarely falls and is unlikely to settle, but is most likely to fall in February. The temperature rarely drops below freezing, although strong wind-chill from Arctic winds can sometimes make it feel like it. The rainiest months are December (average ), November (average ) and January (average ). July is, on average, the sunniest month with 253 hours recorded sunshine; December the least with 58 hours recorded sunshine. Carbon. Guernsey plans to reach carbon neutrality by 2050, according to the Climate Change Policy & Action Plan adopted in August 2020. Geology. Guernsey has a geological history stretching further back into the past than most of Europe. It forms part of the geological province of France known as the Armorican Massif. There is a broad geological division between the north and south of the island. The Southern Metamorphic Complex is elevated above the geologically younger, lower-lying Northern Igneous Complex. Guernsey has experienced a complex geological evolution (especially the rocks of the southern complex) with multiple phases of intrusion and deformation recognisable. Guernsey is composed of nine main rock types; two of these are granites and the rest gneiss. Politics. Guernsey is a parliamentary representative democracy and a British Crown Dependency. The Lieutenant Governor of Guernsey is the "representative of the Crown in right of the "république" of the Bailiwick of Guernsey". The official residence of the Lieutenant Governor is Government House. Since 2022 the incumbent has been Lieutenant General Richard Cripwell . The post was created in 1835 as a result of the abolition of the office of Governor. Since that point, the Lieutenant Governor has always resided locally. The jurisdiction is not part of the United Kingdom, although defence and most foreign relations are handled by the British Government. The entire jurisdiction lies within the Common Travel Area of the British Islands and the Republic of Ireland. Taken together with the separate jurisdictions of Alderney and Sark it forms the Bailiwick of Guernsey. States of Guernsey. The deliberative assembly of the States of Guernsey () is called the States of Deliberation () and consists of 38 People's Deputies, elected on an islandwide basis every four years. There are also two representatives from Alderney, a semi-autonomous dependency of the Bailiwick, but Sark sends no representative since it has its own legislature. The Bailiff or Deputy Bailiff preside in the assembly. There are also two non-voting members: H.M. Procureur (analogous to the role of Attorney General) and H.M. Comptroller (analogous to Solicitor General), both appointed by the Crown and collectively known as the Law Officers of the Crown. A "projet de loi" is the equivalent of a UK bill or a French "projet de loi", and a law is the equivalent of a UK act of parliament or a French "loi". A draft law passed by the States can have no legal effect until formally approved by His Majesty in Council and promulgated by means of an order in council. Laws are given the Royal Sanction at regular meetings of the Privy Council in London, after which they are returned to the islands for formal registration at the Royal Court. The States also make delegated legislation known as Ordinances ("Ordonnances") and Orders ("ordres") which do not require the Royal Assent. Commencement orders are usually in the form of ordinances. The Policy and Resources Committee is responsible for Guernsey's constitutional and external affairs, developing strategic and corporate policy and coordinating States business. It also examines proposals and Reports placed before Guernsey's Parliament (the States of Deliberation) by Departments and Non States Bodies. The President of the committee is the de facto head of government of Guernsey. Legal system. Guernsey's legal system originates in Norman Customary Law, overlaid with principles taken from English common law and Equity as well as from statute law enacted by the competent legislature(s) – usually, but not always, the States of Guernsey. Guernsey has almost complete autonomy over internal affairs and certain external matters. However, the Crown – that is to say, the UK Government – retains an ill-defined reserved power to intervene in the domestic affairs of any of the three Crown Dependencies within the British Islands "in the interests of good government". The UK Parliament is also a source of Guernsey law for those matters which are reserved to the UK, namely defence and foreign affairs. The head of the bailiwick judiciary in Guernsey is the Bailiff, who, as well as performing the judicial functions of a Chief Justice, is also the head of the States of Guernsey and has certain civic, ceremonial and executive functions. The Bailiff's functions may be exercised by the Deputy Bailiff. The posts of Bailiff and Deputy Bailiff are Crown appointments. Sixteen Jurats, who need no specific legal training, are elected by the States of Election from among Islanders. They act as a jury, as judges in civil and criminal cases and fix the sentence in criminal cases. First mentioned in 1179, there is a list of Jurats who have served since 1299. The oldest Courts of Guernsey can be traced back to the 9th century. The principal court is the Royal Court and exercises both civil and criminal jurisdiction. Additional courts, such as the Magistrate's Court, which deals with minor criminal matters, and the Court of Appeal, which hears appeals from the Royal Court, have been added to the Island's legal system over the years. External relations. Several European countries have a consular presence within the jurisdiction. The French Consulate is based at Victor Hugo's former residence at Hauteville House. While the jurisdiction of Guernsey has complete autonomy over internal affairs and certain external matters, the topic of complete independence from the British Crown has been discussed widely and frequently, with ideas ranging from Guernsey obtaining independence as a Dominion to the bailiwicks of Guernsey and Jersey uniting and forming an independent Federal State within the Commonwealth, whereby both islands retain their independence with regards to domestic affairs but internationally, the islands would be regarded as one state. Although it was not a member of the European Union, it had a special relationship with it until Brexit. It had been treated as part of the European Community with access to the single market for the purposes of the free trade in goods. From 2021 with free travel to the continent ceasing, additional bureaucratic procedures come into force, including the need for international driving licences and green cards for vehicle insurance. Parishes. Guernsey has ten parishes, which act as civil administration districts with limited powers. Each parish is administered by a Douzaine, made up of twelve members or more, known as Douzeniers. Douzeniers are elected for a four-year mandate, three, four or five Douzeniers being elected by parishioners at a parish meeting each year. The senior Douzenier is known as the Doyen (Dean). Two elected Constables () carry out the decisions of the Douzaine, serving for between one and three years. The longer serving Constable is known as the Senior Constable and his or her colleague as the Junior Constable. The Douzaines levy an Occupiers Rate on properties to provide funding for running of the administration. Guernsey's Church of England parishes fall under the See of Canterbury, having split from the Bishopric of Winchester in 2014. The biggest parish is Castel, while the most populated is St Peter Port. Economy. Financial services, such as banking, fund management, and insurance, account for about 37% of GDP. Tourism, manufacturing, and horticulture, mainly tomatoes and cut flowers, especially freesias, have been declining. Light tax and death duties make Guernsey a popular offshore finance centre for private-equity funds. Guernsey does not have a Central Bank and it issues its own sterling coinage and banknotes. UK coinage and (English, Scottish and Northern Irish-faced) banknotes also circulate freely and interchangeably. Total island investment funds, used to fund pensions and future island costs, amount to £2.7billion as at June 2016. The island issued a 30-year bond in December 2015 for £330m, its first bond in 80 years. The island has been given a credit rating of AA-/A-1+ with a stable outlook from Standard & Poor's. Guernsey has the official ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code GG and the official ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 code GGY; market data vendors, such as Reuters, will report products related to Guernsey using the alpha-3 code. In March 2016 there were over 32,291 people employed in Guernsey with 4,864 being self-employed and 2,453 employing businesses. 19.6% worked in the finance industry and median earnings were £31,215. Infrastructure. Public services, such as water, wastewater, the two main harbours and the airport are still owned and controlled by the States of Guernsey. Electricity, and postal services have been commercialised and are now operated by companies Guernsey Electricity and Guernsey Post which are wholly owned by the States of Guernsey. Gas is supplied by an independent private company. In 1998, Guernsey and Jersey jointly formed the Channel Islands Electricity Grid to operate and manage the submarine cables between Europe and the Channel Islands. The installation of these cables was originally to provide the island with a secure form of backup power but now are effectively the primary source of power with the local diesel generators providing back-up. Guernsey Telecoms, which provided telecommunications, was sold by the States to Cable & Wireless plc, rebranded as Sure and was sold to Batel co in April 2013. Newtel was the first alternative telecommunications company on the island and was acquired by Wave Telecom in 2010 and subsequently rebranded as Jersey Telecom. Airtel-Vodafone also provide a mobile network. Both the Guernsey Post postal boxes (since 1969) and the telephone boxes (since 2002) are painted blue, but otherwise are identical to their British counterparts, the red pillar box and red telephone box. In 2009 the telephone boxes at the bus station were painted yellow just like they used to be when Guernsey Telecoms was state-owned. The oldest pillar box still in use in the British Isles can be found in Union Street, St Peter Port, and dates back to 1853. Transport. The primary mode of transport on the island is the motor vehicle. Guernsey has an extensive network of lanes, some of which are distinguished as green lanes under the name 'Ruette Tranquille', translated to 'quiet street'. Pedestrians, cyclists, and horse riders have priority with the speed limit on these lanes at 15 mph. Ports and harbours exist at St Peter Port and St Sampson. There is a single paved airport, Guernsey Airport. The States of Guernsey wholly own their own airline, Aurigny. The decision to purchase the airline was made to protect important air links to and from the island and the sale was completed on 15 May 2003. Guernsey has a public bus service, operated by CT Plus under the name 'buses.gg', owned by Kelsian Group on behalf of the States of Guernsey Environment and Infrastructure Department. There is also a taxi network and an electronic bike scheme (EVie), which also operates in Jersey. Business. , the finance industry forms the largest economic sector in Guernsey, generating around 40% of Guernsey's GDP and directly employing around 21% of its workforce. Banks began setting up operations in the island from the early 1960s onwards in order to avoid high onshore taxes and restrictive regulation. The industry regulator is the Guernsey Financial Services Commission, which was established in 1987. In 2015, the Bailiwick of Guernsey (in conjunction with Jersey) established the Channel Islands Financial Ombudsman (CIFO) to resolve consumer complaints about financial services provided in or from the Channel Islands of Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney and Sark. Prior to the growth of the finance industry, the island's main industries were quarrying and horticulture. The latter particularly declined as a result of the oil-price shocks of the 1970s and the introduction of cheap North Sea gas that benefited Dutch growers. Guernsey is home to Specsavers Optical Group, and Healthspan also has its headquarters in Guernsey. Tourism. Guernsey has been a tourist destination since at least the Victorian days, with the first tourist guide published in 1834. In the 19th century, two rail companies (London and South Western Railway and Great Western Railway) ran competing boats from the UK to St Peter Port, with a race to the only convenient berth. This was halted with the sinking of the SS "Stella" in 1899. Guernsey enters Britain in Bloom with St Martin Parish winning the small town category twice in 2006 and 2011, Saint Peter Port winning the large coastal category in 2014 and St Peter's winning the small coastal prize in 2015. Herm has won Britain in Bloom categories several times: in 2002, 2008, and 2012, Herm won the Britain in Bloom Gold Award. The military history of the island has left a number of fortifications, including Castle Cornet, Fort Grey, Guernsey loophole towers and a large collection of German fortifications with a number of museums. The use of the roadstead in front of St Peter Port by over 100 cruise ships a year is bringing over 100,000 day-trip passengers to the island each year. Taxation. Guernsey, Alderney and Sark each raise their own taxation, although in 1949 Alderney (but not Sark) transferred its fiscal rights to Guernsey. Personal tax liability differs according to whether an individual is resident in the island or not. Individuals resident in the Jurisdiction of Guernsey (which does not include Sark) pay income tax at the rate of 20% on their worldwide income, whereas non-residents are only liable on income arising from activity or ownership within Guernsey. The income tax year in Guernsey aligns to the calendar year. All Guernsey-resident individuals are subject to an upper limit on their tax liability, which is known as the "tax cap". Individuals may elect either of the following; Tax on non-Guernsey-source income originally restricted to £110,000, plus tax on Guernsey-source income (excluding Guernsey bank interest), or Taxed on worldwide income originally restricted to £220,000, including Guernsey-source income. Income derived from Guernsey land and property is excluded from the tax cap, as from 1 January 2015, and is subject to tax at the normal rate of 20%. Only one cap applies per married couple. As from 1 Jan 2019, these tax caps have increased to £130,000 and £260,000 respectively. Guernsey has also introduced a new lower £50k tax cap for new residents for three years, subject to buying an Open Market Part A house with a document duty in excess of that amount, and not having lived in Guernsey or Alderney for three years prior. Since 2008, Guernsey has operated three levels of corporation tax, depending on the source of the income. Guernsey levies no capital gains, inheritance, capital transfer, value added (VAT / TVA) or general withholding taxes. Guernsey has thus been described a tax haven. In the 2011 Budget, the UK announced that it would be ending Low Value Consignment Relief that was being used to sell goods VAT free to customers across the UK, with this legislation coming into force on 1 April 2012. Tax revenues represent 22.4% of GDP. Social Insurance Scheme payments are based on gross earnings and apply to all persons over school leaving age. Employees are subject to a rate of 6.8%, whilst the self-employed pay 11.3%. Both have upper and lower earnings limits. Those classed as non-employed and under pension age pay a rate of 10.7%. Other categories have different rates. Society. Demographics. The population is 63,026 (July 2016 est.) The median age for males is 40 years and for females is 42 years. The population growth rate is 0.775% with 9.62 births/1,000 population, 8 deaths/1,000 population, and annual net migration of 6.07/1,000 population. The life expectancy is 80.1 years for males and 84.5 years for females. The Bailiwick ranked 10th in the world in 2015 with an average life expectancy of 82.47 years. Border control. The whole jurisdiction of Guernsey is part of the Common Travel Area. For immigration and nationality purposes it is UK law, and not Guernsey law, which applies (technically the Immigration Act 1971, extended to Guernsey by Order in Council). Guernsey may not apply different immigration controls from the UK. After the United Kingdom left the European Union, from 1 January 2021 all EU nationals, other than British or Irish nationals, travelling for anything other than visitor purposes, are required to apply for a visa to enter the UK, Bailiwick of Guernsey, Jersey or the Isle of Man, prior to travel. People coming for employment to Guernsey require a Visa and a Population Management document. Housing restrictions. Guernsey undertakes a population management mechanism using restrictions over who may work in the island through control of which properties people may live in. The housing market is split between "local market" properties and a set number of "open market" properties. Anyone may live in an open market property, but local market properties can only be lived in by those who qualify – either through being born in Guernsey (to at least one local parent), by obtaining a housing licence, or by virtue of sharing a property with someone who does qualify (living "en famille"). Consequently, "open market'" properties are much more expensive both to buy and to rent. Housing licences are for fixed periods, often only valid for 4 years and only as long as the individual remains employed by a specified Guernsey employer. The licence will specify the type of accommodation and be specific to the address the person lives in, and is often subject to a police record check. These restrictions apply equally regardless of whether the property is owned or rented, and only apply to occupation of the property. Thus, a person whose housing licence expires may continue to own a Guernsey property, but will no longer be able to live in it. There are no restrictions on who may own a property. There are a number of routes to qualifying as a "local" for housing purposes. Generally, it is sufficient to be born to at least one Guernsey parent and to live in the island for ten years in a twenty-year period. In a similar way a partner (married or otherwise) of a local can acquire local status. Multiple problems arise following early separation of couples, especially if they have young children or if a local partner dies; in these situations, personal circumstances and compassion can add weight to requests for local status. Once "local" status has been achieved it remains in place for life. Even a lengthy period of residence outside Guernsey does not invalidate "local" housing status. Although Guernsey's inhabitants are full British citizens, prior to the UK's withdrawal from the EU, an endorsement restricted the right of establishment in other European Union states was placed in the passport of British citizens connected solely with the Channel Islands and Isle of Man. If it was classified with "Islander Status", the British passport was endorsed as follows: 'The holder is not entitled to benefit from EU provisions relating to employment or establishment'. Those who had a parent or grandparent born in the United Kingdom itself (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), or had lived in the United Kingdom for 5 years, were not subject to this restriction. Education. Teaching in Guernsey is based on the English National Curriculum. There are 10 primary schools, plus two junior schools and three infant schools. , the island no longer has the 11-plus exam, which was used to transfer pupils to one of four 11–16 secondary schools, or a co-educational grammar school. There are also three fee-paying colleges with lower schools, for which pupils over 11 receive grant support from the States of Guernsey. In 2016, the States of Guernsey voted to end the use of the 11-plus exams from 2019 onwards. It is also responsible for education on the neighbouring islands. In 2008, the school-leaving age was raised so the earliest date is the last Friday in June in the year a pupil turns 16, in line with England, Wales and Northern Ireland. This means pupils will be between 15 and 10 months and 16 and 10 months before being able to leave. Prior to this, pupils could leave school at the end of the term in which they turned 14, if they so wished: a letter was required to be sent to the Education department to confirm this. However, this option was undertaken by relatively few pupils, the majority choosing to complete their GCSEs and then either begin employment or continue their education. Post-GCSE pupils have a choice of transferring to the state-run Grammar School & Sixth Form Centre, or to the independent colleges for academic AS/A Levels/International Baccalureate Diploma Programme. They also have the option to study vocational subjects at the island's "Guernsey College of Further Education". There are no universities in the island. Students who attend university in the United Kingdom receive state support towards both maintenance and tuition fees. In 2007, the Education Department received the approval of the States Assembly to introduce student contributions to the costs of higher education, in the form of student loans, as apply in the UK. However, immediately after the general election of 2008, the States Assembly voted in favour of a Requête which proposed abolishing the student loans scheme on the grounds that it was expensive to run and would potentially discourage students from going to, and then returning to the island from, university. In 2012, the Education Department reported to the States Assembly that it had no need to re-examine the basis of higher education funding at the present time. Culture. The French impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir visited the island in late summer 1883. While on the island, he painted fifteen pictures of the views on the island, all featuring the bay and beach of Moulin Huet on the south coast. Guernsey cattle are an internationally famous icon of the island. As well as being prized for its rich creamy milk, which is claimed to hold health benefits over milk from other breeds, Guernsey cattle are increasingly being raised for their distinctively flavoured and rich yellowy-fatted beef, with butter made from the milk of Guernsey cows also has a distinctive yellow colour. Since the 1960s the number of individual islanders raising these cattle for private supply has diminished significantly, but Guernsey steers can still be occasionally seen grazing on L'Ancresse common. Guernsey also hosts a breed of goat known as the Golden Guernsey, distinguished by its golden-coloured coat. At the end of the Second World War, the Golden Guernsey had almost been rendered extinct due to interbreeding on the island. The survival of this breed is largely credited to the work of a single woman, Miriam Milbourne, who successfully hid her herd from the Germans during the occupation. Although no longer considered to be critically endangered, the breed remains on the watchlist of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust. The traditional explanation for the donkey ("âne" in French and Guernésiais) is the steepness of St Peter Port streets that necessitated beasts of burden for transport (in contrast to the flat terrain of the rival capital of Saint Helier in Jersey), although it is also used in reference to Guernsey inhabitants' stubbornness. In turn, Guernseymen traditionally refer to Jerseymen as "crapauds" ("toads"). The so-called Guernsey lily, "Nerine sarniensis", is also used as a symbol of the island, although this species was introduced to the island from South Africa. Local food. A local delicacy is the ormer ("Haliotis tuberculata"), a variety of abalone harvested under strict laws from beaches at low spring tides. Traditional Guernsey recipes include a stew called Guernsey bean jar, notably served at the annual Viaer Marchi festival. Its chief ingredients include haricot and butter beans, pork, and shin beef. Guernsey gâche (pronounced "gosh") is a special bread made with raisins, sultanas and mixed peel. "Gâche mélée" is a dessert consisting of spiced, chopped apples suspended in a sponge mix. Languages. English is the language in general use by the majority of the population, while Guernésiais, the Norman language of the island, is spoken fluently by only about 2% of the population (according to 2001 census). However, 14% of the population claim some understanding of the language. Until the early 20th century, French was the only official language of the Bailiwick, and all deeds for the sale and purchase of real estate in Guernsey were written in French until 1971. Family and place names reflect this linguistic heritage. George Métivier, a poet, wrote in Guernésiais. The loss of the island's language and the Anglicisation of its culture, which began in the 19th century and proceeded inexorably for a century, accelerated sharply when the majority of the island's school children were evacuated to the UK for five years during the German occupation of 1940–45. Literature. Victor Hugo, having arrived on Halloween 1855, wrote some of his best-known works while in exile in Guernsey, including "Les Misérables". His home in St Peter Port, Hauteville House, is now a museum administered by the city of Paris. In 1866, he published a novel set on Guernsey, "Travailleurs de la Mer" ("Toilers of the Sea"), which he dedicated to the island. Guernsey was his home for fifteen years. Mabel Collins (1851–1927), a theosophist and prolific author, was born in St Peter Port. Guernseyman G. B. Edwards wrote a critically acclaimed novel, "The Book of Ebenezer Le Page", that was published in 1981, including insights into Guernsey life during the 20th century. In September 2008, a blue plaque was affixed to the house on the Braye Road where Edwards was raised. Henry Watson Fowler moved to Guernsey in 1903. He and his brother Francis George Fowler composed "The King's English", the Concise Oxford Dictionary and much of "Modern English Usage" on the island. "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society", a novel by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, describes the Occupation of Germans during World War II. Written in 2009, it is about a writer who begins corresponding with residents of the island, and becomes compelled to visit the island. Film. A "Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" film adaptation, starring Lily James and Jessica Brown Findlay, was released in 2018. The 2022 British psychological thriller film "Marooned Awakening", starring Murray McArthur, Tilly Keeper and Tim McInnerny was co-written by and stars Guernseyman, Cameron Ashplant. Ashplant produced the film through Across the Channel Productions Ltd, alongside London-based director Musaab Mustafa, and Guernsey co-producers Frances and Roger Le Tissier of Ivy Gate Films. Principal photography was completed entirely on Guernsey in September 2021. The film premiered on the island at Beau Séjour Theatre on 3 September 2022. Sport. Guernsey participates in the biennial Island Games, which it hosted in 1987 and 2003 at Footes Lane. Guernsey has also participated as a country in its own right in Commonwealth Games since 1970. Its first medals came in 1982 with its first gold in 1990. In those sporting events where Guernsey does not have international representation, but the British Home Nations are competing separately, highly skilled islanders may choose to compete for any of the Home Nations. There are, however, restrictions on subsequent transfers to represent other Home Nations. The football player Matt Le Tissier, for example, could have played for the Scottish or Welsh football teams, but opted to play for England instead. Football in Guernsey is run by the Guernsey Football Association. The top tier of Guernsey football is the FNB Priaulx League where there are eight teams (Alderney, Belgrave Wanderers, Northerners, Sylvans, St Martin's, Rovers, Rangers and Vale Recreation). The second tier is the Jackson League. In the 2011–12 season, Guernsey F.C. was formed and entered the Combined Counties League Division 1, becoming the first Channel Island club ever to compete in the English leagues. Guernsey became division champions comfortably on 24 March 2012, they won the Combined Counties Premier Challenge Cup on 4 May 2012. Their second season saw them promoted again on the final day in front of 1,754 'Green Lions' fans, this time to Division One South of the Isthmian League, despite their fixtures being heavily affected not only by poor winter weather, but by their notable progression to the semi-finals of the FA Vase cup competition. They play in level 8 of the English football pyramid. The Corbet Football Field, donated by Jurat Wilfred Corbet OBE in 1932, has fostered the sport greatly over the years. Recently, the island upgraded to a larger, better-quality stadium, in Footes Lane. Guernsey has the second oldest tennis club in the world, at Kings (founded in 1857), with courts built in 1875. The island has produced a world class tennis player in Heather Watson as well as professional squash players in Martine Le Moignan, Lisa Opie and Chris Simpson. Guernsey was declared an affiliate member by the International Cricket Council (ICC) in 2005 and an associate member in 2008. The Guernsey cricket team plays in the World Cricket League and European Cricket Championship as well as the Sussex Cricket League. Various forms of motorsport take place on the island, including races on the sands on Vazon beach as well as a quarter-mile "sprint" along the Vazon coast road. Le Val des Terres, a steeply winding road rising south from St Peter Port to Fort George, is often the focus of both local and international hill-climb races. The 2005, 2006 and 2007 World Touring Car Champion Andy Priaulx is a Guernseyman. The racecourse on L'Ancresse Common was re-established in 2004 after a gap of 13 years, with the first new race occurring on 2 May 2005. Races are held on most May Day bank holidays, with competitors from Guernsey as well as Jersey, France and the UK participating. Sea angling around Guernsey and the other islands in the Bailiwick from shore or boat is a popular pastime for both locals and visitors with the Bailiwick boasting multiple UK records.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12334

God Save the King

"God Save the King" (alternatively "God Save the Queen" when the UK monarch is female) is the national anthem of the United Kingdom and the royal anthem of each of the British Crown Dependencies, one of two national anthems of New Zealand since 1977, and the royal anthem of most Commonwealth realms. The author of the tune is unknown and it may originate in plainchant, but an attribution to the composer John Bull has sometimes been made. In countries not part of the British Empire, the tune of "God Save the King" has provided the basis for various patriotic songs, though still generally connected with royal ceremony. The melody continues to be used for the national anthem of Liechtenstein, "Oben am jungen Rhein", and the royal anthem of Norway, "Kongesangen". The melody is used for the American patriotic song "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" (also known as "America"). The melody was also used for the national anthem "Heil dir im Siegerkranz" of the German Empire from 1871 to 1918 and as "The Prayer of Russians", the imperial anthem of Russia from 1816 to 1833. In Switzerland, it is known as "Rufst du, mein Vaterland". Beyond its first verse, which is consistent, "God Save the King" has many historic and extant versions. Since its first publication, different verses have been added and taken away and, even today, different publications include various selections of verses in various orders. In general, only one verse is sung. Sometimes two verses are sung and, on certain occasions, three. The entire composition is the musical salute for the monarch and royal consort, while other members of the royal family who are entitled to royal salute (such as the Prince of Wales, along with his spouse) receive just the first six bars. The first six bars also form all or part of the viceregal salute in some Commonwealth realms other than the UK (e.g., in Canada, governors general and lieutenant governors at official events are saluted with the first six bars of "God Save the King" followed by the first four and last four bars of "O Canada"), as well as the salute given to governors of British overseas territories. History. In "The Oxford Companion to Music", Percy Scholes points out the similarities to an early plainsong melody, although the rhythm is very distinctly that of a galliard, and he gives examples of several such dance tunes that bear a striking resemblance to "God Save the King". Scholes quotes a keyboard piece by John Bull (1619) which has some similarities to the modern tune, depending on the placing of accidentals which at that time were unwritten in certain cases and left to the discretion of the player (see "musica ficta"). He also points to several pieces by Henry Purcell, one of which includes the opening notes of the modern tune, setting the words "God Save the King". Nineteenth-century scholars and commentators mention the widespread belief that an old Scots carol, "Remember O Thou Man", was the source of the tune. The first published version that resembles the present song appeared in 1744, with no title but the heading "For two voices", in an anthology originally named "Harmonia Britannia" but changed after only a few copies had been printed to "Thesaurus Musicus". When the Jacobite pretender Charles Edward Stuart led the 1745 rising, the song spread among those loyal to King George II. The tune published in "The Gentleman's Magazine" in 1745 departs from that used today at several points, one as early as the first bar, but is otherwise clearly a strong relative of the contemporary anthem. It was recorded as being sung in London theatres in 1745, with, for example, Thomas Arne writing a setting of the tune for the Drury Lane Theatre. Scholes' analysis includes mention of "untenable" and "doubtful" claims, as well as "an American misattribution". Some of these are: Scholes recommends the attribution "traditional" or "traditional; earliest known version by John Bull (1562–1628)". The "English Hymnal" (musical editor Ralph Vaughan Williams) gives no attribution, stating merely "17th or 18th cent." Use in the United Kingdom. Like many aspects of British constitutional life, "God Save the King" derives its official status from custom and use, not from Royal Proclamation or Act of Parliament. The variation in the UK of the lyrics to "God Save the King" is the oldest amongst those currently used, and forms the basis on which all other versions used throughout the Commonwealth are formed; though, again, the words have varied over time. England has no official national anthem of its own; "God Save the King" is treated as the English national anthem when England is represented at sporting events (though there are some exceptions to this rule, such as cricket where "Jerusalem" is used). There is a movement to establish an English national anthem, with Blake and Parry's "Jerusalem" and Elgar's "Land of Hope and Glory" among the top contenders. Wales has a single official national anthem, "Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau" (Land of my Fathers) while Scotland uses unofficial anthems ("Scotland the Brave" was traditionally used until the 1990s, since then, "Flower of Scotland" is more commonly used), these anthems are used formally at state and national ceremonies as well as international sporting events such as football and rugby union matches. On all occasions in Northern Ireland, "God Save the King" is still used as the official anthem. In 2001, it was claimed that the phrase "No surrender" was occasionally sung in the bridge before "Send her victorious" by England football fans at matches. Since 2003, "God Save the King", considered an all-inclusive anthem for Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as well as other countries within the Commonwealth, has been dropped from the Commonwealth Games. Northern Irish athletes receive their gold medals to the tune of the "Londonderry Air", popularly known as "Danny Boy". In 2006, English winners heard Elgar's ""Pomp and Circumstance March" No. 1", usually known as "Land of Hope and Glory", but after a poll conducted by the Commonwealth Games Council for England prior to the 2010 Games, "Jerusalem" was adopted as England's new Commonwealth Games anthem. In sports in which the UK competes as one nation, most notably as Great Britain at the Olympics, the anthem is used to represent anyone or any team that comes from the United Kingdom. Lyrics in the UK. The phrase "God Save the King" is much older than the song, appearing, for instance, several times in the King James Bible. A text based on the 1st Book of Kings Chapter 1: verses 38–40, "And all the people rejoic'd, and said: God save the King! Long live the King! May the King live for ever, Amen", has been sung and proclaimed at every coronation since that of King Edgar in 973. Scholes says that as early as 1545 "God Save the King" was a watchword of the Royal Navy, with the response being "Long to reign over us". He also notes that the prayer read in churches on anniversaries of the Gunpowder Plot includes words which might have formed part of the basis for the former standard verse "Scatter our enemies...assuage their malice and confound their devices". In 1745, "The Gentleman's Magazine" published "God save our lord the king: A new song set for two voices", describing it "As sung at both Playhouses" (the Theatres Royal at Drury Lane and Covent Garden). Traditionally, the first performance was thought to have been in 1745, when it was sung in support of King George II, after his defeat at the Battle of Prestonpans by the army of Charles Edward Stuart, son of James Francis Edward Stuart, the Jacobite claimant to the British throne. It is sometimes claimed that, ironically, the song was originally sung in support of the Jacobite cause: the word "send" in the line "Send him victorious" could imply that the king was absent. However, the "Oxford English Dictionary" cites examples of "[God] send (a person) safe, victorious, etc." meaning "God grant that he may be safe, etc.". There are also examples of early 18th-century drinking glasses which are inscribed with a version of the words and were apparently intended for drinking the health of King James II and VII. Scholes acknowledges these possibilities but argues that the same words were probably being used by both Jacobite and Hanoverian supporters and directed at their respective kings. In 1902, the musician William Hayman Cummings, quoting mid-18th century correspondence between Charles Burney and Sir Joseph Banks, suggested that the words had been based on a Latin verse composed for King James II at the Chapel Royal. Standard version in the United Kingdom. When the monarch of the time is female, "King" is replaced with "Queen" and all masculine pronouns are replaced with their feminine equivalents. There is no definitive version of the lyrics. However, the version consisting of the two above verses has the best claim to be regarded as the "standard" British version as referenced on the Royal Family website The song with an additional verse appears not only in the 1745 "Gentleman's Magazine", but also in publications such as "The Book of English Songs: From the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century" (1851), "National Hymns: How They Are Written and How They Are Not Written" (1861), "Household Book of Poetry" (1882), and "Hymns Ancient and Modern, Revised Version" (1982). The same version with appears in publications including "Scouting for Boys" (1908), and on the Royal Family website. According to Alan Michie's "The Crown and the People", which was published in 1952, after the death of King George VI but before the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, when the first General Assembly of the United Nations was held in London in January 1946 the King, in honour of the occasion, "ordered the belligerent imperious second stanza of 'God Save the King' to be rewritten to bring it more into the spirit of the brotherhood of nations." In the UK, the first verse is typically sung alone, even on official occasions, although the second verse is sometimes sung in addition on certain occasions such as during the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Olympics, 2012 Summer Paralympics, and the 2022 Commonwealth Games and usually at the Last Night of the Proms. The second verse was also sung during the Coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla. Standard version of the music. The standard version of the melody and its key of G major are still those of the originally published version, although the start of the anthem is often signalled by an introductory timpani roll of two bars length. The bass line of the standard version differs little from the second voice part shown in the original, and there is a standard version in four-part harmony for choirs. The first three lines (six bars of music) are soft, ending with a short "crescendo" into "Send him victorious", and then is another "crescendo" at "over us:" into the final words "God save the King". In the early 20th century there existed a Military Band version in the higher key of B, because it was easier for brass instruments to play in that key, though it had the disadvantage of being more difficult to sing: however now most Bands play it in the correct key of concert G. Since 1953, the anthem is sometimes preceded by a fanfare composed by Gordon Jacob for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Alternative British versions. There have been several attempts to rewrite the words. In the nineteenth century there was some lively debate about the national anthem as verse two was considered by some to be slightly offensive in its use of the phrase "scatter her enemies". Some thought it placed better emphasis on the respective power of Parliament and the Crown to change "her enemies" to "our enemies"; others questioned the theology and proposed "thine enemies" instead. Sydney G. R. Coles wrote a completely new version, as did Canon F. K. Harford. O Lord Our God Arise. An additional verse sung second was previously considered part of the standard lyrics in the UK as follows. This version did appear in some works at literature prior the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, however only the version mentioned in the Standard Version in the United Kingdom was used at her Coronation and ever since on all official occasions where 2 verses were sung. William Hickson's alternative version. In 1836, William Edward Hickson wrote an alternative version, of which the first, third, and fourth verses gained some currency when they were appended to the national anthem in "The English Hymnal" (1906). The fourth Hickson verse was sung after the traditional first verse at Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee National Service of Thanksgiving in 2002, and during the raising of the Union Flag during the 2008 Summer Olympics closing ceremony, in which London took the baton from Beijing to host the 2012 Summer Olympics. This verse is currently used as the final verse by the Church of Scotland. Samuel Reynolds Hole's alternative version. To mark the celebration of the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, a modified version of the second verse was written by the Dean of Rochester, the Very Reverend Samuel Reynolds Hole. A four-part harmony setting was then made by Frederick Bridge, and published by Novello. The "Musical Times" commented: "There are some conservative minds who may regret the banishment of the 'knavish tricks' and aggressive spirit of the discarded verse, but it must be admitted that Dean Hole's lines are more consonant with the sentiment of modern Christianity." Others reactions were more negative, one report describing the setting as "unwarrantable liberties...worthy of the severest reprobation", with "too much of a Peace Society flavour about it...If we go about pleading for peace, other nations will get it into their heads that we are afraid of fighting." Perhaps unsurprisingly, Hole's version failed to replace the existing verse permanently. Official peace version. A less militaristic version of the song, titled "Official peace version, 1919", was first published in the hymn book "Songs of Praise" in 1925. This was "official" in the sense that it was approved by the British Privy Council in 1919. However, despite being reproduced in some other hymn books, it is largely unknown today. Historic Jacobite and anti-Jacobite alternative verses. Around 1745, anti-Jacobite sentiment was captured in a verse appended to the song, with a prayer for the success of Field Marshal George Wade's army then assembling at Newcastle. These words attained some short-term use, although they did not appear in the published version in the October 1745 "Gentleman's Magazine". This verse was first documented as an occasional addition to the original anthem by Richard Clark in 1814, and was also mentioned in a later article on the song, published by the "Gentleman's Magazine" in October 1836. Therein, it is presented as an "additional verse... though being of temporary application only... stored in the memory of an old friend... who was born in the very year 1745, and was thus the associate of those who heard it first sung", the lyrics given being: The 1836 article and other sources make it clear that this verse was quickly abandoned after 1745, and it was certainly not used when the song became accepted as the British national anthem in the 1780s and 1790s. It was included as an integral part of the song in the "Oxford Book of Eighteenth-Century Verse" of 1926, although erroneously referencing the "fourth verse" to the "Gentleman's Magazine" article of 1745. On the opposing side, Jacobite beliefs were demonstrated in an alternative verse used during the same period: In May 1800, following an attempt to assassinate King George III at London's Drury Lane theatre, playwright Richard Sheridan immediately composed an additional verse, which was sung from the stage the same night: Various other attempts were made during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to add verses to commemorate particular royal or national events. For example, according to Fitzroy Maclean, when Jacobite forces bypassed Wade's force and reached Derby, but then retreated and when their garrison at Carlisle Castle surrendered to a second government army led by King George's son, the Duke of Cumberland, another verse was added. Other short-lived verses were notably anti-French, such as the following, quoted in the book "Handel" by Edward J. Dent: However, none of these additional verses survived into the twentieth century. Updated "full" versions including additional verses have been published more recently, including the standard three verses, Hickson's fourth verse, Sheridan's verse and the Marshal Wade verse. Historic republican alternative. A version from 1794 composed by the American republican and French citizen Joel Barlow celebrated the power of the guillotine to liberate: Performance in the UK. The style most commonly heard in official performances was proposed as the "proper interpretation" by King George V, who considered himself something of an expert (in view of the number of times he had heard it). An Army Order was duly issued in 1933, which laid down regulations for tempo, dynamics and orchestration. This included instructions such as that the opening "six bars will be played quietly by the reed band with horns and basses in a single phrase. Cornets and side-drum are to be added at the little scale-passage leading into the second half of the tune, and the full brass enters for the last eight bars". The official tempo for the opening section is a metronome setting of 60, with the second part played in a broader manner, at a metronome setting of 52. In recent years the prescribed sombre-paced introduction is often played at a faster and livelier tempo. Until the latter part of the 20th century, theatre and concert goers were expected to stand while the anthem was played after the conclusion of a show. In cinemas this brought a tendency for audiences to rush out while the end credits played to avoid this formality. (This can be seen in the 1972 "Dad's Army" episode "A Soldier's Farewell".) The anthem continues to be played at some traditional events such as Wimbledon, Royal Variety Performance, the Edinburgh Tattoo, Royal Ascot, Henley Royal Regatta and The Proms as well as at Royal events. The anthem was traditionally played at close-down on the BBC, and with the introduction of commercial television to the UK this practice was adopted by some ITV companies (with the notable exceptions of Granada, Thames Television, Central Television, Border Television, and Yorkshire Television). BBC Two also never played the anthem at close-down, and ITV dropped the practice in the late 1980s when the network switched to 24 hour broadcasting, but it continued on BBC One until 8 November 1997 (thereafter BBC One began to simulcast with BBC News after end of programmes). The tradition is carried on, however, by BBC Radio 4, which plays the anthem each night as a transition piece between the end of the Radio 4 broadcasting and the move to BBC World Service. BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 2 also play the National Anthem just before the 0700 and 0800 news bulletins on the actual and official birthdays of the King and the birthdays of senior members of the Royal Family. On 17 January 2022, the GB News Channel started playing the anthem at 05:59 every morning at the beginning of the day's programming. The UK's national anthem usually prefaces The Sovereign's Christmas Message (although in 2007 it appeared at the end, taken from a recording of the 1957 television broadcast), and important royal announcements, such as of royal deaths, when it is played in a slower, sombre arrangement. Other British anthems. Frequently, when an anthem is needed for one of the constituent countries of the United Kingdom at an international sporting event, for instance an alternative song is used: The London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony provided a conscious use of three of the four anthems listed above; the ceremony began with a rendition of the first verse of "Jerusalem", before a choir in Northern Ireland sang "Danny Boy" and a choir in Edinburgh performed part of "Flower of Scotland". Notably, Wales was represented by the hymn "Bread of Heaven", not "Hen Wlad Fy Nhadhau". In April 2007 there was an early day motion, number 1319, to the British Parliament to propose that there should be a separate England anthem: "That this House ... believes that all English sporting associations should adopt an appropriate song that English sportsmen and women, and the English public, would favour when competing as England". An amendment (EDM 1319A3) was proposed by Evan Harris that the song "should have a bit more oomph than "God Save The Queen" and should also not involve God." For more information see also: Use in media. On 3 November 2016, Conservative MP Andrew Rosindell argued for a return to the broadcasting of "God Save the Queen" at the end of BBC One transmissions each day. The practice was dropped in 1997 (ostensibly due to BBC One adopting 24-hour broadcasting by simulcasting BBC News 24 overnight, rendering closedown obsolete). Since 18 January 2022, GB News has played "God Save the Queen" at the start of live programming every day. Use in other Commonwealth countries. "God Save the King" was exported around the world via the expansion of the British Empire, serving as each country's national anthem. Throughout the Empire's evolution into the Commonwealth of Nations, the song declined in use in most states which became independent. In New Zealand, it remains one of the official national anthems. Australia. In Australia, the song has standing through a Royal Proclamation issued by Governor-General Sir Ninian Stephen on 19 April 1984. It declared "God Save the Queen" to be the Royal Anthem and that it is to be played when the Australian monarch or a member of the Royal Family is present, though not exclusively in such circumstances. The same proclamation made "Advance Australia Fair" the national anthem and the basis for the "Vice-Regal Salute" (the first four and last two bars of the anthem). Prior to 1984, "God Save the Queen" was the national anthem of Australia. In 1975, former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, dismissed by Governor-General Sir John Kerr, alluded to the anthem in his comment "Well may we say 'God save the Queen', because nothing will save the Governor-General!". Belize. "God Save the King" is the royal anthem of Belize. The Vice-Regal Salute to the Belizean governor general is composed of the first verse of "God Save the King" and the chorus of National Anthem, "Land of the Free". Canada. By convention, "God Save the King" (, "Dieu Sauve la Reine" when a Queen) is the royal anthem of Canada. It is sometimes played or sung together with the national anthem, "O Canada", at private and public events organised by groups such as the Government of Canada, the Royal Canadian Legion, police services, and loyal groups. The governor general and provincial lieutenant governors are accorded the "Viceregal Salute", comprising the first three lines of "God Save the King", followed by the first and last lines of "O Canada". "God Save the King" has been sung in Canada since the late 1700s and by the mid 20th century was, along with "O Canada", one of the country's two "de facto" national anthems, the first and last verses of the standard British version being used. By-laws and practices governing the use of either song during public events in municipalities varied; in Toronto, "God Save the King" was employed, while in Montreal it was "O Canada". Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson in 1964 said one song would have to be chosen as the country's national anthem and, three years later, he advised Governor General Georges Vanier to appoint the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and House of Commons on the National and Royal Anthems. Within two months, on 12 April 1967, the committee presented its conclusion that "God Save the Queen" (as this was during the reign of Queen Elizabeth II), whose music and lyrics were found to be in the public domain, should be designated as the royal anthem of Canada and "O Canada" as the national anthem, one verse from each, in both official languages, to be adopted by parliament. The group was then charged with establishing official lyrics for each song; for "God Save the Queen", the English words were those inherited from the United Kingdom and the French words were taken from those that had been adopted in 1952 for the coronation of Elizabeth II. When the bill pronouncing "O Canada" as the national anthem was put through parliament, the joint committee's earlier recommendations regarding "God Save the Queen" were not included. The Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces regulates that "God Save the King" be played as a salute to the monarch of Canada and other members of the Canadian royal family, though it may also be used as a hymn or prayer. The words are not to be sung when the song is played as a military royal salute and is abbreviated to the first three lines, while arms are being presented. Elizabeth II stipulated that the arrangement in G major by Lieutenant Colonel Basil H. Brown be used in Canada. The authorised version to be played by pipe bands is "Mallorca". Lyrics in Canada. "God Save the King" has been translated into French, but this translation does not fit the music and cannot be sung. Nevertheless, this translation has been adapted into a bilingual version that can be sung when the monarch is male, and has been sung during public ceremonies, such as the National Remembrance Day Ceremony at the National War Memorial in Ottawa: A special singable one-verse adaptation is used when a singable French version is required, such as when royalty is present at an official occasion: There is a special Canadian verse in English which was once commonly sung in addition to the two standing verses: Channel Islands. "God Save the King" is used by both Bailiwicks of the Channel Islands as an alternative to their respective national anthems. Its use case and popular version is generally similar to how it is used in the United Kingdom. However, the anthem has been translated in Jèrriais: The meaning is broadly similar to the first paragraph of the English version, except for the first two lines which say "God save our Duke" and "Long live our Duke". New Zealand. "God Save the King" was the sole official national anthem until 1977 when "God Defend New Zealand" was added as a second. Since then, "God Save the King" is most often only played when the sovereign, governor-general or other member of the Royal Family is present, or on some occasions such as Anzac Day. The Māori-language version was written by Edward Marsh Williams under the title, "". There is a special New Zealand verse in English which was once commonly sung to replace the second and third verses: Lyrics in Māori. All verses of "God Save the King" have been translated into Māori. The first verse is shown below: Rhodesia. When Rhodesia issued its Unilateral Declaration of Independence from the UK on 11 November 1965, it did so while still maintaining loyalty to Queen Elizabeth II as the Rhodesian head of state, despite the non-recognition of the Rhodesian government by the United Kingdom and the United Nations; "God Save the Queen" therefore remained the Rhodesian national anthem. This was supposed to demonstrate the continued allegiance of the Rhodesian people to the monarch, but the retention in Rhodesia of a song so associated with the UK while the two countries were at loggerheads regarding its constitutional status caused Rhodesian state occasions to have "a faintly ironic tone", in the words of "The Times". Nevertheless, "God Save the Queen" remained Rhodesia's national anthem until March 1970, when the country formally declared itself a republic. "Rise, O Voices of Rhodesia" was adopted in its stead in 1974 and remained in use until the country returned to the UK's control in December 1979. Since the internationally recognised independence of the Republic of Zimbabwe in April 1980, "God Save the King" has had no official status there. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. "God Save the King" is the royal anthem of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. It is played on royal and vice-regal occasions. The Vice-Regal Salute to the governor general is composed of the chorus of "God Save the King" and followed by that of the National Anthem, "Saint Vincent, Land so Beautiful". All proclamations in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines end with the phrase: "God Save the King". Solomon Islands. "God Save the King" was translated into the Lau language in 1945: <poem>God, ka faamouria a King! Nia ka aofia diena Usia tooa gi; Fasuia firua, Falea mai unidiena, Faadiena na taloa nia, God, faamouria a King!</poem> South Africa. "God Save the King" (, "God Red die Koningin" when a Queen) was a co-national anthem of South Africa from 1938 until 1957, when it was formally replaced by "Die Stem van Suid-Afrika" as the sole national anthem. The latter served as a sort of "de facto" co-national anthem alongside the former until 1938. Use elsewhere. The melody has often been used, with lyrics slightly or significantly altered, for royal or national anthems of other countries. During the 19th century, it was used officially in Sweden, and in Iceland. It was also in official usage for brief periods in Imperial Russia, in Greece and in the Kingdom of Hawaii. In Germany, it was used by the kingdoms of Prussia, Hanover, Saxony and Bavaria, and was adopted as anthem of the German Empire ("Heil dir im Siegerkranz") after unification in 1871. It remains as the national anthem of Liechtenstein, and was used by Switzerland until 1961. Musical adaptations. Composers. About 140 composers have used the tune in their compositions. Ludwig van Beethoven composed a set of seven piano variations in the key of C major to the theme of "God Save the King", catalogued as WoO.78 (1802–1803). He also quotes it in his orchestral work "Wellington's Victory". It is also the first song arranged in the collection WoO 157. Muzio Clementi used the theme to "God Save the King" in his Symphony No. 3 in G major, often called the "Great National Symphony", catalogued as WoO. 34. Clementi paid a high tribute to his adopted homeland (the United Kingdom) where he grew up and stayed most of his lifetime. He based the Symphony (about 1816–1824) on "God Save the King", which is hinted at earlier in the work, not least in the second movement, and announced by the trombones in the finale. Johann Christian Bach composed a set of variations on "God Save the King" for the finale to his sixth keyboard concerto (Op. 1) written . Joseph Haydn was impressed by the use of "God Save the King" as a national anthem during his visit to London in 1794, and on his return to Austria composed a different tune, "Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser" ("God Save Emperor Francis"), for the birthday of the last Holy Roman Emperor and Roman-German King, Francis II, which became the basis for the anthem of the later Austrian Empire, and ultimately for the German national anthem. Franz Liszt wrote a piano paraphrase on the anthem (S.259 in the official catalogue, c. 1841). Johann Strauss I quoted "God Save the Queen" in full at the end of his waltz "Huldigung der Königin Victoria von Grossbritannien" (Homage to Queen Victoria of Great Britain), Op. 103, where he also quoted "Rule, Britannia!" in full at the beginning of the piece. Siegfried August Mahlmann in the early 19th century wrote alternate lyrics to adapt the hymn for the Kingdom of Saxony, as "Gott segne Sachsenland" ("God Bless Saxony"). Christian Heinrich Rinck wrote two sets of variations on the anthem: the last movement of his Piano Trio, Op. 34, No. 1 (1815) is a set of five variations and a concluding coda; and Theme (Andante) and (12) Variations in C major on "Heil dir im Siegerkranz" (God Save the King), Op. 55. Heinrich Marschner used the anthem in his "Grande Ouverture solenne", Op. 78 (1842). Gaetano Donizetti used this anthem in his opera "Roberto Devereux". Joachim Raff used this anthem in his Jubelouverture, Op. 103 (1864) dedicated to Adolf, Herzog von Nassau, on the 25th anniversary of his reign. Gioachino Rossini used this anthem in the last scene of his "Il viaggio a Reims", when all the characters, coming from many different European countries, sing a song which recalls their own homeland. Lord Sidney, bass, sings "Della real pianta" on the notes of "God Save the King". Samuel Ramey used to interpolate a spectacular virtuoso cadenza at the end of the song. Fernando Sor used the anthem in his 12 Studies, Op. 6: No. 10 in C major in the section marked 'Maestoso.' Arthur Sullivan quotes the anthem at the end of his ballet "Victoria and Merrie England". Claude Debussy opens with a brief introduction of "God Save the King" in one of his Preludes, "Hommage à S. Pickwick Esq. P.P.M.P.C.". The piece draws its inspiration from the main character of the Charles Dickens novel "The Pickwick Papers". Niccolò Paganini wrote a set of highly virtuosic variations on "God Save the King" as his Op. 9. Max Reger wrote "Variations and Fugue on 'Heil dir im Siegerkranz' (God Save the King)" for organ in 1901 after the death of Queen Victoria. It does not have an opus number. A week before the Coronation Ode was due to be premiered at the June 1902 "Coronation Gala Concert" at Covent Garden (it was cancelled, owing to the King's illness), Sir Edward Elgar introduced an arrangement of "Land of Hope and Glory" as a solo song performed by Clara Butt at a "Coronation Concert" at the Albert Hall. Novello seized upon the prevailing patriotism and requested that Elgar arrange the National Anthem as an appropriate opening for a concert performed in front of the Court and numerous British and foreign dignitaries. This version for orchestra and chorus, which is enlivened by use of "a cappella" and marcato effects, was also performed at the opening of the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley on St. George's Day, 1924, and recorded under the composer's baton in 1928, with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonic Choir. Elgar also used the first verse of the Anthem as the climax of a short "Civic Procession and Anthem", written to accompany the mayoral procession at the opening of the Hereford Music Festival on 4 September 1927. This premiere performance was recorded, and is today available on CD; the score was lost following the festival, and Elgar reconstructed it by ear from the recording. Carl Maria von Weber uses the "God Save the King" theme at the end of his "Jubel Overture". Giuseppe Verdi included "God Save the Queen" in his "Inno delle nazioni" (Hymn of the Nations), composed for the London 1862 International Exhibition. Benjamin Britten arranged "God Save the Queen" in 1961 for the Leeds Festival. This version has been programmed several times at the Last Night of the Proms. Charles Ives wrote "Variations on "America"" for organ in 1891 at age seventeen. It included a polytonal section in three simultaneous keys, though this was omitted from performances at his father's request, because "it made the boys laugh out loud". Ives was fond of the rapid pedal line in the final variation, which he said was "almost as much fun as playing baseball". The piece was not published until 1949; the final version includes an introduction, seven variations and a polytonal interlude. The piece was adapted for orchestra in 1963 by William Schuman. This version became popular during the bicentennial celebrations, and is often heard at pops concerts. Muthuswami Dikshitar (1776–1835), one of the musical trinity in South Indian classical (Carnatic) music composed some Sanskrit pieces set to Western tunes. These are in the raga Sankarabharanam and are referred to as "nottu swaras". Among these, the composition "Santatam Pahimam Sangita Shyamale" is set to the tune of "God Save the Queen". Sigismond Thalberg (1812–1871), Swiss composer and one of the most famous virtuoso pianists of the 19th century, wrote a fantasia on "God Save the Queen". Johan Nepomuk Hummel (1778–1837) wrote "Variations on God Save the King in D major", Op. 10 and quoted the tune briefly in his "Freudenfest-Ouverture in D major", S 148. Adrien-François Servais (1807–66) and Joseph Ghys (1801–48) wrote "Variations brillantes et concertantes sur l'air "God Save the King"", Op. 38, for violin and cello and performed it in London and St Petersburg. Georges Onslow (1784–1853) used the tune in his String Quartet No. 7 in G minor, Op. 9, second movement. Hans Huber used the melody ("Rufst du, mein Vaterland") in the first movement of his Symphony no 3 in C minor, Op. 118 ("Heroic"). Ferdinando Carulli used the melody in Fantaisie sur un air national anglais, for recorder & guitar, Op. 102. Louis Drouet composed "Variations on the air God save the King" for flute and piano. Gordon Jacob wrote a choral arrangement of "God Save the Queen" with a trumpet fanfare introduction, for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. Rock adaptations. Jimi Hendrix played an impromptu version of "God Save the Queen" to open his set at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970. Just before walking onto the stage, he asked "How does it [the anthem] go again?". Hendrix gave the same sort of distortion and improvisation of "God Save the Queen", as he had done with "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the Woodstock Festival, 1969. The rock band Queen recorded an instrumental version of "God Save the Queen" for their 1975 album "A Night at the Opera". Guitarist Brian May adapted the melody using his distinctive layers of overdubbed electric guitars. This recorded version was played at the end of every Queen concert from the end of 1974 to 1986, while vocalist Freddie Mercury walked around the stage wearing a crown and a cloak on their Magic Tour in 1986. The song was played whilst all the Queen members would take their bows. On 3 June 2002, during the Queen's Golden Jubilee, Brian May performed the anthem on his Red Special electric guitar for Party at the Palace from the roof of Buckingham Palace which is featured on the 30th Anniversary DVD edition of "A Night at the Opera". In 1977, the Sex Pistols recorded a song titled "God Save the Queen" in open reference to the National Anthem and the Queen's Silver Jubilee celebrations that year, with the song intending to stand for sympathy for the working class and resentment of the monarchy. They were banned from many venues, censored by mainstream media, and reached number 2 on the official U.K. singles charts and number 1 on the NME chart. A version of "God Save the Queen" by Madness features the melody of the song played on kazoos. It was included on the compilation album "The Business – the Definitive Singles Collection". Computer music. The anthem was the first piece of music played on a computer, and the first computer music to be recorded. Musical notes were first generated by a computer programmed by Alan Turing at the Computing Machine Laboratory of the University of Manchester in 1948. The first music proper, a performance of the National Anthem was programmed by Christopher Strachey on the Mark II Manchester Electronic Computer at same venue, in 1951. Later that year, short extracts of three pieces, the first being the National Anthem, were recorded there by a BBC outside broadcasting unit: the other pieces being "Baa Baa Black Sheep", and "In the Mood". Researchers at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch restored the acetate master disc in 2016 and the results may be heard on SoundCloud. Reception. The philosopher and reformer Jeremy Bentham praised "God Save the King" in 1796: "the melody recommending itself by beauty to the most polished ears, and by its simplicity to the rudest ear. A song of this complexion, implanted by the habit of half a century in the mass of popular sentiment, can not be refused a place in the inventory of the national blessings." Ludwig van Beethoven wrote "I have to show the English a little of what a blessing 'God Save the King' is". Calls for a new national anthem(s). There have been calls within the UK for a new national anthem, whether it be for the United Kingdom itself, Britain and/or England (which all currently use "God Save the King"). There are many reasons people cite for wishing for a new national anthem, such as: from a non-religious standpoint claims of "God Save the King" being long outdated and irrelevant in the 21st century, rejection of odes to promoting war and imperialism and rejection of praising the monarchy from a republican perspective. A further reason is that England has no anthem of its own for sporting contests and the like, whereas Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales have unofficial anthems; "Flower of Scotland", "Londonderry Air", and "Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau" while England tends to use "God Save the King" exclusively and also unofficially. Notes and references. Notes References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12501

Geoff Hurst

Sir Geoffrey Charles Hurst (born 8 December 1941) is an English former professional footballer. A striker, he became the first, and one of the only two men, to ever score a hat-trick in a World Cup final, when England recorded a 4–2 victory over West Germany at Wembley Stadium in 1966. Hurst began his career with West Ham United, where he scored 242 goals in 500 first team appearances. There he won the FA Cup in 1964 and the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1965. He was sold to Stoke City in 1972 for £80,000. After three seasons with Stoke, where he won the Watney Cup in 1973, he finished his Football League career with West Bromwich Albion in 1976. Hurst went to play football in Ireland (Cork Celtic) and the USA (Seattle Sounders) before returning to England to manage non-league Telford United. He also coached in the England set-up before a two-year stint as Chelsea manager from 1979 to 1981. He later coached Kuwait SC before leaving the game to concentrate on his business commitments. In total, Hurst scored 24 goals in 49 England appearances, and as well as success in the 1966 World Cup he also appeared at UEFA Euro 1968 and the 1970 FIFA World Cup. He also had a brief cricket career, making one first-class appearance for Essex in 1962, before concentrating on football. Early life. Hurst was born in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire, England, on 8 December 1941. He had two younger siblings: Diane and Robert. His family moved to Chelmsford, Essex when he was six years old. His father, Charlie Hurst, was a professional footballer who played at centre-half for Bristol Rovers, Oldham Athletic and Rochdale. His mother, Evelyn Hopkins, was from a Gloucestershire family with her mother's side originally from Germany. As a teenager he was obsessed with football, and was once fined £1 for disturbing the peace after consistently kicking a football into his neighbour's garden. Hurst played one first-class cricket match for Essex, against Lancashire at Aigburth in 1962, although it was not a successful outing: he made 0 not out in the first innings, and was bowled by Colin Hilton, again for 0, in the second. However, he appeared 23 times in the Essex Second XI between 1962 and 1964, usually as a wicket-keeper, before concentrating entirely on football. Under his father's management of the club, Hurst played once for Halstead Town reserves at the age of "about 14". Club career. West Ham United. Hurst's football career began when he was apprenticed to West Ham United at the age of 15. Alongside Bobby Moore, both played in the 1959 FA Youth Cup final team that lost to Blackburn Rovers (1–2 on aggregate), but both were also in the team that won the Southern Junior Floodlit Cup (1–0 v Chelsea) later that year. Manager Ted Fenton first selected him for a senior game in a Southern Floodlit Cup tie with Fulham in December 1958. He turned professional at the club four months later, and was paid £7 a week with a £20 signing on fee. His first competitive appearance came in February 1960 when injuries forced Fenton's hand; Hurst put in an indifferent performance and the team lost 3–1. He made only two further appearances in the 1959–60 season, and realised that Bobby Moore was making better progress in the same position than he was. He played six times in the 1960–61 campaign and seriously considered turning his main focus to cricket. In April 1961 Ron Greenwood took over as manager, and drastically changed team training by putting a focus on footballing skill rather than physical fitness. Hurst missed the start of 1961–62 pre-season training due to his cricketing commitments, but went on to make 24 appearances at left-half, and scored his first goal for the club in a 4–2 victory over Wolverhampton Wanderers in December 1961. However, he again missed pre-season training the following summer and was dropped after proving to be unfit during the opening game of the 1962–63 season. In September of that season Greenwood tried playing Hurst as a striker after deciding that the defensive side of his game was a weakness for the young midfielder. He formed a successful partnership with Johnny Byrne and went on to score 13 goals in 27 First Division games whilst Byrne scored nine in 30 games in the 1962–63 season. In the summer of 1963 he joined the club on their pre-season tour of New York, and greatly benefited from playing against top quality players from clubs across the world in the International Soccer League, a friendly tournament. Hurst and West Ham had a poor start to the 1963–64 season, and went on to finish in 14th place. However it was in the FA Cup where the team impressed. A comfortable 3–0 home win over Second Division Charlton Athletic was followed by another 3–0 home win over East End rivals Leyton Orient – though only following a tough 1–1 draw at Brisbane Road. Greenwood named the same 11 players, including Hurst, in all the club's seven FA Cup fixtures as West Ham progressed to the final. Hurst scored one against Charlton and two against Orient, and claimed another goal in the Fifth round as West Ham beat Second Division Swindon Town 3–1 at the County Ground. Burnley provided a stern test in the quarter-finals, but a 3–2 home win took West Ham into the semi-finals, where they faced Manchester United at Hillsborough. West Ham won 3–1, with Hurst scoring the final goal of the game after being set up by Bobby Moore. West Ham faced Second Division Preston North End at Wembley in the 1964 FA Cup Final, and had to come from behind twice to win the match 3–2. Hurst scored his side's second equaliser with a header that bounced under the crossbar and ended up just over the goal line. The club's success won them a place in the European Cup Winners Cup for the 1964–65 season. They defeated Belgian side K.A.A. Gent in the First Round after an unconvincing 2–1 aggregate victory. Czechoslovakian side AC Sparta Prague awaited in the second round, and West Ham progressed with a 3–2 aggregate victory despite the absence of Moore. Despite beating Swiss team FC Lausanne-Sport 6–4 on aggregate in the quarter-finals, Hurst had still not registered a goal in the competition as he was played in a withdrawn role behind Johnny Byrne so as to strengthen the midfield. In the semi-finals, West Ham defended a 2–1 home win over Spanish club Real Zaragoza with a 1–1 draw at La Romareda to claim a place in the 1965 European Cup Winners' Cup Final against TSV 1860 München at Wembley. West Ham won 2–0, Alan Sealey scoring both goals, to give the club their first European trophy. Having scored 40 goals in 59 competitive games in the 1965–66 season and then gone on to make himself a household name by winning the World Cup with England, Hurst was the subject of a £200,000 transfer offer by Manchester United manager Matt Busby – the offer was rejected by Greenwood. He was in the West Ham side which lost the League Cup final, 5–3 on aggregate to West Bromwich Albion. In the 1966–67 season, West Ham demonstrated the inconsistency that would deny them a realistic prospect of winning a league championship under Greenwood. Hurst scored a hat-trick as they defeated full-strength title challengers Leeds United 7–0 in the League Cup, but they exited the FA Cup with a 3–1 defeat to Third Division side Swindon Town. Hurst scored six goals in a First Division match against Sunderland at Upton Park on 19 October 1968, which West Ham won 8–0. However, he regretted admitting that he handled the ball in his first goal which led to the back page headlines focusing on the illegitimate goal rather than the rare feat of one player scoring six goals in one game. In 1972, West Ham reached the semi-finals of the League Cup when they played Stoke City over two legs. In the home leg at Upton Park, they were awarded a penalty after Harry Redknapp was fouled in the box. Hurst took the penalty and struck a powerful shot into the top corner which was saved by Gordon Banks, who succeeded in deflecting the ball over the bar. Stoke won the tie in the subsequent replay and denied Hurst one more final appearance at Wembley. Stoke City. Hurst was sold to Stoke City for a £80,000 fee in August 1972. He was struck down with pneumonia early in 1973 and went to South Africa to recover, playing on loan for Roy Bailey's Cape Town City. He missed just four games for Stoke and upon his return he helped the side to maintain their First Division status. In January 1974, "Potters" manager Tony Waddington asked Hurst to take in new signing Alan Hudson as a lodger so as to provide the talented but troubled midfielder with a stable home during his Stoke career. Hudson adapted well to life in the Hurst household and Stoke recorded a fifth place in the 1973–74 season – a career high for Hurst. Hurst scored 11 goals in 41 games in the 1974–75 season and helped Stoke to finish in fifth place, just four points behind champions Derby County. West Bromwich Albion. Hurst was sold to Johnny Giles's West Bromwich Albion in the summer of 1975 for a fee of £20,000. He played 12 times for the Baggies at the start of the 1975–76 season, scoring twice, before deciding to leave for America. Hurst later acknowledged that at the age of 34 he was too old to lead the line in the "Baggies" push for promotion out of the Second Division. Later career. Hurst signed for Cork Celtic in January 1976, and remained in Ireland for one month. He signed for the Seattle Sounders of the NASL in 1976. Hurst rapidly proved his worth, and became a valuable member of the Sounders team. He was the team's second-leading scorer, helping the Sounders make it to the play-offs for the first time in their brief history, with eight goals and four assists in 23 regular season games, and one goal in the play-offs. International career. 1966 World Cup. Hurst made his senior England debut against West Germany on 23 February 1966. He played well, and further performances against Scotland and Yugoslavia secured him a place in the squad for the 1966 FIFA World Cup. However, he put in mediocre performances in warm-up games against Finland and Denmark, and so Jimmy Greaves and Roger Hunt were instead picked for the final friendly game against Poland. Greaves and Hunt were indeed picked for the three group games against Uruguay, Mexico and France, but in the latter game, Greaves suffered a deep gash to his leg which required stitches, and Hurst was called up to take his place in the quarter-final against Argentina. Argentina were talented but preferred a tougher approach to the game, which saw them reduced to ten men. The game was still tightly contested as it entered its final 15 minutes, but then Martin Peters swung over a curling cross from the left flank and Hurst, anticipating his clubmate's action, got in front of his marker to glance a near post header past the Argentine keeper. England won 1–0 and were in the semi-finals. Greaves was not fit for the game against Portugal so Hurst and Hunt continued up front, and England won 2–1 thanks to two goals by Bobby Charlton, the second of which was set up by Hurst. As the final against the Germans approached, the media learnt of Greaves' return to fitness and, while appreciating Hurst's contribution, started to call for the return of England's most prolific centre forward. Ramsey, however, would not be swayed and selected Hurst for the final. World Cup Final. West Germany took the lead through Helmut Haller early on, but six minutes later Bobby Moore was fouled just inside the German half of the field. He quickly picked himself up and delivered the free kick to Hurst, who eluded his marker Horst-Dieter Höttges and headed the ball past goalkeeper Hans Tilkowski to level the scores at 1–1. With 12 minutes left to play of normal time, an Alan Ball corner left Hurst with a shooting opportunity on the edge of the penalty area; his shot deflected off Wolfgang Weber and fell kindly to Martin Peters, who put the ball into the net to give England the lead. However the Germans scored a very late goal through Weber to level the match at 2–2 at full-time. In the first period of extra-time, Ball crossed from the right to Hurst, who struck a strong shot towards goal with his right foot, falling backwards as he did so. The ball beat the goalkeeper, hit the crossbar and bounced down before Weber headed it out for a corner. England's players claimed a goal whilst the Germans were adamant that the ball had not fully crossed the line. Referee Gottfried Dienst consulted his linesman on the right flank, Tofiq Bahramov, who signalled that the ball had crossed the line, and the goal was given. The so-called Wembley Goal remained a subject for controversy and discussions. The Germans pushed forward in search of an equaliser as the full-time whistle approached, and Bobby Moore exploited their advanced position to send Hurst a long ball in the German half of the pitch. Hurst reached the German penalty box and scored to end the game at 4–2 to England. As Hurst collected the pass, BBC commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme delivered with one of the most famous pieces of football commentary: Hurst thus became the first player to score a hat-trick in the Men's World Cup final, a feat that remained unmatched until 2022, when Kylian Mbappé scored a hat-trick for France against Argentina. Geoff Hurst, however, remains the only man to score a hattrick in a World Cup Final and end up on the winning team. This accomplishment was matched by Carli Lloyd in the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup final for the USA against Japan; unlike Hurst or Mbappé, her hat-trick was completed in regular time. Later international career. Hurst was selected for UEFA Euro 1968, but did not play as England lost 1–0 to Yugoslavia in the semi-final. He did play, and score, in the 2–0 third-place play-off victory over the Soviet Union at the Stadio Olimpico. Hurst scored his second international hat-trick on 12 March 1969, in a 5–0 victory over France, and was named in the Ramsey squad which played in Mexico to defend the World Cup in 1970. He scored the only goal of England's opening game against Romania after being sent through by a pass from Francis Lee. England progressed to the quarter-finals, where once again they faced West Germany. Hurst played a part in the Martin Peters goal that put England 2–0 up. With England up 2–1, Hurst's contested header trickled inches past the post. Later, at 2–2, Hurst had what many thought was a legitimate goal ruled out for offside. The West Germans scored in extra time and won 3–2. Hurst scored against Greece and Switzerland in qualification for UEFA Euro 1972, but played his last international match on 29 April 1972 as England were beaten 3–1 by West Germany – he was replaced by Rodney Marsh with 20 minutes left to play and did not take to the field in an England shirt again. He was named in the squad for the second leg against West Germany after Allan Clarke and Francis Lee picked up injuries, but had to pull out of the squad after picking up an injury himself. Managerial career. Upon his retirement from playing, Hurst moved into management and coaching. He spent three years as player-manager of Telford United in the Southern League before being recruited by Ron Greenwood in the England coaching set up in 1977. He travelled with England to help Greenwood at UEFA Euro 1980 and the 1982 FIFA World Cup, where England failed to make it past the group stages on both occasions. Chelsea. Hurst joined Chelsea, then in the Second Division, before the 1979–80 season, initially as assistant manager to Danny Blanchflower. When Blanchflower was sacked, Hurst was appointed manager. He hired Bobby Gould as his assistant. Things initially went well, and for much of the season Chelsea were on course for promotion, but two wins from their final seven league games ensured the club finished fourth; missing out on third place and promotion on goal difference. He raised £250,000 through the sales of Eamonn Bannon, David Stride and Trevor Aylott. He then spent £300,000 on Colin Lee, Dennis Rofe and Colin Viljoen; he later acknowledged Viljoen as a mistake whilst bemoaning Lee's bad luck with injury. The following season again began well, with the "Blues" among the early promotion pace-setters before a dismal run set in, with Chelsea scoring in just three of their final 22 league matches, culminating in Hurst being sacked and Chelsea finished 12th in the league. Kuwait SC. After being sacked from Chelsea on 23 April 1981, Hurst worked as an insurance salesman for Abbey Life. The next year he was tempted back into management after being offered a generous salary by Kuwait SC. He controversially disciplined and dropped club captain Saad Al-Houti, but was unable to challenge Dave Mackay's Al-Arabi for dominance of the Kuwaiti Premier League. After leaving Kuwait in April 1984 he returned to the insurance trade. Legacy. In 2003 Hurst was included in "The Champions", a statue of 1966 World Cup winning footballers, by sculptor Philip Jackson. It sits at the junctions of Barking Road and Central Park Road, Newham, London, near to the site of West Ham United's former home stadium, the Boleyn Ground and features Martin Peters, Hurst, Bobby Moore and Ray Wilson. Hurst's contribution to the English game was recognised in 2004 when he was inducted in the English Football Hall of Fame. Hurst is also one of the few footballers who have been knighted. A statue of Hurst was unveiled outside Curzon Ashton F.C.'s ground in 2010. He is shown alongside two other World Cup winners born in the area, fellow 1966 squad member Jimmy Armfield, and Simone Perrotta, who won it with Italy in 2006. Personal life. Hurst lives in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, with his wife Judith. They have been married since 13 October 1964, having met three years previously at a youth centre; Eddie Presland was best man. They had three daughters but the eldest Claire died in 2010 after a ten-year long battle against a brain tumour. Hurst had one brother, Robert, who died by suicide in 1974. In November 2020, Hurst offered to donate his brain after his death for research into dementia. This followed the death of several of his 1966 World Cup winning colleagues, Jack Charlton, Martin Peters, Ray Wilson and Nobby Stiles after suffering with the disease and the diagnosis of Bobby Charlton with dementia. Whilst playing for Stoke City F.C. he owned the Royal Oak Inn, Eccleshall Honours. West Ham England Individual Orders References. General Specific

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12583

Gary Lineker

Gary Winston Lineker (; born 30 November 1960) is an English sports broadcaster and former professional footballer. Lineker is the only player to have been the top goalscorer in England with three clubs: Leicester City, Everton and Tottenham Hotspur. He also played for Barcelona in Spain, and won 80 caps for England. He finished his career as England's second top international goalscorer. He has presented the BBC's flagship football show, "Match of the Day", since 1999. Lineker began his football career at Leicester City in 1978, and finished as the First Division's joint top goalscorer in 1984–85. He then moved to league champions Everton where he won both the PFA Players' Player of the Year and FWA Footballer of the Year awards in his debut season, before moving to Spanish club Barcelona. Lineker placed 3rd in the 1986 Ballon d’Or for his performances at Everton after transferring to Barcelona. With the famed Spanish side, he won the 1987–88 Copa del Rey and the 1989 European Cup Winners' Cup. He joined Tottenham Hotspur in 1989, and won his second FWA Footballer of the Year and won the FA Cup, his first and only major trophy in English football. Lineker's final club was Nagoya Grampus Eight; he retired in 1994 after two seasons at the Japanese side. Lineker made his England debut in 1984, earning 80 caps and scoring 48 goals over an eight-year international career. He is England's fourth-highest scorer, behind Harry Kane, Wayne Rooney and Bobby Charlton, and his international goals-to-games ratio remains one of the best for the country. His six goals in the 1986 FIFA World Cup made him the tournament's top scorer, receiving the Golden Boot. Lineker was again integral to England's progress to the semi-finals of the 1990 World Cup, scoring another four goals. He still holds England's record for goals in the FIFA World Cup. Lineker never received a yellow or red card during his career, and he also never won a top-flight league title. He was honoured in 1990 with the FIFA Fair Play Award. In a senior career which spanned 16 years and 654 competitive games, Lineker scored a total of 331 goals, including 283 goals at club level. After his retirement from football he was inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame. A keen supporter of Leicester City, he led a consortium in 2002 that invested in his old club, saving it from bankruptcy, and was appointed honorary vice-president. His media career began with the BBC, where he has presented the flagship football programme "Match of the Day" since the late 1990s, the longest tenure of any MOTD presenter. Lineker is also the BBC's lead presenter for live football matches, including coverage of international tournaments such as the FIFA World Cup. He has also worked for Al Jazeera Sports, Eredivisie Live, NBC Sports Network, and BT Sport's coverage of the UEFA Champions League. Early life. Gary Winston Lineker was born on 30 November 1960 in Leicester, the son of Margaret P. (Abbs) and Barry Lineker. He was given his middle name in honour of Winston Churchill, with whom he shares a birthday. He has one brother, Wayne, who is two years his junior. Lineker grew up with his family in the city, playing football with Wayne. Their father was a greengrocer, as were their grandfather William and great-grandfather George, in Leicester. Barry Lineker ran Lineker's fruit and veg stall in Leicester Market, and as a child and a young player Gary regularly helped out on the stall. Lineker, who is white, received racial abuse as a child for his dark features. Lineker first attended Caldecote Road School (Caldecote Juniors), Braunstone in Leicester (east of the Meridian Centre). He then went to the City of Leicester Boys' Grammar School (now City of Leicester College) on Downing Drive in Evington, owing to his preference for football rather than rugby, which was the main sport of most schools near his home. Lineker was equally talented at both football and cricket. From the ages of 11 to 16 he captained the Leicestershire Schools cricket team, and had felt that he had a higher chance of succeeding at it rather than football. He later stated on "They Think It's All Over" that as a teenager he idolised former England captain David Gower, who was playing for Leicestershire at the time. During his youth he played for Aylestone Park Youth, later becoming the club's president. Lineker left school with four O Levels. One of his teachers wrote on his report card that he "concentrates too much on football" and that he would "never make a living at that". He then joined the youth academy at Leicester City in 1976. Club career. Leicester City. Lineker began his career at his hometown club Leicester City after leaving school in 1977, turning professional in the 1978–79 season and making his senior debut on New Year's Day 1979 in a 2–0 win at Filbert Street over Oldham Athletic in the Second Division. He earned a Second Division title medal a year later with 19 appearances, but played just nine league games in 1980–81 as Leicester went straight back down. However, he became a regular player in 1981–82, scoring 19 goals in all competitions that season. Although Leicester missed out on promotion, they reached the semi-finals of the FA Cup, and clinched promotion a year later as Lineker scored 26 times in the Second Division. In 1983–84, he enjoyed regular First Division action for the first time and was the division's second-highest scorer with 22 goals, although Leicester failed to finish anywhere near the top of the league. He was the First Division's joint top scorer in 1984–85 with 24 goals, and was enjoying a prolific partnership with Alan Smith. However, by this stage he was attracting the attention of bigger clubs, and a move from Filbert Street was looking certain. Everton. In the 1985 close season, defending league champions Everton signed Lineker for £800,000; he scored 40 goals in 57 games for his new team in the 1985–86 season. Lineker's first game for Everton happened to be away to Leicester City; at half time, he walked into the Leicester dressing room by mistake. He was again the First Division's leading goal scorer, this time with 30 goals (including three hat-tricks), and helped Everton finish second in the league. While at Everton, they reached the FA Cup final for the third consecutive year but lost 3–1 to Liverpool, despite Lineker giving them an early lead when he outpaced Alan Hansen to score. Liverpool had also pipped Everton to the title by just two points. "I was only on Merseyside a short time, nine or 10 months in total really, but it was still a happy time personally, while professionally it was one of the most successful periods of my career", he says. "I still have an affinity towards Everton." Lineker scored three hat-tricks for Everton; at home to Birmingham City in a 4–1 league win on 31 August 1985, at home to Manchester City in a 4–0 win on 11 February 1986, and then in the penultimate league game of the season on 3 May 1986, when they kept their title hopes alive with a 6–1 home win over Southampton. On his final league appearance, he scored twice in a 3–1 home win over West Ham United whose own title hopes had just disappeared. However, he and his colleagues were denied title glory as Liverpool also won their final league game of the season at Chelsea. Lineker has consistently stated since retiring from football that this Everton team was the best club side he ever played in. Barcelona. After winning the Golden Boot at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, Lineker was signed by Barcelona for £2.8 million. Barcelona were being managed by former Queens Park Rangers manager Terry Venables, who had also brought in Manchester United and Wales striker Mark Hughes. Barcelona gave Lineker his first chance of European football, as Leicester had never qualified for Europe while he played for them, and Everton were denied a place in the European Cup for 1985–86 due to the ban on English clubs in European competitions following the Heysel disaster. Lineker's Golden Boot-winning performance at the World Cup generated much anticipation of success at the Camp Nou, and he scored 21 goals in 41 games during his first season, including a hat-trick in a 3–2 win over archrivals Real Madrid. He made his Barcelona debut against Racing Santander, scoring twice. Barcelona went on to win the Copa del Rey in 1988 and the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1989. Lineker played in Barcelona's shock home and away defeats to Dundee United. Barcelona manager Johan Cruyff decided to play Lineker on the right of the midfield and he was eventually no longer an automatic choice in the team. With 42 goals in 103 La Liga appearances, Lineker became the highest scoring British player in the competition's history, but was later surpassed by Gareth Bale in March 2016. Tottenham Hotspur. Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson attempted to sign Lineker to partner his ex-Barcelona teammate Mark Hughes in attack, but Lineker instead signed for Tottenham Hotspur in July 1989 for £1.1 million. Over three seasons, he scored 67 goals in 105 league games and won the FA Cup while playing for the club. He finished as top scorer in the First Division in the 1989–90 season, scoring 24 goals as Spurs finished third. He finally collected an English trophy when he won the 1991 FA Cup Final with Spurs, who beat Nottingham Forest 2–1. This was despite Lineker having a goal controversially disallowed for offside and also having a penalty saved by goalkeeper Mark Crossley. Lineker had contributed to Tottenham's run to the final. In the semi-final he scored twice in a 3–1 win over North London rivals Arsenal. He was the top division's second-highest goalscorer in 1991–92 with 28 goals from 35 games, behind Ian Wright, who scored 29 times in 42 games. Despite Lineker's personal performance, Tottenham finished this final pre-Premier League season in 15th place. His last goal in English football came on the last day of the season in a 3–1 defeat to Manchester United at Old Trafford. Nagoya Grampus Eight. In November 1991, Lineker accepted an offer of a two-year contract from J1 League club Nagoya Grampus Eight. The transfer fee paid to Tottenham Hotspur was £2 million. He officially joined Nagoya Grampus Eight after playing his final game for Spurs on 2 May 1992, when he scored the consolation goal in a 3–1 defeat by Manchester United on the last day of the season. Shortly before accepting the offer from Nagoya Grampus Eight, Tottenham had rejected an offer from ambitious Second Division club Blackburn Rovers, who had recently been taken over by steel baron Jack Walker. Having scored 9 goals in 23 appearances over two injury impacted seasons for Nagoya Grampus Eight, he announced his retirement from playing in September 1994. The English national media had previously reported that he would be returning to England to complete his playing career at Middlesbrough or Southampton. International career. Lineker was capped once by the England B national team, playing in a 2–0 home win over New Zealand's B team on 13 November 1984. He first played for the full England team against Scotland in 1984. He played five games in the 1986 World Cup and was top scorer of the tournament with six goals, winning the Golden Boot, making him the first English player to have done so. He scored the second quickest hat-trick ever at a FIFA World Cup tournament against Poland, the second English player to score a hat-trick at a World Cup, and scored two goals against Paraguay in the second round. He played most of the tournament wearing a lightweight cast on his forearm. He scored for England in the World Cup quarter-final against Argentina, but the game ended in defeat as Diego Maradona scored twice for the opposition (the first goal being the "Hand of God" handball, and the second being the "Goal of the Century"). In 1988, Lineker played in Euro 88, but failed to score as England lost all three Group games. It was later established that he had been suffering from hepatitis. In the 1990 World Cup, he scored four goals to help England reach the semi-finals. He was unwell during the tournament, and accidentally defecated in his shorts during the opening group game against the Republic of Ireland. After Andreas Brehme sent England 1–0 down in the semi-final, Lineker received a pass from Paul Parker and escaped two West German defenders on his way to scoring the equaliser, but the West Germans triumphed in the penalty shoot-out and went on to win the trophy. Later he said: "Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans win." Lineker's equaliser appears in the popular England national team anthem, "Three Lions", with the lyric "When Lineker scored". He retired from international football with eighty caps and forty-eight goals, one fewer goal than Sir Bobby Charlton's England record (which Charlton accrued over 106 caps). In what proved to be his last England match, against Sweden at Euro 92, he was substituted by England coach Graham Taylor in favour of Arsenal striker Alan Smith, ultimately denying him the chance to equal—or even better—Charlton's record. He had earlier missed a penalty that would have brought him level, in a pre-tournament friendly against Brazil. He was visibly upset at the decision, not looking at Taylor as he took the bench. He scored four goals in an England match on two occasions and is one of very few players never to have been given a yellow card or a red card in any type of game. Media career. Sports presenting. Following retirement from professional football, Lineker developed a career in the media, initially on the BBC for Radio 5 Live and as a football pundit. He appeared as a team captain on the sports game show "They Think It's All Over" from 1995 to 2003. He also presented "Grandstand" in the London studio while then-presenter Desmond Lynam was in Aintree when the Grand National was abandoned because of a bomb alert at the racecourse in 1997. In 1999, he replaced Lynam as the BBC's anchorman for football coverage, including its flagship football television programme "Match of the Day", becoming BBC Sport's highest paid presenter. Following the departure of Steve Rider from the BBC in 2005, Lineker, who is a keen recreational golfer with a handicap of four, became the new presenter for the corporation's golf coverage. Despite receiving some criticism from his peers, he continued to front the BBC's coverage of the Masters and The Open. In 2005, Lineker was sued for defamation by Australian footballer Harry Kewell over comments Lineker had made writing in his column in "The Sunday Telegraph" about Kewell's transfer from Leeds United to Liverpool. However, the jury was unable to reach a verdict. It became known during the case that the article had actually been ghost-written by a journalist at "The Sunday Telegraph" following a telephone interview with Lineker. In May 2010, Lineker resigned from his role as columnist for "The Mail on Sunday" in protest over the sting operation against Lord Triesman that reportedly jeopardised England's bid to host the 2018 World Cup. Triesman resigned as chairman of the bid and the FA on 16 May 2010 after the publication of a secret recording of a conversation between the peer and a former ministerial aide, during which he claimed that Spain and Russia were planning to bribe referees at the World Cup in South Africa. Lineker then began working as an anchor for the English language football coverage for Al Jazeera Sport, which is broadcast throughout most of the Middle East. He left the Qatar-based network in 2012. In 2013, Lineker began working for NBCSN as part of their Premier League coverage and contributing to the US version of "Match of the Day". On 9 June 2015, Lineker was unveiled as the lead presenter of BT Sport's Champions League coverage. On 13 August 2016, Lineker presented the first "Match of the Day" of the 2016–17 season wearing only boxer shorts. Believing it would simply not happen, he had promised in a tweet from December 2015 that if Leicester City won the Premier League, he would "present Match of the Day in just my undies". As of July 2022, Lineker is the highest-paid BBC presenter and has been for several years; receiving payments of £1.75–1.76 million each year between 2016 and 2020, and approximately £1.35 million in 2020-21. His pay has been criticised by Julian Knight, chair of the parliamentary Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, and Dame Esther Rantzen. The BBC's Director General, Tim Davie, stated that Lineker's pay was justified "because of the value of analysis to the viewing audience". In March 2023, Lineker was required to step back from presenting on the BBC for three days due to a controversy over his criticism of the British government's immigration policy on Twitter. Walkers commercials. Lineker has appeared in television commercials for the Leicester-based snack company Walkers. Originally signing a £200,000 deal in 1994, his first advert was 1995's "Welcome Home" (Lineker had recently returned to England having played in Japan). Walkers temporarily named their salt and vinegar crisps after Lineker, labelling them 'Salt & Lineker', in the late 1990s. In 2000, Lineker's Walkers commercials were ranked ninth in Channel 4's poll of "The 100 Greatest TV Ads". Other media appearances. Lineker participated in Prince Edward's charity television special "The Grand Knockout Tournament" in 1987. He also appeared in the 1991 play "An Evening with Gary Lineker" by Arthur Smith and Chris England, which was adapted for television in 1994. He presented a six-part TV series for the BBC in 1998 (directed by Lloyd Stanton) called "Golden Boots", with other football celebrities. It was an extensive history of the World Cup focusing on the 'Golden Boots' (top scorers). In 2006, Lineker took on an acting role as the voice of "Underground Ernie" on the BBC's children's channel, CBeebies. In December 2008, Lineker appeared on the ITV1 television programme "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" where he and English rugby union player Austin Healey won £50,000 for the Nicholls Spinal Injury Foundation. In 2009, Lineker and his wife Danielle hosted a series of the BBC's "Northern Exposure", following on from Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen from the previous year in visiting and showcasing locations throughout Northern Ireland. Lineker has made a number of cameo appearances in TV shows and movies, such as the 2002 film "Bend It Like Beckham," the 2014 BBC TV film "Marvellous", and a number of appearances in the Apple TV+ football comedy TV series "Ted Lasso". In 2013, Lineker participated in the genealogical programme "Who Do You Think You Are?" during which he discovered an ancestor who was a poacher, and another who was a legal clerk. Goalhanger Films and Podcasts. In May 2014, Lineker established his own production company Goalhanger Films Ltd. with former ITV Controller Tony Pastor. During the 2014 FIFA World Cup, Lineker presented several short videos produced by Goalhanger Films on YouTube with the title "Blahzil". In May 2015, the company produced a 60-minute-long documentary presented by Lineker titled "Gary Lineker on the Road to FA Cup Glory" for the BBC. He also operates Goalhanger Podcasts, which produces "The Rest is History", "The Rest is Politics" and his own podcast, "The Rest is Football", which he hosts with Alan Shearer and Micah Richards. Personal life. Lineker married Michelle Cockayne in 1986. In May 2006, Cockayne filed for divorce on the grounds of her husband's alleged "unreasonable behaviour", with documents submitted to the court claiming that Lineker's actions in their marriage had caused her "stress and anxiety". Lineker and she have four sons; George, Harry, Tobias and Angus. The couple subsequently stated that the situation was amicable. In November 1991, George, Lineker's eldest son, survived a rare form of leukaemia whilst he was a baby, and was treated at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. Lineker now supports children's cancer charity CLIC Sargent and has appeared in promotional clips encouraging people to give blood. Lineker has been actively involved with other cancer charities such as Leukaemia Busters, where between 1994 and 2005 Gary and Michelle were the charity's patrons. He has also been involved with the Fight for Life and Cancer Research UK charities. Lineker was made a freeman of the City of Leicester in 1995 and he has been referred to as "Leicester's favourite son". In October 2002, Lineker backed a £5 million bid to rescue his former club Leicester City, which had recently gone into administration, describing his involvement as "charity" rather than an "ego trip". He stated that he would invest a six-figure sum and that other members of his consortium would invest a similar amount. Lineker met with fans' groups to persuade them to try and raise money to rescue his former club. The club was eventually saved from liquidation. He is now honorary Vice President of Leicester City F.C. Lineker married Danielle Bux on 2 September 2009, in Ravello, Italy. On 13 January 2016, Lineker and Bux announced they were divorcing, after six years of marriage, the reason given being Gary not wanting more children. In 1985, Lineker was best man at snooker player Willie Thorne's wedding and their close friendship was the subject of the VHS production, "Best of Friends – The Official Story of Gary Lineker & Willie Thorne". In November 2017, Lineker was named in the Paradise Papers in connection with a tax avoidance scheme relating to property owned in Barbados and a company set up in the British Virgin Islands. Lineker speaks Spanish, which he learnt during his time playing for FC Barcelona, and is an advocate for the teaching of foreign languages in schools. In April 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Lineker announced that he was donating £140,000 to the British Red Cross towards research into the virus. On 28 March 2023 he won an appeal against HM Revenue and Customs over a bill that totalled £4.9 million. The authority had pursued him over taxes on income from BBC and BT Sport from 2013–14 to 2017–18 on the grounds he was an employee of both organisations at the time. A judge ruled he was a freelancer and had contracts with both broadcasters. Political views. Lineker has been noted for political views which he shares on Twitter. In December 2016, he was described by Angus Harrison of Vice News as "the British Left's Loudest Voice" for being "both staunchly liberal and resolutely unafraid of making his views known". Using a football analogy, Lineker defined his ideological position as "I make more runs to the left than the right, but never felt comfortable on the wing". After the 2017 United Kingdom general election, in which Theresa May led the Conservatives and Jeremy Corbyn led Labour, Lineker wrote "Anyone else feel politically homeless? Everything seems far right or way left. Something sensibly centrist might appeal?" Lineker endorsed a Remain vote in the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. In July 2018, he announced his support for People's Vote, a campaign group calling for a public vote on the final Brexit deal between the UK and the European Union. On 18 October 2016, Lineker tweeted a rebuttal to a statement made by MP David Davies where Davies suggested refugees entering the UK should undergo dental checks to verify their age: "The treatment by some towards these young refugees is hideously racist and utterly heartless. What's happening to our country?" This led "The Sun" to call for Lineker's sacking from "Match of the Day", accusing him of breaching BBC impartiality guidelines. In December 2018, Lineker was criticised by the BBC's cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew for expressing his political views on Twitter. Agnew said, "You are the face of BBC Sport. Please observe BBC editorial guidelines and keep your political views, whatever they are and whatever the subject, to yourself. I'd be sacked if I followed your example." A BBC spokesperson said, "Gary is not involved in any news or political output for the BBC and as such, any expression of his personal political views does not affect the BBC's impartiality." In October 2022, a complaint about a tweet from Lineker that referred to donations to the Conservative Party was upheld by the BBC, on the grounds that it breached social media use guidelines and failed to meet editorial standards of impartiality. During the 2022 World Cup, Qatari lawyer Hassan Al-Thawadi criticised Lineker for covering human rights violations in Qatar by stating that he did not talk about such issues with other host countries. In response, Lineker countered on "The News Agents" podcast that he covered issues in other host countries, and characterised the United States, which is hosting the 2026 FIFA World Cup, as an "extraordinarily racist country". His statements on the United States were criticised by Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan in January 2023, who stated that "I'm thinking their most recent one was when he [Lineker] was over in Qatar, and he did an interview… and he referenced America and there were some very derogatory questionable comments." 2023 controversy and suspension from "Match of the Day". In March 2023, Lineker criticised the British government's asylum policy via Twitter. Commenting on a video message by Home Secretary Suella Braverman about stopping migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats, he said the message was "beyond awful" and called the government's policy "an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s". The comments received condemnation from some Conservative politicians, including Braverman herself, and a spokesperson for Keir Starmer, the Labour Party leader, said comparisons with 1930s Germany "aren't always the best way" to make an argument. Lineker received support from other political figures, including Baron Dubs, Alastair Campbell, and Angela Rayner. A BBC source said the corporation was taking the matter "seriously" and expected to have a "frank conversation" with Lineker. The BBC's culture and media editor Katie Razzall wrote, "As the UK's most scrutinised media organisation in increasingly polarised times, to say Gary Lineker's recent tweets cause difficulty for the BBC is an understatement." Lineker said he stood by his comments and did not fear suspension from his BBC work. On 10 March, the BBC said Lineker would step back from his job on "Match of the Day" because it considered "his recent social media activity to be a breach of our guidelines". It added it had "decided Lineker will not present "Match of the Day" until there's an agreed and clear position on his use of social media". Lineker's BBC Sport colleagues Ian Wright, Alan Shearer, Steve Wilson, Conor McNamara, Robyn Cowen, Steven Wyeth, Alex Scott, Jason Mohammad, Mark Chapman, Jermaine Jenas, Dion Dublin and Jermain Defoe all pulled out of their respective roles in BBC programmes in the next hours in solidarity with him. As a result, the broadcaster was forced to reduce its sports-related schedules for 11 and 12 March, with "Match of the Day" going ahead without any hosts or studio presentation, thus featuring only match footage. It also affected the BBC World Service's English-language programme "Sportsworld", which was not aired on that day and was instead replaced with alternative programming. The BBC and Lineker issued coordinated statements on 13 March. Lineker's suspension was ended and the BBC announced it would initiate an independent review of its social media guidelines and how they apply to freelancers outside news. Director-General Tim Davie stated that Lineker had agreed to abide by the corporation's editorial guidelines until the review into them has been completed. Career statistics. International. Lineker earned his first cap for England in 1984 against Scotland during the 1983–84 British Home Championship. He played his last game for England in a 2–1 loss against Sweden in a Euro 1992 group stage match. He almost equalled the England goalscoring record, held at the time by Bobby Charlton, in a pre-tournament friendly against Brazil, but he missed a penalty kick, leaving him one goal short of Charlton's total, which was overtaken by Wayne Rooney in 2015. Honours. Leicester City Everton Barcelona Tottenham Hotspur Individual Fellowships. Lineker is a Visiting Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford, appointed 2020.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12601

Governor-General of Australia

The governor-general of Australia is the representative of the monarch, currently King Charles III, in Australia. The governor-general is appointed by the monarch on the recommendation of the prime minister. The governor-general has formal presidency over the Federal Executive Council and is commander-in-chief of the Australian Defence Force. The functions of the governor-general include appointing ministers, judges, and ambassadors; giving royal assent to legislation passed by parliament; issuing writs for election; and bestowing Australian honours. In general, the governor-general observes the conventions of the Westminster system and responsible government, maintaining a political neutrality, and acts only on the advice of the prime minister or other ministers or, in certain cases, parliament. The governor-general also has a ceremonial role: hosting events at either of the two official residencesGovernment House in the capital, Canberra, and Admiralty House in Sydneyand travelling throughout Australia to open conferences, attend services and commemorations, and generally provide encouragement to individuals and groups who are contributing to their communities. When travelling abroad, the governor-general is seen as the representative of Australia and its monarch. The governor-general is supported by a staff (of 80 in 2018) headed by the official secretary to the governor-general of Australia. A governor-general is not appointed for a specific term, but is generally expected to serve for five years subject to a possible short extension. Since 1 July 2019, the governor-general has been General David Hurley. From Federation in 1901 until 1965, 11 out of the 15 governors-general were British aristocrats; they included six barons, two viscounts, two earls, and one royal duke. Since then, all but one of the governors-general have been Australian-born; the exception, Sir Ninian Stephen, arrived in Australia as a teenager. Only one governor-general, Dame Quentin Bryce (2008–2014), has been a woman. Appointment. The governor-general is formally appointed by the monarch of Australia, in terms of letters patent issued by the monarch at some time during their reign and counter-signed by the then prime minister. When a new governor-general is to be appointed, the current prime minister recommends a name to the monarch, who by convention accepts that recommendation. The monarch then permits the recommendation to be publicly announced, usually several months before the end of the existing governor-general's term. During these months, the person recommended is referred to as the "governor-general-designate". After receiving their commission, the new governor-general takes an Oath of Allegiance to the monarch and an Oath of Office. These oaths are administered by the chief justice of Australia or another senior judge. Traditionally, the ceremony takes place in the Senate chamber. Tenure. The constitution does not set a term of office, so a governor-general may continue to hold office for any agreed length of time. In recent decades the typical term of office has been five years. Some early governors-general were appointed to terms of just one year (Lord Tennyson) or two years (Lord Forster; later extended). At the end of this initial term, a commission may be extended for a short time, usually to avoid conflict with an election or during political difficulties. Three governors-general have resigned their commission. The first governor-general, Lord Hopetoun, asked to be recalled to Britain in 1903 over a dispute about funding for the post. Sir John Kerr resigned in 1977, with his official reason being his decision to accept the position of Australian Ambassador to UNESCO in Paris, a post which ultimately he did not take up, but the resignation also being motivated by the 1975 constitutional controversy. In 2003, ex-Archbishop Peter Hollingworth voluntarily stood aside while controversial allegations against him were managed, and the letters patent of the office were amended to take account of this circumstance. He later stepped down over the church's handling of allegations of sexual abuse of boys, for which he apologised before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in 2016. In 1961, Lord Dunrossil became the first and, to date, only governor-general to die while holding office. A vacancy occurs on the resignation, death, or incapacity of the governor-general. A temporary vacancy occurs when the governor-general is overseas on official business representing Australia. A temporary vacancy also occurred in 2003 when Peter Hollingworth stood aside. Section 4 of the constitution allows the Monarch to appoint an administrator to carry out the role of governor-general when there is a vacancy. By convention, the longest-serving state governor holds a dormant commission, allowing an assumption of office to commence whenever a vacancy occurs. In 1975, Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam advised the Queen that Sir Colin Hannah, then Governor of Queensland, should have his dormant commission revoked for having made public and partisan anti-Whitlam government political statements, in violation of the convention that state governors and federal governors-general remain neutral and above politics. Dismissal. A governor-general may be recalled or dismissed by the monarch before their term is complete. By convention, this may only be upon advice from the prime minister, who retains responsibility for selecting an immediate replacement or letting the vacancy provisions take effect. The constitutional crisis of 1975 raised the possibility of the prime minister and the governor-general attempting to dismiss each other at the same time. According to William McMahon, Harold Holt considered having Lord Casey dismissed from the governor-generalship, and went as far as to have the necessary documents drawn up. Casey had twice called McMahon into Yarralumla to give him a "dressing down" over his poor relationship with Deputy Prime Minister John McEwen, which he believed was affecting the government. Holt believed that this was an improper use of his authority, but no further action was taken. Functions. Constitutional role. The Constitution of Australia, section 2, provides:A Governor-General appointed by the Queen shall be Her Majesty's representative in the Commonwealth, and shall have and may exercise in the Commonwealth during the Queen's pleasure, but subject to this Constitution, such powers and functions of the Queen as Her Majesty may be pleased to assign to him.Such further powers are currently set out in letters patent of 2008 from Queen Elizabeth II; these contain no substantive powers, but provide for the case of a governor-general's absence or incapacity. The constitution also provides that the governor-general is the monarch's "representative" in exercising the executive power of the Commonwealth (section 61) and as commander-in-chief of the armed forces (section 68). Australian Solicitor-General Maurice Byers stated in 1974: "The constitutional prescription is that executive power is exercisable by the governor-general although vested in the Queen. What is exercisable is original executive power: that is, the very thing vested in the Queen by section 61. And it is exercisable by the Queen's representative, not her delegate or agent." The 1988 Constitutional Commission report explained: "the governor-general is in no sense a delegate of the Queen. The independence of the office is highlighted by changes which have been made in recent years to the Royal Instruments relating to it." The changes occurred in 1984 when Queen Victoria's letters patent and instructions were revoked and replaced with new letters patent, on Prime Minister Bob Hawke's advice, who stated that this would clarify the governor-general's position under the constitution. This remains the case even when the sovereign is in the country: Solicitor-General Kenneth Bailey, prior to the first tour of Australia by its reigning monarch in 1954, explained the position by saying: the Constitution expressly vests in the Governor-General the power or duty to perform a number of the Crown's functions in the Legislature and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth... The executive power of the Commonwealth, by section 61 of the Constitution, is declared to be vested in the Queen. It is also, in the same section, declared to be "exercisable" by the Governor-General as the Queen's representative. In the face of this provision, I feel it is difficult to contend that the Queen, even though present in Australia, may exercise in person functions of executive government which are specifically assigned by the constitution to the Governor-General." As early as 1901, the authoritative commentary by Quick and Garran had noted that the governor-general of Australia was distinguished from other Empire governors-general by the fact that "[t]he principal and most important of his powers and functions, legislative as well as executive, are expressly conferred on him by the terms of the Constitution itself ... not by Royal authority, but by statutory authority". This view was also held by Senior Judge of the Supreme Court of Tasmania Andrew Inglis Clark, who, with W. Harrison Moore (a contributor to the first draft of the constitution put before the 1897 Adelaide Convention and professor of law at the University of Melbourne), postulated that the letters patent and the royal instructions issued by Queen Victoria were unnecessary "or even of doubtful legality". The monarch chose not to intervene during the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, in which Governor-General Sir John Kerr dismissed the Labor government of Gough Whitlam, on the basis that such a decision is a matter "clearly placed within the jurisdiction of the Governor-General". Through her private secretary, she wrote that she "has no part in the decisions which the Governor-General must take in accordance with the Constitution". In an address to the Sydney Institute, January 2007, in connection with that event, Sir David Smith, a retired official secretary to the governor-general of Australia who had been Kerr's official secretary in 1975, described the constitution as conferring the powers and functions of Australia's head of state on the governor-general in "his own right". He stated that the governor-general was more than a representative of the sovereign, explaining: "under section 2 of the Constitution the Governor-General is the Queen's representative and exercises certain royal prerogative powers and functions; under section 61 of the Constitution the Governor-General is the holder of a quite separate and independent office created, not by the Crown, but by the Constitution, and empowered to exercise, in his own right as Governor-General... all the powers and functions of Australia's head of state." Role in the Australian Parliament. The constitution describes the parliament of the commonwealth as consisting of the Monarch, the Senate and the House of Representatives. Section 5 states that "the Governor-General may appoint such times for holding the sessions of the Parliament [...] prorogue the Parliament [and] dissolve the House of Representatives." These provisions make it clear that the Monarch's role in the parliament is in name only and the actual responsibility belongs to the governor-general. Such decisions are usually taken on the advice of the prime minister, although that is not stated in the constitution. The governor-general has a ceremonial role in swearing in and accepting the resignations of members of Parliament. They appoint a deputy, to whom members make an oath of allegiance before they take their seats. On the day parliament opens, the governor-general makes a speech, entirely written by the government, explaining the government's proposed legislative program. The most important power is found in section 58: "When a proposed law passed by both Houses of Parliament is presented to the Governor-General for the Queen's assent, he shall declare ... that he assents in the Queen's name." The royal assent brings such laws into effect, as legislation, from the date of signing. Sections 58 to 60 allow the governor-general to withhold assent, suggest changes, refer to the Monarch or proclaim that the Monarch has annulled the legislation. A number of governors-general have reserved royal assent for particular legislation for the Monarch. Such assent has usually been given during a scheduled visit to Australia by Queen Elizabeth II. On other occasions royal assent has been given elsewhere. Examples of this have been the Flags Act (1953), the Royal Styles and Titles Acts (1953 and 1973), and the Australia Act (1986). Role in executive government. At the start of Chapter 2 on executive government, the constitution says "The executive power of the Commonwealth is vested in the Queen and is exercisable by the Governor-General as the Queen's representative". The governor-general presides over a Federal Executive Council. By convention, the prime minister is appointed to this council and advises as to which parliamentarians shall become ministers and parliamentary secretaries. In the constitution, the words "Governor-General-in-council" mean the governor-general acting with the advice of the Council. Powers exercised in council, which are not reserve powers, include: All such actions are taken on the advice of ministers. Reserve powers. In the United Kingdom, the reserve powers of the monarch (which are typically referred to as the "royal prerogative") are not explicitly stated in constitutional enactments, and are the province of convention and common law. In Australia, however, the powers are explicitly given to the governor-general in the constitution; it is their use that is the subject of convention. The reserve powers are, according to the Constitution of Australia: Those powers are generally and routinely exercised on ministerial advice, but the governor-general retains the ability to act independently in certain circumstances, as governed by convention. It is generally held that the governor-general may use powers without ministerial advice in the following situations: The use of the reserve powers may arise in the following circumstances: The above is not an exhaustive list, and new situations may arise. The most notable use of the reserve powers occurred in November 1975, in the course of the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis. On this occasion the governor-general, Sir John Kerr, dismissed the government of Gough Whitlam when the Senate withheld Supply to the government, even though Whitlam retained the confidence of the House of Representatives. Kerr determined that he had both the right and the duty to dismiss the government and commission a new government that would recommend a dissolution of the Parliament. Events surrounding the dismissal remain extremely controversial. Biosecurity emergencies. On 18 March 2020, a human biosecurity emergency was declared in Australia owing to the risks to human health posed by the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia, after the National Security Committee met the previous day. The "Biosecurity Act 2015" specifies that the governor-general may declare such an emergency exists if the health minister (Greg Hunt at the time) is satisfied that "a listed human disease is posing a severe and immediate threat, or is causing harm, to human health on a nationally significant scale". This gives the minister sweeping powers, including imposing restrictions or preventing the movement of people and goods between specified places, and evacuations. The "Biosecurity (Human Biosecurity Emergency) (Human Coronavirus with Pandemic Potential) Declaration 2020" was declared by Governor-General David Hurley under Section 475 of the Act. Ceremonial role. In addition to the formal constitutional role, the governor-general has a representative and ceremonial role, though the extent and nature of that role has depended on the expectations of the time, the individual in office at the time, the wishes of the incumbent government, and the individual's reputation in the wider community. Governors-general generally become patrons of various charitable institutions, present honours and awards, host functions for various groups of people including ambassadors to and from other countries, and travel widely throughout Australia. Sir William Deane (governor-general 1996–2001) described one of his functions as being "Chief Mourner" at prominent funerals. In "Commentaries on the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia", Garran noted that, since the Australian executive is national in nature (being dependent on the nationally elected House of Representatives, rather than the Senate), "the Governor-General, as the official head of the Executive, does not in the smallest degree represent any federal element; if he represents anything he is the image and embodiment of national unity and the outward and visible representation of the Imperial relationship of the Commonwealth". That role can become controversial, however, if the governor-general becomes unpopular with sections of the community. The public role adopted by Sir John Kerr was curtailed considerably after the constitutional crisis of 1975; Sir William Deane's public statements on political issues produced some hostility towards him; and some charities disassociated themselves from Peter Hollingworth after the issue of his management of sex abuse cases during his time as Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane became a matter of controversy. Diplomatic role. The governor-general makes state visits overseas on behalf of Australia, during which an administrator of the government is appointed. The right of governors-general to make state visits was confirmed at the 1926 Imperial Conference, as it was deemed not feasible for the sovereign to pay state visits on behalf of countries other than the United Kingdom. However, an Australian governor-general did not exercise that right until 1971, when Paul Hasluck visited New Zealand. Hasluck's successor John Kerr made state visits to eight countries, but Kerr's successor Zelman Cowen made only a single state visit – to Papua New Guinea – as he wished to concentrate on travelling within Australia. All subsequent governors-general have travelled widely while in office and made multiple state visits. Occasionally governors-general have made extended tours visiting multiple countries, notably in 2009 when Quentin Bryce visited nine African countries in 19 days. Military role. Under section 68 of the constitution, "the command in chief of the naval and military forces of the Commonwealth is vested in the Governor‑General". In practice, the associated powers over the Australian Defence Force are only exercised on the advice of the prime minister or minister for defence, on behalf of cabinet. The actual powers of the governor-general as commander-in-chief are not defined in the constitution, but rather in the "Defence Act 1903" and other legislation. They include appointing the chief of the Defence Force and authorising the deployment of troops. There is some ambiguity with regard to the role of the governor-general in declarations of war. In 1941 and 1942, the Curtin government advised the governor-general to declare war on several Axis powers, but then had King George VI make identical proclamations on Australia's behalf. No formal declarations of war have been made since World War II, although in 1973 the Whitlam government advised the governor-general to proclaim the end of Australia's involvement in Vietnam, despite the lack of an initiating proclamation. The powers of command-in-chief are vested in the governor-general rather than the "Governor-General in Council", meaning there is an element of personal discretion in their exercise. For instance, in 1970 Governor-General Paul Hasluck refused Prime Minister John Gorton's request to authorise a Pacific Islands Regiment peacekeeping mission in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea, on the grounds that cabinet had not been consulted. Gorton agreed to put the matter to his ministers, and a cabinet meeting agreed that troops should only be called out if requested by the territory's administrator; this did not occur. Defence Minister Malcolm Fraser, who opposed the call out, was responsible for informing Hasluck of the prime minister's lack of consultation. The incident contributed to Fraser's resignation from cabinet in 1971 and Gorton's subsequent loss of the prime ministership. Community role. The governor-general is generally invited to become patron of various charitable and service organisations. Historically the governor-general has also served as Chief Scout of Australia. The chief scout is nominated by the Scouting Association's National Executive Committee and is invited by the president of the Scout Association to accept the appointment. Bill Hayden declined the office on the grounds of his atheism, which was incompatible with the Scout Promise. He did however serve as the association's patron during his term of office. Salary and privileges. Residence. By convention, the governor-general and any family occupy an official residence in Canberra, Government House (commonly referred to as Yarralumla). Salary. The salary of the governor-general was initially set by the constitution, which fixed an annual amount of A£10,000 until the parliament decided otherwise. The constitution also provides that the salary of the governor-general cannot be "altered" during his or her term of office. Under the "Governor-General Act 1974", each new commission has resulted in a pay increase. Today, the law ensures the salary is higher than that for the Chief Justice of the High Court, over a five-year period. The annual salary during Michael Jeffery's term was $365,000. Quentin Bryce's salary was $394,000. The current salary is $425,000 and there is a generous pension. Until 2001, Governors-General did not pay income tax on their salary; this was changed after Elizabeth II agreed to pay tax. Symbols. The official cars of the governor-general fly the flag of the governor-general of Australia and display St. Edward's Crown instead of number plates. A similar arrangement is used for the governors of the six states. When the late Queen Elizabeth II was in Australia, the Queen's Personal Australian Flag was flown on the car in which she was travelling. Transport. The governor-general travels in a Rolls-Royce Phantom VI limousine for ceremonial occasions. However, for official business, the current choice of car is an armoured BMW 7 Series. Official dress. At one time, governors-general wore the traditional court uniform, consisting of a dark navy wool double-breasted coatee with silver oak leaf and fern embroidery on the collar and cuffs trimmed with silver buttons embossed with the Royal Arms and with bullion edged epaulettes on the shoulders, dark navy trousers with a wide band of silver oak-leaf braid down the outside seam, silver sword belt with ceremonial sword, bicorne cocked hat with plume of ostrich feathers, black patent leather Wellington boots with spurs, etc., that is worn on ceremonial occasions. There is also a tropical version made of white tropical wool cut in a typical military fashion worn with a plumed helmet. However, that custom fell into disuse during the tenure of Sir Paul Hasluck. The governor-general now wears an ordinary lounge suit if a man or day dress if a woman. Titles and honours. Governors-general have during their tenure the style "His/Her Excellency the Honourable" and their spouses have the style "His/Her Excellency". Since May 2013, the style used by a former governor-general is "the Honourable"; it was at the same time retrospectively granted for life to all previous holders of the office. From the creation of the Order of Australia in 1975, the governor-general was, "ex officio", Chancellor and Principal Companion of the order, and therefore became entitled to the post-nominal AC. In 1976, the letters patent for the order were amended to introduce the rank of Knight and Dame to the order, and from that time the governor-general became, ex officio, the Chancellor and Principal Knight of the order. In 1986 the letters patent were amended again, and governors-general appointed from that time were again, ex officio, entitled to the post-nominal AC (although if they already held a knighthood in the order that superior rank was retained). Until 1989, all governors-general were members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom and thus held the additional style "The Right Honourable" for life. The same individuals were also usually either peers, knights, or both (the only Australian peer to be appointed as governor-general was the Lord Casey; and Sir William McKell was knighted only in 1951, some years into his term, but he was entitled to the style "The Honourable" during his tenure as premier of New South Wales, an office he held until almost immediately before his appointment). In 1989, Bill Hayden, a republican, declined appointment to the British Privy Council and any imperial honours. From that time until 2014, governors-general did not receive automatic titles or honours, other than the post-nominal AC by virtue of being Chancellor and Principal Companion of the Order of Australia. Dame Quentin Bryce was the first governor-general to have had no prior title or pre-nominal style. She was in office when, on 19 March 2014, Elizabeth II, acting on the advice of Prime Minister Tony Abbott, amended the letters patent of the Order of Australia to provide, inter alia, that the governor-general would be, ex officio, Principal Knight or Principal Dame of the order. Until 2015, the honour continued after the retirement from office of the governor-general. Formerly, all governors-general automatically became a knight upon being sworn in. Spouses of governors-general have no official duties but carry out the role of a vice-regal consort. They are entitled to the courtesy style "Her Excellency" or "His Excellency" during the office-holder's term of office. Most spouses of governors-general have been content to be quietly supportive. Some, however, have been notable in their own right, such as Dame Alexandra Hasluck, Lady Casey and Michael Bryce. History. The office of "governor-general" was previously used in Australia in the mid-19th century. Sir Charles FitzRoy (Governor of New South Wales from 1846–1855) and Sir William Denison (Governor of New South Wales from 1855–1861) also carried the additional title of Governor-General because their jurisdiction extended to other colonies in Australia. The office of governor-general for the Commonwealth of Australia was conceived during the debates and conventions leading up to federation. The first Governor-General, the Earl of Hopetoun, was a previous governor of Victoria. He was appointed in July 1900, returning to Australia shortly before the inauguration of the Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901. After the initial confusion of the Hopetoun Blunder, he appointed the first prime minister of Australia, Edmund Barton, to a caretaker government, with the inaugural 1901 federal election not occurring until March. Early governors-general were British and were appointed by the queen or king on the recommendation of the Colonial Office. The Australian Government was merely asked, as a matter of courtesy, whether they approved of the choice or not. Governors-general were expected to exercise a supervisory role over the Australian Government in the manner of a colonial governor. In a very real sense, they represented the British Government. They had the right to "reserve" legislation passed by the Parliament of Australia: in effect, to ask the Colonial Office in London for an opinion before giving the royal assent. They exercised this power several times. The monarch, acting upon advice of the British Government, could also disallow any Australian legislation up to a year after the governor-general had given it the assent; although this power has never been used. These powers remain in section 59 of the Constitution of Australia, but today are regarded as dead letters. The early governors-general frequently sought advice on the exercise of their powers from judges of the High Court of Australia, Sir Samuel Griffith and Sir Edmund Barton. In 1919, Prime Minister Billy Hughes sent a memorandum to the Colonial Office in which he requested "a real and effective voice in the selection of the King's representative". He further proposed that the Dominions be able to nominate their own candidates and that "the field of selection should not exclude citizens of the Dominion itself". The memorandum met with strong opposition within the Colonial Office and was dismissed by Lord Milner, the Colonial Secretary; no response was given. The following year, as Ronald Munro Ferguson's term was about to expire, Hughes cabled the Colonial Office and asked that the appointment be made in accordance with the memorandum. To mollify Hughes, Milner offered him a choice between three candidates. After consulting his cabinet he chose Henry Forster, 1st Baron Forster. In 1925, under Prime Minister Stanley Bruce, the same practice was followed for the appointment of Forster's successor Lord Stonehaven, with the Australian government publicly stating that his name "had been submitted, with others, to the Commonwealth ministry, who had selected him". During the 1920s, the importance of the position declined. As a result of decisions made at the 1926 Imperial Conference, the governor-general ceased to represent the British Government diplomatically, and the British right of supervision over Australian affairs was abolished. As the Balfour Declaration of 1926, later implemented as the Statute of Westminster 1931, put it:It is desirable formally to place on record a definition of the position held by the Governor-General as His Majesty's representative in the Dominions. That position, though now generally well recognised, undoubtedly represents a development from an earlier stage when the Governor-General was appointed solely on the advice of His Majesty's Ministers in London and acted also as their representative. In our opinion it is an essential consequence of the equality of status existing among the members of the British Commonwealth of Nations that the Governor-General of a Dominion is the representative of the Crown, holding in all essential respects the same position in relation to the administration of public affairs in the Dominion as is held by His Majesty the King in Great Britain, and that he is not the representative or agent of His Majesty's Government in Great Britain or of any Department of that Government. However, it remained unclear just whose prerogative it now became to decide who new governors-general would be. In 1930, King George V and the Australian Prime Minister James Scullin discussed the appointment of a new Governor-General to replace Lord Stonehaven, whose term was coming to an end. The King maintained that it was now his sole prerogative to choose a governor-general, and he wanted Field-Marshal Sir William Birdwood for the Australian post. Scullin recommended the Australian jurist Sir Isaac Isaacs, and he insisted that George V act on the advice of his Australian prime minister in this matter. Scullin was partially influenced by the precedent set by the Government of the Irish Free State, which always insisted upon having an Irishman as the governor-general of the Irish Free State. Scullin's proposed appointment of Sir Isaac Isaacs was fiercely opposed by the British government. This was not because of any lack of regard for Isaacs personally, but because the British government considered that the choice of Governors-General was, since the 1926 Imperial Conference, a matter for the monarch's decision alone. (However, it became very clear in a conversation between Scullin and King George V's private secretary, Lord Stamfordham, on 11 November 1930, that this was merely the official reason for the objection, with the real reason being that an Australian, no matter how highly regarded personally, was not considered appropriate to be a governor-general.) Scullin was equally insistent that the monarch must act on the relevant prime minister's direct advice (the practice until 1926 was that Dominion prime ministers advised the monarch indirectly, through the British government, which effectively had a veto over any proposal it did not agree with). Scullin cited the precedents of the prime minister of South Africa, J. B. M. Hertzog, who had recently insisted on his choice of the Earl of Clarendon as governor-general of that country, and the selection of an Irishman as governor-general of the Irish Free State. Both of these appointments had been agreed to despite British government objections. Despite these precedents, George V remained reluctant to accept Scullin's recommendation of Isaacs and asked him to consider Field Marshal Sir William Birdwood. However, Scullin stood firm, saying he would be prepared to fight a general election on the issue of whether an Australian should be prevented from becoming governor-general because he was Australian. On 29 November, the King agreed to Isaacs's appointment, but made it clear that he did so only because he felt he had no option. (Lord Stamfordham had complained that Scullin had "put a gun to the King's head".) The usual wording of official announcements of this nature read "The King has been pleased to appoint ...", but on this occasion the announcement said merely "The King has appointed ...", and his private secretary (Lord Stamfordham) asked the Australian solicitor-general, Sir Robert Garran, to make sure that Scullin was aware of the exact wording. The opposition Nationalist Party of Australia denounced the appointment as "practically republican", but Scullin had set a precedent. The convention gradually became established throughout the Commonwealth that the Governor-General is a citizen of the country concerned, and is appointed on the advice of the government of that country. At the same time as the appointment of Isaacs as the first Australian-born governor-general, a separate role of British Representative in Australia (as the representative of the British government) was established, with Ernest Crutchley the first appointee. 1935 saw the appointment of the first British high commissioner to Australia, Geoffrey Whiskard (in office 1936–1941). This right not only to advise the monarch directly, but also to expect that advice to be accepted, was soon taken up by all the other Dominion prime ministers. This, among other things, led to the Statute of Westminster 1931 and to the formal separation of the Crowns of the Dominions. After Scullin's defeat in 1931, non-Labor governments continued to recommend British people for appointment as governor-general, but such appointments remained solely a matter between the Australian government and the monarch. In 1947, Labor appointed a second Australian Governor-General, William McKell, who was in office as the Labor premier of New South Wales. The then leader of the Opposition, Robert Menzies, called McKell's appointment "shocking and humiliating". In 1965 the Menzies conservative government appointed an Australian, Lord Casey, and thereafter only Australians have held the position. In 2007, media outlets reported that Prince William might become governor-general of Australia. Both the prime minister, John Howard, and Clarence House repudiated the suggestion. Now, the King of Australia is generally bound by constitutional convention to accept the advice of the Australian prime minister and state premiers about Australian and state constitutional matters, respectively. Backgrounds of governors-general. All the governors-general until 1965 were British-born, except for Australian-born Sir Isaac Isaacs (1931–1936) and Sir William McKell (1947–1953). There have been only Australian occupants since then, although Sir Ninian Stephen (1982–1989) had been born in Britain. Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, was a senior member of the royal family. Dame Quentin Bryce (2008–2014) was the first woman to be appointed to the office. Sir Isaac Isaacs and Sir Zelman Cowen were Jewish; Bill Hayden was an avowed atheist during his term and he made an affirmation rather than swear an oath at the beginning of his commission; the remaining Governors-General have been at least nominally Christian. Various governors-general had previously served as governors of an Australian state or colony: Lord Hopetoun (Victoria 1889–1895); Lord Tennyson (South Australia 1899–1902); Lord Gowrie (South Australia 1928–34; and New South Wales 1935–1936); Major General Michael Jeffery (Western Australia 1993–2000); Dame Quentin Bryce (Queensland 2003–2008); General David Hurley (New South Wales 2014–2019). Sir Ronald Munro Ferguson had been offered the governorship of South Australia in 1895 and of Victoria in 1910, but refused both appointments. Lord Northcote was Governor of Bombay. Lord Casey was Governor of Bengal in between his periods of service to the Australian Parliament. Former leading politicians and members of the judiciary have figured prominently. Lord Dudley was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1902–1905). Lord Stonehaven (as John Baird) was Minister for Transport in the Cabinets of Bonar Law and Stanley Baldwin; and after his return to Britain he became Chairman of the UK Conservative Party. Sir Isaac Isaacs was successively Commonwealth Attorney-General, a High Court judge, and Chief Justice. Sir William McKell was Premier of New South Wales. Lord Dunrossil (as William Morrison) was Speaker of the UK House of Commons. Lord De L'Isle was Secretary of State for Air in Winston Churchill's cabinet from 1951 to 1955. More recent governors-general in this category include Lord Casey, Sir Paul Hasluck, Sir John Kerr, Sir Ninian Stephen, Bill Hayden and Sir William Deane. Of the eleven Australians appointed governor-general since 1965, Lord Casey, Sir Paul Hasluck and Bill Hayden were former federal parliamentarians; Sir John Kerr was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New South Wales; Sir Ninian Stephen and Sir William Deane were appointed from the bench of the High Court; Sir Zelman Cowen was a vice-chancellor of the University of Queensland and constitutional lawyer; Peter Hollingworth was the Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane; and Major-General Michael Jeffery was a retired military officer and former Governor of Western Australia. Quentin Bryce's appointment was announced during her term as Governor of Queensland; she had previously been the Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner. General David Hurley was a retired Chief of Defence Force and former Governor of New South Wales. Significant post-retirement activities of earlier Governors-General have included: Lord Tennyson was appointed Deputy Governor of the Isle of Wight; Sir Ronald Munro Ferguson (by now Lord Novar) became Secretary of State for Scotland; and Lord Gowrie became Chairman of the Marylebone Cricket Club (Lord Forster had also held this post, before his appointment as governor-general).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13007

Geelong Football Club

The Geelong Football Club, nicknamed the Cats, is a professional Australian rules football club based in Geelong, Victoria, Australia. The club competes in the Australian Football League (AFL), the sport's premier competition, and are the 2022 reigning premiers. The club formed in 1859, making it the second-oldest club in the AFL, after Melbourne, and one of the oldest football clubs in the world. In the 1860s, Geelong participated in a series of Challenge Cup competitions, and was a foundation member of both the Victorian Football Association (VFA) in 1877 and the Victorian Football League (VFL) in 1897, now the national AFL. The club won the Western District Challenge Cup in 1875, a then-record seven VFA premierships between 1878 and 1886, and six VFL premierships by 1963, after which it experienced a 44-year waiting period until it won its next premiership, a Grand Final-record 119-point victory in 2007. Geelong won a further three premierships in 2009, 2011 and 2022. Geelong play most of their home games at Kardinia Park (known for sponsorship reasons as GMHBA Stadium) and play the remainder at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Geelong's traditional guernsey colours are white with navy blue hoops. The club's nickname was first used in 1923 after a run of losses prompted a local cartoonist to suggest that the club needed a black cat to bring it good luck. Geelong also field teams in other competitions; a reserves men's team in the Victorian Football League (VFL), a senior women's team in the AFL Women's (AFLW) and a reserves women's team in the VFL Women's (VFLW) competitions. The club's official team song and anthem is "We Are Geelong". History. The club was founded in 1859 in the city of Geelong, Australia, and is the second oldest AFL club. It is believed to be the fourth oldest football club in Australia and one of the oldest in the world and one of the most successful. Initially playing under its own rules, some of which, notably, were permanently introduced into Australian Football, it adopted the Laws of Australian Football in the early 1860s after a series of compromises with the Melbourne Football Club. Geelong went on to play for most of its existence in the premier competitions, the first competition, the Caledonian Society Cup, a foundation club of both the Victorian Football Association (VFA) in 1877 and the Victorian Football League (VFL) in 1897., VFL and continues in the elite Australian Football League (AFL). The Cats have been the VFL/AFL premiers ten times, with four in the AFL era (since 1990) in 2007, 2009, 2011, and most recently, 2022, to be the most successful club over that period (sharing that title with Hawthorn). They have also won ten McClelland Trophies, the most of any AFL/VFL club. Many of the club's official records before 1920 have disappeared. Club identity and culture. Guernseys. Geelong's traditional navy blue and white hooped guernsey has been worn since the club's inception in the mid-1800s. The design is said to represent the white seagulls and blue water of Corio Bay. The team has worn various away guernseys since 1998, all featuring the club's logo and traditional colours. Nickname. Geelong has been nicknamed the 'Cats' since 1923, when the "Herald" sporting local cartoonist, "Wells" (Samuel Garnet Wells), suggested that adopting a black cat as a mascot might bring a football club good luck in his "Herald" cartoon of 6 July 1923. Song: "We Are Geelong". "We Are Geelong" is the song sung after a game won by the Geelong Football Club. It is sung to the tune of "Toreador" from "Carmen". The lyrics were written by former premiership player John Watts. Only the first verse is used at matches and by the team after a victory. The song currently used by the club was recorded by the Fable Singers in April 1972. Stadium and training facilities. Geelong's administrative headquarters is its home stadium, GMHBA Stadium or also known as Kardinia Park. The club trains here during the season, however it also trains at its alternate training venue, the Deakin University Elite Sports Precinct. The latter features an MCG-sized oval and is used often by the club in the pre-season, when Kardinia Park is being used for other events. Rivalries. Hawthorn. The rivalry between Hawthorn and Geelong is defined by two Grand Finals: those of 1989 and 2008. In the 1989 Grand Final, Geelong played the man, resulting in major injuries for several Hawks players, Mark Yeates knocking out Dermott Brereton at the opening bounce; Hawthorn controlled the game, leading by approximately 40 points for most of the match; in the last quarter, Geelong almost managed to come from behind to win, but fell short by six points. In the 2008 Grand Final, Geelong was the heavily backed favourite and had lost only one match for the season, but lost by 26 points; Geelong then won its next eleven matches against Hawthorn over the following five years, under a curse, which was dubbed the "Kennett curse" which was attributed to disrespectful comments made by Hawthorn president Jeff Kennett following the 2008 Grand Final. It was later revealed that after the 2008 grand final, Paul Chapman initiated a pact between other Geelong players to never lose to Hawthorn again. The curse was broken in a preliminary final in 2013, after Paul Chapman played his final match for Geelong the previous week. Hawthorn went on to win the next three premierships. In 2016 Geelong again defeated Hawthorn in the qualifying final. In twenty matches between the two sides between 2008 and 2017, twelve were decided by less than ten points, with Geelong victorious in eleven of those twelve matches. Collingwood. In 1925, Geelong won their first flag over Collingwood. In 1930, Collingwood defeated Geelong in the grand final making it four flags in-a-row for the Pies. Geelong would later deny Collingwood three successive premierships in 1937, winning a famous grand final by 32 points. The two sides played against each other in 6 finals between 1951 and 1955, including the 1952 Grand Final when Geelong easily beat Collingwood by 46 points. In 1953, Collingwood ended Geelong's record 23-game winning streak in the home and away season, and later defeated them by 12 points in the grand final, denying the Cats a third successive premiership. Since 2007, the clubs have again both been at the top of the ladder and have met regularly in finals. Geelong won a memorable preliminary final by five points on their way to their first flag in 44 years. In 2008, Collingwood inflicted Geelong's only home-and-away loss, by a massive 86 points, but the teams did not meet in the finals. They would meet in preliminary finals in 2009 and 2010, each winning one "en route" to a premiership. They finally met again in a Grand Final in 2011, which Geelong won by 38 points; Geelong inflicted Collingwood's only three losses for the 2011 season. Corporate. Sponsorship. At 98 years as of 2023, Geelong's sponsorship with the Ford Motor Company is the longest active sports sponsorship of any sports team in the world, with continuous sponsorship dating back to 1925, a record recognised by Guinness. Reserves team. The Geelong reserves (also known as the Bendigo Bank Cats for sponsorship reasons) are the reserves side of the club, playing in the Victorian Football League. History. Geelong's reserves side began competing in the VFL reserves, later known as the AFL reserves, in 1922. The team won thirteen premierships during that time (1923, 1924, 1930, 1937, 1938, 1948, 1960, 1963, 1964, 1975, 1980, 1981 and 1982), the most of any club. Since the demise of the AFL reserves competition, the Geelong reserves have competed in the Victorian Football League. Unlike all other Victorian AFL clubs, Geelong has never operated in a reserves affiliation with an existing VFL club, having instead operated its stand-alone reserves team continuously. The team is composed of both reserves players from the club's primary and rookie AFL lists, and a separately maintained list of players eligible only for VFL matches. Home games are played at GMHBA Stadium, with some played as curtain-raisers to senior AFL matches. The side is also known as the Bendigo Bank Cats, referring to the club's commercial partnership with Bendigo Bank. Women's teams. In 2017, following the inaugural AFL Women's (AFLW) season, Geelong was among eight clubs that applied for licenses to enter the competition from 2019 onwards. In September 2017, the club was announced as one of two clubs, along with , to receive a license to join the competition in 2019. The club has also had a team in the second-tier VFL Women's league since 2017. Activism. Same Sex Marriage. During the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey, Geelong supported the Yes vote. Voice to Parliament. Geelong is a supporter of the Voice to Parliament.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13075

Gosford

Gosford is a waterfront city on the northern extremity of Brisbane Water in the heart of the Central Coast in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Gosford is the commercial hub and gateway of the Central Coast that is known for boating and scenic views along the shore of Brisbane Water and the surrounding valleys. It is situated north of Sydney and south of Brisbane as well as south of Newcastle. Gosford is located in the local government area of the Central Coast Council. Gosford, locally nicknamed Gossie, is located in the northern eastern part of the Sydney Basin in the Darkinjung Country, while the Gosford City Centre is surrounded by valleys and facing towards Brisbane Water in the south, which extends towards the mouth of Brisbane Water at Ettalong Beach and connecting to Broken Bay, which is adjacent to the Pacific Ocean. The regional city is the administrative centre and central business district of the Central Coast region and is the third largest urban area in New South Wales after Sydney and Newcastle. Gosford has been earmarked as a vital CBD spine under the NSW Metropolitan Strategy after the Central Coast Council was formed in 2016 from the Gosford City and Wyong Shire council merger. The population of the Gosford area was 169,053 in 2016. History. Until white settlement, the area around Gosford was inhabited by the Guringai peoples, who were principally coastal-dwellers, and the Darkinjung people that inhabited the hinterland. Along with the other land around the Hawkesbury River estuary, the Brisbane Water district was explored during the early stages of the settlement of New South Wales. Gosford itself was explored by State Governor Arthur Phillip between 1788 and 1789. The area was difficult to access and settlement began around 1823. By the late 19th century the agriculture in the region was diversifying, with market gardens and citrus orchards occupying the rich soil left after the timber harvest. As late as 1850, the road between Hawkesbury (near Pittwater) and Brisbane Water was a cart wheel track. Typical of early Colonial settlement, convicts lived and worked in the Gosford area. In 1825, Gosford's population reached 100, of whom 50% were convicts. East Gosford was the first centre of settlement. Gosford was named in 1839 after Archibald Acheson, 2nd Earl of Gosford – a friend of the then Governor of New South Wales George Gipps. Acheson's title derives its name from Gosford, a townland (sub-division) of Markethill in County Armagh in Northern Ireland. In 1887, the Main Northern railway line to Sydney was completed, requiring a bridge over the Hawkesbury River and a tunnel through the sandstone ridge west of Woy Woy. The introduction of this transport link and then the Pacific Highway in 1930 accelerated the development of the region. Gosford became a town in 1885 and was declared a municipality in 1886. Mann Street, the spine of the Gosford CBD has been the subject of much debate, with urban planners having ambitions to make Gosford a small smart regional city with various plans for a performing arts center, greater choice in cafes and restaurants, new library, high speed rail linkage to Sydney and Newcastle, better pedestrian access from the Gosford Hospital, education and research precinct over the railway lines to Mann Street and a new Central Coast University promised at State and Federal elections. Availability of affordable car parking around Gosford railway station is an ongoing concern for rail commuters and visitors to Gosford CBD. Demographics. At the , there were 3,499 people in Gosford. 59.6% of people were born in Australia. The next most common countries of birth were India 4.5%, and England 2.9%. 65.2% of people spoke only English at home. Other languages spoken at home included Mandarin at 3.7%. The most common responses for religion were No Religion 33.9% and Catholic 18.2%. The Gosford Statistical Area, which incorporates the whole of Gosford's city and suburbs, includes Avoca Beach, Erina, Ettalong Beach, Kariong, Kincumber, Narara, Terrigal, Woy Woy, and Wyoming, and at the 2021 census had a population of 178,427. Geography. Climate. Gosford has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification: Cfa) with warm summers and mild winters. In summer, temperatures average about 27–28 °C in the day with high humidity and about 17–18 °C at night. Winters are mild with cool overnight temperatures and mild to occasionally warm daytime temperatures with lower humidity. Records range from a maximum of on 18 January 2013, to a low of on 16 July 1970. Average rainfall is 1333 mm, much of which falls in the late summer and autumn. Rainfall is less common in late winter and early spring because of the foehn effect, as the city is located on the leeward side of the Great Dividing Range. Central business district. Gosford proper is located in a valley with President's Hill on the city's western border, Rumbalara Reserve on its eastern border, and Brisbane Water to the city's south. Mann Street, Gosford's main street and part of the Pacific Highway, runs north-south and contains the frontage for much of the commercial district. In the centre of Gosford is a shopping and community precinct, including Kibble Park, William Street Mall, Gosford City Library, the Imperial Shopping Centre and a full range of shops, cafes, banks and services. A renewed period of optimism has followed demolition of several derelict buildings and several infrastructure investment projects including the full fibre optic telecommunications rollout of the National Broadband Network in 2012 in the city's CBD as well as the so-called Kibbleplex project, announced in 2013 that plans to house the new regional library, tertiary teaching rooms and associated organisations. Economy and infrastructure. Gosford is situated along an identified business growth corridor between Erina, the West Gosford light industrial zone and Somersby. Connectivity of main roads and rail travel times between Sydney, the Central Coast and the Hunter region are key issues for corporate business relocation to the region. Aged and personal care and retail are major employers in Gosford. As an entertainment hub, Mann Street enjoys relatively good public transport links and is one of the Central Coast's most popular spots for pubs and clubs and in close proximity to cultural and sporting events. Yacht and other boat building has been undertaken by East Coast Yachts since 1964 in West Gosford. Facilities. Gosford is home to: Media. Newspapers. Express Advocate: A News Corp Australia publication suburban style newspaper in the "News Local Group" Gosford Community News has been published fortnightly by Ducks Crossing Publications since 2010. Commercial radio networks. Radio stations available in Gosford include: Transport. Bus services in Gosford are operated by Busways and Red Bus Services. The Central Coast Highway cuts through Gosford's waterfront area, while its predecessor the, Pacific Highway, takes on several names through the CBD itself. Mann Street contains the main public transport links for Gosford, including Gosford railway station, with NSW TrainLink services twice an hour to Sydney Central and Newcastle Interchange. Sport. Gosford formerly had a professional team in the National Rugby League from 2000 until 2002, the Northern Eagles. The club, formed as a merger between the previously Gosford-bound North Sydney Bears and the Manly Warringah Sea Eagles, played its allocation of Gosford home matches at the purpose-built Central Coast Stadium. The club licence however reverted back to Manly in 2003 and the club was dissolved. The Central Coast Mariners professional soccer team was formed in 2005 to participate in the A-League. The club has won two titles to date. Locally, Gosford is the headquarters of the Central Coast Division Rugby League, which owns the Central Coast League Club in downtown Gosford. The suburb of Gosford has one current club, the St. Edwards Bears, and one junior club, the Gosford Kariong Storm. The Storm were initially a senior club as well, formed from the merger of the Gosford Townies/Giants and the nearby Kariong Kookaburras. The Central Coast Rugby Union features eight first grade clubs and is one of the strongest local rugby union competitions in the state. The city also has local AFL and cricket clubs as well as basketball and Netball teams.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13459

H. G. Wells

Herbert George Wells (21 September 186613 August 1946) was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories. His non-fiction output included works of social commentary, politics, history, popular science, satire, biography, and autobiography. Wells' science fiction novels are so well regarded that he has been called the "father of science fiction". In addition to his fame as a writer, he was prominent in his lifetime as a forward-looking, even prophetic social critic who devoted his literary talents to the development of a progressive vision on a global scale. As a futurist, he wrote a number of utopian works and foresaw the advent of aircraft, tanks, space travel, nuclear weapons, satellite television and something resembling the World Wide Web. His science fiction imagined time travel, alien invasion, invisibility and biological engineering before these subjects were common in the genre. Brian Aldiss referred to Wells as the "Shakespeare of science fiction", while Charles Fort called him a "wild talent". Wells rendered his works convincing by instilling commonplace detail alongside a single extraordinary assumption per workdubbed "Wells's law"leading Joseph Conrad to hail him in 1898 with "O Realist of the Fantastic!". His most notable science fiction works include "The Time Machine" (1895), which was his first novel, "The Island of Doctor Moreau" (1896), "The Invisible Man" (1897), "The War of the Worlds" (1898), the military science fiction "The War in the Air" (1907), and the dystopian "When the Sleeper Wakes" (1910). Novels of social realism such as "Kipps" (1905) and "The History of Mr Polly" (1910), which describe lower-middle-class English life, led to the suggestion that he was a worthy successor to Charles Dickens, but Wells described a range of social strata and even attempted, in "Tono-Bungay" (1909), a diagnosis of English society as a whole. Wells was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times. Wells's earliest specialised training was in biology, and his thinking on ethical matters took place in a Darwinian context. He was also an outspoken socialist from a young age, often (but not always, as at the beginning of the First World War) sympathising with pacifist views. In his later years, he wrote less fiction and more works expounding his political and social views, sometimes giving his profession as that of journalist. Wells was a diabetic and co-founded the charity The Diabetic Association (Diabetes UK) in 1934. Life. Early life. Herbert George Wells was born at Atlas House, 162 High Street in Bromley, Kent, on 21 September 1866. Called "Bertie" by his family, he was the fourth and last child of Joseph Wells, a former domestic gardener, and at the time a shopkeeper and professional cricketer and Sarah Neal, a former domestic servant. An inheritance had allowed the family to acquire a shop in which they sold china and sporting goods, although it failed to prosper: the stock was old and worn out, and the location was poor. Joseph Wells managed to earn a meagre income, but little of it came from the shop and he received an unsteady amount of money from playing professional cricket for the Kent county team. A defining incident of young Wells's life was an accident in 1874 that left him bedridden with a broken leg. To pass the time he began to read books from the local library, brought to him by his father. He soon became devoted to the other worlds and lives to which books gave him access; they also stimulated his desire to write. Later that year he entered Thomas Morley's Commercial Academy, a private school founded in 1849, following the bankruptcy of Morley's earlier school. The teaching was erratic, the curriculum mostly focused, Wells later said, on producing copperplate handwriting and doing the sort of sums useful to tradesmen. Wells continued at Morley's Academy until 1880. In 1877, his father, Joseph Wells, fractured his thigh. The accident effectively put an end to Joseph's career as a cricketer, and his subsequent earnings as a shopkeeper were not enough to compensate for the loss of the primary source of family income. No longer able to support themselves financially, the family instead sought to place their sons as apprentices in various occupations. From 1880 to 1883, Wells had an unhappy apprenticeship as a draper at Hide's Drapery Emporium in Southsea. His experiences at Hide's, where he worked a thirteen-hour day and slept in a dormitory with other apprentices, later inspired his novels "The Wheels of Chance", "The History of Mr Polly", and "Kipps", which portray the life of a draper's apprentice as well as providing a critique of society's distribution of wealth. Wells's parents had a turbulent marriage, owing primarily to his mother's being a Protestant and his father's being a freethinker. When his mother returned to work as a lady's maid (at Uppark, a country house in Sussex), one of the conditions of work was that she would not be permitted to have living space for her husband and children. Thereafter, she and Joseph lived separate lives, though they never divorced and remained faithful to each other. As a consequence, Herbert's personal troubles increased as he subsequently failed as a draper and also, later, as a chemist's assistant. However, Uppark had a magnificent library in which he immersed himself, reading many classic works, including Plato's "Republic", Thomas More's "Utopia", and the works of Daniel Defoe. When he became the first doyen of science fiction as a distinct genre of fiction, Wells referenced Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" in relation to his works, writing, "they belong to a class of writing which includes the story of "Frankenstein"." Teacher. In October 1879, Wells's mother arranged through a distant relative, Arthur Williams, for him to join the National School at Wookey in Somerset as a pupil–teacher, a senior pupil who acted as a teacher of younger children. In December that year, however, Williams was dismissed for irregularities in his qualifications and Wells was returned to Uppark. After a short apprenticeship at a chemist in nearby Midhurst and an even shorter stay as a boarder at Midhurst Grammar School, he signed his apprenticeship papers at Hyde's. In 1883, Wells persuaded his parents to release him from the apprenticeship, taking an opportunity offered by Midhurst Grammar School again to become a pupil–teacher; his proficiency in Latin and science during his earlier short stay had been remembered. The years he spent in Southsea had been the most miserable of his life to that point, but his good fortune in securing a position at Midhurst Grammar School meant that Wells could continue his self-education in earnest. The following year, Wells won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science (later the Royal College of Science in South Kensington, which became part of Imperial College London) in London, studying biology under Thomas Henry Huxley. As an alumnus, he later helped to set up the Royal College of Science Association, of which he became the first president in 1909. Wells studied in his new school until 1887, with a weekly allowance of 21 shillings (a guinea) thanks to his scholarship. This ought to have been a comfortable sum of money (at the time many working class families had "round about a pound a week" as their entire household income), yet in his "Experiment in Autobiography" Wells speaks of constantly being hungry, and indeed photographs of him at the time show a youth who is very thin and malnourished. He soon entered the Debating Society of the school. These years mark the beginning of his interest in a possible reformation of society. At first approaching the subject through Plato's "Republic", he soon turned to contemporary ideas of socialism as expressed by the recently formed Fabian Society and free lectures delivered at Kelmscott House, the home of William Morris. He was also among the founders of "The Science School Journal", a school magazine that allowed him to express his views on literature and society, as well as trying his hand at fiction; a precursor to his novel "The Time Machine" was published in the journal under the title "The Chronic Argonauts". The school year 1886–87 was the last year of his studies. During 1888, Wells stayed in Stoke-on-Trent, living in Basford. The unique environment of The Potteries was certainly an inspiration. He wrote in a letter to a friend from the area that "the district made an immense impression on me." The inspiration for some of his descriptions in "The War of the Worlds" is thought to have come from his short time spent here, seeing the iron foundry furnaces burn over the city, shooting huge red light into the skies. His stay in The Potteries also resulted in the macabre short story "The Cone" (1895, contemporaneous with his famous "The Time Machine"), set in the north of the city. After teaching for some time, he was briefly on the staff of Holt Academy in Wales – Wells found it necessary to supplement his knowledge relating to educational principles and methodology and entered the College of Preceptors (College of Teachers). He later received his Licentiate and Fellowship FCP diplomas from the college. It was not until 1890 that Wells earned a Bachelor of Science degree in zoology from the University of London External Programme. In 1889–90, he managed to find a post as a teacher at Henley House School in London, where he taught A. A. Milne (whose father ran the school). His first published work was a "Text-Book of Biology" in two volumes (1893). Upon leaving the Normal School of Science, Wells was left without a source of income. His aunt Mary—his father's sister-in-law—invited him to stay with her for a while, which solved his immediate problem of accommodation. During his stay at his aunt's residence, he grew increasingly interested in her daughter, Isabel, whom he later courted. To earn money, he began writing short humorous articles for journals such as "The Pall Mall Gazette", later collecting these in "Select Conversations with an Uncle" (1895) and "Certain Personal Matters" (1897). So prolific did Wells become at this mode of journalism that many of his early pieces remain unidentified. According to David C. Smith, "Most of Wells's occasional pieces have not been collected, and many have not even been identified as his. Wells did not automatically receive the byline his reputation demanded until after 1896 or so ... As a result, many of his early pieces are unknown. It is obvious that many early Wells items have been lost." His success with these shorter pieces encouraged him to write book-length work, and he published his first novel, "The Time Machine", in 1895. Personal life. In 1891, Wells married his cousin Isabel Mary Wells (1865–1931; from 1902 Isabel Mary Smith). The couple agreed to separate in 1894, when he had fallen in love with one of his students, Amy Catherine Robbins (1872–1927; later known as Jane), with whom he moved to Woking, Surrey, in May 1895. They lived in a rented house, 'Lynton' (now No.141), Maybury Road, in the town centre for just under 18 months and married at St Pancras register office in October 1895. His short period in Woking was perhaps the most creative and productive of his whole writing career, for while there he planned and wrote "The War of the Worlds" and "The Time Machine", completed "The Island of Doctor Moreau", wrote and published "The Wonderful Visit" and "The Wheels of Chance", and began writing two other early books, "When the Sleeper Wakes" and "Love and Mr Lewisham". In late summer 1896, Wells and Jane moved to a larger house in Worcester Park, near Kingston upon Thames, for two years; this lasted until his poor health took them to Sandgate, near Folkestone, where he constructed a large family home, Spade House, in 1901. He had two sons with Jane: George Philip (known as "Gip"; 1901–1985) and Frank Richard (1903–1982) (grandfather of film director Simon Wells). Jane died on 6 October 1927, in Dunmow, at the age of 55, which left Wells devastated. She was cremated at Golders Green, with friends of the couple present including George Bernard Shaw. Wells had multiple love affairs. Dorothy Richardson was a friend with whom he had a brief affair which led to a pregnancy and miscarriage, in 1907. Wells' wife had been a schoolmate of Richardson. In December 1909, he had a daughter, Anna-Jane, with the writer Amber Reeves, whose parents, William and Maud Pember Reeves, he had met through the Fabian Society. Amber had married the barrister G. R. Blanco White in July of that year, as co-arranged by Wells. After Beatrice Webb voiced disapproval of Wells's "sordid intrigue" with Amber, he responded by lampooning Beatrice Webb and her husband Sidney Webb in his 1911 novel "The New Machiavelli" as 'Altiora and Oscar Bailey', a pair of short-sighted, bourgeois manipulators. Between 1910 and 1913, novelist Elizabeth von Arnim was one of his mistresses. In 1914, he had a son, Anthony West (1914–1987), by the novelist and feminist Rebecca West, 26 years his junior. In 1920–21, and intermittently until his death, he had a love affair with the American birth control activist Margaret Sanger. Between 1924 and 1933 he partnered with the 22-year-younger Dutch adventurer and writer Odette Keun, with whom he lived in "Lou Pidou", a house they built together in Grasse, France. Wells dedicated his longest book to her ("The World of William Clissold", 1926). When visiting Maxim Gorky in Russia 1920, he had slept with Gorky's mistress Moura Budberg, then still Countess Benckendorf and 27 years his junior. In 1933, when she left Gorky and emigrated to London, their relationship renewed and she cared for him through his final illness. Wells repeatedly asked her to marry him, but Budberg strongly rejected his proposals. In "Experiment in Autobiography" (1934), Wells wrote: "I was never a great amorist, though I have loved several people very deeply". David Lodge's novel "A Man of Parts" (2011)a 'narrative based on factual sources' (author's note)gives a convincing and generally sympathetic account of Wells's relations with the women mentioned above, and others. Director Simon Wells (born 1961), the author's great-grandson, was a consultant on the future scenes in "Back to the Future Part II" (1989). Artist. One of the ways that Wells expressed himself was through his drawings and sketches. One common location for these was the endpapers and title pages of his own diaries, and they covered a wide variety of topics, from political commentary to his feelings toward his literary contemporaries and his current romantic interests. During his marriage to Amy Catherine, whom he nicknamed Jane, he drew a considerable number of pictures, many of them being overt comments on their marriage. During this period, he called these pictures "picshuas". These picshuas have been the topic of study by Wells scholars for many years, and in 2006, a book was published on the subject. Writer. Some of his early novels, called "scientific romances", invented several themes now classic in science fiction in such works as "The Time Machine", "The Island of Doctor Moreau", "The Invisible Man", "The War of the Worlds", "When the Sleeper Wakes", and "The First Men in the Moon". He also wrote realistic novels that received critical acclaim, including "Kipps" and a critique of English culture during the Edwardian period, "Tono-Bungay". Wells also wrote dozens of short stories and novellas, including, "The Flowering of the Strange Orchid", which helped bring the full impact of Darwin's revolutionary botanical ideas to a wider public, and was followed by many later successes such as "The Country of the Blind" (1904). According to James E. Gunn, one of Wells's major contributions to the science fiction genre was his approach, which he referred to as his "new system of ideas". In his opinion, the author should always strive to make the story as credible as possible, even if both the writer and the reader knew certain elements are impossible, allowing the reader to accept the ideas as something that could really happen, today referred to as "the plausible impossible" and "suspension of disbelief". While neither invisibility nor time travel was new in speculative fiction, Wells added a sense of realism to the concepts which the readers were not familiar with. He conceived the idea of using a vehicle that allows an operator to travel purposely and selectively forwards or backwards in time. The term "time machine", coined by Wells, is almost universally used to refer to such a vehicle. He explained that while writing "The Time Machine", he realized that "the more impossible the story I had to tell, the more ordinary must be the setting, and the circumstances in which I now set the Time Traveller were all that I could imagine of solid upper-class comforts." In "Wells's Law", a science fiction story should contain only a single extraordinary assumption. Therefore, as justifications for the impossible, he employed scientific ideas and theories. Wells's best-known statement of the "law" appears in his introduction to a collection of his works published in 1934: Dr. Griffin / The Invisible Man is a brilliant research scientist who discovers a method of invisibility, but finds himself unable to reverse the process. An enthusiast of random and irresponsible violence, Griffin has become an iconic character in horror fiction. "The Island of Doctor Moreau" sees a shipwrecked man left on the island home of Doctor Moreau, a mad scientist who creates human-like hybrid beings from animals via vivisection. The earliest depiction of uplift, the novel deals with a number of philosophical themes, including pain and cruelty, moral responsibility, human identity, and human interference with nature. In "The First Men in the Moon" Wells used the idea of radio communication between astronomical objects, a plot point inspired by Nikola Tesla's claim that he had received radio signals from Mars. In addition to science fiction, Wells produced work dealing with mythological beings like an angel in "The Wonderful Visit" (1895) and a mermaid in "The Sea Lady" (1902). Though "Tono-Bungay" is not a science-fiction novel, radioactive decay plays a small but consequential role in it. Radioactive decay plays a much larger role in "The World Set Free" (1914), a book dedicated to Frederick Soddy who would receive a Nobel for proving the existence of radioactive isotopes. This book contains what is surely Wells's biggest prophetic "hit", with the first description of a nuclear weapon (which he termed "atomic bombs"). Scientists of the day were well aware that the natural decay of radium releases energy at a slow rate over thousands of years. The "rate" of release is too slow to have practical utility, but the "total amount" released is huge. Wells's novel revolves around an (unspecified) invention that accelerates the process of radioactive decay, producing bombs that explode with no more than the force of ordinary high explosives—but which "continue to explode" for days on end. "Nothing could have been more obvious to the people of the earlier twentieth century, than the rapidity with which war was becoming impossible ... [but] they did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands". In 1932, the physicist and conceiver of nuclear chain reaction Leó Szilárd read "The World Set Free" (the same year Sir James Chadwick discovered the neutron), a book which he wrote in his memoirs had made "a very great impression on me." In 1934, Szilárd took his ideas for a chain reaction to the British War Office and later the Admiralty, assigning his patent to the Admiralty to keep the news from reaching the notice of the wider scientific community. He wrote, "Knowing what this [a chain reaction] would mean—and I knew it because I had read H.G. Wells—I did not want this patent to become public." Wells also wrote non-fiction. His first non-fiction bestseller was "Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought" (1901). When originally serialised in a magazine it was subtitled "An Experiment in Prophecy", and is considered his most explicitly futuristic work. It offered the immediate political message of the privileged sections of society continuing to bar capable men from other classes from advancement until war would force a need to employ those most able, rather than the traditional upper classes, as leaders. Anticipating what the world would be like in the year 2000, the book is interesting both for its hits (trains and cars resulting in the dispersion of populations from cities to suburbs; moral restrictions declining as men and women seek greater sexual freedom; the defeat of German militarism, and the existence of a European Union) and its misses (he did not expect successful aircraft before 1950, and averred that "my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocate its crew and founder at sea"). His bestselling two-volume work, "The Outline of History" (1920), began a new era of popularised world history. It received a mixed critical response from professional historians. However, it was very popular amongst the general population and made Wells a rich man. Many other authors followed with "Outlines" of their own in other subjects. He reprised his "Outline" in 1922 with a much shorter popular work, "A Short History of the World", a history book praised by Albert Einstein, and two long efforts, "The Science of Life" (1930)—written with his son G. P. Wells and evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley, and "The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind" (1931). The "Outlines" became sufficiently common for James Thurber to parody the trend in his humorous essay, "An Outline of Scientists"—indeed, Wells's "Outline of History" remains in print with a new 2005 edition, while "A Short History of the World" has been re-edited (2006). From quite early in Wells's career, he sought a better way to organise society and wrote a number of Utopian novels. The first of these was "A Modern Utopia" (1905), which shows a worldwide utopia with "no imports but meteorites, and no exports at all"; two travellers from our world fall into its alternate history. The others usually begin with the world rushing to catastrophe, until people realise a better way of living: whether by mysterious gases from a comet causing people to behave rationally and abandoning a European war ("In the Days of the Comet" (1906)), or a world council of scientists taking over, as in "The Shape of Things to Come" (1933, which he later adapted for the 1936 Alexander Korda film, "Things to Come"). This depicted, all too accurately, the impending World War, with cities being destroyed by aerial bombs. He also portrayed the rise of fascist dictators in "The Autocracy of Mr Parham" (1930) and "The Holy Terror" (1939). "Men Like Gods" (1923) is also a utopian novel. Wells in this period was regarded as an enormously influential figure; the literary critic Malcolm Cowley stated: "by the time he was forty, his influence was wider than any other living English writer". Wells contemplates the ideas of nature and nurture and questions humanity in books such as "The First Men in the Moon", where nature is completely suppressed by nurture, and "The Island of Doctor Moreau", where the strong presence of nature represents a threat to a civilized society. Not all his scientific romances ended in a Utopia, and Wells also wrote a dystopian novel, "When the Sleeper Wakes" (1899, rewritten as "The Sleeper Awakes", 1910), which pictures a future society where the classes have become more and more separated, leading to a revolt of the masses against the rulers. "The Island of Doctor Moreau" is even darker. The narrator, having been trapped on an island of animals vivisected (unsuccessfully) into human beings, eventually returns to England; like Gulliver on his return from the Houyhnhnms, he finds himself unable to shake off the perceptions of his fellow humans as barely civilised beasts, slowly reverting to their animal natures. Wells also wrote the preface for the first edition of W. N. P. Barbellion's diaries, "The Journal of a Disappointed Man", published in 1919. Since "Barbellion" was the real author's pen name, many reviewers believed Wells to have been the true author of the "Journal"; Wells always denied this, despite being full of praise for the diaries. In 1927, a Canadian teacher and writer Florence Deeks unsuccessfully sued Wells for infringement of copyright and breach of trust, claiming that much of "The Outline of History" had been plagiarised from her unpublished manuscript, "The Web of the World's Romance", which had spent nearly nine months in the hands of Wells's Canadian publisher, Macmillan Canada. However, it was sworn on oath at the trial that the manuscript remained in Toronto in the safekeeping of Macmillan, and that Wells did not even know it existed, let alone seen it. The court found no proof of copying, and decided the similarities were due to the fact that the books had similar nature and both writers had access to the same sources. In 2000, A. B. McKillop, a professor of history at Carleton University, produced a book on the case, "The Spinster & The Prophet: Florence Deeks, H.G. Wells, and the Mystery of the Purloined Past". According to McKillop, the lawsuit was unsuccessful due to the prejudice against a woman suing a well-known and famous male author, and he paints a detailed story based on the circumstantial evidence of the case. In 2004, Denis N. Magnusson, Professor Emeritus of the Faculty of Law, Queen's University, Ontario, published an article on "Deeks v. Wells". This re-examines the case in relation to McKillop's book. While having some sympathy for Deeks, he argues that she had a weak case that was not well presented, and though she may have met with sexism from her lawyers, she received a fair trial, adding that the law applied is essentially the same law that would be applied to a similar case today (i.e., 2004). In 1933, Wells predicted in "The Shape of Things to Come" that the world war he feared would begin in January 1940, a prediction which ultimately came true four months early, in September 1939, with the outbreak of World War II. In 1936, before the Royal Institution, Wells called for the compilation of a constantly growing and changing World Encyclopaedia, to be reviewed by outstanding authorities and made accessible to every human being. In 1938, he published a collection of essays on the future organisation of knowledge and education, "World Brain", including the essay "The Idea of a Permanent World Encyclopaedia". Prior to 1933, Wells's books were widely read in Germany and Austria, and most of his science fiction works had been translated shortly after publication. By 1933, he had attracted the attention of German officials because of his criticism of the political situation in Germany, and on 10 May 1933, Wells's books were burned by the Nazi youth in Berlin's Opernplatz, and his works were banned from libraries and book stores. Wells, as president of PEN International (Poets, Essayists, Novelists), angered the Nazis by overseeing the expulsion of the German PEN club from the international body in 1934 following the German PEN's refusal to admit non-Aryan writers to its membership. At a PEN conference in Ragusa, Wells refused to yield to Nazi sympathisers who demanded that the exiled author Ernst Toller be prevented from speaking. Near the end of World War II, Allied forces discovered that the SS had compiled lists of people slated for immediate arrest during the invasion of Britain in the abandoned Operation Sea Lion, with Wells included in the alphabetical list of "The Black Book". Wartime works. Seeking a more structured way to play war games, Wells wrote "Floor Games" (1911) followed by "Little Wars" (1913), which set out rules for fighting battles with toy soldiers (miniatures). A pacifist prior to the First World War, Wells stated "how much better is this amiable miniature [war] than the real thing". According to Wells, the idea of the game developed from a visit by his friend Jerome K. Jerome. After dinner, Jerome began shooting down toy soldiers with a toy cannon and Wells joined in to compete. During August 1914, immediately after the outbreak of the First World War, Wells published a number of articles in London newspapers that subsequently appeared as a book entitled "The War That Will End War". He coined the expression with the idealistic belief that the result of the war would make a future conflict impossible. Wells blamed the Central Powers for the coming of the war and argued that only the defeat of German militarism could bring about an end to war. Wells used the shorter form of the phrase, "the war to end war", in "In the Fourth Year" (1918), in which he noted that the phrase "got into circulation" in the second half of 1914. In fact, it had become one of the most common catchphrases of the war. In 1918 Wells worked for the British War Propaganda Bureau, also called Wellington House. Wells was also one of fifty-three leading British authors — a number that included Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — who signed their names to the "Authors' Declaration." This manifesto declared that the German invasion of Belgium had been a brutal crime, and that Britain "could not without dishonour have refused to take part in the present war." Travels to Russia and the Soviet Union. Wells visited Russia three times: 1914, 1920 and 1934. After his visit to Petrograd and Moscow, in January 1914, he returned "a staunch Russophile". He revealed his impressions in "Russia and England: A Study on Contrasts" in "The Daily News", on 1 February 1941 and in the novel "Joan and Peter" (1918). During his second visit, he saw his old friend Maxim Gorky and with Gorky's help, met Vladimir Lenin. In his book "Russia in the Shadows", Wells portrayed Russia as recovering from a total social collapse, "the completest that has ever happened to any modern social organisation." On 23 July 1934, after visiting U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Wells went to the Soviet Union and interviewed Joseph Stalin for three hours for the "New Statesman" magazine, which was extremely rare at that time. He told Stalin how he had seen 'the happy faces of healthy people' in contrast with his previous visit to Moscow in 1920. However, he also criticised the lawlessness, class discrimination, state violence, and absence of free expression. Stalin enjoyed the conversation and replied accordingly. As the chairman of the London-based PEN International, which protected the rights of authors to write without being intimidated, Wells hoped by his trip to USSR, he could win Stalin over by force of argument. Before he left, he realised that no reform was to happen in the near future. Final years. Wells's greatest literary output occurred before the First World War, which was lamented by younger authors whom he had influenced. In this connection, George Orwell described Wells as "too sane to understand the modern world", and "since 1920 he has squandered his talents in slaying paper dragons." G. K. Chesterton quipped: "Mr Wells is a born storyteller who has sold his birthright for a pot of message". Wells had diabetes, and was a co-founder in 1934 of The Diabetic Association (now Diabetes UK, the leading charity for people with diabetes in the UK). On 28 October 1940, on the radio station KTSA in San Antonio, Texas, Wells took part in a radio interview with Orson Welles, who two years previously had performed a famous radio adaptation of "The War of the Worlds". During the interview, by Charles C Shaw, a KTSA radio host, Wells admitted his surprise at the sensation that resulted from the broadcast but acknowledged his debt to Welles for increasing sales of one of his "more obscure" titles. Death. Wells died on 13 August 1946, aged 79, at his home at 13 Hanover Terrace, overlooking Regent's Park, London. In his preface to the 1941 edition of "The War in the Air", Wells had stated that his epitaph should be: "I told you so. You "damned" fools". Wells's body was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium on 16 August 1946; his ashes were subsequently scattered into the English Channel at Old Harry Rocks, the most eastern point of the Jurassic Coast and about 3.5 miles (5.6 km) from Swanage in Dorset. A commemorative blue plaque in his honour was installed by the Greater London Council at his home in Regent's Park in 1966. Futurist. A futurist and "visionary", Wells foresaw the advent of aircraft, tanks, space travel, nuclear weapons, satellite television, and something resembling the World Wide Web. Asserting that "Wells's visions of the future remain unsurpassed", John Higgs, author of "Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century", states that in the late 19th century Wells "saw the coming century clearer than anyone else. He anticipated wars in the air, the sexual revolution, motorised transport causing the growth of suburbs and a proto-Wikipedia he called the "world brain". In his novel "The World Set Free", he imagined an "atomic bomb" of terrifying power that would be dropped from aeroplanes. This was an extraordinary insight for an author writing in 1913, and it made a deep impression on Winston Churchill." In 2011, Wells was among a group of science fiction writers featured in the "Prophets of Science Fiction" series, a show produced and hosted by film director Sir Ridley Scott, which depicts how predictions influenced the development of scientific advancements by inspiring many readers to assist in transforming those futuristic visions into everyday reality. In a 2013 review of "The Time Machine" for the "New Yorker" magazine, Brad Leithauser writes, "At the base of Wells's great visionary exploit is this rational, ultimately scientific attempt to tease out the potential future consequences of present conditions—not as they might arise in a few years, or even decades, but millennia hence, epochs hence. He is world literature's Great Extrapolator. Like no other fiction writer before him, he embraced "deep time". Political views. Wells was a socialist and a member of the Fabian Society. He stood as a Labour Party candidate for London University in the 1922 and 1923 general elections. Winston Churchill was an avid reader of Wells's books, and after they first met in 1902 they kept in touch until Wells died in 1946. As a junior minister Churchill borrowed lines from Wells for one of his most famous early landmark speeches in 1906, and as Prime Minister the phrase "the gathering storm"—used by Churchill to describe the rise of Nazi Germany—had been written by Wells in "The War of the Worlds", which depicts an attack on Britain by Martians. Wells's extensive writings on equality and human rights, most notably his most influential work, "The Rights of Man" (1940), laid the groundwork for the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations shortly after his death. His efforts regarding the League of Nations, on which he collaborated on the project with Leonard Woolf with the booklets "The Idea of a League of Nations", "Prolegomena to the Study of World Organization", and "The Way of the League of Nations", became a disappointment as the organization turned out to be a weak one unable to prevent the Second World War, which itself occurred towards the very end of his life and only increased the pessimistic side of his nature. In his last book "Mind at the End of Its Tether" (1945), he considered the idea that humanity being replaced by another species might not be a bad idea. He referred to the era between the two World Wars as "The Age of Frustration". He was a member of The Other Club, a London dining club. Religious views. Wells' views on God and religion changed over his lifetime. Early in his life he distanced himself from Christianity, and later from theism, and finally, late in life, he was essentially atheistic. Martin Gardner summarises this progression: In "God the Invisible King" (1917), Wells wrote that his idea of God did not draw upon the traditional religions of the world: Later in the work, he aligns himself with a "renascent or modern religion ... neither atheist nor Buddhist nor Mohammedan nor Christian ... [that] he has found growing up in himself". Of Christianity, he said: "it is not now true for me. ... Every believing Christian is, I am sure, my spiritual brother ... but if systemically I called myself a Christian I feel that to most men I should imply too much and so tell a lie". Of other world religions, he writes: "All these religions are true for me as Canterbury Cathedral is a true thing and as a Swiss chalet is a true thing. There they are, and they have served a purpose, they have worked. Only they are not true for me to live in them. ... They do not work for me". In "The Fate of Homo Sapiens" (1939), Wells criticised almost all world religions and philosophies, stating "there is no creed, no way of living left in the world at all, that really meets the needs of the time... When we come to look at them coolly and dispassionately, all the main religions, patriotic, moral and customary systems in which human beings are sheltering today, appear to be in a state of jostling and mutually destructive movement, like the houses and palaces and other buildings of some vast, sprawling city overtaken by a landslide." Wells's opposition to organised religion reached a fever pitch in 1943 with publication of his book "Crux Ansata", subtitled "An Indictment of the Roman Catholic Church". Literary influence and legacy. The science fiction historian John Clute describes Wells as "the most important writer the genre has yet seen", and notes his work has been central to both British and American science fiction. Science fiction author and critic Algis Budrys said Wells "remains the outstanding expositor of both the hope, and the despair, which are embodied in the technology and which are the major facts of life in our world". He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1921, 1932, 1935, and 1946. Wells so influenced real exploration of space that impact craters on Mars and the Moon were named after him. In the United Kingdom, Wells's work was a key model for the British "scientific romance", and other writers in that mode, such as Olaf Stapledon, J. D. Beresford, S. Fowler Wright, and Naomi Mitchison, all drew on Wells's example. Wells was also an important influence on British science fiction of the period after the Second World War, with Arthur C. Clarke and Brian Aldiss expressing strong admiration for Wells's work. A self-declared fan of Wells, John Wyndham, author of "The Day of the Triffids" and "The Midwich Cuckoos", echoes Wells's obsession with catastrophe and its aftermath. His early work (pre 1920) made Wells the literary hero of dystopian novelist George Orwell. Among contemporary British science fiction writers, Stephen Baxter, Christopher Priest and Adam Roberts have all acknowledged Wells's influence on their writing; all three are vice-presidents of the H. G. Wells Society. He also had a strong influence on British scientist J. B. S. Haldane, who wrote "Daedalus; or, Science and the Future" (1924), "The Last Judgement" and "On Being the Right Size" from the essay collection "Possible Worlds" (1927), and "Biological Possibilities for the Human Species in the Next Ten Thousand Years" (1963), which are speculations about the future of human evolution and life on other planets. Haldane gave several lectures about these topics which in turn influenced other science fiction writers. In the United States, Hugo Gernsback reprinted most of Wells's work in the pulp magazine "Amazing Stories", regarding Wells's work as "texts of central importance to the self-conscious new genre". Later American writers such as Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, Carl Sagan, and Ursula K. Le Guin all recalled being influenced by Wells. Sinclair Lewis's early novels were strongly influenced by Wells's realistic social novels, such as "The History of Mr Polly"; Lewis also named his first son Wells after the author. Lewis nominated H.G. Wells for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1932. In an interview with "The Paris Review", Vladimir Nabokov described Wells as his favourite writer when he was a boy and "a great artist." He went on to cite "The Passionate Friends", "Ann Veronica", "The Time Machine", and "The Country of the Blind" as superior to anything else written by Wells's British contemporaries. Nabokov said: "His sociological cogitations can be safely ignored, of course, but his romances and fantasies are superb." Jorge Luis Borges wrote many short pieces on Wells in which he demonstrates a deep familiarity with much of Wells's work. While Borges wrote several critical reviews, including a mostly negative review of Wells's film "Things to Come", he regularly treated Wells as a canonical figure of fantastic literature. Late in his life, Borges included "The Invisible Man" and "The Time Machine" in his "Prologue to a Personal Library", a curated list of 100 great works of literature that he undertook at the behest of the Argentine publishing house Emecé. Canadian author Margaret Atwood read Wells's books, and he also inspired writers of European speculative fiction such as Karel Čapek and Yevgeny Zamyatin. In 2021, Wells was one of six British writers commemorated on a series of UK postage stamps issued by Royal Mail to celebrate British science fiction. Six classic science fiction novels were depicted, one from each author, with "The Time Machine" chosen to represent Wells. Film adaptations. The novels and short stories of H.G. Wells have been adapted for cinema. These include "Island of Lost Souls" (1932), "The Invisible Man" (1933), "Things to Come" (1936), "The Man Who Could Work Miracles" (1937), "The War of the Worlds" (1953), "The Time Machine" (1960), "First Men in the Moon" (1964), "The Island of Dr. Moreau" (1977), "The Island of Dr. Moreau" (1996), "The Time Machine" (2002) and "War of the Worlds" (2005). Literary papers. In 1954, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign purchased the H.G. Wells literary papers and correspondence collection. The university's Rare Book & Manuscript Library holds the largest collection of Wells manuscripts, correspondence, first editions and publications in the United States. Among these is unpublished material and the manuscripts of such works as "The War of the Worlds" and "The Time Machine". The collection includes first editions, revisions and translations. The letters contain general family correspondence, communications from publishers, material regarding the Fabian Society, and letters from politicians and public figures, most notably George Bernard Shaw and Joseph Conrad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13462

Harlan Ellison

Harlan Jay Ellison (May 27, 1934 – June 28, 2018) was an American writer, known for his prolific and influential work in New Wave speculative fiction and for his outspoken, combative personality. His published works include more than 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, comic book scripts, teleplays, essays, and a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media. Some of his best-known works include the 1967 "" episode "The City on the Edge of Forever", considered by some to be the greatest episode of "Star Trek" ever(he subsequently wrote a book about the experience that includes his original screenplay), his "A Boy and His Dog" cycle (which was made into a film), and his short stories "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" and "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman". He was also editor and anthologist for "Dangerous Visions" (1967) and "Again, Dangerous Visions" (1972). Ellison won numerous awards, including multiple Hugos, Nebulas, and Edgars. Biography. Early life and career. Ellison was born to a Jewish family in Cleveland, Ohio, on May 27, 1934, the son of Serita (née Rosenthal) and Louis Laverne Ellison, a dentist and jeweler. He had an older sister, Beverly (Rabnick), who was born in 1926. She died in 2010 without having spoken to him since their mother's funeral in 1976. His family subsequently moved to Painesville, Ohio, but returned to Cleveland in 1949, following his father's death. Ellison frequently ran away from home (in an interview with Tom Snyder he would later claim it was due to discrimination by his high school peers), taking an array of odd jobs—including, by age 18, "tuna fisherman off the coast of Galveston, itinerant crop-picker down in New Orleans, hired gun for a wealthy neurotic, nitroglycerine truck driver in North Carolina, short-order cook, cab driver, lithographer, book salesman, floorwalker in a department store, door-to-door brush salesman, and as a youngster, an actor in several productions at the Cleveland Play House". In 1947, a fan letter he wrote to "Real Fact Comics" became his first published writing. Ellison attended Ohio State University for 18 months (1951–53) before being expelled. He said the expulsion was for hitting a professor who had denigrated his writing ability, and over the next 20 or so years he sent that professor a copy of every story that he published. Ellison published two serialized stories in the "Cleveland News" during 1949, and he sold a story to EC Comics early in the 1950s. During this period, Ellison was an active and visible member of science fiction fandom, and published his own science fiction fanzines, such as "Dimensions" (which had previously been the "Bulletin of the Cleveland Science Fantasy Society" for the Cleveland Science Fantasy Society, and later "Science Fantasy Bulletin".) Ellison moved to New York City in 1955 to pursue a writing career, primarily in science fiction. Over the next two years, he published more than 100 short stories and articles. The short stories collected as "Sex Gang" — which Ellison described in a 2012 interview as "mainstream erotica" — date from this period. He served in the U.S. Army from 1957 to 1959. His first novel, "Web of the City", was published during his military service in 1958, and he said that he had written the bulk of it while undergoing basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia. After leaving the army, he relocated to Chicago, where he edited "Rogue" magazine. Hollywood and beyond. Ellison moved to California in 1962 and began selling his writing to Hollywood. He co-wrote the screenplay for "The Oscar" (1966), starring Stephen Boyd and Elke Sommer. Ellison also sold scripts to many television shows: "The Loretta Young Show" (using the name Harlan Ellis),"The Flying Nun", "Burke's Law", "Route 66," "The Outer Limits", "", "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.", "Cimarron Strip", and "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour". Ellison's screenplay for the "Star Trek" episode "The City on the Edge of Forever" has been considered the best of the 79 episodes in the series. In 1965, he participated in the second and third Selma to Montgomery marches, led by Martin Luther King Jr. In 1966, in an article that "Esquire" magazine later named as the best magazine piece ever written, the journalist Gay Talese wrote a profile of Frank Sinatra. The article, entitled "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold", briefly describes a clash between Sinatra and a young Harlan Ellison, in which the crooner took exception to Ellison's boots during a billiards game. Ellison was hired as a writer for Walt Disney Studios, but was fired on his first day after Roy O. Disney overheard him in the studio commissary joking about making a pornographic animated film featuring Disney characters. Ellison continued to publish short fiction and nonfiction pieces in various publications, including some of his best known stories. "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman" (1965) is a celebration of civil disobedience against repressive authority. "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" (1967) is a story where five humans are tormented by an all-knowing computer throughout eternity. The story was the basis of a 1995 computer game; Ellison participated in the game's design and provided the voice of the god-computer AM. Another story, "A Boy and His Dog", examines the nature of friendship and love in a violent, post-apocalyptic world and was made into the 1975 film of the same name, starring Don Johnson. In 1967, Ellison edited the "Dangerous Visions" collection, which attracted 'special citation at the 26th World SF Convention for editing "the most significant and controversial SF book published in 1967."' In his introduction Isaac Asimov described it epitomising a 'second revolution' in Science Fiction as 'science receded and modern fictional techniques came to the fore.' From 1968 to 1970, Ellison wrote a regular column on television for the "Los Angeles Free Press". Titled "The Glass Teat," Ellison's column examined television's impact on the politics and culture of the time, including its presentations of sex, politics, race, the Vietnam War, and violence. The essays were collected in two anthologies, "The Glass Teat: Essays of Opinion on Television" followed by "The Other Glass Teat". Ellison served as creative consultant to the 1980s version of "The Twilight Zone" science fiction TV series and "Babylon 5". As a member of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), he had voice-over credits for shows, including "The Pirates of Dark Water", "Mother Goose and Grimm", "Space Cases", "Phantom 2040", and "Babylon 5", as well as making an onscreen appearance in the "Babylon 5" episode "The Face of the Enemy". A frequent guest on the Los Angeles science fiction / fantasy culture radio show "Hour 25," hosted by Mike Hodel, Ellison took over as host when Hodel died. Ellison's tenure was from May 1986 to June 1987. Ellison's short story "The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore" (1992) was selected for inclusion in the 1993 edition of "The Best American Short Stories". Ellison as an audio actor/reader was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children twice and has won several Audie Awards. In 2014, Ellison made a guest appearance on the album "Finding Love in Hell" by the stoner metal band Leaving Babylon, reading his piece "The Silence" (originally published in "Mind Fields") as an introduction to the song "Dead to Me." Ellison's official website, harlanellison.com, was launched in 1995 as a fan page; for several years, Ellison was a regular poster in its discussion forum. Personal life and death. Ellison married five times; each relationship ended within a few years, except the last. His first wife was Charlotte Stein, whom he married in 1956. They divorced in 1960, and he later described the marriage as "four years of hell as sustained as the whine of a generator." Later that year he married Billie Joyce Sanders; they divorced in 1963. His 1966 marriage to Loretta Patrick lasted only seven weeks. In 1976, he married Lori Horowitz. He was 41 and she was 19, and he later said of the marriage, "I was desperately in love with her, but it was a stupid marriage on my part." They were divorced after eight months. He and Susan Toth married in 1986, and they remained together, living in Los Angeles, until his death 32 years later. Susan died in August 2020. Ellison described himself as a Jewish atheist. In 1994, he had a heart attack and was hospitalized for quadruple coronary artery bypass surgery. From 2010, he received treatment for clinical depression. In September 2007, Ellison attended the Midwestern debut of the documentary about his life, "Dreams with Sharp Teeth" at the Cleveland Public Library in his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. This would be Ellison's last public appearance in his hometown. On about October 10, 2014, Ellison had a stroke. Although his speech and cognition were unimpaired, he suffered paralysis on his right side, for which he was expected to spend several weeks in physical therapy before being released from the hospital. Harlan Ellison died in his sleep, at home in Los Angeles in the morning of June 28, 2018. His literary estate is currently executed by "Babylon 5" creator J. Michael Straczynski. Pseudonyms. Ellison on occasion used the pseudonym Cordwainer Bird to alert members of the public to situations in which he felt his creative contribution to a project had been mangled by others, beyond repair, typically Hollywood producers or studios (see also Alan Smithee). The first such work to which he signed the name was "The Price of Doom", an episode of "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" (though it was misspelled as Cord Wainer Bird in the credits). An episode of "Burke's Law" ("Who Killed Alex Debbs?") credited to Ellison contains a "character" given this name, played by Sammy Davis Jr. The "Cordwainer Bird" moniker is a tribute to fellow SF writer Paul M. A. Linebarger, better known by his pen name, Cordwainer Smith. The origin of the word "cordwainer" is "shoemaker" (from working with shell cordovan leather for shoes). The term used by Linebarger was meant to imply the industriousness of the pulp author. Ellison said, in interviews and in his writing, that his version of the pseudonym was meant to mean "a shoemaker for birds". Since he used the pseudonym mainly for works he wanted to distance himself from, it may be understood to mean that "this work is for the birds" or that it is of as much use as shoes to a bird. Stephen King once said he thought that it meant that Ellison was giving people who mangled his work a literary version of "the bird" (given credence by Ellison himself in his own essay titled "Somehow, I Don't Think We're in Kansas, Toto", describing his experience with the "Starlost" television series). The Bird moniker became a character in one of Ellison's own stories. In his 1978 book "Strange Wine", Ellison explains the origins of the Bird and goes on to state that Philip José Farmer wrote Cordwainer into the Wold Newton family that the latter writer had developed. The thought of such a whimsical object lesson being related to such lights as Doc Savage, The Shadow, Tarzan, and all the other pulp heroes prompted Ellison to play with the concept, resulting in "The New York Review of Bird", in which an annoyed Bird uncovers the darker secrets of the New York literary establishment before beginning a pulpish slaughter of the same. Other pseudonyms Ellison used during his career include Jay Charby, Sley Harson, Ellis Hart, John Magnus, Paul Merchant, Pat Roeder, Ivar Jorgenson, Derry Tiger, Harlan Ellis and Jay Solo. Controversies and disputes. Temperament. Ellison had a reputation for being abrasive and argumentative. He generally agreed with this assessment, and a dust jacket from one of his books described him as "possibly the most contentious person on Earth." Ellison filed numerous grievances and attempted lawsuits; during a contract dispute over Ace Books binding cigarette ads into one of his paperbacks, he sent them dozens of bricks postage due, followed by a dead gopher. In an October 2017 piece in "Wired", Ellison was dubbed "Sci-Fi's Most Controversial Figure." At Stephen King's request, Ellison provided a description of himself and his writing in "Danse Macabre": "My work is foursquare for chaos. I spend my life personally, and my work professionally, keeping the soup boiling. Gadfly is what they call you when you are no longer dangerous; I much prefer troublemaker, malcontent, desperado. I see myself as a combination of Zorro and Jiminy Cricket. My stories go out from here and raise hell. From time to time some denigrater or critic with umbrage will say of my work, 'He only wrote that to shock.' I smile and nod. Precisely." "Star Trek". Ellison repeatedly criticized how "Star Trek" creator and producer Gene Roddenberry (and others) rewrote his original script for the 1967 episode "The City on the Edge of Forever". Despite his objections, Ellison kept his own name on the shooting script instead of using "Cordwainer Bird" to indicate displeasure (see above). Ellison's original script was first published in the 1976 anthology "Six Science Fiction Plays", edited by Roger Elwood. The aired version was adapted for the "Star Trek" Fotonovel series in 1977. In 1995, Borderlands Press published "The City on the Edge of Forever", with nearly 300 pages, comprising an essay by Ellison, four versions of the teleplay, and eight "Afterwords" contributed by other parties. He greatly expanded the introduction for the paperback edition, in which he explained what he called a "fatally inept" treatment. Both versions of the script won awards: Ellison's original script won the 1968 Writers Guild Award for best episodic drama in television, while the shooting script won the 1968 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. On March 13, 2009, Ellison sued CBS Paramount Television, seeking payment of 25% of net receipts from merchandising, publishing, and other income from the episode since 1967; the suit also names the Writers Guild of America for allegedly failing to act on Ellison's behalf. On October 23, 2009, "Variety" magazine reported that a settlement had been reached. Vietnam War opposition and Aggiecon I. Ellison was among those who in 1968 signed an anti-Vietnam War advertisement in "Galaxy Science Fiction". In 1969, Ellison was Guest of Honor at Texas A&M University's first science fiction convention, Aggiecon, where he reportedly referred to the university's Corps of Cadets as "America's next generation of Nazis", inspired in part by the continuing Vietnam War. Although the university was no longer solely a military school (from 1965), the student body was predominantly made up of cadet members. Between Ellison's anti-military remarks and a food fight that broke out in the ballroom of the hotel where the gathering was held (although, according to Ellison in 2000, the food fight actually started in a Denny's because the staff disappeared and they could not get their check), the school's administration almost refused to approve the science fiction convention the next year and no guest of honor was invited for the next two Aggiecons. However, Ellison was subsequently invited back as Guest of Honor for Aggiecon V (1974). "The Last Dangerous Visions". "The Last Dangerous Visions" (TLDV), the third volume of Ellison's anthology series, was originally announced for publication in 1973, but had not been published. Nearly 150 writers, many now dead, submitted works for the volume. In 1993, Ellison threatened to sue the New England Science Fiction Association (NESFA) for publishing "Himself in Anachron", a short story written by Cordwainer Smith and originally sold to Ellison for the anthology by his widow. The NESFA later reached an amicable settlement after it was revealed that the story contract had expired, allowing them to legally acquire it for publication. British science fiction author Christopher Priest criticized Ellison's editorial practices in an article entitled "The Book on the Edge of Forever", later expanded into a book. Priest documented a half-dozen unfulfilled promises by Ellison to publish "TLDV" within a year of the statement. Priest claims that he submitted a story at Ellison's request, which Ellison retained for several months until Priest withdrew the story and demanded that Ellison return the manuscript. Ellison was incensed by "The Book on the Edge of Forever" and, personally or by proxy, threatened Priest on numerous occasions after its publication. In November 2020, the executor of the Harlan Ellison estate, J. Michael Straczynski, announced on Patreon that he was proceeding with the final preparations for the publication of TLDV with the proceeds to go to the Harlan and Susan Ellison Trust. The book was expected to be published in April 2021, as significant publisher interest was expressed. Christopher Priest was unimpressed, saying that Straczynski was "in the same sort of unenviable position as Trump's caddie", but as an experienced professional would possibly work something out. He added "I kind of lost interest in all that years ago. Ellison clearly did too, along with everyone else. (Although I gather he went on with his magical thinking if anyone asked when he was going to deliver). Many of the stories were withdrawn, because Ellison acted like a dick. Of the ones that remain, most of them are by writers who are now deceased, so the rights have expired and the estates would have to be traced. A lot of the writers have disowned their stories as juvenilia, or outdated, or simply because Ellison was acting like a dick." Despite early hopes of a 2021 release for TLDV, 2021 came and went with no book. An October 2021 'progress report' from Straczynski revealed that the book was still in preparation. On May 2, 2022, Straczynski announced that the book would be published in 2023. On July 10, 2022, Straczynski announced on Twitter that "The Last Dangerous Visions" will be published on September 1, 2024, by Blackstone Publishers. "I, Robot". Shortly after the release of "Star Wars" (1977), Ben Roberts contacted Ellison to develop a script based on Isaac Asimov's "I, Robot" short story collection for Warner Brothers; Ellison and Asimov had been long-time friends, so Ellison may be presumed to have attached particular significance to the project. In a meeting with the Head of Production at Warners, Robert Shapiro, Ellison concluded that Shapiro was commenting on the script without having read it and accused him of having the "intellectual and cranial capacity of an artichoke". Shortly afterwards, Ellison was dropped from the project. Without Ellison, the film came to a dead end, because subsequent scripts were unsatisfactory to potential directors. After a change in studio heads, Warner allowed Ellison's script to be serialized in "Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine" and published in book form. The 2004 film "I, Robot", starring Will Smith, has no connection to Ellison's script. Allegations of assault on Charles Platt. In 1985, Ellison allegedly publicly assaulted author and critic Charles Platt at the Nebula Awards banquet. Platt did not pursue legal action against Ellison and the two men later signed a "non-aggression pact", promising never to discuss the incident again nor to have any contact with one another. Platt claims that Ellison often publicly boasted about the incident. Support of Ed Kramer. Ellison voiced strong support for Ed Kramer, founder of Dragon Con, after Kramer was accused of sexual abuse of children in 2000. Ellison and others disputed the evidence against Kramer, and also alleged Kramer was being held in jail in violation of his right to a speedy trial. When author Nancy A. Collins spoke up against Kramer, Ellison led a long-standing feud against her before Kramer entered an Alford Plea in 2013. 2006 Hugo Awards ceremony. Ellison was presented with a special committee award at the 2006 Hugo Awards ceremony. When Ellison got to the podium, presenter Connie Willis asked him "Are you going to be good?" When she asked the question a second time, Ellison put the microphone in his mouth, to the crowd's laughter. He then placed his hand on her breast during an embrace. Ellison subsequently complained that Willis refused to acknowledge his apology. Lawsuit against Fantagraphics. On September 20, 2006, Ellison sued comic book and magazine publisher Fantagraphics, stating they had defamed him in their book "Comics As Art (We Told You So)". The book recounts the history of Fantagraphics and discussed a lawsuit that resulted from a 1980 Ellison interview with Fantagraphics' industry news magazine, "The Comics Journal". In this interview Ellison referred to comic book writer Michael Fleisher, calling him "bugfuck" and "derange-o". Fleisher lost his libel suit against Ellison and Fantagraphics on December 9, 1986. Ellison, after reading unpublished drafts of the book on Fantagraphics's website, believed that he had been defamed by several anecdotes related to this incident. He sued in the Superior Court for the State of California, in Santa Monica. Fantagraphics attempted to have the lawsuit dismissed. In their motion to dismiss, Fantagraphics argued that the statements were both their personal opinions and generally believed to be true anecdotes. On February 12, 2007, the presiding judge ruled against Fantagraphics' anti-SLAPP motion for dismissal. On June 29, 2007, Ellison claimed that the litigation had been resolved pending Fantagraphics' removal of all references to the case from their website. No money or apologies changed hands in the settlement as posted on August 17, 2007. Copyright suits. In a 1980 lawsuit against ABC and Paramount Pictures, Ellison and Ben Bova claimed that the TV series "Future Cop" was based on their short story "Brillo", winning a $337,000 judgement. Ellison alleged that James Cameron's film "The Terminator" drew from material from an episode of the original "Outer Limits" which Ellison had scripted, "Soldier" (1964). Hemdale, the production company and the distributor Orion Pictures, settled out of court for an undisclosed sum and added a credit to the film which acknowledged Ellison's work. Cameron objected to this acknowledgement and has since labeled Ellison's claim a "nuisance suit". Some accounts of the settlement state that another "Outer Limits" episode written by Ellison, "Demon with a Glass Hand" (1964), was also claimed to have been plagiarized by the film, but Ellison stated that ""Terminator" was not stolen from 'Demon with a Glass Hand,' it was a ripoff of my OTHER Outer Limits script, 'Soldier. In 1983, Marvel Comics released "The Incredible Hulk" #286, entitled "Hero", written by Bill Mantlo. Three issues later, Marvel put up a letter claiming that Mantlo adapted "Soldier" for use as a Hulk story, but they forgot to credit Ellison and it was pointed out by readers. In actuality, then-Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter signed off on the story, not having seen the "Outer Limits" episode it was based on and not realizing Mantlo copied it wholesale. The day the issue went to stands, he was contacted by an angry Ellison, who calmed down after Shooter admitted the error. Although he could have claimed hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages, Ellison only requested the same payment Mantlo got for the story, writer's credit and a lifetime subscription to everything Marvel published. On April 24, 2000, Ellison sued Stephen Robertson for posting four stories to the newsgroup "alt.binaries.e-book" without authorization. The other defendants were AOL and RemarQ, an internet service provider who owned servers hosting the newsgroup. Ellison alleged they had failed to halt copyright infringement in accordance with the "Notice and Takedown Procedure" outlined in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Robertson and RemarQ first settled with Ellison, and then AOL likewise settled with Ellison in June 2004, under conditions that were not made public. Since those settlements Ellison initiated legal action or takedown notices against more than 240 people who have allegedly distributed his writings on the Internet, saying, "If you put your hand in my pocket, you'll drag back six inches of bloody stump". Awards. Ellison won eight Hugo Awards, a shared award for the screenplay of "A Boy and his Dog" that he counted as "half a Hugo", and two special awards from annual World SF Conventions; four Nebula Awards of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA); five Bram Stoker Awards of the Horror Writers Association (HWA); two Edgar Awards of the Mystery Writers of America; two World Fantasy Awards from annual conventions; and two Georges Méliès fantasy film awards. In 1987, Ellison was awarded the Inkpot Award. In his 1981 book about the horror genre, "Danse Macabre", Stephen King reviewed Ellison's collection "Strange Wine" and considered it one of the best horror books published between 1950 and 1980. Ellison won the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 1993. HWA gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996 and the World Horror Convention named him Grand Master in 2000. He was awarded the Gallun Award for Lifetime Achievement in Science Fiction from I-CON in 1997. SFWA named him its 23rd Grand Master of fantasy and science fiction in 2006 and the Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted him in 2011. That year he also received the fourth J. Lloyd Eaton Lifetime Achievement Award in Science Fiction, presented by the UCR Libraries at the 2011 Eaton SF Conference, "Global Science Fiction". , Ellison is the only three-time winner of the Nebula Award for Best Short Story. He won his other Nebula in the novella category. He was awarded the Silver Pen for Journalism by International PEN, the international writers' union, in 1982. In 1990, Ellison was honored by International PEN for continuing commitment to artistic freedom and the battle against censorship. In 1998, he was awarded the "Defender of Liberty" award by the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. In March 1998, the National Women's Committee of Brandeis University honored him with their 1998 Words, Wit, Wisdom award. Ellison was named 2002's winner of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal's "Distinguished Skeptic Award", in recognition of his contributions to science and critical thinking. Ellison was presented with the award at the Skeptics Convention in Burbank, California, on June 22, 2002. In December 2009, Ellison was nominated for a Grammy award in the category Best Spoken Word Album For Children for his reading of "Through the Looking-Glass And What Alice Found There" for Blackstone Audio, Inc. Parodies and pastiches of Ellison. In the 1970s artist and cartoonist Gordon Carleton wrote and drew a scripted slideshow called "City on the Edge of Whatever", which was a spoof of "The City on the Edge of Forever". Occasionally performed at "Star Trek" conventions, it features an irate writer named "Arlan Hellison" who screams at his producers, "Art defilers! Script assassins!" "Justice League of America" #89 ("The Most Dangerous Dreams Of All") 1971, written by Mike Friedrich, is centered around a character named Harlequin Ellis. The character is smitten with Black Canary, and injects himself into Justice League adventures, taking on the role of different heroes in his attempts to woo her. Ellison himself had written several comic book scripts. Ben Bova's novel "The Starcrossed" (1975), a "roman à clef" about Bova and Ellison's experience on "The Starlost" TV series, features a character "Ron Gabriel" who is a pastiche of Ellison. Bova's novel is dedicated to Ellison's pseudonym "Cordwainer Bird", who was credited as series creator on "The Starlost" per Ellison's demand. In the novel, "Ron Gabriel" requires the fictional series producers to credit him under the pseudonym "Victor Lawrence Talbot Frankenstein". In "Murder at the ABA" (1976) by Isaac Asimov, the protagonist, Darius Just, was based on Ellison, as stated by Asimov in footnotes to the book itself, and in his autobiographical volume "In Joy Still Felt". Robert Silverberg named a character in his first novel, "Revolt on Alpha C" (1955), for Ellison, who was Silverberg's neighbor in New York City at the time he was writing the book. This was confirmed in a special edition on the occasion of Silverberg's 35th year in the business. Sharyn McCrumb's mystery novel "Bimbos of the Death Sun" (1988) featured a cantankerous antagonist-turned-murder victim based on Ellison. Fans of Ellison sent him copies of the book, and upon meeting Ellison later that year at the Edgar Awards, Ellison told McCrumb he had read the book and thought it was good. Ellison is a recurring minor character in the animated television series "Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated" (2010–2013), voicing a fictionalized version of himself modeled on his appearance in the 1970s. Ellison appeared as himself in an episode of "The Simpsons" ("Married to the Blob", 2014) in which he meets Bart and Milhouse, and parodies his contention that the film "The Terminator" used ideas from his stories. External links.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13467

Hamburg

Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (; ), is the second-largest city in Germany after Berlin, as well as the overall 8th-largest city and largest non-capital city within the European Union with a population of over 1.9 million. Hamburg's urban area has a population of around 2.5 million and is part of the Hamburg Metropolitan Region, which has a population of over 5.1 million people in total. At the southern tip of the Jutland Peninsula, Hamburg stands on the branching River Elbe at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, on the mouth of the Alster and Bille. Hamburg is one of Germany's three city-states alongside Berlin and Bremen, and is surrounded by Schleswig-Holstein to the north and Lower Saxony to the south. The Port of Hamburg is Germany's largest and Europe's third-largest, after Rotterdam and Antwerp. The local dialect is a variant of Low Saxon. The official name reflects Hamburg's history as a member of the medieval Hanseatic League and a free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire. Before the 1871 unification of Germany, it was a fully sovereign city state, and before 1919 formed a civic republic headed constitutionally by a class of hereditary grand burghers or . Beset by disasters such as the Great Fire of Hamburg, North Sea flood of 1962 and military conflicts including World War II bombing raids, the city has managed to recover and emerge wealthier after each catastrophe. Major regional broadcaster NDR, the printing and publishing firm and the newspapers and are based in the city. Hamburg is the seat of Germany's oldest stock exchange and the world's oldest merchant bank, Berenberg Bank. Media, commercial, logistical, and industrial firms with significant locations in the city include multinationals Airbus, , , , Lufthansa and Unilever. Hamburg is also a major European science, research, and education hub, with several universities and institutions. The city enjoys a very high quality of living, being ranked 19th in the 2019 Mercer Quality of Living Survey. Hamburg hosts specialists in world economics and international law, including consular and diplomatic missions as the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the EU-LAC Foundation, and the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, multipartite international political conferences and summits such as and the G20. Former German chancellors Helmut Schmidt and Angela Merkel were both born in Hamburg. The former Mayor of Hamburg, Olaf Scholz, has been the current German chancellor since December 2021. Hamburg is a major international and domestic tourist destination. The and were declared World Heritage Sites by UNESCO in 2015. Hamburg's rivers and canals are crossed by around 2,500 bridges, making it the city with the highest number of bridges in Europe. Aside from its rich architectural heritage, the city is also home to notable cultural venues such as the and concert halls. It gave birth to movements like and paved the way for bands including the Beatles. Hamburg is also known for several theatres and a variety of musical shows. St. Pauli's is among the best-known European entertainment districts. History. Origins. Claudius Ptolemy (2nd century AD) reported the first name for the vicinity as Treva. Etymology. The name Hamburg comes from the first permanent building on the site, a castle which the Emperor Charlemagne ordered constructed in AD 808. It rose on rocky terrain in a marsh between the River Alster and the River Elbe as a defence against Slavic incursion, and acquired the name "Hammaburg", "burg" meaning castle or fort. The origin of the "Hamma" term remains uncertain, but its location is estimated to be at the site of today's Domplatz. Medieval Hamburg. In 834, Hamburg was designated as the seat of a bishopric. The first bishop, Ansgar, became known as the Apostle of the North. Two years later, Hamburg was united with Bremen as the Bishopric of Hamburg-Bremen. Hamburg was destroyed and occupied several times. In 845, 600 Viking ships sailed up the River Elbe and destroyed Hamburg, at that time a town of around 500 inhabitants. In 1030, King Mieszko II Lambert of Poland burned down the city. Valdemar II of Denmark raided and occupied Hamburg in 1201 and in 1214. The Black Death killed at least 60% of the population in 1350. Hamburg experienced several great fires in the medieval period. In 1189, by imperial charter, Frederick I "Barbarossa" granted Hamburg the status of a Free Imperial City and tax-free access (or free-trade zone) up the Lower Elbe into the North Sea. In 1265, an allegedly forged letter was presented to or by the Rath of Hamburg. This charter, along with Hamburg's proximity to the main trade routes of the North Sea and Baltic Sea, quickly made it a major port in Northern Europe. Its trade alliance with Lübeck in 1241 marks the origin and core of the powerful Hanseatic League of trading cities. On 8 November 1266, a contract between Henry III and Hamburg's traders allowed them to establish a "hanse" in London. This was the first time in history that the word "hanse" was used for the trading guild of the Hanseatic League. In 1270, the solicitor of the senate of Hamburg, "Jordan von Boitzenburg", wrote the first description of civil, criminal and procedural law for a city in Germany in the German language, the "Ordeelbook" ("Ordeel": sentence). On 10 August 1410, civil unrest forced a compromise (German: "Rezeß", literally meaning: withdrawal). This is considered the first constitution of Hamburg. In 1356, the "Matthiae-Mahl" feast dinner for Hanseatic League cities was celebrated for the first time on 25 February, the first day of spring in medieval times. It continues today as the world's oldest ceremonial meal. Early modern period. In 1529, the city embraced Lutheranism, and it received Reformed refugees from the Netherlands and France. When Jan van Valckenborgh introduced a second layer to the fortifications to protect against the Thirty Years' War in the seventeenth century, he extended Hamburg and created a "New Town" ("Neustadt") whose street names still date from the grid system of roads he introduced. Upon the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the Free Imperial City of Hamburg was not incorporated into a larger administrative area while retaining special privileges (mediatised), but became a sovereign state with the official title of the "Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg". Hamburg was briefly annexed by Napoleon I to the First French Empire (1804–1814/1815). Russian forces under General Bennigsen finally freed the city in 1814. Hamburg re-assumed its pre-1811 status as a city-state in 1814. The Vienna Congress of 1815 confirmed Hamburg's independence and it became one of 39 sovereign states of the German Confederation (1815–1866). In 1842, about a quarter of the inner city was destroyed in the "Great Fire". The fire started on the night of 4 May and was not extinguished until 8 May. It destroyed three churches, the town hall, and many other buildings, killing 51 people and leaving an estimated 20,000 homeless. Reconstruction took more than 40 years. After periodic political unrest, particularly in 1848, Hamburg adopted in 1860 a semidemocratic constitution that provided for the election of the Senate, the governing body of the city-state, by adult taxpaying males. Other innovations included the separation of powers, the separation of Church and State, freedom of the press, of assembly and association. Hamburg became a member of the North German Confederation (1866–1871) and of the German Empire (1871–1918), and maintained its self-ruling status during the Weimar Republic (1919–1933). Hamburg acceded to the German Customs Union or Zollverein in 1888, the last (along with Bremen) of the German states to join. The city experienced its fastest growth during the second half of the 19th century when its population more than quadrupled to 800,000 as the growth of the city's Atlantic trade helped make it Europe's second-largest port. The Hamburg-America Line, with Albert Ballin as its director, became the world's largest transatlantic shipping company around the start of the 20th century. Shipping companies sailing to South America, Africa, India and East Asia were based in the city. Hamburg was the departure port for many Germans and Eastern Europeans to emigrate to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Trading communities from all over the world established themselves there. A major outbreak of cholera in 1892 was badly handled by the city government, which retained an unusual degree of independence for a German city. About 8,600 died in the largest German epidemic of the late 19th century, and the last major cholera epidemic in a major city of the Western world. Second World War. Hamburg was a "Gau" within the administrative division of Nazi Germany from 1934 until 1945. During the Second World War, the Allied bombing of Hamburg devastated much of the city and the harbour. On 23 July 1943, the Royal Air Force and United States Army Air Force firebombing created a firestorm which spread from the "Hauptbahnhof" (main railway station) and quickly moved south-east, completely destroying entire boroughs such as Hammerbrook, Billbrook and Hamm South. Thousands of people perished in these densely populated working class boroughs. The raids, codenamed Operation Gomorrah by the RAF, killed at least 42,600 civilians; the precise number is not known. About one million civilians were evacuated in the aftermath of the raids. While some of the boroughs destroyed were rebuilt as residential districts after the war, others such as Hammerbrook were entirely developed into office, retail and limited residential or industrial districts. The Hamburg Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery is in the greater Ohlsdorf Cemetery in the north of Hamburg. At least 42,900 people are thought to have perished in the Neuengamme concentration camp (about outside the city in the marshlands), mostly from epidemics and in the destruction of Kriegsmarine vessels housing evacuees at the end of the war. Systematic deportations of Jewish Germans and Gentile Germans of Jewish descent started on 18 October 1941. These were all directed to ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe or to concentration camps. Most deported persons perished in the Holocaust. By the end of 1942, the "Jüdischer Religionsverband in Hamburg" was dissolved as an independent legal entity and its remaining assets and staff were assumed by the Reich Association of Jews in Germany (District Northwest). On 10 June 1943, the Reich Security Main Office dissolved the association by a decree. The few remaining employees not somewhat protected by a mixed marriage were deported from Hamburg on 23 June to Theresienstadt, where most of them perished. Post-war history. The city was surrendered to British Forces on 3 May 1945, in the Battle of Hamburg, three days after Adolf Hitler's death. After the Second World War, Hamburg formed part of the British Zone of Occupation; it became a state of what was then West Germany in 1949. On 16 February 1962, a North Sea flood caused the Elbe to rise to an all-time high, inundating one-fifth of Hamburg and killing more than 300 people. The inner German border – only east of Hamburg – separated the city from most of its hinterland and reduced Hamburg's global trade. Since German reunification in 1990, and the accession of several Central European and Baltic countries into the European Union in 2004, the Port of Hamburg has restarted ambitions for regaining its position as the region's largest deep-sea port for container shipping and its major commercial and trading centre. Geography. Hamburg is at a sheltered natural harbour on the southern fanning-out of the Jutland Peninsula, between Continental Europe to the south and Scandinavia to the north, with the North Sea to the west and the Baltic Sea to the northeast. It is on the River Elbe at its confluence with the Alster and Bille. The city centre is around the Binnenalster ("Inner Alster") and Außenalster ("Outer Alster"), both formed by damming the River Alster to create lakes. The islands of Neuwerk, Scharhörn, and Nigehörn, away in the Hamburg Wadden Sea National Park, are also part of the city of Hamburg. The neighbourhoods of Neuenfelde, Cranz, Francop and Finkenwerder are part of the "Altes Land" (old land) region, the largest contiguous fruit-producing region in Central Europe. Neugraben-Fischbek has Hamburg's highest elevation, the Hasselbrack at AMSL. Hamburg borders the states of Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony. Climate. Hamburg has an oceanic climate (Köppen: "Cfb"), influenced by its proximity to the coast and maritime influences that originate over the Atlantic Ocean. The location in the north of Germany provides extremes greater than typical marine climates, but definitely in the category due to the prevailing westerlies. Nearby wetlands enjoy a maritime temperate climate. The amount of snowfall has varied greatly in recent decades. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, heavy snowfall sometimes occurred, the winters of recent years have been less cold, with snowfall just a few days per year. The warmest months are June, July, and August, with high temperatures of . The coldest are December, January, and February, with low temperatures of . Demographics. On 31 December 2016, there were 1,860,759 people registered as living in Hamburg in an area of . The population density was . The metropolitan area of the Hamburg region (Hamburg Metropolitan Region) is home to 5,107,429 living on . There were 915,319 women and 945,440 men in Hamburg. For every 1,000 females, there were 1,033 males. In 2015, there were 19,768 births in Hamburg (of which 38.3% were to unmarried women); 6422 marriages and 3190 divorces, and 17,565 deaths. In the city, the population was spread out, with 16.1% under the age of 18, and 18.3% were 65 years of age or older. 356 people in Hamburg were over the age of 100. According to the Statistical Office for Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein, the number of people with a migrant background is at 34% (631,246). Immigrants come from 200 countries. 5,891 people have acquired German cititzenship in 2016. In 2016, there were 1,021,666 households, of which 17.8% had children under the age of 18; 54.4% of all households were made up of singles. 25.6% of all households were single parent households. The average household size was 1.8. Portuguese community. Hamburg has the largest Portuguese community in Germany with about 30,000 people with Portuguese diaspora. Many Portuguese sailor and dealor came to Hamburg since the 15th century due to its port. Since 1970s, there is a district in Hamburg called (Portuguese quarter) where many Portuguese people settled there and has many Portuguese restaurants, cafes and shops today which attracts many tourists. There are many statues, squares and streets in Hamburg that are named after Portuguese historical figures including the Vasco da Gama statue on the Kornhaus bridge, which was suggested by Portuguese community to make the Portuguese community in Hamburg visible. Afghan community. Hamburg has a large Afghan community with about 40,000 people of Afghan diaspora, which makes Hamburg not only the largest Afghan community in Germany, it has also the largest Afghan community in Europe. They first came to Hamburg in the Afghan conflict in 1990s where many Afghan migrants choose to live in Hamburg. Since then the Afghan population grow and after 2015 the Afghan population almost doubled due to the refugee crisis. There is an area in Hamburg behind the central station where many Afghan restaurants and shops are located there. Many carpet shops in Speicherstadt is operated by Afghans. Foreign citizens in Hamburg. Hamburg residents with a foreign citizenship as of 31 December 2016 is as follows: Language. As elsewhere in Germany, Standard German is spoken in Hamburg, but as typical for northern Germany, the original language of Hamburg is Low German, usually referred to as "Hamborger Platt" (German "Hamburger Platt") or "Hamborgsch". Since large-scale standardisation of the German language beginning in earnest in the 18th century, various Low German-coloured dialects have developed (contact-varieties of German on Low Saxon substrates). Originally, there was a range of such Missingsch varieties, the best-known being the low-prestige ones of the working classes and the somewhat more bourgeois "Hanseatendeutsch" (Hanseatic German), although the term is used in appreciation. All of these are now moribund due to the influences of Standard German used by education and media. However, the former importance of Low German is indicated by several songs, such as the famous sea shanty Hamborger Veermaster, written in the 19th century when Low German was used more frequently. Many toponyms and street names reflect Low Saxon vocabulary, partially even in Low Saxon spelling, which is not standardised, and to some part in forms adapted to Standard German. Religion. 65.2% of the population is not religious or adherent other religions than the Evangelical Church or Catholicism. In 2018, 24.9% of the population belonged to the North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church, the largest religious body, and 9.9% to the Roman Catholic Church. Hamburg is seat of one of the three bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany and seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Hamburg. According to the publication ("Muslim life in Germany"), an estimated 141,900 Muslim migrants (from nearly 50 countries of origin) lived in Hamburg in 2008. About three years later (May 2011) calculations based on census data for 21 countries of origin resulted in a figure of about 143,200 Muslim migrants in Hamburg, making up 8.4% percent of the population. , there were more than 50 mosques in the city, including the Ahmadiyya run Fazle Omar Mosque, which is the oldest in the city, and which hosts the Islamic Centre Hamburg. A Jewish community also exists. Government. The city of Hamburg is one of 16 German states, therefore the Mayor of Hamburg's office corresponds more to the role of a minister-president than to the one of a city mayor. As a German state government, it is responsible for public education, correctional institutions and public safety; as a municipality, it is additionally responsible for libraries, recreational facilities, sanitation, water supply and welfare services. Since 1897, the seat of the government has been Hamburg City Hall (Hamburg Rathaus), with the office of the mayor, the meeting room for the Senate and the floor for the Hamburg Parliament. From 2001 until 2010, the mayor of Hamburg was Ole von Beust, who governed in Germany's first statewide "black-green" coalition, consisting of the conservative CDU Hamburg and the alternative GAL, which are Hamburg's regional wing of the Alliance 90/The Greens party. Von Beust was briefly succeeded by Christoph Ahlhaus in 2010, but the coalition broke apart on 28 November 2010. On 7 March 2011 Olaf Scholz (SPD) became mayor. After the 2015 election the SPD and the Alliance 90/The Greens formed a coalition. Boroughs. Hamburg is made up of seven boroughs (German: "Bezirke") and subdivided into 104 quarters (German: "Stadtteile"). There are 181 localities (German: "Ortsteile"). The urban organisation is regulated by the Constitution of Hamburg and several laws. Most of the quarters were former independent cities, towns or villages annexed into Hamburg proper. The last large annexation was done through the Greater Hamburg Act of 1937, when the cities Altona, Harburg, and Wandsbek were merged into the state of Hamburg. The "Act of the Constitution and Administration of Hanseatic city of Hamburg" established Hamburg as a state and a municipality. Some of the boroughs and quarters have been rearranged several times. Each borough is governed by a Borough Council (German: "Bezirksversammlung") and administered by a Municipal Administrator (German: "Bezirksamtsleiter"). The boroughs are not independent municipalities: their power is limited and subordinate to the Senate of Hamburg. The borough administrator is elected by the Borough Council and thereafter requires confirmation and appointment by Hamburg's Senate. The quarters have no governing bodies of their own. Since the latest territorial reform of March 2008, the boroughs are Hamburg-Mitte, Altona, Eimsbüttel, Hamburg-Nord, Wandsbek, Bergedorf, and Harburg. "Hamburg-Mitte" ("Hamburg Centre") covers mostly the urban centre of the city and consists of the quarters Billbrook, Billstedt, Borgfelde, Finkenwerder, HafenCity, Hamm, Hammerbrook, Horn, Kleiner Grasbrook, Neuwerk, Rothenburgsort, St. Georg, St. Pauli, Steinwerder, Veddel, Waltershof, and Wilhelmsburg. The quarters Hamburg-Altstadt ("old town") and Neustadt ("new town") are the historical origin of Hamburg. "Altona" is the westernmost urban borough, on the right bank of the Elbe river. From 1640 to 1864, Altona was under the administration of the Danish monarchy. Altona was an independent city until 1937. Politically, the following quarters are part of Altona: Altona-Altstadt, Altona-Nord, Bahrenfeld, Ottensen, Othmarschen, Groß Flottbek, Osdorf, Lurup, Nienstedten, Blankenese, Iserbrook, Sülldorf, Rissen, and Sternschanze. "Bergedorf" consists of the quarters Allermöhe, Altengamme, Bergedorf—the centre of the former independent town, Billwerder, Curslack, Kirchwerder, Lohbrügge, Moorfleet, Neuengamme, Neuallermöhe, Ochsenwerder, Reitbrook, Spadenland, and Tatenberg. "Eimsbüttel" is split into nine-quarters: Eidelstedt, Eimsbüttel, Harvestehude, Hoheluft-West, Lokstedt, Niendorf, Rotherbaum, Schnelsen, and Stellingen. Located within this borough is former Jewish neighbourhood Grindel. "Hamburg-Nord" contains the quarters Alsterdorf, Barmbek-Nord, Barmbek-Süd, Dulsberg, Eppendorf, Fuhlsbüttel, Groß Borstel, Hoheluft-Ost, Hohenfelde, Langenhorn, Ohlsdorf with Ohlsdorf cemetery, Uhlenhorst, and Winterhude. "Harburg" is situated on the southern shores of the river Elbe and covers parts of the port of Hamburg, residential and rural areas, and some research institutes. The quarters are Altenwerder, Cranz, Eißendorf, Francop, Gut Moor, Harburg, Hausbruch, Heimfeld, Langenbek, Marmstorf, Moorburg, Neuenfelde, Neugraben-Fischbek, Neuland, Rönneburg, Sinstorf, and Wilstorf. "Wandsbek" is divided into the quarters Bergstedt, Bramfeld, Duvenstedt, Eilbek, Farmsen-Berne, Hummelsbüttel, Jenfeld, Lemsahl-Mellingstedt, Marienthal, Poppenbüttel, Rahlstedt, Sasel, Steilshoop, Tonndorf, Volksdorf, Wandsbek, Wellingsbüttel, and Wohldorf-Ohlstedt. Cityscape. Architecture. Hamburg has architecturally significant buildings in a wide range of styles and just one skyscraper under construction (see List of tallest buildings in Hamburg). Churches are important landmarks, such as St Nicholas', which for a short time in the 19th century was the world's tallest building. The skyline features the tall spires of the most important churches ("Hauptkirchen") St Michael's (nicknamed "Michel"), St Peter's, St James's ("St. Jacobi"), and St. Catherine's covered with copper plates, and the Heinrich-Hertz-Turm, the radio and television tower (no longer publicly accessible). The many streams, rivers, and canals are crossed by some 2,500 bridges, more than London, Amsterdam, and Venice put together. Hamburg has more bridges inside its city limits than any other city in the world. The Köhlbrandbrücke, Freihafen Elbbrücken, Lombardsbrücke, and Kennedybrücke dividing Binnenalster from Aussenalster are important roadways. The town hall is a richly decorated Neo-Renaissance building finished in 1897. The tower is high. Its façade, long, depicts the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, since Hamburg was, as a Free Imperial City, only under the sovereignty of the emperor. The Chilehaus, a brick expressionist office building built in 1922 and designed by architect Fritz Höger, is shaped like an ocean liner. Europe's largest urban development since 2008, the HafenCity, will house about 15,000 inhabitants and 45,000 workers. The plan includes designs by Rem Koolhaas and Renzo Piano. The Elbphilharmonie "(Elbe Philharmonic Hall)", opened in January 2017, houses concerts in a sail-shaped building on top of an old warehouse, designed by architects "Herzog & de Meuron". The many parks are distributed over the whole city, which makes Hamburg a very verdant city. The biggest parks are the "Stadtpark", the Ohlsdorf Cemetery, and Planten un Blomen. The "Stadtpark", Hamburg's "Central Park", has a great lawn and a huge water tower, which houses one of Europe's biggest planetaria. The park and its buildings were designed by Fritz Schumacher in the 1910s. Parks and gardens. The lavish and spacious "Planten un Blomen" park (Low German dialect for "plants and flowers") located in the centre of Hamburg is the green heart of the city. Within the park are various thematic gardens, the biggest Japanese garden in Germany, and the "Alter Botanischer Garten Hamburg", which is a historic botanical garden that now consists primarily of greenhouses. The "Botanischer Garten Hamburg" is a modern botanical garden maintained by the University of Hamburg. Besides these, there are many more parks of various sizes. In 2014 Hamburg celebrated a birthday of park culture, where many parks were reconstructed and cleaned up. Moreover, every year there are the famous water-light-concerts in the "Planten un Blomen" park, from May to early October. Culture. From the 1760s the theatre director Abel Seyler—the leader of the Hamburg National Theatre and subsequently the Seyler Theatre Company—established Hamburg as one of the leading European centres of theatrical innovation, promoting experimental productions and pioneering a new more realist style of acting, introducing Shakespeare to a German language audience, and promoting the concept of a national theatre in the tradition of Ludvig Holberg, the Sturm und Drang playwrights, and serious German opera. Today Hamburg has more than 40 theatres, 60 museums, and 100 music venues and clubs. With 6.6 music venues per 100,000 inhabitants, Hamburg has the second-highest density of music venues of Germany's largest cities, after Munich and ahead of Cologne and Berlin. In 2005, more than 18 million people visited concerts, exhibitions, theatres, cinemas, museums, and cultural events, and 8,552 taxable companies (average size 3.16 employees) were engaged in the culture sector, which includes music, performing arts, and literature. The creative industries represent almost one fifth of all companies in Hamburg. Hamburg has entered the European Green Capital Award scheme, and was awarded the title of European Green Capital for 2011. Theatres. The state-owned "Deutsches Schauspielhaus", the Thalia Theatre, Ohnsorg Theatre, "Schmidts Tivoli", and the "Kampnagel" are well-known theatres. The English Theatre of Hamburg, near the U3 station Mundsburg, was founded in 1976 and is the oldest professional English-language theatre in Germany, with exclusively English-speaking actors in its company. Museums. Hamburg has several large museums and galleries showing classical and contemporary art, for example the Kunsthalle Hamburg with its contemporary art gallery ("Galerie der Gegenwart"), the "Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe" (Museum of Art and Design), and the Deichtorhallen (with the House of Photography and Hall of Contemporary Art). The Internationales Maritimes Museum Hamburg opened in the HafenCity quarter in 2008. There are various specialised museums in Hamburg, such as the "Archäologisches Museum Hamburg" (Hamburg Archaeological Museum) in the Harburg borough, the Hamburg Museum of Work ("Museum der Arbeit"), and several museums of local history, such as the ("Freilichtmuseum am Kiekeberg") at Kiekeberg in the Harburg Hills, just outside of Hamburg, in Rosengarten. Two museum ships near St. Pauli Piers ("Landungsbrücken") bear witness to the freight ship ("Cap San Diego") and cargo sailing ship era ("Rickmer Rickmers"). In 2017 the Hamburg-built iron-hulled sailing ship "Peking" returned to the city and was installed in the German Port Museum in 2020. The world's largest model railway museum, Miniatur Wunderland, with total railway length, is also situated near St. Pauli Piers in a former warehouse. BallinStadt, a memorial park and former emigration station, is dedicated to the millions of Europeans who emigrated to North and South America between 1850 and 1939. Visitors descending from those overseas emigrants may search for their ancestors at computer terminals. Music. Hamburg State Opera is a leading opera company. Its orchestra is the Philharmoniker Hamburg. The city's other well-known orchestra is the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra. The main concert venue is the new concert hall Elbphilharmonie. Before it was the Laeiszhalle, "Musikhalle Hamburg". The Laeiszhalle also houses a third orchestra, the Hamburger Symphoniker. György Ligeti and Alfred Schnittke taught at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg. Hamburg is the birthplace of Johannes Brahms, who spent his formative early years in the city, and the birthplace and home of the famous waltz composer Oscar Fetrás, who wrote the well-known "Mondnacht auf der Alster" waltz. Since the German premiere of "Cats" in 1986, there have always been musicals running, including "The Phantom of the Opera", "The Lion King", "Dirty Dancing", and "Dance of the Vampires (musical)". This density, the highest in Germany, is partly due to the major musical production company "Stage Entertainment" being based in the city. In addition to musicals, opera houses, concert halls, and theatres, the cityscape is characterised by a large music scene. This includes, among other things, over 100 music venues, several annual festivals and over 50 event organisers based in Hamburg. Larger venues include the Barclaycard Arena, the Bahrenfeld harness racing track, and Hamburg City Park. Hamburg was an important centre of rock music in the early 1960s. The Beatles lived and played in Hamburg from August 1960 to December 1962. They proved popular and gained local acclaim. Prior to the group's initial recording and widespread fame, Hamburg provided residency and performing venues for the band during the time they performed there. One of the venues they performed at was the Star Club on St. Pauli. Hamburg has produced a number of successful (pop) musicians. Among the best known are Udo Lindenberg, Deichkind, and Jan Delay. The singer Annett Louisan lives in Hamburg. An important meeting place for Hamburg musicians from the 1970s to the mid-80s was the jazz pub Onkel Pö, which was originally founded in the Pöseldorf neighbourhood and later moved to Eppendorf. Many musicians who were counted as part of the "" met here. In addition to Udo Lindenberg, these included Otto Waalkes, Hans Scheibner and groups such as Torfrock and Frumpy. One of the members of the band Frumpy was the Hamburg-born singer and composer Inga Rumpf. Hamburg is famous for a special kind of German alternative music, the "Hamburger Schule", a term used for bands like Tocotronic, Blumfeld, Tomte or Kante. The meeting point of the Hamburg School was long considered to be the in Altona's old town, near the Fischmarkt. Alongside clubs such as the Pal, the Moondoo or the Waagenbau, today the Pudel is a central location of the Hamburg electro scene. Well-known artists of this scene include the DJ duo Moonbootica, Mladen Solomun, and Helena Hauff. Hamburg is also home to many music labels, music distributors and publishers. These include Warner Music, Kontor Records, PIAS, Edel SE & Co. KGaA, Believe Digital, and Indigo. The high proportion of independent labels in the city, which include Audiolith, Dial Records, Grand Hotel van Cleef, among others, is striking. Before its closure, the label L'Age D'Or also belonged to these. In addition, Hamburg has a considerable alternative and punk scene, which gathers around the Rote Flora, a squatted former theatre located in the Sternschanze. The city was a major centre for heavy metal music in the 1980s. Helloween, Gamma Ray, Running Wild, and Grave Digger started in Hamburg. The industrial rock band KMFDM was also formed in Hamburg, initially as a performance art project. The influences of these and other bands from the area helped establish the subgenre of power metal. In the late 90s, Hamburg was considered one of the strongholds of the German hip-hop scene. Bands like Beginner shaped Hamburg's hip-hop style and made the city a serious location for the hip-hop scene through songs like "Hamburg City Blues". In addition to Beginner, several successful German hip-hop acts hail from Hamburg, such as Fünf Sterne Deluxe, Samy Deluxe, Fettes Brot, and 187 Strassenbande. Hamburg has a vibrant psychedelic trance community, with record labels such as Spirit Zone. Festivals and regular events. Hamburg is noted for several festivals and regular events. Some of them are street festivals, such as the LGBT pride "Hamburg Pride" festival or the Alster fair (German: "Alstervergnügen"), held at the "Binnenalster". The "Hamburger DOM" is northern Germany's biggest funfair, held three times a year. "Hafengeburtstag" is a funfair to honour the birthday of the port of Hamburg with a party and a ship parade. The annual biker's service in Saint Michael's Church attracts tens of thousands of bikers. Christmas markets in December are held at the Hamburg Rathaus square, among other places. The "long night of museums" (German: "Lange Nacht der Museen") offers one entrance fee for about 40 museums until midnight. The sixth "Festival of Cultures" was held in September 2008, celebrating multi-cultural life. The Filmfest Hamburg — a film festival originating from the 1950s "Film Days" (German: "Film Tage") — presents a wide range of films. The "Hamburg Messe and Congress" offers a venue for trade shows, such "hanseboot", an international boat show, or "Du und deine Welt", a large consumer products show. Regular sports events—some open to pro and amateur participants—are the cycling competition EuroEyes Cyclassics, the Hamburg Marathon, the biggest marathon in Germany after Berlin, the tennis tournament Hamburg Masters, and equestrian events like the Deutsches Derby. Hamburg is also known for its music and festival culture. For example, the Reeperbahn alone has between 25–30 million visitors every year. In addition, there are over a million visitors to the annual festivals and major music events. Hamburg's festivals include the Elbjazz Festival, which takes place 2 days a year (usually on the Whitsun weekend) in Hamburg's harbour and HafenCity. For contemporary and experimental music, the "blurred edges " festival usually follows in May at various venues within Hamburg. In mid-August, the MS Dockville music and arts festival has run annually since 2007 in the Wilhelmsburg district. This is followed at the end of September by the , which has been running since 2006. As Europe's largest club festival, it offers several hundred program points around the Reeperbahn in Hamburg over four days and is one of the most important meeting places for the music industry worldwide. In November, the ÜBERJAZZ Festival, which aims to expand the stylistic boundaries of the concept of jazz, starts every year at Kampnagel. Cuisine. Original Hamburg dishes are "Birnen, Bohnen und Speck" (green beans cooked with pears and bacon). "Aalsuppe" (Hamburgisch "Oolsupp") is often mistaken to be German for "eel soup" ("Aal"/"Ool" translated 'eel'), but the name probably comes from the Low Saxon "allns" , meaning "all", "everything and the kitchen sink", not necessarily eel. Today eel is often included to meet the expectations of unsuspecting diners. There is "Bratkartoffeln" (pan-fried potato slices), "Finkenwerder Scholle" (Low Saxon "Finkwarder Scholl", pan-fried plaice), "Pannfisch" (pan-fried fish with mustard sauce), "Rote Grütze" (Low Saxon "Rode Grütt", related to Danish "rødgrød", a type of summer pudding made mostly from berries and usually served with cream, like Danish "rødgrød med fløde"), and "Labskaus" (a mixture of corned beef, mashed potatoes, and beetroot, a cousin of the Norwegian "lapskaus" and Liverpool's lobscouse, all offshoots off an old-time one-pot meal that used to be the main component of the common sailor's humdrum diet on the high seas). "Alsterwasser" (in reference to the city's river, the Alster) is the local name for a type of shandy, a concoction of equal parts of beer and carbonated lemonade ("Zitronenlimonade"), the lemonade being added to the beer. There is the curious regional dessert pastry called "Franzbrötchen". Looking rather like a flattened croissant, it is similar in preparation, but includes a cinnamon and sugar filling, often with raisins or brown sugar streusel. The name may also reflect to the roll's croissant-like appearance – "franz" appears to be a shortening of "französisch", meaning "French", which would make a "Franzbrötchen" a "French roll". Ordinary bread rolls tend to be oval-shaped and of the French bread variety. The local name is "Schrippe" (scored lengthways) for the oval kind and, for the round kind, "Rundstück" ("round piece" rather than mainstream German "Brötchen", diminutive form of "Brot" "bread"), a relative of Denmark's "rundstykke". In fact, while by no means identical, the cuisines of Hamburg and Denmark, especially of Copenhagen, have a lot in common. This also includes a predilection for open-faced sandwiches of all sorts, especially topped with cold-smoked or pickled fish. The American hamburger may have developed from Hamburg's "Frikadeller": a pan-fried patty (usually larger and thicker than its American counterpart) made from a mixture of ground beef, soaked stale bread, egg, chopped onion, salt, and pepper, usually served with potatoes and vegetables like any other piece of meat, not usually on a bun. The Oxford Dictionary defined a "Hamburger steak" in 1802: a sometimes-smoked and -salted piece of meat, that, according to some sources, came from Hamburg to America. The name and food, "hamburger", has entered all English-speaking countries, and derivative words in non-English speaking countries. There are restaurants which offer most of these dishes, especially in the HafenCity. Alternative culture. Hamburg has long been a centre of alternative music and counter-culture movements. The boroughs of St. Pauli, Sternschanze, and Altona are known for being home to many radical left-wing and anarchist groups, culminating every year during the traditional May Day demonstrations. During the 2017 G20 summit, which took place in Hamburg from 7–8 July that year, protestors clashed violently with the police in the Sternschanze area and particularly around the Rote Flora. On 7 July, several cars were set on fire and street barricades were erected to prevent the police from entering the area. In response to that, the police made heavy use of water cannons and tear gas in order to scatter the protestors. However, this was met with strong resistance by protestors, resulting in a total of 160 injured police and 75 arrested participants in the protests. After the summit, however, the Rote Flora issued a statement, in which it condemns the arbitrary acts of violence that were committed by some of the protestors whilst generally defending the right to use violence as a means of self-defence against police oppression. In particular, the spokesperson of the Rote Flora said that the autonomous cultural centre had a traditionally good relationship with its neighbours and local residents, since they were united in their fight against gentrification in that neighbourhood. British, American and English-speaking culture. There are several English-speaking communities, such as the Caledonian Society of Hamburg, The British Club Hamburg, British and Commonwealth Luncheon Club, Anglo-German Club e.V., Professional Women's Forum, The British Decorative and Fine Arts Society, The English Speaking Union of the Commonwealth, The Scottish Country Dancers of Hamburg, The Hamburg Players e.V. English Language Theatre Group, The Hamburg Exiles Rugby Club, several cricket clubs, and The Morris Minor Register of Hamburg. Furthermore, the Anglo-Hanseatic Lodge No. 850 within the Grand Lodge of British Freemasons of Germany under the United Grand Lodges of Germany works in Hamburg, and has a diverse expat membership. There is also a 400-year-old Anglican church community worshipping at "". American and international English-speaking organisations include The American Club of Hamburg e.V., the American Women's Club of Hamburg, the English Speaking Union, the German-American Women's Club, and The International Women's Club of Hamburg e.V. "The American Chamber of Commerce" handles matters related to business affairs. The International School of Hamburg serves school children. William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge spent the last two weeks of September 1798 at Hamburg. Dorothy wrote a detailed journal of their stay, labelled "The Hamburg Journal (1798) by noted Wordsworth scholar Edward de Selincourt". A Hamburg saying, referring to its anglophile nature, is: "Wenn es in London anfängt zu regnen, spannen die Hamburger den Schirm auf". ... "When it starts raining in London, people in Hamburg open their umbrellas". Memorials. A memorial for successful English engineer William Lindley, who, beginning in 1842, reorganised the drinking water and sewerage system and thus helped to fight against cholera, is near Baumwall railway station in Vorsetzen street. In 2009, more than 2,500 "stumbling blocks" ("Stolpersteine") were laid, engraved with the names of deported and murdered citizens. Inserted into the pavement in front of their former houses, the blocks draw attention to the victims of Nazi persecution. Economy. The gross domestic product (GDP) of Hamburg was 119.0 billion € in 2018, accounting for 3.6% of German economic output. GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power was €59,600 or 197% of the EU27 average in the same year. The GDP per employee was 132% of the EU average. The city has a relatively high employment rate, at 88 percent of the working-age population, employed in over 160,000 businesses. The median gross salary in 2021 was €47,544, which is 9.29% higher than the median gross salary in Germany overall. The unemployment rate stood at 6.1% in October 2018 and was higher than the German average. Banking. Hamburg has for centuries been a commercial centre of Northern Europe, and is the most important banking city of Northern Germany. The city is the seat of Germany's oldest bank, the Berenberg Bank, M.M.Warburg & CO, and Hamburg Commercial Bank. The Hamburg Stock Exchange is the oldest of its kind in Germany. Port. The most significant economic unit is the Port of Hamburg, which ranks third to Rotterdam and Antwerpen in Europe and 17th-largest worldwide, with transshipments of of cargo and 138.2 million tons of goods in 2016. International trade is also the reason for the large number of consulates in the city. Although situated up the Elbe, it is considered a sea port due to its ability to handle large ocean-going vessels. Industrial production. Heavy industry of Hamburg includes the making of steel, aluminium, copper and various large shipyards such as Blohm + Voss. Hamburg, along with Seattle and Toulouse, is an important location of the civil aerospace industry. Airbus, which operates the Hamburg-Finkenwerder assembly plant in Finkenwerder, employs over 13,000 people. HafenCity. The HafenCity is Europe's largest urban development project and is located in the Hamburg-Mitte district. It consists of the area of the Great Grasbrook, the northern part of the former Elbe island Grasbrook, and the warehouse district on the former Elbe island Kehrwieder and Wandrahm. It is bordered to the north, separated by the customs channel to Hamburg's city centre, west and south by the Elbe, and to the east, bounded by the upper harbour, Rothenburgsort. The district is full of rivers and streams and is surrounded by channels, and has a total area of about 2.2 square-kilometres. HafenCity has 155 hectares in the area formerly belonging to the free port north of the Great Grasbrook. Residential units for up to 12,000 people are planned to be built on the site by around the mid-2020s, and jobs for up to 40,000 people, mainly in the office sector, should be created. It is the largest ongoing urban development project in Hamburg. Construction work started in 2003, and in 2009 the first part of the urban development project was finished with the completion of the Dalmannkai / Sandtorkai neighbourhood – which is the first stage of the HafenCity project. According to the person responsible for the development and commercialisation of HafenCity, "HafenCity Hamburg GmbH", half of the master plan underlying structural construction is already completed, whereas the other half is either under construction or is in the construction preparation stages. Tourism. In 2017, more than 6,783,000 visitors with 13,822,000 overnight stays visited the city. The tourism sector employs more than 175,000 people full-time and brings in revenue of almost €9 billion, making the tourism industry a major economic force in the Hamburg Metropolitan Region. Hamburg has one of the fastest-growing tourism industries in Germany. From 2001 to 2007, the overnight stays in the city increased by 55.2% (Berlin +52.7%, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern +33%). A typical Hamburg visit includes a tour of the city hall and the grand church St. Michaelis (calle "Michel"), and visiting the old warehouse district (Speicherstadt) and the harbour promenade ("Landungsbrücken"). Sightseeing buses connect these points of interest. As Hamburg is one of the world's largest harbours, many visitors take one of the harbour and/or canal boat tours ("Große Hafenrundfahrt", "Fleetfahrt") which start from the "Landungsbrücken". Major destinations also include museums. The area of Reeperbahn, in the quarter St. Pauli, is Europe's largest red light district and home of strip clubs, brothels, bars, and nightclubs. The singer and actor Hans Albers is strongly associated with St. Pauli, and wrote the neighbourhood's unofficial anthem, "Auf der Reeperbahn Nachts um Halb Eins" ("On the Reeperbahn at Half Past Midnight"), in the 1940s. The Beatles had stints on the Reeperbahn early in their careers. Others prefer the laid-back neighbourhood "Schanze", with its street cafés, or a barbecue on one of the beaches along the river Elbe. Hamburg's famous zoo, the Tierpark Hagenbeck, was founded in 1907 by Carl Hagenbeck as the first zoo with moated, barless enclosures. In 2016, the average visitor spent two nights in Hamburg. The majority of visitors come from Germany. Most foreigners are European, especially from Denmark (395,681 overnight stays), the United Kingdom (301,000 overnight stays), Switzerland (340,156 overnight stays), Austria (about 252,397 overnight stays), and the Netherlands (about 182,610 overnight stays). The largest group from outside Europe comes from the United States (206,614 overnight stays). The "Queen Mary 2" has docked regularly since 2004, and there were six departures planned from 2010 onwards. Creative industries. Media businesses employ over 70,000 people. The Norddeutscher Rundfunk, which includes the television station NDR Fernsehen, is based in Hamburg, including the very popular news program "Tagesschau", as are the commercial television station "Hamburg 1", the Christian television station "Bibel TV", and the civil media outlet "Tide TV". There are regional radio stations such as Radio Hamburg. Some of Germany's largest publishing companies, Axel Springer AG, Gruner + Jahr, and Bauer Media Group, are located in the city. Many national newspapers and magazines, such as and "Die Zeit", are produced in Hamburg, as well as some special-interest newspapers such as "Financial Times Deutschland". "Hamburger Abendblatt" and "Hamburger Morgenpost" are daily regional newspapers with a large circulation. There are music publishers, such as Warner Bros. Records Germany, and ICT firms such as Adobe Systems and Google Germany. A total of about 2,000 companies are located in Hamburg that are active in the music industry. With over 17,000 employees and a gross value added of around 640 million euros, this industry is one of the strongest in the city. The and the Clubkombinat represent the companies in the industry. The interests of Hamburg musicians* are represented, for example, by RockCity Hamburg e.V.. Hamburg was one of the locations for the James Bond series film "Tomorrow Never Dies". The "Reeperbahn" has been the location for many scenes, including the 1994 Beatles film "Backbeat". The film "A Most Wanted Man" was set in and filmed in Hamburg. Hamburg was also shown in "An American Tail", where Fievel Mousekewitz and his family immigrate to America in the hopes to escape cats. Infrastructure. Health systems. Hamburg has 54 hospitals. The University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf, with about 1,736 beds, houses a large medical school. There are also smaller private hospitals. On 1 January 2011 there were about 12,507 hospital beds. The city had 5,663 physicians in private practice and 456 pharmacies in 2010. Transport. Hamburg is a major transportation hub, connected to four Autobahnen (motorways) and the most important railway junction on the route to Scandinavia. Bridges and tunnels connect the northern and southern parts of the city, such as the old Elbe Tunnel ("Alter Elbtunnel") or St. Pauli Elbtunnel (official name), which opened in 1911, today a major tourist sight, and the Elbe Tunnel ("Elbtunnel"), the crossing of a motorway. Hamburg Airport is the oldest airport in Germany still in operation. There is also the smaller Hamburg Finkenwerder Airport, used only as a company airport for Airbus. Some airlines market Lübeck Airport in Lübeck as serving Hamburg. Hamburg's licence plate prefix was "HH" (Hansestadt Hamburg; English: Hanseatic City of Hamburg) between 1906 and 1945 and from 1956 onwards, rather than the single letter normally used for large cities since the federal registration reform in 1956, such as B for Berlin or M for Munich. "H" was Hamburg's prefix in the years between 1945 and 1947 (used by Hanover since 1956). Public transport. Public transport by rail, bus, and ship is organised by the "Hamburger Verkehrsverbund" ("Hamburg transit authority") (HVV). Tickets sold by one company are valid on all other HVV companies' services. The HVV was the first organisation of this kind worldwide. 33 mass transit rail lines across the city are the backbone of public transport. The S-Bahn (commuter train system) comprises six lines and the U-Bahn four lines – "U-Bahn" is short for "Untergrundbahn" (underground railway). Approximately of of the U-Bahn is underground; most is on embankments or viaduct or at ground level. Older residents still speak of the system as "Hochbahn" (elevated railway), also because the operating company of the subway is the "Hamburger Hochbahn". The AKN railway connects satellite towns in Schleswig-Holstein to the city. On some routes regional trains of Germany's major railway company Deutsche Bahn AG and the regional "metronom" trains may be used with an HVV ticket. Except at the four bigger stations of the city, Hauptbahnhof, Dammtor, Altona, and Harburg, regional trains do not stop inside the city. The tram system was opened in 1866 and shut down in 1978. Gaps in the rail network are filled by more than 669 bus routes, operated by single-deck two-, three- and four-axle diesel buses. Hamburg has no trams or trolleybuses, but has hydrogen-fuelled buses. The buses run frequently during working hours, with buses on the MetroBus routes running every ten minutes from 6 am to 9 pm. On special weekday night lines the intervals can be 30 minutes or more, while on normal days (Monday-Friday) normal buses stop running at night (some lines run 24 hours a day, every day of the year at least every half hour). There are eight ferry lines along the River Elbe, operated by "HADAG", that fall under the aegis of the HVV. While mainly used by citizens and dock workers, they can also be used for sightseeing tours. The international airport serving Hamburg, Hamburg Airport Helmut Schmidt (IATA: HAM, ICAO: EDDH), is the fifth biggest and oldest airport in Germany, having been established in 1912 and located about from the city centre. About 60 airlines provide service to 125 destination airports, including some long-distance destinations like Newark, New Jersey on United Airlines, Dubai on Emirates, and Tehran on Iran Air. Hamburg is a secondary hub for Lufthansa, which is the largest carrier at the airport, and the airline also operates one of its biggest Lufthansa Technik maintenance facilities there. The second airport is located in Hamburg-Finkenwerder, officially named Hamburg Finkenwerder Airport (IATA: XFW, ICAO: EDHI). It is about from the city centre and is a nonpublic airport for the Airbus plant. It is the second biggest Airbus plant, after Toulouse, and the third biggest aviation manufacturing plant after Seattle and Toulouse; the plant houses the final assembly lines for A318, A319, A320, A321, and A380 aircraft. The average amount of time people spend commuting with public transit in Hamburg, for example to and from work, on a weekday is 58 min. 16% of public transit riders, ride for more than two hours every day. The average amount of time people wait at a stop or station for public transit is 11 min, while 11% of riders wait for over 20 minutes on average every day. The average distance people usually ride in a single trip with public transit is 8.9 km, while 21% travel for over 12 km in a single direction. Utilities. Electricity for Hamburg and Northern Germany is largely provided by "Vattenfall Europe", formerly the state-owned "Hamburgische Electricitäts-Werke". Vattenfall Europe used to operate the Brunsbüttel Nuclear Power Plant and Krümmel Nuclear Power Plant, both taken out of service as part of the nuclear power phase-out. In addition, E.ON operates the Brokdorf Nuclear Power Plant, near Hamburg. There are also the coal-fired Wedel, Tiefstack, and Moorburg CHP Plant, and the fuel-cell power plant in the HafenCity quarter. "VERA Klärschlammverbrennung" uses the biosolids of the Hamburg wastewater treatment plant; the "Pumpspeicherwerk Geesthacht" is a pump storage power plant and a solid waste combustion power station is "Müllverwertung Borsigstraße". In June 2019 City of Hamburg introduced a law governing the phasing out of coal based thermal and electric energy production ("Kohleausstiegsgesetz"). This move was the result of negotiations between parliamentary parties and representatives of the popular petition "Tschuess Kohle ("Goodbye Coal")." In 2020, Hamburg Ministry for Environment and Energy announced a partnership with Namibia, which is a potential supplier of woody biomass from encroacher bush as replacement of coal. Sports. Hamburger SV is a football team playing in the 2. Bundesliga (as of 2023). The HSV was the oldest team of the Bundesliga, playing in the league since its beginning in 1963, until a change of results saw them relegated from the Bundesliga in 2018. HSV was six times German champion, three times winner of the German Cup, and triumphed in the European Cup in 1983, as well as having participated in the group stages of the Champions League twice: in 2000–01 and 2006–07. They play at the Volksparkstadion (average attendance in the 12–13 season was 52,916). In addition, FC St. Pauli was a second division football club that came in second place in the 2009–10 season and qualified to play alongside Hamburger SV in the first division for the first time since the 2001–02 season. St. Pauli's home games take place at the Millerntor-Stadion. The Hamburg Freezers represented Hamburg until 2016 in the DEL, the premier ice hockey league in Germany. HSV Handball represented Hamburg until 2016 in the German handball league. In 2007, HSV Handball won the European Cupwinners Cup. The Club won the league in the 2010–11 season and had an average attendance of 10.690 in the O2 World Hamburg the same year. The most recent success for the team was the EHF Champions League win in 2013. Since 2014, the club has suffered from economic problems and was almost not allowed the playing licence for the 2014–15 season; but due to economic support from the former club president/sponsor Andreas Rudolf, the club was allowed the licence in the last minute. On 20 January 2016, however, their licence was removed due to violations following the continued economic struggles. In 2016–17, they were not allowed to play in the first or second league. The team lives on through their former second team (now their main team) in the third division (2016–2018) and in second division (since 2018). The "BCJ Hamburg" played in the Basketball Bundesliga from 1999 to 2001. Later, the Hamburg Towers became the city's prime team. The Towers promoted to Germany's top division in 2019. In 2022, they already reached the playoffs. The Towers play their home games at the Edel-optics.de Arena in Wilhelmsburg. Hamburg is the nation's field hockey capital and dominates the men's as well as the women's Bundesliga. Hamburg hosts many top teams such as Uhlenhorster Hockey Club, Harvesterhuder Hockey Club, and Club An Der Alster. The Hamburg Warriors are one of Germany's top lacrosse clubs. The club has grown immensely in the last several years and includes at least one youth team, three men's, and two women's teams. The team participates in the Deutsch Lacrosse Verein. The Hamburg Warriors are part of the Harvestehuder Tennis- und Hockey-Club e.V (HTHC). Hamburg Blue Devils was one of the prominent American Football teams playing in German Football League before its exit in 2017. Hamburg Sea Devils is a team of European League of Football (ELF), which is a planned professional league, that is set to become the first fully professional league in Europe since the demise of NFL Europe. The Sea Devils will start playing games in June 2021. There are also the Hamburg Dockers, an Australian rules football club. The FC St. Pauli team dominates women's rugby in Germany. Other first-league teams include VT Aurubis Hamburg (Volleyball) and Hamburger Polo Club. Eimsbütteler TV plays in the German Women's 2 Volleyball Bundesliga. There are also several minority sports clubs, including four cricket clubs. The Centre Court of the Tennis Am Rothenbaum venue, with a capacity of 13,200 ppeople, is the largest in Germany. Hamburg also hosts equestrian events at "Reitstadion Klein Flottbek" (Deutsches Derby in jumping and dressage) and "Horner Rennbahn" (Deutsches Derby flat racing). Besides, Hamburg owns the famous harness racing track "Trabrennbahn Bahrenfeld". The Hamburg Marathon is the biggest marathon in Germany after Berlin's. In 2008, 23,230 participants were registered. World Cup events in cycling, the UCI ProTour competition EuroEyes Cyclassics, and the triathlon ITU World Cup event "Hamburg City Man" are also held in here. Volksparkstadion was used as a site for the 2006 World Cup. In 2010 UEFA held the final of the UEFA Europa League in the arena. Hamburg made a bid for the 2024 Olympic Games, but 51.7 percent of those city residents participating in a referendum in November 2015 voted against continuing Hamburg's bid to host the games. Meanwhile, Hamburg's partner city Kiel voted in favour of hosting the event, with almost 66 percent of all participants supporting the bid. Opponents of the bid had argued that hosting the 33rd Olympic Games would cost the city too much in public funds. Education. The school system is managed by the Ministry of Schools and Vocational Training ("Behörde für Schule und Berufsbildung"). The system had approximately 191,148 students in 221 primary schools and 188 secondary schools in 2016. There are 32 public libraries in Hamburg. Nineteen universities are located in Hamburg, with about 100,589 university students in total, including 9,000 resident students. Six universities are public, including the largest, the University of Hamburg (Universität Hamburg) with the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, the University of Music and Theatre, the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, the HafenCity University Hamburg, and the Hamburg University of Technology. Seven universities are private, like the Bucerius Law School, the Kühne Logistics University, and the HSBA Hamburg School of Business Administration. The city has also smaller private colleges and universities, including many religious and special-purpose institutions, such as the Helmut Schmidt University (formerly the University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg). Hamburg is home to one of the oldest international schools in Germany, the International School of Hamburg. Twin towns – sister cities. Hamburg is twinned with:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13699

Hobart

Hobart ( ; Nuennonne/palawa kani: nipaluna) is the capital and most populous city of the island state of Tasmania, Australia. Home to almost half of all Tasmanians, it is the southernmost and least-populated Australian state capital city, and second-smallest if territories are taken into account, before Darwin, Northern Territory. Hobart is located in Tasmania's south-east on the estuary of the River Derwent, making it the most southern of Australia's capital cities. Its skyline is dominated by the kunanyi/Mount Wellington, and its harbour forms the second-deepest natural port in the world, with much of the city's waterfront consisting of reclaimed land. The metropolitan area is often referred to as Greater Hobart, to differentiate it from the City of Hobart, one of the seven local government areas that cover the city. It has a mild maritime climate. The city lies on country which was known by the local Mouheneener people as nipaluna, a name which includes surrounding features such as kunanyi/Mt. Wellington and timtumili minanya (River Derwent). Prior to British settlement, the land had been occupied for possibly as long as 35,000 years by the semi-nomadic Mouheneener people, a sub-group of the Nuennone, or "South-East tribe". Founded in 1804 as a British penal colony, Hobart is Australia's second-oldest capital city after Sydney, New South Wales. Whaling quickly emerged as a major industry in the area, and for a time Hobart served as the Southern Ocean's main whaling port. Penal transportation ended in the 1850s, after which the city experienced periods of growth and decline. The early 20th century saw an economic boom on the back of mining, agriculture and other primary industries, and the loss of men who served in the world wars was counteracted by an influx of immigration. Despite the rise in migration from Asia and other non-English speaking regions, Hobart's population remains predominantly ethnically Anglo-Celtic, and has the highest percentage of Australian-born residents among Australia's capital cities. Today, Hobart is the financial and administrative hub of Tasmania, serving as the home port for both Australian and French Antarctic operations and acting as a tourist destination, with over 1.192 million visitors in 2011–12, and 924,000 during 2022–23. Well-known drawcards include its convict-era architecture, Salamanca Market and the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), the Southern Hemisphere's largest private museum. History. The first European settlement began in 1803 as a military camp at Risdon Cove on the eastern shores of the River Derwent, amid British concerns over the presence of French explorers. In 1804, along with the military, settlers and convicts from the abandoned Port Phillip settlement, the camp at Risdon Cove was moved by Captain David Collins to a better location at the present site of Hobart at Sullivans Cove. The city, initially known as "Hobart Town" or "Hobarton", was named after Lord Hobart, the British Secretary of State for war and the colonies. The area's indigenous inhabitants were members of the semi-nomadic "Mouheneener" tribe. Violent conflict with the European settlers, and the effects of diseases brought by them, dramatically reduced the Aboriginal population, which was rapidly replaced by free settlers and the convict population. Charles Darwin visited Hobart Town in February 1836 as part of the "Beagle" expedition. He writes of Hobart and the Derwent estuary in "The Voyage of the Beagle":"...The lower parts of the hills which skirt the bay are cleared; and the bright yellow fields of corn, and dark green ones of potatoes, appear very luxuriant... I was chiefly struck with the comparative fewness of the large houses, either built or building. Hobart Town, from the census of 1835, contained 13,826 inhabitants, and the whole of Tasmania 36,505."The River Derwent was one of Australia's finest deepwater ports and was the centre of South Seas whaling and sealing trades. The settlement rapidly grew into a major port, with allied industries such as shipbuilding. Hobart Town became a city on 21 August 1842, and was renamed Hobart from the beginning of 1881. On 7 September 1936, one of the last known surviving thylacines died at the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart. During the mid 20th century, the state and local governments invested in building Hobart's reputation as a tourist attraction - in 1956 the Lanherne Airport (now Hobart International Airport) was opened. Australia's first legal casino, Wrest Point Hotel Casino opened in 1973. Despite these successes, Hobart faced significant challenges during the 20th century, including the 1967 Tasmanian fires, which claimed 62 lives in Hobart itself and destroyed over 1200 homes, and the 1975 Tasman Bridge disaster, when a bulk ore carrier collided with and destroyed the concrete span bridge that connected the city to its eastern suburbs. In the 21st century, Hobart benefited as Tasmania's economy recovered from the 1990s recession, and the city's long-stagnant population growth began to reverse. A period of significant growth has followed, including the redevelopment of the former Macquarie Point railyards, Parliament Square, and new hotel developments throughout the city. Geography. Topography. Hobart is located on the estuary of the River Derwent in the state's south-east. Geologically Hobart is built predominantly on Jurassic dolerite around the foothills interspersed with smaller areas of Triassic siltstone and Permian mudstone. Hobart extends along both sides of the River Derwent; on the western shore from the Derwent valley in the north through the flatter areas of Glenorchy which rests on older Triassic sediment and into the hilly areas of New Town, Lenah Valley. Both of these areas rest on the younger Jurassic dolerite deposits, before stretching into the lower areas such as the beaches of Sandy Bay in the south, in the Derwent estuary. South of the Derwent estuary lies Storm Bay and the Tasman Peninsula. The Eastern Shore also extends from the Derwent valley area in a southerly direction hugging the Meehan Range in the east before sprawling into flatter land in suburbs such as Bellerive. These flatter areas of the eastern shore rest on far younger deposits from the Quaternary. From there the city extends in an easterly direction through the Meehan Range into the hilly areas of Rokeby and Oakdowns, before reaching into the tidal flatland area of Lauderdale. Hobart has access to a number of beach areas including those in the Derwent estuary itself; Long Beach, Nutgrove Beach, Bellerive Beach, Cornelian Bay, Kingston, and Howrah Beaches as well as many more in Frederick Henry Bay such as; Seven Mile, Roaches, Cremorne, Clifton, and Goats Beaches.` Climate. Hobart has a mild temperate oceanic climate (Köppen: "Cfb"). The highest temperature recorded was on 4 January 2013 and the lowest was on 25 June 1972 and 11 July 1981. Annually, Hobart receives only 40.8 clear days without rain. Compared to other major Australian cities, Hobart has the fewest daily average hours of sunshine, with only 5.9 hours per day. However, during the summer it has the same hours of daylight of any Australian city, with 15.3 hours on the summer solstice. By global standards, Hobart has cool summers and mild winters for its relative latitude, being heavily influenced by its seaside location. Although Hobart itself rarely receives snow during the winter due to the foehn effect created by the Central Highlands (the city's geographic position causes a rainshadow), the adjacent Kunanyi/Mount Wellington is frequently seen with a snowcap throughout the year including in summer. During the 20th century, the city itself has received snowfalls at sea level on average only once every 5 years; however, outer suburbs lying higher on the slopes of Mount Wellington receive snow more often, owing to the more exposed position coupled with them resting at higher altitude. These snow-bearing winds often carry on through Tasmania and Victoria to the Snowy Mountains in Victoria and southern New South Wales. The average temperature of the sea ranges from in September to in February. Demographics. At the 2021 census, there were 247,068 people in the Greater Hobart. The City of Hobart local government area had a population of 55,077. As of 2021, the median weekly household income was $1,542, compared with $1,746 nationally. 18.1% of households total weekly income is less than $650 week, while 18.9% of households weekly income exceeds $3,000. This compares to national rates of 16.5% and 24.3% respectively. 35.4% of renting households, and 10.3% of owned households with a mortgage experience housing stress, where rent or mortgage repayments exceed 30% of income. At the 2016 census, The most common occupation categories were professionals (22.6%), clerical and administrative workers (14.7%), technicians and trades workers (13.3%), community and personal service workers (12.8%), and managers (11.3%). Ancestry and immigration. 4.5% of the population (11,216 people) are Indigenous Australians (Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders). At the 2021 census, the most commonly nominated ancestry groups include: 23.4% of the population was born overseas at the 2021 census. The five largest groups of overseas-born were from England (3.3%), Mainland China (2.2%), Nepal (1.7%), India (1.6%) and New Zealand (0.9%). Language. At the 2021 census, 82.6% of the population spoke only English at home. The other languages most commonly spoken at home were Mandarin (2.6%), Nepali (1.8%), Punjabi (0.7%), Cantonese (0.5%) and Vietnamese (0.4%). Religion. In the 2021 census, 49.9% of Greater Hobart residents specified no religion. Christianity comprised the largest religious affiliation (37.1%), with the largest denominations being Anglicanism (14.1%) and Catholicism (14.1%). Hinduism (2.6%), Buddhism (1.3%), Islam (1.3%) and Sikhism (0.6%) constitute the remaining largest religious affiliations. Hobart has a small community of 456 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with meetinghouses in Glenorchy, Rosny, and Glen Huon. There is also a synagogue, with a Jewish community of 203 people. Hobart has a Baháʼí community, with a Baháʼí Centre of Learning, located within the city. In 2013, Hillsong Church established a Hillsong Connect campus in Hobart. Economy. Shipping is significant to the city's economy. Hobart is the home port for the Antarctic activities of Australia and France. The port loads around 2,000 tonnes of Antarctic cargo a year for the Australian research vessel "Nuyina (previously the Aurora Australis)." The city is also a popular cruise ship destination during the summer months, with 47 such ships docking during the course of the 2016–17 summer season. The city also supports many other industries. Major local employers include catamaran builder Incat, zinc refinery Nyrstar Hobart, Cascade Brewery and Cadbury's Chocolate Factory, Norske Skog Boyer and Wrest Point Casino. The city also supports a host of light industry manufacturers, as well as a range of redevelopment projects, including the $689 million Royal Hobart Hospital Redevelopment – standing as the states largest ever Health Infrastructure project. Tourism is a significant part of the economy, with visitors coming to the city to explore its historic inner suburbs and nationally acclaimed restaurants and cafes, as well as its vibrant music and nightlife culture. The two major draw-cards are the weekly market in Salamanca Place, and the Museum of Old and New Art. The city is also used as a base from which to explore the rest of Tasmania. The last 15–20 years have seen Hobart's wine industry thrive as many vineyards have developed in countryside areas outside of the city in the Coal River Wine Region and D'Entrecasteaux Channel, including Moorilla Estate at Berriedale one of the most awarded vineyards in Australia. Antarctic gateway. Hobart is an Antarctic gateway city, with geographical proximity to East Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. Infrastructure is provided by the port of Hobart for scientific research and cruise ships, and Hobart International Airport supports an Antarctic Airlink to Wilkins Runway at Casey Station. Hobart is a logistics point for the French icebreaker "L'Astrolabe". Hobart is the home port for the Australian and French Antarctic programs, and provides port services for other visiting Antarctic nations and Antarctic cruise ships. Antarctic and Southern Ocean expeditions are supported by a specialist cluster offering cold climate products, services and scientific expertise. The majority of these businesses and organisations are members of the Tasmanian polar network, supported in part by the Tasmanian State Government. Tasmania has a high concentration of Antarctic and Southern Ocean scientists. Hobart is home to the following Antarctic and Southern Ocean scientific institutions: Tourism. Hobart serves as a focal point and mecca for tourism in the state of Tasmania. Hobart has been a significant tourist destination for many years, however tourism has evolved to a core industry in the last decade. This process has been termed the "MONA Effect" - referring to the significant influence of the Museum of New and Old Art (MONA), the Southern Hemisphere's largest private museum, on the local tourist economy - compared to the effect of the Guggenheim on Bilbao. Since opening in 2011, MONA had received 2.5 million visitors by 2022 and has helped establish a number of art and food venues and events, including MONA FOMA, and the winter festivals of Mid-Winter Fest and Dark Mofo. 27% of visitors to Tasmania visit the museum. In 2016, Hobart received 1.8 million visitors, surpassing both Perth and Canberra, tying equally with Brisbane. Visitor numbers reached a low of 744,200 in 2021, primarily as a result of the Covid-19 Pandemic, with expectations that numbers would return to normal by 2023. Many local tourist attractions focuses on the convict history of Hobart, the city's historic architecture, art experiences, and food and alcohol experiences. Hobart is home to a significant number of nationally known restaurants, boutique alcohol producers, including Sullivans Cove Wiskey, which won world's best single malt in 2014, boutique hotels, and art experiences. Other significant tourist attractions include Australia's second oldest botanic gardens, the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens, which holds extensive significant plant collections, a range of public and private museums including the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, and kunanyi/Mount Wellington, one of the dominant features of Hobart's skyline. At , the mountain has its own ecosystems, is rich in biodiversity and plays a large part in determining the local weather. Architecture. Hobart is known for its well-preserved Georgian and Victorian architecture, giving the city a distinctly "Old World" feel. For locals, this became a source of discomfiture about the city's convict past, but is now a draw card for tourists. Regions within the city centre, such as Salamanca Place and Battery Point, contain many of the city's heritage-listed buildings. Historic homes and mansions also exist in the suburbs, much of the inner-city neighbourhoods are dotted with weatherboard cottages and two-storey Victorian houses. Hobart has a significant body of notable buildings, including the Cascades Female Factory, one of the UNESCO Australian Convict Sites, the Hobart Synagogue, which is the oldest synagogue in Australia and a rare surviving example of an Egyptian Revival synagogue, Hadley's Orient Hotel, on Hobart's Murray Street, which is the oldest continuously operating hotel in Australia, and the Theatre Royal, the oldest continually operating theatre in Australia. Kelly's Steps were built in 1839 by shipwright and adventurer James Kelly to provide a short-cut from Kelly Street and Arthur Circus in Battery Point to the warehouse and dockyards district of Salamanca Place. In 1835, John Lee Archer designed and oversaw the construction of the sandstone Customs House, facing Sullivans Cove. Completed in 1840, it was used as Tasmania's parliament house, and is now commemorated by a pub bearing the same name (built in 1844) which is frequented by yachtsmen after they have completed the Sydney to Hobart yacht race. Hobart is also home to many historic churches. The Scots Church (formerly known as St Andrew's) was built in Bathurst Street from 1834 to 1836, and a small sandstone building within the churchyard was used as the city's first Presbyterian Church. The Salamanca Place warehouses and the Theatre Royal were also constructed in this period. The Greek revival St George's Anglican Church in Battery Point was completed in 1838, and a classical tower, designed by James Blackburn, was added in 1847. St Joseph's was built in 1840. St David's Cathedral, Hobart's first cathedral, was consecrated in 1874. Hobart has very few high-rise buildings in comparison to other Australian capital cities. This is partly a result of height limits imposed due to Hobart's proximity to the River Derwent and Mount Wellington. Culture. Arts and entertainment. Hobart is home to Australia's oldest continuously operating theatre, the Theatre Royal, built in 1837. Other theatres in the city include the Playhouse theatre, the Backspace Theatre, and many smaller stage theatres. The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra is based at the Federation Concert Hall on the city's waterfront. The Federation Concert Hall also hosts the University of Tasmania's Australian International Symphony Orchestra Institute (AISOI) which fosters advanced young musicians from across Australia and internationally. Australia's first novel, "Quintus Servinton", was published in 1831 by convict Henry Savery and published in Hobart, where he wrote the work during his imprisonment. A generally autobiographical work, it is the story of what happens to a well educated man from a relatively well to do family, who makes poor choices in life. Mary Leman Grimstone, whose book "Woman's Love" was written in Hobart between 1826 and 1829, holds the distinction of being the first non-biographical Australian novel. It was printed in London in 1832. The city has also long been home to a thriving classical, jazz, folk, punk, hip-hop, electro, metal and rock music scene. Internationally recognised musicians such as metal acts Striborg and Psycroptic, indie-electro bands The Paradise Motel and The Scientists of Modern Music, singer-songwriters Sacha Lucashenko (of The Morning After Girls), Michael Noga (of The Drones), and Monique Brumby, two-thirds of indie rock band Love of Diagrams, post punk band Sea Scouts, theremin player Miles Brown, blues guitarist Phil Manning (of blues-rock band Chain), power-pop group The Innocents, and TikTok artist Kim Dracula all originated in Hobart. In addition, founding member of Violent Femmes, Brian Ritchie, now calls Hobart home, and has formed a local band, The Green Mist. Ritchie also curates the annual international arts festival MONA FOMA, held at Salamanca Place's waterfront venue, Princes Wharf, Shed No. 1. Hobart hosts many significant festivals including summer's Taste of Tasmania celebrating local produce, wine and music, "Dark Mofo" marking the winter solstice, Australia's premier festival celebration of voice the "Festival of Voices", and Tasmania's biennial international arts festival Ten Days On The Island. Other festivals, including the "Hobart Fringe Festival", Hobart Summer Festival, Southern Roots Festival, the Falls Festival in Marion Bay and the Soundscape Festival also capitalise on Hobart's artistic communities. Hobart is home to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. The Meadowbank Estate winery and restaurant features a floor mural by Tom Samek, part funded by the Federal Government. The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) opened in 2011 to coincide with the third annual MONA FOMA festival. The multi-storey MONA gallery was built directly underneath the historic Sir Roy Grounds courtyard house, overlooking the River Derwent. This building serves as the entrance to the MONA Gallery. The Lady Franklin Gallery became Australia's first privately funded museum when established by Lady Jane Franklin in 1843. The Art Society of Tasmania has operated from the premises since 1949. Hobart has a growing street art scene thanks to a program called "Hobart Walls", which was launched in association with the "Vibrance Festival", an annual mural-painting event. The City of Hobart and Vibrance Festival launched Hobart's first legal street art wall in Bidencopes Lane in 2018, allowing any artist to paint there, on any day of the week, provided they sign up for a permit and paint between 9am and 10pm. Designed by the prolific architect Sir Roy Grounds, the 17-storey Wrest Point Hotel Casino in Sandy Bay, opened as Australia's first legal casino in 1973. The city's nightlife primarily revolves around Salamanca Place, the waterfront area, Elizabeth St in North Hobart and Sandy Bay, but popular pubs, bars and nightclubs exist around the city as well. Major national and international music events are usually held at the Derwent Entertainment Centre, or the Casino. Popular restaurant strips include Elizabeth Street in North Hobart, and Salamanca Place near the waterfront. These include numerous ethnic restaurants including Chinese, Thai, Greek, Pakistani, Italian, Indian and Mexican. The major shopping street in the CBD is Elizabeth Street, with the pedestrianised Elizabeth Mall and the General Post Office. Close Shave, one of Australia's longest serving male a cappella quartets, is based in Hobart. Events. Hobart is internationally famous among the yachting community as the finish of the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race which starts in Sydney on Boxing Day (the day after Christmas Day). The arrival of the yachts is celebrated as part of the Hobart Summer Festival, a food and wine festival beginning just after Christmas and ending in mid-January. The Taste of Tasmania is a major part of the festival, where locals and visitors can taste fine local and international food and wine. The city is the finishing point of the Targa Tasmania rally car event, which has been held annually in April since 1991. The annual Tulip Festival at the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens is a popular Spring celebration in the city. The Australian Wooden Boat Festival is a biennial event held in Hobart celebrating wooden boats. It is held concurrently with the Royal Hobart Regatta, which began in 1830 and is therefore Tasmania's oldest surviving sporting event. Sport. Most professional Hobart-based sports teams represent Tasmania as a whole rather than exclusively the city. Cricket is a popular game of the city. The Tasmanian Tigers cricket team plays its home games at the Bellerive Oval on the Eastern Shore. A new team, Hobart Hurricanes represent the city in the Big Bash League. Bellerive Oval has been the breeding ground of some world class cricket players including the former Australia captain Ricky Ponting. Despite Australian rules football's huge popularity in the state of Tasmania, the state does not have a team in the Australian Football League. However, a bid for a Tasmanian AFL team is a popular topic among football fans. The State government is one of the potential sponsors of such a team. Local domestic club football is still played. Tasmanian State League football features five clubs from Hobart, and other leagues such as Southern Football League and the Old Scholars Football Association are also played each Winter. The city has two local rugby league football teams (Hobart Tigers and South Hobart Storm) that compete in the Tasmanian Rugby League. Tasmania is not represented by teams in the NRL, Super Rugby, ANZ Championship or A-League. However, the Tasmania JackJumpers entered the NBL in the 2021/22 season. The Hobart Chargers also represent Hobart in the second-tier South East Australian Basketball League. Besides the bid for an AFL club which was passed over in favour of a second Queensland team, despite several major local businesses and the Premier pioneering for a club, there is also a Hobart bid for entry into the A-League. The Tassie Tigers field men's and women's representative sides in the national hockey league, Hockey One (which replaced the Australian Hockey League in 2019). They play their home matches at the Tasmanian Hockey Centre in New Town near Cornelian Bay, which features three synthetic hockey pitches that have also hosted international competition such as the Men's FIH Pro League as recently as 2019. The Kookaburras current co-Captain and games record holder, Eddie Ockenden, is a product of the Hobart-based club North West Graduates. The city co-hosted the basketball FIBA Oceania Championship 1975, where the Australian national basketball team won the gold medal. Media. Five free-to-air television stations service Hobart: Each station broadcasts a primary channel and several multichannels. Hobart is served by twenty-nine digital free-to-air television channels: The majority of pay television services are provided by Foxtel via satellite, although other smaller pay television providers do service Hobart. Commercial radio stations licensed to cover the Hobart market include Triple M Hobart, hit100.9 Hobart and 7HO FM. Local community radio stations include Christian radio station Ultra106five, Edge Radio and Hobart FM which targets the wider community with specialist programmes. The five ABC radio networks available on analogue radio broadcast to Hobart via 936 ABC Hobart, Radio National, Triple J, NewsRadio and ABC Classic FM. Hobart is also home to the video creation company Biteable. Hobart's major newspaper is "The Mercury", which was founded by John Davies in 1854 and has been continually published ever since. The paper is owned and operated by Rupert Murdoch's News Limited. Government. Greater Hobart as of the 2021 Census is divided into seven local government areas - three of which are designated as cities, City of Hobart, City of Glenorchy and City of Clarence. The remaining metropolitan area is within the Municipality of Kingborough, the Municipality of Brighton, the Municipality of Sorell and the Municipality of Derwent Valley. Each local government area has an elected council which manages functions delegated by the Tasmanian state government such as roads, planning, animal control and parks. Mains water and sewerage processing are serviced by TasWater, which is a state-wide authority part owned by the state government and local government areas. Hobart is the seat of the Parliament of Tasmania, located at Parliament House, Salamanca Place, and the location of the official residence of the Governor of Tasmania, Government House. The senior sitting of the Supreme Court of Tasmania, and only sitting of the Court's appeal division, sit in Hobart. Hobart was made the seat of government for the southern district of Tasmania (then called Van Diemen's Land), Buckingham County in 1804, with the northern half of the state separately governed from Port Dalrymple, now George Town. At the time, Van Diemen's Land remained part of the Colony of New South Wales. In 1812, the northern lieutenant governorship ceased and Hobart become de facto seat of government for the entire island. Hobart officially became capital of an independent colony of Van Diemen's Land in 1825, and the seat of responsible self government in 1850 with the Australian Constitutions Act 1850. Infrastructure. Education. Hobart is home to the main campus of the University of Tasmania, located in Sandy Bay. On-site accommodation colleges include Christ College, Jane Franklin Hall and St John Fisher College. Other campuses are in Launceston and Burnie. The Greater Hobart area contains 122 primary, secondary and pretertiary (College) schools distributed throughout Clarence, Glenorchy and Hobart City Councils and Kingborough and Brighton Municipalities. These schools are made up of a mix of public, catholic, private and independent run, with the heaviest distribution lying in the more densely populated West around the Hobart city core. TasTAFE operates a total of seven polytechnic campuses within the Greater Hobart area that provide vocational education and training. Health. Royal Hobart Hospital is a major public hospital in central Hobart with 501 beds, which also serves as a teaching hospital for the University of Tasmania. A private hospital, Hobart Private Hospital is located adjacent to it and operated by Australian healthcare provider Healthscope. The company also owns another hospital in the city, the St. Helen's Private Hospital, which features a mother-baby unit. Transport. The only public transportation within the city of Hobart is via a network of Metro Tasmania buses funded by the Tasmanian Government and a small number of private bus services, departing from the centrally located Hobart City Interchange on Elizabeth Street. Like many large Australian cities, Hobart once operated passenger tram services, a trolleybus network consisting of six routes which operated until 1968. However, the tramway closed in the early 1960s. The tracks are still visible in the older streets of Hobart. Suburban passenger trains, run by the Tasmanian Government Railways, were closed in 1974 and the intrastate passenger service, the Tasman Limited, ceased running in 1978. Recently though there has been a push from the city, and increasingly from government, to establish a light rail network, intended to be fast, efficient, and eco-friendly, along existing tracks in a North South corridor; to help relieve the frequent jamming of traffic in Hobart CBD. The main arterial routes within the urban area are the Brooker Highway to Glenorchy and the northern suburbs, the Tasman Bridge and Bowen Bridge across the river to Rosny and the Eastern Shore. The East Derwent Highway to Lindisfarne, Geilston Bay, and Northwards to Brighton, the South Arm Highway leading to Howrah, Rokeby, Lauderdale and Opossum Bay and the Southern Outlet south to Kingston and the D'Entrecasteaux Channel. Leaving the city, motorists can travel the Lyell Highway to the west coast, Midland Highway to Launceston and the north, Tasman Highway to the east coast, or the Huon Highway to the far south. Ferry services from Hobart's Eastern Shore into the city were once a common form of public transportation, but with lack of government funding, as well as a lack of interest from the private sector, there has been the demise of a regular commuter ferry service – leaving Hobart's commuters relying solely on travel by automobiles and buses. There is however a water taxi service operating from the Eastern Shore into Hobart which provides an alternative to the Tasman Bridge. In 2021, State Government trialed a ferry service that operates on the Derwent between Brooke Street Pier and Bellerive. Due to the success of the trial, the ferry service was made permanent, with more than 2100 passengers in the first three weeks. Hobart is served by Hobart International Airport with flights to/from Adelaide, Auckland, Brisbane, Canberra, Gold Coast, Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, and regional destinations including the Bass Strait islands. The smaller Cambridge Aerodrome mainly serves small charter airlines offering local tourist flights. In the past decade, Hobart International Airport received a huge upgrade, with the airport now being a first class airport facility. In 2009, it was announced that Hobart Airport would receive more upgrades, including a first floor, aerobridges (currently, passengers must walk on the tarmac) and shopping facilities. Possible new international flights to Asia and New Zealand, and possible new domestic flights to Darwin and Cairns have been proposed. A second runway, possibly to be constructed in the next 15 years, would assist with growing passenger numbers to Hobart. Hobart Control Tower may be renovated and fitted with new radar equipment, and the airport's carpark may be extended further. Also, new facilities will be built just outside the airport. A new service station, hotel and day care centre have already been built and the road leading to the airport has been maintained and re-sealed. In 2016, work began on a 500-metre extension of the existing runway in addition to a $100 million upgrade of the airport. The runway extension is expected to allow international flights to land and increase air-traffic with Antarctica. This upgrade was, in part, funded under a promise made during the 2013 federal election by the Abbott government. On 9 August 2021, the Derwent River Ferry (owned by Roche Brothers' Navigator Group) was initiated as a year-long trial servicing between Brooke Street Pier in Hobart centre to Bellerive Pier on the eastern shore. A one-way trip takes approximately 15 minutes, and the ferry operates on all weekdays, but not weekends. It starts the day at Bellerive and departs 8 times there from 6:20am as the first time and 5:30pm as the last (40-minute intervals), before returning from Brooke St Pier at 5:50pm to Bellerive for the next day. The ferry provides a convenient alternative to crossing the Tasman Bridge, with its purpose being to reduce traffic congestion at a cost of $175.5 million. It can hold 107 passengers as well as 15 bicycle spots on board. It is seen as a first step in diversifying Hobart's transportation infrastructure to solve traffic problems that involves taking cars off the road rather than increasing capacity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13830

Hastings

Hastings ( ) is a large seaside town and borough in East Sussex on the south coast of England, east to the county town of Lewes and south east of London. The town gives its name to the Battle of Hastings, which took place to the north-west at Senlac Hill in 1066. It later became one of the medieval Cinque Ports. In the 19th century, it was a popular seaside resort, as the railway allowed tourists and visitors to reach the town. Today, Hastings is a fishing port with the UK's largest beach-based fishing fleet. It has an estimated population of 92,855 as of 2018. History. Early history. The first mention of Hastings is found in the late 8th century in the form "Hastingas". This is derived from the Old English tribal name "Hæstingas", meaning 'the constituency (followers) of Hæsta'. Symeon of Durham records the victory of Offa in 771 over the "Hestingorum gens", that is, "the people of the Hastings tribe." Hastingleigh in Kent was named after that tribe. The place name "Hæstingaceaster" is found in the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" entry for 1050, and may be an alternative name for Hastings. However, the absence of any archaeological remains of or documentary evidence for a Roman fort at Hastings suggest that "Hæstingaceaster" may refer to a different settlement, most likely that based on the Roman remains at Pevensey. Evidence of prehistoric settlements have been found at the town site: flint arrowheads and Bronze Age artefacts have been found. Iron Age forts have been excavated on both the East and West Hills. This suggests that the inhabitants moved early to the safety of the valley in between the forts. The settlement was already based on the port when the Romans arrived in Britain for the first time in 55 BC. At this time, they began to exploit the iron (Wealden rocks provide a plentiful supply of the ore), and shipped it out by boat. Iron was worked locally at Beauport Park, to the north of the town. It employed up to one thousand men and is considered to have been the third-largest mine in the Roman Empire. There was also a possible iron-working site near Blacklands Church in the town – the old name of 'Ponbay Bridge' for a bridge that used to exist in the area is a corruption of 'Pond Bay' as suggested by Thomas Ross (Mayor of Hastings and author of an 1835 guide book) With the departure of the Romans, the town suffered setbacks. The Beauport site was abandoned, and the town suffered from problems from nature and man-made attacks. The Sussex coast has always suffered from occasional violent storms; with the additional hazard of longshore drift (the eastward movement of shingle along the coast), the coastline has been frequently changing. The original Roman port is likely now under the sea. Bulverhythe was probably a harbour used by Danish invaders, which suggests that "-hythe" or "hithe" means a port or small haven. Kingdom of Haestingas. From the 6th century AD until 771, the people of the area around modern-day Hastings, identified the territory as that of the Haestingas tribe and a kingdom separate from the surrounding kingdoms of Suth Saxe ("South Saxons", i.e. Sussex) and Kent. It worked to retain its separate cultural identity until the 11th century. The kingdom was probably a sub-kingdom, the object of a disputed overlordship by the two powerful neighbouring kingdoms: when King Wihtred of Kent settled a dispute with King Ine of Sussex & Wessex in 694, it is probable that he seceded the overlordship of Haestingas to Ine as part of the treaty. In 771 King Offa of Mercia invaded Southern England, and over the next decade gradually seized control of Sussex and Kent. Symeon of Durham records a battle fought at an unidentified location near Hastings in 771, at which Offa defeated the Haestingas tribe, effectively ending its existence as a separate kingdom. By 790, Offa controlled Hastings effectively enough to confirm grants of land in Hastings to the Abbey of St Denis, in Paris. But, the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" for 1011 relates that Vikings overran "all Kent, Sussex, Surrey and Haestingas", indicating the town was still considered a separate 'county' or province to its neighbours 240 years after Offa's conquest. During the reign of Athelstan, he established a royal mint in Hastings in AD 928. Medieval Hastings. The start of the Norman Conquest was the Battle of Hastings, fought on 14 October 1066, although the battle itself took place to the north at Senlac Hill, and William had landed on the coast between Hastings and Eastbourne at Pevensey. It is thought that the Norman encampment was on the town's outskirts, where there was open ground; a new town was already being built in the valley to the east. That "New Burgh" was founded in 1069 and is mentioned in the Domesday Book as such. William defeated and killed Harold Godwinson, the last Saxon King of England, and destroyed his army, thus opening England to the Norman conquest. William caused a castle to be built at Hastings probably using the earthworks of the existing Saxon castle. Hastings was shown as a borough by the time of the Domesday Book (1086); it had also given its name to the Rape of Hastings, one of the six administrative divisions of Sussex. As a borough, Hastings had a corporation consisting of a "bailiff, jurats, and commonalty". By a Charter of Elizabeth I in 1589, the bailiff was replaced by a mayor. Muslim scholar Muhammad al-Idrisi, writing c.1153, described Hastings as "a town of large extent and many inhabitants, flourishing and handsome, having markets, workpeople and rich merchants". Hastings and the sea. By the end of the Saxon period, the port of Hastings had moved eastward near the present town centre in the Priory Stream valley, whose entrance was protected by the White Rock headland (since demolished). It was to be a short stay: Danish attacks and huge floods in 1011 and 1014 motivated the townspeople to relocate to the New Burgh. In the Middle Ages Hastings became one of the Cinque Ports; Sandwich, Dover and New Romney being the first, Hastings and Hythe followed, all finally being joined by Rye and Winchelsea, at one point 42 towns were directly or indirectly affiliated with the group. In the 13th century, much of the town and half of Hastings Castle was washed away in the South England flood of February 1287. During a naval campaign of 1339, and again in 1377, the town was raided and burnt by the French, and seems then to have gone into a decline. As a port, Hastings' days were finished. Hastings had suffered over the years from the lack of a natural harbour, and there have been attempts to create a sheltered harbour. Attempts were made to build a stone harbour during the reign of Elizabeth I, but the foundations were destroyed by the sea in terrible storms. The fishing boats are still stored on and launched from the beach. Hastings was then just a small fishing settlement, but it was soon discovered that the new taxes on luxury goods could be made profitable by smuggling; the town was ideally located for that purpose. Near the castle ruins, on the West Hill, are "St Clement's Caves", partly natural, but mainly excavated by hand by smugglers from the soft sandstone. Their trade was to come to an end with the period following the Napoleonic Wars, for the town became one of the most fashionable resorts in Britain, brought about by the so-called health-giving properties of seawater, as well as the local springs and Roman baths. Once this came about the expansion of the town took place, to the west, since there was little space left in the valley. It was at this time that the elegant Pelham Crescent and Wellington Square were built: other building followed. In the Crescent (designed by architect Joseph Kay) is the classical style church of St Mary in the Castle (its name recalling the old chapel in the castle above) now in use as an arts centre. The building of the crescent and the church necessitated further cutting away of the castle hill cliffs. Once that move away from the old town had begun, it led to the further expansion along the coast, eventually linking up with the new St Leonards. The extensive development meant that a large transient work-force was required. Many of the people coming in to Hastings at this time, settled on some waste-ground to the west of the main town called the America Ground. This land, originally a shingle spit created by the great storm of 1287, was declared to be Crown Property after an inquiry held at Battle during 1827 and the land was cleared in preparation for the development of this area of land by Patrick Francis Robertson. Like many coastal towns, the population of Hastings grew significantly as a result of the construction of railway links and the fashionable growth of seaside holidays during the Victorian era. In 1801, its population was a mere 3,175; by 1831, it had reached over ten thousand; by 1891, it was almost sixty thousand. The last harbour project began in 1896, but this also failed when structural problems and rising costs exhausted all the available funds. Today a fractured seawall is all that remains of what might have become a magnificent harbour. In 1897, the foundation stone was laid on a large concrete structure, but there was insufficient money to complete the work and the "Harbour arm" remains uncompleted. It was later partially blown up to discourage possible use by German invasion forces during World War II. Between 1903 and 1919 Fred Judge FRPS photographed many of the towns events and disasters. These included storms, the first tram, visit of the Lord Mayor of London, Hastings Marathon Race and the pier fire of 1917. Many of these images were produced as picture postcards by the British Postcard manufacturer he founded now known as Judges Postcards. In the 1930s, the town underwent some rejuvenation. Seaside resorts were starting to go out of fashion, Hastings perhaps more than most. The town council set about a huge rebuilding project, among which the promenade was rebuilt, and an Olympic-size bathing pool was erected. The latter, regarded in its day as one of the best open-air swimming and diving complexes in Europe, later became a holiday camp before closing in 1986. It was demolished, but the area is still known by locals as "The Old Bathing Pool". The 2001 census reported over 85,000 inhabitants. Governance. Hastings returned two Members of Parliament (MPs) from the 14th century until 1885, since when it has returned one. Since 1983, it has been part of the parliamentary constituency of Hastings and Rye; the current MP, since December 2019, is Sally-Ann Hart of the Conservative Party. Prior to 1983, the town formed the Hastings parliamentary constituency by itself. Hastings, it is thought, was a Saxon town before the arrival of the Normans: the Domesday Book refers to a "new Borough": as a borough, Hastings had a corporation consisting of a "bailiff, jurats, and commonalty". Its importance was such that it also gave its name to one of the six Rapes or administrative districts of Sussex. By a Charter of Elizabeth I in 1589 the bailiff was replaced by a mayor, by which time the town's importance was dwindling. In the Georgian era, patronage of such seaside places (such as nearby Brighton) gave it a new lease of life so that, when the time came with the reform of English local government in 1888, Hastings became a County Borough, responsible for all its local services, independent of the surrounding county, then Sussex (East); less than one hundred years later, in 1974, that status was abolished. Hastings Borough Council is now in the second tier of local government, below East Sussex County Council. Geography and climate. Hastings is situated where the sandstone beds, at the heart of the Weald, known geologically as the Hastings Sands, meet the English Channel, forming tall cliffs to the east of the town. Hastings Old Town is in a sheltered valley between the East Hill and West Hill (on which the remains of the Castle stand). In Victorian times and later the town has spread westwards and northwards, and now forms a single urban centre with the more suburban area of St Leonards-on-Sea to the west. Roads from the Old Town valley lead towards the Victorian area of Clive Vale and the former village of Ore, from which "The Ridge", marking the effective boundary of Hastings, extends north-westwards towards Battle. Beyond Bulverhythe, the western end of Hastings is marked by low-lying land known as Glyne Gap, separating it from Bexhill-on-Sea. The sandstone cliffs have been the subject of considerable erosion in relatively recent times: much of the Castle was lost to the sea before the present sea defences and promenade were built, and a number of cliff-top houses are in danger of disappearing around the nearby village of Fairlight. The beach is mainly shingle, although wide areas of sand are uncovered at low tide. The town is generally built upon a series of low hills rising to above sea level at "The Ridge" before falling back in the river valley further to the north. There are three Sites of Special Scientific Interest within the borough; Marline Valley Woods, Combe Haven and Hastings Cliffs To Pett Beach. Marline Valley Woods lies within the Ashdown ward of Hastings. It is an ancient woodland of Pedunculate oak—hornbeam which is uncommon nationally. Sussex Wildlife Trust own part of the site. Combe Haven is another site of biological interest, with alluvial meadows, and the largest reed bed in the county, providing habitat for breeding birds. It is in the West St Leonards ward, stretching into the parish of Crowhurst. The final SSSI, Hastings Cliffs to Pett Beach, is within the Ore ward of Hastings, extending into the neighbouring Fairlight and Pett parishes. The site runs along the coast and is of both biological and geological interest. The cliffs hold many fossils and the site has many habitats, including ancient woodland and shingle beaches. Climate. As with the rest of the British Isles and Southern England, Hastings experiences a maritime climate with mild summers and mild winters. In terms of the local climate, Hastings is on the eastern edge of what is, on average, the sunniest part of the UK, the stretch of coast from the Isle of Wight southeastern coast Sandown Bay to the Hastings area. Hastings, tied with Eastbourne, recorded the highest duration of sunshine of any month anywhere in the United Kingdom – 384 hours – in July 1911. Temperature extremes since 1960 at Hastings have ranged from in July 2019, down to in January 1987. A new record temperature of was recorded on 19 July 2022 The Köppen climate classification subtype for this climate is "" (Marine West Coast Climate/Oceanic climate). Neighbourhoods and areas. Some of the areas and suburbs of Hastings are Ore, St Leonards, Silverhill, West St Leonards, and Hollington. Ore, Silverhill and Hollington were once villages that have since become part of the Hastings conurbation area during rapid growth. The original part of St Leonards was bought by James Burton and laid out by his son, the architect Decimus Burton, in the early 19th century as a new town: a place of elegant houses designed for the well-off. It also included a central public garden, a hotel, an archery, assembly rooms and a church. Today's St Leonards has extended well beyond that original design, although the original town still exists within it. Demography. The population of the town in 2001 was 85,029, by 2009 the estimated population was 86,900. Hastings suffers at a disadvantage insofar as growth is concerned because of its restricted situation, lying as it does with the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty to the north. Redevelopment of the area is partly hampered by the split administration of the combined Hastings and Bexhill economic region between Hastings and Rother district councils. There is little space for further large-scale housing and employment growth within the designated boundaries of Hastings, and development on the outskirts is resisted by Rother council whose administrative area surrounds Hastings. Rother has a policy of urban expansion in the area immediately north of Bexhill, but this requires infrastructure improvements by central Governments which have been under discussion for decades. This situation has now become the subject of parliamentary consideration. Economy. Until the development of tourism, fishing was Hastings' major industry. The fishing fleet, based at the Stade, remains Europe's largest beach-launched fishing fleet and has recently won accreditation for its sustainable methods. The fleet has been based on the same beach, below the cliffs at Hastings, for at least 400, possibly 600, years. Its longevity is attributed to the prolific fishing ground of Rye Bay nearby. Hastings fishing vessels are registered at Rye, and thus bear the letters "RX" (Rye, SusseX). There are now various industrial estates that lie around the town, mostly on the outskirts, which include engineering, catering, motoring and construction; however, most of the jobs within the Borough are concentrated on health, public services, retail and education. 85% of the firms (in 2005) employed fewer than 10 people; as a consequence the unemployment rate was 3.3% ("cf." East Sussex 1.7%). However, qualification levels are similar to the national average: 8.2% of the working-age population have no qualifications while 28% hold degree-level qualifications or higher, compared with 11% and 31% respectively across England. Shopping and retail. Hastings main shopping centre is Priory Meadow Shopping Centre, which was built on the site of the old Central Recreation Ground which played host to some Sussex CCC first-class fixtures, and cricketing royalty such as Dr. W. G. Grace and Sir Don Bradman. The centre houses 56 stores and covers around 420,000 ft2. Further retail areas in the town centre include Queens Road, Wellington Place and Robertson Street. There are plans to expand the retail area in Hastings, which includes expanding Priory Meadow and creating more retail space as part of the Priory Quarter development. Priory was intended to have a second floor added to part of the retail area, which has not happened yet and so far only office space has been created as part of the Priory Quarter. Regeneration. In 2002 the Hastings and Bexhill task force, set up by the South East England Development Agency, was founded to regenerate the local economy, a 10-year programme being set up to tackle the local reliance on public sector employment. The regeneration scheme saw the construction of the University Centre Hastings, (now known as the University of Brighton in Hastings) the new Sussex Coast College campus and construction of the Priory Quarter, which still remains unfinished but now houses Saga offices, bringing 800 new jobs to the area. Culture and community. Cadets. Hastings has an Army Cadet Force (ACF) detachment which is part of Sussex ACF. This detachment is based in the old Territorial Army Unit Building on Cinque Ports Way, and is affiliated to PWRR. Hastings also has a Royal Air Force Air Cadet Squadron, 304 (Hastings) Squadron of Sussex Wing RAFAC, based in the same building. The town also has a Sea Cadet squadron, T.S. "Hastings". This sits adjacent to the Army and Air Cadet building on the seafront. The site features a climbing wall and other training facilities. Events. Throughout the year many annual events take place in Hastings, the largest of which being the May Day bank holiday weekend, which features a Jack-in-the-Green festival (revived since 1983) and usually falls around 1-3 May, and the culmination of the Maydayrun—tens of thousands of motorcyclists having ridden the A21 to Hastings. The yearly carnival during Old Town Week takes place every August, which includes a week of events around Hastings Old Town, including a Seaboot race, bike race, street party and pram race. In September, there is a month-long arts festival 'Coastal Currents' and a Seafood and Wine Festival. During Hastings Week held each year around 14 October the Hastings Bonfire Society stages a traditional Sussex Bonfire which includes a torchlight procession through the streets, a beach bonfire and firework display. Hastings Pirate Day takes place in July every year. Hastings, as of November 2017, still holds the Guinness World Record for the most pirates in one place. Other events include the Hastings Beer and Music Festival, held every July on the Oval (Previously Alexandra Park), the Hastings Musical Festival held every March in the White Rock Theatre, the International Composers Festival split between Hastings and Bexhill during August and the Hastings International Chess Congress. There is also a small Wildman event in late January. Theatre and cinema. There are two main theatres in the town, the White Rock Theatre and the Stables Theatre. The White Rock theatre is the venue of the yearly pantomime and throughout the year hosts comedy, dance and music acts. The Stables stages more local productions and acts as an arts exhibition centre. An additional theatre is located in Cambridge Road, the Opus Theatre in a shared space with the His Place church in what used to be the Robertson Street United Reformed Church. There is a small four screen Odeon cinema in the town, located opposite the town hall; however, there are plans to build a new multiplex cinema as part of the Priory Quarter development in the town centre. The town has an independent cinema called the Electric Palace located in the Old Town and a restored cinema in St Leonards called the Kino Teatr. The new luxury 'Sussex Exchange' Cinema, bar and conference venue is situated in st.leonards. Museums and art galleries. There are three museums in Hastings; the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery, the Hastings Fishermen's Museum and the Shipwreck Museum. The former two mentioned are open for the whole year while the Shipwreck Museum is open only weekends during the winter, but daily for the rest of the year. The Hastings Museum and Art gallery concentrates mostly on local history and contains exhibits on Grey Owl and John Logie Baird. It also features a Durbar Hall, donated by Lord Brassey; the hall contains displays focusing on the Indian subcontinent and the Brassey Family. The Fishermen's Museum, housed in the former fishermen's church, is dedicated to the fishing industry and maritime history of Hastings. The Shipwreck Museum displays artifacts from wrecks around the area. The Hastings Contemporary (formerly Jerwood Gallery until 02 July 2019) located in the Stade area of Hastings Old Town is the home for the Jerwood Collection of 20th and 21st century art and a changing contemporary exhibition programme. The project was opposed by many locals who felt that a new art gallery would have been better located elsewhere in the town. In 2019, following a funding dispute with its sponsor the Jerwood Foundation, the gallery was renamed the Hastings Contemporary. Parks and open spaces. There are many parks and open spaces located throughout the town, one of the most popular and largest being Alexandra Park opened in 1882 by the Prince and Princess of Wales. The park contains gardens, open spaces, woods, a bandstand, tennis courts and a cafe. Other open spaces include White Rock Gardens, West Marina Gardens, St Leonards Gardens, Gensing Gardens, Markwick Gardens, Summerfields Woods, Linton Gardens, Hollington woods, Filsham Valley, Warrior Square, Castle Hill, St Helens Woods and Hastings Country Park. Local media. Local news and television programmes is provided by BBC South East and ITV Meridian. Television signals are received from the local TV transmitter. Hastings’s local radio stations are BBC Radio Sussex on 104.5 FM, Heart South on 102.0 FM and More Radio Hastings on 107.8 FM. Local newspapers are the Hastings Observer and Hastings Independent Press. Landmarks. Hastings Castle was built in 1070 by the Normans, four years after the Norman invasion. It is located on the West Hill, overlooking the town centre and is a Grade I listed building. Little remains of the castle apart from the arch left from the chapel, part of the walls and dungeons. The nearby St. Clements Caves are home to the Smugglers Adventure, which features interactive displays relating to the history of smuggling on the south coast of England. Hastings Pier can be seen from any part of the seafront in the town. The old pier was opened in 1872, but closed in 2006 following safety concerns from the council. In October 2010, a serious fire burned down most of the buildings on the pier and caused further damage to the structure. However, the pier reopened on 27 April 2016 in modern architectural forms after a £14.2m refurbishment. It won the Stirling Prize of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA)in 2017. Many church buildings throughout the town are Grade II listed including; Church in the Wood, Blacklands Parish Church, Ebenezer Particular Baptist Chapel, Fishermen's Museum and St Mary Magdalene's Church. On the seafront at St Leonards is Marine Court, a 1938 block of flats in the Art Deco style that was originally called 'The Ship' due to its style being based on the ocean liner RMS "Queen Mary". This block of flats can be seen up to away on a clear day, from Holywell, in the Meads area of Eastbourne. An important former landmark was "the Memorial", a clock tower commemorating Albert the Prince Consort which stood for many years at the traffic junction at the town centre, but was demolished following an arson attack in the 1970s. Transport. Road. Hastings urban area (2011 census: includes Bexhill) is by a sizeable margin the most populous area in Britain to have no direct dual-carriageway link to the national motorway network. There are two major roads in Hastings: the A21 trunk road to London; and the A259 coastal road. Both are beset with traffic problems: although the London road, which has to contend with difficult terrain, has had several sections of widening over the past decades there are still many delays. Long-term plans for a much improved A259 east–west route (including a Hastings bypass) were abandoned in the 1990s. A new Hastings-Bexhill Link Road opened in April 2016 known as the A2690 with the hope of reducing traffic congestion along the A259 Bexhill Road. The new link road travels from Queensway in the North of Hastings and joins up to the A259 in Bexhill. Hastings is also linked to Battle via the A2100, the original London road. The town is served by Stagecoach South East buses on routes that serve the town, and also extend to Bexhill, Eastbourne and Dover as part of The Wave route. Stagecoach also run long distance buses up to Northiam, Hawkhurst, Royal Tunbridge Wells, Ashford and Canterbury. National Express run service 023 to London. National rail. Hastings has four rail links: two to London, one to Brighton and one to Ashford. Of the London lines, the shorter is the Hastings Line, the former South Eastern Railway (SER) route to Charing Cross via Battle and Tunbridge Wells, which opened in 1852; and the longer is the East Coastway Line, the former London, Brighton & South Coast Railway (LBSCR) route to Victoria via Bexhill, Eastbourne and Lewes. Trains to Brighton also use the East Coastway Line. The Marshlink Line runs via Rye to Ashford where a connection can be made with Eurostar services, and is unelectrified except for the Hastings to Ore segment. A historic British Rail Class 201 "Thumper" can sometimes be seen on historic runs to and from Hastings. Hastings is served by two rail companies: Southeastern and Southern. Southeastern services run along the Hastings Line, generally terminating at Hastings, with some peak services extending to Ore; the other lines are served by Southern, with services terminating at Ore or Ashford. The town currently has four railway stations: from west to east they are West St Leonards, St Leonards Warrior Square, Hastings and Ore; this latter has been proposed to be renamed to Ore Valley. There is also one closed station and one proposed station in the area. West Marina station (on the LBSCR line) was very near West St Leonards (on the SER line) and was closed in 1967. A new station has been proposed at Glyne Gap in Bexhill, which would also serve residents from western Hastings. Local rail. There are two funicular railways, known locally as the West Hill and East Hill Lifts respectively. The Hastings Miniature Railway operates along the beach from Rock-a-Nore to Marine Parade, and has provided tourist transport since 1948. The railway was considerably restored and re-opened in 2010. Paths. The Saxon Shore Way, (a long distance footpath, in length from Gravesend, Kent traces the Kent and Sussex coast "as it was in Roman times" to Hastings. The National Cycle Network route NCR2 links Dover to St Austell along the south coast, and passes through Hastings. Historical transport systems. Turnpike. In 1753 many prominent Hastings figures – including the major landowners Edward Milward and John Collier – obtained an Act that allowed them to take control of the existing Hastings-London trackway via Battle and Whatlington, as far north as Flimwell, however the first properly recognised turnpike developed in St. Leonards in 1837 when builder James Burton was building his new town of St Leonards. The route of the road is that taken by the A21 today. Trams and Trolleybuses. Hastings had a network of trams from 1905 to 1929. The trams ran as far as Bexhill, and were worked by overhead electric wires, except for the stretch along the seafront from Bo-Peep to the Memorial, which was initially worked by the Dolter stud contact system. The Dolter system was replaced by petrol electric trams in 1914 due to safety concerns, but overhead electrification was extended to this section in 1921. Trolleybuses rather than trams were used in the section that included the very narrow High Street, and the entire tram network was replaced by the Hastings trolleybus system in 1928–1929. Maidstone & District bought the Hastings Tramway Company in 1935, but the trolleybuses still carried the "Hastings Tramways" logo until shortly before they were replaced by diesel buses in 1959, following the failure of the "Save our trolleys" campaign. Education. Hastings has 18 primary schools, four secondary schools, one further education college and one higher education institution. The University of Brighton in Hastings offers higher education courses in a range of subjects and currently attracts over 800 students. The university's Hastings campus doubled in size in 2012, with the addition of the new Priory Square building designed by Proctor and Matthews Architects. This is located in the town centre a short distance from the railway station. Sussex Coast College, formerly called Hastings College, is the town's further education college; it is located at Station Plaza, next to the railway station. The secondary schools in the town include Ark Alexandra Academy, Hastings Academy and The St Leonards Academy. East Sussex County Council closed three mixed comprehensive schools: Filsham Valley, The Grove and Hillcrest, replacing them with two academy schools; The St Leonards Academy, and The Hastings Academy. The sponsors for the academies are University of Brighton (lead sponsor), British Telecom and East Sussex County Council itself. Religious buildings. The most important buildings from the late medieval period are the two churches in the Old Town, St Clement's (probably built after 1377) and All Saints (early 15th century). There is also a mosque, formerly "Mercatoria School" until purchased by the East Sussex Islamic Association. The former Ebenezer Particular Baptist Chapel in the Old Town dates from 1817 and is listed at Grade II. Christ Church, Blacklands (1876) has a complete decorative scheme of Mural, Stained Glass, Mosaic and Wrought Iron from the firm of Hardman's which gives it a ll* listing. When St. Andrew's was demolished in 1970 to make way for a supermarket, a fragment of the decorative scheme there, painted by Robert Noonan (also known as Robert Tressell, author of "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists") was rescued and features in the Hastings Museum. The Parish and title were added to Blacklands Church. Sport. Every year the Hastings Half Marathon is held in the town although due to Covid-19 restrictions there was no half marathon that took place in 2020 or 2021. The 13.1 mi (21.1 km) race first took place in 1984 and attracts entrants from all over the country, taking runners on a route encircling the town, starting and finishing by the West Marina Gardens in St Leonards. Hastings United is the town's most senior football team, playing in the Premier Division of the Isthmian League. It was founded in 1894 and plays its home games at The Pilot Field, which ground used to be home to two other senior clubs; St Leonards and the original Hastings United which folded in 1985. There are football clubs in Hastings that compete in the East Sussex League, such as Hollington United, St Leonards Social and Rock-a-Nore, playing at local parks and recreation grounds about the town. United attracted sports media headlines, when in 2013 they made it to the third round of the FA Cup for the first time in their history, being the lowest ranked team left in the contest before going out – losing 4–1 to Middlesbrough. The Central Recreation Ground was one of England's oldest, most scenic and most famous cricket grounds. The first match was played there in 1864 and the last in 1989, after which the site was redeveloped into a shopping centre which opened in 1996. It was particularly popular with touring Australian sides who played 18 matches there. Hastings Priory is the town's largest cricket club, having 4 teams playing competitive, as well as a large junior section. The club's home is at Horntye Park, though it also makes use of the facilities at Ark Alexander Academy. ARK Alexander Academy sees clubs using the school as their base, such as Hastings & Bexhill Rugby Football Club, Hastings Athletic Club and Hastings Priory Cricket Club 3rd and 4th teams. Founded in 1895 South Saxons Hockey Club is one of the largest sports clubs in Hastings and is the towns only field hockey club. Locally known as 'Saxons' their home ground is the astroturf pitch at Horntye Park Sports Complex. Saxons field nine Saturday teams (4 Mens, 2 Ladies, 2 Boys development and a Girls development team). Saxons also have a thriving junior section who train on a Sunday and play in county 7's tournaments. Saxons Mens 1st XI play in Kent and Sussex Regional Division One and Saxons Ladies 1st XI play in Sussex Ladies League Premier Division. Hastings Conquerors is the town's only American Football Club. The club was founded in March 2013 by local resident Chris Chillingworth and currently trains at William Parker Sports College. The club made history in June 2013 when it became the UK's first Co-Operative run not-for-profit American Football club. There are many bowling greens in the parks and gardens located about the town; the Hastings Open Bowls Tournament has been held annually in June since 1911 and attracts many entrants country-wide. Since 1920 Hastings has hosted the Hastings International Chess Congress. The annual event is held over the Christmas period at Horntye Park Sports Complex. A testament to its importance is that every World Champion before Garry Kasparov except Bobby Fischer played at Hastings including Emanuel Lasker (1895), José Raúl Capablanca (1919, 1929/30, 1930/1 and 1934/5), Alexander Alekhine (1922, 1925/6, 1933/4 and 1936/7), Max Euwe (1923/4, 1930/1, 1931/2, 1934/5, 1945/6 and 1949/50), Mikhail Botvinnik (1934/5, 1961/2 and 1966/7), Vasily Smyslov (1954/5, 1962/3 and 1968/9), Mikhail Tal (1963/4), Tigran Petrosian (1977/8), Boris Spassky (1965/6), and Anatoly Karpov (1971/2). Hastings & St Leonards/Hastings Downs Golf Club (now defunct) was founded in 1893. The club disappeared in the 1950s. Hastings has hosted the World Crazy Golf Championships since 2003. Notable people. John Logie Baird lived in Hastings in the 1920s where he carried out experiments that led to the transmission of the first television image. Robert Tressell wrote "The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists" in Hastings between 1906 and 1910. Many notable figures were born, raised, or lived in Hastings, including computer scientist Alan Turing, poet Fiona Pitt-Kethley, actress Gwen Watford, comedian Jo Brand, Madness singer Suggs and Thomas H. Jukes, biologist. Gareth Barry, who holds the record number of appearances in the Premier League, was born in Hastings. The author who worked as Grey Owl was born In Hastings and lived here for several years. Harry H Corbett, an actor best known for his role as Harold Steptoe in the BBC sitcom Steptoe and Son, lived in Hastings up until his death in 1982. Mark Edwards, a best-selling British fiction writer, grew up in Hastings. Anna Brassey, a collector and feminist pioneer of early photography, was based in Hastings until her death in 1887 (she was buried at sea). Tom Chaplin, best known as the lead singer of the English pop rock band Keane, was born in Hastings. Twin towns. Hastings is twinned with:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13861

Hampshire

Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Berkshire to the north, Surrey and West Sussex to the east, the Isle of Wight across the Solent to the south, Dorset to the west, and Wiltshire to the north-west. The city of Southampton is the largest settlement, and the county town is the city of Winchester. The county has an area of and a population of 1,844,245, making it the 5th-most populous in England. The South Hampshire built-up area in the south-east of the county has a population of 855,569 and contains the cities of Southampton (269,781) and Portsmouth (208,100). In the north-east, the Farnborough/Aldershot conurbation extends into Berkshire and Surrey and has a population of 252,937. The next-largest settlements are Basingstoke (113,776), Andover (50,887), and Winchester (45,184). The centre and south-west of the county are rural. The county contains thirteen local government districts; eleven are part of Hampshire, a two-tier non-metropolitan county, and the districts of Portsmouth and Southampton are part of unitary authority areas. The county historically contained the towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch, which are now part of Dorset, and the Isle of Wight. Undulating hills characterise much of the county. A belt of chalk crosses the county from north-west, where it forms the Hampshire Downs, to south-east, where it is part of the South Downs. The county's major rivers rise in these hills; the Loddon and Wey drain north, into the Thames, and the Itchen and Test flow south into Southampton Water, a large estuary. In the south-east are Portsmouth Harbour, Langstone Harbour, and the western edge of Chichester Harbour, three large rias. The south-west contains the New Forest, which includes pasture, heath, and forest and is of the largest expanses of ancient woodland remaining in England. Settled about 14,000 years ago, Hampshire's recorded history dates to Roman Britain, when its chief town was Venta Belgarum (now Winchester). The county was recorded in Domesday Book as divided into 44 hundreds. From the 12th century, the ports settlements grew due to increasing trade with the European mainland resulting from the wool and cloth, fishing, and shipbuilding industries. This meant by the 16th century, Southampton had become more populous than Winchester. In 20th century conflicts, including World War One and Two, Hampshire played a crucial military role due to its ports. Toponymy. The Saxon settlement at Southampton was known as , while the surrounding area or was called . The old name was recorded in the Domesday book as , and it is from this spelling that the modern abbreviation "Hants" derives. From 1889 until 1959, the administrative county was named the County of Southampton. It has also been called Southamptonshire. Hampshire was a departure point for several groups of colonists who left England to settle on the east coast of North America during the 17th century, and many inhabitants of Hampshire settled there, naming the land New Hampshire in honour of their original homeland. History. Before the Roman Conquest. The region is believed to have been continuously occupied since the end of the last Ice Age about 12,000 BCE. At that time sea levels were lower and Britain was still attached by a land bridge to the European continent and predominantly covered with deciduous woodland. The first inhabitants were Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. The majority of the population would have been concentrated around the river valleys. Over several thousand years the climate became progressively warmer and sea levels rose; the English Channel, which started out as a river, was a major inlet by 8000 BCE, although Britain was still connected to Europe by a land bridge across the North Sea until 6500 BCE. Notable sites from this period include Bouldnor Cliff. Agriculture was being practised in southern Britain by 4000 BCE and with it a neolithic culture. Some deforestation took place at that time, although during the Bronze Age, beginning in 2200 BCE, it became more widespread and systematic. Hampshire has few monuments to show from those early periods, although nearby Stonehenge was built in several phases at some time between 3100 and 2200 BCE. In the very late Bronze Age fortified hilltop settlements known as hillforts began to appear in large numbers in many parts of Britain including Hampshire, and they became more and more important in the early and middle Iron Age; many of them are still visible in the landscape today and can be visited, notably Danebury Rings, the subject of a major study by archaeologist Barry Cunliffe. By that period the people of Britain predominantly spoke a Celtic language, and their culture shared much in common with the Celts described by classical writers. The town of Bitterne ("Byterne" in a reference from the late 11th century.) shares the same root as the River Erne, suggesting the name refers to the Iverni. Hillforts largely declined in importance in the second half of the second century BCE, with many being abandoned. Probably around that period the first recorded invasion of Britain took place, as southern Britain was largely conquered by warrior-elites from Belgic tribes of northeastern Gaul, but whether those two events were linked to the decline of hillforts is unknown. By the time of the Roman conquest the "oppidum" at Venta Belgarum, modern-day Winchester, was the "de facto" regional administrative centre; Winchester was, however, of secondary importance to the Roman-style town of Calleva Atrebatum, modern Silchester, built further north by a dominant Belgic polity known as the Atrebates in the 50s BCE. Julius Caesar invaded south-eastern England briefly in 55 and again in 54 BCE, but he never reached Hampshire. Notable sites from this period include Hengistbury Head (now in Dorset), which was a major port. The Roman Era. The Romans invaded Britain again in 43 CE and Hampshire was incorporated into the Roman province of Britannia very quickly. It is generally believed their political leaders allowed themselves to be incorporated peacefully. Venta became the capital of the administrative polity of the Belgae, which included most of Hampshire and Wiltshire and reached as far as Bath. Whether the people of Hampshire played any role in Boudicca's rebellion of 60–61 is not recorded, but evidence of burning is seen in Winchester dated to around that period. For most of the next three centuries southern Britain enjoyed relative peace. During the later part of the Roman period most towns built defensive walls; a pottery industry based in the New Forest exported items widely across southern Britain. A fortification near Southampton was called Clausentum, part of the Saxon Shore forts, traditionally seen as defences against maritime raids by Germanic tribes. Portus Adurni was a Roman fort situated at the north end of Portsmouth Harbour. It was part of the Saxon Shore, and is the best-preserved Roman fort north of the Alps. Around an eighth of the fort has been excavated. A Norman keep was added in the Middle Ages, now known as Portchester Castle. The Romans withdrew from Britain in 410. Two major Roman roads, Ermin Way and Port Way, cross the north of the county connecting Calleva Atrebatum with Corinium Dobunnorum, modern Cirencester, and Old Sarum respectively. Other roads connected Venta Belgarum with Old Sarum, Wickham and Clausentum. A road presumed to diverge from the Chichester to Silchester Way at Wickham connected Noviomagus Reginorum, modern Chichester, with Clausentum. The Jutes. Records are sparse for the next 300 years, but later chroniclers speak of an influx of Jutes – an amalgam of Cimbri, Teutons, Gutones and Charudes called "Eudoses", "Eotenas", "Iutae" or "Euthiones" in other sources - and recorded by Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People in the early eighth century: They initially settled Hampshire under Visigothic authority sometime after 476 AD, forming several distinct folklands organized around a central geographical feature. Various place-names identify locations as Jutish, including Bishopstoke ("Ytingstoc"), the River Itchen ("Ytene") and the Meon Valley ("Ytedene"). There in fact appear to be at least two Jutish folklands in Hampshire: one established along the River Itchen and one along the River Meon. Evidence of an early Germanic settlement has been found at Clausentum, dated to the fifth century and likely the Visigothic center of power in the area, either independently or in conjunction with powerful Romano-British trading ports. Nevertheless, Visigothic authority waned after 517 A.D and the settlements were gradually encroached upon by South Saxons. The Saxons. The West Saxons moved south in the late seventh century and incorporated Hampshire into their kingdom. Around this period, the administrative region of "Hampshire" seems to appear - the name is attested as Hamwic and "Hamtunscir" in 755 AD - and suggests that control over the Solent was the motivating factor for establishment of the settlement. Wessex, with its capital at Winchester, gradually expanded westwards into Brythonic Dorset and Somerset. A statue in Winchester celebrates the powerful King Alfred, who repulsed the Vikings and stabilised the region in the 9th century. A scholar as well as a soldier, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a powerful tool in the development of the English identity, was commissioned in his reign. King Alfred proclaimed himself "King of England" in 886 AD; but Athelstan of Wessex did not officially control the whole of England until 927 AD. Middle Ages onwards. By the Norman conquest, London had overtaken Winchester as the largest city in England and after the Norman Conquest, King William I made London his capital. While the centre of political power moved away from Hampshire, Winchester remained an important city; the proximity of the New Forest to Winchester made it a prized royal hunting forest; King William Rufus was killed while hunting there in 1100. There were 44 hundreds, covering 483 named places, recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 which are in present-day Hampshire and part of Sussex. From the 12th century, the ports grew in importance, fuelled by trade with the continent, wool and cloth manufacture in the county, and the fishing industry, and a shipbuilding industry was established. By 1523 at the latest, the population of Southampton had outstripped that of Winchester. Over several centuries, a series of castles and forts was constructed along the coast of the Solent to defend the harbours at Southampton and Portsmouth. These include the Roman Portchester Castle which overlooks Portsmouth Harbour, and a series of forts built by Henry VIII including Hurst Castle, situated on a sand spit at the mouth of the Solent, Calshot Castle on another spit at the mouth of Southampton Water, and Netley Castle. Southampton and Portsmouth remained important harbours when rivals, such as Poole and Bristol, declined, as they are amongst the few locations that combine shelter with deep water. "Mayflower" and "Speedwell" set sail for America from Southampton in 1620. During the English Civil War (1642–1651) there were several skirmishes in Hampshire between the Royalist and Parliamentarian forces. Principal engagements were the Siege of Basing House between 1643 and 1645, and the Battle of Cheriton in 1644; both were significant Parliamentarian victories. Other clashes included the Battle of Alton in 1643, where the commander of the Royalist forces was killed in the pulpit of the parish church, and the Siege of Portsmouth in 1642. By the mid-19th century, with the county's population at 219,210 (double that at the beginning of the century) in more than 86,000 dwellings, agriculture was the principal industry (10 per cent of the county was still forest) with cereals, peas, hops, honey, sheep and hogs important. Due to Hampshire's long association with pigs and boars, natives of the county have been known as "Hampshire hogs" since the 18th century. In the eastern part of the county the principal port was Portsmouth (with its naval base, population 95,000), while several ports (including Southampton, with its steam docks, population 47,000) in the western part were significant. In 1868, the number of people employed in manufacture exceeded those in agriculture, engaged in silk, paper, sugar and lace industries, ship building and salt works. Coastal towns engaged in fishing and exporting agricultural produce. Several places were popular for seasonal sea bathing. The ports employed large numbers of workers, both land-based and seagoing; "Titanic", lost on her maiden voyage in 1912, was crewed largely by residents of Southampton. On 16 October 1908, Samuel Franklin Cody made the first powered flight of in the United Kingdom at Farnborough, then home to the Army Balloon Factory. Modern era. Hampshire played a crucial role in both World Wars due to the large Royal Navy naval base at Portsmouth, the army camp at Aldershot, and the military Netley Hospital on Southampton Water, as well as its proximity to the army training ranges on Salisbury Plain and the Isle of Purbeck. Supermarine, the designers of the Spitfire and other military aircraft, were based in Southampton, which led to severe bombing of the city in World War II. Aldershot remains one of the British Army's main permanent camps. Farnborough is a major centre for the aviation industry. During World War II, the Beaulieu estate of Lord Montagu in the New Forest was the site of several group B finishing schools for agents operated by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) between 1941 and 1945. (One of the trainers was Kim Philby who was later found to be part of a spy ring passing information to the Soviets.) In 2005, a special exhibition was established at the Estate, with a video showing photographs from that era as well as voice recordings of former SOE trainers and agents. Although the Isle of Wight has at times been part of Hampshire, it has been administratively independent for over a century, obtaining a county council of its own in 1890. The Isle of Wight became a full ceremonial county in 1974. Apart from a shared police force, no formal administrative links now exist between the Isle of Wight and Hampshire, though many organisations still combine Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. In the 1970s, local government reorganisation led to a reduction in Hampshire's size; in 1974, the towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch were transferred to Dorset. Geography. Hampshire is bordered by Dorset to the west, Wiltshire to the north-west, Berkshire to the north, Surrey to the north-east, and West Sussex to the east. The southern boundary is the coastline of the English Channel and the Solent, facing the Isle of Wight. It is the largest county in South East England and remains the third largest shire county in the United Kingdom despite losing more land than any other English county in all contemporary boundary changes. At its greatest size in 1890, Hampshire was the fifth-largest county in England. It now has an overall area of , and measures about east–west and north–south. Geology. Hampshire's geology falls into two categories. In the south, along the coast is the "Hampshire Basin", an area of relatively non-resistant Eocene and Oligocene clays and gravels which are protected from sea erosion by the Isle of Purbeck, Dorset, and the Isle of Wight. These low, flat lands support heathland and woodland habitats, a large area of which forms part of the New Forest. The New Forest has a mosaic of heathland, grassland, coniferous and deciduous woodland habitats that host diverse wildlife. The forest is protected as a national park, limiting development and agricultural use to protect the landscape and wildlife. Large areas of the New Forest are open common lands kept as a grassland plagioclimax by grazing animals, including domesticated cattle, pigs and horses, and several wild deer species. Erosion of the weak rock and sea level change flooding the low land has carved several large estuaries and rias, notably the long Southampton Water and the large convoluted Portsmouth Harbour. The Isle of Wight lies off the coast of Hampshire where the non-resistant rock has been eroded away, forming the Solent. A 2014 study found that Hampshire shares significant reserves of shale oil with other neighbouring counties, totalling 4.4 billion barrels of oil, which then Business and Energy Minister Michael Fallon said "will bring jobs and business opportunities" and significantly help with UK energy self-sufficiency. Fracking in the area is required to achieve these objectives, which has been opposed by environmental groups. Natural regions. Natural England identifies a number of national character areas that lie wholly or partially in Hampshire: the Hampshire Downs, New Forest, South Hampshire Lowlands, South Coast Plain, South Downs, Low Weald and Thames Basin Heaths Green belt. Hampshire contains all its green belt in the New Forest district, in the southwest of the county, from the boundary with Dorset along the coastline to Lymington and northwards to Ringwood. Its boundary is contiguous with the New Forest National Park. The Hampshire portion was first created in 1958. Its function is to control expansion in the South East Dorset conurbation and outlying towns and villages. Hills. The highest point in Hampshire is Pilot Hill at , in the northwest corner of the county, bordering Berkshire, and there are some 20 other hills exceeding . Butser Hill, at , where the A3 crosses the South Downs, is probably the best known. In the north and centre of the county the substrate is the rocks of the Chalk Group, which form the Hampshire Downs and the South Downs. These are high hills with steep slopes where they border the clays to the south. The hills dip steeply forming a scarp onto the Thames valley to the north, and dip gently to the south. The highest village in Hampshire at about above sea level is Ashmansworth, located between Andover and Newbury. Rivers. The Itchen and Test are trout rivers that flow from the chalk through wooded valleys into Southampton Water. Other important watercourses are the Hamble, Meon, Beaulieu and Lymington rivers. The Hampshire Avon, which links Stonehenge to the sea, passes through Fordingbridge and Ringwood and then forms the modern border between Hampshire and Dorset. The northern branch of the River Wey has its source near Alton and flows east past Bentley. The River Loddon rises at West Ham Farm and flows north through Basingstoke. Wildlife. Hampshire's downland supports a calcareous grassland habitat, important for wild flowers and insects. A large area of the downs is now protected from further agricultural damage by the East Hampshire Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The River Test has a growing number of otters as, increasingly, does the Itchen, although other areas of the county have quite low numbers. There are wild boar kept for meat in the New Forest, which is known for its ponies and herds of fallow deer, red deer, roe deer, and sika deer as well as a small number of muntjac deer. The deer had been hunted for some 900 years until 1997. An unwelcome relative newcomer is the mink population, descended from animals that escaped or were deliberately released from fur farms since the 1950s, which cause havoc amongst native wildlife. Farlington Marshes, of flower-rich grazing marsh and saline lagoon at the north end of Langstone Harbour, is a nature reserve and an internationally important overwintering site for wildfowl. In a valley on the downs is Selborne; the countryside surrounding the village was the location of Gilbert White's pioneering observations on natural history. Hampshire's county flower is the Dog Rose. Hampshire contains two national parks; the New Forest is wholly within the county, and the South Downs National Park embraces parts of Hampshire, West Sussex and East Sussex; they are each overseen by a national park authority. Climate. Hampshire has a milder climate than most areas of the British Isles, being in the far south with the climate stabilising effect of the sea, but protected against the more extreme weather of the Atlantic coast. Hampshire has a higher average annual temperature than the UK average at , average rainfall at per year, and holds higher than average sunshine totals of around 1,750 hours of sunshine per year. Settlements. "For the complete list of settlements see List of places in Hampshire and List of settlements in Hampshire by population." Hampshire's county town is Winchester, a historic city that was once the capital of the ancient kingdom of Wessex and of England until the Norman conquest of England. The port cities of Southampton and Portsmouth were split off as independent unitary authorities in 1997, although they are still included in Hampshire for ceremonial purposes. Fareham, Gosport and Havant have grown into a conurbation that stretches along the coast between the two main cities. The three cities are all university cities, Southampton being home to the University of Southampton and Southampton Solent University (formerly Southampton Institute), Portsmouth to the University of Portsmouth, and Winchester to the University of Winchester (formerly known as University College Winchester; King Alfred's College). The northeast of the county houses the Blackwater Valley conurbation, which includes the towns of Farnborough, Aldershot, Blackwater and Yateley and borders both Berkshire and Surrey. Hampshire lies outside the green belt area of restricted development around London, but has good railway and motorway links to the capital, and in common with the rest of the south-east has seen the growth of dormitory towns since the 1960s. Basingstoke, in the northern part of the county, has grown from a country town into a business and financial centre. Aldershot, Portsmouth, and Farnborough have strong military associations with the Army, Royal Navy, and Royal Air Force respectively. The county also includes several market towns: Alresford, Alton, Andover, Bishop's Waltham, Lymington, New Milton, Petersfield, Ringwood, Romsey and Whitchurch. Demographics. Population. At the 2001 census the ceremonial county recorded a population of 1,644,249, of which 1,240,103 were in the administrative county, 217,445 were in the unitary authority of Southampton, and 186,701 were in Portsmouth. The population of the administrative county grew 5.6 per cent from the 1991 census and Southampton grew 6.2 per cent (Portsmouth remained unchanged), compared with 2.6 per cent for England and Wales as a whole. Eastleigh and Winchester grew fastest at 9 per cent each. Southampton and Portsmouth are the main settlements within the South Hampshire conurbation, which is home to about half of the ceremonial county's population. The larger South Hampshire metropolitan area has a population of 1,547,000. Cities and towns by population size: (2001 census) The table below shows the population change up to the 2011 census, contrasting the previous census. It also shows the proportion of residents in each district reliant upon lowest income and/or joblessness benefits, the national average proportion of which was 4.5 per cent (August 2012). The most populous district of Hampshire is New Forest District. Ethnicity and religion. At the 2011 census, about 89 per cent of residents were white British, falling to 85.87 per cent in Southampton. The significant ethnic minorities were Asian at 2.6 per cent and mixed race at 1.4 per cent; 10 per cent of residents were born outside the UK. 59.7 per cent stated their religion as Christian and 29.5 per cent as not religious. Significant minority religions were Islam (1.46 per cent) and Hinduism (0.73 per cent). The Church of England Diocese of Winchester was founded in 676AD and covers about two thirds of Hampshire and extends into Dorset. Smaller parts of Hampshire are covered by the dioceses of Portsmouth, Guildford and Oxford. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Portsmouth covers Hampshire as well as the Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands. Politics. With the exceptions of the unitary authorities of Portsmouth and Southampton, Hampshire is governed by Hampshire County Council based at Castle Hill in Winchester, with eleven non-metropolitan districts beneath it and, for the majority of the county, parish councils or town councils at the local level. In the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, nearly 55% of Hampshire (including the Isle of Wight) voted in favour of Brexit. Gosport was the area that voted to Leave with the highest majority (64%), while Winchester was the area that voted to Remain with the highest majority (59%). Hart and East Hampshire also voted to Remain. Parliament. Hampshire elects eighteen Members of Parliament. As of the 2019 General Election, sixteen MPs are Conservative and two MPs are Labour. In the 2019 General Election there were no seat changes, with the 16 Conservative constituencies and 2 Labour constituencies holding on to the same seats won or held in 2017. This is despite the Liberal Democrats gaining 57,876 more votes (an increase of 50.4%) compared to 2017, and Labour losing 72,278 votes (29.9%) compared to 2017. At the 2017 General Election, the Conservatives won 16 seats, continuing their dominance in the county. Labour took two seats, Southampton Test and Portsmouth South. In the 2015 general election, every Hampshire seat except Southampton Test (Labour) was won by the Conservatives. In 2010, 14 constituencies were represented by Conservative Members of Parliament (MPs), two by the Liberal Democrats, and two by Labour. Labour represented the largest urban centre, holding both Southampton constituencies (Test and Itchen). The Liberal Democrats held Portsmouth South and Eastleigh. The Conservatives represent a mix of rural and urban areas: Aldershot, Basingstoke, East Hampshire, Fareham, Gosport, Havant, Meon Valley, North East Hampshire, North West Hampshire, New Forest East, New Forest West, Portsmouth North, Romsey and Southampton North and Winchester. At the 2013 local elections for Hampshire County Council, the Conservative Party had a 37.51 per cent share of the votes, the Liberal Democrats 21.71 per cent, the UK Independence Party 24.61 per cent and Labour 10 per cent. As a result, 45 Conservatives, 17 Liberal Democrats, 10 UKIP, four Labour and one Community Campaign councillor sit on the County Council. Southampton City Council, which is a separate Unitary Authority, has 28 Labour, 16 Conservative, 2 Councillors Against the Cuts and 2 Liberal Democrat councillors. Portsmouth City Council, also a UA, has 25 Liberal Democrat, 12 Conservative and 5 Labour councillors. Hampshire has its own County Youth Council (HCYC) and is an independent youth-run organisation. It meets once a month around Hampshire and aims to give the young people of Hampshire a voice. It also has numerous district and borough youth councils including Basingstoke's "Basingstoke & Deane Youth Council". Economy. Hampshire is one of the most affluent counties in the country, with a gross domestic product (GDP) of £29 billion, excluding Southampton and Portsmouth. In 2018, Hampshire had a GDP per capita of £22,100, comparable with the UK as a whole. Portsmouth and Winchester have the highest job densities in the county; 38 per cent of workplace workers in Portsmouth commuted into the city in 2011. Southampton has the highest number of total jobs and commuting both into and out of the city is high. The county has a lower level of unemployment than the national average, at 1.3 per cent when the national rate is 2.1 per cent, as of February 2018. About one third are employed by large firms. Hampshire has a considerably higher than national average employment in high-tech industries, but average levels in knowledge-based industry. About 25 per cent of the population work in the public sector. Tourism accounts for some 60,000 jobs in the county, around 9 per cent of the total. One of the principal companies in the high tech sector is IBM which has its research and development laboratories at Hursley and its UK headquarters at Cosham. Many rural areas of Hampshire have traditionally been reliant on agriculture, particularly dairy farming, although the significance of agriculture as a rural employer and rural wealth creator has declined since the first half of the 20th century and agriculture currently employs 1.32 per cent of the rural population. The extractive industries deal principally with sand, gravel, clay and hydrocarbons. There are three active oilfields in Hampshire with one being also used as a natural gas store. These are in the west of the county in the "Wessex Basin". The "Weald Basin" to the east has potential as a source of shale oil but is not currently exploited. The New Forest area is a national park, and tourism is a significant economic segment in this area, with 7.5 million visitors in 1992. The South Downs and the cities of Portsmouth, Southampton, and Winchester also attract tourists to the county. Southampton Boat Show is one of the biggest annual events held in the county, and attracts visitors from throughout the country. In 2003, the county had a total of 31 million day visits, and 4.2 million longer stays. The cities of Southampton and Portsmouth are both significant ports, with Southampton Docks handling a large proportion of the national container freight traffic as well as being a major base for cruise liners, and Portsmouth Harbour accommodating one of the Royal Navy's main bases and a terminal for cross-channel ferries to France and Spain. The docks have traditionally been large employers in these cities, though mechanisation of cargo handling has led to a reduction in manpower needed. The Marine Accident Investigation Branch has its principal offices in Southampton, while the Air Accidents Investigation Branch has its head office in Farnborough in Rushmoor District . The Rail Accident Investigation Branch has one of its two offices at Farnborough. Transport. Air. Southampton Airport, with an accompanying main line railway station, is an international airport situated in the Borough of Eastleigh, close to Swaythling in the city of Southampton. The Farnborough International Airshow is a week-long event that combines a major trade exhibition for the aerospace and defence industries with a public airshow. The event is held in mid-July in even-numbered years at Farnborough Airport. The first five days (Monday to Friday) are dedicated to trade, with the final two days open to the public. Sea. Cross-channel and cross-Solent ferries from Southampton, Portsmouth and Lymington link the county to the Isle of Wight, the Channel Islands and continental Europe. Rail. The South West Main Line (operated by South Western Railway) from London to Weymouth runs through Winchester and Southampton, and the Wessex Main Line from Bristol to Portsmouth also runs through the county, as does the Portsmouth Direct Line. Road. The M3 motorway bisects the county from the southwest, at the edge of the New Forest near Southampton, to the northeast, on its way to connect with the M25 London orbital motorway. At its southern end it links with the M27 south coast motorway. The construction of the Twyford Down cutting near Winchester caused major controversy by cutting through a series of ancient trackways and other features of archaeological significance. The M27 serves as a bypass for the major conurbations and as a link to other settlements on the south coast. Other important roads include the A27, A3, A31, A34, A36 and A303. The county has a high level of car ownership, with only 15.7 per cent having no access to a private car compared with 26.8 per cent for England and Wales. The county has a lower than average use of trains (3.2 compared with 4.1 per cent for commuting) and buses (3.2 to 7.4 per cent), but a higher than average use of bicycles (3.5 to 2.7 per cent) and cars (63.5 to 55.3 per cent). Inland waterways. Hampshire formerly had several canals, but most of these have been abandoned and their routes built over. The Basingstoke Canal has been extensively restored, and is now navigable for most of its route, but the Salisbury and Southampton Canal, Andover Canal and Portsmouth and Arundel Canal have all disappeared. Restoration of the Itchen Navigation, linking Southampton and Winchester, primarily as a wildlife corridor, began in 2008. Education. The school system in Hampshire (including Southampton and Portsmouth) is comprehensive. Geographically inside the Hampshire LEA are 24 independent schools, Southampton has three and Portsmouth has four. Few Hampshire schools have sixth forms, which varies by district council. There are 14 further education colleges within the Hampshire LEA, including six graded as 'outstanding' by Ofsted: Alton College, Barton Peveril Sixth Form College, Brockenhurst College, Farnborough College of Technology, Farnborough Sixth Form College, Peter Symonds College, Queen Mary's College, and South Downs College. Notable independent schools in the county include Winchester College, allegedly England's oldest public school, founded in 1382, and the pioneering co-educational Bedales School, founded in 1893. The four universities are the University of Southampton, Solent University, the University of Portsmouth, and the University of Winchester (which also had a small campus in Basingstoke until 2011). Farnborough College of Technology awards University of Surrey-accredited degrees. Health. There are major NHS hospitals in each of the cities, and smaller hospitals in several towns, as well as a number of private hospitals. Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust coordinates public health services, while Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust coordinates hospital services. Culture, arts and sport. Flag. The Flag of Hampshire was officially added to the Flag Institute's registry of flags on 12 March 2019 after receiving support from Hampshire County Council, the Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire, and many local organisations. The county day and flag day is 15 July, St Swithun's Day; St Swithun was an Anglo-Saxon bishop of Winchester. Music. Hampshire is the home of many orchestras, bands, and groups. Musician Laura Marling hails originally from Hampshire. The Hampshire County Youth Choir is based in Winchester, and has had successful tours of Canada and Italy in recent years. The Hampshire County Youth Orchestra (with its associated chamber orchestra and string orchestra) is based at Thornden Hall. Museums. There are a number of local museums, such as the City Museum in Winchester, which covers the Iron Age and Roman periods, the Middle Ages, and the Victorian period over three floors. A "Museum of the Iron Age" is in Andover. Solent Sky Museum depicts the story of aviation in Hampshire and the Solent region, with more than 20 airframes from the golden age. Southampton's Sea City Museum is primarily focused on the city's links with the "Titanic". Basingstoke's Milestones Museum records the county's industrial heritage. There are also a number of national museums in Hampshire. The National Motor Museum is located in the New Forest at Beaulieu. The Royal Navy Museum is part of Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. Other military museums include The Submarine Museum at Gosport, the Royal Marines Museum, originally in Southsea but was due to transfer to the Dockyard in 2019, the Aldershot Military Museum, the D-Day Story by Southsea Castle and the Museum of Army Flying at Middle Wallop. Several museums and historic buildings in Hampshire are the responsibility of the Hampshire Cultural Trust. Specialist museums include the Gilbert White museum in his old home in Selborne, which also includes The Oates Collection, dedicated to the explorer Lawrence Oates. Annual events. The New Forest and Hampshire County Show takes place annually at the end of July; 2020 will mark its centenary. The largest gathering of Muslims in Western Europe, Jalsa Salana, takes place near Alton, with 37,000 visitors in 2017. The ancient festival of Beltain takes place at Butser Ancient Farm in the spring. Buildings and protected monuments. There are 187 Grade I listed buildings in the county, ranging from statues to farm buildings and churches to castles, 511 buildings listed Grade II*, and many more listed in the Grade II category. National Heritage's figures include the Isle of Wight, listing 208 Grade I buildings, 578 Grade II*and 10,372 Grade II, 731 scheduled monuments, two wrecks, 91 parks and gardens, and a battlefield: the Battle of Cheriton, which took place in 1644, near Winchester. Sport. The game of cricket was largely developed in south-east England, with one of the first teams forming at Hambledon in 1750, with the Hambledon Club creating many of cricket's early laws. Hampshire County Cricket Club is a first-class team. The main county ground is the Ageas Bowl in West End, which has hosted one day internationals and which, following redevelopment, hosted its first test match in 2011. The world's oldest surviving bowling green is the Southampton Old Bowling Green, which was first used in 1299. Hampshire's relatively safe waters have allowed the county to develop as one of the busiest sailing areas in the country, with many yacht clubs and several manufacturers on the Solent. The Hamble, Beaulieu and Lymington rivers are major centres for both competitive and recreational sailing, along with Hythe and Ocean Village marinas. The sport of windsurfing was invented at Hayling Island in the south east of the county. Hampshire has several association football teams, including EFL Championship side Southampton, EFL League One side Portsmouth and National League sides Aldershot Town, Eastleigh and Havant & Waterlooville. Portsmouth and Southampton have traditionally been fierce rivals. Portsmouth won the FA Cup in 1939 and 2008 and the Football League title in 1949 and 1950. Southampton won the FA Cup in 1976 and reached the final in 1900, 1902, and 2003, as well as finishing second in the Football League in 1984. Aldershot were members of the Football League from 1932 until they folded in 1992. They were succeeded by Aldershot Town, who in 2008 were crowned the Conference Premier champions and promoted to the Football League but were relegated back to the Conference at the end of the 2012–13 season. Hampshire has a number of Non League football teams. Bashley, Gosport Borough and AFC Totton play in the Southern Football League Premier Division, and Sholing and Winchester City play in the Southern Football League Division One South and West. Thruxton Circuit, in the north of the county, is Hampshire's premier motor racing circuit, with a karting circuit; there are other karting circuits at Southampton and Gosport. The other main circuit was the Ringwood Raceway at Matchams. Lasham Airfield, near Alton, is a major centre for gliding, hosting both regional and national annual competitions. Media. Television. The county's television news is covered by BBC South Today from its studios in Southampton and ITV Meridian from a studio in Whiteley, though both BBC London and ITV London can be received in northern and eastern parts of the county. A local independent television station, "That's Hampshire", started transmitting in May 2017. Radio. Around 25 commercial radio stations cover the area, including BBC Radio Solent, BBC Radio Berkshire and BBC Radio Surrey. University journalism students "broadcast" bulletins on line for local areas, such as the University of Winchester's WINOL (Winchester News Online), run by students on its BA (Hons) Journalism course. Press. Southampton and Portsmouth support daily newspapers; the "Southern Daily Echo" and "The News" respectively. The "Basingstoke Gazette" is published three times a week, and there are a number of other papers that publish on a weekly basis, notably the "Hampshire Chronicle", one of the oldest newspapers in the country. Notable people. Possibly the most notable resident was the Duke of Wellington, who lived at Stratfield Saye House in the north of the county from 1817. An eminent Victorian, who made her mark and "came home" to Hampshire for burial at East Wellow was Florence Nightingale. Hampshire's literary connections include the birthplace of authors Jane Austen, Wilbert Awdry and Charles Dickens, and the residence of others, such as Charles Kingsley and Mrs Gaskell. Austen lived most of her life in Hampshire, where her father was rector of Steventon, and wrote all of her novels in the county. Alice Liddell, also known as Alice Hargreaves, the inspiration for Alice in Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", lived in and around Lyndhurst, Hampshire after her marriage to Reginald Hargreaves, and is buried in the graveyard of St Michael and All Angels Church in the town. Hampshire also has many visual art connections, claiming the painter John Everett Millais as a native, and the cities and countryside have been the subject of paintings by L. S. Lowry and J. M. W. Turner. Selborne was the home of Gilbert White. Journalist and social critic Christopher Hitchens was born into a naval family in Portsmouth. Broadcasters Philippa Forrester, Amanda Lamb and Scott Mills also are from the county. American actor and gameshow host, Richard Dawson, was born and raised here. Richard St. Barbe Baker Founder of the International Tree Foundation and responsible for planting over two billion trees was born in West End.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13867

Harold Holt

Harold Edward Holt (5 August 190817 December 1967) was an Australian politician and lawyer who served as the 17th prime minister of Australia, from 1966 until his disappearance and presumed death in 1967, holding office as leader of the Liberal Party of Australia. Holt was born in Sydney and moved to Melbourne in childhood, studying law at the University of Melbourne. Before entering politics he practised law and was a lobbyist for cinema operators. He was first elected to the House of Representatives at the age of 27, becoming a member of parliament (MP) for the division of Fawkner at a by-election in 1935. A member of the United Australia Party (UAP), Holt was made a minister without portfolio in 1939, when his mentor Robert Menzies became prime minister. His tenure in the ministry was interrupted by a brief stint in the Australian Army, which ended when he was recalled to cabinet following the deaths of three ministers in the 1940 Canberra air disaster. The government was defeated in 1941, sending the UAP into opposition, and he joined the new Liberal Party upon its creation in 1945. When the Liberals came to office in 1949, Holt became a senior figure in the new government. As Minister for Immigration (1949–1956), he expanded the post-war immigration scheme and relaxed the White Australia policy for the first time. He was also influential as Minister for Labour and National Service (1949–1958), where he handled several industrial relations disputes. Holt was elected deputy leader of the Liberal Party in 1956, and after the 1958 election replaced Arthur Fadden as Treasurer. He oversaw the creation of the Reserve Bank of Australia and the decimal Australian dollar, but was blamed for a credit crunch that almost cost the Coalition the 1961 election. However, the economy soon rebounded and Holt retained his place as Menzies' heir apparent. Holt became prime minister in January 1966, elected unopposed as Liberal leader following Menzies' retirement. He fought a general election later that year, winning a landslide victory. The Holt government continued the dismantling of the White Australia policy, amended the constitution to give the federal government responsibility for indigenous affairs, and took Australia out of the sterling area. Holt promoted greater engagement with Asia and the Pacific, and made visits to a number of East Asian countries. His government expanded Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War, and maintained close ties with the United States under President Lyndon B. Johnson. While visiting the White House, Holt proclaimed that he was "all the way with LBJ", a remark which was poorly received at home. In December 1967, Holt disappeared while swimming in rough conditions at Cheviot Beach, Victoria. He was presumed dead, although his body was never recovered; his disappearance spawned a number of conspiracy theories. Holt was the third Australian prime minister to die in office. He was succeeded by Country Party leader John McEwen on an interim basis and then by John Gorton. His death was commemorated in a number of ways, among them by the establishment of the Harold Holt Memorial Swimming Centre in Melbourne. Early life. Birth and family background. Holt was born on 5 August 1908 at his parents' home in Stanmore, New South Wales, a suburb of Sydney. He was the first of two sons born to Olive May (née Williams; formerly Pearce) and Thomas James Holt; his younger brother Clifford was born in 1910. His parents had married seven months before his birth, in January 1908. On his father's side, Holt was descended from James Holt, a cobbler from Birmingham, England, who arrived in New South Wales in 1829. His paternal grandfather, Thomas Holt Sr., owned a large farming property in Nubba, and was twice elected mayor of nearby Wallendbeen. Holt's father trained as a schoolteacher in Sydney and when Harold was born, worked as a physical education teacher at the Cleveland Street School in Surry Hills. Holt's mother was born in Eudunda, South Australia, and had Cornish, English, German, and Irish ancestry; her sister was the actress Vera Pearce. Education. In 1914, Holt's parents moved to Adelaide, where his father became the licensee of a hotel in Payneham. He and his brother stayed behind in Sydney, living with an uncle and attending Randwick Public School. In late 1916, Holt was sent to live with grandparents in the country, where he briefly attended the Nubba State School. He returned to Sydney the following year, and for three years was enrolled at Abbotsholme College, a private school in Killara; his parents separated around that time. In 1920, Holt began boarding at Wesley College, Melbourne. He was a popular and talented student, winning a scholarship in his final year and graduating second in his class. Holt generally spent school holidays with his relatives in Nubba or with schoolmates, rather than with his parents – his father had begun working as a talent agent, touring the country on the Tivoli circuit, while his mother died in 1925. He was 16 at the time, and was unable to attend the funeral. In 1927, Holt began studying law at the University of Melbourne, living at Queen's College on a scholarship. He represented the university in cricket and football, and was also active in various student organisations, serving as president of the Law Students' Society and of the Queen's College social club. Holt won prizes for oratory and essay-writing, and was a member of the inter-university debating team. He graduated with a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1930. Holt's father – living in London – invited him to continue his studies in England, but he declined the offer. Legal career. Holt served his articles of clerkship with the firm of Fink, Best, & Miller. He was admitted to the Victorian Bar in late 1932, and opened his own legal practice the following year. However, clients during the Depression were scarce and frequently underpaid, so Holt lived in a boardinghouse and often relied upon the hospitality of friends. Drawing on his family connections in show business, he eventually accepted an offer to become secretary of the Victorian Cinematograph Exhibitors' Association, a film industry lobby group. In this capacity he appeared several times before the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration. This had a positive effect on his own practice, and he eventually took on two partners, first Jack Graham and later James Newman. The firm of Holt, Graham, & Newman was dissolved in 1963, following a financial dispute and subsequently reconstituted as Holt, Newman, & Holt, with Holt's son Sam as the new addition. Holt's involvement in the practice declined once he entered politics and ceased altogether in 1949, although he did not formally retire until assuming the prime ministership. Early political career. In 1933, Holt joined the Young Nationalists, the youth wing of the United Australia Party. He cultivated a friendship with Mabel Brookes, and through Brookes became acquainted with senior members of the influential Australian Women's National League (AWNL). He also secured the patronage of Robert Menzies, with whom he shared a similar background and political views. At the 1934 federal election, Holt stood for the UAP in the Division of Yarra. It was a safe seat for the Labor Party, held by the party's leader (and former prime minister) James Scullin. Holt lost heavily, as was expected, but was praised for his campaigning. Early the following year, he contested Clifton Hill – another safe Labor seat – at the Victorian state election, losing to Bert Cremean. Holt was eventually elected to parliament on his third attempt, winning a federal by-election for the seat of Fawkner in August 1935; his predecessor, George Maxwell, had died in office. He won UAP preselection against five other candidates, a victory which "Smith's Weekly" attributed to his "political godmothers" in the AWNL. His new seat was centred on Melbourne's wealthy inner-eastern suburbs. Holt was twenty-seven years old when he entered parliament, making him its youngest member. He kept a relatively low profile in his first few years, but spoke on a wide range of topics. When Robert Menzies became prime minister in April 1939, he made Holt one of four ministers without portfolio. His inclusion was made possible by the collapse of the coalition with the Country Party – previously a certain number of positions had been reserved for Country MPs, but the new ministry was composed solely of UAP members. Although Holt officially had no portfolio, he effectively was an assistant minister to Richard Casey, who headed the Department of Supply and Development. He was given responsibility for the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), and also acted for periods as Minister for Trade and Customs and Minister for Civil Aviation and Air while the incumbents were overseas. Holt's first stint as a government minister came to an end in March 1940, when the coalition with the Country Party was reinstituted. His replacement was Arthur Fadden, another future prime minister. World War II. Holt enlisted in the Militia in February 1939, joining a part-time artillery unit for businessmen and professionals. He was given indefinite leave during his ministerial service. In May 1940, without resigning his seat, Holt enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force with the intent of becoming a full-time soldier. Several of his parliamentary colleagues did likewise at various points in the war. Holt was posted to the 2/4th Field Regiment, holding the rank of gunner. He had been offered a commission as an officer in the Royal Australian Air Force, but declined due to his lack of experience. In a press statement, Holt said "as the youngest member of the House, I could not feel happy in my position if I were not prepared to make some sacrifice and take an active part". He was sent to Puckapunyal for training, and expected to be posted to North Africa or Palestine. Holt's brief military career came to an end as a result of the Canberra air disaster on 13 August, which killed three senior government ministers. Menzies called an early general election for 21 September, which resulted in a hung parliament and a UAP–Country minority government. Holt was given leave from the army to campaign, and won re-election with a large majority. Menzies subsequently asked him to return to cabinet, to which he agreed. Holt was sworn in as Minister for Labour and National Service on 28 October, and formally resigned from the army the same day. He was placed in charge of the new Department of Labour and National Service, which took over most of the responsibilities of the previous Department of Industry. He also became a member of the bipartisan Advisory War Council, although he personally favoured the establishment of a national unity government with the Labor Party. As labour minister, Holt's foremost task was to prevent industrial disputes from disrupting the war effort. He met with union leaders and employer groups, and secured their agreement to a streamlining of the arbitration process while the war was underway. He had also been made Minister in charge of Scientific and Industrial Research, which gave him responsibility for the CSIR and its wartime efforts. In April 1941, Holt sponsored and oversaw the passage of the "Child Endowment Act", which introduced a universal child endowment scheme; newspapers labelled him "the godfather to a million Australian children". When leadership troubles hit the Coalition later in the year, Holt initially supported Menzies. However, he and five cabinet colleagues eventually transferred their allegiance to Arthur Fadden, the leader of the Country Party, believing this way the only to ensure stable government. Menzies felt he had been betrayed, but forgave Holt and accepted his assurances that he had been acting in the best interests of the country. Holt retained his portfolios in the Fadden government, which lasted only 40 days before being defeated on a confidence motion in October 1941. After going into opposition, he kept a reasonably low profile for the remainder of the war, except for his membership of the Joint Committee on War Expenditure. He was criticised by some for not re-joining the army, and at the 1943 election was opposed by Brigadier William Cremor, whose campaign was funded by Sydney businessmen (including Keith Murdoch). He lost a significant portion of his primary vote, but suffered only a small swing on the two-party-preferred count. Menzies returned as leader of the UAP in September 1943, and Holt was initially a candidate for the deputy leadership; he withdrew once former prime minister Billy Hughes entered the race. Holt was in favour of the creation of the Liberal Party, but played little role in the practical aspects of its establishment. He became an official member of the new party in February 1945. Postwar ministerial career. After eight years in opposition, the Coalition won the federal election of December 1949 and Menzies began his record-setting second period as Prime Minister. In a redistribution held ahead of that election, Holt's majority in Fawkner nearly disappeared. He transferred to Higgins, one of several new seats created in the 1949 redistribution. The seat was created as a safe Liberal seat; it had been carved out of the wealthier portions of Fawkner. Holt won it easily. He was appointed to the prestigious portfolios of Minister for Labour and National Service (1949–1958; he had previously served in this portfolio 1940–41) and Minister for Immigration (1949–1956), by which time he was being touted in the press as a "certain successor to Menzies and a potential Prime Minister". In Immigration, Holt continued and expanded the massive immigration programme initiated by his ALP predecessor, Arthur Calwell. However, he displayed a more flexible and caring attitude than Calwell, who was a strong advocate of the White Australia policy. One of his first acts was to intervene in the case of Lorenzo Gamboa, a Filipino man with an Australian wife and children who had been denied entry by Calwell due to his race. Holt reversed the decision, allowing Gamboa to settle in Australia permanently. Holt excelled in the Labour portfolio and has been described as one of the best Labour ministers since Federation. Although the conditions were ripe for industrial unrest—Communist influence in the union movement was then at its peak, and the right-wing faction in Cabinet was openly agitating for a showdown with the unions—the combination of strong economic growth and Holt's enlightened approach to industrial relations saw the number of working hours lost to strikes fall dramatically, from over two million in 1949 to just 439,000 in 1958. He also had ministerial responsibility for the Melbourne Olympics in 1956. Holt fostered greater collaboration between the government, the courts, employers and trade unions. He enjoyed good relationships with union leaders like Albert Monk, President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions; and Jim Healy, leader of the radical Waterside Workers Federation;and he gained a reputation for tolerance, restraint and a willingness to compromise, although his controversial decision to use troops to take control of cargo facilities during a waterside dispute in Bowen, Queensland in September 1953 provoked bitter criticism. Holt's personal profile and political standing grew throughout the 1950s. He served on numerous committees and overseas delegations, he was appointed a Privy Counsellor in 1953, and in 1954 he was named one of Australia's six best-dressed men. In 1956, he was elected Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party and became Leader of the House, and from this point on, he was generally acknowledged as Menzies' heir apparent. Treasurer (1958–1966). In December 1958, following the retirement of Arthur Fadden, Holt succeeded him as Treasurer. Holt had little knowledge or interest in economics, but the job cemented his position as Menzies' likely successor. As Treasurer, Holt relied strongly on the advice of Treasury secretary Roland Wilson. His achievements included major reforms to the banking system (originated by Fadden)including the establishment of the Reserve Bank of Australiaand the planning and preparation for the introduction of decimal currency. It was Holt who convinced Cabinet to call the new currency the "dollar" rather than the "royal". The economy Holt inherited was growing strongly, aided by the opening of new iron ore mines. However, in 1959, inflation was running at 4.5% and Treasury was alarmed. Holt was reluctant to act, but in November 1960 introduced a deflationary package of tax changes. He also reluctantly agreed to an interest rate rise by the Reserve Bank. The credit squeeze was nicknamed the "Holt jolt". The economy went into recession, and unemployment rose to three percent, which was considered high for the time and contrary to the government's policy of full employment. The credit squeeze brought the Coalition dangerously close to losing the 1961 election, with the Coalition being returned with a precarious one-seat majority. There were calls for Holt to be sacked, but he retained Menzies' support. He later described 1960–61 as "my most difficult year in public life". Most of the deflationary measures were reversed in 1962, and unemployment dropped down to 1.5 percent by August 1963. In later budgets, Holt retreated to his Queensland holiday home while it was being prepared. He said that the 1965 budget "has had the best reception yet of any in the series I have presented". Prime Minister (1966–1967). Holt was sworn in as prime minister on 26 January 1966, following the retirement of Robert Menzies six days earlier. He won the leadership election unopposed, with William McMahon elected as his deputy. His swearing in was delayed by the death of Defence Minister Shane Paltridge; he and Menzies were both pallbearers at Paltridge's state funeral on 25 January. Holt was the first Australian prime minister born in the 20th century and the first born after federation. He was almost fourteen years younger than his predecessor, but, at the age of 57, was still the fourth-oldest man to assume the office. He had been an MP for over 30 years before becoming prime minister, still the longest wait for any non-caretaker Prime Minister. The only person who had a longer wait was his caretaker successor John McEwen, who had served 33 years before ascending to the post. Stylistically, Holt was more informal and contemporary than Menzies, and his wife accompanied him into the political spotlight. He gave the media an unprecedented level of access, and was the first prime minister to conduct regular press conferences and grant regular television interviews. His press secretary, Tony Eggleton, accompanied him virtually every time he travelled. Holt's initial cabinet was virtually unchanged from that of his predecessor. John Gorton and Les Bury were promoted to replace Menzies and Paltridge, but there were no other changes in composition. There were also no major changes in portfolio, outside of McMahon's promotion to Treasurer in place of Holt. A notable addition to the outer ministry was Senator Annabelle Rankin as Minister for Housing – the first woman to hold a ministerial portfolio. A minor reshuffle occurred after the 1966 election, with Doug Anthony and Ian Sinclair added to cabinet and Charles Barnes demoted to the outer ministry. The only new government department created during Holt's tenure was the Department of Education and Science, established in December 1966, which was the first federal department specific to either of those areas. The Country Party leader and de facto Deputy Prime Minister, John McEwen, was effectively given veto power over government policy by virtue of being the longest-tenured member of the government. Elections. On 26 November 1966, Holt fought his first and only general election as prime minister, winning a somewhat unexpected landslide victory. The Coalition secured 56.9 percent of the two-party-preferred vote, gaining 10 seats and bringing its total number of seats in the House of Representatives to 82 out of 124, the largest majority government in Australian history at the time. The Liberals finished only two seats away from forming majority government in its own right. It was a higher margin of victory than Menzies had achieved in eight elections as Liberal leader, and was the Labor Party's worst electoral defeat in 31 years. Holt received little credit for the Coalition's election victory, even from within his own party. It was generally held that the Labor Party's poor campaign had been the major factor in its defeat. Arthur Calwell, the Leader of the Opposition, was 70 years old and had limited personal popularity – a Gallup poll before the election placed his personal approval rating at 24 percent, compared with Holt's 60 percent. Calwell had suffered a damaging rift with his deputy Gough Whitlam earlier in the year, and the general public still perceived the party as divided. In an election where the Vietnam War was a major campaign issue, he and Whitlam publicly contradicted each other on major policy decisions. Labor ran on an anti-war platform, but struggled to appeal to voters concerned about national security; combined with Calwell's dedication to the White Australia policy, this allowed the party to be portrayed as isolationist and naive about external affairs. Calwell was far less telegenic than his opponent, and was seen as gruff and antagonistic where Holt was suave and easy-going. At a rally in Adelaide a week before the election, Calwell accused Holt of having "chickened out of World War II – just as his three stepsons are chickening out of the war in Vietnam today". His attack on Holt's family – which he refused to withdraw – was viewed as desperate and undignified, and it was pointed out that, unlike Holt, Calwell had performed no military service in World War II. In early 1967, Calwell retired as ALP leader. Whitlam succeeded him, and proved a far more effective opponent than Calwell had been, consistently getting the better of Holt both in the media and in parliament. Labor soon began to recover from its losses and gain ground. By this time, the long-suppressed tensions between the Coalition partners over economic and trade policies were also beginning to emerge. Throughout his reign as Liberal leader, Menzies had enforced strict party discipline but, once he was gone, dissension began to surface. Some Liberals soon became dissatisfied by what they saw as Holt's weak leadership. Alan Reid asserts that Holt was being increasingly criticised within the party in the months before his death, that he was perceived as being "vague, imprecise and evasive" and "nice to the point that his essential decency was viewed as weakness". Domestic policy. According to his biographer Tom Frame, "Holt's inclinations and sympathies were those of the political centre [...] he was a pragmatist rather than a philosopher, but he nonetheless claimed a philosophical lineage connecting him with Alfred Deakin and approvingly quoted his statement that 'we are liberal always, radical often, and reactionary never'." Economy. Holt as prime minister was sometimes criticised for a failure to be assertive on economic matters. A major drought in 1965 had led to slowdown in growth, but he was unwilling to increase public spending in case it increased inflation. The Australian dollar – a legacy of Holt's period as Treasurer – came into circulation on 14 February 1966, less than a month after his prime ministership began. In November 1967, the British government unexpectedly announced that it would be devaluing the pound sterling by 14 percent. Holt announced that the Australian government would not follow suit, effectively withdrawing Australia from the sterling area. The decision was strongly opposed by the Country Party, who feared it would disadvantage primary industry. McEwen went as far as to issue a public statement criticising the decision, which Holt considered a breach of cabinet solidarity. The dispute caused a breakdown in Holt and McEwen's relationship and nearly brought down the Coalition; at one point, Holt made preparations for the Liberals to govern as a minority government the event McEwen tore up the Coalition agreement. Ultimately, the dispute was resolved in Holt's favour. "The Bulletin" said that the withdrawal was "quite certain to mean the end of any remaining special relationship between Australia and Britain". There were no other important economic policy reforms made by the Holt government, although Australia did become a founding member of the Asian Development Bank in 1966. Immigration. As prime minister, Holt continued the liberalisation of immigration law that he had begun as Minister for Immigration. When he came to office, what remained of the White Australia policy was upheld by ministerial decree rather than by explicit legislation. In March 1966, the residency requirement for naturalisation was changed to a uniform five years; it had previously been 15 years for non-whites. Discriminatory provisions relating to family reunification were also removed. As a result, in the two years after March 1966 around 3,000 Asian immigrants were granted Australian citizenship, compared with 4,100 in the preceding two decades. Additionally, Immigration Minister Hubert Opperman announced that potential immigrants to Australia would be assessed solely "on the basis of their suitability as settlers, their ability to integrate readily, and their possession of qualifications which are in fact positively useful to Australia"; non-whites had previously had to demonstrate that they were "highly qualified and distinguished" to gain entry. Keith Wilson believed that the Holt government's reforms ensured that "from now on there will not be in any of our laws or in any of our regulations anything that discriminates against migrants on the grounds of colour or race". However, there would not be a practical change in the composition of Australia's immigration intake for many more years. Holt maintained that "every country reserves to itself the right to decide what the composition of its people shall be", and promised "a community life free from serious minority and racial problems". He was careful to frame his changes as simply a modification of existing policy, in order to avoid alienating organised labour (historically the greatest supporters of restricting non-white immigration). The Labor Party had only removed "White Australia" from its platform in 1965, and Opposition Leader Arthur Calwell stated he was "determined to continue to oppose, for many obvious reasons, any attempt to create a multi-racial society in our midst". However, Holt was less circumspect outside Australia, telling British journalists that no White Australia policy existed and ordering Australian embassies to promote the changes to Asian governments and media outlets. Constitutional reform. In 1967, the Holt government amended the constitution to alter section 51 (xxvi) and remove section 127. This gave the federal government the power to legislate specifically for Indigenous Australians, and also mandated counting Indigenous people in the census. The constitutional amendments required a referendum before they could be enacted, which passed with over 90 percent of the vote; it remains the largest referendum majority in Australian history. Holt personally considered the amendments unnecessary and mostly symbolic, but thought they would be well received by the international community (particularly Asia). According to Barrie Dexter, he was privately shocked by the referendum result, having been uncertain whether it would even pass. Holt came to regard the referendum as indicative of a shift in the national mood. In the following months, he toured Aboriginal communities and consulted with indigenous leaders, including Charles Perkins and Kath Walker. Despite opposition from state governments, he created a new Office of Aboriginal Affairs within the Prime Minister's Department, as well as a new advisory body called the Council of Aboriginal Affairs (chaired by H. C. Coombs). According to Coombs and Paul Hasluck, Holt had little interest in indigenous affairs before becoming prime minister. Despite this, he brought about a fundamental shift in the way policy was handled, paving the way for the federal government to assume many of the powers and responsibilities that had previously been the preserve of the states. Indigenous academic Gary Foley has said that Holt's death was a setback for Aboriginal people, as his successors did not show the same commitment to the framework that he established. The Holt government also unsuccessfully attempted to remove section 24 of the constitution (the so-called "nexus clause"), which requires the number of members in the House of Representatives to be "as nearly as practicable, twice the number of senators". The resulting referendum did not come close to passing, with only 40 percent voting in favour nationwide and only one state (New South Wales) recording a majority. All three major-party leaders campaigned for the "Yes" vote, while opposition came mainly from Coalition backbenchers and Democratic Labor Party senators. Supporters of the "No" vote successfully argued that section 24 protected the influence of the Senate, and thus the interests of less populous states and rural areas. Holt did make one other significant legal reform, albeit one that did not require a constitutional amendment. In September 1967, he announced that his government would use section 74 of the constitution to remove the potential for High Court cases to be appealed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The necessary legislation was not passed until after his death. The arts. In November 1967, in one of his last major policy statements, Holt announced the establishment of the National Gallery of Australia and the Australia Council for the Arts. The National Gallery, which did not open until 1982, was the first arts-related major infrastructure project to be funded by the federal government; previous projects had been funded by state governments or by private subscription. Holt said it would "add significantly to the cultural life of Australia and the national capital". The other element of his announcement, the Australia Council for the Arts, was the first national arts council, intended to provide arms-length advice to the Prime Minister's Department on arts funding. Rupert Myer has suggested that "Holt's legacy ought to be a core belief in, and broad public demand for, the sustained support of cultural activity from all three tiers of government". Foreign policy. Holt believed it was his responsibility as prime minister "to reflect the modern Australia to my fellow countrymen, to our allies and the outside world at large". His approach to national security emphasised opposition to international communism and the need to engage more with Asia. Holt said that the "great central fact of modern history" was "the tremendous power conflict between the communist world and the free world". He was a strong believer in the domino theory and containment, holding that communism had to be fought wherever it occurred in order to prevent it spreading to neighbouring countries. In April 1967, Holt told parliament that "geographically we are part of Asia, and increasingly we have become aware of our involvement in the affairs of Asia – our greatest dangers and our highest hopes are centred in Asia's tomorrows". Gough Whitlam said that Holt "made Australia better known in Asia and he made Australians more aware of Asia than ever before [...] this I believe was his most important contribution to our future". Personal diplomacy was Holt's strong point – he believed diplomatic ties could be strengthened by making intimate connections with other world leaders. This approach was disliked by his external affairs minister, Paul Hasluck, who in his memoirs accused him of believing in "instant diplomacy" and crediting his personal charms for advances made by diplomatic officials. As prime minister, Holt's first overseas trip was to South-East Asia in April 1966, where he visited Malaysia, Singapore, South Vietnam, and Thailand. He toured Cambodia, Laos, South Korea, and Taiwan in March and April 1967, and had planned to visit Burma, India, Indonesia, Japan, and Pakistan in 1968. Most of those countries had never before been visited by an Australian prime minister. There were also a number of reciprocal visits from East Asian leaders, including Eisaku Satō of Japan, Souvanna Phouma of Laos, and Thanom Kittikachorn of Thailand. The most controversial of those occurred in January 1967, when Prime Minister Nguyễn Cao Kỳ of South Vietnam visited on Holt's personal invitation – issued without consulting cabinet. Public sentiment was beginning to turn against the war, and Ky's visit was met with large demonstrations; opposition leader Arthur Calwell issued a statement calling him a "miserable little butcher". Ky nonetheless handled himself well, and "The Bulletin" called his visit a "personal triumph". Vietnam War. The Vietnam War was the dominant foreign policy issue during Holt's term in office. He was a strong supporter of Australian involvement in the war, which had begun in 1962, and accused its critics of adopting a "Lotus Land" attitude. As well as citing Australia's SEATO obligations to South Vietnam, Holt justified the war on the grounds that Australia was morally obligated to "resist communist subversion and aggression" and "defend the right of every people to choose their own social and economic order". He held that "unless there is security for all small nations, there cannot be security for any small nation". In March 1966, Holt announced that the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, would be withdrawn and replaced by the 1st Australian Task Force, a self-contained brigade-sized unit based at Nui Dat. This effectively tripled the number of Australian troops in Vietnam to around 4,500, and also included 1,500 national servicemen – the first conscripts to serve in the conflict. By the final months of Holt's prime ministership, Australia had over 8,000 personnel stationed in South Vietnam, drawn from all three branches of the Australian Defence Force; the final troop increase was announced in October 1967. Holt "never deviated from his whole-hearted support for American bombing of North Vietnam and the hope that steadily increasing the number of foreign troops deployed to South Vietnam would lead to military victory and a solution to the crisis". John Gorton later said it was "ironical that, being a man of peace, he should have presided over one of the greatest build-ups of military power that Australia has found itself engaged in". The government's handling of the war initially enjoyed broad public support, and was considered a key contributor to the landslide election victory in 1966 – referred to by some as a "khaki election". By the end of the following year, however, opinion polls were showing that public sentiment had turned against the war, and previously supportive media outlets had begun to criticised Holt's decision-making. He did not live long enough to see the mass demonstrations experienced by his successors. Political opposition to the war was initially led by Opposition Leader Arthur Calwell, who promised a total withdrawal from the conflict and labelled it a "cruel, unwinnable civil war". His replacement, Gough Whitlam, adopted a more pragmatic approach, focusing on policy specifics (particularly the government's apparent lack of an exit strategy) rather than the validity of the war itself. "All the way with LBJ". Holt cultivated a close relationship with the United States under President Lyndon B. Johnson. He believed that "without the American shield most of us who live in Asia and the South Pacific would have a continuing sense of insecurity". Cooperation between the two countries extended beyond the Vietnam War. Holt approved the construction of several Earth stations for use by NASA and American intelligence agencies, including Pine Gap, Honeysuckle Creek, and Tidbinbilla. This made Australia "the most substantial centre for American missile and space operations outside the continental United States". Holt and Johnson developed a personal friendship. They were the same age, and had first met in 1942, when Johnson visited Melbourne as a naval officer; afterwards they shared a similar career trajectory. Holt visited the U.S. twice while in office, in June and July 1966, and on the latter visit was invited to stay at Camp David. He and Johnson reportedly played tennis, lounged by the pool, and watched movies together. In October 1966, Johnson made the first visit to Australia by an incumbent American president; Vice President Hubert Humphrey had visited in February of that year. He toured five cities, and was greeted by large crowds as well as a number of anti-war demonstrators, who disrupted the presidential motorcade. The opposition criticised the visit as a publicity stunt. Johnson later returned to Australia for Holt's memorial service, and invited his widow Zara to stay with him when she visited the United States in 1969. On his first visit to the U.S., Holt made what was widely viewed as a "faux pas" while delivering a ceremonial address at the White House. Departing from his prepared remarks, he said: "And so, sir, in the lonelier and perhaps even more disheartening moments which come to any national leader, I hope there will be a corner of your mind and heart which takes cheer from the fact that you have an admiring friend, a staunch friend that will be "all the way with LBJ"." Holt had meant it to be a "light-hearted gesture of goodwill towards a generous host", referencing the slogan used in Johnson's 1964 presidential campaign. It was interpreted as such by his immediate audience, but once it was reported back in Australia it came to be viewed as a "foolish, sycophantic and dangerous statement" that was indicative of Australian subservience. Bill Hayden said Holt's remarks "shocked and insulted many Australians [...] its seeming servility was an embarrassment and a worry". Newspaper editorials generally agreed with Holt's assertion that he had been misinterpreted, but still criticised him for making an error in judgment. His comments intensified anti-war sentiments among those who were already opposed to the war, but had little electoral impact. Nonetheless, "all the way with LBJ" is still remembered as Holt's "best-known utterance". Britain and the Commonwealth. Holt was a strong supporter of the Commonwealth of Nations, and believed its member states had moral obligations to one another – particularly Britain, as the former "mother country". However, his relationship with Harold Wilson, the British prime minister, was somewhat frosty. He repeatedly lobbied Wilson to maintain a strong British presence "East of Suez", in order to complement American efforts, and in early 1967 received assurances that no reduction was being contemplated. However, by the middle of the year Wilson had announced that Britain intended to close all of its bases in Asia by the early 1970s (except for Hong Kong). In response to Holt's concerns, it was suggested by Wilson that a British naval base could be established in Cockburn Sound. Holt rejected this outright, and felt that Wilson had deliberately misled him as to his intentions. Controversies. Holt's popularity and political standing was damaged by his perceived poor handling of a series of controversies that emerged during 1967. In April, the ABC's new nightly current affairs program "This Day Tonight" ran a story which criticised the government's decision not to reappoint the Chair of the ABC Board, Sir James Darling. Holt responded rashly, questioning the impartiality of the ABC and implying political bias on the part of journalist Mike Willesee (whose father Don Willesee was an ALP Senator and future Whitlam government minister), and his statement drew strong protests from both Willesee and the Australian Journalists' Association. In May, increasing pressure from the media and within the Liberal Party forced Holt to announce a parliamentary debate on the question of a second inquiry into the 1964 sinking of to be held on 16 May. The debate included the maiden speech by newly elected NSW Liberal MP Edward St John QC, who used the opportunity to criticize the government's attitude to new evidence about the disaster. An enraged Holt interrupted St John's speech, in defiance of the parliamentary convention that maiden speeches are heard in silence; his blunder embarrassed the government and further undermined Holt's support in the Liberal Party. A few days later, Holt announced a new Royal Commission into the disaster. In October the government became embroiled in another embarrassing controversy over the alleged misuse of VIP aircraft, which came to a head when John Gorton (Government Leader in the Senate) tabled documents that showed that Holt had unintentionally misled Parliament in his earlier answers on the matter. Support for his leadership was eroded even further by his refusal to sack the Minister for Air, Peter Howson, in order to defuse the scandal, fuelling criticism from within the party that Holt was "weak" and lacked Menzies' ruthlessness. Much of the blame for the episode within the Public Service was visited upon Sir John Bunting, Secretary of the Prime Minister's Department, although other figures such as the Deputy Secretary Peter Lawler were able to protect themselves. One of John Gorton's first acts upon becoming Prime Minister in January 1968 was to sideline Bunting by creating a separate Department of the Cabinet Office with Bunting as its head, and replaced him with Lenox Hewitt. In November 1967, the government suffered a serious setback in the senate election, winning just 42.8 per cent of the vote against Labor's 45 per cent. The coalition also lost the seats of Corio and Dawson to Labor in by-elections. Alan Reid says that, within the party, the reversal was blamed on Holt's mishandling of the V.I.P. planes scandal. Disquiet was growing about his leadership style and possible health problems. Disappearance. Holt loved the ocean, particularly spearfishing, and had holiday homes at Portsea, Victoria, and Bingil Bay, Queensland. On 17 December 1967, while Holt was spending the weekend at Portsea, he and four companions decided to drive to Point Nepean to watch sailor Alec Rose pass through The Rip on his solo circumnavigation attempt. On their way back to Portsea, Holt convinced the group to stop at remote Cheviot Beach for a swim before lunch – he had spearfished there on many previous occasions, and claimed to "know this beach like the back of my hand". Because of the rough conditions, only one other person, Alan Stewart, joined Holt in the water. Stewart kept close to shore, but Holt swam out into deeper water and was seemingly caught up in a rip, eventually disappearing from view. One of the witnesses, Marjorie Gillespie, described it as "like a leaf being taken out [...] so quick and final". Holt's disappearance sparked "one of the largest search operations in Australian history", but no trace of his body was ever found. At 10 p.m. on 18 December, Governor-General Lord Casey announced he had terminated Holt's commission as prime minister upon his presumed death. A police report released in early 1968 made no definitive findings about Holt's death, while a coronial inquest in 2005 returned a verdict of accidental drowning. It is generally accepted that Holt overestimated his swimming ability. Some have alleged that Holt committed suicide, but those close to him rejected this as uncharacteristic of his personality. Conspiracy theories have included suggestions that Holt faked his own death, was assassinated by the CIA, or was collected by a submarine so that he could defect to China. A memorial service for Holt was held at St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne, on 22 December, and attended by numerous world leaders. Aged 59 at the time of his death, Holt became the third Australian prime minister to die in office, after Joseph Lyons (1939) and John Curtin (1945). John McEwen, the leader of the Country Party, was sworn in as caretaker prime minister on 19 December. The Liberal Party held a leadership election on 9 January 1968, in which John Gorton defeated Paul Hasluck, Billy Snedden, and Les Bury. Gorton was a member of the Senate, and in line with constitutional convention sought and gained election to the House of Representatives at the by-election caused by Holt's death. Personal life. Relationships. While at university, Holt met Zara Dickins, the daughter of a Melbourne businessman; there was an "instant mutual attraction". They made plans to marry once Holt had graduated, but after a financial dispute chose to separate. Zara went on a trip to Britain, where she was introduced to James Fell, a British Indian Army officer. She accompanied Fell to India, and then in early 1935 returned to Australia where Holt again proposed marriage. She declined his offer, and married Fell a short time later, going to live with him in Jabalpur. Holt had entered parliament by that time, and was soon being profiled as "the most eligible bachelor in parliament". He briefly dated Lola Thring, the daughter of his father's business partner, F. W. Thring, but his widowed father Tom was also interested in her (to his son's "disgust"). Tom Holt married Lola in 1936, and their daughter Frances (Harold's half-sister) was born in 1940; Tom Holt died in 1945. In 1937, Zara returned to Australia to give birth to her first child, Nicholas. She had two more children, twins Sam and Andrew, in 1939. Her marriage with Fell broke down a short time later, and in late 1940 she returned to Australia permanently and resumed a relationship with Holt. Their relationship did not become public for some time, in order to avoid Holt's being implicated in Zara's divorce proceedings. They eventually married on 8 October 1946, at Zara's parents' home on St Georges Road, Toorak. They initially lived on nearby Washington Street, but in 1954 bought the St Georges Road house. Holt legally adopted Zara's three children, and as young men they changed their surname to his. According to biographer Tom Frame, it was an "open secret" that Holt was the biological father of the twins, as they shared his physical appearance and had been conceived at a time when Zara was known to have been in Melbourne. Zara Holt was a successful businesswoman, owning a chain of dress shops, and out-earned her husband even as prime minister. It was her success that allowed the couple to purchase two holiday homes, one at Portsea, Victoria, and the other at Bingil Bay, Queensland. She nonetheless made sacrifices for her husband's political career, accompanying him on all but one of his overseas trips, which could last for weeks. After her husband's death, Zara remarried in 1969 to one of his Liberal Party colleagues, Jeff Bate. She was widowed a second time in 1984, and died in 1989. In a 1988 interview with "The Sydney Morning Herald", Zara stated that her husband Harold had carried on "dozens" of extramarital affairs. In his biography of Holt, Tom Frame wrote: "I have not included the names of women with whom Holt allegedly had a sexual relationship because I was unable to confirm or deny that most of these relationships took place […] by their very nature they were always illicit and Holt was very discreet." Personality. Holt was the first Australian Prime Minister born in the twentieth century. He was an enthusiastic sportsman and avid swimmer, in stark contrast to Menzies and the majority of his predecessors and colleagues. Like later successor Bob Hawke, this resonated with positive effect within the electorate. His oratory skills were vastly superior to that of Arthur Calwell, whom Holt resoundingly beat in 1966. Holt's rhetoric was, however, considered a match to that of new Labor leader Gough Whitlam. Whitlam himself later said of Holt: Religious beliefs. Holt has been described as an "apathetic agnostic". He was baptised Anglican, attended Methodist schools, and married with Presbyterian forms, but neither he nor his wife had any interest in religion. His lack of religiosity apparently had little impact on his political prospects, and was not generally remarked upon. Alick Downer believed that Holt's thoughts "lay in this world not the next". According to his friend Simon Warrender, he "was an agnostic whose "raison d'être" was dedication to his career". Holt had a reputation as something of a fatalist, and frequently quoted from Andrew Marvell's "carpe diem" poem "To His Coy Mistress". He was also fond of Rudyard Kipling's poem "If—", which Warrender said he used as a "guiding light in his political and private life". Memorials and other legacies. Harold Holt is commemorated by the Harold Holt Memorial Swimming Centre in the Melbourne suburb of Glen Iris. The complex was under construction at the time of Holt's disappearance, and since he was the local member, it was named in his memory. The irony of commemorating a man who is presumed to have drowned with a swimming pool has been a source of wry amusement for many Australians. The swimming pool within the 1st Australian Support Compound in South Vietnam was also named for him. In 1968, the newly commissioned United States Navy "Knox"-class destroyer escort was named in his honour. It was launched by Holt's widow Dame Zara at the Todd Shipyards in Los Angeles on 3 May 1969, and was the first American warship to bear the name of a foreign leader. In 1969, a plaque commemorating Holt was bolted to the seafloor off Cheviot Beach after a memorial ceremony. It bears the inscription: Other memorials include: By way of a folk memorial, he is recalled in the Australian vernacular expression "do a Harold Holt" (or "do the Harry"), rhyming slang for "do a bolt" meaning "to disappear suddenly and without explanation", although this is usually employed in the context of disappearance from a social gathering rather than a case of presumed death. In the Queen's Birthday Honours of June 1968, Holt's widow Zara was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, becoming Dame Zara Holt DBE. She later married for a third time, to a Liberal party colleague of Holt's, Jeff Bate, and was then known as Dame Zara Bate. The mineral holtite is named in his honor. It was discovered in Greenbushes Tinfield, Western Australia and formally described in 1971.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13961

Hansie Cronje

Wessel Johannes "Hansie" Cronje (25 September 1969 – 1 June 2002) was a South African international cricketer and captain of the South Africa national cricket team in the 1990s. A right-handed all-rounder, as captain Cronje led his team to victory in 27 Test matches and 99 One Day Internationals. Cronje also led South Africa to win the 1998 ICC KnockOut Trophy, the only major ICC title the country has won to date. In the 1998 ICC KnockOut Trophy Final, Cronje played a major role with a bat with his 61 not out, leading the team to victory by 4 wickets. He was voted the 11th-greatest South African in 2004 despite having been banned from cricket for life due to his role in a match-fixing scandal. He died in a plane crash in 2002. Early life. Cronje was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa to Ewie Cronje and San-Marie Cronje on 25 September 1969. He graduated in 1987 from Grey College in Bloemfontein, where he was the head boy. An excellent all round sportsman, he represented the then Orange Free State Province in cricket and rugby at schools level. He was the captain of his school's cricket and rugby teams. Cronje earned a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of the Free State. He had an older brother, Frans Cronje, and a younger sister, Hester Parsons. His father Ewie had played for Orange Free State in the 1960s, and Frans had also played first-class cricket. First-class career. Cronje made his first-class debut for Orange Free State against Transvaal at Johannesburg in January 1988 at the age of 18. In the following season, he was a regular, appearing in all eight Currie Cup matches plus being part of the Benson and Hedges Series-winning team, scoring 73 as an opener in the final. In 1989–90, despite playing all the Currie Cup matches, he failed to make a century, and averaged only 19.76; however, in one-day games he averaged 60.12. During that season he scored his maiden century for South African Universities against Mike Gatting's rebels. Despite having just turned 21, Cronje was made captain of Orange Free State for the 1990–91 season. He scored his maiden century for them against Natal in December 1990, and finished the season with another century and a total of 715 runs at 39.72. That season he also scored 159* in a 40-over match against Griqualand West. In 1992–93, he captained Orange Free State to the Castle Cup/Total Power Series double. In 1995, Cronje appeared for Leicestershire where he scored 1301 runs at 52.04 finishing the season as the county's leading scorer. In 1995–96, he finished the season top of the batting averages in the Currie Cup, his top score of 158 helped Free State chase down 389 to beat Northern Transvaal. In 1997, Cronje played for Ireland as an overseas player in the Benson and Hedges Cup and helped them to a 46-run win over Middlesex by scoring 94 not out and taking three wickets. This was Ireland's first-ever win against English county opposition. Later in the same competition, he scored 85 and took one wicket against Glamorgan. International career. Debuts. Cronje's form in 1991/92 was impressive especially in the one-day format where he averaged 61.40. He earned an international call up for the 1992 World Cup, making his One Day International debut against Australia at Sydney. During the tournament he played in eight of the team's nine games, averaging 34.00 with the bat, while his medium pace was used in bowling 20 overs. After the World Cup Cronje was part of the tour to the West Indies; he featured in the three ODIs, and in the Test match at Bridgetown that followed, he made his Test debut. This was South Africa's first Test since readmission and they came close to beating a strong West Indian side, going into the final day at 122/2 chasing 200 they collapsed to 148. India toured South Africa in 1992/93. In the first one-day international, he hit the famous six when his team needed 6 runs off only 4 balls, and was awarded Man of the match for his bowling. In the one-day series, Cronje managed just one fifty but with the ball he was economical and took his career best figures of 5/32, becoming the second South African to take five wickets in an ODI. In the Test series that followed he scored his maiden test century, 135 off 411 balls, after coming in at 0–1 in the second over he was last man out, after eight and three-quarter hours, in a total of 275. This contributed to South Africa's first Test win since readmission. At the end of the season in a triangular tournament with Pakistan and West Indies he scored 81 off 70 balls against Pakistan. In South Africa's next Test series against Sri Lanka, Cronje scored his second Test century, 122 in the second Test in Colombo; the victory margin of an innings and 208 runs is a South African record. He finished the series with 237 runs at 59.25 after scoring 73* in the drawn third Test. Stand-in captain. In 1993–94, there was another Castle Cup/Total Power Series double for Orange Free State. In international cricket, he was named as vice-captain for the tour of Australia despite being the youngest member of the squad. In the first ODI of the triangular tournament with New Zealand and Australia, he guided South Africa to victory against Australia at the MCG with 91*, which won him the man of the match award. He scored 71 in a rain-affected first test at Melbourne before a tense second test that South Africa won by 5 runs. An injury to captain Kepler Wessels meant Cronje was captain for the final day of the match. Between the second and third tests, the one-day tournament continued, now with Cronje as captain, South Africa made the final series but lost it 2–1 to Australia. He became South Africa's second-youngest Test captain, after Murray Bisset in 1898–99, when he led the team for the third test at Adelaide but it was an unsuccessful start to his captaincy career as the series was squared. In February 1994, there was the return series as Australia toured South Africa. Cronje started the ODI series with scores of 112, 97, 45 and 50* and when Australia played Orange Free State in their final match before the first Test, Cronje hit 251 off 306 balls, 200 of these came on the final day in which 294 runs were added. Despite this, Orange Free State lost the match. In the first test at Johannesburg, he added another century as South Africa won by 197 runs. This innings was the end of a 14-day period in which he'd scored 721 runs against the Aussies. However, he failed to reach fifty in the next two tests and four ODIs as both series were drawn. There was another drawn series when South Africa toured England in 1994. Cronje scored only one century on the whole tour and scored only 90 runs in the three-test series. In October 1994, South Africa again came up against Australia in a triangular one day series also featuring Pakistan. Cronje scored 354 runs at an average of 88.50. Despite this, South Africa lost all their matches. This series was Bob Woolmer's first as coach and Kepler Wessels' last as captain. Cronje, who'd previously been vice-captain, was named as captain for the test series with New Zealand in 1994–95. Permanent captain. South Africa lost the first Test in Johannesburg but before the second test the two teams plus Pakistan and Sri Lanka competed for the Mandela Trophy, New Zealand failed to gain a win in the six-match round robin stage while South Africa beat Pakistan in the final. This changed the momentum as South Africa secured wins in Durban and Cape Town, where Cronje scored his fourth test century. He was the first captain since W. G. Grace to win a three-match series after being one down. In early 1995, South Africa won one-off tests against both Pakistan and New Zealand. In Auckland Cronje scored the only century of the match before a final day declaration left his bowlers barely enough time to dismiss the Kiwis. In October 1995, South Africa won a one-off Test with Zimbabwe. Cronje scored a second innings 54* to guide them to a seven wicket win. In two one-dayers that followed, he took five wickets as South Africa comfortably won both. South Africa won the five Test series against England 1–0 despite Cronje struggling, scoring 113 runs at 18.83. However, he top scored in the one-day series that they won 6–1. In the 1996 World Cup, he scored 78 and 45* against New Zealand and Pakistan, respectively, as South Africa won their group but in the Quarter final with West Indies a Brian Lara century ended their ten-game winning streak. The 1996–97 season featured back-to-back series with India. The first away was lost 2–1. The home series was won 2–0. In the six tests combined, Cronje managed one fifty. Cronje produced better form against Australia, averaging over 50 in both test and ODI series although both were lost. Cronje started 1997–98 by leading South Africa to their first series victory in Pakistan, his batting continued to struggle with his biggest contribution being taking the wickets of Inzamam-ul-Haq and Moin Khan in the Third Test. Better form. Cronje once again came up against Australia and once again ended on the losing side. In the triangular one day series they won the group with Australia just scraping through, they also won the first 'final' but South Africa lost the last two finals. During the group matches Cronje had threatened to lead his team off after Pat Symcox had missiles thrown at him, Symcox had the last laugh ending the match with 4/24. Before the Test series started he scored consecutive centuries against Tasmania and Australia A these were his first in two years. In the first Test, Cronje scored 70 as South Africa saved the match; in the second Test, he lasted 335 minutes for his 88. Despite this, they lost by an innings. In the third Test, they scored 517 and although Mark Taylor carried his bat for 169, Australia needed to bat 109 overs to save the match. Mark Waugh batted 404 minutes, and, despite controversy when Waugh hit one of his bails off (under Law 35 he was adjudged to have finished his stroke and therefore given not out), South Africa fell three wickets short. Cronje put a stump through the umpires' dressing room door after the match and was lucky to avoid a ban. Cronje missed the first Test of the series with Pakistan because of a knee injury. The second Test at Durban was lost, but he top scored at Port Elizabeth with 85, to help square the three Test series 1–1. There was still time in the season for a two-Test series with Sri Lanka. The first was won with Cronje scoring 49 and 74; in the second Test, he took 3/14, his best bowling in Tests, and smashed 82 off 63 balls, his fifty being brought up with three consecutive sixes off Muttiah Muralitharan, and was reached off just 31 balls; at the time, it was the second fastest in Tests after Kapil Dev's. In the triangular series, which South Africa won, he scored only one fifty at East London where he also took 2/17 off 10 overs. During the 1998 Test series against England, Cronje scored five consecutive fifties, having failed to score one in the nine previous Tests against them. In his fiftieth Test, at Trent Bridge he scored 126, his sixth and last Test century and his first in 29 matches. During his second innings of 67, he passed 3,000 runs—only the second South African to do so. However, England won the Test, and the one at Headingley, to win the series 2–1, Cronje finished the series as South Africa's top scorer with 401 runs at 66.83. Whitewash, tie and forfeit. In the West Indies series of 1998–99, Cronje captained South Africa to their only whitewash in a five Test series. His best batting against West Indies came when playing for Free State; he scored 158* as they chased down 438 and made up a first innings deficit of 249. In the ODI series he was South Africa's top scorer and took 11 wickets at 14.72 as South Africa won 6–1. In March 1999, they toured New Zealand, beating them 1–0 in the Test series and 3–2 in the one-dayers. At the 1999 World Cup, Cronje finished with 98 runs at 12.25 as South Africa were eliminated after the famous tied semi-final against Australia at Edgbaston. In the first match of the tournament versus India, Cronje came onto the field with an earpiece wired to coach Bob Woolmer, but at the first drinks break match referee Talat Ali ordered him to remove it. In October 1999, Cronje became South Africa's highest Test run scorer during the first Test against Zimbabwe. The two Test series was won 2–0 thanks to innings victories. South Africa won the series with England in the fourth Test at Cape Town, Cronje's fiftieth as captain. The fifth test of the 1999–2000 South Africa versus England series at Centurion was ruined by rain, entering the final day only 45 overs had been possible with South Africa 155/6. On the final morning as they batted on, news filtered through that the captains had met and were going to "make a game of it". A target of 250 from 70 overs was agreed. When South Africa reached 248/8, Cronje declared; both teams then forfeited an innings leaving England a target of 249 to win the Test, which they did with two wickets left and only five balls remaining. It ended South Africa's 14-game unbeaten streak in Test cricket. It was later learnt Cronje accepted money and a gift from a bookmaker in return for making an early declaration in this Test (see below). Cronje top scored with 56 after South Africa were left reeling at 21–5 in the Final of the triangular tournament which featured England and Zimbabwe. On 31 March 2000, his cricket career finished with a 73-ball 79 against Pakistan in the final of Sharjah Cup 1999/2000. Statistics. Under Cronje's captaincy, South Africa won 27 Tests and lost 11, completing series victories against every team except Australia. He captained the One Day International team to 99 wins out of 138 matches with one tied match and three no results. He holds the South African record for matches won as captain, and his record of captaining his side in 138 matches stands bettered only by Graeme Smith's 149 matches as ODI captain. His 99 wins as captain makes him the fourth-most-successful captain worldwide in terms of matches won, behind Ricky Ponting, Allan Border and Mahendra Singh Dhoni and in terms of percentage of wins (73.70), behind Ponting and Clive Lloyd. Between September 1993 and March 2000, he played in 162 consecutive ODIs, a South African record. Cronje has the record for playing the most consecutive ODI matches as captain (130) and is the only player to play in 100-plus consecutive ODI matches as captain. Match fixing. On 7 April 2000, it was revealed there was a conversation between Cronje and Sanjeev Chawla, a representative of an Indian betting syndicate, over match-fixing allegations. Three other players, Herschelle Gibbs, Nicky Boje and Pieter Strydom, were also implicated. After an enquiry by the King Commission, Cronje was banned from any involvement in cricket for life. He challenged his life ban in September 2001 but on 17 October 2001, his application was dismissed. After 13 years, on 22 July 2013, the Delhi Police registered a first information report for match-fixing in 2000; the charge sheet in the case involved several South African cricketers including Cronje. Death. On 1 June 2002, Cronje's scheduled flight home from Johannesburg to George was grounded. He then hitched a ride as the only passenger aboard a Hawker Siddeley HS 748 turboprop aircraft. Near George airport, the pilots lost visibility in clouds and were unable to land, partly due to unusable navigational equipment. While circling, the plane crashed into Cradock Peak, in the Outeniqua Mountains northeast of the airport. Cronje, aged 32, and the two pilots were killed instantly. In August 2006, an inquest into the plane crash was opened by South Africa's High Court. The inquest concluded that "the death of the deceased Wessel Johannes Cronje was brought about by an act or omission prima facie amounting to an offence on the part of pilots." Conspiracy theories that Cronje was murdered on the orders of a cricket betting syndicate flourished after his death and were most recently re-floated by former Nottinghamshire coach Clive Rice in the wake of the death of Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer in March 2007. It was alleged that he was murdered to hide the truths behind match-fixing. Personal life. Hansie Cronje married Bertha Hans on 8 April 1995. They had no children. Hansie's widow later married Jacques Du Plessis, a financial auditor, in 2003. It was reported that the private ceremony was attended by Hansie's parents and siblings, and close friends Jonty Rhodes and his wife Kate. In 2008, a biographical film titled "Hansie: A True Story" was released, where Frank Rautenbach played the part of Cronje.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13981

Hockey

Hockey is a term used to denote a family of various types of both summer and winter team sports which originated on either an outdoor field, sheet of ice, or dry floor such as in a gymnasium. While these sports vary in specific rules, numbers of players, apparel, and playing surface, they share broad characteristics of two opposing teams using a stick to propel a ball or disk into a goal. There are many types of hockey. Some games make the use of skates, either wheeled, or bladed while others do not. In order to help make the distinction between these various games, the word "hockey" is often preceded by another word i.e. "field hockey", "ice hockey", "roller hockey", "rink hockey", or "floor hockey". In each of these sports, two teams play against each other by trying to manoeuvre the object of play, either a type of ball or a disk (such as a puck), into the opponent's goal using a hockey stick. Two notable exceptions use a straight stick and an open disk (still referred to as a "puck") with a hole in the center instead. The first case is a style of floor hockey whose rules were codified in 1936 during the Great Depression by Canada's Sam Jacks. The second case involves a variant which was later modified in roughly the 1970s to make a related game that would be considered suitable for inclusion as a team sport in the newly emerging Special Olympics. The floor game of gym ringette, though related to floor hockey, is not a true variant due to the fact that it was designed in the 1990s and modelled off of the Canadian ice skating team sport of ringette, which was invented in Canada in 1963. Ringette was also invented by Sam Jacks, the same Canadian who codified the rules for the open disk style of floor hockey 1936. Certain sports which share general characteristics with the forms of hockey, but are not generally referred to as hockey include lacrosse, hurling, camogie, and shinty. Etymology. The first recorded use of the word "hockey" is in the 1773 book "Juvenile Sports and Pastimes, to Which Are Prefixed, Memoirs of the Author: Including a New Mode of Infant Education" by Richard Johnson (Pseud. Master Michel Angelo), whose chapter XI was titled "New Improvements on the Game of Hockey". The belief that hockey was mentioned in a 1363 proclamation by King Edward III of England is based on modern translations of the proclamation, which was originally in Latin and explicitly forbade the games "Pilam Manualem, Pedivam, & Bacularem: & ad Canibucam & Gallorum Pugnam". The English historian and biographer John Strype did not use the word "hockey" when he translated the proclamation in 1720, instead translating "Canibucam" as "Cambuck"; this may have referred to either an early form of hockey or a game more similar to golf or croquet. The word "hockey" itself is of unknown origin. One supposition is that it is a derivative of "hoquet", a Middle French word for a shepherd's stave. The curved, or "hooked" ends of the sticks used for hockey would indeed have resembled these staves, and similar folk etymologies exist for the bat-and-ball sports of Croquet and Cricket. Another supposition derives from the known use of cork bungs (stoppers), in place of wooden balls to play the game. The stoppers came from barrels containing "hock" ale, also called "hocky". Modern usage. In most of the world, the term "hockey" when used without clarification refers to field hockey, while in Canada, the United States, Russia and most of Eastern and Northern Europe, the term usually refers to ice hockey. In more recent history, the word "hockey" is used in reference to either the summer Olympic sport of field hockey, which is a stick and ball game, and the winter ice team skating sports of bandy and ice hockey. This is due to the fact that field hockey and other stick and ball sports and their related variants preceded games which would eventually be played on ice with ice skates, namely bandy and ice hockey, as well as sports involving dry floors such as roller hockey and floor hockey. However, the "hockey" referred to in common parlance often depends on locale, geography, and the size and popularity of the sport involved. For example, in Europe, "hockey" more typically refers to field hockey, whereas in Canada, it typically refers to ice hockey. In the case of bandy, the game was initially called "hockey on the ice" and preceded the organization and development of ice hockey, but was officially changed to "bandy" in the early 20th century in order to avoid confusion with ice hockey, a separate sport. Bandy, while related to other hockey games, derives some of its inspiration from Association football. Sledge hockey, a variant of ice hockey designed for players with physical disabilities, was created in the 1960s and has since been renamed, "Para-ice hockey". History. Games played with curved sticks and a ball can be found in the histories of many cultures. In Egypt, 4000-year-old carvings feature teams with sticks and a projectile, hurling dates to before 1272 BC in Ireland, and there is a depiction from approximately 600 BC in Ancient Greece, where the game may have been called (κερητίζειν) because it was played with a horn or horn-like stick ("", κέρας). In Inner Mongolia, the Daur people have been playing "beikou", a game similar to modern field hockey, for about 1,000 years. Most evidence of hockey-like games during the Middle Ages is found in legislation concerning sports and games. The Galway Statute enacted in Ireland in 1527 banned certain types of ball games, including games using "hooked" (written "hockie", similar to "hooky") sticks. "Bandy, ». a game, like that of Golf, in which the ad- verse parties endeavour to beat a ball (generally a knob or gnarl from the trunk of a tree,) opposite ways...the stick with which the game is played is crook'd at the end;." mid C18th Devon. By the 19th century, the various forms and divisions of historic games began to differentiate and coalesce into the individual sports defined today. Organizations dedicated to the codification of rules and regulations began to form, and national and international bodies sprang up to manage domestic and international competition. Subtypes. Bandy. Bandy is played with a ball on a football pitch-sized ice arena (bandy rink), typically outdoors, and with many rules similar to association football. It is played professionally in Russia and Sweden. The sport is recognized by the IOC; its international governing body is the Federation of International Bandy. Bandy has its roots in England in the 19th century, was originally called "hockey on the ice", and spread from England to other European countries around 1900; a similar Russian sport can also be seen as a predecessor and in Russia, bandy is sometimes called "Russian hockey". Bandy World Championships have been played since 1957 and Women's Bandy World Championships since 2004. There are national club championships in many countries and the top clubs in the world play in the Bandy World Cup every year. Field hockey. Field hockey is played on gravel, natural grass, or sand-based or water-based artificial turf, with a small, hard ball approximately 73 mm (2.9 in) in diameter. The game is popular among both men and women in many parts of the world, particularly in Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Argentina. In most countries, the game is played between single-sex sides, although they can be mixed-sex. The governing body is the 126-member International Hockey Federation (FIH). Men's field hockey has been played at each Summer Olympic Games since 1908 except for 1912 and 1924, while women's field hockey has been played at the Summer Olympic Games since 1980. Modern field hockey sticks are constructed of a composite of wood, glass fibre or carbon fibre (sometimes both) and are J-shaped, with a curved hook at the playing end, a flat surface on the playing side and a curved surface on the rear side. All sticks are right-handed – left-handed sticks are not permitted. While field hockey in its current form appeared in mid-18th century England, primarily in schools, it was not until the first half of the 19th century that it became firmly established. The first club was created in 1849 at Blackheath in south-east London. Field hockey is the national sport of Pakistan. It was the national sport of India until the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports declared in August 2012 that India has no national sport. Ice hockey. Ice hockey is played between two teams of skaters on a large flat area of ice, using a three-inch-diameter (76.2 mm) vulcanized rubber disc called a puck. This puck is often frozen before high-level games to decrease the amount of bouncing and friction on the ice. The game is played all over North America, Europe and to varying extents in many other countries around the world. It is the most popular sport in Canada, Finland, Latvia, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Ice hockey is the national sport of Latvia and the national winter sport of Canada. Ice hockey is played at a number of levels, by all ages. The governing body of international play is the 77-member International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF). Men's ice hockey has been played at the Winter Olympics since 1924, and was in the 1920 Summer Olympics. Women's ice hockey was added to the Winter Olympics in 1998. North America's National Hockey League (NHL) is the strongest professional ice hockey league, drawing top ice hockey players from around the globe. The NHL rules are slightly different from those used in Olympic ice hockey over many categories. International ice hockey rules were adopted from Canadian rules in the early 1900s. The contemporary sport developed in Canada from European and native influences. These included various stick and ball games similar to field hockey, bandy and other games where two teams push a ball or object back and forth with sticks. These were played outdoors on ice under the name "hockey" in England throughout the 19th century, and even earlier under various other names. In Canada, there are 24 reports of hockey-like games in the 19th century before 1875 (five of them using the name "hockey"). The first organized and recorded game of ice hockey was played indoors in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on March 3, 1875, and featured several McGill University students. Ice hockey sticks are long L-shaped sticks made of wood, graphite, or composites with a blade at the bottom that can lie flat on the playing surface when the stick is held upright and can legally curve either way, for left- or right-handed players. Para ice hockey. Ice sledge hockey, or "para ice hockey", is a form of ice hockey designed for players with physical disabilities affecting their lower bodies. Players sit on double-bladed sledges and use two sticks; each stick has a blade at one end and small picks at the other. Players use the sticks to pass, stickhandle and shoot the puck, and to propel their sledges. The rules are very similar to IIHF ice hockey rules. Canada is a recognized international leader in the development of sledge hockey, and much of the equipment for the sport was first developed there, such as sledge hockey sticks laminated with fiberglass, as well as aluminum shafts with hand-carved insert blades and special aluminum sledges with regulation skate blades. Inline sledge hockey. Based on ice sledge hockey, inline sledge hockey is played to the same rules as inline puck hockey (essentially ice hockey played off-ice using inline skates). There is no classification point system dictating who can play inline sledge hockey, unlike the situation with other team sports such as wheelchair basketball and wheelchair rugby. Inline sledge hockey is being developed to allow everyone, regardless of whether they have a disability or not, to complete up to world championship level based solely on talent and ability. The first game of organized inline sledge hockey was played at Bisley, Surrey, England, on December 19, 2009, between the Hull Stingrays and the Grimsby Redwings. Matt Lloyd is credited with inventing inline sledge hockey, and Great Britain is seen as the international leader in the game's development. Roller hockey (inline). Though inline hockey is considered a variant of roller hockey "rink hockey", it was derived from ice hockey instead and uses a type of hockey puck or a ball. Both roller games use a type of wheeled skate but inline hockey uses inline skates rather than roller skates or "quads". The puck-based inline variant is more commonly played in North America than Europe while the ball-based variant is more popular in Europe. Inline hockey puck variant is played by two teams, consisting of four skaters and one goalie, on a dry rink divided into two halves by a center line, with one net at each end of the rink. The game is played in three 15-minute periods with a variation of the ice hockey off-side rule. Icings are also called, but are usually referred to as illegal clearing. The governing body is the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF), just as it is for ice hockey, but some leagues and competitions do not follow the IIHF regulations, in particular USA Inline and Canada Inline. Roller hockey (quad). Roller hockey, also known as "quad hockey", "international-style ball hockey", "rink hockey" and "Hoquei em Patins", is an overarching name for a roller sport that uses quad skates. It has existed long before the invention of inline skates. The sport is played in over sixty countries and has a worldwide following. Roller hockey was a demonstration sport at the 1992 Barcelona Summer Olympics. Street hockey. Also known as road hockey, this is a dry-land variant of ice and roller hockey played year-round on a hard surface (usually asphalt). A ball is usually used instead of a puck, and protective equipment is not usually worn. Other forms of hockey. Other games derived from hockey or its predecessors include the following:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14065

Harwich

Harwich is a town in Essex, England, and one of the Haven ports on the North Sea coast. It is in the Tendring district. Nearby places include Felixstowe to the north-east, Ipswich to the north-west, Colchester to the south-west and Clacton-on-Sea to the south. It is the northernmost coastal town in Essex. Its position on the estuaries of the Stour and Orwell rivers, with its usefulness to mariners as the only safe anchorage between the Thames and the Humber, led to a long period of civil and military maritime significance. The town became a naval base in 1657 and was heavily fortified, with Harwich Redoubt, Beacon Hill Battery, and Bath Side Battery. Harwich is the likely launch point of the "Mayflower", which carried English Puritans to North America, and is the presumed birthplace of "Mayflower" captain Christopher Jones. Harwich today is contiguous with Dovercourt and the two, along with Parkeston, are often referred to collectively as "Harwich". History. The town's name means "military settlement", from Old English "here-wic". The town received its charter in 1238, although there is evidence of earlier settlement – for example, a record of a chapel in 1177, and some indications of a possible Roman presence. The town was the target of an abortive raid by French forces under Antonio Doria on 24 March 1339 during the Hundred Years' War. Because of its strategic position, Harwich was the target for the invasion of Britain by William of Orange on 11 November 1688. However, unfavourable winds forced his fleet to sail into the English Channel instead and eventually land at Torbay. Due to the involvement of the Schomberg family in the invasion, Charles Louis Schomberg was made Marquess of Harwich. Writer Daniel Defoe devotes a few pages to the town in "A tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain". Visiting in 1722, he noted its formidable fort and harbour "of a vast extent". The town, he recounts, was also known for an unusual chalybeate spring rising on Beacon Hill (a promontory to the north-east of the town), which "petrified" clay, allowing it to be used to pave Harwich's streets and build its walls. The locals also claimed that "the same spring is said to turn wood into iron", but Defoe put this down to the presence of "copperas" in the water. Regarding the atmosphere of the town, he states: "Harwich is a town of hurry and business, not much of gaiety and pleasure; yet the inhabitants seem warm in their nests and some of them are very wealthy". Harwich played an important part in the Napoleonic and more especially the two world wars. Of particular note: 1793-1815—Post Office Station for communication with Europe, one of embarkation and evacuation bases for expeditions to Holland in 1799, 1809 and 1813/14; base for capturing enemy privateers. The dockyard built many ships for the Navy, including HMS "Conqueror" which captured the French Admiral Villeneuve at the Battle of Trafalgar. The Redoubt and the now-demolished Ordnance Building date from that era. 1914-18—base for the Royal Navy's Harwich Force light cruisers and destroyers under Commodore Tyrwhitt, and for British submarines. In November 1918 the German U-boat fleet surrendered to the Royal Navy in the harbour. 1939-1945—one of main East Coast minesweeping and destroyer bases, at one period base for British and French submarines; assembled fleets for Dutch and Dunkirk evacuations and follow-up to D-Day; unusually, a target for Italian bombers during the Battle of Britain. Royal Naval Dockyard. Harwich Dockyard was established as a Naval Dockyard in 1652. It ceased to operate as a Royal Dockyard in 1713 (though a Royal Navy presence was maintained until 1829). During the various wars with France and Holland, through to 1815, the dockyard was responsible for both building and repairing numerous warships. HMS "Conqueror", a 74-gun ship completed in 1801, captured the French admiral Villeneuve at Trafalgar. The yard was then a semi-private concern, with the actual shipbuilding contracted to Joseph Graham, who was sometimes mayor of the town. During World War II parts of Harwich were again requisitioned for naval use and ships were based at HMS "Badger"; "Badger" was decommissioned in 1946, but the Royal Naval Auxiliary Service maintained a headquarters on the site until 1992. Lighthouses. In 1665, not long after the establishment of the Dockyard, a pair of lighthouses were set up on the Town Green to serve as leading lights for ships entering the harbour. Completely rebuilt in 1818, both towers are still standing (though they ceased functioning as lighthouses in 1863, when they were replaced by a new pair of lights at Dovercourt). Transport. The Royal Navy no longer has a presence in Harwich but Harwich International Port at nearby Parkeston continues to offer regular ferry services to the Hook of Holland (Hoek van Holland) in the Netherlands. Mann Lines operates a roll-on roll-off ferry service from Harwich Navyard to Bremerhaven, Cuxhaven, Paldiski and Turku. Many operations of the Port of Felixstowe and of Trinity House, the lighthouse authority, are managed from Harwich. The Mayflower railway line serves Harwich and there are three operational passenger stations: , and . The line also allows freight trains to access the Port. The port is famous for the phrase "Harwich for the Continent", seen on road signs and in London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) advertisements. From 1924 to 1987 (with a break during the Second World War), a train ferry service operated between Harwich and Zeebrugge. The train ferry linkspan still exists today and the rails leading from the former goods yard of Harwich Town railway station are still in position across the road, although the line is blocked by the Trinity House buoy store. Architecture. Despite, or perhaps because of, its small size Harwich is highly regarded in terms of architectural heritage, and the whole of the older part of the town, excluding Navyard Wharf, is a conservation area. The regular street plan with principal thoroughfares connected by numerous small alleys indicates the town's medieval origins, although many buildings of this period are hidden behind 18th century facades. The extant medieval structures are largely private homes. The house featured in the image of Kings Head St to the left is unique in the town and is an example of a sailmaker's house, thought to have been built circa 1600. Notable public buildings include the parish church of St. Nicholas (1821) in a restrained Gothic style, with many original furnishings, including a somewhat altered organ in the west end gallery. There is also the Harwich Guildhall of 1769, the only Grade I listed building in Harwich. The Pier Hotel of 1860 and the building that was the Great Eastern Hotel of 1864 can both been seen on the quayside, both reflecting the town's new importance to travellers following the arrival of the Great Eastern Main Line from Colchester in 1854. In 1923, The Great Eastern Hotel was closed by the newly formed LNER, as the Great Eastern Railway had opened a new hotel with the same name at the new passenger port at Parkeston Quay, causing a decline in numbers. The hotel became the Harwich Town Hall, which included the Magistrates Court and, following changes in local government, was sold and divided into apartments. Also of interest are the High Lighthouse (1818), the unusual Treadwheel Crane (late 17th century), the Old Custom Houses on West Street, a number of Victorian shopfronts and the Electric Palace Cinema (1911), one of the oldest purpose-built cinemas to survive complete with its ornamental frontage and original projection room still intact and operational. There is little notable building from the later parts of the 20th century, but major recent additions include the lifeboat station and two new structures for Trinity House. The Trinity House office building, next door to the Old Custom Houses, was completed in 2005. All three additions are influenced by the high-tech style. International Shanty Festival. A Harwich International Shanty Festival was set up in 2006 to organise and co-ordinate an annual sea shanty festival in October. Through concerts, 'singarounds', pub sessions, talks and workshops, the seafaring history and heritage of Harwich is celebrated by local people and international groups. This unique event for Essex attracts audiences countrywide and beyond. The festival is one of the biggest shanty festivals in the country. Notable residents. Harwich has also historically hosted a number of notable inhabitants, linked with Harwich's maritime past. Sport. Harwich is home to Harwich & Parkeston F.C.; Harwich and Dovercourt RFC; Harwich Rangers FC; Sunday Shrimpers; Harwich & Dovercourt Sailing Club; Harwich, Dovercourt & Parkeston Swimming Club; Harwich & Dovercourt Rugby Union Football Club; Harwich & Dovercourt Cricket Club; and Harwich Runners who with support from Harwich Swimming Club host the annual Harwich Triathlons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14131

Hazaras

The Hazaras (; ) are an ethnic group and a principal component of the population of Afghanistan, native to, and primarily residing in the Hazaristan region in central Afghanistan and generally scattered throughout Afghanistan. They are one of the largest ethnic groups in Afghanistan, and significant minority groups in Pakistan, mainly in Quetta, as well as in Iran, mainly in Mashhad. They speak the Dari and Hazaragi dialects of Persian. Dari, also known as Dari-Persian, is the official language of Afghanistan. Hazaras are considered to be one of the most persecuted groups in Afghanistan, and their persecution has occurred various times across previous decades. Etymology. The etymology of the word "Hazara" still remains disputed, but some have differing opinions on the term. Origin. Despite being one of the principal population elements of Afghanistan, the origins of the Hazara people have not been fully reconstructed. However, due to genetic and linguistic analysis, Hazaras are described as an ethnically mixed ethnic group with Hazaras sharing varying degrees of ancestry with contemporary Turkic, Mongolic and Iranic populations. Additionally, overall Hazaras share a common racial structure and physical appearance with the Turkic people of Central Asia. Over the course of centuries, invading Mongol (Turco-Mongol) and Turkic invaders, notably, the Qara'unas, the Chagatai Turco-Mongols, the Ilkhanate and the Timurids, merged with the local indigenous Turkic and Iranic populations. While academics agree that Hazaras are ultimately the result of a combination of several Turkic, Mongolic and Iranic tribes, there is a dispute by some on what groups played the largest roles in this combination. Despite being a mix of multiple distinct ethnicities, a number of researchers in their works write focusing on the Mongolic component. Authors, along with the term Hazaras, use the name Hazara Mongols: such as Elizabeth Emaline Bacon, Barbara A. West, Yuri Averyanov, Elbrus Sattsayev and other. According to historian Lutfi Temirkhanov, the Mongolian detachments left in Afghanistan by Genghis Khan or his successors became the starting layer, the basis of the Hazara ethnogenesis. According to him, the Hazaras in the Ghilji neighborhood are called Mongols. The participation of the Mongols in the ethnogenesis of the Hazaras is evidenced by linguistic data, historical sources, data on toponymy, as well as works on population genetics. Such scholars as Vasily Bartold, Ármin Vámbéry, Vadim Masson, Vadim Romodin, Ilya Petrushevsky, Allah Rakha, Fatima, Min-Sheng Peng, Atif Adan, Rui Bi, Memona Yasmin, Yong-Gang Yao wrote about the historical use of the Mongolian language by the Hazaras. Genetics. Genetically, the Hazara combine varying amounts of West Eurasian and East Eurasian derived components. Genetic data shows that the Hazaras of Afghanistan cluster closely with the Uzbek population of the country, while both groups are at a notable distance from Afghanistan's Tajik and Pashtun populations. There is evidence for both paternal and maternal relations to Turkic peoples, Mongolic peoples, and Iranian peoples. The frequency of ancestry components among the Hazaras vary according to tribal affiliation. They display high genetic affinity to present-day Turkic populations of Central Asia and East Asia. One analysis argues that the Hazaras are a Central Asian people, closely related to the Turkic populations of Central Asia, rather than Mongolians and East Asians or Indo-Iranians. Thus, another analysis argues that the Hazaras share more alleles with East Asians than with some Central Asians and carry 57.8% Mongolian-related ancestry, best represented by the Turkic Uyghur, Kazakh, and Kyrgyz populations. Maternal haplogroups. The Hazara share c. 35% maternal haplogroups with contemporary East Asian populations, while c. 65% is shared with West Eurasian populations. though the Hazaras as a whole have mostly west Eurasian mtDNA. Paternal haplogroups. The most common paternal DNA haplogroups of Hazaras from Afghanistan are the West Eurasian R1a and East Eurasian C-M217 clades, followed by West Eurasian J2-M172 and L-M20. Some Hazaras were also found to belong to the haplogroup R1a1a-M17, E1b1b1-M35, L-M20 and H-M69, which are shared with Tajiks, Pashtuns as well as Indian populations. One individual with haplogroup B-M60, normally found in Eastern Africa, was found as well. Pakistani Hazara harbored high frequency of haplogroup C-M217 at c. 40% (10/25) and Haplogroup R1b at c. 32% (8/25). A relatively high frequency of R1b was also found in Eastern Russian Tatars and Bashkirs. All three groups are thought to be associated with the Golden Horde. Haplogroup C-M217, also known as C2, is the most frequent haplogroup in Mongol and Kazakh populations. According to PhD Sabitov: "Y-DNA haplogroup C2 is certainly associated with the expansion of the Mongols". According to PhD Zhabagin: "The high frequency of haplogroup C2-M217 is consistent with the Mongolian origin of the Hazaras". Haplogroup C-M217 originated in Mongolia about ~ 1,000 years ago. History. The first mention of Hazaras is made by Babur in the early 16th century and later by the court historians of Shah Abbas of the Safavid dynasty. It is reported that they embraced Shia Islam between the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century, during the Safavid periods. Hazara men, along with those of other ethnic groups, were recruited to the army of Ahmad Shah Durrani in the 18th century. 19th century. During the second reign of Dost Mohammad Khan in the 19th century, Hazaras from Hazarajat began to be taxed for the first time. However, for the most part, they still managed to keep their regional autonomy until the 1892 Battle of Uruzgan and subsequent subjugation of Abdur Rahman Khan began in the late 19th century. When the Treaty of Gandomak was signed and the Second Anglo-Afghan War ended in 1880, Abdur Rahman Khan set out a goal to bring Hazaristan, Turkistan and Kafiristan under his control. He launched several campaigns in Hazarajat due to resistance from the Hazaras in which his forces committed atrocities. The southern part of Hazarajat was spared as they accepted his rule, while the other parts of Hazarajat rejected Abdur Rahman and instead supported his uncle, Sher Ali Khan. In response to this Abdur Rahman waged a war against tribal leaders who rejected his policies and rule. This is known as the Hazara Uprisings. These campaigns had a catastrophic impact on the demographics of Hazaras causing over sixty percent of the total Hazara population to be massacred with some being displaced and exiled from their own lands. The Hazara lands was distributed among loyalist villagers of nearby non-Hazaras. The repression after the uprising has been called genocide or ethnic cleansing in the history of modern Afghanistan. After these massacres, Abdul Rahman Khan forced many Hazara families from the Hazara areas of Uruzgan and other parts of Hazarajat to leave their hometowns and ancestral lands. causing some many Hazaras fled to neighboring countries such as Central Asia, Iran, British India, Iraq and Syria. Those Hazaras living in the northern Hindu Kush went to Tsarist Russia, mostly in the southern cities of Russia, and some of them went to Iran. Many Hazaras living in the Tsarist Russian regions lost their language, accent and ethnic identity over time due to the similarities between the racial building and the physical appearance of the people of those regions, and they settled and gravitated among them. These fleeing Hazaras settled in previous Tsarist Russia regions, including Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Dagestan. But the Hazaras in northwestern Afghanistan migrated to Iran and settled in neighborhoods in and around Mashhad. These Hazaras later became known as Khawari or Barbari. Another part of Hazaras from the southeast of the Hazara regions of Afghanistan has moved to British India, which resides in Quetta, present-day Pakistan. One of the most famous political and military figures of these Hazaras is Muhammad Musa Khan, who held the general's military rank in Pakistani system. Another group has settled in Syria, Iraq and British India. These Hazara people who migrated to Pakistan, Iran, Syria and Iraq were unable to settle with the people of these areas because of the differences in physical appearance, so they have not lost their language, culture and ethnic identity. 20th and 21st century. In 1901, Habibullah Khan, Abdur Rahman's eldest son and successor granted amnesty to Hazaras and asked them to return who were exiled by his predecessor. But few of them returned and settled in Afghan Turkestan and Balkh province because they had lost their previous lands. Hazara continued to face social, economic and political discrimination through most of the 20th century. In 1933 Mohammed Nadir Shah the King of Afghanistan was assassinated by Abdul Khaliq Hazara, a school student. The Afghan government captured and executed him later, along with several of his family members. Mistrust of the central government by the Hazaras and local uprisings continued. In particular, from 1945 to 1946, during Zahir Shah's rule, a revolt took place by the leadership of Ibrahim Khan most known as "Ibrahim Gawsawar" against new taxes that were exclusively imposed on Hazaras. The Kuchis meanwhile not only were exempted from taxes but also received allowances from the Afghan government. The angry rebels began capturing and killing government officials. In response, the central government sent a force to subdue the region and later removed the taxes. The repressive policies of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) after the Saur Revolution in 1978 caused uprisings throughout the country. Fearing Iranian influence, the Hazaras were particularly persecuted. President Hafizullah Amin published in October 1979 a list of 12,000 victims of the Taraki government. Among them were 7,000 Hazaras who were shot in the notorious Pul-e-Charkhi prison. During the Soviet-Afghan War, the Hazarajat region did not see as much heavy fighting as other regions of Afghanistan. Most of the Hazara mujahideen fought the Soviets in the regions which were on the periphery of the Hazarajat region. There was a division between the Tanzeem Nasle Nau Hazara, a party based in Quetta, of Hazara nationalists and secular intellectuals, and the Islamist parties in Hazarajat. By 1979, the Hazara-Islamist groups had already liberated Hazarajat from the central Soviet-backed Afghan government and later took entire control of Hazarajat away from the secularists. By 1984, the Islamist dominance of Hazarajat was complete. As the Soviets withdrew in 1989, the Islamist groups felt the need to broaden their political appeal and turned their focus to Hazara nationalism. This led to the establishment of the Hizbe-Wahdat, an alliance of all the Hazara resistance groups (except the Harakat-e Islami). In 1992 with the fall of Kabul, the Harakat-e Islami took sides with Burhanuddin Rabbani's government while the Hizbe-Wahdat took sides with the opposition. The Hizbe-Wahdat was eventually forced out of Kabul in 1995 when the Taliban movement captured and killed their leader Abdul Ali Mazari. With the Taliban's capture of Kabul in 1996, all the Hazara groups united with the new Northern Alliance against the common new enemy. However, despite fierce resistance Hazarajat fell to the Taliban in 1998. The Taliban had Hazarajat isolated from the rest of the world going as far as not allowing the United Nations to deliver food to the provinces of Bamyan, Ghor, Maidan Wardak and Daykundi. In 1997, a revolt broke out among Hazaras in Mazar-e Sharif when they refused to be disarmed by the Taliban; 600 Taliban were killed in subsequent fighting. In retaliation, the genocidal policies of Abdur Rahman Khan's era was adopted by the Taliban. In 1998, six thousand Hazaras were killed in the north; the intention was ethnic cleansing of Hazaras. In March 2001, the two giant Buddhas of Bamiyan, were also destroyed even though there was a lot of condemnation. Hazaras have also played a significant role in the creation of Pakistan. One such Hazara was Qazi Muhammad Isa of the Sheikh Ali tribe, who had been close friends with Muhammad Ali Jinnah, having met each other for the first time while they were studying in London. He had been the first from his native province of Balochistan to obtain a Bar-at-Law degree and had helped set up the All-India Muslim League in Balochistan. Though Hazaras played a role in the anti-Soviet movement, other Hazaras participated in the new communist government, which actively courted Afghan minorities. Sultan Ali Kishtmand, a Hazara, served as prime minister of Afghanistan from 1981 to 1990 (with one brief interruption in 1988). The Ismaili Hazara of Baghlan Province likewise supported the communists, and their "pir" (religious leader) Jaffar Naderi led a pro-Communist militia in the region. During the years that followed, Hazara suffered severe oppression, and many ethnic massacres, genocides, and pogroms were carried out by the predominantly ethnic Pashtun Taliban and are documented by such groups as the Human Rights Watch. Following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, American and Coalition forces invaded Afghanistan. After the fall of the Taliban many Hazaras became important figures in Afghanistan. Hazara have also pursued higher education, enrolled in the army, and many have top government positions. For example, Some Vice Presidents, ministers and governors were Hazara, including Karim Khalili, Sarwar Danish, Sima Samar, Muhammad Mohaqiq, Habiba Sarābi, Abdul Haq Shafaq, Sayed Anwar Rahmati, Qurban Ali Urozgani, Muhammad Arif Shah Jahan, Mahmoud Baligh, Mohammad Eqbal Munib and Mohammad Asim Asim. The mayor of Nili, Daykundi was Azra Jafari, who became the first female mayor in Afghanistan. Some other notable Hazaras include Sultan Ali Keshtmand, Abdul Wahed Sarābi, Akram Yari, Ghulam Ali Wahdat, Sayed Mustafa Kazemi, Ghulam Husain Naseri, Abbas Noyan, Daoud Naji, Abbas Ibrahim Zada, Ramazan Bashardost, Ahmad Shah Ramazan, Ahmad Behzad, Nasrullah Sadiqi Zada Nili, Fahim Hashimy, Maryam Monsef and others. Although Afghanistan has been historically one of the poorest countries in the world, the Hazarajat region has been kept less developed by past governments. Since the ousting of the Taliban in late 2001, billions of dollars poured into Afghanistan for reconstruction and several large-scale reconstruction projects took place in Afghanistan from August 2012. For example, there have been more than 5000 kilometers of road pavement completed across Afghanistan, of which little was done in central Afghanistan (Hazarajat). On the other hand, the Band-e Amir in Bamyan Province became the first national park in Afghanistan. A road from Kabul to Bamyan was also built, along with new police stations, government institutions, hospitals and schools in the provinces of Bamyan, Daykundi and others mostly Hazara-populated provinces. The first ski resort in Afghanistan was also established in Bamyan Province. Discrimination indicates that Kuchis (Pashtun nomads who have historically been migrating from region to region depending on the season) are allowed to use Hazarajat pastures during the summer season. It is believed that allowing the Kuchis to use some of the grazing lands in Hazarajat began during the rule of Abdur Rahman Khan. Living in mountainous Hazarajat, where little farmland exists, Hazara people rely on these pasture lands for their livelihood during the long and harsh winters. In 2007 some Kuchi nomads entered into parts of Hazarajat to graze their livestock, and when the local Hazara resisted, a clash took place and several people on both sides died using assault rifles. Such events continue to occur, even after the central government was forced to intervene, including President Hamid Karzai. In late July 2012, a Hazara police commander in Uruzgan province reportedly rounded up and killed 9 Pashtun civilians in revenge for the death of two local Hazara. The matter is being investigated by the Afghan government. The drive by President Hamid Karzai after the Peace Jirga to strike a deal with Taliban leaders caused deep unease in Afghanistan's minority communities, who fought the Taliban the longest and suffered the most during their rule. The leaders of the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara communities, vowed to resist any return of the Taliban to power, referring to the large-scale massacres of Hazara civilians during the Taliban period. Following the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in 2021, which ended the war in Afghanistan, concerns were raised as to whether the Taliban would reimpose the persecution of Hazaras as in the 1990s. An academic at Melbourne's La Trobe University said that "The Hazaras are very fearful that the Taliban will likely be reinstating the policies of the 1990s" despite Taliban reassurances that they will not revert to the bad old ways of the 1990s. Demographics. Some sources claim that Hazaras comprise about 20 to 30 percent of the total population of Afghanistan. They were by far the largest ethnic group in the past, in 1888–1893 Uprisings of Hazaras over sixty percent of them were massacred with some being displaced and meanwhile they also lost a large part of their territory to non-Hazaras that could double their land size today. Geographic distribution. Afghanistan. The historical and main homeland of Hazaras are the Hazaristan (), a region which is now located in the central highlands of Afghanistan. Until the 1880s, the Hazaras were completely autonomous and controlled the entire Hazaristan region. Nowadays, the vast majority of Hazaras reside in Hazaristan and many others reside in the cities of the country. Central Asia. After the massacre and genocide of the Hazaras by Abdur Rahman in 1888–1893, many Hazaras migrated to Central Asia regions under the occupation of Tsarist Russia, such as Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan, and some of them settled mostly in Samarkand and Bukhara. Over time, a large number of Hazaras living in the regions of Tsarist Russia lost their accent, language and ethnic identity due to the similarities of their racial structure and appearance with the people of those regions and were assimilated among them. Pakistan. During the period of British colonial rule on the Indian subcontinent in the 19th century, Hazaras worked during the winter months in coal mines, road construction, and other working-class jobs in some cities of what is now Pakistan. The earliest record of Hazara in the areas of Pakistan is found in Broadfoot's Sappers company from 1835 in Quetta. This company had also participated in the First Anglo-Afghan War. Some Hazara also worked on the agriculture farms in Sindh and the construction of the Sukkur barrage. In 1962, the government of Pakistan recognized the Hazaras as one of the ethnic groups of Pakistan. Most Pakistani Hazaras today live in the city of Quetta, in Balochistan, Pakistan. Localities in the city of Quetta with prominent Hazara populations include Hazara Town and Mehr Abad and Hazara tribes such as the "Sardar" are exclusively Pakistani. The literacy level among the Hazara community in Pakistan is relatively high compared to the Hazaras of Afghanistan, and they have integrated well into the social dynamics of the local society. Saira Batool, a Hazara woman, was one of the first female pilots in the Pakistan Air Force. Other notable Hazaras include Qazi Muhammad Isa, General Muhammad Musa Khan, who served as the 4th Commander-in-Chief of the Pakistan Army from 1958 to 1968, Air Marshal Sharbat Ali Changezi, whose years of service in the Pakistan Air Force were from 1949 to 1987, Hussain Ali Yousafi, the slain chairman of the Hazara Democratic Party, Sayed Nasir Ali Shah, MNA from Quetta and his father Haji Sayed Hussain Hazara who was a senator and member of Pakistan Parliament during the Zia-ul-Haq era. Despite all of this, Hazaras are often targeted by militant groups such as the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and others. "Activists say at least 800-1,000 Hazaras have been killed since 1999 and the pace is quickening. More than one hundred have been murdered in and around Quetta since January, according to Human Rights Watch." The political representation of the community is served by Hazara Democratic Party, a secular liberal democratic party, headed by Abdul Khaliq Hazara. Iran. The Hazara people in Iran are also referred to as Barbari (), or Khāwari (). Over many years as a result of political unrest in Afghanistan, some Hazaras have migrated to Iran. The local Hazara population has been estimated at 500,000 people including Afghan immigrants. At least one-third have spent more than half their life in Iran. Before the separation of Afghanistan from Iran according to the Treaty of Paris in 1857 during the reign of Naser al-Din Shah, Greater Khorasan covered a part of the west of this land and various tribes or ethnic groups lived in it. One of these tribes was the Hazaras. This tribe, who settled on both sides of the border after drawing the border line between Iran and Afghanistan, has played many roles in the contemporary history of Khorasan province and especially Mashhad. The leadership of this tribe at the end of the Qajar period and also the Pahlavi period was with Muhammad Yusuf Khan Hazara known as "Sulat al-Sultanah Hazara", a Sunni Hazara who was a politician and the first Sunni representative member in the Iranian Parliament and the only Sunni Iranian who has represented Mashhad in the history of Iran's legislatures. Iraq. After World War II, Hazaras took refuge from Afghanistan to Mashhad and then to Iraq and stayed there. Diaspora. Alessandro Monsutti argues, in his recent anthropological book, that migration is the traditional way of life of the Hazara people, referring to the seasonal and historical migrations which have never ceased and do not seem to be dictated only by emergencies such as war. Due to the decades of war in Afghanistan and the sectarian violence in Pakistan, many Hazaras left their communities and have settled in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and particularly the Northern European countries such as Sweden and Denmark. Some go to these countries as exchange students while others through human smuggling, which sometimes costs them their lives. Since 2001, about 1,000 people have died in the ocean while trying to reach Australia by boats from Indonesia. Many of these were Hazaras. The notable case was the Tampa affair in which a shipload of refugees, mostly Hazaras, was rescued by the Norwegian freighter MV "Tampa" and subsequently sent to Nauru. Culture and society. Hazara culture is a combination of customs, traditions, behaviors, beliefs and norms that have been formed in interaction and confrontation with the surrounding phenomena for many years and now it is displayed as a cultural identity. The Hazara culture is rich in heritage, with many unique cultures, and has common influences with various cultures of Central Asia and South Asia. The Hazaras, outside of Hazarajat, have adopted the cultures of the cities where they dwell, resembling the cultures and traditions of the Afghan Tajiks and Pashtuns. Traditionally the Hazara are highland farmers. In Hazarajat, they have retained many of their own cultures and traditions and many of their cultures and traditions are more closely related to those of Central Asians than to those of the Afghan Tajiks. Historically and traditionally, Hazaras live in houses, but some of them such as Aimaq Hazara and a few other are semi-nomadic and live mostly in felt yurts, rather than houses. Attire. Hazara clothing have an important and special role in supporting the cultural, traditional and social identity of the Hazara ethnicity. Hazara clothes are produced manually and by machine; In Afghanistan these types of clothes are sewn in most parts of the country, especially in central provinces of Afghanistan. Male clothing. Hazara men traditionally wear barak, also called barag, and hat. Barak is one of the important components of Hazara people's clothing. Barak is a kind of soft, sticky and thick piece made from the first wool of lambs of special sheep that are raised in Hazarajat, provided. In addition to being a very acceptable, stylish, and regal clothe, the Hazara barak is also a warm winter that is resistant to moisture and does not get wet easily in snow and rain. Also, barak has a special property and softness, it reduces muscle pains and is also healing for joint pains. Nowadays, the most common clothes among Hazara men is the perahan o tunban and sometimes with a hat or a turban. Female clothing. The traditional clothing of Hazara women includes a pleated skirt with a tunban or undergarment. The lower tunbans are made of fabrics such as flowered chits and the upper skirts are made of better fabrics such as velvet or zari and net and have a border or decoration at the bottom. The women's shirt is calf-length, close-collared, and long-sleeved, and has slits on both sides that are placed on the skirts, which are admired for their completeness in the Islamic set. Hazara women's clothing has certain characteristics according to their social, economic, and age conditions. The clothes of young Hazara women are made of different fabrics in different colors and happy designs with beautiful and colorful chador, but older women prefer dark-colored fabrics with simple black and white designs. Hazara women's chador or head cover is often decorated with ornaments that is often silver or gold, and sometimes with a hat. The ornaments on the clothe is silver or gold necklace with colorful beads, buttons, bangles and silver or gold bracelets. Headgear. Hazaras traditionally wear headgear or hats, which are of different types for men and women. There are different types of Hazara hats and caps, some of which are made from animal skin and some from barak. Also some Hazara men wear the turban of Khorasan. Cuisine. The Hazara cuisine is strongly influenced by Central Asian, South Asian and Persian cuisines. However, there are special foods, cooking methods and different cooking styles that are specific to them. They have a hospitable dining etiquette. In their culture, it is customary to prepare special food for guests. Language. The Hazaras speak the Dari and Hazaragi dialects of the Persian language. The Hazara people in Hazaristan region speak the Hazaragi dialect of Persian. According to Encyclopaedia of Islam, Hazaragi is a Persian dialect, which is infused with many Turkic and a few Mongolic words or loanwords. According to Atif Adnan, the Hazara population speaks Persian with some Mongolian words. The primary differences between Persian and Hazaragi are the accent. Despite these differences, Hazaragi is mutually intelligible with Dari, the official language of Afghanistan. According to Doctor of Sciences Lutfi Temirkhanov, the ancestors of the Hazaras were Mongol-speaking and only after the resettlement, they mixed with the Persian-speaking and Turkic-speaking population: "hordes of Mongol princes and feudal lords found themselves in a Persian-speaking encirclement; they mixed with them, were influenced by the Persian-Tajik culture and gradually adopted the Persian language". According to a number of sources, in the 16th century the Mongolian language was widespread among the Hazaras. According to the Great Russian Encyclopedia, until the 19th century Hazaras spoke Mongolian. And according to Temirkhanov, the Mongolian elements make up 10% of the Hazara vocabulary. Religion. Hazaras predominantly practice Islam, mostly the Shi'a, with a significant and almost a large Sunni, some Isma'ili and Non-denominational Islam. The majority of Afghanistan's population practices Sunni Islam; this may have contributed to the discrimination against them. Shia Hazaras. There is no single theory about the acceptance of the Shi'a Islam by the majority of Hazaras. Probably most of them accepted Shi'a Islam during the first part of the 16th century, in the early days of the Safavid dynasty. Sunni Hazaras. A significant and almost a large population of Hazara people are Sunni Muslims. Sunni Hazaras have been Sunni since long ago and before the occupation of Hazara lands by Abdul Rahman, but some of them were converted from Shia to Sunni Islam after the occupation of Hazara lands by Abdul Rahman and 1888–1893 Hazara uprisings. In Afghanistan, they inhabit in different provinces such as Kabul, Baghlan, Badghis, Ghor, Kunduz, Panjshir, Bamyan, Badakhshan, Parwan and in some other regions of Afghanistan. A Sunni Hazara, Sher Muhammad Khan Hazara, the chieftain of the Hazaras of Qala e Naw, Badghis province and a warlord who participant in the Sunni coalition that defended Herat in 1837. Also, one of the defeaters of British forces around Qandahar and Maiwand desert during the First Anglo-Afghan War in 1838–1842. Isma'ili Hazaras. Isma'ili Hazaras mainly live in provinces of Kabul, Parwan, Baghlan and Bamyan. And their smaller groups live in Maidan Wardak, Samangan, Zabul and... The Isma'ili Hazaras have always been kept separate from the rest of the Hazaras on account of religious beliefs and political purposes. Hazara tribes. The Hazara people have been organized by various tribes. Some overarching Hazara tribes are Sheikh Ali, Jaghori, Jaghatu, Qara Baghi, Ghaznichi, Muhammad Khwaja, Behsudi, Daimirdadi, Turkmani, Uruzgani, Daikundi, Daizangi, Daichopan, Daizinyat, Naiman, Qarlugh, Aimaq Hazara and others. The different tribes come from Hazaristan (Hazara regions), such as Parwan, Bamyan, Ghazni, Ghor, Uruzgan, Daikundi, Maidan Wardak and... have spread outwards from Hazaristan (main region) in other parts of Afghanistan, and also in other Hazara-populated areas. Art. Music. Many Hazara musicians are widely hailed as being skilled in playing the dambura, a native, regional lute instrument similarly found in other Central Asian nations, such as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Some of the famous Hazara musician and dambura players are, such as Sarwar Sarkhosh, Dawood Sarkhosh, Safdar Tawakoli, Sayed Anwar Azad and others. In Hazara dambura sometimes revolutionary hymns are very common. The first singer who started singing revolutionary hymns on dambura was Sarwar Sarkhosh, and his main message was the uprising of the young generation and the fight against oppression. Also Ghaychak a field instruments in music that is usually played like a fiddle. The resonance bowl is made of walnuts or berries and its wires are metal which is one of the stringed instruments in Hazara music. Cinema. Hazara cinema artists have no older background, but nowadays some of their famous actors and actresses include Hussain Sadiqi, Abid Ali Nazish, Shamila Shirzad, Nikbakht Noruz and others. Writers and poets. Some well-known Hazara writers and poets include Faiz Muhammad Kateb, Amir Khosrow Dehlavi, Ismael Balkhi, Hassan Poladi, Kazim Yazdani, Ali Mohaqiq Nasab, Kamran Mir Hazar, Basir Ahang, Sayed Askar Mousavi, Ali Baba Taj, Sayed Abutalib Mozaffari, Rahnaward Zaryab, Aziz Royesh and so on. Sports. Many Hazaras engaged in varieties of sports, including football, volleyball, wrestling, martial arts, boxing, karate, taekwondo, judo, wushu, Jujitsu, Cricket, Tennis and more. Pahlawan Ebrahim Khedri, a 62 kg wrestler, was the national champion for two decades in Afghanistan. Another famous Hazara wrestler, Wakil Hussain Allahdad, was killed in the 22 April 2018 Kabul suicide bombing in Dashte Barchi, Kabul. Rohullah Nikpai, won a bronze medal in Taekwondo at the Beijing Olympics 2008, beating world champion Juan Antonio Ramos of Spain 4–1 in a play-off final. It was Afghanistan's first-ever Olympic medal. He then won a second Olympic medal for Afghanistan in the London 2012 games. Another famous Hazara athlete Sayed Abdul Jalil Waiz was the first ever badminton player representing Afghanistan in Asian Junior Championships in 2005 where he produced the first win for his country against Iraq, with 15–13, 15–1. He participated in several international championships since 2005 and achieved victories against Australia, the Philippines and Mongolia. Hamid Rahimi, a Hazara boxer from Afghanistan who lives in Germany. Hussain Sadiqi, a Hazara Australian martial artist who won an award for the best fight scene for an Australian made action movie. Hazara football players are Zohib Islam Amiri who is currently playing for the Afghanistan national football team, Moshtaq Yaqoubi an Afghan-Finnish footballer who plays for HIFK, Mustafa Amini, a Hazara Australian footballer who plays as a midfielder for Danish Superliga club AGF and the Australian national team, Rahmat Akbari an Australian footballer who plays as a midfielder for Brisbane Roar, and others like Rohullah Iqbalzada, Omran Haydary, Zelfy Nazary, Moshtaq Ahmadi and Zahra Mahmoodi. A Pakistani Hazara Abrar Hussain, a former Olympic boxer served as deputy director-general of the Pakistan Sports Board. He represented Pakistan three times at the Olympics and won a gold medal at the 1990 Asian Games in Beijing. Another Hazara boxer from Pakistan is Haider Ali a Commonwealth Games gold medalist and Olympian who is currently retired. Some Hazara from Pakistan have also excelled in sports and have received numerous awards, particularly in boxing, football and field hockey. New Hazara youngsters are seen to appear in many sports in Pakistan mostly from Quetta. Rajab Ali Hazara, who is leading the under 16 Pakistan Football team as captain. Another is Kulsoom Hazara, a Pakistani female karate champion who has won several gold, silver and bronze medals on national and international stages, including Pride of Pakistan Award. Other karateka Hazaras include Nargis Hameedullah who became the first Pakistani woman to win an individual medal (a bronze) at the Asian Games karate championship, and Shahida Abbasi. Cultural sports. Cultural sports of Hazara people are those sports that have been inherited from their ancestors for generations. Buzkashi. Buzkashi is a Central Asian sport in which horse-mounted players attempt to place a goat or calf carcass in a goal. It is the national sport in Afghanistan and is one of the cultural sports of the Hazara people and they still practice this sport in Afghanistan. Tirandāzi. Tirandāzi is a kind of archery and an old cultural sport of Hazaras. Pahlawani. Pahlawani or Kushti is a kind of cultural wrestling sport that is performed by Hazaras. Pahlawani has a long history in Afghanistan and among the Hazaras. In Afghanistan, on holidays, Pahlawani fields are set up. Pahlawani is held in different age groups. This cultural sport has its special techniques. Because this sport is very ancient and familiar, it has been continued from generation to generation among the Hazaras.

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Haryana

Haryana (; ) is an Indian state located in the northern part of the country. It was carved out of the former state of East Punjab on 1 November 1966 on a linguistic basis. 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; and the most populous city is Faridabad, which is a part of the National Capital Region. The city of Gurgaon is among India's largest financial and technology hubs. Haryana has 6 administrative divisions, 22 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. Haryana 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 and has the country's 5th-highest GSDP per capita of . The 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. Etymology. Anthropologists came up with the view that Haryana was known by this name because in the post-Mahabharata period, the Abhiras live here, who developed special skills in the art of agriculture. According to Pran Nath Chopra, Haryana got its name from Abhirayana-Ahirayana-Hirayana-Haryana. History. Ancient period. The 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). During 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. Medieval period. Ancient 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. Pushyabhuti 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. After 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. Hem 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. British Period. The 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. Partition and aftermath. During 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. Formation of Haryana. Haryana 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. 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 – along with Naraingarh, Ambala and Jagadhri – were to be included. The 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. Bhagwat Dayal Sharma became the first Chief Minister of Haryana. Demographics. Religion. According 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. Muslims 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. Languages. The official language of Haryana is Hindi. Several 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. There 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" – to be taught in schools – 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. There 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. Culture. Music. Haryana 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. Folk dances. Folk music and dances of Haryana are based on satisfying the cultural needs of primarily agrarian and martial natures of Haryanavi tribes. Haryanvi musical folk theatre's main types are Saang, Rasa lila and Ragini. The Saang and Ragini form of theatre was popularised by Lakhmi Chand. Haryanvi 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 Nāginī dance, and Ragini), ceremonial (Dhamal Dance, Ghoomar, Jhoomar (male), Khoria, Loor, and Ragini). Folk music and songs. Haryanvi 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. Classical Haryanvi folk music. Classical Haryanvi folk music is based on Indian classical music. Hindustani classical ragas, learnt in gharana parampara of guru–shishya tradition, are used to sing songs of heroic bravery (such as Alha-Khand (1163–1202 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. Desi Haryanvi folk music. Desi 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. Socially normative-cohesive impact. Music 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. With 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. Cuisine. As per a survey, 13% of males and 7.8% of females of Haryana are non-vegetarian. The regional cuisine features the staples of roti, saag, vegetarian sabzi and milk products such as ghee, milk, lassi and kheer. Society. Haryanvi people have a concept of inclusive society involving the "36 Jātis" or communities. Castes such as Jat, Rajput, Gurjar, Saini, Pasi, Ahirs, Ror, Mev, Charan, Bishnoi, Harijan, Aggarwal, Brahmin, Khatri and Tyagi are some of the notable of these 36 Jātis. Geography. Haryana is a landlocked state in northern India. It is between 27°39' to 30°35' N latitude and between 74°28' and 77°36' 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 ft (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 – Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, and Chandigarh. Plains and mountains. Haryana has four main geographical features. Hydrography. The Yamuna, a tributary of the Ganges, flows along the state's eastern boundary. Northern 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. Southern 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. Major canals are Western Yamuna Canal, Sutlej Yamuna link canal (from Sutlej river tributary of Indus), and Indira Gandhi Canal. Major 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. Major 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 in Gurgram district, Hathni Kund in Yamunanagar district, Karna Lake at Karnal, ancient Surajkund in Faridabad, and Tilyar Lake in Rohtak. The "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. The 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". Seasonal waterfalls include Tikkar Taal twin lakes at Morni hiills, Dhosi Hill in Mahendragarh district and Pali village on the outskirts of Faridabad. Climate. Haryana 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 354.5 mm. 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. Flora and fauna. Forests. Forest cover in the state in 2013 was 3.59% (1586 km2) and the Tree Cover in the state was 2.90% (1282 km2), giving a total forest and tree cover of 6.49%. In 2016–17, 18,412 hectares were brought under tree cover by planting 14.1 million 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. Wildlife. Haryana 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 Environmental and ecological issues. Haryana 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 μm 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 million 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. Administration. Divisions. The state is divided into 6 revenue divisions, 5 Police Ranges and 3 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, Sonepat, and Manesar), 18 municipal councils and 52 municipalities. Within 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. Law and order. The Haryana Police force is the law enforcement agency of Haryana. Five Police Ranges are Ambala, Hissar, Karnal, Rewari and Rohtak. Three Police Commissionerates are Faridabad, Gurgaon and Panchkula. Cybercrime investigation cell is based in Gurgaon's Sector 51. The 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. Governance and e-governance. The 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. Economy. Haryana's 14th placed 12.96% 2012-17 CAGR estimated a 2017-18 GSDP of US$95 billion split into 52% services, 30% industries and 18% agriculture. The 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). The 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. The service and industrial sectors are boosted by 7 operational SEZs and an additional 23 formally approved SEZs (20 already notified and 3 in-principal approval) that are mostly spread along the Delhi–Mumbai Industrial Corridor, Amritsar Delhi Kolkata Industrial Corridor and Western Peripheral Expressway. The 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. Agriculture. Crops. Haryana 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. As a result, Haryana is self sufficient in food production and the second largest contributor to India's central pool of food grains In 2015–2016, 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.). Fruits, vegetables and spices. Vegetable 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. Fruits 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. Spices production was: garlic 40,497 tonnes, fenugreek 9,348 tonnes, ginger 4,304 tonnes and others 840 tonnes. Flowers and medicinal plants. Cut flowers production was: marigold 61,830 tonnes, gladiolus 2,448,620 million, rose 1,861,160 million and other 691,300 million. Medicinal plants production was: aloe vera 1403 tonnes and stevia 13 tonnes. Livestock. Haryana is well known for its high-yield Murrah buffalo. Other breeds of cattle native to Haryana are Haryanvi, Mewati, Sahiwal and Nili-Ravi. Research. To 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. Industrial sector. Utilities. Haryana 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. Sources of power in the state include: Services sector. Transport. Roads and highways. Haryana 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 million km per day, and it was the first state in the country to introduce luxury video coaches. Ancient 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. The 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. Railway. The 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 km) and Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (177 km) pass through Haryana. Bikaner 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. The 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–Rohtak 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. Ambala 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–Shimla Railway. Metro. Delhi 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 km. Sky Way. The 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. Communication and media. Haryana 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. Electronic 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. Panipat, 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. Healthcare. The total fertility rate of Haryana is 2.3. The infant mortality rate is 41 (SRS 2012) and the maternal mortality ratio is 146 (SRS 2010–2012). 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 Education. Literacy. The 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. , 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, , 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%. Schools. Haryana 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. In 2015–2016, 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. Universities and higher education. Haryana 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 – 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. Demographically, 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. Union 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. Sports. In 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. The 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. Chief 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." Haryana is home to Haryana Gold, one of India's eight professional basketball teams that compete in the country's UBA Pro Basketball League. At the 2016 Summer Olympics, Sakshi Malik won the bronze medal in the 58 kg category, becoming the first Indian female wrestler to win a medal at the Olympics and the fourth female Olympic medalist from the country. Notable badminton player Saina Nehwal is from Hisar in Haryana. Notable 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. Wrestling is also very prominent in Haryana, as 2 medals won in wrestling at 2020 Tokyo Olympics were from Haryana. Notable athlete Ravi Dahiya, who was born in Nahri village of Sonipat District, won silver medal in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics for India. Ravi Kumar is an Indian freestyle wrestler who won a silver medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in the 57 kg category. Dahiya is also a bronze medalist from 2019 World Wrestling Championships and a two-time Asian champion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14421

Henry Chadwick (writer)

Henry Chadwick (October 5, 1824 – April 20, 1908) was an English-American sportswriter, baseball statistician and historian, often called the "Father of Baseball" for his early reporting on and contributions to the development of the game. He edited the first baseball guide that was sold to the public. He is credited with creating box scores, as well as creating the abbreviation "K" that designates a strikeout. He is said to have created the statistics of batting average and earned run average (ERA). He was posthumously inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1938. Early life. Chadwick was born on October 5, 1824 in Exeter, England. His grandfather, Andrew Chadwick, had been a close friend of theologian John Wesley. His father, James Chadwick, was a supporter of the French Revolution who also tutored John Dalton in music and botany. James Chadwick had served as editor of a publication known as the "Western Times". Edwin Chadwick's mother had made James Chadwick a widower shortly after Edwin's birth. Chadwick was the younger half-brother of Sir Edwin Chadwick, England's sanitary philosopher who developed environmental measures and laws designed to counteract the effects of the Industrial Revolution. Chadwick moved to Brooklyn with his family at the age of 12. Biographer Andrew Schiff writes that Henry Chadwick "was not brought up to value possessions or with an understanding of commerce and trade; rather he received an education that was drenched in moral philosophy and science." He began to write music and to teach piano and guitar. In 1848, Chadwick married Jane Botts from Richmond, Virginia. Botts' father Alexander had been president of the Virginia State Council. She was also related to politician John Botts. Chadwick edited John Botts' work titled "The Great Rebellion". Chadwick and his wife had three children, Richard Westlake Chadwick, in 1849, Susan Mary Chadwick, in 1851, and Rose Virginia Chadwick, 1853. Chadwick became a frequent player of cricket and similar ball games such as rounders. He began covering cricket for numerous local newspapers such as the "Long Island Star". He first came across organized baseball in 1856 as a cricket reporter for "The New York Times", watching a match played between New York's Eagles and Gothams at the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey. He focused his attention as a journalist and writer on baseball after joining the "New York Clipper" in 1857, and was also soon hired on to provide coverage for other New York papers including the "Sunday Mercury". Contributions to baseball. Promotion of the game. Chadwick was one of the prime movers in the rise of baseball to its popularity at the turn of the 20th century. A keen amateur statistician and professional writer, he helped sculpt the public perception of the game, as well as providing the basis for the records of teams' and players' achievements in the form of baseball statistics. He also served on baseball rules committees and influenced the game itself. He is sometimes referred to as "the father of baseball" because he facilitated the popularity of the sport in its early days. Early baseball had a provision known as the "bound rule", which held that a fielder could catch a batted ball on one bounce and that it would still be recorded as an out. Chadwick was an outspoken critic of the rule for many years, stating that fielders should have to catch a ball on the fly for it to count as an out. In 1864, the bound rule was eliminated for balls hit into fair territory. The bound rule for foul balls persisted into the 1880s. Chadwick edited "The Beadle Dime Base-Ball Player", the first annual baseball guide on public sale, as well as the Spalding and Reach annual guides for a number of years and in this capacity promoted the game and influenced the infant discipline of sports journalism. In his 1861 "Beadle" guide, he listed totals of games played, outs, runs, home runs, and strikeouts for hitters on prominent clubs, the first database of its kind. His goal was to provide numerical evidence to prove which players helped a team to win. In 1867 he accompanied the National Base Ball Club of Washington, D.C., on their inaugural national tour, as their official scorer. The next year, Chadwick wrote the first hardcover baseball book, "The Game of Base Ball". In 1874 was instrumental in organizing a tour of England which included games of both baseball and cricket. In his role as journalist, he campaigned against the detrimental effects on the game of both alcohol and gambling. Despite a friendship with Albert Spalding, Chadwick was scornful of the attempts to have Abner Doubleday declared the inventor of baseball. "He means well", said Chadwick, "but he don't know". Chadwick later willed his baseball library to Spalding. Author William Cook wrote that "Chadwick was at times a bit self-aggrandizing, but his heart was always deeply rooted in looking after the best interest of the game." An 1876 "Chicago Tribune" article attacked Chadwick's status as the father of baseball, saying in part that Chadwick "has had enough experience to have made himself a man of respect had heaven but given him a head ... he proceeded to call himself the '"Father of the Game,' and to assume much on the strength of the title. But he found an unruly child, and one which disinherited him with rapidity and ease." Cook writes that Chadwick may have been a victim of "Western journalism", a sensationalized style of writing. Box scores and statistics. Chadwick is credited with devising the baseball box score (which he adapted from the cricket scorecard) for reporting game events. The first box score appeared in an 1859 issue of the "Clipper". It was a grid with nine rows for players and nine columns for innings. The original box scores also created the often puzzling abbreviation for strikeout as "K" – "K" being the last letter of "struck" in "struck out". Chadwick assigned numbers to each defensive position for scorekeeping purposes, a system that remains in modern baseball scorekeeping. Newspapers had previously tallied runs scored, but Chadwick's 1859 box score looked similar in structure to modern ones. Baseball researcher Bill James credits Chadwick's creation of the box score with his interest in the game, but he criticized Chadwick's omission of the walk from calculation of a player's batting average: ""What they failed to understand is that actually the batter has as much or a little more to do with when the walk occurs as the pitcher does. They ignored that element of it and that did distort the game for a lot of people." The box score was popularized in 1925 when "Baseball Magazine" republished Chadwick's 1859 "Clipper" article. Chadwick is credited with devising statistical measures such as batting average and earned run average (ERA). He felt that batting average was the best representation of a batter's offensive skills. He initially scored walks as errors charged to the pitcher. Walks did not exist in cricket (though there is a penalty run for a wide) and upon learning about them in baseball, he felt that they did not have anything to do with offensive skill. He later removed walks entirely from baseball statistics. ERA originated not in the goal of measuring a pitcher's worth but to differentiate between runs caused by batting skill (hits) and lack of fielding skill (errors). He is also noted as believing fielding range to be a superior skill to avoiding errors. Journalistic style. The following description of a game was written by Henry Chadwick and appeared in his "Base Ball Memoranda". It is typical of his style of sports journalism, and that of his time: A Base Ball tourney had been held in Chicago on July 4, 1867, in which the Excelsiors of that city and the Forest City Club, of Rockford, had been the leading contestants. The former had defeated the Forest City nine in two games, by the very close scores of 45–41 in one, and 28–25 in another, when the Forest Citys were invited to meet the Nationals at Chicago on July 25, a day which proved the most notable of the tour. The contest took place at Dexter Park, before a vast crowd of spectators, the majority of whom looked to see the Nationals have almost a walk-over. In the game A. G. Spalding was pitcher and Ross Barnes shortstop for the Forest City nine; these two afterwards becoming famous as star players of the Boston professional team of the early seventies. Williams was pitcher for the Nationals and Frank Norton catcher. The Nationals took the lead in the first innings by 3 to 2; but in the next two innings they added but five runs to their score, while the Forest Citys added thirteen to theirs, thereby taking the lead by a score of fifteen to eight, to the great surprise of the crowd and the delight of the Rockfords. The Nationals tried hard to recover the lost ground. The final result, however, was the success of the Forest Citys by a score of 29 to 23 in a nine innings game, twice interrupted by rain. Later life. Late in life, Chadwick continued editing the "Spalding Base Ball Guides" and producing a column for the "Brooklyn Daily Eagle". In late 1905, he wrote the editor of "The New York Times" to propose widening of the baseball bat to overcome the advantage that pitchers had established in the game. In his letter, Chadwick noted that some cricket experts had advocated for the narrowing of the cricket bat to bring balance to the advantage that belonged to the batter in that game. In the winter before the 1908 baseball season, Chadwick was struck by an automobile and was bedridden for several weeks. He recovered and attended an exhibition game at the Polo Grounds the week before the season began. He caught a cold while at the game, and the illness worsened when he attended an Opening Day game at Washington Park in Brooklyn. On April 19, Chadwick was moving furniture from the fourth floor of his apartment to the second floor when he fell unconscious. He was diagnosed with pneumonia and heart failure. He awakened briefly and asked about the game between Brooklyn and New York, but he died the next day. Henry Chadwick is interred at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. Legacy. For his contributions to the game of baseball, he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in 1938. He was inducted in the same ceremony as Alexander Cartwright. In 2009, the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) established the Henry Chadwick Award to honor the outstanding contributions of baseball researchers. Bill James and John Thorn are among the award's recipients. A collection of historical baseball items, which featured a letter written by Chadwick on the origins of baseball, sold at auction in 2004 for $310,500. Chadwick was inducted to the Suffolk Sports Hall of Fame during 2020. Chadwick, through the Spalding Athletic Library collection, added "The Ancient History of Base Ball" in 1867 and "Technical Terms of Base Ball" in 1897.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14458

Hail

Hail is a form of solid precipitation. It is distinct from ice pellets (American English "sleet"), though the two are often confused. It consists of balls or irregular lumps of ice, each of which is called a hailstone. Ice pellets generally fall in cold weather, while hail growth is greatly inhibited during low surface temperatures. Unlike other forms of water ice precipitation, such as graupel (which is made of rime ice), ice pellets (which are smaller and translucent), and snow (which consists of tiny, delicately crystalline flakes or needles), hailstones usually measure between and in diameter. The METAR reporting code for hail or greater is GR, while smaller hailstones and graupel are coded GS. Hail is possible within most thunderstorms (as it is produced by cumulonimbus), as well as within of the parent storm. Hail formation requires environments of strong, upward motion of air within the parent thunderstorm (similar to tornadoes) and lowered heights of the freezing level. In the mid-latitudes, hail forms near the interiors of continents, while, in the tropics, it tends to be confined to high elevations. There are methods available to detect hail-producing thunderstorms using weather satellites and weather radar imagery. Hailstones generally fall at higher speeds as they grow in size, though complicating factors such as melting, friction with air, wind, and interaction with rain and other hailstones can slow their descent through Earth's atmosphere. Severe weather warnings are issued for hail when the stones reach a damaging size, as it can cause serious damage to human-made structures, and, most commonly, farmers' crops. Definition. Any thunderstorm which produces hail that reaches the ground is known as a hailstorm. An ice crystal with a diameter of > is considered a hailstone. Hailstones can grow to and weigh more than . Unlike ice pellets, hailstones are layered and can be irregular and clumped together. Hail is composed of transparent ice or alternating layers of transparent and translucent ice at least thick, which are deposited upon the hailstone as it travels through the cloud, suspended aloft by air with strong upward motion until its weight overcomes the updraft and falls to the ground. Although the diameter of hail is varied, in the United States, the average observation of damaging hail is between and golf-ball-sized . Stones larger than are usually considered large enough to cause damage. The Meteorological Service of Canada issues severe thunderstorm warnings when hail that size or above is expected. The US National Weather Service has a diameter threshold, effective January 2010, an increase over the previous threshold of hail. Other countries have different thresholds according to local sensitivity to hail; for instance, grape-growing areas could be adversely impacted by smaller hailstones. Hailstones can be very large or very small, depending on how strong the updraft is: weaker hailstorms produce smaller hailstones than stronger hailstorms (such as supercells), as the more powerful updrafts in a stronger storm can keep larger hailstones aloft. Formation. Hail forms in strong thunderstorm clouds, particularly those with intense updrafts, high liquid-water content, great vertical extent, large water droplets, and where a good portion of the cloud layer is below freezing (). These types of strong updrafts can also indicate the presence of a tornado. The growth rate of hailstones is impacted by factors such as higher elevation, lower freezing zones, and wind shear. Layer nature of the hailstones. Like other precipitation in cumulonimbus clouds, hail begins as water droplets. As the droplets rise and the temperature goes below freezing, they become supercooled water and will freeze on contact with condensation nuclei. A cross-section through a large hailstone shows an onion-like structure. This means that the hailstone is made of thick and translucent layers, alternating with layers that are thin, white and opaque. Former theory suggested that hailstones were subjected to multiple descents and ascents, falling into a zone of humidity and refreezing as they were uplifted. This up and down motion was thought to be responsible for the successive layers of the hailstone. New research, based on theory as well as field study, has shown this is not necessarily true. The storm's updraft, with upwardly directed wind speeds as high as , blows the forming hailstones up the cloud. As the hailstone ascends, it passes into areas of the cloud where the concentration of humidity and supercooled water droplets varies. The hailstone's growth rate changes depending on the variation in humidity and supercooled water droplets that it encounters. The accretion rate of these water droplets is another factor in the hailstone's growth. When the hailstone moves into an area with a high concentration of water droplets, it captures the latter and acquires a translucent layer. Should the hailstone move into an area where mostly water vapor is available, it acquires a layer of opaque white ice. Furthermore, the hailstone's speed depends on its position in the cloud's updraft and its mass. This determines the varying thicknesses of the layers of the hailstone. The accretion rate of supercooled water droplets onto the hailstone depends on the relative velocities between these water droplets and the hailstone itself. This means that generally the larger hailstones will form some distance from the stronger updraft, where they can pass more time growing. As the hailstone grows, it releases latent heat, which keeps its exterior in a liquid phase. Because it undergoes "wet growth", the outer layer is "sticky" (i.e. more adhesive), so a single hailstone may grow by collision with other smaller hailstones, forming a larger entity with an irregular shape. Hail can also undergo "dry growth", in which the latent heat release through freezing is not enough to keep the outer layer in a liquid state. Hail forming in this manner appears opaque due to small air bubbles that become trapped in the stone during rapid freezing. These bubbles coalesce and escape during the "wet growth" mode, and the hailstone is more clear. The mode of growth for a hailstone can change throughout its development, and this can result in distinct layers in a hailstone's cross-section. The hailstone will keep rising in the thunderstorm until its mass can no longer be supported by the updraft. This may take at least 30 minutes, based on the force of the updrafts in the hail-producing thunderstorm, whose top is usually greater than 10 km high. It then falls toward the ground while continuing to grow, based on the same processes, until it leaves the cloud. It will later begin to melt as it passes into air above freezing temperature. Thus, a unique trajectory in the thunderstorm is sufficient to explain the layer-like structure of the hailstone. The only case in which multiple trajectories can be discussed is in a multicellular thunderstorm, where the hailstone may be ejected from the top of the "mother" cell and captured in the updraft of a more intense "daughter" cell. This, however, is an exceptional case. Factors favoring hail. Hail is most common within continental interiors of the mid-latitudes, as hail formation is considerably more likely when the freezing level is below the altitude of . Movement of dry air into strong thunderstorms over continents can increase the frequency of hail by promoting evaporational cooling, which lowers the freezing level of thunderstorm clouds, giving hail a larger volume to grow in. Accordingly, hail is less common in the tropics despite a much higher frequency of thunderstorms than in the mid-latitudes because the atmosphere over the tropics tends to be warmer over a much greater altitude. Hail in the tropics occurs mainly at higher elevations. Hail growth becomes vanishingly small when air temperatures fall below , as supercooled water droplets become rare at these temperatures. Around thunderstorms, hail is most likely within the cloud at elevations above . Between and , 60% of hail is still within the thunderstorm, though 40% now lies within the clear air under the anvil. Below , hail is equally distributed in and around a thunderstorm to a distance of . Climatology. Hail occurs most frequently within continental interiors at mid-latitudes and is less common in the tropics, despite a much higher frequency of thunderstorms than in the mid-latitudes. Hail is also much more common along mountain ranges because mountains force horizontal winds upwards (known as orographic lifting), thereby intensifying the updrafts within thunderstorms and making hail more likely. The higher elevations also result in there being less time available for hail to melt before reaching the ground. One of the more common regions for large hail is across mountainous northern India, which reported one of the highest hail-related death tolls on record in 1888. China also experiences significant hailstorms. Central Europe and southern Australia also experience a lot of hailstorms. Regions where hailstorms frequently occur are southern and western Germany, northern and eastern France, southern and eastern Benelux, and northern Italy. In southeastern Europe, Croatia and Serbia experience frequent occurrences of hail. Some mediterranean countries register the maximum frequency of hail during the Fall season. In North America, hail is most common in the area where Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming meet, known as "Hail Alley". Hail in this region occurs between the months of March and October during the afternoon and evening hours, with the bulk of the occurrences from May through September. Cheyenne, Wyoming is North America's most hail-prone city with an average of nine to ten hailstorms per season. To the north of this area and also just downwind of the Rocky Mountains is the Hailstorm Alley region of Alberta, which also experiences an increased incidence of significant hail events. Short-term detection. Weather radar is a very useful tool to detect the presence of hail-producing thunderstorms. However, radar data has to be complemented by a knowledge of current atmospheric conditions which can allow one to determine if the current atmosphere is conducive to hail development. Modern radar scans many angles around the site. Reflectivity values at multiple angles above ground level in a storm are proportional to the precipitation rate at those levels. Summing reflectivities in the Vertically Integrated Liquid or VIL, gives the liquid water content in the cloud. Research shows that hail development in the upper levels of the storm is related to the evolution of VIL. VIL divided by the vertical extent of the storm, called VIL density, has a relationship with hail size, although this varies with atmospheric conditions and therefore is not highly accurate. Traditionally, hail size and probability can be estimated from radar data by computer using algorithms based on this research. Some algorithms include the height of the freezing level to estimate the melting of the hailstone and what would be left on the ground. Certain patterns of reflectivity are important clues for the meteorologist as well. The three body scatter spike is an example. This is the result of energy from the radar hitting hail and being deflected to the ground, where they deflect back to the hail and then to the radar. The energy took more time to go from the hail to the ground and back, as opposed to the energy that went directly from the hail to the radar, and the echo is further away from the radar than the actual location of the hail on the same radial path, forming a cone of weaker reflectivities. More recently, the polarization properties of weather radar returns have been analyzed to differentiate between hail and heavy rain. The use of differential reflectivity (formula_1), in combination with horizontal reflectivity (formula_2) has led to a variety of hail classification algorithms. Visible satellite imagery is beginning to be used to detect hail, but false alarm rates remain high using this method. Size and terminal velocity. The size of hailstones is best determined by measuring their diameter with a ruler. In the absence of a ruler, hailstone size is often visually estimated by comparing its size to that of known objects, such as coins. Using the objects such as hen's eggs, peas, and marbles for comparing hailstone sizes is imprecise, due to their varied dimensions. The UK organisation, TORRO, also scales for both hailstones and hailstorms. When observed at an airport, METAR code is used within a surface weather observation which relates to the size of the hailstone. Within METAR code, GR is used to indicate larger hail, of a diameter of at least . GR is derived from the French word "grêle". Smaller-sized hail, as well as snow pellets, use the coding of GS, which is short for the French word "grésil". Terminal velocity of hail, or the speed at which hail is falling when it strikes the ground, varies. It is estimated that a hailstone of in diameter falls at a rate of , while stones the size of in diameter fall at a rate of . Hailstone velocity is dependent on the size of the stone, its drag coefficient, the motion of wind it is falling through, collisions with raindrops or other hailstones, and melting as the stones fall through a warmer atmosphere. As hailstones are not perfect spheres, it is difficult to accurately calculate their drag coefficient - and, thus, their speed. Size comparisons to objects. In the United States, the National Weather Service reports hail size as a comparison to everyday objects. Hailstones larger than 1 inch in diameter are denoted as "severe." Hail records. Megacryometeors, large rocks of ice that are not associated with thunderstorms, are not officially recognized by the World Meteorological Organization as "hail," which are aggregations of ice associated with thunderstorms, and therefore records of extreme characteristics of megacryometeors are not given as hail records. Hazards. Hail can cause serious damage, notably to automobiles, aircraft, skylights, glass-roofed structures, livestock, and most commonly, crops. Hail damage to roofs often goes unnoticed until further structural damage is seen, such as leaks or cracks. It is hardest to recognize hail damage on shingled roofs and flat roofs, but all roofs have their own hail damage detection problems. Metal roofs are fairly resistant to hail damage, but may accumulate cosmetic damage in the form of dents and damaged coatings. Hail is one of the most significant thunderstorm hazards to aircraft. When hailstones exceed in diameter, planes can be seriously damaged within seconds. The hailstones accumulating on the ground can also be hazardous to landing aircraft. Hail is a common nuisance to drivers of automobiles, severely denting the vehicle and cracking or even shattering windshields and windows unless parked in a garage or covered with a shielding material. Wheat, corn, soybeans, and tobacco are the most sensitive crops to hail damage. Hail is one of Canada's most expensive hazards. Rarely, massive hailstones have been known to cause concussions or fatal head trauma. Hailstorms have been the cause of costly and deadly events throughout history. One of the earliest known incidents occurred around the 9th century in Roopkund, Uttarakhand, India, where 200 to 600 nomads seem to have died of injuries from hail the size of cricket balls. Accumulations. Narrow zones where hail accumulates on the ground in association with thunderstorm activity are known as hail streaks or hail swaths, which can be detectable by satellite after the storms pass by. Hailstorms normally last from a few minutes up to 15 minutes in duration. Accumulating hail storms can blanket the ground with over of hail, cause thousands to lose power, and bring down many trees. Flash flooding and mudslides within areas of steep terrain can be a concern with accumulating hail. Depths of up to have been reported. A landscape covered in accumulated hail generally resembles one covered in accumulated snow and any significant accumulation of hail has the same restrictive effects as snow accumulation, albeit over a smaller area, on transport and infrastructure. Accumulated hail can also cause flooding by blocking drains, and hail can be carried in the floodwater, turning into a snow-like slush which is deposited at lower elevations. On somewhat rare occasions, a thunderstorm can become stationary or nearly so while prolifically producing hail and significant depths of accumulation do occur; this tends to happen in mountainous areas, such as the July 29, 2010 case of a foot of hail accumulation in Boulder County, Colorado. On June 5, 2015, hail up to four feet deep fell on one city block in Denver, Colorado. The hailstones, described as between the size of bumble bees and ping pong balls, were accompanied by rain and high winds. The hail fell in only the one area, leaving the surrounding area untouched. It fell for one and a half hours between 10:00 pm and 11:30 pm. A meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Boulder said, "It's a very interesting phenomenon. We saw the storm stall. It produced copious amounts of hail in one small area. It's a meteorological thing." Tractors used to clear the area filled more than 30 dump truck loads of hail. Research focused on four individual days that accumulated more than of hail in 30 minutes on the Colorado front range has shown that these events share similar patterns in observed synoptic weather, radar, and lightning characteristics, suggesting the possibility of predicting these events prior to their occurrence. A fundamental problem in continuing research in this area is that, unlike hail diameter, hail depth is not commonly reported. The lack of data leaves researchers and forecasters in the dark when trying to verify operational methods. A cooperative effort between the University of Colorado and the National Weather Service is in progress. The joint project's goal is to enlist the help of the general public to develop a database of hail accumulation depths. Suppression and prevention. During the Middle Ages, people in Europe used to ring church bells and fire cannons to try to prevent hail, and the subsequent damage to crops. Updated versions of this approach are available as modern hail cannons. Cloud seeding after World War II was done to eliminate the hail threat, particularly across the Soviet Union, where it was claimed a 70–98% reduction in crop damage from hail storms was achieved by deploying silver iodide in clouds using rockets and artillery shells. But these effects have not been replicated in randomized trials conducted in the West. Hail suppression programs have been undertaken by 15 countries between 1965 and 2005.

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India

India, officially the Republic of India (ISO: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area; the most populous country as of June 2023; and from the time of its independence in 1947, the world's most populous democracy. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives; its Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand, Myanmar, and Indonesia. Modern humans arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa no later than 55,000 years ago. Their long occupation, initially in varying forms of isolation as hunter-gatherers, has made the region highly diverse, second only to Africa in human genetic diversity. Settled life emerged on the subcontinent in the western margins of the Indus river basin 9,000 years ago, evolving gradually into the Indus Valley Civilisation of the third millennium BCE. By , an archaic form of Sanskrit, an Indo-European language, had diffused into India from the northwest. Its evidence today is found in the hymns of the "Rigveda". Preserved by an oral tradition that was resolutely vigilant, the "Rigveda" records the dawning of Hinduism in India. The Dravidian languages of India were supplanted in the northern and western regions. By , stratification and exclusion by caste had emerged within Hinduism, and Buddhism and Jainism had arisen, proclaiming social orders unlinked to heredity. Early political consolidations gave rise to the loose-knit Maurya and Gupta Empires based in the Ganges Basin. Their collective era was suffused with wide-ranging creativity, but also marked by the declining status of women, and the incorporation of untouchability into an organised system of belief. In South India, the Middle kingdoms exported Dravidian-languages scripts and religious cultures to the kingdoms of Southeast Asia. In the early medieval era, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism became established on India's southern and western coasts. Muslim armies from Central Asia intermittently overran India's northern plains, eventually founding the Delhi Sultanate, and drawing northern India into the cosmopolitan networks of medieval Islam. In the 15th century, the Vijayanagara Empire created a long-lasting composite Hindu culture in south India. In the Punjab, Sikhism emerged, rejecting institutionalised religion. The Mughal Empire, in 1526, ushered in two centuries of relative peace, leaving a legacy of luminous architecture. Gradually expanding rule of the British East India Company followed, turning India into a colonial economy, but also consolidating its sovereignty. British Crown rule began in 1858. The rights promised to Indians were granted slowly, but technological changes were introduced, and modern ideas of education and the public life took root. A pioneering and influential nationalist movement emerged, which was noted for nonviolent resistance and became the major factor in ending British rule. In 1947 the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two independent dominions, a Hindu-majority Dominion of India and a Muslim-majority Dominion of Pakistan, amid large-scale loss of life and an unprecedented migration. India has been a federal republic since 1950, governed through a democratic parliamentary system. It is a pluralistic, multilingual and multi-ethnic society. India's population grew from 361 million in 1951 to almost 1.4 billion in 2022. During the same time, its nominal per capita income increased from US$64 annually to US$2,601, and its literacy rate from 16.6% to 74%. From being a comparatively destitute country in 1951, India has become a fast-growing major economy and a hub for information technology services, with an expanding middle class. India has a space programme with several planned or completed extraterrestrial missions. It is the fourth country to land a craft on the moon and the first to do so within of the Lunar south pole. Indian movies, music, and spiritual teachings play an increasing role in global culture. India has substantially reduced its rate of poverty, though at the cost of increasing economic inequality. India is a nuclear-weapon state, which ranks high in military expenditure. It has disputes over Kashmir with its neighbours, Pakistan and China, unresolved since the mid-20th century. Among the socio-economic challenges India faces are gender inequality, child malnutrition, and rising levels of air pollution. India's land is megadiverse, with four biodiversity hotspots. Its forest cover comprises 21.7% of its area. India's wildlife, which has traditionally been viewed with tolerance in India's culture, is supported among these forests, and elsewhere, in protected habitats. Etymology. According to the "Oxford English Dictionary" (third edition 2009), the name "India" is derived from the Classical Latin "India", a reference to South Asia and an uncertain region to its east. In turn the name "India" derived successively from Hellenistic Greek "India" (" Ἰνδία"), ancient Greek "Indos" (" Ἰνδός"), Old Persian "Hindush" (an eastern province of the Achaemenid Empire), and ultimately its cognate, the Sanskrit "Sindhu", or "river", specifically the Indus River and, by implication, its well-settled southern basin. The ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as "Indoi" (""), which translates as "The people of the Indus". The term "Bharat" (; ), mentioned in both Indian epic poetry and the Constitution of India, is used in its variations by many Indian languages. A modern rendering of the historical name "Bharatavarsha", which applied originally to North India, "Bharat" gained increased currency from the mid-19th century as a native name for India. "Hindustan" () is a Middle Persian name for India that became popular by the 13th century, and was used widely since the era of the Mughal Empire. The meaning of "Hindustan" has varied, referring to a region encompassing present-day northern India and Pakistan or to India in its near entirety. History. Ancient India. By 55,000 years ago, the first modern humans, or "Homo sapiens", had arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa, where they had earlier evolved. The earliest known modern human remains in South Asia date to about 30,000 years ago. After , evidence for domestication of food crops and animals, construction of permanent structures, and storage of agricultural surplus appeared in Mehrgarh and other sites in Balochistan, Pakistan. These gradually developed into the Indus Valley Civilisation, the first urban culture in South Asia, which flourished during in Pakistan and western India. Centred around cities such as Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, Dholavira, and Kalibangan, and relying on varied forms of subsistence, the civilisation engaged robustly in crafts production and wide-ranging trade. During the period , many regions of the subcontinent transitioned from the Chalcolithic cultures to the Iron Age ones. The Vedas, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism, were composed during this period, and historians have analysed these to posit a Vedic culture in the Punjab region and the upper Gangetic Plain. Most historians also consider this period to have encompassed several waves of Indo-Aryan migration into the subcontinent from the north-west. The caste system, which created a hierarchy of priests, warriors, and free peasants, but which excluded indigenous peoples by labelling their occupations impure, arose during this period. On the Deccan Plateau, archaeological evidence from this period suggests the existence of a chiefdom stage of political organisation. In South India, a progression to sedentary life is indicated by the large number of megalithic monuments dating from this period, as well as by nearby traces of agriculture, irrigation tanks, and craft traditions. In the late Vedic period, around the 6th century BCE, the small states and chiefdoms of the Ganges Plain and the north-western regions had consolidated into 16 major oligarchies and monarchies that were known as the "mahajanapadas". The emerging urbanisation gave rise to non-Vedic religious movements, two of which became independent religions. Jainism came into prominence during the life of its exemplar, Mahavira. Buddhism, based on the teachings of Gautama Buddha, attracted followers from all social classes excepting the middle class; chronicling the life of the Buddha was central to the beginnings of recorded history in India. In an age of increasing urban wealth, both religions held up renunciation as an ideal, and both established long-lasting monastic traditions. Politically, by the 3rd century BCE, the kingdom of Magadha had annexed or reduced other states to emerge as the Mauryan Empire. The empire was once thought to have controlled most of the subcontinent except the far south, but its core regions are now thought to have been separated by large autonomous areas. The Mauryan kings are known as much for their empire-building and determined management of public life as for Ashoka's renunciation of militarism and far-flung advocacy of the Buddhist "dhamma". The Sangam literature of the Tamil language reveals that, between and , the southern peninsula was ruled by the Cheras, the Cholas, and the Pandyas, dynasties that traded extensively with the Roman Empire and with West and Southeast Asia. In North India, Hinduism asserted patriarchal control within the family, leading to increased subordination of women. By the 4th and 5th centuries, the Gupta Empire had created a complex system of administration and taxation in the greater Ganges Plain; this system became a model for later Indian kingdoms. Under the Guptas, a renewed Hinduism based on devotion, rather than the management of ritual, began to assert itself. This renewal was reflected in a flowering of sculpture and architecture, which found patrons among an urban elite. Classical Sanskrit literature flowered as well, and Indian science, astronomy, medicine, and mathematics made significant advances. Medieval India. The Indian early medieval age, from , is defined by regional kingdoms and cultural diversity. When Harsha of Kannauj, who ruled much of the Indo-Gangetic Plain from , attempted to expand southwards, he was defeated by the Chalukya ruler of the Deccan. When his successor attempted to expand eastwards, he was defeated by the Pala king of Bengal. When the Chalukyas attempted to expand southwards, they were defeated by the Pallavas from farther south, who in turn were opposed by the Pandyas and the Cholas from still farther south. No ruler of this period was able to create an empire and consistently control lands much beyond their core region. During this time, pastoral peoples, whose land had been cleared to make way for the growing agricultural economy, were accommodated within caste society, as were new non-traditional ruling classes. The caste system consequently began to show regional differences. In the 6th and 7th centuries, the first devotional hymns were created in the Tamil language. They were imitated all over India and led to both the resurgence of Hinduism and the development of all modern languages of the subcontinent. Indian royalty, big and small, and the temples they patronised drew citizens in great numbers to the capital cities, which became economic hubs as well. Temple towns of various sizes began to appear everywhere as India underwent another urbanisation. By the 8th and 9th centuries, the effects were felt in South-East Asia, as South Indian culture and political systems were exported to lands that became part of modern-day Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Brunei, Cambodia, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Indian merchants, scholars, and sometimes armies were involved in this transmission; South-East Asians took the initiative as well, with many sojourning in Indian seminaries and translating Buddhist and Hindu texts into their languages. After the 10th century, Muslim Central Asian nomadic clans, using swift-horse cavalry and raising vast armies united by ethnicity and religion, repeatedly overran South Asia's north-western plains, leading eventually to the establishment of the Islamic Delhi Sultanate in 1206. The sultanate was to control much of North India and to make many forays into South India. Although at first disruptive for the Indian elites, the sultanate largely left its vast non-Muslim subject population to its own laws and customs. By repeatedly repulsing Mongol raiders in the 13th century, the sultanate saved India from the devastation visited on West and Central Asia, setting the scene for centuries of migration of fleeing soldiers, learned men, mystics, traders, artists, and artisans from that region into the subcontinent, thereby creating a syncretic Indo-Islamic culture in the north. The sultanate's raiding and weakening of the regional kingdoms of South India paved the way for the indigenous Vijayanagara Empire. Embracing a strong Shaivite tradition and building upon the military technology of the sultanate, the empire came to control much of peninsular India, and was to influence South Indian society for long afterwards. Early modern India. In the early 16th century, northern India, then under mainly Muslim rulers, fell again to the superior mobility and firepower of a new generation of Central Asian warriors. The resulting Mughal Empire did not stamp out the local societies it came to rule. Instead, it balanced and pacified them through new administrative practices and diverse and inclusive ruling elites, leading to more systematic, centralised, and uniform rule. Eschewing tribal bonds and Islamic identity, especially under Akbar, the Mughals united their far-flung realms through loyalty, expressed through a Persianised culture, to an emperor who had near-divine status. The Mughal state's economic policies, deriving most revenues from agriculture and mandating that taxes be paid in the well-regulated silver currency, caused peasants and artisans to enter larger markets. The relative peace maintained by the empire during much of the 17th century was a factor in India's economic expansion, resulting in greater patronage of painting, literary forms, textiles, and architecture. Newly coherent social groups in northern and western India, such as the Marathas, the Rajputs, and the Sikhs, gained military and governing ambitions during Mughal rule, which, through collaboration or adversity, gave them both recognition and military experience. Expanding commerce during Mughal rule gave rise to new Indian commercial and political elites along the coasts of southern and eastern India. As the empire disintegrated, many among these elites were able to seek and control their own affairs. By the early 18th century, with the lines between commercial and political dominance being increasingly blurred, a number of European trading companies, including the English East India Company, had established coastal outposts. The East India Company's control of the seas, greater resources, and more advanced military training and technology led it to increasingly assert its military strength and caused it to become attractive to a portion of the Indian elite; these factors were crucial in allowing the company to gain control over the Bengal region by 1765 and sideline the other European companies. Its further access to the riches of Bengal and the subsequent increased strength and size of its army enabled it to annex or subdue most of India by the 1820s. India was then no longer exporting manufactured goods as it long had, but was instead supplying the British Empire with raw materials. Many historians consider this to be the onset of India's colonial period. By this time, with its economic power severely curtailed by the British parliament and having effectively been made an arm of British administration, the East India Company began more consciously to enter non-economic arenas, including education, social reform, and culture. Modern India. Historians consider India's modern age to have begun sometime between 1848 and 1885. The appointment in 1848 of Lord Dalhousie as Governor General of the East India Company set the stage for changes essential to a modern state. These included the consolidation and demarcation of sovereignty, the surveillance of the population, and the education of citizens. Technological changes—among them, railways, canals, and the telegraph—were introduced not long after their introduction in Europe. However, disaffection with the company also grew during this time and set off the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Fed by diverse resentments and perceptions, including invasive British-style social reforms, harsh land taxes, and summary treatment of some rich landowners and princes, the rebellion rocked many regions of northern and central India and shook the foundations of Company rule. Although the rebellion was suppressed by 1858, it led to the dissolution of the East India Company and the direct administration of India by the British government. Proclaiming a unitary state and a gradual but limited British-style parliamentary system, the new rulers also protected princes and landed gentry as a feudal safeguard against future unrest. In the decades following, public life gradually emerged all over India, leading eventually to the founding of the Indian National Congress in 1885. The rush of technology and the commercialisation of agriculture in the second half of the 19th century was marked by economic setbacks, and many small farmers became dependent on the whims of far-away markets. There was an increase in the number of large-scale famines, and, despite the risks of infrastructure development borne by Indian taxpayers, little industrial employment was generated for Indians. There were also salutary effects: commercial cropping, especially in the newly canalled Punjab, led to increased food production for internal consumption. The railway network provided critical famine relief, notably reduced the cost of moving goods, and helped nascent Indian-owned industry. After World War I, in which approximately one million Indians served, a new period began. It was marked by British reforms but also repressive legislation, by more strident Indian calls for self-rule, and by the beginnings of a nonviolent movement of non-co-operation, of which Mahatma Gandhi would become the leader and enduring symbol. During the 1930s, slow legislative reform was enacted by the British; the Indian National Congress won victories in the resulting elections. The next decade was beset with crises: Indian participation in World War II, the Congress's final push for non-co-operation, and an upsurge of Muslim nationalism. All were capped by the advent of independence in 1947, but tempered by the partition of India into two states: India and Pakistan. Vital to India's self-image as an independent nation was its constitution, completed in 1950, which put in place a secular and democratic republic. Per the London Declaration, India retained its membership of the Commonwealth, becoming the first republic within it. Economic liberalisation, which began in the 1980s and the collaboration with Soviet Union for technical know-how, has created a large urban middle class, transformed India into one of the world's fastest-growing economies, and increased its geopolitical clout. Yet, India is also shaped by seemingly unyielding poverty, both rural and urban; by religious and caste-related violence; by Maoist-inspired Naxalite insurgencies; and by separatism in Jammu and Kashmir and in Northeast India. It has unresolved territorial disputes with China and with Pakistan. India's sustained democratic freedoms are unique among the world's newer nations; however, in spite of its recent economic successes, freedom from want for its disadvantaged population remains a goal yet to be achieved. Geography. India accounts for the bulk of the Indian subcontinent, lying atop the Indian tectonic plate, a part of the Indo-Australian Plate. India's defining geological processes began 75 million years ago when the Indian Plate, then part of the southern supercontinent Gondwana, began a north-eastward drift caused by seafloor spreading to its south-west, and later, south and south-east. Simultaneously, the vast Tethyan oceanic crust, to its northeast, began to subduct under the Eurasian Plate. These dual processes, driven by convection in the Earth's mantle, both created the Indian Ocean and caused the Indian continental crust eventually to under-thrust Eurasia and to uplift the Himalayas. Immediately south of the emerging Himalayas, plate movement created a vast crescent-shaped trough that rapidly filled with river-borne sediment and now constitutes the Indo-Gangetic Plain. The original Indian plate makes its first appearance above the sediment in the ancient Aravalli range, which extends from the Delhi Ridge in a southwesterly direction. To the west lies the Thar Desert, the eastern spread of which is checked by the Aravallis. The remaining Indian Plate survives as peninsular India, the oldest and geologically most stable part of India. It extends as far north as the Satpura and Vindhya ranges in central India. These parallel chains run from the Arabian Sea coast in Gujarat in the west to the coal-rich Chota Nagpur Plateau in Jharkhand in the east. To the south, the remaining peninsular landmass, the Deccan Plateau, is flanked on the west and east by coastal ranges known as the Western and Eastern Ghats; the plateau contains the country's oldest rock formations, some over one billion years old. Constituted in such fashion, India lies to the north of the equator between 6° 44′ and 35° 30′ north latitude and 68° 7′ and 97° 25′ east longitude. India's coastline measures in length; of this distance, belong to peninsular India and to the Andaman, Nicobar, and Lakshadweep island chains. According to the Indian naval hydrographic charts, the mainland coastline consists of the following: 43% sandy beaches; 11% rocky shores, including cliffs; and 46% mudflats or marshy shores. India has hosted or co-hosted several international sporting events: the 1951 and 1982 Asian Games; the 1987, 1996, and 2011 Cricket World Cup tournaments; the 2003 Afro-Asian Games; the 2006 ICC Champions Trophy; the 2009 World Badminton Championships; the 2010 Hockey World Cup; the 2010 Commonwealth Games; and the 2017 FIFA U-17 World Cup. Major international sporting events held annually in India include the Maharashtra Open, the Mumbai Marathon, the Delhi Half Marathon, and the Indian Masters. The first Formula 1 Indian Grand Prix featured in late 2011 but has been discontinued from the F1 season calendar since 2014. India has traditionally been the dominant country at the South Asian Games. An example of this dominance is the basketball competition where the Indian team won four out of five tournaments to date. Bibliography. Overview Etymology History Geography Biodiversity Politics Foreign relations and military Economy Demographics Art Culture External links. Government General information

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Music of India

Owing to India's vastness and diversity, Indian music encompasses numerous genres in multiple varieties and forms which include classical music, folk, rock, and pop. It has a history spanning several millennia and developed over several geo-locations spanning the sub-continent. Music in India began as an integral part of socio-religious life. History. Pre-history. Paleolithic. The 30,000-year-old paleolithic and neolithic cave paintings at the UNESCO world heritage site at Bhimbetka rock shelters in Madhya Pradesh show a type of dance. Mesolithic and chalcolithic cave art of Bhimbetka illustrates musical instruments such as Gongs, Bowed Lyre, daf etc. Neolithic. Chalcolithic era (4000 BCE onward) narrow bar shaped polished stone celts like music instruments, one of the earlier musical instrument in India, were excavated at Sankarjang in the Angul district of Odisha. There is historical evidence in the form of sculptural evidence, i.e. musical instruments, singing and dancing postures of damsels in the Ranigumpha Caves in Khandagiri and Udayagiri at Bhubaneswar. Indus River Valley Civilization. Dancing Girl sculpture (2500 BCE) was found from the Indus Valley civilization (IVC) site. There are IVC-era paintings on pottery of a man with a dhol hanging from his neck and a woman holding a drum under her left arm. Vedic and ancient era. Vedas (c. 1500 – c. 800 BCE Vedic period) document rituals with performing arts and play. For example, Shatapatha Brahmana (~800–700 BCE) has verses in chapter 13.2 written in the form of a play between two actors. "Tala" or "taal" is an ancient music concept traceable to Vedic era texts of Hinduism, such as the "Samaveda" and methods for singing the Vedic hymns. Smriti (500 BCE to 100 BCE ) post-vedic Hindu texts include Valmiki's Ramayana (500 BCE to 100 BCE) which mentions dance and music (dance by Apsaras such as Urvashi, Rambha, Menaka, Tilottama Panchāpsaras, and Ravana's wives excelling in "nrityageeta" or "singing and dancing" and "nritavaditra" or "playing musical instruments"), music and singing by Gandharvas, several string instruments (vina, tantri, bīn, vipanci and "vallaki" similar to "veena"), wind instruments (shankha, venu and "venugana" – likely a mouth organ made by tying several flutes together), raga (including "kaushika" such as "raag kaushik dhwani"), vocal registers (seven "svara" or "sur", "ana" or "ekashurti" drag note, "murchana" the regulated rise and fall of voice in "matra" and "tripramana" three-fold "teen taal" "laya" such as "drut" or quick, "madhya" or middle, and "vilambit" or slow), poetry recitation in Bala Kanda and also in Uttara Kanda by Luv and Kusha in "marga" style. Starting from the earliest known work Tholkappiyam (500 BCE), there are several references to music and "Panns" in the ancient pre-Sangam and Sangam literature starting from the earliest known work Tholkappiyam (500 BCE). Among Sangam literature, "Mathuraikkanci" refers to women singing "sevvazhi pann" to invoke the mercy of God during childbirth. In "Tolkappiyam", the five landscapes of the Sangam literature had each an associated "Pann", each describing the mood of the song associated with that landscape. Among the numerous "panns" that find mention in the ancient Tamil literature are, "Ambal Pann", which is suitable to be played on the flute, "sevvazhi pann" on the "Yazh" (lute), "Nottiram" and "Sevvazhi" expressing pathos, the captivating "Kurinji pann" and the invigorating "Murudappann". Pann() is the melodic mode used by the Tamil people in their music since the ancient times. The ancient "panns" over centuries evolved first into a pentatonic scale and later into the seven note Carnatic Sargam. But from the earliest times, Tamil Music is heptatonic and known as Ezhisai (ஏழிசை). sanskrit saint-poet Jayadeva, who was the great composer and illustrious master of classical music, shaped "Odra-Magadhi" style music and had great influence on Odissi Sangita. Śārṅgadeva composed Sangita-Ratnakara, one of the most important Sanskrit musicological texts from India, which is regarded as the definitive text in both Hindustani music and Carnatic music traditions of Indian classical music. Assamese poet Madhava Kandali, writer of Saptakanda Ramayana, lists several instruments in his version of "Ramayana", such as mardala, khumuchi, bhemachi, dagar, gratal, ramtal, tabal, jhajhar, jinjiri, bheri mahari, tokari, dosari, kendara, dotara, vina, rudra-vipanchi, etc. (meaning that these instruments existed since his time in the 14th century or earlier). The Indian system of notation is perhaps the world's oldest and most elaborate. Medieval era. In the early 14th century under the Khiljis, there were concerts and competitions between Hindustani and Carnatic musicians. From the 16th century onwards, treatises written on music were Sangitamava Chandrika, Gita Prakasha, Sangita Kalalata and Natya Manorama. Twentieth century. In the early 1960s Jazz pioneers such as John Coltrane and George Harrison collaborated with Indian instrumentalists and started to use Indian instruments such as sitar in their songs. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, rock and roll fusions with Indian music were well known throughout Europe and North America. In the late 1980s, Indian-British artists fused Indian and Western traditions to make the Asian Underground. In the new millennium, American hip-hop has featured Indian filmi and bhangra. Mainstream hip-hop artists have sampled songs from Bollywood movies and have collaborated with Indian artists, such as Timbaland's "Indian Flute" In 2010, Laura Marling and Mumford and Sons collaborated with the Dharohar Project. Classical music. The two main traditions of Indian classical music are Carnatic music, which is practised predominantly in the peninsular (southern) regions, and Hindustani music, which is found in the northern, eastern and central regions. The basic concepts of this music includes "Shruti" (microtones), "Swaras" (notes), "Alankar" (ornamentations), "Raga" (melodies improvised from basic grammars), and "Tala" (rhythmic patterns used in percussion). Its tonal system divides the octave into 22 segments called Shrutis, not all equal but each roughly equal to a quarter of a whole tone of the Western music. Both the classical music are standing on the fundamentals of The seven notes of Indian Classical music. These seven notes are also called as Sapta svara or Sapta Sur. These seven svaras are Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha and Ni respectively. These Sapta Svaras are spelt as Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha and Ni, but these are shortforms of Shadja (षड्ज), Rishabha (ऋषभ), Gandhara (गान्धार), Madhyama (मध्यम), Panchama (पंचम), Dhaivata (धैवत) and Nishada (निषाद) respectively. These are also equivalent to Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti. Only these seven svaras built up the Hindustani classical music and the Carnatic classical music. These seven svaras are the fundamentals of a raga. This seven svaras without any variations in them, are called as Shuddha svaras. Variations in these svaras cause them to be and svaras. All the other svaras except Sadja(Sa) and Pancham (Pa) can be or svaras but Sa and Pa are always svaras. And hence svaras Sa and Pa are called Achal Svaras, since these svaras don't move from their original position while svaras Ra, Ga, Ma, Dha, Ni are called Chal Svaras, since these svaras move from their original position. Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha, Ni - Svaras Re, Ga, Dha, Ni - Komal Svaras Ma - Svaras Sangeet Natak Academy recognizes eight classical dance and music forms, namely Bharatanatyam, Kathak, Kuchipudi, Odissi, Kathakali, Sattriya, Manipuri and Mohiniyattam. Additionally, India's Ministry of culture also includes Chhau in its classical list. Carnatic music. Carnatic music can be traced to the 14th - 15th centuries AD and thereafter. It originated in South India during the rule of Vijayanagar Empire through the Keerthanas composed by Purandara Dasa. Like Hindustani music, it is melodic, with improvised variations, but tends to have more fixed compositions. It consists of a composition with improvised embellishments added to the piece in the forms of "Raga Alapana", "Kalpanaswaram", "Neraval" and, in the case of more advanced students, Ragam Thanam Pallavi. The main emphasis is on the vocals as most compositions are written to be sung, and even when played on instruments, they are meant to be performed in a singing style (known as "gāyaki"). Around 300 ragams are in use today. Annamayya is the first known composer in Carnatic music. He is widely regarded as the Andhra Pada kavitā Pitāmaha (Godfather of Telugu song-writing). Purandara Dasa is considered the father of Carnatic music, while the later musicians Tyagaraja, Shyama Shastry and Muthuswami Dikshitar are considered the trinity of Carnatic music. Noted artists of Carnatic music include Tiger Varadachariyar, M D Ramanathan, Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar (the father of the current concert format), Palghat Mani Iyer, Madurai Mani Iyer, Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, Nedunuri Krishnamurthy Alathur Brothers, MS Subbulakshmi, Lalgudi Jayaraman, Balamuralikrishna, TN Seshagopalan, K J Yesudas, N. Ramani, Umayalpuram K. Sivaraman, Sanjay Subrahmanyan, TM Krishna, Bombay Jayashri, T S Nandakumar, Aruna Sairam, Mysore Manjunath, Every December, the city of Chennai in India has its eight-week-long Music Season, which is the world's largest cultural event. Carnatic music has served as the foundation for most music in South India, including folk music, festival music and has also extended its influence to film music in the past 100–150 years or so. Hindustani music. The tradition of Hindustani music dates back to Vedic times where the hymns in the Sama Veda, an ancient religious text, were sung as Samagana and not chanted. It diverged from Carnatic music around the 13th–14th centuries CE, primarily due to Islamic influences. Developing a strong and diverse tradition over several centuries, it has contemporary traditions established primarily in India but also in Pakistan and Bangladesh. In contrast to Carnatic music, the other main Indian classical music tradition originating from the South, Hindustani music was not only influenced by ancient Hindu musical traditions, historical Vedic philosophy and native Indian sounds but also enriched by the Persian performance practices of the Mughals. Classical genres are dhrupad, dhamar, khyal, tarana and sadra, and there are also several semi-classical forms. The root of the name C(K)arnatic music is derived from Sanskrit. Karnam means ears and Atakam means that which is sweet or that which lingers on. Light classical music. There are many types of music which comes under the category of light classical or semi-classical. Some of the forms are Thumri, Dadra, Bhajan, Ghazal, Chaiti, Kajri, Tappa, Natya Sangeet and Qawwali. These forms place emphasis on explicitly seeking emotion from the audience, as opposed to the classical forms. Folk music. Tamang Selo. This is a musical genre of the Tamang people and popular amongst the Nepali speaking community in West Bengal, Sikkim, India and around the world. It is accompanied by Tamang instruments, the Madal, Damphu and Tungna, although nowadays musicians have taken to modern instruments. A Tamang Selo can be catchy and lively or slow and melodious, and is usually sung to convey sorrow, love, happiness or day-to-day incidents and stories of folklore. Hira Devi Waiba is hailed as the pioneer of Nepali folk songs and Tamang Selo. Her song 'Chura ta Hoina Astura' (चुरा त होइन अस्तुरा) is said to be the first Tamang Selo ever recorded. She has sung nearly 300 songs through her musical career spanning 40 years. After Waiba's death in 2011, her son Satya Aditya Waiba (producer/manager) and Navneet Aditya Waiba (singer) collaborated and re-recorded her most iconic songs and released an album titled "Ama Lai Shraddhanjali" (आमालाई श्रद्धाञ्जली-Tribute to Mother). The duo are the only individuals in the Nepali folk music genre who produce authentic traditional Nepali folk songs without adulteration or modernisation. Bhangra and Giddha. Bhangra (Punjabi: ਭੰਗੜਾ) is a form of dance-oriented folk music of Punjab. The present musical style is derived from non-traditional musical accompaniment to the riffs of Punjab called by the same name. The female dance of Punjab region is known as Giddha (Punjabi: ਗਿੱਧਾ). Bihu and Borgeet. Bihu () is the festival of New Year of Assam falling on mid-April. This is a festival of nature and mother earth where the first day is for the cows and buffaloes. The second day of the festival is for the man. Bihu dances and songs accompanied by traditional drums and wind instruments are an essential part of this festival. Bihu songs are energetic and with beats to welcome the festive spring. Assamese drums (dhol), Pepa(usually made from buffalo horn), Gogona are major instruments used. Borgeets () are lyrical songs that are set to specific ragas but not necessarily to any tala. These songs, composed by Srimanta Sankardeva and Madhavdeva in the 15th–16th centuries, are used to begin prayer services in monasteries, e.g. Satra and Namghar associated with the Ekasarana Dharma; and they also belong to the repertoire of Music of Assam outside the religious context. They are a lyrical strain that express the religious sentiments of the poets reacting to different situations, and differ from other lyrics associated with the Ekasarana Dharma. Prominent instruments used in borgeets are "Negera,"Taal, Khols etc. Dandiya. Dandiya or Raas is a form of Gujarati cultural dance that is performed with sticks. The present musical style is derived from the traditional musical accompaniment to the folk dance. It is practiced mainly in the state of Gujarat. There is also another type of dance and music associated with Dandiya/Raas called Garba. Gaana. Gaana is a rap-like "collection of rhythms, beats and sensibilities native to the Dalits of Chennai." It evolved over the past two centuries, combining influences from the "siddhars" (tantric adepts) of ancient Tamilakam, Tamil Sufi saints, and more. Gaana songs are performed at weddings, stage shows, political rallies, and funerals. Performers sing about a wide range of topics, but the essence of gaana is said to be "angst and melancholy" based in life's struggles. In the past few decades, the genre has entered the music of the mainstream Tamil film industry and gained popularity. Contemporary gaana bands like The Casteless Collective are bringing the genre to new audiences while using it for social activism, especially against caste discrimination. Haryanvi. Haryana folk music has two main forms: classical folk music of Haryana and desi folk music of Haryana (country music of Haryana). They take the form of ballads and pangs of parting of lovers, valor and bravery, harvest and happiness. Haryana is rich in musical tradition and even places have been named after ragas, for example Charkhi Dadri district has many villages named as Nandyam, Sarangpur, Bilawala, Brindabana, Todi, Asaveri, Jaisri, Malakoshna, Hindola, Bhairvi and Gopi Kalyana. Himachali. Himachal's folk music varies according to the event or the festival. One of the most popular style of music is "Nati Music," where "nati" being the traditional dance that is done on the song. Nati Music is usually celebratory, and done in fairs or other occasions such as marriages. Jhumair and Domkach. Jhumair and Domkach are Nagpuri folk music. The musical instruments used in folk music and dance are Dhol, Mandar, Bansi, Nagara, Dhak, Shehnai, Khartal, Narsinga etc. Lavani. Lavani comes from the word "Lavanya" which means "beauty". This is one of the most popular forms of dance and music that is practiced all over Maharashtra. It has, in fact, become a necessary part of the Maharashtrian folk dance performances. Traditionally, the songs are sung by female artists, but male artists may occasionally sing Lavanis. The dance format associated with Lavani is known as Tamasha. Lavani is a combination of traditional song and dance, which particularly performed to the enchanting beats of 'Dholaki', a drum-like instrument. The dance is performed by attractive women wearing nine-yard saris. They are sung in a quick tempo. Lavani originated in the arid region of Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. Manipuri. Music of Manipur and Manipuri dance are heritage of Manipuri people. According to tradition of the Manipuri people in the Himalayan foothills and valleys connecting India to Burma, they are the Gandharvas (celestial musicians and dancers) in the Vedic texts, and historic texts of Manipuri people calls the region as "Gandharva-desa". The Vedic "Usha", the goddess of the dawn, is a cultural motif for Manipuri women, and in the Indian tradition, it was "Usha" who created and taught the art of feminine dance to girls. This oral tradition of women's dance is celebrated as "Chingkheirol" in the Manipuri tradition. The ancient Sanskrit texts such as the Mahabharata epic mentions Manipur, where Arjuna meets and falls in love with Chitragada. Dance is called "Jagoi" in a major Meitei language of the region and it traces a long tradition in Manipur. Lai Haraoba dance likely has ancient roots and shares many similarities with dance postures of Nataraja and his legendary disciple called Tandu (locally called "Tangkhu"). Similarly, as does the dance related to commoner "Khamba" and princess "Thoibi" – who perform as pan-Indian Shiva and Parvati, in the legendary tragic love story of Khamba-Thoibi found in the Manipuri epic "Moirang Parba". Marfa music. Hadrani Marfa, or simply Marfa music, introduced during the 18th century in Hyderabad State by the East African Siddi community from Afro-Arab music of Hadhramawt in Yemen, is a form of celebratory rhythmic music and dance among the Hyderabadi Muslims, played with high tempo using Marfa instrument, daff, Dhol, sticks, steel pots and wooden strips called "thapi". Mizo. Mizo Music originated when couplets were developed during the settlement of Thantlang in Burma between 1300 and 1400 CE, and folk songs developed during this period were dar hla (songs on gong); Bawh hla (War chants), Hlado (Chants of hunting); Nauawih hla (Cradle songs) A greater development of songs can be seen from the settlement of Lentlang in Burma, estimated between late 15th to 17th Century CE. The Mizo occupied the present Mizoram from the late 17th century. The pre-colonial period, that is from the 18th to 19th century was another important era in the history of Mizo folk literature. Prior to the annexation by the British Government, the Mizo occupied the present Mizoram for two centuries. In comparison with the folk songs of Thantlang and Lentlang settlement, the songs of this period are more developed in its number, form and contents. The languages are more polished and the flows also better. Most of the songs of this period are named after the composers. Odissi. Jayadeva, the 12th century sanskrit saint-poet, the great composer and illustrious master of classical music, has immense contribution to Odissi music. During his time Odra-Magadhi style music got shaped and achieved its classical status. He indicated the classical ragas prevailing at that time in which these were to be sung. Prior to that there was the tradition of Chhanda which was simple in musical outline. From the 16th century onwards, treatises on music were Sangitamava Chandrika, Gita Prakasha, Sangita Kalalata and Natya Manorama. A couple of treatise namely, "Sangita Sarani" and "Sangi Narayana", were also written in the early path of the 19th century. Odissi Sangita comprises four classes of music namely Dhruvapada, Chitrapada, Chitrakala and Panchal, described in the ancient oriya music texts. The chief Odissi and Shokabaradi. Odissi Sangita (music) is a synthesis of four classes of music, i.e. Dhruvapada, Chitrapada, Chitrakala and Panchal, described in the above-mentioned texts. The great exponents of Odissi music in modern times are the Late Singhari Shyamasundara Kar, Markandeya Mahapatra, Kashinath Pujapanda, Balakrushna Das, Gopal Chandra Panda, Ramhari Das, Bhubaneswari Misra, Shymamani Devi and Sunanda Patnaik, who have achieved eminence in classical music. Rabindra Sangeet (music of Bengal). Rabindra Sangeet ( "Robindro Shonggit", ), also known as Tagore songs, are songs written and composed by Rabindranath Tagore. They have distinctive characteristics in the music of Bengal, popular in India and Bangladesh. "Sangeet" means music, "Rabindra Sangeet" means music (or more aptly songs) of Rabindra. Tagore wrote some 2,230 songs in Bengali, now known as "Rabindra Sangeet", using classical music and traditional folk music as sources. Tagore wrote national anthems of India and Bangladesh, and influenced the national anthem of Sri Lanka. Rajasthani. Rajasthan has a very diverse cultural collection of musician castes, including Langas, Sapera, Bhopa, Jogi and Manganiyar (lit. "the ones who ask/beg"). "Rajasthan Diary" quotes it as a soulful, full-throated music with harmonious diversity. The melodies of Rajasthan come from a variety of instruments. The stringed variety includes the Sarangi, Ravanahatha, Kamayacha, Morsing and Ektara. Percussion instruments come in all shapes and sizes from the huge Nagaras and Dhols to the tiny Damrus. The Daf and Chang are a favorite of Holi (the festival of colours) revelers. Flutes and bagpipers come in local flavors such as Shehnai, Poongi, Algoza, Tarpi, Been and Bankia. Rajasthani music is derived from a combination of string instruments, percussion instruments and wind instruments accompanied by renditions of folk singers. It enjoys a respectable presence in Bollywood music as well. Sufi folk rock / Sufi rock. Sufi folk rock contains elements of modern hard rock and traditional folk music with Sufi poetry. While it was pioneered by bands like Junoon in Pakistan it became very popular, especially in northern India. In 2005, Rabbi Shergill released a Sufi rock song called "Bulla Ki Jaana", which became a chart-topper in India and Pakistan. More recently, the Sufi folk rock song "Bulleya" from the 2016 film "Ae Dil Hai Mushkil" became a mammoth hit. Uttarakhandi. Uttarakhandi folk music had its root in the lap of nature and the hilly terrain of the region. Common themes in the folk music of Uttarakhand are the beauty of nature, various seasons, festivals, religious traditions, cultural practices, folk stories, historical characters, and the bravery of ancestors. The folk songs of Uttarakhand are a reflection of the cultural heritage and the way people live their lives in the Himalayas. Musical instruments used in Uttarakhand music include the Dhol, Damoun, Hudka, Turri, Ransingha, Dholki, Daur, Thali, Bhankora and Masakbhaja. Tabla and Harmonium are also sometimes used, especially in recorded folk music from the 1960s onwards. Generic Indian and global musical instruments have been incorporated in modern popular folks by singers like Mohan Upreti, Narendra Singh Negi, Gopal Babu Goswami, and Chandra Singh Rahi. Popular music in India. Dance music. Dance music, more popularly called "DJ music", is mostly played at nightclubs, parties, weddings and other celebrations. It is more popular among youths. It is mostly based on Indian movie music as well as Indian pop music, both of which tend to borrow and modernise the classical and folk dance songs with modern instruments and other innovations. Movie music. The biggest form of Indian popular music is filmi, or songs from Indian films, it makes up 72% of the music sales in India. The film industry of India supported music by according reverence to classical music while utilising the western orchestration to support Indian melodies. Music composers, like R. D. Burman, Shankar Jaikishan, S. D. Burman, Laxmikant–Pyarelal, Madan Mohan, Bhupen Hazarika, Naushad Ali, O. P. Nayyar, Hemant Kumar, C. Ramchandra, Salil Chowdhury, Kalyanji Anandji, Ilaiyaraaja, A. R. Rahman, Jatin–Lalit, Anu Malik, Nadeem-Shravan, Harris Jayaraj, Himesh Reshammiya, Vidyasagar, Shankar–Ehsaan–Loy, Salim–Sulaiman, Pritam, M.S. Viswanathan, K. V. Mahadevan, Ghantasala and S. D. Batish employed the principles of harmony while retaining classical and folk flavor. Reputed names in the domain of Indian classical music like Ravi Shankar, Vilayat Khan, Ali Akbar Khan and Ram Narayan have also composed music for films. Traditionally, in Indian films, the voice for the songs is not provided by the actors, they are provided by the professional playback singers, to sound more developed, melodious and soulful, while actors lipsynch on the screen. In the past, only a handful of singers provided the voice in films. These include Kishore Kumar, K. J. Yesudas, Mohammed Rafi, Mukesh, S.P. Balasubrahmanyam, T.M. Soundararajan, Hemant Kumar, Manna Dey, P. Susheela, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhonsle, K.S. Chitra, Geeta Dutt, S. Janaki, Shamshad Begum, Suraiya, Noorjahan and Suman Kalyanpur. Recent playback singers include Udit Narayan, Kumar Sanu, Kailash Kher, Alisha Chinai, KK, Shaan, SPB Charan, Madhushree, Shreya Ghoshal, Nihira Joshi, Kavita Krishnamurthy, Hariharan (singer), Ilaiyaraaja, A.R. Rahman, Sonu Nigam, Sukhwinder Singh, Kunal Ganjawala, Anu Malik, Sunidhi Chauhan, Anushka Manchanda, Raja Hasan, Arijit Singh and Alka Yagnik. Rock bands like Indus Creed, Indian Ocean, Silk Route and Euphoria have gained mass appeal with the advent of cable music television. Pop music. Indian pop music is based on an amalgamation of Indian folk and classical music, and modern beats from different parts of the world. Pop music really started in the South Asian region with the playback singer Ahmed Rushdi's song ‘"Ko Ko Korina"’ in 1966, then by Kishore Kumar in the early 1970s. After that, much of Indian Pop music comes from the Indian Film Industry, and until the 1990s, few singers like Usha Uthup, Sharon Prabhakar, and Peenaz Masani outside it were popular. Since then, pop singers in the latter group have included Daler Mehndi, Baba Sehgal, Alisha Chinai, KK, Shantanu Mukherjee a.k.a. Shaan, Sagarika, Colonial Cousins (Hariharan, Lesle Lewis), Lucky Ali, and Sonu Nigam, and music composers like Zila Khan or Jawahar Wattal, who made top selling albums with, Daler Mehndi, Shubha Mudgal, Baba Sehgal, Shweta Shetty and Hans Raj Hans. Besides those listed above, popular Indi-pop singers include Sanam (Band), Gurdas Maan, Sukhwinder Singh, Papon, Zubeen Garg, Raghav Sachar Rageshwari, Vandana Vishwas, Devika Chawla, Bombay Vikings, Asha Bhosle, Sunidhi Chauhan, Anushka Manchanda, Bombay Rockers, Anu Malik, Jazzy B, Malkit Singh, Raghav, Jay Sean, Juggy D, Rishi Rich, Udit Swaraj, Sheila Chandra, Bally Sagoo, Punjabi MC, Beno, Bhangra Knights, Mehnaz, Sanober and Vaishali Samant. Recently, Indian pop has taken an interesting turn with the "remixing" of songs from past Indian movie songs, new beats being added to them. Patriotic music. Patriotic feelings have been instigated within Indians through music since the era of the freedom struggle. Jana Gana Mana, the national anthem of India by Rabindranath Tagore, is largely credited for uniting India through music and Vande Mataram by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay as the national song of India. Patriotic songs were also written in many regional languages such as "Biswo Bizoyi No Zuwan " in Assamese. Post-independence songs such as Aye mere watan ke logo, Mile Sur Mera Tumhara, Ab Tumhare Hawale Watan Saathiyo, Maa Tujhe Salaam by A.R. Rahman have been responsible for consolidating feelings of national integration and unity in diversity. Western music adoption in India. Western world's music has been adopted in India, by creating fusion music in India which in turn have enriched and created global genres of western music. Goa trance. Goa trance, an electronic music style that originated during the late 1980s in Goa in India, has funky, drone-like basslines, similar to the techno minimalism of 21st century psytrance. Psychedelic trance developed from Goa trance. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Goa became popular as a hippie capital, which resulted in evolution of Goa trance throughout the 1980s by mixing the spiritual culture of India with western musical elements of industrial music, new beat and electronic body music (EBM), and the actual Goa trance style became established by the early 1990s. Jazz and blues. Jazz in India was first performed regularly in the metropoles Calcutta and Bombay in the early or middle 1920s. From the 1930s to the 1950s is called as the golden age of jazz in India, when jazz musicians like Leon Abbey, Crickett Smith, Creighton Thompson, Ken Mac, Roy Butler, Teddy Weatherford (who recorded with Louis Armstrong), and Rudy Jackson who toured India to avoid the racial discrimination they faced in the United States. In the 1930s, jazz musicians played in the nightclubs of Bombay, such as at the Taj Mahal hotel ballroom, many of these musicians were Goans most whom also worked in the Bollywood film industry and were responsible for the introduction of genres like jazz and swing to Hindi film music. Indian blues is less prevalent in India than jazz. Interest in the blues in India has only been incidental due to the shared ancestry with jazz. Rock and metal music. Indian rock. The rock music scene in India is small compared to the filmi or fusion musicality scenes. Rock music in India has its origins in the 1960s when international stars such as the Beatles visited India and brought their music with them. These artists' collaboration with Indian musicians such as Ravi Shankar and Zakir Hussain have led to the development of raga rock. International shortwave radio stations such as The Voice of America, BBC, and Radio Ceylon played a major part in bringing Western pop, folk, and rock music to the masses. Indian rock bands began to gain prominence only much later, around the late 1980s. It was around this time that the rock band Indus Creed formerly known as The Rock Machine got itself noticed on the international stage with hits like "Rock N Roll Renegade". Other bands quickly followed. With the introduction of MTV in the early 1990s, Indians began to be exposed to various forms of rock such as grunge and speed metal, impacting the national scene. The cities of the North Eastern Region, mainly Guwahati and Shillong, Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore have emerged as major melting pots for rock and metal enthusiasts. Bangalore has been the hub for rock and metal movement in India. Some prominent bands include Nicotine, Voodoo Child, Indian Ocean, Kryptos, Thermal and a Quarter, Demonic Resurrection, Motherjane, Avial, Bloodywood and Parikrama. Rock-specific labels such as DogmaTone Records and Eastern Fare Music Foundation have since emerged, supporting Indian rock acts. From Central India, Nicotine, an Indore-based metal band, has been credited with pioneering metal music in the region. Raga rock. Raga rock is rock or pop music with a heavy Indian influence, either in its construction, its timbre, or its use of instrumentation, such as the sitar and tabla. Raga and other forms of classical Indian music began to influence many rock groups during the 1960s; most famously the Beatles. The first traces of "raga rock" can be heard on songs such as "See My Friends" by the Kinks and the Yardbirds' "Heart Full of Soul", released the previous month, featured a sitar-like riff by guitarist Jeff Beck. The Beatles song "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)", which first appeared on the band's 1965 album Rubber Soul, was the first western pop song to actually incorporate the sitar (played by lead guitarist George Harrison). The Byrds' March 1966 single "Eight Miles High" and its B-side "Why" were also influential in originating the musical subgenre. Indeed, the term "raga rock" was coined by The Byrds' publicist in the press releases for the single and was first used in print by journalist Sally Kempton in her review of "Eight Miles High" for The Village Voice. George Harrison's interest in Indian music, popularised the genre in the mid-1960s with songs such as "Love You To", "Tomorrow Never Knows" (credited to Lennon-McCartney), "Within You Without You" and "The Inner Light". The rock acts of the sixties both in turn influenced British and American groups and Indian acts to develop a later form of Indian rock. Western classical music. Despite more than a century of exposure to Western classical music and two centuries of British colonialism, classical music in India has never gained significant popularity.. However, Western classical music education has improved with the help of certain institutions in India, including KM Music Conservatory (founded by Oscar-winning Composer A.R. Rahman), Calcutta School of Music, Eastern Fare Music Foundation, In 1930, Mehli Mehta set up the Bombay Symphony Orchestra. His son Zubin Mehta has enjoyed a long international conducting career. The Bombay Chamber Orchestra (BCO) was founded in 1962. Delhi School of Music, Delhi Music Academy, Guitarmonk and others supporting Western classical music.. In 2006, the Symphony Orchestra of India was founded, housed at the NCPA in Mumbai. It is today the only professional symphony orchestra in India and presents two concert seasons per year, with world-renowned conductors and soloists. Globalization of Indian music. As per UN, the Indian diaspora is world's largest overseas diaspora with 17.5 million Indian-origin international migrants across the world, who help spread the global soft power of India. Influence on other genres. Ancient influence on Southeast Asian music genres. With expansion of Indosphere cultural influence of Greater India, through transmission of Hinduism in Southeast Asia and the Silk Road transmission of Buddhism leading to Indianization of Southeast Asia through formation of non-Indian southeast Asian native Indianized kingdoms which adopted sanskritized language and other Indian elements such as the honorific titles, naming of people, naming of places, mottos of organisations and educational institutes as well as adoption of Indian architecture, martial arts, Indian music and dance, traditional Indian clothing, and Indian cuisine, a process which has also been aided by the ongoing historic expansion of Indian diaspora. Indonesian and Malay music. In Indonesian and Malaysian music, the Dangdut a genre of folk music is partly derived and fused from Hindustani music. It is a very popular because of its melodious instrumentation and vocals. Dangdut features a tabla and gendang beat. Indonesians dance in somewhat similar to the ghoomar while listening to dangdut music, but in a much slower version. Thai music. Thai literature and drama draws great inspiration from Indian arts and Hindu legends. Epic of Ramayana is as popular in Thailand as the Ramakien. Two of the most popular classical thai dances the Khon, performed by men wearing ferocious masks, and the Lakhon (Lakhon nai, Lakhon chatri and Lakhon nok), performed by women who play both male and female roles draws inspiration primarily from the Ramakien. Percussion instruments and Piphat, a type of woodwind accompany the dance. Nang talung, a Thai shadow play inspired by South Indian Bommalattam, has shadows made from the pieces of cow or water buffalo hide cut to represent human figures with movable arms and legs are thrown on a screen for the entertainment of spectators. Fusion with traditional music of other nations. Sometimes, the music of India is fused with the native traditional music of other countries. For example, Delhi 2 Dublin, a band based in Canada, is known for fusing Indian and Irish music, and Bhangraton is a fusion of Bhangra music with reggaeton. Western world music. Film music. Indian film composer A. R. Rahman wrote the music for Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Bombay Dreams", and a musical version of "Hum Aapke Hain Koun" was staged in London's West End. The Bollywood sports film "Lagaan" (2001) was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and two other Bollywood films (2002's "Devdas" and 2006's "Rang De Basanti") were nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language. Danny Boyle's "Slumdog Millionaire" (2008) was inspired by Bollywood films. Hip hop and reggae. Bhangraton is a fusion of Bhangra music with reggaeton, which itself is a fusion of hip hop, reggae, and traditional Latin American music. Jazz. In early 1960s Jazz pioneers such as John Coltrane—who recorded a composition entitled 'India' during the November 1961 sessions for his album "Live at the Village Vanguard" (the track was not released until 1963 on Coltrane's album "Impressions")—also embraced this fusion. George Harrison (of the Beatles) played the sitar on the song "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" in 1965, which sparked interest from Shankar, who subsequently took Harrison as his apprentice. Jazz innovator Miles Davis recorded and performed with musicians like Khalil Balakrishna, Bihari Sharma, and Badal Roy in his post-1968 electric ensembles. Virtuoso jazz guitarist John McLaughlin spent several years in Madurai learning Carnatic music and incorporated it into many of his acts including Shakti which featured prominent Indian musicians. Other Western artists such as the Grateful Dead, Incredible String Band, the Rolling Stones, the Move and Traffic soon incorporated Indian influences and instruments, and added Indian performers. Legendary Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia joined guitarist Sanjay Mishra on his classic CD "Blue Incantation" (1995). Mishra also wrote an original score for French Director Eric Heumann for his film "Port Djema" (1996) which won best score at Hamptons film festival and The Golden Bear at Berlin. in 2000 he recorded "Rescue" with drummer Dennis Chambers (Carlos Santana, John McLaughlin et al.) and in 2006 Chateau Benares with guests DJ Logic and Keller Williams (guitar and bass). Musical film. Since the early 2000s, Bollywood began influencing musical films in the Western world and was instrumental role in reviving the American musical film. Baz Luhrmann said that his musical film, "Moulin Rouge!" (2001), was inspired by Bollywood musicals; the film incorporated a Bollywood-style dance scene with a song from the film "China Gate". The critical and financial success of "Moulin Rouge!" began a renaissance of Western musical films such as "Chicago", "Rent", and "Dreamgirls". Psychedelic and trance music. Psychedelic trance developed from Goa trance. Rock and roll. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, rock and roll fusions with Indian music were well known throughout Europe and North America. Ali Akbar Khan's 1955 performance in the United States was perhaps the beginning of this trend. In 1985, a beat-oriented, Raga Rock hybrid called Sitar Power by Ashwin Batish reintroduced sitar in western nations. Sitar Power drew the attention of a number of record labels and was snapped up by Shanachie Records of New Jersey to head their World Beat Ethno Pop division. Technopop. The influence of "filmi" may be seen in popular music worldwide. Technopop pioneers Haruomi Hosono and Ryuichi Sakamoto of the Yellow Magic Orchestra produced a 1978 electronic album, "Cochin Moon", based on an experimental fusion of electronic music and Bollywood-inspired Indian music. Truth Hurts' 2002 song "Addictive", produced by DJ Quik and Dr. Dre, was taken from Lata Mangeshkar's "Thoda Resham Lagta Hai" in "Jyoti" (1981). The Black Eyed Peas' Grammy Award winning 2005 song "Don't Phunk with My Heart" was inspired by two 1970s Bollywood songs: "Ye Mera Dil Yaar Ka Diwana" from "Don" (1978) and "Ae Nujawan Hai Sub" from "Apradh" (1972). Both songs were composed by Kalyanji Anandji, sung by Asha Bhosle, and featured the dancer Helen. Western classical music. Some prominent Indians in Western classical music are: Influence on national music scene. Bollywood has been a significant form of soft power for India, increasing its influence and changing overseas perceptions of India. According to author Roopa Swaminathan, "Bollywood cinema is one of the strongest global cultural ambassadors of a new India." Its role in expanding India's global influence is comparable to Hollywood's similar role with American influence. Africa. Kishore Kumar is popular in Egypt and Somalia. Hindi films were originally distributed to some parts of Africa by Lebanese businessmen, and "Mother India" (1957) continued to be screened in Nigeria decades after its release. Indian movies have influenced Hausa clothing, songs have been covered by Hausa singers, and stories have influenced Nigerian novelists. Stickers of Indian films and stars decorate taxis and buses in Nigeria's Northern Region, and posters of Indian films hang on the walls of tailoring shops and mechanics' garages. In South Africa, film imports from India were watched by black and Indian audiences. Several Bollywood figures have travelled to Africa for films and off-camera projects. "Padmashree Laloo Prasad Yadav" (2005) was filmed in South Africa. "Dil Jo Bhi Kahey..." (2005) was also filmed almost entirely in Mauritius, which has a large ethnic-Indian population. In Egypt, Bollywood films were popular during the 1970s and 1980s. Amitabh Bachchan has remained popular in the country and Indian tourists visiting Egypt are asked, "Do you know Amitabh Bachchan?" Americas. Caribbean. Indo-Caribbean music of Indo-Caribbean people in Caribbean is most common in Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Jamaica, and Suriname, which reflects their Bhojpuri heritage. Main instrumentation are dhantal, metal rod, clapper, dholak, two-headed barrel drum. Women sing Hindu bhajans and folk songs from the music of Bhojpur on various important life events, rituals, celebrations, festivals like phagwah and holi. Indo-Caribbean contributions to popular music are very important. The most well-known is the Indo-Trinidadian "chutney music" tradition. Chutney is a form of popular dance music that developed in the mid-to late 20th century. Baithak Gana is a similar popular form originating in Suriname. Latin America. There is significant Indian diaspora communities in Suriname and Guyana, Indian music and Hindi-language movies are popular. In 2006, "Dhoom 2" became the first Bollywood film to be shot in Rio de Janeiro. North America. In the new millennium, American hip-hop has featured Indian filmi and bhangra. Mainstream hip-hop artists have sampled songs from Bollywood movies and have collaborated with Indian artists. Examples include Timbaland's "Indian Flute", Erick Sermon and Redman's "React", Slum Village's "Disco", and Truth Hurts' hit song "Addictive", which sampled a Lata Mangeshkar song, and The Black Eyed Peas sampled Asha Bhosle's song "Yeh Mera Dil" in their hit single "Don't Phunk With My Heart". In 1997, the British band Cornershop paid tribute to Asha Bhosle with their song "Brimful of Asha", which became an international hit. British-born Indian artist Panjabi MC also had a Bhangra hit in the US with "Mundian To Bach Ke" which featured rapper Jay-Z. Asian Dub Foundation are not huge mainstream stars, but their politically charged rap and punk rock influenced sound has a multi-racial audience in their native UK. In 2008, international star Snoop Dogg appeared in a song in the film Singh Is Kinng. In 2007, hip-hop producer Madlib released ; an album which heavily samples and is inspired by the music of India. Asia. South Asia. Due to shared cultural heritage and language, Indian music and Bollywood films are also popular in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal, where Hindustani is widely understood. Southeast Asia. Already covered in earlier section Ancient influence on Southeast Asian music genre. West Asia. West Asia has large Indian diaspora population, who mainly consume Indian music. Indian music is also popular with native middle eastern people. 85% of Qatar's and 75% of UAE's total population are Indian citizens. Hindi films and music have become popular in Arab countries, and imported Indian films are usually subtitled in Arabic when they are released. Bollywood has progressed in Israel since the early 2000s, with channels dedicated to Indian films on cable television; Europe. Germany. In Germany, Indian stereotypes included bullock carts, beggars, sacred cows, corrupt politicians, and catastrophes before Bollywood and the IT industry transformed global perceptions of India. UK. In the late 1980s, Indian-British artists fused Indian and Western traditions to make the Asian Underground. Since the 1990s, Canadian born musician Nadaka who has spent most of his life in India, has been creating music that is an acoustic fusion of Indian classical music with western styles. One such singer who has merged the Bhakti sangeet tradition of India with the western non-Indian music is Krishna Das and sells music records of his musical sadhana. Another example is the Indo-Canadian musician Vandana Vishwas who has experimented with western music in her 2013 album "Monologues". In a more recent example of Indian-British fusion, Laura Marling along with Mumford and Sons collaborated in 2010 with the Dharohar Project on a four-song EP. The British band Bombay Bicycle Club also sampled the song "Man Dole Mera Tan Dole" for their single "Feel". Laxmikant-Pyarelal Oceania. Due to large Indian diaspora population, Indian music and movies are very popular in Fiji especially among Indo-Fijians. Australia and New Zealand have 2 percent Indian population, as well as other a large South Asian diaspora, and Bollywood music and movies are popular amongst non-Asians in the country as well. Organisations promoting Indian music. Sangeet Natak Akademi is the national level academy for performing arts set up by the Government of India in 1952, which bestows Sangeet Natak Akademi Award as the highest official Indian government's recognition given to practicing artists, It has established several institutions including the Manipur Dance Academy in Imphal, Ravindra Rangshala Centers, Sattriya Centre, Kathak Kendra (National Institute of Kathak Dance) at New Delhi, Centre for Kutiyattam at Thiruvananthapuram, Chhau Centre at Baripada in Jamshedpur, Banaras Music Akademi, Varanasi, and the Northeast Centre.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14560

Republic of Ireland

Ireland ( ), also known as the Republic of Ireland (), is a country in north-western Europe consisting of 26 of the 32 counties of the island of Ireland. The capital and largest city is Dublin, on the eastern side of the island. Around 2.1 million of the country's population of 5.15 million people reside in the Greater Dublin Area. The sovereign state shares its only land border with Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. It is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the Celtic Sea to the south, St George's Channel to the south-east, and the Irish Sea to the east. It is a unitary, parliamentary republic. The legislature, the , consists of a lower house, ; an upper house, ; and an elected President () who serves as the largely ceremonial head of state, but with some important powers and duties. The head of government is the (Prime Minister, literally "Chief"), who is elected by the Dáil and appointed by the President; the Taoiseach in turn appoints other government ministers. The Irish Free State was created with Dominion status in 1922, following the Anglo-Irish Treaty. In 1937, a new constitution was adopted, in which the state was named "Ireland" and effectively became a republic, with an elected non-executive president. It was officially declared a republic in 1949, following the Republic of Ireland Act 1948. Ireland became a member of the United Nations in 1955. It joined the European Communities (EC), the predecessor of the European Union (EU), in 1973. The state had no formal relations with Northern Ireland for most of the 20th century, but the 1980s and 1990s saw the British and Irish governments working with Northern Irish parties to resolve the conflict that had become known as the Troubles. Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, the Irish government and Northern Irish government have co-operated on a number of policy areas under the North/South Ministerial Council created by the Agreement. Ireland is a developed country with a quality of life that ranks amongst the highest in the world; after adjustments for inequality, the 2021 Human Development Index listing ranked it the sixth-highest in the world, behind Finland and ahead of Sweden. It also performs well in areas such as healthcare, economic freedom, and freedom of the press. It is a member of the EU and a founding member of the Council of Europe and the OECD. The Irish government has followed a policy of military neutrality through non-alignment since before World War II, and the country is consequently not a member of NATO, although it is a member of Partnership for Peace and certain aspects of PESCO. Ireland's economy is advanced, with one of Europe's major financial hubs being centred around Dublin. It ranks among the top 10 wealthiest countries in the world in terms of both GDP and GNI per capita. After joining the EC, the country's government enacted a series of liberal economic policies that helped to boost economic growth between 1995 and 2007, a time now often referred to as the Celtic Tiger period. A recession and reversal in growth then followed during the Great Recession, which was exacerbated by the bursting of the Irish property bubble. Name. The Irish name for Ireland is , deriving from , a goddess in Irish mythology. The state created in 1922, comprising 26 of the 32 counties of Ireland, was "styled and known as the Irish Free State" (). The Constitution of Ireland, adopted in 1937, says that "the name of the State is "Éire", or, in the English language, Ireland". Section 2 of the Republic of Ireland Act 1948 states, "It is hereby declared that the description of the State shall be the Republic of Ireland." The 1948 Act does not "name" the state "Republic of Ireland", because to have done so would have put it in conflict with the Constitution. The government of the United Kingdom used the name "Eire" (without the diacritic) and, from 1949, "Republic of Ireland", for the state. It was not until the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, when the state dropped its claim to Northern Ireland, that it began calling the state "Ireland". The state is also informally called "the Republic", "Southern Ireland" or "the South"; especially when distinguishing the state from the island or when discussing Northern Ireland ("the North"). Irish republicans reserve the name "Ireland" for the whole island and often refer to the state as "the Free State", "the 26 Counties", or "the South of Ireland". This is a "response to the partitionist view [...] that Ireland stops at the border". History. Home-rule movement. From the Act of Union on 1 January 1801, until 6 December 1922, the island of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. During the Great Famine, from 1845 to 1849, the island's population of over 8 million fell by 30%. One million Irish died of starvation and disease and another 1.5 million emigrated, mostly to the United States. This set the pattern of emigration for the century to come, resulting in constant population decline up to the 1960s. From 1874, and particularly under Charles Stewart Parnell from 1880, the Irish Parliamentary Party gained prominence. This was firstly through widespread agrarian agitation via the Irish Land League, which won land reforms for tenants in the form of the Irish Land Acts, and secondly through its attempts to achieve Home Rule, via two unsuccessful bills which would have granted Ireland limited national autonomy. These led to "grass-roots" control of national affairs, under the Local Government Act 1898, that had been in the hands of landlord-dominated grand juries of the Protestant Ascendancy. Home Rule seemed certain when the Parliament Act 1911 abolished the veto of the House of Lords, and John Redmond secured the Third Home Rule Act in 1914. However, the Unionist movement had been growing since 1886 among Irish Protestants after the introduction of the first home rule bill, fearing discrimination and loss of economic and social privileges if Irish Catholics achieved real political power. In the late 19th and early 20th-century unionism was particularly strong in parts of Ulster, where industrialisation was more common in contrast to the more agrarian rest of the island, and where the Protestant population was more prominent, with a majority in four counties. Under the leadership of the Dublin-born Sir Edward Carson of the Irish Unionist Party and the Ulsterman Sir James Craig of the Ulster Unionist Party, unionists became strongly militant, forming Ulster Volunteers in order to oppose "the Coercion of Ulster". After the Home Rule Bill passed parliament in May 1914, to avoid rebellion with Ulster, the British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith introduced an Amending Bill reluctantly conceded to by the Irish Party leadership. This provided for the temporary exclusion of Ulster from the workings of the bill for a trial period of six years, with an as yet undecided new set of measures to be introduced for the area to be temporarily excluded. Revolution and steps to independence. Though it received the Royal Assent and was placed on the statute books in 1914, the implementation of the Third Home Rule Act was suspended until after the First World War which defused the threat of civil war in Ireland. With the hope of ensuring the implementation of the Act at the end of the war through Ireland's engagement in the war, Redmond and the Irish National Volunteers supported the UK and its Allies. 175,000 men joined Irish regiments of the 10th (Irish) and 16th (Irish) divisions of the New British Army, while Unionists joined the 36th (Ulster) divisions. The remainder of the Irish Volunteers, who refused Redmond and opposed any support of the UK, launched an armed insurrection against British rule in the 1916 Easter Rising, together with the Irish Citizen Army. This commenced on 24 April 1916 with the declaration of independence. After a week of heavy fighting, primarily in Dublin, the surviving rebels were forced to surrender their positions. The majority were imprisoned, with fifteen of the prisoners (including most of the leaders) were executed as traitors to the UK. This included Patrick Pearse, the spokesman for the rising and who provided the signal to the volunteers to start the rising, as well as James Connolly, socialist and founder of the Industrial Workers of the World union and both the Irish and Scottish Labour movements. These events, together with the Conscription Crisis of 1918, had a profound effect on changing public opinion in Ireland against the British Government. In January 1919, after the December 1918 general election, 73 of Ireland's 105 Members of Parliament (MPs) elected were Sinn Féin members who were elected on a platform of abstentionism from the British House of Commons. In January 1919, they set up an Irish parliament called Dáil Éireann. This first Dáil issued a declaration of independence and proclaimed an Irish Republic. The declaration was mainly a restatement of the 1916 Proclamation with the additional provision that Ireland was no longer a part of the United Kingdom. The Irish Republic's Ministry of Dáil Éireann sent a delegation under (Head of Council, or Speaker, of the Daíl) Seán T. O'Kelly to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, but it was not admitted. After the War of Independence and truce called in July 1921, representatives of the British government and the five Irish treaty delegates, led by Arthur Griffith, Robert Barton and Michael Collins, negotiated the Anglo-Irish Treaty in London from 11 October to 6 December 1921. The Irish delegates set up headquarters at Hans Place in Knightsbridge, and it was here in private discussions that the decision was taken on 5 December to recommend the treaty to Dáil Éireann. On 7 January 1922, the Second Dáil ratified the Treaty by 64 votes to 57. In accordance with the treaty, on 6 December 1922 the entire island of Ireland became a self-governing Dominion called the Irish Free State ("Saorstát Éireann"). Under the Constitution of the Irish Free State, the Parliament of Northern Ireland had the option to leave the Irish Free State one month later and return to the United Kingdom. During the intervening period, the powers of the Parliament of the Irish Free State and Executive Council of the Irish Free State did not extend to Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland exercised its right under the treaty to leave the new Dominion and rejoined the United Kingdom on 8 December 1922. It did so by making an address to the King requesting, "that the powers of the Parliament and Government of the Irish Free State shall no longer extend to Northern Ireland." The Irish Free State was a constitutional monarchy sharing a monarch with the United Kingdom and other Dominions of the British Commonwealth. The country had a governor-general (representing the monarch), a bicameral parliament, a cabinet called the "Executive Council", and a prime minister called the President of the Executive Council. Irish Civil War. The Irish Civil War (June 1922 – May 1923) was the consequence of the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the creation of the Irish Free State. Anti-treaty forces, led by Éamon de Valera, objected to the fact that acceptance of the treaty abolished the Irish Republic of 1919 to which they had sworn loyalty, arguing in the face of public support for the settlement that the "people have no right to do wrong". They objected most to the fact that the state would remain part of the British Empire and that members of the Free State Parliament would have to swear what the anti-treaty side saw as an oath of fidelity to the British king. Pro-treaty forces, led by Michael Collins, argued that the treaty gave "not the ultimate freedom that all nations aspire to and develop, but the freedom to achieve it". At the start of the war, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) split into two opposing camps: a pro-treaty IRA and an anti-treaty IRA. The pro-treaty IRA disbanded and joined the new National Army. However, because the anti-treaty IRA lacked an effective command structure and because of the pro-treaty forces' defensive tactics throughout the war, Michael Collins and his pro-treaty forces were able to build up an army with many tens of thousands of World War I veterans from the 1922 disbanded Irish regiments of the British Army, capable of overwhelming the anti-treatyists. British supplies of artillery, aircraft, machine-guns and ammunition boosted pro-treaty forces, and the threat of a return of Crown forces to the Free State removed any doubts about the necessity of enforcing the treaty. Lack of public support for the anti-treaty forces (often called the Irregulars) and the determination of the government to overcome the Irregulars contributed significantly to their defeat. Constitution of Ireland 1937. Following a national plebiscite in July 1937, the new Constitution of Ireland ("Bunreacht na hÉireann") came into force on 29 December 1937. This replaced the Constitution of the Irish Free State and declared that the name of the state is , or "Ireland" in the English language. While Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution defined the national territory to be the whole island, they also confined the state's jurisdiction to the area that had been the Irish Free State. The former Irish Free State government had abolished the Office of Governor-General in December 1936. Although the constitution established the office of President of Ireland, the question over whether Ireland was a republic remained open. Diplomats were accredited to the king, but the president exercised all internal functions of a head of state. For instance, the President gave assent to new laws with his own authority, without reference to King George VI who was only an "organ", that was provided for by statute law. Ireland remained neutral during World War II, a period it described as The Emergency. Ireland's Dominion status was terminated with the passage of The Republic of Ireland Act 1948, which came into force on 18 April 1949 and declared that the state was a republic. At the time, a declaration of a republic terminated Commonwealth membership. This rule was changed 10 days after Ireland declared itself a republic, with the London Declaration of 28 April 1949. Ireland did not reapply when the rules were altered to permit republics to join. Later, the Crown of Ireland Act 1542 was repealed in Ireland by the Statute Law Revision (Pre-Union Irish Statutes) Act 1962. Recent history. Ireland became a member of the United Nations in December 1955, after having been denied membership because of its neutral stance during the Second World War and not supporting the Allied cause. At the time, joining the UN involved a commitment to using force to deter aggression by one state against another if the UN thought it was necessary. Interest towards membership of the European Communities (EC) developed in Ireland during the 1950s, with consideration also given to membership of the European Free Trade Area. As the United Kingdom intended on EC membership, Ireland applied for membership in July 1961 due to the substantial economic linkages with the United Kingdom. The founding EC members remained sceptical regarding Ireland's economic capacity, neutrality, and unattractive protectionist policy. Many Irish economists and politicians realised that economic policy reform was necessary. The prospect of EC membership became doubtful in 1963 when French President General Charles de Gaulle stated that France opposed Britain's accession, which ceased negotiations with all other candidate countries. In 1969 his successor, Georges Pompidou, was not opposed to British and Irish membership. Negotiations began and in 1972 the Treaty of Accession was signed. A referendum was held later that year which confirmed Ireland's entry into the bloc, and it finally joined the EC as a member state on 1 January 1973. The economic crisis of the late 1970s was fuelled by the Fianna Fáil government's budget, the abolition of the car tax, excessive borrowing, and global economic instability including the 1979 oil crisis. There were significant policy changes from 1989 onwards, with economic reform, tax cuts, welfare reform, an increase in competition, and a ban on borrowing to fund current spending. This policy began in 1989–1992 by the Fianna Fáil/Progressive Democrat government, and continued by the subsequent Fianna Fáil/Labour government and Fine Gael/Labour/Democratic Left government. Ireland became one of the world's fastest growing economies by the late 1990s in what was known as the Celtic Tiger period, which lasted until the Great Recession. Since 2014, Ireland has experienced increased economic activity. In the Northern Ireland question, the British and Irish governments started to seek a peaceful resolution to the violent conflict involving many paramilitaries and the British Army in Northern Ireland known as "The Troubles". A peace settlement for Northern Ireland, known as the Good Friday Agreement, was approved in 1998 in referendums north and south of the border. As part of the peace settlement, the territorial claim to Northern Ireland in Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution of Ireland was removed by referendum. In its white paper on Brexit the United Kingdom government reiterated its commitment to the Good Friday Agreement. With regard to Northern Ireland's status, it said that the UK Government's "clearly-stated preference is to retain Northern Ireland's current constitutional position: as part of the UK, but with strong links to Ireland". Geography. The state extends over an area of about five-sixths () of the island of Ireland (), with Northern Ireland constituting the remainder. The island is bounded to the north and west by the Atlantic Ocean and to the northeast by the North Channel. To the east, the Irish Sea connects to the Atlantic Ocean via St George's Channel and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. The western landscape mostly consists of rugged cliffs, hills and mountains. The central lowlands are extensively covered with glacial deposits of clay and sand, as well as significant areas of bogland and several lakes. The highest point is Carrauntoohil (), located in the MacGillycuddy's Reeks mountain range in the southwest. River Shannon, which traverses the central lowlands, is the longest river in Ireland at in length. The west coast is more rugged than the east, with numerous islands, peninsulas, headlands and bays. Ireland is one of the least forested countries in Europe. Until the end of the Middle Ages, the land was heavily forested. Native species include deciduous trees such as oak, ash, hazel, birch, alder, willow, aspen, elm, rowan and hawthorn, as well as evergreen trees such Scots pine, yew, holly and strawberry trees. The growth of blanket bog and the extensive clearing of woodland for farming are believed to be the main causes of deforestation. Today, only about 10% of Ireland is woodland, most of which is non-native conifer plantations, and only 2% of which is native woodland. The average woodland cover in European countries is over 33%. According to "Coillte", a state-owned forestry business, the country's climate gives Ireland one of the fastest growth rates for forests in Europe. Hedgerows, which are traditionally used to define land boundaries, are an important substitute for woodland habitat, providing refuge for native wild flora and a wide range of insect, bird and mammal species. It is home to two terrestrial ecoregions: Celtic broadleaf forests and North Atlantic moist mixed forests. Agriculture accounts for about 64% of the total land area. This has resulted in limited land to preserve natural habitats, in particular for larger wild mammals with greater territorial requirements. The long history of agricultural production coupled with modern agricultural methods, such as pesticide and fertiliser use, has placed pressure on biodiversity. Climate. The Atlantic Ocean and the warming influence of the Gulf Stream affect weather patterns in Ireland. Temperatures differ regionally, with central and eastern areas tending to be more extreme. However, due to a temperate oceanic climate, temperatures are seldom lower than in winter or higher than in summer. The highest temperature recorded in Ireland was on 26 June 1887 at Kilkenny Castle in Kilkenny, while the lowest temperature recorded was at Markree Castle in Sligo. Rainfall is more prevalent during winter months and less so during the early months of summer. Southwestern areas experience the most rainfall as a result of south westerly winds, while Dublin receives the least. Sunshine duration is highest in the southeast of the country. The far north and west are two of the windiest regions in Europe, with great potential for wind energy generation. Ireland normally gets between 1100 and 1600 hours of sunshine each year, most areas averaging between 3.25 and 3.75 hours a day. The sunniest months are May and June, which average between 5 and 6.5 hours per day over most of the country. The extreme southeast gets most sunshine, averaging over 7 hours a day in early summer. December is the dullest month, with an average daily sunshine ranging from about 1 hour in the north to almost 2 hours in the extreme southeast. The sunniest summer in the 100 years from 1881 to 1980 was 1887, according to measurements made at the Phoenix Park in Dublin; 1980 was the dullest. Politics. Ireland is a constitutional republic with a parliamentary system of government. The is the bicameral national parliament composed of the President of Ireland and the two Houses of the Oireachtas: (House of Representatives) and (Senate). Áras an Uachtaráin is the official residence of the President of Ireland, while the houses of the Oireachtas meet at Leinster House in Dublin. The President serves as head of state, is elected for a seven-year term, and may be re-elected once. The President is primarily a figurehead, but is entrusted with certain constitutional powers with the advice of the Council of State. The office has absolute discretion in some areas, such as referring a bill to the Supreme Court for a judgment on its constitutionality. Michael D. Higgins became the ninth President of Ireland on 11 November 2011. The (Prime Minister) serves as the head of government and is appointed by the President upon the nomination of the . Most have served as the leader of the political party that gains the most seats in national elections. It has become customary for coalitions to form a government, as there has not been a single-party government since 1989. The has 160 members () elected to represent multi-seat constituencies under the system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote. The is composed of sixty members, with eleven nominated by the , six elected by two university constituencies, and 43 elected by public representatives from panels of candidates established on a vocational basis. The government is constitutionally limited to fifteen members. No more than two members can be selected from the , and the , (deputy prime minister) and Minister for Finance must be members of the . The Dáil must be dissolved within five years of its first meeting following the previous election, and a general election for members of the Dáil must take place no later than thirty days after the dissolution. In accordance with the Constitution of Ireland, parliamentary elections must be held at least every seven years, though a lower limit may be set by statute law. The current government is a coalition of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, and the Green Party with Leo Varadkar of Fine Gael as Taoiseach and Micheál Martin of Fianna Fáil as Tánaiste. Opposition parties in the current are Sinn Féin, the Labour Party, People Before Profit–Solidarity, Social Democrats, Aontú, as well as a number of independents. Ireland has been a member state of the European Union since 1973. Citizens of the United Kingdom can freely enter the country without a passport due to the Common Travel Area, which is a passport-free zone comprising the islands of Ireland, Great Britain, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. However, some identification is required at airports and seaports. Local government. The Local Government Act 1898 was the founding statute of the present system of local government, while the Twentieth Amendment to the constitution of 1999 provided for its constitutional recognition. The twenty-six traditional counties of Ireland are the basis of the local government areas, with the traditional counties of Cork, Dublin and Galway containing two or more local government areas. The Local Government Act 2001, as amended by the Local Government Reform Act 2014, provides for a system of thirty-one local authorities – twenty-six county councils, two city and county councils, and three city councils. Counties (with the exception of the counties in Dublin and the three city councils) are divided into municipal districts. A second local government tier of town councils was abolished in 2014. Local authorities are responsible for matters such as planning, local roads, sanitation, and libraries. The breaching of county boundaries should be avoided as far as practicable in drawing Dáil constituencies. Counties with greater populations have multiple constituencies, some of more than one county, but generally do not cross county boundaries. The counties are grouped into three regions, each with a Regional Assembly composed of members delegated by the various county and city councils in the region. The regions do not have any direct administrative role as such, but they serve for planning, coordination and statistical purposes. Law. Ireland has a common law legal system with a written constitution that provides for a parliamentary democracy. The court system consists of the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal, the High Court, the Circuit Court and the District Court, all of which apply the Irish law and hear both civil and criminal matters. Trials for serious offences must usually be held before a jury. The High Court, Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court have authority, by means of judicial review, to determine the compatibility of laws and activities of other institutions of the state with the constitution and the law. Except in exceptional circumstances, court hearings must occur in public. The Garda Síochána ("lit." Guardians of the Peace), more commonly referred to as the Gardaí, is the state's civilian police force. The force is responsible for all aspects of civil policing, both in terms of territory and infrastructure. It is headed by the Garda Commissioner, who is appointed by the Government. Most uniformed members do not routinely carry firearms. Standard policing is traditionally carried out by uniformed officers equipped only with a baton and pepper spray. The Military Police is the corps of the Irish Army responsible for the provision of policing service personnel and providing a military police presence to forces while on exercise and deployment. In wartime, additional tasks include the provision of a traffic control organisation to allow rapid movement of military formations to their mission areas. Other wartime roles include control of prisoners of war and refugees. Ireland's citizenship laws relate to "the island of Ireland", including islands and seas, thereby extending them to Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. Therefore, anyone born in Northern Ireland who meets the requirements for being an Irish citizen, such as birth on the island of Ireland to an Irish or British citizen parent or a parent who is entitled to live in Northern Ireland or the Republic without restriction on their residency, may exercise an entitlement to Irish citizenship, such as an Irish passport. Foreign relations. Foreign relations are substantially influenced by membership of the European Union, although bilateral relations with the United Kingdom and United States are also important. It held the Presidency of the Council of the European Union on six occasions, most recently from January to June 2013. Ireland tends towards independence in foreign policy; thus the country is not a member of NATO and has a longstanding policy of military neutrality. This policy has led to the Irish Defence Forces contributing to peace-keeping missions with the United Nations since 1960, including during the Congo Crisis and subsequently in Cyprus, Lebanon and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Despite Irish neutrality during World War II, Ireland had more than 50,000 participants in the war through enlistment in the British armed forces. During the Cold War, Irish military policy, while ostensibly neutral, was biased towards NATO. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Seán Lemass authorised the search of Cuban and Czechoslovak aircraft passing through Shannon and passed the information to the CIA. Ireland's air facilities were used by the United States military for the delivery of military personnel involved in the 2003 invasion of Iraq through Shannon Airport. The airport had previously been used for the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, as well as the First Gulf War. Since 1999, Ireland has been a member of NATO's Partnership for Peace (PfP) program and NATO's Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC), which is aimed at creating trust between NATO and other states in Europe and the former Soviet Union. Military. Ireland is a neutral country, and has "triple-lock" rules governing the participation of Irish troops in conflict zones, whereby approval must be given by the UN, the Dáil and Government. Accordingly, its military role is limited to national self-defence and participation in United Nations peacekeeping. The Irish Defence Forces () are made up of the Army, Naval Service, Air Corps and Reserve Defence Force. It is small but well equipped, with almost 10,000 full-time military personnel and over 2,000 in reserve. Daily deployments of the Defence Forces cover aid to civil power operations, protection and patrol of Irish territorial waters and EEZ by the Irish Naval Service, and UN, EU and PfP peace-keeping missions. By 1996, over 40,000 Irish service personnel had served in international UN peacekeeping missions. The Irish Air Corps is the air component of the Defence Forces and operates sixteen fixed wing aircraft and eight helicopters. The Irish Naval Service is Ireland's navy, and operates six patrol ships, and smaller numbers of inflatable boats and training vessels, and has armed boarding parties capable of seizing a ship and a special unit of frogmen. The military includes the Reserve Defence Forces (Army Reserve and Naval Service Reserve) for part-time reservists. Ireland's special forces include the Army Ranger Wing, which trains and operates with international special operations units. The President is the formal Supreme Commander of the Defence Forces, but in practice these Forces answer to the Government via the Minister for Defence. In 2017, Ireland signed the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Economy. Ireland is an open economy and ranks first for "high-value" foreign direct investment (FDI) flows. Ireland ranks 5th of 187 (IMF) and 6th of 175 (World Bank) in GDP per capita as well as ranking in the top ten for GNI per capita. An alternative metric, known as modified Gross National Income (GNI), was created by the Central Statistics Office and is used by the Irish government to give a view of activity in the domestic economy after stripping out large multinational export movements which can often relate to intangible assets. This is particularly relevant in Ireland's economy, as GDP disproportionately includes income from non-Irish owned companies, which often flows out of Ireland. Foreign multinationals are the main driver of Ireland's economy, employing a quarter of the private sector workforce, and paying 80% of Irish corporate taxes. 14 of Ireland's top 20 firms (by 2017 turnover) are US-based multinationals and 80% of foreign multinationals in Ireland are from the US. Ireland adopted the euro currency in 2002 along with eleven other EU member states. As of January 2023 there are 20 EU member states using the euro currency with Croatia the most recent member to join on 1 January 2023. Following the Great Recession and the bursting of the Irish property bubble, the country officially exited recession in 2010, driven by a growth in exports from US multinationals in Ireland. However, due to a rise in the cost of public borrowing due to government guarantees of private banking debt, the Irish government accepted an €85 billion programme of assistance from the EU, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and bilateral loans from the United Kingdom, Sweden and Denmark. Following three years of contraction, the economy grew by 0.7% in 2011 and 0.9% in 2012. The unemployment rate was 14.7% in 2012, including 18.5% among recent immigrants. In March 2016 the unemployment rate was reported by the CSO to be 8.6%, down from a peak unemployment rate of 15.1% in February 2012. In addition to unemployment, net emigration from Ireland between 2008 and 2013 totalled 120,100, or some 2.6% of the total population according to the Census of Ireland 2011. One-third of the emigrants were aged between 15 and 24. As of November 2022, unemployment had fallen back to 4.4%. Ireland exited its EU-IMF bailout programme on 15 December 2013. Having implemented budget cuts, reforms and sold assets, Ireland was again able to access debt markets. Since then, Ireland has been able to sell long term bonds at record rates. However, the stabilisation of the Irish credit bubble required a large transfer of debt from the private sector balance sheet (highest OECD leverage), to the public sector balance sheet (almost unleveraged, pre-crisis), via Irish bank bailouts and public deficit spending. The transfer of this debt means that Ireland, in 2017, still has one of the highest levels of both public sector indebtedness, and private sector indebtedness, in the EU-28/OECD. Ireland became one of the main destinations for US pharmaceutical corporate tax inversions from 2009 to 2016. The country has also became the largest foreign location for large US technology multinationals (i.e. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook), which delivered a GDP growth rate of 26.3% (and GNP growth rate of 18.7%) in 2015. This growth was subsequently shown to be due to Apple restructuring its "double Irish" subsidiary (Apple Sales International, currently under threat of a €13bn EU "illegal state aid" fine for preferential tax treatment). Taxation policy. The transformation of Ireland's tax policy started with the creation of a 10% low-tax "special economic zone", called the International Financial Services Centre (or "IFSC"), in 1987. In 1999, the entire country was effectively "turned into an IFSC" with the reduction of Irish corporation tax from 32% to 12.5%. This accelerated the later stages of Ireland's transition from a predominantly agricultural economy into a knowledge and service economy initially focused on property and construction and later focused on attracting mainly US multinationals from high-tech, life sciences, and financial services industries seeking to avail of Ireland's low corporation tax rates and favourable corporate tax system. The multinational tax schemes foreign firms use in Ireland materially distort Irish economic statistics. This reached a climax with the "leprechaun economics" GDP/GNP growth rates of 2015 (as Apple restructured its Irish subsidiaries in 2015). The Central Bank of Ireland introduced a new statistic, Modified gross national income, to remove these distortions. GNI* is 30% below GDP (or, GDP is 143% of GNI). From the creation of the IFSC, the country experienced strong and sustained economic growth which fuelled a dramatic rise in Irish consumer borrowing and spending, and Irish construction and investment, which became known as the Celtic Tiger period. By 2007, Ireland had the highest private sector debt in the OECD with a household debt-to-disposable income ratio of 190%. Global capital markets, who had financed Ireland's build-up of debt in the Celtic Tiger period by enabling Irish banks to borrow in excess of the domestic deposit base (to over 180% at peak), withdrew support in the financial crisis of 2007–2008. Their withdrawal from the over-borrowed Irish credit system would precipitate a deep Irish property correction which then led to the Post-2008 Irish banking crisis. Ireland's successful "low-tax" economy opens it to accusations of being a "corporate tax haven", and led to it being "blacklisted" by Brazil. A 2017 study ranks Ireland as the 5th largest global Conduit OFC, which legally route funds to tax havens. A serious challenge is the passing of the US Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (whose FDII and GILTI regimes target Ireland's multinational tax schemes). The EU's 2018 Digital Sales Tax (DST) (and desire for a CCCTB) is also seen as an attempt to restrict Irish "multinational tax schemes" by US technology firms. Trade. Although multinational corporations dominate Ireland's export sector, exports from other sources also contribute significantly to the national income. The activities of multinational companies based in Ireland have made it one of the largest exporters of pharmaceutical agents, medical devices and software-related goods and services in the world. Ireland's exports also relate to the activities of large Irish companies (such as Ryanair, Kerry Group and Smurfit Kappa) and exports of mineral resources including zinc and lead concentrates. The country also has significant deposits of gypsum and smaller quantities of copper, silver, gold, barite, and dolomite. Tourism in Ireland contributes about 4% of GDP and is a significant source of employment. Other goods exports include agri-food, cattle, beef, dairy products, and aluminum. Ireland's major imports include data processing equipment, chemicals, petroleum and petroleum products, textiles, and clothing. Financial services provided by multinational corporations based at the Irish Financial Services Centre also contribute to Irish exports. The difference between exports (€89.4 billion) and imports (€45.5 billion) resulted an annual trade surplus of €43.9 billion in 2010, which is the highest trade surplus relative to GDP achieved by any EU member state. The EU is by far the country's largest trading partner, accounting for 57.9% of exports and 60.7% of imports. Prior to Brexit, the United Kingdom was the most important trading partner within the EU, accounting for 15.4% of exports and 32.1% of imports. Outside the EU, the United States accounted for 23.2% of exports and 14.1% of imports in 2010. Energy. ESB, Bord Gáis Energy and Airtricity are the three main electricity and gas suppliers in Ireland. There are 19.82 billion cubic metres of proven reserves of gas. Natural gas extraction previously occurred at the Kinsale Head until its exhaustion. The Corrib gas field was due to come on stream in 2013/14. In 2012, the Barryroe field was confirmed to have up to 1.6 billion barrels of oil in reserve, with between 160 and 600 million recoverable. That could provide for Ireland's entire energy needs for up to 13 years, when it is developed in 2015/16. There have been significant efforts to increase the use of renewable and sustainable forms of energy in Ireland, particularly in wind power, with 3,000 MegaWatts of wind farms being constructed, some for the purpose of export. The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) has estimated that 6.5% of Ireland's 2011 energy requirements were produced by renewable sources. The SEAI has also reported an increase in energy efficiency in Ireland with a 28% reduction in carbon emissions per house from 2005 to 2013. As of 2021, Ireland was the 24th largest wind energy producer in the world and the 3rd ranked in 2020 on a per capita basis. Transport. The country's three main international airports at Dublin, Shannon and Cork serve many European and intercontinental routes with scheduled and chartered flights. The London to Dublin air route is the ninth busiest international air route in the world, and also the busiest international air route in Europe, with 14,500 flights between the two in 2017. In 2015, 4.5 million people took the route, at that time, the world's second-busiest. Aer Lingus is the flag carrier of Ireland, although Ryanair is the country's largest airline. Ryanair is Europe's largest low-cost carrier, the second largest in terms of passenger numbers, and the world's largest in terms of international passenger numbers. Railway services are provided by Iarnród Éireann (Irish Rail), which operates all internal intercity, commuter and freight railway services in the country. Dublin is the centre of the network with two main stations, Heuston station and Connolly station, linking to the country's cities and main towns. The Enterprise service, which runs jointly with Northern Ireland Railways, connects Dublin and Belfast. The whole of Ireland's mainline network operates on track with a gauge of, which is unique in Europe and has resulted in distinct rolling stock designs. Dublin's public transport network includes the DART, Luas, Dublin Bus, and dublinbikes. Motorways, national primary roads and national secondary roads are managed by Transport Infrastructure Ireland, while regional roads and local roads are managed by the local authorities in each of their respective areas. The road network is primarily focused on the capital, but motorways connect it to other major Irish cities including Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Galway. Dublin is served by major infrastructure such as the East-Link and West-Link toll-bridges, as well as the Dublin Port Tunnel. The Jack Lynch Tunnel, under the River Lee in Cork, and the Limerick Tunnel, under the River Shannon, were two major projects outside Dublin. Demographics. Genetic research suggests that the earliest settlers migrated from Iberia following the most recent ice age. After the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age, migrants introduced a Celtic language and culture. Migrants from the two latter eras still represent the genetic heritage of most Irish people. Gaelic tradition expanded and became the dominant form over time. Irish people are a combination of Gaelic, Norse, Anglo-Norman, French, and British ancestry. The population of Ireland stood at 5,149,139 in 2022, an increase of 8% since 2016. , Ireland had the highest birth rate in the European Union (16 births per 1,000 of population). In 2014, 36.3% of births were to unmarried women. Annual population growth rates exceeded 2% during the 2002–2006 intercensal period, which was attributed to high rates of natural increase and immigration. This rate declined somewhat during the subsequent 2006–2011 intercensal period, with an average annual percentage change of 1.6%. The total fertility rate (TFR) in 2017 was estimated at 1.80 children born per woman, below the replacement rate of 2.1, it remains considerably below the high of 4.2 children born per woman in 1850. In 2018 the median age of the Irish population was 37.1 years. At the time of the 2022 census, the number of non-Irish nationals was recorded at 631,785. This represents an 8% increase from the 2016 census figure of 535,475. The five largest sources of non-Irish nationals were Poland (93,680), the UK (83,347), India (45,449), Romania (43,323), Lithuania (31,177), and Latvia (27,338) respectively. The non-Irish nationalities which saw the largest increase from 2016 were India (+33,984), Romania (+14,137), Brazil (+13,698), Ukraine (+10,006). The non-Irish nationalities which saw the largest decrease from 2016 were Poland (-28,835), UK (-19,766), Lithuania (-5,375), Latvia (-1,633), and Slovakia (-1,117). Languages. The Irish Constitution describes Irish as the "national language" and the "first official language", but English (the "second official language") is the dominant language. In the 2016 census, about 1.75 million people (40% of the population) said they were able to speak Irish but, of those, under 74,000 spoke it on a daily basis. Irish is spoken as a community language only in a small number of rural areas mostly in the west and south of the country, collectively known as the Gaeltacht. Except in Gaeltacht regions, road signs are usually bilingual. Most public notices and print media are in English only. While the state is officially bilingual, citizens can often struggle to access state services in Irish and most government publications are not available in both languages, even though citizens have the right to deal with the state in Irish. Irish language media include the TV channel TG4, the radio station RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta and online newspaper Tuairisc.ie. In the Irish Defence Forces, all foot and arms drill commands are given in the Irish language. As a result of immigration, Polish is the most widely spoken language in Ireland after English, with Irish as the third most spoken. Several other Central European languages (namely Czech, Hungarian and Slovak), as well as Baltic languages (Lithuanian and Latvian) are also spoken on a day-to-day basis. Other languages spoken in Ireland include Shelta, spoken by Irish Travellers, and a dialect of Scots is spoken by some Ulster Scots people in Donegal. Most secondary school students choose to learn one or two foreign languages. Languages available for the Junior Certificate and the Leaving Certificate include French, German, Italian and Spanish; Leaving Certificate students can also study Arabic, Japanese and Russian. Some secondary schools also offer Ancient Greek, Hebrew and Latin. The study of Irish is generally compulsory for Leaving Certificate students, but some may qualify for an exemption in some circumstances, such as learning difficulties or entering the country after age 11. Healthcare. Healthcare in Ireland is provided by both public and private healthcare providers. The Minister for Health has responsibility for setting overall health service policy. Every resident of Ireland is entitled to receive health care through the public health care system, which is managed by the Health Service Executive and funded by general taxation. A person may be required to pay a subsidised fee for certain health care received; this depends on income, age, illness or disability. All maternity services are provided free of charge and children up to the age of 6 months. Emergency care is provided to patients who present to a hospital emergency department. However, visitors to emergency departments in non-emergency situations who are not referred by their GP may incur a fee of €100. In some circumstances this fee is not payable or may be waived. Anyone holding a European Health Insurance Card is entitled to free maintenance and treatment in public beds in Health Service Executive and voluntary hospitals. Outpatient services are also provided for free. However, the majority of patients on median incomes or above are required to pay subsidised hospital charges. Private health insurance is available to the population for those who want to avail of it. The average life expectancy in Ireland in 2016 was 81.8 years (OECD 2016 list), with 79.9 years for men and 83.6 years for women. It has the highest birth rate in the EU (16.8 births per 1,000 inhabitants, compared to an EU average of 10.7) and a very low infant mortality rate (3.5 per 1,000 live births). The Irish healthcare system ranked 13th out of 34 European countries in 2012 according to the European Health Consumer Index produced by Health Consumer Powerhouse. The same report ranked the Irish healthcare system as having the 8th best health outcomes but only the 21st most accessible system in Europe. Education. Ireland has three levels of education: primary, secondary and higher education. The education systems are largely under the direction of the Government via the Minister for Education. Recognised primary and secondary schools must adhere to the curriculum established by the relevant authorities. Education is compulsory between the ages of six and fifteen years, and all children up to the age of eighteen must complete the first three years of secondary, including one sitting of the Junior Certificate examination. There are approximately 3,300 primary schools in Ireland. The vast majority (92%) are under the patronage of the Catholic Church. Schools run by religious organisations, but receiving public money and recognition, cannot discriminate against pupils based upon religion or lack thereof. A sanctioned system of preference does exist, where students of a particular religion may be accepted before those who do not share the ethos of the school, in a case where a school's quota has already been reached. The Leaving Certificate, which is taken after two years of study, is the final examination in the secondary school system. Those intending to pursue higher education normally take this examination, with access to third-level courses generally depending on results obtained from the best six subjects taken, on a competitive basis. Third-level education awards are conferred by at least 38 Higher Education Institutions – this includes the constituent or linked colleges of seven universities, plus other designated institutions of the Higher Education and Training Awards Council. According to the 2022 US News rankings, Ireland is among the top twenty best countries for education. The Programme for International Student Assessment, coordinated by the OECD, currently ranks Ireland as having the fourth highest reading score, ninth highest science score and thirteenth highest mathematics score, among OECD countries, in its 2012 assessment. In 2012, Irish students aged 15 years had the second highest levels of reading literacy in the EU. Ireland also has 0.747 of the World's top 500 Universities per capita, which ranks the country in 8th place in the world. Primary, secondary and higher (university/college) level education are all free in Ireland for all EU citizens. There are charges to cover student services and examinations. In addition, 37 percent of Ireland's population has a university or college degree, which is among the highest percentages in the world. Religion. Religious freedom is constitutionally provided for in Ireland, and the country's constitution has been secular since 1973. Christianity is the predominant religion, and while Ireland remains a predominantly Catholic country, the percentage of the population who identified as Catholic on the census has fallen sharply from 84.2 percent in the 2011 census to 78.3 percent in the most recent 2016 census. Other results from the 2016 census are: 4.2% Protestant, 1.3% Orthodox, 1.3% as Muslim, and 9.8% as having no religion. According to a Georgetown University study, before 2000 the country had one of the highest rates of regular mass attendance in the Western world. While daily attendance was 13% in 2006, there was a reduction in weekly attendance from 81% in 1990 to 48% in 2006, although the decline was reported as stabilising. In 2011, it was reported that weekly Mass attendance in Dublin was just 18%, and was even lower among younger generations. The Church of Ireland, at 2.7% of the population, is the second largest Christian denomination. Membership declined throughout the twentieth century, but experienced an increase early in the 21st century, as have other small Christian denominations. Other significant Protestant denominations are the Presbyterian Church and Methodist Church. Immigration has contributed to a growth in Hindu and Muslim populations. In percentage terms, Orthodox Christianity and Islam were the fastest growing religions, with increases of 100% and 70% respectively. Ireland's patron saints are Saint Patrick, Saint Bridget and Saint Columba, with Saint Patrick commonly recognised as "the" patron saint. Saint Patrick's Day is celebrated on 17 March in Ireland and abroad as the Irish national day, with parades and other celebrations. As with other predominantly Catholic European states, Ireland underwent a period of legal secularisation in the late twentieth century. In 1972, the article of the Constitution naming specific religious groups was deleted by the Fifth Amendment in a referendum. Article 44 remains in the Constitution: "The State acknowledges that the homage of public worship is due to Almighty God. It shall hold His Name in reverence, and shall respect and honour religion." The article also establishes freedom of religion, prohibits endowment of any religion, prohibits the state from religious discrimination, and requires the state to treat religious and non-religious schools in a non-prejudicial manner. Religious studies was introduced as an optional Junior Certificate subject in 2001. Although most schools are run by religious organisations, a secularist trend is occurring among younger generations. Culture. Ireland's culture was for centuries predominantly Gaelic, and it remains one of the six principal Celtic nations. Following the Anglo-Norman invasion in the 12th century, and gradual British conquest and colonisation beginning in the 16th century, Ireland became influenced by English and Scottish culture. Subsequently, Irish culture, though distinct in many aspects, shares characteristics with the rest of the Anglosphere, Catholic Europe, and other Celtic regions. The Irish diaspora, one of the world's largest and most dispersed, has contributed to the globalisation of Irish culture, producing many prominent figures in art, music, and science. Literature. Ireland has made a significant contribution to world literature in both the English and Irish languages. Modern Irish fiction began with the publishing of the 1726 novel "Gulliver's Travels" by Jonathan Swift. Other writers of importance during the 18th century and their most notable works include Laurence Sterne with the publication of "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" and Oliver Goldsmith's "The Vicar of Wakefield". Numerous Irish novelists emerged during the 19th century, including Maria Edgeworth, John Banim, Gerald Griffin, Charles Kickham, William Carleton, George Moore, and Somerville and Ross. Bram Stoker is best known as the author of the 1897 novel "Dracula". James Joyce (1882–1941) published his most famous work "Ulysses" in 1922, which is an interpretation of the "Odyssey" set in Dublin. Edith Somerville continued writing after the death of her partner Martin Ross in 1915. Dublin's Annie M. P. Smithson was one of several authors catering for fans of romantic fiction in the 1920s and 1930s. After the Second World War, popular novels were published by, among others, Brian O'Nolan, who published as Flann O'Brien, Elizabeth Bowen, and Kate O'Brien. During the final decades of the 20th century, Edna O'Brien, John McGahern, Maeve Binchy, Joseph O'Connor, Roddy Doyle, Colm Tóibín, and John Banville came to the fore as novelists. Patricia Lynch was a prolific children's author in the 20th century, while Eoin Colfer's works were NYT Best Sellers in this genre in the early 21st century. In the genre of the short story, which is a form favoured by many Irish writers, the most prominent figures include Seán Ó Faoláin, Frank O'Connor and William Trevor. Well known Irish poets include Patrick Kavanagh, Thomas McCarthy, Dermot Bolger, and Nobel Prize in Literature laureates William Butler Yeats and Seamus Heaney (born in Northern Ireland but resided in Dublin). Prominent writers in the Irish language are Pádraic Ó Conaire, Máirtín Ó Cadhain, Séamus Ó Grianna, and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. The history of Irish theatre begins with the expansion of the English administration in Dublin during the early 17th century, and since then, Ireland has significantly contributed to English drama. In its early history, theatrical productions in Ireland tended to serve political purposes, but as more theatres opened and the popular audience grew, a more diverse range of entertainments were staged. Many Dublin-based theatres developed links with their London equivalents, and British productions frequently found their way to the Irish stage. However, most Irish playwrights went abroad to establish themselves. In the 18th century, Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan were two of the most successful playwrights on the London stage at that time. At the beginning of the 20th century, theatre companies dedicated to the staging of Irish plays and the development of writers, directors and performers began to emerge, which allowed many Irish playwrights to learn their trade and establish their reputations in Ireland rather than in Britain or the United States. Following in the tradition of acclaimed practitioners, principally Oscar Wilde, Literature Nobel Prize laureates George Bernard Shaw (1925) and Samuel Beckett (1969), playwrights such as Seán O'Casey, Brian Friel, Sebastian Barry, Brendan Behan, Conor McPherson and Billy Roche have gained popular success. Other Irish playwrights of the 20th century include Denis Johnston, Thomas Kilroy, Tom Murphy, Hugh Leonard, Frank McGuinness, and John B. Keane. Music and dance. Irish traditional music has remained vibrant, despite globalising cultural forces, and retains many traditional aspects. It has influenced various music genres, such as American country and roots music, and to some extent modern rock. It has occasionally been blended with styles such as rock and roll and punk rock. Ireland has also produced many internationally known artists in other genres, such as rock, pop, jazz, and blues. Ireland's best selling musical act is the rock band U2, who have sold 170 million copies of their albums worldwide since their formation in 1976. There are a number of classical music ensembles around the country, such as the RTÉ Performing Groups. Ireland also has two opera organisations: Irish National Opera in Dublin, and the annual Wexford Opera Festival, which promotes lesser-known operas, takes place during October and November. Ireland has participated in the Eurovision Song Contest since 1965. Its first win was in 1970, when Dana won with "All Kinds of Everything". It has subsequently won the competition six more times, the highest number of wins by any competing country. The phenomenon "Riverdance" originated as an interval performance during the 1994 contest. Irish dance can broadly be divided into social dance and performance dance. Irish social dance can be divided into "céilí" and set dancing. Irish set dances are quadrilles, danced by 4 couples arranged in a square, while céilí dances are danced by varied formations of couples of 2 to 16 people. There are also many stylistic differences between these two forms. Irish social dance is a living tradition, and variations in particular dances are found across the country. In some places dances are deliberately modified and new dances are choreographed. Performance dance is traditionally referred to as stepdance. Irish stepdance, popularised by the show "Riverdance", is notable for its rapid leg movements, with the body and arms being kept largely stationary. The solo stepdance is generally characterised by a controlled but not rigid upper body, straight arms, and quick, precise movements of the feet. The solo dances can either be in "soft shoe" or "hard shoe". Architecture. Ireland has a wealth of structures, surviving in various states of preservation, from the Neolithic period, such as "Brú na Bóinne", Poulnabrone dolmen, Castlestrange stone, Turoe stone, and Drombeg stone circle. As Ireland was never a part of the Roman Empire, ancient architecture in Greco-Roman style is extremely rare, in contrast to most of Western Europe. The country instead had an extended period of Iron Age architecture. The Irish round tower originated during the Early Medieval period. Christianity introduced simple monastic houses, such as Clonmacnoise, Skellig Michael and Scattery Island. A stylistic similarity has been remarked between these double monasteries and those of the Copts of Egypt. Gaelic kings and aristocrats occupied ringforts or "crannógs". Church reforms during the 12th century via the Cistercians stimulated continental influence, with the Romanesque styled Mellifont, Boyle and Tintern abbeys. Gaelic settlement had been limited to the Monastic proto-towns, such as Kells, where the current street pattern preserves the original circular settlement outline to some extent. Significant urban settlements only developed following the period of Viking invasions. The major Hiberno-Norse Longphorts were located on the coast, but with minor inland fluvial settlements, such as the eponymous Longford. Castles were built by the Anglo-Normans during the late 12th century, such as Dublin Castle and Kilkenny Castle, and the concept of the planned walled trading town was introduced, which gained legal status and several rights by grant of a Charter under Feudalism. These charters specifically governed the design of these towns. Two significant waves of planned town formation followed, the first being the 16th- and 17th-century plantation towns, which were used as a mechanism for the Tudor English kings to suppress local insurgency, followed by 18th-century landlord towns. Surviving Norman founded planned towns include Drogheda and Youghal; plantation towns include Portlaoise and Portarlington; well-preserved 18th-century planned towns include Westport and Ballinasloe. These episodes of planned settlement account for the majority of present-day towns throughout the country. Gothic cathedrals, such as St Patrick's, were also introduced by the Normans. Franciscans were dominant in directing the abbeys by the Late Middle Ages, while elegant tower houses, such as Bunratty Castle, were built by the Gaelic and Norman aristocracy. Many religious buildings were ruined with the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Following the Restoration, palladianism and rococo, particularly country houses, swept through Ireland under the initiative of Edward Lovett Pearce, with the Houses of Parliament being the most significant. With the erection of buildings such as The Custom House, Four Courts, General Post Office and King's Inns, the neoclassical and Georgian styles flourished, especially in Dublin. Georgian townhouses produced streets of singular distinction, particularly in Dublin, Limerick and Cork. Following Catholic Emancipation, cathedrals and churches influenced by the French Gothic Revival emerged, such as St Colman's and St Finbarre's. Ireland has long been associated with thatched roof cottages, though these are nowadays considered quaint. Beginning with the American designed art deco church at Turner's Cross, Cork in 1927, Irish architecture followed the international trend towards modern and sleek building styles since the 20th century. Other developments include the regeneration of Ballymun and an urban extension of Dublin at Adamstown. Since the establishment of the Dublin Docklands Development Authority in 1997, the Dublin Docklands area underwent large-scale redevelopment, which included the construction of the Convention Centre Dublin and Grand Canal Theatre. Completed in 2018, Capital Dock in Dublin is the tallest building in the Republic of Ireland achieving in height (the Obel Tower in Belfast, Northern Ireland being the tallest in Ireland). The Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland regulates the practice of architecture in the state. Media. (RTÉ) is Ireland's public service broadcaster, funded by a television licence fee and advertising. RTÉ operates two national television channels, RTÉ One and RTÉ Two. The other independent national television channels are Virgin Media One, Virgin Media Two, Virgin Media Three and TG4, the latter of which is a public service broadcaster for speakers of the Irish language. All these channels are available on Saorview, the national free-to-air digital terrestrial television service. Additional channels included in the service are RTÉ News Now, RTÉjr, and RTÉ One +1. Subscription-based television providers operating in Ireland include Virgin Media and Sky. The BBC's Northern Irish division is widely available in Ireland. BBC One Northern Ireland and BBC Two Northern Ireland are available in pay television providers including Virgin and Sky as well as via signal overspill by Freeview in border counties. Supported by the Irish Film Board, the Irish film industry grew significantly since the 1990s, with the promotion of indigenous films as well as the attraction of international productions like "Braveheart" and "Saving Private Ryan". A large number of regional and local radio stations are available countrywide. A survey showed that a consistent 85% of adults listen to a mixture of national, regional and local stations on a daily basis. RTÉ Radio operates four national stations, Radio 1, 2fm, Lyric fm, and RnaG. It also operates four national DAB radio stations. There are two independent national stations: Today FM and Newstalk. Ireland has a traditionally competitive print media, which is divided into daily national newspapers and weekly regional newspapers, as well as national Sunday editions. The strength of the British press is a unique feature of the Irish print media scene, with the availability of a wide selection of British published newspapers and magazines. Eurostat reported that 82% of Irish households had Internet access in 2013 compared to the EU average of 79% but only 67% had broadband access. Cuisine. Irish cuisine was traditionally based on meat and dairy products, supplemented with vegetables and seafood. Examples of popular Irish cuisine include boxty, colcannon, coddle, stew, and bacon and cabbage. Ireland is known for the full Irish breakfast, which involves a fried or grilled meal generally consisting of rashers, egg, sausage, white and black pudding, and fried tomato. Apart from the influence by European and international dishes, there has been an emergence of a new Irish cuisine based on traditional ingredients handled in new ways. This cuisine is based on fresh vegetables, fish, oysters, mussels and other shellfish, and the wide range of hand-made cheeses that are now being produced across the country. Shellfish have increased in popularity, especially due to the high quality shellfish available from the country's coastline. The most popular fish include salmon and cod. Traditional breads include soda bread and wheaten bread. Barmbrack is a yeasted bread with added sultanas and raisins, traditionally eaten on Halloween. Popular everyday beverages among the Irish include tea and coffee. Alcoholic drinks associated with Ireland include Poitín and the world-famous Guinness, which is a dry stout that originated in the brewery of Arthur Guinness at St. James's Gate in Dublin. Irish whiskey is also popular throughout the country and comes in various forms, including single malt, single grain, and blended whiskey. Sports. Gaelic football and hurling are the traditional sports of Ireland as well as popular spectator sports. They are administered by the Gaelic Athletics Association on an all-Ireland basis. Other Gaelic games organised by the association include Gaelic handball and rounders. Association football (soccer) is the third most popular spectator sport and has the highest level of participation. Although the League of Ireland is the national league, the English Premier League is the most popular among the public. The Republic of Ireland national football team plays at international level and is administered by the Football Association of Ireland. The Irish Rugby Football Union is the governing body of rugby union, which is played at local and international levels on an all-Ireland basis, and has produced players such as Brian O'Driscoll and Ronan O'Gara, who were on the team that won the Grand Slam in 2009. The success of the Irish Cricket Team in the 2007 Cricket World Cup has led to an increase in the popularity of cricket, which is also administered on an all-Ireland basis by Cricket Ireland. Ireland are one of the twelve Test playing members of the International Cricket Council, having been granted Test status in 2017. Professional domestic matches are played between the major cricket unions of Leinster, Munster, Northern, and North West. Netball is represented by the Ireland national netball team. Golf is another popular sport in Ireland, with over 300 courses countrywide. The country has produced several internationally successful golfers, such as Pádraig Harrington, Shane Lowry and Paul McGinley. Horse racing has a large presence, with influential breeding and racing operations in the country. Racing takes place at courses at The Curragh Racecourse in County Kildare, Leopardstown Racecourse just outside Dublin, and Galway. Ireland has produced champion horses such as Galileo, Montjeu, and Sea the Stars. Boxing is Ireland's most successful sport at an Olympic level. Administered by the Irish Athletic Boxing Association on an all-Ireland basis, it has gained in popularity as a result of the international success of boxers such as Bernard Dunne, Andy Lee and Katie Taylor. Some of Ireland's highest performers in athletics have competed at the Olympic Games, such as Eamonn Coghlan and Sonia O'Sullivan. The annual Dublin Marathon and Dublin Women's Mini Marathon are two of the most popular athletics events in the country. Rugby league is represented by the Ireland national rugby league team and administered by Rugby League Ireland (who are full member of the Rugby League European Federation) on an all-Ireland basis. The team compete in the European Cup (rugby league) and the Rugby League World Cup. Ireland reached the quarter-finals of the 2000 Rugby League World Cup as well as reaching the semi-finals in the 2008 Rugby League World Cup. The Irish Elite League is a domestic competition for rugby league teams in Ireland. While Australian rules football in Ireland has a limited following, a series of International rules football games (constituting a hybrid of the Australian and Gaelic football codes) takes place annually between teams representing Ireland and Australia. Baseball and basketball are also emerging sports in Ireland, both of which have an international team representing the island of Ireland. Other sports which retain a following in Ireland include cycling, greyhound racing, horse riding, and motorsport. Society. Ireland ranks fifth in the world in terms of gender equality. In 2011, Ireland was ranked the most charitable country in Europe, and second most charitable in the world. Contraception was controlled in Ireland until 1979, however, the receding influence of the Catholic Church has led to an increasingly secularised society. A constitutional ban on divorce was lifted following a referendum in 1995. Divorce rates in Ireland are very low compared to European Union averages (0.7 divorced people per 1,000 population in 2011) while the marriage rate in Ireland is slightly above the European Union average (4.6 marriages per 1,000 population per year in 2012). Abortion had been banned throughout the period of the Irish state, first through provisions of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 and later by the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013. The right to life of the unborn was protected in the constitution by the Eighth Amendment in 1983; this provision was removed following a referendum, and replaced it with a provision allowing legislation to regulate the termination of pregnancy. The Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018 passed later that year provided for abortion generally during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and in specified circumstances after that date. Capital punishment is constitutionally banned in Ireland, while discrimination based on age, gender, sexual orientation, marital or familial status, religion, race or membership of the travelling community is illegal. The legislation which outlawed homosexual acts was repealed in 1993. The Civil Partnership and Certain Rights and Obligations of Cohabitants Act 2010 permitted civil partnerships between same-sex couples. The Children and Family Relationships Act 2015 allowed for adoption rights for couples other than married couples, including civil partners and cohabitants, and provided for donor-assisted human reproduction; however, significant sections of the Act have yet to be commenced. Following a referendum held on 23 May 2015, Ireland became the eighteenth country to provide in law for same-sex marriage, and the first to do so by popular vote. Ireland became the first country in the world to introduce an environmental levy for plastic shopping bags in 2002 and a public smoking ban in 2004. Recycling in Ireland is carried out extensively, and Ireland has the second highest rate of packaging recycling in the European Union. It was the first country in Europe to ban incandescent lightbulbs in 2008 and the first EU country to ban in-store tobacco advertising and product display in 2009. In 2015, Ireland became the second country in the world to introduce plain cigarette packaging. Despite the above measures to discourage tobacco use, smoking rates in Ireland remain at approximately 15.4% as of 2020. State symbols. The state shares many symbols with the island of Ireland. These include the colours green and blue, animals such as the Irish wolfhound and stags, structures such as round towers and celtic crosses, and designs such as Celtic knots and spirals. The shamrock, a type of clover, has been a national symbol of Ireland since the 17th century when it became customary to wear it as a symbol on St. Patrick's Day. These symbols are used by state institutions as well as private bodies in the Republic of Ireland. The flag of Ireland is a tricolour of green, white and orange. The flag originates with the Young Ireland movement of the mid-19th century but was not popularised until its use during the Easter Rising of 1916. The colours represent the Gaelic tradition (green) and the followers of William of Orange in Ireland (orange), with white representing the aspiration for peace between them. It was adopted as the flag of the Irish Free State in 1922 and continues to be used as the sole flag and ensign of the state. A naval jack, a green flag with a yellow harp, is set out in Defence Forces Regulations and flown from the bows of warships in addition to the national flag in limited circumstances (e.g. when a ship is not underway). It is based on the unofficial green ensign of Ireland used in the 18th and 19th centuries and the traditional green flag of Ireland dating from the 16th century. Like the national flag, the national anthem, (), has its roots in the Easter Rising, when the song was sung by the rebels. Although originally published in English in 1912, the song was translated into Irish in 1923 and the Irish-language version is more commonly sung today. The song was officially adopted as the anthem of the Irish Free State in 1926 and continues as the national anthem of the state. The first four bars of the chorus followed by the last five comprise the presidential salute. The arms of Ireland originate as the arms of the monarchs of Ireland and was recorded as the arms of the King of Ireland in the 12th century. From the union of the crowns of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1603, they have appeared quartered on the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom. Today, they are the personal arms of the president of Ireland whilst he or she is in office and are flown as the presidential standard. The harp symbol is used extensively by the state to mark official documents, Irish coinage and on the seal of the president of Ireland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14604

Foreign relations of India

India, officially the Republic of India, has full diplomatic relations with 201 states, including Palestine, the Holy See, and Niue. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) is the government agency responsible for the conduct of foreign relations of India. With the world's third largest military expenditure, second largest armed force, fifth largest economy by GDP nominal rates and third largest economy in terms of purchasing power parity, India is a prominent regional power and a rising superpower. According to the MEA, the main purposes of Indian diplomacy include protecting India's national interests, promoting friendly relations with other states, and providing consular services to "foreigners and Indian nationals abroad." In recent decades, India has pursued an expansive foreign policy, including the neighborhood-first policy embodied by SAARC as well as the Look East policy to forge more extensive economic and strategic relationships with other East Asian countries. It has also maintained a policy of strategic ambiguity, which involves its "no first use" nuclear policy and its neutral stance on the Russo-Ukrainian War. India is a member of several intergovernmental organizations, such as the United Nations, the Asian Development Bank, BRICS, and the G-20. which is widely considered the main economic locus of emerging and developed nations. India exerts a salient influence as the founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement. India has also played an important and influential role in other international organisations, such as the East Asia Summit, World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund (IMF), G8+5 and IBSA Dialogue Forum. India is also a member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. As a former British colony, India is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations and continues to maintain relationships with other Commonwealth countries. History. India's relations with the world have evolved since the British Raj (1857–1947) when the British Empire took responsibility for handling external and defence relations. When India gained independence in 1947, few Indians had experience in making or conducting foreign policy. However, the country's oldest political party, the Indian National Congress, had established a small foreign department in 1925 to make overseas contacts and to publicise its independence struggle. From the late 1920s on, Jawaharlal Nehru, who had a long-standing interest in world affairs among independence leaders, formulated the Congress's stance on international issues. As Prime Minister and Minister of External Affairs from 1947, Nehru articulated India's approach to the world. India's international influence varied over the years after independence. Indian prestige and moral authority were high in the 1950s and facilitated the acquisition of developmental assistance from both East and West. Although the prestige stemmed from India's nonaligned stance, the nation was unable to prevent Cold War politics from becoming intertwined with interstate relations in South Asia. On the intensely debated Kashmir issue with Pakistan, India lost credibility by rejecting United Nations' calls for a plebiscite in the disputed area. In the 1960s and 1970s, India's international position among developed and developing countries faded during wars with China and Pakistan, disputes with other countries in South Asia, and India's attempt to match Pakistan's support from the United States and China by signing the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in August 1971. Although India obtained substantial Soviet military and economic aid, which helped to strengthen the nation, India's influence was undercut regionally and internationally by the perception that its friendship with the Soviet Union prevented a more forthright condemnation of the Soviet presence in Afghanistan. In the late 1980s, India improved relations with the United States, other developed countries, and China while continuing close ties with the Soviet Union. Relations with its South Asian neighbours, especially Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal, occupied much of the energies of the Ministry of External Affairs. Even before independence, the Indian colonial government maintained semi-autonomous diplomatic relations. It had colonies (such as the Aden Settlement), that sent and received full missions. India was a founder member of both the League of Nations and the United Nations. After India gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1947, it soon joined the Commonwealth of Nations and strongly supported independence movements in other colonies, like the Indonesian National Revolution. The partition and various territorial disputes, particularly that over Kashmir, would strain its relations with Pakistan for years to come. During the Cold War, India adopted a foreign policy of not aligning itself with any major power bloc. However, India developed close ties with the Soviet Union and received extensive military support from it. The end of the Cold War significantly affected India's foreign policy, as it did for much of the world. The country now seeks to strengthen its diplomatic and economic ties with the United States, the European Union trading bloc, Japan, Israel, Mexico, and Brazil. India has also forged close ties with the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the African Union, the Arab League and Iran. Though India continues to have a military relationship with Russia, Israel has emerged as India's second-largest military partner while India has built a strong strategic partnership with the United States. The foreign policy of Narendra Modi indicated a shift towards focusing on the Asian region and, more broadly, trade deals. Policy. India's foreign policy has always regarded the concept of neighbourhood as one of widening concentric circles, around a central axis of historical and cultural commonalities. As many as 44 million people of Indian origin live and work abroad and constitute an important link with the mother country. An important role of India's foreign policy has been to ensure their welfare and well-being within the framework of the laws of the country where they live. Role of the Prime Minister. Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister, promoted a strong personal role for the Prime Minister but a weak institutional structure. Nehru served concurrently as Prime Minister and Minister of External Affairs; he made all major foreign policy decisions himself after consulting with his advisers and then entrusted the conduct of international affairs to senior members of the Indian Foreign Service. He was the main founding father of the Panchsheel or the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence. His successors continued to exercise considerable control over India's international dealings, although they appointed separate ministers of external affairs.India's second prime minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri (1964–66), expanded the Prime Minister's Office (sometimes called the Prime Minister's Secretariat) and enlarged its powers. By the 1970s, the Office of the Prime Minister had become the de facto coordinator and supra-ministry of the Indian government. The enhanced role of the office strengthened the prime minister's control over foreign policymaking at the expense of the Ministry of External Affairs. Advisers in the office provided channels of information and policy recommendations in addition to those offered by the Ministry of External Affairs. A subordinate part of the office—the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW)—functioned in ways that significantly expanded the information available to the prime minister and his advisers. The RAW gathered intelligence, provided intelligence analysis to the Office of the Prime Minister, and conducted covert operations abroad. The prime minister's control and reliance on personal advisers in the Office of the Prime Minister was particularly strong under the tenures of Indira Gandhi (1966–77 and 1980–84) and her son, Rajiv (1984–89), who succeeded her, and weaker during the periods of coalition governments. Observers find it difficult to determine whether the locus of decision-making authority on any issue lies with the Ministry of External Affairs, the Council of Ministers, the Office of the Prime Minister, or the prime minister himself. The Prime Minister is however free to appoint advisers and special committees to examine various foreign policy options and areas of interest. In a recent instance, Manmohan Singh appointed K. Subrahmanyam in 2005 to head a special government task force to study 'Global Strategic Developments' over the next decade. The Task Force submitted its conclusions to the Prime Minister in 2006. The report has not yet been released in the public domain. Ministry of External Affairs. The Ministry of External Affairs is the Indian government's agency responsible for the foreign relations of India. The Minister of External Affairs holds cabinet rank as a member of the Council of Ministers. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar is the current Minister of External Affairs. The Ministry has a Minister of State V Muraleedharan. The Indian Foreign Secretary is the head of the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) and therefore, serves as the head of all Indian (ambassadors) and high commissioners. Vinay Mohan Kwatra is the current Foreign Secretary of India. Act East Policy. In the post-Cold War era, a significant aspect of India's foreign policy is the Look East Policy. During the cold war, India's relations with its Southeast Asian neighbours were not strong. After the end of the cold war, the government of India particularly realised the importance of redressing this imbalance in India's foreign policy. Consequently, the Narsimha Rao government in the early nineties of the last century unveiled the look east policy. Initially, it focused on renewing political and economic contacts with the countries of East and South-East Asia. At present, under the Look East Policy, the Government of India is giving special emphasis on the economic development of the backward northeastern region of India taking advantage of a huge market of ASEAN as well as of the energy resources available in some of the member countries of ASEAN like Burma. The look-east policy was launched in 1991 just after the end of the cold war, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. After the start of liberalisation, it was a very strategic policy decision taken by the government in foreign policy. To quote Prime Minister Manmohan Singh "it was also a strategic shift in India's vision of the world and India's place in the evolving global economy". The policy was given an initial thrust with the then Prime Minister Narasimha Rao visiting China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and Singapore and India becoming an important dialogue partner with ASEAN in 1992. Since the beginning of this century, India has given a big push to this policy by becoming a summit-level partner of ASEAN (2002) and getting involved in some regional initiatives such as the BIMSTEC and the Ganga–Mekong Cooperation and now becoming a member of the East Asia Summit (EAS) in December 2005. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, India has forged a closer partnership with Western powers. In the 1990s, India's economic problems and the demise of the bipolar world political system forced India to reassess its foreign policy and adjust its foreign relations. Previous policies proved inadequate to cope with the serious domestic and international problems facing India. The end of the Cold War gutted the core meaning of nonalignment and left Indian foreign policy without significant direction. The hard, pragmatic considerations of the early 1990s were still viewed within the nonaligned framework of the past, but the disintegration of the Soviet Union removed much of India's international leverage, for which relations with Russia and the other post-Soviet states could not compensate. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, India improved its relations with the United States, Canada, France, Japan, and Germany. In 1992, India established formal diplomatic relations with Israel and this relationship grew during the tenures of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government and the subsequent United Progressive Alliance (UPA) governments. In the mid-1990s, India attracted the world's attention to Pakistan-backed terrorism in Kashmir. The Kargil War resulted in a major diplomatic victory for India. The United States and European Union recognised the fact that the Pakistani military had illegally infiltrated Indian territory and pressured Pakistan to withdraw from Kargil. Several anti-India militant groups based in Pakistan were labelled as terrorist groups by the United States and European Union. In 1998, India tested nuclear weapons for the second time (see Pokhran-II) which resulted in several US, Japanese and European sanctions on India. India's then defence minister, George Fernandes, said that India's nuclear programme was necessary as it provided a deterrence to potential Chinese nuclear threat. Most of the sanctions imposed on India were removed by 2001. After September 11 attacks in 2001, Indian intelligence agencies provided the US with significant information on Al-Qaeda and related groups' activities in Pakistan and Afghanistan. India's extensive contribution to the War on Terror, coupled with a surge in its economy, has helped India's diplomatic relations with several countries. Over the past three years, India has held numerous joint military exercises with US and European nations that have resulted in a strengthened US-India and EU-India bilateral relationship. India's bilateral trade with Europe and the United States had more than doubled in the five years since 2003. India has been pushing for reforms in the UN and WTO with mixed results. India's candidature for a permanent seat at the UN Security Council is currently backed by several countries including France, Russia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Brazil, Australia and UAE. In 2004, the United States signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with India even though the latter is not a part of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The US argued that India's strong nuclear non-proliferation record made it an exception, however, this has not persuaded other Nuclear Suppliers Group members to sign similar deals with India. During a state visit to India in November 2010, US President Barack Obama announced US support for India's bid for permanent membership to UN Security Council as well as India's entry to Nuclear Suppliers Group, Wassenaar Arrangement, Australia Group and Missile Technology Control Regime. As of January 2018, India has become a member of Wassenaar Arrangement, Australia Group and Missile Technology Control Regime. Strategic partners. India's growing economy, strategic location, a mix of friendly and diplomatic foreign policy and large and vibrant diaspora has won it more allies than enemies. India has friendly relations with several countries in the developing world. Though India is not a part of any major military alliance, it has a close strategic and military relationship with most of its fellow major powers. Countries considered India's closest include the United Arab Emirates, Russian Federation, Israel, Afghanistan, France, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and the United States. Russia is the largest supplier of military equipment to India, followed by Israel and France. According to some analysts, Israel is set to overtake Russia as India's largest military and strategic partner. The two countries also collaborate extensively in the sphere of counter-terrorism and space technology. India also enjoys strong military relations with several other countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, Singapore, Brazil, South Africa and Italy. In addition, India operates an airbase in Tajikistan, signed a landmark defence accord with Qatar in 2008, and has leased out Assumption Island from Seychelles to build a naval base in 2015. India has also forged relationships with developing countries, especially South Africa, Brazil, and Mexico. These countries often represent the interests of developing countries through economic forums such as the G8+5, IBSA and WTO. India was seen as one of the standard bearers of the developing world and claimed to speak for a collection of more than 30 other developing nations at the Doha Development Round. Indian Look East policy has helped it develop greater economic and strategic partnerships with Southeast Asian countries, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. India also enjoys friendly relations with the Persian Gulf countries and most members of the African Union. The Foundation for National Security Research in New Delhi published "India's Strategic Partners: A Comparative Assessment" and ranked India's top strategic partners with a score out of 90 points: Russia comes out on top with 62, followed by the United States (58), France (51), UK (41), Germany (37), and Japan (34). One of the outcomes of the 2023 G20 summit is a transportation project that would facilitate Indian trade to the Middle East and Europe. Partnership agreements. India has signed strategic partnership agreements with more than two dozen countries/supranational entities listed here in the chronological order of the pacts: Future agreements. Currently, India is taking steps towards establishing strategic partnerships with Canada and Argentina. Although India has not signed any formal strategic partnership agreements with Bhutan and Qatar, its foreign ministry often describes relations with these countries as 'strategic'. Africa. Burkina Faso Both countries established diplomatic relations on 24 March 1962 Both countries established diplomatic relations on 18 October 1975 Both countries established diplomatic relations on 26 August 1967 when India's first Ambassador to Congo-Brazzaville , Mr. Venkata Siddathacharry , has presented his credentials to President Massamba-Debat. India and Ethiopia have warm bilateral ties based on mutual cooperation and support. India has been a partner in Ethiopia's developmental efforts, training Ethiopian personnel under its ITEC programmer, providing it with several lines of credit and launching the Pan-African e-Network project there in 2007. The Second India–Africa Forum Summit was held in Addis Ababa in 2011. India is also Ethiopia's second-largest source of foreign direct investments. Both countries established diplomatic relations on 18 August 1947. Modern Egypt-India relations go back to the contacts between Saad Zaghloul and Mohandas Gandhi on the common goals of their respective movements of independence. In 1955, Egypt under Gamal Abdul Nasser and India under Jawaharlal Nehru became the founders of the Non-Aligned Movement. During the 1956 War, Nehru stood supporting Egypt to the point of threatening to withdraw his country from the Commonwealth of Nations. In 1967, following the Arab–Israeli conflict, India supported Egypt and the Arabs. In 1977, New Delhi described the visit of President Anwar al-Sadat to Jerusalem as a "brave" move and considered the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel a primary step on the path of a just settlement of the Middle East problem. Major Egyptian exports to India include raw cotton, raw and manufactured fertilisers, oil and oil products, organic and non-organic chemicals, and leather and iron products. Major imports into Egypt from India are cotton yarn, sesame, coffee, herbs, tobacco, lentils, pharmaceutical products and transport equipment. The Egyptian Ministry of Petroleum is also currently negotiating the establishment of a natural gas-operated fertiliser plant with another Indian company. In 2004 the Gas Authority of India Limited bought 15% of Egypt's Nat Gas distribution and marketing company. In 2008 Egyptian investment in India was worth some 750 million dollars, according to the Egyptian ambassador. After the Arab Spring of 2011, with ousting of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt asked for the help of India in conducting nationwide elections. Gabon maintains an embassy in New Delhi. The Embassy of India in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo is jointly accredited to Gabon. Relations between Ghana and India are generally close and cordial mixed with economic and cultural connections. Trade between India and Ghana amounted to US$818 million in 2010–11 and is expected to be worth US$1 billion by 2013. Ghana imports automobiles and buses from India and companies like Tata Motors and Ashok Leyland have a significant presence in the country. Ghanaian exports to India consist of gold, cocoa and timber while Indian exports to Ghana comprise pharmaceuticals, agricultural machinery, electrical equipment, plastics, steel and cement. The Government of India has extended $228 million in lines of credit to Ghana which has been used for projects in sectors like agro-processing, fish processing, waste management, rural electrification and the expansion of Ghana's railways. India has also offered to set up an India-Africa Institute of Information Technology (IAIIT) and a Food Processing Business Incubation Centre in Ghana under the India–Africa Forum Summit. India is among the largest foreign investors in Ghana's economy. At the end of 2011, Indian investments in Ghana amounted to $550 million covering some 548 projects. Indian investments are primarily in the agriculture and manufacturing sectors of Ghana while Ghanaian companies manufacture drugs in collaboration with Indian companies. The IT sector in Ghana too has a significant Indian presence in it. India and Ghana also have a Bilateral Investment Protection Agreement between them. India's Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilisers is in the process of setting up a fertiliser plant in Ghana at Nyankrom in the Shama District of the Western Region of Ghana. The project entails an investment of US$1.3 billion and the plant would have an annual production capacity of 1.1 million tones, the bulk of which would be exported to India. There are also plans to develop a sugar processing plant entailing an investment of US$36 million. Bank of Baroda, Bharti Airtel, Tata Motors and Tech Mahindra are amongst the major Indian companies in Ghana. There are about seven to eight thousand Indians and Persons of Indian Origin living in Ghana today with some of them having been there for over 70 years. Ghana is home to a growing indigenous Hindu population that today numbers 3000 families. Hinduism first came to Ghana only in the late 1940s with the Sindhi traders who migrated here following India's Partition. It has been growing in Ghana and neighbouring Togo since the mid-1970s when an African Hindu monastery was established in Accra. The bilateral relations between India and Ivory Coast have expanded considerably in recent years as India seeks to develop an extensive commercial and strategic partnership in the West African region. The Indian diplomatic mission in Abidjan was opened in 1979. Ivory Coast opened its resident mission in New Delhi in September 2004. Both nations are currently fostering efforts to increase trade, investments and economic cooperation. Both countries established diplomatic relations on 14 December 1963 As littoral states of the Indian Ocean, trade links and commercial ties between India and Kenya go back several centuries. Kenya has a large minority of Indians and Persons of Indian Origin living there who are descendants of labourers who were brought in by the British to construct the Uganda Railway and Gujarati merchants. India and Kenya have growing trade and commercial ties. Bilateral trade amounted to $2.4 billion in 2010–2011 but with Kenyan imports from India accounting for $2.3 billion, the balance of trade was heavily in India's favour. India is Kenya's sixth-largest trading partner and the largest exporter to Kenya. Indian exports to Kenya include pharmaceuticals, steel, machinery and automobiles while Kenyan exports to India are primary commodities such as soda ash, vegetables and tea. Indian companies have a significant presence in Kenya with Indian corporates like the Tata Group, Essar Group, Reliance Industries and Bharti Airtel operating there. India operates a High Commission in Pretoria which serves Lesotho and Lesotho operates a residential mission in India. Lesotho and India have strong ties. Lesotho has backed India's bid for a Permanent UN seat and has also recognized Jammu and Kashmir as a part of India. India exported US$11 Million to Lesotho in the 2010–2011 year while only importing US$1 Million in goods from Lesotho. Since 2001, an Indian Army Training Team has trained several soldiers in the LDF. The bilateral relations between the Republic of India and the Republic of Liberia have expanded on growing bilateral trade and strategic cooperation. India is represented in Liberia through its embassy in Abidjan (Ivory Coast) and an active honorary consulate in Monrovia since 1984. Liberia was represented in India through its resident mission in New Delhi which subsequently closed due to budgetary constraints. Malawi Both countries established diplomatic relations on 19 October 1964 when has been accredited Acting High Commissioner of India to Malawi Mr. Dileep S. Kamtekar. India is represented in Mauritania by its embassy in Bamako, Mali. India also has an honorary consulate in Nouakchott. The relations between India and Mauritius existed since 1730, diplomatic relations were established in 1948 before Mauritius became an independent state. The relationship is very cordial due to cultural affinities and long historical ties that exist between the two nations. More than 68% of the Mauritian population are of Indian origin, most known as Indo-Mauritian. The economic and commercial corporation has been increasing over the years. India has become Mauritius' largest source of imports since 2007 and Mauritius imported US$816 million worth of goods in the April 2010 – March 2011 financial year. Mauritius has remained the largest source of FDI for India for more than a decade with FDI equity inflows totalling US$55.2 billion in the period April 2000 to April 2011. India and Mauritius co-operate in combating piracy which has emerged as a major threat in the Indian Ocean region and support India's stand against terrorism. The relationship between Mauritius and India date back to the early 1730s, when artisans were brought from Puducherry and Tamil Nadu. Diplomatic relations between India and Mauritius were established in 1948. Mauritius maintained contacts with India through successive Dutch, French and British rule. From the 1820s, Indian workers started coming to Mauritius to work on sugar plantations. From 1833 when slavery was abolished by Parliament, large numbers of Indian workers began to be brought into Mauritius as indentured labourers. On 2 November 1834, the ship named 'Atlas' docked in Mauritius carrying the first batch of Indian indentured labourers. Morocco has an embassy in New Delhi. It also has an Honorary Consul based in Mumbai. India operates an embassy in Rabat. Both nations are part of the Non-Aligned Movement. In the United Nations, India supported the decolonisation of Morocco and the Moroccan freedom movement. India recognised Morocco on 20 June 1956 and established relations in 1957. The Ministry of External Affairs of the Government of India states that "India and Morocco have enjoyed cordial and friendly relations and over the years bilateral relations have witnessed significant depth and growth." The Indian Council for Cultural Relations promotes Indian culture in Morocco. Morocco seeks to increase its trade ties with India and is seeking Indian investment in various sectors The bilateral relations between India and Morocco strengthened after the Moroccan Ambassador to India spent a week in Srinagar, the capital city of Jammu and Kashmir. This showed Moroccan solidarity with India regarding Kashmir. India has a high commissioner in Maputo and Mozambique has a high commissioner in New Delhi. Relations between India and Namibia are warm and cordial. India was one of SWAPO's earliest supporters during the Namibian liberation movement. The first SWAPO embassy was established in India in 1986. India's observer mission was converted to a full High Commissioner on Namibia's Independence Day of 21 March 1990. India has helped train the Namibian Air Force since its creation in 1995. The two countries work closely in mutual multilateral organisations such as the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement and the Commonwealth of Nations. Namibia supports the expansion of the United Nations Security Council to include a permanent seat for India. In 2008–09, trade between the two countries stood at approximately US$80 million. Namibia's main imports from India were drugs and pharmaceuticals, chemicals, agricultural machinery, automobile and automobile parts, glass and glassware, and plastic and linoleum products. India primarily imported nonferrous metals, ores, and metal scraps. Indian products are also exported to neighbouring South Africa and re-imported to Namibia as South African imports. Namibian diamonds are often exported to European diamond markets before being again imported to India. In 2009, the first direct sale of Namibian diamonds to India took place. In 2008, two Indian companies won a US$105 million contract from NamPower to lay a high-voltage direct current bi-polar line from Katima Mulilo to Otjiwarongo. Namibia is a beneficiary of the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) programme for telecommunications professionals from developing countries. India has a high commissioner in Windhoek and Namibia has a high commissioner in New Delhi. Namibia's high commissioner is also accredited for Bangladesh, the Maldives and Sri Lanka. Both countries established diplomatic relations on 18 July 1977 when the first Ambassador of the Republic of Niger, Illa Salifou, presented the letter of credence to Acting President B.D. Jatti. India has close relations with this oil-rich West African country. Twenty percent of India's crude oil needs are met, by Nigeria. of oil, is the amount of oil, that India receives from Nigeria. Trade, between these two countries stands at $875 million in 2005–2006. Indian companies have also invested in manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, iron ore, steel, information technology, and communications, amongst other things. Both India and Nigeria, are members of the Commonwealth of Nations, G-77, and the Non-Aligned Movement. Former Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo was the guest of honour, at the Republic Day parade, in 1999, and the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Nigeria in 2007 and addressed the Nigerian Parliament. Indo-Rwandan relations are the foreign relations between the Republic of India and the Republic of Rwanda. India is represented in Rwanda through its honorary consulate in Kigali. Rwanda has been operating its Embassy in New Delhi since 1998 and appointed its first resident Ambassador in 2001. India–Seychelles relations are bilateral relations between the Republic of India and the Republic of Seychelles. India has a High Commission in Victoria while Seychelles maintains a High Commission in New Delhi. India and South Africa, have always had strong relations even though India revoked diplomatic relations in protest of the apartheid regime in the mid-20th century. The history of British rule connects both lands. There is a large group of Indian South Africans. Mahatma Gandhi, spent many years in South Africa, during which time, he fought for the rights of the ethnic Indians. Nelson Mandela was inspired by Gandhi. After India's independence, India strongly condemned apartheid and refused diplomatic relations while apartheid was conducted as state policy in South Africa. The two countries, now have close economic, political, and sports relations. Trade between the two countries grew from $3 million in 1992–1993 to $4 billion in 2005–2006, and aim to reach trade of $12 billion by 2010. One-third of India's imports from South Africa is gold bar. Diamonds, that are mined from South Africa, are polished in India. Nelson Mandela was awarded the Gandhi Peace Prize. The two countries are also members of the IBSA Dialogue Forum, with Brazil. India hopes to get large amounts of uranium, from resource-rich South Africa, for India's growing civilian nuclear energy sector. India recognised South Sudan on 10 July 2011, a day after South Sudan became an independent state. Right now, relations are economic. Pramit Pal Chaudhuri wrote in the "Hindustan Times" that South Sudan "has other attractions. As the Indian Foreign Ministry's literature notes, South Sudan is reported to have "some of the largest oil reserves in Africa outside Nigeria and Angola". An article in 'The Telegraph' reported that South Sudan is "one of the poorest [countries] in the world, [but] is oil rich. Foreign ministry officials said New Delhi has [a] keen interest in increasing its investments in the oil fields in South Sudan, which now owns over two-thirds of erstwhile united Sudan's oil fields." In return for the oil resources that can be provided by South Sudan, India said it was willing to assist in developing infrastructure, training officials in health, education, and rural development. "We have compiled a definite road map which India can help South Sudan." Both countries established diplomatic relations on 7 May 1956. Indo-Sudanese relations have always been characterised as longstanding, close, and friendly, even since the early development stages of their countries. At the time of Indian independence, Sudan had contributed 70,000 pounds, which was used to build part of the National Defence Academy in Pune. The main building of NDA is called Sudan Block. The two nations established diplomatic relations shortly after India became known as one of the first Asian countries to recognise the newly independent African country. India and Sudan also share geographic and historical similarities, as well as economic interests. Both countries are former British colonies, and remotely border Saudi Arabia using a body of water. India and Sudan continue to have cordial relations, despite issues such as India's close relationship with Israel, India's solidarity with Egypt over border issues with Sudan, and Sudan's intimate bonds with Pakistan and Bangladesh. India had also contributed some troops as United Nations peacekeeping force in Darfur. Togo opened its embassy in New Delhi in October 2010. The High Commission of India in Accra, Ghana is concurrently accredited to Togo. Togolese President Gnassingbé Eyadéma made an official state visit to India in September 1994. During the visit, the two countries agreed to establish Joint Commission. India and Uganda established diplomatic relations in 1965 and each maintains a High Commissioner in the other's capital. The Indian High Commission in Kampala has concurrent accreditation to Burundi and Rwanda. Uganda hosts a large Indian community and India–Uganda relations cover a broad range of sectors including political, economic, commercial, cultural, and scientific cooperation. Relations between India and Uganda began with the arrival of over 30,000 Indians in Uganda in the 19th century who were brought there to construct the Mombasa–Kampala railway line. Ugandan independence activists were inspired in their struggle for Ugandan independence by the success of the Indian independence movement and were also supported in their struggle by the Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru. Indo-Ugandan relations have been good since Uganda's independence except during the regime of Idi Amin. Amin in 1972 expelled over 55,000 people of Indian origin and 5,000 Indians who had formed the commercial and economic backbone of the country accusing them of exploiting native Ugandans. Since the mid-1980s when President Yoweri Museveni came to power, relations have steadily improved. Today some 20,000 Indians and PIOs live or work in Uganda. Ethnic tensions between Indians and Ugandans have been a recurring issue in bilateral relations given the role of Indians in the Ugandan economy. As of the year 2011, India's total trade with Africa is over US$46 billion and its total investment is over US$11 billion with a US$5.7 billion line of credit for executing various projects in Africa. India has had good relationships with most sub-Saharan African nations for most of its history. In the Prime Minister's visit to Mauritius in 1997, the two countries secured a deal to new Credit Agreement of INR 105 million (US$3 million) to finance the import by Mauritius of capital goods, consultancy services and consumer durable from India. The government of India secured a rice and medicine agreement with the people of Seychelles. India continued to build upon its historically close relations with Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. Visits from political ministers from Ethiopia provided opportunities for strengthening bilateral cooperation between the two countries in the fields of education and technical training, water resources management and development of small industries. This has allowed India to gain benefits from nations that are forgotten by other Western Nations. The South African President, Thabo Mbeki has called for a strategic relationship between India and South Africa to avoid imposition by Western Nations. India continued to build upon its close and friendly relations with Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The Minister of Foreign Affairs arranged for the sending of Special Envoys to each of these countries during 1996–97 as a reaffirmation of India's assurance to strengthening cooperation with these countries in a spirit of South-South partnership. These relations have created a position of strength with African nations that other nations may not possess. Americas. India's commonalities with developing nations in Latin America, especially Brazil and Mexico have continued to grow. India and Brazil continue to work together on the reform of the Security Council through the G4 nations while having also increased strategic and economic cooperation through the IBSA Dialogue Forum. The process of finalizing a Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) with MERCOSUR (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay) is on the itinerary and negotiations are being held with Chile. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was the guest of honor at the 2004 Republic Day celebrations in New Delhi. North. Both countries have established diplomatic relations and have an Extradition Arrangement. India and Barbados established diplomatic relations on 30 November 1966 (the date of Barbados' national independence). On that date, the government of India gifted Barbados the throne in Barbados' national House of Assembly. India is represented in Barbados through its embassy in Suriname and an Indian consulate in Holetown, St. James. In 2011–12 the Indian-based firm Era's Lucknow Medical College and Hospital, established the American University of Barbados (AUB), as the island's first Medical School for international students. In 2015 the governments of Barbados and India signed a joint Open Skies Agreement. Today around 3,000 persons from India call Barbados home. Two-thirds are from India's Surat district of Gujarat known as Suratis. Most of the Suratis are involved in trading. The rest are of Sindhis ancestry. India has an Honorary Consulate in Belize City and Belize has an Honorary Consulate in New Delhi. Bilateral trade stood at US$45.3 Million in 2014 and has steadily increased since. Belize and India have engaged in dialogue in Central American Integration System (SICA) discussing anti-terrorism, climate change and food security. India signed a Tax Information Exchange Agreement in 2013 with Belize. India also provides Belize with US$30 Million as part of its foreign aid commitment to SICA countries. Citizens of Belize are eligible for scholarships in Indian universities under Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation Programme and the Indian Council for Cultural Relations. The two nations share a close cultural link due to Belize's large East Indian Population, estimated at 4% of the total population. Indo-Canadian relations are the longstanding bilateral relations between India and Canada, which are built upon a "mutual commitment to democracy", "pluralism", and "people-to-people links", according to the government of Canada. In 2004, bilateral trade between India and Canada was at about C$2.45 billion. However, the botched handling of the Air India investigation and the case, in general, suffered a setback to Indo-Canadian relations. India's Smiling Buddha nuclear test led to connections between the two countries being frozen, with allegations that India broke the terms of the Colombo Plan. Although Jean Chrétien and Roméo LeBlanc both visited India in the late 1990s, relations were again halted after the Pokhran-II tests. Canada-India relations have been on an upward trajectory since 2005. Governments at all levels, private-sector organisations, academic institutes in two countries, and people-to-people contacts—especially diaspora networks—have contributed through individual and concerted efforts to significant improvements in the bilateral relationship.The two governments have agreed on important policy frameworks to advance the bilateral relationship. In particular, the Nuclear Cooperation Agreement (signed in June 2010) and the current successful negotiations of the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) constitute a watershed in Canada-India relations. The two governments have attempted to make up for lost time and are eager to complete CEPA negotiations by 2013 and ensure its ratification by 2014. After the conclusion of CEPA, Canada and India must define the areas for their partnership which will depend on their ability to convert common interests into common action and respond effectively for steady cooperation. For example, during "pull-aside" meetings between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Stephen Harper at the G-20 summit in Mexico in June 2012, and an earlier meeting in Toronto between External Affairs Minister S. M. Krishna and John Baird, the leaders discussed developing a more comprehensive partnership going beyond food security and including the possibility of tie-ups in the energy sector, hydrocarbon. Relations between India and Cuba are close and warm. Both nations are part of the Non-Aligned Movement. Cuba has repeatedly called for a more "democratic" representation of the United Nations Security Council and supports India's candidacy as a permanent member of a reformed Security Council. Fidel Castro said that "The maturity of India..., its unconditional adherence to the principles which lay at the foundation of the Non-Aligned Movement give us the assurances that under the wise leadership of Indira Gandhi (the former Prime Minister of India), the non-aligned countries will continue advancing in their inalienable role as a bastion for peace, national independence and development..." India has an embassy in Havana, the capital of Cuba which opened in January 1960. This had particular significance as it symbolised Indian solidarity with the Cuban revolution. India had been one of the first countries in the world to have recognised the new Cuban government after the Cuban Revolution. Cuba has an embassy in New Delhi, the Indian capital. Relations between India and Jamaica are generally cordial and close. There are many cultural and political connections inherited from British colonial rule, such as membership in the Commonwealth of Nations, parliamentary democracy, the English language and cricket. Both nations are members of the Non-Aligned Movement, the United Nations and the Commonwealth, and Jamaica supports India's candidacy for permanent membership in a reformed UN Security Council. During the British era, Indians voluntarily went to jobs in Jamaica and the West Indies. This has created a considerable population of people of Indian origin in Jamaica. India has a High Commission in Kingston, whilst Jamaica has a consulate in New Delhi and plans to upgrade it to a High Commission soon. Mexico is a very important and major economic partner of India. Nobel Prize laureate and ambassador to India Octavio Paz wrote his book "In Light of India" which is an analysis of Indian history and culture. Both nations are regional powers and members of the G-20 major economies. Bilateral relations between India and Nicaragua have been limited to SICA dialogue and visits by Nicaraguan Ministers to India. India maintains an honorary consul general in Nicaragua, concurrently accredited to the Indian embassy in Panama City and Nicaragua used to maintain an embassy in India but was reduced to an honorary consulate general in New Delhi. the current Foreign minister Samuel Santos López visited India in 2008 for the SICA-India Foreign ministers' meeting and in 2013 for high-level talks with the then External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid which also expanded bilateral trade with the two countries reaching a total of US$60.12 million during 2012–13. Bilateral relations between Panama and India have been growing steadily, reflecting the crucial role the Panama Canal plays in global trade and commerce. Moreover, with over 15,000 Indians living in Panama, diplomatic ties have considerably increased over the past decade. The opening of the expanded Canal in 2016 is expected to provide new prospects for maritime connectivity. In seeking to rapidly strengthen trade relations such as the flow of trade triples between the two countries, India is keen to leverage these transit trade facilities in Panama to access the wider market of Latin America. Along with pursuing a free trade agreement, India wants to promote investment in various sectors of Panama's economy, including the banking and maritime industry and the multimodal centre of the Colón Free Trade Zone. The bilateral relations between the Republic of India and Paraguay have been traditionally strong due to strong commercial, cultural and strategic cooperation. India is represented in Paraguay through its embassy in Buenos Aires in Argentina. India also has an Honorary Consul-General in Asuncion. Paraguay opened its embassy in India in 2005. Bilateral relations between the Republic of India and the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago have considerably expanded in recent years with both nations building strategic and commercial ties. Both nations formally established diplomatic relations in 1962. Both nations were part of the British Empire; India supported the independence of Trinidad and Tobago from British rule and established its diplomatic mission in 1962 – the year that Trinidad and Tobago officially gained independence. They possess diverse natural and economic resources and are the largest economies in their respective regions. Both are members of the Commonwealth of Nations, the United Nations, G-77 and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). The Republic of India operates a High Commission in Port of Spain, whilst the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago operates a High Commission in New Delhi. Before and during the Second World War, the United States under President Roosevelt gave strong support to the Indian independence movement despite being allies to Britain. Relations between India and the United States were lukewarm following Indian independence, as India took a leading position in the Non-Aligned Movement, and received support from the Soviet Union. The US provided support to India in 1962 during its war with China. For most of the Cold War, the USA tended to have warmer relations with Pakistan, primarily as a way to contain Soviet-friendly India and to use Pakistan to back the Afghan Mujahideen against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. An Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, signed in 1971, also positioned India against the USA. After the Sino-Indian War and the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, India made considerable changes to its foreign policy. It developed a close relationship with the Soviet Union and started receiving massive military equipment and financial assistance from the USSR. This harmed the Indo-US relationship. The United States saw Pakistan as a counterweight to pro-Soviet India and started giving the former military assistance. This created an atmosphere of suspicion between India and the US. The Indo-US relationship suffered a considerable setback when the Soviets took over Afghanistan and India overtly supported the Soviet Union. Relations between India and the United States came to an all-time low during the early 1970s. Despite reports of atrocities in East Pakistan, and being told, most notably in the "Blood telegram", of genocidal activities being perpetrated by Pakistani forces, the US. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and US President Richard Nixon did nothing to discourage then-Pakistani President Yahya Khan and the Pakistan Army. Kissinger was particularly concerned about Soviet expansion into South Asia as a result of a treaty of friendship that had recently been signed between India and the Soviet Union and sought to demonstrate to the People's Republic of China the value of a tacit alliance with the United States. During the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, Indian Armed Forces, along with the Mukti Bahini, succeeded in liberating East Pakistan which soon declared independence. Nixon feared that an Indian invasion of West Pakistan would mean total Soviet domination of the region and that it would seriously undermine the global position of the United States and the regional position of America's new tacit ally, China. To demonstrate to China the "bona fides" of the United States as an ally, and in direct violation of the Congress-imposed sanctions on Pakistan, Nixon sent military supplies to Pakistan, routing them through Jordan and Iran, while also encouraging China to increase its arms supplies to Pakistan. When Pakistan's defeat in the eastern sector seemed certain, Nixon sent the to the Bay of Bengal, a move deemed by the Indians as a nuclear threat. The "Enterprise" arrived at the station on 11 December 1971. On 6 and 13 December, the Soviet Navy dispatched two groups of ships, armed with nuclear missiles, from Vladivostok; they trailed US Task Force 74 into the Indian Ocean from 18 December 1971 until 7 January 1972. The Soviets also sent nuclear submarines to ward off the threat posed by USS "Enterprise" in the Indian Ocean.Though American efforts had no effect in turning the tide of the war, the incident involving USS "Enterprise" is viewed as the trigger for India's subsequent interest in developing nuclear weapons. American policy towards the end of the war was dictated primarily by a need to restrict the escalation of the war on the Western sector to prevent the 'dismemberment' of West Pakistan. Years after the war, many American writers criticised the White House policies during the war as being badly flawed and ill-serving to the interests of the United States. India carried out nuclear tests a few years later resulting in sanctions being imposed by the United States, further drifting the two countries apart. In recent years, Kissinger came under fire for comments made during the Indo-Pakistan War in which he described Indians as "bastards". Kissinger has since expressed his regret over the comments. Since the end of the Cold War, India-USA relations have improved dramatically. This has been fostered by the fact that the United States and India are both democracies and have a large and growing trade relationship. During the Gulf War, the economy of India went through an extremely difficult phase. The Government of India adopted liberalised economic systems. After the break-up of the Soviet Union, India improved diplomatic relations with the members of NATO, particularly Canada, France, and Germany. In 1992, India established formal diplomatic relations with Israel. In recent years, India-United States relations have still improved significantly during the Premiership of Narendra Modi since 2014. In 1998, India tested nuclear weapons which resulted in several US, Japanese and European sanctions on India. India's then defence minister, George Fernandes, said that India's nuclear programme was necessary as it provided a deterrence to some potential nuclear threats. Most of the sanctions imposed on India were removed by 2001. India has categorically stated that it will never use weapons first but will defend itself if attacked. The economic sanctions imposed by the United States in response to India's nuclear tests in May 1998 appeared, at least initially, to seriously damage Indo-American relations. President Bill Clinton imposed wide-ranging sanctions according to the 1994 Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act. US sanctions on Indian entities involved in the nuclear industry and opposition to international financial institution loans for non-humanitarian assistance projects in India. The United States encouraged India to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) immediately and without condition. The United States also called for restraint in missile and nuclear testing and deployment by both India and Pakistan. The non-proliferation dialogue initiated after the 1998 nuclear tests has bridged many of the gaps in understanding between the countries. South. Formal relations between both countries were first established in 1949. India has an embassy in Buenos Aires and Argentina has an embassy in New Delhi. The current Indian Ambassador to Argentina (concurrently accredited to Uruguay and Paraguay) is R Viswanathan. According to the Ministry of External Affairs of the Government of India, "Under the 1968 Visa agreement, (Argentine) fees for transit and tourist visas have been abolished. Under the new visa agreement signed during the Argentine Presidential visit in October 2009, it has been agreed that five-year multi-entry business visas would be given free of cost. The Embassy of India in Buenos Aires gives Cafe Con Visa (coffee with visa) to Argentine visitors. The applicants are invited for coffee and a visa is given immediately. This has been praised by the Argentine media, public and the Foreign Minister himself." Relations between Brazil and India have been extended to diverse areas such as science and technology, pharmaceuticals and space as both are member nations of BRICS. The two-way trade in 2007 nearly tripled to US$3.12 billion from US$1.2 billion in 2004. India attaches tremendous importance to its relationship with this Latin American giant and hopes to see the areas of cooperation expand in the coming years. Both countries want the participation of developing countries in the UNSC permanent membership since the underlying philosophy for both of them are: UNSC should be more democratic, legitimate and representative – the G4 is a novel grouping for this realization. Brazil and India are deeply committed to IBSA (South-South cooperation) initiatives and attach utmost importance to this trilateral cooperation between the three large, multi-ethnic, multi-racial and multi-religious developing countries, which are bound by the common principle of pluralism and democracy. Both countries established diplomatic ties on 19 January 1959. Since then, the relationship between the two countries has been gradually increasing with more frequent diplomatic visits to promote political, commercial cultural and academic exchanges. Colombia is currently the commercial point of entry into Latin America for Indian companies. Diplomatic relations between India and Venezuela were established on 1 October 1959. India maintains an embassy in Caracas, while Venezuela maintains an embassy in New Delhi. There have been several visits by heads of state and government, and other high-level officials between the countries. President Hugo Chávez visited New Delhi on 4–7 March 2005. Chávez met with Indian President APJ Abdul Kalam and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The two countries signed six agreements including one to establish a Joint Commission to promote bilateral relations and another on cooperation in the hydrocarbon sector. Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro visited India to attend the First Meeting of the India-CELAC Troika Foreign Ministers meeting in New Delhi on 7 August 2012. The Election Commission of India (ECI) and the National Electoral Council (CNE) of Venezuela signed an MoU during a visit by Indian Election Commissioner V S Sampath to Caracas in 2012. The Minister of State for Corporate Affairs visited Venezuela to attend the state funeral of President Chavez in March 2013. The President and Prime Minister of India expressed condolences on the death of Chávez. The Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Parliament, observed a minute's silence to mark his death. Ambassador Smita Purushottam represented India at the swearing-in ceremony of Chávez's successor Nicolás Maduro on 19 April 2013. Citizens of Venezuela are eligible for scholarships under the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation Programme and the Indian Council for Cultural Relations. Asia. Central. India is working towards developing strong relations with this resource-rich Central Asian country. The Indian oil company, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation has got oil exploration and petroleum development grants in Kazakhstan. The two countries are collaborating in petrochemicals, information technology, and space technology. Kazakhstan has offered India five blocks for oil and gas exploration. India and Kazakhstan, are to set up joint projects in construction, minerals and metallurgy. India also signed four other pacts, including an extradition treaty, in the presence of President Prathibha Patil and her Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev. Kazakhstan will provide Uranium and related products under the MoU between Nuclear Power Corp. of India and Kazatomprom. These MoU also open possibilities of joint exploration of uranium in Kazakhstan, which has the world's second-largest reserves, and India building atomic power plants in the Central Asian country. Diplomatic relations were established between India and Tajikistan following Tajikistan's independence from the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, which had been friendly with India. Tajikistan occupies a strategically important position in Central Asia, bordering Afghanistan, the People's Republic of China and separated by a small strip of Afghan territory from Pakistan. India's role in fighting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda and its strategic rivalry with both China and Pakistan have made its ties with Tajikistan important to its strategic and security policies. Despite their common efforts, bilateral trade has been comparatively low, valued at US$12.09 million in 2005; India's exports to Tajikistan were valued at US$6.2 million and its imports at US$5.89 million. India's military presence and activities have been significant, beginning with India's extensive support of the anti-Taliban Afghan Northern Alliance (ANA). India began renovating the Farkhor Air Base and stationed aircraft of the Indian Air Force there. The Farkhor Air Base became fully operational in 2006, and 12 MiG-29 bombers and trainer aircraft are planned to be stationed there. India has an embassy in Tashkent. Uzbekistan has an embassy in New Delhi. Uzbekistan has had a great impact on Indian culture mostly due to the Mughal Empire which was founded by Babur of Ferghana (in present-day Uzbekistan) who created his empire southward first in Afghanistan and then in India. East. Despite lingering suspicions remaining from the 1962 Sino-Indian War, the 1967 Nathu La and Cho La incidents, and continuing boundary disputes over Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh, Sino-Indian relations have improved gradually since 1988. Both countries have sought to reduce tensions along the frontier, expand trade and cultural ties, and normalise relations. A series of high-level visits between the two nations have helped improve relations. In December 1996, PRC President Jiang Zemin visited India during a tour of South Asia. While in New Delhi, he signed with the Indian Prime Minister a series of confidence-building measures for the disputed borders. Sino-Indian relations suffered a brief setback in May 1998 when the Indian Defence minister justified the country's nuclear tests by citing potential threats from the PRC. However, in June 1999, during the Kargil crisis, then-External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh visited Beijing and stated that India did not consider China a threat. By 2001, relations between India and the PRC were on the mend, and the two sides handled the move from Tibet to India of the 17th Karmapa in January 2000 with delicacy and tact. In 2003, India formally recognised Tibet as a part of China, and China recognised Sikkim as a formal part of India in 2004.Since 2004, the economic rise of both China and India has also helped forge closer relations between the two. Sino-Indian trade reached US$65.47 billion in 2013–14, making China the single largest trading partner of India. The increasing economic reliance between India and China has also bought the two nations closer politically, with both India and China eager to resolve their boundary dispute. They have also collaborated on several issues ranging from WTO's Doha round in 2008 to regional free trade agreement. Similar to Indo-US nuclear deal, India and China have also agreed to cooperate in the field of civilian nuclear energy. However, China's economic interests have clashed with those of India. Both countries are the largest Asian investors in Africa and have competed for control over their large natural resources. There was a tense situation due to the soldiers' stand-off in Doklam, Bhutan; but that was resolved early. Relations were lost due to Galwan Valley skirmishes and its progress. India ceased imports of Chinese products. Various measures were taken, such as several contracts with the Chinese companies involved in railways, networks and several items productions, which were cancelled in response. The outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic from Wuhan also hampered the relations. Following the straining of the bonds, both sides blamed each other for the conflict on LAC. On 29–30 August, it was reported that China had allegedly attempted to cross LAC to attain important hilltops, which was filed by Indian troops, as they were an advantage of acquiring important tops near LAC. India banned more than 250 Chinese apps, and on 16 October, it banned the import of ACs, Refrigerators and Coolers from China. Several core commanders' negotiations and talks were held, which resulted in nothing other than vague promises then. Cross-media blaming was common. There was even a conference held in Moscow, Russia, on 5 September between the Defence Minister of India, Rajnath Singh and Chinese Army General, Wei Fenghe, but that also ended up with no success. The recent meeting of the Quad-alliance was also questioned by China, but was then downed by India. In mid-January 2021, it was reported that both countries had finally agreed upon the de-escalation from their positions. Footage of Chinese troops removing tents/barracks was released. Both countries also agreed that India would move back to Finger-3, while China retained its position back to Finger-8, and also declared the area from Finger-3 to Finger-8 to be "No man's land". India-Japan relations have always been strong. India has culturally influenced Japan through Buddhism. During World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army helped Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose's Indian National Army. Relations have remained warm since India's independence, despite Japan imposing sanctions on India after the 1998 Pokhran-II nuclear tests (the sanctions were removed in 2001). Japanese companies, like Sony, Toyota, and Honda, have manufacturing facilities in India, and with the growth of the Indian economy, India is a big market for Japanese firms. The most prominent Japanese company to have a big investment in India is automobiles giant Suzuki which is in partnership with Indian automobile company Maruti Suzuki, the largest car manufacturer in India. Honda was also a partner in "Hero Honda", one of the largest motorcycle sellers in the world (the companies split in 2011). According to Former Prime Minister Shinzō Abe's "arc of freedom" theory, it is in Japan's interests to develop closer ties with India, the world's most populous democracy, while its relations with China remain chilly. To this end, Japan has funded many infrastructure projects in India, most notably in New Delhi's metro subway system. In December 2006, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Japan culminated in the signing of the "Joint Statement Towards Japan-India Strategic and Global Partnership". Indian applicants were welcomed in 2006 to the JET Programme, starting with just one slot available in 2006 and 41 in 2007. Also, in 2007, the Japan Self-Defense Forces took part in a naval exercise in the Indian Ocean, known as Malabar 2007, which also involved the naval forces of India, Australia, Singapore and the United States. In October 2008, Japan signed an agreement with India under which it would grant the latter a low-interest loan worth US$4.5 billion to construct a high-speed rail line between Delhi and Mumbai. This is the single largest overseas project being financed by Japan and reflects a growing economic partnership between the two. India and Japan signed a security cooperation agreement in which both will hold military exercises, police the Indian Ocean and conduct military-to-military exchanges on fighting terrorism, making India one of only three countries, the other two being the United States and Australia, with which Japan has such a security pact. There are 25,000 Indians in Japan as of 2008. The relations between India and Mongolia are still at a nascent stage and Indo-Mongolian cooperation is limited to diplomatic visits, the provision of soft loans and financial aid and collaborations in the IT sector. India established diplomatic relations in December 1955. India was the first country outside the Soviet bloc to establish diplomatic relations with Mongolia. Since then, there have been treaties of mutual friendship and cooperation between the two countries in 1973, 1994, 2001 and 2004. India and North Korea have growing trade and diplomatic relations. India had a fully functioning embassy in Pyongyang which was closed down due to COVID-19 pandemic in the host country while North Korea still operates an embassy in New Delhi. India has said that it wants the "reunification" of Korea. The cordial relationship between the two countries extends back to 48AD, when Queen Suro, or Princess Heo, travelled from the kingdom of Ayodhya to Korea. According to the Samguk Yusa, the princess had a dream about a heavenly king who was awaiting heaven's anointed ride. After Princess Heo had the dream, she asked her parents, the king and queen, for permission to set out and seek the man, which the king and queen urged with the belief that god orchestrated the whole fate. Upon approval, she set out on a boat, carrying gold, silver, a tea plant, and a stone which calmed the waters. Archeologists discovered a stone with two fish kissing each other, a symbol of the Gaya kingdom that is unique to the Mishra royal family in Ayodhya, India. This royal link provides further evidence that there was an active commercial engagement between India and Korea since the queen's arrival in Korea. Current descendants live in the city of Gimhae as well as abroad in the America states of New Jersey and Kentucky. Many of them became prominent and well-known around the world like President Kim Dae Jung and Prime Minister Kim Jong-pil. The relations between the countries have been relatively limited, although much progress arose during the three decades. Since the formal establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries in 1973, several trade agreements have been reached. Trade between the two nations has increased exponentially, exemplified by the $530 million during the fiscal year of 1992–1993, and the $10 billion during 2006–2007. During the 1997 Asian financial crisis, South Korean businesses sought to increase access to the global markets and began trade investments with India. The last two presidential visits from South Korea to India were in 1996 and 2006, and the embassy works between the two countries are seen as needing improvements. Recently, there have been acknowledgements in the Korean public and political spheres that expanding relations with India should be a major economic and political priority for South Korea. Much of the economic investments of South Korea have been drained into China; however, South Korea is currently the fifth largest source of investment in India. To The Times of India, President Roh Moo-hyun voiced his opinion that cooperation between India's software and Korea's IT industries would bring very efficient and successful outcomes. The two countries agreed to shift their focus to the revision of the visa policies between the two countries, expansion of trade, and establishment of free trade agreement to encourage further investment between the two countries. Korean companies such as LG, Hyundai and Samsung have established manufacturing and service facilities in India, and several Korean construction companies won grants for a portion of the many infrastructural building plans in India, such as the "National Highway Development Project". Tata Motor's purchase of Daewoo Commercial Vehicles at the cost of $102 million highlights India's investments in Korea, which consist mostly of subcontracting. South. Bilateral relations between India and Afghanistan have been traditionally strong and friendly. While India was the only South Asian country to recognise the Soviet-backed Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in the 1980s, its relations were diminished during the Afghan civil wars and the rule of the Islamist Taliban in the 1990s. India aided the overthrow of the Taliban and became the largest regional provider of humanitarian and reconstruction aid. The new democratically elected Afghan government strengthened its ties with India in the wake of persisting tensions and problems with Pakistan, which is continuing to shelter and support the Taliban. India pursues a policy of close cooperation to bolster its standing as a regional power and contains its rival Pakistan, which it maintains is supporting Islamic militants in Kashmir and other parts of India. India is the largest regional investor in Afghanistan, having committed more than US$3 billion for reconstruction purposes. After the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan collapsed, India participated in the evacuation of non-Muslim minorities and provided food aid to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. India was the second country to recognise Bangladesh as a separate and independent state, doing so on 6 December 1971. India fought alongside the Bangladeshis to liberate Bangladesh from West Pakistan in 1971. Bangladesh's relationship with India has been difficult in terms of border killing, irrigation and land border disputes post-1976. However, India has enjoyed a favourable relationship with Bangladesh during governments formed by the Awami League in 1972 and 1996. The recent solutions to land and maritime disputes have taken out irritants in ties. At the outset, India's relations with Bangladesh could not have been stronger because of India's unalloyed support for independence and opposition against Pakistan in 1971. During the independence war, many refugees fled to India. When the struggle of resistance matured in November 1971, India also intervened militarily and may have helped bring international attention to the issue through Indira Gandhi's visit to Washington, D.C. Afterwards India furnished relief and reconstruction aid. India extended recognition to Bangladesh before the end of the war in 1971 (the second country to do so after Bhutan) and subsequently lobbied others to follow suit. India also withdrew its military from the land of Bangladesh when Sheikh Mujibur Rahman requested Indira Gandhi to do so during the latter's visit to Dhaka in 1972. Indo-Bangladesh relations have been somewhat less friendly since the fall of the Mujib government in August 1975. over the years over issues such as South Talpatti Island, the Tin Bigha Corridor and access to Nepal, the Farakka Barrage and water sharing, border conflicts near Tripura and the construction of a fence along most of the border which India explains as security provision against migrants, insurgents and terrorists. Many Bangladeshis feel India likes to play "big brother" to smaller neighbours, including Bangladesh. Bilateral relations warmed in 1996, due to a softer Indian foreign policy and the new Awami League Government. A 30-year water-sharing agreement for the Ganges River was signed in December 1996, after an earlier bilateral water-sharing agreement for the Ganges River lapsed in 1988. Both nations also have cooperated on the issue of flood warnings and preparedness. The Bangladesh Government and tribal insurgents signed a peace accord in December 1997, which allowed for the return of tribal refugees who had fled to India, beginning in 1986, to escape violence caused by an insurgency in their homeland in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. The Bangladesh Army maintains a very strong presence in the area to this day. The army is increasingly concerned about the growing problem of the cultivation of illegal drugs. There are also small pieces of land along the border region that Bangladesh is diplomatically trying to reclaim. Padua, part of Sylhet Division before 1971, has been under Indian control since the war in 1971. This small strip of land was re-occupied by the BDR in 2001 but later given back to India after the Bangladesh government decided to solve the problem through diplomatic negotiations. The Indian New Moore island no longer exists, but Bangladesh repeatedly claims it to be part of the Satkhira district of Bangladesh. In recent years India has increasingly complained that Bangladesh does not secure its border properly. It fears an increasing flow of poor Bangladeshis and it accuses Bangladesh of harbouring Indian separatist groups like ULFA and alleged terrorist groups. The Bangladesh government has refused to accept these allegations. India estimates that over 20 million Bangladeshis are living illegally in India. One Bangladeshi official responded that "there is not a single Bangladeshi migrant in India". Since 2002, India has been constructing an India – Bangladesh Fence along much of the 2500-mile border. The failure to resolve migration disputes bears a human cost for illegal migrants, such as imprisonment and health risks (namely HIV/AIDS). India's prime minister Narendra Modi and his Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina have completed a landmark deal redrawing their messy shared border and thereby solving disputes between India and Bangladesh. Bangladesh has also given India a transit route to travel through Bangladesh to its North East states. India and Bangladesh also have free trade agreement on 7 June 2015. Both countries solved their border dispute on 6 June 2015. To connect Kolkata with Tripura via Bangladesh through railway, the Union Government on 10 February 2016 sanctioned about 580 crore rupees. The project which is expected to be completed by 2017 will pass through Bangladesh. The Agartala-Akhaura rail link between Indian Railway and Bangladesh Railway will reduce the current 1700 km road distance between Kolkata to Agartala via Siliguri to just 350 kilometer by railway. The project ranks high on Prime Minister's 'Act East Policy', and is expected to increase connectivity and boost trade between India and Bangladesh. Historically, there have been close ties with India. Both countries signed a friendship treaty in 1949, where India would assist Bhutan in foreign relations. On 8 February 2007, the Indo-Bhutan Friendship Treaty was substantially revised under the Bhutanese King, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck. Whereas in the Treaty of 1949 Article 2 read as "The Government of India undertakes to exercise no interference in the internal administration of Bhutan. On its part, the Government of Bhutan agrees to be guided by the advice of the Government of India regarding its external relations." In the revised treaty it now reads as, "In keeping with the abiding ties of close friendship and cooperation between Bhutan and India, the Government of the Kingdom of Bhutan and the Government of the Republic of India shall cooperate closely with each other on issues relating to their national interests. Neither government shall allow the use of its territory for activities harmful to the national security and interest of the other". The revised treaty also includes in it the preamble "Reaffirming their respect for each other's independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity", an element that was absent in the earlier version. The Indo-Bhutan Friendship Treaty of 2007 strengthens Bhutan's status as an independent and sovereign nation. India continues to be the largest trade and development partner of Bhutan. Planned development efforts in Bhutan began in the early 1960s. The First Five Year Plan (FYP) of Bhutan was launched in 1961. Since then, India has been extending financial assistance to Bhutan's FYPs. The 10th FYP ended in June 2013. India's overall assistance to the 10th FYP was a little over Rs. 5000 crores, excluding grants for hydropower projects. India has committed Rs. 4500 crores for Bhutan's 11th FYP along with Rs. 500 crores as an Economic Stimulus Package. The hydropower sector is one of the main pillars of bilateral cooperation, exemplifying mutually beneficial synergy by providing clean energy to India and exporting revenue to Bhutan (power contributes 14% to the Bhutanese GDP, comprising about 35% of Bhutan's total exports). Three hydroelectric projects (HEPs) totaling 1416 MW, (336 MW Chukha HEP, the 60 MW Kurichu HEP, and the 1020 MW Tala HEP), are already exporting electricity to India. In 2008 the two governments identified ten more projects for development with a total generation capacity of 10,000 MW. Of these, three projects totaling 2940 MW (1200 MW Punatsangchu-I, 1020 MW Punatsangchu-II and 720 MW Mangdechu HEPs) are under construction and are scheduled to be commissioned in the last quarter of 2017–2018. Out of the remaining 7 HEPs, 4 projects totaling 2120 MW (600 MW Kholongchhu, 180 MW Bunakha, 570 MW Wangchu and 770 MW Chamkarchu) will be constructed under a Joint Venture model, for which a Framework Inter-Governmental Agreement was signed between both governments in 2014. Of these 4 JV-model projects, pre-construction activities for Kholongchhu HEP have commenced. Tata Power is also building a hydroelectric dam in Bhutan. India had assisted Bhutan by deploying its troops in Doklam in 2017- a territory claimed and controlled by the Bhutanese government- to resist a Chinese army's control and construction of military structures. India enjoys a considerable influence over Maldives' foreign policy and provides extensive security cooperation, especially after Operation Cactus in 1988 during which India repelled Tamil mercenaries who invaded the country. As a founder member in 1985 of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, SAARC, which brings together Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, the country plays a very active role in SAARC. The Maldives has taken the lead in calling for a South Asian Free Trade Agreement, the formulation of a Social Charter, the initiation of informal political consultations in SAARC forums, the lobbying for greater action on environmental issues, the proposal of numerous human rights measures such as the regional convention on child rights and for setting up a SAARC Human Rights Resource Centre. The Maldives is also an advocate of greater international profile for SAARC such as through formulating common positions at the UN. India is starting the process to bring the island country into India's security grid. The move comes after the moderate Islamic nation approached New Delhi earlier this year over fears that one of its island resorts could be taken over by terrorists given its lack of military assets and surveillance capabilities. India also signed an agreement with the Maldives in 2011 which is centred around the following: Relations between India and Nepal are close yet fraught with difficulties stemming from border disputes, geography, economics, the problems inherent in big power-small power relations, and common ethnic and linguistic identities that overlap the two countries borders. In 1950 New Delhi and Kathmandu initiated their intertwined relationship with the Treaty of Peace and Friendship and accompanying secret letters that defined security relations between the two countries, and an agreement governing both bilateral trade and trade transiting Indian soil. The 1950 treaty and letters stated that "neither government shall tolerate any threat to the security of the other by a foreign aggressor" and obligated both sides "to inform each other of any serious friction or misunderstanding with any neighboring state likely to cause any breach in the friendly relations subsisting between the two governments", and also granted the Indian and Nepali citizens right to get involved in any economic activity such as work and business-related activity in each other's territory. These accords cemented a "special relationship" between India and Nepal that granted Nepalese in India the same economic and educational opportunities as Indian citizens. Relations between India and Nepal reached their lowest in 1989 when India imposed a 13-month-long economic blockade on Nepal. Indian PM Narendra Modi visited Nepal in 2014, the first by an Indian PM in nearly 17 years. In 2015, a blockade of the India-Nepal border affected relations. The blockade is led by ethnic communities angered by Nepal's recently promulgated new constitution. However, the Nepalese government accuses India of deliberately worsening the embargo, but India denies it. India aided Nepal during the 2015 Kathmandu earthquake with the financial aid of $1 billion and launched Operation Maitri. The relations were strained during mid-2020, when it was reported that a firing took place by the Nepalese police across the Indo-Nepalese border of Bihar on 12 July. Nepalese Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli commented about the pandemic of Coronavirus that the "Indian virus was deadlier" than the one which spread from Wuhan. As time progressed, certain claims were also made on the Indian territories, for example, Kalapani, Limpiyadhura and Lipulekh of Uttarakhand. Similarly, the claims were also made culturally, when it was said that Hindu God Ram was Nepalese, that he was born in Thori, west of Birgunj, and that Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh was fake. Rules were made strict for Indians in Nepal along with banning some Indian media. Indian media stated that the actions of the Oli government were souring the relations, "and these were being done on the direction of China and propelled by Chinese ambassador Hou Yanqi". Speculations were made that since China could not handle India directly, in the aftermath of the LAC skirmish, it was lurking and trapping its neighboring countries and provoking them against India. In August, there were reports about the Chinese "illegal occupations" in Nepal's border states' areas. Despite historical, cultural and ethnic links between them, relations between India and Pakistan have been "plagued" by years of mistrust and suspicion ever since the partition of India in 1947. The principal source of contention between India and its western neighbour has been the Kashmir conflict. After an invasion by Pashtun tribesmen and Pakistani paramilitary forces, the Hindu Maharaja of the Dogra Kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir, Hari Singh, and its Muslim Prime Minister, Sheikh Abdullah, signed an Instrument of Accession with New Delhi. The First Kashmir War started after the Indian Army entered Srinagar, the capital of the state, to secure the area from the invading forces. The war ended in December 1948 with the Line of Control dividing the erstwhile princely state into territories administered by Pakistan (northern and western areas) and India (southern, central and northeastern areas). Pakistan contested the legality of the Instrument of Accession since the Dogra Kingdom has signed a standstill agreement with it. The Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 started following the failure of Pakistan's Operation Gibraltar, which was designed to infiltrate forces into Jammu and Kashmir to precipitate an insurgency against rule by India. The five-week war caused thousands of casualties on both sides. It ended in a United Nations (UN) mandated ceasefire and the subsequent issuance of the Tashkent Declaration. India and Pakistan went to war again in 1971, this time the conflict being over East Pakistan. The large-scale atrocities committed there by the Pakistan army led to millions of Bengali refugees pouring over into India. India, along with the Mukti Bahini, defeated Pakistan and the Pakistani forces surrendered on the eastern front. The war resulted in the creation of Bangladesh. In 1998, India carried out the Pokhran-II nuclear tests which was followed by Pakistan's Chagai-I tests. Following the Lahore Declaration in February 1999, relations briefly improved. A few months later, however, Pakistani paramilitary forces and Pakistan Army, infiltrated in large numbers into the Kargil district of Indian Kashmir. This initiated the Kargil War after India moved in thousands of troops to successfully flush out the infiltrators. Although the conflict did not result in a full-scale war between India and Pakistan, relations between the two reached an all-time low which worsened even further following the involvement of Pakistan-based terrorists in the hijacking of the Indian Airlines Flight 814 in December 1999. Attempts to normalise relations, such as the Agra summit held in July 2001, failed. An attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001, which was blamed on Pakistan, which had condemned the attack caused a military standoff between the two countries which lasted for nearly a year raising fears of nuclear warfare. However, a peace process, initiated in 2003, led to improved relations in the following years. Since the initiation of the peace process, several confidence-building measures (CBMs) between India and Pakistan have taken shape. The Samjhauta Express and Delhi–Lahore Bus service are two of these successful measures which have played a crucial role in expanding people-to-people contact between the two countries. The initiation of the Srinagar–Muzaffarabad Bus service in 2005 and the opening of a historic trade route across the Line of Control in 2008 further reflects increasing eagerness between the two sides to improve relations. Although bilateral trade between India and Pakistan was a modest US$1.7 billion in March 2007, it is expected to cross US$10 billion by 2010. After the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, India sent aid to affected areas in Pakistani Kashmir and Punjab as well as Indian Kashmir. The 2008 Mumbai attacks seriously undermined the relations between the two countries. India alleged Pakistan harbouring militants on their soil, while Pakistan vehemently denied such claims. A new chapter started in India-Pakistan relations when a new NDA government took charge in Delhi after victory in the 2014 election and invited SAARC members' leaders to an oath-taking ceremony. Subsequently, the visit of the Indian prime minister on 25 December informally wished Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on his Birthday and participate in his daughter's wedding. It was hoped that the relationship between the neighbour will improve but an attack on an Indian army camp by Pakistani infiltrators on 18 September 2016 and a subsequent surgical strike by India aggravated the already strained relationship between the nations. A SAARC summit scheduled in Islamabad was called off because of a boycott by India and other SAARC members subsequently. The relationship took a further nosedive after another attack on CRPF in February 2019 by a terrorist associated with the Pakistan-based terror organisation, Jaish-e-Mohammed, when the terrorist rammed his vehicle packed with explosives against a bus carrying CRPF soldiers in Pulwama, Kashmir, killing 40. India blamed Pakistan which was denied by the Pakistani establishment. India retaliated with an airstrike on Balakot, a region claimed and controlled by Pakistan. A new chapter in peace was ignited when it was suddenly declared that a back-door peace settlement over ceasing the cross-border firing across LOC was signed between the armies of both sides, and a steady growth in the countries coming together was observed. Bilateral relations between Sri Lanka and India have enjoyed historically a good relationship. The two countries share near-identical racial and cultural ties. According to traditional Sri Lankan chronicles (Dipavamsa), Buddhism was introduced into Sri Lanka in the 4th century BCE by Venerable Mahinda, the son of Indian Emperor Ashoka, during the reign of Sri Lanka's King Devanampiya Tissa. During this time, a sapling of the Bodhi Tree was brought to Sri Lanka and the first monasteries and Buddhist monuments were established.Nevertheless, relations post-independence were affected by the Sri Lankan Civil War and by the failure of Indian intervention during the civil war as well as India's support for Tamil Tiger militants. India is Sri Lanka's only neighbour, separated by the Palk Strait; both nations occupy a strategic position in South Asia and have sought to build a common security umbrella in the Indian Ocean. India-Sri Lanka relations have undergone a qualitative and quantitative transformation in the recent past. Political relations are close, trade and investments have increased dramatically, infrastructural linkages are constantly being augmented, defence collaboration has increased and there is a general, broad-based improvement across all sectors of bilateral cooperation. India was the first country to respond to Sri Lanka's request for assistance after the tsunami in December 2004. In July 2006, India evacuated 430 Sri Lankan nationals from Lebanon, first to Cyprus by Indian Navy ships and then to Delhi and Colombo by special Air India flights. There exists a broad consensus within the Sri Lankan polity on the primacy of India in Sri Lanka's external relations matrix. Both the major political parties in Sri Lanka, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party and the United Nationalist Party have contributed to the rapid development of bilateral relations in the last ten years. Sri Lanka has supported India's candidature to the permanent membership of the UN Security Council. Certain aspects of India's relations within the subcontinent are conducted through the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). Its members other than India are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Established in 1985, SAARC encourages cooperation in agriculture, rural development, science and technology, culture, health, population control, narcotics control and anti-terrorism. SAARC has intentionally stressed these "core issues" and avoided more divisive political issues, although the political dialogue is often conducted on the margins of SAARC meetings. In 1993, India and its SAARC partners signed an agreement to gradually lower tariffs within the region. Forward movement in SAARC has come to a standstill because of the tension between India and Pakistan, and the SAARC Summit originally scheduled for, but not held in, November 1999 has not been rescheduled. The Fourteenth SAARC Summit was held during 3–4 April 2007 in New Delhi. The 19th SAARC summit that was scheduled to be held in Islamabad was cancelled due to terrorist acts, particularly the Uri attack. Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation is now an "organization of member states" that are littorals of the Bay of Bengal or adjacent to it. The BIMSTEC member states – Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand – are among the major South and Southeast Asia countries dependent on the Bay of Bengal. India and some other countries, frustrated by the obstacles in SAARC's efforts to promote regional cooperation, have been working to make BIMSTEC the premier vehicle in this regard. Southeast. Brunei has a high commission in New Delhi, and India has a high commission in Bandar Seri Begawan. Both countries are full members of the Commonwealth of Nations. Both nations have been in friendly relations. The ties between Indonesia and India date back to the times of the Ramayana, "Yawadvipa" (Java) is mentioned in India's earliest epic, the Ramayana. Sugriva, the chief of Rama's army dispatched his men to Yawadvipa, the island of Java, in search of Sita. Indonesians had absorbed many aspects of Indian culture since almost two millennia ago. The most obvious trace is the large adoption of Sanskrit into the Indonesian language. Several Indonesian toponymy has Indian parallel or origin, such as Madura with Mathura, Serayu and Sarayu rivers, Kalingga from Kalinga Kingdom, and Ngayogyakarta from Ayodhya. Indianised Hindu–Buddhist kingdoms, such as Kalingga, Srivijaya, Mataram, Sunda, Kadiri, Singhasari and Majapahit were the predominant governments in Indonesia, and lasted from 200 to the 1500s, with the last remaining being in Bali. An example of profound Hindu-Buddhist influences in Indonesian history is the 9th-century Prambanan and Borobudur temples.In 1950, the first President of Indonesia – Sukarno called upon the peoples of Indonesia and India to "intensify the cordial relations" that had existed between the two countries "for more than 1000 years" before they had been "disrupted" by colonial powers. In the spring of 1966, the foreign ministers of both countries began speaking again of an era of friendly relations. India had supported Indonesian independence and Nehru had raised the Indonesian question in the United Nations Security Council. India has an embassy in Jakarta and Indonesia operates an embassy in Delhi. India regards Indonesia as a key member of ASEAN. Today, both countries maintain cooperative and friendly relations. India and Indonesia are one of the few (and also one of the largest) democracies in the Asian region which can be projected as a real democracy. Both nations had agreed to establish a strategic partnership. As fellow Asian democracies that share common values, it is natural for both countries to nurture and foster strategic alliances. Indonesia and India are member states of the G-20, the E7, the Non-Aligned Movement, and the United Nations. In recent years, India has endeavoured to build relations, with this small Southeast Asian nation. They have strong military relations, and India shall be building an Airforce Academy in Laos. India has a high commission in Kuala Lumpur, and Malaysia has a high commission in New Delhi. Both countries are full members of the Commonwealth of Nations and the Asian Union. India and Malaysia are also connected by various cultural and historical ties that date back to antiquity. The two countries are on friendly terms with each other and Malaysia harbours a small population of Indian immigrants. Mahathir bin Mohamad the fourth and longest-serving Prime Minister of Malaysia is of Indian origin. His father Mohamad Iskandar, is a Malayalee Muslim who migrated from Kerala and his mother Wan Tampawan, is a Malay. Relations escalated when the Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad questioned the action of revocating the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and on CAA-NRC protests. The relations continue to be diminished, also during the palm oil export from Malaysia to India. Even with the new government in power, currently, there seems no recovery, as former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad still favored Pakistan. India established diplomatic relations after Burma's independence from Great Britain in 1948. For many years, Indo-Burmese relations were strong due to cultural links, flourishing commerce, common interests in regional affairs and the presence of a significant Indian community in Burma. India provided considerable support when Myanmar struggled with regional insurgencies. However, the overthrow of the democratic government by the Military of Burma led to strains in ties. Along with much of the world, India condemned the suppression of democracy and Myanmar ordered the expulsion of the Burmese Indian community, increasing its isolation from the world. Only China maintained close links with Myanmar while India supported the pro-democracy movement. However, due to geopolitical concerns, India revived its relations and recognised the military junta ruling Myanmar in 1993, overcoming strains over drug trafficking, the suppression of democracy and the rule of the military junta in Myanmar. Myanmar is situated to the south of the states of Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh in Northeast India. and the proximity of the People's Republic of China gives strategic importance to Indo-Burmese relations. The Indo-Burmese border stretches over 1,600 kilometers and some insurgents in North-east India seek refuge in Myanmar. Consequently, India has been keen on increasing military cooperation with Myanmar in its counter-insurgency activities. In 2001, the Indian Army completed the construction of a major road along its border with Myanmar. India has also been building major roads, highways, ports and pipelines within Myanmar in an attempt to increase its strategic influence in the region and also to counter China's growing strides in the Indochina peninsula. Indian companies have also sought active participation in oil and natural gas exploration in Myanmar. In February 2007, India announced a plan to develop the Sittwe port, which would enable ocean access from Indian Northeastern states like Mizoram, via the Kaladan River. India is a major customer of Burmese oil and gas. In 2007, Indian exports to Myanmar totaled US$185 million, while its imports from Myanmar were valued at around US$810 million, consisting mostly of oil and gas. India has granted US$100 million credit to fund highway infrastructure projects in Myanmar, while US$57 million has been offered to upgrade Burmese railways. A further US$27 million in grants has been pledged for road and rail projects. India is one of the few countries that has provided military assistance to the Burmese junta. However, there has been increasing pressure on India to cut some of its military supplies to Burma. Relations between the two remain close which was evident in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, when India was one of the few countries whose relief and rescue aid proposals were accepted by Myanmar's junta. India maintains embassies in Rangoon and consulate generals in Mandalay. Through the Srivijaya and Majapahit empires, Hindu influence has been visible in Philippine history from the 10th to 14th centuries. During the 18th century, there was robust trade between Manila with the Coromandel Coast and Bengal, involving Philippine exports of tobacco, silk, cotton, indigo, sugar cane and coffee. Formal diplomatic relations between the Philippines and India were established on 16 November 1949. The first Philippine envoy to India was the late Foreign Secretary Narciso Ramos. Seven years after India's independence in 1947, the Philippines and India signed a Treaty of Friendship on 11 July 1952 in Manila to strengthen the friendly relations existing between the two countries. Soon after, the Philippine Legation in New Delhi was established and then elevated to an embassy. However, due to foreign policy differences as a result of the bipolar alliance structure of the Cold War, the development of bilateral relations was stunted. It was only in 1976 that relations started to normalise when Aditya Birla, one of India's successful industrialists, met with then-President Ferdinand E. Marcos to explore possibilities of setting up joint ventures in the Philippines. Today, like India, the Philippines is the leading voice-operated business process outsourcing (BPO) source in terms of revenue (US$5.7) and number of people (500,000) employed in the sector. In partnership with the Philippines, India has 20 IT/BPO companies in the Philippines. Philippines-India bilateral trade stood at US$986.60 million in 2009. In 2004 it was US$600 million. Both countries aim to reach US$1 billion by 2010. 60,000 Indians are living in the Philippines. The Philippines and India signed in October 2007 the Framework for Bilateral Cooperation which created the PH-India JCBC. It has working groups in trade, agriculture, tourism, health, and renewable energy, a regular policy consultation mechanism and security dialogue. India and Singapore share long-standing cultural, commercial and strategic relations, with Singapore being a part of the "Greater India" cultural and commercial region. More than 300,000 people of Indian Tamil "தமிழ்" origin live in Singapore. Following its independence in 1965, Singapore was concerned with China-backed communist threats as well as domination from Malaysia and Indonesia and sought a close strategic relationship with India, which it saw as a counterbalance to Chinese influence and a partner in achieving regional security. Singapore had always been an important strategic trading post, giving India trade access to Maritime Southeast Asia and the Far East. Although the rival positions of both nations over the Vietnam War and the Cold War caused consternation between India and Singapore, their relationship expanded significantly in the 1990s; Singapore was one of the first to respond to the Indian Look East policy of expanding its economic, cultural and strategic ties in Southeast Asia to strengthen its standing as a regional power. Singapore, and especially, the Singaporean Foreign Minister, George Yeo, have taken an interest, in re-establishing the ancient Indian university, Nalanda University. Singapore is the 8th largest source of investment in India and the largest among ASEAN member nations. It is also India's 9th biggest trading partner as of 2005–06. Its cumulative investment in India totals US$3 billion as of 2006 and is expected to rise to US$ 5 billion by 2010 and US$ 10 billion by 2015. India's economic liberalisation and its "Look East" policy have led to a major expansion in bilateral trade, which grew from US$2.2 billion in 2001 to US$ 9–10 billion in 2006 – a 400% growth in five years – and to US$50 billion by 2010. Singapore accounts for 38% of India's trade with ASEAN member nations and 3.4% of its total foreign trade. India's main exports to Singapore in 2005 included petroleum, gemstones, jewellery, and machinery and its imports from Singapore included electronic goods, organic chemicals and metals. More than half of Singapore's exports to India are basically "re-exports" – items that had been imported from India. India's Indian Look East policy, saw India grow relations with ASEAN countries including Thailand, and Thailand's Look West policy, also saw it grow its relations with India. Both countries are members of BIMSTEC. Indian Prime Ministers Rajiv Gandhi, P.V. Narasimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and Manmohan Singh, have visited Thailand, which was reciprocated by contemporary Thai Prime Ministers Chatichai Choonhavan, Thaksin Sinawatra, and Surayud Chulanont. In 2003, a Free Trade Agreement was signed between the two countries. India is the 13th largest investor in Thailand. The spheres of trade are in chemicals, pharmaceuticals, textiles, nylon, tyre cord, real estate, rayon fibres, paper-grade pulps, steel wires, and rods. However, IT services, and manufacturing, are the main spheres. Through Buddhism, India has culturally influenced Thailand. The Indian epics, Mahabharata, and Ramayana, are popular and are widely taught in schools as part of the curriculum in Thailand. The example can also be seen in temples around Thailand, where the story of Ramayana and renowned Indian folk stories are depicted on the temple wall. Thailand has become a big tourist destination for Indians. Moreover, India and Thailand have been culturally linked for centuries and India has had a deep influence on Thai culture. There are a substantial number of words in Thai that are borrowed from Sanskrit, India's classical language. Pali, which was the language of Magadha and is a medium of Theravada, is another important root of Thai vocabulary. Buddhism, the major religion of Thailand, itself originates from India. The Hindu story of Ramayana is also well known throughout Thailand in the name Ramakien. Both nations have friendly and collateral relations. India supported Vietnam's independence from France, opposed US involvement in the Vietnam War and supported the unification of Vietnam. India established official diplomatic relations in 1972 and maintained friendly relations, especially in the wake of Vietnam's hostile relations with the People's Republic of China, which had become India's strategic rival. India granted the "Most favoured nation" status to Vietnam in 1975 and both nations signed a bilateral trade agreement in 1978 and the Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (BIPPA) on 8 March 1997. In 2007, a fresh joint declaration was issued during the state visit of the Prime Minister of Vietnam Nguyen Tan Dung. Bilateral trade has increased rapidly since the liberalisation of the economies of both Vietnam and India. India is the 13th-largest exporter to Vietnam, with exports having grown steadily from US$11.5 million in 1985–86 to US$395.68 million by 2003. Vietnam's exports to India rose to US$180 million, including agricultural products, handicrafts, textiles, electronics and other goods. Between 2001 and 2006, the volume of bilateral trade expanded at 20–30% per annum to reach $1 billion by 2006. Continuing the rapid pace of growth, bilateral trade is expected to rise to $2 billion by 2008, two years ahead of the official target. India and Vietnam have also expanded cooperation in information technology, education and collaboration of the respective national space programmes. Direct air links and lax visa regulations have been established to bolster tourism. India and Vietnam are members of the Mekong–Ganga Cooperation, created to develop to enhance close ties between India and nations of Southeast Asia. Vietnam has supported India's bid to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and join the Indo-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). In the 2003 joint declaration, India and Vietnam envisaged creating an "Arc of Advantage and Prosperity" in Southeast Asia; to this end, Vietnam has backed a more important relationship and role between India and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its negotiation of an Indo–ASEAN free trade agreement. India and Vietnam have also built strategic partnerships, including extensive cooperation in developing nuclear power, enhancing regional security and fighting terrorism, transnational crime and drug trafficking. India's interaction with ASEAN during the Cold War was very limited. India declined to get associated with ASEAN in the 1960s when full membership was offered even before the grouping was formed. It is only with the formulation of the Look East policy in the last decade (1992), India started giving this region due importance in the foreign policy. India became a sectoral dialogue partner with ASEAN in 1992, a full dialogue partner in 1995, a member of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1996, and a summit-level partner (on par with China, Japan and Korea) in 2002. The first India–ASEAN Business Summit was held in New Delhi in October 2002. The then Prime Minister A. B. Vajpayee addressed this meeting and since then this business summit has become an annual feature before the India–ASEAN Summits, as a forum for networking and exchange of business experiences between policymakers and business leaders from ASEAN and India. Four India-ASEAN Summits, first in 2002 at Phnom Penh (Cambodia), second in 2003 at Bali, Indonesia, third in 2004 at Vientiane, Laos, and the fourth in 2005 at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, have taken place. The following agreements have been entered into with ASEAN: The following proposals were announced by the Prime Minister at the 4th ASEAN-India Summit: The ASEAN region has an abundance of natural resources and significant technological skills. These provide a natural base for the integration between ASEAN and India in both trade and investment. The present level of bilateral trade with ASEAN of nearly US$18 billion is reportedly increasing by about 25% per year. India hopes to reach the level of US$30 billion by 2007. India is also improving its relations with the help of other policy decisions like offers of lines of credit, better connectivity through the air (open skies policy), and rail and road links. West. India established diplomatic relations with Armenia in December 1992. It wasn't recognised by some countries including Pakistan, which most of the nations did. As of the earliest days of the silk route, there have been strong cultural, moral and ancient other traditional relations among the nations. It fully supports India's bid for a permanent seat in UNSC and even completely supports India on Kashmir conflicts. There exists a small community of Armenians in India while there is also a small community of Indians. India has an embassy in Baku and Azerbaijan has an embassy in New Delhi. Both have been connected through ancient cultural links and trade routes (especially the Silk Route). India is a close ally of Bahrain, the Kingdom along with its GCC partners are (according to Indian officials) among the most prominent backers of India's bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, and Bahraini officials have urged India to play a greater role in international affairs. For instance, over concerns about Iran's nuclear programme Bahrain's Crown Prince appealed to India to play an active role in resolving the crisis. Ties between India and Bahrain go back generations, with many of Bahrain's most prominent figures having close connections: poet and constitutionalist Ebrahim Al-Arrayedh grew up in Bombay, while 17th-century Bahraini theologians Sheikh Salih Al-Karzakani and Sheikh Ja'far bin Kamal al-Din were influential figures in the Kingdom of Golkonda and the development of Shia thought in the sub-continent. Bahraini politicians have sought to enhance these long-standing ties, with Parliamentary Speaker Khalifa Al Dhahrani in 2007 leading a delegation of parliamentarians and business leaders to meet the then Indian President Pratibha Patil, the then opposition leader L K Advani, and take part in training and media interviews. Politically, it is easier for Bahrain's politicians to seek training and advice from India than it is from the United States or other Western alternatives. Adding further strength to the ties, Sheikh Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa visited India during which MOUs and bilateral deals worth $450 million were approved. India expressed its support for Bahrain's bid for a non-permanent seat in the UNSC in 2026–27. India supported Cyprus during its struggle for independence from British colonial rule. India supported the Greeks in Cyprus during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 and lobbied for the international recognition of the Government of Nicosia as the sole legal representative of the entire nation. India has consistently supported and voted for a peaceful resolution of the Cyprus dispute at the United Nations. Independent India and Iran established diplomatic links on 15 March 1950. After the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Iran withdrew from CENTO and dissociated itself from US-friendly countries, including Pakistan, which automatically meant an improved relationship with the Republic of India. Currently, the two countries have friendly relations in many areas. There are significant trade ties, particularly in crude oil imports into India and diesel exports to Iran. Iran frequently objected to Pakistan's attempts to draft anti-India resolutions at international organisations such as the OIC. India welcomed Iran's inclusion as an observer state in the SAARC regional organisation. Lucknow continues to be a major centre of Shiite culture and Persian study in the subcontinent. In the 1990s, India and Iran both supported the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan against the Taliban regime. They continue to collaborate in supporting the broad-based anti-Taliban government led by Hamid Karzai and backed by the United States. However, one complex issue in Indo-Iran relations is the issue of Iran's nuclear programme. In this intricate issue, India tries to make a delicate balance. According to Rejaul Laskar, an Indian expert on international relations, "India's position on Iran's nuclear programme has been consistent, principled and balanced, and makes an endeavour to reconcile Iran's quest for energy security with the international community's concerns on proliferation. So, while India acknowledges and supports Iran's ambitions to achieve energy security and in particular, its quest for peaceful use of nuclear energy, it is also India's principled position that Iran must meet all its obligations under international law, particularly its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and other such treaties to which it is a signatory" Following an attack on an Israeli diplomat in India in February 2012, the Delhi Police contended that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps had some involvement in the attack. This was subsequently confirmed in July 2012, after a report by the Delhi Police found evidence that members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps had been involved in the 13 February bomb attack in the capital. Iraq was one of the few countries in the Middle East with which India established diplomatic relations at the embassy level immediately after its independence in 1947. Both nations signed the "Treaty of Perpetual Peace and Friendship" in 1952 and an agreement of cooperation on cultural affairs in 1954. India was amongst the first to recognise the Ba'ath Party-led government, and Iraq remained neutral during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. However, Iraq sided alongside other Persian Gulf states in supporting Pakistan against India during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, which saw the creation of Bangladesh. The eight-year-long Iran–Iraq War caused a steep decline in trade and commerce between the two nations. During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, India remained neutral but permitted refuelling for US aircraft. It opposed UN sanctions on Iraq, but the period of war and Iraq's isolation further diminished India's commercial and diplomatic ties. From 1999 onwards, Iraq and India began to work towards a stronger relationship. Iraq had supported India's right to conduct nuclear tests following its tests of five nuclear weapons on 11 and 13 May 1998. In 2000, the then-Vice-President of Iraq Taha Yassin Ramadan visited India, and on 6 August 2002 President Saddam Hussein conveyed Iraq's "unwavering support" to India over the Kashmir conflict with Pakistan. India and Iraq established joint ministerial committees and trade delegations to promote extensive bilateral cooperation. Although initially disrupted during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, diplomatic and commercial ties between India and the new democratic government of Iraq have since been normalised. The establishment of Israel at the end of World War II was a complex issue. Based on its own experience during partition, when 14 million people were displaced and an estimated 200,000 to 500,000 people were killed in Punjab Province, India had recommended a single state, as did Iran and Yugoslavia (later to undergo its genocidal partition). The state could allocate Arab- and Jewish-majority provinces to prevent the partition of historic Palestine and prevent widespread conflict. But, the final UN resolution recommended the partition of Mandatory Palestine into Arab and Jewish states based on religious and ethnic majorities. India opposed this in the final vote as it did not agree with the concept of partition based on religion. Due to the security threat from a US-backed Pakistan and its nuclear programme in the 1980s, Israel and India started a clandestine relationship that involved cooperation between their respective intelligence agencies. Israel shared India's concerns about the growing danger posed by Pakistan and nuclear proliferation to Iran and other Arab states. Since the establishment of full diplomatic relations with Israel in 1992, India has improved its relationship with the Jewish state. India is regarded as Israel's strongest ally in Asia, and Israel is India's second-largest arms supplier. Since India achieved its independence in 1947, it has supported Palestinian self-determination. India recognised Palestine's statehood following Palestine's declaration on 18 November 1988 and Indo-Palestinian relations was first established in 1974. This has not adversely affected India's improved relations with Israel. India entertained the Israeli Prime Minister in a visit in 2003, and Israel has entertained Indian dignitaries such as Finance Minister Jaswant Singh in diplomatic visits. India and Israel collaborate in scientific and technological endeavours. Israel's Minister for Science and Technology has expressed interest in collaborating with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) towards using satellites to better manage land and other resources. Israel has also expressed interest in participating in ISRO's Chandrayaan Mission involving an uncrewed mission to the moon. On 21 January 2008, India successfully launched an Israeli spy satellite into orbit from the Sriharikota space station in southern India. Israel and India share intelligence on terrorist groups. They have developed close defence and security ties since establishing diplomatic relations in 1992. India has bought more than $5 billion worth of Israeli equipment since 2002. In addition, Israel is training Indian military units and in 2008 was discussing an arrangement to give Indian commandos instruction in counter-terrorist tactics and urban warfare. In December 2008, Israel and India signed a memorandum to set up an Indo-Israel Legal Colloquium to facilitate discussions and exchange programmes between judges and jurists of the two countries. Following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006, India stated that the Israeli use of force was "disproportionate and excessive". The India-Israel relationship has been very close and warm under the premiership of Narendra Modi since 2014. In 2017, he was the first ever Prime Minister of India to visit Israel. India and Lebanon enjoy cordial and friendly relations based on many complementarities such as a political system based on parliamentary democracy, non-alignment, human rights, commitment to a just world order, regional and global peace, a liberal market economy and a vibrant entrepreneurial spirit. India has a peacekeeping force as part of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). One infantry battalion is deployed in Lebanon and about 900 personnel are stationed in the Eastern part of Southern Lebanon. The force also provided non-patrol aid to citizens. India and Lebanon have had very good relations since the 1950s. India–Oman relations are foreign relations between India and the Sultanate of Oman. India has an embassy in Muscat, Oman. The Indian consulate was opened in Muscat in February 1955 and five years later it was upgraded to a consulate general and later developed into a full-fledged embassy in 1971. The first Ambassador of India arrived in Muscat in 1973. Oman established its embassy in New Delhi in 1972 and a consulate general in Mumbai in 1976. $5.6 bn Oman-India energy pipeline plans progressing: Fox Petroleum Group envisions a roughly five-year timeframe for the execution of the pipeline project. Ajay Kumar, the chairman and managing director of Fox Petroleum, based in New Delhi, which is an associate company of Fox Petroleum FZC in the UAE, said that Mr. Modi had "fired the best weapon of economic development and growth". "He has given a red carpet for global players to invest in India," Mr. Kumar added. "It will boost all sectors of the industry – especially for small-scale manufacturing units and heavy industries too." Bilateral relations between India and Saudi Arabia have strengthened considerably owing to cooperation in regional affairs and trade. Saudi Arabia is the one of largest suppliers of oil to India, which is one of the top seven trading partners and the 5th biggest investor in Saudi Arabia. India was one of the first nations to establish ties with the Third Saudi State. During the 1930s, India heavily funded Nejd through financial subsidies. India's strategic relations with Saudi Arabia have been affected by the latter's close ties with Pakistan. Saudi Arabia supported Pakistan's stance on the Kashmir conflict during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 at the expense of its relations with India. The Soviet Union's close relations with India also served as a source of consternation. During the Persian Gulf War (1990–91), India officially maintained neutrality. Saudi Arabia's close military and strategic ties with Pakistan have also been a source of continuing strain. Since the 1990s, both nations have taken steps to improve ties. Saudi Arabia has supported granting observer status to India in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and has expanded its cooperation with India to fight terrorism. In January 2006, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia made a special visit to India, becoming the first Saudi monarch in 51 years to do so. The Saudi king and former Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh signed an agreement forging a strategic energy partnership that was termed the "Delhi Declaration". The pact provides for a "reliable, stable and increased volume of crude oil supplies to India through long-term contracts." Both nations also agreed on joint ventures and the development of oil and natural gas in public and private sectors. An Indo-Saudi joint declaration in the Indian capital New Delhi described the king's visit as "heralding a new era in India-Saudi Arabia relations". Bilateral relations between India and Syria are historic and the two have ancient civilizational ties. Both countries were on the Silk Road through which civilizational exchanges took place for centuries. Syriac Christianity, originating in ancient Syria, spread further to the East and created the first Christian communities in ancient India. The ancient Syriac language among the Syrian Christians of Kerala was also brought to Kerala by St Thomas in the 1st century CE. Even today the language continues to be taught in colleges and universities in Kerala. A common nationalism and secular orientation, membership of NAM and similar perceptions on many issues further strengthened the bond between the two states. India supported "Syria's legitimate right to regain the occupied Golan Heights". In turn, this was reciprocated with Syrian recognition that Kashmir is a bilateral issue as well as general support of India's concerns and even candidature at various international forums. Due to controversial issues such as Turkey's close relationship with Pakistan, relations between the two countries have often been blistered at certain times, but better at others. India and Turkey's relationship alters from unsureness to collaboration when the two nations work together to combat terrorism in Central and South Asia, and the Middle East. India and Turkey are also connected by history, seeing as they have known each other since the days of the Ottoman Empire, and seeing as India was one of the countries to send aid to Turkey following its war of independence. The Indian real estate firm GMR has invested in and is working towards the modernisation of Istanbul's Sabiha Gökçen International Airport. The relations took a nose-dive after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spoke against India on the Kashmir issue and supported Pakistan, during his address at United Nations General Assembly after Pakistan PM Imran Khan, in September 2019. In February 2020, he visited Islamabad and held talks with Imran Khan, on "improving and bolding the relations with Islamabad". At the end of the month, during the riots in Delhi and CAA-NRC protests in India, he criticized the government for its policies. He also criticized the move of the Indian Government on the Galwan Valley skirmishes with China on LAC. India–United Arab Emirates relations refer to the bilateral relations that exist between the Republic of India and the United Arab Emirates. After the creation of the Federation in 1971, India-UAE relations flourished. Today UAE and India share political, economic and cultural links. There are over a million Indians in the United Arab Emirates, being by far the largest migrant group in the country.[1] A large Indian expatriate community resides and engages in the UAE in economically productive activities and has played a significant role in the evolution of the UAE. In 2008–09, India emerged as the largest trade partner of the UAE with bilateral trade between the two countries exceeding US$44.5 billion. [9] UAE and India are each other's main trading partners. The trade totals over $75 billion (AED275.25 billion). India and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf enjoy strong cultural and economic ties. This is reflected in the fact that more than 50% of the oil consumed by India comes from the Persian Gulf countries and Indian nationals form the largest expatriate community in the Arabian peninsula. The annual remittance by Indian expatriates in the region amounted to US$20 billion in 2007. India is one of the largest trading partners of the CCASG with non-oil trade between India and Dubai alone amounting to US$19 billion in 2007. The Persian Gulf countries have also played an important role in addressing India's energy security concerns, with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait regularly increasing their oil supply to India to meet the country's rising energy demand. In 2005, Kuwait increased its oil exports to India by 10% increasing the net oil trade between the two to US$4.5 billion. In 2008, Qatar decided to invest US$5 billion in India's energy sector. India has maritime security arrangements in place with Oman and Qatar. In 2008, a landmark defence pact was signed, under which India committed its military assets to protect "Qatar from external threats". There has been progress in a proposed deep-sea gas pipeline from Qatar, via Oman, to India. Europe. Austria–India relations refers to the bilateral ties between Austria and India. Indo-Austrian relations were established in May 1949 by the first Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru and the Chancellor of Austria Leopold Figl. Historically, Indo-Austrian ties have been particularly strong and India intervened in June 1953 in Austria's favour whilst negotiations were going on with the Soviet Union about the Austrian State Treaty. There is a fully functioning Indian embassy in Vienna, Austria's capital, which is concurrently accredited to the United Nations offices in the city. Austria is represented in India by its embassy and Trade Commission in New Delhi, India's capital, as well as honorary consulates in Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Goa. Belarus has an embassy in New Delhi. Since 14 May 1992, India has an embassy in Minsk. Belgium has an embassy in New Delhi, consulates in Chennai and Mumbai, and an honorary consulate in Kolkata. India has an embassy in Brussels. Bulgaria has an embassy in New Delhi and an honorary consulate in Kolkata. India has an embassy in Sofia. Since February 1995, Croatia has an embassy in New Delhi and an honorary consulate in Mumbai. Since 28 April 1996, India has an embassy in Zagreb. Czech-Indian relations were established in 1921 by a consulate in Bombay. The Czech Republic has an embassy in New Delhi. Consulates of the Czech Republic in India are in Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata. India has an embassy in Prague. Denmark has an embassy in New Delhi, and India has an embassy in Copenhagen. Tranquebar, a town in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, was a Danish colony in India from 1620 to 1845. It is spelled "Trankebar" or "Tranquebar" in Danish, which comes from the native Tamil, Tarangambadi, meaning "place of the singing waves". It was sold, along with the other Danish settlements in mainland India, most notably Serampore (now in West Bengal), to Great Britain in 1845. The Nicobar Islands were also colonised by Denmark until sold to the British in 1868, who made them part of the British Indian Empire. After Independence in 1947, Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru's visit to Denmark in 1957 laid the foundation for a friendly relationship between India and Denmark that has endured ever since. The bilateral relations between India and Denmark are cordial and friendly, based on synergies in political, economic, academic and research fields. There have been periodic high-level visits between the two countries.Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former Prime Minister of Denmark, accompanied by a large business delegation, paid a state visit to India from 4 to 8 February 2008. He visited Infosys, Biocon and IIM Bangalore in Bangalore and Agra. He launched an 'India Action Plan', which called for strengthening of the political dialogue, strengthening of cooperation in trade and investments, research in science and technology, energy, climate and environment, culture, education, student exchanges and attracting skilled manpower and IT experts to Denmark for short periods. The two countries signed an Agreement for the establishment of a Bilateral Joint Commission for Cooperation. In July 2012, the Government of India decided to scale down its diplomatic ties with Denmark after that country's refusal to appeal in their Supreme Court against a decision of its lower court rejecting the extradition of Purulia arms drop case prime accused Kim Davy a.k.a. Niels Holck. Agitated over Denmark's refusal to act on India's repeated requests to appeal in their apex court to facilitate Davy's extradition to India, the government issued a circular directing all senior officials not to meet or entertain any Danish diplomat posted in India. India's first recognition of Estonia came on 22 September 1921 when the former had just acquired membership in the League of Nations. India re-recognised Estonia on 9 September 1991 and diplomatic relations were established on 2 December of the same year in Helsinki. Neither country has a resident ambassador. Estonia is represented in India by an Embassy in New Delhi one honorary consulate in Mumbai. India is represented in Estonia through its embassy in Helsinki (Finland) and an honorary consulate in Tallinn. France and India established diplomatic relations before India's independence from the British Empire on 17 February 1947. France's Indian possessions were returned to India after a treaty of cession was signed by the two countries in May 1956. On 16 August 1962, India and France exchanged the instruments of ratification under which France ceded to India full sovereignty over the territories it held. Pondicherry and the other enclaves of Karaikal, Mahe and Yanam came to be administered as the Union Territory of Puducherry on 1 July 1963. France, Russia and Israel were the only countries that did not condemn India's decision to go nuclear in 1998. In 2003, France became the largest supplier of nuclear fuel and technology to India and remains a large military and economic trade partner. India's candidacy for permanent membership in the UN Security Council has found very strong support from former French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The Indian Government's decisions to purchase French s worth US$3 billion and 43 Airbus aircraft for Air India worth US$2.5 billion have further cemented the strategic, military and economic cooperation between India and France. France's decision to ban schoolchildren from wearing headdresses and veils had the unintended consequence of affecting Sikh children who have been refused entry into public schools. The Indian Government, citing the historic traditions of the Sikh community, has requested French authorities to review the situation to not exclude Sikh children from education. President Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande visited India in January 2008 and 2016 respectively as the Chief Guest of the annual Republic Day parade in New Delhi. France was the first country to sign a nuclear energy cooperation agreement with India; this was done during Prime Minister Singh's visit, following the waiver by the Nuclear Suppliers Group. During the Bastille Day celebrations on 14 July 2009, a detachment of 400 Indian troops marched alongside the French troops and the then Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was the guest of honour. India has an embassy in Helsinki. Finland has an embassy in New Delhi and three honorary consulates in Kolkata, Chennai, and Mumbai. During the Cold War India maintained diplomatic relations with both West Germany and East Germany. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the reunification of Germany, relations have further improved. Germany is India's largest trade partner in Europe. Between 2004 and 2013, Indo-German trade grew in volume but dropped in importance. According to Indian Ministry of Commerce MX data: Total trade between India and Germany was $5.5 billion (3.8% share of Indian trade and ranked 6) in 2004 and $21.6 billion (2.6% share of Indian trade and ranked 9) in 2013. Indian exports to Germany were $2.54 billion (3.99% ranked 6) in 2004 and $7.3billion (2.41% ranked 10) in 2013. Indian imports from Germany were $2.92 billion (3.73% ranked 6) in 2004 and $14.33 billion (2.92% ranked 10) in 2013. Indo-German ties are transactional. The strategic relationship between Germany and India suffers from sustained anti-Asian sentiment, institutionalized discrimination against minority groups, and xenophobic incidents against Indians in Germany. The 2007 Mügeln mob attack on Indians and the 2015 Leipzig University internship controversy have clouded the predominantly commercial-oriented relationship between the two countries. Stiff competition between foreign manufactured goods within the Indian market has seen machine tools, automotive parts and medical supplies from German "Mittelstand" ceding ground to high-technology imports manufactured by companies located in ASEAN & BRICS countries. The Volkswagen emissions scandal drew the spotlight on corrupt behaviour in German boardrooms and brought back memories of the HDW bribery scandal surrounding the procurement of s by the Indian Navy. The India-Germany strategic relationship is limited by the insignificance of German geopolitical influence in Asian affairs. Germany has no strategic footprint in Asia. Germany like India is working towards gaining permanent seats in the United Nations Security Council. For the Ancient Greeks "India" (Greek: Ινδία) meant only the upper Indus until the time of Alexander the Great. Afterwards, "India" meant to the Greeks most of the northern half of the Indian subcontinent. The Greeks referred to the Indians as "Indói" (Greek: Ἰνδοί), literally meaning "the people of the Indus River". Indians called the Greeks Yonas or "Yavanas" from Ionians. Indo-Greek kingdoms were founded by the successor of Alexander the Great. (Greek conquests in India) The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea was a manual written in Greek for navigators who carried trade between Roman Empire and other regions, including ancient India. It gives detailed information about the ports, routes and commodities. The Greek ethnographer and explorer of the Hellenistic period, Megasthenes was the ambassador of Seleucus I in India. In his work, Indika (Greek: Ινδικά), he wrote the history of Indians and their culture. Megasthenes also mentioned the prehistoric arrival of the God Dionysus and Herakles (Megasthenes' Herakles) in India. There is now tangible evidence indicating that the settlement of Greek merchants in Bengal must have begun as early as the beginning of the seventeenth century. Dimitrios Galanos (Greek: Δημήτριος Γαλανός, 1760–1833) was the earliest recorded Greek Indologist. His translations of Sanskrit texts into Greek made knowledge of the philosophical and religious ideas of India available to many Europeans. A "Dimitrios Galanos" Chair for Hellenic Studies was established at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India in September 2000. In modern times, diplomatic relations between Greece and India were established in May 1950. The new Greek Embassy building in New Delhi was inaugurated on 6 February 2001. As of 2020, the relationship between the two countries is closer than ever and is considered historical and strategic by both parties. The Indian embassy is located in Budapest. Iceland and India established diplomatic relations in 1972. The Embassy of Iceland in London was accredited to India and the Embassy of India in Oslo, Norway, was accredited to Iceland. However, it was only after 2003 that the two countries began close diplomatic and economic relationships. In 2003, President of Iceland Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson visited India on a diplomatic mission. This was the first visit by an Icelandic President to India. During the visit, Iceland pledged support to New Delhi's candidature for a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council thus becoming the first Nordic country to do so. This was followed by an official visit of President of India A. P. J. Abdul Kalam to Iceland in May 2005. Following this, a new embassy of Iceland was opened in New Delhi on 26 February 2006. Soon, an Indian Navy team visited Iceland on a friendly mission. Gunnar Pálsson is the ambassador of Iceland to India. The Embassy's area of accreditation, apart from India includes Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Seychelles, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritius and Nepal. India appointed S. Swaminathan as the first resident ambassador to Iceland in March 2008. Indo-Irish relations picked up steam during their respective campaigns for independence from the British Empire. Political relations between the two states have largely been based on socio-cultural ties, although political and economic ties have also helped build relations. Indo-Irish relations were greatly strengthened by Pandit Nehru, Éamon de Valera, Rabindranath Tagore, W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, and, above all, Annie Besant. Politically, relations have not been cold or warm. Mutual benefit has led to economic ties that are fruitful for both states. Visits by government leaders have kept relations cordial at regular intervals. India maintains an embassy in Rome and a consulate-general in Milan. Italy has an embassy in New Delhi, and consulate-generals in Mumbai and Calcutta. Indo-Italian relations have historically been cordial. In recent times, their state has mirrored the political fortunes of Sonia Maino-Gandhi, the Italian-born leader of the Indian National Congress and "de facto" leader of the UPA government of Manmohan Singh. Since 2012 the relationship has been affected by the ongoing Enrica Lexie case: two Indian fishermen were killed on the Indian fishing vessel "St. Antony" as a result of gunshot wounds following a confrontation with the Italian oil tanker "Enrica Lexie" in international waters, off the Kerala coast. After a period of tension, in 2017 Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni visited India and met his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi; they held extensive talks to strengthen the political cooperation and to boost the bilateral trade.There are around 150,000 people of Indian Origins living in Italy. Around 1,000 Italian citizens reside in India, mostly working on behalf of Italian industrial groups. Relations were established in 1947, following India's independence. Luxembourg operates an Embassy in New Delhi whilst India operates a Consulate General in Luxembourg City. Bilateral Trade stood at US$37 Million in 2014 and trade continues to grow every year. Diplomats from both countries have visited the other several times. In 2019, Luxembourg plans to host the annual Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and open an economic mission in India. Malta opened a High Commission of Malta, New Delhi in New Delhi in 2007. Malta also has an honorary consulate in Mumbai. India is represented in Malta by its high commission in Valletta. The Indian embassy to Moldova is accredited by Bucharest, Romania. Moldova maintains an honorary consulate in New Delhi and a consulate in Mumbai. Both countries have taken steps to deepen their ties, which are still maintained at a modest level. Both countries have been found supporting each other on many international platforms like the United Nations through reciprocal support mechanisms. India-Moldova bilateral trade has been rather modest. India–Netherlands relations refer to foreign relations between India and the Netherlands. India maintains an embassy in The Hague, Netherlands and the Netherlands maintains an embassy in New Delhi and a consulate general in Mumbai. Both countries established diplomatic relations on 17 April 1947. In 2012, Trond Giske met with Minister of Finance Pranab Mukherjee, to save Telenor's investments to put forth Norway's "strong wish" that there must not be a waiting period between the confiscation of telecom licenses and the re-sale of those. The leader of Telenor attended the meeting. Mother Teresa, honoured in the Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta became an Indian citizen in 1951, and was born in Skopje (in present-day North Macedonia) in 1910. India has an embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria jointly accredited to the Republic of Macedonia. Both Macedonia has an embassy in New Delhi and an honorary consulate in Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore. Historically, relations have generally been close and friendly, characterised by understanding and cooperation on the international front. India and Portugal have a long history of relations ever since the Portuguese colonisation in British Raj. Both countries established diplomatic relations on 13 April 1947 India's ties with the Russian Federation are time-tested and based on continuity, trust and mutual understanding. There is a national consensus in both countries on the need to preserve and strengthen India-Russia relations and further consolidate the strategic partnership between the two countries. A Declaration on Strategic Partnership was signed between present Russian President Vladimir Putin and former Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in October 2000 the partnership is also referred to asa "special and privileged strategic partnership". Russia and India have decided not to renew the 1971 Indo-Soviet Peace and Friendship Treaty and have sought to follow what both describe as a more pragmatic, less ideological relationship. Russian President Yeltsin's visit to India in January 1993 helped cement this new relationship. Ties have grown stronger with President Vladimir Putin's 2004 visit. The pace of high-level visits has since increased, as discussed in major defence purchases. Russia is working on the development of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant, which will be capable of producing 1000 MW of electricity. Gazprom is working for the development of oil and natural gas, in the Bay of Bengal. India and Russia, have collaborated extensively, on space technology. Other areas of collaboration include software, Ayurveda, etc. India and Russia, have set a determination in increasing trade to $10 billion. Cooperation between clothing manufacturers of the two countries continues to strengthen. India and Russia signed an agreement on joint efforts to increase investment and trade volumes in the textile industry in both countries. In signing the document included representatives of the Russian Union of Entrepreneurs of Textile and Light Industry Council and apparel exports of India (AEPC). A cooperation agreement provides, inter alia, the exchange of technology and know-how in textile production. For this purpose, a special Commission on Affairs Textile (Textile Communication Committee). Counter-terrorism techniques are also in place between Russia and India. In 2007 President Vladimir Putin was the guest of honour at the Republic Day celebration on 26 January 2007. 2008, has been declared by both countries as the Russia-India Friendship Year. Bollywood films are quite popular in Russia. The Indian public sector oil company ONGC bought Imperial Energy Corporation in 2008. In December 2008, during President Medvedev's visit, to New Delhi, India and Russia, signed a nuclear energy cooperation agreement. In March 2010, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed an additional 19 pacts with India which included civilian nuclear energy, space and military cooperation and the final sale of Admiral Gorshkov (Aircraft Carrier) along with MiG-29K fighter jets. During the 2014 Crimean crisis, India refused to support American sanctions against Russia and one of India's national security advisers Shivshankar Menon was reported to have said "There are legitimate Russian and other interests involved and we hope they are discussed and resolved." On 7 August 2014, India and Russia held a joint counter-terrorism exercise near the Moscow boundary with China and Mongolia. It involved the use of tanks and armoured vehicles. India and Russia have so far conducted three rounds of INDRA exercises. The first exercise was carried out in 2005 in Rajasthan, followed by Prshkov in Russia. The third exercise was conducted at Chaubattia in Kumaon Hills in October 2010. India has an embassy in Bucharest and an honorary consulate in Timișoara. Romania has an embassy in New Delhi and an honorary consulate in Kolkata. India has an embassy in Bratislava and Slovakia has an embassy in New Delhi. Diplomatic ties with Spain started in 1956. The first Spanish embassy was established in Delhi in 1958. India and Spain have had a cordial relationship with each other, especially after the establishment of democracy in Spain in 1978. Spain has been a main tourist spot for Indians over the years. Many presidents including Prathibha Patil visited Spain. The royal family of Spain has always liked the humble nature of the Indian government and they have thus paid several visits to India. There was no direct flight from India to Spain but it all changed in 1986 when Iberian travels started to fly directly from Mumbai to Madrid. However, it was stopped in 22 months. In 2006 this issue of the direct flight was reconsidered to improve the ties between India and Spain. "Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara" was shot completely in Spain in 2011. The tourism ministry of Spain is using this movie to promote tourism to Spain in India. India is one of Switzerland's most important partners in Asia. Bilateral and political contacts are constantly developing, and trade and scientific cooperation between the two countries are flourishing. Switzerland was the first country in the World to sign a Friendship treaty with India in 1947. Diplomatic relations between India and Ukraine were established in January 1992. The Indian Embassy in Kyiv was opened in May 1992 and Ukraine opened its mission in New Delhi in February 1993. The Consulate General of India in Odesa functioned from 1962 until its closure in March 1999. UK& India has a high commission in London and two consulates-general in Birmingham and Edinburgh. The United Kingdom has a high commission in New Delhi and five deputy high commissions in Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Kolkata. Since 1947, India's relations with the United Kingdom have been bilateral, as well as through the Commonwealth of Nations framework. Although the Sterling Area no longer exists and the Commonwealth is much more an informal forum, India and the UK still have many enduring links. This is in part due to the significant number of people of Indian origin living in the UK. The large South Asian population in the UK results in steady travel and communication between the two countries. The British Raj allowed for both cultures to imbibe tremendously from the other. The English language and cricket are perhaps the two most evident British exports, whilst in the UK food from the Indian subcontinent is very popular. The United Kingdom's favourite food is often reported to be Indian cuisine, although no official study reports this. Economically the relationship between Britain and India is also strong. India is the second largest investor in Britain after the US. Britain is also one of the largest investors in India. Formal bilateral relations between India and Vatican City have existed since 12 June 1948. An Apostolic Delegation existed in India from 1881. The Holy See has a nunciature in New Delhi whilst India has accredited its embassy in Bern, Switzerland to the Holy See as well. India's Ambassador in Bern has traditionally been accredited to the Holy See. The connections between the Catholic Church and India can be traced back to the apostle St. Thomas, who, according to tradition, came to India in 52 CE in the 9th century, the patriarch of the Nestorians in Persia sent bishops to India. There is a record of an Indian bishop visiting Rome in the early part of the 12th century. The diplomatic mission was established as the Apostolic Delegation to the East Indies in 1881, and included Ceylon, and was extended to Malaca in 1889, then to Burma in 1920, and eventually included Goa in 1923. It was raised to an Internunciature by Pope Pius XII on 12 June 1948 and to a full Apostolic Nunciature by Pope Paul VI on 22 August 1967. There have been three Papal visits to India. The first Pope to visit India was Pope Paul VI, who visited Mumbai in 1964 to attend the Eucharistic Congress. Pope John Paul II visited India in February 1986 and November 1999. Several Indian dignitaries have, from time to time, called on the Pope in the Vatican. These include Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1981 and Prime Minister I. K. Gujral in September 1987. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Prime Minister, called on the Pope in June 2000 during his official visit to Italy. Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat represented the country at the funeral of Pope John Paul II. India was one of the first countries to develop relations with the European Union. The Joint Political Statement of 1993 and the 1994 Cooperation Agreement were the foundational agreements for the bilateral partnership. In 2004, India and European Union became "Strategic Partners". A Joint Action Plan was agreed upon in 2005 and updated in 2008. India-EU Joint Statements were published in 2009 and 2012 following the India-European Union Summits. India and the European Commission initiated negotiations on a "Broad-based Trade and Investment Agreement" (BTIA) in 2007. Seven rounds of negotiations have been completed without reaching a Free Trade Agreement. According to the Government of India, trade between India and the EU was $57.25 billion between April and October 2014 and stood at $101.5 billion for the fiscal period of 2014–2015. The European Union is India's second largest trade bloc, accounting for around 20% of Indian trade (Gulf Cooperation Council is the largest trade bloc with almost $160 billion in total trade). India was the European Union's 8th largest trading partner in 2010. EU-India trade grew from €28.6 billion in 2003 to €72.7 billion in 2013. France, Germany and UK collectively represent the major part of EU-India trade. Annual trade in commercial services tripled from €5.2billion in 2002 to €17.9 billion in 2010. Denmark, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands are the other more prominent European Union countries that trade with India. Oceania. India & Australia are both Commonwealth members. Sporting and cultural ties are significant. Australian cricketers often undertake large commercial ventures in India, enhanced with the IPL, and, to a lesser degree, the ICL. Bollywood productions enjoy a large market in Australia. In 2007, PM John Howard visited Mumbai and its entertainment industry, in efforts to increase Tourism in India to Australia. There are ongoing strategic attempts to form an "Asian NATO" with India, Japan, the US and Australia through the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. During the first decade of the 21st century, the deepening of strategic relations between the two nations was prevented by a range of policy disagreements, such as India's refusal to sign the NPT and Australia's consequent refusal to provide India with uranium. Australia's parliament later allowed for the sale of uranium to India, following changes in government. Closer strategic cooperation between India, Japan, the United States and Australia also began during the second half of the 2010s, which some analysts attributed to a desire to balance Chinese initiatives in the Indo-Pacific region. Fiji's relationship with the Republic of India is often seen by observers against the backdrop of the sometimes tense relations between its indigenous people and the 44 percent of the population who are of Indian descent. India has used its influence in international forums such as the Commonwealth of Nations and United Nations on behalf of ethnic Indians in Fiji, lobbying for sanctions against Fiji in the wake of the 1987 coups and the 2000 coup, both of which removed governments, one dominated and one led, by Indo-Fijians. India and Nauru relations have been established since the island nation's independence in 1968. Leaders of both countries have been meeting on the sidelines of some of the international forums of which both nations are part such as the United Nations and the Non-Aligned Movement. India is one of the largest donors to the island by improving the education ministry and creating transportation and computer connections for the MPs and the Speaker of the Parliament of Nauru. There were numerous visits by the President of Nauru to the republic to further strengthen ties and cooperation. Bilateral relations were established between India and New Zealand in 1952. India has a High Commission in Wellington with an Honorary Consulate in Auckland, while New Zealand has a High Commission in New Delhi along with a Consulate in Mumbai, trade offices in New Delhi and Mumbai and an Honorary Consulate in Chennai. India–New Zealand relations were cordial but not extensive after Indian independence. More recently, New Zealand has shown interest in extending ties with India due to India's impressive GDP growth. India and Papua New Guinea established relations in 1975, following PNG's independence from Australia. Since 1975, relations have grown between the two nations. India maintains a High Commission in Port Moresby while Papua New Guinea maintains a High Commission in New Delhi In the 2010 Fiscal Year, Trade between the two nations grew to US$239 Million. PNG has sent numerous military officers and students to be trained and educated in India's academies and universities respectively. In recent years, India and PNG have signed an Economic Partnership Agreement, allowing India to further invest in PNG's infrastructure, telecommunications and educational institutions. Both countries established diplomatic relations in June 1970. India has its High Commission in Wellington, New Zealand, accredited to Vanuatu. De Facto. Since its declaration of independence from Serbia, Kosovo sought recognition from the major of the world's most influential countries, among them, India. Indian views regarding the developments followed initial constringent to comment but dismissed to give recognition of statehood. There are almost negligible interactions. After India achieved its independence in 1947, the country moved to support Palestinian self-determination following the partition of India. In light of a religious partition between India and Pakistan, the impetus to boost ties with Muslim states around the world was a further tie to India's support for the Palestinian cause. Though it started to waver in the late 1980s and 1990s, as the recognition of Israel led to diplomatic exchanges, the ultimate support for the Palestinian cause, was still an underlying concern. Beyond the recognition of Palestinian self-determination ties have been largely dependent upon socio-cultural bonds, while economic relations were neither cold nor warm. India recognised Palestine's statehood following its declaration on 18 November 1988; although relations were first established in 1974. PNA President Abbas paid a State visit to India in September 2012, during which India pledged $10 million as aid. Indian officials said it was the third such donation, adding that New Delhi was committed to helping other development projects. India also pledged support to Palestine's bid for full and equal membership of the UN. India recognized the Republic of China (R.O.C) from 1947 to 1950. On 1 April 1950, India officially recognised the People's Republic of China (P.R.C) as "China" and continued to recognise the PRC's "One China" policy in which the island of Taiwan is a part of the Chinese territory. However, the bilateral relations between India and Taiwan have improved since the 1990s despite both nations not maintaining official diplomatic relations. Taiwan and India maintain non-governmental interaction via India-Taipei Association and Taipei Economic and Cultural Centre respectively. In July 2020, the Indian government appointed a top career diplomat, Joint Secretary Gourangalal Das, the former head of the U.S. division in India's Ministry of External Affairs, as its new envoy to Taiwan. International organizations. India participates in the following international organisations: India became independent within the British Commonwealth in August 1947 as the Dominion of India after the partition of India into India and the Dominion of Pakistan. King George VI, the last Emperor of India became the King of India with the Governor-General of India as his viceregal representative.India became the very first Commonwealth republic on 26 January 1950, as a result of the London Declaration. India played an important role in the multilateral movements of colonies and newly independent countries that developed into the Non-Aligned Movement. Nonalignment had its origins in India's colonial experience and the nonviolent Indian independence movement led by the Congress, which left India determined to be the master of its fate in an international system dominated politically by Cold War alliances and economically by Western capitalism and Soviet communism. The principles of nonalignment, as articulated by Nehru and his successors, were the preservation of India's freedom of action internationally through refusal to align India with any bloc or alliance, particularly those led by the United States or the Soviet Union; nonviolence and international cooperation as a means of settling international disputes. Nonalignment was a consistent feature of Indian foreign policy by the late 1940s and enjoyed strong, almost unquestioning support among the Indian elite. The term "Non-Alignment" was coined by V K Menon in his speech at the UN in 1953 which was later used by Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru during his speech in 1954 in Colombo, Sri Lanka. In this speech, Nehru described the five pillars to be used as a guide for China–India relations, which were first put forth by PRC Premier Zhou Enlai. Called Panchsheel (five restraints), these principles would later serve as the basis of the Non-Aligned Movement. The five principles were: Jawaharlal Nehru's concept of nonalignment brought India considerable international prestige among newly independent states that shared India's concerns about the military confrontation between the superpowers and the influence of the former colonial powers. New Delhi used nonalignment to establish a significant role for itself as a leader of the newly independent world in such multilateral organisations as the United Nations (UN) and the Nonaligned Movement. The signing of the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation between India and the Soviet Union in 1971 and India's involvement in the internal affairs of its smaller neighbours in the 1970s and 1980s tarnished New Delhi's image as a nonaligned nation and led some observers to note that in practice, nonalignment applied only to India's relations with countries outside South Asia. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD, also known as the Quad) is an informal strategic dialogue between the United States, India, Japan and Australia that is maintained by talks between member countries. The dialogue was initiated in 2007 by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, with the support of American Vice President Dick Cheney, Australian Prime Minister John Howard and Former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The dialogue was paralleled by joint military exercises of an unprecedented scale, titled Exercise Malabar. The diplomatic and military arrangement was widely viewed as a response to increased Chinese economic and military power. On 12 March 2021, the first summit meeting was held virtually between U.S President Joe Biden, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. India was among the original members of the United Nations that signed the Declaration by United Nations at Washington on 1 January 1942 and also participated in the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco from 25 April to 26 June 1945. As a founding member of the United Nations, India strongly supports the purposes and principles of the UN and has made significant contributions to implementing the goals of the Charter and the evolution of the UN's specialised programmes and agencies. India is a charter member of the United Nations and participates in all of its specialised agencies and organisations. India has contributed troops to United Nations peacekeeping efforts in Korea, Egypt and the Congo in its earlier years and in Somalia, Angola, Haiti, Liberia, Lebanon and Rwanda in recent years, and more recently in the South Sudan conflict. India has been a member of the UN Security Council for eight terms (a total of 16 years). India is a member of the G4 group of nations who back each other in seeking a permanent seat on the security council and advocate in favour of the reformation of the UNSC. India is also part of the Group of 77. Described by the WTO's former chief, Pascal Lamy, as one of the organisation's "big brothers", India was instrumental in bringing down the Doha Development Round of talks in 2008. It has played an important role in representing as many as 100 developing nations during WTO summits. Former. The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) had major repercussions for Indian foreign policy. Substantial trade with the former Soviet Union plummeted after the Soviet collapse and has yet to recover. Longstanding military supply relationships were similarly disrupted due to questions over financing, although Russia continues to be India's largest supplier of military systems and spare parts. The relationship with USSR was tested (and proven) during the 1971 war with Pakistan, which led to the subsequent liberation of Bangladesh. Soon after the victory of the Indian Armed Forces, one of the foreign delegates to visit India was Admiral S.G. Gorshkov, Chief of the Soviet Navy. During his visit to Mumbai (Bombay), he came on board INS "Vikrant". During a conversation with Vice Admiral Swaraj Prakash, Gorshkov asked the Vice Admiral, "Were you worried about a battle against the American carrier?" He answered himself: "Well, you had no reason to be worried, as I had a Soviet nuclear submarine trailing the American task force all the way into the Indian Ocean." India had formal relations with the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia until 1992 with the Breakup of Yugoslavia. Border disputes. India's territorial disputes with neighbouring Pakistan and the People's Republic of China have played a crucial role in its foreign policy. India is also involved in minor territorial disputes with neighbouring Bangladesh, Nepal and Maldives. India currently maintains two manned stations in Antarctica but has made some unofficial territorial claims, which are yet to be clarified. India is involved in the following border disputes: Kalapani village of India is claimed by Nepal and Susta village in Nawalparasi district of Nepal is claimed by India. The dispute between India and Nepal involves about of area in Kalapani, where China, India, and Nepal meet. Indian forces occupied the area in 1962 after China and India fought their border war. Three villages are located in the disputed zone: Kuti [Kuthi, 30°19'N, 80°46'E], Gunji, and Knabe. India and Nepal disagree about how to interpret the 1816 Sugauli treaty between the British East India Company and Nepal, which delimited the boundary along the Maha Kali River (Sarda River in India). The dispute intensified in 1997 as the Nepali parliament considered a treaty on the hydroelectric development of the river. India and Nepal differ as to which stream constitutes the source of the river. Nepal regards the Limpiyadhura as the source; India claims the Lipu Lekh. Nepal has reportedly tabled an 1856 map from the British India Office to support its position. The countries have held several meetings about the dispute and discussed jointly surveying to resolve the issue. Although the Indo-Nepali dispute appears to be minor, it was aggravated in 1962 by tensions between China and India. Because the disputed area lies near the Sino-Indian frontier, it gains strategic value. Two regions are claimed by both India and China. Aksai Chin is in the disputed territory of Ladakh, at the junction of India, Tibet and Xinjiang, India claims the 38,000-square-kilometre territory, currently administered by China after Sino-Indian War. India also considers the cessation of Shaksam Valley to China by Pakistan as illegal and a part of its territory. Arunachal Pradesh is a state of India in the country's northeast, bordering on Bhutan, Burma and China's Tibet, though it is under Indian administration since 1914, China claims the 90,000-square-kilometre area as South Tibet. Also, the boundary between the North Indian states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand with China's Tibet is not properly demarcated with some portions under the de facto administration of India. Diplomatic relations with India through philately. List of countries commemorating anniversaries of diplomatic relations with India through philately

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14727

Isle of Man

The Isle of Man ( , also ), also known as Mann (), is a self-governing British Crown Dependency in the Irish Sea between Great Britain and Ireland. As head of state, Charles III holds the title Lord of Mann and is represented by a Lieutenant Governor. The government of the United Kingdom is responsible for the isle's military defence and represents it abroad. Humans have lived on the island since before 6500 BC. Gaelic cultural influence began in the 5th century AD, when Irish missionaries following the teaching of St. Patrick began settling the island, and the Manx language, a branch of the Goidelic languages, emerged. In 627, King Edwin of Northumbria conquered the Isle of Man along with most of Mercia. In the 9th century, Norsemen established the thalassocratic Kingdom of the Isles, which included the Isle of Man. Magnus III, King of Norway from 1093 to 1103, reigned as King of Mann and the Isles between 1099 and 1103. In 1266, King Magnus VI of Norway sold his suzerainty over Mann to King Alexander III of Scotland under the Treaty of Perth. After a period of alternating rule by the Kings of Scotland and England, the island came under the feudal lordship of the English Crown in 1399. The lordship revested in the British Crown in 1765, but the island did not become part of the 18th-century Kingdom of Great Britain, nor of its successors, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the present-day United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It has always retained its internal self-government. In 1881, the Isle of Man Parliament, Tynwald, became the first national legislative body in the world to give women the right to vote in a general election, although this excluded married women. The Manx economy is bolstered by its status as a tax haven and offshore banking destination. Insurance and online gambling each generate 17% of the GNP, followed by information and communications technology and banking with 9% each. This status has also brought the problems of money laundering, financial crime, and terrorism financing. Internationally, the Isle of Man is known for the TT Motorcycle Races, and the Manx cat, a breed with short or no tails. In 2016, UNESCO awarded the Isle of Man biosphere reserve status. Name. The Manx name of the Isle of Man is ': ' (), a Manx word meaning "island"; ' () appears in the genitive case as ' (), with initial consonant mutation, hence ', "Island of Mann". The short form used in English is spelled either Mann or Man. The earliest recorded Manx form of the name is ' or "". The Old Irish form of the name is ' or '. Old Welsh records named it as ', also reflected in ', the name for an ancient district in north Britain along the lower Firth of Forth. In the 1st century AD, Pliny the Elder records it as ' or ', and Ptolemy (2nd century) as "Monœda" (, "Monaoida") or ("Monarina"), in Koine Greek. Later Latin references have ' or ' (Orosius, 416), and ' or ' by Irish writers. It is found in the Sagas of Icelanders as "". The name is probably cognate with the Welsh name of the island of Anglesey, ', usually derived from a Celtic word for 'mountain' (reflected in Welsh ', Breton ', and Scottish Gaelic '), from a Proto-Celtic "*moniyos". The name was at least secondarily associated with that of Manannán mac Lir in Irish mythology (corresponding to Welsh '). In the earliest Irish mythological texts, Manannán is a king of the otherworld, but the 9th-century "Sanas Cormaic" identifies a euhemerised Manannán as "a famous merchant who resided in, and gave name to, the Isle of Man". Later, a Manannán is recorded as the first king of Mann in a Manx poem (dated 1504). History. The island was cut off from the surrounding islands around 8000 BC as sea levels rose following the end of the last ice age. Humans colonised it by travelling by sea some time before 6500 BC. The first occupants were hunter-gatherers and fishermen. Examples of their tools are kept at the Manx Museum. The Neolithic Period marked the beginning of farming, and the people began to build megalithic monuments, such as Cashtal yn Ard in Maughold parish, King Orry's Grave in Laxey, Mull Hill near Cregneash, and Ballaharra Stones at St John's. There were also the local Ronaldsway and Bann cultures. During the Bronze Age, the size of burial mounds decreased. The people put bodies into stone-lined graves with ornamental containers. The Bronze Age burial mounds survived as long-lasting markers around the countryside. The ancient Romans knew of the island and called it "." During the four centuries when Rome ruled the Province of Britannia, the Roman military controlled the Irish Sea, providing safe passage of agricultural goods from the productive farms of Anglesey to Roman settlements at the English – Scottish frontier. Only a few Roman artifacts have been found on Mann, suggesting a lack of strategic value of Mann during the era of Britannia. No Roman lighthouses or signal towers have yet been found on Mann. Around the 5th century AD, large-scale migration from Ireland precipitated a process of Gaelicisation, evidenced by Ogham inscriptions, and the Manx language developed. It is a Goidelic language closely related to Irish and Scottish Gaelic. In the 7th century, Mann came under control of the Anglo-Saxon King Edwin of Northumbria, who then launched raids from Mann into Ireland. How much influence the Northumbrians exerted on Mann is unknown, but very few place names on Mann are of Old English origin. Vikings arrived at the end of the 8th century. They established Tynwald and introduced many land divisions that still exist. In 1266 King Magnus VI of Norway ceded the islands to Alexander III, King of Scots, in the Treaty of Perth. But Scottish rule over Mann did not become firmly established until 1275, when the Manx were defeated in the Battle of Ronaldsway, near Castletown. In 1290 King Edward I of England sent Walter de Huntercombe to take possession of Mann. It remained in English hands until 1313, when Robert the Bruce took it after besieging Castle Rushen for five weeks. In 1314, it was retaken for the English by John Bacach of Argyll. In 1317, it was retaken for the Scots by Thomas Randolph, 1st Earl of Moray and Lord of the Isle of Man. It was held by the Scots until 1333. For some years thereafter control passed back and forth between the two kingdoms until the English took it for the final time in 1346. The English Crown delegated its rule of the island to a series of lords and magnates. Tynwald passed laws concerning the government of the island in all respects and had control over its finances but was subject to the approval of the Lord of Mann. In 1866, the Isle of Man obtained limited home rule, with partly democratic elections to the House of Keys, but the Legislative Council was appointed by the Crown. Since then, democratic government has been gradually extended. The Isle of Man has designated more than 250 historic sites as registered buildings. In July 2022 the 19th International Linguistics Olympiad was held in Castletown on the island. Geography. The Isle of Man is an island located in the middle of the northern Irish Sea, almost equidistant from England to the east, Northern Ireland to the west, and Scotland (closest) to the north, while Wales to the south is almost the distance of the Republic of Ireland to the southwest. It is long and, at its widest point, wide. It has an area of around . Besides the island of Mann itself, the political unit of the Isle of Man includes some nearby small islands: the seasonally inhabited Calf of Man, Chicken Rock (on which stands an unstaffed lighthouse), St Patrick's Isle and St Michael's Isle. The last two of these are connected to the main island by permanent roads/causeways. Ranges of hills in the north and south are separated by a central valley. The northern plain, by contrast, is relatively flat, consisting mainly of deposits from glacial advances from western Scotland during colder times. There are more recently deposited shingle beaches at the northernmost point, the Point of Ayre. The island has one mountain higher than , Snaefell, with a height of . According to an old saying, from the summit one can see six kingdoms: those of Mann, Scotland, England, Ireland, Wales, and Heaven. Some versions add a seventh kingdom, that of the sea, or Neptune. Climate. The Isle of Man has a temperate oceanic climate (Köppen "Cfb"). Average rainfall is higher than averaged over the territory of the British Isles, because the Isle of Man is far enough from Ireland for the prevailing south-westerly winds to accumulate moisture. Average rainfall is highest at Snaefell, where it is around a year. At lower levels it can be around a year. In drier spots, the Isle of Man is sunnier than either Ireland or the majority of England at 1,651 hours per year at the official Ronaldsway station. The highest recorded temperature was in Ronaldsway on 12 July 1983. Due to the moderate surface temperatures of the Irish Sea, the island does not receive bursts of heat that sometimes can hit Northern England. The stable water temperature also means that air frost is rare, averaging just ten occasions per year. On 10 May 2019 Chief Minister Howard Quayle stated that the Isle of Man Government recognises that a state of emergency exists due to the threat of anthropogenic climate change. Governance. The United Kingdom is responsible for the island's defence and ultimately for good governance, and for representing the island in international forums, while the island's own parliament and government have competence over all domestic matters. Socio-political structure. The island's parliament, Tynwald, is claimed to have been in continuous existence since 979 or earlier, purportedly making it the oldest continuously governing body in the world, though evidence supports a much later date. Tynwald is a bicameral or tricameral legislature, comprising the House of Keys (directly elected by universal suffrage with a voting age of 16 years) and the Legislative Council (consisting of indirectly elected and ex-officio members). These two bodies also meet together in joint session as Tynwald Court. The executive branch of government is the Council of Ministers, which is composed of Members of Tynwald (usually Members of the House of Keys, though Members of the Legislative Council may also be appointed as Ministers). It is headed by the Chief Minister. Vice-regal functions of the head of state are performed by a lieutenant governor. External relations and security. In various laws of the United Kingdom, "the United Kingdom" is defined to exclude the Isle of Man. Historically, the UK has taken care of its external and defence affairs and retains paramount power to legislate for the Island. However, in 2007, the Isle of Man and the UK signed an agreement that established frameworks for the development of the international identity of the Isle of Man. There is no separate Manx citizenship. Citizenship is covered by UK law, and Manx people are classed as British citizens. There is a long history of relations and cultural exchange between the Isle of Man and Ireland. The Isle of Man's historic Manx language (and its modern revived variant) are closely related to both Scottish Gaelic and the Irish language, and in 1947, Irish Taoiseach Éamon de Valera spearheaded efforts to save the dying Manx language. Defence. The Isle of Man is not part of the United Kingdom; however, the UK takes care of its external and defence affairs. There are no independent military forces on the Isle of Man, although HMS "Ramsey" was affiliated with the town of the same name. From 1938 to 1955 there existed the Manx Regiment of the British Territorial Army, which saw extensive action during the Second World War. During the English Civil War the 7th Earl of Derby and Lord of Mann James Stanley conscripted 10 men from each parish (170 in total) to fight for the Royalist cause; the majority were killed at the Battle of Wigan Lane in 1651. In 1779, the Manx Fencible Corps, a fencible regiment of three companies, was raised; it was disbanded in 1783 at the end of the American War of Independence. Later, the Royal Manx Fencibles was raised at the time of the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars. The 1st Battalion (of 3 companies) was raised in 1793. A 2nd Battalion (of 10 companies) was raised in 1795, and it saw action during the Irish Rebellion of 1798. The regiment was disbanded in 1802. A third body of Manx Fencibles was raised in 1803 to defend the island during the Napoleonic Wars and to assist the Revenue. It was disbanded in 1811. The Isle of Man Home Guard was raised during the Second World War for home defence. In 2015 a multi-capability recruiting and training unit of the British Army Reserve was established in Douglas. Manxman status. There is no citizenship of the Isle of Man as such; Isle of Man residents are entitled to British citizenship and can obtain a full UK British passport or British Isle of Man passport. The Passport Office, Isle of Man, Douglas, accepts and processes applications for the Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Man, who is formally responsible for issuing Isle of Man–issued British passports, titled ""British Islands – Isle of Man". The powers conferred on the UK Secretary of State by the British Nationality Act 1981 extend to and are exercised in the Isle of Man by the Lieutenant Governor. Isle of Man-issued British passports can presently be issued to any British citizen resident in the Isle of Man, and also to British citizens who have a qualifying close personal connection to the Isle of Man but are now resident either in the UK or in either one of the two other Crown Dependencies. European Union. The Isle of Man was never part of the European Union, nor did it have a special status, and thus it did not take part in the 2016 (Brexit) referendum on the UK's EU membership. However, it was included within the EU's customs area, as part of Protocol 3 of the UK's Act of Accession to the Treaty of Rome, allowing Manx goods to be traded throughout the EU without tariffs. It was not part of the EU's internal market and there were still limitations on the movement of capital, services and labour. EU citizens were entitled to travel and reside, but not work, in the island without restriction. British citizens with Manxman status were under the same circumstances and restrictions as any other non-EU European relating country to work in the EU. The political and diplomatic impacts of Brexit on the island are still uncertain. The UK confirmed that the Crown Dependencies' positions were included in the Brexit negotiations. The Brexit withdrawal agreement explicitly included the Isle of Man in its territorial scope, but makes no other mention of it. The island's government website stated that after the end of the implementation period, the Isle of Man's relationship with the EU would depend on the agreement reached between the UK and the EU on their future relationship. Commonwealth of Nations. The Isle of Man is not a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. By virtue of its relationship with the United Kingdom, it takes part in several Commonwealth institutions, including the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and the Commonwealth Games. The Government of the Isle of Man has made calls for a more integrated relationship with the Commonwealth, including more direct representation and enhanced participation in Commonwealth organisations and meetings, including Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings. The Chief Minister of the Isle of Man has said: "A closer connection with the Commonwealth itself would be a welcome further development of the island's international relationships." Politics. Most Manx politicians stand for election as independents rather than as representatives of political parties. Although political parties do exist, their influence is not nearly as strong as in the United Kingdom. There are three political parties in the Isle of Man: There are also a number of pressure groups on the island. Mec Vannin advocate the establishment of a sovereign republic. The Positive Action Group campaign for three key elements to be introduced into the governance of the island: open accountable government, rigorous control of public finances, and a fairer society. Local government. Local government on the Isle of Man is based partly on the island's 17 ancient parishes. There are four types of local authorities: Each of these districts has its own body of commissioners. LGBT rights. The Isle of Man was the last place in the British Isles to legalise same-sex sexual activity. While it had been legal in England since 1967, it remained illegal in the Isle of Man until 1992. The Isle of Man's former Chief Minister Howard Quayle issued an "unqualified apology" to gay men convicted of same-sex offences under previous Manx laws. Public services. Education. Public education is overseen by the Department of Education, Sport & Culture. Thirty-two primary schools, five secondary schools and the University College Isle of Man function under the department. Health. Two-thirds of residents of Mann are overweight or obese, four in ten are physically inactive, one-quarter are binge drinkers, one in twelve smoke cigarettes, and about 15% are in poor general health. Healthcare is provided via a public health scheme by the Department of Health and Social Care for residents and visitors from the UK. Crime. The Crime Severity Rate in Mann, which largely measures crimes directed against persons or property, remains substantially less than that in the United Kingdom, although the rate of violent crime has been increasing in recent years. Most violent crime is associated with the trade in illegal drugs. The Government of Mann has laid out a strategy entailing a "whole-Island approach" to address the serious problems of money laundering, financial crime, and terrorism financing. Emergency services. The Isle of Man Government maintains five emergency services. These are: All of these services are controlled directly by the Department of Home Affairs of the Isle of Man Government and are independent of the United Kingdom. Nonetheless, the Isle of Man Constabulary voluntarily submits to inspection by the British inspectorate of police, and the Isle of Man Coastguard contracts His Majesty's Coastguard (UK) for air-sea rescue operations. Crematorium. The island's sole crematorium is located in Glencrutchery Road, Douglas, and is operated by the Douglas Borough Council. Usually staffed by four, in March 2020 an increase of staff to 12 was announced by the Council leader, responding to the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic, which could require more staff. Economy. The Isle of Man has no capital gains tax, wealth tax, stamp duty, or inheritance tax and a top rate of income tax of 20%. A tax cap is in force: the maximum amount of tax payable by an individual is £200,000 or £400,000 for couples choosing to have their incomes jointly assessed. Personal income is assessed and taxed on a worldwide income basis rather than a remittance basis. This means that all income earned throughout the world is assessable for Manx tax rather than only income earned in or brought into the island. The standard rate of corporation tax for residents and non-residents is 0%. Retail business profits above £500,000 and banking business income are taxed at 10%, and rental (or other) income from land and buildings situated on the Isle of Man is taxed at 20%. Mann's low corporate tax burden and absence of public registries of corporate ownership provides tax avoidance and tax evasion strategies for individuals and corporations, resulting in a large influx of funds from those in pursuit of tax advantage and financial confidentiality. The relative importance of agriculture, fishing, and tourism in the Isle of Man, the former mainstays of the economy, has accordingly declined. As is typical of the low-tax crown dependencies, Mann's economy features financial services, shell corporations for high-technology companies, online gambling and online gaming, cinema production, and tax havens for high net worth individuals. These activities have brought some high-income jobs to Mann, as hundreds of local residents serve as “straw man" directors and shareholders of shell companies. Similar schemes provide a means for high net worth individuals to reduce their tax obligations and to shield their financial dealings from public scrutiny. As described in the Paradise Papers, the Isle of Man economy features extensive illegal economic activity including tax evasion, money laundering from drug sales, money transfers from weapons sales, and looting of public treasuries of other nation states (particularly Russia). These funds are mostly funneled into the London financial markets. Online gambling sites provided about 10% of the Mann government's revenue in 2014. There has been an effort to regulate these illicit activities on Mann, though the impact of legal measures instituted by the Mann government remains uncertain. As of June, 2023, Mann remains out of compliance with standards for Anti-Money Laundering & Countering the Financing of Terrorism requirements according to Moneyval, the European Union's Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financing of Terrorism The Isle of Man Department for Enterprise manages the diversified economy in 12 key sectors. The largest sectors by GNP are insurance and online casino operations with 17% of GNP each, followed by ICT and banking with 9% each. The 2016 census lists 41,636 total employed. The largest sectors by employment are "medical and health", "financial and business services", construction, retail and public administration. Manufacturing, focused on aerospace and the food and drink industry, employs almost 2000 workers and contributes about 5% of gross domestic product (GDP). The sector provides laser optics, industrial diamonds, electronics, plastics and aerospace precision engineering. Tourism, agriculture, and fishing, once the mainstays of the economy, now make very little contributions to the island's GDP. The unemployment rate on Man is less than 1%. Trade takes place mostly with the United Kingdom. The island is in customs union with the UK, and related revenues are pooled and shared under the Common Purse Agreement. This means that the Isle of Man cannot have the lower excise revenues on alcohol and other goods that are enjoyed in the Channel Islands. The Manx government promotes island locations for making films by offering financial support. Since 1995, over 100 films have been made on the island. Most recently the island has taken a much wider strategy to attract the general digital media industry in film, television, video and esports. The Isle of Man Government Lottery operated from 1986 to 1997. Since 2 December 1999 the island has participated in the United Kingdom National Lottery. The island is the only jurisdiction outside the United Kingdom where it is possible to play the UK National Lottery. Since 2010 it has also been possible for projects in the Isle of Man to receive national lottery Good Causes Funding. The good causes funding is distributed by the Manx Lottery Trust. Tynwald receives the 12% lottery duty for tickets sold in the island. Tourist numbers peaked in the first half of the 20th century, prior to the boom in cheap travel to Southern Europe that also saw the decline of tourism in many similar English seaside resorts. The Isle of Man tourism board has recently invested in "Dark Sky Discovery" sites to diversify its tourism industry. It is expected that dark skies will generally be nominated by the public across the UK. However, the Isle of Man tourism board tasked someone from their team to nominate 27 places on the island as a civil task. This cluster of the highest quality "Milky Way" sites is now well promoted within the island. This government push has effectively given the island a headstart in the number of recognised Dark Sky sites. However, this has created a distorted view when compared to the UK where this is not promoted on a national scale. There, Dark Sky sites are expected to be nominated over time by the public across a full range of town, city and countryside locations rather than "en masse" by government departments. In 2017 an office of The International Stock Exchange was opened to provide a boost for the island's finance industry. Communications. The main telephone provider on the Isle of Man is Manx Telecom. The island has two mobile operators: Manx Telecom, previously known as Manx Pronto, and Sure. Cloud9 operated as a third mobile operator on the island for a short time but has since withdrawn. Broadband internet services are available through four local providers: Wi-Manx, Domicilium, Manx Computer Bureau and Manx Telecom. The island does not have its own ITU country code but is accessed via the British country code (+44), and the island's telephone numbers are part of the British telephone numbering plan, with local dialling codes 01624 for landlines and 07524, 07624 and 07924 for mobiles. Calls to the island from the UK, however, are generally charged differently from those within the UK, and may or may not be included in any "inclusive minutes" packages. In 1996, the Isle of Man Government obtained permission to use the .im national top-level domain (TLD) and has ultimate responsibility for its use. The domain is managed from day to day by Domicilium, an island-based internet service provider. In December 2007, the Manx Electricity Authority and its telecommunications subsidiary, e-llan Communications, commissioned the laying of a new fibre-optic link that connects the island to a worldwide fibre-optic network. In August 2021 it was reported that Elon Musk's satellite internet service, Starlink, had been granted a licence to operate from a ground station on the island. The Isle of Man has three radio stations: Manx Radio, Energy FM and 3FM. There is no insular television service, but local transmitters retransmit British mainland digital broadcasts via the free-to-air digital terrestrial service Freeview. The Isle of Man is served by BBC North West for BBC One and BBC Two television services, and ITV Granada for ITV. Many television services are available by satellite, such as Sky, and Freesat from the group of satellites at 28.2° East, as well as services from a range of other satellites around Europe such as the Astra satellites at 19.2° east and Hot Bird. The Isle of Man has three newspapers, all weeklies, and all owned by Isle of Man Newspapers, a division of the Edinburgh media company Johnston Press. The "Isle of Man Courier" (distribution 36,318) is free and distributed to homes on the island. The other two newspapers are "Isle of Man Examiner" (circulation 13,276) and the "Manx Independent" (circulation 12,255). Postal services are the responsibility of the Isle of Man Post Office, which took over from the UK's General Post Office in 1973. Transport. There is a comprehensive bus network, operated by the government-owned bus operator Bus Vannin. The Isle of Man Sea Terminal in Douglas has regular ferries to and from Heysham and to and from Liverpool, with a more restricted timetable operating in winter. The two vessels are "Manannan" and "Ben My Chree". The latter is due to be replaced with a new vessel which has arrived in 2023, made by Hyundai; it was named "Manxman" by the public in mid 2020. There are also limited summer-only services to and from Belfast and Dublin. The Dublin route also operates at Christmas. At the time of the Isle of Man TT a limited number of sailings operate to and from Larne in Northern Ireland. All ferries are operated by the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company. The only commercial airport on the island is the Isle of Man Airport at Ronaldsway. There are direct scheduled and chartered flights to numerous airports in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The island has a total of of public roads, all of which are paved. There is no overriding national speed limit; only local speed limits are set, and some roads have no speed limit. Rules about reckless driving and most other driving regulations are enforced in a similar way to the UK. There is a requirement for regular vehicle examinations for some vehicles (similar to the MoT test in the UK). The island used to have an extensive narrow-gauge railway system, both steam-operated and electric, but the majority of the steam railway tracks were taken out of service many years ago, and the track removed. , there is a steam railway between Douglas and Port Erin, an electric railway between Douglas and Ramsey and an electric mountain railway which climbs Snaefell. One of the oldest operating horse tram services is located on the sea front in the capital, Douglas. It was founded in 1876. Space commerce. The Isle of Man has become a centre for emerging private space travel companies. A number of the competitors in the Google Lunar X Prize, a $30 million competition for the first privately funded team to send a robot to the Moon, are based on the island. The team summit for the X Prize was held on the island in October 2010. In January 2011 two research space stations owned by Excalibur Almaz arrived on the island and were kept in an aircraft hangar at the airfield at the former RAF Jurby near Jurby. Electricity supply. The electricity supply on the Isle of Man is run by the Manx Utilities Authority. The Isle of Man is connected to Great Britain's national grid by a 40 MW alternating current link (Isle of Man to England Interconnector). There are also hydroelectric, natural gas and diesel generators. The government has also planned a 700 MW offshore wind farm, roughly half the size of Walney Wind Farm. Gas supply. Gas for lighting and heating has been supplied to users on the Isle of Man since 1836, firstly as town gas, then as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG); since 2003 natural gas has been available. The future use of hydrogen as a supplementary or substitute fuel is being studied. Cannabis cultivation. In June 2021, the law prohibiting commercial cultivation of cannabis on Ellan Vannin was repealed, and the government of Mann, for the first time, offered licences for production and export of cannabis. In February 2022, Mann resident and local billionaire John Whittaker, through his firm Peel NRE, proposed to spend US$136 million for the construction of warmhouses for cannabis cultivation, and research facilities, and to develop the business. It was announced that zoning permits had been granted for development of the facility. Although the availability of medical cannabis is heavily restricted within the U.K., there has been an effort to develop the cannabis industry on the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey. Culture. The Manx are a Celtic nation. The culture of the Isle of Man is often promoted as being influenced by its Celtic and, to a lesser extent, its Norse origins. Proximity to the UK, popularity as a UK tourist destination in Victorian times, and immigration from Britain have all meant that the cultures of Great Britain have been influential at least since Revestment. Revival campaigns have attempted to preserve the surviving vestiges of Manx culture after a long period of Anglicisation, and there has been significantly increased interest in the Manx language, history and musical tradition. Language. The official languages of the Isle of Man are English and Manx. Manx has traditionally been spoken but has been stated to be "critically endangered". However, it now has a growing number of young speakers. It is increasingly evident on the island: for instance, in public notices and its increasing use in the Tynwald ceremony. Manx is a Goidelic Celtic language and is one of a number of insular Celtic languages spoken in the British Isles. Manx has been officially recognised as a legitimate autochthonous regional language under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, ratified by the United Kingdom on 27 March 2001 on behalf of the Isle of Man government. Manx is closely related to Irish and Scottish Gaelic but is orthographically sui generis. On the island, the Manx greetings ' (good morning) and ' (good afternoon) can often be heard. As in Irish and Scottish Gaelic, the concepts of "evening" and "afternoon" are referred to with one word. Two other Manx expressions often heard are "Gura mie eu" ("Thank you"; familiar 2nd person singular form "Gura mie ayd") and "", meaning "time enough", which represents a stereotypical view of the Manx attitude to life. In the 2011 Isle of Man census, approximately 1,800 residents could read, write, and speak the Manx language. Symbols. For centuries, the island's symbol has been the so-called "three legs of Mann" (), a triskelion of three legs conjoined at the thigh. The Manx triskelion, which dates back with certainty to the late 13th century, is of uncertain origin. It has been suggested that its origin lies in Sicily, an island which has been associated with the triskelion since ancient times. The symbol appears in the island's official flag and official coat of arms, as well as its currency. The Manx triskelion may be reflected in the island's motto, "Quocunque jeceris stabit", which appears as part of the island's coat of arms. The Latin motto translates as "whichever way you throw, it will stand" or "whithersoever you throw it, it will stand". It dates to the late 17th century when it is known to have appeared on the island's coinage. It may be understood to refer to the Caltrop, a military device with one spike always pointing upwards. The motto itself originally featured on the family badge of the Byzantine/Roman General Flavius Belisarius (505 – 565 AD) along with a representation of a caltrop. It has also been suggested that the motto originally referred to the poor quality of coinage which was common at the time—as in "however it is tested it will pass". The ragwort or "cushag" has been referred to as the Manx national flower. Religion. The predominant religious tradition of the Isle of Man is Christianity, adhered to by 54.7% of the Manx according to the 2021 census. At the same time, 43.8% of the population had no religion, 0.5% adhered to Islam, 0.5% to Buddhism, 0.4% to Hinduism, 0.2% to Judaism, and 0.2% to other religions. Before the Protestant Reformation, the island had a long history as part of the unified Catholic Church, and in the years following the Reformation, the religious authorities on the island, and later the population of the island, accepted the religious authority of the British monarchy, Anglicanism and the Church of England. The Isle of Man also came under the influence of Irish religious tradition. The island forms a separate diocese called Sodor and Man, which in the distant past comprised the medieval kingdom of Man and the Scottish isles ("Suðreyjar" in Old Norse). Nowadays, it consists of sixteen parishes, and since 1541 has been part of the Province of York. Other Christian denominations and other religions also operate on the Isle of Man. The second largest denomination is the Methodist Church, whose Isle of Man District is close in numbers to the Anglican diocese. Then, there are eight Catholic parish churches, included in the Catholic Archdiocese of Liverpool, as well as a presence of Eastern Orthodox Christians. Additionally, there are five Baptist churches, four Pentecostal churches, the Salvation Army, a ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, two congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses, two United Reformed churches, as well as other Christian churches. The Manx Muslim community has a mosque in Douglas, and Jews also have a history on the island. In 2022, the island's first Buddhist temple was established in Baldrine. Myth, legend, and folklore. In Manx mythology, the island was ruled by the sea god Manannán, who would draw his misty cloak around the island to protect it from invaders. One of the principal folk theories about the origin of the name "Mann" is that it is named after Manannán. In the Manx tradition of folklore, there are many stories of mythical creatures and characters. These include the , a malevolent spirit which according to legend, blew the roof off St Trinian's Church in a fit of rage; the ; the ; and the , a ghostly black dog which wandered the walls and corridors of Peel Castle. The Isle of Man is also said to be home to fairies, known locally as "the little folk" or "themselves". There is a famous Fairy Bridge, and it is said to be bad luck if one fails to wish the fairies good morning or afternoon when passing over it. It used to be a tradition to leave a coin on the bridge to ensure good luck. Other types of fairies include the . An old Irish story tells how Lough Neagh was formed when Ireland's legendary giant Fionn mac Cumhaill (commonly anglicised to Finn McCool) ripped up a portion of the land and tossed it at a Scottish rival. He missed and the chunk of earth landed in the Irish Sea, thus creating the island. Peel Castle has been proposed as a possible location of the Arthurian Avalon or as the location of the Grail Castle, site of Lancelot's encounter with the sword bridge of King Maleagant. One of the most oft-repeated myths is that people found guilty of witchcraft were rolled down Slieau Whallian, a hill near St John's, in a barrel. However, this is a 19th-century legend derived from a Scottish legend, which in turn comes from a German legend. Separately, a witchcraft museum was opened at the Witches Mill, Castletown in 1951. There has never actually been a witches' coven on that site; the myth was only created with the opening of the museum. However, there has been a strong tradition of herbalism and the use of charms to prevent and cure illness and disease in people and animals. Music. The music of the Isle of Man reflects Celtic, Norse and other influences, including from its neighbours, Scotland, Ireland, England and Wales. A wide range of music is performed on the island, such as rock, blues, jazz and pop. Its traditional folk music has undergone a revival since the 1970s, starting with a music festival called in Ramsey. This was part of a general revival of the Manx language and culture after the death of the last native speaker of Manx in 1974. Orchestral and song composer Haydn Wood grew up on the Isle of Man, moving there in 1885, aged three years old. The island and its folk tunes inspired Wood's music, resulting in the compositions "Manx Rhapsody (Mylecharaine), Manx Countryside Sketches, Manx Overture," and the 1933 tone poem "" (Manx for "Dear Isle of Man"), based on four Manx folk tunes and scored for wind band. His older brother Harry Wood (1868-1939) was also a musician: a violinist, composer and conductor who became known as "Manxland's King of Music". The Isle of Man is mentioned in the Who song "Happy Jack" as the homeland of the song's titular character, who is always in a state of ecstasy, no matter what happens to him. The song "The Craic was 90 in the Isle of Man" by Christy Moore describes a lively visit during the Island's tourism heyday. The Island is also the birthplace of Maurice, Robin and Barry Gibb, of the Bee Gees; a bronze statue of the trio was unveiled on Douglas promenade in July 2021. Food. In the past, the basic national dish of the island was "spuds and herrin", boiled potatoes and herring. This plain dish was supported by the subsistence farmers of the island, who for centuries crofted the land and fished the sea. Chips, cheese and gravy, a dish similar to poutine, is found in most of the island's fast-food outlets, and consists of thick cut chips, covered in shredded Cheddar cheese and topped with a thick gravy. However, as of the Isle of Man Food & Drink Festival 2018, queenies have been crowned the Manx national dish with many restaurants, hotels and pubs serving locally farmed queen scallops. Seafood has traditionally accounted for a large proportion of the local diet. Although commercial fishing has declined in recent years, local delicacies include Manx kippers (smoked herring) which are produced by the smokeries in Peel on the west coast of the island, albeit mainly from North Sea herring these days. The smokeries also produce other specialities including smoked salmon and bacon. Crab, lobster and scallops are commercially fished, and the queen scallop ("queenies") is regarded as a particular delicacy, with a light, sweet flavour. Cod, ling and mackerel are often angled for the table, and freshwater trout and salmon can be taken from the local rivers and lakes, supported by the government fish hatchery at Cornaa on the east coast. Cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry are all commercially farmed; Manx lamb from the hill farms is a popular dish. The Loaghtan, the indigenous breed of Manx sheep, has a rich, dark meat that has found favour with chefs, featuring in dishes on the BBC's "MasterChef" series. Manx cheese has also found some success, featuring smoked and herb-flavoured varieties, and is stocked by many of the UK's supermarket chains. Manx cheese took bronze medals in the 2005 British Cheese Awards, and sold 578 tonnes over the year. Manx cheddar has been exported to Canada where it is available in some supermarkets. Beer is brewed on a commercial scale by Okells Brewery, which was established in 1850 and is the island's largest brewer; and also, by Bushy's Brewery and the Hooded Ram Brewery. The Isle of Man's Pure Beer Act of 1874, which resembles the German "Reinheitsgebot", is still in effect: under this Act, brewers may only use water, malt, sugar and hops in their brews. Sport. The Isle of Man is represented as a nation in the Commonwealth Games and the Island Games and hosted the IV Commonwealth Youth Games in 2011. Manx athletes have won three gold medals at the Commonwealth Games, including the one by cyclist Mark Cavendish in 2006 in the Scratch race. The Island Games were first held on the island in 1985, and again in 2001. FC Isle of Man was founded in 2019 and is a North West Counties League team. Isle of Man teams and individuals participate in many sports both on and off the island including rugby union, football, gymnastics, field hockey, netball, taekwondo, bowling, obstacle course racing and cricket. The FC Isle of Man will compete in the North West Counties Football League Premier Division in the next league campaign. It being an island, many types of watersports are also popular with residents. Motorcycle racing. The main international event associated with the island is the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy race, colloquially known as "The TT", which began in 1907. It takes place in late May and early June. The TT is now an international road racing event for motorcycles, which used to be part of the World Championship, and is long considered to be one of the "greatest motorcycle sporting events of the world". Taking place over a two-week period, it has become a festival for motorcycling culture, makes a huge contribution to the island's economy and has become part of Manx identity. For many, the Isle carries the title "road racing capital of the world". The Manx Grand Prix is a separate motorcycle event for amateurs and private entrants that uses the same Snaefell Mountain Course in late August and early September. Cammag. Prior to the introduction of football in the 19th century, Cammag was the island's traditional sport. It is similar to the Irish hurling and the Scottish game of shinty. Nowadays there is an annual match at St John's. Theatre and cinema. Built in 1899, to the designs of architect Frank Matcham, and restored in 1976 to its original splendor, the government-owned Gaiety Theatre and Opera House on the Douglas Promenade presents plays, musicals, concerts and comedy shows year-round. Within the Gaiety Theatre Complex, the Broadway Cinema has a capacity of 154 and doubles as a conference venue. The Palace Cinema is located next to the derelict Castle Mona hotel and is operated by the Sefton Group. It has two screens: Screen One holds 293 customers, while Screen Two is smaller with a capacity of just 95. It was extensively refurbished in August 2011. Fauna. Two domestic animals are specifically connected to the Isle of Man, though they are also found elsewhere. The Manx cat is a breed of cat noted for its genetic mutation that causes it to have a shortened tail. The length of this tail can range from a few inches, known as a "stumpy", to being completely nonexistent, or "rumpy". Manx cats display a range of colours and usually have somewhat longer hind legs compared to most cats. The cats have been used as a symbol of the Isle of Man on coins and stamps and at one time the Manx government operated a breeding centre to ensure the continuation of the breed. The Manx Loaghtan sheep is a breed native to the island. It has dark brown wool and four, or sometimes six, horns. The meat is considered to be a delicacy. There are several flocks on the island and others have been started in England and Jersey. A more recent arrival on the island is the red-necked wallaby, which is now established on the island following an escape from the Wildlife Park. The local police report an increasing number of wallaby-related calls. There are also many feral goats in Garff, a matter which was raised in Tynwald Court in January 2018. In March 2016, the Isle of Man became the first entire territory to be adopted into UNESCO's Network of Biosphere Reserves. Demographics. Population. At the 2021 census, the Isle of Man was home to 84,069 people, of whom 26,677 resided in the island's capital, Douglas. The population increased by 755 persons between the 2016 and 2021 censuses. Census. The Isle of Man Full Census, last held in 2021, has been a decennial occurrence since 1821, with interim censuses being introduced from 1966. It is separate from, but similar to, the Census in the United Kingdom.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14790

Ice hockey

Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice hockey sticks to control, advance, and shoot a closed, vulcanized, rubber disc called a "puck" into the other team's goal. Each goal is worth one point. The team which scores the most goals is declared the winner. In a formal game, each team has six skaters on the ice at a time, barring any penalties, one of whom is the goaltender. Ice hockey is a full contact sport, and is considered to be one of the more physically demanding team sports. Ice hockey is one of the sports featured in the Winter Olympics while its premiere international competition, the IIHF World Championships, are governed by the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) for both men's and women's competitions. In North America and parts of Europe the sport is known simply as hockey. However, in other countries, "hockey" usually refers to field hockey. In 1994 hockey was officially recognized as Canada's national winter sport. The modern sport of ice hockey was developed in Canada, most notably in Montreal, where the first indoor game was played on March 3, 1875. Some characteristics of that game, such as the length of the ice rink and the use of a puck, have been retained to this day. Amateur ice hockey leagues began in the 1880s, and professional ice hockey originated around 1900. The Stanley Cup, emblematic of ice hockey club supremacy, was initially commissioned in 1892 as the "Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup" and was first awarded in 1893 to recognize the Canadian amateur champion and later became the championship trophy of the National Hockey League (NHL). In the early 1900s, the Canadian rules were adopted by the Ligue Internationale de Hockey Sur Glace, in Paris, France, the precursor of the IIHF. The sport was played for the first time at the Olympics during the 1920 Summer Olympics. While women also played during the game's early formative years, it was not until organizers began to officially remove body checking from female ice hockey beginning in the mid-1980s that it began to gain greater popularity, which by then had spread to Europe and a variety of other countries. The first IIHF Women's World Championship was held in 1990, and women's play was introduced into the Olympics in 1998. History. Ice hockey is believed to have evolved from simple stick and ball games played in the 18th and 19th centuries in Britain, Ireland, and elsewhere, primarily bandy, hurling, and shinty. The North American sport of lacrosse was also influential. These games were brought to North America and several similar winter games using informal rules developed, such as shinny and ice polo, but would later be absorbed into a new organized game with codified rules which today is ice hockey. Name. In England, field hockey has historically been called simply "hockey" and was what was referenced by first appearances in print. The first known mention spelled as "hockey" occurred in the 1772 book "Juvenile Sports and Pastimes, to Which Are Prefixed, Memoirs of the Author: Including a New Mode of Infant Education", by Richard Johnson (Pseud. Master Michel Angelo), whose chapter XI was titled "New Improvements on the Game of Hockey". The 1527 Statute of Galway banned a sport called hokie'—the hurling of a little ball with sticks or staves". A form of this word was thus being used in the 16th century, though much removed from its current usage. The belief that hockey was mentioned in a 1363 proclamation by King Edward III of England is based on modern translations of the proclamation, which was originally in Latin and explicitly forbade the games . According to the Austin Hockey Association, the word "puck" derives from the Scottish Gaelic or the Irish ('to poke, punch or deliver a blow'). "...The blow given by a hurler to the ball with his or hurley is always called a puck." Precursors. Stick-and-ball games date back to the pre-Christian era in Iran. In Europe, these games included the Irish game of hurling, the closely related Scottish game of shinty and versions of field hockey (including bandy ball, played in England). IJscolf, a game resembling colf on an ice-covered surface, was popular in the Low Countries between the Middle Ages and the Dutch Golden Age. It was played with a wooden curved bat (called a "colf" or "kolf"), a wooden or leather ball and two poles (or nearby landmarks), with the objective to hit the chosen point using the fewest strokes. A similar game ("") had been played for a thousand years or more by the Scandinavian peoples, as documented in the Icelandic sagas. Polo has been referred to as "hockey on horseback". In England, field hockey developed in the late 17th century, and there is evidence that some games of field hockey took place on the ice. These games of "hockey on ice" were sometimes played with a bung (a plug of cork or oak used as a stopper on a barrel). William Pierre Le Cocq stated, in a 1799 letter written in Chesham, England:A 1797 engraving unearthed by Swedish sport historians Carl Gidén and Patrick Houda shows a person on skates with a stick and bung on the River Thames, probably in December 1796. British soldiers and immigrants to Canada and the United States brought their stick-and-ball games with them and played them on the ice and snow of winter. In 1825, John Franklin wrote "The game of hockey played on the ice was the morning sport" on Great Bear Lake near the town of Délı̨nę during one of his Arctic expeditions. A mid-1830s watercolour portrays New Brunswick lieutenant-governor Archibald Campbell and his family with British soldiers on skates playing a stick-on-ice sport. Captain R.G.A. Levinge, a British Army officer in New Brunswick during Campbell's time, wrote about "hockey on ice" on Chippewa Creek (a tributary of the Niagara River) in 1839. In 1843 another British Army officer in Kingston, Ontario, wrote, "Began to skate this year, improved quickly and had great fun at hockey on the ice." An 1859 "Boston Evening Gazette" article referred to an early game of hockey on ice in Halifax that year. An 1835 painting by John O'Toole depicts skaters with sticks and bung on a frozen stream in the American state of West Virginia, at that time still part of Virginia. In that same era, the Mi'kmaq, a First Nations people of the Canadian Maritimes, also had a stick-and-ball game. Canadian oral histories describe a traditional stick-and-ball game played by the Mi'kmaq, and Silas Tertius Rand (in his 1894 "Legends of the Micmacs") describes a Mi'kmaq ball game known as . Rand also describes a game played (probably after European contact) with hurleys, known as . was the name used by the Mi'kmaq to describe their own stick and ball game which they played on the ice while was what the Mi'kmaq called the new the game of "hurley on ice" which was played by others around the province during the same period. Of particular note among influential Mi'kmaqs is Joe Cope ("Old Joe"), a Mi'kmaq elder known for his talent for carving what became one of the earliest types of ice hockey sticks used. Cope once stated, "Long before the pale faces strayed to this country, the Mi'kmaqs were playing two ball games, a field game and an ice game." Sticks made by the Mi'kmaq were used by the British for their games. Early 19th-century paintings depict shinny, an early form of hockey with no standard rules which was played in Nova Scotia. Many of these early games absorbed the physical aggression of what the Onondaga called "" (lacrosse). Shinny was played on the St. Lawrence River at Montreal and Quebec City, and in Kingston and Ottawa. The number of players was often large. To this day, shinny (derived from the Scottish game of shinty) is a popular Canadian term for an informal type of hockey, either ice or street hockey. Thomas Chandler Haliburton, in "The Attache: Second Series" (published in 1844) imagined a dialogue, between two of the novel's characters, which mentions playing "hurly on the long pond on the ice". This has been interpreted by some historians from Windsor, Nova Scotia as reminiscent of the days when the author was a student at King's College School in that town in 1810 and earlier. Based on Haliburton's quote, claims were made that modern hockey was invented in Windsor, Nova Scotia, by King's College students and perhaps named after an individual ("Colonel Hockey's game"). Others claim that the origins of hockey come from games played in the area of Dartmouth and Halifax in Nova Scotia. However, several references have been found to hurling and shinty being played on the ice long before the earliest references from both Windsor and Dartmouth/Halifax, and the word "hockey" was used to designate a stick-and-ball game at least as far back as 1773, as it was mentioned in the book "Juvenile Sports and Pastimes, to Which Are Prefixed, Memoirs of the Author: Including a New Mode of Infant Education" by Richard Johnson (Pseud. Master Michel Angelo), whose chapter XI was titled "New Improvements on the Game of Hockey". Initial development. The city of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, became the centre of the development of contemporary ice hockey, and is recognized as the birthplace of organized ice hockey. On March 3, 1875, the first organized indoor game was played at Montreal's Victoria Skating Rink between two nine-player teams, including James Creighton and several McGill University students. Instead of a ball or bung, the game featured a "flat circular piece of wood" (to keep it in the rink and to protect spectators). The goal posts were apart (today's goals are wide). Some observers of the game at McGill made quick note of its surprisingly aggressive and violent nature. In 1876, games played in Montreal were "conducted under the 'Hockey Association' rules"; the Hockey Association was England's field hockey organization. In 1877, "The Gazette" (Montreal) published a list of seven rules, six of which were largely based on six of the Hockey Association's twelve rules, with only minor differences (even the word "ball" was kept); the one added rule explained how disputes should be settled. The McGill University Hockey Club, the first ice hockey club, was founded in 1877 (followed by the Quebec Hockey Club in 1878 and the Montreal Victorias in 1881). In 1880, the number of players per side was reduced from nine to seven. The number of teams grew, enough to hold the first "world championship" of ice hockey at Montreal's annual Winter Carnival in 1883. The McGill team won the tournament and was awarded the Carnival Cup. The game was divided into thirty-minute halves. The positions were now named: left and right wing, centre, rover, point and cover-point, and goaltender. In 1886, the teams competing at the Winter Carnival organized the Amateur Hockey Association of Canada (AHAC), and played a season comprising "challenges" to the existing champion. In Europe, it was previously believed that in 1885 the Oxford University Ice Hockey Club was formed to play the first Ice Hockey Varsity Match against traditional rival Cambridge in St. Moritz, Switzerland; however, this is now considered to have been a game of bandy. A similar claim which turned out to be accurate is that the oldest rivalry in ice hockey history is between Queen's University at Kingston and Royal Military College of Kingston, Ontario, with the first known match taking place in 1886. In 1888, the Governor General of Canada, The Lord Stanley of Preston, first attended the Montreal Winter Carnival tournament and was impressed with the game. His sons and his daughter, Isobel Stanley, were hockey enthusiasts. In 1892, realizing that there was no recognition for the best team in Canada (although a number of leagues had championship trophies), he purchased a silver bowl for use as a trophy. The Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup (which later became known as the Stanley Cup) was first awarded in 1893 to the Montreal Hockey Club, champions of the AHAC; it continues to be awarded annually to the National Hockey League's championship team. Stanley's son Arthur helped organize the Ontario Hockey Association, and Stanley's daughter Isobel was one of the first women to play ice hockey. By 1893, there were almost a hundred teams in Montreal alone; in addition, there were leagues throughout Canada. Winnipeg hockey players used cricket pads to better protect the goaltender's legs; they also introduced the "scoop" shot, or what is now known as the wrist shot. William Fairbrother, from Ontario, Canada, is credited with inventing the ice hockey net in the 1890s. Goal nets became a standard feature of the Canadian Amateur Hockey League in 1900. Left and right defence began to replace the point and cover-point positions in the OHA in 1906. American financier Malcolm Greene Chace is credited with being the father of hockey in the United States. In 1892, Chace put together a team of men from Yale, Brown, and Harvard, and toured across Canada as captain of this team. The first collegiate hockey match in the United States was played between Yale and Johns Hopkins in Baltimore in 1893. In 1896, the first ice hockey league in the US was formed. The US Amateur Hockey League was founded in New York City, shortly after the opening of the artificial-ice St. Nicholas Rink. By 1898 the following leagues had already formed: the Amateur Hockey League of New York, the Amateur Hockey Association of Canada, and the Ontario Hockey Association. The 1898 Spalding Athletic Library book includes rules and results for each league. Stanley's five sons were instrumental in bringing ice hockey to Europe, defeating a court team (which included the future Edward VII and George V) at Buckingham Palace in 1895. By 1903, a five-team league had been founded. The was founded in 1908 to govern international competition, and the first European championship was won by Great Britain in 1910. The sport grew further in Europe in the 1920s, after ice hockey became an Olympic sport. Many bandy players switched to hockey to be able to compete in the Olympics. In the mid-20th century, the became the International Ice Hockey Federation. As the popularity of ice hockey as a spectator sport grew, earlier rinks were replaced by larger rinks. Most of the early indoor ice rinks have been demolished; Montreal's Victoria Rink, built in 1862, was demolished in 1925. Many older rinks succumbed to fire, such as Denman Arena, Dey's Arena, Quebec Skating Rink and Montreal Arena, a hazard of the buildings' wood construction. The Stannus Street Rink in Windsor, Nova Scotia (built in 1897) may be the oldest still in existence; however, it is no longer used for hockey. The Aberdeen Pavilion (built in 1898) in Ottawa was used for hockey in 1904 and is the oldest existing facility that has hosted Stanley Cup games. The oldest indoor ice hockey arena still in use today for hockey is Boston's Matthews Arena, which was built in 1910. It has been modified extensively several times in its history and is used today by Northeastern University for hockey and other sports. It was the original home rink of the Boston Bruins professional team, itself the oldest United States-based team in the NHL, starting play in the league in what was then called Boston Arena on December 1, 1924. Madison Square Garden in New York City, built in 1968, is the oldest continuously-operating arena in the NHL. Professional era. While scattered incidents of players taking pay to play hockey occurred as early as the 1890s, those found to have done so were banned from playing in the amateur leagues which dominated the sport. By 1902, the Western Pennsylvania Hockey League (WPHL) was the first to employ professionals. The league joined with teams in Michigan and Ontario to form the first fully professional league—the International Professional Hockey League (IPHL)—in 1904. The WPHL and IPHL hired players from Canada; in response, Canadian leagues began to pay players (who played with amateurs). The IPHL, cut off from its largest source of players, disbanded in 1907. By then, several professional hockey leagues were operating in Canada (with leagues in Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec). In 1910, the National Hockey Association (NHA) was formed in Montreal. The NHA would further refine the rules: dropping the rover position, dividing the game into three 20-minute periods and introducing minor and major penalties. After re-organizing as the National Hockey League in 1917, the league expanded into the United States, starting with the Boston Bruins in 1924. Professional hockey leagues developed later in Europe, but amateur leagues leading to national championships were in place. One of the first was the Swiss National League A, founded in 1916. Today, professional leagues have been introduced in most countries of Europe. Top European leagues include the Kontinental Hockey League, the Czech Extraliga, the Finnish Liiga and the Swedish Hockey League. Game. While the general characteristics of the game remain constant, the exact rules depend on the particular code of play being used. The two most important codes are those of the IIHF and the NHL. Both of these codes, and others, originated from Canadian rules of ice hockey of the early 20th century. Ice hockey is played on a "hockey rink". During normal play, there are six players on ice skates on the ice per side, one of them being the goaltender. The objective of the game is to score "goals" by shooting a hard vulcanized rubber disc, the "puck", into the opponent's goal net at the opposite end of the rink. The players use their sticks to pass or shoot the puck. With certain restrictions, players may redirect the puck with any part of their body. Players may not hold the puck in their hand and are prohibited from using their hands to pass the puck to their teammates unless they are in the defensive zone. Players however can knock a puck out of the air with their hand to themself. Players are prohibited from kicking the puck into the opponent's goal, though unintentional redirections off the skate are permitted. Players may not intentionally bat the puck into the net with their hands. Hockey is an off-side game, meaning that forward passes are allowed, unlike in rugby. Before the 1930s, hockey was an on-side game, meaning that only backward passes were allowed. Those rules emphasized individual stick-handling to drive the puck forward. With the arrival of offside rules, the forward pass transformed hockey into a true team sport, where individual performance diminished in importance relative to team play, which could now be coordinated over the entire surface of the ice as opposed to merely rearward players. The six players on each team are typically divided into three forwards, two defencemen, and one goaltender. The term "skaters" typically applies to all players except goaltenders. The "forward" positions consist of a "centre" and two "wingers": a "left wing" and a "right wing". Forwards often play together as units or "lines", with the same three forwards always playing together. The "defencemen" usually stay together as a pair generally divided between left and right. Left and right side wingers or defencemen are generally positioned on the side on which they carry their stick. A substitution of an entire unit at once is called a "line change". Teams typically employ alternate sets of forward lines and defensive pairings when "short-handed" or on a "power play". The goaltender stands in a, usually blue, semi-circle called the "crease" in the defensive zone keeping pucks out of the goal. Substitutions are permitted at any time during the game, although during a stoppage of play the home team is permitted the final change. When players are substituted during play, it is called changing "on the fly". An NHL rule added in the 2005–06 season prevents a team from changing their line after they "ice" the puck. The boards surrounding the ice help keep the puck in play and they can also be used as tools to play the puck. Players are permitted to bodycheck opponents into the boards to stop progress. The referees, linesmen and the outsides of the goal are "in play" and do not stop the game when the puck or players either bounce into or collide with them. Play can be stopped if the goal is knocked out of position. Play often proceeds for minutes without interruption. After a stoppage, play is restarted with a faceoff. Two players face each other and an official drops the puck to the ice, where the two players attempt to gain control of the puck. Markings (circles) on the ice indicate the locations for the faceoff and guide the positioning of players. Three major rules of play in ice hockey limit the movement of the puck: "offside", "icing", and the puck going out of play. Under IIHF rules, each team may carry a maximum of 20 players and two goaltenders on their roster. NHL rules restrict the total number of players per game to 18, plus two goaltenders. In the NHL, the players are usually divided into four lines of three forwards, and into three pairs of defencemen. On occasion, teams may elect to substitute an extra defenceman for a forward. The seventh defenceman may play as a substitute defenceman, spend the game on the bench, or if a team chooses to play four lines then this seventh defenceman may see ice-time on the fourth line as a forward. Periods and overtime. A professional ice hockey game consists of three periods of twenty minutes, the clock running only when the puck is in play. The teams change ends after each period of play, including overtime. Recreational leagues and children's leagues often play shorter games, generally with three shorter periods of play. If a tie occurs in tournament play, as well as in the NHL playoffs, North Americans favour "sudden death overtime", in which the teams continue to play twenty-minute periods until a goal is scored. Up until the 1999–2000 season, regular-season NHL games were settled with a single five-minute sudden death period with five players (plus a goalie) per side, with both teams awarded one point in the standings in the event of a tie. With a goal, the winning team would be awarded two points and the losing team none (just as if they had lost in regulation). The total elapsed time from when the puck first drops, is about 2 hours and 20 minutes for a 60-minute game. From the 1999–2000 until the 2003–04 seasons, the National Hockey League decided ties by playing a single five-minute sudden-death overtime period with each team having four skaters per side (plus the goalie). In the event of a tie, each team would still receive one point in the standings but in the event of a victory the winning team would be awarded two points in the standings and the losing team one point. The idea was to discourage teams from playing for a tie, since previously some teams might have preferred a tie and 1 point to risking a loss and zero points. The exception to this rule is if a team opts to pull their goalie in exchange for an extra skater during overtime and is subsequently scored upon (an "empty net" goal), in which case the losing team receives no points for the overtime loss. Since the 2015–16 season, the single five-minute sudden-death overtime session involves three skaters on each side. Since three skaters must always be on the ice in an NHL game, the consequences of penalties are slightly different from those during regulation play; any penalty during overtime that would result in a team losing a skater during regulation instead causes the other side to add a skater. Once the penalized team's penalty ends, the penalized skater exits the penalty box and the teams continue at 4-on-4 until the next stoppage of play, at which point the teams return to three skaters per side. International play and several North American professional leagues, including the NHL (in the regular season), now use an overtime period identical to that from 1999–2000 to 2003–04 followed by a penalty shootout. If the score remains tied after an extra overtime period, the subsequent shootout consists of three players from each team taking penalty shots. After these six total shots, the team with the most goals is awarded the victory. If the score is still tied, the shootout then proceeds to "sudden death". Regardless of the number of goals scored by either team during the shootout, the final score recorded will award the winning team one more goal than the score at the end of regulation time. In the NHL if a game is decided in overtime or by a shootout the winning team is awarded two points in the standings and the losing team is awarded one point. Ties no longer occur in the NHL. Overtime in the NHL playoffs differs from the regular season. In the playoffs there are no shootouts. If a game is tied after regulation, then a 20-minute period of 5-on-5 sudden-death overtime will be added. If the game is still tied after the overtime, another period is added until a team scores, which wins the match. Since 2019, the IIHF World Championships and the gold medal game in the Olympics use the same format, but in a 3-on-3 format. Penalties. In ice hockey, infractions of the rules lead to a play stoppage whereby the play is restarted at a faceoff. Some infractions result in a "penalty" on a player or team. In the simplest case, the offending player is sent to the "penalty box" and their team must play with one less player on the ice for a designated time. "Minor" penalties last for two minutes, "major" penalties last for five minutes, and a "double minor" penalty is two "consecutive" penalties of two minutes duration. A single minor penalty may be extended by two minutes for causing visible injury to the victimized player. This is usually when blood is drawn during high sticking. Players may be also assessed personal extended penalties or game expulsions for misconduct in addition to the penalty or penalties their team must serve. The team that has been given a penalty is said to be playing "short-handed" while the opposing team is on a "power play". A two-minute minor penalty is often charged for lesser infractions such as tripping, elbowing, roughing, high-sticking, delay of the game, too many players on the ice, boarding, illegal equipment, charging (leaping into an opponent or body-checking him after taking more than two strides), holding, holding the stick (grabbing an opponent's stick), interference, hooking, slashing, kneeing, unsportsmanlike conduct (arguing a penalty call with referee, extremely vulgar or inappropriate verbal comments), "butt-ending" (striking an opponent with the knob of the stick), "spearing" (jabbing an opponent with the blade of the stick), or cross-checking. As of the 2005–2006 season, a minor penalty is also assessed for diving, where a player embellishes or simulates an offence. More egregious fouls may be penalized by a four-minute double-minor penalty, particularly those that injure the victimized player. These penalties end either when the time runs out or when the other team scores during the power play. In the case of a goal scored during the first two minutes of a double-minor, the penalty clock is set down to two minutes upon a score, effectively expiring the first minor penalty. Five-minute major penalties are called for especially violent instances of most minor infractions that result in intentional injury to an opponent, or when a minor penalty results in visible injury (such as bleeding), as well as for fighting. Major penalties are always served in full; they do not terminate on a goal scored by the other team. Major penalties assessed for fighting are typically offsetting, meaning neither team is short-handed and the players exit the penalty box upon a stoppage of play following the expiration of their respective penalties. The foul of boarding (defined as "check[ing] an opponent in such a manner that causes the opponent to be thrown violently in the boards") is penalized either by a minor or major penalty at the discretion of the referee, based on the violent state of the hit. A minor or major penalty for boarding is often assessed when a player checks an opponent from behind and into the boards. Some varieties of penalty do not require the offending team to play a man short. Concurrent five-minute major penalties in the NHL usually result from fighting. In the case of two players being assessed five-minute fighting majors, both the players serve five minutes without their team incurring a loss of player (both teams still have a full complement of players on the ice). This differs with two players from opposing sides getting minor penalties, at the same time or at any intersecting moment, resulting from more common infractions. In this case, both teams will have only four skating players (not counting the goaltender) until one or both penalties expire (if one penalty expires before the other, the opposing team gets a power play for the remainder of the time); this applies regardless of current pending penalties. However, in the NHL, a team always has at least three skaters on the ice. Thus, ten-minute "misconduct" penalties are served in full by the penalized player, but his team may immediately substitute another player on the ice "unless" a minor or major penalty is assessed in conjunction with the misconduct (a "two-and-ten" or "five-and-ten"). In this case, the team designates another player to serve the minor or major; both players go to the penalty box, but only the designee may not be replaced, and he is released upon the expiration of the two or five minutes, at which point the ten-minute misconduct begins. In addition, "game misconducts" are assessed for deliberate intent to inflict severe injury on an opponent (at the officials' discretion), or for a major penalty for a stick infraction or repeated major penalties. The offending player is ejected from the game and must immediately leave the playing surface (he does not sit in the penalty box); meanwhile, if an additional minor or major penalty is assessed, a designated player must serve out of that segment of the penalty in the box (similar to the above-mentioned "two-and-ten"). In some rare cases, a player may receive up to nineteen minutes in penalties for one string of plays. This could involve receiving a four-minute double-minor penalty, getting in a fight with an opposing player who retaliates, and then receiving a game misconduct after the fight. In this case, the player is ejected and two teammates must serve the double-minor and major penalties. A penalty shot is awarded to a player when the illegal actions of another player stop a clear scoring opportunity, most commonly when the player is on a breakaway. A penalty shot allows the obstructed player to pick up the puck on the centre red-line and attempt to score on the goalie with no other players on the ice, to compensate for the earlier missed scoring opportunity. A penalty shot is also awarded for a defender other than the goaltender covering the puck in the goal crease, a goaltender intentionally displacing his own goal posts during a breakaway to avoid a goal, a defender intentionally displacing his own goal posts when there is less than two minutes to play in regulation time or at any point during overtime, or a player or coach intentionally throwing a stick or other object at the puck or the puck carrier and the throwing action disrupts a shot or pass play. Officials also stop play for puck movement violations, such as using one's hands to pass the puck in the offensive end, but no players are penalized for these offences. The sole exceptions are deliberately falling on or gathering the puck to the body, carrying the puck in the hand, and shooting the puck out of play in one's defensive zone (all penalized two minutes for delay of game). In the NHL, a unique penalty applies to the goalies. The goalies now are forbidden to play the puck in the "corners" of the rink near their own net. This will result in a two-minute penalty against the goalie's team. Only in the area in front of the goal line and immediately behind the net (marked by two red lines on either side of the net) can the goalie play the puck. An additional rule that has never been a penalty, but was an infraction in the NHL before recent rules changes, is the two-line offside pass. Prior to the 2005–06 NHL season, play was stopped when a pass from inside a team's defending zone crossed the centre line, with a face-off held in the defending zone of the offending team. Now, the centre line is no longer used in the NHL to determine a two-line pass infraction, a change that the IIHF had adopted in 1998. Players are now able to pass to teammates who are more than the blue and centre ice red line away. The NHL has taken steps to speed up the game of hockey and create a game of finesse, by reducing the number of illegal hits, fights, and "clutching and grabbing" that occurred in the past. Rules are now more strictly enforced, resulting in more penalties, which provides more protection to the players and facilitates more goals being scored. The governing body for United States' amateur hockey has implemented many new rules to reduce the number of stick-on-body occurrences, as well as other detrimental and illegal facets of the game ("zero tolerance"). In men's hockey, but not in women's, a player may use his hip or shoulder to hit another player if the player has the puck or is the last to have touched it. This use of the hip and shoulder is called "body checking". Not all physical contact is legal—in particular, hits from behind, hits to the head and most types of forceful stick-on-body contact are illegal. A "delayed penalty call" occurs when an offence is committed by the team that does not have possession of the puck. In this circumstance the team with possession of the puck is allowed to complete the play; that is, play continues until a goal is scored, a player on the opposing team gains control of the puck, or the team in possession commits an infraction or penalty of their own. Because the team on which the penalty was called cannot control the puck without stopping play, it is impossible for them to score a goal. In these cases, the team in possession of the puck can pull the goalie for an extra attacker without fear of being scored on. However, it is possible for the controlling team to mishandle the puck into their own net. If a delayed penalty is signalled and the team in possession scores, the penalty is still assessed to the offending player, but not served. In 2012, this rule was changed by the United States' National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for college level hockey. In college games, the penalty is still enforced even if the team in possession scores. Officials. A typical game of hockey is governed by two to four "officials" on the ice, charged with enforcing the rules of the game. There are typically two "linesmen" who are mainly responsible for calling "offside" and "icing" violations, breaking up fights, and conducting faceoffs, and one or two "referees", who call goals and all other penalties. Linesmen can, however, report to the referee(s) that a penalty should be assessed against an offending player in some situations. The restrictions on this practice vary depending on the governing rules. On-ice officials are assisted by off-ice officials who act as goal judges, time keepers, and official scorers. The most widespread system is the "three-man system", which uses one referee and two linesmen. A less commonly used system is the two referee and one linesman system. This system is close to the regular three-man system except for a few procedure changes. Beginning with the National Hockey League, a number of leagues have implemented the "four-official system", where an additional referee is added to aid in the calling of penalties normally difficult to assess by one referee. The system is used in every NHL game since 2001, at IIHF World Championships, the Olympics and in many professional and high-level amateur leagues in North America and Europe. Officials are selected by the league they work for. Amateur hockey leagues use guidelines established by national organizing bodies as a basis for choosing their officiating staffs. In North America, the national organizing bodies Hockey Canada and USA Hockey approve officials according to their experience level as well as their ability to pass rules knowledge and skating ability tests. Hockey Canada has officiating levels I through VI. USA Hockey has officiating levels 1 through 4. Equipment. Protective gear. Since men's ice hockey is a full-contact sport, body checks are allowed so injuries are a common occurrence. Protective equipment is mandatory and is enforced in all competitive situations. This includes a helmet with either a visor or a full face mask, shoulder pads, elbow pads, mouth guard, protective gloves, heavily padded shorts (also known as hockey pants) or a girdle, athletic cup (also known as a jock, for males; and jill, for females), shin pads, skates, and (optionally) a neck protector. Goaltenders. Goaltenders use different equipment. With hockey pucks approaching them at speeds of up to they must wear equipment with more protection. Goaltenders wear specialized goalie skates (these skates are built more for movement side to side rather than forwards and backwards), a jock or jill, large leg pads (there are size restrictions in certain leagues), blocking glove, catching glove, a chest protector, a goalie mask, and a large jersey. Goaltenders' equipment has continually become larger and larger, leading to fewer goals in each game and many official rule changes. Ice skates. Ice hockey skates are optimized for physical acceleration, speed and manoeuvrability. This includes rapid starts, stops, turns, and changes in skating direction. In addition, they must be rigid and tough to protect the skater's feet from contact with other skaters, sticks, pucks, the boards, and the ice itself. Rigidity also improves the overall manoeuvrability of the skate. Blade length, thickness (width), and curvature (rocker/radius) (front to back) and radius of hollow (across the blade width) are quite different from speed or figure skates. Hockey players usually adjust these parameters based on their skill level, position, and body type. The blade width of most skates are about thick. Ice hockey stick. Each player other than the goaltender carries a stick consisting of a long, relatively wide, and slightly curved flat blade, attached to a shaft. The curve itself has a big impact on its performance. A deep curve allows for lifting the puck easier while a shallow curve allows for easier backhand shots. The flex of the stick also impacts the performance. Typically, a less flexible stick is meant for a stronger player since the player is looking for the right balanced flex that allows the stick to flex easily while still having a strong "whip-back" which sends the puck flying at high speeds. It is quite distinct from sticks in other sports games and most suited to hitting and controlling the flat puck. Its unique shape contributed to the early development of the game. The goaltender carries a stick of a different design, with a larger blade and a wide, flat shaft. This stick is primarily intended to block shots, but the goaltender may use it to play the puck as well. Injury. Ice hockey is a full-contact sport and carries a high risk of injury. Players are moving at speeds around approximately and much of the game revolves around the physical contact between the players. Skate blades, hockey sticks, shoulder contact, hip contact, and hockey pucks can all potentially cause injuries. Lace bite, an irritation felt on the front of the foot or ankle, is a common ice hockey injury. Compared to athletes who play other sports, ice hockey players are at higher risk of overuse injuries and injuries caused by early sports specialization by teenagers. According to the Hughston Health Alert, "Lacerations to the head, scalp, and face are the most frequent types of injury [in hockey]." One of the leading causes of head injury is body checking from behind. Due to the danger of delivering a check from behind, many leagues – including the NHL – have made this a major and game misconduct penalty. Another type of check that accounts for many of the player-to-player contact concussions is a check to the head resulting in a misconduct penalty (called "head contact"). In recent years, the NHL has implemented new rules which penalize and suspend players for illegal checks to the heads, as well as checks to unsuspecting players. Studies show that ice hockey causes 44.3% of all sports-related traumatic brain injuries among Canadian children. Some teams in the Swiss National League are testing out systems that combine helmet-integrated sensors and analysis software to reveal a player's ongoing brain injury risk during a game.  These sensors provide players and coaches with real-time data on head impact strength, frequency, and severity.   Furthermore, if the app determines that a particular impact has the potential to cause brain injury, it will alert the coach who can in turn seek medical attention for the individual. Tactics. Defensive tactics. Defensive ice hockey tactics vary from more active to more conservative styles of play. One distinction is between man-to-man oriented defensive systems, and zonal oriented defensive systems, though a lot of teams use a combination between the two. Defensive skills involve "pass interception", "shot blocking", and "stick checking" (in which an attempt to take away the puck or cut off the puck lane is initiated by the stick of the defensive player). A tactic commonly used individiually in defence is skating backwards, as this allows a defensive player to follow the puck both with the eyes and with their movements. Normally a defensive side accounts for the offensive players by order of distance to the goal line of the defensive zone, though individual variations occur between different teams as well as different in-game situations. This is referred to as "zoning out" the opposing side. Additional points of emphasis in ice hockey defensive play are concepts like "managing gaps" (gap control), "boxing out" (not letting the offensive team go on the inside), and "staying on the right side" (of the puck). Another popular concept in ice hockey defensive tactics is that of playing a "200-foot game". Checking. An important defensive tactic is checking—attempting to take the puck from an opponent or to remove the opponent from play. "Stick checking", "sweep checking", and "poke checking" are legal uses of the stick to obtain possession of the puck. The "neutral zone trap" is designed to isolate the puck carrier in the neutral zone preventing him from entering the offensive zone. "Body checking" is using one's shoulder or hip to strike an opponent who has the puck or who is the last to have touched it (the last person to have touched the puck is still legally "in possession" of it, although a penalty is generally called if he is checked more than two seconds after his last touch). Body checking is also a penalty in certain leagues in order to reduce the chance of injury to players. Often the term checking is used to refer to body checking, with its true definition generally only propagated among fans of the game. One of the most important strategies for a team is their "forecheck". Forechecking is the act of attacking the opposition in their defensive zone. Forechecking is an important part of the "dump and chase" strategy (i.e. shooting the puck into the offensive zone and then chasing after it). Each team uses their own unique system but the main ones are: 2–1–2, 1–2–2, and 1–4. The 2–1–2 is the most basic forecheck system where two forwards go in deep and pressure the opposition's defencemen, the third forward stays high and the two defencemen stay at the blueline. The 1–2–2 is a bit more conservative system where one forward pressures the puck carrier and the other two forwards cover the oppositions' wingers, with the two defencemen staying at the blueline. The 1–4 is the most defensive forecheck system, referred to as the neutral zone trap, where one forward applies pressure to the puck carrier around the oppositions' blueline and the other four players stand basically in a line by their blueline in hopes the opposition will skate into one of them. Another strategy is the left wing lock, which has two forwards pressure the puck and the left wing and the two defencemen stay at the blueline. Offensive tactics. Offensive tactics include improving a team's position on the ice by advancing the puck out of one's zone towards the opponent's zone, progressively by gaining lines, first your own blue line, then the red line and finally the opponent's blue line. NHL rules instated for the 2006 season redefined the offside rule to make the two-line pass legal; a player may pass the puck from behind his own blue line, past both that blue line and the centre red line, to a player on the near side of the opponents' blue line. Offensive tactics are designed ultimately to score a goal by taking a shot. When a player purposely directs the puck towards the opponent's goal, he or she is said to "shoot" the puck. A "deflection" is a shot that redirects a shot or a pass towards the goal from another player, by allowing the puck to strike the stick and carom towards the goal. A "one-timer" is a shot struck directly off a pass, without receiving the pass and shooting in two separate actions. "Headmanning the puck", also known as "breaking out", is the tactic of rapidly passing to the player farthest down the ice. "Loafing", also known as "cherry-picking", is when a player, usually a forward, skates behind an attacking team, instead of playing defence, in an attempt to create an easy scoring chance. A team that is losing by one or two goals in the last few minutes of play will often elect to "pull the goalie"; that is, remove the goaltender and replace him or her with an "extra attacker" on the ice in the hope of gaining enough advantage to score a goal. However, it is an act of desperation, as it sometimes leads to the opposing team extending their lead by scoring a goal in the empty net. There are many other little tactics used in the game of hockey. "Cycling" moves the puck along the boards in the offensive zone to create a scoring chance by making defenders tired or moving them out of position. "Pinching" is when a defenceman pressures the opposition's winger in the offensive zone when they are breaking out, attempting to stop their attack and keep the puck in the offensive zone. A "saucer pass" is a pass used when an opposition's stick or body is in the passing lane. It is the act of raising the puck over the obstruction and having it land on a teammate's stick. A deke, short for "decoy", is a feint with the body or stick to fool a defender or the goalie. Many modern players, such as Pavel Datsyuk, Sidney Crosby and Patrick Kane, have picked up the skill of "dangling", which is fancier deking and requires more stick handling skills. Fights. Although fighting is officially prohibited in the rules, it is not an uncommon occurrence at the professional level, and its prevalence has been both a target of criticism and a considerable draw for the sport. At the professional level in North America fights are unofficially condoned. Enforcers and other players fight to demoralize the opposing players while exciting their own, as well as settling personal scores. A fight will also break out if one of the team's skilled players gets hit hard or someone receives what the team perceives as a dirty hit. The amateur game penalizes fisticuffs more harshly, as a player who receives a fighting major is also assessed at least a 10-minute misconduct penalty (NCAA and some Junior leagues) or a game misconduct penalty and suspension (high school and younger, as well as some casual adult leagues). Women's ice hockey. The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) holds the IIHF World Women's Championships tournaments in several divisions; championships are held annually, except that the top flight does not play in Olympic years. Body checking. Body checking has been prohibited in women's ice hockey since the mid-1980s in Canada, and spreading from there internationally. Canada's Rhonda Leeman Taylor was responsible for banning body contact from all national women's ice hockey tournaments in Canada in 1983. Body checking in some of the women's hockey leagues in Canada were completely removed in 1986 resulting in a substantial increase in female participation in ice hockey in Canada. Prior to this point, bodychecking had been a part of the women's game in most cases, including in Europe. It wasn't until after the 1990 Women's World Championship (sanctioned by the International Ice Hockey Federation) that body checking was eliminated from the women's ice hockey format internationally. In addition, until the mid 2000s, obstruction and interference were allowed, including pushing players around in front of the net, minor hooking, and "setting picks". When the National Hockey League in North America removed obstruction and interference in the mid 2000s, minor hockey leagues and female leagues followed suit. In women's IIHF ice hockey today, body checking is considered an "illegal hit" and is punishable by a minor penalty, major penalty and game misconduct, or match penalty. In current IIHF women's competition, body checking is either a minor or major penalty, decided at the referee's discretion. Controversy. The idea of reintroducing bodychecking to the female game after its removal in the 1990s remains controversial. Some of those opposed to the idea of its reintroduction maintain it would lead to a loss of female participants, as once stated by Arto Sieppi, Finland's director of women's hockey. Sieppi made the statement in response to claims made by the then head coach of Sweden's women's national ice hockey team, Peter Elander, who had claimed its absence was due to patriarchal sexism. The Svenska damhockeyligan (SDHL), known as the Swedish Women's Hockey League in English, announced in 2022 that it would include body checking during its 2022–23 season, but would maintain a prohibition on the, "..."north-south" open-ice hit". The new program will also be extended to the Damettan, Sweden's second-tier women's league. Equipment. Players in women's competition are required to wear protective full-face masks. At all levels, players must wear a pelvic protector, essentially the female equivalent of a jockstrap, known colloquially as a "jill" or "jillstrap". Other protective equipment for girls and women in ice hockey is sometimes specifically designed for the female body, such as shoulder pads designed to protect a women's breast area without reducing mobility. History. Women began playing the game of ice hockey in the late 19th century. Several games were recorded in the 1890s in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The women of Lord Stanley's family were known to participate in the game of ice hockey on the outdoor ice rink at Rideau Hall, the residence of Canada's Governor-General. The earliest available records of women's ice hockey were in the late 19th-century in Canada. Much like the men's game, women had previously been playing a conglomeration of stick-and-ball ice games. As with men's hockey, the women's game developed at first without an organizing body. A tournament in 1902 between Montreal and Trois-Rivières was billed as the first women's ice hockey championship tournament. Several tournaments, such as at the Banff Winter Carnival, were held in the early 20th century with numerous women's teams such as the Seattle Vamps and Vancouver Amazons. Organizations started to develop in the 1920s, such as the Ladies Ontario Hockey Association in Canada, and later, the Dominion Women's Amateur Hockey Association. Starting in Canada in 1961, the women's game spread to more universities after the Fitness and Amateur Sport Act came into force in whereby the Canadian Government of Canada made an official commitment to "encourage, promote and develop fitness and amateur sport in Canada." Today, the women's game is played from youth through adult leagues, and the university level in North America and internationally. There are major professional women's hockey leagues: the Premier Hockey Federation, (formerly the National Women's Hockey League) with teams in the United States, Canada, and the Zhenskaya Hockey League with teams in Russia and China. In 2019, the Professional Women's Hockey Players Association was formed by over 150 players with the goal of creating a sustainable professional league for women's ice hockey in North America. Between 1995 and 2005 the number of participants increased by 400 percent. In 2011, Canada had 85,827 women players, United States had 65,609, Finland 4,760, Sweden 3,075 and Switzerland 1,172. Women's ice hockey was added as a medal sport eight years after the first world women's ice hockey championship in 1990 at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. Prior to the professionalization of women's ice hockey in the 21st century, almost all professional women hockey players who played against men were goaltenders. No woman has ever played a full season in top tier men's professional ice hockey. The United States Hockey League (USHL) welcomed the first female professional ice hockey player in 1969–70, when the Marquette Iron Rangers signed 18-year-old Karen Koch, a goaltender. Only one woman has ever played in the National Hockey League (NHL), goaltender Manon Rhéaume. Rhéaume played in NHL pre-season games as a goaltender for the Tampa Bay Lightning against the St. Louis Blues and the Boston Bruins. In 2003, Hayley Wickenheiser played with the Kirkkonummi Salamat in the Finnish men's Suomi-sarja league. Women have occasionally competed in North American minor leagues: among them Rhéaume, and fellow goaltenders Kelly Dyer and Erin Whitten. Defenceman Angela Ruggiero became the first woman to actively play in a regular season professional hockey game in North America at a position other than goalie, playing in a single game for the Tulsa Oilers of the Central Hockey League. Women's World Championship. The 1989 IIHF European Women Championships in West Germany was the first European Championship held in women's ice hockey and preceded the eventual International Ice Hockey Federation-sanctioned Women's World Championship for ice hockey. The first world ice hockey championship for women was the 1990 IIHF World Women's Championship. Leagues and championships. The following is a list of professional ice hockey leagues by attendance: Club competition. North America. The NHL is the best attended and most popular ice hockey league in the world, and is among the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada. The league's history began after Canada's National Hockey Association decided to disband in 1917; the result was the creation of the National Hockey League with four teams. The league expanded to the United States beginning in 1924 and had as many as 10 teams before contracting to six teams by 1942–43. In 1967, the NHL doubled in size to 12 teams, undertaking one of the greatest expansions in professional sports history. A few years later, in 1972, a new 12-team league, the World Hockey Association (WHA) was formed and due to its ensuing rivalry with the NHL, it caused an escalation in players' salaries. In 1979, the 17-team NHL merged with the WHA creating a 21-team league. By 2017, the NHL had expanded to 31 teams, and after a realignment in 2013, these teams were divided into two conferences and four divisions. The league expanded to 32 teams in 2021. The American Hockey League (AHL) is the primary developmental professional league for players aspiring to enter the NHL. It comprises 31 teams from the United States and Canada. It is run as a farm league to the NHL, with the vast majority of AHL players under contract to an NHL team. The ECHL (called the East Coast Hockey League before the 2003–04 season) is a mid-level minor league in the United States with a few players under contract to NHL or AHL teams. As of 2019, there are three minor professional leagues with no NHL affiliations: the Federal Prospects Hockey League (FPHL), Ligue Nord-Américaine de Hockey (LNAH), and the Southern Professional Hockey League (SPHL). U Sports ice hockey is the highest level of play at the Canadian university level under the auspices of U Sports, Canada's governing body for university sports. As these players compete at the university level, they are obligated to follow the rule of standard eligibility of five years. In the United States especially, college hockey is popular and the best university teams compete in the annual NCAA Men's Ice Hockey Championship. The American Collegiate Hockey Association is composed of college teams at the club level. In Canada, the Canadian Hockey League is an umbrella organization comprising three major junior leagues: the Ontario Hockey League, the Western Hockey League, and the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. It attracts players from Canada, the United States and Europe. The major junior players are considered amateurs as they are under 21-years-old and not paid a salary, however, they do get a stipend and play a schedule similar to a professional league. Typically, the NHL drafts many players directly from the major junior leagues. In the United States, the United States Hockey League (USHL) is the highest junior league. Players in this league are also amateur with players required to be under 21-years old, but do not get a stipend, which allows players to retain their eligibility for participation in NCAA ice hockey. Eurasia. The Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) is the largest and most popular ice hockey league in Eurasia. The league is the direct successor to the Russian Super League, which in turn was the successor to the Soviet League, the history of which dates back to the Soviet adoption of ice hockey in the 1940s. The KHL was launched in 2008 with clubs predominantly from Russia, but featuring teams from other post-Soviet states. The league expanded beyond the former Soviet countries beginning in the 2011–12 season, with clubs in Croatia and Slovakia. The KHL currently comprises member clubs based in Belarus (1), China (1), Kazakhstan (1) and Russia (19) for a total of 22. The second division of hockey in Eurasia is the Supreme Hockey League (VHL). This league features 24 teams from Russia and 2 from Kazakhstan. This league is currently being converted to a farm league for the KHL, similarly to the AHL's function in relation to the NHL. The third division is the Russian Hockey League, which features only teams from Russia. The Asia League, an international ice hockey league featuring clubs from China, Japan, South Korea, and the Russian Far East, is the successor to the Japan Ice Hockey League. The highest junior league in Eurasia is the Junior Hockey League (MHL). It features 32 teams from post-Soviet states, predominantly Russia. The second tier to this league is the Junior Hockey League Championships (MHL-B). Europe. Several countries in Europe have their own top professional senior leagues. Many future KHL and NHL players start or end their professional careers in these leagues. The National League A in Switzerland, Swedish Hockey League in Sweden, Liiga in Finland, and Czech Extraliga in the Czech Republic are all very popular in their respective countries. Beginning in the 2014–15 season, the Champions Hockey League was launched, a league consisting of first-tier teams from several European countries, running parallel to the teams' domestic leagues. The competition is meant to serve as a Europe-wide ice hockey club championship. The competition is a direct successor to the European Trophy and is related to the 2008–09 tournament of the same name. There are also several annual tournaments for clubs, held outside of league play. Pre-season tournaments include the European Trophy, Tampere Cup and the Pajulahti Cup. One of the oldest international ice hockey competition for clubs is the Spengler Cup, held every year in Davos, Switzerland, between Christmas and New Year's Day. It was first awarded in 1923 to the Oxford University Ice Hockey Club. The Memorial Cup, a competition for junior-level (age 20 and under) clubs is held annually from a pool of junior championship teams in Canada and the United States. International club competitions organized by the IIHF include the Continental Cup, the Victoria Cup and the European Women's Champions Cup. The World Junior Club Cup is an annual tournament of junior ice hockey clubs representing each of the top junior leagues. Other regions. The Australian Ice Hockey League and New Zealand Ice Hockey League are represented by nine and five teams respectively. As of 2012, the two top teams of the previous season from each league compete in the Trans-Tasman Champions League. Ice hockey in Africa is a small but growing sport; while no African ice hockey playing nation has a domestic national league, there are several regional leagues in South Africa. National team competitions. Ice hockey has been played at the Winter Olympics since 1924 (and was played at the summer games in 1920). Hockey is Canada's national winter sport, and Canadians are extremely passionate about the game. The nation has traditionally done very well at the Olympic Games, winning six of the first seven gold medals. However, by 1956, its amateur club teams and national teams could not compete with the teams of government-supported players from the Soviet Union. The USSR won all but two gold medals from 1956 to 1988. The United States won its first gold medal in 1960. On the way to winning the gold medal at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics, amateur US college players defeated the heavily favoured Soviet squad—an event known as the "Miracle on Ice" in the United States. Restrictions on professional players were fully dropped at the 1988 games in Calgary. NHL agreed to participate ten years later. The 1998 Games saw the full participation of players from the NHL, which suspended operations during the Games and has done so in subsequent Games up until 2018. The 2010 games in Vancouver were the first played in an NHL city since the inclusion of NHL players. The 2010 games were the first played on NHL-sized ice rinks, which are narrower than the IIHF standard. National teams representing the member federations of the IIHF compete annually in the IIHF Ice Hockey World Championships. Teams are selected from the available players by the individual federations, without restriction on amateur or professional status. Since it is held in the spring, the tournament coincides with the annual NHL Stanley Cup playoffs and many of the top players are hence not available to participate in the tournament. Many of the NHL players who do play in the IIHF tournament come from teams eliminated before the playoffs or in the first round, and federations often hold open spots until the tournament to allow for players to join the tournament after their club team is eliminated. For many years, the tournament was an amateur-only tournament, but this restriction was removed, beginning in 1977. The 1972 Summit Series and 1974 Summit Series, two series pitting the best Canadian and Soviet players without IIHF restrictions were major successes, and established a rivalry between Canada and the USSR. In the spirit of best-versus-best without restrictions on amateur or professional status, the series were followed by five Canada Cup tournaments, played in North America. Two NHL versus USSR series were also held: the 1979 Challenge Cup and Rendez-vous '87. The Canada Cup tournament later became the World Cup of Hockey, played in 1996, 2004 and 2016. The United States won in 1996 and Canada won in 2004 and 2016. Since the initial women's world championships in 1990, there have been fifteen tournaments. Women's hockey has been played at the Olympics since 1998. The only finals in the women's world championship or Olympics that did not involve both Canada and the United States were the 2006 Winter Olympic final between Canada and Sweden and 2019 World Championship final between the US and Finland. Other ice hockey tournaments featuring national teams include the World Junior Championship, the World U18 Championships, the World U-17 Hockey Challenge, the World Junior A Challenge, the Ivan Hlinka Memorial Tournament, the World Women's U18 Championships and the 4 Nations Cup. The annual Euro Hockey Tour, an unofficial European championship between the national men's teams of the Czech Republic, Finland, Russia and Sweden have been played since 1996–97. Attendance records. The attendance record for an ice hockey game was set on December 11, 2010, when the University of Michigan's men's ice hockey team faced cross-state rival Michigan State in an event billed as "The Big Chill at the Big House". The game was played at Michigan's (American) football venue, Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor, with a capacity of 109,901 as of the 2010 football season. When UM stopped sales to the public on May 6, 2010, with plans to reserve remaining tickets for students, over 100,000 tickets had been sold for the event. Ultimately, a crowd announced by UM as 113,411, the largest in the stadium's history (including football), saw the homestanding Wolverines win 5–0. "Guinness World Records", using a count of ticketed fans who actually entered the stadium instead of UM's figure of tickets sold, announced a final figure of 104,173. The record was approached but not broken at the 2014 NHL Winter Classic, which also held at Michigan Stadium, with the Detroit Red Wings as the home team and the Toronto Maple Leafs as the opposing team with an announced crowd of 105,491. The record for an NHL Stanley Cup playoff game is 28,183, set on April 23, 1996, at the Thunderdome during a Tampa Bay Lightning – Philadelphia Flyers game. International status. Ice hockey is most popular in Canada, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Northern Europe, and the United States. Ice hockey is the official national winter sport of Canada. In addition, ice hockey is the most popular winter sport in Belarus, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, Latvia, Russia, Slovakia, Poland, Sweden, and Switzerland. North America's National Hockey League (NHL) is the highest level for men's ice hockey and the strongest professional ice hockey league in the world. The Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) is the highest league in Russia and much of Eastern Europe. The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) is the formal governing body for international ice hockey, with the IIHF managing international tournaments and maintaining the IIHF World Ranking. Worldwide, the International Ice Hockey Federation has 83 member national associations, comprising 60 full members, 22 associate members, and one affiliate member. In international competitions, the national teams of six countries (the Big Six) predominate: Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, Russia, Sweden and the United States. Of the 69 medals awarded all-time in men's competition at the Olympics, only seven medals were not awarded to one of those countries (or two of their precursors, the Soviet Union for Russia, and Czechoslovakia for the Czech Republic). In the annual Ice Hockey World Championships, 177 of 201 medals have been awarded to the six nations; Canada has won the most gold medals. Teams outside the Big Six have won only nine medals in either competition since 1953. The World Cup of Hockey is organized by the National Hockey League and the National Hockey League Players' Association (NHLPA), unlike the annual World Championships and quadrennial Olympic tournament, both run by the International Ice Hockey Federation. World Cup games are played under NHL rules and not those of the IIHF, and the tournament occurs prior to the NHL pre-season, allowing for all NHL players to be available, unlike the World Championships, which overlaps with the NHL's Stanley Cup playoffs. Furthermore, all 12 Women's Olympic and 36 IIHF World Women's Championship medals were awarded to one of the Big Six. The Canadian national team or the United States national team have between them won every gold medal of either series. Number of registered players by country. Number of registered hockey players, including male, female and junior, provided by the respective countries' federations. This list only includes the 36 of 83 IIHF member countries with more than 1,000 registered players as of November 2022. Variants. Pond hockey. Pond hockey is a form of ice hockey played generally as pick-up hockey on lakes, ponds and artificial outdoor rinks during the winter. Pond hockey is commonly referred to in hockey circles as shinny. Its rules differ from traditional hockey because there is no hitting and very little shooting, placing a greater emphasis on skating, stickhandling and passing abilities. Since 2002, the World Pond Hockey Championship has been played on Roulston Lake in Tobique Valley, New Brunswick, Canada. Since 2006, the US Pond Hockey Championships have been played in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the Canadian National Pond Hockey Championships have been played in Huntsville, Ontario. Sledge hockey. Sledge hockey is an adaption of ice hockey designed for players who have a physical disability. Players are seated in sleds and use a specialized hockey stick that also helps the player navigate on the ice. The sport was created in Sweden in the early 1960s and is played under similar rules to ice hockey. In popular culture. Ice hockey is the official winter sport of Canada. Ice hockey, partially because of its popularity as a major professional sport, has been a source of inspiration for numerous films, television episodes and songs in Canadian and American popular culture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14975

Ivy League

The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference, which comprises eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The conference's headquarters is located in Princeton, New Jersey. The term "Ivy League" is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight schools as a group of elite colleges with connotations of academic excellence, selectivity in admissions, and social elitism. Its members are Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University. While the term was in use as early as 1933, it became official only after the formation of the athletic conference in 1954. All of the "Ivies" except Cornell were founded during the colonial period; they thus account for seven of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. The other two colonial colleges, Rutgers University and the College of William & Mary, became public institutions. Overview. Ivy League schools are viewed as some of the most prestigious universities in the world. All eight universities place in the top 18 of the 2023 "U.S. News & World Report" National Universities ranking, including four Ivies in the top ten (Princeton (#1), Harvard (tied for #3), Yale (tied for #3), and Penn (tied for #7)). "U.S. News" has named a member of the Ivy League as the best national university every year since 2001: , Princeton eleven times, Harvard twice, and the two schools tied for first five times. In the 2022-2023 "U.S. News & World Report" Best Global University Ranking, five Ivies rank in the top 20 of U.S. News' Global Universities Ranking, (Harvard (#1), Columbia (#7), Yale, (#11), Penn (#15), and Princeton (#16)), which, according to U.S. News, are based on "indicators that measure their academic research performance and their global and regional reputations." All eight Ivy League schools are members of the Association of American Universities, the most prestigious alliance of American research universities. Undergraduate enrollments range from about 4,500 to about 15,000, larger than most liberal arts colleges and smaller than most state universities. Total enrollment, which includes graduate students, ranges from approximately 6,600 at Dartmouth to over 20,000 at Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, and Penn. Ivy League financial endowments range from Brown's $6.9 billion to Harvard's $53.2 billion, the largest financial endowment of any academic institution in the world. The Ivy League is similar to other groups of universities in other countries, such as the "Grandes écoles" in France,Golden Triangle or Loxbridge in the United Kingdom, the C9 League in China, the Imperial Universities in Japan, and the Group of Eight<ref name="www.timeshighereducation.com/-2022"></ref> in Australia. Members. Ivy League universities have some of the largest university financial endowments in the world, allowing the universities to provide abundant resources for their academic programs, financial aid, and research endeavors. As of 2021, Harvard University had an endowment of $53.2 billion, the largest of any educational institution. Each university attracts millions of dollars in annual research funding from both the federal government and private sources. Former affiliate members. Before the 2000s, many of the Ivy League championships for men's and women's cross country, indoor and outdoor track & field, and swimming & diving were formatted as invitationals that many schools across the eastern United States would attend. In other sports such as fencing, wrestling, men's and women's ice hockey, and men's and women's rowing, all of the Ivy League schools were members of other single-sport conferences and the top performing Ivy League team would be crowned the champion. The United States Military Academy and the United States Naval Academy were members of the Ivy League in many sports and were crowned as Ivy League champions while competing with Ivy League teams. Both schools ended up departing from the conference in the early 2000s to align with their current conference, the Patriot League. History. Origin of the name. "Planting the ivy" was a customary class day ceremony at many colleges in the 1800s. In 1893, an alumnus told "The Harvard Crimson", "In 1850, class day was placed upon the University Calendar. ... the custom of planting the ivy, while the ivy oration was delivered, arose about this time." At Penn, graduating seniors started the custom of planting ivy at a university building each spring in 1873 and that practice was formally designated as "Ivy Day" in 1874. Ivy planting ceremonies are recorded at Yale, Simmons College, and Bryn Mawr College among other schools. Princeton's "Ivy Club" was founded in 1879. The first usage of "Ivy" in reference to a group of colleges is from sportswriter Stanley Woodward (1895–1965). The first known instance of the term "Ivy League" appeared in "The Christian Science Monitor" on February 7, 1935. Several sportswriters and other journalists used the term shortly later to refer to the older colleges, those along the northeastern seaboard of the United States, chiefly the nine institutions with origins dating from the colonial era, together with the United States Military Academy (West Point), the United States Naval Academy, and a few others. These schools were known for their long-standing traditions in intercollegiate athletics, often being the first schools to participate in such activities. At this time, however, none of these institutions made efforts to form an athletic league. A common folk etymology attributes the name to the Roman numeral for four (IV), asserting that there was such a sports league originally with four members. The "Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins" helped to perpetuate this belief. The supposed "IV League" was formed over a century ago and consisted of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and a fourth school that varies depending on who is telling the story. However, it is clear that Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and Yale met on November 23, 1876, at the so-called Massasoit Convention to decide on uniform rules for the emerging game of American football, which rapidly spread. Pre-Ivy League. Seven out of the eight Ivy League schools are Colonial Colleges: institutions of higher education founded prior to the American Revolution. Cornell, the exception to this commonality, was founded immediately after the American Civil War. These seven colleges served as the primary institutions of higher learning in British America's Northern and Middle Colonies. During the colonial era, the schools' faculties and founding boards were largely drawn from other Ivy League institutions. Also represented were British graduates from the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, the University of St. Andrews, and the University of Edinburgh. The influence of these institutions on the founding of other colleges and universities is notable. This included the Southern public college movement which blossomed in the decades surrounding the turn of the 19th century when Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia established what became the flagship universities of their respective states. In 1801, a majority of the first board of trustees for what became the University of South Carolina were Princeton alumni. They appointed Jonathan Maxcy, a Brown graduate, as the university's first president. Thomas Cooper, an Oxford alumnus and University of Pennsylvania faculty member, became the second president of the South Carolina college. The founders of the University of California came from Yale, hence Berkeley's colors are Yale Blue and California Gold. Cornell served as a model for Stanford University and, in 1891, provided Stanford with its first president. A plurality of the Ivy League schools have identifiable Protestant roots. Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth all held early associations with the Congregationalists. Princeton was financed by New Light Presbyterians, though originally led by a Congregationalist. Brown was founded by Baptists, though the university's charter stipulated that students should enjoy "full liberty of conscience." Columbia was founded by Anglicans, who composed 10 of the college's first 15 presidents. Penn and Cornell were officially nonsectarian, though Protestants were well represented in their respective founding. In the early nineteenth century, the specific purpose of training Calvinist ministers was handed off to theological seminaries, but a denominational tone and religious traditions including compulsory chapel often lasted well into the twentieth century. "Ivy League" is sometimes used as a way of referring to an elite class, even though institutions such as Cornell University were among the first in the United States to reject racial and gender discrimination in their admissions policies. This dates back to at least 1935. Novels and memoirs attest this sense, as a social elite; to some degree independent of the actual schools. History of the athletic league. 19th and early 20th centuries. The first formal athletic league involving eventual Ivy League schools (or any US colleges, for that matter) was created in 1870 with the formation of the Rowing Association of American Colleges. The RAAC hosted a de facto national championship in rowing during the period 1870–1894. In 1881, Penn, Harvard College, Haverford College, Princeton College (then known as College of New Jersey), and Columbia College formed The Intercollegiate Cricket Association, which Cornell University later joined. Penn won The Intercollegiate Cricket Association championship (the "de facto" national championship) 23 times (18 solo, 3 shared with Haverford and Harvard, 1 shared with Haverford and Cornell, and 1 shared with just Haverford) during the 44 years that The Intercollegiate Cricket Association existed (1881 through 1924). In 1895, Cornell, Columbia, and Penn founded the Intercollegiate Rowing Association, which remains the oldest collegiate athletic organizing body in the US. To this day, the IRA Championship Regatta determines the national champion in rowing and all of the Ivies are regularly invited to compete. A basketball league was later created in 1902, when Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton formed the Eastern Intercollegiate Basketball League; they were later joined by Penn and Dartmouth. In 1906, the organization that eventually became the National Collegiate Athletic Association was formed, primarily to formalize rules for the emerging sport of football. But of the 39 original member colleges in the NCAA, only two of them (Dartmouth and Penn) later became Ivies. In February 1903, intercollegiate wrestling began when Yale accepted a challenge from Columbia, published in the Yale News. The dual meet took place prior to a basketball game hosted by Columbia and resulted in a tie. Two years later, Penn and Princeton also added wrestling teams, leading to the formation of the student-run Intercollegiate Wrestling Association, now the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association (EIWA), the first and oldest collegiate wrestling league in the US. Though schools now in Ivy League (such as Yale and Columbia played against each other in the 1880s) it was not until 1930 that Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Penn, Princeton and Yale formed the Eastern Intercollegiate Baseball League; they were later joined by Harvard, Brown, Army and Navy. Before the formal establishment of the Ivy League, there was an "unwritten and unspoken agreement among certain Eastern colleges on athletic relations". The earliest reference to the "Ivy colleges" came in 1933, when Stanley Woodward of the "New York Herald Tribune" used it to refer to the eight current members plus Army. In 1935, the Associated Press reported on an example of collaboration between the schools: Despite such collaboration, the universities did not seem to consider the formation of the league as imminent. Romeyn Berry, Cornell's manager of athletics, reported the situation in January 1936 as follows: Within a year of this statement and having held month-long discussions about the proposal, on December 3, 1936, the idea of "the formation of an Ivy League" gained enough traction among the undergraduate bodies of the universities that the "Columbia Daily Spectator", "The Cornell Daily Sun", "The Dartmouth", "The Harvard Crimson", "The Daily Pennsylvanian", "The Daily Princetonian" and the "Yale Daily News" would simultaneously run an editorial entitled "Now Is the Time", encouraging the seven universities to form the league in an effort to preserve the ideals of athletics. Part of the editorial read as follows: The Ivies have been competing in sports as long as intercollegiate sports have existed in the United States. Rowing teams from Harvard and Yale met in the first sporting event held between students of two U.S. colleges on Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire, on August 3, 1852. Harvard's team, "The Oneida", won the race and was presented with trophy black walnut oars from then-presidential nominee General Franklin Pierce. The proposal did not succeed—on January 11, 1937, the athletic authorities at the schools rejected the "possibility of a heptagonal league in football such as these institutions maintain in basketball, baseball and track." However, they noted that the league "has such promising possibilities that it may not be dismissed and must be the subject of further consideration." Integration of athletic competition in the "Ivy League". The integration of athletics followed a similar pattern to the overall integration of the Ivy League's in the 19th and early 20th century. There was no active policy that would discriminate against incorporating Black student athletes into the athletic coalition. Harvard has the earliest record of breaking the color barrier in athletics after recruiting William Henry Lewis to their football team in 1892. Dartmouth followed suit, with Black athletes integrating onto their football teams in 1904. Brown integrated their football team shortly after, in 1916. Cornell would follow suit in 1937. Penn had black students on their track and field team as early as 1903 (John Baxter Taylor, Jr., the first black athlete in the U.S. to win a gold medal in the Olympics) and a black student was named captain of the track team in 1918. Columbia's track and field team would be integrated in 1934. Basketball would become integrated at Yale in 1926, at Princeton in 1947. Post-World War II. In 1945 the presidents of the eight schools signed the first "Ivy Group Agreement", which set academic, financial, and athletic standards for the football teams. The principles established reiterated those put forward in the Harvard-Yale-Princeton presidents' Agreement of 1916. The Ivy Group Agreement established the core tenet that an applicant's ability to play on a team would not influence admissions decisions: In 1954, the presidents extended the Ivy Group Agreement to all intercollegiate sports, effective with the 1955–56 basketball season. This is generally reckoned as the formal formation of the Ivy League. As part of the transition, Brown, the only Ivy that had not joined the EIBL, did so for the 1954–55 season. A year later, the Ivy League absorbed the EIBL. The Ivy League claims the EIBL's history as its own. Through the EIBL, it is the oldest basketball conference in Division I. As late as the 1960s many of the Ivy League universities' undergraduate programs remained open only to men, with Cornell the only one to have been coeducational from its founding (1865) and Columbia being the last (1983) to become coeducational. Before they became coeducational, many of the Ivy schools maintained extensive social ties with nearby Seven Sisters women's colleges, including weekend visits, dances and parties inviting Ivy and Seven Sisters students to mingle. This was the case not only at Barnard College and Radcliffe College, which are adjacent to Columbia and Harvard, but at more distant institutions as well. The movie "Animal House" includes a satiric version of the formerly common visits by Dartmouth men to Massachusetts to meet Smith and Mount Holyoke women, a drive of more than two hours. As noted by Irene Harwarth, Mindi Maline, and Elizabeth DeBra, "The 'Seven Sisters' was the name given to Barnard, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Vassar, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, and Radcliffe, because of their parallel to the Ivy League men's colleges." In 1982 the Ivy League considered adding two members, with Army, Navy, and Northwestern as the most likely candidates; if it had done so, the league could probably have avoided being moved into the recently created Division I-AA (now Division I FCS) for football. In 1983, following the admission of women to Columbia College, Columbia University and Barnard College entered into an athletic consortium agreement by which students from both schools compete together on Columbia University women's athletic teams, which replaced the women's teams previously sponsored by Barnard.When Army and Navy departed the Eastern Intercollegiate Baseball League in 1992, nearly all intercollegiate competition involving the eight schools became united under the Ivy League banner. The two major exceptions are wrestling, with the Ivies that sponsor wrestling—all except Dartmouth and Yale—members of the EIWA and hockey, with the Ivies that sponsor hockey—all except Penn and Columbia—members of ECAC Hockey. The Ivy League was the first athletic conference to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic by shutting down all athletic competition in March 2020, leaving many Spring schedules unfinished. The Fall 2020 schedule was canceled in July, and winter sports were canceled before Thanksgiving. Of the 357 men's basketball teams in Division I, only ten did not play; the Ivy League made up eight of those ten. By giving up its automatic qualifying bid to March Madness, the Ivy League forfeited at least $280,000 in NCAA basketball funds. As a consequence of the pandemic, an unprecedented number of student athletes in the Ivy League either transferred to other schools, or temporarily unenrolled in hopes of maintaining their eligibility to play post-pandemic. Some Ivy alumni expressed displeasure with the League's position. In February 2021 it was reported that Yale declined a multi-million dollar offer from alum Joseph Tsai to create a sequestered "bubble" for the lacrosse team. The league announced in a May 2021 joint statement that "regular athletic competition" would resume "across all sports" in fall 2021. Following the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, the Ivy League Conference committed itself to uphold "diversity, equity, and inclusion," to combat racism and homophobia. At Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, and Princeton there are Black Student Athlete groups and other affinity groups that are dedicated to ensuring their organizations are committed to anti-racism and anti-homophobia. In 2023, two former Brown University basketball players sued the Ivy League alleging that by denying athletic scholarships, the 1954 "Ivy League Agreement" is anticompetititive and violates antitrust laws. The lawsuit claims that the agreement constitutes price-fixing in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, and in effect raises the cost of Ivy League education for student athletes. Academics. Admissions. The Ivy League schools are highly selective, with all schools reporting acceptance rates at or below approximately 10% at all of the universities. For the class of 2025, six of the eight schools reported acceptance rates below 6%. Admitted students come from around the world, although those from the Northeastern United States make up a significant proportion of students. In 2021, all eight Ivy League schools recorded record high numbers of applications and record low acceptance rates. Year over year increases in the number of applicants ranged from a 14.5% increase at Princeton to a 51% increase at Columbia. There have been arguments that Ivy League schools discriminate against Asian-American candidates. For example, in August 2020, the US Justice Department argued that Yale University discriminated against Asian-American candidates on the basis of their race, a charge the university denied. Harvard was subject to a similar challenge in 2019 from an Asian American student group, with regard to which a federal judge found Harvard to be in compliance with constitutional requirements. The student group has since appealed that decision, and the appeal is still pending as of August 2020. Prestige. Members of the League have been highly ranked by various university rankings. All of the Ivy League schools are consistently ranked within the top 20 national universities by the "U.S. News & World Report" Best Colleges Ranking. "The Wall Street Journal" rankings place all eight of the universities within the top 15 in the country. Further, Ivy League members have produced many Nobel laureates and winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Another measure is endowment size per student. Collaboration. Collaboration between the member schools is illustrated by the student-led Ivy Council that meets in the fall and spring of each year, with representatives from every Ivy League school. The governing body of the Ivy League is the Council of Ivy Group presidents, composed of each university president. During meetings, the presidents discuss common procedures and initiatives for their universities. The universities collaborate academically through the IvyPlus Exchange Scholar Program, which allows students to cross-register at one of the Ivies or another eligible school such as Berkeley, Chicago, MIT, and Stanford. History of diversity. Racial segregation and integration. Ivy League institutions have a complex history of racial segregation, and, eventually, integration. All of the universities in the Ivy League besides Cornell University were chartered during the American era of slavery. In 2003, Brown University was the first of the Ivies to take accountability for their historic ties to slavery and the . Following Brown, other Ivy League universities formed committees to examine their ties to slavery, and found various institutional relationships to slavery. Yale University, for example, used profits from slave traders and owners to fund its first scholarships, libraries, and faculty positions. To date, some of Yale's residential colleges are named after slave traders and supporters. The investigations at Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylvania all found that, in the century following their charters, enslaved Black people lived on campus to care for students, professors, or the universities' presidents. Notably, Princeton's first nine presidents were slave owners, and in 1766, a slave auction reportedly took place on Princeton's campus.   A small number of Black people did attend Ivy League institutions as students during their early years. These early students, however, were not always granted degrees. For example, some Black students were recorded studying privately with the Princeton University president as early as 1774, but no Black students received Princeton degrees until the middle of the twentieth century. Jonathan and Philip Gayienquitioga, two brothers of the Mohawk People, were the first people of color to enroll at Penn in 1755 after being recruited by Benjamin Franklin to attend the Academy of Philadelphia (then part of Penn), but there is no evidence that either earned a degree as the first native American to graduate Penn did not occur until 1847, when Robert Daniel Ross (a member of the Cherokee Nation) graduated with a degree from Penn's medical school. 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1900, W.E.B. Du Bois oversaw and edited "The College-bred Negro," a study on Black integration in colleges and universities that found a combined total of 52 Black students had graduated from Ivy League schools in their collective histories. Since no official policies prohibited schools in the Ivy League from admitting students of color each university in the League had different policies regarding the admission of Black students. Dartmouth's first Black student graduated in 1828, while Princeton would only admit their first Black student under the V-12 Navy College Training Program in the 1940's. Early Black student admits to Ivy League universities were controversial and often faced backlash. Dartmouth initially denied its first Black graduate, Edward Mitchell, supposedly to avoid "offend[ing] students." Dartmouth students protested this decision, leading to Mitchell's admission in 1824. Richard Henry Green was awarded by Dartmouth College a MD degree in 1864. Harvard admitted its first Black student, Beverly Garnett Williams, in 1847. News of his admission incited protests by Harvard students and faculty. Williams died before the academic year began, however, and never matriculated. Richard Theodore Greener was the first African American to receive a Harvard degree in 1870. Between 1890 and 1940, an average of three Black men enrolled at Harvard per year. In 1923, Harvard's Board of Overseers overruled University President Abbot Lawrence's ban on Black students living in dorms, announcing that all freshmen would be permitted to live in dorms regardless of race, but upheld that “men of the white and colored races shall not be compelled to live and eat together." Brown seems to have refused admission to Black students outright prior to the Civil War. Abolitionist Elizabeth Buffum Chase wrote in her book "Anti Slavery Reminiscences" about "a lad of rare excellence and attainments [who] was refused an examination for admission by the authorities of Brown University on account of the color of his skin." Inman Page was the first Black student to graduate from Brown in 1877, and was class speaker. William Adger, James Brister, and Nathan Francis Mossell were the first Black students enrolled at Penn in 1879. Brister graduated from the School of Dental Medicine (Penn Dental) in 1881 as the first African American to earn a degree from Penn, while Adger was the first African American to graduate from the college in 1883. Columbia University has claimed that four Black students earned University degrees between 1875 and 1900, though their names are apparently unknown. Yale's Edward Bouchet, was the first Black person (a) elected to Phi Beta Kappa in the US in 1874 and (b) to earn a Ph.D. from any American university, completing his dissertation in physics in 1876. Bouchet was thought to have been the first African-American graduate of Yale, but research publicized in 2014 reported that Yale awarded a Black man, Richard Henry Green, a bachelor of arts degree in 1857. Cornell seemed the most inclusive of the Ivy Leagues at its inception, with admission open to any race and gender. University co-founder Andrew Dickson White wrote in1874 that the school had """no colored students...at present but shall be very glad to receive any who are prepared to enter...if even one offered himself and passed the examinations, we should receive him even if all our five hundred white students were to ask for dismissal on that account." In 1890, Charles Chauveau Cook and Jane Eleanor Datcher were the first Black students awarded four-year undergraduate Cornell degrees. Despite this, Black students faced legal and social segregation in the town of Ithaca, New York. In 1905, Black students reported being denied housing while attending Cornell. Princeton University, sometimes referred to as the "Southern-most Ivy", was the last to integrate. In W.E.B. Du Bois' "The College-bred Negro" (1900)"," a Princeton representative is quoted, "We have never had any colored students here, though there is nothing in the University statutes to prevent their admission. It is possible, however, in view of our proximity to the South and the large number of southern students here, that Negro students would find Princeton less comfortable than some other institutions." Notably, in 1939, Princeton revoked admittance to Black student Bruce Wright upon his arrival on campus, when Director of Admission Radcliffe Heermance noticed Wright's race. When a disappointed Wright wrote Heermance requesting an explanation, Heermance responded:"I cannot conscientiously advise a colored student to apply for admission to Princeton simply because I do not think that he would be happy in this environment. There are no colored students in the University and a member of your race might feel very much alone...My personal experience would enforce my advice to any colored student that he would be happier in an environment of others of his race, and that he would adjust himself far more easily to the life of a New England college or university, or one of the large state universities than he would to a residential college of this particular type."The few early Black students admitted to Ivy League universities were often from wealthy Caribbean families. Barriers preventing African American students from attending Ivy League universities included the universities' policies, poor recruitment, tuition costs, and the lack of secondary education opportunities in a racially segregated country. More Black students attended Ivy League graduate and professional schools than their undergraduate programs. By the middle of the 20th century, only 54 Black men and women had graduated with a Bachelor degree from Ivy League universities. Late 20th century. By the middle of the 20th century, some Ivy League students and alumni were advocating for increased racial integration efforts. These efforts were met with mixed reactions from the schools themselves. Without a goal for integration shared by the institutions as a collective, each school increased racial diversity at different rates, with Dartmouth having 120 Black undergraduates in the class of 1945 and Princeton having a cumulative total of fewer than 100 Black undergraduates by 1967. The V-12 Navy College Training Program in 1942 effectively forced all eight Ivy institutions to increase Black student enrollment. At Princeton University, the Black students in this program were the first ever granted bachelor's degrees by the University. The 1954 Supreme Court decision in "Brown v. Board of Education" did not require private universities like those in the Ivy League to abide by the ruling. It wasn't until the Court's 1976 decision in "Runyon v. McCrary" that private institutions became legally prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race. By the early 1960s, however, some admissions offices in the Ivy League began to make concerted efforts to increase their number of Black applicants, rolling out initiatives that actively sought Black talent from high schools. Efforts for racial integration at Ivy League institutions relied on the support of student organizations, faculty-led initiatives, and third-party organizations like the National Scholarship Service and Fund for Negro Students to seek prospective Black applicants. These efforts also prompted internal University action, such as the creation of Cornell's Committee on Special Educational Projects (COSEP), an organization aimed to recruit and support Black students. By 1965, however, Black students still were only 2% of admitted students across all the Ivies. Prior to the 1960s, the majority of Ivy League universities explicitly prohibited the admission of women, instead forming partnerships with nearby women's colleges. As such, Black women were not able to attend Ivy League universities until they changed their policies. Lillian Lincoln Lambert was the first Black woman to receive a degree from Harvard University after graduating with a master's degree from Harvard Business School in 1969. Lincoln Lambert was also a founding member of Harvard's African American Student Union, which according to her, actively recruited Black students and created "a space where Black students could find not only support but resources for everything from barber shops that cut Black hair to churches." As Black student populations grew at Ivy League schools, on-campus activism saw an increase during the civil rights movement. In 1969, students in Cornell's Afro-American Society led an armed occupation of Willard Straight Hall to protest the university's racist policies and “its slow progress in establishing a Black studies program.” In the same year, students associated with Yale's New Left organization, Students for a Democratic Society, worked closely with the New Haven Black Panthers to lead sit-ins and protests that advocated for the admission of more students of color and the establishment of an African American studies department. At Brown University, identity-based student organizations such as the United African People and the African American Society called for an increase to the number of Black faculty and increased attention to the needs of Black students. Demonstrations at Harvard and Columbia took the form of occupations and non-violent sit-ins that were often subject to forceful removal by local police called by University administrators. Activism at Dartmouth took a different shape during this time period, as students would use demonstrations that were happening at other Ivies and colleges around the country, to effectively position their demands for progress within the prospect of taking actions similar to those happening elsewhere. 21st century. Continuing the trajectory of the late 20th century, the number of Black students on Ivy League campuses has continued to increase in the 21st century. From 2006 to 2018, there was an approximated 50% increase in the admission of Black students into entering classes, growing from 1,110 to 1,663. As of 2018, the Ivy League universities unanimously supported Harvard University's “race-conscious admissions” model. Harvard University representatives credited this form of affirmative action as one of the factors increasing campus diversity. In 2014 case "Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action", — the Supreme Court upheld Michigan's ban on affirmative action for public institutions and in 2016 in"Fisher v. University of Texas II", the court upheld the university's limited use of race in admissions decisions because the university showed it had a clear goal of limited scope without other workable race-neutral means to achieve it. However, in 2023 — "Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College", the United States Supreme Court overruled the decades old decisions"Regents of University of California v. Bakke" and "Grutter v. Bollinger" and other cases mentioned above in this paragraph but disallowing non-individualized racial preferences in admissions for civilian universities. In essence, the court interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment as not permitting Harvard's “race-conscious admissions” as the court decision now forbids the consideration of race in higher education admissions. Institutions in favor of Harvard's model argue that in addition to academic excellence they also aim to form a diverse student body, while individuals that argue against the model state that it is discriminatory against certain applicants. The growing Black student population in Ivy League universities in the early 2000s was accompanied by an increase in the number of Black faculty at these institutions, though rates of change among faculty have been slower and inconsistent. In 2005, 588– or about 3.9%– of the Ivies' 14,831 full-time faculty members were Black. This proportion decreased to 3.4% in 2015. Notably, in 2001, Ruth J. Simmons became the president of Brown University, making her the first and only Black president of an Ivy League institution. The 21st century saw the continuation of demonstrations by Ivy League students revolving around race. Many of these demonstrations have sought to continue the work of their 20th century predecessors by advocating for increased admission and support of Black students. In light of the "Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College" Supreme Court case, students from Yale and Harvard joined other universities in protesting in defense of race-conscious admissions policies. Likewise, Black students from Ivy League institutions continue to protest for the betterment of Black students' lives on campus and beyond. Following Michael Brown's death in 2014, students across the Ivies formed the Black Ivy Coalition, which included members from all eight institutions and aimed to combat anti-Black racism. Individual Ivy League universities also formed their own advocacy organizations and movements as a direct response to instances of anti-Black violence. After the murder of Michael Brown, Princeton University students formed the Black Justice League, which in 2015, occupied Nassau Hall and presented a list of demands to university administrators. Similarly, in 2017, Cornell students made demands to their administration protesting the assault of a Black student. Led by Black Students United, the demands included banning the Psi Upsilon fraternity for hate crimes, implementing implicit bias training, and introducing policies to increase the number of Black students at the university. Student demonstrations have also focused on sparking change beyond Ivy League campuses. Following the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, Harvard's Black Law Students Association, beyond calling for more Black faculty, critical race theory curriculum, and protection for student protestors, also called on the university to divest from prisons and denounce state-sanctioned violence. In response to racially charged incidents across the country and prompting from student activists, Ivy League universities have removed and renamed campus landmarks. In response to the 2016 Black Lives Matter protests, Cornell renamed their botanical gardens, previously called the "Cornell Plantations," to the "Cornell Botanical Gardens." In 2018, Brown renamed one of its largest academic and administrative buildings after its first black graduates, Inman E. Page and Ethel Tremaine Robinson. In response to the murder of George Floyd in 2020, Princeton University removed Woodrow Wilson's name from a residential college and the School of Public and International Affairs because of his “racist thinking and policies.” Fashion and lifestyle. Different fashion trends and styles have emerged from Ivy League campuses over time, and fashion trends such as Ivy League and preppy are styles often associated with the Ivy League and its culture. Ivy League style is a style of men's dress, popular during the late 1950s, believed to have originated on Ivy League campuses. The clothing stores J. Press and Brooks Brothers represent perhaps the quintessential Ivy League dress manner. The Ivy League style is said to be the predecessor to the preppy style of dress. Preppy fashion started around 1912 to the late 1940s and 1950s as the Ivy League style of dress. J. Press represents the quintessential preppy clothing brand, stemming from the collegiate traditions that shaped the preppy subculture. In the mid-twentieth century J. Press and Brooks Brothers, both being pioneers in preppy fashion, had stores on Ivy League school campuses, including Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Some typical preppy styles also reflect traditional upper class New England leisure activities, such as equestrian, sailing or yachting, hunting, fencing, rowing, lacrosse, tennis, golf, and rugby. Longtime New England outdoor outfitters, such as L.L. Bean, became part of conventional preppy style. This can be seen in sport stripes and colors, equestrian clothing, plaid shirts, field jackets and nautical-themed accessories. Vacationing in Palm Beach, Florida, long popular with the East Coast upper class, led to the emergence of bright colors combinations in leisure wear seen in some brands such as Lilly Pulitzer. By the 1980s, other brands such as Lacoste, Izod and Dooney & Bourke became associated with preppy style. Though the Ivy League style is most commonly associated with the white, male elites that historically made up Ivy League campuses, the style was quickly popularized among Black communities during the civil rights era. Reinterpretations of this style by African-American men in the 1950s and 1960s combined the preppy Ivy League style with other popular Black styles of dress. This led to the emergence of a new style of dress, the Black Ivy style. Today, Ivy League styles continue to be popular on Ivy League campuses, throughout the U.S., and abroad, and are oftentimes labeled as "Classic American style" or "Traditional American style". Social elitism. The Ivy League is often associated with the upper class White Anglo-Saxon Protestant community of the Northeast, Old money, or more generally, the American upper middle and upper classes. Although most Ivy League students come from upper-middle and upper-class families, the student body has become increasingly more economically and ethnically diverse. The universities provide significant financial aid to help increase the enrollment of lower income and middle class students. Several reports suggest, however, that the proportion of students from less-affluent families remains low. Phrases such as "Ivy League snobbery" are ubiquitous in nonfiction and fiction writing of the early and mid-twentieth century. A Louis Auchincloss character dreads "the aridity of snobbery which he knew infected the Ivy League colleges". A business writer, warning in 2001 against discriminatory hiring, presented a cautionary example of an attitude to avoid (the bracketed phrase is his): The phrase "Ivy League" historically has been perceived as connected not only with academic excellence but also with social elitism. In 1936, sportswriter John Kieran noted that student editors at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Penn were advocating the formation of an athletic association. In urging them to consider "Army and Navy and Georgetown and Fordham and Syracuse and Brown and Pitt" as candidates for membership, he exhorted: Aspects of Ivy stereotyping were illustrated during the 1988 presidential election, when George H. W. Bush (Yale '48) derided Michael Dukakis (graduate of Harvard Law School) for having "foreign-policy views born in Harvard Yard's boutique." "New York Times" columnist Maureen Dowd asked "Wasn't this a case of the pot calling the kettle elite?" Bush explained, however, 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. ... Harvard boutique to me has the connotation of liberalism and elitism" and said "Harvard" in his remark was intended to represent "a philosophical enclave" and not a statement about class. Columnist Russell Baker opined that "Voters inclined to loathe and fear elite Ivy League schools rarely make fine distinctions between Yale and Harvard. All they know is that both are full of rich, fancy, stuck-up and possibly dangerous intellectuals who never sit down to supper in their undershirt no matter how hot the weather gets." Still, the next five consecutive presidents all attended Ivy League schools for at least part of their education—George H. W. Bush (Yale undergrad), Bill Clinton (Yale Law School), George W. Bush (Yale undergrad, Harvard Business School), Barack Obama (Columbia undergrad, Harvard Law School), and Donald Trump (Penn undergrad). U.S. presidents in the Ivy League. Of the 45 persons who have served as President of the United States, 16 have graduated from an Ivy League university. Of them, eight have degrees from Harvard, five from Yale, three from Columbia, two from Princeton and one from Penn. Twelve presidents have earned Ivy undergraduate degrees. Four of these were transfer students: Woodrow Wilson transferred from Davidson College, Barack Obama transferred from Occidental College, Donald Trump transferred from Fordham University, and John F. Kennedy transferred from Princeton to Harvard. John Adams was the first president to graduate from college, graduating from Harvard in 1755. Student demographics. Geographic distribution. Students of the Ivy League largely hail from the Northeast, largely from the New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia areas. As all eight Ivy League universities are within the Northeast, most graduates end up working and residing in the Northeast after graduation. An unscientific survey of Harvard seniors from the Class of 2013 found that 42% hailed from the Northeast and 55% overall were planning on working and residing in the Northeast. Boston and New York City are traditionally where many Ivy League graduates end up living. Socioeconomics and social class. Students of the Ivy League, both graduate and undergraduate, come primarily from upper middle and upper class families. In recent years, however, the universities have looked towards increasing socioeconomic and class diversity, by providing greater financial aid packages to applicants from lower, working, and lower middle class American families. In 2013, a Harvard Crimson writer estimated that 46% of Harvard undergraduate students came from families in the top 3.8% of all American households (i.e., over $200,000 annual income). In 2012, the bottom 25% of the American income distribution accounted for only 3–4% of students at Brown, a figure that had remained unchanged since 1992. In 2014, 69% of incoming freshmen students at Yale College came from families with annual incomes of over $120,000, putting most Yale College students in the upper-middle and upper classes. (The median household income in the U.S. in 2013 was $52,700.) In the 2011–2012 academic year, students qualifying for Pell Grants (federally funded scholarships on the basis of need) constituted 20% at Harvard, 18% at Cornell, 17% at Penn, 16% at Columbia, 15% at Dartmouth and Brown, 14% at Yale, and 12% at Princeton. Nationally, 35% of American university students qualify for a Pell Grant. Competition and athletics. Ivy champions are recognized in sixteen men's and sixteen women's sports. In some sports, Ivy teams actually compete as members of another league, the Ivy championship being decided by isolating the members' records in play against each other; for example, the six league members who participate in ice hockey do so as members of ECAC Hockey, but an Ivy champion is extrapolated each year. In one sport, rowing, the Ivies recognize team champions for each sex in both heavyweight and lightweight divisions. While the Intercollegiate Rowing Association governs all four sex- and bodyweight-based divisions of rowing, the only one that is sanctioned by the NCAA is women's heavyweight. The Ivy League was the last Division I basketball conference to institute a conference postseason tournament; the first tournaments for men and women were held at the end of the 2016–17 season. The tournaments only award the Ivy League automatic bids for the NCAA Division I Men's and Women's Basketball Tournaments; the official conference championships continue to be awarded based solely on regular-season results. Before the 2016–17 season, the automatic bids were based solely on regular-season record, with a one-game playoff (or series of one-game playoffs if more than two teams were tied) held to determine the automatic bid. The Ivy League is one of only two Division I conferences which award their official basketball championships solely on regular-season results; the other is the Southeastern Conference. Since its inception, an Ivy League school has yet to win either the men's or women's Division I NCAA basketball tournament. On average, each Ivy school has more than 35 varsity teams. All eight are in the top 20 for number of sports offered for both men and women among Division I schools. Unlike most Division I athletic conferences, the Ivy League prohibits the granting of athletic scholarships; all scholarships awarded are need-based (financial aid). In addition, the Ivies have a rigid policy against redshirting, even for medical reasons; an athlete loses a year of eligibility for every year enrolled at an Ivy institution. Additionally, the Ivies prohibit graduate students from participating in intercollegiate athletics, even if they have remaining athletic eligibility. The only exception to the ban on graduate students was that seniors graduating in 2021 were allowed to play at their current institutions as graduate students in 2021–22. This was a one-time-only response to the Ivies shutting down most intercollegiate athletics in 2020–21 due to COVID-19. Ivy League teams' non-league games are often against the members of the Patriot League, which have similar academic standards and athletic scholarship policies (although unlike the Ivies, the Patriot League allows both redshirting and play by eligible graduate students). In the time before recruiting for college sports became dominated by those offering athletic scholarships and lowered academic standards for athletes, the Ivy League was successful in many sports relative to other universities in the country. In particular, Princeton won 26 recognized national championships in college football (last in 1935), and Yale won 18 (last in 1927). Both of these totals are considerably higher than those of other historically strong programs such as Alabama, which has won 15, Notre Dame, which claims 11 but is credited by many sources with 13, and USC, which has won 11. Yale, whose coach Walter Camp was the "Father of American Football," held on to its place as the all-time wins leader in college football throughout the entire 20th century, but was finally passed by Michigan on November 10, 2001. Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Penn each have over a dozen former scholar-athletes enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame. Currently Dartmouth holds the record for most Ivy League football titles, with 18, followed closely by Harvard and Penn, each with 17 titles. In addition, the Ivy League has produced Super Bowl winners Kevin Boothe (Cornell), two-time Pro Bowler Zak DeOssie (Brown), Sean Morey (Brown), All-Pro selection Matt Birk (Harvard), Calvin Hill (Yale), Derrick Harmon (Cornell) and 1999 "Mr. Irrelevant" Jim Finn (Penn). Beginning with the 1982 football season, the Ivy League has competed in Division I-AA (renamed FCS The Ivy League teams are eligible for the FCS tournament held to determine the national champion, and the league champion is eligible for an automatic bid (and any other team may qualify for an at-large selection) from the NCAA. However, since its inception in 1956, the Ivy League has not played any postseason games due to concerns about the extended December schedule's effects on academics. (The last postseason game for a member was , the 1934 Rose Bowl, won by For this reason, any Ivy League team invited to the FCS playoffs turns down the bid. The Ivy League plays a strict 10-game schedule, compared to other FCS members' schedules of 11 (or, in some seasons, 12) regular season games, plus post-season, which expanded in 2013 to five rounds with 24 teams, with a bye week for the top eight teams. Football is the only sport in which the Ivy League declines to compete for a national title. In addition to varsity football, Penn and Cornell also field teams in the 9-team Collegiate Sprint Football League, in which all players must weigh 178 pounds or less. With Princeton canceling its program in 2016, Penn is the last remaining founding members of the league from its 1934 debut, and Cornell is the next-oldest, joining in 1937. Yale and Columbia previously fielded teams in the league but no longer do so. Men's sponsored sports by school. Men's varsity sports not sponsored by the Ivy League. Notes: 1: Though the Ivy League lists ice hockey as a sponsored sport, all six ice hockey playing Ivy League schools participate as members of ECAC Hockey. 2: Though the Ivy League lists wrestling as a sponsored sport, all six Ivy League schools with wrestling teams participate as members of the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association. Women's sponsored sports by school. Women's varsity sports not sponsored by the Ivy League. Notes: 1: Though the Ivy League lists ice hockey as a sponsored sport, all six ice hockey playing Ivy League schools participate as members of ECAC Hockey. 2. The Ivy League is home to some of the oldest college rugby teams in the United States. Although none of the men's teams and half of the women's teams are not "varsity" sports, they all compete against each other as part of the Ivy Rugby Conference in addition to their own local conferences. Four of the women's teams (Brown, Dartmouth, Harvard, and Princeton) play as part of the NCAA emerging sport category. Historical results. The table above includes the number of team championships won from the beginning of official Ivy League competition (1956–57 academic year) through 2016–17. Princeton and Harvard have on occasion won ten or more Ivy League titles in a year, an achievement accomplished 10 times by Harvard and 24 times by Princeton, including a conference-record 15 championships in 2010–11. Only once has one of the other six schools earned more than eight titles in a single academic year (Cornell with nine in 2005–06). In the 38 academic years beginning 1979–80, Princeton has averaged 10 championships per year, one-third of the conference total of 33 sponsored sports. In the 12 academic years beginning 2005–06 Princeton has won championships in 31 different sports, all except wrestling and men's tennis. Rivalries. Rivalries run deep in the Ivy League. For instance, Princeton and Penn are longstanding men's basketball rivals; "Puck Frinceton" T-shirts are worn by Quaker fans at games. In only 11 instances in the history of Ivy League basketball, and in only seven seasons since Yale's 1962 title, has neither Penn nor Princeton won at least a share of the Ivy League title in basketball, with Princeton champion or co-champion 26 times and Penn 25 times. Penn has won 21 outright, Princeton 19 outright. Princeton has been a co-champion 7 times, sharing 4 of those titles with Penn (these 4 seasons represent the only times Penn has been co-champion). In addition to their athletic rivalry, both Princeton and UPenn also have a connection to the Ivy Day tradition. Ivy Day is a traditional ceremony that takes place in the spring, where seniors don caps and gowns and march through campus carrying ivy chains, which are symbolic of the ivy-covered walls of their schools. While Ivy Day is not unique to Princeton and Penn, the two schools do have a particularly strong connection to the tradition. Harvard won its first title of either variety in 2011, losing a dramatic play-off game to Princeton for the NCAA tournament bid, then rebounded to win outright championships in 2012, 2013, and 2014. Harvard also won the 2013 Great Alaska Shootout, defeating TCU to become the only Ivy League school to win the now-defunct tournament. Rivalries exist between other Ivy league teams in other sports, including Cornell and Harvard in hockey, Harvard and Princeton in swimming, and Harvard and Penn in football (Penn and Harvard have won 28 Ivy League Football Championships since 1982, Penn-16; Harvard-12). During that time Penn has had 8 undefeated Ivy League Football Championships and Harvard has had 6 undefeated Ivy League Football Championships. In men's lacrosse, Cornell and Princeton are perennial rivals, and they are two of three Ivy League teams to have won the NCAA tournament. In 2009, the Big Red and Tigers met for their 70th game in the NCAA tournament. No team other than Harvard or Princeton has won the men's swimming conference title outright since 1972, although Yale, Columbia, and Cornell have shared the title with Harvard and Princeton during this time. Similarly, no program other than Princeton and Harvard has won the women's swimming championship since Brown's 1999 title. Princeton or Cornell has won every indoor and outdoor track and field championship, both men's and women's, every year since 2002–03, with one exception (Columbia women won the indoor championship in 2012). Harvard and Yale are football and crew rivals although the competition has become unbalanced; Harvard has won all but one of the last 15 football games and all but one of the last 13 crew races. Intra-conference football rivalries. The Yale–Princeton series is the nation's second-longest by games played, exceeded only by "The Rivalry" between Lehigh and Lafayette, which began later in 1884 but included two or three games in each of 17 early seasons. For the first three decades of the Yale-Princeton rivalry, the two played their season-ending game at a neutral site, usually New York City, and with one exception (1890: Harvard), the winner of the game also won at least a share of the national championship that year, covering the period 1869 through 1903. This phenomenon of a finale contest at a neutral site for the national title created a social occasion for the society elite of the metropolitan area akin to a Super Bowl in the era prior to the establishment of the NFL in 1920. These football games were also financially profitable for the two universities, so much that they began to play baseball games in New York City as well, drawing record crowds for that sport also, largely from the same social demographic. In a period when the only professional team sports were fledgling baseball leagues, these high-profile early contests between Princeton and Yale played a role in popularizing spectator sports, demonstrating their financial potential and raising public awareness of Ivy universities at a time when few people attended college. Championships. NCAA team championships. This list, which is current through January 8, 2018, includes NCAA championships and women's AIAW championships (one each for Yale and Dartmouth and five for Cornell). Excluded from this list are all other national championships earned outside the scope of NCAA competition, including football titles and retroactive Helms Foundation titles. Other ivies. The term "Ivy" is sometimes used to connote a positive comparison to or an association with the Ivy League, often along academic lines. The term has been used to describe the Little Ivies, a grouping of small liberal arts colleges in the Northeastern United States. Other common uses include the Public Ivies, the Hidden Ivies, the Southern Ivies, and the Black Ivies. Ivy Plus. The term "Ivy Plus" is sometimes used to refer to the original eight institutions (in this context the Ancient Eight) plus several other schools for purposes of alumni associations, university consortia, or endowment comparisons. In his book "Untangling the Ivy League", Zawel writes, "The inclusion of non–Ivy League schools under this term is commonplace for some schools and extremely rare for others. Among these other schools, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University are almost always included. The University of Chicago and Duke University are often included as well." The term "IvyPlus" also refers to a formal exchange scholar program that includes all the Ivy League schools as well as Berkeley, Chicago, MIT, and Stanford.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15116

Inter Milan

Football Club Internazionale Milano, commonly referred to as Internazionale () or simply Inter, and colloquially known as Inter Milan in English-speaking countries, is an Italian professional football club based in Milan, Lombardy. Inter is the only Italian side to have always competed in the top flight of Italian football since its debut in 1909. Founded in 1908 following a schism within the Milan Cricket and Football Club (now AC Milan), Inter won its first championship in 1910. Since its formation, the club has won 35 domestic trophies, including 19 league titles, 9 Coppa Italia and 7 Supercoppa Italiana. From 2006 to 2010, the club won five successive league titles, equalling the all-time record at that time. They have won the European Cup/Champions League three times: two back-to-back in 1964 and 1965 and then another in 2010. Their latest win completed an unprecedented Italian seasonal treble, with Inter winning the Coppa Italia and the "Scudetto" the same year. The club has also won three UEFA Cups, two Intercontinental Cups and one FIFA Club World Cup. Inter's home games are played at the San Siro stadium, which they share with city rivals Milan. The stadium is the largest in Italian football with a capacity of 75,817. They have long-standing rivalries with Milan, with whom they contest the Derby della Madonnina, and Juventus, with whom they contest the Derby d'Italia; their rivalry with the former is one of the most followed derbies in football. Inter has the highest home game attendance in Italy and the sixth highest attendance in Europe. Since 2016, the club has been majority-owned by Chinese holding company Suning Holdings Group. Inter is one of the most valuable in Italian and world football. History. Foundation and early years (1908–1960). The club was founded on 9 March 1908 as "Football Club Internazionale", following the schism with the Milan Cricket and Football Club (now AC Milan). The name of the club derives from the wish of its founding members to accept foreign players without limits as well as Italians. The club won its first championship in 1910 and its second in 1920. The captain and coach of the first championship winning team was Virgilio Fossati, who was later killed in battle while serving in the Italian army during World War I. In 1922, Inter was at risk of relegation to the second division, but they remained in the top league after winning two play-offs. Six years later, during the Fascist era, the club was forced to merge with the "Unione Sportiva Milanese" and was renamed "Società Sportiva Ambrosiana". During the 1928–29 season, the team wore white jerseys with a red cross emblazoned on it; the jersey's design was inspired by the flag and coat of arms of the city of Milan. In 1929, the new club chairman Oreste Simonotti changed the club's name to "Associazione Sportiva Ambrosiana" and restored the previous black-and-blue jerseys, however supporters continued to call the team "Inter", and in 1931 new chairman Pozzani caved in to shareholder pressure and changed the name to "Associazione Sportiva Ambrosiana-Inter". Their first Coppa Italia (Italian Cup) was won in 1938–39, led by the iconic Giuseppe Meazza, after whom the San Siro stadium is officially named. A fifth championship followed in 1940, despite Meazza incurring an injury. After the end of World War II the club regained its original name, winning its sixth championship in 1953 and its seventh in 1954. "Grande Inter" (1960–1967). In 1960, manager Helenio Herrera joined Inter from Barcelona, bringing with him his midfield general Luis Suárez, who won the European Footballer of the Year in the same year for his role in Barcelona's La Liga/Fairs Cup double. He would transform Inter into one of the greatest teams in Europe. He modified a 5–3–2 tactic known as the "Verrou" ("door bolt") which created greater flexibility for counterattacks. The "catenaccio" system was invented by an Austrian coach, Karl Rappan. Rappan's original system was implemented with four fixed defenders, playing a strict man-to-man marking system, plus a playmaker in the middle of the field who plays the ball together with two midfield wings. Herrera would modify it by adding a fifth defender, the sweeper or libero behind the two centre backs. The sweeper or libero who acted as the free man would deal with any attackers who went through the two centre backs. Inter finished third in the Serie A in his first season, second the next year and first in his third season. Then followed a back-to-back European Cup victory in 1964 and 1965, earning him the title "il Mago" ("the Wizard"). The core of Herrera's team were the attacking fullbacks Tarcisio Burgnich and Giacinto Facchetti, Armando Picchi the sweeper, Suárez the playmaker, Jair the winger, Mario Corso the left midfielder, and Sandro Mazzola, who played on the inside-right. In 1964, Inter reached the European Cup Final by beating Borussia Dortmund in the semi-final and Partizan in the quarter-final. In the final, they met Real Madrid, a team that had reached seven out of the nine finals to date. Mazzola scored two goals in a 3–1 victory, and then the team won the Intercontinental Cup against Independiente. A year later, Inter repeated the feat by beating two-time winner Benfica in the final held at home, from a Jair goal after have defeated Liverpool in semifinals recovery from a 3-1 with a 3-0, and then again beat Independiente in the Intercontinental Cup becoming the first European team to win two times in a row the competition. Inter in 1965 came close to win Treble for the first time in European football history after have won also Serie A title but lost 1965 Coppa Italia final. Inter reached again semifinals in 1966 but this time lost against Real Madrid that later will win the tournament. In 1967, with Suárez injured, Inter lost the European Cup Final 2–1 to Celtic. During that year the club changed its name to "Football Club Internazionale Milano". Subsequent achievements (1967–1991). Following the golden era of the 1960s, Inter managed to win their eleventh league title in 1971 and their twelfth in 1980. Inter were defeated for the second time in five years in the final of the European Cup, going down 0–2 to Johan Cruyff's Ajax in 1972. During the 1970s and the 1980s, Inter also added two to its Coppa Italia tally, in 1977–78 and 1981–82. Hansi Müller (1975–1982 VfB Stuttgart, 1982–1984 Inter Milan) and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge (1974–1984 Bayern Munich, 1984–1987 Inter Milan) played for Inter Milan. Led by the German duo of Andreas Brehme and Lothar Matthäus, and Argentine Ramón Díaz, Inter captured the 1989 Serie A championship. Inter were unable to defend their title despite adding fellow German Jürgen Klinsmann to the squad and winning their first Supercoppa Italiana at the start of the season. Mixed fortunes (1991–2004). The 1990s was a period of disappointment. While their great rivals Milan and Juventus were achieving success both domestically and in Europe, Inter were left behind, with repeated mediocre results in the domestic league standings, their worst coming in 1993–94 when they finished just one point out of the relegation zone. Nevertheless, they achieved some European success with three UEFA Cup victories in 1991, 1994 and 1998. With Massimo Moratti's takeover from Ernesto Pellegrini in 1995, Inter twice broke the world record transfer fee in this period (£19.5 million for Ronaldo from Barcelona in 1997 and £31 million for Christian Vieri from Lazio two years later). However, the 1990s remained the only decade in Inter's history, alongside the 1940s, in which they did not win a single Serie A championship. For Inter fans, it was difficult to find who in particular was to blame for the troubled times and this led to some icy relations between them and the chairman, the managers and even some individual players. Moratti later became a target of the fans, especially when he sacked the much-loved coach Luigi Simoni after only a few games into the 1998–99 season, having just received the Italian manager of the year award for 1998 the day before being dismissed. That season, Inter failed to qualify for any European competition for the first time in almost ten years, finishing in eighth place. The following season, Moratti appointed former Juventus manager Marcello Lippi, and signed players such as Angelo Peruzzi and Laurent Blanc together with other former Juventus players Vieri and Vladimir Jugović. The team came close to their first domestic success since 1989 when they reached the Coppa Italia final only to be defeated by Lazio. Inter's misfortunes continued the following season, losing the 2000 Supercoppa Italiana match against Lazio 4–3 after initially taking the lead through new signing Robbie Keane. They were also eliminated in the preliminary round of the Champions League by Swedish club Helsingborgs IF, with Álvaro Recoba missing a crucial late penalty. Lippi was sacked after only a single game of the new season following Inter's first ever Serie A defeat to Reggina. Marco Tardelli, chosen to replace Lippi, failed to improve results, and is remembered by Inter fans as the manager that lost 6–0 in the city derby against Milan. Other members of the Inter "family" during this period that suffered were the likes of Vieri and Fabio Cannavaro, both of whom had their restaurants in Milan vandalised after defeats to the "Rossoneri". In 2002, not only did Inter manage to make it to the UEFA Cup semi-finals, but were also only 45 minutes away from capturing the "Scudetto" when they needed to maintain their one-goal advantage away to Lazio. Inter were 2–1 up after only 24 minutes. Lazio equalised during first half injury time and then scored two more goals in the second half to clinch victory that eventually saw Juventus win the championship. The next season, Inter finished as league runners-up and also managed to make it to the 2002–03 Champions League semi-finals against Milan, losing on the away goals rule. Comeback and unprecedented treble (2004–2011). On 8 July 2004, Inter appointed former Lazio coach Roberto Mancini as its new head coach. In his first season, the team collected 72 points from 18 wins, 18 draws and only two losses, as well as winning the Coppa Italia and later the Supercoppa Italiana. On 11 May 2006, Inter retained their Coppa Italia title once again after defeating Roma with a 4–1 aggregate victory (a 1–1 scoreline in Rome and a 3–1 win at the San Siro). Inter were awarded the 2005–06 Serie A championship retrospectively after title-winning Juventus was relegated and points were stripped from Milan due to the "Calciopoli" scandal. During the following season, Inter went on a record-breaking run of 17 consecutive victories in Serie A, starting on 25 September 2006 with a 4–1 home victory over Livorno, and ending on 28 February 2007, after a 1–1 draw at home to Udinese. On 22 April 2007, Inter won their second consecutive "Scudetto"—and first on the field since 1989—when they defeated Siena 2–1 at Stadio Artemio Franchi. Italian World Cup-winning defender Marco Materazzi scored both goals. Inter started the 2007–08 season with the goal of winning both Serie A and Champions League. The team started well in the league, topping the table from the first round of matches, and also managed to qualify for the Champions League knockout stage. However, a late collapse, leading to a 2–0 defeat with ten men away to Liverpool on 19 February in the Champions League, threw into question manager Roberto Mancini's future at Inter while domestic form took a sharp turn of fortune with the team failing to win in the three following Serie A games. After being eliminated by Liverpool in the Champions League, Mancini announced his intention to leave his job immediately only to change his mind the following day. On the final day of the 2007–08 Serie A season, Inter played Parma away, and two goals from Zlatan Ibrahimović sealed their third consecutive championship. Mancini, however, was sacked soon after due to his previous announcement to leave the club. On 2 June 2008, Inter appointed former Porto and Chelsea boss José Mourinho as new head coach. In his first season, the "Nerazzurri" won a Suppercoppa Italiana and a fourth consecutive title, though falling in the Champions League in the first knockout round for a third-straight year, losing to eventual finalist Manchester United. In winning the league title Inter became the first club in the last 60 years to win the title for the fourth consecutive time and joined Torino and Juventus as the only clubs to accomplish this feat, as well as being the first club based outside Turin. Inter won the 2009–10 Champions League, defeating reigning champions Barcelona in the semi-final before beating Bayern Munich 2–0 in the final with two goals from Diego Milito. Inter also won the 2009–10 Serie A title by two points over Roma, and the 2010 Coppa Italia by defeating the same side 1–0 in the final. This made Inter the first Italian team to win the treble. At the end of the season, Mourinho left the club to manage Real Madrid; he was replaced by Rafael Benítez. On 21 August 2010, Inter defeated Roma 3–1 and won the 2010 Supercoppa Italiana, their fourth trophy of the year. In December 2010, they claimed the FIFA Club World Cup for the first time after a 3–0 win against TP Mazembe in the final. However, after this win, on 23 December 2010, due to their declining performance in Serie A, the team fired Benítez. He was replaced by Leonardo the following day. Leonardo started with 30 points from 12 games, with an average of 2.5 points per game, better than his predecessors Benítez and Mourinho. On 6 March 2011, Leonardo set a new Italian Serie A record by collecting 33 points in 13 games; the previous record was 32 points in 13 games made by Fabio Capello in the 2004–05 season. Leonardo led the club to the quarter-finals of the Champions League before losing to Schalke 04, and lead them to Coppa Italia title. At the end of the season, however, he resigned and was followed by new managers Gian Piero Gasperini, Claudio Ranieri and Andrea Stramaccioni, all hired during the following season. Changes in ownership (2011–2019). On 1 August 2012, the club announced that Moratti was to sell a minority interest of the club to a Chinese consortium led by Kenneth Huang. On the same day, Inter announced an agreement was formed with China Railway Construction Corporation Limited for a new stadium project, however, the deal with the Chinese eventually collapsed. The 2012–13 season was the worst in recent club history with Inter finishing ninth in Serie A and failing to qualify for any European competitions. Walter Mazzarri was appointed to replace Stramaccioni as the manager for 2013–14 season on 24 May 2013, having ended his tenure at Napoli. He guided the club to fifth in Serie A and to 2014–15 UEFA Europa League qualification. On 15 October 2013, an Indonesian consortium (International Sports Capital HK Ltd.) led by Erick Thohir, Handy Soetedjo and Rosan Roeslani, signed an agreement to acquire 70% of Inter shares from Internazionale Holding S.r.l. Immediately after the deal, Moratti's Internazionale Holding S.r.l. still retained 29.5% of the shares of FC Internazionale Milano S.p.A. After the deal, the shares of Inter was owned by a chain of holding companies, namely International Sports Capital S.p.A. of Italy (for 70% stake), International Sports Capital HK Limited and Asian Sports Ventures HK Limited of Hong Kong. Asian Sports Ventures HK Limited, itself another intermediate holding company, was owned by Nusantara Sports Ventures HK Limited (60% stake, a company owned by Thohir), Alke Sports Investment HK Limited (20% stake) and Aksis Sports Capital HK Limited (20% stake). Thohir, whom also co-owned Major League Soccer (MLS) club D.C. United and Indonesia Super League (ISL) club Persib Bandung, announced on 2 December 2013 that Inter and D.C. United had formed strategic partnership. During the Thohir era the club began to modify its financial structure from one reliant on continual owner investment to a more self sustain business model although the club still breached UEFA Financial Fair Play Regulations in 2015. The club was fined and received squad reduction in UEFA competitions, with additional penalties suspended in the probation period. During this time, Roberto Mancini returned as the club manager on 14 November 2014, with Inter finishing eighth. Inter finished 2015–2016 season fourth, failing to return to Champions League. On 6 June 2016, Suning Holdings Group (via a Luxembourg-based subsidiary Great Horizon S.á r.l.) a company owned by Zhang Jindong, co-founder and chairman of Suning Commerce Group, acquired a majority stake of Inter from Thohir's consortium International Sports Capital S.p.A. and from Moratti family's remaining shares in Internazionale Holding S.r.l. According to various filings, the total investment from Suning was €270 million. The deal was approved by an extraordinary general meeting on 28 June 2016, from which Suning Holdings Group had acquired a 68.55% stake in the club. The first season of new ownership, however, started with poor performance in pre-season friendlies. On 8 August 2016, Inter parted company with head coach Roberto Mancini by mutual consent over disagreements regarding the club's direction. He was replaced by Frank de Boer who was sacked on 1 November 2016 after leading Inter to a 4W–2D–5L record in 11 Serie A games as head coach. The successor, Stefano Pioli, didn't save the team from getting the worst group result in UEFA competitions in the club's history. Despite an eight-game winning streak, he and the club parted away before season's end when it became clear they would finish outside the league's top three for the sixth consecutive season. On 9 June 2017, former Roma coach Luciano Spalletti was appointed as Inter manager, signing a two-year contract, and eleven months later Inter clinched a UEFA Champions League group stage spot after going six years without Champions League participation thanks to a 3–2 victory against Lazio in the final game of 2017–18 Serie A. Due to this success, in August the club extended the contract with Spalletti to 2021. On 26 October 2018, Steven Zhang was appointed as new president of the club. On 25 January 2019, the club officially announced that LionRock Capital from Hong Kong reached an agreement with International Sports Capital HK Limited, in order to acquire its 31.05% shares in Inter and to become the club's new minority shareholder. After the 2018–19 Serie A season, despite Inter finishing fourth, Spalletti was sacked. In May 2021, American investment firm Oaktree Capital loaned Inter $336 million to cover losses incurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. Renewed successes (2019–present). On 31 May 2019, Inter appointed former Juventus and Italian manager Antonio Conte as their new coach, signing a three-year deal. In September 2019, Steven Zhang was elected to the board of the European Club Association. In the 2019–20 Serie A, Inter Milan finished as runner-up as they won 2–0 against Atalanta on the last matchday. They also reached the 2020 UEFA Europa League Final, ultimately losing 3–2 to Sevilla. Following Atalanta's draw against Sassuolo on 2 May 2021, Internazionale were confirmed as champions for the first time in eleven years, ending Juventus' run of nine consecutive titles. However, despite securing Serie A glory, Conte left the club by mutual consent on 26 May 2021. The departure was reportedly due to disagreements between Conte and the board over player transfers. In June 2021, Simone Inzaghi was appointed as Conte's replacement. On 22 June 2021, Carlo Cottarelli launched the shareholding of the fans of the Inter Milan club with InterSpac project. On 8 August 2021, Romelu Lukaku was sold to Chelsea F.C. for €115 million, representing the most expensive association football transfer by an Italian football club ever. On 12 January 2022, Inter won the Supercoppa Italiana, defeating Juventus 2–1 at San Siro. After conceding a goal to the opponent, Inter equalised with a penalty scored by Lautaro Martínez, and the match finished 1–1 in regulation time. In the last second of the extra-time, Alexis Sánchez scored the winning goal following a defensive error, giving Inter the first trophy of the season, also Simone Inzaghi's first trophy as Inter manager. On 11 May 2022, Inter won the Coppa Italia defeating Juventus 4–2 at Stadio Olimpico. After normal time had ended 2–2, with Nicolò Barella and Hakan Çalhanoğlu scoring Inter's goals, Ivan Perišić's brace in the extra-time gave Inter the win and the second title of the season. The 2021–22 Serie A campaign saw Inter finish in second place, being the most prolific attacking side with 84 goals. On 18 January 2023, Inter won the Supercoppa Italiana, defeating Milan 3−0 at King Fahd International Stadium, thanks to goals from Federico Dimarco, Edin Džeko, and Lautaro Martinez. On 16 May 2023, Inter won against Milan in the semi-finals of 2022–23 UEFA Champions League and qualified for the final, the first time they have reached the final in the UEFA Champions League since 2010. However, they were defeated at the Atatürk Olympic Stadium 1−0 by Manchester City after a second half goal from Rodri. Colours and badge. One of the founders of Inter, a painter named Giorgio Muggiani, was responsible for the design of the first Inter logo in 1908. The first design incorporated the letters "FCIM" in the centre of a series of circles that formed the badge of the club. The basic elements of the design have remained constant even as finer details have been modified over the years. Starting at the 1999–2000 season, the original club crest was reduced in size, to give place for the addition of the club's name and foundation year at the upper and lower part of the logo respectively. In 2007, the logo was returned to the pre-1999–2000 era. It was given a more modern look with a smaller "Scudetto" star and lighter color scheme. This version was used until July 2014, when the club decided to undertake a rebranding. The most significant difference between the current and the previous logo is the omission of the star from other media except match kits. Since its founding in 1908, Inter have almost always worn black and blue stripes, earning them the nickname "Nerazzurri". According to the tradition, the colours were adopted to represent the nocturnal sky: in fact, the club was established on the night of 9 March, at 23:30; moreover, blue was chosen by Giorgio Muggiani because he considered it to be the opposite colour to red, worn by the Milan Cricket and Football Club rivals. During the 1928–29 season, however, Inter were forced to abandon their black and blue uniforms. In 1928, Inter's name and philosophy made the ruling Fascist Party uneasy; as a result, during the same year the 20-year-old club was merged with "Unione Sportiva Milanese": the new club was named "Società Sportiva Ambrosiana" after the patron saint of Milan. The flag of Milan (the red cross on white background) replaced the traditional black and blue. In 1929 the black-and-blue jerseys were restored, and after World War II, when the Fascists had fallen from power, the club reverted to their original name. In 2008, Inter celebrated their centenary with a red cross on their away shirt. The cross is reminiscent of the flag of their city, and they continue to use the pattern on their third kit. In 2014, the club adopted a predominantly black home kit with thin blue pinstripes before returning to a more traditional design the following season. Animals are often used to represent football clubs in Italy – the grass snake, called "Biscione", represents Inter. The snake is an important symbol for the city of Milan, appearing often in Milanese heraldry as a coiled viper with a man in its jaws. The symbol is present on the coat of arms of the House of Sforza (which ruled over Italy from Milan during the Renaissance period), the city of Milan, the historical Duchy of Milan (a 400-year state of the Holy Roman Empire) and Insubria (a historical region the city of Milan falls within). For the 2010–11 season, Inter's away kit featured the serpent. Stadium. The team's stadium is the 75,923 seat San Siro, officially known as the "Stadio Giuseppe Meazza" after the former player who represented both Milan and Inter. The more commonly used name, "San Siro", is the name of the district where it is located. San Siro has been the home of Milan since 1926, when it was privately built by funding from Milan's chairman at the time, Piero Pirelli. Construction was performed by 120 workers, and took 13 and a half months to complete. The stadium was owned by the club until it was sold to the city in 1935, and since 1947 it has been shared with Inter, when they were accepted as joint tenant. The first game played at the stadium was on 19 September 1926, when Inter beat Milan 6–3 in a friendly match. Milan played its first league game in San Siro on 19 September 1926, losing 1–2 to Sampierdarenese. From an initial capacity of 35,000 spectators, the stadium has undergone several major renovations. A major structural renovation was made for the 2016 UEFA Champions League Final while another one took place in late 2021 to host the UEFA Nations League final. The stadium is going to be refurbished again in time for Milano Cortina 2026. Based on the English model for stadiums, San Siro is specifically designed for football matches, as opposed to many multi-purpose stadiums used in Serie A. It is therefore renowned in Italy for its fantastic atmosphere during matches owing to the closeness of the stands to the pitch. New Milano Stadium. Since 2012, various proposals and projects by Massimo Moratti have alternated regarding a possible construction of a new Inter stadium. Between June and July 2019 Inter and A.C. Milan announced the agreement for the construction of a new shared stadium in the San Siro area. In the winter of 2021, Giuseppe Sala, the mayor of Milan, gave the official permission for the construction of the new stadium next to San Siro that will be partially demolished and refunctionalised after the 2026 Olympic Games. In early 2022 Inter and A.C. Milan revealed a "plan B" to relocate the construction of the new Milano stadium in the Greater Milan, away from San Siro area. Supporters and rivalries. Inter is one of the most supported clubs in Italy, according to an August 2007 research by Italian newspaper "La Repubblica". In the early years (until the First World War), Inter fans from the city of Milan were typically middle class, while Milan fans were typically working class. During Massimo Moratti ownership Inter fans were viewed in a moderate left-political eye. At the same time during Silvio Berlusconi reign, A.C. Milan fans were viewed in a moderate/right political eye. Today these divisions are anachronistic. The traditional ultras group of Inter is "Boys San"; they hold a significant place in the history of the ultras scene in general due to the fact that they are one of the oldest, being founded in 1969. Politically, one group (Irriducibili) of Inter Ultras are right-wing and this group has good relationships with the Lazio ultras. As well as the main group (apolitical) of "Boys San", there are five more significant groups: "Viking" (apolitical), "Irriducibili" (right-wing), "Ultras" (apolitical), "Brianza Alcoolica" (apolitical) and "Imbastisci" (left-wing). Inter's most vocal fans are known to gather in the Curva Nord, or north curve of the San Siro. This longstanding tradition has led to the Curva Nord being synonymous with the club's most die-hard supporters, who unfurl banners and wave flags in support of their team. Inter have several rivalries, two of which are highly significant in Italian football; firstly, they participate in the intracity "Derby della Madonnina" with AC Milan; the rivalry has existed ever since Inter splintered off from Milan in 1908. The name of the derby refers to the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose statue atop the Milan Cathedral is one of the city's main attractions. The match usually creates a lively atmosphere, with numerous (often humorous or offensive) banners unfolded before the match. Flares are commonly present, but they also led to the abandonment of the second leg of the 2004–05 Champions League quarter-final matchup between Milan and Inter on 12 April after a flare thrown from the crowd by an Inter supporter struck Milan keeper Dida on the shoulder. The other significant rivalry is with Juventus; matches between the two clubs are known as the "Derby d'Italia". Up until the 2006 Italian football scandal, which saw Juventus relegated, the two were the only Italian clubs never to have played below Serie A. In the 2000s, Inter developed a rivalry with Roma, who finished as runners-up to Inter in all but one of Inter's five "Scudetto"-winning seasons between 2005–06 and 2009–10. The two sides have also contested in five Coppa Italia finals and four Supercoppa Italiana finals since 2006. Other clubs, like Atalanta and Napoli, are also considered among their rivals. Their supporters collectively go by "Interisti", or "Nerazzurri." Honours. Inter have won 35 domestic trophies, including the Serie A 19 times, the Coppa Italia nine times and the Supercoppa Italiana seven times. From 2006 to 2010, the club won five successive league titles, equalling the all-time record before 2017, when Juventus won the sixth successive league title. They have won the UEFA Champions League three times: two back-to-back in 1964 and 1965 and then another in 2010; the last completed an unprecedented Italian treble with the Coppa Italia and the "Scudetto". The club has also won three UEFA Europa League, two Intercontinental Cup and one FIFA Club World Cup. Inter has never been relegated from the top flight of Italian football in its entire existence. It is the sole club to have competed in Serie A and its predecessors in every season since its debut in 1909. Club statistics and records. Javier Zanetti holds the records for both total appearances and Serie A appearances for Inter, with 858 official games played in total and 618 in Serie A. Giuseppe Meazza is Inter's all-time top goalscorer, with 284 goals in 408 games. Behind him, in second place, is Alessandro Altobelli with 209 goals in 466 games, and Roberto Boninsegna in third place, with 171 goals over 281 games. Helenio Herrera had the longest reign as Inter coach, with nine years (eight consecutive) in charge, and is the most successful coach in Inter history with three "Scudetti", two European Cups, and two Intercontinental Cup wins. José Mourinho, who was appointed on 2 June 2008, completed his first season in Italy by winning the Serie A title and the Supercoppa Italiana; in his second season he won the first "treble" in Italian history: the Serie A, Coppa Italia and the UEFA Champions League. Players. First-team squad. Out on loan. Youth sector. Inter Primavera players that received a first-team squad call-up. Retired numbers. 3 – Giacinto Facchetti, left back, played for Inter 1960–1978 "(posthumous honour)". The number was retired on 8 September 2006, four days after Facchetti had died from cancer aged 64. The last player to wear the number 3 shirt was Argentinian center back Nicolás Burdisso, who took on the number 16 shirt for the rest of the season. 4 – Javier Zanetti, defensive midfielder, played 858 games for Inter between 1995 and his retirement in the summer of 2014. In June 2014, club chairman Erick Thohir confirmed that Zanetti's number 4 was to be retired out of respect. Chairmen and managers. Chairmen history. Below is a list of Inter chairmen from 1908 until the present day. Managerial history. Below is a list of Inter coaches from 1909 until the present day. Corporate. FC Internazionale Milano S.p.A. was described as one of the financial "black-holes" among the Italian clubs, which was heavily dependent on the financial contribution from the owner Massimo Moratti. In June 2006, the shirt sponsor and the minority shareholder of the club, Pirelli, sold 15.26% shares of the club to Moratti family, for €13.5 million. The tyre manufacturer retained 4.2%. However, due to several capital increases of Inter, such as a reversed merger with an intermediate holding company, Inter Capital S.r.l. in 2006, which held 89% shares of Inter and €70 million capitals at that time, or issues new shares for €70.8 million in June 2007, €99.9 million in December 2007, €86.6 million in 2008, €70 million in 2009, €40 million in 2010 and 2011, €35 million in 2012 or allowing Thoir subscribed €75 million new shares of Inter in 2013, Pirelli became the third largest shareholders of just 0.5%, . Inter had yet another recapitalization that was reserved for Suning Holdings Group in 2016. In the prospectus of Pirelli's second IPO in 2017, the company also revealed that the value of the remaining shares of Inter that was owned by Pirelli, was write-off to zero in 2016 financial year. Inter also received direct capital contribution from the shareholders to cover loss which was excluded from issuing shares in the past. () Right before the takeover of Thohir, the consolidated balance sheets of "Internazionale Holding S.r.l." showed the whole companies group had a bank debt of €157 million, including the bank debt of a subsidiary "Inter Brand Srl", as well as the club itself, to Istituto per il Credito Sportivo (ICS), for €15.674 million on the balance sheet at end of 2012–13 financial year. In 2006 Inter sold its brand to the new subsidiary, "Inter Brand S.r.l.", a special purpose entity with a shares capital of €40 million, for €158 million (the deal made Internazionale make a net loss of just €31 million in a separate financial statement). At the same time the subsidiary secured a €120 million loan from Banca Antonveneta, which would be repaid in installments until 30 June 2016; "La Repubblica" described the deal as "doping". In September 2011 Inter secured a loan from ICS by factoring the sponsorship of Pirelli of 2012–13 and 2013–14 season, for €24.8 million, in an interest rate of 3 months Euribor + 1.95% spread. In June 2014 new Inter Group secured €230 million loan from Goldman Sachs and UniCredit at a new interest rate of 3 months Euribor + 5.5% spread, as well as setting up a new subsidiary to be the debt carrier: "Inter Media and Communication S.r.l.". €200 million of which would be utilized in debt refinancing of the group. The €230million loan, €1 million (plus interests) would be due on 30 June 2015, €45 million (plus interests) would be repaid in 15 installments from 30 September 2015 to 31 March 2019, as well as €184 million (plus interests) would be due on 30 June 2019. In ownership side, the Hong Kong-based International Sports Capital HK Limited, had pledged the shares of Italy-based International Sports Capital S.p.A. (the direct holding company of Inter) to CPPIB Credit Investments for €170 million in 2015, at an interest rate of 8% p.a (due March 2018) to 15% p.a. (due March 2020). ISC repaid the notes on 1 July 2016 after they sold part of the shares of Inter to Suning Holdings Group. However, in the late 2016 the shares of ISC S.p.A. was pledged again by ISC HK to private equity funds of OCP Asia for US$80 million. In December 2017, the club also refinanced its debt of €300 million, by issuing corporate bond to the market, via Goldman Sachs as the bookkeeper, for an interest rate of 4.875% p.a. Considering revenue alone, Inter surpassed city rivals in Deloitte Football Money League for the first time, in the 2008–2009 season, to rank in ninth place, one place behind Juventus in eighth place, with Milan in tenth place. In the 2009–10 season, Inter remained in ninth place, surpassing Juventus (10th) but Milan re-took the leading role as the seventh. Inter became the eighth in 2010–2011, but was still one place behind Milan. Since 2011, Inter fell to 11th in 2011–12, 15th in 2012–13, 17th in 2013–14, 19th in 2014–15 and 2015–16 season. In 2016–17 season, Inter was ranked 15th in the "Money League". In 2010 "Football Money League" (2008–09 season), the normalized revenue of €196.5 million were divided up between matchday (14%, €28.2 million), broadcasting (59%, €115.7 million, +7%, +€8 million) and commercial (27%, €52.6 million, +43%). Kit sponsors Nike and Pirelli contributed €18.1 million and €9.3 million respectively to commercial revenues, while broadcasting revenues were boosted €1.6 million (6%) by Champions League distribution. Deloitte expressed the idea that issues in Italian football, particularly matchday revenue issues were holding Inter back compared to other European giants, and developing their own stadia would result in Serie A clubs being more competitive on the world stage. In 2009–10 season the revenue of Inter was boosted by the sales of Ibrahimović, the treble and the release clause of coach José Mourinho. According to the normalized figures by Deloitte in their 2011 "Football Money League", in 2009–10 season, the revenue had increased €28.3 million (14%) to €224.8 million. The ratio of matchday, broadcasting and commercial in the adjusted figures was 17%:62%:21%. For the 2010–11 season, Serie A clubs started negotiating club TV rights collectively rather than individually. This was predicted to result in lower broadcasting revenues for big clubs such as Juventus and Inter, with smaller clubs gaining from the loss. Eventually the result included an extraordinary income of €13 million from RAI. In 2012 "Football Money League" (2010–11 season), the normalized revenue was €211.4 million. The ratio of matchday, broadcasting and commercial in the adjusted figures was 16%:58%:26%. However, combining revenue and cost, in the 2006–07 season they had a net loss of €206 million (€112 million extraordinary basis, due to the abolition of non-standard accounting practice of the special amortization fund), followed by a net loss of €148 million in the 2007–08 season, a net loss of €154 million in 2008–09 season, a net loss of €69 million in the 2009–10 season, a net loss of €87 million in the 2010–11 season, a net loss of €77 million in the 2011–12 season, a net loss of €80 million in 2012–13 season and a net profit of €33 million in 2013–14 season, due to special income from the establishment of subsidiary Inter Media and Communication. All aforementioned figures were in separate financial statement. Figures from consolidated financial statement were announced since 2014–15 season, which were net losses of €140.4 million (2014–15), €59.6 million (2015–16 season, before 2017 restatement) and €24.6 million (2016–17). In 2015 Inter and Roma were the only two Italian clubs that were sanctioned by the UEFA due to their breaking of UEFA Financial Fair Play Regulations, which was followed by AC Milan which was once barred from returning to European competition in 2018. As a probation to avoid further sanction, Inter agreed to have a three-year aggregate break-even from 2015 to 2018, with the 2015–16 season being allowed to have a net loss of a maximum of €30 million, followed by break-even in the 2016–17 season and onwards. Inter was also fined €6 million plus an additional €14 million in probation. Inter also made a financial trick in the transfer market in mid-2015, in which Stevan Jovetić and Miranda were signed by Inter on temporary deals plus an obligation to sign outright in 2017, making their cost less in the loan period. Moreover, despite heavily investing in new signings, namely Geoffrey Kondogbia and Ivan Perišić that potentially increased the cost in amortization, Inter also sold Mateo Kovačić for €29 million, making a windfall profit. In November 2018, documents from Football Leaks further revealed that the loan signings such as Xherdan Shaqiri in January 2015, was in fact had inevitable conditions to trigger the outright purchase. On 21 April 2017, Inter announced that their net loss (FFP adjusted) of 2015–16 season was within the allowable limit of €30 million. However, on the same day UEFA also announced that the reduction of squad size of Inter in European competitions would not be lifted yet, due to partial fulfilment of the targets in the settlement agreement. Same announcement was made by UEFA in June 2018, based on Inter's 2016–17 season financial result. In February 2020, Inter Milan sued Major League Soccer (MLS) for trademark infringement, claiming that the term "Inter" is synonymous with its club and no one else.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15308

Ian McKellen

Sir Ian Murray McKellen (born 25 May 1939) is an English actor. With a career spanning more than six decades, he is noted for his roles on the screen and stage in genres ranging from Shakespearean dramas and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction. He is regarded as a British cultural icon and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1991. He has received numerous accolades, including a Tony Award, six Olivier Awards, and a Golden Globe Award as well as nominations for two Academy Awards, five BAFTA Awards and five Emmy Awards. McKellen made his stage debut in 1961 at the Belgrade Theatre as a member of their repertory company. In 1965, McKellen made his first West End appearance. In 1969, he was invited to join the Prospect Theatre Company to play the lead parts in Shakespeare's "Richard II" and Marlowe's "Edward II". In the 1970s, McKellen became a stalwart of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre of Great Britain. He has earned five Olivier Awards for his roles in "Pillars of the Community" (1977), "The Alchemist" (1978), "Bent" (1979), "Wild Honey" (1984), and "Richard III" (1995). McKellen made his Broadway debut in "The Promise" (1965). He went on to receive the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his role as Antonio Salieri in "Amadeus" (1980). He was further nominated for "Ian McKellen: Acting Shakespeare" (1984). He returned to Broadway in "Wild Honey" (1986), "Dance of Death" (1990), "No Man's Land" (2013), and "Waiting for Godot" (2013), the latter being a joint production with Patrick Stewart. McKellen achieved worldwide fame for his film roles, including the titular King in "Richard III" (1995), James Whale in "Gods and Monsters" (1998), Magneto in the "X-Men" films, and Gandalf in "The Lord of the Rings" (2001–2003) and "The Hobbit" (2012–2014) trilogies. Other notable film roles include "A Touch of Love" (1969), "Plenty" (1985), "Six Degrees of Separation" (1993), "Restoration" (1995), "Mr. Holmes" (2015), and "The Good Liar" (2019). McKellen came out as gay in 1988, and has since championed LGBT social movements worldwide. He was awarded the Freedom of the City of London in October 2014. McKellen is a co-founder of Stonewall, an LGBT rights lobby group in the United Kingdom, named after the Stonewall riots. He is also patron of LGBT History Month, Pride London, Oxford Pride, GAY-GLOS, LGBT Foundation and FFLAG. Early life and education. McKellen was born on 25 May 1939 in Burnley, Lancashire, the son of Margery Lois (née Sutcliffe) and Denis Murray McKellen. He was their second child, with a sister, Jean, five years his senior. Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, his family moved to Wigan. They lived there until Ian was twelve years old, before relocating to Bolton in 1951 after his father had been promoted. The experience of living through the war as a young child had a lasting impact on him, and he later said that "only after peace resumed ... did I realise that war wasn't normal". When an interviewer remarked that he seemed quite calm in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks, McKellen said: "Well, darling, you forget—I slept under a steel plate until I was four years old". McKellen's father was a civil engineer and lay preacher, and was of Protestant Irish and Scottish descent. Both of McKellen's grandfathers were preachers, and his great-great-grandfather, James McKellen, was a "strict, evangelical Protestant minister" in Ballymena, County Antrim. His home environment was strongly Christian, but non-orthodox. "My upbringing was of low nonconformist Christians who felt that you led the Christian life in part by behaving in a Christian manner to everybody you met". When he was 12, his mother died of breast cancer; his father died when he was 25. After his coming out as gay to his stepmother, Gladys McKellen, who was a Quaker, he said, "Not only was she not fazed, but as a member of a society which declared its indifference to people's sexuality years back, I think she was just glad for my sake that I wasn't lying any more". His great-great-grandfather Robert J. Lowes was an activist and campaigner in the ultimately successful campaign for a Saturday half-holiday in Manchester, the forerunner to the modern five-day work week, thus making Lowes a "grandfather of the modern weekend". McKellen attended Bolton School (Boys' Division), of which he is still a supporter, attending regularly to talk to pupils. McKellen's acting career started at Bolton Little Theatre, of which he is now the patron. An early fascination with the theatre was encouraged by his parents, who took him on a family outing to "Peter Pan" at the Opera House in Manchester when he was three. When he was nine, his main Christmas present was a fold-away wood and bakelite Victorian theatre from Pollocks Toy Theatres, with cardboard scenery and wires to push on the cut-outs of Cinderella and of Laurence Olivier's reenactment of Shakespeare's "Hamlet". His sister took him to his first Shakespeare play, "Twelfth Night", by the amateurs of Wigan's Little Theatre, shortly followed by their "Macbeth" and Wigan High School for Girls' production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream", with music by Mendelssohn, with the role of Bottom played by Jean McKellen, who continued to act, direct, and produce amateur theatre until her death. In 1958, McKellen, at the age of 18, won a scholarship to St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he read English literature. He has since been made an Honorary Fellow of the college. While at Cambridge, McKellen was a member of the Marlowe Society, where he appeared in 23 plays over the course of 3 years. At that young age he was already giving performances that have since become legendary such as his Justice Shallow in "Henry IV" alongside Trevor Nunn and Derek Jacobi (March 1959), "Cymbeline" (as Posthumus, opposite Margaret Drabble as Imogen) and "Doctor Faustus". During this period McKellen had already been directed by Peter Hall, John Barton and Dadie Rylands, all of whom would have a significant impact on McKellen's future career. Career. 1965–1985: National Theatre acclaim. McKellen made his first professional appearance in 1961 at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry, as Roper in "A Man for All Seasons", although an audio recording of the Marlowe Society's "Cymbeline" had gone on commercial sale as part of the Argo Shakespeare series. After four years in regional repertory theatres, McKellen made his first West End appearance, in "A Scent of Flowers", regarded as a "notable success". In 1965 he was a member of Laurence Olivier's National Theatre Company at the Old Vic, which led to roles at the Chichester Festival. With the Prospect Theatre Company, McKellen made his breakthrough performances of Shakespeare's "Richard II" (directed by Richard Cottrell) and Christopher Marlowe's "Edward II" (directed by Toby Robertson) at the Edinburgh Festival in 1969, the latter causing a storm of protest over the enactment of the homosexual Edward's lurid death. One of McKellen's first major roles on television was as the title character in the BBC's 1966 adaptation of "David Copperfield", which achieved 12 million viewers on its initial airings. After some rebroadcasting in the late 60s, the master videotapes for the serial were wiped, and only four scattered episodes (3, 8, 9 and 11) survive as telerecordings, three of which feature McKellen as adult David. McKellen had taken film roles throughout his career—beginning in 1969 with his role of George Matthews in "A Touch of Love", and his first leading role was in 1980 as D. H. Lawrence in "Priest of Love", but it was not until the 1990s that he became more widely recognised in this medium after several roles in blockbuster Hollywood films. In 1969, McKellen starred in three films, Michael Hayes's "The Promise", Clive Donner's epic film "Alfred the Great", and Waris Hussein's "A Touch of Love" (1969). In the 1970s, McKellen became a well-known figure in British theatre, performing frequently at the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre, where he played several leading Shakespearean roles. From 1973 to 1974, McKellen toured the United Kingdom and Brooklyn Academy of Music portraying Lady Wishfort's Footman, Kruschov, and Edgar in the William Congreve comedy "The Way of the World", Anton Chekov's comedic three-act play "The Wood Demon" and William Shakespeare tragedy "King Lear". The following year, he starred in Shakespeare's "King John", George Colman's "The Clandestine Marriage", and George Bernard Shaw's "Too True to Be Good". From 1976 to 1977 he portrayed Romeo in the Shakespeare romance "Romeo & Juliet" at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. The following year he played King Leontes in "The Winter's Tale". In 1976, McKellen played the title role in William Shakespeare's "Macbeth" at Stratford in a "gripping ... out of the ordinary" production, with Judi Dench, and Iago in "Othello", in award-winning productions directed by Trevor Nunn. Both of these productions were adapted into television films, also directed by Nunn. From 1978 to 1979 he toured in a double feature production of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night", and Anton Chekov's "Three Sisters" portraying Sir Toby Belch and Andrei, respectively. In 1979, McKellen gained acclaim for his role as Antonio Salieri in the Broadway transfer production of Peter Shaffer's play "Amadeus". It was an immensely popular play produced by the National Theatre originally starring Paul Scofield. The transfer starred McKellen, Tim Curry as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Jane Seymour as Constanze Mozart. "The New York Times" theatre critic Frank Rich wrote of McKellen's performance "In Mr. McKellen's superb performance, Salieri's descent into madness was portrayed in dark notes of almost bone-rattling terror". For his performance, McKellen received the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play. In 1981, McKellen portrayed writer and poet D. H. Lawrence in the Christopher Miles directed biographical film, "Priest of Love". He followed up with Michael Mann's horror film "The Keep" (1983). In 1985, he starred in "Plenty", the film adaptation of the David Hare play of the same name. The film was directed by Fred Schepisi and starred Meryl Streep, Charles Dance, John Gielgud, and Sting. The film spans nearly 20 years from the early 1940s to the 1960s, around an Englishwoman's experiences as a fighter for the French Resistance during World War II when she has a one-night stand with a British intelligence agent. The film received mixed reviews with Roger Ebert of "The Chicago Sun-Times" praising the film's ensemble cast writing, "The performances in the movie supply one brilliant solo after another; most of the big moments come as characters dominate the scenes they are in". 1986–2000: Established actor. In 1986, he returned to Broadway in the revival of Anton Chekhov's first play "Wild Honey" alongside Kim Cattrall and Kate Burton. The play concerned a local Russian schoolteacher who struggles to remain faithful to his wife, despite the attention of three other women. McKellen received mixed reviews from critics in particular Frank Rich of "The New York Times" who praised him for his "bravura and athletically graceful technique that provides everything except, perhaps, the thing that matters most—sustained laughter". He later wrote, "Mr. McKellen finds himself in the peculiar predicament of the star who strains to carry a frail supporting cast". In 1989 he played Iago in production of "Othello" by the Royal Shakespeare Company. McKellen starred in the British drama "Scandal" (1989) a fictionalised account of the Profumo affair that rocked the government of British prime minister Harold Macmillan. McKellen portrayed John Profumo. The film starred Joanne Whalley, and John Hurt. The film premiered at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival and competed for the Palme d'Or. From 1990 to 1992, he acted in a world tour of a lauded revival of "Richard III", playing the title character. The production played at the Brooklyn Academy of Music for two weeks before continuing its tour where Frank Rich of "New York Times" was able to review it. In his piece, he praised McKellen's performance writing, "Mr McKellen's highly sophisticated sense of theatre and fun drives him to reveal the secrets of how he pulls his victims' strings whether he is addressing the audience in a soliloquy or not". For his performance he received the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor. In 1992, he acted in Pam Gems's revival of Chekov's "Uncle Vanya" at the Royal National Theatre alongside Antony Sher, and Janet McTeer. In 1993, he starred in the film "Six Degrees of Separation" based on the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award nominated play of the same name. McKellen starred alongside Will Smith, Donald Sutherland and Stockard Channing. The film was a critical success. That same year, he also appeared in the western "The Ballad of Little Jo" opposite Bob Hoskins and the action comedy "Last Action Hero" starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. The following year, he appeared in the superhero film "The Shadow" with Alec Baldwin and the James L. Brooks directed comedy "I'll Do Anything" starring Nick Nolte. In 1995, McKellen made his screenwriting debut with "Richard III", an ambitious adaptation of William Shakespeare's play of the same name, directed by Richard Loncraine. The film reimagines the play's story and characters to a setting based on 1930s Britain, with Richard depicted as a fascist plotting to usurp the throne. McKellen stars in the title role alongside an ensemble cast including Annette Bening, Robert Downey Jr., Jim Broadbent, Kristen Scott Thomas, Nigel Hawthorne and Dame Maggie Smith. As executive producer he returned his £50,000 fee to complete the filming of the final battle. In his review of the film, "The Washington Post" film critic Hal Hinson called McKellen's performance a "lethally flamboyant incarnation" and said his "florid mastery ... dominates everything". Film critic Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" praised McKellen's adaptation and his performance in his four star review writing, "McKellen has a deep sympathy for the playwright ... Here he brings to Shakespeare's most tortured villain a malevolence we are moved to pity. No man should be so evil, and know it. Hitler and others were more evil, but denied out to themselves. There is no escape for Richard. He is one of the first self-aware characters in the theatre, and for that distinction he must pay the price". His performance in the title role garnered BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor and won the European Film Award for Best Actor. His screenplay was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. That same year, he appeared in the historical drama "Restoration" (1995) also starring Downey Jr., as well as Meg Ryan, Hugh Grant, and David Thewlis. He also appeared in the British romantic comedy "Jack and Sarah" (1995) starring Richard E. Grant, Samantha Mathis, and Judi Dench. In 1993, he appeared in minor roles in the television miniseries "Tales of the City", based on the novel by his friend Armistead Maupin. Later that year, McKellen appeared in the HBO television film "And the Band Played On" based on the acclaimed novel of the same name about the discovery of HIV. For his performance as gay rights activist Bill Kraus, McKellen received the CableACE Award for Supporting Actor in a Movie or Miniseries and was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie. From 1993 to 1997 McKellen toured in a one-man show entitled, "A Knights Out", about coming out as a gay man. Laurie Winer from "The Los Angeles Times" wrote, "Even if he is preaching to the converted, McKellen makes us aware of the vast and powerful intolerance outside the comfortable walls of the theatre. Endowed with a rare technique, he is a natural storyteller, an admirable human being and a hands-on activist". From 1997 to 1998, he starred as Dr. Tomas Stockmann in a revival of Henrik Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People". Later that year he played Garry Essendine in the Noël Coward comedy "Present Laughter" at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. In 1998, he appeared in the modestly acclaimed psychological thriller "Apt Pupil", which was directed by Bryan Singer and based on a story by Stephen King. McKellen portrayed a fugitive Nazi officer living under a false name in the US who is befriended by a curious teenager (Brad Renfro) who threatens to expose him unless he tells his story in detail. That same year, he played James Whale, the director of "Frankenstein" in the Bill Condon directed period drama "Gods and Monsters", a role for which he was subsequently nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, losing it to Roberto Benigni in "Life is Beautiful" (1998). In 1995, he appeared in the BBC television comedy film "Cold Comfort Farm" starring Kate Beckinsale, Rufus Sewell, and Stephen Fry. The following year he starred as Tsar Nicholas II in the HBO made-for-television movie "" (1996) starring Alan Rickman as Rasputin. For his performance, McKellen earned a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie nomination and received a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film win. McKellen appeared as Mr Creakle in the BBC series "David Copperfield" (1999) based on the Charles Dickens classic novel. The miniseries starred a pre-"Harry Potter" Daniel Radcliffe, Bob Hoskins, and Dame Maggie Smith. 2000–2011: International stardom. In 1999, McKellen was cast, again under the direction of Bryan Singer, to play the comic book supervillain Magneto in the 2000 film "X-Men" and its sequels "X2: X-Men United" (2003) and ' (2006). He later reprised his role of Magneto in 2014's ', sharing the role with Michael Fassbender, who played a younger version of the character in 2011's "". While filming the first "X-Men" film in 1999, McKellen was cast as the wizard Gandalf in Peter Jackson's film trilogy adaptation of "The Lord of the Rings" (consisting of ', ', and ""), released between 2001 and 2003. He won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture for his work in "The Fellowship of the Ring" and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the same role. He provided the voice of Gandalf for several video game adaptations of the "Lord of the Rings" films. McKellen returned to the Broadway stage in 2001 in a August Strindberg play "The Dance of Death" alongside Helen Mirren, and David Strathairn at the Broadhurst Theatre. "The New York Times" Theatre critic Ben Brantley praised McKellen's performance writing, "[McKellen] returns to Broadway to serve up an Elysian concoction we get to sample too little these days: a mixture of heroic stage presence, actorly intelligence, and rarefied theatrical technique". McKellen toured with the production at the Lyric Theatre in London's West End and to the Sydney Art's Festival in Australia. On 16 March 2002, he hosted "Saturday Night Live". In 2003, McKellen made a guest appearance as himself on the American cartoon show "The Simpsons" in a special British-themed episode entitled "The Regina Monologues", along with the then UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and author J. K. Rowling. In April and May 2005, he played the role of Mel Hutchwright in Granada Television's long-running British soap opera, "Coronation Street", fulfilling a lifelong ambition. He narrated Richard Bell's film "Eighteen" as a grandfather who leaves his World War II memoirs on audio-cassette for his teenage grandson. McKellen has appeared in limited release films, such as "Emile" (which was shot in three weeks following the "X2" shoot), "Neverwas" and "Asylum". In 2006, He appeared as Sir Leigh Teabing in "The Da Vinci Code" opposite Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon. During a 17 May 2006 interview on "The Today Show" with the "Da Vinci Code" cast and director Ron Howard, Matt Lauer posed a question to the group about how they would have felt if the film had borne a prominent disclaimer that it is a work of fiction, as some religious groups wanted. McKellen responded, "I've often thought the Bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying 'This is fiction'. I mean, walking on water? It takes ... an act of faith. And I have faith in this movie—not that it's true, not that it's factual, but that it's a jolly good story". He continued, "And I think audiences are clever enough and bright enough to separate out fact and fiction, and discuss the thing when they've seen it". McKellen appeared in the 2006 BBC series of Ricky Gervais's comedy series "Extras", where he played himself directing Gervais's character Andy Millman in a play about gay lovers. McKellen received a 2007 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor – Comedy Series nomination for his performance. In 2007, McKellen narrated the romantic fantasy adventure film "Stardust" starring Charlie Cox and Claire Danes, which was a critical and financial success. That same year, he lent his voice to the armored bear Iorek Byrnison in the Chris Weitz-directed fantasy film "The Golden Compass" based on the acclaimed Philip Pullman novel "Northern Lights" and starred Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig. The film received mixed reviews but was a financial success. In 2007, he returned to the Royal Shakespeare Company, in productions of "King Lear" and "The Seagull", both directed by Trevor Nunn. In 2009 he portrayed Number Two in "The Prisoner", a remake of the 1967 cult series "The Prisoner". In 2009, he appeared in a very popular revival of "Waiting for Godot" at London's Haymarket Theatre, directed by Sean Mathias, and playing opposite Patrick Stewart. From 2013 to 2014, McKellen and Stewart starred in a double production of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" and Harold Pinter's "No Man's Land" on Broadway at the Cort Theatre. "Variety" theatre critic Marilyn Stasio praised the dual production writing, "McKellen and Stewart find plenty of consoling comedy in two masterpieces of existential despair". In both productions of Stasio claims, "the two thespians play the parts they were meant to play". He is Patron of English Touring Theatre and also President and Patron of the Little Theatre Guild of Great Britain, an association of amateur theatre organisations throughout the UK. In late August 2012, he took part in the opening ceremony of the London Paralympics, portraying Prospero from "The Tempest". 2012–present: Career expansion. McKellen reprised the role of Gandalf on screen in Peter Jackson's three-part film adaptation of "The Hobbit" starting with ' (2012), followed by ' (2013), and finally ' (2014). Despite the series receiving mixed reviews, it emerged as a financial success. McKellen also reprised his role as Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto in James Mangold's "The Wolverine" (2013), and Singer's ' (2014). In November 2013, McKellen appeared in the "Doctor Who" 50th anniversary comedy homage "The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot". From 2013 to 2016, McKellen co-starred in the ITV sitcom "Vicious" as Freddie Thornhill, alongside Derek Jacobi. The series revolves around an elderly gay couple who have been together for 50 years. The show's original title was "Vicious Old Queens". There are ongoing jokes about McKellen's career as a relatively unsuccessful character actor who owns a tux because he stole it after doing a guest spot on "Downton Abbey" and that he holds the title of "10th Most Popular ‘Doctor Who’ Villain". Liz Shannon Miller of "IndieWire" noted while the concept seemed, "weird as hell", that "Once you come to accept McKellen and Jacobi in a multi-camera format, there is a lot to respect about their performances; specifically, the way that those decades of classical training adapt themselves to the sitcom world. Much has been written before about how the tradition of the multi-cam, filmed in front of a studio audience, relates to theatre, and McKellen and Jacobi know how to play to a live crowd". In 2015, McKellen reunited with director Bill Condon playing an elderly Sherlock Holmes in the mystery film "Mr. Holmes" alongside Laura Linney. In the film based on the novel "A Slight Trick of the Mind" (2005), Holmes now 93, struggles to recall the details of his final case because his mind is slowly deteriorating. The film premiered at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival with McKellen receiving acclaim for his performance. "Rolling Stone" film critic Peter Travers praised his performance writing, "Don't think you can take another Hollywood version of Sherlock Holmes? Snap out of it. Apologies to Robert Downey Jr. and Benedict Cumberbatch, but what Ian McKellen does with Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective in Mr Holmes is nothing short of magnificent ... Director Bill Condon, who teamed superbly with McKellen on the Oscar-winning Gods and Monsters, brings us a riveting character study of a lion not going gentle into winter". In October 2015, McKellen appeared as Norman to Anthony Hopkins's Sir in a BBC Two production of Ronald Harwood's "The Dresser", alongside Edward Fox, Vanessa Kirby, and Emily Watson. Television critic Tim Goodman of "The Hollywood Reporter" praised the film and the central performances writing, "there’s no escaping that Hopkins and McKellen are the central figures here, giving wonderfully nuanced performances, onscreen together for their first time in their acclaimed careers". For his performance McKellen received a British Academy Television Award nomination for his performance. In 2017, McKellen portrayed in a supporting role as Cogsworth (originally voiced by David Ogden Stiers in the 1991 animated film) in the live-action adaptation of Disney's "Beauty and the Beast", directed by Bill Condon (which marked the third collaboration between Condon and McKellen, after "Gods and Monsters" and "Mr. Holmes") and co-starred alongside Emma Watson and Dan Stevens. The film was released to positive reviews and grossed $1.2billion worldwide, making it the highest-grossing live-action musical film, the second highest-grossing film of 2017, and the 17th highest-grossing film of all time. In 2017, McKellen appeared in the documentary "McKellen: Playing the Part", directed by director Joe Stephenson. The documentary explores McKellen's life and career as an actor. In October 2017, McKellen played King Lear at the Chichester Festival Theatre, a role which he said was likely to be his "last big Shakespearean part". He performed the play at the Duke of York's Theatre in London's West End during the summer of 2018. To celebrate his 80th birthday, in 2019 McKellen performed in a one-man stage show titled "" celebrating the various performances throughout his career. The show toured across the UK and Ireland (raising money for each venue and organisation's charity) before a West End run at the Harold Pinter Theatre and was performed for one night only on Broadway at the Hudson Theatre. The following year, he appeared in Kenneth Branagh's historical drama "All is True" (2018) portraying Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, opposite Branagh and Judi Dench. In 2019, he reunited with Condon for a fourth time in the mystery thriller "The Good Liar" opposite Helen Mirren, who received praise for their onscreen chemistry. That same year, he appeared as in the movie musical adaptation of "Cats" directed by Tom Hooper. The film featured performances from Jennifer Hudson, James Corden, Rebel Wilson, Idris Elba, and Judi Dench. The film was widely panned for its poor visual effects, editing, performances, screenplay, and was a box office disaster. In 2021, he played the title role in an age-blind production of "Hamlet" (having previously played the part in a UK and European tour in 1971), followed by the role of Firs in Chekov's "The Cherry Orchard" at the Theatre Royal, Windsor. In 2023 he is set to star in period thriller "The Critic" directed by Anand Tucker. The film is written by Patrick Marber adapted off the 2015 novel "Curtain Call" by Anthony Quinn. The film will premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. Personal life. McKellen and his first partner, Brian Taylor, a history teacher from Bolton, began their relationship in 1964. Their relationship lasted for eight years, ending in 1972. They lived in Earls Terrace, Kensington, London, where McKellen continued to pursue his career as an actor. In 1978 he met his second partner, Sean Mathias, at the Edinburgh Festival. This relationship lasted until 1988, and according to Mathias, it was tempestuous, with conflicts over McKellen's success in acting versus Mathias's somewhat less-successful career. The two remained friends, with Mathias later directing McKellen in "Waiting for Godot" at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in 2009. The pair entered into a business partnership with Evgeny Lebedev, purchasing the lease of The Grapes public house in Narrow Street. As of 2005, McKellen had been living in Narrow Street, Limehouse, for more than 25 years, more than a decade of which had been spent in a five-storey Victorian conversion. McKellen is an atheist. In the late 1980s, he lost his appetite for every kind of meat but fish, and has since followed a mainly pescetarian diet. In 2001, Ian McKellen received the Artist Citizen of the World Award (France). McKellen has a tattoo of the Elvish number nine, written using J. R. R. Tolkien's constructed script of Tengwar, on his shoulder in reference to his involvement in the "Lord of the Rings" and the fact that his character was one of the original nine companions of the Fellowship of the Ring. All but one of the other actors of "The Fellowship" (Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Orlando Bloom, Billy Boyd, Sean Bean, Dominic Monaghan and Viggo Mortensen) have the same tattoo (John Rhys-Davies did not get the tattoo, but his stunt double Brett Beattie did). McKellen was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2006. In 2012, he stated on his blog that "There is no cause for alarm. I am examined regularly and the cancer is contained. I've not needed any treatment". McKellen became an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church in early 2013 in order to preside over the marriage of his friend and "X-Men" co-star Patrick Stewart to the singer Sunny Ozell. McKellen was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters by Cambridge University on 18 June 2014. He was made a Freeman of the City of London on Thursday 30 October 2014. The ceremony took place at Guildhall in London. He was nominated by London's Lord Mayor Fiona Woolf, who said he was an "exceptional actor" and "tireless campaigner for equality". He is also an Emeritus Fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford. Activism. LGBT rights. While McKellen had made his sexual orientation known to fellow actors early on in his stage career, it was not until 1988 that he came out to the general public while appearing on the BBC Radio programme "Third Ear" hosted by conservative journalist Peregrine Worsthorne. The context that prompted McKellen's decision, overriding any concerns about a possible negative effect on his career, was that the controversial Section 28 of the Local Government Bill, known simply as Section 28, was then under consideration in the British Parliament. Section 28 proposed prohibiting local authorities from promoting homosexuality "... as a kind of pretended family relationship". McKellen has stated that he was influenced in his decision by the advice and support of his friends, among them noted gay author Armistead Maupin. In a 1998 interview that discusses the 29th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, McKellen commented, I have many regrets about not having come out earlier, but one of them might be that I didn't engage myself in the politicking. He has said of this period: My own participating in that campaign was a focus for people [to] take comfort that if Ian McKellen was on board for this, perhaps it would be all right for other people to be as well, gay and straight. Section 28 was, however, enacted and remained on the statute books until 2000 in Scotland and 2003 in England and Wales. Section 28 never applied in Northern Ireland. In 2003, during an appearance on "Have I Got News For You", McKellen claimed when he visited Michael Howard, then Environment Secretary (responsible for local government), in 1988 to lobby against Section 28, Howard refused to change his position but did ask him to leave an autograph for his children. McKellen agreed, but wrote, "Fuck off, I'm gay". McKellen described Howard's junior ministers, Conservatives David Wilshire and Jill Knight, who were the architects of Section 28, as the 'ugly sisters' of a political pantomime. McKellen has continued to be very active in LGBT rights efforts. In a statement on his website regarding his activism, the actor commented: McKellen is a co-founder of Stonewall, an LGBT rights lobby group in the United Kingdom, named after the Stonewall riots. McKellen is also patron of LGBT History Month, Pride London, Oxford Pride, GAY-GLOS, LGBT Foundation and FFLAG where he appears in their video "Parents Talking". In 1994, at the closing ceremony of the Gay Games, he briefly took the stage to address the crowd, saying, "I'm Sir Ian McKellen, but you can call me Serena": This nickname, given to him by Stephen Fry, had been circulating within the gay community since McKellen's knighthood was conferred. In 2002, he was the Celebrity Grand Marshal of the San Francisco Pride Parade and he attended the Academy Awards with his then-boyfriend, New Zealander Nick Cuthell. In 2006, McKellen spoke at the pre-launch of the 2007 LGBT History Month in the UK, lending his support to the organisation and its founder, Sue Sanders. In 2007, he became a patron of The Albert Kennedy Trust, an organisation that provides support to young, homeless and troubled LGBT people. In 2006, he became a patron of Oxford Pride, stating:I send my love to all members of Oxford Pride, their sponsors and supporters, of which I am proud to be one ... Onlookers can be impressed by our confidence and determination to be ourselves and gay people, of whatever age, can be comforted by the occasion to take the first steps towards coming out and leaving the closet forever behind. McKellen has taken his activism internationally, and caused a major stir in Singapore, where he was invited to do an interview on a morning show and shocked the interviewer by asking if they could recommend him a gay bar; the programme immediately ended. In December 2008, he was named in "Out" annual Out 100 list. In 2010, McKellen extended his support for Liverpool's Homotopia festival in which a group of gay and lesbian Merseyside teenagers helped to produce an anti-homophobia campaign pack for schools and youth centres across the city. In May 2011, he called Sergey Sobyanin, Moscow's mayor, a "coward" for refusing to allow gay parades in the city. In 2014, he was named in the top 10 on the World Pride Power list. Charity work. In April 2010, along with actors Brian Cox and Eleanor Bron, McKellen appeared in a series of TV advertisements to support Age UK, the charity recently formed from the merger of Age Concern and Help the Aged. All three actors gave their time free of charge. A cricket fan since childhood, McKellen umpired in March 2011 for a charity cricket match in New Zealand to support earthquake victims of the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake. McKellen is an honorary board member for the New York- and Washington, D.C.-based organization Only Make Believe. Only Make Believe creates and performs interactive plays in children's hospitals and care facilities. He was honoured by the organisation in 2012 and hosted their annual Make Believe on Broadway Gala in November 2013. He garnered publicity for the organisation by stripping down to his Lord of the Rings underwear on stage. McKellen also has a history of supporting individual theatres. While in New Zealand filming "The Hobbit" in 2012, he announced a special New Zealand tour "Shakespeare, Tolkien and You!", with proceeds going to help save the Isaac Theatre Royal, which suffered extensive damage during the 2011 Christchurch earthquake. McKellen said he opted to help save the building as it was the last theatre he played in New Zealand ("Waiting for Godot" in 2010) and the locals' love for it made it a place worth supporting. In July 2017, he performed a new one-man show for a week at Park Theatre (London), donating the proceeds to the theatre. Together with a number of his "Lord of the Rings" co-stars (plus writer Philippa Boyens and director Peter Jackson), on 1 June 2020 McKellen joined Josh Gad's YouTube series "Reunited Apart" which reunites the cast of popular movies through video-conferencing, and promotes donations to non-profit charities. Other work. A friend of Ian Charleson and an admirer of his work, McKellen contributed an entire chapter to "For Ian Charleson: A Tribute". A recording of McKellen's voice is heard before performances at the Royal Festival Hall, reminding patrons to ensure their mobile phones and watch alarms are switched off and to keep coughing to a minimum. He also took part in the 2012 Summer Paralympics opening ceremony in London as Prospero from Shakespeare's "The Tempest". Accolades and honours. McKellen has received two Academy Award nominations for his performances in "Gods and Monsters" (1999), and ' (2001). He has also received 5 Primetime Emmy Award nominations. McKellen has received two Tony Award nominations winning for Best Actor in a Play for his performance in "Amadeus" in 1981. He has also received 12 Laurence Olivier Awards (Olivier Awards) nominations winning 6 awards for his performances in "Pillars of the Community" (1977), "The Alchemist" (1978), "Bent" (1979), "Wild Honey" (1984), "Richard III" (1991), and ' (2020). He has also received various honorary awards including Pride International Film Festival's Lifetime Achievement & Distinction Award in 2004 and the Olivier Awards's Society Special Award in 2006. He also received Evening Standard Awards The Lebedev Special Award in 2009. The following year he received an Empire Award's Empire Icon Award In 2017 he received the Honorary Award from the Istanbul International Film Festival. BBC stated how his "performances have guaranteed him a place in the canon of English stage and film actors". McKellen was awarded a CBE in 1979, he was knighted in 1991 for services to the performing arts, and made a Companion of Honour for services to drama and to equality in the 2008 New Year Honours.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15524

Ian Botham

Ian Terence Botham, Baron Botham, (born 24 November 1955) is an English cricket commentator, member of the House of Lords, a former cricketer who has been chairman of Durham County Cricket Club since 2017 and charity fundraiser. Hailed as one of the greatest all-rounders in the history of the game, Botham represented England in both Test and One-Day International cricket. He played most of his first-class cricket for Somerset, at other times competing for Worcestershire, Durham and Queensland. He was an aggressive right-handed batsman and, as a right-arm fast-medium bowler, was noted for his swing bowling. He generally fielded close to the wicket, predominantly in the slips. In Test cricket, Botham scored 14 centuries with a highest score of 208, and from 1986 to 1988 held the world record for the most Test wickets until overtaken by fellow all-rounder Sir Richard Hadlee. He took five wickets in an innings 27 times, and 10 wickets in a match four times. In 1980, he became the second player in Test history to complete the "match double" of scoring 100 runs and taking 10 wickets in the same match. On the occasion of England's 1000th Test in August 2018, he was named in the country's greatest Test XI by the ECB. Botham has at times been involved in controversies, including a highly publicised court case involving rival all-rounder Imran Khan and an ongoing dispute with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). These incidents, allied to his on-field success, have attracted media attention, especially from the tabloid press. Botham has used his fame to raise money for research into childhood leukaemia. These efforts have realised millions of pounds for Bloodwise, of which he became president. On 8 August 2009, he was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame. In July 2020, it was announced that Botham would be elevated to the House of Lords and that he would sit as a crossbench peer. Botham has a wide range of sporting interests outside cricket. He was a talented footballer at school and had to choose between cricket and football as a career. He chose cricket but, even so, he played professional football for a few seasons and made eleven appearances in the Football League for Scunthorpe United, becoming the club's president in 2017. He is a keen golfer, and his other pastimes include angling and shooting. He has been awarded both a knighthood and a life peerage. Early life and development as a cricketer (1955–1973). Ian Botham was born in Heswall, Cheshire, to Herbert Leslie ("Les") Botham and Violet Marie, née Collett. His father had been in the Fleet Air Arm for twenty years spanning the Second World War; his mother was a nurse. The family moved to Yeovil before Botham's third birthday after his father got a job as a test engineer at Westland Helicopters. Both his parents played cricket: his father for Westland Sports Club while his mother captained a nursing services team at Sherborne. Botham developed an eagerness for the game before he had started school: he would climb through the fence of the Yeovil Boys' Grammar School to watch the pupils play cricket. At the age of around four, he came home with a cricket ball and asked his mother "Do you know how to hold a ball when you're going to bowl a daisy-cutter?" He subsequently demonstrated the grip and went away to practise bowling it. Botham attended Milford Junior School in the town, and his "love affair" with sport began there. He played both cricket and football for the school's teams at the age of nine, two years earlier than most of his contemporaries. Playing against the older boys forced Botham to learn to hit the ball hard, and improve to their standard. At the same age he went to matches with his father, who played for Westland Sports Club, and if one of the teams was short, he would try to get a match. His father recalled that though he never got to bowl, and rarely got to bat, he received praise for the standard of his fielding. He joined the Boys' Brigade where more sporting opportunities were available. By the time he was nine, he had begun to "haunt" local recreation grounds with his kit always ready, looking to play for any team that was short of players. By the age of twelve he was playing occasional matches for Yeovil Cricket Club's second team. Botham went on to Bucklers Mead Comprehensive School in Yeovil, where he continued to do well in sport and played for the school's cricket and football teams. He became captain of their under-16 cricket team when he was thirteen. His performances for the school drew the attention of Somerset County Cricket Club's youth coach Bill Andrews. Still thirteen, he scored 80 runs on debut for Somerset's under-15s side against Wiltshire, but the team captain Phil Slocombe did not call on him to bowl as he considered him to be a specialist batsman. Two years later, Botham had the opportunity to choose between football and cricket: Bert Head, manager of Crystal Palace offered him apprentice forms with the First Division club. He already had a contract with Somerset and, after discussing the offer with his father, decided to continue to pursue a cricket career, as he believed he was a better cricketer. When informed that he wanted to be a sportsman, Botham's careers teacher said to him: "Fine, everyone wants to play sport, but what are you really going to do?" In 1972, at the age of 16, Botham left school intent on playing cricket for Somerset, who retained his contract but felt he was too young to justify a full professional deal. So, Botham joined the ground staff at Lord's. As a ground boy, he had numerous tasks such as "cleaning the pavilion windows, pushing the roller on matchdays, selling scorecards, pressing electronic buttons on the scoreboards and rushing bowling analyses to the dressing-room". He also received coaching and plenty of time in the practice nets, and was often the first to arrive and the last to leave practice. Despite his time in the nets, Botham was only considered by Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) coach Harry Sharp to have the potential to become a "good, average county cricketer." Botham travelled to play for Somerset under-25s a number of times during the season, but failed to excel in any of the matches. His appearances for the MCC were of a similar vein: he rarely scored more than 50 runs, and was used sparingly as a bowler. In one such match against "Scotland A", the MCC Young Cricketers used eight bowlers in their second innings, but Botham was not among them. The following year, still a ground boy at Lord's, Botham was asked to return to play for Somerset's under-25s more often. Against Glamorgan U-25, he scored 91 runs and took three tail-end wickets, while just under a month later he claimed a further three wickets against Hampshire. He advanced to play for the county's second team in the Minor Counties Championship, and although he was still used sparingly as a bowler, he made some good scores with the bat, most significantly against Cornwall, against whom he aggregated 194 runs in four innings. During winter nets prior to the season, Botham had caught the eye of the former England Test cricketer Tom Cartwright, who coached at Millfield School in addition to playing for Somerset. Cartwright was impressed with Botham's foot-work and physical co-ordination, and helped him learn the basics of swing bowling, something Botham picked up "astonishly quickly" according to Cartwright. Cricket career (1973–1993). Somerset (1973–1975). Botham had done well for the Second XI and he later acknowledged the help and advice he received from Somerset players Peter Robinson, Graham Burgess and Ken Palmer. Botham made his senior debut, aged 17, for Somerset on Sunday, 2 September 1973 when he played in a List A John Player League (JPL) match (38 overs each) against Sussex at the County Ground, Hove. The match was in the same week that his time on the Lord's ground staff was completed. Somerset batted first, and Botham, number seven in the batting order, scored two runs before he was dismissed leg before wicket (lbw) by Mike Buss. Somerset totalled 139 for 9. Sussex won comfortably by six wickets, reaching 141 for four with fifteen deliveries remaining. Botham bowled three overs without success, conceding 22 runs. He did impress, however, by taking a diving catch to dismiss his future England colleague Tony Greig off the bowling of his captain Brian Close. A week later, Botham made a second appearance in the JPL against Surrey at The Oval in the final match of the season. Somerset were well beaten by 68 runs. Botham had his first bowling success when he dismissed Geoff Howarth lbw. He bowled four overs and took one for 14. As in his first match, he scored two batting at number seven, this time being caught and bowled by Intikhab Alam. These were his only two senior appearances in 1973, Somerset finishing 11th in the JPL. In summary, Botham scored four runs, took one wicket for 14 and held one catch. Aged 18, Botham was a regular in the Somerset team from the beginning of the 1974 season and made his first-class début 8–10 May in a County Championship match against Lancashire at the County Ground, Taunton. Viv Richards, from Antigua and Barbuda, made his County Championship début for Somerset in the same match and Lancashire's team included Clive Lloyd, two players who would loom large in Botham's future Test career. Brian Close won the toss and decided to bat first. On day one, Somerset were all out for 285 and Lancashire reached 41 for none. Botham batted at number seven and scored 13 before being caught. Day two was rain-affected and Lancashire advanced to 200 for none. Their innings closed on the final day at 381 for eight. Botham bowled only three overs and his figures were none for 15; he held one catch to dismiss Jack Simmons. Somerset played for the draw and were 104 for two at the end. Botham did not bat again. On 12 June 1974, he played against Hampshire at Taunton in a Benson & Hedges Cup (B&H Cup) quarter-final. Hampshire won the toss and decided to bat. They scored 182 all out with Botham taking two for 33 including the prize wicket of Barry Richards, bowled for 13. Botham was number nine in Somerset's batting order and came in with his team struggling at 113 for 7. Almost immediately, that became 113 for 8 and he had only the tailenders Hallam Moseley and Bob Clapp to support him. He was facing the West Indian fast bowler Andy Roberts who delivered a bouncer which hit him in the mouth. Despite heavy bleeding and the eventual loss of four teeth, Botham refused to leave the field and carried on batting. He hit two sixes and made 45*, enabling Somerset to win by one wicket. He won the Gold Award. Later, he said he should have left the field but was full of praise for Moseley and Clapp. In a County Championship match on 13 July 1974, Botham scored his first half-century in first-class cricket. He made 59 in Somerset's first innings against Middlesex at Taunton, the highest individual score in a low-scoring match which Somerset won by 73 runs. Middlesex's captain was Mike Brearley, who would become a very influential figure in Botham's career. A month later, in a match against Leicestershire at Clarence Park, Weston-super-Mare, Botham achieved his first-ever five wickets in an innings (5wI) with five for 59. He took seven in the match which Somerset won by 179 runs, largely thanks to Close who scored 59 and 114*. Botham showed great promise in 1974, his first full season in which Somerset finished fifth in the County Championship and a close second to Leicestershire in the JPL. They also reached the semi-finals in both the Gillette Cup and the B&H Cup. In 18 first-class appearances, Botham scored 441 runs with a highest of 59, took 30 first-class wickets with a best of five for 59 and held 15 catches. He played in 18 List A matches too, scoring 222 runs with a highest of 45* (his Gold Award innings against Hampshire), took 12 wickets with a best of two for 16 and held four catches. Botham continued to make progress in 1975. Somerset struggled in the County Championship, winning only four of their twenty matches and finished joint 12th. In the JPL, they slumped badly from second to 14th. They reached the quarter-final of the B&H Cup but only the second round of the Gillette Cup. Botham played in 22 first-class and 23 List A matches so it was a busy season for him. In first-class, he scored 584 runs with a highest of 65, one of two half-centuries, and held 18 catches. He took 62 wickets, doubling his 1974 tally, with a best of five for 69, his only 5wI that season. In List A, he scored 232 runs with a highest of 38* and held seven catches. He took 32 wickets with a best of three for 34. Somerset and England (1976). 1976 was a significant season for Botham as he scored over 1,000 runs for the first time, completed his first century and earned international selection by England in two Limited Overs Internationals. Somerset improved in the County Championship to finish seventh, winning seven matches. They were one of five teams tied for first place in the JPL but their run rate was less than that of Kent, who were declared the champions. Somerset lost their opening match in the Gillette Cup and were eliminated at the group stage of the B&H Cup. Botham, though, came on in leaps and bounds. He totalled 1,022 first-class runs in 20 matches with a highest of 167*, his first-ever century and he also scored six half-centuries. With the ball, he took 66 wickets with a best of six for 16. He had four 5wI and, for the first time, ten wickets in a match (10wM). He played in a total of 22 List A matches, including the two for England, scoring 395 runs with a highest of 46. He took 33 wickets with a best of four for 41. In the County Championship match against Sussex at Hove in May, Botham came very close to his maiden century but was dismissed for 97, his highest score to date. The match was drawn. At the end of the month, Somerset played Gloucestershire in a remarkable match at Taunton. Batting first, Somerset scored 333 for seven (innings closed) and then, thanks to six for 25 by Botham, bowled out Gloucestershire for only 79. The follow-on was enforced but Gloucestershire proved a much tougher nut to crack second time around. With Zaheer Abbas scoring 141, they made 372 and left Somerset needing 118 to win. Botham took five for 125 in the second innings for a match analysis of 11 for 150, his maiden 10wM. This match ended the same way as the famous Test at Headingley in 1981 but the boot was on the other foot for Botham here because he was on the team that enforced the follow-on – and lost. Mike Procter and Tony Brown did the damage and bowled Somerset out for 110 in 42 overs, Gloucestershire winning by just eight runs. Botham scored his maiden first-class century at Trent Bridge on Tuesday 3 August 1976 in the County Championship game against Nottinghamshire (Notts) who won the toss and decided to bat first. Derek Randall scored 204* and the Notts innings closed at 364 for 4 (Botham one for 59). Somerset were 52 for one at close of play. On day two, Somerset scored 304 for 8 (innings closed) and Botham, batting at number six, scored 80. At close of play, Notts in their second innings were 107 for four, thus extending their lead to 167 with six wickets standing. On day three, Notts advanced to 240 for nine declared (Botham one for 16), leaving Somerset with a difficult target of 301. At 40 for two and with both their openers gone, Brian Close changed his batting order and summoned Botham to come in at number four. Close himself had gone in at three but he was out soon afterwards for 35. With support from Graham Burgess (78), Botham laid into the Notts bowling and scored an impressive 167 not out. Somerset reached 302 for four in only 65 overs and won by six wickets. Botham's international début for England was on 26 August 1976 in a Limited Overs International (LOI) against the West Indies at the North Marine Road Ground, Scarborough. The series was called the Prudential Trophy and the teams had 55 overs each per innings. Botham, still only 20, was the youngest player. At Scarborough, England captain Alan Knott lost the toss and Clive Lloyd, captaining the West Indies, elected to field first. Botham was number seven in the batting order and came in at 136 for five to join Graham Barlow. He scored only one before he was caught by Roy Fredericks off the bowling of his future "Sky Sports" colleague Michael Holding. England's innings closed at 202 for eight with Barlow 80 not out. West Indies lost Fredericks almost immediately but that brought Viv Richards to the crease and he hit 119 not out, winning the man of the match award, and leading West Indies to victory in only 41 overs by six wickets. Botham had the consolation of taking his first international wicket when he had Lawrence Rowe caught by Mike Hendrick for 10. He bowled only three overs and took some punishment from Richards, his return being one for 26. In the second match at Lord's, Botham was replaced by returning England captain Tony Greig. England lost by 36 runs as Richards, this time with 97, was again the difference between the teams. Having lost the series, England recalled Botham for the final match at Edgbaston on 30–31 August. The match was extended to two days and overs reduced to 32 per side. Tony Greig won the toss and decided to field. England began well and dismissed Fredericks and Richards, for a duck, in only the second over. West Indies were then seven for one but a powerful innings by Clive Lloyd pulled them out of trouble and they reached 223 for nine, innings closed. Botham bowled three very expensive overs, conceding 31 runs, but he did manage to bowl out Michael Holding for his second international wicket. England were never in the hunt and were bowled out for 173, West Indies winning by 50 runs and claiming the series 3–0. Botham again batted at number seven and made a good start, scoring 20 at a run a ball, but he was then caught by Bernard Julien off Fredericks and England were 151 for seven with only Knott and the tailenders left. District cricket in Australia (1976–77). In the winter of 1976–77, after he had made his first two international appearances, Botham played District Cricket in Melbourne, Australia for the University of Melbourne Cricket Club. He was joined by Yorkshire's Graham Stevenson. They were signed for the second half of the season on a sponsorship arranged through the Test and County Cricket Board (TCCB) by Whitbread's Brewery. Five of the competition's 15 rounds were abandoned because of adverse weather. It was apparently on this trip that Botham originally fell out with the former Australian captain Ian Chappell. The cause seems to have been a cricket-related argument in a bar, which may have resulted in Chappell being pushed off his stool (the story is widely sourced but accounts differ). This became a long-running feud and, as late as the 2010–11 Ashes series, there was an altercation between Botham and Chappell in a car park at the Adelaide Oval. Somerset and England (1977). Botham produced a number of good batting and bowling performances for Somerset in 1977 and these impressed the Test selectors who included him in the team for the third Test against Australia at Trent Bridge, starting on 28 July. Having captured 36 first-class wickets through May and June, Botham had something of a purple patch in July which earned him his Test call-up. In the match against Sussex at Hove, which Somerset won by an innings and 37 runs, he took four for 111 and six for 50 for his second 10wM. In Somerset's innings of 448 for eight, he shared a 4th wicket partnership of 174 with Viv Richards. Botham scored 62, Richards 204. He took 22 more wickets, including two 5wI, in the next three County Championship games before his Test debut. In the whole season, playing 17 first-class matches, he took 88 wickets with six 5wI and one 10wM, his second innings return at Hove being his best. His batting was not quite as good as in 1976 as his average was down but he scored 738 runs with a highest of 114, which was his sole century, and five half-centuries. He scored the century in July against Hampshire at Taunton, 114 in Somerset's first innings of 284, and followed it with bowling returns of four for 69 and four for 43, another impressive all-round effort which earned Somerset a win by 152 runs. Somerset had a good season in the County Championship, finishing fourth. They reached the semi-final of the Gillette Cup but, without the injured Botham, were well beaten by eventual winners Middlesex. They were a poor tenth in the JPL and were eliminated from the B&H Cup at the group stage. Botham made his Test début at Trent Bridge on 28 July 1977 in the third Test against Australia. His début was somewhat overshadowed by the return from self-imposed Test exile of Geoffrey Boycott. England went into the match with a 1–0 series lead having won the second Test after the first had been drawn. The series was played against the background of the so-called "Packer Affair" which resulted in the establishment of World Series Cricket in the next Australian season. Because of Tony Greig's involvement, he had been stripped of the England captaincy but remained in the team under new captain Mike Brearley. England had three all-rounders at Trent Bridge with Greig, Geoff Miller and Botham all playing. Australian captain Greg Chappell won the toss and decided to bat first. Australia scored 243 and were all out shortly before the close on day one. Botham, aged 21, made an immediate impact and took five for 74, the highlight being the wicket of Chappell, bowled for just 19. England batted all through day two and into day three as Boycott, in his first Test innings since 1974, and Knott both made centuries. Botham came in at number eight on day three and scored 25 before he was bowled by Max Walker. England were all out not long afterwards for 364, a first innings lead of 121. Botham had no joy in Australia's second innings with none for 60. A century by Rick McCosker enabled Australia to score 309 before they were all out in the evening session on day four. Bob Willis took five for 88. England needed 189 to win and completed the job, by seven wickets, well into the final day with Brearley scoring 81 and Boycott, who batted on all five days, 80 not out. Botham didn't get a second innings. Botham's impressive bowling at Trent Bridge meant he was an automatic choice for the fourth Test at Headingley two weeks later. England won the toss, decided to bat first and went on to win by an innings and 85 runs to secure a winning 3–0 lead in the series and regain The Ashes, which they had lost in 1974–75. The match is famous for Boycott's one hundredth career century, scored on his home county ground and in his second Test since his return to the England fold. Botham was bowled third ball by Ray Bright without scoring. He made amends with the ball by taking five for 21 in only eleven overs, Australia being bowled out for only 103. The follow-on was enforced and Australia this time made 248, but Botham (none for 47) did not take a wicket. He was injured during the second innings when he accidentally trod on the ball and broke a bone in his foot. He was unable to play again in the 1977 season. His promising start as Test player resulted in two awards. He was named Young Cricketer of the Year for 1977 by the Cricket Writers' Club; and was selected as one of the "Wisden Cricketers of the Year" (i.e., for 1977 but announced in the 1978 edition). "Wisden" commented that his 1977 season "was marred only by a week's cricket idleness carrying the drinks at the Prudential matches, and a foot injury which ruined for him the end of the season and probably robbed him of a rare double. He finished with 88 wickets and 738 runs". Importantly, the foot injury was a broken toe sustained when he trod on the ball at Headingley and Botham subsequently needed treatment for it at his local hospital in Taunton. It was while going to one of his appointments that he took a wrong turn and ended up on a children's ward where he learned that some of the children were dying of leukaemia. This incident sparked his charitable crusade on behalf of leukaemia research. Somerset and England (1977–78 to 1979–80). England were in Pakistan from November 1977 to January 1978, playing three Tests and three LOIs. Botham was almost fully recovered from his foot injury but did not play in any of the Tests. He took part in all three LOIs and in some of the first-class matches against club teams. From January to March, England were in New Zealand for a three-match Test series under the captaincy of Geoff Boycott. Botham impressed in a first-class match against Canterbury at Lancaster Park, scoring 126 not out in the second innings against an attack including Richard Hadlee and was selected for the first Test at Basin Reserve. Botham had an indifferent game there and England, twice bowled out by Hadlee, lost by 72 runs. In the next match at Carisbrook against Otago, Botham achieved a 10wM with seven for 58 (his career best return to date) in the second innings, enabling the England XI to win by six wickets. England won the second Test at Lancaster Park by 174 runs after an outstanding all-round performance by Botham who scored 103 and 30 not out and took five for 73 and three for 38. He also held three catches. In the second innings, promoted up the order to get quick runs before an overnight declaration, he was responsible for calling for a risky run that led to the run-out dismissal of acting-captain Geoff Boycott: Botham's own published autobiography alleges that this was deliberately done, on the orders of acting vice-captain Bob Willis, because Boycott was scoring too slowly. The final Test was played at Eden Park and was drawn, the series ending 1–1. New Zealand batted first and totalled 315 with Geoff Howarth scoring 122. Botham took five for 109 in 34 overs. England replied with 429 all out (Clive Radley 158, Botham 53). New Zealand then chose to bat out time and Howarth scored his second century of the match (Botham none for 51). Botham's form in New Zealand cemented his place in the England team. In the 1978 English season, Pakistan and New Zealand both visited to play three Tests each and Botham featured in all six matches. Having scored exactly 100 in the first Test against Pakistan at Edgbaston, England winning by an innings and 57 runs, Botham in the second at Lord's scored 108 and then, after none for 17 in the first innings, achieved his Test and first-class career best return of eight for 34 in the second, England winning by an innings and 120 runs. The third Test was ruined by the weather and England won the series 2–0. Against New Zealand, Botham did little with the bat but his bowling was outstanding. In the second Test he took nine wickets in the match as England won by an innings and then a 10wM in the final match at Lord's with six for 101 and five for 39. England won the series 3–0. Due to his England commitments, Botham appeared infrequently for Somerset in 1978. His best performances for them were a return of seven for 61 against Glamorgan and an innings of 80 against Sussex in the Gillette Cup final at Lord's. This was Somerset's first limited overs final and they lost by five wickets despite Botham's effort. They were involved in a tight contest for the JPL title and were placed second on run rate after tying with Hampshire and Leicestershire on 48 points each. Somerset did quite well in the County Championship, finishing fifth after winning nine matches, and reached the semi-final of the B&H Cup. Botham's first tour of Australia was in 1978–79. England, defending the Ashes they had regained in 1977, played six Tests under Mike Brearley's leadership. Australia had what was effectively "a reserve team" because their leading players were contracted to World Series Cricket for the season. The difference in standard was evident on the first day of the first Test at the Gabba as Botham, Chris Old and Bob Willis bowled them out for only 116 in just 38 overs, England going on to win easily enough by seven wickets. Apart from a surprise defeat in the third Test, England were never troubled and won the series 5–1. Botham's performance in the series was satisfactory but there were no headlines and only modest averages. He took 23 wickets at 24.65 with a best return of four for 42. He scored 291 runs with a highest of 74 at 29.10. He held 11 catches. Botham played for England in the 1979 Cricket World Cup and was a member of their losing team in the final. He was again an infrequent member of the Somerset team because of the World Cup and the Test series against India. It became a memorable season for Somerset as they built on their form in 1978 to win both the Gillette Cup and the JPL, their first-ever senior trophies. Botham played in the Gillette Cup final at Lord's, in which they defeated Northamptonshire by 45 runs, thanks to a century by Viv Richards. They slipped to eighth in the County Championship. In the B&H Cup, however, they were expelled from the competition for bringing the game into disrepute after an unsporting declaration, designed to protect the team's run rate, by team captain Brian Rose. The England v India series in 1979 took place after the World Cup ended and four Tests were played. England won the first at Edgbaston by an innings and 83 runs after opening with a massive total of 633 for five declared. Botham scored 33 and then took two for 86 and five for 70. On the first day of the second Test at Lord's, Botham swept through the Indian batting with five for 35 and a catch off Mike Hendrick to dismiss them for only 96 in 56 overs. Surprisingly, however, India recovered to salvage a draw. In the third Test at Headingley, it was Botham the batsman who did the business, scoring 137 from 152 balls in England's first innings total of 270 (the next highest innings was 31 by Geoff Boycott). The match was ruined by the weather and was drawn. In the final Test at The Oval, England opened with 305 (Botham 38); India replied with 202 (Botham four for 65); and England with 334 for eight declared (Botham run out for a duck) extended their lead to 437 with four sessions remaining. Thanks to a brilliant 221 by Sunil Gavaskar, India came agonisingly close to pulling off a remarkable last day victory but ran out of time on 429 for eight (Botham three for 97), just nine runs short, and so England won the series 1–0 with three draws. The shambolic state of international cricket at the end of the 1970s was illustrated by the panic resulting from a hastily convened settlement between World Series Cricket and the Australian Board of Control. Although they had visited Australia only twelve months earlier to play for the Ashes, England were persuaded to go there again and play another three Tests, but with the Ashes not at stake. As "Wisden" put it, the programme did not have the best interests of cricket at heart, particularly Australian cricket below Test level, which had been "swamped by the accent on Test and one-day internationals, neatly parcelled to present a cricketing package suitable for maximum exploitation on television". The matches were widely perceived to be semi-official only and received "a definite thumbs down". Botham was a member of the England team and played in all three matches which, rightly or wrongly, count towards his Test statistics. England were largely faithful to the players who had toured Australia the previous winter and Derek Underwood was the only World Series player they recalled; they did not recall Alan Knott, for example, while Tony Greig was beyond the pale. Australia recalled Greg Chappell, Dennis Lillee, Rod Marsh and Jeff Thomson, fielding a team that was a mixture of old and new. In the first match, played at the WACA Ground, Botham had match figures of eleven for 176 but to no avail as Australia won by 138 runs. Having excelled with the ball in that match, Botham did so with his bat in the third one, scoring an unbeaten 119 in the second innings of the third. Australia won all three matches of a series best forgotten for all its attendant politics, but Botham had enhanced his reputation as a world-class all-rounder. Jubilee Test, India, February 1980. Botham's third overseas tour was to India in February 1980. It was the fiftieth anniversary of India's entry into Test cricket and so England played a single commemorative Test at the Wankhede Stadium in Bombay. It turned into a personal triumph for Botham who became the first player in Test history to score a century and take ten wickets in the same match. England's wicketkeeper Bob Taylor held ten catches in the match, eight of them off Botham's bowling. India won the toss and decided to bat first but, with Botham taking six for 58, they were all out on day one for 242. England replied with 296, the highlight being Botham's 114 from just 144 balls; he began his innings with England in trouble at 57 for four. This quickly became 58 for five and Botham was joined by England's other match hero Taylor. England's first five batsmen had contributed just 51 to the total. Botham was often unfairly labelled a "big hitter" but in fact his style was very orthodox (i.e., he "played straight") and in this innings he scored 17 fours but, significantly, no sixes. Taylor provided dogged support and their sixth wicket partnership realised 171 runs. When Botham was out near the end of day two, the score was 229 for six and England reached 232 for six at close of play, still ten runs behind. On the third morning, Taylor led England past India's total and, with useful batting performances by the specialist bowlers, England totalled 296 to gain a first innings lead of 54. India's second innings was a disaster, and they lost eight wickets by the close of play on the third day with only Kapil Dev offering any resistance. They were all out early on the fourth day for 149. Botham was the outstanding performer again, taking seven for 48 which gave him match figures of thirteen for 106. Geoffrey Boycott and Graham Gooch scored the necessary runs for England to win by ten wickets with a day to spare. Somerset and England (1980 to 1980–81). Mike Brearley announced his retirement from Test cricket after the Jubilee Test in Bombay and, somewhat surprisingly given his lack of captaincy experience, Botham was appointed to replace him as England's captain for the forthcoming home series against West Indies, who were at the time the world's outstanding team. Botham led England in twelve Tests in 1980 and 1981 but he was unsuccessful, the team achieving no wins, eight draws and four defeats under his leadership. In addition, his form suffered and was eventually dismissed from the post, although he did actually resign just before the selectors were about to fire him. In Botham's defence, nine of his matches as captain were against West Indies, who afterwards won twelve of their next thirteen Tests against England. The other three were all against Australia. In 1980, which was a wet summer, West Indies arguably had the better of all five Test matches, although, with the rain constantly intervening, they were able to win only one of them. Ironically it was the one which they came closest to losing, West Indies winning the first Test by only two wickets, and being at one stage 180/7 chasing a tricky 208. Rain saved England from a probable heavy defeat in the 2nd and 5th Tests: they fared better in between. In the 3rd, England conceded a first-innings lead of 110, but replied strongly in the second innings with a painstakingly slow and defensive 391/7, which would have resulted in a difficult target for the Windies had there been another day to chase it – but the third day had been rained off, and time ran out. In the Fourth Test, England picked up their only first-innings lead of the series – of 105 runs – but collapsed catastrophically in the second, before being saved by a century partnership for the last wicket between Willey (100*) and Willis (24*) to reach a total 201/9, and again the loss of a day and a half to rain left no time for the Windies to chase a potentially tough target above 300. Botham had a poor season as a bowler and, in all first-class cricket, took just 40 wickets at the high average of 34.67 with a best return of only four for 38. He did better as a batsman, scoring 1,149 runs (the second time, after 1976, that he topped a thousand in a season) at 42.55: but this did not translate to form in the Tests. He completed two centuries and six other half-centuries for his county. His highest score in the season was ultimately the highest of his career: 228 for Somerset against Gloucestershire at Taunton in May. He batted for just over three hours, hitting 27 fours and ten sixes. With Gloucestershire batting out time for a draw on the final day, Somerset used all eleven players as bowlers. Apart from an innings of 57 in the first Test, Botham contributed little to England in the series and that innings was the only time he reached 50 in all his twelve Tests as England captain. Somerset came close to retaining their JPL title in 1980 but had to be content with second place, only two points behind Warwickshire. They finished a credible fifth in the County Championship but were eliminated from both the Gillette and B&H Cups in the opening phase. Botham led England on the controversial tour of the West Indies from January to April 1981. The second Test, scheduled to be played at Bourda, was cancelled after the Guyanese government revoking the visa of Robin Jackman because of his playing and coaching links with South Africa. The other four Tests were played and West Indies won the series 2–0 but England were helped by rain in the two drawn matches. Botham took the most wickets for England, but "Wisden" said "his bowling never recovered the full rhythm of a year before". His batting, however, apart from one good LOI performance in the first one-day international "was found wanting in technique, concentration and eventually in confidence". In "Wisden's" view, Botham's loss of form "could be cited as eloquent evidence of the undesirability of saddling a fast bowler and vital all-rounder with the extra burden of captaincy". The closest England came to a victory was in the first ODI, in which England bowled the West Indies out for 127 but, thanks to six wickets from Colin Croft, failed by two runs in the chase which was anchored by Botham's 60: this was, at the time, the lowest ODI total batting first to be successfully defended. Somerset and England (1981). The England captaincy had affected Botham's form as a player and in his last Test as captain, against Australia at Lord's in 1981, he was dismissed for a pair. According to "Wisden" editor Matthew Engel, writing in "ESPNcricinfo", Botham "resigned (a minute before being sacked), his form shot to pieces" after that match. Australia were then leading the series 1–0 after two Tests with four more to be played. Botham was replaced by the returning Mike Brearley, who had been his predecessor until retiring from Test cricket in 1980. Botham continued to play for England under Brearley and achieved the highpoint of his career in the next three Tests as England recovered to win The Ashes. In the third Test at Headingley, Australia opened with 401 for 9 declared, despite good bowling by Botham who took 6 for 95. England responded poorly and were dismissed for 174. Botham was the only batsman to perform at all well and scored 50, which was his first Test half-century since he had been awarded the captaincy thirteen Tests earlier. Having been forced to follow-on, England collapsed again and at 135 for 7 on the afternoon of the fourth day, an innings defeat looked certain. Bookmakers had reportedly been offering odds of 500/1 against an England win after the follow-on was enforced. Botham, himself not long at the wicket, was the sole remaining recognised batsman as he was joined by the fast bowler Graham Dilley, number nine in the batting order, with only Chris Old and Bob Willis to come. With able support from Dilley (56) and Old (29), Botham hit out and by the close of play was 145 not out with Willis hanging on at the other end on 1 not out. England's lead was just 124 but there remained a glimmer of hope. On the final day's play, Botham reached 149 not out before Willis's wicket fell. Australia, with plenty of time remaining, needed 130 to win and were generally expected to get them; but after Botham took the first wicket, Willis took 8 for 43 to dismiss Australia for only 111. England had won by 18 runs; it was only the second time in history that a team following on had won a Test match. Botham's outstanding form continued through the next two Tests. In the fourth at Edgbaston, a low-scoring match left Australia batting last and needing 151 to win. They reached 105 for 5 and were still favourites at that point but, in an inspired spell of bowling, Botham then took five wickets for only one run in 28 balls to give England victory by 29 runs. In the fifth Test at Old Trafford, Botham scored 118 in a partnership of 149 with Chris Tavaré before he was dismissed. He hit six sixes in that innings. England won that match to take a winning 3–1 series lead. The last Test at The Oval was drawn, Botham achieving a 10wM by taking six for 125 and four for 128. He was named Man of the Series after scoring 399 runs, taking 34 wickets and holding 12 catches. Somerset won the Benson & Hedges Cup for the first time in 1981 and did well in the County Championship too, finishing third. They were again runners-up in the JPL, but a long way behind the winners Essex. In the renamed NatWest Trophy (formerly Gillette Cup), Somerset were knocked out in the second round. Botham played in the B&H final at Lord's, in which Somerset defeated Surrey by seven wickets. He took no wickets but provided Viv Richards (132 not out) with good support in the run chase. Botham ended the season with 67 wickets at 25.55, a best return of six for 90 (for Somerset v Sussex) and one 10wM (sixth Test). He scored 925 runs with a highest of 149* (third Test) at 42.04; and held 19 catches. Somerset and England (1981–82 to 1983–84). During this period, Botham played in 25 Tests. There were home series against both India and Pakistan in 1982; and New Zealand in 1983. His overseas tours were to India and Sri Lanka in 1981–82 (he took part in the inaugural Test played by Sri Lanka); to Australia in 1982–83; and to New Zealand and Pakistan in 1983–84. He played for England in the 1983 Cricket World Cup and was a member of their losing team in the semi-final. Botham's return to India was less than triumphant and "Wisden" took him to task for his "ineffectiveness with the ball". Having achieved a match analysis of nine for 133 at Bombay, where England were beaten on a poor pitch, Botham took only eight more wickets, at 65 each, in the last five Tests and "Wisden" said this "was a telling blow to England's chance of levelling the series". 1982 was a good all-round season for Botham, especially as Somerset retained the Benson & Hedges Cup. In 17 first-class matches, he scored 1,241 runs with a highest of 208 against India (this was ultimately his career highest in Test cricket) at a good average of 44.32. He took 66 wickets at the low average of 22.98 with a best return of five for 46. England won their Test series against Pakistan by 2–1 and the one against India 1–0. Botham scored two centuries against India: 128 at Old Trafford and his career high 208 at The Oval. Somerset finished sixth and ninth in the County Championship and the JPL respectively. They reached the quarter-final of the NatWest Trophy and their season highlight was retaining the B&H Cup they won in 1981. In the final at Lord's, Somerset dismissed Nottinghamshire for only 130 (Botham two for 19)and won easily by nine wickets. Botham toured Australia again in 1982–83 with England seeking to retain the Ashes, but Australia won the series 2–1 despite England winning, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), a Test described by "Wisden" as "one of the most exciting Test matches ever played". Botham had a poor series and tour. He played in nine first-class matches and scored only 434 runs at the low average of 24.11 with a highest of 65. He was no better with the ball, taking just 29 wickets for a too-high 35.62 with a best return of four for 43. He did, however, field well and held 17 catches, nearly two a match. In the 1983 English season, Somerset won the NatWest Trophy for the first time, defeating Kent in the Lord's final by 24 runs with Botham as their captain. They were very close to taking the JPL title too but, having tied with Yorkshire on 46 points, they were placed second on run rate. In the County Championship, they won only three matches and finished tenth. They were knocked out of the B&H Cup early. Botham had a good season with the bat, scoring 852 runs in his 14 first-class matches at 40.57 with a highest score of 152 among three centuries. He did less well with the ball: only 22 wickets at the high average of 33.09. New Zealand played a four-match Test series against England after the World Cup and, at the 29th attempt, finally defeated England for the first time in a Test match in England. England won the other three matches convincingly, however, to take the series 3–1. Botham did little with the ball, the same story as in his whole season, but he did score a century (103) in the final Test at Trent Bridge (see photo). In the winter of 1983–84, England toured New Zealand from January to February and Pakistan in March. Apart from one innings at Basin Reserve in the first Test against New Zealand, Botham was a disappointment on this tour, especially as a bowler. He scored 138 in the first Test, sharing in a sixth wicket partnership of 232 with Derek Randall (164), but the match was drawn. It was a poor tour for England, all told, and described by "Wisden" as "ranking among the unhappiest they have ever undertaken". England lost both series 1–0. Botham left Pakistan after the first Test there, the one England lost, to have a knee problem investigated at home. Somerset and England (1984 to 1986–87). After ten seasons as a first-team regular, Botham was appointed Somerset club captain in 1984 and 1985. In the County Championship, they finished seventh in 1984 and then dropped to 17th (bottom of the table) in 1985. In the JPL, they were 15th in 1984 and eleventh in 1985. They made little impression in either of the B&H Cup or the NatWest Trophy so, all in all, Botham's captaincy period was a lean time for the club who had enjoyed its most successful period ever in the preceding seasons. Botham played in 18 Tests from 1984 to 1986, ten of them (five home, five away) against West Indies. Throughout Botham's Test career, the highest international standards were set by West Indies and Botham was generally unsuccessful against them. In both of these series, 1984 and 1985–86, West Indies beat England 5–0 in whitewashes that were dubbed "blackwash". Ironically, his highest score and both his best and worst bowling performances against West Indies occurred in the same match at Lord's in 1984. Clive Lloyd won the toss and, perhaps mistakenly, elected to field. The first day was rain-affected and England, 167 for two overnight, scored 286 thanks to a century by Graeme Fowler; Botham scored a useful 30. West Indies lost three quick wickets, all of them to Botham who was a "reminder of his old self" in the words of "Wisden", but recovered to reach 119 for three at the close of play on day two. In the third morning, Viv Richards was dismissed by Botham under dubious circumstances but Botham was inspired by the capture of his great friend's wicket and went on to take eight for 103, dismissing West Indies for 245 and for once giving England a chance of victory against the world's best team, with a first innings lead of 41. This was Botham's best-ever bowling performance against West Indies by some distance. England began their second innings and had been reduced to 88 for four when Botham joined Allan Lamb. They reached 114 for four at day three close. There was no Sunday play and England resumed on the Monday 155 runs ahead with six wickets standing. Botham and Lamb added 128 for the fifth wicket before Botham was out for 81, including nine fours and one six, easily his highest score and best innings against West Indies. Lamb made a century and England were all out on the Tuesday morning (final day) for exactly 300. West Indies needed 342 to win in five and a half hours. They lost Desmond Haynes to a run out at 57 for 0, whereupon Larry Gomes (92 not out) joined Gordon Greenidge (214 not out) and West Indies went on to win by nine wickets with 11.5 of the last twenty overs to spare. Although "Wisden" does not name Botham except as an "inattentive" fielder who dropped a catch, it describes the England bowlers "looking second-rate and nobody but Willis bowling the right line or setting the right field to the powerful and phlegmatic Greenidge". Botham bowled the most overs, 20, and with nought for 117 he conceded almost a run a ball (Willis had nought for 48 from 15 overs). In mitigation, "Wisden" conceded that Greenidge played "the innings of his life, and his ruthless batting probably made the bowling look worse that it was". He also played in the one-off Test against Sri Lanka: not bowling particularly well in the first innings although he took the first wicket (1/114 out of 491), and being dismissed for 6 as England batted (370). Toward the end of Sri Lanka's second innings as the match meandered to a draw, in absolutely ferocious heat Botham dispensed with his usual fast bowler's long run-up and switched to bowling off-spin off a few paces, surprising everybody (himself included) by taking several wickets with it, out of an analysis of 6/90. He decided to take a rest over the winter, and sit out of the 1984–85 tour of India. In 1985, Botham played in all six Tests against a poor Australian team as England, themselves a second-rate team based on their recent performances, comfortably regained the Ashes and he was the leading wicket-taker, but the series was dominated by England's specialist batsmen, especially Mike Gatting and David Gower. Botham, who by this time had adopted a dyed blonde mullet haircut as a trademark, contributed relatively little with the bat, compared with the massive totals amassed by Gower, Gatting, Graham Gooch and Tim Robinson. He scored 250 runs at 31.25 with a highest of 85. He did take the most wickets (31 at 27.58 with a best of five for 109) but he was rarely impressive and he was bowling to a weak batting side, Allan Border apart. England's best bowler was Richard Ellison who played only twice and took 17 wickets at only 10.88 with a best of six for 77 and one 10wM. Botham was suspended for 63 days by the Test and County Cricket Board in 1986 after he admitted in an interview that he had smoked cannabis. Due to the ban, Botham played in only one Test which was the final one of the series against New Zealand. He made his mark on that Test though: beginning it by taking the wicket of Bruce Edgar with his very first delivery, to go level with Dennis Lillee on 355 as holder of the world record for Test wickets. The next delivery was edged through the slip cordon by Jeff Crowe. Botham went past the mark in his second over to hold the record outright, by trapping Crowe leg-before. Then on the fourth day of the match, coming in after centuries from Gatting and Gower, he bashed a quickfire half-century in just 32 balls, including 24 off one over from Derek Stirling – equalling the record at the time, for most runs off an over in Tests... a record which he was responsible for, but from the other side, having conceded 24 runs to Andy Roberts back in the 1980/81 tour of the West Indies. England declared with a massive first-innings lead, but rain came after lunch on the fourth day and only one further over was bowled. Botham was succeeded by Peter Roebuck as Somerset captain for 1986 but, during the season, tensions arose in the Somerset dressing room which eventually exploded into a full-scale row and resulted in the sacking by the club of Botham's friends Viv Richards and Joel Garner. Botham, who supported Richards and Garner, decided to resign at the end of the season. 1986 was not a season for Botham to remember except for one brilliant List A innings when he made his career highest score in the limited overs form of 175 not out for Somerset against Northamptonshire in a 39-over JPL match at the Wellingborough School ground. It was to no avail, however, as the weather intervened and the game ended in no result. His innings remains a ground record. Botham's final tour of Australia was in 1986/87 under Mike Gatting's captaincy. He played in four Tests and England won the Ashes for the last time until 2005. In many ways, the series was also Botham's last hurrah because he scored his final Test century (138 in the first Test at Brisbane which England won by seven wickets) and took his final Test 5wI (five for 41 in the fourth Test at the MCG which England won by an innings and 14 runs). "Wisden" pointed out that although Botham had a modest series statistically, "he was an asset to the side" because of his enthusiasm and "going out of his way to encourage younger players, especially Phil DeFreitas". Unfortunately he suffered a severe rib injury in the Second Test in Perth, which kept him out of the 3rd Test entirely and reduced the pace of his bowling for the remainder of the tour as he tried to manage it: as a result, with reasonable success, he changed his bowling style to a defensive, miserly military-medium pace. England also won the two one-day tournaments, the one-off Benson & Hedges Perth Challenge (against Australia, West Indies and Pakistan) and the World Series (against Australia and Windies): Botham produced several match-winning performances with both bat and ball despite being not fully fit, and was Man of the Match in both matches of the best-of-three final of the World Series – with the bat in the first, opening the batting for 71 (scored out of 91 while he was at the crease), and with the ball in the second, for a particularly miserly spell which also took three wickets as England defended a low total by nine runs, to win the finals 2–0. It was also in this tournament that England tried the experiment of having Botham open the batting in ODIs, with the idea of hitting the ball over the top to counter the fielding restrictions which forced most of the fielders to be close to the bat inside the early overs. Worcestershire and England (1987 to 1991). After his resignation from Somerset, Botham joined Worcestershire for the 1987 season and spent five seasons with them. In 1987, he scored 126* against his old county but otherwise he was more successful as a limited overs batsman, scoring two centuries and averaging 40.94. His bowling too was much better in the shorter form, wherein he averaged 21.29 against 42.04 in first-class. His limited overs efforts helped Worcestershire to win the Sunday League. They finished ninth in the County Championship and were unsuccessful in the two knockout trophies. Worcestershire, taking a leaf from England's winter tactic, sometimes used Botham to open the batting in one-day matches, in partnership with regular opener Tim Curtis. Botham played in the five 1987 Tests against Pakistan, the last time he represented England in a full series. He scored 232 runs in the series with one half-century (51*) at 33.14; and took only seven wickets which were enormously expensive. Pakistan won by an innings at Headingley with the other four Tests drawn, although England were in superior positions in the First and Fourth tests which lost much time to rain, and only narrowly failed to level the series in the Fourth, running out of overs chasing a small target. When Pakistan totalled 708 at The Oval, the 217 runs conceded by Botham, from 52 overs, were the most by an England bowler, passing the 204 by Ian Peebles, from 71 overs, against Australia at The Oval in 1930, although he took three wickets and also ran out Imran Khan. The half-century, his final and by far his slowest Test fifty, was a dogged, defensive effort occupying most of the last day in a drawn match, in an unbroken partnership with Gatting (150*) to save the 5th test and keep England's margin of defeat at 1–0. He declined to go on tour with England the following winter, either for the 1987 World Cup in India and Pakistan (in which England reached the final) or for the subsequent tours of Pakistan (lost 1–0) and New Zealand (a rain-ruined 0–0 drawn series). Botham spent the 1987–88 Australian season with Queensland, playing for them in the Sheffield Shield. Queensland were one of the better state teams in the 1980s and were always in the Shield's top three from the 1983–84 season through to the 1990–91 season, but didn't win it. In Botham's season there, his teammates including Allan Border (captain), wicketkeeper Ian Healy and pace bowler Craig McDermott, they finished second to Western Australia. Botham scored several half-centuries and took a reasonable number of wickets and helped Queensland make the Sheffield Shield final. Botham and Dennis Lillee were fined for damaging the Queensland dressing room in Launceston, Tasmania during a one-day match. When the Queensland team flew to Perth for the Shield final, Botham was involved in an altercation where he allegedly assaulted a fellow airline passenger who had intervened in an argument between the Queensland players. Queensland lost the final. Botham was fined $800 by a magistrate and $5,000 by the Australian Cricket Board. He was consequently sacked by Queensland. Botham was unfit for most of the 1988 season and played in only four first-class and seven limited overs matches during April and May. He did not play for England. Nevertheless, Worcestershire won both the County Championship and the Sunday League. Botham was out of action for eleven months, having had an operation to fuse vertebrae in his spine in response to a long-standing back problem. He returned in May 1989 and, bowling well in the County Championship, helped Worcestershire to a second successive title. With England struggling against Allan Border's rebuilt Australian team which featured the likes of Healy, McDermott, Steve Waugh, Merv Hughes and Mark Taylor, Botham was recalled for the third, fourth and fifth Tests of the pivotal Ashes 1989 series. He could do little to stem a tide which had now turned completely in Australia's favour and looked completely out of his depth. He scored only 62 runs at the very low average of 15.50 – two-thirds of them in one innings – and took just three wickets at an enormously expensive 80.33. The summer of 1989 saw more controversy for England with the organisation of a rebel tour to South Africa, all participants being banned for three years: Botham declined the rebel tour, hoping to be selected for the winter tour of the West Indies, only to be dropped for his poor form. Another two-year absence from international cricket ensued until he was recalled again to play against West Indies in 1991, on the strength of belting 161* for Worcestershire against them in their early-season tour match against the county – it was to be his only century ever against the West Indies. He was selected for the early-season ODI series at first: he took a wicket in his first over, and four in his ten-over spell, but later tore a hamstring, going for a quick single while batting. He could have retired hurt, but opted to continue with a runner, only to be dismissed by the next delivery. The injury put him out of the remaining ODIs (both won by England) and the first couple of Tests (which England won and drew to lead 1–0): then, on his comeback in a county match, another injury caused him to be unavailable for the 3rd and 4th Tests (both lost by England). He was recalled for the 5th Test with England needing a victory to tie the series: batting in the first innings, he scored a respectable 31 before attempting to hook Curtly Ambrose and being dismissed "hit wicket", in circumstances which caused an infamous giggling fit in the BBC "Test Match Special" radio commentary box. Used sparingly with the ball, he took 1/27 and 2/40 as West Indies were bowled out, forced to follow on and bowled out again, by Tufnell (6/25) and Lawrence (5/106) in the first and second innings respectively. His only Test victory against the Windies was completed when he himself hit the winning runs – a boundary off his first delivery – as England chased a target of 143 with five wickets to spare, and tied the series. Two weeks later, he played against Sri Lanka at Lord's, achieving little of note. He helped Worcestershire to win the B&H Cup for the only time in 1991. Durham and England (1991–92 to 1993). Botham's final tour was to Australia and New Zealand in 1991–92. In the tour of NZ, he played in only the last Test, and the one-day series: his most notable contribution was his highest ODI score of 79, opening the batting, in which he seemed to be set fair to finally reach a century in an ODI, but NZ managed to keep him away from the strike for several overs, he ran out of patience, slogged a delivery straight up in the air and was caught. After this came the World Cup in Australia. Botham had not previously won any man of the match awards in the World Cup, but in this competition he won two. Against India at the WACA Ground, he bowled tightly and restricted India, needing 237, to only 27 runs from his ten overs, an economy rate of 2.70 which was significantly lower than anyone else's. He captured two wickets and one of them was Sachin Tendulkar. England won by nine runs. Against Australia at Sydney Cricket Ground later in the competition, Botham won the award for the sort of all-round performance which had made his reputation. Australia won the toss and decided to bat first. They scored 171 all out in 49 overs and Botham took four for 31 in his ten. He then opened the England innings with Graham Gooch – the tactic England had trialled in Australia five years before, and again in the ODIs against NZ at the end of the tour before the World Cup – and scored 53 from only 77 balls in a partnership with Gooch of 107. England went on to win by eight wickets with nine overs to spare. He was less successful in the final, where previously economical bowling figures were ruined by a late assault from the Pakistani batting line-up, and then he was given out caught-behind for a duck (perhaps unfortunately, since he appeared not to have touched the ball according to the camera replays) in Wasim Akram's first over, England losing the match. In 1992, Botham joined County Championship newcomers Durham, scoring a century in the second innings in their inaugural first-class match against Leicestershire: and he played in the first two Tests against Pakistan, the second one at Lord's being his final Test appearance. Botham scored 2 and 6, cheaply dismissed each time by the pace of Waqar Younis. As a bowler, he was used for only five overs in the first innings, his final Test return being none for nine: he did not bowl in Pakistan's second innings, thanks to a foot injury sustained while batting, although he fielded at slip. England lost the match by two wickets and Pakistan went on to win the series 2–1. Botham did however play in the ODI series, in all five matches, which England won 4–1: these were his last international matches. England's batting was so dominant in all but one of the matches, that Botham only came in right at the end of the innings, or not at all, reverting to his old place in the middle order, and he had little to do: except in the 4th match, where he opened the batting again (in Gooch's absence) and scored a respectable and workmanlike 40, but saw England lose their last four wickets for ten runs and the match by three runs. His bowling was similarly unremarkable, usually capturing one or two wickets at about four an over: he neither scored a run (did not bat) nor took a wicket (0–43) in his final match. It was in 1992 that Botham was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to cricket and for his charity work in the Queen's Birthday Honours. Botham retired from cricket midway through the 1993 season, his last match being for Durham against the visiting Australians at The Racecourse 17–19 July 1993. Durham batted first and scored 385 for eight declared (Wayne Larkins 151). In his final first-class innings, Botham scored 32. In reply, Australia could only make 221, thanks to Simon Brown who took seven for 70 (Botham none for 21). Being 164 behind, Australia had to follow on and a victory for Durham was possible but centuries by Matthew Hayden and David Boon saved Australia and the match was drawn. Botham's final bowling return was none for 45 from eleven overs. In the final over of the game, Botham also kept wicket, without wearing gloves or pads. Records in international cricket. Botham's Test career spanned 16 seasons and he played in 102 matches. He scored 5,200 runs at an average of 33.54 with a highest score of 208 in his 14 centuries. He took 383 wickets at an average of 28.40 with a best return of eight for 34 and achieved ten wickets in a match four times. He held 120 catches. In 116 LOIs from 1976 to 1992, he scored 2,113 runs with a highest score of 79; took 145 wickets with a best return of four for 31; and held 36 catches. A straight comparison of these totals with those of his Test career reveal that he was less effective in the limited overs form of the game. He did have some outstanding LOI matches, however, winning six man of the match awards. Botham took part in three editions of the Cricket World Cup: 1979, 1983 and 1992. He played in 22 World Cup matches including the finals in 1979 and 1992, both of which England lost, and he was in England's losing team in the 1983 semi-final. Botham was the 21st player to achieve the "double" of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in Test cricket and he went on to score 5,200 runs and take 383 wickets, as well as holding 120 catches. He held the world record for the greatest number of Test wickets from 21 August 1986 to 12 November 1988. His predecessor was Dennis Lillee who had retired with 355 wickets in 70 matches. Botham extended the record to 373 in 94 matches before he was overtaken by Richard Hadlee. Botham ended with 383 wickets in 102 matches while Hadlee extended the record to 431 in 86 matches. See List of Test cricket records#Career. As described above, Botham in 1980 became the second player to achieve the "match double" of 100 runs and ten wickets in Test cricket, following Alan Davidson in 1960–61. Botham was, however, the first to score a century and take ten wickets in a Test match (Davidson scored 44 and 80). The century and ten double has since been achieved by Imran Khan who scored 117 and took six for 98 and five for 82 against India at the Iqbal Stadium in Faisalabad in January 1983., and again by Shakib Al Hasan for Bangladesh against Zimbabwe at Khulna in 2014. List of Test centuries and five-wicket innings. Compared with many of cricket's greatest players, most of whom were specialists, Botham's averages seem fairly ordinary but this overlooks the fact that he was a genuine all-rounder and it is rare for this type of player to achieve world-class status. Since the Second World War, Botham is one of perhaps a dozen or so world-class all-rounders whereas there have been numerous world-class specialists. Some of the great all-rounders, such as Garfield Sobers and Jacques Kallis as batsmen or Alan Davidson and Richard Hadlee as bowlers, could justifiably be described as world-class specialists in their main discipline who were effective practitioners of the other. The genuine all-rounders to achieve world-class status during the era, besides Botham himself, have included Keith Miller, Richie Benaud, Mike Procter, Clive Rice, Imran Khan, Kapil Dev and Andrew Flintoff. Of note, Botham's first 202 wickets came at 21.20 per wicket, while his final 181 cost on average 36.43 apiece; the first average is one that would make Botham one of the greatest bowlers of the modern era, ranking alongside the West Indian greats Curtly Ambrose (career average 20.99), Malcolm Marshall (career average 20.94), and Joel Garner (career average 20.97), but the second average depicts a player who, as a specialist bowler, would be unable to sustain a place in many Test teams. This difference can be largely attributed to the longer term effects of a back injury he sustained in 1980; this limited his bowling pace and his ability to swing the ball. Botham's batting – although never the equal of his bowling abilities – declined as well, with a batting average of 38.80 for his first 51 Tests substantially higher than the 28.87 he managed in his last 51 Tests, again a number that would be considered unsatisfactory for a specialist batsman in most Test sides. In the first 5 years of Botham's Test career, when not playing as captain, he scored 2,557 runs at an average of 49.17 including 11 centuries and a highest score of 208, took 196 wickets at an average of 21.28 including nineteen 5 wicket hauls and held 50 catches. Such figures denote a player who would easily maintain a place in any Test side as a specialist batsman or bowler alone. During this period his reputation as one of the leading Test all-rounders was firmly established. Style and technique. Botham had an affinity with Brian Close, his first county captain who became a mentor to him, as they shared a determination to do well and win matches. "Wisden" has commented on another shared characteristic: "outstanding courage", mainly because Botham would readily field anywhere, generally in the slips but also in dangerous positions near the batsman and he was a brilliant fielder. As a batsman, Botham was often wrongly labelled by the tabloid press as a "big hitter" (effectively implying that he was a "slogger") but, while it is true that his strength enabled him to drive a ball for six and his courage to hook one for six, Botham actually had a very correct batting style as he stood side-on and played straight: "Wisden" praised his "straight hitting and square cutting". Botham might not have been good enough to retain a regular England place as a specialist batsman (his Test career batting average was a fairly modest 33.54) but as a bowler who was capable of taking 383 Test wickets, he certainly would. "Wisden" praised Tom Cartwright for helping to develop Botham's technique as a swing bowler and, by the time he made his Test debut in 1977, Botham had mastered change of pace, the outswinger and the fast inswinging yorker, all formidable parts of his repertoire which eventually enabled him to break the world Test wicket record. Writing in "Barclays World of Cricket" (1986), former England captain Tony Lewis commented on Botham's strength, enthusiasm and aggression "which he took into every game". Lewis, however, pointed out that Botham's exuberance often reduced the efficiency of his play, in that he would take too many risks or refuse to give up on a bowling tactic despite ongoing heavy cost. He summarised Botham as an exciting cricketer who lacked self-discipline. Botham was in the middle of his career when the book was published, but Lewis emphasised the speed at which Botham had achieved certain milestones such as 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in Test cricket. At that time there seemed no reason why Botham should not go on reaching milestones, but he had already peaked and, in retrospect, his career had a meteoric aspect. His rival Imran Khan asserted this when he said: "Botham was someone who I don't think ever did justice to his talent. When he started he could have done anything, but he declined very quickly. In a way our careers were the opposite of each other. I started quite slowly but got better, maximised my talent. He went the other way, I think". Legacy. Botham's career and ability level has been oft-debated. For example, when naming him as a Cricketer of the Year in its 1978 edition, "Wisden" described Botham as "a determined character who knows where he is aiming, and who will, quite naturally and fiercely, address himself to the interesting view that he is overrated". Denis Compton would dismiss Botham as "overrated" and said he "only did well because all the best players had joined Packer": i.e., for World Series Cricket (WSC). He would readily give praise to his colleagues, for instance, his batting partners Hallam Moseley and Bob Clapp after the 1974 Benson and Hedges quarter-final against Hampshire; and to Bob Willis, the man whose bowling spell won the test match at Headingley in 1981. The Richards–Botham Trophy, set to replace the Wisden Trophy for winners of West Indies–England Test series, is named in honour of Botham and Viv Richards. Libel cases brought against Imran Khan (1994–1996). In 1994, the year after he retired, Botham became embroiled in a legal dispute with Imran Khan who, in an article for "India Today", had accused Botham and Allan Lamb of bringing cricket into disrepute. Botham and Lamb instigated a libel action in response. The case was heard at the High Court in 1996 with the court choosing to hear on the second day a separate action brought solely by Botham against Khan, who had suggested in a newspaper article that Botham had been involved in ball-tampering. This would become the subject of a court case later on, one that Khan would go on to win. Botham was liable for all expenses in the court case in the ruling, including those incurred by Khan. Football career. Botham was a talented footballer but, believing he was better at cricket, he chose the latter for his full-time career. Even so, he played football as a centre-half from 1978 to 1985 for Yeovil Town and Scunthorpe United. He made eleven appearances in the Football League for Scunthorpe. While with Yeovil, Botham made an appearance for the Football Association XI (a representative side for non-League footballers) against the Northern Football League at Croft Park during the 1984–85 season. Charity fundraising. Botham has been a prodigious fundraiser for charitable causes, undertaking a total of 12 long-distance charity walks. His first, in 1985, was a 900-mile trek from John o' Groats to Land's End. His efforts were inspired after a visit to Taunton's Musgrove Park Hospital in 1977 whilst receiving treatment for a broken toe. When he took a wrong turn into a children's ward, he was devastated to learn that some of the children had only weeks to live, and why. At the time he was an expectant father. Since then his efforts have raised more than £12 million for charity, with leukaemia research the main cause to benefit. In recognition of this work, Botham in 2003 became the first-ever President of Bloodwise, the UK's leading blood cancer charity. On 10 October 2007, Botham was invested a Knight Bachelor by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, having been appointed in the Queen's Birthday Honours "for services to Charity and to Cricket". Media career. After retiring from cricket, Botham became involved in the media and has worked as an analyst and commentator for Sky Sports for many years. Unlike Fred Trueman and others, he does not hark back to "in my day". "Wisden" editor Matthew Engel remarked on Botham's calmness, wit and sagacity as a TV commentator, though admitting he was surprised by it. On 9 August 2009, while commentating on the fourth Ashes Test at Headingley that season, Botham was invited to take part in an on-field ceremony to induct him into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame along with the Yorkshire greats Wilfred Rhodes, Fred Trueman and Geoffrey Boycott. Geoff Boycott was also in attendance, along with Fred Trueman's widow Veronica and Colin Graves who, as Yorkshire County Cricket Club chairman, accepted the honour on behalf of Wilfred Rhodes. Botham said: "To be named amongst 55 of the most prolific players in cricketing history is a great honour for me. To have my cricketing career recognised in the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame is not something I would have thought when I began playing cricket but to be receiving this award today is something I'm extremely grateful for". Colin Graves included Botham in his tribute to Rhodes when he said: "It is a great honour to accept the cap on behalf of a Yorkshire legend. Wilfred Rhodes was an exceedingly gifted player and is rightly regarded as one of England's greatest all-rounders. I am also delighted to see two other great Yorkshiremen and another great all-rounder inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame today". He was the subject of "This Is Your Life" in 1981 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews during a meeting at Lord's. On 12 August 1995, Botham was interviewed at length by Andrew Neil on his one-on-one interview show "Is This Your Life?" for Channel 4. Peerage. He was nominated by Boris Johnson for a life peerage in the 2020 Political Honours, it being widely reported that the honour was a reward for his support for Brexit. He was created "Baron Botham, of Ravensworth in the County of North Yorkshire" on 10 September and took the oath and his seat on 5 October 2020. He made his maiden speech on 3 November the same year and since then has made one further spoken contribution on 25 November 2020. His last vote in the House of Lords was in July 2021. On 23 August 2021, Boris Johnson appointed him the UK's Trade Envoy to Australia. Personal life. Botham is colour blind. In 1976, in Doncaster, Botham married Kathryn ("Kathy") Waller (now Lady Botham) whom he first met in June 1974. After their marriage, they lived until the late 1980s in Epworth, near Scunthorpe. They have one son, Liam (born August 1977), and two daughters, Sarah and Becky. The family now live in Ravensworth in North Yorkshire, and also own property in Almería, where Botham frequently plays golf. Botham is an avid trout and salmon fisherman. As a result, he was invited to present a TV series called "Botham on the Fly". He has also been a team captain on the BBC series "A Question of Sport". Besides angling and golf, Botham enjoys game shooting and owns a grouse moor. This has resulted in a high-profile dispute with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). In August 2016, he called for Chris Packham to be sacked by the BBC as part of a campaign funded by the grouse shooting industry, after Packham had highlighted the industry's involvement in the illegal killing of endangered species of birds of prey. According to the "New Statesman" in 2015, "Botham is an old-fashioned Englishman [...] he is conservative with a small and upper-case C" and "a robust monarchist". Botham was a staunch supporter of Britain's withdrawal from the European Union. He was quoted: "Personally, I think that England is an island. I think that England should be England. And I think that we should keep that." He appeared at a number of pro-Leave campaign events in the run-up to the United Kingdom's European Union membership referendum in 2016. Botham's private life has also made occasional dramatic appearances in Britain's tabloid newspapers, with at least one extra-marital affair prompting a public apology to his wife Kathy. He also fell out publicly with other players, including fellow England player Geoff Boycott, Somerset captain Peter Roebuck, and Australian batsman Ian Chappell, with whom he had an altercation in an Adelaide Oval car park during the 2010–11 Ashes series. Although Botham hoped to resolve his long-running feud with Chappell during a Channel 9 documentary on 27 June 2023, Chappell refused.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15660

Jamaica

Jamaica (; , ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third largest after Cuba and of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean. Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola (the island containing the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic); the British Overseas Territory of the Cayman Islands lies to the north-west. Originally inhabited by the indigenous Taíno peoples, the island came under Spanish rule following the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1494. Many of the indigenous people either were killed or died of diseases, after which the Spanish brought large numbers of African slaves to Jamaica as labourers. The island remained a possession of Spain until 1655, under the name Santiago, when England (later Great Britain) conquered it and named it "Jamaica". It became an important part of the colonial British West Indies. Under Britain's colonial rule, Jamaica became a leading sugar exporter, with a plantation economy dependent on continued importation of African slaves and their descendants. The British fully emancipated all slaves in 1838, and many freedmen chose to have subsistence farms rather than to work on plantations. Beginning in the 1840s, the British began using Chinese and Indian indentured labour to work on plantations. The island achieved independence from the United Kingdom on 6 August 1962. With million people, Jamaica is the third-most populous Anglophone country in the Americas (after the United States and Canada), and the fourth-most populous country in the Caribbean. Kingston is the country's capital and largest city. The majority of Jamaicans are of Sub-Saharan African ancestry, with significant European, East Asian (primarily Chinese), Indian, Lebanese, and mixed-race minorities. Due to a high rate of emigration for work since the 1960s, there is a large Jamaican diaspora, particularly in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The country has a global influence that belies its small size; it was the birthplace of the Rastafari religion, reggae music (and associated genres such as dub, ska and dancehall), and it is internationally prominent in sports, most notably cricket, sprinting and athletics. Jamaica has sometimes been considered the world's least populous cultural superpower. Jamaica is an upper-middle income country with an economy heavily dependent on tourism; it has an average of 4.3 million tourists a year. The country performs favourably in measures of press freedom, democratic governance and sustainable well-being. Jamaica is a parliamentary constitutional monarchy with power vested in the bicameral Parliament of Jamaica, consisting of an appointed Senate and a directly elected House of Representatives. Andrew Holness has served as Prime Minister of Jamaica since March 2016. As a Commonwealth realm, with Charles III as its king, the appointed representative of the Crown is the Governor-General of Jamaica, an office held by Patrick Allen since 2009. Etymology. The indigenous people, the Taíno, called the island "Xaymaca" in their language, meaning the "Land of Wood and Water" or the "Land of Springs". "Yamaye" has been suggested as an early Taino name for the island as recorded by Christopher Columbus. Colloquially, Jamaicans refer to their home island as the "Rock". Slang names such as "Jamrock", "Jamdown" ("Jamdung" in Jamaican Patois), or briefly "Ja", have derived from this. History. Prehistory. Humans inhabited Jamaica from as early as 4000–1000 BC. Little is known of these early peoples. A group known as the "Redware people" after their pottery arrived circa 600 AD, followed by the Taíno circa 800 AD, who most likely came from South America. They practised an agrarian and fishing economy, and at their height are thought to have numbered some 60,000 people, grouped into around 200 villages headed by "caciques" (chiefs). The south coast of Jamaica was the most populated, especially around the area now known as Old Harbour. Though often thought to have become extinct following contact with Europeans, the Taíno in fact still inhabited Jamaica when the English took control of the island in 1655. Some fled into interior regions, merging with African Maroon communities. The Jamaican National Heritage Trust is attempting to locate and document any remaining evidence of the Taíno. Spanish rule (1509–1655). Christopher Columbus was the first European to see Jamaica, claiming the island for Spain after landing there in 1494 on his second voyage to the Americas. His probable landing point was Dry Harbour, called Discovery Bay, and St. Ann's Bay was named "Saint Gloria" by Columbus, as the first sighting of the land. He later returned in 1503; however, he was shipwrecked and he and his crew were forced to live on Jamaica for a year while waiting to be rescued. One and a half kilometres west of St. Ann's Bay is the site of the first Spanish settlement on the island, Sevilla, which was established in 1509 by Juan de Esquivel but abandoned around 1524 because it was deemed unhealthy. The capital was moved to Spanish Town, then called "St. Jago de la Vega", around 1534. Meanwhile, the Taínos began dying in large numbers, both from introduced diseases and from enslavement by the Spanish. As a result, the Spanish began importing slaves from Africa to the island. Many slaves managed to escape, forming autonomous communities in remote and easily defended areas in the interior of Jamaica, mixing with the remaining Taino; these communities became known as Maroons. Many Jews fled the Spanish Inquisition to live on the island. They lived as conversos and were often persecuted by the Spanish rulers, and some turned to piracy against the Spanish Empire's shipping. By the early 17th century it is estimated that no more than 2,500–3,000 people lived on Jamaica. Early British period. The English began taking an interest in the island and, following a failed attempt to conquer Santo Domingo on Hispaniola, Admiral William Penn and General Robert Venables led an invasion of Jamaica in 1655. Battles at Ocho Rios in 1657 and the Rio Nuevo in 1658 resulted in Spanish defeats; in 1660 the Maroon community under the leadership of Juan de Bolas switched sides from the Spanish, and began supporting the English. With their help, the Spanish defeat was secured. In 1661 English civil government was formed and Roundhead soldiers turned their attention to governance and agricultural responsibilities. When the English captured Jamaica, most Spanish colonists fled, with the exception of Spanish Jews, who chose to remain. Spanish slave holders freed their slaves before leaving. Many slaves dispersed into the mountains, joining the already established maroon communities. During the centuries of slavery, Jamaican Maroons established free communities in the mountainous interior of Jamaica, where they maintained their freedom and independence for generations, under the leadership of Maroon leaders such as Juan de Serras. Meanwhile, the Spanish made several attempts to re-capture the island, prompting the British to support pirates attacking Spanish ships in the Caribbean; as a result piracy became rampant on Jamaica, with the city of Port Royal becoming notorious for its lawlessness. Spain later recognised English possession of the island with the Treaty of Madrid (1670). After that, the English authorities sought to rein in the worst excesses of the pirates. In 1660, the population of Jamaica was about 4,500 white and 1,500 black. By the early 1670s, as the English developed sugar cane plantations worked by large numbers of slaves, black Africans formed a majority of the population. The Irish in Jamaica also formed a large part of the island's early population, making up two-thirds of the white population on the island in the late 17th century, twice that of the English population. They were brought in as indentured labourers and soldiers after the conquest of 1655. The majority of Irish were transported by force as political prisoners of war from Ireland as a result of the ongoing Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Migration of large numbers of Irish to the island continued into the 18th century. A limited form of local government was introduced with the creation of the House of Assembly of Jamaica in 1664; however, it represented only a tiny number of rich plantation owners. In 1692, the colony was rocked by an earthquake that resulted in several thousand deaths and the almost complete destruction of Port Royal. 18th–19th centuries. During the 1700s the economy boomed, based largely on sugar and other crops for export such as coffee, cotton and indigo. All these crops were worked by black slaves, who lived short and often brutal lives with no rights, being the property of a small planter-class. In the 18th century, slaves ran away and joined the Maroons in increasing numbers, and resulted in The First Maroon War (1728 – 1739/40), which ended in stalemate. The British government sued for peace, and signed treaties with the Leeward Maroons led by Cudjoe and Accompong in 1739, and the Windward Maroons led by Quao and Queen Nanny in 1740. A large slave rebellion, known as Tacky's War, broke out in 1760 but was defeated by the British and their Maroon allies. After the second conflict in 1795–96, many Maroons from the Maroon town of Cudjoe's Town (Trelawny Town) were expelled to Nova Scotia and, later, Sierra Leone. By the beginning of the 19th century, Jamaica's dependence on slave labour and a plantation economy had resulted in black people outnumbering white people by a ratio of almost 20 to 1. Although the British had outlawed the importation of slaves, some were still smuggled in from Spanish colonies and directly from Africa. While planning the abolition of slavery, the British Parliament passed laws to improve conditions for slaves. They banned the use of whips in the field and flogging of women; informed planters that slaves were to be allowed religious instruction, and required a free day during each week when slaves could sell their produce, prohibiting Sunday markets to enable slaves to attend church. The House of Assembly in Jamaica resented and resisted the new laws. Members, with membership then restricted to European-descended Jamaicans, claimed that the slaves were content and objected to Parliament's interference in island affairs. Slave owners feared possible revolts if conditions were lightened. The British abolished the slave trade in 1807, but not the institution itself. In 1831 a huge slave rebellion, known as the Baptist War, broke out, led by the Baptist preacher Samuel Sharpe. The rebellion resulted in hundreds of deaths and the destruction of many plantations, and led to ferocious reprisals by the plantocracy class. As a result of rebellions such as these, as well as the efforts of abolitionists, Britain outlawed slavery in its empire in 1834, with full emancipation from chattel slavery declared in 1838. The population in 1834 was 371,070, of whom 15,000 were white, 5,000 free black; 40,000 "coloured" or free people of colour (mixed race); and 311,070 were slaves. The resulting labour shortage prompted the British to begin to "import" indentured servants to supplement the labour pool, as many freedmen resisted working on the plantations. Workers recruited from India began arriving in 1845, Chinese workers in 1854. Many South Asian and Chinese descendants continue to reside in Jamaica today. Over the next 20 years, several epidemics of cholera, scarlet fever, and smallpox hit the island, killing almost 60,000 people (about 10 per day). Nevertheless, in 1871 the census recorded a population of 506,154 people, 246,573 of which were males, and 259,581 females. Their races were recorded as 13,101 white, 100,346 coloured (mixed black and white), and 392,707 black. This period was marked by an economic slump, with many Jamaicans living in poverty. Dissatisfaction with this, and continued racial discrimination and marginalisation of the black majority, led to the outbreak of the Morant Bay rebellion in 1865 led by Paul Bogle, which was put down by Governor John Eyre with such brutality that he was recalled from his position. His successor, John Peter Grant, enacted a series of social, financial and political reforms whilst aiming to uphold firm British rule over the island, which became a Crown Colony in 1866. In 1872 the capital was transferred from Spanish Town to Kingston. Early 20th century. In 1907 Jamaica was struck by an earthquake—this, and the subsequent fire, caused immense destruction in Kingston and the deaths of 800–1,000 people. Unemployment and poverty remained a problem for many Jamaicans. Various movements seeking political change arose as a result, most notably the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League founded by Marcus Garvey in 1917. As well as seeking greater political rights and an improvement for the condition of workers, Garvey was also a prominent Pan-Africanist and proponent of the Back-to-Africa movement. He was also one of the chief inspirations behind Rastafari, a religion founded in Jamaica in the 1930s that combined Christianity with an Afrocentric theology focused on the figure of Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia. Despite occasional persecution, Rastafari grew to become an established faith on the island, later spreading abroad. The Great Depression of the 1930s hit Jamaica hard. As part of the British West Indian labour unrest of 1934–39, Jamaica saw numerous strikes, culminating in a strike in 1938 that turned into a riot. As a result, the British government instituted a commission to look into the causes of the disturbances; their report recommended political and economic reforms in Britain's Caribbean colonies. A new House of Representatives was established in 1944, elected by universal adult suffrage. During this period Jamaica's two-party system emerged, with the creation of the Jamaican Labour Party (JLP) under Alexander Bustamante and the People's National Party (PNP) under Norman Manley. Jamaica slowly gained increasing autonomy from the United Kingdom. In 1958 it became a province in the Federation of the West Indies, a federation of several of Britain's Caribbean colonies. Membership of the Federation proved to be divisive, however, and a referendum on the issue saw a slight majority voting to leave. After leaving the Federation, Jamaica attained full independence on 6 August 1962. The new state retained, however, its membership in the Commonwealth of Nations (with the British monarch as head of state) and adopted a Westminster-style parliamentary system. Bustamante, at the age of 78, became the country's first prime minister. Post-independence era. Strong economic growth, averaging approximately 6% per year, marked the first ten years of independence under conservative JLP governments; these were led by successive Prime Ministers Alexander Bustamante, Donald Sangster (who died of natural causes within two months of taking office) and Hugh Shearer. The growth was fuelled by high levels of private investment in bauxite/alumina, tourism, the manufacturing industry and, to a lesser extent, the agricultural sector. In the 1967 Jamaican general election, the JLP were victorious again, winning 33 out of 53 seats, with the PNP taking 20 seats. In terms of foreign policy Jamaica became a member of the Non-Aligned Movement, seeking to retain strong ties with Britain and the United States whilst also developing links with Communist states such as Cuba. The optimism of the first decade was accompanied by a growing sense of inequality among many Afro-Jamaicans, and a concern that the benefits of growth were not being shared by the urban poor, many of whom ended up living in crime-ridden shanty towns in Kingston. This, combined with the effects of a slowdown in the global economy in 1970, led to the voters electing the PNP under Michael Manley in 1972. The PNP won 37 seats to the JLP's 16. Manley's government enacted various social reforms, such as a higher minimum wage, land reform, legislation for women's equality, greater housing construction and an increase in educational provision. Internationally he improved ties with the Communist bloc and vigorously opposed the apartheid regime in South Africa. In 1976, the PNP won another landslide, winning 47 seats to the JLP's 13. The turnout was a very high 85 percent. However, the economy faltered in this period due to a combination of internal and external factors (such as the oil shocks). The rivalry between the JLP and PNP became intense, and political and gang-related violence grew significantly in this period. By 1980, Jamaica's gross national product had declined to some 25% below its 1972 level. Seeking change, Jamaicans voted the JLP back in in 1980 under Edward Seaga, the JLP winning 51 seats to the PNP's nine seats. Firmly anti-Communist, Seaga cut ties with Cuba and sent troops to support the US invasion of Grenada in 1983. The economic deterioration, however, continued into the mid-1980s, exacerbated by a number of factors. The largest and third-largest alumina producers, Alpart and Alcoa, closed; and there was a significant reduction in production by the second-largest producer, Alcan. Reynolds Jamaica Mines, Ltd. left the Jamaican industry. There was also a decline in tourism, which was important to the economy. Owing to rising foreign and local debt, accompanied by large fiscal deficits, the government sought International Monetary Fund (IMF) financing, which was dependent on implementing various austerity measures. These resulted in strikes in 1985 and a decline in support for the Seaga government, exacerbated by criticism of the government's response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Gilbert in 1988. Having now de-emphasised socialism and adopting a more centrist position, Michael Manley and the PNP were re-elected in 1989, winning 45 seats to the JLP's 15. The PNP went on to win a string of elections, under Prime Ministers Michael Manley (1989–1992), P. J. Patterson (1992–2005) and Portia Simpson-Miller (2005–2007). In the 1993 Jamaican general election, Patterson led the PNP to victory, winning 52 seats to the JLP's eight seats. Patterson also won the 1997 Jamaican general election, by another landslide margin of 50 seats to the JLP's 10 seats. Patterson's third consecutive victory came in the 2002 Jamaican general election, when the PNP retained power, but with a reduced seat majority of 34 seats to 26. Patterson stepped down on 26 February 2006, and was replaced by Portia Simpson-Miller, Jamaica's first female Prime Minister. The turnout slowly declined during this period of time, from 67.4% in 1993 to 59.1% in 2002. During this period various economic reforms were introduced, such as deregulating the finance sector and floating the Jamaican dollar, as well as greater investment in infrastructure, whilst also retaining a strong social safety net. Political violence, so prevalent in the previous two decades, declined significantly. In 2007 the PNP was defeated by the JLP by a narrow margin of 32 seats to 28, with a turnout of 61.46%. This election ended 18 years of PNP rule, and Bruce Golding became the new prime minister. Golding's tenure (2007–2010) was dominated by the effects of the global recession, as well as the fallout from an attempt by Jamaican police and military to arrest drug lord Christopher Coke in 2010 which erupted in violence, resulting in over 70 deaths. As a result of this incident Golding resigned and was replaced by Andrew Holness in 2011. Independence, however widely celebrated in Jamaica, has been questioned in the early 21st century. In 2011, a survey showed that approximately 60% of Jamaicans believe that the country would have been better off had it remained a British colony, with only 17% believing it would have been worse off, citing as problems years of social and fiscal mismanagement in the country. Holness and the JLP were defeated in the 2011 Jamaican general election, which saw Portia Simpson-Miller and the PNP return to power. The number of seats had been increased to 63, and the PNP swept to power with a landslide 42 seats to the JLP's 21. The voter turnout was 53.17%. Holness's JLP won the 2016 general election narrowly, defeating Simpson-Miller's PNP, on 25 February. The PNP won 31 seats to the JLP's 32. As a result, Simpson-Miller became Opposition Leader for a second time. The voter turnout dipped below 50% for the first time, registering just 48.37%. In the 2020 general election, Andrew Holness made history for the JLP by accomplishing a second consecutive win for the Jamaica Labour Party, winning 49 seats to 14 won by the PNP, led this time by Peter Phillips. The last time a consecutive win occurred for the JLP was in 1980. However, the turnout at this election was just 37%, probably affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Government and politics. Jamaica is a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy. The head of state is the King of Jamaica (currently King Charles III), represented locally by the Governor-General of Jamaica. The governor-general is nominated by the Prime Minister of Jamaica and the entire Cabinet and then formally appointed by the monarch. All the members of the Cabinet are appointed by the governor-general on the advice of the prime minister. The monarch and the governor-general serve largely ceremonial roles, apart from their reserve powers for use in certain constitutional crisis situations. The position of the monarch has been a matter of continuing debate in Jamaica for many years; currently both major political parties are committed to transitioning to a republic with a president. Jamaica's current constitution was drafted in 1962 by a bipartisan joint committee of the Jamaican legislature. It came into force with the Jamaica Independence Act, 1962, which was passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which gave Jamaica independence. The Parliament of Jamaica is bicameral, consisting of the House of Representatives (Lower House) and the Senate (Upper House). Members of the House (known as Members of Parliament or "MPs") are directly elected, and the member of the House of Representatives who, in the governor-general's best judgement, is best able to command the confidence of a majority of the members of that House, is appointed by the governor-general to be the prime minister. Senators are nominated jointly by the prime minister and the parliamentary Leader of the Opposition and are then appointed by the governor-general. The Judiciary of Jamaica operates on a common law system derived from English law and Commonwealth of Nations precedents. The court of final appeal is the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, though during the 2000s Parliament attempted to replace it with the Caribbean Court of Justice. Political parties and elections. Jamaica has traditionally had a two-party system, with power often alternating between the People's National Party (PNP) and Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). The party with current administrative and legislative power is the Jamaica Labour Party, after its 2020 victory. There are also several minor parties who have yet to gain a seat in parliament; the largest of these is the National Democratic Movement (NDM). Military. The Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) is the small but professional military force of Jamaica. The JDF is based on the British military model with similar organisation, training, weapons and traditions. Once chosen, officer candidates are sent to one of several British or Canadian basic officer courses depending on the arm of service. Enlisted soldiers are given basic training at Up Park Camp or JDF Training Depot, Newcastle, both in St. Andrew. As with the British model, NCOs are given several levels of professional training as they rise up the ranks. Additional military schools are available for speciality training in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. The JDF is directly descended from the British Army's West India Regiment, which was formed during the colonial era. The West India Regiment was used extensively throughout the British Empire in policing the empire from 1795 to 1926. Other units in the JDF heritage include the early colonial Jamaica Militia, the Kingston Infantry Volunteers of WWI and reorganised into the Jamaican Infantry Volunteers in World War II. The West Indies Regiment was reformed in 1958 as part of the West Indies Federation, after dissolution of the Federation the JDF was established. The Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) comprises an infantry Regiment and Reserve Corps, an Air Wing, a Coast Guard fleet and a supporting Engineering Unit. The infantry regiment contains the 1st, 2nd and 3rd (National Reserve) battalions. The JDF Air Wing is divided into three flight units, a training unit, a support unit and the JDF Air Wing (National Reserve). The Coast Guard is divided between seagoing crews and support crews who conduct maritime safety and maritime law enforcement as well as defence-related operations. The role of the support battalion is to provide support to boost numbers in combat and issue competency training in order to allow for the readiness of the force. The 1st Engineer Regiment was formed due to an increased demand for military engineers and their role is to provide engineering services whenever and wherever they are needed. The Headquarters JDF contains the JDF Commander, Command Staff as well as Intelligence, Judge Advocate office, Administrative and Procurement sections. In recent years the JDF has been called on to assist the nation's police, the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), in fighting drug smuggling and a rising crime rate which includes one of the highest murder rates in the world. JDF units actively conduct armed patrols with the JCF in high-crime areas and known gang neighbourhoods. There has been vocal controversy as well as support of this JDF role. In early 2005, an Opposition leader, Edward Seaga, called for the merger of the JDF and JCF. This has not garnered support in either organisation nor among the majority of citizens. In 2017, Jamaica signed the UN treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Administrative divisions. Jamaica is divided into 14 parishes, which are grouped into three historic counties that have no administrative relevance. In the context of local government the parishes are designated "Local Authorities". These local authorities are further styled as "Municipal Corporations", which are either city municipalities or town municipalities. Any new city municipality must have a population of at least 50,000, and a town municipality a number set by the Minister of Local Government. There are currently no town municipalities. The local governments of the parishes of Kingston and St. Andrews are consolidated as the city municipality of Kingston & St. Andrew Municipal Corporation. The newest city municipality is the Municipality of Portmore, created 2003. While it is geographically located within the parish of St. Catherine, it is governed independently. Geography and environment. Jamaica is the third largest island in the Caribbean. It lies between latitudes 17° and 19°N, and longitudes 76° and 79°W. Mountains dominate the interior: the Don Figuerero, Santa Cruz, and May Day mountains in the west, the Dry Harbour Mountains in the centre, and the John Crow Mountains and Blue Mountains in the east, the latter containing Blue Mountain Peak, Jamaica's tallest mountain at 2,256 m. They are surrounded by a narrow coastal plain. Jamaica has two cities, the first being Kingston, the capital city and centre of business, located on the south coast and the second being Montego Bay, one of the best known cities in the Caribbean for tourism, located on the north coast. Kingston Harbour is the seventh-largest natural harbour in the world, which contributed to the city being designated as the capital in 1872. Other towns of note include Portmore, Spanish Town, Savanna la Mar, Mandeville and the resort towns of Ocho Ríos, Port Antonio and Negril. Tourist attractions include Dunn's River Falls in St. Ann, YS Falls in St. Elizabeth, the Blue Lagoon in Portland, a dormant volcano's crater, and Port Royal, site of a major earthquake in 1692 that helped form the island's Palisadoes tombolo. Among the variety of terrestrial, aquatic and marine ecosystems are dry and wet limestone forests, rainforest, riparian woodland, wetlands, caves, rivers, seagrass beds and coral reefs. The authorities have recognised the tremendous significance and potential of the environment and have designated some of the more "fertile" areas as "protected". Among the island's protected areas are the Cockpit Country, Hellshire Hills, and Litchfield forest reserves. In 1992, Jamaica's first marine park, covering nearly , was established in Montego Bay. Portland Bight Protected Area was designated in 1999. The following year Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park was created, covering roughly of a wilderness area which supports thousands of tree and fern species and rare animals. There are several small islands off Jamaica's coast, most notably those in Portland Bight such as Pigeon Island, Salt Island, Dolphin Island, Long Island, Great Goat Island and Little Goat Island, and also Lime Cay located further east. Much further out – some 50–80 km off the south coast – lie the very small Morant Cays and Pedro Cays. Climate. The climate in Jamaica is tropical, with hot and humid weather, although higher inland regions are more temperate. Some regions on the south coast, such as the Liguanea Plain and the Pedro Plains, are relatively dry rain-shadow areas. Jamaica lies in the hurricane belt of the Atlantic Ocean and because of this, the island sometimes suffers significant storm damage. Hurricanes Charlie and Gilbert hit Jamaica directly in 1951 and 1988, respectively, causing major damage and many deaths. In the 2000s (decade), hurricanes Ivan, Dean, and Gustav also brought severe weather to the island. Flora and fauna. Jamaica's climate is tropical, supporting diverse ecosystems with a wealth of plants and animals. Its plant life has changed considerably over the centuries; when the Spanish arrived in 1494, except for small agricultural clearings, the country was deeply forested. The European settlers cut down the great timber trees for building and ships' supplies, and cleared the plains, savannas, and mountain slopes for intense agricultural cultivation. Many new plants were introduced including sugarcane, bananas, and citrus trees. Jamaica is home to about 3,000 species of native flowering plants (of which over 1,000 are endemic and 200 are species of orchid), thousands of species of non-flowering flora, and about 20 botanical gardens, some of which are several hundred years old. Areas of heavy rainfall also contain stands of bamboo, ferns, ebony, mahogany, and rosewood. Cactus and similar dry-area plants are found along the south and southwest coastal area. Parts of the west and southwest consist of large grasslands, with scattered stands of trees. Jamaica is home to three terrestrial ecoregions, the Jamaican moist forests, Jamaican dry forests, and Greater Antilles mangroves. It had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 5.01/10, ranking it 110th globally out of 172 countries. Jamaica's fauna, typical of the Caribbean, includes highly diversified wildlife with many endemic species. As with other oceanic islands, land mammals are mostly several species of bats of which at least three endemic species are found only in Cockpit Country, one of which is at-risk. Other species of bat include the fig-eating and hairy-tailed bats. The only non-bat native mammal extant in Jamaica is the Jamaican hutia, locally known as the coney. Introduced mammals such as wild boar and the small Asian mongoose are also common. Jamaica is also home to about 50 species of reptiles, the largest of which is the American crocodile; however, it is only present within the Black River and a few other areas. Lizards such as anoles, iguanas and snakes such as racers and the Jamaican boa (the largest snake on the island), are common in areas such as the Cockpit Country. None of Jamaica's eight species of native snakes is venomous. Jamaica is home to about 289 species of birds of which 27 are endemic including the endangered black-Billed parrots and the Jamaican blackbird, both of which are only found in Cockpit Country. It is also the indigenous home to four species of hummingbirds (three of which are found nowhere else in the world): the black-billed streamertail, the Jamaican mango, the Vervain hummingbird, and red-billed streamertails. The red-billed streamertail, known locally as the "doctor bird", is Jamaica's National Symbol. Other notable species include the Jamaican tody and the Greater flamingo, One species of freshwater turtle is native to Jamaica, the Jamaican slider. It is found only on Jamaica and on a few islands in the Bahamas. In addition, many types of frogs are common on the island, especially treefrogs. Jamaican waters contain considerable resources of fresh and saltwater fish. The chief varieties of saltwater fish are kingfish, jack, mackerel, whiting, bonito, and tuna. Fish that occasionally enter freshwater and estuarine environments include snook, jewfish, mangrove snapper, and mullets. Fish that spend the majority of their lives in Jamaica's fresh waters include many species of livebearers, killifish, freshwater gobies, the mountain mullet, and the American eel. Tilapia have been introduced from Africa for aquaculture, and are very common. Also visible in the waters surrounding Jamaica are dolphins, parrotfish, and the endangered manatee. Insects and other invertebrates are abundant, including the world's largest centipede, the Amazonian giant centipede. Jamaica is the home to about 150 species of butterflies and moths, including 35 indigenous species and 22 subspecies. It is also the native home to the Jamaican swallowtail, the western hemisphere's largest butterfly. Aquatic life. Coral reef ecosystems are important because they provide people with a source of livelihood, food, recreation, and medicinal compounds and protect the land on which they live. Jamaica relies on the ocean and its ecosystem for its development. However, the marine life in Jamaica is also being affected. There could be many factors that contribute to marine life not having the best health. Jamaica's geological origin, topographical features and seasonal high rainfall make it susceptible to a range of natural hazards that can affect the coastal and oceanic environments. These include storm surge, slope failures (landslides), earthquakes, floods and hurricanes. Coral reefs in the Negril Marine Park (NMP), Jamaica, have been increasingly impacted by nutrient pollution and macroalgal blooms following decades of intensive development as a major tourist destination. Another one of those factors could include tourism: being that Jamaica is a very touristy place, the island draws numerous people traveling here from all over the world. The Jamaican tourism industry accounts for 32% of total employment and 36% of the country's GDP and is largely based on the sun, sea and sand, the last two of these attributes being dependent on healthy coral reef ecosystems. Because of Jamaica's tourism, they have developed a study to see if the tourist would be willing to help financially to manage their marine ecosystem because Jamaica alone is unable to. The ocean connects all the countries all over the world, however, everyone and everything is affecting the flow and life in the ocean. Jamaica is a very touristy place specifically because of their beaches. If their oceans are not functioning at their best then the well-being of Jamaica and the people who live there will start to deteriorate. According to the OECD, oceans contribute $1.5 trillion annually in value-added to the overall economy. A developing country on an island will get the majority of their revenue from their ocean. Pollution. Pollution comes from run-off, sewage systems, and garbage. However, this typically all ends up in the ocean after there is rain or floods. Everything that ends up in the water changes the quality and balance of the ocean. Poor coastal water quality has adversely affected fisheries, tourism and mariculture, as well as undermining biological sustainability of the living resources of ocean and coastal habitats. Jamaica imports and exports many goods through their waters. Some of the imports that go into Jamaica include petroleum and petroleum products. Issues include accidents at sea; risk of spills through local and international transport of petroleum and petroleum products. Oil spills can disrupt the marine life with chemicals that are not normally found in the ocean. Other forms of pollution also occur in Jamaica. Solid waste disposal mechanisms in Jamaica are currently inadequate. The solid waste gets into the water through rainfall forces. Solid waste is also harmful to wildlife, particularly birds, fish and turtles that feed at the surface of the water and mistake floating debris for food. For example, plastic can be caught around birds' and turtles' necks, making it difficult to eat and breath as they begin to grow, causing the plastic to get tighter around their necks. Pieces of plastic, metal, and glass can be mistaken for the food fish eat. Each Jamaican generates 1 kg (2 lbs) of waste per day; only 70% of this is collected by National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA)—the remaining 30% is either burnt or disposed of in gullies/waterways. Environmental policies. There are policies that are being put into place to help preserve the ocean and the life below water. The goal of integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) is to improve the quality of life of human communities who depend on coastal resources while maintaining the biological diversity and productivity of coastal ecosystems. Developing an underdeveloped country can impact the oceans ecosystem because of all the construction that would be done to develop the country. Over-building, driven by powerful market forces as well as poverty among some sectors of the population, and destructive exploitation contribute to the decline of ocean and coastal resources. Developing practices that will contribute to the lives of the people but also to the life of the ocean and its ecosystem. Some of these practices include: Develop sustainable fisheries practices, ensure sustainable mariculture techniques and practices, sustainable management of shipping, and promote sustainable tourism practices. Demographics. Ethnic origins. C.I.A. World Fact Book 2015 Jamaica's diverse ethnic roots are reflected in the national motto "Out of Many One People". Most of the population of 2,812,000 (July 2018 est.) are of African or partially African descent, with many being able to trace their origins to the West African countries of Ghana and Nigeria. Other major ancestral areas are Europe, South Asia, and East Asia. It is uncommon for Jamaicans to identify themselves by race as is prominent in other countries such as the United States, with most Jamaicans seeing Jamaican nationality as an identity in and of itself, identifying as simply being "Jamaican" regardless of ethnicity. A study found that the average admixture on the island was 78.3% Sub-Saharan African, 16.0% European, and 5.7% East Asian. Another study in 2020 showed that Jamaicans of African descent represent 76.3% of the population, followed by 15.1% Afro-European, 3.4% East Indian and Afro-East Indian, 3.2% Caucasian, 1.2% Chinese and 0.8% other. The Jamaican Maroons of Accompong and other settlements are the descendants of African slaves who fled the plantations for the interior where they set up their own autonomous communities. Many Maroons continue to have their own traditions and speak their own language, known locally as Kromanti. Asians form the second-largest group and include Indo-Jamaicans and Chinese Jamaicans. Most are descended from indentured workers brought by the British colonial government to fill labour shortages following the abolition of slavery in 1838. Prominent Indian Jamaicans include jockey Shaun Bridgmohan, who was the first Jamaican in the Kentucky Derby, NBC Nightly News journalist Lester Holt, and Miss Jamaica World and Miss Universe winner Yendi Phillips. The southwestern parish of Westmoreland is famous for its large population of Indo-Jamaicans. Along with their Indian counterparts, Chinese Jamaicans have also played an integral part in Jamaica's community and history. Prominent descendants of this group include Canadian billionaire investor Michael Lee-Chin, supermodels Naomi Campbell and Tyson Beckford, and VP Records founder Vincent "Randy" Chin. There are about 20,000 Jamaicans who have Lebanese and Syrian ancestry. Most were Christian immigrants who fled the Ottoman occupation of Lebanon in the early 19th century. Eventually their descendants became very successful politicians and businessmen. Notable Jamaicans from this group include former Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Seaga, Jamaican politician and former Miss World Lisa Hanna, Jamaican politicians Edward Zacca and Shahine Robinson, and hotelier Abraham Elias Issa. The first wave of English immigrants arrived to the island 1655 after conquering the Spanish, and they have historically been the dominant group. Prominent descendants from this group include former American Governor of New York David Paterson, Sandals Hotels owner Gordon Butch Stewart, United States Presidential Advisor and "mother" of the Pell Grant Lois Rice, and former United States National Security Advisor and Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice. The first Irish immigrants came to Jamaica in the 1600s as war prisoners and later, indentured labour. Their descendants include two of Jamaica's National Heroes: Prime Ministers Michael Manley and Alexander Bustamante. Along with the English and the Irish, the Scots are another group that has made a significant impact on the island. According to the Scotland Herald newspaper, Jamaica has more people using the Campbell surnames than the population of Scotland itself, and it also has the highest percentage of Scottish surnames outside of Scotland. Scottish surnames account to about 60% of the surnames in the Jamaican phone books. The first Jamaican inhabitants from Scotland were exiled "rebels". Later, they would be followed by ambitious businessmen who spent time between their great country estates in Scotland and the island. As a result, many of the slave owning plantations on the island were owned by Scottish men, and thus a large number of mixed-race Jamaicans can claim Scottish ancestry. High immigration from Scotland continued until well after independence. Today, notable Scottish-Jamaicans include the businessman John Pringle, former American Secretary of State Colin Powell, and American actress Kerry Washington. There is also a significant Portuguese Jamaican population that is predominantly of Sephardic Jewish heritage. The first Jews arrived as explorers from Spain in the 15th century after being forced to convert to Christianity or face death. A small number of them became slave owners and even famous pirates. Judaism eventually became very influential in Jamaica and can be seen today with many Jewish cemeteries around the country. During the Holocaust Jamaica became a refuge for Jews fleeing persecution in Europe. Famous Jewish descendants include the dancehall artist Sean Paul, former record producer and founder of Island Records Chris Blackwell, and Jacob De Cordova who was the founder of the "Daily Gleaner" newspaper. In recent years immigration has increased, coming mainly from China, Haiti, Cuba, Colombia, and Latin America; 20,000 Latin Americans reside in Jamaica. In 2016, the Prime Minister Andrew Holness suggested making Spanish Jamaica's second official language. About 7,000 Americans also reside in Jamaica. Notable American with connection to the island include fashion icon Ralph Lauren, philanthropist Daisy Soros, Blackstone's Schwarzman family, the family of the late Lieutenant Governor of Delaware John W. Rollins, fashion designer Vanessa Noel, investor Guy Stuart, Edward and Patricia Falkenberg, and iHeart Media CEO Bob Pittman, all of whom hold annual charity events to support the island. Languages. Jamaica is regarded as a bilingual country, with two major languages in use by the population. The official language is English, which is "used in all domains of public life", including the government, the legal system, the media, and education. However, the primary spoken language is an English-based creole called Jamaican Patois (or Patwa). The two exist in a dialect continuum, with speakers using a different register of speech depending on context and whom they are speaking to. "Pure" Patois, though sometimes seen as merely a particularly aberrant dialect of English, is essentially mutually unintelligible with standard English and is best thought of as a separate language. A 2007 survey by the Jamaican Language Unit found that 17.1 percent of the population were monolingual in Jamaican Standard English (JSE), 36.5 percent were monolingual in Patois, and 46.4 percent were bilingual, although earlier surveys had pointed to a greater degree of bilinguality (up to 90 percent). The Jamaican education system has only recently begun to offer formal instruction in Patois, while retaining JSE as the "official language of instruction". Additionally, some Jamaicans use one or more of Jamaican Sign Language (JSL), American Sign Language (ASL) or the declining indigenous Jamaican Country Sign Language (Konchri Sain). Both JSL and ASL are rapidly replacing Konchri Sain for a variety of reasons. Emigration. Many Jamaicans have emigrated to other countries, especially to the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada. In the case of the United States, about 20,000 Jamaicans per year are granted permanent residence. There has also been emigration of Jamaicans to other Caribbeans countries such as Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guyana, and The Bahamas. It was estimated in 2004 that up to 2.5 million Jamaicans and Jamaican descendants live abroad. Jamaicans in the United Kingdom number an estimated 800,000 making them by far the country's largest African-Caribbean group. Large-scale migration from Jamaica to the UK occurred primarily in the 1950s and 1960s when the country was still under British rule. Jamaican communities exist in most large UK cities. Concentrations of expatriate Jamaicans are quite considerable in numerous cities in the United States, including New York City, Buffalo, the Miami metro area, Atlanta, Chicago, Orlando, Tampa, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Hartford, Providence and Los Angeles. In Canada, the Jamaican population is centred in Toronto, with smaller communities in cities such as Hamilton, Montreal, Winnipeg, Vancouver and Ottawa. Jamaican Canadians comprise about 30% of the entire Black Canadian population. A notable though much smaller group of emigrants are Jamaicans in Ethiopia. These are mostly Rastafarians, in whose theological worldview Africa is the promised land, or "Zion", or more specifically Ethiopia, due to reverence in which former Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie is held. Most live in the small town of Shashamane about 150 miles (240 km) south of the capital Addis Ababa. Crime. When Jamaica gained independence in 1962, the murder rate was 3.9 per 100,000 inhabitants, one of the lowest in the world. By 2009, the rate was 62 per 100,000 inhabitants, one of the highest in the world. Gang violence became a serious problem, with organised crime being centred around Jamaican posses or "Yardies". Jamaica has had one of the highest murder rates in the world for many years, according to UN estimates. Some areas of Jamaica, particularly poor areas in Kingston, Montego Bay and elsewhere experience high levels of crime and violence. However, there were 1,683 reported murders in 2009 and 1,447 in 2010. After 2011 the murder rate continued to fall, following the downward trend in 2010, after a strategic programme was launched. In 2012, the Ministry of National Security reported a 30 percent decrease in murders. Nevertheless, in 2017 murders rose by 22% over the previous year. Many Jamaicans are hostile towards LGBT and intersex people, and mob attacks against gay people have been reported. Numerous high-profile dancehall and ragga artists have produced songs featuring explicitly homophobic lyrics. Male homosexuality is illegal and punishable by imprisonment. Religion. Christianity is the largest religion practised in Jamaica. About 70% are Protestants; Roman Catholics are just 2% of the population. According to the 2001 census, the country's largest Protestant denominations are the Church of God (24%), Seventh-day Adventist Church (11%), Pentecostal (10%), Baptist (7%), Anglican (4%), United Church (2%), Methodist (2%), Moravian (1%) and Plymouth Brethren (1%). Bedwardism is a form of Christianity native to the island, sometimes viewed as a separate faith. The Christian faith gained acceptance as British Christian abolitionists and Baptist missionaries joined educated former slaves in the struggle against slavery. The Rastafari movement has 29,026 adherents, according to the 2011 census, with 25,325 Rastafarian males and 3,701 Rastafarian females. The faith originated in Jamaica in the 1930s and though rooted in Christianity it is heavily Afrocentric in its focus, revering figures such as the Jamaican black nationalist Marcus Garvey and Haile Selassie, the former Emperor of Ethiopia. Rastafari has since spread across the globe, especially to areas with large black or African diasporas. Various faiths and traditional religious practices derived from Africa are practised on the island, notably Kumina, Convince, Myal and Obeah. Other religions in Jamaica include Jehovah's Witnesses (2% population), the Bahá'í faith, which counts perhaps 8,000 adherents and 21 Local Spiritual Assemblies, Mormonism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. The Hindu Diwali festival is celebrated yearly among the Indo-Jamaican community. There is also a small population of about 200 Jews, who describe themselves as Liberal-Conservative. The first Jews in Jamaica trace their roots back to early 15th-century Spain and Portugal. Kahal Kadosh Shaare Shalom, also known as the United Congregation of Israelites, is a historic synagogue located in the city of Kingston. Originally built in 1912, it is the official and only Jewish place of worship left on the island. The once abundant Jewish population has voluntarily converted to Christianity over time. Shaare Shalom is one of the few synagogues in the world that contains sand covered floors and is a popular tourist destination. Other small groups include Muslims, who claim 5,000 adherents. The Muslim holidays of Ashura (known locally as Hussay or Hosay) and Eid have been celebrated throughout the island for hundreds of years. In the past, every plantation in each parish celebrated Hosay. Today it has been called an Indian carnival and is perhaps most well known in Clarendon where it is celebrated each August. People of all religions attend the event, showing mutual respect. Culture. Music. Jamaican culture has a strong global presence. The musical genres reggae, ska, mento, rocksteady, dub, and, more recently, dancehall and ragga all originated in the island's vibrant, popular urban recording industry. These have themselves gone on to influence numerous other genres, such as punk rock (through reggae and ska), dub poetry, New Wave, two-tone, lovers rock, reggaeton, jungle, drum and bass, dubstep, grime and American rap music. Some rappers, such as The Notorious B.I.G., Busta Rhymes, and Heavy D, are of Jamaican descent. Bob Marley is probably the best known Jamaican musician; with his band the Wailers he had a string of hits in 1960s–70s, popularising reggae internationally and going on to sell millions of records. Many other internationally known artists were born in Jamaica, including Toots Hibbert, Millie Small, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Gregory Isaacs, Half Pint, Protoje, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer, Big Youth, Jimmy Cliff, Dennis Brown, Desmond Dekker, Beres Hammond, Beenie Man, Shaggy, Grace Jones, Shabba Ranks, Super Cat, Buju Banton, Sean Paul, I Wayne, Bounty Killer and many others. Bands that came from Jamaica include Black Uhuru, Third World Band, Inner Circle, Chalice Reggae Band, Culture, Fab Five and Morgan Heritage. Literature. The journalist and author H. G. de Lisser used his native country as the setting for his many novels. Born in Falmouth, Jamaica, de Lisser worked as a reporter for the "Jamaica Times" at a young age and in 1920 began publishing the magazine "Planters' Punch". "The White Witch of Rosehall" is one of his better-known novels. He was named Honorary President of the Jamaican Press Association; he worked throughout his professional career to promote the Jamaican sugar industry. Roger Mais, a journalist, poet, and playwright wrote many short stories, plays, and novels, including "The Hills Were Joyful Together" (1953), "Brother Man" (1954), and "Black Lightning" (1955). Ian Fleming, who had a home in Jamaica where he spent considerable time, repeatedly used the island as a setting in his James Bond novels, including "Live and Let Die", "Doctor No", "For Your Eyes Only", "The Man with the Golden Gun", and "Octopussy and The Living Daylights". Marlon James (1970), novelist has published three novels: "John Crow's Devil" (2005), "The Book of Night Women" (2009) and "A Brief History of Seven Killings" (2014), winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize. Film. Jamaica has a history in the film industry dating from the early 1960s. A look at delinquent youth in Jamaica is presented in the 1970s musical crime film "The Harder They Come", starring Jimmy Cliff as a frustrated (and psychopathic) reggae musician who descends into a murderous crime spree. Other notable Jamaican films include "Countryman", "Rockers", "Dancehall Queen", "One Love", "Shottas", "Out the Gate", "Third World Cop" and "Kingston Paradise". Jamaica is also often used as a filming location, such as the James Bond film "Dr. No" (1962), "Papillon" (1973) starring Steve McQueen, "Cocktail" (1988) starring Tom Cruise, and the 1993 Disney comedy "Cool Runnings", which is loosely based on the true story of Jamaica's first bobsled team trying to make it in the Winter Olympics. Cuisine. The island is famous for its Jamaican jerk spice, curries and rice and peas which is integral to Jamaican cuisine. Jamaica is also home to Red Stripe beer and Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee. Sport. Sport is an integral part of national life in Jamaica and the island's athletes tend to perform to a standard well above what might ordinarily be expected of such a small country. While the most popular local sport is cricket, on the international stage Jamaicans have tended to do particularly well at track and field athletics. The country was one of the venues of 2007 Cricket World Cup and the West Indies cricket team is one of 12 ICC full member teams that participate in international Test cricket. The Jamaica national cricket team competes regionally, and also provides players for the West Indies team. Sabina Park is the only Test venue in the island, but the Greenfield Stadium is also used for cricket. Since independence Jamaica has consistently produced world class athletes in track and field. Over the past six decades Jamaica has produced dozens of world class sprinters including Olympic and World Champion Usain Bolt, world record holder in the 100m for men at 9.58s, and 200m for men at 19.19s. Other noteworthy Jamaican sprinters include Arthur Wint, the first Jamaican Olympic gold medalist; Donald Quarrie, Elaine Thompson double Olympic champion from Rio 2016 in the 100m and 200m, Olympic Champion and former 200m world record holder; Roy Anthony Bridge, part of the International Olympic Committee; Merlene Ottey; Delloreen Ennis-London; Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the former World and two time Olympic 100m Champion; Kerron Stewart; Aleen Bailey; Juliet Cuthbert; three-time Olympic gold medalist; Veronica Campbell-Brown; Sherone Simpson; Brigitte Foster-Hylton; Yohan Blake; Herb McKenley; George Rhoden, Olympic gold medalist; Deon Hemmings, Olympic gold medalist; as well as Asafa Powell, former 100m world record holder and two-time 100m Olympic finalist and gold medal winner in the men's 2008 Olympic . American Olympic winner Sanya Richards-Ross was also born in Jamaica. Association football and horse-racing are other popular sports in Jamaica. The national football team qualified for the 1998 FIFA World Cup. Horse racing was Jamaica's first sport. Today, horse racing provides jobs for about 20,000 people including horse breeders, groomers, and trainers. Also, several Jamaicans are known internationally for their success in horse racing including Richard DePass, who once held the Guinness Book of World Records for the most wins in a day, Canadian awards winner George HoSang, and American award winners Charlie Hussey, Andrew Ramgeet, and Barrington Harvey. Race car driving is also a popular sport in Jamaica with several car racing tracks and racing associations across the country. The Jamaica national bobsled team was once a serious contender in the Winter Olympics, beating many well-established teams. Chess and basketball are widely played in Jamaica and are supported by the Jamaica Chess Federation (JCF) and the Jamaica Basketball Federation (JBF), respectively. Netball is also very popular on the island, with the Jamaica national netball team called The Sunshine Girls consistently ranking in the top five in the world. Rugby league has been played in Jamaica since 2006. The Jamaica national rugby league team is made up of players who play in Jamaica and from UK based professional and semi professional clubs (notably in the Super League and Championship). In November 2018 for the first time ever, the Jamaican rugby league team qualified for the Rugby League World Cup after defeating the USA & Canada. Jamaica will play in the 2021 Rugby League World Cup in England. According to ESPN, the highest paid Jamaican professional athlete in 2011 was Justin Masterson, starting pitcher for the baseball team Cleveland Indians in the United States. Education. The emancipation of the slaves heralded the establishment of an education system for the masses. Prior to emancipation there were few schools for educating locals and many sent their children off to England to access quality education. After emancipation the West Indian Commission granted a sum of money to establish Elementary Schools, now known as "All Age Schools". Most of these schools were established by the churches. This was the genesis of the modern Jamaican school system. Presently the following categories of schools exist: Additionally, there are many community and teacher training colleges. Education is free from the early childhood to secondary levels. There are also opportunities for those who cannot afford further education in the vocational arena, through the Human Employment and Resource Training-National Training Agency (HEART Trust-NTA) programme, which is opened to all working age national population and through an extensive scholarship network for the various universities. Students are taught Spanish in school from the primary level upwards; about 40–45% of educated people in Jamaica knows some form of Spanish. Economy. Jamaica is a mixed economy with both state enterprises and private sector businesses. Major sectors of the Jamaican economy include agriculture, mining, manufacturing, tourism, petroleum refining, financial and insurance services. Tourism and mining are the leading earners of foreign exchange. Half the Jamaican economy relies on services, with half of its income coming from services such as tourism. An estimated 4.3 million foreign tourists visit Jamaica every year. According to the World Bank, Jamaica is an upper-middle income country that, like its Caribbean neighbours, is vulnerable to the effects of climate change, flooding, and hurricanes. In 2018, Jamaica represented the CARICOM Caribbean Community at the G20 and the G7 annual meetings. In 2019 Jamaica reported its lowest unemployment rate in 50 years. Supported by multilateral financial institutions, Jamaica has, since the early 1980s, sought to implement structural reforms aimed at fostering private sector activity and increasing the role of market forces in resource allocation Since 1991, the government has followed a programme of economic liberalisation and stabilisation by removing exchange controls, floating the exchange rate, cutting tariffs, stabilising the Jamaican dollar, reducing inflation and removing restrictions on foreign investment. Emphasis has been placed on maintaining strict fiscal discipline, greater openness to trade and financial flows, market liberalisation and reduction in the size of government. During this period, a large share of the economy was returned to private sector ownership through divestment and privatisation programmes. The free-trade zones at Kingston, Montego Bay and Spanish Town allow duty-free importation, tax-free profits, and free repatriation of export earnings. Jamaica's economy grew strongly after the years of independence, but then stagnated in the 1980s, due to the heavy falls in price of bauxite and fluctuations in the price of agriculture. The financial sector was troubled in 1994, with many banks and insurance companies suffering heavy losses and liquidity problems. According to the Commonwealth Secretariat, "The government set up the Financial Sector Adjustment Company (Finsac) in January 1997 to assist these banks and companies, providing funds in return for equity, and acquired substantial holdings in banks and insurance companies and related companies..." but it only exasperated the problem, and brought the country into large external debt. From 2001, once it had restored these banks and companies to financial health, Finsac divested them." The Government of Jamaica remains committed to lowering inflation, with a long-term objective of bringing it in line with that of its major trading partners. In 1996 and 1997 there was a decrease in GDP largely due to significant problems in the financial sector and, in 1997, a severe island-wide drought (the worst in 70 years) and hurricane that drastically reduced agricultural production. In 1997 and 1998, nominal GDP was approximately a high of about 8 percent of GDP and then lowered to 4½ percent of GDP in 1999 and 2000. The economy in 1997 was marked by low levels of import growth, high levels of private capital inflows and relative stability in the foreign exchange market. Recent economic performance shows the Jamaican economy is recovering. Agricultural production, an important engine of growth increased to 5.5% in 2001 compared to the corresponding period in 2000, signalling the first positive growth rate in the sector since January 1997. In 2018, Jamaica reported a 7.9% increase in corn, 6.1% increase in plantains, 10.4% increase in bananas, 2.2% increase in pineapples, 13.3% increase in dasheen, 24.9% increase in coconuts, and a 10.6% increase in whole milk production. Bauxite and alumina production increased 5.5% from January to December 1998, compared to the corresponding period in 1997. January's bauxite production recorded a 7.1% increase relative to January 1998 and continued expansion of alumina production through 2009 is planned by Alcoa. Jamaica is the fifth-largest exporter of bauxite in the world, after Australia, China, Brazil and Guinea. The country also exports limestone, of which it holds large deposits. The government is currently implementing plans to increase its extraction. A Canadian company, Carube Copper Corp, has found and confirmed, "...the existence of at least seven significant Cu/Au porphyry systems (in St. Catherine)." They have estimated that, "The porphyry distribution found at Bellas Gate is similar to that found in the Northparkes mining district of New South Wales, Australia (which was) sold to China in 2013 for US$820 million." Carube noted that Jamaica's geology, "... is similar to that of Chile, Argentina and the Dominican Republic – all productive mining jurisdictions." Mining on the sites began in 2017. Tourism, which is the largest foreign exchange earner, showed improvement as well. In 1999 the total visitor arrivals was 2 million, an increase of 100,000 from the previous year. Since 2017, Jamaica's tourism has risen exponentially, rising to 4.3 million average tourists per year. Jamaica's largest tourist markets are from North America, South America, and Europe. In 2017, Jamaica recorded a 91.3% increase in stopover visitors from Southern and Western Europe (and a 41% increase in stopover arrivals from January to September 2017 over the same period from the previous year) with Germany, Portugal and Spain registering the highest percentage gains. In 2018, Jamaica won several World Travel Awards in Portugal winning the "Chairman's Award for Global Tourism Innovation", "Best Tourist Board in the Caribbean" "Best Honeymoon Destination", "Best Culinary Destination", "World's Leading Beach Destination" and "World's Leading Cruise Destination". Two months later, the Travvy Tourism Awards held in New York City, awarded Jamaica's Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett, with the inaugural Chairman's Award for, "Global Tourism Innovation for the Development of the Global Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management Centre (GTRCM)". Bartlett has also won the Pacific Travel Writer's Association's award in Germany for the, "2018 Best Tourism Minister of the Year". Petrojam, Jamaica's national and only petroleum refinery, is co-owned by the Government of Venezuela. Petrojam, "..operates a 35,000 barrel per day hydro-skimming refinery, to produce Automotive Diesel Oil; Heavy Fuel Oil; Kerosene/Jet Fuel, Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG), Asphalt and Gasoline." Customers include the Power industry, Aircraft refuellers, and Local Marketing companies. On 20 February 2019, the Jamaican Government voted to retake ownership of Venezuela's 49% share. Jamaica's agricultural exports are sugar, bananas, cocoa, coconut, molasses oranges, limes, grapefruit, rum, yams, allspice (of which it is the world's largest and "most exceptional quality" exporter), and Blue Mountain Coffee which is considered a world renowned gourmet brand. Jamaica has a wide variety of industrial and commercial activities. The aviation industry is able to perform most routine aircraft maintenance, except for heavy structural repairs. There is a considerable amount of technical support for transport and agricultural aviation. Jamaica has a considerable amount of industrial engineering, light manufacturing, including metal fabrication, metal roofing, and furniture manufacturing. Food and beverage processing, glassware manufacturing, software and data processing, printing and publishing, insurance underwriting, music and recording, and advanced education activities can be found in the larger urban areas. The Jamaican construction industry is entirely self-sufficient, with professional technical standards and guidance. Since the first quarter of 2006, the economy of Jamaica has undergone a period of staunch growth. With inflation for the 2006 calendar year down to 6.0% and unemployment down to 8.9%, the nominal GDP grew by an unprecedented 2.9%. An investment programme in island transportation and utility infrastructure and gains in the tourism, mining, and service sectors all contributed this figure. All projections for 2007 show an even higher potential for economic growth with all estimates over 3.0% and hampered only by urban crime and public policies. Jamaica was ranked 72nd in the Global Innovation Index in 2020, up from 81st in 2019. In 2006, Jamaica became part of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) as one of the pioneering members. The global economic downturn had a significant impact on the Jamaican economy for the years 2007 to 2009, resulting in negative economic growth. The government implemented a new Debt Management Initiative, the Jamaica Debt Exchange (JDX) on 14 January 2010. The initiative would see holders of Government of Jamaica (GOJ) bonds returning the high interest earning instruments for bonds with lower yields and longer maturities. The offer was taken up by over 95% of local financial institutions and was deemed a success by the government. Owing to the success of the JDX program, the Bruce Golding-led government was successful in entering into a borrowing arrangement with the IMF on 4 February 2010 for the amount of US$1.27b. The loan agreement is for a period of three years. In April 2014, the Governments of Jamaica and China signed the preliminary agreements for the first phase of the Jamaican Logistics Hub (JLH) – the initiative that aims to position Kingston as the fourth node in the global logistics chain, joining Rotterdam, Dubai and Singapore, and serving the Americas. The Project, when completed, is expected to provide many jobs for Jamaicans, Economic Zones for multinational companies and much needed economic growth to alleviate the country's heavy debt-to-GDP ratio. Strict adherence to the IMF's refinancing programme and preparations for the JLH has favourably affected Jamaica's credit rating and outlook from the three biggest rating agencies. In 2018, both Moody's and Standard and Poor Credit ratings upgraded Jamaica's ratings to both "stable and positive" respectively. Science and technology. "Main articles: Science and technology in Jamaica and List of Jamaican inventions and discoveries" The Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) sector is guided by the National Commission on Science and Technology (NCST) and the Scientific Research Council (SRC). Both are under the direction of the Ministry of Science, Energy, and Technology. Since the 1990s, the government has set an agenda to push the development of science and technology in Jamaica. Despite some successes, such as the growth of the nutraceutical industry, it has been difficult to translate the results into domestic technologies, products and services - largely because of national budgetary constraints. However, with Jamaica's improved fiscal space, coming out of its recent IMF programme, the government has pledged to increase expenditure on research and development. Jamaicans have made some noteworthy scientific and medical contributions. Amongst these include the discovery of kwashiorkor, the pioneer of treatments for pediatric sickle cell anemia and the invention of various spacecraft support systems. Infrastructure. Transport. The transport infrastructure in Jamaica consists of roadways, railways and air transport, with roadways forming the backbone of the island's internal transport system. Roadways. The Jamaican road network consists of almost of roads, of which over is paved. The Jamaican Government has, since the late 1990s and in cooperation with private investors, embarked on a campaign of infrastructural improvement projects, one of which includes the creation of a system of freeways, the first such access-controlled roadways of their kind on the island, connecting the main population centres of the island. This project has so far seen the completion of of freeway. Railways. Railways in Jamaica no longer enjoy the prominent position they once did, having been largely replaced by roadways as the primary means of transport. Of the of railway found in Jamaica, only remain in operation, currently used to transport bauxite. On 13 April 2011, a limited passenger service was resumed between May Pen, Spanish Town and Linstead. Air transport. There are three international airports in Jamaica with modern terminals, long runways, and the navigational equipment required to accommodate the large jet aircraft used in modern and air travel: Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston; Ian Fleming International Airport in Boscobel, Saint Mary Parish; and the island's largest and busiest airport, Sir Donald Sangster International Airport in the resort city of Montego Bay. Manley and Sangster International airports are home to the country's national airline, Air Jamaica. In addition there are local commuter airports at Tinson Pen (Kingston), Port Antonio, and Negril, which cater to internal flights only. Many other small, rural centres are served by private airstrips on sugar estates or bauxite mines. Ports, shipping and lighthouses. Owing to its location in the Caribbean Sea in the shipping lane to the Panama Canal and relative proximity to large markets in North America and emerging markets in Latin America, Jamaica receives much traffic of shipping containers. The container terminal at the Port of Kingston has undergone large expansion in capacity in recent years to handle growth both already realised as well as that which is projected in coming years. Montego Freeport in Montego Bay also handles a variety of cargo like (though more limited than) the Port of Kingston, mainly agricultural products. There are several other ports positioned around the island, including Port Esquivel in St. Catherine (WINDALCO), Rocky Point in Clarendon, Port Kaiser in St. Elizabeth, Port Rhoades in Discovery Bay, Reynolds Pier in Ocho Rios, and Boundbrook Port in Port Antonio. To aid the navigation of shipping, Jamaica operates nine lighthouses. They are maintained by the <Port Authority of Jamaica, an agency of the Ministry of Transport and Works. Energy. Jamaica depends on petroleum imports to satisfy its national energy needs. Many test sites have been explored for oil, but no commercially viable quantities have been found. The most convenient sources of imported oil and motor fuels (diesel, gasoline, and jet fuel) are from Mexico and Venezuela. Jamaica's electrical power is produced by diesel (bunker oil) generators located in Old Harbour. This facility has been further equipped with liquid natural gas capability and storage. Other smaller power stations (most owned by the Jamaica Public Service Company, the island's electricity provider) support the island's electrical grid including the Hunts Bay Power Station, the Bogue Power Station Saint James, the Rockfort Power Station Saint Andrew and small hydroelectric plants on the White River, Rio Bueno, Morant River, Black River (Maggotty) and Roaring River. A wind farm, owned by the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica, was established at Wigton, Manchester. Jamaica has successfully operated a SLOWPOKE-2 nuclear reactor of 20 kW capacity since the early 1980s, but there are no plans to expand nuclear power at present. Jamaica imports approximately of oil energy products per day, including asphalt and lubrication products. Just 20% of imported fuels are used for road transportation, the rest being used by the bauxite industry, electricity generation, and aviation. 30,000 barrels/day of crude imports are processed into various motor fuels and asphalt by the Petrojam Refinery in Kingston. Jamaica produces enormous quantities of drinking alcohol (at least 5% water content), most of which appears to be consumed as beverages, and none used as motor fuel. Facilities exist to refine hydrous ethanol feedstock into anhydrous ethanol (0% water content), but as of 2007, the process appeared to be uneconomic and the production plant was idle. The facility has since been purchased by West Indies Petroleum Ltd. and repurposed for petroleum distillates. Communication. Jamaica has a fully digital telephone communication system with a mobile penetration of over 95%. The country's two mobile operators – FLOW Jamaica (formerly LIME, bMobile and Cable and Wireless Jamaica) and Digicel Jamaica have spent millions in network upgrades and expansion. The newest operator, Digicel was granted a licence in 2001 to operate mobile services in the newly liberalised telecom market that had once been the sole domain of the incumbent FLOW (then Cable and Wireless Jamaica) monopoly. Digicel opted for the more widely used GSM wireless system, while a past operator, Oceanic (which became Claro Jamaica and later merged with Digicel Jamaica in 2011) opted for the CDMA standard. FLOW (formerly "LIME" – pre-Columbus Communications merger) which had begun with TDMA standard, subsequently upgraded to GSM in 2002, decommissioned TDMA in 2006 and only utilised that standard until 2009 when LIME launched its 3G network. Both operators currently provide islandwide coverage with HSPA+ (3G) technology. Currently, only Digicel offers LTE to its customers whereas FLOW Jamaica has committed to launching LTE in the cities of Kingston and Montego Bay, places where Digicel's LTE network is currently only found in, in short order. A new entrant to the Jamaican communications market, Flow Jamaica, laid a new submarine cable connecting Jamaica to the United States. This new cable increases the total number of submarine cables connecting Jamaica to the rest of the world to four. Cable and Wireless Communications (parent company of LIME) acquired the company in late 2014 and replaced their brand LIME with FLOW. FLOW Jamaica currently has the most broadband and cable subscribers on the island and also has 1 million mobile subscribers, second to Digicel (which had, at its peak, over 2 million mobile subscriptions on its network). Digicel entered the broadband market in 2010 by offering WiMAX broadband, capable of up to 6 Mbit/s per subscriber. To further their broadband share post-LIME/FLOW merger in 2014, the company introduced a new broadband service called Digicel Play, which is Jamaica's second FTTH offering (after LIME's deployment in selected communities in 2011). It is currently only available in the parishes of Kingston, Portmore and St. Andrew. It offers speeds of up to 200 Mbit/s down, 100 Mbit/s up via a pure fibre optic network. Digicel's competitor, FLOW Jamaica, has a network consisting of ADSL, Coaxial and Fibre to the Home (inherited from LIME) and only offers speeds up to 100 Mbit/s. FLOW has committed to expanding its Fibre offering to more areas in order to combat Digicel's entrance into the market. It was announced that the Office and Utilities Regulations (OUR), Ministry of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining (MSTEM) and the Spectrum Management Authority (SMA) have given approval for another mobile operator licence in January 2016. The identity of this entrant was ascertained on 20 May 2016, when the Jamaican Government named the new carrier as Symbiote Investments Limited operating under the name Caricel. The company will focus on 4G LTE data offerings and will first go live in the Kingston Metropolitan Area and will expand to the rest of Jamaica thereafter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15661

History of Jamaica

The Caribbean Island of Jamaica was initially inhabited in approximately 600 AD or 650 AD by the Redware people, often associated with redware pottery. By roughly 800 AD, a second wave of inhabitance occurred by the Arawak tribes, including the Tainos, prior to the arrival of Columbus in 1494. Early inhabitants of Jamaica named the land "Xaymaca", meaning "land of wood and water". The Spanish enslaved the Arawak, who were ravaged further by diseases that the Spanish brought with them. Early historians believe that by 1602, the Arawak-speaking Taino tribes were extinct. However, some of the Taino escaped into the forested mountains of the interior, where they mixed with runaway African slaves, and survived free from first Spanish, and then English, rule. The Spanish also captured and transported hundreds of West African people to the island for the purpose of slavery. However, the majority of Africans were brought into Jamaica by the English. In 1655, the English invaded Jamaica, and defeated the Spanish. Some African enslaved people took advantage of the political turmoil and escaped to the island's interior mountains, forming independent communities which became known as the Maroons. Meanwhile, on the coast, the English built the settlement of Port Royal, a base of operations where piracy flourished as so many European rebels had been rejected from their countries to serve sentences on the seas. Captain Henry Morgan, a Welsh plantation owner and privateer, raided settlements and shipping bases in Port Royal, earning him his reputation as one of the richest pirates in the Caribbean. In the 18th century, sugar cane replaced piracy as British Jamaica's main source of income. The sugar industry was labour-intensive and the British brought hundreds of thousands of enslaved black Africans to the island. By 1850, the black and mulatto Jamaican population outnumbered the white population by a ratio of twenty to one. Enslaved Jamaicans mounted over a dozen major uprisings during the 18th century, including Tacky's Revolt in 1760. There were also periodic skirmishes between the British and the mountain communities of the Jamaican Maroons, culminating in the First Maroon War of the 1730s and the Second Maroon War of 1795–1796. The aftermath of the Baptist War shone a light on the conditions of slaves which contributed greatly to the abolition movement and the passage of The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, which formally ended slavery in Jamaica in 1834. However, relations between the white and black community remained tense coming into the mid-19th century, with the most notable event being the Morant Bay Rebellion in 1865. The latter half of the 19th century saw economic decline, low crop prices, droughts, and disease. When sugar lost its importance, many former plantations went bankrupt, and land was sold to Jamaican peasants and cane fields were consolidated by dominant British producers. Jamaica's first political parties emerged in the late 1920s, while workers association and trade unions emerged in the 1930s. The development of a new Constitution in 1944, universal male suffrage, and limited self-government eventually led to Jamaican Independence in 1962 with Alexander Bustamante serving as its first prime minister. The country saw an extensive period of postwar growth and a smaller reliance on the agricultural sector and a larger reliance on bauxite and mining in the 1960s and 1970s. Political power changed hands between the two dominant parties, the JLP and PNP, from the 1970s to the present day. While Jamaica's murder rate fell by nearly half after the 2010 Tivoli Incursion, the country's murder rate remains one of the highest in the world. Economic troubles hit the country in 2013, the IMF agreed to a $1 billion loan to help Jamaica meet large debt payments, making Jamaica a highly indebted country that spends around half of its annual budget on debt repayments. Pre-Columbian Jamaica. The first inhabitants of Jamaica probably came from islands to the east in two waves of migration. About 600 CE the culture known as the “Redware people” arrived. Little is known of these people, however, beyond the red pottery they left behind. Alligator Pond in Manchester Parish and Little River in St. Ann Parish are among the earliest known sites of this Ostionoid person, who lived near the coast and extensively hunted turtles and fish. Around 800 CE, the Arawak tribes of the Tainos arrived, eventually settling throughout the island. Living in villages ruled by tribal chiefs called the caciques, they sustained themselves on fishing and the cultivation of maize and cassava. At the height of their civilization, their population is estimated to have numbered as much as 60,000. The Arawak brought a South America system of raising yuca known as "conuco" to the island. To add nutrients to the soil, the Arawak burned local bushes and trees and heaped the ash into large mounds, into which they then planted yuca cuttings. Most Arawak lived in large circular buildings ("bohios"), constructed with wooden poles, woven straw, and palm leaves. The Arawak spoke an Arawakan language and did not have writing. Some of the words used by them, such as "barbacoa" ("barbecue"), "hamaca" ("hammock"), "kanoa" ("canoe"), "tabaco" ("tobacco"), "yuca", "batata" ("sweet potato"), and "juracán" ("hurricane"), have been incorporated into Spanish and English. The Spanish period (1494–1655). Christopher Columbus is believed to be the first European to reach Jamaica. He landed on the island on 5 May 1494, during his second voyage to the Americas. Columbus returned to Jamaica during his fourth voyage to the Americas. He had been sailing around the Caribbean for nearly a year when a storm beached his ships in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, on 25 June 1503. Columbus and his men remained stranded on the island for one year, finally departing on June 1504. The Spanish crown granted the island to the Columbus family, but for decades it was something of a backwater, valued chiefly as a supply base for food and animal hides. In 1509 Juan de Esquivel founded the first permanent European settlement, the town of Sevilla la Nueva (New Seville), on the north coast of the island. A decade later, Friar Bartolomé de las Casas wrote to Spanish authorities about Esquivel's conduct during the Higüey massacre of 1503. In 1534 the capital was moved to Villa de la Vega (later Santiago de la Vega), now called Spanish Town. This settlement served as the capital of both Spanish and English Jamaica, from its founding until 1872, after which the capital was moved to Kingston. The Spanish enslaved many of the Arawak. Some escaped to the mountains to join the Maroons. However, most died from European diseases as well as from being overworked. The Spaniards also introduced the first African slaves into the island. By the early 17th century, when most of the Taino had died out, the population of the island was about 3,000, including a small number of African slaves. Disappointed in the lack of gold on the island, Jamaica was mainly used as a military base to supply colonization efforts in the mainland Americas. The Spanish colonists did not bring women in the first expeditions and took Taíno women for their common-law wives, resulting in mestizo children. Although the Taino referred to the island as "Xaymaca", the Spanish gradually changed the name to "Jamaica". In the so-called Admiral's map of 1507 the island was labeled as "Jamaiqua" and in Peter Martyr's work "Decades" of 1511, he referred to it as both "Jamaica" and "Jamica". British rule (1655–1962). 17th century. English conquest. In late 1654, English leader Oliver Cromwell launched the "Western Design" armada against Spain's colonies in the Caribbean. In April 1655, General Robert Venables led the armada in an attack on Spain's fort at Santo Domingo, Hispaniola. After the Spanish repelled this poorly executed attack, the English force then sailed for Jamaica, the only Spanish West Indies island that did not have new defensive works. In May 1655, around 7,000 English soldiers landed near Jamaica's capital, named Spanish Town and soon overwhelmed the small number of Spanish troops (at the time, Jamaica's entire population only numbered around 2,500). Spain never recaptured Jamaica, losing the Battle of Ocho Rios in 1657 and the Battle of Rio Nuevo in 1658. In 1660, the turning point was when some Spanish runaway slaves, who settled in the interior mountainous regions of Jamaica, became known as the Jamaican Maroons, under the leadership of Juan de Bolas switched sides from the Spanish to the English. For England, Jamaica was to be the "dagger pointed at the heart of the Spanish Empire," but in fact, it was a possession of little economic value then. England gained formal possession of Jamaica from Spain in 1670 through the Treaty of Madrid. Removing the pressing need for constant defence against a Spanish attack, this change served as an incentive to planting. British Colonization. Cromwell increased the island's European population by sending indentured servants and prisoners to Jamaica. Due to Irish emigration resulting from the wars in Ireland at this time two-thirds of this 17th-century European population was Irish. But tropical diseases kept the number of Europeans under 10,000 until about 1740. Although the African slave population in the 1670s and 1680s never exceeded 10,000, by the end of the 17th century imports of slaves increased the black population to at least five times greater than the white population. Thereafter, Jamaica's African population did not increase significantly in number until well into the 18th century, in part because ships coming from the west coast of Africa preferred to unload at the islands of the Eastern Caribbean. At the beginning of the 18th century, the number of slaves in Jamaica did not exceed 45,000, but by 1800 it had increased to over 300,000. Maroons. When the English captured Jamaica in 1655, the Spanish colonists fled, leaving a large number of African slaves. These former Spanish slaves organised under the leadership of rival captains Juan de Serras and Juan de Bolas. These Jamaican Maroons intermarried with the Arawak people, and established distinct independent communities in the mountainous interior of Jamaica. They survived by subsistence farming and periodic raids of plantations. Over time, the Maroons came to control large areas of the Jamaican interior. In the second half of the seventeenth century, de Serras fought regular campaigns against English colonial forces, even attacking the capital of Spanish Town, and he was never defeated by the English. Throughout the seventeenth century, and in the first few decades of the eighteenth century, Maroon forces frequently defeated the British in small-scale skirmishes. The British colonial authorities dispatched numerous expeditions in an attempt to subdue them, but the Maroons successfully fought a guerrilla campaign against the British in the mountainous interior, and forced the British government to seek peace terms to end the expensive conflict. In the early eighteenth century, English-speaking escaped Akan slaves were at the forefront of the Maroon fighting against the British. The House of Assembly. Beginning with the Stuart monarchy's appointment of a civil governor to Jamaica in 1661, political patterns were established that lasted well into the 20th century. The second governor, Lord Windsor, brought with him in 1662 a proclamation from the king giving Jamaica's non-slave populace the same rights as those of English citizens, including the right to make their own laws. Although he spent only ten weeks in Jamaica, Lord Windsor laid the foundations of a governing system that was to last for two centuries — a crown-appointed governor acting with the advice of a nominated council in the legislature. The legislature consisted of the governor and an elected but highly unrepresentative House of Assembly. For years, the planter-dominated Assembly was in continual conflict with the various governors and the Stuart kings; there were also contentious factions within the assembly itself. For much of the 1670s and 1680s, Charles II and James II and the assembly feuded over such matters as the purchase of slaves from ships not run by the royal English trading company. The last Stuart governor, Christopher Monck, 2nd Duke of Albemarle, who was more interested in treasure hunting than in planting, turned the planter oligarchy out of office. After the duke's death in 1688, the planters, who had fled Jamaica to London, succeeded in lobbying James II to order a return to the pre-Albemarle political arrangement (the local control of Jamaican planters belonging to the assembly). Jamaica's pirates. Following the 1655 conquest, Spain repeatedly attempted to recapture Jamaica. In response, in 1657, Governor Edward D'Oyley invited the Brethren of the Coast to come to Port Royal and make it their home port. The Brethren was made up of a group of pirates who were descendants of cattle-hunting "boucaniers" (later Anglicised to buccaneers), who had turned to piracy after being robbed by the Spanish (and subsequently thrown out of Hispaniola). These pirates concentrated their attacks on Spanish shipping, whose interests were considered the major threat to the town. These pirates later became legal English privateers who were given letters of marque by Jamaica's governor. Around the same time that pirates were invited to Port Royal, England launched a series of attacks against Spanish shipping vessels and coastal towns. By sending the newly appointed privateers after Spanish ships and settlements, England had successfully set up a system of defense for Port Royal. Jamaica became a haven of privateers, buccaneers, and occasionally outright pirates: Christopher Myngs, Edward Mansvelt, and most famously, Henry Morgan. England gained formal possession of Jamaica from Spain in 1670 through the Treaty of Madrid. Removing the pressing need for constant defense against a Spanish attack, this change served as an incentive to planting. This settlement also improved the supply of slaves and resulted in more protection, including military support, for the planters against foreign competition. As a result, the sugar monoculture and slave-worked plantation society spread across Jamaica throughout the 18th century, decreasing Jamaica's dependence on privateers for protection and funds. However, the English colonial authorities continued to have difficulties suppressing the Spanish Maroons, who made their homes in the mountainous interior and mounted periodic raids on estates and towns, such as Spanish Town. The Karmahaly Maroons, led by Juan de Serras, continued to stay in the forested mountains, and periodically fought the English. In the 1670s and 1680s, in his capacity as an owner of a large slave plantation, Morgan led three campaigns against the Jamaican Maroons of Juan de Serras. Morgan achieved some success against the Maroons, who withdrew further into the Blue Mountains, where they were able to stay out of the reach of Morgan and his forces. Another blow to Jamaica's partnership with privateers was the violent earthquake which destroyed much of Port Royal on 7 June 1692. Two-thirds of the town sank into the sea immediately after the main shock. After the earthquake, the town was partially rebuilt but the colonial government was relocated to Spanish Town, which had been the capital under Spanish rule. Port Royal was further devastated by a fire in 1703 and a hurricane in 1722. Most of the sea trade moved to Kingston. By the late 18th century, Port Royal was largely abandoned. 18th century. Jamaica's sugar boom. In the mid-17th century, sugarcane was introduced to the British West Indies by the Dutch, from Brazil. Upon landing in Jamaica and other islands, they quickly urged local growers to change their main crops from cotton and tobacco to sugarcane. With depressed prices of cotton and tobacco, due mainly to stiff competition from the North American colonies, the farmers switched, leading to a boom in the Caribbean economies. Sugarcane was quickly snapped up by the British, who used it in cakes and to sweeten tea. In the 18th century, sugar replaced piracy as Jamaica's main source of income. The sugar industry was labor-intensive and the British brought hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans to Jamaica. By 1832, the median-size plantation in Jamaica had about 150 slaves, and nearly one of every four bondsmen lived on units that had at least 250 slaves. In "The Book of Night Women", author Marlon James indicates that the ratio of slave owners to enslaved Africans is 1:33. James also depicts atrocities that slave owners subjected slaves to along with violent resistance from the slaves as well as numerous slaves who died in pursuit of freedom. After slavery was abolished in 1834, sugarcane plantations used a variety of forms of labour including workers imported from India under contracts of indenture. First Maroon War. Starting in the late seventeenth century, there were periodic skirmishes between the English colonial militia and the Windward Maroons, alongside occasional slave revolts. In 1673 one such revolt in St. Ann's Parish of 200 slaves created the separate group of Leeward Maroons. These Maroons united with a group of Madagascars who had survived the shipwreck of a slave ship and formed their own maroon community in St. George's parish. Several more rebellions strengthened the numbers of this Leeward group. Notably, in 1690 a revolt at Sutton's plantation in Clarendon Parish of 400 slaves considerably strengthened the Leeward Maroons. The Leeward Maroons inhabited "cockpits," caves, or deep ravines that were easily defended, even against troops with superior firepower. Such guerrilla warfare and the use of scouts who blew the abeng (the cow horn, which was used as a trumpet) to warn of approaching enemies allowed the Maroons to evade, thwart, frustrate, and defeat the British. Early in the 18th century, the Maroons took a heavy toll on British colonial militiamen who sent against them in the interior, in what came to be known as the First Maroon War. In 1728, the British authorities sent Robert Hunter to assume the office of governor of Jamaica; Hunter's arrival led to an intensification of the conflict. However, despite increased numbers, the British colonial authorities were unable to defeat the Windward Maroons. In 1739–40, the British government in Jamaica recognised that it could not defeat the Maroons, so they offered them treaties of peace instead. In 1739, the British, led by Governor Edward Trelawny, sued for peace with the Leeward Maroon leader, Cudjoe, described by British planters as a short, almost dwarf-like man who for years fought skilfully and bravely to maintain his people's independence. Some writers maintain that during the conflict, Cudjoe became increasingly disillusioned, and quarrelled with his lieutenants and with other Maroon groups. He felt that the only hope for the future was a peace treaty with the enemy which recognized the independence of the Leeward Maroons. In 1742, Cudjoe had to suppress a rebellion of Leeward Maroons against the treaty. The First Maroon War came to an end with a 1739–1740 agreement between the Maroons and the British government. In exchange, they were asked to agree not to harbour new runaway slaves, but rather to help catch them. This last clause in the treaty naturally caused a split between the Maroons and the mainly mulatto population, although from time to time runaways from the plantations still found their way into maroon settlements, such as those led by Three Fingered Jack (Jamaica). Another provision of the agreement was that the Maroons would serve to protect the island from invaders. The latter was because the Maroons were revered by the British as skilled warriors. A year later, the even more rebellious Windward Maroons led by Quao also agreed to sign a treaty under pressure from both white Jamaican militias and the Leeward Maroons. Eventually, Queen Nanny agreed to a land patent which meant that her Maroons also accepted peace terms. The Maroons were to remain in their five main towns (Accompong; Cudjoe's Town (Trelawny Town); Nanny Town, later known as Moore Town; Scott's Hall (Jamaica); and Charles Town, Jamaica), living under their own rulers and a British supervisor. Tacky's revolt. In May 1760, Tacky, a slave overseer on the Frontier plantation in Saint Mary Parish, led a group of enslaved Africans in taking over the Frontier and Trinity plantations while killing their enslavers. They then marched to the storeroom at Fort Haldane, where the munitions to defend the town of Port Maria were kept. After killing the storekeeper, Tacky and his men stole nearly 4 barrels of gunpowder and 40 firearms with shot, before marching on to overrun the plantations at Heywood Hall and Esher. By dawn, hundreds of other slaves had joined Tacky and his followers. At Ballard's Valley, the rebels stopped to rejoice in their success. One slave from Esher decided to slip away and sound the alarm. Obeahmen (Caribbean witch doctors) quickly circulated around the camp dispensing a powder that they claimed would protect the men from injury in battle and loudly proclaimed that an Obeahman could not be killed. The confidence was high. Soon there were 70 to 80 mounted militia on their way along with some Maroons from Scott's Hall, who were bound by treaty to suppress such rebellions. When the militia learned of the Obeahman's boast of not being able to be killed, an Obeahman was captured, killed, and hung with his mask, ornaments of teeth and bone and feather trimmings at a prominent place visible from the encampment of rebels. Many of the rebels, confidence shaken, returned to their plantations. Tacky and 25 or so men decided to fight on. Tacky and his men went running through the woods being chased by the Maroons and their legendary marksman, Davy the Maroon. While running at full speed, Davy shot Tacky and cut off his head as evidence of his feat, for which he would be richly rewarded. Tacky's head was later displayed on a pole in Spanish Town until a follower took it down in the middle of the night. The rest of Tacky's men were found in a cave near Tacky Falls, having committed suicide rather than going back to slavery. Second Maroon War. In 1795, the Second Maroon War was instigated when two Maroons were flogged by a black slave for allegedly stealing two pigs. When six Maroon leaders came to the British to present their grievances, the British took them as prisoners. This sparked an eight-month conflict, spurred by the fact that Maroons felt that they were being mistreated under the terms of Cudjoe's Treaty of 1739, which ended the First Maroon War. The war lasted for five months as a bloody stalemate. The British colonial authorities could muster 5,000 men, outnumbering the Maroons ten to one, but the mountainous and forested topography of Jamaica proved ideal for guerrilla warfare. The Maroons surrendered in December 1795. A treaty signed in December between Major General George Walpole and the Maroon leaders established that the Maroons would beg on their knees for the King's forgiveness, return all runaway slaves, and be relocated elsewhere in Jamaica. The governor of Jamaica ratified the treaty but gave the Maroons only three days to present themselves to beg forgiveness on 1 January 1796. Suspicious of British intentions, most of the Maroons did not surrender until mid-March. The British used the contrived breach of the treaty as a pretext to deport the entire Trelawny Town Maroons to Nova Scotia. After a few years, the Maroons were again deported to the new British settlement of Sierra Leone in West Africa. 19th century. Slave resistance. Hundreds of runaway slaves secured their freedom by escaping and fighting alongside the Maroons of Trelawny Town. About half of these runaways surrendered with the Maroons, and many were executed or re-sold in slavery to Cuba. However, a few hundred stayed out in the forests of the Cockpit Country, and they joined other runaway communities. In 1798, a slave named Cuffee ran away from a western estate, and established a runaway community which was able to resist attempts by the colonial forces and the Maroons remaining in Jamaica to subdue them. In the early nineteenth century, colonial records describe hundreds of runaway slaves escaping to "Healthshire" where they flourished for several years before they were captured by a party of Maroons. In 1812, a community of runaways started when a dozen men and some women escaped from the sugar plantations of Trelawny into the Cockpit Country, and they created a village with the curious name of Me-no-Sen-You-no-Come. By the 1820s, Me-no-Sen-You-no-Come housed between 50 and 60 runaways. The headmen of the community were escaped slaves named Warren and Forbes. Me-no-Sen-You-no-Come also conducted a thriving trade with slaves from the north coast, who exchanged their salt provisions with the runaways for their ground provisions. In October 1824, the colonial militias tried to destroy this community. However, the community of Me-no-Sen-You-no-Come continued to thrive in the Cockpit Country until Emancipation in the 1830s. The Baptist War. In 1831, enslaved Baptist preacher Samuel Sharpe led a strike among demanding more freedom and a working wage of "half the going wage rate." Upon refusal of their demands, the strike escalated into a full rebellion, in part because Sharpe had also made military preparations with a rebel military group known as the Black Regiment led by a slave known as Colonel Johnson of Retrieve Estate, about 150 strong with 50 guns among them. Colonel Johnson's Black Regiment clashed with a local militia led by Colonel Grignon at old Montpelier on December 28. The militia retreated to Montego Bay while the Black Regiment advanced an invasion of estates in the hills, inviting more slaves to join while burning houses, fields, and other properties, setting off a trail of fires through the Great River Valley in Westmoreland and St. Elizabeth to St James. The Baptist War, as it was known, became the largest slave uprising in the British West Indies, lasting 10 days and mobilised as many as 60,000 of Jamaica's 300,000 slaves. The rebellion was suppressed by colonial forces under the control of Sir Willoughby Cotton. The reaction of the Jamaican Government and plantocracy was far more brutal. Approximately five hundred slaves were killed in total: 207 during the revolt and somewhere in the range between 310 and 340 slaves were killed through "various forms of judicial executions" after the rebellion was concluded, at times, for quite minor offenses (one recorded execution indicates the crime being the theft of a pig; another, a cow). An 1853 account by Henry Bleby described how three or four simultaneous executions were commonly observed; bodies would be allowed to pile up until workhouse slaves carted the bodies away at night and buried them in mass graves outside town. The brutality of the plantocracy during the revolt is thought to have accelerated the process of emancipation, with initial measures beginning in 1833. Emancipation. The British Parliament held two inquires as a result of the loss of property and life in the 1831 Baptist War rebellion. Their reports of the conditions of the slaves contributed greatly to the abolition movement and helped lead to the passage of The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, formally ending slavery in Jamaica on August 1, 1834. However, the act stipulated that all slaves above the age of 6 on the date abolition took effect, were bound (indentured) in service to their former owners', albeit with a guarantee of rights, under what was called the "Apprenticeship System". The length of servitude that was required varied based on the former slaves’ responsibilities with "domestic slaves" owing 4 years of service and "agriculture slaves" owing 6. In addition to the apprentice system, former slave owners were to be compensated for the loss of their "property." By 1839, "Twenty Million Pounds Sterling" was paid out to the owners of slaves freed in the Caribbean and Africa under the 1833 Abolition Act, half of whom were absentee landlords residing in Great Britain. The apprentice system was unpopular amongst Jamaica's "former" slaves — especially elderly slaves — who unlike slave owners were not provided any compensation. This led to protests. In the face of mounting pressure, a resolution was passed on August 1, 1838, releasing all "apprentices" regardless of position from all obligations to their former masters. With the abolition of the slave trade in 1808 and slavery itself in 1834, the island's sugar- and slave-based economy faltered. The period after emancipation in 1834 initially was marked by a conflict between the plantocracy and elements in the Colonial Office over the extent to which individual freedom should be coupled with political participation for blacks. In 1840 the assembly changed the voting qualifications in a way that enabled a majority of blacks and people of mixed race (browns or mulattos) to vote. But neither change in the political system, nor abolition of slavery, changed the planter's chief interest — which lay in the continued profitability of their estates — and they continued to dominate the elitist assembly. Nevertheless, at the end of the 19th century and in the early years of the 20th century, the crown began to allow some Jamaicans – mostly local merchants, urban professionals, and artisans—to hold seats on appointed councils. The Morant Bay Rebellion. Tensions between blacks and whites resulted in the October 1865 Morant Bay rebellion led by Paul Bogle. The rebellion was sparked on 7 October, when a black man was put on trial and imprisoned for allegedly trespassing on a long-abandoned plantation. During the proceedings, James Geoghegon, a black spectator, disrupted the trial, and in the police's attempts to seize him to remove him from the courthouse, a fight broke out between the police and other spectators. While pursuing Geoghegon, two policemen were beaten with sticks and stones. The following Monday, arrest warrants were issued for several men for rioting, resisting arrest, and assaulting the police. Among them was Baptist preacher Paul Bogle. A few days later on 11 October, Mr. Paul Bogle marched with a group of protesters to Morant Bay. When the group arrived at the courthouse they were met by a small and inexperienced volunteer militia. The crowd began pelting the militia with rocks and sticks, and the militia opened fire on the group, killing seven black protesters before retreating. Governor John Eyre sent government troops, under Brigadier-General Alexander Nelson, to hunt down the poorly armed rebels and bring Paul Bogle back to Morant Bay for trial. The troops met with no organized resistance, yet they killed blacks indiscriminately, most of whom had not been involved in the riot or rebellion. According to one soldier, "We slaughtered all before us... man or woman or child.” In the end, 439 black Jamaicans were killed directly by soldiers, and 354 more (including Paul Bogle) were arrested and later executed, some without proper trials. Paul Bogle was executed "either the same evening he was tried or the next morning." Other punishments included the flogging of over 600 men and women (including some pregnant women), and long prison sentences. Thousands of homes belonging to black Jamaicans were burned down without any justifiable reason. George William Gordon, Jamaican-born plantation owner, businessman and politician, who was the mixed-race son of Scottish-born plantation owner of Cherry Gardens in St. Andrew, Joseph Gordon, and his black enslaved mistress. Gordon, had been critical of Governor John Eyre and his policies, and was later arrested by the Governor who believed he had been behind the rebellion. Despite having very little to do with the rebellion, Gordon was eventually executed. Though he was arrested in Kingston, he was transferred by Eyre to Morant Bay, where he could be tried under martial law. The execution and trial of Gordon via martial law raised some constitutional issues back in Britain, where concerns emerged about whether British dependencies should be ruled under the government of law, or through a military license. Gordon hanged on 23 October, after a speedy trial — just two days after his trial had begun. He and William Bogle, Paul's brother, "were both tried together, and executed at the same time.” Decline of the sugar industry. During most of the 18th century, the monocrop economy based on sugarcane production for export flourished. In the last quarter of the century, however, the Jamaican sugar economy declined as famines, hurricanes, colonial wars, and wars of independence disrupted trade. By the 1820s, Jamaican sugar became less competitive with the high-volume producers like Cuba, and production subsequently declined. By 1882 sugar output was less than half what it was in 1828. A major reason for the decline was the British Parliament's 1807 abolition of the slave trade, under which the transportation of slaves to Jamaica after 1 March 1808 was forbidden. The abolition of the slave trade was followed by the abolition of slavery in 1834 and full emancipation of slaves within four years. Unable to convert the ex-slaves into a sharecropping tenant class similar to the one established in the post-Civil War South of the United States, planters became increasingly dependent on wage labour and began recruiting workers abroad, primarily from India, China, and Sierra Leone. Many of the former slaves settled in peasant or small farm communities in the interior of the island like the "yam belt," where they engaged in subsistence and some cash crop farming. The second half of the 19th century was a period of severe economic decline for Jamaica. Low crop prices, droughts, and disease led to serious social unrest, culminating in the Morant Bay rebellions of 1865. However, renewed British administration after the 1865 rebellion, in the form of crown colony status, resulted in some social and economic progress as well as investment in the physical infrastructure. Agricultural development was the centrepiece of restored British rule in Jamaica. In 1868 the first large-scale irrigation project was launched. In 1895 the Jamaica Agricultural Society was founded to promote more scientific and profitable methods of farming. Also in the 1890s, the Crown Lands Settlement Scheme was introduced, a land reform program of sorts, which allowed small farmers to purchase two hectares or more of land on favorable terms. Between 1865 and 1930, the character of landholding in Jamaica changed substantially, as sugar declined in importance. As many former plantations went bankrupt, some land was sold to Jamaican peasants under the Crown Lands Settlement whereas other cane fields were consolidated by dominant British producers, most notably by the British firm Tate and Lyle. Although the concentration of land and wealth in Jamaica was not as drastic as in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, by the 1920s the typical sugar plantation on the island had increased to an average of 266 hectares. But, as noted, smallscale agriculture in Jamaica survived the consolidation of land by sugar powers. The number of small holdings in fact tripled between 1865 and 1930, thus retaining a large portion of the population as peasantry. Most of the expansion in small holdings took place before 1910, with farms averaging between two and twenty hectares. The rise of the banana trade during the second half of the 19th century also changed production and trade patterns on the island. Bananas were first exported in 1867, and banana farming grew rapidly thereafter. By 1890, bananas had replaced sugar as Jamaica's principal export. Production rose from 5 million stems (32 percent of exports) in 1897 to an average of 20 million stems a year in the 1920s and 1930s, or over half of domestic exports. As with sugar, the presence of American companies, like the well-known United Fruit Company in Jamaica, was a driving force behind renewed agricultural exports. The British also became more interested in Jamaican bananas than in the country's sugar. Expansion of banana production, however, was hampered by serious labour shortages. The rise of the banana economy took place amidst a general exodus of up to 11,000 Jamaicans a year. Jamaica as a Crown Colony. In 1846 Jamaican planters — adversely affected by the loss of slave labour — suffered a crushing blow when Britain passed the Sugar Duties Act, eliminating Jamaica's traditionally favoured status as its primary supplier of sugar. The Jamaica House of Assembly stumbled from one crisis to another until the collapse of the sugar trade, when racial and religious tensions came to a head during the Morant Bay rebellion of 1865. Although suppressed ruthlessly, the severe rioting so alarmed the planters that the two-centuries-old assembly voted to abolish itself and asked for the establishment of direct British rule. In 1866 the new governor John Peter Grant arrived to implement a series of reforms that accompanied the transition to a crown colony. The government consisted of the Legislative Council and the executive Privy Council containing members of both chambers of the House of Assembly, but the Colonial Office exercised effective power through a presiding British governor. The council included a few handpicked prominent Jamaicans for the sake of appearance only. In the late 19th century, crown colony rule was modified; representation and limited self-rule were reintroduced gradually into Jamaica after 1884. The colony's legal structure was reformed along the lines of English common law and county courts, and a constabulary force was established. The smooth working of the crown colony system depended on a good understanding and an identity of interests between the governing officials, who were British, and most of the nonofficial, nominated members of the Legislative Council, who were Jamaicans. The elected members of this body were in a permanent minority and without any influence or administrative power. The unstated alliance – based on shared color, attitudes, and interest – between the British officials and the Jamaican upper class was reinforced in London, where the West India Committee lobbied for Jamaican interests. Jamaica's white or near-white propertied class continued to hold the dominant position in every respect; the vast majority of the black population remained poor and disenfranchised. Religion. Until it was disestablished in 1870, the Church of England in Jamaica was the established church. It represented the white English community. It received funding from the colonial government and was given responsibility for providing religious instruction to the slaves. It was challenged by Methodist missionaries from England, and the Methodists in turn were denounced as troublemakers. The Church of England in Jamaica established the Jamaica Home and Foreign Missionary Society in 1861; its mission stations multiplied, with financial help from religious organizations in London. The Society sent its own missionaries to West Africa. Baptist missions grew rapidly, thanks to missionaries from England and the United States, and became the largest denomination by 1900. Baptist missionaries denounced the apprentice system as a form of slavery. In the 1870s and 1880s, the Methodists opened a high school and a theological college. Other Protestant groups included the Moravians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Seventh-day Adventist, Church of God, and others. There were several thousand Roman Catholics. The population was largely Christian by 1900, and most families were linked with the church or a Sunday School. Traditional pagan practices persisted in an unorganized fashion, such as witchcraft. Kingston, the new capital. In 1872, the government passed an act to transfer government offices from Spanish Town to Kingston. Kingston had been founded as a refuge for survivors of the 1692 earthquake that destroyed Port Royal. The town did not begin to grow until after the further destruction of Port Royal by fire in 1703. Surveyor John Goffe drew up a plan for the town based on a grid bounded by North, East, West, and Harbour Streets. By 1716 it had become the largest town and the center of trade for Jamaica. The government sold the land to people with the regulation that they purchase no more than the amount of the land that they owned in Port Royal, and the only land on the sea front. Gradually wealthy merchants began to move their residences from above their businesses to the farm lands north on the plains of Liguanea. In 1755 the governor, Sir Charles Knowles, had decided to transfer the government offices from Spanish Town to Kingston. It was thought by some to be an unsuitable location for the Assembly in proximity to the moral distractions of Kingston, and the next governor rescinded the Act. However, by 1780 the population of Kingston was 11,000, and the merchants began lobbying for the administrative capital to be transferred from Spanish Town, which was by then eclipsed by the commercial activity in Kingston. The 1907 Kingston earthquake destroyed much of the city. Considered by many writers of that time one of the world's deadliest earthquakes, it resulted in the death of over eight hundred Jamaicans and destroyed the homes of over ten thousand more. Early 20th century. Marcus Garvey. Marcus Mosiah Garvey, a black activist, Trade Unionist, and husband to Amy Jacques Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League in 1914, one of Jamaica's first political parties in 1929, and a workers association in the early 1930s. Garvey also promoted the Back-to-Africa movement, which called for those of African descent to return to the homelands of their ancestors. Garvey, a controversial figure, had been the target of a four-year investigation by the United States government. He was convicted of mail fraud in 1923 and had served most of a five-year term in an Atlanta penitentiary when he was deported to Jamaica in 1927. Garvey left the colony in 1935 to live in the United Kingdom, where he died heavily in debt five years later. He was proclaimed Jamaica's first national hero in the 1960s after Edward P.G. Seaga, then a government minister arranged the return of his remains to Jamaica. In 1987 Jamaica petitioned the United States Congress to pardon Garvey on the basis that the federal charges brought against him were unsubstantiated and unjust. Rastafari movement. The Rastafari movement, a new religion, emerged among impoverished and socially disenfranchised Afro-Jamaican communities in 1930s Jamaica. Its Afrocentric ideology was largely a reaction against Jamaica's then-dominant British colonial culture. It was influenced by both Ethiopianism and the Back-to-Africa movement promoted by black nationalist figures like Marcus Garvey. The movement developed after several Christian clergymen, most notably Leonard Howell, proclaimed that the crowning of Haile Selassie as Emperor of Ethiopia in 1930 fulfilled a Biblical prophecy. By the 1950s, Rastafari's counter-cultural stance had brought the movement into conflict with wider Jamaican society, including violent clashes with law enforcement. In the 1960s and 1970s, it gained increased respectability within Jamaica and greater visibility abroad through the popularity of Rasta-inspired reggae musicians like Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. Enthusiasm for Rastafari declined in the 1980s, following the deaths of Haile Selassie and Marley. The Great Depression and worker protests. The Great Depression caused sugar prices to slump in 1929 and led to the return of many Jamaicans. Economic stagnation, discontent with unemployment, low wages, high prices, and poor living conditions caused social unrest in the 1930s. Uprisings in Jamaica began on the Frome Sugar Estate in the western parish of Westmoreland and quickly spread east to Kingston. Jamaica, in particular, set the pace for the region in its demands for economic development from British colonial rule. Because of disturbances in Jamaica and the rest of the region, the British in 1938 appointed the Moyne Commission. An immediate result of the commission was the Colonial Development Welfare Act, which provided for the expenditure of approximately Ł1 million a year for twenty years on coordinated development in the British West Indies. Concrete actions, however, were not implemented to deal with Jamaica's massive structural problems. New unions and parties. The rise of nationalism, as distinct from island identification or desire for self-determination, is generally dated to the 1938 labor riots that affected both Jamaica and the islands of the Eastern Caribbean. William Alexander Bustamante (formerly William Alexander Clarke), a moneylender in the capital city of Kingston who had formed the Jamaica Trade Workers and Tradesmen Union (JTWTU) three years earlier, captured the imagination of the black masses with his messianic personality, even though he himself was light-skinned, affluent, and aristocratic. Bustamante emerged from the 1938 strikes and other disturbances as a populist leader and the principal spokesperson for the militant urban working class, and in that year, using the JTWTU as a stepping stone, he founded the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union (BITU), which inaugurated Jamaica's worker's movement. A first cousin of Bustamante, Norman W. Manley, concluded as a result of the 1938 riots that the real basis for national unity in Jamaica lay in the masses. Unlike the union-oriented Bustamante, however, Manley was more interested in access to control over state power and political rights for the masses. On 18 September 1938, he inaugurated the People's National Party (PNP), which had begun as a nationalist movement supported by Bustamante and the mixed-race middle class (which included the intelligentsia) and the liberal sector of the business community with leaders who were highly educated members of the upper middle class. The 1938 riots spurred the PNP to unionize labor, although it would be several years before the PNP formed major labor unions. The party concentrated its earliest efforts on establishing a network both in urban areas and in banana-growing rural parishes, later working on building support among small farmers and in areas of bauxite mining. The PNP adopted a socialist ideology in 1940 and later joined the Socialist International, allying itself formally with the social democratic parties of Western Europe. Guided by socialist principles, Manley was not a doctrinaire socialist. PNP socialism during the 1940s was similar to British Labour Party ideas on state control of the factors of production, equality of opportunity, and a welfare state, although a left-wing element in the PNP held more orthodox Marxist views and worked for the internationalization of the trade union movement through the Caribbean Labour Congress. In those formative years of Jamaican political and union activity, relations between Manley and Bustamante were cordial. Manley defended Bustamante in court against charges brought by the British for his labor activism in the 1938 riots and looked after the BITU during Bustamante's imprisonment. Bustamante had political ambitions of his own, however. In 1942, while still incarcerated, he founded a political party to rival the PNP, called the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). The new party, whose leaders were of a lower class than those of the PNP, was supported by conservative businessmen and 60,000 dues-paying BITU members, who encompassed dock and sugar plantation workers and other unskilled urban laborers. On his release in 1943, Bustamante began building up the JLP. Meanwhile, several PNP leaders organized the leftist-oriented Trade Union Congress (TUC). Thus, from an early stage in modern Jamaica, unionized labor was an integral part of organized political life. For the next quarter-century, Bustamante and Manley competed for center stage in Jamaican political affairs, the former espousing the cause of the "barefoot man"; the latter, "democratic socialism," a loosely defined political and economic theory aimed at achieving a classless system of government. Jamaica's two founding fathers projected quite different popular images. Bustamante, lacking even a high school diploma, was an autocratic, charismatic, and highly adept politician; Manley was an athletic, Oxford-trained lawyer, Rhodes scholar, humanist, and liberal intellectual. Although considerably more reserved than Bustamante, Manley was well-liked and widely respected. He was also a visionary nationalist who became the driving force behind the crown colony's quest for independence. Following the 1938 disturbances in the West Indies, London sent the Moyne Commission to study conditions in the British Caribbean territories. Its findings led in the early 1940s to better wages and a new constitution. Issued on 20 November 1944, the Constitution modified the crown colony system and inaugurated limited self-government based on the Westminster model of government and universal adult suffrage. It also embodied the island's principles of ministerial responsibility and the rule of law. Thirty-one percent of the population participated in the 1944 elections. The JLP – helped by its promises to create jobs, its practice of dispensing public funds in pro-JLP parishes, and the PNP's relatively radical platform – won an 18 percent majority of the votes over the PNP, as well as 22 seats in the 32-member House of Representatives, with 5 going to the PNP and 5 to other short-lived parties. In 1945 Bustamante took office as Jamaica's first premier (the pre-independence title for head of government). Under the new charter, the British governor, assisted by the six-member Privy Council and 10-member Executive Council, remained responsible solely to the crown. The Jamaican Legislative Council became the upper house, or Senate, of the bicameral Parliament. House members were elected by adult suffrage from single-member electoral districts called constituencies. Despite these changes, ultimate power remained concentrated in the hands of the governor and other high officials. Independent Jamaica (1962–present). 1960s. The road to independence. After World War II, Jamaica began a relatively long transition to full political independence. Jamaicans preferred British culture over American, but they had a tumultuous relationship with the British and resented British domination, racism, and the dictatorial Colonial Office. Britain gradually granted the colony more self-government under periodic constitutional changes. Jamaica's political patterns and governmental structure were shaped during two decades of what was called "constitutional decolonisation," the period between 1944 and independence in 1962. Having seen how little popular appeal the PNP's 1944 campaign position had, the party shifted toward the centre in 1949 and remained there until 1974. The PNP actually won a 0.8-percent majority of the votes over the JLP in the 1949 election, but the JLP won a majority of the House seats. In the 1950s, the PNP and JLP became increasingly similar in their sociological composition and ideological outlook. During the cold war years, socialism became an explosive domestic issue. The JLP exploited it among property owners and churchgoers, attracting more middle-class support. As a result, PNP leaders diluted their socialist rhetoric, and in 1952 the PNP moderated its image by expelling four prominent leftists who had controlled the TUC. The PNP then formed the more conservative National Workers Union (NWU). Henceforth, PNP socialism meant little more than national planning within a framework of private property and foreign capital. The PNP retained, however, a basic commitment to socialist precepts, such as public control of resources and more equitable income distribution. Manley's PNP came to the office for the first time after winning the 1955 elections with an 11-percent majority over the JLP and 50.5 percent of the popular vote. Amendments to the constitution that took effect in May 1953 reconstituted the Executive Council and provided for eight ministers to be selected from among House members. The first ministries were subsequently established. These amendments also enlarged the limited powers of the House of Representatives and made elected members of the governor's executive council responsible to the legislature. Manley, elected chief minister beginning in January 1955, accelerated the process of decolonisation during his able stewardship. Further progress toward self-government was achieved under constitutional amendments in 1955 and 1956, and cabinet government was established on 11 November 1957. Assured by British declarations that independence would be granted to a collective West Indian state rather than to individual colonies, Manley supported Jamaica's joining nine other British territories in the West Indies Federation, established on 3 January 1958. Manley became the island's premier after the PNP again won a decisive victory in the general election in July 1959, securing 30 out of 45 House seats. Membership in the federation remained an issue in Jamaican politics. Bustamante, reversing his previously supportive position on the issue, warned of the financial implications of membership – Jamaica was responsible for 43 percent of its own financing – and inequity in Jamaica's proportional representation in the federation's House of Assembly. Manley's PNP favoured staying in the federation, but he agreed to hold a referendum in September 1961 to decide on the issue. When 54 percent of the electorate voted to withdraw, Jamaica left the federation, which dissolved in 1962 after Trinidad and Tobago also pulled out. Manley believed that the rejection of his pro-federation policy in the 1961 referendum called for a renewed mandate from the electorate, but the JLP won the election of early 1962 by a fraction. Bustamante assumed the premiership that April and Manley spent his remaining few years in politics as leader of the opposition. Jamaica received its independence on 6 August 1962. The new nation retained, however, its membership in the Commonwealth of Nations and adopted a Westminster-style parliamentary system. Bustamante, at the age of 78, became the nation's first prime minister. Jamaica under Bustamante. Bustamante subsequently became the first Prime Minister of Jamaica. The island country joined the Commonwealth of Nations, an organisation of ex-British territories. Jamaica continues to be a Commonwealth realm, with the British monarch as King of Jamaica and head of state. An extensive period of postwar growth transformed Jamaica into an increasingly industrial society. This pattern was accelerated with the export of bauxite beginning in the 1950s. The economic structure shifted from a dependence on agriculture that in 1950 accounted for 30.8 percent of GDP to an agricultural contribution of 12.9 percent in 1960 and 6.7 percent in 1970. During the same period, the contribution to the GDP of mining increased from less than 1 percent in 1950 to 9.3 percent in 1960 and 12.6 percent in 1970. Bustamante's government also continued the government's repression of Rastafarians. During the Coral Gardens incident, one prominent example of state violence against Rastafarians, where following a violent confrontation between Rastafarians and police forces at a gas station, Bustamante issued the police and military an order to "bring in all Rastas, dead or alive." 54 years later, following a government investigation into the incident, the government of Jamaica issued an apology, taking unequivocal responsibility for the Bustamante government's actions and making significant financial reparations to remaining survivors of the incident. Jamaica under Donald Sangster and Hugh Shearer. Bustamante was succeeded as the prime minister in February 1967 by Donald Sangster, who in the same year died in office. Hugh Shearer, a protégé of Bustamante, succeeded Sangster and served from 1967 to 1972. Investments in tourism, bauxite mining, and light manufacturing industries fueled economic growth. In October 1968 when the Shearer government banned Dr. Walter Rodney from returning to his teaching position at the University of the West Indies, so-called Rodney riots started. They were a part of an emerging black consciousness movement in the Caribbean. Reggae. Jamaica's reggae music developed from Ska and rocksteady in the 1960s. The shift from rocksteady to reggae was illustrated by the organ shuffle pioneered by Jamaican musicians like Jackie Mittoo and Winston Wright and featured in transitional singles "Say What You're Saying" (1967) by Clancy Eccles and "People Funny Boy" (1968) by Lee "Scratch" Perry. The Pioneers' 1968 track "Long Shot (Bus' Me Bet)" has been identified as the earliest recorded example of the new rhythm sound that became known as reggae. Early 1968 was when the first "bona fide" reggae records were released: "Nanny Goat" by Larry Marshall and "No More Heartaches" by The Beltones. That same year, the newest Jamaican sound began to spawn big-name imitators in other countries. American artist Johnny Nash's 1968 hit "Hold Me Tight" has been credited with first putting reggae in the American listener charts. Around the same time, reggae influences were starting to surface in rock and pop music, one example being 1968's "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" by The Beatles. Other significant reggae pioneers include Prince Buster, Desmond Dekker and Ken Boothe. Bob Marley. The Wailers, a band started by Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer in 1963, is perhaps the most recognised band that made the transition through all three stages of early Jamaican popular music: ska, rocksteady and reggae. The Wailers would go on to release some of the earliest reggae records with producer Lee Scratch Perry. After the Wailers disbanded in 1974, Marley then went on to pursue a solo career that culminated in the release of the album "Exodus" in 1977, which established his worldwide reputation and produced his status as one of the world's best-selling artists of all time, with sales of more than 75 million records. He was a committed Rastafari who infused his music with a sense of spirituality. 1970s and 1980s. Michael Manley. In the election of 1972, the PNP's Michael Manley defeated the JLP's unpopular incumbent Prime Minister Hugh Shearer. Under Manley, Jamaica established a minimum wage for all workers, including domestic workers. In 1974, Manley proposed free education from primary school to university. The introduction of universally free secondary education was a major step in removing the institutional barriers to the private sector and preferred government jobs that required secondary diplomas. The PNP government in 1974 also formed the Jamaica Movement for the Advancement of Literacy (JAMAL), which administered adult education programs with the goal of involving 100,000 adults a year. Land reform expanded under his administration. Historically, land tenure in Jamaica has been rather inequitable. Project Land Lease (introduced in 1973), attempted an integrated rural development approach, providing tens of thousands of small farmers with land, technical advice, inputs such as fertilisers, and access to credit. An estimated 14 percent of idle land was redistributed through this program, much of which had been abandoned during the post-war urban migration and/or purchased by large bauxite companies. The minimum voting age was lowered to 18 years, while equal pay for women was introduced. Maternity leave was also introduced, while the government outlawed the stigma of illegitimacy. The Masters and Servants Act was abolished, and a Labour Relations and Industrial Disputes Act provided workers and their trade unions with enhanced rights. The National Housing Trust was established, providing "the means for most employed people to own their own homes," and greatly stimulated housing construction, with more than 40,000 houses built between 1974 and 1980. Subsidised meals, transportation and uniforms for schoolchildren from disadvantaged backgrounds were introduced, together with free education at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. Special employment programmes were also launched, together with programmes designed to combat illiteracy. Increases in pensions and poor relief were carried out, along with a reform of local government taxation, an increase in youth training, an expansion of day care centres. and an upgrading of hospitals. A worker's participation program was introduced, together with a new mental health law and the family court. Free health care for all Jamaicans was introduced, while health clinics and a paramedical system in rural areas were established. Various clinics were also set up to facilitate access to medical drugs. Spending on education was significantly increased, while the number of doctors and dentists in the country rose. One Love Peace Concert. The One Love Peace Concert was a large concert held in Kingston on April 22, 1978, during a time of political civil war in Jamaica between opposing parties Jamaican Labour Party and the People's National Party. The concert came to its peak during Bob Marley & The Wailers' performance of "Jammin'", when Marley joined the hands of political rivals Michael Manley (PNP) and Edward Seaga (JLP). Edward Seaga. In the 1980 election, Edward Seaga and the JLP won by an overwhelming majority – 57 percent of the popular vote and 51 of the 60 seats in the House of Representatives. Seaga immediately began to reverse the policies of his predecessor by privatising the industry and seeking closer ties with the USA. Seaga was one of the first foreign heads of government to visit newly elected US president Ronald Reagan early the next year and was one of the architects of the Caribbean Basin Initiative, which was sponsored by Reagan. He delayed his promise to cut diplomatic relations with Cuba until a year later when he accused the Cuban government of giving asylum to Jamaican criminals. Seaga supported the collapse of the Marxist regime in Grenada and the subsequent US-led invasion of that island in October 1983. On the back of the Grenada invasion, Seaga called snap elections at the end of 1983, which Manley's PNP boycotted. His party thus controlled all seats in parliament. In an unusual move, because the Jamaican constitution required an opposition in the appointed Senate, Seaga appointed eight independent senators to form an official opposition. Seaga lost much of his US support when he was unable to deliver on his early promises of removing the bauxite levy, and his domestic support also plummeted. Articles attacking Seaga appeared in the US media and foreign investors left the country. Rioting in 1987 and 1988, the continued high popularity of Michael Manley, and complaints of governmental incompetence in the wake of the devastation of the island by Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, also contributed to his defeat in the 1989 elections. Hurricane Gilbert. In 1988, Hurricane Gilbert produced a storm surge and brought up to of rain in the mountainous areas of Jamaica, causing inland flash flooding. 49 people died. Prime Minister Edward Seaga stated that the hardest hit areas near where Gilbert made landfall looked "like Hiroshima after the atom bomb." The storm left US$4 billion (in 1988 dollars) in damage from destroyed crops, buildings, houses, roads, and small aircraft. Two people eventually had to be rescued because of mudslides triggered by Gilbert and were sent to the hospital. The two people were reported to be fine. No planes were going in and out of Kingston, and telephone lines were jammed from Jamaica to Florida. As Gilbert lashed Kingston, its winds knocked down power lines, uprooted trees, and flattened fences. On the north coast, waves hit Ocho Rios, a popular tourist resort where hotels were evacuated. Kingston's airport reported severe damage to its aircraft, and all Jamaica-bound flights were cancelled at Miami International Airport. Unofficial estimates state that at least 30 people were killed around the island. Estimated property damage reached more than $200 million. More than 100,000 houses were destroyed or damaged and the country's banana crop was largely destroyed. Hundreds of miles of roads and highways were also heavily damaged. Reconnaissance flights over remote parts of Jamaica reported that 80 percent of the homes on the island had lost their roofs. The poultry industry was also wiped out; the damage from agricultural loss reached $500  million (1988 USD). Hurricane Gilbert was the most destructive storm in the history of Jamaica and the most severe storm since Hurricane Charlie in 1951. Birth of Jamaica's film industry. Jamaica's film industry was born in 1972 with the release of "The Harder They Come", the first feature-length film made by Jamaicans. It starred reggae singer Jimmy Cliff, was directed by Perry Henzell, and was produced by Island Records founder Chris Blackwell. The film is famous for its reggae soundtrack that is said to have "brought reggae to the world". Jamaica's other popular films include 1976's "Smile Orange", 1982's "Countryman", 1991's "The Lunatic", 1997's "Dancehall Queen", and 1999's "Third World Cop". Major figures in the Jamaican film industry include actors Paul Campbell and Carl Bradshaw, actress Audrey Reid, and producer Chris Blackwell. 1990s and 2000s. 18 years of PNP rule. The 1989 election. was the first election contested by the People's National Party since 1980, as they had boycotted the 1983 snap election. Prime Minister Edward Seaga announced the election date on January 15, 1989, at a rally in Kingston. He cited emergency conditions caused by Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 as the reason for extending the parliamentary term beyond its normal five-year mandate. The date and tone of the election were shaped in part by Hurricane Gilbert, which made landfall in September 1988 and decimated the island. The hurricane caused almost $1 billion worth of damage to the island, with banana and coffee crops wiped out and thousands of homes destroyed. Both parties engaged in campaigning through the distribution of relief supplies, a hallmark of the Jamaican patronage system. Political commentators noted that prior to the hurricane, Edward Seaga and the JLP trailed Michael Manley and the PNP by twenty points in opinion polls. The ability to provide relief as the party in charge allowed Seaga to improve his standing among voters and erode the inevitability of Manley's victory. However, scandals related to the relief effort cost Seaga and the JLP some of the gains made immediately following the hurricane. Scandals that emerged included National Security Minister Errol Anderson personally controlling a warehouse full of disaster relief supplies and candidate Joan Gordon-Webley distributing American-donated flour in sacks with her picture on them. The election was characterised by a narrower ideological difference between the two parties on economic issues. Michael Manley facilitated his comeback campaign by moderating his leftist positions and admitting mistakes made as Prime Minister, saying he erred when he involved government in economic production and had abandoned all thoughts of nationalising industry. He cited the PNP's desire to continue the market-oriented policies of the JLP government, but with a more participatory approach. Prime Minister Edward Seaga ran on his record of economic growth and the reduction of unemployment in Jamaica, using the campaign slogan "Don't Let Them Wreck It Again" to refer to Manley's tenure as Prime Minister. Seaga during his tenure as Prime Minister emphasised the need to tighten public sector spending and cut close to 27,000 public sector jobs in 1983 and 1984. He shifted his plans as elections neared with a promise to spend J$1 billion on a five-year Social Well-Being Programme, which would build new hospitals and schools in Jamaica. Foreign policy also played a role in the 1989 election. Prime Minister Edward Seaga emphasised his relations with the United States, a relationship that saw Jamaica receiving considerable economic aid from the U.S. and additional loans from international institutions. Manley pledged better relations with the United States while at the same time pledging to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba that had been cut under Seaga. With Manley as Prime Minister, Jamaican-American relations had significantly frayed as a result of Manley's economic policies and close relations with Cuba. The PNP was ultimately victorious and Manley's second term focused on liberalising Jamaica's economy, with the pursuit of a free-market programme that stood in marked contrast to the interventionist economic policies pursued by Manley's first government. Various measures were, however, undertaken to cushion the negative effects of liberalisation. A Social Support Programme was introduced to provide welfare assistance for poor Jamaicans. In addition, the programme focused on creating direct employment, training, and credit for much of the population. The government also announced a 50% increase in the number of food stamps for the most vulnerable groups (including pregnant women, nursing mothers, and children) was announced. A small number of community councils were also created. In addition, a limited land reform programme was carried out that leased and sold the land to small farmers, and land plots were granted to hundreds of farmers. The government also had an admirable record in housing provision, while measures were also taken to protect consumers from illegal and unfair business practices. In 1992, citing health reasons, Manley stepped down as Prime Minister and PNP leader. His former Deputy Prime Minister, Percival Patterson, assumed both offices. Patterson led efforts to strengthen the country's social protection and security systems—a critical element of his economic and social policy agenda to mitigate, reduce poverty and social deprivation. His massive investments in modernisation of Jamaica's infrastructure and restructuring of the country's financial sector are widely credited with having led to Jamaica's greatest period of investment in tourism, mining, ICT and energy since the 1960s. He also ended Jamaica's 18-year borrowing relationship with the International Monetary Fund, allowing the country greater latitude in pursuit of its economic policies. Patterson led the PNP to resounding victories in the 1993 and 1997 elections. Patterson called the 1997 election in November 1997, when his People's National Party was ahead in the opinion polls, inflation had fallen substantially and the national football team had just qualified for the 1998 World Cup. The previous election in 1993 had seen the People's National Party win 52 of the 60 seats. A record 197 candidates contested the election, with a new political party, the National Democratic Movement, standing in most of the seats. The National Democratic Movement had been founded in 1995 by a former Labour Party chairman, Bruce Golding, after a dispute over the leadership of the Jamaica Labour Party. The 1997 election was mainly free of violence as compared to previous elections, although it began with an incident where rival motorcades from the main parties were fired on. The election was the first in Jamaica where a team of international election monitors attended. The monitors were from the Carter Center and included Jimmy Carter, Colin Powell and former heavyweight boxing world champion Evander Holyfield. Just before the election the two main party leaders made a joint appeal for people to avoid marring the election with violence. Election day itself saw one death and four injuries relating to the election, but the 1980 election had seen over 800 deaths. In winning the election the People's National Party became the first party to win three consecutive terms. The opposition Jamaica Labour Party only had two more seats in Parliament after the election but their leader Edward Seaga held his seat for a ninth time in a row. The National Democratic Movement failed to win any seats despite a pre-election prediction that they would manage to win a seat. The 2002 election. was a victory for the People's National Party, but their number of seats fell from 50 to 34 (out of 60 total). PNP leader P. J. Patterson retained his position as Prime Minister, becoming the first political leader to win three successive elections. Patterson stepped down on 26 February 2006, and was replaced by Portia Simpson-Miller, Jamaica's first female Prime Minister. The 2007 elections. had originally been scheduled for August 27, 2007 but were delayed to September 3 due to Hurricane Dean. The preliminary results indicated a slim victory for the opposition Jamaican Labour Party led by Bruce Golding, which grew by two seats from 31–29 to 33–27 after official recounts. The JLP defeated the People's National Party after 18 years of unbroken governance. Economic challenges. In the 1990s, Jamaica and other Caribbean banana producers argued for the continuation of their preferential access to EU markets, notably the United Kingdom. They feared that otherwise the EU would be flooded with cheap bananas from the Central American plantations, with devastating effects on several Caribbean economies. Negotiations led in 1993 to the EU agreeing to maintain the Caribbean producers' preferential access until the end of Lomé IV, pending possible negotiation on an extension. In 1995, the United States government petitioned to the World Trade Organization to investigate whether the Lomé IV convention had violated WTO rules. Then later in 1996, the WTO Dispute Settlement Body ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, effectively ending the cross-subsidies that had benefited ACP countries for many years. But the US remained unsatisfied and insisted that all preferential trade agreements between the EU and ACP should cease. The WTO Dispute Settlement Body established another panel to discuss the issue and concluded that agreements between the EU and ACP were indeed not compatible with WTO regulations. Finally, the EU negotiated with the US through WTO to reach an agreement. In tourism, after a decrease in volume following the 11 September attacks in the U.S., the number of tourists going to Jamaica eventually rebounded, with the island now receiving over a million tourists each year. Services now account for over 60 percent of Jamaica's GDP and one of every four workers in Jamaica works in tourism or services. However, according to the World Bank, around 80% of the money tourism makes in Jamaica does not stay on the island, but goes instead to the multinational resorts. 2007 Cricket World Cup and 2008 Olympics. The 2007 Cricket World Cup was the first time the ICC Cricket World Cup had been held in the Caribbean. The Jamaican Government spent US$81 million for "on the pitch" expenses. This included refurbishing Sabina Park and constructing the new multi-purpose facility in Trelawny – through a loan from China. Another US$20 million is budgeted for "off-the-pitch" expenses, putting the tally at more than US$100 million or JM$7 billion. This put the reconstruction cost of Sabina Park at US$46 million whilst the Trelawny Stadium will cost US$35 million. The total amount of money spent on stadiums was at least US$301 million. The 2007 World Cup organisers were criticised for restrictions on outside food, signs, replica kits and musical instruments, despite Caribbean cricketing customs, with authorities being accused of "running [cricket and cricketing traditions] out of town, then sanitising it out of existence". Sir Viv Richards echoed the concerns. The ICC were also condemned for high prices for tickets and concessions, which were considered unaffordable for the local population in many of the locations. In a tragic turn of events, Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer was found dead on 18 March 2007, one day after his team's defeat to Ireland put them out of the running for the World Cup. Jamaican police performed an autopsy which was deemed inconclusive. The following day police announced that the death was suspicious and ordered a full investigation. Further investigation revealed the cause of death was "manual strangulation", and that the investigation would be handled as a murder. After a lengthy investigation the Jamaican police rescinded the comments that he was not murdered, and confirmed that he died from natural causes. In sprinting, Jamaicans had begun their domination of the 100 metres world record in 2005. Jamaica's Asafa Powell set the record in June 2005 and held it until May 2008, with times of 9.77 and 9.74 seconds respectively. However, at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Jamaica's athletes reached heights by nearly doubling the country's total gold medal count and breaking the nation's record for the number of medals earned in a single game. Usain Bolt won three of Jamaica's six gold medals at Beijing, breaking an Olympic and world record in all three of the events in which he participated. Shelly-Ann Fraser led an unprecedented Jamaican sweep of the medals in the Women's 100 m. Dancehall goes global. Although Jamaican dancehall music originated in the late 1970s, it greatly increased in popularity in the late 1980s and 1990s. Initially dancehall was a more sparse version of reggae than the roots style, which had dominated much of the 1970s. Two of the biggest stars of the early dancehall era were Yellowman and Eek-a-Mouse. Dancehall brought a new generation of producers, including Linval Thompson, Gussie Clarke and Jah Thomas. In the mid-1980s, digital instrumentation became more prevalent, changing the sound considerably, with digital dancehall (or "ragga") becoming increasingly characterised by faster rhythms. In the early 1990s songs by Dawn Penn, Shabba Ranks, Patra and Chaka Demus and Pliers were the first dancehall megahits in the US and abroad. Other varieties of dancehall achieved crossover success outside of Jamaica during the mid-to-late 1990s. In the 1990s, dancehall came under increasing criticism for anti-gay lyrics such as those found in Buju Banton's 1988 hit "Boom Bye Bye," which is about shooting a gay man in the head: "It's like boom bye bye / Inna batty boy head / Rude boy nah promote no nasty man / Dem haffi dead." The early 2000s saw the success of newer charting acts such as Elephant Man, Tanya Stephens, and Sean Paul. Dancehall made a resurgence within the pop market in the late 2000s, with songs by Konshens, Mr. Vegas, Popcaan, Mavado, Vybz Kartel, Beenie Man among others. In 2011, Vybz Kartel—at the time, one of dancehall's biggest stars—was arrested for the murder of Clive "Lizard" William. In 2014 he was sentenced to life in prison after a 65-day trial, the longest in Jamaican history. 2010s. Tivoli Incursion. Politically and socially, the 2010s in Jamaica have been shaped by the Tivoli Incursion—a 2010 gun-battle between police and the gang of Christopher "Dudus" Coke. Over seventy Jamaicans were killed during the gun battle and the inquiry into police actions during the incursion continues today. Coke took over the "Shower Posse" gang of Tivoli Gardens from his father, Lester “Jim Brown” Coke, in the 1990s. Under Christopher Coke's leadership, the gang trafficked drugs and dabbled in visa fraud (using a high-school athletics team) and extortion, charging small traders in the nearby market for “protection money”. The gang had close political ties. Tivoli Gardens is part of the Kingston Western parliamentary district, a seat was held for years by Edward Seaga, long-time leader of the JLP. That helped Coke expand into construction, with his company winning numerous government contracts. Within Tivoli Gardens, the gang operated as a government unto itself. On 23 May 2010, Jamaica security forces began searching for Coke after the United States requested his extradition, and the leader of the criminal gang that attacked several police stations. The violence, which largely took place over 24–25 May, killed at least 73 civilians and wounded at least 35 others. Four soldiers/police were also killed and more than 500 arrests were made, as Jamaican police and soldiers fought gunmen in the Tivoli Gardens district of Kingston. Coke was eventually captured on 23 June, after initial rumours that he was attempting to surrender to the United States. Kingston police arrested Coke on the outskirts of the city, apparently while a local reverend, Reverend Al Miller, was helping negotiate his surrender to the United States Embassy. In 2011, Coke pleaded guilty to racketeering and drug-related charges in a New York Federal court, and was sentenced to 23 years in prison on 8 June 2012. In the four years following Coke's capture, Jamaica's murder rate decreased by nearly half. However, the murder rate remains one of the highest in the world and Jamaica's morgues have not been able to keep up. The lack of facilities to store and study murder victims has been one of the reasons that few murders are solved, with the conviction rate for homicides standing at around five percent. In 2007, following the botched investigation into the death of Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer, who died unexpectedly while the island hosted the sport's world cup, Jamaican politicians debated the need for a modern public morgue. 2011 election. The Tivoli Incursion and LGBT rights were both major issues in the 2011 election. Although the JLP survived an election called shortly after the 2010 Tivoli Gardens incident, the following year the date of the 2011 election was set as 29 December, and major local media outlets viewed the election as "too close to call", though as Simpson-Miller campaigned in key constituencies the gap widened to favour the PNP. Days before the election, Simpson-Miller came out fully in favor of LGBT rights in a televised debate, saying that she "has no problem giving certain positions of authority to a homosexual as long as they show the necessary level of competence for the post." However, since taking power her government has not attempted to repeal the laws which criminalise homosexuality. In 2012, Dane Lewis launched a legal challenge to Jamaica's Offenses Against Persons Act of 1864, commonly known as the "buggery" laws, on the grounds that they are unconstitutional and promote homophobia throughout the Caribbean. The legal challenge was taken to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The Offenses Against Persons Act does not formally ban homosexuality, but clause 76 provides for up to 10 years' imprisonment, with or without hard labour, for anyone convicted of the "abominable crime of buggery committed either with mankind or any animal". Two further clauses outlaw attempted buggery and gross indecency between two men. LGBT rights returned to Jamaican headlines the next year, following the violent murder in July 2013 of a 16-year-old boy who showed up at a party in women's clothing. Advocates called for the repeal of a nearly 150-year-old anti-sodomy law that bans anal sex, legislation which is accused of helping spur anti-LGBT violence. Further economic troubles. In 2013, the International Monetary Fund announced a $1 billion loan to help Jamaica meet large debt payments. The loan required the Jamaican government to institute a pay freeze amounting to a 20% real-terms cut in wages. Jamaica is one of the most indebted countries and spends around half of its annual federal budget on debt repayments. The 2010s look to be a bad time for Jamaica's sugarcane industry. After a brief increase sugar prices, the outlook for Jamaican sugar took a hit in 2015 when the EU began moving towards ending a cap on European sugar beet production. Jamaica exports 25% of the sugar it produces to Britain and prices for Jamaican sugar are expected to fall in the wake of the end of the cap on the EU's subsidised sugar beet industry. However, marijuana may become a new cash crop and tourist-draw for Jamaica, depending on future legislation. On 25 February 2015, the Jamaican House of Representatives passed a law decriminalizing possession of up to 2 ounces of cannabis. The new law includes provisions legalizing the cultivation for the personal use of up to five plants, as well as setting up regulations for the cultivation and distribution of cannabis for medical and religious purposes 2016 election. In February 2016, opposition Labour Party won a narrow victory in the general election. Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller of the People's National Party was replaced by Andrew Holness, the leader of the Labour Party. 2020s. 2020 election. In September 2020, the ruling centre-right Labour Party won a landslide victory in the general election. It took 49 of 63 parliamentary seats, meaning the incumbent Prime Minister Andrew Holness will serve a second term.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15693

Jersey

Jersey ( ; ), also known as the Bailiwick of Jersey, is an island country and self-governing British Crown Dependency near the coast of north-west France. It is the largest of the Channel Islands and is from the Cotentin Peninsula in Normandy. The Bailiwick consists of the main island of Jersey and some surrounding uninhabited islands and rocks including Les Dirouilles, Les Écréhous, Les Minquiers, and Les Pierres de Lecq. Jersey was part of the Duchy of Normandy, whose dukes became kings of England from 1066. After Normandy was lost by the kings of England in the 13th century, and the ducal title surrendered to France, Jersey remained loyal to the English Crown, though it never became part of the Kingdom of England. Between then and the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Jersey was at the frontline of Anglo-French wars and was invaded a number of times, leading to the construction of fortifications such as Mont Orgueil Castle and a thriving smuggling industry. During the Second World War, the island was invaded and occupied for five years by Nazi Germany. The island was liberated on 9 May 1945, which is now celebrated as the island's national day. Jersey is a self-governing parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarchy, with its own financial, legal and judicial systems, and the power of self-determination. Jersey's constitutional relationship is with the Crown; it is not part of the United Kingdom. The Bailiff is the civil head, president of the States and head of the judiciary; the Lieutenant Governor represents the head of state, the British monarch; and the Chief Minister is the head of government. Jersey's defence and international representation – as well as certain policy areas, such as nationality law – are the responsibility of the UK Government, but Jersey still has a separate international identity. The island has a large financial services industry, which generates 40% of its GVA. British cultural influence on the island is evident in its use of English as the main language and Pound sterling as its primary currency. Additional British cultural similarities include: driving on the left, access to British television and newspapers, a school curriculum following that of England, and the popularity of British sports, including cricket. The island also has a strong Norman-French culture, such as its historic dialect of the Norman language, Jèrriais, being one of only two places in Normandy with government status for the language (the other being Guernsey), as well as the use of standard French in legal matters and officially in use as a government language, strong cultural ties to mainland Normandy as a part of the Normandy region, and place names with French or Norman origins. The island has very close cultural links with its neighbouring islands in the Bailiwick of Guernsey, and they share a good-natured rivalry. Jersey and its people have been described as a nation. Name. The Channel Islands are mentioned in the Antonine Itinerary as the following: "Sarnia", "Caesarea", "Barsa", "Silia" and "Andium", but Jersey cannot be identified specifically because none corresponds directly to the present names. The name has been used as the Latin name for Jersey (also in its French version ) since William Camden's "Britannia", and is used in titles of associations and institutions today. The Latin name was also applied to the colony of New Jersey as . "Andium", "Agna" and "Augia" were used in antiquity. Scholars variously surmise that "Jersey" and "Jèrri" derive from (Old Norse for 'earth') or ('earl'), or perhaps the Norse personal name (thus , 'Geirr's Island'). The ending denotes an island (as in Guernsey or Surtsey). History. Humans have lived on the island since at least 12000 BCE, with evidence of habitation in the Palaeolithic period (La Cotte de St Brelade) and Neolithic dolmens, such as La Hougue Bie. Evidence of Bronze Age and early Iron Age settlements can be found in many locations around the island. Archaeological evidence of Roman influence has been found, in particular at Les Landes. Christianity was brought to the island by migrants from Brittany in c. fifth - sixth century CE. In the sixth century, the island's patron saint Helier lived at the Hermitage on L'Islet (now Elizabeth Castle). Legend states that Helier was beheaded by raiders and subsequently lifted his head and walked to shore. In the ninth century the island was raided by Vikings and in 933 it was annexed to Normandy by William Longsword. When Duke William the Conqueror became King of England in 1066, the island remained part of the Norman possessions. However, in 1204, when Normandy was returned to the French king, the island remained a possession of the English crown, though never incorporated into England.Traditionally it is said that Jersey's self-governance originates from the "Constitutions of King John", however this is disputed. Nevertheless, the island continued to follow Norman customs and laws. The King also appointed a Bailiff and a Warden (now Lieutenant-Governor). The period of English rule was marked by wars between England and France, as such a military fortress was built at Mont Orgueil. During the Tudor period, the split between the Church of England and the Vatican led to islanders adopting the Protestant religion. During the reign of Elizabeth, French refugees brought strict Calvinism to the island, which remained the common religion until 1617. In the late 16th century, islanders travelled across the North Atlantic to participate in the Newfoundland fisheries. In recognition for help given to him during his exile in Jersey in the 1640s, King Charles II of England gave Vice Admiral Sir George Carteret, bailiff and governor, a large grant of land in the American colonies in between the Hudson and Delaware rivers, which he promptly named New Jersey. It is now a state in the United States. In 1769, the island suffered food supply shortages, leading to an insurrection on 28 September known as the Corn Riots. The States met at Elizabeth Castle and decided to request help from the King. However, in 1771 the Crown demanded reforms to the island's governance, leading to the Code of 1771 and removed the powers of the Royal Court to make laws without the States. In 1781, during the American Wars of Independence, the island was invaded by a French force which captured St Helier, but was defeated by Major Peirson's army at the Battle of Jersey. The 19th century saw the improvement of the road network under General Don, the construction of two railway lines, the improvement of transport links to England, and the construction of new piers and harbours in St Helier. This grew a tourism industry in the island and led to the immigration of thousands of English residents, leading to a cultural shift towards a more anglicised island culture. Island politics was divisively split between the conservative Laurel party and the progressive Rose party, as the lie of power shifted increasingly to the States from the Crown. In the 1850s, the French author Victor Hugo lived in Jersey, but was expelled for insulting the Queen, so he moved on to Guernsey. During the Second World War, 6,500 Jersey residents were evacuated by their own choice to the UK out of a total population of 50,000. Jersey was occupied by Germany from 1 July 1940 until 9 May 1945, when Germany surrendered. During this time the Germans constructed many fortifications using slave labour imported onto the island from many different countries occupied or at war with Germany. After 1944, supplies from France were interrupted by the D-Day landings, and food on the island became scarce. The SS "Vega" was sent to the island carrying Red Cross supplies and news of the success of the Allied advance in Europe. During the Nazi occupation, a resistance cell was created by communist activist Norman Le Brocq and the Jersey Communist Party, whose communist ideology of forming a 'United Front' led to the creation of the Jersey Democratic Movement. The Channel Islands were one of the last places in Europe to be liberated. 9 May is celebrated as the island's Liberation Day, where there are celebrations in Liberation Square. After Liberation, the States was reformed, becoming wholly democratically elected, and universal franchise was implemented. Since liberation, the island has grown in population and adopted new industries, especially the finance industry. Politics. Jersey is a Crown Dependency and is not part of the United Kingdom – it is officially part of the British Islands. As one of the Crown Dependencies, Jersey is autonomous and self-governing, with its own independent legal, administrative and fiscal systems. Jersey's government has described Jersey as a "self-governing, democratic country with the power of self-determination". Because Jersey is a dependency of the British Crown, King Charles III reigns in Jersey. "The Crown" is defined by the Law Officers of the Crown as the "Crown in right of Jersey". The King's representative and adviser in the island is the Lieutenant Governor of Jersey – Vice-Admiral Jerry Kyd since 8 October 2022. He is a point of contact between Jersey ministers and the UK Government and carries out some functions in relation to immigration control, deportation, naturalisation and the issue of passports. In 1973, the Royal Commission on the Constitution set out the duties of the Crown as including: ultimate responsibility for the 'good government' of the Crown Dependencies; ratification of island legislation by Order-in-Council (royal assent); international representation, subject to consultation with the island authorities before concluding any agreement which would apply to them; ensuring the islands meet their international obligations; and defence. Legislature and government. Jersey's unicameral legislature is the States Assembly. It includes 49 elected members: 12 Connétables (often called 'constables', heads of parishes) and 37 deputies (representing constituencies), all elected for four-year terms as from the October 2011 elections. Jersey has one of the lowest voter turnouts internationally, with just 33% of the electorate voting in 2005, putting it well below the 77% European average for that year. From the 2022 elections, the role of Senators was abolished and the eight senators were replaced with an increased number of deputies. The 37 deputies are now elected from nine super constituencies, rather than in individual parishes. Although efforts were made the remove the Connétables, they will continue their historic role as States members. There are also five non-voting members appointed by the Crown: the Bailiff, the Lieutenant Governor of Jersey, the Dean of Jersey, the Attorney General and Solicitor General. The Bailiff is President (presiding officer) of the States Assembly, head of the judiciary and as civic head of the island carries out various ceremonial roles. The Council of Ministers, consisting of a Chief Minister and nine ministers, makes up the leading body of the Government of Jersey. Each minister may appoint up to two assistant ministers. A Chief Executive is head of the civil service. Some governmental functions are carried out in the island's parishes. Law. Jersey is a distinct jurisdiction for the purposes of conflict of laws, separate from the other Channel Islands, England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Jersey law has been influenced by several different legal traditions, in particular Norman customary law, English common law and modern French civil law. Jersey's legal system is therefore described as 'mixed' or 'pluralistic', and sources of law are in French and English languages, although since the 1950s the main working language of the legal system is English. The principal court is the Royal Court, with appeals to the Jersey Court of Appeal and, ultimately, to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The Bailiff is head of the judiciary; the Bailiff and the Deputy Bailiff are appointed by the Crown. Other members of the island's judiciary are appointed by the Bailiff. External relations. The external relations of Jersey are overseen by the External Relations Minister of the Government of Jersey. In 2007, the Chief Minister and the UK Lord Chancellor signed an agreement that established a framework for the development of the international identity of Jersey. Although diplomatic representation is reserved to the Crown, Jersey has been developing its own international identity over recent years. It negotiates directly with foreign governments on various matters, for example Tax information exchange agreements (TIEAs) have been signed directly by the island with several countries. The Government maintains offices (some in partnership with Guernsey) in Caen, London and Brussels. Jersey is a member of the British-Irish Council, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and the Assemblée parlementaire de la Francophonie. Jersey Independence has in the past been discussed in the States Assembly. Former External Relations Minister Sir Philip Bailhache has at various times warned that the island may need to go independent. It is not Jersey Government policy to seek independence, but the island is prepared if it needed to do so. Jersey is a third-party European country to the EU. Since 1 January 2021, Jersey has been part of the UK-EU Trade and Economic Cooperation Agreement for the purposes of goods and fishing. Goods exported from the island into Europe are not subject to tariffs and Jersey is solely responsible for management of its territorial waters, however permits may be granted to EU fishermen who have a history of fishing in the Bailiwick's waters. The management of this permit system has caused tension between the French and Jersey authorities, with the French threatening to cut off Jersey's electricity supply in May 2021. Before the end of the transition period after the UK withdrew from the EU in 2020, Jersey had a special relationship with the EU. It was part of the EU customs union and there was free movement of goods between Jersey and the EU but the single market in financial services and free movement of people did not apply to Jersey. Administrative divisions. Jersey is divided into twelve parishes (which have civil and religious functions). They are all named after their parish church. The Connétable is the head of the parish. They are elected at island general elections and sit "ex oficio" in the States Assembly. The parishes have various civil administrative functions, such as roads (managed by the Road Committee) and policing (through the Honorary Police). Each parish is governed through direct democracy at Parish Assemblies, consisting of all eligible voters resident in the parish. The "Procureurs du Bien Public" are the legal and financial representatives of these parishes. The parishes of Jersey are further divided into "vingtaines" (or, in St. Ouen, "cueillettes"). Geography. Jersey is an island measuring (or 66,436 vergées), including reclaimed land and intertidal zone. It lies in the English Channel, about from the Cotentin Peninsula in Normandy, France, and about south of Great Britain. It is the largest and southernmost of the Channel Islands and part of the British Isles, with a maximum land elevation of 143 m (469 ft) above sea level. About 24% of the island is built-up. 52% of the land area is dedicated to cultivation and around 18% is the natural environment. It lies within longitude -2° W and latitude 49° N. It has a coastline that is long and a total area of . It measures roughly from west to east and north to south, which gives it the affectionate name among locals of "nine-by-five". The island is divided into twelve parishes; the largest is St Ouen and the smallest is St Clement. The island is characterised by a number of valleys which generally run north-to-south, such as Waterworks Valley, Grands Vaux, Mont les Vaux, although a few run in other directions, such as Le Mourier Valley. The highest point on the island is Les Platons at . There are several smaller island groups that are part of the Bailiwick of Jersey, such as Les Minquiers and Les Écrehous, however unlike the smaller islands of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, none of these are permanently inhabited. Settlements. The largest settlement is the town of St Helier, including the built-up area of southern St Helier and neighbouring areas such as Georgetown, which also plays host to the island's seat of government. The town is the central business district, hosting a large proportion of the island's retail and employment, such as the finance industry. Outside of the town, many islanders live in suburban and rural settlements, especially along main roads leading out of town and even the more rural areas of the island have considerable amounts of development (St Ouen, the least densely populated parish still has 270 persons per square kilometre). The south and east coasts from St Aubin to Gorey are largely urbanised. The second smaller urban area is the Les Quennevais area in St Brelade, which is home to a small precinct of shops, a school, a park and a leisure centre. Most people across Jersey regularly travel from the rural settlements to St Helier and from the town to the rural areas for work and leisure purposes. Housing costs in Jersey are very high. The Jersey House Price Index has at least doubled between 2002 and 2020. The mix-adjusted house price for Jersey is £567,000, higher than any UK region (UK average: £249,000) including London (average: £497,000; highest of any UK region). Climate. The climate is an oceanic climate with mild winters and mild to warm summers. The highest temperature recorded was 37.9 °C (100.2 °F) on 18 July 2022, and the lowest temperature recorded was −10.3 °C (13.5 °F) on 5 January 1894. 2014 was the warmest year on record; the mean daily air temperature was 13.34 °C. For tourism advertising, Jersey often claims to be "the sunniest place in the British Isles", which is true as Jersey has 342 hours of sunlight more than any place in the UK. In 2011, Jersey received controversy for calling itself "the warmest place in the British Isles" during an advertising campaign. The following table contains the official Jersey Airport averages for 1981–2010 for Jersey, being located from St. Helier – Economy. Jersey's economy is highly developed and services-focused, with a GDP per capita of £45,320 in 2019. It is a mixed market economy, with free market principles and an advanced social security infrastructure. 53,460 people were employed in Jersey : 24% in financial and legal services; 16% in wholesale and retail trades; 16% in the public sector; 10% in education, health and other private sector services; 10% in construction and quarrying; 9% in hotels, restaurants and bars. Thanks to specialisation in a few high-return sectors, at purchasing power parity Jersey has high economic output per capita, substantially ahead of all of the world's large developed economies. Gross national income in 2009 was £3.7 billion (approximately £40,000 per head of population). However, this is not indicative of each individual resident's purchasing power and the actual standard of living in Jersey is comparable to that in the UK outside central London. Jersey is one of the world's largest offshore finance centres. The UK acts as a conduit for financial services between European countries and the island. The growth of this sector however has not been without its controversies as Jersey has been characterised by critics and detractors as a place in which the "leadership has essentially been captured by global finance, and whose members will threaten and intimidate anyone who dissents." Tourism is an important economic sector for the island, however travel to Jersey is very seasonal. Accommodation occupancy is much higher in the summer months, especially August, than in the winter months (with a low in November). The majority of visitors to the island arrive by air from the UK. On 18 February 2005, Jersey was granted Fairtrade Island status. In 2017, 52% of the Island's area was agricultural land (a decrease since 2009). Major agricultural products are potatoes and dairy produce. Jersey cattle are a small breed of cow widely known for their rich milk and cream; the quality of their meat is also appreciated on a small scale. The herd total in 2009 was 5,090 animals. Fisheries and aquaculture make use of Jersey's marine resources to a total value of over £6 million in 2009. Along with Guernsey, Jersey has its own lottery called the Channel Islands Lottery, which was launched in 1975. Taxation. Jersey is not a tax-free jurisdiction. Taxes are levied on properties (known as 'rates') and a Personal Income Tax, Corporate Income Tax and goods and services tax exist. Before 2008, Jersey had no value-added tax (VAT). Many companies, such as Amazon and Play.com, took advantage of this and a loophole in European law, known as low-value consignment relief, to establish a tax-free fulfilment industry from Jersey. This loophole was closed by the European Union in 2012, resulting in the loss of hundreds of jobs. There is a 20% standard rate for Income Tax and a 5% standard rate for GST. The island has a 0% default tax rate for corporations; however, higher rates apply to financial services, utility companies and large corporate retailers. Jersey is considered to be a tax haven. The island, until March 2019, was on the EU tax haven blacklist, but no longer features. In January 2021, the chair of the EU Tax Matters Subcommittee, Paul Tang, criticised the list for not including such "renowned tax havens" as Jersey. In 2020, Tax Justice ranked Jersey as the 16th on the Financial Secrecy Index, below larger countries such as the UK, however still placing at the lower end of the 'extreme danger zone' for offshore secrecy'. The island accounts of 0.46% of the global offshore finance market, making a small player in the total market. In 2020, the Corporate Tax Haven Index ranked Jersey eighth for 2021 with an haven score (a measure of the jurisdiction's systems to be used for corporate tax abuse) of 100 out of 100; however, the island only has 0.51% on the Global Scale Weight ranking. Transport. The primary mode of transport on the island is the motor vehicle. Jersey has a road network consisting of of roads and there are a total of 124,737 motor vehicles registered on the island as of 2016. Jersey has a large network of lanes, some of which are classified as green lanes, which have a 15 mph speed limit and where priority is afforded to pedestrians, cyclists and horse riders. The public bus network in Jersey has been regulated by the Government since 2002, replacing a de-regulated, commercial service. It is operated on a sole-operator franchise model, currently contracted to LibertyBus, a company owned by Kelsian Group. LibertyBus also operate the school bus services. There is also a taxi network and an electronic bike scheme (EVie). Jersey has an airport and a number of ports, which are operated by Ports of Jersey. Currency. Jersey's monetary policy is linked to the Bank of England. The official currency of Jersey is the pound sterling. Jersey issues its own postage stamps, banknotes (including a £1 note which is not issued in the UK) and coins that circulate alongside all other sterling coinage. Jersey currency is not legal tender outside Jersey; however it is "acceptable tender" in the UK and can be surrendered at banks in exchange for UK currency. In July 2014, the Jersey Financial Services Commission approved the establishment of the world's first regulated Bitcoin fund, at a time when the digital currency was being accepted by some local businesses. Demography. Censuses have been undertaken in Jersey since 1821. In the 2021 census, the total resident population was estimated to be 103,267, of whom 35% live in Saint Helier, the island's only town. Approximately half the island's population was born in Jersey; 29% of the population were born elsewhere in the British Isles, 8% in continental Portugal or Madeira, 9% in other European countries and 5% elsewhere. Nationality and citizenship. Jersey people are the native nation on the island, however do not form a majority of the population. Jersey people are often called Islanders or, in individual terms, Jerseyman or Jerseywoman. Jersey people did not generally identify themselves as English prior to the Union of Britain. Jersey was culturally and geographically much closer to Normandy and there were limited cross-Channel links. However, wars with France, including invasions of Jersey, grew loyalty to Britain over time and the French came more and more to be seen as a distinct people. By the start of the 19th century, Jersey people generally identified as British, which can be seen through the treatment of the Breton immigrants of the time as a distinct nation. Furthermore, the growth of the British migrant population strengthened the role of English and the British cultural influence. Finally, the introduction of compulsory education - which was exclusively in English - and the period of the Occupation reduced the traditional and Norman cultural influences and increased British cultural practices and pride in British nationhood among the island population. Nationality law in Jersey is conferred by the British Nationality Act 1981 extended to the island by an Order in Council with the consent of the States of Jersey. British nationality law confers British citizenship onto those with suitable connections to Jersey. The Lieutenant Governor's office issues British passports (specifically the Jersey variant) to British citizens with a connection to Jersey by residency or birth. Immigration. Jersey is constitutionally entitled to restrict immigration by non-Jersey residents, but control of immigration at the point of entry cannot be introduced for British, certain Commonwealth and EEA nationals without change to existing international law. Jersey is part of the Common Travel Area (CTA), a border control-free zone which encompasses the Crown Dependencies, the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. This means a passport is not required to travel from Jersey to any of these territories (or vice versa) though the Government recommends all travellers bring photo ID since it may need to be checked by customs or police officers and is generally required by commercial transport providers into the island. Due to the CTA, Jersey-born British citizens in the rest of the CTA and British and Irish citizens in Jersey have the right to access social benefits, access healthcare, access social housing support and to vote in general elections. For non-CTA travel, Jersey maintains its own immigration and border controls (although most travel into the Bailiwick is from the rest of the CTA), however UK immigration legislation may be extended to Jersey (subject to exceptions and adaptations) following consultation with Jersey and with Jersey's consent. To control population numbers, Jersey operates a system of registration which restricts the right to live and work in the island according to certain requirements. In order to move to Jersey or work in Jersey, everyone (including Jersey-born people) must be registered and have a registration card. There are a number of statuses: History of immigration. Until the 19th centuries, there was generally limited immigration to the island, especially from English people. Jersey was a distant territory to the British mainland (taking days to travel between England and the islands) and culturally distinct (the locals predominantly speaking Norman French). However, from the 16th to 19th centuries, Jersey became home to French religious refugees, particularly Protestants following the Edict of Nantes. From the early 19th century, the island's economic boom attracted economic migrants. By 1841, of the 47,544 population, 11,338 were born in the British Isles outside of Jersey. From the 1840s onwards, agricultural workers came from neighbouring Brittany and mainland Normandy, both due to the booming economy of Jersey and the economic situation in northern France. Furthermore, the new potato season coincided with the time of least agricultural activity in Brittany and Normandy. While many returned to France, some settled in the island. Between 1851 and 1921, the Jersey population fell by 12.8% (possibly up to 18%). The economic boom ended in the 1850s leading to significant emigration, including on to British colonies. A 1901 report by the States concluded that by 1921, the number of births to foreign-born fathers would be equal to those to Jersey-born fathers, describing the immigration situation as a 'formidable invasion, although peaceful', and predicted this would have a large impact on the island's socio-political situation. After World War II, when the island had only 55,244 residents, it saw a period of rapid population increase. By 1991, the population was 84,082. The booming tourism industry required a large volume of relatively low cost labour, so the island turned to Madeira for seasonal staff. Between 1961 and 1981, the Portuguese-born population grew 0.2% to 3.1% of the population. In 2021, this figure was 8%. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the new source of cheap labour for the island has been Polish people, whose population has grown from non-existent to 3%. Immigration has helped give aspects of Jersey a distinct urban character, particularly in and around the parish of St Helier, which contributes much to ongoing debates between development and sustainability throughout the island. Religion. Jersey's patron saint is St Helier, after whom the capital town is named. From the fifth century, the island was under the Bishop of Coutances, until being transferred to the Diocese of Winchester in 1568. As of 2022, the island is planned to be transferred to the Diocese of Salisbury. The established church is the Church of England, presided over in the island by the Dean, who is "ex officio" a States Member, but has no vote. The primary churches are the parish churches, which are 12 ancient Anglican churches in each of the parish centre, though other churches do exist. According to a 2015 survey of islanders, 54% of adults have a religion. Christianity is the predominant religion in the island, with over half of islanders identifying as Christian in some form. The largest religious group is Anglicans, with 23% of the population. Culture. Cultural events. The Battle of Flowers is a carnival, which has been held annually in August since 1902. Other festivals include (Christmas festival), (cidermaking festival), the Battle of Britain air display, Weekender Music Festival, food festivals, and parish events. The Jersey Eisteddfod is an annual festival celebrating local culture. It is split into performing arts (e.g. dance, music, modern languages) and creative arts (e.g. needlework, photography, craft). Art. Archaeologists have discovered stone planquettes with abstract designs made by the Magdalenians and dating to the Upper Palaeolithic; these are the oldest pieces of art discovered in the British Isles as of 2023. The island has produced a number of notable artists. John St Helier Lander (1868–1944) was a portrait painter born in St Helier in 1868; he was a portraitist for the Royal Family. Edmund Blampied also lived around the same period; he was known for his etchings and drypoint. Other famous historic artists include John Le Capelain, John Everett Millais and Philip Ouless. There are also several contemporary Jersey artists, such as Ian Rolls, known for painting quirky landscape paintings. Jersey also has historic connections to French art. French artist René Lalique created the stained glass windows at St Matthew's Church. No similar Lalique commission survives elsewhere in the world. Artist partners Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore were born in France but moved to and died in the island. Media. BBC Radio Jersey provides a radio service, and BBC Channel Islands News provides a joint television news service with Guernsey. ITV Channel Television is a regional ITV franchise shared with the Bailiwick of Guernsey but with its headquarters in Jersey. Radio services are also provided by Channel 103, among other companies. Bailiwick Express is one of Jersey's digital online news sources. Jersey has only one newspaper, the "Jersey Evening Post", which is printed six days a week, and has been in publication since 1890. Music. Little is known of the history of music in the islands, though fieldwork has recorded folk songs from the Channel Islands, mostly in French. The folk song is unique to the island. In contemporary music, Guru Josh, who was born in Jersey, produced house and techno music. He was most notable for his internationally successful debut hit Infinity and its re-releases, reaching number one in numerous European countries. Furthermore, rock and pop artist Nerina Pallot was raised on the island and has enjoyed international success, and has written songs for famous artists like Kylie Minogue. The island has a summer music festival scene stretching from mid-June to late September including Good Vibrations, Out-There, the Weekender (the largest festival in the Channel Islands) and Electric Park. Theatre. There are two theatres on the island: the Jersey Opera House and the Jersey Arts Centre. Lillie Langtry is probably the most famous actress from the island. She was born in Jersey and became an actress on the West End in the late 19th century. She was the first socialite to appear on stage and the first celebrity to endorse a commercial product. She was also famous for her relationships with notable figures, including the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII. She is buried in St Saviour's Church graveyard. Cinema. In 1909, T. J. West established the first cinema in the Royal Hall in St. Helier, which became known as West's Cinema in 1923 and was demolished in 1977. The first talking picture, "The Perfect Alibi", was shown on 30 December 1929 at the Picture House in St. Helier. The Jersey Film Society was founded on 11 December 1947 at the Café Bleu, West's Cinema. The large Art Deco Forum Cinema was opened in 1935 – during the German occupation this was used for German propaganda films. The Odeon Cinema was opened 2 June 1952 and, was later rebranded in the early 21st century as the Forum cinema. Its owners, however, struggled to meet tough competition from the Cineworld Cinemas group, which opened a 10 screen multiplex on the waterfront centre in St. Helier on reclaimed land in December 2002 and the Odeon closed its doors in late 2008. The Odeon is now a listed building. First held in 2008, the Branchage Jersey International Film Festival attracts filmmakers from all over the world. The 2001 movie The Others was set on the island in 1945 shortly after liberation. Food and drink. Seafood has traditionally been important to the cuisine of Jersey: mussels (called in the island), oysters, lobster and crabs – especially spider crabs – ormers and conger. Jersey milk being very rich, cream and butter have played a large part in insular cooking. Jersey Royal potatoes are the local variety of new potato, and the island is famous for its early crop of Chats (small potatoes) from the south-facing côtils (steeply sloping fields). They were originally grown using vraic as a natural fertiliser, giving them their own individual taste; only a small portion of those grown in the island still use this method. They are eaten in a variety of ways, often simply boiled and served with butter or when not as fresh fried in butter. Apples historically were an important crop. are apple dumplings, but the most typical speciality is black butter (), a dark spicy spread prepared from apples, cider and spices. Cider used to be an important export. After decline and near-disappearance in the late 20th century, apple production is being increased and promoted. Besides cider, apple brandy is produced. Other production of alcohol drinks includes wine, and in 2013 the first commercial vodkas made from Jersey Royal potatoes were marketed. Among other traditional dishes are cabbage loaf, Jersey wonders (), fliottes, bean crock (), nettle () soup, and vraic buns. Sport. In its own right Jersey participates in the Commonwealth Games and in the biennial Island Games, which it first hosted in 1997 and more recently in 2015. The Jersey Football Association supervises football in Jersey. As of 2022, the Jersey Football Combination has nine teams in its top division. Jersey national football team plays in the annual Muratti competition against the other Channel Islands. Rugby union in Jersey comes under the auspices of the Jersey Rugby Association (JRA), which is a member of the Rugby Football Union of England. Jersey Reds compete in the English rugby union system; after four promotions in five seasons, the last three of which were consecutive, they competed in the second-level RFU Championship in 2012–13. Jersey is an associate member of the International Cricket Council (ICC). The Jersey cricket team plays in the Inter-insular match, as well as in ICC tournaments around the world in One Day Internationals and Twenty20 Internationals. For Horse racing, Les Landes Racecourse can be found at Les Landes in St. Ouen next to the ruins of Grosnez Castle. Jersey has two public indoor swimming pools: AquaSplash, St Helier and Les Quennevais, St Brelade. Swimming in the sea, windsurfing and other marine sports are practised. Jersey Swimming Club has organised an annual swim from Elizabeth Castle to Saint Helier Harbour for over 50 years. A round-island swim is a major challenge: the record for the swim is Ross Wisby, who circumnavigated the island in 9 hours 26 minutes in 2015. The Royal Channel Island Yacht Club is based in St Brelade. Two professional golfers from Jersey have won the Open Championship seven times between them; Harry Vardon won six times and Ted Ray won once, both around the turn of the 20th century. Vardon and Ray also won the U.S. Open once each. Harry Vardon's brother, Tom Vardon, had wins on various European tours. Jersey Sport, an independent body that promotes sports in Jersey and support clubs, was launched in 2017 Languages. Until the 19th century, indigenous Jèrriais – a variety of Norman – was the language of the island though French was used for official business. During the 20th century, British cultural influence saw an intense language shift take place and Jersey today is predominantly English-speaking. Jèrriais nonetheless survives; around 2,600 islanders (three per cent) are thought to be habitual speakers, and some 10,000 (12 per cent) in all claim some knowledge of the language, particularly amongst the elderly in rural parishes. There have been efforts to revive Jèrriais in schools. The dialects of Jèrriais differ in phonology and, to a lesser extent, lexis between parishes, with the most marked differences to be heard between those of the west and east. Many place names are in Jèrriais, and French and English place names are also to be found. Anglicisation of the place names increased apace with the migration of English people to the island. Literature. Wace was a 12th-century poet born in Jersey. He is the earliest known Jersey writer, authoring "Roman de Brut" and "Roman de Rou", among others. Some believe him to be the earliest Jèrriais writer and he is known as the founder of Jersey literature, but the language in which he wrote is very different from modern Jèrriais. As Jèrriais was not an official language in Jersey, it had no standard written form, which meant that Jersey literature is very varied, written in multiple forms of Jèrriais alongside Standard English and French. Matthew Le Geyt was the first poet to publish in Jèrriais after the introduction of printing to the island in the 18th century. Philippe Le Sueur Mourant wrote in Jèrriais in the 19th century. Jerseyman George d'la Forge is named the 'Guardian of the Jersey Norman Heritage'. Though he lived in America for most of his life, he felt a strong attachment to Jersey and his native language. His works were turned into books in the 1980s. After the failure of the 1848 revolution, thirty-nine French revolutionaries were exiled in Jersey, including the famous French author Victor Hugo, as Jersey's culture was closer to their native French. Gerald Durrell, the famous zoologist who set up Jersey Zoo, was also an author, writing novels, non-fiction and children's books. He was writing as a means to fund and further his conservation work. Education. Education in the island is managed by the Department for Children, Young People, Education and Skills of the Government of Jersey. The education system in Jersey is based on the English system. Full time education is compulsory for children aged 5 to 16. Furthermore, the Government provides limited pre-school education free to parents. Jersey schools must teach the Jersey Curriculum, which is based on the English National Curriculum, with differences to account for Jersey's unique position. As of 2022, there are 24 States primary schools, seven private primary or preparatory schools, four comprehensive States secondary schools, two fee-paying States secondary schools, two private secondary schools and one provided grammar school and sixth form, Hautlieu School. Furthermore, Highlands College provides alternative post-16 and all post-18 education available on the island. However, higher education facilities are limited, so many students study off-island. In the UK, Jersey students pay the same rate as Home students. Environment. Three areas of land are protected for their ecological or geological interest as Sites of Special Interest (SSI). Jersey has four designated Ramsar sites: Les Pierres de Lecq, Les Minquiers, Les Écréhous and Les Dirouilles and the south east coast of Jersey (a large area of intertidal zone). Jersey is the home of the Jersey Zoo (formerly known as the Durrell Wildlife Park) founded by the naturalist, zookeeper and author Gerald Durrell. Biodiversity. Four species of small mammal are considered native: the wood mouse ("Apodemus sylvaticus"), the Jersey bank vole ("Myodes glareolus caesarius"), the lesser white-toothed shrew ("Crocidura suaveolens") and the French shrew ("Sorex coronatus"). Three wild mammals are well-established introductions: the rabbit (introduced in the mediaeval period), the red squirrel and the hedgehog (both introduced in the 19th century). The stoat ("Mustela erminea") became extinct in Jersey between 1976 and 2000. The green lizard (Lacerta bilineata) is a protected species of reptile; Jersey is its only native habitat in the British Isles. The red-billed chough ("Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax") became extinct in Jersey around 1900, when changes in farming and grazing practices led to a decline in the coastal slope habitat required by this species. Birds on the Edge, a project between the Government of Jersey, Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and National Trust for Jersey, is working to restore Jersey's coastal habitats and reinstate the red-billed chough (and other bird species) to the island Jersey is the only place in the British Isles where the agile frog ("Rana dalmatina)" is found. The remaining population of agile frogs on Jersey is very small and is restricted to the south west of the island. The species is the subject of an ongoing programme to save it from extinction in Jersey via a collaboration between the Government of Jersey, Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and Jersey Amphibian and Reptile Group (JARG), with support and sponsorship from several other organisations. The programme includes captive breeding and release, public awareness and habitat restoration activities. Trees generally considered native are the alder ("Alnus glutinosa"), silver birch ("Betula pendula"), sweet chestnut ("Castanea sativa"), hazel ("Corylus avellana"), hawthorn ("Crataegus monogyna"), beech ("Fagus sylvatica"), ash ("Fraxinus excelsior"), aspen ("Populus tremula"), wild cherry ("Prunus avium"), blackthorn ("Prunus spinosa"), holm oak ("Quercus ilex"), oak ("Quercus robur"), sallow ("Salix cinerea"), elder ("Sambucus nigra"), elm ("Ulmus" spp.) and medlar ("Mespilus germanica"). Among notable introduced species, the cabbage palm ("Cordyline australis") has been planted in coastal areas and may be seen in many gardens. Notable marine species include the ormer, conger, bass, undulate ray, grey mullet, ballan wrasse and garfish. Marine mammals include the bottlenosed dolphin and grey seal. Historically the island has given its name to a variety of overly-large cabbage, the Jersey cabbage, also known as Jersey kale or cow cabbage. Japanese knotweed ("Reynoutria japonica") is an invasive species that threatens Jersey's biodiversity. It is easily recognisable and has hollow stems with small white flowers that are produced in late summer. Other non-native species on the island include the Colorado beetle, burnet rose and oak processionary moth. Public services. Healthcare. Health services on the island are overseen by the Department for Health and Social Care. Jersey does not have a nationalised health service and the service is not part of the National Health Service. Many healthcare treatments are not free at the point of use, however treatment in the accident and emergency department is free. For residents, prescriptions and some hospital treatments are free, but GP services cost money. Emergency services. Emergency services are provided by the States of Jersey Police with the support of the Honorary Police as necessary, States of Jersey Ambulance Service, Jersey Fire and Rescue Service and the Jersey Coastguard. The Jersey Fire and Rescue Service, Jersey Lifeboat Association and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution operate an inshore rescue and lifeboat service; Channel Islands Air Search provides rapid response airborne search of the surrounding waters. The States of Jersey Fire Service was formed in 1938 when the States took over the Saint Helier Fire Brigade, which had been formed in 1901. The first lifeboat was equipped, funded by the States, in 1830. The RNLI established a lifeboat station in 1884. Border security and customs controls are undertaken by the States of Jersey Customs and Immigration Service. Jersey has adopted the 112 emergency number alongside its existing 999 emergency number. Supply services. Water supplies in Jersey are managed by Jersey Water. Jersey Water supply water from two water treatment works, around 7.2 billion litres in 2018. Water in Jersey is almost exclusively from rainfall-dependent surface water. The water is collected and stored in six reservoirs and there is also a desalination plant that produces up to 10.8 million litres per day (around half of the Island's average daily usage). In 2017, 101 water pollution incidents were reported, an increase of 5% on 2016. Another estimated 515,700 m3 of water is abstracted for domestic purposes from private sources (around 9% of the population). Electricity in Jersey is provided by a sole supplier, Jersey Electricity, of which the States of Jersey is the majority shareholder. Jersey imports 95 per cent of its power from France. 35% of the imported power derives from hydro-electric sources and 65% from nuclear sources. Jersey Electricity claims the carbon intensity of its electricity supply is 35g CO2 e / kWh compared to 352g CO2 e / kWh in the UK.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15858

John Cleese

John Marwood Cleese ( ; born 27 October 1939) is an English actor, comedian, screenwriter, and producer. Emerging from the Cambridge Footlights in the 1960s, he first achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on "The Frost Report". In the late 1960s, he cofounded Monty Python, the comedy troupe responsible for the sketch show "Monty Python's Flying Circus." Along with his Python costars Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Graham Chapman, Cleese starred in Monty Python films, which include "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" (1975), "Life of Brian" (1979), and "The Meaning of Life" (1983). In the mid-1970s, Cleese and first wife Connie Booth cowrote the sitcom "Fawlty Towers", in which he starred as hotel owner Basil Fawlty, for which he won the 1980 British Academy Television Award for Best Entertainment Performance. In 2000, the show topped the British Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes, and in a 2001 Channel 4 poll, Basil was ranked second on its list of the 100 Greatest TV Characters. Cleese costarred with Kevin Kline, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Michael Palin in "A Fish Called Wanda" (1988) and "Fierce Creatures" (1997), both of which he also wrote. For "A Fish Called Wanda", he received Academy Award, BAFTA Award, and Golden Globe Award nominations. He has also starred in "Time Bandits" (1981), "Clockwise" (1986), and "Rat Race" (2001) and acted in "Silverado" (1985), "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein" (1994), two "James Bond" films (as R and Q), two "Harry Potter" films (as Nearly Headless Nick), and the last three "Shrek" films. He received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for "Cheers" (1987) and was nominated for "3rd Rock from the Sun" (1998) and "Will & Grace" (2004). Cleese has specialised in political and religious satire, black comedy, sketch comedy, and surreal humour. He was ranked the second best comedian ever in a 2005 Channel 4 poll of fellow comedians. He cofounded Video Arts, a production company making entertaining training films as well as "The Secret Policeman's Ball" benefit shows to raise funds for the human rights organization Amnesty International. Formerly a staunch supporter of the Liberal Democrats, in 1999, he turned down an offer from the party to nominate him for a life peerage. In 2023, he was preparing to present his news show on GB News. Early life and education. Cleese was born in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England, the only child of Reginald Francis Cleese (1893–1972), an insurance salesman, and his wife Muriel Evelyn ("née" Cross, 1899–2000), the daughter of an auctioneer. His family's surname was originally Cheese, but his father had thought it was embarrassing and used the name Cleese when he enlisted in the Army during the First World War; he changed it officially by deed poll in 1923. As a child, Cleese supported Bristol City and Somerset County Cricket Club. Cleese was educated at St Peter's Preparatory School (paid for by money his mother inherited), where he received a prize for English and did well at cricket and boxing. When he was 13, he was awarded an exhibition at Clifton College, an English public school in Bristol. He was already more than 6 feet (1.83 m) tall by then. Cleese allegedly defaced the school grounds, as a prank, by painting footprints to suggest that the statue of Field Marshal Earl Haig had got down from his plinth and gone to the toilet. Cleese played cricket in the First XI and did well academically, passing eight O-Levels and three A-Levels in mathematics, physics and chemistry. In his autobiography "So, Anyway", he says that discovering, aged 17, he had not been made a house prefect by his housemaster affected his outlook: "It was not fair and therefore it was unworthy of my respect... I believe that this moment changed my perspective on the world." Cleese could not go straight to Cambridge, as the ending of National Service meant there were twice the usual number of applicants for places, so he returned to his prep school for two years to teach science, English, geography, history, and Latin (he drew on his Latin teaching experience later for a scene in "Life of Brian", in which he corrects Brian's badly written Latin graffiti). He then took up a place he had won at Downing College, Cambridge, to read law. He also joined the Cambridge Footlights. He recalled that he went to the Cambridge Guildhall, where each university society had a stall, and went up to the Footlights stall, where he was asked if he could sing or dance. He replied "no" as he was not allowed to sing at his school because he was so bad, and if there was anything worse than his singing, it was his dancing. He was then asked "Well, what do you do?" to which he replied, "I make people laugh." At the Footlights theatrical club, Cleese spent a lot of time with Tim Brooke-Taylor and Bill Oddie and met his future writing partner Graham Chapman. Cleese wrote extra material for the 1961 Footlights Revue "I Thought I Saw It Move", and was registrar for the Footlights Club during 1962. He was also in the cast of the 1962 Footlights Revue "Double Take!" Cleese graduated from Cambridge in 1963 with an upper second. Despite his successes on "The Frost Report", his father sent him cuttings from "The Daily Telegraph" offering management jobs in places like Marks & Spencer. Career. 1963–1968: Pre-Python. Cleese was a scriptwriter, as well as a cast member, for the 1963 Footlights Revue "A Clump of Plinths". The revue was so successful at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe that it was renamed "Cambridge Circus" and taken to the West End in London and then on a tour of New Zealand and Broadway, with the cast also appearing in some of the revue's sketches on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in October 1964. After "Cambridge Circus", Cleese briefly stayed in America, performing on and off-Broadway. While performing in the musical "Half a Sixpence", Cleese met future Python Terry Gilliam as well as American actress Connie Booth, whom he married on 20 February 1968. At their wedding at a Unitarian Church in Manhattan, the couple attempted to ensure an absence of any theistic language. "The only moment of disappointment," Cleese recalled, "came at the very end of the service when I discovered that I'd failed to excise one particular mention of the word 'God.'" Later, Booth became a writing partner. He was soon offered work as a writer with BBC Radio, where he worked on several programmes, most notably as a sketch writer for "The Dick Emery Show". The success of the Footlights Revue led to the recording of a short series of half-hour radio programmes, called "I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again", which were so popular that the BBC commissioned a regular series with the same title that ran from 1965 to 1974. Cleese returned to Britain and joined the cast. In many episodes, he is credited as "John Otto Cleese" (according to Jem Roberts, this may have been due to the embarrassment of his actual middle name Marwood). Also in 1965, Cleese and Chapman began writing on "The Frost Report". The writing staff chosen for "The Frost Report" consisted of a number of writers and performers who went on to make names for themselves in comedy. They included co-performers from "I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again" and future Goodies Bill Oddie and Tim Brooke-Taylor, and also Frank Muir, Barry Cryer, Marty Feldman, Ronnie Barker, Ronnie Corbett, Dick Vosburgh and future Python members Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. While working on "The Frost Report", the future Pythons developed the writing styles that would make their collaboration significant. Cleese's and Chapman's sketches often involved authority figures, some of whom were performed by Cleese, while Jones and Palin were both infatuated with filmed scenes that opened with idyllic countryside panoramas. Idle was one of those charged with writing David Frost's monologue. During this period Cleese met and befriended influential British comedian Peter Cook, eventually collaborating with Cook on several projects and forming a close friendship that lasted until Cook's death in 1995. It was as a performer on "The Frost Report" that Cleese achieved his breakthrough on British television as a comedy actor, appearing as the tall, "upper class" patrician figure in the classic "Class" sketch (screened on 7 April 1966), contrasting comically in a line-up with the shorter, "middle class" Ronnie Barker and the even shorter, "working class" Ronnie Corbett. The British Film Institute commented, "Its twinning of height and social position, combined with a minimal script, created a classic TV moment." This series was so popular that in 1966 Cleese and Chapman were invited to work as writers and performers with Brooke-Taylor and Feldman on "At Last the 1948 Show", during which time the "Four Yorkshiremen sketch" was written by all four writers/performers (the Four Yorkshiremen sketch is now better known as a Monty Python sketch). Cleese and Chapman also wrote episodes for the first series of "Doctor in the House" (and later Cleese wrote six episodes of "Doctor at Large" on his own in 1971). These series were successful, and in 1969 Cleese and Chapman were offered their very own series. However, owing to Chapman's alcoholism, Cleese found himself bearing an increasing workload in the partnership and was, therefore, unenthusiastic about doing a series with just the two of them. He had found working with Palin on "The Frost Report" an enjoyable experience and invited him to join the series. Palin had previously been working on "Do Not Adjust Your Set" with Idle and Jones, with Terry Gilliam creating the animations. The four of them had, on the back of the success of "Do Not Adjust Your Set", been offered a series for Thames Television, which they were waiting to begin when Cleese's offer arrived. Palin agreed to work with Cleese and Chapman in the meantime, bringing with him Gilliam, Jones, and Idle. 1969–1983: Monty Python. "Monty Python's Flying Circus" ran for four series from October 1969 to December 1974 on BBC Television, though Cleese quit the show after the third. Cleese's two primary characterisations were as a sophisticate and a loony. He portrayed the former as a series of announcers, TV show hosts, and government officials (for example, "The Ministry of Silly Walks"). The latter is perhaps best represented in the "Cheese Shop" and by Cleese's Mr Praline character, the man with a dead Norwegian Blue parrot and a menagerie of other animals all named "Eric". He was also known for his working class "Sergeant Major" character, who worked as a Police Sergeant, Roman Centurion, etc. Cleese also appeared during some abrupt scene changes as a radio commentator (usually outfitted in a dinner suit) where, in a rather pompous manner, he would make the formal and determined announcement "And now for something completely different", which later became the title of the first Monty Python film. Partnership with Graham Chapman Along with Gilliam's animations, Cleese's work with Graham Chapman provided Python with its darkest and angriest moments, and many of his characters display the seething suppressed rage that later characterised his portrayal of Basil Fawlty. Unlike Palin and Jones, Cleese and Chapman wrote together in the same room; Cleese claims that their writing partnership involved him doing most of the work, while Chapman sat back, not speaking for long periods before suddenly coming out with an idea that often elevated the sketch to a new level. A classic example of this is the "Dead Parrot sketch", envisaged by Cleese as a satire on poor customer service, which was originally to have involved a broken toaster and later a broken car (this version was actually performed and broadcast on the pre-Python special "How to Irritate People"). It was Chapman's suggestion to change the faulty item into a dead parrot, and he also suggested that the parrot be specifically a "Norwegian Blue", giving the sketch a surreal air which made it far more memorable. Their humour often involved ordinary people in ordinary situations behaving absurdly for no obvious reason. Like Chapman, Cleese's poker face, clipped middle class accent, and intimidating height allowed him to appear convincingly as a variety of authority figures, such as policemen, detectives, Nazi officers or government officials, which he then proceeded to undermine. In the "Ministry of Silly Walks" sketch (written by Palin and Jones), for example, Cleese exploits his stature as the crane-legged civil servant performing a grotesquely elaborate walk to his office. On the Silly Walks sketch, Ben Beaumont-Thomas in "The Guardian" writes, "Cleese is utterly deadpan as he takes the stereotypical bowler-hatted political drone and ruthlessly skewers him. All the self-importance, bureaucratic inefficiency and laughable circuitousness of Whitehall is summed up in one balletic extension of his slender leg." Chapman and Cleese also specialised in sketches wherein two characters conducted highly articulate arguments over completely arbitrary subjects, such as in the "cheese shop", the "dead parrot" sketch and "Argument Clinic", where Cleese plays a stone-faced bureaucrat employed to sit behind a desk and engage people in pointless, trivial bickering. All of these roles were opposite Palin (who Cleese often claims is his favourite Python to work with)—the comic contrast between the towering Cleese's crazed aggression and the shorter Palin's shuffling inoffensiveness is a common feature in the series. Occasionally, the typical Cleese–Palin dynamic is reversed, as in "Fish Licence", wherein Palin plays the bureaucrat with whom Cleese is trying to work. Though "Flying Circus" lasted four series, by the start of series 3, Cleese was growing tired of dealing with Chapman's alcoholism. He felt, too, that the show's scripts had declined in quality. For these reasons, he became restless and decided to move on. Though he stayed for the third series, he officially left the group before the fourth season. Cleese received a credit on three episodes of the fourth series which used material from these sessions, though he was officially unconnected with the fourth series. He remained friendly with the group, and all six began writing "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". Much of his work on "Holy Grail" remains widely quoted, including the Black Knight scene. Cleese returned to the troupe to co-write and co-star in two further Monty Python films, "Monty Python's Life of Brian" and "Monty Python's The Meaning of Life". His attack on Roman rule in "Life of Brian"–when he asks "What have the Romans ever done for us?", before being met with a string of benefits including sanitation, roads and public order–was ranked the seventh funniest line in film in a 2002 poll. Since the last Python film ("Meaning of Life" in 1983) Cleese has participated in various live performances with the group over the years. 1970–1979: "Fawlty Towers". From 1970 to 1973, Cleese served as rector of the University of St Andrews. His election proved a milestone for the university, revolutionising and modernising the post. For instance, the rector was traditionally entitled to appoint an "assessor", a deputy to sit in his place at important meetings in his absence. Cleese changed this into a position for a student, elected across campus by the student body, resulting in direct access and representation for the student body. Around this time, Cleese worked with comedian Les Dawson on his sketch/stand-up show "Sez Les". The differences between the two physically (the tall, lean Cleese and the short, stout Dawson) and socially (the public school and the Cambridge-educated Cleese vs. the working class, self-educated Mancunian Dawson) were marked, but both worked well together from series 8 onwards until the series ended in 1976. Cleese appeared on a single, "Superspike", with Bill Oddie and a group of UK athletes, billed the "Superspike Squad", to fund the latter's attendance at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. Cleese starred in the low-budget spoof of the Sherlock Holmes detective series "The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It" (1977) as the grandson of the world's greatest consulting detective. In December 1977, Cleese appeared as a guest star on "The Muppet Show". Ranked one of the best guest stars to appear on the show, Cleese was a fan of "The Muppet Show" and co-wrote much of the episode. In it he is "kidnapped" before the show begins, complains about the number of pigs, and gets roped into doing a closing number with Kermit the Frog, Sweetums, pigs, chickens and monsters. Cleese also made a cameo appearance in their 1981 film "The Great Muppet Caper" and won the "TV Times" award for Funniest Man on TV – 1978–79. In 1979, he starred in a TV special, "To Norway, Home of Giants", produced by Johnny Bergh. Throughout the 1970s, Cleese also produced and acted in a number of successful business training films, including "Meetings, Bloody Meetings," and "More Bloody Meetings". These were produced by his company Video Arts. "Fawlty Towers" Cleese achieved greater prominence in the United Kingdom as the neurotic hotel manager Basil Fawlty in the two series of "Fawlty Towers", first broadcast 1975 and 1979, which he co-wrote with his wife Connie Booth. The series won three BAFTA awards when produced, and in 2000 it topped the British Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes. In a 2001 poll conducted by Channel 4 Basil Fawlty was ranked second (behind Homer Simpson) on their list of the 100 Greatest TV Characters. The series also featured Prunella Scales as Basil's acerbic wife Sybil, Andrew Sachs as the much abused Spanish waiter Manuel, and Booth as waitress Polly, the series' voice of sanity. Cleese based Basil Fawlty on a real person, Donald Sinclair, whom he had encountered in 1970 while the Monty Python team were staying at the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay while filming inserts for their television series. Reportedly, Cleese was inspired by Sinclair's mantra, "I could run this hotel just fine if it weren't for the guests." He later described Sinclair as "the most wonderfully rude man I have ever met," although Sinclair's widow has said her husband was totally misrepresented in the series. During the Pythons' stay, Sinclair allegedly threw Idle's briefcase out of the hotel "in case it contained a bomb," complained about Gilliam's "American" table manners, and threw a bus timetable at another guest after he dared to ask the time of the next bus to town. The first series was screened from 19 September 1975 on BBC 2, initially to poor reviews, but gained momentum when repeated on BBC 1 the following year. Despite this, a second series did not air until 1979, by which time Cleese's marriage to Booth had ended, but they revived their collaboration for the second series. "Fawlty Towers" consisted of two seasons, each of only six episodes; Cleese and Booth both maintain that this was to avoid compromising the quality of the series. The popularity of "Fawlty Towers" has endured, and in addition to featuring high in greatest-ever television show polls it is often rebroadcast. In a 2002 poll, Basil's "don't mention the war" comment (said to the waitress Polly about the German guests) was ranked the second funniest line in television. 1980–1999. During the 1980s and 1990s, Cleese focused on film, though he did work with Peter Cook in his one-off TV special "Peter Cook and Co." in 1980. In the same year, Cleese played Petruchio, in Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew" in the BBC Television Shakespeare series. In 1981 he appeared in the Terry Gilliam-directed "Time Bandits" as Robin Hood. He also participated in "Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl" (filmed 1980, released 1982) and starred in "The Secret Policeman's Ball" for Amnesty International. In 1985, Cleese had a small dramatic role as a sheriff in the American Western "Silverado", which had an all-star cast that included Kevin Kline, with whom he starred in "A Fish Called Wanda" three years later. In 1986, he starred in the British comedy film "Clockwise" as an uptight school headmaster obsessed with punctuality and constantly getting into trouble during a journey to speak at the Headmasters' Conference. Written by Michael Frayn, the film was successful in the UK but not in the United States. It earned Cleese the 1987 Peter Sellers Award For Comedy at the Evening Standard British Film Awards. In 1988, Cleese wrote and starred in "A Fish Called Wanda" as the lead, Archie Leach, along with Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, and Michael Palin. "Wanda" was a commercial and critical success, becoming one of the top ten films of the year at the US box office, and Cleese was nominated for an Academy Award for his script. Kline won the Oscar for his portrayal of bumbling, violent, narcissistic ex-CIA agent Otto West in the film. From 1988 to 1992, Cleese appeared in numerous television commercials for Schweppes Ginger Ale. Between 1992 and 1994, he also appeared in some television commercials for Magnavox. In 1989, Graham Chapman was diagnosed with throat cancer; Cleese, Michael Palin, Peter Cook, and Chapman's partner David Sherlock witnessed Chapman's death. Chapman's death occurred a day before the 20th anniversary of the first broadcast of "Flying Circus", with Jones commenting that it was "the worst case of party-pooping in all history." Cleese gave a eulogy at Chapman's memorial service. Cleese later played a supporting role in Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein" (1994) alongside Branagh himself and Robert De Niro. With Robin Skynner, the English psychiatrist, Cleese wrote two books on relationships: "Families and How to Survive Them" and "Life and How to Survive It". The books are presented as a dialogue between Skynner and Cleese. The follow-up to "A Fish Called Wanda", "Fierce Creatures"—which again starred Cleese alongside Kevin Kline, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Michael Palin—was released in 1997, but was greeted with mixed reception by critics and audiences. Cleese has since often stated that making the second film had been a mistake. When asked by his friend, director and restaurant critic Michael Winner, what he would do differently if he could live his life again, Cleese responded, "I wouldn't have married Alyce Faye Eichelberger and I wouldn't have made "Fierce Creatures"." In 1999, Cleese appeared in the James Bond film "The World Is Not Enough" as Q's assistant, referred to by Bond as "R". In 2002, when Cleese reprised his role in "Die Another Day", the character was promoted, making Cleese the new quartermaster (Q) of MI6. In 2004, Cleese was featured as Q in the video game "", featuring his likeness and voice. Cleese did not appear in the subsequent Bond films, "Casino Royale", "Quantum of Solace" and "Skyfall"; in the latter film, Ben Whishaw was cast in the role of Q. 2000–2009. Cleese is Provost's visiting professor at Cornell University, after having been Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large from 1999 to 2006. He makes occasional well-received appearances on the Cornell campus. In 2001, Cleese was cast in the comedy "Rat Race" as the eccentric hotel owner Donald P. Sinclair, the name of the Torquay hotel owner on whom he had based the character of Basil Fawlty. That year he appeared as Nearly Headless Nick in the first "Harry Potter" film: "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" (2001), a role he would reprise in "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" (2002). In 2002, Cleese made a cameo appearance in the film "The Adventures of Pluto Nash", in which he played "James", a computerised chauffeur of a hover car stolen by the title character (played by Eddie Murphy). The vehicle is subsequently destroyed in a chase, leaving the chauffeur stranded in a remote place on the moon. In 2003, Cleese appeared as Lyle Finster on the US sitcom "Will & Grace". His character's daughter, Lorraine, was played by Minnie Driver. In the series, Lyle Finster briefly marries Karen Walker (Megan Mullally). In 2004, Cleese was credited as co-writer of a DC Comics graphic novel titled "". Part of DC's "Elseworlds" line of imaginary stories, "True Brit", mostly written by Kim Howard Johnson, suggests what might have happened had Superman's rocket ship landed on a farm in Britain, not America. From 10 November to 9 December 2005, Cleese toured New Zealand with his stage show "John Cleese—His Life, Times and Current Medical Problems". Cleese described it as "a one-man show with several people in it, which pushes the envelope of acceptable behaviour in new and disgusting ways". The show was developed in New York City with William Goldman and includes Cleese's daughter Camilla as a writer and actor (the shows were directed by Australian Bille Brown). His assistant of many years, Garry Scott-Irvine, also appeared and was listed as a co-producer. The show then played in universities in California and Arizona from 10 January to 25 March 2006 under the title "Seven Ways to Skin an Ocelot". His voice can be downloaded for directional guidance purposes as a downloadable option on some personal GPS-navigation device models by company TomTom. In a 2005 poll of comedians and comedy insiders, "The Comedians' Comedian", Cleese was voted second to Peter Cook. In 2006, Cleese hosted a television special of football's greatest kicks, goals, saves, bloopers, plays, and penalties, as well as football's influence on culture (including the Monty Python sketch "Philosophy Football"), featuring interviews with pop culture icons Dave Stewart, Dennis Hopper, and Henry Kissinger, as well as eminent footballers, including Pelé, Mia Hamm, and Thierry Henry. "The Art of Soccer with John Cleese" was released in North America on DVD in January 2009 by BFS Entertainment & Multimedia. Also in 2006, Cleese released the song "Don't Mention the World Cup". Cleese lent his voice to the BioWare video game "Jade Empire". His role was that of an "outlander" named Sir Roderick Ponce von Fontlebottom the Magnificent Bastard, stranded in the Imperial City of the Jade Empire. His character is essentially a British colonialist stereotype who refers to the people of the Jade Empire as "savages in need of enlightenment". His armour has the design of a fork stuck in a piece of cheese. In 2007, Cleese appeared in ads for Titleist as a golf course designer named "Ian MacCallister", who represents "Golf Designers Against Distance". Also in 2007, he was involved in filming of the sequel to "The Pink Panther", titled "The Pink Panther 2", with Steve Martin and Aishwarya Rai. Cleese collaborated with Los Angeles Guitar Quartet member William Kanengiser in 2008 on the text to the performance piece "The Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha". Cleese, as narrator, and the LAGQ premiered the work in Santa Barbara. The year 2008 also saw reports of Cleese working on a musical version of "A Fish Called Wanda" with his daughter Camilla. At the end of March 2009, Cleese published his first article as "Contributing Editor" to "The Spectator": "The real reason I had to join "The Spectator"". Cleese has also hosted comedy galas at the Montreal Just for Laughs comedy festival in 2006, and again in 2009. Towards the end of 2009 and into 2010, Cleese appeared in a series of television adverts for the Norwegian electric goods shop chain Elkjøp. In March 2010 it was announced that Cleese would be playing Jasper in the video game "Fable III". In 2009 and 2010, Cleese toured Scandinavia and the US with his Alimony Tour Year One and Year Two. In May 2010, it was announced that this tour, set for May 2011, would extend to the UK (his first tour there). The show is dubbed the "Alimony Tour" in reference to the financial implications of Cleese's divorce. The UK tour started in Cambridge on 3 May, visiting Birmingham, Nottingham, Salford, York, Liverpool, Leeds, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Oxford, Bristol and Bath (the Alimony Tour DVD was recorded on 2 July, the final Bath date). Later in 2011 John took his Alimony Tour to South Africa. He played Cape Town on the 21 & 22 October before moving over to Johannesburg, where he played from 25 to 30 October. In January 2012 he took his one-man show to Australia, starting in Perth on 22 January and throughout the next four months visited Adelaide, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Newcastle, New South Wales, Melbourne, Sydney, and finished up during April in Canberra. 2010–present. In October 2010, Cleese was featured in the launch of an advertising campaign by The Automobile Association for a new home emergency response product. He appeared as a man who believed the AA could not help him during a series of disasters, including water pouring through his ceiling, with the line "The AA? For faulty showers?" During 2010, Cleese appeared in a series of radio advertisements for the Canadian insurance company Pacific Blue Cross, in which he plays a character called "Dr. Nigel Bilkington, Chief of Medicine for American General Hospital". In 2012, Cleese was cast in "Hunting Elephants", a heist comedy by Israeli filmmaker Reshef Levi. Cleese had to quit just prior to filming due to heart trouble and was replaced by Patrick Stewart. Between September and October 2013, Cleese embarked on his first-ever cross-Canada comedy tour. Entitled "John Cleese: Last Time to See Me Before I Die tour", he visited Halifax, Ottawa, Toronto, Edmonton, Calgary, Victoria and finished in Vancouver, performing to mostly sold-out venues. Cleese returned to the stage in Dubai in November 2013, where he performed to a sold-out theatre. Cleese was interviewed and appears as himself in filmmaker Gracie Otto's 2013 documentary film "The Last Impresario", about Cleese's longtime friend and colleague Michael White. White produced "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" and Cleese's pre-Python comedy production "Cambridge Circus". At a comic press conference in November 2013, Cleese and other surviving members of the Monty Python comedy group announced a reuniting performance to be held in July 2014. Cleese joined with Eric Idle in 2015 and 2016 for a tour of North America, Canada and the ANZUS nations, "John Cleese & Eric Idle: Together Again At Last . . . For The Very First Time," playing small theatres and including interaction with audiences as well as sketches and reminisces. In a Reddit Ask Me Anything interview, Cleese expressed regret that he had turned down the role played by Robin Williams in "The Birdcage", the butler played by Anthony Hopkins in "The Remains of the Day", and the clergyman played by Peter Cook in "The Princess Bride". In 2017, he wrote "Bang Bang!" a new adaptation of Georges Feydeau's French play "Monsieur Chasse!" for the Mercury Theatre, Colchester, before making its American premiere at the Shadowland Stages in Ellenville, New York in 2018 followed by touring the UK in spring 2020. In 2021, Cleese cancelled an appearance at Cambridge University after learning that art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon had been blacklisted by the student union for impersonating Adolf Hitler. His visit to the university was intended to be part of a documentary on wokeism. Cleese said he was "blacklisting myself before someone else does". In April 2022, he was cast in Roman Polanski's upcoming drama film "The Palace". In October, it was announced that Cleese will present a news show on GB News in 2023, alongside Andrew Doyle. He said he wanted to promote "proper argument". Style of humour. In his "Alimony Tour" Cleese explained the origin of his fondness for black humour, the only thing that he inherited from his mother. Examples of it are the Dead Parrot sketch, "The Kipper and the Corpse" episode of "Fawlty Towers", his clip for the 1992 BBC2 mockumentary "A Question of Taste", the Undertakers sketch, and his eulogy at Graham Chapman's memorial service which included the line, "Good riddance to him, the freeloading bastard! I hope he fries." On his attitude to life he states, "I can take almost nothing seriously". Cleese has criticised political correctness, wokeism and cancel culture, saying that despite initial good intentions to "not be mean to people", they have become "a sort of indulgence of the most over-sensitive people in your culture, the people who are most easily upset [...] if you have to keep thinking which words you can use and which you can't, then that will stifle creativity." According to Cleese, "The main thing is to realise that words depend on their context [...] PC people simply don't understand this business about context because they tend to be very literal-minded", and that he imagined a "woke joke [...] might be heart-warming but it's not going to be very funny." He has also argued that political correctness and wokeism are a threat to humour, creativity, and freedom of thought and expression. In 2020, following a controversy over the content of the "Fawlty Towers" episode "The Germans", Cleese criticised the BBC, saying "The BBC is now run by a mixture of marketing people and petty bureaucrats. It used to have a large sprinkling of people who'd actually made programmes. Not any more. So BBC decisions are made by persons whose main concern is not losing their jobs... That's why they're so cowardly and gutless and contemptible." He likened the style of humour in "Fawlty Towers" to the representation of Alf Garnett from another BBC sitcom, "Till Death Us Do Part", saying "We laughed at Alf's reactionary views. Thus we discredited them, by laughing at him. Of course, there were people—very stupid people—who said 'Thank God someone is saying these things at last'. We laughed at these people too. Now they're taking decisions about BBC comedy." Activism and politics. Cleese (and the other members of Python) have contributed their services to charitable endeavours and causes—sometimes as an ensemble, at other times as individuals. The cause that has been the most frequent and consistent beneficiary has been the human rights work of Amnesty International via the "Secret Policeman's Ball" benefit shows. The idea of the "Ball" was conceived by Cleese, with "Huffington Post" stating "in 1976 he "friended" the then-struggling Amnesty International (according to Martin Lewis, the very notion of Human Rights was then not the domain of hipsters and students, but just of foreign-policy wonks) first with a cheque signed "J. Cleese" — and then by rounding up "a few friends" to put on a show." Many musicians have publicly attributed their activism—and the organisation of their own benefit events—to the inspiration of the work in this field of Cleese and the rest of Python, such as Bob Geldof (organiser of Live Aid), U2, Pete Townshend, and Sting. On the impact of the Ball on Geldof, Sting states, "he took the 'Ball' and ran with it." Cleese, in 2022, spoke at the conference of the revival Social Democratic Party. Previously, he was a long-standing supporter of the Liberal Democrats and before that was a supporter of the original SDP after their formation in 1981. During the 1987 general election he recorded a party political broadcast for the SDP–Liberal Alliance, in which he advocated for the introduction of proportional representation. Cleese subsequently appeared in broadcasts for the Liberal Democrats in the 1997 general election and narrated a radio election broadcast for the party during the 2001 general election. In 2008, Cleese expressed support for Barack Obama and his presidential candidacy, offering his services as a speech writer. He was an outspoken critic of Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, saying that "Michael Palin is no longer the funniest Palin". The same year, he wrote a satirical poem about Fox News commentator Sean Hannity for "Countdown with Keith Olbermann". In 2011, Cleese declared his appreciation for Britain's coalition government between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, saying: "I think what's happening at the moment is rather interesting. The Coalition has made everything a little more courteous and a little more flexible. I think it was quite good that the Liberal Democrats had to compromise a bit with the Tories." He also criticised the previous Labour government, commenting: "Although my inclinations are slightly left-of-centre, I was terribly disappointed with the last Labour government. Gordon Brown lacked emotional intelligence and was never a leader." Cleese also reiterated his support for proportional representation. In April 2011, Cleese said that he had declined a life peerage for political services in 1999. Outgoing leader of the Liberal Democrats Paddy Ashdown had put forward the suggestion shortly before stepping down, with the idea that Cleese would take the party whip and sit as a working peer, but the actor quipped that he "realised this involved being in England in the winter and I thought that was too much of a price to pay." Cleese also declined a CBE title in 1996 as he thought, "they were silly." In an interview with "The Daily Telegraph" in 2014, Cleese expressed political interest about the UK Independence Party, saying that although he was in doubt as to whether he was prepared to vote for it, he was attracted to its challenge to the established political order and the radicalism of its policies on the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union. He expressed support for immigration, but also concern about the integration of immigrants into British culture. Talking to "Der Spiegel" in 2015, Cleese expressed a critical view on what he saw as a plutocracy that was unhealthily developing control of the governance of the First World's societies, stating that he had reached a point when he "saw that our existence here is absolutely hopeless. I see the rich have got a stranglehold on us. If somebody had said that to me when I was 20, I would have regarded him as a left-wing loony." In 2016, Cleese publicly supported Brexit in the 2016 referendum on leaving the European Union. He tweeted: "If I thought there was any chance of major reform in the EU, I'd vote to stay in. But there isn't. Sad." Cleese said that "EU bureaucrats" had taken away "any trace of democratic accountability" and suggested they should "give up the euro, introduce accountability." During then-Republican nominee Donald Trump's run for the US presidency in 2016, Cleese described Trump as "a narcissist, with no attention span, who doesn't have clear ideas about anything and makes it all up as he goes along". He had previously described the leadership of the Republican Party as "the most cynical, most disgracefully immoral people I've ever come across in a Western civilisation". In 2017, Cleese stated that he would not vote in that year's general election because "I live in Chelsea and Kensington, so under our present system my vote is utterly worthless." In July 2018, Cleese said that he was leaving the UK to relocate to the Caribbean island of Nevis, partly over frustration around the standard of the Brexit debate, including "dreadful lies" by "the right" and a lack of reform regarding the press and the voting system. He relocated to Nevis on 1 November 2018. In May 2019, Cleese repeated his previous statement that London was no longer an English city, saying "virtually all my friends from abroad have confirmed my observation. So there must be some truth in it... I note also that London was the UK city that voted most strongly to remain in the EU." London Mayor Sadiq Khan responded, "These comments make John Cleese sound like he's in character as Basil Fawlty. Londoners know that our diversity is our greatest strength. We are proudly the English capital, a European city and a global hub." Cleese added, "I suspect I should apologise for my affection for the Englishness of my upbringing, but in some ways I found it calmer, more polite, more humorous, less tabloid, and less money-oriented than the one that is replacing it." In 2020, Cleese opposed the BBC's removal of the "Fawlty Towers" episode "The Germans" from the UKTV streaming service after protests following the murder of George Floyd, stating that the program was mocking prejudice with its use of a character who uttered racial slurs. "If they can't see that, if people are too stupid to see that, what can one say," said Cleese. UKTV later restored the episode with a disclaimer about its content. In November 2021, Cleese protested against perceived cancel culture by blacklisting himself over a Hitler impersonation controversy at the Cambridge Union. Anti-smoking campaign. In 1992, the UK Health Education Authority (subsequently the Health Development Agency, now merged into the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) recruited Cleese—an ex-smoker—to star in a series of anti-smoking public service announcements (PSAs) on British television, which took the form of sketches rife with morbid humour about smoking and were designed to encourage adult smokers to quit. In a controlled study of regions of central and northern England (one region received no intervention) the PSAs were broadcast in two regions, and one region received both the PSAs, plus locally organised anti-tobacco campaigning. The study found: After 18 months, 9.8% of successfully re-interviewed smokers had stopped and 4.3% of ex-smokers had relapsed. [...] There was no evidence of an extra effect of the local tobacco control network when combined with TV media [...] Applying these results to a typical population where 28% smoke and 28% are ex-smokers, and where there would be an equal number of quitters and relapsers over an 18 month period without the campaign, suggests that the campaign would reduce smoking prevalence by about 1.2%. Personal life. Cleese met Connie Booth in the US and they married in 1968. In 1971, Booth gave birth to their only child, Cynthia Cleese, who went on to appear with her father in his films "A Fish Called Wanda" and "Fierce Creatures". With Booth, Cleese wrote the scripts for and co-starred in both series of "Fawlty Towers", although the two were actually divorced before the second series was finished and aired. Cleese and Booth are said to have remained close friends since. Cleese has two grandchildren, Evan and Olivia, through Cynthia's marriage to writer/director Ed Solomon. Cleese married American actress Barbara Trentham in 1981. Their daughter Camilla, Cleese's second child, was born in 1984. He and Trentham divorced in 1990. During this time, Cleese emigrated to Los Angeles. In 1992, he married American psychotherapist Alyce Faye Eichelberger. They divorced in 2008; the divorce settlement left Eichelberger with £12 million in finance and assets, including £600,000 a year for seven years. Cleese said, "What I find so unfair is that if we both died today, her children would get much more than mine ... I got off lightly. Think what I'd have had to pay Alyce if she had contributed anything to the relationship—such as children, or a conversation". Less than a year later, he returned to the UK, where he has property in London and a home on the Royal Crescent in Bath, Somerset. In August 2012, Cleese married English jewellery designer and former model Jennifer Wade in a ceremony on the Caribbean island of Mustique. In an interview in 2014, Cleese blamed his mother, who lived to the age of 101, for his problems in relationships with women, saying: "My ingrained habit of walking on eggshells when dealing with my mother dominated my romantic liaisons for many years." Cleese said that he had spent "a large part of my life in some form of therapy" over his relationships with women. In March 2015, in an interview with "Der Spiegel", he was asked if he was religious. Cleese stated that he did not think much of organised religion and said he was not committed to "anything except the vague feeling that there is something more going on than the materialist reductionist people think". Cleese has a passion for lemurs. Following the 1997 comedy film "Fierce Creatures", in which the ring-tailed lemur played a key role, he hosted the 1998 BBC documentary "In the Wild: Operation Lemur with John Cleese", which tracked the progress of a reintroduction of black-and-white ruffed lemurs back into the Betampona Reserve in Madagascar. The project had been partly funded by Cleese's donation of the proceeds from the London premiere of "Fierce Creatures". Cleese said "I adore lemurs. They're extremely gentle, well-mannered, pretty and yet great fun ... I should have married one". The Bemaraha woolly lemur ("Avahi cleesei"), also known as Cleese's woolly lemur, is native to western Madagascar. The scientist who discovered the species named it after Cleese, mainly because of Cleese's fondness for lemurs and his efforts at protecting and preserving them. The species was first discovered in 1990 by a team of scientists from the University of Zurich led by Urs Thalmann but was not formally described as a species until 11 November 2005.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15898

John Major

Sir John Major (born 29 March 1943) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990 to 1997. He previously held Cabinet positions under prime minister Margaret Thatcher, the last as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1989 to 1990. Major was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Huntingdon, formerly Huntingdonshire, from 1979 to 2001. Since stepping down as an MP in 2001, Major has focused on writing and his business, sporting and charity work, and has occasionally commented on political developments in the role of an elder statesman. Having left school a day before turning sixteen, Major joined the Young Conservatives in 1959, and soon became a highly active member. He was elected to Lambeth London Borough Council in 1968, and a decade later to parliament, being elected as the Conservative MP for Huntingdonshire in the 1979 general election. Major held several junior government positions under Thatcher from 1984 to 1987, including Parliamentary Private Secretary and assistant whip. He served in Thatcher's third ministry as Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 1987 to 1989, Foreign Secretary in 1989, and Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1989 to 1990. Following Thatcher's resignation in 1990, after a challenge was launched to her leadership, Major stood in the 1990 Conservative leadership election to replace her and emerged victorious, becoming prime minister. His mild-mannered style and moderate political stance contrasted with that of Thatcher. Two years into his premiership, Major went on to lead the Conservative Party to a fourth consecutive electoral victory, winning more than 14 million votes, which remains the highest number ever won by a political party in Britain. As prime minister, Major created the Citizen's Charter, removed the Poll Tax and replaced it with the Council Tax, committed British troops to the Gulf War, took charge of the UK's negotiations over the Maastricht Treaty, led the country during the early 1990s economic crisis, withdrew the pound from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (on Black Wednesday), promoted the socially conservative back to basics campaign, privatised the railways and coal industry, and played a pivotal role in creating peace in Northern Ireland. In 1995, Major resigned as party leader, amid internal divisions over UK membership of the European Union, parliamentary scandals (widely known as "sleaze") and questions over his economic credibility. Despite being reelected as Conservative leader in the 1995 leadership election, his administration remained unpopular, and soon lost its parliamentary majority. The Labour Party pulled ahead of the Conservatives in every local election during Major's leadership, which increased after Tony Blair became Labour leader in 1994. The Conservatives were defeated in a landslide in the 1997 general election, ending 18 years of Conservative rule. After Blair succeeded Major as prime minister, Major served as Leader of the Opposition for seven weeks while the leadership election to replace him took place. He formed a temporary Shadow Cabinet, and Major himself served as shadow foreign secretary and Shadow Secretary of State for Defence. His resignation as Conservative leader formally took effect in June 1997 following the election of William Hague. He remained active in Parliament, regularly attending and contributing in debates, until he stood down at the 2001 election to focus on writing and his business, sporting and charity work. Since leaving office, Major has tended to maintain a low profile in the media, occasionally making political interventions. He supported the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign for the UK to remain in the European Union, and has often criticised Brexit since the outcome of the 2016 referendum. Major was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005 for services to politics and charity, and was made a Companion of Honour in 1999 for his work on the Northern Ireland peace process. Although public favourability of Major has improved since he left office, his premiership has generally been viewed as average in historical rankings and public opinion of British prime ministers. Early life and education (1943–1959). John Major was born on 29 March 1943 at St Helier Hospital and Queen Mary's Hospital for Children in St Helier, Surrey, to Gwen Major ("née" Coates, 1905–1970) and former music hall performer Tom Major-Ball (1879–1962), who was 63 years old when Major was born. He was christened "John Roy Major" but only "John Major" was recorded on his birth certificate; he used his middle name until the early 1980s. His birth had been a difficult one, with his mother suffering from pleurisy and pneumonia and John Major requiring several blood transfusions due to an infection, causing permanent scarring to his ankles. The Major family - John, his parents, and his two older siblings Terry and Pat) - lived at 260 Longfellow Road, Worcester Park, Surrey, a middle-class area where Major's father ran a garden ornaments business and his mother worked in a local library and as a part-time dance teacher. John Major later described the family's circumstances at this time as being "comfortable but not well off". Following a German V-1 flying bomb attack in the area in 1944 which killed several people, the Majors moved to the village of Saham Toney, Norfolk, for the duration of the war. John began attending primary school at Cheam Common School from 1948. His childhood was generally happy, and he enjoyed reading, sports (especially cricket and football) and keeping pets, such as his rabbits. In 1954 John passed the 11+ exam, enabling him to go to Rutlish School, a grammar school in Merton Park, though to John's chagrin his father insisted that he register as 'John Major-Ball'. The family's fortunes took a turn for the worse, with his father's health deteriorating, and the business in severe financial difficulties. A recalled business loan which the family were unable to repay forced Tom Major to sell the house in Worcester Park in May 1955, with the family moving to a cramped, rented top-floor flat at 144 Coldharbour Lane, Brixton. With his parents distracted by their reduced circumstances, John Major's difficulties at Rutlish went unnoticed. Acutely conscious of his straitened circumstances in relation to the other pupils, Major was something of a loner and consistently under-performed except in sports, coming to see the school as "a penance to be endured". Major left school just before his 16th birthday in 1959 with just three O-level passes in History, English Language and English Literature, to his parents' disappointment. Major's interest in politics stems from this period, and he avidly kept up with current affairs by reading newspapers on his long commutes from Brixton to Wimbledon. In 1956 Major met local MP Marcus Lipton at a local church fair and was invited to watch his first debate in the House of Commons, where Harold Macmillan presented his only Budget as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Major has attributed his political ambitions to this event. Early post-school career (1959–1979). Major's first job was as a clerk in the London-based insurance brokerage firm Price Forbes in 1959, though finding the job dull and offering no prospects he quit. Major began working with his brother Terry at the garden ornaments business; this had been sold in 1959, enabling the family to move to a larger residence at 80 Burton Road, Brixton. Major's father died on 27 March 1962. John left the ornaments business the following year to care for his ill mother, though when she got better he was unable to find a new job and was unemployed for much of the latter half of 1962, a situation he says was "degrading". After Major became prime minister, it was misreported that his failure to get a job as a bus conductor resulted from his failing to pass a maths test; he had in fact passed all of the necessary tests but had been passed over owing to his height. In the meantime he studied for a qualification in banking via correspondence course. Eventually in December 1962 he found a job working at the London Electricity Board (LEB) in Elephant and Castle. In 1959 Major had joined the Young Conservatives in Brixton and soon became a highly active member, which helped increase his confidence following the failure of his school days. Encouraged by fellow Conservative Derek Stone, he started giving speeches on a soap-box in Brixton Market. According to his biographer Anthony Seldon, Major brought "youthful exuberance" to the Tories in Brixton, but was sometimes in trouble with the professional agent Marion Standing. Major stood as a Councillor in the 1964 Lambeth London Borough Council election for Larkhall ward at the age of 21 in 1964, losing to Labour. He also assisted local Conservative candidates Kenneth Payne in the 1964 general election and Piers Dixon in the 1966 general election. Another formative influence on Major in this period was Jean Kierans, a divorcée 13 years his elder with two children who lived opposite the family on Burton Road, who became his mentor and lover. Seldon writes "She ... made Major smarten his appearance, groomed him politically, and made him more ambitious and worldly." Major later moved in with Kierans when his family left Burton Road in 1965; their relationship lasted from 1963 to sometime after 1968. Major left the LEB and took up a post at District Bank in May 1965, though he soon left this to join Standard Bank the following year, largely because the latter offered the chance to work abroad. In December 1966 he was sent for a long secondment in Jos, Nigeria, which he enjoyed immensely, though he was put off by the casual racism of some of the ex-pat workers there. In May 1967 he was involved in a serious car crash in which he broke a leg and had to be flown home. Leaving hospital, he split his time between Jean Kierans' house and a small rented flat in Mayfair, working at Standard Bank's London office and resuming his banking diploma and activities with the Young Conservatives in his spare time. Major stood again as Councillor in the 1968 Lambeth London Borough Council election, this time for Ferndale ward. Though a Labour stronghold, the Conservatives received a huge boost following Enoch Powell's anti-immigration 'Rivers of Blood speech' in April 1968 and Major won, despite strongly disapproving of Powell's views. Major took a major interest in housing matters, with Lambeth notorious for overcrowding and poor-quality rented accommodation. In February 1970 Major became Chairman of the Housing Committee, being responsible for overseeing the building of several large council estates. He also promoted more openness at the council, initiating a series of public meetings with local residents. Major also undertook fact-finding trips to the Netherlands, Finland and the Soviet Union. Despite the Lambeth housing team being well-regarded nationally, Major lost his seat in the 1971 Lambeth London Borough Council election. Major met Norma Johnson at a Conservative party event in Brixton in April 1970, and the two became engaged shortly thereafter, marrying at St Matthew's Church in Brixton on 3 October 1970. John's mother died shortly before in September at the age of 65. John and Norma moved into a flat at Primrose Court, Streatham, which John had bought in 1969, and had their first child, Elizabeth, in November 1971. In 1974 the couple moved to a larger residence at West Oak, Beckenham, and had a second child, James, in January 1975. Meanwhile, Major continued to work at Standard Bank (renamed Standard Chartered from 1975), having completed his banking diploma in 1972. Major was promoted to head of the PR department in August 1976, and his duties necessitated the occasional foreign trip to East Asia. Despite his setback at the 1971 Lambeth Council election, Major continued to nurse political ambitions, and with help from friends in the Conservative Party managed to get onto the Conservative Central Office's list of potential MP candidates. Major was selected as the Conservative candidate for the Labour-dominated St Pancras North constituency, fighting both the February and October 1974 general elections, losing heavily both times to Labour's Albert Stallard. Major then attempted to get selected as a candidate for a more promising seat, and despite numerous attempts was unsuccessful until December 1976. Growing increasingly frustrated, Major resolved to make one last attempt, applying for selection to the safe Conservative seat of Huntingdonshire and finally he succeeded. Major was in some ways an odd choice, being a born-and-bred Londoner in a largely rural constituency still home to many landed families; however, he was seen as being the most likely to win-over the increasingly large numbers of upwardly mobile London over-spill families living in the area, and he was helped to familiarise himself with the area by local MP David Renton. In 1977 the Major family purchased a house at De Vere Close in the village of Hemingford Grey. Major took on a less demanding job at Standard Chartered, and started working part-time in 1978 so that he could devote more time to his constituency duties. Early parliamentary career (1979–1987). Major won the Huntingdon seat by a large margin in the 1979 general election, which brought Margaret Thatcher to power. He made his maiden speech in the House of Commons on 13 June 1979, voicing his support for the government's budget. Major assiduously courted contacts at all levels of the party in this period, joining the informal 'Guy Fawkes club' of Conservative MPs and attending various Committees. He became Secretary of the Environment Committee and also assisted with work on the Housing Act 1980, which allowed council house tenants the Right to Buy their homes. At this time Major lived in De Vere Close, Hemingford Grey. Major's first promotion came when he was appointed as a Parliamentary Private Secretary in January 1981 to Patrick Mayhew and Timothy Raison, both Ministers of State at the Home Office. Seeking to gain more exposure to foreign affairs, he joined several Labour Party MPs on a fact-finding trip to the Middle East in April 1982. The group met with King Hussein of Jordan and Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation in Lebanon; in Israel they were briefly caught in the middle of a shooting incident between Israeli troops and a Palestinian rock-thrower. Major later became an assistant whip in January 1983, responsible for East Anglian MPs. During this period Major became also involved in the response to protests at RAF Molesworth, which lay in his constituency; various peace groups were opposed to the siting of cruise missiles at the base and had established a permanent 'peace camp' there. Major addressed public meetings opposed to the protesters, organised by parish councillors, and also met Bill Westwood and separately Michael Heseltine to discuss the issue. The protesters were evicted in February 1984. Major comfortably won re-election to the now slightly enlarged seat of Huntingdon at the 1983 general election. Shortly thereafter he and Norma moved to a larger house (Finings) in Great Stukeley; Major generally spent his weekends there, and weekdays at a rented flat in Durand Gardens, Stockwell. Major was invited to join the prestigious 'Blue Chip' group of rising stars in the Conservative Party, and he was promoted to Treasury Whip in October 1984. It was later revealed (in 2002) that during this period Major had conducted an affair with Edwina Currie, a Conservative backbencher and later Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Health and Social Security; the affair ended in 1988. Major narrowly avoided the IRA's Brighton hotel bombing in October 1984, having left the hotel only a few hours before the bomb went off. Also in this period, Major stood in for a Foreign Office minister on a trip to South America, visiting Colombia, Peru and Venezuela. In September 1985, Major was made Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS), before being promoted to become Minister of State in the same department in September 1986. The large size of the DHSS granted Ministers a greater degree of responsibility than in other departments, with Major assisting with work on the Social Security Act 1986 and improving provision for disabled people. Major began to gain a bigger profile, giving his first speech at the Conservative Party Conference in October 1986. He first attracted major national media attention in January 1987 over cold weather payments to the elderly, when Britain was in the depths of a severe winter. Amidst intense media criticism, Major discussed the issue with Margaret Thatcher and an increase in the payments was approved. In Cabinet (1987–1990). Chief Secretary to the Treasury (1987–1989). Following the 1987 general election, in which Major retained his seat with an increased majority, he was promoted to the Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, making him the first MP of the 1979 intake to reach the Cabinet. The then-Chancellor Nigel Lawson generally made significant decisions with little input from others, and Major was put in charge of agreeing departmental budgets with the Secretaries of State. These discussions went well, and for the first time in several years budgets were agreed without recourse to the external adjudication of the so-called 'Star Chamber'. Major successfully concluded a second round of such spending reviews in July 1988. Whilst Chief Secretary Major took part in discussions over the future funding of the NHS, against the background of an NHS strike in February 1988 over pay, resulting in the 'Working for Patients' white paper and subsequent National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990. Major also insisted in discussions with Thatcher that government assistance should be provided to support the sale of Short Brothers to Bombardier, an aerospace company and major employer in Northern Ireland which might otherwise have collapsed. Foreign Secretary (July–October 1989). In 1987–1988 it became clear that Major had become a 'favourite' of Margaret Thatcher and he was widely tipped for further promotion. Nevertheless, Major's appointment to Foreign Secretary in July 1989 came as a surprise due to his relative lack of experience in the Cabinet and unfamiliarity with international affairs. Major found the prospect daunting, and unsuccessfully attempted to convince Thatcher to allow him to stay on at the Treasury. There were also fears within the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) that Major would be Thatcher's 'hatchet-man', as her relations with the department under Geoffrey Howe had been poor and characterised by mutual distrust. Major accepted the job and began to settle into the department, living in an upstairs room at the FCO and devolving decision making where necessary, though he found the increased security burdensome and disliked the extensive ceremonial aspects of the role. Amongst Major's first acts as Foreign Secretary was to cancel the sale of Hawk aircraft to Iraq, over concerns they would be used for internal repression. He represented Britain at the Paris Peace Conference to determine the future of Cambodia. Major also met with US secretary of state James Baker, with whom he primarily discussed the issue of Vietnamese boat people, and with Qian Qichen, Foreign Minister of China, becoming the first senior Western politician to meet with a Chinese official since the violent crackdown of pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square the previous month. Discussions focused primarily on the future of Hong Kong, which Britain was scheduled to hand over to China in 1997. Major spent most of a summer holiday that year in Spain conducting extensive background reading on foreign affairs and British foreign policy. Upon his return to the UK he and Thatcher met with French president François Mitterrand, in which the future direction of the European Community was discussed. In September 1989 Major delivered a speech at the United Nations General Assembly, in which he pledged to support Colombia's effort to tackle the drugs trade and reiterated Britain's opposition to the apartheid regime in South Africa. Major also met US president George H. W. Bush in Washington, D.C. and Domingo Cavallo, the Argentine foreign minister, the first such meeting since the end of the Falklands War seven years earlier. Major's last major summit as Foreign Secretary was the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Malaysia. The meeting was dominated by the issue of sanctions on South Africa, with Britain being the only country to oppose them, on the grounds that they would end up hurting poorer South Africans far more than the apartheid regime at which they were aimed. The summit ended acrimoniously, with Thatcher controversially and against established precedent issuing a second final communiqué stating Britain's opposition to sanctions, with the press seizing on the apparent disagreement on the matter between Major and Thatcher. Chancellor of the Exchequer (1989–1990). After just three months as Foreign Secretary Major was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer on 26 October 1989 following the sudden resignation of Nigel Lawson, who had fallen out with Thatcher over what he saw as her excessive reliance on the advice of her Economic Adviser Alan Walters. The appointment meant that, despite only being in the Cabinet for a little over two years, Major had gone from the most junior position in the Cabinet to holding two of the Great Offices of State. Major made tackling inflation a priority, stating that tough measures were needed to bring it down and that "if it isn't hurting, it isn't working." He delivered his first Autumn Statement on 15 November, announcing a boost in spending (mainly for the NHS) and with interest rates to be kept as they were. As Chancellor, Major presented only one Budget, the first to be televised live, on 20 March 1990. He publicised it as a 'budget for savers', with the creations of the Tax-exempt special savings account (TESSA), arguing that measures were required to address the marked fall in the household savings ratio that had been apparent during the previous financial year. Major also abolished the composite rate tax and stamp duty on share trades, whilst increasing taxes on alcohol, cigarettes and petrol. Tax cuts were also made which benefited football associations, the aim being to increase funding on safety measures following the Bradford City stadium fire and Hillsborough disaster. Extra funding was also made available to Scotland in order to limit the impact of the Community Charge (widely dubbed the 'Poll Tax'), which had been introduced there that year. The European Community's push for full Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) was another important factor in Major's time as Chancellor; in June 1990 he proposed that instead of a single European currency there could instead be a 'hard ECU', which different national currencies could compete against and, if the ECU was successful, could lead to a single currency. The move was seen as a wrecking tactic by France and Germany, especially when the increasingly Euro-sceptic Thatcher announced her outright opposition to EMU, and the idea was abandoned. More successfully, Major managed to get the new European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) located in London. By early 1990 Major had become convinced that the best way to combat inflation and restore macroeconomic stability would be if the British pound were to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), and he and Douglas Hurd (Major's successor as Foreign Secretary) set about trying to convince a reluctant Thatcher to join it. The move was supported by the Bank of England, the Treasury, most of the Cabinet, the Labour Party, several major business associations and much of the press. With the 'Lawson Boom' showing signs of running out of steam, exacerbated by rising oil prices following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, there were fears of a potential recession and pressure to cut interest rates. Thatcher finally agreed on 4 October, and Britain's entry into the ERM at a rate of DM 2.95 to £1.00 (with an agreed 6% floating 'band' either side) was announced the following day. An interest rate cut of 1% (from 15%) was also announced on the same day. The rest of Major's Chancellorship prior to the leadership contest was largely uneventful; he considered granting the Bank of England operational independence over monetary policy, with the ability to set interest rates, but decided against it. He also agreed a restructuring and write-off of some Third World debt at a Commonwealth Finance Ministers meeting in Trinidad and Tobago in September 1990. Conservative Party leadership contest. Opposition within the Conservative Party to Margaret Thatcher had been brewing for some time, focusing on what was seen as her brusque, imperious style and the poll tax, which was facing serious opposition across the country. In December 1989, she had survived a leadership bid by Anthony Meyer; though she won easily, 60 MPs had not voted for her, and it was rumoured that many more had had to be strong-armed into supporting her. By early 1990, it was clear that bills for many under the new poll tax regime would be higher than anticipated, and opposition to the Tax grew, with a non-payment campaign gaining much support and an anti-poll tax demonstration in Trafalgar Square in March ending in rioting. The Conservatives lost the 1990 Mid Staffordshire by-election to Labour and the 1990 Eastbourne by-election to the Liberal Democrats, both Conservative seats, causing many Conservative MPs to worry about their prospects at the upcoming general election, due in 1991 or 1992. Thatcher's staunch anti-European stance also alienated pro-Europe Conservatives. On 1 November, the pro-European deputy prime minister Geoffrey Howe resigned, issuing a fiercely critical broadside against Thatcher in the House of Commons on 13 November. The day after Howe's speech Michael Heseltine, Thatcher's former Secretary of State for Defence who had acrimoniously resigned in 1986 over the Westland affair, challenged Thatcher for the leadership of the Conservative Party. Both John Major and Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd supported Thatcher in the first round. Major was at home in Huntingdon recovering from a pre-arranged wisdom tooth operation during the first leadership ballot, which Thatcher won but not by the required threshold, necessitating a second round. Following discussions with her cabinet, in which many stated that though supporting her they doubted she could win, Thatcher withdrew from the contest and announced that she would resign as prime minister once a new leader had been elected. Major subsequently announced on 22 November that he would stand in the second ballot, with Thatcher's backing. Major's platform was one of moderation on Europe, a review of the poll tax, and the desire to build a "classless society". Unlike in the first ballot, a candidate only required a simple majority of Conservative MPs to win, in this case 187 of 372 MPs. The ballot was held on the afternoon of 27 November; although Major obtained 185 votes, 2 votes short of an overall majority, he polled far enough ahead of both Hurd and Heseltine to secure their immediate withdrawal. With no remaining challengers, Major was formally named Leader of the Conservative Party that evening and was duly appointed prime minister the following day. At 47, he was the youngest prime minister since Lord Rosebery some 95 years earlier. Prime Minister (1990–1997). First Major ministry (1990–1992). Major became prime minister on 28 November 1990 when he accepted the Queen's invitation to form a government, succeeding Margaret Thatcher. He inherited a majority government from Margaret Thatcher who had been the prime minister for the previous eleven years. The Conservatives' popularity was low, with some polling showing Labour's Neil Kinnock with a 23% lead over the Tories in April 1990 following the introduction of the Community Charge (poll tax). By the time of Major's appointment, Labour's lead had shrunk to 14%. However, by 1991, the Conservatives had narrowly retaken Labour in the polls. Major's first ministry was dominated by the early 1990s recession which was believed to be caused by high interest rates, falling house prices and an overvalued exchange rate. The high interest rates led to more saving, less spending and less investment in the UK's sectors. Falling house prices stalled construction in the housing sector. Economic growth wasn't re-established until early 1993. By December 1991, unemployment was at 2.5 million (compared to 1.6 million 18 months earlier). Additionally, inflation was in double digits and interest rates reached 15%. However, opinion polling for Major's government remained stable during this period. Second Major ministry (1992–1997). On 9 April 1992, Major called an election. To the surprise of many pollsters, the Conservatives won a majority, with 336 seats, and earning 41.9% of the vote. With a high turnout, the Conservatives earned over 14 million votes which remains a record in any UK general election. This was the Conservatives' fourth consecutive election victory. Neil Kinnock was replaced by John Smith as Labour leader and Leader of the Opposition in 1992. On 16 September 1992, the pound sterling crashed out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism after the Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont had invested heavily in trying to keep it there, adjusting interest rates four times in one day. This event would later be called Black Wednesday. Despite the recession finally ending in 1993, the Conservatives' popularity didn't improve. Major's second ministry was also defined by conflicts within the Conservative Party regarding Europe following the government's defeat on the Maastricht Treaty. On 12 May 1994, John Smith died from a heart attack and was replaced by Tony Blair who continued Labour's modernisation under the slogan of "New Labour". Some polling at the end of 1994 and the start of 1995 had Labour with a vote share of over 60%. The Tories remained divided over this era and in an attempt to silence his critics, Major resigned as Party leader. In the leadership election, Major comfortably beat John Redwood in June 1995. Following a string of by-election defeats, the Conservatives' majority of 21 had been eroded by 13 December 1996. In the 1997 election on 1 May 1997, Labour won a 179-seat majority, ending their eighteen years in opposition. This was the worst general election result of the 20th century for the Conservatives, seeing the loss of all the party's seats in Wales and Scotland. On the morning of 2nd May 1997, on his final departure from Downing Street to offer his resignation to the Queen, Major announced his intention to step down as leader of the Conservative Party, stating in his exit speech that "when the curtain falls, it's time to get off the stage". He was succeeded as Prime Minister by Tony Blair. Final years in Parliament (1997–2001). Speculation over Major's leadership had continued since his re-election in 1995, and intensified as it became increasingly likely that the Conservatives would suffer a landslide defeat in the upcoming general election. During this period, Michael Portillo had frequently been touted as the favourite to replace Major, but lost his seat in the election, thus eliminating him from the running. Although many Conservative MPs wanted Major to resign as leader immediately because of the 1997 election loss, there was a movement among the grassroots of the party, encouraged by his political allies, to have him stay on as leader until the autumn. Lord Cranborne, his chief of staff during the election, and the chief whip, Alastair Goodlad, both pleaded with him to stay on: they argued that remaining as leader for a few months would give the party time to come to terms with the scale of defeat before electing a successor. Major refused, saying: "It would be terrible, because I would be presiding with no authority over a number of candidates fighting for the crown. It would merely prolong the agony." Major served as Leader of the Opposition for seven weeks while the leadership election to replace him was underway. He formed a temporary Shadow Cabinet, but with seven of his Cabinet ministers having lost their seats at the election, and with few senior MPs left to replace them, several MPs had to hold multiple briefs. Major himself served as shadow foreign secretary (having served as foreign secretary for three months in 1989) and Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, and the office of Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland was left vacant until after the 2001 general election as the party no longer had any Scottish MPs. Major's resignation as Conservative leader formally took effect on 19 June 1997 after the election of William Hague. Major's Resignation Honours were announced on 1 August 1997. He remained active in Parliament, regularly attending and contributing in debates. He stood down from the House of Commons at the 2001 general election, having announced his retirement from Parliament on 10 March 2000. Jonathan Djanogly took over as MP for Huntingdon, retaining the seat for the Conservatives at the 2001 election. Like some post-war former prime ministers (such as Edward Heath), Major turned down a peerage when he retired from the House of Commons in 2001. He said that he wanted a "firebreak from politics" and to focus on writing and his business, sporting and charity work. Post-parliamentary life (2001–present). Since leaving office, Major has tended to maintain a low profile in the media, occasionally commentating on political developments in the role of an elder statesman. In 1999 he published an autobiography, covering his early life and time in office, which was generally well received. Major went on to write a book about the history of cricket in 2007 ("" and a book about music hall ("My Old Man: A Personal History of Music Hall" in 2012. Major has further indulged his love of cricket as President of Surrey County Cricket Club from 2000 to 2001 (and Honorary Life Vice-president since 2002). In March 2001 he gave the tribute to cricketer Colin Cowdrey at his memorial service in Westminster Abbey. In 2005 he was elected to the Committee of the Marylebone Cricket Club, historically the governing body of the sport, and still guardian of the laws of the game. Major left the committee in 2011, citing concerns with the planned redevelopment of Lord's Cricket Ground. John Major has also been actively engaged in charity work, being President of Asthma UK, and a Patron of the Prostate Cancer Charity, Sightsavers UK, Mercy Ships, Support for Africa 2000, Afghan Heroes, and Consortium for Street Children. In February 2012, Major became chairman of the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust, which was formed as part of the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II and is intended to support charitable organisations and projects across the Commonwealth, focusing on areas such as cures for diseases and the promotion of culture and education. Major was a Patron of the sight loss and learning disability charity SeeAbility from 2006 to 2012 and has been a vice-president since 2013. Major has also pursued a variety of business interests, taking up appointments as Senior Adviser to Credit Suisse, chairman of the board of Senior Advisers at Global Infrastructure Partners, Global Adviser to AECOM, Chairman of the International Advisory Board of the National Bank of Kuwait, and Chairman of the European Advisory Council of the Emerson Electric Company. He was a member of the Carlyle Group's European Advisory Board from 1998 and was appointed Chairman of Carlyle Europe in May 2001. He stood down from the Group circa 2004–05. Major was also a director at the bus manufacturers the Mayflower Corporation from 2000 to 2003, which was liquidated in 2004 due to funding issues. Following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997, Major was appointed a special guardian to Princes William and Harry, with responsibility for legal and administrative matters. As a result of this, Major was the only current or former prime minister out of the five then still alive invited to the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in May 2018. Major has also attended the funerals of notable political figures, such as Nelson Mandela in December 2013, former US first lady Barbara Bush at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas on 21 April 2018 and the state funeral of George H. W. Bush on 5 December 2018. As a former Prime Minister, Major with Lady Major had a place of honour at the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II on 19 September 2022. Revelation of affair. In 1993, Major sued two magazines, "New Statesman and Society" and "Scallywag", as well as their distributors, for reporting rumours of an affair with Clare Latimer, a Downing Street caterer, even though at least one of the magazines had said that the rumours were false. The allegations of an affair with Latimer were indeed proven false. However, an affair with a different woman, Edwina Currie, came out a decade later, and both of these publications considered legal action to recover their costs when that happened. In September 2002, it was revealed that, prior to his elevation to the Cabinet, Major had had a four-year-long extramarital affair with Edwina Currie, from 1984 to 1988. Commentators were quick to refer to Major's previous 'Back to Basics' platform to throw charges of hypocrisy at him. An obituary of Tony Newton in "The Daily Telegraph" claimed that if Newton had not kept the affair a closely guarded secret, "it is highly unlikely that Major would have become prime minister". In a press statement, Major said that he was "ashamed" by the affair and that his wife had forgiven him. In response, Currie said "he wasn't ashamed of it at the time and he wanted it to continue." Political engagement. Major has become an active after-dinner speaker, earning over £25,000 per engagement for his "insights and his own opinions" on politics and other matters according to his agency. Major is also actively involved in various think tanks: he is the Chair of the Panel of Senior Advisers at Chatham House (having previously served as a president of Chatham House), a member of the International Advisory Boards of the Peres Center for Peace in Israel, the InterAction Council, the Baker Institute in Houston, and a Patron of the Atlantic Partnership. Major was also a Director with the Ditchley Foundation from 2000 to 2009, and a President of the influential centre-right think tank the Bow Group from 2012 to 2014. In February 2005, it was reported that Major and Norman Lamont delayed the release of papers on Black Wednesday under the Freedom of Information Act. Major denied doing so, saying that he had not heard of the request until the scheduled release date and had merely asked to look at the papers himself. He told BBC News that he and Lamont had been the victims of "whispering voices" to the press. He later publicly approved the release of the papers. In December 2006, Major led calls for an independent inquiry into Blair's decision to invade Iraq, following revelations made by Carne Ross, a former British senior diplomat, that contradicted Blair's case for the invasion. He was touted as a possible Conservative candidate for the Mayor of London elections in 2008, but turned down an offer from the Leader of the Conservatives at the time, David Cameron. A spokesperson for Major said "his political career is behind him". Following the 2010 general election, Major announced his support for the Cameron–Clegg coalition, and stated that he hoped for a "liberal conservative" alliance beyond 2015, criticising Labour under Ed Miliband for playing "party games" rather than serving the national interest. Nevertheless, in 2013 Major expressed his concern at the seeming decline in social mobility in Britain: "In every single sphere of British influence, the upper echelons of power in 2013 are held overwhelmingly by the privately educated or the affluent middle class. To me, from my background, I find that truly shocking." During the 2014 Scottish independence referendum Major strongly encouraged a "No" vote, stating that a vote for independence would be damaging both for Scotland and the rest of the UK. This was similar to his stance on devolution in Scotland before referendums were held on the subject both there and in Wales in 1997. Major was a vocal supporter for the Remain campaign in the 2016 referendum on British membership of the European Union. Major supported a second referendum over Brexit, stating that the leave campaign put out a "fantasy case" during the referendum campaign, adding that to describe a second vote as undemocratic was "a rather curious proposition" and that he could see no "intellectual argument" against redoing the ballot. Major feared Brexit would make the UK poorer and could endanger the peace settlement in Northern Ireland. On 30 August 2019, it was announced that Major intended to join a court case by Gina Miller against the proroguing of Parliament by the prime minister at the time, Boris Johnson. In the 2019 general election Major urged voters to vote tactically against candidates supporting Boris Johnson when those candidates wanted a hard Brexit. Major said Brexit is, "the worst foreign policy decision in my lifetime. It will affect nearly every single aspect of our lives for many decades to come. It will make our country poorer and weaker. It will hurt most those who have least. Never have the stakes been higher, especially for the young. Brexit may even break up our historic United Kingdom." In early 2020, after the UK formally left the EU with an initial deal, Major expressed his concerns about a future trading deal with the EU being "flimsy". In February 2022, Major made a speech at the Institute for Government think-tank in London, in which he criticised Johnson over the Partygate scandal, suggesting that he ought to resign, and also the proposed policy for those seeking asylum which he called "un-British". In July 2022, immediately following Johnson's announcement he intended to resign as prime minister but would stay until a successor was chosen, Major called for Johnson's immediate replacement and removal "for the overall wellbeing of the country." In February 2023, Major made a speech at the Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee, where he said that Brexit was "a colossal mistake" and that Johnson agreed the Brexit protocol knowing it was "a mess". Assessment and legacy. Major's mild-mannered style and moderate political stance contrasted with that of Thatcher, and made him theoretically well-placed to act as a conciliatory and relatively uncontroversial leader of his party. In spite of this, conflict raged within the parliamentary Conservative Party, particularly over the extent of Britain's integration with the European Union. Major never succeeded in reconciling the "Euro-rebels" among his MPs to his European policy, who although relatively few in number, wielded great influence because of his small majority and their wider following among Conservative activists and voters. Episodes such as the Maastricht Rebellion, led by Bill Cash and Margaret Thatcher, inflicted serious political damage on him and his government. The additional bitterness on the right wing of the Conservative Party at the manner in which Margaret Thatcher had been deposed did not make Major's task any easier, with many viewing him as a weak and vacillating leader. Ongoing 'sleaze'-related scandals among leading Conservative MPs also did Major and his government no favours, decreasing support for the party amongst the public. His task became even more difficult after the election of the modernist and highly media-savvy Tony Blair as Labour leader in July 1994, who mercilessly exploited Conservative divisions whilst shifting Labour to the centre, thus making it much more electable. Whilst few observers doubted that Major was an honest and decent man, or that he made sincere and sometimes successful attempts to improve life in Britain and to unite his deeply divided party, he was also perceived as a weak and ineffectual figure, and his approval ratings for most of his time in office were low, particularly after "Black Wednesday" in September 1992 which destroyed the Conservative's reputation for effective economic management. Major defended his government in his memoirs, focusing particularly on how under him the British economy had recovered from the recession of 1990–1993. He wrote that "during my premiership interest rates fell from 14% to 6%; unemployment was at 1.75 million when I took office, and at 1.6 million and falling upon my departure; and the government's annual borrowing rose from £0.5 billion to nearly £46 billion at its peak before falling to £1 billion". Major's Chancellor Ken Clarke stated in 2016 that Major's reputation looked better as time went by, in contrast to that of Tony Blair's which appeared to be in decline. Paddy Ashdown, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats during Major's term of office, was more sympathetic, writing in 2017 that Major was "one of the most honest, brave and sincere men to ever be Prime Minister" and that his time in office compares favourably with that of his successor Tony Blair. Writing shortly after he left office, the historian and journalist Paul Johnson wrote that Major was "a hopeless leader" who "should never have been Prime Minister". The sentiments echoed that of much of the press at the time, which was generally hostile to Major, especially after Black Wednesday. The journalist Peter Oborne was one such figure, though writing in 2017 he stated that he now regrets his negative reporting, stating that he himself and the press in general were "grossly unfair to Major" and that this was motivated at least in part by snobbery at Major's humble upbringing. In 2012 Oborne had written that Major's government looks ever more successful as time goes by. Oborne singled out Major's achievements in the Northern Irish peace process, boosting the economy, keeping Britain out of the Eurozone, and his reforms of public services as being worthy of praise. Others remain unconvinced however and, writing in 2011, the BBC's Home editor Mark Easton judged that "Majorism" had made little lasting impact. In academic circles Major's legacy has generally been better received. Mark Stuart, writing in 2017, stated that Major is "the best ex-Prime Minister we have ever had", praising him for initiating the Northern Ireland peace process, peacefully handing Hong Kong back to China, creating the National Lottery and leaving a sound economy to Labour in 1997. Dennis Kavanagh likewise states that Major did relatively well considering the unbridgeable divides that existed in the Conservative Party in the 1990s, chiefly over Europe, whilst also delivering economic growth, a more user-focused public sector and the basis of peace settlement in Northern Ireland. He also notes that Major's unexpected 1992 election victory effectively sealed in the Thatcher-era reforms and forced the Labour Party to ditch most of its more socialist-tinged policies, thereby permanently shifting the British political landscape to the centre ground. Anthony Seldon largely agrees with this assessment, adding that Major's deep dislike of discrimination contributed to the continuing decline in racism and homophobia in British society, and that his proactive foreign policy stance maintained Britain's influence in the world at a time of profound global change. He also notes that Major faced a deeply unfavourable set of circumstances: most of the obvious and pressing Conservative reforms (e.g. reining in the power of trade unions and privatising failing industries) had already been completed under Thatcher, the swift nature of his rise to power left him little time to formulate policy positions and upon becoming prime minister he was immediately thrust into having to deal with the Gulf War and a major recession. Furthermore, the narrow majority achieved after the 1992 election left him exposed to internal Conservative rebellions, which only worsened as time went by, abetted by a hostile press, as it became clear the Conservatives would lose the next election. Seldon concludes that "Major was neither non-entity nor failure. His will be judged an important if unruly premiership at the end of the Conservative century, completing some parts of an earlier agenda while in some key respects helping to define a Conservatism for the 21st century." Seldon reiterated these views in his contribution to the 2017 volume "John Major: An Unsuccessful Prime Minister?" Political historian Robert Taylor, in his 2006 biography of Major, concurs with many of these points, summing up that "In the perspective provided by the years of New Labour government since May 1997, John Major's record as Prime Minister looked much better than his many critics liked to suggest... Britain's most extraordinary Conservative Prime Minister bequeathed an important legacy to this party and his country to build on. One day both yet may come to recognise and appreciate it." Noted political historian Dick Leonard, however, writing in 2004, was more harsh in his assessment, concluding that Major was "A man of evident decent instincts, but limited abilities: as Prime Minister he pushed these abilities to the limit. It was not enough." Representation in the media. During his leadership of the Conservative Party, Major was portrayed as honest ("Honest John") but unable to exert effective control over his fractious party. However, his polite, easy-going manner was initially well received by both his supporters and his critics. Major's appearance was noted for its greyness, his prodigious philtrum, and large glasses, all of which were exaggerated in caricatures. For example, in "Spitting Image", Major's puppet was changed from a circus performer to that of a literally grey man who ate dinner with his wife in silence, occasionally saying "nice peas, dear", while at the same time nursing an unrequited crush on his colleague Virginia Bottomley – an invention, but an ironic one in view of his affair with Edwina Currie, which was not then a matter of public knowledge. By the end of his premiership his puppet would often be shown observing the latest fiasco and ineffectually murmuring "oh dear". Long-standing Conservative MP Enoch Powell, when asked about Major, stated "I simply find myself asking – does he really exist?", whereas on the left Labour's Alastair Campbell dismissed him as a "piece of lettuce that passes for prime minister" and Labour MP Tony Banks said of Major in 1994 that, "He was a fairly competent Chairman of Housing on Lambeth Council. Every time he gets up now I keep thinking, 'What on earth is Councillor Major doing?' I can't believe he's here and sometimes I think he can't either." The media (particularly "The Guardian" cartoonist Steve Bell) used the allegation by Alastair Campbell that he had observed Major tucking his shirt into his underpants to caricature him wearing his pants outside his trousers, as a pale grey echo of both Superman and Supermac, a parody of Harold Macmillan. Bell also used the humorous possibilities of the Cones Hotline, a means for the public to inform the authorities of potentially unnecessary traffic cones, which was part of the Citizen's Charter project established by John Major. Major was also satirised by Patrick Wright with his book "101 Uses for a John Major" (based on a comic book of some 10 years earlier called "101 Uses for a Dead Cat", in which Major was illustrated serving a number of bizarre purposes, such as a train-spotter's anorak or as a flag-pole; Wright published a second collection of '101 Uses', as well as a parodic cartoon biography of Major entitled "Not Inconsiderable: Being the Life and Times of John Major". "Private Eye" parodied Sue Townsend's "The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, age 13¾" to run a regular column "", in which Major was portrayed as naïve and childish, keeping lists of his enemies in a Rymans Notebook called his "Bastards Book", and featuring "my wife Norman" and "Mr Dr Mawhinney" as recurring characters. The magazine still runs one-off specials of this diary (with the age updated) on occasions when Major is in the news, such as on the breaking of the Edwina Currie story or the publication of his autobiography. The impressionist comedian Rory Bremner often mocked John Major, for example depicting him as 'John 90', a play on 1960s puppet show "Joe 90"; his impersonation was so accurate that he managed to fool the MP Richard Body that he was really speaking to Major in a prank phone call. The incident prompted Cabinet Secretary Robin Butler to warn Channel 4 head Michael Grade against any further calls for fear that state secrets could be inadvertently leaked. Major was often mocked for his nostalgic evocation of what sounded like the lost Britain of the 1950s ; for example, his famous speech stating that "Fifty years from now Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and – as George Orwell said – 'old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist'." Major complained in his memoirs that these words (which drew upon a passage in George Orwell's essay "" had been misrepresented as being more naive and romantic than he had intended, and indeed his memoirs were dismissive of the common conservative viewpoint that there was once a time of moral rectitude; Major wrote that "life has never been as simple as that". Throughout his time in office Major was often acutely sensitive to criticism of him in the press; his biographer Anthony Seldon posits this to an inner vulnerability stemming from his difficult childhood and adolescence. After leaving office, Major stated that "Perhaps up to a point I was too sensitive about some of the things in the press, I'm happy to concede that. But, the politicians who are said to have hides like rhinos and be utterly impervious to criticism, if they're not extinct, they are very rare and I freely confess I wasn't amongst them." Major has been depicted on screen by Keith Drinkel in "" (1991), Michael Maloney in "Margaret" (2009), Robin Kermode in "The Iron Lady" (2011), Marc Ozall in the TV series "The Crown", Gordon Griffin in "Westminster on Trial" and Roger Sansom in "On the Record". Footage of Major's 1992 election win is used in Patrick Keiller's 1994 documentary film "London". Major was also one of the prime ministers portrayed in the 2013 stage play "The Audience". Less flatteringly, Major was the subject of the song "John Major – Fuck You" by Scottish punk band Oi Polloi. Major was portrayed by Jonny Lee Miller in the fifth season of "The Crown" in 2022. Major called the series a "barrel-load of nonsense" for a fictitious storyline in which the then Prince Charles lobbies Major in 1991, attempting to oust Queen Elizabeth II from power. Netflix defended the series as a "fictional dramatisation". Personal life. Major married Norma Johnson (now Dame Norma Major) on 3 October 1970 at St Matthew's Church, Brixton. She was a teacher and a member of the Young Conservatives. They met on polling day for the Greater London Council elections in London, and became engaged after only ten days. They have two children: a daughter, Elizabeth (born November 1971) and a son, James (b. January 1975). They continue to live at their constituency home, Finings, in Great Stukeley, Huntingdonshire. They also own a flat in London and a holiday home on the Norfolk coast at Weybourne, which they have in the past invited ex-soldiers to use for free as part of the Afghan Heroes charity. As with all former prime ministers, Major is entitled to round-the-clock police protection. Elizabeth Major, a qualified veterinary nurse, married Luke Salter on 26 March 2000 at All Saints Church, Somerby, having been in a relationship with him since 1988. Salter died on 22 November 2002 from cancer. James Major, a former retail manager and nightclub promoter, married gameshow hostess Emma Noble on 29 March 1999 in the Chapel Crypt at Westminster Abbey. They had a son, Harrison, born July 2000, who was later diagnosed with autism. The marriage ended in an acrimonious divorce in 2003, with Noble accusing Major of "unreasonable behaviour". James later married Kate Postlethwaite (née Dorrell), the mother of his second son. Major's elder brother Terry, who died in 2007, became a minor media personality during Major's period in Downing Street, writing a 1994 autobiography, "Major Major: Memories of an Older Brother", and appearing on TV shows such as "Have I Got News for You". John's sister Patricia Dessoy kept a much lower profile; she died in 2017. After leaving office Major became aware that his father fathered two half-siblings extramaritally: Tom Moss and Kathleen Lemmon. Research conducted by Paul Penn-Simkins, a genealogist formerly employed as a researcher at the College of Arms and as a heraldic consultant at Christie's, and subsequently corroborated by Lynda Rippin, a genealogist employed by Lincolnshire Council, showed that John Major and Margaret Thatcher were fifth cousins once removed, both descending from the Crust family, who farmed at Leake, near Boston, Lincolnshire. Major has been keen on sports since his youth, most notably cricket; he is also a supporter of Chelsea F.C. and a Patron of British Gymnastics. He also enjoys gardening, listening to music and reading; Anthony Trollope being among his favourite authors. Major is a Christian, though his upbringing was never especially religious and he states that he is "a believer at a distance". He shied away from the topic when in office, stating that "I have always been a little wary of politicians who parade their faith, and prefer a little English reserve on the subject." Honours. In the 1999 New Year Honours List, Major was made a Companion of Honour for his work on the Northern Ireland peace process. On 23 April 2005, Major was bestowed with a knighthood as a Knight Companion of the Order of the Garter by Queen Elizabeth II. He was installed at St George's Chapel, Windsor, on 13 June. Membership of the Order of the Garter is limited in number to 24, and as a personal gift of the Monarch is an honour traditionally bestowed on former prime ministers. On 20 June 2008, Major was granted the Freedom of the City of Cork. He was also granted the Outstanding Contribution to Ireland award in Dublin on 4 December 2014. On 8 May 2012, Major was personally decorated at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo by the Emperor of Japan with the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun in recognition of his invaluable contributions to Japan–UK relations through his work in the political and economic arena, and also in promoting mutual understanding. While prime minister, Major had pursued energetic campaigns aimed at boosting bilateral trade: "Priority Japan" (1991–1994) and "Action Japan" (1994–1997). The 1991 Japan Festival also took place under his premiership. Awards. In 2008, Major won the British Sports Book Awards (Best Cricket Book) for "More Than a Game". Public commemoration. An oil painting of Major, painted in 1996 by June Mendoza, is part of the Parliamentary collection, as is a bronze bust by Anne Curry, unveiled in the Members' Lobby on 16 October 2017. There is another bust of Major in the Norman Shaw Building North by Neale Andrew, sculpted in 1993 and installed in 2004, however this is not accessible to the public. A large bust of John Major by Shenda Amery in Huntingdon Library was unveiled by his wife Norma in 1993. A painting of John Major by Diccon Swan is on display at the Carlton Club, and was unveiled by his wife Norma in 1994. The National Portrait Gallery holds two paintings of Major – the first official portrait of him as prime minister, painted by Peter Deighan in 1994, and one of John and Norma by John Wonnacott, painted in 1997. There is a large John Major Suite at The Oval, home to Surrey County Cricket Club; the venue also contains a painting of Major. There is a 'Heritage in Sutton' plaque on St Helier Hospital, where John Major was born in 1943, and a plaque commemorating him in Archbishop's Park next to Lambeth Palace, included as part of the Lambeth Millennium Pathway. There are also various plaques commemorating facilities opened by John Major: at Brampton Memorial Centre, Brampton (opened 1988), Hamerton Zoo Park, Hamerton (1990), Cadbury World, Birmingham (1991), a tree commemorating the restoration of the River Mill pub, Eaton Socon, the gardens at Hinchingbrooke Hospital, Huntingdon (2009), the North Terminal extension at Gatwick Airport (2011), Huntingdonshire Football Association headquarters, Huntingdon (2015), and Alconbury Weald cricket pitch (2019). In 2013 the town of Candeleda in Spain named a street for John Major (, as Major has holidayed there for many years. Major Close, in Loughborough Junction near where John grew up, is also named for him; the street was to be called 'Sir John Major Close', however this long name breached council guidelines. In type theory, heterogeneous equality, that is, a form of equality predicate defined for pairs of elements of arbitrary type, not just from the same type, is sometimes referred to as "John Major's equality" (JMeq), following Conor McBride:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16036

John Peel

John Robert Parker Ravenscroft (30 August 1939 – 25 October 2004), known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey (DJ) and radio presenter. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004. Peel was one of the first broadcasters to play psychedelic rock and progressive rock records on British radio. He is widely acknowledged for promoting artists of many genres, including pop, dub reggae, punk rock and post-punk, electronic music and dance music, indie rock, extreme metal and British hip hop. Fellow DJ Paul Gambaccini described Peel as "the most important single person in popular music from approximately 1967 through 1978. He broke more important artists than any individual." Peel's Radio 1 shows were notable for the regular "Peel sessions", which usually consisted of four songs recorded by an artist in the BBC's studios, often providing the first major national coverage to bands that later achieved fame. Another feature was the annual Festive Fifty countdown of his listeners' favourite records of the year. Peel appeared on television occasionally as one of the presenters of "Top of the Pops" in the 1980s, and provided voice-over commentary for a number of BBC programmes. He became popular with the audience of BBC Radio 4 for his "Home Truths" programme, which ran from the 1990s, featuring unusual stories from listeners' domestic lives. Early life. John Peel was born in Heswall Nursing Home in Heswall on the Wirral Peninsula, near Liverpool, the eldest of three sons of Robert Leslie Ravenscroft, a successful cotton merchant, and his wife Joan Mary ("née" Swainson). He grew up in the nearby village of Burton. He was educated as a boarder at Shrewsbury School, where one of his contemporaries was future Monty Python member Michael Palin. In his posthumously published autobiography, Peel said that he was raped by an older pupil while at Shrewsbury. Peel was an avid radio listener and record collector from an early age, beginning with music offered by the American Forces Network and Radio Luxembourg. He recalled an early desire to host a radio programme of his own "so that I could play music that I heard and wanted others to hear". His housemaster, R. H. J. Brooke, whom Peel described as "extraordinarily eccentric" and "amazingly perceptive", wrote on one of his school reports, "Perhaps it's possible that John can form some kind of nightmarish career out of his enthusiasm for unlistenable records and his delight in writing long and facetious essays." Peel completed his national service in 1959 in the Royal Artillery as a B2 radar operator. Afterwards, he worked as a mill operative at Townhead Mill in Rochdale and returned each weekend to Heswall on a scooter borrowed from his sister. While in Rochdale during the week, he stayed in a bed-and-breakfast in the area of Milkstone Road and Drake Street, and developed long-term associations with the town as the years progressed. Career. United States. In 1960, aged 21, Peel went to the United States to work for a cotton producer who had business dealings with his father. He took a number of other jobs afterwards, including working as a travelling insurance salesman. While in Dallas, Texas, where the insurance company he worked for was based, he conversed with the presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, and his running mate Lyndon B. Johnson, who were touring the city during the 1960 election campaign, and took photographs of them. Following Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, Peel passed himself off as a reporter for the "Liverpool Echo" in order to attend the arraignment of Lee Harvey Oswald. He and a friend can be seen in the footage of the 22/23 November midnight press conference at the Dallas Police Department when Oswald was paraded before the media. He later phoned in the story to the "Echo". While working for the insurance company, Peel wrote programs for punched card entry for an IBM 1410 computer (which led to his entry in "Who's Who" noting him as a former computer programmer), and he got his first radio job working unpaid for WRR (AM) in Dallas. There, he presented the second hour of the Monday night programme "Kat's Karavan", which was primarily hosted by the American singer and radio personality Jim Lowe. Following this, and as Beatlemania hit the United States, Peel was hired by the Dallas radio station KLIF as the official Beatles correspondent on the strength of his connection to Liverpool. He later worked for KOMA in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, until 1965, when he moved to KMEN in San Bernardino, California, and used his birth name, John Ravenscroft, to present the breakfast show. Return to Britain. Peel returned to the UK in early 1967 and found work with the offshore pirate radio station Radio London. He was offered the midnight-to-two shift, which gradually developed into a programme, "The Perfumed Garden". Some thought it was named after an erotic book that was famous at the time, though Peel claimed never to have read it. While on "Big L", he adopted the name John Peel (a name suggested by a Radio London secretary) and established himself as a distinctive radio voice. Peel's show was an outlet for the music of the UK underground scene. He played classic blues, folk music and psychedelic rock, with an emphasis on the new music emerging from Los Angeles and San Francisco. As important as the musical content of the programme was the personal – sometimes confessional – tone of Peel's presentation, and the listener participation it engendered. Underground events he had attended during his periods of shore leave, such as the UFO Club and the 14 Hour Technicolor Dream, together with causes célèbres like the drug busts of the Rolling Stones and John "Hoppy" Hopkins, were discussed between records. All this was far removed from Radio London's daytime format. Listeners sent Peel letters, poems and records from their own collections so that the programme became a vehicle for two-way communication; by the final week of Radio London he was receiving far more mail than any other DJ on the station. After the closure of Radio London in 1967, Peel wrote a column, "The Perfumed Garden", for the underground newspaper the "International Times" (from autumn 1967 to mid-1969), in which he showed himself to be a committed, if critical, supporter of the ideals of the underground. A "Perfumed Garden" mailing list was set up by a group of keen listeners, which facilitated contacts and gave rise to numerous small-scale, local arts projects typical of the time, including the poetry magazine "Sol". BBC. When Radio London closed on 14 August 1967, Peel joined the BBC's new music station, BBC Radio 1, which began broadcasting on 30 September 1967. Unlike Big L, Radio 1 was not a full-time station but a broadcaster of a mixture of recorded music and live studio orchestras. Peel said he felt he was hired because the BBC "had no real idea what they were doing so they had to take people off the pirate ships because there wasn't anybody else". Peel presented a programme called "Top Gear." At first he was obliged to share presentation duties with other DJs (Pete Drummond and Tommy Vance were among his co-hosts) but in February 1968 he was given sole charge of "Top Gear." He presented the show until it ended in 1975. Peel played an eclectic mix of the music that caught his attention; something he would continue to do throughout his career. In 1969, after hosting a trailer for a BBC programme on VD on his "Night Ride" programme, Peel received significant media attention because he divulged on air that he had suffered from a sexually transmitted disease earlier that year. This admission was later used in an attempt to discredit him when he appeared as a defence witness in the 1971 "Oz" obscenity trial. The "Night Ride" programme, advertised by the BBC as an exploration of words and music, seemed to take up from where "The Perfumed Garden" had left off. It featured rock, folk, blues, classical and electronic music. A unique feature of the programme was the inclusion of tracks, mostly of exotic non-Western music, drawn from the BBC Sound Archive; the most popular of these were gathered on a BBC Records LP, "John Peel's Archive Things" (1970). "Night Ride" also featured poetry readings and numerous interviews with a wide range of guests, including his friends Marc Bolan, journalist and musician Mick Farren, poet Pete Roche, singer-songwriter Bridget St John and stars such as the Byrds, the Rolling Stones and John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The programme captured much of the creative activity of the underground scene. Its anti-establishment stance and unpredictability, however, did not find approval with the BBC hierarchy and it ended in September 1969 after 18 months. In his sleeve notes to the "Archive Things" LP Peel calls the free-form nature of "Night Ride" his preferred radio format. His subsequent shows featured a mixture of records and live sessions, a format that would characterise his Radio 1 programmes for the rest of his career. Punk era. Peel's enthusiasm for music outside the mainstream occasionally brought him into conflict with the Radio 1 hierarchy. On one occasion, the station controller Derek Chinnery contacted John Walters and asked him to confirm that the show was not playing any punk, which he (Chinnery) had read about in the press and of which he disapproved. Chinnery was evidently somewhat surprised by Walters' reply that in recent weeks they had been playing little else. In a 1990 interview, Peel recalled his 1976 discovery of the first album by New York punk band the Ramones as a seminal event, In 1979, Peel stated: "They leave you to get on with it. I'm paid money by the BBC not to go off and work for a commercial radio station ... I wouldn't want to go to one anyway, because they wouldn't let me do what the BBC let me do." Peel's reputation as an important DJ who broke unsigned acts into the mainstream was such that young hopefuls sent him an enormous number of records, CDs, and tapes. When he returned home from a three-week holiday at the end of 1986 there were 173 LPs, 91 12"s and 179 7"s waiting for him. In 1983 Alan Melina and Jeff Chegwin, the music publishers for unsigned artist Billy Bragg, drove to the Radio 1 studios with a mushroom biryani and a copy of his record after hearing Peel mention that he was hungry; the subsequent airplay launched Billy Bragg's career. In addition to his Radio 1 show, Peel broadcast as a disc jockey on the BBC World Service, on the British Forces Broadcasting Service ("John Peel's Music on BFBS") for 30 years, VPRO Radio3 in the Netherlands, YLE Radio Mafia in Finland, Ö3 in Austria (Nachtexpress), and on Radio 4U, Radio Eins (Peel ...), Radio Bremen (Ritz) and some independent radio stations around FSK Hamburg in Germany. As a result of his BFBS programme he was voted, in Germany, "Top DJ in Europe". Peel was an occasional presenter of "Top of the Pops" on BBC1 from the late 1960s until the mid-1990s, and in particular from 1982 to 1987 when he appeared regularly. In 1971 he appeared not as presenter but performer, alongside Rod Stewart and the Faces, pretending to play mandolin on "Maggie May". He often presented the BBC's television coverage of music events, notably the Glastonbury Festival. Later years. Between 1995 and 1997, Peel presented "Offspring", a show about children, on BBC Radio 4. In 1998, "Offspring" grew into the magazine-style documentary show "Home Truths". When he took on the job presenting the programme, which was about everyday life in British families, Peel requested that it be free from celebrities, as he found real-life stories more entertaining. "Home Truths" was described by occasional stand-in presenter John Walters as being "about people who had fridges called Renfrewshire". Peel also made regular contributions to BBC Two's humorous look at the irritations of modern life "Grumpy Old Men". His only appearances in an acting role in film or television were in Harry Enfield's "Smashie and Nicey: The End of an Era" as John Past Bedtime, and in 1999 as a "grumpy old man who catalogues records" in the film "Five Seconds to Spare". However, he had provided narration for others. He appeared as a celebrity guest on a number of TV shows, including "This Is Your Life" (1996, BBC), "Travels With My Camera" (1996, Channel 4 TV) and "Going Home" (2002, ITV TV), and presented the 1997 Channel 4 series "Classic Trains". He was also in demand as a voice-over artist for television documentaries, such as BBC One's "A Life of Grime". In April 2003, the publishers Transworld successfully wooed Peel with a package worth £1.5 million for his autobiography, having placed an advert in a national newspaper aimed only at Peel. Unfinished at the time of his death, it was completed by Sheila and journalist Ryan Gilbey. It was published in October 2005 under the title "Margrave of the Marshes". A collection of Peel's miscellaneous writings, "The Olivetti Chronicles", was published in 2008. Personal life. Marriages. While residing in Dallas, Texas, in 1965, aged 25, Peel married Shirley Anne Milburn, aged 15. The marriage was never happy, with reports that Milburn was often violent towards Peel. Although she accompanied Peel back to Britain in 1967, they were soon separated. The divorce became final in 1973. Milburn later took her own life. After separation from his first wife, Peel's personal life began to stabilise, as he found friendship and support from new "Top Gear" producer John Walters, and from his girlfriend Sheila Gilhooly, whom he identified on-air as "the Pig". Peel married Gilhooly on 31 August 1974. The reception was in London's Regent's Park, with Walters as best man. Peel wore Liverpool football colours (red) and walked down the aisle to the song "You'll Never Walk Alone". Their sheepdog, Woggle, served as a bridesmaid. Rock singer Rod Stewart and Monty Python member Graham Chapman both attended. In the 1970s, Peel and Sheila moved to a thatched cottage in the village of Great Finborough near Stowmarket in Suffolk, nicknamed Peel Acres. In later years, Peel broadcast many of his shows from a studio in the house, with Sheila and their children often being involved or at least mentioned. Peel's passion for Liverpool F.C. was reflected in his children's names: William Robert Anfield, Alexandra Mary Anfield, Thomas James Dalglish, and Florence Victoria Shankly. Health problems. At the age of 62 in 2001, Peel was diagnosed with diabetes, following many years of fatigue. Allegations of sexual misconduct. Peel has been accused of sexual misconduct, although he was never charged with any offences. His first marriage to Milburn in 1965 has been cited as an example, given her age of 15 when they wed (Peel was 25), however in Texas this was legal at the time. To "The Guardian" in 1975, Peel said of young women, "All they wanted me to do was abuse them, sexually, which, of course, I was only too happy to do". In an interview with "The Sunday Correspondent" in 1989, Peel stated, "Girls used to queue up outside. By and large not usually for shagging. Oral sex they were particularly keen on, I remember. [...] One of my, er, regular customers, as it were, turned out to be 13, though she looked older." Peel joked that he "didn't ask for ID". An interview originally published in "The Herald" in April 2004 stated that Peel admitted to sexual contact with "an awful lot" of underage girls. He stated that, in the early 1960s, the only available women were in high school. In 2012, a woman stated that she had a three-month affair with Peel in 1969 when she was 15 years old; Peel was 30. She said they had unprotected sex; this was shortly after Peel discussed contracting a sexually transmitted disease. The relationship resulted in a "traumatic" abortion. She stated that, "looking back, it was terribly wrong and I was perhaps manipulated." Death. Peel died suddenly at the age of 65 from a heart attack on 25 October 2004, on a working holiday in the city of Cusco in Peru. Shortly after the announcement of his death, tributes began to arrive from fans and supporters both in public and private life. On 26 October 2004 BBC Radio 1 cleared its schedules to broadcast a day of tributes. London's "Evening Standard" boards that afternoon read "the day the music died", quoting Don McLean's hit "American Pie". Peel had often spoken wryly of his eventual death. He once said on the Channel 4 miniseries "Sounds of the Suburbs", "I've always imagined I'd die by driving into the back of a truck while trying to read the name on a cassette and people would say, 'He would have wanted to go that way.' Well, I want them to know that I wouldn't." At one point, he said that if he died before his producer John Walters, he wanted the latter to play Roy Harper's "When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease". Walters having died in 2001, it was left to Andy Kershaw to end his tribute programme to Peel on BBC Radio 3 with the song. Peel's stand-in on his Radio 1 slot, Rob da Bank, also played the song at the start of the final show before his funeral. Another time, Peel said he would like to be remembered with a gospel song. He stated that the final record he would play would be the Rev C. L. Franklin's sermon "Dry Bones in The Valley". On his "Home Truths" BBC radio show, Peel once commented about his own death: Peel's funeral, on 12 November 2004, in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, was attended by over a thousand people, including many of the artists he had championed. Eulogies were read by his brother Alan Ravenscroft and DJ Paul Gambaccini. The service ended with clips of him talking about his life. His coffin was carried out to the accompaniment of his favourite song, The Undertones' "Teenage Kicks". Peel had written that, apart from his name, all he wanted on his gravestone were the words, "Teenage dreams, so hard to beat", from the lyrics of "Teenage Kicks". A headstone featuring the lyrics and the Liver Bird from his favourite football team, Liverpool F.C., was placed at his grave in 2008. Peel was buried in the graveyard of St Andrew's Church in Great Finborough, Suffolk. Life in music. Peel sessions. John Peel Sessions were a feature of his BBC Radio 1 shows, which usually consisted of four pieces of music pre-recorded at the BBC's studios. The sessions originally came about due to restrictions imposed on the BBC by the Musicians' Union and Phonographic Performance Limited which represented the record companies dominated by the EMI cartel. Because of these restrictions, the BBC had been forced to hire bands and orchestras to render cover versions of recorded music. The theory behind this device was that it would create employment and force people to buy records and not listen to them free of charge on the air. One of the reasons why the offshore broadcasting stations of the 1960s were called "pirates" was because they operated outside of British laws and were not bound by the needle time restriction on the number of records they could play on the air. The BBC employed its own house bands and orchestras and it also engaged outside bands to record exclusive tracks for its programmes in BBC studios. This was the reason why Peel was able to use "session men" in his own programmes. Sessions were usually four tracks recorded and mixed in a single day; as such they often had a rough-and-ready, demo-like feel, somewhere between a live performance and a finished recording. During the 37 years Peel remained on BBC Radio 1, over 4,000 sessions were recorded by over 2,000 artists. Many classic Peel Sessions have been released on record, particularly by the Strange Fruit label. In May 2020, an alphabetised catalogue of hundreds of classic Peel Sessions others had previously uploaded to YouTube was published. Festive Fifty. The Festive Fifty – a countdown of the best tracks of the year as voted for by the listeners – was an annual tradition of Peel's Radio 1 show. Despite his eclectic play list, it tended to be composed largely of "white boys with guitars", as Peel complained in 1988. In 1991, the broadcast of the chart was cancelled due to a lack of votes, although many have speculated that it was because no entries came from the dance acts that Peel had been championing that year. Topped by Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", this Phantom Fifty was eventually broadcast at the rate of one track per programme in 1993. The 1997 chart was initially cancelled due to the lack of air-time Peel had been allocated for the period, but enough "spontaneous" votes were received over the phone that a Festive Thirty-One was compiled and broadcast. Peel wrote that "The Festive 50 dates back to what was doubtless a crisp September morning in the early-to-mid Seventies, when John Walters and I were musing on life in his uniquely squalid office. In our waggish way, we decided to mock the enthusiasm of the Radio 1 management of the time for programmes with alliterative titles. Content, we felt, was of less importance than a snappy "Radio Times" billing. In the course of our historic meeting we had, I imagine, some fine reasons for dismissing the idea of a Festive 40 and going instead for a Festive 50, a decision that was to ruin my Decembers for years to come, condemning me to night after night at home with a ledger, when I could have been out and about having fun, fun, fun." After his death, the Festive Fifty was continued on Radio 1 by Rob da Bank, Huw Stephens and Ras Kwame for two years, but then given to Peel-inspired Internet radio station Dandelion Radio, and continues to be compiled. Dandelion Records and Strange Fruit. In 1969, Peel founded Dandelion Records (named after his pet hamster) so that he could release the debut album by Bridget St John, which he also produced. The label released 27 albums by 18 different artists before folding in 1972. Of its albums, "There is Some Fun Going Forward" was a sampler intended to present its acts to a wide audience, but Dandelion was never a great success, with only two releases charting nationally: Medicine Head in the UK with "(And the) Pictures in the Sky" and Beau in Lebanon with "1917 Revolution". Having had an affinity with the Manchester area from working in a cotton mill in Rochdale in 1959, Peel signed Manchester bands Stack Waddy and Tractor to Dandelion and was always supportive of both bands throughout his life. It is alleged that Peel spotted a Rochdale postmark on the envelope containing the tape sent to him by Tractor, then called "The Way We Live". As Peel stated: It was never a success financially. In fact, we lost money, if I remember correctly, on every single release bar one. I did quite like it but it was terribly indulgent. Not as indulgent as it would have been had I not had a business partner, admittedly... I liked having a label. It enabled you to put out stuff that you liked without, in those days, having to worry about whether it was going to work commercially. I've never been a good business man. Peel appeared on one Dandelion release: the David Bedford album "Nurses Song with Elephants", recorded at the Marquee Studios, as part of a group playing twenty-seven plastic pipe twirlers on the track "Some Bright Stars for Queen's College". In the 1980s Peel set up Strange Fruit Records with Clive Selwood to release material recorded by the BBC for Peel Sessions. Production (albums). John Peel is sometimes confused with the more prolific record producer Jonathan Peel, who was an in-house music producer for EMI before going freelance in 1970. Favourite music. John Peel wrote in his autobiography, "Margrave of the Marshes", that the band of which he owned the most records was The Fall. Regulars in the Festive 50, and easily recognised by vocalist Mark E. Smith's distinctive delivery, The Fall became synonymous with Peel's Radio 1 show through the 1980s and 1990s. Peel kept in contact with many of the artists he championed but only met Smith on two, apparently awkward, occasions. The Misunderstood is the only band that Peel ever personally managed – he first met the band in Riverside, California in 1966 and convinced them to move to London. He championed their music throughout his career; in 1968, he described their 1966 single "I Can Take You to the Sun" as "the best popular record that's ever been recorded." and shortly before his death, he stated, "If I had to list the ten greatest performances I've seen in my life, one would be The Misunderstood at Pandora's Box, Hollywood, 1966 ... My god, they were a great band!" His favourite single is widely known to have been "Teenage Kicks" by The Undertones; in an interview in 2001, he stated "There's nothing you could add to it or subtract from it that would improve it." In the same 2001 interview, he also listed "No More Ghettos in America" by Stanley Winston, "There Must Be Thousands" by The Quads and "Lonely Saturday Night" by Don French as being among his all-time favourites. He also described Lianne Hall as one of the great English voices. In 1997 "The Guardian" asked Peel to list his top 20 albums. He listed Captain Beefheart's "Trout Mask Replica" as his number 1, having previously described it as "a work of art". The top 20 also included LPs by The Velvet Underground, The Ramones, Pulp, Misty in Roots, Nirvana, Neil Young, Pink Floyd, The Four Brothers, Dave Clarke, Richard and Linda Thompson and The Rolling Stones. A longer list of his favourite singles was revealed in 2005 when the contents of a wooden box in which he stored the records that meant the most to him were made public. The box was the subject of a television documentary, "John Peel's Record Box". Out of 130 vinyl singles in the box, 11 of them were by The White Stripes, more than any other band in the box. In 1999 Peel presented a nightly segment on his programme titled the Peelennium, in which he played four recordings from each year of the 20th century. Awards and honorary degrees. Peel was 11 times "Melody Maker"′s DJ of the year, Sony Broadcaster of the Year in 1993, winner of the publicly voted Godlike Genius Award from the "NME" in 1994, Sony Gold Award winner in 2002 and is a member of the Radio Academy Hall of Fame. At the NME awards in 2005, he was Hero of the Year and was posthumously given a special award for "Lifelong Service To Music". At the same event the "John Peel Award For Musical Innovation" was awarded to The Others. He was awarded many honorary degrees including an MA from the University of East Anglia, doctorates (Anglia Polytechnic University and Sheffield Hallam University), various degrees (University of Liverpool, Open University, University of Portsmouth, University of Bradford) and a fellowship of Liverpool John Moores University. He was appointed an OBE in 1998, for his services to British music. In 2002, the BBC conducted a vote to discover the 100 Greatest Britons of all time, in which Peel was voted 43rd. Legacy. Since his death various parties have recognised Peel's influence. A stage for new bands at the Glastonbury Festival, previously known as "The New Bands Tent" was renamed "The John Peel Stage" in 2005, although this was renamed again as "Woodsies" in 2023. In 2008 Merseytravel announced it would be naming a train after him. The John Peel Centre for Creative Arts opened in Stowmarket in early 2013. The main purposes of the centre is to serve as a live venue for music and performance and as a community meeting point. The 2005 Mogwai live compilation album "" was dedicated to Peel as some of the tracks had been performed during the Peel Sessions. Peel's voice announces "Ladies and Gentlemen, Mogwai!" at the beginning of "Hunted by a Freak", the album's opener. On 8 October 2005 Cotswold Rail locomotive 47813 was named "John Peel" by Peel's widow Shelia at Bury St Edmunds station. On 13 October 2005, the first "John Peel Day" was held to mark the anniversary of his last show. The BBC encouraged as many bands as possible to stage gigs on the 13th, and over 500 gigs took place in the UK and as far away as Canada and New Zealand, from bands ranging from Peel favourites New Order and The Fall, to many new and unsigned bands. A second John Peel day was held on 12 October 2006, and a third on 11 October 2007. The BBC had originally planned to hold a John Peel Day annually, but Radio 1 has not held any official commemoration of the event since 2007, though gigs still took place around the country to mark the anniversary for a number of years afterwards. At the annual Gilles Peterson's Worldwide Awards, the "John Peel Play More Jazz Award" was named in his honour. In Peel's hometown of Heswall, a pub was opened in his honour in 2007. Named The Ravenscroft, the pub was converted from the old Heswall Telephone Exchange but has since been renamed. In 2012 Peel was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork – the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album cover. Several Peel-related compilation albums have been released since his death, including "", a project Peel started with his wife that was left unfinished when he died, and "Kats Karavan: The History of John Peel on the Radio" (2009), a 4 CD box set. Rock music critic Peter Paphides said in a review of the box set that "[s]ome artists remain forever associated with him", including ...And the Native Hipsters with "There Goes Concorde Again", and Ivor Cutler with "Jam". A sizable online community has also emerged dedicated to sharing recordings of his radio shows. In May 2012 a campaign was started to turn demolition-threatened Bradford Odeon into the John Peel Creative Arts Centre in the North, though this was ultimately unsuccessful. Blue plaques. In 2009 blue plaques bearing Peel's name were unveiled at two former recording studios in Rochdale – one at the site of Tractor Sound Studios in Heywood, the other at the site of the Kenion Street Music Building – to recognise Peel's contribution to the local music industry. In June 2017 Peel's widow Sheila unveiled a blue plaque in his honour in Great Finborough.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16135

Jonathan Meades

Jonathan Turner Meades (born 21 January 1947) is an English writer and film-maker, primarily on the subjects of place, culture, architecture and food. His work spans journalism, fiction, essays, memoir and over fifty highly idiosyncratic television films, and has been described as "brainy, scabrous, mischievous," "iconoclastic" and possessed of "a polymathic breadth of knowledge and truly caustic wit". His latest book, an anthology of uncollected writing from 1988 to 2020 titled "Pedro and Ricky Come Again," was published by Unbound in March 2021 and is the sequel to "Peter Knows What Dick Likes". His most recent film, "Franco Building with Jonathan Meades", aired on BBC Four in August 2019 and is the fourth instalment in a series on the architectural legacy of 20th-century European dictators. He has described himself as a "cardinal of atheism" and is both an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society and a Patron of Humanists UK. Early life and education. Jonathan Meades was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, the only child of John William Meades, a biscuit company sales rep, and Margery Agnes Meades ("née" Hogg), a primary school teacher. The family lived in an "unbelievably cramped" terraced, thatched cottage in the East Harnham area of the city. Meades was educated until the age of 13 at the nearby Salisbury Cathedral School, within Salisbury Cathedral Close. He discovered a fascination for place and the built environment whilst accompanying his father on sales trips during school holidays; he would be left unattended and free to explore while the elder Meades conducted his business with the grocer. This later developed into a full-blown passion for architecture following a visit to Edwin Lutyens' Marsh Court on a school cricket trip at the age of 13. He also developed an early love of France on the frequent trips which his family took there, made possible by his Francophile mother's father, who worked for Southern Railway, the company which ran the Saint-Malo and Le Havre ferries. In 1960 he was sent as a boarder to King's College, Taunton, which he has described as "a dim, backward, muscular Christian boot camp". He later "walked out" of the school and was sent instead to a crammer in London, where he lodged with the painter Vivien White, daughter of Augustus John. After a year at the University of Bordeaux and unsure of what to do next, he decided to become an actor after a chance meeting with Charles Collingwood and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) from 1966 to 1969. His contemporaries there included Robert Lindsay, David Bradley, Stephanie Beacham, Michael Kitchen and Richard Beckinsale. He later described it as a "Sandhurst for chorus boys" where students were "martially drilled," teaching them the value of discipline, craft and technique. Although he ultimately decided against joining the acting profession, the training which he received would prove essential in his later television career, as would his extra-curricular interest in French New Wave cinema, in particular the work of Jean-Pierre Melville and Alain Robbe-Grillet. His regular Sunday pastime of exploring the capital with his "Pevsner Architectural Guide" would also benefit him later. On leaving RADA, he was told by the Principal, Hugh Cruttwell, that he might as well abandon acting until he reached middle age, at which point he might become an interesting character actor. When the two met again decades later, after Meades had established himself on television, Cruttwell joked that he had not realised that the character would be called "Jonathan Meades". Writing. Journalism. Following a period as a freelance copywriter, Meades began writing for the now-defunct literary magazine "Books & Bookmen" in 1971, setting him on a career as a journalist and critic. In 1973 he reviewed a V&A exhibition on Victorian architecture for the magazine, igniting a passion for the style and prompting him to explore even more of London than he had to date. Using the unlimited travel afforded by Red Rover bus passes, he rode on random buses for exactly 20 minutes and then got off, no matter where he was. After leaving "Books and Bookmen" in 1975 he wrote for the sex education magazine "Curious" and joined the staff of "Time Out", then became "The Observer"'s TV critic in 1977. This led to the publication of his first book, "This Is Their Life", an A to Z of TV star biographies with an introduction by Mike Yarwood. He moved to "Architects' Journal" in 1979 and around this time worked on another book, "The Illustrated Atlas of the World's Great Buildings", with Philip Bagenal. In 1981 he became the editor of Richard Branson's short-lived listings magazine "Event", then from 1982 was the features editor of "Tatler". It was here that he first had the opportunity to write about food, filling in as restaurant critic after Julian Barnes resigned, using the pseudonym "John Beaver". He was also invited to contribute to the bi-monthly restaurant magazine "À la Carte" at around this time. In 1986 he was offered the job of restaurant critic at "The Times", replacing comedy writer Stan Hey. Meades was a great success in this position, taking the job more seriously than his predecessor. He won Best Food Journalist at the 1986, 1990, 1996 and 1999 Glenfiddich Awards. Despite his success, he often tired of the repetitive nature of the job and threatened to leave several times. The paper responded by increasing his salary. He finally quit in around 2000, having been pronounced morbidly obese by his doctor: he had put on around five pounds per year, or one ounce per meal, during his tenure. He then managed to lose a third of his body weight over the course of the following twelve months, using a strict diet of protein and citrus. He remained with "The Times" as a columnist until 2005. In the years since, he has done less journalism, but has contributed essays and reviews to numerous publications including the "New Statesman", "The Independent", "The Guardian", "The Spectator", "The Daily Telegraph", "The Times Literary Supplement", and many others. Books and other writing. In 1982, "Harpers & Queen" published three short stories which Meades had written about "rural lowlife". These, along with four more, were collected in 1984 as "Filthy English", his first volume of fiction. Andrew Billen of the "London Evening Standard" later described them as "bucolic horror stories". A few more stories appeared in his first anthology of journalism and essays, 1989's "Peter Knows What Dick Likes", the title of which is a reference to the supposed superiority of male-on-male fellatio. He contributed to the screenplay of the 1992 French-Italian adventure film "L'Atlantide", directed by Bob Swaim, and also wrote three unproduced screenplays in the 1980s and the 1990s: "Millie's Problem" (1985), "The Side I Dressed On" (1987) and "The Brute's Price" (1996). His first novel, "Pompey", was published in 1993. A dark, epic family saga centred around the titular city of Portsmouth, it was widely praised and favourably compared to Sterne, Scarfe, Steadman, Nabokov and Joyce, amongst other "great stylists". On its 2013 reissue, Matthew Adams wrote in "The Independent", "Where his first collection of stories, "Filthy English", achieved the distinction of covering in aggressively vivid prose the disciplines of murder, addiction, incest and bestial pornography, "Pompey" exhibits an even greater concentration of his aptitude for squalor [...] by the end of the opening two pages, which must rank among the most startling affirmations of omniscience in 20th-century literature, the reader has met with an arresting injunction: "After using this book please wash your hands."" A second novel, "The Fowler Family Business", followed in 2002. A tale of suburban sexual deceit in the funeral trade, it was described by the "London Evening Standard" as "hilarious and very black". An anthology of his food journalism, "Incest and Morris Dancing: A Gastronomic Revolution", was published in the same year. In a 2010 interview with "The Arts Desk", he revealed that he was working on a third novel. An anthology of journalism, essays and TV scripts on the built environment, "Museum Without Walls", was published by the crowdfunded imprint Unbound in 2012. Meades' memoir of his childhood in the 1950s and early 1960s, "An Encyclopaedia of Myself", was published in May 2014. It was long-listed for that year's Samuel Johnson Prize and won Best Memoir in the Spear's Book Awards 2014. Roger Lewis of the "Financial Times" said of the work that "If this book is thought of less as a memoir than as a symphonic poem about post-war England and Englishness – well, then it is a masterpiece." In 2015, the publisher and record label Test Centre released a spoken word vinyl album by Meades entitled "Pedigree Mongrel", consisting of readings from "Pompey", "Museum Without Walls", "An Encyclopaedia of Myself" and unpublished fiction, combined with soundscapes created by Mordant Music. The sleeve of the album featured photography by Meades, including an abstract self-portrait on the front cover. Also in 2015, Meades, along with Laura Noble, contributed essays to Robert Clayton's photographic collection "Estate", which documented life on the soon-to-be-demolished Lion Farm housing estate in Oldbury, West Midlands in 1990. A book of "borrowed" recipes, "The Plagiarist in the Kitchen: A Lifetime's Culinary Thefts", was published by Unbound in 2017. According to Meades, it is "devoted to the idea that you shouldn't try and invent anything in the kitchen, just rely on what has already been done [...] I hate the idea of experimental cookery, but I like the idea of experimental literature. "Isle of Rust", a collaboration with the photographer Alex Boyd featuring text based on Meades' script for his 2009 film about Lewis and Harris, was published by Luath Press in 2019. An anthology of uncollected writing from 1988 to 2020 entitled "Pedro and Ricky Come Again", described as "the best of three decades of Jonathan Meades" and the sequel to "Peter Knows What Dick Likes", was published by Unbound in March 2021. Television. Meades' first foray into television was in 1985: a short film on the art and architecture of Barcelona for the BBC Two arts magazine programme "Saturday Review". His first major project was the 1987 six-part Channel 4 architectural documentary series "The Victorian House". This contained many stylistic similarities to his other work, but the producer of the series, John Marshall, received the sole writing credit and it was not a happy experience for Meades. He would be credited as the sole author of all his subsequent work. His next series was "Abroad in Britain", broadcast on BBC Two in 1990. It featured five irreverent, "slightly bonkers" films which explored unusual and neglected aspects of the built environment: informal plotland dwellings along the Severn Valley, nautical culture around the Solent and architectural forms associated with utopianism, bohemians and the military. Each episode was introduced by Meades as being "devoted to the proposition that the exotic begins at home." The series was influenced by the work of architectural critic Ian Nairn and French New Wave film director Alain Robbe-Grillet, and it cemented Meades' uniquely incongruous on-screen persona: dark glasses, dark suits, inscrutable, didactic delivery and dense, mordant language peppered with gags and surreal interludes. Rachel Cooke of "The Guardian" later described his TV persona as "pugnacious, sardonic and seemingly super-confident", while noting the RADA training and that it was "not the real Jonathan Meades, who is an altogether more diffident and shy character [...] except when drunk". The series spawned four sequels: "Further Abroad" (1994), "Even Further Abroad" (1997), "Abroad Again in Britain" (2005) and "Abroad Again" (2007), along with several other series and stand-alone films, the majority of which have been archived on the website "MeadesShrine". Preferring to be thought of as a performer rather than as a presenter, Meades has described his style as "heavy entertainment"; "staged essays" which seek to combine "lecture hall" and "music hall", Geoffrey Hill and Benny Hill. The 1998 film "Heart By-Pass" looked affectionately at Birmingham; particularly at how its architecture, transport system and ethnic mix have changed since the 1960s. It featured the music of many of the city's best-known '60s and '70s rock bands such as The Moody Blues, The Move, Traffic, Black Sabbath and ELO. He made two films on the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner. The first, in 1998, was the Worcestershire episode of the series "Travels with Pevsner", in which noted writers followed his guide books on particular counties. The second, in 2001, was a biography entitled "Pevsner Revisited". Meades made two other stand-alone films which aired earlier in 2001: "Victoria Died in 1901 and is Still Alive Today" examined the other-worldly legacy of Victorian architecture and culture one hundred years on, set to a soundtrack of late 1960s psychedelic rock by artists such as The Velvet Underground, The Kinks and Pink Floyd, while "suRREAL FILM" (or "tvSSFBM EHKL", the letters of the title moved forwards then backwards) sought to expound on surrealism in a manner befitting the subject, and reflected on, "inter alia", the fact that Meades had recently lost a considerable amount of weight. Both films featured the comic actor Christopher Biggins, notably as Queen Victoria herself, and were the first of Meades' films to be directed by Francis Hanly, who would go on to be his main collaborator, directing and shooting virtually all of his films from 2008 onwards. A three-part series on food culture, "Meades Eats", aired on BBC Four in 2003, again featuring Biggins and Hanly. The episodes dealt with fast food, the notion of a gastronomic revolution in the UK and with the ever-increasing influence of immigrant cuisines. The 2008 two-part BBC Four film "Jonathan Meades: Magnetic North" celebrated the culture of Northern Europe, examining why the North suffers in the British popular imagination in comparison with the South. Meades travelled from the slag heaps of northern France to Belgian cities, the red-light district of Hamburg, Gdańsk, the Baltic States and finally Helsinki, musing on the architecture, food and art of the places he visited. Writing in "The Daily Telegraph", James Walton praised the programme as "Sparkling, thought-provoking, constantly challenging the accepted view, Meades seemed at times inspired, at others deranged. The only thing he never was, thank heaven, was obvious." A 9-DVD box set collecting all of his BBC work to date was planned for release in April 2008, but was reduced to a 3-disc anthology due to the expense of licensing the music used in the programmes. Much of the carefully chosen popular music used in the original edits was replaced by library music, and the more music-dependent films such as "Surreal Film", "Victoria Died in 1901" and "Heart By-Pass" were not included. In 2009, Meades toured Scotland in a three-part BBC Four series entitled "Jonathan Meades: Off Kilter". He visited Aberdeen, Lewis and Harris (the 'Isle of Rust') and the less-renowned footballing towns of south-west Fife, Clackmannanshire and Falkirk, guided by his foul-mouthed 'ScotNav'. In 2012, BBC Four screened "Jonathan Meades on France", a series in which he explored his "second country". The first episode, "Fragments of an Arbitrary Encyclopaedia", focused on the Lorraine region, using a miscellany of words beginning with the letter V. The second episode, "A Biased Anthology of Parisian Peripheries", focused on Frenchness and its major traits. The series concluded with "Just a Few Debts France Owes to America". The 2013 film "The Joy of Essex" examined that county's little-known history of utopian communities. A two-part series on Brutalist architecture, "Bunkers, Brutalism and Bloodymindedness: Concrete Poetry", aired in 2014. In a 2017 interview with "The Guardian", Meades quoted his director, Francis Hanly, on how their production budgets had declined over the years: "We used to be a convoy, now we are a Smart car". In a 2008 interview with "The Independent", he indicated that the blame for this lay mostly with former BBC Two controller Jane Root. "Jonathan Meades on Jargon" aired on BBC Four in May 2018. The BBC Four website described it as a "provocative television essay" which "dissects politics, the law, football commentary, business, the arts, tabloid-speak and management consultancy to show how jargon is used to cover up, confuse and generally keep us in the dark." "The Guardian" described it as "blisteringly brutal, clever and hilarious," while "The Times" also declared Meades to be "on blistering form." Over a period of 25 years, Meades has written and presented four films on the architectural legacy of 20th-century European dictators, the latest of which, "Franco Building with Jonathan Meades", looking at Franco's Spain, aired in August 2019. The previous instalments were "Jerry Building" (Nazi Germany, 1994), "Joe Building" (Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union, 2006) and "Ben Building" (Benito Mussolini's Italy, 2016). Photography. Meades entered the world of photography with the 2013 collection "Pidgin Snaps". Published by Unbound as a "boxette" of 100 postcards, it featured mostly abstract digital work. It was followed in April 2016 by an exhibition entitled "Ape Forgets Medication: Treyfs and Artknacks" at the Londonewcastle Project in Shoreditch, London. A second exhibition, "After Medication: Random Treyfs and Artknacks" was held in October 2017 at 108 Fine Art, Harrogate. Personal life. Meades has been married three times and has four daughters from his first two marriages. In 1980 he married Sally Brown, director of the British Theatre Association, and the couple had twins. His second wife was Frances Bentley, managing editor of "Vogue", whom he married in 1988. They had two daughters and divorced in 1997. In 2003 he married his girlfriend Colette Forder, a colleague from "The Times". In around 2007, the couple sold their penthouse flat on Tyers Gate, off Bermondsey Street, Southwark, where they had lived for 10 years, and moved to a converted mill near Bordeaux. Discovering that they found country life boring, they then moved to Marseille in around 2011, where they live in Le Corbusier's Unité d'habitation apartment block. During his time at RADA, he became friends with the painter Duggie Fields, whose flatmate was the former Pink Floyd singer, songwriter and guitarist Syd Barrett. He was also friendly with Aubrey "Po" Powell, co-founder of the graphic design company Hipgnosis, most famous for its Pink Floyd album covers. He has described himself as "a hanger-on to the hangers-on" around the band and has admitted to taking LSD three times, describing it as "the only remotely interesting drug". Meades was called "the best amateur chef in the world" by Marco Pierre White. He taught himself to cook as a young man using "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" (1961, 1970), by Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle and Julia Child. He is a football fan and supports Southampton F.C. He has been a member of Soho's Groucho and Academy clubs. He won the first ever episode of the BBC's "Celebrity Mastermind", broadcast in December 2002. His specialist subject was English Architecture, 1850–2002. In the autumn of 2016, he was rushed to hospital and underwent five hours of cardiac surgery. Earlier in the year he had suffered from pleurisy and an embolism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16274

Jalalabad

Jalalabad (; ]) is the fifth-largest city of Afghanistan. It has a population of about 356,274, and serves as the capital of Nangarhar Province in the eastern part of the country, about from the capital Kabul. Jalalabad is located at the junction of the Kabul River and the Kunar River in a plateau to the south of the Hindu Kush mountains. It is linked by the Kabul-Jalalabad Road to the west and Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, to the east through Torkham and the Khyber Pass. Jalalabad is a leading center of social and trade activity because of its proximity with the Torkham border checkpoint and border crossing, away. Major industries include papermaking, as well as agricultural products including oranges, lemon, rice, and sugarcane, helped by its warm climate. It hosts Afghanistan's second largest educational institute, Nangarhar University. For centuries the city has been favored by Afghan kings and it has a cultural significance in Afghan poetry. During Timur Shah's reign of the Durrani Empire, Jalalabad served as the Afghan winter capital. History. Ancient and medieval. Known at the time by names such as Nagarhara and Adinapur, Jalalabad was a major center of Greco-Buddhist culture during the late 1st millennium BCE, focused on sites such as Ahin Posh. The first surviving references to the city are in early 1st millennium CE accounts by visiting Chinese Buddhist monks. In or about 400 CE, Faxian visited "Nagarhara" and worshiped at sacred Buddhist sites, such as the "Cave of the Buddha's Shadow” (佛影窟). In 630 CE, Xuan Zang, visited "Adinapur" and other locations nearby. The Buddhist era began to end after the region was conquered by Muslim forces during the late 1st Millennium. However, conversions to Islam evidently did not occur quickly. In "Hudud-al-Alam", written in 982 CE, there is reference to a village near Jalalabad where the local king had Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu wives. The region became part of the Ghaznavid Empire in the 10th century. Sabuktigin annexed the land all the way west of the Neelum River in Kashmir. "The Afghans and Khiljies who resided among the mountains having taken the oath of allegiance to Sabuktigin, many of them were enlisted in his army, after which he returned in triumph to Ghazni." The Ghurids succeeded the Ghaznavids and expanded the Islamic empire further into Hindustan. The region around Jalalabad later became part of the Khalji territory, followed by that of the Timurids. Modern. It is said that the original name of Jalalabad was Adinapur. Jalalabad was named in honour of Mughal ruler Jalal-uddin in the last decade of the sixteenth century, the grandson of Babur. The modern city gained prominence during the reign of Babur, founder of the Mughal Empire. Babur had chosen the site for this city which was built by his grandson Jalal-uddin Mohammad Akbar in 1560. It remained part of the Mughal Empire until around 1738 when Nader Shah and his Afsharid forces defeated the Mughals. Nader Shah's forces were accompanied by the young Ahmad Shah Durrani and his 4,000-strong Afghan army from southern Afghanistan. In 1747, he founded the Durrani Empire (Afghan Empire) after re-conquering the area. The Afghan army has long used the city while going back and forth during their military campaigns into the Indian-subcontinent. In 1834, Dost Mohammad Khan subjugated Jalalabad in the Campaign to Jalalabad. The British-Indian forces invaded Jalalabad in 1838, during the First Anglo-Afghan War. In the 1842 Battle of Jellalabad, Akbar Khan besieged the British troops on their way to Jalalabad. In 1878, during the Second Anglo-Afghan War, the British again invaded and set up camps in Jalalabad but withdrew two years later. Jalalabad is considered one of the most important cities of the Pashtun culture. Seraj-ul-Emarat, the residence of Amir Habibullah and King Amanullah was destroyed in 1929 when Habibullah Kalakani rose to power; the other sanctuaries however, retain vestiges of the past. The mausoleum of both rulers is enclosed by a garden facing Seraj-ul-Emart. The Sulemankhils, a Pashtun family famous for their scientific research, is from Jalalabad. Other celebrated Pashtun families originate from the villages near Jalalabad too. In the 1960s and 1970s, construction started on a new planned city called Reg-e Shamshad Khan. From 1978 to early 1990s, the city served as a strategic location for the Soviet-backed Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. In March 1989, two Mujahideen rebel factions backed by Pakistan and the U.S. assaulted the city during the Battle of Jalalabad. However government forces managed to drive them out within two months, which was a major setback to the resistance fighters and the ISI. The city was heavily bombarded and hundreds of civilians were killed. Many buildings, such as schools, hospitals and public buildings were destroyed during the 2-month battle. After the resignation of President Najibullah, Jalalabad quickly fell to mujahideen rebels of Yunus Khalis on April 19, 1992. On September 12, 1996, the Taliban took control of the city until they were toppled by the US-backed Afghan forces in late 2001. Al-Qaeda had been building terrorist training camps in Jalalabad. The city returned to Afghan government control under Hamid Karzai. The economy of Jalalabad gradually increased in the last decade. Many of the city's population began joining the Afghan National Security Forces. Construction has also increased. The Jalalabad Airport has long served as a military base for the NATO forces. In 2011, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul announced that it plans to establish a consulate in Jalalabad. In March 2007, US marines murdered 19 unarmed civilians and wounded 50 near Jalalabad, in an incident compared by the New York Times to the Haditha massacre. None of those responsible received any serious punishment. Many suicide attacks by jihadist insurgents have taken place, including in August 2013, April 2015, January 2018, July 2018, September 2018, October 2019 and August 2020. The groups responsible for the attacks include the Taliban, Haqqani Network, al-Qaeda, and ISIS (Daesh). On August 15, 2021, the Taliban again took control of the city. Its capture cut off the last highway from Kabul to the outside world, and the city fell later the same day. Three days later on August 18, protestors took down the Afghan Taliban flag and replaced it with a tricolor flag of the previous Afghan government. Demographics. The city population is estimated to be 280,685 in year 2021. It has six districts and a total land area of . The total number of dwellings in this city is 39,586. Nearly all residents of Jalalabad are Muslim, followers of Sunni Islam. Jalalabad is also a center of the country's Sikhs, although the community has dwindled in the city (and nationwide) since the wars began. Similarly it is also has a Hindu minority. Land use. Jalalabad is the regional hub in eastern Afghanistan, close to the border with Pakistan. Agriculture is the predominant land use at 44%, higher density of dwellings is found in Districts 1–5 and vacant plots are largely clustered in District 6. Districts 1–6 all have a grid network of roads. Climate. Jalalabad's climate is hot desert (Köppen: BWh), and it is one of the hottest localities in Afghanistan. The city's climate has close resemblance to that of Arizona in the United States. It receives six to eight inches (152 to 203 mm) of rainfall per annum which are limited to winter and the months of spring. Frosts are not common, and during the summer, the temperature can reach a maximum of 120 °F (49 °C). The north and southwestern parts of the city which has lower elevation are welcoming places to winds from the north and west cooling the parts in summer months. Jalalabad has the highest relative humidity in summer compared to other Afghan cities. However the moderate temperatures of winter has led to various people down the history establishing their settlements in the city. Because of its warm temperature relative to most of Afghanistan, Jalalabad (alongside Peshawar) was often the "winter capital" of various Afghan rulers of the past centuries, while rich people would relocate to villas in Jalalabad to avoid the freezing temperatures in Kabul. Flora and fauna. Jalalabad is home to a large number of fruits. Various types of citrus fruits like orange, tangerine, grapefruit, lemon, lime grow in gardens as well as in orchards. The orange trees yield a crop only once in three years. The "narindj" variety of orange is the most common one which has yellow skin and its taste is a combination of orange and grapefruit. The grapefruits grown here have a diameter of eight or nine inches. Per year 1800 tonnes of pomegranates, 334 tonnes of grapes, and 7750 tonnes of mulberries are produced in Jalalabad. The fruits are either sold in local markets or transported to Kabul markets from where they are exported. The second most common crop is local "vatani" variety of sugarcane. It contains 15% sugar by weight. Jalalabad also has the largest date farm in Afghanistan. Transportation. The Jalalabad Airport (also known as Nangarhar Airport) is located roughly southeast from the city's center. It is a domestic airport for civilian use. It serves the population of Nangarhar and neighboring provinces. There are proposals for the establishment of Afghanistan's rail network linking Jalalabad with Pakistan Railways, allowing for increased trade of goods, people and commerce between the two countries. Jalalabad is connected by main roads with the Afghan capital of Kabul, the city of Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, and several nearby Afghan cities and towns. All trade between Afghanistan and Pakistan passes through this city. The highway between Jalalabad and Kabul was resurfaced in 2006, reducing the transit time between these two important cities. This highway is considered to be one of the most dangerous in the world because of the large number of accidents. An improvement in the road networks between Jalalabad and Peshawar has also been proposed, with the intention of widening the existing road and improving security to attract more tourists and allow for safer passage of goods between to the two countries. General places of interest. The Ghazi Amanullah International Cricket Stadium is next to the Ghazi Amanullah Khan Town, which is about of driving distance southeast of Jalalabad. The people of Jalalabad go there not only for sports purposes but also for enjoyment and relaxation. This is especially during holidays or when they receive visiting family or friends from another place. It is also a popular hangout for those with cars. Sports. The province is represented in domestic cricket competitions by the Nangarhar province cricket team. National team member Hamid Hasan was born in the province and he currently represents Afghanistan in international cricket. The Ghazi Amanullah International Cricket Stadium is the first international standard cricket stadium in Afghanistan. It is located in the Ghazi Amanullah Town, a modern suburb on the southeastern fringe of Jalalabad in Nangarhar Province. Construction on the stadium began in March 2010 when the foundation stone was laid by Minister of Finance and president of the Afghanistan Cricket Board, Omar Zakhilwal. The project, which was developed on 30 acres of land donated by the developer constructing the Ghazi Amanullah Town, cost up the first phase of construction $1.8 million. The first phase, which took one year to complete, included the completion of the stadium itself. The remainder of the phases will see the construction of a pavilion, accommodation for players and administrative buildings. The stadium, which has a capacity of 14,000, was completed before the national team and under-19 team left for Canada and the Under-19 Cricket World Cup Qualifier in Ireland respectively. The two sides inaugurated the stadium in a Twenty20 match. It is hoped that the stadium will be able to attract international teams to play Afghanistan, who currently have One Day International status until at least 2013.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16336

Jeffrey Archer

Jeffrey Howard Archer, Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare (born 15 April 1940) is an English novelist, life peer, convicted criminal, and former elected politician who remains a member of the House of Lords. Before becoming an author, Archer was a Member of Parliament (1969–1974), but did not seek re-election after a financial scandal that left him almost bankrupt. Archer revived his fortunes as a novelist. His 1979 novel "Kane and Abel" remains one of the best-selling books in the world, with an estimated 34 million copies sold worldwide. Overall his books have sold more than 320 million copies worldwide. Archer became deputy chairman of the Conservative Party (1985–86), before resigning after a newspaper accused him of paying money to a prostitute. In 1987, he won a court case and was awarded large damages because of this claim. He was made a life peer in 1992 and subsequently became Conservative candidate to be the first elected Mayor of London. He resigned his candidacy in 1999 after it emerged that he had lied in his 1987 libel case. He was imprisoned (2001–2003) for perjury and perverting the course of justice, ending his active political career. Early life and education. Jeffrey Howard Archer was born in the City of London Maternity Hospital in Holloway, London on 15 April 1940. He was two weeks old when his family moved to Somerset, eventually settling in the seaside town of Weston-super-Mare, where Archer spent most of his early life. His father, William (died 1956), was 64 years old when Jeffrey Archer was born. Early in his career, Archer gave conflicting accounts to the press of his father's supposed, but non-existent, military career. William Archer was, in fact, a bigamist, fraudster, and conman, who impersonated another William Archer, a deceased war medal holder. He was at different times employed as a chewing gum salesman in New York and a mortgage broker in London. In the latter capacity, he was charged at the Old Bailey with a series of fraud offences. On being released on bail, he absconded to the US under the name William Grimwood. In the US, William Archer fathered a child, Rosemary Turner (21 June 1917 – 11 October 1986), Jeffrey's half-sister. In 1940 Rosemary married lawyer Brien McMahon who went on to become the Democratic senator for Connecticut (1945–1952) and a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1952. After Brien McMahon's death that year, Rosemary married, in 1953, the Belgian ambassador to Washington, Baron Silvercruys. The First Lady, Mamie Eisenhower, was the guest-of-honour at their wedding. As a boy Archer dreamed of being captain of the Bristol Rovers Football Club. He is still a fan of the club. Wellington School. In 1951, Archer won a scholarship to Wellington School in Somerset (not Wellington College in Berkshire, as he was later inclined to claim) after passing the 11-plus. At this time his mother, Lola, was employed as a journalist on Weston's local newspaper, the "Weston Mercury". She wrote a weekly column entitled "Over the Teacups", and frequently wrote about Jeffrey, calling him 'Tuppence'. Although Archer enjoyed the local fame this brought him, it caused him to be the victim of bullying while at Wellington School. Archer left school with O-levels in English literature, art, and history. He then spent a few years in a variety of jobs, including training with the army and a short period with the Metropolitan Police. He later worked as a physical education teacher, first at Vicar's Hill, a preparatory school in Hampshire, and later at Dover College in Kent. Oxford. In 1963 Archer was offered a place at the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education to study for a Diploma of Education. The course was based in the department, and Archer became a member of Brasenose College. There have been claims that Archer provided false evidence of his academic qualifications to Brasenose, the apparent citing of an American institution which was actually a bodybuilding club, for instance, in gaining admission to the course. It has also been alleged Archer provided false statements about three non-existent A-Level passes and a U.S. university degree. Although the diploma course only lasted a year, Archer spent a total of three years at Oxford. At Oxford, Archer was successful in athletics, competing in sprinting and hurdling, and became president of the Oxford University Athletic Club. Television coverage survives of him making false starts in a 1964 sprint race, but he was not disqualified. He gained a blue in athletics and went on to run for England, and once competed for Great Britain. Archer raised money for the charity Oxfam, obtaining the support of The Beatles in a fundraising drive. The band accepted his invitation to visit the Principal's lodge at Brasenose College, where they were photographed with Archer and dons of the college, although they did not play there. The critic Sheridan Morley, then a student at Merton, was present and recalled the occasion: Early career. After leaving Oxford, Archer continued as a charity fundraiser, initially working for the National Birthday Trust, a medical charity that promoted safe childbirth, before joining the United Nations Association (UNA) as its chief fundraiser. The then chairman of the UNA, Humphry Berkeley, alleged that there were numerous discrepancies in Archer's expense claims while he worked at the UNA. Around this time, Archer began a career in politics, serving as a Conservative councillor for Havering on the Greater London Council (1967–1970). Archer set up his own fundraising and public relations company, Arrow Enterprises, in 1969. That same year he opened an art gallery, the Archer Gallery, in Mayfair. The gallery specialised in modern art, including pieces by the sculptor and painter Leon Underwood. The gallery ultimately lost money, however, and Archer sold it two years later. Member of Parliament. At 29, Archer was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for the Lincolnshire constituency of Louth, holding the seat for the Conservative Party in a by-election on 4 December 1969. Archer beat Ian Gow to the selection after winning over a substantial proportion of younger members at the selection meeting. The national party had concerns about Archer's selection, specifically relating to the UNA expenses allegations made by Humphry Berkeley, himself a former Conservative MP. Berkeley tried to persuade the Conservative Central Office that Archer was unsuitable as a parliamentary candidate. Archer brought a defamation action against Berkeley and the story was kept out of the press, although a truncated version of the story did appear in "The Times". The case was eventually settled out of court, with Archer agreeing to pay legal costs of around £30,000. Louth constituency had three key areas: Louth, Cleethorpes, and Immingham. During his time as an MP, Archer was a regular at the Immingham Conservative Club in the most working-class part of the constituency. In 1970 he took part in the Kennedy Memorial Test, a 50-mile running/walking race from Louth to Skegness and back. In parliament, Archer was on the left of the Conservative Party, rebelling against some of his party's policies. He advocated free TV licences for elderly people and was against museum entrance charges. In 1971, he employed David Mellor to deal with his correspondence. He tipped Mellor to reach the cabinet. In an interview, in February 1999 Archer said, "I hope we don't return to extremes. I'm what you might call centre-right but I've always disliked the right wing as much as I've disliked the left wing." Financial crisis. In 1974, Archer was a casualty of a fraudulent investment scheme involving a Canadian company called Aquablast. The debacle lost him his first fortune and left him almost £500,000 in debt. Fearing imminent bankruptcy, he stood down as an MP at the October 1974 general election. While he was a witness in the Aquablast case in Toronto in 1975, Archer was accused of stealing three suits from a department store. Archer denied the accusation for many years, but in the late 1990s he finally acknowledged that he had taken the suits, although he claimed that at the time he had not realised he had left the shop. No charges were ever brought. Writing career. Archer wrote his first book, "Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less", in the autumn of 1974, as a means of avoiding bankruptcy. The book was picked up by the literary agent Deborah Owen and published first in the U.S., then eventually in Britain in the autumn of 1976. A radio adaptation was aired on BBC Radio 4 in the early 1980s and a BBC Television adaptation of the book was broadcast in 1990. "Kane and Abel" (1979) proved to be his best-selling work, reaching number one on "The New York Times" bestsellers list. Like most of his early work, it was edited by Richard Cohen, the Olympic fencing gold-medallist. It was made into a television mini-series by CBS in 1985, starring Peter Strauss and Sam Neill. The following year, Granada TV screened a 10-part adaptation of another Archer bestseller, "First Among Equals", which told the story of four men and their quest to become prime minister. In the U.S. edition of the novel, the character of Andrew Fraser was eliminated, reducing the number of protagonists to three. As well as novels and short stories, Archer has also written three stage plays. The first, "Beyond Reasonable Doubt", opened in 1987 and ran at the Queen's Theatre in London's West End for over a year. Archer's next play, "Exclusive", opened at the Strand Theatre, London, in September 1989. It was not well received by critics, and closed after a few weeks. His final play, "The Accused", opened at the Theatre Royal, Windsor on 26 September 2000, before transferring to the Theatre Royal Haymarket in the West End in December. In 1988, author Kathleen Burnett accused Archer of plagiarizing a story she had written, and including it in his short-story collection, "A Twist in the Tale". Archer denied he had plagiarized the story, claiming he had simply been inspired by the idea. While Archer's books are commercially successful, critics have been generally unfavorable towards his writing. Journalist Hugo Barnacle, writing for "The Independent" about "The Fourth Estate" (1996), thought the novel, while demonstrating that "the editors don't seem to have done any work", was "not wholly unsatisfactory". Archer has said that he spends considerable time writing and re-writing each book. He goes abroad to write the first draft, working in blocks of two hours at a time, then writes anything up to 17 drafts in total. Since 2010, Archer has written the first draft of each new book at his villa in Majorca, called "Writer's Block". In 2011, Archer published the first of seven books in "The Clifton Chronicles" series, which follow the life of Harry Clifton from his birth in 1920, through to his funeral in 1993. The first novel in the series, "Only Time Will Tell", tells the story of Harry from 1920 through to 1940, and was published in the UK on 12 May 2011. The seventh and final novel in the series, "This Was a Man", was published on 3 November 2016. "The Short, the Long and the Tall", an illustrated collection of Archer's short stories, was published in November 2020, with watercolor illustrations by artist Paul Cox. "Over My Dead Body" was published in October 2021, and is the fourth book in a series featuring detective William Warwick. The book was critical acclaimed and one of the New York Bestsellers of the year. In January 2020 it was reported that Archer had sued his former literary agents, Curtis Brown, for £500,000 in unpaid royalties. Return to politics. Deputy party chairman. Archer's political career revived in the 1980s, and he became a popular speaker among the Conservative grassroots. He was appointed deputy chairman of the Conservative Party by Margaret Thatcher in September 1985. Norman Tebbit, party chairman, had misgivings over the appointment, as did other prominent members of the party, including William Whitelaw and Edward Heath. During his tenure as deputy chairman, Archer was responsible for a number of embarrassing moments, including his statement, made during a live radio interview, that many young, unemployed people were simply unwilling to find work. At the time of Archer's comment, unemployment in the UK stood at a record 3.4 million. Archer was later forced to apologise for the remark, saying that his words had been "taken out of context". Archer resigned as deputy chairman in October 1986 due to a scandal caused by an article in "The News of the World", which led with the story, "Tory boss Archer pays vice-girl", and claimed Archer had paid Monica Coghlan, a prostitute, £2,000 through an intermediary at Victoria Station to go abroad. "Daily Star" libel case. Shortly after "The News of the World" story broke, rival tabloid the "Daily Star" ran a story alleging Archer had paid for sex with Coghlan, something "The News of the World" had been careful to avoid stating directly. Archer responded by suing the "Daily Star". The case came to court in July 1987. Explaining the payment to Coghlan as the action of a philanthropist rather than that of a guilty man, Archer won the case and was awarded £500,000 damages. Archer stated he would donate the money to charity. However, this case would ultimately result in Archer's final exit from front-line politics some years later. The description the judge (Mr Justice Caulfield) gave of Mrs Archer in his jury instructions included: "Remember Mary Archer in the witness-box. Your vision of her probably will never disappear. Has she elegance? Has she fragrance? Would she have, without the strain of this trial, radiance? How would she appeal? Has she had a happy married life? Has she been able to enjoy, rather than endure, her husband Jeffrey?" The judge then went on to say of Jeffrey Archer: "Is he in need of cold, unloving, rubber-insulated sex in a seedy hotel round about quarter to one on a Tuesday morning after an evening at the Caprice?" Although the Archers claimed they were a normal, happily married couple, by this time, according to the journalist Adam Raphael, Jeffrey and Mary Archer were living largely separate lives. The editor of the "Daily Star", Lloyd Turner, was sacked six weeks after the trial by the paper's owner Lord Stevens of Ludgate. Adam Raphael soon afterwards found proof that Archer had perjured himself at the trial, but his superiors were unwilling to take the risk of a potentially costly libel case. "The News of the World" later settled out-of-court with Archer, acknowledging they, too, had libelled him. Kurdish charity and peerage. When Saddam Hussein suppressed Kurdish uprisings in 1991, Archer, with the Red Cross, set up the charity Simple Truth, a fundraising campaign on behalf of the Kurds. In May 1991, Archer organised a charity pop concert, starring Rod Stewart, Paul Simon, Sting and Gloria Estefan, who all performed free of charge. Archer stated that his charity had raised £57,042,000, though it was later reported that only £3 million came from the and appeal, the rest from aid projects sponsored by the British and other governments, with significant amounts pledged before the concert. The charity would later incur further controversy. Having been previously rejected, Archer was made a life peer on 27 July 1992 as Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare, "of Mark in the County of Somerset". Prime Minister John Major recommended him largely because of Archer's role in aid to the Kurds. Archer and Major had been friends for a number of years. Political statements in 1990s. In a speech at the 1993 Conservative conference, Archer urged then Home Secretary Michael Howard, to "Stand and deliver," saying: "Michael, I am sick and tired of being told by old people that they are frightened to open the door, they're frightened to go out at night, frightened to use the parks and byways where their parents and grandparents walked with freedom ... We say to you: stand and deliver!". He then attacked violent films and urged tougher prison conditions to prevent criminals from re-offending. He criticised the role of "do-gooders" and finished off the speech by denouncing the opposition party's law and order policies. This was a time when Archer was actively seeking another front-line political role. On "Question Time" on 20 January 1994, Archer said that 18 should be the age of consent for gay sex, as opposed to 21, which it was at the time. Archer though was opposed to the age of consent for gay men being 16. Historian David Starkey was on the same edition, and said of Archer: "Englishmen like you enjoy sitting on the fence so much because you enjoy the sensation." Archer has also consistently been an opponent of a return to capital punishment. Allegations of insider dealings. In January 1994, Mary Archer, then a director of Anglia Television, attended a directors' meeting at which an impending takeover of Anglia Television by MAI, which owned Meridian Broadcasting, was discussed. The following day, Jeffrey Archer bought 50,000 shares in Anglia Television, acting on behalf of a friend, Broosk Saib. Shortly after this, it was announced publicly that Anglia Television would be taken over by MAI. As a result, the shares jumped in value, whereupon Archer sold them on behalf of his friend for a profit of £77,219. The arrangements he made with the stockbrokers meant he did not have to pay at the time of buying the shares. An inquiry was launched by the Stock Exchange into possible insider trading. The Department of Trade and Industry, headed by Michael Heseltine, announced that Archer would not be prosecuted due to insufficient evidence. His solicitors admitted that he had made a mistake, but Archer later said that he had been exonerated. London mayoral candidature. In 1999, Archer had been selected by the Conservative Party as candidate for the London mayoral election of 2000, with the support of two former Prime Ministers, Baroness Thatcher and John Major. On 21 November 1999 the "News of the World" published allegations made by Ted Francis, a former friend, that Archer had committed perjury in his 1987 libel case. Archer withdrew his candidature the following day. After the allegations broke, Archer was disowned by his party. Conservative leader William Hague explained: "This is the end of politics for Jeffrey Archer. I will not tolerate such behaviour in my party." On 4 February 2000, Archer was expelled from the party for five years. Perjury trial and imprisonment. Trial. On 26 September 2000, Archer was charged with perjury and perverting the course of justice during the 1987 libel trial. Ted Francis was charged with perverting the course of justice. Simultaneously, Archer starred in a production of his own courtroom play "The Accused", staged at London's Theatre Royal Haymarket. The play concerned the court trial of an alleged murderer and assigned the role of jury to the audience, which would vote on the guilt of Archer's character at the end of each performance. The perjury trial began on 30 May 2001, a month after Monica Coghlan's death in a road traffic collision. Ted Francis claimed that Archer had asked him to provide a false alibi for the night Archer was alleged to have been with Monica Coghlan. Angela Peppiatt, Archer's former personal assistant, also claimed Archer had fabricated an alibi in the 1987 trial. Peppiatt had kept a diary of Archer's movements, which contradicted evidence given during the 1987 trial. Andrina Colquhoun, Archer's former mistress, confirmed that they had been having an affair in the 1980s, thus contradicting the claim that he and Mary Archer had been "happily married" at the time of the trial. Archer never spoke during the trial, though his wife Mary again gave evidence as she had done during the 1987 trial. On 19 July 2001, Archer was found guilty of perjury and perverting the course of justice at the 1987 trial. He was sentenced to four years' imprisonment by Mr Justice Potts. Francis was found not guilty. Prominent journalists admitted to having accepted Archer's hospitality after he was convicted. Archer's mother had died shortly before he was sentenced and he was released for the day to attend her funeral. Prison. Archer was initially sent to HM Prison Belmarsh, a Category "A" prison, but was moved to HM Prison Wayland, a Category "C" prison in Norfolk, on 9 August 2001. Despite automatically qualifying as a category "D" prisoner, given it was a first conviction and he did not pose a serious risk of harm to the public, his status as such was suspended pending a police investigation into allegations about his Kurdish charity. He was then transferred to HM Prison North Sea Camp, an open prison, in October 2001. From there he was let out to work, briefly, at the Theatre Royal in Lincoln, and allowed occasional home visits. Media reports claimed he had abused this privilege by attending a lunch with a friend, Education Secretary Gillian Shephard. In September 2002 he was transferred to a Category "B" prison, Lincoln. After three weeks, he was moved to the Category "D" HM Prison Hollesley Bay in Suffolk. During his imprisonment, Archer was visited by a number of high-profile friends, including actor Donald Sinden and entertainer Barry Humphries (who performed as Dame Edna Everage). In October 2002, Archer repaid the "Daily Star" the £500,000 damages he had received in 1987, as well as legal costs and interest of £1.3 million. That month, he was suspended from Marylebone Cricket Club for seven years. On 21 July 2003, Archer was released on licence from Hollesley Bay after serving half of his sentence. He remained a peer, there being no legal provision through which his peerage could be removed at the time other than passing a new Act of Parliament. He also retained membership of the House of Lords, which did not then have the power to expel members; however, Archer has not taken an active part in the proceedings of the House. Politically, he is a non-affiliated member. Prison diaries. While in prison, Archer wrote the three-volume memoir "A Prison Diary", with volumes fashioned after Dante's "Divine Comedy", and named after the first three prisons in which he was kept. His prison term also served as inspiration for nine of the 12 short stories in the collection "Cat O' Nine Tales". Kurdish aid controversy. In July 2001, shortly after Archer was jailed for perjury, Scotland Yard began investigating allegations that millions of pounds had disappeared from his Kurdish charity. In 1991, Archer had claimed to have raised £57,042,000. In 1992, the Kurdish Disaster Fund wrote to Archer, complaining: "You must be concerned that the Kurdish refugees have seen hardly any of the huge sums raised in the west in their name." Kurdish groups claimed that little more than £250,000 had been received by groups in Iraq. A British Red Cross-commissioned KPMG audit of the cash showed no donations were handled by Archer and any misappropriation was "unlikely"; however, KPMG also could find no evidence to support Archer's claims to have raised £31.5 million from overseas governments. The police said they would launch a "preliminary assessment of the facts" from the audit but were not investigating the Simple Truth fund. Subsequent incidents. In 2004, the government of Equatorial Guinea alleged that Archer was one of the financiers of the failed 2004 coup d'état attempt against it, citing bank details and telephone records as evidence. In 2009, Archer said: "I am completely relaxed about it. Mr Mann [Simon Mann, the English mercenary leader of the coup] has made clear that it's nothing to do with me." In 2011, Mann, imprisoned in Equatorial Guinea for his role in leading the failed 2004 coup d'état but released on humanitarian grounds later, told "The Daily Telegraph" that his forthcoming book, "Cry Havoc", would reveal "the financial involvement of a controversial and internationally famous member of the British House of Lords in the plot, backed up by banking records." He claimed documents from the bank accounts in Guernsey of two companies Mann used as vehicles for organising the coup, showed a 'J H Archer' paying $135,000 into one of the firms. Personal life. Archer has been married to Mary Weeden since July 1966. They met at Oxford University, where Weeden was studying chemistry at St Anne's College. She went on to specialise in solar power. They have two children: William Archer (born 1972), a theatrical producer, and James Archer (born 1974), a financial adviser and businessman. In 1979, the Archers purchased the Old Vicarage, Grantchester, a house associated with the poet Rupert Brooke. Every summer, they host a lavish garden party in the grounds to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Following the near-bankruptcy of the Aquablast scandal, by the early 1980s, Archer was back in a comfortable financial position and began to hold shepherd's pie and Krug parties for prominent people at his London penthouse, which overlooks the River Thames and the Houses of Parliament. On 26 February 2006, on Andrew Marr's "Sunday AM" programme, Archer said he had no interest in returning to front-line politics and would pursue his writing instead. Archer in fiction. Archer was satirically portrayed as a misunderstood secret agent, saviour of Britain and mankind and "overall thoroughly good chap", by actor Damian Lewis in the BBC drama "" (2002). Scriptwriter Guy Jenkin explained that "my Jeffrey Archer is the man who has frequently saved Britain over the last 30 years. He's beloved of all women he comes across, all men, all dogs—he's a superhero." Ian Hislop and Nick Newman's 1994 BBC Radio 4 satirical series "Gush" purported to be "written by master storyteller Archie Jeffries". In the Amazon series "Good Omens", a reference is made by one of the angels in Aziraphale's bookshop: "Something smells evil." Aziraphale replies, "Oh, that would be the Jeffrey Archer books, I'm afraid." In the "Doctor Who" episode "Silence in the Library", the Doctor mentions that the Library has whole continents of Jeffrey Archer. Works. Archer has published 42 works, which have been translated into 33 languages, with combined sales of more than 275 million copies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16590

Junkers Ju 87

The Junkers Ju 87 or "Stuka" is a German dive bomber and ground-attack aircraft. Designed by Hermann Pohlmann, it first flew in 1935. The Ju 87 made its combat debut in 1937 with the Luftwaffe's Condor Legion during the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939 and served the Axis in World War II from beginning to end (1939–1945). The aircraft is easily recognisable by its inverted gull wings and fixed spatted undercarriage. Upon the leading edges of its faired main gear legs were mounted ram-air sirens known as "", which became a propaganda symbol of German air power and of the so-called "Blitzkrieg" victories of 1939–1942, as well as providing Stuka pilots with audible feedback as to speed. The Stuka's design included several innovations, including automatic pull-up dive brakes under both wings to ensure that the aircraft recovered from its attack dive even if the pilot blacked out from the high g-forces, or suffered from target fixation. The Ju 87 operated with considerable success in close air support and anti-shipping roles at the outbreak of World War II. It led air assaults in the invasion of Poland in September 1939. Stukas proved critical to the rapid conquest of Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France in 1940. Though sturdy, accurate, and very effective against ground targets, the Stuka was, like many other dive bombers of the period, vulnerable to fighter aircraft. During the Battle of Britain of 1940–1941, its lack of manoeuvrability, speed, or defensive armament meant that it required a heavy fighter escort to operate effectively. After the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe deployed Stuka units in the Balkans Campaign, the African and the Mediterranean theatres and in the early stages of the Eastern Front war, where it was used for general ground support, as an effective specialised anti-tank aircraft and in an anti-shipping role. Once the Luftwaffe lost air superiority, the Stuka became an easy target for enemy fighters, but it continued being produced until 1944 for lack of a better replacement. By 1945 ground-attack versions of the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 had largely replaced the Ju 87, but it remained in service until the end of the war in 1945. Germany built an estimated 6,000 Ju 87s of all versions between 1936 and August 1944. "Oberst" Hans-Ulrich Rudel became the most successful Stuka pilot and the most highly decorated German pilot of the war. Development. Early design. The Ju 87's principal designer, Hermann Pohlmann, held the opinion that any dive-bomber design needed to be simple and robust. This led to many technical innovations, such as the retractable undercarriage being discarded in favour of one of the Stuka's distinctive features, its fixed and "spatted" undercarriage. Pohlmann continued to carry on developing and adding to his ideas and those of Dipl Ing Karl Plauth (Plauth was killed in a flying accident in November 1927), and produced the Ju A 48, which underwent testing on 29 September 1928. The military version of the Ju A 48 was designated the Ju K 47. After the Nazis came to power, the design was given priority. Despite initial competition from the Henschel Hs 123, the "Reichsluftfahrtministerium" (RLM, the German aviation ministry) turned to the designs of Herman Pohlmann of Junkers and co-designer of the K 47, Karl Plauth. During the trials with the K 47 in 1932, double vertical stabilisers were introduced to give the rear gunner a better field of fire. The main, and what was to be the most distinctive, feature of the Ju 87 was its double-spar inverted gull wings. After Plauth's death, Pohlmann continued the development of the Junkers dive bomber. The Ju A 48 registration D-ITOR, was originally fitted with a BMW 132 engine, producing 450 kW (600 hp). The machine was also fitted with dive brakes for dive testing. The aircraft was given a good evaluation and "exhibited very good flying characteristics". Ernst Udet took an immediate liking to the concept of dive-bombing after flying the Curtiss F11C Goshawk. When Walther Wever and Robert Ritter von Greim were invited to watch Udet perform a trial flight in May 1934 at the Jüterbog artillery range, it raised doubts about the capability of the dive bomber. Udet began his dive at and released his bombs at , barely recovering and pulling out of the dive. The chief of the "Luftwaffe" Command Office Walther Wever, and the Secretary of State for Aviation Erhard Milch, feared that such high-level nerves and skill could not be expected of "average pilots" in the "Luftwaffe". Nevertheless, development continued at Junkers. Udet's "growing love affair" with the dive bomber pushed it to the forefront of German aviation development. Udet went so far as to advocate that all medium bombers should have dive-bombing capabilities, which initially doomed the only dedicated, strategic heavy bomber design to enter German front-line service during the war years—the 30-metre wingspan Heinkel He 177A—into having an airframe design (due to Udet examining its design details in November 1937) that could perform "medium angle" dive-bombing missions, until "Reichsmarschall" Hermann Göring exempted the He 177A, Germany's only operational heavy bomber, in September 1942 from being given the task of such a mismatched mission profile for its large airframe. Evolution. The design of the Ju 87 had begun in 1933 as part of the "Sturzbomber-Programm". The Ju 87 was to be powered by the British Rolls-Royce Kestrel engine. Ten engines were ordered by Junkers on 19 April 1934 for £20,514, two shillings and sixpence. The first Ju 87 prototype was built by in Sweden and secretly brought to Germany in late 1934. It was to have been completed in April 1935, but, due to the inadequate strength of the airframe, construction took until October 1935. The mostly complete Ju 87 V1 W.Nr. 4921 (less non-essential parts) took off for its maiden flight on 17 September 1935. The aircraft was later given the registration D-UBYR. The flight report, by "Hauptmann" Willy Neuenhofen, stated the only problem was with the small radiator, which caused the engine to overheat. The Ju 87 V1, powered by a Rolls-Royce Kestrel V12 cylinder liquid-cooled engine, and with a twin tail, crashed on 24 January 1936 at Kleutsch near Dresden, killing Junkers' chief test pilot, Willy Neuenhofen, and his engineer, Heinrich Kreft. The square twin fins and rudders proved too weak; they collapsed and the aircraft crashed after it entered an inverted spin during the testing of the terminal dynamic pressure in a dive. The crash prompted a change to a single vertical stabiliser tail design. To withstand strong forces during a dive, heavy plating, along with brackets riveted to the frame and longeron, was fitted to the fuselage. Other early additions included the installation of hydraulic dive brakes that were fitted under the leading edge and could rotate 90°. The RLM was still not interested in the Ju 87 and was not impressed that it relied on a British engine. In late 1935, Junkers suggested fitting a DB 600 inverted V-12 engine, with the final variant to be equipped with the Jumo 210. This was accepted by the RLM as an interim solution. The reworking of the design began on 1 January 1936. The test flight could not be carried out for over two months due to a lack of adequate aircraft. The 24 January crash had already destroyed one machine. The second prototype was also beset by design problems. It had its twin stabilisers removed and a single tail fin installed due to fears over stability. Due to a shortage of engines, instead of a DB 600, a BMW "Hornet" engine was fitted. All these delays set back testing until 25 February 1936. By March 1936, the second prototype, the V2, was finally fitted with the Jumo 210Aa engine, which a year later was replaced by a Jumo 210 G (W.Nr. 19310). The testing went well, and the pilot, Flight Captain Hesselbach, praised its performance. However, Wolfram von Richthofen, in charge of developing and testing new aircraft in the Technisches Amt, or Technical Service, told the Junkers representative and Construction Office chief engineer that the Ju 87 stood little chance of becoming the Luftwaffe's main dive bomber, as it was underpowered in his opinion. On 9 June 1936, the RLM ordered cessation of development in favour of the Heinkel He 118, a rival design. Udet cancelled the order the next day, and development continued. On 27 July 1936, Udet crashed the He 118 prototype, He 118 V1 D-UKYM. That same day, Charles Lindbergh was visiting Ernst Heinkel, so Heinkel could communicate with Udet only by telephone. According to this version of the story, Heinkel warned Udet about the propeller's fragility. Udet failed to consider this, so in a dive, the engine oversped and the propeller broke away. Immediately after this incident, Udet announced the Stuka the winner of the development contest. Refinements. Despite being chosen, the design was still lacking and drew frequent criticism from Wolfram von Richthofen. Testing of the V4 prototype (A Ju 87 A-0) in early 1937 revealed several problems. The Ju 87 could take off in and climb to in eight minutes with a bomb load, and its cruising speed was . Richthofen pushed for a more powerful engine. According to the test pilots, the Heinkel He 50 had a better acceleration rate, and could climb away from the target area much more quickly, avoiding enemy ground and air defences. Richthofen stated that any maximum speed below was unacceptable for those reasons. Pilots also complained that navigation and powerplant instruments were mixed together, and were not easy to read, especially in combat. Despite this, pilots praised the aircraft's handling qualities and strong airframe. These problems were to be resolved by installing the DB 600 engine, but delays in development forced the installation of the Jumo 210 D inverted V-12 engine. Flight testing began on 14 August 1936. Subsequent testing and progress fell short of Richthofen's hopes, although the machine's speed was increased to at ground level and at , while maintaining its good handling ability. Design. Basic design (based on the B series). The Ju 87 was a single-engined all-metal cantilever monoplane. It had a fixed undercarriage and could carry a two-person crew. The main construction material was duralumin, and the external coverings were made of duralumin sheeting. Parts that were required to be of strong construction, such as the wing flaps, were made of Pantal (a German aluminium alloy containing titanium as a hardening element) and its components made of Elektron. Bolts and parts that were required to take heavy stress were made of steel. The Ju 87 was fitted with detachable hatches and removable coverings to aid and ease maintenance and overhaul. The designers avoided welding parts wherever possible, preferring moulded and cast parts instead. Large airframe segments were interchangeable as a complete unit, which increased speed of repair. The airframe was also subdivided into sections to allow transport by road or rail. The wings were of standard Junkers double-wing construction. This gave the Ju 87 considerable advantage on take-off; even at a shallow angle, large lift forces were created through the aerofoil, reducing take-off and landing runs. In accordance with the Aircraft Certification Centre for "Stress Group 5", the Ju 87 had reached the acceptable structural strength requirements for a dive bomber. It was able to withstand diving speeds of and a maximum level speed of near ground level, and a flying weight of . Performance in the diving attack was enhanced by the introduction of dive brakes under each wing, which allowed the Ju 87 to maintain a constant speed and allow the pilot to steady his aim. It also prevented the crew from suffering extreme g forces and high acceleration during "pull-out" from the dive. The fuselage had an oval cross-section and housed, in most examples, a Junkers Jumo 211 water-cooled inverted V-12 engine. The cockpit was protected from the engine by a firewall ahead of the wing centre section where the fuel tanks were located. At the rear of the cockpit, the bulkhead was covered by a canvas cover which could be breached by the crew in an emergency, enabling them to escape into the main fuselage. The canopy was split into two sections and joined by a strong welded steel frame. The canopy itself was made of Plexiglas and each compartment had its own "sliding hood" for the two crew members. The engine was mounted on two main support frames that were supported by two tubular struts. The frame structure was triangulated and emanated from the fuselage. The main frames were bolted onto the engine's top quarter. In turn, the frames were attached to the firewall by universal joints. The firewall itself was constructed from asbestos mesh with dural sheets on both sides. All conduits passing through had to be arranged so that no harmful gases could penetrate the cockpit. The fuel system comprised two fuel tanks between the main (forward) and rear spars of the (inner) anhedral wing section of the port and starboard wings, each with capacity. The tanks also had a predetermined limit which, if passed, would warn the pilot via a red warning light in the cockpit. The fuel was injected via a pump from the tanks to the engine. Should this shut down, it could be pumped manually using a hand-pump on the fuel cock armature. The powerplant was cooled by a , ring-shaped aluminium water container situated between the propeller and engine. A further container of was positioned under the engine. The control surfaces operated in much the same way as other aircraft, with the exception of the innovative automatic pull-out system. Releasing the bomb initiated the pull-out, or automatic recovery and climb, upon the deflection of the dive brakes. The pilot could override the system by exerting significant force on the control column and taking manual control. The wing was the most unusual feature. It consisted of a single centre section and two outer sections installed using four universal joints. The centre section had a large negative dihedral (anhedral) and the outer surfaces a positive dihedral. This created the inverted gull, or "cranked", wing pattern along the leading edge. The shape of the wing improved the pilot's ground visibility and also allowed a shorter undercarriage height. The centre section protruded by only on either side. The offensive armament was two 7.92 mm (.312 in) MG 17 machine guns fitted one in each wing outboard of undercarriage, operated by a mechanical pneumatics system from the pilot's control column. The rear gunner/radio operator operated one 7.92 mm (.312 in) MG 15 machine gun for defensive purposes. The engine and propeller had automatic controls, and an auto-trimmer made the aircraft tail-heavy as the pilot rolled over into his dive, lining up red lines at 60°, 75° or 80° on the cockpit side window with the horizon and aiming at the target with the sight of the fixed gun. The heavy bomb was swung down clear of the propeller on crutches prior to release. Diving procedure. Flying at , the pilot located his target through a bombsight window in the cockpit floor. The pilot moved the dive lever to the rear, limiting the "throw" of the control column. The dive brakes were activated automatically, the pilot set the trim tabs, reduced his throttle and closed the coolant flaps. The aircraft then rolled 180°, automatically nosing the aircraft into a dive. Red tabs protruded from the upper surfaces of the wing as a visual indicator to the pilot that, in case of a g-force induced black-out, the automatic dive recovery system would be activated. The Stuka dived at a 60–90° angle, holding a constant speed of due to dive-brake deployment, which increased the accuracy of the Ju 87's aim. When the aircraft was reasonably close to the target, a light on the contact altimeter (an altimeter equipped with an electrical contact which triggers at a preset altitude) came on to indicate the bomb-release point, usually at a minimum height of . The pilot released the bomb and initiated the automatic pull-out mechanism by depressing a knob on the control column. An elongated U-shaped crutch located under the fuselage swung the bomb out of the way of the propeller, and the aircraft automatically began a 6g pullout. Once the nose was above the horizon, dive brakes were retracted, the throttle was opened, and the propeller was set to climb. The pilot regained control and resumed normal flight. The coolant flaps had to be reopened quickly to prevent overheating. The automatic pull-out was not liked by all pilots. Helmut Mahlke later said that he and his unit disconnected the system because it allowed the enemy to predict the Ju 87's recovery pattern and height, making it easier for ground defences to hit an aircraft. Physical stress on the crew was severe. Human beings subjected to more than 5g in a seated position will suffer vision impairment in the form of a grey veil known to Stuka pilots as "seeing stars". They lose vision while remaining conscious; after five seconds, they black out. The Ju 87 pilots experienced the visual impairments most during "pull-up" from a dive. Eric "Winkle" Brown RN, a British test pilot and Commanding Officer of No. 1426 Flight RAF (the captured enemy aircraft Flight), tested the Ju 87 at RAE Farnborough. He said of the Stuka, "I had flown a lot of dive-bombers and it's the only one that you can dive truly vertically. Sometimes with the dive-bombers ... maximum dive is usually in the order of 60 degrees ... When flying the Stuka, because it's all automatic, you are really flying vertically ... The Stuka was in a class of its own." G-force test at Dessau. Extensive tests were carried out by the Junkers works at their Dessau plant. It was discovered that the highest load a pilot could endure was 8.5 g for three seconds, when the aircraft was pushed to its limit by the centrifugal forces. At less than 4 g, no visual problems or loss of consciousness were experienced. Above 6 g, 50% of pilots suffered visual problems, or "greyout". With 40%, vision vanished altogether from 7.5 g upwards and black-out sometimes occurred. Despite this blindness, the pilot could maintain consciousness and was capable of "bodily reactions". After more than three seconds, half the subjects passed out. The pilot would regain consciousness two or three seconds after the centrifugal forces had dropped below 3 g and had lasted no longer than three seconds. In a crouched position, pilots could withstand 7.5 g and were able to remain functional for a short duration. In this position, Junkers concluded that of pilots could withstand 8 g and perhaps 9 g for three to five seconds without vision defects which, under war conditions, was acceptable. During tests with the Ju 87 A-2, new technologies were tried out to reduce the effects of g. The pressurised cabin was of great importance during this research. Testing revealed that at high altitude, even 2 g could cause death in an unpressurised cabin and without appropriate clothing. This new technology, along with special clothing and oxygen masks, was researched and tested. When the United States Army occupied the Junkers factory at Dessau on 21 April 1945, they were both impressed at and interested in the medical flight tests with the Ju 87. Other designs. The concept of dive bombing became so popular among the leadership of the Luftwaffe that it became almost obligatory in new aircraft designs. Later bomber models like the Junkers Ju 88 and the Dornier Do 217 were equipped for dive bombing. The Heinkel He 177 strategic bomber was initially supposed to have dive bombing capabilities, a requirement that contributed to the failure of the design, with the requirement not rescinded until September 1942 by Göring. Once the Stuka became too vulnerable to fighter opposition on all fronts, work was done to develop a replacement. None of the dedicated close-support designs on the drawing board progressed far due to the impact of the war and technological difficulties. So the Luftwaffe settled on the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter aircraft, with the Fw 190F becoming the ground-attack version. The Fw 190F started to replace the Ju 87 for day missions in 1943, but the Ju 87 continued to be used as a night nuisance-raider until the end of the war. Variants. Ju 87 A. The second prototype had a redesigned single vertical stabiliser and a Jumo 210 A engine installed, and later the Jumo 210Da. The first A series variant, the A-0, was of all-metal construction, with an enclosed cockpit under a "greenhouse" well-framed canopy; bearing twin radio masts on its aft sections, diagonally mounted to either side of the airframe's planform centreline and unique to the -A version. To ease the difficulty of mass production, the leading edge of the wing was straightened out and the ailerons' two aerofoil sections had smooth leading and trailing edges. The pilot could adjust the elevator and rudder trim tabs in flight, and the tail was connected to the landing flaps, which were positioned in two parts between the ailerons and fuselage. The A-0 also had a flatter engine cowling, which gave the pilot a much better field of vision. In order for the engine cowling to be flattened, the engine was set down nearly . The fuselage was also lowered along with the gunner's position, allowing the gunner a better field of fire. The RLM ordered seven A-0s initially, but then increased the order to 11. Early in 1937, the A-0 was tested with varied bomb loads. The underpowered Jumo 210A, as pointed out by von Richthofen, was insufficient, and was quickly replaced with the Jumo 210D engine. The A-1 differed from the A-0 only slightly. As well as the installation of the Jumo 210D, the A-1 had two fuel tanks built into the inner wing, but it was not armoured or protected. The A-1 was also intended to be fitted with four MG 17 machine guns in its wings, but two of these—one per side—were omitted due to weight concerns; the pair that remained were fed a total of 500 rounds of ammunition, stored in the design's characteristic transverse strut-braced, large-planform undercarriage "trousers", not used on the Ju 87B versions and onward. The pilot relied on the Revi C 21C gun sight for the two MG 17s. The gunner had a single MG 15, with 14 drums of ammunition, each containing 75 rounds. This represented a 150-round increase in this area over the Ju 87 A-0. The A-1 was also fitted with a larger propeller. The Ju 87 was capable of carrying a bomb, but only if not carrying the rear gunner/radio operator as, even with the Jumo 210D, the Ju 87 was still underpowered for operations with more than a bomb load. All Ju 87 As were restricted to weapons (although during the Spanish Civil War missions were conducted without the gunner). The Ju 87 A-2 was retrofitted with the Jumo 210Da fitted with a two-stage supercharger. The only further significant difference between the A-1 and A-2 was the H-PA-III controllable-pitch propeller. By mid-1938, 262 Ju 87 As had been produced, 192 from the Junkers factory in Dessau and a further 70 from Weser Flugzeugbau ("Weserflug" – WFG) in Lemwerder near Bremen. The new, more powerful, Ju 87B model started to replace the Ju 87A at this time. Prototypes Production variants Ju 87 B. The Ju 87 B series was to be the first mass-produced variant. A total of six pre-production Ju 87 B-0 were produced, built from Ju 87 A airframes. The first production version was the Ju 87 B-1, with a considerably larger engine, its Jumo 211D generating 1,200 PS (), and completely redesigned fuselage and landing gear, replacing the twin radio masts of the "A" version with a single mast mounted further forward on the "greenhouse" canopy, and much simpler, lighter-weight wheel "spats" used from the -B version onwards, discarding the transverse strut bracing of the "A" version's maingear design. This new design was again tested in Spain, and after proving its abilities there, production was ramped up to 60 per month. As a result, by the outbreak of World War II, the Luftwaffe had 336 Ju 87 B-1s on hand. The B-1 was also fitted with "Jericho trumpets", essentially sirens driven by propellers with a diameter of The devices caused a loss of 20–25 km/h (10–20 mph) through drag, and over time the sirens were no longer installed on many units, although they remained in use to various extent. As an alternative, some bombs were fitted with whistles on the fin to produce the noise after release. The trumpets were a suggestion from Udet, but some authors say the idea originated from Adolf Hitler. The Ju 87 B-2s that followed had some improvements and were built in several variants that included ski-equipped versions (the B-1 also had this modification) and at the other end, with a tropical operation kit called the Ju 87 B-2 trop. Italy's Regia Aeronautica received B-2s and named them the "Picchiatello", while others went to the other members of the Axis, including Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania. The B-2 also had an oil hydraulic system for closing the cowling flaps. This continued in all the later designs. Production of the Ju 87 B started in 1937. 89 B-1s were to be built at Junkers' factory in Dessau and another 40 at the Weserflug plant in Lemwerder by July 1937. Production would be carried out by the Weserflug company after April 1938, but Junkers continued producing Ju 87 up until March 1940. Ju 87 R. A long range version of the Ju 87 B was also built, known as the Ju 87 R, the letter being an abbreviation for "Reichweite", "(operational) range". They were primarily intended for anti-shipping missions. The Ju 87 R had a B-series airframe with an additional oil tank and fuel lines to the outer wing stations to permit the use of two standardised capacity under-wing drop tanks, used by a wide variety of Luftwaffe aircraft through most of the war. This increased fuel capacity to (500 litres in main fuel tank of which 480 litres were usable + 600 litres from drop tanks). To prevent overload conditions, bomb carrying ability was often restricted to a single bomb if the aircraft was fully loaded with fuel. The Ju 87 R-1 had a B-1 airframe with the exception of a modification in the fuselage which enabled an additional oil tank. This was installed to feed the engine due to the increase in range with the extra fuel tanks. The Ju 87 R-2 had the same airframe as the B-2, and strengthened to ensure it could withstand dives of . The Jumo 211D in-line engine was installed, replacing the R-1s Jumo 211A. Due to an increase in overall weight by , the Ju 87 R-2 was slower than the Ju 87 B-1 and had a lower service ceiling. The Ju 87 R-2 had an increased range advantage of . The R-3 and R-4 were the last R variants developed. Only a few were built. The R-3 was an experimental tug for gliders and had an expanded radio system so the crew could communicate with the glider crew by way of the tow rope. The R-4 differed from the R-2 in the Jumo 211J powerplant. Known prototypes Ju 87 C. On 18 August 1937, the RLM decided to introduce the Ju 87 Tr(C). The Ju 87 C was intended to be a dive and torpedo bomber for the Kriegsmarine. The type was ordered into prototype production and available for testing in January 1938. Testing was given two months and was to begin in February and end in April 1938. The prototype V10 was to be a fixed wing test aircraft, while the following V11 would be modified with folding wings. The prototypes were Ju 87 B-0 airframes powered by Jumo 211 A engines. Owing to delays, the V10 was not completed until March 1938. It first flew on 17 March and was designated Ju 87 C-1. On 12 May, the V11 also flew for the first time. By 15 December 1939, 915 arrested landings on dry land had been made. It was found that the arresting gear winch was too weak and had to be replaced. Tests showed the average braking distance was . The Ju 87 V11 was designated C-0 on 8 October 1938. It was fitted out with standard Ju 87 C-0 equipment and better wing-folding mechanisms. The "carrier Stuka" was to be built at the Weserflug Company's Lemwerder plant between April and July 1940. Among the "special" equipment of the Ju 87 C was a two-seat rubber dinghy with a flare gun, signal ammunition and other emergency supplies. A quick fuel dump mechanism and two inflatable 750 L (200 US gal) bags in each wing and a further two 500 L (130 US gal) bags in the fuselage enabled the Ju 87 C to remain afloat for up to three days in calm seas. On 6 October 1939, with the war already underway, 120 of the planned Ju 87 Tr(C)s on order at that point were cancelled. Despite the cancellation, the tests continued using catapults. The Ju 87 C had a takeoff weight of and a speed of on departure. The Ju 87 could be launched with a SC bomb and four SC bombs under the fuselage. The C-1 was to have two MG 17s mounted in the wing with a MG 15 operated by the rear gunner. On 18 May 1940, production of the C-1 was switched to the R-1. Known prototypes Ju 87 D. Despite the Stuka's vulnerability to enemy fighters having been exposed during the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe had no choice but to continue its development, as there was no replacement aircraft in sight. The result was the D-series. In June 1941, the RLM ordered five prototypes, the Ju 87 V21–25. A Daimler-Benz DB 603 powerplant was to be installed in the Ju 87 D-1, but it did not have the power of the Jumo 211 and performed "poorly" during tests and was dropped. The Ju 87 D-series featured two coolant radiators underneath the inboard sections of the wings, while the oil cooler was relocated to the position formerly occupied by the single, undernose "chin" coolant radiator. The D-series also introduced an aerodynamically refined cockpit with better visibility and space. Armour protection was increased and a new dual-barrel 7.92 mm (.312 in) MG 81Z machine gun with an extremely high rate of fire was installed in the rear defensive position. Engine power was increased again, the Jumo 211J now delivering 1,420 PS (). Bomb carrying ability was nearly quadrupled from in the B-version to in the D-version (max. load for short ranges, overload condition), a typical bomb load ranged from . The internal fuel capacity of the Ju 87 D was raised to 800 L (of which 780 L were usable) by adding wing tanks while retaining the option to carry two 300 L drop tanks. Tests at Rechlin-Lärz Airfield revealed it made possible a flight duration of 2 hours and 15 minutes. With an extra two 300 L (80 US gal) fuel tanks, it could achieve four hours flight time. The D-2 was a variant used as a glider tug by converting older D-series airframes. It was intended as the tropical version of the D-1 and had heavier armour to protect the crew from ground fire. The armour reduced its performance and caused the Oberkommando der Luftwaffe to "place no particular value on the production of the D-2". The D-3 was an improved D-1 with more armour for its ground-attack role. Some Ju 87 D-3s were designated D-3N or D-3 trop and fitted with night or tropical equipment. The D-4 designation applied to a prototype torpedo-bomber version, which could carry a aerial torpedo on a PVC 1006 B rack—this setup would have had the capacity to carry the "Luftorpedo" LT 850, the German version of the well-proven Japanese Type 91 aerial torpedo of 848 kg (1,870 lb). The D-4 was to be converted from D-3 airframes and, in place of the carrier-specific Ju 87C series designs, operated from the aircraft carrier "". Other modifications included a flame eliminator and, unlike earlier D variants, two 20 mm MG 151/20 cannon, while the radio operator/rear gunner's ammunition supply was increased by 1,000 to 2,000 rounds. The Ju 87 D-5 was based on the D-3 design and was unique in the Ju 87 series as it had wings 0.6 metres (2 ft) longer than previous variants. The two 7.92 mm MG 17 wing guns were exchanged for more powerful 20 mm MG 151/20s to better suit the aircraft's ground-attack role. The window in the floor of the cockpit was reinforced and four, rather than the previous three, aileron hinges were installed. Higher diving speeds were obtained of up to . The range was recorded as at ground level and at . The D-6, according to "Operating instructions, works document 2097", was built in limited numbers to train pilots on "rationalised versions". Due to shortages in raw materials, it did not go into mass production. The D-7 was another ground attack aircraft based on D-1 airframes upgraded to D-5 standard (armour, wing cannons, extended wing panels), while the D-8 was similar to the D-7 but based on D-3 airframes. The D-7 and D-8 were both were fitted with exhaust flame dampers, and could conduct night operations. Production of the D-1 variant started in 1941 with 495 ordered. These aircraft were delivered between May 1941 and March 1942. The RLM wanted 832 machines produced from February 1941. The Weserflug company was tasked with their production. From June to September 1941, 40 Ju 87 Ds were expected to be built, increasing to 90 thereafter. Various production problems were encountered. One of the planned 48 was produced in July. Of the 25 the RLM hoped for in August 1941, none were delivered. In September did the first two of the planned 102 Ju 87s came off the production lines. The shortfalls continued to the end of 1941. During this time, the WFG plant in Lemwerder moved production to Berlin. Over 165 Ju 87s had not been delivered and production was only 23 Ju 87 Ds per month out of the 40 expected. By the spring of 1942 to the end of production in 1944, 3,300 Ju 87s, mostly D-1s, D-2s and D-5s had been manufactured. In January 1943, a variety of Ju 87 Ds became "test beds" for the Ju 87 G variants. At the start of 1943, the coastal Luftwaffe "Erprobungsstelle" test centre at Tarnewitz tested this combination from a static position. "Oberst" G. Wolfgang Vorwald noted the experiments were not successful, and suggested the cannon be installed on the Messerschmitt Me 410. Testing continued, and on 31 January 1943, Ju 87 D-1 W.Nr 2552 was tested by "Hauptmann" Hans-Karl Stepp near the Briansk training area. Stepp noted the increase in drag, which reduced the aircraft's speed to . Stepp also noted that the aircraft was also less agile than the existing D variants. D-1 and D-3 variants operated in combat with the BK 37 cannon in 1943. Known prototypes Ju 87 G. With the G variant, the ageing airframe of the Ju 87 found new life as an anti-tank aircraft. This was the final operational version of the Stuka, and was deployed on the Eastern Front. The reverse in German military fortunes after 1943 and the appearance of huge numbers of well-armoured Soviet tanks caused Junkers to adapt the existing design to combat this new threat. The Henschel Hs 129 had proved a potent ground attack weapon, but its large fuel tanks made it vulnerable to enemy fire, prompting the RLM to say, "that in the shortest possible time a replacement of the Hs 129 type must take place." With Soviet tanks the priority targets, the development of a further variant as a successor to the Ju 87D began in November 1942. On 3 November, Milch raised the question of replacing the Ju 87, or redesigning it altogether. It was decided to keep the design as it was, but the power-plant was upgraded to a Junkers Jumo 211J, and two cannons were added. The variant was also designed to carry a free-fall bomb load. Furthermore, the armoured protection of the Ilyushin Il-2 "Sturmovik" was copied to protect the crew from ground fire now that the Ju 87 would be required to conduct low level attacks. Hans-Ulrich Rudel, a Stuka ace, had suggested using two 37 mm (1.46 in) Flak 18 guns, each one in a self-contained under-wing gun pod, as the "Bordkanone BK 3,7", after achieving success against Soviet tanks with the 20 mm MG 151/20 cannon. These gun pods were fitted to a Ju 87 D-1, W.Nr 2552. The first flight of the machine took place on 31 January 1943, piloted by Stepp. The continuing problems with about two dozen of the Ju 88P-1 and slow development of the Henschel Hs 129 B-3, both designs using the large, 7.5 cm Pak 40-based, autoloading Bordkanone 7,5 7.5 cm (2.95 in) cannon in a conformal gun pod beneath the fuselage, meant the Ju 87G was put into production. In April 1943, the first production Ju 87 G-1s were delivered to front line units. The two 37 mm (1.46 in) "Bordkanone" BK 3,7 cannons were mounted in under-wing gun pods, each loaded with two six-round magazines of armour-piercing tungsten carbide-cored ammunition. With these weapons, the "Kanonenvogel" ("cannon-bird"), as it was nicknamed, proved very successful in the hands of Stuka aces such as Rudel. The G-1 was converted from older D-series airframes, retaining the smaller wing, but without the dive brakes. The G-2 was similar to the G-1 except for use of the extended wing of the D-5. 208 G-2s were built and at least a further 22 more were converted from D-3 airframes. Only a handful of production Gs were committed in the Battle of Kursk. On the opening day of the offensive, Hans-Ulrich Rudel flew the only "official" Ju 87 G, although a significant number of Ju 87 D variants were fitted with the 37 mm (1.46 in) cannon, and operated as unofficial Ju 87 Gs before the battle. In June 1943, the RLM ordered 20 Ju 87Gs as production variants. Night-harassment variants. The Ju 87 had been used in the night intruder role in 1940 and 1941 during The Blitz, but the Soviet Air Force practice of harassing German ground forces using antiquated Polikarpov Po-2 and R-5 biplanes at night to drop flares and fragmentation bombs, inspired the Luftwaffe to form its own "Störkampfstaffeln" (harassment squadrons). On 23 July 1942, Junkers offered the Ju 87 B-2, R-2 and R-4s with "Flammenvernichter" ("flame eliminators"). On 10 November 1943, the RLM GL/C-E2 Division finally authorised the design in directive No. 1117. The need to equip night units and the phasing out of Ju 87s from ground attack groups in favour of the Fw 190, enabled the use of D-5 airframes awaiting repair and D-7 and 8s already in conversion units. The latter variants were either conversions or modified D-1 and D-3 air frames. Adding the necessary equipment, radios and dampeners was a requirement regardless of whether the aircraft was a production D-5 or a D-1 or 3 that had undergone wing changes. The change in designations due to conversions was not readily apparent, for with wing changes, the serial number and designation was applied to the fuselage by the manufacture which remained unaltered by wing changes. Some sub-contractors added an "N" designation (Nacht) for clarity on D-3 and 5s . Others added the roman numeral VII to the D-7s, perhaps to reflect that the aircraft was fitted with the FuG 7 radio. A great deal of confusion exists concerning the D-7. Its existence has been questioned, but the type is listed in Junkers company records and in the "Der Reichsminister der Luftfahrt" and "Oberbefehlshaber der Luftwaffe Technisches Amt". There was no production "nacht stuka", and modifications could vary according to the sub-contractor and depending on what parts were available. A Stuka repair centre was set up at Wels-Lichtenegg. From May 1940 to November 1944, 746 were repaired and flight-tested there. In the winter 1943/44, the "Metal Works Lower Saxony Brinckmann und Mergell" company (Menibum) converted approximately 300 Ju 87D-3 and 5s to night versions. Dive-brakes were removed there, while gun muzzles and dampers were installed to eliminate exhaust and muzzle flash. The Jumo 211P engine was installed in some cases. It took 2,170 technicians and workers to carry out the conversions. Total figures for conversions to night flying operations are unknown. The company's equipment was seized by the Soviet Union at the end of the war, and the records were lost or destroyed. A main piece of equipment, hereto not installed in the Ju 87, was the FuG 101 Electronic Radio Altimeter. This was used to measure height. Some Ju 87s also used FuG 16Z transmitter/receiver set to augment the FuG 25 IFF (Identification Friend or Foe). Pilots were also asked to complete the new "Blind Flying Certificate 3", which was especially introduced for this new type of operation. Pilots were trained at night, over unfamiliar terrain, and forced to rely on their instruments for direction. The Ju 87's standard Revi C12D gunsight was replaced with the new "Nachtrevi" ("Night revi") C12N. On some Ju 87s, the Revi 16D was exchanged for the Nachtrevi 16D. To help the pilot see his instrument panel, a violet light was installed. On 15 November 1942, the Auxiliary "Staffel" was created. By mid-1943, "Luftflotte" 1 was given four "Staffeln" while "Luftflotte" 4 and "Luftwaffe Kommando Ost" (Luftwaffe Command East) were given six and two respectively. In the first half of 1943, 12 "Nachtschlachtgruppen" ("night battle groups"—NSGr) had been formed, flying a multitude of different types of aircraft, including the Ju 87, which proved itself ideally suited to the low-level slow flying needed. NSGr 1 and 2 fought with some success on the Western Front during the Battle of Normandy and Battle of the Bulge. NSGr 7 operated in "anti-partisan" role from bases in Albania from July 1944, replacing their use of German trainers. The 3rd and 4th group served on the Eastern Front, the 8th in the Arctic and the 9th in Italy. NSGr 20 fought against the Western Allied invasion of Germany in 1945. Photographic evidence exists of 16 NSGr 20 Ju 87s lining up to take-off in the woods circling the Lippe airfield, Germany while under attack from Republic P-47 Thunderbolts of the USAAF IX Tactical Air Command. The unit operated against the Ludendorff Bridge during the Battle of Remagen. Production. Despite initial production issues with the Ju 87, the RLM ordered 216 Ju 87 A-1s into production and wanted to receive delivery of all machines between January 1936 and 1938. The Junkers production capacity was fully occupied and licensing to other production facilities became necessary. The first 35 Ju 87 A-1s were therefore produced by the Weser Flugzeugbau (WFG). By 1 September 1939, 360 Ju 87 As and Bs had been built by the Junkers factories at Dessau and Weserflug factory in Lemwerder near Bremen. By 30 September 1939, Junkers had received 2,365,196 Reichsmark (RM) for Ju 87 construction orders. The RLM paid another 243,646 RM for development orders. According to audit records in Berlin, by the end of the financial year on 30 September 1941, 3,059,000 RM had been spent on Ju 87 airframes. By 30 June 1940, 697 Ju 87 B-1s and 129 B-2s alone had been produced. Another 105 R-1s and seven R-2s had been built. The range of the B-2 was insufficient, and dropped in favor of the Ju 87 R long-range versions in the second half of 1940. The 105 R-1s were converted to R-2 status and a further 616 production R-2s were ordered. In May 1941, the development of the D-1 was planned and was ordered into production by March 1942. The expansion of the Ju 88 production lines to compensate for the withdrawal of Dornier Do 17 production delayed production of the Ju 87 D. The Weserflug plant in Lemwerder experienced production shortfalls. This prompted Milch to visit and threaten the company into meeting the RLM's Ju 87 D-1 requirements on 23 February 1942. To meet these demands, 700 skilled workers were needed. Skilled workers had been called up for military service in the Wehrmacht. Junkers were able to supply 300 German workers to the Weserflug factory, and as an interim solution, Soviet prisoners of war and Soviet civilians deported to Germany. Working around the clock, the shortfall was made good. WFG received an official commendation. By May 1942, demand increased further. Chief of Procurement General Walter Herthel found that each unit needed 100 Ju 87s as standard strength and an average of 20 per month to cover attrition. Not until June–December 1942 did production capacity increase, and 80 Ju 87s were produced per month. By 17 August 1942, production had climbed rapidly after Blohm & Voss BV 138 production was scaled down and licence work had shut down at WFG. Production now reached 150 Ju 87 D airframes per month, but spare parts were failing to reach the same production levels. Undercarriage parts were in particularly short supply. Milch ordered production to 350 Ju 87s per month in September 1942. This was not achievable due to the insufficient production capacity in the Reich. The RLM considered setting up production facilities in Slovakia. But this would delay production until the buildings and factories could be furnished with the machine tools. These tools were also in short supply, and the RLM hoped to purchase them from Switzerland and Italy. The Slovaks could provide 3,500–4,000 workers, but no technical personnel. The move would produce only another 25 machines per month at a time when demand was increasing. In October, production plans were dealt another blow when one of WFGs plants burned down, leaving a chronic shortage of tailwheels and undercarriage parts. Junkers director and member of the Luftwaffe industry council Carl Frytag reported that by January 1943 only 120 Ju 87s could be produced at Bremen and 230 at Berlin-Tempelhof. Decline and end of production. After evaluating Ju 87 operations on the Eastern Front, Göring ordered production limited to 200 per month in total. "" ("General of Ground Attack") Ernst Kupfer decided continued development would "hardly bring any further tactical value". Adolf Galland, a fighter pilot with operational and combat experience in ground attack, said that abandoning development would be premature, but 150 machines per month would be sufficient. On 28 July 1943, strike and bomber production was to be scaled down, and fighter and bomber destroyer production given priority. On 3 August 1943, Milch contradicted this and declared that this increase in fighter production would not affect production of the Ju 87, Ju 188, Ju 288 and Ju 290. This was an important consideration as the life expectancy of a Ju 87 had been reduced (since 1941) from 9.5 months to 5.5 months to just 100 operational flying hours. On 26 October, Kupfer reported the Ju 87 could no longer survive in operations and that the Focke-Wulf Fw 190F should take its place. Milch finally agreed and ordered the minimal continuance of Ju 87 D-3 and D-5 production for a smooth transition period. In May 1944, production wound down. 78 Ju 87s were built in May and 69 rebuilt from damaged machines. In the next six months, 438 Ju 87 Ds and Gs were added to the Ju 87 force as new or repaired aircraft. It is unknown whether any Ju 87s were built from parts unofficially after December 1944 and the end of production. Overall, 550 Ju 87 As and B2s were completed at the Junkers factory in Dessau. Production of the Ju 87 R and D variants was transferred to the Weserflug company, which produced 5,930 of the 6,500 Ju 87s produced in total. During the course of the war, little damage was done to the WFG plant at Lemwerder. Attacks throughout 1940-45 caused little lasting damage and succeeded only in damaging some Ju 87 airframes, in contrast to the Focke-Wulf plant in Bremen. At Berlin-Tempelhof, little delay or damage was caused to Ju 87 production, despite the heavy bombings and large-scale destruction inflicted on other targets. The WFG again went unscathed. The Junkers factory at Dessau was heavily attacked, but not until Ju 87 production had ceased. The Ju 87 repair facility at the Wels aircraft works was destroyed on 30 May 1944, and the site abandoned Ju 87 links. Operational history. Spanish Civil War. Among the many German aircraft designs that participated in the Condor Legion, and as part of other German involvement in the Spanish Civil War, a single Ju 87 A-0 (the V4 prototype) was allocated serial number 29-1 and was assigned to the VJ/88, the experimental "Staffel" of the Legion's fighter wing. The aircraft was secretly loaded onto the ship "Usaramo" and departed Hamburg harbour on the night of 1 August 1936, arriving in Cádiz five days later. The only known information pertaining to its combat career in Spain is that it was piloted by "Unteroffizier" Herman Beuer, and took part in the Nationalist offensive against Bilbao in 1937. Presumably the aircraft was then secretly returned to Germany. In January 1938, three Ju 87 As from the Legion Condor arrived. Several problems became evident—the spatted undercarriage sank into muddy airfield surfaces, and the spats were temporarily removed. The maximum bomb load could only be carried if the gunner vacated his seat, therefore the bomb load was restricted to . These aircraft supported the Nationalist forces and carried out anti-shipping missions until they returned to Germany in October 1938. During the Catalonia Offensive in January 1939, the Junkers Ju 87 returned to Spain. On the morning of 21 January 1939, 34 Heinkel He 111, along with some escorts and three Ju 87B, attacked the Port of Barcelona, five days before the city was captured by the Nationalists. 29 Republican fighters were defending the city. There were more than 100 aircraft operating over the city and, while a Ju 87 was dive-bombing a ship, a Republican Polikarpov I-15 pilot, Francisco Alférez Jiménez, claimed it destroyed near El Vendrell, in Comarruga, but the Stuka was capable of landing on the beach without crashing. That was the only time a Stuka attacked the capital of Catalonia. On 24 January 1939, a group of Stukas prevented the destruction of a bridge near Barcelona by strafing the demolition engineers on Molins de Rei. During the attack the Republican ground defenders, equipped with a quadruple PM M1910 mounting, hit one pilot (Heinz Bohne) in both legs and the Stuka crashed, seriously injuring Bohne, and his machine gunner, Albert Conrad. Those two were the only Stuka casualties of the war. As with the Ju 87 A-0, the B-1s were returned discreetly to the Reich. The experience of the Spanish Civil War proved invaluable—air and ground crews perfected their skills, and equipment was evaluated under combat conditions. The Ju 87 had however not been tested against numerous and well-coordinated fighter opposition; this lesson was learned later at great cost to the Stuka crews. Second World War. All Stuka units were moved to Germany's eastern border in preparation for the invasion of Poland. On the morning of 15 August 1939, during a mass-formation dive-bombing demonstration for high-ranking commanders of the Luftwaffe at Neuhammer training grounds near Sagan, 13 Ju 87s and 26 crew members were lost when they crashed into the ground almost simultaneously. The planes dived through clouds, expecting to release their practice bombs and pull out of the dive once below the cloud ceiling. They were unaware that the ceiling was too low and unexpected ground mist formed, leaving them no time to pull out of the dive. Poland. On 1 September 1939, the Wehrmacht invaded Poland, beginning World War II. "Generalquartiermeister der Luftwaffe" records indicate a total force of 366 Ju 87 A and Bs were available for operations on 31 August 1939. The first Ju 87 operation was to destroy Polish demolition charges fixed to the rail bridges over the Vistula, that linked Eastern Germany to the Danzig corridor and East Prussia as well as Polish Pomerania. To do this, Ju 87s were ordered to perform a low-level attack on the Polish Army Garrison headquarters. II. and III./StG 1 targeted the cables along the embankment, the electricity plant and signal boxes at Dirschau (now Tczew, Poland. At exactly 04:26 CET, a "Kette" ("chain" or flight of three) of Ju 87s of 3./StG 1 led by "Staffelkapitän" "Oberleutnant" Bruno Dilly carried out the first bombing attack of the war. The Stukas attacked 11 minutes before the official German declaration of hostilities and hit the targets. The Ju 87s achieved complete success. The mission failed as the German Army delayed their advance allowing the Poles to carry out repairs and destroy all but one of the bridges before the Germans could reach them. A Ju 87 achieved the first air victory during World War II on the morning of 1 September 1939, when "" "Leutnant" Frank Neubert of I./StG 2 "Immelmann" shot down a Polish PZL P.11c fighter while it was taking off from Balice airfield; its pilot, Captain Mieczysław Medwecki, was killed. In air-to-air combat, Ju 87 formations were well protected by German fighter aircraft and losses were light against the tenacious, but short lived opposition. The Ju 87s reverted to ground attack missions for the campaign after the opening air attacks. Ju 87s were involved in the controversial but effective attacks at Wieluń. The lack of anti-aircraft artillery in the Polish Army magnified the impact of the Ju 87. At Piotrków Trybunalski I./StG 76 and I./StG 2 destroyed a Polish infantry division de-training there. Troop trains were also easy targets. StG 77 destroyed one such target at Radomsko. During the Battle of Radom six Polish divisions trapped by encircling German forces were forced to surrender after a relentless four-day bombardment by StG 51, 76 and 77. Employed in this assault were fragmentation bombs, which caused appalling casualties to the Polish ground troops. Demoralised, the Poles surrendered. The Stukas also participated in the Battle of Bzura which resulted in the breaking of Polish resistance. The dive bomber wings ("Sturzkampfgeschwader") alone dropped 388 tonnes (428 tons) of bombs during this battle. During the Siege of Warsaw and the Battle of Modlin, the Ju 87 wings contributed to the defeat of well-entrenched and resolute Polish forces. IV(Stuka)./LG 1 was particularly effective in destroying the fortified Modlin. The "Luftwaffe" had a few anti-shipping naval units such as 4.(St)/TrGr 186 to deal with Polish naval forces. This unit performed effectively, sinking the 1540-ton destroyer "Wicher" and the minelayer "Gryf" of the Polish Navy (both moored in a harbour). The torpedo boat "Mazur" (412 tons) was sunk at Oksywie; the gunboat "General Haller" (441 tons) was sunk in Hel Harbour on 6 September—during the Battle of Hel—along with the minesweeper "Mewa" (183 tons) and its sister ships "Czapla" and "Jaskolka" with several auxiliaries. The Polish naval units trapped in the Baltic were destroyed by Ju 87 operations. Once again, enemy air opposition was light, and the "Stukawaffe" (Stuka force) lost 31 aircraft during the campaign. Norway. Operation Weserübung began on 9 April 1940 with the invasions of Norway and Denmark. Denmark capitulated within the day; Norway continued to resist with British and French help. The campaign was not a "Blitzkrieg" of fast-moving armoured divisions supported by air power as the mountainous terrain ruled out close Panzer/Stuka cooperation. Instead, the Germans relied on paratroops transported by Junkers Ju 52s and specialised ski troops. The Ju 87s were given the role of ground attack and anti-shipping missions; they proved to be the most effective weapon in the Luftwaffe's armoury carrying out the latter task. On 9 April, the first Stukas took off at 10:59 from occupied airfields to destroy Oscarsborg Fortress, after the loss of the German cruiser "Blücher", which disrupted the amphibious landings in Oslo through Oslofjord. The 22 Ju 87s had helped suppress the Norwegian defenders during the ensuing Battle of Drøbak Sound, but the defenders did not surrender until after Oslo had been captured. As a result, the German naval operation failed. StG 1 caught the 735 ton Norwegian destroyer "Æger" off Stavanger and hit her in the engine room. "Æger" was run aground and scuttled. The Stuka wings were now equipped with the new Ju 87 R, which differed from the Ju 87 B by having increased internal fuel capacity and two 300l underwing drop tanks for more range. The Stukas had numerous successes against Allied naval vessels and in particular the Royal Navy which posed a formidable threat to German naval and coastal operations. The British heavy cruiser HMS "Suffolk" was attacked on 17 April. Her stern was virtually destroyed but she limped back to Scapa Flow with 33 dead and 38 wounded crewmen. The light cruiser squadron consisting of the sister ships "Curacoa" and "Curlew" were subjected to lengthy attacks which badly damaged the former for one Ju 87 lost. A witness later said, "they threatened to take our masthead with them in every screaming nerve-racking dive". The same fate nearly befell the sloop "Black Swan". On 27 April, a bomb passed through the quarterdeck, a wardroom, a water tank and 4-inch (10.2 cm) ammunition magazine and out through the hull to explode in the fjord. The muffled explosion limited the damage to her hull. "Black Swan" fired 1,000 rounds, but failed to shoot down any of her attackers. The sloop was sunk on 30 April. The French large destroyer "Bison" was sunk along with by "Sturzkampfgeschwader" 1 on 3 May 1940 during the evacuation from Namsos. "Bison"s forward magazine was hit, killing 108 of the crew. "Afridi", which had taken off some of "Bison"s survivors, was sunk in a later attack with the loss of 63 sailors. 49 officers and men, 13 soldiers and 33 survivors from "Bison" were lost aboard "Afridi". All ships were targeted. Armed trawlers were used under the German air umbrella in an attempt to make smaller targets. Such craft were not armoured or armed. The Ju 87s demonstrated this on 30 April when they sank the "Jardine" (452 tons) and "Warwickshire" (466 tons). On 15 May, the Polish troopship "Chrobry" (11,442 tons) was sunk. The "Stukas" also had an operational effect, even when little damage was done. On 1 May 1940, Vice Admiral Lionel Wells commanded a Home Fleet expedition of seven destroyers, the heavy cruiser "Berwick", the aircraft carriers "Glorious" and "Ark Royal", and the battleship "Valiant". The carriers mounted fighter patrols over the ships evacuating troops from Andalsnes. The "Stuka" waves (accompanied by He 111s) achieved several near misses, but were unable to obtain a hit. Nevertheless, Wells ordered that no ship was to operate within range of the Ju 87s' Norwegian airfields. The Ju 87s had, in effect, driven British sea power from the Norwegian coast. Moreover, Victor reported to the Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet, Admiral Charles Forbes, that carrier operations were no longer practical under the current conditions. In the following weeks, StG 1 continued their sea operations. Off Namsos on 5 May 1940, they caught and sank the Royal Norwegian Navy transports "Aafjord" (335 tons) and "Blaafjeld" (1,146 tons). The Ju 87s then took to bombing the town and the airstrip to support the German forces under the command of Eduard Dietl. The town fell in the first week of May. In the remaining four weeks of the campaign in Norway, the Ju 87s supported German forces in containing the Allied land forces in Narvik until they withdrew in early June. France and the Low Countries. The Ju 87 units had learned lessons from the Polish and Norwegian campaigns. The failures in Poland, and of the "Stukas" of I./StG 1 to silence the Oscarsborg fort, ensured even more attention was paid to pin-point bombing during the Phoney War period. This was to pay off in the Western campaign. When "Fall Gelb" (Case Yellow) began on 10 May 1940, the "Stuka" helped swiftly neutralise the fortress of Eben Emael, Belgium. The headquarters of the commander responsible for ordering the destruction of the Belgian Army-held bridges along the Albert Canal was stationed in the village of Lanaken (14 km/ mi to the north). The "Stuka" demonstrated its accuracy when the small building was destroyed by four direct hits. As a result, only one of the three bridges was destroyed, allowing the German Army to rapidly advance in the opening days of the Battle of Belgium. The Ju 87 proved to be a useful asset to Army Group B in the Low Countries. In pitched battles against French armoured forces at Hannut and Gembloux, Ju 87s effectively neutralised artillery and armour. The Ju 87s also assisted German forces in the Battle of the Netherlands. The Dutch Navy in concert with the British were evacuating the Dutch royal family and Dutch gold reserves through the country's ports. Ju 87s sank the Dutch ships "Jan Van Galen" (1,316 tons) and "Johan Maurits Van Nassau" (1,520 tons) as they provided close-shore artillery support at Waalhaven and the Afsluitdijk. The British "Valentine" was crippled, beached and scuttled while "Winchester", "Whitley" and "Westminster" were damaged. "Whitley" was later beached and scuttled after an air attack on 19 May. The Ju 87 units were also instrumental in the Battle of France. It was here that most of the Ju 87-equipped units were concentrated. They assisted in the breakthrough at Sedan, the critical and first major land battle of the war on French territory. The "Stukawaffe" flew 300 sorties against French positions, with StG 77 alone flying 201 individual missions. The Ju 87s benefited from heavy fighter protection from Messerschmitt Bf 109 units. When resistance was organised, the Ju 87s could be vulnerable. For example, on 12 May, near Sedan, six French Curtiss H-75s from Groupe de Chasse I/5 (Group Interception) attacked a formation of Ju 87s, claiming 11 out of 12 unescorted Ju 87s without loss (the Germans recorded six losses over Sedan entire). For the most part, Allied opposition was disorganised. During the battles of Montcornet, Arras, Bolougne, and Calais, Ju 87 operations broke up counterattacks and offered pin-point aerial artillery support for German infantry. The Luftwaffe benefited from excellent ground-to-air communications throughout the campaign. Radio equipped forward liaison officers could call upon the Stukas and direct them to attack enemy positions along the axis of advance. In some cases the Stukas responded in 10–20 minutes. Hans Seidemann (Richthofen's Chief of Staff) said that "never again was such a smoothly functioning system for discussing and planning joint operations achieved." During the Battle of Dunkirk, many Allied ships were lost to Ju 87 attacks while evacuating British and French troops. The French destroyer was sunk on 21 May 1940, followed by the paddle steamer "Crested Eagle" on 28 May. The French Channel-steamer "Côte d'Arzur" (3,047) followed. The Ju 87s operated to maximum effectiveness when the weather allowed. RAF fighter units were held back and Allied air cover was patchy at best. On 29 May the Royal Navy destroyer HMS "Grenade" was severely damaged by a Ju 87 attack within Dunkirk's harbour, and subsequently sank. The French destroyer "Mistral" was crippled by bomb damage the same day. "Jaguar" and "Verity" were badly damaged while the trawlers "Calvi" and "Polly Johnson" (363 and 290 tons) disintegrated under bombardment. The merchant ship "Fenella" (2,376 tons) was sunk having taken on 600 soldiers. The attacks brought the evacuation to a halt for a time. The ferries "Lorina" and "Normannia" (1,564 and 1,567 tons) were sunk also. By 29 May, the Allies had lost 31 vessels sunk and 11 damaged. On 1 June the Ju 87s sank the "Halcyon"-class minesweeper "Skipjack" while the destroyer "Keith" was sunk and "Basilisk" was crippled before being scuttled by "Whitehall". "Whitehall" was later badly damaged and along with "Ivanhoe", staggered back to Dover. "Havant", commissioned for just three weeks, was sunk and in the evening the French destroyer "Foudroyant" sank after a mass-attack. Further victories against shipping were claimed before nightfall on 1 June. The steamer "Pavon" was lost while carrying 1,500 Dutch soldiers most of whom were killed. The oil tanker "Niger" was also destroyed. A flotilla of French minesweepers were also lost—"Denis Papin" (264 tons), the "Le Moussaillon" (380 tons) and "Venus" (264 tons). In total, 89 merchantmen (of 126,518 grt) were lost, and of 40 RN destroyers used in the battle, eight were sunk (one to an E-boat and one to a submarine), and a further 23 damaged and out of service. The campaign ended after the French surrender on 25 June 1940. Allied air power had been ineffective and disorganised, and as a result, "Stuka" losses were mainly due to ground fire. 120 machines, one-third of the Stuka force, were destroyed or damaged by all causes from 10 May to 25 June 1940. Battle of Britain. For the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe's order of battle included bomber wings equipped with the Ju 87. Lehrgeschwader 2's IV.(St), Sturzkampfgeschwader 1's III. Gruppe and Sturzkampfgeschwader 2's III. Gruppe, Sturzkampfgeschwader 51 and Sturzkampfgeschwader 3's I. Gruppe were committed to the battle. As an anti-shipping weapon, the Ju 87 proved a potent weapon in the early stages of the battle. On 4 July 1940, StG 2 made a successful attack on a convoy in the English Channel, sinking four freighters: "Britsum", "Dallas City", "Deucalion" and "Kolga". Six more were damaged. That afternoon, 33 Ju 87s delivered the single most deadly air assault on British territory in history, when 33 Ju 87s of III./StG 51, avoiding Royal Air Force (RAF) interception, sank the 5,500 ton anti-aircraft ship in Portland Harbour, killing 176 of its 298 crew. One of "Foylebank's" gunners, Leading Seaman John F. Mantle continued to fire on the Stukas as the ship sank. He was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross for remaining at his post despite being mortally wounded. Mantle may have been responsible for the single Ju 87 lost during the raid. During August, the Ju 87s also had some success. On 13 August the opening of the main German attacks on airfields took place; it was known to the Luftwaffe as "Adlertag" ("Eagle Day"). Bf 109s of Jagdgeschwader 26 (JG 26) were sent out in advance of the main strike and drew off RAF fighters, allowing 86 Ju 87s of StG 1 to attack RAF Detling in Kent unhindered. The attack killed the station commander, destroyed 20 RAF aircraft on the ground and a great many of the airfield's buildings. Detling was not an RAF Fighter Command station. The Battle of Britain proved for the first time that the Junkers Ju 87 was vulnerable in hostile skies against well-organised and determined fighter opposition. The Ju 87, like other dive bombers, was slow and possessed inadequate defences. Furthermore, it could not be effectively protected by fighters because of its low speed, and the very low altitudes at which it ended its dive bomb attacks. The Stuka depended on air superiority, the very thing being contested over Britain. It was withdrawn from attacks on Britain in August after prohibitive losses, leaving the Luftwaffe without precision ground-attack aircraft. Steady losses had occurred throughout their participation in the battle. On 18 August, known as the Hardest Day because both sides suffered heavy losses, the Stuka was withdrawn after 16 were destroyed and many others damaged. According to the Generalquartiermeister der Luftwaffe, 59 Stukas had been destroyed and 33 damaged to varying degrees in six weeks of operations. Over 20% of the total Stuka strength had been lost between 8 and 18 August; and the myth of the Stuka shattered. The Ju 87s did succeed in sinking six warships, 14 merchant ships, badly damaging seven airfields and three Chain Home radar stations, and destroying 49 British aircraft, mainly on the ground. On 19 August, the units of VIII. Fliegerkorps moved up from their bases around Cherbourg-Octeville and concentrated in the Pas de Calais under Luftflotte 2, closer to the area of the proposed invasion of Britain. On 13 September, the Luftwaffe targeted airfields again, with a small number of Ju 87s crossing the coast at Selsey and heading for Tangmere. After a lull, anti-shipping operations attacks were resumed by some Ju 87 units from 1 November 1940, as part of the new winter tactic of enforcing a blockade. Over the next 10 days, seven merchant ships were sunk or damaged, mainly in the Thames Estuary, for the loss of four Ju 87s. On 14 November 19 Stukas from III./St.G 1 with escort drawn from JG 26 and JG 51 went out against another convoy; as no targets were found over the estuary, the Stukas attacked Dover, their alternative target. Bad weather resulted in a decline of anti-shipping operations, and before long the Ju 87 groups began re-deploying to Poland, as part of the concealed build-up for Operation Barbarossa. By spring 1941, only St.G 1 with 30 Ju 87s remained facing the United Kingdom. Operations on a small scale continued throughout the winter months into March. Targets included ships at sea, the Thames Estuary, the Chatham naval dockyard and Dover and night-bomber sorties made over the Channel. These attacks were resumed the following winter. North Africa and the Mediterranean. After the Italian defeats in the Italo-Greek War and Operation Compass in North Africa, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht ordered the deployment of German forces to these theatres. Amongst the Luftwaffe contingent deployed was the command unit StG 3, which touched down in Sicily in December 1940. In the next few days, two groups—80 Stukas—were deployed under X. Fliegerkorps. The first task of the "Korps" was to attack British shipping passing between Sicily and Africa, in particular the convoys aimed at re-supplying Malta. The Ju 87s first made their presence felt by subjecting the British aircraft carrier to heavy attack. The crews were confident that they could sink it as the flight deck had an area of about . On 10 January 1941, the Stuka crews were told that four direct hits with bombs would be enough to sink the carrier. The Ju 87s delivered six and three damaging near-misses but the ship's engines were untouched and she reached the besieged harbour of Malta. The "Regia Aeronautica" was equipped for a while with the Stukas. In 1939, the Italian government asked the RLM to supply 100 Ju 87s. Italian pilots were sent to Graz in Austria to be trained for dive-bombing aircraft. In the spring of 1940, between 72 and 108 Ju 87 B-1s, some of them ex-Luftwaffe aircraft, were delivered to 96° "Gruppo Bombardamento a Tuffo". The Italian Stuka, renamed "Picchiatello", was in turn assigned to "Gruppi" 97°, 101° and 102°. The "Picchiatelli" were used against Malta, Allied convoys in Mediterranean and in North Africa (where they took part in conquering Tobruk). They were used by the Regia Aeronautica up to 1942. Some of the "Picchiatelli" saw action in the opening phase of the Italian invasion of Greece in October 1940. Their numbers were low and ineffective in comparison to German operations. The Italian forces were quickly pushed back. By early 1941, the Greeks had pushed into Italian-occupied Albania. Once again, Hitler decided to send military aid to his ally. Before the Luftwaffe could intervene, the Italian Ju 87s achieved some successes. 97 "Gruppo" (group) and its 239 "Squadriglia" (squadron) sinking the Hellenic Navy freighter "Susanah" off Corfu on 4 April 1941 while the torpedo boat "Proussa" was sunk later in the day. On 21 April the Greek freighter "Ioanna" was sunk and they accounted for the British tanker "Hekla" off Tobruk on 25 May and then the Royal Australian Navy destroyer "Waterhen" on 20 June. The British gunboat "Cricket" and supply submarine "Cachalot" became victims. The former was crippled and later sunk by Italian warships. In March, the pro-German Yugoslav government was toppled. A furious Hitler ordered the attack to be expanded to include Yugoslavia. Operation Marita commenced on 7 April. The Luftwaffe committed StG 1, 2 and 77 to the campaign. The Stuka once again spearheaded the air assault, with a front line strength of 300 machines, against minimal Yugoslav resistance in the air, allowing the Stukas to develop a fearsome reputation in this region. Operating unmolested, they took a heavy toll of ground forces, suffering only light losses to ground fire. The effectiveness of the dive bombers helped bring about Yugoslav capitulation in ten days. The Stukas also took a peripheral part in Operation Punishment, Hitler's retribution bombing of Belgrade. The dive bombers were to attack airfields and anti-aircraft gun positions as the level bombers struck civilian targets. Belgrade was badly damaged, with 2,271 people killed and 12,000 injured. In Greece, despite British aid, little air opposition was encountered. As the Allies withdrew and resistance collapsed, the Allies began evacuating to Crete. The Stukas inflicted severe damage on Allied shipping. On 22 April, the 1,389 ton destroyers "Psara" and "Ydra" were sunk. In the next two days, the Greek naval base at Piraeus lost 23 vessels to Stuka attack. During the Battle of Crete, the Ju 87s also played a significant role. On 21–22 May 1941, the Germans attempted to send in reinforcements to Crete by sea but lost 10 vessels to "Force D" under the command of Rear Admiral Irvine Glennie. The force, consisting of the cruisers , and , forced the remaining German ships to retreat. The Stukas were called upon to deal with the British naval threat. On 21 May, the destroyer was sunk and the next day the battleship was damaged and the cruiser was sunk, with the loss of 45 officers and 648 ratings. The Ju 87s also crippled the cruiser that morning, (she was later finished off by Bf 109 fighter bombers) while sinking the destroyer with one hit. As the Battle of Crete drew to a close, the Allies began yet another withdrawal. On 23 May, the Royal Navy lost the destroyers and , followed by on 26 May; "Orion" and "Dido" were also severely damaged. "Orion" had been evacuating 1,100 soldiers to North Africa; 260 of them were killed and another 280 wounded. The dive bomber wing supported "Generalfeldmarschall" Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps in its two-year campaign in North Africa; its other main task was attacking Allied shipping. In 1941, Ju 87 operations in North Africa were dominated by the Siege of Tobruk, which lasted for over seven months. It served during the Battle of Gazala and the First Battle of El Alamein, as well as the decisive Second Battle of El Alamein, which drove Rommel back to Tunisia. As the tide turned and Allied air power grew in the autumn of 1942, the Ju 87 became very vulnerable and losses were heavy. The entry of the Americans into North Africa with the Operation Torch invasion of French North Africa made the situation far worse; the Stuka was obsolete in what was now a fighter-bomber's war. The Bf 109 and Fw 190 could at least fight enemy fighters on equal terms after dropping their ordnance but the Stuka could not. The Ju 87's vulnerability was demonstrated on 11 November 1942, when 15 Ju 87Ds were shot down by United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) Curtiss P-40Fs in minutes. According to Ring and Shores there were 15 Ju 87s on the mission, 2 Squadron SAAF shot down eight with four probable and three were shot down by 57th Fighter Group. Two South-African and one American lost shot down by German fighter escort. Three Stuka crews were captured, one was wounded. By 1943, the Allies enjoyed air supremacy in North Africa. The Ju 87s ventured out in "Rotte" strength only, often jettisoning their bombs at the first sight of enemy aircraft. Adding to this trouble, the German fighters had only enough fuel to cover the Ju 87s on takeoff, their most vulnerable point. After that, the Stukas were on their own. The dive bombers continued operations in southern Europe; after the Italian surrender in September 1943, the Ju 87 participated in the last campaign-sized victory over the Western Allies, the Dodecanese Campaign. The Dodecanese Islands had been occupied by the British; the Luftwaffe committed 75 Stukas of StG 3 based in Megara (I./StG 3) and Argos (II.StG 3; from 17 October on Rhodes), to recover the islands. With the RAF bases away, the Ju 87 helped the German landing forces rapidly conquer the islands. On 5 October the minelayer "Lagnano" was sunk along with a patrol vessel, a steam ship and the auxiliary landing ship "Porto Di Roma". On 24 October Ju 87s sank the landing craft LCT-115 and cargo ship "Taganrog" at Samos. On 31 October the light cruiser "Aurora" was put out of action for a year. The light cruisers "Penelope" and "Carlisle" were badly damaged by StG 3 and the destroyer "Panther" was also sunk by Ju 87s before the capitulation of the Allied force. It proved to be the Stuka's final victory against the British. Eastern front. Barbarossa; 1941. On 22 June 1941, the Wehrmacht commenced Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. The Luftwaffe order of battle of 22 June 1941 contained four dive bomber wings. "VIII. Fliegerkorps" was equipped with units "Stab", II. and III./StG 1. Also included were "Stab", I., II. and III. of "Sturzkampfgeschwader 2" Immelmann. Attached to "II. Fliegerkorps", under the command of "General der Flieger" Bruno Loerzer, were "Stab", I., II. and III. of StG 77. "Luftflotte 5", under the command of "Generaloberst" Hans-Jürgen Stumpff, operating from Norway's Arctic Circle, were allotted IV. "Gruppe" (St)/"Lehrgeschwader 1" ("LG 1"). The first Stuka loss on the Soviet-German front occurred early at 03:40–03:47 in the morning of 22 June. While being escorted by Bf 109s from JG 51 to attack Brest Fortress, "Oberleutnant" Karl Führing of StG 77 was shot down by an I-153. The dive bomber wing suffered only two losses on the opening day of Barbarossa. As a result of the Luftwaffe's attention, the Soviet Air Force in the western Soviet Union was nearly destroyed. The official report claimed 1,489 Soviet aircraft destroyed. Göring ordered this checked. After picking their way through the wreckage across the front, Luftwaffe officers found that the tally exceeded 2,000. In the next two days, the Soviets reported the loss of another 1,922 aircraft. The Ju 87 took a huge toll on Soviet ground forces, helping to break up counterattacks of Soviet armour, eliminating strongpoints and disrupting the enemy supply lines. A demonstration of the Stukas effectiveness occurred on 5 July, when StG 77 knocked out 18 trains and 500 vehicles. As the 1st and 2nd Panzer Groups forced bridgeheads across the Dnieper river and closed in on Kyiv, the Ju 87s again rendered invaluable support. On 13 September, Stukas from StG 1 destroyed the rail network in the vicinity as well as inflicting heavy casualties on escaping Red Army columns, for the loss of one Ju 87. On 23 September, Rudel (who was to become the most decorated serviceman in the Wehrmacht) of StG 2, helped sink the Soviet battleship "Marat", during an air attack on Kronstadt harbour near Leningrad, which was struck by two bombs. During this action, "Leutnant" Egbert Jaeckel sank the destroyer "Minsk", while the destroyer "Steregushchiy" and submarine "M-74" were also sunk. The Stukas also crippled the battleship "Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya" and the destroyers "Silnyy" and "Grozyashchiy" in exchange for two Ju 87s shot down. Elsewhere on the Eastern front, the Junkers assisted Army Group Centre in its drive toward Moscow. From 13 to 22 December 420 vehicles and 23 tanks were destroyed by StG 77, greatly improving the morale of the German infantry, who were by now on the defensive. StG 77 finished the campaign as the most effective dive bomber wing. It had destroyed 2,401 vehicles, 234 tanks, 92 artillery batteries and 21 trains for the loss of 25 Ju 87s to hostile action. At the end of Barbarossa, StG 1 had lost 60 Stukas in aerial combat and one on the ground. StG 2 lost 39 Ju 87s in the air and two on the ground, StG 77 lost 29 of their dive-bombers in the air and three on the ground (25 to enemy action). IV.(St)/LG1, operating from Norway, lost 24 Ju 87s, all in aerial combat. Fall Blau to Stalingrad; 1942. In early 1942, the Ju 87s gave the Heer yet more valuable support. On 29 December 1941, the Soviet 44th Army landed on the Kerch Peninsula. The Luftwaffe was only able to dispatch meager reinforcements of four bomber groups ("Kampfgruppen") and two dive bomber groups belonging to StG 77. With air superiority, the Ju 87s operated with impunity. In the first 10 days of the Battle of the Kerch Peninsula, half the landing force was destroyed, while sea lanes were blocked by the Stukas inflicting heavy losses on Soviet shipping. The Ju 87's effectiveness against Soviet armour was not yet potent. Later versions of the T-34 tank could withstand Stuka attacks in general, unless a direct hit was scored but the Soviet 44th Army had only obsolescent types with thin armour which were nearly all destroyed. During the Battle of Sevastopol, the Stukas repeatedly bombed the trapped Soviet forces. Some Ju 87 pilots flew up to 300 sorties against the Soviet defenders. StG 77 (Luftflotte 4) flew 7,708 combat sorties dropping 3,537 tonnes of bombs on the city. Their efforts help secure the capitulation of Soviet forces on 4 July. For the German summer offensive, "Fall Blau", the Luftwaffe had concentrated 1,800 aircraft into "Luftflotte 4" making it the largest and most powerful air command in the world. The "Stukawaffe" strength stood at 151. During the Battle of Stalingrad, Stukas flew thousands of sorties against Soviet positions in the city. StG 1, 2 and 77 flew 320 sorties on 14 October 1942. As the German Sixth Army pushed the Soviets into a 1,000-metre enclave on the west bank of the Volga River, 1,208 Stuka sorties were flown against this small strip of land. The intense air attack, though causing horrific losses on Soviet units, failed to destroy them. The Luftwaffe's Stuka force made a maximum effort during this phase of the war. They flew an average of 500 sorties per day and caused heavy losses among Soviet forces, losing an average of only one Stuka per day. The Battle of Stalingrad marked the high point in the fortunes of the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka. As the strength of the Soviet Air Forces grew, they gradually wrested control of the skies from the Luftwaffe. From this point onward, Stuka losses increased. Kursk and decline; 1943. The Stuka was also heavily involved in Operation Citadel, the Kursk offensive. The Luftwaffe committed I, II, III./St.G 1 and III./StG 3 under the command of Luftflotte 6. I., II, III. of StGs 2 and 3 were committed under the command of "Fliegerkorps" VIII. Rudel's cannon-equipped Ju 87 Gs had a devastating effect on Soviet armour at Orel and Belgorod. The Ju 87s participated in a huge aerial counter-offensive lasting from 16 to 31 July against a Soviet offensive at Khotynets and saved two German armies from encirclement, reducing the attacking Soviet 11th Guards Army to 33 tanks by 20 July. The Soviet offensive had been completely halted from the air although losses were considerable. Fliegerkorps VIII lost eight Ju 87s on 8 July, six on 9 July, six on 10 July and another eight on 11 July. The Stuka arm also lost eight of their Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross holders. StG 77 lost 24 Ju 87s in the period 5–31 July (StG had lost 23 in July–December 1942), while StG 2 lost another 30 aircraft in the same period. In September 1943, three of the Stuka units were re-equipped with the Fw 190F and G (ground attack versions) and began to be renamed "Schlachtgeschwader" (attack wings). In the face of overwhelming air opposition, the dive-bomber required heavy protection from German fighters to counter Soviet fighters. Some units like SG 2 "Immelmann" continued to operate with great success throughout 1943–45, operating the Ju 87 G variants equipped with 37 mm cannons, which became tank killers, although in increasingly small numbers. In the wake of the defeat at Kursk, Ju 87s played a vital defensive role on the southern wing of the Eastern Front. To combat the Luftwaffe, the Soviets could deploy 3,000 fighter aircraft. As a result, the Stukas suffered heavily. SG 77 lost 30 Ju 87s in August 1943 as did SG 2 "Immelmann", which also reported the loss of 30 aircraft in combat operations. Despite these losses, Ju 87s helped the XXIX Army Corps break out of an encirclement near the Sea of Azov. The Battle of Kiev also included substantial use of the Ju 87 units, although again, unsuccessful in stemming the advances. Stuka units were with the loss of air superiority, becoming vulnerable on the ground as well. Some Stuka aces were lost this way. In the aftermath of Kursk, Stuka strength fell to 184 aircraft in total. This was well below 50 per cent of the required strength. On 18 October 1943, StG 1, 2, 3, 5 and 77 were renamed "Schlachtgeschwader" (SG) wings, reflecting their ground-attack role, as these combat wings were now also using ground-attack aircraft, such as the Fw 190F-series aircraft. The Luftwaffe's dive-bomber units had ceased to exist. A few Ju 87s were also retained for anti-shipping operations in the Black Sea, a role it had proved successful in when operating in the Mediterranean. In October 1943, this became evident again when StG 3 carried out several attacks against the Soviet Black Sea Fleet. On 6 October 1943 the most powerful flotilla in the fleet comprising the "Leningrad" class destroyers "Kharkov", "Besposhchadny" and "Sposobny" were caught and sunk by dive-bombing. After the disaster, Josef Stalin decreed that no more ships were to pass within range of German aircraft without his personal permission. Operation Bagration to Berlin 1944–1945. Towards the end of the war, as the Allies gained air supremacy, the Stuka was being replaced by ground-attack versions of the Fw 190. By early 1944, the number of Ju 87 units and operational aircraft terminally declined. For the Soviet summer offensive, Operation Bagration, 12 Ju 87 groups and five mixed groups (including Fw 190s) were on the Luftwaffe's order of battle on 26 June 1944. Gefechtsverband Kuhlmey, a mixed aircraft unit, which included large numbers of Stuka dive bombers, was rushed to the Finnish front in the summer of 1944 and was instrumental in halting the Soviet fourth strategic offensive. The unit claimed 200 Soviet tanks and 150 Soviet aircraft destroyed for 41 losses. By 31 January 1945, only 104 Ju 87s remained operational with their units. The other mixed "Schlacht" units contained a further 70 Ju 87s and Fw 190s between them. Chronic fuel shortages kept the Stukas grounded and sorties decreased until the end of the war in May 1945. In the final months of the war the ground attack groups were still able to impose operational constraints upon the enemy. Most notably the aircraft participated in the defence of Berlin. On 12 January 1945 the 1st Belorussian Front initiated the Vistula–Oder Offensive. The offensive made rapid progress. The Soviets eventually outran their air support, which was unable to use forward, quagmire-filled, airfields. The Germans, who had fallen back on airbases with good facilities and concrete runways, were able to mount uninterrupted attacks against Soviet army columns. Reminiscent of the early years, the "Luftwaffe" was able to inflict high losses largely unopposed. Over 800 vehicles were destroyed within two weeks. In the first three days of February 1945, 2,000 vehicles and 51 tanks were claimed to be lost to German air attacks. The Ju 87 participated in these intense battles in small numbers. It was the largest concentration of German air power since 1940 and even in February 1945 the Germans were able to achieve and challenge for air superiority on the Eastern Front. The air offensive was instrumental in saving Berlin, albeit only for three months. The effort exhausted German fuel reserves. The contribution of the Ju 87 was exemplified by Rudel, who claimed 13 enemy tanks on 8 February 1945. Post-war research revealed that generally, bombing pilots were far less effective than they claimed. The German Luftwaffe, in particular, did not do a scientific analysis of the Ju 87 pilot claims in 1939–1945 but instead relied on pre-war tests and assumptions, contrary to the Allies who did such research during the war, which showed that pilots, for a number of reasons, misjudged most of their tank kills and revealed the ineffectiveness of dive-bombers as an anti-tank weapon, except for the suppression effect of the bombing. Surviving aircraft. Two intact Ju 87s survive, with a third being restored: A later, ground-attack variant, this is displayed at the Royal Air Force Museum in London; it was captured by British forces at Eggebek, Schleswig-Holstein in May 1945. It is thought to have been built in 1943–1944 as a D-5 before being rebuilt as a G-2 variant, possibly by fitting G-2 outer wings to a D-5 airframe. The wings have the hard-points for "Bordkanone BK 3,7" gun-pods, but these are not fitted. It was one of 12 captured German aircraft selected by the British for museum preservation and assigned to the Air Historical Branch. The aircraft was stored and displayed at various RAF sites until 1978, when it was moved to the RAF Museum. In 1967, permission was given to use the aircraft in the film "Battle of Britain" and it was repainted and modified to resemble a 1940 variant of the Ju 87. The engine was found to be in excellent condition and there was little difficulty in starting it, but returning the aircraft to airworthiness was considered too costly for the filmmakers and, ultimately, models were used in the film to represent Stukas. In 1998, the film modifications were removed, and the aircraft returned to the original G-2 configuration. This aircraft is displayed in the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. It was abandoned in North Africa and found by British forces in 1941. The Ju 87 was donated by the British government and sent to the US during the war. It was fully restored in 1974 by the EAA of Wisconsin. One Ju 87 is under restoration: One aircraft is being restored to airworthy condition from two wrecks, owned by Paul Allen's Flying Heritage & Combat Armor Museum. The project takes its identification from Ju 87 R-4 Werk Nr. "6234", which was built in 1941 and served with Stukageschwader 5. Shot down in April 1942 on a mission to bomb Murmansk, it was recovered in 1992. The wreck was purchased by New Zealand collector Tim Wallis, who originally planned for a rebuild to airworthy status, and later went to the Deutsches Technikmuseum in Berlin. Parts from a second airframe, a Ju 87 R-2 "Werknummer" 857509 which served bearing the "Stammkennzeichen" of code LI+KU from 1./St.G.5, and was recovered to the United Kingdom in 1998, have also been incorporated. The project was displayed in November 2018 and the restoration was stated to take between 18 months and two years to complete. Work will be conducted in a display hangar to allow the public to observe the work underway. Other aircraft survive as wreckage recovered from crash sites: In popular culture. According to Richard King, the Jericho trumpets sound "is often used in movies and TV shows as the classic dive bomber sound, plane crashing sound, or for an anvil dropping on Wile E. Coyote’s head".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16759

Kevlar

Kevlar (para-aramid) is a strong, heat-resistant synthetic fiber, related to other aramids such as Nomex and Technora. Developed by Stephanie Kwolek at DuPont in 1965, the high-strength material was first used commercially in the early 1970s as a replacement for steel in racing tires. It is typically spun into ropes or fabric sheets that can be used as such, or as an ingredient in composite material components. Kevlar has many applications, ranging from bicycle tires and racing sails to bulletproof vests, all due to its high tensile strength-to-weight ratio; by this measure it is five times stronger than steel. It is also used to make modern marching drumheads that withstand high impact; and for mooring lines and other underwater applications. A similar fiber called Twaron with the same chemical structure was developed by Akzo in the 1970s; commercial production started in 1986, and Twaron is now manufactured by Teijin. History. Poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide (K29) – branded Kevlar – was invented by the American chemist Stephanie Kwolek while working for DuPont, in anticipation of a gasoline shortage. In 1964, her group began searching for a new lightweight strong fiber to use for light, but strong, tires. The polymers she had been working with at the time, poly-p-phenylene-terephthalate and polybenzamide, formed liquid crystals while in solution, something unique to those polymers at the time. The solution was "cloudy, opalescent upon being stirred, and of low viscosity" and usually was thrown away. However, Kwolek persuaded the technician, Charles Smullen, who ran the spinneret, to test her solution, and was amazed to find that the fiber did not break, unlike nylon. Her supervisor and her laboratory director understood the significance of her discovery and a new field of polymer chemistry quickly arose. By 1971, modern Kevlar was introduced. However, Kwolek was not very involved in developing the applications of Kevlar. In 1971, Lester Shubin, who was then the Director of Science and Technology for the National Institute for Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, suggested using Kevlar to replace nylon in bullet-proof vests. Prior to the introduction of Kevlar, flak jackets made of nylon had provided much more limited protection to users. Shubin later recalled how the idea developed: "We folded it over a couple of times and shot at it. The bullets didn't go through." In tests, they strapped Kevlar onto anesthetized goats and shot at their hearts, spinal cords, livers and lungs. They monitored the goats' heart rate and blood gas levels to check for lung injuries. After 24 hours, one goat died and the others had wounds that were not life threatening. Shubin received a $5 million grant to research the use of the fabric in bullet-proof vests. Kevlar 149 was invented by Dr. Jacob Lahijani of Dupont in the 1980s. Production. Kevlar is synthesized in solution from the monomers 1,4-phenylene-diamine ("para"-phenylenediamine) and terephthaloyl chloride in a condensation reaction yielding hydrochloric acid as a byproduct. The result has liquid-crystalline behavior, and mechanical drawing orients the polymer chains in the fiber's direction. Hexamethylphosphoramide (HMPA) was the solvent initially used for the polymerization, but for safety reasons, DuPont replaced it by a solution of "N"-methyl-pyrrolidone and calcium chloride. As this process had been patented by Akzo (see above) in the production of Twaron, a patent war ensued. Kevlar production is expensive because of the difficulties arising from using concentrated sulfuric acid, needed to keep the water-insoluble polymer in solution during its synthesis and spinning. Several grades of Kevlar are available: The ultraviolet component of sunlight degrades and decomposes Kevlar, a problem known as "UV degradation", and so it is rarely used outdoors without protection against sunlight. Structure and properties. When Kevlar is spun, the resulting fiber has a tensile strength of about , and a relative density of 1.44 (0.052 lb/in3). The polymer owes its high strength to the many inter-chain bonds. These inter-molecular hydrogen bonds form between the carbonyl groups and N"H" centers. Additional strength is derived from aromatic stacking interactions between adjacent strands. These interactions have a greater influence on Kevlar than the van der Waals interactions and chain length that typically influence the properties of other synthetic polymers and fibers such as ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene. The presence of salts and certain other impurities, especially calcium, could interfere with the strand interactions and care is taken to avoid inclusion in its production. Kevlar's structure consists of relatively rigid molecules which tend to form mostly planar sheet-like structures rather like silk protein. Thermal properties. Kevlar maintains its strength and resilience down to cryogenic temperatures (): in fact, it is slightly stronger at low temperatures. At higher temperatures the tensile strength is immediately reduced by about 10–20%, and after some hours the strength progressively reduces further. For example: enduring for 500 hours, its strength is reduced by about 10%; and enduring for 70 hours, its strength is reduced by about 50%. Applications. Science. Kevlar is often used in the field of cryogenics for its low thermal conductivity and high strength relative to other materials for suspension purposes. It is most often used to suspend a paramagnetic salt enclosure from a superconducting magnet mandrel in order to minimize any heat leaks to the paramagnetic material. It is also used as a thermal standoff or structural support where low heat leaks are desired. A thin Kevlar window has been used by the NA48 experiment at CERN to separate a vacuum vessel from a vessel at nearly atmospheric pressure, both in diameter. The window has provided vacuum tightness combined with reasonably small amount of material (only 0.3% to 0.4% of radiation length). Protection. Kevlar is a well-known component of personal armor such as combat helmets, ballistic face masks, and ballistic vests. The PASGT helmet and vest used by United States military forces, use Kevlar as a key component in their construction. Other military uses include bulletproof face masks and spall liners used to protect the crews of armoured fighting vehicles. "Nimitz"-class aircraft carriers use Kevlar reinforcement in vital areas. Civilian applications include: high heat resistance uniforms worn by firefighters, body armour worn by police officers, security, and police tactical teams such as SWAT. Kevlar is used to manufacture gloves, sleeves, jackets, chaps and other articles of clothing designed to protect users from cuts, abrasions and heat. Kevlar-based protective gear is often considerably lighter and thinner than equivalent gear made of more traditional materials. It is used for motorcycle safety clothing, especially in the areas featuring padding such as the shoulders and elbows. In the sport of fencing it is used in the protective jackets, breeches, plastrons and the bib of the masks. It is increasingly being used in the "peto", the padded covering which protects the picadors' horses in the bullring. Speed skaters also frequently wear an under-layer of Kevlar fabric to prevent potential wounds from skates in the event of a fall or collision. Sport. In "kyudo", or Japanese archery, it may be used for bow strings, as an alternative to the more expensive hemp. It is one of the main materials used for paraglider suspension lines. It is used as an inner lining for some bicycle tires to prevent punctures. In table tennis, plies of Kevlar are added to custom ply blades, or paddles, in order to increase bounce and reduce weight. Tennis racquets are sometimes strung with Kevlar. It is used in sails for high performance racing boats. In 2013, with advancements in technology, Nike used Kevlar in shoes for the first time. It launched the Elite II Series, with enhancements to its earlier version of basketball shoes by using Kevlar in the anterior as well as the shoe laces. This was done to decrease the elasticity of the tip of the shoe in contrast to the nylon conventionally used, as Kevlar expanded by about 1% against nylon which expanded by about 30%. Shoes in this range included LeBron, HyperDunk and Zoom Kobe VII. However these shoes were launched at a price range much higher than average cost of basketball shoes. It was also used in the laces for the Adidas F50 adiZero Prime football boot. Several companies, including Continental AG, manufacture cycle tires with Kevlar to protect against punctures. Folding-bead bicycle tires, introduced to cycling by Tom Ritchey in 1984, use Kevlar as a bead in place of steel for weight reduction and strength. A side effect of the folding bead is a reduction in shelf and floor space needed to display cycle tires in a retail environment, as they are folded and placed in small boxes. Music. Kevlar has also been found to have useful acoustic properties for loudspeaker cones, specifically for bass and mid range drive units. Additionally, Kevlar has been used as a strength member in fiber optic cables such as the ones used for audio data transmissions. Kevlar can be used as an acoustic core on bows for string instruments. Kevlar's physical properties provide strength, flexibility, and stability for the bow's user. To date, the only manufacturer of this type of bow is CodaBow. Kevlar is also presently used as a material for tailcords (a.k.a. tailpiece adjusters), which connect the tailpiece to the endpin of bowed string instruments. Kevlar is sometimes used as a material on marching snare drums. It allows for an extremely high amount of tension, resulting in a cleaner sound. There is usually a resin poured onto the Kevlar to make the head airtight, and a nylon top layer to provide a flat striking surface. This is one of the primary types of marching snare drum heads. Remo's Falam Slam patch is made with Kevlar and is used to reinforce bass drum heads where the beater strikes. Kevlar is used in the woodwind reeds of Fibracell. The material of these reeds is a composite of aerospace materials designed to duplicate the way nature constructs cane reed. Very stiff but sound absorbing Kevlar fibers are suspended in a lightweight resin formulation. Motor vehicles. Kevlar is sometimes used in structural components of cars, especially high-value performance cars such as the Ferrari F40. The chopped fiber has been used as a replacement for asbestos in brake pads. Aramids such as Kevlar release less airborne fibres than asbestos brakes and do not have the carcinogenic properties associated with asbestos. Other uses. Wicks for fire dancing props are made of composite materials with Kevlar in them. Kevlar by itself does not absorb fuel very well, so it is blended with other materials such as fiberglass or cotton. Kevlar's high heat resistance allows the wicks to be reused many times. Kevlar is sometimes used as a substitute for Teflon in some non-stick frying pans. Kevlar fiber is used in rope and in cable, where the fibers are kept parallel within a polyethylene sleeve. The cables have been used in suspension bridges such as the bridge at Aberfeldy, Scotland. They have also been used to stabilize cracking concrete cooling towers by circumferential application followed by tensioning to close the cracks. Kevlar is widely used as a protective outer sheath for optical fiber cable, as its strength protects the cable from damage and kinking. When used in this application it is commonly known by the trademarked name Parafil. Kevlar was used by scientists at Georgia Institute of Technology as a base textile for an experiment in electricity-producing clothing. This was done by weaving zinc oxide nanowires into the fabric. If successful, the new fabric will generate about 80 milliwatts per square meter. A retractable roof of over of Kevlar was a key part of the design of the Olympic Stadium, Montreal for the 1976 Summer Olympics. It was spectacularly unsuccessful, as it was completed 10 years late and replaced just 10 years later in May 1998 after a series of problems. Kevlar can be found as a reinforcing layer in rubber bellows expansion joints and rubber hoses, for use in high temperature applications, and for its high strength. It is also found as a braid layer used on the outside of hose assemblies, to add protection against sharp objects. Some cellphones (including the Motorola RAZR Family, the Motorola Droid Maxx, OnePlus 2 and Pocophone F1) have a Kevlar backplate, chosen over other materials such as carbon fiber due to its resilience and lack of interference with signal transmission. The Kevlar fiber/epoxy matrix composite materials can be used in marine current turbines (MCT) or wind turbines due to their high specific strength and light weight compared to other fibers. Composite materials. Aramid fibers are widely used for reinforcing composite materials, often in combination with carbon fiber and glass fiber. The matrix for high performance composites is usually epoxy resin. Typical applications include monocoque bodies for Formula 1 cars, helicopter rotor blades, tennis, table tennis, badminton and squash rackets, kayaks, cricket bats, and field hockey, ice hockey and lacrosse sticks. Kevlar 149, the strongest fiber and most crystalline in structure, is an alternative in certain parts of aircraft construction. The wing leading edge is one application, Kevlar being less prone than carbon or glass fiber to break in bird collisions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16766

Kent

Kent is a ceremonial county in the South East England region, the closest county to continental Europe. It borders Essex across the entire estuary of the River Thames to the north; the French department of Pas-de-Calais across the Strait of Dover to the south-east; East Sussex to the south-west; Surrey to the west and Greater London to the north-west. The county town is Maidstone. It is the fifth most populous county in England, the most populous non-metropolitan county and the most populous of the Home Counties, an area influenced by the capital such as commutes and transport connections to the capital. Twenty-eight per cent of the county forms part of two Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty: the North Downs and The High Weald. Kent was one of the first British territories to be settled by Germanic tribes, most notably the Jutes, following the withdrawal of the Romans. Canterbury Cathedral in Kent, the oldest cathedral in England, has been the seat of the Archbishops of Canterbury since the conversion of England to Christianity that began in the 6th century with Saint Augustine. Rochester Cathedral in Medway is England's second-oldest cathedral. Located between London and the Strait of Dover, which separates England from mainland Europe, Kent has been the setting for both conflict and diplomacy, including the Battle of Britain in World War II and the Leeds Castle peace talks of 1978 and 2004. England relied on the county's ports to provide warships through much of its history; the Cinque Ports in the 10th–14th centuries and Chatham Dockyard in the 16th–20th centuries were of particular importance. France can be seen clearly in fine weather from Folkestone and the White Cliffs of Dover. Hills in the form of the North Downs and the Greensand Ridge span the length of the county and in the Vale of Holmesdale in between and to the south are most of the county's . The county has agriculture, haulage, logistics and tourism industries. As the land between the capital and the wider continent, it is a high-income county. Agriculture of the county is a notable sector: "The Garden of England" is a nickname for the county, which has multiple orchards and allotments. In north-west Kent, industries include aggregate building material extraction, printing and scientific research. Coal mining has also played its part in the county's industrial heritage. Etymology. The name "Kent" is believed to be of Celtic origin. The meaning has been explained as 'coastal district,' 'corner-land' or 'land on the edge' (compare Welsh "cant" 'bordering of a circle, tire, edge;' Breton "cant" 'circle;' Dutch "kant" 'side, edge'). In Latin sources the area is called "Cantia" or "Cantium", while the Anglo-Saxons referred to it as "Cent", "Cent lond" or "Centrice". History. The area has been occupied since the Palaeolithic era, as attested by finds from the quarries at Swanscombe. The Medway megaliths were built during the Neolithic era. There is a rich sequence of Bronze Age, Celtic Iron Age, and Britto-Roman era occupation, as indicated by finds and features such as the Ringlemere gold cup and the Roman villas of the Darent valley. Julius Caesar described the area as "Cantium", or the home of the Cantiaci, in 51 BC. The extreme west of the modern county was by the time of Roman Britain occupied by a Celtic Iron Age tribe known as the Regni. Caesar wrote that the people of Kent were 'by far the most civilised inhabitants of Britain'. Following the withdrawal of the Romans, large numbers of Germanic speakers from mainland Europe settled in Kent, bringing their language, which came to be Old English. While they expelled the native Romano-British population, some likely remained in the area, eventually assimilating with the newcomers. Of the invading tribes, the Jutes were the most prominent, and the area became a Jutish kingdom recorded as "Cantia" in about 730 and "Cent" in 835. The early medieval inhabitants of the county were referred to as the "Cantwara", or Kentish people. The city of Canterbury was the largest in Kent. In 597, Pope Gregory I appointed the religious missionary (who became Saint Augustine of Canterbury after his death) as the first Archbishop of Canterbury. In the previous year, Augustine successfully converted the pagan King Æthelberht of Kent to Christianity. The Diocese of Canterbury became England's first Episcopal See with first cathedral and has since remained England's centre of Christianity. The second designated English cathedral was for West Kent at Rochester Cathedral. Kent was traditionally partitioned into East and West Kent, and into lathes and hundreds. The traditional border of East and West Kent was the county's main river, the Medway. Men and women from east of the Medway are Men (or Maids) of Kent, those from the west are Kentishmen or Kentish Maids. The divide has been explained by some as originating in the Anglo-Saxon migrations, with Jutes mainly settling east of the Medway and Saxons settling west of it. In the 11th century, the people of Kent adopted the motto "Invicta", meaning "undefeated" or "unconquered". This naming followed the invasion of Britain by William of Normandy as he was unable to subdue the county and they negotiated favourable terms. The continued resistance of the Kentish people against the Normans led to Kent's designation as a semi-autonomous county palatine in 1067. Under the nominal rule of William's half-brother Odo of Bayeux, the county was granted similar powers to those granted in the areas bordering Wales and Scotland. During the medieval and early modern period, Kent played a major role in several of England's most notable rebellions, including the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, led by Wat Tyler, Jack Cade's Kent rebellion of 1450, and Wyatt's Rebellion of 1554 against Queen Mary I. The Royal Navy first used the River Medway in 1547. By the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603) a small dockyard had been established at Chatham. By 1618, storehouses, a ropewalk, a drydock, and houses for officials had been built downstream from Chatham. By the 17th century, tensions between Britain and the powers of the Netherlands and France led to increasing military build-up in the county. Forts were built all along the coast following the raid on the Medway, a successful attack by the Dutch navy on the shipyards of the Medway towns in 1667. The 18th century was dominated by wars with France, during which the Medway became the primary base for a fleet that could act along the Dutch and French coasts. When the theatre of operation moved to the Atlantic, this role was assumed by Portsmouth and Plymouth, with Chatham concentrating on shipbuilding and ship repair. As an indication of the area's military importance, the first Ordnance Survey map ever drawn was a one-inch map of Kent, published in 1801. Many of the Georgian naval buildings still stand. In the early 19th century, smugglers were very active on the Kent coastline. Gangs such as The Aldington Gang brought spirits, tobacco and salt to the county, and transported goods such as wool across the sea to France. In 1889, the County of London was created and took over responsibility for local administration of parts of north-west Kent. These included the towns of Greenwich, Woolwich, Deptford, Lee, Eltham, Charlton, and Kidbrooke. In 1900, however, Kent absorbed the district of Penge. Some of Kent is contiguous with the Greater London sprawl, notably parts of Dartford. Originally, the border between Kent and Sussex (later East Sussex) ran through the towns of Tunbridge Wells and Lamberhurst. In 1894, by the Local Government Act, the parts of these towns that lay in East Sussex were absorbed by Kent. During the Second World War, much of the Battle of Britain was fought in the skies over Kent. Between June 1944 and March 1945, more than 10,000 V1 flying bombs, or "Doodlebugs", were fired towards London from bases in Northern France. Although many were destroyed by aircraft, anti-aircraft guns and barrage balloons, both London and Kent were hit by around 2,500 of these bombs. After the war, Kent's borders changed several more times. In 1965, the London boroughs of Bromley and Bexley were created from nine towns formerly in Kent. In 1998, Rochester, Chatham, Gillingham and Rainham left the administrative county of Kent to form the Unitary Authority of Medway. Plans for another unitary authority in north-west Kent were dropped, but in 2016 consultations began between five Kent local authorities (Canterbury, Thanet, Dover, Folkestone & Hythe, and Ashford) with a view to forming a new unified authority for East Kent, although remaining within the auspices of Kent County Council. This idea was eventually dropped. For almost nine centuries, a small part of present-day East London (the North Woolwich, London E16 area), formed part of Kent. Geography. Kent is in the southeastern corner of England. It borders the Thames Estuary and the North Sea to the north, and the Straits of Dover and the English Channel to the south. France is across the Strait. The major geographical features of the county are based on a series of ridges and valleys running east–west across the county. These are the results of erosion of the Wealden dome, a dome across Kent and Sussex created by alpine movements 20–10 million years ago. This dome consists of an upper layer of chalk above successive layers of Upper Greensand, Gault Clay, Lower Greensand, Weald Clay, and Wealden sandstone. The ridges and valleys formed when the exposed clay eroded faster than the exposed chalk, greensand, or sandstone. Sevenoaks, Maidstone, Ashford, and Folkestone are built on greensand, while Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells are built on sandstone. Dartford, Gravesend, the Medway towns, Sittingbourne, Faversham, Canterbury, Deal, and Dover are built on chalk. The easterly section of the Wealden dome has been eroded away by the sea, and cliffs such as the White Cliffs of Dover are present where a chalk ridge known as the North Downs meets the coast. Spanning Dover and Westerham is the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The Wealden dome is a Mesozoic structure lying on a Palaeozoic foundation, which can often create the right conditions for coal formation. This is found in East Kent roughly between Deal, Canterbury, and Dover. The Coal Measures within the Westphalian Sandstone are about deep, and are subject to flooding. They occur in two major troughs, which extend under the English Channel. Seismic activity has occasionally been recorded in Kent, though the epicentres were offshore. In 1382 and 1580 there were two earthquakes exceeding 6.0 on the Richter Scale. In 1776, 1950, and on 28 April 2007 there were earthquakes of around 4.3. The 2007 earthquake caused physical damage in Folkestone. A further quake on 22 May 2015 measured 4.2 on the Richter Scale. It was centred in the Sandwich area of east Kent at about ten miles below the surface. There was little if any damage reported. The coastline of Kent is continuously changing, due to tectonic uplift and coastal erosion. Until about 960, the Isle of Thanet was an island, separated by the Wantsum channel, formed around a deposit of chalk; over time, the channels silted up with alluvium. Similarly Romney Marsh and Dungeness have been formed by accumulation of alluvium. Kent's principal river, the River Medway, rises near East Grinstead in Sussex and flows eastwards to Maidstone. Here it turns north and breaks through the North Downs at Rochester, then joins the estuary of the River Thames near Sheerness. The Medway is some long. The river is tidal as far as Allington lock, but in earlier times, cargo-carrying vessels reached as far upstream as Tonbridge. The Medway has captured the head waters of other rivers such as the River Darent. Other rivers of Kent include the River Stour in the east. A 2014 study found that Kent shares significant reserves of shale oil with other neighbouring counties, totalling 4.4 billion barrels of oil, which then Business and Energy Minister Michael Fallon said "will bring jobs and business opportunities" and significantly help with UK energy self-sufficiency. Fracking in the area is required to achieve these objectives; it has been opposed by environmental groups. Climate. Kent is one of the warmest parts of Britain. On 10 August 2003, in the hamlet of Brogdale near Faversham the temperature reached , at that time the highest temperature ever officially recorded in the United Kingdom. The record still stands as the hottest August day ever recorded. Governance. Kent County Council (KCC) and its 12 district councils administer most of the county (3352 km2), while the Medway Towns Council, a unitary authority and commonly called Medway Council, administers the more densely populated remainder (192 km2). Together they have around 300 town and parish councils. Kent County Council's headquarters are in Maidstone, while Medway's offices are at Gun Wharf, Chatham. At the 2013 county council elections, control of Kent County Council was held by the Conservatives, who won 44 of the council's 83 seats. 17 seats were won by the United Kingdom Independence Party, 13 by the Labour Party, 7 by the Liberal Democrats, 1 by the Green Party and 1 by the Swanscombe and Greenhithe Residents Association. At the 2007 local elections, control of Medway Council was held by the Conservatives; 33 of the council's 55 seats were held by the Conservatives, 13 by the Labour Party, 8 by the Liberal Democrats and 1 by an Independent. All but one of Kent's district councils are controlled by the Conservatives: a minority Labour administration took control of Thanet District in December 2011 after a Conservative councillor defected to the Independent group. In the council elections of May 2015 the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) took control of the Council, the first and so far only one in the UK. In October 2015 UKIP lost overall control following a series of resignations, although remaining the largest party, only for UKIP to regain control once more following ward elections in August 2016. At the national level, Kent is represented in Parliament by 17 MPs, all of whom are Conservative except Rosie Duffield, Labour MP for Canterbury since 2017. Demography. At the 2011 census, Kent, including Medway, had 1,727,665 residents (18.0% of which in Medway); had 711,847 households (17.5% of which in Medway) and had 743,436 dwellings (14.8% of which in Medway). 51.1% of Kent's population excluding Medway was female — as to Medway, this proportion was 50.4%. The tables below provide statistics for the administrative county of Kent, that is, excluding Medway. Economy. At the 2001 UK census, employment statistics for the residents in Kent, including Medway, were as follows: 41.1% in full-time employment, 12.4% in part-time employment, 9.1% self-employed, 2.9% unemployed, 2.3% students with jobs, 3.7% students without jobs, 12.3% retired, 7.3% looking after home or family, 4.3% permanently sick or disabled, and 2.7% economically inactive for other reasons. Of residents aged 16–74, 16% had a higher education qualification or the equivalent, compared to 20% nationwide. The average hours worked per week by residents of Kent were 43.1 for males and 30.9 for females. Their industry of employment was 17.3% retail, 12.4% manufacturing, 11.8% real estate, 10.3% health and social work, 8.9% construction, 8.2% transport and communications, 7.9% education, 6.0% public administration and defence, 5.6% finance, 4.8% other community and personal service activities, 4.1% hotels and restaurants, 1.6% agriculture, 0.8% energy and water supply, 0.2% mining, and 0.1% private households. This is higher than the whole of England for construction and transport/communications and lower for manufacturing. Kent is sometimes known as the "Garden of England" for its abundance of orchards and hop gardens. In particular the county produces tree-grown fruits, strawberries and hazelnuts. Distinctive hop-drying buildings called oasts are common in the countryside, although many have been converted into dwellings. Nearer to London, market gardens also flourish. Kent is the main area for hazelnut production in the UK. However, in recent years, there has been a significant drop in agriculture, and industry and services are increasing their utilisation of the area. This is illustrated by the following table of economic indicator gross value added (GVA) between 1995 and 2003 (figures are in £ millions): North Kent is heavily industrialised, with cement-making at Northfleet and Cuxton, brickmaking at Sittingbourne, shipbuilding on the Medway and Swale, engineering and aircraft design and construction at Rochester, chemicals at Dartford, papermaking at Swanley, and oil refining at Grain. There is a steel mini mill in Sheerness and a rolling mill in Queenborough. There are two nuclear power stations at Dungeness, although the older one, Dungeness A, built in 1965, was decommissioned in 2006. Cement-making, papermaking, and coal-mining were important industries in Kent during the 19th and 20th centuries. Cement came to the fore in the 19th century when massive building projects were undertaken. The ready supply of chalk and huge pits between Stone and Gravesend bear testament to that industry. There were also other workings around Burham on the tidal Medway. Chalk, gravel and clay were excavated on Dartford Heath for centuries. Kent's original paper mills stood on streams like the River Darent, tributaries of the River Medway, and on the River Stour. Two 18th century mills were on the River Len and at Tovil on the River Loose. In the late 19th century huge modern mills were built at Dartford and Northfleet on the River Thames and at Kemsley on The Swale. In pre-industrial times, almost every village and town had its own windmill or watermill, with over 400 windmills known to have stood at some time. Twenty-eight survive within the county today, plus two replica mills and a further two in that part of Kent now absorbed into London. All the major rivers in the county were used to power watermills. From about 1900, several coal pits operated in East Kent. The Kent Coalfield was mined during the 20th century at several collieries, including Chislet, Tilmanstone, Betteshanger, and the Snowdown Colliery, which ran from 1908 to 1986. The west of the county (including Tunbridge Wells, Tonbridge, and Sevenoaks) has less than 50% of the average claimant count for low incomes or worklessness as the coastal districts of Dover, Folkestone and Hythe, and Thanet (chiefly three resorts: Ramsgate, Broadstairs, and Margate). West and Central Kent have long had many City of London commuters. Culture. Architecture. Kent's geographical location between the Straits of Dover and London has influenced its architecture, as has its Cretaceous geology and its good farming land and fine building clays. Kent's countryside pattern was determined by a gavelkind inheritance system that generated a proliferation of small settlements. There was no open-field system, and the large tracts were owned by the two great abbeys, Christ Church, Canterbury and St Augustine's Abbey, that did not pass into the hands of the king during the Reformation. Canterbury Cathedral is the United Kingdom's metropolitan cathedral; it was founded in AD 598 and displays architecture from all periods. There are nine Anglo-Saxon churches in Kent. Rochester Cathedral is England's second-oldest cathedral, the present building built in the Early English Style. These two dioceses ensured that every village had a parish church. The sites of Richborough Castle and Dover Castle, along with two strategic sites along Watling Street, were fortified by the Romans and the Dukes of Kent. Other important sites include Canterbury city walls and Rochester Castle. There remained a need to defend London and thus Kent. Deal Castle, Walmer Castle, Sandown Castle (whose remains were eroded by the sea in the 1990s) were constructed in late mediaeval times, and HM Dockyard, at Chatham and its surrounding castles and forts—Upnor Castle, Great Lines, and Fort Amherst—more recently. Kent has three unique vernacular architecture forms: the oast house, the Wealden hall house, and Kentish peg-tiles. Kent has bridge trusts to maintain its bridges, and though the great bridge (1387) at Rochester was replaced there are medieval structures at Aylesford, Yalding and Teston. With the motorways in the late twentieth century came the M2 motorway bridge spanning the Medway and the Dartford tunnel and the Dartford Bridge spanning the Thames. Literature and publishing. Kent has provided inspiration for several notable writers and artists. Canterbury's religious role gave rise to Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales", a key development in the English language. The father of novelist Charles Dickens worked at the Chatham Dockyard; in many of his books, the celebrated novelist featured the scenery of Chatham, Rochester, and the Cliffe marshes. During the late 1930s, Nobel Prize-awarded novelist William Golding worked as a teacher at Maidstone Grammar School, where he met his future wife Ann Brookfield. William Caxton, who first introduced the printing press to England, was born in Kent; the recent invention was key in helping many Kent dialect words and spellings to become standard in English. Lord Northbourne hosted a biodynamic agriculture conference on his estate at Betteshanger in the summer of 1939, he coined the term 'organic farming' and published his manifesto of organic agriculture the following year spawning a global movement for sustainable agriculture and food. Visual arts. A number of significant artists came from Kent, including Thomas Sidney Cooper, a painter of landscapes, often incorporating farm animals, Richard Dadd, a maker of faery paintings, and Mary Tourtel, the creator of the children's book character, Rupert Bear. The artist Clive Head was also born in Kent. The landscape painter J. M. W. Turner spent part of his childhood in the town of Margate in East Kent, and regularly returned to visit it throughout his life. The East Kent coast inspired many of his works, including some of his most famous seascapes. Kent has also been the home to artists including Frank Auerbach, Tracey Emin and Stass Paraskos. Kent was also the location of the largest number of art schools in the country during the nineteenth century, estimated by the art historian David Haste, to approach two hundred. This is believed to be the result of Kent being a front line county during the Napoleonic Wars. At this time, before the invention of photography, draughtsmen were used to draw maps and topographical representations of the fields of battle, and after the wars ended many of these settled permanently in the county in which they had been based. Once the idea of art schools had been established, even in small towns in Kent, the tradition continued, although most of the schools were very small one-man operations, each teaching a small number of daughters of the upper classes how to draw and make watercolour paintings. Nonetheless, some of these small art schools developed into much larger organisations, including Canterbury College of Art, founded by Thomas Sidney Cooper in 1868, which is today the University for the Creative Arts. Blean near Canterbury was home to Smallfilms, the production company founded by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin and responsible for children's TV favourites Noggin the Nog, Ivor the Engine and Bagpuss. Performing arts. The county's largest theatre is the Marlowe Theatre in the centre of Canterbury. Music festivals that take place in Kent include Chilled in a Field Festival, Electric Gardens, Hop Farm Festival, In the Woods Festival, Lounge On The Farm and the annual Smugglers Festival near Deal. Other venues for live music include Leas Cliff Hall in Folkestone and the Assembly Hall in Tunbridge Wells. Kentish independence. Kentish people have long viewed themselves as Kentish first and British second, and to this day refer to themselves as either 'Men of Kent' or 'Kentish men' depending on whether they live to the East or West of the River Medway. After the 2016 Brexit referendum and subsequent proposals for "border checks" on the Kentish border, effectively making Kent a country within a country, this pride in being Kentish began to form into calls from some areas for an independent Kent or an autonomous republic within the UK, especially from the county's prominent newspapers, with the idea being discussed in detail in some areas - with some ideas such as mock passports and "tongue-in-cheek" manifestos being created. These calls for independence can be explained by the individualistic and rebellious mentality that has always existed in the county, which can be explained by the counties position in the very South-East of the United Kingdom, having been a prominent and independent kingdom for centuries as well as being the source of many major rebellions that have occurred in the United Kingdom. Transport. Roads. With the Roman invasion, a road network was constructed to connect London to the Channel ports of Dover, Lympne and Richborough. The London–Dover road was Watling Street. These roads are now approximately the A2, B2068, A257, and the A28. The A2 runs through Dartford (A207), Gravesend, Rochester, Canterbury, and Dover; the A20 through Eltham, Wrotham, Maidstone, Charing, Ashford. Hythe, Folkestone and Dover; the A21 around Sevenoaks, Tonbridge, Tunbridge Wells and on to Hastings in East Sussex. In the 1960s, two motorways were built; the M2 from Medway to Faversham, and the M20 from Swanley to Folkestone. Part of the M25 runs through Kent, from Westerham to the Dartford Crossing. The M26 motorway, built in 1980, provides a short link between the M25 at Sevenoaks and the M20 near Wrotham. Kent currently has more motorways by distance than any other county in the UK, with sections of the M2, M20, M25 and M26 totalling within the extents of the ceremonial county. In the run-up to Britain leaving the European Union, Government minister Michael Gove confirmed that the Government intended to impose a "de facto" border between Kent and the rest of England for freight lorries, in order to deal with expected lorry queues of 7,000 or more at Folkestone, Dover and other ports. Heavy goods vehicle operators need to apply for a 24-hour Kent Access Permit (KAP) to take a vehicle of 7.5 tonnes or more into Kent if their intention is to cross to the EU via Dover or the Eurotunnel. Water. The medieval Cinque Ports, except for the Port of Dover, have all now silted up. The Medway Estuary has been an important port and naval base for 500 years. The River Medway is tidal up to Allington and navigable up to Tonbridge. Kent's two canals are the Royal Military Canal between Hythe and Rye, which still exists, and the Thames and Medway Canal between Strood and Gravesend. Built-in 1824, it was purchased in 1846 by the railways, which partially backfilled it. Container ports are at Ramsgate and Thamesport. Following the closures across the lower Medway, and the Swale to the Isle of Sheppey, during the 20th century, the Woolwich Ferry is the only domestic ferry that runs in the broadest definition of the county. Railways. The earliest locomotive-driven passenger-carrying railway in Britain was the Canterbury & Whitstable Railway which opened in 1830. This and the London & Greenwich Railway later merged into South Eastern Railway (SER). By the 1850s, SER's networks had expanded to Ashford, Ramsgate, Canterbury, Tunbridge Wells, and the Medway towns. SER's major London termini were London Bridge, Charing Cross, and Cannon Street. Kent also had a second major railway, the London, Chatham & Dover Railway. Originally the East Kent Railway in 1858, it linked the northeast Kent coast with London terminals at Victoria and Blackfriars. The two companies merged in 1899, forming the South Eastern & Chatham Railway, further amalgamated with other railways by the Railways Act 1921 to form the Southern Railway. Britain's railways were nationalised in 1948, forming British Railways. The railways were privatised in 1996 and most Kent passenger services were franchised to Connex South Eastern. Following financial difficulties, Connex lost the franchise and was replaced by South Eastern Trains and after Southeastern. The Channel Tunnel was completed in 1994 and High Speed 1 in November 2007 with a London terminus at St Pancras. A new station, Ebbsfleet International, opened between Dartford and Gravesend, serving northern Kent. The high speed lines will be utilised to provide a faster train service to coastal towns like Ramsgate and Folkestone. This station is in addition to the existing station at Ashford International, which has suffered a massive cut in service as a result. In addition to the "main line" railways, there are several light, heritage, and industrial railways in Kent. There are three heritage, standard gauge railways; Spa Valley Railway near Tunbridge Wells on the old Tunbridge Wells West branch, East Kent Railway on the old East Kent coalfield area and the Kent & East Sussex Railway on the Weald around Tenterden. In addition, there is the gauge, Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway on the southeast Kent coast along the Dungeness peninsula. Finally, there is the , industrial Sittingbourne & Kemsley Light Railway, previously the Bowaters Paper Railway. Air. Charter flights are provided by Lydd Airport at Lydd. In 2002, it was revealed that the government was considering building a new four-runway airport on the marshland near the village of Cliffe on Hoo Peninsula. This plan was dropped in 2003 following protests by cultural and environmental groups. However further plans for a Thames Estuary Airport on the Kent coast have subsequently emerged, including the Thames Hub Airport, again sited on the Isle of Grain and designed by Lord Foster, and the London Britannia Airport plan, colloquially known as "Boris Island" due to its being championed by the former Mayor of London Boris Johnson, which would see a six runway airport built on an artificial island to be towards the Shivering Sands area, north-east of Whitstable. Both of these options were dropped in 2014 in favour of expansion at either Gatwick or Heathrow Airport, the latter finally being the chosen option following Theresa May's installation as Prime Minister in summer 2016. Manston Airport, located near the village of Manston in the Thanet district, was a former RAF facility that also handled some civilian flights. It closed in 2014. Education. Kent has four universities: Canterbury Christ Church University with campuses throughout East Kent; University of Kent, with campuses in Canterbury and Medway; University of Greenwich (a London University), with sites at Woolwich, Eltham, London and Medway; the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) also has three of its five campuses in the county. Although much of Britain adopted a comprehensive education system in the 1970s, Kent County Council (KCC) and Medway Unitary Authority are among around fifteen local authorities still providing wholly selective education through the eleven-plus examination with students allocated a place at a secondary modern school or at a grammar school. Together, the two Kent authorities have 38 of the 164 grammar schools remaining in Britain. Kent County Council has the largest education department of any local council in Britain, providing school places for over 289,000 pupils. In 2005–06, Kent County Council and Medway introduced a standardised school year, based on six terms, as recommended by the Local Government Association in its 2000 report, "The Rhythms of Schooling". Kent County Council Local Education Authority maintains 96 secondary schools, of which 33 are selective schools and 63 are secondary modern schools. Music education is provided by Kent Music (formerly Kent Music School), which has its origins in the 1940s. Kent Music provides services across the county including Kent County Youth Orchestra, Kent Youth Choirs, and an annual summer school at Benenden School. National Challenge schools. In 2010, Kent had the highest number of National Challenge schools in England: schools which are branded 'failing' based on the British Government's floor targets that 30% of pupils achieve at least 5 GCSE grades A* to C. Of the 63 secondary modern schools, 33 missed this target; thus 52% of Kent secondary modern schools (34% out of all 96 maintained secondary schools) are 'failing'. Sport. In association football, Kent's highest ranked football team is Gillingham FC (nicknamed 'The Gills') who play in Football League Two, having been demoted at the end of the 2021–22 season. Maidstone United was a Football League side from 1989 until going bankrupt in 1992. Kent clubs in the higher levels of non-league football include the current incarnation of Maidstone United and Dover Athletic playing in the National League along with Ebbsfleet United, who were promoted in 2017. Dartford currently play in National League South, the sixth tier of the English football pyramid. Kent is represented in cricket by Kent County Cricket Club. The club was a founder member of the County Championship in 1890 and has won the competition, the major domestic first-class cricket competition, seven times. The club is based at the St Lawrence Ground in Canterbury and also plays matches at the Nevill Ground in Royal Tunbridge Wells and the County Cricket Ground, Beckenham. The Kent Women cricket team has won the Women's County Championship seven times since it was established in 1997. Cricket has traditionally been a popular sport in the county and Kent is considered one of the locations in which the game first developed. Teams have represented the county since the early 18th century. The Kent Cricket League is the top level of club competition within Kent and features teams from throughout the county, including areas such as Beckenham and Bexley which were formerly part of the county. Canterbury Hockey Club and Holcombe Hockey Club both play in the top division in both the men's and women's England Hockey Leagues. Sevenoaks Hockey Club's women first XI plays in the second tier of national competition. In rugby union, Tonbridge Juddians and Canterbury RFC play in the fourth-tier of English rugby in the National League 2 South. Gravesend RFC play in the seventh-tier London 2 South-East. Blackheath FC, a club within the historic boundaries of the county, play in fourth-tier National League 2 South. Both Tonbridge Juddians and Blackheath RFC played in National league 1 (the third-tier of English rugby) up until the end of the 2021–2022 season. In motorsport, the Brands Hatch circuit near Swanley has played host to a number of national and international racing events and hosted 12 runnings of the British Grand Prix in various years between 1964 and 1986. Kent is home to two National League netball clubs, both based in northwest Kent: Telstars (Premier Division 2) and KCNC (Premier Division 3). The 2021–2022 season has seen three Kentish clubs demoted from the third-tier of their respective sports to the fourth-tier, with rugby clubs Tonbridge Juddians and Blackheath RFC being demoted in rugby and Gillingham FC being demoted in football. News and media. Television. Much of Kent is served by the BBC's South East region, which is based in Tunbridge Wells and provides local news for the county and East Sussex. Its commercial rival is ITV Meridian Ltd, which has a newsroom at The Maidstone Studios despite the main studio being based in Hampshire. Main transmitters providing these services are at West Hougham, near Dover and Blue Bell Hill, between Chatham and Maidstone. A powerful relay transmitter at Tunbridge Wells serves the town and surrounding area. Those parts of Kent closest to London such as Swanley, Westerham, Dartford, Gravesend, and Sevenoaks lie within the ITV London and BBC London areas, taking their television signals from the Crystal Palace transmitter. Radio. Kent has two county-wide stations – BBC Radio Kent, based in Tunbridge Wells; and the commercial station KMFM, owned by the KM Group. KMFM previously consisted of seven local stations which covered different areas of the county (and are still technically seven different licences) but have shared all programming since 2012 The county's first commercial station was originally known as Invicta FM and began broadcasting in 1984. After various buyouts, the station was rebranded into Heart Kent in 2009 as part of the Heart Network. The station was closed and merged with several other Heart stations in the south of England in 2019 to form Heart South, with the Kent studios in Whitstable closing and production moving to Fareham in Hampshire. There are several community radio stations in Kent including: Newspapers. The KM Group, KOS Media and Kent Regional News and Media all provide local newspapers for most of the large towns and cities. County-wide papers include the "Kent Messenger", "Kent on Saturday", "Kent on Sunday", and the "Kent and Sussex Courier".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16826

Kabul

Kabul (; ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province; it is administratively divided into 22 municipal districts. According to 2023 estimates, the population of Kabul was 4.95 million people. In contemporary times, the city has served as Afghanistan's political, cultural, and economical center, and rapid urbanisation has made Kabul the 75th-largest city in the world and the country's primate city. The modern-day city of Kabul is located high up in a narrow valley in the Hindu Kush, and is bounded by the Kabul River. At an elevation of , it is one of the highest capital cities in the world. The center of this city includes its old neighborhoods, which includes the areas of Khashti Bridge, Khabgah, Kahforoshi, Deh-Afghanan, Chandavel, Shorbazar, Saraji, Zana-Khan and Baghe Alimardan. Kabul is said to be over 3,500 years old, mentioned since at least the time of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Located at a crossroads in Asia—roughly halfway between Istanbul, Turkey, in the west and Hanoi, Vietnam, in the east—it is situated in a strategic location along the trade routes of Central Asia and South Asia, and was a key destination on the ancient Silk Road; It was traditionally seen as the meeting point between Tartary, India, and Persia. Kabul has also been under the rule of various other dynasties and empires, including the Seleucids, the Kushans, the Hindu Shahis, Western Turks, the Turk Shahis, the Samanids, the Khwarazmians, the Timurids, and the Mongols, among others. In the 16th century, the Mughal Empire used Kabul as a summer capital, during which time it prospered and increased in significance. It briefly came under the control of the Afsharids following Nader Shah's invasion of India, until finally coming under local rule by the Afghan Empire in 1747; Kabul became the capital of Afghanistan in 1776, during the reign of Timur Shah Durrani (a son of Ahmad Shah Durrani). In the 19th century, the city was occupied by the British, but after establishing foreign relations and agreements, they were compelled to withdraw all forces from Afghanistan and returned to British India. Kabul is known for its historical gardens, bazaars, and palaces; well-known examples are the Gardens of Babur and Darul Aman Palace, as well as the Arg. In the second half of the 20th century, it became a stop on the hippie trail undertaken by many Europeans, and the city also gained the nickname "Paris of Central Asia" during this time. However, this period of tranquility ended in 1978 with the Saur Revolution and subsequent Soviet military intervention in 1979, which sparked the protracted Soviet–Afghan War until 1989. The 1990s were marked by continuous civil wars between various splinter factions of the disbanded Afghan mujahideen, which destroyed much of the city. In 1996, Kabul was captured by the Taliban after four years of intermittent fighting with other Afghan factions. However, the Taliban-ruled city soon fell to the United States after the American-led invasion of Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks in 2001. In 2021, Kabul was re-captured by the Taliban following the withdrawal of American-led military forces from Afghanistan. Toponymy and etymology. Kabul (, ; ', ; ', ) is also spelled as Cabool, Cabol, Kabol, or Cabul. Kabul was known by different names throughout history. Its meaning is unknown, but "certainly pre-dates the advent of Islam when it was an important centre on the route between India and the Hellenic world". In Sanskrit, it was known as "Kubha", whereas Greek authors of classical antiquity referred to it as "Kophen", "Kophes" or "Koa". The Chinese traveler Xuanzang (fl. 7th century CE) recorded the city as "Kaofu" (高附). The name "Kabul" was first applied to the Kabul river before being applied to the area situated between the Hindu Kush and Sindh (present-day Pakistan). This area was also known as Kabulistan. Alexander Cunningham (died 1893) noted in the 19th century that "Kaofu" as recorded by the Chinese was in all likelihood the name of "one of the five Yuchi or Tukhari tribes". Cunningam added that this tribe gave its name to the city after it was occupied by them in the 2nd century BCE. This "supposition seems likely" as the Afghan historian Mir Ghulam Mohammad Ghobar (1898–1978) wrote that in the Avesta (sacred book of Zoroastrianism), Kabul was known as "Vaekereta", whereas the Greeks of antiquity referred to it as "Ortospana" ("High Place"), which corresponds to the Sanskrit word "Urddhastana", which was applied to Kabul. The Greek geographer Ptolemy (died ) recorded Kabul as "Καβουρα" ("Kabura"). According to a legend, one could find a lake in Kabul, in the middle of which the so-called "Island of Happiness" could be found, where a joyous family of musicians lived. According to this same legend, the island became accessible by the order of a king through the construction of a bridge (i.e. "pul" in Persian) made out of straw (i.e. "kah" in Persian). According to this legend the name Kabul was thus formed as a result of these two words combined, i.e. "kah" + "pul". The "Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names" argues that the "suggestion that the name is derived from the Arabic root "qbl" 'meeting' or 'receiving' is unlikely". It remains unknown when the name "Kabul" was first applied to the city. However, it "came into prominence" following the destruction of Kapisa and other cities in what is present-day Afghanistan by Genghis Khan (c. 1162–1227) in the thirteenth century. Due to the centrality of the city within the region, as well as its cultural importance as a nexus of ethnic groups in the region, Kabul became known as the Paris of Central Asia in the late 20th century. History. Antiquity. The origin of Kabul, who built it and when, is largely unknown. The Hindu Rigveda, composed between 2000 and 1500 BC and one of the four canonical texts of Hinduism, and the Avesta, the primary canon of texts of Zoroastrianism, refer to the Kabul River and to a settlement called "Kubha". The Kabul valley was part of the Median Empire (c. 678–549 BC). In 549 BC, the Median Empire was annexed by Cyrus The Great and Kabul became part the Achaemenid Empire (c. 550–330 BC). During that period, Kabul became a center of learning for Zoroastrianism, followed by Buddhism and Hinduism. An inscription on Darius the Great's tombstone lists Kabul as one of the 29 countries of the Achaemenid Empire. When Alexander annexed the Achaemenid Empire, the Kabul region came under his control. After his death, his empire was seized by his general Seleucus, becoming part of the Seleucid Empire. In 305 BCE, the Seleucid Empire was extended to the Indus River which led to friction with the neighbouring Mauryan Empire. During the Mauryan period, trade flourished because of uniform weights and measures. Irrigation facilities for public use were developed leading to an increased harvest of crops. People were also employed as artisans, jewellers, and carpenters. The Greco-Bactrians took control of Kabul from the Mauryans in the early 2nd century BC, then lost the city to their subordinates in the Indo-Greek Kingdom around the mid-2nd century BC. Buddhism was greatly patronised by these rulers and the majority of people of the city were adherents of the religion. Indo-Scythians expelled the Indo-Greeks by the mid 1st century BC, but lost the city to the Kushan Empire about 100 years later. It is mentioned as "Kophes" or "Kophene" in some classical writings. Hsuan Tsang refers to the city as "Kaofu" in the 7th century AD, which is the appellation of one of the five tribes of the Yuezhi who had migrated from across the Hindu Kush into the Kabul valley around the beginning of the Christian era. It was conquered by Kushan Emperor Kujula Kadphises in about 45 AD and remained Kushan territory until at least the 3rd century AD. The Kushans were Indo-European-speaking peoples based in Bactria. Around 230 AD, the Kushans were defeated by the Sassanid Empire and replaced by Sassanid vassals known as the Indo-Sassanids. During the Sassanian period, the city was referred to as "Kapul" in Pahlavi scripts. Kapol in the Persian language means Royal (ka) Bridge (pol), which is due to the main bridge on the Kabul River that connected the east and west of the city. In 420 AD, the Indo-Sassanids were driven out of Afghanistan by the Xionite tribe known as the Kidarites, who were then replaced in the 460s by the Hephthalites. It became part of the surviving Turk Shahi Kingdom of Kapisa, also known as "Kabul-Shahan". According to "Táríkhu-l Hind" by Al-Biruni, Kabul was governed by princes of Turkic lineage.|Abu Rayhan Biruni|978–1048 AD}} It was briefly held by the Tibetan Empire between 801 and 815. Islamisation and Mongol invasion. The Islamic conquest reached modern-day Afghanistan in 642 AD, at a time when Kabul was independent. Till then, Kabul was considered politically and culturally part of Indian world. A number of failed expeditions were made to Islamise the region. In one of them, Abdur Rahman bin Samara arrived in Kabul from Zaranj in the late 600s and converted 12,000 inhabitants to Islam before abandoning the city. Muslims were a minority until Ya'qub bin Laith as-Saffar of Zaranj conquered Kabul in 870 from the Hindu Shahis and established the first Islamic dynasty in the region. It was reported that the rulers of Kabul were Muslims with non-Muslims living close by. Iranian traveller and geographer Istakhri described it in 921: Over the following centuries, the city was successively controlled by the Samanids, Ghaznavids, Ghurids, Khwarazmshahs, Qarlughids, and Khaljis. In the 13th century, the invading Mongols caused major destruction in the region. Report of a massacre in the close by Bamiyan is recorded around this period, where the entire population of the valley was annihilated by the Mongol troops as revenge for the death of Genghis Khan's grandson. As a result, many natives of Afghanistan fled south toward the Indian subcontinent where some established dynasties in Delhi. The Chagatai Khanate and Kartids were vassals of Ilkhanate until the dissolution of the latter in 1335. Following the era of the Khalji dynasty in 1333, the famous Moroccan scholar Ibn Battuta was visiting Kabul and wrote: Timurid and Mughal era. In the 14th century, Kabul became a major trading centre under the kingdom of Timur ("Tamerlane"). In 1504, the city fell to Babur from the north and made into his headquarters, which became one of the principal cities of his later Mughal Empire. In 1525, Babur described Kabulistan in his memoirs by writing that: Mirza Muhammad Haidar Dughlat, a poet from Hindustan who visited at the time wrote: "Dine and drink in Kabul: it is mountain, desert, city, river and all else." It was from here that Babur began his 1526 conquest of Hindustan, which was ruled by the Afghan Lodi dynasty and began east of the Indus River in what is present-day Pakistan. Babur loved Kabul due to the fact that he lived in it for 20 years and the people were loyal to him, including the weather that he was used to. His wish to be buried in Kabul was finally granted. The inscription on his tomb contains the famous Persian couplet, which states: اگرفردوس روی زمین است همین است و همین است و همین است Transliteration: Agar fardus rui zamayn ast', hameen ast', o hameen ast', o hameen ast'. Kabul remained in Mughal control for the next 200 years. Though Mughal power became centred within the Indian subcontinent, Kabul retained importance as a frontier city for the empire; Abul Fazl, Emperor Akbar's chronicler, described it as one of the two gates to Hindustan (the other being Kandahar). As part of administrative reforms under Akbar, the city was made capital of the eponymous Mughal province, Kabul Subah. Under Mughal governance, Kabul became a prosperous urban centre, endowed with bazaars such as the non-extant Char Chatta. For the first time in its history, Kabul served as a mint centre, producing gold and silver Mughal coins up to the reign of Alamgir II. It acted as a military base for Shah Jahan's campaigns in Balkh and Badakhshan. Kabul was also a recreational retreat for the Mughals, who hunted here and constructed several gardens. Most of the Mughals' architectural contributions to the city (such as gardens, fortifications, and mosques) have not survived. During this time, the population was about 60,000. Under later Mughal Emperors, Kabul became neglected. The empire lost the city when it was captured in 1738 by Nader Shah, who was en route to invade the Indian subcontinent. Durrani and Barakzai dynasties. Nine years after Nader Shah and his forces invaded and occupied the city as part of the more easternmost parts of his Empire, he was assassinated by his own officers, causing its rapid disintegration. Ahmad Shah Durrani, commander of 4,000 Abdali Afghans, asserted Pashtun rule in 1747 and further expanded his new Afghan Empire. His ascension to power marked the beginning of Afghanistan. By this time, Kabul had lost its status as a metropolitan city, and its population had decreased to 10,000. Interest in the city was renewed when Ahmad Shah's son Timur Shah Durrani, after inheriting power, transferred the capital of the Durrani Empire from Kandahar to Kabul in 1776. Kabul experienced considerable urban development during the reigns of Timur Shah and his successor Zaman Shah; several religious and public buildings were constructed, and diverse groups of Sufis, jurists, and literary families were encouraged to settle the city through land grants and stipends. Kabul's first visitor from Europe was Englishman George Forster, who described 18th-century Kabul as "the best and cleanest city in Asia". In 1826, the kingdom was claimed by Dost Mohammad Khan, but in 1839 Shujah Shah Durrani was re-installed with the help of the British Empire during the First Anglo-Afghan War. In 1841 a local uprising resulted in the killing of the British resident and loss of mission in Kabul and the 1842 retreat from Kabul to Jalalabad. In 1842 the British returned to Kabul, demolishing the city's main "bazaar" in revenge before returning to British India (now Pakistan). Akbar Khan took to the throne from 1842 to 1845 and was followed by Dost Mohammad Khan. The Second Anglo-Afghan War broke out in 1879 when Kabul was under Sher Ali Khan's rule, as the Afghan king initially refused to accept British diplomatic missions and later the British residents were again massacred. During the war, Bala Hissar was partially destroyed by a fire and an explosion. 20th century. Having become an established bazaar city, leather and textile industries developed by 1916. The majority of the population was concentrated on the south side of the river. Kabul modernised throughout the regime of King Habibullah Khan, with the introduction of electricity, telephone, and a postal service. The first modern high school, Habibia, was established in 1903. In 1919, after the Third Anglo-Afghan War, King Amanullah Khan announced Afghanistan's independence in foreign affairs at Eidgah Mosque in Kabul. Amanullah was reform-minded and he had a plan to build a new capital city on land about 6 km away from Kabul. This area was named Darulaman and it consisted of the famous Darul Aman Palace, where he later resided. Many educational institutions were founded in Kabul during the 1920s. In 1929 King Amanullah left Kabul due to a local uprising orchestrated by Habibullah Kalakani, but he himself was imprisoned and executed after nine months in power by King Nader Khan. Three years later, in 1933, the new king was assassinated during an award ceremony inside a school in Kabul. The throne was left to his 19-year-old son, Zahir Shah, who became the last King of Afghanistan. Unlike Amanullah Khan, Nader Khan and Zahir Shah had no plans to create a new capital city, and thus Kabul remained the country's seat of government. During the inter-war period France and Germany helped develop the country and maintained high schools and lycees in the capital, providing education for the children of the city's elite families. Kabul University opened in 1932 and by the 1960s western educated Afghans made up the majority of teachers. By the 1960s the majority of instructors at the university had degrees from Western universities. Kabul's only railway service, the Kabul–Darulaman Tramway, operated for six years from 1923 to 1929. When Zahir Shah took power in 1933 Kabul had the only of rail in the country and the country had few internal telegraphs, phone lines or roads. Zahir turned to the Japanese, Germans and Italians for help developing a modern transportation and communication network. A radio tower built by the Germans in 1937 in Kabul allowed instant communication with outlying villages. A national bank and state cartels were organised to allow for economic modernisation. Textile mills, power plants, carpet and furniture factories were also built in Kabul, providing much-needed manufacturing and infrastructure. During the 1940s and 1950s, urbanisation accelerated and the built-up area was increased to 68 km2 by 1962, an almost fourteen-fold increase compared to 1925. The Serena Hotel opened in 1945 as the first Western style luxury hotel. Under the premiership of Mohammad Daoud Khan in the 1950s, foreign investment and development increased. In 1955, the Soviet Union forwarded $100 million in credit to Afghanistan, which financed public transportation, airports, a cement factory, mechanised bakery, a five-lane highway from Kabul to the Soviet border and dams, including the Salang Pass to the north of Kabul. During the 1960s, Soviet-style microrayon housing estates were built, containing sixty blocks. The government also built many ministry buildings in the brutalist architecture style. In the 1960s the first Marks & Spencer store in Central Asia was built in the city. Kabul Zoo was inaugurated in 1967, which was maintained with the help of visiting German zoologists. During this time, Kabul experimented with liberalisation, notably the loosening of restrictions on speech and assembly which led to student politics in the capital and various demonstrations by Socialist, Maoist, liberal or Islamist factions. Foreigners flocked to Kabul and the nation's tourism industry picked up speed. To accompany the city with newfound tourism, western-style accommodations were opened in the 1960s, notably the Spinzar Hotel. Western, American and Japanese tourists were visiting the city's attractions including the "celebrated" Chicken Street and the National Museum that used to have some of Asia's finest cultural artifacts. Lonely Planet called it an upcoming "tourist trap" in 1973. Additionally, Pakistanis were also visiting to watch Indian movies in cinemas that were banned in their own country. During this time, Kabul had been nicknamed the "Paris of Central Asia". According to J. Bruce Amstutz, an American diplomat in Kabul: Until the late 1970s, Kabul was a major stop on the famous Hippie trail, coming from Bamyan to the west on towards Peshawar. At the time, Kabul became known for its street sales of hashish and became a major tourist attraction for western hippies. Occupations wars and Taliban Regime (1996–2001). On 28 April 1978, President Daoud and most of his family were assassinated in Kabul's Presidential Palace in what is called the Saur Revolution. Pro-Soviet PDPA under Nur Muhammad Taraki seized power and slowly began to institute reforms. Private businesses were nationalised in the Soviet manner. Education was modified into the Soviet model, with lessons focusing on teaching Russian, Marxism–Leninism and learning of other countries belonging to the Soviet bloc. Amid growing internal chaos and heightened cold war tensions, the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Adolph Dubs, was kidnapped on his way to work at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul on 14 February 1979 and killed during a rescue attempt at the Serena Hotel. There were conflicting reports of who abducted Dubs and what demands were made for his release. Several senior Soviet officials were in the lobby of the hotel during a standoff with the kidnappers, who were holding Dubs in room 117. Afghan police, acting on the advice of Soviet advisors and over the objections of U.S. officials, launched a rescue attempt, during which Dubs was shot in the head from a distance of six inches and killed. Many questions about the killing remain unanswered. On 24 December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and Kabul was heavily occupied by Soviet Armed Forces. In Pakistan, Director-General of the ISI Akhtar Abdur Rahman advocated for the idea of covert operation in Afghanistan by arming Islamic extremists who formed the mujahideen. General Rahman was heard loudly saying: "Kabul must burn! Kabul must burn!", and mastered the idea of proxy war in Afghanistan. Pakistani President Zia-ul-Haq authorised this operation under General Rahman, which was later merged with Operation Cyclone, a programme funded by the United States and carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency. The Soviets turned the city of Kabul into their command centre during the Soviet–Afghan War, and while fighting was mostly taking place in the countryside, Kabul was widely disturbed. Political crime and guerrilla attacks on military and government targets were common, and the sound of gunfire became commonplace at night in the outskirts. Large numbers of PDPA party members and Soviet troops were kidnapped or assassinated, sometimes in broad daylight, with acts of terrorism committed by civilians, anti-regime militias and also Khalqists. By July 1980, as much as twelve party members were being assassinated on a daily basis, and the Soviet Army stopped patrolling the city in January 1981. A major uprising against the Soviet presence broke out in Kabul in February 1980 in what is called the 3 Hut uprising. It led to a night curfew in the city that would remain in place for seven years. The Soviet Embassy also, was attacked four times with arms fire in the first five years of the war. A Western correspondent revisiting Kabul in December 1983 after a year, said that the city was "converted into a fortress bristling with weapons". Contrastingly, that same year American diplomat Charles Dunbar commented that the Soviet troops' presence was "surprisingly modest", and an author in a 1983 "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" article thought that the Soviet soldiers had a "friendly" atmosphere. The city's population increased from around 500,000 in 1978 to 1.5 million in 1988. The large influx were mostly internal refugees who fled other parts of the country for safety in Kabul. During this time, women made up 40% of the workforce. Soviet men and women were very common in the city's shopping roads, with the large availability of Western products. Most Soviet civilians (numbering between 8,000 and 10,000) lived in the northeastern Soviet-style Mikrorayon ("microraion") housing complex that was surrounded by barbed-wire and armed tanks. They sometimes received abuse from anti-Soviet civilians on the streets. The mujahideen rebels managed to strike at the city a few times—on 9 October 1987, a car bomb planted by a mujahideen group killed 27 people, and on 27 April 1988, in celebrations of the 10th anniversary of the Saur Revolution, a truck bomb killed six people. After the fall of Mohammad Najibullah's government in April 1992, different mujahideen factions entered the city and formed a government under the Peshawar Accords, but Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's party refused to sign the accords and started shelling the city for power, which soon escalated into a full-scale conflict. This marked the start of a dark period of the city: at least 30,000 civilians were killed in a period known locally as the "Kabul Wars." About 80 percent of the city was devastated and destroyed by 1996. The old city and western areas were among the worst-hit. A "New York Times" analyst said in 1996 that the city was more devastated than Sarajevo, which was similarly damaged during the Bosnian War at the time. The city suffered heavily under a bombardment campaign between rival militias which intensified during the summer of 1992. Its geographic location in a narrow valley made it an easy target from rockets fired by militias who based themselves in the surrounding mountains. Within two years' time, the majority of infrastructure was destroyed, a massive exodus of the population left to the countryside or abroad, and electricity and water was completely out. In late 1994, bombardment of the capital came to a temporary halt. These forces took steps to restore law and order. Courts started to work again, convicting individuals inside government troops who had committed crimes. On 27 September 1996, the hardline Taliban militia seized Kabul and established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. They imposed a strict form of Sharia (Islamic law), restricting women from work and education, conducting amputations against common thieves, and hit-squads from the infamous "Ministry for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice" watching public beatings of people. 21st century. In November 2001, the Northern Alliance captured Kabul after the Taliban had abandoned it following the American invasion. A month later a new government under President Hamid Karzai began to assemble. In the meantime, a NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was deployed in Afghanistan. The war-torn city began to see some positive development as many expatriate Afghans returned to the country. The city's population grew from about 500,000 in 2001 to over 3 million in recent years. Many foreign embassies re-opened. In 2008 the process started to gradually hand over security responsibilities from NATO to Afghan forces. From late 2001 the city has been continuously rebuilt - many of the damaged landmarks were rebuilt or renovated, for example the Gardens of Babur in 2005, the arch of Paghman, the Mahmoud Khan Bridge clock tower in 2013, and the Taj Beg Palace in 2021. Local community efforts have also managed to restore war-ravaged local homes and dwellings. The city has experienced rapid urbanisation with an increasing population. Many informal settlements have been built. Since the late 2000s, numerous modern housing complexes have been built, many of which are gated and secured, to serve a growing Afghan middle class. Some of these include the Aria City (in District 10) and Golden City (District 8). Some complexes have been built out-of-town, such as the Omid-e-Sabz township (District 13), Qasaba/Khwaja Rawash township (District 15), and Sayed Jamaludin township (District 12). Throughout the years, a high-security "Green Zone" was formed in the centre of the city. In 2010, a series of manned checkpoints called the Ring of Steel was put into operation. Concrete blast walls also appeared throughout Kabul in the 2000s for security reasons. Despite frequent terrorist attacks in the city, mainly by Taliban insurgents, the city continued to develop and was the fifth fastest-growing city in the world as of 2012. Until August 2021, the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) had been in charge of security in and around the city. Kabul was periodically the scene of deadly bombings carried out mostly by the Taliban and its wing the Haqqani network. Government employees, soldiers and ordinary civilians have all been targets of attacks. The Afghan government called the actions of the terrorists war crimes. The deadliest attack yet was a truck bombing in May 2017. The city was seized during the 2021 Taliban offensive on August 15, 2021; under Taliban rule the city and the country has experienced some relative calm, although a number of terrorist attacks have since been committed by the regional ISIL branch. Geography. Kabul was situated in the eastern part of the country, above sea level in a narrow valley, wedged between the Hindu Kush mountains along the Kabul River. Immediately to the south of the old city are the ancient city walls and the Sher Darwaza mountain, with the Shuhadayi Salihin cemetery behind it. A bit further east is the ancient Bala Hissar fortress with the Kol-e Hasmat Khan lake behind it. Its location has been described as a "bowl surrounded by mountains". Some of the mountains (which are called "koh") include: Khair Khana-e Shamali, Khwaja Rawash, Shakhi Baran Tey, Chihil Sutun, Qurugh, Khwaja Razaq and Sher Darwaza. There are also two mountains in between urban areas to the west: Koh-e Asamai (locally known as the "Television hill") and Ali Abad. Hills within the city (which are called "tapa") include Bibi Mahro and Maranjan. The Logar River flows into Kabul from the south, joining the Kabul River not far from the city centre. The city covers an area size of , making it by far the largest in the country. The closest foreign capital cities as the crow flies are Islamabad, Dushanbe, Tashkent, New Delhi and Bishkek. Kabul is roughly equidistant between Istanbul (western Asia) and Hanoi (eastern Asia). Climate. Kabul has a continental, cold semi-arid climate (BSk), with precipitation concentrated in the winter (almost exclusively falling as snow) and spring months. Summers have very low humidity, providing some relief from the heat. Autumns feature warm afternoons and sharply cooler evenings. Winters are very cold by South Asian standards, with a subzero January daily average temperature of , mainly due to the high elevation of the city. Spring is the wettest time of the year. Sunny conditions dominate year-round, and the annual mean temperature is only , much lower than that of Afghanistan's other large cities. Environment. The Kabul River flowed through the heart of the city, dividing the central bazaars. There are several bridges ("pul") crossing the river, the major ones being Pul-e Shah-Do Shamshira, Pul-e Bagh-e Omomi, Pul-e Khishti, and Pul-e Mahmoud. Due to climate change, since the 21st century, the river runs dry most of the year, only filling up in the wetter winter and spring seasons. A large lake and wetland was located just to the southeast from the old city called "Kol-e Hashmat Khan". The marsh provides a critical resting place to thousands of birds who fly between the Indian subcontinent and Siberia. In 2017 the government declared the lake a protected area. Some rare species of birds have been spotted at the lake, such as the Eastern imperial eagle and the Dalmatian pelican. Kabul's other large lake is Qargha, located some 9 km northwest from the centre. It is a major attraction for locals as well as foreigners. Air pollution is a major problem in the city during the winter season, when many residents burn low-quality fuels. Districts. The city of Kabul located within Kabul District, one of the 15 districts of Kabul Province. As the provincial capital, it forms a municipality ("shārwāli") which is further divided into 22 administrative districts called municipal districts or city districts ("nāhia"), which coincide with the official Police Districts (PD). The number of city districts increased from 11 to 18 in 2005, and then to 22 by 2010 after the incorporation of Districts 14 and 19–22 which were annexed by Kabul Municipality from surrounding rural districts. The city limits have thus substantially increased. Due to demarcation disputes with the provincial administration, some of these new districts are more administered by the provincial districts than the municipality. District 1 contains most of the old city. Downtown Kabul mostly consist of Districts 2, 4 and 10. In addition, Districts 3 and 6 house many commercial and governmental points of interests. The city's north and west are the most urbanised, as opposed to the south and east. The table below show the 22 city districts and their settlements, with information about its land size and usage, accurate as of 2011. Demographics. Kabul's population was estimated in 2023 at about 4.95 million. The city's population has long fluctuated due to the wars. The lack of an up-to-date census means that there are various estimates of the population. Kabul's population was estimated to have been about 10,000 in 1700, 65,000 by 1878, and 120,000 by 1940. More recently, the population was around 500,000 in 1979, whilst another source claims 337,715 as of 1976. This figure rose to about 1.5 million by 1988, before dramatically dropping in the 1990s. Kabul became one of the fastest-growing cities in the world, with its population growing fourfold from 2001 to 2014. This was partly due to the return of refugees after the fall of the Taliban regime, and partly due to Afghans moving from other provinces mainly due to war between Taliban insurgents and Afghan government forces in their native areas as well as looking for labor. This resulting rapid urbanisation means that many residents today live in informal settlements. Shanty mud-brick homes on the mountainsides and steep hills have been built by them and these are usually poverty-stricken, not connected to the water and electricity grid. Although the settlements are illegal, they have been tolerated by authorities. In 2017 Kabul Municipality started a project to paint the homes in these settlements in bright colors in an effort to "cheer up" residents. Kabul is and has historically been the most ethnically diverse city in the country, with the population including Afghans from all over the country. Approximately 60% of Kabul's population is Tajik, 20% Hazara, another 15% is Pashtun, and minority ethnic groups include Baloch, Uzbek, Turkmen, and Afghan Hindu. Almost three-quarters of the population of Kabul follow Sunni Islam, and around Twenty-five percent of residents are Shiites. Other religions in the city include Sikhism and Hinduism. In 1525, Babur described the region in his memoirs by writing that: Along with Pashtun, Tajik and Hazara communities, who make up the majority of the population of the city, there was a significant population of Uzbek, Turkmen, Kuchi, Qizilbash, Hindu, Sikh and other groups. The broader province of Kabul however, is dominated by Pashtun and Tajik groups. The Dari (Persian) and Pashto languages are widely used in the region, although Dari serves as the lingua franca. Multilingualism is common throughout the area, particularly among the Pashtun people. The term "Kabuli" (کابلی) is referred to the urbanites of the city. They were ethnic-neutral, typically speak Dari (Persian), were generally secularly educated, and favor Western fashion. Many Kabulites (especially elites and the upper class) left the country during the civil war and are now outnumbered by rural people who moved in from the countryside, mostly refugees but also labor-seekers. About 68% of the city's population follow Sunni Islam while 30% are Shiites (mainly the Hazaras and Qizilbash). The remaining 2% are followers of Sikhism and Hinduism, as well as one known Christian resident (First Lady Rula Ghani) and one Jewish resident (Zablon Simintov) in the 2010s. It is estimated that there were 500–8,000 Afghan Christians in the country as a whole; due to restrictions on religious freedom, they often worship in secret, rendering it difficult to estimate the number of Christians in Kabul specifically. Hundreds of non-Muslims still remain after the Taliban retakeover Afghanistan. Kabul also has small Indian (which the Sikhs and Hindus belong to) and Turkish communities (mostly business-owners and investors), and in the 1980s had a sizable Russian community during the Soviet campaign in the country. Sports. Cricket has historically been the dominant sport in Kabul, with 2 of 3 sports stadiums reserved for it. Government and politics. The municipality's administrative structure consisted of 17 departments under a mayor. Like other provincial municipalities in Afghanistan, the municipality of Kabul dealt with city affairs such as construction and infrastructure. The city districts ("nāhia") collected certain taxes and issued building licenses. Each city district had a district head appointed by the mayor, and lead six major departments in the district office. The neighbourhood organisation structure at the "nahia" level was called a "gozar". Kabul has been Divided in to 630 Gozars. A "wakil-e gozar" was a person chosen to represent a community within a city district. Kabul's Chief of Police was Lt. Gen. Abdul Rahman Rahimi. The police were part of the Afghan National Police (ANP) under the Ministry of Interior and were arranged by city districts. The Police Chief was selected by the Interior Minister and is responsible for all law enforcement activities throughout the Kabul province. Economy and infrastructure. Kabul's main products included fresh and dried fruit, nuts, beverages, Afghan rugs, leather and sheep skin products, furniture, antique replicas, and domestic clothes. The World Bank authorised US$25 million for the Kabul Urban Reconstruction Project which closed in 2011. Over the last decade, the United States has invested approximately $9.1 billion into urban infrastructure in Afghanistan. The wars since 1978 have limited the city's economic productivity but after the establishment of the Karzai administration since late 2001, local economic developments have included a number of indoor shopping malls. The first of these was the Kabul City Center, opened 2005. Others have also opened in recent years including Gulbahar Center, City Walk Mall and Majid Mall. Mandawi Road on the south side of the river, located between Murad Khani and Shur Bazaar neighbourhoods, is one of the main bazaars of Kabul. This wholesale market is very popular amongst locals. Nearby is the Sarai Shahzada money exchange market. Chicken Street is perhaps best known to foreigners. Kabul's largest industrial hub was located in District 9, on the north banks of the River Kabul and near the airport. About from downtown Kabul, in Bagrami, a industrial complex had been completed with modern facilities, which allowed companies to operate businesses there. The park had professional management for the daily maintenance of public roads, internal streets, common areas, parking areas, 24 hours perimeter security, access control for vehicles and people. A number of factories operated there, including the $25 million Coca-Cola bottling plant and the Omaid Bahar juice factory. According to Transparency International, the government of Afghanistan was the third most-corrupt in the world, as of 2010. Experts believe that the poor decisions of Afghan politicians contributed to the unrest in the region. This also prevented foreign investment in Afghanistan, especially by Western countries. In 2012, there were reportedly $3.9 billion paid to public officials in bribes which contributed to these issues. Da Afghanistan Bank, the nation's central bank, was headquartered in Kabul. In addition, there are several commercial banks in the city. Each year about 20,000 foreign tourists visited Afghanistan. Development planning. A US$1 billion contract was signed in 2013 to commence work on the "New Kabul City", which is a major residential scheme that would accommodate 1.5 million people. Another development is the Qatar Township in Kabul. Communications. As of November 2015, there were more than 24 television stations based out of Kabul. Terrestrial TV transmitters were located at the summit of the Koh-e Asamai. GSM/GPRS mobile phone services are provided by Afghan Wireless, Etisalat, Roshan, MTN and Salaam. They provide 4G and 3G services. In November 2006, the Afghan Ministry of Communications signed a US$64.5 million deal with ZTE on the establishment of a countrywide fibre optical cable network to help improve telephone, internet, television and radio broadcast services not just in Kabul but throughout the country. Mail and delivery services are provided by Afghan Post, FedEx, TNT N.V., and DHL. Hotels and other lodging. Kabul has many hotels for domestic and foreign travelers. Guest houses are also found in the city. The better and safer ones are located in the Shahr-e Naw and Wazir Akbar Khan neighbourhoods (the Green Zone). The following are some of the hotels in Kabul (in alphabetical order). Culture and landmarks. The old part of Kabul was filled with bazaars nestled along its narrow, crooked streets, examples being the Mandawi and the Bird Market ("Ka Foroshi"). Cultural sites included: the National Museum of Afghanistan, notably displaying an impressive statue of Surya excavated at Khair Khana, the ruined Darul Aman Palace, the tomb of Mughal Emperor Babur at Bagh-e Babur, and Chihil Sutun Park, the Minar-i-Istiqlal (Column of Independence) built in 1919 after the Third Afghan War, the tomb of Timur Shah Durrani, the Bagh-e Bala Palace and the imposing Id Gah Mosque (founded 1893). Bala Hissar was a fort which was partially destroyed during the Second Anglo-Afghan War, then restored as a military college. There was also the Kolola Pushta fort, which was garrisoned by the Afghan Army, and the nearby 19th-century Shahrara Tower fort, which was ruined in 1928. The Koh-e Asamai mountain had a temple that was considered important to Hinduism. Other places of interest include Kabul City Center, which was Kabul's first shopping mall, the shops around Flower Street and Chicken Street, Wazir Akbar Khan district, Kabul Golf Club, Kabul Zoo, Abdul Rahman Mosque, Shah-Do Shamshira and other famous mosques, the National Gallery of Afghanistan, the National Archives of Afghanistan, Afghan Royal Family Mausoleum, the OMAR Mine Museum, Bibi Mahro Hill, Kabul Cemetery, and Paghman Gardens best known for the famous Taq-e Zafar arch. The Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) was also involved in the restoration of the Bagh-e Babur (Babur Gardens). Maranjan Hill ("Tappe-i-Maranjan") was a nearby hill where Buddhist statues and Graeco-Bactrian coins from the 2nd century BC have been found. Outside the city proper lied the Buddhist Guldara stupa and another stupa at Shewaki. Paghman and Jalalabad were interesting valleys west and east of the city. On the latter road, about 16 miles east of the city, was the Tang-e Gharu gorge. Kabul used to have as many as 23 cinemas, but currently only had four, including the state owned Ariana Cinema. The decline of cinema of Afghanistan since the 1990s, both due to war and oppressive regimes, had meant many of these have closed. The Nandari, or Kabul National Theater, was one of the largest theaters in Asia before it was destroyed in the civil war and has not been restored. The lack of investment meant that the sector did not recover after 2001, and notably the rundown Park Cinema was controversially demolished in 2020. Architecture. Kabul's various architectural designs reflected the various links it has had with empires and civilisations, particularly being on the ancient trade route connecting India and China with Persia and the West. The Buddhist Chakari minaret was likely built in the Kushan era and had traces of Greco-Bactrian and Gandhara Art. It had Buddhist swastika and both Mahayana and Theravada qualities. Following the Islamic conquest, a new age of architectural realms appeared in the Kabul region. The Gardens of Babur was perhaps the best preserved example of Islamic and Mughal architecture. Emperor Babur had also built seven other big gardens in Kabul at the time. The present Gardens of Babur also reflect Afghanistan's traditional architecture by the wooden carving, pressed stucco, decorative stone masonry and other features. Another fine example of the Babur era is the Id Gah Mosque, using stones from the Punjab and Sindh and designed by Persians. Ahmad Shah Durrani's rise as the Afghan ruler brought changes to Kabul and the nation, with a more inward-looking and self-protecting society reflecting the architecture that were no different between the rich and poor peoples. mausoleum of Timur Shah Durrani, the Afghan ruler until his death in 1793, was another example of Islamic design, built in an octagonal structure. It followed Central Asian traditions of decorative brick masonries along with a colorless appearance. After the Second Anglo-Afghan War, the country's emir Abdur Rahman Khan brought European styles for the first time. The Bagh-e Bala Palace was designed in a mixed Mughal and British Indian style, the first significant change from traditional Afghan and Islamic styles. However palaces were still built with Central Asian Islamic design at heart. Numerous lavish buildings were created during this time, combined with large gardens. The Dilkusha Palace within the Arg was the first created by a British architect. Its accompanying clock tower, , was also a British creation. Houses in Kabul during this time were generally made up of walled compounds, built around courtyards and having narrow passageways to places. In the 1920s, new styles were strongly influenced by European architectural styles due to king Amanullah Khan's visits to Europe, particularly Berlin and Paris. Darul Aman Palace was the best known example of modern Western design. The Shah-Do Shamshira Mosque was built in an unusual style for a mosque in Western and Italian style baroque. The Taq-e Zafar in Paghman and other landmarks there were also based on European designs. Houses also became more open, without having many of the walls. Later in the century, several Soviet inspired designs made its way into Kabul. Most notable of these were the various "microraion"s built in the city in the 1960s and afterwards. A different flavor of modern style was seen on the Hotel Inter-Continental Kabul and Serena Hotel. In the 21st century, modern designs based on glass facades became popular. Examples of this modern Western style were the Kabul City Center and Golbahar Center. The National Assembly building opened in 2015 had elements of modern Islamic Mughal architecture, considered to have the largest dome in Asia. The Indian architecture could also be influenced by the fact it was built by the government of India, but its carving and large porch represent Afghan traditional architectural forms. The new Ministry of Defense building followed traditional, Islamic and Western designs inspired by the Pentagon. Another mix of these designs appeared on the Paghman Hill Castle completed in 2014. Increasing numbers of high rises have been built in this period, with the Kabul Markaz tower in 2020 becoming the city's first to break the tall barrier. The construction boom with modern high-rises throughout the 2010s had led to a major change in the city's skyline. Transportation. Kabul has no train service. Air. Kabul International Airport is located from the centre of Kabul. It is a hub to Ariana Afghan Airlines, the national carrier of Afghanistan, as well as private airlines such as Afghan Jet International, East Horizon Airlines, Kam Air, Pamir Airways, and Safi Airways. Regional airlines such as Air India, SpiceJet, flydubai, Emirates, Gulf Air, Mahan Air, Pakistan International Airlines, Turkish Airlines and others also had regularly scheduled flights to the airport. Road. The AH76 highway (or Kabul-Charikar Highway) connected Kabul north towards Charikar, Pol-e Khomri and Mazar-i-Sharif ( away), with leading roads to Kunduz ( away). The AH77 highway went west towards Bamiyan Province ( away) and Chaghcharan in the central mountains of Afghanistan. To the south-west, the Kabul-Ghazni Highway went to Ghazni ( away) and Kandahar ( away). To the south, the Kabul-Gardez Highway connected it to Gardez ( away) and Khost. To the east, the Kabul-Jalalabad Highway went to Jalalabad ( away) and across the border to Peshawar. Much of the road network in downtown Kabul consisted of square or circle intersections ("char-rahi"). The main square in the city was Pashtunistan Square (named after Pashtunistan), which had a large fountain in it and was located adjacent to the presidential palace, the Central Bank, and other landmarks. The Massoud Circle was located by the U.S. Embassy and had the road leading to the airport. In the old city, Sar-e Chawk roundabout was at the center of Maiwand Road ("Jadayi Maiwand"). Once all roads led to it, and in the 16th century was called the "navel of Kabul". In the Shahr-e Naw district there were several major intersections: Ansari, Haji Yaqub, Quwayi Markaz, Sedarat, and Turabaz Khan. The latter, named after Turabaz Khan, connected Flower Street and Chicken Street. There were also two major intersections in western Kabul: the Deh Mazang Circle and Kote Sangi. Salang Watt was the main road to the north-west, whereas Asamayi Watt and Seh Aqrab (also called Sevom Aqrab) was the main road to western Kabul. The steep population rise in the 21st century had caused major congestion problems for the city's roads. In efforts to tackle this issue, a 95 km outer ring road costing $110 million was approved in 2017. Construction would have taken five years and it will run from Char Asiab via Ahmad Shah Baba Mina, Deh Sabz ("Kabul New City" development area), the AH76 highway, Paghman and back to Char Asyab. A new bus public transport service was also planned to be opened in 2018 (see below). In September 2017, the head of the Kabul Municipality announced that 286 meters of pedestrian overpass footbridges will be built in eight busy areas "in the near future". Under the Kabul Urban Transport Efficiency Improvement Project that was signed in 2014 and backed by the World Bank, the city has seen widespread improvements in road conditions, including the building of new pedestrian sidewalks, drainage systems, lighting and asphalted road surfaces. The project runs until 31 December 2019. Private vehicles had been on the rise in Kabul since 2002, with about 700,000 cars registered as of 2013 and up to 80% of the cars reported to be Toyota Corollas. The number of dealerships had also increased from 77 in 2003 to over 550 by 2010. Gas stations were mainly private-owned. Bicycles on the road were a common sight in the city. Public transport. The taxicabs in Kabul were painted in a white and yellow livery. The majority of these were older model Toyota Corollas. A few Soviet-era Russian cabs were also still in operation. Long-distance road journeys were made by private Mercedes-Benz coach buses or vans, trucks and cars. Although a nationwide bus service was available from Kabul, flying was safer, especially for foreigners. The city's public bus service (Millie Bus / "National Bus") was established in the 1960s to take commuters on daily routes to many destinations. The service had about 800 buses. The Kabul bus system had discovered a new source of revenue in whole-bus advertising from MTN similar to "bus wrap" advertising on public transit in more developed nations. There was also an express bus that runs from downtown to Hamid Karzai International Airport for Safi Airways passengers. An electric trolleybus system operated in Kabul from February 1979 to 1992 using Škoda fleet built by a Czechoslovak company (see Trolleybuses in Kabul for more). The trolleybus service was highly popular mainly due to its low price compared to the Millie Bus conventional bus service. The last trolleybus came to a halt in late 1992 due to warfare – much of the copper overhead wires were later looted but a few of them, including the steel poles, can still be seen in Kabul today. In June 2017 Kabul Municipality unveiled plans for a new bus rapid transit system, the first major urban public transportation scheme. It was expected to open by 2018, but its construction had been hampered. In March 2021, a new city bus service was launched in Kabul using American vehicles built by IC Bus, and accompanied by newly built bus stops throughout the city. Five buses entered service on one route which is expected to be expanded to a fleet of 200 buses on 16 different routes. Internet-based participatory planning. In 2019, the Nagoya Institute of Technology, in partnership with the Kabul city Municipality, jointly agreed to deploy a digital platform, called D-Agree in urban planning to provide support for stakeholders to promote meaningful public participation and help reach consensus in Kabul city planning process. From September 2019 until the Fall of Kabul (2021) in August 2021, the platform was used on behalf of Kabul Municipality to moderate more than 300 Kabul city-related planning discussions. In these discussions, more than 15,000 citizens participated in planning activities hosted by D-Agree and generated more than 71,000 opinions which catalogued into issue-based information system regarding urban-related thematic areas. Despite the Taliban take-over, D-Agree will continue to play an important role in facilitating urban planning and infrastructure-related consultations. In 2022, United Nations reported that D-Agree Afghanistan is used as a digital and smart city solutions in Afghanistan. D-Agree, is a discussion support platform with artificial intelligence–based facilitation. The discussion trees in D-Agree, inspired by issue-based information system, contain a combination of four types of elements: issues, ideas, pros, and cons. The software extracts a discussion's structure in real time based on IBIS, automatically classifying all the sentences. Education. The Ministry of Education led by Ghulam Farooq Wardak was responsible for the education system in Afghanistan. Public and private schools in the city have reopened since 2002 after they were shut down or destroyed during fighting in the 1980s to the late 1990s. Boys and girls were strongly encouraged to attend school under the Karzai administration but many more schools were needed not only in Kabul but throughout the country. The Afghan Ministry of Education had plans to build more schools in the coming years so that education was provided to all citizens of the country. High schools in Kabul included: Universities. Universities included: Health care. Health care in Afghanistan has improved in the last two decades. There are over 5,000 hospitals and clinics in the country, with the major ones being in Kabul.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16876

Kingston upon Thames

Kingston upon Thames (hyphenated until 1965, colloquially known as Kingston) is a town in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, southwest London, England. It is situated on the River Thames and southwest of Charing Cross. It is notable as the ancient market town in which Saxon kings were crowned and today is the administrative centre of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames. Historically in the county of Surrey, the ancient parish of Kingston became absorbed in the Municipal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames, reformed in 1835. From 1893 to 2021 it was the location of Surrey County Council, extraterritorially in terms of local government administration since 1965, when Kingston became a part of Greater London. Today, most of the town centre is part of the KT1 postcode area, but some areas north of Kingston railway station are within KT2 and SW15,as well as parts of New Malden has SW20. The United Kingdom Census 2011 recorded the population of the town (comprising the four wards of Canbury, Grove, Norbiton and Tudor) as 43,013, while the borough overall counted 175,470. Kingston is identified as a metropolitan centre in the London Plan and is one of the biggest retail centres in the UK, receiving 18 million visitors a year. It is also home to Kingston University. History. Early history. Kingston was called "Cyninges tun" in 838 AD, "Chingestune" in 1086, "Kingeston" in 1164, "Kyngeston super Tamisiam" in 1321 and "Kingestowne upon Thames" in 1589. The name means 'the king's manor or estate' from the Old English words "cyning" and "tun". It belonged to the king in Saxon times and was the earliest royal borough. The first surviving record of Kingston is from AD 838 as the site of a meeting between King Egbert of Wessex and Ceolnoth, Archbishop of Canterbury. Kingston lay on the boundary between the ancient kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia, until in the early tenth century when King Athelstan united both to create the kingdom of England. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, two tenth-century kings were consecrated in Kingston: Æthelstan (925), and Æthelred the Unready (978). There are certain other kings who are said to have been crowned there, but for whom the evidence (including the writings of Florence of Worcester and Ralph de Diceto) is less substantial: Edward the Elder (902), Edmund I (939), Eadred (946), Eadwig (956), Edgar the Peaceful (circa 960) and Edward the Martyr (975). It was later thought that the coronations were conducted in the chapel of St Mary, which collapsed in 1730. Tradition dating to the 18th century holds that a large stone recovered from the ruins played a part in the coronations. It was initially used as a mounting block, but in 1850 it was moved to a more dignified place in the market before finally being moved to its current location in the grounds of the Guildhall. From Medieval times Shrovetide Football was played annually at Kingston upon Thames and in surrounding towns including Richmond and Twickenham. The windows of the houses and shops were boarded up and from 12 noon the inhabitants would kick several balls around the town before retiring to the public houses. The last game was played in 1866, by which time the urban development of the town meant it caused too much damage and the custom was outlawed. Local government. Kingston upon Thames formed an ancient parish in the Kingston hundred of Surrey. The parish of Kingston upon Thames covered a large area including Hook, Kew, New Malden, Petersham, Richmond, Surbiton, Thames Ditton and East Molesey. The town of Kingston was granted a charter by King John in 1200, but the oldest one to survive is from 1208 and this document is housed in the town's archives. Other charters were issued by later kings, including Edward IV's charter that gave the town the status of a borough in 1481. The borough covered a much smaller area than the ancient parish, although as new parishes were split off the borough and parish eventually became identical in 1894. The borough was reformed by the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, becoming the Municipal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames (then spelt with hyphens). It had been known as a Royal borough through custom and the right to the title was confirmed by George V in 1927. Kingston upon Thames was the seat of Surrey County Council when it moved from Newington in 1893 through until 2021 despite not being governed by it. In 1965, the local government of Greater London was reorganised and the municipal borough was abolished. Its former area was merged with that of the Municipal Borough of Surbiton and the Municipal Borough of Malden and Coombe, to form the London Borough of Kingston upon Thames. At the request of Kingston upon Thames London Borough Council another royal charter was granted by Queen Elizabeth II entitling it to continue using the title "Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames" for the new borough. Urban development. Kingston was built at the first crossing point of the Thames upstream from London Bridge and a bridge still exists at the same site. It was this 'great bridge' that gave it its early importance in the 13th century. Kingston was occupied by the Romans, and later it was either a royal residence or a royal demesne. There is a record of a council held there in 838, at which Egbert of Wessex, King of Wessex, and his son Ethelwulf of Wessex were present. In the Domesday Book it was held by William the Conqueror. Its domesday assets were: a church, five mills, four fisheries worth 10s, 27 ploughs, of meadow, woodland worth six hogs. It rendered £31 10s (£31.50). In 1730, the chapel containing the royal effigies collapsed, burying the sexton, who was digging a grave, the sexton's daughter and another person. The daughter survived this accident and was her father's successor as sexton. Kingston sent members to early Parliaments, until a petition by the inhabitants prayed to be relieved from the burden. Another chapel, the collegiate chapel of St Mary Magdalene, The Lovekyn Chapel, still exists. It was founded in 1309 by a former mayor of London, Edward Lovekyn. It is the only private chantry chapel to survive the Reformation. With the coming of the railway in the 1830s, there was much building development to the south of the town. Much of this became the new town of Surbiton, but the Surbiton Park estate, built in the grounds of Surbiton Place in the 1850s, remained part of Kingston during the period of the Municipal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames. A permanent military presence was established in the borough with the completion of The Barracks in 1875. Economic development. Kingston evolved as a market town from the Saxon period, with goods transported on the Thames and over land via the crossing point. Rights to hold markets were amongst the liberties granted by the royal charter of 1208 and the market formally established in 1242. A horse fair was held at a site on the downstream side of the river north of the bridge and a market extended from there to around the church by the 17th century and further south towards the course of the Hogsmill River. Goods traded included oats, wheat, rye, malt, apples and other fruit, flowers, wool, leather and cheese. Cattle, meat and fish were also traded. The regular Saturday market was supplemented by a Wednesday market in 1662. In addition to markets, regular fairs were held. Local industries included pottery, brick making, tanning, leather-working, fishing, milling, brewing and boat-building. The presence of fabric and wood-working craft skills associated with boat-building was a factor in the choice of Kingston as the site chosen by Tommy Sopwith to expand production of early aircraft from Sopwith Aviation's origins at Brooklands. Well known aviation personalities Sydney Camm, Harry Hawker and Tommy Sopwith were responsible for much of Kingston's achievements in aviation. For much of the 20th century, Kingston was a major military aircraft manufacturing centre specialising in fighter aircraft – first with Sopwith Aviation, H G Hawker Engineering, later Hawker Aircraft, Hawker Siddeley and eventually British Aerospace. The renowned Sopwith Camel, Hawker Fury, Hurricane, Hunter and Harrier jump jet were all designed and built in the town and examples of all of these aircraft can be seen today at the nearby Brooklands Museum in Weybridge. British Aerospace finally closed its Lower Ham Road factory in 1992; part of the site was subsequently redeveloped for housing but the riverside part houses a community centre and sports complex. Recent developments. Following the construction of the Kingston Relief Road (commonly known as the "Kingston one-way system") in 1989, major shopping streets in the town centre and the historic Market Place were pedestrianised. Two major commercial developments were also built in Kingston town centre - with John Lewis Kingston department store opening in 1990 and the Bentall Centre shopping centre opening in 1992. In the early 2000s, the Charter Quay development south of Kingston Bridge completed the riverside walk, as well as adding bars, restaurants and the Rose Theatre, which opened in 2008 with Sir Peter Hall as the director. Also, in 2001, the old Kingston bus garage and bus station, closed the previous year, was demolished and the site redeveloped as the Rotunda complex, with an Odeon Cinema, restaurants and tenpin bowling. Governance. Kingston straddles two Parliamentary constituencies: the area north of the railway line is part of Richmond Park, which is represented by Sarah Olney of the Liberal Democrats, and the area south of the railway line (including the ancient town centre) is part of Kingston and Surbiton which is represented by Ed Davey of the Liberal Democrats. Notable locations. Central Kingston is a busy, largely pedestrian and predominantly retail centre, with a small number of commercial offices and civic buildings. The shopping centre includes a shopping mall, "The Bentall Centre", containing the Bentalls department store and large branches of chain stores found in many British high streets. There is a large branch of the John Lewis department store group, with a Waitrose supermarket in the basement. A smaller 1960s shopping centre called Eden Walk exists nearby. The Rotunda, in a former Bentalls furniture depository building (a local landmark), includes a bowling alley, fitness centre, a 15-screen Odeon multiplex cinema and a few restaurants. The ancient market is still held daily in the Market Place, including such produce as fish, jewellery, exotic foods, local foods and flowers. Kingston's civic buildings include Kingston Museum, public library, modern Crown Court, smaller County Court and the Guildhall. The Guildhall is located by the part-culverted mouth of the Hogsmill River, and houses Kingston Council and magistrates' court. A short distance away is the County Hall Building which houses the main offices of Surrey County Council. From 1893 to 1965, before Kingston became one of the 32 London boroughs of Greater London, it was the county town of Surrey following the period of 1791–1893 when Newington had this role. Guildford has officially reclaimed this ancient, now ceremonial title as Kingston is no longer administered by Surrey. Kingston's main open space is the River Thames, with its lively frontage of bars and restaurants. Downstream there is a walk through Canbury Gardens towards Teddington Lock. Upstream there is a promenade crossing the Hogsmill river and reaching almost to Surbiton. Eagle Brewery Wharf is a council-owned public space located on the riverside. Across Kingston Bridge is a tree lined river bank fronting the expanse of Hampton Court Park. Economy. Kingston has many pubs and restaurants and several public houses in the centre have become restaurants or bars. The more traditional pubs tend to be in the northern part of the town (Canbury) and include The Canbury Arms, Park Tavern, The Wych Elm and Willoughby Arms. Further south are found the Druid's Head, the Spring Grove, The Cricketers, The Albion Tavern, The Duke of Buckingham, and several small local pubs around Fairfield. The Druid's Head is notable as one of the first taverns to make syllabub, the famous dessert, in the 18th century. There are several Chinese, Indian, Thai and Italian restaurants. The local newspapers are the weekly "Surrey Comet", which celebrated its 150th year in 2004, and the "Kingston Guardian". In 2010 retail footprint research, Kingston ranked 25th in terms of retail expenditure in the UK at £810 million, equal to Covent Garden and just ahead of Southampton. This puts it as generating the fifth highest level of retail sales in Greater London, passing Croydon, with just four West End alternatives ahead. In 2005, Kingston was 24th with £864 million, and 3rd in London. In a 2015 study by CACI, Kingston was ranked 28th in the UK in the Hot 100 Retail Locations - and the second highest in Greater London after Croydon. In 2018, Kingston was ranked joint 5th in the UK by Knight Frank in the "High Street Investment Ranking", only bettered by Cambridge, Bath, Chichester and Reading. In 2013 Kingston became the location for a local currency scheme, designed to boost and strengthen the local economy in Kingston, as part of the Transition towns initiative. The Kingston pound began as a digital currency, and from 2018 existed in paper format, with denominations of K£1;K£5;K£10;and K£20 designed by graphic design students from Kingston University. These were taken out of circulation in 2021, but have been sold to many collectors all over the world. The Kingston Pound is a 'tagged' sterling that can be exchanged either way on a 1 for 1 basis without any penalty. As of 2011, Kingston upon Thames has the fourth highest retail turnover for comparison goods in Greater London, £432 million annually, only bettered by the West End, Shepherd's Bush and Stratford. As of 2012, Kingston has of total town centre floorspace, the 3rd highest in London. Culture. A notable dramatic arts venue is the Rose Theatre, opened on 16 January 2008 and seating about 900 people. The audience are arranged around the semi-circular stage. All Saints Church is host to classical choral and music concerts mostly on Saturdays and houses a Frobenius organ. There are a number of choral societies including the Kingston Orpheus Choir and the Kingston Choral Society, an amateur symphony orchestra the Kingston Philharmonia, and the Kingston and District Chamber Music Society. A number of annual festivals are organised by the Council and Kingston Arts Council including Kingston Readers' Festival, Think-in-Kingston and the Festival of the Voice. Kingston University runs the Stanley Picker Gallery and Kingston Museum has a changing gallery on the first floor. A regular singing group at the Rose Theatre caters to schools and families. John Galsworthy the author was born on Kingston Hill and Jacqueline Wilson grew up, and went to school in Kingston and still lives there today. Both are commemorated at Kingston University – Galsworthy in the newest building and Wilson in the main hall. Also commemorated at the university is photographer Eadweard Muybridge who was born at Kingston and changed the spelling of his first name in reference to the name of the Saxon king on the Coronation Stone. He was a pioneer in the photography of the moving image. R. C. Sherriff the playwright is also associated with Kingston, writing his first play to support Kingston Rowing Club. An earlier writer born in Kingston was John Cleland. Kingston has been covered in literature, film and television. It is where the comic Victorian novel "Three Men in a Boat" by Jerome K. Jerome begins; cannons aimed against the Martians in H. G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds" are positioned on Kingston Hill; in "The Rainbow" by D. H. Lawrence the youngest Brangwen dreams of a job in Kingston upon Thames in a long, lyrical passage; Mr. Knightly in "Emma" by Jane Austen regularly visits Kingston, although the narrative never follows him there. Fine art is also a prominent feature in the history of Kingston. Both John Hoyland and Jeremy Moon worked from permanent studios in Kingston and many artists and designers have studied at the university including Fiona Banner, John Bratby, David Nash and Jasper Morrison. Early in his music career, the guitarist and singer-songwriter Eric Clapton spent time busking in Kingston upon Thames, having grown up and studied in the area. Rock band Cardiacs were formed in the town. Recently, a scene from "Mujhse Dosti Karoge", a Bollywood film starring Hrithik Roshan as the leading actor, was filmed by the toppled telephone boxes sculpture in Old London Road. The 1974 Doctor Who story "Invasion of the Dinosaurs" used several locations in the town for filming. The 2008 series of "Primeval", shown on ITV1 in January, featured almost an entire episode filmed inside the Bentall Centre and John Lewis department stores. Kingston featured in "Primeval" again in May 2009 with several scenes shot in and around the Market Place. Nipper, the famous "His Master's Voice" (HMV) dog, is buried in the town under Lloyds Bank. His owners lived nearby in Fife Road. Kingston Green Fair was held annually from 1987 to 2008 in Canbury Gardens, next to the river, on the Spring Bank Holiday. The word "Green" in the title refers to the ethos of the fair as promoting sustainable development. For instance no meat or other products derived from dead animals were allowed to be sold, and no electricity was permitted on the site unless generated by wind, sun, or bicycle power. Public art. One of the more unusual sights in Kingston is "Out of Order" by David Mach, a sculpture in the form of twelve disused red telephone boxes that have been tipped up to lean against one another in an arrangement resembling dominoes. The work was commissioned in 1988 as part of the landscaping for the new Relief Road, and was described by its creator as "anti-minimalist". Transport. Rail. Kingston is principally served by Kingston railway station, which opened in 1863. The station is in London fare zone 6 and is served by South Western Railway trains from London Waterloo. Trains to Waterloo link Kingston directly to destinations such as Wimbledon, Clapham Junction and Vauxhall. Eastbound trains travel to Shepperton via Teddington, Hampton and Sunbury. Eastbound trains also travel on the Kingston loop line towards Teddington, Strawberry Hill, Twickenham and Richmond, after which trains continue towards Waterloo. From Waterloo, trains to Kingston are advertised towards "Shepperton" and "Strawberry Hill". A nearby station in Norbiton (in fare zone 5) is on the same lines. Nearby Surbiton station - originally named Kingston when it opened in 1838 - is on the South West Main Line in London fare zone 6. Surbiton is also served by South Western Railway trains from Waterloo. Southbound services link Surbiton to destinations in Surrey and Hampshire, such as Hampton Court, Guildford, Woking and Basingstoke. The station building at Surbiton was built in 1937, designed in Art Deco style by James Robb Scott. It is Grade II listed. Bus. Kingston is served by two bus stations, Cromwell Road and Fairfield, and a large number of bus stops, with destinations across Greater London and Surrey including links directly to Heathrow Airport. Road. The Kingston Bypass passes to the south and east of Kingston. The bypass carries the A3, which links the area to Wandsworth, Clapham and the City of London to the north. To the south, the A3 runs to Portsmouth via Guildford and Petersfield. A portion of the bypass carries the A309 to Thames Ditton, Hampton Court and the A308. There are several radial routes including: Kingston Relief Road. In the 1960s, planners proposed a partially elevated ring road encircling the town centre, to alleviate congestion on major shopping streets and traffic heading towards Kingston Bridge. After objections from local residents, an interim one-way system was implemented in July 1963. Following this, the Kingston Relief Road was constructed in Kingston town centre in the late 1980s. Commonly known as the "Kingston one-way system", the road encircles the town centre, allowing for major shopping streets such as Clarence Street to be pedestrianised. On the western side of the town centre, the road passes underneath John Lewis Kingston before crossing the River Thames via Kingston Bridge. As part of the project, two bus stations were constructed, cycle lanes installed and several artworks commissioned including "Out of Order" by David Mach and "River Celebration" by Carole Hodgson. River. Kingston Town End and Kingston Turks piers are situated in Kingston. Turk Launches operates a Summer-only river tour between Hampton Court and Richmond St Helena. Cycling. There is a network of cycle lanes throughout Kingston linking the area to destinations throughout south-west London and England. Key routes include: Education. Kingston is the location of Kingston University and Kingston College. Primary schools in the town include Latchmere School, Fernhill School, St Luke's School, King Athelstan School and St Agatha's Catholic Primary School. Secondary schools in the town include The Kingston Academy, Tiffin School, Tiffin Girls' School and Kingston Grammar School, all of which have large catchment areas across Greater London and Surrey. The growth and development of Kingston Polytechnic, and its transformation into Kingston University in 1992, has made Kingston a university town. Religious sites. The 12th-century All Saints Church serves the Church of England parish of Kingston which lies ecclesiastically in the Diocese of Southwark, although there has been a church in Kingston since at least 838. The suffragan or Area Bishop of Kingston is the Rt Rev Dr Richard Cheetham. Other Anglican churches in Kingston, of more recent date, are St John the Evangelist and St Luke. Kingston lies in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Southwark, and there is a Roman Catholic Church dedicated to Saint Agatha. Kingston is also the home of the Kingston Surbiton & District Synagogue. It also has a Quaker meeting house, a Mosque and a Sikh Gurdwara. Lady Booth Road, formerly Fairfield Road, is named to commemorate the former location of the Salvation Army citadel. Sport. Kingston is the home of four association football clubs, Chelsea F.C. Women who play at the Kingsmeadow Stadium, Corinthian-Casuals and Kingstonian who play in Tolworth, and Chessington & Hook United who play in Chessington. Chelsea F.C. Women play in the FA Women's Super League, whereas Kingstonian, Corinthian-Casuals and Chessington & Hook United are non-league clubs. Kingston Athletic Club and Polytechnic Harriers are based at the neighbouring Kingsmeadow athletics stadium. This stadium has a 400m track which is floodlit, a gym and 5-a-side football facilities. Kingston Rugby Club is based on the outskirts of the town, and Kingston Rowing Club (founded in 1858) is based in Canbury Gardens on the River Thames. The Club holds two large timed race events (HEADs) in the Spring and Autumn. Kingston Regatta takes place on the river just above the bridge over a weekend in early July. The town has a large leisure centre next to Fairfield named the Kingfisher Centre, which contains an indoor swimming pool and gymnasium. Sport in Kingston is promoted and encouraged by Sport Kingston, an organisation funded by the Royal Borough of Kingston. Kingston Wildcats School of Basketball is a community basketball development club that practices and plays its home fixtures at Chessington School, competing in the Surrey League and Basketball England National League. London 2012 Summer Olympics. Prior to the opening of the games, Kingston hosted the 2012 Summer Olympics torch relay on two occasions with the flame travelling through the borough on 24 July 2012 and aboard the "Gloriana" in a cauldron on 27 July 2012 en route to the Olympic Stadium for the opening ceremony. The borough was the setting for four cycling events during the Olympics, the men's road race, women's road race, men's road time trial and women's road time trial. Following the games, the London–Surrey Classic professional road bicycle race ran through the town from 2013 to 2018, using a similar course to the Olympic road race. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, the race will not return to Kingston, with the RideLondon festival using the roads of Essex instead. Geography. Kingston is south-east of Twickenham, north-east of Walton-on-Thames, and north-west of Sutton. Town twinning. Kingston upon Thames has been twinned with Oldenburg in Germany since 2010. It also has been historically twinned with Delft in the Netherlands. Since 2016, Kingston upon Thames has been twinned with Jaffna in Sri Lanka.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16880

Karnataka

Karnataka (; ISO: , , also known as Karunāḍu), formerly Mysore State , is a state in the southwestern region of India. It was formed as Mysore State on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, and renamed "Karnataka" in 1973. The state was part of the Carnatic region in British terminology. Its capital and largest city is Bengaluru (Bangalore). Karnataka is bordered by the Lakshadweep Sea to the west, Goa to the northwest, Maharashtra to the north, Telangana to the northeast, Andhra Pradesh to the east, Tamil Nadu to the southeast, and Kerala to the southwest. It is the only southern state to have land borders with all of the other four southern Indian sister states. The state covers an area of , or 5.83 percent of the total geographical area of India. It is the sixth-largest Indian state by area. With 61,130,704 inhabitants at the 2011 census, Karnataka is the eighth-largest state by population, comprising 31 districts. Kannada, one of the classical languages of India, is the most widely spoken and official language of the state. Other minority languages spoken include Urdu, Konkani, Marathi, Tulu, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kodava and Beary. Karnataka also contains some of the only villages in India where Sanskrit is primarily spoken. Though several etymologies have been suggested for the name Karnataka, the generally accepted one is that "Karnataka" is derived from the Kannada words "karu" and "nādu", meaning "elevated land". "Karu Nadu" may also be read as "karu", meaning "black" and "nadu", meaning "region", as a reference to the black cotton soil found in the Bayalu Seeme region of the state. The British used the word Carnatic, sometimes "Karnatak", to describe both sides of peninsular India, south of the Krishna. With an antiquity that dates to the paleolithic, Karnataka has been home to some of the most powerful empires of ancient and medieval India. The philosophers and musical bards patronised by these empires launched socio-religious and literary movements which have endured to the present day. Karnataka has contributed significantly to both forms of Indian classical music, the Carnatic and Hindustani traditions. The economy of Karnataka is the fifth-largest of any Indian state with in gross domestic product and a per capita GDP of . Karnataka has the fifteenth-highest ranking among Indian states in Human Development Index. History. Karnataka's pre-history goes back to a paleolithic hand-axe culture evidenced by discoveries of, among other things, hand axes and cleavers in the region. Evidence of neolithic and megalithic cultures have also been found in the state. Gold discovered in Harappa was found to be imported from mines in Karnataka, prompting scholars to hypothesise about contacts between ancient Karnataka and the Indus Valley civilisation . Prior to the third century BCE, most of Karnataka formed part of the Nanda Empire before coming under the Mauryan empire of Emperor Ashoka. Four centuries of Satavahana rule followed, allowing them to control large areas of Karnataka. The decline of Satavahana power led to the rise of the earliest native kingdoms, the Kadambas and the Western Gangas, marking the region's emergence as an independent political entity. The Kadamba Dynasty, founded by Mayurasharma, had its capital at Banavasi; the Western Ganga Dynasty was formed with Talakad as its capital. These were also the first kingdoms to use Kannada in administration, as evidenced by the Halmidi inscription and a fifth-century copper coin discovered at Banavasi. These dynasties were followed by imperial Kannada empires such as the Badami Chalukyas, the Rashtrakuta Empire of Manyakheta and the Western Chalukya Empire, which ruled over large parts of the Deccan and had their capitals in what is now Karnataka. The Western Chalukyas patronised a unique style of architecture and Kannada literature which became a precursor to the Hoysala art of the 12th century. Parts of modern-day Southern Karnataka (Gangavadi) were occupied by the Chola Empire at the turn of the 11th century. The Cholas and the Hoysalas fought over the region in the early 12th century before it eventually came under Hoysala rule. At the turn of the first millennium, the Hoysalas gained power in the region. Literature flourished during this time, which led to the emergence of distinctive Kannada literary metres, and the construction of temples and sculptures adhering to the Vesara style of architecture. The expansion of the Hoysala Empire brought minor parts of modern Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu under its rule. In the early 14th century, Harihara and Bukka Raya established the Vijayanagara empire with its capital, "Hosapattana" (later named Vijayanagara), on the banks of the Tungabhadra River in the modern Bellary district. Under the rule of Krishnadevaraya, a distinct form of literature and architecture evolved. The empire rose as a bulwark against Muslim advances into South India, which it completely controlled for over two centuries. In 1537, Kempe Gowda I, a chieftain of the Vijayanagara Empire, widely held as the founder of modern Bangalore, built a fort and established the area around it as Bengaluru Pete. In 1565, Karnataka and the rest of South India experienced a major geopolitical shift when the Vijayanagara empire fell to a confederation of Islamic sultanates in the Battle of Talikota. The Bijapur Sultanate, which had risen after the demise of the Bahmani Sultanate of Bidar, soon took control of the Deccan; it was defeated by the Moghuls in the late 17th century. The Bahmani and Bijapur rulers encouraged Urdu and Persian literature and Indo-Saracenic architecture, the Gol Gumbaz being one of the high points of this style. During the sixteenth century, Konkani Hindus migrated to Karnataka, mostly from Salcette, Goa, while during the seventeenth and eighteenth century, Goan Catholics migrated to North Canara and South Canara, especially from Bardes, Goa, as a result of food shortages, epidemics and heavy taxation imposed by the Portuguese. In the period that followed, parts of northern Karnataka were ruled by the Nizam of Hyderabad, the Maratha Empire, the British, and other powers. In the south, the Mysore Kingdom, a former vassal of the Vijayanagara Empire, was briefly independent. With the death of Krishnaraja Wodeyar II, Haidar Ali, the commander-in-chief of the Mysore army, gained control of the region. After his death, the kingdom was inherited by his son Tipu Sultan. To contain European expansion in South India, Haidar Ali and later Tipu Sultan fought four significant Anglo-Mysore Wars, the last of which resulted in Tippu Sultan's death and the incorporation of Mysore into the British Raj in 1799. The Kingdom of Mysore was restored to the Wodeyars and Mysore remained a princely state under the British Raj. As the "doctrine of lapse" gave way to dissent and resistance from princely states across the country, Kittur Chennamma, Sangolli Rayanna and others spearheaded rebellions in Karnataka in 1830, nearly three decades before the Indian Rebellion of 1857. However, Kitturu was taken over by the British East India Company even before the doctrine was officially articulated by Lord Dalhousie in 1848. Other uprisings followed, such as the ones at Supa, Bagalkot, Shorapur, Nargund and Dandeli. These rebellions—which coincided with the Indian Rebellion of 1857—were led by Mundargi Bhimarao, Bhaskar Rao Bhave, the Halagali Bedas, Raja Venkatappa Nayaka and others. By the late 19th century, the independence movement had gained momentum; Karnad Sadashiva Rao, Aluru Venkata Raya, S. Nijalingappa, Kengal Hanumanthaiah, Nittoor Srinivasa Rau and others carried on the struggle into the early 20th century. After India's independence, the Maharaja, Jayachamarajendra Wodeyar, allowed his kingdom's accession to India. In 1950, Mysore became an Indian state of the same name; the former Maharaja served as its "Rajpramukh" (head of state) until 1975. Following the long-standing demand of the Ekikarana Movement, Kodagu- and Kannada-speaking regions from the adjoining states of Madras, Hyderabad and Bombay were incorporated into the Mysore state, under the States Reorganisation Act of 1956. The thus expanded state was renamed Karnataka, seventeen years later, on 1 November 1973. In the early 1900s through the post-independence era, industrial visionaries such as Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvarayya, played an important role in the development of Karnataka's strong manufacturing and industrial base. Geography. The state has three principal geographical zones: The bulk of the state is in the Bayaluseeme region, the northern part of which is the second-largest arid region in India. The highest point in Karnataka is the Mullayanagiri hills in Chikmagalur district which has an altitude of . The two main river systems of the state are the Krishna and its tributaries, the Bhima, Ghataprabha, Vedavathi, Malaprabha and Tungabhadra in North Karnataka, and the Kaveri and its tributaries, the Hemavati, Shimsha, Arkavati, Lakshmana Thirtha and Kabini, in South Karnataka. Most of these rivers flow out of Karnataka eastward, reaching the sea at the Bay of Bengal. Other prominent rivers such as the Sharavati in Shimoga and Netravati in Dakshina Kannada flow westward to the Lakshadweep Sea. A large number of dams and reservoirs are constructed across these rivers which richly add to the irrigation and hydroelectricity power generation capacities of the state. Karnataka consists of four main types of geological formations – the "Archean complex" made up of Dharwad schists and granitic gneisses, the "Proterozoic" non-fossiliferous sedimentary formations of the Kaladgi and Bhima series, the "Deccan trappean and intertrappean deposits" and the tertiary and recent laterites and alluvial deposits. Laterite cappings that are found in many districts over the Deccan Traps were formed after the cessation of volcanic activity in the early tertiary period. Eleven groups of soil orders are found in Karnataka, viz. Entisols, Inceptisols, Mollisols, Spodosols, Alfisols, Ultisols, Oxisols, Aridisols, Vertisols, Andisols and Histosols. Depending on the agricultural capability of the soil, the soil types are divided into six types, "viz." red, lateritic, black, alluvio-colluvial, forest and coastal soils. About of Karnataka (i.e. 16% of the state's geographic area) is covered by forests. The forests are classified as reserved, protected, unclosed, village and private forests. The percentage of forested area is slightly less than the all-India average of about 23%, and significantly less than the 33% prescribed in the National Forest Policy. Climate. Karnataka experiences four seasons. The winter in January and February is followed by summer between March and May, the monsoon season between June and September and the post-monsoon season from October till December. Meteorologically, Karnataka is divided into three zones – coastal, north interior and south interior. Of these, the coastal zone receives the heaviest rainfall with an average rainfall of about per annum, far in excess of the state average of . Amagaon in Khanapura taluka of Belgaum district received of rainfall in 2010. In 2014 Kokalli in Sirsi taluka of Uttara Kannada district received of rainfall. Agumbe in Thirthahalli taluka and Hulikal of Hosanagara taluka in Shimoga district were the rainiest cities in Karnataka, situated in one of the wettest regions in the world. The state is projected to warm about by 2030. The monsoon is set to provide less rainfall. Agriculture in Karnataka is mostly rainfed as opposed to irrigated, making it highly vulnerable to expected changes in the monsoon. The highest recorded temperature was in Raichuru district. The lowest recorded temperature was at Bidar district. Flora and fauna. Karnataka is home to a variety of wildlife. It has a recorded forest area of which constitutes 12.3% of the total geographical area of the state. These forests support 25% of the elephant and 10% of the tiger population of India. Many regions of Karnataka are as yet unexplored, so new species of flora and fauna are found periodically. The Western Ghats, a biodiversity hotspot, includes the western region of Karnataka. The Bandipur and Nagarahole National Parks were included in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve in 1986, a UNESCO designation. The Indian roller and the Indian elephant are recognised as the state bird and animal while sandalwood and the lotus are recognised as the state tree and flower respectively. Karnataka has five national parks: Anshi, Bandipur, Bannerghatta, Kudremukh and Nagarhole. It also has 27 wildlife sanctuaries of which seven are bird sanctuaries. Wild animals that are found in Karnataka include the elephant, the tiger, the leopard, the gaur, the sambar deer, the chital or spotted deer, the muntjac, the bonnet macaque, the slender loris, the common palm civet, the small Indian civet, the sloth bear, the dhole, the striped hyena, the Bengal fox and the golden jackal. Some of the birds found here are the great hornbill, the Malabar pied hornbill, the Ceylon frogmouth, herons, ducks, kites, eagles, falcons, quails, partridges, lapwings, sandpipers, pigeons, doves, parakeets, cuckoos, owls, nightjars, swifts, kingfishers, bee-eaters and munias. Some species of trees found in Karnataka are "Calophyllum tomentosum", "Calophyllum wightianum", "Garcinia cambogia", "Garcinia morella", "Alstonia scholaris", "Flacourtia montana", "Artocarpus hirsutus", "Artocarpus lacucha", "Cinnamomum zeylanicum", "Grewia tiliifolia", "Santalum album", "Shorea talura", "Emblica officinalis", "Vitex altissima" and "Wrightia tinctoria". Wildlife in Karnataka is threatened by poaching, habitat destruction, human-wildlife conflict and pollution. Sub-divisions. There are 31 districts in Karnataka. Each district ("zila") is governed by a district commissioner ("ziladar"). The districts are further divided into sub-districts ("talukas"), which are governed by sub-commissioners ("talukdars"); sub-divisions comprise blocks ("tehsils"/"hobli"), which are governed by block development officers ("tehsildars"), which contain village councils ("panchayats"), town municipal councils ("purasabhe"), city municipal councils ("nagarasabhe"), and city municipal corporations ("mahanagara palike"). Demographics. According to the 2011 census of India, the total population of Karnataka was 61,095,297 of which 30,966,657 (50.7%) were male and 30,128,640 (49.3%) were female, or 1000 males for every 973 females. This represents a 15.60% increase over the population in 2001. The population density was 319 per km2 and 38.67% of the people lived in urban areas. The literacy rate was 75.36% with 82.47% of males and 68.08% of females being literate. In 2007 the state had a birth rate of 2.2%, a death rate of 0.7%, an infant mortality rate of 5.5% and a maternal mortality rate of 0.2%. The total fertility rate was 2.2. Karnataka's private sector speciality health care competes with the best in the world. Karnataka has also established a modicum of public health services having a better record of health care and child care than most other states of India. In spite of these advances, some parts of the state still suffer from the lack of primary health care. Religion. Adi Shankara (788–820 CE) chose Sringeri in Karnataka to establish the first of his four "mathas" (monastery). Madhvacharya (1238–1317) was the chief proponent of Tattvavada (philosophy of reality), popularly known as Dvaita or Dualistic school of Hindu philosophy – one of the three most influential Vedanta philosophies. Madhvacharya was one of the important philosophers during the Bhakti movement. He was a pioneer in many ways, going against standard conventions and norms. According to tradition, Madhvacharya is believed to be the third incarnation of Vayu (Mukhyaprana), after Hanuman and Bhima. The Haridasa devotional movement is considered one of the turning points in the cultural history of India. Over a span of nearly six centuries, several saints and mystics helped shape the culture, philosophy, and art of South India and Karnataka in particular by exerting considerable spiritual influence over the masses and kingdoms that ruled South India. This movement was ushered in by the Haridasas (literally "servants of Hari") and took shape in the 13th century – 14th century CE, period, prior to and during the early rule of the Vijayanagara empire. The main objective of this movement was to propagate the Dvaita philosophy of Madhvacharya (Madhva Siddhanta) to the masses through a literary medium known as Dasa Sahitya. Purandara dasa is widely recognised as the "Pithamaha" of Carnatic Music for his immense contribution. Ramanuja, the leading expounder of "Vishishtadvaita", spent many years in Melkote. He came to Karnataka in 1098 CE and lived here until 1122 CE. He first lived in Tondanur and then moved to Melkote where the Cheluvanarayana Swamy Temple and a well-organised "matha" were built. He was patronised by the Hoysala king, Vishnuvardhana. In the twelfth century, Lingayatism emerged in northern Karnataka as a protest against the rigidity of the prevailing social and caste system. Leading figures of this movement were Basava, Akka Mahadevi and Allama Prabhu, who established the Anubhava Mantapa which was the centre of all religious and philosophical thoughts and discussions pertaining to Lingayats. These three social reformers did so by the literary means of "Vachana Sahitya" which is very famous for its simple, straight forward and easily understandable Kannada language. Lingayatism preached women equality by letting women wear "Ishtalinga" i.e. Symbol of god around their neck. Basava shunned the sharp hierarchical divisions that existed and sought to remove all distinctions between the hierarchically superior master class and the subordinate, servile class. He also supported inter-caste marriages and Kaay Ta tTatva of Basavanna. This was the basis of the Lingayat faith which today counts millions among its followers. The Jain philosophy and literature have contributed immensely to the religious and cultural landscape of Karnataka. Islam, which had an early presence on the west coast of India as early as the tenth century, gained a foothold in Karnataka with the rise of the Bahamani and Bijapur sultanates that ruled parts of Karnataka. Christianity reached Karnataka in the sixteenth century with the arrival of the Portuguese and St. Francis Xavier in 1545. Buddhism was popular in Karnataka during the first millennium in places such as Gulbarga and Banavasi. A chance discovery of edicts and several Mauryan relics at Sannati in Kalaburagi district in 1986 has proven that the Krishna River basin was once home to both Mahayana and Hinayana Buddhism. There are Tibetan refugee camps in Karnataka. Festivals. Mysore Dasara is celebrated as the "Nada habba" (state festival) and this is marked by major festivities at Mysore. Bangalore Karaga, celebrated in the heart of Bangalore, is the second most important festival celebrated in Karnataka. "Ugadi" (Kannada New Year), Makara Sankranti (the harvest festival), Ganesh Chaturthi, Gowri Habba, Ram Navami, Nagapanchami, Basava Jayanthi, Deepavali, and Balipadyami are the other major festivals of Karnataka. Language. Kannada is the official language of the state of Karnataka, as the native language of 66.46% of its population as of 2011 and is one of the classical languages of India. Urdu is the second largest language, spoken by 10.83% of the population, and is the language of Muslims outside the coastal region. Telugu (5.84%) is a major language in areas bordering Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka as well as Bangalore, while Tamil (3.45%) is a major language of Bangalore and in the Kolar district. Marathi (3.29%) is concentrated in areas of Uttara Kannada, Belgaum and Bidar districts bordering Maharashtra. Lambadi is spoken by the Lambadis scattered throughout North Karnataka, while Hindi is spoken in Bangalore. Tulu (2.61%), Konkani (1.29%), and Malayalam (1.27%) are all found in linguistically diverse Coastal Karnataka, where a number of mixed and distinct dialects such as Are Bhashe, Beary Bhashe, and Nawayathi are found. Kodava Takk is the language of Kodagu. Kannada played a crucial role in the creation of Karnataka: linguistic demographics played a major role in defining the new state in 1956. Tulu, Konkani and Kodava are other minor native languages that share a long history in the state. Urdu is spoken widely by the Muslim population. Less widely spoken languages include Beary bashe and certain languages such as Sankethi. Some of the regional languages in Karnataka are Tulu, Kodava, Konkani and Beary. Kannada features a rich and ancient body of literature including religious and secular genre, covering topics as diverse as Jainism (such as "Puranas"), Lingayatism (such as Vachanas), Vaishnavism (such as "Haridasa Sahitya") and modern literature. Evidence from edicts during the time of Ashoka (reigned 274–232 BCE) suggest that Buddhist literature influenced the Kannada script and its literature. The Halmidi inscription, the earliest attested full-length inscription in the Kannada language and script, dates from 450 CE, while the earliest available literary work, the "Kavirajamarga", has been dated to 850 CE. References made in the "Kavirajamarga", however, prove that Kannada literature flourished in the native composition metres such as "Chattana", "Beddande" and "Melvadu" during earlier centuries. The classic refers to several earlier greats ("purvacharyar") of Kannada poetry and prose. Kuvempu, the renowned Kannada poet and writer who wrote Jaya Bharata Jananiya Tanujate, the state anthem of Karnataka was the first recipient of the Karnataka Ratna, the highest civilian award bestowed by the Government of Karnataka. Contemporary Kannada literature has received considerable acknowledgement in the arena of Indian literature, with eight Kannada writers winning India's highest literary honour, the Jnanpith award. Tulu is the majority language in the coastal district of Dakshina Kannada and is the second most spoken in the Udupi district. This region is also known as Tulu Nadu. "Tulu Mahabharato", written by Arunabja in the Tigalari script, is the oldest surviving Tulu text. Tigalari script was used by Brahmins to write Sanskrit language. The use of the Kannada script for writing Tulu and non-availability of print in Tigalari script contributed to the marginalisation of Tigalari script. In Karnataka Konkani is mostly spoken in the Uttara Kannada and Dakshina Kannada districts and in parts of Udupi, Konkani use the Devanagari Script (which is official)/Kannada script( Optional ) for writing as identified by government of Karnataka. The Kodavas who mainly reside in the Kodagu district, speak Kodava Takk. Kodagu was a separate State with its own Chief Minister and Council of Ministers till 1956. Two regional variations of the language exist, the northern "Mendale Takka" and the southern "Kiggaati Takka". Kodava Takk has its own script, "Karnataka Kodava Sahitya Academy" has accepted Dr IM Muthanna's Script which was developed in 1970 as the Official Script of Kodava Thakk. English is the medium of education in many schools and widely used for business communication in most private companies. All of the state's languages are patronised and promoted by governmental and quasi-governmental bodies. The "Kannada Sahitya Parishat" and the "Kannada Sahitya Akademi" are responsible for the promotion of Kannada while the "Karnataka Konkani Sahitya Akademi", the "Tulu Sahitya Akademi" and the "Kodava Sahitya Akademi" promote their respective languages. Government and administration. Karnataka has a parliamentary system of government with two democratically elected houses, the Legislative Assembly and the Legislative Council. The Legislative Assembly consists of 224 members who are elected for five-year terms. The Legislative Council is a permanent body of 75 members with one-third (25 members) retiring every two years. The government of Karnataka is headed by the Chief Minister who is chosen by the ruling party members of the Legislative Assembly. The Chief Minister, along with the council of ministers, executes the legislative agenda and exercises most of the executive powers. However, the constitutional and formal head of the state is the Governor who is appointed for a five-year term by the President of India on the advice of the Union government. The people of Karnataka also elect 28 members to the "Lok Sabha", the lower house of the Indian Parliament. The members of the state Legislative Assembly elect 12 members to the "Rajya Sabha", the upper house of the Indian Parliament.For administrative purposes, Karnataka has been divided into four revenue divisions, 49 sub-divisions, 31 districts, 175 "taluks" and 745 "hoblies" / revenue circles. The administration in each district is headed by a Deputy Commissioner who belongs to the Indian Administrative Service and is assisted by a number of officers belonging to Karnataka state services. The Superintendent of Police, an officer belonging to the Indian Police Service and assisted by the officers of the Karnataka Police Service, is entrusted with the responsibility of maintaining law and order and related issues in each district. The Deputy Conservator of Forests, an officer belonging to the Indian Forest Service, is entrusted with the responsibility of managing forests, environment and wildlife of the district, he will be assisted by the officers belonging to Karnataka Forest Service and officers belonging to Karnataka Forest Subordinate Service. Sectoral development in the districts is looked after by the district head of each development department such as Public Works Department, Health, Education, Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, etc. The judiciary in the state consists of the Karnataka High Court ("Attara Kacheri") in Bangalore, Hubballi-Dharwad, and Kalaburagi, district and session courts in each district and lower courts and judges at the "taluk" level. Politics in Karnataka has been dominated by three political parties, the Indian National Congress, the Janata Dal (Secular) and the Bharatiya Janata Party. Politicians from Karnataka have played prominent roles in federal government of India with some of them having held the high positions of Prime Minister and Vice-President. Border disputes involving Karnataka's claim on the Kasaragod and Solapur districts and Maharashtra's claim on Belagavi are ongoing since the states reorganisation. The official has a "Ganda Berunda" in the centre. Surmounting this are four lions facing the four directions, taken from the Lion Capital of Ashoka at Sarnath. The emblem also carries two "Sharabhas" with the head of an elephant and the body of a lion. Economy. Karnataka had an estimated GSDP (Gross State Domestic Product) of about US$115.86 billion in the 2014–15 fiscal year. The state registered a GSDP growth rate of 7% for the year 2014–2015. Karnataka's contribution to India's GDP in the year 2014–15 was 7.54%. With GDP growth of 17.59% and per capita GDP growth of 16.04%, Karnataka is on the 6th position among all states and union territories. In an employment survey conducted for the year 2013–2014, the unemployment rate in Karnataka was 1.8% compared to the national rate of 4.9%. In 2011–2012, Karnataka had an estimated poverty ratio of 20.91% compared to the national ratio of 21.92%. Nearly 56% of the workforce in Karnataka is engaged in agriculture and related activities. A total of 12.31 million hectares of land, or 64.6% of the state's total area, is cultivated. Much of the agricultural output is dependent on the southwest monsoon as only 26.5% of the sown area is irrigated. Karnataka is the manufacturing hub for some of the largest public sector industries in India, including Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, National Aerospace Laboratories, Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, Bharat Earth Movers Limited and HMT (formerly Hindustan Machine Tools), which are based in Bangalore. Many of India's premier science and technology research centres, such as Indian Space Research Organisation, Central Power Research Institute, Bharat Electronics Limited and the Central Food Technological Research Institute, are also headquartered in Karnataka. Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited is an oil refinery, located in Mangalore. The state has also begun to invest heavily in solar power centred on the Pavagada Solar Park. As of December 2017, the state has installed an estimated 2.2 gigawatts of block solar panelling and in January 2018 announced a tender to generate a further 1.2 gigawatts in the coming years: Karnataka Renewable Energy Development suggests that this will be based on 24 separate systems (or 'blocks') generating 50 megawatts each. Since the 1980s, Karnataka has emerged as the pan-Indian leader in the field of IT (information technology). In 2007, there were nearly 2,000 firms operating in Karnataka. Many of them, including two of India's biggest software firms, Infosys and Wipro, are also headquartered in the state. Exports from these firms exceeded in 2006–07, accounting for nearly 38% of all IT exports from India. The Nandi Hills area in the outskirts of Devanahalli is the site of the upcoming $22 billion, 50 km2 BIAL IT Investment Region, one of the largest infrastructure projects in the history of Karnataka. All this has earned the state capital, Bangalore, the sobriquet "Silicon Valley of India". Karnataka also leads the nation in biotechnology. It is home to India's largest biocluster, with 60% of the country's biotechnology firms being based here. The state has 18,000 hectares of land under flower cultivation, an upcoming industry which supplies flowers and ornamental plants worldwide. Seven of India's banks, Canara Bank, Syndicate Bank, Corporation Bank, Vijaya Bank, Karnataka Bank, ING Vysya Bank and the State Bank of Mysore originated in this state. The coastal districts of Udupi and Dakshina Kannada have a branch for every 500 persons—the best distribution of banks in India. In March 2002, Karnataka had 4767 branches of different banks with each branch serving 11,000 persons, which is lower than the national average of 16,000. A majority of the silk industry in India is headquartered in Karnataka, much of it in Doddaballapura in Bangalore Rural district and the state government intends to invest in a "Silk City" at Muddenahalli in Chikkaballapura district. Transport. Air transport in Karnataka, as in the rest of the country, is still a fledgling but fast expanding sector. Karnataka has airports at Bangalore, Mangalore, Belgaum, Hubli, Hampi, Bellary, Gulbarga, and Mysore with international operations from Bangalore and Mangalore airports. Shimoga and Bijapur airports are being built under the UDAN Scheme. Karnataka has a railway network with a total length of approximately . Until the creation of the South-Western Railway Zone headquartered at Hubballi in 2003, the railway network in the state was in the Southern Railway zone, South-Central Railway Zone and Western Railway zone. Several parts of the state now come under the South Western Railway zone with 3 Railway Divisions at Bangalore, Mysore, Hubli, with the remainder under the Southern Railway zone and Konkan Railway Zone, which is considered one of India's biggest railway projects of the century due to the difficult terrain. Bangalore and other cities in the state are well-connected with intrastate and inter-state destinations. Karnataka has 11 ports, including the New Mangalore Port, a major port and ten minor ports, of which three were operational in 2012. The New Mangalore port was incorporated as the ninth major port in India on 4 May 1974. This port handled 32.04 million tonnes of traffic in the fiscal year 2006–07 with 17.92 million tonnes of imports and 14.12 million tonnes of exports. The port also handled 1015 vessels including 18 cruise vessels during the year 2006–07. Foreigners can enter Mangalore through the New Mangalore Port with the help of Electronic visa (e-visa). Cruise ships from Europe, North America and UAE arrive at New Mangalore Port to visit the tourist places across Coastal Karnataka. The port of Mangalore is among the 4 major ports of India that receive over 25 international cruise ships every year. The total lengths of National Highways and State Highways in Karnataka are , respectively. The state transport corporations, transports an average of 2.2 million passengers daily and employs about 25,000 people. The Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) and The Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) headquartered in Bangalore, The Kalyana Karnataka Road Transport Corporation (KKRTC) headquartered in Gulbarga, and The North Western Karnataka Road Transport Corporation (NWKRTC) headquartered in Hubballi are the 4 state-owned transport corporations. Culture. The diverse linguistic and religious ethnicities that are native to Karnataka, combined with their long histories, have contributed immensely to the varied cultural heritage of the state. Apart from Kannadigas, Karnataka is home to Tuluvas, Kodavas and Konkanis. Minor populations of Tibetan Buddhists and tribes like the Soligas, Yeravas, Todas and Siddhis also live in Karnataka. The traditional folk arts cover the entire gamut of music, dance, drama, storytelling by itinerant troupes, etc. "Yakshagana" of Malnad and coastal Karnataka, a classical dance drama, is one of the major theatrical forms of Karnataka. Contemporary theatre culture in Karnataka remains vibrant with organisations like "Ninasam", "Ranga Shankara", "Rangayana" and "Prabhat Kalavidaru" continuing to build on the foundations laid by Gubbi Veeranna, T. P. Kailasam, B. V. Karanth, K V Subbanna, Prasanna and others. "Veeragase", "Kamsale", "Kolata" and "Dollu Kunitha" are popular dance forms. The Mysore style of "Bharatanatya", nurtured and popularised by the likes of the legendary Jatti Tayamma, continues to hold sway in Karnataka, and Bangalore also enjoys an eminent place as one of the foremost centres of "Bharatanatya". Karnataka also has a special place in the world of Indian classical music, with both Karnataka (Carnatic) and Hindustani styles finding place in the state, and Karnataka has produced a number of stalwarts in both styles. The Haridasa movement of the sixteenth century contributed significantly to the development of Karnataka (Carnatic) music as a performing art form. Purandara Dasa, one of the most revered Haridasas, is known as the "Karnataka Sangeeta Pitamaha" ('Father of Karnataka a.k.a. Carnatic music'). Celebrated Hindustani musicians like Gangubai Hangal, Mallikarjun Mansur, Bhimsen Joshi, Basavaraja Rajaguru, Sawai Gandharva and several others hail from Karnataka, and some of them have been recipients of the Kalidas Samman, Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan awards. Noted Carnatic musicians include Violin T. Chowdiah, Veena Sheshanna, Mysore Vasudevachar, Doreswamy Iyengar and Thitte Krishna Iyengar. "Gamaka" is another classical music genre based on Carnatic music that is practised in Karnataka. "Kannada Bhavageete" is a genre of popular music that draws inspiration from the expressionist poetry of modern poets. The Mysore school of painting has produced painters like Sundarayya, Tanjavur Kondayya, B. Venkatappa and Keshavayya. "Chitrakala Parishat" is an organisation in Karnataka dedicated to promoting painting, mainly in the Mysore painting style. "Saree" is the traditional dress of women in Karnataka. Women in Kodagu have a distinct style of wearing the "saree", different from the rest of Karnataka. "Dhoti", known as "Panche" in Karnataka, is the traditional attire of men. Shirt, Trousers and "Salwar kameez" are widely worn in Urban areas. "Mysore Peta" is the traditional headgear of southern Karnataka, while the "pagadi" or "pataga" (similar to the Rajasthani turban) is preferred in the northern areas of the state. Rice and "Ragi" form the staple food in South Karnataka, whereas "Jolada rotti", Sorghum is staple to North Karnataka. "Bisi bele bath", "Jolada rotti", "Ragi mudde", "Uppittu", "Benne Dose", "Masala Dose" and "Maddur Vade" are some of the popular food items in Karnataka. Among sweets, "Mysore Pak", "Karadantu" of Gokak and "Amingad", "Belgaavi Kunda" and "Dharwad pedha" are popular. Apart from this, coastal Karnataka and Kodagu have distinctive cuisines of their own. Udupi cuisine of coastal Karnataka is popular all over India. Education. As per the 2011 census, Karnataka had a literacy rate of 75.60%, with 82.85% of males and 68.13% of females in the state being literate. The Indian Institute of Science and Manipal Academy of Higher Education were ranked within the top 10 universities of India by NIRF 2020. The state is home to some of the premier educational and research institutions of India such as the Indian Institute of Management – Bangalore, the Indian Institute of Technology – Dharwad the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences – Bangalore, the National Institute of Technology Karnataka – Surathkal and the National Law School of India University – Bangalore. In March 2006, Karnataka had 54,529 primary schools with 252,875 teachers and 8.495 million students, and 9498 secondary schools with 92,287 teachers and 1.384 million students. There are three kinds of schools in the state, viz., government-run, private aided (financial aid is provided by the government) and private unaided (no financial aid is provided). The primary languages of instruction in most schools are Kannada and English. The syllabus taught in the schools is either of KSEEB (SSLC) and Pre-University Couse (PUC) of the State Syllabus, the CBSE of the Central Syllabus, CISCE, IGCSE, IB, NIOS, etc., are all defined by the Department of Public Instruction of the Government of Karnataka. The state has two Sainik Schools – Kodagu Sainik School in Kodagu and Vijayapura Sainik School in Vijayapura. To maximise attendance in schools, the Karnataka Government has launched a mid-day meal scheme in government and aided schools in which free lunch is provided to the students. Statewide board examinations are conducted at the end of secondary education. Students who qualify are allowed to pursue a two-year pre-university course, after which they become eligible to pursue under-graduate degrees. There are 481-degree colleges affiliated with one of the universities in the state, viz. Bangalore University, Rani Channamma University, Belagavi, Gulbarga University, Karnatak University, Kuvempu University, Mangalore University and Mysore University. In 1998, the engineering colleges in the state were brought under the newly formed Visvesvaraya Technological University headquartered in Belgaum, whereas the medical colleges are run under the jurisdiction of the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences headquartered in Bangalore. Some of these baccalaureate colleges are accredited with the status of a deemed university. There are 186 engineering, 39 medical and 41 dental colleges in the state. Udupi, Sringeri, Gokarna and Melkote are well-known places of Sanskrit and Vedic learning. In 2015 the Central Government decided to establish the first Indian Institute of Technology in Karnataka at Dharwad. Tulu and Konkani languages are taught as an optional subject in the twin districts of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi. Christ University, Jain University, CMR University, Dayananda Sagar University, PES University and REVA University are notable private universities in Karnataka. On 9 February 2022, Karnataka shut its schools for three days after the regional administration-backed schools imposed a hijab ban, leading to widespread protests and violence. Other universities in the state began enforcing prohibitions after Hindu students, supported by right-wing Hindu groups, argued that if hijabs were allowed in classrooms, they should wear saffron shawls. On 5 February 2022, the Karnataka state government advised colleges to guarantee that "clothes which disturb equality, integrity, and public law and order should not be worn" in apparent support of schools' ability to enforce a ban. Media. The era of Kannada newspapers started in the year 1843 when Hermann Mögling, a missionary from Basel Mission, published the first Kannada newspaper called "Mangaluru Samachara" in Mangalore. The first Kannada periodical, "Mysuru Vrittanta Bodhini" was started by Bhashyam Bhashyacharya in Mysore. Shortly after Indian independence in 1948, K. N. Guruswamy founded "The Printers (Mysuru) Private Limited" and began publishing two newspapers, "Deccan Herald" and "Prajavani". Presently "The Times of India" and "Vijaya Karnataka" are the largest-selling English and Kannada newspapers respectively. A vast number of weekly, biweekly and monthly magazines are under publication in both Kannada and English. "Udayavani", "Kannadaprabha", "Samyukta Karnataka", "VarthaBharathi", "Sanjevani", "Eesanje", "Hosa digantha", "Karavali Ale" are also some popular dailies published from Karnataka. Doordarshan is the broadcaster of the Government of India and its channel DD Chandana is dedicated to Kannada. Prominent Kannada channels include Colors Kannada, Zee Kannada, Star Suvarna and Udaya TV. Karnataka occupies a special place in the history of Indian radio. In 1935, "Aakashvani", the first private radio station in India, was started by Prof. M.V. Gopalaswamy in Mysore. The popular radio station was taken over by the local municipality and later by All India Radio (AIR) and moved to Bangalore in 1955. Later in 1957, AIR adopted the original name of the radio station, "Aakashavani" as its own. Some of the popular programs aired by AIR Bangalore included "Nisarga Sampada" and "Sasya Sanjeevini" which were programs that taught science through songs, plays, and stories. These two programs became so popular that they were translated and broadcast in 18 different languages and the entire series was recorded on cassettes by the Government of Karnataka and distributed to thousands of schools across the state. Karnataka has witnessed a growth in FM radio channels, mainly in the cities of Bangalore, Mangalore and Mysore, which has become hugely popular. Sports. Karnataka's smallest district, Kodagu, is a major contributor to Indian field hockey, producing numerous players who have represented India at the international level. The annual Kodava Hockey Festival is the largest hockey tournament in the world. Bangalore has hosted a WTA tennis event and, in 1997, it hosted the fourth National Games of India. The Sports Authority of India, the premier sports institute in the country, and the Nike Tennis Academy are also situated in Bangalore. Karnataka has been referred to as the cradle of Indian swimming because of its high standards in comparison to other states. One of the most popular sports in Karnataka is cricket. The state cricket team has won the Ranji Trophy seven times, second only to Mumbai in terms of success. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore regularly hosts international Cricket matches and is also the home of the National Cricket Academy, which was opened in 2000 to nurture potential international players. Many cricketers have represented India and in one international match held in the 1990s; players from Karnataka composed the majority of the national team. The Royal Challengers Bangalore, an Indian Premier League franchise, the Bengaluru Football Club, an Indian Super League franchise, the Bengaluru Yodhas, a Pro Wrestling League franchise, the Bengaluru Blasters, a Premier Badminton League franchise and the Bengaluru Bulls, a Pro Kabaddi League franchise are based in Bangalore. The Karnataka Premier League is an inter-regional Twenty20 cricket tournament played in the state. Notable sportsmen from Karnataka include B.S. Chandrasekhar, Roger Binny, E. A. S. Prasanna, Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath, Rahul Dravid, Venkatesh Prasad, Robin Uthappa, Vinay Kumar, Gundappa Vishwanath, Syed Kirmani, Stuart Binny, K. L. Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, Manish Pandey, Karun Nair, Ashwini Ponnappa, Mahesh Bhupathi, Rohan Bopanna, Prakash Padukone who won the All England Badminton Championships in 1980 and Pankaj Advani who has won three world titles in cue sports by the age of 20 including the amateur World Snooker Championship in 2003 and the World Billiards Championship in 2005. Bijapur district has produced some of the best-known road cyclists in the national circuit. Premalata Sureban was part of the Indian contingent at the Perlis Open '99 in Malaysia. In recognition of the talent of cyclists in the district, the state government laid down a cycling track at the B.R. Ambedkar Stadium at a cost of . Tourism. By virtue of its varied geography and long history, Karnataka hosts numerous spots of interest for tourists. There is an array of ancient sculptured temples, modern cities, scenic hill ranges, forests and beaches. Karnataka has been ranked as the fourth most popular destination for tourism among the states of India. Karnataka has the second highest number of nationally protected monuments in India, second only to Uttar Pradesh, in addition to 752 monuments protected by the State Directorate of Archaeology and Museums. Another 25,000 monuments are yet to receive protection. The districts of the Western Ghats and the southern districts of the state have popular eco-tourism locations including Kudremukh, Madikeri and Agumbe. Karnataka has 25 wildlife sanctuaries and five national parks. Popular among them are Bandipura National Park, Bannerghatta National Park and Nagarhole National Park. The ruins of the Vijayanagara Empire at Hampi and the monuments of Pattadakal are on the list of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites. The cave temples at Badami and the rock-cut temples at Aihole representing the Badami Chalukyan style of architecture are also popular tourist destinations. The Hoysala temples at Beluru and Halebidu, which were built with Chloritic schist (soapstone) are proposed UNESCO World Heritage sites. The Gol Gumbaz and Ibrahim Rauza are famous examples of the Deccan Sultanate style of architecture. The monolith of Gomateshwara Bahubali at Shravanabelagola is the tallest sculpted monolith in the world, attracting tens of thousands of pilgrims during the Mahamastakabhisheka festival. The waterfalls of Karnataka and Kudremukh are considered by some to be among the "1001 Natural Wonders of the World". Jog Falls is India's tallest single-tiered waterfall with Gokak Falls, Unchalli Falls, Magod Falls, Abbey Falls and Shivanasamudra Falls among other popular waterfalls. Several popular beaches dot the coastline, including Murudeshwara, Gokarna, Malpe and Karwar. In addition, Karnataka is home to several places of religious importance. Several Hindu temples including the famous Udupi Sri Krishna Matha, the Marikamba Temple at Sirsi, the Kollur Mookambika Temple, the Sri Manjunatha Temple at Dharmasthala, Kukke Subramanya Temple, Janardhana and Mahakali Temple at Ambalpadi, Sharadamba Temple at Shringeri attract pilgrims from all over India. Most of the holy sites of Lingayatism, like Kudalasangama and Basavana Bagewadi, are found in northern parts of the state. Shravanabelagola, Mudabidri and Karkala are famous for Jain history and monuments. Jainism had a stronghold in Karnataka in the early medieval period with Shravanabelagola as its most important centre. The Shettihalli Rosary Church near Shettihalli, an example of French colonial Gothic architecture, is a rare example of a Christian ruin, is a popular tourist site. Karnataka has become a center of health care tourism and has the highest number of approved health systems and alternative therapies in India. Along with some ISO certified government-owned hospitals, private institutions which provide international-quality services, Hospitals in Karnataka treat around 8,000 health tourists every year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16926

Kabaddi

Kabaddi (also known as kaudi) is a contact team sport played between two teams of seven players. The objective of the game is for a single player on offense, referred to as a "raider", to run into the opposing team's half of the court, touch out as many of their players and return to their own half of the court, all without being tackled by the defenders in 30 seconds. Points are scored for each player tagged by the raider, while the opposing team earns a point for stopping the raider. Players are taken out of the game if they are touched or tackled, but are brought back in for each point scored by their team from a tag or a tackle. It is popular in the Indian subcontinent and other surrounding Asian countries. Although accounts of kabaddi appear in the histories of ancient India, the game was popularised as a competitive sport in the 20th century. It is the national sport of Bangladesh. It is the state game of the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh. There are two major disciplines: "Punjabi kabaddi", also called "circle styles", comprises traditional forms of the sport that are played on a circular field outdoors, and the "standard style", on a rectangular court indoors, is played in major professional leagues and international competitions such as the Asian Games. This game is known by numerous names in different parts of the Indian subcontinent, such as: "kabaddi "or "chedugudu" in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana; "kabaddi" in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala; "kabaddi", "komonti" or "ha-du-du" in West Bengal and Bangladesh; "baibalaa" in Maldives, "kauddi" or "kabaddi" in the Punjab region; "hu-tu-tu" in Western India, "ha-do-do" in Eastern India; "chadakudu" in South India; "kapardi" in Nepal; "kabadi" or "sadugudu" in Tamil Nadu; and "chakgudu" in Sri Lanka. History. Kabaddi is a sport developed centered on Jallikattu. It was common among the Ayar tribal people who lived in the Mullai geographical region of ancient Tamil Nadu. A player going to the opposition is treated like a Bull. It is like taming a bull without touching it, as it is mentioned in Sangam Literature that the game called Sadugudu was practised since ages. There are also accounts of Gautam Buddha having played the game recreationally. According to another version of this sport's origins, kabaddi originated in Tamil Nadu over 4,000 years ago. The game was said to have been popular among the Yadava people. An Abhang by Tukaram stated that the lord Krishna played the game in his youth. Modern kabaddi is a synthesis of the game played in various forms under different names in the Indian subcontinent. India has been first credited with having helped to popularise kabaddi as a competitive sport, with the first organized competitions occurring in the 1920s, their introduction to the programme of the Indian Olympic Games in 1938, the establishment of the All-India Kabaddi Federation in 1950, and it being played as a demonstration sport at the inaugural 1951 Asian Games in New Delhi. These developments helped to formalize the sport, which had traditionally been played in villages, for legitimate international competition. After being demonstrated again at the 1982 Asian Games in Delhi, Kabaddi was added to the Asian Games programme beginning in 1990. Variations. Standard style. In the international team version of kabaddi, two teams of seven members each occupy opposite halves of a court of in case of men and in case of women. Each has five supplementary players held in reserve for substitution. The game is played with 20-minute halves with a 5-minute half time break in which the teams exchange sides. During each play, known as a "raid", a player from the attacking side, known as the "raider", runs into the opposing team's side of the court and attempts to tag as many of the seven defending players as possible. The raider must cross the baulk line into the defending team's territory, and then return to their half of the field without being tackled. (If an attacker touches a defender and hasn't yet reached the baulk line, they do not need to reach the baulk line to score points and may return to their half of the court.) While raiding, the raider must loudly chant "kabaddi", confirming to referees that their raid is done on a single breath without inhaling. Each raid has a 30-second time limit. A point is scored for each defender tagged; tags can be made with the raider's hand or foot. If the raider steps beyond the bonus line marked in the defending team's territory when there are five or more players, they earn an additional point known as a bonus point. If the raider is successfully stopped (tackled), the opposite team earns a point instead. All players tagged are taken out of the game, but one is "revived" for each point a team scores from a subsequent tag or tackle. Bonus points do not revive players. Players who step out of the boundary are out. A raid where no points are scored by the raider is referred to as an "empty raid". By contrast, a play where the raider scores three or more points is referred to as a "super raid". If a team gets all seven players on the opposing team out at once ("All Out"), they earn two additional points and the players are placed back in the game. Circle style. There are four major forms of Indian kabaddi recognised by the amateur federation. In Sanjeevani kabaddi, one player is revived against one player of the opposite team who is out. The game is played over 40 minutes with a five-minute break between halves. There are seven players on each side and the team that outs all the players on the opponent's side scores four extra points. In Gaminee style, seven players play on each side and a player put out has to remain out until all his team members are out. The team that is successful in outing all the players of the opponent's side secures a point. The game continues until five or seven such points are secured and has no fixed time duration. Amar style resembles the Sanjeevani form in the time frame rule, but a player who is declared out stays inside the court while play continues. For every player of the opposition touched "out", a team earns a point. Punjabi kabaddi is a variation that is played on a circular pitch of a diameter of . Major competitions. The following competitions are played in standard format, for that of circle style kabaddi, see Punjabi kabaddi. Kabaddi World Cup. The Kabaddi World Cup is an outdoor international standard style kabaddi competition conducted by the International Kabaddi Federation (IKF), contested by men's and women's national teams. The competition has been previously contested in 2004, 2007 and 2016. All the tournaments have been won by India. India defeated Iran by 38–29 in the final of the championship game to clinch the title of 2016. After the establishment of a new kabaddi organization named World Kabaddi Federation, a 2019 Kabaddi World Cup was held in April 2019 at Malacca, Malaysia. It was the largest world cup in kabaddi history, consisting of 32 men's teams and 24 women's teams. Asian Games. Kabaddi was played as a demonstration event at the First Asian Games in 1951, and again in 1982, before becoming a medal event for the first time in 1990. The Indian national team won every men's and women's kabaddi competition in the Asian Games from 2002 through 2014. At the 2018 Asian Games, Iran became the first country other than India to win gold medals in kabaddi, with India's men's team winning bronze, and India's women's team being beaten by Iran to win silver. Pro Kabaddi League. The Pro Kabaddi League was established in 2014. The league modeled its business upon that of the Indian Premier League of Twenty20 cricket, with a large focus on marketing, the backing of local broadcaster Star Sports, and changes to the sport's rules and its presentation to make it more suitable for a television audience. The Pro Kabaddi League quickly became a ratings success on Indian television; the 2014 season was watched by at least 435 million viewers over the course of the season, and the inaugural championship match was seen by 98.6 million viewers. All players in the league must be strictly under 85 kg of weight. Additional rules are used in the Pro Kabaddi League to encourage scoring: when a defensive side has three or fewer players remaining, tackles are worth two points instead of one. Furthermore, if a team performs two empty raids in a row, the next raider must score a point, or else they will be declared out and the opposing team will score a point. Indo International Premier Kabaddi League. The inaugural edition of the IIPKL was on 13 May at Pune, India. The title for the inaugural season was won by the Bangalore Rhinos. Super Kabaddi League. In May 2018, the Super Kabaddi League was first held in Pakistan, as part of a larger push to promote renewed interest in the sport in Pakistan. Asian Kabaddi Championship. AKC's tenth season was played in Gorgan, Iran, in 2017 in which India won its tenth gold by defeating Pakistan in the finals. Kabaddi Masters. The inaugural edition of the Kabaddi Masters was held in Dubai, 22–30 June 2018. It was the first kabaddi tournament to be held in the UAE. It featured 6 teams. India won the tournament by defeating Iran in the final with a scoreline of 44–26, with the Indian Defense outperforming the Iran Defense. Junior World Kabaddi championship. The inaugural Junior Kabaddi World Championship was held in Kish island, Iran, 11–14 November 2019. It featured 13 teams. Iran won the tournament by defeating Kenya in the final, 42–22. Team India did not participate in this tournament. Yuva Kabaddi Series. Yuva Kabaddi Series is a long duration tournament for the youth players of India, limited to players under 23 years of age and under 80 kg in weight. The inaugural Yuva Kabaddi Series was conducted in Jaipur in June 2022. Three tournaments were conducted in 2022: Summer Edition in Jaipur, Monsoon Edition at Ranchi, and Winter Edition at Pondicherry; and two in 2023: the KMP YKS in Maharashtra (which was won by Ahmednagar) and Summer Edition Mysore. For the first time in the history of Indian kabaddi, players from the North East will be playing in a tournament of this stature. Yuva Kabaddi Series was founded by uMumba CEO Suhail Chandhok and Vikas Kumar Gautam. European Kabaddi championship. The first edition of European Kabaddi Championship was held in Scotland in 2019. The final match was between Poland and Holland, Poland won the tournament. Final score was Poland 47–27 Holland. The second edition was held in Cyprus in 2021 which was organized by World Kabaddi Federation. Poland retained their title by beating hosts Cyprus in the final, 29-15. Italy is set to host the third edition in 2022. Popularity. Kabaddi is a popular sport in the Indian subcontinent. The governing federation for kabaddi in India is the Amateur Kabaddi Federation of India (AKFI), which was founded in 1973 and compiled a standard set of rules. The governing body for kabaddi in Pakistan is Pakistan Kabaddi Federation. In Bangladesh, Kabaddi is known with a different name called "Ha-du-du". Ha-du-du has no definite rules and is played with different rules in different areas. Kabaddi is the national sport of Bangladesh, given official status in 1972. The Amateur Kabaddi Federation of Bangladesh was formed in 1973. In Iran, the Community of Kabaddi was formed in 1996 (the same year they joined the Asian Kabaddi Federation), and in 2001 they joined the International Kabaddi Federation. The Iran Amateur Kabaddi Federation was formed in 2004. Kabaddi is among the national sports of Nepal. Kabaddi is played and taught in most primary schools beginning in about the third grade in most Nepali schools. Kabaddi was also played by the British Army for fun, to keep fit and as an enticement to recruit soldiers from the British Asian community. Kabaddi was brought to United Kingdom by Bangladeshi, Indian, Pakistani, Nepali and Sri Lankan immigrants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17003

Tettigoniidae

Insects in the family Tettigoniidae are commonly called katydids (especially in North America), or bush crickets. They have previously been known as "long-horned grasshoppers". More than 8,000 species are known. Part of the suborder Ensifera, the Tettigoniidae are the only extant (living) family in the superfamily Tettigonioidea. They are primarily nocturnal in habit with strident mating calls. Many species exhibit mimicry and camouflage, commonly with shapes and colors similar to leaves. Etymology. The family name Tettigoniidae is derived from the genus "Tettigonia", first described by Carl Linnaeus in 1758. In Latin "tettigonia" means a kind of small cicada, leafhopper; it is from the Greek τεττιγόνιον "tettigonion", the diminutive of the imitative (onomatopoeic) τέττιξ, "tettix", cicada. All of these names such as "tettix" with repeated sounds are onomatopoeic, imitating the stridulation of these insects. The common name "katydid" is also onomatopoeic and comes from the particularly loud, three-pulsed song, often rendered "ka-ty-did", of the nominate subspecies of the North American "Pterophylla camellifolia", belonging to the subfamily Pseudophyllinae, which are known as "true katydids". Description and life cycle. Description. Tettigoniids range in size from as small as to as large as . The smaller species typically live in drier or more stressful habitats which may lead to their small size. The small size is associated with greater agility, faster development, and lower nutritional needs. Tettigoniids are tree-living insects that are most commonly heard at night during summer and early fall. Tettigoniids may be distinguished from the grasshopper by the length of their filamentous antennae, which may exceed their own body length, while grasshoppers' antennae are always relatively short and thickened. Life cycle. Eggs are typically oval and may be attached in rows to plants. Where the eggs are deposited relates to the way the ovipositor is formed. It consists of up to three pairs of appendages formed to transmit the egg, to make a place for it, and place it properly. Tettigoniids have either sickle-shaped ovipositors which typically lay eggs in dead or living plant matter, or uniform long ovipositors which lay eggs in grass stems. When tettigoniids hatch, the nymphs often look like small, wingless versions of the adults, but in some species, the nymphs look nothing at all like the adult and rather mimic other species such as ants, spiders and assassin bugs, or flowers, to prevent predation. The nymphs remain in a mimic state only until they are large enough to escape predation. Once they complete their last molt (after about 5 successful molts), they are then prepared to mate. Distribution. Tettigoniids are found on every continent except Antarctica. The vast majority of katydid species live in the tropical regions of the world. For example, the Amazon basin rain forest is home to over 2,000 species of katydids. However, katydids are found in the cool, dry temperate regions, as well, with about 255 species in North America. Classification. The Tettigoniidae are a large family and have been divided into a number of subfamilies: The Copiphorinae were previously considered a subfamily, but are now placed as tribe Copiphorini in the subfamily Conocephalinae. The genus "Acridoxena" is now placed in the tribe Acridoxenini of the Mecopodinae (previously its own subfamily, Acridoxeninae). Extinct taxa. The "Orthoptera species file" lists: The genus †"Triassophyllum" is extinct and may be placed here or in the Archaeorthoptera. Ecology. The diet of most tettigoniids includes leaves, flowers, bark, and seeds, but many species are exclusively predatory, feeding on other insects, snails, or even small vertebrates such as snakes and lizards. Some are also considered pests by commercial crop growers and are sprayed to limit growth, but population densities are usually low, so a large economic impact is rare. Tettigoniids are serious insect pests of karuka ("Pandanus julianettii"). The species "Segestes gracilis" and "Segestidea montana" eat the leaves and can sometimes kill trees. Growers will stuff leaves and grass in between the leaves of the crown to keep insects out. By observing the head and mouthparts, where differences can be seen in relation to function, it is possible to determine what type of food the tettigoniids consume. Large tettigoniids can inflict a painful bite or pinch if handled, but seldom break the skin. Some species of bush crickets are consumed by people, such as the "nsenene" ("Ruspolia differens") in Uganda and neighbouring areas. Communication. The males of tettigoniids have sound-producing organs located on the hind angles of their front wings. In some species, females are also capable of stridulation. Females chirp in response to the shrill of the males. The males use this sound for courtship, which occurs late in the summer. The sound is produced by rubbing two parts of their bodies together, called stridulation. In many cases this is done with the wings, but not exclusively. One body part bears a file or comb with ridges; the other has the plectrum, which runs over the ridges to produce a vibration. For tettigoniids, the fore wings are used to sing. Tettigoniids produce continuous songs known as trills. The size of the insect, the spacing of the ridges, and the width of the scraper all influence what sound is made. Many species stridulate at a tempo which is governed by ambient temperature, so that the number of chirps in a defined period of time can produce a fairly accurate temperature reading. For American katydids, the formula is generally given as the number of chirps in 15 seconds plus 37 to give the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit. Predation. Some tettigoniids have spines on different parts of their bodies that work in different ways. The Listroscelinae have limb spines on the ventral surfaces of their bodies. This works in a way to confine their prey to make a temporary cage above their mouthparts. The spines are articulated and comparatively flexible, but relatively blunt. Due to this, they are used to cage and not penetrate the prey's body. Spines on the tibiae and the femora are usually more sharp and nonarticulated. They are designed more for penetration or help in the defensive mechanism they might have. This usually works with their diurnal roosting posture to maximize defense and prevent predators from going for their head. Defense mechanisms. When tettigoniids go to rest during the day, they enter a diurnal roosting posture to maximize their cryptic qualities. This position fools predators into thinking the katydid is either dead or just a leaf on the plant. Various tettigoniids have bright coloration and black apical spots on the inner surfaces of the tegmina, and brightly colored hind wings. By flicking their wings open when disturbed, they use the coloration to fool predators into thinking the spots are eyes. This, in combination with their coloration mimicking leaves, allows them to blend in with their surroundings, but also makes predators unsure which side is the front and which side is the back. Reproductive behavior. The males provide a nuptial gift for the females in the form of a spermatophylax, a body attached to the males' spermatophore and consumed by the female, to distract her from eating the male's spermatophore and thereby increase his paternity. Polygamy. The Tettigoniidae have polygamous relationships. The first male to mate is guaranteed an extremely high confidence of paternity when a second male couples at the termination of female sexual refractoriness. The nutrients that the offspring ultimately receive will increase their fitness. The second male to mate with the female at the termination of her refractory period is usually cuckolded. Competition. The polygamous relationships of the Tettigoniidae lead to high levels of male-male competition. Male competition is caused by the decreased availability of males able to supply nutritious spermaphylanges to the females. Females produce more eggs on a high-quality diet; thus, the female looks for healthier males with a more nutritious spermatophylax. Females use the sound created by the male to judge his fitness. The louder and more fluent the trill, the higher the fitness of the male. Stress response. Oftentimes in species which produce larger food gifts, the female seeks out the males to copulate. This, however, is a cost to females as they risk predation while searching for males. Also, a cost-benefit tradeoff exists in the size of the spermatophore which the male tettigoniids produce. When males possess a large spermatophore, they benefit by being more highly selected for by females, but they are only able to mate one to two times during their lifetimes. Inversely, male Tettigoniidae with smaller spermatophores have the benefit of being able to mate two to three times per night, but have lower chances of being selected by females. Even in times of nutritional stress, male Tettigoniidae continue to invest nutrients within their spermatophores. In some species, the cost of creating the spermatophore is low, but even in those which it is not low, it is still not beneficial to reduce the quality of the spermatophore, as it would lead to lower reproductive selection and success. This low reproductive success is attributed to some Tettigoniidae species in which the spermatophylax that the female receives as a food gift from the male during copulation increases the reproductive output of the reproduction attempt. However, in other cases, the female receives few, if any, benefits. The reproductive behavior of bush crickets has been studied in great depth. Studies found that the tuberous bush cricket ("Platycleis affinis") has the largest testes in proportion to body mass of any animal recorded. They account for 14% of the insect's body mass and are thought to enable a fast remating rate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17012

Kim Philby

Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby (1 January 191211 May 1988) was a British intelligence officer and a spy for the Soviet Union. In 1963, he was revealed to be a member of the Cambridge Five, a spy ring which had divulged British secrets to the Soviets during World War II and in the early stages of the Cold War. Of the five, Philby is believed to have been most successful in providing secret information to the Soviets. Born in British India, Philby was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was recruited by Soviet intelligence in 1934. After leaving Cambridge, Philby worked as a journalist, covering the Spanish Civil War and the Battle of France. In 1940 he began working for the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6). By the end of the Second World War he had become a high-ranking member. In 1949 Philby was appointed first secretary to the British Embassy in Washington and served as chief British liaison with American intelligence agencies. During his career as an intelligence officer, he passed large amounts of intelligence to the Soviet Union, including the Albanian Subversion, a plot to subvert Communist Albania. Philby was suspected of tipping off two other spies under suspicion of Soviet espionage, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, both of whom subsequently fled to Moscow in May 1951. Under suspicion himself, Philby resigned from MI6 in July 1951 but was publicly exonerated by then-Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan in 1955. He resumed his career as both a journalist and a spy for MI6 in Beirut, but was forced to defect to Moscow after finally being unmasked as a Soviet agent in 1963. He lived in Moscow until his death in 1988. Early life. Kim Philby was born in Ambala, Punjab, British India, to author and explorer St John Philby and his wife, Dora Johnston. A member of the Indian Civil Service (ICS) at the time of Philby's birth, St John later became a civil servant in Mesopotamia and advisor to King Ibn Sa'ud of Saudi Arabia. Nicknamed "Kim" after the boy-spy in Rudyard Kipling's novel "Kim", Philby attended Aldro preparatory school, an all-boys school located in Shackleford, Surrey, England. In his early teens, he spent some time with the Bedouin in the Arabian desert. Following in the footsteps of his father, Philby continued to Westminster School, which he left in 1928 at the age of 16. He won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied history and economics. He graduated in 1933 with a 2:1 degree in Economics. At Cambridge, Philby exhibited a "leaning towards communism", in the words of his father, who went on to write: "The only serious question is whether Kim definitely intended to be disloyal to the government while in its service." Upon his graduation, Maurice Dobb, a fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and tutor in economics, introduced him to the World Federation for the Relief of the Victims of German Fascism, an organization based in Paris which attempted to aid the people victimized by Nazi Germany and provide education on oppositions to fascism. The organization was one of several fronts operated by German communist Willi Münzenberg, a member of the Reichstag who had fled to France in 1933. Early professional career. Vienna. While working to aid German refugees in Vienna, Philby met Litzi Friedmann (born Alice Kohlmann), a young Austrian communist of Hungarian Jewish origins. Philby admired the strength of her political convictions and later recalled that at their first meeting: A frank and direct person, Litzi came out and asked me how much money I had. I replied £100, which I hoped would last me about a year in Vienna. She made some calculations and announced, "That will leave you an excess of £25. You can give that to the International Organisation for Aid for Revolutionaries. We need it desperately." I liked her determination. Philby acted as a courier between Vienna and Prague, paying for the train tickets out of his remaining £75 and using his British passport to evade suspicion. He also delivered clothes and money to refugees. Following the Austrofascist victory in the Austrian Civil War, Philby and Friedmann married in February 1934, enabling her to escape to the United Kingdom with him two months later. It is possible that it was a Viennese-born friend of Friedmann's in London, Edith Tudor Hartherself, at this time, a Soviet agentwho first approached Philby about the possibility of working for Soviet intelligence. In early 1934, Arnold Deutsch, another Soviet agent, was sent to University College London under the cover of a research appointment, but in reality had been assigned to recruit the brightest students from Britain's top universities. Philby had come to the Soviets' notice earlier that year in Vienna, where he had been involved in demonstrations against the government of Engelbert Dollfuss. In June 1934, Deutsch recruited him to the Soviet intelligence services. Philby later recalled: Lizzy came home one evening and told me that she had arranged for me to meet a "man of decisive importance". I questioned her about it but she would give me no details. The rendezvous took place in Regents Park. The man described himself as Otto. I discovered much later from a photograph in MI5 files that the name he went by was Arnold Deutsch. I think that he was of Czech origin; about 5 ft 7in, stout, with blue eyes and light curly hair. Though a convinced Communist, he had a strong humanistic streak. He hated London, adored Paris, and spoke of it with deeply loving affection. He was a man of considerable cultural background." Philby recommended to Deutsch several of his Cambridge contemporaries, including Donald Maclean, who at the time was working in the Foreign Office, as well as Guy Burgess, despite his personal reservations about Burgess' erratic personality. London and Spain. In London, Philby began a career as a journalist. He took a job at a monthly magazine, the "World Review of Reviews", for which he wrote a large number of articles and letters (sometimes under a variety of pseudonyms) and occasionally served as "acting editor." Meanwhile, Philby and Friedmann separated. They remained friends for many years following their separation and divorced only in 1946, just following the end of the Second World War. When the Germans threatened to overrun Paris in 1940, where she was then living at this time, Philby arranged for Friedmann's escape to Britain. In 1936, Philby began working at a failing trade magazine, the "Anglo-Russian Trade Gazette", as editor. After the magazine's owner changed the paper's role to covering Anglo-German trade, Philby engaged in a concerted effort to make contact with Germans such as Joachim von Ribbentrop, at that time the German ambassador in London. He became a member of the Anglo-German Fellowship, an organization aiming at rebuilding and supporting a friendly relationship between Germany and the United Kingdom. The Anglo-German Fellowship, at this time, was supported both by the British and German governments, and Philby made many trips to Berlin. In February 1937, Philby travelled to Spain, then embroiled in a bloody civil war triggered by the "coup d'état" of Falangist forces under General Francisco Franco against the government of President Manuel Azaña. Philby worked at first as a freelance journalist; from May 1937, he served as a first-hand correspondent for "The Times", reporting from the headquarters of the pro-Franco forces in Seville. He also began working for both the Soviet and British intelligence, which usually consisted of posting letters in a crude code to a fictitious girlfriend, Mlle Dupont in Paris, for the Soviets. He used a simpler system for MI6, delivering post at Hendaye, France, for the British embassy in Paris. When visiting Paris after the war, he was shocked to discover that the address that he used for Mlle Dupont was that of the Soviet embassy. His controller in Paris, a Latvian national named Ozolin-Haskins (code name Pierre), was shot in Moscow in 1937 during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge. His successor, Boris Bazarov, suffered the same fate two years later. Both the British and the Soviets were interested in analyzing the combat performance of the new Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter planes and Panzer I and Panzer II tanks deployed with Falangist forces in Spain. Philby told the British, after a direct question to Franco, that German troops would never be permitted to cross Spain to attack Gibraltar. Philby's Soviet controller at the time, Theodore Maly, reported in April 1937 to the NKVD that he had personally briefed Philby on the need "to discover the system of guarding Franco and his entourage". Maly was one of the Soviet Union's most powerful and influential illegal controllers and recruiters. With the goal of potentially arranging Franco's assassination, Philby was instructed to report on vulnerable points in Franco's security and recommend ways to gain access to him and his staff. However, such an act was never a real possibility; upon debriefing Philby in London on 24 May 1937, Maly wrote to the NKVD, "Though devoted and ready to sacrifice himself, [Philby] does not possess the physical courage and other qualities necessary for this [assassination] attempt." In December 1937, during the Battle of Teruel, a Republican shell hit just in front of the car in which Philby was travelling with the correspondents Edward J. Neil of the Associated Press, Bradish Johnson of "Newsweek" and Ernest Sheepshanks of Reuters. Johnson was killed outright, and Neil and Sheepshanks soon died of their injuries. Philby suffered only a minor head wound. As a result of this accident, Philby, who was well-liked by the Nationalist forces whose victories he trumpeted, was awarded the Red Cross of Military Merit by Franco on 2 March 1938. Philby found that the award proved helpful in obtaining access to fascist circles: ...there had been a lot of criticism of British journalists from Franco officers who seemed to think that the British in general must be a lot of Communists because so many were fighting with the International Brigades. After I had been wounded and decorated by Franco himself, I became known as 'the English-decorated-by-Franco' and all sorts of doors opened to me. In 1938, Walter Krivitsky (born Samuel Ginsberg), a former GRU officer in Paris who had defected to France the previous year, travelled to the United States and published an account of his time in "Stalin's secret service". He testified before the Dies Committee (later to become the House Un-American Activities Committee) regarding Soviet espionage within the US. In 1940 he was interviewed by MI5 officers in London, led by Jane Archer. Krivitsky claimed that two Soviet intelligence agents had penetrated the Foreign Office and that a third Soviet intelligence agent had worked as a journalist for a British newspaper in Spain. No connection with Philby was made at the time, and Krivitsky was found shot in a Washington hotel room the following year. Alexander Orlov (born Lev Feldbin; code-name Swede), Philby's controller in Madrid, who had once met him in France, also defected. To protect his family, still living in the Soviet Union, Orlov said nothing about Philby, an agreement Stalin respected. On a short trip back from Spain, Philby tried to recruit Flora Solomon as a Soviet agent; she was the daughter of a Russian banker and gold dealer, a relative of the Rothschilds and wife of a London stockbroker. At the same time, Burgess was trying to get her into MI6. But the "rezident" (Russian term for spymaster) in France, probably Pierre at this time, suggested to Moscow that he suspected Philby's motives. Solomon introduced Philby to the woman who would become Philby's second wife, Aileen Furse. Solomon went to work for the British retailer Marks & Spencer. MI6 career. World War II. In July 1939, Philby returned to "The Times" office in London. When Britain declared war on Nazi Germany in September 1939, Philby's contact with his Soviet controllers was lost and he failed to attend the meetings that were necessary for his work. During the Phoney War from September 1939 until the Dunkirk evacuation, Philby worked as "The Times" first-hand correspondent with the British Expeditionary Force headquarters. After being evacuated from Boulogne on 21 May, he returned to France in mid-June and began representing "The Daily Telegraph" in addition to "The Times". He briefly reported from Cherbourg and Brest, sailing for Plymouth less than 24 hours before France surrendered to Germany in June 1940. In 1940, on the recommendation of Burgess, Philby joined MI6's Section D, a secret organisation charged with investigating how enemies might be attacked through non-military means. Philby and Burgess ran a training course for would-be saboteurs at Brickendonbury Manor in Hertfordshire. His time at Section D, however, was short-lived; the "tiny, ineffective, and slightly comic" section was soon absorbed by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in the summer of 1940. Burgess was arrested in September for drunken driving and was subsequently fired, while Philby was appointed as an instructor on clandestine propaganda at the SOE's finishing school for agents at the Estate of Lord Montagu in Beaulieu, Hampshire. Philby's role as an instructor of sabotage agents again brought him to the attention of the Soviet Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU). This role allowed him to conduct sabotage and instruct agents on how to properly conduct sabotage. The new London "rezident", Ivan Chichayev (code-name Vadim), re-established contact and asked for a list of British agents being trained to enter the Soviet Union. Philby replied that none had been sent and that none was undergoing training at that time. This statement was underlined twice in red and marked with two question marks, clearly indicating confusion and questioning of this, by disbelieving staff at Moscow Central in the Lubyanka, according to Genrikh Borovik, who saw the telegrams much later in the KGB archives. Philby provided Stalin with advance warning of Operation Barbarossa and of the Japanese intention to strike into southeast Asia instead of attacking the Soviet Union as Adolf Hitler had urged. The first was ignored as a provocation, but the second, when confirmed by the Russo-German journalist and spy Richard Sorge in Tokyo, contributed to Stalin's decision to begin transporting troops from the Far East in time for the counteroffensive around Moscow. By September 1941, Philby began working for Section Five of MI6, a section responsible for offensive counter-intelligence. On the strength of his knowledge and experience of Franco's Spain, he was put in charge of the subsection which dealt with Spain and Portugal. This entailed responsibility for a network of undercover operatives in several cities such as Madrid, Gibraltar, Lisbon and Tangier. At this time, the German "Abwehr" was active in Spain, particularly around the British naval base of Gibraltar, which its agents hoped to watch with many detection stations to track Allied supply ships in the Western Mediterranean. Thanks to British counter-intelligence efforts, of which Philby's Iberian subsection formed a significant part, the project (Abwehr code-name "Bodden") never came to fruition. During 1942–43, Philby's responsibilities were then expanded to include North Africa and Italy, and he was made the deputy head of Section Five under Major Felix Cowgill, an army officer seconded to SIS. In early 1944, as it became clear that the Soviet Union was likely to once more prove a significant adversary to Britain, SIS re-activated Section Nine, which dealt with anti-communist efforts. In late 1944 Philby, on instructions from his Soviet handler, maneuvered through the system successfully to replace Cowgill as head of Section Nine. Charles Arnold-Baker, an officer of German birth (born Wolfgang von Blumenthal) working for Richard Gatty in Belgium and later transferred to the Norwegian/Swedish border, voiced many suspicions of Philby and his intentions but was repeatedly ignored. While working in Section Five, Philby had become acquainted with James Jesus Angleton, a young American counter-intelligence officer working in liaison with SIS in London. Angleton, later chief of the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) Counterintelligence Staff, became suspicious of Philby when he failed to pass on information relating to a British agent executed by the Gestapo in Germany. It later emerged that the agent—known as Schmidt—had also worked as an informant for the "Rote Kapelle" organisation, which sent information to both London and Moscow. Nevertheless, Angleton's suspicions went unheard. In late summer 1943, the SIS provided the GRU an official report on the activities of German agents in Bulgaria and Romania, soon to be liberated by the Soviet Union. The NKVD complained to Cecil Barclay, the SIS representative in Moscow, that information had been withheld. Barclay reported the complaint to London. Philby claimed to have overheard discussion of this by chance and sent a report to his controller. This turned out to be identical with Barclay's dispatch, convincing the NKVD that Philby had seen the full Barclay report. A similar lapse occurred with a report from the Japanese embassy in Moscow sent to Tokyo. The NKVD received the same report from Sorge but with an extra paragraph claiming that Hitler might seek a separate peace with the Soviet Union. These lapses by Philby aroused intense suspicion in Moscow. Elena Modrzhinskaya at GUGB headquarters in Moscow assessed all material from the Cambridge Five. She noted that they produced an extraordinary wealth of information on German war plans but next to nothing on the repeated question of British penetration of Soviet intelligence in either London or Moscow. Philby had repeated his claim that there were no such agents. She asked, "Could the SIS really be such fools they failed to notice suitcase-loads of papers leaving the office? Could they have overlooked Philby's Communist wife?" Modrzhinskaya concluded that all were double agents, working essentially for the British. A more serious incident occurred in August 1945, when Konstantin Volkov, an NKVD agent and vice-consul in Istanbul, requested political asylum in Britain for himself and his wife. For a large sum of money, Volkov offered the names of three Soviet agents inside Britain, two of whom worked in the Foreign Office and a third who worked in counterintelligence in London. Philby was given the task of dealing with Volkov by British intelligence. He warned the Soviets of the attempted defection and travelled to Istanbul—ostensibly to handle the matter on behalf of SIS but, in reality, to ensure that Volkov had been neutralised. By the time he arrived in Turkey, three weeks later, Volkov had been removed to Moscow. The intervention of Philby in the affair and the subsequent capture of Volkov by the Soviets might have seriously compromised Philby's position. Volkov's defection had been discussed with the British embassy in Ankara on telephones which turned out to have been tapped by Soviet intelligence. Volkov had insisted that all written communications about him take place by bag rather than by telegraph, causing a delay in reaction that might plausibly have given the Soviets time to uncover his plans. Philby was thus able to evade blame and detection. A month later Igor Gouzenko, a cipher clerk in Ottawa, took political asylum in Canada and gave the Royal Canadian Mounted Police names of agents operating within the British Empire that were known to him. When Jane Archer (who had interviewed Krivitsky) was appointed to Philby's section he moved her off investigatory work in case she became aware of his past. He later wrote "she had got a tantalising scrap of information about a young English journalist whom the Soviet intelligence had sent to Spain during the Civil War. And here she was plunked down in my midst!" Years after the war, Sir Hardy Amies, who had served as an intelligence officer, recalled that Philby was in his mess and on being asked what the infamous spy was like, Hardy quipped, "He was always trying to get information out of me—most significantly the name of my tailor". Philby, "employed in a Department of the Foreign Office", was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1946. Istanbul. In February 1947, Philby was appointed head of British intelligence for Turkey and posted to Istanbul with his second wife, Aileen, and their family. His public position was that of First Secretary at the British Consulate; in reality, his intelligence work required overseeing British agents and working with the Turkish security services. Philby planned to infiltrate five or six groups of émigrés into Soviet Armenia or Soviet Georgia, but efforts among the expatriate community in Paris produced just two recruits. Turkish intelligence took them to a border crossing into Georgia but soon afterwards shots were heard. Another effort was made using a Turkish gulet for a seaborne landing, but it never left port. Philby was implicated in a similar campaign in Communist Albania. Colonel David Smiley, an aristocratic Guards officer who had helped Enver Hoxha and his communist guerillas to liberate Albania, now prepared to remove Hoxha. He trained Albanian commandos—some of whom were former Nazi collaborators—in Libya or Malta. From 1947, they infiltrated the southern mountains to build support for former King Zog. The first three missions, overland from Greece, were trouble-free. Larger numbers were landed by sea and air under Operation Valuable, which continued until 1951, increasingly under the influence of the newly formed CIA. Stewart Menzies, head of SIS, disliked the idea, which was promoted by former SOE men now in SIS. Most infiltrators were caught by the Sigurimi, the Albanian Security Service. Clearly there had been leaks and Philby was later suspected as one of the leakers. His own comment was, "I do not say that people were happy under the regime but the CIA underestimated the degree of control that the Authorities had over the country." Philby later wrote of his attitude towards the operation in Albania: The agents we sent into Albania were armed men intent on murder, sabotage and assassination ... They knew the risks they were running. I was serving the interests of the Soviet Union and those interests required that these men were defeated. To the extent that I helped defeat them, even if it caused their deaths, I have no regrets. Philby's wife had suffered from psychological problems since childhood which caused her to inflict injuries upon herself. In 1948, troubled by the heavy drinking and frequent depressions that had become a feature of her husband's life in Istanbul, she experienced a breakdown of this nature, staging an accident and injecting herself with urine and insulin to cause skin disfigurations. She was sent to a clinic in Switzerland to recover. Upon her return to Istanbul in late 1948, she was badly burned in an incident with a charcoal stove and returned to Switzerland. Shortly afterward, Philby was moved to the job as chief SIS representative in Washington, with his family. Washington, D.C.. In September 1949, the Philbys arrived in the United States. Officially, his post was that of First Secretary to the British Embassy; in reality, he served as chief British intelligence representative in Washington. His office oversaw a large amount of urgent and top secret communications between Washington and London. Philby was also responsible for liaising with the CIA and promoting "more aggressive Anglo-American intelligence operations". A leading figure within the CIA was Philby's wary former colleague, James Jesus Angleton, with whom he once again found himself working closely. Angleton remained suspicious of Philby but lunched with him every week in Washington. A more serious threat to Philby's position had come to light. During the summer of 1945, a Soviet cipher clerk had reused a one-time pad to transmit intelligence traffic. This mistake made it possible to break the normally impregnable code. Contained in the traffic (intercepted and decrypted as part of the Venona project) was information that documents had been sent to Moscow from the British embassy in Washington. The intercepted messages revealed that the embassy source (identified as "Homer") travelled to New York City to meet his Soviet contact twice a week. Philby had been briefed on the situation shortly before reaching Washington in 1949; it was clear to Philby that the agent was Maclean, who worked in the embassy at the time and whose wife, Melinda, lived in New York. Philby had to help discover the identity of "Homer", but also wished to protect Maclean. In January 1950, on evidence provided by the Venona intercepts, Soviet atomic spy Klaus Fuchs was arrested. His arrest led to others: Harry Gold, a courier with whom Fuchs had worked; David Greenglass and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The investigation into the embassy leak continued and the stress of it was exacerbated by the arrival in Washington, in October 1950, of Burgess—Philby's unstable and dangerously alcoholic fellow spy. Burgess, who had been given a post as Second Secretary at the British Embassy, took up residence in the Philby family home and rapidly set about causing offence to all and sundry. Philby's wife resented him and disliked his presence; Americans were offended by his "natural superciliousness" and "utter contempt for the whole pyramid of values, attitudes, and courtesies of the American way of life". J. Edgar Hoover complained that Burgess used British embassy automobiles to avoid arrest when he cruised Washington in pursuit of homosexual encounters. His dissolution had a troubling effect on Philby; the morning after a particularly disastrous and drunken party, a guest returning to collect his car heard voices upstairs and found "Kim and Guy in the bedroom drinking champagne. They had already been down to the Embassy but being unable to work had come back". Burgess' presence was awkward for Philby, yet it was potentially dangerous for Philby to leave him unsupervised. The situation in Washington was tense. From April 1950, Maclean had been the prime suspect in the investigation into the embassy leak. Philby had undertaken to devise an escape plan which would warn Maclean, in England, of the intense suspicion he was under and arrange for him to flee. Burgess had to get to London to warn Maclean, who was under surveillance. In early May 1951, Burgess got three speeding tickets in a single day—then pleaded diplomatic immunity, causing an official complaint to be made to the British ambassador. Burgess was sent back to England, where he met Maclean in his London club. The SIS planned to interrogate Maclean on 28 May 1951. On 23 May, concerned that Maclean had not yet fled, Philby wired Burgess, ostensibly about his Lincoln convertible abandoned in the embassy car park. "If he did not act at once it would be too late," the telegram read, "because [Philby] would send his car to the scrap heap. There was nothing more [he] could do." On 25 May, Burgess drove Maclean from his home at Tatsfield, Surrey, to Southampton, where both boarded the steamship "Falaise" to France and then proceeded to Moscow. London. Burgess had intended to aid Maclean in his escape, not accompany him in it. The "affair of the missing diplomats," as it was referred to before Burgess and Maclean surfaced in Moscow, attracted a great deal of public attention, and Burgess' disappearance, which identified him as complicit in Maclean's espionage, deeply compromised Philby's position. Under a cloud of suspicion raised by his highly visible and intimate association with Burgess, Philby returned to London. There, he underwent MI5 interrogation aimed at ascertaining whether he had acted as a "third man" in Burgess and Maclean's spy ring. In July 1951, Philby resigned from MI6, preempting his all-but-inevitable dismissal. Even after his departure from MI6, suspicion towards Philby continued. Interrogated repeatedly regarding his intelligence work and his connection with Burgess, he continued to deny that he had acted as a Soviet agent. From 1952, Philby struggled to find work as a journalist, eventually—in August 1954—accepting a position with a diplomatic newsletter called the "Fleet Street Letter". Lacking access to material of value and out of touch with Soviet intelligence, he all but ceased to operate as a Soviet agent. On 25 October 1955, following revelations in "The New York Times", Labour MP Marcus Lipton used parliamentary privilege to ask Prime Minister Anthony Eden if he was determined "to cover up at all costs the dubious third man activities of Mr Harold Philby..." This was reported in the British press, leading Philby to threaten legal action against Lipton if he repeated his accusations outside Parliament. Lipton later withdrew his comments. This retraction came about when Philby was officially cleared by Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan on 7 November. The minister told the House of Commons, "I have no reason to conclude that Mr. Philby has at any time betrayed the interests of his country, or to identify him with the so-called 'Third Man', if indeed there was one." Following this, Philby gave a press conference in which—calmly, confidently, and without the stammer he had struggled with since childhood—he reiterated his innocence, declaring, "I have never been a communist." Later life and defection. Beirut. After being exonerated, Philby was no longer employed by MI6 and Soviet intelligence lost all contact with him. In August 1956 he was sent to Beirut as a Middle East correspondent for "The Observer" and "The Economist". There, his journalism served as cover for renewed work for MI6. He wrote under his own name and under the pen name "Charles Garner" when writing about subjects he considered too "fluffy", for example Arab slave girls, meaning distasteful. In Lebanon, Philby at first lived in Mahalla Jamil, his father's large household located in the village of Ajaltoun, just outside Beirut. Following the departure of his father and stepbrothers for Saudi Arabia, he continued to live alone in Ajaltoun, but took a flat in Beirut after beginning an affair with Eleanor Brewer, the wife of "New York Times" correspondent Sam Pope Brewer. Following the death of his second wife in 1957 and Eleanor's subsequent divorce from Brewer, the two were married in London in 1959 and set up house together in Beirut. From 1960, Philby's formerly marginal work as a journalist became more substantial and he frequently travelled throughout the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and Yemen. In 1961, Anatoliy Golitsyn, a major in the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, defected to the United States from his diplomatic post in Helsinki. Golitsyn offered the CIA revelations of Soviet agents within American and British intelligence services. Following his debriefing in the US, Golitsyn was sent to SIS for further questioning. The head of MI6, Dick White, only recently transferred from MI5, had suspected Philby as the "third man". Golitsyn proceeded to confirm White's suspicions about Philby's role. Nicholas Elliott, an MI6 officer recently stationed in Beirut who was a friend of Philby's and had previously believed in his innocence, was tasked with attempting to secure his full confession. It is unclear whether Philby had been alerted, but Eleanor noted that as 1962 wore on, expressions of tension in his life "became worse and were reflected in bouts of deep depression and drinking". She recalled returning home to Beirut from a sight-seeing trip in Jordan to find Philby "hopelessly drunk and incoherent with grief on the terrace of the flat," mourning the death of a little pet fox which had fallen from the balcony. When Elliott met Philby in late 1962, the first time since Golitsyn's defection, he found Philby too drunk to stand and with a bandaged head; he had fallen repeatedly and cracked his skull on a bathroom radiator, requiring stitches. Philby told Elliott that he was "half expecting" to see him. Elliott confronted him, saying, "I once looked up to you, Kim. My God, how I despise you now. I hope you've enough decency left to understand why." Prompted by Elliott's accusations, Philby confirmed the charges of espionage and described his intelligence activities on behalf of the Soviets. However, when Elliott asked him to sign a written statement, he hesitated and requested a delay in the interrogation. Another meeting was scheduled to take place in the last week of January. It has since been suggested that the whole confrontation with Elliott had been a charade to convince the KGB that Philby had to be brought back to Moscow, where he could serve as a British penetration agent of Moscow Central. On the evening of 23 January 1963, Philby vanished from Beirut, failing to meet his wife for a dinner party at the home of Glencairn Balfour Paul, First Secretary at the British Embassy. The "Dolmatova", a Soviet freighter bound for Odessa, had left Beirut that morning so abruptly that cargo was left scattered over the docks; Philby claimed that he left Beirut on board this ship. However, others maintain that he escaped through Syria, overland to Soviet Armenia and thence to the Russian SFSR. It was not until 1 July 1963 that Philby's flight to Moscow was officially confirmed. On 30 July, Soviet officials announced that they had granted him political asylum in the Soviet Union, along with Soviet citizenship. When the news broke, MI6 came under criticism for failing to anticipate and block Philby's defection, though Elliott was to claim he could not have prevented Philby's flight. Journalist Ben Macintyre, author of several works on espionage, speculated that MI6 might have left open the opportunity for Philby to flee to Moscow to avoid an embarrassing public trial. Philby himself thought this might have been the case. Moscow. Upon his arrival in Moscow in January 1963, Philby discovered that he was not a colonel in the KGB, as he had been led to believe. He was paid 500 roubles a month (the average Soviet salary in 1960 was Rbls 80.60 a month and Rbls 122 in 1970) and his family was not immediately able to join him in exile. Philby was under virtual house arrest and under guard, with all visitors screened by the KGB. It was ten years before he was given a minor role in the training of KGB recruits. Mikhail Lyubimov, his closest KGB contact, explained that this was to guard his safety, but later admitted that the real reason was the KGB's fear that Philby would return to London. Secret files released to the National Archives in late 2020 indicated that the British government had intentionally conducted a campaign to keep Philby's spying confidential "to minimise political embarrassment" and prevent the publication of his memoirs, according to a report by "The Guardian". Nonetheless, the information was publicized in 1967 when he granted an interview to Murray Sayle of "The Times" in Moscow. Philby confirmed that he had worked for the KGB and that "his purpose in life was to destroy imperialism". In Moscow, Philby occupied himself by writing his memoirs, which were published in Britain in 1968 under the title "My Silent War"; they were not published in the Soviet Union until 1980. In the book, Philby says that his loyalties were always with the communists; he considered himself not to have been a double agent but "a straight penetration agent working in the Soviet interest." Philby continued to read "The Times", which was not generally available in the USSR, listened to the BBC World Service and was an avid follower of cricket. Philby's award of the Order of the British Empire was cancelled and annulled in 1965. Though he claimed publicly in January 1988 that he did not regret his decisions and that he missed nothing about England except some friends, Colman's mustard and Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce, his wife Rufina Ivanovna Pukhova later described Philby as "disappointed in many ways" by what he found in Moscow. "He saw people suffering too much," but he consoled himself by arguing that "the ideals were right but the way they were carried out was wrong. The fault lay with the people in charge." Pukhova said, "he was struck by disappointment, brought to tears. He said, 'Why do old people live so badly here? After all, they won the war.'" Philby's drinking and depression continued; according to Rufina, he had attempted suicide by slashing his wrists sometime in the 1960s. Philby found work in the early 1970s in the KGB's Active Measures Department churning out fabricated documents. Working from genuine unclassified and public CIA or US State Department documents, Philby inserted "sinister" paragraphs regarding US plans. The KGB would stamp the documents "top secret" and begin their circulation. For the Soviets, Philby was an invaluable asset, ensuring the correct use of idiomatic and diplomatic English phrases in their disinformation efforts. Death and Soviet honours. Philby died of heart failure in Moscow in 1988. He was given a hero's funeral and posthumously awarded numerous medals by the Soviets: Order of Lenin, Order of the Red Banner, Order of Friendship of Peoples, Order of the Great Patriotic War, Order of Lenin and Jubilee Medal "Forty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945". Motivation. In a 1981 lecture to the Stasi, the East German security service, Philby attributed the failure of British intelligence to unmask him as due in great part to the British class system—it was inconceivable that one "born into the ruling class of the British Empire" would be a traitor—to the amateurish and incompetent nature of the organisation, and to so many in MI6 having so much to lose if he was proven to be a spy. He had the policy of never confessing—a document in his own handwriting was dismissed as a forgery. Philby said that at the time of his recruitment as a spy there were no prospects of his being useful; he was instructed to make his way into the Secret Service, which took years, starting with journalism and building up contacts in the British establishment. He said that there was no discipline there; he made friends with the archivist, which enabled him for years to take secret documents home, many unrelated to his own work, and bring them back the next day; his handler took and photographed them overnight. When he was instructed to remove and replace his boss, Felix Cowgill, he asked if it was proposed "to shoot him or something" but was told to use bureaucratic intrigue. He said: "It was a very dirty story—but after all our work does imply getting dirty hands from time to time but we do it for a cause that is not dirty in any way". Commenting on his sabotage of the operation to secretly send thousands of anti-communists into Albania to overthrow the communist government, which led to many being killed, Philby defended his actions by saying that he had helped prevent another world war. Personal life. In February 1934, Philby married Litzi Friedmann, an Austrian Jewish communist whom he had met in Vienna. They subsequently moved to Britain; however, as Philby assumed the role of a fascist sympathiser, they separated. Litzi lived in Paris before returning to London for the duration of the war; she ultimately settled in East Germany. While working as a correspondent in Spain, Philby began an affair with Frances Doble, Lady Lindsay-Hogg, an actress and aristocratic divorcée who was an admirer of Franco and Hitler. They travelled together in Spain through August 1939. In 1940, Philby began living with Aileen Furse in London. Their first three children, Josephine, John and Tommy, were born between 1941 and 1944. In 1946, Philby arranged a divorce from Litzi. He and Aileen were married on 25 September 1946, while Aileen was pregnant with their fourth child, Miranda. Their fifth child, Harry George, was born in 1950. Aileen suffered from psychiatric problems, which grew more severe during the period of poverty and suspicion following the flight of Burgess and Maclean. She lived separately from Philby, settling with their children in Crowborough while he lived first in London and later in Beirut. Weakened by alcoholism and frequent illness, she died of influenza in December 1957. In 1956, Philby began an affair with Eleanor Brewer, the wife of "New York Times" correspondent Sam Pope Brewer. Following Eleanor's divorce, the couple married in January 1959. After Philby defected in 1963, Eleanor visited him in Moscow. In November 1964, after a visit to the US, she returned, intending to settle permanently. In her absence, Philby had begun an affair with Donald Maclean's wife, Melinda. He and Eleanor divorced and she departed Moscow in May 1965. Melinda left Maclean and briefly lived with Philby in Moscow. In 1968, she returned to Maclean. In 1971, Philby married Rufina Pukhova, a 39-year-old Russo-Polish woman, with whom he lived until his death in 1988.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17034

Protea cynaroides

Protea cynaroides, also called the king protea (from , ), is a flowering plant. It is a distinctive member of "Protea", having the largest flower head in the genus. The species is also known as giant protea, honeypot or king sugar bush. It is widely distributed in the southwestern and southern parts of South Africa in the fynbos region. The king protea is the national flower of South Africa. It also is the flagship of the Protea Atlas Project, run by the South African National Botanical Institute. The king protea has several colour forms and horticulturists have recognized 81 garden varieties, some of which have injudiciously been planted in its natural range. In some varieties the pink of the flower and red borders of leaves are replaced by a creamy yellow. This unusual flower has a long vase life in flower arrangements, and makes for an excellent dried flower. "Protea cynaroides" is adapted to survive wildfires by its thick underground stem, which contains many dormant buds; these will produce the new growth after the fire. Taxonomy. "Protea cynaroides" is a species of Protea in the huge family Proteaceae. The family comprises about 80 genera with about 1600 species. It has Gondwanan distribution, which means that it is mainly spread across the Southern Hemisphere, from Southern Africa, across to Australia, to South America, although certain species are also found in equatorial Africa, India, southern Asia and Oceania as well. "Protea cynaroides" is further placed within the subfamily Proteoideae, which is found mainly in Southern Africa. This subfamily is defined as those species having cluster roots, solitary ovules and indehiscent fruits. Proteoideae is further divided into four tribes: Conospermeae, Petrophileae, Proteae and Leucadendreae. The genus "Protea", and hence "P. cynaroides", is placed under the tribe Proteae. Etymology. The name of the plant family Proteaceae as well as the genus "Protea", both to which "P. cynaroides" belongs to, derive from the name of the Greek god Proteus, a deity that was able to change between many forms. This is an appropriate image, seeing as both the family and the genus are known for their astonishing variety and diversity of flowers and leaves. The specific epithet "cynaroides" refers to the artichoke-like appearance of the flower-heads: the artichoke belongs to the genus "Cynara". Description. "P. cynaroides" is a woody shrub with thick stems and large dark green, glossy leaves. Most plants are one metre in height when mature, but may vary according to locality and habitat from in height. The "flowers" of "P. cynaroides" are actually composite flower heads (termed an inflorescence) with a collection of flowers in the centre, surrounded by large colourful bracts, from about in diameter. Large, vigorous plants produce six to ten flower heads in one season, although some exceptional plants can produce up to forty flower heads on one plant. The colour of the bracts varies from a creamy white to a deep crimson, but the soft pale pink bracts with a silvery sheen are the most prized. Research. The diploid chromosome count is 2n = 24. The genome of king protea has been sequenced and published in 2022, corresponding to the first genome sequenced in the Proteales order. Ecology. "Protea cynaroides" grows in a harsh environment with dry, hot summers and wet, cold winters. Several adaptions include tough, leathery leaves, which helps to prevent excessive loss of moisture, and a large taproot which penetrates deep into the soil to reach underground moisture. Like most other Proteaceae, "P. cynaroides" has proteoid roots, roots with dense clusters of short lateral rootlets that form a mat in the soil just below the leaf litter. These enhance solubilisation of nutrients, thus allowing nutrient uptake in the low-nutrient, phosphorus-deficient soils of its native fynbos habitat. The flowers are fed at by a range of nectarivorous birds, mainly sunbirds and sugarbirds, including the orange-breasted sunbird ("Anthobaphes violacea"), southern double-collared sunbird ("Cinnyris chalybeus"), malachite sunbird ("Nectarinia famosa"), and the Cape sugarbird ("Promerops cafer"). In order to reach the nectar, the bird must push its bill into the inflorescence. As it does so, its bill and face gets brushed with pollen, thereby allowing for possible pollination. Along with birds, a host of insects are attracted to the flowerhead, such as bees, for example the Cape honeybee, and various beetle species such as rove beetles and the beetles of the huge family Scarabaeidae such as the protea beetle "Trichostetha fascicularis" and monkey beetles. Like many other "Protea" species, "P. cynaroides" is adapted to an environment in which bushfires are essential for reproduction and regeneration. Most "Protea" species can be placed in one of two broad groups according to their response to fire: "reseeders" are killed by fire, but fire also triggers the release of their canopy seed bank, thus promoting recruitment of the next generation; "resprouters" survive fire, resprouting from a lignotuber or, more rarely, epicormic buds protected by thick bark. "P. cynaroides" is a resprouter as it shoots up new stems from buds in its thick underground stem after a fire. Sport. The king protea is the national flower of South Africa and as such lends its name to the national cricket team, whose nickname is "the Proteas" In the early 1990s there was a political debate as to how and if the flower should be incorporated onto the national rugby teams shirts, perhaps replacing the controversial springbok.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17123

Karachi

Karachi (; ; ; ) is the capital city of the Pakistani province of Sindh. It is the largest city in Pakistan and 12th largest in the world, with a population of over 20 million. It is situated at the southern tip of the country along the Arabian Sea coast. It is the former capital of Pakistan. Ranked as a beta-global city, it is Pakistan's premier industrial and financial centre, with an estimated GDP of over $200 billion (PPP) . Karachi is Pakistan's most cosmopolitan city, linguistically, ethnically, and religiously diverse cities, as well as one of the most socially liberal. The region has been inhabited for millennia, but the city was formally founded as the fortified village of "Kolachi" as recently as 1729. The settlement greatly increased in importance on arrival of the East India Company in the mid-19th century. British administrators embarked on substantial projects to transform the city into a major seaport, and connect it with the extensive railway network of the Indian subcontinent. At the time of Pakistan's independence in 1947, the city was the largest in Sindh with an estimated population of 400,000 people. Afterwards, city experienced a dramatic shift in population and demography with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Muslim immigrants (Muhajirs) from India, coupled with a substantial exodus of its Hindu residents. The city experienced rapid economic growth following Pakistan's independence, attracting migrants from throughout the country and other regions in South Asia. According to the 2017 Census of Pakistan, Karachi's total population was 16,051,521, with 14.9 million of those people residing in the urban areas of the city. Karachi is one of the world's fastest-growing cities, and has significant communities representing almost every ethnic group in Pakistan. Karachi holds more than two million Bengali immigrants, a million Afghan refugees, and up to 400,000 Rohingyas from Myanmar. Karachi is now Pakistan's premier industrial and financial centre. The city has a formal economy estimated to be worth $190 billion , which is the largest in the country. Karachi collects 35% of Pakistan's tax revenue, and generates approximately 25% of Pakistan's entire GDP. Approximately 30% of Pakistani industrial output is from Karachi, while Karachi's ports handle approximately 95% of Pakistan's foreign trade. Approximately 90% of the multinational corporations and 100% of banks operating in Pakistan are headquartered in Karachi. It also serves as a transport hub, and contains Pakistan's two largest seaports, the Port of Karachi and Port Qasim, as well as Pakistan's busiest airport, Jinnah International Airport. Karachi is also considered to be Pakistan's fashion capital, and has hosted the annual Karachi Fashion Week since 2009. Known as the "City of Lights" in the 1960s and 1970s for its vibrant nightlife, Karachi was beset by sharp ethnic, sectarian, and political conflict in the 1980s with the large-scale arrival of weaponry during the Soviet–Afghan War. The city had become well known for its high rates of violent crime, but recorded crimes sharply decreased following a crackdown operation against criminals, the MQM political party, and Islamist militants, initiated in 2013 by the Pakistan Rangers. As a result of the operation, Karachi dropped from being ranked the world's 6th-most dangerous city for crime in 2014, to 128th by 2022. Etymology. Before independence, the city was widely known as "Karanchi" in Urdu, though the English spelling "Karachi" became more popular over time. Modern Karachi was reputedly founded in 1729 as the settlement of "Kolachi-jo-Goth" during the rule of Kalhora dynasty. The new settlement is said to have been named in honour of Mai Kolachi, whose son is said to have slain a man-eating crocodile in the village after his elder brothers had already been killed by it. The name "Karachee," a shortened and corrupted version of the original name "Kolachi-jo-Goth", was used for the first time in a Dutch report from 1742 about a shipwreck near the settlement. History. Early history. The region around Karachi has been the site of human habitation for millennia. Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic sites have been excavated in the Mulri Hills along Karachi's northern outskirts. These earliest inhabitants are believed to have been hunter-gatherers, with ancient flint tools discovered at several sites. The expansive Karachi region is believed to have been known to the ancient Greeks, and may have been the site of Barbarikon, an ancient seaport which was located at the nearby mouth of the Indus River. Karachi may also have been referred to as "Ramya" in ancient Greek texts. The ancient site of Krokola, a natural harbor west of the Indus where Alexander the Great sailed his fleet for Achaemenid Assyria, may have been located near the mouth of Karachi's Malir River, though some believe it was located near Gizri. No other natural harbor exists near the mouth of the Indus that could accommodate a large fleet. Nearchus, who commanded Alexander's naval fleet, also mentioned a hilly island by the name of Morontobara and an adjacent flat island named "Bibakta", which colonial historians identified as Karachi's Manora Point and Kiamari (or Clifton), respectively, based on Greek descriptions. Both areas were island until well into the colonial era, when silting in led to them being connected to the mainland. In 711 CE, Muhammad bin Qasim conquered the Sindh and Indus Valley and the port of Debal, from where he launched his forces further into the Indus Valley in 712. Some have identified the port with Karachi, though some argue the location was somewhere between Karachi and the nearby city of Thatta. Under Mirza Ghazi Beg, the Mughal administrator of Sindh, the development of coastal Sindh and the Indus River Delta was encouraged. Under his rule, fortifications in the region acted as a bulwark against Portuguese incursions into Sindh. In 1553–54, Ottoman admiral Seydi Ali Reis, mentioned a small port along the Sindh coast by the name of "Kaurashi" which may have been Karachi. The Chaukhandi tombs in Karachi's modern suburbs were built around this time between the 15th and 18th centuries. Kolachi settlement. 19th century Karachi historian Seth Naomal Hotchand recorded that a small settlement of 20–25 huts existed along the Karachi Harbour that was known as "Dibro", which was situated along a pool of water known as "Kolachi-jo-Kun." In 1725, a band of Baloch settlers from Makran and Kalat had settled in the hamlet after fleeing droughts and tribal feuds. A new settlement was built in 1729 at the site of "Dibro", which came to be known as "Kolachi-jo-Goth" ("The village of "Kolachi")." The new settlement is said to have been named in honour of Mai Kolachi, a resident of the old settlement whose son is said to have slain a man-eating crocodile. Kolachi was about 40 hectares in size, with some smaller fishing villages scattered in its vicinity. The founders of the new fortified settlement were Sindhi Baniyas, and are said to have arrived from the nearby town of Kharak Bandar after the harbour there silted in 1728 after heavy rains. Kolachi was fortified, and defended with cannons imported from Muscat, Oman. Under the Talpurs, the "Rah-i-Bandar" road was built to connect the city's port to the caravan terminals. This road would eventually be further developed by the British into Bandar Road, which was renamed Muhammad Ali Jinnah Road. The name "Karachee" was used for the first time in a Dutch document from 1742, in which a merchant ship "de Ridderkerk" is shipwrecked near the settlement. In 1770s, Karachi came under the control of the Khan of Kalat, which attracted a second wave of Balochi settlers. In 1795, Karachi was annexed by the Talpurs, triggering a third wave of Balochi settlers who arrived from central Sindh and southern Punjab. The Talpurs built the Manora Fort in 1797, which was used to protect Karachi's Harbor from al-Qasimi pirates. In 1799 or 1800, the founder of the Talpur dynasty, Mir Fateh Ali Khan, allowed the East India Company under Nathan Crow to establish a trading post in Karachi. He was allowed to build a house for himself in Karachi at that time, but by 1802 was ordered to leave the city. The city continued to be ruled by the Talpurs until it was occupied by forces under the command of John Keane in February 1839. British control. The British East India Company captured Karachi on 3February 1839 after opened fire and quickly destroyed Manora Fort, which guarded Karachi Harbour at Manora Point. Karachi's population at the time was an estimated 8,000 to 14,000, and was confined to the walled city in Mithadar, with suburbs in what is now the Serai Quarter. British troops, known as the "Company Bahadur" established a camp to the east of the captured city, which became the precursor to the modern Karachi Cantonment. The British further developed the Karachi Cantonment as a military garrison to aid the British war effort in the First Anglo-Afghan War. The Portuguese Goan community started migrating to Karachi in the 1820s as traders. The majority of the estimated 100,000 who came to Pakistan are primarily concentrated in Karachi. Sindh's capital was shifted from Hyderabad to Karachi in 1840 when Karachi was annexed to the British Empire after Major General Charles James Napier captured the rest of Sindh following his victory against the Talpurs at the Battle of Miani. Following the 1843 annexation, on 17 February the entire province was amalgamated into the Bombay Presidency for the next 93 years, and Karachi remain the divisional headquarter. A few years later in 1846, Karachi suffered a large cholera outbreak, which led to the establishment of the Karachi Cholera Board (predecessor to the city's civic government). The city grew under the administration of its new Commissioner, Henry Bartle Edward Frere, who was appointed in the 1850s. Karachi was recognized for its strategic importance, prompting the British to establish the Port of Karachi in 1854. Karachi rapidly became a transportation hub for British India owing to newly built port and rail infrastructure, as well as the increase in agricultural exports from the opening of productive tracts of newly irrigated land in Punjab and Sindh. By 1856, the value of goods traded through Karachi reached £855,103, leading to the establishment of merchant offices and warehouses. The population in 1856 is estimated to have been 57,000. During the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, the 21st Native Infantry, then stationed in Karachi, mutinied and declared allegiance to rebel forces in September 1857, though the British were able to quickly defeat the rebels and reassert control over the city. Following the Rebellion, British colonial administrators continued to develop the city's infrastructure, but continued to neglect localities like Lyari, which was home to the city's original population of Sindhi fishermen and Balochi nomads. At the outbreak of the American Civil War, Karachi's port became an important cotton-exporting port, with "Indus Steam Flotilla" and "Orient Inland Steam Navigation Company" established to transport cotton from rest of Sindh to Karachi's port, and onwards to textile mills in England. With increased economic opportunities, economic migrants from several ethnicities and religions, including Anglo-British, Parsis, Marathis, and Goan Christians, among others, established themselves in Karachi, with many setting-up businesses in the new commercial district of Saddar. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, was born in Karachi's Wazir Mansion in 1876 to such migrants from Gujarat. Public building works were undertaken at this time in Gothic and Indo-Saracenic styles, including the construction of Frere Hall in 1865 and the later Empress Market in 1889. With the completion of the Suez Canal in 1869, Karachi's position as a major port increased even further. In 1878, the British Raj connected Karachi with the network of British India's vast railway system. In 1887, Karachi Port underwent radical improvements with connection to the railways, along with expansion and dredging of the port, and construction of a breakwater. Karachi's first synagogue was established in 1893. By 1899, Karachi had become the largest wheat-exporting port in the East. In 1901, Karachi's population was 117,000 with a further 109,000 included in the Municipal area. Under the British, the city's municipal government was established. Known as the "Father of Modern Karachi", mayor Seth Harchandrai Vishandas led the municipal government to improve sanitary conditions in the Old City, as well as major infrastructure works in the New Town after his election in 1911. in 1914, Karachi had become the largest wheat-exporting port of the entire British Empire, after large irrigation works in Sindh were initiated to increase wheat and cotton yields. By 1924, the "Drigh Road Aerodrome" was established, now the Faisal Air Force Base. Karachi's increasing importance as a cosmopolitan transportation hub leads to the influence of non-Sindhis in Sindh's administration. Half the city was born outside of Karachi by as early as 1921. Native Sindhis were upset by this influence, and so on 1 April 1936, Sindh was established as a province separate from the Bombay Presidency with Karachi was once again made capital of Sindh. In 1941, the population of the city had risen to 387,000. Post-independence. At the dawn of independence following the success of the Pakistan Movement in 1947, On 15 August 1947 Capital of Sindh shifted from Karachi to Hyderabad and Karachi was made the national capital of Pakistan. Karachi was Sindh's largest city with a population of over 400,000. The city had a slight Hindu majority, with around 51% of the population being Hindu. Partition resulted in the exodus of much of the city's Hindu population, though Karachi, like most of Sindh, remained relatively peaceful compared to cities in Punjab. Riots erupted on 6January 1948, after which most of Sindh's Hindu population fled to India, with assistance of the Indian government. Karachi became the focus for the resettlement of middle-class Muslim "Muhajir" refugees who fled India, with 470,000 refugees in Karachi by May 1948, leading to a drastic alteration of the city's demography. In 1941, Muslims were 42% of Karachi's population, but by 1951 made up 96% of the city's population. The city's population had tripled between 1941 and 1951. Urdu replaced Sindhi as Karachi's most widely spoken language; Sindhi was the mother tongue of 51% of Karachi in 1941, but only 8.5% in 1951, while Urdu grew to become the mother tongue of 51% of Karachi's population. 100,000 Muhajir refugees arrived annually in Karachi until 1952. Muhajirs kept arriving from different parts of India till 2000. Karachi was selected as the first capital of Pakistan, and was administered as a federal district separate from Sindh beginning in 1948, the capital of Sindh shifted again Hyderabad to Karachi until the national capital was shifted to Rawalpindi in 1958. While foreign embassies shifted away from Karachi, the city is host to numerous consulates and honorary consulates. Between 1958 and 1970, Karachi's role as capital of Sindh was ceased due to the One Unit programme enacted by President Iskander Mirza. Karachi of the 1960s was regarded as an economic role model around the world, with Seoul, South Korea, borrowing from the city's second "Five-Year Plan". Several examples of Modernist architect were built in Karachi during this period, including the Mazar-e-Quaid mausoleum, the distinct Masjid-e-Tooba, and the Habib Bank Plaza (the tallest building in all of South Asia at the time). The city's population by 1961 had grown 369% compared to 1941. By the mid-1960s, Karachi began to attract large numbers of Pashtun, Punjabis and Kashmiris from northern Pakistan. The 1970s saw a construction boom funded by remittances and investments from the Gulf States, and the appearance of apartment buildings in the city. Real-estate prices soared during this period, leading to a worsening housing crisis. The period also saw labour unrest in Karachi's industrial estates beginning in 1970 that were violently repressed by the government of President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto from 1972 onwards. To appease conservative forces, Bhutto banned alcohol in Pakistan, and cracked-down of Karachi's discotheques and cabarets - leading to the closure of Karachi's once-lively nightlife. The city's art scene was further repressed during the rule of dictator General Zia-ul-Haq. Zia's Islamization policies lead the Westernized upper-middle classes of Karachi to largely withdraw from the public sphere, and instead form their own social venues that became inaccessible to the poor. This decade also saw an influx of more than one million Bihari immigrants into Karachi from the newly made country Bangladesh which separated from Pakistan in 1971. In 1972, the Karachi district divided into three districts, East, West and South districts. The 1980s and 1990s saw an influx of almost one million Afghan refugees into Karachi fleeing the Soviet–Afghan War. This was followed by refugees escaping from post-revolution Iran. At this time, Karachi was also rocked by political conflict, while crime rates drastically increased with the arrival of weaponry from the War in Afghanistan. Conflict between the MQM party, and ethnic Sindhis, Pashtuns, Punjabis and Balochis was sharp. The party and its vast network of supporters were targeted by Pakistani security forces as part of the controversial Operation Clean-up in 1992an effort to restore peace in the city that lasted until 1994. Anti-Hindu riots also broke out in Karachi in 1992 in retaliation for the demolition of the Babri Mosque in India by a group of Hindu nationalists earlier that year. In 1996, two (02) more districts created in the Karachi division named Central and Malir districts. The 2010s saw another influx of hundreds of thousands of Pashtun refugees fleeing conflict in North-West Pakistan and the 2010 Pakistan floods. By this point Karachi had become widely known for its high rates of violent crime, usually in relation to criminal activity, gang-warfare, sectarian violence, and extrajudicial killings. Recorded crimes sharply decreased following a controversial crackdown operation against criminals, the MQM party, and Islamist militants initiated in 2013 by the Pakistan Rangers. As a result of the operation, Karachi went from being ranked the world's 6th most dangerous city for crime in 2014, to 128th by 2022. In 2022 at least one million flood affectees from Sindh and Balochistan took refuge in Karachi. Geography. Karachi is located on the coastline of Sindh province in southern Pakistan, along the Karachi Harbour, a natural harbour on the Arabian Sea. Karachi is built on a coastal plain with scattered rocky outcroppings, hills and marshlands. Mangrove forests grow in the brackish waters around the Karachi Harbour, and farther southeast towards the expansive Indus River Delta. West of Karachi city is the Cape Monze, locally known as Ras Muari, which is an area characterised by sea cliffs, rocky sandstone promontories and beaches. Karachi lies very close to a major fault line, where the Indian tectonic plate meets the Arabian tectonic plate. Within the city of Karachi are two small ranges: the Khasa Hills and Mulri Hills, which lie in the northwest and act as a barrier between North Nazimabad and Orangi. Karachi's hills are barren and are part of the larger Kirthar Range, and have a maximum elevation of . Between the hills are wide coastal plains interspersed with dry river beds and water channels. Karachi has developed around the Malir River and Lyari Rivers, with the Lyari shore being the site of the settlement for "Kolachi". To the east of Karachi lies the Indus River flood plains. Climate. Karachi has a hot desert climate (Köppen: "BWh") dominated by a long "Summer Season" while moderated by oceanic influence from the Arabian Sea. The city has low annual average precipitation levels (approx. per annum), the bulk of which occurs during the July–August monsoon season. Summers are hot and humid, and Karachi is prone to deadly heatwaves. On the other hand, cool sea breezes typically provide relief during hot summer months. A text message-based early warning system alerts people to take precautionary measures and helps prevent fatalities during an unusually strong heatwave or thunderstorm. The winter climate is dry and lasts between December and February. It is dry and pleasant in winter relative to the warm hot season that follows, which starts in March and lasts until October. Proximity to the sea maintains humidity levels at near-constant levels year-round. Thus, the climate is similar to a humid tropical climate except for low precipitation and occasional temperatures well over 100 F (38 C) due to dry continental influence. The city's highest monthly rainfall, , occurred in July 1967. The city's highest rainfall in 24 hours occurred on 7August 1953, when about of rain lashed the city, resulting in major flooding. Karachi's highest recorded temperature is which was recorded on 9May 1938, and the lowest is recorded on 21 January 1934. Cityscape. The city first developed around the Karachi Harbour, and owes much of its growth to its role as a seaport at the end of the 18th century, contrasted with Pakistan's millennia-old cities such as Lahore, Multan, and Peshawar. Karachi's Mithadar neighbourhood represents the extent of "Kolachi" prior to British rule. British Karachi was divided between the "New Town" and the "Old Town", with British investments focused primarily on the New Town. The Old Town was a largely unplanned neighbourhood which housed most of the city's indigenous residents and had no access to sewerage systems, electricity, and water. The New Town was subdivided into residential, commercial, and military areas. Given the strategic value of the city, the British developed the Karachi Cantonment as a military garrison in the New Town to aid the British war effort in the First Anglo-Afghan War. The city's development was largely confined to the area north of the China Creek prior to independence, although the seaside area of Clifton was also developed as a posh locale under the British, and its large bungalows and estates remain some of the city's most desirable properties. The aforementioned historic areas form the oldest portions of Karachi, and contain its most important monuments and government buildings, with the I. I. Chundrigar Road being home to most of Pakistan's banks, including the Habib Bank Plaza which was Pakistan's tallest building from 1963 until the early 2000s. Situated on a coastal plain northwest of Karachi's historic core lies the sprawling district of Orangi. North of the historic core is the largely middle-class district of Nazimabad, and upper-middle-class North Nazimabad, which were developed in the 1950s. To the east of the historic core is the area known as Defence, an expansive upscale suburb developed and administered by the Pakistan Army. Karachi's coastal plains along the Arabian Sea south of Clifton were also developed much later as part of the greater Defence Housing Authority project. Karachi's city limits also include several islands, including Baba and Bhit Islands, Oyster Rocks, and Manora, a former island which is now connected to the mainland by a thin 12-kilometre long shoal known as Sandspit. Gulistan-e-Johar, Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Federal B. Area, Malir, Landhi and Korangi areas were all developed after 1970. The city has been described as one divided into sections for those able to afford to live in planned localities with access to urban amenities, and those who live in unplanned communities with inadequate access to such services. 35% of Karachi's residents live in unplanned communities. Economy. Karachi is Pakistan's financial and commercial capital. Since Pakistan's independence, Karachi has been the centre of the nation's economy, and remain's Pakistan's largest urban economy despite the economic stagnation caused by sociopolitical unrest during the late 1980s and 1990s. The city forms the centre of an economic corridor stretching from Karachi to nearby Hyderabad, and Thatta. , Karachi had an estimated GDP (PPP) of $190 billion with a yearly growth rate of 5.5%. Karachi contributes 90% of Sindh's GDP and accounts for approximately 25% of the total GDP of Pakistan. The city has a large informal economy which is not typically reflected in GDP estimates. The informal economy may constitute up to 36% of Pakistan's total economy, versus 22% of India's economy, and 13% of the Chinese economy. The informal sector employs up to 70% of the city's workforce. In 2018 The Global Metro Monitor Report ranked Karachi's economy as the best performing metropolitan economy in Pakistan. Today along with Pakistan's continued economic expansion Karachi is now ranked third in the world for consumer expenditure growth with its market anticipated to increase by 6.6% in real terms in 2018 It is also ranked among the top cities in the world by an anticipated increase of a number of households (1.3 million households) with annual income above $20,000 dollars measured at PPP exchange rates by 2025. The Global FDI Intelligence Report 2017/2018 published by Financial Times ranks Karachi amongst the top 10 Asia pacific cities of the future for FDI strategy. According to Anatol Lieven the economic growth of Karachi is a result of the influx of Muhajirs to Karachi during late 1940s and early 50s. Finance and banking. Most of Pakistan's public and private banks are headquartered on Karachi's I. I. Chundrigar Road, which is known as "Pakistan's Wall Street", with a large percentage of the cash flow in the Pakistani economy taking place on I. I. Chundrigar Road. Most major foreign multinational corporations operating in Pakistan have their headquarters in Karachi. Karachi is also home to the Pakistan Stock Exchange, which was rated as Asia's best-performing stock market in 2015 on the heels of Pakistan's upgrade to emerging-market status by MSCI. Media and technology. Karachi has been the pioneer in cable networking in Pakistan with the most sophisticated of the cable networks of any city of Pakistan, and has seen an expansion of information and communications technology and electronic media. The city has become a software outsourcing hub for Pakistan. Several independent television and radio stations are based in Karachi, including Business Plus, , Geo TV, KTN, Sindh TV, CNBC Pakistan, TV ONE, Express TV, ARY Digital, Indus Television Network, Samaa TV, Abb Takk News, Bol TV, and Dawn News, as well as several local stations. Industry. Industry contributes a large portion of Karachi's economy, with the city home to several of Pakistan's largest companies dealing in textiles, cement, steel, heavy machinery, chemicals, and food products. The city is home to approximately 30 percent of Pakistan's manufacturing sector, and produces approximately 42 percent of Pakistan's value added in large scale manufacturing. At least 4500 industrial units form Karachi's formal industrial economy. Karachi's informal manufacturing sector employs far more people than the formal sector, though proxy data suggest that the capital employed and value-added from such informal enterprises is far smaller than that of formal sector enterprises. An estimated 63% of the Karachi's workforce is employed in trade and manufacturing. Karachi Export Processing Zone, SITE, Korangi, Northern Bypass Industrial Zone, Bin Qasim and North Karachi serve as large industrial estates in Karachi. The Karachi Expo Centre also complements Karachi's industrial economy by hosting regional and international exhibitions. Revenue collection. As home to Pakistan's largest ports and a large portion of its manufacturing base, Karachi contributes a large share of Pakistan's collected tax revenue. As most of Pakistan's large multinational corporations are based in Karachi, income taxes are paid in the city even though income may be generated from other parts of the country. As home to the country's two largest ports, Pakistani customs officials collect the bulk of federal duty and tariffs at Karachi's ports, even if those imports are destined for one of Pakistan's other provinces. Approximately 25% of Pakistan's national revenue is "generated" in Karachi. According to the Federal Board of Revenue's 2006–2007 year book, tax and customs units in Karachi were responsible for 46.75% of direct taxes, 33.65% of federal excise tax, and 23.38% of domestic sales tax. Karachi accounts for 75.14% of customs duty and 79% of sales tax on imports, and collects 53.38% of the total collections of the Federal Board of Revenue, of which 53.33% are customs duty and sales tax on imports. Demographics. Karachi is the most linguistically, ethnically, and religiously diverse city in Pakistan. The city is a melting pot of ethnolinguistic groups from throughout Pakistan, as well as migrants from other parts of Asia. The 2017 census numerated Karachi's population to be 14,910,352, having grown 2.49% per year since the 1998 census, which had listed Karachi's population at approximately 9.3 million. The city's inhabitants are referred to by the demonym "Karachiite" in English, and "Karāchīwālā" in Urdu. Language. Karachi has the largest number of Urdu speakers in Pakistan. As per the 2017 census, the linguistic breakdown of Karachi Division is: The category of "others" includes Hindko, Kashmiri, Kohistani, Burushaski, Gujarati, Memoni, Marwari, Dari, Brahui, Makrani, Khowar, Gilgiti, Balti, Arabic, Farsi, and Bengali. Population. At the end of the 19th century, Karachi had an estimated population of 105,000. By the dawn of Pakistan's independence in 1947, the city had an estimated population of 400,000. The city's population grew dramatically with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees from the newly independent Republic of India. Rapid economic growth following independence attracted further migrants from throughout Pakistan and South Asia. The 2017 census numerated Karachi's population to be 14,910,352, having grown 2.49% per year since the 1998 census, which had listed Karachi's population at approximately 9.3 million. Lower than expected population figures from the census suggest that Karachi's poor infrastructure, law and order situation, and weakened economy relative to other parts of Pakistan made the city less attractive to in-migration than previously thought. The figure is disputed by all the major political parties in Sindh. Karachi's population grew by 59.8% since the 1998 census to 14.9 million, while Lahore city grew 75.3%though Karachi's census district had not been altered by the provincial government since 1998, while Lahore's had been expanded by Punjab's government, leading to some of Karachi's growth to have occurred outside the city's census boundaries. Karachi's population had grown at a rate of 3.49% between the 1981 and 1998 census, leading many analysts to estimate Karachi's 2017 population to be approximately 18 million by extrapolating a continued annual growth rate of 3.49%. Some had expected that the city's population to be between 22 and 30 million, which would require an annual growth rate accelerating to between 4.6% and 6.33%. Political parties in the province have suggested the city's population has been underestimated in a deliberate attempt to undermine the political power of the city and province. Senator Taj Haider from the PPP claimed he had official documents revealing the city's population to be 25.6 million in 2013, while the Sindh Bureau of Statistics, part of by the PPP-led provincial administration, estimated Karachi's 2016 population to be 19.1 million. District population density per km2. According to 2017 Census, with 43,063.51 residents per square kilometre Karachi Central is the most densely populated district of the six districts of Karachi as well as the entirety of Pakistan. Ethnicity. The oldest portions of modern Karachi reflect the ethnic composition of the first settlement, with Balochis and Sindhis continuing to make up a large portion of the Lyari neighbourhood, though many of the residents are relatively recent migrants. Following Partition, large numbers of Hindus left Pakistan for the newly independent Dominion of India (later the Republic of India), while a larger percentage of Muslim migrant and refugees from India settled in Karachi. The city grew 150% during the ten year period between 1941 and 1951 with the new arrivals from India, who made up 57% of Karachi's population in 1951. The city is now considered a melting pot of Pakistan and is the country's most diverse city. Karachi is the largest Bengali speaking city outside Bengal region. In 2011, an estimated 2.5 million foreign migrants lived in the city, mostly from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka. Much of Karachi's citizenry descend from Urdu-speaking migrants and refugees from North India who became known by the Arabic term for "Migrant": Muhajir. The first Muhajirs of Karachi arrived in 1946 in the aftermath of the Great Calcutta Killings and subsequent 1946 Bihar riots. The city's wealthy Hindus opposed the resettlement of refugees near their homes, and so many refugees were accommodated in the older and more congested parts of Karachi. The city witnessed a large influx of Muhajirs following Partition, who were drawn to the port city and newly designated federal capital for its white-collar job opportunities. Muhajirs continued to migrate to Pakistan throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, with Karachi remaining the primary destination of Indian Muslim migrants throughout those decades. The Muhajir Urdu-speaking community in the 2017 census forms slightly less than 45% of the city's population. Muhajirs form the bulk of Karachi's middle class. Karachi is home to a wide array of non-Urdu speaking Muslim peoples from what is now the Republic of India. The city has a sizable community of Gujarati, Marathi, Konkani-speaking refugees. Karachi is also home to a several-thousand member strong community of Malabari Muslims from Kerala in South India. These ethno-linguistic groups are being assimilated in the Urdu-speaking community. During the period of rapid economic growth in the 1960s, large numbers Pashtuns from the NWFP migrated to Karachi with Afghan Pashtun refugees settling in Karachi during the 80's. Karachi is home to the world's largest urban Pashtun population, with more Pashtun citizens than the Peshawar. Pashtuns from Afghanistan are regarded as the most conservative community. Pashtuns from Pakistan's Swat Valley, in contrast, are generally seen as more liberal in social outlook. The Pashtun community forms the bulk of manual labourers and transporters. Anatol Lieven of Georgetown University in Qatar wrote that due to Pashtuns settling the city, "Karachi (not Kabul, Kandahar or Peshawar) is the largest Pashtun city in the world." Migrants from Punjab began settling in Karachi in large numbers in the 1960s, and now make up an estimated 14% of Karachi's population. The community forms the bulk of the city's police force. The bulk of Karachi's Christian community, which makes up 2.5% of the city's population, is Punjabi. Despite being the capital of Sindh province, only 6–8% of the city is Sindhi. Sindhis form much of the municipal and provincial bureaucracy. 4% of Karachi's population speaks Balochi as its mother tongue, though most Baloch speakers are of Sheedi heritagea community that traces its roots to Africa. Following the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 and independence of Bangladesh, thousands of Urdu-speaking Biharis arrived in the city, preferring to remain Pakistani rather than live in the newly independent country. Large numbers of Bengalis also migrated from Bangladesh to Karachi during periods of economic growth in the 1980s and 1990s. Karachi is now home to an estimated 2.5 to 3million ethnic Bengalis living in Pakistan. Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, who speak a dialect of Bengali and are sometimes regarded as Bengalis, also live in the city. Karachi is home to an estimated 400,000 Rohingya residents. Large scale Rohingya migration to Karachi made Karachi one of the largest population centres of Rohingyas in the world outside of Myanmar. Central Asian migrants from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan have also settled in the city. Domestic workers from the Philippines are employed in Karachi's posh locales, while many of the city's teachers hail from Sri Lanka. Many Sri Lankans moved to Karachi due to the 2022 Economic Crisis in Sri Lanka. Expatriates from China began migrating to Karachi in the 1940s, to work as dentists, chefs and shoemakers, while many of their descendants continue to live in Pakistan. Chinese also reached Karachi after 2015 in large number due to the CPEC project. The city is also home to a small number of British and American expatriates. During World War II, about 3,000 Polish refugees from the Soviet Union, with some Polish families who chose to remain in the city after Partition. Post-Partition Karachi also once had a sizable refugee community from post-revolutionary Iran. Religion. Karachi is a religiously homogeneous city with more than 96 per cent of its population adhering to Islam. "Karachiites" adhere to numerous sects and sub-sects of Islam, as well as Protestant Christianity, and community of Goan Catholics. The city also is home to large numbers of Hindus, and a small community of Zoroastrians and Parsi's. According to Nichola Khan Karachi is also the world's largest Muslim city. Prior to Pakistan's independence in 1947, the religious demographics of the city was estimated to be 51.1% Hindu, 42.3% Muslim, with the remaining 7% primarily Christians (both British and native), Sikhs, Jains, with a small number of Jews. Following the independence of Pakistan, the vast majority of Karachi's Sindhi Hindu population left for India while Muslim refugees from India, in turn, settled in the city. This mass migration dramatically changed the religious demographics of the city. Islam. Karachi is overwhelmingly Muslim, though the city is one of Pakistan's most secular cities. Approximately 85% of Karachi's Muslims are Sunnis, while 15% are Shi'ites. Sunnis primarily follow the Hanafi school of jurisprudence, with Sufism influencing religious practices by encouraging reverence for Sufi saints such as Abdullah Shah Ghazi and Mewa Shah. Shi'ites are predominantly Twelver, with a significant Ismaili minority which is further subdivided into Nizaris, Mustaalis, Dawoodi Bohras, and Sulaymanis. There are over 3000 mosques in Karachi, most famous of which include Grand Jamia Mosque, Baitul Mukarram Mosque, Masjid-e-Tooba and Memon Masjid. Christianity. Approximately 2.5% of Karachi's population is Christian. The city's Christian community is primarily composed of Punjabi Christians and a community of Goan Catholics who are typically better-educated and more affluent than their Punjabi co-religionists. They established the posh Cincinnatus Town in Garden East as a Goan enclave. The Goan community dates from 1820 and has a population estimated to be 12,000–15,000 strong. Karachi is served by its own archdiocese, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Karachi. Hinduism. While most of the city's Hindu population left "en masse" for India following Pakistan's independence, Karachi still has a large Hindu community with an estimated population of 250,000 based on 2013 data, with several active temples in central Karachi. The Hindu community is split into a more affluent Sindhi Hindu and small Punjabi Hindu group that forms part of Karachi's educated middle class, while poorer Hindus of Rajasthani and Marwari descent form the other part and typically serve as menial and day laborers. Wealthier Hindus live primarily in Clifton and Saddar, while poorer ones live and have temples in Narayanpura and Lyari. Many streets in central Karachi still retain Hindu names, especially in Mithadar, Aram Bagh (formerly Ram Bagh), and Ramswami. Many Mandirs exist in Saddar which are over a 100 years old. Zoroastrianism. Karachi's affluent and influential Parsis have lived in the region in the 12th century, though the modern community dates from the mid 19th century when they served as military contractors and commissariat agents to the British. Further waves of Parsi immigrants from Persia settled in the city in the late 19th century. The population of Parsis in Karachi and throughout South Asia is in continuous decline due to low birth-rates and migration to Western countries. In 2019, according to Framji Minwalla, approximately 1,092 Parsis are left in Pakistan. Transportation. Road. Karachi is served by a road network estimated to be approximately in length, serving approximately 5 million vehicles per day. Karachi is served by 6 Signal-Free Corridors which are designed as urban express roads to permit traffic to transverse large distances without the need to stop at intersections and stoplights. The Karsaz Road connects PAF Museum in central Karachi to SITE Industrial Area. The Rashid Minhas Road connects Surjani Town with Shah Faisal Town over a 20 km span. The University Road connects Karachi's urban centre to the Gulistan-e-Johar suburb. The Shahrah-e-Faisal connects Karachi's Sadar area to the Jinnah International Airport. The Shahrah-e-Pakistan connects city centre to Federal B. Area. The Sher Shah Suri Road connects the city centre to Nazimabad. The Lyari Expressway is a 16 km controlled-access highway along the Lyari River. This toll highway is designed to relieve congestion within the city. To the north of Karachi lies the 39 km Karachi Northern Bypass (M10), which bypasses the city to connect M9 Motorway to N25 National Highway. A Malir Expressway is underconstruction along the Malir River. It will link Karachi's DHA to Karachi's Malir Town and terminate at Kathore on M-9 Motorway. Karachi is the terminus of the M-9 motorway, which connects Karachi to Hyderabad. M-9 motorway is part of a larger countrywide motorways network, many of which were built through China Pakistan Economic Corridor Project. From Hyderabad, motorways provide high-speed road access to all major Pakistani cities like Peshawar, Islamabad, Lahore, Multan and Faisalabad. Karachi is also the terminus of the N-5 National Highway which connects the city to the historic medieval capital of Sindh, Thatta. It offers further connections to northern Pakistan and the Afghan border near Torkham. The N-25 National Highway connects Karachi to capital of Balochistan, Quetta. The N-10 National Highway connects Karachi to the emerging port city of Gwadar. Rail. Karachi is linked by rail to the rest of the country by Pakistan Railways. The Karachi City Station and Karachi Cantonment Railway Station are the city's two major railway stations. The city has an international rail link, the Thar Express which links Karachi Cantonment Station with Bhagat Ki Kothi station in Jodhpur, India. The railway system also handles freight linking Karachi port to destinations up-country in northern Pakistan. The city is the terminus for the Main Line-1 Railway which connects Karachi to Peshawar. Pakistan's rail network, including the Main Line-1 Railway is being upgraded as part of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, allowing trains to depart Karachi and travel on Pakistani railways at an average speed of versus the current average speed of . Public transport. Metrobus. The Pakistani Government is developing the Karachi Metrobus project, which is a 6-line bus rapid transit system. The Metrobus project was inaugurated by then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on 25 February 2016. Sharif said the "project will be more beautiful than Lahore Metro Bus". Orange and Green Lines are operational while Red-Line is underconstruction. People's Bus Service. In 2022, provincial government launched People's Bus Service having fleet size of 100+ which run on 12 different routes on nominal fare. The buses are air-conditioned, have wifi, have priority seeting for disabled and elderly and are wheelchair accessible. Red buses are for general public. Pink buses are for women only. White buses are environment friendly electric buses having designated charging points. Karachi Circular Railway. Karachi Circular Railway is a partially active regional public transit system in Karachi, which serves the Karachi metropolitan area. KCR was fully operational between 1969 and 1999. Since 2001, restoration of the railway and restarting the system had been sought. In November 2020, the KCR partially revived operations. KCR was included in CPEC by Shehbaz Sharif and construction started in 2022. Existing 43 km KCR track and stations would be completely rebuilt into automated rapid transit system with electric trains. The route would not be changed however many underpasses and bridges would be built along the route to eliminate 22-level crossings. New KCR would be similar to Lahore's Orange Train. New KCR would have joint stations with Karachi Metrobus at points of intersection. Project would be operational by 2025. With its hub at Karachi City station on I. I. Chundrigar Road, KCR will connect the city centre with several industrial, commercial and residential districts within the city. Tramway service. A tramway service was started in 1884 in Karachi but was closed in 1975. However, the revival of tramway service is proposed by Karachi Administrator Iftikhar Ali. Turkey has offered assistance in the revival and launching modern tramway service in Karachi. Air. Karachi's Jinnah International Airport is the busiest airport of Pakistan with a total of 7.2 million passengers in 2018. The current terminal structure was built in 1992, and is divided into international and domestic sections. Karachi's airport serves as a hub for the flag carrier, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), as well as for Air Indus, Serene Air and airblue. The airport offers non-stop flights to destinations throughout East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Gulf States, Europe and North America. Sea. The largest shipping ports in Pakistan are the Port of Karachi and the nearby Port Qasim, the former being the oldest port of Pakistan. Port Qasim is located east of the Port of Karachi on the Indus River estuary. These ports handle 95% of Pakistan's trade cargo to and from foreign ports. These seaports have modern facilities which include bulk handling, containers and oil terminals. The ports are part of the Maritime Silk Road. Civic administration. City government. Karachi has a fragmented system of civic government. The urban area is divided into six District Municipal Corporations: Karachi East, Karachi West, Karachi Central, Karachi South, Malir, Korangi. Each district is further divided into between 22 and 42 Union Committees. Each Union Committee is represented by seven elected representatives, four of whom can be general candidates of any background; the other three seats are reserved for women, religious minorities, and a union representative or peasant farmer. Karachi's urban area also includes six cantonments, which are administered directly by the Pakistani military, and include some of Karachi's most desirable real-estate. Key civic bodies, such as the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board and KBCA (Karachi Building Control Authority), among others, are under the direct control of the Government of Sindh. Additionally, Karachi's city-planning authority for undeveloped land, the Karachi Development Authority, is under control of the government, while two new city-planning authorities, the Lyari Development Authority and Malir Development Authority were revived by the Pakistan Peoples Party government in 2011allegedly to patronize their electoral allies and voting banks. Historical background. In response to a cholera epidemic in 1846, the Karachi Conservancy Board was organized by British administrators to control its spread. The board became the Karachi Municipal Commission in 1852, and the Karachi Municipal Committee the following year. The City of Karachi Municipal Act of 1933 transformed the city administration into the Karachi Municipal Corporation with a mayor, a deputy mayor and 57 councillors. In 1976, the body became the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation. During the 1900s, Karachi saw its major beautification project under the mayoralty of Harchandrai Vishandas. New roads, parks, residential, and recreational areas were developed as part of this project. In 1948, the Federal Capital Territory of Pakistan was created, comprising approximately of Karachi and surrounding areas, but this was merged into the province of West Pakistan in 1959. In 1960, Karachi and Lasbela District merged to create Karachi-Bela Division. In 1972, Lasbela District transferred to Kalat division and Karachi metropolitan area was divided into three (03) districts East, West and South. In 1996, again the Karachi metropolitan area was divided into More two (02) districts Central and Malir, each with its own municipal corporation. Union councils (2001–11). In 2001, during the rule of General Pervez Musharraf, five districts of Karachi were merged to form the city district of Karachi, with a three-tier structure. The two most local tiers are composed of 18 towns, and 178 union councils. Each tier focused on elected councils with some common members to provide "vertical linkage" within the federation. Naimatullah Khan was the first Nazim of Karachi during the Union Council period, while Shafiq-Ur-Rehman Paracha was the first district coordination officer of Karachi. Syed Mustafa Kamal was elected City Nazim of Karachi to succeed Naimatullah Khan in 2005 elections, and Nasreen Jalil was elected as the City Naib Nazim. Each Union Council had thirteen members elected from specified electorates: four men and two women elected directly by the general population; two men and two women elected by peasants and workers; one member for minority communities; two members are elected jointly as the Union Mayor ("Nazim") and Deputy Union Mayor ("Naib Nazim"). Each council included up to three council secretaries and a number of other civil servants. The Union Council system was dismantled in 2011. District Municipal Corporations (2011–present). In July 2011, city district government of Karachi was reverted its original constituent units known as District Municipal Corporations (DMC). The five original DMCs are: Karachi East, Karachi West, Karachi Central, Karachi South and Malir. In November 2013, a sixth DMC, Korangi District was carved out from District East. In August 2020, Sindh cabinet approves formation of the seventh district in Karachi (Keamari District), Keamari District was formed by splitting District West. The committees for each district devise and enforce land-use and zoning regulations within their district. Each committee also manages water supply, sewage, and roads (except for 28 main arteries, which are managed by the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation). Street lighting, traffic planning, markets regulations, and signage are also under the control of the DMCs. Each DMC also maintains its own municipal record archive, and devises its own local budget. Municipal Administration of Karachi is also run by the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC), which is responsible for the development and maintenance of main arteries, bridges, drains, several hospitals, beaches, solid waste management, as well as some parks, and the city's firefighting services. Between 2016 till 2020 the mayor of Karachi was Waseem Akhtar (2016-2020), with Arshad Hassan serving as Deputy Mayor; both served as part of the KMC. The Administrator of Karachi is Syed Saif-ur-Rehman as of 2022. In 2023, Murtaza Wahab of PPP was elected the mayor of Karachi. The position of Commissioner of Karachi was created, with Iftikhar Ali Shallwani serving this role. There are six military cantonments, which are administered by the Pakistani Army, and are some of Karachi's most upscale neighbourhoods. City planning. The Karachi Development Authority (KDA), along with the Lyari Development Authority (LDA) and Malir Development Authority (MDA), is responsible for the development of most undeveloped land around Karachi. KDA came into existence in 1957 with the task of managing land around Karachi, while the LDA and MDA were formed in 1993 and 1994, respectively. KDA under the control of Karachi's local government and mayor in 2001, while the LDA and MDA were abolished. KDA was later placed under the direct control of the Government of Sindh in 2011. The LDA and MDA were also revived by the Pakistan Peoples Party government at the time, allegedly to patronize their electoral allies and voting banks. City-planning in Karachi, therefore, is not locally directed but is instead controlled at the provincial level. Each District Municipal Corporation regulate land-use in developed areas, while the Sindh Building Control Authority ensures that building construction is in accordance with building & town planning regulations. Cantonment areas, and the Defence Housing Authority are administered and planned by the military. Municipal services. Water. Municipal water supplies are managed by the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KW&SB), which supplies 640 million gallons daily (MGD) to the city (excluding the city's steel mills and Port Qasim), of which 440 MGD are filtered/treated. Most of the supply comes from the Indus River, and 90 MGD from the Hub Dam. Karachi's water supply is transported to the city through a complex network of canals, conduits, and siphons, with the aid of pumping and filtration stations. 80% of Karachi households have access to piped water , with private water tankers supplying much of the water required in informal settlements. 15% of residents in a 2022 survey rated their water supply as "bad" or "very bad", while 40% expressed concern at the stability of water supply. By 2022, an estimated 35,000 people were dying due to water-borne diseases annually. The K-IV water project is under development at a cost of $876 million. It would connect Keenjhar Lake to Karachi hence eradicating water scarcity in eastern and northern parts of the city. It is expected to supply 650 million gallons daily of potable water to the city, the first phase 260 million gallons upon completion. Desalination plants are also planned to be built on Arabian Sea coast on western side of Karachi in near future. These would resolve water scarcity issues in western parts of the city including SITE Area, Shershah and Orangi Town. Sanitation. 98% of Karachi's households are connected to the city's underground public sewerage system, largely operated by the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KW&SB). The KW&SB operates 150 pumping stations, 25 bulk reservoirs, over 10,000 kilometres of pipes, and 250,000 manholes. The city generates approximately 472 million gallons daily (MGD) of sewage, of which 417 MGD are discharged without treatment. KW&SB has the optimum capacity to treat up to 150 MGD of sewage, but uses only about 50 MGD of this capacity. Three treatment plants are available, in SITE Town (Gutter Baghicha), Mehmoodabad, and Mauripur. 75% reported in 2022 that Karachi's drainage system overflows or backs up, the highest percentage of all major Pakistani cities. Parts of the city's drainage system overflow on average 2–7 times per month, flooding some city streets. Households in Orangi self-organized to set-up their own sewerage system under the Orangi Pilot Project, a community service organization founded in 1980. 90% of Orangi streets are now connected to a sewer system built by local residents under the Orangi Pilot Project. Residents of individual streets bear the cost of sewerage pipes, and provide volunteer labour to lay the pipe. Residents also maintain the sewer pipes, while the city municipal administration has built several primary and secondary pipes for the network. As a result of OPP, 96% of Orangi residents have access to a latrine. The Sindh Solid Waste Management Board (SSWMB) is responsible for the collection and disposal of solid waste, not only in Karachi but throughout the whole province. Karachi has the highest percentage of residents in Pakistan who report that their streets are never cleaned42% of residents in Karachi report their streets are never cleaned, compared to 10% of residents in Lahore. Only 17% of Karachi residents reporting daily street cleaning, compared to 45% in Lahore. 69% of Karachi residents rely on private garbage collection services, with only 15% relying on municipal garbage collection services. 53% of Karachi residents in a 2022 survey reported that the state of their neighbourhood's cleanliness was either "bad" or "very bad". compared to 35% in Lahore, and 16% in Multan. Electricity. The one and only electricity providing company in Karachi is K-Electric. It was government owned but was privatised in 2019. Government still has some shares. However HUBCO is an Independent Power Producer (IPP) that owns few major powerplants. Karachi mostly gets electricity from oil, gas and coal powerplants established either on western coastline or Port Qasim Industrial Zone. Most recently built coal powerplants were the 1320MW Port Qasim Powerplant and the 1320MW Hub Coal Powerplant. 3 Nuclear Powerplants on western coastline namely KANUPP (K-1, K-2, K-3) also feed Karachi. Jhimpir, a nearby town has Wind Powerplants of more than 1000MW. This capacity is going to increase in future expansions. Solar Parks are envisioned to be established on western coastline having a starting generation of 1000MW. 75% of Karachi receives uninterrupted power supply almost throughout the year. 25% areas including industrial areas suffer with up to 6 hours of power outages everyday due to energy generation deficit. Power outages increase further in Peak-summer and Monsoon season (May to August). Many slums and unregulated areas are not yet electrified hence they indulge in electricity theft which is locally called Kunda-System. Police, Ambulance, Firefighting. Police is under the control of provincial government and city government has no authority over it. Ambulance is run by private hospitals or NGOs, the most famous of which are Edhi, Chhipa and JDC. Firefighting is under control of local government and has enough firefighters and vehicles to work quickly during fire. Education. Districts literacy rate (10 years and above). According to 2017 Census of Pakistan, Central is the most literate district among all the districts of Karachi and Sindh. Following is the literacy rate of 10 years and above population of the six districts of Karachi: Primary and secondary. Karachi's primary education system is divided into five levels: primary (grades one through five); middle (grades six through eight); high (grades nine and ten, leading to the Secondary School Certificate); intermediate (grades eleven and twelve, leading to a Higher Secondary School Certificate); and university programs leading to graduate and advanced degrees. Karachi has both public and private educational institutions. Most educational institutions are gender-based from primary to intermediate. Universities are mostly co-education. Several of Karachi's schools, such as St Patrick's High School, St Joseph's Convent School and St Paul's English High School, are operated by Christian churches, and are among Pakistan's most prestigious schools. Higher. Karachi is home to several major public universities. Karachi's first public university's date from the British colonial era. The Sindh Madressatul Islam founded in 1885, was granted university status in 2012. Establishment of the Sindh Madressatul Islam was followed by the establishment of the D. J. Sindh Government Science College in 1887, and the institution was granted university status in 2014. The Nadirshaw Edulji Dinshaw University of Engineering and Technology (NED), was founded in 1921, and is Pakistan's oldest institution of higher learning. The Dow University of Health Sciences was established in 1945, and is now one of Pakistan's top medical research institutions. The University of Karachi, founded in 1951, is Pakistan's largest university with a student population of 24,000. The Institute of Business Administration (IBA), founded in 1955, is the oldest business school outside of North America and Europe, and was set up with technical support from the Wharton School and the University of Southern California. The Dawood University of Engineering and Technology, which opened in 1962, offers degree programmes in petroleum, gas, chemical, and industrial engineering. The Pakistan Navy Engineering College (PNEC), operated by the Pakistan Navy, is associated with the National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) in Islamabad. Karachi is also home to numerous private universities. The Aga Khan University, founded in 1983, is Karachi's oldest private educational institution, and is one of Pakistan's most prestigious medical schools. The Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture was founded in 1989, and offers degree programmes in arts and architectural fields. Hamdard University is the largest private university in Pakistan with faculties including Eastern Medicine, Medical, Engineering, Pharmacy, and Law. The National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences (NUCES-FAST), one of Pakistan's top universities in computer education, operates two campuses in Karachi. Bahria University (BU) founded in 2000, is one of the major general institutions of Pakistan with their campuses in Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore offers degree programs in Management Sciences, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Psychology. Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology (SSUET) offers degree programmes in biomedical, electronics, telecom and computer engineering. Karachi Institute of Economics & Technology (KIET) has two campuses in Karachi. The Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (SZABIST), founded in 1995 by former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, operates a campus in Karachi. Other names include: Healthcare. Karachi is a centre of research in biomedicine with at least 30 public hospitals, 80 registered private hospitals and 12 recognized medical colleges, including the Indus Hospital, Lady Dufferin Hospital, Karachi Institute of Heart Diseases, National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases, Civil Hospital, Combined Military Hospital, PNS Rahat, PNS Shifa, Aga Khan University Hospital, Liaquat National Hospital, Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, Holy Family Hospital and Ziauddin Hospital. In 1995, Ziauddin Hospital was the site of Pakistan's first bone marrow transplant. Karachi municipal authorities in 2017 launched a new early warning system that alerted city residents to a forecasted heatwave. Previous heatwaves had routinely claimed lives in the city, but implementation of the warning system was credited for no reported heat-related fatalities. During 2020-2021 COVID-19 pandemic, vaccines were available in all major hospitals. Entertainment, tourism and culture. Shopping malls. Karachi is home to Pakistan and South Asia's largest shopping mall, Lucky One Mall which hosts more than two hundred stores. According to TripAdvisor the city is also home to Pakistan's favorite shopping mall, Dolmen Mall, Clifton which was also featured on CNN. In 2023, another mega mall/entertainment complex named 'Mall of Karachi' situated at the bottom of Pakistan's tallest skyscraper Bahria Icon Tower will be opened. Museums and galleries. Karachi is home to several of Pakistan's most important museums. The National Museum of Pakistan and Mohatta Palace display artwork, while the city also has several private art galleries. There are also the Pakistan Airforce Museum, the Pakistan Maritime Museum and the country's first interactive science centre, the MagnifiScience Centre located in the city. Wazir Mansion, the birthplace of Pakistan's founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah has also been preserved as a museum open to the public. Quaid-e-Azam House, the residence of Muhammad Ali Jinnah is also a museum which showcases his furniture and other belongings. Other museums include TDF Ghar and the State Bank of Pakistan Museum & Art Gallery. Theatre and cinema. Karachi is home to some of Pakistan's important cultural institutions. The National Academy of Performing Arts, located in the former Hindu Gymkhana, offers diploma courses in performing arts including classical music and contemporary theatre. Karachi is home to groups such as Thespianz Theater, a professional youth-based, non-profit performing arts group, which works on theatre and arts activities in Pakistan. Though Lahore was considered to be home of Pakistan's film industry, Karachi is home to Urdu cinema and Kara Film Festival annually showcases independent Pakistani and international films and documentaries. Bambino Cinema, Capri Cinema, Cinepax Cinema, Cinegold Plex Cinema (Bahria Town), Mega Multiplex Cinema (Millennium Mall), Nueplex Cinema (Askari-4), Atrium Mall Cinema (Sadar) are some of the most popular cinemas in Karachi. Music. The All Pakistan Music Conference, linked to the 45-year-old similar institution in Lahore, has been holding its annual music festival since its inception in 2004. The National Arts Council ("Koocha-e-Saqafat") has musical performances and mushaira. Social issues. Crime & Lawlessness. Sometimes stated to be amongst the world's most dangerous cities, the extent of violent crime in Karachi is not as significant in magnitude as compared to other cities. According to the Numbeo Crime Index 2014, Karachi was the 6th most dangerous city in the world. By the middle of 2016, Karachi's rank had dropped to 31 following the launch of anti-crime operations. By 2018, Karachi's ranking has dropped to 50. In 2021, Karachi's ranking fell to 115. In 2022, the ranking fell further to 128th place, ranking Karachi safer than regional cities such as Dhaka (56th place), Delhi (90th place), and Bangalore (122nd place). The city's large population results in high numbers of homicides with a moderate homicide rate. Karachi's homicide rates are lower than many Latin American cities, and in 2015 was 12.5 per 100,000lower than the homicide rate of several American cities such as New Orleans and St. Louis. The homicide rates in some Latin American cities such as Caracas, Venezuela and Acapulco, Mexico are in excess of 100 per 100,000 residents, many times greater than Karachi's homicide rate. In 2016, the number of murders in Karachi had dropped to 471, which had dropped further to 381 in 2017. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Karachi was rocked by political conflict while crime rates drastically increased with the arrival of weaponry from the War in Afghanistan. Several of Karachi's criminal mafias became powerful during a period in the 1990s described as "the rule of the mafias." Major mafias active in the city included land mafia, water tanker mafia, transport mafia and a sand and gravel mafia. Karachi's highest death rates occurred in the mid-1990s. In 1995, 1,742 killings were recorded, with a maximum of 15 killings in a single day. Karachi Operation by Pakistan Rangers. Karachi had become widely known for its high rates of violent crime, but rates sharply decreased following a controversial crackdown operation against criminals, the MQM political party, and Islamist militants initiated in 2013 by the Pakistan Rangers. In 2015, 1,040 Karachiites were killed in either acts of terror or other crimean almost 50% decrease from the 2,023 killed in 2014, and an almost 70% decrease from the 3,251 recorded killed in 2013the highest ever recorded number in Karachi history. Violent crime like target killings, kidnappings for ransom or extortion, burning or torturing to death, drugs and weapons smugling decreased sharply after 2015. Street crime still remains high like snatching of cash, phones, motorcycles and cars on gunpoint. With 650 homicides in 2015, Karachi's homicide rate decreased by 75% compared to 2013. In 2017, the number of homicides had dropped further to 381. Extortion crimes decreased by 80% between 2013 and 2015, while kidnappings decreased by 90% during the same period. By 2016, the city registered a total of 21 cases of kidnap for ransom. Terrorist incidents dropped by 98% between 2012 and 2017, according to Pakistan's Interior Ministry. As a result of the Karachi's improved security environment, real-estate prices in Karachi rose sharply after 2015, with a rise in business for upmarket restaurants and cafés. Ethnic & Linguistic conflict. Insufficient affordable housing infrastructure to absorb growth has resulted in the city's diverse migrant populations being largely confined to ethnically homogeneous neighbourhoods. The 1970s saw major labour struggles in Karachi's industrial estates. Violence originated in the city's university campuses, and spread into the city. Conflict was especially sharp between MQM party and ethnic Sindhis, Pashtuns, and Punjabis. The party and its vast network of supporters were targeted by Pakistani security forces as part of the controversial Operation Clean-up in 1992, as part of an effort to restore peace in the city that lasted until 1994. The ethnic conflicts kept going between linguistic groups till late 2010s and are no more extreme. Poor infrastructure. Urban planning and service delivery have not kept pace with Karachi's growth, resulting in the city's low ranking on livability rankings. The city has no cohesive transportation policy and inadequate transport, though up to 1,000 new vehicles are added daily to the city's congested streets. Roads and streets are broken at many places but are not repaired in timely manner. Unable to provide housing to large numbers of refugees shortly after independence, Karachi's authorities first issued "slips" to refugees beginning in 1950 – which allowed refugees to settle on any vacant land. Such informal settlements are known as katchi abadis. Approximately half of Karachi's residents still live in these unplanned communities which have limited paved roads and limited utilities. Pollution. Air quality index is one of the worst in the world. Due to desert terrain, there is plenty of dust throughout the year except for rainy season. Vehicles and industries also contribute to air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. There is a lot of noise pollution due to traffic. Land pollution is due to solid trash not disposed to dedicated dumping sites. Trash is seen here and there and sometimes everywhere. Lastly there is water pollution in Lyari and Malir rivers as gutters directly open into these rivers. These rivers than directly go into Arabian sea untreated. So sewerage and industrial wastewater is directly being thrown into Indian Ocean hence polluting it and destroying marine life under the sea. 3 waste water treatment plants exist but are all dysfunctional. Urban flooding in monsoon season. Size of Drainage system and storm water drains (locally known as Naalahs) in the city is not enough to handle the heavy rainfalls of monsoon. The drainage system and storm water drains are also filled with solid trash. When water finds no path, it enters streets, roads, underpasses and even houses during rainfall in July and August of every year. Major Naalahs like Orangi Naalah, Gujjar Naalah, Mehmoodabad Naalah are cleaned every year by government but are polluted by people the next day. Flooding hinders connectivity of different areas of the city specially Landhi and Korangi. Floods have caused drown or electric shocks related deaths as well. Architecture. Karachi has a collection of buildings and structures of varied architectural styles. The downtown districts of Saddar and Clifton contain early 20th-century architecture, ranging in style from the neo-classical KPT building to the Sindh High Court Building. Karachi acquired its first neo-Gothic or Indo-Gothic buildings when Frere Hall, Empress Market and St. Patrick's Cathedral were completed. The Mock Tudor architectural style was introduced in the Karachi Gymkhana and the Boat Club. Neo-Renaissance architecture was popular in the 19th century and was the architectural style for St. Joseph's Convent (1870) and the Sind Club (1883). The classical style made a comeback in the late 19th century, as seen in Lady Dufferin Hospital (1898) and the Cantt. Railway Station. While Italianate buildings remained popular, an eclectic blend termed Indo-Saracenic or Anglo-Mughal began to emerge in some locations. The local mercantile community began acquiring impressive structures. Zaibunnisa Street in the Saddar area (known as Elphinstone Street in British days) is an example where the mercantile groups adopted the Italianate and Indo-Saracenic style to demonstrate their familiarity with Western culture and their own. The Hindu Gymkhana (1925) and Mohatta Palace are examples of Mughal revival buildings. The Sindh Wildlife Conservation Building, located in Saddar, served as a Freemasonic Lodge until it was taken over by the government. There are talks of it being taken away from this custody and being renovated and the Lodge being preserved with its original woodwork and ornate wooden staircase. Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture is one of the prime examples of Architectural conservation and restoration where an entire Nusserwanjee building from Kharadar area of Karachi has been relocated to Clifton for adaptive reuse in an art school. The procedure involved the careful removal of each piece of timber and stone, stacked temporarily, loaded on the trucks for transportation to the Clifton site, unloaded and re-arranged according to a given layout, stone by stone, piece by piece, and completed within three months. Architecturally distinctive, even eccentric, buildings have sprung up throughout Karachi. Notable example of contemporary architecture include the Pakistan State Oil Headquarters building. The city has examples of modern Islamic architecture, including the Aga Khan University hospital, Grand Jamia Mosque, Masjid e Tooba, Faran Mosque, Baitul Mukarram Mosque, Quaid's Mausoleum, and the Textile Institute of Pakistan. One of the unique cultural elements of Karachi is that the residences, which are two- or three-story townhouses, are built with the front yard protected by a high brick wall. I. I. Chundrigar Road features a range of tall buildings. The most prominent examples include the Habib Bank Plaza, UBL Tower, PRC Towers, PNSC Building and MCB Tower. Newer skyscrapers are being built in Clifton. At least 50 150m+ buildings were underconstruction in 2022. Sports. Cricket. Cricket's history in Pakistan predates the creation of the country in 1947. The first ever international cricket match in Karachi was held on 22 November 1935 between Sindh and Australian cricket teams. The match was seen by 5,000 Karachiites. Karachi is also the place that innovated tape ball, a safer and more affordable alternative to cricket. The inaugural first-class match at the National Stadium was played between Pakistan and India on 26 February 1955 and since then Pakistani national cricket team has won 20 of the 41 Test matches played at the National Stadium. The first One Day International at the National Stadium was against the West Indies on 21 November 1980, with the match going to the last ball. The national team has been less successful in such limited-overs matches at the ground, including a five-year stint between 1996 and 2001, when they failed to win any matches. The city has been host to a number of domestic cricket teams including Karachi, Karachi Blues, Karachi Greens, and Karachi Whites. The National Stadium hosted two group matches (Pakistan v. South Africa on 29 February and Pakistan v. England on 3March), and a quarter-final match (South Africa v. West Indies on 11 March) during the 1996 Cricket World Cup. Rafi Cricket Stadium under construction in Bahria Town would soon become the largest cricket stadium in Karachi with a capacity of 50,000+ spectators. Other sports. When it comes to sports Karachi has a distinction, because some sources cite that it was in 1877 at Karachi in (British) India, where the first attempt was made to form a set of rules of badminton and likely place is said to be Frere Hall. Karachi has hosted seven editions of the National Games of Pakistan, most recently in 2007. In 2005, the city hosted the SAFF Championship at this ground, as well as the Geo Super Football League 2007, which attracted capacity crowds during the games. The popularity of golf is increasing, with clubs in Karachi like Dreamworld Resort, Bahria Town Golf Club, Hotel & Golf Club, Arabian Sea Country Club, DA Country & Golf Club. The city has facilities for field hockey (Hockey Club of Pakistan, UBL Hockey Ground), boxing (KPT Sports Complex), squash (Jahangir Khan Squash Complex), and polo. There are marinas and boating clubs. National Bank of Pakistan Sports Complex is First-class cricket venue and Multi-purpose sports facility in Karachi.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17168

Kathmandu

Kathmandu, officially Kathmandu Metropolitan City, is the capital and most populous city of Nepal with 845,767 inhabitants living in 105,649 households as of the 2021 Nepal census and 2.9 million people in its urban agglomeration. It is located in the Kathmandu Valley, a large valley in the high plateaus in central Nepal, at an altitude of . The city is one of the oldest continuously inhabited places in the world, founded in the 2nd century AD. The valley was historically called the "Nepal Mandala" and has been the home of the Newar people, a cosmopolitan urban civilization in the Himalayan foothills. The city was the royal capital of the Kingdom of Nepal and hosts palaces, mansions and gardens built by the Nepali aristocracy. It has been home to the headquarters of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) since 1985. Today, it is the seat of government of the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, established in 2008, and is part of Bagmati Province. Kathmandu is and has been for many years the centre of Nepal's history, art, culture, and economy. It has a multi-ethnic population within a Hindu and Buddhist majority. Religious and cultural festivities form a major part of the lives of people residing in Kathmandu. Tourism is an important part of the economy in the city. In 2013, Kathmandu was ranked third among the top ten upcoming travel destinations in the world by TripAdvisor, and ranked first in Asia. The city is considered the gateway to the Nepal Himalayas and is home to several World Heritage Sites: the Durbar Square, Swayambhu Mahachaitya, Bouddha and Pashupatinath. Kathmandu valley is growing at 4 per cent per year according to the World Bank in 2010, making it one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in South Asia, and the first region in Nepal to face the unprecedented challenges of rapid urbanization and modernization at a metropolitan scale. It is the largest metropolitan area located in the Himalayas. Etymology. The indigenous Nepal Bhasa term for Kathmandu is "Yen". The Nepali name "Kathmandu" comes from Kasthamandap, which stood in Kathmandu Durbar Square, was completely destroyed by the earthquake of April 2015, but has since been reconstructed. In Sanskrit, () means "wood" and () means "pavilion". This public pavilion, also known as "Maru Satta" in Newari, was rebuilt in 1596 by Biseth in the period of King Laxmi Narsingh Malla. The three-storey structure was made entirely of wood and used no iron nails nor supports. According to legends, all the timber used to build the pagoda was obtained from a single tree. The colophons of ancient manuscripts, dated as late as the 20th century, refer to Kathmandu as in Nepal Mandala. Mahānagar means "great city". The city is called in a vow that Buddhist priests still recite to this day. Thus, Kathmandu is also known as . During medieval times, the city was sometimes called Kāntipur (). This name is derived from two Sanskrit words – and . is a word that stands for "beauty" and is mostly associated with light and means place, thus giving it the meaning, "City of light". Among the indigenous Newar people, Kathmandu is known as "Yeṃ Dey" (), and Patan and Bhaktapur are known as "Yala Dey" () and "Khwopa Dey" () respectively. "Yen" is the shorter form of "Yambu" (), which originally referred to the northern half of Kathmandu. The older northern settlements were referred to as Yambi while the southern settlement was known as Yangala. The spelling "Katmandu" was often used in older English-language text. More recently, however, the spelling "Kathmandu" has become more common in English. History. Archaeological excavations in parts of Kathmandu have found evidence of ancient civilizations. The oldest of these findings is a statue, found in Maligaon, that was dated at 185 AD. The excavation of Dhando Chaitya uncovered a brick with an inscription in Brahmi script. Archaeologists believe that it is two thousand years old. Stone inscriptions are ubiquitous elements at the heritage sites and are key sources for the history of Nepal. The earliest Western reference to Kathmandu appears in an account of Portuguese Jesuit Father Joao Cabral who passed through the Kathmandu Valley in the spring of 1628 and was received graciously by the king of that time, probably King Lakshminarasimha Malla of Kathmandu on their way from Tibet to India. Father Cabral reported that they reached "Cadmendu", the capital of Nepal kingdom. Ancient history. The ancient history of Kathmandu is described in its traditional myths and legends. According to Swayambhu Purana, present-day Kathmandu was once a huge and deep lake named "Nagdaha", as it was full of snakes. The lake was cut drained by Bodhisatwa Manjushree with his sword, and the water was evacuated out from there. He then established a city called Manjupattan, and made Dharmakar the ruler of the valley land. After some time, a demon named Banasur closed the outlet, and the valley again turned into a lake. Then Lord Krishna came to Nepal, killed Banasur, and again drained out the water by Cutting the edge of Chobhar hill with this Sudharshan Chakra. He brought some Gopals along with him and made Bhuktaman the king of Nepal. Kotirudra Samhita of Shiva Purana, Chapter 11, "Shloka" 18 refers to the place as Nayapala city, which was famous for its Pashupati Shivalinga. The name Nepal probably originates from this city Nayapala. Very few historical records exists of the period before medieval Licchavi rulers. According to Gopalraj Vansawali, a genealogy of Nepali monarchy, the rulers of Kathmandu Valley before the Licchavis were Gopalas, Mahispalas, Aabhirs, Kiratas, and Somavanshi. The Kirata dynasty was established by Yalamber. During the Kirata era, a settlement called Yambu existed in the northern half of old Kathmandu. In some of the Sino-Tibetan languages, Kathmandu is still called Yambu. Another smaller settlement called Yengal was present in the southern half of old Kathmandu, near Manjupattan. During the reign of the seventh Kirata ruler, Jitedasti, Buddhist monks entered Kathmandu valley and established a forest monastery at Sankhu. Licchavi era. The Licchavis from the Indo-Gangetic plain migrated north and defeated the Kirats, establishing the Licchavi dynasty, circa 400 AD. During this era, following the genocide of Shakyas in Lumbini by Virudhaka, the survivors migrated north and entered the forest monastery lora masquerading as Koliyas. From Sankhu, they migrated to Yambu and Yengal (Lanjagwal and Manjupattan) and established the first permanent Buddhist monasteries of Kathmandu. This created the basis of Newar Buddhism, which is the only surviving Sanskrit-based Buddhist tradition in the world. With their migration, Yambu was called Koligram and Yengal was called Dakshin Koligram during most of the Licchavi era. Eventually, the Licchavi ruler Gunakamadeva merged Koligram and Dakshin Koligram, founding the city of Kathmandu. The city was designed in the shape of "Chandrahrasa", the sword of Manjushri. The city was surrounded by eight barracks guarded by Ajimas. One of these barracks is still in use at Bhadrakali (in front of Singha Durbar). The city served as an important transit point in the trade between India and Tibet, leading to tremendous growth in architecture. Descriptions of buildings such as Managriha, Kailaskut Bhawan, and Bhadradiwas Bhawan have been found in the surviving journals of travellers and monks who lived during this era. For example, the famous 7th-century Chinese traveller Xuanzang described Kailaskut Bhawan, the palace of the Licchavi king Amshuverma. The trade route also led to cultural exchange as well. The artistry of the Newar people—the indigenous inhabitants of the Kathmandu Valley—became highly sought after during this era, both within the Valley and throughout the greater Himalayas. Newar artists travelled extensively throughout Asia, creating religious art for their neighbours. For example, Araniko led a group of his compatriot artists through Tibet and China. Bhrikuti, the princess of Nepal who married Tibetan monarch Songtsän Gampo, was instrumental in introducing Buddhism to Tibet. Malla era. The Licchavi era was followed by the Malla era. Rulers from Tirhut, upon being attacked by the Delhi Sultanate, fled north to the Kathmandu valley. They intermarried with Nepali royalty, and this led to the Malla era. The early years of the Malla era were turbulent, with raids and attacks from Khas and Turk Muslims. There was also a devastating earthquake which claimed the lives of a third of Kathmandu's population, including the king Abhaya Malla. These disasters led to the destruction of most of the architecture of the Licchavi era (such as Mangriha and Kailashkut Bhawan), and the loss of literature collected in various monasteries within the city. Despite the initial hardships, Kathmandu rose to prominence again and, during most of the Malla era, dominated the trade between India and Tibet. Nepali currency became the standard currency in trans-Himalayan trade. During the later part of the Malla era, Kathmandu Valley comprised four fortified cities: Kantipur, Lalitpur, Bhaktapur, and Kirtipur. These served as the capitals of the Malla confederation of Nepal. These states competed with each other in the arts, architecture, esthetics, and trade, resulting in tremendous development. The kings of this period directly influenced or involved themselves in the construction of public buildings, squares, and temples, as well as the development of waterspouts, the institutionalisation of trusts (called guthis), the codification of laws, the writing of dramas, and the performance of plays in city squares. Evidence of an influx of ideas from India, Tibet, China, Persia, and Europe among other places can be found in a stone inscription from the time of king Pratap Malla. Books have been found from this era that describe their tantric tradition (e.g. Tantrakhyan), medicine (e.g. Haramekhala), religion (e.g. Mooldevshashidev), law, morals, and history. Amarkosh, a Sanskrit-Nepal Bhasa dictionary from 1381, was also found. Architecturally notable buildings from this era include Kathmandu Durbar Square, Patan Durbar Square, Bhaktapur Durbar Square, the former durbar of Kirtipur, Nyatapola, Kumbheshwar, the Krishna temple, and others. Medieval era. Early Shah rule. The Gorkha Kingdom ended the Malla confederation after the Battle of Kathmandu in 1768. This marked the beginning of the modern era in Kathmandu. The Battle of Kirtipur was the start of the Gorkha conquest of the Kathmandu Valley. Kathmandu was adopted as the capital of the Gorkha empire, and the empire itself was dubbed Nepal. During the early part of this era, Kathmandu maintained its distinctive culture. Buildings with characteristic Nepali architecture, such as the nine-story tower of Basantapur, were built during this era. However, trade declined because of continual war with neighbouring nations. Bhimsen Thapa supported France against Great Britain; this led to the development of modern military structures, such as modern barracks in Kathmandu. The nine-storey tower Dharahara was originally built during this era. Rana rule. Rana rule over Nepal started with the Kot massacre of 1846, which occurred near Hanuman Dhoka Durbar. During this massacre, most of Nepal's high-ranking officials were massacred by Jung Bahadur Rana and his supporters. Another massacre, the Bhandarkhal Massacre, was also conducted by Kunwar and his supporters in Kathmandu. During the Rana regime, Kathmandu's alliance shifted from anti-British to pro-British; this led to the construction of the first buildings in the style of Western European architecture. The most well-known of these buildings include Singha Durbar, Garden of Dreams, Shital Niwas, and the old Narayanhiti palace. The first modern commercial road in the Kathmandu Valley, the New Road, was also built during this era. Trichandra College (the first college of Nepal), Durbar High School (the first modern school of Nepal), and Bir Hospital (the first hospital of Nepal) were built in Kathmandu during this era. Education was only accessible to the privileged class. Rana rule was marked by despotism, economic exploitation and religious persecution. Geography. Kathmandu is in the northwestern part of the Kathmandu Valley to the north of the Bagmati River and covers an area of . The average elevation is above sea level. The city is bounded by several other municipalities of the Kathmandu valley: south of the Bagmati by Lalitpur Metropolitan City (Patan), with which it forms one urban area surrounded by a ring road, to the southwest by Kirtipur and to the east by Madyapur Thimi. To the north the urban area extends into several municipalities; Nagarjun, Tarakeshwor, Tokha, Budhanilkantha, Gokarneshwor and Kageshwori Manohara. However, the urban agglomeration extends well beyond the neighbouring municipalities, e.g. to Bhaktapur, and nearly covers the entire Kathmandu Valley. Kathmandu is dissected by eight rivers, the main river of the valley, the Bagmati and its tributaries, of which the Bishnumati, Dhobi Khola, Manohara Khola, Hanumante Khola, and Tukucha Khola are predominant. The mountains from where these rivers originate are in the elevation range of , and have passes which provide access to and from Kathmandu and its valley. An ancient canal once flowed from Nagarjuna hill through Balaju to Kathmandu; this canal is now extinct. The city of Kathmandu and the surrounding valley are in the "Deciduous Monsoon Forest Zone" (altitude range of ), one of five vegetation zones defined for Nepal. The dominant tree species in this zone are oak, elm, beech, maple and others, with coniferous trees at higher altitude. Kathmandu administration. Kathmandu and adjacent cities are composed of neighbourhoods, which are utilized quite extensively and more familiar among locals. However, administratively the city is divided into 32 wards, numbered from 1 to 32. Earlier, there were 35 wards which made it the metropolitan city with the largest number of the wards. Balendra Shah (Balen) has been elected as the new mayor of Kathmandu Climate. Under Köppen's climate classification, portions of the city with lower elevations (1300-1400m) which is 88 per cent of total have a humid subtropical climate (Cwa), while portions of the city with higher elevations generally have a subtropical highland climate (Cwb). In the Kathmandu Valley, which is representative of its valley's climate, the average summer temperature varies from . The average winter temperature is . Five major climatic regions are found in Nepal. Of these, High hills of Kathmandu Valley including Chandragiri hill is in the "Warm Temperate Zone" (elevation ranging from ), where the climate is fairly temperate, atypical for the region. This zone is followed by the "Cool Temperate Zone" with elevation varying between . The city generally has a climate with warm days followed by cool nights and mornings. Unpredictable weather is expected, given that temperatures can drop to or less during the winter. During a 2013 cold front, the winter temperatures of Kathmandu dropped to , and the lowest temperature was recorded on 10 January 2013, at . Rainfall is mostly monsoon-based (about 65% of the total concentrated during the monsoon months of June to September), and decreases substantially () from eastern Nepal to western Nepal. Rainfall has been recorded at about for the Kathmandu valley, and averages for the city of Kathmandu. On average humidity is 75%. The chart below is based on data from the Nepal Bureau of Standards & Meteorology, Weather Meteorology for 2005. The chart provides minimum and maximum temperatures during each month. The annual amount of precipitation was for 2005, as per monthly data included in the table above. The decade of 2000–2010 saw highly variable and unprecedented precipitation anomalies in Kathmandu. This was mostly due to the annual variation of the southwest monsoon. For example, 2001 recorded only of precipitation due to an extraordinarily weak monsoon season. In contrast, 2003 was the wettest year ever in Kathmandu, totaling over of precipitation due to an exceptionally strong monsoon season. Air quality. Air pollution is a major issue in the Kathmandu Valley. According to the 2016 World Health Organization's Ambient Air Pollution Database, the annual average PM2.5 (particulate matter) concentration in 2013 was 49 μg/m3, which is 4.9 times higher than recommended by the World Health Organization. Starting in early 2017, the Government of Nepal and the Embassy of the United States in Kathmandu have monitored and publicly share real-time air quality data. In Nepal and Kathmandu, the annual premature deaths due to air pollution reached 37,399 and 9,943 respectively, according to a Republica news report published on 23 November 2019. This indicates, around a quarter of the total deaths due to air pollution in Nepal are in Kathmandu. Government and public services. Civic administration. Kathmandu Municipal Corporation (KMC) is the chief nodal agency for the administration of Kathmandu. The Municipality of Kathmandu was upgraded to a metropolitan city in 1995. Metropolitan Kathmandu is divided into five sectors: the Central Sector, the East Sector, the North Sector, the City Core and the West Sector. For civic administration, the city is further divided into 35 administrative wards. The Council administers the Metropolitan area of Kathmandu city through its 177 elected representatives and 20 nominated members. It holds biannual meetings to review, process and approve the annual budget and make major policy decisions. The ward's profile documents for the 35 wards prepared by the Kathmandu Metropolitan Council is detailed and provides information for each ward on population, the structure and condition of houses, the type of roads, educational, health and financial institutions, entertainment facilities, parking space, security provisions, etc. It also includes lists of development projects completed, on-going and planned, along with informative data about the cultural heritage, festivals, historical sites and the local inhabitants. Ward 16 is the largest, with an area of 437.4 ha; ward 26 is the smallest, with an area of 4 ha. Kathmandu is the headquarters of the surrounding Kathmandu District. Law and order. The Metropolitan Police is the main law enforcement agency in the city. It is headed by a commissioner of police. The Metropolitan Police is a division of the Nepal Police, and the administrative control lies with the Ministry of Home Affairs. Fire service. The fire service, known as the "Barun Yantra Karyalaya" (), opened its first station in Kathmandu in 1937 with a single-vehicle. An iron tower was erected to monitor the city and watch for a fire. As a precautionary measure, firemen were sent to the areas which were designated as accident-prone areas. In 1944, the fire service was extended to the neighbouring cities of Lalitpur and Bhaktapur. In 1966, a fire service was established in Kathmandu central airport. In 1975, a West German government donation added seven fire engines to Kathmandu's fire service. The fire service in the city is also overlooked by an international non-governmental organization, the Firefighters Volunteer Association of Nepal (FAN), which was established in 2000 with the purpose of raising public awareness about fire and improving safety. Electricity and water supply. Electricity in Kathmandu is regulated and distributed by the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA). Water supply and sanitation facilities are provided by the Kathmandu Upatyaka Khanepani Limited (KUKL). There is a severe shortage of water for household purposes such as drinking, bathing, cooking and washing and irrigation. People have been using bottled mineral water, water from tank trucks and from the ancient dhunge dharas () for all the purposes related to water. The city water shortage should be solved by the completion of the much plagued Melamchi Water Supply Project by the end of 2019. Despite continued efforts by governmental bodies, Kathmandu is one of the most polluted cities in Nepal, largely due to overpopulation. Waste management. Waste management may be through composting in municipal waste management units, and at houses with home composting units. Both systems are common and established in India and neighbouring countries. Demographics. Kathmandu's urban cosmopolitan character has made it the most populous city in Nepal. According to the National Population Census of 2011, the total population of Kathmandu city was 975,543 in 254,292 households with an annual growth rate of 6.12% with respect to the population figure of 2001. 70% of the total population residing in Kathmandu are aged between 15 and 59. In one decade, the population increased from 427,045 in 1991 to 671,805 in 2001. The population was projected to reach 915,071 in 2011 and 1,319,597 by 2021. To keep up this population growth, the KMC-controlled area of expanded to in 2001. With this new area, the population density which was 85 in 1991 remained 85 in 2001; it is likely to jump to 111 in 2011 and 161 in 2021. Languages. As of the 2011 census, Nepali is the most common mother tongue in Kathmandu, with 62% of the population speaking it as their mother tongue. Newar is spoken by 19%, and the other languages spoken in the city include Tamang (6%), Maithili (3%), Bhojpuri (2%), Gurung (2%), Magar (2%) and Sherpa (1%) as their first language. English is also spoken by many. Ethnic groups. The largest group is the native Newars, whose various sub-groups combine to make up 24.7% of the population. Almost equal in number is the Bahuns, also known as Hill-Brahmin or Khas Brahmin, representing 24.5% of the population. They are part of the broader Khas community, as are the Chhetri, the third largest group, who account for 18% of the population. Other groups in Kathmandu include the Janajatis, comprising the Tamang (7.8%), Magar (3.8%), Gurung (2.6%), and Rai (2.1%). Nepalese Muslims represent 1.8% of the population. More recently, other Madeshi groups from Terai have come to represent a substantial proportion of the city's population, and there are around 12,000 Marwadis, mainly merchants. Architecture and cityscape. The ancient trade route between India and Tibet that passed through Kathmandu enabled a fusion of artistic and architectural traditions from other cultures to be amalgamated with local art and architecture. The monuments of Kathmandu City have been influenced over the centuries by Hindu and Buddhist religious practices. The architectural treasure of the Kathmandu valley has been categorized under the well-known seven groups of heritage monuments and buildings. In 2006 UNESCO declared these seven groups of monuments as a World Heritage Site (WHS). The seven monuments zones cover an area of , with the buffer zone extending to . The Seven Monument Zones inscribed originally in 1979 and with a minor modification in 2006 are the Durbar squares of Hanuman Dhoka, Patan and Bhaktapur, the Hindu temples of Pashupatinath and Changunarayan, the Buddhist stupas of Swayambhunath and Boudhanath. Durbar Squares. The literal meaning of Durbar Square is a "place of palaces". There are three preserved Durbar Squares in Kathmandu valley and one unpreserved in Kirtipur. The Durbar Square of Kathmandu is in the old city and has heritage buildings representing four kingdoms (Kantipur, Lalitpur, Bhaktapur, Kirtipur); the earliest being the Licchavi dynasty. The complex has 50 temples and is distributed in two quadrangles of the Durbar Square. The outer quadrangle has the Kasthamandap, Kumari Ghar, and Shiva-Parvati Temple; the inner quadrangle has the Hanuman Dhoka palace. The squares were severely damaged in the April 2015 earthquake. Hanuman Dhoka is a complex of structures with the royal palace of the Malla kings and of the Shah dynasty. It is spread over five acres. The eastern wing, with ten courtyards, is the oldest part, dating to the mid-16th century. It was expanded by King Pratap Malla in the 17th century with many temples. The royal family lived in this palace until 1886 when they moved to Narayanhiti Palace. The stone inscription outside is in fifteen languages. Kumari Ghar is a palace in the centre of the Kathmandu city, next to the Durbar square where a royal Kumari selected from several Kumaris resides. Kumari, or Kumari Devi, is the tradition of worshipping young pre-pubescent girls as manifestations of the divine female energy or "devi" in South Asian countries. In Nepal the selection process is very rigorous. Previously, during the time of the monarchy, the queen and the priests used to appoint the proposed Kumari with delicate process of astrological examination and physical examination of 32 'gunas'. The "china" (), an ancient Hindu astrological report, of the Kumari and the reigning king, was ought to be similar. The Kumari is believed to be a bodily incarnation of the goddess Taleju (the Nepali name for Durga) until she menstruates, after which it is believed that the goddess vacates her body. Serious illness or a major loss of blood from an injury also causes her to revert to common status. The current Kumari, Trishna Shakya, age three at the time of appointment, was installed in September 2017 succeeding Matina Shakya who was the first Kumari of Kathmandu after the end of the monarchy. Kasthamandap is a three-storeyed temple enshrining an image of Gorakhnath. It was built in the 16th century in pagoda style. The name of Kathmandu is a derivative of the word "Kasthamandap". It was built under the reign of King Laxmi Narsingha Malla. Kasthamandap stands at the intersection of two ancient trade routes linking India and Tibet at Maru square. It was originally built as a rest house for travellers. Pashupatinath temple. The Pashupatinath Temple () is a famous 5th century Hindu temple dedicated to Lord Shiva. Located on the banks of the Bagmati River, the Pashupatinath Temple is the oldest Hindu temple in Kathmandu. It served as the seat of national deity, Lord Pashupatinath, until Nepal was secularized. However, a significant part of the temple was destroyed by Mughal invaders in the 14th century and little or nothing remains of the original 5th-century temple exterior. The temple as it stands today was built in the 19th century, although the image of the bull and the black four-headed image of Pashupati are at least 300 years old. The temple is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Shivaratri, or the night of Lord Shiva, is the most important festival that takes place here, attracting thousands of devotees and sadhus. Believers in Pashupatinath (mainly Hindus) are allowed to enter the temple premises, but non-Hindu visitors are allowed to view the temple only from the across the Bagmati River. The priests who perform the services at this temple have been Brahmins from Karnataka in southern India since the time of Malla king Yaksha Malla. This tradition is believed to have been started at the request of Adi Shankaracharya who sought to unify the states of Bharatam, a region in south Asia believed to be ruled by a mythological king Bharat, by encouraging cultural exchange. This procedure is followed in other temples around India, which were sanctified by Adi Shankaracharya. The temple is built in the pagoda style of architecture, with cubic constructions and carved wooden rafters (tundal) on which they rest, and two-level roofs made of copper and gold. Boudhanath. Boudhanath (; also written as "Bouddhanath", "Bodhnath", "Baudhanath" or the "Khāsa" "Chaitya"), is one of the holiest Buddhist sites in Nepal, along with the Swayambhunath. It is a very popular tourist site. Boudhanath is known as Khāsti by Newars and as Bauddha or Bodhnāth by speakers of Nepali. About from the centre and northeastern outskirts of Kathmandu, the stupa's massive mandala makes it one of the largest spherical stupas in Nepal. Boudhanath became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979. The base of the stupa has 108 small depictions of the Dhyani Buddha Amitabha. It is surrounded with a brick wall with 147 niches, each with four or five prayer wheels engraved with the mantra, "Om mani padme hum". At the northern entrance where visitors must pass is a shrine dedicated to Ajima, the goddess of smallpox. Every year the stupa attracts many Tibetan Buddhist pilgrims who perform full body prostrations in the inner lower enclosure, walk around the stupa with prayer wheels, chant, and pray. Thousands of prayer flags are hoisted up from the top of the stupa downwards and dot the perimeter of the complex. The influx of many Tibetan refugees from China has seen the construction of over 50 Tibetan gompas (monasteries) around Boudhanath. Swayambhu. Swayambhunath () is a Buddhist stupa atop a hillock at the northwestern part of the city. This is among the oldest religious sites in Nepal. Although the site is considered Buddhist, it is revered by both Buddhists and Hindus. The stupa consists of a dome at the base; above the dome, there is a cubic structure with the eyes of Buddha looking in all four directions. There are pentagonal "toran" above each of the four sides, with statues engraved on them. Behind and above the torana there are thirteen tiers. Above all the tiers, there is a small space above which lies a "gajur". Rani Pokhari. Ranipokhari () is a historic artificial pond nestled in the heart of Kathmandu. It was built by king Pratap Malla in 1670 for his beloved queen after she lost her son and could not recover from her loss. A large stone statue of an elephant in the south signifies the image of Pratap Malla and his two sons. Balgopaleshwor Temple stands still inside the temple above the pond. Rani Pokhari is opened once a year during the final day of Tihar i.e. Bhai Tika and Chhath festival. The world's largest Chhath takes place every year in Ranipokhari. The pond is one of Kathmandu's most famous landmarks and is known for its religious and aesthetic significance. However, Ranipokhari is now under development, which began in 2019 and is expected to be finished next year, according to reports. Culture. Arts. Kathmandu valley the City of Newars is described as "an enormous treasure house of art and sculptures", which are made of wood, stone, metal, and terracotta, and found in profusion in temples, shrines, stupas, gompas, chaityas and palaces. The art objects are also seen in street corners, lanes, private courtyards and in open ground. Most art is in the form of icons of gods and goddesses. Kathmandu valley has had this art treasure for a very long time, but received worldwide recognition only after the country opened to the outside world in 1950. The religious art of Nepal and Kathmandu in particular consists of an iconic symbolism of the Mother Goddesses such as: Bhavani, Durga, Gaja-Lakshmi, Hariti-Sitala, Mahsishamardini, Saptamatrika (seven mother goddesses), and Sri-Lakshmi (wealth-goddess). From the 3rd century BCE, apart from the Hindu gods and goddesses, Buddhist monuments from the Ashokan period (it is said that Ashoka visited Nepal in 250 BC) have embellished Nepal in general and the valley in particular. These art and architectural edifices encompass three major periods of evolution: the Licchavi or classical period (500 to 900 AD), the post-classical period (1000 to 1400 AD), with strong influence of the Palla art form; the Malla period (1400 onwards) that exhibited explicitly tantric influences coupled with the art of Tibetan Demonology. A broad typology has been ascribed to the decorative designs and carvings created by the people of Nepal. These artists have maintained a blend of Hinduism and Buddhism. The typology, based on the type of material used are: stone art, metal art, wood art, terracotta art, and painting. Museums. Kathmandu is home to a number of museums and art galleries, including the National Museum of Nepal and the Natural History Museum of Nepal. Nepal's art and architecture is an amalgamation of two ancient religions, Hinduism and Buddhism. These are amply reflected in the many temples, shrines, stupas, monasteries, and palaces in the seven well-defined Monument Zones of the Kathmandu valley are part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This amalgamation is also reflected in the planning and exhibitions in museums and art galleries throughout Kathmandu and its sister cities of Patan and Bhaktapur. The museums display unique artefacts and paintings from the 5th century CE to the present day, including archaeological exportation. Museums and art galleries in Kathmandu include: The National Museum is in the western part of Kathmandu, near the Swayambhunath stupa in a historical building constructed in the early 19th century by General Bhimsen Thapa. It is the most important museum in the country, housing an extensive collection of weapons, art and antiquities of historic and cultural importance. The museum was established in 1928 as a collection house of war trophies and weapons, and the initial name of this museum was "Chhauni Silkhana", meaning "the stone house of arms and ammunition". Given its focus, the museum contains many weapons, including locally made firearms used in wars, leather cannons from the 18th–19th century, and medieval and modern works in wood, bronze, stone and paintings. The Natural History Museum is in the southern foothills of Swayambhunath hill and has a sizeable collection of different species of animals, butterflies, and plants. The museum is noted for its display of species, from prehistoric shells to stuffed animals. The Tribhuvan Museum contains artifacts related to King Tribhuvan (1906–1955). It has a variety of pieces including his personal belongings, letters, and papers, memorabilia related to events he was involved in and a rare collection of photos and paintings of Royal family members. The Mahendra Museum is dedicated to the King Mahendra (1920–1972). Like the Tribhuvan Museum, it includes his personal belongings such as decorations, stamps, coins and personal notes and manuscripts, but it also has structural reconstructions of his cabinet room and office chamber. The Hanumandhoka Palace, a lavish medieval palace complex in the Durbar, contains three separate museums of historic importance. These museums include the Birendra museum, which contains items related to the second-last monarch, King Birendra. The enclosed compound of the Narayanhiti Palace Museum is in the north-central part of Kathmandu. "Narayanhiti" () comes from "Narayana" (), a form of the Hindu god Lord Vishnu, and "Hiti" (), meaning "water spout" (the temple of lord Vishnu is opposite to the palace, and the water spout is east of the main entrance to the precinct). The current palace building was built in 1970 in front of the old palace, built in 1915, in the form of a contemporary pagoda. It was built on the occasion of the marriage of the then crown prince and heir apparent to the throne, Birendra. The southern gate of the palace is at the crossing of Prithvipath and Durbar Marg roads. The palace area covers and is fully secured with gates on all sides. This palace was the scene of the Nepali royal massacre. After the fall of the monarchy, it has been converted into a museum. The Taragaon Museum presents the modern history of the Kathmandu valley. It seeks to document 50 years of research and cultural heritage conservation of the Kathmandu Valley, documenting what artists, photographers, architects, and anthropologists from abroad had contributed in the second half of the 20th century. The actual structure of the museum showcases restoration and rehabilitation efforts to preserve the built heritage of Kathmandu. It was designed by Carl Pruscha (master-planner of the Kathmandu Valley) in 1970 and constructed in 1971. Restoration works began in 2010 to rehabilitate the Taragaon hostel into the Taragaon Museum. The design uses local brick along with modern architectural design elements, as well as the use of circle, triangles and squares. The museum is within a short walk from the Boudhanath stupa, which itself can be seen from the museum tower. Art galleries. Kathmandu is a centre for art in Nepal, displaying the work of contemporary artists in the country and also collections of historical artists. Patan in particular is an ancient city noted for its fine arts and crafts. Art in Kathmandu is vibrant, demonstrating a fusion of traditionalism and modern art, derived from a great number of national, Asian, and global influences. Nepali art is commonly divided into two areas: the idealistic traditional painting known as Paubhas in Nepal and perhaps more commonly known as Thangkas in Tibet, closely linked to the country's religious history and on the other hand the contemporary western-style painting, including nature-based compositions or abstract artwork based on Tantric elements and social themes of which painters in Nepal are well noted for. Internationally, the British-based charity, the Kathmandu Contemporary Art Centre is involved with promoting arts in Kathmandu. Kathmandu houses many notable art galleries. The NAFA Gallery, operated by the Arts and crafts Department of the Nepal Academy is housed in Sita Bhavan, a neo-classical old Rana palace. The Srijana Contemporary Art Gallery, inside the Bhrikutimandap Exhibition grounds, hosts the work of contemporary painters and sculptors, and regularly organizes exhibitions. It also runs morning and evening classes in the schools of art. Also of note is the Moti Azima Gallery, in a three-storied building in Bhimsenthan which contains an impressive collection of traditional utensils and handmade dolls and items typical of a medieval Newar house, giving an important insight into Nepali history. The J Art Gallery near the former royal palace in Durbarmarg displays the artwork of eminent, established Nepali painters. The Nepal Art Council Gallery, in the Babar Mahal, on the way to Tribhuvan International Airport contains artwork of both national and international artists and extensive halls regularly used for art exhibitions. Literature. The National Library of Nepal is located in Patan. It is the largest library in the country with more than 70,000 books in English, Nepali, Sanskrit, Hindi, and Nepal Bhasa. The library is in possession of rare scholarly books in Sanskrit and English dating from the 17th century. Kathmandu also contains the Kaiser Library, in the Kaiser Mahal on the ground floor of the Ministry of Education building. This collection of around 45,000 books is derived from a personal collection of Kaiser Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana. It covers a wide range of subjects including history, law, art, religion, and philosophy, as well as a Sanskrit manual of Tantra, which is believed to be over 1,000 years old. The 2015 earthquake caused severe damage to the Ministry of Education building, and the contents of the Kaiser Library have been temporarily relocated. The Asa Archives are also noteworthy. They specialize in medieval history and religious traditions of the Kathmandu valley. The archives, in Kulambhulu, have a collection of some 6,000 loose-leaf handwritten books and 1,000 palm-leaf manuscripts (mostly in Sanskrit or Nepal Bhasa) and a manuscript dated to 1464. Cinema and theatre. Kathmandu is home to Nepali cinema and theatres. The city contains several theatres, including the National Dance Theatre in Kanti Path, the Ganga Theatre, the Himalayan Theatre and the Aarohan Theater Group founded in 1982. The M. Art Theater is based in the city. The Gurukul School of Theatre organizes the Kathmandu International Theater Festival, attracting artists from all over the world. A mini theatre has been opened at the Hanumandhoka Durbar Square, established by the Durbar Conservation and Promotion Committee. Kathmandu has a number of cinemas (old single screen establishments and some new multiplexes) showing Nepali, Bollywood and Hollywood films. Some old establishments include Vishwajyoti Cinema Hall, Jai Nepal Hall, Kumari Cinema Hall, Gopi Krishna Cinema Hall and Guna Cinema Hall. Kathmandu also houses some international standard cinema theatres and multiplexes, such as QFX Cinemas, Cine De Chef, Fcube Cinemas, Q's Cinemas, Big Movies, BSR Movies and many more. Music. Kathmandu is the center of music and dance in Nepal, and these art forms are integral to understanding the city. Musical performances are organized in cultural venues. Music is a part of the traditional aspect of Kathmandu. Gunla is the traditional music festival according to Nepal Sambat. Newar music originated in Kathmandu. Furthermore, music from all over Nepal can be found in Kathmandu. A number of hippies visited Kathmandu during the 1970s and introduced rock music and jazz to the city. Kathmandu is noted internationally for its jazz festival, popularly known as Jazzmandu. It is the only jazz festival in the Himalayan region and was established in March 2002. The festival attracts musicians from countries worldwide, such as Australia, Denmark, United States, Benin, and India. The city has been referenced in numerous songs, including works by Cat Stevens ('Katmandu', "Mona Bone Jakon" (1970), Bob Seger ('Katmandu', "Beautiful Loser" (1975)), Rush ('A Passage to Bangkok', "Pulling into Kathmandu"; "2112", 1976), John Lennon ('Nobody Told Me' (1984, posthumously)), Krematorij ('Kathmandu', "Three Springs" (2000)), Fito Páez ("Tráfico por Katmandú" – "Traffic through Kathmandu") and Cavalcade ('Kathmandu Kid') 2019. Cuisine. The staple food of most people in Kathmandu is dal bhat. This consists of rice and lentil soup, generally served with vegetable curries, achar and sometimes chutney. Momo, a type of Nepali version of Tibetan dumpling, has become prominent in Nepal with many street vendors and restaurants selling it. It is one of the most popular fast foods in Kathmandu. Various Nepali variants of momo including buff (i.e. buffalo) dumplings, chicken dumplings, and vegetarian momo are famous in Kathmandu. Most of the cuisines found in Kathmandu are non-vegetarian. However, the practice of vegetarianism is not uncommon, and vegetarian cuisines can be found throughout the city. Consumption of beef is very uncommon and considered taboo in many places. "Buff" (meat of water buffalo) is very common. There is a strong tradition of "buff" consumption in Kathmandu, especially among Newars, which is not found in other parts of Nepal. Consumption of pork was considered taboo until a few decades ago. Due to the intermixing with Kirat cuisine from eastern Nepal, pork has found a place in Kathmandu dishes. A fringe population of devout Hindus and Muslims consider it taboo. The Muslims forbid eating "buff" as from Quran while Hindus eat all varieties except beef as they consider cow to be a goddess and symbol of purity. The chief lunch/snack for locals and visitors is mostly "Momo" or "Chowmein". Kathmandu had only one western-style restaurant in 1955. A large number of restaurants in Kathmandu have since opened, catering Nepali cuisine, Tibetan cuisine, Chinese cuisine and Indian cuisine in particular. Many other restaurants have opened to accommodate locals, expatriates, and tourists. The growth of tourism in Kathmandu has led to culinary creativity and the development of hybrid foods to accommodate for tourists such as American chop suey, which is a sweet-and-sour sauce with crispy noodles with a fried egg commonly added on top and other westernized adaptations of traditional cuisine. Continental cuisine can be found in selected places. International chain restaurants are rare, but some outlets of Pizza Hut and KFC have recently opened there. It also has several outlets of the international ice-cream chain Baskin-Robbins. Kathmandu has a larger proportion of tea drinkers than coffee drinkers. Tea, locally known as Chiya, is widely served but is extremely weak by western standards. It is richer and contains tea leaves boiled with milk, sugar, and spices. Tea shops that specially serve tea with other snacks are widely available. Alcohol is widely drunk, and there are numerous local variants of alcoholic beverages. Drinking and driving is illegal, and authorities have a zero-tolerance policy. Ailaa and thwon (alcohol made from rice) are the alcoholic beverages of Kathmandu, found in all the local bhattis (alcohol serving eateries). Chhyaang, tongba (fermented millet or barley) and raksi are alcoholic beverages from other parts of Nepal which are found in Kathmandu. However, shops and bars in Kathmandu widely sell western and Nepali beers. Festivals. Most of the fairs and festivals in Kathmandu originated in the Malla period or earlier. Traditionally, these festivals were celebrated by Newars. In recent years, these festivals have found wider participation from other Kathmanduites as well. As the capital of the Nepal, various national festivals are celebrated in Kathmandu. With mass migration to the city, the cultures of Khas from the west, Kirats from the east, Bon/Tibetan from the north, and Mithila from the south meet in the capital and mingle harmoniously. The festivities such as the Ghode (horse) Jatra, Indra Jatra, Dashain Durga Puja festivals, Shivratri and many more are observed by all Hindu and Buddhist communities of Kathmandu with devotional fervor and enthusiasm. Social regulation in the codes enacted incorporates Hindu traditions and ethics. These were followed by the Shah kings and previous kings, as devout Hindus and protectors of the Buddhist religion. Cultural continuity has been maintained for centuries in the exclusive worship of goddesses and deities in Kathmandu and the rest of the country. These deities include the Ajima, Taleju (or Tulja Bhavani or Taleju Bhawani) and her other form : Digu Taleju (or Degu Taleju) and Kumari (the living goddess). The artistic edifices have now become places of worship in the everyday life of the people, therefore a roster is maintained to observe annual festivals. There are 133 festivals held in the year. Some of the traditional festivals observed in Kathmandu, apart from those previously mentioned, are Bada Dashain, Tihar, Chhath, Maghe Sankranti, Nag Panchami, Janai Purnima, Pancha Dan, Teej/Rishi Panchami, Pahan Charhe, Jana Baha Dyah Jatra (White Machchhendranath Jatra), and Matatirtha Aunsi. Religions. Hinduism. Hinduism is one of the indigenous beliefs of the city. Assumedly, together with the kingdom of Licchhavi (c. 400 to 750), Hinduism and the endogam social stratification of the caste was established in Kathmandu Valley. The Pashupatinath Temple, Changu Narayan Temple, and the Kasthamandap are of particular importance to Hindus. Other notable Hindu temples in Kathmandu and the surrounding valley include Bajrayogini Temple, Dakshinkali Temple, Guhyeshwari Temple, and the Shobha Bhagawati shrine. The Bagmati River which flows through Kathmandu is considered a holy river both by Hindus and Buddhists, and many Hindu temples are on the banks of this river. The importance of the Bagmati also lies in the fact that Hindus are cremated on its banks, and Kirants are buried in the hills by its side. According to the Nepali Hindu tradition, the dead body must be dipped three times into the Bagmati before cremation. The chief mourner (usually the first son) who lights the funeral pyre must take a holy riverwater bath immediately after cremation. Many relatives who join the funeral procession also take bath in the Bagmati or sprinkle the holy water on their bodies at the end of cremation as the Bagmati is believed to purify people spiritually. Buddhism. Buddhism was brought into Kathmandu with the arrival of Buddhist monks during the time of Buddha (c. 563 – 483 BCE). They established a forest monastery in Sankhu. This monastery was renovated by Shakyas after they fled genocide from Virudhaka (r. 491–461 BCE). During the Hindu Lichchavi era (c. 400 to 750), various monasteries and orders were created which successively led to the formation of Newar Buddhism, which is still practiced in the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Sanskrit. Legendary Princess Bhrikuti (7th-century) and artist Araniko (1245–1306 CE) from that tradition of Kathmandu valley played a significant role in spreading Buddhism in Tibet and China. There are over 108 traditional monasteries (Bahals and Baháʼís) in Kathmandu based on Newar Buddhism. Since the 1960s, the permanent Tibetan Buddhist population of Kathmandu has risen significantly so that there are now over fifty Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in the area. Also, with the modernization of Newar Buddhism, various Theravada Bihars have been established. Kirat Mundhum. Kirant Mundhum is one of the indigenous animistic practices of Nepal. It is practiced by the Kirat people. Some animistic aspects of Kirant beliefs, such as ancestor worship (worship of Ajima) are also found in Newars of Kirant origin. Ancient religious sites believed to be worshipped by ancient Kirats, such as Pashupatinath, Wanga Akash Bhairabh (Yalambar) and Ajima are now worshipped by people of all Dharmic religions in Kathmandu. Kirats who have migrated from other parts of Nepal to Kathmandu practice Mundhum in the city. Other religions. Sikhism is practiced primarily in Gurudwara at Kupundole. An earlier temple of Sikhism is also present in Kathmandu which is now defunct. Jainism is practiced by a small community. A Jain temple is present in Gyaneshwar, where Jains practice their faith. According to the records of the Spiritual Assembly of the Baháʼís of Nepal, there are approximately 300 followers of the Baháʼí Faith in Kathmandu valley. They have a national office in Shantinagar, Baneshwor. The Baháʼís also have classes for children at the National Centre and other localities in Kathmandu. In Kathmandu alone there are about 170 Christian churches. Christian missionary hospitals, welfare organizations, and schools are also operating. Nepali citizens who served as soldiers in Indian and British armies, who had converted to Christianity while in service, on return to Nepal continue to practice their religion. They have contributed to the spread of Christianity and the building of churches in Nepal and in Kathmandu, in particular. Education. The oldest modern school in Nepal, the Durbar High School, and the oldest college, the Tri-Chandra College, are both in Kathmandu. The largest (according to number of students and colleges), the oldest and most distinguished university in Nepal the Tribhuvan University, located in Kirtipur. The second largest university, Kathmandu University (KU), is in Dhulikhel, Kavre on the outskirts of Kathmandu. It is the second oldest university in Nepal, established in November 1991. Not surprisingly the best schools and colleges of Nepal are located in Kathmandu and its adjoining cities. Every year thousands of students from all over Nepal arrive at Kathmandu to get admission in the various schools and colleges. One of the key concerns of educationists and concerned citizens is the massive outflux of students from Nepal to outside Nepal for studies. Every year thousands of students apply for "No Objection Certificates" for studying abroad. Consultancy firms specializing in preparing students to go abroad can be found in all prominent locations. The reason for such an outflux range from perceived low quality of education, political instability, fewer opportunities in the job market, opportunities for earning while learning abroad and better job prospects with an international degree. Healthcare. Healthcare in Kathmandu is the most developed in Nepal, and the city and surrounding valley is home to some of the best hospitals and clinics in the country. Bir Hospital is the oldest, established in July 1889 by Bir Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana. Notable hospitals include Bir Hospital, Nepal Medical College (Jorpati) and Teaching Hospital, Tribhuvan University Institute of Medicine (Teaching Hospital), Patan Hospital, Kathmandu Model Hospital, Scheer Memorial Hospital, Om Hospital, Norvic Hospital, Grande International Hospital, Nobel Hospital and many more. The city is supported by specialist hospitals/clinics such as Shahid Shukraraj Tropical Hospital, Shahid Gangalal Foundation, Kathmandu Veterinary Hospital, Nepal Eye Hospital, Kanti Children's Hospital, Nepal International Clinic (Travel and Mountain Medicine Center), Neuro Center, Spinal Rehabilitation center and Bhaktapur Cancer Hospital. Most of the general hospitals are in the city center, although several clinics are elsewhere in Kathmandu district. Tilganga Institute of Ophthalmology is an Ophthalmological hospital in Kathmandu. It pioneered the production of low cost intraocular lenses (IOLs), which are used in cataract surgery. The team of Dr. Sanduk Ruit in Tilganga pioneered sutureless small-incision cataract surgery (SICS), a technique which has been used to treat 4 million of the world's 20 million people with cataract blindness. Medical colleges. Institute of Medicine, the central college of Tribhuvan University is the first medical college of Nepal and is in Maharajgunj, Kathmandu. It was established in 1972 and started to impart medical education from 1978. Other major institutions include Patan Academy of Health Sciences, Kathmandu Medical College, Nepal Medical College, KIST Medical College, Nepal Army Institute of Health Sciences, National Academy of Medical Sciences (NAMS) and Kathmandu University School of Medical Sciences (KUSMS), are also in or around Kathmandu. Economy. The location and terrain of Kathmandu have played a significant role in the development of a stable economy which spans millennia. The city is in an ancient lake basin, with fertile soil and flat terrain. This geography helped form a society based on agriculture. This, combined with its location between India and China, helped establish Kathmandu as an important trading centre over the centuries. Kathmandu's trade is an ancient profession that flourished along an offshoot of the Silk Road which linked India and Tibet. From centuries past, Lhasa Newar merchants of Kathmandu have conducted trade across the Himalaya and contributed to spreading art styles and Buddhism across Central Asia. Other traditional occupations are farming, metal casting, woodcarving, painting, weaving, and pottery. Kathmandu is the most important industrial and commercial centre in Nepal. The Nepal Stock Exchange, the head office of the national bank, the chamber of commerce, as well as head offices of national and international banks, telecommunication companies, the electricity authority, and various other national and international organizations are in Kathmandu. The major economic hubs are the New Road, Durbar Marg, Ason and Putalisadak. The economic output of the metropolitan area of around Rs. 550 billion approximately per year alone is worth more than one third of national GDP (nominal), while the per capita income of $2200 is approximately three times the national average. Kathmandu exports handicrafts, artworks, garments, carpets, pashmina, paper; trade accounts for 21% of its revenues. Manufacturing is also important and accounts for 19% of the revenue that Kathmandu generates. Garments and woolen carpets are the most notable manufactured products. Other economic sectors in Kathmandu include agriculture (9%), education (6%), transport (6%), and hotels and restaurants (5%). Kathmandu is famous for lokta paper and pashmina shawls. Tourism. Tourism is considered another important industry in Nepal. This industry started around 1950, as the country's political makeup changed and ended the country's isolation from the rest of the world. In 1956, air transportation was established and the Tribhuvan Highway, between Kathmandu and Raxaul (at India's border), was started. Separate organizations were created in Kathmandu to promote this activity; some of these include the Tourism Development Board, the Department of Tourism and the Civil Aviation Department. Furthermore, Nepal became a member of several international tourist associations. Establishing diplomatic relations with other nations further accentuated this activity. The hotel industry, travel agencies, training of tourist guides, and targeted publicity campaigns are the chief reasons for the remarkable growth of this industry in Nepal, and in Kathmandu in particular. Since then, tourism in Nepal has thrived. It is the country's most important industry. Tourism is a major source of income for most of the people in the city, with several hundred thousand visitors annually. Hindu and Buddhist pilgrims from all over the world visit Kathmandu's religious sites such as Pashupatinath, Swayambhunath, Boudhanath, Changunarayan and Budhanilkantha. From a mere 6,179 tourists in 1961/62, the number increased to 491,504 in 1999/2000. In economic terms, the foreign exchange registered 3.8% of the GDP in 1995/96 but then started declining. Following the end of the Maoist insurgency, there was a significant rise in the number of tourist arrivals, with 509,956 tourists recorded in 2009. Since then, tourism has improved as the country transitioned into a republic. The high level of tourism is attributed to the natural grandeur of the Himalayas and the rich cultural heritage of the country.The neighbourhood of Thamel is Kathmandu's primary "traveller's ghetto", packed with guest houses, restaurants, shops, and bookstores, catering to tourists. Another neighbourhood of growing popularity is Jhamel, a name for Jhamsikhel that was coined to rhyme with Thamel. Jhochhen Tol, also known as "Freak Street", is Kathmandu's original traveller's haunt, made popular by the hippies of the 1960s and 1970s; it remains a popular alternative to Thamel. Ason is a bazaar and ceremonial square on the old trade route to Tibet, and provides a fine example of a traditional neighbourhood. With the opening of the tourist industry after the change in the political scenario of Nepal in 1950, the hotel industry drastically improved. Now Kathmandu boasts several luxuries such as the Hyatt Regency, Dwarika's, Hotel Yak & Yeti, The Everest Hotel, Hotel Radisson, Hotel De L'Annapurna, The Malla Hotel, Shangri-La Hotel (not operated by the Shangri-La Hotel Group) and Hotel Shanker. There are several four-star hotels such as Akama Hotel, Hotel Vaishali, Hotel Narayani, The Blue Star and Grand Hotel. The Garden Hotel, Hotel Ambassador, and Aloha Inn are among the three-star hotels in Kathmandu. Hotels like Hyatt Regency, De L'Annapurna, and Yak & Yeti are among the five-star hotels with casinos as well. Transport. Road. The total length of roads in Nepal is recorded to be , as of 2003–04. This fairly large network has helped the economic development of the country, particularly in the fields of agriculture, horticulture, vegetable farming, industry and also tourism. In view of the hilly terrain, transportation takes place in Kathmandu are mainly by road and air. Kathmandu is connected by the Tribhuvan Highway to the south connecting India, Prithvi Highway to the west and Araniko Highway to the north connecting China. The BP Highway connects Kathmandu to the eastern part of Nepal through Sindhuli. The fast-track is under construction which will be the shortest route to connect Terai with the valley. Sajha Yatayat provides regular bus services throughout Kathmandu and the surrounding valley. Other bus companies including micro-bus companies operate several unscheduled routes. Trolleybusses used to operate on the route between Tripureshwor and Suryabinayak on a 13-kilometer route. Air. The main international airport serving Kathmandu valley is the Tribhuvan International Airport, about from the city centre and is operated by the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal. It has two terminals, one domestic and one international. At present, it connects 30 cities around the globe in Europe, Asia and the Middle East such as Istanbul, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Singapore, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Dhaka, Paro, Lhasa, Chengdu, Guangzhou and Hong Kong. Since 2013, Turkish Airlines has connected Istanbul to Kathmandu. Oman Air also connects Muscat to Kathmandu since 2010. Nepal Airlines started flying to Tokyo-Narita from 2 March 2020. Regionally, several Nepali airlines operate from the city, including Buddha Air, Nepal Airlines, Shree Airlines and Yeti Airlines to other major towns across Nepal. Ropeways. Ropeways are another important transportation means in hilly terrain. A ropeway operated between Kathmandu and Hetauda over a length of which carried 25 tonnes of goods per hour. It has since been discontinued due to poor carrying capacity and maintenance issues. During the Rana period, a ropeway was constructed between Mathatirtha in Kathmandu to Dhorsing in Makawanpur of over in length, which carried a cargo of 8 tonnes per hour. At present, a cable car service is operated in Kathmandu in Chandragiri Hills. Media. Kathmandu is the television hub of Nepal. Nepal Television, established in 1985, is the oldest and most-watched television channel in Nepal, as is government-owned NTV PLUS and also Kantipur Television, Image Channel, Sagarmatha Television, Himalaya TV, AP1 TV and other channels. The headquarters of many of the country's news outlets are also in the city including Kathmandu Tribune, the government-owned Gorkhapatra (the oldest national daily newspaper in Nepal), The Kathmandu Post, Nepali Times, Kantipur Publications and its paper Kantipur, Naya Patrika, The Himalayan Times, Karobar Economic Daily, Aarthik Abhiyan National Daily and Jana Aastha National Weekly. Nepal Republic Media, the publisher of myRepublica, joined a publishing alliance with the International Herald Tribune (IHT), to publish the Asia Pacific Edition of IHT from Kathmandu from 20 July 2011. There is a state-run National News Agency (RSS). Radio Nepal is a state-run organization that operates national and regional radio stations. These stations are: Hits FM, Radio Kantipur, HBC 94 FM, Radio Sagarmatha and Image FM. The BBC also has an FM broadcasting station in Kathmandu. Few Community radio stations such as Radio Pratibodh – 102.4 MHz, Radio Upatyaka – 87.6 MHz etc. also broadcast within the valley. Sports. Cricket and Football are the most popular sports among the younger generation in Nepal and there are several stadiums in the city. The sport is governed by the National Sports Council from its headquarters in Kathmandu. The only international football stadium in the city is the Dasharath Rangasala, a multi-purpose stadium used mostly for football matches and cultural events, in the neighbourhood of Tripureshwor. It is the largest stadium in Nepal with a capacity of 25,000 spectators, built in 1956. Martyr's Memorial League is also held in this ground every year. The stadium was renovated with Chinese aid before the 8th South Asian Games were held in Kathmandu and floodlights were installed. Kathmandu is home to the oldest football clubs of Nepal such as Ranipokhari Corner Team (RCT), Sankata Club and New Road Team (NRT). Other prominent clubs include Manang Marsyangdi Club, Machhindra FC, Tribhuvan Army Club (TAC) and Nepal Police Club. Kathmandu is also home of some of the oldest cricket clubs in Nepal, such as Yengal Sports Club. Kathmandu Kings XI represents Kathmandu in the Everest Premier League. International relations and organizations. The Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC), in order to promote international relations, has established an International Relations Secretariat (IRC). KMC's first international relationship was established in 1975 with the city of Eugene, Oregon, United States. This activity has been further enhanced by establishing formal relationships with 8 other cities: Matsumoto City (Nagano Prefecture, Japan), Rochester (New York State), Yangon (formerly Rangoon, Myanmar), Xi'an (Shaanxi, China), Minsk (Belarus), and Pyongyang (North Korea). KMC's constant endeavour is to enhance its interaction with South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries, other international agencies and many other major cities of the world to achieve better urban management and developmental programs for Kathmandu. Kathmandu is home to several international and regional organizations, including the SAARC Secretariat and the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD). Twin towns – sister cities. Kathmandu is twinned with:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17503

Leisure

Leisure has often been defined as a quality of experience or as free time. Free time is time spent away from business, work, job hunting, domestic chores, and education, as well as necessary activities such as eating and sleeping. Leisure as an experience usually emphasizes dimensions of perceived freedom and choice. It is done for "its own sake", for the quality of experience and involvement. Other classic definitions include Thorstein Veblen's (1899) of "nonproductive consumption of time." Free time is not easy to define due to the multiplicity of approaches used to determine its essence. Different disciplines have definitions reflecting their common issues: for example, sociology on social forces and contexts and psychology as mental and emotional states and conditions. From a research perspective, these approaches have an advantage of being quantifiable and comparable over time and place. Leisure studies and sociology of leisure are the academic disciplines concerned with the study and analysis of leisure. Recreation differs from leisure in that it is a purposeful activity that includes the experience of leisure in activity contexts. Economists consider that leisure times are valuable to a person like wages that they could earn for the same time spend towards the activity. If it were not, people would have worked instead of taking leisure. However, the distinction between leisure and unavoidable activities is not a rigidly defined one, e.g. people sometimes do work-oriented tasks for pleasure as well as for long-term utility. A related concept is social leisure, which involves leisurely activities in social settings, such as extracurricular activities, e.g. sports, clubs. Another related concept is that of family leisure. Relationships with others is usually a major factor in both satisfaction and choice. The concept of leisure as a human right was realised in article 24 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. History. Leisure has historically been the privilege of the upper class. Opportunities for leisure came with more money, or organization, and less working time, rising dramatically in the mid-to-late 19th century, starting in Great Britain and spreading to other rich nations in Europe. It spread as well to the United States, although that country had a reputation in Europe for providing much less leisure despite its wealth. Immigrants to the United States discovered they had to work harder than they did in Europe. Economists continue to investigate why Americans work longer hours. In a recent book, Laurent Turcot argues that leisure was not created in the 19th century but is imbricated in the occidental world since the beginning of history. Canada. In Canada, leisure in the country is related to the decline in work hours and is shaped by moral values, and the ethnic-religious and gender communities. In a cold country with winter's long nights, and summer's extended daylight, favorite leisure activities include horse racing, team sports such as hockey, singalongs, roller skating and board games. The churches tried to steer leisure activities, by preaching against drinking and scheduling annual revivals and weekly club activities. By 1930 radio played a major role in uniting Canadians behind their local or regional hockey teams. Play-by-play sports coverage, especially of ice hockey, absorbed fans far more intensely than newspaper accounts the next day. Rural areas were especially influenced by sports coverage. France. Leisure by the mid-19th century was no longer an individualistic activity. It was increasingly organized. In the French industrial city of Lille, with a population of 80,000 in 1858, the cabarets or taverns for the working class numbered 1300, or one for every three houses. Lille counted 63 drinking and singing clubs, 37 clubs for card players, 23 for bowling, 13 for skittles, and 18 for archery. The churches likewise have their social organizations. Each club had a long roster of officers, and a busy schedule of banquets, festivals and competitions. At the turn of the century thousands of these clubs had been created. United Kingdom. As literacy, wealth, ease of travel, and a broadened sense of community grew in Britain from the mid-19th century onward, there was more time and interest in leisure activities of all sorts, on the part of all classes. Opportunities for leisure activities increased because real wages continued to grow and hours of work continued to decline. In urban Britain, the nine-hour day was increasingly the norm; the 1874 Factory Act limited the workweek to 56.5 hours. The movement toward an eight-hour day. Furthermore, system of routine annual vacations came into play, starting with white-collar workers and moving into the working-class. Some 200 seaside resorts emerged thanks to cheap hotels and inexpensive railway fares, widespread banking holidays and the fading of many religious prohibitions against secular activities on Sundays. By the late Victorian era, the leisure industry had emerged in all British cities, and the pattern was copied across Western Europe and North America. It provided scheduled entertainment of suitable length and convenient locales at inexpensive prices. These include sporting events, music halls, and popular theater. By 1880 football was no longer the preserve of the social elite, as it attracted large working-class audiences. Average gate was 5,000 in 1905, rising to 23,000 in 1913. That amounted to 6 million paying customers with a weekly turnover of £400,000. Sports by 1900 generated some three percent of the total gross national product in Britain. Professionalization of sports was the norm, although some new activities reached an upscale amateur audience, such as lawn tennis and golf. Women were now allowed in some sports, such as archery, tennis, badminton and gymnastics. Leisure was primarily a male activity, with middle-class women allowed in at the margins. There were class differences with upper-class clubs, and working-class and middle-class pubs. Heavy drinking declined; there was more betting on outcomes. Participation in sports and all sorts of leisure activities increased for average English people, and their interest in spectator sports increased dramatically. By the 1920s the cinema and radio attracted all classes, ages, and genders in very large numbers. Giant palaces were built for the huge audiences that wanted to see Hollywood films. In Liverpool 40 percent of the population attended one of the 69 cinemas once a week; 25 percent went twice. Traditionalists grumbled about the American cultural invasion, but the permanent impact was minor. The British showed a more profound interest in sports, and in greater variety, that any rival. They gave pride of place to such moral issues as sportsmanship and fair play. Cricket became symbolic of the Imperial spirit throughout the Empire. Soccer proved highly attractive to the urban working classes, which introduced the rowdy spectator to the sports world. In some sports, there was significant controversy in the fight for amateur purity especially in rugby and rowing. New games became popular almost overnight, including golf, lawn tennis, cycling and hockey. Women were much more likely to enter these sports than the old established ones. The aristocracy and landed gentry, with their ironclad control over land rights, dominated hunting, shooting, fishing and horse racing. Cricket had become well-established among the English upper class in the 18th century, and was a major factor in sports competition among the public schools. Army units around the Empire had time on their hands, and encouraged the locals to learn cricket so they could have some entertaining competition. Most of the Empire embraced cricket, with the exception of Canada. Cricket test matches (international) began by the 1870s; the most famous is that between Australia and Britain for "The Ashes". Types. The range of leisure activities extends from the very informal and casual to highly organised and long-lasting activities. A significant subset of leisure activities are hobbies which are undertaken for personal satisfaction, usually on a regular basis, and often result in satisfaction through skill development or recognised achievement, sometimes in the form of a product. The list of hobbies is ever changing as society changes. Substantial and fulfilling hobbies and pursuits are described by Sociologist Robert Stebbins as "serious leisure". The "serious leisure perspective" is a way of viewing the wide range of leisure pursuits in three main categories: casual leisure, serious leisure, and project-based leisure. Serious leisure. ""Serious leisure" is the systematic pursuit of an amateur, hobbyist, or volunteer ... that is highly substantial, interesting, and fulfilling and where ... participants find a [leisure] career...". For example, collecting stamps or maintaining a public wetland area. People undertaking serious leisure can be categorised as amateurs, volunteers or hobbyists. Their engagement is distinguished from casual leisure by a high level of perseverance, effort, knowledge and training required and durable benefits and the sense that one can create in effect a leisure career through such activity. The range of serious leisure activities is growing rapidly in modern times with developed societies having greater leisure time, longevity and prosperity. The Internet is providing increased support for amateurs and hobbyists to communicate, display and share products. Reading. As literacy and leisure time expanded after 1900, reading became a popular pastime. New additions to adult fiction doubled during the 1920s, reaching 2800 new books a year by 1935. Libraries tripled their stocks, and saw heavy demand for new fiction. A dramatic innovation was the inexpensive paperback, pioneered by Allen Lane (1902–70) at Penguin Books in 1935. The first titles included novels by Ernest Hemingway and Agatha Christie. They were sold cheap (usually sixpence) in a wide variety of inexpensive stores such as Woolworth's. Penguin aimed at an educated middle class "middlebrow" audience. It avoided the downscale image of American paperbacks. The line signaled cultural self-improvement and political education. The more polemical Penguin Specials, typically with a leftist orientation for Labour readers, were widely distributed during World War II. However the war years caused a shortage of staff for publishers and book stores, and a severe shortage of rationed paper, worsened by the air raid on Paternoster Square in 1940 that burned 5 million books in warehouses. Romantic fiction was especially popular, with Mills and Boon the leading publisher. Romantic encounters were embodied in a principle of sexual purity that demonstrated not only social conservatism, but also how heroines could control their personal autonomy. Adventure magazines became quite popular, especially those published by DC Thomson; the publisher sent observers around the country to talk to boys and learn what they wanted to read about. The story line in magazines and cinema that most appealed to boys was the glamorous heroism of British soldiers fighting wars that were perceived as exciting and just. Casual leisure. ""Casual leisure" is immediately, intrinsically rewarding; and it is a relatively short-lived, pleasurable activity requiring little or no special training to enjoy it." For example, watching TV or going for a swim. Project-based leisure. ""Project-based leisure" is a short-term, moderately complicated, either one-shot or occasional, though infrequent, creative undertaking carried out in free time." For example, working on a single Wikipedia article or building a garden feature. Cultural differences. Time available for leisure varies from one society to the next, although anthropologists have found that hunter-gatherers tend to have significantly more leisure time than people in more complex societies. As a result, band societies such as the Shoshone of the Great Basin came across as extraordinarily lazy to European colonialists. Workaholics, less common than the social myths, are those who work compulsively at the expense of other activities. They prefer to work rather than spend time socializing and engaging in other leisure activities. European and American men statistically have more leisure time than women, due to both household and parenting responsibilities and increasing participation in the paid employment. In Europe and the United States, adult men usually have between one and nine hours more leisure time than women do each week. Family leisure. Family leisure is defined as time that parents, children and siblings spend together in free time or recreational activities, and it can be expanded to address intergenerational family leisure as time that grandparents, parents, and grandchildren spend together in free time or recreational activities. Leisure can become a central place for the development of emotional closeness and strong family bonds. Contexts such as urban/rural shape the perspectives, meanings, and experiences of family leisure. For example, leisure moments are part of work in rural areas, and the rural idyll is enacted by urban families on weekends, but both urban and rural families somehow romanticize rural contexts as ideal spaces for family making (connection to nature, slower and more intimate space, notion of a caring social fabric, tranquillity, etc.). Also, much "family leisure" requires tasks that are most often assigned to women. Family leisure also includes playing together with family members on the weekend day. Aging. Leisure is important across the lifespan and can facilitate a sense of control and self-worth. Older adults, specifically, can benefit from physical, social, emotional, cultural, and spiritual aspects of leisure. Leisure engagement and relationships are commonly central to "successful" and satisfying aging. For example, engaging in leisure with grandchildren can enhance feelings of generativity, whereby older adults can achieve well-being by leaving a legacy beyond themselves for future generations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17844

Lord Peter Wimsey

Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey (later 17th Duke of Denver) is the fictional protagonist in a series of detective novels and short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers (and their continuation by Jill Paton Walsh). A dilettante who solves mysteries for his own amusement, Wimsey is an archetype for the British gentleman detective. He is often assisted by his valet and former batman, Mervyn Bunter; by his good friend and later brother-in-law, police detective Charles Parker; and, in a few books, by Harriet Vane, who becomes his wife. Biography. Background. Born in 1890 and ageing in real time, Wimsey is described as being of average height, with straw-coloured hair, a beaked nose, and a vaguely foolish face. Reputedly his looks are patterned after those of academic and poet Roy Ridley, whom Sayers briefly met after witnessing him read his Newdigate Prize-winning poem "Oxford" at the Encaenia ceremony in July 1913. Twice in the novels (in "Murder Must Advertise" and "Busman's Honeymoon") his looks are compared to those of the actor Ralph Lynn. Wimsey also possesses considerable intelligence and athletic ability, evidenced by his playing cricket for Oxford University while earning a First. He creates a spectacularly successful publicity campaign for Whifflet cigarettes while working for Pym's Publicity Ltd, and at age 40 is able to turn three cartwheels in the office corridor, stopping just short of the boss's open office door ("Murder Must Advertise"). Among Lord Peter's hobbies, in addition to criminology, is collecting incunabula, books from the earliest days of printing. He is an expert on matters of food (and especially wine), male fashion, and classical music. He excels at the piano, including Bach's works for keyboard instruments. Lord Peter likes driving fast and keeps a powerful Daimler (for example, a 12-cylinder or "double-six" 1927 Daimler four-seater); he calls these cars "Mrs Merdle" after a character in Charles Dickens's "Little Dorrit" who "hated fuss". In the eleventh novel, "Busman's Honeymoon", we are told he has owned nine Daimlers with this name. Lord Peter Wimsey's ancestry begins with the 12th-century knight Gerald de Wimsey, who went with King Richard the Lionheart on the Third Crusade and took part in the Siege of Acre. This makes the Wimseys an unusually ancient family, since "Very few English noble families go that far in the first creation; rebellions and monarchic head choppings had seen to that", as reviewer Janet Hitchman noted in the introduction to "Striding Folly". The family coat of arms, first mentioned in "Gaudy Night", is "Sable, 3 mice courant, argent; crest, a domestic cat couched as to spring, proper". The family motto, displayed under its coat of arms, is "As my Whimsy takes me." Early life. Lord Peter was the second of the three children of Mortimer Wimsey, 15th Duke of Denver, and Honoria Lucasta Delagardie, who lives on throughout the novels as the Dowager Duchess of Denver. She is witty and intelligent, and strongly supports her younger son, whom she plainly prefers over her less intelligent, more conventional older son Gerald, the 16th Duke. Gerald's snobbish wife, Helen, detests Peter. Gerald's son and heir is the devil-may-care Viscount St George. Lady Mary, the younger sister of the 16th Duke, and of Lord Peter, leans strongly to the political left. At one time she planned to elope with a radical left agitator, and though this did not come about she did scandalise Helen by marrying a policeman of working-class origins. Lord Peter Wimsey is called "Lord" as he is the younger son of a duke. This is a courtesy title; he is not a peer and has no right to sit in the House of Lords, nor does the courtesy title pass on to any offspring he may have. As a boy, Peter was, to the great distress of his father, strongly attached to an old, smelly poacher living at the edge of the family estate. In his youth, Peter was influenced by his maternal uncle, Paul Delagardie, who took it upon himself to instruct his nephew in the facts of life – how to conduct various love affairs and treat his lovers. Lord Peter was educated at Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford, graduating with a first-class degree in history. He was also an outstanding cricketer, whose performance was still well remembered decades later. Though not taking up an academic career, he was left with an enduring and deep love for Oxford. Great War and aftermath. To his uncle's disappointment, Wimsey fell deeply in love with a young woman named Barbara and became engaged to her. When the First World War broke out, he hastened to join the British Army, releasing Barbara from her engagement in case he was killed or mutilated. The girl later married another, less principled officer. Wimsey served on the Western Front from 1914 to 1918, reaching the rank of Major in the Rifle Brigade. He was appointed an intelligence officer, and on one occasion he infiltrated the staff room of a German officer. Though not explicitly stated, that feat implies that Wimsey spoke a fluent and unaccented German. As noted in "Have His Carcase", he communicated at that time with British Intelligence using the Playfair cipher and became proficient in its use. For reasons never clarified, after the end of his spy mission, Wimsey in the later part of the war moved from Intelligence and resumed the role of a regular line officer. He was a conscientious and effective commanding officer, popular with the men under his command—an affection still retained by Wimsey's former soldiers many years after the war, as is evident from a short passage in "Clouds of Witness" and an extensive reminiscence in "Gaudy Night". In particular, while in the army he met Sergeant Mervyn Bunter, who had previously been in service. In 1918, Wimsey was wounded by artillery fire near Caudry in France. He suffered a breakdown due to shell shock (which we now call post-traumatic stress disorder but which was then often thought, by those without first-hand experience of it, to be a species of malingering) and was eventually sent home. While sharing this experience, which the Dowager Duchess referred to as "a jam", Wimsey and Bunter arranged that if they were both to survive the war, Bunter would become Wimsey's valet. Throughout the books, Bunter takes care to address Wimsey as "My Lord". Nevertheless, he is a friend as well as a servant, and Wimsey again and again expresses amazement at Bunter's high efficiency and competence in virtually every sphere of life. After the war, Wimsey was ill for many months, recovering at the family's ancestral home in Duke's Denver, a fictional setting—as is the Dukedom of Denver—about 15 miles (24 km) beyond the real Denver in Norfolk, on the A10 near Downham Market. Wimsey was for a time unable to give servants any orders whatsoever, since his wartime experience made him associate the giving of an order with causing the death of the person to whom the order was given. Bunter arrived and, with the approval of the Dowager Duchess, took up his post as valet. Bunter moved Wimsey to a London flat at 110A Piccadilly, W1, while Wimsey recovered. Even much later, however, Wimsey would have relapses—especially when his actions caused a murderer to be hanged. As noted in "Whose Body?", on such occasions Bunter would take care of Wimsey and tenderly put him to bed, and they would revert to being "Major Wimsey" and "Sergeant Bunter". In the reissue of "The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club" (1935), the biography of Wimsey is "brought up to date" by his uncle, Paul Austin Delagardie, purportedly at the request of Sayers herself, further giving the illusion that he is a real person. At this point, Wimsey is claimed to be 45 years old and "time he was settled". The biography takes up the last eight pages of the book and concludes with the statement that Wimsey "has always had everything except the things he really wanted, and I suppose he is luckier than most." Detective work. Wimsey begins his hobby of investigation by recovering "The Attenbury Emeralds" in 1921. At the beginning of "Whose Body?", there appears the unpleasant Inspector Sugg, who is extremely hostile to Wimsey and tries to exclude him from the investigation (reminiscent of the relations between Sherlock Holmes and Inspector Lestrade). However, Wimsey is able to bypass Sugg through his friendship with Scotland Yard detective Charles Parker, a sergeant in 1921. At the end of "Whose Body?", Wimsey generously allows Sugg to take completely undeserved credit for the solution; the grateful Sugg cannot go on with his hostility to Wimsey. In later books, Sugg fades away and Wimsey's relations with the police become dominated by his amicable partnership with Parker, who eventually rises to the rank of Commander (and becomes Wimsey's brother-in-law). Bunter, a man of many talents himself, not least photography, often proves instrumental in Wimsey's investigations. However, Wimsey is not entirely well. At the end of the investigation in "Whose Body?" (1923), Wimsey hallucinates that he is back in the trenches. He soon recovers his senses and goes on a long holiday. In "Clouds of Witness" (1926), Wimsey travels to the fictional Riddlesdale in North Yorkshire to assist his elder brother Gerald, who has been accused of murdering Captain Denis Cathcart, their sister's fiancé. As Gerald is the Duke of Denver, he is tried by the entire House of Lords, as required by the law at that time, to much scandal and the distress of his wife Helen. Their sister, Lady Mary, also falls under suspicion. Lord Peter clears the Duke and Lady Mary, to whom Parker is attracted. As a result of the slaughter of men in the First World War, there was in the UK a considerable imbalance between the sexes. It is not exactly known when Wimsey recruited Miss Climpson to run an undercover employment agency for women, a means to garner information from the otherwise inaccessible world of spinsters and widows, but it is prior to "Unnatural Death" (1927), in which Miss Climpson assists Wimsey's investigation of the suspicious death of an elderly cancer patient. Wimsey's highly effective idea is that a male detective going around and asking questions is likely to arouse suspicion, while a middle-aged woman doing it would be dismissed as a gossip and people would speak openly to her. As recounted in the short story "The Adventurous Exploit of the Cave of Ali Baba", in December 1927 Wimsey fakes his own death, supposedly while hunting big game in Tanganyika, to penetrate and break up a particularly dangerous and well-organised criminal gang. Only Wimsey's mother and sister, the loyal Bunter and Inspector Parker know he is still alive. Emerging victorious after more than a year masquerading as "the disgruntled sacked servant Rogers", Wimsey remarks that "We shall have an awful time with the lawyers, proving that I am me." In fact, he returns smoothly to his old life, and the interlude is never referred to in later books. During the 1920s, Wimsey has affairs with various women, which are the subject of much gossip in Britain and Europe. This part of his life remains hazy: it is hardly ever mentioned in the books set in the same period; most of the scant information on the subject is given in flashbacks from later times, after he meets Harriet Vane and relations with other women become a closed chapter. In "Busman's Honeymoon" Wimsey facetiously refers to a gentleman's duty "to remember whom he had taken to bed" so as not to embarrass his bedmate by calling her by the wrong name. There are several references to a relationship with a famous Viennese opera singer, and Bunter—who evidently was involved with this, as with other parts of his master's life—recalls Wimsey being very angry with a French mistress who mistreated her own servant. The only one of Wimsey's earlier women to appear in person is the artist Marjorie Phelps, who plays an important role in "The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club". She has known Wimsey for years and is attracted to him, though it is not explicitly stated whether they were lovers. Wimsey likes her, respects her, and enjoys her company—but that is not enough. In "Strong Poison", she is the first person other than Wimsey himself to realise that he has fallen in love with Harriet. Reviewer Barbara Stanton noted that "Dorothy Sayers had created Peter Wimsey as a womanizer - though a rather gentlemanly and sensitive one. It would have been out of character for him to return Marjorie Phelps' love, and inevitable that he would break her heart - as he must have done to many other women before. But Sayers - a woman writer who had herself experienced disappointments and frustrations in relations with men - evidently decided to take revenge on her character and educate him. Sayers took the conscious decision to turn the tables on Wimsey and make him fall deeply in love with a woman who would make him sweat and wait very very long before she finally accepted him". In "Strong Poison" Lord Peter encounters Harriet Vane, a cerebral, Oxford-educated mystery writer, while she is on trial for the murder of her former lover in December 1929. He falls in love with her at first sight. He saves Harriet from the gallows, but she believes that gratitude is not a good foundation for marriage, and politely but firmly declines his frequent proposals. Lord Peter encourages his friend and foil, Chief Inspector Charles Parker, to propose to his sister, Lady Mary Wimsey, despite the great difference in their rank and wealth. They marry and have a son, named Charles Peter ("Peterkin"), and a daughter, Mary Lucasta ("Polly"). Visiting the Fen country in Easter 1930 (in "The Nine Tailors") Wimsey must unravel a 20-year-old case of missing jewels, an unknown corpse, a missing World War I soldier believed alive, a murderous escaped convict believed dead, and a mysterious code concerning church bells. While on a fishing holiday in Scotland later in 1930, Wimsey takes part in the investigation of the murder of an artist, related in "Five Red Herrings". Despite her rejection of his marriage proposals, he continues to court Miss Vane. In "Have His Carcase", in 1931, he finds Harriet is not in London, but learns from a reporter that she has discovered a corpse while on a walking holiday on England's south coast. Wimsey is at her hotel the next morning. He not only investigates the death and offers proposals of marriage, but also acts as Harriet's patron and protector from press and police. Despite a prickly relationship, they work together to identify the murderer. Back in London in 1932, Wimsey goes undercover as "Death Bredon" at an advertising firm, working as a copywriter ("Murder Must Advertise"). Bredon is framed for murder, leading Charles Parker to "arrest" Bredon for murder in front of numerous witnesses. To distinguish Death Bredon from Lord Peter Wimsey, Parker smuggles Wimsey out of the police station and urges him to get into the papers. Accordingly, Wimsey accompanies "a Royal personage" to a public event, leading the press to carry pictures of both "Bredon" and Wimsey. By 1935 Lord Peter is in continental Europe, acting as an unofficial attaché to the British Foreign Office (at the time of writing, British diplomacy was much concerned with the impending Italian invasion of Ethiopia). Harriet Vane contacts him about a problem she has been asked to investigate in her college at Oxford ("Gaudy Night"). At the end of their investigation, Vane finally accepts Wimsey's proposal of marriage. The couple marry on 8 October 1935, at St Cross Church, Oxford, as depicted in the opening collection of letters and diary entries in "Busman's Honeymoon". The Wimseys honeymoon at Talboys, a house in east Hertfordshire near Harriet's childhood home, which Peter has bought for her as a wedding present. There they find the body of the previous owner, and spend their honeymoon solving the case, thus having the aphoristic "Busman's Honeymoon". Over the next five years, according to Sayers' short stories, the Wimseys have three sons: Bredon Delagardie Peter Wimsey (born in October 1936 in the story "The Haunted Policeman"); Roger Wimsey (born 1938), and Paul Wimsey (born 1940). However, according to the wartime publications of "The Wimsey Papers", published in "The Spectator", the second son was called Paul. In "The Attenbury Emeralds", Paul is again the second son and Roger is the third son. In the subsequent "The Late Scholar", Roger is not mentioned at all. It may be presumed that Paul is named after Lord Peter's maternal uncle Paul Delagardie. "Roger" is an ancestral Wimsey name. In Sayers's final Wimsey story, the 1942 short story "Talboys", Peter and Harriet are enjoying rural domestic bliss with their three sons when Bredon, their first-born, is accused of the theft of prize peaches from the neighbour's tree. Peter and the accused set off to investigate and, of course, prove Bredon's innocence. Fictional bibliography. Wimsey is described as having authored numerous books, among them the following fictitious works: The stories. Dorothy Sayers wrote 11 Wimsey novels and a number of short stories featuring Wimsey and his family. Other recurring characters include Inspector Charles Parker, the family solicitor Mr Murbles, barrister Sir Impey Biggs, journalist Salcombe Hardy, and family friend and financial whiz the Honourable Freddy Arbuthnot, who finds himself entangled in the case in the first of the Wimsey books, "Whose Body?" (1923). Sayers wrote no more Wimsey murder mysteries, and only one story involving him, after the outbreak of World War II. In "The Wimsey Papers", a series of fictionalised commentaries in the form of mock letters between members of the Wimsey family published in "The Spectator", there is a reference to Harriet's difficulty in continuing to write murder mysteries at a time when European dictators were openly committing mass murders with impunity; this seems to have reflected Sayers' own wartime feeling. "The Wimsey Papers" included a reference to Wimsey and Bunter setting out during the war on a secret mission of espionage in Europe, and provide the ironic epitaph Wimsey writes for himself: "Here lies an anachronism in the vague expectation of eternity". The papers also incidentally show that in addition to his thorough knowledge of the classics of English literature, Wimsey is familiar — though in fundamental disagreement — with the works of Karl Marx, and well able to debate with Marxists on their home ground. The only occasion when Sayers returned to Wimsey was the 1942 short story "Talboys". The story is set in a quiet rural environment, the war at that time devastating Europe received only a single oblique reference, and the case Wimsey undertakes is just to clear his young son of the false accusation of stealing fruit from the neighbour's tree. Though Sayers lived until 1957, she never again took up the Wimsey books after this final effort. Jill Paton Walsh wrote about Wimsey's career through and beyond the Second World War. In the continuations "Thrones, Dominations" (1998), "A Presumption of Death" (2002), "The Attenbury Emeralds" (2010), and "The Late Scholar" (2014), Harriet lives with the children at Talboys, Wimsey and Bunter have returned successfully from their secret mission in 1940, and his nephew Lord St. George is killed while serving as an RAF pilot in the Battle of Britain. Consequently, when Wimsey's brother dies of a heart attack in 1951 during a fire in Bredon Hall, Wimsey becomes — very reluctantly — the Duke of Denver. Their Graces are then drawn into a mystery at a fictional Oxford college. Origins. In "How I Came to Invent the Character of Lord Peter Wimsey," Sayers wrote: Janet Hitchman, in the preface to "Striding Folly", remarks that "Wimsey may have been the sad ghost of a wartime lover(...). Oxford, as everywhere in the country, was filled with bereaved women, but it may have been more noticeable in university towns where a whole year's intake could be wiped out in France in less than an hour." There is, however, no verifiable evidence of any such World War I lover of Sayers on whom the character of Wimsey might be based. Another theory is that Wimsey was based, at least in part, on Eric Whelpton, who was a close friend of Sayers at Oxford. Ian Carmichael, who played the part of Wimsey in the first BBC television adaptation and studied the character and the books thoroughly, said that the character was Sayers' conception of the 'ideal man', based in part on her earlier romantic misfortunes. Another theory is that Wimsey was based, at least in part, on Philip Trent, created by E. C. Bentley in the novel "Trent's Last Case". Dorothy Sayers greatly admired that book. Social satire. Many episodes in the Wimsey books express a mild satire on the British class system, in particular in depicting the relationship between Wimsey and Bunter. The two of them are clearly the best and closest of friends, yet Bunter is invariably punctilious in using "my lord" even when they are alone, and "his lordship" in company. In a brief passage written from Bunter's point of view in "Busman's Honeymoon" Bunter is seen, even in the privacy of his own mind, to be thinking of his employer as "His Lordship". Wimsey and Bunter even mock the Jeeves and Wooster relationship. In "Whose Body?", when Wimsey is caught by a severe recurrence of his First World War shell-shock and nightmares and being taken care of by Bunter, the two of them revert to being "Major Wimsey" and "Sergeant Bunter". In that role, Bunter, sitting at the bedside of the sleeping Wimsey, is seen to mutter affectionately, "Bloody little fool!" In "The Vindictive Story of the Footsteps That Ran", the staunchly democratic Dr Hartman invites Bunter to sit down to eat together with himself and Wimsey, at the doctor's modest apartment. Wimsey does not object, but Bunter strongly does: "If I may state my own preference, sir, it would be to wait upon you and his lordship in the usual manner". Whereupon Wimsey remarks: "Bunter likes me to know my place". At the conclusion of "Strong Poison", Inspector Parker asks "What would one naturally do if one found one's water-bottle empty?" (a point of crucial importance in solving the book's mystery). Wimsey promptly answers, "Ring the bell", whereupon Miss Murchison, the indefatigable investigator employed by Wimsey for much of this book, comments "Or, if one wasn't accustomed to be waited on, one might use the water from the bedroom jug." George Orwell was highly critical of this aspect of the Wimsey books: "... Even she [Sayers] is not so far removed from "Peg's Paper" as might appear at a casual glance. It is, after all, a very ancient trick to write novels with a lord for a hero. Where Miss Sayers has shown more astuteness than most is in perceiving that you can carry that kind of thing off a great deal better if you pretend to treat it as a joke. By being, on the surface, a little ironical about Lord Peter Wimsey and his noble ancestors, she is enabled to lay on the snobbishness ('his lordship' etc.) much thicker than any overt snob would dare to do". Dramatic adaptations. Film. In 1935, the British film "The Silent Passenger" was released, in which Lord Peter, played by well-known comic actor Peter Haddon, solved a mystery on the boat train crossing the English Channel. Sayers disliked the film and James Brabazon describes it as an "oddity, in which Dorothy's contribution was altered out of all recognition." The novel "Busman's Honeymoon" was originally a stage play by Sayers and her friend Muriel St. Clare Byrne. A 1940 film of "Busman's Honeymoon" (US: "The Haunted Honeymoon"), stars Robert Montgomery and Constance Cummings as Lord and Lady Peter and Seymour Hicks as Bunter. Television. A BBC television version of the play "Busman's Honeymoon" with Harold Warrender as Lord Peter, was transmitted live on the BBC Television Service on 2 October 1947. A second live BBC version was broadcast on 3 October 1957, with Peter Gray as Wimsey. Several other Lord Peter Wimsey novels were made into television productions by the BBC, in two separate series. Wimsey was played by Ian Carmichael, with Bunter being played by Glyn Houston (with Derek Newark stepping in for "The Unpleasantness at The Bellona Club"), in a series of separate serials under the umbrella title "Lord Peter Wimsey", that ran between 1972 and 1975, adapting five novels ("Clouds of Witness", "The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club", "Five Red Herrings", "Murder Must Advertise" and "The Nine Tailors"). Edward Petherbridge played Lord Peter for BBC Television in 1987, in which three of the four major Wimsey/Vane novels ("Strong Poison", "Have His Carcase" and "Gaudy Night") were dramatised under the umbrella title "A Dorothy L. Sayers Mystery". Harriet Vane was played by Harriet Walter and Bunter was played by Richard Morant. The BBC was unable to secure the rights to turn "Busman's Honeymoon" into a proposed fourth and last part of the planned 13-episode series, so the series was produced as ten episodes. (Edward Petherbridge later played Wimsey in the UK production of the "Busman's Honeymoon" play staged at the Lyric Hammersmith and on tour in 1988, with the role of Harriet being taken by his real-life spouse, Emily Richard.) Both sets of adaptations were critically successful, with both Carmichael and Petherbridge's respective performances being widely praised. However, the two portrayals are quite different from one another: Carmichael's Peter is eccentric, jolly and foppish with occasional glimpses of the inner wistful, romantic soul, whereas Petherbridge's portrayal was more calm, solemn and had a stiff upper lip, subtly downplaying many of the character's eccentricities. Both the 1970s productions and the 1987 series are now available on videotape and DVD. Radio. Adaptations of the Lord Peter Wimsey novels appeared on BBC Radio from the 1930s onwards. An adaptation of the short story "The Footsteps That Ran" dramatised by John Cheatle appeared on the BBC Home Service in November 1939 with Cecil Trouncer as Wimsey. Rex Harrison took on the role in an adaptation of "Absolutely Everywhere" on the Home Service on 5 March 1940. The short story "The Man With No Face" was dramatised by Audrey Lucas for the Home Service "Saturday-Night Theatre" play, broadcast on 3 April 1943 with Robert Holmes in the lead role. A four-part adaptation of "The Nine Tailors" adapted by Giles Cooper and starring Alan Wheatley as Wimsey was broadcast on the BBC Light Programme in August 1954. Ian Carmichael reprised his television role as Lord Peter in ten radio adaptations for BBC Radio 4 of Sayers's Wimsey novels between 1973 and 1983, all of which have been available on cassette and CD from the BBC Radio Collection. These co-starred Peter Jones as Bunter. In the original series no adaptation was made of the seminal "Gaudy Night", perhaps because the leading character in this novel is Harriet and not Peter; this was corrected in 2005 when a version specially recorded for the BBC Radio Collection was released starring Carmichael and Joanna David. The CD also includes a panel discussion on the novel, the major participants in which are P. D. James and Jill Paton Walsh. "Gaudy Night" was released as an unabridged audio book read by Ian Carmichael in 1993. Gary Bond starred as Lord Peter Wimsey and John Cater as Bunter in two single-episode BBC Radio 4 adaptations: "The Nine Tailors" on 25 December 1986 and "Whose Body" on 26 December 1987. Simon Russell Beale played Wimsey in an adaptation of "Strong Poison" dramatised by Michael Bakewell in 1999. Bibliography. Novels. With year of first publication Uncollected Lord Peter Wimsey stories. In addition there are Books about Lord Peter by other authors. Lord Peter Wimsey has also been included by the science fiction writer Philip José Farmer as a member of the Wold Newton family.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17867

London

London () is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of around 8.8 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea and has been a major settlement for two millennia. The City of London, its ancient core and financial centre, was founded by the Romans as "Londinium" and retains its medieval boundaries. The City of Westminster, to the west of the City of London, has for centuries hosted the national government and parliament. Since the 19th century, the name "London" also refers to the metropolis around this core, historically split among the counties of Middlesex, Essex, Surrey, Kent, and Hertfordshire, which since 1965 has largely comprised Greater London, which is governed by 33 local authorities and the Greater London Authority. As one of the world's major global cities, London exerts a strong influence on its arts, entertainment, fashion, commerce and finance, education, health care, media, science and technology, tourism, transport, and communications. Its GDP (€801.66 billion in 2017) makes it the largest urban economy in Europe, and it is one of the major financial centres in the world. With Europe's largest concentration of higher education institutions, it is home to some of the highest-ranked academic institutions in the world—Imperial College London in natural and applied sciences, the London School of Economics in social sciences, and the comprehensive University College London. London is the most visited city in Europe and has the busiest city airport system in the world. The London Underground is the oldest rapid transit system in the world. London's diverse cultures encompass over 300 languages. The mid-2018 population of Greater London of about 9 million made it Europe's third-most populous city, accounting for 13.4% of the population of the United Kingdom and over 16% of the population of England. The Greater London Built-up Area is the fourth-most populous in Europe, with about 9.8 million inhabitants at the 2011 census. The London metropolitan area is the third-most populous in Europe, with about 14 million inhabitants in 2016, granting London the status of a megacity. London has four World Heritage Sites: the Tower of London; Kew Gardens; the combined Palace of Westminster, Westminster Abbey, and St Margaret's Church; and also the historic settlement in Greenwich, where the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, defines the prime meridian (0° longitude) and Greenwich Mean Time. Other landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Paul's Cathedral, Tower Bridge, and Trafalgar Square. London has many museums, galleries, libraries, and cultural venues, including the British Museum, National Gallery, Natural History Museum, Tate Modern, British Library, and numerous West End theatres. Important sporting events held in London include the FA Cup Final, the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, and the London Marathon. In 2012, London became the first city to host three Summer Olympic Games. Toponymy. "London" is an ancient name, attested in the first century AD, usually in the Latinised form . Modern scientific analyses of the name must account for the origins of the different forms found in early sources: Latin (usually ), Old English (usually ), and Welsh (usually ), with reference to the known developments over time of sounds in those different languages. It is agreed that the name came into these languages from Common Brythonic; recent work tends to reconstruct the lost Celtic form of the name as or something similar. This was adapted into Latin as and borrowed into Old English. Until 1889, the name "London" applied officially only to the City of London, but since then it has also referred to the County of London and to Greater London. History. Prehistory. In 1993, remains of a Bronze Age bridge were found on the south foreshore upstream from Vauxhall Bridge. Two of the timbers were radiocarbon dated to 1750–1285 BC. In 2010, foundations of a large timber structure, dated to 4800–4500 BC, were found on the Thames's south foreshore downstream from Vauxhall Bridge. Both structures are on the south bank of the Thames, where the now-underground River Effra flows into the Thames. Roman London. Despite the evidence of scattered Brythonic settlements in the area, the first major settlement was founded by the Romans around 47 AD, about four years after their invasion of 43 AD. This only lasted until about 61 AD, when the Iceni tribe led by Queen Boudica stormed it and burnt it to the ground. The next planned incarnation of Londinium prospered, superseding Colchester as the principal city of the Roman province of Britannia in 100. At its height in the 2nd century, Roman London had a population of about 60,000. Anglo-Saxon and Viking-period London. With the early 5th-century collapse of Roman rule, the walled city of Londinium was effectively abandoned, although Roman civilisation continued around St Martin-in-the-Fields until about 450. From about 500, an Anglo-Saxon settlement known as Lundenwic developed slightly west of the old Roman city. By about 680 the city had become a major port again, but there is little evidence of large-scale production. From the 820s repeated Viking assaults brought decline. Three are recorded; those in 851 and 886 succeeded, while the last, in 994, was rebuffed. The Vikings applied Danelaw over much of eastern and northern England, its boundary running roughly from London to Chester as an area of political and geographical control imposed by the Viking incursions formally agreed by the Danish warlord, Guthrum and the West Saxon king Alfred the Great in 886. The "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" records that Alfred "refounded" London in 886. Archaeological research shows this involved abandonment of Lundenwic and a revival of life and trade within the old Roman walls. London then grew slowly until a dramatic increase in about 950. By the 11th century, London was clearly the largest town in England. Westminster Abbey, rebuilt in Romanesque style by King Edward the Confessor, was one of the grandest churches in Europe. Winchester had been the capital of Anglo-Saxon England, but from this time London became the main forum for foreign traders and the base for defence in time of war. In the view of Frank Stenton: "It had the resources, and it was rapidly developing the dignity and the political self-consciousness appropriate to a national capital." Middle Ages. After winning the Battle of Hastings, William, Duke of Normandy was crowned King of England in newly completed Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066. William built the Tower of London, the first of many such in England rebuilt in stone in the south-eastern corner of the city, to intimidate the inhabitants. In 1097, William II began building Westminster Hall, close by the abbey of the same name. It became the basis of a new Palace of Westminster. In the 12th century, the institutions of central government, which had hitherto followed the royal English court around the country, grew in size and sophistication and became increasingly fixed, for most purposes at Westminster, although the royal treasury came to rest in the Tower. While the City of Westminster developed into a true governmental capital, its distinct neighbour, the City of London, remained England's largest city and principal commercial centre and flourished under its own unique administration, the Corporation of London. In 1100, its population was some 18,000; by 1300 it had grown to nearly 100,000. With the Black Death in the mid-14th century, London lost nearly a third of its population. London was the focus of the Peasants' Revolt in 1381. London was a centre of England's Jewish population before their expulsion by Edward I in 1290. Violence against Jews occurred in 1190, when it was rumoured that the new king had ordered their massacre after they had presented themselves at his coronation. In 1264 during the Second Barons' War, Simon de Montfort's rebels killed 500 Jews while attempting to seize records of debts. Early modern. During the Tudor period, the Reformation produced a gradual shift to Protestantism. Much of London property passed from church to private ownership, which accelerated trade and business in the city. In 1475, the Hanseatic League set up a main trading base ("kontor") of England in London, called the "Stalhof" or "Steelyard". It remained until 1853, when the Hanseatic cities of Lübeck, Bremen and Hamburg sold the property to South Eastern Railway. Woollen cloth was shipped undyed and undressed from 14th/15th century London to the nearby shores of the Low Countries. Yet English maritime enterprise hardly reached beyond the seas of north-west Europe. The commercial route to Italy and the Mediterranean was normally through Antwerp and over the Alps; any ships passing through the Strait of Gibraltar to or from England were likely to be Italian or Ragusan. The reopening of the Netherlands to English shipping in January 1565 spurred a burst of commercial activity. The Royal Exchange was founded. Mercantilism grew and monopoly traders such as the East India Company were founded as trade expanded to the New World. London became the main North Sea port, with migrants arriving from England and abroad. The population rose from about 50,000 in 1530 to about 225,000 in 1605. In the 16th century, William Shakespeare and his contemporaries lived in London during English Renaissance theatre. Shakespeare's Globe Theatre was constructed in 1599 in Southwark. Stage performances came to a halt in London when Puritan authorities shut down the theatres in the 1640s and 1650s. The ban on theatre was lifted during the Restoration in 1660, and London's oldest operating theatre, Drury Lane, opened in 1663 in what is now the West End theatre district. By the end of the Tudor period in 1603, London was still compact. There was an assassination attempt on James I in Westminster, in the Gunpowder Plot of 5 November 1605. In 1637, the government of Charles I attempted to reform administration in the London area. This called for the Corporation of the city to extend its jurisdiction and administration over expanding areas around the city. Fearing an attempt by the Crown to diminish the Liberties of London, coupled with a lack of interest in administering these additional areas or concern by city guilds of having to share power, caused the Corporation's "The Great Refusal", a decision which largely continues to account for the unique governmental status of the City. In the English Civil War, the majority of Londoners supported the Parliamentary cause. After an initial advance by the Royalists in 1642, culminating in the battles of Brentford and Turnham Green, London was surrounded by a defensive perimeter wall known as the Lines of Communication. The lines were built by up to 20,000 people, and were completed in under two months. The fortifications failed their only test when the New Model Army entered London in 1647, and they were levelled by Parliament the same year. London was plagued by disease in the early 17th century, culminating in the Great Plague of 1665–1666, which killed up to 100,000 people, or a fifth of the population. The Great Fire of London broke out in 1666 in Pudding Lane in the city and quickly swept through the wooden buildings. Rebuilding took over ten years and was supervised by polymath Robert Hooke. In 1708 Christopher Wren's masterpiece, St Paul's Cathedral, was completed. During the Georgian era, new districts such as Mayfair were formed in the west; new bridges over the Thames encouraged development in South London. In the east, the Port of London expanded downstream. London's development as an international financial centre matured for much of the 18th century. In 1762, George III acquired Buckingham House, which was enlarged over the next 75 years. During the 18th century, London was said to be dogged by crime, and the Bow Street Runners were established in 1750 as a professional police force. Epidemics during the 1720s and 30s saw most children born in the city die before reaching their fifth birthday. Coffee-houses became a popular place to debate ideas, as growing literacy and development of the printing press made news widely available, with Fleet Street becoming the centre of the British press. The invasion of Amsterdam by Napoleonic armies led many financiers to relocate to London and the first London international issue was arranged in 1817. Around the same time, the Royal Navy became the world's leading war fleet, acting as a major deterrent to potential economic adversaries. The repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 was specifically aimed at weakening Dutch economic power. London then overtook Amsterdam as the leading international financial centre. Late modern and contemporary. With the onset of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, an unprecedented growth in urbanisation took place, and the number of High Streets (the primary street for retail in Britain) rapidly grew. London was the world's largest city from about 1831 to 1925, with a population density of 802 per acre (325 per hectare). In addition to the growing number of stores selling goods, such as Harding, Howell & Co.—one of the first department stores—located on Pall Mall, the streets had scores of street sellers. London's overcrowded conditions led to cholera epidemics, claiming 14,000 lives in 1848, and 6,000 in 1866. Rising traffic congestion led to the creation of the world's first local urban rail network. The Metropolitan Board of Works oversaw infrastructure expansion in the capital and some surrounding counties; it was abolished in 1889 when the London County Council was created out of county areas surrounding the capital. From the early years of the 20th century onwards, teashops were found on High Streets across London and the rest of Britain, with Lyons, who opened the first of their chain of teashops in Piccadilly in 1894, leading the way. The tearooms, such as the Criterion in Piccadilly, became a popular meeting place for women from the suffrage movement. The city was the target of many attacks during the suffragette bombing and arson campaign, between 1912 and 1914, which saw historic landmarks such as Westminster Abbey and St Paul's Cathedral bombed. London was bombed by the Germans in the First World War, and during the Second World War, the Blitz and other bombings by the German "Luftwaffe" killed over 30,000 Londoners, destroying large tracts of housing and other buildings across the city. The tomb of the Unknown Warrior, an unidentified member of the British armed forces killed during the First World War, was buried in Westminster Abbey on 11 November 1920. The Cenotaph, located in Whitehall, was unveiled on the same day, and is the focal point for the National Service of Remembrance held annually on Remembrance Sunday, the closest Sunday to 11 November. The 1948 Summer Olympics were held at the original Wembley Stadium, while London was still recovering from the war. From the 1940s, London became home to many immigrants, primarily from Commonwealth countries such as Jamaica, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, making London one of the most diverse cities in the world. In 1951, the Festival of Britain was held on the South Bank. The Great Smog of 1952 led to the Clean Air Act 1956, which ended the "pea soup fogs" for which London had been notorious, and had earned it the nickname the "Big Smoke". Starting mainly in the mid-1960s, London became a centre for worldwide youth culture, exemplified by the Swinging London sub-culture associated with the King's Road, Chelsea and Carnaby Street. The role of trendsetter revived in the punk era. In 1965 London's political boundaries were expanded in response to the growth of the urban area and a new Greater London Council was created. During The Troubles in Northern Ireland, London was hit from 1973 by bomb attacks by the Provisional Irish Republican Army. These attacks lasted for two decades, starting with the Old Bailey bombing. Racial inequality was highlighted by the 1981 Brixton riot. Greater London's population declined in the decades after the Second World War, from an estimated peak of 8.6 million in 1939 to around 6.8 million in the 1980s. The principal ports for London moved downstream to Felixstowe and Tilbury, with the London Docklands area becoming a focus for regeneration, including the Canary Wharf development. This was born out of London's increasing role as an international financial centre in the 1980s. Located about 2 miles (3.2 km) east of central London, the Thames Barrier was completed in the 1980s to protect London against tidal surges from the North Sea. The Greater London Council was abolished in 1986, leaving London with no central administration until 2000 and the creation of the Greater London Authority. To mark the 21st century, the Millennium Dome, London Eye and Millennium Bridge were constructed. On 6 July 2005 London was awarded the 2012 Summer Olympics, as the first city to stage the Olympic Games three times. On 7 July 2005, three London Underground trains and a double-decker bus were bombed in a series of terrorist attacks. In 2008, "Time" named London alongside New York City and Hong Kong as Nylonkong, hailing them as the world's three most influential global cities. In January 2015, Greater London's population was estimated to be 8.63 million, its highest since 1939. During the Brexit referendum in 2016, the UK as a whole decided to leave the European Union, but most London constituencies voted for remaining. However, Britain's exit from the European Union (EU) in early 2021 (Brexit) only marginally weakened London's position as an international financial center (IFC). On 6 May 2023, the coronation of Charles III and his wife, Camilla, as king and queen of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms, took place at Westminster Abbey, London. Administration. Local government. The administration of London is formed of two tiers: a citywide, strategic tier and a local tier. Citywide administration is coordinated by the Greater London Authority (GLA), while local administration is carried out by 33 smaller authorities. The GLA consists of two elected components: the mayor of London, who has executive powers, and the London Assembly, which scrutinises the mayor's decisions and can accept or reject the mayor's budget proposals each year. The GLA has responsibility for the majority of London's transport system through its functional arm Transport for London (TfL), it is responsible for overseeing the city's police and fire services, and also for setting a strategic vision for London on a range of issues. The headquarters of the GLA is City Hall, Newham. The mayor since 2016 has been Sadiq Khan, the first Muslim mayor of a major Western capital. The mayor's statutory planning strategy is published as the London Plan, which was most recently revised in 2011. The local authorities are the councils of the 32 London boroughs and the City of London Corporation. They are responsible for most local services, such as local planning, schools, libraries, leisure and recreation, social services, local roads and refuse collection. Certain functions, such as waste management, are provided through joint arrangements. In 2009–2010 the combined revenue expenditure by London councils and the GLA amounted to just over £22 billion (£14.7 billion for the boroughs and £7.4 billion for the GLA). The London Fire Brigade is the statutory fire and rescue service for Greater London, run by the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority. It is the third largest fire service in the world. National Health Service ambulance services are provided by the London Ambulance Service (LAS) NHS Trust, the largest free-at-the-point-of-use emergency ambulance service in the world. The London Air Ambulance charity operates in conjunction with the LAS where required. Her Majesty's Coastguard and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution operate on the River Thames, which is under the jurisdiction of the Port of London Authority from Teddington Lock to the sea. National government. London is the seat of the Government of the United Kingdom. Many government departments, as well as the prime minister's residence at 10 Downing Street, are based close to the Palace of Westminster, particularly along Whitehall. There are 73 members of Parliament (MPs) from London; , 49 are from the Labour Party, 21 are Conservatives, and three are Liberal Democrats. The ministerial post of minister for London was created in 1994 and as of 2020 is held by Paul Scully. Policing and crime. Policing in Greater London, with the exception of the City of London, is provided by the Metropolitan Police ("The Met"), overseen by the mayor through the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC). The Met is also referred to as Scotland Yard after the location of its original headquarters in a road called Great Scotland Yard in Whitehall. The City of London has its own police force – the City of London Police. First worn by Met police officers in 1863, the custodian helmet has been called a "cultural icon" and a "symbol of British law enforcement". Introduced by the Met in 1929, the blue police telephone box (basis for the TARDIS in "Doctor Who") was once a common sight throughout London and regional cities in the UK. The British Transport Police are responsible for police services on National Rail, London Underground, Docklands Light Railway and Tramlink services. The Ministry of Defence Police is a special police force in London, which does not generally become involved with policing the general public. The UK's domestic counter-intelligence service (MI5) is headquartered in Thames House on the north bank of the River Thames, and the foreign intelligence service (MI6) is headquartered in the SIS Building on the south bank. Crime rates vary widely across different areas of London. Crime figures are made available nationally at Local Authority and Ward level. In 2015, there were 118 homicides, a 25.5% increase over 2014. Recorded crime has been rising in London, notably violent crime and murder by stabbing and other means have risen. There were 50 murders from the start of 2018 to mid April 2018. Funding cuts to police in London are likely to have contributed to this, though other factors are involved. However, the murder rate in London is much lower than other major cities around the world. Geography. Scope. London, also known as Greater London, is one of nine regions of England and the top subdivision covering most of the city's metropolis. The City of London at its core once comprised the whole settlement, but as its urban area grew, the Corporation of London resisted attempts to amalgamate the city with its suburbs, causing "London" to be defined several ways. Forty per cent of Greater London is covered by the London post town, in which 'LONDON' forms part of postal addresses. The London telephone area code (020) covers a larger area, similar in size to Greater London, although some outer districts are excluded and some just outside included. The Greater London boundary has been aligned to the M25 motorway in places. Further urban expansion is now prevented by the Metropolitan Green Belt, although the built-up area extends beyond the boundary in places, producing a separately defined Greater London Urban Area. Beyond this is the vast London commuter belt. Greater London is split for some purposes into Inner London and Outer London, and by the River Thames into North and South, with an informal central London area. The coordinates of the nominal centre of London, traditionally the original Eleanor Cross at Charing Cross near the junction of Trafalgar Square and Whitehall, are about . Status. Within London, both the City of London and the City of Westminster have city status and both the City of London and the remainder of Greater London are counties for the purposes of lieutenancies. The area of Greater London includes areas that are part of the historic counties of Middlesex, Kent, Surrey, Essex and Hertfordshire. London's status as the capital of England, and later the United Kingdom, has never been granted or confirmed by statute or in written form. Its status as a capital was established by constitutional convention, which means its status as "de facto" capital is a part of the UK's uncodified constitution. The capital of England was moved to London from Winchester as the Palace of Westminster developed in the 12th and 13th centuries to become the permanent location of the royal court, and thus the political capital of the nation. More recently, Greater London has been defined as a region of England and in this context is known as "London". Topography. Greater London encompasses a total area of an area which had a population of 7,172,036 in 2001 and a population density of . The extended area known as the London Metropolitan Region or the London Metropolitan Agglomeration, comprises a total area of has a population of 13,709,000 and a population density of . Modern London stands on the Thames, its primary geographical feature, a navigable river which crosses the city from the south-west to the east. The Thames Valley is a flood plain surrounded by gently rolling hills including Parliament Hill, Addington Hills, and Primrose Hill. Historically London grew up at the lowest bridging point on the Thames. The Thames was once a much broader, shallower river with extensive marshlands; at high tide, its shores reached five times their present width. Since the Victorian era the Thames has been extensively embanked, and many of its London tributaries now flow underground. The Thames is a tidal river, and London is vulnerable to flooding. The threat has increased over time because of a slow but continuous rise in high water level caused by climate change and by the slow 'tilting' of the British Isles as a result of post-glacial rebound. Climate. London has a temperate oceanic climate (Köppen: "Cfb"). Rainfall records have been kept in the city since at least 1697, when records began at Kew. At Kew, the most rainfall in one month is in November 1755 and the least is in both December 1788 and July 1800. Mile End also had in April 1893. The wettest year on record is 1903, with a total fall of and the driest is 1921, with a total fall of . The average annual precipitation amounts to about 600 mm, which is half the annual rainfall of New York City. Despite its relatively low annual precipitation, London still receives 109.6 rainy days on the 1.0 mm threshold annually. However, London is vulnerable to climate change in the United Kingdom, and there is increasing concern among hydrological experts that London households may run out of water before 2050. Temperature extremes in London range from at Heathrow on 19 July 2022 down to at Northolt on 13 December 1981. Records for atmospheric pressure have been kept at London since 1692. The highest pressure ever reported is on 20 January 2020. Summers are generally warm, sometimes hot. London's average July high is 23.5 °C (74.3 °F). On average each year, London experiences 31 days above and 4.2 days above . During the 2003 European heat wave, prolonged heat led to hundreds of heat-related deaths. A previous spell of 15 consecutive days above in England in 1976 also caused many heat related deaths. A previous temperature of in August 1911 at the Greenwich station was later disregarded as non-standard. Droughts can also, occasionally, be a problem, especially in summer, most recently in summer 2018, and with much drier than average conditions prevailing from May to December. However, the most consecutive days without rain was 73 days in the spring of 1893. Winters are generally cool with little temperature variation. Heavy snow is rare but snow usually falls at least once each winter. Spring and autumn can be pleasant. As a large city, London has a considerable urban heat island effect, making the centre of London at times warmer than the suburbs and outskirts. Areas. Places within London's vast urban area are identified using area names, such as Mayfair, Southwark, Wembley, and Whitechapel. These are either informal designations, reflect the names of villages that have been absorbed by sprawl, or are superseded administrative units such as parishes or former boroughs. Such names have remained in use through tradition, each referring to a local area with its own distinctive character, but without official boundaries. Since 1965, Greater London has been divided into 32 London boroughs in addition to the ancient City of London. The City of London is the main financial district, and Canary Wharf has recently developed into a new financial and commercial hub in the Docklands to the east. The West End is London's main entertainment and shopping district, attracting tourists. West London includes expensive residential areas where properties can sell for tens of millions of pounds. The average price for properties in Kensington and Chelsea is over £2 million with a similarly high outlay in most of central London. The East End is the area closest to the original Port of London, known for its high immigrant population, as well as for being one of the poorest areas in London. The surrounding East London area saw much of London's early industrial development; now, brownfield sites throughout the area are being redeveloped as part of the Thames Gateway including the London Riverside and Lower Lea Valley, which was developed into the Olympic Park for the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics. Architecture. London's buildings are too diverse to be characterised by any particular architectural style, partly because of their varying ages. Many grand houses and public buildings, such as the National Gallery, are constructed from Portland stone. Some areas of the city, particularly those just west of the centre, are characterised by white stucco or whitewashed buildings. Few structures in central London pre-date the Great Fire of 1666, these being a few trace Roman remains, the Tower of London and a few scattered Tudor survivors in the city. Further out is, for example, the Tudor-period Hampton Court Palace. Part of the varied architectural heritage are the 17th-century churches by Christopher Wren, neoclassical financial institutions such as the Royal Exchange and the Bank of England, to the early 20th century Old Bailey courthouse and the 1960s Barbican Estate. The 1939 Battersea Power Station by the river in the south-west is a local landmark, while some railway termini are excellent examples of Victorian architecture, most notably St. Pancras and Paddington. The density of London varies, with high employment density in the central area and Canary Wharf, high residential densities in inner London, and lower densities in Outer London. The Monument in the City of London provides views of the surrounding area while commemorating the Great Fire of London, which originated nearby. Marble Arch and Wellington Arch, at the north and south ends of Park Lane, respectively, have royal connections, as do the Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Hall in Kensington. Nelson's Column (built to commemorate Admiral Horatio Nelson) is a nationally recognised monument in Trafalgar Square, one of the focal points of central London. Older buildings are mainly brick, commonly the yellow London stock brick. In the dense areas, most of the concentration is via medium- and high-rise buildings. London's skyscrapers, such as 30 St Mary Axe (dubbed "The Gherkin"), Tower 42, the Broadgate Tower and One Canada Square, are mostly in the two financial districts, the City of London and Canary Wharf. High-rise development is restricted at certain sites if it would obstruct protected views of St Paul's Cathedral and other historic buildings. This protective policy, known as 'St Paul's Heights', has been in operation by the City of London since 1937. Nevertheless, there are a number of tall skyscrapers in central London, including the 95-storey Shard London Bridge, the tallest building in the United Kingdom and Western Europe. Other notable modern buildings include The Scalpel, 20 Fenchurch Street (dubbed "The Walkie-Talkie"), the former City Hall in Southwark, the Art Deco BBC Broadcasting House plus the Postmodernist British Library in Somers Town/Kings Cross and No 1 Poultry by James Stirling. The BT Tower stands at and has a 360 degree coloured LED screen near the top. What was formerly the Millennium Dome, by the Thames to the east of Canary Wharf, is now an entertainment venue called the O2 Arena. Natural history. The London Natural History Society suggests that London is "one of the World's Greenest Cities" with more than 40 per cent green space or open water. They indicate that 2000 species of flowering plant have been found growing there and that the tidal Thames supports 120 species of fish. They state that over 60 species of bird nest in central London and that their members have recorded 47 species of butterfly, 1173 moths and more than 270 kinds of spider around London. London's wetland areas support nationally important populations of many water birds. London has 38 Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs), two national nature reserves and 76 local nature reserves. Amphibians are common in the capital, including smooth newts living by the Tate Modern, and common frogs, common toads, palmate newts and great crested newts. On the other hand, native reptiles such as slowworms, common lizards, barred grass snakes and adders, are mostly only seen in Outer London. Among other inhabitants of London are 10,000 red foxes, so that there are now 16 foxes for every square mile (6 per square kilometre) of London. Other mammals found in Greater London are hedgehog, brown rat, mice, rabbit, shrew, vole, and grey squirrel. In wilder areas of Outer London, such as Epping Forest, a wide variety of mammals are found, including European hare, badger, field, bank and water vole, wood mouse, yellow-necked mouse, mole, shrew, and weasel, in addition to red fox, grey squirrel and hedgehog. A dead otter was found at The Highway, in Wapping, about a mile from the Tower Bridge, which would suggest that they have begun to move back after being absent a hundred years from the city. Ten of England's eighteen species of bats have been recorded in Epping Forest: soprano, Nathusius' and common pipistrelles, common noctule, serotine, barbastelle, Daubenton's, brown long-eared, Natterer's and Leisler's. Herds of red and fallow deer roam freely within much of Richmond and Bushy Park. A cull takes place each November and February to ensure numbers can be sustained. Epping Forest is also known for its fallow deer, which can frequently be seen in herds to the north of the Forest. A rare population of melanistic, black fallow deer is also maintained at the Deer Sanctuary near Theydon Bois. Muntjac deer are also found in the forest. While Londoners are accustomed to wildlife such as birds and foxes sharing the city, more recently urban deer have started becoming a regular feature, and whole herds of fallow deer come into residential areas at night to take advantage of London's green spaces. Demography. The 2021 census recorded that 3,575,739 people or 40.6% of London's population were foreign-born, making it the city with the largest immigrant population, in terms of absolute numbers. About 69% of children born in London in 2015 had at least one parent who was born abroad. The population then grew by just over a million between the 2001 and 2011 Censuses, to reach 8,173,941 in the latter. London's continuous urban area extends beyond Greater London and numbered 9,787,426 people in 2011, while its wider metropolitan area had a population of 12–14 million, depending on the definition used. According to Eurostat, London is the second most populous metropolitan area in Europe. A net 726,000 immigrants arrived there in the period 1991–2001. The region covers , giving a population density of more than ten times that of any other British region. In population terms, London is the 19th largest city and the 18th largest metropolitan region. Age structure and median age. Children younger than 14 constituted 20.6% of the population in Outer London in 2018, and 18% in Inner London. The 15–24 age group was 11.1% in Outer and 10.2% in Inner London, those aged 25–44 years 30.6% in Outer London and 39.7% in Inner London, those aged 45–64 years 24% and 20.7% in Outer and Inner London respectively. Those aged 65 and over are 13.6% in Outer London, but only 9.3% in Inner London. The median age of London's residents in 2018 was 36.5, which was younger than the UK median of 40.3. Ethnic groups. According to the Office for National Statistics, based on 2011 Census estimates, 59.8 per cent of the 8,173,941 inhabitants of London were White, with 44.9% White British, 2.2% White Irish, 0.1% gypsy/Irish traveller and 12.1% classified as Other White. Meanwhile, 20.9% of Londoners were of Asian or mixed-Asian descent, with 19.7% being of full Asian descents and 1.2% being of mixed-Asian heritage. Indians accounted for 6.6% of the population, followed by Pakistanis and Bangladeshis at 2.7% each. Chinese people accounted for 1.5%, and Arabs for 1.3%. A further 4.9% were classified as "Other Asian". 15.6% of London's population were of Black or mixed-Black descent. 13.3% were of full Black descent, with persons of mixed-Black heritage comprising 2.3%. Black Africans accounted for 7.0% of London's population; 4.2% identified as Black Caribbean, and 2.1% as "Other Black". 5.0% were of mixed race. The history of African presence extends back to the Roman period. As of 2007, one fifth of primary school students across London were from ethnic minorities. Altogether at the 2011 census, of London's 1,624,768 population aged 0 to 15, 46.4% were White, 19.8% Asian, 19% Black, 10.8% Mixed and 4% another ethnic group. In January 2005, a survey of London's ethnic and religious diversity claimed that more than 300 languages were spoken in London and more than 50 non-indigenous communities had populations of more than 10,000. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that , London's foreign-born population was 3,346,000 (35%), up from 1,630,000 in 1997. The 2011 census showed that 36.7% of Greater London's population were born outside the UK. Estimates by the Office for National Statistics indicate that the five largest foreign-born groups living in London from July 2009 to June 2010 were born in India, Poland, Ireland, Bangladesh and Nigeria. In the 2021 census 40.6% of London residents were foreign-born. The ethnic demographics of the 2021 census were reported as 53.8% White, with White British reported at 36.8%, Asian or Asian British at 20.8%, Black or Black British at 13.5%, mixed 5.7% and other at 6.3%. Religion. According to the 2011 Census, the largest religious groupings were Christians (48.4%), followed by those of no religion (20.7%), Muslims (12.4%), no response (8.5%), Hindus (5.0%), Jews (1.8%), Sikhs (1.5%), Buddhists (1.0%) and other (0.6%). London has traditionally been Christian, and has a large number of churches, particularly in the City of London. The well-known St Paul's Cathedral in the City and Southwark Cathedral south of the river are Anglican administrative centres, while the Archbishop of Canterbury, principal bishop of the Church of England and worldwide Anglican Communion, has his main residence at Lambeth Palace in the London Borough of Lambeth. Important national and royal ceremonies are shared between St Paul's and Westminster Abbey. The Abbey is not to be confused with nearby Westminster Cathedral, the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in England and Wales. Despite the prevalence of Anglican churches, observance is low within the denomination. Anglican Church attendance continues a long, steady decline, according to Church of England statistics. Notable mosques include the East London Mosque in Tower Hamlets, which is allowed to give the Islamic call to prayer through loudspeakers, the London Central Mosque on the edge of Regent's Park and the Baitul Futuh of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. After the oil boom, increasing numbers of wealthy Middle-Eastern Arab Muslims based themselves around Mayfair, Kensington and Knightsbridge in West London. There are large Bengali Muslim communities in the eastern boroughs of Tower Hamlets and Newham. Large Hindu communities are found in the north-western boroughs of Harrow and Brent, the latter hosting what was until 2006 Europe's largest Hindu temple, Neasden Temple. London is home to 44 Hindu temples, including the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir London. There are Sikh communities in East and West London, particularly in Southall, home to one of the largest Sikh populations and the largest Sikh temple outside India. The majority of British Jews live in London, with notable Jewish communities in Stamford Hill, Stanmore, Golders Green, Finchley, Hampstead, Hendon and Edgware, all in North London. Bevis Marks Synagogue in the City of London is affiliated to London's historic Sephardic Jewish community. It is the only synagogue in Europe to have held regular services continually for over 300 years. Stanmore and Canons Park Synagogue has the largest membership of any Orthodox synagogue in Europe. The London Jewish Forum was set up in 2006 in response to the growing significance of devolved London Government. Accents. Cockney is an accent heard across London, mainly spoken by working-class and lower-middle class Londoners. It is mainly attributed to the East End and wider East London, having originated there in the 18th century, although it has been suggested that the Cockney style of speech is much older. Some features of Cockney include, "Th"-fronting (pronouncing "th" as "f"), "th" inside a word is pronounced with a "v" , "H"-dropping, and, like most English accents, a Cockney accent drops the "r" after a vowel. John Camden Hotten, in his "Slang Dictionary" of 1859, makes reference to Cockney "use of a peculiar slang language" (Cockney rhyming slang) when describing the costermongers of the East End. Since the start of the 21st century the extreme form of the Cockney dialect is less common in parts of the East End itself, with modern strongholds including other parts of London and suburbs in the home counties. Estuary English is an intermediate accent between Cockney and Received Pronunciation. It is widely spoken by people of all classes. Multicultural London English (MLE) is a multiethnolect becoming increasingly common in multicultural areas amongst young, working-class people from diverse backgrounds. It is a fusion of an array of ethnic accents, in particular Afro-Caribbean and South Asian, with a significant Cockney influence. Received Pronunciation (RP) is the accent traditionally regarded as the standard for British English. It has no specific geographical correlate, although it is also traditionally defined as the standard speech used in London and south-eastern England. It is mainly spoken by upper-class and upper-middle class Londoners. Economy. London's gross regional product in 2019 was £503 billion, around a quarter of UK GDP. London has five major business districts: the city, Westminster, Canary Wharf, Camden & Islington and Lambeth & Southwark. One way to get an idea of their relative importance is to look at relative amounts of office space: Greater London had 27 million m2 of office space in 2001, and the City contains the most space, with 8 million m2 of office space. London has some of the highest real estate prices in the world. London is the world's most expensive office market according to world property journal (2015) report. the residential property in London is worth $2.2 trillion. The city has the highest property prices of any European city according to the Office for National Statistics and the European Office of Statistics. On average the price per square metre in central London is €24,252 (April 2014). This is higher than the property prices in other G8 European capital cities. City of London. London's finance industry is based in the City of London and Canary Wharf, the two major business districts. London is one of the pre-eminent financial centres of the world as the most important location for international finance. London took over as a major financial centre shortly after 1795 when the Dutch Republic collapsed before the Napoleonic armies. For many bankers established in Amsterdam (e.g. Hope, Baring), this was only time to move to London. Also, London's market-centred system (as opposed to the bank-centred one in Amsterdam) grew more dominant in the 18th century. The London financial elite was strengthened by a strong Jewish community from all over Europe capable of mastering the most sophisticated financial tools of the time. This economic strength of the city was attributed to its diversity. By the mid-19th century, London was the leading financial centre, and at the end of the century over half the world's trade was financed in British currency. Still, London tops the world rankings on the Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI), and it ranked second in A.T. Kearney's 2018 Global Cities Index. London's largest industry is finance, and its financial exports make it a large contributor to the UK's balance of payments. Around 325,000 people were employed in financial services in London until mid-2007. London has over 480 overseas banks, more than any other city in the world. It is the world's biggest currency trading centre, accounting for some 37 per cent of the $5.1 trillion average daily volume, according to the BIS. Over 85 per cent (3.2 million) of the employed population of greater London works in the services industries. Because of its prominent global role, London's economy had been affected by the financial crisis of 2007–2008. However, by 2010 the city had recovered, put in place new regulatory powers, proceeded to regain lost ground and re-established London's economic dominance. Along with professional services headquarters, the City of London is home to the Bank of England, London Stock Exchange, and Lloyd's of London insurance market. Over half the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies have their headquarters in central London. Over 70 per cent of the FTSE 100 are within London's metropolitan area, and 75 per cent of Fortune 500 companies have offices in London. In a 1992 report commissioned by the London Stock Exchange, Sir Adrian Cadbury, chairman of his family's confectionery company Cadbury, produced the Cadbury Report, a code of best practice which served as a basis for reform of corporate governance around the world. Media and technology. Media companies are concentrated in London, and the media distribution industry is London's second most competitive sector. The BBC, the world's oldest national broadcaster, is a significant employer, while other broadcasters also have headquarters around the city. Many national newspapers, including "The Times", founded in 1785, are edited in London; the term Fleet Street (where most national newspapers operated) remains a metonym for the British national press. London is a major retail centre and in 2010 had the highest non-food retail sales of any city in the world, with a total spend of around £64.2 billion. The Port of London is the second largest in the UK, handling 45 million tonnes of cargo each year. A growing number of technology companies are based in London, notably in East London Tech City, also known as Silicon Roundabout. In 2014 the city was among the first to receive a geoTLD. In February 2014 London was ranked as the European City of the Future in the 2014/15 list by "fDi Intelligence". A museum in Bletchley Park, where Alan Turing was based during World War II, is in Bletchley, north of central London, as is The National Museum of Computing. The gas and electricity distribution networks that manage and operate the towers, cables and pressure systems that deliver energy to consumers across the city are managed by National Grid plc, SGN and UK Power Networks. Tourism. London is one of the leading tourist destinations in the world and in 2015 was ranked as the most visited city in the world with over 65 million visits. It is also the top city in the world by visitor cross-border spending, estimated at US$20.23 billion in 2015. Tourism is one of London's prime industries, employing 700,000 full-time workers in 2016, and contributes £36 billion a year to the economy. The city accounts for 54% of all inbound visitor spending in the UK. London was the world top city destination as ranked by TripAdvisor users. In 2015 the top most-visited attractions in the UK were all in London. The top 10 most visited attractions were: (with visits per venue) The number of hotel rooms in London in 2015 stood at 138,769, and is expected to grow over the years. Transport. Transport is one of the four main areas of policy administered by the Mayor of London, but the mayor's financial control does not extend to the longer-distance rail network that enters London. In 2007 the Mayor of London assumed responsibility for some local lines, which now form the London Overground network, adding to the existing responsibility for the London Underground, trams and buses. The public transport network is administered by Transport for London (TfL). The lines that formed the London Underground, as well as trams and buses, became part of an integrated transport system in 1933 when the London Passenger Transport Board or "London Transport" was created. Transport for London is now the statutory corporation responsible for most aspects of the transport system in Greater London, and is run by a board and a commissioner appointed by the Mayor of London. Aviation. London is a major international air transport hub with the busiest city airspace in the world. Eight airports use the word "London" in their name, but most traffic passes through six of these. Additionally, various other airports also serve London, catering primarily to general aviation flights. Rail. Underground and DLR. Opened in 1863, the London Underground, commonly referred to as the Tube or just the Underground, is the oldest and third longest metro system in the world. The system serves 272 stations, and was formed from several private companies, including the world's first underground electric line, the City and South London Railway, which opened in 1890. Over four million journeys are made every day on the Underground network, over 1 billion each year. An investment programme is attempting to reduce congestion and improve reliability, including £6.5 billion (€7.7 billion) spent before the 2012 Summer Olympics. The Docklands Light Railway (DLR), which opened in 1987, is a second, more local metro system using smaller and lighter tram-type vehicles that serve the Docklands, Greenwich and Lewisham. Suburban. There are 368 railway stations in the London Travelcard Zones on an extensive above-ground suburban railway network. South London, particularly, has a high concentration of railways as it has fewer Underground lines. Most rail lines terminate around the centre of London, running into eighteen terminal stations, with the exception of the Thameslink trains connecting Bedford in the north and Brighton in the south via Luton and Gatwick airports. London has Britain's busiest station by number of passengers—Waterloo, with over 184 million people using the interchange station complex (which includes Waterloo East station) each year. is one of Europe's busiest rail interchanges. With the need for more rail capacity, the Elizabeth Line (also known as Crossrail) opened in May 2022. It is a new railway line running east to west through London and into the Home Counties with a branch to Heathrow Airport. It was Europe's biggest construction project, with a £15 billion projected cost. Inter-city and international. London is the centre of the National Rail network, with 70 per cent of rail journeys starting or ending in London. King's Cross station and Euston station, both in London, are the starting points of the East Coast Main Line and the West Coast Main Line – the two main railway lines in Britain. Like suburban rail services, regional and inter-city trains depart from several termini around the city centre, directly linking London with most of Great Britain's major cities and towns. "The Flying Scotsman" is an express passenger train service that has operated between London and Edinburgh since 1862; the world famous steam locomotive named after this service, "Flying Scotsman", was the first locomotive to reach the officially authenticated speed of 100 miles per hour (161 km/h) in 1934. Some international railway services to Continental Europe were operated during the 20th century as boat trains. The opening of the Channel Tunnel in 1994 connected London directly to the continental rail network, allowing Eurostar services to begin. Since 2007, high-speed trains link St. Pancras International with Lille, Calais, Paris, Disneyland Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and other European tourist destinations via the High Speed 1 rail link and the Channel Tunnel. The first high-speed domestic trains started in June 2009 linking Kent to London. There are plans for a second high speed line linking London to the Midlands, North West England, and Yorkshire. Buses, coaches and trams. London's bus network runs 24 hours a day with about 9,300 vehicles, over 675 bus routes and about 19,000 bus stops. In 2019 the network had over 2 billion commuter trips per year. Since 2010 an average of £1.2 billion is taken in revenue each year. London has one of the largest wheelchair-accessible networks in the world and from the third quarter of 2007, became more accessible to hearing and visually impaired passengers as audio-visual announcements were introduced. London's coach hub is Victoria Coach Station, opened in 1932. Nationalised in 1970 and subsequently purchased by London Transport which then became Transport for London, Victoria Coach Station has over 14 million passengers a year and provides services across the UK and continental Europe. London has a modern tram network, known as Tramlink. It has 39 stops and four routes, and carried 28 million people in 2013. Since June 2008, Transport for London has completely owned and operated Tramlink. Cable car. London's first and to date only cable car is the London Cable Car, which opened in June 2012. The cable car crosses the Thames and links Greenwich Peninsula with the Royal Docks in the east of the city. It is able to carry up to 2,500 passengers per hour in each direction at peak times. Cycling. In the Greater London Area, around 670,000 people use a bike every day, meaning around 7% of the total population of around 8.8 million use a bike on an average day. Cycling has become an increasingly popular way to get around London. The launch of a bicycle hire scheme in July 2010 was successful and generally well received. Port and river boats. The Port of London, once the largest in the world, is now only the second-largest in the United Kingdom, handling 45 million tonnes of cargo each year as of 2009. Most of this cargo passes through the Port of Tilbury, outside the boundary of Greater London. London has river boat services on the Thames known as Thames Clippers, which offer both commuter and tourist boat services. At major piers including Canary Wharf, London Bridge City, Battersea Power Station and London Eye (Waterloo), services depart at least every 20 minutes during commuter times. The Woolwich Ferry, with 2.5 million passengers every year, is a frequent service linking the North and South Circular Roads. Roads. Although the majority of journeys in central London are made by public transport, car travel is common in the suburbs. The inner ring road (around the city centre), the North and South Circular roads (just within the suburbs), and the outer orbital motorway (the M25, just outside the built-up area in most places) encircle the city and are intersected by a number of busy radial routes—but very few motorways penetrate into inner London. The M25 is the second-longest ring-road motorway in Europe at long. The A1 and M1 connect London to Leeds, and Newcastle and Edinburgh. The Austin Motor Company began making hackney carriages (London taxis) in 1929, and models include Austin FX3 from 1948, Austin FX4 from 1958, with more recent models TXII and TX4 manufactured by London Taxis International. The BBC states, "ubiquitous black cabs and red double-decker buses all have long and tangled stories that are deeply embedded in London's traditions". London is notorious for its traffic congestion; in 2009, the average speed of a car in the rush hour was recorded at . In 2003, a congestion charge was introduced to reduce traffic volumes in the city centre. With a few exceptions, motorists are required to pay to drive within a defined zone encompassing much of central London. Motorists who are residents of the defined zone can buy a greatly reduced season pass. Over the course of several years, the average number of cars entering the centre of London on a weekday was reduced from 195,000 to 125,000 cars. Education. Tertiary education. London is a major global centre of higher education teaching and research and has the largest concentration of higher education institutes in Europe. According to the QS World University Rankings 2015/16, London has the greatest concentration of top class universities in the world and its international student population of around 110,000 is larger than any other city in the world. A 2014 PricewaterhouseCoopers report termed London the global capital of higher education. A number of world-leading education institutions are based in London. In the 2022 "QS World University Rankings", Imperial College London is ranked No. 6 in the world, University College London (UCL) is ranked 8th, and King's College London (KCL) is ranked 37th. All are regularly ranked highly, with Imperial College being the UK's leading university in the Research Excellence Framework ranking 2021. The London School of Economics has been described as the world's leading social science institution for both teaching and research. The London Business School is considered one of the world's leading business schools and in 2015 its MBA programme was ranked second-best in the world by the "Financial Times". The city is also home to three of the world's top ten performing arts schools (as ranked by the 2020 QS World University Rankings): the Royal College of Music (ranking 2nd in the world), the Royal Academy of Music (ranking 4th) and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (ranking 6th). With students in London and around 48,000 in University of London Worldwide, the federal University of London is the largest contact teaching university in the UK. It includes five multi-faculty universities – City, King's College London, Queen Mary, Royal Holloway and UCL – and a number of smaller and more specialised institutions including Birkbeck, the Courtauld Institute of Art, Goldsmiths, the London Business School, the London School of Economics, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the Royal Academy of Music, the Central School of Speech and Drama, the Royal Veterinary College and the School of Oriental and African Studies. Universities in London outside the University of London system include Brunel University, Imperial College London, Kingston University, London Metropolitan University, University of East London, University of West London, University of Westminster, London South Bank University, Middlesex University, and University of the Arts London (the largest university of art, design, fashion, communication and the performing arts in Europe). In addition, there are three international universities – Regent's University London, Richmond, The American International University in London and Schiller International University. London is home to five major medical schools – Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry (part of Queen Mary), King's College London School of Medicine (the largest medical school in Europe), Imperial College School of Medicine, UCL Medical School and St George's, University of London – and has many affiliated teaching hospitals. It is also a major centre for biomedical research, and three of the UK's eight academic health science centres are based in the city – Imperial College Healthcare, King's Health Partners and UCL Partners (the largest such centre in Europe). Additionally, many biomedical and biotechnology spin out companies from these research institutions are based around the city, most prominently in White City. Founded by pioneering nurse Florence Nightingale at St Thomas' Hospital in 1860, the first nursing school is now part of King's College London. It was at King's in 1952 where a team led by Rosalind Franklin captured "Photo 51", the critical evidence in identifying the structure of DNA. There are a number of business schools in London, including the London School of Business and Finance, Cass Business School (part of City University London), Hult International Business School, ESCP Europe, European Business School London, Imperial College Business School, the London Business School and the UCL School of Management. London is also home to many specialist arts education institutions, including the Central School of Ballet, London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), London College of Contemporary Arts (LCCA), London Contemporary Dance School, National Centre for Circus Arts, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA; president Sir Kenneth Branagh), Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance, the Royal College of Art, Sylvia Young Theatre School and Trinity Laban. The BRIT School in the London borough of Croydon provides training for the performing arts and technologies. Primary and secondary education. The majority of primary and secondary schools and further-education colleges in London are controlled by the London boroughs or otherwise state-funded; leading examples include Ashbourne College, Bethnal Green Academy, Brampton Manor Academy, City and Islington College, City of Westminster College, David Game College, Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College, Leyton Sixth Form College, London Academy of Excellence, Tower Hamlets College, and Newham Collegiate Sixth Form Centre. There are also a number of private schools and colleges in London, some old and famous, such as City of London School, Harrow, St Paul's School, Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, University College School, The John Lyon School, Highgate School and Westminster School. Royal Observatory, Greenwich and learned societies. Founded in 1675, the Royal Observatory in Greenwich was established to address the problem of calculating longitude for navigational purposes. This pioneering work in solving longitude featured in astronomer royal Nevil Maskelyne's "Nautical Almanac" which made the Greenwich meridian the universal reference point, and helped lead to the international adoption of Greenwich as the prime meridian (0° longitude) in 1884. Important scientific learned societies based in London include the Royal Society—the UK's national academy of sciences and the oldest national scientific institution in the world—founded in 1660, and the Royal Institution, founded in 1799. Since 1825, the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures have presented scientific subjects to a general audience, and speakers have included aerospace engineer Frank Whittle, naturalist David Attenborough and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. Culture. Leisure and entertainment. Leisure is a major part of the London economy. A 2003 report attributed a quarter of the entire UK leisure economy to London at 25.6 events per 1000 people. The city is one of the four fashion capitals of the world, and, according to official statistics, is the world's third-busiest film production centre, presents more live comedy than any other city, and has the biggest theatre audience of any city in the world. Within the City of Westminster in London, the entertainment district of the West End has its focus around Leicester Square, where London and world film premieres are held, and Piccadilly Circus, with its giant electronic advertisements. London's theatre district is here, as are many cinemas, bars, clubs, and restaurants, including the city's Chinatown district (in Soho), and just to the east is Covent Garden, an area housing speciality shops. The city is the home of Andrew Lloyd Webber, whose musicals have dominated West End theatre since the late 20th century. Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap", the world's longest-running play, has been performed in the West End since 1952. The Laurence Olivier Awards–named after Laurence Olivier–are given annually by the Society of London Theatre. The Royal Ballet, English National Ballet, Royal Opera, and English National Opera are based in London and perform at the Royal Opera House, the London Coliseum, Sadler's Wells Theatre, and the Royal Albert Hall, as well as touring the country. Islington's long Upper Street, extending northwards from Angel, has more bars and restaurants than any other street in the UK. Europe's busiest shopping area is Oxford Street, a shopping street nearly long, making it the longest shopping street in the UK. It is home to vast numbers of retailers and department stores, including Selfridges flagship store. Knightsbridge, home to the equally renowned Harrods department store, lies to the south-west. Opened in 1760 with its flagship store on Regent Street since 1881, Hamleys is the oldest toy store in the world. Madame Tussauds wax museum opened in Baker Street in 1835, an era viewed as being when London's tourism industry began. London is home to designers John Galliano, Stella McCartney, Manolo Blahnik, and Jimmy Choo, among others; its renowned art and fashion schools make it one of the four international centres of fashion. Mary Quant designed the miniskirt in her King's Road boutique in Swinging Sixties London. London offers a great variety of cuisine as a result of its ethnically diverse population. Gastronomic centres include the Bangladeshi restaurants of Brick Lane and the Chinese restaurants of Chinatown. There are Chinese takeaways throughout London, as are Indian restaurants which provide Indian and Anglo-Indian cuisine. Around 1860, the first fish and chips shop in London was opened by Joseph Malin, a Jewish immigrant, in Bow. The full English breakfast dates from the Victorian era, and many cafe's in London serve a full English throughout the day. London has five 3-Michelin star restaurants, including Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in Chelsea. Many hotels in London provide a traditional afternoon tea service, such as the Oscar Wilde Lounge at the Hotel Café Royal in Piccadilly, and a themed tea service is also available, for example an "Alice in Wonderland" themed afternoon tea served at the Egerton House Hotel, and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" themed afternoon tea at One Aldwych in Covent Garden. The nation's most popular biscuit to dunk in tea, chocolate digestives have been manufactured by McVitie's at their Harlesden factory in north-west London since 1925. There is a variety of annual events, beginning with the relatively new New Year's Day Parade, a fireworks display at the London Eye; the world's second largest street party, the Notting Hill Carnival, is held on the late August Bank Holiday each year. Traditional parades include November's Lord Mayor's Show, a centuries-old event celebrating the annual appointment of a new Lord Mayor of the City of London with a procession along the streets of the city, and June's Trooping the Colour, a formal military pageant performed by regiments of the Commonwealth and British armies to celebrate the Queen's Official Birthday. The Boishakhi Mela is a Bengali New Year festival celebrated by the British Bangladeshi community. It is the largest open-air Asian festival in Europe. After the Notting Hill Carnival, it is the second-largest street festival in the United Kingdom attracting over 80,000 visitors. First held in 1862, the RHS Chelsea Flower Show (run by the Royal Horticultural Society) takes place in May every year. LGBT scene. The first gay bar in London in the modern sense was The Cave of the Golden Calf, established as a night club in an underground location at 9 Heddon Street, just off Regent Street, in 1912 and became a haunt for the wealthy, aristocratic and bohemian. While London has been an LGBT tourism destination, after homosexuality was decriminalised in England in 1967 gay bar culture became more visible, and from the early 1970s Soho (and in particular Old Compton Street) became the centre of the London LGBT community. G-A-Y, previously based at the Astoria, and now Heaven, is a long-running night club. Wider British cultural movements have influenced LGBT culture: for example, the emergence of glam rock in the UK in the early 1970s, via Marc Bolan and David Bowie, saw a generation of teenagers begin playing with the idea of androgyny, and the West End musical "The Rocky Horror Show", which debuted in London in 1973, is also widely said to have been an influence on countercultural and sexual liberation movements. The Blitz Kids (which included Boy George) frequented the Tuesday club-night at Blitz in Covent Garden, helping launch the New Romantic subcultural movement in the late 1970s. Today, the annual London Pride Parade and the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival are held in the city. Literature, film and television. London has been the setting for many works of literature. The pilgrims in Geoffrey Chaucer's late 14th-century "Canterbury Tales" set out for Canterbury from London. William Shakespeare spent a large part of his life living and working in London; his contemporary Ben Jonson was also based there, and some of his work, most notably his play "The Alchemist", was set in the city. "A Journal of the Plague Year" (1722) by Daniel Defoe is a fictionalisation of the events of the 1665 Great Plague. The literary centres of London have traditionally been hilly Hampstead and (since the early 20th century) Bloomsbury. Writers closely associated with the city are the diarist Samuel Pepys, noted for his eyewitness account of the Great Fire; Charles Dickens, whose representation of a foggy, snowy, grimy London of street sweepers and pickpockets has influenced people's vision of early Victorian London; and Virginia Woolf, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the 20th century. Later important depictions of London from the 19th and early 20th centuries are Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. Robert Louis Stevenson mixed in London literary circles, and in 1886 he wrote the "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde", a gothic novella set in Victorian London. In 1898, H. G. Wells' sci-fi novel "The War of the Worlds" sees London (and the south of England) invaded by Martians. Letitia Elizabeth Landon wrote "Calendar of the London Seasons" in 1834. Modern writers influenced by the city include Peter Ackroyd, author of a "biography" of London, and Iain Sinclair, who writes in the genre of psychogeography. In the 1940s, George Orwell wrote essays in the "London Evening Standard", most notably "A Nice Cup of Tea" (method for making tea) and "The Moon Under Water" (an ideal pub). The WWII evacuation of children from London is depicted in C. S. Lewis' first Narnia book "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" (1950). On Christmas Eve 1925, Winnie-the-Pooh debuted in London's "Evening News", with the character based on a stuffed toy A. A. Milne bought for his son Christopher Robin in Harrods. In 1958, author Michael Bond created Paddington Bear, a refugee found in London Paddington station. A screen adaptation, "Paddington" (2014), features the calypso song "London is the Place for Me". London has played a significant role in the film industry. Major studios within or bordering London include Pinewood, Elstree, Ealing, Shepperton, Twickenham, and Leavesden, with the "James Bond" and "Harry Potter" series among many notable films produced here. Working Title Films has its headquarters in London. A post-production community is centred in Soho, and London houses six of the world's largest visual effects companies, such as Framestore. The Imaginarium, a digital performance-capture studio, was founded by Andy Serkis. London has been the setting for films including "Oliver Twist" (1948), "Scrooge" (1951), "Peter Pan" (1953), "One Hundred and One Dalmatians" (1961), "My Fair Lady" (1964), "Mary Poppins" (1964), "Blowup" (1966), "A Clockwork Orange" (1971), "The Long Good Friday" (1980), "The Great Mouse Detective" (1986), "Notting Hill" (1999), "Love Actually" (2003), "V for Vendetta" (2005), "" (2008) and "The King's Speech" (2010). Notable actors and filmmakers from London include Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Caine, Julie Andrews, Peter Sellers, David Lean, Julie Christie, Gary Oldman, Emma Thompson, Guy Ritchie, Christopher Nolan, Alan Rickman, Jude Law, Helena Bonham Carter, Idris Elba, Tom Hardy, Daniel Radcliffe, Keira Knightley, Daniel Kaluuya and Daniel Day-Lewis. Post-war Ealing comedies featured Alec Guinness, from the 1950s Hammer Horrors starred Christopher Lee, films by Michael Powell included the London-set early slasher "Peeping Tom" (1960), the 1970s comedy troupe Monty Python had film editing suites in Covent Garden, while since the 1990s Richard Curtis's rom-coms have featured Hugh Grant. The largest cinema chain in the country, Odeon Cinemas was founded in London in 1928 by Oscar Deutsch. The British Academy Film Awards (BAFTAs) have been held in London since 1949, with the BAFTA Fellowship the Academy's highest accolade. Founded in 1957, the BFI London Film Festival takes place over two weeks every October. London is a major centre for television production, with studios including Television Centre, ITV Studios, Sky Campus and Fountain Studios; the latter hosted the original talent shows, "Pop Idol", "The X Factor", and "Britain's Got Talent", before each format was exported around the world. Formerly a franchise of ITV, Thames Television featured comedians such as Benny Hill and Rowan Atkinson ("Mr. Bean" was first screened by Thames), while Talkback produced "Da Ali G Show" which featured Sacha Baron Cohen as Ali G. Many television shows have been set in London, including the popular television soap opera "EastEnders". Museums, art galleries and libraries. London is home to many museums, galleries, and other institutions, many of which are free of admission charges and are major tourist attractions as well as playing a research role. The first of these to be established was the British Museum in Bloomsbury, in 1753. Originally containing antiquities, natural history specimens, and the national library, the museum now has 7 million artefacts from around the globe. In 1824, the National Gallery was founded to house the British national collection of Western paintings; this now occupies a prominent position in Trafalgar Square. The British Library is the second largest library in the world, and the national library of the United Kingdom. There are many other research libraries, including the Wellcome Library and Dana Centre, as well as university libraries, including the British Library of Political and Economic Science at LSE, the Abdus Salam Library at Imperial, the Maughan Library at King's, and the Senate House Libraries at the University of London. In the latter half of the 19th century the locale of South Kensington was developed as "Albertopolis", a cultural and scientific quarter. Three major national museums are there: the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Natural History Museum, and the Science Museum. The National Portrait Gallery was founded in 1856 to house depictions of figures from British history; its holdings now comprise the world's most extensive collection of portraits. The national gallery of British art is at Tate Britain, originally established as an annexe of the National Gallery in 1897. The Tate Gallery, as it was formerly known, also became a major centre for modern art. In 2000, this collection moved to Tate Modern, a new gallery housed in the former Bankside Power Station which is accessed by pedestrians north of the Thames via the Millennium Bridge. Music. London is one of the major classical and popular music capitals of the world and hosts major music corporations, such as Universal Music Group International and Warner Music Group, and countless bands, musicians and industry professionals. The city is also home to many orchestras and concert halls, such as the Barbican Arts Centre (principal base of the London Symphony Orchestra and the London Symphony Chorus), the Southbank Centre (London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Philharmonia Orchestra), Cadogan Hall (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra) and the Royal Albert Hall (The Proms). The Proms, an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music first held in 1895, ends with the Last Night of the Proms. London's two main opera houses are the Royal Opera House and the London Coliseum (home to the English National Opera). The UK's largest pipe organ is at the Royal Albert Hall. Other significant instruments are in cathedrals and major churches—the church bells of St Clement Danes feature in the 1744 nursery rhyme "Oranges and Lemons". Several conservatoires are within the city: Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama and Trinity Laban. The record label EMI was formed in the city in 1931, and an early employee for the company, Alan Blumlein, created stereo sound that year. London has numerous venues for rock and pop concerts, including the world's busiest indoor venue, the O2 Arena, and Wembley Arena, as well as many mid-sized venues, such as Brixton Academy, the Hammersmith Apollo and the Shepherd's Bush Empire. Several music festivals, including the Wireless Festival, Lovebox and Hyde Park's British Summer Time, are held in London. The city is home to the original Hard Rock Cafe and the Abbey Road Studios, where the Beatles recorded many of their hits. In the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, musicians and groups like Elton John, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, Queen, Eric Clapton, the Who, Cliff Richard, Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, Deep Purple, T. Rex, the Police, Elvis Costello, Dire Straits, Cat Stevens, Fleetwood Mac, the Cure, Madness, Culture Club, Dusty Springfield, Phil Collins, Rod Stewart, Status Quo and Sade, derived their sound from the streets and rhythms of London. London was instrumental in the development of punk music, with figures such as the Sex Pistols, the Clash and fashion designer Vivienne Westwood all based in the city. Other artists to emerge from the London music scene include George Michael, Kate Bush, Seal, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bush, the Spice Girls, Jamiroquai, Blur, the Prodigy, Gorillaz, Mumford & Sons, Coldplay, Amy Winehouse, Adele, Sam Smith, Ed Sheeran, Ellie Goulding, Dua Lipa and Florence and the Machine. Artists from London played a prominent role in the development of synth-pop, including Gary Numan, Depeche Mode, the Pet Shop Boys and Eurythmics; the latter's "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" was recorded in the attic of their north London home, heralding a trend for home recording methods. Artists from London with a Caribbean influence include Hot Chocolate, Billy Ocean, Soul II Soul and Eddy Grant, with the latter fusing reggae, soul and samba with rock and pop. London is also a centre for urban music. In particular the genres UK garage, drum and bass, dubstep and grime evolved in the city from the foreign genres of house, hip hop, and reggae, alongside local drum and bass. Music station BBC Radio 1Xtra was set up to support the rise of local urban contemporary music both in London and in the rest of the United Kingdom. The British Phonographic Industry's annual popular music awards, the Brit Awards, are held in London. Recreation. Parks and open spaces. A 2013 report by the City of London Corporation said that London is the "greenest city" in Europe with 35,000 acres (14,164 hectares) of public parks, woodlands and gardens. The largest parks in the central area of London are three of the eight Royal Parks, namely Hyde Park and its neighbour Kensington Gardens in the west, and Regent's Park to the north. Hyde Park in particular is popular for sports and sometimes hosts open-air concerts. Regent's Park contains London Zoo, the world's oldest scientific zoo, and is near Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. Primrose Hill is a popular spot from which to view the city skyline. Close to Hyde Park are smaller Royal Parks, Green Park and St. James's Park. A number of large parks lie outside the city centre, including Hampstead Heath and the remaining Royal Parks of Greenwich Park to the southeast, and Bushy Park and Richmond Park (the largest) to the southwest. Hampton Court Park is also a royal park, but, because it contains a palace, it is administered by the Historic Royal Palaces, unlike the eight Royal Parks. Close to Richmond Park is Kew Gardens, which has the world's largest collection of living plants. In 2003, the gardens were put on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. There are also parks administered by London's borough Councils, including Victoria Park in the East End and Battersea Park in the centre. Some more informal, semi-natural open spaces also exist, including Hampstead Heath and Epping Forest, both controlled by the City of London Corporation. Hampstead Heath incorporates Kenwood House, a former stately home and a popular location in the summer months when classical musical concerts are held by the lake. Epping Forest is a popular venue for various outdoor activities, including mountain biking, walking, horse riding, golf, angling, and orienteering. Three of the UK's most-visited theme parks, Thorpe Park near Staines-upon-Thames, Chessington World of Adventures in Chessington and Legoland Windsor, are located within of London. Walking. Walking is a popular recreational activity in London. Areas that provide for walks include Wimbledon Common, Epping Forest, Hampton Court Park, Hampstead Heath, the eight Royal Parks, canals and disused railway tracks. Access to canals and rivers has improved recently, including the creation of the Thames Path, some of which is within Greater London, and The Wandle Trail along the River Wandle. Other long-distance paths, linking green spaces, have also been created, including the Capital Ring, the Green Chain Walk, London Outer Orbital Path ("Loop"), Jubilee Walkway, Lea Valley Walk, and the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Walk. Sport. London has hosted the Summer Olympics three times: in 1908, 1948, and 2012, making it the first city to host the modern Games three times. The city was also the host of the British Empire Games in 1934. In 2017, London hosted the World Championships in Athletics for the first time. London's most popular sport is football, and it has seven clubs in the Premier League in the 2022–23 season: Arsenal, Brentford, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Fulham, Tottenham Hotspur, and West Ham United. Other professional men's teams in London are AFC Wimbledon, Barnet, Bromley, Charlton Athletic, Dagenham & Redbridge, Leyton Orient, Millwall, Queens Park Rangers and Sutton United. Four London-based teams are in the Women's Super League: Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham and West Ham United. Three Premiership Rugby union teams are based in Greater London: Harlequins, London Irish and Saracens. Ealing Trailfinders, London Sottish and Richmond play in the RFU Championship; other rugby union clubs in the city include Scottish, Rosslyn Park F.C., Westcombe Park R.F.C. and Blackheath F.C. Twickenham Stadium in south-west London hosts home matches for the England national rugby union team. While rugby league is more popular in the north of England, there are two professional rugby league clubs in London – the London Broncos in the second-tier RFL Championship and the third-tier League 1 team, the London Skolars. One of London's best-known annual sports competitions is the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, held at the All England Club in the south-western suburb of Wimbledon since 1877. Played in late June to early July, it is the oldest tennis tournament in the world and widely considered the most prestigious. London has two Test cricket grounds, Lord's (home of Middlesex C.C.C.) and the Oval (home of Surrey C.C.C.). Lord's has hosted four finals of the Cricket World Cup and is known as the "Home of Cricket". Alexandra Palace in north London hosts the PDC World Darts Championship and the Masters snooker tournament. Other key annual events are the mass-participation London Marathon and the University Boat Race.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17911

Lord Dunsany

Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany, (; 24 July 1878 – 25 October 1957), commonly known as Lord Dunsany, was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist. He published more than 90 volumes of fiction, essays, poems and plays in his lifetime, with a modest amount of material published posthumously. He gained a name in the 1910s as a great writer in the English-speaking world. Best known today are the 1924 fantasy novel, "The King of Elfland's Daughter", and his first book, "The Gods of Pegāna", which depicts a fictional pantheon. Many critics feel his early work laid grounds for the fantasy genre. Born in London as heir to an old Irish peerage, he was raised partly in Kent, but later lived mainly at Ireland's possibly longest-inhabited home, Dunsany Castle near Tara. He worked with W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory supporting the Abbey Theatre and some fellow writers. He was a chess and pistol champion of Ireland, and travelled and hunted. He devised an asymmetrical game called Dunsany's chess. In later life, he gained an honorary doctorate from Trinity College Dublin. He retired to Shoreham, Kent, in 1947. In 1957 he took ill when visiting Ireland and died in Dublin of appendicitis. Biography. Early life. Edward Plunkett ("Dunsany"), known to his family as "Eddie", was the first son of John William Plunkett, 17th Baron of Dunsany (1853–1899), and his wife, Ernle Elizabeth Louisa Maria Grosvenor Ernle-Erle-Drax, née Ernle Elizabeth Louisa Maria Grosvenor Burton (1855–1916). From a historically wealthy and famous family, Lord Dunsany was related to many well-known Irish figures. He was a kinsman of the Catholic Saint Oliver Plunkett, the martyred Archbishop of Armagh whose ring and crozier head are still held by the Dunsany family. He was also related to the prominent Anglo-Irish unionist and later nationalist / Home Rule politician Sir Horace Plunkett and George Count Plunkett, Papal Count and Republican politician, father of Joseph Plunkett, executed for his part in the 1916 Rising. His mother was a cousin of Sir Richard Burton, and he inherited from her considerable height, being 1.93 metres tall (6'4"). The Countess of Fingall, wife of Dunsany's cousin, the Earl of Fingall, wrote a best-selling account of the life of the aristocracy in Ireland in the late 19th century and early 20th century called "Seventy Years Young". Plunkett's only grown sibling, a younger brother, from whom he was estranged from about 1916, for reasons not fully clear but connected to his mother's will, was the noted British naval officer Sir Reginald Drax. Another younger brother died in infancy. Edward Plunkett grew up at the family properties, notably, Dunstall Priory in Shoreham, Kent, and Dunsany Castle in County Meath, but also in family homes such as in London. His schooling was at Cheam, Eton College and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, which he entered in 1896. Title and marriage. The title passed to him at his father's death in 1899 at a fairly young age. The young Lord Dunsany returned to Dunsany Castle after war duty, in 1901. In that year he was also confirmed as an elector for the Representative Peers for Ireland in the House of Lords. In 1903, he met Lady Beatrice Child Villiers (1880–1970), youngest daughter of The 7th Earl of Jersey (head of the Jersey banking family), who was then living at Osterley Park. They married in 1904. Their one child, Randal, was born in 1906. Lady Beatrice was supportive of Dunsany's interests and helped him by typing his manuscripts, selecting work for his collections, including the 1954 retrospective short story collection, and overseeing his literary heritage after his death. The Dunsanys were socially active in Dublin and London and travelled between homes in Meath, London and Kent, other than during the First and Second world wars and the Irish War of Independence. Dunsany circulated with many literary figures of the time. To many of these in Ireland he was first introduced by his uncle, the co-operative pioneer Sir Horace Plunkett, who also helped to manage his estate and investments for a time. He was friendly, for example, with George William Russell, Oliver St. John Gogarty, and for a time, W. B. Yeats. He also socialised at times with George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells, and was a friend of Rudyard Kipling. In 1910 Dunsany commissioned a two-storey extension to Dunsany Castle, with a billiard room, bedrooms and other facilities. The billiard room includes the crests of all the Lords Dunsany up to the 18th. Military experience. Dunsany served as a second lieutenant in the Coldstream Guards in the Second Boer War. Volunteering in the First World War and appointed Captain in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, he was stationed for a time at Ebrington Barracks in Derry. Hearing while on leave of disturbances in Dublin during the Easter Rising of 1916, he drove in to offer help and was wounded by a bullet lodged in his skull. After recovery at Jervis Street Hospital and what was then the King George V Hospital (now St. Bricin's Military Hospital), he returned to duty. His military belt was lost in the episode and later used at the burial of Michael Collins. Having been refused forward positioning in 1916 and listed as valuable as a trainer, he served in the later war stages in the trenches and in the final period writing propaganda material for the War Office with MI7b(1). There is a book at Dunsany Castle with wartime photographs, on which lost members of his command are marked. During the Irish War of Independence, Dunsany was charged with violating the Restoration of Order in Ireland Regulations, tried by court-martial on 4 February 1921, convicted, and sentenced to pay a fine of 25 pounds or serve three months in prison without labour. The Crown Forces had searched Dunsany Castle and had found two double-barrelled shotguns, two rook rifles, four Very pistols, an automatic pistol and a large quantity of pistol ammunition, along with shotgun and rifle ammunition. During the Second World War, Dunsany signed up for the Irish Army Reserve and the British Home Guard, the two countries' local defence forces, and was especially active in Shoreham, Kent, the English village bombed most during the Battle of Britain. Literary life. Dunsany's fame arose chiefly from his prolific writings. He was involved in the Irish Literary Revival. Supporting the Revival, Dunsany was a major donor to the Abbey Theatre and he moved in Irish literary circles. He was well acquainted with W. B. Yeats (who rarely acted as editor but gathered and published a Dunsany selection), Lady Gregory, Percy French, George "AE" Russell, Oliver St John Gogarty, Padraic Colum (with whom he jointly wrote a play) and others. He befriended and supported Francis Ledwidge, to whom he gave the use of his library, and Mary Lavin. Dunsany made his first literary tour to the United States in 1919 and further such visits up to the 1950s, in the early years mostly to the eastern seaboard and later, notably, to California. Dunsany's own work and contribution to the Irish literary heritage were recognised with an honorary degree from Trinity College Dublin. Early 1940s. In 1940, Dunsany was appointed Byron Professor of English in Athens University, Greece. Having reached Athens by a circuitous route, he was so successful that he was offered a post as Professor of English in Istanbul. However, he had to be evacuated due to the German invasion of Greece in April 1941, returning home by an even more complex route, his travels forming a basis for a long poem published in book form ("A Journey, in 5 cantos: The Battle of Britain, The Battle of Greece, The Battle of the Mediterranean, Battles Long Ago, The Battle of the Atlantic", special edition January 1944). Olivia Manning's character Lord Pinkrose in her novel sequence the "Fortunes of War" was a mocking portrait of Dunsany in that period. Later life. In 1947, Dunsany transferred his Meath estate in trust to his son and heir and settled in Kent at his Shoreham house, Dunstall Priory, not far from the home of Rudyard Kipling. He visited Ireland only occasionally thereafter, and engaged actively in life in Shoreham and London. He also began a new series of visits to the United States, notably California, as recounted in Hazel Littlefield-Smith's biographical "Dunsany, King of Dreams". Death. In 1957, Lord Dunsany became ill while dining with the Earl and Countess of Fingall at Dunsany, in what proved to be an attack of appendicitis. He died in hospital in Dublin, at the age of 79. He was buried in the churchyard of the ancient church of St Peter and St Paul, Shoreham, Kent. His funeral was attended by many family members (including Pakenhams, Jerseys and Fingals), representatives of his old regiment and various bodies in which he had taken an interest, and figures from Shoreham. A memorial service was held at Kilmessan in Meath, with a reading of "Crossing the Bar", which coincided with the passing of a flock of geese. Beatrice survived Dunsany, living mainly at Shoreham and overseeing his literary legacy until her death in 1970. Their son Randal succeeded to the barony and was in turn succeeded by his grandson, the artist Edward Plunkett. Dunsany's literary rights passed from Beatrice to Edward. Interests. Aside from his literary work, Dunsany was a keen chess player, setting chess puzzles for journals such as "The Times" of London, playing José Raúl Capablanca to a draw in a simultaneous exhibition, and inventing Dunsany's Chess, an asymmetrical chess variant notable for not involving any fairy pieces, unlike the many variants that require the player to learn unconventional piece movements. He was president of both the Irish Chess Union and the Kent County Chess Association for some years and of Sevenoaks Chess Club for 54 years. Dunsany was an avid horseman and hunter, for many years hosting the hounds of a local hunt and hunting in parts of Africa. He was at one time the pistol-shooting champion of Ireland. Dunsany also campaigned for animal rights, being known especially for his opposition to the "docking" of dogs' tails, and presided over the West Kent branch of the RSPCA in his later years. He enjoyed cricket, provided the local cricket ground situated near Dunsany Crossroads, and later played for and presided at Shoreham Cricket Club in Kent. He was a supporter of Scouting for many years, serving as President of the Sevenoaks district Boy Scouts Association. He also supported an amateur drama group, the Shoreham Players. Dunsany provided support for the British Legion in both Ireland and Kent, including grounds in Trim and poetry for the Irish branch's annual memorial service on a number of occasions. Writings. Dunsany was a prolific writer of short stories, novels, plays, poetry, essays and autobiography. He published over 90 books in his lifetime, not including individual plays. Books have continued to appear, with more than 120 having been issued by 2017. Dunsany's works have been published in many languages. Early career. Dunsany began his literary career in the late 1890s writing under his given name, with published verses such as "Rhymes from a Suburb" and "The Spirit of the Bog". In 1905, writing as Lord Dunsany, he produced the well-received collection "The Gods of Pegāna." Early fantasy. Dunsany's most notable fantasy short stories appeared in collections from 1905 to 1919, before fantasy had been recognised as a distinct genre. He paid for the publication of the first collection, "The Gods of Pegāna," earning a commission on sales. The stories in his first two books, and perhaps the beginning of his third, were set in an invented world, Pegāna, with its own gods, history and geography. Starting with this, Dunsany's name is linked to that of Sidney Sime, his chosen artist, who illustrated much of his work, notably up to 1922. Drama. After "The Book of Wonder" (1912), Dunsany began to write plays – many of which were even more successful at the time than his early story collections – while continuing to write short stories. He carried on writing plays for the theatre into the 1930s, including the famous "If" (1921), and also some radio productions. Although many of Dunsany's plays were successfully staged in his lifetime, he also wrote "chamber plays" or closet dramas. Some of these chamber or radio plays involve supernatural events – a character appearing out of thin air or vanishing in full view of the audience, without an explanation of how the effect is to be staged, a matter of no importance, as Dunsany did not intend them to be performed live. Middle period. After a successful US lecture tour in 1919–1920, Dunsany's reputation was now related principally to his plays. He temporarily reduced his output of short stories, concentrating on plays, novels and poetry for a time. His poetry, now little seen, was for a time so popular that it is recited by the lead character of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "This Side of Paradise". His sonnet "A Dirge of Victory" was the only poem included in the Armistice Day edition of the Times of London. Launching another phase of his work, Dunsany's first novel, "" appeared in 1922. It is set in "a Romantic Spain that never was" and follows the adventures of a young nobleman, Don Rodriguez, and his servant in their search for a castle for Rodriguez. In 1924, Dunsany published his second novel, "The King of Elfland's Daughter," a return to his early style of writing. In his next novel, "The Charwoman's Shadow," Dunsany returned to the Spanish milieu and the light style of "Don Rodriguez". Among his best-known characters was Joseph Jorkens, an obese, middle-aged raconteur who frequented the fictional Billiards Club in London and would tell fantastic stories if anyone bought him a large whiskey and soda. From his tales, it was clear that Jorkens had travelled to all seven continents, was extremely resourceful and well-versed in world cultures, but always came up short on becoming rich and famous. The "Jorkens" books, which sold well, were among the first of a type that would become popular in fantasy and science fiction writing: highly improbable "club tales" told at a gentleman's club or bar. Some saw Dunsany's writing habits as peculiar. Lady Beatrice said, "He always sat on a crumpled old hat while composing his tales". (The hat was eventually stolen by a visitor to Dunsany Castle.) Dunsany almost never rewrote anything; everything he published was a first draft. Much of his work was written with a quill pen he made himself; Lady Beatrice was usually the first to see the writings and would help to type them. It has been said that Lord Dunsany sometimes conceived stories while hunting and would return to the Castle and draw in his family and servants to re-enact his visions before he set them on paper. Translations. Dunsany's work was translated from early on into languages that include Spanish, French, Japanese, German, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Czech and Turkish – his uncle, Horace Plunkett, suggested 14 languages by the 1920s. Style and themes. Dunsany's style varied significantly throughout his writing career. Prominent Dunsany scholar S. T. Joshi has described these shifts as Dunsany moving on after he felt he had exhausted the potential of a style or medium. From the naïve fantasy of his earliest writings, through his early short-story work in 1904–1908, he turned to the self-conscious fantasy of "The Book of Wonder" in 1912, in which he almost seems to be parodying his lofty early style. Each of his collections varies in mood; "A Dreamer's Tales" varies from the wistfulness of "Blagdaross" to the horrors of "Poor Old Bill" and "Where the Tides Ebb and Flow" to the social satire of "The Day of the Poll." The opening paragraph of "The Hoard of the Gibbelins" from "The Book of Wonder," (1912) gives a good indication of both the tone and tenor of Dunsany's style at the time: The Gibbelins eat, as is well known, nothing less good than man. Their evil tower is joined to Terra Cognita, to the lands we know, by a bridge. Their hoard is beyond reason; avarice has no use for it; they have a separate cellar for emeralds and a separate cellar for sapphires; they have filled a hole with gold and dig it up when they need it. And the only use that is known for their ridiculous wealth is to attract to their larder a continual supply of food. In times of famine, they have even been known to scatter rubies abroad, a little trail of them to some city of Man, and sure enough, their larders would soon be full again. Despite his frequent shifts of style and medium, Dunsany's thematic concerns remained essentially the same. Many of his later novels had an explicitly Irish theme, from the semi-autobiographical "The Curse of the Wise Woman" to "His Fellow Men." Memberships, awards and honours. Lord Dunsany was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a member and at one point President of the Authors' Society, and likewise President of the Shakespeare Reading Society from 1938 until his death in 1957, when he was succeeded by Sir John Gielgud. Dunsany was also a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and an honorary member of the Institut Historique et Heraldique de France. He was initially an Associate Member of the Irish Academy of Letters, founded by Yeats and others, and later a full member. At one of their meetings, after 1922, he asked Seán Ó Faoláin, who was presiding, "Do we not toast the King?" Ó Faoláin replied that there was only one toast: to the Nation; but after it was given and O'Faolain had called for coffee, he saw Dunsany, standing quietly among the bustle, raise his glass discreetly, and whisper "God bless him". "The Curse of the Wise Woman" received the Harmsworth Literary Award in Ireland. Dunsany received an honorary doctorate, D.Litt., from Trinity College Dublin, in 1940. In 1950, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature by Irish PEN, citing his fiction, poetry, and support for younger writers. However, after a negative appraisal by Per Hallström, the Nobel Committee did not consider him for the prize, which was won that year by Bertrand Russell. Curator and studies. In the late 1990s, a curator, J. W. (Joe) Doyle, was appointed by the estate to work at Dunsany Castle, in part to locate and organise the author's manuscripts, typescripts and other materials. Doyle found several works known to exist but thought to be "lost": the plays "The Ginger Cat" and "The Murderers," some Jorkens stories, and the novel "The Pleasures of a Futuroscope" (later published by Hippocampus Press). He also found hitherto unknown works, including "The Last Book of Jorkens", to the first edition of which he wrote an introduction, and an unnamed 1956 short story collection, eventually published as part of "The Ghost in the Corner and other stories" in 2017. Doyle was still working as curator in 2020. Some uncollected works, previously published in magazines, and some unpublished works, have been selected in consultation with them, and published in chapbooks by a US small press. Fans and scholars S. T. Joshi and Darrell Schweitzer worked on the Dunsany œuvre for over twenty years, gathering stories, essays and reference material, for a joint initial bibliography and separate scholarly studies of Dunsany's work. An updated edition of their bibliography appeared in 2013. Joshi edited "The Collected Jorkens" and "The Ginger Cat and other lost plays" and co-edited "The Ghost in the Corner and other stories" using materials unearthed by the Dunsany curator. In the late 2000s a PhD researcher, Tania Scott from the University of Glasgow, worked on Dunsany for some time and spoke at literary and other conventions; her thesis was published in 2011, entitled "Locating Ireland in the fantastic fiction of Lord Dunsany". A Swedish fan, Martin Andersson, was also active in research and publication in the mid-2010s. Documentary. An hour-long documentary, "Shooting for the Butler", was released by Auteur TV and Justified Films in 2014, directed by Digby Rumsey. With footage from Dunsany and Shoreham, it included interviews with the author's great-grandson, the estate's curator, author Liz Williams, scholar S. T. Joshi, a local who knew the writer personally, and the head of the Irish Chess Union, among others. Legacy. Dunsany's literary rights passed to a will trust first managed by Beatrice, Lady Dunsany, and are currently handled by Curtis Brown of London and partner firms worldwide. (Some past US deals, for example, have been listed by Locus Magazine as by SCG.) A few Dunsany works are protected for longer than normal copyright periods in some territories, notably most of the contents of the "Last Book of Jorkens", and some short stories published on the Dunsany website or elsewhere by the family in the early 2000s. Dunsany's primary home, over 820 years old, can be visited at certain times. Tours usually include the Library, but not the tower room where he often liked to work. His other home, Dunstall Priory, was sold to an admirer, Grey Gowrie, later head of the Arts Council of the UK, and then passed to other owners. The family still owns a farm and downland in the area and a Tudor cottage in Shoreham village. The grave of Dunsany and his wife can be seen in the church graveyard there. (Most previous barons are buried in the grounds of Dunsany Castle.) Dunsany's manuscripts are collected in the family archive, including some specially bound volumes of some of his works. Scholarly access is possible through the curator. Seven boxes of Dunsany's papers are held at the Harry Ransom Center.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18053

Bodyline

Bodyline, also known as fast leg theory bowling, was a cricketing tactic devised by the English cricket team for their 1932–33 Ashes tour of Australia. It was designed to combat the extraordinary batting skill of Australia's leading batsman, Don Bradman. A bodyline delivery was one in which the cricket ball was bowled at pace, aimed at the body of the batsman in the expectation that when he defended himself with his bat, a resulting deflection could be caught by one of several fielders deliberately placed nearby on the leg side. At the time, no helmets or other upper body protective gear was worn, and critics of the tactic considered it intimidating, and physically threatening in a game that was traditionally supposed to uphold conventions of sportsmanship. The England team's use of the tactic was perceived by some, both in Australia and England, as overly aggressive or even unfair, and caused a controversy that rose to such a level that it threatened diplomatic relations between the two countries before the situation was calmed. Although no serious injuries arose from any short-pitched deliveries while a leg theory field was actually set, the tactic led to considerable ill feeling between the two teams, particularly when Australian batsmen were struck, inflaming spectators. After the introduction of helmets, short-pitched fast bowling, at up to 90 mph, continues to be permitted in cricket, even when aimed at the batsman, and is considered to be a legitimate bowling tactic when used sparingly. Over time, several of the Laws of Cricket were changed to render the bodyline tactic less effective, and increase player safety, such as concussion breaks and inspections. Definition and etymology. Bodyline is a tactic devised for and primarily used in the Ashes series between England and Australia in 1932–33. The tactic involved bowling at the leg stump or just outside it, but pitching the ball short so that, on bouncing, it reared up threateningly at the body of a batsman standing in an orthodox batting position. A ring of fielders ranged on the leg side would catch any defensive deflection from the bat. The batsman's options were to evade the ball through ducking or moving aside, allow the ball to strike his body, or attempt to play the ball with his bat. The last course carried additional risks, as defensive shots brought few runs and could carry far enough to be caught by fielders on the leg side, and pull and hook shots could be caught near the boundary of the field where two men were usually placed for such a shot. Bodyline bowling is intended to be intimidatory, and was primarily designed as an attempt to curb the unusually prolific scoring of Donald Bradman, although other Australian batsmen such as Bill Woodfull, Bill Ponsford, and Alan Kippax were also targeted. Several terms were used to describe this style of bowling before the name 'bodyline' was used. Among the first to use it was the writer and former Australian Test cricketer Jack Worrall in the match between the English team and an Australian XI. When 'bodyline' was first used in full, he referred to "half-pitched slingers on the body line" and first used it in print after the first Test. Other writers used a similar phrase around this time, but the first use of 'bodyline' in print seems to have been by the journalist Hugh Buggy in the Melbourne "Herald", in his report on the first day's play of the first Test. Genesis. Leg theory bowling. In the 19th century, most cricketers considered it unsportsmanlike to bowl the ball at the leg stump or for batsmen to hit on the leg side. But by the early years of the 20th century, some bowlers, usually slow or medium-paced, used leg theory as a tactic; the ball was aimed outside the line of leg stump and the fielders placed on that side of the field, the object being to test the batsman's patience and force a rash stroke. Two English left-arm bowlers, George Hirst in 1903–04 and Frank Foster in 1911–12, bowled leg theory to packed leg side fields in Test matches in Australia; Warwick Armstrong also used it regularly for Australia. In the years immediately before the First World War, several bowlers used leg theory in English county cricket. When cricket resumed after the war, few bowlers maintained the tactic, which was unpopular with spectators owing to its negativity. Fred Root, the Worcestershire bowler, used it regularly and with considerable success in county cricket. Root later defended the use of leg theory—and bodyline—observing that when bowlers bowled outside off stump, the batsmen always had the option to let the ball pass them without playing a shot, so they could scarcely complain. Some fast bowlers experimented with leg theory prior to 1932, sometimes accompanying the tactic with short-pitched bowling. In 1925, Australian Jack Scott first bowled a form of what would later have been called bodyline in a state match for New South Wales; his captain Herbie Collins disliked it and would not let him use it again. Other Australian captains were less particular, including Vic Richardson, who asked the South Australian bowler Lance Gun to use it in 1925, and later let Scott use it when he moved to South Australia. Scott repeated the tactics against the MCC in 1928–29. In 1927, in a Test trial match, "Nobby" Clark bowled short to a leg-trap (a cluster of fielders placed close on the leg side). He was representing England in a side captained by Douglas Jardine. In 1928–29, Harry Alexander bowled fast leg theory at an England team, and Harold Larwood briefly used a similar tactic on that same tour in two Test matches. Freddie Calthorpe, the England captain, criticised Learie Constantine's use of short-pitched bowling to a leg side field in a Test match in 1930; one such ball struck Andy Sandham, but Constantine only reverted to more conventional tactics after a complaint from the England team. Donald Bradman. The Australian cricket team toured England in 1930. Australia won the five-Test series 2–1, and Donald Bradman scored 974 runs at a batting average of 139.14, an aggregate record that still stands to this day. By the time of the next Ashes series of 1932–33, Bradman's average hovered around 100, approximately twice that of all other world-class batsmen. The English cricket authorities felt that specific tactics would be required to curtail Bradman from being even more successful on his own Australian pitches; some believed that Bradman was at his most vulnerable against leg-spin bowling as Walter Robins and Ian Peebles had supposedly caused him problems; consequently two leg-spinners were included in the English touring party of 1932–33. Gradually, the idea developed that Bradman was possibly vulnerable to pace bowling. In the final Test of the 1930 Ashes series, while he was batting, the pitch became briefly difficult following rain. Bradman was observed to be uncomfortable facing deliveries which bounced higher than usual at a faster pace, being seen to consistently step back out of the line of the ball. Former England player and Surrey captain Percy Fender was one who noticed this, and the incident was much discussed by cricketers. Given that Bradman scored 232, it was not initially thought that a way to curb his prodigious scoring had been found. When Douglas Jardine later saw film footage of the Oval incident and noticed Bradman's discomfort, according to his daughter he shouted, "I've got it! He's yellow!" The theory of Bradman's vulnerability developed further when Fender received correspondence from Australia in 1932, describing how Australian batsmen were increasingly moving across the stumps towards the off side to play the ball on the on side. Fender showed these letters to his Surrey team-mate Jardine when it became clear that Jardine was to captain the English team in Australia during the 1932–33 tour, and he also discussed Bradman's discomfort at the Oval. It was also known in England that Bradman was dismissed for a four-ball duck by fast bowler Eddie Gilbert, and had looked very uncomfortable. Bradman had also appeared uncomfortable against the pace of Sandy Bell in his innings of 299 not out at the Adelaide Oval in South Africa's tour of Australia earlier in 1932, when the desperate bowler decided to bowl short to him, and fellow South African Herbie Taylor, according to Jack Fingleton, may have mentioned this to English cricketers in 1932. Fender felt Bradman might be vulnerable to fast, short-pitched deliveries on the line of leg stump. Jardine felt that Bradman was nervous about standing his ground against intimidatory bowling, citing instances in 1930 when he shuffled about, contrary to orthodox batting technique. Douglas Jardine. Jardine's first experience against Australia came when he scored an unbeaten 96 to secure a draw against the 1921 Australian touring side for Oxford University. The tourists were criticised in the press for not allowing Jardine to reach his hundred, but had tried to help him with some easy bowling. There has been speculation that this incident helped develop Jardine's antipathy towards Australians, although Jardine's biographer Christopher Douglas denies this. Jardine's attitude towards Australia hardened after he toured the country in 1928–29. When he scored three consecutive hundreds in the early games, he was frequently jeered by the crowd for slow play; the Australian spectators took an increasing dislike to him, mainly for his superior attitude and bearing, his awkward fielding, and particularly his choice of headwear—a Harlequin cap that was given to successful Oxford cricketers. Although Jardine may simply have worn the cap out of superstition, it conveyed a negative impression to the spectators; his general demeanour drew one comment of "Where's the butler to carry the bat for you?" By this stage Jardine had developed an intense dislike for Australian crowds. During his third century at the start of the tour, during a period of abuse from the spectators, he observed to Hunter Hendry that "All Australians are uneducated, and an unruly mob". After the innings, when teammate Patsy Hendren remarked that the Australian crowds did not like Jardine, he replied "It's fucking mutual". During the tour, Jardine fielded next to the crowd on the boundary. There, he was roundly abused and mocked for his awkward fielding, particularly when chasing the ball. On one occasion, he spat towards the crowd while fielding on the boundary as he changed position for the final time. Jardine was appointed captain of England for the 1931 season, replacing Percy Chapman who had led the team in 1930. He defeated New Zealand in his first series, but opinion was divided as to how effective he had been. The following season, he led England again and was appointed to lead the team to tour Australia for the 1932–33 Ashes series. A meeting was arranged between Jardine, Nottinghamshire captain Arthur Carr and his two fast bowlers Harold Larwood and Bill Voce at London's Piccadilly Hotel to discuss a plan to combat Bradman. Jardine asked Larwood and Voce if they could bowl on leg stump and make the ball rise into the body of the batsman. The bowlers agreed they could, and that it might prove effective. Jardine also visited Frank Foster to discuss his field-placing in Australia in 1911–12. Larwood and Voce practised the plan over the remainder of the 1932 season with varying but increasing success and several injuries to batsmen. Ken Farnes experimented with short-pitched, leg-theory bowling but was not selected for the tour. Bill Bowes also used short-pitched bowling, notably against Jack Hobbs. Ashes series of 1932–33. Early development on tour. The England team which toured Australia in 1932–33 contained four fast bowlers and a few medium pacers; such a heavy concentration on pace was unusual at the time, and drew comment from the Australian press and players, including Bradman. On the journey, Jardine instructed his team on how to approach the tour and discussed tactics with several players, including Larwood; at this stage, he seems to have settled on leg theory, if not full bodyline, as his main tactic. Some players later reported that he told them to hate the Australians in order to defeat them, while instructing them to refer to Bradman as "the little bastard." Upon arrival, Jardine quickly alienated the press and crowds through his manner and approach. In the early matches, although there were instances of the English bowlers pitching the ball short and causing problems with their pace, full bodyline tactics were not used. There had been little unusual about the English bowling except the number of fast bowlers. Larwood and Voce were given a light workload in the early matches by Jardine. The English tactics changed in a game against an Australian XI team at Melbourne in mid-November, when full bodyline tactics were deployed for the first time. Jardine had left himself out of the English side, which was led instead by Bob Wyatt who later wrote that the team experimented with a diluted form of bodyline bowling. He reported to Jardine that Bradman, who was playing for the opposition, seemed uncomfortable against the bowling tactics of Larwood, Voce and Bowes. The crowd, press and Australian players were shocked by what they experienced and believed that the bowlers were targeting the batsmen's heads. Bradman adopted unorthodox tactics—ducking, weaving and moving around the crease—which did not meet with universal approval from Australians and he scored just 36 and 13 in the match. The tactic continued to be used in the next game by Voce (Larwood and Bowes did not play in this game), against New South Wales, for whom Jack Fingleton made a century and received several blows in the process. Bradman again failed twice, and had scored just 103 runs in six innings against the touring team; many Australian fans were now worried by Bradman's form. Meanwhile, Jardine wrote to tell Fender that his information about the Australian batting technique was correct and that it meant he was having to move more and more fielders onto the leg side: "if this goes on I shall have to move the whole bloody lot to the leg side." The Australian press were shocked and criticised the hostility of Larwood in particular. Some former Australian players joined the criticism, saying the tactics were ethically wrong. But at this stage, not everyone was opposed, and the Australian Board of Control believed the English team had bowled fairly. On the other hand, Jardine increasingly came into disagreement with tour manager Warner over bodyline as the tour progressed. Warner hated bodyline but would not speak out against it. He was accused of hypocrisy for not taking a stand on either side, particularly after expressing sentiments at the start of the tour that cricket "has become a synonym for all that is true and honest. To say 'that is not cricket' implies something underhand, something not in keeping with the best ideals ... all who love it as players, as officials or spectators must be careful lest anything they do should do it harm." First two Test matches. Bradman missed the first Test at Sydney, worn out by constant cricket and the ongoing argument with the Board of Control. Jardine later wrote that the real reason was that the batsman had suffered a nervous breakdown. The English bowlers used bodyline intermittently in the first match, to the crowd's vocal displeasure, and the Australians lost the game by ten wickets. Larwood was particularly successful, returning match figures of ten wickets for 124 runs. One of the English bowlers, Gubby Allen, refused to bowl with fielders on the leg side, clashing with Jardine over these tactics. The only Australian batsman to make an impact was Stan McCabe, who hooked and pulled everything aimed at his upper body, to score 187 not out in four hours from 233 deliveries. Behind the scenes, administrators began to express concerns to each other. Yet the English tactics still did not earn universal disapproval; former Australian captain Monty Noble praised the English bowling. Meanwhile, Woodfull was being encouraged to retaliate to the short-pitched English attack, not least by members of his own side such as Vic Richardson, or to include pace bowlers such as Eddie Gilbert or Laurie Nash to match the aggression of the opposition. But Woodfull refused to consider doing so. He had to wait until minutes before the game before he was confirmed as captain by the selectors. For the second Test, Bradman returned to the team after his newspaper employers released him from his contract. England continued to use bodyline and Bradman was dismissed by his first ball in the first innings. In the second innings, against the full bodyline attack, he scored an unbeaten century which helped Australia to win the match and level the series at one match each. Critics began to believe bodyline was not quite the threat that had been perceived and Bradman's reputation, which had suffered slightly with his earlier failures, was restored. However, the pitch was slightly slower than others in the series, and Larwood was suffering from problems with his boots which reduced his effectiveness. Third Test match. The controversy reached its peak during the Third Test at Adelaide. On the second day, a Saturday, before a crowd of 50,962 spectators, Australia bowled out England who had batted through the first day. In the third over of the Australian innings, Larwood bowled to Woodfull. The fifth ball narrowly missed Woodfull's head and the final ball, delivered short on the line of middle stump, struck Woodfull over the heart. The batsman dropped his bat and staggered away holding his chest, bent over in pain. The England players surrounded Woodfull to offer sympathy but the crowd began to protest noisily. Jardine called to Larwood: "Well bowled, Harold!" Although the comment was aimed at unnerving Bradman, who was also batting at the time, Woodfull was appalled. Play resumed after a brief delay, once it was certain the Australian captain was fit to carry on and, since Larwood's over had ended, Woodfull did not have to face the bowling of Allen in the next over. However, when Larwood was ready to bowl at Woodfull again, play was halted once more when the fielders were moved into bodyline positions, causing the crowd to protest and call abuse at the England team. Subsequently, Jardine claimed that Larwood requested a field change, Larwood said that Jardine had done so. Many commentators condemned the alteration of the field as unsporting, and the angry spectators became extremely volatile. Jardine, although writing that Woodfull could have retired hurt if he was unfit, later expressed his regret at making the field change at that moment. The fury of the crowd was such that a riot might have occurred had another incident taken place and several writers suggested that the anger of the spectators was the culmination of feelings built up over the two months that bodyline had developed. During the over, another rising Larwood delivery knocked the bat out of Woodfull's hands. He batted for 89 minutes, being hit a few more times before Allen bowled him for 22. Later in the day, Pelham Warner, one of the England managers, visited the Australian dressing room. He expressed sympathy to Woodfull but was surprised by the Australian's response. According to Warner, Woodfull replied, "I don't want to see you, Mr Warner. There are two teams out there. One is trying to play cricket and the other is not." Fingleton wrote that Woodfull had added, "This game is too good to be spoilt. It is time some people got out of it." Woodfull was usually dignified and quietly spoken, making his reaction surprising to Warner and others present. Warner was so shaken that he was found in tears later that day in his hotel room. There was no play on the following day, Sunday being a rest day, but on Monday morning, the exchange between Warner and Woodfull was reported in several Australian newspapers. The players and officials were horrified that a sensitive private exchange had been reported to the press. Leaks to the press were practically unknown in 1933. David Frith notes that discretion and respect were highly prized and such a leak was "regarded as a moral offence of the first order." Woodfull made it clear that he severely disapproved of the leak, and later wrote that he "always expected cricketers to do the right thing by their team-mates." As the only full-time journalist in the Australian team, suspicion immediately fell on Fingleton, although as soon as the story was published, he told Woodfull he was not responsible. Warner offered Larwood a reward of one pound if he could dismiss Fingleton in the second innings; Larwood obliged by bowling him for a duck. Fingleton later claimed that Sydney Sun reporter Claude Corbett had received the information from Bradman; for the rest of their lives, Fingleton and Bradman made claim and counter-claim that the other man was responsible for the leak. The following day, as Australia faced a large deficit on the first innings, Bert Oldfield played a long innings in support of Bill Ponsford, who scored 85. In the course of the innings, the English bowlers used bodyline against him, and he faced several short-pitched deliveries but took several fours from Larwood to move to 41. Having just conceded a four, Larwood bowled fractionally shorter and slightly slower. Oldfield attempted to hook but lost sight of the ball and edged it onto his temple; the ball fractured his skull. Oldfield staggered away and fell to his knees and play stopped as Woodfull came onto the pitch and the angry crowd jeered and shouted, once more reaching the point where a riot seemed likely. Several English players thought about arming themselves with stumps should the crowd come onto the field. The ball which injured Oldfield was bowled to a conventional, non-bodyline field; Larwood immediately apologised but Oldfield said that it was his own fault before he was helped back to the dressing room and play continued. Jardine later secretly sent a telegram of sympathy to Oldfield's wife and arranged for presents to be given to his young daughters. The cable exchange. At the end of the fourth day's play of the third Test match, the Australian Board of Control sent a cable to the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), cricket's ruling body and the club that selected the England team, in London: Not all Australians, including the press and players, believed that the cable should have been sent, particularly immediately following a heavy defeat. The suggestion of unsportsmanlike behaviour was deeply resented by the MCC, and was one of the worst accusations that could have been levelled at the team at the time. Additionally, members of the MCC believed that the Australians had over-reacted to the English bowling. The MCC took some time to draft a reply: At this point, the remainder of the series was under threat. Jardine was shaken by the events and by the hostile reactions to his team. Stories appeared in the press, possibly leaked by the disenchanted Nawab of Pataudi, about fights and arguments between the England players. Jardine offered to stop using bodyline if the team did not support him, but after a private meeting (not attended by Jardine or either of the team managers) the players released a statement fully supporting the captain and his tactics. Even so, Jardine would not have played in the fourth Test without the withdrawal of the "unsportsmanlike" accusation. The Australian Board met to draft a reply cable, which was sent on 30 January, indicating that they wished the series to continue and offering to postpone consideration of the fairness of bodyline bowling until after the series. The MCC's reply, on 2 February, suggested that continuing the series would be impossible unless the accusation of unsporting behaviour was withdrawn. The situation escalated into a diplomatic incident. Figures high up in both the British and Australian government saw bodyline as potentially fracturing an international relationship that needed to remain strong. The Governor of South Australia, Alexander Hore-Ruthven, who was in England at the time, expressed his concern to British Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs James Henry Thomas that this would cause a significant impact on trade between the nations. The standoff was settled when the Australian prime minister, Joseph Lyons, met with members of the Australian Board and outlined to them the severe economic hardships that could be caused in Australia if the British public boycotted Australian trade. Following considerable discussion and debate in the English and Australian press, the Australian Board sent a cable to the MCC which, while maintaining its opposition to bodyline bowling, stated "We do not regard the sportsmanship of your team as being in question". Even so, correspondence between the Australian Board and the MCC continued for almost a year. The end of the series. Voce missed the fourth Test of the series, being replaced by a leg spinner, Tommy Mitchell. Larwood continued to use bodyline, but he was the only bowler in the team using the tactic; even so, he used it less frequently than usual and seemed less effective in high temperatures and humidity. England won the game by eight wickets, thanks in part to an innings of 83 by Eddie Paynter who had been admitted to hospital with tonsillitis but left in order to bat when England were struggling in their innings. Voce returned for the final Test, but neither he nor Allen were fully fit, and despite the use of bodyline tactics, Australia scored 435 at a rapid pace, aided by several dropped catches. Australia included a fast bowler for this final game, Harry Alexander who bowled some short deliveries but was not allowed to use many fielders on the leg side by his captain, Woodfull. England built a lead of 19 but their tactics in Australia's second innings were disrupted when Larwood left the field with an injured foot; Hedley Verity, a spinner, claimed five wickets to bowl Australia out; England won by eight wickets and won the series by four Tests to one. In England. Bodyline continued to be bowled occasionally in the 1933 English season—most notably by Nottinghamshire, who had Carr, Voce and Larwood in their team. Jardine himself had to face bodyline bowling in a Test match. The West Indian cricket team toured England in 1933, and, in the second Test at Old Trafford, Jackie Grant, their captain, decided to try bodyline. He had a couple of fast bowlers, Manny Martindale and Learie Constantine. Facing bodyline tactics for the first time, England first suffered, falling to 134 for 4, with Wally Hammond being hit on the chin, though he recovered to continue his innings. Then Jardine himself faced Martindale and Constantine. Jardine never flinched. With Les Ames finding himself in difficulties, Jardine said, "You get yourself down this end, Les. I'll take care of this bloody nonsense." He played right back to the bouncers, standing on tiptoe, and played them with a dead bat, sometimes playing the ball one handed for more control. While the Old Trafford pitch was not as suited to bodyline as the hard Australian wickets, Martindale did take 5 for 73, but Constantine only took 1 for 55. Jardine himself made 127, his only Test century. In the West Indian second innings, Clark bowled bodyline back to the West Indians, taking 2 for 64. The match in the end was drawn but played a large part in turning English opinion against bodyline. "The Times" used the word bodyline, without using inverted commas or using the qualification "so-called", for the first time. "Wisden" also said that "most of those watching it for the first time must have come to the conclusion that, while strictly within the law, it was not nice." In 1934, Bill Woodfull led Australia back to England on a tour that had been under a cloud after the tempestuous cricket diplomacy of the previous bodyline series. Jardine had retired from International cricket in early 1934 after captaining a fraught tour of India and under England's new captain, Bob Wyatt, agreements were put in place so that bodyline would not be used. However, there were occasions when the Australians felt that their hosts had crossed the mark with tactics resembling bodyline. In a match between the Australians and Nottinghamshire, Voce, one of the bodyline practitioners of 1932–33, employed the strategy with the wicket-keeper standing to the leg side and took 8/66. In the second innings, Voce repeated the tactic late in the day, in fading light against Woodfull and Bill Brown. Of his 12 balls, 11 were no lower than head height. Woodfull told the Nottinghamshire administrators that, if Voce's leg-side bowling was repeated, his men would leave the field and return to London. He further said that Australia would not return to the country in the future. The following day, Voce was absent, ostensibly due to a leg injury. Already angered by the absence of Larwood, the Nottinghamshire faithful heckled the Australians all day. Australia had previously and privately complained that some pacemen had strayed past the agreement in the Tests. Changes to the laws of cricket. As a direct consequence of the 1932–33 tour, the MCC introduced a new rule to the Laws of Cricket for the 1935 English cricket season. Originally, the MCC hoped that captains would ensure that the game was played in the correct spirit, and passed a resolution that bodyline bowling would breach this spirit. When this proved to be insufficient, the MCC passed a law that "direct attack" bowling was unfair and became the responsibility of the umpires to identify and stop. In 1957, the laws were altered to prevent more than two fielders standing behind square on the leg side; the intention was to prevent negative bowling tactics whereby off spinners and slow inswing bowlers aimed at the leg stump of batsmen with fielders concentrated on the leg side. However, an indirect effect was to make bodyline fields impossible to implement. Later law changes, under the heading of "Intimidatory Short Pitched Bowling", also restricted the number of "bouncers" which might be bowled in an over. Nevertheless, the tactic of intimidating the batsman is still used to an extent that would have been shocking in 1933, although it is less dangerous now because today's players wear helmets and generally far more protective gear. The West Indies teams of the 1980s, who regularly fielded a bowling attack comprising some of the best fast bowlers in cricket history, were perhaps the most feared exponents. Reaction. The English players and management were consistent in referring to their tactic as "fast leg theory" considering it to be a variant of the established and unobjectionable leg theory tactic. The inflammatory term "bodyline" was coined and perpetuated by the Australian press (see above). English writers used the term "fast leg theory". The terminology reflected differences in understanding, as neither the English public nor the Board of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC)—the governing body of English cricket—could understand why the Australians were complaining about what they perceived as a commonly used tactic. Some concluded that the Australian cricket authorities and public were sore losers. Of the four fast bowlers in the tour party, Gubby Allen was a voice of dissent in the English camp, refusing to bowl short on the leg side, and writing several letters home to England critical of Jardine, although he did not express this in public in Australia. A number of other players, while maintaining a united front in public, also deplored bodyline in private. The amateurs Bob Wyatt (the vice-captain), Freddie Brown and the Nawab of Pataudi opposed it, as did Wally Hammond and Les Ames among the professionals. During the season, Woodfull's physical courage, stoic and dignified leadership won him many admirers. He flatly refused to employ retaliatory tactics and did not publicly complain even though he and his men were repeatedly hit. Jardine however insisted his tactic was not designed to cause injury and that he was leading his team in a sportsmanlike and gentlemanly manner, arguing that it was up to the Australian batsmen to play their way out of trouble. It was subsequently revealed that several of the players had private reservations, but they did not express them publicly at the time. Legacy. Following the 1932–33 series, several authors, including many of the players involved, released books expressing various points of view about bodyline. Many argued that it was a scourge on cricket and must be stamped out, while some did not see what all the fuss was about. The series has been described as the most controversial period in Australian cricket history, and voted the most important Australian moment by a panel of Australian cricket identities. The MCC asked Harold Larwood to sign an apology to them for his bowling in Australia, making his selection for England again conditional upon it. Larwood was furious at the notion, pointing out that he had been following orders from his captain, and that was where any blame should lie. Larwood refused, never played for England again, and became vilified in his own country. Douglas Jardine always defended his tactics and in the book he wrote about the tour, "In Quest of the Ashes", described allegations that the England bowlers directed their attack with the intention of causing physical harm as stupid and patently untruthful. The immediate effect of the law change which banned bodyline in 1935 was to make commentators and spectators sensitive to the use of short-pitched bowling; bouncers became exceedingly rare and bowlers who delivered them were practically ostracised. This attitude ended after the Second World War, and among the first teams to make extensive use of short-pitched bowling was the Australian team captained by Bradman between 1946 and 1948. Other teams soon followed. Outside the sport, there were significant consequences for Anglo-Australian relations, which remained strained until the outbreak of World War II made cooperation paramount. Business between the two countries was adversely affected as citizens of each country avoided goods manufactured in the other. Australian commerce also suffered in British colonies in Asia: the "North China Daily News" published a pro-bodyline editorial, denouncing Australians as sore losers. An Australian journalist reported that several business deals in Hong Kong and Shanghai were lost by Australians because of local reactions. English immigrants in Australia found themselves shunned and persecuted by locals, and Australian visitors to England were treated similarly. In 1934–35 a statue of Prince Albert in Sydney was vandalised, with an ear being knocked off and the word "BODYLINE" painted on it. Both before and after World War II, numerous satirical cartoons and comedy skits were written, mostly in Australia, based on events of the bodyline tour. Generally, they poked fun at the English. In 1984, Australia's Network Ten produced a television mini-series titled "Bodyline", dramatising the events of the 1932–33 English tour of Australia. It starred Gary Sweet as Don Bradman, Hugo Weaving as Douglas Jardine, Jim Holt as Harold Larwood, Rhys McConnochie as Pelham Warner, and Frank Thring as Jardine's mentor Lord Harris. The series took some liberties with historical accuracy for the sake of drama, including a depiction of angry Australian fans burning a British flag at the Adelaide Oval, an event which was never documented. Larwood, having emigrated to Australia in 1950, was largely welcomed with open arms, although received several threatening and obscene phone calls after the series aired. The series was widely and strongly attacked by the surviving players for its inaccuracy and sensationalism. To this day, the bodyline tour remains one of the most significant events in the history of cricket, and strong in the consciousness of many cricket followers. In a poll of cricket journalists, commentators, and players in 2004, the bodyline tour was ranked the most important event in cricket history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18062

Leather

Leather is a strong, flexible and durable material obtained from the tanning, or chemical treatment, of animal skins and hides to prevent decay. The most common leathers come from cattle, sheep, goats, equine animals, buffalo, pigs and hogs, and aquatic animals such as seals and alligators. Leather can be used to make a variety of items, including clothing, footwear, handbags, furniture, tools and sports equipment, and lasts for decades. Leather making has been practiced for more than 7,000 years and the leading producers of leather today are China and India. Critics of tanneries claim that they engage in unsustainable practices that pose health hazards to the people and the environment near them. Production processes. The leather manufacturing process is divided into three fundamental subprocesses: preparatory stages, tanning, and crusting. A further subprocess, finishing, can be added into the leather process sequence, but not all leathers receive finishing. The preparatory stages are when the hide is prepared for tanning. Preparatory stages may include soaking, hair removal, liming, deliming, bating, bleaching, and pickling. Tanning is a process that stabilizes the proteins, particularly collagen, of the raw hide to increase the thermal, chemical and microbiological stability of the hides and skins, making it suitable for a wide variety of end applications. The principal difference between raw and tanned hides is that raw hides dry out to form a hard, inflexible material that, when rewetted, will putrefy, while tanned material dries to a flexible form that does not become putrid when rewetted. Many tanning methods and materials exist. The typical process sees tanners load the hides into a drum and immerse them in a tank that contains the tanning "liquor". The hides soak while the drum slowly rotates about its axis, and the tanning liquor slowly penetrates through the full thickness of the hide. Once the process achieves even penetration, workers slowly raise the liquor's pH in a process called basification, which fixes the tanning material to the leather. The more tanning material fixed, the higher the leather's hydrothermal stability and shrinkage temperature resistance. Crusting is a process that thins and lubricates leather. It often includes a coloring operation. Chemicals added during crusting must be fixed in place. Crusting culminates with a drying and softening operation, and may include splitting, shaving, dyeing, whitening or other methods. For some leathers, tanners apply a surface coating, called "finishing". Finishing operations can include oiling, brushing, buffing, coating, polishing, embossing, glazing, or tumbling, among others. Leather can be oiled to improve its water resistance. This currying process after tanning supplements the natural oils remaining in the leather itself, which can be washed out through repeated exposure to water. Frequent oiling of leather, with mink oil, neatsfoot oil, or a similar material keeps it supple and improves its lifespan dramatically. Tanning methods. Tanning processes largely differ in which chemicals are used in the tanning liquor. Some common types include: Grades. In general, leather is produced in the following grades: From other animals. Today, most leather is made of cattle hides, which constitute about 65% of all leather produced. Other animals that are used include sheep (about 13%), goats (about 11%), and pigs (about 10%). Obtaining accurate figures from around the world is difficult, especially for areas where the skin may be eaten. Other animals mentioned below only constitute a fraction of a percent of total leather production. Horse hides are used to make particularly durable leathers. Shell cordovan is a horse leather made not from the outer skin but from an under layer, found only in equine species, called the shell. It is prized for its mirror-like finish and anti-creasing properties. Lamb and deerskin are used for soft leather in more expensive apparel. Deerskin is widely used in work gloves and indoor shoes. Reptilian skins, such as alligator, crocodile, and snake, are noted for their distinct patterns that reflect the scales of their species. This has led to hunting and farming of these species in part for their skins. The Argentine black and white tegu is one of the most exploited reptile species in the world in the leather trade. However, it is not endangered and while monitored, trade is legal in most South American countries. Kangaroo leather is used to make items that must be strong and flexible. It is the material most commonly used in bullwhips. Some motorcyclists favor kangaroo leather for motorcycle leathers because of its light weight and abrasion resistance. Kangaroo leather is also used for falconry jesses, soccer footwear, (e.g. Adidas Copa Mundial) and boxing speed bags. Although originally raised for their feathers in the 19th century, ostriches are now more popular for both meat and leather. Ostrich leather has a characteristic "goose bump" look because of the large follicles where the feathers grew. Different processes produce different finishes for many applications, including upholstery, footwear, automotive products, accessories, and clothing. In Thailand, stingray leather is used in wallets and belts. Stingray leather is tough and durable. The leather is often dyed black and covered with tiny round bumps in the natural pattern of the back ridge of an animal. These bumps are then usually dyed white to highlight the decoration. Stingray rawhide is also used as grips on Chinese swords, Scottish basket hilted swords, and Japanese katanas. Stingray leather is also used for high abrasion areas in motorcycle racing leathers (especially in gloves, where its high abrasion resistance helps prevent wear through in the event of an accident). For a given thickness, fish leather is typically much stronger due to its criss-crossed fibers. Environmental impact. Leather produces some environmental impact, most notably due to: Carbon footprint. Estimates of the carbon footprint of bovine leather range from 65 to 150 kg of CO2 equivalent per square meter of production. Water footprint. One ton of hide or skin generally produces 20 to 80 m3 of waste water, including chromium levels of 100–400 mg/L, sulfide levels of 200–800 mg/L, high levels of fat and other solid wastes, and notable pathogen contamination. Producers often add pesticides to protect hides during transport. With solid wastes representing up to 70% of the wet weight of the original hides, the tanning process represents a considerable strain on water treatment installations. Disposal. Leather biodegrades slowly—taking 25 to 40 years to decompose. However, vinyl and petrochemical-derived materials take 500 or more years to decompose. Chemical waste disposal. Tanning is especially polluting in countries where environmental regulations are lax, such as in India, the world's third-largest producer and exporter of leather. To give an example of an efficient pollution prevention system, chromium loads per produced tonne are generally abated from 8 kg to 1.5 kg. VOC emissions are typically reduced from 30 kg/t to 2 kg/t in a properly managed facility. A review of the total pollution load decrease achievable according to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization posts precise data on the abatement achievable through industrially proven low-waste advanced methods, while noting, "even though the chrome pollution load can be decreased by 94% on introducing advanced technologies, the minimum residual load 0.15 kg/t raw hide can still cause difficulties when using landfills and composting sludge from wastewater treatment on account of the regulations currently in force in some countries." In Kanpur, the self-proclaimed "Leather City of World"—with 10,000 tanneries as of 2011 and a city of three million on the banks of the Ganges—pollution levels were so high, that despite an industry crisis, the pollution control board decided to shut down 49 high-polluting tanneries out of 404 in July 2009. In 2003 for instance, the main tanneries' effluent disposal unit was dumping 22 tonnes of chromium-laden solid waste per day in the open. In the Hazaribagh neighborhood of Dhaka in Bangladesh, chemicals from tanneries end up in Dhaka's main river. Besides the environmental damage, the health of both local factory workers and the end consumer is also negatively affected. After approximately 15 years of ignoring high court rulings, the government shut down more than 100 tanneries the weekend of 8 April 2017 in the neighborhood. The higher cost associated with the treatment of effluents than to untreated effluent discharging leads to illegal dumping to save on costs. For instance, in Croatia in 2001, proper pollution abatement cost US$70–100 per ton of raw hides processed against $43/t for irresponsible behavior. In November 2009, one of Uganda's main leather making companies was caught directly dumping waste water into a wetland adjacent to Lake Victoria. Role of enzymes. Enzymes like proteases, lipases, and amylases have an important role in the soaking, dehairing, degreasing, and bating operations of leather manufacturing. Proteases are the most commonly used enzymes in leather production. The enzyme must not damage or dissolve collagen or keratin, but should hydrolyze casein, elastin, albumin, globulin-like proteins, and nonstructural proteins that are not essential for leather making. This process is called bating. Lipases are used in the degreasing operation to hydrolyze fat particles embedded in the skin. Amylases are used to soften skin, to bring out the grain, and to impart strength and flexibility to the skin. These enzymes are rarely used. Preservation and conditioning. The natural fibers of leather break down with the passage of time. Acidic leathers are particularly vulnerable to red rot, which causes powdering of the surface and a change in consistency. Damage from red rot is aggravated by high temperatures and relative humidities. Although it is chemically irreversible, treatments can add handling strength and prevent disintegration of red rotted leather. Exposure to long periods of low relative humidities (below 40%) can cause leather to become desiccated, irreversibly changing the fibrous structure of the leather. Chemical damage can also occur from exposure to environmental factors, including ultraviolet light, ozone, acid from sulfurous and nitrous pollutants in the air, or through a chemical action following any treatment with tallow or oil compounds. Both oxidation and chemical damage occur faster at higher temperatures. There are few methods to maintain and clean leather goods properly such as using damp cloth and avoid using a wet cloth or soaking the leather in water. Various treatments are available such as conditioners. Saddle soap is used for cleaning, conditioning, and softening leather. Leather shoes are widely conditioned with shoe polish. In modern culture. Due to its excellent resistance to abrasion and wind, leather found a use in rugged occupations. The enduring image of a cowboy in leather chaps gave way to the leather-jacketed and leather-helmeted aviator. When motorcycles were invented, some riders took to wearing heavy leather jackets to protect from road rash and wind blast; some also wear chaps or full leather pants to protect the lower body. Leather's flexibility allows it to be formed and shaped into balls and protective gear. Subsequently, many sports use equipment made with leather, such as baseball gloves and the ball used in cricket and gridiron football. Leather fetishism is the name popularly used to describe a fetishistic attraction to people wearing leather, or in certain cases, to the garments themselves. Many rock groups (particularly heavy metal and punk groups in the 1970s and 80s) are well known for wearing leather clothing. Extreme metal bands (especially black metal bands) and Goth rock groups have extensive black leather clothing. Leather has become less common in the punk community over the last three decades, as there is opposition to the use of leather from punks who support animal rights. Many cars and trucks come with optional or standard leather or "leather faced" seating. Religious sensitivities. In countries with significant populations of individuals observing religions which place restrictions on material choices, vendors typically clarify the source of leather in their products. Such labeling helps facilitate religious observance, so, for example, a Muslim will not accidentally purchase pigskin or a Hindu can avoid cattleskin. Such taboos increase the demand for religiously neutral leathers such as ostrich and deer. Judaism forbids the comfort of wearing leather shoes on Yom Kippur, Tisha B'Av, and during mourning. Also, see Teffilin and Torah Scroll. Jainism prohibits the use of leather, since it is obtained by killing animals. Alternatives. Many forms of artificial leather have been developed, usually involving polyurethane or vinyl coatings applied to a cloth backing. Many names and brands for such artificial leathers exist, including "pleather", a portmanteau of "plastic leather", and the brand name Naugahyde. Another alternative is cultured leather which is lab-grown using cell-culture methods, mushroom-based materials and gelatin-based textile made by upcycling meat industry waste. Leather made of fungi or mushroom-based materials are completely biodegradable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18080

Lacrosse

Lacrosse is a contact team sport played with a lacrosse stick and a lacrosse ball. It is the oldest organized sport in North America, with its origins with the indigenous people of North America as early as the 12th century. The game was extensively modified by European colonists, reducing the violence, to create its current collegiate and professional form. Players use the head of the lacrosse stick to carry, pass, catch, and shoot the ball into the goal. The sport has four versions that have different sticks, fields, rules and equipment: field lacrosse, women's lacrosse, box lacrosse and intercrosse. The men's games, field lacrosse (outdoor) and box lacrosse (indoor), are contact sports and all players wear protective gear: helmet, gloves, shoulder pads, and elbow pads. The women's game is played outdoors and does not allow body contact but does allow stick to stick contact. The only protective gear required for women players is eyegear, while goalies wear helmets and protective pads. Both men's and women's field lacrosse have 6v6 versions played on smaller fields, gaining acceptance in multi-sport events. Intercrosse is a mixed-gender non-contact sport played indoors that uses an all-plastic stick and a softer ball. The modern sport is governed by World Lacrosse and is the only international sport organization to recognize First Nations bands and Native American tribes as sovereign nations. The organization hosts the World Lacrosse Championship for men, the Women's Lacrosse World Cup, the World Indoor Lacrosse Championship for box lacrosse, and the Under-19 World Lacrosse Championships for both men and women. Each is held every four years. Lacrosse at the Summer Olympics has been contested at two editions of the Summer Olympic Games, 1904 and 1908. It was also held as a demonstration event at the 1928, 1932, and 1948 Summer Olympics. History. Lacrosse is based on games played by various Native American communities as early as 1100 AD. By the 17th century, a version of lacrosse was well-established and was documented by Jesuit missionary priests in the territory of present-day Canada. In the traditional aboriginal Canadian version, each team consisted of about 100 to 1,000 men on a field several miles/kilometers long. These games lasted from sunup to sundown for two to three days straight and were played as part of ceremonial ritual, a kind of symbolic warfare, or to give thanks to the Creator or Master. Lacrosse played a significant role in the community and religious life of tribes across the continent for many years. Early lacrosse was characterized by deep spiritual involvement, befitting the spirit of combat in which it was undertaken. Those who took part did so in the role of warriors, with the goal of bringing glory and honour to themselves and their tribes. The game was said to be played "for the Creator" or was referred to as "The Creator's Game," and a version of the game was called "baggataway." The French Jesuit missionary saw Huron tribesmen play the game during 1637 in present-day Ontario. He called it , "the stick" in French. The name seems to be originated from the French term for field hockey, . James Smith described in some detail a game being played in 1757 by Mohawk people "wherein now they used a wooden ball, about in diameter, and the instrument they moved it with was a strong staff about long, with a hoop net on the end of it, large enough to contain the ball." English-speaking people from Montreal noticed Mohawk people playing the game and started playing themselves in the 1830s. In 1856, William George Beers, a Canadian dentist, founded the Montreal Lacrosse Club. In 1860, Beers codified the game, shortening the length of each game and reducing the number of players to 12 per team. The first game played under Beers's rules was at Upper Canada College in 1867; they lost to the Toronto Cricket Club by a score of 3–1. The new sport proved to be very popular and spread across the English-speaking world; by 1900 there were dozens of men's clubs in Canada, the United States, England, Australia, and New Zealand. The women's game was introduced by Louisa Lumsden in Scotland in 1890. The first women's club in the United States was started by Rosabelle Sinclair at Bryn Mawr School in 1926. In the United States, lacrosse during the late 1800s and first half of the 1900s was primarily a regional sport centered around the Mid-Atlantic states, especially New York and Maryland. However, in the last half of the 20th century, the sport spread outside this region, and can be currently found in most of the United States. According to a survey conducted by US Lacrosse in 2016, there are over 825,000 lacrosse participants nationwide and lacrosse is the fastest-growing team sport among NFHS member schools. Versions of lacrosse. Field lacrosse. Field lacrosse is the men's outdoor version of the sport. There are ten players on each team: three attackmen, three midfielders, three defensemen, and one goalie. Each player carries a lacrosse stick. A short stick measures between long and is used by attackmen and midfielders. A maximum of four players on the field per team may carry a long stick which is between long and is used by the three defensemen and sometimes one defensive midfielder. The goalie uses a stick with a head as wide as that can be between long. The field of play is . The goals are and are apart. Each goal sits inside a circular "crease", measuring in diameter. The goalie has special privileges within the crease to avoid opponents' stick checks. Offensive players or their sticks may not enter into the crease at any time. The mid-field line separates the field into an offensive and defensive zone for each team. Each team must keep four players in its defensive zone and three players in its offensive zone at all times. It does not matter which positional players satisfy the requirement, although usually the three attackmen stay in the offensive zone, the three defensemen and the goalie stay in the defensive zone, and the three middies play in both zones. A team that violates this rule is offsides and either loses possession of the ball if they have it or incurs a technical foul if they do not. The regulation playing time of a game is 60 minutes, divided into four periods of 15 minutes each. Play is started at the beginning of each quarter and after each goal with a face-off. During a face-off, two players lay their sticks on the ground parallel to the mid-line, the two heads of their sticks on opposite sides of the ball. At the whistle, the face-off-men scrap for the ball, often by "clamping" it under their stick and flicking it out to their teammates. When one of the teams has possession of the ball, they bring it into their offensive zone and try to score a goal. Due to the offsides rule, settled play involves six offensive players versus six defensive players and a goalie. If the ball goes out of bounds, possession is awarded against the team that touched it last. The exception is when the ball is shot towards the goal. Missed shots that go out of bounds are awarded to the team that has the player who is the closest to the ball when and where the ball goes out. During play, teams may substitute players in and out if they leave and enter the field through the substitution area, sometimes referred to as "on the fly". After penalties and goals, players may freely substitute and do not have to go through the substitution area. Penalties are awarded for rule violations and result in the offending team losing possession (loss of possession) or temporarily losing a player (time serving). During time serving penalties, the penalized team plays with one fewer player for the duration of the penalty. Time serving penalties are either releasable or non-releasable. When serving a releasable penalty, the offending player may re-enter play if a goal is scored by the opposing team during the duration of the penalty. Non-releasable penalties do not allow this and the player must serve the entire duration. In conjunction with the offsides rule, the opponent may play with six attackers versus the penalized team's five defenders and goalie. The team that has taken the penalty is said to be playing man down, while the other team is man up. Teams will use various lacrosse strategies to attack and defend while a player is being penalized. There are two classes of rule violations that result in penalties: technical fouls and personal fouls. Technical fouls, such as offsides, pushing, and holding, result in either a loss of possession or a 30-second penalty, depending on which team has the ball. Personal fouls, such as cross-checking, illegal body checking, or slashing, concern actions that endanger player safety. Cross-checking is when a player strikes another player with the shaft of the stick between his hands. A slash is when a player strikes another player with the end of the stick anywhere besides the gloves. These fouls draw 1-minute or longer penalties; the offending player must leave the field. Box lacrosse. Box lacrosse is played by teams of five runners plus a goalie on an ice hockey rink where the ice has been removed or covered by artificial turf, or in an indoor soccer field. The enclosed playing area is called a box, in contrast to the open playing field of the traditional game. This version of the game was introduced in Canada in the 1930s to promote business for hockey arenas outside of the ice hockey season. Within several years it had nearly supplanted field lacrosse in Canada. The goals in box lacrosse are smaller than field lacrosse, traditionally wide and tall. Also, the goaltender wears much more protective padding, including a massive chest protector and armguard combination known as "uppers", large shin guards known as leg pads (both of which must follow strict measurement guidelines), and ice hockey-style goalie masks. The style of the game is quick, accelerated by the close confines of the floor and a shot clock. The shot clock requires the attacking team to take a shot on goal within 30 seconds of gaining possession of the ball. Box lacrosse is also a much more physical game. Since cross checking is legal in box lacrosse, players wear rib pads and the shoulder and elbow pads are bigger and stronger than what field lacrosse players wear. Box lacrosse players wear a hockey helmet with a box lacrosse cage. There is no offsides in box lacrosse, the players substitute freely from their bench areas as in hockey. However, most players specialize in offense or defense, so usually all five runners substitute for teammates as their team transitions between offense and defense. For penalties, the offending player is sent to the penalty box and his team has to play without him, or man-down, for the length of the penalty. Most fouls are minor penalties and last for two minutes, major penalties for serious offenses last five minutes. What separates box lacrosse (and ice hockey) from other sports is that at the top levels of professional and junior lacrosse, participating in a fight does not automatically cause an ejection, but a five-minute major penalty is given. Box lacrosse is played at the highest level in the National Lacrosse League and by the Senior A divisions of the Canadian Lacrosse Association. The National Lacrosse League (NLL) employs some minor rule changes from the Canadian Lacrosse Association (CLA) rules. Notably, the goals are wide instead of and the games are played during the winter. The NLL games consist of four fifteen-minute quarters compared with three periods of twenty minutes each in CLA games. NLL players may only use sticks with hollow shafts, while CLA permits solid wooden sticks. Women's lacrosse. The rules of women's lacrosse differ significantly from men's lacrosse, most notably by equipment and the degree of allowable physical contact. Women's lacrosse rules also differ significantly between the US and all other countries, who play by the Federation of International Lacrosse (FIL) rules. Women's lacrosse does not allow physical contact, the only protective equipment worn is a mouth guard and eye-guard. In the early part of the 21st century, there have been discussions of requiring headgear to prevent concussions. In 2008, Florida was the first state to mandate headgear in women's lacrosse. Stick checking is permitted in the women's game, but only in certain levels of play and within strict rules. Women's lacrosse also does not allow players to have a pocket, or loose net, on the lacrosse stick. Women start the game with a "draw" instead of a face-off. The two players stand up and the ball is placed between their stick heads while their sticks are horizontal at waist-height. At the whistle, the players lift their sticks into the air, trying to control where the ball goes. The first modern women's lacrosse game was held at St Leonards School in Scotland in 1890. It was introduced by the school's headmistress Louisa Lumsden after a visit to Quebec, where she saw it played. The first women's lacrosse team in the United States was established at Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore, Maryland in 1926. Both the number of players and the lines on the field differ from men's lacrosse. There are 12 players in women's lacrosse and players must abide by certain boundaries that do not exist in men's play. The three specific boundaries are the "fan" in front of the goal ( internationally), the ( internationally) half circle that surrounds the 8-meter fan, and the draw circle in the center of the field, which is used for draws to start quarters and after goals. The goal circle is also positioned slightly closer to the end line in women's lacrosse compared to men's. In women's lacrosse on either the offensive or defensive end, the players besides the goaltender are not able to step inside the goal circle; this becomes a "goal-circle violation". However, at the women's collegiate level, a new rule has been established that allows defenders to pass through the goal circle. The 8-meter fan that is in front of the goal circle has a few restrictions in it. Defenders cannot stand inside the 8-meter fan longer than 3 seconds without being a stick-length away from the offensive player they are guarding. This is very similar to the three-second rule in basketball. A three seconds violation results in a player from the other team taking a free shot against the goalie. If you are an attacker trying to shoot the ball into the goal, you are not supposed to take a shot while a defender is in "shooting space". To make sure that you, the defender, are being safe, you want to lead with your lacrosse stick and once you are a sticks-length away, you can be in front of her. Intercrosse. Intercrosse, or soft stick lacrosse, is a non-contact form of lacrosse with a standardized set of rules using modified lacrosse equipment. An intercrosse stick is different from a normal lacrosse stick, the head is made completely of plastic instead of leather or nylon pockets in traditional lacrosse sticks. The ball is larger, softer and hollow, unlike a lacrosse ball, which is solid rubber. Intercrosse as a competitive adult sport is popular in Quebec, Canada, as well as in many European countries, particularly in the Czech Republic. Generally, teams consist of five players per side, and the field size is wide and long. Goals for adults are the same size as box lacrosse, in height and width. The international governing body, the Fédération Internationale d'Inter-Crosse, hosts a World Championship bi-annually. Soft stick lacrosse is a popular way to introduce youth to the sport. It can be played outdoors or indoors and has a developed curriculum for physical education classes. International lacrosse. Lacrosse has historically been played for the most part in Canada and the United States, with small but dedicated lacrosse communities in the United Kingdom and Australia. Recently, however, lacrosse has begun to flourish at the international level, with teams being established around the world, particularly in Europe and East Asia. World Lacrosse. In August 2008, the men's international governing body, the International Lacrosse Federation, merged with the women's, the International Federation of Women's Lacrosse Associations, to form the Federation of International Lacrosse (FIL). The FIL changed its name to World Lacrosse in May 2019. There are currently 62 member nations of World Lacrosse. Tournaments. World Lacrosse sponsors five world championship tournaments: the World Lacrosse Championship for men's field, the Women's Lacrosse World Championship for women's, the World Indoor Lacrosse Championship for box lacrosse, as well as the Men's Under-20 World Lacrosse Championships and Women's Under-20 World Lacrosse Championships. Each is held every four years. The World Lacrosse Championship (WLC) began in 1968 as a four-team invitational tournament sponsored by the International Lacrosse Federation. Until 1990, only the United States, Canada, England, and Australia had entered. With the expansion of the game internationally, the 2014 World Lacrosse Championship was contested by 38 countries. The WLC has been dominated by the United States. Team USA has won 11 of the 14 titles, with Canada winning the other three. The Women's Lacrosse World Cup (WLWC) began in 1982. The United States has won 9 of the 11 titles, with Australia winning the other two. Canada and England have always finished in the top five. The 2017 tournament was held in England and featured 25 countries. The first World Indoor Lacrosse Championship (WILC) was held in 2003 and contested by six nations at four sites in Ontario. Canada won the championship by beating the Iroquois Nationals 21–4 in the final. The 2007 championship hosted by the Onondaga Nation included 13 teams. Canada has dominated the competition, winning all five gold medals and never losing a game. The Iroquois Nationals are the men's national team representing the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy in international field lacrosse competition. The team was admitted to the FIL in 1987. It is the only First Nations team sanctioned for international competition in any sport. The Nationals placed fourth in the 1998, 2002 and 2006 World Lacrosse Championships and third in 2014. The indoor team won the silver medal in all four World Indoor Lacrosse Championships. In 2008, the Iroquois women's team was admitted to the FIL as the Haudenosaunee Nationals. They placed 7th at the 2013 Women's Lacrosse World Cup. Olympic Games. Field lacrosse was a medal sport in the 1904 and the 1908 Summer Olympics. In 1904, three teams competed in the games held in St. Louis. Two Canadian teams, the Winnipeg Shamrocks and a team of Mohawk people from the Iroquois Confederacy, plus the local St. Louis Amateur Athletic Association team representing the United States participated. The Winnipeg Shamrocks captured the gold medal. The 1908 games held in London, England, featured only two teams, representing Canada and Great Britain. The Canadians again won the gold medal in a single championship match by a score of 14–10. In the 1928, 1932, and the 1948 Summer Olympics, lacrosse was a demonstration sport. The 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam featured three teams: the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. The 1932 games in Los Angeles featured a three-game exhibition between a Canadian all-star team and the United States. The United States was represented by Johns Hopkins in both the 1928 and 1932 Olympics. The 1948 games featured an exhibition by an "All-England" team organized by the English Lacrosse Union and the collegiate lacrosse team from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute representing the United States. This exhibition match ended in a 5–5 tie. Efforts were made to include lacrosse as an exhibition sport at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, and the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, but they were not successful. An obstacle for lacrosse to return to the Olympics has been insufficient international participation. To be considered for the Olympics, a sport had to be played on four continents and by at least 75 countries. Lacrosse is played on all six continents, but as of August 2019 when Ghana joined, there are only 63 countries playing the sport. However, nowadays numeric criteria about widely practiced sports have been abolished. The International Olympic Committee granted provisional status to World Lacrosse in 2018 and Lacrosse may be included in the 2028 Summer Olympics. In August 2022, It was announced that nine sports had made the shortlist to be included in the games, among them lacrosse, with presentations expected to be made later that month. Other. The European Lacrosse Federation (ELF) was established in 1995 and held the first European Lacrosse Championships that year. Originally an annual event, it is now held every four years, in between FIL's men's and women's championships. In 2004, 12 men's and 6 women's teams played in the tournament, making it the largest international lacrosse event of the year. The last men's tournament was in 2016, when 24 countries participated. England won its ninth gold medal out of the ten tournaments played. 2015 was the last women's tournament, when 17 teams participated in the Czech Republic. England won its sixth gold medal, with Wales earning silver and Scotland bronze. These three countries from Great Britain have dominated the women's championships, earning all but three medals since the tournament began in 1996. There are currently 29 members of the ELF, they make up the majority of nations in the FIL. The Asia Pacific Lacrosse Union was founded in 2004 by Australia, Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan. It currently has 12 members and holds the Asia Pacific Championship for both men's and women's teams every two years. Lacrosse was played in the World Games for the first time at the 2017 World Games held in Poland. Only women's teams took part in the competition. The United States won the gold medal defeating Canada in the finals. Australia won the bronze medal match. The Haudenosaunee Nationals women's lacrosse team could not participate. Both men and women tournaments consisting of the 6v6 version played on smaller fields were held in the 2022 World Games in Birmingham, Alabama, USA. Lacrosse in the United States. College lacrosse. Men's college lacrosse. Collegiate lacrosse in the United States is played at the NCAA, NAIA and club levels. There are currently 71 NCAA Division I men's lacrosse teams, 93 Division II teams, and 236 Division III teams. Thirty-two schools participate at the NAIA level. 184 men's club teams compete in the Men's Collegiate Lacrosse Association, including most universities and colleges outside the northeastern United States. The National College Lacrosse League and Great Lakes Lacrosse League are two other lower-division club leagues. In Canada, 14 teams from Ontario and Quebec play field lacrosse in the fall in the Canadian University Field Lacrosse Association. The first U. S. intercollegiate men's lacrosse game was played on November 22, 1877 between New York University and Manhattan College. An organizing body for the sport, the U. S. National Lacrosse Association, was founded in 1879 and the first intercollegiate lacrosse tournament was held in 1881, with Harvard beating Princeton 3–0 in the championship game. Annual post-season championships were awarded by a variety of early lacrosse associations through the 1930s. From 1936 to 1972, the United States Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association awarded the Wingate Memorial Trophy to the best college lacrosse team each year. The NCAA began sponsoring a men's lacrosse championship in 1971, when Cornell took the first title over Maryland, 12–6. Syracuse has 10 Division I titles, Johns Hopkins 9, and Princeton 6. The NCAA national championship weekend tournament draws over 80,000 fans. Women's college lacrosse. There are currently 112 Division I women's lacrosse teams, 109 Division II teams, and 282 Division III teams. There are 36 NAIA women's lacrosse teams. The NCAA started sponsoring a women's lacrosse championship in 1982. Maryland has traditionally dominated women's intercollegiate play, producing many head coaches and U.S. national team players. The Terrapins won seven consecutive NCAA championships from 1995 through 2001. Princeton's women's teams have made it to the final game seven times since 1993 and have won three NCAA titles, in 1993, 2002, and 2003. In recent years, Northwestern has become a force, winning the national championship from 2005 through 2009. Maryland ended Northwestern's streak by defeating the Wildcats in the 2010 final, however, Northwestern won the next two titles in 2011 and 2012. Maryland again claimed the national championship in 2014, 2015, and 2017. The Women's Collegiate Lacrosse Associates (WCLA) is a collection of over 260 college club teams that are organized by US Lacrosse. Teams are organized into two divisions and various leagues. Professional lacrosse. Major League Lacrosse. Major League Lacrosse (MLL) was a semi-professional field lacrosse league started in 2001 with six teams in the Northeastern United States. The leagues final year had six teams, playing a week long round-robin regular season. MLL rules were based on NCAA men's rules with several exceptions, such as a 16-yard 2-point line and a 60-second shot clock. MLL venues range from small stadiums with under 10,000 capacity to an NFL stadium in Denver that seats 76,000. Overall league average attendance is around 4,000 per game, but Denver has averaged around 10,000 per game since its founding in 2006. The rookie salary is $7,000 per season and most players make between $10,000 and $20,000 per season. Therefore, the players had other jobs, often non-lacrosse related, and travel to games on the weekends. The Chesapeake Bayhawks, who have played in the Annapolis–Baltimore–Washington, DC area since 2001, were the most successful franchise with six championships. On December 16, 2020, it was announced that the MLL was merging all operations with the Premier Lacrosse League. The PLL added the Boston Cannons and rebranded them to "Cannons Lacrosse Club". No other MLL teams were added into the PLL. National Lacrosse League. The National Lacrosse League (NLL) is a men's semi-professional box lacrosse league in North America. The NLL currently has fifteen teams, ten in the United States and five in Canada. The 18-game regular season runs from December to April; games are always on the weekends. The champion is awarded the National Lacrosse League Cup in early June. Games are played in ice rinks with artificial turf covering the ice. Venues range from NHL arenas seating 19,000 to smaller arenas with under 10,000 capacity. In 2017, average attendance ranged from 3,200 per game in Vancouver to over 15,000 in Buffalo. Overall, the league averaged 9,500 people per game. With an average salary around $20,000 per season, players have regular jobs, mostly non-lacrosse related, and live in different cities, flying into town for games. Canadians and Native Americans make up over 90% of the players. The NLL started in 1987 as the Eagle Pro Box Lacrosse League. Teams in Philadelphia, New Jersey, Baltimore and Washington, DC, played a 6-game season. The league operated as the Major Indoor Lacrosse League from 1989 to 1997, when there were six teams playing a 10-game schedule. The current NLL name began in the 1998 season, which included the first Canadian team. The most successful franchises have been the Toronto Rock and the former Philadelphia Wings (now the Albany FireWolves), each has won six championships. Premier Lacrosse League. In October 2018, former MLL player Paul Rabil branched away from the MLL and created the Premier Lacrosse League. The PLL focuses on being a traveling lacrosse league that will bring the best players in the world to different cities in the United States. Each player has a minimum salary of $25,000, equity in the league, and medical benefits. The average salary is $35,000. The most successful team is Whipsnakes Lacrosse Club which has two championships. Since its inaugural season in 2019, the PLL has expanded to eight teams and merged with the MLL. Beginning with the 2022 season, the PLL has had a broadcasting deal with ESPN. Prior to the 2023 season the PLL announced that they would be assigning home-cities to each team for the 2024 season. The touring model would not cease, however, with each team hosting one regular season weekend where they play a doubleheader. There will also be two neutral site weekends. United Women's Lacrosse League. The United Women's Lacrosse League (UWLX), was a four-team women's lacrosse league, was launched in 2016. The teams are the Baltimore Ride, Boston Storm, Long Island Sound and Philadelphia Force. Long Island won the first two championships. The league closed in 2020. Women’s Professional Lacrosse League. The Women's Professional Lacrosse League was a professional women's lacrosse league with 5 teams that started in 2018. It closed in 2020. Athletes Unlimited Lacrosse. Athletes Unlimited Lacrosse is a women's lacrosse league that had its inaugural season in 2021. Rather than having set teams, at the end of each week, the top four players are determined by a point system and named captains of next week's teams. They then draft their team for the next week. The champion of the league is the player that scores the most points. There are 56 players in the league as of 2023. Equipment. Stick. The lacrosse stick has two parts, the head and the shaft. There are three parts to the head: the scoop, sidewall, and pocket. The scoop is the top of the stick that affects picking up ground ball as well as passing and shooting. The sidewall is the side of the head that affects the depth of the head and the stiffness. The pocket is the leather or nylon mesh attached to the sidewall and scoop. A wider pocket allows an easier time catching balls, but will also cause less ball control. A narrower pocket makes catching harder, but allows more ball retention and accuracy. Shafts are usually made of hollow metal. They are octagonal, instead of round, in order to provide a better grip. Most are made of aluminum, titanium, scandium, or alloys, but some shafts are made from other materials, including wood, plastic, carbon fiber, or fiberglass. Stick length, both shaft and head together, is governed by NCAA regulations, which require that men's sticks be from long for offensive players, and long for defensemen, and long for goalies. Women's sticks must be an overall length of . The head must be seven to nine inches wide and the top of the ball must remain above the side walls when dropped in the pocket. The goalkeeper's stick must be long. The head of the goalie's stick can up to wide and the pocket may be mesh. Ball. The ball is made of solid rubber. It is typically white for men's lacrosse, or yellow for women's lacrosse; but is also produced in a wide variety of colors, such as yellow, orange or lime green according to the Men's Lacrosse Rules and Interpretations. Men's field protective equipment. Men's field lacrosse protective equipment contains a pair of gloves, elbow pads, shoulder pads, helmet, mouthguard, and cleats. Pads differ in size and protection from player to player based on position, ability, comfort and preference. For example, many attack players wear larger and more protective elbow pads to protect themselves from checks thrown at them while defenders typically wear smaller and less protective pads due to their smaller possibility of being checked and goalies usually wear no elbow pads due to the very limited opportunities of being checked. A goalkeeper must also wear a large protective chest pad to cover their stomach and chest and a plastic neck guard that connects to the chin of their helmet to protect them from shots hitting their windpipe. In addition, male goalkeepers are required to wear a protective cup. Men's box protective equipment. Men's box players wear more protective gear than field players due to the increased physical contact and more permissive checking rules. Cross-checking in the back is allowed by the rules. Runners wear larger and heavier elbow pads and stronger shoulder pads that extend down the back of the player. Most players wear rib pads as well. Box goalies wear equipment very similar to ice hockey goalies, the leg blockers are somewhat smaller, although the shoulder pads are bigger than ice hockey pads. Women's field protective equipment. Women's field players are not required to wear protective equipment besides eyewear and a mouthguard. Eyegear is a metal cage covering the eyes attached with a strap around the back of the head. In recent years, there has been discussion about allowing or requiring padded headgear to protect against concussions. Women goalies wear a helmet, gloves, and chest protector.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18081

Liverpool

Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, North West England, with a population of 500,500 in 2022. The city is part of a broader metropolitan area that is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a population of 2.24 million. A historic port city, Liverpool lies on the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary adjacent to the Irish Sea. The city was an important part of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain and a vital hub for trade. The city celebrated its 800th anniversary in 2007 and was named the 2008 European Capital of Culture. Its selection was credited with kickstarting an economic renaissance in the region. The city's modern economy has a significant influence on the knowledge sector, maritime industry, tourism, culture, hospitality, healthcare industry, life sciences, the creative and digital sectors. Liverpool is within the boundaries of the ancient hundred of West Derby in the historic county of Lancashire. It was made a borough in 1207, a city in 1880, and a county borough independent of Lancashire County Council, which was established in 1889. In 1974, it became a metropolitan borough in the newly created metropolitan county of Merseyside. And most recently, a constituent local authority within the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, in 2014. Liverpool's growth as a major port was paralleled by the expansion of the city throughout the Industrial Revolution. Along with general cargo, freight, and raw materials such as coal and cotton, merchants were also involved in the slave trade. In the 19th century, Liverpool was a major port of departure for English and Irish emigrants to North America. It was also home to both the Cunard and White Star Lines, and was the port of registry of the ocean liners , , , and . Liverpool has the second highest number of art galleries, national museums, listed buildings, and listed parks in the UK; only the capital, London, has more. The former Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City includes the Pier Head, Royal Albert Dock and William Brown Street. Several areas of Liverpool city centre carried World Heritage Site status from 2004 until 2021; the city's vast collection of parks and open spaces have been described as the "most important in the country" by England's Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest. In 2019, Liverpool was the fifth most visited UK city. It is noted for its culture, architecture, and transport links. The city is closely associated with sport and the arts, especially music. In sports, the city is widely noted as the home of Premier League football teams Liverpool F.C. and Everton F.C., with matches between the two rivals being known as the Merseyside derby. The annual Grand National horse race takes place at Aintree Racecourse. The significance of Liverpool to pop music is linked intrinsically to the popularity and success of the Beatles, widely regarded as the most influential band of all time. Liverpool has continued to produce notable musicians. Musicians from the city have released 57 No. 1 hit singles, more than any other city in the world, per head of population. Liverpool is also England's only UNESCO City of Music. The city also has a long-standing reputation for producing , , , , , , and . Natives of Liverpool (and some longtime residents from elsewhere) are formally referred to as "Liverpudlians", but are usually called "Scousers" in reference to scouse, a local stew made popular by sailors in the city; "Scouse" is also the most common name for the Liverpool accent and dialect. Its status as a port city historically attracted a diverse population from a wide range of cultures, primarily Ireland, Norway, and Wales. It is also home to the oldest black community in the UK and the oldest Chinese community in Europe. Toponymy. The name comes from the Old English "lifer", meaning thick or muddy water, and "pōl", meaning a pool or creek, and is first recorded around 1190 as "Liuerpul". According to the "Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names", "The original reference was to a pool or tidal creek now filled up into which two streams drained". The place appearing as "Leyrpole", in a legal record of 1418, may also refer to Liverpool. Other origins of the name have been suggested, including "elverpool", a reference to the large number of eels in the Mersey. The adjective "Liverpudlian" was first recorded in 1833. Although the Old English origin of the name Liverpool is beyond dispute, claims are sometimes made that the name Liverpool is of Welsh origin, but these are without foundation. The Welsh name for Liverpool is Lerpwl, from a former English local form Leerpool. This is a reduction of the form "Leverpool" with the loss of the intervocalic [v] (seen in other English names and words e.g. Daventry (Northamptonshire) > Danetry, never-do-well > ne’er-do-well). In the 19th century, some Welsh publications used the name "Lle'r Pwll" ("(the) place (of) the pool"), a reinterpretation of Lerpwl, probably in the belief that "Lle'r Pwll" was the original form. Another name, which is widely known even today, is Llynlleifiad, again a 19th-century coining. "Llyn" is pool, but "lleifiad" has no obvious meaning. G. Melville Richards (1910–1973), a pioneer of scientific toponymy in Wales, in "Place Names of North Wales", does not attempt to explain it beyond noting that "lleifiad" is used as a Welsh equivalent of "Liver". A derivative form of a learned borrowing into Welsh (*llaf) of Latin lāma (slough, bog, fen) to give "lleifiad" is possible, but unproven. History. Early history. In the Middle Ages, Liverpool existed as a tactical army base for King John of England and as a small town of farmers, fishermen and tradesmen. The town was planned with its own castle, although due to outbreaks of disease and its subordinance to the nearby Roman port of Chester, the town's growth and prosperity stagnated until the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Substantial growth took place in the mid-late 18th century when the town became the most heavily involved European port in the Atlantic slave trade. King John's letters patent of 1207 announced the foundation of the borough of Liverpool (then spelt as "Liuerpul"). There is no evidence that the place had previously been a centre of any trade. The creation of the borough was probably due to King John deciding it would be a convenient place to embark men and supplies for his Irish campaigns, in particular John's Irish campaign of 1209. The original street plan of Liverpool is said to have been designed by King John near the same time it was granted a royal charter, making it a borough. The original seven streets were laid out in the shape of a double cross: Bank Street (now Water Street), Castle Street, Chapel Street, Dale Street, Juggler Street (now High Street), Moor Street (now Tithebarn Street) and Whiteacre Street (now Old Hall Street). Liverpool Castle was built before 1235, it survived until it was demolished in the 1720s. By the middle of the 16th century, the population was still around 600, although this was likely to have fallen from an earlier peak of 1000 people due to slow trade and the effects of the plague. In the 17th century, there was slow progress in trade and population growth. Battles for control of the town were waged during the English Civil War, including a brief siege in 1644. In 1699, the same year as its first recorded slave ship, "Liverpool Merchant", set sail for Africa, Liverpool was made a parish by Act of Parliament. But arguably, the legislation of 1695 that reformed the Liverpool council was of more significance to its subsequent development. Since Roman times, the nearby city of Chester on the River Dee had been the region's principal port on the Irish Sea. However, as the Dee began to silt up, maritime trade from Chester became increasingly difficult and shifted towards Liverpool on the neighbouring River Mersey. The first of the Liverpool docks was constructed in 1715, and the system of docks gradually grew into a large interconnected system. As trade from the West Indies, including sugar, surpassed that of Ireland and Europe, and as the River Dee continued to silt up, Liverpool began to grow with increasing rapidity. The first commercial wet dock was built in Liverpool in 1715. Substantial profits from the slave trade and tobacco helped the town to prosper and rapidly grow, although several prominent local men, including William Rathbone, William Roscoe and Edward Rushton, were at the forefront of the local abolitionist movement. 19th century. The 19th century saw Liverpool rise to global economic importance. Pioneering, world first, technology and civic facilities launched in the city to serve the accelerating population which was fuelled by an influx of ethnic and religious communities from all around the world. By the start of the 19th century, a large volume of trade was passing through Liverpool, and the construction of major buildings reflected this wealth. In 1830, Liverpool and Manchester became the first cities to have an intercity rail link, through the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. The population continued to rise rapidly, especially during the 1840s when Irish migrants began arriving by the hundreds of thousands as a result of the Great Famine. Whilst many Irish settled during this time in the city, a large percentage also emigrated to the United States or moved to the industrial centres of Lancashire, Yorkshire and the Midlands. In her poetical illustration "Liverpool" (1832), which celebrates the city's worldwide commerce, Letitia Elizabeth Landon refers specifically to the Macgregor Laird expedition to the Niger River, at that time in progress. This is to a painting by Samuel Austin, "Liverpool, from the Mersey". Britain was a major market for cotton imported from the Deep South of the United States, which fed the textile industry in the country. Given the crucial place cotton held in the city's economy, during the American Civil War Liverpool was, in the words of historian Sven Beckert, "the most pro-Confederate place in the world outside the Confederacy itself." Liverpool merchants helped to bring out cotton from ports blockaded by the Union Navy, built ships of war for the Confederacy, and supplied the South with military equipment and credit. During the war, the Confederate Navy ship, the CSS "Alabama", was built at Birkenhead on the Mersey, and the CSS "Shenandoah" surrendered there (being the final surrender at the end of the war). The city was also the center of Confederate purchasing war materiel, including arms and ammunition, uniforms, and naval supplies to be smuggled by British blockade runners to the South. For periods during the 19th century, the wealth of Liverpool exceeded that of London, and Liverpool's Custom House was the single largest contributor to the British Exchequer. Liverpool was the only British city ever to have its own Whitehall office. During this century, at least 40% of the world's entire trade passed through Liverpool. In the early 19th century, Liverpool played a major role in the Antarctic sealing industry, in recognition of which Liverpool Beach in the South Shetland Islands is named after the city. As early as 1851, the city was described as "the New York of Europe". During the late 19th and early 20th century, Liverpool was attracting immigrants from across Europe. This resulted in the construction of a diverse array of religious buildings in the city for the new ethnic and religious groups, many of which are still in use today. The Deutsche Kirche Liverpool, Greek Orthodox Church of St Nicholas, Gustav Adolf Church and Princes Road Synagogue were all established in the 1800s to serve Liverpool's growing German, Greek, Nordic and Jewish communities, respectively. One of Liverpool's oldest surviving churches, St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church, served the Polish community in its final years as a place of worship. 20th century. The 20th century saw Liverpool's established rank as a global economic powerhouse challenged. Its strategic location as an international seaport made it particularly vulnerable in two World Wars. Economic depressions (both in the United Kingdom and across the world), changing housing patterns and containerisation in the maritime industry contributed to a downtrend in the city's productivity and prosperity. Despite this, the city's influence on global popular culture excelled and by the end of the century, the continuing process of urban renewal paved the way for the redefined modern city of the 21st century. The period after the Great War was marked by social unrest, as society grappled with the massive war losses of young men, as well as trying to re-integrate veterans into civilian life and the economy. Unemployment and poor living standards greeted many ex-servicemen. Union organising and strikes took place in numerous locations, including police strikes in London among the Metropolitan Police. Numerous colonial soldiers and sailors from Africa and India, who had served with the British Armed Forces, settled in Liverpool and other port cities. In June 1919, they were subject to attack by whites in racial riots; residents in the port included Swedish immigrants, and both groups had to compete with native people from Liverpool for jobs and housing. In this period, race riots also took place in Cardiff, Newport and Barry, and there had been incidents in Glasgow, South Shields, London, Hull and Salford. The Housing Act 1919 resulted in mass council housing being built across Liverpool during the 1920s and 1930s. In the 1920s and 1930s, as much as 15% of the city's population (around 140,000 people) was relocated from the inner-city to new purpose built, lower density suburban housing estates, based on the belief that this would improve their standard of living, though the overall benefits have been contested. Numerous private homes were also built during this era. During the Great Depression of the early 1930s, unemployment peaked at around 30% in the city. Liverpool was the site of Britain's first provincial airport, operating from 1930. During the Second World War, the critical strategic importance of Liverpool was recognised by both Hitler and Churchill. The city was heavily bombed by the Germans, suffering a blitz second only to London's. The pivotal Battle of the Atlantic was planned, fought and won from Liverpool. The "Luftwaffe" made 80 air raids on Merseyside, killing 2,500 people and causing damage to almost half the homes in the metropolitan area. Significant rebuilding followed the war, including massive housing estates and the Seaforth Dock, the largest dock project in Britain. In the 1950s and 1960s, much of the immediate reconstruction that took place in the city centre proved to be deeply unpopular. The historic portions of the city that had survived German bombing suffered extensive destruction during urban renewal. It has been argued that the so-called 'Shankland Plan' of the 1960s, named after the town planner Graeme Shankland, led to compromised town planning and vast road-building schemes that devastated and divided inner city neighbourhoods. Concrete brutalist architecture, compromised visions, botched projects and grand designs that were never realised became the subject of condemnation. Historian Raphael Samuel labelled the town planner Graeme Shankland "the butcher of Liverpool". Since 1952, Liverpool has been twinned with Cologne, Germany, a city which also suffered severe aerial bombing during the war. A significant West Indian black community has existed in the city since the first two decades of the 20th century. Like most British cities and industrialised towns, Liverpool became home to a significant number of Commonwealth immigrants, beginning after World War I with colonial soldiers and sailors who had served in the area. More immigrants arrived after World War II, mostly settling in older inner-city areas such as Toxteth, where housing was less expensive. The black population of Liverpool was recorded at 1.90% in 2011. In the 2021 Census, 5.2% described themselves as black African, Caribbean, mixed white and black African, mixed white and Caribbean or 'other black'. The construction of suburban public housing expanded after the Second World War. Some of the older inner-city areas were redeveloped for new homes. In the 1960s, Liverpool was the centre of the "Merseybeat" sound, which became synonymous with the Beatles and fellow Liverpudlian rock bands. Influenced by American rhythm and blues and rock music, they also in turn strongly affected American music. The Beatles became internationally known in the early 1960s and performed around the world together; they were, and continue to be, the most commercially successful and musically influential band in popular history. Their co-founder, singer, and composer John Lennon was killed in New York City in 1980. Liverpool Airport was renamed after him in 2002, the first British airport to be named in honour of an individual. Previously part of Lancashire, and a county borough from 1889, Liverpool became a metropolitan borough within the newly created metropolitan county of Merseyside, in 1974. From the mid-1970s onwards, Liverpool's docks and traditional manufacturing industries declined due to restructuring of shipping and heavy industry, causing massive losses of jobs. The advent of containerisation meant that the city's docks became largely obsolete, and dock workers were made unemployed. By the early 1980s, unemployment rates in Liverpool were among the highest in the UK, standing at 17% by January 1982. Although, this was about half the level of unemployment that had affected the city during the Great Depression some 50 years previously. During this period, Liverpool became a hub of fierce left-wing opposition to the central government in London. 1980's Liverpool has been labelled as Britain's ‘shock city’. Once the second city of the British Empire which rivalled the capital city in global significance, Liverpool had collapsed in to its 'nadir' at the depths of post-colonial, post-industrial Britain. In the late 20th century, Liverpool's economy began to recover. The late 1980's saw the opening of a regenerated Albert Dock which proved to be a catalyst for further regeneration. In the mid-1990s, the city enjoyed growth rates higher than the national average. At the end of the 20th century, Liverpool was concentrating on regeneration, a process that continues today. 21st century. Ongoing regeneration combined with the hosting of internationally significant events has helped to re-purpose Liverpool as one of the most visited, tourist orientated, cities in the United Kingdom. City leaders are focussing on long-term strategies to grow the city's population and economy, whilst national government explores the continuous potential for devolution in the city. In 2002, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh visited Liverpool to mark the Golden Jubilee. On speaking to an audience at Liverpool Town Hall, the Queen recognised Liverpool as "one of the most distinctive and energetic parts of the United Kingdom", and paid tribute to the city's "major orchestras, world-class museums and galleries". She also acknowledged Liverpool's bid to become the European Capital of Culture. To celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Elizabeth II in 2002, the conservation charity Plantlife organised a competition to choose county flowers; the sea-holly was Liverpool's final choice. The initiative was designed to highlight growing threats to the UK's flower species and also ask the public about which flowers best represented their county. Capitalising on the popularity of 1960s rock groups, such as the Beatles, as well as the city's world-class art galleries, museums and landmarks, tourism and culture have become a significant factor in Liverpool's economy. In 2004, property developer Grosvenor started the Paradise Project, a £920 million development based on Paradise Street. This produced one of the most significant changes to Liverpool's city centre since the post-war reconstruction. Renamed as 'Liverpool One,' the centre opened in May 2008. In 2007, events and celebrations took place in honour of the 800th anniversary of the founding of the borough of Liverpool. Liverpool was designated as a joint European Capital of Culture for 2008. The celebrations included the erection of La Princesse, a large mechanical spider 20 metres high and weighing 37 tonnes, which represented the "eight legs" of Liverpool: honour, history, music, the Mersey, the ports, governance, sunshine and culture. La Princesse roamed the streets of the city during the festivities, and concluded by entering the Queensway Tunnel. Spearheaded by the multi-billion-pound Liverpool ONE development, regeneration continued throughout the 2010s. Some of the most significant redevelopment projects included new buildings in the Commercial District, King's Dock, Mann Island, around Lime Street, the Baltic Triangle, RopeWalks, and Edge Lane. Changes to Liverpool's governance took place in 2014. The local authority of Liverpool City Council decided to pool its power and resources with surrounding boroughs through the formation of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority in a form of devolution. With a devolved budget granted by central government, the authority now oversees and invests in foremost strategic affairs throughout the Liverpool City Region, including major regeneration projects. The authority, along with Liverpool City Council itself, has embarked on long-term plans to grow the population and economy of the city. By the 2020s, urban regeneration throughout the city continues. Liverpool Waters, a mixed-use development in the city's disused northern docklands, has been identified as one of the largest megaprojects in the UK's history. Everton's new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock was regarded as the largest single-site private sector development in the United Kingdom at the time of construction. Major events, business and political conferences regularly take place in the city and form an important part of the economy. In June 2014, Prime Minister David Cameron launched the International Festival for Business in Liverpool, the world's largest business event in 2014, and the largest in the UK since the Festival of Britain in 1951. The Labour Party has chosen Liverpool numerous times since the mid 2010s for their annual Labour Party Conference. Liverpool hosted the Eurovision Song Contest 2023. Inventions and innovations. Liverpool has been a centre of invention and innovation. Railways, transatlantic steamships, municipal trams, and electric trains were all pioneered in Liverpool as modes of mass transit. In 1829 and 1836, the first railway tunnels in the world were constructed under Liverpool (Wapping Tunnel). From 1950 to 1951, the world's first scheduled passenger helicopter service ran between Liverpool and Cardiff. The first School for the Blind, Mechanics' Institute, High School for Girls, council house, and Juvenile Court were all founded in Liverpool. Charities such as the RSPCA, NSPCC, Age Concern, Relate, and Citizen's Advice Bureau all evolved from work in the city. The first lifeboat station, public bath and wash-house, sanitary act, medical officer for health (William Henry Duncan), district nurse, slum clearance, purpose-built ambulance, X-ray medical diagnosis, school of tropical medicine (Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine), motorised municipal fire-engine, free school meal, cancer research centre, and zoonosis research centre all originated in Liverpool. The first British Nobel Prize was awarded in 1902 to Ronald Ross, professor at the School of Tropical Medicine, the first school of its kind in the world. Orthopaedic surgery was pioneered in Liverpool by Hugh Owen Thomas, and modern medical anaesthetics by Thomas Cecil Gray. The world's first integrated sewer system was constructed in Liverpool by James Newlands, appointed in 1847 as the UK's first borough engineer. Liverpool also founded the UK's first Underwriters' Association and the first Institute of Accountants. The Western world's first financial derivatives (cotton futures) were traded on the Liverpool Cotton Exchange in the late 1700s. In the arts, Liverpool was home to the first lending library (The Lyceum), athenaeum society (Liverpool Athenaeum), arts centre (Bluecoat Chambers), and public art conservation centre (National Conservation Centre). It is also home to the UK's oldest surviving classical orchestra (Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra) and repertory theatre (Liverpool Playhouse). In 1864, Peter Ellis built the world's first iron-framed, curtain-walled office building, Oriel Chambers, which was a prototype of the skyscraper. The UK's first purpose-built department store was Compton House, completed in 1867 for the retailer J.R. Jeffrey. It was the largest store in the world at the time. Between 1862 and 1867, Liverpool held an annual Grand Olympic Festival. Devised by John Hulley and Charles Pierre Melly, these games were the first to be wholly amateur in nature and international in outlook. The programme of the first modern Olympiad in Athens in 1896 was almost identical to that of the Liverpool Olympics. In 1865, Hulley co-founded the National Olympian Association in Liverpool, a forerunner of the British Olympic Association. Its articles of foundation provided the framework for the International Olympic Charter. Sir Alfred Lewis Jones, a shipowner, introduced bananas to the UK via Liverpool's docks in 1884. The Mersey Railway, opened in 1886, incorporated the world's first tunnel under a tidal estuary and the world's first deep-level underground stations (Liverpool James Street railway station). In 1889, borough engineer John Alexander Brodie invented the football goal net. He was also a pioneer in the use of pre-fabricated housing and oversaw the construction of the UK's first ring road (A5058) and intercity highway (East Lancashire Road), as well as the Queensway Tunnel linking Liverpool and Birkenhead. Described as "the eighth wonder of the world" at the time of its construction, it was the longest underwater tunnel in the world for 24 years. In 1897, the Lumière brothers filmed Liverpool, including what is believed to be the world's first tracking shot, taken from the Liverpool Overhead Railway, the world's first elevated electrified railway. The Overhead Railway was the first railway in the world to use electric multiple units, employ automatic signalling, and install an escalator. Liverpool inventor Frank Hornby was a visionary in toy development and manufacture, producing three of the most popular lines of toys in the 20th century: Meccano, Hornby Model Railways, and Dinky Toys. The British Interplanetary Society, founded in Liverpool in 1933 by Phillip Ellaby Cleator, is the world's oldest existing organisation devoted to the promotion of spaceflight. Its journal, the "Journal of the British Interplanetary Society", is the longest-running astronautical publication in the world. In 1999, Liverpool was the first city outside London to be awarded blue plaques by English Heritage in recognition of the "significant contribution made by its sons and daughters in all walks of life". Government. For the purposes of local government, the city of Liverpool is classified as a metropolitan borough. The metropolitan borough is located within both the county of Merseyside and the Liverpool City Region. Each of these geographical areas is treated as an administrative area with different levels of local governance applying to each. Liverpool City Council is the governing body solely for the city of Liverpool and performs functions that are standard of an English Unitary Authority. The Liverpool City Region Combined Authority reserves major strategic powers over such things as transport, economic development and regeneration for the city along with the 5 surrounding boroughs of the Liverpool City Region. The Combined Authority has competency over areas which have been devolved by national government and are specific to the local area. Nevertheless, there are a few exceptions to local governance apart from these two structures. Liverpool was administered by Merseyside County Council between 1974 and 1986 and some residual aspects of organisation which date back to this time have survived. When the County Council was disbanded in 1986, most civic functions were transferred to Liverpool City Council. However, several authorities such as the police and fire and rescue service, continue to be run at a county-wide level. The county of Merseyside, therefore, continues to exist as an administrative area for a few limited services only, while the capability and capacity of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority is evolving over time. The city also elects five members of Parliament (MPs) to the Westminster Parliament. City Council Leader and Cabinet. Liverpool City Council operates under a constitution comprising 85 city councillors who are directly elected by the Liverpool electorate every 4 years and represent a variety of different political parties. The city councillors make decisions about local services for the city's people. At each election, the political party that wins the majority of the 85 council seats leads the council for the following 4 years. The local leader of this party assumes the role of Leader of the City Council who then chairs a Cabinet of 9 councillors who are assigned specific responsibilities known as 'portfolios'. The incumbent Leader of Liverpool City Council is Councillor Liam Robinson, who represents the Labour Party, which secured a large majority at the 2023 local election. The City Council's decisions and scrutiny of activities are undertaken by a number of different committees and panels which include the Overview and Scrutiny Committees, Scrutiny Panels, Regulatory Committees and other committees. The day-to-day management of the council is carried out by the management team which includes the Chief Executive and several directors and senior officers. The management team works with the Cabinet and councillors to deliver strategic direction and priorities such as the budget and the City Plan. Liverpool City Council elections. Every 4 years, the city elects 85 councillors from 64 local council wards, which in alphabetical order are: During the 2023 Liverpool City Council election, the Labour Party consolidated its control of Liverpool City Council, following on from the previous elections. Out of the total 85 City Council seats up for election, The Labour Party won 61 seats (53.13% of the electorate's total votes), the Liberal Democrats won 15 seats (21.61% of the votes), the Green Party won 3 seats (9.76% of the votes), the Liverpool Community Independents won 3 seats (4.64% of the votes) and the Liberal Party won the remaining 3 seats (3.21% of the votes). The Conservative Party, the political party in power at national government, had no representation on Liverpool City Council. Only 27.27% of the eligible Liverpool electorate turned out to vote. Throughout most of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Liverpool was a municipal stronghold of Toryism. However, support for the Conservative Party in recent times has been among the lowest in any part of Britain, particularly since the monetarist economic policies of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher. After the 1979 general election, many have claimed that her victory contributed to longstanding high unemployment and decline in the city. Liverpool is one of the Labour Party's key strongholds; however, the city has also seen hard times under Labour governments also. Particularly in the Winter of Discontent (late 1978 and early 1979) when Liverpool suffered public sector strikes along with the rest of the United Kingdom, but also when it suffered the particularly humiliating misfortune of having grave-diggers going on strike, leaving the dead unburied for long periods. City Council criticism and improvement. In recent years, Liverpool City Council has began an extensive improvement program designed to ensure that the authority makes efficient use of taxpayer's money and to encourage more business and investment in the city. In 2021, a highly critical government inspection and subsequent report of Liverpool City Council (referred to as the Caller report) identified multiple shortcomings at Liverpool City Council. The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Robert Jenrick sent government commissioners to oversee the City Council's highways, regeneration, property management, governance and financial decision-making. The authority was compelled to commit to a three-year improvement plan in which the entire structure of the council would be overhauled. As a result of the intervention, major structural changes at the City Council took place by the 2023 United Kingdom local elections, which were labelled "the most unpredictable [elections] in the city's history". The number of electoral wards in the city was doubled from 30 to 64, whilst the overall number of City Councillors up for election was reduced from 90 to 85. In future, the council would also change to 'all out' elections every four years whereby every single City Councillor would be eligible for re-election at the same time. The role of elected city mayor was also abolished and the Council reverted to the previous Leader and Cabinet style of leadership. The outcome of the elections were seen not only as a test of how the general public would respond to the government intervention in the city, but also to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's government as a whole. Councillor Liam Robinson became the new Leader of Liverpool City Council at the 2023 City Council election. The Liverpool Strategic Futures Advisory Panel, chaired by the Mayor of Liverpool City Region Steve Rotheram, and including several high-profile figures with experience in local government, was established. The panel was tasked with directing the council's long-term future outside of government intervention measures and to advise on plans and priorities that the city should pursue. In February 2008, Liverpool City Council was reported to be the worst-performing council in the country, receiving just a one-star rating (classified as inadequate). The main cause of the poor rating was attributed to the council's poor handling of tax-payer money, including the accumulation of a £20m shortfall whilst the city held the title of European Capital of Culture. Lord Mayor of Liverpool. The Lord Mayor of Liverpool is an ancient ceremonial role. Councillors within Liverpool City Council (not the general public) elect the Lord Mayor annually, who then serves a one-year term. The Lord Mayor is styled as the 'first citizen' and is chosen to represent the city at civic functions and engagements, promote it to the wider world, support local charities and community groups, attend religious events, meet delegates from Liverpool's twin cities, chair council meetings and confer Honorary Freemen and associations. Metro Mayor of Liverpool City Region. The City of Liverpool is one of the six constituent local government districts of the Liverpool City Region. The Metro Mayor of the Liverpool City Region is directly every four years by residents of those six boroughs and oversees the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority. The Combined Authority is the top-tier administrative body for the local governance of the city region and is tasked with taking major strategic decisions on issues such as transport and investment, economic development, employment and skills, tourism, culture, housing and physical infrastructure. The current Metro Mayor is Steve Rotheram. Parliamentary constituencies and MPs. Liverpool is included within five parliamentary constituencies, through which MPs are elected to represent the city in Westminster: Liverpool Riverside, Liverpool Walton, Liverpool Wavertree, Liverpool West Derby and Garston and Halewood. At the last general election, all were won by Labour with representation being from Kim Johnson, Dan Carden, Paula Barker and Ian Byrne respectively. Due to boundary changes prior to the 2010 election, the Liverpool Garston constituency was merged with most of Knowsley South to form the Garston and Halewood cross-boundary seat. At the most recent 2019 election, this seat was won by Maria Eagle of the Labour Party. Geography. Environment. Liverpool has been described as having "the most splendid setting of any English city." At (53.4, −2.98), northwest of London, located on the Liverpool Bay of the Irish Sea the city of Liverpool is built across a ridge of sandstone hills rising up to a height of around 230 feet (70 m) above sea-level at Everton Hill, which represents the southern boundary of the West Lancashire Coastal Plain. The Mersey Estuary separates Liverpool from the Wirral Peninsula. The boundaries of Liverpool are adjacent to Bootle, Crosby and Maghull in south Sefton to the north, and Kirkby, Huyton, Prescot and Halewood in Knowsley to the east. Climate. Liverpool experiences a temperate maritime climate (Köppen: "Cfb"), like much of the British Isles, with relatively mild summers, cool winters and rainfall spread fairly evenly throughout the year. Rainfall and temperature records had been kept at Bidston Hill since 1867, but records for atmospheric pressure go back as far as at least 1846. Bidston closed down in 2002 but the Met Office also has a weather station at Crosby. Since records began in 1867, temperatures have ranged from on 21 December 2010 to on 2 August 1990, although Liverpool Airport recorded a temperature of on 19 July 2006. The lowest amount of sunshine on record was 16.5 hours in December 1927 whereas the most was 314.5 hours in July 2013. Tornado activity or funnel cloud formation is very rare in and around the Liverpool area and tornadoes that do form are usually weak. Recent tornadoes or funnel clouds in Merseyside have been seen in 1998 and 2014. During the period 1981–2010, Crosby recorded an average of 32.8 days of air frost per year, which is low for the United Kingdom. Snow is fairly common during the winter although heavy snow is rare. Snow generally falls between November and March but can occasionally fall earlier and later. In recent times, the earliest snowfall was on 1 October 2008 while the latest occurred on 15 May 2012. Although historically, the earliest snowfall occurred on 10 September 1908 and the latest on 2 June 1975. Rainfall, although light, is quite a common occurrence in Liverpool, with the wettest month on record being August 1956, which recorded of rain and the driest being February 1932, with . The driest year on record was 1991, with of rainfall and the wettest was 1872, with . Human. Suburbs and districts. Suburbs and districts of Liverpool include: Green Liverpool. In 2010, Liverpool City Council and the Primary Care Trust commissioned the Mersey Forest to complete "A Green Infrastructure Strategy" for the city. Green belt. Liverpool is a core urban element of a green belt region that extends into the wider surrounding counties, which is in place to reduce urban sprawl, prevent the towns in the conurbation from further convergence, protect the identity of outlying communities, encourage brownfield reuse, and preserve nearby countryside. This is achieved by restricting inappropriate development within the designated areas and imposing stricter conditions on permitted building. Due to being already highly built up, the city contains limited portions of protected green belt area within greenfield throughout the borough at Fazakerley, Croxteth Hall and country park and Craven Wood, Woodfields Park and nearby golf courses in Netherley, small greenfield tracts east of the Speke area by the St Ambrose primary school, and the small hamlet of Oglet and the surrounding area south of Liverpool Airport. The green belt was first drawn up in 1983 under Merseyside County Council and the size in the city amounts to . Demography. Population. The city. The city of Liverpool is at the core of a much larger and more populous metropolitan area, however, at the most recent UK Census in 2021, the area governed by Liverpool City Council had a population of 486,100, a 4.2% increase from the previous Census in 2011. This figure increased to 500,500 people by 2022, according to data from Liverpool City Council. Taking in to account how local government is organised within the cities and metropolitan areas of England, the city of Liverpool was the fifth largest of England's 'core cities' and had the second overall highest population density of those, by 2021. The population of the city has steadily risen since the 2001 Census. As well as having a growing population, the population density also grew at the 2021 Census compared to the previous Census. This makes Liverpool the second most densely populated local authority in North West England, after Manchester. The population of the city is comparatively younger than that of England as a whole. Family life in the city is also growing at odds with the North West England region as a whole: At the 2021 Census, the percentage of households including a couple without children increased in Liverpool, but fell across the North West. The percentage of people aged 16 years and over (excluding full-time students) who were employed also increased in Liverpool compared to the overall North West region where it fell. The 2021 Census also showed that Liverpool's ethnic and international population was growing. The number of residents in the city born outside of England has increased since the previous Census, whilst the number of residents who did not identify with any national identity associated with the UK has also increased at a faster rate than England as a whole. The overall share of the city's population who identified as Asian and Black increased, while the percentage who identified as white decreased in the city compared with previous Census. It has been argued that the city can claim to have one of the strongest Irish heritages in the United Kingdom, with as many as 75 percent (estimated) of Liverpool's population with some form of Irish ancestry. The growing population of Liverpool in the 21st century reverses a trend which took place between the 1930s and 2001, when the population of the city proper effectively halved. At the 1931 United Kingdom census, Liverpool's population reached an all-time high of 846,302. Following this peak, in response to central government policy, the Council authority of Liverpool then built and owned large several ‘new town’ council estates in the suburbs within Liverpool's metropolitan area. Tens of thousands of people were systematically relocated to new housing in areas such as Halton, Knowsley, St Helens, Sefton, Wirral, Cheshire West and Chester, West Lancashire, Warrington and as far as North Wales. Such a mass relocation and population loss during this time was common practice for many British cities, including London and Manchester, In contrast, satellite towns such as Kirkby, Skelmersdale and Runcorn saw a corresponding rise in their populations (Kirkby being the fastest growing town in Britain during the 1960s). Urban and metropolitan area. Liverpool is typically grouped with the wider Merseyside (plus Halton) area for the purpose of defining its metropolitan footprint, and there are several methodologies. Sometimes, this metropolitan area is broadened to encompass urban settlements in the neighbouring counties of Lancashire and Cheshire. The Office for National Statistics in the United Kingdom uses the international standardised International Territorial Levels (ITLs) to divide up the economic territory of the UK. This enables the ONS to calculate regional and local statistics and data. The ONS uses a series of codes to identify these areas. In order of hierarchy from largest area to smallest area, Liverpool is part of the following regions: ITL 1 region. North West England (code TLD) <br>At the 2021 Census, the ITL 1 region of North West England had a usual resident population of 7,417,300. ITL 2 region. Merseyside (code TLD7) <br>The ITL 2 region of Merseyside is defined as the area comprising East Merseyside (TLD71) plus Liverpool (TLD72), Sefton (TLD73) and Wirral (TLD74). <br>At the 2021 Census, the population of this area was as follows: East Merseyside (TLD71): Liverpool (TLD72) = 486,100 Sefton (TLD73) = 279,300 Wirral (TLD74) = 320,200 Therefore, the total population of the ITL 2 Merseyside region was 1,551,500 based on the 2021 Census. ITL 3 region. The smallest ITL 3 area classed as Liverpool (code TLD72), therefore, had a population of 486,100 at the 2021 Census. Other definitions. At the 2021 Census, the ONS used a refreshed concept of built-up areas (BUAs) based on the physical built environment, using satellite imagery to recognise developed land, such as cities, towns, and villages. This allows the ONS to investigate economic and social statistics based on actual settlements where most people live. Data from the 2021 Census is not directly comparable with 2011 Census data due to this revised methodology. Using the population figures of BUAs at the 2021 Census (excluding London), Liverpool Built-up Area is the third largest in England with some 506,565 usual residents (behind only Birmingham and Leeds). Liverpool's built-up area is, therefore, larger than the major English cities of Bristol, Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne, Nottingham and Sheffield. Excluding London, the Liverpool City Region was the 4th largest combined authority area in England, by 2021. The population is approximately 1.6 million. The Liverpool City Region is a political and economic partnership between local authorities including Liverpool, plus the Metropolitan boroughs of Knowsley, Sefton, St Helens, Wirral and the Borough of Halton. The Liverpool City Region Combined Authority exercises strategic governance powers for the region in many areas. The economic data of the Liverpool city region is of particular policy interest to the Office for National Statistics, particularly as the British Government continuously explores the potential to negotiate increased devolved powers for each combined authority area. A 2011 report, "Liverpool City Region - Building on its Strengths", by Lord Heseltine and Terry Leahy, stated that "what is now called Liverpool City Region has a population of around 1.5million", but also referred to "an urban region that spreads from Wrexham and Flintshire to Chester, Warrington, West Lancashire and across to Southport", with a population of 2.3million. In 2006, in an attempt to harmonise the series of metropolitan areas across the European Union, ESPON (now European Observation Network for Territorial Development and Cohesion) released a study defining a "Liverpool/Birkenhead Metropolitan area" with an estimated population of 2,241,000 people. The metro area comprised a functional urban area consisting of a contiguous urban sprawl, labour pool, and commuter Travel to work areas. The analysis defined this metropolitan area as Liverpool itself, combined with the surrounding areas of Birkenhead, Wigan/Ashton, Warrington, Widnes/Runcorn, Chester, Southport, Ellesmere Port, Ormskirk and Skelmersdale. Liverpool and Manchester are sometimes considered as one large polynuclear metropolitan area, or megalopolis. Ethnicity. In recent decades, Liverpool's population is becoming more multicultural. According to the 2021 census, 77% of all Liverpool residents described their ethnic group as White English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish or British. The remaining 23% were described as non White English/British. Between 2011 and 2021, there was population growth across all ethnic groups, except 'White English/British' and 'Any Other', where there were overall losses. The number of 'Other White residents' in Liverpool also increased by almost 12,000 people, with notable increases in the 'Other Asian', 'Arab', and 'Other Mixed/Multiple' population categories. The non-White English/British population as a percentage of the total population across the 'newly organised city electoral wards' ranged from 5% in the Orrell Park ward to 69% in the Princes Park ward. 9 out of 10 Liverpool residents regarded English as their main language. The highest non-English languages in the city were Arabic (5,743 main speakers) followed by Polish (4,809 main speakers). Overall, almost 45,000 residents had a main language that was not English. According to a 2014 survey, the ten most popular surnames of Liverpool and their occurrence in the population are: Liverpool is home to Britain's oldest Black community, dating to at least the 1730s. Some Liverpudlians can trace their black ancestry in the city back ten generations. Early Black settlers in the city included seamen, the children of traders sent to be educated, and freed slaves, since slaves entering the country after 1722 were deemed free men. Since the 20th century, Liverpool is also noted for its large African-Caribbean, Ghanaian, and Somali communities, formed of more recent African-descended immigrants and their subsequent generations. The city is also home to the oldest Chinese community in Europe; the first residents of the city's Chinatown arrived as seamen in the 19th century. The traditional Chinese gateway erected in Liverpool's Chinatown is the largest gateway outside China. Liverpool also has a long-standing Filipino community. Lita Roza, a singer from Liverpool who was the first woman to achieve a UK number one hit, had Filipino ancestry. The city is also known for its large Irish and Welsh populations. In 1813, 10 per cent of Liverpool's population was Welsh, leading to the city becoming known as "the capital of North Wales." During, and in the decades following, the Great Irish Famine in the mid-19th century, up to two million Irish people travelled to Liverpool within one decade, with many subsequently departing for the United States. By 1851, more than 20 per cent of the population of Liverpool was Irish. At the 2001 Census, 1.17 per cent of the population were Welsh-born and 0.75 per cent were born in the Republic of Ireland, while 0.54 per cent were born in Northern Ireland, but many more Liverpudlians are of legacy Welsh or Irish ancestry. Other contemporary ethnicities include Indian, Latin American, Malaysian, and Yemeni communities, which number several thousand each. Religion. The thousands of migrants and sailors passing through Liverpool resulted in a religious diversity that is still apparent today. This is reflected in the equally diverse collection of religious buildings, including two Christian cathedrals. Liverpool is known to be England's 'most Catholic city', with a Catholic population much larger than in other parts of England. This is mainly due to high historic Irish migration to the city and their descendants since. The parish church of Liverpool is the Anglican Our Lady and St Nicholas, colloquially known as "the sailors church", which has existed near the waterfront since 1257. It regularly plays host to Catholic masses. Other notable churches include the Greek Orthodox Church of St Nicholas (built in the Neo-Byzantine architecture style), and the Gustav Adolf Church (the Swedish Seamen's Church, reminiscent of Nordic styles). Liverpool's wealth as a port city enabled the construction of two enormous cathedrals in the 20th century. The Anglican Cathedral, which was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and plays host to the annual Liverpool Shakespeare Festival, has one of the longest naves, largest organs and heaviest and highest peals of bells in the world. The Roman Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral, on Mount Pleasant next to Liverpool Science Park, was initially planned to be even larger. Of Sir Edwin Lutyens's original design, only the crypt was completed. The cathedral was eventually built to a simpler design by Sir Frederick Gibberd. While this is on a smaller scale than Lutyens' original design, it still incorporates the largest panel of stained glass in the world. The road running between the two cathedrals is called Hope Street. The cathedral has long been colloquially referred to as "Paddy's Wigwam" due to its shape. Liverpool contains several synagogues, of which the Grade I listed Moorish Revival Princes Road Synagogue is architecturally the most notable. Princes Road is widely considered to be the most magnificent of Britain's Moorish Revival synagogues and one of the finest buildings in Liverpool. Liverpool has a thriving Jewish community with a further two orthodox Synagogues, one in the Allerton district of the city and a second in the Childwall district of the city where a significant Jewish community reside. A third orthodox Synagogue in the Greenbank Park area of L17 has recently closed and is a listed 1930s structure. There is also a Lubavitch Chabad House and a reform Synagogue. Liverpool has had a Jewish community since the mid-18th century. The Jewish population of Liverpool is around 5,000. The Liverpool Talmudical College existed from 1914 until 1990, when its classes moved to the Childwall Synagogue. Liverpool also has a Hindu community, with a Mandir on Edge Lane, Edge Hill. The Shri Radha Krishna Temple from the Hindu Cultural Organisation in Liverpool is located there. Liverpool also has the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in Wavertree and a Baháʼí Centre in the same area. The city had the earliest Mosque in England and possibly the UK, founded in 1887 by William Abdullah Quilliam, a lawyer who had converted to Islam who set up the Liverpool Muslim Institute in a terraced house on West Derby Road. Apart from the first mosque in England which now houses a museum , the largest and main one, Al-Rahma mosque, was also the third purpose built mosque in the United Kingdom. The second largest mosque in Liverpool is the Masjid Al-Taiseer. Other mosques in the city include the Bait ul Lateef Ahmadiyya Mosque, Hamza Center (Community Center), Islamic community centre, Liverpool Mosque and Islamic Institute, Liverpool Towhid Centre, Masjid Annour, and the Shah Jalal Mosque. Demonym and identity. Natives of the city of Liverpool are referred to as Liverpudlians, and colloquially as "Scousers", a reference to "scouse", a form of stew. The word "Scouse" has also become synonymous with the Liverpool accent and dialect. Many people "self-identify" as Liverpudlians or Scousers without actually being born or living within the city boundaries of Liverpool. Economy. City and region. The City of Liverpool forms an integral part of North West England's economy, the third largest regional economy in the United Kingdom. The city is also a major contributor to the economy of Liverpool City Region, worth over £40 billion per year. The local authority area governed by Liverpool City Council accounts for 39% of the Liverpool city region's total jobs, 40% of its total GVA and 35% of its total businesses. At the local authority level, the city's GVA (balanced) at current basic prices was £14.3 billion in 2021. Its GDP at current market prices was £15.9 billion. This equates to £32,841 per head of the population. At the 2021 United Kingdom census, 51.1% of Liverpool's population aged 16 years and over was classed as employed, 44.2% economically inactive and 4.8% unemployed. Of those employed, the most popular industries providing the employment were human health and social work activities (18.7%), wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motor cycles (15%), education (10.8%), public administration and defence; compulsory social security (7.3%), accommodation and food service activities (6.8%), construction (6.5%), transport and storage (5.8%), manufacturing (5.5%) and professional, scientific and technical activities (5.2%). According to the ONS Business Register and Employment Survey 2021, some industries within Liverpool perform strongly compared to other local authorities in Great Britain. In terms of absolute number of jobs per industry in Great Britain's local authority areas, Liverpool features in the national top 10 for human health and social work activities; arts, entertainment and recreation; public administration and defence; compulsory social security; accommodation and food service activities and real estate activities. Liverpool features in the national top 20 for number of jobs in education; construction; wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles; transportation and storage; financial and insurance activities and professional, scientific and technical activities. In 2023, Liverpool City Council set out an economic growth plan for the city over the following 20 years. The City Council will have particular focus on economic sectors such as the visitor economy (tourism), culture, life sciences, digital and creative sectors, and advanced car manufacturing. According to the International Passenger Survey, from the ONS, Liverpool was one of the top 5 most visited cities in the UK by overseas tourists in 2022. As of the same year, the city's tourist industry was worth a total of £3.5 billion annually and was part of a larger city region tourist industry worth £5 billion. A consistent calendar of major events, as well as a plethora of cultural attractions, continue to provide a significant draw for tourists. Tourism related to the Beatles is worth an estimated £100m to the Liverpool economy each year alone. Liverpool One, as well as a growing retail offer overall, has led to the city being one of the most prominent destinations for shopping in the UK. Liverpool Cruise Terminal, which is situated close to the Pier Head, enables tourists to berth in the centre of the city. Liverpool is home to the Knowledge Quarter, a 450-acre city centre district that hosts some of the world's most influential institutions in science, health, technology, education, music and the creative performing arts. The UK government has also identified the city as a 'pharmaceutical production superpower' and one of the UK's leading regions for bioprocessing. The accolade led to the government choosing the city for England's second ever 'Investment Zone' in 2023. This will involve millions of pounds being invested over the coming years in to science orientated districts including the Knowledge Quarter and the so-called 'pharma cluster' in the city suburb of Speke. The two clusters form an internationally significant role in infectious disease control. Liverpool City Council also plan to invest in the city's Baltic Triangle, which is renowned in the creative and digital industries. Car manufacturing also takes place in the city at the Jaguar Land Rover Halewood plant, where the Range Rover Evoque model is assembled. In 2023, Jaguar Land Rover announced that the Halewood plant would begin to shift its focus to electric car production. Historically, the economy of Liverpool was centred on the city's port and manufacturing base. Today, the Port of Liverpool is the UK's fourth largest port by tonnage of freight, handling over 30 million tonnes in 2020. The city is also the UK's largest port for transatlantic trade, handling 45% of the country's trade from the United States. In 2023, the city was chosen by the British government to be a designated Freeport to encourage growing international commerce. The Liverpool2 container terminal, completed in 2022, has greatly increased the volume of cargo which Liverpool is able to handle and has facilitated the world's biggest container vessels. Liverpool is also home to numerous UK headquarters, or the major strategic branch offices, of many shipping and freight lines including: Atlantic Container Line, Bibby Line, Borchard Lines Ltd, CMA CGM, Hapag-Lloyd, Independent Container Line, Irish Ferries, Maersk Line, Mediterranean Shipping Company and Zim Integrated Shipping Services. Liverpool's rich architectural base has helped the city become the second most filmed city in the UK outside London. As well as being a featured location in its own right, it often doubles up for Chicago, London, Moscow, New York City, Paris and Rome. The Depot studios, close to the city centre, provide space for film and TV productions. Major economic projects planned for the city include the revitalisation of disused land in the North docks/Ten Streets area, Liverpool Waters and a new purpose built TV studio at the former Littlewoods Pools building, adjacent to the Depot. City region economy and devolution. The policy agenda of the British Government is to continuously monitor the economy and productivity of the UK's core cities within the context of their respective city regions. The government's longer-term plan is to assess each area's potential for increased devolution and transfer of additional powers and budgets from central government in Whitehall to their corresponding combined authorities. As such, official statistics about Liverpool's economy within the context of the Liverpool City Region, are closely monitored by the Office for National Statistics. This allows policy and decision makers to more accurately assess the ‘functional economic area’ of the city, which is not bound by traditional local government geographies. As of 2023, there are 10 city regions in England with Combined Authorities. The economy of Liverpool's combined authority area in comparison to the other city regions is as follows: Landmarks and recent development projects. Liverpool's long commercial history has given rise to a considerable variety of architectural styles found within the city, ranging from 16th century Tudor buildings to modern-day contemporary architecture. The majority of buildings in the city date from the late-18th century onwards, the period during which the city grew into one of the foremost powers in the British Empire. There are over 2,500 listed buildings in Liverpool, of which 27 are Grade I listed and 85 are Grade II* listed. The city also has a greater number of public sculptures than any other location in the United Kingdom aside from Westminster and more Georgian houses than the city of Bath. This richness of architecture has subsequently seen Liverpool described by English Heritage, as England's finest Victorian city. The value of Liverpool's architecture and design was recognised in 2004, when several areas throughout the city were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Known as the Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City, the sites were added in recognition of the city's role in the development of international trade and docking technology. However, this status was revoked in July 2021, when UNESCO resolved that recent and proposed developments, such as the Bramley-Moore Dock stadium and Liverpool Waters projects, had resulted in the "serious deterioration" of the area's significance. Waterfront and docks. As a major British port, the docks in Liverpool have historically been central to the city's development. Several major docking firsts have occurred in the city including the construction of the world's first enclosed wet dock (the Old Dock) in 1715 and the first ever hydraulic lifting cranes. The best-known dock in Liverpool is the Royal Albert Dock, which was constructed in 1846 and today comprises the largest single collection of Grade I listed buildings anywhere in Britain. Built under the guidance of Jesse Hartley, it was considered to be one of the most advanced docks anywhere in the world upon completion and is often attributed with helping the city to become one of the most important ports in the world. Today, the Royal Albert Dock houses restaurants, bars, shops, two hotels as well as the Merseyside Maritime Museum, International Slavery Museum, Tate Liverpool and The Beatles Story. North of the city centre is Stanley Dock, home to the Stanley Dock Tobacco Warehouse, which was at the time of its construction in 1901, the world's largest building in terms of area and today stands as the world's largest brick-work building. One of the most famous locations in Liverpool is the Pier Head, renowned for the trio of buildings – the Royal Liver Building, the Cunard Building and the Port of Liverpool Building – which sit upon it. Collectively referred to as the "Three Graces", these buildings stand as a testament to the great wealth in the city during the late 19th and early 20th century. Built in a variety of architectural styles, they are recognised as being the symbol of 'maritime Liverpool' and are regarded by many as contributing to one of the most impressive waterfronts in the world. In the 21st century, several areas along Liverpool's waterfront have undergone significant redevelopment. Amongst the notable developments are the Museum of Liverpool, the construction of the Liverpool Arena, ACC Liverpool and Exhibition Centre Liverpool on King's Dock, Alexandra Tower and 1 Princes Dock on Prince's Dock and Liverpool Marina around Coburg and Brunswick Docks. The Wheel of Liverpool opened on 25 March 2010. However, plans to redevelop parts of Liverpool city centre have been marred by controversy. In December 2016, a newly formed company called North Point Global Ltd. was given the rights to develop part of the docks under the "New Chinatown" working name. Though heavily advertised in Liverpool, Hong Kong and Chinese cities with high profile advertisements and videos, the "New Chinatown" development failed to materialise. In January 2018, the "Liverpool Echo" and "Asia Times" revealed that the site remained sans any construction. North Point Global as well as its subcontractor "Bilt" had both declared bankruptcy, and the small investors (mostly middle class couples) who had already paid money for the apartments had lost most of their savings in them. Commercial district and cultural quarter. Liverpool's historic position as one of the most important trading ports in the world has meant that over time many grand buildings have been constructed in the city as headquarters for shipping firms, insurance companies, banks and other large firms. The great wealth this brought then allowed for the development of grand civic buildings, which were designed to allow the local administrators to 'run the city with pride'. The commercial district is centred on the Castle Street, Dale Street and Old Hall Street areas of the city, with many of the area's roads still following their medieval layout. Having developed predominantly over a period of three centuries, the area is regarded as one of the most important architectural locations in the city, as recognised by its inclusion in Liverpool's former World Heritage site. The oldest building in the area is the Grade I listed Liverpool Town Hall, which is located at the top of Castle Street and dates from 1754. Often regarded as the city's finest piece of Georgian architecture, the building is known as one of the most extravagantly decorated civic buildings anywhere in Britain. Also on Castle Street is the Grade I listed Bank of England Building, constructed between 1845 and 1848, as one of only three provincial branches of the national bank. Amongst the other buildings in the area are the Tower Buildings, Albion House (the former White Star Line headquarters), the Municipal Buildings and Oriel Chambers, which is considered to be one of the earliest Modernist style buildings ever built. The area around William Brown Street is referred to as the city's 'Cultural Quarter', owing to the presence of numerous civic buildings, including the William Brown Library, Walker Art Gallery, Picton Reading Rooms and World Museum Liverpool. The area is dominated by neo-classical architecture, of which the most prominent, St George's Hall, is widely regarded as the best example of a neo-classical building anywhere in Europe. A Grade I listed building, it was constructed between 1840 and 1855 to serve a variety of civic functions in the city and its doors are inscribed with "S.P.Q.L." (Latin "senatus populusque Liverpudliensis"), meaning "the senate and people of Liverpool". William Brown Street is also home to numerous public monuments and sculptures, including Wellington's Column and the Steble Fountain. Many others are located around the area, particularly in St John's Gardens, which was specifically developed for this purpose. The William Brown Street area has been likened to a modern recreation of the Roman Forum. Other notable landmarks. While the majority of Liverpool's architecture dates from the mid-18th century onwards, there are several buildings that pre-date this time. One of the oldest surviving buildings is Speke Hall, a Tudor manor house located in the south of the city, which was completed in 1598. The building is one of the few remaining timber framed Tudor houses left in the north of England and is particularly noted for its Victorian interiors, which were added in the mid-19th century. In addition to Speke Hall, many of the city's other oldest surviving buildings are also former manor houses including Croxteth Hall and Woolton Hall, which were completed in 1702 and 1704 respectively. The oldest building within the city centre is the Grade I listed Bluecoat Chambers, which was built between 1717 and 1718. Constructed in British Queen Anne style architecture, the building was influenced in part by the work of Christopher Wren and was originally the home of the Bluecoat School (who later moved to a larger site in Wavertree in the south of the city). Since 1908, it has acted as a centre for arts in Liverpool. Liverpool is noted for having two Cathedrals, each of which imposes over the landscape around it. The Anglican Cathedral, which was constructed between 1904 and 1978, is the largest Cathedral in Britain and the fifth largest in the world. Designed and built in Gothic style, it is regarded as one of the greatest buildings to have been constructed during the 20th century and was described by former British Poet Laureate, John Betjeman, as "one of the great buildings of the world". The Roman Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral was constructed between 1962 and 1967 and is known as one of the first cathedrals to break the traditional longitudinal design. In the 21st century, many parts of Liverpool's city centre have undergone significant redevelopment and regeneration after years of decline. So far, the largest of these developments has been Liverpool One, which saw almost £1 billion invested in the redevelopment of of land, providing new retail, commercial, residential and leisure space. Around the north of the city centre, several new skyscrapers have also been constructed including the RIBA award-winning Unity Buildings and West Tower, which at 140m is Liverpool's tallest building. Many redevelopment schemes are also in progress including Central Village / Circus, the Lime Street gateway, and the highly ambitious Liverpool Waters. There are many other notable buildings in Liverpool, including the art deco former terminal building of Speke Airport, the University of Liverpool's Victoria Building, (which provided the inspiration for the term "Red Brick University"), and the Adelphi Hotel, which was in the past considered to be one of the finest hotels anywhere in the world. Parks and gardens. The Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England describes Merseyside's as collectively the "most important in the country". The city of Liverpool has ten listed parks and cemeteries, including two Grade I and five Grade II*, more than any other English city apart from London. Transport. Transport in Liverpool is primarily centred on the city's road and rail networks, both of which are extensive and provide links across the United Kingdom. Liverpool has an extensive local public transport network, which is managed by Merseytravel, and includes buses, trains and ferries. Additionally, the city also has an international airport and a major port, both of which provides links to locations outside the country. National and international travel. Roads. As a major city, Liverpool has direct road links with many other areas within England. To the east, the M62 motorway connects Liverpool with Hull and along the route provides links to several large cities, including Manchester, Leeds and Bradford. The M62 also provides a connection to both the M6 and M1 motorways, providing indirect links to more distant areas including Birmingham, London, Nottingham, Preston and Sheffield. To the west of the city, the Kingsway and Queensway Tunnels connect Liverpool with the Wirral Peninsula, including Birkenhead, and Wallasey. The A41 road and M53 motorway, which both begin in Birkenhead, link to Cheshire and Shropshire and via the A55, to North Wales. To the south, Liverpool is connected to Widnes and Warrington via the A562 and across the River Mersey to Runcorn, via the Silver Jubilee and Mersey Gateway bridges. Railway. Liverpool is served by two separate rail networks. The local rail network is managed and run by Merseyrail and provides links throughout Merseyside and beyond (see Local travel below), while the national network, which is managed by Network Rail, provides Liverpool with connections to major towns and cities across England. The city's primary main line station is Lime Street station, which is the terminus for several lines into the city, with numerous destinations including London (in 2 hours 8 minutes with Pendolino trains), Birmingham, Newcastle upon Tyne, Manchester, Preston, Leeds, Scarborough, Sheffield, Nottingham and Norwich. Opened in 1836, Lime Street station is the world's oldest mainline terminus station still in use. In the south of the city, Liverpool South Parkway provides a connection to the city's airport. Port. The Port of Liverpool is one of Britain's largest ports, providing passenger ferry services across the Irish Sea to Belfast, Dublin and the Isle of Man. Services are provided by several companies, including the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company, P&O Ferries and Stena Line. In 2007, a new cruise terminal was opened in Liverpool, located alongside the Pier Head in the city centre. November 2016 saw the official opening of Liverpool2, an extension to the port that allows post-Panamax vessels to dock in Liverpool. Leeds and Liverpool Canal runs into Liverpool city centre via Liverpool Canal Link at Pier Head since 2009. Liverpool Cruise Terminal in the city centre provides long-distance passenger cruises, Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines MS Black Watch and Cruise & Maritime Voyages MS Magellan using the terminal to depart to Iceland, France, Spain and Norway. Airport. Liverpool John Lennon Airport, which is located in the south of the city, provides Liverpool with direct air connections across the United Kingdom and Europe. In 2008, the airport handled over 5.3 million passengers and today offers services to 68 destinations, including Berlin, Rome, Milan, Paris, Barcelona and Zürich. The airport is primarily served by low-cost airlines, notably Ryanair and Easyjet, although it does provide additional charter services in the summer. Jet2 Have announced a new services to winter sun destinations will be starting from Winter 2024 to destinations such as Lanzarote & Tenerife. Local travel. Trains. Liverpool's local rail network is one of the busiest and most extensive in the country. The network consists of three lines: the Northern Line, which runs to Southport, Ormskirk, Kirkby and Hunts Cross; the Wirral Line, which runs through the Mersey Railway Tunnel and has branches to New Brighton, West Kirby, Chester and Ellesmere Port; and the City Line, which begins at Lime Street, providing links to St Helens, Wigan, Preston, Warrington and Manchester. The network is predominantly electric. Electrification of the City Line was completed in 2015. The two lines operated by Merseyrail are the busiest British urban commuter networks outside London, covering of track, with an average of 110,000 passenger journeys per weekday. Services are operated by the Merseyrail franchise and managed by Merseytravel. Local services on the City Line are operated by Northern rather than Merseyrail, although the line itself remains part of the Merseyrail network. Within the city centre the majority of the network is underground, with four city centre stations and over of tunnels. Buses. Local bus services within and around Liverpool are managed by Merseytravel and are run by several different companies, including Arriva and Stagecoach. The two principal termini for local buses are Queen Square bus station (located near Lime Street railway station) for services north and east of the city, and Liverpool One bus station (located near the Royal Albert Dock) for services to the south and east. Cross-river services to the Wirral use roadside terminus points in Castle Street and Sir Thomas Street. A night bus service also operates on Saturdays providing services from the city centre across Liverpool and Merseyside. City Sights and City explorer by Maghull coaches offer a tour bus service. National Express also operates. Mersey Ferry. The cross-river ferry service in Liverpool, known as the Mersey Ferry, is managed and operated by Merseytravel, with services operating between the Pier Head in Liverpool and both Woodside in Birkenhead and Seacombe in Wallasey. Services operate at intervals ranging from 20 minutes, at peak times, to every hour during the middle of the day and at weekends. Despite remaining an important transport link between the city and the Wirral Peninsula, the Mersey Ferry has become an increasingly popular tourist attraction within the city, with daytime River Explorer Cruises providing passengers with an historical overview of the River Mersey and surrounding areas. Cycling. In May 2014, the CityBike hire scheme was launched in the city. The scheme provides access to over 1,000 bikes stationed at over 140 docking stations across the city. National Cycle Route 56, National Cycle Route 62 and National Cycle Route 810 run through Liverpool. Culture. As with other large cities, Liverpool is an important cultural centre within the United Kingdom, incorporating music, performing arts, museums and art galleries, literature and nightlife amongst others. In 2008, the cultural heritage of the city was celebrated with the city holding the title of European Capital of Culture, during which time a wide range of cultural celebrations took place in the city, including Go Superlambananas! and La Princesse. Liverpool has also held Europe's largest music and poetry event, the Welsh national Eisteddfod, three times, despite being in England, in 1884, 1900, and 1929. Music. Liverpool is internationally known for music and is recognised by "Guinness World Records" as the "World Capital City of Pop". Musicians from the city have produced 56 No. 1 singles, more than any other city in the world. Both the most successful male band and girl group in global music history have contained Liverpudlian members. Liverpool is most famous as the birthplace of the Beatles and during the 1960s was at the forefront of the Beat Music movement, which would eventually lead to the British Invasion. Many notable musicians of the time originated in the city including Billy J. Kramer, Cilla Black, Gerry and the Pacemakers and The Searchers. The influence of musicians from Liverpool, coupled with other cultural exploits of the time, such as the Liverpool poets, prompted American poet Allen Ginsberg to proclaim that the city was "the centre of consciousness of the human universe". Other musicians from Liverpool include Billy Fury, A Flock of Seagulls, Echo & the Bunnymen, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Frankie Vaughan, Anathema, Ladytron, The Zutons, Cast, Atomic Kitten and Rebecca Ferguson. The La's 1990 hit single "There She Goes" was described by "Rolling Stone" as a "founding piece of Britpop's foundation." The city is also home to the oldest surviving professional symphony orchestra in the UK, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, which is based in the Philharmonic Hall. The chief conductor of the orchestra is Vasily Petrenko. Sir Edward Elgar dedicated his Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 to the Liverpool Orchestral Society, and the piece had its first performance in the city in 1901. Among Liverpool's curiosities, the Austrian émigré Fritz Spiegl is notable. He not only became a world expert on the etymology of Scouse, but composed the music to Z-cars and the Radio 4 UK Theme. Well established festivals in the city include Africa Oyé and Brazilica which are the UK's largest free African and Brazilian music festivals respectively. The dance music festival Creamfields was established by the Liverpool-based Cream clubbing brand which started life as a weekly event at Nation nightclub. There are numerous music venues located across the city, however, the Liverpool Arena is by far the largest. Opened in 2008, the 11,000-seat arena hosted the MTV Europe Music Awards the same year, and since then has played host to world-renowned acts such as Andrea Bocelli, Beyoncé, Elton John, Kanye West, Kasabian, The Killers, Lady Gaga, Oasis, Pink, Rihanna, and UB40. On 7 October 2022, the BBC and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) announced that Liverpool would host the Eurovision Song Contest 2023 on behalf of the previous year's winning country Ukraine, who was unable to meet the demands of hosting the event due to security concerns caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The contest was held at the Liverpool Arena and consisted of two semi-finals on 9 and 11 May, and a final on 13 May 2023. This was the first time that the contest took place in the city, and was also a record-extending ninth time that the UK has hosted the contest, having last done so in Birmingham in 1998. Visual arts. Liverpool has more galleries and national museums than any other city in the United Kingdom apart from London. National Museums Liverpool is the only English national collection based wholly outside London. The Tate Liverpool gallery houses the modern art collection of the Tate in the North of England and was, until the opening of Tate Modern, the largest exhibition space dedicated to modern art in the United Kingdom. The FACT centre hosts touring multimedia exhibitions, while the Walker Art Gallery houses one of the most impressive permanent collections of Pre-Raphaelite art in the world. Sudley House contains another major collection of pre-20th-century art. Liverpool University's Victoria Building was re-opened as a public art gallery and museum to display the university's artwork and historical collections which include the largest display of art by Audubon outside the US. A number of artists have also come from the city, including painter George Stubbs who was born in Liverpool in 1724. The Liverpool Biennial festival of arts runs from mid-September to late November and comprises three main sections; the International, The Independents and New Contemporaries although fringe events are timed to coincide. It was during the 2004 festival that Yoko Ono's work "My mother is beautiful" caused widespread public protest when photographs of a naked woman's pubic area were exhibited on the main shopping street. Literature. Felicia Hemans (née Browne) was born in Dale Street, Liverpool, in 1793, although she later moved to Flintshire, in Wales. Felicia was born in Liverpool, a granddaughter of the Venetian consul in that city. Her father's business soon brought the family to Denbighshire in North Wales, where she spent her youth. They made their home near Abergele and St. Asaph (Flintshire), and it is clear that she came to regard herself as Welsh by adoption, later referring to Wales as "Land of my childhood, my home and my dead". Her first poems, dedicated to the Prince of Wales, were published in Liverpool in 1808, when she was only fourteen, arousing the interest of Percy Bysshe Shelley, who briefly corresponded with her. An engraving of a painting of by S. F. Serres was published in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1834 with a poetical illustration by Letitia Elizabeth Landon to which she adds the note 'I believe that to this haunted gate, a common superstition is attached, namely, that to wish, and to have that wish fulfilled, is the result of such wish being uttered while passing'. It stood on the North Shore before the docks were built and was a place where farewells could be waved to departing voyagers. A number of notable authors have visited Liverpool, including Daniel Defoe, Washington Irving, Thomas De Quincey, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Hugh Walpole. Daniel Defoe, after visiting the city, described it, as "one of the wonders of Britain in his 'Tour through England and Wales'". Herman Melville's novel Redburn deals with the first seagoing voyage of 19 years old Wellingborough Redburn between New York and Liverpool in 1839. Largely autobiographical, the middle sections of the book are set in Liverpool and describe the young merchantman's wanderings, and his reflections. Hawthorne was stationed in Liverpool as United States consul between 1853 and 1856. Charles Dickens visited the city on numerous occasions to give public readings. Hopkins served as priest at St Francis Xavier Church, Langdale St., Liverpool, between 1879 and 81. Although he is not known to have ever visited Liverpool, Jung famously had a vivid dream of the city which he analysed in one of his works. Of all the poets who are connected with Liverpool, perhaps the greatest is Constantine P. Cavafy, a twentieth-century Greek cultural icon, although he was born in Alexandria. From a wealthy family, his father had business interests in Egypt, London and Liverpool. After his father's death, Cavafy's mother brought him in 1872 at the age of nine to Liverpool, where he spent part of his childhood being educated. He lived first in Balmoral Road, then when the family firm crashed, he lived in poorer circumstances in Huskisson Street. After his father died in 1870, Cavafy and his family settled for a while in Liverpool. In 1876, his family faced financial problems due to the Long Depression of 1873, so, by 1877, they had to move back to Alexandria. "Her Benny", a novel telling the tragic story of Liverpool street urchins in the 1870s, written by Methodist preacher Silas K. Hocking, was a best-seller and the first book to sell a million copies in the author's lifetime. The prolific writer of adventure novels, Harold Edward Bindloss (1866–1945), was born in Liverpool. The writer, docker and political activist George Garrett was born in Seacombe, on the Wirral Peninsula in 1896 and was brought up in Liverpool's South end, around Park Road, the son of a fierce Liverpool–Irish Catholic mother and a staunch 'Orange' stevedore father. In the 1920s and 1930s, his organisation within the Seamen's Vigilance Committees, unemployed demonstrations, and hunger marches from Liverpool became part of a wider cultural force. He spoke at reconciliation meetings in sectarian Liverpool, and helped found the Unity Theatre in the 1930s as part of the Popular Front against the rise of fascism, particularly its echoes in the Spanish Civil War. Garrett died in 1966. The novelist and playwright James Hanley (1897–1985) was born in Kirkdale, Liverpool, in 1897 (not Dublin, nor 1901 as he generally implied) to a working-class family. Hanley grew up close to the docks and much of his early writing is about seamen. "The Furys" (1935) is first in a sequence of five loosely autobiographical novels about working-class life in Liverpool. James Hanley's brother, novelist Gerald Hanley (1916–92) was also born in Liverpool (not County Cork, Ireland, as he claimed). While he published a number of novels he also wrote radio plays for the BBC as well as some film scripts, most notably "The Blue Max" (1966). He was also one of several scriptwriters for a life of Gandhi (1964). Novelist Beryl Bainbridge (1932–2010) was born in Liverpool and raised in nearby Formby. She was primarily known for her works of psychological fiction, often set among the English working classes. Bainbridge won the Whitbread Awards prize for best novel in 1977 and 1996 and was nominated five times for the Booker Prize. "The Times" newspaper named Bainbridge among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". J. G. Farrell was born in Liverpool in 1935 but left at the outbreak of war in 1939. A novelist of Irish descent, Farrell gained prominence for his historical fiction, most notably his "Empire Trilogy" ("Troubles", "The Siege of Krishnapur" and "The Singapore Grip"), dealing with the political and human consequences of British colonial rule. However, his career ended when he drowned in Ireland in 1979 at the age of 44. Helen Forrester was the pen name of June Bhatia (née Huband) (1919–2011), who was known for her books about her early childhood in Liverpool during the Great Depression, including "Twopence to Cross the Mersey" (1974), as well as several works of fiction. During the late 1960s the city became well known for the Liverpool poets, who include Roger McGough and the late Adrian Henri. An anthology of poems, "The Mersey Sound", written by Henri, McGough and Brian Patten, has sold well since it was first being published in 1967. Liverpool has produced several noted writers of horror fiction, often set on Merseyside – Ramsey Campbell, Clive Barker and Peter Atkins among them. A collection of Liverpudlian horror fiction, "Spook City" was edited by a Liverpool expatriate, Angus Mackenzie, and introduced by Doug Bradley, also from Liverpool. Bradley is famed for portraying Barker's creation Pinhead in the "Hellraiser" series of films. Performing arts. Liverpool also has a long history of performing arts, reflected in several annual theatre festivals such as the Liverpool Shakespeare Festival, which takes place inside Liverpool Cathedral and in the adjacent historic St James' Gardens every summer; the Everyword Festival of new theatre writing, the only one of its kind in the country; Physical Fest, an international festival of physical theatre; the annual festivals organised by Liverpool John Moores University's drama department and the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts; and other festivals by the large number of theatres in the city, such as the Empire, Epstein, Everyman, Playhouse, Royal Court, and Unity theatres. Notable actors and actresses from Liverpool include Arthur Askey, Tom Baker, Kim Cattrall, Jodie Comer, Stephen Graham, Rex Harrison, Jason Isaacs, Tina Malone, the McGann brothers (Joe, Mark, Paul, and Stephen), David Morrissey, Elizabeth Morton, Peter Serafinowicz, Elisabeth Sladen, Alison Steadman, and Rita Tushingham. Actors and actresses from elsewhere in the world have strong ties to the city, such as Canadian actor Mike Myers (whose parents were both from Liverpool) and American actress Halle Berry (whose mother was from Liverpool). Nightlife. Liverpool has a thriving and varied nightlife. The majority of the city's late-night restaurants, bars, pubs, nightclubs, music venues and comedy clubs are located in a number of distinct districts. In 2023, figures from global data company Square show that night-time spending in bars and restaurants in Liverpool city centre outperformed all major UK cities, including London. Figures by the Liverpool BID Company suggest that the busiest nights of the week in Liverpool city centre are Friday and Saturday. Using cameras to track the flow of people in key locations between 7pm and 4am, at least 1.5 million people pass through the city centre every Friday night and almost 2 million people on Saturday nights. The data demonstrates that Monday night is the quietest night of the week in the city centre and footfall then increases every single night to reach its peak on Saturday nights. 125,889 people worked in the city's night time economy as of 2022, according to the Liverpool BID Company. Liverpool's nightlife is concentrated in a number of districts including Ropewalks which comprises Concert Square, St. Peter's Square and the adjoining Seel Street and Duke Street. Other popular areas include Hardman Street, the Cavern Quarter, Baltic Triangle, Royal Albert Dock and the city's Pride Quarter, which is home to a large number of LGBT venues. In the city's suburbs, Lark Lane in Aigburth is noted for an abundance of bars and late-night venues. Education. In Liverpool primary and secondary education is available in various forms supported by the state including secular, Church of England, Jewish, and Roman Catholic. Islamic education is available at primary level, but there is no secondary provision. One of Liverpool's important early schools was The Liverpool Blue Coat School; founded in 1708 as a charitable school. The Liverpool Blue Coat School is the top-performing school in the city with 100% 5 or more A*-C grades at GCSE resulting in the 30th best GCSE results in the country and an average point score per student of 1087.4 in A/AS levels. Other notable schools include Liverpool College founded in 1840 Merchant Taylors' School founded in 1620. Another of Liverpool's notable senior schools is St. Edward's College situated in the West Derby area of the city. Historic grammar schools, such as the Liverpool Institute High School and Liverpool Collegiate School—both closed in the 1980s—are still remembered as centres of academic excellence. Bellerive Catholic College is the city's top-performing non-selective school, based upon GCSE results in 2007. Liverpool has three universities: the University of Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores University and Liverpool Hope University. Edge Hill University, founded as a teacher-training college in the Edge Hill district of Liverpool, is now located in Ormskirk in South-West Lancashire. Liverpool is also home to the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA). The University of Liverpool was established in 1881 as University College Liverpool. In 1884, it became part of the federal Victoria University. Following a Royal Charter and Act of Parliament in 1903, it became an independent university, the University of Liverpool, with the right to confer its own degrees. It was the first university to offer degrees in biochemistry, architecture, civic design, veterinary science, oceanography and social science. Liverpool Hope University, which was formed through the merger of three colleges, the earliest of which was founded in 1844, gained university status in 2005. It is the only ecumenical university in Europe. It is situated on both sides of Taggart Avenue in Childwall and has a second campus in the city centre (the Cornerstone). The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, founded to address some of the problems created by trade, continues today as a post-graduate school affiliated with the University of Liverpool and houses an anti-venom repository. Liverpool John Moores University was previously a polytechnic, and gained status in 1992. It is named in honour of Sir John Moores, one of the founders of the Littlewoods football pools and retail group, who was a major benefactor. The institution was previously owned and run by Liverpool City Council. It traces it lineage to the Liverpool Mechanics' Institute, opened in 1823, making it by this measure England's third-oldest university. The city has one further education college, City of Liverpool College in the city centre. Liverpool City Council operates Burton Manor, a residential adult education college in nearby Burton, on the Wirral Peninsula. There are two Jewish schools in Liverpool, both belonging to the King David Foundation. King David School, Liverpool, is the High School and the King David Primary School. There is also a King David Kindergarten, featured in the community centre of Harold House. These schools are all run by the King David Foundation located in Harold House in Childwall; conveniently next door to the Childwall Synagogue. Sport. Football. Liverpool is one of the most successful footballing cities in England, and is home to two top flight Premier League teams. Everton F.C. was founded in 1878 and play at Goodison Park and Liverpool F.C. were founded in 1892 and play at Anfield. Between them, the clubs have won 28 English First Division titles, 12 FA Cup titles, 10 League Cup titles, 6 European Cup titles, 1 FIFA Club World Cup title, 1 European Cup Winners' Cup title, 3 UEFA Cup titles, and 24 FA Charity Shields. The two clubs contest the Merseyside derby, dubbed the 'friendly derby'. Despite the name the fixture is known for its keen rivalry, having seen more sending-offs in this fixture than any other. Unlike many other derbies it is not rare for families in the city to contain supporters of both clubs. Liverpool F.C. is the English and British club with the most European Cup titles with six, the latest in 2019. Liverpool has played at Anfield since 1892, when the club was formed to occupy the stadium following Everton's departure due to a dispute with their landlord. Liverpool are still playing there 125 years later, although the ground has been completely rebuilt since the 1970s. The Spion Kop (rebuilt as an all-seater stand in 1994–95) was the most famous part of the ground, gaining cult status across the world due to the songs and celebrations of the many fans who packed onto its terraces. Anfield is classified as a 4 Star UEFA Elite Stadium with capacity for 54,000 spectators in comfort and is a distinctive landmark in an area filled with smaller and older buildings. Liverpool club also has a multimillion-pound youth training facility called The Academy. After leaving Anfield in 1892, Everton moved to Goodison Park on the opposite side of Stanley Park. The ground was opened on 24 August 1892, by Lord Kinnaird and Frederick Wall of the FA but the first crowds to attend the ground saw a short athletics meeting followed by a selection of music and a fireworks display. Everton's first game there was on 2 September 1892 when they beat Bolton 4–2. It now has the capacity for just under 40,000 spectators all-seated, but the last expansion took place in 1994 when a new goal-end stand gave the stadium an all-seater capacity. The Main Stand dates back to the 1970s, while the other two stands are refurbished pre-Second World War structures. Everton is currently in the process of relocating, with a stadium move mooted as early as 1996. In 2003, the club were forced to abandon plans for a 55,000-seat stadium at King's Dock due to financial constraints, with further proposed moves to Kirkby (comprising part of Destination Kirkby, moving the stadium just beyond Liverpool's council boundary into Kirkby) and Walton Hall Park similarly scrapped. The latest plan is a move to nearby Bramley-Moore Dock on Liverpool's waterfront, with ground broken on the project in August 2021. Rugby league. Rugby league is a developing sport in Liverpool, with many community partners assisting the sport's governing body (RFL) to offer opportunities to participate. These include well established professional clubs in the neighbouring towns of St. Helens and Widnes. The city has a thriving student rugby league scene; Liverpool University took part in the first university game in 1968 and the other universities have been regular participants in the BUSA competition. Today there are a number of non-professional clubs in the city, including Liverpool Buccaneers, who in 2006 won the regional final of the Rugby League Conference and in 2008 were elevated to the Rugby League Conference National division. Two junior clubs, "Liverpool Lions" (based in Croxteth) and "Liverpool Storm" (based in Childwall), have been established in 2008. They will be competing in the NWC Junior leagues in 2009. Rugby league has more recently returned to Huyton-with-Roby in the form of the Huyton Bulldogs A.R.L.F.C. Huyton Bulldogs currently compete in the RL Merit League, and their home ground is at the Jubilee Playing Fields, Twig Lane, Huyton. A number of secondary schools throughout Merseyside are now participating in the inaugural merit league and 2008 is the first year that Merseyside schools have qualified for the RFL's Champion Schools tournament. Primary schools have been competing in tag festivals for a few years and the annual Tag World Cup is one of the major events in the Liverpool schools' competition calendar. Boxing. Boxing is massively popular in Liverpool. The city has a proud heritage and history in the sport and is home to around 22 amateur boxing clubs, which are responsible for producing many successful boxers, such as Nel Tarleton, Alan Rudkin, John Conteh, Andy Holligan, Liam Smith, Paul Hodkinson, Tony Bellew and Robin Ried. The city also boasts a consistently strong amateur contingent which is highlighted by Liverpool being the most represented city on the GB Boxing team, as well as at the 2012 London Olympics, the most notable Liverpool amateur fighters include; Jimmy Lloyd, George Turpin, Tony Willis, Robin Reid and David Price who have all medalled at the Olympic Games. Boxing events are usually hosted at the Echo Arena and Liverpool Olympia within the city, although the former home of Liverpool boxing was the renowned Liverpool Stadium. Horse racing. Aintree is home to the world's most famous steeple-chase, the John Smith's Grand National which takes place annually in early April. The race meeting attracts horse owners/ jockeys from around the world to compete in the demanding and 30-fence course. There have been many memorable moments of the Grand National, for instance, the 100/1 outsider Foinavon in 1967, the dominant Red Rum and Ginger McCain of the 1970s and Mon Mome (100/1) who won the 2009 meeting. In 2010, the National became the first horse race to be televised in high-definition in the UK. Golf. The Royal Liverpool Golf Club, situated in the nearby town of Hoylake on the Wirral Peninsula, has hosted The Open Championship on a number of occasions, most recently in 2023. It also hosted the Walker Cup in 1983. Greyhound racing. Liverpool once contained four greyhound tracks, Seaforth Greyhound Stadium (1933–1965), Breck Park Stadium (1927–1948), Stanley Greyhound Stadium (1927–1961) and.White City Stadium (1932–1973). Breck Park also hosted boxing bouts and both Stanley and Seaforth hosted Motorcycle speedway. Athletics. Wavertree Sports Park is home to the Liverpool Harriers athletics club, which has produced such athletes as Curtis Robb, Allyn Condon (the only British athlete to compete at both the Summer and Winter Olympics), and Katarina Johnson-Thompson; Great Britain was represented by Johnson-Thompson at the 2012 London Olympics in the women's heptathlon, and she would go on to win the gold medal at the 2019 World Championships, giving Liverpool its first gold medal and breaking the British record in the process. Gymnastics. In August 2012, Liverpool gymnast Beth Tweddle won an Olympic bronze medal in London 2012 in the uneven bars at her third Olympic Games, thus becoming the most decorated British gymnast in history. Park Road Gymnastics Centre provides training to a high level. Swimming. Liverpool has produced several swimmers who have represented their nation at major championships such as the Olympic Games. The most notable of which is Steve Parry who claimed a bronze medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics in the 200m butterfly. Others include Herbert Nickel Haresnape, Margaret Kelly, Shellagh Ratcliffe and Austin Rawlinson. There is a purpose-built aquatics centre at Wavertree Sports Park, which opened in 2008. The City of Liverpool Swimming Club has been National Speedo League Champions 8 out of the last 11 years. Cricket. The city is the hub of the Liverpool and District Cricket Competition, an ECB Premier League. Sefton Park and Liverpool are the league's founder members based in the city with Wavertree, Alder and Old Xaverians clubs having joined the league more recently. Liverpool plays host Lancashire County Cricket Club as an outground most seasons, including six of eight home County Championship games during Lancashire's 2011 title winning campaign whilst Old Trafford was refurbished. Tennis. Since 2014 Liverpool Cricket Club has played host to the annual Tradition-ICAP Liverpool International tennis tournament, which has seen tennis stars such as Novak Djokovic, David Ferrer, Mardy Fish, Laura Robson and Caroline Wozniacki. Previously this had been held at Calderstones Park, situated in Allerton in the south of the city. Liverpool Tennis Development Programme at Wavertree Tennis Centre is one of the largest in the UK. Basketball. Professional basketball came to the city in 2007 with the entry of Everton Tigers, now known as Mersey Tigers, into the elite British Basketball League. The club was originally associated with Everton F.C., and was part of the "Toxteth Tigers" youth development programme, which reached over 1,500 young people every year. The Tigers began to play in Britain's top league for the 2007–08 season, playing at the Greenbank Sports Academy before moving into the newly completed Echo Arena during that season. After the 2009–10 season, Everton F.C. withdrew funding from the Tigers, who then changed their name to Mersey Tigers. Their closest professional rivals are the Cheshire Jets, based away in Chester. Baseball. Liverpool is one of three cities which still host the traditional sport of British baseball and it hosts the annual England-Wales international match every two years, alternating with Cardiff and Newport. Liverpool Trojans are the oldest existing baseball club in the UK. Cycling. The 2014 Tour of Britain cycle race began in Liverpool on 7 September, utilising a city centre circuit to complete of racing. The Tour of Britain took nine stages and finished in London on 14 September. Other. A 2016 study of UK fitness centres found that, of the top 20 UK urban areas, Liverpool had the highest number of leisure and sports centres per capita, with 4.3 centres per 100,000 of the city population. Media. The city has one daily newspaper: the "Echo", published by Reach plc. "The Liverpool Daily Post" was also published until 2013. The UK's first online only weekly newspaper called "Southport Reporter" ("Southport and Mersey Reporter"), is also one of the many other news outlets that cover the city. The independent media organisation "The Post" also covers Liverpool, while "Nerve" magazine publishes articles and reviews of cultural events. LOCAL TV Liverpool is a local television station serving Liverpool City Region and surrounding areas. The station is owned and operated by Made Television Ltd and forms part of a group of eight local TV stations. It broadcasts from studios and offices in Liverpool. The ITV region which covers Liverpool is ITV Granada. In 2006, the Television company opened a new newsroom in the Royal Liver Building. Granada's regional news broadcasts were produced at the Royal Albert Dock News Centre during the 1980s and 1990s. The BBC also opened a new newsroom on Hanover Street in 2006. ITV's daily magazine programme "This Morning" was broadcast from studios at Royal Albert Dock until 1996, when production was moved to London. Granada's short-lived shopping channel "Shop!" was also produced in Liverpool until it was cancelled in 2002. Liverpool is the home of the TV production company Lime Pictures, formerly Mersey Television, which produced the now-defunct soap operas "Brookside" and "Grange Hill". It also produces the soap opera "Hollyoaks", which was formerly filmed in Chester and began on Channel 4 in 1995. All three series were/are largely filmed in the Childwall area of Liverpool. Radio stations include BBC Radio Merseyside, Liverpool Live Radio, Melodic Distraction, In Demand Radio, Capital Liverpool, Radio City and Greatest Hits Radio Liverpool & The North West. The last two are owned by Bauer and located in Radio City Tower which, along with the two cathedrals, dominates the city's skyline. Liverpool has also featured in films; see List of films set in Liverpool for some of them. In films the city has "doubled" for London, Paris, New York, Chicago, Moscow, Dublin, Venice and Berlin. International links. Twin cities. Liverpool is twinned with: Friendship links. Liverpool has friendship links (without formal constitution) with the following cities: Consulates. The first overseas consulate of the United States was opened in Liverpool in 1790, and it remained operational for almost two centuries. Today, a large number of consulates are located in the city serving Chile, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Sweden and Thailand. Tunisian & Ivory Coast Consulates are located in the neighbouring Metropolitan Borough of Sefton. Freedom of the City. The following people and military units have received the Freedom of the City of Liverpool.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18121

Leg spin

Leg spin is a type of spin bowling in cricket. A leg spinner bowls right-arm with a wrist spin action. The leg spinner's normal delivery causes the ball to spin from right to left (from the bowler's perspective) when the ball bounces on the pitch. For a right-handed batter, that is away from the leg side, and this is where it gets the name leg break. Leg spinners bowl mostly leg breaks, varying them by adjusting the line and length, and amount of side spin versus topspin of the deliveries. Leg spinners also typically use variations of flight by sometimes looping the ball in the air, allowing any cross-breeze and the aerodynamic effects of the spinning ball to cause the ball to dip and drift before bouncing and spinning or "turning", sharply. Leg spinners also bowl other types of delivery, which spin differently, such as the googly. The terms 'leg spin', 'leg spinner', 'leg break' and 'leggie' are used in slightly different ways by different sources. The bowlers with the second- and fourth-highest number of wickets in the history of Test cricket, Shane Warne and Anil Kumble, respectively, were leg spinners. One famous example of leg spin is Warne's Ball of the Century. History. In the 1970s and 1980s, it was thought that leg spin would disappear from the game due to the success of West Indian, and later Australian teams, exclusively using fast bowlers. During this time Abdul Qadir of Pakistan was the highest-profile leg spinner in the world and is sometimes credited with "keeping the art alive". However, leg spin has again become popular with cricket fans and a successful part of cricket teams, driven largely by the success of Shane Warne, beginning with his spectacular Ball of the Century to Mike Gatting in 1993. Comparison with other types of bowling. A left-handed bowler who bowls with the same (wrist spin) action as a leg spinner is known as a left-arm unorthodox spin bowler. The ball itself spins in the opposite direction. The same kind of trajectory, which spins from right to left on pitching, when performed by a left-arm bowler is known as left-arm orthodox spin bowling. As with all spinners, leg spinners bowl the ball far more slowly (70–90 km/h or 45–55 mph) than fast bowlers. The fastest leg spinners will sometimes top 100 km/h (60 mph). While very difficult to bowl accurately, good leg spin is considered one of the most threatening types of bowling to bat against for a right-handed batter, since the flight and sharp turn make the ball's movement extremely hard to read, and the turn away from the right-handed batter is more dangerous than the turn into the right-handed batter generated by an off spinner. Any miscalculation can result in an outside edge off the bat and a catch going to the wicket-keeper or slip fielders. Alternatively, for a ball aimed outside the leg stump, the breaking may be so sharp that the ball goes behind a right-handed batter and hits the stumps – the batter is then said (informally) to be "bowled around his or her legs". A left-handed batter has less difficulty facing leg spin bowling, because the ball moves in towards the batter's body, meaning the batter's legs are usually in the path of the ball if it misses the bat or takes an edge. This makes it difficult for the bowler to get the batter out bowled or caught from a leg break. Leg spin: Some sources make the term 'leg spin' synonymous with leg break, implying that other deliveries bowled by a leg spinner do not count as 'leg spin'. However, other sources use the term 'leg spin' more widely, to include all deliveries bowled by a leg spinner, including non-leg break deliveries. Leg break: In the definition of a leg break, some sources actually include the bowler being a leg spinner, which implies that only leg spinners can bowl leg breaks; all leg breaks are bowled by leg spinners. Other sources do not include the bowler being a leg spinner in the definition of a leg break, and say a leg break is simply a delivery that spins from the legside to the offside, and so can also be bowled by other types of bowler. In this case, leg breaks are (only) mostly bowled by leg spinners. Leg spinner: The term leg spinner can be used to mean either the bowler or the leg break delivery. Leggie: The term leggie can also be used to mean either the bowler or the leg break delivery. Technique. A leg break is bowled by holding the cricket ball in the palm of the hand with the seam running across under all the fingers. As the ball is released, the wrist is rotated to the left and the ball flicked by the ring finger, giving the ball an anti-clockwise spin as seen from behind. To grip the ball for a leg-spinning delivery, the ball is placed into the palm with the seam parallel to the palm. The first two fingers then spread and grip the ball, and the third and fourth fingers close together and rest against the side of the ball. The first bend of the third finger should grasp the seam. The thumb resting against the side is up to the bowler but should impart no pressure. When the ball is bowled, the third finger will apply most of the spin. The wrist is cocked as it comes down by the hip, and the wrist moves sharply from right to left as the ball is released, adding more spin. The ball is tossed up to provide flight. The batter will see the hand with the palm facing towards them when the ball is released. Notable leg spin bowlers. Players listed below have been included as they meet specific criteria which the general cricketing public would recognise as having achieved significant success in the art of leg spin bowling. For example: leading wicket-takers, and inventors of new deliveries. Other deliveries bowled by leg spin bowlers. Highly skilled leg spin bowlers are also able to bowl deliveries that behave unexpectedly, including the googly, which turns the opposite way to a normal leg break and the topspinner, which does not turn but dips sharply and bounces higher than other deliveries. A few leg spinners such as Abdul Qadir, Anil Kumble, Shane Warne and Mushtaq Ahmed have also mastered the flipper, a delivery that like a topspinner goes straight on landing, but floats through the air before skidding and keeping low, often dismissing batters leg before wicket or bowled. Another variation in the arsenal of some leg spinners is the slider, a leg break pushed out of the hand somewhat faster, so that it does not spin as much, but travels more straight on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18148

Left-arm orthodox spin

Left-arm orthodox spin, Left-arm off spin also known as slow left-arm orthodox spin bowling, is a type of left-arm finger spin bowling in the sport of cricket. Left-arm orthodox spin is bowled by a left-arm bowler using the fingers to spin the ball from right to left of the cricket pitch (from the bowler's perspective). Right-arm orthodox spin bowlers generally attempt to drift the ball in the air into a right-handed batsman, and then turn it away from the batsman (towards off-stump) upon landing on the pitch. The drift and turn in the air are attacking techniques. The stock delivery of a left-arm orthodox spin bowler is the left-arm orthodox spinner. The major variations of a left-arm orthodox spin bowler are the topspinner (which turns less and bounces higher in the cricket pitch), the arm ball (which does not turn at all, drifts into a right-handed batsman in the direction of the bowler's arm movement; also called a 'floater') and the left-arm spinner's version of a doosra (which turns the other way). Notable slow left-arm orthodox spin bowlers. Players listed below are included as they meet specific criteria which are generally recognized as having achieved significant success in the art of left-arm orthodox spin bowling. For example, leading wicket-takers, and inventors of new deliveries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18157

Lucent

Lucent Technologies, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications equipment company headquartered in Murray Hill, New Jersey. It was established on September 30, 1996, through the divestiture of the former AT&T Technologies business unit of AT&T Corporation, which included Western Electric and Bell Labs. Lucent was merged with Alcatel SA of France on December 1, 2006, forming Alcatel-Lucent. Alcatel-Lucent was absorbed by Nokia in January 2016. Name. Lucent means "light-bearing" in Latin. The name was applied for in 1996 at the time of the split from AT&T. The name was widely criticised, as the logo was to be, both internally and externally. Corporate communications and business cards included the strapline 'Bell Labs Innovations' in a bid to retain the prestige of the internationally famous research lab, within a new business under an as-yet unknown name. This same linguistic root also gives Lucifer, "the light bearer" (from lux, 'light', and ferre, 'to bear'), who is also a character in Dante's epic poem "Inferno". Shortly after the Lucent renaming in 1996, Lucent's Plan 9 project released a development of their work as the Inferno OS in 1997. This extended the 'Lucifer' and Dante references as a series of punning names for the components of Inferno - Dis, Limbo, Charon and Styx (9P Protocol). When the rights to Inferno were sold in 2000, the company Vita Nuova Holdings was formed to represent them. This continues the Dante theme, although moving away from his "Divine Comedy" to the poem "La Vita Nuova". Logo. The Lucent logo, the Innovation Ring, was designed by Landor Associates, a prominent San Francisco-based branding consultancy. One source inside Lucent says that the logo is a Zen Buddhist symbol for "eternal truth", the Enso, turned 90 degrees and modified. Another source says it represents the mythic ouroboros, a snake holding its tail in its mouth. Lucent's logo also has been said to represent constant re-creating and re-thinking. Carly Fiorina picked the logo because her mother was a painter and she rejected the sterile geometric logos of most high tech companies. After the logo was compared in the media to the ring a coffee mug leaves on paper, a "Dilbert" comic strip showed Dogbert as an overpaid consultant designing a new company logo; he takes a piece of paper that his coffee cup was sitting on and calls it the "Brown Ring of Quality". A telecommunication commentator referred to the logo as "a big red zero" and predicted financial losses. History. One of the primary reasons AT&T Corporation chose to spin off its equipment manufacturing business was to permit it to profit from sales to competing telecommunications providers; these customers had previously shown reluctance to purchase from a direct competitor. Bell Labs brought prestige to the new company, as well as the revenue from thousands of patents. At the time of its spinoff, Lucent was placed under the leadership of Henry Schacht, who was brought in to oversee its transition from an arm of AT&T into an independent corporation. Richard McGinn, who was serving as president and COO, succeeded Schacht as CEO in 1997 while Schacht remained chairman of the board. Lucent became a "darling" stock of the investment community in the late 1990s, and its split-adjusted spinoff price of $7.56/share rose to a high of $84. Its market capitalization reached a high of $258 billion, and it was at the time the most widely held company with 5.3 million shareholders. In 1997, Lucent acquired Milpitas-based voicemail market leader Octel Communications Corporation for $2.1 billion, a move which immediately rendered the Business Systems Group profitable. The same year, Lucent acquired Livingston Enterprises Inc. for $650 million in stock. Livingston was known most for the creation of the RADIUS protocol and their PortMaster product that was used widely by dial-up internet service providers. In 1999, Lucent acquired Ascend Communications, an Alameda, California–based manufacturer of communications equipment for US$24 billion. Lucent held discussions to acquire Juniper Networks but decided instead to build its own routers. In 1995, Carly Fiorina led corporate operations. In that capacity, she reported to Lucent chief executive Henry B. Schacht. She played a key role in planning and implementing the 1996 initial public offering of a successful stock and company launch strategy. Under her guidance, the spin-off raised 3 billion. Later in 1996, Fiorina was appointed president of Lucent's consumer products sector, reporting to president and chief operating officer Rich McGinn. In 1997, she was named group president for Lucent's 19 billion global service-provider business, overseeing marketing and sales for the company's largest customer segment. That year, Fiorina chaired a 2.5 billion joint venture between Lucent's consumer communications and Royal Philips Electronics, under the name Philips Consumer Communications (PCC). The focus of the venture was to bring both companies to the top three in technology, distribution, and brand recognition. Ultimately, the project struggled, and dissolved a year later after it garnered only 2% market share in mobile phones. Losses were at $500 million on sales of $2.5 billion. As a result of the failed joint venture, Philips announced the closure of one-quarter of the company's 230 factories worldwide, and Lucent closed down its wireless handset portion of the venture. Analysts suggested that the joint venture's failure was due to a combination of technology and management problems. Upon the end of the joint venture, PCC sent 5,000 employees back to Philips, many of which were laid off, and 8,400 employees back to Lucent. Under Fiorina, the company added 22,000 jobs and revenues seemed to grow from 19 billion to 38 billion. However, the real cause of Lucent spurring sales under Fiorina was by lending money to their own customers. According to "Fortune" magazine, "In a neat bit of accounting magic, money from the loans began to appear on Lucent’s income statement as new revenue while the dicey debt got stashed on its balance sheet as an allegedly solid asset". Lucent's stock price grew 10-fold. At the start of 2000, Lucent's "private bubble" burst, while competitors like Nortel Networks and Alcatel were still going strong; it would be many months before the rest of the telecom industry bubble collapsed. Previously Lucent had 14 straight quarters where it exceeded analysts' expectations, leading to high expectations for the 15th quarter, ending Dec. 31, 1999. On January 6, 2000, Lucent made the first of a string of announcements that it had missed its quarterly estimates, as CEO Rich McGinn grimly announced that Lucent had run into special problems during that quarter—including disruptions in its optical networking business—and reported flat revenues and a big drop in profits. That caused the stock to plunge by 28%, shaving $64 billion off of the company's market capitalization. When it was later revealed that it had used dubious accounting and sales practices to generate some of its earlier quarterly numbers, Lucent fell from grace. It was said that "Rich McGinn couldn't accept Lucent's fall from its early triumphs." He described himself once as imposing "audacious" goals on his managers, believing the stretch for performance would produce dream results. Henry Schacht defended the corporate culture that McGinn created and noted that McGinn did not sell any Lucent shares while serving as CEO. In June 2000, Lucent announced it would acquire Chromartis, an Israeli maker of optical network equipment, for $4.5 billion In November 2000, the company disclosed to the Securities and Exchange Commission that it had a $125 million accounting error for the third quarter of 2000, and by December 2000 it reported it had overstated its revenues for its latest quarter by nearly $700 million. Although no wrongdoing was found on his part, McGinn was forced to resign as CEO and he was replaced by Schacht on an interim basis. Subsequently, its CFO, Deborah Hopkins, left the company in May 2001 with Lucent's stock at $9.06 whereas at the time she was hired it was at $46.82. In August 2001, Lucent shut down Chromartis. In 2001 there were merger discussions between Lucent and Alcatel, which would have seen Lucent acquired at its current market price without a premium; the newly combined entity would have been headquartered in Murray Hill. However, these negotiations collapsed when Schacht insisted on an equal 7–7 split of the merged company's board of directors, while Alcatel chief executive officer Serge Tchuruk wanted 8 of the 14 board seats for Alcatel due to it being in a stronger position. The failure of the merger talks caused Lucent's share price to collapse, and by October 2002 the stock price had bottomed at 55 cents per share. Patricia Russo, formerly Lucent's EVP of the Corporate Office who then left for Eastman Kodak to serve as COO, was named permanent chairman and CEO of Lucent in 2002, succeeding Schacht who remained on the board of directors. In April 2000, Lucent sold its Consumer Products unit to VTech. In October 2000, Lucent spun off its Business Systems arm into Avaya, Inc., and in June 2002, it spun off its microelectronics division into Agere Systems. The spinoffs of enterprise networking and wireless, the industry's key growth businesses from 2003 onward, meant that Lucent no longer had the capacity to serve this market. Lucent was reduced to 30,500 employees, down from about 165,000 employees at its zenith. The layoffs of so many experienced employees meant that the company was in a weakened position and unable to reestablish itself when the market recovered in 2003. By early 2003, Lucent's market value was $15.6 billion (which includes $6.8 billion of current value for two companies that Lucent had recently spun off, Avaya and Agere Systems), making the shares worth around $2.13, a far cry from its dotcom bubble peak of around $84, when Lucent was worth $258 billion. Lucent continued to be active in the areas of telephone switching, optical, data and wireless networking. On April 2, 2006, Lucent announced a merger agreement with Alcatel, which was 1.5 times the size of Lucent. Serge Tchuruk became non-executive chairman, and Russo served as CEO of the newly merged company, Alcatel-Lucent, until they were both forced to resign at the end of 2008. The merger failed to produce the expected synergies, and there were significant write-downs of Lucent's assets that Alcatel purchased. Operations. Divisions. Lucent was divided into several core groups: Murray Hill facility. The Murray Hill anechoic chamber, built in 1940, is the world's oldest wedge-based anechoic chamber. The interior room measures approximately high by wide by deep. The exterior concrete and brick walls are about thick to keep outside noise from entering the chamber. The chamber absorbs over 99.995% of the incident acoustic energy above 200 Hz. At one time the Murray Hill chamber was cited in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's quietest room. It is possible to hear the sounds of skeletal joints and heart beats very prominently. The Murray Hill facility was the global headquarters for Lucent Technologies. The Murray Hill facility also has the largest copper-roof in the world. When Lucent Technologies was experiencing financial troubles in 2000 and 2001, one out of every three fluorescent lights was turned off in the facility. The same was done in the Naperville, Illinois, and Allentown, Pennsylvania, facilities for a while. The facility had a cricket field and featured a nearby station from which enthusiasts could control RC airplanes and helicopters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18184

Lizard

Lizards are a widespread group of squamate reptiles, with over 7,000 species, ranging across all continents except Antarctica, as well as most oceanic island chains. The group is paraphyletic since it excludes the snakes and Amphisbaenia, although some lizards are more closely related to these two excluded groups than they are to other lizards. Lizards range in size from chameleons and geckos a few centimeters long to the 3-meter-long Komodo dragon. Most lizards are quadrupedal, running with a strong side-to-side motion. Some lineages (known as "legless lizards"), have secondarily lost their legs, and have long snake-like bodies. Some lizards, such as the forest-dwelling "Draco", are able to glide. They are often territorial, the males fighting off other males and signalling, often with bright colours, to attract mates and to intimidate rivals. Lizards are mainly carnivorous, often being sit-and-wait predators; many smaller species eat insects, while the Komodo eats mammals as big as water buffalo. Lizards make use of a variety of antipredator adaptations, including venom, camouflage, reflex bleeding, and the ability to sacrifice and regrow their tails. Anatomy. Largest and smallest. The adult length of species within the suborder ranges from a few centimeters for chameleons such as "Brookesia micra" and geckos such as "Sphaerodactylus ariasae" to nearly in the case of the largest living varanid lizard, the Komodo dragon. Most lizards are fairly small animals. Distinguishing features. Lizards typically have rounded torsos, elevated heads on short necks, four limbs and long tails, although some are legless. Lizards and snakes share a movable quadrate bone, distinguishing them from the rhynchocephalians, which have more rigid diapsid skulls. Some lizards such as chameleons have prehensile tails, assisting them in climbing among vegetation. As in other reptiles, the skin of lizards is covered in overlapping scales made of keratin. This provides protection from the environment and reduces water loss through evaporation. This adaptation enables lizards to thrive in some of the driest deserts on earth. The skin is tough and leathery, and is shed (sloughed) as the animal grows. Unlike snakes which shed the skin in a single piece, lizards slough their skin in several pieces. The scales may be modified into spines for display or protection, and some species have bone osteoderms underneath the scales. The dentitions of lizards reflect their wide range of diets, including carnivorous, insectivorous, omnivorous, herbivorous, nectivorous, and molluscivorous. Species typically have uniform teeth suited to their diet, but several species have variable teeth, such as cutting teeth in the front of the jaws and crushing teeth in the rear. Most species are pleurodont, though agamids and chameleons are acrodont. The tongue can be extended outside the mouth, and is often long. In the beaded lizards, whiptails and monitor lizards, the tongue is forked and used mainly or exclusively to sense the environment, continually flicking out to sample the environment, and back to transfer molecules to the vomeronasal organ responsible for chemosensation, analogous to but different from smell or taste. In geckos, the tongue is used to lick the eyes clean: they have no eyelids. Chameleons have very long sticky tongues which can be extended rapidly to catch their insect prey. Three lineages, the geckos, anoles, and chameleons, have modified the scales under their toes to form adhesive pads, highly prominent in the first two groups. The pads are composed of millions of tiny setae (hair-like structures) which fit closely to the substrate to adhere using van der Waals forces; no liquid adhesive is needed. In addition, the toes of chameleons are divided into two opposed groups on each foot (zygodactyly), enabling them to perch on branches as birds do. Physiology. Locomotion. Aside from legless lizards, most lizards are quadrupedal and move using gaits with alternating movement of the right and left limbs with substantial body bending. This body bending prevents significant respiration during movement, limiting their endurance, in a mechanism called Carrier's constraint. Several species can run bipedally, and a few can prop themselves up on their hindlimbs and tail while stationary. Several small species such as those in the genus "Draco" can glide: some can attain a distance of , losing in height. Some species, like geckos and chameleons, adhere to vertical surfaces including glass and ceilings. Some species, like the common basilisk, can run across water. Senses. Lizards make use of their senses of sight, touch, olfaction and hearing like other vertebrates. The balance of these varies with the habitat of different species; for instance, skinks that live largely covered by loose soil rely heavily on olfaction and touch, while geckos depend largely on acute vision for their ability to hunt and to evaluate the distance to their prey before striking. Monitor lizards have acute vision, hearing, and olfactory senses. Some lizards make unusual use of their sense organs: chameleons can steer their eyes in different directions, sometimes providing non-overlapping fields of view, such as forwards and backwards at once. Lizards lack external ears, having instead a circular opening in which the tympanic membrane (eardrum) can be seen. Many species rely on hearing for early warning of predators, and flee at the slightest sound. As in snakes and many mammals, all lizards have a specialised olfactory system, the vomeronasal organ, used to detect pheromones. Monitor lizards transfer scent from the tip of their tongue to the organ; the tongue is used only for this information-gathering purpose, and is not involved in manipulating food. Some lizards, particularly iguanas, have retained a photosensory organ on the top of their heads called the parietal eye, a basal ("primitive") feature also present in the tuatara. This "eye" has only a rudimentary retina and lens and cannot form images, but is sensitive to changes in light and dark and can detect movement. This helps them detect predators stalking it from above. Venom. Until 2006 it was thought that the Gila monster and the Mexican beaded lizard were the only venomous lizards. However, several species of monitor lizards, including the Komodo dragon, produce powerful venom in their oral glands. Lace monitor venom, for instance, causes swift loss of consciousness and extensive bleeding through its pharmacological effects, both lowering blood pressure and preventing blood clotting. Nine classes of toxin known from snakes are produced by lizards. The range of actions provides the potential for new medicinal drugs based on lizard venom proteins. Genes associated with venom toxins have been found in the salivary glands of a wide range of lizards, including species traditionally thought of as non-venomous, such as iguanas and bearded dragons. This suggests that these genes evolved in the common ancestor of lizards and snakes, some 200 million years ago (forming a single clade, the Toxicofera). However, most of these putative venom genes were "housekeeping genes" found in all cells and tissues, including skin and cloacal scent glands. The genes in question may thus be evolutionary precursors of venom genes. Respiration. Recent studies (2013 and 2014) on the lung anatomy of the savannah monitor and green iguana found them to have a unidirectional airflow system, which involves the air moving in a loop through the lungs when breathing. This was previously thought to only exist in the archosaurs (crocodilians and birds). This may be evidence that unidirectional airflow is an ancestral trait in diapsids. Reproduction and life cycle. As with all amniotes, lizards rely on internal fertilisation and copulation involves the male inserting one of his hemipenes into the female's cloaca. The majority of species are oviparous (egg laying). The female deposits the eggs in a protective structure like a nest or crevice or simply on the ground. Depending on the species, clutch size can vary from 4–5 percent of the females body weight to 40–50 percent and clutches range from one or a few large eggs to dozens of small ones. In most lizards, the eggs have leathery shells to allow for the exchange of water, although more arid-living species have calcified shells to retain water. Inside the eggs, the embryos use nutrients from the yolk. Parental care is uncommon and the female usually abandons the eggs after laying them. Brooding and protection of eggs do occur in some species. The female prairie skink uses respiratory water loss to maintain the humidity of the eggs which facilitates embryonic development. In lace monitors, the young hatch close to 300 days, and the female returns to help them escape the termite mound where the eggs were laid. Around 20 percent of lizard species reproduce via viviparity (live birth). This is particularly common in Anguimorphs. Viviparous species give birth to relatively developed young which look like miniature adults. Embryos are nourished via a placenta-like structure. A minority of lizards have parthenogenesis (reproduction from unfertilised eggs). These species consist of all females who reproduce asexually with no need for males. This is known to occur in various species of whiptail lizards. Parthenogenesis was also recorded in species that normally reproduce sexually. A captive female Komodo dragon produced a clutch of eggs, despite being separated from males for over two years. Sex determination in lizards can be temperature-dependent. The temperature of the eggs' micro-environment can determine the sex of the hatched young: low temperature incubation produces more females while higher temperatures produce more males. However, some lizards have sex chromosomes and both male heterogamety (XY and XXY) and female heterogamety (ZW) occur. Behaviour. Diurnality and thermoregulation. The majority of lizard species are active during the day, though some are active at night, notably geckos. As ectotherms, lizards have a limited ability to regulate their body temperature, and must seek out and bask in sunlight to gain enough heat to become fully active. Thermoregulation behavior can be beneficial in the short term for lizards as it allows the ability to buffer environmental variation and endure climate warming. In high altitudes, the "Podarcis hispaniscus" responds to higher temperature with a darker dorsal coloration to prevent UV-radiation and background matching. Their thermoregulatory mechanisms also allow the lizard to maintain their ideal body temperature for optimal mobility. Territoriality. Most social interactions among lizards are between breeding individuals. Territoriality is common and is correlated with species that use sit-and-wait hunting strategies. Males establish and maintain territories that contain resources that attract females and which they defend from other males. Important resources include basking, feeding, and nesting sites as well as refuges from predators. The habitat of a species affects the structure of territories, for example, rock lizards have territories atop rocky outcrops. Some species may aggregate in groups, enhancing vigilance and lessening the risk of predation for individuals, particularly for juveniles. Agonistic behaviour typically occurs between sexually mature males over territory or mates and may involve displays, posturing, chasing, grappling and biting. Communication. Lizards signal both to attract mates and to intimidate rivals. Visual displays include body postures and inflation, push-ups, bright colours, mouth gapings and tail waggings. Male anoles and iguanas have dewlaps or skin flaps which come in various sizes, colours and patterns and the expansion of the dewlap as well as head-bobs and body movements add to the visual signals. Some species have deep blue dewlaps and communicate with ultraviolet signals. Blue-tongued skinks will flash their tongues as a threat display. Chameleons are known to change their complex colour patterns when communicating, particularly during agonistic encounters. They tend to show brighter colours when displaying aggression and darker colours when they submit or "give up". Several gecko species are brightly coloured; some species tilt their bodies to display their coloration. In certain species, brightly coloured males turn dull when not in the presence of rivals or females. While it is usually males that display, in some species females also use such communication. In the bronze anole, head-bobs are a common form of communication among females, the speed and frequency varying with age and territorial status. Chemical cues or pheromones are also important in communication. Males typically direct signals at rivals, while females direct them at potential mates. Lizards may be able to recognise individuals of the same species by their scent. Acoustic communication is less common in lizards. Hissing, a typical reptilian sound, is mostly produced by larger species as part of a threat display, accompanying gaping jaws. Some groups, particularly geckos, snake-lizards, and some iguanids, can produce more complex sounds and vocal apparatuses have independently evolved in different groups. These sounds are used for courtship, territorial defense and in distress, and include clicks, squeaks, barks and growls. The mating call of the male tokay gecko is heard as "tokay-tokay!". Tactile communication involves individuals rubbing against each other, either in courtship or in aggression. Some chameleon species communicate with one another by vibrating the substrate that they are standing on, such as a tree branch or leaf. Ecology. Distribution and habitat. Lizards are found worldwide, excluding the far north and Antarctica, and some islands. They can be found in elevations from sea level to . They prefer warmer, tropical climates but are adaptable and can live in all but the most extreme environments. Lizards also exploit a number of habitats; most primarily live on the ground, but others may live in rocks, on trees, underground and even in water. The marine iguana is adapted for life in the sea. Diet. The majority of lizard species are predatory and the most common prey items are small, terrestrial invertebrates, particularly insects. Many species are sit-and-wait predators though others may be more active foragers. Chameleons prey on numerous insect species, such as beetles, grasshoppers and winged termites as well as spiders. They rely on persistence and ambush to capture these prey. An individual perches on a branch and stays perfectly still, with only its eyes moving. When an insect lands, the chameleon focuses its eyes on the target and slowly moves toward it before projecting its long sticky tongue which, when hauled back, brings the attached prey with it. Geckos feed on crickets, beetles, termites and moths. Termites are an important part of the diets of some species of Autarchoglossa, since, as social insects, they can be found in large numbers in one spot. Ants may form a prominent part of the diet of some lizards, particularly among the lacertas. Horned lizards are also well known for specializing on ants. Due to their small size and indigestible chitin, ants must be consumed in large amounts, and ant-eating lizards have larger stomachs than even herbivorous ones. Species of skink and alligator lizards eat snails and their power jaws and molar-like teeth are adapted for breaking the shells. Larger species, such as monitor lizards, can feed on larger prey including fish, frogs, birds, mammals and other reptiles. Prey may be swallowed whole and torn into smaller pieces. Both bird and reptile eggs may also be consumed as well. Gila monsters and beaded lizards climb trees to reach both the eggs and young of birds. Despite being venomous, these species rely on their strong jaws to kill prey. Mammalian prey typically consists of rodents and leporids; the Komodo dragon can kill prey as large as water buffalo. Dragons are prolific scavengers, and a single decaying carcass can attract several from away. A dragon is capable of consuming a carcass in 17 minutes. Around 2 percent of lizard species, including many iguanids, are herbivores. Adults of these species eat plant parts like flowers, leaves, stems and fruit, while juveniles eat more insects. Plant parts can be hard to digest, and, as they get closer to adulthood, juvenile iguanas eat faeces from adults to acquire the microflora necessary for their transition to a plant-based diet. Perhaps the most herbivorous species is the marine iguana which dives to forage for algae, kelp and other marine plants. Some non-herbivorous species supplement their insect diet with fruit, which is easily digested. Antipredator adaptations. Lizards have a variety of antipredator adaptations, including running and climbing, venom, camouflage, tail autotomy, and reflex bleeding. Camouflage. Lizards exploit a variety of different camouflage methods. Many lizards are disruptively patterned. In some species, such as Aegean wall lizards, individuals vary in colour, and select rocks which best match their own colour to minimise the risk of being detected by predators. The Moorish gecko is able to change colour for camouflage: when a light-coloured gecko is placed on a dark surface, it darkens within an hour to match the environment. The chameleons in general use their ability to change their coloration for signalling rather than camouflage, but some species such as Smith's dwarf chameleon do use active colour change for camouflage purposes. The flat-tail horned lizard's body is coloured like its desert background, and is flattened and fringed with white scales to minimise its shadow. Autotomy. Many lizards, including geckos and skinks, are capable of shedding their tails (autotomy). The detached tail, sometimes brilliantly coloured, continues to writhe after detaching, distracting the predator's attention from the fleeing prey. Lizards partially regenerate their tails over a period of weeks. Some 326 genes are involved in regenerating lizard tails. The fish-scale gecko "Geckolepis megalepis " sheds patches of skin and scales if grabbed. Escape, playing dead, reflex bleeding. Many lizards attempt to escape from danger by running to a place of safety; for example, wall lizards can run up walls and hide in holes or cracks. Horned lizards adopt differing defences for specific predators. They may play dead to deceive a predator that has caught them; attempt to outrun the rattlesnake, which does not pursue prey; but stay still, relying on their cryptic coloration, for "Masticophis" whip snakes which can catch even swift prey. If caught, some species such as the greater short-horned lizard puff themselves up, making their bodies hard for a narrow-mouthed predator like a whip snake to swallow. Finally, horned lizards can squirt blood at cat and dog predators from a pouch beneath its eyes, to a distance of about ; the blood tastes foul to these attackers. Evolution. Fossil history. The closest living relatives of lizards are rhynchocephalians, a once diverse order of reptiles, of which is there is now only one living species, the tuatara of New Zealand. Some reptiles from the Early and Middle Triassic, like "Sophineta" and "Megachirella", are suggested to be stem-group squamates, more closely related to modern lizards than rhynchocephalians, however, their position is disputed, with some studies recovering them as less closely related to squamates than rhynchocephalians are. In 2022 "Cryptovaranoides" from the Late Triassic was described and was suggested to the oldest known crown group lizard by 35 million years, as previously described undisputed lizards are unknown until the Middle Jurassic. Middle Jurassic lizards include representatives of modern clades like Scincomorpha. Lizard morphological and ecological diversity substantially increased over the course of the Cretaceous. Mosasaurs likely evolved from an extinct group of aquatic lizards known as aigialosaurs in the Early Cretaceous. Dolichosauridae is a family of Late Cretaceous aquatic varanoid lizards closely related to the mosasaurs. Phylogeny. External. The position of the lizards and other Squamata among the reptiles was studied using fossil evidence by Rainer Schoch and Hans-Dieter Sues in 2015. Lizards form about 60% of the extant non-avian reptiles. Internal. Both the snakes and the Amphisbaenia (worm lizards) are clades deep within the Squamata (the smallest clade that contains all the lizards), so "lizard" is paraphyletic. The cladogram is based on genomic analysis by Wiens and colleagues in 2012 and 2016. Excluded taxa are shown in upper case on the cladogram. Taxonomy. In the 13th century, lizards were recognized in Europe as part of a broad category of "reptiles" that consisted of a miscellany of egg-laying creatures, including "snakes, various fantastic monsters, […], assorted amphibians, and worms", as recorded by Vincent of Beauvais in his "Mirror of Nature". The seventeenth century saw changes in this loose description. The name Sauria was coined by James Macartney (1802); it was the Latinisation of the French name "Sauriens", coined by Alexandre Brongniart (1800) for an order of reptiles in the classification proposed by the author, containing lizards and crocodilians, later discovered not to be each other's closest relatives. Later authors used the term "Sauria" in a more restricted sense, i.e. as a synonym of Lacertilia, a suborder of Squamata that includes all lizards but excludes snakes. This classification is rarely used today because Sauria so-defined is a paraphyletic group. It was defined as a clade by Jacques Gauthier, Arnold G. Kluge and Timothy Rowe (1988) as the group containing the most recent common ancestor of archosaurs and lepidosaurs (the groups containing crocodiles and lizards, as per Mcartney's original definition) and all its descendants. A different definition was formulated by Michael deBraga and Olivier Rieppel (1997), who defined Sauria as the clade containing the most recent common ancestor of Choristodera, Archosauromorpha, Lepidosauromorpha and all their descendants. However, these uses have not gained wide acceptance among specialists. Suborder Lacertilia (Sauria) – (lizards) Convergence. Lizards have frequently evolved convergently, with multiple groups independently developing similar morphology and ecological niches. "Anolis" ecomorphs have become a model system in evolutionary biology for studying convergence. Limbs have been lost or reduced independently over two dozen times across lizard evolution, including in the Anniellidae, Anguidae, Cordylidae, Dibamidae, Gymnophthalmidae, Pygopodidae, and Scincidae; snakes are just the most famous and species-rich group of Squamata to have followed this path. Relationship with humans. Interactions and uses by humans. Most lizard species are harmless to humans. Only the largest lizard species, the Komodo dragon, which reaches in length and weighs up to , has been known to stalk, attack, and, on occasion, kill humans. An eight-year-old Indonesian boy died from blood loss after an attack in 2007. Numerous species of lizard are kept as pets, including bearded dragons, iguanas, anoles, and geckos (such as the popular leopard gecko).Monitor lizards such as the savannah monitor and tegus such as the Argentine tegu and red tegu are also kept. Green iguanas are eaten in Central America, where they are sometimes referred to as "chicken of the tree" after their habit of resting in trees and their supposedly chicken-like taste, while spiny-tailed lizards are eaten in Africa. In North Africa, "Uromastyx" species are considered "dhaab" or 'fish of the desert' and eaten by nomadic tribes.Lizards such as the Gila monster produce toxins with medical applications. Gila toxin reduces plasma glucose; the substance is now synthesized for use in the anti-diabetes drug exenatide (Byetta). Another toxin from Gila monster saliva has been studied for use as an anti-Alzheimer's drug. In culture. Lizards appear in myths and folktales around the world. In Australian Aboriginal mythology, Tarrotarro, the lizard god, split the human race into male and female, and gave people the ability to express themselves in art. A lizard king named Mo'o features in Hawaii and other cultures in Polynesia. In the Amazon, the lizard is the king of beasts, while among the Bantu of Africa, the god UNkulunkulu sent a chameleon to tell humans they would live forever, but the chameleon was held up, and another lizard brought a different message, that the time of humanity was limited. A popular legend in Maharashtra tells the tale of how a common Indian monitor, with ropes attached, was used to scale the walls of the fort in the Battle of Sinhagad. In the Bhojpuri speaking region of India and Nepal, there is a belief among children that, on touching skink's tail three (or five) time with the shortest finger gives money. Lizards in many cultures share the symbolism of snakes, especially as an emblem of resurrection. This may have derived from their regular molting. The motif of lizards on Christian candle holders probably alludes to the same symbolism. According to Jack Tresidder, in Egypt and the Classical world, they were beneficial emblems, linked with wisdom. In African, Aboriginal and Melanesian folklore they are linked to cultural heroes or ancestral figures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18387

Lanista

Lanista is a genus of African bush-crickets (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae) in the subfamily Conocephalinae.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18544

Left-arm unorthodox spin

Left-arm unorthodox spin, also known as slow left-arm wrist-spin, is a type of spin bowling in the sport of cricket. Left-arm unorthodox spin bowlers use wrist spin to spin the ball, and make it deviate, or 'turn' from left to right after pitching. The direction of turn is the same as that of a traditional right-handed off spin bowler, although the ball will usually turn more sharply due to the spin being imparted predominantly by the wrist. Some left-arm unorthodox bowlers also bowl the equivalent of a googly, or 'wrong'un', which turns from right to left on the pitch. The ball turns away from the right-handed batsman, as if the bowler were an orthodox left-arm spinner. The delivery was sometimes historically called a chinaman. Notable left-arm unorthodox spin bowlers. The first cricketer known to bowl the style of delivery was 19th-century South African bowler Charlie Llewellyn. Llewellyn toured North America with Bernard Bosanquet, the originator of the googly delivery, and Llewellyn likely learned the googly-style of delivery from him, bowling it with his left-arm. Chuck Fleetwood-Smith, an ambidextrous Australian bowler, notably used the delivery in the 1930s, including in his 10 Test matches. Among noted players who have bowled the delivery are Denis Compton, who originally bowled orthodox slow-left arm deliveries but developed left-arm wrist spin, taking most of his 622 first-class wickets using the delivery. Although better known for fast bowling and orthodox slow left-arm, Garfield Sobers could also use it to good effect. In cricket's modern era, Australian Brad Hogg brought the delivery to wider notice and had one of the most well-disguised wrong'uns. Kuldeep Yadav, who debuted for India in March 2017, bowls left-arm wrist spin, and Paul Adams played 45 Test matches and 24 One-day internationals for South Africa between 1995 and 2004 using the delivery. Michael Bevan and Dave Mohammed are also considered to be "among the better known" bowlers to use the style. In 2021 "The Guardian" claimed that Kuldeep, Tabraiz Shamsi of South Africa and the Afghan bowler Noor Ahmad were "probably the foremost left-arm wrist-spinners in world cricket", while in 2022 Michael Rippon was reported as "the first specialist left-arm wristspinner" to play for New Zealand. In the women's game, Kary Chan of Hong Kong uses left-arm wrist spin deliveries. CricInfo suggests that left-arm wrist-spin bowlers are uncommon because it is "difficult to control left-arm wrist spin. And ... the ball coming in to a right-hander is considered less dangerous than the one leaving him". Instances of left-arm unorthodox spinners taking ten wickets in a Test match are, therefore, rare. Examples where this has occurred include Chuck Fleetwood-Smith against England in 1936–37, Michael Bevan against the West Indies in 1996–97, and Paul Adams against Bangladesh in 2002–03. Historical use of the term 'chinaman'. Historically the term "chinaman" was sometimes used to describe the googly delivery or other unusual deliveries, whether bowled by right or left-arm bowlers. The left-arm wrist spinner's delivery that is the equivalent of the googly eventually became known as the "chinaman". The origin of the term is unclear, although it is known to have been in use in Yorkshire during the 1920s and may have been first used in reference to Roy Kilner. It is possible that it is a guarded reference to Charlie Llewellyn, the first left-arm bowler to bowl the equivalent of the googly. It is first known to have been used in print in "The Guardian" in 1926 in reference to the possibility of Yorkshire bowler George Macaulay bowling a googly, but the term became more widely used after a Test match between England and West Indies at Old Trafford in 1933. Ellis Achong, a player of Chinese origin who bowled slow left-arm orthodox spin, had Walter Robins stumped off a surprise delivery that spun into the right-hander from outside the off stump. As he walked back to the pavilion, Robins reportedly said to the umpire, "fancy being done by a bloody Chinaman!", leading to the more widespread use of the term. In 2017, Australian journalist Andrew Wu, who is of Chinese descent, raised concerns about the use of the term as "racially offensive", arguing the term itself "has historically been used in a contemptuous manner to describe the Chinese". "Wisden" formally changed their wording of the term to slow left-arm wrist-spin in the 2018 edition of the Almanack, describing chinaman as "no longer appropriate". CricInfo followed suit in 2021, noting that although some argued that its use in cricket "was not meant to be derogatory", that its continued use was inappropriate. Some writers continue to use the term.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18650

Flipper (cricket)

The flipper is a particular bowling delivery used in cricket, generally by a leg spin bowler. In essence it is a back spin ball. Squeezed out of the front of the hand with the thumb and first and second fingers, it keeps deceptively low after pitching and can accordingly be very difficult to play. The flipper is comparable to a riseball in fast-pitch softball. With backspin on the ball the Magnus effect results in air travelling over the top of the ball quickly and cleanly while air travelling under the ball is turbulent. The lift so produced causes the ball to drop slower and it travels further than a normal delivery. The slower descent also results in the ball bouncing lower. The flipper is bowled on the opposite side from a slider, much in the same way that the top-spinner is bowled. On release, the bowler 'pinches' or clicks the thumb and forefinger, causing the ball to come out underneath the hand. There must be sufficient tension in the wrist and fingers to impart sufficient backspin. In doing so the flipper will float towards the batsman and land on a fuller length than he anticipated, often leaving him caught on the back foot when he wrongly assumes it to be a pullable or a cuttable ball. The back spin or will cause the ball to proceed with very little bounce, though this may be harder to achieve on softer wickets. A series of normal leg spinners or topspinners, with their dropping looping flight, will have the batsman used to the ball pitching on a shorter length. The batsman may wrongly assume that the flipper will drop and loop like a normal overspinning delivery, resulting in the ball pitching under the bat and going on either to hit the stumps or result in leg before wicket. Much of the effectiveness of the flipper is attributable to the "pop", that is, the extra pace and change in trajectory that is imparted to the ball when it is squeezed out of the bowler's hand. Occasionally, the term 'flipper' has been used to describe other types of deliveries. The Australian leg spinner Bob Holland employed a back spinning ball that he simply pushed backwards with the heel of his palm. Sometimes this form of front-hand flipper is called a "zooter". It is easier to bowl but not as effective as the amount of backspin is much less. Bowlers of the flipper. It was reputedly invented by the Australian leg-spinner Clarrie Grimmett. Grimmett became so enamoured with the delivery that at times he bowled it almost as frequently as his stock leg break. The great Don Bradman once remarked to Grimmett that he must have forgotten how to bowl a leg break, as he bowled so many flippers. Bradman was bowled shortly thereafter at a memorial match by Grimmett who produced a perfectly pitched stock ball that turned just enough to remove Bradman's off bail. "There y'are Don, I told you I could bowl a leg break" was Grimmett's alleged response. The flipper was perfected by Cowandilla raised "leg spinning magician" and Wisden Cricketer of the year, Bruce Dooland, who taught it to Richie Benaud. The flipper was the signature delivery of Anil Kumble of India and the Australian leg-spinner Shane Warne in his earlier years, until injury and later shoulder surgery restricted his ability to bowl flippers accurately. Like the googly, it may become more difficult to bowl as a bowler ages due to the flexibility and suppleness it demands from the bowler's wrist. It is difficult to disguise the flipper entirely when bowling, as the hand action is distinctly different from a leg break. When Clarrie Grimmett first began bowling the delivery, batsmen would listen for the telltale clicking sound of his fingers; to compensate, Grimmett would often click the fingers of his non-bowling hand when "not" bowling the flipper to confuse the batsman. Abdul Qadir of Pakistan achieved great success with the flipper making it one of his signature deliveries, along with him Shane Warne was also arguably the leading exponent of the flipper in more recent times. Anil Kumble of India used the flipper well to his advantage. Brad Hogg of Australia has also used the flipper with great success in limited overs cricket.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19189

Mumbai

Mumbai (, , IAST: ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra. Mumbai is the "de facto" financial centre and the most populous city of India with an estimated city proper population of 12.5 million (1.25 crore). Mumbai is the centre of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, the sixth most populous metropolitan area in the world with a population of over 23 million (2.3 crore) living under the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Mumbai lies on the Konkan coast on the west coast of India and has a deep natural harbour. In 2008, Mumbai was named an alpha world city. The seven islands that constitute Mumbai were earlier home to communities of Marathi language-speaking Koli people. For centuries, the seven islands of Bombay were under the control of successive indigenous rulers before being ceded to the Portuguese Empire, and subsequently to the East India Company in 1661, through the dowry of Catherine Braganza when she was married off to Charles II of England. Beginning in 1782, Mumbai was reshaped by the Hornby Vellard project, which undertook reclamation of the area between the seven islands from the sea. Along with construction of major roads and railways, the reclamation project, completed in 1845, transformed Mumbai into a major seaport on the Arabian Sea. Mumbai in the 19th century was characterized by economic and educational development. During the early 20th century it became a strong base for the Indian independence movement. Upon India's independence in 1947 the city was incorporated into Bombay State. In 1960, following the Samyukta Maharashtra Movement, a new state of Maharashtra was created with Mumbai as the capital. Mumbai is the financial, commercial, and the entertainment capital of India. It is also one of the world's top ten centres of commerce in terms of global financial flow, generating 6.16% of India's GDP, and accounting for 25% of industrial output, 70% of maritime trade in India (Mumbai Port Trust, Dharamtar Port and JNPT), and 70% of capital transactions to India's economy. The city houses important financial institutions and the corporate headquarters of numerous Indian companies and multinational corporations. It is also home to some of India's premier scientific and nuclear institutes. The city is also home to Bollywood and Marathi cinema industries. Mumbai's business opportunities attract migrants from all over India. Etymology. The name "Mumbai" (Marathi: ) is derived from "Mumbā" or "Mahā-Ambā"—the name of the patron Hindu goddess (kuladevata) Mumbadevi of the native Koli community—and from "ā'ī", meaning "mother" in the Marathi language, which is the mother tongue of the Koli people and the official language of Maharashtra. According to certain accounts, the Koli community, which hails from Kathiawar and Central Gujarat, is believed to have introduced their deity Mumba from Kathiawar (Gujarat), where her worship continues to this day. However, other sources disagree that Mumbai's name was derived from the goddess Mumba. The oldest known names for the city are "Kakamuchee" and "Galajunkja"; these are sometimes still used. Portuguese writer Gaspar Correia recorded the name "Bombaim" after 1512 in his "Lendas da Índia" ("Legends of India"). While some anglophone authors have suggested this name possibly originated as an allegued Galician-Portuguese phrase "bom baim", meaning "good little bay", such suggestions lack any scientific basis. Portuguese linguist José Pedro Machado attrributes that interpretation to a deficient knowledge of the Portuguese language of these authors, mixing up the Portuguese word "bom" with the English "bay", from the English version of the name. In 1516, Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa used the name "Tana-Maiambu": "Tana" appears to refer to the adjoining town of Thane and "Maiambu" to "Mumbadevi". The form "Bombaim" is still commonly used in Portuguese. Other variations recorded in the 16th and the 17th centuries include: "Mombayn" (1525), "Bombay" (1538), "Bombain" (1552), "Bombaym" (1552), "Monbaym" (1554), "Mombaim" (1563), "Mombaym" (1644), "Bambaye" (1666), "Bombaiim" (1666), "Bombeye" (1676), "Boon Bay" (1690) and "Bon Bahia". After the English gained possession of the city in the 17th century, the Portuguese name was anglicised as "Bombay". Ali Muhammad Khan, imperial dewan or revenue minister of the Gujarat province, in the "Mirat-i Ahmedi" (1762) referred to the city as "Manbai". The French traveller Louis Rousselet, who visited in 1863 and 1868, states in his book "L'Inde des Rajahs", which was first published in 1877: "Etymologists have wrongly derived this name from the Portuguese Bôa Bahia, or (French: "bonne bai", English: "good bay"), not knowing that the tutelar goddess of this island has been, from remote antiquity, Bomba, or Mumba Devi, and that she still ... possesses a temple". By the late 20th century, the city was referred to as "Mumbai" or "Mambai" in Marathi, Konkani, Gujarati, Kannada and Sindhi, and as "Bambai" in Hindi. The Government of India officially changed the English name to "Mumbai" in November 1995. This came at the insistence of the Marathi nationalist Shiv Sena party, which had just won the Maharashtra state elections, and mirrored similar name changes across the country and particularly in Maharashtra. According to "Slate" magazine, "they argued that 'Bombay' was a corrupted English version of 'Mumbai' and an unwanted legacy of British colonial rule." "Slate" also said "The push to rename Bombay was part of a larger movement to strengthen Marathi identity in the Maharashtra region." While Mumbai is still referred to as Bombay by some of its residents and by some Indians from other regions, mention of the city by a name other than "Mumbai" has been controversial. People from Mumbai. A resident of Mumbai is called "Mumbaikar" (pronounced ]) in Marathi, in which the suffix "-kar" means a "resident of". The term had been in use for quite some time but it gained popularity after the official name change to Mumbai. Older terms such as "Bombayite" are also used. History. Early history. Mumbai is built on what was once an archipelago of seven islands: Isle of Bombay, Parel, Mazagaon, Mahim, Colaba, Worli, and Old Woman's Island (also known as "Little Colaba"). It is not exactly known when these islands were first inhabited. Pleistocene sediments found along the coastal areas around Kandivali in northern Mumbai suggest that the islands were inhabited since the South Asian Stone Age. Perhaps at the beginning of the Common Era, or possibly earlier, they came to be occupied by the Koli fishing community. In the 3rd century BCE, the islands formed part of the Maurya Empire, during its expansion in the south, ruled by the Buddhist emperor Ashoka of Magadha. The Kanheri Caves in Borivali were excavated from basalt rock in the first century CE, and served as an important centre of Buddhism in Western India during ancient Times. The city then was known as "Heptanesia" (Ancient Greek: A Cluster of Seven Islands) to the Greek geographer Ptolemy in 150 CE. The Mahakali Caves in Andheri were cut out between the 1st century BCE and the 6th century CE. Between the 2nd century BCE and 9th century CE, the islands came under the control of successive indigenous dynasties: Satavahanas, Western Satraps, Abhira, Vakataka, Kalachuris, Konkan Mauryas, Chalukyas and Rashtrakutas, before being ruled by the Shilaharas from 810 to 1260. Some of the oldest edifices in the city built during this period are the Jogeshwari Caves (between 520 and 525), Elephanta Caves (between the sixth to seventh century), Walkeshwar Temple (10th century), and Banganga Tank (12th century). King Bhimdev founded his kingdom in the region in the late 13th century and established his capital in "Mahikawati" (present day Mahim). The Pathare Prabhus, among the earliest known settlers of the city, were brought to "Mahikawati" from Saurashtra in Gujarat around 1298 by Bhimdev. The Delhi Sultanate annexed the islands in 1347–48 and controlled it until 1407. During this time, the islands were administered by the Muslim Governors of Gujarat, who were appointed by the Delhi Sultanate. The islands were later governed by the independent Gujarat Sultanate, which was established in 1407. As a result of the Sultanate's support, numerous mosques were built, with one notable example being the Haji Ali Dargah in Worli. Erected in 1431, this magnificent structure pays homage to the revered Muslim saint, Haji Ali. From 1429 to 1431, the islands were a source of contention between the Gujarat Sultanate and the Bahmani Sultanate of Deccan. In 1493, Bahadur Khan Gilani of the Bahmani Sultanate attempted to conquer the islands but was defeated. Portuguese and British rule. The Mughal Empire, founded in 1526, was the dominant power in the Indian subcontinent during the mid-16th century. Growing apprehensive of the power of the Mughal emperor Humayun, Sultan Bahadur Shah of Gujarat was obliged to sign the Treaty of Bassein with the Portuguese Empire on 23 December 1534. According to the treaty, the Seven Islands of Bombay, the nearby strategic town of Bassein and its dependencies were offered to the Portuguese. The territories were later surrendered on 25 October 1535. The Portuguese were actively involved in the foundation and growth of their Roman Catholic religious orders in Bombay. They called the islands by various names, which finally took the written form "Bombaim". The islands were leased to several Portuguese officers during their regime. The Portuguese Franciscans and Jesuits built several churches in the city, prominent being the St. Michael's Church at Mahim (1534), St. John the Baptist Church at Andheri (1579), St. Andrew's Church at Bandra (1580), and Gloria Church at Byculla (1632). The Portuguese also built several fortifications around the city like the Bombay Castle, "Castella de Aguada" (Castelo da Aguada or Bandra Fort), and Madh Fort. The English were in constant struggle with the Portuguese vying for hegemony over Mumbai, as they recognised its strategic natural harbour and its natural isolation from land attacks. By the middle of the 17th century the growing power of the Dutch Empire forced the English to acquire a station in western India. On 11 May 1661, the marriage treaty of Charles II of England and Catherine of Braganza, daughter of King John IV of Portugal, placed the islands in possession of the English Empire, as part of Catherine's dowry to Charles. However, Salsette, Bassein, Mazagaon, Parel, Worli, Sion, Dharavi, and Wadala still remained under Portuguese possession. From 1665 to 1666, the English managed to acquire Mahim, Sion, Dharavi, and Wadala. In accordance with the Royal Charter of 27 March 1668, England leased these islands to the English East India Company in 1668 for a sum of £10 per annum. The population quickly rose from 10,000 in 1661, to 60,000 in 1675. The islands were subsequently attacked by Yakut Khan, the Muslim Koli admiral of the Mughal Empire, in October 1672, Rickloffe van Goen, the Governor-General of Dutch India on 20 February 1673, and Siddi admiral Sambal on 10 October 1673. In 1687, the English East India Company transferred its headquarters from Surat to Mumbai. The city eventually became the headquarters of the Bombay Presidency. Following the transfer, Mumbai was placed at the head of all the company's establishments in India. Towards the end of the 17th century, the islands again suffered incursions from Yakut Khan in 1689–90. The Portuguese presence ended in Mumbai when the Marathas under "Peshwa" Baji Rao I captured Salsette in 1737, and Bassein in 1739. By the middle of the 18th century, Mumbai began to grow into a major trading town, and received a huge influx of migrants from across India. Later, the British occupied Salsette on 28 December 1774. With the Treaty of Surat (1775), the British formally gained control of Salsette and Bassein, resulting in the First Anglo-Maratha War. The British were able to secure Salsette from the Marathas without violence through the Treaty of Purandar (1776), and later through the Treaty of Salbai (1782), signed to settle the outcome of the First Anglo-Maratha War. From 1782 onwards, the city was reshaped with large-scale civil engineering projects aimed at merging all the seven islands of Bombay into a single amalgamated mass by way of a causeway called the Hornby Vellard, which was completed by 1784. In 1817, the British East India Company under Mountstuart Elphinstone defeated Baji Rao II, the last of the Maratha "Peshwa" in the Battle of Khadki. Following his defeat, almost the whole of the Deccan Plateau came under British suzerainty, and was incorporated into the Bombay Presidency. The success of the British campaign in the Deccan marked the end of all attacks by native powers. By 1845, the seven islands coalesced into a single landmass by the Hornby Vellard project via large scale land reclamation. On 16 April 1853, India's first passenger railway line was established, connecting Mumbai to the neighbouring town of Thana (now Thane). During the American Civil War (1861–1865), the city became the world's chief cotton-trading market, resulting in a boom in the economy that subsequently enhanced the city's stature. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 transformed Mumbai into one of the largest seaports on the Arabian Sea. In September 1896, Mumbai was hit by a bubonic plague epidemic where the death toll was estimated at 1,900 people per week. About 850,000 people fled Mumbai and the textile industry was adversely affected. While the city was the capital of the Bombay Presidency, the Indian independence movement fostered the Quit India Movement in 1942 and the Royal Indian Navy mutiny in 1946. Independent India. After India's independence in 1947, the territory of the Bombay Presidency retained by India was restructured into Bombay State. The area of Bombay State increased, after several erstwhile princely states that joined the Indian union were integrated into the state. Subsequently, the city became the capital of Bombay State. In April 1950, Municipal limits of Mumbai were expanded by merging the Mumbai Suburban District and Mumbai City to form the Greater Mumbai Municipal Corporation. The Samyukta Maharashtra movement to create a separate Maharashtra state including Mumbai was at its height in the 1950s. In the "Lok Sabha" discussions in 1955, the Congress party demanded that the city be constituted as an autonomous city-state. The States Reorganisation Committee recommended a bilingual state for Maharashtra–Gujarat with Mumbai as its capital in its 1955 report. Bombay Citizens' Committee, an advocacy group of leading Gujarati industrialists lobbied for Mumbai's independent status. Following protests during the movement in which 105 people died in clashes with the police, Bombay State was reorganised on linguistic lines on 1 May 1960. Gujarati-speaking areas of Bombay State were partitioned into the state of Gujarat. Maharashtra State with Mumbai as its capital was formed with the merger of Marathi-speaking areas of Bombay State, eight districts from Central Provinces and Berar, five districts from Hyderabad State, and numerous princely states enclosed between them. As a memorial to the martyrs of the Samyukta Maharashtra movement, Flora Fountain was renamed as "Hutatma Chowk" (Martyr's Square) and a memorial was erected. The following decades saw massive expansion of the city and its suburbs. In the late 1960s, Nariman Point and Cuffe Parade were reclaimed and developed. The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (BMRDA) was established on 26 January 1975 by the Government of Maharashtra as an apex body for planning and co-ordination of development activities in the Mumbai metropolitan region. In August 1979, a sister township of New Mumbai was founded by the City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) across the Thane and Raigad districts to help the dispersal and control of Mumbai's population. The textile industry in Mumbai largely disappeared after the widespread 1982 Great Bombay Textile Strike, in which nearly 250,000 workers in more than 50 textile mills went on strike. Mumbai's defunct cotton mills have since become the focus of intense redevelopment. Industrial development began in Mumbai when its economy started focusing on the petrochemical, electronic, and automotive sectors. In 1954 Hindustan Petroleum comissoned Mumbai Refinery at Trombay and BPCL Refinery. The Jawaharlal Nehru Port, which handles 55–60% of India's containerized cargo, was commissioned on 26 May 1989 across the creek at Nhava Sheva with a view to de-congest Mumbai Harbour and to serve as a hub port for the city. The geographical limits of Greater Mumbai were coextensive with municipal limits of Greater Mumbai. On 1 October 1990, the Greater Mumbai district was bifurcated to form two revenue districts namely, Mumbai City and Mumbai Suburban, though they continued to be administered by same Municipal Administration. The years from 1990 to 2010 saw an increase in violence and terrorism activities. Following the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, the city was rocked by the Hindu-Muslim riots of 1992–93 in which more than 1,000 people were killed. In March 1993, a series of 13 coordinated bombings at several city landmarks by Islamic extremists and the Mumbai underworld resulted in 257 deaths and over 700 injuries. In 2006, 209 people were killed and over 700 injured when seven bombs exploded on the city's commuter trains. In 2008, a series of ten coordinated attacks by armed terrorists for three days resulted in 173 deaths, 308 injuries, and severe damage to several heritage landmarks and prestigious hotels. The three coordinated bomb explosions in July 2011 that occurred at the Opera house, Zaveri Bazaar and Dadar were the latest in the series of terrorist attacks in Mumbai which resulted in 26 deaths and 130 injuries. Mumbai is the commercial capital of India and has evolved into a global financial hub. For several decades it has been the home of India's main financial services companies, and a focus for both infrastructure development and private investment. From being an ancient fishing community and a colonial centre of trade, Mumbai has become South Asia's largest city and home of the world's most prolific film industry. Geography. Mumbai is on a narrow peninsula on the southwest of Salsette Island, which lies between the Arabian Sea to the west, Thane Creek to the east and Vasai Creek to the north. Mumbai's suburban district occupies most of the island. Navi Mumbai is east of Thane Creek and Thane is north of Vasai Creek. Mumbai consists of two distinct regions: Mumbai City district and Mumbai Suburban district, which form two separate revenue districts of Maharashtra. The city district region is also commonly referred to as the "Island City" or South Mumbai. The total area of Mumbai is 603.4 km2 (233 sq mi). Of this, the island city spans 67.79 km2 (26 sq mi), while the suburban district spans 370 km2 (143 sq mi), together accounting for 437.71 km2 (169 sq mi) under the administration of Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM). The remaining areas belong to various Defence establishments, the Mumbai Port Trust, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Borivali National Park, which are out of the jurisdiction of the MCGM. The Mumbai Metropolitan Region which includes portions of Thane, Palghar and Raigad districts in addition to Greater Mumbai, covers an area of 4,355 km2 (1681.5 sq mi). Mumbai lies at the mouth of the Ulhas River on the western coast of India, in the coastal region known as the Konkan. It sits on Salsette Island (Sashti Island), which it partially shares with the Thane district. Mumbai is bounded by the Arabian Sea to the west. Many parts of the city lie just above sea level, with elevations ranging from 10 m (33 ft) to 15 m (49 ft); the city has an average elevation of 14 m (46 ft). Northern Mumbai (Salsette) is hilly, and the highest point in the city is 450 m (1,476 ft) at Salsette in the Powai–Kanheri ranges. The Sanjay Gandhi National Park (Borivali National Park) is located partly in the Mumbai suburban district, and partly in the Thane district, and it extends over an area of 103.09 km2 (39.80 sq mi). Apart from the Bhatsa Dam, there are six major lakes that supply water to the city: Vihar, Lower Vaitarna, Upper Vaitarna, Tulsi, Tansa and Powai. Tulsi Lake and Vihar Lake are located in Borivili National Park, within the city's limits. The supply from Powai lake, also within the city limits, is used only for agricultural and industrial purposes. Three small rivers, the Dahisar River, Poinsar (or Poisar) and Ohiwara (or Oshiwara) originate within the park, while the polluted Mithi River originates from Tulsi Lake and gathers water overflowing from Vihar and Powai Lakes. The coastline of the city is indented with numerous creeks and bays, stretching from the Thane creek on the eastern to Madh Marve on the western front. The eastern coast of Salsette Island is covered with large mangrove swamps, rich in biodiversity, while the western coast is mostly sandy and rocky. Soil cover in the city region is predominantly sandy due to its proximity to the sea. In the suburbs, the soil cover is largely alluvial and loamy. The underlying rock of the region is composed of black Deccan basalt flows, and their acidic and basic variants dating back to the late Cretaceous and early Eocene eras. Mumbai sits on a seismically active zone owing to the presence of 23 fault lines in the vicinity. The area is classified as a Seismic Zone III region, which means an earthquake of up to magnitude 6.5 on the Richter magnitude scale may be expected. Climate. Mumbai has an extreme tropical wet and dry climate ("Aw") under the Köppen climate classification, although the central and southern suburbs have a tropical monsoon climate ("Am") with even heavier wet season rainfall. Mumbai has a virtually rainless period extending from October to May and an extremely wet period peaking in July. A cooler season from December to February is followed by a hotter season from March to May. The period from June to about the end of September constitutes the south west monsoon season, and October and November form the post-monsoon season. Between June and September, the South-west monsoon rains occur in Mumbai. Pre-monsoon showers are received in May. Occasionally, north-east monsoon showers occur in October and November. The maximum annual rainfall ever recorded was for 1954. The highest rainfall recorded in a single day was on 26 July 2005. The average total annual rainfall is for the Island City, and for the suburbs. The average annual temperature is , and the average annual precipitation is . In the Island City, the average maximum temperature is , while the average minimum temperature is . In the suburbs, the daily mean maximum temperature range from to , while the daily mean minimum temperature ranges from to . The record high is set on 14 April 1952, and the record low is set on 27 January 1962. Tropical cyclones are rare in the city. The worst cyclone to ever impact Mumbai was the one in 1948 where gusts reached in Juhu. The storm left 38 people dead and 47 missing. The storm reportedly impacted Mumbai for 20 hours and left the city devastated. Mumbai is prone to monsoon floods, caused due to climate change that is affected by heavy rains and high tide in the sea, according to the World Bank, unplanned drainage system and informal settlement is a key factor of frequent floods in Mumbai. Among other causes of flooding in Mumbai is its geographic location, Mumbai urban is peninsular in form, (a land-filled area that connects seven islands) a low laying area, compared to its suburbs that sit on an elevated location. Over the past few decades, new informal settlements were formed in the suburbs, causing a rapid increase in population, improper waste management, and drainage congestion. The rainwater from these areas heavily flows towards low-lying urban areas consisting of some slums and high-rise buildings. As a result, slums are either swamped, washed away, or collapse causing heavy casualties, and post-flood water logging lasts for a long time that causing blockage of railway lines-(most frequently used public transport in Mumbai), traffic snarl, inundated roads, and sub-merged bylanes. Over the past few decades, the frequency of floods in Mumbai is enormous, the 2005 Mumbai floods are characterized by 500-1000 deaths, household displacements, damaged infrastructure-(including heritage sites), and a financial loss of 1.2 billion. In the process of reducing floods in Mumbai, the Maharashtra government adopted a flood mitigation plan; according to which the drainage system will be restructured, restoration of Mithi River, and re-establishment of informal settlements. Local civic body Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) authorities are assigned to forecast and issue eviction notices while BMC along with NGO's prepare for the evacuation of the residents of those areas to temporary safe camps. Air pollution. Air pollution is a major issue in Mumbai. According to the 2016 World Health Organization Global Urban Ambient Air Pollution Database, the annual average PM2.5 concentration in 2013 was 63 μg/m3, which is 6.3 times higher than that recommended by the WHO Air Quality Guidelines for the annual mean PM2.5. The Central Pollution Control Board for the Government of India and the Consulate General of the United States, Mumbai monitor and publicly share real-time air quality data. 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 Mumbai, among other Indian cities. Economy. Mumbai is India's second largest city (by population) and is the financial and commercial capital of the country as it generates 6.16% of the total GDP. It serves as an economic hub of India; as of 2006, Mumbai contributed 10% of the nation's factory employment, 25% of industrial output, 33% of income tax collections, 60% of customs duty collections, 20% of central excise tax collections, 40% of foreign trade, and in corporate taxes. Along with the rest of India, Mumbai has witnessed an economic boom since the liberalisation of 1991, the finance boom in the mid-nineties and the IT, export, services and outsourcing boom in the 2000s. Although Mumbai had prominently figured as the hub of economic activity of India in the 1990s, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region's contribution to India's GDP is currently declining. Recent estimates of the economy of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region have ranged from $368 billion to $400 billion (PPP metro GDP) ranking it either the most or second-most productive metro area of India. Many of India's numerous conglomerates (including Larsen & Toubro, State Bank of India (SBI), Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), Tata Group, Godrej and Reliance), and five of the Fortune Global 500 companies are based in Mumbai. This is facilitated by the presence of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE), and financial sector regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). Until the 1970s, Mumbai owed its prosperity largely to textile mills and the seaport, but the local economy has since then diversified to include finance, engineering, diamond-polishing, healthcare and information technology. The key sectors contributing to the city's economy are: finance, gems & jewellery, leather processing, IT and ITES, textiles, petrochemical, electronics manufacturing, automobiles, and entertainment. Nariman Point and Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) are Mumbai's major financial centres. Despite competition from Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pune, Mumbai has carved a niche for itself in the information technology industry. The Santacruz Electronic Export Processing Zone (SEEPZ) and the International Infotech Park (Navi Mumbai) offer excellent facilities to IT companies. State and central government employees make up a large percentage of the city's workforce. Mumbai also has a large unskilled and semi-skilled self-employed population, who primarily earn their livelihood as hawkers, taxi drivers, mechanics, and other such blue collar professions. The port and shipping industry is well established, with Mumbai Port being one of the oldest and most significant ports in India. Dharavi, in central Mumbai, has an increasingly large recycling industry, processing recyclable waste from other parts of the city; the district has an estimated 15,000 single-room factories. As of 2023, Mumbai is home to the seventh-highest number of billionaires of any city. With a total wealth of around $960 billion, it is the richest Indian city and one of the richest cities in the world. , the Globalization and World Cities Study Group (GaWC) has ranked Mumbai as an "Alpha world city", third in its categories of Global cities. Mumbai is the third most expensive office market in the world, and was ranked among the fastest cities in the country for business startup in 2009. Government and politics. Civic administration. Greater Mumbai (or Brihanmumbai), an area of , consisting of the Mumbai City and Mumbai Suburban districts, extends from Colaba in the south, to Mulund and Dahisar in the north, and Mankhurd in the east. Its population as per the 2011 census was 12,442,373. It is administered by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) (sometimes referred to as the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai), formerly known as the "Bombay Municipal Corporation" (BMC). The BMC is in charge of the civic and infrastructure needs of the metropolis. The mayor, who serves for a term of two and a half years, is chosen through an indirect election by the councillors from among themselves. The municipal commissioner is the chief executive officer and head of the executive arm of the municipal corporation. All executive powers are vested in the municipal commissioner who is an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer appointed by the state government. Although the municipal corporation is the legislative body that lays down policies for the governance of the city, it is the commissioner who is responsible for the execution of the policies. The commissioner is appointed for a fixed term as defined by state statute. The powers of the commissioner are those provided by statute and those delegated by the corporation or the standing committee. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation was ranked 9th out of 21 cities for best governance & administrative practices in India in 2014. It scored 3.5 on 10 compared to the national average of 3.3. The two revenue districts of Mumbai come under the jurisdiction of a District Collector. The collectors are in charge of property records and revenue collection for the central government, and oversee the national elections held in the city. The Mumbai Police is headed by a police commissioner, who is an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer. The Mumbai Police is a division of the Maharashtra Police, under the state Home Ministry. The city is divided into seven police zones and seventeen traffic police zones, each headed by a deputy commissioner of police. The Mumbai Traffic Police is a semi-autonomous body under the Mumbai Police. The Mumbai Fire Brigade, which is under the jurisdiction of the municipal corporation, is headed by the chief fire officer, who is assisted by four deputy chief fire officers and six divisional officers. The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) is responsible for infrastructure development and planning of Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Mumbai is the seat of the Bombay High Court, which exercises jurisdiction over the states of Maharashtra and Goa, and the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu. Mumbai also has two lower courts, the Small Causes Court for civil matters, and the Sessions Court for criminal cases. Mumbai also has a special Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (TADA) court for people accused of conspiring and abetting acts of terrorism in the city. National politics. Mumbai had been a traditional stronghold and birthplace of the Indian National Congress, also known as the Congress Party. The first session of the Indian National Congress was held in Mumbai from 28 to 31 December 1885. The city played host to the Indian National Congress six times during its first 50 years, and became a strong base for the Indian independence movement during the 20th century. The 1960s saw the rise of regionalist politics in Mumbai, with the formation of the Shiv Sena on 19 June 1966, under the leadership of Balasaheb Thackeray out of a feeling of resentment about the relative marginalisation of the native Marathi people in Mumbai. Shiv Sena switched from 'Marathi Cause' to larger 'Hindutva Cause' in 1985 and joined hands with Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) in the same year. The Congress had dominated the politics of Mumbai from independence until the early 1980s, when the Shiv Sena won the 1985 Mumbai Municipal Corporation elections. In 1989, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a major national political party, forged an electoral alliance with the Shiv Sena to dislodge the Congress in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly elections. In 1999, several members left the Congress to form the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) but later allied with the Congress as part of an alliance known as the Democratic Front. Other parties such as Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), Samajwadi Party (SP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) and several independent candidates also contest elections in the city. In the Indian national elections held every five years, Mumbai is represented by six parliamentary constituencies: North, North West, North East, North Central, South Central, and South. A member of parliament (MP) to the "Lok Sabha", the lower house of the Indian Parliament, is elected from each of the parliamentary constituencies. In the 2019 national election, all six parliamentary constituencies were won by the BJP and Shiv Sena in alliance, with both parties winning three seats each. In the Maharashtra state assembly elections held every five years, Mumbai is represented by 36 assembly constituencies. A member of the legislative assembly (MLA) to the Maharashtra "Vidhan Sabha" (legislative assembly) is elected from each of the assembly constituencies. In the 2019 state assembly election, out of the 36 assembly constituencies, 16 were won by the BJP, 11 by the Shiv Sena, 6 by the Congress, 2 by the NCP and one by independent candidate. Elections are also held every five years to elect corporators to power in the MCGM. The Corporation comprises 227 directly elected Councillors representing the 24 municipal wards, five nominated Councillors having special knowledge or experience in municipal administration, and a mayor whose role is mostly ceremonial. In the 2012 municipal corporation elections, out of the 227 seats, the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance secured 107 seats, holding power with the support of independent candidates in the MCGM, while the Congress-NCP alliance bagged 64 seats. The tenure of the mayor, deputy mayor, and municipal commissioner is two and a half years. Transport. Public transport. Public transport systems in Mumbai include the Mumbai Suburban Railway, Monorail, Metro, Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) buses, black-and-yellow meter taxis, auto rickshaws and ferries. Suburban railway and BEST bus services together accounted for about 88% of the passenger traffic in 2008. Auto rickshaws are allowed to operate only in the suburban areas of Mumbai, while taxis are allowed to operate throughout Mumbai, but generally operate in South Mumbai. Taxis and Auto rickshaws in Mumbai are required by law to run on compressed natural gas (CNG), and are a convenient, economical, and easily available means of transport. Railway. The Mumbai Suburban Railway, popularly referred to as Locals forms the backbone of the city's transport system. It is operated by the Central Railway and Western Railway zones of the Indian Railways. Mumbai's suburban rail systems carried a total of 63 lakh (6.3 million) passengers every day in 2007. Trains are overcrowded during peak hours, with nine-car trains of rated capacity 1,700 passengers, actually carrying around 4,500 passengers at peak hours. The Mumbai rail network is spread at an expanse of 319 route kilometres. 191 rakes (train-sets) of 9 car and 12 car composition are utilised to run a total of 2,226 train services in the city. The Mumbai Monorail and Mumbai Metro have been built and are being extended in phases to relieve the overcrowding on the existing network. The Monorail opened in early February 2014. The first line of the Mumbai Metro opened in early June 2014. Mumbai is the headquarters of two zones of the Indian Railways: the Central Railway (CR) headquartered at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (formerly Victoria Terminus), and the Western Railway (WR) headquartered at Churchgate. Mumbai is also well connected to most parts of India by the Indian Railways. Long-distance trains originate from Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Dadar, Lokmanya Tilak Terminus, Mumbai Central, Bandra Terminus, Andheri and Borivali. Bus. Mumbai's bus services carried over 55 lakh (5.5 million) passengers per day in 2008, which dropped to 28 lakh (2.8 million) in 2015. Public buses run by BEST cover almost all parts of the metropolis, as well as parts of Navi Mumbai, Mira-Bhayandar and Thane. The BEST operates a total of 4,608 buses with CCTV cameras installed, ferrying 45 lakh (4.5 million) passengers daily over 390 routes. Its fleet consists of single-decker, double-decker, vestibule, low-floor, disabled-friendly, air-conditioned and Euro III compliant diesel and compressed natural gas powered buses. BEST introduced air-conditioned buses in 1998. BEST buses are red in colour, based originally on the Routemaster buses of London. Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC, also known as ST) buses provide intercity transport connecting Mumbai with other towns and cities of Maharashtra and nearby states. The Navi Mumbai Municipal Transport (NMMT) and Thane Municipal Transport (TMT) also operate their buses in Mumbai, connecting various nodes of Navi Mumbai and Thane to parts of Mumbai. Buses are generally favoured for commuting short to medium distances, while train fares are more economical for longer distance commutes. The "Mumbai Darshan" is a tourist bus service which explores numerous tourist attractions in Mumbai. Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) lanes have been planned throughout Mumbai. Though 88% of the city's commuters travel by public transport, Mumbai still continues to struggle with traffic congestion. Mumbai's transport system has been categorised as one of the most congested in the world. Water. Water transport in Mumbai consists of ferries, hovercraft and catamarans. Services are provided by both government agencies as well as private partners. Hovercraft services plied briefly in the late 1990s between the Gateway of India and CBD Belapur in Navi Mumbai. They were subsequently scrapped due to lack of adequate infrastructure. Road. Mumbai is served by National Highway 48, National Highway 66, National Highway 160 and National Highway 61. The Mumbai–Chennai and Mumbai–Delhi prongs of the Golden Quadrilateral system of National Highways start from the city. The Mumbai-Pune Expressway was the first expressway built in India. The Eastern Freeway was opened in 2013. The Bandra-Worli Sea Link bridge, along with Mahim Causeway, links the island city to the western suburbs. The three major road arteries of the city are the Eastern Express Highway from Sion to Thane, the Sion Panvel Expressway from Sion to Panvel and the Western Express Highway from Bandra to Bhayander. The under-construction Mumbai Trans Harbour Link will connect Mumbai with Navi Mumbai and when completed, will be the longest sea bridge in India. Mumbai has approximately of roads. There are five tolled entry points to the city by road. Mumbai had about 721,000 private vehicles as of March 2014, 56,459 black and yellow taxis , and 106,000 auto rickshaws, as of May 2013. Mumbai currently has one operational expressway–the Mumbai–Pune Expressway, which directly connects Mumbai with Pune. In the coming years, the great metropolis will be connected with more expressways. They are as follows: Air. The Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (formerly Sahar International Airport) is the main aviation hub in the city and the second busiest airport in India in terms of passenger traffic. It handled 36.6 million (3.66 crore) passengers and 694,300 tonnes of cargo during FY 2014–2015. An upgrade plan was initiated in 2006, targeted at increasing the capacity of the airport to handle up to 40 million (4 crore) passengers annually and the new terminal T2 was opened in February 2014. The proposed Navi Mumbai International airport to be built in the Kopra-Panvel area has been sanctioned by the Indian Government and will help relieve the increasing traffic burden on the existing airport. The Juhu Aerodrome was India's first airport, and now hosts the Bombay Flying Club and a heliport operated by state-owned Pawan Hans. Sea. Mumbai is served by two major ports, Mumbai Port Trust and Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, which lies just across the creek in Navi Mumbai. Mumbai Port has one of the best natural harbours in the world, and has extensive wet and dry dock accommodation facilities. Jawaharlal Nehru Port, commissioned on 26 May 1989, is the busiest and most modern major port in India. It handles 55–60% of the country's total containerised cargo. Ferries from Ferry Wharf in Mazagaon allow access to islands near the city. The city is also the headquarters of the Western Naval Command, and also an important base for the Indian Navy. Utility services. Under colonial rule, tanks were the only source of water in Mumbai, with many localities having been named after them. The MCGM supplies potable water to the city from six lakes, most of which comes from the Tulsi and Vihar lakes. The Tansa lake supplies water to the western suburbs and parts of the island city along the Western Railway. The water is filtered at Bhandup, which is Asia's largest water filtration plant. India's first underground water tunnel was completed in Mumbai to supply water to the Bhandup filtration plant. About 700 million (70 crore) litres of water, out of a daily supply of 3.5 billion (350 crore) litres, is lost by way of water thefts, illegal connections and leakages, per day in Mumbai. Almost all of Mumbai's daily refuse of 7,800 metric tonnes, of which 40 metric tonnes is plastic waste, is transported to dumping grounds in Gorai in the northwest, Mulund in the northeast, and to the Deonar dumping ground in the east. Sewage treatment is carried out at Worli and Bandra, and disposed of by two independent marine outfalls of and at Bandra and Worli respectively. Electricity is distributed by the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) undertaking in the island city, and by Adani Transmission, Tata Power and the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Co. Ltd (Mahavitaran) in the suburbs. Power supply cables are underground, which reduces pilferage, thefts and other losses. Cooking gas is supplied in the form of liquefied petroleum gas cylinders sold by state-owned oil companies, as well as through piped natural gas supplied by Mahanagar Gas Limited. The largest telephone service provider is the state-owned MTNL, which held a monopoly over fixed line and cellular services up until 2000, and provides fixed line as well as mobile WLL services. Mobile phone coverage is extensive, and the main service providers are Vodafone Essar, Airtel, MTNL, Loop Mobile, Reliance Communications, Idea Cellular and Tata Indicom. Both GSM and CDMA services are available in the city. Mumbai, along with the area served by telephone exchanges in Navi Mumbai and Kalyan is classified as a "Metro" telecom circle. Many of the above service providers also provide broadband internet and wireless internet access in Mumbai. , Mumbai had the highest number of internet users in India with 16.4 million (1.64 crore) users. Demographics. According to the 2011 census, the population of Mumbai city was 12,479,608. The population density is estimated to be about 20,482 persons per square kilometre. The living space is 4.5 square metres per person. Mumbai Metropolitan Region was home to 20,748,395 people by 2011. Greater Mumbai, the area under the administration of the MCGM, has a literacy rate of 94.7%, higher than the national average of 86.7%. The number of slum-dwellers in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region is estimated to be 90 lakh (9 million), up from 60 lakh (6 million) in 2001 which constitutes approximately 38.5% of the region. The sex ratio in 2011 was 838 females per 1,000 males in the island city, 857 in the suburbs, and 848 as a whole in Greater Mumbai, all numbers lower than the national average of 914 females per 1,000 males. The low sex ratio is partly because of the large number of male migrants who come to the city to work. Residents of Mumbai call themselves "Mumbaikar", "Mumbaiite", "Bombayite" or "Bombaiite". Mumbai suffers from the same major urbanization problems seen in many fast growing cities in developing countries: poverty and unemployment. With available land at a premium, Mumbai residents often reside in cramped, relatively expensive housing, usually far from workplaces, and therefore requiring long commutes on crowded mass transit, or clogged roadways. Many of them live close to bus or train stations, although suburban residents spend significant time travelling southward to the main commercial district. Dharavi, Asia's second largest slum (if Karachi's Orangi Town is counted as a single slum) is located in central Mumbai and houses between 800,000 and 10 lakh (one million) people in , making it one of the most densely populated areas on Earth with a population density of at least 334,728 persons per square kilometre. The number of migrants to Mumbai from outside Maharashtra during the 1991–2001 decade was 11.2 lakh (1.12 million), which amounted to 54.8% of the net addition to the population of Mumbai. The number of households in Mumbai is forecast to rise from 42 lakh (4.2 million) in 2008 to 66 lakh (6.6 million) in 2020. The number of households with annual incomes of 20 lakh (2 million) rupees will increase from 4% to 10% by 2020, amounting to 660,000 families. The number of households with incomes from 10 to 20 lakh (1–2 million) rupees is also estimated to increase from 4% to 15% by 2020. According to the 2016 report of the Central Pollution Control Board, Mumbai is the noisiest city in India, ahead of Lucknow, Hyderabad and Delhi. Ethnic groups and religions. The religious groups represented in Greater Mumbai as of 2011 include Hindus (65.99%), Muslims (20.65%), Buddhists (4.85%), Jains (4.10%), Christians (3.27%) and Sikhs (0.49%). The linguistic/ethnic demographics in the Greater Mumbai Area are: Maharashtrians (32%), Gujaratis (20%), with the rest hailing from other parts of India. Native Christians include East Indian Catholics, who were converted by the Portuguese during the 16th century, while Goan and Mangalorean Catholics also constitute a significant portion of the Christian community of the city. Jews settled in Mumbai during the 18th century. The Bene Israeli Jewish community of Mumbai, who migrated from the Konkan villages, south of Mumbai, are believed to be the descendants of the Jews of Israel who were shipwrecked off the Konkan coast, probably in the year 175 BCE, during the reign of the Greek ruler, Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Mumbai is also home to the largest population of Parsi Zoroastrians in the world, numbering about 60,000, however their population is declining rapidly. Parsis migrated to India from Greater Iran following the Muslim conquest of Persia in the seventh century. The oldest Muslim communities in Mumbai include the Dawoodi Bohras, Ismaili Khojas, and Konkani Muslims. Language. Marathi is the official and working language of the bureaucracy along with English. Mumbai has a large polyglot population like all other metropolitan cities of India. Sixteen major languages of India are spoken in Mumbai, with the most common being Marathi and its dialect East Indian. Marathi, and its dialect, as a single language is spoken by 35.30% of the population around 4,396,870 people. Hindi is spoken by 25.90% of the population around 3,582,719 people, making it the second largest dominant language in Mumbai. Many Hindi speakers are workers from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar who migrate seasonally to Mumbai to work as labourers. Gujarati with 2,640,990 speakers is spoken by 20.4% of the population. Other languages spoken include Urdu by 11.69% of the population. English is extensively spoken and is the principal language of the city's white collar workforce. A colloquial form of Hindi, known as "Bambaiya" – a blend of Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Konkani, Urdu, Indian English and some invented words – is spoken on the streets. Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, Odia, Punjabi, Sindhi, Tulu, Assamese, Bengali, Bhojpuri are other minority languages spoken in Mumbai. In the Suburbs, Marathi is spoken by 36.78% of the population and Gujarati by 31.21%. Education. Schools. Schools in Mumbai are either "municipal schools" (run by the MCGM) or private schools (run by trusts or individuals), which in some cases receive financial aid from the government. The schools are affiliated with either of the following boards: The primary education system of the MCGM is the largest urban primary education system in Asia. The MCGM operates 1,188 primary schools imparting primary education to 485,531 students in eight languages (Marathi, Hindi, Gujarati, Urdu, English, Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada). The MCGM also imparts secondary education to 55,576 students through its 49 secondary schools. Higher education. Under the 10+2+3/4 plan, students complete ten years of schooling and then enrol for two years in junior college, where they select one of three streams: arts, commerce, or science. This is followed by either a general degree course in a chosen field of study, or a professional degree course, such as law, engineering and medicine. Most colleges in the city are affiliated with the University of Mumbai, one of the largest universities in the world in terms of the number of graduates. The University of Mumbai is one of the premier universities in India. It was ranked 41 among the Top 50 Engineering Schools of the world by America's news broadcasting firm "Business Insider" in 2012 and was the only university in the list from the five emerging BRICS nations viz Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Moreover, the University of Mumbai was ranked 5th in the list of best universities in India by "India Today" in 2013 and ranked at 62 in the QS BRICS University rankings for 2013, a ranking of leading universities in the five BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). Its strongest scores in the QS University Rankings: BRICS are for papers per faculty (8th), employer reputation (20th) and citations per paper (28th). It was ranked 10th among the top Universities of India by QS in 2013. With 7 of the top ten Indian Universities being purely science and technology universities, it was India's 3rd best Multi Disciplinary University in the QS University ranking. The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay), Mumbai, Institute of Chemical Technology (formerly UDCT / UICT), Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute (VJTI), which are India's premier engineering and technology schools, along with SNDT Women's University are the autonomous universities located in Mumbai. In April 2015, IIT Bombay launched the first U.S.-India joint EMBA program alongside Washington University in St. Louis. Thadomal Shahani Engineering College is the first and the oldest private engineering college affiliated to the federal University of Mumbai and is also pioneered to be the first institute in the city's university to offer undergraduate level courses in Computer Engineering, Information Technology, Biomedical Engineering and Biotechnology. Grant Medical College established in 1845 and Seth G.S. Medical College are the leading medical institutes affiliated with Sir Jamshedjee Jeejeebhoy Group of Hospitals and KEM Hospital respectively. Mumbai is also home to National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (JBIMS), Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS), S P Jain Institute of Management and Research, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) and several other management schools. Government Law College and Sydenham College, respectively the oldest law and commerce colleges in India, are based in Mumbai. The Sir J. J. School of Art is Mumbai's oldest art institution. It also has one of the best law schools or universities of the country which is National Law Universities (NLU). Mumbai is home to two prominent research institutions: the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC). The BARC operates CIRUS, a 40 MW nuclear research reactor at their facility in Trombay. Mumbai Veterinary College is the oldest and premier Veterinary College of India and Asia. Its foundation stone is laid in the year of 1886. The ICAR-Central Institute of Fisheries Education (CIFE) is a Deemed to be University and institution of higher learning for fisheries science in Mumbai, India. CIFE has over four decades of leadership in human resource development with its alumni aiding in the development of fisheries and aquaculture worldwide, producing notable contributions to research and technological advancements to its credit. The institute is one of four deemed to be universities operating under the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR); the other three being the Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI), the National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI) and the Indian Agriculture Research Institute (IARI) Culture/Cityscape. Mumbai's culture offers a blend of traditional and cosmopolitan festivals, food, entertainment, and night life. The city's cosmopolitan and urban-centric modern cultural offerings are comparable to other world capitals. Mumbai bears the distinction of being the most cosmopolitan city of India. Its history as a major trading centre and the expansion of an education middle class has led to a diverse range of cultures, religions, and cuisines coexisting in the city. The variety and abundance of restaurants, cinemas, theatres, sports events and museums are a product of Mumbai's unique cosmopolitan culture. Mumbai is the birthplace of Indian cinema—Dadasaheb Phalke laid the foundations with silent movies followed by Marathi talkies—and the oldest film broadcast took place in the early 20th century. Mumbai also has a large number of cinema halls that feature Bollywood, Marathi and Hollywood movies. The Mumbai International Film Festival and the award ceremony of the Filmfare Awards, the oldest and prominent film awards given for Hindi film industry in India, are held in Mumbai. Despite most of the professional theatre groups that formed during the British Raj having disbanded by the 1950s, Mumbai has developed a thriving "theatre movement" tradition in Marathi, Hindi, English, and other regional languages. Contemporary art is featured in both government-funded art spaces and private commercial galleries. The government-funded institutions include the Jehangir Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Modern Art. Built in 1833, the Asiatic Society of Mumbai is one of the oldest public libraries in the city. The Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (formerly The Prince of Wales Museum) is a renowned museum in South Mumbai which houses rare ancient exhibits of Indian history. Mumbai has a zoo named Jijamata Udyaan (formerly Victoria Gardens), which also harbor's a garden. The rich literary traditions of the city have been highlighted internationally by Booker Prize winners Salman Rushdie, Aravind Adiga. Marathi literature has been modernized in the works of Mumbai-based authors such as Mohan Apte, Anant Kanekar, and Gangadhar Gadgil, and is promoted through an annual Sahitya Akademi Award, a literary honor bestowed by India's National Academy of Letters. Mumbai residents celebrate both Western and Indian festivals, Ganesh Chaturthi is the biggest and most important festival of Mumbai, There are almost 5000 Ganpati Pandals set up in Mumbai city for the celebrations. Other festivals like Diwali, Holi, Navratri, Christmas, Rakshabandhan, Makar Sankranti, Dussera, Eid, Durga Puja, Ram Navami, Shiv Jayanti and Maha Shivratri are some of the popular festivals in the city. The Kala Ghoda Arts Festival is an exhibition of a world of arts that encapsulates works of artists in the fields of music, dance, theatre, and films. The Banganga Festival is a two-day music festival, held annually in the month of January, which is organised by the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC) at the historic Banganga Tank in Mumbai. The Elephanta Festival—celebrated every February on the Elephanta Islands—is dedicated to classical Indian dance and music and attracts performers from across the country. Public holidays specific to the city and the state include Maharashtra Day on 1 May, to celebrate the formation of Maharashtra state on 1 May 1960, and Gudi Padwa which is the New Year's Day for Marathi people. Beaches are a major tourist attraction in the city. The major beaches in Mumbai are Girgaum Chowpatty, Juhu Beach, Dadar Chowpatty, Gorai Beach, Marve Beach, Versova Beach, Madh Beach, Aksa Beach and Manori Beach. Most of the beaches are unfit for swimming, except Girgaum Chowpatty and Juhu Beach. Essel World is a theme park and amusement centre situated close to Gorai Beach, and includes Asia's largest theme water park, Water Kingdom. Adlabs Imagica opened in April 2013 is located near the city of Khopoli off the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. Cityscape. Mumbai's cityscape consists of a variety of tall buildings and structures, most of which have been built in the last two decades. There was a significant lull in construction projects since the mid-1990s after which construction projects began taking the skyline upwards, with a major acceleration in the pace of development since 2000, when the Lower Parel area began developing. Mumbai with a commanding 77% share of tall buildings in India, is poised to maintain its position as the frontrunner in tall building construction due to its ability to command premium prices compared to other cities, thereby ensuring the economic viability of such developments within the city. Mumbai has more residential tall buildings rather than commercial, unlike the trend globally. Limited land resources and an exponential increase in urban population were the primary reasons for Mumbai’s vertical growth compared to other Tier 1 Indian cities. Architecture. The architecture of the city is a blend of Gothic Revival, Indo-Saracenic, Art Deco, and other contemporary styles. Most of the buildings during the British period, such as the Victoria Terminus and University of Mumbai, were built in Gothic Revival style. Their architectural features include a variety of European influences such as German gables, Dutch roofs, Swiss timbering, Romance arches, Tudor casements, and traditional Indian features. There are also a few Indo-Saracenic styled buildings such as the Gateway of India. Art Deco styled landmarks can be found along Marine Drive and west of the Oval Maidan. Mumbai has the second highest number of Art Deco buildings in the world after Miami. In the newer suburbs, modern buildings dominate the landscape. Mumbai has by far the highest number of skyscrapers in India, with 956 existing skyscrapers and 272 under construction . The Mumbai Heritage Conservation Committee (MHCC), established in 1995, formulates special regulations and by-laws to assist in the conservation of the city's heritage structures. Mumbai has three UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the Elephanta Caves and the Victorian and Art Deco Ensemble. In the south of Mumbai, there are colonial-era buildings and Soviet-style offices. In the east are factories and some slums. On the West coast are former-textile mills being demolished and skyscrapers built on top. There are 237 buildings taller than 100 m, compared with 327 in Shanghai and 855 in New York. Media. Bollywood, the Hindi film industry based in Mumbai, produces around 150–200 films every year. The name Bollywood is a blend of Bombay and Hollywood. The 2000s saw a growth in Bollywood's popularity overseas. This led filmmaking to new heights in terms of quality, cinematography and innovative story lines as well as technical advances such as special effects and animation. Studios in Goregaon, including Film City, are the location for most movie sets. The city also hosts the Marathi film industry which has seen increased popularity in recent years, and TV production companies. Mumbai is a hub of Indian film making. Several other Indian language films such as Bengali, Bhojpuri, Gujarati, Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu and Urdu are also occasionally shot in Mumbai. Slumdog Millionaire, an English language British film, was shot entirely in Mumbai and has garnered 8 Oscar awards. Mumbai has numerous newspaper publications, television and radio stations. Marathi dailies enjoy the maximum readership share in the city and the top Marathi language newspapers are "Maharashtra Times", "Navakaal", "Lokmat", "Loksatta", "Mumbai Chaufer", "Saamana" and "Sakaal". Popular Marathi language magazines are "Saptahik Sakaal", "Grihashobhika", "Lokrajya", "Lokprabha" & "Chitralekha". Popular English language newspapers published and sold in Mumbai include "The Times of India", "Mid-day", "Hindustan Times", "DNA India", and "The Indian Express". Newspapers are also printed in other Indian languages. Mumbai is home to Asia's oldest newspaper, "Bombay Samachar", which has been published in Gujarati since 1822. "Bombay Durpan", the first Marathi newspaper, was started by Balshastri Jambhekar in 1832. Numerous Indian and international television channels can be watched in Mumbai through one of the Pay TV companies or the local cable television provider. The metropolis is also the hub of many international media corporations, with many news channels and print publications having a major presence. The national television broadcaster, Doordarshan, provides two free terrestrial channels, while three main cable networks serve most households. The wide range of cable channels available includes Zee Marathi, Zee Talkies, ETV Marathi, Star Pravah, Mi Marathi, DD Sahyadri (All Marathi channels), news channels such as ABP Majha, IBN-Lokmat, Zee 24 Taas, sports channels like ESPN, Star Sports, National entertainment channels like Colors TV, Sony, Zee TV and Star Plus, business news channels like CNBC Awaaz, Zee Business, ET Now and Bloomberg UTV. News channels entirely dedicated to Mumbai include Sahara Samay Mumbai. Zing a popular Bollywood gossip channel is also based out of Mumbai. Satellite television (DTH) has yet to gain mass acceptance, due to high installation costs. Prominent DTH entertainment services in Mumbai include Dish TV and Tata Sky. There are twelve radio stations in Mumbai, with nine broadcasting on the FM band, and three All India Radio stations broadcasting on the AM band. Mumbai also has access to Commercial radio providers such as Sirius. The Conditional Access System (CAS) started by the Union Government in 2006 met a poor response in Mumbai due to competition from its sister technology Direct-to-Home (DTH) transmission service. Sports. Cricket is more popular than any other sport in Mumbai. It is home to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and Indian Premier League (IPL). Mumbai's first-class team Mumbai cricket team has won 41 Ranji Trophy titles, the most by any team. The city based Mumbai Indians compete in the Indian Premier League. Mumbai has two international cricket stadiums, the Wankhede Stadium and the Brabourne Stadium. The first cricket test match in India was played in Mumbai at the Bombay Gymkhana. The biggest cricketing event to be staged in the city so far is the final of the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup which was played at the Wankhede Stadium. Mumbai and London are the only two cities to have hosted both a World Cup final and the final of an ICC Champions Trophy which was played at the Brabourne Stadium in 2006. Football is another popular sport in the city, with the FIFA World Cup and the English Premier League being followed widely. The Mumbai City FC of Indian Super League (ISL) play their home matches at the Mumbai Football Arena. While the I-League club Kenkre FC uses the Cooperage Ground as home ground. When the Elite Football League of India was introduced in August 2011, Mumbai was noted as one of eight cities to be awarded a team for the inaugural season. Mumbai's first professional American football franchise, the Mumbai Gladiators, played its first season, in Pune, in late 2012. In Hockey, Mumbai is home to the Mumbai Marines and Mumbai Magicians in the World Series Hockey and Hockey India League respectively. Matches in the city are played at the Mahindra Hockey Stadium. The Indian Badminton League (IBL), now known as the Premier Badminton League is also visiting Mumbai since its inaugural edition in 2013 when the final was held in Mumbai's National Sports Club of India. In the second season, the final of the 2016 Premier Badminton League was held between home-squad Mumbai Rockets and the Delhi Dashers (formerly Delhi Acers), the visitors eventually claiming the title. The opening ceremony was also held in Mumbai while the finals in Delhi. In the 2017 Premier Badminton League (also known as Vodafone PBL 2017 for sponsorship reasons) the Mumbai Rockets beat the Hyderabad Hunters 3–1 to proceed to the final. In the final they lost 3–4 to the Chennai Smashers. U Mumba is the team representing Mumbai in the country's professional Kabaddi league, Pro Kabaddi. The Mumbai Leg of Pro Kabaddi is held at the NSCI, Worli. Rugby is another growing sport in Mumbai with league matches being held at the Bombay Gymkhana from June to November. Every February, Mumbai holds derby races at the Mahalaxmi Racecourse. Mcdowell's Derby is also held in February at the Turf Club in Mumbai. In March 2004, the Mumbai Grand Prix was part of the F1 powerboat world championship, and the Force India F1 team car was unveiled in the city, in 2008. In 2004, the annual Mumbai Marathon was established as a part of "The Greatest Race on Earth". Mumbai had also played host to the Kingfisher Airlines Tennis Open, an International Series tournament of the ATP World Tour, in 2006 and 2007. Mumbai will host the 140th IOC Session in 2023. Regional and Professional Sports Teams from Mumbai Former Regional and Professional Sports Teams from Mumbai International relations. Twin towns and sister cities. Source: "Hindustan Times"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19281

Montserrat

Montserrat ( ) is a British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean. It is part of the Leeward Islands, the northern portion of the Lesser Antilles chain of the West Indies. Montserrat is about long and wide, with roughly of coastline. It is nicknamed "The Emerald Isle of the Caribbean" both for its resemblance to coastal Ireland and for the Irish ancestry of many of its inhabitants. Montserrat is the only non-fully sovereign full member of the Caribbean Community and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States. On 18 July 1995, the previously dormant Soufrière Hills volcano, in the southern part of the island, became active. Eruptions destroyed Montserrat's Georgian era capital city of Plymouth. Between 1995 and 2000, two-thirds of the island's population was forced to flee, primarily to the United Kingdom, leaving fewer than 1,200 people on the island in 1997 (rising to nearly 5,000 by 2016). The volcanic activity continues, mostly affecting the vicinity of Plymouth, including its docking facilities, and the eastern side of the island around the former W. H. Bramble Airport, the remnants of which were buried by flows from volcanic activity on 11 February 2010. An exclusion zone, encompassing the southern part of the island to as far north as parts of the Belham Valley, was imposed because of the size of the existing volcanic dome and the resulting potential for pyroclastic activity. Visitors are generally not permitted entry into the exclusion zone, but a view of the destruction of Plymouth can be seen from the top of Garibaldi Hill in Isles Bay. Relatively quiet since early 2010, the volcano continues to be closely monitored by the Montserrat Volcano Observatory. In 2015, it was announced that planning would begin on a new town and port at Little Bay on the northwest coast of the island. While additional plans proceeded, the centre of government and businesses was moved to Brades. After a number of delays, including Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 and the COVID-19 pandemic beginning in early 2020, in June 2022, ground was broken on the Little Bay Port Development Project, a £28 million project funded by the UK and the Caribbean Development Bank. Etymology. In 1493, Christopher Columbus named the island "Santa María de Montserrate", after the Virgin of Montserrat of the Monastery of Montserrat near Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain. Montserrat means "serrated mountain" in Catalan. History. Pre-colonial era. Archaeological field work in 2012 in Montserrat's Centre Hills indicated there was an Archaic (pre-Arawak) occupation between 2000 and 500 BCE. Later coastal sites show the presence of the Saladoid culture (until 550 CE). The native Caribs are believed to have called the island "Alliouagana", meaning 'Land of the Prickly Bush'. In 2016, nine petroglyphs were discovered by local residents hiking in a wooded area near Soldier Ghaut. Another was discovered in 2018 in the same area of the island. The carvings are believed to be 1000–1500 years old. Early European period. In November 1493, Christopher Columbus passed Montserrat in his second voyage, after being told that the island was unoccupied due to raids by the Caribs. A number of Irishmen settled in Montserrat in 1632. Most came from nearby Saint Kitts at the instigation of the island's governor Thomas Warner, with more settlers arriving later from Virginia. The first settlers "appear to have been cultivators, each working his own little farm". The preponderance of Anglo-Irish in the first wave of European settlers led a leading legal scholar to remark that a "nice question" is whether the original settlers took with them the law of the Kingdom of Ireland insofar as it differed from the law of the Kingdom of England. The Irish being historical allies of the French, especially in their qualified disdain of the English, invited the French to claim the island in 1666, although no troops were sent by France to maintain control. However, the French did attack and briefly occupy the island in the late 1660s; it was captured shortly afterwards by the English and English control of the island was confirmed under the Treaty of Breda the following year. Despite the seizing by force of the island by the French, the island's legal status is that of a "colony acquired by settlement", as the French gave up their claim to the island at Breda. A neo-feudal colony developed amongst the so-called "redlegs". The Anglo-Irish colonists began to transport both white and Sub-Saharan African slaves for labour, as was common to most Caribbean islands. By the late 18th century, numerous plantations had been developed on the island. 18th century. There was a brief French attack on Montserrat in 1712. On 17 March 1768, a slave rebellion failed but their efforts were remembered. Slavery was abolished in 1834. In 1985, the people of Montserrat made St Patrick's Day a ten-day public holiday to commemorate the uprising. Festivities celebrate the culture and history of Montserrat in song, dance, food and traditional costumes. In 1782, during the American Revolutionary War, as America's first ally, France captured Montserrat in their war of support of the Americans. The French, not intent on truly colonising the island, then agreed to return the island to Great Britain under the 1783 Treaty of Paris. New crops and politics. Britain abolished slavery in Montserrat and its other territories effective August 1834. During the nineteenth century, falling sugar prices had an adverse effect on the island's economy, as Brazil and other nations competed in the trade. The first lime tree orchards on the island were planted in 1852 by a local planter Mr Burke. Later, in 1857, the British philanthropist Joseph Sturge bought a sugar estate to prove it was economically viable to employ paid labour rather than slaves. Numerous members of the Sturge family bought additional land. In 1869, the family established the Montserrat Company Limited and planted Key lime trees, started the commercial production of lime juice, with more than 100,000 gallons produced annually by 1895, set up a school, and sold parcels of land to the inhabitants of the island. The pure lime juice was transported in casks to England where it was clarified and bottled by Evans, Sons & Co, of Liverpool, with a trade mark on each bottle intended to guarantee quality to the public. Much of Montserrat came to be owned by smallholders. From 1871 to 1958, Montserrat was administered as part of the federal crown colony of the British Leeward Islands, becoming a province of the short-lived West Indies Federation from 1958 to 1962. The first Chief Minister of Montserrat was William Henry Bramble of the Montserrat Labour Party from 1960 to 1970; he worked to promote labour rights and boost tourism to the island, and Montserrat's original airport was named in his honour. However, Bramble's son Percival Austin Bramble was critical of the way tourist facilities were being constructed, and he subsequently set up his own party (the Progressive Democratic Party) which went on to win the 1970 Montserratian general election, with Percival Bramble serving as Chief Minister from 1970 to 1978. The period 1978 to 1991 was dominated politically by Chief Minister John Osborne and his People's Liberation Movement; his brief flirtation with possibly declaring independence never materialised. On 10 May 1991, the Caribbean Territories (Abolition of Death Penalty for Murder) Order 1991 came into force, formally abolishing the death penalty for murder on Montserrat. Corruption allegations within the PLM party resulted in the collapse of the Osborne government in 1991, with Reuben Meade becoming the new chief minister. As a result, early elections were called. In 1995, Montserrat was devastated by the catastrophic volcanic eruptions of the Soufrière Hills, which destroyed the capital city of Plymouth, and necessitated the evacuation of a large part of the island. Many Montserratians emigrated abroad, mainly to the United Kingdom, though in recent years some have started returning. The eruptions rendered the entire southern half of the island uninhabitable, and it is currently designated an Exclusion Zone with restricted access. Criticism of the Montserratian government's response to the disaster led to the resignation of Chief Minister Bertrand Osborne in 1997, after only a year in office, and being replaced by David Brandt who remained in office until 2001. Since leaving office, Brandt has been the subject of multiple criminal investigation into alleged sex offences with minors. He was found guilty of six counts of sexual exploitation and sentenced to fifteen years in July 2021. John Osborne returned as Chief Minister following victory in the 2001 election, being ousted by Lowell Lewis of the Montserrat Democratic Party in 2006. Reuben Meade returned to office in 2009 to 2014; during his term the post of Chief Minister was replaced with that of Premier. In the autumn of 2017, Montserrat was not hit by Hurricane Irma and sustained only minor damage from Hurricane Maria. Since November 2019, Easton Taylor-Farrell of the Movement for Change and Prosperity party has been the island's Premier. Politics and government. Montserrat is an internally self-governing overseas territory of the United Kingdom. The United Nations Committee on Decolonization includes Montserrat on the United Nations list of non-self-governing territories. The island's head of state is King Charles III, represented by an appointed Governor. Executive power is exercised by the government, whereas the Premier is the head of government. The Premier is appointed by the Governor from among the members of the Legislative Assembly which consists of nine elected members. The leader of the party with a majority of seats is usually the one who is appointed. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the Legislative Assembly. The Assembly also includes two "ex officio" members, the attorney general and financial secretary. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. Administrative divisions. For the purposes of local government, Montserrat is divided into three parishes. Going north to south, they are: The locations of settlements on the island have been vastly changed since the volcanic activity began. Only the Parish of Saint Peter in the northwest of the island is now inhabited, with a population of between 4,000 and 6,000, the other two parishes being still too dangerous to inhabit. A significantly more up-to-date administrative division type would be the 3 census regions, primarily used for the population census. Going north to south, these are: For census purposes, these are further divided into 23 enumeration districts. Police. Policing is primarily the responsibility of the Royal Montserrat Police Service. Military and Defence. The defence of Montserrat is the responsibility of the United Kingdom. The Royal Navy maintains a ship on permanent station in the Caribbean () and additionally sends another Royal Navy or Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship as a part of the Atlantic Patrol (NORTH) tasking. These ships' main mission in the region is to maintain British sovereignty for the overseas territories, provide humanitarian aid and disaster relief during disasters such as hurricanes, which are common in the area, and conduct counter-narcotics operations. Royal Montserrat Defence Force. The Royal Montserrat Defence Force is the home defence unit of the British Overseas Territory of Montserrat. Raised in 1899, the unit is today a reduced force of about forty volunteer soldiers, primarily concerned with civil defence and ceremonial duties. The unit has a historical association with the Irish Guards. Communications. The island is served by landline telephones, fully digitalised, with 3000 subscribers and by mobile cellular, with an estimated number of 5000 handsets in use. An estimated 2860 users have internet access. These are July 2016 estimates. Public radio service is provided by Radio Montserrat. There is a single television broadcaster, PTV. Cable and satellite television service is available. The UK Postcode for directing mail to Montserrat is MSR followed by four digits according to the destination town, for example, the postcode for Little Bay is MSR1120. Geography. The island of Montserrat is located approximately southwest of Antigua, southeast of Redonda (a small island owned by Antigua and Barbuda), and northwest of the French overseas region of Guadeloupe. Beyond Redonda lies Nevis (part of St Kitts and Nevis), about to the north-west. It comprises and is gradually increasing owing to the buildup of volcanic deposits on the southeast coast. The island is long and wide and consists of a mountainous interior surrounded by a flatter littoral region, with rock cliffs rising above the sea and a number of smooth bottomed sandy beaches scattered among coves on the western (Caribbean Sea) side of the island. The major mountains are (from north to south) Silver Hill, Katy Hill in the Centre Hills range, the Soufrière Hills and the South Soufrière Hills. The Soufrière Hills volcano is the island's highest point; its pre-1995 height was . However, it has grown after the eruption due to the creation of a lava dome, with its current height being estimated at . The 2011 estimate by the CIA indicates that 30% of the island's land is classified as agricultural, 20% as arable, 25% as forest and the balance as "other". Montserrat has a few tiny off-shore islands, such as Little Redonda off its north coast and Pinnacle Rock and Statue Rock off its east. Volcano and exclusion zone. In July 1995, Montserrat's Soufrière Hills volcano, dormant for centuries, erupted and soon buried the island's capital, Plymouth, in more than of mud, destroyed its airport and docking facilities, and rendered the southern part of the island, now termed the exclusion zone, uninhabitable and not safe for travel. The southern part of the island was evacuated and visits are severely restricted. The exclusion zone also includes two sea areas adjacent to the land areas of most volcanic activity. After the destruction of Plymouth and disruption of the economy, more than half of the population left the island, which also lacked housing. During the late 1990s, additional eruptions occurred. On 25 June 1997, a pyroclastic flow travelled down Mosquito Ghaut. This pyroclastic surge could not be restrained by the ghaut and spilled out of it, killing 19 people who were in the (officially evacuated) Streatham village area. Several others in the area suffered severe burns. In recognition of the disaster, in 1998, the people of Montserrat were granted full residency rights in the United Kingdom, allowing them to migrate if they chose. British citizenship was granted in 2002. For a number of years in the early 2000s, the volcano's activity consisted mostly of infrequent ventings of ash into the uninhabited areas in the south. The ash falls occasionally extended into the northern and western parts of the island. In the most recent period of increased activity at the Soufrière Hills volcano, from November 2009 through February 2010, ash vented and there was a vulcanian explosion that sent pyroclastic flows down several sides of the mountain. Travel into parts of the exclusion zone was occasionally allowed, though only by a licence from the Royal Montserrat Police Force. Since 2014 the area has been split into multiple subzones with varying entry and use restrictions, based on volcanic activity: some areas even being (in 2020) open 24 hours and inhabited. The most dangerous zone, which includes the former capital, remains forbidden to casual visitors due to volcanic and other hazards, especially due to the lack of maintenance in destroyed areas. It is legal to visit this area when accompanied by a government-authorised guide. The northern part of Montserrat has largely been unaffected by volcanic activity, and remains lush and green. In February 2005, Princess Anne officially opened what is now called the John A. Osborne Airport in the north. Since 2011, it handles several flights daily operated by Fly Montserrat Airways. Docking facilities are in place at Little Bay, where the new capital town is being constructed; the new government centre is at Brades, a short distance away. Wildlife. Montserrat, like many isolated islands, is home to rare, endemic plant and animal species. Work undertaken by the Montserrat National Trust in collaboration with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew has centred on the conservation of pribby ("Rondeletia buxifolia") in the Centre Hills region. Until 2006, this species was known only from one book about the vegetation of Montserrat. In 2006, conservationists also rescued several plants of the endangered Montserrat orchid ("Epidendrum montserratense") from dead trees on the island and installed them in the security of the island's botanic garden. Montserrat is also home to the critically endangered giant ditch frog ("Leptodactylus fallax"), known locally as the mountain chicken, found only in Montserrat and Dominica. The species has undergone catastrophic declines due to the amphibian disease Chytridiomycosis and the volcanic eruption in 1997. Experts from Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust have been working with the Montserrat Department of Environment to conserve the frog in-situ in a project called "Saving the Mountain Chicken", and an ex-situ captive breeding population has been set up in partnership with Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, Zoological Society of London, Chester Zoo, Parken Zoo, and the Governments of Montserrat and Dominica. Releases from this programme have already taken place in a hope to increase the numbers of the frog and reduce extinction risk from Chytridiomycosis. The national bird is the endemic Montserrat oriole ("Icterus oberi"). The IUCN Red List classifies it as vulnerable, having previously listed it as critically endangered. Captive populations are held in several zoos in the UK including: Chester Zoo, London Zoo, Jersey Zoo and Edinburgh Zoo. The Montserrat galliwasp ("Diploglossus montisserrati"), a type of lizard, is endemic to Montserrat and is listed on the IUCN Red List as critically endangered. A species action plan has been developed for this species. In 2005, a biodiversity assessment for the Centre Hills was conducted. To support the work of local conservationists, a team of international partners, including Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and Montana State University, carried out extensive surveys and collected biological data. Researchers from Montana State University found that the invertebrate fauna was particularly rich on the island. The report found that the number of invertebrate species known to occur in Montserrat is 1241. The number of known beetle species is 718 species from 63 families. It is estimated that 120 invertebrates are endemic to Montserrat. Montserrat is known for its coral reefs and its caves along the shore. These caves house many species of bats, and efforts are underway to monitor and protect the ten species of bats from extinction. The Montserrat tarantula ("Cyrtopholis femoralis") is the only species of tarantula native to the island. It was first bred in captivity at the Chester Zoo in August 2016. Climate. Montserrat has a tropical rainforest climate ("Af" according to the Köppen climate classification) with the temperature being warm and consistent year-round, and lots of precipitation. Summer and autumn are wetter because of Atlantic hurricanes. Economy. Montserrat's economy was devastated by the 1995 eruption and its aftermath; currently the island's operating budget is largely supplied by the British government and administered through the Department for International Development (DFID) amounting to approximately £25 million per year. Additional amounts are secured through income and property taxes, licence and other fees as well as customs duties levied on imported goods. The limited economy of Montserrat, with a population under 5000, consumes 2.5 MW of electric power, produced by five diesel generators. Two exploratory geothermal wells have found good resources and the pad for a third geothermal well was prepared in 2016. Together the geothermal wells are expected to produce more power than the island requires. A 250 kW solar PV station was commissioned in 2019, with plans for another 750 kW. A report published by the CIA indicates that the value of exports totalled the equivalent of US$5.7 million (2017 est.), consisting primarily of electronic components, plastic bags, apparel, hot peppers, limes, live plants and cattle. The value of imports totalled US$31.02 million (2016 est.), consisting primarily of machinery and transportation equipment, foodstuffs, manufactured goods, fuels and lubricants. In 1979, The Beatles producer George Martin opened AIR Studios Montserrat, making the island popular with musicians who often went there to record while taking advantage of the island's climate and beautiful surroundings. In the early hours of 17 September 1989, Hurricane Hugo passed the island as a Category 4 hurricane, damaging more than 90% of the structures on the island. AIR Studios Montserrat closed, and the tourist economy was virtually wiped out. The slowly recovering tourist industry was again wiped out with the eruption of the Soufrière Hills Volcano in 1995, although it began partially to recover within fifteen years. Transport. Air. John A. Osborne Airport is the only airport on the island (constructed after the W. H. Bramble Airport was destroyed in 1997 by the volcanic eruption). Scheduled service to Antigua is provided by FlyMontserrat and ABM Air. Charter flights are also available to the surrounding islands. Sea. Ferry service to the island was provided by the Jaden Sun Ferry. It ran from Heritage Quay in St. John's, Antigua and Barbuda to Little Bay on Montserrat. The ride was about an hour and a half and operated five days a week. This service stopped in 2019 due to being financially unsustainable and the only access to Montserrat now is by air. Demographics. Montserrat had a population of 7,119 in 1842. The island had a population of 5,879 (according to a 2008 estimate). An estimated 8,000 refugees left the island (primarily to the UK) following the resumption of volcanic activity in July 1995; the population was 13,000 in 1994. The 2011 Montserrat census indicated a population of 4,922. In early 2016, the estimated population had reached nearly 5,000 primarily due to immigration from other islands. Age structure (2003 estimates): The median age of the population was 28.1 as of 2002 and the sex ratio was 0.96 males/female as of 2000. The population growth rate is 6.9% (2008 est.), with a birth rate of 17.57 births/1,000 population, death rate of 7.34 deaths/1,000 population (2003 est.), and net migration rate of 195.35/1,000 population (2000 est.) There is an infant mortality rate of 7.77 deaths/1000 live births (2003 est.). The life expectancy at birth is 78.36 years: 76.24 for males and 80.59 for females (2003 est.). The total fertility rate is 1.8 children born/woman (2003 est.). According to a United Nations estimate, the population as of April 2018 was 5,197 (for a density of 52 per square kilometre or 135 people per square mile), with just over 90% living in non-urban areas. Language. English is the sole official language and the main spoken language. A few thousand people speak Montserrat Creole, a dialect of Leeward Caribbean Creole English. Historically Irish was spoken, but not any more. Irish language in Montserrat. The Irish constituted the largest proportion of the white population from the founding of the colony in 1628. Most were indentured servants; others were merchants or plantation owners. The geographer Thomas Jeffrey claimed in "The West India Atlas" (1780) that the majority of those on Montserrat were either Irish or of Irish descent, "so that the use of the Irish language is preserved on the island, even among the Negroes." African slaves and Irish indentured servants of all classes were in constant contact, with sexual relationships being common and a population of mixed descent appearing as a consequence. The Irish were also prominent in Caribbean commerce, with their merchants importing Irish goods such as beef, pork, butter and herring, and also importing slaves. There is indirect evidence that the use of the Irish language continued in Montserrat until at least the middle of the nineteenth century. The Kilkenny diarist and Irish scholar Amhlaoibh Ó Súilleabháin noted in 1831 that he had heard that Irish was still spoken in Montserrat by both black and white inhabitants. In 1852, Henry H. Breen wrote in "Notes and Queries: a Medium of Intercommunication for Literary Men, etc.", "The statement that 'the Irish language is spoken in the West India Islands, and that in some of them it may be said to be almost vernacular,' is true of the little Island of Montserrat, but has no foundation with respect to the other colonies." In 1902, "The Irish Times" quoted the "Montreal Family Herald" in a description of Montserrat, noting that "the negroes to this day speak the old Irish Gaelic tongue, or English with an Irish brogue. A story is told of a Connaught man who, on arriving at the island, was, to his astonishment, hailed in a vernacular Irish by the black people." A letter by W. F. Butler in "The Atheneum" (15 July 1905) quotes an account by a Cork civil servant, C. Cremen, of what he had heard from a retired sailor called John O'Donovan, a fluent Irish speaker: The British phonetician John C. Wells conducted research into speech in Montserrat in 1977–78 (which included also Montserratians resident in London). He found media claims that Irish speech, whether Anglo-Irish or Irish Gaelic, influenced contemporary Montserratian speech were largely exaggerated. He found little in phonology, morphology or syntax that could be attributed to Irish influence, and in Wells' report, only a small number of Irish words in use, one example being "minseach" which he suggests is the noun "goat". Religion. In 2001, the CIA estimated the primary religion as Protestant (67.1%, including Anglican 21.8%, Methodist 17%, Pentecostal 14.1%, Seventh-day Adventist 10.5%, and Church of God 3.7%), with Catholics constituting 11.6%, Rastafarian 1.4%, other 6.5%, none 2.6%, unspecified 10.8%. Ethnic groups. Residents of Montserrat are known as Montserratians. The population is predominantly, but not exclusively, of mixed African-Irish descent. It is not known with certainty how many African slaves and indentured Irish labourers were brought to the West Indies, though according to one estimate some 60,000 Irish were "Barbadosed" by Oliver Cromwell, some of whom would have arrived in Montserrat. Data published by the Central Intelligence Agency indicates the ethnic group mix as follows (2011 est.): Education. Education in Montserrat is compulsory for children between the ages of 5 and 14, and free up to the age of 17. The only secondary school (pre-16 years of age) on the island is the Montserrat Secondary School (MSS) in Salem. Montserrat Community College (MCC) is a community college (post-16 and tertiary educational institution) in Salem. The University of the West Indies maintains its Montserrat Open Campus. University of Science, Arts and Technology is a private medical school in Olveston. Culture. For more than a decade, George Martin's AIR Montserrat studio played host to recording sessions by many well known rock musicians, including Dire Straits, the Police, Rush, Elton John, Michael Jackson, and the Rolling Stones. After the volcanic eruptions of 1995 through 1997, and until his death in 2016, George Martin raised funds to help the victims and families on the island. The first event was a star-studded event at London's Royal Albert Hall in September 1997 (Music for Montserrat) featuring many artists who had previously recorded on the island including Paul McCartney, Mark Knopfler, Elton John, Sting, Phil Collins, Eric Clapton, and Midge Ure. The event raised £1.5 million. All the proceeds from the show went towards short-term relief for the islanders. Martin's second major initiative was to release five hundred limited edition lithographs of his score for the Beatles song "Yesterday". Complete with mistakes and tea stains, the lithographs are numbered and signed by Paul McCartney and Martin. The lithograph sale raised more than US$1.4 million, which helped fund the building of a new cultural and community centre for Montserrat and provided a much needed focal point to help the re-generation of the island. Many albums of note were recorded at AIR Studios, including Rush's "Power Windows", Dire Straits' "Brothers in Arms", Duran Duran's "Seven and the Ragged Tiger", the Police's "Synchronicity" and "Ghost in the Machine" (videos for "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" and "Spirits in the Material World" were filmed in Montserrat), and Jimmy Buffett's "Volcano" (named for Soufrière Hills). Ian Anderson (of Jethro Tull) recorded the song "Montserrat" on "The Secret Language of Birds" in tribute to the volcanic difficulties and feeling among residents of being abandoned by the UK government. In 2017, Montserrat was used to film much of the 2020 film "Wendy". Media. Montserrat has one national radio station, Radio Montserrat. The station offers a wide selection of music and news within the island and also on the internet for Montserratians living overseas. Notable shows include the "Morning Show" with Basil Chambers and Rose Willock's "Cultural Show". Cuisine. Montserrat's national dish is goat water, a thick goat meat stew served with crusty bread rolls. Montserrat cuisine resembles the general British and Caribbean cuisines, as it is situated in the Caribbean zone and it is a British territory. The cuisine includes a wide range of light meats, like fish, seafood and chicken, which are mostly grilled or roasted. Being a fusion of numerous cultures, such as Spanish, French, African, Indian and Amerindian, the Caribbean cuisine is unique and complex. More sophisticated meals include the Montserrat jerk shrimp, with rum, cinnamon bananas and cranberry. In other more rural areas, people prefer to eat homemade food, like the traditional mahi mahi and local breads. Sport. Yachting. Montserrat is home to the Montserrat Yachting Association. Athletics. Montserrat has competed in every Commonwealth Games since 1994. Miguel Francis who now represents the United Kingdom and previously represented Antigua and Barbuda was born in Montserrat. He holds the Antiguan National record over 200m in 19.88. Basketball. Basketball is growing in popularity in Montserrat with the country now setting up their own basketball league. The league contains six teams, which are the Look-Out Shooters, Davy Hill Ras Valley, Cudjoe Head Renegades, St. Peters Hilltop, Salem Jammers and MSS School Warriors. They have also built a new 800 seater complex which cost $1.5 million. Cricket. In common with many Caribbean islands, cricket is a very popular sport in Montserrat. Players from Montserrat are eligible to play for the West Indies cricket team. Jim Allen was the first to play for the West Indies and he represented the World Series Cricket West Indians, although, with a very small population, no other player from Montserrat had gone on to represent the West Indies until Lionel Baker made his One Day International debut against Pakistan in November 2008. The Montserrat cricket team forms a part of the Leeward Islands cricket team in regional domestic cricket; however, it plays as a separate entity in minor regional matches, as well having previously played Twenty20 cricket in the Stanford 20/20. Two grounds on the island have held first-class matches for the Leeward Islands, the first and most historic was Sturge Park in Plymouth, which had been in use since the 1920s. This was destroyed in 1997 by the volcanic eruption. A new ground, the Salem Oval, was constructed and opened in 2000. This has also held first-class cricket. A second ground has been constructed at Little Bay. Football. Montserrat has its own FIFA affiliated football team, and has competed in the World Cup qualifiers five times but failed to advance to the finals from 2002 to 2018. A field for the team was built near the airport by FIFA. In 2002, the team competed in a friendly match with the second-lowest-ranked team in FIFA at that time, Bhutan, in "The Other Final", the same day as the final of the 2002 World Cup. Bhutan won 4–0. Montserrat has failed to qualify for any FIFA World Cup. They have also failed to ever qualify for the Gold Cup and Caribbean Cup. The current national team relies mostly on the diaspora resident in England and in the last World Cup qualification game against Curaçao nearly all the squad members played and lived in England. Montserrat has a club league, the Montserrat Championship, which has played sporadically since 1974. The league was most recently on hiatus from 2005 until 2015 but restarted play in 2016. Surfing. Carrll Robilotta, whose parents moved from the United States to Montserrat in 1980, was responsible for pioneering the sport of surfing on the island. He and his brother Gary explored, discovered, and named the surf spots on the island during the 80's and early 90's. Settlements. Settlements within the exclusion zone are no longer habitable. See also List of settlements abandoned after the 1997 Soufrière Hills eruption. Abandoned settlements in the exclusion zone. Settlements in italics have been destroyed by pyroclastic flows since the 1997 eruption. Others have been evacuated or destroyed since 1995. Notable Montserratians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19301

Mozambique

Mozambique (; , ; ; ; ), officially the Republic of Mozambique (, ), is a country located in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west, and Eswatini and South Africa to the southwest. The sovereign state is separated from the Comoros, Mayotte and Madagascar by the Mozambique Channel to the east. The capital and largest city is Maputo. Northern Mozambique lies within the monsoon trade winds of the Indian Ocean and is frequently affected by disruptive weather. Between the 7th and 11th centuries, a series of Swahili port towns developed on that area, which contributed to the development of a distinct Swahili culture and dialect. In the late medieval period, these towns were frequented by traders from Somalia, Ethiopia, Egypt, Arabia, Persia, and India. The voyage of Vasco da Gama in 1498 marked the arrival of the Portuguese, who began a gradual process of colonisation and settlement in 1505. After over four centuries of Portuguese rule, Mozambique gained independence in 1975, becoming the People's Republic of Mozambique shortly thereafter. After only two years of independence, the country descended into an intense and protracted civil war lasting from 1977 to 1992. In 1994, Mozambique held its first multiparty elections and has since remained a relatively stable presidential republic, although it still faces a low-intensity insurgency distinctively in the farthermost regions from the southern capital and where Islam is dominant. Mozambique is endowed with rich and extensive natural resources, notwithstanding the country's economy is based chiefly on fishery—substantially molluscs, crustaceans and echinoderms—and agriculture with a growing industry of food and beverages, chemical manufacturing, aluminium and oil. The tourism sector is expanding. South Africa remains Mozambique's main trading partner, preserving a close relationship with Portugal with a perspective on other European markets. Since 2001, Mozambique's GDP growth has been thriving, but the nation is still one of the poorest and most underdeveloped countries in the world, ranking low in GDP per capita, human development, measures of inequality and average life expectancy. The country's population of around 30 million, as of 2022 estimates, is composed of overwhelmingly Bantu peoples. However, the only official language in Mozambique is the colonial language of Portuguese, which is spoken in urban areas as a first or second language by most, and generally as a lingua franca between younger Mozambicans with access to formal education. The most important local languages include Tsonga, Makhuwa, Sena, Chichewa, and Swahili. Glottolog lists 46 languages spoken in the country, of which one is a signed language (Mozambican Sign Language/"Língua de sinais de Moçambique"). The largest religion in Mozambique is Christianity, with significant minorities following Islam and African traditional religions. Mozambique is a member of the United Nations, the African Union, the Commonwealth of Nations, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Southern African Development Community, and is an observer at La Francophonie. Etymology. The country was named Moçambique by the Portuguese after the Island of Mozambique, derived from "Mussa Bin Bique" or "Musa Al Big" or "Mossa Al Bique" or "Mussa Ben Mbiki" or "Mussa Ibn Malik", an Arab trader who first visited the island and later lived there. The island-town was the capital of the Portuguese colony until 1898, when it was moved south to Lourenço Marques (now Maputo). History. Bantu migrations. Bantu-speaking peoples migrated into Mozambique as early as the 4th century BC. It is believed between the 1st and 5th centuries AD, waves of migration from the west and north went through the Zambezi River valley and then gradually into the plateau and coastal areas of Southern Africa. They established agricultural communities or societies based on herding cattle. They brought with them the technology for smelting and smithing iron. Swahili Coast. From the late first millennium AD, vast Indian Ocean trade networks extended as far south into Mozambique as evidenced by the ancient port town of Chibuene. Beginning in the 9th century, a growing involvement in Indian Ocean trade led to the development of numerous port towns along the entire East African coast, including modern day Mozambique. Largely autonomous, these towns broadly participated in the incipient Swahili culture. Islam was often adopted by urban elites, facilitating trade. In Mozambique, Sofala, Angoche, and Mozambique Island were regional powers by the 15th century. The towns traded with merchants from both the African interior and the broader Indian Ocean world. Particularly important were the gold and ivory caravan routes. Inland states like the Kingdom of Zimbabwe and Kingdom of Mutapa provided the coveted gold and ivory, which were then exchanged up the coast to larger port cities like Kilwa and Mombasa. Portuguese Mozambique (1498–1975). The Island of Mozambique after which the country is named, is a small coral island at the mouth of Mossuril Bay on the Nacala coast of northern Mozambique, first explored by Europeans in the late 15th century. When Portuguese explorers reached Mozambique in 1498, Arab-trading settlements had existed along the coast and outlying islands for several centuries. From about 1500, Portuguese trading posts and forts displaced the Arabic commercial and military hegemony, becoming regular ports of call on the new European sea route to the east, the first steps in what was to become a process of colonisation. The voyage of Vasco da Gama around the Cape of Good Hope in 1498 marked the Portuguese entry into trade, politics, and society of the region. The Portuguese gained control of the Island of Mozambique and the port city of Sofala in the early 16th century, and by the 1530s, small groups of Portuguese traders and prospectors seeking gold penetrated the interior regions, where they set up garrisons and trading posts at Sena and Tete on the Zambezi and tried to gain exclusive control over the gold trade. In the central part of the Mozambique territory, the Portuguese attempted to legitimise and consolidate their trade and settlement positions through the creation of "prazos". These land grants tied emigrants to their settlements, and inland Mozambique was largely left to be administered by "prazeiros", the grant holders, while central authorities in Portugal concentrated their direct exercise of power on, in their view, the more important Portuguese possessions in Asia and the Americas. Slavery in Mozambique pre-dated European-contact. African rulers and chiefs dealt in enslaved people, first with Arab Muslim traders, who sent the enslaved to Middle East Asia cities and plantations, and later with Portuguese and other European traders. In a continuation of the trade, slaves were supplied by warring local African rulers, who raided enemy tribes and sold their captives to the "prazeiros". The authority of the "prazeiros" was exercised and upheld amongst the local population by armies of these enslaved men, whose members became known as "Chikunda". Continuing emigration from Portugal occurred at comparatively low levels until late in the nineteenth century, promoting "Africanisation". While "prazos" were originally intended to be held solely by Portuguese colonists, through intermarriage and the relative isolation of "prazeiros" from ongoing Portuguese influences, the "prazos" became African-Portuguese or African-Indian. Although Portuguese influence gradually expanded, its power was limited and exercised through individual settlers and officials who were granted extensive autonomy. The Portuguese were able to wrest much of the coastal trade from Arab Muslims between 1500 and 1700, but, with the Arab Muslim seizure of Portugal's key foothold at Fort Jesus on Mombasa Island (now in Kenya) in 1698, the pendulum began to swing in the other direction. As a result, investment lagged while Lisbon devoted itself to the more lucrative trade with India and the Far East and to the colonisation of Brazil. The Mazrui and Omani Arabs reclaimed much of the Indian Ocean trade, forcing the Portuguese to retreat south. Many "prazos" had declined by the mid-19th century, but several of them survived. During the 19th century other European powers, particularly the British (British South Africa Company) and the French (Madagascar), became increasingly involved in the trade and politics of the region around the Portuguese East African territories. By the early 20th century the Portuguese had shifted the administration of much of Mozambique to large private companies, like the Mozambique Company, the Zambezia Company and the Niassa Company, controlled and financed mostly by British financiers such as Solomon Joel, which established railroad lines to their neighbouring colonies (South Africa and Rhodesia). Although slavery had been legally abolished in Mozambique, at the end of the 19th century the chartered companies enacted a forced labour policy and supplied cheap—often forced—African labour to the mines and plantations of the nearby British colonies and South Africa. The Zambezia Company, the most profitable chartered company, took over several smaller "prazeiro" holdings and established military outposts to protect its property. The chartered companies built roads and ports to bring their goods to market including a railroad linking present-day Zimbabwe with the Mozambican port of Beira. Due to their unsatisfactory performance and the shift, under the corporatist Estado Novo regime of Oliveira Salazar, toward a stronger Portuguese control of Portuguese Empire's economy, the companies' concessions were not renewed when they ran out. This was what happened in 1942 with the Mozambique Company, which, however, continued to operate in the agricultural and commercial sectors as a corporation, and had already happened in 1929 with the termination of the Niassa Company's concession. In 1951, the Portuguese overseas colonies in Africa were rebranded as Overseas Provinces of Portugal. The Mueda massacre of 16 June 1960, resulted in the death of Makonde protestors, which provoked the struggle of independence from Portuguese rule of Mozambique. Mozambican War of Independence (1964–1975). As communist and anti-colonial ideologies spread out across Africa, many clandestine political movements were established in support of Mozambican independence. These movements claimed that since policies and development plans were primarily designed by the ruling authorities for the benefit of Mozambique's Portuguese population, little attention was paid to Mozambique's tribal integration and the development of its native communities. According to the official guerrilla statements, this affected a majority of the indigenous population who suffered both state-sponsored discrimination and enormous social pressure. Many felt they had received too little opportunity or resources to upgrade their skills and improve their economic and social situation to a degree comparable to that of the Europeans. Statistically, Mozambique's Portuguese whites were indeed wealthier and more skilled than the black indigenous majority. As a response to the guerrilla movement, the Portuguese government from the 1960s and principally the early 1970s initiated gradual changes with new socioeconomic developments and egalitarian policies. The Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) initiated a guerrilla campaign against Portuguese rule in September 1964. This conflict—along with the two others already initiated in the other Portuguese colonies of Angola and Portuguese Guinea—became part of the so-called Portuguese Colonial War (1961–1974). From a military standpoint, the Portuguese regular army maintained control of the population centres while the guerrilla forces sought to undermine their influence in rural and tribal areas in the north and west. As part of their response to FRELIMO, the Portuguese government began to pay more attention to creating favourable conditions for social development and economic growth. Independence (1975). FRELIMO took control of the territory after ten years of sporadic warfare, as well as Portugal's own return to democracy after the fall of the authoritarian Estado Novo regime in the Carnation Revolution of April 1974 and the failed coup of 25 November 1975. Within a year, most of the 250,000 Portuguese in Mozambique had left—some expelled by the government of the nearly independent territory, some left the country to avoid possible reprisals from the unstable government—and Mozambique became independent from Portugal on 25 June 1975. A law had been passed on the initiative of the relatively unknown Armando Guebuza of the FRELIMO party, ordering the Portuguese to leave the country in 24 hours with only of luggage. Unable to salvage any of their assets, most of them returned to Portugal penniless. Mozambican Civil War (1977–1992). The new government under President Samora Machel established a one-party state based on Marxist principles. It received diplomatic and some military support from Cuba and the Soviet Union and proceeded to crack down on opposition. Starting shortly after independence, the country was plagued from 1977 to 1992 by a long and violent civil war between the opposition forces of anti-communist Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO) rebel militias and the FRELIMO regime. This conflict characterised the first decades of Mozambican independence, combined with sabotage from the neighbouring states of Rhodesia and South Africa, ineffective policies, failed central planning, and the resulting economic collapse. This period was also marked by the exodus of Portuguese nationals and Mozambicans of Portuguese heritage, a collapsed infrastructure, lack of investment in productive assets, and government nationalisation of privately owned industries, as well as widespread famine. During most of the civil war, the FRELIMO-formed central government was unable to exercise effective control outside urban areas, many of which were cut off from the capital. RENAMO-controlled areas included up to 50% of the rural areas in several provinces, and it is reported that health services of any kind were isolated from assistance for years in those areas. The problem worsened when the government cut back spending on health care. The war was marked by mass human rights violations from both sides of the conflict, with both RENAMO and FRELIMO contributing to the chaos through the use of terror and indiscriminate targeting of civilians. The central government executed tens of thousands of people while trying to extend its control throughout the country and sent many people to "re-education camps" where thousands died. During the war, RENAMO proposed a peace agreement based on the secession of RENAMO-controlled northern and western territories as the independent "Republic of Rombesia", but FRELIMO refused, insisting on the undivided sovereignty of the entire country. An estimated one million Mozambicans perished during the civil war, 1.7 million took refuge in neighbouring states, and several million more were internally displaced. The FRELIMO regime also gave shelter and support to South African (African National Congress) and Zimbabwean (Zimbabwe African National Union) rebel movements, while the governments of Rhodesia and later Apartheid South Africa backed RENAMO in the civil war. Between 300,000 and 600,000 people died of famine during the war. On 19 October 1986, Machel was on his way back from an international meeting in Zambia in the presidential Tupolev Tu-134 aircraft when the plane crashed in the Lebombo Mountains near Mbuzini in the Mpumalanga region of apartheid-ruling South Africa. There were ten survivors, but President Machel and thirty-three others died, including ministers and officials of the Mozambique government. The United Nations' Soviet delegation issued a minority report contending that their expertise and experience had been undermined by the South Africans. Representatives of the Soviet Union advanced the theory that the plane had been intentionally diverted by a false navigational beacon signal, using a technology provided by military intelligence operatives of the South African government. Machel's successor Joaquim Chissano implemented sweeping changes in the country, starting reforms such as changing from Marxism to capitalism and began peace talks with RENAMO. The new constitution enacted in 1990 provided for a multi-party political system, market-based economy, and free elections. The civil war ended in October 1992 with the Rome General Peace Accords, first brokered by the Christian Council of Mozambique (Council of Protestant Churches) and then taken over by Community of Sant'Egidio. Peace returned to Mozambique, under the supervision of the peacekeeping force of the United Nations. Democratic era (1993–present). Mozambique held elections in 1994, which were accepted by most political parties as free and fair although still contested by many nationals and observers alike. FRELIMO won, under Joaquim Chissano, while RENAMO, led by Afonso Dhlakama, ran as the official opposition. In 1995, Mozambique joined the Commonwealth of Nations, becoming, at the time, the only member nation that had never been part of the British Empire. By mid-1995, over 1.7 million refugees who had sought asylum in neighbouring countries had returned to Mozambique, part of the largest repatriation witnessed in sub-Saharan Africa. An additional four million internally displaced persons had returned to their homes. In December 1999, Mozambique held elections for a second time since the civil war, which were again won by FRELIMO. RENAMO accused FRELIMO of fraud and threatened to return to civil war but backed down after taking the matter to the Supreme Court and losing. In early 2000, a cyclone caused widespread flooding, killing hundreds and devastating the already precarious infrastructure. There were widespread suspicions that foreign aid resources had been diverted by powerful leaders of FRELIMO. Carlos Cardoso, a journalist investigating these allegations, was murdered, and his death was never satisfactorily explained. Indicating in 2001 that he would not run for a third term, Chissano criticised leaders who stayed on longer than he had, which was generally seen as a reference to Zambian President Frederick Chiluba, who at the time was considering a third term, and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, then in his fourth term. Presidential and National Assembly elections took place on 1–2 December 2004. FRELIMO candidate Armando Guebuza won with 64% of the popular vote, and Dhlakama received 32% of the popular vote. FRELIMO won 160 seats in Parliament, with a coalition of RENAMO and several small parties winning the 90 remaining seats. Guebuza was inaugurated as the President of Mozambique on 2 February 2005 and served two five-year terms. His successor, Filipe Nyusi, became the fourth President of Mozambique on 15 January 2015. From 2013 to 2019, a low-intensity insurgency by RENAMO occurred, mainly in the country's central and northern regions. On 5 September 2014, Guebuza and Dhlakama signed the Accord on Cessation of Hostilities, which brought the military hostilities to a halt and allowed both parties to concentrate on the general elections to be held in October 2014. However, after the general elections, a new political crisis emerged. RENAMO did not recognise the validity of the election results and demanded the control of six provinces – Nampula, Niassa, Tete, Zambezia, Sofala, and Manica – where they claimed to have won a majority. About 12,000 refugees fled to Malawi. The UNHCR, Doctors Without Borders, and Human Rights Watch reported that government forces had torched villages and carried out summary executions and sexual abuses. In October 2019, President Filipe Nyusi was re-elected after a landslide victory in general election. FRELIMO won 184 seats, RENAMO got 60 seats and the MDM party received the remaining 6 seats in the National Assembly. Opposition did not accept the results because of allegations of fraud and irregularities. FRELIMO secured two-thirds majority in parliament which allowed FRELIMO to re-adjust the constitution without needing the agreement of the opposition. Since 2017, the country has faced an ongoing insurgency by Islamist groups. In September 2020, ISIL insurgents captured and briefly occupied Vamizi Island in the Indian Ocean. In March 2021, dozens of civilians were killed and 35,000 others were displaced after Islamist rebels seized the city of Palma. In December 2021, nearly 4,000 Mozambicans fled their villages after an intensification of jihadist attacks in Niassa. Geography. At , Mozambique is the world's 35th-largest country. Mozambique is located on the southeast coast of Africa and is bound by Eswatini to the south, South Africa to the southwest, Zimbabwe to the west, Zambia and Malawi to the northwest, Tanzania to the north and the Indian Ocean to the east. Mozambique lies between latitudes 10° and 27°S, and longitudes 30° and 41°E. The country is divided into two topographical regions by the Zambezi River. To the north of the Zambezi, the narrow coastal strip gives way to inland hills and low plateaus. Rugged highlands are further west; they include the Niassa highlands, Namuli or Shire highlands, Angonia highlands, Tete highlands and the Makonde plateau, covered with miombo woodlands. To the south of the Zambezi, the lowlands are broader with the Mashonaland plateau and Lebombo Mountains located in the deep south. The country is drained by five principal rivers and several smaller ones with the largest and most important the Zambezi. The country has four notable lakes: Lake Niassa (or Malawi), Lake Chiuta, Cahora Bassa and Lake Shirwa, all in the north. The major cities are Maputo, Beira, Nampula, Tete, Quelimane, Chimoio, Pemba, Inhambane, Xai-Xai and Lichinga. Climate. Mozambique has a tropical climate with two seasons: a wet season from October to March and a dry season from April to September. Climatic conditions, however, vary depending on altitude. Rainfall is heavy along the coast and decreases in the north and south. Annual precipitation varies from depending on the region, with an average of . Cyclones are common during the wet season. Average temperature ranges in Maputo are from in July and from in February. In 2019 Mozambique suffered floods and destruction from the devastating cyclones Idai and Kenneth, the first time two cyclones had struck the nation in a single season. Thousands of crops were destroyed during the flooding, which causes transboundary animal diseases, and over 10 million people were affected throughout the region, according to the FAO's urgent campaign for southern Africa, which includes Malawi, Madagascar, and Mozambique. These countries have been experiencing climate disasters between January and March 2023 that have seriously affected various sectors, including farming, fisheries, and thousands of crops. Wildlife. There are known to be 740 bird species in Mozambique, including 20 globally threatened species and two introduced species, and over 200 mammal species endemic to Mozambique, including the critically endangered Selous' zebra, Vincent's bush squirrel and 13 other endangered or vulnerable species. Protected areas include thirteen forest reserves, seven national parks, six nature reserves, three frontier conservation areas and three wildlife or game reserves. The country had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 6.93/10, ranking it 62nd globally out of 172 countries. Politics. The Constitution of Mozambique stipulates that the President of the Republic functions as the head of state, head of government, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and as a symbol of national unity. He is directly elected for a five-year term via run-off voting; if no candidate receives more than half of the votes cast in the first round of voting, a second round of voting will be held in which only the two candidates who received the highest number of votes in the first round will participate, and whichever of the candidates obtains a majority of votes in the second round will thus be elected president. The prime minister is appointed by the president. His functions include convening and chairing the council of ministers (cabinet), advising the president, assisting the president in governing the country, and coordinating the functions of the other ministers. The Assembly of the Republic ("Assembleia da República") has 250 members, elected for a five-year term by proportional representation. The judiciary comprises a Supreme Court and provincial, district, and municipal courts. Mozambique operates a small, functioning military that handles all aspects of domestic national defence, the Mozambique Defence Armed Forces. Foreign relations. While allegiances dating back to the liberation struggle remain relevant, Mozambique's foreign policy has become increasingly pragmatic. The twin pillars of Mozambique's foreign policy are maintenance of good relations with its neighbours and maintenance and expansion of ties to development partners. During the 1970s and the early 1980s, Mozambique's foreign policy was inextricably linked to the struggles for majority rule in Rhodesia and South Africa as well as superpower competition and the Cold War. Mozambique's decision to enforce UN sanctions against Rhodesia and deny that country access to the sea led Ian Smith's government to undertake overt and covert actions to oppose the country. Although the change of government in Zimbabwe in 1980 removed this threat, the government of South Africa continued to destabilise Mozambique. Mozambique also belonged to the Frontline States. The 1984 Nkomati Accord, while failing in its goal of ending South African support to RENAMO, opened initial diplomatic contacts between the Mozambican and South African governments. This process gained momentum with South Africa's elimination of apartheid, which culminated in the establishment of full diplomatic relations in October 1993. While relations with neighbouring Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia and Tanzania show occasional strains, Mozambique's ties to these countries remain strong. In the years immediately following its independence, Mozambique benefited from considerable assistance from some Western countries, notably the Scandinavians. The Soviet Union and its allies became Mozambique's primary economic, military and political supporters, and its foreign policy reflected this linkage. This began to change in 1983; in 1984 Mozambique joined the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Western aid by the Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland quickly replaced Soviet support. Finland and the Netherlands are becoming increasingly important sources of development assistance. Italy also maintains a profile in Mozambique as a result of its key role during the peace process. Relations with Portugal, the former colonial power, continue to be important because Portuguese investors play a visible role in Mozambique's economy. Mozambique is a member of the Non-Aligned Movement and ranks among the moderate members of the African bloc in the United Nations and other international organisations. Mozambique also belongs to the African Union and the Southern African Development Community. In 1994, the government became a full member of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, in part to broaden its base of international support but also to please the country's sizeable Muslim population. Similarly, in 1995 Mozambique joined its Anglophone neighbours in the Commonwealth of Nations. At the time it was the only nation to have joined the Commonwealth that was never part of the British Empire. In the same year, Mozambique became a founding member and the first President of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries and maintains close ties with other Portuguese-speaking countries. Human rights. Same-sex sexual activity has been legal since 2015. However, discrimination against LGBT people in Mozambique is widespread. Administrative divisions. Mozambique is divided into ten provinces ("provincias") and one capital city ("cidade capital") with provincial status. The provinces are subdivided into 129 districts ("distritos"). The districts are further divided into 405 ""postos administrativos" (administrative posts, headed by "secretários") and then into "localidades" (localities), the lowest geographical level of the central state administration. There are 53 "municípios"" (municipalities). Economy. Mozambique is one of the poorest and most underdeveloped countries in the world, even though between 1994 and 2006 its average annual GDP growth was approximately 8%. The IMF classifies Mozambique as a heavily indebted poor country. In a 2006 survey, three-quarters of Mozambicans said that in the past five years their economic position had remained the same or become worse. Mozambique's official currency is the metical (as of December 2022, US$1 is roughly equivalent to 64 meticals) The U.S. dollar, South African rand, and the euro are widely accepted and used in business transactions. The minimum legal salary is around US$60 per month. Mozambique is a member of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The SADC free trade protocol is aimed at making the Southern African region more competitive by eliminating tariffs and other trade barriers. The World Bank in 2007 talked of Mozambique's 'blistering pace of economic growth'. A joint donor-government study in early 2007 said 'Mozambique is generally considered an aid success story.' Rebounding growth. The resettlement of civil war refugees and successful economic reform have led to a high growth rate: the country enjoyed a remarkable recovery, achieving an average annual rate of economic growth of 8% between 1996 and 2006 and between 6–7% from 2006 to 2011. Rapid expansion in the future hinges on several major foreign investment projects, continued economic reform, and the revival of the agriculture, transportation, and tourism sectors. In 2013 about 80% of the population was employed in agriculture, the majority of whom were engaged in small-scale subsistence farming which still suffered from inadequate infrastructure, commercial networks, and investment. However, in 2012, more than 90% of Mozambique's arable land was still uncultivated. In 2013, a BBC article reported that starting in 2009, the Portuguese had been returning to Mozambique because of the growing economy in Mozambique and the poor economic situation in Portugal. Economic reforms. More than 1,200 mostly small state-owned enterprises have been privatised. Preparations for privatisation and/or sector liberalisation were made for the remaining parastatal enterprises, including telecommunications, energy, ports, and railways. The government frequently selected a strategic foreign investor when privatising a parastatal. Additionally, customs duties have been reduced, and customs management has been streamlined and reformed. The government introduced a value-added tax in 1999 as part of its efforts to increase domestic revenues. Corruption. Mozambique's economy has been shaken by numerous corruption scandals. In July 2011, the government proposed new anti-corruption laws to criminalise embezzlement, influence peddling and graft, following numerous instances of the theft of public money. This has been endorsed by the country's Council of Ministers. Mozambique convicted two former ministers for graft. Mozambique was ranked 116 of 178 countries in anti-graft watchdog Transparency International's index of global corruption. According to a USAID report written in 2005, "the scale and scope of corruption in Mozambique are cause for alarm." In 2012, the government of Inhambane province uncovered the misappropriation of public funds by the director of the Provincial Anti-Drugs Office, Calisto Alberto Tomo. He was found to have colluded with the accountant in the Anti-Drugs Office, Recalda Guambe, to steal over 260,000 meticais between 2008 and 2010. The government of Mozambique has taken steps to address the problem of corruption, and some positive developments can be observed, such as the passages of several anti-corruption bills in 2012. Natural resources. In 2010–2011, Anadarko Petroleum and Eni discovered the Mamba South gas field, recoverable reserves of 4,200 billion cubic metres (150 trillion cubic feet) of natural gas in the Rovuma Basin, off the coast of northern Cabo Delgado Province. Once developed, this could make Mozambique one of the largest producers of liquefied natural gas in the world. In January 2017, 3 firms were selected by the government for the natural gas development projects in the Rovuma gas basin. GL Africa Energy (UK) was awarded one of the tenders. It plans to build and operate a 250 MW gas-powered plant. Production was scheduled to start in 2018. Mozambique is now scheduled to begin exporting LNG globally in 2024. In 2019, developments in the Rovuma Basin, referred to as The Mozambique LNG Project, raised $19 billion from a consortium of investors to finally bring this LNG to market. The majority of the project and its associated operations have been awarded to the company, TotalEnergies. Tourism. The country's natural environment, wildlife, and historic heritage provide opportunities for beach, cultural, and eco-tourism. Mozambique has a great potential for growth in its gross domestic product (GDP). The north beaches with clean water are suitable for tourism, especially those that are very far from urban centres, such the Quirimbas Islands and the archipelago of Bazaruto. The Inhambane Province attracts international divers because of the marine biodiversity and the presence of whale sharks and manta rays. There are several national parks, including Gorongosa National Park. Transport. There are over of roads, but much of the network is unpaved. Like its Commonwealth neighbours, traffic circulates on the left. There is an international airport at Maputo, 21 other paved airports, and over 100 airstrips with unpaved runways. There are 3,750 km of navigable inland waterways. There are rail links serving principal cities and connecting the country with Malawi, Zimbabwe and South Africa. The Mozambican railway system developed over more than a century from three different ports on the coast that served as terminals for separate lines to the hinterland. The railroads were major targets during the Mozambican Civil War, were sabotaged by RENAMO, and are being rehabilitated. A parastatal authority, "Portos e Caminhos de Ferro de Moçambique" (Mozambique Ports and Railways), oversees the railway system and its connected ports, but management has been largely outsourced. Each line has its own development corridor. there were 3,123 km of railway track, consisting of 2,983 km of gauge, compatible with neighbouring rail systems, and a 140 km line of gauge, the Gaza Railway. The central Beira–Bulawayo railway and Sena railway route links the port of Beira to the landlocked countries of Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. To the north of this the port of Nacala is also linked by Nacala rail to Malawi, and to the south the port of Maputo is connected by the Limpopo rail, the Goba rail and the Ressano Garcia rail to Zimbabwe, Eswatini and South Africa. These networks interconnect only via neighbouring countries. A new route for coal haulage between Tete and Beira was planned to come into service by 2010, and in August 2010, Mozambique and Botswana signed a memorandum of understanding to develop a 1,100 km railway through Zimbabwe, to carry coal from Serule in Botswana to a deepwater port at Techobanine Point. Newer rolling stock has been supplied by the Indian Golden Rock workshop using Centre Buffer Couplers and air brakes. Water supply and sanitation. Water supply and sanitation in Mozambique is characterised by low levels of access to an improved water source (estimated to be 51% in 2011), low levels of access to adequate sanitation (estimated to be 25% in 2011) and mostly poor service quality. In 2007 the government defined a strategy for water supply and sanitation in rural areas, where 62% of the population lives. In urban areas, water is supplied by informal small-scale providers and by formal providers. Beginning in 1998, Mozambique reformed the formal part of the urban water supply sector through the creation of an independent regulatory agency called CRA, an asset-holding company called FIPAG and a public-private partnership (PPP) with a company called Aguas de Moçambique. The PPP covered those areas of the capital and of four other cities that had access to formal water supply systems. However, the PPP ended when the management contracts for four cities expired in 2008 and when the foreign partner of the company that serves the capital under a lease contract withdrew in 2010, claiming heavy losses. While urban water supply has received considerable policy attention, the government has no strategy for urban sanitation yet. External donors finance about 87.4% of all public investments in the sector. Demographics. The north-central provinces of Zambezia and Nampula are the most populous, with about 45% of the population. The estimated four million Makua are the dominant group in the northern part of the country; the Sena and Shona (mostly Ndau) are prominent in the Zambezi valley, and the Tsonga and Shangaan people dominate southern Mozambique. Other groups include Makonde, Yao, Swahili, Tonga, Chopi, and Nguni (including Zulu). Bantu people comprise 97.8% of the population, with the rest made up of Portuguese ancestry, Euro-Africans ("mestiço" people of mixed Bantu and Portuguese ancestry), and Indians. Roughly 45,000 people of Indian descent reside in Mozambique. During Portuguese colonial rule, a large minority of people of Portuguese descent lived permanently in almost all areas of the country, and Mozambicans with Portuguese heritage at the time of independence numbered about 360,000. Many of these left the country after independence from Portugal in 1975. There are various estimates for the size of Mozambique's Chinese community, ranging from 7,000 to 12,000 . According to a 2011 survey, the total fertility rate was 5.9 children per woman, with 6.6 in rural areas and 4.5 in urban areas. Languages. Portuguese is the official and most widely spoken language of the nation, spoken by 50.3% of the population. The Bantu-group languages that are indigenous to the country vary greatly in their groupings and in some cases are rather poorly appreciated and documented. Apart from its lingua franca uses in the north of the country, Swahili is spoken in a small area of the coast next to the Tanzanian border; south of this, towards Moçambique Island, Kimwani, regarded as a dialect of Swahili, is used. Immediately inland of the Swahili area, Makonde is used, separated farther inland by a small strip of Makhuwa-speaking territory from an area where Yao or ChiYao is used. Makonde and Yao belong to a different group, Yao being very close to the Mwera language of the Rondo Plateau area in Tanzania. Prepositions appear in these languages as locative prefixes prefixed to the noun and declined according to their own noun-class. Some Nyanja is used at the coast of Lake Malawi, as well as on the other side of the Lake. Somewhat different from all of these are the languages of the eMakhuwa group, with a loss of initial k-, which means that many nouns begin with a vowel: for example, "epula" = "rain". There is eMakhuwa proper, with the related eLomwe and eChuwabo, with a small eKoti-speaking area at the coast. In an area straddling the lower Zambezi, Sena, which belongs to the same group as Nyanja, is spoken, with areas speaking the related CiNyungwe and CiSenga further upriver. A large Shona-speaking area extends between the Zimbabwe border and the sea: this was formerly known as the Ndau variety but now uses the orthography of the Standard Shona of Zimbabwe. Apparently similar to Shona, but lacking the tone patterns of the Shona language, and regarded by its speakers as quite separate, is CiBalke, also called Rue or Barwe, used in a small area near the Zimbabwe border. South of this area are languages of the Tsonga group. XiTswa or Tswa occurs at the coast and inland, XiTsonga or Tsonga straddles the area around the Limpopo River, including such local dialects as XiHlanganu, XiN'walungu, XiBila, XiHlengwe, and XiDzonga. This language area extends into neighbouring South Africa. Still related to these, but distinct, are GiTonga, BiTonga, and CiCopi or Chopi, spoken north of the mouth of the Limpopo, and XiRonga or Ronga, spoken in the immediate region around Maputo. The languages in this group are, judging by the short vocabularies, very vaguely similar to Zulu, but obviously not in the same immediate group. There are small Swazi- and Zulu-speaking areas in Mozambique immediately next to the Swaziland and KwaZulu-Natal borders. Arabs, Chinese, and Indians primarily speak Portuguese and some Hindi. Indians from Portuguese India speak any of the Portuguese creoles of their origin aside from Portuguese as their second language. Religion. The 2007 census found that Christians made up 59.2% of Mozambique's population, Muslims comprised 18.9% of the population, 7.3% of the people held other beliefs, mainly animism, and 13.9% had no religious beliefs. A more recent government survey conducted by the Demographic and Health Surveys program in 2015 indicated that Catholicism had increased to 30.5% of the population, Muslims constituted 19.3%, and various Protestant groups a total of 44%. According to 2018 estimates from the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, 28% of the population is Catholic, 18% are Muslim (mostly Sunni), 15% are Zionist Christians, 12% are Protestants, 7% are members of other religious groups, and 18% have no religion. The Catholic Church has established twelve dioceses (Beira, Chimoio, Gurué, Inhambane, Lichinga, Maputo, Nacala, Nampula, Pemba, Quelimane, Tete, and Xai-Xai; archdioceses are Beira, Maputo and Nampula). Statistics for the dioceses range from a low 5.8% Catholics in the population in the Diocese of Chimoio, to 32.50% in Quelimane diocese (Anuario catolico de Mocambique). Among the main Protestant denominations are Igreja União Baptista de Moçambique, the Assembleias de Deus, the Seventh-day Adventists, the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, the Igreja do Evangelho Completo de Deus, the Igreja Metodista Unida, the Igreja Presbiteriana de Moçambique, the Igrejas de Cristo and the Assembleia Evangélica de Deus. The work of Methodism in Mozambique started in 1890. Erwin Richards began a Methodist mission at Chicuque in Inhambane Province. The Igreja Metodista Unida em Moçambique (United Methodist Church in Mozambique) observed the 100th anniversary of Methodist presence in Mozambique in 1990. President Chissano praised the work and role of the UMC to more than 10,000 people who attended the ceremony. The United Methodist Church has tripled in size in Mozambique since 1998. There are more than 150,000 members in more than 180 congregations of the 24 districts. New pastors are ordained each year. New churches are chartered each year in each Annual Conference (north and south). The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has established a growing presence. It first began sending missionaries to Mozambique in 1999, and, as of April 2015, has more than 7,943 members. The Baháʼí Faith has been present in Mozambique since the early 1950s but did not openly identify itself in those years because of the strong influence of the Catholic Church which did not recognise it officially as a world religion. The independence in 1975 saw the entrance of new pioneers. In total, there are about 3,000 declared Baháʼís . Muslims are particularly present in the north of the country. They are organised in several "tariqa" or brotherhoods. Two national organisations also exist—the "Conselho Islâmico de Moçambique" and the "Congresso Islâmico de Moçambique". There are also important Pakistani, Indian associations as well as some Shia communities. There is a very small but thriving Jewish community in Maputo. Health. The fertility rate is at about 5.5 births per woman. Public expenditure on health was at 2.7% of the GDP in 2004, whereas private expenditure on health was at 1.3% in the same year. Health expenditure per capita was 42 US$ (PPP) in 2004. In the early 21st century there were 3 physicians per 100,000 people in the country. Infant mortality was at 100 per 1,000 births in 2005. The 2010 maternal mortality rate per 100,000 births for Mozambique is 550. This is compared with 598.8 in 2008 and 385 in 1990. The under 5 mortality rate, per 1,000 births is 147 and the neonatal mortality as a percentage of under 5s mortality is 29. In Mozambique the number of midwives per 1,000 live births is 3 and the lifetime risk of death for pregnant women 1 in 37. The official HIV prevalence in 2011 was 11.5% of the population aged between 15 and 49 years. In the southern parts of Mozambique—Maputo and Gaza provinces as well as the city of Maputo—the official figures are more than twice as high as the national average. In 2011 the health authorities estimated about 1.7 million Mozambicans were HIV-positive, of whom 600,000 were in need of anti-retroviral treatment. As of December 2011, 240,000 were receiving such treatment, increasing to 416,000 in March 2014 according to the health authorities. Education. Portuguese is the primary language of instruction in all Mozambican schools. All Mozambicans are required by law to attend school through the primary level; however, a lot of children do not go to primary school because they have to work for their families' subsistence farms for a living. In 2007, one million children still did not go to school, most of them from poor rural families, and almost half of all teachers were unqualified. Girls enrollment increased from 3 million in 2002 to 4.1 million in 2006 while the completion rate increased from 31,000 to 90,000, which testified a very poor completion rate. After grade 7, pupils must take standardised national exams to enter secondary school, which runs from eighth to 10th grade. Space in Mozambican universities is extremely limited; thus most pupils who complete pre-university school do not immediately proceed on to university studies. Many go to work as teachers or are unemployed. There are also institutes that give more vocational training, specialising in agricultural, technical or pedagogical studies, which students may attend after grade 10 in lieu of a pre-university school. After independence from Portugal in 1975, a number of Mozambican pupils continued to be admitted every year at Portuguese high schools, polytechnical institutes and universities, through bilateral agreements between the Portuguese government and the Mozambican government. According to 2010 estimates, the literacy rate was 56.1% (70.8% male and 42.8% female). By 2015, this had increased to 58.8% (73.3% male and 45.4% female). Culture. Mozambique was ruled by Portugal, and they share a main language (Portuguese) and main religion (Roman Catholicism). But since most of the people of Mozambique are Bantus, most of the culture is native; for Bantus living in urban areas, there is some Portuguese influence. Mozambican culture also influences the Portuguese culture. Arts. The Makonde are known for their wood carving and elaborate masks, which are commonly used in traditional dances. There are two different kinds of wood carvings: shetani, (evil spirits), which are mostly carved in heavy ebony, tall, and elegantly curved with symbols and nonrepresentational faces; and ujamaa, which are totem-type carvings which illustrate lifelike faces of people and various figures. These sculptures are usually referred to as "family trees" because they tell stories of many generations. During the last years of the colonial period, Mozambican art reflected the oppression by the colonial power and became a symbol of resistance. After independence in 1975, modern art came into a new phase. The two best known and most influential contemporary Mozambican artists are the painter Malangatana Ngwenya and the sculptor Alberto Chissano. A lot of the post-independence art during the 1980s and 1990s reflect the political struggle, civil war, suffering, starvation, and struggle. Dances are usually intricate, highly developed traditions throughout Mozambique. There are many different kinds of dances from tribe to tribe which are usually ritualistic in nature. The Chopi, for instance, act out battles dressed in animal skins. The men of Makua dress in colourful outfits and masks while dancing on stilts around the village for hours. Groups of women in the northern part of the country perform a traditional dance called "tufo", to celebrate Islamic holidays. Cuisine. With a nearly 500-year presence in the country, the Portuguese have greatly influenced Mozambique's cuisine. Staples and crops such as cassava (a starchy root of Brazilian origin) and cashew nuts (also of Brazilian origin, though Mozambique was once the largest producer of these nuts), and "pãozinho" (pronounced , Portuguese-style buns), were brought in by the Portuguese. The use of spices and seasonings such as bay leaves, chili peppers, fresh coriander, garlic, onions, paprika, red sweet peppers, and wine were introduced by the Portuguese, as were maize, potatoes, rice, and sugarcane. "espetada", the popular "inteiro com piripiri" (whole chicken in piri-piri sauce), "prego" (steak roll), "pudim" (pudding), and "rissóis" (battered shrimp) are all Portuguese dishes commonly eaten in present-day Mozambique. Media. Mozambican media is heavily influenced by the government. Newspapers have relatively low circulation rates because of high newspaper prices and low literacy rates. Among the most highly circulated newspapers are state-controlled dailies, such as "Noticias" and "Diário de Moçambique", and the weekly "Domingo". Their circulation is mostly confined to Maputo. Most funding and advertising revenue is given to pro-government newspapers. Radio programmes are the most influential form of media in the country because of ease of access. State-owned radio stations are more popular than privately owned media. This is exemplified by the government radio station, Rádio Moçambique, the most popular station in the country. It was established shortly after Mozambique's independence. The television stations watched by Mozambicans are STV, TIM, and TVM Televisão Moçambique. Through cable and satellite, viewers can access tens of other African, Asian, Brazilian, and European channels. Music. The music of Mozambique serves many purposes, ranging from religious expression to traditional ceremonies. Musical instruments are usually handmade. Some of the instruments used in Mozambican musical expression include drums made of wood and animal skin; the "lupembe", a woodwind instrument made from animal horns or wood; and the marimba, which is a kind of xylophone native to Mozambique and other parts of Africa. The marimba is a popular instrument with the Chopi of the south-central coast, who are famous for their musical skill and dance. Sport. Football () is the most popular sport in Mozambique. The national team is the Mozambique national football team. Track and field and basketball are also avidly followed in the country. Roller hockey is popular, and the best result for the national team was when they came in fourth at the 2011 FIRS Roller Hockey World Cup. The women's beach volleyball team finished 2nd at the 2018–2020 CAVB Beach Volleyball Continental Cup. The Mozambique national cricket team represents the nation in international cricket. External links. Government: General information: Tourism: Health: The State of the World's Midwifery – Mozambique Country Profile

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19532

Cardiff Arms Park

Cardiff Arms Park (), also known as The Arms Park, is situated in the centre of Cardiff, Wales. It is primarily known as a rugby union stadium, but it also has a bowling green. The Arms Park was host to the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in 1958, and hosted four games in the 1991 Rugby World Cup, including the third-place play-off. The Arms Park also hosted the inaugural Heineken Cup Final of 1995–96 and the following year in 1996–97. The history of the rugby ground begins with the first stands appearing for spectators in the ground in 1881–1882. Originally the Arms Park had a cricket ground to the north and a rugby union stadium to the south. By 1969, the cricket ground had been demolished to make way for the present day rugby ground to the north and a second rugby stadium to the south, called the National Stadium. The National Stadium, which was used by Wales national rugby union team, was officially opened on 7 April 1984, however in 1997 it was demolished to make way for the Millennium Stadium in 1999, which hosted the 1999 Rugby World Cup and became the national stadium of Wales. The rugby ground has remained the home of the semi-professional Cardiff RFC yet the professional Cardiff Blues regional rugby union team moved to the Cardiff City Stadium in 2009, but returned three years later. The site is owned by Cardiff Athletic Club and has been host to many sports, apart from rugby union and cricket; they include athletics, association football, greyhound racing, tennis, British baseball and boxing. The site also has a bowling green to the north of the rugby ground, which is used by Cardiff Athletic Bowls Club, which is the bowls section of the Cardiff Athletic Club. The National Stadium also hosted many music concerts including Michael Jackson, Dire Straits, David Bowie, Bon Jovi, The Rolling Stones and U2. History. Early history of the site. The Cardiff Arms Park site was originally called the Great Park, a swampy meadow behind the Cardiff Arms Hotel. The hotel was built by Sir Thomas Morgan, during the reign of Charles I. Cardiff Arms Park was named after this hotel. From 1803, the Cardiff Arms Hotel and the Park had become the property of the Bute family. The Arms Park soon became a popular place for sporting events, and by 1848, Cardiff Cricket Club was using the site for its cricket matches. However, by 1878, Cardiff Arms Hotel had been demolished. The 3rd Marquess of Bute stipulated that the ground could only be used for "recreational purposes". At that time Cardiff Arms Park had a cricket ground to the north and a rugby union ground to the south. 1881–2 saw the first stands for spectators; they held 300 spectators and cost £50. The architect was Archibald Leitch, famous for designing Ibrox Stadium and Old Trafford, among others. In 1890, new standing areas were constructed along the entire length of the ground, with additional stands erected in 1896. 1912 redevelopment. By 1912, the Cardiff Football Ground, as it was then known, had a new south stand and temporary stands on the north, east and west ends of the ground. The south stand was covered, while the north terrace was initially without a roof. The improvements were partly funded by the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU). The opening ceremony took place on 5 October 1912, with a match between Newport RFC and Cardiff RFC. The new ground was opened by Lord Ninian Crichton-Stuart. This new development increased the ground capacity to 43,000 and much improved facilities at the ground compared to the earlier stands. In 1922, The 4th Marquess of Bute sold the entire site and it was bought by the Cardiff Arms Park Company Limited for £30,000. It was then leased to the Cardiff Athletic Club (cricket and rugby sections) for 99 years at a cost of £200 per annum. North and South Stand redevelopments. During 1934 the cricket pavilion had been demolished to make way for the new North Stand which was built on the rugby union ground, costing around £20,000. However, in 1941 the new North Stand and part of the west terracing was badly damaged in the Blitz by the Luftwaffe during the Second World War. At a general meeting of the WRU in June 1953 they made a decision "That until such time as the facilities at Swansea were improved, all international matches be played at Cardiff". At the same time, plans were made for a new South Stand which was estimated to cost £60,000; the tender price, however, came out at £90,000, so a compromise was made and it was decided to build a new upper South Stand costing £64,000 instead, with the Cardiff Athletic Club contributing £15,000 and the remainder coming from the WRU. The new South Stand opened in 1956, in time for the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games. This brought the overall capacity of the Arms Park up to 60,000 spectators, of which 12,800 were seated and the remainder standing. The Arms Park hosted the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games, which was used for the athletics events, but this event caused damage to the drainage system, so much so, that other rugby unions (England, Scotland and Ireland) complained after the Games about the state of the pitch. On 4 December 1960, due to torrential rain, the River Taff burst its banks with the Arms Park pitch being left under of water. The Development Committee was set up to resolve these issues on a permanent basis. They looked at various sites in Cardiff, but they all proved to be unsatisfactory. They also could not agree a solution with the Cardiff Athletic Club, so they purchased about of land at Island Farm in Bridgend, which was previously used as a prisoner-of-war camp. It is best known for being the camp where the biggest escape attempt was made by German prisoners of war in Great Britain during the Second World War. Due to problems including transport issues Glamorgan County Council never gave outline planning permission for the proposals and by June 1964 the scheme was abandoned. At that stage, the cricket ground to the north was still being used by Glamorgan County Cricket Club, and the rugby union ground to the south was used by the national Wales team and Cardiff RFC. By 7 October 1966, the first floodlit game was held at Cardiff Arms Park, a game in which Cardiff RFC beat the Barbarians by 12 points to 8. National Stadium redevelopment. The National Stadium, which was previously known as the Welsh National Rugby Ground, was designed by Osborne V Webb & Partners and built by G A Williamson & Associates of Porthcawl and Andrew Scott & Company of Port Talbot. In 1969 construction began on the stadium which replaced the existing rugby ground built in 1881. The stadium was home to the Wales national rugby union team since 1964 and the Wales national football team since 1989. In 1997 the stadium was demolished to make way for the new Millennium Stadium. Millennium Stadium. Thirteen years after the National Stadium had opened in 1984, it was considered too small and did not have the facilities required of the time and it was demolished and a new stadium, the Millennium Stadium, was built in its place (completed to a north–south alignment and opened in June 1999). This would become the fourth redevelopment on the site. Construction involved the demolition of a number of buildings, primarily the existing National Stadium, Wales Empire Pool in Wood Street, Cardiff Empire Telephone Exchange building and the newly built Territorial Auxiliary & Volunteer Reserve building both in Park Street, and the Social Security offices in Westgate Street. The Millennium Stadium is now on roughly two-thirds of the National Stadium, but it no longer uses the Arms Park name. Since 2016 it has been known as the Principality Stadium. Current site. Rugby ground. Only the rugby ground and the Cardiff Athletic Bowls Club now use the name Cardiff Arms Park. The rugby ground has two main stands, the North Stand and the South Stand. Both the Stands have terracing below seating. The other stands in the ground are the Westgate Street end Family Stand, which has rows of seating below executive boxes, plus the club shop, and the River Taff end (the Barry Nelmes Suite, named after Barry Nelmes, the former Cardiff RFC captain), which has 26 executive boxes. The rugby ground has two main entrances, the south entrance, and the Gwyn Nicholls Memorial Gates (Angel Hotel entrance), which was unveiled on 26 December 1949 in honour of the Welsh international rugby player Gwyn Nicholls. The Cardiff Athletic Clubhouse is situated in the corner of the ground between the South Stand and the Westgate Street end. The South Stand of the rugby ground formed a complete unit with the North Stand of the National Stadium. Now the same structure of the South Stand of the rugby ground is also physically attached to the North Stand of the Millennium Stadium. This section is known colloquially as Glanmor's Gap, after Glanmor Griffiths, former chair and President of the WRU. This came about because the WRU were unable to secure enough funding to include the North Stand in the Millennium Stadium, and the National Lottery Commission would not provide any additional funds to be used for the construction of a new ground for Cardiff RFC. The Millennium Stadium was therefore built with the old reinforced concrete structure of the National Stadium (North Stand) and the new steel Millennium Stadium structure built around it. There was doubt about the future of the Arms Park after 2010 following the move of the Cardiff Blues to the Cardiff City Stadium. Cardiff RFC Ltd, the company that runs Cardiff Blues and Cardiff RFC, still has a 15-year lease on the Arms Park, but talks are underway to release the rugby club from the terms of the lease, to enable the Millennium Stadium to be redeveloped with a new North Stand and adjoining convention centre. However, it still has the original requirement on the lease, that the land will only be used for "recreational purposes", as stipulated by the Bute family. But the Arms Park site is a prime piece of real estate in the centre of Cardiff, which means that it may be difficult to sell the land to property developers. The estimated value of the whole Arms Park site could be at least £25 million, although with the "recreational use" requirement, its actual value could be a lot less than that figure. A decision by Cardiff Athletic Club on the future of the Arms Park has yet to be made. In 2011, the Cardiff Blues regional rugby union team made a £6 million bid for the Arms Park, later the WRU made an increased bid of £10 million for the site. Both bids were rejected by the trustees of the Cardiff Athletic Club. However, in 2012 Cardiff Blues announced that they would be making a permanent return to Cardiff Arms Park following declining attendances at the Cardiff City Stadium. During the 2013 off-season, the pitch at the rugby gound was replaced with an all weather 3G (third generation) artificial turf surface from FieldTurf at a cost of £400,000, intended to prevent any adverse weather conditions from affecting the rugby. An agreement in principle was reached in December 2015 between the landlord of the stadium site (Cardiff Athletic Club) and its tenant (Cardiff Blues) to give the club a 150-year lease on the stadium site. This could see the redevelopment of the Arms Park, including a new 15,000 seater stadium at 90 degrees to the existing stadium costing between £20 million and £30 million and surrounded by new offices and apartments. If the final agreement goes ahead, Cardiff Athletic Club would receive an upfront payment of approximately £8 million. As part of the agreement, the bowls section would have to vacate its current site at the Arms Park and move to a new facility. At present Cardiff Blues pay Cardiff Athletic Club rent of around £115,000 per annum, however this would nearly double to around £200,000. Bowling green. Cardiff Arms Park is best known as a rugby union stadium, but Cardiff Athletic Bowls Club (CABC) was established in 1923, and ever since then, the club has used the Arms Park as its bowling green. The bowls club is a section of the Cardiff Athletic Club and shares many of the facilities of the Cardiff Arms Park athletics centre. The Les Spence Memorial Gates were erected in memory of the former Cardiff RFU player, who captained the team in 1936–37. He was born in 1907 and became chairman of the Cardiff RFU and president of the WRU between 1973 and 1974. He was awarded an MBE and died in 1988. The club has produced two Welsh international bowlers; Mr. C Standfast in 1937 and Mr. B Hawkins who represented Wales in the 1982 World Pairs and captained Wales in 1982 and 1984. Usage. Association football. The Riverside Football Club, founded in 1899, played some matches at the Arms Park until 1910, when they moved to Ninian Park, and later became Cardiff City Football Club. On 31 May 1989, Wales played its first international game against West Germany at the National Stadium in a World Cup qualifying match, which ended goalless. It was also the first ever international football match held in Great Britain that was watched by all-seater spectators. The adjoining Cardiff Rugby Club ground has also been used for Association Football. In July 1995, Ton Pentre played two Intertoto Cup games there, against Heerenveen (Netherlands) and Uniao Leiria (Portugal) as their own ground was not suitable. The Heerenveen game - the first ever soccer match to be played there - kicked off at 6pm on Saturday 1 July 1995 and resulted in the Dutch side winning 7–0. The Wales U-21 team have also played a home game there in the late 1990s. On 5 April 2017, the ground was used to host the men's and women's football matches as part of the 2017 Welsh Varsity, between Cardiff University and Swansea University. The women's game finished in a 1-1 draw, while the men's game resulted in a 1-0 win for Swansea. Athletics. In 1958, the British Empire and Commonwealth Games were held in Cardiff. The event was (to date) the biggest sporting event ever held in Wales; however, it would not have been possible without the financial support given by the WRU and the Cardiff Athletic Club. Both the opening and closing ceremonies took place at Cardiff Arms Park, plus all the track and field events, on what had been the greyhound track. It would turn out to be the last time that South Africa would participate in the Games until 1994. South Africa withdrew from the Commonwealth Games in 1961. Baseball & British baseball. Baseball was established early on in Cardiff, and one of the earliest of games to be held at the Arms Park was on 18 May 1918. It was a charity match in aid of the Prisoner of War Fund between Welsh and American teams of the U.S. Beaufort & U.S. Jupiter. British baseball matches have also regularly taken place at the Arms Park and hosted the annual England versus Wales international game every four years. The games are now usually held at Roath Park. Boxing. The first boxing contest held at the Arms Park was on 24 January 1914, when Bombardier Billy Wells beat Gaston Pigot by a knockout in the first round of a 20-round contest. Boxing contests were held later on 14 June 1943, 12 August 1944, 4 October 1951 and 10 September 1952. Around 25,000 spectators watched international boxing on 1 October 1993, at the National Stadium with a World Boxing Council (WBC) Heavyweight title bout between Lennox Lewis and Frank Bruno. It was the first time that two British-born boxers had fought for the world heavyweight title. Lewis beat Bruno by a technical knockout in the 7th round, in what was called the "Battle of Britain". On 30 September 1995, Steve Robinson the World Boxing Organization (WBO) World Featherweight Champion, lost against Prince Naseem Hamed at the rugby ground in 8 rounds. Cricket. In 1819 Cardiff Cricket Club was formed and by 1848 they had moved to their new home at the Arms Park. Glamorgan County Cricket Club, at the time not a first-class county, played their first match at the ground in June 1869 against Monmouthshire Cricket Club. The county club played their first County Championship match on the ground in 1921, competing there every season (except while first-class cricket was suspended during the Second World War) until their final match on the ground against Somerset in August 1966. Cardiff Cricket Club played their final game at the ground against Lydney Cricket Club on 17 September 1966. Both Cardiff Cricket Club and Glamorgan then moved to a new ground at Sophia Gardens on the opposite bank of the River Taff to the Arms Park following work on the creation of the national rugby stadium. The first first-class cricket match to be held on the ground was between West of England and East of England, on 20 June 1910. In all more than 240 first-class matches were played on the ground, all but two involving Glamorgan as the home team. Only one List A cricket match was played on the ground, Glamorgan's Gillette Cup fixture against Somerset on 22 May 1963. Greyhound racing. Greyhound racing took place at the Arms Park for fifty years from 1927 until 1977. Rugby union. In 1876, the Cardiff RFC was formed and soon after they also used the park. On 12 April 1884, the first international match was played at the ground between Wales and Ireland, when 5,000 people watched Wales beat Ireland by two tries and a drop goal to nil. The Arms Park rugby ground became the permanent home of the Wales national rugby union team in 1964. Later, the National Stadium was also home to the WRU Challenge Cup from 1972 until the match held at the Stadium on 26 April 1997, at a much reduced capacity, between Cardiff RFC and Swansea RFC. Cardiff RFC won the match 33–26. The National Stadium is best known as the venue for what is considered to be "the greatest try ever scored" by Gareth Edwards for the Barbarians against New Zealand in what is also called "the greatest match ever played" on 27 January 1973. The final result was a win for the Barbarians. The score, 23–11, which translates to 27–13 in today's scoring system. The scorers were: Barbarians: Tries: Gareth Edwards, Fergus Slattery, John Bevan, J P R Williams; Conversions: Phil Bennett (2); Penalty: Phil Bennett. All Blacks: Tries: Grant Batty (2); Penalty: Joseph Karam. The National Stadium hosted four games in the 1991 Rugby World Cup, including the third-place play-off. The National Stadium was also host to the inaugural Heineken Cup final of 1995–96 when Toulouse beat Cardiff RFC by 21–18 after extra time, in front of 21,800 spectators. The following final in 1996–97 was also held at the National Stadium, this time it was between Brive and Leicester Tigers. Brive won the match 28–9, in front of a crowd of 41,664. In 2008, the rugby ground hosted all the games in Pool A of the 2008 IRB Junior World Championship and also the semi-final on 18 June 2008, in which England beat South Africa 26–18. Until February 2012, it had been assumed that the last professional rugby union game to take place at the Arms Park was on 17 May 2009, when Edinburgh beat the Cardiff Blues 36–14 in a Celtic League match during the 2008–09 season. However, on Tuesday, 7 February 2012, it was confirmed that Cardiff Blues would face Connacht at the Arms Park on Friday, 10 February 2012. The Pro12 League game result was a win for the Cardiff Blues 22–15 and attendance of 8,000. The following Tuesday, it was announced that the match against Ulster on Friday, 17 February, would also be at the Arms Park, resulting in a Blues win, 21–14 and attendance of 8,600. The agreement signed during 2009 tied Cardiff Blues to a 20-year contract to play a maximum of 18 games per season for a set fee, rather than per match at Cardiff City Stadium. But on 23 February, it was announced that the two Welsh 'derbies' against the Scarlets and the Ospreys would be played at Cardiff City Stadium, rather than the Arms Park, because of Cardiff Blues' anticipation that the attendance figures would far exceed the maximum capacity of 9,000. On 8 May 2012, it was announced that Cardiff Blues would be returning to the Arms Park on a permanent basis after just three years at the Cardiff City Stadium. On 23 May 2014, the rugby ground hosted the final of the 2013–14 Amlin Challenge Cup in which Northampton Saints beat Bath 30–16. Cardiff Arms Park hosted matches of the 1991 Rugby World Cup. Rugby league. South Wales Scorpions played a Rugby League Championship 1 match against London Skolars at Cardiff Arms Park on Sunday, 27 July 2014 and on Sunday 10 May 2015 at Cardiff Arms Park, South Wales Scorpions took on North Wales Crusaders. The 2015 European Cup match between France and Wales was held at Cardiff Arms Park on Friday on 30 October 2015. On 11 April it was announced Cardiff Arms Park would be the new home ground of the Women's Betfred Super League South team Cardiff Demons. The inaugural league champions will play all home games at the stadium during the 2022 season. The highest attendance for a rugby league game at the Arms Park was recorded on 8 June 1996 during the first Super League season when 6,708 saw St. Helens defeat the Sheffield Eagles 43–32. The St Helens team at the time contained Welsh players Anthony Sullivan, Karle Hammond and Keiron Cunningham. List of rugby league test matches played at Cardiff Arms Park. Tennis. Tennis courts were laid out in the Arms Park for Cardiff Tennis Club until the club moved to Sophia Gardens in 1967. In 2003, the club amalgamated with Lisvane Tennis Club to form Lisvane (CAC) Tennis Club, which is still a section of Cardiff Athletic Club (CAC). Music concerts. Major music concerts were also held at the National Stadium from 1987 until 1996, they included Tina Turner, U2, Michael Jackson, The Rolling Stones, Dire Straits, Bon Jovi and R.E.M. The last music concert was held on 14 July 1996. Jehovah's Witnesses held their annual conventions at the National Stadium. Singing tradition. The National Stadium was known primarily as the venue for massed voices singing such hymns as "Cwm Rhondda", "Calon Lân", "Men of Harlech" and "Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau" ("Land of my Fathers" – the national anthem of Wales). The legendary atmosphere including singing of the crowd was said to be worth at least a try or a goal to the home nation. This tradition of singing has now passed on to the Millennium Stadium. The Arms Park has its own choir, called the Cardiff Arms Park Male Choir. It was formed in 1966 as the Cardiff Athletic Club Male Voice Choir, and today performs internationally with a schedule of concerts and tours. In 2000, the choir changed their name to become the Cardiff Arms Park Male Choir.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19701

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a 1975 British comedy film satirizing the Arthurian legend, written and performed by the Monty Python comedy group (Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin) and directed by Gilliam and Jones in their feature directorial debuts. It was conceived during the hiatus between the third and fourth series of their BBC Television series "Monty Python's Flying Circus". While the group's first film, "And Now for Something Completely Different", was a compilation of sketches from the first two television series, "Holy Grail" is an original story that parodies the legend of King Arthur's quest for the Holy Grail. Thirty years later, Idle used the film as the basis for the 2005 Tony Award-winning musical "Spamalot". "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" grossed more than any British film exhibited in the US in 1975. In the US, it was selected in 2011 as the second-best comedy of all time in the ABC special "Best in Film: The Greatest Movies of Our Time" behind "Airplane!" In the UK, readers of "Total Film" magazine in 2000 ranked it the fifth-greatest comedy film of all time; a similar poll of Channel 4 viewers in 2006 placed it sixth. Plot. In AD 932, King Arthur and his squire, Patsy, travel Britain searching for men to join the Knights of the Round Table. Along the way, Arthur debates whether swallows could carry coconuts, passes through a town infected with the Black Death, recounts receiving Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake to two anarcho-syndicalist peasants, defeats the Black Knight, and observes an impromptu witch trial. He recruits Sir Bedevere the Wise, Sir Lancelot the Brave, Sir Galahad the Pure, Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-as-Sir-Lancelot, and the aptly named Sir Not-Appearing-in-this-Film, along with their squires and Robin's minstrels. Arthur leads the knights to Camelot, but, after a musical number, changes his mind, deeming it "a silly place". As they turn away, God appears and orders Arthur to find the Holy Grail. Arthur and his knights arrive at a castle occupied by French soldiers, who claim to have the Grail and taunt the Britons, driving them back with a barrage of barnyard animals. Bedevere concocts a plan to sneak in using a Trojan Rabbit, but no one hides inside it, and the Britons are forced to flee when it is flung back at them. Arthur decides the knights should go their separate ways to search for the Grail. A modern-day historian filming a documentary on the Arthurian legends is killed by an unknown knight on horseback, triggering a police investigation. Arthur and Bedevere are given directions by an old man and attempt to satisfy the strange requests of the dreaded Knights Who Say "Ni!" Sir Robin avoids a fight with a Three-Headed Knight by running away while the heads are arguing amongst themselves. Sir Galahad is led by a grail-shaped beacon to Castle Anthrax, which is occupied exclusively by young women, who wish to be punished for misleading him, but he is unwillingly "rescued" by Lancelot. Lancelot receives an arrow-shot note from Swamp Castle. Believing the note is from a lady being forced to marry against her will, he storms the castle and slaughters several members of the wedding party, only to discover the note is from an effeminate prince. Arthur and his knights regroup and are joined by Brother Maynard, his monk brethren, and three new knights: Bors, Gawain and Ector. They meet Tim the Enchanter, who directs them to a cave where the location of the Grail is said to be written. The entrance to the cave is guarded by the Rabbit of Caerbannog. Underestimating it, the knights attack, but the Rabbit easily kills Bors, Gawain and Ector. Arthur uses the "Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch", provided by Brother Maynard, to destroy the creature. Inside the cave, they find an inscription from Joseph of Arimathea, directing them to Castle Aarrgh. A cave monster devours Brother Maynard, but Arthur and the knights escape after the animator unexpectedly suffers a fatal heart attack. The knights approach the Bridge of Death, where the bridge-keeper demands they answer three questions in order to pass or else be cast into the Gorge of Eternal Peril. Lancelot easily answers simple questions and crosses. An overly cocky Robin is defeated by an unexpectedly difficult question, and an indecisive Galahad fails an easy one; both are magically flung into the gorge. When Arthur asks for clarification on a question regarding the airspeed of an unladen swallow, the bridge-keeper cannot answer and is himself thrown into the gorge. Arthur and Bedevere cannot find Lancelot, unaware that he has been arrested by police investigating the historian's death. The pair reach Castle Aarrgh, but find it occupied by the French soldiers from earlier in the film. After being repelled by showers of manure, they summon an army of knights and prepare to assault the castle. As the army charges, the police arrive, arrest Arthur and Bedevere for the murder of the historian and break the camera, abruptly ending the film. Production. Development. In January 1973 the Monty Python troupe wrote the first draft of the screenplay. Half of the material was set in the Middle Ages and half was set in the present day. The group decided to focus on the Middle Ages, focusing on the legend of the Holy Grail. By the fourth or fifth draft, the story was complete, and the cast joked that the fact that the Grail was never retrieved would be "a big let-down ... a great anti-climax". Graham Chapman said a challenge was incorporating scenes that did not fit the Holy Grail motif. Neither Terry Gilliam nor Terry Jones had directed a film before, and described it as a learning experience in which they would learn to make a film by making an entire full-length film. The cast humorously described the novice directing style as employing the level of mutual disrespect always found in Monty Python's work. A 2021 tweet by Eric Idle revealed that the film was financed by eight investors: Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson, "Holy Grail"'s co-producer Michael White, Heartaches (a cricket team founded by lyricist Tim Rice), and three record companies including Charisma Records, the record label that released Python's early comedy albums. Idle and Terry Gilliam had previously mentioned that Elton John also contributed to the financing of the film. The investors contributed the entire original budget of £175,350 (about $410,000 in 1974) and also received a percentage of the proceeds from the 2005 musical "Spamalot". According to Gilliam, the Pythons turned to rock stars like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin for finance as the studios refused to fund the film and rock stars saw it as "a good tax write-off" because the top rate of UK income tax was "as high as 90%" at the time. Filming. "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" was mostly shot on location in Scotland, particularly around Doune Castle, Glen Coe, and the privately owned Castle Stalker. The many castles seen throughout the film were mainly either Doune Castle shot from different angles or hanging miniatures. There are several exceptions to this: the very first exterior shot of a castle at the beginning of the film is Kidwelly Castle in South Wales, and the single exterior shot of the Swamp Castle during "Tale of Sir Lancelot" is Bodiam Castle in East Sussex; all subsequent shots of the exterior and interior of those scenes were filmed at Doune Castle. Production designer Julian Doyle recounted that his crew constructed walls in the forest near Doune. Terry Jones later recalled the crew had selected more castles around Scotland for locations, but during the two weeks prior to principal photography, the Scottish Department of the Environment declined permission for use of the castles in its jurisdiction, for fear of damage. At the start of "The Tale of Sir Robin", there is a slow camera zoom in on rocky scenery (that in the voice-over is described as "the dark forest of Ewing"). This is actually a still photograph of the gorge at Mount Buffalo National Park in Victoria, Australia. Doyle stated in 2000 during an interview with "Hotdog" magazine that it was a still image filmed with candles underneath the frame (to give a heat haze). This was a low-cost method of achieving a convincing location effect. On the DVD audio commentary, Cleese described challenges shooting and editing Castle Anthrax in "The Tale of Sir Galahad", with what he felt the most comedic take being unused because an anachronistic coat was visible in it. Castle Anthrax was also shot in one part of Doune, where costume designer Hazel Pethig advised against nudity, dressing the girls in shifts. The scene in which the knights fight the Rabbit of Caerbannog was filmed at Tomnadashan mine. A real white rabbit was used, switched with puppets for its killings. The bite effects were done with special puppetry by both Gilliam and SFX technician John Horton. According to Gilliam, the rabbit was covered with red liquid to simulate blood, though its owner did not want the animal dirty and was kept unaware. The liquid was difficult to remove from the fur. Gilliam also stated that he thought, in hindsight, the crew could have just purchased their own rabbit instead. Regardless, the rabbit itself was unharmed. As chronicled in "The Life of Python", "The First 20 Years of Monty Python", and "The Pythons' Autobiography", Chapman suffered from acrophobia, trembling and bouts of forgetfulness during filming due to his alcoholism, prompting him to refrain from drinking while the production continued in order to remain "on an even keel". Nearly three years later, in December 1977, Chapman achieved sobriety. Originally the knight characters were going to ride real horses, but after it became clear that the film's small budget precluded real horses (except for a lone horse appearing in a couple of scenes), the Pythons decided their characters would mime horse-riding while their porters trotted behind them banging coconut shells together. The joke was derived from the old-fashioned sound effect used by radio shows to convey the sound of hooves clattering. This was later referred to in the German release of the film, which translated the title as "Die Ritter der Kokosnuß" ("The Knights of the Coconut"). Similarly, the Hungarian title "Gyalog galopp" translates to "Galloping on Foot". The opening credits of the film feature pseudo-Swedish subtitles, which soon turn into an appeal to visit Sweden and see the country's moose. The subtitles are soon stopped and claim that the people responsible have been sacked, but moose references continue throughout the actual credits. The subtitles were written by Michael Palin as a way to "entertain the 'captive' audience" at the beginning of the film. Soundtrack. In addition to several songs written by Python regular Neil Innes, several pieces of music were licensed from De Wolfe Music Library. These include: Innes was supposed to write the film's soundtrack in its entirety, but after the team watched the movie with Innes's soundtrack, they decided to go instead with "canned" music, music borrowed from existing stock recordings. One problem with Innes's music, apparently, was that they considered it too appropriate, so that, according to Python scholar Darl Larsen, it "undercut the Pythons' attempt at undercutting the medieval world they were trying to depict". Release. "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" had its theatrical debut in the United Kingdom on 3 April 1975, followed by a United States release on 27 April 1975. It was re-released on 14 October 2015 in the United Kingdom. It earned rentals in the US and Canada of $5.17 million. The film had its television premiere 25 February 1977 on the "CBS Late Movie". Reportedly, the Pythons were displeased to discover a number of edits were done by the network to reduce use of profanity and the showing of blood. The troupe pulled back the rights and thereafter had it broadcast in the United States only on PBS and later other channels such as Comedy Central and IFC, where it runs uncut. Box office. According to records of the NFFC, as of 31 December 1978 the distributor earned receipts of £2,358,229. Home media. In Region 1, The Criterion Collection released a LaserDisc version of the film featuring audio commentary from directors Jones and Gilliam. In 2001, Columbia Tristar published a two-disc, special-edition DVD. Disc one includes the Jones and Gilliam commentary, a second commentary with Idle, Palin and Cleese, the film's screenplay on a subtitle track and "Subtitles for People Who Don't Like the Film"–consisting of lines taken from William Shakespeare's "Henry IV, Part 2". Disc two includes "Monty Python and the Holy Grail in Lego", a "brickfilm" version of the "Camelot Song" as sung by Lego minifigures. It was created by Spite Your Face Productions on commission from the Lego Group and Python Pictures. The project was conceived by the original film's respective producer and co-director, John Goldstone and Terry Gilliam. Disc two also includes two scenes from the film's Japanese dub, literally translated back into English through subtitles. "The Quest for the Holy Grail Locations", hosted by Palin and Jones, shows places in Scotland used for the setting titled as "England 932 A.D." (as well as the two Pythons purchasing a copy of their own script as a guide). Also included is a who's who page, advertising galleries and sing-alongs. A "Collector's Edition" DVD release additionally included a book of the screenplay, a limited-edition film cell/senitype, and limited-edition art cards. A 35th-anniversary edition on Blu-ray was released in the US on 6 March 2012. Special features include "The Holy Book of Days," a second-screen experience that can be downloaded as an app on an iOS device and played with the Blu-ray to enhance its viewing, lost animation sequences with a new intro from animator Terry Gilliam, outtakes and extended scenes with Python member and the movie's co-director Terry Jones. On the special edition DVD, the studio logos, opening credits and a brief portion of the opening scene of 1961 British Film "Dentist on the Job" is added to the start of the film. The clip ends with a spluttering, unseen "projectionist" realising he has played the wrong film. A "slide" then appears urging the audience to wait one moment please while the operator changes reels. Reception and legacy. Contemporary reviews were mixed. Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" wrote in a favourable review that the film had "some low spots," but had gags which were "nonstop, occasionally inspired and should not be divulged, though it's not giving away too much to say that I particularly liked a sequence in which the knights, to gain access to an enemy castle, come up with the idea of building a Trojan rabbit." Charles Champlin of the "Los Angeles Times" was also positive, writing that the film, "like "Mad" comics, is not certain to please every taste. But its youthful exuberance and its rousing zaniness are hard not to like. As a matter of fact, the sense of fun is dangerously contagious." Penelope Gilliatt of "The New Yorker" called the film "often recklessly funny and sometimes a matter of comic genius." Other reviews were less enthusiastic. "Variety" wrote that the storyline was "basically an excuse for set pieces, some amusing, others overdone." Gene Siskel of the "Chicago Tribune" gave the film two-and-a-half stars, writing that he felt "it contained about 10 very funny moments and 70 minutes of silence. Too many of the jokes took too long to set up, a trait shared by both "Blazing Saddles" and "Young Frankenstein". I guess I prefer Monty Python in chunks, in its original, television revue format." Gary Arnold of "The Washington Post" called the film "a fitfully amusing spoof of the Arthurian legends" but "rather poky" in tempo, citing the running gag of Swedish subtitles in the opening credits as an example of how the Pythons "don't know when to let go of any "shtik"". Geoff Brown of "The Monthly Film Bulletin" wrote in a mixed review that "the team's visual buffooneries and verbal rigamaroles (some good, some bad, but mostly indifferent) are piled on top of each other with no attention to judicious timing or structure, and a form which began as a jaunty assault on the well-made revue sketch and an ingenious misuse of television's fragmented style of presentation, threatens to become as unyielding and unfruitful as the conventions it originally attacked." The film's reputation grew over time. In 2000, readers of "Total Film" magazine voted "Holy Grail" the fifth-greatest comedy film of all time. The next Python film, "Life of Brian", was ranked first. A 2006 poll of Channel 4 viewers on the 50 Greatest Comedy Films saw "Holy Grail" placed in sixth place (with "Life of Brian" again topping the list). In 2011, an ABC prime-time special, "Best in Film: The Greatest Movies of Our Time", counted down the best films chosen by fans based on results of a poll conducted by ABC and "People". "Holy Grail" was selected as the second best comedy after "Airplane!" In 2016, "Empire" magazine ranked "Holy Grail" 18th in their list of the 100 best British films ("Life of Brian" was ranked 2nd), their entry stating, "Elvis ordered a print of this comedy classic and watched it five times. If it's good enough for the King, it's good enough for you." In a 2017 interview at Indiana University in Bloomington, John Cleese expressed disappointment with the film's conclusion. "'The ending annoys me the most'", he said after a screening of the film on the Indiana campus, adding that "'It ends the way it does because we couldn't think of any other way'". However, scripts for the film and notebooks that are among Michael Palin's private archive, which he donated to the British Library in 2017, do document at least one alternative ending that the troupe considered: "a battle between the knights of Camelot, the French, and the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog". Due to the film's small production budget, that idea for a "much pricier option" was discarded by the Pythons in favour of the ending with "King Arthur getting arrested", which Palin deemed "cheaper" and "funnier". Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes offers a 96% approval rating from reviews of 83 critics, with an average rating of 8.50/10. The consensus reads, "A cult classic as gut-bustingly hilarious as it is blithely ridiculous, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" has lost none of its exceedingly silly charm." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 91 out of 100 based on 24 critics' reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". "Spamalot". The film was adapted as the 2005 Tony Award-winning Broadway musical "Spamalot". Written primarily by Idle, the stage show offers a revised plot, while retaining many jokes from the film. In May 2018, 20th Century Fox green-lit a film adaptation of the musical. Idle would write the screenplay and stage director Casey Nicholaw would direct. Slated to begin filming in early 2019, production was delayed as a result of the acquisition of 20th Century Fox by The Walt Disney Company. The project announced a move to Paramount Pictures on January 6, 2020, with Idle and Nicholaw still attached as writer and director, and Dan Jinks joining as a producer. However, in 2021, Idle confirmed on his Twitter account that the film would not be made because two of his former colleagues opposed it. A Broadway revival will begin previews on October 31, 2023 at the St. James Theatre, with an official opening night of November 16, 2023. In 2013, the Pythons lost a legal case to Mark Forstater, the film's producer, owing a combined £800,000 in legal fees and back royalties to Forstater for the derivative work of "Spamalot". To help cover the cost of these royalties and fees, the group arranged and performed in a stage show, "Monty Python Live (Mostly)", held at the O2 Arena in London in July 2014.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19735

Macquarie University

Macquarie University ( ) is a public research university based in Sydney, Australia, in the suburb of Macquarie Park. Founded in 1964 by the New South Wales Government, it was the third university to be established in the metropolitan area of Sydney. Established as a verdant university, Macquarie has five faculties, as well as the Macquarie University Hospital and the Macquarie Graduate School of Management, which are located on the university's main campus in suburban Sydney. The university is the first in Australia to fully align its degree system with the Bologna Accord. History. 20th century. The idea of founding a third university in Sydney was flagged in the early 1960s when the New South Wales Government formed a committee of enquiry into higher education to deal with a perceived emergency in university enrollments in New South Wales. During this enquiry, the Senate of the University of Sydney put in a submission which highlighted 'the immediate need to establish a third university in the metropolitan area'. After much debate a future campus location was selected in what was then a semi-rural part of North Ryde, and it was decided that the future university be named after Lachlan Macquarie, an important early governor of the colony of New South Wales. Macquarie University was formally established in 1964 with the passage of the Macquarie University Act 1964 by the New South Wales parliament. The initial concept of the campus was to create a new high technology corridor, similar to the area surrounding Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, the goal being to provide for interaction between industry and the new university. The academic core was designed in the Brutalist style and developed by the renowned town planner Walter Abraham who also oversaw the next 20 years of planning and development for the university. A committee appointed to advise the state government on the establishment of the new university at North Ryde nominated Abraham as the architect-planner. The fledgling Macquarie University Council decided that planning for the campus would be done within the university, rather than by consultants, and this led to the establishment of the architect-planners office. The first Vice-Chancellor of Macquarie University, Alexander George Mitchell, was selected by the University Council which met for the first time on 17 June 1964. Members of the first university council included: Colonel Sir Edward Ford OBE, David Paver Mellor, Rae Else-Mitchell QC and Sir Walter Scott. The university first opened to students on 6 March 1967 with more students than anticipated. The Australian Universities Commission had allowed for 510 effective full-time students (EFTS) but Macquarie had 956 enrolments and 622 EFTS. Between 1968 and 1969, enrolment at Macquarie increased dramatically with an extra 1200 EFTS, with 100 new academic staff employed. 1969 also saw the establishment of the Macquarie Graduate School of Management (MGSM). Macquarie grew during the seventies and eighties with rapid expansion in courses offered, student numbers and development of the site. In 1972, the university established the Macquarie Law School, the third law school in Sydney. In their book "Liberality of Opportunity", Bruce Mansfield and Mark Hutchinson describe the founding of Macquarie University as 'an act of faith and a great experiment'. An additional topic considered in this book is the science reform movement of the late 1970s that resulted in the introduction of a named science degree, thus facilitating the subsequent inclusion of other named degrees in addition to the traditional BA. An alternative view on this topic is given by theoretical physicist John Ward. In 1973 the student union (MUSC) worked with the Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) to organise one of the first "pink bans". Similar in tactic to the green ban, the pink ban was recommended when one of the residential colleges at Macquarie University, Robert Menzies College, ordered a student to lead a celibate life and undertake therapy and confession to cure himself of his homosexuality. The BLF decided to stop all construction work at the college until the university and the college Master made statements committing to a non-discriminatory university environment. MUSC was successful in engaging with the BLF again in 1974 when a woman at Macquarie University had her NSW Department of Education scholarship cancelled on the basis that she was a lesbian and therefore unfit to be a teacher. After over a decade of service, the first Vice Chancellor Mitchell was succeeded by Edwin C. Webb in December 1975. Webb was required to steer the university through one of its most difficult periods as the value of universities were debated and the governments introduced significant funding cuts. Webb left the university in 1986 and was succeeded by Di Yerbury, the first female Vice-Chancellor in Australia. Yerbury would go on to hold the position of Vice-Chancellor for nearly 20 years. In 1990 the university absorbed the Institute of Early Childhood Studies of the Sydney College of Advanced Education, under the terms of the Higher Education (Amalgamation) Act 1989. l 21st century. Steven Schwartz replaced Di Yerbury as Vice-Chancellor at the beginning of 2006. Yerbury's departure was attended with much controversy, including a "bitter dispute" with Schwartz, disputed ownership of university artworks worth $13 million and Yerbury's salary package. In August 2006, Schwartz expressed concern about the actions of Yerbury in a letter to university auditors. Yerbury strongly denied any wrongdoing and claimed the artworks were hers. During 2007, Macquarie University restructured its student organisation after an audit raised questions about management of hundreds of thousands of dollars in funds by student organisations At the centre of the investigation was Victor Ma, president of the Macquarie University Students' Council, who was previously involved in a high-profile case of student election fixing at the University of Sydney. The university Council resolved to immediately remove Ma from his position. Vice-Chancellor Schwartz cited an urgent need to reform Macquarie's main student bodies. However, Ma strongly denied any wrongdoing and labelled the controversy a case of 'character assassination'. The Federal Court ordered on 23 May 2007 that Macquarie University Union Ltd be wound up. Following the dissolution of Macquarie University Union Ltd, the outgoing student organisation was replaced with a new wholly owned subsidiary company of the university, known as U@MQ Ltd. The new student organisation originally lacked a true student representative union; however, following a complete review and authorisation from the university Council, a new student union known as Macquarie University Students Association (MUSRA) was established in 2009. Within the first few hundred days of Schwartz's instatement as Vice-Chancellor, the 'Macquarie@50' strategic plan was launched, which positioned the university to enhance research, teaching, infrastructure and academic rankings by the university's 50th anniversary in 2014. Included in the university's plans for the future was the establishment of a sustainability office in order to more effectively manage environmental and social development at Macquarie. As part of this campaign, in 2009 Macquarie became the first Fair Trade accredited university in Australia. The beginning of 2009 also saw the introduction of a new logo for the university which retained the Sirius Star, present on both the old logo and the university crest, but now 'embedded in a stylised lotus flower'. In accordance with the university by-law, the crest continues to be used for formal purposes and is displayed on university testamurs. The by-law also prescribes the university's motto, taken from Chaucer: 'And gladly teche'. In 2013, the university became the first in Australia to fully align its degree system with the Bologna Accord. Symbols. Coat of arms. Macquarie University's coat of arms (often erroneously referred to as a 'crest') was assumed through a 1967 amendment of the "Macquarie University Act, 1964" (Confirmed by Letters patent of the College of Arms, 16 August 1969), and the Grant of arms reads: The escutcheon (in green taken from the tartan of Clan MacQuarrie) displays the Macquarie Lighthouse tower, the first major public building in the colony when completed in 1816, as well as the Sirius star (in gold), which was also the name of the flagship of the First Fleet. The motto chosen for the university, which following the rules of English heraldry does not form part of the original grant of arms, was "And Gladly Teche", a phrase taken from the general prologue of "The Canterbury Tales" by Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1400), and symbolises the university's commitment to both learning and teaching. The university's founders originally wanted to base the university's arms on Lachlan Macquarie's family arms, but they decided to go for a more conceptual approach that represented Lachlan Macquarie as a builder and administrator. They did however identify that the arms used by Governor Macquarie had never been formally granted by the Court of the Lord Lyon in Scotland, and was successful in having a grant of arms issued for Macquarie by the Lord Lyon King of Arms, as well as the right to display his arms. These arms, along with the new arms of the university, were formally unveiled on 31 May 1967 by the chancellor, Sir Garfield Barwick. The coat of arms and the motto are used in a very limited number of formal communications. Logo. Macquarie has had a number of logos in its history. In 2014, the university launched a new logo as part of its Shared Identity Project. The logo reintroduced the Macquarie Lighthouse, a popular symbol of the university within the university community and maintained the Sirus Star. Campus. Macquarie University's main campus is located about north-west of the Sydney CBD and is set on 126 hectares of rolling lawns and natural bushland. Located within the high-technology corridor of Sydney's north-west and in close proximity to Macquarie Park and its surrounding industries, Macquarie's location has been crucial in its development as a relatively research intensive university. Prior to the development of the campus, most of the site was cultivated with peach orchards, market gardens and poultry farms. The university's first architect-planner was Walter Abraham, one of the first six administrators appointed to Macquarie University. As the site adapted from its former rural use to a busy collegiate environment, he implemented carefully designed planting programs across the campus. Abraham established a grid design comprising lots of running north–south, with the aim of creating a compact academic core. The measure of was seen as one minute's walk, and grid design reflected the aim of having a maximum walk of 10 minutes between any two parts of the university. The main east–west walkway that runs from the Macquarie University Research Park through to the arts faculty buildings, was named Wally's Walk in recognition of Walter Abraham's contribution to the development of the university. Apart from its centres of learning, the campus features the Macquarie University Research Park, museums, art galleries, a sculpture park, an observatory, a sport and aquatic centre and also the private Macquarie University Hospital. The campus has its own postcode, 2109. Macquarie University Hospital. Macquarie became the first university in Australia to own and operate a private medical facility in 2010 when it opened a $300 million hospital on its campus. The hospital is the first and only private not-for-profit teaching hospital on an Australian university campus. The Macquarie University Hospital is located to the north of the main campus area towards the university sports grounds. It comprises 183 beds, 13 operating theatres, 2 cardiac and vascular angiography suites. The hospital is co-located with the university's Australian School of Advanced Medicine. Commercial use. The university hosts a number of high-technology companies on its campus. Primarily designed to encourage interaction between the university and industry, commercialisation of its campus has also given the institution an additional revenue stream. Tenants are selected based on their potential to collaborate with the university's researches or their ability to provide opportunities for its students and graduates. Cochlear has its headquarters in close proximity to the Australian Hearing Hub on the southern edge of campus. Other companies that have office space at the campus include Dow Corning, Goodman Fielder, Nortel, OPSM, and Siemens. The Macquarie University Observatory was originally constructed in 1978 as a research facility but, since 1997, has been accessible to the public through its Public Observing Program. Library. The library houses over 1.8 million items and uses the Library of Congress Classification System. The library features several collections including a Rare Book Collection, a Palaeontology Collection and the Brunner Collection of Egyptological materials. Macquarie University operated two libraries during the transition. The old library in building C7A closed at the end of July 2011 (which has since been repurposed as a student support and study space), and the new library in building C3C became fully operational on 1 August 2011. The new library was the first university library in Australia to possess an Automated Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS). The ASRS consists of an environmentally controlled vault with metal bins storing the items; robotic cranes retrieve an item on request and deliver it to the service desk for collection. Macquarie University Incubator. The Macquarie University Incubator is a space to research and develop ideas that can be commercialised. It was established in 2017 as a part of the Macquarie Park Innovation District (MPID) project. Macquarie University received $1 million grant from the New South Wales government to build the incubator. The university has also committed about $7 million to the incubator with financial support of the big businesses and the New South Wales government. It was officially opened by Prince Andrew, Duke of York on 25 September 2017. Residential colleges. Macquarie University has two residential colleges on its campus, Dunmore Lang College and Robert Menzies College, both founded in 1972. The colleges offer academic support and a wide range of social and sporting activities in a communal environment. Separate to the colleges is the Macquarie University Village. The village has over 900 rooms in mostly town house style buildings to the north of the campus. The village encourages its students to interact in its communal spaces and has a number of social events throughout the year. Museums and collections. The museums and collections of Macquarie University are extensive and include nine museums and galleries. Each collection focuses on various historical, scientific or artistic interests. The most visible collection on campus is the sculpture park which is exhibited across the entire campus. At close to 100 sculptures on display, it is the largest park of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. All museums and galleries are open to the public and offer educational programs for students at primary, secondary and tertiary levels. Sports facilities. Located on the western side of the campus is the Macquarie University Sport and Aquatic Centre. Previously a sports hall facility, the complex was renovated and reopened in 2007 with the addition of the new gym and aquatic centre. It houses a 50-metre FINA-compliant outdoor pool and a 25-metre indoor pool. The complex also contains a gymnasium and squash, badminton, basketball, volleyball and netball courts. Macquarie also has seven hectares of high quality playing fields for football, cricket and tennis. Situated to the north of the campus, the playing fields are used by the university as well as a number of elite sporting teams such as Sydney FC and the Matildas. Transport. Macquarie University is served by Macquarie University station on the Sydney Metro Northwest. Macquarie is the only university in Australia with a railway station on campus. There is also a major bus interchange within the campus that provides close to 800 bus services daily. The M2 Motorway runs parallel to the northern boundary of the campus and is accessible to traffic from the university. Organisation and governance. Structure. The university currently comprises 35 departments within four faculties: Research centres, schools and institutes that are affiliated with the university: Macquarie University's Australian Hearing Hub is partnered with Cochlear. Cochlear Headquarters are on campus. The Australian Hearing Hub includes the head office of Australian Hearing. The Australian Research Institute for Environment and Sustainability is a research centre that promotes change for environmental sustainability, is affiliated with the university and is located on its campus. Access Macquarie Limited was established in 1989 as the commercial arm of the university. It facilitates and supports the commercial needs of industry, business and government organisations seeking to utilise the academic expertise of the broader University community. Governance. The university is governed by a 17-member Council. The University Council is the governing authority of the university under the "Macquarie University Act 1989". The Council takes primary responsibility for the control and management of the affairs of the university, and is empowered to make by-laws and rules relating to how the university is managed. Members of the Council include the university vice-chancellor, academic and non-academic staff, the vice president of the Academic Senate and a student representative. The Council is chaired by the chancellor of the university. The Academic Senate is the primary academic body of the university. It has certain powers delegated to it by Council, such as the approving of examination results and the completion of requirements for the award of degrees. At the same time, it makes recommendations to the Council concerning all changes to degree rules, and all proposals for new awards. While the Academic Senate is an independent body, it is required to make recommendations to the university Council in relation to matters outside its delegated authority. Macquarie's current Vice-Chancellor, Bruce Dowton, took over from Schwartz in September 2012. Prior to his appointment Dowton served as a senior medical executive having held a range of positions in university, healthcare and consulting organisations. He also served as a pediatrician at the Massachusetts General Hospital for Children, and as Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. There have been five Vice-Chancellors in the university's history. Academic profile. International admissions. The Macquarie University International College offers Foundation Studies (Pre-University) and University-level Diplomas. Upon successful completion of a MUIC Diploma, students enter the appropriate bachelor's degree as a second year student. The Centre for Macquarie English is the English-language centre that offers a range of specialised, direct entry English programmes that are approved by Macquarie University. Research. The university positions itself as being research intensive. In 2012, 85% of Macquarie's broad fields of research was rated 'at or above world standard' in the Excellence in Research for Australia 2012 National report. The university is within the top 3 universities in Australia for the number of peer reviewed publications produced per academic staff member. Researchers at Macquarie University, David Skellern and Neil Weste, and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation helped develop Wi-Fi. David Skellern has been a major donor to the university through the Skellern Family Trust. Macquarie physicists Frank Duarte and Jim Piper pioneered the laser designs adopted by researchers worldwide, in various major national programs, for atomic vapor laser isotope separation. Macquarie University's linguistics department developed the Macquarie Dictionary. The dictionary is regarded as the standard reference on Australian English. Macquarie University has a research partnership with the University of Hamburg in Germany and Fudan University in China. They offer dual and joint degree programs and engage in joint research. University rankings. Overall. Macquarie University is ranked 130th in the QS rankings, 180th in the Times Higher (THE) rankings, 192nd by US News, and 201-300th bracket in ARWU. This contributes to Macquarie being the 10th ranked Australian university overall in the world ranking systems. Macquarie University rankings within Australia include being placed at number 8 on the ERA scale (2012) and being a 4 1/2 Star AEN rated university. Macquarie also has a student survey satisfaction rating of 77.4% for business, 90.3% for health, 91.4% for arts, and 93.8% for science. Macquarie is ranked in the top 40 universities in the Asia-Pacific region and within Australia's top 10 universities according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities, the U.S. News & World Report Rankings and the QS World University Rankings. Internationally, Macquarie was ranked 239th in the world (9th in Australia) in the Academic Ranking of World Universities of 2014. Macquarie was the highest ranked university in Australia under the age of 50 and was ranked 18th in the world (prior to its golden jubilee in 2014), according to the QS World University Rankings. The 2022 QS Graduate Employability Rankings ranked Macquarie graduates 9th most employable in Australia, and 98th in the world. Subject. Macquarie University was ranked among the top 50 universities in the world for linguistics (43rd), psychology (48th) and earth and marine sciences (48th), and was ranked in the top 5 nationally for philosophy and earth and marine sciences, according to the 2014 QS World University Rankings. Macquarie ranked 67th in the world for Arts and Humanities (equal 5th in Australia), according to the 2015 Times Higher Education rankings by subject and 54th in the world for arts and humanities, according to the 2017 USNWR rankings by subject. Arts and Humanities is Macquarie's best discipline area in rankings. Macquarie was one of four non-Group of Eight universities ranked in the top 100 universities in the world in particular discipline areas. The Macquarie Graduate School of Management is one of the oldest business schools in Australia. In 2014, "The Economist" ranked MGSM 5th in the Asia-Pacific, 3rd in Australia, 1st in Sydney/New South Wales and 49th in the world. It was the highest ranked business school in Australia and was ranked 68th in the world in the 2015 "Financial Times" MBA ranking. Student life. Macquarie is the fourth largest university in Sydney (38,753 students in 2013). The university has the largest student exchange programme in Australia. In 2012, 9,802 students from Asia were enrolled at Macquarie University (Sydney campuses and offshore programs in China, Hong Kong, Korea and Singapore). Campus Life manages the university's non-academic services: food and retail, sport and recreation, student groups, child care, and entertainment. From late 2017 onward its Campus Hub facility has been closed for reconstruction; a 'pop-up'-style replacement, the Campus Common, has been opened for the duration. The Global Leadership Program (GLP) is a university-funded co-curricular program that is open to all students and can be undertaken alongside any degree at Macquarie University. The GLP aims to instil leadership and innovation skills, cross-cultural understanding and a sense of global citizenship in its graduates. Upon successful completion of the GLP, students receive a formal notation on their academic transcript and a certificate. Macquarie's GLP was the first of its kind when it launched in the Australian university sector in 2005 and is the country's flagship tertiary global leadership program with more than 4000 active participants in more than 200 academic disciplines. GLP is a co-curricular learning and engagement program that students design according to their own interests and complete at their own pace. Students are required to complete a workshop series, attend tailored keynote speaker and networking events and complete an experiential credit component. This ranges from short-term study abroad, volunteering (domestic and/or international), internships (domestic and/or international), learning a new language or attending internationally themed seminars and study tours. The GLP won the Institute for International Education's 2017 Heiskell award for Innovation in International Education - Internationalising the Campus. Macquarie University is the first Southern Hemisphere university to receive the award in its 17-year history. The GLP was awarded the 2018 NSW International Student Community Engagement Award (Joint Winner) in the Education Provider category. This award recognises the innovative way in which the GLP facilitates connection and engagement with community for Macquarie University International GLP Students, and also recognises the contribution that the GLP makes to the International Student experience in New South Wales. In 2019, the GLP won the Global PIEoneer Award for International Education in the category of 'Progressive Education Delivery' in Guildhall, London. The PIEoneer Awards are the only global awards that celebrate innovation and achievement across the whole of the international education industry. Macquarie University has its own community radio station on campus, 2SER FM. The station is jointly owned by Macquarie University and University of Technology, Sydney. Macquarie University students celebrate Conception Day each year since 1969 to – according to legend – commemorate the date of conception of Lachlan Macquarie, as his birthday fell at the wrong time of year for a celebration. Conception Day is traditionally held on the last day of classes before the September mid-semester break. Notable alumni and staff. Alumni include Rhodes and John Monash Scholars and several Fulbright Scholars. Notable alumni include: Minister for the Environment and Water, Tanya Plibersek; Australian politician and former Lord Mayor of Brisbane, Jim Soorley; New South Wales Minister for Health, Brad Hazzard; Australian politician, Mike Kelly; Australian basketball player, Lauren Jackson; Australian swimmer, Ian Thorpe; Australian water polo player, Holly Lincoln-Smith; three founding members of the Australian children's musical group The Wiggles, Greg Page, Anthony Field, and Murray Cook; former Director-General of the National Library of Australia, Anne-Marie Schwirtlich AM; New Zealand conservationist, Pete Bethune; Miss Universe Australia 2008, Laura Dundovic; Australian Journalist, Hugh Riminton; BBC Presenter, Yalda Hakim. Notable alumni in science include: Australian scientist Barry Brook, American physicist Frank Duarte, and Australian physicist Cathy Foley. Alumni notable in the business world include: Australian hedge fund manager Greg Coffey, Australian businesswoman Catherine Livingstone, founder of Freelancer.com Matt Barrie, businessman Napoleon Perdis; Australian venture capitalist Larry R. Marshall; Former CEO of Seven West Media, David Leckie; Australian Economist, Sean Turnell; Former CEO of Commonwealth Bank & former Chairman of the Australian Government Future Fund Board of Guardians, David Murray. Notable faculty members include: Indian neurosurgeon B. K. Misra Australian writer and four time Miles Franklin Award winner, Thea Astley; Hungarian Australian mathematician, Esther Szekeres; Australian mathematician, Neil Trudinger; Australian environmentalist and activist, Tim Flannery; British physicist and author, Paul Davies; British-Australian physicist, John Clive Ward; Israeli-Australian mathematician, José Enrique Moyal; Australian linguist, Geoffrey Hull; Australian geologist, Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, John Veevers; Australian climatologist, Ann Henderson-Sellers; Australian sociologist, Raewyn Connell. Four Macquarie University academics were included in The World's Most Influential Minds 2014 report by Thomson Reuters, which identified the most highly cited researchers of the last 11 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19765

Melbourne Cricket Ground

The Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), also known locally as The G, is an Australian sports stadium located in Yarra Park, Melbourne, Victoria. Founded and managed by the Melbourne Cricket Club, it is the largest stadium in the Southern Hemisphere, the 11th largest globally, and the second largest cricket ground by capacity. The MCG is within walking distance of the city centre and is served by Richmond and Jolimont railway stations, as well as the route 70, route 75, and route 48 trams. It is adjacent to Melbourne Park and is part of the Melbourne Sports and Entertainment Precinct. Since it was built in 1853, the MCG has undergone numerous renovations. It served as the centerpiece stadium of the 1956 Summer Olympics, the 2006 Commonwealth Games and two Cricket World Cups: 1992 and 2015. Noted for its role in the development of international cricket, the MCG hosted both the first Test match and the first One Day International, played between Australia and England in 1877 and 1971 respectively. It has also maintained strong ties with Australian rules football since its codification in 1859, and has become the principal venue for Australian Football League (AFL) matches, including the AFL Grand Final, the world's highest attended league championship event. It hosted the Grand Final for the 2022 T20 World Cup. Home to the Australian Sports Museum, the MCG has hosted other major sporting events, including international rules football matches between Australia and Ireland, international rugby union matches, State of Origin (rugby league) games, and FIFA World Cup qualifiers. Concerts and other cultural events are also held at the venue with the record attendance standing at 143,750 for a Billy Graham evangelistic crusade in 1959. Grandstand redevelopments and occupational health and safety legislation have limited the maximum seating capacity to approximately 95,000 with an additional 5,000 standing room capacity, bringing the total capacity to 100,024. The MCG is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register and was included on the Australian National Heritage List in 2005. In 2003, journalist Greg Baum called it "a shrine, a citadel, a landmark, a totem" that "symbolises Melbourne to the world". Early history. The MCG is built atop a Wurundjeri camping ground and site of numerous corroborees. Founded in November 1838 the Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC) selected the current MCG site in 1853 after previously playing at several grounds around Melbourne. The club's first game was against a military team at the Old Mint site, at the corner of William and La Trobe Streets. Burial Hill (now Flagstaff Gardens) became its home ground in January 1839, but the area was already set aside for Botanical Gardens and the club was moved on in October 1846, to an area on the south bank of the Yarra about where the Herald & Weekly Times building is today. The area was subject to flooding, forcing the club to move again, this time to a ground in South Melbourne. It was not long before the club was forced out again, this time because of the expansion of the railway. The South Melbourne ground was in the path of Victoria's first steam railway line from Melbourne to Sandridge (now Port Melbourne). Governor La Trobe offered the MCC a choice of three sites; an area adjacent to the existing ground, a site at the junction of Flinders and Spring Streets or a ten-acre (about 4 hectares) section of the Government Paddock at Richmond next to Richmond Park. Between European settlement in 1835 and the early 1860s, this last option, which is now Yarra Park, was known as the Government or Police Paddock and served as a large agistment area for the horses of the Mounted Police, Border Police and Native Police. The north-eastern section also housed the main barracks for the Mounted Police in the Port Phillip district. In 1850 it was part of a stretch set aside for public recreation extending from Governor La Trobe's Jolimont Estate to the Yarra River. By 1853 it had become a busy promenade for Melbourne residents. An MCC sub-committee chose the Richmond Park option because it was level enough for cricket but sloped enough to prevent inundation. That ground was located where the Richmond, or outer, end of the current MCG is now. At the same time the Richmond Cricket Club was given occupancy rights to for another cricket ground on the eastern side of the Government Paddock. In 1861, a board of trustees was appointed to be responsible for the ground. Over the first forty years, most of the trustees were appointed by the MCC, giving the cricket club relative autonomy over the use of the ground. In 1906, the state governments' Lands ministry appointed five new trustees, putting the government-appointed trustees in the majority; and the government has appointed and overseen the trust since. This gives the state government, via the trust, a level of control over the ground's use. At the time of the land grant, the Government stipulated that the ground was to be used for cricket and cricket only. This condition technically remained until 1933 when the Melbourne Cricket Ground Act 1933 widened its allowable uses. The 1933 act has been replaced by separate acts in 1989 and 2009. In 1863, a corridor of land running diagonally across Yarra Park was granted to the Melbourne & Hobson's Bay Railway Company and divided Yarra Park from the river. The Mounted Police barracks were operational until the 1880s when it was subdivided into the current residential precinct bordered by Vale Street. The area closest to the river was also developed for sporting purposes in later years including Olympic venues in 1956. Stadium development. The first grandstand at the MCG was the original wooden members' stand built in 1854, while the first public grandstand was a 200-metre long 6000-seat temporary structure built in 1861. Another grandstand seating 2000, facing one way to the cricket ground and the other way to the park where football was played, was built in 1876 for the 1877 visit of James Lillywhite's English cricket team. It was during this tour that the MCG hosted the world's first Test match. In 1881, the original members' stand was sold to the Richmond Cricket Club for £55. A new brick stand, considered at the time to be the world's finest cricket facility, was built in its place. The foundation stone was laid by Prince George of Wales and Prince Albert Victor on 4 July and the stand opened in December that year. It was also in 1881 that a telephone was installed at the ground, and the wickets and goal posts were changed from an east–west orientation to north–south. In 1882 a scoreboard was built which showed details of the batsman's name and how he was dismissed. When the Lillywhite tour stand burned down in 1884 it was replaced by a new stand which seated 450 members and 4500 public. In 1897, second-storey wings were added to 'The Grandstand', as it was known, increasing capacity to 9,000. In 1900 it was lit with electric light. More stands were built in the early 20th century. An open wooden stand was on the south side of the ground in 1904 and the 2084-seat Grey Smith Stand (known as the New Stand until 1912) was erected for members in 1906. The 4000-seat Harrison Stand on the ground's southern side was built in 1908 followed by the 8000-seat Wardill Stand in 1912. In the 15 years after 1897 the grandstand capacity at the ground increased to nearly 20,000, while the full ground capacity was almost 60,000. In 1927, the second brick members' stand was replaced at a cost of £60,000. The Harrison and Wardill Stands were demolished in 1936 to make way for the Southern Stand which was completed in 1937. The Southern Stand seated 18,200 under cover and 13,000 in the open and was the main public area of the MCG. The maximum capacity of the ground under this configuration, as advised by the Health Department, was 84,000 seated and 94,000 standing. The Northern Stand, also known as the Olympic Stand, was built to replace the old Grandstand for the 1956 Olympic Games. By Health Department regulations, this was to increase the stadium's capacity to 120,000; although this was revised down after the 1956 VFL Grand Final, which could not comfortably accommodate its crowd of 115,802. Ten years later, the Grey Smith Stand and the open concrete stand next to it were replaced by the Western Stand; the Duke of Edinburgh laid a foundation stone for the Western Stand on 3 March 1967, and it was completed in 1968; in 1986, it was renamed the W.H. Ponsford Stand in honour of Victorian batsman Bill Ponsford. This was the stadium's highest capacity configuration, and the all-time record crowd for a sporting event at the venue of 121,696 was set under this configuration in the 1970 VFL Grand Final. The MCG was the home of Australia's first full colour video scoreboard, which replaced the old scoreboard in 1982, located on Level 4 of the Western Stand, which notably caught fire in 1999 and was replaced in 2000. A second video screen added in 1994 almost directly opposite, on Level 4 of the Olympic stand. In 1985, light towers were installed at the ground, allowing for night football and day-night cricket games. During the 1980s, the Olympic Stand had corporate suites installed which led to the reduction of seating and standing capacity in the stand, the Ponsford Stand had seats installed on the ground level replacing the standing room and both the Southern Stand and Olympic Stand had their wooden bench seats removed and replaced with plastic bucket seats. In 1988, inspections of the old Southern Stand found concrete cancer and provided the opportunity to replace the increasingly run-down 50-year-old facility. The projected cost of $100 million was outside what the Melbourne Cricket Club could afford so the Victorian Football League took the opportunity to part fund the project in return for a 30-year deal to share the ground. The new Great Southern Stand was completed in 1992, in time for the 1992 Cricket World Cup, at a final cost of $150 million. It was renamed the Shane Warne Stand after Victorian bowler Shane Warne in 2022 shortly after his death. The 1928 Members' stand, the 1956 Olympic stand and the 1968 W.H. Ponsford stand were demolished one by one between late 2003 to 2005 and replaced with a new structure in time for the 2006 Commonwealth Games. Despite now standing as a single unbroken stand, the individual sections retain the names of W.H. Ponsford, Olympic and Members Stands. The redevelopment cost exceeded 400 million and pushed the ground's capacity to just above 100,000. Since redevelopment, the highest attendance has been 100,024 at the 2022 AFL Grand Final. From 2011 until 2013, the Victoria State Government and the Melbourne Cricket Club funded a $55 million refurbishment of the facilities in the Great Southern Stand, including renovations to entrance gates and ticket outlets, food and beverage outlets, etc., without significantly modifying the stand. New scoreboards, more than twice the size of the original ones, were installed in the same positions in late 2013. From November 2019 until February 2020 all the playing field lights, including those in the light towers, were replaced with LED sports lighting with the lighting under the roof and in two of the light towers completed in time for the Boxing Day Test against New Zealand. Cricket. Early years. The first cricket match at the venue was played on 30 September 1854, while the first inter-colonial cricket match to be played at the MCG was between Victoria and New South Wales in March 1856. Victoria had played Tasmania (then known as Van Diemen's Land) as early as 1851 but the Victorians had included two professionals in the 1853 team upsetting the Tasmanians and causing a cooling of relations between the two colonies. To replace the disgruntled Tasmanians the Melbourne Cricket Club issued a challenge to play any team in the colonies for £1000. Sydney publican William Tunks accepted the challenge on behalf of New South Wales although the Victorians were criticised for playing for money. Ethics aside, New South Wales could not afford the £1000 and only managed to travel to Melbourne after half the team's travel cost of £181 was put up by Sydney barrister Richard Driver. The game eventually got under way on 26 March 1856. The Victorians, stung by criticism over the £1000 stake, argued over just about everything; the toss, who should bat first, whether different pitches should be used for the different innings and even what the umpires should wear. Victoria won the toss but New South Wales captain George Gilbert successfully argued that the visiting team should decide who bats first. The MCG was a grassless desert and Gilbert, considering players fielded without boots, promptly sent Victoria into bat. Needing only 16 to win in the final innings, New South Wales collapsed to be 5 for 5 before Gilbert's batting saved the game and the visitors won by three wickets. In subsequent years conditions at the MCG improved but the ever-ambitious Melburnians were always on the lookout for more than the usual diet of club and inter-colonial games. In 1861, Felix William Spiers and Christopher Pond, the proprietors of the Cafe de Paris in Bourke Street and caterers to the MCC, sent their agent, W.B. Mallam, to England to arrange for a cricket team to visit Australia. Mallam found a team and, captained by Heathfield Stephenson, it arrived in Australia on Christmas Eve 1861 to be met by a crowd of more than 3000 people. The team was taken on a parade through the streets wearing white-trimmed hats with blue ribbons given to them for the occasion. Wherever they went they were mobbed and cheered by crowds to the point where the tour sponsors had to take them out of Melbourne so that they could train undisturbed. Their first game was at the MCG on New Year's Day 1862, against a Victorian XVIII. The Englishmen also wore coloured sashes around their waists to identify each player and were presented with hats to shade them from the sun. Some estimates put the crowd at the MCG that day at 25,000. It must have been quite a picture with a new 6000 seat grandstand, coloured marquees ringing the ground and a carnival outside. Stephenson said that the ground was better than any in England. The Victorians however, were no match for the English at cricket and the visitors won by an innings and 96 runs. Over the four days of the 'test' more than 45,000 people attended and the profits for Speirs and Pond from this game alone was enough to fund the whole tour. At that time it was the largest number of people to ever watch a cricket match anywhere in the world. Local cricket authorities went out of their way to cater for the needs of the team and the sponsors. They provided grounds and sponsors booths without charge and let the sponsors keep the gate takings. The sponsors however, were not so generous in return. They quibbled with the Melbourne Cricket Club about paying £175 for damages to the MCG despite a prior arrangement to do so. The last match of the tour was against a Victorian XXII at the MCG after which the English team planted an elm tree outside the ground. Following the success of this tour, a number of other English teams also visited in subsequent years. George Parr's side came out in 1863–64 and there were two tours by sides led by William Gilbert Grace. The fourth tour was led by James Lillywhite. On Boxing Day 1866 an Indigenous Australian cricket team played at the MCG with 11,000 spectators against an MCC team. A few players in that match were in a later team that toured England in 1868. Some also played in three other matches at the ground before 1869. First Test match. Up until the fourth tour in 1877, led by James Lillywhite, touring teams had played first-class games against the individual colonial sides, but Lillywhite felt that his side had done well enough against New South Wales to warrant a game against an All Australian team. When Lillywhite headed off to New Zealand he left Melbourne cricketer John Conway to arrange the match for their return. Conway ignored the cricket associations in each colony and selected his own Australian team, negotiating directly with the players. Not only was the team he selected of doubtful representation but it was also probably not the strongest available as some players had declined to take part for various reasons. Demon bowler Fred Spofforth refused to play because wicket-keeper Billy Murdoch was not selected. Paceman Frank Allan was at Warrnambool Agricultural Show and Australia's best all-rounder Edwin Evans could not get away from work. In the end only five Australian-born players were selected. The same could be said for Lillywhite's team which, being selected from only four counties, meant that some of England's best players did not take part. In addition, the team had a rough voyage back across the Tasman Sea and many members had been seasick. The game was due to be played on 15 March, the day after their arrival, but most had not yet fully recovered. On top of that, wicket-keeper Ted Pooley was still in a New Zealand prison after a brawl in a Christchurch pub. England was nonetheless favourite to win the game and the first ever Test match began with a crowd of only 1000 watching. The Australians elected Dave Gregory from New South Wales as Australia's first ever captain and on winning the toss he decided to bat. Charles Bannerman scored an unbeaten 165 before retiring hurt. Sydney Cricket Ground curator, Ned Gregory, playing in his one and only Test for Australia, scored Test cricket's first duck. Australia racked up 245 and 104 while England scored 196 and 108 giving Australia victory by 45 runs. The win hinged on Bannerman's century and a superb bowling performance by Tom Kendall who took 7 for 55 in England's second innings. A fortnight later there was a return game, although it was really more of a benefit for the English team. Australia included Spofforth, Murdoch and T.J.D. Cooper in the side but this time the honours went to England who won by four wickets. Two years later Lord Harris brought another England team out and during England's first innings in the Test at the MCG, Fred Spofforth took the first hat-trick in Test cricket. He bagged two hauls of 6 for 48 and 7 for 62 in Australia's ten wicket win. Cricket uses. Through most of the 20th century, the Melbourne Cricket Ground was one of the two major Test venues in Australia (along with the Sydney Cricket Ground), and it would host one or two Tests in each summer in which Tests were played; since 1982, the Melbourne Cricket Ground has hosted one Test match each summer. Until 1979, the ground almost always hosted its match or one of its matches over the New Year, with the first day's play falling somewhere between 29 December and 1 January; in most years since 1980 and every year since 1995, its test has begun on Boxing Day, and it is now a standard fixture in the Australian cricket calendar and is known as the Boxing Day Test. The venue also hosts one-day international matches each year, and Twenty20 international matches most years. No other venue in Melbourne has hosted a Test, and Docklands Stadium is the only other venue to have hosted a limited-overs international. The Victorian first-class team plays Sheffield Shield cricket at the venue during the season. Prior to Test cricket being played on Boxing Day, it was a long-standing tradition for Victoria to host New South Wales in a first-class match on Boxing Day. Victoria also played its limited overs matches at the ground. Since the introduction of the domestic Twenty20 Big Bash League (BBL) in 2011, the Melbourne Stars club has played its home matches at the ground. It is also the home ground of the Melbourne Stars Women team, which plays in the Women's Big Bash League (WBBL). By the 1980s, the integral MCG pitch – grown from Merri Creek black soil – was considered the worst in Australia, in some matches exhibiting wildly inconsistent bounce which could see balls pass through as grubbers or rear dangerously high – a phenomenon which was put down to damage caused by footballers in winter and increased use for cricket during the summers of the 1970s. The integral pitch has since been removed and drop-in pitches have been cultivated and used since 1996, generally offering consistent bounce and a fair balance between bat and ball. The decade-and-a-half-old pitches degraded again through the late 2010s, seeing the pitch receive the first official International Cricket Council 'poor' rating by an Australian pitch in 2017, and saw another Sheffield Shield match abandoned in 2019; a new set of drop-in pitches will be grown and ready for use by the early 2020s. Highlights and lowlights. The highest first class team score in history was posted at the MCG in the Boxing Day match against New South Wales in 1926–27. Victoria scored 1107 in two days, with Bill Ponsford scoring 352 and Jack Ryder scoring 295. One of the most sensational incidents in Test cricket occurred at the MCG during the Melbourne test of the 1954–55 England tour of Australia. Big cracks had appeared in the pitch during a very hot Saturday's play and on the rest day Sunday, groundsman Jack House watered the pitch to close them up. This was illegal and the story was leaked by "The Age" newspaper. The teams agreed to finish the match and England won by 128 runs after Frank Tyson took 7 for 27 in the final innings. An incident in the second Test of the 1960–61 series involved the West Indies player Joe Solomon being given out after his hat fell on the stumps after being bowled at by Richie Benaud. The crowd sided with the West Indies over the Australians. Not only was the first Test match played at the MCG, the first One Day International match was also played there, on 5 January 1971, between Australia and England. The match was played on what was originally scheduled to have been the fifth day of a Test match, but the Test was abandoned after the first three days were washed out. Australia won the 40-over match by 5 wickets. The next ODI was played in August 1972, some 19 months later. In March 1977, a Centenary Test Match was held between Australia and England to mark the 100th anniversary of the first Test match. The match was the idea of former Australian bowler and MCC committee member Hans Ebeling who had been responsible for developing the cricket museum at the MCG. England's Derek Randall scored 174, Australia's Rod Marsh also got a century, Dennis Lillee took 11 wickets, and David Hookes, in his first Test, hit five fours in a row off England captain Tony Greig's bowling. Rick McCosker opened the batting for Australia and suffered a fractured jaw after being hit by a sharply rising delivery. He left the field but came back in the second innings with his head swathed in bandages. Australia won the match by 45 runs, exactly the same margin as the first Test in 1877. Another incident occurred on 1 February 1981 at the end of a one-day match between Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand, batting second, needed six runs off the last ball of the day to tie the game. Australian captain, Greg Chappell instructed his brother Trevor, who was bowling the last over, to send the last ball down underarm to prevent the New Zealand batsman, Brian McKechnie, from hitting the ball for six. Although not in the spirit of the game, an underarm delivery was quite legal, so long as the arm was kept straight. The Laws of cricket have since been changed to prevent such a thing happening again. The incident has long been a sore point between Australia and New Zealand. In February and March 1985 the Benson & Hedges World Championship of Cricket was played at the MCG, a One Day International tournament involving all of the then Test match playing countries to celebrate 150 years of the Australian state of Victoria. Some matches were also played at Sydney Cricket Ground. The MCG hosted the 1992 Cricket World Cup Final between Pakistan and England with a crowd of more than 87,000. Pakistan won the match after an all-round performance by Wasim Akram who scored 33 runs and took 3 wickets to make Pakistan cricket world champions for the first and, to date, only time. During the 1995 Boxing Day Test at the MCG, Australian umpire Darrell Hair called Sri Lankan spin bowler Muttiah Muralitharan for throwing the ball, rather than bowling it, seven times during the match. The other umpire did not call him once and this caused a controversy, although Muralitharan was later called for throwing by other umpires in different matches. The MCG is known for its great atmosphere, much of which is generated in the infamous Bay 13, situated almost directly opposite to the members stand. In the late 1980s, the crowd at Bay 13 would often mimic the warm up stretches performed by Merv Hughes. In a 1999 One-Day International, the behaviour of Bay 13 was so bad that Shane Warne, donning a helmet for protection, asked the crowd to settle down at the request of opposing England captain Alec Stewart. The MCG hosted three pool games as part of the 2015 ICC Cricket World Cup as well as a quarter-final, and then the final on 29 March. Australia comfortably defeated New Zealand by seven wickets in front of an Australian record cricket crowd of 93,013. The 2020 ICC Women's T20 World Cup Final was held on International Women's Day between Australia and India. Australia won by 85 runs in front of a record crowd for women's cricket of 86,174. Australian rules football. Origins. Despite being called the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the stadium has been and continues to be used much more often for Australian rules football. Spectator numbers for football are larger than for any other sport in Australia, and it makes more money for the MCG than any of the other sports played there. Although the Melbourne Cricket Club members were instrumental in founding Australian Rules Football, there were understandable concerns in the early days about the damage that might be done to the playing surface if football was allowed to be played at the MCG. Therefore, football games were often played in the parklands next to the cricket ground, and this was the case for the first documented football match to be played at the ground. The match which today is considered to be the first Australian rules football, played between Melbourne Grammar and Scotch College over three Saturdays beginning 7 August 1858 was played in this area. It wasn't until 1869 that football was played on the MCG proper, a trial game involving a police team. It was not for another ten years, in 1879, after the formation of the Victorian Football Association, that the first official match was played on the MCG and the cricket ground itself became a regular venue for football. Two night matches were played on the ground during the year under the newly invented electric light. In the early years, the MCG was the home ground of Melbourne Football Club, Australia's oldest club, established in 1858 by the founder of the game itself, Thomas Wills. Melbourne won five premierships during the 1870s using the MCG as its home ground. The first of nearly 3000 Victorian Football League/Australian Football League games to be played at the MCG was on 15 May 1897, with beating 64 to 19. Melbourne used the venue as its training base until 1984, before being required to move to preserve the venue's surface when North Melbourne began playing there. Finals and grand finals. The VFL/AFL grand final has been played at the MCG every season since 1902, except for between 1942 and 1945, when the ground was used by the military during World War II; in 1991 as the construction of the Great Southern Stand had temporarily reduced the ground's capacity below that of Waverley Park; and both 2020 and 2021, when restrictions in Victoria due to the COVID-19 pandemic prompted the games to be moved to the Gabba in Queensland and Perth Stadium in Western Australia respectively. All three grand final replays have been played at the MCG. Before the MCG was fully seated, a grand final could draw attendances above 110,000. The record for the highest attendance in the history of the sport was set in the 1970 VFL Grand Final, with 121,696 in attendance. Since being fully seated, grand final attendances are typically between 95,000 and 100,000, with the record of 100,024 at the 2022 AFL Grand Final, followed by 100,022 at the 2018 AFL Grand Final and 100,021 at the 2017 AFL Grand Final. In the modern era, most finals games held in Melbourne have been played at the MCG. Under the current contract, 10 finals (excluding the grand final) must be played at the MCG over a five-year period. Under previous contracts, the MCG was entitled to host at least one match in each week of the finals, which on several occasions required non-Victorian clubs to play "home" finals in Victoria. The MCG is contracted to host the grand final every year until 2059. All Melbourne-based teams (and most of the time Geelong) play their "home" finals at the MCG unless if four Victorian teams win the right to host a final in the first week of the finals. MCG and the VFL/AFL. For many years the VFL had an uneasy relationship with the MCG trustees and the Melbourne Cricket Club. Both needed the other, but resented the dependence. The VFL made the first move which brought things to a head by beginning the development of VFL Park at Mulgrave in the 1960s as its own home ground and as a potential venue for future grand finals. Then in 1983, president of the VFL, Allen Aylett started to pressure the MCG Trust to give the VFL a greater share of the money it made from using the ground for football. After negotiations with the MCC in 1964, joined Melbourne playing their home games at the MCG from 1965. In March 1983 the MCG trustees met to consider a submission from Aylett. Aylett said he wanted the Melbourne Cricket Club's share of revenue cut from 15 per cent to 10 per cent. He threatened to take the following day's opening game of the season, Collingwood vs Melbourne, away from the MCG. The money was held aside until an agreement could be reached. Different deals, half deals and possible deals were done over the years, with the Premier of Victoria, John Cain, Jr., even becoming involved. Cain was said to have promised the VFL it could use the MCG for six months of the year and then hand it back to the MCC, but this never eventuated, as the MCG Trust did not approve it. In the mid-1980s, a deal was done where the VFL was given its own members area in the Southern Stand. Against this background of political maneuvering, in 1985 became the third club to make the MCG its home ground. In the same year, North played in the first night football match at the MCG for almost 110 years, against Collingwood on 29 March 1985. In 1986, only a month after Ross Oakley had taken over as VFL Commissioner, VFL executives met with the MCC and took a big step towards resolving their differences. Changes in the personnel at the MCC also helped. In 1983 John Lill was appointed secretary and Don Cordner its president. Shortly after the Southern Stand opened in 1992, the Australian Football League moved its headquarters into the complex. The AFL assisted with financing the new stand and came to an agreement that ensures at least 45 AFL games are played at the MCG each year, including the Grand Final in September. Another 45 days of cricket are also played there each year and more than 3.5 million spectators come to watch every year. Also in 1992, became the fourth AFL club to call the MCG home with staging the majority of their home games at the MCG from 1994 onwards before fully moving from Victoria Park to the MCG in 2000. have also used the ground for up to five home games a year since 1992. After the closure of Waverley Park, moved their home games to the MCG in 2000. As of the end of 2011, Matthew Richardson holds the records for having scored the most goals on the MCG and as of 2021 Scott Pendlebury holds the record for playing the most matches. Two players have scored 14 goals for an AFL or VFL game in one match at the MCG, Gary Ablett Sr. in 1989 and 1993 and John Longmire in 1990. Before an AFL match between and on 27 August 1999, the city end scoreboard caught on fire due to an electrical fault, causing the start of play to be delayed by half an hour. World War II. During World War II, the government requisitioned the MCG for military use. From 1942 until 1945 it was occupied by (in order): the United States Army Air Forces, the Royal Australian Air Force, the United States Marine Corps and again the RAAF. Over the course of the war, more than 200,000 personnel were barracked at the MCG. From April to October 1942, the US Army's Fifth Air Force occupied the ground, naming it "Camp Murphy", in honor of officer Colonel William Murphy, a senior USAAF officer killed in Java. In 1943 the MCG was home to the legendary First Regiment of the First Division of the United States Marine Corps. The First Marine Division were the heroes of the Guadalcanal campaign and used the "cricket grounds", as the marines referred to it, to rest and recuperate. On 14 March 1943 the marines hosted a giant "get together" of American and Australian troops on the arena. In 1977, Melbourne Cricket Club president Sir Albert Chadwick and Medal of Honor recipient, Colonel Mitchell Paige, unveiled a commemorative plaque recognizing the Americans' time at the ground. In episode 3 of the 2010 TV miniseries, "The Pacific", members of the US Marines are shown to be camped in the war-era MCG. Olympic Games. The MCG's most famous moment in history was as the main stadium for the 1956 Olympic Games, hosting the opening and closing ceremonies, track and field events, and the finals in field hockey and soccer. The MCG was only one of seven possible venues, including the Melbourne Showgrounds, for the Games' main arena. The MCG was the Federal Government's preferred venue but there was resistance from the MCC. The inability to decide on the central venue nearly caused the Games to be moved from Melbourne. Prime Minister Robert Menzies recognised the potential embarrassment to Australia if this happened and organised a three-day summit meeting to thrash things out. Attending was Victorian Premier John Cain, Sr., the Prime Minister, deputy opposition leader Arthur Calwell, all State political leaders, civic leaders, Olympic officials and trustees and officials of the MCC. Convening the meeting was no small effort considering the calibre of those attending and that many of the sports officials were only part-time amateurs. As 22 November, the date of the opening ceremony, drew closer, Melbourne was gripped ever more tightly by Olympic fever. At 3 pm the day before the opening ceremony, people began to line up outside the MCG gates. That night the city was paralysed by a quarter of a million people who had come to celebrate. The MCG's capacity was increased by the new Olympic (or Northern) Stand, and on the day itself 103,000 people filled the stadium to capacity. A young up and coming distance runner was chosen to carry the Olympic torch into the stadium for the opening ceremony. Although Ron Clarke had a number of junior world records for distances of 1500 m, one mile (1.6 km) and two miles (3 km), he was relatively unknown in 1956. Perhaps the opportunity to carry the torch inspired him because he went on to have a career of exceptional brilliance and was without doubt the most outstanding runner of his day. At one stage he held the world record for every distance from two miles (3 km) to 20 km. His few failures came in Olympic and Commonwealth Games competition. Although favourite for the gold at Tokyo in 1964 he was placed ninth in the 5,000 metres race and the marathon and third in the 10,000 metres. He lost again in the 1966 Commonwealth Games and in 1968 at altitude in Mexico he collapsed at the end of the 10 km race. On that famous day in Melbourne in 1956 the torch spluttered and sparked, showering Clarke with hot magnesium, burning holes in his shirt. When he dipped the torch into the cauldron it burst into flame singeing him further. In the centre of the ground, John Landy, the fastest miler in the world, took the Olympic oath and sculler Merv Wood carried the Australian flag. The Melbourne Games also saw the high point of Australian female sprinting with Betty Cuthbert winning three gold medals at the MCG. She won the 100 m and 200 m and anchored the winning 4 x 100 m team. Born in Merrylands in Sydney's west she was a champion schoolgirl athlete and had already broken the world record for the 200 m just before the 1956 Games. She was to be overshadowed by her Western Suburbs club member, the Marlene Matthews. When they got to the Games, Matthews was the overwhelming favourite especially for the 100 m a distance over which Cuthbert had beaten her just once. Both Matthews and Cuthbert won their heats with Matthews setting an Olympic record of 11.5 seconds in hers. Cuthbert broke that record in the following heat with a time of 11.4 seconds. The world record of 11.3 was held by another Australian, Shirley Strickland who was eliminated in her heat. In the final Matthews felt she got a bad start and was last at the 50 metre mark. Cuthbert sensed Isabella Daniels from the USA close behind her and pulled out a little extra to win Australia's first gold at the Games in a time of 11.5 seconds, Matthews was third. The result was repeated in the 200 m final. Cuthbert won her second gold breaking Marjorie Jackson's Olympic record. Matthews was third again. By the time the 1956 Olympics came around, Shirley Strickland was a mother of 31 years of age but managed to defend her 80 m title, which she had won in Helsinki four years before, winning gold and setting a new Olympic record. The sensational incident of the track events was the non-selection of Marlene Matthews in the 4 x 100 m relay. Matthews trained with the relay team up until the selection was made but Cuthbert, Strickland, Fleur Mellor and Norma Croker were picked for the team. There was outrage at the selection which increased when Matthews went on to run third in both the 100 m and 200 m finals. Personally she was devastated and felt that she had been overlooked for her poor baton change. Strickland was disappointed with the way Matthews was treated and maintained it was an opinion held in New South Wales that she had baton problems. One of the selectors, Doris Magee from NSW, said that selecting Matthews increased the risk of disqualification at the change. But Cuthbert maintained that the selectors made the right choice saying that Fleur Mellor was fresh, a specialist relay runner and was better around the curves than Matthews. The men did not fare so well. The 4 x 400 m relay team, including later IOC Committee member Kevan Gosper, won silver. Charles Porter also won silver in the high jump. Hec Hogan won bronze in the 100 m to become the first Australian man to win a medal in a sprint since the turn of the century and despite injury John Landy won bronze in the 1500 m. Allan Lawrence won bronze in the 10,000 m event. Apart from athletics, the stadium was also used for the soccer finals, the hockey finals, the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, and an exhibition game of baseball between the Australian National Team and a US armed services team at which an estimated crowd of 114,000 attended. This was the Guinness World Record for the largest attendance for any baseball game, which stood until a 29 March 2008 exhibition game between the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers at the Los Angeles Coliseum (also a former Olympic venue in 1932 and 1984) drawing 115,300. The MCG was also used for another demonstration sport, Australian Rules. The Olympics being an amateur competition meant that only amateurs could play in the demonstration game. A combined team of amateurs from the VFL and VFA were selected to play a state team from the Victorian Amateur Football Association (VAFA). The game was played 7 December 1956 with the VAFA side, wearing white jumpers, green collars and the Olympic rings on their chests, winning easily 81 to 55. One of the players chosen for the VFA side was Lindsay Gaze (although he never got off the bench) who would go on to make his mark in another sport, basketball, rather than Australian Rules. The MCG's link with its Olympic past continues to this day. Within its walls is the IOC-endorsed Australian Gallery of Sport and Olympic Museum. Forty-four years later at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, the ground hosted several soccer preliminaries, making it one of a few venues ever used for more than one Olympics. Commonwealth Games. The Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the 2006 Commonwealth Games were held at the MCG, as well as athletics events during the games. The games began on 15 March and ended on 26 March. The seating capacity of the stadium during the games was 80,000. A total of 47 events were contested, of which 24 by male and 23 by female athletes. Furthermore, three men's and three women's disability events were held within the programme. All athletics events took place within the Melbourne Cricket Ground, while the marathon and racewalking events took place on the streets of Melbourne and finished at the main stadium. The hosts Australia easily won the medals table with 16 golds and 41 medals in total. Jamaica came second with 10 golds and 22 medals, while Kenya and England were the next best performers. A total of eleven Games records were broken over the course of the seven-day competition. Six of the records were broken by Australian athletes. Rugby union. The first game of Rugby Union to be played on the ground was on Saturday, 29 June 1878, when the Waratah Club of Sydney played Carlton Football Club in a return of the previous year's contests in Sydney where the clubs had competed in both codes of football. The match, watched by a crowd of between 6,000 and 7,000 resulted in a draw; one goal and one try being awarded to each team. The next Rugby match was held on Wednesday 29 June 1881, when the Wanderers, a team organised under the auspices of the Melbourne Cricket Club, played a team representing a detached Royal Navy squadron then visiting Melbourne. The squadron team won by one goal and one try to nil. It was not until 19 August 1899 that the MCG was again the venue for a Union match, this time Victoria v the British Lions (as they were later to be called). During the preceding week the Victorians had held several trial and practice matches there, as well as several training sessions, despite which they were defeated 30–0 on the day before a crowd of some 7,000. Nine years later, on Monday, 10 August 1908, Victoria was again the host, this time to the Australian team en route to Great Britain and soon to be dubbed the First Wallabies. Despite being held on a working day some 1,500 spectators attended to see the visitors win by 26–6. On Saturday, 6 July 1912 the MCG was the venue, for the only time ever, of a match between two Victorian Rugby Union clubs, Melbourne and East Melbourne, the former winning 9–5 in what was reported to be ‘... one of the finest exhibitions of the Rugby game ever seen in Victoria.' It was played before a large crowd as a curtain raiser to a State Rules match against South Australia. On Saturday 18 June 1921, in another curtain raiser, this time to a Melbourne-Fitzroy League game, a team representing Victoria was soundly beaten 51–0 by the South African Springboks in front of a crowd of 11,214. It was nine years later, on Saturday 13 September 1930, that the British Lions returned to play Victoria, again before a crowd of 7,000, this time defeating the home side 41–36, a surprisingly narrow winning margin. The first post war match at the MCG was on 21 May 1949 when the NZ Maoris outclassed a Southern States side 35–8 before a crowd of close to 10,000. A year later, on 29 July 1950, for the first and only time, Queensland travelled to Victoria to play an interstate match, defeating their hosts 31–12 before a crowd of 7,479. In the following year the MCG was the venue for a contest between the New Zealand All Blacks and an Australian XV. This was on 30 June 1951 before some 9,000 spectators and resulted in a convincing 56–11 win for the visitors. Union did not return to the MCG until the late 1990s, for several night time Test matches, both Australia v New Zealand All Blacks as part of the Tri Nations Series. The first, on Saturday 26 July 1997, being notable for an attendance of 90,119, the visitors decisively winning 33–18 and the second, on Saturday 11 July 1998, for a victory to Australia of 24–16. Australia and New Zealand met again at the MCG during the 2007 Tri Nations Series on 30 June, the hosts again winning, this time by 20 points to 15 in front of a crowd of 79,322. Australia returned to the MCG as part of the 2023 Rugby Championship. They were defeated by New Zealand 38–7 in front of a crowd of 83,944. Rugby league. Rugby league was first played at the ground on 15 August 1914, with the New South Wales team losing to England 15–21. The first ever State of Origin match at the MCG (and second in Melbourne) was Game II of the 1994 series, and the attendance of 87,161 set a new record rugby league crowd in Australia. The MCG was also the venue for Game II of the 1995 State of Origin series and drew 52,994, the most of any game that series. The second game of the 1997 State of Origin series, which, due to the Super League war only featured Australian Rugby League-signed players, was played there too, but only attracted 25,105, the lowest in a series that failed to attract over 35,000 to any game. The Melbourne Storm played two marquee games at the MCG in 2000. This was the first time that they had played outside of their normal home ground of Olympic Park Stadium which held 18,500 people. Their first game was held on 3 March 2000 against the St. George Illawarra Dragons in a rematch of the infamous 1999 NRL Grand Final. Dragons player Anthony Mundine said the Storm were 'not worthy premiers' and they responded by running in 12 tries to two, winning 70–10 in front of 23,239 fans. This was their biggest crowd they had played against until 33,427 turned up to the 2007 Preliminary Final at Docklands Stadium which saw Melbourne defeat the Parramatta Eels 26–10. The record home and away crowd record has also been overhauled, when a match at Docklands in 2010 against St George attracted 25,480 spectators. Their second game attracted only 15,535 spectators and was up against the Cronulla Sharks on 24 June 2000. Once again, the Storm won 22–16. It was announced in June 2014 that the ground would host its first State of Origin match since 1997. Game II of the 2015 series was played at the venue, with an all-time record State of Origin crowd of 91,513 attending the match. The attendance is 19th on the all time rugby league attendance list and the 4th highest rugby league attendance in Australia. The MCG hosted its fifth State of Origin match on 6 June 2018. In front of a crowd of 87,122, the third largest State of Origin crowd in Victoria, New South Wales defeated Queensland 22–12. Soccer. On 9 February 2006 Victorian premier Steve Bracks and Football Federation Australia chairman Frank Lowy announced that the MCG would host a world class soccer event each year from 2006 until 2009 inclusive. The agreement sees an annual fixture at the MCG, beginning with a clash between Australia and European champions Greece on 25 May 2006 in front of a sell-out crowd of 95,103, before Australia left to contest in the World Cup finals. Australia beat Greece 1–0. The Socceroos also hosted a match in 2007 against Argentina, losing 1–0, as well as 2010 FIFA World Cup qualification matches in 2009 against Japan, which attracted 81,872 fans as Australia beat Japan 2–1 via 2 Tim Cahill headers after falling behind 1–0 late in the 1st half. In 2010 it was announced that as a warm up to the 2010 FIFA World Cup which the Australians had qualified for, they would play fellow qualified nation New Zealand on 24 May at the MCG. Other matches played at the MCG include the following: Tennis. In 1878 the Melbourne Cricket Club's Lawn Tennis Committee laid an asphalt court at the MCG and Victoria's first game of tennis was played there. A second court of grass was laid in 1879 and the first Victorian Championship played on it in 1880. The first inter-colonial championship was played in 1883 and the first formal inter-state match between NSW and Victoria played in 1884 with Victoria winning. In 1889 the MCC arranged for tennis to be played at the Warehousemen's Cricket Ground (now known as the Albert Cricket Ground), at Albert Park, rather than at the MCG. Cycling. It was at the MCG in 1869 that one of Australia's first bicycle races was held. The event was for velocipedes, crude wooden machines with pedals on the front wheels. In 1898 the Austral Wheel Race was held at the MCG attracting a crowd of 30,000 to see cyclists race for a total of £400 in prize money, with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winning £240, £120, and £40 respectively. Test cricket records. Partnership records. All records correct as of 8 July 2021. ODI records. Last updated 26 December 2022. Twenty20 International records. Last updated 26 December 2022. VFL/AFL records. All records correct as of 26 August 2019. Statues. Tattersall's Parade of Champions. The Tattersall's Parade of the Champions undertaking is a gift to the people of Australia by Tattersall's and is a focal point of the Yarra Park precinct. The MCG is a magnet for tourists worldwide and the statues reinforce the association between the elite sportsmen and women who have competed here and the stadium that rejoiced in their performances. Australia Post Avenue of Legends. In 2010, the Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC) announced an expansion to the list of sporting statues placed around the MCG precinct in partnership with Australia Post. The Australia Post Avenue of Legends project aimed to place a minimum of five statues in Yarra Park, extending from the gate 2 MCC members entrance up the avenue towards Wellington Parade. The most recent addition of Kevin Bartlett was unveiled in March 2017.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20090

Marmite

Marmite ( ) is a British savoury food spread based on yeast extract, invented by the German scientist Justus von Liebig. It is made from by-products of beer brewing (lees) and is produced by the British company Unilever. Marmite is a vegan source of B vitamins, including supplemental vitamin B12. A traditional method of use is to spread it very thinly on buttered toast. Marmite is a sticky, dark brown paste with a distinctive, salty, powerful flavour and heady aroma. This distinctive taste is represented in the marketing slogan: "Love it or hate it." Such is its prominence in British popular culture that Marmite is often used as a metaphor for something that is an acquired taste or a polarised opinion. Marmite is commonly used as a flavouring, as it is particularly rich in umami due to its very high levels of glutamate (1960 mg/100 g). The image on the jar shows a "marmite" (), a French term for a large, covered earthenware or metal cooking pot. Marmite was originally supplied in earthenware pots but since the 1920s has been sold in glass jars. Marmite's distinctive bulbous jars are supplied to Unilever by the German glass manufacturer Gerresheimer. Similar products include the Australian Vegemite (whose name is derived from that of Marmite), the Swiss Cenovis, the Brazilian Cenovit, the long-extinct Argentinian Condibé, and the German Vitam-R. Marmite in New Zealand has been manufactured since 1919 under licence, but with a different recipe; it is the only one sold as "Marmite" in Australasia and the Pacific Islands, whereas elsewhere the British version predominates. History. The product that was to become Marmite was invented during the late 19th century when the German scientist Justus von Liebig discovered that brewer's yeast could be concentrated, bottled and eaten. During 1902, the Marmite Food Extract Company was formed in Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire, England with Marmite as its main product and Burton as the site of the first factory. The by-product yeast needed for the paste was supplied by Bass Brewery. By 1907, the product had become successful enough to warrant construction of a second factory at Camberwell Green in London. By 1912, the discovery of vitamins was a boost for Marmite, as the spread is a rich source of the vitamin B complex; with the vitamin B1 deficiency beriberi being common during World War I, the spread became more popular. British troops during World War I were issued Marmite as part of their rations. During the 1930s, Marmite was used by the English scientist Lucy Wills to successfully treat a form of anaemia in mill workers in Bombay. She later identified folic acid as the active ingredient. Marmite was used to treat malnutrition by Suriya-Mal workers during the 1934–5 malaria epidemic in Sri Lanka. Housewives were encouraged to spread Marmite thinly and to "use it sparingly just now" because of limited rations of the product. During 1990, Marmite Limited, which had become a subsidiary of Bovril Limited, was bought by CPC International Inc, which changed its name to Best Foods Inc during 1998. Best Foods Inc subsequently merged with Unilever during 2000, and Marmite is now a trademark owned by Unilever. Similar products. There are a number of similar yeast products available in other countries; these products are not directly connected to the original Marmite recipe and brand. The Australian product Vegemite was developed in early 1920s by Cyril Callister for Fred Walker and Co. due to shortages of Marmite exports to Australia as a result of the First World War. It is now distributed in many countries, and AussieMite is sold in Australia. Other products include OzeMite, which is made by Dick Smith Foods; Cenovit, a Brazilian spread; Vitam-R, a German spread; Cenovis, a Swiss spread; and Vegex, an autolyzed yeast product available in the United States since 1913. In the United Kingdom, own-branded yeast extract, very similar to Marmite, is sold by Sainsbury's, Tesco and Aldi. Usage. Marmite has traditionally been eaten as a savoury spread on bread, toast, savoury biscuits or crackers, and other similar baked products. Owing to its concentrated taste, it is often spread very thinly in combination with butter or margarine. It can be made into a savoury hot drink by adding one teaspoon to a mug of hot water, much like Oxo or Bovril. It is also commonly used to enrich casseroles and stews. Marmite is often paired with cheese—for example, in a cheese sandwich or a cheese-flavoured biscuit such as Mini Cheddars. In the UK, Starbucks offers a cheese and Marmite panini. There are Marmite-flavored varieties of Walkers Crisps, and of some brands of rice cakes and biscuits. Marmite has also been used as an ingredient in cocktails, including the Marmite Cocktail and the Marmite Gold Rush. Celebrity chefs have created signature Marmite-flavored recipes: Nigella Lawson has one for Marmite spaghetti, and Heston Blumenthal has one for Marmite consommé. In 2020, Marmite launched a campaign on Instagram—“The Great Marmite Experiment”—-encouraging people to share their Marmite-flavored recipes. The many entries in response included roast potatoes, beef Wellington and cookies. In Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong, Marmite is enjoyed stirred into congee (rice porridge), and in an intensely savory Malaysian dish (local Chinese dish) called Marmite Chicken, consisting of fried pieces of chicken tossed in a Marmite sauce. Manufacture. While the process is secret, the general method for making yeast extract on a commercial scale is to add salt to a suspension of yeast, making the solution hypertonic, which results in the cells shrivelling; this triggers autolysis, during which the yeast self-destructs. The dying yeast cells are then heated to complete their breakdown, and since yeast cells have thick cell walls which would detract from the smoothness of the end product, the husks are sieved out. As with other yeast extracts, Marmite contains free glutamic acid, the monosodium salt of which being monosodium glutamate. Currently, the main ingredients of Marmite are glutamic acid-rich yeast extract, with lesser quantities of salt, vegetable extract, spice extracts and celery extracts, although the precise composition is a trade secret. Vitamins added for food fortification include riboflavin, folic acid, and Vitamin B12. Vitamin B12 is not naturally found in yeast extract, but is very important for vegans who are at risk of deficiency. Nutritional information. Marmite is rich in B vitamins including thiamin (B1), riboflavin (B2), niacin (B3), and folic acid (B9). Vitamin B12 is only available through artificial enrichment; riboflavin and folic acid are added on top of the naturally-occurring amount. The sodium content of the spread is high and has caused concern, although it is the amount per serving rather than the percentage in bulk Marmite that is relevant. The main ingredient of Marmite is yeast extract, which contains a high concentration of glutamic acid. Marmite is not gluten-free, as it is made with wheat, and although it is thoroughly washed, it may contain small quantities of gluten. Marmite should be avoided if a person takes a MAOI antidepressant, such as phenelzine (Nardil) or tranylcypromine (Parnate), as yeast extracts interact adversely with these types of medications due to their tyramine content. Storage. Marmite should be stored in the dark and kept cool, but should not be refrigerated. The "best before" date is given as guidance for the loss of vitamins rather than safety. Marketing. Marmite's publicity campaigns initially emphasised the spread's healthy nature, extolling it as "The growing up spread you never grow out of". The first major Marmite advertising campaign began during the 1930s, with characters whose faces incorporated the word "good". Soon afterwards, the increasing awareness of vitamins was used in Marmite advertising, with slogans proclaiming that "A small quantity added to the daily diet will ensure you and your family are taking sufficient vitamin B to keep nerves, brain, and digestion in proper working order". During the 1980s, the spread was advertised with the slogan "My mate, Marmite", chanted in television commercials by an army platoon. The spread had been a standard vitamin supplement for British-based German POWs during the Second World War. By the 1990s Marmite's distinctive and powerful flavour had earned it as many detractors as it had fans, and it was known for producing a polarised "love/hate" reaction amongst consumers. For many years television advertisements for Marmite featured the song "Low Rider" by the band War with the lyrics changed to the phrase "My Mate, Marmite". Marmite began a "Love it or Hate it" campaign during October 1996, and this resulted in the inventing of the phrase "Marmite effect" or "Marmite reaction" for anything which provoked controversy. On 22 April 2010, Unilever threatened legal action against the British National Party for using a jar of Marmite and the "love it or hate it" slogan in a party political broadcast. Availability worldwide. Because of the local product named "Marmite", European Marmite is sold by the name "Our Mate" in Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand Marmite uses the name "NZ-Mite" elsewhere. Denmark. In Denmark, food safety legislation dictates that foodstuffs that contain added vitamins can only be sold by retailers which have been licensed by the Veterinary and Food Administration. During May 2011, the company that imports the product to Denmark revealed that it was not licensed and had therefore stopped selling the product: this resulted in widespread but inaccurate reports by the British media that Marmite had been banned by the Danish authorities. The Danish Veterinary and Food Administration stated during 2015 that Marmite had not been banned in the country, but that fortified foods need to be tested for safety and approved before they can be marketed in the country. The issue was resolved in 2016, after the completion of a 2014 supplier-requested test. Canada. On 24 January 2014, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency was noted, in a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation story, as preparing to stop the sale of Marmite, as well as Vegemite and Ovaltine, in Canada because they were enriched with vitamins and minerals which were not listed by Canadian food regulations. The agency said the products were not a health hazard. The CFIA later specified that these specific items had been seized because they were not the versions that are formulated for sale in Canada and which satisfy all Canadian food regulations. Canadian versions of Marmite and the other products would still be permitted to be sold in Canada. South Africa. Marmite is manufactured by licence in South Africa by Pioneer Foods in its traditional form. South Africa also produces a bottled, long-life Marmite-flavoured cheese spread. It is light in texture and contains a hint of Marmite. Special editions. During 2002 a 100th anniversary jar was released. During February 2007, Marmite produced a limited edition Guinness Marmite of 300,000 jars of 250 g of their yeast extract with 30% Guinness yeast, giving it a noticeable hint of "Guinness" flavour. During January 2008 Champagne Marmite was released for Valentine's Day, with a limited-edition production of 600,000 units initially released exclusively to Selfridges of London. The product had 0.3% champagne added to the recipe, and a modified heart-shaped label with "I love you" in place of the logo. During 2009, a limited edition Marston's Pedigree Marmite was initiated to celebrate the 2009 Ashes Cricket test series. During March 2010, a "super-strength" version of Marmite was released, called Marmite XO (XO standing for "extra old"). Marmite XO is matured for 28 days, four times longer than usual. The original Marmite XO's cap was black, and has a black and gold label. In July 2019, Marmite XO returned due to popular demand. The 2019 version has an off-white cap as opposed to the original black. During April 2012, a special-edition jar in commemoration of the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II was released. With the product renamed "Ma'amite," the redesigned label featured a colour scheme based upon the Union Jack; the marmite and spoon logo replaced by a gold crown, and with a red rather than yellow cap. The front label also declares "Made with 100% British Yeast". Coinciding with the 110th anniversary of the brand, production was limited to 300,000 jars. For Christmas 2012 a gold limited edition was begun, containing edible gold-coloured flecks. Marmite chocolate is also available. During 2015, Marmite Summer of Love Special Edition featured a flower power-themed label. This special edition's blend had a lighter taste made using 100% lager yeast. On 25 March 2019, Marmite Peanut Butter was introduced, which (as the title implied) combined the taste of Marmite with that of crunchy peanut butter. On 2 May 2022, Marmite Truffle was launched and sold exclusively in Sainsburys, along with Marmite 'Dynamite', a chilli-flavoured Marmite spread. The Marmite Truffle was marketed with a variation of the 'Love it Or Hate It' slogan designed to make it sound more sophisticated: "One either loves it or considers it utterly vulgar".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20167

Mexican cuisine

Mexican cuisine consists of the cooking cuisines and traditions of the modern country of Mexico. Its earliest roots lie in Mesoamerican cuisine. Its ingredients and methods begin with the first agricultural communities such as the Olmec and Maya who domesticated maize, created the standard process of nixtamalization, and established their foodways. Successive waves of other Mesoamerican groups brought with them their cooking methods. These included: the Teotihuacanos, Toltec, Huastec, Zapotec, Mixtec, Otomi, Purépecha, Totonac, Mazatec, Mazahua, and Nahua. With the Mexica formation of the multi-ethnic Triple Alliance (Aztec Empire), culinary foodways became infused (Aztec cuisine). Today's food staples native to the land include corn (maize), turkey, beans, squash, amaranth, chia, avocados, tomatoes, tomatillos, cacao, vanilla, agave, spirulina, sweet potato, cactus, and chili pepper. Its history over the centuries has resulted in regional cuisines based on local conditions, including Baja Med, Chiapas, Veracruz, Oaxacan, and the American cuisines of New Mexican and Tex-Mex. After the Spanish Conquest of the Aztec empire and the rest of Mesoamerica, Spaniards introduced a number of other foods, the most important of which were meats from domesticated animals (beef, pork, chicken, goat, and sheep), dairy products (especially cheese and milk), rice, sugar, olive oil and various fruits and vegetables. Various cooking styles and recipes were also introduced from Spain both throughout the colonial period and by Spanish immigrants who continued to arrive following independence. Spanish influence in Mexican cuisine is also noticeable in its sweets such as: alfajores, alfeniques, borrachitos and churros. African and Asian influences were also introduced during this era as a result of African slavery and Asian slavery in New Spain through the Atlantic slave trade and the Manila-Acapulco Galleons. Mexican cuisine is an important aspect of the culture, social structure and popular traditions of Mexico. The most important example of this connection is the use of mole for special occasions and holidays, particularly in the South and Central regions of the country. For this reason and others, traditional Mexican cuisine was inscribed in 2010 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. Basic elements. Mexican cuisine is a complex and ancient cuisine, with techniques and skills developed over thousands of years of history. It is created mostly with ingredients native to Mexico, as well as those brought over by the Spanish conquistadors, with some new influences since then. In addition to staples such as corn and chili peppers, native ingredients include squashes, avocados, cocoa and vanilla, as well as ingredients not generally used in other cuisines, such as edible flowers, vegetables like huauzontle and papaloquelite, or small criollo avocados, whose skin is edible. Chocolate originated in Mexico and was prized by the Aztecs. It remains an important ingredient in Mexican cookery. Vegetables play an important role in Mexican cuisine. Common vegetables include zucchini, cauliflower, corn, potatoes, spinach, Swiss chard, mushrooms, jitomate (red tomato), and green tomato. Other traditional vegetable ingredients include chili pepper, huitlacoche (corn fungus), huauzontle, and nopal (cactus pads). European contributions include pork, chicken, beef, cheese, herbs and spices, as well as some fruits. Tropical fruits, many of which are indigenous to the Americas, such as guava, prickly pear, sapote, mangoes, bananas, pineapple and cherimoya (custard apple) are popular, especially in the center and south of the country. Edible insects have been enjoyed in Mexico for millennia. Entemophagy or insect-eating is becoming increasingly popular outside of poor and rural areas for its unique flavors, sustainability, and connection to pre-Hispanic heritage. Popular species include chapulines (grasshoppers or crickets), escamoles (ant larvae), cumiles (stink bugs) and (water bug eggs). Maize. Despite the introduction of wheat and rice to Mexico, maize is the most commonly consumed grain in almost all areas of the country and serves as the main ingredient in many local recipes (e.g. maize tortillas, atole, pozole, menudo, tamal). While also eaten fresh, most maize is dried, nixtamalized and ground into a dough called "masa". This dough is used both fresh and fermented to make a wide variety of dishes from drinks (atole, pozole, etc.) to tamales, sopes, and much more. However, the most common way to eat maize in Mexico is in the form of a tortilla, which accompanies almost every dish. Tortillas are made of maize in most of the country, but other regional versions exist, such as wheat in the north or plantain, yuca and wild greens in Oaxaca. Chile peppers. The other basic ingredient in all parts of Mexico is the chile pepper. Mexican food has a reputation for being very spicy, but it has a wide range of flavors and while many spices are used for cooking, not all are spicy. Many dishes also have subtle flavors. Chiles are indigenous to Mexico and their use dates back thousands of years. They are used for their flavors and not just their heat, with Mexico using the widest variety. If a savory dish or snack does not contain chile pepper, hot sauce is usually added, and chile pepper is often added to fresh fruit and sweets. The importance of the chile goes back to the Mesoamerican period, where it was considered to be as much of a staple as corn and beans. In the 16th century, Bartolomé de las Casas wrote that without chiles, the indigenous people did not think they were eating. Even today, most Mexicans believe that their national identity would be at a loss without chiles and the many varieties of sauces and salsas created using chiles as their base. Many dishes in Mexico are defined by their sauces and the chiles those sauces contain (which are usually very spicy), rather than the meat or vegetable that the sauce covers. These dishes include entomatada (in tomato sauce), adobo or adobados, pipians and moles. A hominy soup called pozole is defined as white, green or red depending on the chile sauce used or omitted. Tamales are differentiated by the filling which is again defined by the sauce (red or green chile pepper strips or mole). Dishes without a sauce are rarely eaten without salsa or without fresh or pickled chiles. This includes street foods, such as tacos, tortas, soup, sopes, tlacoyos, tlayudas, gorditas and sincronizadas. For most dishes, it is the type of chile used that gives it its main flavor. Chipotle, smoked-dried jalapeño pepper, is very common in Mexican cuisine. Beans. In addition to corn, common beans ("Phaseolus vulgaris") are a historical component of the Mexican diet. Genetic evidence indicates domestication occurred in Mesoamerica as well as South America Common bean varieties and cultivars used in Mexican cuisine include the pinto bean and the black turtle bean. Beans and corn are deficient in different essential amino acids but complement each other. When eaten in combination, they provide a complete protein source. Spanish contributions. Together with Mesoamerica, Spain is the second basis of Mexican cuisine, contributing in two fundamental ways: Firstly, they brought with them old world staples and ingredients which did not exist in the Americas such as sugar, wheat, rice, onions, garlic, limes, oil, dairy products, pork, beef and many others. Secondly they brought various culinary traditions from the Iberian peninsula which have become prevalent in Mexico. Equally, the discovery of the incorporation of New World ingredients to Spanish cuisine has led to many shared foods such as chorizo which uses paprika. Spanish cuisine was in turn heavily influenced by its Moorish heritage and this created one of the earliest instances of the world's greatest Fusion cuisines. The Spanish also introduced the technique of frying in pork fat. Today, the main meats found in Mexico are pork, chicken, beef, goat, and sheep. Seafood and fish are also popular, especially along the coasts, and the way of cooking it commonly has Spanish origin such as Huachinango a la vizcaina. Cheesemaking in Mexico has evolved its specialties, although Spanish-style cheese such as Manchego is also produced in Mexico. It is an important economic activity, especially in the north, and is frequently done at home. The main cheese-making areas are Chihuahua, Oaxaca, Querétaro, and Chiapas. Goat cheese is still made, but it is not as popular and is harder to find in stores. Churros are a common snack originating in Spain and because sugar cane was brought to the Americas through Spanish colonization, all of Mexico's sweets have a Hispanic origin, often with a Muslim heritage such as Alfeñiques. Food and society. Home cooking. In most of Mexico, especially in rural areas, much of the food is consumed in the home. Cooking for the family is usually considered to be women's work, and this includes cooking for celebrations as well. Traditionally girls have been considered ready to marry when they can cook, and cooking is considered a main talent for housewives. The main meal of the day in Mexico is the "comida", meaning 'meal' in Spanish. The normal meal is, as follows; early morning meal, is called "desayuno", which entails coffee/atole (maize drink) and light meal, in some areas, the "almuerzo", around 11AM, includes a "snack" and drink, then followed by "comida", between noon and 2PM (lunch), which in itself is usually the heaviest meal of the day, or supper. It sometimes begins with soup, often chicken broth with pasta or a "dry soup", which is pasta or rice flavored with onions, garlic or vegetables. The main course is meat served in a cooked sauce with salsa on the side, accompanied with beans and tortillas and often with a fruit drink in some areas. The last meal of the day is "cena", dinner, which varies greatly by region, and is usually eaten between 6PM and 9PM. In the evening, it is common to eat leftovers from the comida or sweet bread accompanied by coffee or chocolate. Breakfast can consist of meat in broth (such as pancita), tacos, enchiladas or meat with eggs. This is usually served with beans, tortillas, and coffee or juice. Food and festivals. Mexican cuisine is elaborate and often tied to symbolism and festivals, which is one reason it was named as an example of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. Many of the foods of Mexico are complicated because of their relation to the social structure of the country. Food preparation, especially for family and social events, is considered to be an investment in order to maintain social relationships. Even the idea of flavor is considered to be social, with meals prepared for certain dinners and certain occasions when they are considered the most tasty. The ability to cook well, called "sazón" (lit. seasoning) is considered to be a gift generally gained from experience and a sense of commitment to the diners. For the Day of the Dead festival, foods such as tamales and mole are set out on altars and it is believed that the visiting dead relatives eat the essence of the food. If eaten afterwards by the living it is considered to be tasteless. In central Mexico, the main festival foods are mole, barbacoa, carnitas and mixiotes. They are often prepared to feed hundreds of guests, requiring groups of cooks. The cooking is part of the social custom meant to bind families and communities. Mexican regional home cooking is completely different from the food served in most Mexican restaurants outside Mexico, which is usually some variety of Tex-Mex. The original versions of Mexican dishes are vastly different from their Tex-Mex variation. Some of Mexico's traditional foods involved complex or long cooking processes, including cooking underground (such as cochinita pibil). Before industrialization, traditional women spent several hours a day boiling dried corn then grinding it on a metate to make the dough for tortillas, cooking them one-by-one on a comal griddle. In some areas, tortillas are still made this way. Sauces and salsas were also ground in a mortar called a molcajete. Today, blenders are more often used, though the texture is a bit different. Most people in Mexico would say that those made with a molcajete taste better, but few do this now. The most important food for festivals and other special occasions is mole, especially mole poblano in the center of the country. Mole is served at Christmas, Easter, Day of the Dead and at birthdays, baptisms, weddings and funerals, and tends to be eaten only for special occasions because it is such a complex and time-consuming dish. While still dominant in this way, other foods have become acceptable for these occasions, such as barbacoa, carnitas and mixiotes, especially since the 1980s. This may have been because of economic crises at that time, allowing for the substitution of these cheaper foods, or the fact that they can be bought ready-made or may already be made as part of the family business. Another important festive food is the tamale, also known as "tamal" in Spanish. This is a filled cornmeal dumpling, steamed in a wrapping (usually a corn husk or banana leaf) and one of the basic staples in most regions of Mexico. It has its origins in the pre-Hispanic era and today is found in many varieties in all of Mexico. Like a mole, it is complicated to prepare and best done in large amounts. Tamales are associated with certain celebrations such as Candlemas. They are wrapped in corn husks in the highlands and desert areas of Mexico and in banana leaves in the tropics. Street food. Mexican street food can include tacos, quesadillas, pambazos, tamales, huaraches, alambres, al pastor, and food not suitable to cook at home, including barbacoa, carnitas, and since many homes in Mexico do not make use of ovens, roasted chicken. One attraction of street food in Mexico is the satisfaction of hunger or craving without all the social and emotional connotation of eating at home, although longtime customers can have something of a friendship/familial relationship with a chosen vendor. Tacos are the top-rated and most well-known street Mexican food. It is made up of meat or other fillings wrapped in a tortilla often served with cheese added. Vegetarian fillings include mushrooms, potatoes, rice, or beans. The best known of Mexico's street foods is the taco, whose origin is based on the pre-Hispanic custom of picking up other foods with tortillas as utensils were not used. The origin of the word is in dispute, with some saying it is derived from Nahuatl and others from various Spanish phrases. It possible the term taco comes from the term tlaco or tlacatl, which means middle or half in nahuatl. Tacos are not eaten as the main meal; they are generally eaten before midday or late in the evening. Just about any other foodstuff can be wrapped in a tortilla, and in Mexico, it varies from rice, to meat (plain or in sauce), to cream, to vegetables, to cheese, or simply to plain chile peppers or fresh salsa. Preferred fillings vary from region to region with pork generally found more often in the center and south, beef in the north, seafood along the coasts, and chicken and lamb in most of the country. Another popular street food, especially in Mexico City and the surrounding area is the torta. It consists of a roll of some type, stuffed with several ingredients. This has its origins in the 19th century, when the French introduced a number of new kinds of bread. The torta began by splitting the roll and adding beans. Today, refried beans can still be found on many kinds of tortas. In Mexico City, the most common roll used for tortas is called "telera", a relatively flat roll with two splits on the upper surface. In Puebla, the preferred bread is called a cemita, as is the sandwich. In both areas, the bread is stuffed with various fillings, especially if it is a hot sandwich, with beans, cream (mayonnaise is rare) and some kind of hot chile pepper. The influence of American fast food on Mexican street food grew during the late 20th century. One example of this is the invention of the Sonoran hot dog in the late 1980s. The frankfurters are usually boiled then wrapped in bacon and fried. They are served in a bolillo-style bun, typically topped by a combination of pinto beans, diced tomatoes, onions and jalapeño peppers, and other condiments. Along the US-Mexican border, specifically dense areas like Tijuana, Mexican vendors sell food such as fruit melanged with Tajin spice to people crossing the border via carts. In recent years, these food carts have been threatened by tightened border security at the port of entry. Both the US and the Mexican governments have proposed a project that would widen the streets at the border, allowing for more people to pass through the border, although widening them would decimate neighboring mercados that rely on the business of travelers. Besides food, street vendors also sell various kinds of drinks (including , , and ) and treats (such as , , and ). Most tamale stands sell as a standard accompaniment. History. Pre-Hispanic period. Around 7000 BCE, the indigenous peoples of Mexico and Central America hunted game and gathered plants, including wild chili peppers. Corn was not yet cultivated, so one main source of calories was roasted agave hearts. By 1200 BCE, corn was domesticated and a process called nixtamalization, or treatment with lye, was developed to soften corn for grinding and improve its nutritional value. This allowed the creation of tortillas and other kinds of flat breads. The indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica have numerous stories about the origin of corn, usually related to being a gift of one or more gods, such as Quetzalcoatl. The other staple was beans, eaten with corn and some other plants as a complementary protein. Other protein sources included amaranth, domesticated turkey, insects such as grasshoppers, beetles and ant larvae, iguanas, and turtle eggs on the coastlines. Vegetables included squash and their seeds; chilacayote; jicama, a kind of sweet potato; and edible flowers, especially those of squash. The chile pepper was used as food, ritual and as medicine. When the Spanish arrived, the Aztecs had sophisticated agricultural techniques and an abundance of food, which was the base of their economy. It allowed them to expand an empire, bringing in tribute which consisted mostly of foods the Aztecs could not grow themselves. According to Bernardino de Sahagún, the Nahua peoples of central Mexico ate corn, beans, turkey, fish, small game, insects and a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, pulses, seeds, tubers, wild mushrooms, plants and herbs that they collected or cultivated. Modern period. After the Conquest, the Spanish introduced a variety of foodstuffs and cooking techniques, like frying, to the New World. Regional cuisines remained varied, with native staples more prevalent in the rural southern areas and Spanish foods taking root in the more sparsely populated northern region. European style wheat bread was initially met unfavorably with Moctezuma's emissaries who reportedly described it as tasting of "dried maize stalks". On the Spanish side, Bernal Díaz del Castillo complained about the "maize cake" rations on campaign. The cuisine of Spain is a Mediterranean cuisine influenced by its Arab period, composed of a number of staples such as olive oil and rice. Spanish settlers introduced these staples to the region, although some continued to be imported, such as wine, brandy, nuts, olives, spices, and capers. They introduced domesticated animals, such as pigs, cows, chickens, goats, and sheep for meat and milk, raising the consumption of protein. Cheese became the most important dairy product. The Spanish brought rice to Mexico, along with sugar cane, used extensively creation of many kinds of sweets, especially local fruits in syrup. A sugar-based candy craft called alfeñique was imported and is now used for the Day of the Dead. Over time ingredients like olive oil, rice, onions, garlic, oregano, coriander, cinnamon, and cloves became incorporated with native ingredients and cooking techniques. One of the main avenues for the mixing of the two cuisines was in convents. Despite the influence of Spanish culture, Mexican cuisine has maintained its base of corn, beans and chili peppers. Natives continued to be reliant on maize; it was less expensive than the wheat favored by European settlers, it was easier to cultivate and produced higher yields. European control over the land grew stronger with the founding of wheat farms. In 18th century Mexico City, wheat was baked into leaved rolls called "pan francés" or "pan español", but only two bakers were allowed to bake this style of bread and they worked on consignment to the viceroy and the archbishop. Large ring loaves of choice flour known as "pan floreado" were available for wealthy "Creoles". Other styles of bread used lower-quality wheat and maize to produce "pan común", "pambazo" and "cemita". Pozole is mentioned in the 16th century Florentine Codex by Bernardino de Sahagún. In the eighteenth century, an Italian Capuchin friar, Ilarione da Bergamo, included descriptions of food in his travelogue. He noted that tortillas were eaten not only by the poor, but by the upper class as well. He described lunch fare as pork products like chorizo and ham being eaten between tortillas, with a piquant red chili sauce. For drink, pulque, as well as corn-based atole, and for those who could afford, it chocolate-based drinks were consumed twice a day. According to de Bergamo's account neither coffee nor wine are consumed, and evening meals ended with a small portion of beans in a thick soup instead, "served to set the stage for drinking water". During the 19th century, Mexico experienced an influx of various immigrants, including French, Lebanese, German, Chinese and Italian, which have had some effect on the food. During the French intervention in Mexico, French food became popular with the upper classes. An influence on these new trends came from chef Tudor, who was brought to Mexico by the Emperor Maximilian of Habsburg. One lasting evidence of this is the variety of breads and sweet breads, such as bolillos, conchas and much more, which can be found in Mexican bakeries. The Germans brought beer brewing techniques and the Chinese added their cuisine to certain areas of the country. This led to Mexico characterizing its cuisine more by its relation to popular traditions rather than on particular cooking techniques. Since the 20th century, there has been an interchange of food influences between Mexico and the United States. Mexican cooking was of course still practiced in what is now the Southwest United States after the Mexican–American War, but Diana Kennedy, in her book "The Cuisines of Mexico" (published in 1972), drew a sharp distinction between Mexican food and Tex-Mex. Tex-Mex food was developed from Mexican and Anglo influences, and was traced to the late 19th century in Texas. It still continues to develop with flour tortillas becoming popular north of the border only in the latter 20th century. From north to south, much of the influence has been related to food industrialization, as well as the greater availability overall of food, especially after the Mexican Revolution. One other very visible sign of influence from the United States is the appearance of fast foods, such as hamburgers, hot dogs and pizza. In the latter 20th century, international influence in Mexico has led to interest and development of haute cuisine. In Mexico, many professional chefs are trained in French or international cuisine, but the use of Mexican staples and flavors is still favored, including the simple foods of traditional markets. It is not unusual to see some quesadillas or small tacos among the other hors d'oeuvres at fancy dinner parties in Mexico. Professional cookery in Mexico is growing and includes an emphasis on traditional methods and ingredients. In the cities, there is interest in publishing and preserving what is authentic Mexican food. This movement is traceable to 1982 with the Mexican Culinary Circle of Mexico City. It was created by a group of women chefs and other culinary experts as a reaction to the fear of traditions being lost with the increasing introduction of foreign techniques and foods. In 2010, Mexico's cuisine was recognized by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. In contemporary times, various world cuisines have become popular in Mexico, thus adopting a Mexican fusion. For example, sushi in Mexico is often made by using a variety of sauces based on mango and tamarind, and very often served with serrano-chili blended soy sauce, or complemented with vinegar, habanero peppers, and chipotle peppers. Beverages. Corn in Mexico is not only eaten, but also drunk as a beverage. Corn is the base of a hot drink called atole, which is then flavored with fruit, chocolate, rice or other flavors. Fermented corn is the base of a cold drink, which goes by different names and varieties, such as tejuino, pozol and others. Aguas frescas are flavored drinks usually made from fruit, water and sugar. Beverages also include hibiscus iced tea, one made from tamarind and one from rice called horchata. One variant of coffee is café de olla, which is coffee brewed with cinnamon and raw sugar. Many of the most popular beverages can be found sold by street vendors and juice bars in Mexico. Chocolate played an important part in the history of Mexican cuisine. The word "chocolate" originated from Mexico's Aztec cuisine, derived from the Nahuatl word "xocolatl". Chocolate was first drunk rather than eaten. It was also used for religious rituals. The Maya civilization grew cacao trees and used the cacao seeds it produced to make a frothy, bitter drink. The drink, called "xocoatl", was often flavored with vanilla, chile pepper, and "achiote". Tejate is another Mexican beverage made from cacao. Alcoholic beverages from Mexico include tequila, pulque, aguardiente, mezcal and charanda. Wine, rum and beer are also produced. The most common alcoholic beverage consumed with food in Mexico is beer, followed by tequila. A classic margarita, a popular cocktail, is composed of tequila, cointreau and lime juice. Rompope is believed to have been originally made in the convents of the city of Puebla, Mexico. The word "rompope" is a derivation of the word "rompon", which is used to describe the Spanish version of eggnog that came to Mexico. A popular Soft drink from Mexico is Sangria Señorial a sangria-flavored, non-alcoholic beverage. Sangria is a Spanish drink that was introduced by Spaniards, as was Horchata and Agua de Jamaica. Regional cuisines. Chiapas. Similar to other regions in Mexico, corn is a dietary staple and other indigenous foods remain strong in the cuisine as well. Along with a chile called simojovel, used nowhere else in the country, the cuisine is also distinguished by the use of herbs, such as chipilín and hierba santa. Like in Oaxaca, tamales are usually wrapped in banana leaves (or sometimes with the leaves of hoja santa), but often chipilín is incorporated into the dough. As in the Yucatán Peninsula, boiled corn is drunk as a beverage called pozol, but here it is usually flavored with all-natural cacao. Another beverage (which can be served hot or cold) typical from this region is Tascalate, which is made of powdered maize, cocoa beans, achiote (annatto), chilies, pine nuts and cinnamon. The favored meats are beef, pork and chicken (introduced by the Spanish), especially in the highlands, which favors the raising of livestock. The livestock industry has also prompted the making of cheese, mostly done on ranches and in small cooperatives, with the best known from Ocosingo, Rayón and Pijijiapan. Meat and cheese dishes are frequently accompanied by vegetables, such as squash, chayote, and carrots. Mexico City. The main feature of Mexico City cooking is that it has been influenced by those of the other regions of Mexico, as well as a number of foreign influences. This is because Mexico City has been a center for migration of people from all over Mexico since pre-Hispanic times. Most of the ingredients of this area's cooking are not grown in situ, but imported from all of the country (such as tropical fruits). Street cuisine is very popular, with taco stands, and lunch counters on every street. Popular foods in the city include barbacoa (a specialty of the central highlands), birria (from western Mexico), cabrito (from the north), carnitas (originally from Michoacán), mole sauces (from Puebla and central Mexico), tacos with many different fillings, and large sub-like sandwiches called tortas, usually served at specialized shops called 'Torterías'. This is also the area where most of Mexico's haute cuisine can be found. There are eateries that specialize in pre-Hispanic food, including dishes with insects. Northern Mexico. The foods eaten in what is now the north of Mexico have differed from those in the south since the pre-Hispanic era. Here, the indigenous people were hunter-gatherers with limited agriculture and settlements because of the arid land. When the Europeans arrived, they found much of the land in this area suitable for raising cattle, goats and sheep. This led to the dominance of meat, especially beef, in the region, and some of the most popular dishes include machaca, arrachera and cabrito. The region's distinctive cooking technique is grilling, as ranch culture has promoted outdoor cooking done by men. The ranch culture has also prompted cheese production and the north produces the widest varieties of cheese in Mexico. These include queso fresco (fresh farmer's cheese), ranchero (similar to Monterey Jack), cuajada (a mildly sweet, creamy curd of fresh milk), requesón (similar to cottage cheese or ricotta), Chihuahua's creamy semi-soft queso menonita, and fifty-six varieties of asadero (smoked cheese). Another important aspect of northern cuisine is the presence of wheat, especially in the use of flour tortillas. The area has at least forty different types of flour tortillas. The main reason for this is that much of the land supports wheat production, introduced by the Spanish. These large tortillas allowed for the creation of burritos, usually filled with machaca in Sonora, which eventually gained popularity in the Southwest United States. The variety of foodstuffs in the north is not as varied as in the south of Mexico, because of the mostly desert climate. Much of the cuisine of this area is dependent on food preservation techniques, namely dehydration and canning. Dried foods include meat, chiles, squash, peas, corn, lentils, beans and dried fruit. A number of these are also canned. Preservation techniques change the flavor of foods; for example, many chiles are less hot after drying. In Northeastern Mexico, during the Spanish colonial period, Nuevo León was founded and settled by Spanish families of Jewish origin (Crypto-Jews). They contributed to the regional cuisine with dishes, such as "pan de semita" or "Semitic bread" (a type of bread made without leavening), and "cabrito" or baby goat, which is the typical food of Monterrey and the state of Nuevo León, as well as some regions of Coahuila. The north has seen waves of immigration by the Chinese, Mormons, and Mennonites, who have influenced the cuisines in areas, such as Chihuahua and Baja California. Most recently, Baja Med cuisine has emerged in Ensenada and elsewhere in Baja California, combining Mexican and Mediterranean flavors. Oaxaca. The cooking of Oaxaca remained more intact after the conquest, as the Spanish took the area with less fighting and less disruption of the economy and food production systems. However, it was the first area to experience the mixing of foods and cooking styles, while central Mexico was still recuperating. Despite its size, the state has a wide variety of ecosystems and a wide variety of native foods. Vegetables are grown in the central valley, seafood is abundant on the coast and the area bordering Veracruz grows tropical fruits. Much of the state's cooking is influenced by that of the Mixtec and, to a lesser extent, the Zapotec. Later in the colonial period, Oaxaca lost its position as a major food supplier and the area's cooking returned to a more indigenous style, keeping only a small number of foodstuffs, such as chicken and pork. It also adapted mozzarella, brought by the Spanish, and modified it to what is now known as Oaxaca cheese. One major feature of Oaxacan cuisine is its seven mole varieties, second only to mole poblano in popularity. The seven are Negro (black), Amarillo (yellow), Coloradito (little red), Mancha Manteles (table cloth stainer), Chichilo (smoky stew), Rojo (red), and Verde (green). Corn is the staple food in the region. Tortillas are called blandas and are a part of every meal. Corn is also used to make empanadas, tamales and more. Black beans are favored, often served in soup or as a sauce for enfrijoladas. Oaxaca's regional chile peppers include pasilla oaxaqueña (red, hot and smoky), along with amarillos (yellow), chilhuacles, chilcostles and costeños. These, along with herbs, such as hoja santa, give the food its unique taste. Another important aspect of Oaxacan cuisine is chocolate, generally consumed as a beverage. It is frequently hand ground and combined with almonds, cinnamon and other ingredients. Veracruz. The cuisine of Veracruz is a mix of indigenous, Afro-Mexican and Spanish. The indigenous contribution is in the use of corn as a staple, as well as vanilla (native to the state) and herbs called acuyo and hoja santa. It is also supplemented by a wide variety of tropical fruits, such as papaya, mamey and zapote, along with the introduction of citrus fruit and pineapple by the Spanish. The Spanish also introduced European herbs, such as parsley, thyme, marjoram, bay laurel, cilantro and others, which characterize much of the state's cooking. They are found in the best known dish of the region Huachinango a la veracruzana, a red snapper dish. The African influence is from the importation of slaves through the Caribbean, who brought foods with them, which had been introduced earlier to Africa by the Portuguese. As it borders the Gulf coast, seafood figures prominently in most of the state. The state's role as a gateway to Mexico has meant that the dietary staple of corn is less evident than in other parts of Mexico, with rice as a heavy favorite. Corn dishes include garnachas (a kind of corn cake), which are readily available especially in the mountain areas, where indigenous influence is strongest. Anthropologist and restaurateur Raquel Torres Cerdán has worked to preserve and record many of the foods of indigenous peoples of the region. Western Mexico. West of Mexico City is the Pacific coast and the states of Michoacán, Jalisco and Colima. The cuisine of Michoacan is based on the Purepecha culture which still dominates most of the state. The area has a large network of rivers and lakes providing fish. Its use of corn is perhaps the most varied. While atole is drunk in most parts of Mexico, it is made with more different flavors in Michoacán, including blackberry, cascabel chili and more. Tamales come in different shapes, wrapped in corn husks. These include those folded into polyhedrons called corundas and can vary in name if the filling is different. In the Bajío area, tamales are often served with a meat stew called , which is flavored with cactus fruit. The main Spanish contributions to Michoacán cuisine are rice, pork and spices. One of the best-known dishes from the state is morisquesta, which is a sausage and rice dish, closely followed by carnitas, which is deep-fried (confit technique) pork. The latter can be found in many parts of Mexico, often claimed to be authentically Michoacán. Other important ingredients in the cuisine include wheat (where bread symbolizes fertility) found in breads and pastries. Another is sugar, giving rise to a wide variety of desserts and sweets, such as fruit jellies and ice cream, mostly associated with the town of Tocumbo. The town of Cotija has a cheese named after it. The local alcoholic beverage is charanda, which is made with fermented sugar cane. The cuisine of the states of Jalisco and Colima is noted for dishes such as birria, chilayo, menudo, and pork dishes. Jalisco's cuisine is known for tequila, with the liquor produced only in certain areas allowed to use the name. The cultural and gastronomic center of the area is Guadalajara, an area where both agriculture and cattle raising have thrived. The best-known dish from the area is birria, a stew of goat, beef, mutton, or pork, with chiles and spices. An important street food is tortas ahogadas, where the torta (sandwich) is drowned in a chile sauce. Near Guadalajara is the town of Tonalá, known for its pozole, a hominy stew, reportedly said in the 16th century, to have been originally created with human flesh for ritual use. The area which makes tequila surrounds the city. A popular local drink is tejuino, made from fermented corn. Bionico is also a popular dessert in the Guadalajara area. On the Pacific coast, seafood is common, generally cooked with European spices along with chile, and is often served with a spicy salsa. Favored fish varieties include marlin, swordfish, snapper, tuna, shrimp and octopus. Tropical fruits are also important. The cuisine of the Baja California Peninsula is especially heavy on seafood, with the widest variety. It also features a mild green chile pepper, as well as dates, especially in sweets. Yucatán. The food of the Yucatán peninsula is distinct from the rest of the country. It is based primarily on Mayan food with influences from the Caribbean, Central Mexican, European (especially French) and Middle Eastern cultures. As in other areas of Mexico, corn is the basic staple, as both a liquid and a solid food. One common way of consuming corn, especially by the poor, is a thin drink or gruel of white corn called by such names as pozol or keyem. One of the main spices in the region is the annatto seed, called achiote in Spanish. It gives food a reddish color and a slightly peppery smell with a hint of nutmeg. Recados are seasoning pastes, based on achiote (recado rojo) or a mixture of habanero and chirmole both used on chicken and pork. Recado rojo is used for the area's best-known dish, cochinita pibil. Pibil refers to the cooking method (from the Mayan word "píib", meaning "buried") in which foods are wrapped, generally in banana leaves, and cooked in a pit oven. Various meats are cooked this way. Habaneros are another distinctive ingredient, but they are generally served as (or part of) condiments on the side rather than integrated into the dishes. A prominent feature of Yucatán cooking is the use of bitter oranges, which gives Yucatán food the tangy element that characterizes it. Bitter orange is used as a seasoning for broth, to marinate meat and its juice (watered down with sugar) is used as a refreshing beverage. Honey was used long before the arrival of the Spanish to sweeten foods and to make a ritual alcoholic drink called balché. Today, a honey liquor called xtabentun is still made and consumed in the region. The coastal areas feature several seafood dishes, based on fish like the Mero, a variety of grunt and Esmedregal, which is fried and served with a spicy salsa based on the x'catic pepper and achiote paste. Other dishes include conch fillet (usually served raw, just marinated in lime juice), coconut flavored shrimp and lagoon snails. Traditionally, some dishes are served as entrées, such as the brazo de reina (a type of tamale made from chaya) and papadzules (egg tacos seasoned in a pumpkin seed gravy). Street food in the area usually consists of Cochinita Pibil Tacos, Lebanese-based kibbeh, shawarma tacos, snacks made from hardened corn dough called piedras, and fruit-flavored ices. Lime soup made of chicken or some other meat such as pork or beef, lime juice and served with tortilla chips. Panucho made with a refried tortilla that is stuffed with refried black beans and topped with chopped cabbage, pulled chicken or turkey, tomato, pickled red onion, avocado, and pickled jalapeño pepper. Desserts. Dessert culture in Mexico did not develop until after the introduction of the Spanish to the area. There were foods which could be considered desserts by modern standards like chocolate, but they were consumed and used differently. With the introduction of Europeans and their food and culture to the region came sugar and with it, sweets. The range of desserts evolved and grew over time to include everything from churros to rice pudding, from cakes to fruit treats. Some of the desserts which historically are made in Mexico are fairly easy to make and can be produced in high quantity. Chocolate. Chocolate consumption pre-European influence was drunk in a warm syrupy form mixed with honey. This was done in order to create a pleasant drinking experience. During this time chocolate was also treated as medicine. After the arrival of Europeans, Chocolate was brought across the sea to Europe where it would be used in various forms including medicine and confections. In the modern era, chocolate is used as both a topping and a dip, as well as in candies. The traditional form of chocolate consumption lives on in the form of Mexican hot chocolate, the natural evolution of the warm syrup. Fruits. There are a number of fruit related dessert recipes which are popular in Mexico, some using native fruits, such as plantains and others using foreign fruits like oranges. Recipes for these foods can be found dating back to the early 19th century and incorporate both sugar and ice. Fruit dishes are naturally sweet and juicy which made them popular in the Mexican climate. One such dessert is orange and lime ice, a treat similar to snow cones. It is made by freezing strained oranges and lime juice mixed with sugar. Baked goods. Baked dessert items in Mexico are mostly ideas imported from Europe over time. These items came from a variety of different nations before becoming staples of desserts in the region. Baked goods include cookies made with local fruits, churros which originated in the Iberian Peninsula, and macaroons which come from Italy. Churros can be made by mixing flour with boiling water, shaping and frying that mixture then coating it in cinnamon and/or sugar. Churros can be eaten hot or cold and can be molded into any number of different shapes. Mexican food outside Mexico. Mexican cuisine is offered in a few fine restaurants in Europe and the United States. Sometimes landrace corn from Mexico is imported and ground on the premises. United States. Mexican food in the United States is based on the food of Native Americans and Hispanos in the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico. Mexican foods that originate in the United States often come from the Southwestern region, breakfast burritos and red or green chile come from New Mexican cuisine, likewise chili con carne and chimichangas are examples of Tex-Mex. With the growing ethnic Mexican-American population in the United States, more authentic Mexican food is gradually appearing in the United States. Most large American cities host a Mexican diaspora due to proximity and immigration, and Mexican restaurants and food trucks are generally easy to find in the continental states. One reason is that Mexican immigrants use food as a means of combating homesickness, and for their descendants, it is a symbol of ethnicity. Alternatively, with more Americans experiencing Mexican food in Mexico, there is a growing demand for more authentic flavors. Korean tacos are a Korean-Mexican fusion dish popular in a number of urban areas in the United States and Canada. Korean tacos originated in Los Angeles. In 2013, Carlos Gaytán became the first Mexican to obtain a Michelin star for his work at the Mexique restaurant in Chicago. In 2014, Daniela Soto-Innes helped to open Cosme in New York City, serving there as the Chef de Cuisine.

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Manchester

Manchester ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of Greater Manchester, England; it had a population of 552,000 at the 2021 census. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The two cities and the surrounding towns form one of the United Kingdom's most populous conurbations, the Greater Manchester Built-up Area, which has a population of 2.87 million. The city borders the boroughs of Trafford, Stockport, Tameside, Oldham, Rochdale, Bury and Salford. The history of Manchester began with the civilian settlement associated with the Roman fort ("castra") of "Mamucium" or "Mancunium", established in about AD 79 on a sandstone bluff near the confluence of the rivers Medlock and Irwell. Throughout the Middle Ages, Manchester remained a manorial township but began to expand "at an astonishing rate" around the turn of the 19th century. Manchester's unplanned urbanisation was brought on by a boom in textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution and resulted in it becoming the world's first industrialised city. Historically part of Lancashire, areas of Cheshire south of the River Mersey were incorporated into Manchester in the 20th century, including Wythenshawe in 1931. Manchester achieved city status in 1853. The Manchester Ship Canal opened in 1894, creating the Port of Manchester and linking the city to the Irish Sea, to the west. Its fortune declined after the Second World War, owing to deindustrialisation, and the IRA bombing in 1996 led to extensive investment and regeneration. Following considerable redevelopment, Manchester was the host city for the 2002 Commonwealth Games. The city is notable for its architecture, culture, musical exports, media links, scientific and engineering output, social impact, sports clubs and transport connections. Manchester Liverpool Road railway station is the world's oldest surviving inter-city passenger railway station. At the University of Manchester, Ernest Rutherford first split the atom in 1917; Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn and Geoff Tootill developed the world's first stored-program computer in 1948; and Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov first isolated graphene in 2004. Manchester has a large urban sprawl, which forms from the city centre into the other neighbouring authorities; these include The Four Heatons, Failsworth, Prestwich, Stretford, Sale, Droylsden, Old Trafford and Reddish. The city is also contiguous with Salford and its borough, but is separated from it by the River Irwell. This urban area is cut off by the M60, also known as the Manchester Outer Ring Road, which runs in a circular around the city and these areas. It joins the M62 to the north-east and the M602 to the west, as well as the East Lancashire Road and A6. Toponymy. The name "Manchester" originates from the Latin name ' or its variant ' and the citizens are still referred to as Mancunians (). These names are generally thought to represent a Latinisation of an original Brittonic name. The generally accepted etymology of this name is that it comes from Brittonic *"-" ("breast", in reference to a "breast-like hill"). However, more recent work suggests that it could come from *' ("mother", in reference to a local river goddess). Both usages are preserved in Insular Celtic languages, such as ' meaning "breast" in Irish and "mother" in Welsh. The suffix "-chester" is from Old English ' ("Roman fortification", itself a loanword from Latin ', "fort; fortified town"). History. Early history. The Brigantes were the major Celtic tribe in what is now known as Northern England; they had a stronghold in the locality at a sandstone outcrop on which Manchester Cathedral now stands, opposite the bank of the River Irwell. Their territory extended across the fertile lowland of what is now Salford and Stretford. Following the Roman conquest of Britain in the 1st century, General Agricola ordered the construction of a fort named Mamucium in the year 79 to ensure that Roman interests in Deva Victrix (Chester) and Eboracum (York) were protected from the Brigantes. Central Manchester has been permanently settled since this time. A stabilised fragment of foundations of the final version of the Roman fort is visible in Castlefield. The Roman habitation of Manchester probably ended around the 3rd century; its civilian settlement appears to have been abandoned by the mid-3rd century, although the fort may have supported a small garrison until the late 3rd or early 4th century. After the Roman withdrawal and Saxon conquest, the focus of settlement shifted to the confluence of the Irwell and Irk sometime before the arrival of the Normans after 1066. Much of the wider area was laid waste in the subsequent Harrying of the North. In the Domesday Book of 1086, Manchester is recorded as within the hundred of Salford and held as tenant in chief by a Norman named Roger of Poitou, later being held by the family of Grelley, lord of the manor and residents of Manchester Castle until 1215 before a Manor House was built. By 1421 Thomas de la Warre founded and constructed a collegiate church for the parish, now Manchester Cathedral; the domestic premises of the college house Chetham's School of Music and Chetham's Library. The library, which opened in 1653 and is still open to the public today, is the oldest free public reference library in the United Kingdom. Manchester is mentioned as having a market in 1282. Around the 14th century, Manchester received an influx of Flemish weavers, sometimes credited as the foundation of the region's textile industry. Manchester became an important centre for the manufacture and trade of woollens and linen, and by about 1540, had expanded to become, in John Leland's words, "The fairest, best builded, quickest, and most populous town of all Lancashire". The cathedral and Chetham's buildings are the only significant survivors of Leland's Manchester. During the English Civil War Manchester strongly favoured the Parliamentary interest. Although not long-lasting, Cromwell granted it the right to elect its own MP. Charles Worsley, who sat for the city for only a year, was later appointed Major General for Lancashire, Cheshire and Staffordshire during the Rule of the Major Generals. He was a diligent puritan, turning out ale houses and banning the celebration of Christmas; he died in 1656. Significant quantities of cotton began to be used after about 1600, firstly in linen/cotton fustians, but by around 1750 pure cotton fabrics were being produced and cotton had overtaken wool in importance. The Irwell and Mersey were made navigable by 1736, opening a route from Manchester to the sea docks on the Mersey. The Bridgewater Canal, Britain's first wholly artificial waterway, was opened in 1761, bringing coal from mines at Worsley to central Manchester. The canal was extended to the Mersey at Runcorn by 1776. The combination of competition and improved efficiency halved the cost of coal and halved the transport cost of raw cotton. Manchester became the dominant marketplace for textiles produced in the surrounding towns. A commodities exchange, opened in 1729, and numerous large warehouses, aided commerce. In 1780, Richard Arkwright began construction of Manchester's first cotton mill. In the early 1800s, John Dalton formulated his atomic theory in Manchester. Industrial Revolution. Manchester was one of the centres of textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution. The great majority of cotton spinning took place in the towns of south Lancashire and north Cheshire, and Manchester was for a time the most productive centre of cotton processing. Manchester became known as the world's largest marketplace for cotton goods and was dubbed "Cottonopolis" and "Warehouse City" during the Victorian era. In Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, the term "manchester" is still used for household linen: sheets, pillow cases, towels, etc. The industrial revolution brought about huge change in Manchester and was key to the increase in Manchester's population. Manchester began expanding "at an astonishing rate" around the turn of the 19th century as people flocked to the city for work from Scotland, Wales, Ireland and other areas of England as part of a process of unplanned urbanisation brought on by the Industrial Revolution. It developed a wide range of industries, so that by 1835 "Manchester was without challenge the first and greatest industrial city in the world". Engineering firms initially made machines for the cotton trade, but diversified into general manufacture. Similarly, the chemical industry started by producing bleaches and dyes, but expanded into other areas. Commerce was supported by financial service industries such as banking and insurance. Trade, and feeding the growing population, required a large transport and distribution infrastructure: the canal system was extended, and Manchester became one end of the world's first intercity passenger railway—the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Competition between the various forms of transport kept costs down. In 1878 the GPO (the forerunner of British Telecom) provided its first telephones to a firm in Manchester. The Manchester Ship Canal was built between 1888 and 1894, in some sections by canalisation of the Rivers Irwell and Mersey, running from Salford to Eastham Locks on the tidal Mersey. This enabled oceangoing ships to sail right into the Port of Manchester. On the canal's banks, just outside the borough, the world's first industrial estate was created at Trafford Park. Large quantities of machinery, including cotton processing plant, were exported around the world. A centre of capitalism, Manchester was once the scene of bread and labour riots, as well as calls for greater political recognition by the city's working and non-titled classes. One such gathering ended with the Peterloo massacre of 16 August 1819. The economic school of Manchester Capitalism developed there, and Manchester was the centre of the Anti-Corn Law League from 1838 onward. Manchester has a notable place in the history of Marxism and left-wing politics; being the subject of Friedrich Engels' work "The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844"; Engels spent much of his life in and around Manchester, and when Karl Marx visited Manchester, they met at Chetham's Library. The economics books Marx was reading at the time can be seen in the library, as can the window seat where Marx and Engels would meet. The first Trades Union Congress was held in Manchester (at the Mechanics' Institute, David Street), from 2 to 6 June 1868. Manchester was an important cradle of the Labour Party and the Suffragette Movement. At that time, it seemed a place in which anything could happen—new industrial processes, new ways of thinking (the Manchester School, promoting free trade and "laissez-faire"), new classes or groups in society, new religious sects, and new forms of labour organisation. It attracted educated visitors from all parts of Britain and Europe. A saying capturing this sense of innovation survives today: "What Manchester does today, the rest of the world does tomorrow." Manchester's golden age was perhaps the last quarter of the 19th century. Many of the great public buildings (including Manchester Town Hall) date from then. The city's cosmopolitan atmosphere contributed to a vibrant culture, which included the Hallé Orchestra. In 1889, when county councils were created in England, the municipal borough became a county borough with even greater autonomy. Although the Industrial Revolution brought wealth to the city, it also brought poverty and squalor to a large part of the population. Historian Simon Schama noted that "Manchester was the very best and the very worst taken to terrifying extremes, a new kind of city in the world; the chimneys of industrial suburbs greeting you with columns of smoke". An American visitor taken to Manchester's blackspots saw "wretched, defrauded, oppressed, crushed human nature, lying and bleeding fragments". The number of cotton mills in Manchester itself reached a peak of 108 in 1853. Thereafter the number began to decline and Manchester was surpassed as the largest centre of cotton spinning by Bolton in the 1850s and Oldham in the 1860s. However, this period of decline coincided with the rise of the city as the financial centre of the region. Manchester continued to process cotton, and in 1913, 65% of the world's cotton was processed in the area. The First World War interrupted access to the export markets. Cotton processing in other parts of the world increased, often on machines produced in Manchester. Manchester suffered greatly from the Great Depression and the underlying structural changes that began to supplant the old industries, including textile manufacture. Blitz. Like most of the UK, the Manchester area was mobilised extensively during the Second World War. For example, casting and machining expertise at Beyer, Peacock & Company's locomotive works in Gorton was switched to bomb making; Dunlop's rubber works in Chorlton-on-Medlock made barrage balloons; and just outside the city in Trafford Park, engineers Metropolitan-Vickers made Avro Manchester and Avro Lancaster bombers and Ford built the Rolls-Royce Merlin engines to power them. Manchester was thus the target of bombing by the Luftwaffe, and by late 1940 air raids were taking place against non-military targets. The biggest took place during the Christmas Blitz on the nights of 22/23 and 24 December 1940, when an estimated of high explosives plus over 37,000 incendiary bombs were dropped. A large part of the historic city centre was destroyed, including 165 warehouses, 200 business premises, and 150 offices. 376 were killed and 30,000 houses were damaged. Manchester Cathedral, Royal Exchange and Free Trade Hall were among the buildings seriously damaged; restoration of the cathedral took 20 years. In total, 589 civilians were recorded to have died as result of enemy action within the Manchester County Borough. Post-Second World War. Cotton processing and trading continued to fall in peacetime, and the exchange closed in 1968. By 1963 the port of Manchester was the UK's third largest, and employed over 3,000 men, but the canal was unable to handle the increasingly large container ships. Traffic declined, and the port closed in 1982. Heavy industry suffered a downturn from the 1960s and was greatly reduced under the economic policies followed by Margaret Thatcher's government after 1979. Manchester lost 150,000 jobs in manufacturing between 1961 and 1983. Regeneration began in the late 1980s, with initiatives such as the Metrolink, the Bridgewater Concert Hall, the Manchester Arena, and (in Salford) the rebranding of the port as Salford Quays. Two bids to host the Olympic Games were part of a process to raise the international profile of the city. Manchester has a history of attacks attributed to Irish Republicans, including the Manchester Martyrs of 1867, arson in 1920, a series of explosions in 1939, and two bombs in 1992. On Saturday 15 June 1996, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) carried out the 1996 Manchester bombing, the detonation of a large bomb next to a department store in the city centre. The largest to be detonated on British soil, the bomb injured over 200 people, heavily damaged nearby buildings, and broke windows away. The cost of the immediate damage was initially estimated at £50 million, but this was quickly revised upwards. The final insurance payout was over £400 million; many affected businesses never recovered from the loss of trade. Since 2000. Spurred by the investment after the 1996 bombing and aided by the XVII Commonwealth Games, the city centre has undergone extensive regeneration. New and renovated complexes such as The Printworks and Corn Exchange have become popular shopping, eating and entertainment areas. Manchester Arndale is the UK's largest city-centre shopping centre. Large city sections from the 1960s have been demolished, re-developed or modernised with the use of glass and steel. Old mills have been converted into apartments. Hulme has undergone extensive regeneration, with million-pound loft-house apartments being developed. The 47-storey, Beetham Tower was the tallest UK building outside of London and the highest residential accommodation in Europe when completed in 2006. It was surpassed in 2018 by the South Tower of the Deansgate Square project, also in Manchester. In January 2007, the independent Casino Advisory Panel licensed Manchester to build the UK's only supercasino, but plans were abandoned in February 2008. On 22 May 2017, an Islamist terrorist carried out a bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in the Manchester Arena; the bomb killed 23, including the attacker, and injured over 800. It was the deadliest terrorist attack and first suicide bombing in Britain since the 7 July 2005 London bombings. It caused worldwide condemnation and changed the UK's threat level to "critical" for the first time since 2007. Birmingham has historically been considered to be England or the UK's second city, but in the 21st century claims to this unofficial title have also been made for Manchester. Government. The City of Manchester is governed by the Manchester City Council. The Greater Manchester Combined Authority, with a directly elected mayor, has responsibilities for economic strategy and transport, amongst other areas, on a Greater Manchester-wide basis. Manchester has been a member of the English Core Cities Group since its inception in 1995. The town of Manchester was granted a charter by Thomas Grelley in 1301, but lost its borough status in a court case of 1359. Until the 19th century local government was largely in the hands of manorial courts, the last of which was dissolved in 1846. From a very early time, the township of Manchester lay within the historic or ceremonial county boundaries of Lancashire. Pevsner wrote "That [neighbouring] Stretford and Salford are not administratively one with Manchester is one of the most curious anomalies of England". A stroke of a baron's pen is said to have divorced Manchester and Salford, though it was not Salford that became separated from Manchester, it was Manchester, with its humbler line of lords, that was separated from Salford. It was this separation that resulted in Salford becoming the judicial seat of Salfordshire, which included the ancient parish of Manchester. Manchester later formed its own Poor Law Union using the name "Manchester". In 1792, Commissioners – usually known as "Police Commissioners" – were established for the social improvement of Manchester. Manchester regained its borough status in 1838, and comprised the townships of Beswick, Cheetham Hill, Chorlton upon Medlock and Hulme. By 1846, with increasing population and greater industrialisation, the Borough Council had taken over the powers of the "Police Commissioners". In 1853, Manchester was granted city status. In 1885, Bradford, Harpurhey, Rusholme and parts of Moss Side and Withington townships became part of the City of Manchester. In 1889, the city became a county borough, as did many larger Lancashire towns, and therefore not governed by Lancashire County Council. Between 1890 and 1933, more areas were added to the city, which had been administered by Lancashire County Council, including former villages such as Burnage, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Didsbury, Fallowfield, Levenshulme, Longsight, and Withington. In 1931, the Cheshire civil parishes of Baguley, Northenden and Northen Etchells from the south of the River Mersey were added. In 1974, by way of the Local Government Act 1972, the City of Manchester became a metropolitan district of the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester. That year, Ringway, the village where the Manchester Airport is located, was added to the city. In November 2014, it was announced that Greater Manchester would receive a new directly elected mayor. The mayor would have fiscal control over health, transport, housing and police in the area. Andy Burnham was elected as the first mayor of Greater Manchester in 2017. Geography. At , northwest of London, Manchester lies in a bowl-shaped land area bordered to the north and east by the Pennines, an upland chain that runs the length of northern England, and to the south by the Cheshire Plain. Manchester is north-east of Liverpool and north-west of Sheffield, making the city the halfway point between the two. The city centre is on the east bank of the River Irwell, near its confluences with the Rivers Medlock and Irk, and is relatively low-lying, being between above sea level. The River Mersey flows through the south of Manchester. Much of the inner city, especially in the south, is flat, offering extensive views from many highrise buildings in the city of the foothills and moors of the Pennines, which can often be capped with snow in the winter months. Manchester's geographic features were highly influential in its early development as the world's first industrial city. These features are its climate, its proximity to a seaport at Liverpool, the availability of water power from its rivers, and its nearby coal reserves. The name Manchester, though officially applied only to the metropolitan district within Greater Manchester, has been applied to other, wider divisions of land, particularly across much of the Greater Manchester county and urban area. The "Manchester City Zone", "Manchester post town" and the "Manchester Congestion Charge" are all examples of this. For purposes of the Office for National Statistics, Manchester forms the most populous settlement within the Greater Manchester Urban Area, the United Kingdom's third-largest conurbation. There is a mix of high-density urban and suburban locations. The largest open space in the city, at around , is Heaton Park. Manchester is contiguous on all sides with several large settlements, except for a small section along its southern boundary with Cheshire. The M60 and M56 motorways pass through Northenden and Wythenshawe respectively in the south of Manchester. Heavy rail lines enter the city from all directions, the principal destination being Manchester Piccadilly station. Climate. Manchester experiences a temperate oceanic climate (Köppen: "Cfb"), like much of the British Isles, with warm summers and cold winters compared to other parts of the UK. Summer daytime temperatures regularly top 20°C, quite often reaching 25°C on sunny days during July and August in particular. In more recent years, temperatures have occasionally reached over 30°C. There is regular but generally light precipitation throughout the year. The city's average annual rainfall is compared to a UK average of , and its mean rain days are 140.4 per annum, compared to the UK average of 154.4. Manchester has a relatively high humidity level, and this, along with abundant soft water, was one factor that led to advancement of the textile industry in the area. Snowfalls are not common in the city because of the urban warming effect but the West Pennine Moors to the north-west, South Pennines to the north-east and Peak District to the east receive more snow, which can close roads leading out of the city. They include the A62 via Oldham and Standedge, the A57, Snake Pass, towards Sheffield, and the Pennine section of the M62. The lowest temperature ever recorded in Manchester was on 7 January 2010. Green belt. Manchester lies at the centre of a green belt region extending into the wider surrounding counties. This reduces urban sprawl, prevents towns in the conurbation from further convergence, protects the identity of outlying communities, and preserves nearby countryside. It is achieved by restricting inappropriate development within the designated areas and imposing stricter conditions on permitted building. Due to being already highly urban, the city contains limited portions of protected green-belt area within greenfield throughout the borough, with minimal development opportunities, at Clayton Vale, Heaton Park, Chorlton Water Park along with the Chorlton Ees & Ivy Green nature reserve and the floodplain surrounding the River Mersey, as well as the southern area around Manchester Airport. The green belt was first drawn up in 1961. Demographics. Historically the population of Manchester began to increase rapidly during the Victorian era, estimated at 354,930 for Manchester and 110,833 for Salford in 1865, and peaking at 766,311 in 1931. From then the population began to decrease rapidly, due to slum clearance and the increased building of social housing overspill estates by Manchester City Council after the Second World War such as Hattersley and Langley. The 2012 mid-year estimate for the population of Manchester was 510,700. This was an increase of 7,900, or 1.6 per cent, since the 2011 estimate. Since 2001, the population has grown by 87,900, or 20.8 per cent, making Manchester the third fastest-growing area in the 2011 census. The city experienced the greatest percentage population growth outside London, with an increase of 19 per cent to over 500,000. Manchester's population is projected to reach 532,200 by 2021, an increase of 5.8 per cent from 2011. This represents a slower rate of growth than the previous decade. The Greater Manchester Built-up Area in 2011 had an estimated population of 2,553,400. In 2012 an estimated 2,702,200 people lived in Greater Manchester. An 6,547,000 people were estimated in 2012 to live within of Manchester and 11,694,000 within . Between the beginning of July 2011 and end of June 2012 (mid-year estimate date), births exceeded deaths by 4,800. Migration (internal and international) and other changes accounted for a net increase of 3,100 people between July 2011 and June 2012. Compared with Greater Manchester and with England, Manchester has a younger population, with a particularly large 20–35 age group. There were 76,095 undergraduate and postgraduate students at Manchester Metropolitan University, the University of Manchester and Royal Northern College of Music in the 2011/2012 academic year. Of all households in Manchester, 0.23 per cent were Same-Sex Civil Partnership households, compared with an English national average of 0.16 per cent in 2011. The Manchester Larger Urban Zone, a Eurostat measure of the functional city-region approximated to local government districts, had a population of 2,539,100 in 2004. In addition to Manchester itself, the LUZ includes the remainder of the county of Greater Manchester. The Manchester LUZ is the second largest within the United Kingdom, behind that of London. Religion. Since the 2001 census, the proportion of Christians in Manchester has fallen by 22 per cent from 62.4 per cent to 48.7 per cent in 2011. The proportion of those with no religious affiliation rose by 58.1 per cent from 16 per cent to 25.3 per cent, whilst the proportion of Muslims increased by 73.6 per cent from 9.1 per cent to 15.8 per cent. The size of the Jewish population in Greater Manchester is the largest in Britain outside London. Ethnicity. In terms of ethnic composition, the City of Manchester has the highest non-white proportion of any district in Greater Manchester. Statistics from the 2011 census showed that 66.7 per cent of the population was White (59.3 per cent White British, 2.4 per cent White Irish, 0.1 per cent Gypsy or Irish Traveller, 4.9 per cent Other White – although the size of mixed European and British ethnic groups is unclear, there are reportedly over 25,000 people in Greater Manchester of at least partial Italian descent alone, which represents 5.5 per cent of the population of Greater Manchester). 4.7 per cent were mixed race (1.8 per cent White and Black Caribbean, 0.9 per cent White and Black African, 1.0 per cent White and Asian, 1.0 per cent other mixed), 17.1 per cent Asian (2.3 per cent Indian, 8.5 per cent Pakistani, 1.3 per cent Bangladeshi, 2.7 per cent Chinese, 2.3 per cent other Asian), 8.6 per cent Black (5.1 per cent African, 1.6 per cent other Black), 1.9 per cent Arab and 1.2 per cent of other ethnic heritage. Kidd identifies Moss Side, Longsight, Cheetham Hill, Rusholme, as centres of population for ethnic minorities. Manchester's Irish Festival, including a St Patrick's Day parade, is one of Europe's largest. There is also a well-established Chinatown in the city with a substantial number of Chinese restaurants and supermarkets. The area also attracts large numbers of Chinese students to the city who, in attending the local universities, contribute to Manchester having the third-largest Chinese population in Europe. Ethnicity of Manchester, from 1971 to 2021: Ethnicity of school pupils Economy. The Office for National Statistics does not produce economic data for the City of Manchester alone, but includes four other metropolitan boroughs, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, in an area named Greater Manchester South, which had a GVA of £34.8 billion. The economy grew relatively strongly between 2002 and 2012, when growth was 2.3 per cent above the national average. The wider metropolitan economy is the third largest in the United Kingdom. It is ranked as a beta world city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. As the UK economy continues to recover from its 2008–2010 downturn, Manchester compares favourably according to recent figures. In 2012 it showed the strongest annual growth in business stock (5 per cent) of all core cities. The city had a relatively sharp increase in the number of business deaths, the largest increase in all the core cities, but this was offset by strong growth in new businesses, resulting in strong net growth. Manchester's civic leadership has a reputation for business acumen. It owns two of the country's four busiest airports and uses its earnings to fund local projects. Meanwhile, KPMG's competitive alternative report found that in 2012 Manchester had the 9th lowest tax cost of any industrialised city in the world, and fiscal devolution has come earlier to Manchester than to any other British city: it can keep half the extra taxes it gets from transport investment. KPMG's competitive alternative report also found that Manchester was Europe's most affordable city featured, ranking slightly better than the Dutch cities of Rotterdam and Amsterdam, which all have a cost-of-living index of less than 95. Manchester is a city of contrast, where some of the country's most deprived and most affluent neighbourhoods can be found. According to 2010 Indices of Multiple Deprivation, Manchester is the 4th most deprived local council in England. Unemployment throughout 2012–2013 averaged 11.9 per cent, which was above national average, but lower than some of the country's comparable large cities. On the other hand, Greater Manchester is home to more multi-millionaires than anywhere outside London, with the City of Manchester taking up most of the tally. In 2013 Manchester was ranked 6th in the UK for quality of life, according to a rating of the UK's 12 largest cities. Women fare better in Manchester than the rest of the country in comparative pay with men. The per hours-worked gender pay gap is 3.3 per cent compared with 11.1 per cent for Britain. 37 per cent of the working-age population in Manchester have degree-level qualifications, as opposed to an average of 33 per cent across other core cities, although its schools under-perform slightly compared with the national average. Manchester has the largest UK office market outside London, according to GVA Grimley, with a quarterly office uptake (averaged over 2010–2014) of some 250,000 square ft – equivalent to the quarterly office uptake of Leeds, Liverpool and Newcastle combined and 90,000 square feet more than the nearest rival, Birmingham. The strong office market in Manchester has been partly attributed to "northshoring" (from offshoring), which entails the relocation or alternative creation of jobs away from the overheated South to areas where office space is possibly cheaper and the workforce market less saturated. Landmarks. Manchester's buildings display a variety of architectural styles, ranging from Victorian to contemporary architecture. The widespread use of red brick characterises the city, much of the architecture of which harks back to its days as a global centre for the cotton trade. Just outside the immediate city centre are a large number of former cotton mills, some of which have been left virtually untouched since their closure, while many have been redeveloped as apartment buildings and office space. Manchester Town Hall, in Albert Square, was built in the Gothic revival style and is seen as one of the most important Victorian buildings in England. Manchester also has a number of skyscrapers built in the 1960s and 1970s, the tallest being the CIS Tower near Manchester Victoria station until the Beetham Tower was completed in 2006. The latter exemplifies a new surge in high-rise building. It includes a Hilton hotel, a restaurant and apartments. The largest skyscraper is now Deansgate Square South Tower, at 201 metres (659 feet).The Green Building, opposite Oxford Road station, is a pioneering eco-friendly housing project, while the recently completed One Angel Square, is one of the most sustainable large buildings in the world. The award-winning Heaton Park in the north of the city borough is one of the largest municipal parks in Europe, covering of parkland. The city has 135 parks, gardens, and open spaces. Two large squares hold many of Manchester's public monuments. Albert Square has monuments to Prince Albert, Bishop James Fraser, Oliver Heywood, William Gladstone and John Bright. Piccadilly Gardens has monuments dedicated to Queen Victoria, Robert Peel, James Watt and the Duke of Wellington. The cenotaph in St Peter's Square is Manchester's main memorial to its war dead. Designed by Edwin Lutyens, it echoes the original on Whitehall in London. The Alan Turing Memorial in Sackville Park commemorates his role as the father of modern computing. A larger-than-life statue of Abraham Lincoln by George Gray Barnard in the eponymous Lincoln Square (having stood for many years in Platt Fields) was presented to the city by Mr and Mrs Charles Phelps Taft of Cincinnati, Ohio, to mark the part Lancashire played in the cotton famine and American Civil War of 1861–1865. A Concorde is on display near Manchester Airport. Manchester has six designated local nature reserves: Chorlton Water Park, Blackley Forest, Clayton Vale and Chorlton Ees, Ivy Green, Boggart Hole Clough and Highfield Country Park. Transport. Rail. Manchester Liverpool Road was the world's first purpose-built passenger and goods railway station and served as the Manchester terminus on the Liverpool & Manchester Railway – the world's first inter-city passenger railway. It is still extant and its buildings form part of the Science & Industry Museum. Two of the city's four main line termini did not survive the 1960s: Manchester Central and Manchester Exchange each closed in 1969. In addition, Manchester Mayfield station closed to passenger services in 1960; its buildings and platforms are still extant, next to Piccadilly station, but are due to be redeveloped in the 2020s. Today, the city is well served by its rail network although it is now working to capacity, and is at the centre of an extensive county-wide railway network, including the West Coast Main Line, with two mainline stations: Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester Victoria. The Manchester station group – comprising Manchester Piccadilly, Manchester Victoria, Manchester Oxford Road and Deansgate – is the third busiest in the United Kingdom, with 44.9 million passengers recorded in 2017/2018. The High Speed 2 link to Birmingham and London is also planned, which if built will include a tunnel under Manchester on the final approach into an upgraded Piccadilly station. Recent improvements in Manchester as part of the Northern Hub in the 2010s have been numerous electrification schemes into and through Manchester, redevelopment of Victoria station and construction of the Ordsall Chord directly linking Victoria and Piccadilly. Work on two new through platforms at Piccadilly and an extensive upgrade at Oxford Road had not commenced as of 2019. Manchester city centre, specifically the Castlefield Corridor, suffers from constrained rail capacity that frequently leads to delays and cancellations – a 2018 report found that all three major Manchester stations are among the top ten worst stations in the United Kingdom for punctuality, with Oxford Road deemed the worst in the country. Metrolink (tram). Manchester became the first city in the UK to acquire a modern light rail tram system when the Manchester Metrolink opened in 1992. In 2016–2017, 37.8 million passenger journeys were made on the system.<ref name="16/17DfTstats"></ref> The present system mostly runs on former commuter rail lines converted for light rail use, and crosses the city centre via on-street tram lines. The network consists of eight lines with 99 stops. A new line to the Trafford Centre opened in 2020. Manchester city centre is also serviced by over a dozen heavy and light rail-based park and ride sites. Bus. The city has one of the most extensive bus networks outside London, with over 50 bus companies operating in the Greater Manchester region radiating from the city. In 2011, 80 per cent of public transport journeys in Greater Manchester were made by bus, amounting to 220 million passenger journeys each year. After deregulation in 1986, the bus system was taken over by GM Buses, which after privatisation was split into GM Buses North and GM Buses South. Later these were taken over by First Greater Manchester and Stagecoach Manchester. Much of the First Greater Manchester business was sold to Diamond North West and Go North West in 2019. Go North West operate a three-route zero-fare Manchester Metroshuttle, which carries 2.8 million commuters a year around Manchester's business districts. Stagecoach Manchester is the Stagecoach Group's largest subsidiary and operates around 690 buses. Air. Manchester Airport serves Manchester, Northern England and North Wales. The airport is the third busiest in the United Kingdom, with over double the number of annual passengers of the next busiest non-London airport. Services cover many destinations in Europe, North America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia (with more destinations from Manchester than any other airport in Britain). A second runway was opened in 2001 and there have been continued terminal improvements. The airport has the highest rating available: ""Category 10", encompassing an elite group of airports able to handle "Code F"" aircraft, including the Airbus A380 and Boeing 747-8. From September 2010 the airport became one of only 17 airports in the world and the only UK airport other than Heathrow Airport and Gatwick Airport to operate the Airbus A380. A smaller City Airport Manchester exists to the west of Manchester city centre. It was Manchester's first municipal airport and became the site of the first air traffic control tower in the UK, and the first municipal airfield in the UK to be licensed by the Air Ministry. Today, private charter flights and general aviation use City. It also has a flight school, and both the Greater Manchester Police Air Support Unit and the North West Air Ambulance have helicopters based there. Canal. An extensive canal network, including the Manchester Ship Canal, was built to carry freight from the Industrial Revolution onward; the canals are still maintained, though now largely repurposed for leisure use. In 2012, plans were approved to introduce a water taxi service between Manchester city centre and MediaCityUK at Salford Quays. It ceased to operate in June 2018, citing poor infrastructure. Cycling. Cycling for transportation and leisure enjoys popularity in Manchester and the city also plays a major role in British cycle racing. Culture. Music. Bands that have emerged from the Manchester music scene include Van der Graaf Generator, Oasis, the Smiths, Joy Division and its successor group New Order, Buzzcocks, the Stone Roses, the Fall, the Durutti Column, 10cc, Godley & Creme, the Verve, Elbow, Doves, the Charlatans, M People, the 1975, Simply Red, Take That, Dutch Uncles, Everything Everything, Pale Waves, and the Outfield. Manchester was credited as the main driving force behind British indie music of the 1980s led by the Smiths, later including the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets, and James. The later groups came from what became known as the "Madchester" scene that also centred on The Haçienda nightclub developed by the founder of Factory Records, Tony Wilson. Although from southern England, the Chemical Brothers subsequently formed in Manchester. Former Smiths frontman Morrissey, whose lyrics often refer to Manchester locations and culture, later found international success as a solo artist. Previously, notable Manchester acts of the 1960s include the Hollies, Herman's Hermits, and Davy Jones of the Monkees (famed in the mid-1960s for their albums and their American TV show), and the earlier Bee Gees, who grew up in Chorlton. Another notable contemporary band from near Manchester is the Courteeners consisting of Liam Fray and four close friends. Singer-songwriter Ren Harvieu is also from Greater Manchester. Its main pop music venue is Manchester Arena, voted "International Venue of the Year" in 2007. With over 21,000 seats, it is the largest arena of its type in Europe. In terms of concertgoers, it is the busiest indoor arena in the world, ahead of Madison Square Garden in New York and The O2 Arena in London, which are second and third busiest. Other venues include Manchester Apollo, Albert Hall, Victoria Warehouse and the Manchester Academy. Smaller venues include the Band on the Wall, the Night and Day Café, the Ruby Lounge, and The Deaf Institute. Manchester also has the most indie and rock music events outside London. Manchester has two symphony orchestras, The Hallé and the BBC Philharmonic, and a chamber orchestra, the Manchester Camerata. In the 1950s, the city was home to a so-called "Manchester School" of classical composers, which was composed of Harrison Birtwistle, Peter Maxwell Davies, David Ellis and Alexander Goehr. Manchester is a centre for musical education: the Royal Northern College of Music and Chetham's School of Music. Forerunners of the RNCM were the Northern School of Music (founded 1920) and the Royal Manchester College of Music (founded 1893), which merged in 1973. One of the earliest instructors and classical music pianists/conductors at the RNCM, shortly after its founding, was the Russian-born Arthur Friedheim, (1859–1932), who later had the music library at the famed Peabody Institute conservatory of music in Baltimore, Maryland, named after him. The main classical music venue was the Free Trade Hall on Peter Street until the opening in 1996 of the 2,500 seat Bridgewater Hall. Brass band music, a tradition in the north of England, is important to Manchester's musical heritage; some of the UK's leading bands, such as the CWS Manchester Band and the Fairey Band, are from Manchester and surrounding areas, and the Whit Friday brass-band contest takes place annually in the neighbouring areas of Saddleworth and Tameside. Performing arts. Manchester has a thriving theatre, opera and dance scene, with a number of large performance venues, including Manchester Opera House, which feature large-scale touring shows and West End productions; the Palace Theatre; and the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester's former cotton exchange, which is the largest theatre in the round in the UK. Smaller venues include the Contact Theatre and Z-arts in Hulme. The Dancehouse on Oxford Road is dedicated to dance productions. In 2014, HOME, a new custom-built arts complex opened. Housing two theatre spaces, five cinemas and an art exhibition space, it replaced the Cornerhouse and The Library Theatre. Since 2007 the city has hosted the Manchester International Festival, a biennial international arts festival with a focus on original work, which has included major new commissions by artists, including Bjork. A government statement in 2014 announced a £78 million grant for a new "large-scale, ultra-flexible arts space" for the city. Later the council stated it had secured a further £32 million. The £110 million venue was confirmed in July 2016. The theatre, to be called The Factory, after Manchester's Factory Records, will provide a permanent home for the Manchester International Festival. It is due to open at the end of 2019. Museums and galleries. Manchester's museums celebrate Manchester's Roman history, rich industrial heritage and its role in the Industrial Revolution, the textile industry, the Trade Union movement, women's suffrage and football. A reconstructed part of the Roman fort of Mamucium is open to the public in Castlefield. The Science and Industry Museum, housed in the former Liverpool Road railway station, has a large collection of steam locomotives, industrial machinery, aircraft and a replica of the world's first stored computer program (known as the Manchester Baby). The Museum of Transport displays a collection of historic buses and trams. Trafford Park in the neighbouring borough of Trafford is home to Imperial War Museum North. The Manchester Museum opened to the public in the 1880s, has notable Egyptology and natural history collections. Other exhibition spaces and museums in Manchester include Islington Mill in Salford, the National Football Museum at Urbis, Castlefield Gallery, the Manchester Costume Gallery at Platt Fields Park, the People's History Museum and the Manchester Jewish Museum. The municipally owned Manchester Art Gallery in Mosley Street houses a permanent collection of European painting and one of Britain's main collections of Pre-Raphaelite paintings. In the south of the city, the Whitworth Art Gallery displays modern art, sculpture and textiles and was voted Museum of the Year in 2015. The work of Stretford-born painter , known for "matchstick" paintings of industrial Manchester and Salford, can be seen in the City and Whitworth Manchester galleries, and at the Lowry art centre in Salford Quays (in the neighbouring borough of Salford), which devotes a large permanent exhibition to his works. Literature. Manchester is a UNESCO City of Literature known for a "radical literary history". Manchester in the 19th century featured in works highlighting the changes that industrialisation had brought. They include Elizabeth Gaskell's novel "Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life" (1848), and studies such as "The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844" by Friedrich Engels, while living and working here. Manchester was the meeting place of Engels and Karl Marx. The two began writing "The Communist Manifesto" in Chetham's Library – founded in 1653 and claiming to be the oldest public library in the English-speaking world. Elsewhere in the city, the John Rylands Library holds an extensive collection of early printing. The Rylands Library Papyrus P52, believed to be the earliest extant New Testament text, is on permanent display there. Letitia Landon's poetical illustration "Manchester" to a vista over the city by G. Pickering in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1835, records the rapid growth of the city and its cultural importance. Charles Dickens is reputed to have set his novel "Hard Times" in the city, and though partly modelled on Preston, it shows the influence of his friend Mrs Gaskell. Gaskell penned all her novels but "Mary Barton" at her home in 84 Plymouth Grove. Often her house played host to influential authors: Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Charles Eliot Norton, for example. It is now open as a literary museum. Charlotte Brontë began writing her novel "Jane Eyre" in 1846, while staying at lodgings in Hulme. She was accompanying her father Patrick, who was convalescing in the city after cataract surgery. She probably envisioned Manchester Cathedral churchyard as the burial place for Jane's parents and the birthplace of Jane herself. Also associated with the city is the Victorian poet and novelist Isabella Banks, famed for her 1876 novel "The Manchester Man". Anglo-American author Frances Hodgson Burnett was born in the city's Cheetham Hill district in 1849, and wrote much of her classic children's novel "The Secret Garden" while visiting nearby Salford's Buile Hill Park. Anthony Burgess is among the 20th-century writers who made Manchester their home. He wrote here the dystopian satire "A Clockwork Orange" in 1962. Dame Carol Ann Duffy, Poet Laureate from 2009 to 2019, moved to the city in 1996 and lives in West Didsbury. Nightlife. The night-time economy of Manchester has expanded significantly since about 1993, with investment from breweries in bars, public houses and clubs, along with active support from the local authorities. The more than 500 licensed premises in the city centre have a capacity to deal with more than visitors, with 110,000–130,000 people visiting on a typical weekend night, making Manchester the most popular city for events at 79 per thousand people. The night-time economy has a value of about £100 million, and supports 12,000 jobs. The Madchester scene of the 1980s, from which groups including the Stone Roses, the Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets, 808 State, James and the Charlatans emerged, was based around clubs such as The Haçienda. The period was the subject of the movie "24 Hour Party People". Many of the big clubs suffered problems with organised crime at that time; Haslam describes one where staff were so completely intimidated that free admission and drinks were demanded (and given) and drugs were openly dealt. Following a series of drug-related violent incidents, The Haçienda closed in 1997. Gay village. Public houses in the Canal Street area have had an LGBTQ+ clientele since at least 1940, and now form the centre of Manchester's LGBTQ+ community. Since the opening of new bars and clubs, the area attracts 20,000 visitors each weekend and has hosted a popular festival, Manchester Pride, each August since 1995. Education. There are three universities in the City of Manchester. The University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University and Royal Northern College of Music. The University of Manchester is the second largest full-time non-collegiate university in the United Kingdom, created in 2004 by the merger of Victoria University of Manchester, founded in 1904, and UMIST, founded in 1956, having developed from the Mechanics' Institute founded, as indicated in the university's logo, in 1824. The University of Manchester includes the Manchester Business School, which offered the first MBA course in the UK in 1965. Manchester Metropolitan University was formed as Manchester Polytechnic on the merger of three colleges in 1970. It gained university status in 1992, and in the same year absorbed Crewe and Alsager College of Higher Education in South Cheshire. The Cheshire campus permanently closed in 2019. The University of Law, the largest provider of vocation legal training in Europe, has a campus in the city. The three universities are grouped around Oxford Road on the southern side of the city centre, which forms Europe's largest urban higher-education precinct. Together they have a combined population of over 80,000 students as of 2022. One of Manchester's notable secondary schools is Manchester Grammar School. Established in 1515, as a free grammar school next to what is now the cathedral, it moved in 1931 to Old Hall Lane in Fallowfield, south Manchester, to accommodate the growing student body. In the post-war period, it was a direct grant grammar school (i.e. partially state funded), but it reverted to independent status in 1976 after abolition of the direct-grant system. Its previous premises are now used by Chetham's School of Music. There are three schools nearby: William Hulme's Grammar School, Withington Girls' School and Manchester High School for Girls. In 2019, the Manchester Local Education Authority was ranked second to last out of Greater Manchester's ten LEAs and 140th out of 151 in the country LEAs based on the percentage of pupils attaining grades 4 or above in English and mathematics GCSEs (General Certificate of Secondary Education) with 56.2 per cent compared with the national average of 64.9 per cent. Of the 63 secondary schools in the LEA, four had 80 per cent or more pupils achieving Grade 4 or above in English and maths GCSEs: Manchester High School for Girls, The King David High School, Manchester Islamic High School for Girls, and Kassim Darwish Grammar School for Boys. Sport. Two Premier League football clubs bear the city's name – Manchester City and Manchester United. Manchester City's home is the City of Manchester Stadium in east Manchester, built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games and then reconfigured as a football ground in 2003. Manchester United and Lancashire County Cricket Club, although commonly associated with Manchester, are based in the neighbouring metropolitan borough of Trafford. Sporting facilities built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games include the City of Manchester Stadium, National Squash Centre and Manchester Aquatics Centre. Manchester has competed twice to host the Olympic Games, beaten by Atlanta for 1996 and Sydney for 2000. The National Cycling Centre includes a velodrome, BMX Arena and Mountainbike trials, and is the home of British Cycling, UCI ProTeam Team Sky and Sky Track Cycling. The Manchester Velodrome, built as a part of the bid for the 2000 games, has become a catalyst for British success in cycling. The velodrome hosted the UCI Track Cycling World Championships for a record third time in 2008. The National Indoor BMX Arena (2,000 capacity) adjacent to the velodrome opened in 2011. The Manchester Arena hosted the FINA World Swimming Championships in 2008. Manchester hosted the World Squash Championships in 2008, the 2010 World Lacrosse Championship, the 2013 Ashes series, 2013 Rugby League World Cup, 2015 Rugby World Cup and 2019 Cricket World Cup. Media. Print. "The Guardian" newspaper was founded in the city in 1821 as "The Manchester Guardian". Until 2008, its head office was still in the city, though many of its management functions were moved to London in 1964. For many years most national newspapers had offices in Manchester: "The Daily Telegraph", "Daily Express", "Daily Mail", "Daily Mirror", "The Sun". At its height, 1,500 journalists were employed, earning the city the nickname "second Fleet Street". In the 1980s the titles closed their northern offices and centred their operations in London. The main regional newspaper in the city is the "Manchester Evening News", which was for over 80 years the sister publication of "The Manchester Guardian". The "Manchester Evening News" has the largest circulation of a UK regional evening newspaper and is distributed free of charge in the city centre on Thursdays and Fridays, but paid for in the suburbs. Despite its title, it is available all day. Several local weekly free papers are distributed by the MEN group. The "Metro North West" is available free at Metrolink stops, rail stations and other busy locations. An attempt to launch a Northern daily newspaper, the "North West Times", employing journalists made redundant by other titles, closed in 1988. Another attempt was made with the "North West Enquirer", which hoped to provide a true "regional" newspaper for the North West, much in the same vein as the "Yorkshire Post" does for Yorkshire or "The Northern Echo" does for the North East; it folded in October 2006. Television. Manchester has been a centre of television broadcasting since the 1950s. A number of television studios have been in operation around the city, and have since relocated to MediaCityUK in neighbouring Salford. The ITV franchise Granada Television has been based in Manchester since 1954. Now based at MediaCityUK, the company's former headquarters at Granada Studios on Quay Street with its distinctive illuminated sign were a prominent landmark on the Manchester skyline for several decades. Granada produces "Coronation Street," local news and programmes for North West England. Although its influence has waned, Granada had been described as "the best commercial television company in the world". With the growth in regional television in the 1950s, Manchester became one of the BBC's three main centres in England. In 1954, the BBC opened its first regional BBC Television studio outside London, Dickenson Road Studios, in a converted Methodist chapel in Rusholme. The first edition of "Top of the Pops" was broadcast here on New Year's Day 1964. From 1975, BBC programmes including "Mastermind", and "Real Story", were made at New Broadcasting House on Oxford Road. The "Cutting It" series set in the city's Northern Quarter and "The Street" were set in Manchester as was "Life on Mars". Manchester was the regional base for BBC One North West Region programmes before it relocated to MediaCityUK in nearby Salford Quays. The Manchester television channel, Channel M, owned by the Guardian Media Group operated from 2000, but closed in 2012. Manchester is also covered by two internet television channels: Quays News and Manchester.tv. The city had a new terrestrial channel from January 2014 when YourTV Manchester, which won the OFCOM licence bid in February 2013. It began its first broadcast, but in 2015, That's Manchester took over to air on 31 May and launched the freeview channel 8 service slot, before moving to channel 7 in April 2016. Radio. The city has the highest number of local radio stations outside London, including BBC Radio Manchester, Hits Radio Manchester, Capital Manchester and Lancashire, Greatest Hits Radio Manchester & The North West, Heart North West, Smooth North West, Gold, Radio X, NMFM (North Manchester FM) and XS Manchester. Student radio stations include Fuse FM at the University of Manchester and MMU Radio at the Manchester Metropolitan University. A community radio network is coordinated by Radio Regen, with stations covering Ardwick, Longsight and Levenshulme (All FM 96.9) and Wythenshawe (Wythenshawe FM 97.2). Defunct radio stations include Sunset 102, which became Kiss 102, then Galaxy Manchester), and KFM which became Signal Cheshire (later Imagine FM). These stations and pirate radio played a significant role in the city's house music culture, the Madchester scene. International relations. Manchester has formal twinning arrangements (or "friendship agreements") with several places. In addition, the British Council maintains a metropolitan centre in Manchester. Manchester is home to the largest group of consuls in the UK outside London. The expansion of international trade links during the Industrial Revolution led to the introduction of the first consuls in the 1820s and since then over 800, from all parts of the world, have been based in Manchester. Manchester hosts consular services for most of the north of England.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20451

Men at Work

Men at Work are an Australian rock band formed in Melbourne in 1978 and best known for breakthrough hits such as "Down Under", "Who Can It Be Now?", "Be Good Johnny", "Overkill", and "It's a Mistake". Its founding member and frontman is Colin Hay, who performs on lead vocals and guitar. After playing as an acoustic duo with Ron Strykert during 1978–1979, Hay formed the group with Strykert playing bass guitar and Jerry Speiser on drums. They were soon joined by Greg Ham on flute, saxophone, and keyboards and John Rees on bass guitar, with Strykert switching back to lead guitar. The group was managed by Russell Depeller, a friend of Hay, whom he met at La Trobe University. This line-up achieved national and international success during the early to mid-1980s. In January 1983, they were the first Australian artists to have a simultaneous No. 1 album and No. 1 single on the United States "Billboard" charts: "Business as Usual" (released on 9 November 1981) and "Down Under" (1981), respectively. With the same works, they achieved the distinction of a simultaneous No. 1 album and No. 1 single on the Australian, New Zealand, and United Kingdom charts. Their second album "Cargo" (2 May 1983) was No. 1 in Australia, No. 2 in New Zealand, No. 3 in the US, and No. 8 in the UK. Their third album "Two Hearts" (3 April 1985) reached the top 20 in Australia and top 50 in the US. They won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 1983, they were inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 1994, and they have sold over 30 million albums worldwide. In May 2001, "Down Under" was listed at No. 4 on the APRA Top 30 Australian songs and "Business as Usual" appeared in the book "100 Best Australian Albums" (October 2010). In 1984, Speiser and Rees were asked to leave the group, leaving Hay, Ham, and Strykert as a trio, accompanied by session musicians. During the recording of the "Two Hearts" album, Strykert decided to leave. Soon after the 1985 release of "Two Hearts", Ham left also, leaving Hay as the sole remaining member. Hay elected to work as a solo artist shortly thereafter in early 1986, and the Men at Work name was retired. From 1996 until 2002, Hay and Ham revived the name and toured the world as Men at Work (accompanied by new group members). On 19 April 2012, Ham was found dead at his home from an apparent heart attack. In 2019, Hay once again revived the Men at Work moniker and began touring with another new group of musicians. No other previous Men At Work members are involved in the current revival. History. Origins. The nucleus of Men at Work formed in Melbourne around June 1979 with Colin Hay on lead vocals and guitar, Ron Strykert on bass guitar, and Jerry Speiser on drums. They were soon joined by Greg Ham on flute, sax and keyboards, and then John Rees on bass guitar, with Strykert switching to lead guitar. Hay had emigrated to Australia in 1967 from Scotland with his family. In 1978, he had formed an acoustic duo with Strykert, which expanded by mid-1979 with the addition of Speiser. Around this time as a side project, keyboardist Greg Sneddon (ex-Alroy Band), a former bandmate of Jerry Speiser, together with Speiser, Hay and Strykert, performed and recorded the music to 'Riff Raff", a low budget stage musical, upon which Sneddon had worked. Hay asked Greg Ham to join the group, but Ham hesitated, as he was finishing his music degree. Ultimately, he decided to join the band in October 1979. John Rees, a friend of Jerry, joined soon after. The name Men At Work was thrown into the hat by Colin Hay, and was seconded by Ron Strykert, when a name was required to put on the blackboard outside The Cricketer's Arms Hotel, Richmond. The band built a "grass roots" reputation as a pub rock band. In 1980, the group issued their debut single, "Keypunch Operator" backed by "Down Under", with both tracks co-written by Hay and Strykert. It was "self-financed" and appeared on their own independent, M. A. W. label. Australian musicologist, Ian McFarlane, felt the A-side was "a fast-paced country-styled rocker with a clean sound and quirky rhythm". Despite not appearing in the top 100 on the Australian Kent Music Report Singles Chart, by the end of that year the group had "grown in stature to become the most in-demand and highly paid, unsigned band of the year". International success - "Business as Usual" and "Cargo" (1981–1983). Early in 1981 Men at Work signed with CBS Records, the Australian branch of CBS Records International, (which became Sony Music) on the recommendation of Peter Karpin, the label's A&R person. The group's first single with CBS Records in Australia "Who Can It Be Now?", was released in June 1981 which reached No. 2 and remained in the chart for 24 weeks. It had been produced by United States-based Peter McIan, who was also working on their debut album, "Business as Usual". McIan, together with the band worked on the arrangements for all the songs that appeared on "Business As Usual". Their next single was a re-arranged and "popified" version of "Down Under". It appeared in October that year and reached No. 1 in November, where it remained for six weeks. "Business as Usual" was also released in October and went to No. 1 on the Australian Kent Music Report Albums Chart, spending a total of nine weeks at the top spot. "The Canberra Times" Garry Raffaele opined that it "generally stays at a high level, tight and jerky ... There is a delicacy about this music — and that is not a thing you can say about too many rock groups. The flute and reeds of Greg Ham do much to further that". McFarlane noted that "[a]side from the strength of the music, part of the album's appeal was its economy. The production sound was low-key, but clean and uncluttered. Indeed, the songs stood by themselves with little embellishment save for a bright, melodic, singalong quality". By February the following year both "Down Under" and "Business as Usual" had reached No. 1 on the respective Official New Zealand Music Charts – the latter was the first Australian album to reach that peak in New Zealand. Despite its strong Australian and New Zealand showing, and having an American producer (McIan), "Business as Usual" was twice rejected by Columbia's US parent company. Thanks to the persistence of Russell Depeller and Karpin, the album was finally released in the US and the United Kingdom in April 1982 – six months after its Australian release. Their next single, "Be Good Johnny", was issued in Australia in April 1982 and reached No. 8 in Australia, and No. 3 in New Zealand. Men at Work initially broke through to North American audiences in the western provinces of Canada with "Who Can It Be Now?" hitting the top 10 on radio stations in Winnipeg by May 1982. It peaked at No. 8 on the Canadian "RPM" Top Singles Chart in July. In August the group toured Canada and the United States to promote the album and related singles, supporting Fleetwood Mac. The band became more popular on Canadian radio in the following months and also started receiving top 40 US airplay by August. In October "Who Can It Be Now?" reached No. 1 on the US "Billboard" Hot 100, while Canada was one single ahead with "Down Under" topping the Canadian charts that same month. In the following month "Business as Usual" began a 15-week run at No. 1 on the "Billboard" 200. While "Who Can It Be Now?" was still in the top ten in the US, "Down Under" was finally released in that market. It entered the US charts at No. 79 and ten weeks later, it was No. 1. By January 1983 Men at Work had the top album and single in both the US and the UK – never previously achieved by an Australian act. "Be Good Johnny" received moderate airplay in the US; it reached the top 20 in Canada. "Down Under" gained international media exposure in September 1983 through television coverage of the Australian challenge for the America's Cup yacht trophy in September 1983 when it was adopted as the theme song by the crew of the successful "Australia II". The band released their second album, "Cargo", in April 1983, which also peaked at No. 1 – for two weeks – on the Australian charts. In New Zealand it reached No. 2. It had been finished in mid-1982 with McIan producing again, but was held back due to the success of their debut album on the international market, where "Business as Usual" was still riding high. "Cargo" appeared at No. 3 on the "Billboard" 200, and No. 8 in the UK. The lead single, "Overkill", was issued in Australia ahead of the album in October 1982 and reached No. 6, it peaked at No. 3 in the US. "Dr. Heckyll & Mr. Jive" followed in March 1983 made it to No. 5 in Australia, and No. 28 in the US. "It's a Mistake" reached No. 6 in the US. The band toured the world extensively in 1983. "Two Hearts" and break-up (1984–1986). In 1984, long standing tensions between Hay and Speiser led to a split in the band. Both Rees and Speiser were told they were "not required", as Hay, Ham and Strykert used session musicians to record their third album, "Two Hearts" (23 April 1985). Hay later attributed the firing to a dispute over the band's manager, Russell Deppler, stating, "The rhythm section got sacked because they wanted to sack the manager, who was my friend." Speiser opined, "Russell was good for hustling gigs in Melbourne and Sydney but once the band became international and multi-million, the sheep farmer from Warrnambool had no idea." Studio musicians included Jeremy Alsop on bass guitar (ex-Ram Band, Pyramid, Broderick Smith Band); and Mark Kennedy on drums (Spectrum, Ayers Rock, Marcia Hines Band). "Two Hearts" was produced by Hay and Ham. It was a critical and commercial failure compared to their previous albums and only peaked at No. 16 in Australia, and No. 50 on the US chart. Strykert had left during its production. Four tracks were released as singles, "Everything I Need" (May 1985), "Man with Two Hearts", "Maria" (August), and "Hard Luck Story" (October); only the lead single charted in Australia (No. 37) and the US (No. 47). The album relied heavily on drum machines and synthesisers, and reduced the presence of Ham's saxophone, giving it a different feel compared to its predecessors. Hay and Ham hired new bandmates, to tour in support of "Two Hearts", with Alsop and Kennedy joined by James Black on guitar and keyboards (Mondo Rock, The Black Sorrows). Soon after a third guitarist, Colin Bayley (Mi-Sex), was added and Kennedy was replaced on drums by Chad Wackerman (Frank Zappa). Australian singers Kate Ceberano and Renée Geyer had also worked on the album and performed live as guest vocalists. On 13 July 1985 Men at Work performed three tracks for the Oz for Africa concert (part of the global Live Aid program)—"Maria", "Overkill", and an unreleased one, "The Longest Night". They were broadcast in Australia (on both Seven Network and Nine Network) and on MTV in the US. "Maria" and "Overkill" were also broadcast by American Broadcasting Company (ABC) during their Live Aid telecast. Ham left during the band's time touring behind the album. The final Men at Work performances during 1985 had jazz saxophonist Paul Williamson (The Black Sorrows), replacing Ham. As of October 1985, the band's official line-up was a sextet of Hay, Alsop, Bayley, Black, Wackerman and Williamson (as pictured on the Australia-only single "Sail To You"), but by early 1986 the band was defunct. At that time, Hay started recording his first solo album, "Looking for Jack" (January 1987), which had Alsop and Wackerman as session musicians. Partial reunion and second break-up (1996–2002). By mid-1996, after a ten-year absence, Hay and Ham reformed Men at Work to tour South America. They had enjoyed strong fan support there during their earlier career and demands for a reunion had persisted. The 1996 line up had Stephen Hadley on bass guitar and backing vocals (ex-The Black Sorrows, Paul Kelly Band); Simon Hosford on guitar and backing vocals (Colin Hay backing band); and John Watson on drums (The Black Sorrows). The tour culminated in a performance in São Paulo, which was recorded for the Brazilian release of a live album, "Brazil '96", in 1997, which was co-produced by Hay and Ham for Sony Music. It was re-released worldwide in 1998 as "Brazil" with a bonus track, "The Longest Night", the first new studio track since "Two Hearts". In 1997 drummer Tony Floyd replaced Watson but by 1998 the lineup was Hay, Ham, James Ryan (guitar, backing vocals), Rick Grossman (of the Hoodoo Gurus) on bass and Peter Maslen (ex-Boom Crash Opera) on drums. In 1999 Ryan, Grossman and Maslen were out and Hosford and Floyd were back in, along with bassist Stuart Speed. Rodrigo Aravena was brought in on bass in 2000, along with Heta Moses on drums. Moses was replaced by Warren Trout in 2001 as Stephen Hadley returned on bass. The band toured Australia, South America, Europe and the US from 1998 to 2000. Men at Work performed "Down Under" at the closing ceremony of the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, alongside Paul Hogan of ""Crocodile" Dundee" (1986). One of their European tours for mid-2000 was cancelled and the group had disbanded once again by 2002, although Hay and Ham periodically reunited Men at Work with guest musicians (including an appearance in February 2009, when they performed "Down Under" as a duo at the Australia Unites Victorian Bushfire Appeal Telethon). Copyright lawsuit and the death of Greg Ham. In February 2010, Larrikin Music Publishing won a case against Hay and Strykert, their record label (Sony BMG Music Entertainment) and music publishing company (EMI Songs Australia), arising from the uncredited appropriation of "Kookaburra", originally written in 1932 by Marion Sinclair, and for which Larrikin owned the publishing rights, as the flute line in the Men at Work song "Down Under". Back in early 2009 the Australian music-themed TV quiz, "Spicks and Specks", had posed a question which suggested that "Down Under" contained elements of "Kookaburra". Larrikin, then headed by Norman Lurie, filed suit after Larrikin was sold to another company and had demanded between 40% and 60% of the previous six years of earnings from the song. In February 2010, the judge ruled that "Down Under" did contain a flute riff based on "Kookaburra" but stipulated that neither was it necessarily the hook nor a substantial part of the hit song (Hay and Strykert had written the track years before the flute riff was added by Ham). In July 2010, a judge ruled that Larrikin should be paid 5% of past (since 2002) and future profits. Ham took the verdict particularly hard, feeling responsible for having performed the flute riff at the centre of the lawsuit and worried that he would only be remembered for copying someone else's music, resulting in depression and anxiety. Ham's body was found in his Carlton North home on 19 April 2012 after he suffered a fatal heart attack at age 58. Post 2012. In June 2019, Hay toured Europe with a group of Los Angeles-based session musicians under the name Men at Work, despite the band featuring no other original members of the band. The new lineup consisted of Hay (vocals, guitar), Scheila Gonzalez (saxophone, keyboards, vocals, flute), San Miguel Perez (guitar, backing vocals), Yosmel Montejo (bass, backing vocals), Jimmy Branly (drums, percussion) and Cecilia Noël (backing vocals). In 2021 Australian producer Christian 'Luude' Benson (from the Tasmanian tech house dance duo Choomba) remixed "Down Under" as a drum and bass track, which became popular online. Hay re-recorded the vocal for the track's official release, now credited to Luude featuring Colin Hay, with the record charting at number 32 on the UK Singles chart on 7 January 2022 and at number 48 in Australia (on the ARIA Top 50 Singles for the week of 10 January 2022). Other projects. Hay maintained a solo career and played with Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band. Strykert relocated to Hobart in 2009 from Los Angeles, and continued to play music and released his first solo album, "Paradise", in September that year. He expressed resentment towards Hay, mainly over royalties. Ham remained musically active and played sax with the Melbourne-based group The Nudist Funk Orchestra until his death. Rees was a music teacher in Melbourne and also played the violin and bass guitar for the band Beggs 2 Differ. Speiser played drums for the band The Afterburner. Awards and nominations. ARIA Music Awards. The ARIA Music Awards is an annual awards ceremony that recognises excellence, innovation, and achievement across all genres of Australian music. They commenced in 1987. Men at Work were inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1994. Countdown Australian Music Awards. "Countdown" is an Australian pop music TV series that aired on national broadcaster ABC-TV from 1974 to 1987, it presented music awards from 1979 to 1987, initially in conjunction with magazine "TV Week". The TV Week / Countdown Awards were a combination of popular-voted and peer-voted awards. Other awards. In August 1983 they were given a Crystal Globe Award for $100 million worth of record business by their US label. That same year in Canada they were awarded a Juno Award for "International LP of the Year". Men at Work has sold over 30 million albums worldwide. On 28 May 2001 "Down Under" was listed at No. 4 on the APRA Top 30 Australian songs. In October 2010, "Business as Usual" was listed in the book, "100 Best Australian Albums". Members. Colin Hay has been the only constant member in all configurations. Present Current touring members Former Former touring members

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20629

Maharashtra

Maharashtra (; , abbr. MH or Maha) is a state in the western peninsular region of India occupying a substantial portion of the Deccan Plateau. It is bordered by the Arabian Sea to the west, the Indian states of Karnataka and Goa to the south, Telangana to the southeast and Chhattisgarh to the east, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh to the north, and the Indian union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu to the northwest. Maharashtra is the second-most populous state in India and the third-most populous country subdivision globally. The state is divided into 6 divisions and 36 districts, with the state capital being Mumbai, the most populous urban area in India, and Nagpur serving as the winter capital. The Godavari and Krishna are the two major rivers in the state and forests cover 16.47 percent of the state's geographical area. The state is home to six UNESCO World Heritage Sites: Ajanta Caves, Ellora Caves, Elephanta Caves, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (formerly Victoria Terminus), The Victorian Gothic and Art Deco Ensembles of Mumbai and The Western Ghats, a heritage site made up of 39 individual properties of which 4 are in Maharashtra. Maharashtra is the single largest contributor to India's Economy with a share of 14 per cent in all-India nominal GDP. The economy of Maharashtra is the largest in India, with a gross state domestic product (GSDP) of and GSDP per capita of . The service sector dominates the state's economy, accounting for 69.3 per cent of the value of the output of the country. Although agriculture accounts for 12 per cent of the state GDP, it employs nearly half the population of the state. Maharashtra is one of the most industrialised states in India. The state's capital, Mumbai, is India's financial and commercial capital. India's largest stock exchange Bombay Stock Exchange, the oldest in Asia, is located in the city, as is National Stock Exchange, which is the second largest stock exchange in India and one of world's largest derivatives exchanges. The state has played a significant role in the country's social and political life and is widely considered a leader in terms of agricultural and industrial production, trade and transport, and education. Maharashtra is the ninth-highest ranking among Indian states in the human development index. The region that encompasses the state has a history going back many millennia. Notable dynasties that ruled the region include the Asmakas, the Mauryas, the Satavahanas, the Western Satraps, the Abhiras, the Vakatakas, the Chalukyas, the Rashtrakutas, the Western Chalukyas, the Seuna Yadavas, the Khaljis, the Tughlaqs, the Bahamanis, the Deccan sultanates, the Mughals, the Maratha Empire founded by Shivaji, and the British. Ruins, monuments, tombs, forts, and places of worship left by these rulers are dotted around the state. At the time of the Indian independence movement in the early 20th century, along with British ruled areas of Bombay presidency, and Central Provinces and Berar, the region included many British Vassal states. Among these, the erstwhile Deccan States Agency included Kolhapur, Miraj, Sangli, Aundh, Bhor, Sawantwadi and Marathwada of Hyderabad State. The state was formed on 1 May 1960 after a long struggle for special state for Marathi language speaking people through Samyukta Maharashtra Movement (). Etymology. The modern Marathi language evolved from the Maharashtri Prakrit, and the word "Marhatta" (later used for the Marathas) is found in the Jain Maharashtrian literature. The term Maharashtra () along with Maharashtrian, Marathi, and Maratha may have derived from the same root. However, their exact etymology is uncertain. The most widely accepted theory among the linguistic scholars is that the words Maratha and Maharashtra ultimately derived from a combination of "Mahā" () and "Rāshtrikā" (), the name of a tribe or dynasty of chiefs ruling in the Deccan region. An alternate theory states that the term is derived from "mahā" ("great") and "ratha"/"rathi" ("chariot"/"charioteer"), which refers to a skilful northern fighting force that migrated southward into the area. An alternative theory states that the term derives from the word "mahā" ("great") and "rāshtra" ("nation/dominion"). However, this theory is somewhat controversial among modern scholars who believe it to be the Sanskritised interpretation of later writers. History. Numerous Late Harappan or Chalcolithic sites belonging to the Jorwe culture (–700 BCE) have been discovered throughout the state. The largest settlement discovered of the culture is at Daimabad, which had a mud fortification during this period, as well as an elliptical temple with fire pits. In the Late Harappan period there was a large migration of people from Gujarat to northern Maharashtra. Maharashtra was ruled by Maurya Empire in the fourth and third centuries BCE. Around 230 BCE, Maharashtra came under the rule of the Satavahana dynasty which ruled it for the next 400 years. The rule of Satavahana dynasty was followed by that of Western Satraps, Gupta Empire, Gurjara-Pratihara, Vakataka, Kadambas, Chalukya Empire, Rashtrakuta Dynasty, and Western Chalukya and the Yadava Dynasty. The Buddhist Ajanta Caves in present-day Aurangabad display influences from the Satavahana and Vakataka styles. The caves were possibly excavated during this period. The Chalukya dynasty ruled the region from the sixth to the eighth centuries CE, and the two prominent rulers were Pulakeshin II, who defeated the north Indian Emperor Harsha, and Vikramaditya II, who defeated the Arab invaders in the eighth century. The Rashtrakuta dynasty ruled Maharashtra from the eighth to the tenth century. The Arab traveller Sulaiman al Mahri described the ruler of the Rashtrakuta dynasty Amoghavarsha as "one of the four great kings of the world". Shilahara dynasty began as vassals of the Rashtrakuta dynasty which ruled the Deccan plateau between the eighth and tenth centuries. From the early 11th century to the 12th century, the Deccan Plateau, which includes a significant part of Maharashtra, was dominated by the Western Chalukya Empire and the Chola dynasty. Several battles were fought between the Western Chalukya Empire and the Chola dynasty in the Deccan Plateau during the reigns of Raja Raja Chola I, Rajendra Chola I, Jayasimha II, Someshvara I, and Vikramaditya VI. In the early 14th century, the Yadava dynasty, which ruled most of present-day Maharashtra, was overthrown by the Delhi Sultanate ruler Alauddin Khalji. Later, Muhammad bin Tughluq conquered parts of the Deccan, and temporarily shifted his capital from Delhi to Daulatabad in Maharashtra. After the collapse of the Tughluqs in 1347, the local Bahmani Sultanate of Gulbarga took over, governing the region for the next 150 years. After the break-up of the Bahamani sultanate in 1518, Maharashtra split into five Deccan Sultanates: Nizamshah of Ahmednagar, Adilshah of Bijapur, Qutubshah of Golkonda, Bidarshah of Bidar and Imadshah of Elichpur. These kingdoms often fought with each other. United, they decisively defeated the Vijayanagara Empire of the south in 1565. The present area of Mumbai was ruled by the Sultanate of Gujarat before its capture by Portugal in 1535 and the Faruqi dynasty ruled the Khandesh region between 1382 and 1601 before finally getting annexed in the Mughal Empire. Malik Ambar, the regent of the Nizamshahi dynasty of Ahmednagar from 1607 to 1626, increased the strength and power of Murtaza Nizam Shah II and raised a large army.Ambar is said to have introduced the concept of guerrilla warfare in the Deccan region. Malik Ambar assisted Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in Delhi against his stepmother, Nur Jahan, who wanted to enthrone her son-in-law. Both Shivaji's grandfather, Maloji and father Shahaji served under Ambar. In the early 17th century, Shahaji Bhosale, an ambitious local general who had served the Ahmadnagar Sultanate, the Mughals and Adil Shah of Bijapur at different periods throughout his career, attempted to establish his independent rule. This attempt was unsuccessful, but his son Shivaji succeeded in establishing the Maratha Empire. Shortly after Shivaji's death in 1680, the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb launched a campaign to conquer Maratha territories as well as the Adilshahi and Govalkonda kingdoms. This campaign, better known as Mughal–Maratha Wars, was a strategic defeat for Mughals. Aurangzeb failed to fully conquer Maratha territories, and this campaign had a ruinous effect on Mughal Treasury and Army. Shortly after Aurangzeb's death in 1707, Marathas under Peshwa Bajirao I and the generals that he had promoted such as Ranoji Shinde and Malharrao Holkar started conquering Mughal Territories in the north and western India, and by 1750s they or their successors had confined the Mughals to city of Delhi. .In the east the Bhonsale family of Nagpur expanded Maratha control all the way to Bengal. At its peak, the Maratha empire covered much of the subcontinent, encompassing a territory of over 2.8 million km2. The Marathas are credited to a large extent for ending the Mughal rule in India. After their defeat at the hand of Ahmad Shah Abdali's Afghan forces in the Third Battle of Panipat in 1761, the Maratha suffered a setback. However, they soon reclaimed the lost territories and ruled central and north India including Delhi until the end of the eighteenth century. The Marathas also developed a potent "Navy" circa in the 1660s, which at its peak under the command of Kanhoji Angre, dominated the territorial waters of the western coast of India from Mumbai to Savantwadi. It resisted the British, Portuguese, Dutch, and Siddi naval ships and kept a check on their naval ambitions.  Charles Metcalfe, British Civil servant and later Acting Governor-General, said in 1806 The British East India Company slowly expanded areas under its rule during the 18th century. The Third Anglo-Maratha War (1817–1818) led to the end of the Maratha Empire and the East India Company took over the empire. The Maratha Navy dominated till around the 1730s, was in a state of decline by the 1770s and ceased to exist by 1818. The British governed western Maharashtra as part of the Bombay Presidency, which spanned an area from Karachi in Pakistan to northern Deccan. A number of the Maratha states persisted as princely states, retaining autonomy in return for acknowledging British suzerainty. The largest princely states in the territory were Nagpur, Satara and Kolhapur State; Satara was annexed to the Bombay Presidency in 1848, and Nagpur was annexed in 1853 to become Nagpur Province, later part of the Central Provinces. Berar, which had been part of the Nizam of Hyderabad's kingdom, was occupied by the British in 1853 and annexed to the Central Provinces in 1903. However, a large region called Marathwada remained part of the Nizam's Hyderabad State throughout the British period. The British ruled Maharashtra region from 1818 to 1947 and influenced every aspect of life for the people of the region. They brought several changes to the legal system, built modern means of transport including roads and Railways, took various steps to provide mass education, including that for previously marginalised classes and women, established universities based on western system and imparting education in science, technology, and western medicine, standardised the Marathi language, and introduced mass media by utilising modern printing technologies. The 1857 war of independence had many Marathi leaders, though the battles mainly took place in northern India. The modern struggle for independence started taking shape in the late 1800s with leaders such as Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Justice Mahadev Govind Ranade, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Pherozeshah Mehta and Dadabhai Naoroji evaluating the company rule and its consequences. Jyotirao Phule was the pioneer of social reform in the Maharashtra region in the second half of the 19th century. His social work was continued by Shahu, Raja of Kolhapur and later by B. R. Ambedkar. After the partial autonomy given to the states by the Government of India Act 1935, B. G. Kher became the first Chief Minister of the Congress party-led Government of tri-lingual Bombay Presidency. The ultimatum to the British during the Quit India Movement was given in Mumbai and culminated in the transfer of power and independence in 1947. After Indian independence, princely states and Jagirs of the Deccan States Agency were merged into Bombay State, which was created from the former Bombay Presidency in 1950. In 1956, the States Reorganisation Act reorganised the Indian states along linguistic lines, and Bombay Presidency State was enlarged by the addition of the predominantly Marathi-speaking regions of Marathwada (Aurangabad Division) from erstwhile Hyderabad state and Vidarbha region from the Central Provinces and Berar. The southernmost part of Bombay State was ceded to Mysore. In the 1950s, Marathi people strongly protested against bilingual Bombay state under the banner of Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti. The notable leaders of the samiti included Keshavrao Jedhe, S.M. Joshi, Shripad Amrit Dange, Pralhad Keshav Atre and Gopalrao Khedkar. The key demand of the samiti called for a Marathi speaking state with Mumbai as its capital. In the Gujarati speaking areas of the state, a similar Mahagujarat Movement demanded a separate Gujarat state comprising majority Gujarati areas. After many years of protests, which saw 106 deaths amongst the protestors, and electoral success of the samiti in 1957 elections, the central government led by Prime minister Nehru split Bombay State into two new states of Maharashtra and Gujarat on 1 May 1960. The state continues to have a dispute with Karnataka regarding the region of Belgaum and Karwar. The Government of Maharashtra was unhappy with the border demarcation of 1957 and filed a petition to the Ministry of Home affairs of India. Maharashtra claimed 814 villages, and 3 urban settlements of Belagon, Karwar and Nippani, all part of then Bombay Presidency before freedom of the country. A petition by Maharashtra in the Supreme Court of India, staking a claim over Belagon, is currently pending. Geography. Maharashtra with a total area of , is the third-largest state by area in terms of land area and constitutes 9.36 per cent of India's total geographical area. The State lies between 15°35' N to 22°02' N latitude and 72°36' E to 80°54' E longitude. It occupies the western and central part of the country and has a coastline stretching 840 kilometres along the Arabian Sea. The dominant physical feature of the state is its plateau character, which is separated from the Konkan coastline by the mountain range of the Western Ghats, which runs parallel to the coast from north to south. The Western Ghats, also known as the Sahyadri Range, has an average elevation of 1,200 metres (4,000 ft); its slopes gently descending towards the east and southeast. The Western Ghats (or the Sahyadri Mountain range) provide a physical barrier to the state on the west, while the Satpura Hills along the north and Bhamragad-Chiroli-Gaikhuri ranges on the east serve as its natural borders. This state's expansion from North to South is 720 km and East to West is 800 km. To the west of these hills lie the Konkan coastal plains, 50–80 kilometres in width. To the east of the Ghats lies the flat Deccan Plateau. The main rivers of the state are the Krishna, and its tributary, Bhima, the Godavari, and its main tributaries, Manjara, and Wardha-Wainganga and the Tapi, and its tributary Purna. Maharashtra is divided into five geographic regions. Konkan is the western coastal region, between the Western Ghats and the sea. Khandesh is the north region lying in the valley of the Tapti, Purna river. Nashik, Malegaon Jalgaon, Dhule and Bhusawal are the major cities of this region. Desh is in the center of the state. Marathwada, which was a part of the princely state of Hyderabad until 1956, is located in the southeastern part of the state. Aurangabad and Nanded are the main cities of the region. Vidarbha is the easternmost region of the state, formerly part of the Central Provinces and Berar. The state has limited area under irrigation, low natural fertility of soils, and large areas prone to recurrent drought. Due to this the agricultural productivity of Maharashtra is generally low as compared to the national averages of various crops. Maharashtra has been divided in to nine agro-climatic zones on the basis of annual rainfall soil types, vegetation and cropping pattern. Climate. Maharashtra experiences a tropical wet and dry climate with hot, rainy, and cold weather seasons. The month of March marks the beginning of the summer and the temperature rises steadily until June. In the central plains, summer temperatures rise to between and . May is usually the warmest and January the coldest month of the year. The winter season lasts until February with lower temperatures occurring in December and January. On the Deccan plateau that lies on eastern side of the Sahyadri mountains, the climate is drier, however, dew and hail often occur, depending on seasonal weather. The rainfall patterns in the state vary by the topography of different regions. The state can be divided into four meteorological regions, namely coastal Konkan, Western Maharashtra, Marathwada, and Vidarbha. The southwest monsoon usually arrives in the last week of June and lasts till mid-September. Pre-monsoon showers begin towards the middle of June and post-monsoon rains occasionally occur in October. The highest average monthly rainfall is during July and August. In the winter season, there may be a little rainfall associated with western winds over the region. The Konkan coastal area, west of the Sahyadri Mountains receives very heavy monsoon rains with an annual average of more than 3,000 mm. However, just 150 km to the east, in the rain shadow of the mountain range, only 500–700 mm/year will fall, and long dry spells leading to drought are a common occurrence. Maharashtra has many of the 99 Indian districts identified by the Indian Central water commission as prone to drought. The average annual rainfall in the state is 1,181 mm and 75 per cent of it is received during the southwest monsoon from June–to September. However, under the influence of the Bay of Bengal, eastern Vidarbha receives good rainfall in July, August, and September. Thane, Raigad, Ratnagiri, and Sindhudurg districts receive heavy rains of an average of and the hill stations of Matheran and Mahabaleshwar over . Contrariwise, the rain shadow districts of Nashik, Pune, Ahmednagar, Dhule, Jalgaon, Satara, Sangli, Solapur, and parts of Kolhapur receive less than annually. In winter, a cool dry spell occurs, with clear skies, gentle air breeze, and pleasant weather that prevails from October to February, although the eastern Vidarbha region receives rainfall from the north-east monsoon. Flora and fauna. The state has three crucial biogeographic zones, namely Western Ghats, Deccan Plateau, and the West coast. The Ghats nurture endemic species, Deccan Plateau provides for vast mountain ranges and grasslands while the coast is home to littoral and swamp forests. Flora of Maharashtra is heterogeneous in composition. In 2012 the recorded thick forest area in the state was which was about 20.13 per cent of the state's geographical area. There are three main Public Forestry Institutions (PFIs) in the Maharashtra state: the Maharashtra Forest Department (MFD), the Forest Development Corporation of Maharashtra (FDCM) and the Directorate of Social Forestry (SFD). The Maharashtra State Biodiversity Board, constituted by the Government of Maharashtra in January 2012 under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, is the nodal body for the conservation of biodiversity within and outside forest areas in the State. Maharashtra is ranked second among the Indian states in terms of the recorded forest area. Recorded Forest Area (RFA) in the state is of which is reserved forests, is protected forest and is unclassed forests. Based on the interpretation of IRS Resourcesat-2 LISS III satellite data of the period Oct 2017 to Jan 2018, the State has under Very Dense Forest(VDF), under Moderately Dense Forest (MDF) and under Open Forest (OF). According to the Champion and Seth classification, Maharashtra has five types of forests: The most common animal species present in the state are monkeys, wild pigs, tiger, leopard, gaur, sloth bear, sambar, four-horned antelope, chital, barking deer, mouse deer, small Indian civet, golden jackal, jungle cat, and hare. Other animals found in this state include reptiles such as lizards, scorpions and snake species such as cobras and kraits. The state provides legal protection to its tiger population through six dedicated tiger reserves under the precincts of the National Tiger Conservation Authority. The state's 720 kilometres of sea coastline of the Arabian sea marks the presence of various types of fish and marine animals. The Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) found 1527 marine animal species, including molluscs with 581 species, many crustacean species including crabs, shrimps, and lobsters, 289 fish species, and 141 species types of annelids (sea worms). Regions, divisions and districts. Maharashtra has following geographical regions: It consists of six administrative divisions: The state's six divisions are further divided into 36 districts, 109 sub-divisions, and 358 talukas. Maharashtra's top five districts by population, as ranked by the 2011 Census, are listed in the following table. Each district is governed by a district collector or district magistrate, appointed either by the Indian Administrative Service or the Maharashtra Civil Service. Districts are subdivided into "sub-divisions" (Taluka) governed by sub-divisional magistrates, and again into "blocks". A block consists of panchayats (village councils) and town municipalities. Talukas are intermediate level panchayat between the Zilla Parishad (district councils) at the district level and gram panchayat (village councils) at the lower level. Out of the total population of Maharashtra, 45.22 per cent of people live in urban regions. The total figure of the population living in urban areas is 50.8 million. There are 27 Municipal Corporations in Maharashtra. Demographics. According to the provisional results of the 2011 national census, Maharashtra was at that time the richest state in India and the second-most populous state in India with a population of 112,374,333. Contributing to 9.28 per cent of India's population, males and females are 58,243,056 and 54,131,277, respectively. The total population growth in 2011 was 15.99 per cent while in the previous decade it was 22.57 per cent. Since independence, the decadal growth rate of population has remained higher (except in the year 1971) than the national average. However, in the year 2011, it was found to be lower than the national average. The 2011 census for the state found 55 per cent of the population to be rural with 45 per cent being urban-based. Although, India hasn't conducted a caste-wise census since Independence, based on the British era census of 1931, it is estimated that the Maratha and the Maratha-kunbi numerically form the largest caste cluster with around 32 per cent of the population. Maharashtra has a large Other Backward Class population constituting 41 per cent of the population. The scheduled tribes include "Adivasis" such as Thakar, Warli, Konkana and Halba. The 2011 census found scheduled castes and scheduled tribes to account for 11.8 per cent and 8.9 per cent of the population, respectively. The state also includes a substantial number of migrants from other states of India. Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, and Karnataka account for the largest percentage of migrants to the Mumbai metropolitan area. The 2011 census reported the human sex ratio is 929 females per 1000 males, which were below the national average of 943. The density of Maharashtra was 365 inhabitants per km2 which was lower than the national average of 382 per km2. Since 1921, the populations of Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg shrank by −4.96 per cent and −2.30 per cent, respectively, while the population of Thane grew by 35.9 per cent, followed by Pune at 30.3 per cent. The literacy rate is 83.2 per cent, higher than the national rate at 74.04 per cent. Of this, male literacy stood at 89.82 per cent and female literacy 75.48 per cent. Religion. According to the 2011 census, Hinduism was the principal religion in the state at 79.8 per cent of the total population. Muslims constituted 11.5 per cent of the total population. Maharastra has highest number of followers of Buddhism in India, accounting for 5.8 per cent of Maharashtra's total population with 6,531,200 followers. Marathi Buddhists account for 77.36% of all Buddhists in India. Sikhs, Christians, and Jains constituted 0.2 per cent, 1.0 per cent, and 1.2 per cent of the Maharashtra population respectively. Maharashtra, and particularly the city of Mumbai, is home to two tiny religious communities. This includes 5000 Jews, mainly belonging to the Bene Israel, and Baghdadi Jewish communities. Parsi is the other community who follow Zoroastrianism. The 2011 census recorded around 44,000 parsis in Maharashtra. Language. Marathi is the official language although different regions have their own dialects. Most people speak regional languages classified as dialects of Marathi in the census. Powari, Lodhi, and Varhadi are spoken in the Vidarbha region, Dangi is spoken near the Maharashtra-Gujarat border, Bhil languages are spoken throughout the northwest part of the state, Khandeshi (locally known as Ahirani) is spoken in Khandesh region. In the Desh and Marathwada regions, Dakhini Urdu is widely spoken, although Dakhini speakers are usually bilingual in Marathi. Konkani, and its dialect Malvani, is spoken along the southern Konkan coast. Telugu and Kannada are spoken along the border areas of Telangana and Karnataka respectively. At the junction of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh a variety of Hindi dialects are spoken such as Lodhi and Powari. Lambadi is spoken through a wide area of eastern Marathwada and western Vidarbha. Gondi is spoken by diminishing minorities throughout Vidarbha, but most concentrated in the forests of Gadchiroli and the Telangana border. Marathi is the first language of a majority or plurality of the people in all districts of Maharastra except Nandurbar, where Bhili is spoken by 45% of its population. The highest percentage of Khandeshi speakers are Dhule district (29%) and the highest percentage of Gondi speakers are in Gadchiroli district (24%). Hindi is widely-spoken across Maharashtra, mainly as a second-language. The highest percentages of mother-tongue Hindi speakers are in urban areas, especially Mumbai and its suburbs, where it is mother tongue to over a quarter of the population. Pune and Nagpur are also home to large communities of Hindi-speakers. Gujarati and Urdu are also major languages in Mumbai, both are spoken by around 10% of the population. Urdu and its dialect, the Dakhni are spoken by the Muslim population of the state. The Mumbai metropolitan area is home to migrants from all over India, and so Hindi is a common language. Many other languages are spoken in Mumbai including Tamil, Telugu, Konkani, Kannada, Sindhi, Punjabi, Bengali, Tulu to name a few. Governance and administration. The state is governed through a parliamentary system of representative democracy, a feature the state shares with other Indian states. Maharashtra is one of the seven states in India where the state legislature is bicameral, comprising the Vidhan Sabha (Legislative Assembly) and the Vidhan Parishad (Legislative Council). The legislature, the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly, consists of elected members and special office bearers such as the Speaker and Deputy Speaker, who are elected by the members. The Legislative Assembly consists of 288 members who are elected for five-year terms unless the Assembly is dissolved before to the completion of the term. The Legislative Council is a permanent body of 78 members with one-third (33 members) retiring every two years. The state has 48 seats in the Lok Sabha, or the lower chamber of the Indian Parliament, and 19 seats in the Rajya Sabha, or the upper chamber of the Indian Parliament. The government of Maharashtra is a democratically elected body in India with the Governor as its constitutional head who is appointed by the President of India for a five-year term. The leader of the party or coalition with a majority in the Legislative Assembly is appointed as the Chief Minister by the Governor, and the Council of Ministers are appointed by the Governor on the advice of the Chief Minister. The governor remains a ceremonial head of the state, while the Chief Minister and his council are responsible for day-to-day government functions. The council of ministers consists of Cabinet Ministers and Ministers of State (MoS). The Secretariat headed by the Chief Secretary assists the council of ministers. The Chief Secretary is also the administrative head of the government. Each government department is headed by a Minister, who is assisted by an Additional Chief Secretary or a Principal Secretary, who is usually an officer of the Indian Administrative Service, the Additional Chief Secretary/Principal Secretary serves as the administrative head of the department they are assigned to. Each department also has officers of the rank of Secretary, Special Secretary, Joint Secretary, etc. assisting the Minister and the Additional Chief Secretary/Principal Secretary. For purpose of administration, the state is divided into 6 divisions and 36 districts. Divisional Commissioner, an IAS officer is the head of administration at the divisional level. The administration in each district is headed by a District Magistrate, who is an IAS officer and is assisted by several officers belonging to state services. Urban areas in the state are governed by Municipal Corporations, Municipal Councils, Nagar Panchayats, and seven Cantonment Boards. The Maharashtra Police is headed by an IPS officer of the rank of Director general of police. A Superintendent of Police, an IPS officer assisted by the officers of the Maharashtra Police Service, is entrusted with the responsibility of maintaining law and order and related issues in each district. The Divisional Forest Officer, an officer belonging to the Indian Forest Service, manages the forests, environment, and wildlife of the district, assisted by the officers of Maharashtra Forest Service and Maharashtra Forest Subordinate Service. The judiciary in the state consists of the Maharashtra High Court (The High Court of Bombay), district and session courts in each district and lower courts and judges at the taluka level. The High Court has regional branches at Nagpur and Aurangabad in Maharashtra and Panaji which is the capital of Goa. The state cabinet on 13 May 2015 passed a resolution favouring the setting up of one more bench of the Bombay high court in Kolhapur, covering the region. The President of India appoints the chief justice of the High Court of the Maharashtra judiciary on the advice of the chief justice of the Supreme Court of India as well as the Governor of Maharashtra. Other judges are appointed by the chief justice of the high court of the judiciary on the advice of the Chief Justice. Subordinate Judicial Service is another vital part of the judiciary of Maharashtra. The subordinate judiciary or the district courts are categorised into two divisions: the Maharashtra civil judicial services and higher judicial service. While the Maharashtra civil judicial services comprises the Civil Judges (Junior Division)/Judicial Magistrates and civil judges (Senior Division)/Chief Judicial Magistrate, the higher judicial service comprises civil and sessions judges. The Subordinate judicial service of the judiciary is controlled by the District Judge. Politics. The politics of the state in the first decades after its formation in 1960 was dominated by the Indian National Congress party or its offshoots such as the Nationalist Congress Party. At present, it has been dominated by four political parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Nationalist Congress Party, the Indian National Congress and the Shivsena. Just like in other states in India, dynastic politics is fairly common also among political parties in Maharashtra. The dynastic phenomenon is seen from the national level down to the district level and even village level. The three-tier structure of Panchayati Raj created in the state in the 1960s also helped to create and consolidate this phenomenon in rural areas. Apart from controlling the government, political families also control cooperative institutions, mainly cooperative sugar factories and district cooperative banks in the state. The Bharatiya Janata Party also features several senior leaders who are dynasts. In Maharashtra, the NCP has a particularly high level of dynasticism. In the early years, the politics of Maharashtra was dominated by Congress party figures such as Yashwantrao Chavan, Vasantdada Patil, Vasantrao Naik, and Shankarrao Chavan. Sharad Pawar, who started his political career in the Congress party, has been a towering personality in state and national politics for over forty years. During his career, he has split the Congress twice with significant consequences for the state politics. The Congress party enjoyed a near unchallenged dominance of the political landscape until 1995 when the Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) secured an overwhelming majority in the state to form a coalition government. After his second parting from the Congress party in 1999, Sharad Pawar founded the NCP but then formed a coalition with the Congress to keep out the BJP-Shiv Sena combine out of the Maharashtra state government for fifteen years until September 2014. Prithviraj Chavan of the Congress party was the last Chief Minister of Maharashtra under the Congress-NCP alliance. For the 2014 assembly polls, the two alliances between NCP and Congress and that between BJP and Shiv Sena respectively broke down over seat allocations. In the election, the largest number of seats went to the Bharatiya Janata Party, with 122 seats. The BJP initially formed a minority government under Devendra Fadnavis. The Shiv Sena entered the Government after two months and provided a comfortable majority for the alliance in the Maharashtra Vidhansabha for the duration of the assembly. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance secured 41 seats out of 48 from the state. Later in 2019, the BJP and Shiv Sena alliance fought the assembly elections together but the alliance broke down after the election over the post of the chief minister. Uddhav Thackeray of Shiv Sena then formed an alternative governing coalition under his leadership with his erstwhile opponents from NCP, INC, and several independent members of the legislative assembly. Thackeray served as the 19th Chief minister of Maharashtra of the Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition until June 2022. In late June 2022, Eknath Shinde, a senior Shiv Sena leader, and the majority of MLAs from Shiv Sena joined hands with the BJP. Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari called for a trust vote, an action that would later on be described as a "sad spectacle" by Supreme Court of India, and draw criticism from Political Observers. Uddhav Thackeray resigned from the post as chief minister well as a MLC member ahead of no-confidence motion on 29 June 2022. Shinde subsequently formed a new coalition with the BJP, and was sworn in as the Chief Minister on 30 June 2022. BJP leader, Devendra Fadnavis was given the post of Deputy Chief Minister in the new government. Uddhav Thackeray filed a lawsuit in Supreme Court of India claiming that Eknath Shinde and his group's actions meant that they were disqualified under Anti-defection law, with Eknath Shinde claiming that he has not defected, but rather represents the true Shiv Sena party. The supreme court delivered its verdict in May 2023. In its verdict the five-judge constitution bench of the Supreme court ruled that the Maharashtra governor and assembly speaker did not act as per the law. However, the court said that it cannot order the restoration of the Uddhav Thackeray government as Thackeray resigned without facing a floor test. Supreme Court also asked the Assembly Speaker to decide on the matter of disqualification of 16 MLAs including Chief Minister Eknath Shinde. The case for decision on which faction has rights to use Shiv Sena Name and Symbol is currently being heard by Supreme Court. In July 2023, NCP leader Ajit Pawar, and a number of NCP state assembly members joined the Shivsena- BJP government led by Eknath Shinde. Sharad Pawar, the founder of NCP, has condemned the move and expelled the rebels. Ajit Pawar has claimed support from majority of party legislators and office holders of the party, and has claimed the right to the NCP election symbol with the Election Commission of India. Economy. The economy of Maharashtra is driven by manufacturing, international trade, Mass Media (television, motion pictures, video games, recorded music), aerospace, technology, petroleum, fashion, apparel, and tourism. Maharashtra is the most industrialised state and has maintained the leading position in the industrial sector in India. The State is a pioneer in small scale industries. Mumbai, the capital of the state and the financial capital of India, houses the headquarters of most of the major corporate and financial institutions. India's main stock exchanges and capital market and commodity exchanges are located in Mumbai. The state continues to attract industrial investments from domestic as well as foreign institutions. Maharashtra has the largest proportion of taxpayers in India and its share markets transact almost 70 per cent of the country's stocks. The Service sector dominates the economy of Maharashtra, accounting for 61.4 per cent of the value addition and 69.3 per cent of the value of output in the state. The state's per-capita income in 2014 was 40 per cent higher than the all-India average in the same year. The gross state domestic product (GSDP) at current prices for 2021-22 is estimated at $420 billion and contributes about 14.2 per cent of the GDP. The agriculture and allied activities sector contributes 13.2 per cent to the state's income. In 2012, Maharashtra reported a revenue surplus of 1524.9 million (US$24 million), with total revenue of 1,367,117 million (US$22 billion) and spending of 1,365,592.1 million (US$22 billion).  Maharashtra is the largest FDI destination of India. The FDI inflows in the State since April 2000 to September 2021 was ₹9,59,746 crore, which was 28.2 per cent of total FDI inflows at All-India level. With a total of 11,308 startups, Maharashtra has the highest number of recognised startups. Maharashtra contributes 25 per cent of the country's industrial output and is the most indebted state in the country. Industrial activity in state is concentrated in Seven districts: Mumbai City, Mumbai Suburban, Thane, Aurangabad, Pune, Nagpur, and Nashik. Mumbai has the largest share in GSDP (19.5 per cent), both Thane and Pune districts contribute about same in the Industry sector, Pune district contributes more in the agriculture and allied activities sector, whereas Thane district contributes more in the Services sector. Nashik district shares highest in the agricultural and allied activities sector, but is behind in the Industry and Services sectors as compared to Thane and Pune districts. Industries in Maharashtra include chemical and chemical products (17.6 per cent), food and food products (16.1 per cent), refined petroleum products (12.9 per cent), machinery and equipment (8 per cent), textiles (6.9 per cent), basic metals (5.8 per cent), motor vehicles (4.7 per cent) and furniture (4.3 per cent). Maharashtra is the manufacturing hub for some of the largest public sector industries in India, including Hindustan Petroleum Corporation, Tata Petrodyne and Oil India Ltd. Maharashtra is the leading Indian state for many Creative industries including advertising, architecture, art, crafts, design, fashion, film, music, performing arts, publishing, R&D, software, toys and games, TV and radio, and video games. Maharashtra has an above-average knowledge industry in India with the Pune Metropolitan area being the leading IT hub in the state. Approximately 25 per cent of the top 500 companies in the IT sector are based in Maharashtra. The state accounts for 28 per cent of the software exports of India. Maharashtra and particularly Mumbai is a prominent location for the Indian entertainment industry, with many films, television series, books, and other media being set there. Mumbai is the largest centre for film and television production and a third of all Indian films are produced in the state. Multimillion-dollar Bollywood productions, with the most expensive costing up to , are filmed there. Marathi films used to be previously made primarily in Kolhapur, but now are produced in Mumbai. The state houses important financial institutions such as the Reserve Bank of India, the Bombay Stock Exchange, the National Stock Exchange of India, the SEBI and the corporate headquarters of numerous Indian companies and multinational corporations. It is also home to some of India's premier scientific and nuclear institutes like BARC, NPCL, IREL, TIFR, AERB, AECI, and the Department of Atomic Energy. With more than half the population being rural, agriculture and allied industries play an important role in the states's economy and source of income for the rural population. The agriculture and allied activities sector contributes 12.9 per cent to the state's income. Staples such as rice and millet are the main monsoon crops. Important cash crops include sugarcane, cotton, oilseeds, tobacco, fruit, vegetables, and spices such as turmeric. Animal husbandry is an important agriculture-related activity. The State's share in the livestock and poultry population in India is about 7 per cent and 10 per cent, respectively. Maharashtra was a pioneer in the development of Agricultural Cooperative Societies after independence. It was an integral part of the then Governing Congress party's vision of 'rural development with local initiative'. A 'special' status was accorded to the sugar cooperatives and the government assumed the role of a mentor by acting as a stakeholder, guarantor, and regulator, Apart from sugar, cooperatives play a crucial role in dairy, cotton, and fertiliser industries. The banking sector comprises scheduled and non-scheduled banks. Scheduled banks are of two types, commercial and cooperative. Scheduled Commercial Banks (SCBs) in India are classified into five types: State Bank of India and its associates, nationalised banks, private sector banks, Regional Rural Banks, and others (foreign banks). In 2012, there were 9,053 banking offices in the state, of which about 26 per cent were in rural and 54 per cent were in urban areas. Maharashtra has a microfinance system, which refers to small-scale financial services extended to the poor in both rural and urban areas. It covers a variety of financial instruments, such as lending, savings, life insurance, and crop insurance. The three largest urban cooperative banks in India are all based in Maharashtra. Transport. The state has a large, multi-modal transportation system with the largest road network in India. In 2011, the total length of surface road in Maharashtra was 267,452 km; national highways accounted for 4,176 km, and state highways 3,700 km. The Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) provides economical and reliable passenger road transport service in the public sector. These buses, popularly called ST (State Transport), are the preferred mode of transport for much of the populace. Hired forms of transport include metered taxis and auto-rickshaws, which often ply specific routes in cities. Other district roads and village roads provide villages, accessibility to meet their social needs as well as the means to transport agricultural produce from villages to nearby markets. Major district roads provide a secondary function of linking between main roads and rural roads. Approximately 98 per cent of villages are connected either via the highways or modern roads in Maharashtra. Average speed on state highways varies between 50 and 60 km/h (31–37 mi/h) due to the heavy presence of vehicles; in villages and towns, speeds are as low as 25–30 km/h (15–18 mi/h). The first passenger train in India ran from Mumbai to Thane on 16 April 1853. Rail transportation is run by the Central Railway, Western Railway, South Central Railway, and South East Central Railway zones of the Indian Railways with the first two zones being headquartered in Mumbai, at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) and Churchgate respectively. Konkan Railway is headquartered in Navi Mumbai. The Mumbai Rajdhani Express, the fastest Rajdhani train, connects the Indian capital of New Delhi to Mumbai. Thane and CSMT are the busiest railway stations in India, the latter serving as a terminal for both long-distance trains and commuter trains of the Mumbai Suburban Railway. The two principal seaports, Mumbai Port and Jawaharlal Nehru Port, which is also in the Mumbai region, are under the control and supervision of the government of India. There are around 48 minor ports in Maharashtra. Most of these handle passenger traffic and have a limited capacity. None of the major rivers in Maharashtra are navigable and so river transport does not exist in the state. Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (formerly Bombay International Airport), is the state's largest airport. The four other international airports are Pune International Airport, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar International Airport at Nagpur, Nashik Airport, Shirdi Airport. Aurangabad Airport, Kolhapur Airport, Jalgaon Airport, and Nanded Airport are domestic airports in the state. Most of the State's airfields are operated by the Airports Authority of India (AAI) while Reliance Airport Developers (RADPL), currently operates five non-metro airports at Latur, Nanded, Baramati, Osmanabad and Yavatmal on a 95-year lease. The Maharashtra Airport Development Company (MADC) was set up in 2002 to take up development of airports in the state that are not under the AAI or the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC). MADC is playing the lead role in the planning and implementation of the Multi-modal International Cargo Hub and Airport at Nagpur (MIHAN) project. Additional smaller airports include Akola, Amravati, Chandrapur, Ratnagiri, and Solapur. Maharashtra Metro Rail Corporation Limited (Maha Metro), headquartered in Nagpur is a Joint Venture establishment of Government of India & Government of Maharashtra headquartered in Nagpur, India. Maha Metro is responsible for the implementation of all Maharashtra state metro projects, except the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Mumbai Metro is operational since 8 June 2014. Education. The state has been known for its pioneering role in the development of the modern education system in India. Most of the private colleges including religious and special-purpose institutions were set up in the last thirty years after the State Government of Vasantdada Patil liberalised the Education Sector in 1982. Under the 10+2+3 plan, after completing secondary school, students typically enroll for two years in a junior college, also known as pre-university, or in schools with a higher secondary facility affiliated with the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education or any central board. Students choose from one of three streams, namely liberal arts, commerce, or science. Upon completing the required coursework, students may enrol in general or professional degree programs. Schools in the state are either managed by the government or by private trusts, including religious institutions. The medium of instruction in most of the schools is mainly Marathi, English, or Hindi, though Urdu is also used. The secondary schools are affiliated with the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE), the Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE), the National Institute of Open School (NIOS), and the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education. Maharashtra has 24 universities with a turnout of 160,000 Graduates every year. Established during the rule of East India company in 1857 as Bombay University, The University of Mumbai, is the largest university in the world in terms of the number of graduates. It has 141 affiliated colleges. According to a report published by The Times Education magazine, 5 to 7 Maharashtra colleges and universities are ranked among the top 20 in India. Maharashtra is also home to notable autonomous institutes as Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Indian Institute of Information Technology Pune, College of Engineering Pune (CoEP), Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Technological University, Institute of Chemical Technology, Homi Bhabha National Institute, Walchand College of Engineering, Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology (VNIT) and Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute (VJTI), Sardar Patel College of Engineering (SPCE). Most of these autonomous institutes are ranked the highest in India and have very competitive entry requirements. The University of Pune (now Savitribai Phule Pune University), the National Defence Academy, Film and Television Institute of India, Armed Forces Medical College, and National Chemical Laboratory were established in Pune soon after the Indian independence in 1947. Mumbai has an IIT, has National Institute of Industrial Engineering and Nagpur has IIM and AIIMS. Other notable institutes in the state are: Maharashtra National Law University, Nagpur (MNLUN), Maharashtra National Law University, Mumbai (MNLUM), Maharashtra National Law University, Aurangabad (MNLUA), Government Law College, Mumbai (GLC), ILS Law College, and Symbiosis Law School (SLS) Agricultural universities include Vasantrao Naik Marathwada Agricultural University, Mahatma Phule Krishi Vidyapeeth, Dr. Panjabrao Deshmukh Krishi Vidyapeeth, and Dr. Balasaheb Sawant Konkan Krishi Vidyapeeth, Regional universities viz. Sant Gadge Baba Amravati University, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, North Maharashtra University, Shivaji University, Solapur University, Swami Ramanand Teerth Marathwada University, and Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University are established to cover the educational needs at the district levels of the state. deemed universities are established in Maharashtra, including Symbiosis International University, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, and Tilak Maharashtra University. Vocational training in different trades such as construction, plumbing, welding, automobile mechanics is offered by post-secondary school Industrial Training Institute (ITIs). Local community colleges also exist with generally more open admission policies, shorter academic programs, and lower tuition. Scottish missionary John Wilson, Indian nationalists such as Vasudev Balwant Phadke and Bal Gangadhar Tilak, social reformers such as Jyotirao Phule, Dhondo Keshav Karve and Bhaurao Patil played a leading role in the setting up of modern schools and colleges during the British colonial era. The forerunner of Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute was established in 1821. The Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey Women's University, the oldest women's liberal arts college in South Asia, started its journey in 1916. College of Engineering Pune, established in 1854, is the third oldest college in Asia. Government Polytechnic Nagpur, established in 1914, is one of the oldest polytechnics in India. Infrastructure. Healthcare. Health indicators of Maharashtra show that they have attained relatively high growth against a background of high per capita income (PCI). In 2011, the health care system in Maharashtra consisted of 363 rural government hospitals, 23 district hospitals (with 7,561 beds), 4 general hospitals (with 714 beds) mostly under the Maharashtra Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, and 380 private medical establishments; these establishments provide the state with more than 30,000 hospital beds. It is the first state in India to have nine women's hospitals serving 1,365 beds. The state also has a significant number of medical practitioners who hold the Bachelor of Ayurveda, Medicine and Surgery qualifications. These practitioners primarily use the traditional Indian therapy of Ayurveda, nevertheless, modern western medicine is used as well. In Maharashtra as well as in the rest of India, Primary Health Centre (PHC) is part of the government-funded public health system and is the most basic unit of the healthcare system. They are essentially single-physician clinics usually with facilities for minor surgeries, too. Maharashtra has a life expectancy at birth of 67.2 years in 2011, ranking it third among 29 Indian states. The total fertility rate of the state is 1.9. The Infant mortality rate is 28 and the maternal mortality ratio is 104 (2012–2013), which are lower than the national averages. Public health services are governed by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), through various departments. The Ministry is divided into two departments: the Public Health Department, which includes family welfare and medical relief, and the Department of Medical Education and Drugs. Health insurance includes any program that helps pay for medical expenses, through privately purchased insurance, social insurance, or a social welfare program funded by the government. In a more technical sense, the term is used to describe any form of insurance that protects against the costs of medical services. This usage includes private insurance and social insurance programs such as National Health Mission, which pools resources and spreads the financial risk associated with major medical expenses across the entire population to protect everyone, as well as social welfare programs such as National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and the Health Insurance Program, which assist people who cannot afford health coverage. Energy. Although its population makes Maharashtra one of the country's largest energy users, conservation mandates, mild weather in the largest population centers, and strong environmental movements have kept its per capita energy use to one of the smallest of any Indian state. The high electricity demand of the state constitutes 13 per cent of the total installed electricity generation capacity in India, which is mainly from fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas. Mahavitaran is responsible for the distribution of electricity throughout the state by buying power from Mahanirmiti, captive power plants, other state electricity boards, and private sector power generation companies. As of 2012, Maharashtra was the largest power generating state in India, with an installed electricity generation capacity of 26,838 MW. The state forms a major constituent of the western grid of India, which now comes under the North, East, West and North Eastern (NEWNE) grids of India. Maharashtra Power Generation Company (MAHAGENCO) operates thermal power plants. In addition to the state government-owned power generation plants, there are privately owned power generation plants that transmit power through the Maharashtra State Electricity Transmission Company, which is responsible for the transmission of electricity in the state. Environmental protection and sustainability. Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) is established and responsible for implementing various environmental legislations in the state principally including the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974, Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981, Water (Cess) Act, 1977 and some of the provisions under Environmental (Protection) Act, 1986 and the rules framed there under it including, Biomedical Waste (M&H) Rules, 1998, Hazardous Waste (M&H) Rules, 2000, and Municipal Solid Waste Rules, 2000. MPCB is functioning under the administrative control of the Environment Department of the Government of Maharashtra. The Maharashtra Plastic and Thermocol Products ban became effective as law on 23 June 2018, subjecting plastic users to fines and potential imprisonment for repeat offenders. Culture. Cuisine. Maharashtrian cuisine includes a variety of dishes ranging from mild to very spicy ones. Wheat, rice, "jowar", "bajri", vegetables, lentils and fruit form staple food of the Maharashtrian diet. Some of the popular traditional dishes include "puran poli", "ukdiche modak", "Thalipeeth." Street food items like "Batata wada," "Misal Pav", "Pav Bhaji" and" Vada pav" are very popular among the locals and are usually sold on stalls and in small hotels. Meals (mainly lunch and dinner) are served on a plate called thali. Each food item served on the "thali" is arranged in a specific way. All non-vegetarian and vegetarian dishes are eaten with boiled rice, chapatis or with bhakris, made of jowar, bajra or rice flours. A typical vegetarian thali is made of chapati or bhakri (Indian flat bread), dal, rice (varan bhaat), amti, "bhaji or usal", chutney, "koshimbir" (salad) and buttermilk or "Sol kadhi". A "bhaji" is a vegetable dish made of a particular vegetable or combination of vegetables. "Aamti" is variant of the curry, typically consisting of a lentil ("tur") stock, flavoured with goda masala and sometimes with tamarind or amshul, and jaggery ("gul"). "Varan" is nothing but plain dal, a common Indian lentil stew. More or less, most of the dishes use coconut, onion, garlic, ginger, red chili powder, green chilies, and mustard though some section of the population traditionally avoid onion and garlics. Maharashtrian cuisine varies with the regions. Malvani (Konkani), Kolhapuri, and Varhadhi cuisins are examples of well known regional cuisines. Kolhapur is famous for Tambda Pandhra rassa, a dish made of either chicken or mutton. Rice and seafood are the staple foods of the coastal Konkani people. Among seafood, the most popular is a fish variety called the Bombay duck (also known as bombil in Marathi). Attire. Traditionally, Marathi women commonly wore the sari, often distinctly designed according to local cultural customs. Most middle-aged and young women in urban Maharashtra dress in western outfits such as skirts and trousers or shalwar kameez with the traditionally "nauvari" or nine-yard lugade, disappearing from the markets due to a lack of demand. Older women wear the five-yard sari. In urban areas, the five-yard sari, especially the Paithani, is worn by younger women for special occasions such as marriages and religious ceremonies. Among men, western dressing has greater acceptance. Men also wear traditional costumes such as the dhoti, and pheta on cultural occasions. The Gandhi cap is the popular headgear among older men in rural Maharashtra. Women wear traditional jewellery derived from Maratha and Peshwa dynasties. Kolhapuri saaj, a special type of necklace, is also worn by Marathi women. In urban areas, western attire is dominant amongst women and men. Music. Maharashtra and Maharashtrian artists have been influential in preserving and developing Hindustani classical music for more than a century. Notable practitioners of Kirana or Gwalior style called Maharashtra their home. The Sawai Gandharva Bhimsen Festival in Pune started by Bhimsen Joshi in the 1950s is considered the most prestigious Hindustani music festival in India, if not one of the largest. Cities like Kolhapur and Pune have been playing a major role in the preservation of music like Bhavageet and Natya Sangeet, which are inherited from Indian classical music. The biggest form of Indian popular music is songs from films produced in Mumbai. Film music, in 2009 made up 72 per cent of the music sales in India. Most the influential music composers and singers have called Mumbai their home. In recent decades, the music scene in Maharashtra, and particularly in Mumbai has seen a growth of newer music forms such as rap. The city also holds festivals in western music genres such as blues. In 2006, the Symphony Orchestra of India was founded, housed at the NCPA in Mumbai. It is today the only professional symphony orchestra in India and presents two concert seasons per year, with world-renowned conductors and soloists. Maharashtra has a long and rich tradition of folk music. Some of the most common forms of folk music in practice are Bhajan, Bharud, Kirtan, Gondhal, and Koli Geet. Dance. Marathi dance forms draw from folk traditions. Lavani is popular form of dance in the state. The Bhajan, Kirtan and Abhangas of the Warkari sect (Vaishanav Devotees) have a long history and are part of their daily rituals. Koli dance (called 'Koligeete') is among the most popular dances of Maharashtra. As the name suggests, it is related to the fisher folk of Maharashtra, who are called Kolis. Popular for their unique identity and liveliness, their dances represent their occupation. This type of dance is represented by both men and women. While dancing, they are divided into groups of two. These fishermen display the movements of waves and casting of the nets during their koli dance performances. Theatre. Modern Theatre in Maharashtra can trace its origins to the British colonial era in the middle of the 19th century. It is modelled mainly after the western tradition but also includes forms like Sangeet Natak (musical drama). In recent decades, Marathi Tamasha has also been incorporated in some experimental plays. The repertoire of Marathi theatre ranges from humorous social plays, farces, historical plays, and musical, to experimental plays and serious drama. Marathi Playwrights such as Vijay Tendulkar, P. L. Deshpande, Mahesh Elkunchwar, Ratnakar Matkari, and Satish Alekar have influenced theatre throughout India. Besides Marathi theatre, Maharashtra and particularly, Mumbai, has had a long tradition of theatre in other languages such as Gujarati, Hindi, and English. The National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCP) is a multi-venue, multi-purpose cultural center in Mumbai which hosts events in music, dance, theatre, film, literature, and photography from India as well other places. It also presents new and innovative work in the performing arts field. Literature. Maharashtra's regional literature is about the lives and circumstances of Marathi people in specific parts of the state. The Marathi language, which boasts a rich literary heritage, is written in the Devanagari script. The earliest instance of Marathi literature is Dnyaneshwari, a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita by 13th-century Bhakti Saint Dnyaneshwar and devotional poems called abhangs by his contemporaries such as Namdev, and Gora Kumbhar. Devotional literature from the Early modern period includes compositions in praise of the God Pandurang by Bhakti saints such as Tukaram, Eknath, and Rama by Ramdas respectively. 19th century Marathi literature includes mainly Polemic works of social and political activists such as Balshastri Jambhekar, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Gopal Hari Deshmukh, Mahadev Govind Ranade, Jyotirao Phule, and Vishnushastri Chiplunkar. Keshavsuta was a pioneer in modern Marathi poetry. The Hindutva proponent, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was a prolific writer. His work in English and Marathi consists of many essays, two novels, poetry, and plays. Four Marathi writers have been honoured with the Jnanpith Award, India's highest literary award. They include novelists, Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar, and Bhalchandra Nemade, Vishnu Vaman Shirwadkar(Kusumagraj) and Vinda Karandikar. The last two were known for their poetry as well. Other notable writers from the early and mid 20th century include playwright Ram Ganesh Gadkari, novelist Hari Narayan Apte, poet, and novelist B. S. Mardhekar, Sane Guruji, Vyankatesh Digambar Madgulkar, Prahlad Keshav Atre, Chintamani Tryambak Khanolkar, and Laxmanshastri Joshi. Vishwas Patil, Ranjit Desai, and Shivaji Sawant are known for novels based on Maratha history. Pu La Deshpande gained popularity in the period after independence for depicting the urban middle class society. His work includes humour, travelogues, plays, and biographies. Narayan Surve, Shanta Shelke, Durga Bhagwat, Suresh Bhat, and Narendra Jadhav are some of the more recent authors Dalit literature originally emerged in the Marathi language as a literary response to the everyday oppressions of caste in mid-twentieth-century independent India, critiquing caste practices by experimenting with various literary forms. In 1958, the term "Dalit literature" was used for the first conference of "Maharashtra Dalit Sahitya Sangha" (Maharashtra Dalit Literature Society) in Mumbai. Maharashtra, and particularly the cities in the state such as Mumbai and Pune are diverse with different languages being spoken. Mumbai is called home by writers in English such as Rohinton Mistry, Shobha De, and Salman Rushdie. Their novels are set with Mumbai as the backdrop. Many eminent Urdu poets such as Kaifi Azmi, Jan Nissar Akhtar, Gulzar, and Javed Akhtar have been residents of Mumbai. Cinema. First Indian feature length film, Raja Harishchandra, was made in Maharashtra by Dadasaheb Phalke in 1913. Dadasaheb Phalke is widely considered the father of Indian cinema. The Dadasaheb Phalke Award is India's highest award in cinema, given annually by the Government of India for lifetime contribution to Indian cinema. The Marathi film industry, initially located in Kolhapur, has spread throughout Mumbai. Well known for its art films, the early Marathi film industry included acclaimed directors such as Dadasaheb Phalke, V. Shantaram, Raja Thakur, Bhalji Pendharkar, Pralhad Keshav Atre, Baburao Painter, and Dada Kondke. Some of the directors who made acclaimed films in Marathi are Jabbar Patel, Mahesh Manjrekar, Amol Palekar, and Sanjay Surkar. Durga Khote was one of the first women from respectable families to enter the film industry, thus breaking a social taboo. Lalita Pawar, Sulabha Deshpande, and Usha Kiran featured in Hindi and Marathi movies. In 70s and 80s, Smita Patil, Ranjana Deshmukh, Reema Lagoo featured in both art and mainstream movies in Hindi and Marathi. Rohini Hattangadi starred in a number of acclaimed movies, and is the only Indian actress to win the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance as Kasturba Gandhi in "Gandhi" (1982). Bhanu Athaiya was the first Indian to win an Oscar in Best Costume Design category for "Gandhi" (1982). In 90s and 2000s, Urmila Matondkar and Madhuri Dixit starred in critically acclaimed and high grossing films in Hindi and Marathi. In earliest days of Marathi cinema, Suryakant Mandhare was a leading star. In later years, Shriram Lagoo, Nilu Phule, Vikram Gokhale, Dilip Prabhavalkar played character roles in theatre, and Hindi and Marathi films. Ramesh Deo and Mohan Joshi played leading men in Mainstream Marathi movies. In 70s and 80s, Sachin Pilgaonkar, Ashok Saraf, Laxmikant Berde and Mahesh Kothare created a "comedy film wave" in Marathi Cinema. Maharashtra is a prominent location for the Indian entertainment industry, with enormous films, television series, books, and other media production companies being set there. Mumbai has numerous film production studios and facilities to produce films. Mainstream Hindi films are popular in Maharashtra, especially in urban areas. Mumbai is the largest center for film and television production and a third of all Indian films are produced in the state. Multimillion-dollar Bollywood productions, with the most expensive costing up to , are filmed there. Media. The state is home to more than 200 newspapers and 350 consumer magazines. The publishing industry employs more than 250,000 people. There are number of Marathi news channels in the state viz "News18 Lokmat, ABP Majha". As of December 2016, Sakal, published in Pune and other major cities, is the largest circulated Marathi Newspaper in Maharashtra. Other major Marathi newspapers include "Maharashtra Times", "Loksatta", "Nava Kaal", "Pudhari", "Lokmat" and "Sakal" "Saptahik Sakal", "Grihashobhika", "Lokrajya", "Lokprabha", and "Chitralekha" are some of the prominent Marathi magazines. English language newspapers are confined to urban areas. Some popular among these are "Daily News & Analysis", "The Times of India", "Hindustan Times", "The Indian Express", "Mumbai Mirror", "Asian Age", "MiD-DAY" and "The Free Press Journal". Some prominent financial dailies like "The Economic Times", "Mint", "Business Standard", and "The Financial Express" are widely circulated. Many newspapers in other Indian languages such as Nava Bharat in Hindi, Udayavani in Kannada, Mumbai Samachar in Gujarati, and The Inquilab in Urdu have Mumbai editions. The television industry in Maharashtra has been contributing significantly in the state's economy. Doordarshan, a state-owned television broadcaster runs a channel named DD Sahyadri. Numerous Indian and international television channels can be watched in Maharashtra through one of the Pay TV companies or the local cable television provider. The four major Indian broadcast networks are all headquartered in Maharashtra: The Times, STAR India, CNN-IBN and ZEEL. Multi-system operators provide a range of Marathi, Bengali, Nepali, Hindi, English, and international channels via cable. There are number of entertainment channels that exclusively streams content in Marathi including Zee Marathi, Zee Yuva, Colors Marathi, Star Pravah, Sony Marathi, and Fakt Marathi. All India Radio airs its content through multiple channels including "Air Marathi", "FM Gold", and "FM Rainbow". Air India's commercially successful air channel "Vividh Bharti" is headquartered in Mumbai. Private radio stations like "Big 92.7 FM", "Radio Mirchi", "Red FM," "Vasundhara Vahini", "Radio Dhamaal 24", and "My FM" air in all major cities. Airtel, BSNL, Jio, and VI networks provide cellular services and have covered most of the Maharashtra. Broadband internet is available in most of the towns, villages, and cities, provided by the state-run MTNL and BSNL and by other private companies. Sports. Cricket is the most popular spectator sport in Maharashtra. It is played as an exercise and recreational activity. Maharashtra is represented by three teams in Domestic Cricket namely Maharashtra, Mumbai and Vidarbha cricket team. These teams are governed by Maharashtra cricket association, Mumbai Cricket Association, and Vidarbha Cricket Association, respectively. Governing body of Cricket in India, BCCI, has its headquarters in Churchgate, Mumbai. The state also has Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise Mumbai Indians based in Mumbai which plays its home matches at Wankhede Stadium. Brabourne Stadium, Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai and New VCA Stadium, Nagpur are international cricket stadiums, which are the venues for international cricket. At 2022 National games, Maharashtra won highest number of medals among the states and was second in medals tally behind Services. Maharashtra won 39 gold medals. Kabbadi, Kho kho, Kushti, and Mallakhamba are some of the traditional games that are played in the state. Kusti and bullock cart races are popular in rural areas of South-west Maharashtra, are organised by villagers during the annual fairs. Amateur wrestling tournaments Hind Kesari, Maharashtra Kesari are held annually. Badminton, Volleyball, Tennis are played as a recreational activity in urban areas. The beaches of Konkan coast, mountains of Western Ghats, and the lakes formed by numerous dams in the state facilitate adventure sports such as paragliding, rock climbing, trekking, mountaineering, water sports, and scuba diving and are popular among visitors. India's only world class Tennis championship Maharashtra Open tennis championship are annually organised in Pune by governing body of tennis in the state, 'Maharashtra Lawn Tennis Association' (MLTA). The tournament is part of ATP Tour 250. Mumbai and Pune hold derby races at the Mahalaxmi Racecourse and Pune Race Course respectively. The Maharashtra football team represents the state in the Santosh Trophy, football tournament. Many national-level football club are based in this state, such as Mumbai Tigers F.C., Kenkre F.C., Bengal Mumbai FC, and Air India FC. Two clubs from the state participate in Elite Football League of India. Mumbai Gladiators and Pune Marathas are teams based in Mumbai and Pune respectively. Puneri Paltan, U Mumba, Pro Kabbadi, league teams are based in Pune and Mumbai respectively. Tourism. Maharashtra has a number of places that attracts national international tourists. The most popular or well known are Mumbai city, Ajanta, Ellora caves and the Nature reserves in the state. Ajanta–Ellora are the UNESCO world heritage sites. Mumbai, being the biggest and the most cosmopolitan city in India, attracts tourists from all over the world for its many attractions including colonial architecture, beaches, Bollywood, shopping, and an active nightlife. The city attracts three million foreign and forty million domestic tourists annually. The state wants to increase the numbers by allowing retailers and entertainment venues to be open 24-hours a day, seven days a week. Pune city, along with MTDC, organizes many cultural events during Pune festival which coincides with the Hindu Ganeshotsav festival. Hill stations built during the British rule are popular tourist destinations, especially during the summer months.These include Mahabaleshwar, Lonavala, and Matheran in Western Maharashtra, and Chikhaldara in the Vidarbha region. The mountainous districts of Western Maharashtra are dotted with the ruins of hundreds of mountain forts from the Deccan Sultanate and the Maratha empire eras. These forts and the surrounding hills are popular among people interested in trekking, and hiking, and heritage tourism related to Chhatrapati Shivaji. Notable forts popular with tourists include Shivaneri, Rajgad, Sinhagad, Raigad, and Pratapgad. A number of temples such as Trimbakeshwar, Bhavani of Tuljapur, Shani Shingnapur, Jyotiba Temple, Ashtavinayaka Ganapati temples, Lord Pandurang temple at Pandharpur attract a huge number of Hindu devotees every year. Khandoba temple of God Khandoba at Jejuri in the Pune district attract pilgrims from all over the Maharashtra where worshipers shower each other with "Bhandar" (turmaric powder). Saibaba temple at Shirdi is visited by an average of 25,000 pilgrims a day and during religious festivals, this number can reach up to 300,000. The places associated with the Warkari sect such as Pandharpur, Dehu, and Alandi remain popular throughout the year, and attract huge number of people from all over the state during religious observations. Situated in Nanded, Sikh Gurudwara of Hazur Sahib, also known as Takht Sachkhand Sri Hazur Abchalnagar Sahib, is one of the five takhts in Sikhism. The area around the city of Aurangabad has many ancient and medieval sites including the UNESCO World Heritage Sites of Ajanta and Ellora caves, the Daulatabad Fort, and the Bibi Ka Maqbara. The Vidarbha region of Maharashtra has numerous nature reserve parks. These include Melghat Tiger Reserve in Amravati district, Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve in Chandrapur district, Umred Karhandla Wildlife Sanctuary in Nagpur district, the Nagzira wildlife sanctuary, and Navegaon National Park (bird sanctuary) of Gondia District. According to a survey by the government of Maharashtra, in 2009-10, domestic tourists accounted for 98% of the total number of visitors to Maharashtra and the remaining were foreign. Visitors from the US, UK, Germany, and UAE each form a significant percentage of the foreign tourists. The state government has established the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC) for the systematic development and promotion of tourism in the state. MTDC owns and maintains resorts at all key tourist centers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20804

Magdeburg

Magdeburg (; ) is the capital of the German state Saxony-Anhalt. The city is situated at the Elbe river. Otto I, the first Holy Roman Emperor and founder of the Archdiocese of Magdeburg, was buried in the city's cathedral after his death. Magdeburg's version of German town law, known as Magdeburg rights, spread throughout Central and Eastern Europe. In the Late Middle Ages, Magdeburg was one of the largest and most prosperous German cities and a notable member of the Hanseatic League. One of the most notable people from the city is Otto von Guericke, famous for his experiments with the Magdeburg hemispheres. Magdeburg has experienced three major devastations in its history. In 1207 the first catastrophe struck the city, with a fire burning down large parts of the city, including the Ottonian cathedral. The Catholic League sacked Magdeburg in 1631, resulting in the death of 25,000 non-combatants, the largest loss of the Thirty Years' War. During World War II the Allies bombed the city in 1945 and destroyed much of the city centre. After World War II, the city belonged to the German Democratic Republic from 1949 to 1990. Since then, many new construction projects have been implemented and old buildings have been restored. Magdeburg celebrated its 1,200th anniversary in 2005. Magdeburg is situated on Autobahn 2 and Autobahn 14, and hence is at the connection point of Eastern Europe (Berlin and beyond) with Western Europe, as well as the north and south of Germany. For the modern city, the most significant industries are: machine industry, healthcare industry, mechanical engineering, environmental technology, circular economy, logistics, culture industry, wood industry and information and communications technology. There are numerous cultural institutions in the city, including the Theater Magdeburg and the Museum of Cultural History. The city is also the location of two universities, the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg and the Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences. History. Early years. Founded by Charlemagne in 805 as Magadoburg (probably from Old High German "magado" for "big", "mighty" and "burga" for "fortress"), the town was fortified in 919 by King Henry the Fowler against the Magyars and Slavs. In 929 King Otto I granted the city to his English-born wife Edith as dower. Queen Edith loved the town and often resided there; at her death she was buried in the crypt of the Benedictine abbey of Saint Maurice, later rebuilt as the cathedral. In 937, Magdeburg was the seat of a royal assembly. Otto I repeatedly visited Magdeburg, establishing a convent here about 937 and was later buried in the cathedral. He granted the abbey the right to income from various tithes and to corvée labour from the surrounding countryside. The Archbishopric of Magdeburg was founded in 968 at the synod of Ravenna; Adalbert of Magdeburg was consecrated as its first archbishop. The archbishopric under Adalbert included the bishoprics of Havelberg, Brandenburg, Merseburg, Meissen and Naumburg-Zeitz. The archbishops played a prominent role in the German colonisation of the Slavic lands east of the Elbe river. In 1035 Magdeburg received a patent giving the city the right to hold trade exhibitions and conventions. This formed the basis of German town law to become known as the Magdeburg rights. These laws were adopted and modified throughout Central and Eastern Europe. Visitors from many countries began to trade with Magdeburg. The town was burnt down in 1188. In the 13th century, Magdeburg became a member of the Hanseatic League. With more than 20,000 inhabitants Magdeburg was one of the largest cities in the Holy Roman Empire. The town had active maritime commerce on the west (towards Flanders), with the countries of the North Sea, and maintained traffic and communication with the interior (for example Braunschweig). Reformation. The citizens constantly struggled against the archbishop, becoming nearly independent from him by the end of the 15th century. Around Easter 1497, the then twelve-year-old Martin Luther attended school in Magdeburg, where he was exposed to the teachings of the Brethren of the Common Life. In 1524, he was called to Magdeburg, where he preached and caused the city's defection from Roman Catholicism. The Protestant Reformation had quickly found adherents in the city, where Luther had been a schoolboy. Emperor Charles V repeatedly outlawed the unruly town, which had joined the League of Torgau and the Schmalkaldic League. As it had not accepted the Augsburg Interim decree (1548), the city, by the emperor's commands, was besieged (1550–1551) by Maurice, Elector of Saxony, but it retained its independence. The rule of the archbishop was replaced by that of various administrators belonging to Protestant dynasties. In the following years, Magdeburg gained a reputation as a stronghold of Protestantism and became the first major city to publish the writings of Martin Luther. In Magdeburg, Matthias Flacius and his companions wrote their anti-Catholic pamphlets and the "Magdeburg Centuries", in which they argued that the Roman Catholic Church had become the kingdom of the Antichrist. In 1629 the city withstood its first siege during the Thirty Years' War, by Albrecht von Wallenstein, a Protestant convert to Catholicism. However, in 1631, imperial troops under Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly, stormed the city and massacred the inhabitants, killing about 20,000 and burning the city. After the war, a population of only 4,000 remained. Under the Peace of Westphalia (1648), Magdeburg was to be assigned to Brandenburg-Prussia after the death of the administrator August of Saxe-Weissenfels, as the semi-autonomous Duchy of Magdeburg. This occurred in 1680. The city made an astonishingly quick recovery, due especially to the energy and dedication of its mayor Otto von Guericke, who was also a noted scientist. Just six years after the end of the terribly destructive war, Magdeburg was the scene of the famous scientific experiment known as The "Magdeburg hemispheres" by which the existence of vacuum - hitherto hotly debated - was empirically proven, with enormous implications for the later developments of physics. 19th century. In the course of the Napoleonic Wars, the fortress surrendered to French troops in 1806. The city was annexed to the French-controlled Kingdom of Westphalia in the 1807 Treaty of Tilsit. King Jérôme appointed Count Heinrich von Blumenthal as mayor. In 1815, after the Napoleonic Wars, Magdeburg was made the capital of the new Prussian Province of Saxony. 20th century. In 1912, the old fortress was dismantled, and in 1908, the municipality Rothensee became part of Magdeburg. Magdeburg was heavily bombed by British and American air forces during the Second World War. The RAF bombing raid on the night of 16 January 1945 destroyed much of the city centre. The death toll is estimated at 2,000–2,500. Near the end of World War II, the city of about 340,000 became capital of the Province of Magdeburg. Brabag's Magdeburg/Rothensee plant that produced synthetic oil from lignite coal was a target of the Oil Campaign of World War II. The "Gründerzeit" suburbs north of the city, called the Nordfront, were destroyed as well as some of the city's main streets with its Baroque buildings. It was occupied by 9th US Army troops on 18 April 1945 and was left to the Red Army on 1 July 1945. Post-war the area was part of the Soviet Zone of Occupation and many of the remaining pre-World War II city buildings were destroyed, with only a few buildings near the cathedral and in the southern part of the old city being restored to their pre-war state. Before the reunification of Germany, many surviving "Gründerzeit" buildings were left uninhabited and, after years of degradation, waiting for demolition. From 1949 until German reunification on 3 October 1990, Magdeburg belonged to the German Democratic Republic. Since German reunification. In 1990 Magdeburg became the capital of the new state of Saxony-Anhalt within reunified Germany. Huge parts of the city and its centre were also rebuilt in a modern style. Its economy is one of the fastest-growing in the former East German states. In 2005 Magdeburg celebrated its 1200th anniversary. The city was hit by 2013 European floods. Authorities declared a state of emergency and said they expected the Elbe river to rise higher than in 2002. In Magdeburg, with water levels of above normal, about 23,000 residents had to leave their homes on 9 June. Intel will build its largest plant in Europe in the south of the city by 2027. Geography. Magdeburg is one of the major towns along the Elbe Cycle Route (Elberadweg). Its area is . Districts. The city of Magdeburg is divided into 40 "Stadtteile" (districts). Three of these, the former municipalities Beyendorf-Sohlen, Pechau and Randau-Calenberge, have a special status as "Ortschaften". The "Stadtteile" of Magdeburg are: Climate. Magdeburg has a Humid continental climate (Dfb) bordering on an oceanic climate (Cfb) according to Köppen climate classification. Population. As of 2021, Magdeburg has a population of about 237,000. Its population grew rapidly after the end of 19th century due to industrialization. In 1885, the population was 100,000, and doubled after only five years. Magdeburg reached its greatest population in 1940, at approximately 346,000. At that time the city was poised to become a giant metropolis, but the events of WWII changed its future. After the war, in the East Germany era, Magdeburg recovered its industrial base to a degree, particularly the Machine industry, and became one of the important cities of East Germany. In 1991, when Magdeburg became the capital of the state of Saxony-Anhalt, its population was about 275,000. After the German Reunification, the population of Magdeburg declined due to some loss of industries, when many residents moved to former West Germany. Since 2011, the population has stabilized at around 240,000. Politics. Mayor. The current mayor of Magdeburg is independent politician Simone Borris since 2022. The most recent mayoral election was held on 24 April 2022, with a runoff held on 8 May, and the results were as follows: ! rowspan=2 colspan=2| Candidate ! rowspan=2| Party ! colspan=2| First round ! colspan=2| Second round ! Votes ! Votes ! colspan=3| Valid votes ! 76,432 ! 99.6 ! 60,508 ! 99.4 ! colspan=3| Invalid votes ! 302 ! 0.4 ! 340 ! 0.6 ! colspan=3| Total ! 76,734 ! 100.0 ! 60,848 ! 100.0 ! colspan=3| Electorate/voter turnout ! 189,916 ! 40.4 ! 189,471 ! 32.1 City council. The most recent city council election was held on 26 May 2019, and the results were as follows: ! colspan=2| Party ! Votes ! +/- ! Seats ! colspan=2| Total ! 300,393 ! 100.0 ! ! colspan=2| Valid votes ! 101,994 ! 98.5 ! ! colspan=2| Invalid votes ! 1,547 ! 1.5 ! ! colspan=2| Total ! 103,541 ! 100.0 ! 56 ! ±0 ! colspan=2| Electorate/voter turnout ! 193,826 ! 53.4 ! 15.1 ! Education. The Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg (German: Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg) was founded in 1993 and is one of the newest universities in Germany. The university in Magdeburg has about 13,000 students in nine faculties. There are 11,700 papers published in international journals from this institute. The Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences was founded in 1991. There are 30 direct study programs in five departments in Magdeburg and two departments in Stendal. The university has more than 130 professors and approximately 4,500 students at Magdeburg and 1,900 at Stendal. Culture and architecture. Entertainment. Magdeburg has a municipal theatre, Theater Magdeburg. Magdeburg is well known for its Christmas market, which is an attraction for 1.5 million visitors every year. Other events are the "Stadtfest", "Christopher Street Day", "Elbe in Flames", and the "Europafest Magdeburg". The autumn fair (formerly men's fair) of Magdeburg goes back to Germany's oldest folk festival. The tradition dates back to September 1010, when the holy feast of the Theban Legion was celebrated in Magdeburg (then called Magathaburg). Architecture. Cathedral. One of Magdeburg's most impressive buildings is the Lutheran Cathedral of Saints Catherine and Maurice with a height of , making it the tallest church building of eastern Germany. It is notable for its beautiful and unique sculptures, especially the "Twelve Virgins" at the Northern Gate, the depictions of Otto I the Great and his wife Editha as well as the statues of St Maurice and St Catherine. The predecessor of the cathedral was a church built in 937 within an abbey, called St. Maurice. Emperor Otto I the Great was buried here beside his wife in 973. St. Maurice burnt to ashes in 1207. The exact location of that church remained unknown for a long time. The foundations were rediscovered in May 2003, revealing a building long and wide. The construction of the new church lasted 300 years. The cathedral of Saints Catherine and Maurice was the first Gothic church building in Germany. The building of the steeples was completed as late as 1520. While the cathedral was virtually the only building to survive the massacres of the Thirty Years' War, it suffered damage in World War II. It was soon rebuilt and completed in 1955. The square in front of the cathedral (also called the "Neuer Markt", or "new marketplace") was occupied by an imperial palace ("Kaiserpfalz"), which was destroyed in the fire of 1207. The stones from the ruin were used for the building of the cathedral. The presumed remains of the palace were excavated in the 1960s. Sports. Magdeburg has a proud history of sports teams, with Association football proving the most popular. 1. FC Magdeburg currently plays in the 2. Bundesliga, the second division of German football. They are the only East German football club to have won the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup. The now-defunct clubs SV Victoria 96 Magdeburg and Cricket Viktoria Magdeburg were among the first football clubs in Germany. There is also the very successful handball team, SC Magdeburg. They won multiple times the Handball-Bundesliga (HBL), DHB-Pokal, DHB-Supercup, EHF European League, EHF Champions League, EHF Men's Champions Trophy and the IHF Men's Super Globe. The discus was re-discovered in Magdeburg in the 1870s by Christian Georg Kohlrausch, a gymnastics teacher. Twin towns – sister cities. Magdeburg is twinned with:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20905

Muttiah Muralitharan

Deshabandu Muttiah Muralitharan (, ), also spelt Muralidaran and often referred to as Murali (born 1972) is a Sri Lankan cricket coach, former professional cricketer, businessman and a member of the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame. Averaging over six wickets per Test match, Muralitharan is widely regarded as the most successful and one of the greatest bowlers in the history of the sport. He is the only bowler to take 800 Test wickets and more than 530 One Day International (ODI) wickets. , he has taken more wickets in international cricket than any other bowler. Muralitharan was a part of the Sri Lankan team that won the 1996 Cricket World Cup. Muralitharan's international career was beset by controversy over his bowling action. Due to an unusual hyperextension of his congenitally bent arm during delivery, his bowling action was called into question on a number of occasions by umpires and sections of the cricket community. After biomechanical analysis under simulated playing conditions, Muralitharan's action was cleared by the International Cricket Council, first in 1996 and again in 1999. Muralitharan held the number one spot in the International Cricket Council's player rankings for Test bowlers for a record period of 1,711 days spanning 214 Test matches. He became the highest wicket-taker in Test cricket when he overtook the previous record-holder Shane Warne on 2007. Muralitharan had previously held the record when he surpassed Courtney Walsh's 519 wickets in 2004, but he suffered a shoulder injury later that year and was overtaken by Warne. Muralitharan took the wicket of Gautam Gambhir on 5 February 2009 in Colombo to surpass Wasim Akram's ODI record of 502 wickets. He retired from Test cricket in 2010, registering his 800th and final wicket on 22 July 2010 from his final ball in his last Test match.<ref name="bbc-12/13/02"></ref> Muralitharan was rated the greatest Test match bowler by "Wisden's Cricketers' Almanack" in 2002, and in 2017 was the first Sri Lankan cricketer to be inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame. He won the Ada Derana Sri Lankan of the Year award in 2017. Early years and personal life. Muralitharan was born 17 April 1972 to a Hill Country Tamil Hindu family in Kandy, Sri Lanka, the eldest of the four sons to Sinnasamy Muttiah and Lakshmi. Muralitharan's father, Sinnasamy Muttiah, runs a successful biscuit-making business. Muralitharan's paternal grandfather, Periyasamy Sinasamy, came from South India to work in the tea plantations of central Sri Lanka in 1920.<ref name="Telegraph, UK,-09/12/07"></ref> Sinasamy later returned to the country of his birth with his daughters and settled in Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, India. However, his sons, including Muralitharan's father Muttiah, remained in Sri Lanka. When he was nine years old, Muralitharan was sent to St. Anthony's College, Kandy, a private school run by Benedictine monks. He began his cricketing career as a medium pace bowler but on the advice of his school coach, Sunil Fernando, he took up off-spin when he was fourteen years old. He soon impressed and went on to play for four years in the school First XI. In those days he played as an all-rounder and batted in the middle order. In his final two seasons at St Anthony's College he took over one hundred wickets and in 1990–91 was named as the 'Bata Schoolboy Cricketer of the Year'. After leaving school he joined Tamil Union Cricket and Athletic Club and was selected for the Sri Lanka A tour of England in 1991. He played in five games but failed to capture a single wicket. On his return to Sri Lanka he impressed against Allan Border's Australian team in a practice game and then went on to make his Test debut at R. Premadasa Stadium in the Second Test match of the series. When his grandfather died at the age of 104 in July 2004, Muralitharan returned home from Asia Cup to attend his funeral. Periyasamy Sinasamy's first wish to see Muralitharan claiming the world record for the most Test wickets was realised (passing the record set by Courtney Walsh), but not his desire to live to see his grandson married. Muralitharan's grandmother had died one month earlier at the age of 97. Muralitharan's manager, Kushil Gunasekera, stated that "Murali's family is closely knit and united. They respect traditional values. The late grandfather enjoyed a great relationship with Murali." Muralitharan married Madhimalar Ramamurthy, a Chennai native, on 2005.<ref name="tribune-2/3/05"></ref> Madhimalar is the daughter of the late Dr S. Ramamurthy of Malar Hospitals, and his wife Dr Nithya Ramamurthy. Their first child, Naren, was born in January 2006. Muttiah Muralitharan holds Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) and he does not need a visa for travelling to India. According to his manager, Kushil Gunasekera, Muralitharan qualifies for this status because his family originates from India. Muttiah announced on 3 April 2011 that he was retiring from all sport. Spelling and meaning of name. Even though his name was widely romanised as Muralitharan from the start of his career, he prefers the spelling Muralidaran. The different spellings have arisen because the Tamil letter த can be pronounced as both 't' and 'd' depending on its place in a word. It is often transliterated as 'th' to distinguish it from another letter, ட, which is a retroflex 't' or 'd'. In 2007, when Cricket Australia decided to unveil the new Warne-Muralidaran Trophy, to be contested between Australia and Sri Lanka, Muralitharan was requested to clarify how his name should be spelt. Cricket Australia spokesman Peter Young confirmed that "the spelling he's given is Muralidaran". The first-day cover involving Muralitharan bears an official seal captioned as "The highest wicket taker in Test cricket, MUTHIAH MURALIDARAN, First Day of Issue 03.12.2007, Camp Post Office, Asgiriya International Cricket Stadium, Kandy". Domestic cricket. In Sri Lanka. In domestic cricket, Muralitharan played for two first-class Sri Lankan sides, Tamil Union Cricket and Athletic Club in the Premier Trophy and Central Province in the Provincial Championship. His record is exceptional – 234 wickets at 14.51 runs in 46 matches. In England. He also played county cricket in England, mainly for Lancashire (1999, 2001, 2005 and 2007), appearing in twenty-eight first-class games for the club. He played five first class games for Kent during the 2003 season. His bowling record in English domestic cricket is also exceptional – 236 wickets at 15.62 runs in 33 matches. Despite his efforts, he was never on a title-winning first-class domestic team in either the Premier Trophy or the County Championship. He was unusual amongst his contemporaries in that he played in more Test matches than other first-class games (116 Tests and 99 other first-class matches as of 2007). Muralitharan was signed by Gloucestershire in 2011 to play in T20 matches. He renewed his T20 contract with Gloucestershire in 2012, but did not stay on for the 2013 season. In India. Muralitharan was contracted to represent Bengal in the 2008–09 Ranji Trophy tournament. He was expected to play about four matches in the tournament's second division – the Plate League. In February 2008, Muralitharan was slated to play Twenty20 cricket for the Chennai Super Kings in the Indian Premier League (IPL). He was bought for $600,000 by India Cements, the Chennai franchisee of the IPL, through a bidding process. The Chennai Super Kings were the runners-up in the inaugural edition of the IPL, losing to the Rajasthan Royals in the final. Muralitharan captured 11 wickets in 15 games, at an economy rate of 6.96 an over. In 2010, in the third season of IPL, Muralitharan was part of the Chennai Super Kings side that won the IPL championship. Muralitharan also remained the side's leading wicket-taker after all the three tournaments. At the 2011 IPL Player Auction Muralitharan was bought by Kochi Tuskers Kerala for US$1.1 million. In the 2012 season Muralitharan moved to Royal Challengers Bangalore, where he took 14 wickets in 9 games and had an average economy rate of 6.38. He played for Royal Challengers Bangalore from 2012 to 2014. He decided to retire from the IPL in 2014. In 2015, Muralitharan was appointed as the bowling coach and mentor of the IPL team Sunrisers Hyderabad. In Australia. Muttiah Muralitharan signed for the Melbourne Renegades to play Twenty20 cricket in the Big Bash League in 2012. He stated, "I wanted to play one season in Australia and the opportunity from the Melbourne Renegades was there so I took it with both hands." International career. Bowling style and career progress. Muralitharan is the first wrist-spinning off-spinner in the history of the game. He bowls marathon spells, yet he is usually on the attack. His unique bowling action begins with a short run-up, and culminates with an open-chested extremely wristy release from a partly supinated forearm which had him mistaken for a leg-spinner early in his career by Allan Border. Aside from his stock delivery, the off-break, of which he claimed to have two variations (during a recorded television 'doosra' show off with Mark Nicholas from Channel 4 in 2004), his main deliveries are a fast topspinner which lands on the seam and usually goes straight on, and the doosra, a surprise delivery which turns from leg to off (the opposite direction of his stock delivery) with no easily discernible change of action.<ref name="Muttiah Muralitharan - Legend / The Genius"></ref> Additionally, he would occasionally use one of his several unnamed novelties. His super-flexible wrist makes him especially potent and guarantees him turn on any surface. From his debut in 1992, Muralitharan took 800 Test wickets and over 500 One Day International wickets, becoming the first player to take 1,000 wickets combined in the two main forms of international cricket. Test cricket. Emerging years. On 28 August 1992 at the age of 20, Muralitharan made his debut against Australia at the Khettarama Stadium and claimed 3 for 141. Craig McDermott was his first Test wicket. His freakish action and his angular run-up showed that this was no run-of-the-mill spinner. During his first Test, there was one dismissal which convinced many of Muralitharan's special powers. Tom Moody's leg-stump was dislodged when he shouldered arms to a delivery that pitched at least two feet outside the off-stump. The youthful Muralitharan went from strength to strength, playing a major part in Sri Lanka's back-to-back Test victories against England and New Zealand in 1992–93. It was at this point in his career that he struck a close bond with his leader, mentor and one time business partner, the authoritative captain Arjuna Ranatunga. This relationship formed the bedrock of his success and meant that there were few doubts about his status as the team's sole wicket-taker. Ranatunga was thoroughly convinced that Muralitharan's precocious talent would signal a new era in Sri Lanka's short Test history. In August 1993 at Moratuwa, Muralitharan captured 5 for 104 in South Africa's first innings, his first five-wicket haul in Tests. His wickets included Kepler Wessels, Hansie Cronje and Jonty Rhodes. Muralitharan continued to baffle batsman outside the shores of Sri Lanka, irrespective of the team's performance. In Sri Lanka's humiliating drubbing at the hands of India in 1993–94, where all three Tests were innings defeats, Muralitharan was the sole success, with 12 wickets in the rubber. His perseverance in the face of some astronomical scores by the fearsome quartet of Mohammed Azharuddin, Sachin Tendulkar, Navjot Sidhu and Vinod Kambli was in sharp contrast to the submission with which his teammates played the series. It was in New Zealand in March 1995 that Muralitharan displayed his qualities as a match-winner on any surface. In Sri Lanka's first triumph on foreign soil, Muralitharan confused the crease-bound New Zealanders on a grassy pitch in Dunedin. The Sri Lankan manager Duleep Mendis' claim that Muralitharan can turn the ball on concrete was confirmed. On the eve of his tour of Pakistan later that year, doubts were cast on his ability to trouble subcontinental batsmen. By taking 19 wickets in the series and delivering a historic 2–1 victory, the off-spinner silenced the doubters. The Pakistanis, who had negotiated Warne's leg-breaks in the previous home series, were never at ease against him. Prior to the eventful Boxing Day Test of 1995, Muralitharan had captured 80 wickets in 22 Tests at an unflattering average of 32.74. Even at that point in his career he was the leading wicket taker for Sri Lanka having gone past Rumesh Ratnayake's aggregate of 73 wickets. Boxing Day Test 1995. During the second Test between Sri Lanka and Australia at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Boxing Day 1995, Australian umpire Darrell Hair called Muralitharan for throwing in front of a crowd of 55,239. The off-spinner was no-balled seven times in three overs by Hair, who believed the then 23-year-old was bending his arm and straightening it in the process of delivery; an illegal action in cricket. Muralitharan had bowled two overs before lunch from umpire Steve Dunne's or the Members' End of the ground with umpire Hair at square leg and these passed without incident. At he took up the attack from umpire Hair's or the southern end. Muralitharan's third over was a maiden with all deliveries again passed as legitimate but in his fourth Hair no-balled him twice for throwing on the fourth and sixth balls. The umpire continued to call him three times in his fifth over on the second, fourth and sixth balls. While the bowler stood with his hands on his hips perplexed, the five calls provoked an immediate response by the Sri Lankan captain Arjuna Ranatunga who left the field at to take advice from his team management. He returned at and continued with Muralitharan who was called two more times in his sixth over on the second and sixth balls. At Ranatunga removed the bowler from the attack, although he reintroduced him at at umpire Dunne's end. Although Hair reports in his book, "Decision Maker", that at the end of the tea break he stated that he would call Muralitharan no matter which end he bowled he did not do so. Muralitharan completed another twelve overs without further no-balls and, after bowling Mark Waugh, finished the day with figures of 18–3–58–1. After being no-balled Muralitharan bowled a further 32 overs from umpire Steve Dunne's end without protest from either Dunne or Hair, at square leg. The Sri Lankan camp was outraged after the incident, but the ICC defended Hair, outlining a list of steps they had taken in the past to determine, without result, the legitimacy of Muralitharan's action. By calling Muralitharan from the bowlers' end Hair overrode what is normally regarded as the authority of the square leg umpire in adjudicating on throwing. Dunne would have had to break convention to support his partner. At the end of the match the Sri Lankans requested from the ICC permission to confer with Hair to find out exactly how to remedy the problem with their bowler. Despite the game's controlling body agreeing to it, the Australian Cricket Board vetoed it on the grounds that it might lead to umpires being quizzed by teams after every game and meant that the throwing controversy would continue into the World Series Cup during the coming week. The Sri Lankans were disappointed they did not get an explanation and decided they would continue playing their bowler in matches not umpired by Hair and wanted to know whether other umpires would support or reject Hair's judgement. Muralitharan's action was cleared by the ICC after biomechanical analysis at the University of Western Australia and at the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology in 1996. They concluded that his action created the 'optical illusion of throwing'. Mid career. On 16 March 1997, Muralitharan became the first Sri Lankan to reach 100 test wickets, when he dismissed Stephen Fleming in the second innings of the Hamilton Test. In January 1998, Muralitharan took his first ten-wicket haul against Zimbabwe in the first test at Kandy. Sri Lanka won by eight wickets and Muralitharan had figures of 12 for 117. In August that same year Muralitharan produces his career-best test match figures of 16 for 220, in the one-off test against England. In England's second innings Muralitharan bowled a marathon 54.2 overs to pick up 9 for 65 runs, the other wicket being a run out. Ben Hollioake becomes his 200th test wicket. Sri Lanka won by ten wickets, their first Test victory in England. After breaking the world record for the most test wickets in 2007, Muralitharan commented that his 1998 performance at the Oval against England, was his career highlight. He stated "Everyone thought I was a good bowler then and I didn't look back from there." Playing his 58th test, Muralitharan claimed his 300th test wicket when he dismissed Shaun Pollock in the First Test in Durban, in December 2000. Only Dennis Lillee reached the milestone faster, in his 56th test. On 4 January 2002 in Kandy Muralitharan might have finished with the best-ever figures for a single innings, but after he had claimed nine wickets against Zimbabwe Russel Arnold dropped a catch at short leg. He missed out on the tenth when Chaminda Vaas dismissed Henry Olonga caught behind amid stifled appeals. Muralitharan follows up his 9 for 51 in the first innings with 4 for 64 in the second, equalling Richard Hadlee's record of 10 ten-wicket match hauls, but needing 15 fewer Tests to do so. On 15 January 2002 playing in his 72nd test, Muralitharan became the fastest and youngest to reach the 400-wicket landmark when he bowled Olonga in the third Test in Galle. On 16 March 2004 Muralitharan became the fastest and the youngest bowler to reach 500 wickets during the second test between Sri Lanka and Australia played in Kandy. In his 87th test, he bowled Kasprowicz to claim his 500th victim just four days after Warne reached the landmark on the fifth day of the First Test between the two teams at Galle. Warne took 108 tests to reach 500. Muralitharan took 4–48 on the first day of the second Test as Australia were skittled for 120 in the first innings. Passing Walsh and Warne. In May 2004, Muralitharan overtook West Indian Courtney Walsh's record of 519 Test match wickets to become the highest wicket-taker. Zimbabwe's Mluleki Nkala becomes Muralitharan's 520th scalp in Tests. Muralitharan held the record until Shane Warne claimed it in October 2004. Warne surpassed Sri Lankan Muttiah Muralitharan's mark of 532 wickets by dismissing India's Irfan Pathan. Warne said he enjoyed his duel with Muralitharan, who was sidelined following shoulder surgery at the time. After an outstanding year Muralitharan was adjudged as the Wisden Leading Cricketer in the World in 2006. In six Tests, he took 60 wickets. He took ten in each of four successive matches, the second time he performed such a feat. The opponents for his 60-wicket haul were England away, South Africa at home and New Zealand away: serious opposition. In all, Muralitharan took 90 wickets in 11 Tests in the calendar year. For his performances in 2006, he was named in the World Test XI by ICC and Cricinfo. In July 2007, Muttiah Muralitharan became the second bowler after Australia's Shane Warne to capture 700 Test wickets. The off-spinner reached the landmark when he had Bangladesh's last man Syed Rasel caught in the deep by Farveez Maharoof on the fourth day of the third and final Test at the Asgiriya stadium in Kandy. The dismissal signalled Sri Lanka's victory by an innings and 193 runs to give the host a 3–0 sweep of the series. Muralitharan finished with six wickets in each innings to claim 10 wickets or more in a Test for the 20th time. However, he was unable to pass Warne's record of 708 wickets when Sri Lanka toured Australia in November 2007, capturing just four wickets in two Test matches. Muralitharan reclaimed the record for most Test wickets during the first Test against England at Kandy on 2007. The spinner bowled England's Paul Collingwood to claim his 709th Test victim and overtaking Shane Warne in the process. Muralitharan reached the mark in his 116th Test – 29 fewer than Warne – and had conceded only 21.77 runs per wicket compared to the Australian's 25.41. This was Muralitharan's 61st 5-wicket haul. Warne believed that Muralitharan would take "1,000 wickets" before he retired. Former record holder Courtney Walsh also opined that this would be possible if Muralitharan retained his hunger for wickets. Muralitharan himself believed there was a possibility that he would reach this milestone. For his performances in 2007, he was named in the World Test XI by ICC and Cricinfo. Beyond the world record. In July 2008, Muralitharan and Ajantha Mendis stopped India's strong batting as Sri Lanka won the first Test by a record innings and 239 runs in Colombo. Muralitharan finished the match with 11 wickets for 110, as India were shot out for 138 in their second innings after conceding a lead of 377 on the fourth day. He was well supported by debutant Ajantha Mendis, an unorthodox spinner with plenty of variation, who took eight wickets in his debut match. Muralitharan believed the emergence of Mendis would help prolong his own career. Muralitharan, 36, and 23-year-old Mendis formed a formidable partnership in the first Test thrashing of India, taking 19 of the 20 wickets between them. "If he keeps performing this way, he will definitely take a lot of wickets in international cricket. Now that he has come, I think I can play Test cricket a few more years. Bowling 50 overs in a Test innings is very hard. Now if I bowl only 30–35 and he bowls more than me, the job will get easier for me." For his performances in 2008, he was named in the World Test XI by ICC. Performance analysis. In July 2007, Muralitharan achieved a career peak Test Bowling Rating of 920, based on the LG ICC Player Rankings. This is the highest ever rating achieved by a spin bowler in Test cricket. This also puts him in fourth place in the LG ICC Best-Ever Test bowling ratings. Muralitharan has the unique distinction of getting 10 or more wickets in a match against all other nine Test playing nations as well as capturing over 50 wickets against each of them. He also obtained 7 or more wickets in an innings against five nations, namely England, India, South Africa, West Indies and Zimbabwe (refer to table above). Muttiah Muralitharan also took at least five five-fors against all the other nine Test sides. He currently holds the highest wickets/match ratio (6.1) for any bowler with over 200 Test wickets and also represented Sri Lanka in 118 Tests of the 175 that they have played (67.4%). Against teams excluding Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, Muralitharan took 624 wickets in 108 Tests. By comparison, excluding his matches against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, Warne took 691 wickets in 142 tests. Murali's average of 24.05 is slightly superior to Warne's career average of 25.41. Muralitharan won 18 Man of the Match awards in Test cricket. During Muralitharan's playing days, the ICC Future Tours Programme denied Sri Lanka and several other teams a level playing field. As a consequence Muralitharan never toured South Africa after December 2002 and never playing a Test at the spin-friendly Sydney Cricket Ground. Another comparison of Muralitharan's bowling record against other successful international bowlers is their career record away from home. Muralitharan received criticism that he enjoyed great success on home soil, taking wickets on pitches that are more spin-friendly than other international pitches. A quick analysis of his Test record of matches played outside Sri Lanka shows that from 52 matches he took 278 wickets at an average of 26.24 runs per wicket, with a strike rate of 60.1 balls per wicket. Similarly, spin bowling rival Shane Warne retired with a slightly superior 'away' record of 362 wickets from 73 matches, at an average of 25.50 and a strike rate of 56.7. Due to the variabilities of Test cricket such as grounds played at and opposition played against it is difficult to compare the quality of the top level players and, as such, is very difficult and subjective. However, it is clear that Muralitharan did much better playing at home to test minnows Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, averaging less than 16 runs a wicket. Cricinfo's statistics editor S Rajesh concluded that the decade 2000–2009 was the best 10-year period for Test batsmen since the 1940s. Muralitharan was clearly the leading Test wicket-taker during this period, capturing 565 wickets at 20.97 in spite of the dominance of the bat over ball. Shane Warne captured 357 wickets at an average of 25.17 during the decade. Of spinners with over Test 100 wickets only John Briggs (17.75), Jim Laker (21.24), Bill O'Reilly (22.59) and Clarrie Grimmett (24.21) have sub 25.00 bowling averages. Muralitharan was on the winning side on 54 of the 133 test matches he played. In those games he captured a total of 438 wickets (8.1 wickets per match), at an outstanding average of 16.18 per wicket and a strike rate of 42.7. Muralitharan took 795 wickets for his country Sri Lanka in 132 tests. The next most wickets for Sri Lanka in these 132 Tests was Chaminda Vaas' 309 – less than 40% of the spinner's pile. No one else managed 100. Collectively Sri Lankan bowlers tallied 1968 wickets across that span, of which Muralitharan accounted for 40.4%. Among the 24 other Sri Lankans who took more than 10 of those wickets, only Lasith Malinga did so at a better strike rate (52.3) than Muralitharan's 54.9 – and the latter bowled rather more overs, 6657.1 of them to be precise. One day internationals. Career summary. On 12 August 1993 Muralitharan made his One Day International (ODI) debut against India at the Khettarama Stadium and took 1 for 38 off ten overs. Pravin Amre was his first ODI wicket. On 27 October 2000 in Sharjah, Muralitharan captured 7 for 30 against India, which were then the best bowling figures in One Day Internationals. On 9 April 2002 Muralitharan achieved a career peak ODI Bowling Rating of 913, based on the LG ICC Player Rankings. This is the highest ever rating achieved by a spin bowler in One Day Internationals. This also puts him in fourth place in the LG ICC Best-Ever ODI bowling ratings. In 2006, Muralitharan had the second (now third) highest number of runs (99) hit off him in a One Day International Innings. The Australians, especially Adam Gilchrist, attacked Muralitharan's bowling more than usual that day. Yet, for his performances in 2006, he was named in the World ODI XI by the ICC. Muralitharan does not have a great record against the Australians in ODIs and this was proved again as he was ineffective in the finals of the 2007 World Cup; his chief tormentor again being Gilchrist. Yet, for his performances in 2007, he was named in the World ODI XI by the ICC. He was named in the 'Team of the Tournament' by Cricinfo for the 2007 World Cup. Muralitharan played in five Cricket World Cup tournaments, in 1996, 1999, 2003, 2007 and 2011. He captured 67 World Cup wickets and is second in the list behind Glenn McGrath who has 71, and represented Sri Lanka in three World Cup finals. In 1996 Muralitharan was part of Sri Lanka's World Cup winning team that defeated Australia in Lahore, Pakistan. Muralitharan also played in the 2007 World Cup final, when Australia defeated Sri Lanka in Bridgetown, Barbados. He picked up 23 wickets in the 2007 World Cup, and finished as the second highest wicket taker in the tournament behind Glenn McGrath. He was part of the 2011 team who lost the world cup final against India in Mumbai. It was his farewell match as well. He was named in the 'Team of the Tournament' for the 2011 World Cup by the ICC. Muttiah Muralitharan was left out of the Sri Lankan one-day squad to tour West Indies in April 2008. The chairman of selectors Ashantha De Mel clarifying the non-selection stated that "We know he (Muralitharan) can still play in the next World Cup if he is properly looked after, so we want to use him sparingly to preserve him for the big games and the World Cup coming up in the Asian sub-continent where Muralitharan will be a threat." Muralitharan has the highest number of career wickets in One Day Internationals, having overtaken Wasim Akram on 2009. Akram took 502 wickets in 356 matches. On 2009, Muralitharan dismissed Yuvraj Singh in his 327th match, the third ODI against India in Colombo to equal Akram's record. He won 13 Man of the Match awards in this form of the game. Batting. An aggressive lower order batsman who usually batted at No. 11, Muralitharan was known for his tendency to back away to leg and slog. Sometimes, he could be troublesome for bowlers because of his unorthodox and adventurous ways. Once, in a Test match against England, while playing Alex Tudor, he moved back towards his leg stump trying to hook the ball and ended up lying on the ground sideways after the shot. He was infamously run out in a match against New Zealand when he left his crease to congratulate Kumar Sangakkara, who had just scored a single to reach his century; the New Zealand fielder had not yet returned the ball to the wicketkeeper, so the ball was still in play. His highest Test score of 67 came against India at Kandy in 2001, including three sixes and five fours. He made valuable scores on occasion, including 30 runs against England at the Oval in 1998, including 5 fours, 38 runs (4 fours, 1 six) against England at Galle in 2003, 43 runs (5 fours, 3 sixes) against Australia at Kandy in 2004 36 runs against the West Indies at Colombo in 2005, and his highest-ever ODI score, 33 not out (4 fours and 2 sixes off 16 balls) against Bangladesh in the final of the 2009 Tri-Series in Bangladesh. In the latter match, Muralitharan's effort, which included three fours and a six off one over, played a key role in Sri Lanka winning the match and series after the first eight overs saw them reduced to 6 for 5, the lowest score ever recorded in an ODI at the fall of the fifth wicket. Muralitharan has a strike rate close to 70 in Test cricket and scored over 55% of his Test runs in fours and sixes. Muralitharan, together with Chaminda Vaas, holds the record for the highest 10th wicket partnership in Tests for Sri Lanka. The pair put on 79 runs for the last wicket at the Asgiriya Stadium against Australia in March 2004. Muralitharan also holds the record for scoring most runs in Test cricket while batting at the number 11 position. Muralitharan currently holds the record for the most ducks (dismissals for zero) ever in international cricket (Tests, ODI's and Twenty20), with a total of 59 ducks. Abuse in Australia. Muralitharan voiced his frustration at routinely being heckled by Australian crowds who accuse him of throwing – one common jeer directed at him was "No Ball!". Following the then Australian Prime Minister John Howard's statement that Muralitharan was a "chucker", in 2004, Muralitharan indicated that he would skip future tours to Australia. Tom Moody, the former Sri Lanka coach and former Australian Test cricketer, said he was embarrassed by the derogatory reaction and negative attention directed towards Muttiah Muralitharan by Australian crowds. Moody stated that "As an Australian when I have been with the Sri Lankan team in Australia, or playing against them in the World Cup, it's the only situation we find in the whole of the cricketing world where we have this disgraceful slant on a cricketer". During the 2008 Commonwealth Bank series in Australia, some members of the Sri Lankan contingent including Muralitharan, were the target of an egg throwing incident in Hobart. The Sri Lankan cricket selector Don Anurasiri was hit by an egg, while Muralitharan and two others were verbally abused by a car-load of people as they were walking from a restaurant back to the hotel. Due to the incident taking place at night, it is unclear whether Muralitharan was indeed the target of the culprits. Even though the Australian coach of the Sri Lankan team, Trevor Bayliss, down-played the incident as "a non-event", Cricket Australia tightened security around the team. In response to this episode Muralitharan was quoted as saying "When you come to Australia, you expect such incidents". At the conclusion of Muralitharan's test career cricket writer Rahul Bhattacharya summed up Muralitharan's trials thus: "Murali is described often as a fox. This seems right. Unlike hedgehog bowlers who pursue one big idea, Murali, like a fox, had many ways of pursuit. Like a fox he did not hunt in a pack. Like a fox he was himself cruelly hunted for sport in some parts of the world. Fox hunting was banned a few years ago in England, but is still legal in Australia." Retirement. On 7 July 2010, Muttiah Muralitharan formally announced his retirement from Test cricket at a media briefing in Colombo. He confirmed that the first Test Match against India due to commence on , 2010 would be his last, but indicated that he was willing to play One-Day Internationals if it was considered necessary leading up to the 2011 World Cup, which Sri Lanka co-hosted. He identified Sri Lanka's World Cup win of 1996 as his greatest moment as a cricketer. He also stated that there were some regrets during his 19-year playing career. "Not winning Test matches in South Africa, Australia and India are regrets. But I am sure we will win very soon." At the start of his last match, Muralitharan was eight short of 800 wickets. At the fall of the ninth wicket of the Indian's second innings Muralitharan still needed one wicket to reach the milestone. After 90 minutes of resistance Muralitharan was able to dismiss the last Indian batsman Pragyan Ojha on the last delivery of the final over of his Test career. By doing so he became the only bowler to reach 800 wickets in Test cricket. Sri Lanka won the match by 10 wickets, the seventh time they have done so and the second time they have done it against India. In late 2010, Muralitharan announced his retirement from international cricket after 2011 Cricket World Cup, co-hosted by Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka announcing "This World Cup will be my last outing. I am retiring totally from international cricket thereafter. My time is up. I've signed up to play for two years in IPL." His final ODI appearance in Sri Lankan soil came during the semi-final clash against New Zealand, where Muralitharan took the wicket of Scott Styris in his last delivery. His last ODI was against India in the World Cup final at Mumbai, however Sri Lanka lost the match and Murali couldn't take any wickets. After retirement. In July 2014, he played for the Rest of the World side in the Bicentenary Celebration match at Lord's. Coaching career. Muralitharan is the bowling coach of Sunrisers Hyderabad since 2015. Under in his tenure the Sunrisers Hyderabad emerged as IPL Champions in 2016. He has also been appointed as the head coach of Thiruvallur Veerans in the 2nd edition of the TNPL. In 2014, Muralitharan joined the Australian national team as a coaching consultant for the Test series against Pakistan in the United Arab Emirates. On 11 March 2014, he was appointed as the spin bowling consultant for the Cricket Association of Bengal. The tenure started with the players in a four-day camp beginning on 15 March 2014. He was again called up for the Australian team prior to Australia's tour of Sri Lanka in 2016. Despite his presence in the team as consultant, Australia failed to win any of the three Test matches, losing the series 3–0. Muralitharan's role in the Australian team generated controversy throughout the country and Sri Lanka Cricket, and Muralitharan traded verbal blows with the then Sri Lanka team manager Charith Senanayake following an altercation. The Head of SLC Thilanga Sumathipala warned Muralitharan for attempting to coach the Australian team, the team which gave more pressure to Muralitharan in the past due to his bowling actions. Muralitharan said that the team which was against him in the past but now called him to coach them to play against Sri Lanka was a big victory in his career. World records and achievements. Muttiah Muralitharan holds a number of world records, and several firsts: Recognition. In 2002, Wisden carried out a statistical analysis of all Test matches in an effort to rate the greatest cricketers in history, and Muralitharan was ranked as the best Test bowler of all time. However, two years earlier, Muralitharan was not named as one of the five Wisden Cricketers of the Century. Former Australian captain Steve Waugh called him "the Don Bradman of bowling". Muralitharan was selected as the Wisden Leading Cricketer in the World in 2000 and in 2006. On 15 November 2007, the Warne-Muralidaran Trophy was unveiled named after the two leading wicket-takers in Test cricket, Shane Warne and Muralitharan. The trophy displays images of the two spin bowlers' hands each holding a cricket ball. This trophy will be contested between Australia and Sri Lanka in all future Test series. On 3 December 2007, just hours after Muttiah Muralitharan became Test cricket's leading Test wicket-taker, Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) announced it had unveiled a portrait of the Sri Lanka off-spinner at Lord's. On the same day the Philatelic Bureau of the Department of Posts in Sri Lanka issued a circular stamp with a denomination of Rs. 5 to mark the world record set by Muttiah Muralitharan. The circular design was meant to denote the cricket ball. Australian musician Alston Koch provoked worldwide interest when he recorded the only official tribute song to Muralitharan. The song was even mentioned on the BBC's Test Match Special. The Muralitharan Song video was also released after he broke the world record. On 10 January 2008, the Parliament of Sri Lanka felicitated Muttiah Muralitharan for his world record breaking feat of being the highest wicket taker in Test cricket. This was the first time that a sportsman had been honoured in the country's Supreme Legislature. The Central Provincial Council in Kandy has renamed the International Cricket Stadium in Pallekele after Muttiah Muralitharan. Controversy of bowling action. Throughout much of his international career, Muralitharan's action was suspected of contravening the laws of the game by the straightening of his bowling arm during delivery. Although he was cited three times, subsequent biomechanical testing led the ICC to clear him of the charge and permit him to continue bowling. Biomechanical testing conducted on four occasions fueled debate as to whether his action was in fact illegal or actually an illusion created by his allegedly unique ability to generate extra movement both at the shoulder as well the wrist, which enables him to bowl the doosra without straightening the elbow. First throwing citation and testing. Initial concerns as to whether Muralitharan's action contravened the laws of the game by straightening his bowling arm during delivery broke into open controversy after Australian umpire Darrell Hair called a "no-ball" for an illegal action seven times during the Boxing Day Test match in Melbourne, Australia, in 1995. Australian Sir Donald Bradman, universally regarded as the greatest batsman in history, was later quoted as saying it was the "worst example of umpiring that [he had] witnessed, and against everything the game stands for. Clearly Murali does not throw the ball". Ten days later, on 5 January 1996, Sri Lanka played the West Indies in the seventh ODI of the triangular World Series competition, in Brisbane. Umpire Ross Emerson officiating in his debut international match, no-balled Muralitharan three times in his first over, twice in his second and twice in his third. It was an identical tally to that called by Hair on Boxing Day and (like Hair) Emerson made his calls from the bowler's end while his partner stood silent. The main difference was that several no-balls were for leg-breaks instead of the bowler's normal off-breaks. In February 1996, just before the World Cup, Muralitharan underwent biomechanical analysis at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology under the supervision of Prof. Ravindra Goonetilleke, who declared his action legal in the conditions tested, citing a congenital defect in Muralitharan's arm which makes him incapable of fully straightening the arm but gives the appearance of fully straightening it. Although under the original Laws a bowler's arm did not have to be fully straightened to be an illegal delivery, it was concluded that his action created the 'optical illusion of throwing'. Based on this evidence, ICC gave clearance to Muralitharan to continue bowling. Second citation and testing. Doubts about Muralitharan's action persisted, however. On the 1998–99 tour to Australia he was once again called for throwing by Ross Emerson during a One Day International against England at the Adelaide Oval in Australia. The Sri Lankan team almost abandoned the match, but after instructions from the President of the Board of Control for Cricket in Sri Lanka, the game resumed. The Sri Lankan captain at the time Arjuna Ranatunga, was later fined and given a suspended ban from the game as a result. It later emerged that at the time of this match Emerson was on sick leave from his non-cricket job due to a stress-related illness and he stood down for the rest of the series. Muralitharan was sent for further tests in Perth and England and was cleared again. At no stage was Muralitharan requested to change or remodel his action, by the ICC. Up to this point in his career (1999) Muralitharan primarily bowled two types of deliveries, namely the off-break and the topspinner. He had not yet mastered the doosra. Third citation and testing. Muralitharan continued bowling, taking his 500th Test wicket in the second Test against Australia in Kandy on 2004. At the end of the series his doosra delivery was officially called into question by match referee Chris Broad. At the University of Western Australia (Department of Human Movement and Exercise Science), three-dimensional kinematic measurements of Muttiah Muralitharan's bowling arm were taken using an optical motion capture system while he bowled his doosra. Muralitharan's mean elbow extension angle for the doosra delivery was 14°, which was subsequently reduced to a mean of 10.2° after remedial training at the university. The findings reported to ICC by the University of Western Australia's study was that Muralitharan's doosra contravened the established ICC elbow extension limit of 5° for spinners. Under the original throwing Laws of Cricket, the umpires officiating were under an obligation to call "no-ball" to a delivery that they were not entirely happy was absolutely fair. This Law gave the umpires absolutely no discretion. In 2000, the Laws were changed to put an allowable figure of straightening of 5° for spinners, 7.5° for medium pacers and 10° for fast bowlers in an attempt to more clearly define what was legal. But these figures proved difficult to enforce due to umpires being unable to discern actual amounts of straightening and the differentiation between the three different allowable figures. Testing in Test match conditions is not currently possible "when the identification of elbow and shoulder joint centres in on-field data collection, where a shirt is worn, also involves large errors. In a match the ability to differentiate anatomical movements such as 'elbow extension' by digitising segment end-points, particularly if you have segment rotations, is extremely difficult and prone to error. This is certainly the case with spin bowlers. It is therefore not surprising that laboratory testing is preferred, particularly for spin bowlers, where an appropriate pitch length and run-up can be structured. This is clearly the only way to test players, where data would be able to withstand scientific and therefore legal scrutiny." An extensive ICC study, the results of which were released in November 2004, was conducted to investigate the "chucking issue". A laboratory kinematic analysis of 42 non-Test playing bowlers done by Ferdinands and Kersting (2004) established that the 5° limit for slow and spin bowlers was particularly impractical. Due to the overwhelming scientific findings, researchers recommended that a flat rate of 15° tolerable elbow extension be used to define a preliminary demarcation point between bowling and throwing. A panel of former Test players consisting of Aravinda de Silva, Angus Fraser, Michael Holding, Tony Lewis, Tim May and the ICC's Dave Richardson, with the assistance of several biomechanical experts, stated that 99% of all bowlers in the history of cricket straighten their arms when bowling. Only one player tested (part-time bowler Ramnaresh Sarwan) reportedly did not transgress the pre 2000 rules. Many of these reports have controversially not been published and as such, the 99% figure stated has yet to be proved. In fact, Muralitharan stirred up controversy when he said during an interview with a Melbourne radio station that Jason Gillespie, Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee flexed their arms by 12, 13 and 14–15 degrees respectively, although it is unclear as to where Muralitharan quoted these figures from. Muralitharan was censured by the Sri Lankan Cricket Board for these comments. The ICC Executive was asked to ratify the panel's recommendations at the ICC's Annual General Meeting in February 2005. Based on the recommendations the ICC issued a new guideline (which was effective from 2005) allowing for extensions or hyperextensions of up to 15 degrees for all types of bowlers, thus deeming Muralitharan's doosra to be legal. Explaining why the maximum level of 15 degrees was arrived at, panel member Angus Fraser stated "That is the number which biomechanics says that it (straightening) becomes visible. It is difficult for the naked eye to see less than 15 degrees in a bowler's action. We found when the biceps reached the shoulder the amount of bend was around 165 degrees. Very few bowlers can get to 180 degrees because the joint doesn't allow that. ... but once you go further than 15 degrees you get into an area which is starting to give you an unfair advantage and you are breaking the law". University of South Australia study. The original decision of disallowing the doosra bowling action was hailed widely as justifiable on account of being scientifically based. Hence, a team of Australian scientists representing the University of South Australia conducted an independent research, in line with modern Artificial Intelligence and biomechanics to solve the controversial issue arise from doosra. The University of South Australia's study, founded by Prof. Mahinda Pathegama, and contributed by Prof. Ozdemir Gol, Prof. J. Mazumdar, Prof. Tony Worsley and Prof. Lakmi Jain has analyzed the previous studies with close scrutiny since the techniques in their fields of expertise are employed in the course of assessment as the basis for decision-making. The findings based on this scientific study are overwhelming and Dave Richardson, general manager ICC stated that "the ICC is currently reviewing the Law on throwing and the ICC regulations and the study done by Prof. Mahinda Pathegama with UniSA scientists is a valuable source of information in this regard." The team of Australian scientists including Sri Lankan-born Australian scientist, Prof. Mahinda Pathegama reporting their findings, in line with the Muralitharan test to ICC, has analyzed in-depth various issues, such as Pitfalls in image interpretation when using 2D images for 3D modeling associates compared to the modern techniques in Artificial Intelligence and biomechanics, and Biomechanics assessment for doosra bowling action, etc. Pathegama at al. (2004) further reports on the Disagreement of expression on measurement accuracy in the Murali Report, with the analysis of the Motion tracking system used for the Murali Report, and discussing Cognitive aspects, Evidence of errors in Anthropometric assessment and movement tracking, Lateral inhibition in response tracking, Psycho-physiological aspect on post-assessments, Angular measurement errors, Skin marker induced errors, Geometrics-and physics-based 3D modeling and the Approach to on-field assessment, etc. The Muralitharan Report produced by the University of Western Australia's study has considered the Richards study done in 1999 to evaluate the error margin. University of South Australia's study done by Prof. Mahinda Pathegama argued that the Richards study which was presented by the University of Western Australia's study has used a rigid aluminium bar that only rotated in the horizontal plane to introduce such error margin. Pathegama's report stated that "in view of the system used in the test itself yielding considerable error even with a rigid aluminum bar (an "accuracy level of approximately 4 degrees" as stated in the Murali Report), it stands to reason that the error margin would be considerably larger when tracking skin markers on a spin bowler's moving upper limb by this same system". Vincent Barnes in an interview argues that Bruce Elliott, the UWA professor who is also the ICC biomechanist, had made an interesting discovery in his dealings with finger spinners. "He said he had found that a lot of bowlers from the subcontinent could bowl the doosra legally, but not Caucasian bowlers." Fourth round of testing. On 2 February 2006, Muralitharan underwent a fourth round of biomechanical testing at the University of Western Australia. There had been criticism that the previous round of tests in July 2004 did not replicate match conditions due to a slower bowling speed in the laboratory tests. The results showed that the average elbow extension while bowling the 'doosra' delivery was 12.2 degrees, at an average of . The average for his off-break was 12.9 degrees at . Bowling with an arm brace. In July 2004 Muralitharan was filmed in England, bowling with an arm brace on. The film was shown on Britain's Channel 4 during the Test against England on 2004. Initially, Muralitharan bowled three balls – the off-spinner, the top-spinner and the doosra – as he would in a match. Then he bowled the same three balls with a brace that is made from steel bars, which are set into strong resin. This brace has been moulded to his right arm, is approximately 46 centimetres long and weighs just under 1 kilogram. TV presenter Mark Nicholas who tried the brace himself, confirmed that "There is no way an arm can be bent, or flexed, when it is in this brace." All three balls reacted in the same way as when bowled without the brace. They were not bowled quite so fast because the weight of the brace restricts the speed of Muralitharan's shoulder rotation, but the spin was still there. With the brace on, there still appeared to be a jerk in his action. When studying the film at varying speeds, it still appeared as if he straightened his arm, even though the brace makes it impossible to do so. His unique shoulder rotation and amazing wrist action seem to create the illusion that he straightens his arm. The off-spinner said the exercise was to convince a sceptical public rather than sway an ICC investigation into bowling actions launched after he was reported by match referee Chris Broad for his doosra delivery in March 2004, the third time action was taken on his bowling. In an interview for August 2004 edition of Wisden Asia Cricket, Muralitharan stated "I think it will prove a point to those who had said that it was physically impossible to bowl a ball that turned the other way. I proved that it was possible to bowl the doosra without bending the arm." In 2004 at the R Premadasa Stadium in Colombo, Muralitharan voluntarily performed a series of tests with live video cameras. Michael Slater and Ravi Shastri witnessed it all unfold. Muralitharan once again showed he could bowl all his deliveries including the doosra with an arm brace that prevents any straightening of his elbow. Orthopediatrician Dr Mandeep Dillon stated that Muralitharan's unusual ability to generate extra movement both at the shoulder as well the wrist enables him to bowl the doosra without straightening the elbow. Critics and converts. Two vocal critics of Muralitharan's action have been former test cricketers, Australian Dean Jones and Bishan Bedi, the former Indian captain. Dean Jones later admitted to being wrong in his assessment of Murali when he witnessed first hand Murali bowling with an arm-brace on. Michael Holding, the former West Indian fast bowler was also a critic of Muralitharan, but withdrew his criticisms under the light of the tests carried out. Holding had been quoted as being in "110% agreement" with Bedi, who likened Murali's action to a "javelin throw" and more recently, compared to a "shot putter". Following the ICC study, as a member of the panel that conducted the study, Holding stated, "The scientific evidence is overwhelming ... When bowlers who to the naked eye look to have pure actions are thoroughly analysed with the sophisticated technology now in place, they are likely to be shown as straightening their arm by 11 and in some cases 12 degrees. Under a strict interpretation of the Law, these players are breaking the rules. The game needs to deal with this reality and make its judgment as to how it accommodates this fact." In May 2002, Adam Gilchrist, speaking at a Carlton (Australian) Football Club luncheon, claimed Muralitharan's action does not comply with the laws of cricket. The Melbourne-based Age newspaper quoted Gilchrist as saying."Yeah, I think he does (chuck), and I say that because, if you read the laws of the game, there's no doubt in my mind that he and many others, throughout cricket history have." These comments were made before the doosra controversy, in spite of Muralitharan's action having been cleared by ICC in both 1996 and 1999. For his comment Gilchrist was reprimanded by the Australian Cricket Board (ACB) and found guilty of being in breach of ACB rules concerned with "detrimental public comment". During the 2006 tour of New Zealand another Muralitharan critic, former New Zealand captain and cricket commentator Martin Crowe, called for Muralitharan's doosra to be monitored more closely, asserting that his action seemed to deteriorate during a match. Earlier that year when delivering the Cowdrey lecture at Lords Martin Crowe had demanded zero tolerance instead of 15 degrees for throwing and specifically branded Muttiah Muralitharan a chucker. In response to Crowe's criticism ICC general manager Dave Richardson stated that the scientific evidence presented by biomechanists Professor Bruce Elliot, Dr Paul Hurrion and Mr Marc Portuswith was overwhelming and clarified that "Some bowlers, even those not suspected of having flawed actions, were found likely to be straightening their arms by 11 or 12 degrees. And at the same time, some bowlers that may appear to be throwing may be hyper-extending or bowl with permanently bent elbows. Under a strict interpretation of the law, they were breaking the rules – but if we ruled out every bowler that did that then there would be no bowlers left." Scientific research on bowling actions. Since 1999 there has been a number of scientific research publications discussing Muralitharan's bowling action as well the need for defining the legality of a bowling action using biomechanical concepts. This research directly contributed towards the official acceptance of Muralitharan's bowling action and convinced the ICC to redefine the bowling laws in cricket. The key publications are listed below: Philanthropy. Muralitharan, along with his manager Kushil Gunasekara, established the charitable organisation Foundation of Goodness in the early 2000s. The organisation is committed to the wellbeing of the Seenigama region (in southern Sri Lanka) and supports local communities through a range of projects across areas including children's needs, education and training, health care and psycho-social support, housing, livelihoods, sport and the environment. Murali's Seenigama project raised funds from cricketers and administrators in England and Australia. Canadian pop-star Bryan Adams donated a swimming pool. Muralitharan also planned to build a second sports complex for war-displaced civilians in Mankulam, a town located 300 kilometers from north of Colombo. The two-year one million dollar project aims to build a sports center, a school, English and IT training centers and an Elders' home. While the Sports Complex remains the main project, Foundation of Goodness also plans to help educate children, youth and adults. English cricketer Sir Ian Botham visited Mankulam with Muralitharan, and later addressing the media in Colombo on 27 March 2011 said that he will consider a walk from Point Pedro (the extreme northern tip of Sri Lanka) to Dondra Head (the extreme southern tip of Sri Lanka) to raise funds for the project. In June 2004, Muralitharan also joined the United Nations World Food Program as an ambassador to fight hunger among school children. When the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake devastated Sri Lanka on 2004, Muralitharan contributed to the relief programs. He himself narrowly escaped death, arriving 20 minutes late at Seenigama, where he was to give away prizes at one of the charity projects he worked on. While international agencies were bringing food in by air, Muralitharan paid for and organised three convoys of ten trucks each to get assist in the distribution. He persuaded those who could to donate clothes, and supervised the delivery himself. During the rehabilitation efforts in the tsunami's aftermath, cement was in short supply. Muralitharan promptly signed an endorsement deal with Lafarge, a global cement giant, that was a straight barter, where cement would be supplied to the Foundation for Goodness in exchange for work Muralitharan did. During the first three years since the tsunami, the foundation raised more than US$ to help survivors, and has built homes, schools, sports facilities and computer centres. Other work. On 1 August 2015, Muralitharan and fellow Sri Lankan cricketer Tillakaratne Dilshan were appointed by President of Sri Lanka Maithripala Sirisena as the Brand Ambassadors for the Presidential Task Force to combat kidney disease. In popular culture. In July 2019, it was announced that a biopic would be made in Tamil titled "800" with actor Vijay Sethupathi portraying Muralitharan. The film was set to be produced by actor Rana Daggubati under his banner Suresh Productions with MS Sripathy director. However the filming was put on hold due to various reasons such as political opposition. On 8 October 2020, the filmmakers announced that the biopic film tentatively titled as "800" would be proceeded as planned and also revealed that first look poster of the film would be released sooner along with the details of cast and crew members. Sethupathi received widespread criticism and backlash in the social media for portraying the role of former Sri Lankan veteran cricketer Muttiah Muralitharan in the biopic flick. Netizens also claimed that Muralitharan himself is a pro Rajapaksa supporter and requested Sethupathi to leave the filming. In addition, politicians from Tamil Nadu also cautioned that a Tamil actor shouldn't play the role of a Sri Lankan recalling the claims of genocide massacre of over two lakhs Sri Lankan Tamils during the final stage of the Sri Lankan Civil War. Dravidian outfit in Coimbaitore also urged Vijay Sethupathi to drop out from the project insisting that Muralitharan supported Sinhalese during the Sri Lankan Civil War. #Shame on Vijay Sethupathi hashtag was trending on the social media on 13 October 2020 soon after the motion poster release of the film which was released via Star Sports prior to the group stage match between Chennai Super Kings and Sunrisers Hyderabad during the 2020 Indian Premier League. Muralitharan denied the allegations regarding supporting the killing of innocent civilians during the civil war and insisted that the war should not be glorified. Due to the political upheavals regarding the film, Muralitharan himself urged Sethupathi to opt out of the project and the film project did not materialise. On 17 April 2023, coinciding with the birthday of Muralitharan, the first look poster of the biopic titled "800" was released with Madhur Mittal replacing Sethupathi. The film produced by Movie Train Motion Pictures, is filmed across Sri Lanka, Chennai, Cochin, England, and Australia.