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+Snakes are elongated, legless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes.[2] Like all other squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joints than their lizard ancestors, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads with their highly mobile jaws. To accommodate their narrow bodies, snakes' paired organs (such as kidneys) appear one in front of the other instead of side by side, and most have only one functional lung. Some species retain a pelvic girdle with a pair of vestigial claws on either side of the cloaca. Lizards have evolved elongate bodies without limbs or with greatly reduced limbs about twenty-five times independently via convergent evolution, leading to many lineages of legless lizards.[3]  Legless lizards resemble snakes, but several common groups of legless lizards have eyelids and external ears, which snakes lack, although this rule is not universal (see Amphisbaenia, Dibamidae, and Pygopodidae).
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+Living snakes are found on every continent except Antarctica, and on most smaller land masses; exceptions include some large islands, such as Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, the Hawaiian archipelago, and the islands of New Zealand, and many small islands of the Atlantic and central Pacific oceans.[4] Additionally, sea snakes are widespread throughout the Indian and Pacific Oceans. More than 20 families are currently recognized, comprising about 520 genera and about 3,600 species.[5][6] They range in size from the tiny, 10.4 cm (4.1 in)-long Barbados thread snake[7] to the reticulated python of 6.95 meters (22.8 ft) in length.[8] The fossil species Titanoboa cerrejonensis was 12.8 meters (42 ft) long.[9] Snakes are thought to have evolved from either burrowing or aquatic lizards, perhaps during the Jurassic period, with the earliest known fossils dating to between 143 and 167 Ma ago.[10] The diversity of modern snakes appeared during the Paleocene epoch (c 66 to 56 Ma ago, after the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event). The oldest preserved descriptions of snakes can be found in the Brooklyn Papyrus.
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+Most species are nonvenomous and those that have venom use it primarily to kill and subdue prey rather than for self-defense. Some possess venom potent enough to cause painful injury or death to humans. Nonvenomous snakes either swallow prey alive or kill by constriction.
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+The English word snake comes from Old English snaca, itself from Proto-Germanic *snak-an- (cf. Germanic Schnake "ring snake", Swedish snok "grass snake"), from Proto-Indo-European root *(s)nēg-o- "to crawl", "to creep", which also gave sneak as well as Sanskrit nāgá "snake".[11] The word ousted adder, as adder went on to narrow in meaning, though in Old English næddre was the general word for snake.[12] The other term, serpent, is from French, ultimately from Indo-European *serp- (to creep),[13] which also gave Ancient Greek hérpō (ἕρπω) "I crawl".
+
+Leptotyphlopidae
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+Anomalepididae
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+Typhlopidae
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+Anilius
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+Tropidophiidae
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+Uropeltidae
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+Anomochilus
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+Cylindrophis
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+Pythonidae
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+Xenopeltis
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+Loxocemus
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+Acrochordidae
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+Xenodermidae
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+Pareidae
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+Viperidae
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+Homalopsidae
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+Lamprophiidae
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+Elapidae
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+Colubridae
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+Boidae
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+Erycinae
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+Calabaria
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+Ungaliophiinae
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+Sanzinia
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+Candoia
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+The fossil record of snakes is relatively poor because snake skeletons are typically small and fragile making fossilization uncommon. Fossils readily identifiable as snakes (though often retaining hind limbs) first appear in the fossil record during the Cretaceous period.[15] The earliest known true snake fossils (members of the crown group Serpentes) come from the marine simoliophiids, the oldest of which is the Late Cretaceous (Cenomanian age) Haasiophis terrasanctus,[1] dated to between 112 and 94 million years old.[16]
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+Based on comparative anatomy, there is consensus that snakes descended from lizards.[17]:11[18] Pythons and boas—primitive groups among modern snakes—have vestigial hind limbs: tiny, clawed digits known as anal spurs, which are used to grasp during mating.[17]:11[19] The families Leptotyphlopidae and Typhlopidae also possess remnants of the pelvic girdle, appearing as horny projections when visible.
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+Front limbs are nonexistent in all known snakes. This is caused by the evolution of their Hox genes, controlling limb morphogenesis. The axial skeleton of the snakes’ common ancestor, like most other tetrapods, had regional specializations consisting of cervical (neck), thoracic (chest), lumbar (lower back), sacral (pelvic), and caudal (tail) vertebrae. Early in snake evolution, the Hox gene expression in the axial skeleton responsible for the development of the thorax became dominant. As a result, the vertebrae anterior to the hindlimb buds (when present) all have the same thoracic-like identity (except from the atlas, axis, and 1–3 neck vertebrae). In other words, most of a snake's skeleton is an extremely extended thorax. Ribs are found exclusively on the thoracic vertebrae. Neck, lumbar and pelvic vertebrae are very reduced in number (only 2–10 lumbar and pelvic vertebrae are present), while only a short tail remains of the caudal vertebrae. However, the tail is still long enough to be of important use in many species, and is modified in some aquatic and tree-dwelling species.
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+Many modern snake groups originated during the Paleocene, alongside the adaptive radiation of mammals following the extinction of (non-avian) dinosaurs. The expansion of grasslands in North America also led to an explosive radiation among snakes.[20]  Previously, snakes were a minor component of the North American fauna, but during the Miocene, the number of species and their prevalence increased dramatically with the first appearances of vipers and elapids in North America and the significant diversification of Colubridae (including the origin of many modern genera such as Nerodia, Lampropeltis, Pituophis, and Pantherophis).[20]
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+There is fossil evidence to suggest that snakes may have evolved from burrowing lizards, such as the varanids (or a similar group) during the Cretaceous Period.[21] An early fossil snake relative, Najash rionegrina, was a two-legged burrowing animal with a sacrum, and was fully terrestrial.[22] One extant analog of these putative ancestors is the earless monitor Lanthanotus of Borneo (though it also is semiaquatic).[23] Subterranean species evolved bodies streamlined for burrowing, and eventually lost their limbs.[23] According to this hypothesis, features such as the transparent, fused eyelids (brille) and loss of external ears evolved to cope with fossorial difficulties, such as scratched corneas and dirt in the ears.[21][23] Some primitive snakes are known to have possessed hindlimbs, but their pelvic bones lacked a direct connection to the vertebrae. These include fossil species like Haasiophis, Pachyrhachis and Eupodophis, which are slightly older than Najash.[19]
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+This hypothesis was strengthened in 2015 by the discovery of a 113m year-old fossil of a four-legged snake in Brazil that has been named Tetrapodophis amplectus. It has many snake-like features, is adapted for burrowing and its stomach indicates that it was preying on other animals.[24] It is currently uncertain if Tetrapodophis is a snake or another species, in the squamate order, as a snake-like body has independently evolved at least 26 times. Tetrapodophis does not have distinctive snake features in its spine and skull.[25][26]
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+An alternative hypothesis, based on morphology, suggests the ancestors of snakes were related to mosasaurs—extinct aquatic reptiles from the Cretaceous—which in turn are thought to have derived from varanid lizards.[18] According to this hypothesis, the fused, transparent eyelids of snakes are thought to have evolved to combat marine conditions (corneal water loss through osmosis), and the external ears were lost through disuse in an aquatic environment. This ultimately led to an animal similar to today's sea snakes. In the Late Cretaceous, snakes recolonized land, and continued to diversify into today's snakes. Fossilized snake remains are known from early Late Cretaceous marine sediments, which is consistent with this hypothesis; particularly so, as they are older than the terrestrial Najash rionegrina. Similar skull structure, reduced or absent limbs, and other anatomical features found in both mosasaurs and snakes lead to a positive cladistical correlation, although some of these features are shared with varanids.[citation needed]
+
+Tetrapodophis
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+Pachyrhachis
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+Eupodophis descouensi
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+Eupodophis descouensi hind leg
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+Genetic studies in recent years have indicated snakes are not as closely related to monitor lizards as was once believed—and therefore not to mosasaurs, the proposed ancestor in the aquatic scenario of their evolution. However, more evidence links mosasaurs to snakes than to varanids. Fragmented remains found from the Jurassic and Early Cretaceous indicate deeper fossil records for these groups, which may potentially refute either hypothesis.[27][28]
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+In 2016 two studies reported that limb loss in snakes is associated with DNA mutations in the Zone of Polarizing Activity Regulatory Sequence (ZRS), a regulatory region of the sonic hedgehog gene which is critically required for limb development. More advanced snakes have no remnants of limbs, but basal snakes such as pythons and boas do have traces of highly reduced, vestigial hind limbs. Python embryos even have fully developed hind limb buds, but their later development is stopped by the DNA mutations in the ZRS.[29][30][31][32]
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+There are over 2,900 species of snakes ranging as far northward as the Arctic Circle in Scandinavia and southward through Australia.[18] Snakes can be found on every continent except Antarctica, in the sea, and as high as 16,000 feet (4,900 m) in the Himalayan Mountains of Asia.[18][33]:143 There are numerous islands from which snakes are absent, such as Ireland, Iceland, and New Zealand[4][33] (although New Zealand's waters are infrequently visited by the yellow-bellied sea snake and the banded sea krait).[34]
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+All modern snakes are grouped within the suborder Serpentes in Linnean taxonomy, part of the order Squamata, though their precise placement within squamates remains controversial.[5]
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+The two infraorders of Serpentes are: Alethinophidia and Scolecophidia.[5] This separation is based on morphological characteristics and mitochondrial DNA sequence similarity. Alethinophidia is sometimes split into Henophidia and Caenophidia, with the latter consisting of "colubroid" snakes (colubrids, vipers, elapids, hydrophiids, and atractaspids) and acrochordids, while the other alethinophidian families comprise Henophidia.[35] While not extant today, the Madtsoiidae, a family of giant, primitive, python-like snakes, was around until 50,000 years ago in Australia, represented by genera such as Wonambi.
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+There are numerous debates in the systematics within the group. For instance, many sources classify Boidae and Pythonidae as one family, while some keep the Elapidae and Hydrophiidae (sea snakes) separate for practical reasons despite their extremely close relation.
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+Recent molecular studies support the monophyly of the clades of modern snakes, scolecophidians, typhlopids + anomalepidids, alethinophidians, core alethinophidians, uropeltids (Cylindrophis, Anomochilus, uropeltines), macrostomatans, booids, boids, pythonids and caenophidians.[14]
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+
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+While snakes are limbless reptiles, which evolved from (and are grouped with) lizards, there are many other species of lizards which have lost their limbs independently and superficially look similar to snakes. These include the slowworm and glass snake.
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+Other serpentine tetrapods unrelated to snakes include caecilians (amphibians), amphisbaenians (near-lizard squamates), and the extinct aistopods (amphibians).
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+The now extinct Titanoboa cerrejonensis snakes were 12.8 m (42 ft) in length.[9] By comparison, the largest extant snakes are the reticulated python, which measures about 6.95 m (22.8 ft) long,[8] and the green anaconda, which measures about 5.21 m (17.1 ft) long and is considered the heaviest snake on Earth at 97.5 kg (215 lb).[39]
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+At the other end of the scale, the smallest extant snake is Leptotyphlops carlae, with a length of about 10.4 cm (4.1 in).[7] Most snakes are fairly small animals, approximately 1 m (3.3 ft) in length.[40]
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+Pit vipers, pythons, and some boas have infrared-sensitive receptors in deep grooves on the snout, which allow them to "see" the radiated heat of warm-blooded prey. In pit vipers, the grooves are located between the nostril and the eye in a large "pit" on each side of the head. Other infrared-sensitive snakes have multiple, smaller labial pits lining the upper lip, just below the nostrils.[41]
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+Snakes use smell to track their prey. They smell by using their forked tongues to collect airborne particles, then passing them to the vomeronasal organ or Jacobson's organ in the mouth for examination.[41] The fork in the tongue gives snakes a sort of directional sense of smell and taste simultaneously.[41] They keep their tongues constantly in motion, sampling particles from the air, ground, and water, analyzing the chemicals found, and determining the presence of prey or predators in the local environment. In water-dwelling snakes, such as the anaconda, the tongue functions efficiently underwater.[41]
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+The underside is very sensitive to vibration. This allows snakes to be able to sense approaching animals by detecting faint vibrations in the ground.[41]
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+Snake vision varies greatly, from only being able to distinguish light from dark to keen eyesight, but the main trend is that their vision is adequate although not sharp, and allows them to track movements.[42] Generally, vision is best in arboreal snakes and weakest in burrowing snakes. Some snakes, such as the Asian vine snake (genus Ahaetulla), have binocular vision, with both eyes capable of focusing on the same point. Most snakes focus by moving the lens back and forth in relation to the retina, while in the other amniote groups, the lens is stretched. Many nocturnal snakes have slit pupils while diurnal snakes have round pupils. Most species possess three visual pigments and are probably able to see two primary colors in daylight. It's concluded that the last common ancestors of all snakes had UV-sensitive vision, but that most snakes that depends on their eyesight to hunt in daylight have evolved lenses that act as sunglasses which filters out UV-light, and probably also sharpens their vision by improving the contrasts.[43]
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+The skin of a snake is covered in scales. Contrary to the popular notion of snakes being slimy because of possible confusion of snakes with worms, snakeskin has a smooth, dry texture. Most snakes use specialized belly scales to travel, gripping surfaces. The body scales may be smooth, keeled, or granular. The eyelids of a snake are transparent "spectacle" scales, which remain permanently closed, also known as brille.
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+The shedding of scales is called ecdysis (or in normal usage, molting or sloughing). In the case of snakes, the complete outer layer of skin is shed in one layer.[44] Snake scales are not discrete, but extensions of the epidermis—hence they are not shed separately but as a complete outer layer during each molt, akin to a sock being turned inside out.[45]
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+Snakes have a wide diversity of skin coloration patterns. These patterns are often related to behavior, such as a tendency to have to flee from predators. Snakes that are plain or have longitudinal stripes often have to escape from predators, with the pattern (or lack thereof) not providing reference points to predators, thus allowing the snake to escape without being notice. Plain snakes usually adopt active hunting strategies, as their pattern allows them to send little information to prey about motion. Blotched snakes, on the other hand, usually use ambush-based strategies, likely because it helps them blend into an environment with irregularly shaped objects, like sticks or rocks. Spotted patterning can similarly help snakes to blend into their environment.[46]
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+The shape and number of scales on the head, back, and belly are often characteristic and used for taxonomic purposes. Scales are named mainly according to their positions on the body. In "advanced" (Caenophidian) snakes, the broad belly scales and rows of dorsal scales correspond to the vertebrae, allowing scientists to count the vertebrae without dissection.
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+Molting, or ecdysis, serves a number of functions. Firstly, the old and worn skin is replaced; secondly, it helps get rid of parasites such as mites and ticks. Renewal of the skin by molting is supposed to allow growth in some animals such as insects; however, this has been disputed in the case of snakes.[45][47]
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+Molting occurs periodically throughout the snake's life. Before a molt, the snake stops eating and often hides or moves to a safe place. Just before shedding, the skin becomes dull and dry looking and the eyes become cloudy or blue-colored. The inner surface of the old skin liquefies. This causes the old skin to separate from the new skin beneath it. After a few days, the eyes clear and the snake "crawls" out of its old skin. The old skin breaks near the mouth and the snake wriggles out, aided by rubbing against rough surfaces. In many cases, the cast skin peels backward over the body from head to tail in one piece, like pulling a sock off inside-out. A new, larger, brighter layer of skin has formed underneath.[45][48]
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+An older snake may shed its skin only once or twice a year. But a younger snake, still growing, may shed up to four times a year.[48] The discarded skin gives a perfect imprint of the scale pattern, and it is usually possible to identify the snake if the discarded skin is reasonably intact.[45] This periodic renewal has led to the snake being a symbol of healing and medicine, as pictured in the Rod of Asclepius.[49]
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+Scale counts can sometimes be used to tell the sex of a snake when the species is not distinctly sexually dimorphic. A probe is inserted into the cloaca until it can go no further. The probe is marked at the point where it stops, removed, and compared to the subcaudal depth by laying it alongside the scales.[50] The scalation count determines whether the snake is a male or female as hemipenes of a male will probe to a different depth (usually longer) than the cloaca of a female.[50][clarification needed]
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+The skeleton of most snakes consists solely of the skull, hyoid, vertebral column, and ribs, though henophidian snakes retain vestiges of the pelvis and rear limbs.
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+The skull of the snake consists of a solid and complete neurocranium, to which many of the other bones are only loosely attached, particularly the highly mobile jaw bones, which facilitate manipulation and ingestion of large prey items. The left and right sides of the lower jaw are joined only by a flexible ligament at the anterior tips, allowing them to separate widely, while the posterior end of the lower jaw bones articulate with a quadrate bone, allowing further mobility. The bones of the mandible and quadrate bones can also pick up ground borne vibrations.[51]  Because the sides of the jaw can move independently of one another, snakes resting their jaws on a surface have sensitive stereo hearing which can detect the position of prey. The jaw-quadrate-stapes pathway is capable of detecting vibrations on the angstrom scale, despite the absence of an outer ear and the ossicle mechanism of impedance matching used in other vertebrates to receive vibrations from the air.[52][53]
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+The hyoid is a small bone located posterior and ventral to the skull, in the 'neck' region, which serves as an attachment for muscles of the snake's tongue, as it does in all other tetrapods.
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+The vertebral column consists of anywhere between 200 and 400 (or more) vertebrae. Tail vertebrae are comparatively few in number (often less than 20% of the total) and lack ribs, while body vertebrae each have two ribs articulating with them. The vertebrae have projections that allow for strong muscle attachment enabling locomotion without limbs.
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+Autotomy of the tail, a feature found in some lizards is absent in most snakes.[54] Caudal autotomy in snakes is rare and is intervertebral, unlike that in lizards, which is intravertebral—that is, the break happens along a predefined fracture plane present on a vertebra.[55][56]
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+In some snakes, most notably boas and pythons, there are vestiges of the hindlimbs in the form of a pair of pelvic spurs. These small, claw-like protrusions on each side of the cloaca are the external portion of the vestigial hindlimb skeleton, which includes the remains of an ilium and femur.
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+Snakes are polyphyodonts with teeth that are continuously replaced.[57]
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+Snake's and other reptiles have a three-chambered heart that controls the circulatory system via the left and right atrium, and one ventricle.[58] Internally, the ventricle is divided into three interconnected cavities which include the cavum arteriosum, the cavum pulmonale, and the cavum venosum.[59] The cavum venosum receives deoxygenated blood from the right atrium while the cavum arteriosum receives oxygenated blood directly from the left atrium. Located beneath the cavum venosum is the cavum pulmonale, which pumps blood to the pulmonary trunk.[60]
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+The snake's heart is encased in a sac, called the pericardium, located at the bifurcation of the bronchi. The heart is able to move around, however, owing to the lack of a diaphragm. This adjustment protects the heart from potential damage when large ingested prey is passed through the esophagus. The spleen is attached to the gall bladder and pancreas and filters the blood. The thymus is located in fatty tissue above the heart and is responsible for the generation of immune cells in the blood. The cardiovascular system of snakes is also unique for the presence of a renal portal system in which the blood from the snake's tail passes through the kidneys before returning to the heart.[61]
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+The vestigial left lung is often small or sometimes even absent, as snakes' tubular bodies require all of their organs to be long and thin.[61] In the majority of species, only one lung is functional. This lung contains a vascularized anterior portion and a posterior portion that does not function in gas exchange.[61] This 'saccular lung' is used for hydrostatic purposes to adjust buoyancy in some aquatic snakes and its function remains unknown in terrestrial species.[61] Many organs that are paired, such as kidneys or reproductive organs, are staggered within the body, with one located ahead of the other.[61]
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+Snakes have no lymph nodes.[61]
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+Cobras, vipers, and closely related species use venom to immobilize, injure or kill their prey. The venom is modified saliva, delivered through fangs.[17]:243 The fangs of 'advanced' venomous snakes like viperids and elapids are hollow to inject venom more effectively, while the fangs of rear-fanged snakes such as the boomslang merely have a groove on the posterior edge to channel venom into the wound. Snake venoms are often prey specific—their role in self-defense is secondary.[17]:243
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+Venom, like all salivary secretions, is a predigestant that initiates the breakdown of food into soluble compounds, facilitating proper digestion. Even nonvenomous snake bites (like any animal bite) will cause tissue damage.[17]:209
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+Certain birds, mammals, and other snakes (such as kingsnakes) that prey on venomous snakes have developed resistance and even immunity to certain venoms.[17]:243 Venomous snakes include three families of snakes, and do not constitute a formal classification group used in taxonomy.
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+The colloquial term "poisonous snake" is generally an incorrect label for snakes. A poison is inhaled or ingested, whereas venom produced by snakes is injected into its victim via fangs.[62] There are, however, two exceptions: Rhabdophis sequesters toxins from the toads it eats, then secretes them from nuchal glands to ward off predators, and a small unusual population of garter snakes in the U.S. state of Oregon retains enough toxins in their livers from the newts they eat to be effectively poisonous to small local predators (such as crows and foxes).[63]
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+Snake venoms are complex mixtures of proteins, and are stored in venom glands at the back of the head.[63] In all venomous snakes, these glands open through ducts into grooved or hollow teeth in the upper jaw.[17]:243[62] These proteins can potentially be a mix of neurotoxins (which attack the nervous system), hemotoxins (which attack the circulatory system), cytotoxins, bungarotoxins and many other toxins that affect the body in different ways.[62] Almost all snake venom contains hyaluronidase, an enzyme that ensures rapid diffusion of the venom.[17]:243
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+Venomous snakes that use hemotoxins usually have fangs in the front of their mouths, making it easier for them to inject the venom into their victims.[62] Some snakes that use neurotoxins (such as the mangrove snake) have fangs in the back of their mouths, with the fangs curled backwards.[64] This makes it difficult both for the snake to use its venom and for scientists to milk them.[62] Elapids, however, such as cobras and kraits are proteroglyphous—they possess hollow fangs that cannot be erected toward the front of their mouths, and cannot "stab" like a viper. They must actually bite the victim.[17]:242
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+It has recently been suggested that all snakes may be venomous to a certain degree, with harmless snakes having weak venom and no fangs.[65] Most snakes currently labelled "nonvenomous" would still be considered harmless according to this theory, as they either lack a venom delivery method or are incapable of delivering enough to endanger a human. This theory postulates that snakes may have evolved from a common lizard ancestor that was venomous—and that venomous lizards like the gila monster, beaded lizard, monitor lizards, and the now-extinct mosasaurs may also have derived from it. They share this venom clade with various other saurian species.
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+Venomous snakes are classified in two taxonomic families:
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+There is a third family containing the opistoglyphous (rear-fanged) snakes (as well as the majority of other snake species):
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+Although a wide range of reproductive modes are used by snakes, all snakes employ internal fertilization. This is accomplished by means of paired, forked hemipenes, which are stored, inverted, in the male's tail.[66] The hemipenes are often grooved, hooked, or spined in order to grip the walls of the female's cloaca.[67][66]
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+Most species of snakes lay eggs which they abandon shortly after laying. However, a few species (such as the king cobra) actually construct nests and stay in the vicinity of the hatchlings after incubation.[66] Most pythons coil around their egg-clutches and remain with them until they hatch.[68] A female python will not leave the eggs, except to occasionally bask in the sun or drink water. She will even "shiver" to generate heat to incubate the eggs.[68]
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+Some species of snake are ovoviviparous and retain the eggs within their bodies until they are almost ready to hatch.[69][70] Recently, it has been confirmed that several species of snake are fully viviparous, such as the boa constrictor and green anaconda, nourishing their young through a placenta as well as a yolk sac, which is highly unusual among reptiles, or anything else outside of requiem sharks or placental mammals.[69][70] Retention of eggs and live birth are most often associated with colder environments.[66][70]
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+Sexual selection in snakes is demonstrated by the 3,000 species that each use different tactics in acquiring mates.[71] Ritual combat between males for the females they want to mate with includes topping, a behavior exhibited by most viperids in which one male will twist around the vertically elevated fore body of its opponent and forcing it downward. It is common for neck biting to occur while the snakes are entwined.[72]
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+Parthenogenesis is a natural form of reproduction in which growth and development of embryos occur without fertilization. Agkistrodon contortrix (copperhead) and Agkistrodon piscivorus (cotton mouth) can reproduce by facultative parthenogenesis. That is, they are capable of switching from a sexual mode of reproduction to an asexual mode.[73] The type of parthenogenesis that likely occurs is automixis with terminal fusion, a process in which two terminal products from the same meiosis fuse to form a diploid zygote. This process leads to genome wide homozygosity, expression of deleterious recessive alleles and often to developmental abnormalities. Both captive-born and wild-born A. contortrix and A. piscivorus appear to be capable of this form of parthenogenesis.[73]
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+Reproduction in squamate reptiles is almost exclusively sexual. Males ordinarily have a ZZ pair of sex determining chromosomes, and females a ZW pair. However, the Colombian Rainbow boa (Epicrates maurus) can also reproduce by facultative parthenogenesis resulting in production of WW female progeny.[74] The WW females are likely produced by terminal automixis.
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+In regions where winters are colder than snakes can tolerate while remaining active, local species will brumate. Unlike hibernation, in which mammals are actually asleep, brumating reptiles are awake but inactive. Individual snakes may brumate in burrows, under rock piles, or inside fallen trees, or snakes may aggregate in large numbers at hibernacula.
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+All snakes are strictly carnivorous, eating small animals including lizards, frogs, other snakes, small mammals, birds, eggs, fish, snails, worms or insects.[17][3][18][75] Because snakes cannot bite or tear their food to pieces, they must swallow prey whole. The body size of a snake has a major influence on its eating habits. Smaller snakes eat smaller prey. Juvenile pythons might start out feeding on lizards or mice and graduate to small deer or antelope as an adult, for example.
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+The snake's jaw is a complex structure. Contrary to the popular belief that snakes can dislocate their jaws, snakes have a very flexible lower jaw, the two halves of which are not rigidly attached, and numerous other joints in their skull (see snake skull), allowing them to open their mouths wide enough to swallow their prey whole, even if it is larger in diameter than the snake itself.[75] For example, the African egg-eating snake has flexible jaws adapted for eating eggs much larger than the diameter of its head.[17]:81 This snake has no teeth, but does have bony protrusions on the inside edge of its spine, which it uses to break shells when it eats eggs.[17]:81
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+While the majority of snakes eat a variety of prey animals, there is some specialization by some species. King cobras and the Australian bandy-bandy consume other snakes. Snakes of the family Pareidae have more teeth on the right side of their mouths than on the left, as the shells of their prey usually spiral clockwise.[17]:184[76][77]
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+Some snakes have a venomous bite, which they use to kill their prey before eating it.[75][78] Other snakes kill their prey by constriction.[75] Still others swallow their prey whole and alive.[17]:81[75]
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+After eating, snakes become dormant while the process of digestion takes place.[50] Digestion is an intense activity, especially after consumption of large prey. In species that feed only sporadically, the entire intestine enters a reduced state between meals to conserve energy. The digestive system is then 'up-regulated' to full capacity within 48 hours of prey consumption. Being ectothermic ("cold-blooded"), the surrounding temperature plays a large role in snake digestion. The ideal temperature for snakes to digest is 30 °C (86 °F). So much metabolic energy is involved in a snake's digestion that in the South American rattlesnake (Crotalus durissus), surface body temperature increases by as much as 1.2 °C (2.2 °F) during the digestive process.[79] Because of this, a snake disturbed after having eaten recently will often regurgitate its prey to be able to escape the perceived threat. When undisturbed, the digestive process is highly efficient, with the snake's digestive enzymes dissolving and absorbing everything but the prey's hair (or feathers) and claws, which are excreted along with waste.
+
+The lack of limbs does not impede the movement of snakes. They have developed several different modes of locomotion to deal with particular environments. Unlike the gaits of limbed animals, which form a continuum, each mode of snake locomotion is discrete and distinct from the others; transitions between modes are abrupt.[80][81]
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+Lateral undulation is the sole mode of aquatic locomotion, and the most common mode of terrestrial locomotion.[81] In this mode, the body of the snake alternately flexes to the left and right, resulting in a series of rearward-moving "waves".[80] While this movement appears rapid, snakes have rarely been documented moving faster than two body-lengths per second, often much less.[82] This mode of movement has the same net cost of transport (calories burned per meter moved) as running in lizards of the same mass.[83]
+
+Terrestrial lateral undulation is the most common mode of terrestrial locomotion for most snake species.[80] In this mode, the posteriorly moving waves push against contact points in the environment, such as rocks, twigs, irregularities in the soil, etc.[80] Each of these environmental objects, in turn, generates a reaction force directed forward and towards the midline of the snake, resulting in forward thrust while the lateral components cancel out.[84] The speed of this movement depends upon the density of push-points in the environment, with a medium density of about 8[clarification needed] along the snake's length being ideal.[82] The wave speed is precisely the same as the snake speed, and as a result, every point on the snake's body follows the path of the point ahead of it, allowing snakes to move through very dense vegetation and small openings.[84]
+
+When swimming, the waves become larger as they move down the snake's body, and the wave travels backwards faster than the snake moves forwards.[85] Thrust is generated by pushing their body against the water, resulting in the observed slip. In spite of overall similarities, studies show that the pattern of muscle activation is different in aquatic versus terrestrial lateral undulation, which justifies calling them separate modes.[86] All snakes can laterally undulate forward (with backward-moving waves), but only sea snakes have been observed reversing the motion (moving backwards with forward-moving waves).[80]
+
+Most often employed by colubroid snakes (colubrids, elapids, and vipers) when the snake must move in an environment that lacks irregularities to push against (rendering lateral undulation impossible), such as a slick mud flat, or a sand dune, sidewinding is a modified form of lateral undulation in which all of the body segments oriented in one direction remain in contact with the ground, while the other segments are lifted up, resulting in a peculiar "rolling" motion.[87][88] This mode of locomotion overcomes the slippery nature of sand or mud by pushing off with only static portions on the body, thereby minimizing slipping.[87] The static nature of the contact points can be shown from the tracks of a sidewinding snake, which show each belly scale imprint, without any smearing. This mode of locomotion has very low caloric cost, less than ⅓ of the cost for a lizard to move the same distance.[83] Contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence that sidewinding is associated with the sand being hot.[87]
+
+When push-points are absent, but there is not enough space to use sidewinding because of lateral constraints, such as in tunnels, snakes rely on concertina locomotion.[80][88] In this mode, the snake braces the posterior portion of its body against the tunnel wall while the front of the snake extends and straightens.[87] The front portion then flexes and forms an anchor point, and the posterior is straightened and pulled forwards. This mode of locomotion is slow and very demanding, up to seven times the cost of laterally undulating over the same distance.[83] This high cost is due to the repeated stops and starts of portions of the body as well as the necessity of using active muscular effort to brace against the tunnel walls.
+
+The movement of snakes in arboreal habitats has only recently been studied.[89] While on tree branches, snakes use several modes of locomotion depending on species and bark texture.[89] In general, snakes will use a modified form of concertina locomotion on smooth branches, but will laterally undulate if contact points are available.[89] Snakes move faster on small branches and when contact points are present, in contrast to limbed animals, which do better on large branches with little 'clutter'.[89]
+
+Gliding snakes (Chrysopelea) of Southeast Asia launch themselves from branch tips, spreading their ribs and laterally undulating as they glide between trees.[87][90][91] These snakes can perform a controlled glide for hundreds of feet depending upon launch altitude and can even turn in midair.[87][90]
+
+The slowest mode of snake locomotion is rectilinear locomotion, which is also the only one where the snake does not need to bend its body laterally, though it may do so when turning.[92] In this mode, the belly scales are lifted and pulled forward before being placed down and the body pulled over them. Waves of movement and stasis pass posteriorly, resulting in a series of ripples in the skin.[92] The ribs of the snake do not move in this mode of locomotion and this method is most often used by large pythons, boas, and vipers when stalking prey across open ground as the snake's movements are subtle and harder to detect by their prey in this manner.[87]
+
+Snakes do not ordinarily prey on humans. Unless startled or injured, most snakes prefer to avoid contact and will not attack humans. With the exception of large constrictors, nonvenomous snakes are not a threat to humans. The bite of a nonvenomous snake is usually harmless; their teeth are not adapted for tearing or inflicting a deep puncture wound, but rather grabbing and holding. Although the possibility of infection and tissue damage is present in the bite of a nonvenomous snake, venomous snakes present far greater hazard to humans.[17]:209 The World Health Organisation (WHO) lists snakebite under the "other neglected conditions" category.[95]
+
+Documented deaths resulting from snake bites are uncommon. Nonfatal bites from venomous snakes may result in the need for amputation of a limb or part thereof. Of the roughly 725 species of venomous snakes worldwide, only 250 are able to kill a human with one bite. Australia averages only one fatal snake bite per year. In India, 250,000 snakebites are recorded in a single year, with as many as 50,000 recorded initial deaths.[96] The WHO estimates that on the order of 100 000 people die each year as a result of snake bites, and around three times as many amputations and other permanent disabilities are caused by snakebites annually.[97]
+
+The treatment for a snakebite is as variable as the bite itself. The most common and effective method is through antivenom (or antivenin), a serum made from the venom of the snake. Some antivenom is species-specific (monovalent) while some is made for use with multiple species in mind (polyvalent). In the United States for example, all species of venomous snakes are pit vipers, with the exception of the coral snake. To produce antivenom, a mixture of the venoms of the different species of rattlesnakes, copperheads, and cottonmouths is injected into the body of a horse in ever-increasing dosages until the horse is immunized. Blood is then extracted from the immunized horse. The serum is separated and further purified and freeze-dried. It is reconstituted with sterile water and becomes antivenom. For this reason, people who are allergic to horses are more likely to suffer an allergic reaction to antivenom.[98] Antivenom for the more dangerous species (such as mambas, taipans, and cobras) is made in a similar manner in India, South Africa, and Australia, although these antivenoms are species-specific.
+
+In some parts of the world, especially in India, snake charming is a roadside show performed by a charmer. In such a show, the snake charmer carries a basket that contains a snake that he seemingly charms by playing tunes from his flutelike musical instrument, to which the snake responds.[99] Snakes lack external ears, though they do have internal ears, and respond to the movement of the flute, not the actual noise.[99]
+
+The Wildlife Protection Act of 1972 in India technically proscribes snake charming on grounds of reducing animal cruelty. Other snake charmers also have a snake and mongoose show, where both the animals have a mock fight; however, this is not very common, as the snakes, as well as the mongooses, may be seriously injured or killed. Snake charming as a profession is dying out in India because of competition from modern forms of entertainment and environment laws proscribing the practice. Many Indians have never seen snake charming and it is becoming a folktale of the past.[99][100][101][102]
+
+The Irulas tribe of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu in India have been hunter-gatherers in the hot, dry plains forests, and have practiced the art of snake catching for generations. They have a vast knowledge of snakes in the field. They generally catch the snakes with the help of a simple stick. Earlier, the Irulas caught thousands of snakes for the snake-skin industry. After the complete ban of the snake-skin industry in India and protection of all snakes under the Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972, they formed the Irula Snake Catcher's Cooperative and switched to catching snakes for removal of venom, releasing them in the wild after four extractions. The venom so collected is used for producing life-saving antivenom, biomedical research and for other medicinal products.[103] The Irulas are also known to eat some of the snakes they catch and are very useful in rat extermination in the villages.
+
+Despite the existence of snake charmers, there have also been professional snake catchers or wranglers. Modern-day snake trapping involves a herpetologist using a long stick with a V- shaped end. Some television show hosts, like Bill Haast, Austin Stevens, Steve Irwin, and Jeff Corwin, prefer to catch them using bare hands.
+
+While not commonly thought of as food in most cultures, in others the consumption of snakes is acceptable, or even considered a delicacy. Snake soup of Cantonese cuisine is consumed by locals in autumn, to warm up their body. Western cultures document the consumption of snakes under extreme circumstances of hunger.[104] Cooked rattlesnake meat is an exception, which is commonly consumed in Texas[105] and parts of the Midwestern United States. In Asian countries such as China, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia, drinking the blood of snakes—particularly the cobra—is believed to increase sexual virility.[106] The blood is drained while the cobra is still alive when possible, and is usually mixed with some form of liquor to improve the taste.[106]
+
+In some Asian countries, the use of snakes in alcohol is also accepted. In such cases, the body of a snake or several snakes is left to steep in a jar or container of liquor. It is claimed that this makes the liquor stronger (as well as more expensive). One example of this is the Habu snake sometimes placed in the Okinawan liquor Habushu (ブ酒,) also known as "Habu Sake".[107]
+
+Snake wine (蛇酒) is an alcoholic beverage produced by infusing whole snakes in rice wine or grain alcohol. The drink was first recorded to have been consumed in China during the Western Zhou dynasty and considered an important curative and believed to reinvigorate a person according to traditional Chinese medicine.[108]
+
+In the Western world, some snakes (especially docile species such as the ball python and corn snake) are kept as pets. To meet this demand a captive breeding industry has developed. Snakes bred in captivity tend to make better pets and are considered preferable to wild caught specimens.[109] Snakes can be very low maintenance pets, especially compared to more traditional species. They require minimal space, as most common species do not exceed 5 feet (1.5 m) in length. Pet snakes can be fed relatively infrequently, usually once every 5 to 14 days. Certain snakes have a lifespan of more than 40 years if given proper care.
+
+In ancient Mesopotamia, Nirah, the messenger god of Ištaran, was represented as a serpent on kudurrus, or boundary stones.[110] Representations of two intertwined serpents are common in Sumerian art and Neo-Sumerian artwork[110] and still appear sporadically on cylinder seals and amulets until as late as the thirteenth century BC.[110] The horned viper (Cerastes cerastes) appears in Kassite and Neo-Assyrian kudurrus[110] and is invoked in Assyrian texts as a magical protective entity.[110] A dragon-like creature with horns, the body and neck of a snake, the forelegs of a lion, and the hind-legs of a bird appears in Mesopotamian art from the Akkadian Period until the Hellenistic Period (323 BC–31 BC).[110] This creature, known in Akkadian as the mušḫuššu, meaning "furious serpent", was used as a symbol for particular deities and also as a general protective emblem.[110] It seems to have originally been the attendant of the Underworld god Ninazu,[110] but later became the attendant to the Hurrian storm-god Tishpak, as well as, later, Ninazu's son Ningishzida, the Babylonian national god Marduk, the scribal god Nabu, and the Assyrian national god Ashur.[110]
+
+In Egyptian history, the snake occupies a primary role with the Nile cobra adorning the crown of the pharaoh in ancient times. It was worshipped as one of the gods and was also used for sinister purposes: murder of an adversary and ritual suicide (Cleopatra).[citation needed] The ouroboros was a well-known ancient Egyptian symbol of a serpent swallowing its own tail.[111] The precursor to the ouroboros was the "Many-Faced",[111] a serpent with five heads, who, according to the Amduat, the oldest surviving Book of the Afterlife, was said to coil around the corpse of the sun god Ra protectively.[111] The earliest surviving depiction of a "true" ouroboros comes from the gilded shrines in the tomb of Tutankhamun.[111] In the early centuries AD, the ouroboros was adopted as a symbol by Gnostic Christians[111] and chapter 136 of the Pistis Sophia, an early Gnostic text, describes "a great dragon whose tail is in its mouth".[111] In medieval alchemy, the ouroboros became a typical western dragon with wings, legs, and a tail.[111]
+
+In the Bible, King Nahash of Ammon, whose name means "Snake", is depicted very negatively, as a particularly cruel and despicable enemy of the ancient Hebrews.
+
+The ancient Greeks used the Gorgoneion, a depiction of a hideous face with serpents for hair, as an apotropaic symbol to ward off evil.[112] In a Greek myth described by Pseudo-Apollodorus in his Bibliotheca, Medusa was a Gorgon with serpents for hair whose gaze turned all those who looked at her to stone and was slain by the hero Perseus.[113][114][115] In the Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphoses, Medusa is said to have once been a beautiful priestess of Athena, whom Athena turned into a serpent-haired monster after she was raped by the god Poseidon in Athena's temple.[116] In another myth referenced by the Boeotian poet Hesiod and described in detail by Pseudo-Apollodorus, the hero Heracles is said to have slain the Lernaean Hydra,[117][118] a multiple-headed serpent which dwelt in the swamps of Lerna.[117][118]
+
+The legendary account of the foundation of Thebes mentioned a monster snake guarding the spring from which the new settlement was to draw its water. In fighting and killing the snake, the companions of the founder Cadmus all perished – leading to the term "Cadmean victory" (i.e. a victory involving one's own ruin).[citation needed]
+
+Three medical symbols involving snakes that are still used today are Bowl of Hygieia, symbolizing pharmacy, and the Caduceus and Rod of Asclepius, which are symbols denoting medicine in general.[49]
+
+One of the etymologies proposed for the common female first name Linda is that it might derive from Old German Lindi or Linda, meaning a serpent.
+
+India is often called the land of snakes and is steeped in tradition regarding snakes.[119] Snakes are worshipped as gods even today with many women pouring milk on snake pits (despite snakes' aversion for milk).[119] The cobra is seen on the neck of Shiva and Vishnu is depicted often as sleeping on a seven-headed snake or within the coils of a serpent.[120] There are also several temples in India solely for cobras sometimes called Nagraj (King of Snakes) and it is believed that snakes are symbols of fertility. There is a Hindu festival called Nag Panchami each year on which day snakes are venerated and prayed to. See also Nāga.[citation needed]
+
+In India there is another mythology about snakes. Commonly known in Hindi as "Ichchhadhari" snakes. Such snakes can take the form of any living creature, but prefer human form. These mythical snakes possess a valuable gem called "Mani", which is more brilliant than diamond. There are many stories in India about greedy people trying to possess this gem and ending up getting killed.[citation needed]
+
+The snake is one of the 12 celestial animals of Chinese zodiac, in the Chinese calendar.[121]
+
+Many ancient Peruvian cultures worshipped nature.[122] They emphasized animals and often depicted snakes in their art.[123]
+
+Snakes are a part of Hindu worship. A festival, Nag Panchami, in which participants worship either images of or live Nāgas (cobras) is celebrated every year. Most images of Lord Shiva depict snake around his neck. Puranas have various stories associated with snakes. In the Puranas, Shesha is said to hold all the planets of the Universe on his hoods and to constantly sing the glories of Vishnu from all his mouths. He is sometimes referred to as "Ananta-Shesha", which means "Endless Shesha". Other notable snakes in Hinduism are Ananta, Vasuki, Taxak, Karkotaka and Pingala. The term Nāga is used to refer to entities that take the form of large snakes in Hinduism and Buddhism.
+
+Snakes have also been widely revered, such as in ancient Greece, where the serpent was seen as a healer. Asclepius carried a serpent wound around his wand, a symbol seen today on many ambulances.
+
+In religious terms, the snake and jaguar are arguably the most important animals in ancient Mesoamerica. "In states of ecstasy, lords dance a serpent dance; great descending snakes adorn and support buildings from Chichen Itza to Tenochtitlan, and the Nahuatl word coatl meaning serpent or twin, forms part of primary deities such as Mixcoatl, Quetzalcoatl, and Coatlicue."[124] In both Maya and Aztec calendars, the fifth day of the week was known as Snake Day.
+
+In Judaism, the snake of brass is also a symbol of healing, of one's life being saved from imminent death.[125]
+
+In some parts of Christianity, Christ's redemptive work is compared to saving one's life through beholding the Nehushtan (serpent of brass).[126] Snake handlers use snakes as an integral part of church worship in order to exhibit their faith in divine protection. However, more commonly in Christianity, the serpent has been seen as a representative of evil and sly plotting, which can be seen in the description in Genesis chapter 3 of a snake in the Garden of Eden tempting Eve.[127] Saint Patrick is reputed to have expelled all snakes from Ireland while converting the country to Christianity in the 5th century, thus explaining the absence of snakes there.
+
+In Christianity and Judaism, the snake makes its infamous appearance in the first book of the Bible when a serpent appears before the first couple Adam and Eve and tempts them with the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.[127] The snake returns in Exodus when Moses, as a sign of God's power, turns his staff into a snake and when Moses made the Nehushtan, a bronze snake on a pole that when looked at cured the people of bites from the snakes that plagued them in the desert. The serpent makes its final appearance symbolizing Satan in the Book of Revelation: "And he laid hold on the dragon the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years."[128]
+
+In Neo-Paganism and Wicca, the snake is seen as a symbol of wisdom and knowledge.
+
+Several compounds from snake venoms are being researched as potential treatments or preventatives for pain, cancers, arthritis, stroke, heart disease, hemophilia, and hypertension, and to control bleeding (e.g. during surgery).[130][131][132]
+
+Caldwell MW, Nydam RL, Palci A, Apesteguía S (January 2015). "The oldest known snakes from the Middle Jurassic-Lower Cretaceous provide insights on snake evolution". Nature Communications. 6 (5996): 5996. Bibcode:2015NatCo...6.5996C. doi:10.1038/ncomms6996. PMID 25625704.

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+
+
+Snakes are elongated, legless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes.[2] Like all other squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joints than their lizard ancestors, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads with their highly mobile jaws. To accommodate their narrow bodies, snakes' paired organs (such as kidneys) appear one in front of the other instead of side by side, and most have only one functional lung. Some species retain a pelvic girdle with a pair of vestigial claws on either side of the cloaca. Lizards have evolved elongate bodies without limbs or with greatly reduced limbs about twenty-five times independently via convergent evolution, leading to many lineages of legless lizards.[3]  Legless lizards resemble snakes, but several common groups of legless lizards have eyelids and external ears, which snakes lack, although this rule is not universal (see Amphisbaenia, Dibamidae, and Pygopodidae).
+
+Living snakes are found on every continent except Antarctica, and on most smaller land masses; exceptions include some large islands, such as Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, the Hawaiian archipelago, and the islands of New Zealand, and many small islands of the Atlantic and central Pacific oceans.[4] Additionally, sea snakes are widespread throughout the Indian and Pacific Oceans. More than 20 families are currently recognized, comprising about 520 genera and about 3,600 species.[5][6] They range in size from the tiny, 10.4 cm (4.1 in)-long Barbados thread snake[7] to the reticulated python of 6.95 meters (22.8 ft) in length.[8] The fossil species Titanoboa cerrejonensis was 12.8 meters (42 ft) long.[9] Snakes are thought to have evolved from either burrowing or aquatic lizards, perhaps during the Jurassic period, with the earliest known fossils dating to between 143 and 167 Ma ago.[10] The diversity of modern snakes appeared during the Paleocene epoch (c 66 to 56 Ma ago, after the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event). The oldest preserved descriptions of snakes can be found in the Brooklyn Papyrus.
+
+Most species are nonvenomous and those that have venom use it primarily to kill and subdue prey rather than for self-defense. Some possess venom potent enough to cause painful injury or death to humans. Nonvenomous snakes either swallow prey alive or kill by constriction.
+
+The English word snake comes from Old English snaca, itself from Proto-Germanic *snak-an- (cf. Germanic Schnake "ring snake", Swedish snok "grass snake"), from Proto-Indo-European root *(s)nēg-o- "to crawl", "to creep", which also gave sneak as well as Sanskrit nāgá "snake".[11] The word ousted adder, as adder went on to narrow in meaning, though in Old English næddre was the general word for snake.[12] The other term, serpent, is from French, ultimately from Indo-European *serp- (to creep),[13] which also gave Ancient Greek hérpō (ἕρπω) "I crawl".
+
+Leptotyphlopidae
+
+Anomalepididae
+
+Typhlopidae
+
+Anilius
+
+Tropidophiidae
+
+Uropeltidae
+
+Anomochilus
+
+Cylindrophis
+
+Pythonidae
+
+Xenopeltis
+
+Loxocemus
+
+Acrochordidae
+
+Xenodermidae
+
+Pareidae
+
+Viperidae
+
+Homalopsidae
+
+Lamprophiidae
+
+Elapidae
+
+Colubridae
+
+Boidae
+
+Erycinae
+
+Calabaria
+
+Ungaliophiinae
+
+Sanzinia
+
+Candoia
+
+The fossil record of snakes is relatively poor because snake skeletons are typically small and fragile making fossilization uncommon. Fossils readily identifiable as snakes (though often retaining hind limbs) first appear in the fossil record during the Cretaceous period.[15] The earliest known true snake fossils (members of the crown group Serpentes) come from the marine simoliophiids, the oldest of which is the Late Cretaceous (Cenomanian age) Haasiophis terrasanctus,[1] dated to between 112 and 94 million years old.[16]
+
+Based on comparative anatomy, there is consensus that snakes descended from lizards.[17]:11[18] Pythons and boas—primitive groups among modern snakes—have vestigial hind limbs: tiny, clawed digits known as anal spurs, which are used to grasp during mating.[17]:11[19] The families Leptotyphlopidae and Typhlopidae also possess remnants of the pelvic girdle, appearing as horny projections when visible.
+
+Front limbs are nonexistent in all known snakes. This is caused by the evolution of their Hox genes, controlling limb morphogenesis. The axial skeleton of the snakes’ common ancestor, like most other tetrapods, had regional specializations consisting of cervical (neck), thoracic (chest), lumbar (lower back), sacral (pelvic), and caudal (tail) vertebrae. Early in snake evolution, the Hox gene expression in the axial skeleton responsible for the development of the thorax became dominant. As a result, the vertebrae anterior to the hindlimb buds (when present) all have the same thoracic-like identity (except from the atlas, axis, and 1–3 neck vertebrae). In other words, most of a snake's skeleton is an extremely extended thorax. Ribs are found exclusively on the thoracic vertebrae. Neck, lumbar and pelvic vertebrae are very reduced in number (only 2–10 lumbar and pelvic vertebrae are present), while only a short tail remains of the caudal vertebrae. However, the tail is still long enough to be of important use in many species, and is modified in some aquatic and tree-dwelling species.
+
+Many modern snake groups originated during the Paleocene, alongside the adaptive radiation of mammals following the extinction of (non-avian) dinosaurs. The expansion of grasslands in North America also led to an explosive radiation among snakes.[20]  Previously, snakes were a minor component of the North American fauna, but during the Miocene, the number of species and their prevalence increased dramatically with the first appearances of vipers and elapids in North America and the significant diversification of Colubridae (including the origin of many modern genera such as Nerodia, Lampropeltis, Pituophis, and Pantherophis).[20]
+
+There is fossil evidence to suggest that snakes may have evolved from burrowing lizards, such as the varanids (or a similar group) during the Cretaceous Period.[21] An early fossil snake relative, Najash rionegrina, was a two-legged burrowing animal with a sacrum, and was fully terrestrial.[22] One extant analog of these putative ancestors is the earless monitor Lanthanotus of Borneo (though it also is semiaquatic).[23] Subterranean species evolved bodies streamlined for burrowing, and eventually lost their limbs.[23] According to this hypothesis, features such as the transparent, fused eyelids (brille) and loss of external ears evolved to cope with fossorial difficulties, such as scratched corneas and dirt in the ears.[21][23] Some primitive snakes are known to have possessed hindlimbs, but their pelvic bones lacked a direct connection to the vertebrae. These include fossil species like Haasiophis, Pachyrhachis and Eupodophis, which are slightly older than Najash.[19]
+
+This hypothesis was strengthened in 2015 by the discovery of a 113m year-old fossil of a four-legged snake in Brazil that has been named Tetrapodophis amplectus. It has many snake-like features, is adapted for burrowing and its stomach indicates that it was preying on other animals.[24] It is currently uncertain if Tetrapodophis is a snake or another species, in the squamate order, as a snake-like body has independently evolved at least 26 times. Tetrapodophis does not have distinctive snake features in its spine and skull.[25][26]
+
+An alternative hypothesis, based on morphology, suggests the ancestors of snakes were related to mosasaurs—extinct aquatic reptiles from the Cretaceous—which in turn are thought to have derived from varanid lizards.[18] According to this hypothesis, the fused, transparent eyelids of snakes are thought to have evolved to combat marine conditions (corneal water loss through osmosis), and the external ears were lost through disuse in an aquatic environment. This ultimately led to an animal similar to today's sea snakes. In the Late Cretaceous, snakes recolonized land, and continued to diversify into today's snakes. Fossilized snake remains are known from early Late Cretaceous marine sediments, which is consistent with this hypothesis; particularly so, as they are older than the terrestrial Najash rionegrina. Similar skull structure, reduced or absent limbs, and other anatomical features found in both mosasaurs and snakes lead to a positive cladistical correlation, although some of these features are shared with varanids.[citation needed]
+
+Tetrapodophis
+
+Pachyrhachis
+
+Eupodophis descouensi
+
+Eupodophis descouensi hind leg
+
+Genetic studies in recent years have indicated snakes are not as closely related to monitor lizards as was once believed—and therefore not to mosasaurs, the proposed ancestor in the aquatic scenario of their evolution. However, more evidence links mosasaurs to snakes than to varanids. Fragmented remains found from the Jurassic and Early Cretaceous indicate deeper fossil records for these groups, which may potentially refute either hypothesis.[27][28]
+
+In 2016 two studies reported that limb loss in snakes is associated with DNA mutations in the Zone of Polarizing Activity Regulatory Sequence (ZRS), a regulatory region of the sonic hedgehog gene which is critically required for limb development. More advanced snakes have no remnants of limbs, but basal snakes such as pythons and boas do have traces of highly reduced, vestigial hind limbs. Python embryos even have fully developed hind limb buds, but their later development is stopped by the DNA mutations in the ZRS.[29][30][31][32]
+
+There are over 2,900 species of snakes ranging as far northward as the Arctic Circle in Scandinavia and southward through Australia.[18] Snakes can be found on every continent except Antarctica, in the sea, and as high as 16,000 feet (4,900 m) in the Himalayan Mountains of Asia.[18][33]:143 There are numerous islands from which snakes are absent, such as Ireland, Iceland, and New Zealand[4][33] (although New Zealand's waters are infrequently visited by the yellow-bellied sea snake and the banded sea krait).[34]
+
+All modern snakes are grouped within the suborder Serpentes in Linnean taxonomy, part of the order Squamata, though their precise placement within squamates remains controversial.[5]
+
+The two infraorders of Serpentes are: Alethinophidia and Scolecophidia.[5] This separation is based on morphological characteristics and mitochondrial DNA sequence similarity. Alethinophidia is sometimes split into Henophidia and Caenophidia, with the latter consisting of "colubroid" snakes (colubrids, vipers, elapids, hydrophiids, and atractaspids) and acrochordids, while the other alethinophidian families comprise Henophidia.[35] While not extant today, the Madtsoiidae, a family of giant, primitive, python-like snakes, was around until 50,000 years ago in Australia, represented by genera such as Wonambi.
+
+There are numerous debates in the systematics within the group. For instance, many sources classify Boidae and Pythonidae as one family, while some keep the Elapidae and Hydrophiidae (sea snakes) separate for practical reasons despite their extremely close relation.
+
+Recent molecular studies support the monophyly of the clades of modern snakes, scolecophidians, typhlopids + anomalepidids, alethinophidians, core alethinophidians, uropeltids (Cylindrophis, Anomochilus, uropeltines), macrostomatans, booids, boids, pythonids and caenophidians.[14]
+
+
+
+While snakes are limbless reptiles, which evolved from (and are grouped with) lizards, there are many other species of lizards which have lost their limbs independently and superficially look similar to snakes. These include the slowworm and glass snake.
+
+Other serpentine tetrapods unrelated to snakes include caecilians (amphibians), amphisbaenians (near-lizard squamates), and the extinct aistopods (amphibians).
+
+The now extinct Titanoboa cerrejonensis snakes were 12.8 m (42 ft) in length.[9] By comparison, the largest extant snakes are the reticulated python, which measures about 6.95 m (22.8 ft) long,[8] and the green anaconda, which measures about 5.21 m (17.1 ft) long and is considered the heaviest snake on Earth at 97.5 kg (215 lb).[39]
+
+At the other end of the scale, the smallest extant snake is Leptotyphlops carlae, with a length of about 10.4 cm (4.1 in).[7] Most snakes are fairly small animals, approximately 1 m (3.3 ft) in length.[40]
+
+Pit vipers, pythons, and some boas have infrared-sensitive receptors in deep grooves on the snout, which allow them to "see" the radiated heat of warm-blooded prey. In pit vipers, the grooves are located between the nostril and the eye in a large "pit" on each side of the head. Other infrared-sensitive snakes have multiple, smaller labial pits lining the upper lip, just below the nostrils.[41]
+
+Snakes use smell to track their prey. They smell by using their forked tongues to collect airborne particles, then passing them to the vomeronasal organ or Jacobson's organ in the mouth for examination.[41] The fork in the tongue gives snakes a sort of directional sense of smell and taste simultaneously.[41] They keep their tongues constantly in motion, sampling particles from the air, ground, and water, analyzing the chemicals found, and determining the presence of prey or predators in the local environment. In water-dwelling snakes, such as the anaconda, the tongue functions efficiently underwater.[41]
+
+The underside is very sensitive to vibration. This allows snakes to be able to sense approaching animals by detecting faint vibrations in the ground.[41]
+
+Snake vision varies greatly, from only being able to distinguish light from dark to keen eyesight, but the main trend is that their vision is adequate although not sharp, and allows them to track movements.[42] Generally, vision is best in arboreal snakes and weakest in burrowing snakes. Some snakes, such as the Asian vine snake (genus Ahaetulla), have binocular vision, with both eyes capable of focusing on the same point. Most snakes focus by moving the lens back and forth in relation to the retina, while in the other amniote groups, the lens is stretched. Many nocturnal snakes have slit pupils while diurnal snakes have round pupils. Most species possess three visual pigments and are probably able to see two primary colors in daylight. It's concluded that the last common ancestors of all snakes had UV-sensitive vision, but that most snakes that depends on their eyesight to hunt in daylight have evolved lenses that act as sunglasses which filters out UV-light, and probably also sharpens their vision by improving the contrasts.[43]
+
+The skin of a snake is covered in scales. Contrary to the popular notion of snakes being slimy because of possible confusion of snakes with worms, snakeskin has a smooth, dry texture. Most snakes use specialized belly scales to travel, gripping surfaces. The body scales may be smooth, keeled, or granular. The eyelids of a snake are transparent "spectacle" scales, which remain permanently closed, also known as brille.
+
+The shedding of scales is called ecdysis (or in normal usage, molting or sloughing). In the case of snakes, the complete outer layer of skin is shed in one layer.[44] Snake scales are not discrete, but extensions of the epidermis—hence they are not shed separately but as a complete outer layer during each molt, akin to a sock being turned inside out.[45]
+
+Snakes have a wide diversity of skin coloration patterns. These patterns are often related to behavior, such as a tendency to have to flee from predators. Snakes that are plain or have longitudinal stripes often have to escape from predators, with the pattern (or lack thereof) not providing reference points to predators, thus allowing the snake to escape without being notice. Plain snakes usually adopt active hunting strategies, as their pattern allows them to send little information to prey about motion. Blotched snakes, on the other hand, usually use ambush-based strategies, likely because it helps them blend into an environment with irregularly shaped objects, like sticks or rocks. Spotted patterning can similarly help snakes to blend into their environment.[46]
+
+The shape and number of scales on the head, back, and belly are often characteristic and used for taxonomic purposes. Scales are named mainly according to their positions on the body. In "advanced" (Caenophidian) snakes, the broad belly scales and rows of dorsal scales correspond to the vertebrae, allowing scientists to count the vertebrae without dissection.
+
+Molting, or ecdysis, serves a number of functions. Firstly, the old and worn skin is replaced; secondly, it helps get rid of parasites such as mites and ticks. Renewal of the skin by molting is supposed to allow growth in some animals such as insects; however, this has been disputed in the case of snakes.[45][47]
+
+Molting occurs periodically throughout the snake's life. Before a molt, the snake stops eating and often hides or moves to a safe place. Just before shedding, the skin becomes dull and dry looking and the eyes become cloudy or blue-colored. The inner surface of the old skin liquefies. This causes the old skin to separate from the new skin beneath it. After a few days, the eyes clear and the snake "crawls" out of its old skin. The old skin breaks near the mouth and the snake wriggles out, aided by rubbing against rough surfaces. In many cases, the cast skin peels backward over the body from head to tail in one piece, like pulling a sock off inside-out. A new, larger, brighter layer of skin has formed underneath.[45][48]
+
+An older snake may shed its skin only once or twice a year. But a younger snake, still growing, may shed up to four times a year.[48] The discarded skin gives a perfect imprint of the scale pattern, and it is usually possible to identify the snake if the discarded skin is reasonably intact.[45] This periodic renewal has led to the snake being a symbol of healing and medicine, as pictured in the Rod of Asclepius.[49]
+
+Scale counts can sometimes be used to tell the sex of a snake when the species is not distinctly sexually dimorphic. A probe is inserted into the cloaca until it can go no further. The probe is marked at the point where it stops, removed, and compared to the subcaudal depth by laying it alongside the scales.[50] The scalation count determines whether the snake is a male or female as hemipenes of a male will probe to a different depth (usually longer) than the cloaca of a female.[50][clarification needed]
+
+The skeleton of most snakes consists solely of the skull, hyoid, vertebral column, and ribs, though henophidian snakes retain vestiges of the pelvis and rear limbs.
+
+The skull of the snake consists of a solid and complete neurocranium, to which many of the other bones are only loosely attached, particularly the highly mobile jaw bones, which facilitate manipulation and ingestion of large prey items. The left and right sides of the lower jaw are joined only by a flexible ligament at the anterior tips, allowing them to separate widely, while the posterior end of the lower jaw bones articulate with a quadrate bone, allowing further mobility. The bones of the mandible and quadrate bones can also pick up ground borne vibrations.[51]  Because the sides of the jaw can move independently of one another, snakes resting their jaws on a surface have sensitive stereo hearing which can detect the position of prey. The jaw-quadrate-stapes pathway is capable of detecting vibrations on the angstrom scale, despite the absence of an outer ear and the ossicle mechanism of impedance matching used in other vertebrates to receive vibrations from the air.[52][53]
+
+The hyoid is a small bone located posterior and ventral to the skull, in the 'neck' region, which serves as an attachment for muscles of the snake's tongue, as it does in all other tetrapods.
+
+The vertebral column consists of anywhere between 200 and 400 (or more) vertebrae. Tail vertebrae are comparatively few in number (often less than 20% of the total) and lack ribs, while body vertebrae each have two ribs articulating with them. The vertebrae have projections that allow for strong muscle attachment enabling locomotion without limbs.
+
+Autotomy of the tail, a feature found in some lizards is absent in most snakes.[54] Caudal autotomy in snakes is rare and is intervertebral, unlike that in lizards, which is intravertebral—that is, the break happens along a predefined fracture plane present on a vertebra.[55][56]
+
+In some snakes, most notably boas and pythons, there are vestiges of the hindlimbs in the form of a pair of pelvic spurs. These small, claw-like protrusions on each side of the cloaca are the external portion of the vestigial hindlimb skeleton, which includes the remains of an ilium and femur.
+
+Snakes are polyphyodonts with teeth that are continuously replaced.[57]
+
+Snake's and other reptiles have a three-chambered heart that controls the circulatory system via the left and right atrium, and one ventricle.[58] Internally, the ventricle is divided into three interconnected cavities which include the cavum arteriosum, the cavum pulmonale, and the cavum venosum.[59] The cavum venosum receives deoxygenated blood from the right atrium while the cavum arteriosum receives oxygenated blood directly from the left atrium. Located beneath the cavum venosum is the cavum pulmonale, which pumps blood to the pulmonary trunk.[60]
+
+The snake's heart is encased in a sac, called the pericardium, located at the bifurcation of the bronchi. The heart is able to move around, however, owing to the lack of a diaphragm. This adjustment protects the heart from potential damage when large ingested prey is passed through the esophagus. The spleen is attached to the gall bladder and pancreas and filters the blood. The thymus is located in fatty tissue above the heart and is responsible for the generation of immune cells in the blood. The cardiovascular system of snakes is also unique for the presence of a renal portal system in which the blood from the snake's tail passes through the kidneys before returning to the heart.[61]
+
+The vestigial left lung is often small or sometimes even absent, as snakes' tubular bodies require all of their organs to be long and thin.[61] In the majority of species, only one lung is functional. This lung contains a vascularized anterior portion and a posterior portion that does not function in gas exchange.[61] This 'saccular lung' is used for hydrostatic purposes to adjust buoyancy in some aquatic snakes and its function remains unknown in terrestrial species.[61] Many organs that are paired, such as kidneys or reproductive organs, are staggered within the body, with one located ahead of the other.[61]
+
+Snakes have no lymph nodes.[61]
+
+Cobras, vipers, and closely related species use venom to immobilize, injure or kill their prey. The venom is modified saliva, delivered through fangs.[17]:243 The fangs of 'advanced' venomous snakes like viperids and elapids are hollow to inject venom more effectively, while the fangs of rear-fanged snakes such as the boomslang merely have a groove on the posterior edge to channel venom into the wound. Snake venoms are often prey specific—their role in self-defense is secondary.[17]:243
+
+Venom, like all salivary secretions, is a predigestant that initiates the breakdown of food into soluble compounds, facilitating proper digestion. Even nonvenomous snake bites (like any animal bite) will cause tissue damage.[17]:209
+
+Certain birds, mammals, and other snakes (such as kingsnakes) that prey on venomous snakes have developed resistance and even immunity to certain venoms.[17]:243 Venomous snakes include three families of snakes, and do not constitute a formal classification group used in taxonomy.
+
+The colloquial term "poisonous snake" is generally an incorrect label for snakes. A poison is inhaled or ingested, whereas venom produced by snakes is injected into its victim via fangs.[62] There are, however, two exceptions: Rhabdophis sequesters toxins from the toads it eats, then secretes them from nuchal glands to ward off predators, and a small unusual population of garter snakes in the U.S. state of Oregon retains enough toxins in their livers from the newts they eat to be effectively poisonous to small local predators (such as crows and foxes).[63]
+
+Snake venoms are complex mixtures of proteins, and are stored in venom glands at the back of the head.[63] In all venomous snakes, these glands open through ducts into grooved or hollow teeth in the upper jaw.[17]:243[62] These proteins can potentially be a mix of neurotoxins (which attack the nervous system), hemotoxins (which attack the circulatory system), cytotoxins, bungarotoxins and many other toxins that affect the body in different ways.[62] Almost all snake venom contains hyaluronidase, an enzyme that ensures rapid diffusion of the venom.[17]:243
+
+Venomous snakes that use hemotoxins usually have fangs in the front of their mouths, making it easier for them to inject the venom into their victims.[62] Some snakes that use neurotoxins (such as the mangrove snake) have fangs in the back of their mouths, with the fangs curled backwards.[64] This makes it difficult both for the snake to use its venom and for scientists to milk them.[62] Elapids, however, such as cobras and kraits are proteroglyphous—they possess hollow fangs that cannot be erected toward the front of their mouths, and cannot "stab" like a viper. They must actually bite the victim.[17]:242
+
+It has recently been suggested that all snakes may be venomous to a certain degree, with harmless snakes having weak venom and no fangs.[65] Most snakes currently labelled "nonvenomous" would still be considered harmless according to this theory, as they either lack a venom delivery method or are incapable of delivering enough to endanger a human. This theory postulates that snakes may have evolved from a common lizard ancestor that was venomous—and that venomous lizards like the gila monster, beaded lizard, monitor lizards, and the now-extinct mosasaurs may also have derived from it. They share this venom clade with various other saurian species.
+
+Venomous snakes are classified in two taxonomic families:
+
+There is a third family containing the opistoglyphous (rear-fanged) snakes (as well as the majority of other snake species):
+
+Although a wide range of reproductive modes are used by snakes, all snakes employ internal fertilization. This is accomplished by means of paired, forked hemipenes, which are stored, inverted, in the male's tail.[66] The hemipenes are often grooved, hooked, or spined in order to grip the walls of the female's cloaca.[67][66]
+
+Most species of snakes lay eggs which they abandon shortly after laying. However, a few species (such as the king cobra) actually construct nests and stay in the vicinity of the hatchlings after incubation.[66] Most pythons coil around their egg-clutches and remain with them until they hatch.[68] A female python will not leave the eggs, except to occasionally bask in the sun or drink water. She will even "shiver" to generate heat to incubate the eggs.[68]
+
+Some species of snake are ovoviviparous and retain the eggs within their bodies until they are almost ready to hatch.[69][70] Recently, it has been confirmed that several species of snake are fully viviparous, such as the boa constrictor and green anaconda, nourishing their young through a placenta as well as a yolk sac, which is highly unusual among reptiles, or anything else outside of requiem sharks or placental mammals.[69][70] Retention of eggs and live birth are most often associated with colder environments.[66][70]
+
+Sexual selection in snakes is demonstrated by the 3,000 species that each use different tactics in acquiring mates.[71] Ritual combat between males for the females they want to mate with includes topping, a behavior exhibited by most viperids in which one male will twist around the vertically elevated fore body of its opponent and forcing it downward. It is common for neck biting to occur while the snakes are entwined.[72]
+
+Parthenogenesis is a natural form of reproduction in which growth and development of embryos occur without fertilization. Agkistrodon contortrix (copperhead) and Agkistrodon piscivorus (cotton mouth) can reproduce by facultative parthenogenesis. That is, they are capable of switching from a sexual mode of reproduction to an asexual mode.[73] The type of parthenogenesis that likely occurs is automixis with terminal fusion, a process in which two terminal products from the same meiosis fuse to form a diploid zygote. This process leads to genome wide homozygosity, expression of deleterious recessive alleles and often to developmental abnormalities. Both captive-born and wild-born A. contortrix and A. piscivorus appear to be capable of this form of parthenogenesis.[73]
+
+Reproduction in squamate reptiles is almost exclusively sexual. Males ordinarily have a ZZ pair of sex determining chromosomes, and females a ZW pair. However, the Colombian Rainbow boa (Epicrates maurus) can also reproduce by facultative parthenogenesis resulting in production of WW female progeny.[74] The WW females are likely produced by terminal automixis.
+
+In regions where winters are colder than snakes can tolerate while remaining active, local species will brumate. Unlike hibernation, in which mammals are actually asleep, brumating reptiles are awake but inactive. Individual snakes may brumate in burrows, under rock piles, or inside fallen trees, or snakes may aggregate in large numbers at hibernacula.
+
+All snakes are strictly carnivorous, eating small animals including lizards, frogs, other snakes, small mammals, birds, eggs, fish, snails, worms or insects.[17][3][18][75] Because snakes cannot bite or tear their food to pieces, they must swallow prey whole. The body size of a snake has a major influence on its eating habits. Smaller snakes eat smaller prey. Juvenile pythons might start out feeding on lizards or mice and graduate to small deer or antelope as an adult, for example.
+
+The snake's jaw is a complex structure. Contrary to the popular belief that snakes can dislocate their jaws, snakes have a very flexible lower jaw, the two halves of which are not rigidly attached, and numerous other joints in their skull (see snake skull), allowing them to open their mouths wide enough to swallow their prey whole, even if it is larger in diameter than the snake itself.[75] For example, the African egg-eating snake has flexible jaws adapted for eating eggs much larger than the diameter of its head.[17]:81 This snake has no teeth, but does have bony protrusions on the inside edge of its spine, which it uses to break shells when it eats eggs.[17]:81
+
+While the majority of snakes eat a variety of prey animals, there is some specialization by some species. King cobras and the Australian bandy-bandy consume other snakes. Snakes of the family Pareidae have more teeth on the right side of their mouths than on the left, as the shells of their prey usually spiral clockwise.[17]:184[76][77]
+
+Some snakes have a venomous bite, which they use to kill their prey before eating it.[75][78] Other snakes kill their prey by constriction.[75] Still others swallow their prey whole and alive.[17]:81[75]
+
+After eating, snakes become dormant while the process of digestion takes place.[50] Digestion is an intense activity, especially after consumption of large prey. In species that feed only sporadically, the entire intestine enters a reduced state between meals to conserve energy. The digestive system is then 'up-regulated' to full capacity within 48 hours of prey consumption. Being ectothermic ("cold-blooded"), the surrounding temperature plays a large role in snake digestion. The ideal temperature for snakes to digest is 30 °C (86 °F). So much metabolic energy is involved in a snake's digestion that in the South American rattlesnake (Crotalus durissus), surface body temperature increases by as much as 1.2 °C (2.2 °F) during the digestive process.[79] Because of this, a snake disturbed after having eaten recently will often regurgitate its prey to be able to escape the perceived threat. When undisturbed, the digestive process is highly efficient, with the snake's digestive enzymes dissolving and absorbing everything but the prey's hair (or feathers) and claws, which are excreted along with waste.
+
+The lack of limbs does not impede the movement of snakes. They have developed several different modes of locomotion to deal with particular environments. Unlike the gaits of limbed animals, which form a continuum, each mode of snake locomotion is discrete and distinct from the others; transitions between modes are abrupt.[80][81]
+
+Lateral undulation is the sole mode of aquatic locomotion, and the most common mode of terrestrial locomotion.[81] In this mode, the body of the snake alternately flexes to the left and right, resulting in a series of rearward-moving "waves".[80] While this movement appears rapid, snakes have rarely been documented moving faster than two body-lengths per second, often much less.[82] This mode of movement has the same net cost of transport (calories burned per meter moved) as running in lizards of the same mass.[83]
+
+Terrestrial lateral undulation is the most common mode of terrestrial locomotion for most snake species.[80] In this mode, the posteriorly moving waves push against contact points in the environment, such as rocks, twigs, irregularities in the soil, etc.[80] Each of these environmental objects, in turn, generates a reaction force directed forward and towards the midline of the snake, resulting in forward thrust while the lateral components cancel out.[84] The speed of this movement depends upon the density of push-points in the environment, with a medium density of about 8[clarification needed] along the snake's length being ideal.[82] The wave speed is precisely the same as the snake speed, and as a result, every point on the snake's body follows the path of the point ahead of it, allowing snakes to move through very dense vegetation and small openings.[84]
+
+When swimming, the waves become larger as they move down the snake's body, and the wave travels backwards faster than the snake moves forwards.[85] Thrust is generated by pushing their body against the water, resulting in the observed slip. In spite of overall similarities, studies show that the pattern of muscle activation is different in aquatic versus terrestrial lateral undulation, which justifies calling them separate modes.[86] All snakes can laterally undulate forward (with backward-moving waves), but only sea snakes have been observed reversing the motion (moving backwards with forward-moving waves).[80]
+
+Most often employed by colubroid snakes (colubrids, elapids, and vipers) when the snake must move in an environment that lacks irregularities to push against (rendering lateral undulation impossible), such as a slick mud flat, or a sand dune, sidewinding is a modified form of lateral undulation in which all of the body segments oriented in one direction remain in contact with the ground, while the other segments are lifted up, resulting in a peculiar "rolling" motion.[87][88] This mode of locomotion overcomes the slippery nature of sand or mud by pushing off with only static portions on the body, thereby minimizing slipping.[87] The static nature of the contact points can be shown from the tracks of a sidewinding snake, which show each belly scale imprint, without any smearing. This mode of locomotion has very low caloric cost, less than ⅓ of the cost for a lizard to move the same distance.[83] Contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence that sidewinding is associated with the sand being hot.[87]
+
+When push-points are absent, but there is not enough space to use sidewinding because of lateral constraints, such as in tunnels, snakes rely on concertina locomotion.[80][88] In this mode, the snake braces the posterior portion of its body against the tunnel wall while the front of the snake extends and straightens.[87] The front portion then flexes and forms an anchor point, and the posterior is straightened and pulled forwards. This mode of locomotion is slow and very demanding, up to seven times the cost of laterally undulating over the same distance.[83] This high cost is due to the repeated stops and starts of portions of the body as well as the necessity of using active muscular effort to brace against the tunnel walls.
+
+The movement of snakes in arboreal habitats has only recently been studied.[89] While on tree branches, snakes use several modes of locomotion depending on species and bark texture.[89] In general, snakes will use a modified form of concertina locomotion on smooth branches, but will laterally undulate if contact points are available.[89] Snakes move faster on small branches and when contact points are present, in contrast to limbed animals, which do better on large branches with little 'clutter'.[89]
+
+Gliding snakes (Chrysopelea) of Southeast Asia launch themselves from branch tips, spreading their ribs and laterally undulating as they glide between trees.[87][90][91] These snakes can perform a controlled glide for hundreds of feet depending upon launch altitude and can even turn in midair.[87][90]
+
+The slowest mode of snake locomotion is rectilinear locomotion, which is also the only one where the snake does not need to bend its body laterally, though it may do so when turning.[92] In this mode, the belly scales are lifted and pulled forward before being placed down and the body pulled over them. Waves of movement and stasis pass posteriorly, resulting in a series of ripples in the skin.[92] The ribs of the snake do not move in this mode of locomotion and this method is most often used by large pythons, boas, and vipers when stalking prey across open ground as the snake's movements are subtle and harder to detect by their prey in this manner.[87]
+
+Snakes do not ordinarily prey on humans. Unless startled or injured, most snakes prefer to avoid contact and will not attack humans. With the exception of large constrictors, nonvenomous snakes are not a threat to humans. The bite of a nonvenomous snake is usually harmless; their teeth are not adapted for tearing or inflicting a deep puncture wound, but rather grabbing and holding. Although the possibility of infection and tissue damage is present in the bite of a nonvenomous snake, venomous snakes present far greater hazard to humans.[17]:209 The World Health Organisation (WHO) lists snakebite under the "other neglected conditions" category.[95]
+
+Documented deaths resulting from snake bites are uncommon. Nonfatal bites from venomous snakes may result in the need for amputation of a limb or part thereof. Of the roughly 725 species of venomous snakes worldwide, only 250 are able to kill a human with one bite. Australia averages only one fatal snake bite per year. In India, 250,000 snakebites are recorded in a single year, with as many as 50,000 recorded initial deaths.[96] The WHO estimates that on the order of 100 000 people die each year as a result of snake bites, and around three times as many amputations and other permanent disabilities are caused by snakebites annually.[97]
+
+The treatment for a snakebite is as variable as the bite itself. The most common and effective method is through antivenom (or antivenin), a serum made from the venom of the snake. Some antivenom is species-specific (monovalent) while some is made for use with multiple species in mind (polyvalent). In the United States for example, all species of venomous snakes are pit vipers, with the exception of the coral snake. To produce antivenom, a mixture of the venoms of the different species of rattlesnakes, copperheads, and cottonmouths is injected into the body of a horse in ever-increasing dosages until the horse is immunized. Blood is then extracted from the immunized horse. The serum is separated and further purified and freeze-dried. It is reconstituted with sterile water and becomes antivenom. For this reason, people who are allergic to horses are more likely to suffer an allergic reaction to antivenom.[98] Antivenom for the more dangerous species (such as mambas, taipans, and cobras) is made in a similar manner in India, South Africa, and Australia, although these antivenoms are species-specific.
+
+In some parts of the world, especially in India, snake charming is a roadside show performed by a charmer. In such a show, the snake charmer carries a basket that contains a snake that he seemingly charms by playing tunes from his flutelike musical instrument, to which the snake responds.[99] Snakes lack external ears, though they do have internal ears, and respond to the movement of the flute, not the actual noise.[99]
+
+The Wildlife Protection Act of 1972 in India technically proscribes snake charming on grounds of reducing animal cruelty. Other snake charmers also have a snake and mongoose show, where both the animals have a mock fight; however, this is not very common, as the snakes, as well as the mongooses, may be seriously injured or killed. Snake charming as a profession is dying out in India because of competition from modern forms of entertainment and environment laws proscribing the practice. Many Indians have never seen snake charming and it is becoming a folktale of the past.[99][100][101][102]
+
+The Irulas tribe of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu in India have been hunter-gatherers in the hot, dry plains forests, and have practiced the art of snake catching for generations. They have a vast knowledge of snakes in the field. They generally catch the snakes with the help of a simple stick. Earlier, the Irulas caught thousands of snakes for the snake-skin industry. After the complete ban of the snake-skin industry in India and protection of all snakes under the Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972, they formed the Irula Snake Catcher's Cooperative and switched to catching snakes for removal of venom, releasing them in the wild after four extractions. The venom so collected is used for producing life-saving antivenom, biomedical research and for other medicinal products.[103] The Irulas are also known to eat some of the snakes they catch and are very useful in rat extermination in the villages.
+
+Despite the existence of snake charmers, there have also been professional snake catchers or wranglers. Modern-day snake trapping involves a herpetologist using a long stick with a V- shaped end. Some television show hosts, like Bill Haast, Austin Stevens, Steve Irwin, and Jeff Corwin, prefer to catch them using bare hands.
+
+While not commonly thought of as food in most cultures, in others the consumption of snakes is acceptable, or even considered a delicacy. Snake soup of Cantonese cuisine is consumed by locals in autumn, to warm up their body. Western cultures document the consumption of snakes under extreme circumstances of hunger.[104] Cooked rattlesnake meat is an exception, which is commonly consumed in Texas[105] and parts of the Midwestern United States. In Asian countries such as China, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia, drinking the blood of snakes—particularly the cobra—is believed to increase sexual virility.[106] The blood is drained while the cobra is still alive when possible, and is usually mixed with some form of liquor to improve the taste.[106]
+
+In some Asian countries, the use of snakes in alcohol is also accepted. In such cases, the body of a snake or several snakes is left to steep in a jar or container of liquor. It is claimed that this makes the liquor stronger (as well as more expensive). One example of this is the Habu snake sometimes placed in the Okinawan liquor Habushu (ブ酒,) also known as "Habu Sake".[107]
+
+Snake wine (蛇酒) is an alcoholic beverage produced by infusing whole snakes in rice wine or grain alcohol. The drink was first recorded to have been consumed in China during the Western Zhou dynasty and considered an important curative and believed to reinvigorate a person according to traditional Chinese medicine.[108]
+
+In the Western world, some snakes (especially docile species such as the ball python and corn snake) are kept as pets. To meet this demand a captive breeding industry has developed. Snakes bred in captivity tend to make better pets and are considered preferable to wild caught specimens.[109] Snakes can be very low maintenance pets, especially compared to more traditional species. They require minimal space, as most common species do not exceed 5 feet (1.5 m) in length. Pet snakes can be fed relatively infrequently, usually once every 5 to 14 days. Certain snakes have a lifespan of more than 40 years if given proper care.
+
+In ancient Mesopotamia, Nirah, the messenger god of Ištaran, was represented as a serpent on kudurrus, or boundary stones.[110] Representations of two intertwined serpents are common in Sumerian art and Neo-Sumerian artwork[110] and still appear sporadically on cylinder seals and amulets until as late as the thirteenth century BC.[110] The horned viper (Cerastes cerastes) appears in Kassite and Neo-Assyrian kudurrus[110] and is invoked in Assyrian texts as a magical protective entity.[110] A dragon-like creature with horns, the body and neck of a snake, the forelegs of a lion, and the hind-legs of a bird appears in Mesopotamian art from the Akkadian Period until the Hellenistic Period (323 BC–31 BC).[110] This creature, known in Akkadian as the mušḫuššu, meaning "furious serpent", was used as a symbol for particular deities and also as a general protective emblem.[110] It seems to have originally been the attendant of the Underworld god Ninazu,[110] but later became the attendant to the Hurrian storm-god Tishpak, as well as, later, Ninazu's son Ningishzida, the Babylonian national god Marduk, the scribal god Nabu, and the Assyrian national god Ashur.[110]
+
+In Egyptian history, the snake occupies a primary role with the Nile cobra adorning the crown of the pharaoh in ancient times. It was worshipped as one of the gods and was also used for sinister purposes: murder of an adversary and ritual suicide (Cleopatra).[citation needed] The ouroboros was a well-known ancient Egyptian symbol of a serpent swallowing its own tail.[111] The precursor to the ouroboros was the "Many-Faced",[111] a serpent with five heads, who, according to the Amduat, the oldest surviving Book of the Afterlife, was said to coil around the corpse of the sun god Ra protectively.[111] The earliest surviving depiction of a "true" ouroboros comes from the gilded shrines in the tomb of Tutankhamun.[111] In the early centuries AD, the ouroboros was adopted as a symbol by Gnostic Christians[111] and chapter 136 of the Pistis Sophia, an early Gnostic text, describes "a great dragon whose tail is in its mouth".[111] In medieval alchemy, the ouroboros became a typical western dragon with wings, legs, and a tail.[111]
+
+In the Bible, King Nahash of Ammon, whose name means "Snake", is depicted very negatively, as a particularly cruel and despicable enemy of the ancient Hebrews.
+
+The ancient Greeks used the Gorgoneion, a depiction of a hideous face with serpents for hair, as an apotropaic symbol to ward off evil.[112] In a Greek myth described by Pseudo-Apollodorus in his Bibliotheca, Medusa was a Gorgon with serpents for hair whose gaze turned all those who looked at her to stone and was slain by the hero Perseus.[113][114][115] In the Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphoses, Medusa is said to have once been a beautiful priestess of Athena, whom Athena turned into a serpent-haired monster after she was raped by the god Poseidon in Athena's temple.[116] In another myth referenced by the Boeotian poet Hesiod and described in detail by Pseudo-Apollodorus, the hero Heracles is said to have slain the Lernaean Hydra,[117][118] a multiple-headed serpent which dwelt in the swamps of Lerna.[117][118]
+
+The legendary account of the foundation of Thebes mentioned a monster snake guarding the spring from which the new settlement was to draw its water. In fighting and killing the snake, the companions of the founder Cadmus all perished – leading to the term "Cadmean victory" (i.e. a victory involving one's own ruin).[citation needed]
+
+Three medical symbols involving snakes that are still used today are Bowl of Hygieia, symbolizing pharmacy, and the Caduceus and Rod of Asclepius, which are symbols denoting medicine in general.[49]
+
+One of the etymologies proposed for the common female first name Linda is that it might derive from Old German Lindi or Linda, meaning a serpent.
+
+India is often called the land of snakes and is steeped in tradition regarding snakes.[119] Snakes are worshipped as gods even today with many women pouring milk on snake pits (despite snakes' aversion for milk).[119] The cobra is seen on the neck of Shiva and Vishnu is depicted often as sleeping on a seven-headed snake or within the coils of a serpent.[120] There are also several temples in India solely for cobras sometimes called Nagraj (King of Snakes) and it is believed that snakes are symbols of fertility. There is a Hindu festival called Nag Panchami each year on which day snakes are venerated and prayed to. See also Nāga.[citation needed]
+
+In India there is another mythology about snakes. Commonly known in Hindi as "Ichchhadhari" snakes. Such snakes can take the form of any living creature, but prefer human form. These mythical snakes possess a valuable gem called "Mani", which is more brilliant than diamond. There are many stories in India about greedy people trying to possess this gem and ending up getting killed.[citation needed]
+
+The snake is one of the 12 celestial animals of Chinese zodiac, in the Chinese calendar.[121]
+
+Many ancient Peruvian cultures worshipped nature.[122] They emphasized animals and often depicted snakes in their art.[123]
+
+Snakes are a part of Hindu worship. A festival, Nag Panchami, in which participants worship either images of or live Nāgas (cobras) is celebrated every year. Most images of Lord Shiva depict snake around his neck. Puranas have various stories associated with snakes. In the Puranas, Shesha is said to hold all the planets of the Universe on his hoods and to constantly sing the glories of Vishnu from all his mouths. He is sometimes referred to as "Ananta-Shesha", which means "Endless Shesha". Other notable snakes in Hinduism are Ananta, Vasuki, Taxak, Karkotaka and Pingala. The term Nāga is used to refer to entities that take the form of large snakes in Hinduism and Buddhism.
+
+Snakes have also been widely revered, such as in ancient Greece, where the serpent was seen as a healer. Asclepius carried a serpent wound around his wand, a symbol seen today on many ambulances.
+
+In religious terms, the snake and jaguar are arguably the most important animals in ancient Mesoamerica. "In states of ecstasy, lords dance a serpent dance; great descending snakes adorn and support buildings from Chichen Itza to Tenochtitlan, and the Nahuatl word coatl meaning serpent or twin, forms part of primary deities such as Mixcoatl, Quetzalcoatl, and Coatlicue."[124] In both Maya and Aztec calendars, the fifth day of the week was known as Snake Day.
+
+In Judaism, the snake of brass is also a symbol of healing, of one's life being saved from imminent death.[125]
+
+In some parts of Christianity, Christ's redemptive work is compared to saving one's life through beholding the Nehushtan (serpent of brass).[126] Snake handlers use snakes as an integral part of church worship in order to exhibit their faith in divine protection. However, more commonly in Christianity, the serpent has been seen as a representative of evil and sly plotting, which can be seen in the description in Genesis chapter 3 of a snake in the Garden of Eden tempting Eve.[127] Saint Patrick is reputed to have expelled all snakes from Ireland while converting the country to Christianity in the 5th century, thus explaining the absence of snakes there.
+
+In Christianity and Judaism, the snake makes its infamous appearance in the first book of the Bible when a serpent appears before the first couple Adam and Eve and tempts them with the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.[127] The snake returns in Exodus when Moses, as a sign of God's power, turns his staff into a snake and when Moses made the Nehushtan, a bronze snake on a pole that when looked at cured the people of bites from the snakes that plagued them in the desert. The serpent makes its final appearance symbolizing Satan in the Book of Revelation: "And he laid hold on the dragon the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years."[128]
+
+In Neo-Paganism and Wicca, the snake is seen as a symbol of wisdom and knowledge.
+
+Several compounds from snake venoms are being researched as potential treatments or preventatives for pain, cancers, arthritis, stroke, heart disease, hemophilia, and hypertension, and to control bleeding (e.g. during surgery).[130][131][132]
+
+Caldwell MW, Nydam RL, Palci A, Apesteguía S (January 2015). "The oldest known snakes from the Middle Jurassic-Lower Cretaceous provide insights on snake evolution". Nature Communications. 6 (5996): 5996. Bibcode:2015NatCo...6.5996C. doi:10.1038/ncomms6996. PMID 25625704.

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+The serval (Leptailurus serval) /ˈsɜːrvəl/ is a wild cat native to Africa. It is rare in North Africa and the Sahel, but widespread in sub-Saharan countries except rainforest regions. On the IUCN Red List it is listed as Least Concern.[1]
+
+It was first described by von Schreber in 1776.[3] It is the sole member of the genus Leptailurus. Three subspecies are recognised. The serval is a slender, medium-sized cat that stands 54–62 cm (21–24 in) at the shoulder and weighs 9–18 kg (20–40 lb). It is characterised by a small head, large ears, a golden-yellow to buff coat spotted and striped with black, and a short, black-tipped tail. The serval has the longest legs of any cat relative to its body size.
+
+Active in the day as well as at night, servals tend to be solitary with minimal social interaction. Both sexes establish highly overlapping home ranges of 10 to 32 km2 (4 to 12 sq mi), and mark them with feces and saliva. Servals are carnivores – they prey on rodents (particularly vlei rats), small birds, frogs, insects, and reptiles. The serval uses its sense of hearing to locate the prey; to kill small prey, it leaps over 2 m (6 ft 7 in) above the ground to land on the prey on its forefeet, and finally kills it with a bite on the neck or the head. Mating takes place at different times of the year in different parts of their range, but typically once or twice a year in an area. After a gestational period of two to three months, a litter of one to four is born. Weaning occurs at one month, and kittens begin hunting on their own at six months. The juveniles leave their mother at 12 months.
+
+It occurs in protected areas across its range, and hunting of servals is either prohibited or regulated in several countries.
+
+The name "serval" is a Portuguese name used by Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1765 for a spotted cat that was kept at the time in the Royal Menagerie in Versailles.[4]
+The name Leptailurus may have been derived from the medieval Greek λεπταλέος or λεπτός meaning "fine, delicate".[5]
+
+Felis serval was first described by Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber in 1776.[3] In the 19th and 20th centuries, the following serval zoological specimens were described:
+
+The generic name Leptailurus was proposed by Nikolai Severtzov in 1858.[12] The serval is the sole member of this genus.[13]
+
+In 1944, Pocock recognised three serval races in North Africa.[14] 
+Three subspecies are recognised as valid since 2017:[15]
+
+The phylogenetic relationships of the serval have remained in dispute; in 1997, palaeontologists M. C. McKenna and S. K. Bell classified Leptailurus as a subgenus of Felis, while others like O. R. P. Bininda-Edmonds (of the Technical University of Munich) have grouped it with Felis, Lynx and Caracal. Studies in the 2000s and the 2010s show that the serval, along with the caracal and the African golden cat, forms one of the eight lineages of Felidae. According to a 2006 genetic study, the Caracal lineage came into existence 8.5 million years ago, and the ancestor of this lineage arrived in Africa 8.5–5.6 mya.[2][16]
+
+The phylogenetic relationships of the serval are as follows:[2][16]
+
+Marbled cat (P. marmorata)
+
+Bay cat (Catopuma badia)
+
+Asian golden cat (Catopuma temminckii)
+
+
+
+Serval (L. serval)
+
+Caracal (Caracal caracal)
+
+African golden cat (Caracal aurata)
+
+Leopardus
+
+Lynx
+
+Acinonyx
+
+Puma
+
+Otocolobus
+
+Prionailurus
+
+Felis
+
+In April 1986, the first savannah cat, a hybrid between a male serval and a female domestic cat, was born; it was larger than a typical domestic kitten and resembled its father in its coat pattern. It appeared to have inherited a few domestic cat traits, such as tameness, from its mother. This cat breed may have a dog-like habit of following its owner about, and can be a good swimmer. Over the years it has gained popularity as a pet.[17]
+
+The serval is a slender, medium-sized cat; it stands 54 to 62 cm (21–24 in) at the shoulder and weighs 8 to 18 kg (18–40 lb), but females tend to be lighter. The head-and-body length is typically between 67 and 100 cm (26–39 in).[18] Males tend to be sturdier than females.[19] Prominent characteristics include the small head, large ears, spotted and striped coat, long legs and a black-tipped tail that is around 30 cm (12 in) long.[20][21] The serval has the longest legs of any cat relative to its body size, largely due to the greatly elongated metatarsal bones in the feet.[22][23] The toes are elongated as well, and unusually mobile.[22]
+
+The coat is basically golden-yellow to buff, and extensively marked with black spots and stripes.[19] The spots show great variation in size. Melanistic servals are also known.[22] Facial features include the brownish or greenish eyes, white whiskers on the snout and near the ears, ears as large as those of a domestic cat (but large relative to the size of the head) and black on the back with a white horizontal band in the middle, whitish chin, and spots and streaks on the cheeks and the forehead. Three to four black stripes run from the back of the head onto the shoulders, and then break into rows of spots. The white underbelly has dense and fluffy basal fur, and the soft guard hairs (the layer of fur protecting the basal fur) are 5–10 cm (2–4 in) long. Guard hairs are up to 3 cm (1 1⁄4 in) long on the neck, back and the flanks, and are merely 1 cm (1⁄2 in) long on the face.[21][24][19] The closely set ears are black on the back with a horizontal white band;[19] the ears can rotate up to 180 degrees independently of each other.[22] The serval has a good sense of smell, hearing and vision.[21]
+
+The serval is similar to the sympatric caracal, but has a narrower spoor, a rounder skull, and lacks its prominent ear tufts. The African golden cat is darker, with different cranial features.[19] It resembles the cheetah in its build and coat pattern, though not in size.[21] The serval shares its adaptations to its marshy habitat with the jungle cat; both cats have large and sharp ears that help in locating the prey efficiently, and their long legs raise them above muddy ground and water.[26]
+
+In North Africa, the serval is known only from Morocco and has been reintroduced in Tunisia, but is feared to be extinct in Algeria. It inhabits semi-arid areas and cork oak forests close to the Mediterranean Sea, but avoids rainforests and arid areas. It occurs in the Sahel, and is widespread in Southern Africa. It inhabits grasslands, moorlands and bamboo thickets at high altitudes up to 3,800 m (12,500 ft) on Mount Kilimanjaro. It prefers areas close to water bodies such as wetland and savanna, which provide cover such as reeds and tall grasses.[1][19]
+In 2014 and 2015, it was recorded in the floodplains and gallery forests of Benin’s Pendjari National Park by camera-traps.[27]
+In the East Sudanian Savanna, it was recorded in the transboundary Dinder–Alatash protected area complex during surveys between 2015 and 2018.[28]
+
+In Zambia's Luambe National Park, the population density was recorded as 0.1/km2 (0.26/sq mi) in 2011.[29]
+In South Africa, the serval was recorded in Free State, eastern Northern Cape, and southern North West.[30]
+In Namibia, it is present in Khaudum and Mudumu National Parks.[31]
+
+The serval is active in the day as well as at night; activity might peak in early morning, around twilight and at midnight. Servals might be active for a longer time on cool or rainy days. During the hot midday, they rest or groom themselves in the shade of bushes and grasses. Servals remain cautious of their vicinity, though they may be less alert when no large carnivores or prey animals are around. Servals walk as much as 2 to 4 kilometres (1 1⁄4 to 2 1⁄2 miles) every night.[20][18] Servals will often use special trails to reach certain hunting areas. A solitary animal, there is little social interaction among servals except in the mating season, when pairs of opposite sexes may stay together. The only long-lasting bond appears to be of the mother and her cubs, which leave their mother only when they are a year old.[19]
+
+Both males and females establish home ranges, and are most active only in certain regions ('core areas') within them. The area of these ranges can vary from 10 to 32 square kilometres (4 to 12 square miles); prey density, availability of cover and human interference could be significant factors in determining their size.[19][33] Home ranges might overlap extensively, but occupants show minimal interaction. Aggressive encounters are rare, as servals appear to mutually avoid one another rather than fight and defend their ranges. Agonistic behaviour involves vertical movement of the head (contrary to the horizontal movement observed in other cats), raising the hair and the tail, displaying the teeth and the white band on the ears, and yowling. Individuals mark their ranges and preferred paths by spraying urine on nearby vegetation, dropping scats along the way, and rubbing their mouth on grasses or the ground while releasing saliva. Servals tend to be sedentary, shifting only a few kilometres away even if they leave their range.[19][18]
+
+The serval is vulnerable to hyaenas and wild dogs. It will seek cover to escape their view, and, if the predator is very close, immediately flee in long leaps, changing its direction frequently and with the tail raised.[18] The serval is an efficient, though not frequent, climber; an individual was observed to have climbed a tree to a height of more than 9 metres (30 feet) to escape dogs.[22] Like many cats, the serval is able to purr;[34] it also has a high-pitched chirp, and can hiss, cackle, growl, grunt and meow.[22]
+
+The serval is a carnivore that preys on rodents, particularly vlei rats, small birds, frogs, insects and reptiles, and also feeds on grass that can facilitate digestion or act as an emetic. Up to 90% of the preyed animals weigh less than 200 g (7 oz); occasionally it also hunts larger prey such as duikers, hares, flamingoes and young antelopes.[22] The percentage of rodents in the diet has been estimated at 80-97%.[33][35][36] Apart from vlei rats, other rodents recorded frequently in the diet include the African grass rat, African pygmy mouse and multimammate mice.[19]
+
+Servals locate prey by their strong sense of hearing. To kill small prey, the serval will slowly stalk it, then pounce on it with the forefeet directed toward the chest, and finally land on it with its forelegs outstretched. The prey, receiving a blow from one or both of the serval's forepaws, is incapacitated, and the serval gives it a bite on the head or the neck and immediately swallows it. Snakes are dealt more blows and even bites, and may be consumed even as they are moving. Larger prey, such as larger birds, are killed by a sprint followed by a leap to catch them as they are trying to flee, and are eaten slowly. Servals have been observed caching large kills to be consumed later by concealing them in dead leaves and grasses. Servals typically get rid of the internal organs of rodents while eating, and pluck feathers from birds before consuming them. During a leap, a serval can reach more than 2 m (6 ft 7 in) above the ground and cover a horizontal distance of up to 3.6 m (11 ft 10 in).  Servals appear to be efficient hunters; a study in Ngorongoro showed that servals were successful in half of their hunting attempts, regardless of the time of hunting, and a mother serval was found to have a success rate of 62%. The number of kills in a 24-hour period averaged 15 to 16. Scavenging has been observed, but very rarely.[22][19]
+
+Both sexes become sexually mature when they are one to two years old. Oestrus in females lasts one to four days; it typically occurs once or twice a year, though it can occur three or four times a year if the mother loses her litters.[37] Observations of captive servals suggest that when a female enters oestrus, the rate of urine-marking increases in her as well as the males in her vicinity. Zoologist Jonathan Kingdon described the behaviour of a female serval in oestrus in his 1997 book East African Mammals. He noted that she would roam restlessly, spray urine frequently holding her vibrating tail in a vertical manner, rub her head near the place she has marked, salivate continuously, give out sharp and short "miaow"s that can be heard for quite a distance, and rub her mouth and cheeks against the face of an approaching male. The time when mating takes place varies geographically; births peak in winter in Botswana, and toward the end of the dry season in the Ngorongoro Crater. A trend generally observed across the range is that births precede the breeding season of murid rodents.[22]
+
+Gestation lasts for two to three months, following which a litter of one to four kittens is born. Births take place in secluded areas, for example in dense vegetation or burrows abandoned by aardvarks and porcupines. Blind at birth, newborn weigh nearly 250 g (9 oz) and have soft, woolly hair (greyer than in adults) and unclear markings. The eyes open after nine to thirteen days. Weaning begins a month after birth; the mother brings small kills to her kittens and calls out to them as she approaches the "den".[22] A mother with young kittens rests for a notably lesser time and has to spend almost twice the time and energy for hunting than do other servals.[33] If disturbed, the mother shifts her kittens one by one to a more secure place.[24] Kittens eventually start accompanying their mother to hunts. At around six months, they acquire their permanent canines and begin to hunt themselves; they leave their mother at about 12 months of age. They may reach sexual maturity from 12 to 25 months of age.[22] Life expectancy is about 10 years in the wild, and up to 20 years in captivity.[38]
+
+A major threat to the survival of the serval include the degradation of wetlands and grasslands. Trade of serval skins, though on the decline, still occurs in countries such as Benin and Senegal. In West Africa, the serval has significance in traditional medicine. Pastoralists often kill servals to protect their livestock, though servals generally do not prey on livestock.[1]
+
+The serval is listed as least concern on the IUCN Red List, and is included in CITES Appendix II. It occurs in several protected areas across its range. Hunting of servals is prohibited in Algeria, Botswana, Congo, Kenya, Liberia, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tunisia and South Africa's Cape Province; hunting regulations apply in Angola, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Malawi, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Tanzania, Togo and Zambia.[1]
+
+The association of servals with human beings dates to the time of Ancient Egypt.[39] Servals are depicted as gifts or traded objects from Nubia in Egyptian art.[40]
+
+Like many other species of felid, servals are occasionally kept as pets, although their wild nature means that ownership of servals is regulated in most countries.[41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48]

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+Slavery is any system in which principles of property law are applied to people, allowing individuals to own, buy and sell other individuals, as a de jure form of property.[1] An enslaved person is unable to withdraw unilaterally from such an arrangement and works without remuneration. Many scholars now use the term chattel slavery to refer to this specific sense of legalized, de jure slavery.
+
+In a broader sense, however, the word "slavery" may also refer to any situation in which an individual is de facto forced to work against their own will. To describe such circumstances, scholars may use such alternate terms as unfree labour or forced labour.[2]
+
+Under the broader use of the term slavery, but also in certain cases of actual de jure (chattel) slavery, local laws and/or customs may vest the enslaved with limited rights and protections.
+
+Slavery has existed in many cultures, dating back to early human civilizations.[3] It was legal in most societies at some time in the past but is now outlawed in all recognized countries.[4][5] Nevertheless, as of 2019 there were an estimated 40 million people worldwide subject to some form of slavery, 25% of them children.[6] More than half of modern slaves are used for forced labor, mostly in the private sector.[6] The most common form of modern slave trade is commonly referred to as human trafficking. In some areas of the world, slavery continues through practices such as debt bondage, the most common source of modern slaves;[2] serfdom; domestic servants kept in captivity; certain adoptions in which children are forced to work as slaves; child soldiers; and forced marriage.[7]
+
+The word slave is derived from the ethnonym (ethnic name) Slav.[8][9][10] It arrived in English via the Old French sclave. In Medieval Latin the word was sclavus and in Byzantine Greek σκλάβος.[8] Use of the word arose during the Early Medieval Period, when Slavs from Central and Eastern Europe (Saqaliba) were frequently enslaved by Moors from the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa.[11][12][13] An older interpretation connected slave to the Greek verb skyleúo 'to strip a slain enemy'.[14]
+
+There is a dispute among historians about whether terms such as "unfree labourer" or enslaved person, rather than "slave", should be used when describing the victims of slavery. According to those proposing a change in terminology, slave perpetuates the crime of slavery in language; by reducing its victims to a nonhuman noun instead of "carry[ing] them forward as people, not the property that they were". Other historians prefer slave because the term is familiar and shorter, or because it accurately reflects the inhumanity of slavery, with "person" implying a degree of autonomy that slavery does not allow.[15]
+
+Indenture, otherwise known as bonded labour or debt bondage, is a form of unfree labour under which a person pledges himself or herself against a loan.[16] The services required to repay the debt, and their duration, may be undefined.[16] Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation, with children required to pay off their progenitors' debt.[16] It is the most widespread form of slavery today.[2] Debt bondage is most prevalent in South Asia.[17]
+
+Chattel slavery, also called traditional slavery, is so named because people are treated as the chattel (personal property) of the owner and are bought and sold as commodities. Typically, under the chattel slave system, children inherited slave status via the mother (partus sequitur ventrem).[18] Although it dominated many different societies throughout human history, this form of slavery has been formally abolished and is very rare today. Even when it can be said to survive, it is not upheld by the legal system of any internationally recognized government.[19]
+
+"Slavery" has also been used to refer to a legal state of dependency to somebody else.[20][21] For example, in Persia, the situations and lives of such slaves could be better than those of common citizens.[22]
+
+Forced labour, or unfree labour, is sometimes used to describe an individual who is forced to work against their own will, under threat of violence or other punishment, but the generic term unfree labour is also used to describe chattel slavery, as well as any other situation in which a person is obliged to work against their own will, and a person's ability to work productively is under the complete control of another person.[2] This may also include institutions not commonly classified as slavery, such as serfdom, conscription and penal labour. While some unfree labourers, such as serfs, have substantive, de jure legal or traditional rights, they also have no ability to terminate the arrangements under which they work and are frequently subject to forms of coercion, violence, and restrictions on their activities and movement outside their place of work.
+
+Human trafficking primarily involves women and children forced into prostitution and is the fastest growing form of forced labour, with Thailand, Cambodia, India, Brazil and Mexico having been identified as leading hotspots of commercial sexual exploitation of children.[2][23][24] Examples of sexual slavery, often in military contexts, include detention in "rape camps" or "comfort stations," "comfort women", forced "marriages" to soldiers and other practices involving the treatment of women or men as chattel and, as such, violations of the peremptory norm prohibiting slavery.[25][26][27][28]
+
+In 2007, Human Rights Watch estimated that 200,000 to 300,000 children served as soldiers in current conflicts.[29] More girls under 16 work as domestic workers than any other category of child labor, often sent to cities by parents living in rural poverty[30] such as in restaveks in Haiti.
+
+Forced marriages or early marriages are often considered types of slavery. Forced marriage continues to be practiced in parts of the world including some parts of Asia and Africa and in immigrant communities in the West.[31][32][33][34] Sacred prostitution is where girls and women are pledged to priests or those of higher castes, such as the practice of Devadasi in South Asia or fetish slaves in West Africa.[2] Marriage by abduction occurs in many places in the world today, with a national average of 69% of marriages in Ethiopia being through abduction.[35]
+
+Economists have attempted to model the circumstances under which slavery (and variants such as serfdom) appear and disappear. One observation is that slavery becomes more desirable for landowners where land is abundant but labour is scarce, such that rent is depressed and paid workers can demand high wages. If the opposite holds true, then it becomes more costly for landowners to have guards for the slaves than to employ paid workers who can only demand low wages because of the amount of competition.[36] Thus, first slavery and then serfdom gradually decreased in Europe as the population grew but were reintroduced in the Americas and in Russia as large areas of new land with few people became available.[37]
+
+Slavery is more common when the labor done is relatively simple and thus easy to supervise, such as large-scale growing of a single crop, like sugar and cotton, in which output was based on economies of scale. This enables such systems of labor, such as the gang system in the United States, to become prominent on large plantations where field hands were monitored and worked with factory-like precision. For example, each work gang was based on an internal division of labour that assigned every member of the gang to a precise task and simultaneously made their own performance dependent on the actions of the others. The hoe hands chopped out the weeds that surrounded the cotton plants as well as excessive sprouts. The plow gangs followed behind, stirring the soil near the rows of cotton plants and tossing it back around the plants. Thus, the gang system worked like an assembly line.[38]
+
+Since the 18th century, critics have argued that slavery tends to retard technological advancement because the focus is on increasing the number of slaves doing simple tasks rather than upgrading the efficiency of labour. For example, it is sometime argued that, because of this narrow focus, theoretical knowledge and learning in Greece – and later in Rome – was not applied to ease physical labour or improve manufacturing.[39]
+
+Scottish economist Adam Smith states that free labour was economically better than slave labour, and that it is nearly impossible to end slavery in a free, democratic, or republican form of government since many of its legislators or political figures were slave owners, and would not punish themselves.  He further states that slaves would be better able to gain their freedom when there was centralized government, or a central authority like a king or the church.[40][41] Similar arguments appear later in the works of Auguste Comte, especially when it comes to Smith's belief in the separation of powers, or what Comte called the "separation of the spiritual and the temporal" during the Middle Ages and the end of slavery, and Smith's criticism of masters, past and present. As Smith states in the Lectures on Jurisprudence, "The great power of the clergy thus concurring with that of the king set the slaves at liberty. But it was absolutely necessary both that the authority of the king and of the clergy should be great. Where ever any one of these was wanting, slavery still continues..."
+
+Worldwide, slavery is a criminal offense, but slave owners can get very high returns for their risk. According to researcher Siddharth Kara, the profits generated worldwide by all forms of slavery in 2007 were $91.2 billion. That is second only to drug trafficking, in terms of global criminal enterprises. Currently, the weighted average global sales price of a slave is calculated to be approximately $340, with a high of $1,895 for the average trafficked sex slave, and a low of $40 to $50 for debt bondage slaves in part of Asia and Africa.[42] The weighted average annual profits generated by a slave in 2007 was $3,175, with a low of an average $950 for bonded labor and $29,210 for a trafficked sex slave.[42] Approximately 40% of slave profits each year are generated by trafficked sex slaves, representing slightly more than 4% of the world's 29 million slaves.[42]
+
+Throughout history, slaves were clothed in a distinctive fashion, particularly with respect to the frequent lack of footwear, as they were rather commonly forced to go barefoot. This was partly because of economic reasons but also served as a distinguishing feature, especially in South Africa and South America. For example, the Cape Town slave code stated that "Slaves must go barefoot and must carry passes."[43] It also puts slaves at a physical disadvantage because of the lack of protection against environmental adversities and also in situations of possible confrontation, thereby making it more difficult to escape or to rebel against their owners.
+
+This was the case in the majority of states that abolished slavery later in history, as most images from the respective historical period suggest that slaves were barefoot.[44]
+To quote Brother Riemer (1779): "[the slaves] are, even in their most beautiful suit, obliged to go barefoot. Slaves were forbidden to wear shoes. This was a prime mark of distinction between the free and the bonded and no exceptions were permitted."[45]
+
+According to the Bible, shoes have been considered badges of freedom since antiquity: "But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put [it] on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on [his] feet" (Luke 15:22). This aspect can be viewed as an informal law in areas where slavery existed as any person sighted barefoot in public would be conclusively regarded as a slave.
+
+In certain societies this rule is valid to this day. As with the Tuareg, where slavery is still unofficially practiced, their slaves are constantly forced to remain barefoot as a recognition mark. Mainly through their bare feet their societal status and rank opposite their owners is displayed to the public in a plainly visible way.[46]
+
+Another widespread practice was branding the slaves either to generally mark them as property or as punishment usually reserved for fugitives.
+
+Some scholars differentiate between ancient forms of slavery and the large-scale, largely race-based slavery which grew to immense proportions starting in the 14th century. The first type of slavery, sometimes called "just title servitude," was suffered by prisoners of war, debtors, and other vulnerable people.[47] The second, race-based type of slavery was argued even by some contemporary writers to be intrinsically immoral.[48][49][50]
+
+Evidence of slavery predates written records and has existed in many cultures.[3]  Slavery is rare among hunter-gatherer populations because it requires economic surpluses and a high population density to be viable. Thus, although it has existed among unusually resource-rich hunter gatherers, such as the American Indian peoples of the salmon-rich rivers of the Pacific Northwest Coast, slavery became widespread only with the invention of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution about 11,000 years ago.[51]
+
+In the earliest known records, slavery is treated as an established institution. The Code of Hammurabi (c. 1760 BC), for example, prescribed death for anyone who helped a slave escape or who sheltered a fugitive.[52] The Bible mentions slavery as an established institution.[3] Slavery was known in almost every ancient civilization and society.[3] Such institutions included debt bondage, punishment for crime, the enslavement of prisoners of war, child abandonment, and the birth of slave children to slaves.[53]
+
+Slavery existed in Pharaonic Egypt, but studying it is complicated by terminology used by the Egyptians to refer to different classes of servitude over the course of history. Interpretation of the textual evidence of classes of slaves in ancient Egypt has been difficult to differentiate by word usage alone.[54][55] There were three apparent types of enslavement in Ancient Egypt: chattel slavery, bonded labor, and forced labor.[56][57][58]
+
+Slavery is known to have existed in ancient China as early as the Shang dynasty.[59] Slavery was largely employed by governments as a means of maintaining a public labor force.[60][61]
+
+Records of slavery in Ancient Greece date as far back as Mycenaean Greece. It is certain that Classical Athens had the largest slave population, with as many as 80,000 in the 6th and 5th centuries BC.[62]  As the Roman Republic expanded outward, entire populations were enslaved, thus creating an ample supply from all over Europe and the Mediterranean. Slaves were used for labour, as well as for amusement (e.g. gladiators and sex slaves). This oppression by an elite minority eventually led to slave revolts (see Roman Servile Wars); the Third Servile War, led by Spartacus, (a Thracian) being the most famous.
+
+By the late Republican era, slavery had become a vital economic pillar in the wealth of Rome, as well as a very significant part of Roman society.[63] It is estimated that 25% or more of the population of Ancient Rome was enslaved, although the actual percentage is debated by scholars and varied from region to region.[64][65] Slaves represented 15–25% of Italy's population,[66] mostly captives in war,[66] especially from Gaul[67] and Epirus. Estimates of the number of slaves in the Roman Empire suggest that the majority of slaves were scattered throughout the provinces outside of Italy.[66] Generally, slaves in Italy were indigenous Italians,[68] with a minority of foreigners (including both slaves and freedmen) born outside of Italy estimated at 5% of the total in the capital at its peak, where their number was largest. Those from outside of Europe were predominantly of Greek descent, while the Jewish ones never fully assimilated into Roman society, remaining an identifiable minority. These slaves (especially the foreigners) had higher death rates and lower birth rates than natives and were sometimes even subjected to mass expulsions.[69] The average recorded age at death for the slaves of the city of Rome was seventeen and a half years (17.2 for males; 17.9 for females).[70][page needed]
+
+Slavery was widespread in Africa, with both internal and external slave trade.[71] In the Senegambia region, between 1300 and 1900, close to one-third of the population was enslaved. In early Islamic states of the western Sahel, including Ghana, Mali, Segou, and Songhai, about a third of the population were enslaved.[72]
+
+The Arab slave trade, across the Sahara desert and across the Indian Ocean, began after Muslim Arab and Swahili traders won control of the Swahili Coast and sea routes during the 9th century (see Sultanate of Zanzibar). These traders captured Bantu peoples (Zanj) from the interior in present-day Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania and brought them to the coast.[74][75] There, the slaves gradually assimilated in the rural areas, particularly on the Unguja and Pemba islands.[76]
+
+Slavery in Mexico can be traced back to the Aztecs.[77] Other Amerindians, such as the Inca of the Andes, the Tupinambá of Brazil, the Creek of Georgia, and the Comanche of Texas, also owned slaves.[3]
+
+Many Han Chinese were enslaved in the process of the Mongol invasion of China proper.[78] According to Japanese historians Sugiyama Masaaki (杉山正明) and Funada Yoshiyuki (舩田善之), there were also a certain number of Mongolian slaves owned by Han Chinese during the Yuan dynasty. Moreover, there is no evidence that the Han Chinese, who were at the bottom of Yuan society according to some research, suffered particularly cruel abuse.[79][80]
+
+Slavery in Korea existed since before the Three Kingdoms of Korea period, approximately 2,000 years ago.[81] Slavery has been described as "very important in medieval Korea, probably more important than in any other East Asian country, but by the 16th century, population growth was making [it] unnecessary".[82] Slavery went into decline around the 10th century but came back in the late Goryeo period when Korea also experienced a number of slave rebellions.[81]
+
+In the Joseon period of Korea, members of the slave class were known as nobi. The nobi were socially indistinct from freemen (i.e., the middle and common classes) other than the ruling yangban class, and some possessed property rights, legal entities and civil rights. Hence, some scholars argue that it is inappropriate to call them "slaves",[83] while some scholars describe them as serfs.[84][85] The nobi population could fluctuate up to about one-third of the population, but on average the nobi made up about 10% of the total population.[86] In 1801, the vast majority of government nobi were emancipated,[87] and by 1858 the nobi population stood at about 1.5 percent of the total population of Korea.[88]
+
+Slavery largely disappeared from Western Europe in the Middle Ages but persisted longer in Eastern Europe.[89] Large-scale trading in slaves was mainly confined to the South and East of early medieval Europe: the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim world were the destinations, while pagan Central and Eastern Europe (along with the Caucasus and Tartary) were important sources. Viking, Arab, Greek, and Radhanite Jewish merchants were all involved in the slave trade during the Early Middle Ages.[90][91][92] The trade in European slaves reached a peak in the 10th century following the Zanj Rebellion which dampened the use of African slaves in the Arab world.[93][94]
+
+Slavery in early medieval Europe was so common that the Catholic Church repeatedly prohibited it, or at least the export of Christian slaves to non-Christian lands, as for example at the Council of Koblenz (922), the Council of London (1102) (which aimed mainly at the sale of English slaves to Ireland)[95] and the Council of Armagh (1171). Serfdom, on the contrary, was widely accepted. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, granting the kings of Spain and Portugal the right to reduce any "Saracens (Muslims), pagans and any other unbelievers" to perpetual slavery, legitimizing the slave trade as a result of war.[96] The approval of slavery under these conditions was reaffirmed and extended in his Romanus Pontifex bull of 1455.
+
+In Britain, slavery continued to be practiced following the fall of Rome, and sections of Hywel the Good's laws dealt with slaves in medieval Wales. The trade particularly picked up after the Viking invasions, with major markets at Chester[97] and Bristol[98] supplied by Danish, Mercian, and Welsh raiding of one another's borderlands. At the time of the Domesday Book, nearly 10% of the English population were slaves.[99] William the Conqueror introduced a law preventing the sale of slaves overseas.[100] According to historian John Gillingham, by 1200 slavery in the British Isles was non-existent.[101] The slave trade was abolished by the Slave Trade Act 1807, although slavery remained legal in possessions outside Europe until the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 and the Indian Slavery Act, 1843.[102]
+
+The Byzantine-Ottoman wars and the Ottoman wars in Europe brought large numbers of slaves into the Islamic world.[103] To staff its bureaucracy, the Ottoman Empire established a janissary system which seized hundreds of thousands of Christian boys through the devşirme system. They were well cared for but were legally slaves owned by the government and were not allowed to marry. They were never bought or sold. The empire gave them significant administrative and military roles. The system began about 1365; there were 135,000 janissaries in 1826, when the system ended.[104]
+
+After the Battle of Lepanto, 12,000 Christian galley slaves were recaptured and freed from the Ottoman fleet.[105] Eastern Europe suffered a series of Tatar invasions, the goal of which was to loot and capture slaves into jasyr.[106] Seventy-five Crimean Tatar raids were recorded into Poland–Lithuania between 1474 and 1569.[107]
+
+Slavery in Poland was forbidden in the 15th century; in Lithuania, slavery was formally abolished in 1588; they were replaced by the second serfdom.
+
+Medieval Spain and Portugal were the scene of almost constant Muslim invasion of the predominantly Christian area. Periodic raiding expeditions were sent from Al-Andalus to ravage the Iberian Christian kingdoms, bringing back booty and slaves. In a raid against Lisbon in 1189, for example, the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives, while his governor of Córdoba, in a subsequent attack upon Silves, Portugal, in 1191, took 3,000 Christian slaves.[108] From the 11th to the 19th century, North African Barbary Pirates engaged in Razzias, raids on European coastal towns, to capture Christian slaves to sell at slave markets in places such as Algeria and Morocco.[109][110]
+The maritime town of Lagos was the first slave market created in Portugal (one of the earliest colonizers of the Americas) for the sale of imported African slaves – the Mercado de Escravos, opened in 1444.[111][112] In 1441, the first slaves were brought to Portugal from northern Mauritania.[112]
+
+By 1552, black African slaves made up 10% of the population of Lisbon.[113][114] In the second half of the 16th century, the Crown gave up the monopoly on slave trade, and the focus of European trade in African slaves shifted from import to Europe to slave transports directly to tropical colonies in the Americas – especially Brazil.[112] In the 15th century one-third of the slaves were resold to the African market in exchange of gold.[115]
+
+In Kievan Rus and Muscovy, slaves were usually classified as kholops. According to David P. Forsythe, "In 1649 up to three-quarters of Muscovy's peasants, or 13 to 14 million people, were serfs whose material lives were barely distinguishable from slaves. Perhaps another 1.5 million were formally enslaved, with Russian slaves serving Russian masters."[117] Slavery remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter the Great converted the household slaves into house serfs. Russian agricultural slaves were formally converted into serfs earlier in 1679.[118]
+
+In Scandinavia, thralldom was abolished in the mid-14th century.[119]
+
+During the Second World War Nazi Germany effectively enslaved about 12 million people, both those considered undesirable and citizens of conquered countries, with the avowed intention of treating these Untermenschen (sub-humans) as a permanent slave-class of inferior beings who could be worked until they died, and who possessed neither the rights nor the legal status of members of the Aryan race.[120]
+
+The Arab slave trade lasted more than a millennium.[121] As recently as the early 1960s, Saudi Arabia's slave population was estimated at 300,000.[122] Along with Yemen, the Saudis abolished slavery in 1962.[123] Historically, slaves in the Arab World came from many different regions, including Sub-Saharan Africa (mainly Zanj),[124] the Caucasus (mainly Circassians),[125] Central Asia (mainly Tartars), and Central and Eastern Europe (mainly Saqaliba).[126]
+
+Some historians assert that as many as 17 million people were sold into slavery on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and North Africa, and approximately 5 million African slaves were bought by Muslim slave traders and taken from Africa across the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara desert between 1500 and 1900.[127] The captives were sold throughout the Middle East. This trade accelerated as superior ships led to more trade and greater demand for labour on plantations in the region. Eventually, tens of thousands of captives were being taken every year.[76][128][129] The Indian Ocean slave trade was multi-directional and changed over time. To meet the demand for menial labor, Bantu slaves bought by Arab slave traders from southeastern Africa were sold in cumulatively large numbers over the centuries to customers in Egypt, Arabia, the Persian Gulf, India, European colonies in the Far East, the Indian Ocean islands, Ethiopia and Somalia.[130]
+
+According to the Encyclopedia of African History, "It is estimated that by the 1890s the largest slave population of the world, about 2 million people, was concentrated in the territories of the Sokoto Caliphate. The use of slave labor was extensive, especially in agriculture."[131][132] The Anti-Slavery Society estimated there were 2 million slaves in Ethiopia in the early 1930s out of an estimated population of 8 to 16 million.[133]
+
+Slave labor in East Africa was drawn from the Zanj, Bantu peoples that lived along the East African coast.[75][134] The Zanj were for centuries shipped as slaves by Arab traders to all the countries bordering the Indian Ocean. The Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs recruited many Zanj slaves as soldiers and, as early as 696, there were slave revolts of the Zanj against their Arab enslavers in Iraq. The Zanj Rebellion, a series of uprisings that took place between 869 and 883 near Basra (also known as Basara), situated in present-day Iraq, is believed to have involved enslaved Zanj that had originally been captured from the African Great Lakes region and areas further south in East Africa.[135] It grew to involve over 500,000 slaves and free men who were imported from across the Muslim empire and claimed over "tens of thousands of lives in lower Iraq".[136]
+The Zanj who were taken as slaves to the Middle East were often used in strenuous agricultural work.[137] As the plantation economy boomed and the Arabs became richer, agriculture and other manual labor work was thought to be demeaning. The resulting labor shortage led to an increased slave market.
+
+In Algiers, the capital of Algeria, captured Christians and Europeans were forced into slavery. In about 1650, there were as many as 35,000 Christian slaves in Algiers.[138] By one estimate, raids by Barbary pirates on coastal villages and ships extending from Italy to Iceland, enslaved an estimated 1 to 1.25 million Europeans between the 16th and 19th centuries.[139][140][141] However, to this estimate is extrapolated by assuming the number of European, slaves captured by Barbary pirates, was constant for 250 years period:
+
+There are no records of how many men, women and children were enslaved, but it is possible to calculate roughly the number of fresh captives that would have been needed to keep populations steady and replace those slaves who died, escaped, were ransomed, or converted to Islam. On this basis it is thought that around 8,500 new slaves were needed annually to replenish numbers – about 850,000 captives over the century from 1580 to 1680.  By extension, for the 250 years between 1530 and 1780, the figure could easily have been as high as 1,250,000.[142]
+
+Davis' numbers have been refuted by other historians, such as David Earle, who cautions that true picture of Europeans slaves is clouded by the fact the corsairs also seized non-Christian whites from eastern Europe.[142] In addition, the number of slaves traded was hyperactive, with exaggerated estimates relying on peak years to calculate averages for entire centuries, or millennia.  Hence, there were wide fluctuations year-to-year, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, given slave imports, and also given the fact that, prior to the 1840s, there are no consistent records.  Middle East expert, John Wright, cautions that modern estimates are based on back-calculations from human observation.[143] Such observations, across the late 16th and early 17th century observers, account for around 35,000 European Christian slaves held throughout this period on the Barbary Coast, across Tripoli, Tunis, but mostly in Algiers. The majority were sailors (particularly those who were English), taken with their ships, but others were fishermen and coastal villagers.  However, most of these captives were people from lands close to Africa, particularly Spain and Italy.[144] This eventually led to the bombardment of Algiers by an Anglo-Dutch fleet in 1816.[145][146]
+
+Under Omani Arabs, Zanzibar became East Africa's main slave port, with as many as 50,000 enslaved Africans passing through every year during the 19th century.[147][148] Some historians estimate that between 11 and 18 million African slaves crossed the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert from 650 to 1900 AD.[3][149] Eduard Rüppell described the losses of Sudanese slaves being transported on foot to Egypt: "after the Daftardar bey's 1822 campaign in the southern Nuba mountains, nearly 40,000 slaves were captured. However, through bad treatment, disease and desert travel barely 5,000 made it to Egypt.."[150] W.A. Veenhoven wrote: "The German doctor, Gustav Nachtigal, an eye-witness, believed that for every slave who arrived at a market three or four died on the way ... Keltie (The Partition of Africa, London, 1920) believes that for every slave the Arabs brought to the coast at least six died on the way or during the slavers' raid. Livingstone puts the figure as high as ten to one."[151]
+
+Systems of servitude and slavery were common in parts of Africa, as they were in much of the ancient world. In many African societies where slavery was prevalent, the enslaved people were not treated as chattel slaves and were given certain rights in a system similar to indentured servitude elsewhere in the world. The forms of slavery in Africa were closely related to kinship structures. In many African communities, where land could not be owned, enslavement of individuals was used as a means to increase the influence a person had and expand connections.[152] This made slaves a permanent part of a master's lineage and the children of slaves could become closely connected with the larger family ties.[153] Children of slaves born into families could be integrated into the master's kinship group and rise to prominent positions within society, even to the level of chief in some instances.  However, stigma often remained attached and there could be strict separations between slave members of a kinship group and those related to the master.[152] Slavery was practiced in many different forms: debt slavery, enslavement of war captives, military slavery, and criminal slavery were all practiced in various parts of Africa.[154] Slavery for domestic and court purposes was widespread throughout Africa.
+
+When the Atlantic slave trade began, many of the local slave systems began supplying captives for chattel slave markets outside Africa. Although the Atlantic slave trade was not the only slave trade from Africa, it was the largest in volume and intensity. As Elikia M’bokolo wrote in Le Monde diplomatique:
+
+The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries (from the ninth to the nineteenth).... Four million enslaved people exported via the Red Sea, another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean.[155]
+
+The trans-Atlantic slave trade peaked in the late 18th century, when the largest number of slaves were captured on raiding expeditions into the interior of West Africa. These expeditions were typically carried out by African kingdoms, such as the Oyo Empire (Yoruba), the Ashanti Empire,[156] the kingdom of Dahomey,[157] and the Aro Confederacy.[158]  It is estimated that about 15 percent of slaves died during the voyage, with mortality rates considerably higher in Africa itself in the process of capturing and transporting indigenous peoples to the ships.[159][160]
+
+Slavery in America remains a contentious issue and played a major role in the history and evolution of some countries, triggering a revolution, a civil war, and numerous rebellions.
+
+In order to establish itself as an American empire, Spain had to fight against the relatively powerful civilizations of the New World. The Spanish conquest of the indigenous peoples in the Americas included using the Natives as forced labour. The Spanish colonies were the first Europeans to use African slaves in the New World on islands such as Cuba and Hispaniola.[161] Bartolomé de las Casas, a 16th-century Dominican friar and Spanish historian, participated in campaigns in Cuba (at Bayamo and Camagüey) and was present at the massacre of Hatuey; his observation of that massacre led him to fight for a social movement away from the use of natives as slaves. Also, the alarming decline in the native population had spurred the first royal laws protecting the native population. The first African slaves arrived in Hispaniola in 1501.[162] England played a prominent role in the Atlantic slave trade. The "slave triangle" was pioneered by Francis Drake and his associates.
+
+Many Africans who arrived in North America during the 17th and 18th centuries came under contract as indentured servants.[163] The transformation from indentured servitude to slavery was a gradual process in Virginia. The earliest legal documentation of such a shift was in 1640 where a negro, John Punch, was sentenced to lifetime slavery, forcing him to serve his master, Hugh Gwyn, for the remainder of his life, for attempting to run away. This case was significant because it established the disparity between his sentence as a black man and that of the two white indentured servants who escaped with him (one described as Dutch and one as a Scotchman). It is the first documented case of a black man sentenced to lifetime servitude and is considered one of the first legal cases to make a racial distinction between black and white indentured servants.[164][165][166][167][168]
+
+After 1640, planters started to ignore the expiration of indentured contracts and keep their servants as slaves for life. This was demonstrated by the 1655 case Johnson v. Parker, where the court ruled that a black man, Anthony Johnson of Virginia, was granted ownership of another black man, John Casor, as the result of a civil case.[169]  This was the first instance of a judicial determination in the Thirteen Colonies holding that a person who had committed no crime could be held in servitude for life.[170][171][172][173][174][175][176]
+
+In the early 17th century, the majority of the labour in Barbados was provided by European indentured servants, mainly English, Irish and Scottish, with enslaved Africans and enslaved Amerindians providing little of the workforce. The introduction of sugar cane from Dutch Brazil in 1640 completely transformed society and the economy. Barbados eventually had one of the world's largest sugar industries.[177]
+
+As the effects of the new crop increased, so did the shift in the ethnic composition of Barbados and surrounding islands. The workable sugar plantation required a large investment and a great deal of heavy labour. At first, Dutch traders supplied the equipment, financing, and enslaved Africans, in addition to transporting most of the sugar to Europe. In 1644, the population of Barbados was estimated at 30,000, of which about 800 were of African descent, with the remainder mainly of English descent. These English smallholders were eventually bought out, and the island filled up with large sugar plantations worked by enslaved Africans. By 1660, there was near parity with 27,000 blacks and 26,000 whites. By 1666, at least 12,000 white smallholders had been bought out, died, or left the island. Many of the remaining whites were increasingly poor. By 1680, there were 17 slaves for every indentured servant. By 1700, there were 15,000 free whites and 50,000 enslaved Africans.
+
+Because of the increased implementation of slave codes, which created differential treatment between Africans and the white workers and ruling planter class, the island became increasingly unattractive to poor whites. Black or slave codes were implemented in 1661, 1676, 1682, and 1688. In response to these codes, several slave rebellions were attempted or planned during this time, but none succeeded. Nevertheless, poor whites who had or acquired the means to emigrate often did so. Planters expanded their importation of enslaved Africans to cultivate sugar cane.
+
+Slavery in Brazil began long before the first Portuguese settlement was established in 1532, as members of one tribe would enslave captured members of another.[178]
+
+Later, Portuguese colonists were heavily dependent on indigenous labor during the initial phases of settlement to maintain the subsistence economy, and natives were often captured by expeditions called bandeiras. The importation of African slaves began midway through the 16th century, but the enslavement of indigenous peoples continued well into the 17th and 18th centuries.
+
+During the Atlantic slave trade era, Brazil imported more African slaves than any other country. Nearly 5 million slaves were brought from Africa to Brazil during the period from 1501 to 1866.[179] Until the early 1850s, most enslaved Africans who arrived on Brazilian shores were forced to embark at West Central African ports, especially in Luanda (present-day Angola). Today, with the exception of Nigeria, the largest population of people of African descent is in Brazil.[180]
+
+Slave labor was the driving force behind the growth of the sugar economy in Brazil, and sugar was the primary export of the colony from 1600 to 1650. Gold and diamond deposits were discovered in Brazil in 1690, which sparked an increase in the importation of African slaves to power this newly profitable market. Transportation systems were developed for the mining infrastructure, and population boomed from immigrants seeking to take part in gold and diamond mining. Demand for African slaves did not wane after the decline of the mining industry in the second half of the 18th century. Cattle ranching and foodstuff production proliferated after the population growth, both of which relied heavily on slave labor. 1.7 million slaves were imported to Brazil from Africa from 1700 to 1800, and the rise of coffee in the 1830s further enticed expansion of the slave trade.
+
+Brazil was the last country in the Western world to abolish slavery. Forty percent of the total number of slaves brought to the Americas were sent to Brazil. For reference, the United States received 10 percent. Despite being abolished, there are still people working in slavery-like conditions in Brazil in the 21st century.
+
+In 1789 the Spanish Crown led an effort to reform slavery, as the demand for slave labor in Cuba was growing. The Crown issued a decree, Código Negro Español (Spanish Black Codex), that specified food and clothing provisions, put limits on the number of work hours, limited punishments, required religious instruction, and protected marriages, forbidding the sale of young children away from their mothers.[181] The British made other changes to the institution of slavery in Cuba.[181] But planters often flouted the laws and protested against them, considering them a threat to their authority[181] and an intrusion into their personal lives.[181]
+
+The slaveowners did not protest against all the measures of the codex, many of which they argued were already common practices. They objected to efforts to set limits on their ability to apply physical punishment. For instance, the Black Codex limited whippings to 25 and required the whippings "not to cause serious bruises or bleeding".[181] The slave-owners thought that the slaves would interpret these limits as weaknesses, ultimately leading to resistance.[181] Another contested issue was the work hours that were restricted "from sunrise to sunset"; plantation owners responded by explaining that cutting and processing of cane needed 20-hour days during the harvest season.[181]
+
+Those slaves who worked on sugar plantations and in sugar mills were often subject to the harshest of conditions. The field work was rigorous manual labor which the slaves began at an early age. The work days lasted close to 20 hours during harvest and processing, including cultivating and cutting the crops, hauling wagons, and processing sugarcane with dangerous machinery. The slaves were forced to reside in barracoons, where they were crammed in and locked in by a padlock at night, getting about three to four hours of sleep.  The conditions of the barracoons were harsh; they were highly unsanitary and extremely hot. Typically there was no ventilation; the only window was a small barred hole in the wall.[182]
+
+Cuba's slavery system was gendered in a way that some duties were performed only by male slaves, some only by female slaves. Female slaves in Havana from the 16th century onwards performed duties such as operating the town taverns, eating houses, and lodges, as well as being laundresses and domestic laborers and servants. Female slaves also served as the town prostitutes.
+
+Some Cuban women could gain freedom by having children with white men. As in other Latin cultures, there were looser borders with the mulatto or mixed-race population. Sometimes men who took slaves as wives or concubines freed both them and their children. As in New Orleans and Saint-Domingue, mulattos began to be classified as a third group between the European colonists and African slaves. Freedmen, generally of mixed race, came to represent 20% of the total Cuban population and 41% of the non-white Cuban population.[183]
+
+Planters encouraged Afro-Cuban slaves to have children in order to reproduce their work force. The masters wanted to pair strong and large-built black men with healthy black women. They were placed in the barracoons and forced to have sex and create offspring of “breed stock” children, who would sell for around 500 pesos. The planters needed children to be born to replace slaves who died under the harsh regime. Sometimes if the overseers did not like the quality of children, they separate the parents and sent the mother back to working in the fields.[184]
+
+Both women and men were subject to the punishments of violence and humiliating abuse. Slaves who misbehaved or disobeyed their masters were often placed in stocks in the depths of the boiler houses where they were abandoned for days at a time, and oftentimes two to three months. These wooden stocks were made in two types: lying-down or stand-up types. women were punished, even when pregnant. They were subjected to whippings: they had to lie "face down over a scooped-out piece of round [earth] to protect their bellies." [185] Some masters reportedly whipped pregnant women in the belly, often causing miscarriages. The wounds were treated with “compresses of tobacco leaves, urine and salt." [186]
+
+Slavery in Haiti started with the arrival of Christopher Columbus on the island in 1492. The practice was devastating to the native population.[187] Following the indigenous Taíno's near decimation from forced labour, disease and war, the Spanish, under advisement of the Catholic priest Bartolomeu de las Casas, and with the blessing of the Catholic church began engaging in earnest in the kidnapped and forced labour of enslaved Africans. During the French colonial period beginning in 1625, the economy of Haiti (then known as Saint-Domingue) was based on slavery, and the practice there was regarded as the most brutal in the world.
+
+Following the Treaty of Ryswick of 1697, Hispaniola was divided between France and Spain.  France received the western third and subsequently named it Saint-Domingue.  To develop it into sugarcane plantations, the French imported thousands of slaves from Africa. Sugar was a lucrative commodity crop throughout the 18th century. By 1789, approximately 40,000 white colonists lived in Saint-Domingue. The whites were vastly outnumbered by the tens of thousands of African slaves they had imported to work on their plantations, which were primarily devoted to the production of sugarcane. In the north of the island, slaves were able to retain many ties to African cultures, religion and language; these ties were continually being renewed by newly imported Africans. Blacks outnumbered whites by about ten to one.
+
+The French-enacted Code Noir ("Black Code"), prepared by Jean-Baptiste Colbert and ratified by Louis XIV, had established rules on slave treatment and permissible freedoms. Saint-Domingue has been described as one of the most brutally efficient slave colonies; one-third of newly imported Africans died within a few years.[188] Many slaves died from diseases such as smallpox and typhoid fever.[189] They had birth rates around 3 percent, and there is evidence that some women aborted fetuses, or committed infanticide, rather allow their children to live within the bonds of slavery.[190][191]
+
+As in its Louisiana colony, the French colonial government allowed some rights to free people of color: the mixed-race descendants of white male colonists and black female slaves (and later, mixed-race women). Over time, many were released from slavery. They established a separate social class. White French Creole fathers frequently sent their mixed-race sons to France for their education. Some men of color were admitted into the military. More of the free people of color lived in the south of the island, near Port-au-Prince, and many intermarried within their community. They frequently worked as artisans and tradesmen, and began to own some property. Some became slave holders. The free people of color petitioned the colonial government to expand their rights.
+
+Slaves that made it to Haiti from the trans-Atlantic journey and slaves born in Haiti were first documented in Haiti's archives and transferred to France's Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As of 2015[update], these records are in The National Archives of France. According to the 1788 Census, Haiti's population consisted of nearly 40,000 whites, 30,000 free coloureds and 450,000 slaves.[192]
+
+The Haitian Revolution of 1804, the only successful slave revolt in human history, precipitated the end of slavery in all French colonies.
+
+Jamaica was colonized by the Taino tribes prior to the arrival of Columbus in 1494. The Spanish enslaved many of the Taino; some escaped, but most died from European diseases and overwork. The Spaniards also introduced the first African slaves.[193]
+
+The Spanish colonists did not bring women in the first expeditions and took Taíno women for their common-law wives, resulting in mestizo children.[194]  Sexual violence with the Taíno women by the Spanish was also common.[195][196]
+
+Although the African slave population in the 1670s and 1680s never exceeded 10,000, by 1800 it had increased to over 300,000.
+
+In 1519, Hernán Cortés brought the first modern slave to the area.[197] In the mid-16th century, the second viceroy to Mexico, Luis de Velasco, prohibited slavery of the Aztecs.  A labor shortage resulted as the Aztecs were either killed or died from disease.  This led to the African slaves being imported, as they were not susceptible to smallpox.  In exchange, many Africans were afforded the opportunity to buy their freedom, while eventually others were granted their freedom by their masters.[197]
+
+When Ponce de León and the Spaniards arrived on the island of Borikén (Puerto Rico), they enslaved Taíno tribes on the island, forcing them to work in the gold mines and in the construction of forts. Many Taíno died, particularly from smallpox, of which they had no immunity. Other Taínos committed suicide or left the island after the failed Taíno revolt of 1511.[198]  The Spanish colonists, fearing the loss of their labor force, complained  the courts that they needed manpower. As an alternative, Las Casas suggested the importation and use of African slaves. In 1517, the Spanish Crown permitted its subjects to import twelve slaves each, thereby beginning the slave trade on the colonies.[199]
+
+African slaves were legally branded with a hot iron on the forehead, prevented their "theft" or lawsuits that challenged their captivity.[200]  The colonists continued this branding practice for more than 250 years.[201]  They were sent to work in the gold mines, or in the island's ginger and sugar fields.  They were allowed to live with their families in a hut on the master's land, and given a patch of land where they could farm, but otherwise were subjected to harsh treatment; including sexual abuse as the majority of colonists had arrived without women; many of them intermarried with the Africans or Taínos. Their mixed-race descendants formed the first generations of the early Puerto Rican population.[200]
+
+The slaves faced heavy discrimination and had no opportunity for advancement, though they were educated by their masters.  The Spaniards considered the Africans superior to the Taíno, since the latter were unwilling to assimilate. The slaves, in contrast, had little choice but to adapt. Many converted to Christianity and were given their masters' surnames.[200]
+
+By 1570, the colonists found that the gold mines were depleted, relegating the island to a garrison for passing ships. The cultivation of crops such as tobacco, cotton, cocoa, and ginger became the cornerstone of the economy.[202]  With rising demand for sugar on the international market, major planters increased their labor-intensive cultivation and processing of sugar cane. Sugar plantations supplanted mining as Puerto Rico's main industry and kept demand high for African slavery.[202]
+
+After 1784, Spain provided five ways by which slaves could obtain freedom.[201]  Five years later, the Spanish Crown issued the "Royal Decree of Graces of 1789", which set new rules related to the slave trade and added restrictions to the granting of freedman status. The decree granted its subjects the right to purchase slaves and to participate in the flourishing slave trade in the Caribbean. Later that year a new slave code, also known as El Código Negro (The Black Code), was introduced.[203]
+
+Under "El Código Negro", a slave could buy his freedom, in the event that his master was willing to sell, by paying the price sought in installments. Slaves were allowed to earn money during their spare time by working as shoemakers, cleaning clothes, or selling the produce they grew on their own plots of land. For the freedom of their newborn child, not yet baptized, they paid at half the going price for a baptized child.[203] Many of these freedmen started settlements in the areas which became known as Cangrejos (Santurce), Carolina, Canóvanas, Loíza, and Luquillo. Some became slave owners themselves.[200] Despite these paths to freedom, from 1790 onwards, the number of slaves more than doubled in Puerto Rico as a result of the dramatic expansion of the sugar industry in the island.[202]
+
+On March 22, 1873, slavery was legally abolished in Puerto Rico. However, slaves were not emancipated but rather had to buy their own freedom, at whatever price was set by their last masters. They were also required to work for another three years for their former masters, for other colonists interested in their services, or for the state in order to pay some compensation.[204] Between 1527 and 1873, slaves in Puerto Rico had carried out more than twenty revolts.[205][206]
+
+The planters of the Dutch colony relied heavily on African slaves to cultivate, harvest and process the commodity crops of coffee, cocoa, sugar cane and cotton plantations along the rivers. Planters' treatment of the slaves was notoriously bad.[207]  Historian C. R. Boxer wrote that "man's inhumanity to man just about reached its limits in Surinam."[208]
+
+Many slaves escaped the plantations.  With the help of the native South Americans living in the adjoining rain forests, these runaway slaves established a new and unique culture in the interior that was highly successful in its own right. They were known collectively in English as Maroons, in French as Nèg'Marrons (literally meaning "brown negroes", that is "pale-skinned negroes"), and in Dutch as Marrons.  The Maroons gradually developed several independent tribes through a process of ethnogenesis, as they were made up of slaves from different African ethnicities. These tribes include the Saramaka,  Paramaka, Ndyuka or Aukan, Kwinti, Aluku or Boni, and Matawai.
+
+The Maroons often raided plantations to recruit new members from the slaves and capture women, as well as to acquire weapons, food and supplies. They sometimes killed planters and their families in the raids.[209]  The colonists also mounted armed campaigns against the Maroons, who generally escaped through the rain forest, which they knew much better than did the coloniss. To end hostilities, in the 18th century the European colonial authorities signed several peace treaties with different tribes. They granted the Maroons sovereign status and trade rights in their inland territories, giving them autonomy.
+
+In 1861–63, President Abraham Lincoln of the United States and his administration looked abroad for places to relocate freed slaves who wanted to leave the United States. It opened negotiations with the Dutch government regarding African-American emigration to and colonization of the Dutch colony of Suriname in South America. Nothing came of it and after 1864, the proposal was dropped.[210]
+
+The Netherlands abolished slavery in Suriname, in 1863, under a gradual process that required slaves to work on plantations for 10 transition years for minimal pay, which was considered as partial compensation for their masters. After 1873, most freedmen largely abandoned the plantations where they had worked for several generations in favor of the capital city, Paramaribo.
+
+Slavery in the United States was the legal institution of human chattel enslavement, primarily of Africans and African Americans, that existed in the United States of America in the 18th and 19th centuries after it gained independence from the British and before the end of the American Civil War. Slavery had been practiced in British America from early colonial days and was legal in all Thirteen Colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
+
+By the time of the American Revolution, the status of slave had been institutionalized as a racial caste associated with African ancestry.[211]  The United States became polarized over the issue of slavery, represented by the slave and free states divided by the Mason–Dixon line, which separated free Pennsylvania from slave Maryland and Delaware.
+
+Congress, during the Jefferson administration prohibited the importation of slaves, effective 1808, although smuggling (illegal importing) was not unusual.[212] Domestic slave trading, however, continued at a rapid pace, driven by labor demands from the development of cotton plantations in the Deep South. Those states attempted to extend slavery into the new western territories to keep their share of political power in the nation. Such laws proposed to Congress to continue the spread of slavery into newly ratified states include the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
+
+The treatment of slaves in the United States varied widely depending on conditions, times, and places. The power relationships of slavery corrupted many whites who had authority over slaves, with children showing their own cruelty. Masters and overseers resorted to physical punishments to impose their wills. Slaves were punished by whipping, shackling, hanging, beating, burning, mutilation, branding and imprisonment. Punishment was most often meted out in response to disobedience or perceived infractions, but sometimes abuse was carried out to re-assert the dominance of the master or overseer of the slave.[213] Treatment was usually harsher on large plantations, which were often managed by overseers and owned by absentee slaveholders.
+
+William Wells Brown, who escaped to freedom, reported that on one plantation, slave men were required to pick 80 pounds of cotton per day, while women were required to pick 70 pounds per day; if any slave failed in his or her quota, they were subject to whip lashes for each pound they were short. The whipping post stood next to the cotton scales.[215] A New York man who attended a slave auction in the mid-19th century reported that at least three-quarters of the male slaves he saw at sale had scars on their backs from whipping.[216] By contrast, small slave-owning families had closer relationships between the owners and slaves; this sometimes resulted in a more humane environment but was not a given.[213]
+
+More than one million slaves were sold from the Upper South, which had a surplus of labor, and taken to the Deep South in a forced migration, splitting up many families.  New communities of African-American culture were developed in the Deep South, and the total slave population in the South eventually reached 4 million before liberation.[217][218] In the 19th century, proponents of slavery often defended the institution as a "necessary evil". White people of that time feared that emancipation of black slaves would have more harmful social and economic consequences than the continuation of slavery.  The French writer and traveler Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America (1835), expressed opposition to slavery while observing its effects on American society. He felt that a multiracial society without slavery was untenable, as he believed that prejudice against black people increased as they were granted more rights.  Others, like James Henry Hammond argued that slavery was a "positive good" stating: "Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement."
+
+The Southern state governments wanted to keep a balance between the number of slave and free states to maintain a political balance of power in Congress. The new territories acquired from Britain, France, and Mexico were the subject of major political compromises. By 1850, the newly rich cotton-growing South was threatening to secede from the Union, and tensions continued to rise.  Many white Southern Christians, including church ministers, attempted to justify their support for slavery as modified by Christian paternalism.[219]  The largest denominations, the Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches, split over the slavery issue into regional organizations of the North and South.
+
+When Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election on a platform of halting the expansion of slavery, according to the 1860 U.S. census, roughly 400,000 individuals, representing 8% of all U.S. families, owned nearly 4,000,000 slaves.[220] One-third of Southern families owned slaves.[221]  The South was heavily invested in slavery.  As such, upon Lincoln's election, seven states broke away to form the Confederate States of America. The first six states to secede held the greatest number of slaves in the South. Shortly after, over the issue of slavery, the United States erupted into an all out Civil War, with slavery legally ceasing as an institution following the war in December 1865.
+
+In 2018, the Orlando Sentinel reported some private Christian schools in Florida as teaching students a creationist curriculum which includes assertions such as, “most black and white southerners had long lived together in harmony” and that “power-hungry individuals stirred up the people” leading to the Civil Rights Movement.[222]
+
+Slavery has existed all throughout Asia, and forms of slavery still exist today.
+
+Slavery has taken various forms throughout China's history. It was reportedly abolished as a legally recognized institution, including in a 1909 law[223][224] fully enacted in 1910,[225]  although the practice continued until at least 1949.[226]
+
+The Tang dynasty purchased Western slaves from the Radhanite Jews.[227] Tang Chinese soldiers and pirates enslaved Koreans, Turks, Persians, Indonesians, and people from Inner Mongolia, central Asia, and northern India.[228][229][230][231] The greatest source of slaves came from southern tribes, including Thais and aboriginals from the southern provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Guizhou. Malays, Khmers, Indians, and "black skinned" peoples (who were either Austronesian Negritos of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, or Africans, or both) were also purchased as slaves in the Tang dynasty.[232]
+
+In the 17th century Qing Dynasty, there was a hereditarily servile people called Booi Aha (Manchu:booi niyalma; Chinese transliteration: 包衣阿哈), which is a Manchu word literally translated as "household person" and sometimes rendered as "nucai." The Manchu was establishing close personal and paternalist relationship between masters and their slaves, as Nurhachi said, "The Master should love the slaves and eat the same food as him".[233]  However,  booi aha "did not correspond exactly to the Chinese category of "bond-servant slave" (Chinese:奴僕); instead, it was a relationship of personal dependency on a master which in theory guaranteed close personal relationships and equal treatment, even though many western scholars would directly translate "booi" as "bond-servant" (some of the "booi" even had their own servant).[234][235]
+
+Chinese Muslim (Tungans) Sufis who were charged with practicing xiejiao (heterodox religion), were punished by exile to Xinjiang and being sold as a slave to other Muslims, such as the Sufi begs.[236] Han Chinese who committed crimes such as those dealing with opium became slaves to the begs, this practice was administered by Qing law.[237] Most Chinese in Altishahr were exile slaves to Turkestani Begs.[238] While free Chinese merchants generally did not engage in relationships with East Turkestani women, some of the Chinese slaves belonging to begs, along with Green Standard soldiers, Bannermen, and Manchus, engaged in affairs with the East Turkestani women that were serious in nature.[239]
+
+Slavery in India was widespread by the 6th century BC, and perhaps even as far back as the Vedic period.[240] Slavery intensified during the Muslim domination of northern India after the 11th-century.[241] Slavery existed in Portuguese India after the 16th century. The Dutch, too, largely dealt in Abyssian slaves, known in India as Habshis or Sheedes.[242] Arakan/Bengal, Malabar, and Coromandel remained the largest sources of forced labour until the 1660s.
+
+Between 1626 and 1662, the Dutch exported on an average 150–400 slaves annually from the Arakan-Bengal coast. During the first 30 years of Batavia's existence, Indian and Arakanese slaves provided the main labour force of the Dutch East India Company, Asian headquarters. An increase in Coromandel slaves occurred during a famine following the revolt of the Nayaka Indian rulers of South India (Tanjavur, Senji, and Madurai) against Bijapur overlordship (1645) and the subsequent devastation of the Tanjavur countryside by the Bijapur army. Reportedly, more than 150,000 people were taken by the invading Deccani Muslim armies to Bijapur and Golconda. In 1646, 2,118 slaves were exported to Batavia, the overwhelming majority from southern Coromandel. Some slaves were also acquired further south at Tondi, Adirampatnam, and Kayalpatnam. Another increase in slaving took place between 1659 and 1661 from Tanjavur as a result of a series of successive Bijapuri raids. At Nagapatnam, Pulicat, and elsewhere, the company purchased 8,000–10,000 slaves, the bulk of whom were sent to Ceylon, while a small portion were exported to Batavia and Malacca. Finally, following a long drought in Madurai and southern Coromandel, in 1673, which intensified the prolonged Madurai-Maratha struggle over Tanjavur and punitive fiscal practices, thousands of people from Tanjavur, mostly children, were sold into slavery and exported by Asian traders from Nagapattinam to Aceh, Johor, and other slave markets.
+
+In September 1687, 665 slaves were exported by the English from Fort St. George, Madras.  And, in 1694–96, when warfare once more ravaged South India, a total of 3,859 slaves were imported from Coromandel by private individuals into Ceylon.[243][244][245][246]
+The volume of the total Dutch Indian Ocean slave trade has been estimated to be about 15–30% of the Atlantic slave trade, slightly smaller than the trans-Saharan slave trade, and one-and-a-half to three times the size of the Swahili and Red Sea coast and the Dutch West India Company slave trades.[247]
+According to Sir Henry Bartle Frere (who sat on the Viceroy's Council), there were an estimated 8 or 9 million slaves in India in 1841. About 15% of the population of Malabar were slaves. Slavery was legally abolished in the possessions of the East India Company by the Indian Slavery Act, 1843.[3]
+
+The hill tribe people in Indochina were "hunted incessantly and carried off as slaves by the Siamese (Thai), the Anamites (Vietnamese), and the Cambodians".[248] A Siamese military campaign in Laos in 1876 was described by a British observer as having been "transformed into slave-hunting raids on a large scale".[249] The census, taken in 1879, showed that 6% of the population in the Malay sultanate of Perak were slaves.[250] Enslaved people made up about two-thirds of the population in part of North Borneo in the 1880s.[250]
+
+After the Portuguese first made contact with Japan in 1543, a large scale slave trade developed in which Portuguese purchased Japanese as slaves in Japan and sold them to various locations overseas, including Portugal, throughout the 16th and 17th centuries.[251][252] Many documents mention the large slave trade along with protests against the enslavement of Japanese. Japanese slaves are believed to be the first of their nation to end up in Europe, and the Portuguese purchased large numbers of Japanese slave girls to bring to Portugal for sexual purposes, as noted by the Church[253] in 1555. Japanese slave women were even sold as concubines to Asian lascar and African crew members, along with their European counterparts serving on Portuguese ships trading in Japan, mentioned by Luis Cerqueira, a Portuguese Jesuit, in a 1598 document.[254] Japanese slaves were brought by the Portuguese to Macau, where they were enslaved to Portuguese or became slaves to other slaves.[255][256]
+
+Some Korean slaves were bought by the Portuguese and brought back to Portugal from Japan, where they had been among the tens of thousands of Korean prisoners of war transported to Japan during the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–98).[257][258] Historians pointed out that at the same time Hideyoshi expressed his indignation and outrage at the Portuguese trade in Japanese slaves, he was engaging in a mass slave trade of Korean prisoners of war in Japan.[259][260]
+Fillippo Sassetti saw some Chinese and Japanese slaves in Lisbon among the large slave community in 1578, although most of the slaves were black.[261][262][263][264][265]
+The Portuguese "highly regarded" Asian slaves from the East much more "than slaves from sub-Saharan Africa".[266] The Portuguese attributed qualities like intelligence and industriousness to Chinese and Japanese slaves.[267][268][269][270]
+
+King Sebastian of Portugal feared rampant slavery was having a negative effect on Catholic proselytization, so he commanded that it be banned in 1571.[271][272]Hideyoshi was so disgusted that his own Japanese people were being sold en masse into slavery on Kyushu, that he wrote a letter to Jesuit Vice-Provincial Gaspar Coelho on July 24, 1587, to demand the Portuguese, Siamese (Thai), and Cambodians stop purchasing and enslaving Japanese and return Japanese slaves who ended up as far as India.[273][274][275] Hideyoshi blamed the Portuguese and Jesuits for this slave trade and banned Christian proselytizing as a result.[276][self-published source][277] In 1595, a law was passed by Portugal banning the selling and buying of Chinese and Japanese slaves.[278]
+
+During the Joseon period, the nobi population could fluctuate up to about one-third of the population, but on average the nobi made up about 10% of the total population.[81] The nobi system declined beginning in the 18th century.[279] Since the outset of the Joseon dynasty and especially beginning in the 17th century, there was harsh criticism among prominent thinkers in Korea about the nobi system. Even within the Joseon government, there were indications of a shift in attitude toward the nobi.[280] King Yeongjo implemented a policy of gradual emancipation in 1775,[82] and he and his successor King Jeongjo made many proposals and developments that lessened the burden on nobi, which led to the emancipation of the vast majority of government nobi in 1801.[280] In addition, population growth,[82] numerous escaped slaves,[81] growing commercialization of agriculture, and the rise of the independent small farmer class contributed to the decline in the number of nobi to about 1.5% of the total population by 1858.[281] The hereditary nobi system was officially abolished around 1886–87,[81][281] and the rest of the nobi system was abolished with the Gabo Reform of 1894.[81][282] However, slavery did not completely disappear in Korea until 1930, during Imperial Japanese rule.
+
+During the Imperial Japanese occupation of Korea around World War II, some Koreans were used in forced labor by the Imperial Japanese, in conditions which have been compared to slavery.[81][283] These included women forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army before and during World War II, known as "comfort women".[81][283]
+
+Slaves (he mōkai) had a recognised social role in traditional  Māori society in New Zealand.[284]
+
+Blackbirding occurred in the  Pacific, especially in the 19th century.
+
+In Constantinople, about one-fifth of the population consisted of slaves.[285] The city was a major centre of the slave trade in the 15th and later centuries.
+Slaves were provided by Tatar raids on Slavic villages[286] but also by conquest and the suppression of rebellions, in the aftermath of which entire populations were sometimes enslaved and sold across the Empire, reducing the risk of future rebellion.  The Ottomans also purchased slaves from traders who brought slaves into the Empire from Europe and Africa. It has been estimated that some 200,000 slaves – mainly Circassians – were imported into the Ottoman Empire between 1800 and 1909.[250] As late as 1908, women slaves were still sold in the Ottoman Empire.[287]
+
+Until the late 18th century, the Crimean Khanate (a Muslim Tatar state) maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East.[106] The slaves were captured in southern Russia, Poland-Lithuania, Moldavia, Wallachia, and Circassia by Tatar horsemen[288] and sold in the Crimean port of Kaffa.[289] About 2 million mostly Christian slaves were exported over the 16th and 17th centuries[290] until the Crimean Khanate was destroyed by the Russian Empire in 1783.[291]
+
+A slave market for captured Russian and Persian slaves was centred in the Central Asian khanate of Khiva.[292] In the early 1840s, the population of the Uzbek states of Bukhara and Khiva included about 900,000 slaves.[250] Darrel P. Kaiser wrote, "Kazakh-Kirghiz tribesmen kidnapped 1573 settlers from colonies [German settlements in Russia] in 1774 alone and only half were successfully ransomed. The rest were killed or enslaved."[293]
+
+Even though slavery is now outlawed in every country, the number of slaves today is estimated as between 12 million and 29.8 million.[294][295][296] According to a broad definition of slavery, there were 27 million people in slavery in 1999, spread all over the world.[297] In 2005, the International Labour Organization provided an estimate of 12.3 million forced labourers.[298] Siddharth Kara has also provided an estimate of 28.4 million slaves at the end of 2006 divided into three categories: bonded labour/debt bondage (18.1 million), forced labour (7.6 million), and trafficked slaves (2.7 million).[42] Kara provides a dynamic model to calculate the number of slaves in the world each year, with an estimated 29.2 million at the end of 2009.
+
+According to a 2003 report by Human Rights Watch, an estimated 15 million children in debt bondage in India work in slavery-like conditions to pay off their family's debts.[300][301]
+
+A report by the Walk Free Foundation in 2013,[302] found India had the highest number of slaves, nearly 14 million, followed by China (2.9 million), Pakistan (2.1 million), Nigeria, Ethiopia, Russia, Thailand, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar and Bangladesh; while the countries with the highest proportions of slaves were Mauritania, Haiti, Pakistan, India and Nepal.[303]
+
+In June 2013, U.S. State Department released a report on slavery.  It placed Russia, China, and Uzbekistan in the worst offenders category.  Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, and Zimbabwe were at the lowest level. The list also included Algeria, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait among a total of 21 countries.[304][305]
+
+The Walk Free Foundation reported in 2018 that slavery in wealthy Western societies is much more prevalent than previously known, in particular the United States and Great Britain, which have 403,000 (one in 800) and 136,000 slaves respectively. Andrew Forrest, founder of the organization, said that "The United States is one of the most advanced countries in the world yet has more than 400,000 modern slaves working under forced labor conditions."[306] An estimated 40.3 million are enslaved globally, with North Korea having the most slaves at 2.6 million (one in 10). The foundation defines contemporary slavery as "situations of exploitation that a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion, abuse of power, or deception."[307]
+
+During the Second Libyan Civil War, Libyans started capturing Sub-Saharan African migrants trying to get to Europe through Libya and selling them on slave markets or holding them hostage for ransom[308]  Women are often raped, used as sex slaves, or sold to brothels.[309][310][311] Child migrants suffer from abuse and child rape in Libya.[312][313]
+
+In Mauritania, the last country to abolish slavery (in 1981), it is estimated that 20% of its 3 million population, are enslaved as bonded laborers.[314][315][316] Slavery in Mauritania was criminalized in August 2007.[317] However, although slavery, as a practice, was legally banned in 1981, it was not a crime to own a slave until 2007.[318] Although many slaves have escaped or have been freed since 2007, as of 2012[update], only one slave owner had been sentenced to serve time in prison.[319]
+
+While American slaves in 1809 were sold for around $40,000 (in inflation adjusted dollars), a slave nowadays can be bought for just $90, making replacement more economical than providing long-term care.[320] Slavery is a multibillion-dollar industry with estimates of up to $35 billion generated annually.[321]
+
+Victims of human trafficking are typically recruited through deceit or trickery (such as a false job offer, false migration offer, or false marriage offer), sale by family members, recruitment by former slaves, or outright abduction. Victims are forced into a "debt slavery" situation by coercion, deception, fraud, intimidation, isolation, threat, physical force, debt bondage or even force-feeding with drugs to control their victims.[322] "Annually, according to U.S. government-sponsored research completed in 2006, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders, which does not include millions trafficked within their own countries. Approximately 80% of transnational victims are women and girls, and up to 50% are minors, reports the U.S. State Department in a 2008 study.[323]
+
+While the majority of trafficking victims are women who are forced into prostitution (in which case the practice is called sex trafficking), victims also include men, women and children who are forced into manual labour.[324] Because of the illegal nature of human trafficking, its extent is unknown. A U.S. government report, published in 2005, estimates that about 700,000 people worldwide are trafficked across borders each year. This figure does not include those who are trafficked internally.[324] Another research effort revealed that roughly 1.5 million individuals are trafficked either internally or internationally each year, of which about 500,000 are sex trafficking victims.[42]
+
+Slavery has existed, in one form or another, throughout recorded human history – as have, in various periods, movements to free large or distinct groups of slaves.
+
+Ashoka, who ruled the Maurya Empire in the Indian subcontinent from 269–232 BCE, abolished the slave trade but not slavery.[326] The Qin dynasty, which ruled China from 221 to 206 BC, abolished slavery and discouraged serfdom. However, many of its laws were overturned when the dynasty was overthrown.[327] Slavery was again abolished by Wang Mang in China in 17 CE but was reinstituted after his assassination.[328]
+
+The Spanish colonization of the Americas sparked a discussion about the right to enslave Native Americans. A prominent critic of slavery in the Spanish New World colonies was Bartolomé de las Casas, who opposed the enslavement of Native Americans, and as well as Africans in America.
+
+One of the first protests against slavery came from German and Dutch Quakers in Pennsylvania in 1688.[329] In 1777, Vermont, at the time an independent nation, became the first portion of what would become the United States to abolish slavery.[329]
+
+In the United States, all of the northern states had abolished slavery by 1804, with New Jersey being the last to act.[330] Abolitionist pressure produced a series of small steps towards emancipation. After the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves went into effect on January 1, 1808, the importation of slaves into the United States was prohibited,[331] but not the internal slave trade, nor involvement in the international slave trade externally. Legal slavery persisted; most of those slaves already in the U.S. were legally emancipated only in 1863. Many American abolitionists took an active role in opposing slavery by supporting the Underground Railroad. Violent clashes between anti-slavery and pro-slavery Americans included Bleeding Kansas, a series of political and armed disputes in 1854–1861 as to whether Kansas would join the United States as a slave or free state. By 1860, the total number of slaves reached almost four million, and the American Civil War, beginning in 1861, led to the end of slavery in the United States.[332] In 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves held in the Confederate States; the 13th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution prohibited most forms of slavery throughout the country.
+
+Many of the freed slaves became sharecroppers and indentured servants. In this manner, some became tied to the very parcel of land into which they had been born a slave having little freedom or economic opportunity because of Jim Crow laws which perpetuated discrimination, limited education, promoted persecution without due process and resulted in continued poverty. Fear of reprisals such as unjust incarcerations and lynchings deterred upward mobility further.
+
+France abolished slavery in 1794.[329]
+
+One of the most significant milestones in the campaign to abolish slavery throughout the world occurred in England in 1772, with British Judge Lord Mansfield, whose opinion in Somersett's Case was widely taken to have held that slavery was illegal in England. This judgement also laid down the principle that slavery contracted in other jurisdictions could not be enforced in England.[333]
+
+Sons of Africa was a late 18th-century British group that campaigned to end slavery. Its members were Africans in London, freed slaves who included Ottobah Cugoano, Olaudah Equiano and other leading members of London's black community. It was closely connected to the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, a non-denominational group founded in 1787, whose members included Thomas Clarkson. British Member of Parliament William Wilberforce led the anti-slavery movement in the United Kingdom, although the groundwork was an anti-slavery essay by Clarkson. Wilberforce was urged by his close friend, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, to make the issue his own and was also given support by reformed Evangelical John Newton. The Slave Trade Act was passed by the British Parliament on March 25, 1807, making the slave trade illegal throughout the British Empire,[334] Wilberforce also campaigned for abolition of slavery in the British Empire, which he lived to see in the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.
+
+After the 1807 act abolishing the slave trade was passed, these campaigners switched to encouraging other countries to follow suit, notably France and the British colonies. Between 1808 and 1860, the British West Africa Squadron seized approximately 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard.[335] Action was also taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade, for example against "the usurping King of Lagos", deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African rulers.[336]
+
+In 1839, the world's oldest international human rights organization, Anti-Slavery International, was formed in Britain by Joseph Sturge, which campaigned to outlaw slavery in other countries.[337] There were celebrations in 2007 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in the United Kingdom through the work of the British Anti-Slavery Society.
+
+In the 1860s, David Livingstone's reports of atrocities within the Arab slave trade in Africa stirred up the interest of the British public, reviving the flagging abolitionist movement. The Royal Navy throughout the 1870s attempted to suppress "this abominable Eastern trade", at Zanzibar in particular. In 1905, the French abolished indigenous slavery in most of French West Africa.[338]
+
+On December 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which declared freedom from slavery is an internationally recognized human right. Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:
+
+No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.[339]
+
+In 2014, for the first time in history, major leaders of many religions, Buddhist, Anglican, Catholic, Orthodox Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim met to sign a shared commitment against modern-day slavery; the declaration they signed calls for the elimination of slavery and human trafficking by 2020.[340] The signatories were: Pope Francis, Mātā Amṛtānandamayī, Bhikkhuni Thich Nu Chân Không (representing Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh), Datuk K Sri Dhammaratana, Chief High Priest of Malaysia, Rabbi Abraham Skorka, Rabbi David Rosen, Abbas Abdalla Abbas Soliman, Undersecretary of State of Al Azhar Alsharif (representing Mohamed Ahmed El-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar), Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi al-Modarresi, Sheikh Naziyah Razzaq Jaafar, Special advisor of Grand Ayatollah (representing Grand Ayatollah Sheikh Basheer Hussain al Najafi), Sheikh Omar Abboud, Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Metropolitan Emmanuel of France (representing Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.)[340]
+
+Groups such as the American Anti-Slavery Group, Anti-Slavery International, Free the Slaves, the Anti-Slavery Society, and the Norwegian Anti-Slavery Society continue to campaign to eliminate slavery.
+
+On May 21, 2001, the National Assembly of France passed the Taubira law, recognizing slavery as a crime against humanity. Apologies on behalf of African nations, for their role in trading their countrymen into slavery, remain an open issue since slavery was practiced in Africa even before the first Europeans arrived and the Atlantic slave trade was performed with a high degree of involvement of several African societies. The black slave market was supplied by well-established slave trade networks controlled by local African societies and individuals.[341]
+
+There is adequate evidence citing case after case of African control of segments of the trade. Several African nations such as the Calabar and other southern parts of Nigeria had economies depended solely on the trade. African peoples such as the Imbangala of Angola and the Nyamwezi of Tanzania would serve as middlemen or roving bands warring with other African nations to capture Africans for Europeans.[342]
+
+Several historians have made important contributions to the global understanding of the African side of the Atlantic slave trade. By arguing that African merchants determined the assemblage of trade goods accepted in exchange for slaves, many historians argue for African agency and ultimately a shared responsibility for the slave trade.[343]
+
+In 1999, President Mathieu Kerekou of Benin issued a national apology for the central role Africans played in the Atlantic slave trade.[344] Luc Gnacadja, minister of environment and housing for Benin, later said: "The slave trade is a shame, and we do repent for it."[345] Researchers estimate that 3 million slaves were exported out of the Slave Coast bordering the Bight of Benin.[345] President Jerry Rawlings of Ghana also apologized for his country's involvement in the slave trade.[344]
+
+The issue of an apology is linked to reparations for slavery and is still being pursued by entities across the world. For example, the Jamaican Reparations Movement approved its declaration and action plan. In 2007, British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a formal apology for Great Britain's involvement in slavery.[346]
+
+On February 25, 2007, the Commonwealth of Virginia resolved to 'profoundly regret' and apologize for its role in the institution of slavery. Unique and the first of its kind in the U.S., the apology was unanimously passed in both Houses as Virginia approached the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown.[347]
+
+On August 24, 2007, Mayor Ken Livingstone of London apologized publicly for Britain's role in colonial slave trade. "You can look across there to see the institutions that still have the benefit of the wealth they created from slavery," he said, pointing towards the financial district. He claimed that London was still tainted by the horrors of slavery. Specifically, London outfitted, financed, and insured many of the ships, which helped fund the building of London's docks.[348] Officials in Liverpool, which was a large slave trading port, apologized in 1999.[349]
+
+On July 30, 2008, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution apologizing for American slavery and subsequent discriminatory laws.[350] In June 2009, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution apologizing to African-Americans for the "fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery".[351] The news was welcomed by President Barack Obama, the nation's first president of African descent.[352] Some of President Obama's ancestors may have been slave owners.[353]
+
+In 2010, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi apologized for Arab involvement in the slave trade, saying: "I regret the behavior of the Arabs… They brought African children to North Africa, they made them slaves, they sold them like animals, and they took them as slaves and traded them in a shameful way."[354]
+
+There have been movements to achieve reparations for those formerly held as slaves or for their descendants. Claims for reparations for being held in slavery are handled as a civil law matter in almost every country. This is often decried as a serious problem, since former slaves' relatives lack of money means they often have limited access to a potentially expensive and futile legal process. Mandatory systems of fines and reparations paid to an as yet undetermined group of claimants from fines, paid by unspecified parties, and collected by authorities have been proposed by advocates to alleviate this "civil court problem." Since in almost all cases there are no living ex-slaves or living ex-slave owners these movements have gained little traction. In nearly all cases the judicial system has ruled that the statute of limitations on these possible claims has long since expired.
+
+The word slavery is often used as a pejorative to describe any activity in which one is coerced into performing. Some argue that military drafts and other forms of coerced government labour constitute "state-operated slavery."[355][356] Some libertarians and anarcho-capitalists view government taxation as a form of slavery.[357]
+
+"Slavery" has been used by some anti-psychiatry proponents to define involuntary psychiatric patients, claiming there are no unbiased physical tests for mental illness and yet the psychiatric patient must follow the orders of the psychiatrist. They assert that instead of chains to control the slave, the psychiatrist uses drugs to control the mind.[358] Drapetomania was a psychiatric diagnosis for a slave who did not want to be a slave.[359][360]
+
+Some proponents of animal rights have applied the term slavery to the condition of some or all human-owned animals, arguing that their status is comparable to that of human slaves.[361]
+
+The labor market, as institutionalized under today's market economic systems, has been criticized by mainstream socialists and by anarcho-syndicalists, who utilise the term wage slavery as a pejorative or dysphemism for wage labour.[362][363][364][365][366][367] Socialists draw parallels between the trade of labour as a commodity and slavery. Cicero is also known to have suggested such parallels.[368]
+
+Film has been the most influential medium in the presentation of the history of slavery to the general public around the world.[369] The American film industry has had a complex relationship with slavery and until recent decades often avoided the topic. Films such as Birth of a Nation (1915)[370] and Gone with the Wind (1939) became controversial because they gave a favourable depiction. In 1940 The Santa Fe Trail gave a liberal but ambiguous interpretation of John Brown's attacks on slavery.[371] Song of the South gave a favorable outlook on slavery in the United States in 1946.
+
+The Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s made defiant slaves into heroes.[372] The question of slavery in American memory necessarily involves its depictions in feature films.[373]
+
+Most Hollywood films used American settings, although Spartacus (1960), dealt with an actual revolt in the Roman Empire known as the Third Servile War. The revolt failed, and all the rebels were executed, but their spirit lived on according to the film.[374] Spartacus stays surprisingly close to the historical record.[375]
+
+The Last Supper (La última cena in Spanish) was a 1976 film directed by Cuban Tomás Gutiérrez Alea about the teaching of Christianity to slaves in Cuba, and emphasizes the role of ritual and revolt. Burn! takes place on the imaginary Portuguese island of Queimada (where the locals speak Spanish) and it merges historical events that took place in Brazil, Cuba, Santo Domingo, Jamaica, and elsewhere.
+
+Historians agree that films have largely shaped historical memories, but they debate issues of accuracy, plausibility, moralism, sensationalism, how facts are stretched in search of broader truths, and suitability for the classroom.[376][377] Berlin argues that critics complain if the treatment emphasizes historical brutality, or if it glosses over the harshness to highlight the emotional impact of slavery.[378]

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+Severus Snape is a fictional character in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. He is an exceptionally skilful wizard whose coldly sarcastic and controlled exterior conceals deep emotions and anguish. A Professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Snape is hostile to Harry due to his resemblance to his father James, who bullied Snape during their time at Hogwarts.
+
+Snape's character becomes more layered and enigmatic as the series progresses, and a central mystery concerns his loyalties. Snape dies at the hands of Lord Voldemort in the seventh book, at which time his back story is revealed. Despite his attraction to the Dark Arts and Voldemort's ideology of wizard supremacy, Snape's love for Muggle-born Lily Evans, Harry's mother, eventually compelled him to defect from the Death Eaters and become a double agent for Albus Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix. The fact that Lily chose James Potter, Harry's father who had bullied Snape and to whom Harry bears a strong physical resemblance, only fuels Snape's hostility towards Harry.
+
+The character has been widely acclaimed by readers and critics. Rowling described him as "a gift of a character"[1] whose story she had known since the first book, and Elizabeth Hand of The Washington Post opined that Snape's life "is the most heartbreaking, surprising and satisfying of all of Rowling's achievements".[2] Actor Alan Rickman portrayed Snape in all eight Harry Potter films, released between 2001 and 2011.
+
+In an interview,[3] Rowling described Snape's character as an "antihero". She has said that she drew inspiration for Snape's character from a disliked teacher from her own childhood,[4] and described Snape as a horrible teacher,[5] saying the "worst, shabbiest thing you can do as a teacher is to bully students."[6] However, she does suggest in the books that he is generally an effective teacher.[7] Although Rowling has said that Gilderoy Lockhart is her only character that she "deliberately based on a real person",[8] Snape was reportedly based, at least in part, on John Nettleship, who taught Rowling chemistry and employed her mother as an assistant at Wyedean School near Chepstow.[9][10][11] Rowling based Snape's given name on "Severus Road" in Clapham,[12] and his surname is borrowed from the name of a village in England.[13] In a 1999 interview[14] and again in 2004,[8] Rowling singled out Snape as one of her favourite characters to write.
+
+Rowling was less forthcoming about Snape than she was for other characters, because his true loyalties and motivations were not revealed until the final book.[15] However, she hinted numerous times at Snape's important role, suggesting that people should "keep their eye on Snape".[4][16] In 1999, answering a question regarding Snape's love life and the redemptive pattern to his character, Rowling expressed her surprise at the foresight.[17] Rowling also disclosed that after the publication of Prisoner of Azkaban, there was one female fan who guessed Snape loved Lily Potter, making Rowling wonder how she had given herself away.[18]
+
+After the completion of the series, Rowling began to speak openly about Snape, discussing the contrast between his character arc and that of Albus Dumbledore.[19] Rowling said "the series is built around [the Dumbledore and Snape storylines]", and maintained that she always knew what Snape would turn out to be at the end and that she carefully plotted his storyline throughout the series. "I had to drop clues all the way through because as you know in the seventh book when you have the revelation scene where everything shifts and you realise...what Snape's motivation was. I had to plot that through the books because at the point where you see what was really going on, it would have been an absolute cheat on the reader at that point just to show a bunch of stuff you've never seen before."[18] Rowling further said in an interview that she wanted Snape to find redemption and forgiveness: "Snape is a complicated man...he was a flawed human being, like all of us. Harry forgives him...Harry really sees the good in Snape ultimately... I wanted there to be redemption."[20]
+
+Snape first appears in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, shortly after Harry arrives at Hogwarts. He is the school's Potions Master, though he is widely rumoured to covet the Defence Against the Dark Arts post.[21] Snape himself confirms the rumour in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.[22] Snape is a sinister and malicious teacher who makes frequent snide and disparaging remarks at Harry's expense. He quickly becomes the primary antagonist of the book, as Harry suspects him of plotting to steal the philosopher's stone, and of attempting to kill him. Only the climax of the book reveals that Professor Quirrell, in league with Lord Voldemort, is the real enemy; Snape, suspicious of Quirrell, had been looking out for Harry throughout the book. In the final chapter, Dumbledore suggests that because Harry's father James had saved Snape's life when they were both students, even though the two detested each other, Snape felt responsible for Harry in return.[23] As the final book reveals, this is not the full story. In any case, even after Quirrell's true role is revealed, Harry retains feelings of suspicion and resentment towards Snape, and their relationship remains tense. Snape's behaviour and attitude towards Harry also remain unchanged.
+
+Snape has a minor role in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, where he helps Gilderoy Lockhart oversee Hogwarts' short-lived Duelling Club,[24] but he has little interaction with the main plot. It is while attending the Duelling Club that Harry learns the Expelliarmus spell, which plays a significant role in later books, by seeing Snape use it.
+
+In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Snape demonstrates his expertise with potions by brewing the complex Wolfsbane potion for the new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor, Remus Lupin.[25] Throughout the third book, Snape suspects that Lupin may be helping Harry's godfather Sirius Black enter Hogwarts castle; Sirius had been convicted (wrongly, as it is later revealed) of murdering Peter Pettigrew and innocent bystanders, and betraying the Potter family's hiding place to Voldemort. This suspicion stems from Lupin's friendship with Sirius and Harry's father, James, while they were all at Hogwarts as students.[26] Near the climax of the book, Snape attempts to apprehend Sirius, but Sirius escapes with Harry's aid. Snape informs Dumbledore of this circumstance, and when Harry and Lupin are not punished, Snape retaliates by revealing to the entire school that Lupin is a werewolf, forcing the latter to resign his post.[27]
+
+Prisoner of Azkaban reveals more details about the connection between Snape and James. While in school together, Sirius once tricked Snape into almost entering the Shrieking Shack while Lupin was there, transformed into a werewolf. James realised the danger and stopped Snape, saving his life; this is the incident Dumbledore referred to at the end of the first book. Snape, however, believes James' actions were self-serving, to avoid being expelled.[28]
+
+Snape's role in the fourth novel, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, is not substantially different from that of the previous three books. He is apoplectic when Harry is unexpectedly entered into the Triwizard Tournament. Later Harry accidentally falls into Dumbledore's Pensieve and views memories of several Death Eater trials from years before. At one point, Snape is named as a Death Eater by Igor Karkaroff, but Dumbledore comes to Snape's defence, claiming that although Snape had indeed been a Death Eater, he changed sides before Voldemort's downfall and turned spy against him. Later, Dumbledore assures Harry that Snape's reformation is genuine, though he refuses to tell Harry how he knows this, saying the information "is a matter between Professor Snape and myself".[29]
+
+At the end of the book, Dumbledore attempts to convince a disbelieving Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge, that Voldemort has returned. As proof, Snape willingly shows Fudge the restored Dark Mark on his arm. He is subsequently sent on a secret mission by Dumbledore. This mission, as had been implied in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and revealed in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was to rejoin the Death Eaters and spy on Voldemort as a re-doubled agent, while pretending to spy on Dumbledore on behalf of Voldemort.
+
+In the fifth novel, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Snape returns to a more prominent role. With Voldemort having returned to a fully corporeal body, Snape continues working as a re-doubled agent for Dumbledore.[30] He is seen prior to the start of school at Number 12, Grimmauld Place giving reports to the Order of the Phoenix.[31] He has a very strained relationship with Sirius, who owns Grimmauld Place and must remain there in hiding. The two trade frequent snide remarks and at one point almost begin a duel. Snape taunts Sirius about the latter's not being able to take an active role in the Order's missions because of his fugitive status. Harry feels later that this taunting contributed to Sirius' willingness to take unsafe risks.[32] Back at school, Snape's allegiance to the Order has no effect on his dislike for Harry.
+
+Later in the book, Dumbledore has Snape teach Harry Occlumency, the protection of the mind from outside intrusion or influence.[32] The sessions are made difficult by their mutual hostility and end prematurely when Harry uses Dumbledore's Pensieve to view one of Snape's worst childhood memories without the latter's permission. He sees the memory of Snape being bullied by James and Sirius, and of calling Harry's mother Lily a Mudblood (a highly offensive term).[26] Only in the final book is it revealed that, prior to this confrontation, Snape and Lily had been close friends.
+
+Towards the end of the novel, Dolores Umbridge – the school's politically appointed headmistress – captures Harry and interrogates him about Dumbledore's whereabouts. She sends for Snape, demanding that he provide the magical truth serum Veritaserum in order to force Harry to reveal any information he may be hiding. Snape claims that his supplies of the serum have been exhausted after Umbridge tries to use the drug previously on Harry. It is later revealed that Snape had in fact supplied Umbridge with fake Veritaserum on the prior attempt. Snape then carries Harry's cryptic warning about Sirius' capture to the other Order members, allowing them to come to the rescue in the Department of Mysteries.[33] Harry still holds Snape partly responsible for Sirius' death, believing Snape's goading spurred Sirius into joining the battle.
+
+In the second chapter of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Bellatrix Lestrange and Narcissa Malfoy visit Snape at his home in Spinner's End. Narcissa's son Draco has been given a difficult task by Voldemort, and Narcissa swears Snape to an Unbreakable Vow that he will protect Draco, help him complete Voldemort's task, and finish the task himself if Draco fails. When questioned by Bellatrix about his loyalties, Snape says he has been working for Voldemort ever since Voldemort's return, and explains his actions in the previous books in that light. He points out that gaining Dumbledore's trust and protection has kept him out of Azkaban and free to operate on Voldemort's behalf.[34]
+
+At the start-of-term feast at Hogwarts, Dumbledore announces Snape as the new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor. Horace Slughorn, a former teacher who himself had taught Snape during his Hogwarts years, comes out of retirement and replaces him as Potions Master. With Snape no longer teaching Potions, Harry enrolls in Slughorn's class and is lent an old textbook until his new one arrives. Harry finds marginalia, including a variety of hexes and jinxes seemingly invented by an unknown student, and substantial improvements to the book's standard potion-making instructions. The text is inscribed as being "the Property of the Half-Blood Prince". The notes greatly bolster Harry's performance in Potions, so much so that he impresses Slughorn. Snape, who maintains that he "never had the impression that [he] had been able to teach Potter anything at all", is suspicious of Harry's newfound Potions success.[35]
+
+Later, during a fight with Draco, Harry casts one of the Prince's spells marked "For Enemies," and is horrified by the devastating wounds it inflicts to Draco's face and chest. Snape rushes to the scene and heals Draco, then interrogates Harry regarding the spell, using Legilimency to extract the source of Harry's knowledge (the Potions textbook) from Harry's mind. When Snape insists that Harry show him his Potions textbook, Harry hides the Prince's book and gives him Ron Weasley's book instead. As punishment for the attack and knowing Harry is lying about the textbook, Snape assigns Harry detention during the final Quidditch match of the year.[36]
+
+Before leaving Hogwarts to accompany Dumbledore in locating another horcrux – part of Voldemort's soul – Harry discovers from Professor Trelawney that it was Snape who overheard the prophecy and told it to Voldemort, resulting in Voldemort hunting down Harry and his parents. Despite this and Harry's angry questions, Dumbledore avers his trust in Snape. Returning to Hogwarts after retrieving Voldemort's Horcrux, Harry and Dumbledore alight atop the school's astronomy tower. Gravely weakened by the horcrux's protective potion, Dumbledore tells Harry he must fetch Snape, but before Harry can leave, Draco suddenly arrives, intending to carry out Voldemort's order to assassinate Dumbledore, closely followed by other Death Eaters (followers of Voldemort), and Snape. Snape interrupts the planned murder, killing the headmaster himself.[37] Harry, who is paralysed under his invisibility cloak by Dumbledore for his own protection, witnesses the kill, and is released upon Dumbledore's death. Enraged, he pursues Snape, Draco, and the Death Eaters as they flee the castle. Snape easily blocks Harry's spells and jeeringly points out Harry's mistakes, but never strikes back. During the confrontation, Snape reveals himself as the eponymous "Half-Blood Prince" (being the half-blood son of Muggle Tobias Snape and pure-blood Eileen Prince). Snape passes through the school gates and Disapparates with Draco in tow at the book's end.[38] The full relationship between Dumbledore and Snape and the reason for Snape's actions remain unknown until the final book. In an interview, Rowling mentioned that at this point in the series, the Harry–Snape relationship has become "as personal, if not more so, than Harry–Voldemort."[39]
+
+In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Voldemort and his Death Eaters have tightened their grip on the wizarding world. Snape is named Headmaster of Hogwarts, while Death Eaters Alecto and Amycus Carrow are appointed as Hogwarts staff. The novel focuses largely on Harry and his friends and events outside the school; therefore Snape plays a limited role at the start. In the course of the book, Harry and his friends find out that a few students attempted to steal the Sword of Godric Gryffindor, and that Snape subsequently sent it to be stored at Gringotts Wizarding Bank; however, that sword was only a copy. Later on, Harry and Ron are led to find the real sword by a Patronus taking the form of a doe.[40] (Towards the end of the book, Harry learns that this was Snape's Patronus, taking the same shape as Harry's mother Lily's Patronus, a visible sign of his lifelong love for Harry's mother, and that Dumbledore had asked Snape to ensure that Harry gained possession of the sword.[41] The novel also reveals that Snape had covertly used his position as Headmaster to protect the students and to contain the Carrows.[41])
+
+Towards the end of the school year, Professors McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout force Snape to flee the school.[42] Voldemort summons Snape to the Shrieking Shack. Erroneously believing Snape is the master of the Elder Wand and that Snape's death will make him the master of the Wand, Voldemort kills Snape by having his pet snake Nagini bite him through the neck.[43] The dying Snape releases a cloud of memories and tells Harry, who has watched the entire scene from a hidden spot, to take and view them.
+
+From these memories, Harry sees Snape's childhood and learns his true loyalties. In this vision, Harry learns that Snape befriended Lily as a child when they lived near each other. Upon their arrival at Hogwarts, the Sorting Hat placed Snape and Lily into Slytherin and Gryffindor Houses, respectively. They remained friends for the next few years until they were driven apart by Snape's interest in the Dark Arts; the friendship finally ended following the bullying episode that Harry had briefly seen in the fifth book, in which Snape calls Lily "Mudblood". Despite this separation and Snape's enduring animosity toward Lily's eventual husband James Potter, Snape continued to love Lily for the rest of his life.
+
+The memories also show that as a Death Eater, Snape had revealed to Voldemort a prophecy made by Sybill Trelawney, causing Voldemort to attempt to prevent it by killing Harry and his parents. Snape, who had not realised until too late that Voldemort had interpreted the prophecy to be referring to Lily and her family (as it could've also referred to the Frank and Alice Longbottom and their son Neville Longbottom), asked Voldemort to spare Lily. Still in terror for her life, he also approached Dumbledore, admitted his actions, and begged him to protect the Potters. Dumbledore chided him for thinking only of himself and not of Lily's husband and child, but agreed and ensured that they were placed under the Fidelius Charm. In return, Snape secretly allied himself with Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix as a double agent against Voldemort, using his powers of Occlumency to hide his betrayal from Voldemort. However, Snape demanded of Dumbledore that his love for Lily (his reason for switching sides) be kept a secret, especially from Harry, because of the deep animosity he felt towards Harry's father and his mixed feelings towards Harry (who reminded him of both his love for Lily Potter and her death, and his animosity towards James Potter). Dumbledore agreed and kept the secret throughout his life, although questioning Snape's request to "never reveal the best of you". Even with his efforts to protect her, Snape felt responsible for Lily's death at Voldemort's hands.
+
+Snape's memories then reveal that Dumbledore had impetuously tried to use the Gaunt ring, which had been cursed by Voldemort, and had been suffering from a powerful curse. Snape's knowledge of the Dark Arts enabled him to slow the spread of the curse from Dumbledore's hand through his body, but he would have died within a year. Dumbledore, aware that Voldemort had ordered Draco to kill him, had asked Snape to kill him instead as a way of sparing the boy's soul and of preventing his own otherwise slow, painful death. Although Snape was reluctant, even asking about the impact of such an action on his own soul, Dumbledore implied that this kind of coup de grâce would not damage a human's soul in the same way murder would.[41] Snape agreed to do as the Headmaster requested. Snape's memories also provide Harry with the information he needs to ensure Voldemort's final defeat, in the form of conversations Snape had with Dumbledore.[41]
+
+Rowling noted in an interview that because Snape abandoned his post before dying or officially retiring, a portrait of him does not immediately appear in the Headmaster's office following his death. She adds, however, that she would like to think Harry made Snape's true loyalty and heroism known in the Wizarding world, and that he lobbied to ensure that a portrait be installed in the office.[44] In a separate interview, Rowling discussed Snape's back story, saying she had planned it ever since she wrote the first book because the whole series is built around it and she considers him one of the most important characters of the seventh book.[18]
+
+In the epilogue to Deathly Hallows, set nineteen years after Harry defeats Voldemort, Harry has named his second-born son Albus Severus, after Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape. As Albus is about to enter his first year at Hogwarts, he expresses concern that he will be sorted into Slytherin. Harry tells his son, "you were named for two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them [Snape] was a Slytherin and he was probably the bravest man I ever knew."[45]
+
+When Draco and Astoria Greengrass' son Scorpius Malfoy finds himself in an alternate timeline in which Voldemort won the Battle of Hogwarts, killed Harry and his allies and instituted a terrible reign of terror, he desperately searches for help in restoring history to its original course. He finds that in this reality Snape is still alive and still teaches at Hogwarts, and asks for his help. At first Snape is suspicious of him, since this timeline's version of Scorpius is a bully and a Voldemort stalwart. But when Scorpius shows that he knows of Snape having been in love with Lily, Harry's mother – Snape's most closely guarded secret – Snape becomes convinced that he does indeed come from a different timeline where Harry and his friends won. Snape then reveals that he, together with the fugitive Ron and Hermione Granger, maintain the last remnants of Dumbledore's Army – still waging hopeless resistance against the all-powerful Voldemort. In talking with Scorpius, Snape had learned that Harry would name his son "Albus Severus" and would regard Snape as "probably the bravest man I ever knew" – and is deeply moved. Though having guessed that in the other timeline he would die, Snape nevertheless willingly helps Scorpius recreate this timeline – and being discovered by Dementors, Snape sacrifices himself in order to cover Scorpius' escape.
+
+Severus Snape appears in all eight Harry Potter films,[46] portrayed by British actor Alan Rickman. Rickman was Rowling's personal choice to portray the character.[47] He had conversations with Rowling about his character and is one of the few Harry Potter actors that she spoke to prior to the completion of the book series about the future direction of the character.[48] "He knew very early on that he'd been in love with Lily," said Rowling. "He needed to understand […] where this bitterness towards this boy who's the living example of her preference for another man came from."[49]
+
+Rickman used this knowledge of Snape's ultimate loyalties throughout the films to decide how to play certain scenes, deliver specific lines, or use body language to convey specific emotions.[50] When the directors of the films would ask him why he was doing a scene a certain way or delivering a line in a specific manner, Rickman would simply reply that he knew something they didn't.[50]
+
+Rickman himself refrained from talking about Snape, asking readers to wait and "see what unfolds" in the course of the novels; however, he did say Snape is a complicated person, very rigid and full of himself; in an interview he went further, saying: "Snape isn't one who enjoys jokes and I strongly fear that his sense of humour is extremely limited... But in his defence, I will add that he didn't have an easy adolescence, particularly during his studies at Hogwarts."[51] He also said Snape is a fascinating character, and that he takes immense pleasure in playing such an ambiguous person.[52]
+
+Rickman's performance as Snape was widely acclaimed by critics, fans and Rowling herself. Entertainment Weekly listed Rickman as one of the most popular movie stars in 2007 for his performance as Snape, saying: "As the icy, humourless magic instructor Severus Snape, Rickman may not be on screen long—but he owns every minute."[53] Rickman also noted fans' reactions; in an interview, he said he found "that people in general adore Snape. He is sarcastic, stubborn, etc, etc. But he is also fascinating. I have a lot of fun impersonating him."[52] Rickman was nominated for several awards for his portrayal of Snape, and in 2011, was elected the best character portrayal in all the Harry Potter films series.[54]
+
+In 2011, Empire magazine published an open letter from Rickman to J.K. Rowling, ruminating on the ten years of working on the Potter films and thanking her for telling the story.[55]
+
+In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifteen-year-old Snape (portrayed by Alec Hopkins) makes a brief appearance in a flashback to Snape's youth. In the final film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, the younger Snape, perhaps ten or eleven, is played by Benedict Clarke. In 2016, a fan film prequel, Severus Snape and the Marauders, was released online and Snape was played by Mick Ignis.[56]
+
+Before Alan Rickman was offered the role of Severus Snape, the role was originally offered to Tim Roth,[57] who turned the role down in favour of portraying General Thade in Planet of the Apes.[58]
+
+Snape is described as a thin man with sallow skin, a large, hooked nose, and yellow, uneven teeth. He has shoulder-length, greasy black hair which frames his face, and cold, black eyes. He wears black, flowing robes which give him the appearance of "an overgrown bat".[59] The youthful Snape had a "stringy, pallid look", being "round-shouldered yet angular", having a "twitchy" walk "that recalled a spider" and "long oily hair that jumped about his face".[26]
+
+In the chapter illustrations by Mary GrandPré in the American editions of The Prisoner of Azkaban, The Order of the Phoenix, and The Half-Blood Prince, Snape is depicted with a moustache and goatee, long black hair, and a receding hairline.
+
+Snape is generally depicted as being cold, calculating, precise, sarcastic, and bitter. He strongly dislikes Harry and often insults him by insulting his father James. As the series progresses, it is revealed that his treatment of Harry stems from Snape's bitter rivalry with James when they were in school together. In particular, James and Sirius bullied Snape, which according to Alan Rickman caused the already lonely boy to further "shut himself in".[52] Rowling further described the young Snape as insecure and vulnerable: "Given his time over again [Snape] would not have become a Death Eater, but like many insecure, vulnerable people he craved membership of something big and powerful, something impressive.[...] [He] was so blinded by his attraction to the dark side he thought [Lily] would find him impressive if he became a real Death Eater."[3]
+
+The adult Snape, on the other hand, is portrayed as very self-assured and confident of his abilities, to a degree that Rickman described as "full of himself."[51] Director David Yates said Snape is a character with gravitas, authority and power.[60] Snape typically displays a very calm and collected demeanour, rarely at a loss for words or taken off guard. His temper, however, is sometimes short where Harry is concerned and positively flares when dealing with his erstwhile tormentor Sirius, or when accused of cowardice. His otherwise impassive and aloof attitude seems to stem from his belief that people who cannot control their emotions are weak.[32]
+
+Like some other prominent members of Slytherin house, Snape is shown to be a clever and cunning wizard.[43][61] He is intelligent and has a keen, analytical mind. In an interview, Rowling adds that Snape is immensely brave,[20] and when asked if she considers Snape a hero, replied: "Yes, I do; though a very flawed hero. An anti-hero, perhaps. He is not a particularly likeable man in many ways. He remains rather cruel, a bully, riddled with bitterness and insecurity—and yet he loved, and showed loyalty to that love and, ultimately, laid down his life because of it. That's pretty heroic!"[3]
+
+All seven novels show Snape to be a very powerful wizard and to have been outstanding while a student. He specialises in potion making and has talent and passion for the Dark Arts. Sirius claimed that Snape knew more hexes and curses as a first-year student at Hogwarts than most seventh-years knew.[61] Particularly gifted in potion making, Snape added major improvements to his Potions textbook while still a student. Also as a student, Snape shows a rare gift for discovering new spells. Lupin describes Sectumsempra as Snape's "speciality" in Deathly Hallows.[62] Snape is shown using this spell as a teenager against Harry's father James[26] and in the aerial battle in the last novel when he accidentally hits George Weasley (acting as a Potter decoy) with it while actually aiming for a Death Eater who was trying to attack Lupin, permanently severing George's right ear. Despite Sectumsempra's deadly power, Snape can also heal the wounds it causes.[36] Snape is adept at reversing or containing potentially fatal damage from other dark curses as well, due to his vast knowledge of Dark Arts, as he does when Dumbledore[41] and then Katie Bell[63] are cursed. Skilful in the arts of Legilimency and especially Occlumency, Snape is able to both access the minds of others and protect his own thoughts—indeed, though Snape does not care for the term himself, Harry forms the uncomfortable impression early in the series that the Potions Master is able to "read minds." Being an Occlumens, Snape is able to keep his betrayal from Voldemort, who is himself described as being "the greatest Legilimens" in history.[34] According to Rowling, Snape is the only Death Eater capable of producing a full Patronus, which, like Lily's, is a doe.[3] Snape is a talented duellist, able to hold off by himself (if only briefly) a group of three Hogwarts professors that included former duelling champion Filius Flitwick. Professor McGonagall later implies that Snape learned to fly without the use of a broom, a rare skill previously displayed only by Voldemort.[42]
+
+Snape's family background is mostly shown in flashbacks during the course of the last three novels. Snape was born to Eileen Prince, a witch, and Tobias Snape, a Muggle, making him a half-blood (hence the name, "Half-Blood Prince"). This is rare for a Death Eater, as remarked in the last book, though Voldemort himself also had a Muggle father. Snape spent his early childhood living with his parents in a small house in Spinner's End. Snape's family was a poor one and he is described as wearing ill-fitting clothes "that were so mis-matched that it looked deliberate". As a child, Snape was apparently neglected and his parents often fought with one another. Snape was very eager to leave his home to go to Hogwarts.[41] Towards the end of the last novel, Harry draws parallels between his childhood, Snape's, and Voldemort's.[64]
+
+Snape's true loyalty was one of the most significant questions in the series up until the end of the final instalment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Although the first five novels depict him as unfair and vindictive towards Harry and his friends, he invariably ends up protecting or otherwise helping them when they or their allies are in danger. Several characters express doubts about his loyalty, but Dumbledore's trust in him is generally taken to be the final word. The sixth novel, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, departs from that model. In the second chapter, Snape claims to have been working for Voldemort ever since the latter's return, and only pretending to help Dumbledore.[34] By killing Dumbledore toward the end of the novel, Snape seems to place himself firmly in Voldemort's camp.[37] Rowling maintains this impression through the early chapters of the seventh novel. However, near the climax of the book, Snape leaves Harry his dying thoughts (to be viewed in the Pensieve) and ultimately reveals to Harry that he had been loyal to Albus Dumbledore throughout the series.[41] Snape's fierce devotion to and love of his childhood friend Lily, Harry's mother, is the foundation of that loyalty.[41]
+
+After Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Snape's loyalty was a matter of intense debate among the fans. The issue was given special attention in the marketing campaigns on behalf of the last book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. "Is Snape Good or Evil?" was one of the questions in Scholastic Inc.'s seven-question series, part of its marketing campaign for the book.[65] As part of the Waldenbooks marketing campaign, two free stickers, one that said "Trust Snape" and another that stated "Snape Is A Very Bad Man" were available with the book. Borders Group published a separate book on the topic, The Great Snape Debate, containing essays and arguments from both sides of the debate.[66][67]
+
+The secretive attitude and gradual unfolding of Snape's character was broadly admired, with Stephen Fry, the UK audio books narrator, saying in 2003: "Most characters like Snape are hard to love but there is a sort of ambiguity—you can't quite decide—something sad about him—lonely and it's fascinating when you think he's going to be the evil one..., then slowly you get this idea he's not so bad after all."[68] David Yates, who directed the final four films of the series, also expressed his views on the character, saying: "A character like Snape, where you're not really sure if he's a good guy or a bad guy, that gives you a latent tension... I think the coolest thing you can do with an audience is deny them a little bit of information."[60] Despite being less than kind, the character quickly gained popularity within fandom to a level that surprised Rowling herself.[8] Joyce Millman suggests in her essay "To Sir with Love" in the book Mapping the World of Harry Potter, that Snape is derived from a tradition of Byronic heroes such as Wuthering Heights' Heathcliff.[69]
+Jenny Sawyer from The Christian Science Monitor commented on the character's development in the series.[70] She claimed that Snape is the only protagonist who genuinely has a choice to make and who struggles to do the right thing, hence the only one to face a "compelling inner crisis". She believed the popularity of the character is due to the moral journey and inner conflict that Snape undergoes within the series, as it is the hero's struggle and costly redemption that really matter: "[Snape's] character ached for resolution. And it is precisely this need for resolution—our desire to know the real Snape and to understand his choices—that makes him the most compelling character in the Potter epic."
+
+The final revelation of Snape's loyalty in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was viewed positively by fans and critics alike. Daniel Radcliffe, who portrays Harry Potter in the movie series, expressed his delight, saying he was pleased to see that his theory that Snape would end up being a sort of tragic hero came through.[71] Elizabeth Hand from The Washington Post wrote, "The much-maligned loner Snape does not come onstage until the latter part of "Deathly Hallows," but when he does the book becomes his: Snape's fate, more than Voldemort's, perhaps more even than Harry's, is the most heartbreaking, surprising and satisfying of all of Rowling's achievements."[2]
+
+IGN listed Snape as their 4th top Harry Potter character, saying that he makes "quite an impact in the Harry Potter series",[72] and IGN's Joe Utichi called Snape his favourite Harry Potter character and praised his character development.[73] Shortly after the release of the final film, MTV held a public poll for fans to vote for the best character in the series, and Snape was voted #1.[74] Around the same time, Empire magazine held a public poll for fans to vote for the 25 greatest characters in the series, and Snape once again came in at #1.[75] In May 2011, Snape was again voted as the No. 1 favourite Harry Potter character in a public poll held by the Bloomsbury publishing house.[76]
+
+The character of Severus Snape has appeared in various animated parodies of Harry Potter. He is a starring character in Neil Cicierega's online Potter Puppet Pals parodies, and has a centric episode titled Bothering Snape. Also, the video The Mysterious Ticking Noise with the chorus "Snape, Snape, Severus Snape" was the winner for "Best Comedy" of the year 2007 at YouTube; it currently has over 170 million views.[77] Snape is also parodied as Professor Santory Snapekin in Sluggy Freelance's webcomic entitled Torg Potter. In the first parody, Torg defeats a plot by Professor Snapekin to achieve ultimate power.[78]
+
+In a 2004 sketch on Saturday Night Live in which Lindsay Lohan appears as Hermione Granger, Snape is portrayed by Will Forte.[79] Snape has also been parodied in UK television. Comic Relief released a story called Harry Potter and the Secret Chamberpot of Azerbaijan, in which Snape is played by Jeremy Irons.[80][81] Snape appeared in a Harry Potter parody named "Louis Potter and the Philosopher's Scone" in Alistair McGowan's Big Impression show, played by Alistair McGowan himself.[82][83] In the Harry Bladder sketches in All That, Snape appears as Professor Chafe (portrayed by Jeremy Rowley), whose legs were badly chafed, causing him to be unnecessarily mean. Many sketches feature students brewing potions that did silly things, like enlarge students' behinds, give males large breasts, or change people into bras. In a sketch comedy named "Cooking With..." on Australian TV series The Wedge, Snape is played by Anthony Ahern, and catches Harry and Hermione making love.[84] In A Very Potter Musical, Snape is played by actor Joe Moses.

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+Seville (/səˈvɪl/; Spanish: Sevilla [seˈβiʎa] (listen)) is the capital and largest city of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the River Guadalquivir, in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula.
+
+Seville has a municipal population of about 690,000 as of 2016[update], and a metropolitan population of about 1.5 million, making it the largest city in Andalusia, the fourth-largest city in Spain and the 30th most populous municipality in the European Union. Its old town, with an area of 4 square kilometres (2 sq mi), contains three UNESCO World Heritage Sites: the Alcázar palace complex, the Cathedral and the General Archive of the Indies. The Seville harbour, located about 80 kilometres (50 miles) from the Atlantic Ocean, is the only river port in Spain.[3] Seville experiences high temperatures in the summer, with daily maximums routinely above 35 °C (95 °F) in July and August.
+
+Seville was founded as the Roman city of Hispalis. It became known as Ishbiliyah after the Muslim conquest in 711. During the Muslim rule in Spain, Seville came under the jurisdiction of the Caliphate of Córdoba before becoming the independent Taifa of Seville; later it was ruled by the Muslim Almoravids and the Almohads until finally being incorporated into the Christian Kingdom of Castile under Ferdinand III in 1248.[4] After the discovery of the Americas, Seville became one of the economic centres of the Spanish Empire as its port monopolised the trans-oceanic trade and the Casa de Contratación (House of Trade) wielded its power, opening a Golden Age of arts and literature. In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan departed from Seville for the first circumnavigation of the Earth. Coinciding with the Baroque period of European history, the 17th century in Seville represented the most brilliant flowering of the city's culture; then began a gradual economic and demographic decline as silting in the Guadalquivir forced the trade monopoly to relocate to the nearby port of Cádiz.
+
+The 20th century in Seville saw the tribulations of the Spanish Civil War, decisive cultural milestones such as the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929 and Expo '92, and the city's election as the capital of the Autonomous Community of Andalusia.
+
+Hisbaal is the oldest name for Seville. It appears to have originated during the Phoenician colonisation of the Tartessian culture in south-western Iberia and it refers to the God Baal.[5] According to Manuel Pellicer Catalán, the ancient name was Spal, and it meant "lowland" in the Phoenician language (cognate to the Hebrew Shfela and the Arabic Asfal أسفل).[6][7] During Roman rule, the name was Latinised as Hispal and later as Hispalis. After the Umayyad invasion, this name remained in use among the Mozarabs,[8] being adapted into Arabic as Išbīliya (إشبيلية): since the /p/ phoneme does not exist in Arabic, it was replaced by /b/; the Latin place-name suffix -is was Arabized as -iya, and a /æ/ turned into ī /iː/ due to the phonetic phenomenon called imāla.[9]
+
+In the meantime, the city's official name had been changed to Ḥimṣ al-Andalus (حمص الأندلس), in reference to the city of Homs in modern Syria, the jund of which Seville had been assigned to upon the Umayyad conquest;[10][11][12][13] "Ḥimṣ al-Andalus" remained a customary and affectionate name for the city during the whole period throughout the Muslim Arab world,[12][14][15] being referred to for example in the encyclopedia of Yaqut al-Hamawi[16] or in Abu al-Baqa ar-Rundi's Ritha' al-Andalus.[17]
+
+The city is sometimes referred to as the "Pearl of Andalusia".
+
+The inhabitants of the city are known as sevillanos (feminine form: sevillanas) or hispalenses, after the Roman name of the city.
+
+NO8DO is the official motto of Seville, popularly believed to be a rebus signifying the Spanish No me ha dejado, meaning "She [Seville] has not abandoned me". The phrase, pronounced with synalepha as [no ma ðeˈxaðo] no-madeja-do, is spelled with an eight in the middle representing the word madeja [maˈðexa] "skein [of wool]". Legend states that the title was given by King Alfonso X, who was resident in the city's Alcázar and supported by the citizens when his son, later Sancho IV of Castile, tried to usurp the throne from him.
+
+The emblem is present on Seville's municipal flag, and features on city property such as manhole covers, and Christopher Columbus's tomb in the Cathedral.
+
+Seville is approximately 2,200 years old. The passage of the various civilizations instrumental in its growth has left the city with a distinct personality, and a large and well-preserved historical centre.
+
+The mythological founder of the city is Hercules (Heracles), commonly identified with the Phoenician god Melqart, who the myth says sailed through the Strait of Gibraltar to the Atlantic, and founded trading posts at the current sites of Cádiz and of Seville.[18] The original core of the city, in the neighbourhood of the present-day street, Cuesta del Rosario, dates to the 8th century BC,[19] when Seville was on an island in the Guadalquivir.[20] Archaeological excavations in 1999 found anthropic remains under the north wall of the Real Alcázar dating to the 8th–7th century BC.[21] The town was called Hisbaal by the Phoenicians and by the Tartessians, the indigenous pre-Roman Iberian people of Tartessos, who controlled the Guadalquivir Valley at the time.
+
+The city was known from Roman times as Hispal and later as Hispalis. Hispalis developed into one of the great market and industrial centres of Hispania, while the nearby Roman city of Italica (present-day Santiponce, birthplace of the Roman emperors Trajan and Hadrian)[22] remained a typically Roman residential city. Large-scale Roman archaeological remains can be seen there and at the nearby town of Carmona as well.
+
+Existing Roman features in Seville itself include the remains exposed in situ in the underground Antiquarium of the Metropol Parasol building, the remnants of an aqueduct, three pillars of a temple in Mármoles Street, the columns of La Alameda de Hércules and the remains in the Patio de Banderas square near the Seville Cathedral. The walls surrounding the city were originally built during the rule of Julius Caesar, but their current course and design were the result of Moorish reconstructions.[23]
+
+Following Roman rule, there were successive conquests of the Roman province of Hispania Baetica by the Germanic Vandals, Suebi and Visigoths during the 5th and 6th centuries.
+
+Seville was taken by the Moors, during the conquest of Hispalis in 712. It was the capital for the kings of the Umayyad Caliphate, the Almoravid dynasty first and after the Almohad dynasty (from Arabic al-Muwahhidun, i.e., "the monotheists" or "the Unitarians"), from the 8th to 13th centuries.
+
+The Moorish urban influences continued and are present in contemporary Seville, for instance in the custom of decorating with plants and small fountains in the courtyards of the houses. However, most buildings of the Moorish aesthetic actually belong to the Mudéjar style of Islamic art, developed under Christian rule and inspired by the Arabic style. Original Moorish buildings are the Patio del Yeso in the Alcázar, the city walls, and the main section of the Giralda, the bell tower of the Seville Cathedral.[24]
+
+In 1247, the Christian King Ferdinand III of Castile and León began the conquest of Andalusia. After conquering Jaén and Córdoba, he besieged Seville while capturing two nearby villages, Carmona Lora del Rio, and Alcalá del Rio. The siege lasted fifteen months. The decisive action took place in May 1248 when Ramón Bonifaz sailed up the Guadalquivir and severed the Triana bridge used to provision the city from the farms of the Aljarafe. The city surrendered on 23 November 1248.[25]
+
+The city's development continued after the Castilian conquest in 1248. Public buildings were constructed including churches—many of which were built in the Mudéjar and Gothic styles—such as the Seville Cathedral, built during the 15th century with Gothic architecture.[26] Other Moorish buildings were converted into Catholic edifices, as was customary of the Catholic Church during the Reconquista. For example, the Torre del Oro—once an important Moorish naval watchtower along the Guadalquivir—was converted into a cathedral by 1271.[27] The Moors' Palace became the Castilian royal residence, and during Pedro I's rule it was replaced by the Alcázar (the upper levels are still used by the Spanish royal family as the official Seville residence).
+
+After the 1391 pogrom, believed to having been instigated by the Archdeacon Ferrant Martínez, all the synagogues in Seville were converted to churches (renamed Santa María la Blanca, San Bartolomé, Santa Cruz, and Convento Madre de Dios). The Jewish quarter's land and shops (which were located in modern-day Barrio Santa Cruz) were appropriated by the church. Many were killed during the pogrom, although most were forced to convert.
+
+The first tribunal of the Spanish Inquisition was instituted in Seville in 1478. Its primary charge was to ensure that all nominal Christians were really behaving like Christians, and not practicing what Judaism they could in secret. At first, the activity of the Inquisition was limited to the dioceses of Seville and Córdoba, where Alonso de Ojeda had detected converso activity.[further explanation needed] The first Auto de Fé took place in Seville on 6 February 1481, when six people were burned alive. Alonso de Ojeda himself gave the sermon. The Inquisition then grew rapidly. The Plaza de San Francisco was the site of the 'autos de fé'. By 1492, tribunals existed in eight Castilian cities: Ávila, Córdoba, Jaén, Medina del Campo, Segovia, Sigüenza, Toledo, and Valladolid;[28] and by the Alhambra Decree all Jews were forced to convert to Catholicism or be exiled (expelled) from Spain.[29]
+
+Following the 1492 Christopher Columbus expedition to the New World (from the port of Palos de la Frontera), the results from his claiming territory and trade for the Crown of Castile (soon to be Spain) in the West Indies began to profit the city, as all goods imported from the New World were required to pass through the Casa de Contratación before being distributed throughout the rest of Spain. Unlike other harbours, reaching the port of Seville required sailing about 80 kilometres (50 mi) up the River Guadalquivir, which had been heavily defended with fortifications since the Middle Ages. This made Seville the best defended port to receive the riches transported from the Americas. A 'golden age of development' commenced in Seville, due to its being the only port awarded the royal monopoly for trade with the growing Spanish colonies in the Americas and the influx of riches from them. Since only sailing ships leaving from and returning to the inland port of Seville could engage in trade with the Spanish Americas, merchants from Europe and other trade centres needed to go to Seville to acquire New World trade goods. The city's population grew to more than a hundred thousand people.[30]
+
+In the late 16th century the monopoly was broken, with the port of Cádiz also authorised as a port of trade. Throughout the 17th century, colonial trade declined. Spain's American Colonies improved their production of basic goods, reducing their need to import. Compounded with these tribulations was the silting of the Guadalquivir river in the 1620s, which made Seville's harbors harder to use, and ceased upriver shipping.[27][31] The Great Plague of Seville in 1649, exacerbated by excessive flooding of the Guadalquivir, reduced the population by almost half, and it would not recover until the early 19th century.[32][33] By the 18th century, Seville's international importance was in decline. After the silting up of the harbour by the River Guadalquivir, upriver shipping ceased and the city went into relative economic decline.[citation needed]
+
+The writer Miguel de Cervantes lived primarily in Seville between 1596 and 1600. Because of financial problems, Cervantes worked as a purveyor for the Spanish Armada, and later as a tax collector. In 1597, discrepancies in his accounts of the three years previous landed him in the Royal Prison of Seville for a short time. His short story Rinconete y Cortadillo, since the 19th century one of his most-read pieces, includes much description of Sevillian society; it features two young vagabonds who come to Seville, attracted by the riches and disorder that the 16th-century commerce with the Americas had brought to the city.
+
+During the 18th century Charles III of Spain promoted Seville's industries. Construction of the Real Fábrica de Tabacos (Royal Tobacco Factory) began in 1728, with additions to it over the next 30 years.[citation needed] It was the second-largest building in Spain, after the royal residence El Escorial. Since the 1950s it has been the seat of the rectorate (administration) of the University of Seville, as well as its Schools of Law, Philology (language/letters), Geography, and History.[34]
+
+More operas have been set in Seville than in any other city of Europe. In 2012, a study of experts concluded the total number of operas set in Seville is 153. Among the composers who fell in love with the city are Beethoven (Fidelio), Mozart (The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni), Rossini (The Barber of Seville), Donizetti (La favorite), and Bizet (Carmen).[35]
+
+The first newspaper in Spain outside of Madrid was Seville's Hebdomario útil de Seville, which began publication in 1758.
+
+Between 1825 and 1833, Melchor Cano acted as chief architect in Seville; most of the urban planning policy and architectural modifications of the city were made by him and his collaborator Jose Manuel Arjona y Cuba.[36]
+
+Industrial architecture surviving today from the first half of the 19th century includes the ceramics factory installed in the Carthusian monastery at La Cartuja in 1841 by the Pickman family, and now home to the El Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo (CAAC),[37] which manages the collections of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Sevilla.[38] It also houses the rectory of the UNIA.[39]
+
+In the years that Queen Isabel II ruled directly, about 1843–1868, the Sevillian bourgeoisie invested in a construction boom unmatched in the city's history. The Isabel II bridge, better known as the Triana bridge, dates from this period; street lighting was expanded in the municipality and most of the streets were paved during this time as well.[40]
+
+By the second half of the 19th century, Seville began an expansion supported by railway construction and the demolition of part of its ancient walls, allowing the urban space of the city to grow eastward and southward. The Sevillana de Electricidad Company was created in 1894 to provide electric power throughout the municipality,[41] and in 1901 the Plaza de Armas railway station was inaugurated. The Museum of Fine Arts (Museo de Bellas Artes de Sevilla) opened in 1904.
+
+In 1929 the city hosted the Ibero-American Exposition, which accelerated the southern expansion of the city and created new public spaces such as the Plaza de España and the Maria Luisa Park. Not long before the opening, the Spanish government began a modernisation of the city in order to prepare for the expected crowds by erecting new hotels and widening the mediaeval streets to allow for the movement of automobiles.[42]
+
+Seville fell very quickly at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. General Queipo de Llano carried out a coup within the city, quickly capturing the city centre.[43] Radio Seville opposed the uprising and called for the peasants to come to the city for arms, while workers' groups established barricades.[43] De Llano then moved to capture Radio Seville, which he used to broadcast propaganda on behalf of the Franquist forces.[43] After the initial takeover of the city, resistance continued among residents of the working-class neighbourhoods for some time, until a series of fierce reprisals took place.[44]
+
+Under Francisco Franco's rule Spain was officially neutral in World War II (although it did collaborate with the Axis powers),[45][46][47] and like the rest of the country, Seville remained largely economically and culturally isolated from the outside world. In 1953 the shipyard of Seville was opened, eventually employing more than 2,000 workers in the 1970s. Before the existence of wetlands regulation in the Guadalquivir basin, Seville suffered regular heavy flooding; perhaps worst of all were the floods that occurred in November 1961 when the River Tamarguillo, a tributary of the Guadalquivir, overflowed as a result of a prodigious downpour of rain, and Seville was consequently declared a disaster zone.[48]
+
+Trade unionism in Seville began during the 1960s with the underground organisational activities of the Workers' Commissions or Comisiones Obreras (CCOO), in factories such as Hytasa, the Astilleros shipyards, Hispano Aviación, etc. Several of the movement's leaders were imprisoned in November 1973.[citation needed] On 3 April 1979 Spain held its first democratic municipal elections after the end of Franco's dictatorship; councillors representing four different political parties were elected in Seville. On 5 November 1982, Pope John Paul II arrived in Seville to officiate at a Mass before more than half a million people at the fairgrounds. He visited the city again on 13 June 1993, for the International Eucharistic Congress.
+
+In 1992, coinciding with the fifth centenary of the Discovery of the Americas, the Universal Exposition was held for six months in Seville, on the occasion of which the local communications network and urban infrastructure was greatly improved under a 1987 PGOU plan launched by Mayor Manuel del Valle:[49] the SE-30 ring road around the city was completed and new highways were constructed; the new Seville-Santa Justa railway station had opened in 1991, while the Spanish High-Speed Rail system, the Alta Velocidad Española (AVE), began to operate between Madrid-Seville. The Seville Airport, (Aeropuerto de Sevilla), was expanded with a new terminal building designed by the architect Rafael Moneo, and various other improvements were made. The monumental Puente del Alamillo (Alamillo Bridge) over the Guadalquivir, designed by the architect Santiago Calatrava, was built to allow access to the island of La Cartuja, site of the massive exposition. Some of the installations remaining at the site after the exposition were converted into the Scientific and Technological Park Cartuja 93.
+
+In 2004 the Metropol Parasol project, commonly known as Las Setas (The Mushrooms), due to the appearance of the structure, was launched to revitalise the Plaza de la Encarnación, for years used as a car park and seen as a dead spot between more popular tourist destinations in the city. The Metropol Parasol was completed in March 2011,[50] costing just over €102 million in total, more than twice as much as originally planned.[51] Constructed from crossed wooden beams, Las Setas is said to be the largest timber-framed structure in the world.[52]
+
+Seville has an area of 141 km2 (54 sq mi), according to the National Topographic Map (Mapa Topográfico Nacional) series from the Instituto Geográfico Nacional – Centro Nacional de Información Geográfica, the country's civilian survey organisation (pages 984, 985 and 1002). The city is situated in the fertile valley of the River Guadalquivir. The average height above sea level is 7 metres (23 feet). Most of the city is on the east side of the river, while Triana, La Cartuja and Los Remedios are on the west side. The Aljarafe region lies further west, and is considered part of the metropolitan area. The city has boundaries on the north with La Rinconada, La Algaba and Santiponce; on the east with Alcalá de Guadaira; on the south with Dos Hermanas and Gelves and on the west with San Juan de Aznalfarache, Tomares and Camas.
+
+Seville is on the same parallel as United States west coast city San Jose in central California. São Miguel, the main island of the Azores archipelago, lies on the same latitude. Further east from Seville in the Mediterranean Basin, it is on the same latitude as Catania in Sicily, Italy and just south of Athens, the capital of Greece. Beyond that, it is located on the same parallel as South Korean capital, Seoul. Seville is located inland, not very far from the Andalusian coast, but still sees a much more continental climate than the nearest port cities, Cádiz and Huelva.  Its distance from the sea makes summers in Sevilla much hotter than along the coastline.
+
+Seville has a Mediterranean climate (Köppen climate classification Csa), featuring very hot, dry summers and mild winters with moderate rainfall.[53] Like most Mediterranean climates, Seville is drier during summers and wetter during winters. The annual average temperature is 25.4 °C (78 °F) during the day and 13 °C (55 °F) at night. Summer is the dominant season and lasts from May to October, the latter in spite of the dwindling daylight and inland position.
+
+Seville has an annual average of 19.2 °C (67 °F). After the city of Córdoba (also in Andalusia), Seville has the hottest summer in continental Europe among all cities with a population over 100,000 people, with average daily highs in July of 36.0 °C (97 °F). Average daily lows in July are 20.3 °C (69 °F) and every year the temperature exceeds 40 °C (104 °F) on several occasions. The coldest temperature extreme of −5.5 °C (22 °F)[54] was registered by the weather station at Seville Airport on 12 February 1956. A historical record high (disputed) of 50.0 °C (122 °F) was recorded on 4 August 1881, according to the NOAA Satellite and Information Service.[55] There is an unaccredited record by the National Institute of Meteorology of 47.2 °C (117 °F) on 1 August during the 2003 heat wave, according to a weather station (83910 LEZL) located in the southern part of Seville Airport, near the abandoned military zone. This temperature would be one of the highest ever recorded in Spain.
+
+The average sunshine hours in Seville are approximately 3000 per year. Snowfall is virtually unknown, and the last important snowfall occurred in 1954. Seville had to wait until 10 January 2010 to see snowflakes again falling on the city, the only snowfall during the 21st century to date, though it was quite significant in the immediate surrounding villages and suburbs.[56][57][58] Since the year 1500, only 10 snowfalls have been recorded/reported in Seville. During the 20th century, Seville registered just 2 snowfalls, being the last one in 2 February 1954.[59]
+[60]
+
+Seville is a municipality, the basic level of local government in Spain. The Ayuntamiento is the body charged with the municipal government and administration. The Plenary of the ayuntamiento is formed by 31 elected municipal councillors, who in turn invest the mayor. The last municipal election took place on 26 May 2019. The current mayor is Juan Espadas (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party), who has held the post since 2015.
+
+Seville is the capital of the autonomous community of Andalusia, according to Article 4 of the Statute of Autonomy of Andalusia of 2007, and is the capital of the Province of Seville as well. The historical building of the Palace of San Telmo is now the seat of the presidency of the Andalusian Autonomous Government. The administrative headquarters are in Torre Triana, in La Cartuja. The Hospital de las Cinco Llagas (literally, "Hospital of the Five Holy Wounds") is the current seat of the Parliament of Andalusia.
+
+The municipal administration is decentralized into 11 districts, further divided into 108 neighbourhoods.
+
+
+
+Seville is a big tourist centre in Spain. In 2018, there were over 2.5 million travellers and tourists who stayed at a tourist accommodation, placing it third in Spain after Madrid and Barcelona. The city has an overall low level of seasonality, so there are tourists year-round.[62] There are many landmarks, museums, parks, gardens and other kinds of tourist spots around the city so there is something for everyone.
+
+The Alcázar, the Cathedral, and the Archivo General de Indias (General Archive of the Indies) are UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
+
+The St. Mary of the See Cathedral was built from 1401 to 1519 after the Reconquista on the former site of the city's mosque. It is among the largest of all medieval and Gothic cathedrals, in terms of both area and volume. The interior is the longest nave in Spain and is lavishly decorated, with a large quantity of gold evident. La Giralda is a tower attached to the Cathedral that dates back to the twelfth century. It was originally built as part of a mosque when the Moors ruled in Spain and was later added onto by the Christians. Tourists today can climb the tower by walking up a series of ramps that were previously used by officials who rode their horses to the top of the tower. The overall tower construction is consistent with Roman lighthouse construction methods such as with the
+Tower of Hercules (circa 2nd century CE) built on the northwest coast of Spain. La Giralda gets its name from the weathervane attached to the very top of it, as "gira" means "turning one" in the Spanish language.
+
+The Alcázar facing the cathedral was developed from a previous Moorish Palace which was developed from a Visigoth establishment which was itself developed from an existing Roman construction.  The redevelopment was started in 1181 and continued for over 500 years, mainly in the Mudéjar style, but also in the Renaissance style. The TV show Game of Thrones has shot many scenes at this location.
+
+The Torre del Oro was built as a watchtower and defensive barrier on the river. The river was used as a mode of defense. A chain was strung through the water from the base of the tower to prevent boats from traveling into the river port.
+
+The City Hall was built in the 16th century in high Plateresque style by master architect Diego de Riaño. The façade to Plaza Nueva was built in the 19th century in Neoclassical style.
+
+The Palacio de San Telmo, formerly the University of Sailors, and later the Seminary, is now the seat for the Andalusian Autonomous Government. It is one of the most emblematic buildings of baroque architecture, mainly to its world-renowned churrigueresque principal façade and the impressive chapel.
+
+The Royal Tobacco Factory is housed on the original site of the first tobacco factory in Europe, a vast 18th-century building in Baroque style and the purported inspiration for the opera Carmen.
+
+The Metropol Parasol, in La Encarnación square, is the world's largest wooden structure.[63] A monumental umbrella-like building designed by the German architect Jürgen Mayer, finished in 2011. This modern architecture structure houses the central market and an underground archaeological complex. The terrace roof is a city viewpoint.[64]
+
+The General Archive of the Indies, is the repository of extremely valuable archival documents illustrating the history of the Spanish Empire in the Americas and the Philippines. The building itself, an unusually serene and Italianate example of Spanish Renaissance architecture, was designed by Juan de Herrera.
+
+The Plaza de España in the Parque de María Luisa (María Luisa Park) was built by the architect Aníbal González for the 1929 Exposición Ibero-Americana. It is an outstanding example of Regionalist Revival Architecture, a bizarre and loftily conceived mixture of diverse historic styles, such as Art Deco and lavishly ornamented with typical glazed tiles.[65][66]
+
+There are several Moorish elements, some of which include remains of former important Sevillan mosques currently being part of churches in the city, also in museums.
+
+The neighbourhood of Triana, situated on the west bank of the River Guadalquivir, played an important role in the history of the city and constitutes by itself a folk, monumental and cultural centre.
+
+On the other hand, La Macarena neighbourhood is located on the northern side of the city centre. It contains some important monuments and religious buildings, such as the Museum and Catholic Church of La Macarena or the Hospital de las Cinco Llagas.
+
+The most important art collection of Seville is the Museum of Fine Arts of Seville. It was established in 1835 in the former Convent of La Merced. It holds many masterworks by Murillo, Pacheco, Zurbarán, Valdés Leal, and others masters of the Baroque Sevillian School, containing also Flemish paintings of the 15th and 16th centuries.
+
+Other museums in Seville are:
+
+The 32-metres-high bronze sculpture, The Birth of a New Man (popularly known as Columbus's Egg, el Huevo de Colón), by the Georgian sculptor Zurab Tsereteli,[67] is located in its northwestern sector.
+
+The Teatro Lope de Vega is located on Avenida de María Luisa avenue (next to Parque de María Luisa). It was built in 1929, being its architect Vicente Traver y Tomás. It was the auditorium of the pavilion of the city in the Ibero-American Exhibition. This pavilion had a large room that became the Casino of the Exhibition. The theater occupied an area of 4600 m² and could accommodate 1100 viewers. Its architecture is Spanish Baroque Revival, being the building faithful to this style both in the set and in its ornamentation.
+
+It has served as a place to represent all kinds of shows (theater, dance, opera, jazz, flamenco) and nowadays the most outstanding of the panorama is its programming national and international, becoming one of the most important theaters in Spain.[68]
+
+Others important theatres are Teatro de la Maestranza, Auditorio Rocío Jurado and Teatro Central.
+
+Seville also has a corral de comedias theatre, which is the Corral del Coliseo, now used as a residential building.
+
+There are many entertainment options around the city of Seville and one of its biggest attractions is the numerous festivals that happen around the year. Some of the festivals concentrate on religion and culture, others focus on the folklore of the area, traditions, and entertainment.[69]
+
+Seville is home to the bi-annual flamenco festival La Bienal, which claims to be "the biggest flamenco event worldwide" and lasts for nearly a month.
+[70]
+
+In the district of Triana, the Velá de Santiago y Santa Ana is held every July and includes sporting events, performances, and cultural activities as the city honors St. James and St. Ana.
+[71]
+
+Semana Santa is celebrated all over Spain and Latin America, but the celebration in Seville is large and well known as a Fiesta of International Tourist Interest. 54 local brotherhoods,[72] or "costaleros", organize floats and processions throughout the week, reenacting the story of the Passion of Christ. There is traditional music and art incorporated into the processions, making Semana Santa an important source of both material and immaterial Sevillian cultural identity.[73][74][75]
+
+The April Fair (Feria de Abril) is a huge celebration that takes place in Seville about two weeks after the Holy Week. It was previously associated with celebrating livestock; however, nowadays its purpose is to create a fun cheerful environment tied to the appreciation of the Spanish folklore.[76]
+
+During the Feria, families, businesses, and organisations set up casetas (marquees) in which they spend the week dancing, drinking, and socialising. Traditionally, women wear elaborate flamenco dresses and men dress in their best suits. The marquees are set up on a permanent fairground in the district of Los Remedios,[77] in which each street is named after a famous bullfighter.
+
+The International Boat Show of Seville is an annual event that takes place in the only indoor maritime port of the country, which is one of the most important in Europe.[78]
+
+Seville had a vibrant rock music scene in the 1970s and 1980s[79] with bands like Triana, Alameda and Smash, who fused Andalusia's traditional flamenco music with British-style progressive rock. The punk rock group Reincidentes and indie band Sr Chinarro, as well as singer Kiko Veneno, rose to prominence in the early 1990s. The city's music scene now features rap acts such as SFDK, Mala Rodríguez, Dareysteel, Tote King, Dogma Crew, Bisley DeMarra, Haze and Jesuly. Seville's diverse music scene is reflected in the variety of its club-centred nightlife.
+
+The city is also home to many theatres and performance spaces where classical music is performed, including Teatro Lope de Vega, Teatro La Maestranza, Teatro Central, the Real Alcazar Gardens and the Sala Joaquín Turina.
+
+Despite its name, the sevillana dance, commonly presented as flamenco, is not thought to be of Sevillan origin. However, the folksongs called sevillanas are authentically Sevillan, as is the four-part dance performed with them.
+
+The Triana district in Seville is considered a birthplace of flamenco, where it found its beginning as an expression of the poor and marginalized. Seville's Gypsy population, known as Flamencos, were instrumental in the development of the art form. While it began as and remains a representation of Andalusian culture, it has also become a national heritage symbol of Spain.
+[80]
+[81]
+[82]
+[83]
+There are more flamenco artists in Seville than anywhere else in the country, supporting an entire industry surrounding it and drawing in a significant amount of tourism for the city.
+[84]
+
+The tapas scene is one of the main cultural attractions of the city: people go from one bar to another, enjoying small dishes called tapas (literally "lids" or "covers" in Spanish, referring to their probable origin as snacks served on small plates used to cover drinks).
+Local specialities include fried and grilled seafood (including squid, choco (cuttlefish), swordfish, marinated dogfish, and ortiguillas), grilled and stewed meat, spinach with chickpeas, Jamón ibérico, lamb kidneys in sherry sauce, snails, caldo de puchero, and gazpacho. A sandwich known as a serranito is the typical and popular version of fast food.
+
+Typical desserts from Seville include pestiños, a honey-coated sweet fritter; torrijas, fried slices of bread with honey; roscos fritos, deep-fried sugar-coated ring doughnuts; magdalenas or fairy cakes; yemas de San Leandro,[citation needed] which provide the city's convents with a source of revenue; and tortas de aceite, a thin sugar-coated cake made with olive oil. Polvorones and mantecados are traditional Christmas products, whereas pestiños and torrijas are typically consumed during the Holy Week.
+
+Bitter Seville oranges grow on trees lining the city streets. Large quantities are collected and exported to Britain to be used in marmalade. [85] Locally, the fruit is used predominantly in aromatherapy, herbal medicine, and dietary diet products, rather than as a foodstuff.[86]  According to legend, the Arabs brought the bitter orange to Seville from East Asia via Iraq around the 10th century to beautify and perfume their patios and gardens, as well as to provide shade.[87] The flowers of the tree are a source of neroli oil, commonly used in perfumery and in skin lotions for massage.
+
+Seville is the most populated city in southern Spain, and has the largest GDP (gross domestic product) of any in Andalusia,[88] accounting for one-quarter of its total GDP.[88] All municipalities in the metropolitan area depend directly or indirectly on Seville's economy, while agriculture dominates the economy of the smaller villages, with some industrial activity localised in industrial parks. The Diputacion de Sevilla (Deputation of Seville), with provincial headquarters in the Antiguo Cuartel de Caballería (Old Cavalry Barracks) on Avenida Menendez Pelayo, provides public services to distant villages that they can not provide themselves.[89]
+
+The economic activity of Seville cannot be detached from the geographical and urban context of the city; the capital of Andalusia is the centre of a growing metropolitan area. Aside from traditional neighbourhoods such as Santa Cruz, Triana and others, those further away from the centre, such as Nervión, Sevilla Este, and El Porvenir have seen recent economic growth. Until the economic crisis of 2007, this urban area saw significant population growth and the development of new industrial and commercial parks.[90]
+
+During this period, availability of infrastructure in the city contributed to the growth of an economy dominated by the service sector,[91] but in which industry still holds a considerable place.[92]
+
+The 1990s saw massive growth in investment in infrastructure in Seville, largely due to its hosting of the Universal Exposition of Seville in 1992. This economic development of the city and its urban area is supported by good transportation links to other Spanish cities, including a high-speed AVE railway connection to Madrid, and a new international airport.
+
+Seville has the only inland port in Spain, located 80 km (50 mi) from the mouth of the River Guadalquivir. This harbour complex offers access to the Atlantic and the Mediterranean and allows trade in goods between the south of Spain (Andalusia, Extremadura) and Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. The port has undergone reorganisation. Annual tonnage rose to 5.3 million tonnes of goods in 2006.[93]
+
+Cartuja 93 is a research and development park.[94] employing 15,000 persons. The Sevilla Tower skyscraper was started in March 2008 and was completed in 2015. With a height of 180.5 metres (592 feet) and 40 floors, it's the tallest building in Andalusia.
+
+Seville has conference facilities, including the Conference and Convention Centre. It's Parque Tecnológico y Aeronáutico Aerópolis (Technological and Aeronautical Park) is focused on the aircraft industry. Outside of Seville are nine PS20 solar power towers which use the city's sunny weather to provide most of it with clean and renewable energy.
+
+The Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas en Sevilla (CSIC) is based in the former Pavilion of Peru in the Maria Luisa Park. In April 2008 the city council of Seville provided a grant to renovate the building to create the Casa de la Ciencia (Science Centre) to encourage popular interest in science.[95]
+The internationally recognised company Neocodex has its headquarters in Seville; it maintains the first and largest DNA bank in Spain and has made significant contributions to scientific research in genetics.[96] Seville is also considered an important technological and research centre for renewable energy and the aeronautics industry.[97][98]
+
+The output of the research centres in Sevillan universities working in tandem with city government, and the numerous local technology companies, have made Seville a leader among Spanish cities in technological research and development. The Parque Científico Tecnológico Cartuja 93 is a nexus of private and public investment in various fields of research.[99]
+
+Principal fields of innovation and research are telecommunications, new technologies, biotechnology (with applications in local agricultural practices), environment and renewable energy.
+
+Seville is served by the TUSSAM (Transportes Urbanos de Sevilla) bus network which runs buses throughout the city. The Consorcio de Transportes de Sevilla communicates by bus with all the satellite towns of Seville.
+
+Two bus stations serve transportation between surrounding areas and other cities: Plaza de Armas Station, with destinations north and west, and Prado de San Sebastián Station, covering routes to the south and east. Plaza de Armas station has direct bus lines to many Spanish cities as well as Lisbon, Portugal.
+
+The Seville metro ("Metro de Sevilla" in Spanish) is a light metro network serving the city of Seville and its metropolitan area. The system is totally independent of any other rail or street traffic. All stations were built with platform screen doors.
+
+It was the sixth Metro system to be built in Spain, after those in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Bilbao and Palma de Mallorca. Currently, it is the fifth-biggest Metro company in Spain by the number of passengers carried (more than 12,000,000 in 2009).[citation needed]
+
+The metro of Sevilla has 1 line with 22 stations and is currently expanding, with 3 more different lines projected.[citation needed]
+
+MetroCentro is a surface tramway serving the centre of the city. It began operating in October 2007.
+
+The service has just five stops: Plaza Nueva, Archivo de Indias, Puerta de Jerez, Prado de San Sebastián and San Bernardo, all as part of Phase I of the project. It is expected to be extended to Santa Justa AVE station, including four new stops: San Francisco Javier, Eduardo Dato, Luis de Morales, and Santa Justa. This extension was postponed although the City Council had made expanding the metro lines a priority.[citation needed]
+
+The Seville-Santa Justa railway station is served by the AVE high-speed rail system, operated by the Spanish state-owned rail company Renfe. A five-line commuter rail service (Cercanías) joins the city with the Metropolitan area. Seville is on the Red Ciudades AVE, a net created with Seville next to 17 major cities of Spain with high-speed rail.
+
+Although Seville is close to the Portuguese city of Faro, it is not possible to cross the border by train.[100]
+
+The Sevici community bicycle program has integrated bicycles into the public transport network. Bicycles are available for hire around the city at low cost, and green bicycle lanes can be seen on most major streets. The number of people using bicycles as a means of transport in Seville has increased substantially in recent years, multiplying tenfold from 2006 to 2011.[101] As of 2015[update], an estimated 9 percent of all mechanized trips in the city (and 5.6 percent of all trips including those on foot) are made by bicycle.[102]
+
+The city council signed a contract with the multinational corporation JCDecaux, an outdoor advertising company. The public bicycle rental system is financed by a local advertising operator in return for the city signing over a 10-year licence to exploit citywide billboards. The overall scheme is called Cyclocity[103] by JCDecaux, but each city's system is branded under an individual name.
+
+The San Pablo Airport is the main airport for Seville and is Andalusia's second busiest airport, after Málaga's.  The airport handled 4,051,392 passengers and just under 5,000 tonnes of cargo in 2009.[104] It has one terminal and one runway.
+
+It is one of many bases for the Spanish low-cost carrier Vueling, and from November 2010 Ryanair based aircraft at the airport.[105][needs update]
+
+This enabled low-cost direct flights to several Spanish cities, as well as to the neighbor country of Portugal with weekly flights to Porto[106] and to other European cities.
+
+Seville is the only commercial river port in Spain and the only inland city in the country where cruise ships can arrive in the historical centre. On 21 August 2012, the Muelle de las Delicias, controlled by the Port Authority of Seville, hosted the cruise ship Azamara Journey for two days, the largest ship ever to visit the town. This vessel belongs to the shipping company Royal Caribbean and can accommodate up to 700 passengers.[107]
+
+Seville has one ring road, the SE-30, which connects with the dual carriageway of the south, the A-4, that directly communicates the city with Cádiz, Cordoba and Madrid. Also there is another dual carriageway, the A-92, linking the city with Osuna, Antequera, Granada, Guadix and Almeria. The A-49 links Seville with Huelva and the Algarve in the south of Portugal.
+
+The average amount of time people spend commuting with public transit in Sevilla, for example to and from work, on a weekday is 34 min. 7% 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 eight minutes, while 15% 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 5.6 kilometres (3.5 mi), while 7% travel for over 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) in a single direction.[108]
+
+Seville is home to three public universities. The University of Seville (US), founded in 1505; as of 2019, it had 72,000 students.[109] The Pablo de Olavide University (UPO), founded in 1997, with 9,152 students in 2019;[110] and the International University of Andalusia (UNIA), founded in 1994.[111]
+
+The US and the UPO are important centres of learning in Western Andalusia as they offer a wide range of academic courses; consequently, the city has a large number of students from Huelva and Cádiz.
+
+Additionally, there is the School of Hispanic American Studies, founded in 1942, the Menéndez Pelayo International University, based in Santander, which operates branch campuses in Seville, and Loyola University Andalusia.[112]
+
+Seville is also home to many international schools and colleges that cater to American students who come to study abroad.
+
+Seville is the hometown of two rival association football teams: Real Betis Balompié and Sevilla Fútbol Club, both teams are playing in the La Liga. Both teams have only won the league once each: Betis in 1935 and Sevilla in 1946.[113] Only Sevilla has won European competitions, winning consecutive UEFA Cup finals in 2006 and 2007[114] and the UEFA Europa League in 2014,[115] 2015 and 2016. The Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán and Benito Villamarín, stadiums of Sevilla and Betis respectively, were a venue during the 1982 FIFA World Cup.[116] Also Sevilla's stadium hosted the 1986 European Cup Final[117] and the multi-purpose stadium built in 1999 La Cartuja, was the venue for the 2003 UEFA Cup Final.[118] Seville has an ACB League basketball club, the CB Sevilla.
+
+Seville has hosted both indoor (1991) and outdoor (1999) World Championships in athletics, while housed the tennis Davis Cup final in 2004 and 2011. The city unsuccessfully bid for the 2004[119] and 2008 Summer Olympics,[120] for which the 60,000-seat Estadio de La Cartuja was designed to stage. Seville's River Guadalquivir is one of only three FISA approved international training centres for rowing and the only one in Spain; the 2002 World Rowing Championships and the 2013 European Rowing Championships were held there.
+
+Seville Walls
+
+Iglesia de Omnium Sanctorum (1249) (Gothic-Mudéjar)
+
+Iglesia de San Marcos (14th century)
+
+Iglesia de Santa Catalina (14th century)
+
+Seville Cathedral
+
+Iglesia de San Pedro (between 14th and 18th centuries)
+
+Iglesia de San Luis de los Franceses (1699-1730)
+
+Iglesia del Salvador (1679-1712)
+
+Plaza de Toros de la Real Maestranza
+
+General Archive of the Indies
+
+Casa de los Pinelo (16th century) in the Jewish Quarter
+
+Archbishop's palace
+
+River Guadalquivir over the city of Seville
+
+The tomb of Christopher Columbus, inside the Cathedral of Seville
+
+Puerta de la Macarena and Basílica de la Macarena
+
+Plaza del Altozano in the Triana district
+
+Ancient Roman in the Museo Arqueológico de Sevilla
+
+Street in the Jewish Quarter
+
+Spires of the Hospital de Nuestra Señora de la Paz (16th century)
+
+Carthusian Monastery (Cartuja) of Seville
+
+Plaza de España, Seville
+
+Plaza del Triunfo
+
+Seville is twinned with the following cities (the relationship between Seville and Kansas City is due to a small replica of the Giralda tower, Sevilla's cathedral belltower, that exists in Kansas City):
+
+Seville has been given titles by Spanish monarchs and heads of state throughout its history.[134]

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+A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry[1][2] – produced by several kinds of large herbaceous flowering plants in the genus Musa.[3] In some countries, bananas used for cooking may be called "plantains", distinguishing them from dessert bananas. The fruit is variable in size, color, and firmness, but is usually elongated and curved, with soft flesh rich in starch covered with a rind, which may be green, yellow, red, purple, or brown when ripe. The fruits grow in clusters hanging from the top of the plant. Almost all modern edible seedless (parthenocarp) bananas come from two wild species – Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana. The scientific names of most cultivated bananas are Musa acuminata, Musa balbisiana, and Musa × paradisiaca for the hybrid Musa acuminata × M. balbisiana, depending on their genomic constitution. The old scientific name for this hybrid, Musa sapientum, is no longer used.
+
+Musa species are native to tropical Indomalaya and Australia, and are likely to have been first domesticated in Papua New Guinea.[4][5] They are grown in 135 countries,[6] primarily for their fruit, and to a lesser extent to make fiber, banana wine, and banana beer and as ornamental plants. The world's largest producers of bananas in 2017 were India and China, which together accounted for approximately 38% of total production.[7]
+
+Worldwide, there is no sharp distinction between "bananas" and "plantains". Especially in the Americas and Europe, "banana" usually refers to soft, sweet, dessert bananas, particularly those of the Cavendish group, which are the main exports from banana-growing countries. By contrast, Musa cultivars with firmer, starchier fruit are called "plantains". In other regions, such as Southeast Asia, many more kinds of banana are grown and eaten, so the binary distinction is not useful and is not made in local languages.
+
+The term "banana" is also used as the common name for the plants that produce the fruit.[3] This can extend to other members of the genus Musa, such as the scarlet banana (Musa coccinea), the pink banana (Musa velutina), and the Fe'i bananas. It can also refer to members of the genus Ensete, such as the snow banana (Ensete glaucum) and the economically important false banana (Ensete ventricosum). Both genera are in the banana family, Musaceae.
+
+A banana corm, about 25 cm (10 in) across
+
+Female flowers have petals at the tip of the ovary
+
+Banana 'tree' showing fruit and inflorescence
+
+Banana tree with opening inflorescence
+
+Banana inflorescence, partially opened
+
+Wild banana with flowers and stem growing in reverse direction
+
+Extracted banana's DNA strands that can be seen with naked eyes
+
+The banana plant is the largest herbaceous flowering plant.[8] All the above-ground parts of a banana plant grow from a structure usually called a "corm".[9] Plants are normally tall and fairly sturdy, and are often mistaken for trees, but what appears to be a trunk is actually a "false stem" or pseudostem. Bananas grow in a wide variety of soils, as long as the soil is at least 60 centimetres (2.0 ft) deep, has good drainage and is not compacted.[10] The leaves of banana plants are composed of a "stalk" (petiole) and a blade (lamina). The base of the petiole widens to form a sheath; the tightly packed sheaths make up the pseudostem, which is all that supports the plant. The edges of the sheath meet when it is first produced, making it tubular. As new growth occurs in the centre of the pseudostem the edges are forced apart.[11] Cultivated banana plants vary in height depending on the variety and growing conditions. Most are around 5 m (16 ft) tall, with a range from 'Dwarf Cavendish' plants at around 3 m (10 ft) to 'Gros Michel' at 7 m (23 ft) or more.[12][13] Leaves are spirally arranged and may grow 2.7 metres (8.9 ft) long and 60 cm (2.0 ft) wide.[1] They are easily torn by the wind, resulting in the familiar frond look.[14]
+
+When a banana plant is mature, the corm stops producing new leaves and begins to form a flower spike or inflorescence. A stem develops which grows up inside the pseudostem, carrying the immature inflorescence until eventually it emerges at the top.[15] Each pseudostem normally produces a single inflorescence, also known as the "banana heart". (More are sometimes produced; an exceptional plant in the Philippines produced five.[16]) After fruiting, the pseudostem dies, but offshoots will normally have developed from the base, so that the plant as a whole is perennial. In the plantation system of cultivation, only one of the offshoots will be allowed to develop in order to maintain spacing.[17] The inflorescence contains many bracts (sometimes incorrectly referred to as petals) between rows of flowers. The female flowers (which can develop into fruit) appear in rows further up the stem (closer to the leaves) from the rows of male flowers. The ovary is inferior, meaning that the tiny petals and other flower parts appear at the tip of the ovary.[18]
+
+The banana fruits develop from the banana heart, in a large hanging cluster, made up of tiers (called "hands"), with up to 20 fruit to a tier. The hanging cluster is known as a bunch, comprising 3–20 tiers, or commercially as a "banana stem", and can weigh 30–50 kilograms (66–110 lb). Individual banana fruits (commonly known as a banana or "finger") average 125 grams (4 1⁄2 oz), of which approximately 75% is water and 25% dry matter (nutrient table, lower right).
+
+The fruit has been described as a "leathery berry".[19] There is a protective outer layer (a peel or skin) with numerous long, thin strings (the phloem bundles), which run lengthwise between the skin and the edible inner portion. The inner part of the common yellow dessert variety can be split lengthwise into three sections that correspond to the inner portions of the three carpels by manually deforming the unopened fruit.[20] In cultivated varieties, the seeds are diminished nearly to non-existence; their remnants are tiny black specks in the interior of the fruit.[21]
+
+As with all potassium-containing objects on Earth, including many common foods and people, bananas emit radioactivity at very low levels occurring naturally from potassium-40 (40K or K-40),[22] which is one of several isotopes of potassium.[23][24] The banana equivalent dose of radiation was developed in 1995 as a simple teaching-tool to educate the public about the natural, small amount of K-40 radiation occurring in every human and in common foods – where the banana was used as an example.[25][26] The K-40 in a banana contains about 15 becquerels or 0.1 micro-sieverts (units of radioactivity exposure),[27] an amount that does not add to the total body radiation dose when a banana is consumed.[22][26]
+The radiation exposure from consuming one banana is approximately 1% of the average daily exposure to radiation, or about 50 times less than a typical x-ray in a dental exam and 400 times less than taking a commercial flight across the United States.[27]
+
+The word banana is thought to be of West African origin, possibly from the Wolof word banaana, and passed into English via Spanish or Portuguese.[28]
+
+The genus Musa was created by Carl Linnaeus in 1753.[29] The name may be derived from Antonius Musa, physician to the Emperor Augustus, or Linnaeus may have adapted the Arabic word for banana, mauz.[30] The old biological name Musa sapientum = "Muse of the wise" arose because of homophony in Latin with the classical Muses.
+
+Musa is in the family Musaceae. The APG III system assigns Musaceae to the order Zingiberales, part of the commelinid clade of the monocotyledonous flowering plants. Some 70 species of Musa were recognized by the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families as of January 2013[update];[29] several produce edible fruit, while others are cultivated as ornamentals.[31]
+
+The classification of cultivated bananas has long been a problematic issue for taxonomists. Linnaeus originally placed bananas into two species based only on their uses as food: Musa sapientum for dessert bananas and Musa paradisiaca for plantains. More species names were added, but this approach proved to be inadequate for the number of cultivars in the primary center of diversity of the genus, Southeast Asia. Many of these cultivars were given names that were later discovered to be synonyms.[32]
+
+In a series of papers published from 1947 onwards, Ernest Cheesman showed that Linnaeus's Musa sapientum and Musa paradisiaca were cultivars and descendants of two wild seed-producing species, Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana, both first described by Luigi Aloysius Colla.[33] Cheesman recommended the abolition of Linnaeus's species in favor of reclassifying bananas according to three morphologically distinct groups of cultivars – those primarily exhibiting the botanical characteristics of Musa balbisiana, those primarily exhibiting the botanical characteristics of Musa acuminata, and those with characteristics of both.[32] Researchers Norman Simmonds and Ken Shepherd proposed a genome-based nomenclature system in 1955. This system eliminated almost all the difficulties and inconsistencies of the earlier classification of bananas based on assigning scientific names to cultivated varieties. Despite this, the original names are still recognized by some authorities, leading to confusion.[33][34]
+
+The accepted scientific names for most groups of cultivated bananas are Musa acuminata Colla and Musa balbisiana Colla for the ancestral species, and Musa × paradisiaca L. for the hybrid M. acuminata × M. balbisiana.[35]
+
+Synonyms of M. × paradisiaca include
+
+Generally, modern classifications of banana cultivars follow Simmonds and Shepherd's system. Cultivars are placed in groups based on the number of chromosomes they have and which species they are derived from. Thus the Latundan banana is placed in the AAB Group, showing that it is a triploid derived from both M. acuminata (A) and M. balbisiana (B). For a list of the cultivars classified under this system, see "List of banana cultivars".
+
+In 2012, a team of scientists announced they had achieved a draft sequence of the genome of Musa acuminata.[36]
+
+In regions such as North America and Europe, Musa fruits offered for sale can be divided into "bananas" and "plantains", based on their intended use as food. Thus the banana producer and distributor Chiquita produces publicity material for the American market which says that "a plantain is not a banana". The stated differences are that plantains are more starchy and less sweet; they are eaten cooked rather than raw; they have thicker skin, which may be green, yellow or black; and they can be used at any stage of ripeness.[37] Linnaeus made the same distinction between plantains and bananas when first naming two "species" of Musa.[38] Members of the "plantain subgroup" of banana cultivars, most important as food in West Africa and Latin America, correspond to the Chiquita description, having long pointed fruit. They are described by Ploetz et al. as "true" plantains, distinct from other cooking bananas.[39] The cooking bananas of East Africa belong to a different group, the East African Highland bananas,[13] so would not qualify as "true" plantains on this definition.
+
+An alternative approach divides bananas into dessert bananas and cooking bananas, with plantains being one of the subgroups of cooking bananas.[40] Triploid cultivars derived solely from M. acuminata are examples of "dessert bananas", whereas triploid cultivars derived from the hybrid between M. acuminata and M. balbinosa (in particular the plantain subgroup of the AAB Group) are "plantains".[41][42] Small farmers in Colombia grow a much wider range of cultivars than large commercial plantations. A study of these cultivars showed that they could be placed into at least three groups based on their characteristics: dessert bananas, non-plantain cooking bananas, and plantains, although there were overlaps between dessert and cooking bananas.[43]
+
+In Southeast Asia – the center of diversity for bananas, both wild and cultivated – the distinction between "bananas" and "plantains" does not work, according to Valmayor et al. Many bananas are used both raw and cooked. There are starchy cooking bananas which are smaller than those eaten raw. The range of colors, sizes and shapes is far wider than in those grown or sold in Africa, Europe or the Americas.[38] Southeast Asian languages do not make the distinction between "bananas" and "plantains" that is made in English (and Spanish). Thus both Cavendish cultivars, the classic yellow dessert bananas, and Saba cultivars, used mainly for cooking, are called pisang in Malaysia and Indonesia, kluai in Thailand and chuoi in Vietnam.[44] Fe'i bananas, grown and eaten in the islands of the Pacific, are derived from entirely different wild species than traditional bananas and plantains. Most Fe'i bananas are cooked, but Karat bananas, which are short and squat with bright red skins, very different from the usual yellow dessert bananas, are eaten raw.[45]
+
+In summary, in commerce in Europe and the Americas (although not in small-scale cultivation), it is possible to distinguish between "bananas", which are eaten raw, and "plantains", which are cooked. In other regions of the world, particularly India, Southeast Asia and the islands of the Pacific, there are many more kinds of banana and the two-fold distinction is not useful and not made in local languages. Plantains are one of many kinds of cooking bananas, which are not always distinct from dessert bananas.
+
+The earliest domestication of bananas (Musa spp.) were initially from naturally occurring parthenocarpic (seedless) individuals of Musa acuminata banksii in New Guinea. These were cultivated by Papuans before the arrival of Austronesian-speakers. Numerous phytoliths of bananas have been recovered from the Kuk Swamp archaeological site and dated to around 10,000 to 6,500 BP. From New Guinea, cultivated bananas spread westward into Island Southeast Asia through proximity (not migrations). They hybridized with other (possibly independently domesticated) subspecies of Musa acuminata as well as Musa balbisiana in the Philippines, northern New Guinea, and possibly Halmahera. These hybridization events produced the triploid cultivars of bananas commonly grown today. From Island Southeast Asia, they became part of the staple crops of Austronesian peoples and were spread during their voyages and ancient maritime trading routes into Oceania, East Africa, South Asia, and Indochina.[47][48][49]
+
+These ancient introductions resulted in the banana subgroup now known as the "true" plantains, which include the East African Highland bananas and the Pacific plantains (the Iholena and Maoli-Popo'ulu subgroups). East African Highland bananas originated from banana populations introduced to Madagascar probably from the region between Java, Borneo, and New Guinea; while Pacific plantains were introduced to the Pacific Islands from either eastern New Guinea or the Bismarck Archipelago.[47][48]
+
+Phytolith discoveries in Cameroon dating to the first millennium BCE[51] triggered an as yet unresolved debate about the date of first cultivation in Africa. There is linguistic evidence that bananas were known in Madagascar around that time.[52] The earliest prior evidence indicates that cultivation dates to no earlier than late 6th century CE.[53] It is likely, however, that bananas were brought at least to Madagascar if not to the East African coast during the phase of Malagasy colonization of the island from South East Asia c. 400 CE.[54]
+
+A second wave of introductions later spread bananas to other parts of tropical Asia, particularly Indochina and the Indian Subcontinent.[47][48] However, there is evidence that bananas were known to the Indus Valley Civilisation from phytoliths recovered from the Kot Diji archaeological site in Pakistan (although they are absent in other contemporary sites in South Asia). This may be a possible indication of very early dispersal of bananas by Austronesian traders by sea from as early as 2000 BCE. But this is still putative, as they may have come from local wild Musa species used for fiber or as ornamentals, not food.[49]
+
+Southeast Asia remains the region of primary diversity of the banana. Areas of secondary diversity are found in Africa, indicating a long history of banana cultivation in these regions.[55]
+
+The banana may also have been present in isolated locations elsewhere in the Middle East on the eve of Islam. The spread of Islam was followed by far-reaching diffusion. There are numerous references to it in Islamic texts (such as poems and hadiths) beginning in the 9th century. By the 10th century the banana appears in texts from Palestine and Egypt. From there it diffused into North Africa and Muslim Iberia. During the medieval ages, bananas from Granada were considered among the best in the Arab world.[56] In 650, Islamic conquerors brought the banana to Palestine. Today, banana consumption increases significantly in Islamic countries during Ramadan, the month of daylight fasting.[57]
+
+Bananas were certainly grown in the Christian Kingdom of Cyprus by the late medieval period. Writing in 1458, the Italian traveller and writer Gabriele Capodilista [it] wrote favourably of the extensive farm produce of the estates at Episkopi, near modern-day Limassol, including the region's banana plantations.[58]
+
+Bananas were introduced to the Americas by Portuguese sailors who brought the fruits from West Africa in the 16th century.[59]
+
+Many wild banana species as well as cultivars exist in extraordinary diversity in India, China, and Southeast Asia.
+
+There are fuzzy bananas whose skins are bubblegum pink; green-and-white striped bananas with pulp the color of orange sherbet; bananas that, when cooked, taste like strawberries. The Double Mahoi plant can produce two bunches at once. The Chinese name of the aromatic Go San Heong banana means 'You can smell it from the next mountain.' The fingers on one banana plant grow fused; another produces bunches of a thousand fingers, each only an inch long.
+
+In the 15th and 16th centuries, Portuguese colonists started banana plantations in the Atlantic Islands, Brazil, and western Africa.[61] North Americans began consuming bananas on a small scale at very high prices shortly after the Civil War, though it was only in the 1880s that the food became more widespread.[62] As late as the Victorian Era, bananas were not widely known in Europe, although they were available.[61] Jules Verne introduces bananas to his readers with detailed descriptions in Around the World in Eighty Days (1872).
+
+The earliest modern plantations originated in Jamaica and the related Western Caribbean Zone, including most of Central America. It involved the combination of modern transportation networks of steamships and railroads with the development of refrigeration that allowed more time between harvesting and ripening. North American shippers like Lorenzo Dow Baker and Andrew Preston, the founders of the Boston Fruit Company started this process in the 1870s, but railroad builders like Minor C. Keith also participated, eventually culminating in the multi-national giant corporations like today's Chiquita Brands International and Dole.[62] These companies were monopolistic, vertically integrated (meaning they controlled growing, processing, shipping and marketing) and usually used political manipulation to build enclave economies (economies that were internally self-sufficient, virtually tax exempt, and export-oriented that contribute very little to the host economy). Their political maneuvers, which gave rise to the term Banana republic for states like Honduras and Guatemala, included working with local elites and their rivalries to influence politics or playing the international interests of the United States, especially during the Cold War, to keep the political climate favorable to their interests.[63]
+
+The vast majority of the world's bananas today are cultivated for family consumption or for sale on local markets. India is the world leader in this sort of production, but many other Asian and African countries where climate and soil conditions allow cultivation also host large populations of banana growers who sell at least some of their crop.[64]
+
+Peasant sector banana growers produce for the world market in the Caribbean, however. The Windward Islands are notable for the growing, largely of Cavendish bananas, for an international market, generally in Europe but also in North America. In the Caribbean, and especially in Dominica where this sort of cultivation is widespread, holdings are in the 1–2 acre range. In many cases the farmer earns additional money from other crops, from engaging in labor outside the farm, and from a share of the earnings of relatives living overseas.[65]
+
+Banana crops are vulnerable to destruction by high winds, such as tropical storms or cyclones.[66]
+
+All widely cultivated bananas today descend from the two wild bananas Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana. While the original wild bananas contained large seeds, diploid or polyploid cultivars (some being hybrids) with tiny seeds are preferred for human raw fruit consumption.[67] These are propagated asexually from offshoots. The plant is allowed to produce two shoots at a time; a larger one for immediate fruiting and a smaller "sucker" or "follower" to produce fruit in 6–8 months.
+
+As a non-seasonal crop, bananas are available fresh year-round.[68]
+
+In global commerce in 2009, by far the most important cultivars belonged to the triploid AAA group of Musa acuminata, commonly referred to as Cavendish group bananas. They accounted for the majority of banana exports,[67] despite only coming into existence in 1836.[69] The cultivars Dwarf Cavendish and Grand Nain (Chiquita Banana) gained popularity in the 1950s after the previous mass-produced cultivar, Gros Michel (also an AAA group cultivar), became commercially unviable due to Panama disease, caused by the fungus Fusarium oxysporum which attacks the roots of the banana plant.[67] Cavendish cultivars are resistant to the Panama disease, but in 2013 there were fears that the black sigatoka fungus would in turn make Cavendish bananas unviable.[70]
+
+Even though it is no longer viable for large scale cultivation, Gros Michel is not extinct and is still grown in areas where Panama disease is not found.[71] Likewise, Dwarf Cavendish and Grand Nain are in no danger of extinction, but they may leave supermarket shelves if disease makes it impossible to supply the global market. It is unclear if any existing cultivar can replace Cavendish bananas, so various hybridisation and genetic engineering programs are attempting to create a disease-resistant, mass-market banana.[67]  One such strain that has emerged is the Taiwanese Cavendish, also known as the Formosana.[72]
+
+Export bananas are picked green, and ripen in special rooms upon arrival in the destination country. These rooms are air-tight and filled with ethylene gas to induce ripening. The vivid yellow color consumers normally associate with supermarket bananas is, in fact, caused by the artificial ripening process.[73] Flavor and texture are also affected by ripening temperature. Bananas are refrigerated to between 13.5 and 15 °C (56.3 and 59.0 °F) during transport. At lower temperatures, ripening permanently stalls, and the bananas turn gray as cell walls break down. The skin of ripe bananas quickly blackens in the 4 °C (39 °F) environment of a domestic refrigerator, although the fruit inside remains unaffected.
+
+Bananas can be ordered by the retailer "ungassed" (i.e. not treated with ethylene), and may show up at the supermarket fully green. Guineos verdes (green bananas) that have not been gassed will never fully ripen before becoming rotten. Instead of fresh eating, these bananas can be used for cooking, as seen in Jamaican cuisine.[74]
+
+A 2008 study reported that ripe bananas fluoresce when exposed to ultraviolet light. This property is attributed to the degradation of chlorophyll leading to the accumulation of a fluorescent product in the skin of the fruit. The chlorophyll breakdown product is stabilized by a propionate ester group. Banana-plant leaves also fluoresce in the same way. Green (under-ripe) bananas do not fluoresce.[75] That paper suggested that this fluorescence could be put to use "for optical in vivo monitoring of ripening and over-ripening of bananas and other fruit."
+
+Bananas must be transported over long distances from the tropics to world markets.[76] To obtain maximum shelf life, harvest comes before the fruit is mature. The fruit requires careful handling, rapid transport to ports, cooling, and refrigerated shipping. The goal is to prevent the bananas from producing their natural ripening agent, ethylene. This technology allows storage and transport for 3–4 weeks at 13 °C (55 °F). On arrival, bananas are held at about 17 °C (63 °F) and treated with a low concentration of ethylene. After a few days, the fruit begins to ripen and is distributed for final sale. Ripe bananas can be held for a few days at home. If bananas are too green, they can be put in a brown paper bag with an apple or tomato overnight to speed up the ripening process.[77]
+
+Carbon dioxide (which bananas produce) and ethylene absorbents extend fruit life even at high temperatures. This effect can be exploited by packing banana in a polyethylene bag and including an ethylene absorbent, e.g., potassium permanganate, on an inert carrier. The bag is then sealed with a band or string. This treatment has been shown to more than double lifespans up to 3–4 weeks without the need for refrigeration.[78][79][80]
+
+The excessive use of fertilizers often left in abandoned plantations contributes greatly to eutrophication in local streams and lakes, and harms aquatic life after algal blooms deprive fish of oxygen. It has been theorized that destruction of 60% of coral reefs along the coasts of Costa Rica is partially from sediments from banana plantations. Another issue is the deforestation associated with expanding banana production. As monocultures rapidly deplete soil nutrients plantations expand to areas with rich soils and cut down forests, which also affects soil erosion and degradation, and increases frequency of flooding. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) stated that banana production produced more waste than any other agricultural sector, mostly from discarded banana plants, bags used to cover the bananas, strings to tie them, and containers for transport.[81]
+
+In 2017, world production of bananas and plantains combined was 153 million tonnes, led by India and China with a combined total of 27% of global production[85][86]. Other major producers were the Philippines, Colombia, Indonesia, Ecuador, and  Brazil.
+
+As reported for 2013, total world exports were 20 million tonnes of bananas and 859,000 tonnes of plantains.[87] Ecuador and the Philippines were the leading exporters with 5.4 and 3.3 million tonnes, respectively, and the Dominican Republic was the leading exporter of plantains with 210,350 tonnes.[87]
+
+Bananas and plantains constitute a major staple food crop for millions of people in developing countries. In many tropical countries, green (unripe) bananas used for cooking represent the main cultivars. Most producers are small-scale farmers either for home consumption or local markets. Because bananas and plantains produce fruit year-round, they provide a valuable food source during the hunger season (when the food from one annual/semi-annual harvest has been consumed, and the next is still to come). Bananas and plantains are important for global food security.[88]
+
+While in no danger of outright extinction, the most common edible banana cultivar Cavendish (extremely popular in Europe and the Americas) could become unviable for large-scale cultivation in the next 10–20 years. Its predecessor 'Gros Michel', discovered in the 1820s, suffered this fate. Like almost all bananas, Cavendish lacks genetic diversity, which makes it vulnerable to diseases, threatening both commercial cultivation and small-scale subsistence farming.[89][90] Some commentators remarked that those variants which could replace what much of the world considers a "typical banana" are so different that most people would not consider them the same fruit, and blame the decline of the banana on monogenetic cultivation driven by short-term commercial motives.[63]
+
+Panama disease is caused by a fusarium soil fungus (Race 1), which enters the plants through the roots and travels with water into the trunk and leaves, producing gels and gums that cut off the flow of water and nutrients, causing the plant to wilt, and exposing the rest of the plant to lethal amounts of sunlight. Prior to 1960, almost all commercial banana production centered on "Gros Michel", which was highly susceptible.[91] Cavendish was chosen as the replacement for Gros Michel because, among resistant cultivars, it produces the highest quality fruit. However, more care is required for shipping the Cavendish,[92] and its quality compared to Gros Michel is debated.[93]
+
+According to current sources, a deadly form of Panama disease is infecting Cavendish. All plants are genetically identical, which prevents evolution of disease resistance. Researchers are examining hundreds of wild varieties for resistance.[91]
+
+Tropical race 4 (TR4), a reinvigorated strain of Panama disease, was first discovered in 1993. This virulent form of fusarium wilt destroyed Cavendish in several southeast Asian countries and spread to Australia and India.[94] As the soil-based fungi can easily be carried on boots, clothing, or tools, the wilt spread to the Americas despite years of preventive efforts.[94] Cavendish is highly susceptible to TR4, and over time, Cavendish is endangered for commercial production by this disease.[95] The only known defense to TR4 is genetic resistance.[94] This is conferred either by RGA2, a gene isolated from a TR4-resistant diploid banana, or by the nematode-derived Ced9.[96] Experts state the need to enrich banana biodiversity by producing diverse new banana varieties, not just having a focus on the Cavendish.[94]
+
+Black sigatoka is a fungal leaf spot disease first observed in Fiji in 1963 or 1964. Black Sigatoka (also known as black leaf streak) has spread to banana plantations throughout the tropics from infected banana leaves that were used as packing material. It affects all main cultivars of bananas and plantains (including the Cavendish cultivars[70]), impeding photosynthesis by blackening parts of the leaves, eventually killing the entire leaf. Starved for energy, fruit production falls by 50% or more, and the bananas that do grow ripen prematurely, making them unsuitable for export. The fungus has shown ever-increasing resistance to treatment, with the current expense for treating 1 hectare (2.5 acres) exceeding $1,000 per year. In addition to the expense, there is the question of how long intensive spraying can be environmentally justified.
+
+Banana bunchy top virus (BBTV) is a plant virus of the genus Babuvirus, family Nanonviridae affecting Musa spp. (including banana, abaca, plantain and ornamental bananas) and Ensete spp. in the family Musaceae.[97] Banana bunchy top disease (BBTD) symptoms include dark green streaks of variable length in leaf veins, midribs and petioles. Leaves become short and stunted as the disease progresses, becoming 'bunched' at the apex of the plant. Infected plants may produce no fruit or the bunch may not emerge from the pseudostem.[98] The virus is transmitted by the banana aphid Pentalonia nigronervosa and is widespread in SE Asia, Asia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Oceania and parts of Africa. There is no cure for BBTD, but it can be effectively controlled by the eradication of diseased plants and the use of virus-free planting material.[99] No resistant cultivars have been found, but varietal differences in susceptibility have been reported. The commercially important Cavendish subgroup is severely affected.[98]
+
+Banana bacterial wilt (BBW) is a bacterial disease caused by Xanthomonas campestris pv. musacearum.[100] After being originally identified on a close relative of bananas, Ensete ventricosum, in Ethiopia in the 1960s,[101] BBW occurred in Uganda in 2001 affecting all banana cultivars. Since then BBW has been diagnosed in Central and East Africa including the banana growing regions of Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Burundi, and Uganda.[102]
+
+Given the narrow range of genetic diversity present in bananas and the many threats via biotic (pests and diseases) and abiotic (such as drought) stress, conservation of the full spectrum of banana genetic resources is ongoing.[103] Banana germplasm is conserved in many national and regional gene banks, and at the world's largest banana collection, the International Musa Germplasm Transit Centre (ITC), managed by Bioversity International and hosted at KU Leuven in Belgium.[104] Musa cultivars are usually seedless, and options for their long-term conservation are constrained by the vegetative nature of the plant's reproductive system. Consequently, they are conserved by three main methods: in vivo (planted in field collections), in vitro (as plantlets in test tubes within a controlled environment), and by cryopreservation (meristems conserved in liquid nitrogen at −196 °C).[103] Genes from wild banana species are conserved as DNA and as cryopreserved pollen[103] and banana seeds from wild species are also conserved, although less commonly, as they are difficult to regenerate. In addition, bananas and their crop wild relatives are conserved in situ (in wild natural habitats where they evolved and continue to do so). Diversity is also conserved in farmers' fields where continuous cultivation, adaptation and improvement of cultivars is often carried out by small-scale farmers growing traditional local cultivars.[105]
+
+Raw bananas (not including the peel) are 75% water, 23% carbohydrates, 1% protein, and contain negligible fat. A 100-gram reference serving supplies 89 Calories, 31% of the US recommended Daily Value (DV) of vitamin B6, and moderate amounts of vitamin C, manganese and dietary fiber, with no other micronutrients in significant content (see table).
+
+Although bananas are commonly thought to contain exceptional potassium content,[26][106] their actual potassium content is not high per typical food serving, having only 8% of the US recommended Daily Value for potassium (considered a low level of the DV, see nutrition table), and their potassium-content ranking among fruits, vegetables, legumes, and many other foods is relatively moderate.[107][108] Vegetables with higher potassium content than raw dessert bananas (358 mg per 100 gm) include raw spinach (558 mg per 100 gm), baked potatoes without skin (391 mg per 100 gm), cooked soybeans (539 mg per 100 gm), grilled portabella mushrooms (437 mg per 100 gm), and processed tomato sauces (413–439 mg per 100 gm). Raw plantains contain 499 mg potassium per 100 gm. Dehydrated dessert bananas or banana powder contain 1491 mg potassium per 100 gm.[107]
+
+Individuals with a latex allergy may experience a reaction to bananas.[109]
+
+Bananas are a staple starch for many tropical populations. Depending upon cultivar and ripeness, the flesh can vary in taste from starchy to sweet, and texture from firm to mushy. Both the skin and inner part can be eaten raw or cooked. The primary component of the aroma of fresh bananas is isoamyl acetate (also known as banana oil), which, along with several other compounds such as butyl acetate and isobutyl acetate, is a significant contributor to banana flavor.[110][111][112]
+
+During the ripening process, bananas produce the gas ethylene, which acts as a plant hormone and indirectly affects the flavor. Among other things, ethylene stimulates the formation of amylase, an enzyme that breaks down starch into sugar, influencing the taste of bananas. The greener, less ripe bananas contain higher levels of starch and, consequently, have a "starchier" taste. On the other hand, yellow bananas taste sweeter due to higher sugar concentrations. Furthermore, ethylene signals the production of pectinase, an enzyme which breaks down the pectin between the cells of the banana, causing the banana to soften as it ripens.[113][114]
+
+Bananas are eaten deep fried, baked in their skin in a split bamboo, or steamed in glutinous rice wrapped in a banana leaf. Bananas can be made into fruit preserves. Banana pancakes are popular among travelers in South Asia and Southeast Asia. This has elicited the expression Banana Pancake Trail for those places in Asia that cater to these travelers. Banana chips are a snack produced from sliced dehydrated or fried banana or plantain, which have a dark brown color and an intense banana taste. Dried bananas are also ground to make banana flour. Extracting juice is difficult, because when a banana is compressed, it simply turns to pulp. Bananas feature prominently in Philippine cuisine, being part of traditional dishes and desserts like maruya, turón, and halo-halo or saba con yelo. Most of these dishes use the Saba Banana or Cardaba banana cultivar. Bananas are also commonly used in cuisine in the South-Indian state of Kerala, where they are steamed (puzhungiyathu), made into curries,[115] fried into chips, (upperi)[116] or fried in batter (pazhampori).[117] Pisang goreng, bananas fried with batter similar to the Filipino maruya or Kerala pazhampori, is a popular dessert in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. A similar dish is known in the United Kingdom and United States as banana fritters.
+
+Plantains are used in various stews and curries or cooked, baked or mashed in much the same way as potatoes, such as the pazham pachadi dish prepared in Kerala.[115]
+
+Banana hearts are used as a vegetable[118] in South Asian and Southeast Asian cuisine, either raw or steamed with dips or cooked in soups, curries and fried foods.[119][120] The flavor resembles that of artichoke. As with artichokes, both the fleshy part of the bracts and the heart are edible.[121]
+
+Banana leaves are large, flexible, and waterproof. They are often used as ecologically friendly disposable food containers or as "plates" in South Asia and several Southeast Asian countries.[122] In Indonesian cuisine, banana leaf is employed in cooking methods like pepes and botok; banana leaf packages containing food ingredients and spices are cooked in steam or in boiled water, or are grilled on charcoal. When used so for steaming or grilling, the banana leaves protect the food ingredients from burning and add a subtle sweet flavor.[123] In South India, it is customary to serve traditional food on a banana leaf. In Tamil Nadu (India), dried banana leaves are used as to pack food and to make cups to hold liquid food items.
+
+The tender core of the banana plant's trunk is also used in South Asian and Southeast Asian cuisine. Examples include the Burmese dish mohinga, and the Filipino dish inubaran.[124]
+
+Banana fiber harvested from the pseudostems and leaves of the plant has been used for textiles in Asia since at least the 13th century. Both fruit-bearing and fibrous varieties of the banana plant have been used.[125] In the Japanese system Kijōka-bashōfu, leaves and shoots are cut from the plant periodically to ensure softness. Harvested shoots are first boiled in lye to prepare fibers for yarn-making. These banana shoots produce fibers of varying degrees of softness, yielding yarns and textiles with differing qualities for specific uses. For example, the outermost fibers of the shoots are the coarsest, and are suitable for tablecloths, while the softest innermost fibers are desirable for kimono and kamishimo. This traditional Japanese cloth-making process requires many steps, all performed by hand.[126]
+
+In India, a banana fiber separator machine has been developed, which takes the agricultural waste of local banana harvests and extracts strands of the fiber.[127]
+
+Banana fiber is used in the production of banana paper. Banana paper is made from two different parts: the bark of the banana plant, mainly used for artistic purposes, or from the fibers of the stem and non-usable fruits. The paper is either hand-made or by industrial process.[128]
+
+Now I don't think much of the man that throws a banana peelin' on the sidewalk, and I don't think much of the banana peel that throws a man on the sidewalk neither ... my foot hit the bananer peelin' and I went up in the air, and I come down ker-plunk, jist as I was pickin' myself up a little boy come runnin' across the street ... he says, "Oh mister, won't you please do that agin? My little brother didn't see you do it."
+
+In India, bananas serve a prominent part in many festivals and occasions of Hindus. In South Indian weddings, particularly Tamil weddings, banana trees are tied in pairs to form an arch as a blessing to the couple for a long-lasting, useful life.[136][137]
+
+In Thailand, it is believed that a certain type of banana plants may be inhabited by a spirit, Nang Tani, a type of ghost related to trees and similar plants that manifests itself as a young woman.[138] Often people tie a length of colored satin cloth around the pseudostem of the banana plants.[139]
+
+In Malay folklore, the ghost known as Pontianak is associated with banana plants (pokok pisang), and its spirit is said to reside in them during the day.[140]
+
+There is a long racist history of describing people of African descent as being more like monkeys than humans, and due to the assumption in popular culture that monkeys like bananas, bananas have been used in symbolic acts of hate speech.[141][142]
+
+Particularly in Europe, bananas have long been commonly thrown at black footballers by racist spectators.[143] In April 2014, during a match at Villarreal's stadium, El Madrigal, Dani Alves was targeted by Villareal supporter David Campaya Lleo, who threw a banana at him.[144] Alves picked up the banana, peeled it and took a bite, and the meme went viral on social media in support of him.[145]  Racist taunts are an ongoing problem in football.[146][147]   Bananas were hung from nooses around the campus of American University in May 2017 after the student body elected its first black woman student government president.[148]
+
+The Unicode standard includes the emoji character U+1F34C 🍌 BANANA (HTML 🍌).[149]

en/5370.html.txt

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+
+
+Coordinates: 4°35′S 55°40′E / 4.583°S 55.667°E / -4.583; 55.667
+
+– in Africa (light blue & dark grey)– in the African Union (light blue)
+
+Seychelles (/seɪˈʃɛlz/ (listen); French: [sɛʃɛl][6][7][8] or [seʃɛl][9]), officially the Republic of Seychelles (French: République des Seychelles; Creole: La Repiblik Sesel), is an archipelagic island country in the Indian Ocean at the eastern edge of the Somali Sea. The country consists of 115 islands.  Its capital and largest city, Victoria, lies 1,500 kilometres (932 mi) east of mainland Africa. Other nearby island countries and territories include Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, and the French territories of Mayotte and Réunion to the south; as well as the Maldives and Chagos Archipelago to the east. With a population of roughly 94,367, it has the smallest population of any sovereign African country.[10]
+
+Seychelles was uninhabited prior to being encountered by Europeans in the 16th century. It faced competing French and British interests until coming under full British control in the late 19th century. Since proclaiming independence from the United Kingdom in 1976, Seychelles has developed from a largely agricultural society to a market-based diversified economy, characterized by rapidly rising service, public sector, and tourism activities. From 1976 until 2015, nominal GDP grew nearly sevenfold, and purchasing power parity increased nearly sixteenfold. Since the late 2010s, the government has taken steps to encourage foreign investment.
+
+Today, Seychelles boasts the highest nominal per capita GDP of any African nation. It is the first African country with an HDI score exceeding 0.800, and therefore the only country in the continent with a very high Human Development Index. It is one of only two countries in Africa classified as a high-income economy by the World Bank, the other being Mauritius. Despite its relative prosperity, poverty remains widespread, and the country has one of the highest levels of economic inequality and unequal wealth distribution, with the upper and ruling class commanding a vast proportion of the country's wealth.[11]
+
+Seychellois culture and society is an eclectic mix of French, British, and African influences, with more recent infusions of Chinese and Indian elements. The country is a member of the United Nations, the African Union, the Southern African Development Community, and the Commonwealth of Nations.
+
+Seychelles were uninhabited throughout most of recorded history. Some scholars assume that Austronesian seafarers and later Maldivian and Arab traders were the first to visit the uninhabited Seychelles. This assumption is based on the discovery of tombs, visible until 1910.[12] The earliest recorded sighting by Europeans took place on 15 March 1503, recorded by Thomé Lopes aboard "Rui Mendes de Brito,” part of the 4th Portuguese India Armada commanded by the Portuguese Admiral Vasco da Gama. Da Gama's ships passed close to an elevated island, probably Silhouette Island and the following day Desroches Island. The earliest recorded landing was in January 1609, by the crew of the "Ascension" under Captain Alexander Sharpeigh during the fourth voyage of the British East India Company.
+
+A transit point for trade between Africa and Asia, the islands were said to be occasionally used by pirates until the French began to take control starting in 1756 when a Stone of Possession was laid on Mahé by Captain Nicholas Morphey. The islands were named after Jean Moreau de Séchelles, Louis XV's Minister of Finance.[13]
+
+The British frigate "Orpheus" commanded by Captain Henry Newcome arrived at Mahé on 16 May 1794, during the War of the First Coalition. Terms of capitulation were drawn up and the next day Seychelles was surrendered to Britain. Jean Baptiste Quéau de Quincy, the French administrator of Seychelles during the years of war with the United Kingdom, declined to resist when armed enemy warships arrived. Instead, he successfully negotiated the status of capitulation to Britain which gave the settlers a privileged position of neutrality.
+
+Britain eventually assumed full control upon the surrender of Mauritius in 1810, formalised in 1814 at the Treaty of Paris. Seychelles became a crown colony separate from Mauritius in 1903. Elections were held in 1966 and 1970.
+
+Independence was granted in 1976 and it became a republic at the same time. It has been a member of Commonwealth.[14] In the 1970s Seychelles was "the place to be seen, a playground for film stars and the international jet set".[15] In 1977, a coup d'état by France Albert René ousted the first president of the republic, James Mancham.[16] René discouraged overdependence on tourism and declared that he wanted "to keep the Seychelles for the Seychellois".[15]
+
+The 1979 constitution declared a socialist one-party state, which lasted until 1991.
+
+In the 1980s there were a series of coup attempts against President René, some of which were supported by South Africa. In 1981, Mike Hoare led a team of 43 South African mercenaries masquerading as holidaying rugby players in the 1981 Seychelles coup d'état attempt.[15] There was a gun battle at the airport, and most of the mercenaries later escaped in a hijacked Air India plane.[15] The leader of this hijacking was German mercenary D. Clodo, a former member of the Rhodesian SAS.[17] Clodo later stood trial in South Africa (where he was acquitted) as well as in his home country Germany for air piracy.[18]
+
+In 1986, an attempted coup led by the Seychelles Minister of Defence, Ogilvy Berlouis, caused President René to request assistance from India. In Operation Flowers are Blooming, the Indian naval vessel INS Vindhyagiri arrived in Port Victoria to help avert the coup.[19]
+
+The first draft of a new constitution failed to receive the requisite 60% of voters in 1992, but an amended version was approved in 1993.
+
+In January 2013, Seychelles declared a state of emergency; the tropical cyclone Felleng caused torrential rain, and flooding and landslides destroyed hundreds of houses.[20][21]
+
+The Seychelles president, who is head of state and head of government, is elected by popular vote for a five-year term of office. The cabinet is presided over and appointed by the president, subject to the approval of a majority of the legislature.
+
+The unicameral Seychellois parliament, the National Assembly or Assemblée Nationale, consists of 34 members, 25 of whom are elected directly by popular vote, while the remaining nine seats are appointed proportionally according to the percentage of votes received by each party. All members serve five-year terms.
+
+The Supreme Court of Seychelles, created in 1903, is the highest trial court in Seychelles and the first court of appeal from all the lower courts and tribunals. The highest court of law in Seychelles is the Seychelles Court of Appeal, which is the court of final appeal in the country.[22]
+
+Seychelles' previous president France Albert René came to power after his supporters overthrew the first president James Mancham on 5 June 1977 in a coup d'état and installed him as president. René was at that time the prime minister.[23][24][25] René ruled as a strongman under a socialist one-party system until 1993, when he was forced to introduce a multi-party system. He stepped down in 2004 in favour of his vice-president, James Michel, who was reelected in 2006 and again in 2011.[23][24][25] On 28 September 2016, the Office of the President announced that Michel would step down effective 16 October, and that Vice President Danny Faure would complete the rest of Michel's term.[26]
+
+The primary political parties are the ruling socialist People's Party (PP), known until 2009 as the Seychelles People's Progressive Front (SPPF) now called United Seychelles (US), and the socially liberal Seychelles National Party (SNP).[27]
+
+Seychelles is a member of the African Union (AU), the francophone Indian Ocean Commission (IOC), La Francophonie, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Commonwealth. From 1979 to 1981, the United States was involved in the failed 1981 coup attempt.[28] Under the Obama administration, the US began running drone operations out of Seychelles.[29] In the Spring of 2013, members of the Special-Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force Africa mentored troops in Seychelles, along with a variety of other African nations.[29]
+
+Seychelles is divided into twenty-six administrative regions comprising all of the inner islands. Eight of the districts make up the capital of Seychelles and are referred to as Greater Victoria. Another 14 districts are considered the rural part of the main island of Mahé with two districts on Praslin and one on La Digue which also includes respective satellite islands. The rest of the Outer Islands (Îles Eloignées) are the last district recently created by the tourism ministry.
+
+Greater Victoria
+
+
+
+Rural Mahé
+
+
+
+Praslin
+
+La Digue and remaining Inner Islands
+
+
+
+An island nation, Seychelles is located in the Somali Sea segment of the Indian Ocean, northeast of Madagascar and about 1,600 km (994 mi) east of Kenya. The Constitution of Seychelles lists 155 named islands and a further 7 reclaimed islands have been created subsequent to the publication of the Constitution. The majority of the islands are uninhabited, with many dedicated as nature reserves. Seychelles largest island Mahe is located at a distance of 835 mi (1,344 km), from Mogadishu, Somalia's capital over the Somali Sea.[30]
+
+A group of 44 islands (42 granitic and 2 coralline) occupy the shallow waters of the Seychelles Bank and are collectively referred to as the inner islands. They have a total area of 244 km2, accounting for 54% of the total land area of the Seychelles and 98% of the entire population.
+
+The islands are divided into groups as follows.
+
+There are 42 granitic islands known as the Granitic Seychelles. These are in descending order of size: Mahé, Praslin, Silhouette Island, La Digue, Curieuse, Félicité, Frégate, Ste-Anne, North, Cerf, Marianne, Grand Sœur, Thérèse, Aride Island, Conception, Petite Sœur, Cousin Island, Cousine, Long, Récif, Round (Praslin), Anonyme, Mamelles, Moyenne, Île aux Vaches Marines, L'Islette, Beacon (Île Sèche), Cachée, Cocos, Round (Mahé), L'Ilot Frégate, Booby, Chauve-Souris (Mahé), Chauve-Souris (Praslin), Île La Fouche, Hodoul, L'Ilot, Rat, Souris, St. Pierre (Praslin), Zavé, Harrison Rocks (Grand Rocher).
+
+There are two coral sand cays north of the granitics on the edge of the Seychelles Bank: Denis and Bird.
+
+There are two coral islands south of the Granitics: Coëtivy and Platte.
+
+There are 29 coral islands in the Amirantes group, west of the granitics: Desroches, Poivre Atoll (comprising three islands—Poivre, Florentin and South Island), Alphonse, D'Arros, St. Joseph Atoll (comprising 14 islands—St. Joseph, Île aux Fouquets, Resource, Petit Carcassaye, Grand Carcassaye, Benjamin, Bancs Ferrari, Chiens, Pélicans, Vars, Île Paul, Banc de Sable, Banc aux Cocos and Île aux Poules), Marie Louise, Desnœufs, African Banks (comprising two islands—African Banks and South Island), Rémire, St. François, Boudeuse, Étoile, Bijoutier.
+
+There are 13 coral islands in the Farquhar Group, south-southwest of the Amirantes: Farquhar Atoll (comprising 10 islands—Bancs de Sable, Déposés, Île aux Goëlettes, Lapins, Île du Milieu, North Manaha, South Manaha, Middle Manaha, North Island and South Island), Providence Atoll (comprising two islands—Providence and Bancs Providence) and St Pierre.
+
+There are 67 raised coral islands in the Aldabra Group, west of the Farquhar Group: Aldabra Atoll (comprising 46 islands—Grande Terre, Picard, Polymnie, Malabar, Île Michel, Île Esprit, Île aux Moustiques, Ilot Parc, Ilot Émile, Ilot Yangue, Ilot Magnan, Île Lanier, Champignon des Os, Euphrate, Grand Mentor, Grand Ilot, Gros Ilot Gionnet, Gros Ilot Sésame, Héron Rock, Hide Island, Île aux Aigrettes, Île aux Cèdres, Îles Chalands, Île Fangame, Île Héron, Île Michel, Île Squacco, Île Sylvestre, Île Verte, Ilot Déder, Ilot du Sud, Ilot du Milieu, Ilot du Nord, Ilot Dubois, Ilot Macoa, Ilot Marquoix, Ilots Niçois, Ilot Salade, Middle Row Island, Noddy Rock, North Row Island, Petit Mentor, Petit Mentor Endans, Petits Ilots, Pink Rock and Table Ronde), Assumption Island, Astove and Cosmoledo Atoll (comprising 19 islands—Menai, Île du Nord (West North), Île Nord-Est (East North), Île du Trou, Goélettes, Grand Polyte, Petit Polyte, Grand Île (Wizard), Pagode, Île du Sud-Ouest (South), Île aux Moustiques, Île Baleine, Île aux Chauve-Souris, Île aux Macaques, Île aux Rats, Île du Nord-Ouest, Île Observation, Île Sud-Est and Ilot la Croix).
+
+In addition to these 155 islands as per the Constitution of Seychelles there are 7 reclaimed islands: Ile Perseverance, Ile Aurore, Romainville, Eden Island, Eve, Ile du Port and Ile Soleil.
+
+South Island, African Banks has been eroded by the sea. At St Joseph Atoll, Banc de Sable and Pelican Island have also eroded, while Grand Carcassaye and Petit Carcassaye have merged to form one island. There are also several unnamed islands at Aldabra, St Joseph Atoll and Cosmoledo. Pti Astove, though named, failed to make it into the Constitution for unknown reasons.
+
+The climate is equable although quite humid, as the islands are small,[31] classified by Köppen-Geiger system as tropical rain forest (Af). The temperature varies little throughout the year. Temperatures on Mahé vary from 24 to 30 °C (75 to 86 °F), and rainfall ranges from 2,900 mm (114 in) annually at Victoria to 3,600 mm (142 in) on the mountain slopes. Precipitation is somewhat less on the other islands.[32]
+
+During the coolest months, July and August, the average low is about 24 °C (75 °F). The southeast trade winds blow regularly from May to November, and this is the most pleasant time of the year. The hot months are from December to April, with higher humidity (80%). March and April are the hottest months, but the temperature seldom exceeds 31 °C (88 °F). Most of the islands lie outside the cyclone belt, so high winds are rare.[32]
+
+Seychelles is among the world's leading countries to protect lands for threatened species, allocating 42% of its territory for conservation.[35] Like many fragile island ecosystems, Seychelles saw the loss of biodiversity when humans first settled in the area, including the disappearance of most of the giant tortoises from the granitic islands, the felling of coastal and mid-level forests, and the extinction of species such as the chestnut flanked white eye, the Seychelles parakeet, and the saltwater crocodile. However, extinctions were far fewer than on islands such as Mauritius or Hawaii, partly due to a shorter period of human occupation (since 1770). Seychelles today is known for success stories in protecting its flora and fauna. The rare Seychelles black parrot, the national bird of the country, is now protected.
+
+The granitic islands of Seychelles are home to about 75 endemic plant species, with a further 25 or so species in the Aldabra group. Particularly well known is the coco de mer, a species of palm that grows only on the islands of Praslin and neighbouring Curieuse. Sometimes nicknamed the "love nut" because the shape of its "double" coconut resembles buttocks, the coco-de-mer produces the world's heaviest seed. The jellyfish tree is to be found in only a few locations on Mahe. This strange and ancient plant in a genus of its own (Medusagyne) seems to reproduce only in cultivation and not in the wild. Other unique plant species include Wright's gardenia (Rothmannia annae) found only on Aride Island Special Reserve.
+
+The freshwater crab genus Seychellum is endemic to the granitic Seychelles, and a further 26 species of crabs and five species of hermit crabs live on the islands.[36]
+
+The Aldabra giant tortoise now populates many of the islands of Seychelles; the Aldabra population is the largest remaining. These unique reptiles can be found even in captive herds. The granitic islands of Seychelles may support distinct species of Seychelles giant tortoises; the status of the different populations is currently unclear.
+
+There are several unique species of orchid on the islands.
+
+Seychelles hosts some of the largest seabird colonies in the world, notably on the outer islands of Aldabra and Cosmoledo. In granitic Seychelles the largest colonies are on Aride Island including the world's largest numbers of two species. Sooty terns also breed on the islands. Other birds include Cattle egrets (Bubulcus ibis) and Fairy terns (Gygis alba).[37]
+
+The marine life around the islands, especially the more remote coral islands, can be spectacular. More than 1,000 species of fish have been recorded.
+
+Since the use of spearguns and dynamite for fishing was banned through efforts of local conservationists in the 1960s, the wildlife is unafraid of snorkelers and divers. Coral bleaching in 1998 has damaged most reefs, but some reefs show healthy recovery (e.g., Silhouette Island).
+
+Despite huge disparities across nations,[citation needed] Seychelles claims to have achieved nearly all of its Millennium Development Goals.[38] 17 MDGS and 169 targets have been achieved.[citation needed]  Environmental protection is becoming a cultural value.[citation needed]
+
+Their government's Seychelles Climate Guide describes the nation's climate as rainy, with a dry season with an ocean economy in the ocean regions.  The Southeast Trades is on the decline but still fairly strong.[39] Reportedly, weather patterns there are becoming less predictable.[40]
+
+When the British gained control of the islands during the Napoleonic Wars, they allowed the French upper class to retain their land. Both the French and British settlers used enslaved Africans, and although the British prohibited slavery in 1835, African workers continued to come. Thus the Gran blan ("big whites") of French origin dominated economic and political life. The British administration employed Indians on indentured servitude to the same degree as in Mauritius resulting in a small Indian population. The Indians, like a similar minority of Chinese, were confined to a merchant class.[41]
+
+Through harmonious socioeconomic policies and developments[citation needed] over the years, today Seychelles is described as a fusion of peoples and cultures. Numerous Seychellois are considered multiracial: blending from African, Asian and European descent to create a modern creole culture. Evidence of this harmonious blend is also revealed in Seychellois food, incorporating various aspects of French, Chinese, Indian and African cuisine.
+
+As the islands of the Seychelles had no indigenous population, the current Seychellois descend from people who immigrated, of which the largest ethnic groups were those of African, French, Indian and Chinese origin. The median age of the Seychellois is 32 years.[42]
+
+French and English are official languages along with Seychellois Creole, which is primarily based upon French. However, nowadays the language is often laced with English words and phrases. Including second-language speakers, Seychellois Creole is the most-spoken official language in the Seychelles, followed by French and English.[43] 91% of the population speaks Seychelles Creole, 5.1% speaks English and  0.7 % French.[43] Most business and official meetings are conducted in English and nearly all official websites are in English. National Assembly business is conducted in Creole, but laws are passed and published in English.
+
+According to the 2010 census, most Seychellois are Christians: 76.2% were Roman Catholic, pastorally served by the exempt Diocese of Port Victoria or Seychelles (immediately dependent on the Holy See); 10.6% were Protestant, (Anglican 6.1%, Pentecostal Assembly 1.5%, Seventh-Day Adventist 1.2%, other Protestant 1.6%).[44]
+
+Hinduism is the second largest religion, with more than 2.4% of the population.[42] The Hindu following in Seychelles has seen an increase in the community with the organization of the Seychelles Hindu Kovil Sangam and the consecration of the Navasakti Vinayagar Temple.A reported 6% of the population of Seychelles are ethnic Indians, but only 2.4% are Hindus.[citation needed]
+
+Islam is followed by another 1.6% of the population.  Other faiths accounted for 1.1% of the population, while a further 5.9% were non-religious or did not specify a religion.[42]
+
+During the plantation era, cinnamon, vanilla and copra were the chief exports. In 1965, during a three-month visit to the islands, futurist Donald Prell prepared for the then-crown colony Governor General an economic report containing a scenario for the future of the economy.  Quoting from his report, in the 1960s, about 33% of the working population worked at plantations, and 20% worked in the public or government sector.[45][46]
+The Indian Ocean Tracking Station on Mahé used by the Air Force Satellite Control Network was closed in August 1996 after the Seychelles government attempted to raise the rent to more than $10,000,000 per year.
+
+Since independence in 1976,... per capita output has expanded to roughly seven times the old near-subsistence level. Growth has been led by the tourist sector, which employs about 30% of the labour force, compared to agriculture which today employs about 3% of the labour force. Despite the growth of tourism, farming and fishing continue to employ some people, as do industries that process coconuts and vanilla.
+
+As of 2013[update], the main export products are processed fish (60%) and non-fillet frozen fish (22%).[47]
+
+The prime agricultural products currently produced in Seychelles include sweet potatoes, vanilla, coconuts and cinnamon. These products provide much of the economic support of the locals. Frozen and canned fish, copra, cinnamon and vanilla are the main export commodities.
+
+Since the worldwide economic crises of 2008, the Seychelles government has prioritised a curbing of the budget deficit, including the containment of social welfare costs and further privatisation of public enterprises. The government has a pervasive presence in economic activity, with public enterprises active in petroleum product distribution, banking, imports of basic products, telecommunications and a wide range of other businesses. According to the 2013 Index of Economic Freedom, which measures the degree of limited government, market openness, regulatory efficiency, rule of law, and other factors, economic freedom has been increasing each year since 2010.[48]
+
+The national currency of Seychelles is the Seychellois rupee. Initially tied to a basket of international currencies, it was depegged and allowed to be devalued and float freely in 2008 on the presumed hopes of attracting further foreign investment in the Seychelles economy.
+
+In 1971, with the opening of Seychelles International Airport, tourism became a significant industry, essentially dividing the economy into plantations and tourism. The tourism sector paid better, and the plantation economy could only expand so far. The plantation sector of the economy declined in prominence, and tourism became the primary industry of Seychelles.
+
+In recent years the government has encouraged foreign investment to upgrade hotels and other services. These incentives have given rise to an enormous amount of investment in real estate projects and new resort properties, such as project TIME, distributed by the World Bank, along with its predecessor project MAGIC.[citation needed] Despite its growth, the vulnerability of the tourist sector was illustrated by the sharp drop in 1991–1992 due largely to the Gulf War.[49]
+
+Since then the government has moved to reduce the dependence on tourism by promoting the development of farming, fishing, small-scale manufacturing and most recently the offshore financial sector, through the establishment of the Financial Services Authority and the enactment of several pieces of legislation (such as the International Corporate Service Providers Act, the International Business Companies Act, the Securities Act, the Mutual Funds and Hedge Fund Act, amongst others). In March 2015, Seychelles allocated Assumption Island to be developed by India.[50]
+
+Although multinational oil companies have explored the waters around the islands, no oil or gas has been found. In 2005, a deal was signed with US firm Petroquest, giving it exploration rights to about 30,000 km2 around Constant, Topaz, Farquhar and Coëtivy islands until 2014. Seychelles imports oil from the Persian Gulf in the form of refined petroleum derivatives at the rate of about 5,700 barrels per day (910 m3/d).
+
+In recent years oil has been imported from Kuwait and also from Bahrain. Seychelles imports three times more oil than is needed for internal uses because it re-exports the surplus oil in the form of bunker for ships and aircraft calling at Mahé. There are no refining capacities on the islands. Oil and gas imports, distribution and re-export are the responsibility of Seychelles Petroleum (Sepec), while oil exploration is the responsibility of the Seychelles National Oil Company (SNOC).
+
+For such a small country, Seychelles has a vibrant art scene that encompasses painters, sculptors, writers and poets, artisans of many types, musicians and dancers.
+
+The Seychelles has a diverse and upcoming group of artists who draw inspiration from the Islands around them.
+
+A National Art Gallery was inaugurated in 1994 on the occasion of the official opening of the National Cultural Centre which housed the National Library and the National Archives with other offices of the Ministry of Culture.
+
+The Minister of Culture then said that an exhibition which featured the works of artists, painters and sculptors was a testimony to the development of art in Seychelles as a creative form of expression and gave a view of the state of contemporary art in Seychelles.
+
+Contemporary Seychelles’ artists trained in universities the world over since the independence of the country in 1976, particularly, have been free to express themselves in a variety of styles.
+
+Painters have traditionally taken inspiration from the richness of Seychelles’ natural beauty to produce a wide range of works using mediums ranging from water-colours to oils, acrylics, collages, metals, aluminium, wood, fabrics, gouache, varnishes, recycled materials, pastels, charcoal, embossing, etching, and giclee prints. Local sculptors produce fine works in wood, stone, bronze and cartonnage.
+
+Art in Seychelles, Then and Now’ Is a recently published hardback that provides a unique overview of both contemporary art in Seychelles as well as exploring aspects of the history and development of visual art.
+
+Fifty artists collaborated in the project through interview and the provision of work which collectively articulates an energised and increasingly diverse range of outcomes.
+
+Generously illustrated in colour, the book annotates the work of practicing artists through their own words and provides a narrative timeline dating back to the first habitation of the islands in the 18th century.
+
+Music and dance have always played a prominent role in Seychelles culture and in all types of local festivities. Rooted in African, Malagasy and European cultures, music is played to the accompaniment of drums such as the Tambour and Tam-Tam and simple string instruments. The violin and guitar are relatively recent foreign imports which play a prominent role in today's music.
+
+The lively Sega dance with its elegant hip-swaying and shuffling of the feet is still popular as is the traditional Moutya, a mysterious, dance dating back to the days of slavery when it was often used as an outlet for strong emotions and as a way of expressing discontent.
+
+The music of Seychelles is diverse, a reflection of the fusion of cultures through its history. The folk music of the islands incorporates multiple influences in a syncretic fashion, including African rhythms, aesthetic and instrumentation—such as the zez and the bom (known in Brazil as berimbau), European contredanse, polka and mazurka, French folk and pop, sega from Mauritius and Réunion, taarab, soukous and other pan-African genres, and Polynesian, Indian and Arcadian music.
+
+A form of percussion music called contombley is popular, as is Moutya, a fusion of native folk rhythms with Kenyan benga. Kontredans (based on European contredanse) is popular, especially in District and School competitions during the annual Festival Kreol (International Creole Festival). Moutya playing and dancing can often be seen at beach bazaars. Their main languages are Seychellois Creole of the French language, French and English.
+
+Staple foods include fish, seafood and shellfish dishes, often accompanied with rice.[51][52] Fish dishes are cooked in several ways, such as steamed, grilled, wrapped in banana leaves, baked, salted and smoked.[51] Curry dishes with rice are also a significant aspect of the country's cuisine.[52][53]
+
+Additional food staples include coconut, breadfruit, mangoes and kordonnyen fish.[54] Dishes are often garnished with fresh flowers.[54]
+
+The main daily newspaper is the Seychelles Nation, dedicated to local government views and current affairs and topics. Other political parties operate other papers such as Regar. Foreign newspapers and magazines are readily available in most bookshops and newsagents. The papers are mostly written in Seychellois Creole, French and English.
+
+The main television and radio network is operated by the Seychelles Broadcasting Corporation which offers locally produced news and discussion programmes in the Seychellois Creole language. Broadcasts run between 3 pm and 11:30 pm on weekdays and longer hours during the weekends. There are also imported English and French language television programmes imported on Seychellois terrestrial television and international satellite television has grown rapidly in recent years.
+
+The most popular sport in Seychelles is basketball, which has particularly developed last decade.[57] The country's national team qualified for the 2015 African Games, its greatest accomplishment to date. There, the team competed against some of the continent's largest countries such as Egypt.
+
+Seychellois society is essentially matriarchal.[58][59] Mothers tend to be dominant in the household, controlling most expenditures and looking after the interests of the children.[58] Unwed mothers are the societal norm, and the law requires fathers to support their children.[59] Men are important for their earning ability, but their domestic role is relatively peripheral.[58]
+
+Until the mid-19th century, little formal education was available in Seychelles. The Catholic and Anglican churches opened mission schools in 1851. The Catholic mission later operated boys' and girls' secondary schools with religious brothers and nuns from abroad even after the government became responsible for them in 1944.
+
+A teacher training college opened in 1959, when the supply of locally trained teachers began to grow, and in short time many new schools were established. Since 1981 a system of free education has been in effect, requiring attendance by all children in grades one to nine, beginning at age five. Ninety percent of all children attend nursery school at age four.
+
+The literacy rate for school-age children rose to more than 90% by the late 1980s. Many older Seychellois had not been taught to read or write in their childhood; adult education classes helped raise adult literacy from 60% to a claimed 100% in 2014.
+
+There are a total of 68 schools in Seychelles. The public school system consists of 23 crèches, 25 primary schools and 13 secondary schools. They are located on Mahé, Praslin, La Digue and Silhouette. Additionally, there are three private schools: École Française, International School and the independent school. All the private schools are on Mahé, and the International School has a branch on Praslin. There are seven post-secondary (non-tertiary) schools: the Seychelles Polytechnic, School of Advanced Level Studies, Seychelles Tourism Academy, University of Seychelles Education, Seychelles Institute of Technology, Maritime Training Center, Seychelles Agricultural and Horticultural Training Center and the National Institute for Health and Social Studies.
+
+The administration launched plans to open a university in an attempt to slow down the brain drain that has occurred. University of Seychelles, initiated in conjunction with the University of London, opened on 17 September 2009 in three locations, and offers qualifications from the University of London.
+
+The Military of Seychelles is the Seychelles People's Defence Force which consists of a number of distinct branches: an Infantry Unit and Coast Guard, Air Force and a Presidential Protection Unit. India has played and continues to play a key role developing the military of Seychelles. After handing over two SDB Mk5 patrol vessels built by GRSE, the INS Tarasa and INS Tarmugli, to the Seychelles Coast Guard, which were subsequently renamed SCG Constant and SCG Topaz, India also gifted a Dornier Maritime Patrol aircraft built by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited.[60] India also signed a pact to develop Assumption Island, one of the 115 islands that make up the country. Spread over 11 km2 (4 sq mi), it is strategically located in the Indian Ocean, north of Madagascar. The island is being leased for the development of strategic assets by India.[61] In 2018, Seychelles signed the UN treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.[62][63]
+
+In 2014, Seychelles had the highest incarceration rate in the world of 799 prisoners per 100,000 population, exceeding the United States' rate by 15%.[64] However, the country's actual population is less than 100,000; as of September 2014, Seychelles had 735 actual prisoners, 6% of whom were female, incarcerated in three prisons.[65]
+
+Seychelles is a key participant in the fight against Indian Ocean piracy primarily committed by Somali pirates.[66] Former president James Michel said that piracy costs between $7 million – $12 million a year to the international community: "The pirates cost 4% of the Seychelles GDP, including direct and indirect costs for the loss of boats, fishing, and tourism, and the indirect investment for the maritime security." These are factors affecting local fishing – one of the country's main national resources – which had a 46% loss in 2008–2009.[66] International contributions of patrol boats, planes or drones have been provided to help Seychelles combat sea piracy.[66]
+
+Government
+
+Religion
+
+General

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+The Taj Mahal (/ˌtɑːdʒ məˈhɑːl, ˌtɑːʒ-/;[4] lit. 'Crown of the Palace', [taːdʒ ˈmɛːɦ(ə)l])[5] is an ivory-white marble mausoleum on the southern bank of the river Yamuna  in the Indian city of Agra. It was commissioned in 1632 by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan (reigned from 1628 to 1658) to house the tomb of his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal; it also houses the tomb of Shah Jahan himself. The tomb is the centrepiece of a 17-hectare (42-acre) complex, which includes a mosque and a guest house, and is set in formal gardens bounded on three sides by a crenellated wall.
+
+Construction of the mausoleum was essentially completed in 1643, but work continued on other phases of the project for another 10 years. The Taj Mahal complex is believed to have been completed in its entirety in 1653 at a cost estimated at the time to be around 32 million rupees, which in 2020 would be approximately 70 billion rupees (about U.S. $916 million). The construction project employed some 20,000 artisans under the guidance of a board of architects led by the court architect to the emperor, Ustad Ahmad Lahauri.
+
+The Taj Mahal was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983 for being "the jewel of Muslim art in India and one of the universally admired masterpieces of the world's heritage". It is regarded by many as the best example of Mughal architecture and a symbol of India's rich history. The Taj Mahal attracts 7–8 million visitors a year and in 2007, it was declared a winner of the New 7 Wonders of the World (2000–2007) initiative.
+
+The Taj Mahal was commissioned by Shah Jahan in 1631, to be built in the memory of his wife Mumtaz Mahal, who died on 17 June that year, while giving birth to their 14th child, Gauhara Begum.[6][7] Construction started in 1632,[8] and the mausoleum was completed in 1648, while the surrounding buildings and garden were finished five years later.[9] The imperial court documenting Shah Jahan's grief after the death of Mumtaz Mahal illustrates the love story held as the inspiration for the Taj Mahal.[10]
+
+"Shah Jahan on a globe" from the Smithsonian Institution
+
+Artistic depiction of Mumtaz Mahal
+
+The Taj Mahal incorporates and expands on design traditions of Persian and earlier Mughal architecture. Specific inspiration came from successful Timurid and Mughal buildings including the Gur-e Amir (the tomb of Timur, progenitor of the Mughal dynasty, in Samarkand),[11] Humayun's Tomb which inspired the Charbagh gardens and hasht-behesht (architecture) plan of the site, Itmad-Ud-Daulah's Tomb (sometimes called the Baby Taj), and Shah Jahan's own Jama Masjid in Delhi. While earlier Mughal buildings were primarily constructed of red sandstone, Shah Jahan promoted the use of white marble inlaid with semi-precious stones. Buildings under his patronage reached new levels of refinement.[12]
+
+The tomb is the central focus of the entire complex of the Taj Mahal. It is a large, white marble structure standing on a square plinth and consists of a symmetrical building with an iwan (an arch-shaped doorway) topped by a large dome and finial. Like most Mughal tombs, the basic elements are Persian in origin.[13]
+
+The base structure is a large multi-chambered cube with chamfered corners forming an unequal eight-sided structure that is approximately 55 metres (180 ft) on each of the four long sides. Each side of the iwan is framed with a huge pishtaq or vaulted archway with two similarly shaped arched balconies stacked on either side. This motif of stacked pishtaqs is replicated on the chamfered corner areas, making the design completely symmetrical on all sides of the building. Four minarets frame the tomb, one at each corner of the plinth facing the chamfered corners. The main chamber houses the false sarcophagi of Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan; the actual graves are at a lower level.[14]
+
+The Taj Mahal main building
+
+The main gateway (darwaza) to the Taj Mahal
+
+Taj Mahal minaret.
+
+Taj Mahal at sunrise from Main Entrance.
+
+Four minarets frame the tomb.
+
+Interior view of the vaulted dome over the tombs of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz.
+
+The false sarcophagi of Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan in the main chamber.
+
+The actual tombs of Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan in the lower level.
+
+Main marble dome, smaller domes, and decorative spires that extend from the edges of the base walls.
+
+Arabic calligraphy at the tomb entrance.
+
+The most spectacular feature is the marble dome that surmounts the tomb. The dome is nearly 35 metres (115 ft) high which is close in measurement to the length of the base, and accentuated by the cylindrical "drum" it sits on, which is approximately 7 metres (23 ft) high. Because of its shape, the dome is often called an onion dome or amrud (guava dome).[15] The top is decorated with a lotus design which also serves to accentuate its height. The shape of the dome is emphasised by four smaller domed chattris (kiosks) placed at its corners, which replicate the onion shape of the main dome. The dome is slightly asymmetrical.[16] Their columned bases open through the roof of the tomb and provide light to the interior. Tall decorative spires (guldastas) extend from edges of base walls, and provide visual emphasis to the height of the dome. The lotus motif is repeated on both the chattris and guldastas. The dome and chattris are topped by a gilded finial which mixes traditional Persian and Hindustani decorative elements.[17]
+
+The main finial was originally made of gold but was replaced by a copy made of gilded bronze in the early 19th century. This feature provides a clear example of integration of traditional Persian and Hindu decorative elements.[18] The finial is topped by a moon, a typical Islamic motif whose horns point heavenward.[19]
+
+The minarets, which are each more than 40 metres (130 ft) tall, display the designer's penchant for symmetry. They were designed as working minarets— a traditional element of mosques, used by the muezzin to call the Islamic faithful to prayer. Each minaret is effectively divided into three equal parts by two working balconies that ring the tower. At the top of the tower is a final balcony surmounted by a chattri that mirrors the design of those on the tomb. The chattris all share the same decorative elements of a lotus design topped by a gilded finial. The minarets were constructed slightly outside of the plinth so that in the event of collapse, a typical occurrence with many tall constructions of the period, the material from the towers would tend to fall away from the tomb.[citation needed]
+
+The exterior decorations of the Taj Mahal are among the finest in Mughal architecture. As the surface area changes, the decorations are refined proportionally. The decorative elements were created by applying paint, stucco, stone inlays or carvings. In line with the Islamic prohibition against the use of anthropomorphic forms, the decorative elements can be grouped into either calligraphy, abstract forms or vegetative motifs.
+Throughout the complex are passages from the Qur'an that comprise some of the decorative elements. Recent scholarship suggests that Amanat Khan chose the passages.[20][21]
+
+The calligraphy on the Great Gate reads "O Soul, thou art at rest. Return to the Lord at peace with Him, and He at peace with you."[21] The calligraphy was created in 1609 by a calligrapher named Abdul Haq. Shah Jahan conferred the title of "Amanat Khan" upon him as a reward for his "dazzling virtuosity."[22] Near the lines from the Qur'an at the base of the interior dome is the inscription, "Written by the insignificant being, Amanat Khan Shirazi."[23] Much of the calligraphy is composed of florid thuluth script made of jasper or black marble[22] inlaid in white marble panels. Higher panels are written in slightly larger script to reduce the skewing effect when viewed from below. The calligraphy found on the marble cenotaphs in the tomb is particularly detailed and delicate.[citation needed]
+
+Abstract forms are used throughout, especially in the plinth, minarets, gateway, mosque, jawab and, to a lesser extent, on the surfaces of the tomb. The domes and vaults of the sandstone buildings are worked with tracery of incised painting to create elaborate geometric forms. Herringbone inlays define the space between many of the adjoining elements. White inlays are used in sandstone buildings, and dark or black inlays on the white marbles. Mortared areas of the marble buildings have been stained or painted in a contrasting colour which creates a complex array of geometric patterns. Floors and walkways use contrasting tiles or blocks in tessellation patterns.[citation needed]
+
+On the lower walls of the tomb are white marble dados sculpted with realistic bas relief depictions of flowers and vines. The marble has been polished to emphasise the exquisite detailing of the carvings. The dado frames and archway spandrels have been decorated with pietra dura inlays of highly stylised, almost geometric vines, flowers and fruits. The inlay stones are of yellow marble, jasper and jade, polished and levelled to the surface of the walls.[22]
+
+Taj Mahal Exterior with a minaret
+
+Detail of plant motifs on Taj Mahal wall
+
+Base, dome and minaret.
+
+Finial, tamga of the Mughal Empire.
+
+Calligraphy of Persian poems.
+
+Plant motifs.
+
+Reflective tiles.
+
+Marble jali lattice.
+
+Calligraphy of Arabic Ayaat.
+
+The interior chamber of the Taj Mahal reaches far beyond traditional decorative elements. The inlay work is not pietra dura, but a lapidary of precious and semiprecious gemstones.[24] The inner chamber is an octagon with the design allowing for entry from each face, although only the door facing the garden to the south is used. The interior walls are about 25 metres (82 ft) high and are topped by a "false" interior dome decorated with a sun motif. Eight pishtaq arches define the space at ground level and, as with the exterior, each lower pishtaq is crowned by a second pishtaq about midway up the wall.[25] The four central upper arches form balconies or viewing areas, and each balcony's exterior window has an intricate screen or jali cut from marble. In addition to the light from the balcony screens, light enters through roof openings covered by chattris at the corners. The octagonal marble screen or jali bordering the cenotaphs is made from eight marble panels carved through with intricate pierce work. The remaining surfaces are inlaid in delicate detail with semi-precious stones forming twining vines, fruits and flowers. Each chamber wall is highly decorated with dado bas-relief, intricate lapidary inlay and refined calligraphy panels which reflect, in little detail, the design elements seen throughout the exterior of the complex.[26]
+
+Flowers carved in marble.
+
+Detail of pietra dura jali inlay.
+
+Delicacy of intricate pierce work.
+
+Archways in the mosque.
+
+Incised painting.
+
+Finial floor tiling.
+
+Detail of jali.
+
+Muslim tradition forbids elaborate decoration of graves. Hence, the bodies of Mumtaz and Shah Jahan were put in a relatively plain crypt beneath the inner chamber with their faces turned right, towards Mecca. Mumtaz Mahal's cenotaph is placed at the precise centre of the inner chamber on a rectangular marble base of 1.5 by 2.5 metres (4 ft 11 in by 8 ft 2 in). Both the base and casket are elaborately inlaid with precious and semiprecious gems. Calligraphic inscriptions on the casket identify and praise Mumtaz. On the lid of the casket is a raised rectangular lozenge meant to suggest a writing tablet. Shah Jahan's cenotaph is beside Mumtaz's to the western side and is the only visible asymmetric element in the entire complex. His cenotaph is bigger than his wife's, but reflects the same elements: a larger casket on a slightly taller base precisely decorated with lapidary and calligraphy that identifies him. On the lid of the casket is a traditional sculpture of a small pen box.[25]
+
+The pen box and writing tablet are traditional Mughal funerary icons decorating the caskets of men and women respectively. The Ninety Nine Names of God are calligraphic inscriptions on the sides of the actual tomb of Mumtaz Mahal. Other inscriptions inside the crypt include, "O Noble, O Magnificent, O Majestic, O Unique, O Eternal, O Glorious... ". The tomb of Shah Jahan bears a calligraphic inscription that reads; "He travelled from this world to the banquet-hall of Eternity on the night of the twenty-sixth of the month of Rajab, in the year 1076 Hijri."[27]
+
+The complex is set around a large 300-metre (980 ft) square charbagh or Mughal garden.
+The garden uses raised pathways that divide each of the four-quarters of the garden into 16 sunken parterres or flowerbeds. Halfway between the tomb and gateway in the centre of the garden is a raised marble water tank with a reflecting pool positioned on a north-south axis to reflect the image of the mausoleum. The elevated marble water tank is called al Hawd al-Kawthar in reference to the "Tank of Abundance" promised to Muhammad.[28]
+
+Elsewhere, the garden is laid out with avenues of trees labeled according to common and scientific names[29] and fountains. The charbagh garden, a design inspired by Persian gardens, was introduced to India by Babur, the first Mughal emperor. It symbolises the four flowing rivers of Jannah (Paradise) and reflects the Paradise garden derived from the Persian paridaeza, meaning 'walled garden.' In mystic Islamic texts of the Mughal period, Paradise is described as an ideal garden of abundance with four rivers flowing from a central spring or mountain, separating the garden into north, west, south and east.[citation needed]
+
+Most Mughal charbaghs are rectangular with a tomb or pavilion in the centre. The Taj Mahal garden is unusual in that the main element, the tomb, is located at the end of the garden. With the discovery of Mahtab Bagh or "Moonlight Garden" on the other side of the Yamuna, the interpretation of the Archaeological Survey of India is that the Yamuna river itself was incorporated into the garden's design and was meant to be seen as one of the rivers of Paradise.[30] Similarities in layout and architectural features with the Shalimar Gardens suggests both gardens may have been designed by the same architect, Ali Mardan.[31] Early accounts of the garden describe its profusion of vegetation, including abundant roses, daffodils, and fruit trees.[32] As the Mughal Empire declined, the Taj Mahal and its gardens also declined. By the end of the 19th century, the British Empire controlled more than three-fifths of India,[33] and assumed management of the Taj Mahal. They changed the landscaping to their liking which more closely resembled the formal lawns of London.[34]
+
+The Taj Mahal complex is bordered on three sides by crenellated red sandstone walls; the side facing the river is open. Outside the walls are several additional mausoleums, including those of Shah Jahan's other wives, and a larger tomb for Mumtaz's favourite servant.[35]
+
+The main gateway (darwaza) is a monumental structure built primarily of marble, and reminiscent of the Mughal architecture of earlier emperors. Its archways mirror the shape of the tomb's archways, and its pishtaq arches incorporate the calligraphy that decorates the tomb. The vaulted ceilings and walls have elaborate geometric designs like those found in the other sandstone buildings in the complex.[citation needed]
+
+At the far end of the complex are two grand red sandstone buildings that mirror each other, and face the sides of the tomb. The backs of the buildings parallel the western and eastern walls. The western building is a mosque and the other is the jawab (answer), thought to have been constructed for architectural balance although it may have been used as a guesthouse. Distinctions between the two buildings include the jawab's lack of a mihrab (a niche in a mosque's wall facing Mecca), and its floors of geometric design whereas the floor of the mosque is laid with outlines of 569 prayer rugs in black marble. The mosque's basic design of a long hall surmounted by three domes is similar to others built by Shah Jahan, particularly the Masjid-i Jahān-Numā, or Jama Masjid, Delhi. The Mughal mosques of this period divide the sanctuary hall into three areas comprising a main sanctuary and slightly smaller sanctuaries on either side. At the Taj Mahal, each sanctuary opens onto an expansive vaulting dome. The outlying buildings were completed in 1643.[9]
+
+The Taj Mahal is built on a parcel of land to the south of the walled city of Agra. Shah Jahan presented Maharajah Jai Singh with a large palace in the centre of Agra in exchange for the land.[36] An area of roughly 1.2 hectares (3 acres) was excavated, filled with dirt to reduce seepage, and levelled at 50 metres (160 ft) above riverbank. In the tomb area, wells were dug and filled with stone and rubble to form the footings of the tomb. Instead of lashed bamboo, workmen constructed a colossal brick scaffold that mirrored the tomb. The scaffold was so enormous that foremen estimated it would take years to dismantle.[37]
+
+The Taj Mahal was constructed using materials from all over India and Asia. It is believed over 1,000 elephants were used to transport building materials. It took the efforts of 22,000 labourers, painters, embroidery artists and stonecutters to shape the Taj Mahal.[38] The translucent white marble was brought from Makrana, Rajasthan, the jasper from Punjab, jade and crystal from China. The turquoise was from Tibet and the Lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, while the sapphire came from Sri Lanka and the carnelian from Arabia. In all, twenty-eight types of precious and semi-precious stones were inlaid into the white marble.[citation needed]
+
+According to the legend, Shah Jahan decreed that anyone could keep the bricks taken from the scaffold, and thus it was dismantled by peasants overnight.[39] A 15-kilometre (9.3 mi) tamped-earth ramp was built to transport marble and materials to the construction site and teams of twenty or thirty oxen pulled the blocks on specially constructed wagons.[40] An elaborate post-and-beam pulley system was used to raise the blocks into desired position. Water was drawn from the river by a series of purs, an animal-powered rope and bucket mechanism, into a large storage tank and raised to a large distribution tank. It was passed into three subsidiary tanks, from which it was piped to the complex.[citation needed]
+
+The plinth and tomb took roughly 12 years to complete. The remaining parts of the complex took an additional 10 years and were completed in order of minarets, mosque and jawab, and gateway. Since the complex was built in stages, discrepancies exist in completion dates due to differing opinions on "completion". Construction of the mausoleum itself was essentially completed by 1643[8] while work on the outlying buildings continued for years. Estimates of the cost of construction vary due to difficulties in estimating costs across time. The total cost at the time has been estimated to be about 32 million Indian rupees,[8] which is around 52.8 billion Indian rupees ($827 million US) based on 2015 values.[41]
+
+Abdul Hamid Lahauri in his book Badshahnama refers to Taj Mahal as rauza-i munawwara (Perso-Arabic: روضه منواره rawdah-i munawwarah), meaning the illumined or illustrious tomb.[42]
+Soon after the Taj Mahal's completion, Shah Jahan was deposed by his son Aurangzeb and put under house arrest at nearby Agra Fort. Upon Shah Jahan's death, Aurangzeb buried him in the mausoleum next to his wife.[43] In the 18th century, the Jat rulers of Bharatpur invaded Agra and attacked the Taj Mahal, the two chandeliers, one of agate and another of silver, which were hung over the main cenotaph, were taken away by them, along with the gold and silver screen. Kanbo, a Mughal historian, said the gold shield which covered the 4.6-metre-high (15 ft) finial at the top of the main dome was also removed during the Jat despoliation.[44]
+
+By the late 19th century, parts of the buildings had fallen into disrepair. At the end of the 19th century, British viceroy Lord Curzon ordered a sweeping restoration project, which was completed in 1908.[citation needed] He also commissioned the large lamp in the interior chamber, modelled after one in a Cairo mosque. During this time the garden was remodelled with European-style lawns that are still in place today.[citation needed]
+
+In 1942, the government erected scaffolding to disguise the building in anticipation of air attacks by the Japanese Air Force.[45][46] During the India-Pakistan wars of 1965 and 1971, scaffolding was again erected to mislead bomber pilots.[47]
+
+More recent threats have come from environmental pollution on the banks of the Yamuna River including acid rain[48] due to the Mathura Oil Refinery,[citation needed] which was opposed by Supreme Court of India directives.[49] The pollution has been turning the Taj Mahal yellow-brown.[50] To help control the pollution, the Indian government has set up the "Taj Trapezium Zone (TTZ)", a 10,400-square-kilometre (4,000 sq mi) area around the monument where strict emissions standards are in place.[51]
+
+Concerns for the tomb's structural integrity have recently been raised because of a decline in the groundwater level in the Yamuna river basin which is falling at a rate of around 1.5 m (5 ft) per year. In 2010, cracks appeared in parts of the tomb, and the minarets which surround the monument were showing signs of tilting, as the wooden foundation of the tomb may be rotting due to lack of water. It has been pointed out by politicians, however, that the minarets are designed to tilt slightly outwards to prevent them from crashing on top of the tomb in the event of an earthquake. In 2011, it was reported that some predictions indicated that the tomb could collapse within five years.[52][52]
+
+Small minarets located at two of the outlying buildings were reported as damaged by a storm on April 11, 2018.[53] On 31 May 2020 another fierce thunderstorm caused some damage to the complex.[54]
+
+The Taj Mahal attracts a large number of tourists. UNESCO documented more than 2 million visitors in 2001,[55] which had increased to about 7–8 million in 2014.[3] A two-tier pricing system is in place, with a significantly lower entrance fee for Indian citizens and a more expensive one for foreigners. In 2018, the fee for Indian citizens was 50 INR, for foreign tourists 1,100 INR.[56] Most tourists visit in the cooler months of October, November and February. Polluting traffic is not allowed near the complex and tourists must either walk from parking areas or catch an electric bus. The Khawasspuras (northern courtyards) are currently being restored for use as a new visitor centre.[57][58] In 2019, in order to address overtourism, the site instituted fines for visitors who stayed longer than three hours.[59]
+
+The small town to the south of the Taj, known as Taj Ganji or Mumtazabad, was initially constructed with caravanserais, bazaars and markets to serve the needs of visitors and workers.[60] Lists of recommended travel destinations often feature the Taj Mahal, which also appears in several listings of seven wonders of the modern world, including the recently announced New Seven Wonders of the World, a recent poll with 100 million votes.[61]
+
+The grounds are open from 06:00 to 19:00 weekdays, except for Friday when the complex is open for prayers at the mosque between 12:00 and 14:00. The complex is open for night viewing on the day of the full moon and two days before and after,[62] excluding Fridays and the month of Ramadan.
+
+Foreign dignitaries often visit the Taj Mahal on trips to India. Notable figures who have travelled to the site include Dwight Eisenhower, Jacqueline Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, George Harrison, Barack and Michelle Obama, Mark Zuckerberg, Vladimir Putin, Princess Diana and Donald Trump.[63][64]
+
+Ever since its construction, the building has been the source of an admiration transcending culture and geography, and so personal and emotional responses have consistently eclipsed scholastic appraisals of the monument.[65] A longstanding myth holds that Shah Jahan planned a mausoleum to be built in black marble as a Black Taj Mahal across the Yamuna river.[6] The idea originates from fanciful writings of Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, a European traveller who visited Agra in 1665. It was suggested that his son Aurangzeb overthrew Shah Jahan before it could be built. Ruins of blackened marble across the river in Moonlight Garden, Mahtab Bagh, seemed to support this legend. However, excavations carried out in the 1990s found that they were discoloured white stones that had turned black.[66] A more credible theory for the origins of the black mausoleum was demonstrated in 2006 by archaeologists who reconstructed part of the pool in the Moonlight Garden. A dark reflection of the white mausoleum could clearly be seen, befitting Shah Jahan's obsession with symmetry and the positioning of the pool itself. Warrior Empire: The Mughals of India. A+E Television Network. 2006.
+
+No evidence exists for claims that describe, often in horrific detail, the deaths, dismemberments and mutilations which Shah Jahan supposedly inflicted on various architects and craftsmen associated with the tomb. Some stories claim that those involved in construction signed contracts committing themselves to have no part in any similar design. Similar claims are made for many famous buildings.[67] No evidence exists for claims that Lord William Bentinck, governor-general of India in the 1830s, supposedly planned to demolish the Taj Mahal and auction off the marble. Bentinck's biographer John Rosselli says that the story arose from Bentinck's fund-raising sale of discarded marble from Agra Fort.[68]
+
+Another myth suggests that beating the silhouette of the finial will cause water to come forth. To this day, officials find broken bangles surrounding the silhouette.[69]
+
+In 2000, India's Supreme Court dismissed P. N. Oak's petition[70] to declare that a Hindu king built the Taj Mahal.[67][71] In 2005 a similar petition was dismissed by the Allahabad High Court. This case was brought by Amar Nath Mishra, a social worker and preacher who says that the Taj Mahal was built by the Hindu King Parmar Dev in 1196.[72]
+
+A theory that the Taj Mahal was designed by an Italian, Geronimo Vereneo, held sway for a brief period after it was first promoted by Henry George Keene in 1879 who went by a translation of a Spanish work Itinerario, (The Travels of Fray Sebastian Manrique, 1629–1643). Another theory that a Frenchman, Austin of Bordeaux designed the Taj was promoted by William Henry Sleeman based on the work of Jean-Baptiste Tavernier. These ideas were revived by Father Hosten and discussed again by E.B. Havell and served as the basis for subsequent theories and controversies.[73]
+
+As of 2017, several court cases about Taj Mahal being a Hindu temple have been inspired by P. N.  Oak's theory.[74][75] In August 2017, Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) stated there was no evidence to suggest the monument ever housed a temple.[76] Bharatiya Janata Party's Vinay Katiyar in 2017 claimed that the 17th century monument was built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan after destroying a Hindu temple called "Tejo Mahalaya" and it housed a Shiva linga. This claim had also been made by another BJP member Laxmikant Bajpai in 2014. The BJP government's union minister of culture Mahesh Sharma stated in November 2015 during a session of the parliament, that there was no evidence that it was a temple. The theories about Taj Mahal being a Shiva temple started circulating when Oak released his 1989 book "Taj Mahal: The True Story". He claimed it was built in 1155 AD and not in the 17th century, as stated by the ASI.[77] Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan stated Taj might be destroyed like Babri Masjid as people believed there was a temple there.[78] Katiyar called for the demolition of the Taj and its replacement by a temple in February 2018. In response Indian National Congress MP Shashi Tharoor called him a troglodyte.[79]
+
+A controversy was created in 2017 when the Uttar Pradesh government did not include it in its official tourism booklet "Uttar Pradesh Tourism - Unlimited Possibilities". The chief minister Yogi Adityanath had earlier claimed it does not represent Indian culture.[80] Amidst this controversy, BJP MLA Sangeet Som had claimed that the those who built the Taj Mahal were traitors and it was a "blot" on the country's culture. He claimed it was built by a man who jailed his own father and wished to kill Hindus. BJP MP Anshul Verma supported his comments. AIMIM MP Asaduddin Owaisi, Jammu & Kashmir National Conference leader Omar Abdullah[81] and Azam Khan criticised him. CM Adityanath stated Som's comments were personal and the government will focus on the tourism potential of every monument.[82]
+
+Eastern view in the morning
+
+Taj Mahal in cloudy weather and its minaret under restoration
+
+Western view at sunset
+
+Taj Mahal through the fog
+
+A panoramic view looking 360 degrees around the Taj Mahal in 2005
+

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+William Shakespeare (bapt. 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616)[a] was an English playwright, poet, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's greatest dramatist.[2][3][4] He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard").[5][b] His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays,[c] 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.[7] They also continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
+
+Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.[8][9][10]
+
+Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613.[11][12][d] His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best work produced in these genres. Until about 1608, he wrote mainly tragedies, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language.[2][3][4] In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
+
+Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy in his lifetime. However, in 1623, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, John Heminges and Henry Condell, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that included all but two of his plays.[13] The volume was prefaced with a poem by Ben Jonson, in which Jonson presciently hails Shakespeare in a now-famous quote as "not of an age, but for all time".[13]
+
+William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful glover (glove-maker) originally from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden, the daughter of an affluent landowning farmer.[14] He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he was baptised on 26 April 1564. His date of birth is unknown, but is traditionally observed on 23 April, Saint George's Day.[15] This date, which can be traced to a mistake made by an 18th-century scholar, has proved appealing to biographers because Shakespeare died on the same date in 1616.[16][17] He was the third of eight children, and the eldest surviving son.[18]
+
+Although no attendance records for the period survive, most biographers agree that Shakespeare was probably educated at the King's New School in Stratford,[19][20][21] a free school chartered in 1553,[22] about a quarter-mile (400 m) from his home. Grammar schools varied in quality during the Elizabethan era, but grammar school curricula were largely similar: the basic Latin text was standardised by royal decree,[23][24] and the school would have provided an intensive education in grammar based upon Latin classical authors.[25]
+
+At the age of 18, Shakespeare married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. The consistory court of the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage licence on 27 November 1582. The next day, two of Hathaway's neighbours posted bonds guaranteeing that no lawful claims impeded the marriage.[26] The ceremony may have been arranged in some haste since the Worcester chancellor allowed the marriage banns to be read once instead of the usual three times,[27][28] and six months after the marriage Anne gave birth to a daughter, Susanna, baptised 26 May 1583.[29] Twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later and were baptised 2 February 1585.[30] Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried 11 August 1596.[31]
+
+After the birth of the twins, Shakespeare left few historical traces until he is mentioned as part of the London theatre scene in 1592. The exception is the appearance of his name in the "complaints bill" of a law case before the Queen's Bench court at Westminster dated Michaelmas Term 1588 and 9 October 1589.[32] Scholars refer to the years between 1585 and 1592 as Shakespeare's "lost years".[33] Biographers attempting to account for this period have reported many apocryphal stories. Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare's first biographer, recounted a Stratford legend that Shakespeare fled the town for London to escape prosecution for deer poaching in the estate of local squire Thomas Lucy. Shakespeare is also supposed to have taken his revenge on Lucy by writing a scurrilous ballad about him.[34][35] Another 18th-century story has Shakespeare starting his theatrical career minding the horses of theatre patrons in London.[36] John Aubrey reported that Shakespeare had been a country schoolmaster.[37] Some 20th-century scholars suggested that Shakespeare may have been employed as a schoolmaster by Alexander Hoghton of Lancashire, a Catholic landowner who named a certain "William Shakeshafte" in his will.[38][39] Little evidence substantiates such stories other than hearsay collected after his death, and Shakeshafte was a common name in the Lancashire area.[40][41]
+
+It is not known definitively when Shakespeare began writing, but contemporary allusions and records of performances show that several of his plays were on the London stage by 1592.[42] By then, he was sufficiently known in London to be attacked in print by the playwright Robert Greene in his Groats-Worth of Wit:
+
+... there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a Player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.[43]
+
+Scholars differ on the exact meaning of Greene's words,[43][44] but most agree that Greene was accusing Shakespeare of reaching above his rank in trying to match such university-educated writers as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, and Greene himself (the so-called "University Wits").[45] The italicised phrase parodying the line "Oh, tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide" from Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 3, along with the pun "Shake-scene", clearly identify Shakespeare as Greene's target. As used here, Johannes Factotum ("Jack of all trades") refers to a second-rate tinkerer with the work of others, rather than the more common "universal genius".[43][46]
+
+Greene's attack is the earliest surviving mention of Shakespeare's work in the theatre. Biographers suggest that his career may have begun any time from the mid-1580s to just before Greene's remarks.[47][48][49] After 1594, Shakespeare's plays were performed only by the Lord Chamberlain's Men, a company owned by a group of players, including Shakespeare, that soon became the leading playing company in London.[50] After the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, the company was awarded a royal patent by the new King James I, and changed its name to the King's Men.[51]
+
+"All the world's a stage,
+and all the men and women merely players:
+they have their exits and their entrances;
+and one man in his time plays many parts ..."
+
+—As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7, 139–142[52]
+
+In 1599, a partnership of members of the company built their own theatre on the south bank of the River Thames, which they named the Globe. In 1608, the partnership also took over the Blackfriars indoor theatre. Extant records of Shakespeare's property purchases and investments indicate that his association with the company made him a wealthy man,[53] and in 1597, he bought the second-largest house in Stratford, New Place, and in 1605, invested in a share of the parish tithes in Stratford.[54]
+
+Some of Shakespeare's plays were published in quarto editions, beginning in 1594, and by 1598, his name had become a selling point and began to appear on the title pages.[55][56][57] Shakespeare continued to act in his own and other plays after his success as a playwright. The 1616 edition of Ben Jonson's Works names him on the cast lists for Every Man in His Humour (1598) and Sejanus His Fall (1603).[58] The absence of his name from the 1605 cast list for Jonson's Volpone is taken by some scholars as a sign that his acting career was nearing its end.[47] The First Folio of 1623, however, lists Shakespeare as one of "the Principal Actors in all these Plays", some of which were first staged after Volpone, although we cannot know for certain which roles he played.[59] In 1610, John Davies of Hereford wrote that "good Will" played "kingly" roles.[60] In 1709, Rowe passed down a tradition that Shakespeare played the ghost of Hamlet's father.[35] Later traditions maintain that he also played Adam in As You Like It, and the Chorus in Henry V,[61][62] though scholars doubt the sources of that information.[63]
+
+Throughout his career, Shakespeare divided his time between London and Stratford. In 1596, the year before he bought New Place as his family home in Stratford, Shakespeare was living in the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, north of the River Thames.[64][65] He moved across the river to Southwark by 1599, the same year his company constructed the Globe Theatre there.[64][66] By 1604, he had moved north of the river again, to an area north of St Paul's Cathedral with many fine houses. There, he rented rooms from a French Huguenot named Christopher Mountjoy, a maker of ladies' wigs and other headgear.[67][68]
+
+Rowe was the first biographer to record the tradition, repeated by Johnson, that Shakespeare retired to Stratford "some years before his death".[69][70] He was still working as an actor in London in 1608; in an answer to the sharers' petition in 1635, Cuthbert Burbage stated that after purchasing the lease of the Blackfriars Theatre in 1608 from Henry Evans, the King's Men "placed men players" there, "which were Heminges, Condell, Shakespeare, etc.".[71] However, it is perhaps relevant that the bubonic plague raged in London throughout 1609.[72][73] The London public playhouses were repeatedly closed during extended outbreaks of the plague (a total of over 60 months closure between May 1603 and February 1610),[74] which meant there was often no acting work. Retirement from all work was uncommon at that time.[75] Shakespeare continued to visit London during the years 1611–1614.[69] In 1612, he was called as a witness in Bellott v Mountjoy, a court case concerning the marriage settlement of Mountjoy's daughter, Mary.[76][77] In March 1613, he bought a gatehouse in the former Blackfriars priory;[78] and from November 1614, he was in London for several weeks with his son-in-law, John Hall.[79] After 1610, Shakespeare wrote fewer plays, and none are attributed to him after 1613.[80] His last three plays were collaborations, probably with John Fletcher,[81] who succeeded him as the house playwright of the King's Men.[82]
+
+Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, at the age of 52.[f] He died within a month of signing his will, a document which he begins by describing himself as being in "perfect health". No extant contemporary source explains how or why he died. Half a century later, John Ward, the vicar of Stratford, wrote in his notebook: "Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting and, it seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted",[83][84] not an impossible scenario since Shakespeare knew Jonson and Drayton. Of the tributes from fellow authors, one refers to his relatively sudden death: "We wondered, Shakespeare, that thou went'st so soon / From the world's stage to the grave's tiring room."[85][g]
+
+He was survived by his wife and two daughters. Susanna had married a physician, John Hall, in 1607,[86] and Judith had married Thomas Quiney, a vintner, two months before Shakespeare's death.[87] Shakespeare signed his last will and testament on 25 March 1616; the following day, his new son-in-law, Thomas Quiney was found guilty of fathering an illegitimate son by Margaret Wheeler, who had died during childbirth. Thomas was ordered by the church court to do public penance, which would have caused much shame and embarrassment for the Shakespeare family.[87]
+
+Shakespeare bequeathed the bulk of his large estate to his elder daughter Susanna[88] under stipulations that she pass it down intact to "the first son of her body".[89] The Quineys had three children, all of whom died without marrying.[90][91] The Halls had one child, Elizabeth, who married twice but died without children in 1670, ending Shakespeare's direct line.[92][93] Shakespeare's will scarcely mentions his wife, Anne, who was probably entitled to one-third of his estate automatically.[h] He did make a point, however, of leaving her "my second best bed", a bequest that has led to much speculation.[95][96][97] Some scholars see the bequest as an insult to Anne, whereas others believe that the second-best bed would have been the matrimonial bed and therefore rich in significance.[98]
+
+Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church two days after his death.[99][100] The epitaph carved into the stone slab covering his grave includes a curse against moving his bones, which was carefully avoided during restoration of the church in 2008:[101]
+
+Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare,
+To digg the dvst encloased heare.
+Bleste be yͤ man yͭ spares thes stones,
+And cvrst be he yͭ moves my bones.[102][i]
+
+(Modern spelling: Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear, / To dig the dust enclosed here. / Blessed be the man that spares these stones, / And cursed be he that moves my bones.)
+
+Some time before 1623, a funerary monument was erected in his memory on the north wall, with a half-effigy of him in the act of writing. Its plaque compares him to Nestor, Socrates, and Virgil.[103] In 1623, in conjunction with the publication of the First Folio, the Droeshout engraving was published.[104]
+
+Shakespeare has been commemorated in many statues and memorials around the world, including funeral monuments in Southwark Cathedral and Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.[105][106]
+
+Most playwrights of the period typically collaborated with others at some point, and critics agree that Shakespeare did the same, mostly early and late in his career.[107]
+
+The first recorded works of Shakespeare are Richard III and the three parts of Henry VI, written in the early 1590s during a vogue for historical drama. Shakespeare's plays are difficult to date precisely, however,[108][109] and studies of the texts suggest that Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona may also belong to Shakespeare's earliest period.[110][108] His first histories, which draw heavily on the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland,[111] dramatise the destructive results of weak or corrupt rule and have been interpreted as a justification for the origins of the Tudor dynasty.[112] The early plays were influenced by the works of other Elizabethan dramatists, especially Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe, by the traditions of medieval drama, and by the plays of Seneca.[113][114][115] The Comedy of Errors was also based on classical models, but no source for The Taming of the Shrew has been found, though it is related to a separate play of the same name and may have derived from a folk story.[116][117] Like The Two Gentlemen of Verona, in which two friends appear to approve of rape,[118][119][120] the Shrew's story of the taming of a woman's independent spirit by a man sometimes troubles modern critics, directors, and audiences.[121]
+
+Shakespeare's early classical and Italianate comedies, containing tight double plots and precise comic sequences, give way in the mid-1590s to the romantic atmosphere of his most acclaimed comedies.[122] A Midsummer Night's Dream is a witty mixture of romance, fairy magic, and comic lowlife scenes.[123] Shakespeare's next comedy, the equally romantic Merchant of Venice, contains a portrayal of the vengeful Jewish moneylender Shylock, which reflects Elizabethan views but may appear derogatory to modern audiences.[124][125] The wit and wordplay of Much Ado About Nothing,[126] the charming rural setting of As You Like It, and the lively merrymaking of Twelfth Night complete Shakespeare's sequence of great comedies.[127] After the lyrical Richard II, written almost entirely in verse, Shakespeare introduced prose comedy into the histories of the late 1590s, Henry IV, parts 1 and 2, and Henry V. His characters become more complex and tender as he switches deftly between comic and serious scenes, prose and poetry, and achieves the narrative variety of his mature work.[128][129][130] This period begins and ends with two tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, the famous romantic tragedy of sexually charged adolescence, love, and death;[131][132] and Julius Caesar—based on Sir Thomas North's 1579 translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives—which introduced a new kind of drama.[133][134] According to Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro, in Julius Caesar, "the various strands of politics, character, inwardness, contemporary events, even Shakespeare's own reflections on the act of writing, began to infuse each other".[135]
+
+In the early 17th century, Shakespeare wrote the so-called "problem plays" Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, and All's Well That Ends Well and a number of his best known tragedies.[136][137] Many critics believe that Shakespeare's greatest tragedies represent the peak of his art. The titular hero of one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies, Hamlet, has probably been discussed more than any other Shakespearean character, especially for his famous soliloquy which begins "To be or not to be; that is the question".[138] Unlike the introverted Hamlet, whose fatal flaw is hesitation, the heroes of the tragedies that followed, Othello and King Lear, are undone by hasty errors of judgement.[139] The plots of Shakespeare's tragedies often hinge on such fatal errors or flaws, which overturn order and destroy the hero and those he loves.[140] In Othello, the villain Iago stokes Othello's sexual jealousy to the point where he murders the innocent wife who loves him.[141][142] In King Lear, the old king commits the tragic error of giving up his powers, initiating the events which lead to the torture and blinding of the Earl of Gloucester and the murder of Lear's youngest daughter Cordelia. According to the critic Frank Kermode, "the play...offers neither its good characters nor its audience any relief from its cruelty".[143][144][145] In Macbeth, the shortest and most compressed of Shakespeare's tragedies,[146] uncontrollable ambition incites Macbeth and his wife, Lady Macbeth, to murder the rightful king and usurp the throne until their own guilt destroys them in turn.[147] In this play, Shakespeare adds a supernatural element to the tragic structure. His last major tragedies, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus, contain some of Shakespeare's finest poetry and were considered his most successful tragedies by the poet and critic T. S. Eliot.[148][149][150]
+
+In his final period, Shakespeare turned to romance or tragicomedy and completed three more major plays: Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest, as well as the collaboration, Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Less bleak than the tragedies, these four plays are graver in tone than the comedies of the 1590s, but they end with reconciliation and the forgiveness of potentially tragic errors.[151] Some commentators have seen this change in mood as evidence of a more serene view of life on Shakespeare's part, but it may merely reflect the theatrical fashion of the day.[152][153][154] Shakespeare collaborated on two further surviving plays, Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen, probably with John Fletcher.[155]
+
+It is not clear for which companies Shakespeare wrote his early plays. The title page of the 1594 edition of Titus Andronicus reveals that the play had been acted by three different troupes.[156] After the plagues of 1592–93, Shakespeare's plays were performed by his own company at The Theatre and the Curtain in Shoreditch, north of the Thames.[157] Londoners flocked there to see the first part of Henry IV, Leonard Digges recording, "Let but Falstaff come, Hal, Poins, the rest ... and you scarce shall have a room".[158] When the company found themselves in dispute with their landlord, they pulled The Theatre down and used the timbers to construct the Globe Theatre, the first playhouse built by actors for actors, on the south bank of the Thames at Southwark.[159][160] The Globe opened in autumn 1599, with Julius Caesar one of the first plays staged. Most of Shakespeare's greatest post-1599 plays were written for the Globe, including Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear.[159][161][162]
+
+After the Lord Chamberlain's Men were renamed the King's Men in 1603, they entered a special relationship with the new King James. Although the performance records are patchy, the King's Men performed seven of Shakespeare's plays at court between 1 November 1604, and 31 October 1605, including two performances of The Merchant of Venice.[62] After 1608, they performed at the indoor Blackfriars Theatre during the winter and the Globe during the summer.[163] The indoor setting, combined with the Jacobean fashion for lavishly staged masques, allowed Shakespeare to introduce more elaborate stage devices. In Cymbeline, for example, Jupiter descends "in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle: he throws a thunderbolt. The ghosts fall on their knees."[164][165]
+
+The actors in Shakespeare's company included the famous Richard Burbage, William Kempe, Henry Condell and John Heminges. Burbage played the leading role in the first performances of many of Shakespeare's plays, including Richard III, Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear.[166] The popular comic actor Will Kempe played the servant Peter in Romeo and Juliet and Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing, among other characters.[167][168] He was replaced around 1600 by Robert Armin, who played roles such as Touchstone in As You Like It and the fool in King Lear.[169] In 1613, Sir Henry Wotton recorded that Henry VIII "was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and ceremony".[170] On 29 June, however, a cannon set fire to the thatch of the Globe and burned the theatre to the ground, an event which pinpoints the date of a Shakespeare play with rare precision.[170]
+
+In 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two of Shakespeare's friends from the King's Men, published the First Folio, a collected edition of Shakespeare's plays. It contained 36 texts, including 18 printed for the first time.[171] Many of the plays had already appeared in quarto versions—flimsy books made from sheets of paper folded twice to make four leaves.[172] No evidence suggests that Shakespeare approved these editions, which the First Folio describes as "stol'n and surreptitious copies".[173] Nor did Shakespeare plan or expect his works to survive in any form at all; those works likely would have faded into oblivion but for his friends' spontaneous idea, after his death, to create and publish the First Folio.[174]
+
+Alfred Pollard termed some of the pre-1623 versions as "bad quartos" because of their adapted, paraphrased or garbled texts, which may in places have been reconstructed from memory.[172][173][175] Where several versions of a play survive, each differs from the other. The differences may stem from copying or printing errors, from notes by actors or audience members, or from Shakespeare's own papers.[176][177] In some cases, for example, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, and Othello, Shakespeare could have revised the texts between the quarto and folio editions. In the case of King Lear, however, while most modern editions do conflate them, the 1623 folio version is so different from the 1608 quarto that the Oxford Shakespeare prints them both, arguing that they cannot be conflated without confusion.[178]
+
+In 1593 and 1594, when the theatres were closed because of plague, Shakespeare published two narrative poems on sexual themes, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. He dedicated them to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. In Venus and Adonis, an innocent Adonis rejects the sexual advances of Venus; while in The Rape of Lucrece, the virtuous wife Lucrece is raped by the lustful Tarquin.[179] Influenced by Ovid's Metamorphoses,[180] the poems show the guilt and moral confusion that result from uncontrolled lust.[181] Both proved popular and were often reprinted during Shakespeare's lifetime. A third narrative poem, A Lover's Complaint, in which a young woman laments her seduction by a persuasive suitor, was printed in the first edition of the Sonnets in 1609. Most scholars now accept that Shakespeare wrote A Lover's Complaint. Critics consider that its fine qualities are marred by leaden effects.[182][183][184] The Phoenix and the Turtle, printed in Robert Chester's 1601 Love's Martyr, mourns the deaths of the legendary phoenix and his lover, the faithful turtle dove. In 1599, two early drafts of sonnets 138 and 144 appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim, published under Shakespeare's name but without his permission.[182][184][185]
+
+Published in 1609, the Sonnets were the last of Shakespeare's non-dramatic works to be printed. Scholars are not certain when each of the 154 sonnets was composed, but evidence suggests that Shakespeare wrote sonnets throughout his career for a private readership.[186][187] Even before the two unauthorised sonnets appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim in 1599, Francis Meres had referred in 1598 to Shakespeare's "sugred Sonnets among his private friends".[188] Few analysts believe that the published collection follows Shakespeare's intended sequence.[189] He seems to have planned two contrasting series: one about uncontrollable lust for a married woman of dark complexion (the "dark lady"), and one about conflicted love for a fair young man (the "fair youth"). It remains unclear if these figures represent real individuals, or if the authorial "I" who addresses them represents Shakespeare himself, though Wordsworth believed that with the sonnets "Shakespeare unlocked his heart".[188][187]
+
+"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
+Thou art more lovely and more temperate ..."
+
+—Lines from Shakespeare's Sonnet 18.[190]
+
+The 1609 edition was dedicated to a "Mr. W.H.", credited as "the only begetter" of the poems. It is not known whether this was written by Shakespeare himself or by the publisher, Thomas Thorpe, whose initials appear at the foot of the dedication page; nor is it known who Mr. W.H. was, despite numerous theories, or whether Shakespeare even authorised the publication.[191] Critics praise the Sonnets as a profound meditation on the nature of love, sexual passion, procreation, death, and time.[192]
+
+Shakespeare's first plays were written in the conventional style of the day. He wrote them in a stylised language that does not always spring naturally from the needs of the characters or the drama.[193] The poetry depends on extended, sometimes elaborate metaphors and conceits, and the language is often rhetorical—written for actors to declaim rather than speak. The grand speeches in Titus Andronicus, in the view of some critics, often hold up the action, for example; and the verse in The Two Gentlemen of Verona has been described as stilted.[194][195]
+
+"And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
+Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd
+Upon the sightless couriers of the air."[196]
+
+However, Shakespeare soon began to adapt the traditional styles to his own purposes. The opening soliloquy of Richard III has its roots in the self-declaration of Vice in medieval drama. At the same time, Richard's vivid self-awareness looks forward to the soliloquies of Shakespeare's mature plays.[197][198] No single play marks a change from the traditional to the freer style. Shakespeare combined the two throughout his career, with Romeo and Juliet perhaps the best example of the mixing of the styles.[199] By the time of Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, and A Midsummer Night's Dream in the mid-1590s, Shakespeare had begun to write a more natural poetry. He increasingly tuned his metaphors and images to the needs of the drama itself.
+
+Shakespeare's standard poetic form was blank verse, composed in iambic pentameter. In practice, this meant that his verse was usually unrhymed and consisted of ten syllables to a line, spoken with a stress on every second syllable. The blank verse of his early plays is quite different from that of his later ones. It is often beautiful, but its sentences tend to start, pause, and finish at the end of lines, with the risk of monotony.[200] Once Shakespeare mastered traditional blank verse, he began to interrupt and vary its flow. This technique releases the new power and flexibility of the poetry in plays such as Julius Caesar and Hamlet. Shakespeare uses it, for example, to convey the turmoil in Hamlet's mind:[201]
+
+Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting
+That would not let me sleep. Methought I lay
+Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly—
+And prais'd be rashness for it—let us know
+Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well ...
+
+After Hamlet, Shakespeare varied his poetic style further, particularly in the more emotional passages of the late tragedies. The literary critic A. C. Bradley described this style as "more concentrated, rapid, varied, and, in construction, less regular, not seldom twisted or elliptical".[202] In the last phase of his career, Shakespeare adopted many techniques to achieve these effects. These included run-on lines, irregular pauses and stops, and extreme variations in sentence structure and length.[203] In Macbeth, for example, the language darts from one unrelated metaphor or simile to another: "was the hope drunk/ Wherein you dressed yourself?" (1.7.35–38); "... pity, like a naked new-born babe/ Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd/ Upon the sightless couriers of the air ..." (1.7.21–25). The listener is challenged to complete the sense.[203] The late romances, with their shifts in time and surprising turns of plot, inspired a last poetic style in which long and short sentences are set against one another, clauses are piled up, subject and object are reversed, and words are omitted, creating an effect of spontaneity.[204]
+
+Shakespeare combined poetic genius with a practical sense of the theatre.[205] Like all playwrights of the time, he dramatised stories from sources such as Plutarch and Holinshed.[206] He reshaped each plot to create several centres of interest and to show as many sides of a narrative to the audience as possible. This strength of design ensures that a Shakespeare play can survive translation, cutting and wide interpretation without loss to its core drama.[207] As Shakespeare's mastery grew, he gave his characters clearer and more varied motivations and distinctive patterns of speech. He preserved aspects of his earlier style in the later plays, however. In Shakespeare's late romances, he deliberately returned to a more artificial style, which emphasised the illusion of theatre.[208][209]
+
+Shakespeare's work has made a lasting impression on later theatre and literature. In particular, he expanded the dramatic potential of characterisation, plot, language, and genre.[210] Until Romeo and Juliet, for example, romance had not been viewed as a worthy topic for tragedy.[211] Soliloquies had been used mainly to convey information about characters or events, but Shakespeare used them to explore characters' minds.[212] His work heavily influenced later poetry. The Romantic poets attempted to revive Shakespearean verse drama, though with little success. Critic George Steiner described all English verse dramas from Coleridge to Tennyson as "feeble variations on Shakespearean themes."[213]
+
+Shakespeare influenced novelists such as Thomas Hardy, William Faulkner, and Charles Dickens. The American novelist Herman Melville's soliloquies owe much to Shakespeare; his Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick is a classic tragic hero, inspired by King Lear.[214] Scholars have identified 20,000 pieces of music linked to Shakespeare's works. These include three operas by Giuseppe Verdi, Macbeth, Otello and Falstaff, whose critical standing compares with that of the source plays.[215] Shakespeare has also inspired many painters, including the Romantics and the Pre-Raphaelites. The Swiss Romantic artist Henry Fuseli, a friend of William Blake, even translated Macbeth into German.[216] The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud drew on Shakespearean psychology, in particular, that of Hamlet, for his theories of human nature.[217]
+
+In Shakespeare's day, English grammar, spelling, and pronunciation were less standardised than they are now,[218] and his use of language helped shape modern English.[219] Samuel Johnson quoted him more often than any other author in his A Dictionary of the English Language, the first serious work of its type.[220] Expressions such as "with bated breath" (Merchant of Venice) and "a foregone conclusion" (Othello) have found their way into everyday English speech.[221][222]
+
+Shakespeare's influence extends far beyond his native England and the English language. His reception in Germany was particularly significant; as early as the 18th century Shakespeare was widely translated and popularised in Germany, and gradually became a "classic of the German Weimar era;" Christoph Martin Wieland was the first to produce complete translations of Shakespeare's plays in any language.[223][224]
+
+—Ben Jonson[225]
+
+Shakespeare was not revered in his lifetime, but he received a large amount of praise.[226][227] In 1598, the cleric and author Francis Meres singled him out from a group of English playwrights as "the most excellent" in both comedy and tragedy.[228][229] The authors of the Parnassus plays at St John's College, Cambridge, numbered him with Chaucer, Gower, and Spenser.[230] In the First Folio, Ben Jonson called Shakespeare the "Soul of the age, the applause, delight, the wonder of our stage", although he had remarked elsewhere that "Shakespeare wanted art".[225]
+
+Between the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the end of the 17th century, classical ideas were in vogue. As a result, critics of the time mostly rated Shakespeare below John Fletcher and Ben Jonson.[231] Thomas Rymer, for example, condemned Shakespeare for mixing the comic with the tragic. Nevertheless, poet and critic John Dryden rated Shakespeare highly, saying of Jonson, "I admire him, but I love Shakespeare".[232] For several decades, Rymer's view held sway; but during the 18th century, critics began to respond to Shakespeare on his own terms and acclaim what they termed his natural genius. A series of scholarly editions of his work, notably those of Samuel Johnson in 1765 and Edmond Malone in 1790, added to his growing reputation.[233][234] By 1800, he was firmly enshrined as the national poet.[235] In the 18th and 19th centuries, his reputation also spread abroad. Among those who championed him were the writers Voltaire, Goethe, Stendhal, and Victor Hugo.[236][j]
+
+During the Romantic era, Shakespeare was praised by the poet and literary philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the critic August Wilhelm Schlegel translated his plays in the spirit of German Romanticism.[238] In the 19th century, critical admiration for Shakespeare's genius often bordered on adulation.[239] "This King Shakespeare," the essayist Thomas Carlyle wrote in 1840, "does not he shine, in crowned sovereignty, over us all, as the noblest, gentlest, yet strongest of rallying signs; indestructible".[240] The Victorians produced his plays as lavish spectacles on a grand scale.[241] The playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw mocked the cult of Shakespeare worship as "bardolatry", claiming that the new naturalism of Ibsen's plays had made Shakespeare obsolete.[242]
+
+The modernist revolution in the arts during the early 20th century, far from discarding Shakespeare, eagerly enlisted his work in the service of the avant-garde. The Expressionists in Germany and the Futurists in Moscow mounted productions of his plays. Marxist playwright and director Bertolt Brecht devised an epic theatre under the influence of Shakespeare. The poet and critic T.S. Eliot argued against Shaw that Shakespeare's "primitiveness" in fact made him truly modern.[243] Eliot, along with G. Wilson Knight and the school of New Criticism, led a movement towards a closer reading of Shakespeare's imagery. In the 1950s, a wave of new critical approaches replaced modernism and paved the way for "post-modern" studies of Shakespeare.[244] By the 1980s, Shakespeare studies were open to movements such as structuralism, feminism, New Historicism, African-American studies, and queer studies.[245][246] Comparing Shakespeare's accomplishments to those of leading figures in philosophy and theology, Harold Bloom wrote: "Shakespeare was larger than Plato and than St. Augustine. He encloses us because we see with his fundamental perceptions."[247]
+
+Shakespeare's works include the 36 plays printed in the First Folio of 1623, listed according to their folio classification as comedies, histories, and tragedies.[248] Two plays not included in the First Folio, The Two Noble Kinsmen and Pericles, Prince of Tyre, are now accepted as part of the canon, with today's scholars agreeing that Shakespeare made major contributions to the writing of both.[249][250] No Shakespearean poems were included in the First Folio.
+
+In the late 19th century, Edward Dowden classified four of the late comedies as romances, and though many scholars prefer to call them tragicomedies, Dowden's term is often used.[251][252] In 1896, Frederick S. Boas coined the term "problem plays" to describe four plays: All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, and Hamlet.[253] "Dramas as singular in theme and temper cannot be strictly called comedies or tragedies", he wrote. "We may, therefore, borrow a convenient phrase from the theatre of today and class them together as Shakespeare's problem plays."[254] The term, much debated and sometimes applied to other plays, remains in use, though Hamlet is definitively classed as a tragedy.[255][256][257]
+
+Around 230 years after Shakespeare's death, doubts began to be expressed about the authorship of the works attributed to him.[258] Proposed alternative candidates include Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.[259] Several "group theories" have also been proposed.[260] Only a small minority of academics believe there is reason to question the traditional attribution,[261] but interest in the subject, particularly the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship, continues into the 21st century.[262][263][264]
+
+Shakespeare conformed to the official state religion,[k] but his private views on religion have been the subject of debate. Shakespeare's will uses a Protestant formula, and he was a confirmed member of the Church of England, where he was married, his children were baptised, and where he is buried. Some scholars claim that members of Shakespeare's family were Catholics, at a time when practising Catholicism in England was against the law.[266] Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden, certainly came from a pious Catholic family. The strongest evidence might be a Catholic statement of faith signed by his father, John Shakespeare, found in 1757 in the rafters of his former house in Henley Street. However, the document is now lost and scholars differ as to its authenticity.[267][268] In 1591, the authorities reported that John Shakespeare had missed church "for fear of process for debt", a common Catholic excuse.[269][270][271] In 1606, the name of William's daughter Susanna appears on a list of those who failed to attend Easter communion in Stratford.[269][270][271] Other authors argue that there is a lack of evidence about Shakespeare's religious beliefs. Scholars find evidence both for and against Shakespeare's Catholicism, Protestantism, or lack of belief in his plays, but the truth may be impossible to prove.[272][273]
+
+Few details of Shakespeare's sexuality are known. At 18, he married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway, who was pregnant. Susanna, the first of their three children, was born six months later on 26 May 1583. Over the centuries, some readers have posited that Shakespeare's sonnets are autobiographical,[274] and point to them as evidence of his love for a young man. Others read the same passages as the expression of intense friendship rather than romantic love.[275][276][277] The 26 so-called "Dark Lady" sonnets, addressed to a married woman, are taken as evidence of heterosexual liaisons.[278]
+
+No written contemporary description of Shakespeare's physical appearance survives, and no evidence suggests that he ever commissioned a portrait, so the Droeshout engraving, which Ben Jonson approved of as a good likeness,[279] and his Stratford monument provide perhaps the best evidence of his appearance. From the 18th century, the desire for authentic Shakespeare portraits fuelled claims that various surviving pictures depicted Shakespeare. That demand also led to the production of several fake portraits, as well as misattributions, repaintings, and relabelling of portraits of other people.[280]
+

en/5373.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,80 @@
+Shampoo (/ʃæmˈpuː/) is a hair care product, typically in the form of a viscous liquid, that is used for cleaning hair. Less commonly, shampoo is available in bar form, like a bar of soap. Shampoo is used by applying it to wet hair, massaging the product into the scalp, and then rinsing it out. Some users may follow a shampooing with the use of hair conditioner.
+
+The typical reason of using shampoo is to remove the unwanted build-up of sebum in the hair without stripping out so much as to make hair unmanageable. Shampoo is generally made by combining a surfactant, most often sodium lauryl sulfate or sodium laureth sulfate, with a co-surfactant, most often cocamidopropyl betaine in water. The sulphate ingredient acts as a surfactant, essentially heavy duty soap that makes it easier to trap oil and grease.
+
+Specialty shampoos are marketed to people with dandruff, color-treated hair, gluten or wheat allergies, an interest in using an organic product, and infants and young children ("baby shampoo" is less irritating). There are also shampoos intended for animals that may contain insecticides or other medications to treat skin conditions or parasite infestations such as fleas.
+
+The word shampoo entered the English language from the Indian subcontinent during the colonial era.[1] It dates to 1762 and is derived from Hindi chāmpo (चाँपो [tʃãːpoː]),[2][3] itself derived from the Sanskrit root chapati (चपति), which means to press, knead, or soothe.[4][5]
+
+In the Indian subcontinent, a variety of herbs and their extracts have been used as shampoos since ancient times. A very effective early shampoo was made by boiling Sapindus with dried Indian gooseberry (amla) and a selection of other herbs, using the strained extract. Sapindus, also known as soapberries or soapnuts, a tropical tree widespread in India, is called ksuna (Sanskrit: क्षुण)[6] in ancient Indian texts and its fruit pulp contains saponins which are a natural surfactant. The extract of soapberries creates a lather which Indian texts called phenaka (Sanskrit: फेनक).[7] It leaves the hair soft, shiny and manageable. Other products used for hair cleansing were shikakai (Acacia concinna), hibiscus flowers,[8][9] ritha (Sapindus mukorossi) and arappu (Albizzia amara).[10] Guru Nanak, the founder and the first Guru of Sikhism, made references to soapberry tree and soap in the 16th century.[11]
+
+Cleansing with hair and body massage (champu) during one's daily bath was an indulgence of early colonial traders in India. When they returned to Europe, they introduced the newly learned habits, including the hair treatment they called shampoo.[12]
+
+Sake Dean Mahomed, an Indian traveller, surgeon, and entrepreneur, is credited with introducing the practice of champooi or "shampooing" to Britain. In 1814, Mahomed, with his Irish wife Jane Daly, opened the first commercial "shampooing" vapour masseur bath in England, in Brighton. He described the treatment in a local paper as "The Indian Medicated Vapour Bath (type of Turkish bath), a cure to many diseases and giving full relief when everything fails; particularly Rheumatic and paralytic, gout, stiff joints, old sprains, lame legs, aches and pains in the joints".[13]
+
+During the early stages of shampoo in Europe, English hair stylists boiled shaved soap in water and added herbs to give the hair shine and fragrance. Commercially made shampoo was available from the turn of the 20th century. A 1914 advertisement for Canthrox Shampoo in American Magazine showed young women at camp washing their hair with Canthrox in a lake; magazine advertisements in 1914 by Rexall featured Harmony Hair Beautifier and Shampoo.[14]
+
+In 1927, liquid shampoo was invented by German inventor Hans Schwarzkopf in Berlin, whose name created a shampoo brand sold in Europe.
+
+Originally, soap and shampoo were very similar products; both containing the same naturally derived surfactants, a type of detergent. Modern shampoo as it is known today was first introduced in the 1930s with Drene, the first shampoo using synthetic surfactants instead of soap. Shampoo is also more beneficial for the hair roots.[15]
+
+Early shampoos used in Indonesia were made from the husk and straw (merang) of rice. The husks and straws were burned into ash, and the ashes (which have alkaline properties) are mixed with water to form lather. The ashes and lather were scrubbed into the hair and rinsed out, leaving the hair clean, but very dry. Afterwards, coconut oil was applied to the hair in order to moisturize it.[16]
+
+Certain Native American tribes used extracts from North American plants as hair shampoo; for example the Costanoans of present-day coastal California used extracts from the coastal woodfern, Dryopteris expansa,[17]
+
+Before quinoa can be eaten the saponin must be washed out from the grain prior to cooking. Pre-Columbian Andean civilizations used this soapy by-product as a shampoo.[18]
+
+Shampoo is generally made by combining a surfactant, most often sodium lauryl sulfate or sodium laureth sulfate, with a co-surfactant, most often cocamidopropyl betaine in water to form a thick, viscous liquid. Other essential ingredients include salt (sodium chloride), which is used to adjust the viscosity, a preservative and fragrance.[19][20] Other ingredients are generally included in shampoo formulations to maximize the following qualities:
+
+Many shampoos are pearlescent. This effect is achieved by the addition of tiny flakes of suitable materials, e.g. glycol distearate, chemically derived from stearic acid, which may have either animal or vegetable origins. Glycol distearate is a wax. Many shampoos also include silicone to provide conditioning benefits.
+
+In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) mandates that shampoo containers accurately list ingredients on the products container. The government further regulates what shampoo manufacturers can and cannot claim as any associated benefit. Shampoo producers often use these regulations to challenge marketing claims made by competitors, helping to enforce these regulations. While the claims may be substantiated, however, the testing methods and details of such claims are not as straightforward. For example, many products are purported to protect hair from damage due to ultraviolet radiation. While the ingredient responsible for this protection does block UV, it is not often present in a high enough concentration to be effective. The North American Hair Research Society has a program to certify functional claims based on third-party testing.  Shampoos made for treating medical conditions such as dandruff[22] or itchy scalp are regulated as OTC drugs[23] in the US marketplace.
+
+In the European Union, there is a requirement for the anti-dandruff claim to be substantiated as with any other advertising claim, but it is not considered to be a medical problem.[citation needed]
+
+A number of contact allergens are used as ingredients in shampoos, and contact allergy caused by shampoos is well known.[24] Patch testing can identify ingredients to which patients are allergic, after which a physician can help the patient find a shampoo that is free of the ingredient to which they are allergic.[24][25]  The US bans 11 ingredients from shampoos, Canada bans 587, and the EU bans 1328.[26]
+
+Cosmetic companies have developed shampoos specifically for those who have dandruff. These contain fungicides such as ketoconazole, zinc pyrithione and selenium disulfide, which reduce loose dander by killing fungi like Malassezia furfur. Coal tar and salicylate derivatives are often used as well.
+Alternatives to medicated shampoos are available for people who wish to avoid synthetic fungicides. Such shampoos often use tea tree oil, essential oils or herbal extracts.[27]
+
+Many companies have also developed color-protection shampoos suitable for colored hair; some of these shampoos contain gentle cleansers according to their manufacturers.
+
+Shampoo for infants and young children is formulated so that it is less irritating and usually less prone to produce a stinging or burning sensation if it were to get into the eyes. For example, Johnson's Baby Shampoo advertises under the premise of "No More Tears". This is accomplished by one or more of the following formulation strategies.
+
+The distinction in 4 above does not completely surmount the controversy over the use of shampoo ingredients to mitigate eye sting produced by other ingredients, or the use of the products so formulated.
+The considerations in 3 and 4 frequently result in a much greater multiplicity of surfactants being used in individual baby shampoos than in other shampoos, and the detergency or foaming of such products may be compromised thereby. The monoanionic sulfonated surfactants and viscosity-increasing or foam stabilizing alkanolamides seen so frequently in other shampoos are much less common in the better baby shampoos.
+
+Sulfate-free shampoos are composed of natural ingredients and free from both the sodium lauryl sulfate and sodium Laureth sulfate[28]. The purpose of these sulfates is to create a lathering effect to remove oil and dirt from your hair. If your shampoo easily makes a lather in the shower, there's a good chance it contains sulfates. Sulfate-free shampoos make little to no lather.
+
+Shampoo intended for animals may contain insecticides or other medications for treatment of skin conditions or parasite infestations such as fleas or mange. These must never be used on humans. While some human shampoos may be harmful when used on animals, any human haircare products that contain active ingredients or drugs (such as zinc in anti-dandruff shampoos) are potentially toxic when ingested by animals. Special care must be taken not to use those products on pets. Cats are at particular risk due to their instinctive method of grooming their fur with their tongues.
+
+Shampoos that are especially designed to be used on pets, commonly dogs and cats, are normally intended to do more than just clean the pet's coat or skin. Most of these shampoos contain ingredients which act differently and are meant to treat a skin condition or an allergy or to fight against fleas.
+
+The main ingredients contained by pet shampoos can be grouped in insecticidals, antiseborrheic, antibacterials, antifungals, emollients, emulsifiers and humectants. Whereas some of these ingredients may be efficient in treating some conditions, pet owners are recommended to use them according to their veterinarian's indications because many of them cannot be used on cats or can harm the pet if it is misused.
+Generally, insecticidal pet shampoos contain pyrethrin, pyrethroids (such as permethrin and which may not be used on cats) and carbaryl. These ingredients are mostly found in shampoos that are meant to fight against parasite infestations.
+
+Antifungal shampoos are used on pets with yeast or ringworm infections. These might contain ingredients such as miconazole, chlorhexidine, providone iodine, ketoconazole or selenium sulfide (which cannot be used on cats).
+
+Bacterial infections in pets are sometimes treated with antibacterial shampoos. They commonly contain benzoyl peroxide, chlorhexidine, povidone iodine, triclosan, ethyl lactate, or sulfur.
+
+Antipruritic shampoos are intended to provide relief of itching due to conditions such as atopy and other allergies.[29] These usually contain colloidal oatmeal, hydrocortisone, Aloe vera, pramoxine hydrochloride, menthol, diphenhydramine, sulfur or salicylic acid. These ingredients are aimed to reduce the inflammation, cure the condition and ease the symptoms at the same time while providing comfort to the pet.
+
+Antiseborrheic shampoos are those especially designed for pets with scales or those with excessive oily coats. These shampoos are made of sulfur, salicylic acid, refined tar (which cannot be used on cats), selenium sulfide (cannot be used on cats) and benzoyl peroxide. All these are meant to treat or prevent seborrhea oleosa, which is a condition characterized by excess oils. Dry scales can be prevented and treated with shampoos that contain sulfur or salicylic acid and which can be used on both cats and dogs.
+
+Emollient shampoos are efficient in adding oils to the skin and relieving the symptoms of a dry and itchy skin. They usually contain oils such as almond, corn, cottonseed, coconut, olive, peanut, Persia, safflower, sesame, lanolin, mineral or paraffin oil. The emollient shampoos are typically used with emulsifiers as they help distributing the emollients. These include ingredients such as cetyl alcohol, laureth-5, lecithin, PEG-4 dilaurate, stearic acid, stearyl alcohol, carboxylic acid, lactic acid, urea, sodium lactate, propylene glycol, glycerin, or polyvinylpyrrolidone.
+
+Although some of the pet shampoos are highly effective, some others may be less effective for some condition than another. Yet, although natural pet shampoos exist, it has been brought to attention that some of these might cause irritation to the skin of the pet. Natural ingredients that might be potential allergens for some pets include eucalyptus, lemon or orange extracts and tea tree oil.[30] On the contrary, oatmeal appears to be one of the most widely skin-tolerated ingredients that is found in pet shampoos. Most ingredients found in a shampoo meant to be used on animals are safe for the pet as there is a high likelihood that the pets will lick their coats, especially in the case of cats.
+
+Pet shampoos which include fragrances, deodorants or colors may harm the skin of the pet by causing inflammations or irritation. Shampoos that do not contain any unnatural additives are known as hypoallergenic shampoos and are increasing in popularity.
+
+Solid shampoos or shampoo bars use as their surfactants soaps or other surfactants formulated as solids. They have the advantage of being spill-proof. They are easy to apply; one may simply rub the bar over wet hair, and work the soaped hair into a low lather.
+
+Stiff, non-pourable clear gels to be squeezed from a tube were once popular forms of shampoo, and can be produced by increasing a shampoo's viscosity. This type of shampoo cannot be spilled, but unlike a solid, it can still be lost down the drain by sliding off wet skin or hair.
+
+Shampoos in the form of pastes or creams were formerly marketed in jars or tubes. The contents were wet but not completely dissolved. They would apply faster than solids and dissolve quickly.
+
+Antibacterial shampoos are often used in veterinary medicine for various conditions,[31][32] as well as in humans before some surgical procedures.[33][34]
+
+Closely associated with environmentalism, the "no poo" movement consists of people rejecting the societal norm of frequent shampoo use. Some adherents of the no poo movement use baking soda or vinegar to wash their hair, while others use diluted honey. Other people use nothing, rinsing their hair only with conditioner.[35][36]
+
+In the 1970s, ads featuring Farrah Fawcett and Christie Brinkley asserted that it was unhealthy not to shampoo several times a week. This mindset is reinforced by the greasy feeling of the scalp after a day or two of not shampooing. Using shampoo every day removes sebum, the oil produced by the scalp. This causes the sebaceous glands to produce oil at a higher rate, to compensate for what is lost during shampooing. According to Michelle Hanjani, a dermatologist at Columbia University, a gradual reduction in shampoo use will cause the sebum glands to produce at a slower rate, resulting in less grease in the scalp.[37] Although this approach might seem unappealing to some individuals, many people try alternate shampooing techniques like baking soda and vinegar in order to avoid ingredients used in many shampoos that make hair greasy over time.[38]

en/5374.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,80 @@
+Shampoo (/ʃæmˈpuː/) is a hair care product, typically in the form of a viscous liquid, that is used for cleaning hair. Less commonly, shampoo is available in bar form, like a bar of soap. Shampoo is used by applying it to wet hair, massaging the product into the scalp, and then rinsing it out. Some users may follow a shampooing with the use of hair conditioner.
+
+The typical reason of using shampoo is to remove the unwanted build-up of sebum in the hair without stripping out so much as to make hair unmanageable. Shampoo is generally made by combining a surfactant, most often sodium lauryl sulfate or sodium laureth sulfate, with a co-surfactant, most often cocamidopropyl betaine in water. The sulphate ingredient acts as a surfactant, essentially heavy duty soap that makes it easier to trap oil and grease.
+
+Specialty shampoos are marketed to people with dandruff, color-treated hair, gluten or wheat allergies, an interest in using an organic product, and infants and young children ("baby shampoo" is less irritating). There are also shampoos intended for animals that may contain insecticides or other medications to treat skin conditions or parasite infestations such as fleas.
+
+The word shampoo entered the English language from the Indian subcontinent during the colonial era.[1] It dates to 1762 and is derived from Hindi chāmpo (चाँपो [tʃãːpoː]),[2][3] itself derived from the Sanskrit root chapati (चपति), which means to press, knead, or soothe.[4][5]
+
+In the Indian subcontinent, a variety of herbs and their extracts have been used as shampoos since ancient times. A very effective early shampoo was made by boiling Sapindus with dried Indian gooseberry (amla) and a selection of other herbs, using the strained extract. Sapindus, also known as soapberries or soapnuts, a tropical tree widespread in India, is called ksuna (Sanskrit: क्षुण)[6] in ancient Indian texts and its fruit pulp contains saponins which are a natural surfactant. The extract of soapberries creates a lather which Indian texts called phenaka (Sanskrit: फेनक).[7] It leaves the hair soft, shiny and manageable. Other products used for hair cleansing were shikakai (Acacia concinna), hibiscus flowers,[8][9] ritha (Sapindus mukorossi) and arappu (Albizzia amara).[10] Guru Nanak, the founder and the first Guru of Sikhism, made references to soapberry tree and soap in the 16th century.[11]
+
+Cleansing with hair and body massage (champu) during one's daily bath was an indulgence of early colonial traders in India. When they returned to Europe, they introduced the newly learned habits, including the hair treatment they called shampoo.[12]
+
+Sake Dean Mahomed, an Indian traveller, surgeon, and entrepreneur, is credited with introducing the practice of champooi or "shampooing" to Britain. In 1814, Mahomed, with his Irish wife Jane Daly, opened the first commercial "shampooing" vapour masseur bath in England, in Brighton. He described the treatment in a local paper as "The Indian Medicated Vapour Bath (type of Turkish bath), a cure to many diseases and giving full relief when everything fails; particularly Rheumatic and paralytic, gout, stiff joints, old sprains, lame legs, aches and pains in the joints".[13]
+
+During the early stages of shampoo in Europe, English hair stylists boiled shaved soap in water and added herbs to give the hair shine and fragrance. Commercially made shampoo was available from the turn of the 20th century. A 1914 advertisement for Canthrox Shampoo in American Magazine showed young women at camp washing their hair with Canthrox in a lake; magazine advertisements in 1914 by Rexall featured Harmony Hair Beautifier and Shampoo.[14]
+
+In 1927, liquid shampoo was invented by German inventor Hans Schwarzkopf in Berlin, whose name created a shampoo brand sold in Europe.
+
+Originally, soap and shampoo were very similar products; both containing the same naturally derived surfactants, a type of detergent. Modern shampoo as it is known today was first introduced in the 1930s with Drene, the first shampoo using synthetic surfactants instead of soap. Shampoo is also more beneficial for the hair roots.[15]
+
+Early shampoos used in Indonesia were made from the husk and straw (merang) of rice. The husks and straws were burned into ash, and the ashes (which have alkaline properties) are mixed with water to form lather. The ashes and lather were scrubbed into the hair and rinsed out, leaving the hair clean, but very dry. Afterwards, coconut oil was applied to the hair in order to moisturize it.[16]
+
+Certain Native American tribes used extracts from North American plants as hair shampoo; for example the Costanoans of present-day coastal California used extracts from the coastal woodfern, Dryopteris expansa,[17]
+
+Before quinoa can be eaten the saponin must be washed out from the grain prior to cooking. Pre-Columbian Andean civilizations used this soapy by-product as a shampoo.[18]
+
+Shampoo is generally made by combining a surfactant, most often sodium lauryl sulfate or sodium laureth sulfate, with a co-surfactant, most often cocamidopropyl betaine in water to form a thick, viscous liquid. Other essential ingredients include salt (sodium chloride), which is used to adjust the viscosity, a preservative and fragrance.[19][20] Other ingredients are generally included in shampoo formulations to maximize the following qualities:
+
+Many shampoos are pearlescent. This effect is achieved by the addition of tiny flakes of suitable materials, e.g. glycol distearate, chemically derived from stearic acid, which may have either animal or vegetable origins. Glycol distearate is a wax. Many shampoos also include silicone to provide conditioning benefits.
+
+In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) mandates that shampoo containers accurately list ingredients on the products container. The government further regulates what shampoo manufacturers can and cannot claim as any associated benefit. Shampoo producers often use these regulations to challenge marketing claims made by competitors, helping to enforce these regulations. While the claims may be substantiated, however, the testing methods and details of such claims are not as straightforward. For example, many products are purported to protect hair from damage due to ultraviolet radiation. While the ingredient responsible for this protection does block UV, it is not often present in a high enough concentration to be effective. The North American Hair Research Society has a program to certify functional claims based on third-party testing.  Shampoos made for treating medical conditions such as dandruff[22] or itchy scalp are regulated as OTC drugs[23] in the US marketplace.
+
+In the European Union, there is a requirement for the anti-dandruff claim to be substantiated as with any other advertising claim, but it is not considered to be a medical problem.[citation needed]
+
+A number of contact allergens are used as ingredients in shampoos, and contact allergy caused by shampoos is well known.[24] Patch testing can identify ingredients to which patients are allergic, after which a physician can help the patient find a shampoo that is free of the ingredient to which they are allergic.[24][25]  The US bans 11 ingredients from shampoos, Canada bans 587, and the EU bans 1328.[26]
+
+Cosmetic companies have developed shampoos specifically for those who have dandruff. These contain fungicides such as ketoconazole, zinc pyrithione and selenium disulfide, which reduce loose dander by killing fungi like Malassezia furfur. Coal tar and salicylate derivatives are often used as well.
+Alternatives to medicated shampoos are available for people who wish to avoid synthetic fungicides. Such shampoos often use tea tree oil, essential oils or herbal extracts.[27]
+
+Many companies have also developed color-protection shampoos suitable for colored hair; some of these shampoos contain gentle cleansers according to their manufacturers.
+
+Shampoo for infants and young children is formulated so that it is less irritating and usually less prone to produce a stinging or burning sensation if it were to get into the eyes. For example, Johnson's Baby Shampoo advertises under the premise of "No More Tears". This is accomplished by one or more of the following formulation strategies.
+
+The distinction in 4 above does not completely surmount the controversy over the use of shampoo ingredients to mitigate eye sting produced by other ingredients, or the use of the products so formulated.
+The considerations in 3 and 4 frequently result in a much greater multiplicity of surfactants being used in individual baby shampoos than in other shampoos, and the detergency or foaming of such products may be compromised thereby. The monoanionic sulfonated surfactants and viscosity-increasing or foam stabilizing alkanolamides seen so frequently in other shampoos are much less common in the better baby shampoos.
+
+Sulfate-free shampoos are composed of natural ingredients and free from both the sodium lauryl sulfate and sodium Laureth sulfate[28]. The purpose of these sulfates is to create a lathering effect to remove oil and dirt from your hair. If your shampoo easily makes a lather in the shower, there's a good chance it contains sulfates. Sulfate-free shampoos make little to no lather.
+
+Shampoo intended for animals may contain insecticides or other medications for treatment of skin conditions or parasite infestations such as fleas or mange. These must never be used on humans. While some human shampoos may be harmful when used on animals, any human haircare products that contain active ingredients or drugs (such as zinc in anti-dandruff shampoos) are potentially toxic when ingested by animals. Special care must be taken not to use those products on pets. Cats are at particular risk due to their instinctive method of grooming their fur with their tongues.
+
+Shampoos that are especially designed to be used on pets, commonly dogs and cats, are normally intended to do more than just clean the pet's coat or skin. Most of these shampoos contain ingredients which act differently and are meant to treat a skin condition or an allergy or to fight against fleas.
+
+The main ingredients contained by pet shampoos can be grouped in insecticidals, antiseborrheic, antibacterials, antifungals, emollients, emulsifiers and humectants. Whereas some of these ingredients may be efficient in treating some conditions, pet owners are recommended to use them according to their veterinarian's indications because many of them cannot be used on cats or can harm the pet if it is misused.
+Generally, insecticidal pet shampoos contain pyrethrin, pyrethroids (such as permethrin and which may not be used on cats) and carbaryl. These ingredients are mostly found in shampoos that are meant to fight against parasite infestations.
+
+Antifungal shampoos are used on pets with yeast or ringworm infections. These might contain ingredients such as miconazole, chlorhexidine, providone iodine, ketoconazole or selenium sulfide (which cannot be used on cats).
+
+Bacterial infections in pets are sometimes treated with antibacterial shampoos. They commonly contain benzoyl peroxide, chlorhexidine, povidone iodine, triclosan, ethyl lactate, or sulfur.
+
+Antipruritic shampoos are intended to provide relief of itching due to conditions such as atopy and other allergies.[29] These usually contain colloidal oatmeal, hydrocortisone, Aloe vera, pramoxine hydrochloride, menthol, diphenhydramine, sulfur or salicylic acid. These ingredients are aimed to reduce the inflammation, cure the condition and ease the symptoms at the same time while providing comfort to the pet.
+
+Antiseborrheic shampoos are those especially designed for pets with scales or those with excessive oily coats. These shampoos are made of sulfur, salicylic acid, refined tar (which cannot be used on cats), selenium sulfide (cannot be used on cats) and benzoyl peroxide. All these are meant to treat or prevent seborrhea oleosa, which is a condition characterized by excess oils. Dry scales can be prevented and treated with shampoos that contain sulfur or salicylic acid and which can be used on both cats and dogs.
+
+Emollient shampoos are efficient in adding oils to the skin and relieving the symptoms of a dry and itchy skin. They usually contain oils such as almond, corn, cottonseed, coconut, olive, peanut, Persia, safflower, sesame, lanolin, mineral or paraffin oil. The emollient shampoos are typically used with emulsifiers as they help distributing the emollients. These include ingredients such as cetyl alcohol, laureth-5, lecithin, PEG-4 dilaurate, stearic acid, stearyl alcohol, carboxylic acid, lactic acid, urea, sodium lactate, propylene glycol, glycerin, or polyvinylpyrrolidone.
+
+Although some of the pet shampoos are highly effective, some others may be less effective for some condition than another. Yet, although natural pet shampoos exist, it has been brought to attention that some of these might cause irritation to the skin of the pet. Natural ingredients that might be potential allergens for some pets include eucalyptus, lemon or orange extracts and tea tree oil.[30] On the contrary, oatmeal appears to be one of the most widely skin-tolerated ingredients that is found in pet shampoos. Most ingredients found in a shampoo meant to be used on animals are safe for the pet as there is a high likelihood that the pets will lick their coats, especially in the case of cats.
+
+Pet shampoos which include fragrances, deodorants or colors may harm the skin of the pet by causing inflammations or irritation. Shampoos that do not contain any unnatural additives are known as hypoallergenic shampoos and are increasing in popularity.
+
+Solid shampoos or shampoo bars use as their surfactants soaps or other surfactants formulated as solids. They have the advantage of being spill-proof. They are easy to apply; one may simply rub the bar over wet hair, and work the soaped hair into a low lather.
+
+Stiff, non-pourable clear gels to be squeezed from a tube were once popular forms of shampoo, and can be produced by increasing a shampoo's viscosity. This type of shampoo cannot be spilled, but unlike a solid, it can still be lost down the drain by sliding off wet skin or hair.
+
+Shampoos in the form of pastes or creams were formerly marketed in jars or tubes. The contents were wet but not completely dissolved. They would apply faster than solids and dissolve quickly.
+
+Antibacterial shampoos are often used in veterinary medicine for various conditions,[31][32] as well as in humans before some surgical procedures.[33][34]
+
+Closely associated with environmentalism, the "no poo" movement consists of people rejecting the societal norm of frequent shampoo use. Some adherents of the no poo movement use baking soda or vinegar to wash their hair, while others use diluted honey. Other people use nothing, rinsing their hair only with conditioner.[35][36]
+
+In the 1970s, ads featuring Farrah Fawcett and Christie Brinkley asserted that it was unhealthy not to shampoo several times a week. This mindset is reinforced by the greasy feeling of the scalp after a day or two of not shampooing. Using shampoo every day removes sebum, the oil produced by the scalp. This causes the sebaceous glands to produce oil at a higher rate, to compensate for what is lost during shampooing. According to Michelle Hanjani, a dermatologist at Columbia University, a gradual reduction in shampoo use will cause the sebum glands to produce at a slower rate, resulting in less grease in the scalp.[37] Although this approach might seem unappealing to some individuals, many people try alternate shampooing techniques like baking soda and vinegar in order to avoid ingredients used in many shampoos that make hair greasy over time.[38]

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+Shanghai (Chinese: 上海, Shanghainese pronunciation: [zɑ̃.hɛ] (listen), Standard Mandarin pronunciation: [ʂâŋ.xài] (listen)) is one of the four municipalities of the People's Republic of China. It is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze, with the Huangpu River flowing through it. With a population of 24.28 million as of 2019[update], it is the most populous urban area in China and the second most populous city proper in the world. Greater Shanghai is a global center for finance, technology, innovation and transportation and the Port of Shanghai is the world's busiest container port.
+
+Originally a fishing village and market town, Shanghai grew in importance in the 19th century due to trade and its favorable port location. The city was one of five treaty ports forced open to foreign trade after the First Opium War. The Shanghai International Settlement and the French Concession were subsequently established. The city then flourished, becoming a primary commercial and financial hub of the Asia-Pacific region in the 1930s. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the city was the site of the major Battle of Shanghai. After the war, with the CPC takeover of mainland China in 1949, trade was limited to other socialist countries and the city's global influence declined.
+
+In the 1990s, economic reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping resulted in an intense redevelopment of the city, especially the Pudong district, aiding the return of finance and foreign investment to the city. The city has since re-emerged as a hub for international trade and finance; it is the home of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, one of the largest stock exchanges in the world by market capitalization and the Shanghai Free-Trade Zone, the first free-trade zone in China.
+
+Shanghai has been described as the "showpiece" of the booming economy of China. Featuring several architecture styles such as Art Deco and shikumen, the city is renowned for its Lujiazui skyline, museums and historic buildings—including the City God Temple, Yu Garden, the China Pavilion and buildings along the Bund. Shanghai is also known for its sugary cuisine, distinctive dialect and vibrant international flair. Every year, the city hosts numerous national and international events, including Shanghai Fashion Week, the Chinese Grand Prix and ChinaJoy.
+
+Shanghai is governed as one of the four municipalities under the direct administration of Chinese central government and is thus under direct administration of the State Council.
+
+The two Chinese characters in the city's name are 上 (shàng/zan, "upon") and 海 (hǎi/hae, "sea"), together meaning "Upon the Sea". The earliest occurrence of this name dates from the 11th-century Song dynasty, when there was already a river confluence and a town with this name in the area. How the name should be understood has been disputed, but Chinese historians have concluded that during the Tang dynasty, the area of modern-day Shanghai was under the sea level, so the land appeared to be literally "on the sea".[13]
+Shanghai is officially abbreviated 沪[a] (Hù/Vu2) in Chinese, a contraction of 沪渎[b] (Hù Dú/Vu Doh, "Harpoon Ditch"), a 4th- or 5th-century Jin name for the mouth of Suzhou Creek when it was the main conduit into the ocean.[16] This character appears on all motor vehicle license plates issued in the municipality today.[17]
+
+申 (Shēn) or 申城 (Shēnchéng, "Shen City") was an early name originating from Lord Chunshen, a 3rd-century BC nobleman and prime minister of the state of Chu, whose fief included modern Shanghai.[16] Shanghainese sports teams and newspapers often use Shen in their names, such as Shanghai Shenhua F.C. and Shen Bao.
+
+华亭[c] (Huátíng) was another early name for Shanghai. In AD 751 during the mid-Tang dynasty, Huating County was established by Zhao Juzhen, the governor of Wu Commandery, at modern-day Songjiang, the first county-level administration within modern-day Shanghai. The first five-star hotel in the city was named after Huating.[18]
+
+魔都 (Módū, "Magical City"), a contemporary nickname for Shanghai, is widely known among the youth.[19] The name was first mentioned in Shōfu Muramatsu's 1924 novel Mato, which portrayed Shanghai as a dichotomic city where both light and darkness existed.[20]
+
+The city has various nicknames in English, including "Pearl of the Orient" and "Paris of the East".[21][22]
+
+The western part of modern-day Shanghai was inhabited 6000 years ago.[23] During the Spring and Autumn period (approximately 771 to 476 BC), it belonged to the Kingdom of Wu, which was conquered by the Kingdom of Yue, which in turn was conquered by the Kingdom of Chu.[24] During the Warring States period (475 BC), Shanghai was part of the fief of Lord Chunshen of Chu, one of the Four Lords of the Warring States. He ordered the excavation of the Huangpu River. Its former or poetic name, the Chunshen River, gave Shanghai its nickname of "Shēn".[24] Fishermen living in the Shanghai area then created a fish tool called the hù, which lent its name to the outlet of Suzhou Creek north of the Old City and became a common nickname and abbreviation for the city.[25]
+
+During the Tang and Song dynasties, Qinglong Town (青龙镇[d]) in modern Qingpu District was a major trading port. Established in 746 (the fifth year of the Tang Tianbao era), it developed into what historically called a "giant town of the Southeast", with thirteen temples and seven pagodas. Mi Fu, a scholar and artist of the Song dynasty, served as its mayor. The port experienced thriving trade with provinces along the Yangtze and the Chinese coast, as well as with foreign countries such as Japan and Silla.[2]
+
+By the end of the Song dynasty, the center of trading had moved downstream of the Wusong River to Shanghai.[26] It was upgraded in status from a village to a market town in 1074, and in 1172, a second sea wall was built to stabilize the ocean coastline, supplementing an earlier dike.[27] From the Yuan dynasty in 1292 until Shanghai officially became a municipality in 1927, central Shanghai was administered as a county under Songjiang Prefecture, which had its seat in the present-day Songjiang District.[28]
+
+Two important events helped promote Shanghai's developments in the Ming dynasty. A city wall was built for the first time in 1554 to protect the town from raids by Japanese pirates. It measured 10 m (33 ft) high and 5 km (3 mi) in circumference.[29] A City God Temple was built in 1602 during the Wanli reign. This honor was usually reserved for prefectural capitals and not normally given to a mere county seat such as Shanghai. Scholars have theorized that this likely reflected the town's economic importance, as opposed to its low political status.[29]
+
+During the Qing dynasty, Shanghai became one of the most important sea ports in the Yangtze Delta region as a result of two important central government policy changes: in 1684, the Kangxi Emperor reversed the Ming dynasty prohibition on oceangoing vessels—a ban that had been in force since 1525; and in 1732, the Qianlong Emperor moved the customs office for Jiangsu province (江海关;[e] see Customs House, Shanghai) from the prefectural capital of Songjiang to Shanghai, and gave Shanghai exclusive control over customs collections for Jiangsu's foreign trade. As a result of these two critical decisions, Shanghai became the major trade port for all of the lower Yangtze region by 1735, despite still being at the lowest administrative level in the political hierarchy.[30]
+
+In the 19th century, international attention to Shanghai grew due to European recognition of its economic and trade potential at the Yangtze. During the First Opium War (1839–1842), British forces occupied the city.[31] The war ended in 1842 with the Treaty of Nanking, which opened Shanghai as one of the five treaty ports for international trade.[32] The Treaty of the Bogue, the Treaty of Wanghia, and the Treaty of Whampoa (signed in 1843, 1844, and 1844, respectively) forced Chinese concession to European and American desires for visitation and trade on Chinese soil. Britain, France, and the United States all carved out outside the walled city of Shanghai, which was still ruled by the Chinese.[33]
+
+The Chinese-held Old City of Shanghai fell to rebels from the Small Swords Society in 1853, but was recovered by the Qing government in February 1855.[34] In 1854, the Shanghai Municipal Council was created to manage the foreign settlements. Between 1860 and 1862, the Taiping rebels twice attacked Shanghai and destroyed the city's eastern and southern suburbs, but failed to take the city.[35] In 1863, the British settlement to the south of Suzhou Creek (northern Huangpu District) and the American settlement to the north (southern Hongkou District) joined in order to form the Shanghai International Settlement. The French opted out of the Shanghai Municipal Council and maintained its own concession to the south and southwest.[36]
+
+The First Sino-Japanese War concluded with the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki, which elevated Japan to become another foreign power in Shanghai. Japan built the first factories in Shanghai, which was soon copied by other foreign powers. All this international activity gave Shanghai the nickname "the Great Athens of China".[37] In 1914, the Old City walls were dismantled because they blocked the city's expansion. In July 1921, the Communist Party of China was founded in the French Concession.[33] On May 30, 1925, the May Thirtieth Movement broke out when a worker in a Japanese-owned cotton mill was shot and killed by a Japanese foreman.[38] Workers in the city then launched general strikes against imperialism, which became nation-wide protests that gave rise to Chinese nationalism.[39]
+
+The golden age of Shanghai began with its elevation to municipality on 7 July 1927.[33][40] This new Chinese municipality covered an area of 494.69 km2 (191.0 sq mi), including the modern-day districts of Baoshan, Yangpu, Zhabei, Nanshi, and Pudong, but excluded the foreign concessions territories.[40] Headed by a Chinese mayor and municipal council, the new city government's first task—the Greater Shanghai Plan—was to create a new city center in Jiangwan town of Yangpu district, outside the boundaries of the foreign concessions. The plan included a public museum, library, sports stadium, and city hall, which were partially constructed before being interrupted by the Japanese invasion.[41]
+
+The city flourished, becoming a primary commercial and financial hub of the Asia-Pacific region in the 1930s.[42] During the ensuing decades, citizens of many countries and all continents came to Shanghai to live and work; those who stayed for long periods⁠⁠—some for generations⁠—called themselves "Shanghailanders".[43] In the 1920s and 1930s, almost 20,000 White Russians fled the newly established Soviet Union to reside in Shanghai.[44] These Shanghai Russians constituted the second-largest foreign community. By 1932, Shanghai had become the world's fifth largest city and home to 70,000 foreigners.[45] In the 1930s, some 30,000 Ashkenazi Jewish refugees from Europe arrived in the city.[46]
+
+Shanghai filmed in 1937
+
+The Bund in the late 1920s seen from the French Concession
+
+Nanking Road (modern-day East Nanjing Road) in the 1930s
+
+Shanghai Park Hotel was the tallest building in Asia for decades
+
+Former Shanghai Library
+
+The HSBC Building built in 1923 and the Customs House built in 1927
+
+On 28 January 1932, Japanese forces invaded Shanghai while the Chinese resisted. More than 10,000 shops and hundreds of factories were destroyed, leaving Zhabei district ruined. About 18,000 civilians were either killed, injured, or declared missing.[33] A ceasefire was brokered on 5 May.[47] In 1937, the Battle of Shanghai resulted in the occupation of the Chinese-administered parts of Shanghai outside of the International Settlement and the French Concession. People who stayed in the occupied city suffered on a daily basis, experiencing hunger, oppression, or even death.[48] The foreign concessions were ultimately occupied by the Japanese on 8 December 1941 and remained occupied until Japan's surrender in 1945; multiple war crimes were committed during that time.[49]
+
+A side-effect of the Japanese invasion of Shanghai was the Shanghai Ghetto. Japanese consul to Kaunas, Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara issued thousands of visas to Jewish refugees who were escaping the Nazi's Final Solution to the Jewish Question. They traveled from Keidan, Lithuania across Russia by railroad to the Vladivostok from where they traveled by ship to Kobe, Japan. However, the Jewish refugees' stay in Kobe was short as the Japanese government transferred them to Shanghai by November, 1941. Other Jewish refugees found haven in Shanghai, not through Sugihara, but came on ships from Italy. The refugees from Europe were interned into a cramped ghetto in the Hongkou District,[50] and after the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor, even the Iraqi Jews who had been living in Shanghai from before the outbreak of WWII were interned. Among the refugees in the Shanghai Ghetto was the Mirrer Yeshiva, including its students and faculty. On September 3, 1945, the Chinese Army liberated the Ghetto and most of the Jews left over the next few years. By 1957, there were only one hundred Jews remaining in Shanghai.
+
+On 27 May 1949, the People's Liberation Army took control of Shanghai through the Shanghai Campaign. Under the new People's Republic of China (PRC), Shanghai was one of only three municipalities not merged into neighboring provinces (the others being Beijing and Tianjin).[51] Most foreign firms moved their offices from Shanghai to Hong Kong, as part of a foreign divestment due to the PRC's victory.[52]
+
+After the war, Shanghai's economy was restored—from 1949 to 1952, the city's agricultural and industrial output increased by 51.5% and 94.2%, respectively.[33] There were 20 urban districts and 10 suburbs at the time.[53] On 17 January 1958, Jiading, Baoshan, and Shanghai County in Jiangsu became part of Shanghai Municipality, which expanded to 863 km2 (333.2 sq mi). The following December, the land area of Shanghai was further expanded to 5,910 km2 (2,281.9 sq mi) after more surrounding suburban areas in Jiangsu were added: Chongming, Jinshan, Qingpu, Fengxian, Chuansha, and Nanhui.[54] In 1964, the city's administrative divisions were rearranged to 10 urban districts and 10 counties.[53]
+
+As the industrial center of China with most skilled industrial workers, Shanghai became a center for radical leftism during the 1950s and 1960s. The radical leftist Jiang Qing and her three allies, together the Gang of Four, were based in the city.[55] During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), Shanghai's society was severely damaged, with 310,000 wrongful convictions involving more than 1 million people. About 11,500 people were unjustly persecuted to death. Yet, even during the most tumultuous times of the revolution, Shanghai was able to maintain economic production with positive annual growth rate.[33]
+
+Since 1949, Shanghai has been a comparatively heavy contributor of tax revenue to the central government; in 1983, the city's contribution in tax revenue was greater than investment received in the past 33 years combined.[56] T. Its importance to the fiscal well-being of the central government also denied it from economic liberalizations begun in 1978. In 1990, Deng Xiaoping finally permitted Shanghai to initiate economic reforms, which reintroduced foreign capital to the city and developed the Pudong district, resulting in the birth of Lujiazui.[57]
+
+Shanghai is located on the Yangtze Estuary of China's east coast, with the Yangtze River to the north and Hangzhou Bay to the south. The land is formed by the Yangtze's natural deposition and modern land reclamation projects. As such, it has sandy soil, and skyscrapers are to be built with deep concrete piles to avoid sinking into the soft ground.[58] The provincial-level Municipality of Shanghai administers both the estuary and many of its surrounding islands. It is roughly equidistant from Beijing and Guangzhou, bordering the East China Sea to the east, Zhejiang to the south, and Jiangsu to the west and north.[59] The municipality's northernmost point is on Chongming Island, which is the second-largest island in mainland China after its expansion during the 20th century.[60] However, it does not include an exclave of Jiangsu on northern Chongming or the two islands forming Shanghai's Yangshan Port, which are parts of Zhejiang's Shengsi County.
+
+Shanghai is located on an alluvial plain. As such, the vast majority of its 6,340.5 km2 (2,448.1 sq mi) land area is flat, with an average elevation of 4 m (13 ft).[9] The city's few hills, such as She Shan, lie to the southwest, and its highest point is the peak of Dajinshan Island (103 m or 338 ft) in Hangzhou Bay.[9] Shanghai has many rivers, canals, streams, and lakes, and it is known for its rich water resources as part of the Lake Tai drainage basin.[7]
+
+Downtown Shanghai is bisected by the Huangpu River, a man-made tributary of the Yangtze created by order of Lord Chunshen during the Warring States period.[24] The historic center of the city was located on the west bank of the Huangpu (Puxi), near the mouth of Suzhou Creek, connecting it with Lake Tai and the Grand Canal. The central financial district, Lujiazui, has been established on the east bank of the Huangpu (Pudong). Along Shanghai's eastern shore, the destruction of local wetlands due to the construction of Pudong International Airport has been partially offset by the protection and expansion of a nearby shoal, Jiuduansha, as a nature preserve.[61]
+
+Shanghai has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa), with an average annual temperature of 15.8 °C (60.4 °F) for urban districts and 15.2–15.7 °C (59.4–60.3 °F) for suburbs.[58] The city experiences four distinct seasons. Winters are chilly and damp—northwesterly winds from Siberia can cause nighttime temperatures to drop below freezing. Each year, there are an average of 6.2 days with snowfall and 2.8 days with snow cover.[58] Summers are hot and humid, and occasional downpours or freak thunderstorms can be expected. On average, 8.7 days exceed 35 °C (95 °F) annually. In summer and the beginning of autumn, the city is susceptible to typhoons.[62]
+
+The most pleasant seasons are generally spring, although changeable and often rainy, and autumn, which is usually sunny and dry. With monthly percent possible sunshine ranging from 34% in March to 54% in August, the city receives 1,895 hours of bright sunshine annually. Extremes since 1951 have ranged from −10.1 °C (14 °F) on 31 January 1977 (unofficial record of −12.1 °C (10 °F) was set on 19 January 1893) to 40.9 °C (106 °F) on 21 July 2017 at a weather station in Xujiahui.[63][64]
+
+Shanghai has a rich collection of buildings and structures of various architectural styles. The Bund, located by the bank of the Huangpu River, is home to a row of early 20th-century architecture, ranging in style from the neoclassical HSBC Building to the Art Deco Sassoon House (now part of the Peace Hotel). Many areas in the former foreign concessions are also well-preserved, the most notable being the French Concession.[66] Shanghai is also home to many architecturally distinctive and even eccentric buildings, including the Shanghai Museum, the Shanghai Grand Theatre, the Shanghai Oriental Art Center, and the Oriental Pearl Tower. Despite rampant redevelopment, the Old City still retains some traditional architecture and designs, such as the Yu Garden, an elaborate Jiangnan style garden.[67]
+
+As a result of its construction boom during the 1920s and 1930s, Shanghai has among the most Art Deco buildings in the world.[66] One of the most famous architects working in Shanghai was László Hudec, a Hungarian-Slovak who lived in the city between 1918 and 1947.[68] His most notable Art Deco buildings include the Park Hotel, the Grand Theatre, and the Paramount.[69] Other prominent architects who contributed to the Art Deco style are Clement Palmer and Arthur Turner, who together designed the Peace Hotel, the Metropole Hotel, and the Broadway Mansions;[70] and Austrian architect GH Gonda, who designed the Capitol Theater. The Bund has been revitalized several times. The first was in 1986, with a new promenade by the Dutch architect Paulus Snoeren.[71] The second was before the 2010 Expo, which includes restoration of the century-old Waibaidu Bridge and reconfiguration of traffic flow.[72]
+
+One uniquely Shanghainese cultural element is the shikumen (石库门, "stone storage door") residence, typically two- or three-story gray brick houses with the front yard protected by a heavy wooden door in a stylistic stone arch.[73] Each residence is connected and arranged in straight alleys, known as longtang[f] (弄堂). The house is similar to western-style terrace houses or townhouses, but distinguishes by the tall, heavy brick wall and archway in front of each house.[75]
+
+The shikumen is a cultural blend of elements found in Western architecture with traditional Jiangnan Chinese architecture and social behavior.[73] Like almost all traditional Chinese dwellings, it has a courtyard, which reduces outside noise. Vegetation can be grown in the courtyard, and it can also allow for sunlight and ventilation to the rooms.[76]
+
+Some of Shanghai's buildings feature Soviet neoclassical architecture or Stalinist architecture, though the city has fewer such structures than Beijing. These buildings were mostly erected between the founding of the People's Republic in 1949 and the Sino-Soviet Split in the late 1960s. During this time period, large numbers of Soviet experts, including architects, poured into China to aid the country in the construction of a communist state. An example of Soviet neoclassical architecture in Shanghai is the modern-day Shanghai Exhibition Center.[77]
+
+Shanghai—Lujiazui in particular—has numerous skyscrapers, making it the fifth city in the world with the most skyscrapers.[78] Among the most prominent examples are the 421 m (1,381 ft) high Jin Mao Tower, the 492 m (1,614 ft) high Shanghai World Financial Center, and the 632 m (2,073 ft) high Shanghai Tower, which is the tallest building in China and the second tallest in the world.[79] Completed in 2015, the tower takes the form of nine twisted sections stacked atop each other, totaling 128 floors.[80] It is featured in its double-skin facade design, which eliminates the need for either layer to be opaqued for reflectivity as the double-layer structure has already reduced the heat absorption.[81] The futuristic-looking Oriental Pearl Tower, at 468 m (1,535 ft), is located nearby at the northern tip of Lujiazui.[82] Skyscrapers outside of Lujiazui include the White Magnolia Plaza in Hongkou, the Shimao International Plaza in Huangpu, and the Shanghai Wheelock Square in Jing'an.
+
+The Shanghai Museum
+
+The Shanghai Grand Theater
+
+The Shanghai Exhibition Center, an example of Stalinist architecture
+
+The Oriental Pearl Tower at night
+
+Shanghai Tower
+
+Like virtually all governing institutions in mainland China, Shanghai has a parallel party-government system,[86] in which the Party Committee Secretary, officially termed the Communist Party of China Shanghai Municipal Committee Secretary, outranks the Mayor.[87] The party's committee [zh] acts as the top policy-formulation body, and is typically composed of 12 members (including the secretary).[88][89]
+
+Political power in Shanghai has frequently been a stepping stone to higher positions in the central government. Since Jiang Zemin became the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China in June 1989, all former Shanghai party secretaries but one were elevated to the Politburo Standing Committee, the de facto highest decision-making body in China,[86] including Jiang himself (Party General Secretary),[90] Zhu Rongji (Premier),[91] Wu Bangguo (Chairman of the National People's Congress),[92] Huang Ju (Vice Premier),[93] Xi Jinping (current General Secretary),[94] Yu Zhengsheng,[95] and Han Zheng.[96] Zeng Qinghong, a former deputy party secretary of Shanghai, also rose to the Politburo Standing Committee and became the Vice President and an influential power broker.[97] The only exception is Chen Liangyu, who was fired in 2006 and later convicted of corruption.[98]
+
+Officials with ties to the Shanghai administration collectively form a powerful faction in the central government known as the Shanghai Clique, which has often been viewed to compete against the rival Youth League Faction over personnel appointments and policy decisions.[99] However, Xi Jinping, successor to Hu Jintao as General Secretary and President, was largely an independent leader and took anti-corruption campaigns on both factions.[100]
+
+Shanghai is one of the four municipalities under the direct administration of the Government of the People's Republic of China,[101] and is divided into 16 county-level districts.
+
+Although every district has its own urban core, the city hall and major administrative units are located in Huangpu District, which also serves as a commercial area, including the famous Nanjing Road. Other major commercial areas include Xintiandi and Huaihai Road[g] in Huangpu District, and Xujiahui[h] in Xuhui District. Many universities in Shanghai are located in residential areas in Yangpu District and Putuo District.
+
+Seven of the districts govern Puxi (lit. "The West Bank", or "West of the River Pu"), the older part of urban Shanghai on the west bank of the Huangpu River. These seven districts are collectively referred to as Shanghai Proper (上海市区) or the core city (市中心), which comprise Huangpu, Xuhui, Changning, Jing'an, Putuo, Hongkou, and Yangpu.
+
+Pudong (lit. "The East Bank", or "East of the River Pu"), the newer part of urban and suburban Shanghai on the east bank of the Huangpu River, is governed by Pudong New Area (浦东新区).[i]
+
+Seven of the districts govern suburbs, satellite towns, and rural areas farther away from the urban core: Baoshan,[j] Minhang,[k] Jiading,[l] Jinshan,[m] Songjiang,[n] Qingpu,[o] and Fengxian.[p]
+
+Chongming District comprises the islands of Changxing and Hengsha and most—but not all[q]—of Chongming Island.
+
+The former district of Nanhui was absorbed into Pudong District in 2009. In 2011, Luwan District merged with Huangpu District. As of 2015[update], these county-level divisions are further divided into the following 210 township-level divisions: 109 towns, 2 townships, and 99 subdistricts. Those are in turn divided into the following village-level divisions: 3,661 neighborhood committees and 1,704 village committees.[107]
+
+Shanghai has been described as the "showpiece" of the booming economy of China.[108][109] The city is a global center for finance and innovation,[110][111] and a national center for commerce, trade, and transportation,[112] with the world's busiest container port—the Port of Shanghai.[113] As of 2019[update], Shanghai had a GDP of CN¥3.82 trillion (US$539 billion) that makes up 3.85% of China's GDP,[10][114] and a GDP per capita of CN¥157,138 (US$22,186).[10] Shanghai's six largest industries—retail, finance, IT, real estate, machine manufacturing, and automotive manufacturing—comprise about half the city's GDP.[115] In 2019, the average annual disposable income of Shanghai's residents was CN¥69,442 (US$9,808) per capita, making it one of the wealthiest cities in China,[10] but also the most expensive city in mainland China to live in according to a 2017 study by the Economist Intelligence Unit.[116]
+
+Shanghai was the largest and most prosperous city in East Asia during the 1930s, and rapid redevelopment began in the 1990s.[42] In the last two decades, Shanghai has been one of the fastest-developing cities in the world; it has recorded double-digit GDP growth in almost every year between 1992 and 2008, before the financial crisis of 2007–08.[123]
+
+Shanghai is a global financial center, ranking fourth in the 26th edition of the Global Financial Centres Index (and third in Asia, after Singapore and Hong Kong),[124] published in September 2019 by Z/Yen and China Development Institute.[125] As of 2019[update], the Shanghai Stock Exchange had a market capitalization of US$4.02 trillion, making it the largest stock exchange in China and the fourth-largest stock exchange in the world.[126] In 2009, the trading volume of six key commodities—including rubber, copper, and zinc—on the Shanghai Futures Exchange all ranked first globally.[127] By the end of 2017, Shanghai had 1,491 financial institutions, of which 251 were foreign-invested.[128]
+
+In September 2013 with the backing of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, the city launched the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free-Trade Zone—the first free-trade zone in mainland China. The zone introduced a number of pilot reforms designed to incentivize foreign investment. In April 2014, The Banker reported that Shanghai "has attracted the highest volumes of financial sector foreign direct investment in the Asia-Pacific region in the 12 months to the end of January 2014".[129] In August 2014, fDi magazine named Shanghai the "Chinese Province of the Future 2014/15" due to "particularly impressive performances in the Business Friendliness and Connectivity categories, as well as placing second in the Economic Potential and Human Capital and Lifestyle categories".[130]
+
+As one of the main industrial centers of China, Shanghai plays a key role in domestic manufacturing and heavy industry. Several industrial zones—including Shanghai Hongqiao Economic and Technological Development Zone, Jinqiao Export Economic Processing Zone, Minhang Economic and Technological Development Zone, and Shanghai Caohejing High-Tech Development Zone—are backbones of Shanghai's secondary industry. Shanghai is home to China's largest steelmaker Baosteel Group, China's largest shipbuilding base Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding Group, and one of China's oldest shipbuilders, the Jiangnan Shipyard.[131][132] Auto manufacturing is another important industry. The Shanghai-based SAIC Motor is one of the three largest automotive corporations in China, and has strategic partnerships with Volkswagen and General Motors.[133]
+
+Tourism is a major industry of Shanghai. In 2017, the number of domestic tourists increased by 7.5% to 318 million, while the number of overseas tourists increased by 2.2% to 8.73 million.[128] As of 2019[update], the city had 71 five star hotels, 61 four star hotels, 1,758 travel agencies, 113 rated tourist attractions, and 34 red tourist attractions.[10]
+
+The conference and meeting sector is also growing. According to the International Congress and Convention Association, Shanghai hosted 82 international meetings in 2018, a 34% increase from 61 in 2017.[134][135]
+
+Shanghai is home to China (Shanghai) Pilot Free-Trade Zone, the first free-trade zone in mainland China.[136] As of October 2019[update], it is also the second largest free-trade zone in mainland China in terms of land area (behind Hainan Free Trade Zone [zh], which covers the whole Hainan province[137]) by covering an area of 240.22 km2 (92.75 sq mi) and integrating four existing bonded zones—Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone, Waigaoqiao Free Trade Logistics Park, Yangshan Free Trade Port Area, and Pudong Airport Comprehensive Free Trade Zone.[138][139] Several preferential policies have been implemented to attract foreign investment in various industries to the zone. Because the zone is not technically considered Chinese territory for tax purposes, commodities entering the zone are exempt from duty and customs clearance.[140]
+
+As of 2019[update], Shanghai had a total population of 24,281,400, including 14,504,300 (59.7%) hukou holders (registered locally).[10] According to the 2010 national census, 89.3% of Shanghai's population live in urban areas, and 10.7% live in rural areas.[143] Based on the population of its total administrative area, Shanghai is the second largest of the four municipalities of China, behind Chongqing, but is generally considered the largest Chinese city because the urban population of Chongqing is much smaller.[144] According to the OECD, Shanghai's metropolitan area has an estimated population of 34 million.[11]
+
+According to the Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau, about 157,900 residents in Shanghai are foreigners, including 28,900 Japanese, 21,900 Americans and, 20,800 Koreans.[145] However, the actual number of foreign citizens in the city is probably much higher.[146] Shanghai is also a domestic immigration city—40.3% (9.8 million) of the city's residents are from other regions of China.[10]
+
+Shanghai has a life expectancy of 83.6 years for the city's registered population,[147] the highest life expectancy of all cities in mainland China. However, this has also caused the city to experience population aging—in 2017, 33.1% (4.8 million) of the city's registered population was aged 60 or above.[148] In 2017, the Chinese government implemented population controls for Shanghai, resulting in a population decline of 10,000 people by the end of the year.[149]
+
+Due to its cosmopolitan history, Shanghai has a blend of religious heritage; religious buildings and institutions are scattered around the city. According to a 2012 survey, only 13.1% of the city's population belongs to organized religions, including Buddhists with 10.4%, Protestants with 1.9%, Catholics with 0.7%, and other faiths with 0.1%. The remaining 86.9% of the population may be either irreligious or involved in worship of nature deities and ancestors, Confucian churches, Taoism, or folk religious sects.[150]
+
+Buddhism, in its Chinese varieties, has had a presence in Shanghai since the Three Kingdoms period, during which the Longhua Temple—the largest temple in Shanghai—and the Jing'an Temple were founded.[151] Another significant temple is the Jade Buddha Temple, which was named after a large statue of Buddha carved out of jade in the temple.[152] As of 2014[update], Buddhism in Shanghai had 114 temples, 1,182 clergical staff, and 453,300 registered followers.[151] The religion also has its own college, the Shanghai Buddhist College [zh], and its own press, Shanghai Buddhological Press [zh].[153]
+
+Catholicism was brought into Shanghai in 1608 by Italian missionary Lazzaro Cattaneo.[154] The Apostolic Vicariate of Shanghai was erected in 1933, and was further elevated to the Diocese of Shanghai in 1946.[155] Notable Catholic sites include the St. Ignatius Cathedral in Xujiahui—the largest Catholic church in the city,[156] the St. Francis Xavier Church, and the She Shan Basilica.[157] Other forms of Christianity in Shanghai include Eastern Orthodox minorities and, since 1996, registered Christian Protestant churches. During World War II, thousands of Jews emigrated to Shanghai in an effort to flee Nazi Germany. They lived in a designated area called the Shanghai Ghetto and formed a community centered on the Ohel Moishe Synagogue, which is now the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum.[158]
+
+Islam came into Shanghai during the Yuan dynasty. The city's first mosque, Songjiang Mosque, was built during the Zhizheng (至正) era under Emperor Huizong. Shanghai's Muslim population increased in the 19th and early 20th centuries (when the city was a treaty port), during which time many mosques—including the Xiaotaoyuan Mosque, the Huxi Mosque, and the Pudong Mosque—were built. The Shanghai Islamic Association is located in the Xiaotaoyuan Mosque in Huangpu.[159]
+
+Shanghai has several folk religious temples, including the City God Temple at the heart of the Old City, the Dajing Ge Pavilion dedicated to the Three Kingdoms general Guan Yu, the Confucian Temple of Shanghai, and a major Taoist center Shanghai White Cloud Temple [zh] where the Shanghai Taoist Association locates.[160]
+
+The vernacular language spoken in the city is Shanghainese, a dialect of the Taihu Wu subgroup of the Wu Chinese family. This is different from the official Chinese dialect, Mandarin, which is mutually unintelligible with Wu Chinese.[162] Modern Shanghainese is based on other dialects of Taihu Wu: Suzhounese, Ningbonese, and the local dialect of Songjiang Prefecture.[163]
+
+Prior to its expansion, the language spoken in Shanghai was subordinate to those spoken around Jiaxing and later Suzhou,[163] and was known as "the local tongue" (本地闲话), which is now being used in suburbs only.[164] In the late 19th century, downtown Shanghainese (上海闲话) appeared, undergoing rapid changes and quickly replacing Suzhounese as the prestige dialect of the Yangtze River Delta region. At the time, most of the city's residents were immigrants from the two adjacent provinces, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, so Shanghainese was mostly a hybrid between Southern Jiangsu and Ningbo dialects. After 1949, Putonghua has also had a great impact on Shanghainese as a result of being rigorously promoted by the government.[163] Since the 1990s, many migrants outside of the Wu-speaking region have come to Shanghai for education and jobs. They often cannot speak the local language and therefore use Putonghua as a lingua franca. Because Putonghua and English were more favored, Shanghainese began to decline, and fluency among young speakers weakened.[165] However, in recent years, there have been movements within the city to promote the local language and protect it from fading out.[166][167]
+
+Shanghai is a major center of higher education in China. By the end of 2019, Shanghai had 64 universities and colleges, 929 secondary schools, 698 primary schools, and 31 special schools.[10] A number of China's most prestigious universities are based in Shanghai, including Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Tongji University, and East China Normal University. These universities were selected as "985 universities" by the Chinese government in order to build world-class universities.[168] Fudan University established a joint EMBA program with Washington University in St. Louis in 2002 which has since consistently been ranked as one of the best in the world.[169][170] The city government's education agency is the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission.
+
+The city has many Chinese–foreign joint education institutes [zh], such as the Shanghai University–University of Technology Sydney Business School since 1994, the University of Michigan–Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute since 2006, and New York University Shanghai—the first China–U.S. joint venture university—since 2012.[171][172] In 2013, the Shanghai Municipality and the Chinese Academy of Sciences founded the ShanghaiTech University in the Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park in Pudong.[173] Shanghai is also home to the cadre school China Executive Leadership Academy in Pudong and the China Europe International Business School.
+
+In Shanghai, the nine years of compulsory education—including five years of primary education and four years of junior secondary education—are free, with a gross enrollment ratio of over 99.9%.[10] The city's compulsory education system is among the best in the world: in 2009 and 2012, 15-year-old students from Shanghai ranked first in every subject (math, reading, and science) in the Program for International Student Assessment, a worldwide study of academic performance conducted by the OECD.[174][175] The consecutive three-year senior secondary education is priced and uses the Senior High School Entrance Examination (Zhongkao) as a selection process, with a gross enrollment ratio of 98%.[176] Among all senior high schools, the four with the best teaching quality—Shanghai High School, No. 2 High School Attached to East China Normal University, High School Affiliated to Fudan University, and High School Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University—are termed "The Four Schools" ("四校") of Shanghai.[177] As of October 2019[update], the city's National College Entrance Examination (Gaokao) is structured under the "3+3" system, in which all general senior high school students study three compulsory subjects (Chinese, English, and math) and three subjects chosen from six options (physics, chemistry, biology, history, geography, and politics).[178]
+
+Shanghai has an extensive public transportation system comprising metros, buses, ferries, and taxis, all of which can be accessed using a Shanghai Public Transport Card.[179]
+
+Shanghai's rapid transit system, the Shanghai Metro, incorporates both subway and light metro lines and extends to every core urban district as well as neighboring suburban districts. As of 2019[update], there are 17 metro lines (excluding the Shanghai maglev train and Jinshan Railway), 415 stations, and 704.91 km (438 mi) of lines in operation, making it the longest network in the world.[10] On 8 March 2019, it set the city's daily metro ridership record with 13.3 million.[180] The average fare ranges from CN¥3 (US$0.48) to CN¥9 (US$1.28), depending on the travel distance.[181]
+
+Opened in 2004, the Shanghai maglev train is the first and the fastest commercial high-speed maglev in the world, with a maximum operation speed of 430 km/h (267 mph).[182] The train can complete the 30-kilometer (19 mi) journey between Longyang Road Station and Pudong International Airport in 7 minutes 20 seconds,[183] comparing to 32 minutes by Metro Line 2[184] and 30 minutes by car.[185] A one-way ticket costs CN¥50 (US$8), or CN¥40 (US$6.40) for those with airline tickets or public transportation cards. A round-trip ticket costs CN¥80 (US$12.80), and VIP tickets cost double the standard fare.[186]
+
+With the first tram line been in service in 1908, trams were once popular in Shanghai in the early 20th century.[187] By 1925, there were 328 tramcars and 14 routes operated by Chinese, French, and British companies collaboratively,[188] all of which were nationalized after the PRC's victory in 1949. Since the 1960s, many tram lines were either dismantled or replaced by trolleybus or motorbus lines;[189] the last tram line was demolished in 1975.[190] Shanghai reintroduced trams in 2010, as a modern rubber-tire Translohr system in Zhangjiang area of East Shanghai as Zhangjiang Tram.[191] In 2018, the steel wheeled Songjiang Tram started operating in Songjiang District.[192] Additional tram lines are under planning in Hongqiao Subdistrict and Jiading District as of 2019[update].[193]
+
+Shanghai also has the world's most extensive bus network, including the world's oldest continuously operating trolleybus system, with 1,575 lines covering a total length of 8,997 km (5,590 mi) by 2019.[10] The system is operated by multiple companies.[194] Bus fares generally cost CN¥2 (US$0.32).[195]
+
+As of 2019[update], a total of 40,000 taxis were in operation in Shanghai.[10] The base fare for taxis is CN¥14 (US$2.24), which covers the first 3 km (2 mi) and includes a CN¥1 (US$0.14) fuel surcharge. The base fare is CN¥18 (US$2.55) between 11:00 pm and 5:00 am. Each additional kilometer costs CN¥2.5 (US$0.40), or CN¥3.3 (US$0.47) between 11:00 pm and 5:00 am.[196]  In addition to traditional taxis, ridesharing companies including DiDi and Uber play major roles in urban transportation. Ridesharing costs are comparable to those of taxis, and are sometimes even lower due to promotional discounts from ridesharing companies.[197]
+
+Shanghai is a major hub of China's expressway network. Many national expressways (prefixed with the letter G) pass through or end in Shanghai, including Jinghu Expressway (overlaps with Hurong Expressway), Shenhai Expressway, Hushaan Expressway, Huyu Expressway, Hukun Expressway (overlaps with Hangzhou Bay Ring Expressway), and Shanghai Ring Expressway.[198] There are also numerous municipal expressways prefixed with the letter S.[198] As of 2019, Shanghai has a total of 12 bridges and 14 tunnels crossing the Huangpu River.[199][200] The Shanghai Yangtze River Bridge is the city's only bridge–tunnel complex across Yangtze River.
+
+The expressway network within the city center consists of North–South Elevated Road, Yan'an Elevated Road, and Inner Ring Road. Other ring roads in Shanghai include Middle Ring Road, Outer Ring Expressway, and Shanghai Ring Expressway.
+
+Bicycle lanes are common in Shanghai, separating non-motorized traffic from car traffic on most surface streets. However, on some main roads, including all expressways, bicycles and motorcycles are banned. In recent years, cycling has seen a resurgence in popularity due to the emergence of a large number of dockless app-based bicycle-sharing systems, such as Mobike, Bluegogo, and ofo.[201] As of December 2018[update], these ridesharing systems have a joint average of 1.15 million daily riders within the city.[202]
+
+Private car ownership in Shanghai is rapidly increasing: in 2019, there were 3.40 million private cars in the city, a 12.5% increase from 2018.[10] New private cars cannot be driven without a license plate, which are sold in monthly license plate auctions. Around 9,500 license plates are auctioned each month, and the average price is about CN¥89,600 (US$12,739) in 2019.[203] According to the city's vehicle regulations introduced in June 2016, only locally registered residents and those who have paid social insurance or individual income taxes for over three years are eligible to be in the auction. The purpose of this policy is to limit the growth of automobile traffic and alleviate congestion.[204]
+
+Shanghai has four major railway stations: Shanghai railway station, Shanghai South railway station, Shanghai West railway station, and Shanghai Hongqiao railway station.[205] All are connected to the metro network and serve as hubs in the railway network of China.
+
+Built in 1876, the Woosung railway was the first railway in Shanghai and the first railway in operation in China[206] By 1909, Shanghai–Nanjing railway and Shanghai–Hangzhou railway were in service.[207][208] As of October 2019[update], the two railways have been integrated into two main railways in China: Beijing–Shanghai railway and Shanghai–Kunming railway, respectively.[209]
+
+Shanghai has three high-speed railways (HSRs): Beijing–Shanghai HSR (overlaps with Shanghai–Wuhan–Chengdu passenger railway), Shanghai–Nanjing intercity railway, and Shanghai–Kunming HSR. Two HSRs are under construction: Shanghai–Nantong railway and Shanghai–Suzhou–Huzhou HSR [zh].[210][211]
+
+Shanghai also has four commuter railways: Pudong railway and Jinshan Railway operated by China Railway, and Line 16 and Line 17 operated by Shanghai Metro.[212][213] As of October 2019[update], three additional lines—Chongming line, Jiamin line and Shanghai Airport Link [zh]—are under construction.[213][214]
+
+Shanghai is one of the largest air transportation hubs in Asia.[215] The city has two commercial airports: Shanghai Pudong International Airport and Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport.[216] Pudong International Airport is the primary international airport, while Hongqiao International Airport mainly operates domestic flights with limited short-haul international flights. In 2018, Pudong International Airport served 74.0 million passengers and handled 3.8 million tons of cargo, making it the ninth-busiest airport by passenger volume and third-busiest airport by cargo volume.[217] The same year, Hongqiao International Airport served 43.6 million passengers, making it the 19th-busiest airport by passenger volume.[217]
+
+Since its opening, the Port of Shanghai has rapidly grown to become the largest port in China.[218] Yangshan Port was built in 2005 because the river was unsuitable for docking large container ships. The port is connected with the mainland through the 32-kilometer (20 mi) long Donghai Bridge. Although the port is run by the Shanghai International Port Group under the government of Shanghai, it administratively belongs to Shengsi County, Zhejiang.[219]
+
+Overtaking the Port of Singapore in 2010,[220] the Port of Shanghai has become world's busiest container port with an annual TEU transportation of 42 million in 2018.[221] Besides cargo, the Port of Shanghai handled 259 cruises and 1.89 million passengers in 2019.[10]
+
+The culture of Shanghai was a combination of the nearby Wuyue culture and the "East Meets West" Haipai culture. Examples of the Wuyue culture's influence includes Shanghainese language developed from the nearby Jiaxing, Suzhou, and Ningbo dialect, and Shanghai cuisine influenced by the Jiangsu cuisine and Zhejiang cuisine.[222] The Haipai culture emerged after Shanghai became a prosperous port in the early 20th century, with numerous foreigners from Europe, America, Japan, India moving into the city.[223] The culture fuses elements of western cultures with the local Wuyue culture, and its influence extends to the city's literature, fashion, architecture, music, and even food and beverages.[224] The term Haipai—originally referring to a painting school in Shanghai—was coined by a group of Beijing writers in 1920 to criticize some Shanghai scholars for admiring capitalism and western culture.[224][225] In recent years, Shanghai has been recognized as a new influence and inspiration for cyberpunk culture.[226] Futuristic buildings such as the Oriental Pearl Tower and the neon-illuminated Yan'an Elevated Road are examples that have boosted Shanghai's cyberpunk image.
+
+Cultural curation in Shanghai has seen significant growth since 2013, with several new museums having been opened in the city.[227] This is in part due to the city's most recently released city development plans, with aims in making the city "an excellent global city".[228] As such, Shanghai has several museums[229] of regional and national importance.[230] The Shanghai Museum has one of the best collections of Chinese historical artifacts in the world, including a large collection of ancient Chinese bronzes. The China Art Museum, located in the former China Pavilion of Expo 2010, is the largest art museum in Asia. Power Station of Art is built in a converted power station, similar to London's Tate Modern. The Shanghai Natural History Museum and the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum are major natural history and science museums. In addition, there is a variety of smaller, specialist museums housed in important archaeological and historical sites such as the Songze Museum, the Museum of the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, the site of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, the former Ohel Moshe Synagogue (Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum), and the General Post Office Building (Shanghai Postal Museum). The Rockbund Art Museum is also in Shanghai. There are also many art galleries, concentrated in the M50 Art District and Tianzifang. Shanghai is also home to one of China's largest aquariums, the Shanghai Ocean Aquarium. MoCA, Museum of Contemporary Art of Shanghai, is a private museum centrally located in People's Park on West Nanjing Road, and is committed to promote contemporary art and design.
+
+Benbang cuisine (本帮菜)[231] is Shanghai's traditional cooking style originated 400 years ago under profound influence of those of the surrounding provinces. It emphasises the use of condiments and meanwhile retaining the original flavours of the raw ingredients materials. Sugar is an important ingredient in Benbang cuisine, especially when used in combination with soy sauce. Another characteristic is the use of a great variety of seafood and freshwater food. Signature dishes of Benbang cuisine include Xiaolongbao, Red braised pork belly, and Shanghai hairy crab.[232] Haipai cuisine, on the other hand, is a Western-style cooking originated in Shanghai but absorbs elements from French, British, Russian, German, and Italian cuisine and adapts them to suit the local taste according to the features of local ingredients.[233] Famous dishes of Haipai cuisine include Shanghai-style borscht (罗宋汤, "Russian soup"), crispy pork cutlets, and Shanghai salad [zh] derived from Olivier salad.[234]
+
+The Songjiang School (淞江派), containing the Huating School (华亭派) founded by Gu Zhengyi,[235] was a small painting school in Shanghai during the Ming and the Qing Dynasty.[236] It was represented by Dong Qichang.[237] The school was considered as a further development of the Wu School in Suzhou, the cultural center of the Jiangnan region at the time.[238] In the mid 19th century, the Shanghai School movement commenced, focusing less on the symbolism emphasized by the Literati style but more on the visual content of the painting through the use of bright colors. Secular objects like flowers and birds were often selected as themes.[239] Western art was introduced to Shanghai in 1847 by Spanish missionary Joannes Ferrer (范廷佐), and the city's first western atelier was established in 1864 inside the Tushanwan orphanage [zh; fr].[240] During the Republic of China, many famous artists including Zhang Daqian, Liu Haisu, Xu Beihong, Feng Zikai and Yan Wenliang settled in Shanghai thus it gradually became the art center of China. Various art forms—photography, wood carving, sculpture, comics (Manhua) and Lianhuanhua—thrived. Sanmao, one of the most well-known comics in China, was created then to dramatize the chaos brought to society by the Second Sino-Japanese War.[241] Today, the most comprehensive art and cultural facility in Shanghai is the China Art Museum. In addition, the Chinese painting academy features the Guohua,[242] while the Power Station of Art plays an important role in the contemporary art.[243] First held in 1996, the Shanghai Biennale has now become an important place for Chinese and foreign arts to interact.[244]
+
+Traditional Xiqu became the main way of entertainment for the public in the late 19th century. In the early 20th century, monologue and burlesque in Shanghainese appeared in Shanghai, absorbing elements from traditional dramas. The Great World opened in 1912 is a significant stage at the time.[245] In 1920s, Pingtan expanded from Suzhou to Shanghai.[246] With the abundant commercial radio stations, Pingtan art developed rapidly to 103 programs every day by the 1930s. At the same time, Shanghai also formed a Shanghai-style Beijing Opera led by Zhou Xinfang and Gai Jiaotian [zh], and attracted many Xiqu masters like Mei Lanfang to the city.[247] At the same time, a small troupe from Shengxian (now Shengzhou) also began to promote Yue opera on the Shanghainese stage.[248] A unique style of opera, Shanghai opera, is formed when the local folksongs collided with modern operas.[249] As of 2012, the well-known Xiqu troupes in Shanghai include Shanghai Jingju Theatre Company, Shanghai Kunqu Opera Troupe [zh], Shanghai Yue Opera House and Shanghai Huju Opera House.[250]
+
+Drama appeared in missionary schools in Shanghai in the late 19th century. Back then, it was mainly performed in English. Scandals in Officialdom (官场丑史), staged in 1899, was one of the earliest recorded plays.[251] In 1907, Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly (黑奴吁天录) was performed at the Lyceum Theatre [zh].[252] After the New Culture Movement, drama had become a popular way for students and intellectuals to express their views. Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre, Shanghai Opera House and Shanghai Theatre Academy are four major institutes of theater training in Shanghai. Notable theaters in Shanghai include the Shanghai Grand Theatre, the Oriental Art Center and the People's Theatre.
+
+Shanghai is considered to be the birthplace of Chinese cinema.[253] China's first short film, The Difficult Couple (1913), and the country's first fictional feature film, An Orphan Rescues His Grandfather (孤儿救祖记, 1923)[254] were both produced in Shanghai. Shanghai's film industry went on to blossom during the early 1930s, generating great stars such as Hu Die, Ruan Lingyu, Zhou Xuan, Jin Yan, and Zhao Dan. Another film star, Jiang Qing, went on to become Madame Mao Zedong. The exile of Shanghainese filmmakers and actors as a result of the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Communist revolution contributed enormously to the development of the Hong Kong film industry.[255] The movie In the Mood for Love directed by Wong Kar-wai, a native Shanghainese, depicts a slice of the displaced Shanghainese community in Hong Kong and the nostalgia for that era, featuring 1940s music by Zhou Xuan.[256]
+
+Since 2001, Shanghai has held its own fashion week called Shanghai Fashion Week twice every year in April and October. The April session is a part of the Shanghai International Fashion Culture Festival, which usually lasts for a month, while Shanghai Fashion Week lasts for seven days, and the main venue is in Fuxing Park, Shanghai, while the opening and closing ceremony is in Shanghai Fashion Center.[257] Supported by the People's Republic Ministry of Commerce, Shanghai Fashion Week is a major business and culture event of national significance hosted by the Shanghai Municipal Government. Shanghai Fashion Week is aiming to build up an international and professional platform, gathering all of the top design talents of Asia.
+The event features international designers but the primary purpose is to showcase Chinese designers.[258] The international presence has included many of the most promising young British fashion designers.[259]
+
+Shanghai is home to several soccer teams, including two in the Chinese Super League: Shanghai Greenland Shenhua F.C. and Shanghai SIPG F.C.. China's top-tier basketball team, the Shanghai Sharks of the Chinese Basketball Association, developed Yao Ming before he entered the NBA. Shanghai also has an ice hockey team, China Dragon, and a baseball team, the Shanghai Golden Eagles, which plays in the China Baseball League.
+
+The Shanghai Cricket Club dates back to 1858 when the first recorded cricket match was played between a team of British Naval officers and a Shanghai 11. Following a 45-year dormancy after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the club was re-established in 1994 by expatriates living in the city and has since grown to over 300 members. The Shanghai cricket team was a cricket team that played various international matches between 1866 and 1948. With cricket in the rest of China almost non-existent, for that period they were the de facto China national cricket team.[260]
+
+Shanghai is home to many prominent Chinese professional athletes, such as basketball player Yao Ming, 110-meter hurdler Liu Xiang, table tennis player Wang Liqin, and badminton player Wang Yihan.
+
+Shanghai is the annual host of several international sports events. Since 2004, it has hosted the annual Chinese Grand Prix, a round of the Formula One World Championship. The race is staged annually at the Shanghai International Circuit.[261] It hosted the 1000th Formula One race on 14 April 2019. In 2010, Shanghai also became the host city of Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM), which raced in a street circuit in Pudong. In 2012, Shanghai started to host 6 Hours of Shanghai as one round from the inaugural season of the FIA World Endurance Championship. The city also hosts the Shanghai Masters tennis tournament, which is part of ATP World Tour Masters 1000, as well as golf tournaments including the BMW Masters and WGC-HSBC Champions.[262]
+
+On 21 September 2017, Shanghai hosted a National Hockey League (NHL) ice hockey exhibition game in an effort to increase fan interest for the 2017–18 NHL season.[263]
+
+Shanghai has an extensive public park system; by 2018, the city had 300 parks, of which 281 had free admission, and the per capita park area was 8.2 m2 (88 sq ft).[264] Some of the parks also have become popular tourist attractions due to their unique location, history, or architecture.
+
+The People's Square park, located in the heart of downtown Shanghai, is especially well known for its proximity to other major landmarks in the city. Fuxing Park, located in the former French Concession, features formal French-style gardens and is surrounded by high-end bars and cafes.[265]
+
+Zhongshan Park in western central Shanghai is famous for its monument of Chopin, the tallest statue dedicated to the composer in the world.[266] Built in 1914 as Jessfield Park, it once contained the campus of St. John's University, Shanghai's first international college; today, the park features sakura and peony gardens and a 150-year-old platanus,[267] and it also serves as an interchange hub in the metro system.[268]
+
+One of Shanghai's newer parks is the Xujiahui Park, which was built in 1999, on the former grounds of the Great Chinese Rubber Works Factory and the EMI Recording Studio (now La Villa Rouge restaurant). The park has an artificial lake with a sky bridge running across the park.[269] Shanghai Botanical Garden is located 12 km (7 mi) southwest of the city center and was established in 1978. In 2011, the largest botanical garden in Shanghai—Shanghai Chen Shan Botanical Garden—opened in Songjiang District.[270]
+
+Other notable parks in Shanghai include Lu Xun Park, Century Park, Gucun Park [zh], Gongqing Forest Park, and Jing'an Park.
+
+The Shanghai Disney Resort Project was approved by the government on 4 November 2009[271] and opened in 2016.[272]
+The $4.4 billion theme park and resort in Pudong features a castle that is the biggest among Disney's resorts.[273] More than 11 million people visited the resort in its first year of operation.[274]
+
+Air pollution in Shanghai is not as severe as in many other Chinese cities, but is still considered substantial by world standards.[275] During the December 2013 Eastern China smog, air pollution rates reached between 23 and 31 times the international standard.[276][277] On 6 December 2013, levels of PM2.5 particulate matter in Shanghai rose above 600 micrograms per cubic meter and in the surrounding area, above 700 micrograms per cubic metre.[277] Levels of PM2.5 in Putuo District reached 726 micrograms per cubic meter.[278][279] As a result, the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission received orders to suspend students' outdoor activities. Authorities pulled nearly one-third of government vehicles from the roads, while much construction work was halted. Most inbound flights were canceled, and more than 50 flights at Pudong International Airport were diverted.[280]
+
+On 23 January 2014, Yang Xiong, the mayor of Shanghai, announced that three main measures would be taken to manage the air pollution in Shanghai, along with surrounding Anhui, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang provinces.[281] The measures involved implementing the 2013 air-cleaning program, establishing a linkage mechanism with the three surrounding provinces, and improving the city's early-warning systems.[281] On 12 February 2014, China's cabinet announced that a CN¥10 billion (US$1.7 billion) fund will be set up to help companies meet the new environmental standards.[282] The effect of the policy was significant. From 2013 to 2018, more than 3,000 treatment facilities for industrial waste gases were installed, and the city's annual smoke, nitrogen oxide, and sulfur dioxide emission decreased by 65%, 54%, and 95%, respectively.[283][284]
+
+Public awareness of the environment is growing, and the city is investing in a number of environmental protection projects. A 14-year cleanup of Suzhou Creek, which runs through the city, was finished in 2012, and 1.3 million cubic meters of sludge were removed.[285] Additionally, the government has moved almost all the factories within the city center to either the outskirts or other provinces,[286] and provided incentives for transportation companies to invest in LPG buses and taxis.
+
+On 1 July 2019, Shanghai adopted a new garbage-classification system that sorts out waste into residual waste, kitchen waste, recyclable waste, and hazardous waste.[287] The wastes are collected by separate vehicles and sent to incineration plants, landfills, recycling centers, and hazardous-waste-disposal facilities, respectively.[288]
+
+Media in Shanghai [zh] covers newspapers, publisher, broadcast, television, and Internet, with some media having influence over the whole country. In regard to foreign publications in Shanghai, Hartmut Walravens of the IFLA Newspapers Section said that when the Japanese controlled Shanghai in the 1940s "it was very difficult to publish good papers – one either had to concentrate on emigration problems, or cooperate like the Chronicle".[289]
+
+As of March 2020[update], newspapers publishing in Shanghai include:
+
+Newspapers formerly published in Shanghai include:
+
+The city's main broadcaster is Shanghai Media Group.
+
+The city is the home of the New Development Bank, a multilateral development bank established by the BRICS states, and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a Eurasian political, economic, and security organization.
+
+As of April 2020[update], Shanghai is twinned with the following regions, cities, and counties:[294]
+
+aDirect-administered Municipalities.
+bSub-provincial cities as provincial capitals.
+cSeparate state-planning cities.
+1Special economic-zone Cities.
+2Open Coastal Cities.
+3Prefecture capital status established by Heilongjiang Province and not recognized by Ministry of Civil Affairs. Disputed by Oroqen Autonomous Banner, Hulunbuir, Inner Mongolia as part of it.
+4Only administers islands and waters in South China Sea and have no urban core comparable to typical cities in China.
+5The claimed province of Taiwan no longer have any internal division announced by Ministry of Civil Affairs of PRC, due to lack of actual jurisdiction. See Template:Administrative divisions of Taiwan instead.

en/5376.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,263 @@
+
+
+Shanghai (Chinese: 上海, Shanghainese pronunciation: [zɑ̃.hɛ] (listen), Standard Mandarin pronunciation: [ʂâŋ.xài] (listen)) is one of the four municipalities of the People's Republic of China. It is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze, with the Huangpu River flowing through it. With a population of 24.28 million as of 2019[update], it is the most populous urban area in China and the second most populous city proper in the world. Greater Shanghai is a global center for finance, technology, innovation and transportation and the Port of Shanghai is the world's busiest container port.
+
+Originally a fishing village and market town, Shanghai grew in importance in the 19th century due to trade and its favorable port location. The city was one of five treaty ports forced open to foreign trade after the First Opium War. The Shanghai International Settlement and the French Concession were subsequently established. The city then flourished, becoming a primary commercial and financial hub of the Asia-Pacific region in the 1930s. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the city was the site of the major Battle of Shanghai. After the war, with the CPC takeover of mainland China in 1949, trade was limited to other socialist countries and the city's global influence declined.
+
+In the 1990s, economic reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping resulted in an intense redevelopment of the city, especially the Pudong district, aiding the return of finance and foreign investment to the city. The city has since re-emerged as a hub for international trade and finance; it is the home of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, one of the largest stock exchanges in the world by market capitalization and the Shanghai Free-Trade Zone, the first free-trade zone in China.
+
+Shanghai has been described as the "showpiece" of the booming economy of China. Featuring several architecture styles such as Art Deco and shikumen, the city is renowned for its Lujiazui skyline, museums and historic buildings—including the City God Temple, Yu Garden, the China Pavilion and buildings along the Bund. Shanghai is also known for its sugary cuisine, distinctive dialect and vibrant international flair. Every year, the city hosts numerous national and international events, including Shanghai Fashion Week, the Chinese Grand Prix and ChinaJoy.
+
+Shanghai is governed as one of the four municipalities under the direct administration of Chinese central government and is thus under direct administration of the State Council.
+
+The two Chinese characters in the city's name are 上 (shàng/zan, "upon") and 海 (hǎi/hae, "sea"), together meaning "Upon the Sea". The earliest occurrence of this name dates from the 11th-century Song dynasty, when there was already a river confluence and a town with this name in the area. How the name should be understood has been disputed, but Chinese historians have concluded that during the Tang dynasty, the area of modern-day Shanghai was under the sea level, so the land appeared to be literally "on the sea".[13]
+Shanghai is officially abbreviated 沪[a] (Hù/Vu2) in Chinese, a contraction of 沪渎[b] (Hù Dú/Vu Doh, "Harpoon Ditch"), a 4th- or 5th-century Jin name for the mouth of Suzhou Creek when it was the main conduit into the ocean.[16] This character appears on all motor vehicle license plates issued in the municipality today.[17]
+
+申 (Shēn) or 申城 (Shēnchéng, "Shen City") was an early name originating from Lord Chunshen, a 3rd-century BC nobleman and prime minister of the state of Chu, whose fief included modern Shanghai.[16] Shanghainese sports teams and newspapers often use Shen in their names, such as Shanghai Shenhua F.C. and Shen Bao.
+
+华亭[c] (Huátíng) was another early name for Shanghai. In AD 751 during the mid-Tang dynasty, Huating County was established by Zhao Juzhen, the governor of Wu Commandery, at modern-day Songjiang, the first county-level administration within modern-day Shanghai. The first five-star hotel in the city was named after Huating.[18]
+
+魔都 (Módū, "Magical City"), a contemporary nickname for Shanghai, is widely known among the youth.[19] The name was first mentioned in Shōfu Muramatsu's 1924 novel Mato, which portrayed Shanghai as a dichotomic city where both light and darkness existed.[20]
+
+The city has various nicknames in English, including "Pearl of the Orient" and "Paris of the East".[21][22]
+
+The western part of modern-day Shanghai was inhabited 6000 years ago.[23] During the Spring and Autumn period (approximately 771 to 476 BC), it belonged to the Kingdom of Wu, which was conquered by the Kingdom of Yue, which in turn was conquered by the Kingdom of Chu.[24] During the Warring States period (475 BC), Shanghai was part of the fief of Lord Chunshen of Chu, one of the Four Lords of the Warring States. He ordered the excavation of the Huangpu River. Its former or poetic name, the Chunshen River, gave Shanghai its nickname of "Shēn".[24] Fishermen living in the Shanghai area then created a fish tool called the hù, which lent its name to the outlet of Suzhou Creek north of the Old City and became a common nickname and abbreviation for the city.[25]
+
+During the Tang and Song dynasties, Qinglong Town (青龙镇[d]) in modern Qingpu District was a major trading port. Established in 746 (the fifth year of the Tang Tianbao era), it developed into what historically called a "giant town of the Southeast", with thirteen temples and seven pagodas. Mi Fu, a scholar and artist of the Song dynasty, served as its mayor. The port experienced thriving trade with provinces along the Yangtze and the Chinese coast, as well as with foreign countries such as Japan and Silla.[2]
+
+By the end of the Song dynasty, the center of trading had moved downstream of the Wusong River to Shanghai.[26] It was upgraded in status from a village to a market town in 1074, and in 1172, a second sea wall was built to stabilize the ocean coastline, supplementing an earlier dike.[27] From the Yuan dynasty in 1292 until Shanghai officially became a municipality in 1927, central Shanghai was administered as a county under Songjiang Prefecture, which had its seat in the present-day Songjiang District.[28]
+
+Two important events helped promote Shanghai's developments in the Ming dynasty. A city wall was built for the first time in 1554 to protect the town from raids by Japanese pirates. It measured 10 m (33 ft) high and 5 km (3 mi) in circumference.[29] A City God Temple was built in 1602 during the Wanli reign. This honor was usually reserved for prefectural capitals and not normally given to a mere county seat such as Shanghai. Scholars have theorized that this likely reflected the town's economic importance, as opposed to its low political status.[29]
+
+During the Qing dynasty, Shanghai became one of the most important sea ports in the Yangtze Delta region as a result of two important central government policy changes: in 1684, the Kangxi Emperor reversed the Ming dynasty prohibition on oceangoing vessels—a ban that had been in force since 1525; and in 1732, the Qianlong Emperor moved the customs office for Jiangsu province (江海关;[e] see Customs House, Shanghai) from the prefectural capital of Songjiang to Shanghai, and gave Shanghai exclusive control over customs collections for Jiangsu's foreign trade. As a result of these two critical decisions, Shanghai became the major trade port for all of the lower Yangtze region by 1735, despite still being at the lowest administrative level in the political hierarchy.[30]
+
+In the 19th century, international attention to Shanghai grew due to European recognition of its economic and trade potential at the Yangtze. During the First Opium War (1839–1842), British forces occupied the city.[31] The war ended in 1842 with the Treaty of Nanking, which opened Shanghai as one of the five treaty ports for international trade.[32] The Treaty of the Bogue, the Treaty of Wanghia, and the Treaty of Whampoa (signed in 1843, 1844, and 1844, respectively) forced Chinese concession to European and American desires for visitation and trade on Chinese soil. Britain, France, and the United States all carved out outside the walled city of Shanghai, which was still ruled by the Chinese.[33]
+
+The Chinese-held Old City of Shanghai fell to rebels from the Small Swords Society in 1853, but was recovered by the Qing government in February 1855.[34] In 1854, the Shanghai Municipal Council was created to manage the foreign settlements. Between 1860 and 1862, the Taiping rebels twice attacked Shanghai and destroyed the city's eastern and southern suburbs, but failed to take the city.[35] In 1863, the British settlement to the south of Suzhou Creek (northern Huangpu District) and the American settlement to the north (southern Hongkou District) joined in order to form the Shanghai International Settlement. The French opted out of the Shanghai Municipal Council and maintained its own concession to the south and southwest.[36]
+
+The First Sino-Japanese War concluded with the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki, which elevated Japan to become another foreign power in Shanghai. Japan built the first factories in Shanghai, which was soon copied by other foreign powers. All this international activity gave Shanghai the nickname "the Great Athens of China".[37] In 1914, the Old City walls were dismantled because they blocked the city's expansion. In July 1921, the Communist Party of China was founded in the French Concession.[33] On May 30, 1925, the May Thirtieth Movement broke out when a worker in a Japanese-owned cotton mill was shot and killed by a Japanese foreman.[38] Workers in the city then launched general strikes against imperialism, which became nation-wide protests that gave rise to Chinese nationalism.[39]
+
+The golden age of Shanghai began with its elevation to municipality on 7 July 1927.[33][40] This new Chinese municipality covered an area of 494.69 km2 (191.0 sq mi), including the modern-day districts of Baoshan, Yangpu, Zhabei, Nanshi, and Pudong, but excluded the foreign concessions territories.[40] Headed by a Chinese mayor and municipal council, the new city government's first task—the Greater Shanghai Plan—was to create a new city center in Jiangwan town of Yangpu district, outside the boundaries of the foreign concessions. The plan included a public museum, library, sports stadium, and city hall, which were partially constructed before being interrupted by the Japanese invasion.[41]
+
+The city flourished, becoming a primary commercial and financial hub of the Asia-Pacific region in the 1930s.[42] During the ensuing decades, citizens of many countries and all continents came to Shanghai to live and work; those who stayed for long periods⁠⁠—some for generations⁠—called themselves "Shanghailanders".[43] In the 1920s and 1930s, almost 20,000 White Russians fled the newly established Soviet Union to reside in Shanghai.[44] These Shanghai Russians constituted the second-largest foreign community. By 1932, Shanghai had become the world's fifth largest city and home to 70,000 foreigners.[45] In the 1930s, some 30,000 Ashkenazi Jewish refugees from Europe arrived in the city.[46]
+
+Shanghai filmed in 1937
+
+The Bund in the late 1920s seen from the French Concession
+
+Nanking Road (modern-day East Nanjing Road) in the 1930s
+
+Shanghai Park Hotel was the tallest building in Asia for decades
+
+Former Shanghai Library
+
+The HSBC Building built in 1923 and the Customs House built in 1927
+
+On 28 January 1932, Japanese forces invaded Shanghai while the Chinese resisted. More than 10,000 shops and hundreds of factories were destroyed, leaving Zhabei district ruined. About 18,000 civilians were either killed, injured, or declared missing.[33] A ceasefire was brokered on 5 May.[47] In 1937, the Battle of Shanghai resulted in the occupation of the Chinese-administered parts of Shanghai outside of the International Settlement and the French Concession. People who stayed in the occupied city suffered on a daily basis, experiencing hunger, oppression, or even death.[48] The foreign concessions were ultimately occupied by the Japanese on 8 December 1941 and remained occupied until Japan's surrender in 1945; multiple war crimes were committed during that time.[49]
+
+A side-effect of the Japanese invasion of Shanghai was the Shanghai Ghetto. Japanese consul to Kaunas, Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara issued thousands of visas to Jewish refugees who were escaping the Nazi's Final Solution to the Jewish Question. They traveled from Keidan, Lithuania across Russia by railroad to the Vladivostok from where they traveled by ship to Kobe, Japan. However, the Jewish refugees' stay in Kobe was short as the Japanese government transferred them to Shanghai by November, 1941. Other Jewish refugees found haven in Shanghai, not through Sugihara, but came on ships from Italy. The refugees from Europe were interned into a cramped ghetto in the Hongkou District,[50] and after the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor, even the Iraqi Jews who had been living in Shanghai from before the outbreak of WWII were interned. Among the refugees in the Shanghai Ghetto was the Mirrer Yeshiva, including its students and faculty. On September 3, 1945, the Chinese Army liberated the Ghetto and most of the Jews left over the next few years. By 1957, there were only one hundred Jews remaining in Shanghai.
+
+On 27 May 1949, the People's Liberation Army took control of Shanghai through the Shanghai Campaign. Under the new People's Republic of China (PRC), Shanghai was one of only three municipalities not merged into neighboring provinces (the others being Beijing and Tianjin).[51] Most foreign firms moved their offices from Shanghai to Hong Kong, as part of a foreign divestment due to the PRC's victory.[52]
+
+After the war, Shanghai's economy was restored—from 1949 to 1952, the city's agricultural and industrial output increased by 51.5% and 94.2%, respectively.[33] There were 20 urban districts and 10 suburbs at the time.[53] On 17 January 1958, Jiading, Baoshan, and Shanghai County in Jiangsu became part of Shanghai Municipality, which expanded to 863 km2 (333.2 sq mi). The following December, the land area of Shanghai was further expanded to 5,910 km2 (2,281.9 sq mi) after more surrounding suburban areas in Jiangsu were added: Chongming, Jinshan, Qingpu, Fengxian, Chuansha, and Nanhui.[54] In 1964, the city's administrative divisions were rearranged to 10 urban districts and 10 counties.[53]
+
+As the industrial center of China with most skilled industrial workers, Shanghai became a center for radical leftism during the 1950s and 1960s. The radical leftist Jiang Qing and her three allies, together the Gang of Four, were based in the city.[55] During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), Shanghai's society was severely damaged, with 310,000 wrongful convictions involving more than 1 million people. About 11,500 people were unjustly persecuted to death. Yet, even during the most tumultuous times of the revolution, Shanghai was able to maintain economic production with positive annual growth rate.[33]
+
+Since 1949, Shanghai has been a comparatively heavy contributor of tax revenue to the central government; in 1983, the city's contribution in tax revenue was greater than investment received in the past 33 years combined.[56] T. Its importance to the fiscal well-being of the central government also denied it from economic liberalizations begun in 1978. In 1990, Deng Xiaoping finally permitted Shanghai to initiate economic reforms, which reintroduced foreign capital to the city and developed the Pudong district, resulting in the birth of Lujiazui.[57]
+
+Shanghai is located on the Yangtze Estuary of China's east coast, with the Yangtze River to the north and Hangzhou Bay to the south. The land is formed by the Yangtze's natural deposition and modern land reclamation projects. As such, it has sandy soil, and skyscrapers are to be built with deep concrete piles to avoid sinking into the soft ground.[58] The provincial-level Municipality of Shanghai administers both the estuary and many of its surrounding islands. It is roughly equidistant from Beijing and Guangzhou, bordering the East China Sea to the east, Zhejiang to the south, and Jiangsu to the west and north.[59] The municipality's northernmost point is on Chongming Island, which is the second-largest island in mainland China after its expansion during the 20th century.[60] However, it does not include an exclave of Jiangsu on northern Chongming or the two islands forming Shanghai's Yangshan Port, which are parts of Zhejiang's Shengsi County.
+
+Shanghai is located on an alluvial plain. As such, the vast majority of its 6,340.5 km2 (2,448.1 sq mi) land area is flat, with an average elevation of 4 m (13 ft).[9] The city's few hills, such as She Shan, lie to the southwest, and its highest point is the peak of Dajinshan Island (103 m or 338 ft) in Hangzhou Bay.[9] Shanghai has many rivers, canals, streams, and lakes, and it is known for its rich water resources as part of the Lake Tai drainage basin.[7]
+
+Downtown Shanghai is bisected by the Huangpu River, a man-made tributary of the Yangtze created by order of Lord Chunshen during the Warring States period.[24] The historic center of the city was located on the west bank of the Huangpu (Puxi), near the mouth of Suzhou Creek, connecting it with Lake Tai and the Grand Canal. The central financial district, Lujiazui, has been established on the east bank of the Huangpu (Pudong). Along Shanghai's eastern shore, the destruction of local wetlands due to the construction of Pudong International Airport has been partially offset by the protection and expansion of a nearby shoal, Jiuduansha, as a nature preserve.[61]
+
+Shanghai has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa), with an average annual temperature of 15.8 °C (60.4 °F) for urban districts and 15.2–15.7 °C (59.4–60.3 °F) for suburbs.[58] The city experiences four distinct seasons. Winters are chilly and damp—northwesterly winds from Siberia can cause nighttime temperatures to drop below freezing. Each year, there are an average of 6.2 days with snowfall and 2.8 days with snow cover.[58] Summers are hot and humid, and occasional downpours or freak thunderstorms can be expected. On average, 8.7 days exceed 35 °C (95 °F) annually. In summer and the beginning of autumn, the city is susceptible to typhoons.[62]
+
+The most pleasant seasons are generally spring, although changeable and often rainy, and autumn, which is usually sunny and dry. With monthly percent possible sunshine ranging from 34% in March to 54% in August, the city receives 1,895 hours of bright sunshine annually. Extremes since 1951 have ranged from −10.1 °C (14 °F) on 31 January 1977 (unofficial record of −12.1 °C (10 °F) was set on 19 January 1893) to 40.9 °C (106 °F) on 21 July 2017 at a weather station in Xujiahui.[63][64]
+
+Shanghai has a rich collection of buildings and structures of various architectural styles. The Bund, located by the bank of the Huangpu River, is home to a row of early 20th-century architecture, ranging in style from the neoclassical HSBC Building to the Art Deco Sassoon House (now part of the Peace Hotel). Many areas in the former foreign concessions are also well-preserved, the most notable being the French Concession.[66] Shanghai is also home to many architecturally distinctive and even eccentric buildings, including the Shanghai Museum, the Shanghai Grand Theatre, the Shanghai Oriental Art Center, and the Oriental Pearl Tower. Despite rampant redevelopment, the Old City still retains some traditional architecture and designs, such as the Yu Garden, an elaborate Jiangnan style garden.[67]
+
+As a result of its construction boom during the 1920s and 1930s, Shanghai has among the most Art Deco buildings in the world.[66] One of the most famous architects working in Shanghai was László Hudec, a Hungarian-Slovak who lived in the city between 1918 and 1947.[68] His most notable Art Deco buildings include the Park Hotel, the Grand Theatre, and the Paramount.[69] Other prominent architects who contributed to the Art Deco style are Clement Palmer and Arthur Turner, who together designed the Peace Hotel, the Metropole Hotel, and the Broadway Mansions;[70] and Austrian architect GH Gonda, who designed the Capitol Theater. The Bund has been revitalized several times. The first was in 1986, with a new promenade by the Dutch architect Paulus Snoeren.[71] The second was before the 2010 Expo, which includes restoration of the century-old Waibaidu Bridge and reconfiguration of traffic flow.[72]
+
+One uniquely Shanghainese cultural element is the shikumen (石库门, "stone storage door") residence, typically two- or three-story gray brick houses with the front yard protected by a heavy wooden door in a stylistic stone arch.[73] Each residence is connected and arranged in straight alleys, known as longtang[f] (弄堂). The house is similar to western-style terrace houses or townhouses, but distinguishes by the tall, heavy brick wall and archway in front of each house.[75]
+
+The shikumen is a cultural blend of elements found in Western architecture with traditional Jiangnan Chinese architecture and social behavior.[73] Like almost all traditional Chinese dwellings, it has a courtyard, which reduces outside noise. Vegetation can be grown in the courtyard, and it can also allow for sunlight and ventilation to the rooms.[76]
+
+Some of Shanghai's buildings feature Soviet neoclassical architecture or Stalinist architecture, though the city has fewer such structures than Beijing. These buildings were mostly erected between the founding of the People's Republic in 1949 and the Sino-Soviet Split in the late 1960s. During this time period, large numbers of Soviet experts, including architects, poured into China to aid the country in the construction of a communist state. An example of Soviet neoclassical architecture in Shanghai is the modern-day Shanghai Exhibition Center.[77]
+
+Shanghai—Lujiazui in particular—has numerous skyscrapers, making it the fifth city in the world with the most skyscrapers.[78] Among the most prominent examples are the 421 m (1,381 ft) high Jin Mao Tower, the 492 m (1,614 ft) high Shanghai World Financial Center, and the 632 m (2,073 ft) high Shanghai Tower, which is the tallest building in China and the second tallest in the world.[79] Completed in 2015, the tower takes the form of nine twisted sections stacked atop each other, totaling 128 floors.[80] It is featured in its double-skin facade design, which eliminates the need for either layer to be opaqued for reflectivity as the double-layer structure has already reduced the heat absorption.[81] The futuristic-looking Oriental Pearl Tower, at 468 m (1,535 ft), is located nearby at the northern tip of Lujiazui.[82] Skyscrapers outside of Lujiazui include the White Magnolia Plaza in Hongkou, the Shimao International Plaza in Huangpu, and the Shanghai Wheelock Square in Jing'an.
+
+The Shanghai Museum
+
+The Shanghai Grand Theater
+
+The Shanghai Exhibition Center, an example of Stalinist architecture
+
+The Oriental Pearl Tower at night
+
+Shanghai Tower
+
+Like virtually all governing institutions in mainland China, Shanghai has a parallel party-government system,[86] in which the Party Committee Secretary, officially termed the Communist Party of China Shanghai Municipal Committee Secretary, outranks the Mayor.[87] The party's committee [zh] acts as the top policy-formulation body, and is typically composed of 12 members (including the secretary).[88][89]
+
+Political power in Shanghai has frequently been a stepping stone to higher positions in the central government. Since Jiang Zemin became the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China in June 1989, all former Shanghai party secretaries but one were elevated to the Politburo Standing Committee, the de facto highest decision-making body in China,[86] including Jiang himself (Party General Secretary),[90] Zhu Rongji (Premier),[91] Wu Bangguo (Chairman of the National People's Congress),[92] Huang Ju (Vice Premier),[93] Xi Jinping (current General Secretary),[94] Yu Zhengsheng,[95] and Han Zheng.[96] Zeng Qinghong, a former deputy party secretary of Shanghai, also rose to the Politburo Standing Committee and became the Vice President and an influential power broker.[97] The only exception is Chen Liangyu, who was fired in 2006 and later convicted of corruption.[98]
+
+Officials with ties to the Shanghai administration collectively form a powerful faction in the central government known as the Shanghai Clique, which has often been viewed to compete against the rival Youth League Faction over personnel appointments and policy decisions.[99] However, Xi Jinping, successor to Hu Jintao as General Secretary and President, was largely an independent leader and took anti-corruption campaigns on both factions.[100]
+
+Shanghai is one of the four municipalities under the direct administration of the Government of the People's Republic of China,[101] and is divided into 16 county-level districts.
+
+Although every district has its own urban core, the city hall and major administrative units are located in Huangpu District, which also serves as a commercial area, including the famous Nanjing Road. Other major commercial areas include Xintiandi and Huaihai Road[g] in Huangpu District, and Xujiahui[h] in Xuhui District. Many universities in Shanghai are located in residential areas in Yangpu District and Putuo District.
+
+Seven of the districts govern Puxi (lit. "The West Bank", or "West of the River Pu"), the older part of urban Shanghai on the west bank of the Huangpu River. These seven districts are collectively referred to as Shanghai Proper (上海市区) or the core city (市中心), which comprise Huangpu, Xuhui, Changning, Jing'an, Putuo, Hongkou, and Yangpu.
+
+Pudong (lit. "The East Bank", or "East of the River Pu"), the newer part of urban and suburban Shanghai on the east bank of the Huangpu River, is governed by Pudong New Area (浦东新区).[i]
+
+Seven of the districts govern suburbs, satellite towns, and rural areas farther away from the urban core: Baoshan,[j] Minhang,[k] Jiading,[l] Jinshan,[m] Songjiang,[n] Qingpu,[o] and Fengxian.[p]
+
+Chongming District comprises the islands of Changxing and Hengsha and most—but not all[q]—of Chongming Island.
+
+The former district of Nanhui was absorbed into Pudong District in 2009. In 2011, Luwan District merged with Huangpu District. As of 2015[update], these county-level divisions are further divided into the following 210 township-level divisions: 109 towns, 2 townships, and 99 subdistricts. Those are in turn divided into the following village-level divisions: 3,661 neighborhood committees and 1,704 village committees.[107]
+
+Shanghai has been described as the "showpiece" of the booming economy of China.[108][109] The city is a global center for finance and innovation,[110][111] and a national center for commerce, trade, and transportation,[112] with the world's busiest container port—the Port of Shanghai.[113] As of 2019[update], Shanghai had a GDP of CN¥3.82 trillion (US$539 billion) that makes up 3.85% of China's GDP,[10][114] and a GDP per capita of CN¥157,138 (US$22,186).[10] Shanghai's six largest industries—retail, finance, IT, real estate, machine manufacturing, and automotive manufacturing—comprise about half the city's GDP.[115] In 2019, the average annual disposable income of Shanghai's residents was CN¥69,442 (US$9,808) per capita, making it one of the wealthiest cities in China,[10] but also the most expensive city in mainland China to live in according to a 2017 study by the Economist Intelligence Unit.[116]
+
+Shanghai was the largest and most prosperous city in East Asia during the 1930s, and rapid redevelopment began in the 1990s.[42] In the last two decades, Shanghai has been one of the fastest-developing cities in the world; it has recorded double-digit GDP growth in almost every year between 1992 and 2008, before the financial crisis of 2007–08.[123]
+
+Shanghai is a global financial center, ranking fourth in the 26th edition of the Global Financial Centres Index (and third in Asia, after Singapore and Hong Kong),[124] published in September 2019 by Z/Yen and China Development Institute.[125] As of 2019[update], the Shanghai Stock Exchange had a market capitalization of US$4.02 trillion, making it the largest stock exchange in China and the fourth-largest stock exchange in the world.[126] In 2009, the trading volume of six key commodities—including rubber, copper, and zinc—on the Shanghai Futures Exchange all ranked first globally.[127] By the end of 2017, Shanghai had 1,491 financial institutions, of which 251 were foreign-invested.[128]
+
+In September 2013 with the backing of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, the city launched the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free-Trade Zone—the first free-trade zone in mainland China. The zone introduced a number of pilot reforms designed to incentivize foreign investment. In April 2014, The Banker reported that Shanghai "has attracted the highest volumes of financial sector foreign direct investment in the Asia-Pacific region in the 12 months to the end of January 2014".[129] In August 2014, fDi magazine named Shanghai the "Chinese Province of the Future 2014/15" due to "particularly impressive performances in the Business Friendliness and Connectivity categories, as well as placing second in the Economic Potential and Human Capital and Lifestyle categories".[130]
+
+As one of the main industrial centers of China, Shanghai plays a key role in domestic manufacturing and heavy industry. Several industrial zones—including Shanghai Hongqiao Economic and Technological Development Zone, Jinqiao Export Economic Processing Zone, Minhang Economic and Technological Development Zone, and Shanghai Caohejing High-Tech Development Zone—are backbones of Shanghai's secondary industry. Shanghai is home to China's largest steelmaker Baosteel Group, China's largest shipbuilding base Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding Group, and one of China's oldest shipbuilders, the Jiangnan Shipyard.[131][132] Auto manufacturing is another important industry. The Shanghai-based SAIC Motor is one of the three largest automotive corporations in China, and has strategic partnerships with Volkswagen and General Motors.[133]
+
+Tourism is a major industry of Shanghai. In 2017, the number of domestic tourists increased by 7.5% to 318 million, while the number of overseas tourists increased by 2.2% to 8.73 million.[128] As of 2019[update], the city had 71 five star hotels, 61 four star hotels, 1,758 travel agencies, 113 rated tourist attractions, and 34 red tourist attractions.[10]
+
+The conference and meeting sector is also growing. According to the International Congress and Convention Association, Shanghai hosted 82 international meetings in 2018, a 34% increase from 61 in 2017.[134][135]
+
+Shanghai is home to China (Shanghai) Pilot Free-Trade Zone, the first free-trade zone in mainland China.[136] As of October 2019[update], it is also the second largest free-trade zone in mainland China in terms of land area (behind Hainan Free Trade Zone [zh], which covers the whole Hainan province[137]) by covering an area of 240.22 km2 (92.75 sq mi) and integrating four existing bonded zones—Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone, Waigaoqiao Free Trade Logistics Park, Yangshan Free Trade Port Area, and Pudong Airport Comprehensive Free Trade Zone.[138][139] Several preferential policies have been implemented to attract foreign investment in various industries to the zone. Because the zone is not technically considered Chinese territory for tax purposes, commodities entering the zone are exempt from duty and customs clearance.[140]
+
+As of 2019[update], Shanghai had a total population of 24,281,400, including 14,504,300 (59.7%) hukou holders (registered locally).[10] According to the 2010 national census, 89.3% of Shanghai's population live in urban areas, and 10.7% live in rural areas.[143] Based on the population of its total administrative area, Shanghai is the second largest of the four municipalities of China, behind Chongqing, but is generally considered the largest Chinese city because the urban population of Chongqing is much smaller.[144] According to the OECD, Shanghai's metropolitan area has an estimated population of 34 million.[11]
+
+According to the Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau, about 157,900 residents in Shanghai are foreigners, including 28,900 Japanese, 21,900 Americans and, 20,800 Koreans.[145] However, the actual number of foreign citizens in the city is probably much higher.[146] Shanghai is also a domestic immigration city—40.3% (9.8 million) of the city's residents are from other regions of China.[10]
+
+Shanghai has a life expectancy of 83.6 years for the city's registered population,[147] the highest life expectancy of all cities in mainland China. However, this has also caused the city to experience population aging—in 2017, 33.1% (4.8 million) of the city's registered population was aged 60 or above.[148] In 2017, the Chinese government implemented population controls for Shanghai, resulting in a population decline of 10,000 people by the end of the year.[149]
+
+Due to its cosmopolitan history, Shanghai has a blend of religious heritage; religious buildings and institutions are scattered around the city. According to a 2012 survey, only 13.1% of the city's population belongs to organized religions, including Buddhists with 10.4%, Protestants with 1.9%, Catholics with 0.7%, and other faiths with 0.1%. The remaining 86.9% of the population may be either irreligious or involved in worship of nature deities and ancestors, Confucian churches, Taoism, or folk religious sects.[150]
+
+Buddhism, in its Chinese varieties, has had a presence in Shanghai since the Three Kingdoms period, during which the Longhua Temple—the largest temple in Shanghai—and the Jing'an Temple were founded.[151] Another significant temple is the Jade Buddha Temple, which was named after a large statue of Buddha carved out of jade in the temple.[152] As of 2014[update], Buddhism in Shanghai had 114 temples, 1,182 clergical staff, and 453,300 registered followers.[151] The religion also has its own college, the Shanghai Buddhist College [zh], and its own press, Shanghai Buddhological Press [zh].[153]
+
+Catholicism was brought into Shanghai in 1608 by Italian missionary Lazzaro Cattaneo.[154] The Apostolic Vicariate of Shanghai was erected in 1933, and was further elevated to the Diocese of Shanghai in 1946.[155] Notable Catholic sites include the St. Ignatius Cathedral in Xujiahui—the largest Catholic church in the city,[156] the St. Francis Xavier Church, and the She Shan Basilica.[157] Other forms of Christianity in Shanghai include Eastern Orthodox minorities and, since 1996, registered Christian Protestant churches. During World War II, thousands of Jews emigrated to Shanghai in an effort to flee Nazi Germany. They lived in a designated area called the Shanghai Ghetto and formed a community centered on the Ohel Moishe Synagogue, which is now the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum.[158]
+
+Islam came into Shanghai during the Yuan dynasty. The city's first mosque, Songjiang Mosque, was built during the Zhizheng (至正) era under Emperor Huizong. Shanghai's Muslim population increased in the 19th and early 20th centuries (when the city was a treaty port), during which time many mosques—including the Xiaotaoyuan Mosque, the Huxi Mosque, and the Pudong Mosque—were built. The Shanghai Islamic Association is located in the Xiaotaoyuan Mosque in Huangpu.[159]
+
+Shanghai has several folk religious temples, including the City God Temple at the heart of the Old City, the Dajing Ge Pavilion dedicated to the Three Kingdoms general Guan Yu, the Confucian Temple of Shanghai, and a major Taoist center Shanghai White Cloud Temple [zh] where the Shanghai Taoist Association locates.[160]
+
+The vernacular language spoken in the city is Shanghainese, a dialect of the Taihu Wu subgroup of the Wu Chinese family. This is different from the official Chinese dialect, Mandarin, which is mutually unintelligible with Wu Chinese.[162] Modern Shanghainese is based on other dialects of Taihu Wu: Suzhounese, Ningbonese, and the local dialect of Songjiang Prefecture.[163]
+
+Prior to its expansion, the language spoken in Shanghai was subordinate to those spoken around Jiaxing and later Suzhou,[163] and was known as "the local tongue" (本地闲话), which is now being used in suburbs only.[164] In the late 19th century, downtown Shanghainese (上海闲话) appeared, undergoing rapid changes and quickly replacing Suzhounese as the prestige dialect of the Yangtze River Delta region. At the time, most of the city's residents were immigrants from the two adjacent provinces, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, so Shanghainese was mostly a hybrid between Southern Jiangsu and Ningbo dialects. After 1949, Putonghua has also had a great impact on Shanghainese as a result of being rigorously promoted by the government.[163] Since the 1990s, many migrants outside of the Wu-speaking region have come to Shanghai for education and jobs. They often cannot speak the local language and therefore use Putonghua as a lingua franca. Because Putonghua and English were more favored, Shanghainese began to decline, and fluency among young speakers weakened.[165] However, in recent years, there have been movements within the city to promote the local language and protect it from fading out.[166][167]
+
+Shanghai is a major center of higher education in China. By the end of 2019, Shanghai had 64 universities and colleges, 929 secondary schools, 698 primary schools, and 31 special schools.[10] A number of China's most prestigious universities are based in Shanghai, including Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Tongji University, and East China Normal University. These universities were selected as "985 universities" by the Chinese government in order to build world-class universities.[168] Fudan University established a joint EMBA program with Washington University in St. Louis in 2002 which has since consistently been ranked as one of the best in the world.[169][170] The city government's education agency is the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission.
+
+The city has many Chinese–foreign joint education institutes [zh], such as the Shanghai University–University of Technology Sydney Business School since 1994, the University of Michigan–Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute since 2006, and New York University Shanghai—the first China–U.S. joint venture university—since 2012.[171][172] In 2013, the Shanghai Municipality and the Chinese Academy of Sciences founded the ShanghaiTech University in the Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park in Pudong.[173] Shanghai is also home to the cadre school China Executive Leadership Academy in Pudong and the China Europe International Business School.
+
+In Shanghai, the nine years of compulsory education—including five years of primary education and four years of junior secondary education—are free, with a gross enrollment ratio of over 99.9%.[10] The city's compulsory education system is among the best in the world: in 2009 and 2012, 15-year-old students from Shanghai ranked first in every subject (math, reading, and science) in the Program for International Student Assessment, a worldwide study of academic performance conducted by the OECD.[174][175] The consecutive three-year senior secondary education is priced and uses the Senior High School Entrance Examination (Zhongkao) as a selection process, with a gross enrollment ratio of 98%.[176] Among all senior high schools, the four with the best teaching quality—Shanghai High School, No. 2 High School Attached to East China Normal University, High School Affiliated to Fudan University, and High School Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University—are termed "The Four Schools" ("四校") of Shanghai.[177] As of October 2019[update], the city's National College Entrance Examination (Gaokao) is structured under the "3+3" system, in which all general senior high school students study three compulsory subjects (Chinese, English, and math) and three subjects chosen from six options (physics, chemistry, biology, history, geography, and politics).[178]
+
+Shanghai has an extensive public transportation system comprising metros, buses, ferries, and taxis, all of which can be accessed using a Shanghai Public Transport Card.[179]
+
+Shanghai's rapid transit system, the Shanghai Metro, incorporates both subway and light metro lines and extends to every core urban district as well as neighboring suburban districts. As of 2019[update], there are 17 metro lines (excluding the Shanghai maglev train and Jinshan Railway), 415 stations, and 704.91 km (438 mi) of lines in operation, making it the longest network in the world.[10] On 8 March 2019, it set the city's daily metro ridership record with 13.3 million.[180] The average fare ranges from CN¥3 (US$0.48) to CN¥9 (US$1.28), depending on the travel distance.[181]
+
+Opened in 2004, the Shanghai maglev train is the first and the fastest commercial high-speed maglev in the world, with a maximum operation speed of 430 km/h (267 mph).[182] The train can complete the 30-kilometer (19 mi) journey between Longyang Road Station and Pudong International Airport in 7 minutes 20 seconds,[183] comparing to 32 minutes by Metro Line 2[184] and 30 minutes by car.[185] A one-way ticket costs CN¥50 (US$8), or CN¥40 (US$6.40) for those with airline tickets or public transportation cards. A round-trip ticket costs CN¥80 (US$12.80), and VIP tickets cost double the standard fare.[186]
+
+With the first tram line been in service in 1908, trams were once popular in Shanghai in the early 20th century.[187] By 1925, there were 328 tramcars and 14 routes operated by Chinese, French, and British companies collaboratively,[188] all of which were nationalized after the PRC's victory in 1949. Since the 1960s, many tram lines were either dismantled or replaced by trolleybus or motorbus lines;[189] the last tram line was demolished in 1975.[190] Shanghai reintroduced trams in 2010, as a modern rubber-tire Translohr system in Zhangjiang area of East Shanghai as Zhangjiang Tram.[191] In 2018, the steel wheeled Songjiang Tram started operating in Songjiang District.[192] Additional tram lines are under planning in Hongqiao Subdistrict and Jiading District as of 2019[update].[193]
+
+Shanghai also has the world's most extensive bus network, including the world's oldest continuously operating trolleybus system, with 1,575 lines covering a total length of 8,997 km (5,590 mi) by 2019.[10] The system is operated by multiple companies.[194] Bus fares generally cost CN¥2 (US$0.32).[195]
+
+As of 2019[update], a total of 40,000 taxis were in operation in Shanghai.[10] The base fare for taxis is CN¥14 (US$2.24), which covers the first 3 km (2 mi) and includes a CN¥1 (US$0.14) fuel surcharge. The base fare is CN¥18 (US$2.55) between 11:00 pm and 5:00 am. Each additional kilometer costs CN¥2.5 (US$0.40), or CN¥3.3 (US$0.47) between 11:00 pm and 5:00 am.[196]  In addition to traditional taxis, ridesharing companies including DiDi and Uber play major roles in urban transportation. Ridesharing costs are comparable to those of taxis, and are sometimes even lower due to promotional discounts from ridesharing companies.[197]
+
+Shanghai is a major hub of China's expressway network. Many national expressways (prefixed with the letter G) pass through or end in Shanghai, including Jinghu Expressway (overlaps with Hurong Expressway), Shenhai Expressway, Hushaan Expressway, Huyu Expressway, Hukun Expressway (overlaps with Hangzhou Bay Ring Expressway), and Shanghai Ring Expressway.[198] There are also numerous municipal expressways prefixed with the letter S.[198] As of 2019, Shanghai has a total of 12 bridges and 14 tunnels crossing the Huangpu River.[199][200] The Shanghai Yangtze River Bridge is the city's only bridge–tunnel complex across Yangtze River.
+
+The expressway network within the city center consists of North–South Elevated Road, Yan'an Elevated Road, and Inner Ring Road. Other ring roads in Shanghai include Middle Ring Road, Outer Ring Expressway, and Shanghai Ring Expressway.
+
+Bicycle lanes are common in Shanghai, separating non-motorized traffic from car traffic on most surface streets. However, on some main roads, including all expressways, bicycles and motorcycles are banned. In recent years, cycling has seen a resurgence in popularity due to the emergence of a large number of dockless app-based bicycle-sharing systems, such as Mobike, Bluegogo, and ofo.[201] As of December 2018[update], these ridesharing systems have a joint average of 1.15 million daily riders within the city.[202]
+
+Private car ownership in Shanghai is rapidly increasing: in 2019, there were 3.40 million private cars in the city, a 12.5% increase from 2018.[10] New private cars cannot be driven without a license plate, which are sold in monthly license plate auctions. Around 9,500 license plates are auctioned each month, and the average price is about CN¥89,600 (US$12,739) in 2019.[203] According to the city's vehicle regulations introduced in June 2016, only locally registered residents and those who have paid social insurance or individual income taxes for over three years are eligible to be in the auction. The purpose of this policy is to limit the growth of automobile traffic and alleviate congestion.[204]
+
+Shanghai has four major railway stations: Shanghai railway station, Shanghai South railway station, Shanghai West railway station, and Shanghai Hongqiao railway station.[205] All are connected to the metro network and serve as hubs in the railway network of China.
+
+Built in 1876, the Woosung railway was the first railway in Shanghai and the first railway in operation in China[206] By 1909, Shanghai–Nanjing railway and Shanghai–Hangzhou railway were in service.[207][208] As of October 2019[update], the two railways have been integrated into two main railways in China: Beijing–Shanghai railway and Shanghai–Kunming railway, respectively.[209]
+
+Shanghai has three high-speed railways (HSRs): Beijing–Shanghai HSR (overlaps with Shanghai–Wuhan–Chengdu passenger railway), Shanghai–Nanjing intercity railway, and Shanghai–Kunming HSR. Two HSRs are under construction: Shanghai–Nantong railway and Shanghai–Suzhou–Huzhou HSR [zh].[210][211]
+
+Shanghai also has four commuter railways: Pudong railway and Jinshan Railway operated by China Railway, and Line 16 and Line 17 operated by Shanghai Metro.[212][213] As of October 2019[update], three additional lines—Chongming line, Jiamin line and Shanghai Airport Link [zh]—are under construction.[213][214]
+
+Shanghai is one of the largest air transportation hubs in Asia.[215] The city has two commercial airports: Shanghai Pudong International Airport and Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport.[216] Pudong International Airport is the primary international airport, while Hongqiao International Airport mainly operates domestic flights with limited short-haul international flights. In 2018, Pudong International Airport served 74.0 million passengers and handled 3.8 million tons of cargo, making it the ninth-busiest airport by passenger volume and third-busiest airport by cargo volume.[217] The same year, Hongqiao International Airport served 43.6 million passengers, making it the 19th-busiest airport by passenger volume.[217]
+
+Since its opening, the Port of Shanghai has rapidly grown to become the largest port in China.[218] Yangshan Port was built in 2005 because the river was unsuitable for docking large container ships. The port is connected with the mainland through the 32-kilometer (20 mi) long Donghai Bridge. Although the port is run by the Shanghai International Port Group under the government of Shanghai, it administratively belongs to Shengsi County, Zhejiang.[219]
+
+Overtaking the Port of Singapore in 2010,[220] the Port of Shanghai has become world's busiest container port with an annual TEU transportation of 42 million in 2018.[221] Besides cargo, the Port of Shanghai handled 259 cruises and 1.89 million passengers in 2019.[10]
+
+The culture of Shanghai was a combination of the nearby Wuyue culture and the "East Meets West" Haipai culture. Examples of the Wuyue culture's influence includes Shanghainese language developed from the nearby Jiaxing, Suzhou, and Ningbo dialect, and Shanghai cuisine influenced by the Jiangsu cuisine and Zhejiang cuisine.[222] The Haipai culture emerged after Shanghai became a prosperous port in the early 20th century, with numerous foreigners from Europe, America, Japan, India moving into the city.[223] The culture fuses elements of western cultures with the local Wuyue culture, and its influence extends to the city's literature, fashion, architecture, music, and even food and beverages.[224] The term Haipai—originally referring to a painting school in Shanghai—was coined by a group of Beijing writers in 1920 to criticize some Shanghai scholars for admiring capitalism and western culture.[224][225] In recent years, Shanghai has been recognized as a new influence and inspiration for cyberpunk culture.[226] Futuristic buildings such as the Oriental Pearl Tower and the neon-illuminated Yan'an Elevated Road are examples that have boosted Shanghai's cyberpunk image.
+
+Cultural curation in Shanghai has seen significant growth since 2013, with several new museums having been opened in the city.[227] This is in part due to the city's most recently released city development plans, with aims in making the city "an excellent global city".[228] As such, Shanghai has several museums[229] of regional and national importance.[230] The Shanghai Museum has one of the best collections of Chinese historical artifacts in the world, including a large collection of ancient Chinese bronzes. The China Art Museum, located in the former China Pavilion of Expo 2010, is the largest art museum in Asia. Power Station of Art is built in a converted power station, similar to London's Tate Modern. The Shanghai Natural History Museum and the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum are major natural history and science museums. In addition, there is a variety of smaller, specialist museums housed in important archaeological and historical sites such as the Songze Museum, the Museum of the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, the site of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, the former Ohel Moshe Synagogue (Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum), and the General Post Office Building (Shanghai Postal Museum). The Rockbund Art Museum is also in Shanghai. There are also many art galleries, concentrated in the M50 Art District and Tianzifang. Shanghai is also home to one of China's largest aquariums, the Shanghai Ocean Aquarium. MoCA, Museum of Contemporary Art of Shanghai, is a private museum centrally located in People's Park on West Nanjing Road, and is committed to promote contemporary art and design.
+
+Benbang cuisine (本帮菜)[231] is Shanghai's traditional cooking style originated 400 years ago under profound influence of those of the surrounding provinces. It emphasises the use of condiments and meanwhile retaining the original flavours of the raw ingredients materials. Sugar is an important ingredient in Benbang cuisine, especially when used in combination with soy sauce. Another characteristic is the use of a great variety of seafood and freshwater food. Signature dishes of Benbang cuisine include Xiaolongbao, Red braised pork belly, and Shanghai hairy crab.[232] Haipai cuisine, on the other hand, is a Western-style cooking originated in Shanghai but absorbs elements from French, British, Russian, German, and Italian cuisine and adapts them to suit the local taste according to the features of local ingredients.[233] Famous dishes of Haipai cuisine include Shanghai-style borscht (罗宋汤, "Russian soup"), crispy pork cutlets, and Shanghai salad [zh] derived from Olivier salad.[234]
+
+The Songjiang School (淞江派), containing the Huating School (华亭派) founded by Gu Zhengyi,[235] was a small painting school in Shanghai during the Ming and the Qing Dynasty.[236] It was represented by Dong Qichang.[237] The school was considered as a further development of the Wu School in Suzhou, the cultural center of the Jiangnan region at the time.[238] In the mid 19th century, the Shanghai School movement commenced, focusing less on the symbolism emphasized by the Literati style but more on the visual content of the painting through the use of bright colors. Secular objects like flowers and birds were often selected as themes.[239] Western art was introduced to Shanghai in 1847 by Spanish missionary Joannes Ferrer (范廷佐), and the city's first western atelier was established in 1864 inside the Tushanwan orphanage [zh; fr].[240] During the Republic of China, many famous artists including Zhang Daqian, Liu Haisu, Xu Beihong, Feng Zikai and Yan Wenliang settled in Shanghai thus it gradually became the art center of China. Various art forms—photography, wood carving, sculpture, comics (Manhua) and Lianhuanhua—thrived. Sanmao, one of the most well-known comics in China, was created then to dramatize the chaos brought to society by the Second Sino-Japanese War.[241] Today, the most comprehensive art and cultural facility in Shanghai is the China Art Museum. In addition, the Chinese painting academy features the Guohua,[242] while the Power Station of Art plays an important role in the contemporary art.[243] First held in 1996, the Shanghai Biennale has now become an important place for Chinese and foreign arts to interact.[244]
+
+Traditional Xiqu became the main way of entertainment for the public in the late 19th century. In the early 20th century, monologue and burlesque in Shanghainese appeared in Shanghai, absorbing elements from traditional dramas. The Great World opened in 1912 is a significant stage at the time.[245] In 1920s, Pingtan expanded from Suzhou to Shanghai.[246] With the abundant commercial radio stations, Pingtan art developed rapidly to 103 programs every day by the 1930s. At the same time, Shanghai also formed a Shanghai-style Beijing Opera led by Zhou Xinfang and Gai Jiaotian [zh], and attracted many Xiqu masters like Mei Lanfang to the city.[247] At the same time, a small troupe from Shengxian (now Shengzhou) also began to promote Yue opera on the Shanghainese stage.[248] A unique style of opera, Shanghai opera, is formed when the local folksongs collided with modern operas.[249] As of 2012, the well-known Xiqu troupes in Shanghai include Shanghai Jingju Theatre Company, Shanghai Kunqu Opera Troupe [zh], Shanghai Yue Opera House and Shanghai Huju Opera House.[250]
+
+Drama appeared in missionary schools in Shanghai in the late 19th century. Back then, it was mainly performed in English. Scandals in Officialdom (官场丑史), staged in 1899, was one of the earliest recorded plays.[251] In 1907, Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly (黑奴吁天录) was performed at the Lyceum Theatre [zh].[252] After the New Culture Movement, drama had become a popular way for students and intellectuals to express their views. Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre, Shanghai Opera House and Shanghai Theatre Academy are four major institutes of theater training in Shanghai. Notable theaters in Shanghai include the Shanghai Grand Theatre, the Oriental Art Center and the People's Theatre.
+
+Shanghai is considered to be the birthplace of Chinese cinema.[253] China's first short film, The Difficult Couple (1913), and the country's first fictional feature film, An Orphan Rescues His Grandfather (孤儿救祖记, 1923)[254] were both produced in Shanghai. Shanghai's film industry went on to blossom during the early 1930s, generating great stars such as Hu Die, Ruan Lingyu, Zhou Xuan, Jin Yan, and Zhao Dan. Another film star, Jiang Qing, went on to become Madame Mao Zedong. The exile of Shanghainese filmmakers and actors as a result of the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Communist revolution contributed enormously to the development of the Hong Kong film industry.[255] The movie In the Mood for Love directed by Wong Kar-wai, a native Shanghainese, depicts a slice of the displaced Shanghainese community in Hong Kong and the nostalgia for that era, featuring 1940s music by Zhou Xuan.[256]
+
+Since 2001, Shanghai has held its own fashion week called Shanghai Fashion Week twice every year in April and October. The April session is a part of the Shanghai International Fashion Culture Festival, which usually lasts for a month, while Shanghai Fashion Week lasts for seven days, and the main venue is in Fuxing Park, Shanghai, while the opening and closing ceremony is in Shanghai Fashion Center.[257] Supported by the People's Republic Ministry of Commerce, Shanghai Fashion Week is a major business and culture event of national significance hosted by the Shanghai Municipal Government. Shanghai Fashion Week is aiming to build up an international and professional platform, gathering all of the top design talents of Asia.
+The event features international designers but the primary purpose is to showcase Chinese designers.[258] The international presence has included many of the most promising young British fashion designers.[259]
+
+Shanghai is home to several soccer teams, including two in the Chinese Super League: Shanghai Greenland Shenhua F.C. and Shanghai SIPG F.C.. China's top-tier basketball team, the Shanghai Sharks of the Chinese Basketball Association, developed Yao Ming before he entered the NBA. Shanghai also has an ice hockey team, China Dragon, and a baseball team, the Shanghai Golden Eagles, which plays in the China Baseball League.
+
+The Shanghai Cricket Club dates back to 1858 when the first recorded cricket match was played between a team of British Naval officers and a Shanghai 11. Following a 45-year dormancy after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the club was re-established in 1994 by expatriates living in the city and has since grown to over 300 members. The Shanghai cricket team was a cricket team that played various international matches between 1866 and 1948. With cricket in the rest of China almost non-existent, for that period they were the de facto China national cricket team.[260]
+
+Shanghai is home to many prominent Chinese professional athletes, such as basketball player Yao Ming, 110-meter hurdler Liu Xiang, table tennis player Wang Liqin, and badminton player Wang Yihan.
+
+Shanghai is the annual host of several international sports events. Since 2004, it has hosted the annual Chinese Grand Prix, a round of the Formula One World Championship. The race is staged annually at the Shanghai International Circuit.[261] It hosted the 1000th Formula One race on 14 April 2019. In 2010, Shanghai also became the host city of Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM), which raced in a street circuit in Pudong. In 2012, Shanghai started to host 6 Hours of Shanghai as one round from the inaugural season of the FIA World Endurance Championship. The city also hosts the Shanghai Masters tennis tournament, which is part of ATP World Tour Masters 1000, as well as golf tournaments including the BMW Masters and WGC-HSBC Champions.[262]
+
+On 21 September 2017, Shanghai hosted a National Hockey League (NHL) ice hockey exhibition game in an effort to increase fan interest for the 2017–18 NHL season.[263]
+
+Shanghai has an extensive public park system; by 2018, the city had 300 parks, of which 281 had free admission, and the per capita park area was 8.2 m2 (88 sq ft).[264] Some of the parks also have become popular tourist attractions due to their unique location, history, or architecture.
+
+The People's Square park, located in the heart of downtown Shanghai, is especially well known for its proximity to other major landmarks in the city. Fuxing Park, located in the former French Concession, features formal French-style gardens and is surrounded by high-end bars and cafes.[265]
+
+Zhongshan Park in western central Shanghai is famous for its monument of Chopin, the tallest statue dedicated to the composer in the world.[266] Built in 1914 as Jessfield Park, it once contained the campus of St. John's University, Shanghai's first international college; today, the park features sakura and peony gardens and a 150-year-old platanus,[267] and it also serves as an interchange hub in the metro system.[268]
+
+One of Shanghai's newer parks is the Xujiahui Park, which was built in 1999, on the former grounds of the Great Chinese Rubber Works Factory and the EMI Recording Studio (now La Villa Rouge restaurant). The park has an artificial lake with a sky bridge running across the park.[269] Shanghai Botanical Garden is located 12 km (7 mi) southwest of the city center and was established in 1978. In 2011, the largest botanical garden in Shanghai—Shanghai Chen Shan Botanical Garden—opened in Songjiang District.[270]
+
+Other notable parks in Shanghai include Lu Xun Park, Century Park, Gucun Park [zh], Gongqing Forest Park, and Jing'an Park.
+
+The Shanghai Disney Resort Project was approved by the government on 4 November 2009[271] and opened in 2016.[272]
+The $4.4 billion theme park and resort in Pudong features a castle that is the biggest among Disney's resorts.[273] More than 11 million people visited the resort in its first year of operation.[274]
+
+Air pollution in Shanghai is not as severe as in many other Chinese cities, but is still considered substantial by world standards.[275] During the December 2013 Eastern China smog, air pollution rates reached between 23 and 31 times the international standard.[276][277] On 6 December 2013, levels of PM2.5 particulate matter in Shanghai rose above 600 micrograms per cubic meter and in the surrounding area, above 700 micrograms per cubic metre.[277] Levels of PM2.5 in Putuo District reached 726 micrograms per cubic meter.[278][279] As a result, the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission received orders to suspend students' outdoor activities. Authorities pulled nearly one-third of government vehicles from the roads, while much construction work was halted. Most inbound flights were canceled, and more than 50 flights at Pudong International Airport were diverted.[280]
+
+On 23 January 2014, Yang Xiong, the mayor of Shanghai, announced that three main measures would be taken to manage the air pollution in Shanghai, along with surrounding Anhui, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang provinces.[281] The measures involved implementing the 2013 air-cleaning program, establishing a linkage mechanism with the three surrounding provinces, and improving the city's early-warning systems.[281] On 12 February 2014, China's cabinet announced that a CN¥10 billion (US$1.7 billion) fund will be set up to help companies meet the new environmental standards.[282] The effect of the policy was significant. From 2013 to 2018, more than 3,000 treatment facilities for industrial waste gases were installed, and the city's annual smoke, nitrogen oxide, and sulfur dioxide emission decreased by 65%, 54%, and 95%, respectively.[283][284]
+
+Public awareness of the environment is growing, and the city is investing in a number of environmental protection projects. A 14-year cleanup of Suzhou Creek, which runs through the city, was finished in 2012, and 1.3 million cubic meters of sludge were removed.[285] Additionally, the government has moved almost all the factories within the city center to either the outskirts or other provinces,[286] and provided incentives for transportation companies to invest in LPG buses and taxis.
+
+On 1 July 2019, Shanghai adopted a new garbage-classification system that sorts out waste into residual waste, kitchen waste, recyclable waste, and hazardous waste.[287] The wastes are collected by separate vehicles and sent to incineration plants, landfills, recycling centers, and hazardous-waste-disposal facilities, respectively.[288]
+
+Media in Shanghai [zh] covers newspapers, publisher, broadcast, television, and Internet, with some media having influence over the whole country. In regard to foreign publications in Shanghai, Hartmut Walravens of the IFLA Newspapers Section said that when the Japanese controlled Shanghai in the 1940s "it was very difficult to publish good papers – one either had to concentrate on emigration problems, or cooperate like the Chronicle".[289]
+
+As of March 2020[update], newspapers publishing in Shanghai include:
+
+Newspapers formerly published in Shanghai include:
+
+The city's main broadcaster is Shanghai Media Group.
+
+The city is the home of the New Development Bank, a multilateral development bank established by the BRICS states, and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a Eurasian political, economic, and security organization.
+
+As of April 2020[update], Shanghai is twinned with the following regions, cities, and counties:[294]
+
+aDirect-administered Municipalities.
+bSub-provincial cities as provincial capitals.
+cSeparate state-planning cities.
+1Special economic-zone Cities.
+2Open Coastal Cities.
+3Prefecture capital status established by Heilongjiang Province and not recognized by Ministry of Civil Affairs. Disputed by Oroqen Autonomous Banner, Hulunbuir, Inner Mongolia as part of it.
+4Only administers islands and waters in South China Sea and have no urban core comparable to typical cities in China.
+5The claimed province of Taiwan no longer have any internal division announced by Ministry of Civil Affairs of PRC, due to lack of actual jurisdiction. See Template:Administrative divisions of Taiwan instead.

en/5377.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,263 @@
+
+
+Shanghai (Chinese: 上海, Shanghainese pronunciation: [zɑ̃.hɛ] (listen), Standard Mandarin pronunciation: [ʂâŋ.xài] (listen)) is one of the four municipalities of the People's Republic of China. It is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze, with the Huangpu River flowing through it. With a population of 24.28 million as of 2019[update], it is the most populous urban area in China and the second most populous city proper in the world. Greater Shanghai is a global center for finance, technology, innovation and transportation and the Port of Shanghai is the world's busiest container port.
+
+Originally a fishing village and market town, Shanghai grew in importance in the 19th century due to trade and its favorable port location. The city was one of five treaty ports forced open to foreign trade after the First Opium War. The Shanghai International Settlement and the French Concession were subsequently established. The city then flourished, becoming a primary commercial and financial hub of the Asia-Pacific region in the 1930s. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the city was the site of the major Battle of Shanghai. After the war, with the CPC takeover of mainland China in 1949, trade was limited to other socialist countries and the city's global influence declined.
+
+In the 1990s, economic reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping resulted in an intense redevelopment of the city, especially the Pudong district, aiding the return of finance and foreign investment to the city. The city has since re-emerged as a hub for international trade and finance; it is the home of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, one of the largest stock exchanges in the world by market capitalization and the Shanghai Free-Trade Zone, the first free-trade zone in China.
+
+Shanghai has been described as the "showpiece" of the booming economy of China. Featuring several architecture styles such as Art Deco and shikumen, the city is renowned for its Lujiazui skyline, museums and historic buildings—including the City God Temple, Yu Garden, the China Pavilion and buildings along the Bund. Shanghai is also known for its sugary cuisine, distinctive dialect and vibrant international flair. Every year, the city hosts numerous national and international events, including Shanghai Fashion Week, the Chinese Grand Prix and ChinaJoy.
+
+Shanghai is governed as one of the four municipalities under the direct administration of Chinese central government and is thus under direct administration of the State Council.
+
+The two Chinese characters in the city's name are 上 (shàng/zan, "upon") and 海 (hǎi/hae, "sea"), together meaning "Upon the Sea". The earliest occurrence of this name dates from the 11th-century Song dynasty, when there was already a river confluence and a town with this name in the area. How the name should be understood has been disputed, but Chinese historians have concluded that during the Tang dynasty, the area of modern-day Shanghai was under the sea level, so the land appeared to be literally "on the sea".[13]
+Shanghai is officially abbreviated 沪[a] (Hù/Vu2) in Chinese, a contraction of 沪渎[b] (Hù Dú/Vu Doh, "Harpoon Ditch"), a 4th- or 5th-century Jin name for the mouth of Suzhou Creek when it was the main conduit into the ocean.[16] This character appears on all motor vehicle license plates issued in the municipality today.[17]
+
+申 (Shēn) or 申城 (Shēnchéng, "Shen City") was an early name originating from Lord Chunshen, a 3rd-century BC nobleman and prime minister of the state of Chu, whose fief included modern Shanghai.[16] Shanghainese sports teams and newspapers often use Shen in their names, such as Shanghai Shenhua F.C. and Shen Bao.
+
+华亭[c] (Huátíng) was another early name for Shanghai. In AD 751 during the mid-Tang dynasty, Huating County was established by Zhao Juzhen, the governor of Wu Commandery, at modern-day Songjiang, the first county-level administration within modern-day Shanghai. The first five-star hotel in the city was named after Huating.[18]
+
+魔都 (Módū, "Magical City"), a contemporary nickname for Shanghai, is widely known among the youth.[19] The name was first mentioned in Shōfu Muramatsu's 1924 novel Mato, which portrayed Shanghai as a dichotomic city where both light and darkness existed.[20]
+
+The city has various nicknames in English, including "Pearl of the Orient" and "Paris of the East".[21][22]
+
+The western part of modern-day Shanghai was inhabited 6000 years ago.[23] During the Spring and Autumn period (approximately 771 to 476 BC), it belonged to the Kingdom of Wu, which was conquered by the Kingdom of Yue, which in turn was conquered by the Kingdom of Chu.[24] During the Warring States period (475 BC), Shanghai was part of the fief of Lord Chunshen of Chu, one of the Four Lords of the Warring States. He ordered the excavation of the Huangpu River. Its former or poetic name, the Chunshen River, gave Shanghai its nickname of "Shēn".[24] Fishermen living in the Shanghai area then created a fish tool called the hù, which lent its name to the outlet of Suzhou Creek north of the Old City and became a common nickname and abbreviation for the city.[25]
+
+During the Tang and Song dynasties, Qinglong Town (青龙镇[d]) in modern Qingpu District was a major trading port. Established in 746 (the fifth year of the Tang Tianbao era), it developed into what historically called a "giant town of the Southeast", with thirteen temples and seven pagodas. Mi Fu, a scholar and artist of the Song dynasty, served as its mayor. The port experienced thriving trade with provinces along the Yangtze and the Chinese coast, as well as with foreign countries such as Japan and Silla.[2]
+
+By the end of the Song dynasty, the center of trading had moved downstream of the Wusong River to Shanghai.[26] It was upgraded in status from a village to a market town in 1074, and in 1172, a second sea wall was built to stabilize the ocean coastline, supplementing an earlier dike.[27] From the Yuan dynasty in 1292 until Shanghai officially became a municipality in 1927, central Shanghai was administered as a county under Songjiang Prefecture, which had its seat in the present-day Songjiang District.[28]
+
+Two important events helped promote Shanghai's developments in the Ming dynasty. A city wall was built for the first time in 1554 to protect the town from raids by Japanese pirates. It measured 10 m (33 ft) high and 5 km (3 mi) in circumference.[29] A City God Temple was built in 1602 during the Wanli reign. This honor was usually reserved for prefectural capitals and not normally given to a mere county seat such as Shanghai. Scholars have theorized that this likely reflected the town's economic importance, as opposed to its low political status.[29]
+
+During the Qing dynasty, Shanghai became one of the most important sea ports in the Yangtze Delta region as a result of two important central government policy changes: in 1684, the Kangxi Emperor reversed the Ming dynasty prohibition on oceangoing vessels—a ban that had been in force since 1525; and in 1732, the Qianlong Emperor moved the customs office for Jiangsu province (江海关;[e] see Customs House, Shanghai) from the prefectural capital of Songjiang to Shanghai, and gave Shanghai exclusive control over customs collections for Jiangsu's foreign trade. As a result of these two critical decisions, Shanghai became the major trade port for all of the lower Yangtze region by 1735, despite still being at the lowest administrative level in the political hierarchy.[30]
+
+In the 19th century, international attention to Shanghai grew due to European recognition of its economic and trade potential at the Yangtze. During the First Opium War (1839–1842), British forces occupied the city.[31] The war ended in 1842 with the Treaty of Nanking, which opened Shanghai as one of the five treaty ports for international trade.[32] The Treaty of the Bogue, the Treaty of Wanghia, and the Treaty of Whampoa (signed in 1843, 1844, and 1844, respectively) forced Chinese concession to European and American desires for visitation and trade on Chinese soil. Britain, France, and the United States all carved out outside the walled city of Shanghai, which was still ruled by the Chinese.[33]
+
+The Chinese-held Old City of Shanghai fell to rebels from the Small Swords Society in 1853, but was recovered by the Qing government in February 1855.[34] In 1854, the Shanghai Municipal Council was created to manage the foreign settlements. Between 1860 and 1862, the Taiping rebels twice attacked Shanghai and destroyed the city's eastern and southern suburbs, but failed to take the city.[35] In 1863, the British settlement to the south of Suzhou Creek (northern Huangpu District) and the American settlement to the north (southern Hongkou District) joined in order to form the Shanghai International Settlement. The French opted out of the Shanghai Municipal Council and maintained its own concession to the south and southwest.[36]
+
+The First Sino-Japanese War concluded with the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki, which elevated Japan to become another foreign power in Shanghai. Japan built the first factories in Shanghai, which was soon copied by other foreign powers. All this international activity gave Shanghai the nickname "the Great Athens of China".[37] In 1914, the Old City walls were dismantled because they blocked the city's expansion. In July 1921, the Communist Party of China was founded in the French Concession.[33] On May 30, 1925, the May Thirtieth Movement broke out when a worker in a Japanese-owned cotton mill was shot and killed by a Japanese foreman.[38] Workers in the city then launched general strikes against imperialism, which became nation-wide protests that gave rise to Chinese nationalism.[39]
+
+The golden age of Shanghai began with its elevation to municipality on 7 July 1927.[33][40] This new Chinese municipality covered an area of 494.69 km2 (191.0 sq mi), including the modern-day districts of Baoshan, Yangpu, Zhabei, Nanshi, and Pudong, but excluded the foreign concessions territories.[40] Headed by a Chinese mayor and municipal council, the new city government's first task—the Greater Shanghai Plan—was to create a new city center in Jiangwan town of Yangpu district, outside the boundaries of the foreign concessions. The plan included a public museum, library, sports stadium, and city hall, which were partially constructed before being interrupted by the Japanese invasion.[41]
+
+The city flourished, becoming a primary commercial and financial hub of the Asia-Pacific region in the 1930s.[42] During the ensuing decades, citizens of many countries and all continents came to Shanghai to live and work; those who stayed for long periods⁠⁠—some for generations⁠—called themselves "Shanghailanders".[43] In the 1920s and 1930s, almost 20,000 White Russians fled the newly established Soviet Union to reside in Shanghai.[44] These Shanghai Russians constituted the second-largest foreign community. By 1932, Shanghai had become the world's fifth largest city and home to 70,000 foreigners.[45] In the 1930s, some 30,000 Ashkenazi Jewish refugees from Europe arrived in the city.[46]
+
+Shanghai filmed in 1937
+
+The Bund in the late 1920s seen from the French Concession
+
+Nanking Road (modern-day East Nanjing Road) in the 1930s
+
+Shanghai Park Hotel was the tallest building in Asia for decades
+
+Former Shanghai Library
+
+The HSBC Building built in 1923 and the Customs House built in 1927
+
+On 28 January 1932, Japanese forces invaded Shanghai while the Chinese resisted. More than 10,000 shops and hundreds of factories were destroyed, leaving Zhabei district ruined. About 18,000 civilians were either killed, injured, or declared missing.[33] A ceasefire was brokered on 5 May.[47] In 1937, the Battle of Shanghai resulted in the occupation of the Chinese-administered parts of Shanghai outside of the International Settlement and the French Concession. People who stayed in the occupied city suffered on a daily basis, experiencing hunger, oppression, or even death.[48] The foreign concessions were ultimately occupied by the Japanese on 8 December 1941 and remained occupied until Japan's surrender in 1945; multiple war crimes were committed during that time.[49]
+
+A side-effect of the Japanese invasion of Shanghai was the Shanghai Ghetto. Japanese consul to Kaunas, Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara issued thousands of visas to Jewish refugees who were escaping the Nazi's Final Solution to the Jewish Question. They traveled from Keidan, Lithuania across Russia by railroad to the Vladivostok from where they traveled by ship to Kobe, Japan. However, the Jewish refugees' stay in Kobe was short as the Japanese government transferred them to Shanghai by November, 1941. Other Jewish refugees found haven in Shanghai, not through Sugihara, but came on ships from Italy. The refugees from Europe were interned into a cramped ghetto in the Hongkou District,[50] and after the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor, even the Iraqi Jews who had been living in Shanghai from before the outbreak of WWII were interned. Among the refugees in the Shanghai Ghetto was the Mirrer Yeshiva, including its students and faculty. On September 3, 1945, the Chinese Army liberated the Ghetto and most of the Jews left over the next few years. By 1957, there were only one hundred Jews remaining in Shanghai.
+
+On 27 May 1949, the People's Liberation Army took control of Shanghai through the Shanghai Campaign. Under the new People's Republic of China (PRC), Shanghai was one of only three municipalities not merged into neighboring provinces (the others being Beijing and Tianjin).[51] Most foreign firms moved their offices from Shanghai to Hong Kong, as part of a foreign divestment due to the PRC's victory.[52]
+
+After the war, Shanghai's economy was restored—from 1949 to 1952, the city's agricultural and industrial output increased by 51.5% and 94.2%, respectively.[33] There were 20 urban districts and 10 suburbs at the time.[53] On 17 January 1958, Jiading, Baoshan, and Shanghai County in Jiangsu became part of Shanghai Municipality, which expanded to 863 km2 (333.2 sq mi). The following December, the land area of Shanghai was further expanded to 5,910 km2 (2,281.9 sq mi) after more surrounding suburban areas in Jiangsu were added: Chongming, Jinshan, Qingpu, Fengxian, Chuansha, and Nanhui.[54] In 1964, the city's administrative divisions were rearranged to 10 urban districts and 10 counties.[53]
+
+As the industrial center of China with most skilled industrial workers, Shanghai became a center for radical leftism during the 1950s and 1960s. The radical leftist Jiang Qing and her three allies, together the Gang of Four, were based in the city.[55] During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), Shanghai's society was severely damaged, with 310,000 wrongful convictions involving more than 1 million people. About 11,500 people were unjustly persecuted to death. Yet, even during the most tumultuous times of the revolution, Shanghai was able to maintain economic production with positive annual growth rate.[33]
+
+Since 1949, Shanghai has been a comparatively heavy contributor of tax revenue to the central government; in 1983, the city's contribution in tax revenue was greater than investment received in the past 33 years combined.[56] T. Its importance to the fiscal well-being of the central government also denied it from economic liberalizations begun in 1978. In 1990, Deng Xiaoping finally permitted Shanghai to initiate economic reforms, which reintroduced foreign capital to the city and developed the Pudong district, resulting in the birth of Lujiazui.[57]
+
+Shanghai is located on the Yangtze Estuary of China's east coast, with the Yangtze River to the north and Hangzhou Bay to the south. The land is formed by the Yangtze's natural deposition and modern land reclamation projects. As such, it has sandy soil, and skyscrapers are to be built with deep concrete piles to avoid sinking into the soft ground.[58] The provincial-level Municipality of Shanghai administers both the estuary and many of its surrounding islands. It is roughly equidistant from Beijing and Guangzhou, bordering the East China Sea to the east, Zhejiang to the south, and Jiangsu to the west and north.[59] The municipality's northernmost point is on Chongming Island, which is the second-largest island in mainland China after its expansion during the 20th century.[60] However, it does not include an exclave of Jiangsu on northern Chongming or the two islands forming Shanghai's Yangshan Port, which are parts of Zhejiang's Shengsi County.
+
+Shanghai is located on an alluvial plain. As such, the vast majority of its 6,340.5 km2 (2,448.1 sq mi) land area is flat, with an average elevation of 4 m (13 ft).[9] The city's few hills, such as She Shan, lie to the southwest, and its highest point is the peak of Dajinshan Island (103 m or 338 ft) in Hangzhou Bay.[9] Shanghai has many rivers, canals, streams, and lakes, and it is known for its rich water resources as part of the Lake Tai drainage basin.[7]
+
+Downtown Shanghai is bisected by the Huangpu River, a man-made tributary of the Yangtze created by order of Lord Chunshen during the Warring States period.[24] The historic center of the city was located on the west bank of the Huangpu (Puxi), near the mouth of Suzhou Creek, connecting it with Lake Tai and the Grand Canal. The central financial district, Lujiazui, has been established on the east bank of the Huangpu (Pudong). Along Shanghai's eastern shore, the destruction of local wetlands due to the construction of Pudong International Airport has been partially offset by the protection and expansion of a nearby shoal, Jiuduansha, as a nature preserve.[61]
+
+Shanghai has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa), with an average annual temperature of 15.8 °C (60.4 °F) for urban districts and 15.2–15.7 °C (59.4–60.3 °F) for suburbs.[58] The city experiences four distinct seasons. Winters are chilly and damp—northwesterly winds from Siberia can cause nighttime temperatures to drop below freezing. Each year, there are an average of 6.2 days with snowfall and 2.8 days with snow cover.[58] Summers are hot and humid, and occasional downpours or freak thunderstorms can be expected. On average, 8.7 days exceed 35 °C (95 °F) annually. In summer and the beginning of autumn, the city is susceptible to typhoons.[62]
+
+The most pleasant seasons are generally spring, although changeable and often rainy, and autumn, which is usually sunny and dry. With monthly percent possible sunshine ranging from 34% in March to 54% in August, the city receives 1,895 hours of bright sunshine annually. Extremes since 1951 have ranged from −10.1 °C (14 °F) on 31 January 1977 (unofficial record of −12.1 °C (10 °F) was set on 19 January 1893) to 40.9 °C (106 °F) on 21 July 2017 at a weather station in Xujiahui.[63][64]
+
+Shanghai has a rich collection of buildings and structures of various architectural styles. The Bund, located by the bank of the Huangpu River, is home to a row of early 20th-century architecture, ranging in style from the neoclassical HSBC Building to the Art Deco Sassoon House (now part of the Peace Hotel). Many areas in the former foreign concessions are also well-preserved, the most notable being the French Concession.[66] Shanghai is also home to many architecturally distinctive and even eccentric buildings, including the Shanghai Museum, the Shanghai Grand Theatre, the Shanghai Oriental Art Center, and the Oriental Pearl Tower. Despite rampant redevelopment, the Old City still retains some traditional architecture and designs, such as the Yu Garden, an elaborate Jiangnan style garden.[67]
+
+As a result of its construction boom during the 1920s and 1930s, Shanghai has among the most Art Deco buildings in the world.[66] One of the most famous architects working in Shanghai was László Hudec, a Hungarian-Slovak who lived in the city between 1918 and 1947.[68] His most notable Art Deco buildings include the Park Hotel, the Grand Theatre, and the Paramount.[69] Other prominent architects who contributed to the Art Deco style are Clement Palmer and Arthur Turner, who together designed the Peace Hotel, the Metropole Hotel, and the Broadway Mansions;[70] and Austrian architect GH Gonda, who designed the Capitol Theater. The Bund has been revitalized several times. The first was in 1986, with a new promenade by the Dutch architect Paulus Snoeren.[71] The second was before the 2010 Expo, which includes restoration of the century-old Waibaidu Bridge and reconfiguration of traffic flow.[72]
+
+One uniquely Shanghainese cultural element is the shikumen (石库门, "stone storage door") residence, typically two- or three-story gray brick houses with the front yard protected by a heavy wooden door in a stylistic stone arch.[73] Each residence is connected and arranged in straight alleys, known as longtang[f] (弄堂). The house is similar to western-style terrace houses or townhouses, but distinguishes by the tall, heavy brick wall and archway in front of each house.[75]
+
+The shikumen is a cultural blend of elements found in Western architecture with traditional Jiangnan Chinese architecture and social behavior.[73] Like almost all traditional Chinese dwellings, it has a courtyard, which reduces outside noise. Vegetation can be grown in the courtyard, and it can also allow for sunlight and ventilation to the rooms.[76]
+
+Some of Shanghai's buildings feature Soviet neoclassical architecture or Stalinist architecture, though the city has fewer such structures than Beijing. These buildings were mostly erected between the founding of the People's Republic in 1949 and the Sino-Soviet Split in the late 1960s. During this time period, large numbers of Soviet experts, including architects, poured into China to aid the country in the construction of a communist state. An example of Soviet neoclassical architecture in Shanghai is the modern-day Shanghai Exhibition Center.[77]
+
+Shanghai—Lujiazui in particular—has numerous skyscrapers, making it the fifth city in the world with the most skyscrapers.[78] Among the most prominent examples are the 421 m (1,381 ft) high Jin Mao Tower, the 492 m (1,614 ft) high Shanghai World Financial Center, and the 632 m (2,073 ft) high Shanghai Tower, which is the tallest building in China and the second tallest in the world.[79] Completed in 2015, the tower takes the form of nine twisted sections stacked atop each other, totaling 128 floors.[80] It is featured in its double-skin facade design, which eliminates the need for either layer to be opaqued for reflectivity as the double-layer structure has already reduced the heat absorption.[81] The futuristic-looking Oriental Pearl Tower, at 468 m (1,535 ft), is located nearby at the northern tip of Lujiazui.[82] Skyscrapers outside of Lujiazui include the White Magnolia Plaza in Hongkou, the Shimao International Plaza in Huangpu, and the Shanghai Wheelock Square in Jing'an.
+
+The Shanghai Museum
+
+The Shanghai Grand Theater
+
+The Shanghai Exhibition Center, an example of Stalinist architecture
+
+The Oriental Pearl Tower at night
+
+Shanghai Tower
+
+Like virtually all governing institutions in mainland China, Shanghai has a parallel party-government system,[86] in which the Party Committee Secretary, officially termed the Communist Party of China Shanghai Municipal Committee Secretary, outranks the Mayor.[87] The party's committee [zh] acts as the top policy-formulation body, and is typically composed of 12 members (including the secretary).[88][89]
+
+Political power in Shanghai has frequently been a stepping stone to higher positions in the central government. Since Jiang Zemin became the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China in June 1989, all former Shanghai party secretaries but one were elevated to the Politburo Standing Committee, the de facto highest decision-making body in China,[86] including Jiang himself (Party General Secretary),[90] Zhu Rongji (Premier),[91] Wu Bangguo (Chairman of the National People's Congress),[92] Huang Ju (Vice Premier),[93] Xi Jinping (current General Secretary),[94] Yu Zhengsheng,[95] and Han Zheng.[96] Zeng Qinghong, a former deputy party secretary of Shanghai, also rose to the Politburo Standing Committee and became the Vice President and an influential power broker.[97] The only exception is Chen Liangyu, who was fired in 2006 and later convicted of corruption.[98]
+
+Officials with ties to the Shanghai administration collectively form a powerful faction in the central government known as the Shanghai Clique, which has often been viewed to compete against the rival Youth League Faction over personnel appointments and policy decisions.[99] However, Xi Jinping, successor to Hu Jintao as General Secretary and President, was largely an independent leader and took anti-corruption campaigns on both factions.[100]
+
+Shanghai is one of the four municipalities under the direct administration of the Government of the People's Republic of China,[101] and is divided into 16 county-level districts.
+
+Although every district has its own urban core, the city hall and major administrative units are located in Huangpu District, which also serves as a commercial area, including the famous Nanjing Road. Other major commercial areas include Xintiandi and Huaihai Road[g] in Huangpu District, and Xujiahui[h] in Xuhui District. Many universities in Shanghai are located in residential areas in Yangpu District and Putuo District.
+
+Seven of the districts govern Puxi (lit. "The West Bank", or "West of the River Pu"), the older part of urban Shanghai on the west bank of the Huangpu River. These seven districts are collectively referred to as Shanghai Proper (上海市区) or the core city (市中心), which comprise Huangpu, Xuhui, Changning, Jing'an, Putuo, Hongkou, and Yangpu.
+
+Pudong (lit. "The East Bank", or "East of the River Pu"), the newer part of urban and suburban Shanghai on the east bank of the Huangpu River, is governed by Pudong New Area (浦东新区).[i]
+
+Seven of the districts govern suburbs, satellite towns, and rural areas farther away from the urban core: Baoshan,[j] Minhang,[k] Jiading,[l] Jinshan,[m] Songjiang,[n] Qingpu,[o] and Fengxian.[p]
+
+Chongming District comprises the islands of Changxing and Hengsha and most—but not all[q]—of Chongming Island.
+
+The former district of Nanhui was absorbed into Pudong District in 2009. In 2011, Luwan District merged with Huangpu District. As of 2015[update], these county-level divisions are further divided into the following 210 township-level divisions: 109 towns, 2 townships, and 99 subdistricts. Those are in turn divided into the following village-level divisions: 3,661 neighborhood committees and 1,704 village committees.[107]
+
+Shanghai has been described as the "showpiece" of the booming economy of China.[108][109] The city is a global center for finance and innovation,[110][111] and a national center for commerce, trade, and transportation,[112] with the world's busiest container port—the Port of Shanghai.[113] As of 2019[update], Shanghai had a GDP of CN¥3.82 trillion (US$539 billion) that makes up 3.85% of China's GDP,[10][114] and a GDP per capita of CN¥157,138 (US$22,186).[10] Shanghai's six largest industries—retail, finance, IT, real estate, machine manufacturing, and automotive manufacturing—comprise about half the city's GDP.[115] In 2019, the average annual disposable income of Shanghai's residents was CN¥69,442 (US$9,808) per capita, making it one of the wealthiest cities in China,[10] but also the most expensive city in mainland China to live in according to a 2017 study by the Economist Intelligence Unit.[116]
+
+Shanghai was the largest and most prosperous city in East Asia during the 1930s, and rapid redevelopment began in the 1990s.[42] In the last two decades, Shanghai has been one of the fastest-developing cities in the world; it has recorded double-digit GDP growth in almost every year between 1992 and 2008, before the financial crisis of 2007–08.[123]
+
+Shanghai is a global financial center, ranking fourth in the 26th edition of the Global Financial Centres Index (and third in Asia, after Singapore and Hong Kong),[124] published in September 2019 by Z/Yen and China Development Institute.[125] As of 2019[update], the Shanghai Stock Exchange had a market capitalization of US$4.02 trillion, making it the largest stock exchange in China and the fourth-largest stock exchange in the world.[126] In 2009, the trading volume of six key commodities—including rubber, copper, and zinc—on the Shanghai Futures Exchange all ranked first globally.[127] By the end of 2017, Shanghai had 1,491 financial institutions, of which 251 were foreign-invested.[128]
+
+In September 2013 with the backing of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, the city launched the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free-Trade Zone—the first free-trade zone in mainland China. The zone introduced a number of pilot reforms designed to incentivize foreign investment. In April 2014, The Banker reported that Shanghai "has attracted the highest volumes of financial sector foreign direct investment in the Asia-Pacific region in the 12 months to the end of January 2014".[129] In August 2014, fDi magazine named Shanghai the "Chinese Province of the Future 2014/15" due to "particularly impressive performances in the Business Friendliness and Connectivity categories, as well as placing second in the Economic Potential and Human Capital and Lifestyle categories".[130]
+
+As one of the main industrial centers of China, Shanghai plays a key role in domestic manufacturing and heavy industry. Several industrial zones—including Shanghai Hongqiao Economic and Technological Development Zone, Jinqiao Export Economic Processing Zone, Minhang Economic and Technological Development Zone, and Shanghai Caohejing High-Tech Development Zone—are backbones of Shanghai's secondary industry. Shanghai is home to China's largest steelmaker Baosteel Group, China's largest shipbuilding base Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding Group, and one of China's oldest shipbuilders, the Jiangnan Shipyard.[131][132] Auto manufacturing is another important industry. The Shanghai-based SAIC Motor is one of the three largest automotive corporations in China, and has strategic partnerships with Volkswagen and General Motors.[133]
+
+Tourism is a major industry of Shanghai. In 2017, the number of domestic tourists increased by 7.5% to 318 million, while the number of overseas tourists increased by 2.2% to 8.73 million.[128] As of 2019[update], the city had 71 five star hotels, 61 four star hotels, 1,758 travel agencies, 113 rated tourist attractions, and 34 red tourist attractions.[10]
+
+The conference and meeting sector is also growing. According to the International Congress and Convention Association, Shanghai hosted 82 international meetings in 2018, a 34% increase from 61 in 2017.[134][135]
+
+Shanghai is home to China (Shanghai) Pilot Free-Trade Zone, the first free-trade zone in mainland China.[136] As of October 2019[update], it is also the second largest free-trade zone in mainland China in terms of land area (behind Hainan Free Trade Zone [zh], which covers the whole Hainan province[137]) by covering an area of 240.22 km2 (92.75 sq mi) and integrating four existing bonded zones—Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone, Waigaoqiao Free Trade Logistics Park, Yangshan Free Trade Port Area, and Pudong Airport Comprehensive Free Trade Zone.[138][139] Several preferential policies have been implemented to attract foreign investment in various industries to the zone. Because the zone is not technically considered Chinese territory for tax purposes, commodities entering the zone are exempt from duty and customs clearance.[140]
+
+As of 2019[update], Shanghai had a total population of 24,281,400, including 14,504,300 (59.7%) hukou holders (registered locally).[10] According to the 2010 national census, 89.3% of Shanghai's population live in urban areas, and 10.7% live in rural areas.[143] Based on the population of its total administrative area, Shanghai is the second largest of the four municipalities of China, behind Chongqing, but is generally considered the largest Chinese city because the urban population of Chongqing is much smaller.[144] According to the OECD, Shanghai's metropolitan area has an estimated population of 34 million.[11]
+
+According to the Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau, about 157,900 residents in Shanghai are foreigners, including 28,900 Japanese, 21,900 Americans and, 20,800 Koreans.[145] However, the actual number of foreign citizens in the city is probably much higher.[146] Shanghai is also a domestic immigration city—40.3% (9.8 million) of the city's residents are from other regions of China.[10]
+
+Shanghai has a life expectancy of 83.6 years for the city's registered population,[147] the highest life expectancy of all cities in mainland China. However, this has also caused the city to experience population aging—in 2017, 33.1% (4.8 million) of the city's registered population was aged 60 or above.[148] In 2017, the Chinese government implemented population controls for Shanghai, resulting in a population decline of 10,000 people by the end of the year.[149]
+
+Due to its cosmopolitan history, Shanghai has a blend of religious heritage; religious buildings and institutions are scattered around the city. According to a 2012 survey, only 13.1% of the city's population belongs to organized religions, including Buddhists with 10.4%, Protestants with 1.9%, Catholics with 0.7%, and other faiths with 0.1%. The remaining 86.9% of the population may be either irreligious or involved in worship of nature deities and ancestors, Confucian churches, Taoism, or folk religious sects.[150]
+
+Buddhism, in its Chinese varieties, has had a presence in Shanghai since the Three Kingdoms period, during which the Longhua Temple—the largest temple in Shanghai—and the Jing'an Temple were founded.[151] Another significant temple is the Jade Buddha Temple, which was named after a large statue of Buddha carved out of jade in the temple.[152] As of 2014[update], Buddhism in Shanghai had 114 temples, 1,182 clergical staff, and 453,300 registered followers.[151] The religion also has its own college, the Shanghai Buddhist College [zh], and its own press, Shanghai Buddhological Press [zh].[153]
+
+Catholicism was brought into Shanghai in 1608 by Italian missionary Lazzaro Cattaneo.[154] The Apostolic Vicariate of Shanghai was erected in 1933, and was further elevated to the Diocese of Shanghai in 1946.[155] Notable Catholic sites include the St. Ignatius Cathedral in Xujiahui—the largest Catholic church in the city,[156] the St. Francis Xavier Church, and the She Shan Basilica.[157] Other forms of Christianity in Shanghai include Eastern Orthodox minorities and, since 1996, registered Christian Protestant churches. During World War II, thousands of Jews emigrated to Shanghai in an effort to flee Nazi Germany. They lived in a designated area called the Shanghai Ghetto and formed a community centered on the Ohel Moishe Synagogue, which is now the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum.[158]
+
+Islam came into Shanghai during the Yuan dynasty. The city's first mosque, Songjiang Mosque, was built during the Zhizheng (至正) era under Emperor Huizong. Shanghai's Muslim population increased in the 19th and early 20th centuries (when the city was a treaty port), during which time many mosques—including the Xiaotaoyuan Mosque, the Huxi Mosque, and the Pudong Mosque—were built. The Shanghai Islamic Association is located in the Xiaotaoyuan Mosque in Huangpu.[159]
+
+Shanghai has several folk religious temples, including the City God Temple at the heart of the Old City, the Dajing Ge Pavilion dedicated to the Three Kingdoms general Guan Yu, the Confucian Temple of Shanghai, and a major Taoist center Shanghai White Cloud Temple [zh] where the Shanghai Taoist Association locates.[160]
+
+The vernacular language spoken in the city is Shanghainese, a dialect of the Taihu Wu subgroup of the Wu Chinese family. This is different from the official Chinese dialect, Mandarin, which is mutually unintelligible with Wu Chinese.[162] Modern Shanghainese is based on other dialects of Taihu Wu: Suzhounese, Ningbonese, and the local dialect of Songjiang Prefecture.[163]
+
+Prior to its expansion, the language spoken in Shanghai was subordinate to those spoken around Jiaxing and later Suzhou,[163] and was known as "the local tongue" (本地闲话), which is now being used in suburbs only.[164] In the late 19th century, downtown Shanghainese (上海闲话) appeared, undergoing rapid changes and quickly replacing Suzhounese as the prestige dialect of the Yangtze River Delta region. At the time, most of the city's residents were immigrants from the two adjacent provinces, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, so Shanghainese was mostly a hybrid between Southern Jiangsu and Ningbo dialects. After 1949, Putonghua has also had a great impact on Shanghainese as a result of being rigorously promoted by the government.[163] Since the 1990s, many migrants outside of the Wu-speaking region have come to Shanghai for education and jobs. They often cannot speak the local language and therefore use Putonghua as a lingua franca. Because Putonghua and English were more favored, Shanghainese began to decline, and fluency among young speakers weakened.[165] However, in recent years, there have been movements within the city to promote the local language and protect it from fading out.[166][167]
+
+Shanghai is a major center of higher education in China. By the end of 2019, Shanghai had 64 universities and colleges, 929 secondary schools, 698 primary schools, and 31 special schools.[10] A number of China's most prestigious universities are based in Shanghai, including Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Tongji University, and East China Normal University. These universities were selected as "985 universities" by the Chinese government in order to build world-class universities.[168] Fudan University established a joint EMBA program with Washington University in St. Louis in 2002 which has since consistently been ranked as one of the best in the world.[169][170] The city government's education agency is the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission.
+
+The city has many Chinese–foreign joint education institutes [zh], such as the Shanghai University–University of Technology Sydney Business School since 1994, the University of Michigan–Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute since 2006, and New York University Shanghai—the first China–U.S. joint venture university—since 2012.[171][172] In 2013, the Shanghai Municipality and the Chinese Academy of Sciences founded the ShanghaiTech University in the Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park in Pudong.[173] Shanghai is also home to the cadre school China Executive Leadership Academy in Pudong and the China Europe International Business School.
+
+In Shanghai, the nine years of compulsory education—including five years of primary education and four years of junior secondary education—are free, with a gross enrollment ratio of over 99.9%.[10] The city's compulsory education system is among the best in the world: in 2009 and 2012, 15-year-old students from Shanghai ranked first in every subject (math, reading, and science) in the Program for International Student Assessment, a worldwide study of academic performance conducted by the OECD.[174][175] The consecutive three-year senior secondary education is priced and uses the Senior High School Entrance Examination (Zhongkao) as a selection process, with a gross enrollment ratio of 98%.[176] Among all senior high schools, the four with the best teaching quality—Shanghai High School, No. 2 High School Attached to East China Normal University, High School Affiliated to Fudan University, and High School Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University—are termed "The Four Schools" ("四校") of Shanghai.[177] As of October 2019[update], the city's National College Entrance Examination (Gaokao) is structured under the "3+3" system, in which all general senior high school students study three compulsory subjects (Chinese, English, and math) and three subjects chosen from six options (physics, chemistry, biology, history, geography, and politics).[178]
+
+Shanghai has an extensive public transportation system comprising metros, buses, ferries, and taxis, all of which can be accessed using a Shanghai Public Transport Card.[179]
+
+Shanghai's rapid transit system, the Shanghai Metro, incorporates both subway and light metro lines and extends to every core urban district as well as neighboring suburban districts. As of 2019[update], there are 17 metro lines (excluding the Shanghai maglev train and Jinshan Railway), 415 stations, and 704.91 km (438 mi) of lines in operation, making it the longest network in the world.[10] On 8 March 2019, it set the city's daily metro ridership record with 13.3 million.[180] The average fare ranges from CN¥3 (US$0.48) to CN¥9 (US$1.28), depending on the travel distance.[181]
+
+Opened in 2004, the Shanghai maglev train is the first and the fastest commercial high-speed maglev in the world, with a maximum operation speed of 430 km/h (267 mph).[182] The train can complete the 30-kilometer (19 mi) journey between Longyang Road Station and Pudong International Airport in 7 minutes 20 seconds,[183] comparing to 32 minutes by Metro Line 2[184] and 30 minutes by car.[185] A one-way ticket costs CN¥50 (US$8), or CN¥40 (US$6.40) for those with airline tickets or public transportation cards. A round-trip ticket costs CN¥80 (US$12.80), and VIP tickets cost double the standard fare.[186]
+
+With the first tram line been in service in 1908, trams were once popular in Shanghai in the early 20th century.[187] By 1925, there were 328 tramcars and 14 routes operated by Chinese, French, and British companies collaboratively,[188] all of which were nationalized after the PRC's victory in 1949. Since the 1960s, many tram lines were either dismantled or replaced by trolleybus or motorbus lines;[189] the last tram line was demolished in 1975.[190] Shanghai reintroduced trams in 2010, as a modern rubber-tire Translohr system in Zhangjiang area of East Shanghai as Zhangjiang Tram.[191] In 2018, the steel wheeled Songjiang Tram started operating in Songjiang District.[192] Additional tram lines are under planning in Hongqiao Subdistrict and Jiading District as of 2019[update].[193]
+
+Shanghai also has the world's most extensive bus network, including the world's oldest continuously operating trolleybus system, with 1,575 lines covering a total length of 8,997 km (5,590 mi) by 2019.[10] The system is operated by multiple companies.[194] Bus fares generally cost CN¥2 (US$0.32).[195]
+
+As of 2019[update], a total of 40,000 taxis were in operation in Shanghai.[10] The base fare for taxis is CN¥14 (US$2.24), which covers the first 3 km (2 mi) and includes a CN¥1 (US$0.14) fuel surcharge. The base fare is CN¥18 (US$2.55) between 11:00 pm and 5:00 am. Each additional kilometer costs CN¥2.5 (US$0.40), or CN¥3.3 (US$0.47) between 11:00 pm and 5:00 am.[196]  In addition to traditional taxis, ridesharing companies including DiDi and Uber play major roles in urban transportation. Ridesharing costs are comparable to those of taxis, and are sometimes even lower due to promotional discounts from ridesharing companies.[197]
+
+Shanghai is a major hub of China's expressway network. Many national expressways (prefixed with the letter G) pass through or end in Shanghai, including Jinghu Expressway (overlaps with Hurong Expressway), Shenhai Expressway, Hushaan Expressway, Huyu Expressway, Hukun Expressway (overlaps with Hangzhou Bay Ring Expressway), and Shanghai Ring Expressway.[198] There are also numerous municipal expressways prefixed with the letter S.[198] As of 2019, Shanghai has a total of 12 bridges and 14 tunnels crossing the Huangpu River.[199][200] The Shanghai Yangtze River Bridge is the city's only bridge–tunnel complex across Yangtze River.
+
+The expressway network within the city center consists of North–South Elevated Road, Yan'an Elevated Road, and Inner Ring Road. Other ring roads in Shanghai include Middle Ring Road, Outer Ring Expressway, and Shanghai Ring Expressway.
+
+Bicycle lanes are common in Shanghai, separating non-motorized traffic from car traffic on most surface streets. However, on some main roads, including all expressways, bicycles and motorcycles are banned. In recent years, cycling has seen a resurgence in popularity due to the emergence of a large number of dockless app-based bicycle-sharing systems, such as Mobike, Bluegogo, and ofo.[201] As of December 2018[update], these ridesharing systems have a joint average of 1.15 million daily riders within the city.[202]
+
+Private car ownership in Shanghai is rapidly increasing: in 2019, there were 3.40 million private cars in the city, a 12.5% increase from 2018.[10] New private cars cannot be driven without a license plate, which are sold in monthly license plate auctions. Around 9,500 license plates are auctioned each month, and the average price is about CN¥89,600 (US$12,739) in 2019.[203] According to the city's vehicle regulations introduced in June 2016, only locally registered residents and those who have paid social insurance or individual income taxes for over three years are eligible to be in the auction. The purpose of this policy is to limit the growth of automobile traffic and alleviate congestion.[204]
+
+Shanghai has four major railway stations: Shanghai railway station, Shanghai South railway station, Shanghai West railway station, and Shanghai Hongqiao railway station.[205] All are connected to the metro network and serve as hubs in the railway network of China.
+
+Built in 1876, the Woosung railway was the first railway in Shanghai and the first railway in operation in China[206] By 1909, Shanghai–Nanjing railway and Shanghai–Hangzhou railway were in service.[207][208] As of October 2019[update], the two railways have been integrated into two main railways in China: Beijing–Shanghai railway and Shanghai–Kunming railway, respectively.[209]
+
+Shanghai has three high-speed railways (HSRs): Beijing–Shanghai HSR (overlaps with Shanghai–Wuhan–Chengdu passenger railway), Shanghai–Nanjing intercity railway, and Shanghai–Kunming HSR. Two HSRs are under construction: Shanghai–Nantong railway and Shanghai–Suzhou–Huzhou HSR [zh].[210][211]
+
+Shanghai also has four commuter railways: Pudong railway and Jinshan Railway operated by China Railway, and Line 16 and Line 17 operated by Shanghai Metro.[212][213] As of October 2019[update], three additional lines—Chongming line, Jiamin line and Shanghai Airport Link [zh]—are under construction.[213][214]
+
+Shanghai is one of the largest air transportation hubs in Asia.[215] The city has two commercial airports: Shanghai Pudong International Airport and Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport.[216] Pudong International Airport is the primary international airport, while Hongqiao International Airport mainly operates domestic flights with limited short-haul international flights. In 2018, Pudong International Airport served 74.0 million passengers and handled 3.8 million tons of cargo, making it the ninth-busiest airport by passenger volume and third-busiest airport by cargo volume.[217] The same year, Hongqiao International Airport served 43.6 million passengers, making it the 19th-busiest airport by passenger volume.[217]
+
+Since its opening, the Port of Shanghai has rapidly grown to become the largest port in China.[218] Yangshan Port was built in 2005 because the river was unsuitable for docking large container ships. The port is connected with the mainland through the 32-kilometer (20 mi) long Donghai Bridge. Although the port is run by the Shanghai International Port Group under the government of Shanghai, it administratively belongs to Shengsi County, Zhejiang.[219]
+
+Overtaking the Port of Singapore in 2010,[220] the Port of Shanghai has become world's busiest container port with an annual TEU transportation of 42 million in 2018.[221] Besides cargo, the Port of Shanghai handled 259 cruises and 1.89 million passengers in 2019.[10]
+
+The culture of Shanghai was a combination of the nearby Wuyue culture and the "East Meets West" Haipai culture. Examples of the Wuyue culture's influence includes Shanghainese language developed from the nearby Jiaxing, Suzhou, and Ningbo dialect, and Shanghai cuisine influenced by the Jiangsu cuisine and Zhejiang cuisine.[222] The Haipai culture emerged after Shanghai became a prosperous port in the early 20th century, with numerous foreigners from Europe, America, Japan, India moving into the city.[223] The culture fuses elements of western cultures with the local Wuyue culture, and its influence extends to the city's literature, fashion, architecture, music, and even food and beverages.[224] The term Haipai—originally referring to a painting school in Shanghai—was coined by a group of Beijing writers in 1920 to criticize some Shanghai scholars for admiring capitalism and western culture.[224][225] In recent years, Shanghai has been recognized as a new influence and inspiration for cyberpunk culture.[226] Futuristic buildings such as the Oriental Pearl Tower and the neon-illuminated Yan'an Elevated Road are examples that have boosted Shanghai's cyberpunk image.
+
+Cultural curation in Shanghai has seen significant growth since 2013, with several new museums having been opened in the city.[227] This is in part due to the city's most recently released city development plans, with aims in making the city "an excellent global city".[228] As such, Shanghai has several museums[229] of regional and national importance.[230] The Shanghai Museum has one of the best collections of Chinese historical artifacts in the world, including a large collection of ancient Chinese bronzes. The China Art Museum, located in the former China Pavilion of Expo 2010, is the largest art museum in Asia. Power Station of Art is built in a converted power station, similar to London's Tate Modern. The Shanghai Natural History Museum and the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum are major natural history and science museums. In addition, there is a variety of smaller, specialist museums housed in important archaeological and historical sites such as the Songze Museum, the Museum of the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, the site of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, the former Ohel Moshe Synagogue (Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum), and the General Post Office Building (Shanghai Postal Museum). The Rockbund Art Museum is also in Shanghai. There are also many art galleries, concentrated in the M50 Art District and Tianzifang. Shanghai is also home to one of China's largest aquariums, the Shanghai Ocean Aquarium. MoCA, Museum of Contemporary Art of Shanghai, is a private museum centrally located in People's Park on West Nanjing Road, and is committed to promote contemporary art and design.
+
+Benbang cuisine (本帮菜)[231] is Shanghai's traditional cooking style originated 400 years ago under profound influence of those of the surrounding provinces. It emphasises the use of condiments and meanwhile retaining the original flavours of the raw ingredients materials. Sugar is an important ingredient in Benbang cuisine, especially when used in combination with soy sauce. Another characteristic is the use of a great variety of seafood and freshwater food. Signature dishes of Benbang cuisine include Xiaolongbao, Red braised pork belly, and Shanghai hairy crab.[232] Haipai cuisine, on the other hand, is a Western-style cooking originated in Shanghai but absorbs elements from French, British, Russian, German, and Italian cuisine and adapts them to suit the local taste according to the features of local ingredients.[233] Famous dishes of Haipai cuisine include Shanghai-style borscht (罗宋汤, "Russian soup"), crispy pork cutlets, and Shanghai salad [zh] derived from Olivier salad.[234]
+
+The Songjiang School (淞江派), containing the Huating School (华亭派) founded by Gu Zhengyi,[235] was a small painting school in Shanghai during the Ming and the Qing Dynasty.[236] It was represented by Dong Qichang.[237] The school was considered as a further development of the Wu School in Suzhou, the cultural center of the Jiangnan region at the time.[238] In the mid 19th century, the Shanghai School movement commenced, focusing less on the symbolism emphasized by the Literati style but more on the visual content of the painting through the use of bright colors. Secular objects like flowers and birds were often selected as themes.[239] Western art was introduced to Shanghai in 1847 by Spanish missionary Joannes Ferrer (范廷佐), and the city's first western atelier was established in 1864 inside the Tushanwan orphanage [zh; fr].[240] During the Republic of China, many famous artists including Zhang Daqian, Liu Haisu, Xu Beihong, Feng Zikai and Yan Wenliang settled in Shanghai thus it gradually became the art center of China. Various art forms—photography, wood carving, sculpture, comics (Manhua) and Lianhuanhua—thrived. Sanmao, one of the most well-known comics in China, was created then to dramatize the chaos brought to society by the Second Sino-Japanese War.[241] Today, the most comprehensive art and cultural facility in Shanghai is the China Art Museum. In addition, the Chinese painting academy features the Guohua,[242] while the Power Station of Art plays an important role in the contemporary art.[243] First held in 1996, the Shanghai Biennale has now become an important place for Chinese and foreign arts to interact.[244]
+
+Traditional Xiqu became the main way of entertainment for the public in the late 19th century. In the early 20th century, monologue and burlesque in Shanghainese appeared in Shanghai, absorbing elements from traditional dramas. The Great World opened in 1912 is a significant stage at the time.[245] In 1920s, Pingtan expanded from Suzhou to Shanghai.[246] With the abundant commercial radio stations, Pingtan art developed rapidly to 103 programs every day by the 1930s. At the same time, Shanghai also formed a Shanghai-style Beijing Opera led by Zhou Xinfang and Gai Jiaotian [zh], and attracted many Xiqu masters like Mei Lanfang to the city.[247] At the same time, a small troupe from Shengxian (now Shengzhou) also began to promote Yue opera on the Shanghainese stage.[248] A unique style of opera, Shanghai opera, is formed when the local folksongs collided with modern operas.[249] As of 2012, the well-known Xiqu troupes in Shanghai include Shanghai Jingju Theatre Company, Shanghai Kunqu Opera Troupe [zh], Shanghai Yue Opera House and Shanghai Huju Opera House.[250]
+
+Drama appeared in missionary schools in Shanghai in the late 19th century. Back then, it was mainly performed in English. Scandals in Officialdom (官场丑史), staged in 1899, was one of the earliest recorded plays.[251] In 1907, Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly (黑奴吁天录) was performed at the Lyceum Theatre [zh].[252] After the New Culture Movement, drama had become a popular way for students and intellectuals to express their views. Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre, Shanghai Opera House and Shanghai Theatre Academy are four major institutes of theater training in Shanghai. Notable theaters in Shanghai include the Shanghai Grand Theatre, the Oriental Art Center and the People's Theatre.
+
+Shanghai is considered to be the birthplace of Chinese cinema.[253] China's first short film, The Difficult Couple (1913), and the country's first fictional feature film, An Orphan Rescues His Grandfather (孤儿救祖记, 1923)[254] were both produced in Shanghai. Shanghai's film industry went on to blossom during the early 1930s, generating great stars such as Hu Die, Ruan Lingyu, Zhou Xuan, Jin Yan, and Zhao Dan. Another film star, Jiang Qing, went on to become Madame Mao Zedong. The exile of Shanghainese filmmakers and actors as a result of the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Communist revolution contributed enormously to the development of the Hong Kong film industry.[255] The movie In the Mood for Love directed by Wong Kar-wai, a native Shanghainese, depicts a slice of the displaced Shanghainese community in Hong Kong and the nostalgia for that era, featuring 1940s music by Zhou Xuan.[256]
+
+Since 2001, Shanghai has held its own fashion week called Shanghai Fashion Week twice every year in April and October. The April session is a part of the Shanghai International Fashion Culture Festival, which usually lasts for a month, while Shanghai Fashion Week lasts for seven days, and the main venue is in Fuxing Park, Shanghai, while the opening and closing ceremony is in Shanghai Fashion Center.[257] Supported by the People's Republic Ministry of Commerce, Shanghai Fashion Week is a major business and culture event of national significance hosted by the Shanghai Municipal Government. Shanghai Fashion Week is aiming to build up an international and professional platform, gathering all of the top design talents of Asia.
+The event features international designers but the primary purpose is to showcase Chinese designers.[258] The international presence has included many of the most promising young British fashion designers.[259]
+
+Shanghai is home to several soccer teams, including two in the Chinese Super League: Shanghai Greenland Shenhua F.C. and Shanghai SIPG F.C.. China's top-tier basketball team, the Shanghai Sharks of the Chinese Basketball Association, developed Yao Ming before he entered the NBA. Shanghai also has an ice hockey team, China Dragon, and a baseball team, the Shanghai Golden Eagles, which plays in the China Baseball League.
+
+The Shanghai Cricket Club dates back to 1858 when the first recorded cricket match was played between a team of British Naval officers and a Shanghai 11. Following a 45-year dormancy after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the club was re-established in 1994 by expatriates living in the city and has since grown to over 300 members. The Shanghai cricket team was a cricket team that played various international matches between 1866 and 1948. With cricket in the rest of China almost non-existent, for that period they were the de facto China national cricket team.[260]
+
+Shanghai is home to many prominent Chinese professional athletes, such as basketball player Yao Ming, 110-meter hurdler Liu Xiang, table tennis player Wang Liqin, and badminton player Wang Yihan.
+
+Shanghai is the annual host of several international sports events. Since 2004, it has hosted the annual Chinese Grand Prix, a round of the Formula One World Championship. The race is staged annually at the Shanghai International Circuit.[261] It hosted the 1000th Formula One race on 14 April 2019. In 2010, Shanghai also became the host city of Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM), which raced in a street circuit in Pudong. In 2012, Shanghai started to host 6 Hours of Shanghai as one round from the inaugural season of the FIA World Endurance Championship. The city also hosts the Shanghai Masters tennis tournament, which is part of ATP World Tour Masters 1000, as well as golf tournaments including the BMW Masters and WGC-HSBC Champions.[262]
+
+On 21 September 2017, Shanghai hosted a National Hockey League (NHL) ice hockey exhibition game in an effort to increase fan interest for the 2017–18 NHL season.[263]
+
+Shanghai has an extensive public park system; by 2018, the city had 300 parks, of which 281 had free admission, and the per capita park area was 8.2 m2 (88 sq ft).[264] Some of the parks also have become popular tourist attractions due to their unique location, history, or architecture.
+
+The People's Square park, located in the heart of downtown Shanghai, is especially well known for its proximity to other major landmarks in the city. Fuxing Park, located in the former French Concession, features formal French-style gardens and is surrounded by high-end bars and cafes.[265]
+
+Zhongshan Park in western central Shanghai is famous for its monument of Chopin, the tallest statue dedicated to the composer in the world.[266] Built in 1914 as Jessfield Park, it once contained the campus of St. John's University, Shanghai's first international college; today, the park features sakura and peony gardens and a 150-year-old platanus,[267] and it also serves as an interchange hub in the metro system.[268]
+
+One of Shanghai's newer parks is the Xujiahui Park, which was built in 1999, on the former grounds of the Great Chinese Rubber Works Factory and the EMI Recording Studio (now La Villa Rouge restaurant). The park has an artificial lake with a sky bridge running across the park.[269] Shanghai Botanical Garden is located 12 km (7 mi) southwest of the city center and was established in 1978. In 2011, the largest botanical garden in Shanghai—Shanghai Chen Shan Botanical Garden—opened in Songjiang District.[270]
+
+Other notable parks in Shanghai include Lu Xun Park, Century Park, Gucun Park [zh], Gongqing Forest Park, and Jing'an Park.
+
+The Shanghai Disney Resort Project was approved by the government on 4 November 2009[271] and opened in 2016.[272]
+The $4.4 billion theme park and resort in Pudong features a castle that is the biggest among Disney's resorts.[273] More than 11 million people visited the resort in its first year of operation.[274]
+
+Air pollution in Shanghai is not as severe as in many other Chinese cities, but is still considered substantial by world standards.[275] During the December 2013 Eastern China smog, air pollution rates reached between 23 and 31 times the international standard.[276][277] On 6 December 2013, levels of PM2.5 particulate matter in Shanghai rose above 600 micrograms per cubic meter and in the surrounding area, above 700 micrograms per cubic metre.[277] Levels of PM2.5 in Putuo District reached 726 micrograms per cubic meter.[278][279] As a result, the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission received orders to suspend students' outdoor activities. Authorities pulled nearly one-third of government vehicles from the roads, while much construction work was halted. Most inbound flights were canceled, and more than 50 flights at Pudong International Airport were diverted.[280]
+
+On 23 January 2014, Yang Xiong, the mayor of Shanghai, announced that three main measures would be taken to manage the air pollution in Shanghai, along with surrounding Anhui, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang provinces.[281] The measures involved implementing the 2013 air-cleaning program, establishing a linkage mechanism with the three surrounding provinces, and improving the city's early-warning systems.[281] On 12 February 2014, China's cabinet announced that a CN¥10 billion (US$1.7 billion) fund will be set up to help companies meet the new environmental standards.[282] The effect of the policy was significant. From 2013 to 2018, more than 3,000 treatment facilities for industrial waste gases were installed, and the city's annual smoke, nitrogen oxide, and sulfur dioxide emission decreased by 65%, 54%, and 95%, respectively.[283][284]
+
+Public awareness of the environment is growing, and the city is investing in a number of environmental protection projects. A 14-year cleanup of Suzhou Creek, which runs through the city, was finished in 2012, and 1.3 million cubic meters of sludge were removed.[285] Additionally, the government has moved almost all the factories within the city center to either the outskirts or other provinces,[286] and provided incentives for transportation companies to invest in LPG buses and taxis.
+
+On 1 July 2019, Shanghai adopted a new garbage-classification system that sorts out waste into residual waste, kitchen waste, recyclable waste, and hazardous waste.[287] The wastes are collected by separate vehicles and sent to incineration plants, landfills, recycling centers, and hazardous-waste-disposal facilities, respectively.[288]
+
+Media in Shanghai [zh] covers newspapers, publisher, broadcast, television, and Internet, with some media having influence over the whole country. In regard to foreign publications in Shanghai, Hartmut Walravens of the IFLA Newspapers Section said that when the Japanese controlled Shanghai in the 1940s "it was very difficult to publish good papers – one either had to concentrate on emigration problems, or cooperate like the Chronicle".[289]
+
+As of March 2020[update], newspapers publishing in Shanghai include:
+
+Newspapers formerly published in Shanghai include:
+
+The city's main broadcaster is Shanghai Media Group.
+
+The city is the home of the New Development Bank, a multilateral development bank established by the BRICS states, and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a Eurasian political, economic, and security organization.
+
+As of April 2020[update], Shanghai is twinned with the following regions, cities, and counties:[294]
+
+aDirect-administered Municipalities.
+bSub-provincial cities as provincial capitals.
+cSeparate state-planning cities.
+1Special economic-zone Cities.
+2Open Coastal Cities.
+3Prefecture capital status established by Heilongjiang Province and not recognized by Ministry of Civil Affairs. Disputed by Oroqen Autonomous Banner, Hulunbuir, Inner Mongolia as part of it.
+4Only administers islands and waters in South China Sea and have no urban core comparable to typical cities in China.
+5The claimed province of Taiwan no longer have any internal division announced by Ministry of Civil Affairs of PRC, due to lack of actual jurisdiction. See Template:Administrative divisions of Taiwan instead.

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@@ -0,0 +1,248 @@
+
+
+The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah,[c] was the World War II genocide of the European Jews. Between 1941 and 1945, across German-occupied Europe, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population.[a][d] The murders were carried out in pogroms and mass shootings; by a policy of extermination through work in concentration camps; and in gas chambers and gas vans in German extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz, Bełżec, Chełmno, Majdanek, Sobibór, and Treblinka in occupied Poland.[4]
+
+Germany implemented the persecution in stages. Following Adolf Hitler's appointment as Chancellor on 30 January 1933, the regime built a network of concentration camps in Germany for political opponents and those deemed "undesirable", starting with Dachau on 22 March 1933.[5] After the passing of the Enabling Act on 24 March,[6] which gave Hitler plenary powers, the government began isolating Jews from civil society; this included boycotting Jewish businesses in April 1933 and enacting the Nuremberg Laws in September 1935. On 9–10 November 1938, eight months after Germany annexed Austria, Jewish businesses and other buildings were ransacked or set on fire throughout Germany and Austria during what became known as Kristallnacht (the "Night of Broken Glass"). After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, triggering World War II, the regime set up ghettos to segregate Jews. Eventually thousands of camps and other detention sites were established across German-occupied Europe.
+
+The segregation of Jews in ghettos culminated in the policy of extermination the Nazis called the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question", discussed by senior Nazi officials at the Wannsee Conference in Berlin in January 1942. As German forces captured territories in the East, all anti-Jewish measures were radicalized. Under the coordination of the SS, with directions from the highest leadership of the Nazi Party, killings were committed within Germany itself, throughout occupied Europe, and within territories controlled by Germany's allies. Paramilitary death squads called Einsatzgruppen, in cooperation with the German Army and local collaborators, murdered around 1.3 million Jews in mass shootings and pogroms between 1941 and 1945. By mid-1942, victims were being deported from ghettos across Europe in sealed freight trains to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, they were gassed, worked or beaten to death, or killed by disease or during death marches. The killing continued until the end of World War II in Europe in May 1945.
+
+The European Jews were targeted for extermination as part of a larger event during the Holocaust era (1933–1945),[7][8] in which Germany and its collaborators persecuted and murdered other groups, including ethnic Poles, Soviet civilians and prisoners of war, the Roma, the handicapped, political and religious dissidents, and gay men.[e] The death toll of these other groups is thought to be over 11 million.[b]
+
+The term holocaust, first used in 1895 by the New York Times to describe the massacre of Armenian Christians by Ottoman Muslims,[9] comes from the Greek: ὁλόκαυστος, romanized: holókaustos; ὅλος hólos, "whole" + καυστός kaustós, "burnt offering".[f] The biblical term shoah (Hebrew: שׁוֹאָה), meaning "destruction", became the standard Hebrew term for the murder of the European Jews. According to Haaretz, the writer Yehuda Erez may have been the first to describe events in Germany as the shoah. Davar and later Haaretz both used the term in September 1939.[12][g] Yom HaShoah became Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day in 1951.[14]
+
+On 3 October 1941 the American Hebrew used the phrase "before the Holocaust", apparently to refer to the situation in France,[15] and in May 1943 the New York Times, discussing the Bermuda Conference, referred to the "hundreds of thousands of European Jews still surviving the Nazi Holocaust".[16] In 1968 the Library of Congress created a new category, "Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)".[17] The term was popularized in the United States by the NBC mini-series Holocaust (1978), about a fictional family of German Jews,[18] and in November that year the President's Commission on the Holocaust was established.[19] As non-Jewish groups began to include themselves as Holocaust victims, many Jews chose to use the Hebrew terms Shoah or Churban.[20][h] The Nazis used the phrase "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" (German: die Endlösung der Judenfrage).[22]
+
+Most Holocaust historians define the Holocaust as the genocide of the European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1941 and 1945.[a]
+
+Michael Gray, a specialist in Holocaust education,[30] offers three definitions: (a) "the persecution and murder of Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators between 1933 and 1945", which views Kristallnacht in 1938 as an early phase of the Holocaust; (b) "the systematic mass murder of the Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators between 1941 and 1945", which recognizes the policy shift in 1941 toward extermination; and (c) "the persecution and murder of various groups by the Nazi regime and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945", which includes all the Nazis' victims, a definition that fails, Gray writes, to acknowledge that only the Jews were singled out for annihilation.[31] Donald Niewyk and Francis Nicosia, in The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust (2000), favor a definition that focuses on the Jews, Roma and handicapped: "the systematic, state-sponsored murder of entire groups determined by heredity".[32]
+
+The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum distinguishes between the Holocaust (the murder of six million Jews) and "the era of the Holocaust", which began when Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933.[33] Victims of the era of the Holocaust include those the Nazis viewed as inherently inferior (chiefly Slavs, the Roma and the handicapped), and those targeted because of their beliefs or behavior (such as Jehovah's Witnesses, communists and homosexuals).[34] Peter Hayes writes that the persecution of these groups was less consistent than that of the Jews; the Nazis' treatment of the Slavs, for example, consisted of "enslavement and gradual attrition", while some Slavs (Hayes lists Bulgarians, Croats, Slovaks and some Ukrainians) were favored.[24] Against this, Hitler regarded the Jews as what Dan Stone calls "a Gegenrasse: a 'counter-race' ... not really human at all".[e]
+
+The logistics of the mass murder turned Germany into what Michael Berenbaum called a "genocidal state".[36] Eberhard Jäckel wrote in 1986 during the German Historikerstreit—a dispute among historians about the uniqueness of the Holocaust and its relationship with the crimes of the Soviet Union—that it was the first time a state had thrown its power behind the idea that an entire people should be wiped out.[i] Anyone with three or four Jewish grandparents was to be exterminated,[38] and complex rules were devised to deal with Mischlinge ("mixed breeds").[39] Bureaucrats identified who was a Jew, confiscated property, and scheduled trains to deport them. Companies fired Jews and later used them as slave labor. Universities dismissed Jewish faculty and students. German pharmaceutical companies tested drugs on camp prisoners; other companies built the crematoria.[36] As prisoners entered the death camps, they surrendered all personal property,[40] which was catalogued and tagged before being sent to Germany for reuse or recycling.[41] Through a concealed account, the German National Bank helped launder valuables stolen from the victims.[42]
+
+Dan Stone writes that since the opening of archives following the fall of former communist states in Eastern Europe, it has become increasingly clear that the Holocaust was a pan-European phenomenon, a series of "Holocausts" impossible to conduct without the help of local collaborators. Without collaborators, the Germans could not have extended the killing across most of the continent.[43][j][45] According to Donald Bloxham, in many parts of Europe "extreme collective violence was becoming an accepted measure of resolving identity crises".[46] Christian Gerlach writes that non-Germans "not under German command" killed 5–6 percent of the six million, but that their involvement was crucial in other ways.[47]
+
+The industrialization and scale of the murder was unprecedented. Killings were systematically conducted in virtually all areas of occupied Europe—more than 20 occupied countries.[48] Nearly three million Jews in occupied Poland and between 700,000 and 2.5 million Jews in the Soviet Union were killed. Hundreds of thousands more died in the rest of Europe.[49] Some Christian churches defended converted Jews, but otherwise, Saul Friedländer wrote in 2007: "Not one social group, not one religious community, not one scholarly institution or professional association in Germany and throughout Europe declared its solidarity with the Jews ..."[50]
+
+Medical experiments conducted on camp inmates by the SS were another distinctive feature.[51] At least 7,000 prisoners were subjected to experiments; most died as a result, during the experiments or later.[52] Twenty-three senior physicians and other medical personnel were charged at Nuremberg, after the war, with crimes against humanity. They included the head of the German Red Cross, tenured professors, clinic directors, and biomedical researchers.[53] Experiments took place at Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, Natzweiler-Struthof, Neuengamme, Ravensbrück, Sachsenhausen, and elsewhere. Some dealt with sterilization of men and women, the treatment of war wounds, ways to counteract chemical weapons, research into new vaccines and drugs, and the survival of harsh conditions.[52]
+
+The most notorious physician was Josef Mengele, an SS officer who became the Auschwitz camp doctor on 30 May 1943.[54] Interested in genetics[54] and keen to experiment on twins, he would pick out subjects from the new arrivals during "selection" on the ramp, shouting "Zwillinge heraus!" (twins step forward!).[55] They would be measured, killed, and dissected. One of Mengele's assistants said in 1946 that he was told to send organs of interest to the directors of the "Anthropological Institute in Berlin-Dahlem". This is thought to refer to Mengele's academic supervisor, Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, director from October 1942 of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics in Berlin-Dahlem.[56][k]
+
+There were around 9.5 million Jews in Europe in 1933.[60] Most heavily concentrated in the east, the pre-war population was 3.5 million in Poland; 3 million in the Soviet Union; nearly 800,000 in Romania, and 700,000 in Hungary. Germany had over 500,000.[49]
+
+Throughout the Middle Ages in Europe, Jews were subjected to antisemitism based on Christian theology, which blamed them for killing Jesus. Even after the Reformation, Catholicism and Lutheranism continued to persecute Jews, accusing them of blood libels and subjecting them to pogroms and expulsions.[61] The second half of the 19th century saw the emergence in the German empire and Austria-Hungary of the völkisch movement, developed by such thinkers as Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Paul de Lagarde. The movement embraced a pseudo-scientific racism that viewed Jews as a race whose members were locked in mortal combat with the Aryan race for world domination.[62] These ideas became commonplace throughout Germany; the professional classes adopted an ideology that did not see humans as racial equals with equal hereditary value.[63] The Nazi Party (the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or National Socialist German Workers' Party) originated as an offshoot of the völkisch movement, and it adopted that movement's antisemitism.[64]
+
+After World War I (1914–1918), many Germans did not accept that their country had been defeated, which gave birth to the stab-in-the-back myth. This insinuated that it was disloyal politicians, chiefly Jews and communists, who had orchestrated Germany's surrender. Inflaming the anti-Jewish sentiment was the apparent over-representation of Jews in the leadership of communist revolutionary governments in Europe, such as Ernst Toller, head of a short-lived revolutionary government in Bavaria. This perception contributed to the canard of Jewish Bolshevism.[65]
+
+Early antisemites in the Nazi Party included Dietrich Eckart, publisher of the Völkischer Beobachter, the party's newspaper, and Alfred Rosenberg, who wrote antisemitic articles for it in the 1920s. Rosenberg's vision of a secretive Jewish conspiracy ruling the world would influence Hitler's views of Jews by making them the driving force behind communism.[66]  Central to Hitler's world view was the idea of expansion and Lebensraum (living space) in Eastern Europe for German Aryans, a policy of what Doris Bergen called "race and space". Open about his hatred of Jews, he subscribed to common antisemitic stereotypes.[67] From the early 1920s onwards, he compared the Jews to germs and said they should be dealt with in the same way. He viewed Marxism as a Jewish doctrine, said he was fighting against "Jewish Marxism", and believed that Jews had created communism as part of a conspiracy to destroy Germany.[68]
+
+With the appointment in January 1933 of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany and the Nazi's seizure of power, German leaders proclaimed the rebirth of the Volksgemeinschaft ("people's community").[70] Nazi policies divided the population into two groups: the Volksgenossen ("national comrades") who belonged to the Volksgemeinschaft, and the Gemeinschaftsfremde ("community aliens") who did not. Enemies were divided into three groups: the "racial" or "blood" enemies, such as the Jews and Roma; political opponents of Nazism, such as Marxists, liberals, Christians, and the "reactionaries" viewed as wayward "national comrades"; and moral opponents, such as gay men, the work-shy, and habitual criminals. The latter two groups were to be sent to concentration camps for "re-education", with the aim of eventual absorption into the Volksgemeinschaft. "Racial" enemies could never belong to the Volksgemeinschaft; they were to be removed from society.[71]
+
+Before and after the March 1933 Reichstag elections, the Nazis intensified their campaign of violence against opponents,[72] setting up concentration camps for extrajudicial imprisonment.[73] One of the first, at Dachau, opened on 22 March 1933.[74] Initially the camp contained mostly Communists and Social Democrats.[75] Other early prisons were consolidated by mid-1934 into purpose-built camps outside the cities, run exclusively by the SS.[76] The camps served as a deterrent by terrorizing Germans who did not support the regime.[77]
+
+Throughout the 1930s, the legal, economic, and social rights of Jews were steadily restricted.[78]On 1 April 1933, there was a boycott of Jewish businesses.[79] On 7 April 1933, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service was passed, which excluded Jews and other "non-Aryans" from the civil service.[80] Jews were disbarred from practicing law, being editors or proprietors of newspapers, joining the Journalists' Association, or owning farms.[81] In Silesia, in March 1933, a group of men entered the courthouse and beat up Jewish lawyers; Friedländer writes that, in Dresden, Jewish lawyers and judges were dragged out of courtrooms during trials.[82] Jewish students were restricted by quotas from attending schools and universities.[80] Jewish businesses were targeted for closure or "Aryanization", the forcible sale to Germans; of the approximately 50,000 Jewish-owned businesses in Germany in 1933, about 7,000 were still Jewish-owned in April 1939. Works by Jewish composers,[83] authors, and artists were excluded from publications, performances, and exhibitions.[84] Jewish doctors were dismissed or urged to resign. The Deutsches Ärzteblatt (a medical journal) reported on 6 April 1933: "Germans are to be treated by Germans only."[85]
+
+The economic strain of the Great Depression led Protestant charities and some members of the German medical establishment to advocate compulsory sterilization of the "incurable" mentally and physically handicapped,[87] people the Nazis called Lebensunwertes Leben (life unworthy of life).[88] On 14 July 1933, the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring (Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses), the Sterilization Law, was passed.[89][90] The New York Times reported on 21 December that year: "400,000 Germans to be sterilized".[91] There were 84,525 applications from doctors in the first year. The courts reached a decision in 64,499 of those cases; 56,244 were in favor of sterilization.[92] Estimates for the number of involuntary sterilizations during the whole of the Third Reich range from 300,000 to 400,000.[93]
+
+In October 1939 Hitler signed a "euthanasia decree" backdated to 1 September 1939 that authorized Reichsleiter Philipp Bouhler, the chief of Hitler's Chancellery, and Karl Brandt, Hitler's personal physician, to carry out a program of involuntary euthanasia. After the war this program came to be known as Aktion T4,[94] named after Tiergartenstraße 4, the address of a villa in the Berlin borough of Tiergarten, where the various organizations involved were headquartered.[95] T4 was mainly directed at adults, but the euthanasia of children was also carried out.[96] Between 1939 and 1941, 80,000 to 100,000 mentally ill adults in institutions were killed, as were 5,000 children and 1,000 Jews, also in institutions. There were also dedicated killing centers, where the deaths were estimated at 20,000, according to Georg Renno, deputy director of Schloss Hartheim, one of the euthanasia centers, or 400,000, according to Frank Zeireis, commandant of the Mauthausen concentration camp.[97] Overall, the number of mentally and physically handicapped murdered was about 150,000.[98]
+
+Although not ordered to take part, psychiatrists and many psychiatric institutions were involved in the planning and carrying out of Aktion T4.[99] In August 1941, after protests from Germany's Catholic and Protestant churches, Hitler cancelled the T4 program,[100] although the handicapped continued to be killed until the end of the war.[98] The medical community regularly received bodies for research; for example, the University of Tübingen received 1,077 bodies from executions between 1933 and 1945. The German neuroscientist Julius Hallervorden received 697 brains from one hospital between 1940 and 1944: "I accepted these brains of course. Where they came from and how they came to me was really none of my business."[101]
+
+On 15 September 1935, the Reichstag passed the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, known as the Nuremberg Laws. The former said that only those of "German or kindred blood" could be citizens. Anyone with three or more Jewish grandparents was classified as a Jew.[103] The second law said: "Marriages between Jews and subjects of the state of German or related blood are forbidden." Sexual relationships between them were also criminalized; Jews were not allowed to employ German women under the age of 45 in their homes.[104][103] The laws referred to Jews but applied equally to the Roma and black Germans. Although other European countries—Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Slovakia, and Vichy France—passed similar legislation,[103] Gerlach notes that "Nazi Germany adopted more nationwide anti-Jewish laws and regulations (about 1,500) than any other state."[105]
+
+By the end of 1934, 50,000 German Jews had left Germany,[106] and by the end of 1938, approximately half the German Jewish population had left,[107] among them the conductor Bruno Walter, who fled after being told that the hall of the Berlin Philharmonic would be burned down if he conducted a concert there.[108] Albert Einstein, who was in the United States when Hitler came to power, never returned to Germany; his citizenship was revoked and he was expelled from the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and Prussian Academy of Sciences.[109] Other Jewish scientists, including Gustav Hertz, lost their teaching positions and left the country.[110]
+
+On 12 March 1938, Germany annexed Austria. Austrian Nazis broke into Jewish shops, stole from Jewish homes and businesses, and forced Jews to perform humiliating acts such as scrubbing the streets or cleaning toilets.[111] Jewish businesses were "Aryanized", and all the legal restrictions on Jews in Germany were imposed.[112] In August that year, Adolf Eichmann was put in charge of the Central Agency for Jewish Emigration in Vienna (Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung in Wien). About 100,000 Austrian Jews had left the country by May 1939, including Sigmund Freud and his family, who moved to London.[113] The Évian Conference was held in France in July 1938 by 32 countries, as an attempt to help the increased refugees from Germany, but aside from establishing the largely ineffectual Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, little was accomplished and most countries participating did not increase the number of refugees they would accept.[114]
+
+On 7 November 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a Polish Jew, shot the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in the German Embassy in Paris, in retaliation for the expulsion of his parents and siblings from Germany.[115][l] When vom Rath died on 9 November, the government used his death as a pretext to instigate a pogrom against the Jews. The government claimed it was spontaneous, but in fact it had been ordered and planned by Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, although with no clear goals, according to David Cesarani. The result, he writes, was "murder, rape, looting, destruction of property, and terror on an unprecedented scale".[117]
+
+Known as Kristallnacht (or "Night of Broken Glass"), the attacks on 9–10 November 1938 were partly carried out by the SS and SA,[118] but ordinary Germans joined in; in some areas, the violence began before the SS or SA arrived.[119] Over 7,500 Jewish shops (out of 9,000) were looted and attacked, and over 1,000 synagogues damaged or destroyed. Groups of Jews were forced by the crowd to watch their synagogues burn; in Bensheim they were made to dance around it, and in Laupheim to kneel before it.[120] At least 90 Jews died. The damage was estimated at 39 million Reichmarks.[121] Cesarani writes that "[t]he extent of the desolation stunned the population and rocked the regime."[122] It also shocked the rest of the world. The Times of London wrote on 11 November 1938: "No foreign propagandist bent upon blackening Germany before the world could outdo the tale of burnings and beatings, of blackguardly assaults upon defenseless and innocent people, which disgraced that country yesterday. Either the German authorities were a party to this outbreak or their powers over public order and a hooligan minority are not what they are proudly claimed to be."[123]
+
+Between 9 and 16 November, 30,000 Jews were sent to the Buchenwald, Dachau, and Sachsenhausen concentration camps.[124] Many were released within weeks; by early 1939, 2,000 remained in the camps.[125] German Jewry was held collectively responsible for restitution of the damage; they also had to pay an "atonement tax" of over a billion Reichmarks. Insurance payments for damage to their property were confiscated by the government. A decree on 12 November 1938 barred Jews from most remaining occupations.[126] Kristallnacht marked the end of any sort of public Jewish activity and culture, and Jews stepped up their efforts to leave the country.[127]
+
+Before World War II, Germany considered mass deportation from Europe of German, and later European, Jewry.[128] Among the areas considered for possible resettlement were British Palestine and, after the war began, French Madagascar,[129] Siberia, and two reservations in Poland.[130][m] Palestine was the only location to which any German resettlement plan produced results, via the Haavara Agreement between the Zionist Federation of Germany and the German government. Between November 1933 and December 1939, the agreement resulted in the emigration of about 53,000 German Jews, who were allowed to transfer RM 100 million of their assets to Palestine by buying German goods, in violation of the Jewish-led anti-Nazi boycott of 1933.[132]
+
+When Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, triggering a declaration of war from France and the UK, it gained control of an additional two million Jews, reduced to around 1.7 – 1.8 million in the German zone when the Soviet Union invaded from the east on 17 September.[133] The German army, the Wehrmacht, was accompanied by seven SS Einsatzgruppen ("special task forces") and an Einsatzkommando, numbering altogether 3,000 men, whose role was to deal with "all anti-German elements in hostile country behind the troops in combat". Most of the Einsatzgruppen commanders were professionals; 15 of the 25 leaders had PhDs. By 29 August, two days before the invasion, they had already drawn up a list of 30,000 people to send to concentration camps. By the first week of the invasion, 200 people were being executed every day.[134]
+
+The Germans began sending Jews from territories they had recently annexed (Austria, Czechoslovakia, and western Poland) to the central section of Poland, which they called the General Government.[135] To 
+make it easier to control and deport them, the Jews were concentrated in ghettos in major cities.[136] The Germans planned to set up a Jewish reservation in southeast Poland around the transit camp in Nisko, but the "Nisko plan" failed, in part because it was opposed by Hans Frank, the new Governor-General of the General Government.[137] In mid-October 1940 the idea was revived, this time to be located in Lublin. Resettlement continued until January 1941 under SS officer Odilo Globocnik, but further plans for the Lublin reservation failed for logistical and political reasons.[138]
+
+There had been anti-Jewish pogroms in Poland before the war, including in around 100 towns between 1935 and 1937,[139] and again in 1938.[140] In June and July 1941, during the Lviv pogroms in Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine), around 6,000 Polish Jews were murdered in the streets by the Ukrainian People's Militia and local people.[141][n] Another 2,500–3,500 Jews died in mass shootings by Einsatzgruppe C.[142] During the Jedwabne pogrom on 10 July 1941, a group of Poles in Jedwabne killed the town's Jewish community, many of whom were burned alive in a barn.[143] The attack may have been engineered by the German Security Police.[144][o]
+
+The Germans established ghettos in Poland, in the incorporated territories and General Government area, to confine Jews.[135] These were closed off from the outside world at different times and for different reasons.[146] In early 1941, the Warsaw ghetto contained 445,000 people, including 130,000 from elsewhere,[147] while the second largest, the Łódź ghetto, held 160,000.[148] Although the Warsaw ghetto contained 30 percent of the city's population, it occupied only 2.5 percent of its area, averaging over nine people per room.[149] The massive overcrowding, poor hygiene facilities and lack of food killed thousands. Over 43,000 residents died in 1941.[150]
+
+According to a letter dated 21 September 1939 from SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA or Reich Security Head Office), to the Einsatzgruppen, each ghetto had to be run by a Judenrat, or "Jewish Council of Elders", to consist of 24 male Jews with local influence.[151] Judenräte were responsible for the ghetto's day-to-day operations, including distributing food, water, heat, medical care, and shelter. The Germans also required them to confiscate property, organize forced labor, and, finally, facilitate deportations to extermination camps.[152] The Jewish councils' basic strategy was one of trying to minimize losses by cooperating with German authorities, bribing officials, and petitioning for better conditions.[153]
+
+Germany invaded Norway and Denmark on 9 April 1940, during Operation Weserübung. Denmark was overrun so quickly that there was no time for a resistance to form. Consequently, the Danish government stayed in power and the Germans found it easier to work through it. Because of this, few measures were taken against the Danish Jews before 1942.[154] By June 1940 Norway was completely occupied.[155] In late 1940, the country's 1,800 Jews were banned from certain occupations, and in 1941 all Jews had to register their property with the government.[156] On 26 November 1942, 532 Jews were taken by police officers, at four o'clock in the morning, to Oslo harbor, where they boarded a German ship. From Germany they were sent by freight train to Auschwitz. According to Dan Stone, only nine survived the war.[157]
+
+In May 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, and France. After Belgium's surrender, the country was ruled by a German military governor, Alexander von Falkenhausen, who enacted anti-Jewish measures against its 90,000 Jews, many of them refugees from Germany or Eastern Europe.[158] In the Netherlands, the Germans installed Arthur Seyss-Inquart as Reichskommissar, who began to persecute the country's 140,000 Jews. Jews were forced out of their jobs and had to register with the government. In February 1941, non-Jewish Dutch citizens staged a strike in protest that was quickly crushed.[159] From July 1942, over 107,000 Dutch Jews were deported; only 5,000 survived the war. Most were sent to Auschwitz; the first transport of 1,135 Jews left Holland for Auschwitz on 15 July 1942. Between 2 March and 20 July 1943, 34,313 Jews were sent in 19 transports to the Sobibór extermination camp, where all but 18 are thought to have been gassed on arrival.[160]
+
+France had approximately 300,000 Jews, divided between the German-occupied north and the unoccupied collaborationist southern areas in Vichy France (named after the town Vichy). The occupied regions were under the control of a military governor, and there, anti-Jewish measures were not enacted as quickly as they were in the Vichy-controlled areas.[161] In July 1940, the Jews in the parts of Alsace-Lorraine that had been annexed to Germany were expelled into Vichy France.[162] Vichy France's government implemented anti-Jewish measures in French Algeria and the two French Protectorates of Tunisia and Morocco.[163] Tunisia had 85,000 Jews when the Germans and Italians arrived in November 1942; an estimated 5,000 Jews were subjected to forced labor.[164]
+
+The fall of France gave rise to the Madagascar Plan in the summer of 1940, when French Madagascar in Southeast Africa became the focus of discussions about deporting all European Jews there; it was thought that the area's harsh living conditions would hasten deaths.[165] Several Polish, French and British leaders had discussed the idea in the 1930s, as did German leaders from 1938.[166] Adolf Eichmann's office was ordered to investigate the option, but no evidence of planning exists until after the defeat of France in June 1940.[167] Germany's inability to defeat Britain, something that was obvious to the Germans by September 1940, prevented the movement of Jews across the seas,[168] and the Foreign Ministry abandoned the plan in February 1942.[169]
+
+Yugoslavia and Greece were invaded in April 1941 and surrendered before the end of the month. Germany and Italy divided Greece into occupation zones but did not eliminate it as a country. Yugoslavia, home to around 80,000 Jews, was dismembered; regions in the north were annexed by Germany and regions along the coast made part of Italy. The rest of the country was divided into the Independent State of Croatia, nominally an ally of Germany, and Serbia, which was governed by a combination of military and police administrators.[170] Serbia was declared free of Jews (Judenfrei) in August 1942.[171][172] Croatia's ruling party, the Ustashe, killed the majority of the country's Jews and massacred, expelled or forcibly converted to Catholicism the area's local Orthodox Christian Serb population.[173] On 18 April 1944 Croatia was declared as Judenfrei.[174][175] Jews and Serbs alike were "hacked to death and burned in barns", writes historian Jeremy Black. One difference between the Germans and Croatians was that the Ustashe allowed its Jewish and Serbian victims to convert to Catholicism so they could escape death.[171] According to Jozo Tomasevich of the 115 Jewish religious communities from Yugoslavia which existed in 1939 and 1940, only the Jewish communities from Zagreb managed to survive the war.[176]
+
+Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, a day Timothy Snyder called "one of the most significant days in the history of Europe ... the beginning of a calamity that defies description".[177] Jürgen Matthäus described it as "a quantum leap toward the Holocaust".[178] German propaganda portrayed the conflict as an ideological war between German National Socialism and Jewish Bolshevism and as a racial war between the Germans and the Jewish, Romani, and Slavic Untermenschen ("sub-humans").[179] David Cesarani writes that the war was driven primarily by the need for resources: agricultural land to feed Germany, natural resources for German industry, and control over Europe's largest oil fields. But precisely because of the Soviet Union's vast resources, "[v]ictory would have to be swift".[180] Between early fall 1941 and late spring 1942, according to Matthäus, 2 million of the 3.5 million Soviet soldiers captured by the Wehrmacht (Germany's armed forces) had been executed or had died of neglect and abuse. By 1944 the Soviet death toll was at least 20 million.[181]
+
+As German troops advanced, the mass shooting of "anti-German elements" was assigned, as in Poland, to the Einsatzgruppen, this time under the command of Reinhard Heydrich.[182] The point of the attacks was to destroy the local Communist Party leadership and therefore the state, including "Jews in the Party and State employment", and any "radical elements".[p] Cesarani writes that the killing of Jews was at this point a "subset" of these activities.[184]
+
+Einsatzgruppe A arrived in the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) with Army Group North; Einsatzgruppe B in Belarus with Army Group Center; Einsatzgruppe C in the Ukraine with Army Group South; and Einsatzgruppe D went further south into Ukraine with the 11th Army.[185] Each Einsatzgruppe numbered around 600–1,000 men, with a few women in administrative roles.[186] Travelling with nine German Order Police battalions and three units of the Waffen-SS,[187] the Einsatzgruppen and their local collaborators had murdered almost 500,000 people by the winter of 1941–1942. By the end of the war, they had killed around two million, including about 1.3 million Jews and up to a quarter of a million Roma.[188] According to Wolfram Wette, the Germany army took part in these shootings as bystanders, photographers and active shooters; to justify their troops' involvement, army commanders would describe the victims as "hostages", "bandits" and "partisans".[189] Local populations helped by identifying and rounding up Jews, and by actively participating in the killing. In Lithuania, Latvia and western Ukraine, locals were deeply involved; Latvian and Lithuanian units participated in the murder of Jews in Belarus, and in the south, Ukrainians killed about 24,000 Jews. Some Ukrainians went to Poland to serve as guards in the camps.[190]
+
+Typically, victims would undress and give up their valuables before lining up beside a ditch to be shot, or they would be forced to climb into the ditch, lie on a lower layer of corpses, and wait to be killed.[192] The latter was known as Sardinenpackung ("packing sardines"), a method reportedly started by SS officer Friedrich Jeckeln.[193]
+
+At first the Einsatzgruppen targeted the male Jewish intelligentsia, defined as male Jews aged 15–60 who had worked for the state and in certain professions (the commandos would describe them as "Bolshevist functionaries" and similar), but from August 1941 they began to murder women and children too.[194] Christopher Browning reports that on 1 August, the SS Cavalry Brigade passed an order to its units: "Explicit order by RF-SS [Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer-SS]. All Jews must be shot. Drive the female Jews into the swamps."[195] In a speech on 6 October 1943 to party leaders, Heinrich Himmler said he had ordered that women and children be shot, but Peter Longerich and Christian Gerlach write that the murder of women and children began at different times in different areas, suggesting local influence.[196]
+
+Notable massacres include the July 1941 Ponary massacre near Vilnius (Soviet Lithuania), in which Einsatgruppe B and Lithuanian collaborators shot 72,000 Jews and 8,000 non-Jewish Lithuanians and Poles.[197] In the Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre (Soviet Ukraine), nearly 24,000 Jews were killed between 27 and 30 August 1941.[181] The largest massacre was at a ravine called Babi Yar outside Kiev (also Soviet Ukraine), where 33,771 Jews were killed on 29–30 September 1941.[198] Einsatzgruppe C and the Order Police, assisted by Ukrainian militia, carried out the killings,[199] while the German 6th Army helped round up and transport the victims to be shot.[200] The Germans continued to use the ravine for mass killings throughout the war; the total killed there could be as high as 100,000.[201]
+
+Historians agree that there was a "gradual radicalization" between the spring and autumn of 1941 of what Longerich calls Germany's Judenpolitik, but they disagree about whether a decision—Führerentscheidung (Führer's decision)—to murder the European Jews was made at this point.[202][q] According to Christopher Browning, writing in 2004, most historians maintain that there was no order before the invasion to kill all the Soviet Jews.[204] Longerich wrote in 2010 that the gradual increase in brutality and numbers killed between July and September 1941 suggests there was "no particular order"; instead it was a question of "a process of increasingly radical interpretations of orders".[205]
+
+According to Dan Stone, the murder of Jews in Romania was "essentially an independent undertaking".[206] Romania implemented anti-Jewish measures in May and June 1940 as part of its efforts towards an alliance with Germany. Jews were forced from government service, pogroms were carried out, and by March 1941 all Jews had lost their jobs and had their property confiscated.[207] In June 1941 Romania joined Germany in its invasion of the Soviet Union.
+
+Thousands of Jews were killed in January and June 1941 in the Bucharest pogrom and Iaşi pogrom.[208] According to a 2004 report by Tuvia Friling and others, up to 14,850 Jews died during the Iaşi pogrom.[209] The Romanian military killed up to 25,000 Jews during the Odessa massacre between 18 October 1941 and March 1942, assisted by gendarmes and the police.[210] Mihai Antonescu, Romania's deputy prime minister, was reported to have said it was "the most favorable moment in our history" to solve the "Jewish problem".[211] In July 1941 he said it was time for "total ethnic purification, for a revision of national life, and for purging our race of all those elements which are foreign to its soul, which have grown like mistletoes and darken our future".[212] Romania set up concentration camps under its control in Transnistria, reportedly extremely brutal, where 154,000–170,000 Jews were deported from 1941 to 1943.[213]
+
+Bulgaria introduced anti-Jewish measures between 1940 and 1943, which included a curfew, the requirement to wear a yellow star, restrictions on owning telephones or radios, the banning of mixed marriages (except for Jews who had converted to Christianity), and the registration of property.[214] It annexed Thrace and Macedonia, and in February 1943 agreed to a demand from Germany that it deport 20,000 Jews to the Treblinka extermination camp. All 11,000 Jews from the annexed territories were sent to their deaths, and plans were made to deport an additional 6,000–8,000 Bulgarian Jews from Sofia to meet the quota.[215] When the plans became public, the Orthodox Church and many Bulgarians protested, and King Boris III canceled the deportation of Jews native to Bulgaria.[216] Instead, they were expelled to provincial areas of the country.[215]
+
+Stone writes that Slovakia, led by Roman Catholic priest Jozef Tiso (president of the Slovak State, 1939–1945), was "one of the most loyal of the collaborationist regimes". It deported 7,500 Jews in 1938 on its own initiative; introduced anti-Jewish measures in 1940; and by the autumn of 1942 had deported around 60,000 Jews to ghettos and concentration camps in Poland. Another 2,396 were deported and 2,257 killed that autumn during an uprising, and 13,500 were deported between October 1944 and March 1945.[217] According to Stone, "the Holocaust in Slovakia was far more than a German project, even if it was carried out in the context of a 'puppet' state."[218]
+
+Although Hungary expelled Jews who were not citizens from its newly annexed lands in 1941, it did not deport most of its Jews[219] until the German invasion of Hungary in March 1944. Between 15 May and early July 1944, 437,000 Jews were deported from Hungary, mostly to Auschwitz, where most of them were gassed; there were four transports a day, each carrying 3,000 people.[220] In Budapest in October and November 1944, the Hungarian Arrow Cross forced 50,000 Jews to march to the Austrian border as part of a deal with Germany to supply forced labor. So many died that the marches were stopped.[221]
+
+Italy introduced some antisemitic measures, but there was less antisemitism there than in Germany, and Italian-occupied countries were generally safer for Jews than those occupied by Germany. There were no deportations of Italian Jews to Germany while Italy remained an ally. In some areas, the Italian authorities even tried to protect Jews, such as in the Croatian areas of the Balkans. But while Italian forces in Russia were not as vicious towards Jews as the Germans, they did not try to stop German atrocities either.[222] Several forced labor camps for Jews were established in Italian-controlled Libya; almost 2,600 Libyan Jews were sent to camps, where 562 died.[223] In Finland, the government was pressured in 1942 to hand over its 150–200 non-Finnish Jews to Germany. After opposition from both the government and public, eight non-Finnish Jews were deported in late 1942; only one survived the war.[224] Japan had little antisemitism in its society and did not persecute Jews in most of the territories it controlled. Jews in Shanghai were confined, but despite German pressure they were not killed.[225]
+
+Germany first used concentration camps as places of terror and unlawful incarceration of political opponents.[227] Large numbers of Jews were not sent there until after Kristallnacht in November 1938.[228] After war broke out in 1939, new camps were established, many outside Germany in occupied Europe.[229] Most wartime prisoners of the camps were not Germans but belonged to countries under German occupation.[230]
+
+After 1942, the economic function of the camps, previously secondary to their penal and terror functions, came to the fore. Forced labor of camp prisoners became commonplace.[228] The guards became much more brutal, and the death rate increased as the guards not only beat and starved prisoners, but killed them more frequently.[230] Vernichtung durch Arbeit ("extermination through labor") was a policy; camp inmates would literally be worked to death, or to physical exhaustion, at which point they would be gassed or shot.[231] The Germans estimated the average prisoner's lifespan in a concentration camp at three months, as a result of lack of food and clothing, constant epidemics, and frequent punishments for the most minor transgressions.[232] The shifts were long and often involved exposure to dangerous materials.[233]
+
+Transportation to and between camps was often carried out in closed freight cars with littie air or water, long delays and prisoners packed tightly.[234] In mid-1942 work camps began requiring newly arrived prisoners to be placed in quarantine for four weeks.[235] Prisoners wore colored triangles on their uniforms, the color denoting the reason for their incarceration. Red signified a political prisoner, Jehovah's Witnesses had purple triangles, "asocials" and criminals wore black and green, and gay men wore pink.[236] Jews wore two yellow triangles, one over another to form a six-pointed star.[237] Prisoners in Auschwitz were tattooed on arrival with an identification number.[238]
+
+On 7 December 1941, Japanese aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor, an American naval base in Honolulu, Hawaii, killing 2,403 Americans. The following day, the United States declared war on Japan, and on 11 December, Germany declared war on the United States.[239] According to Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt, Hitler had trusted American Jews, whom he assumed were all powerful, to keep the United States out of the war in the interests of German Jews. When America declared war, he blamed the Jews.[240]
+
+Nearly three years earlier, on 30 January 1939, Hitler had told the Reichstag: "if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will be not the Bolshevising of the earth, and thus a victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!"[241] In the view of Christian Gerlach, Hitler "announced his decision in principle" to annihilate the Jews on or around 12 December 1941, one day after his declaration of war. On that day, Hitler gave a speech in his private apartment at the Reich Chancellery to senior Nazi Party leaders: the Reichsleiter, the most senior, and the Gauleiter, the regional leaders.[242] The following day, Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda, noted in his diary:
+
+Regarding the Jewish question, the Führer is determined to clear the table. He warned the Jews that if they were to cause another world war, it would lead to their destruction. Those were not empty words. Now the world war has come. The destruction of the Jews must be its necessary consequence. We cannot be sentimental about it.[t]
+
+Christopher Browning argues that Hitler gave no order during the Reich Chancellery meeting but did make clear that he had intended his 1939 warning to the Jews to be taken literally, and he signaled to party leaders that they could give appropriate orders to others.[244] Peter Longerich interprets Hitler's speech to the party leaders as an appeal to radicalize a policy that was already being executed.[245] According to Gerlach, an unidentified former German Sicherheitsdienst officer wrote in a report in 1944, after defecting to Switzerland: "After America entered the war, the annihilation (Ausrottung) of all European Jews was initiated on the Führer's order."[246]
+
+Four days after Hitler's meeting with party leaders, Hans Frank, Governor-General of the General Government area of occupied Poland, who was at the meeting, spoke to district governors: "We must put an end to the Jews ... I will in principle proceed only on the assumption that they will disappear. They must go."[247][u] On 18 December Hitler and Himmler held a meeting to which Himmler referred in his appointment book as "Juden frage | als Partisanen auszurotten" ("Jewish question / to be exterminated as partisans"). Browning interprets this as a meeting to discuss how to justify and speak about the killing.[249]
+
+SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Head Office (RSHA), convened what became known as the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942 at Am Großen Wannsee 56–58, a villa in Berlin's Wannsee suburb.[250][251] The meeting had been scheduled for 9 December 1941, and invitations had been sent on 29 November, but it had been postponed indefinitely. A month later, invitations were sent out again, this time for 20 January.[252]
+
+The 15 men present at Wannsee included Adolf Eichmann (head of Jewish affairs for the RSHA), Heinrich Müller (head of the Gestapo), and other SS and party leaders and department heads.[w] Browning writes that eight of the 15 had doctorates: "Thus it was not a dimwitted crowd unable to grasp what was going to be said to them."[254] Thirty copies of the minutes, known as the Wannsee Protocol, were made. Copy no. 16 was found by American prosecutors in March 1947 in a German Foreign Office folder.[255] Written by Eichmann and stamped "Top Secret", the minutes were written in "euphemistic language" on Heydrich's instructions, according to Eichmann's later testimony.[245]
+
+Discussing plans for a "final solution to the Jewish question" ("Endlösung der Judenfrage"), and a "final solution to the Jewish question in Europe" ("Endlösung der europäischen Judenfrage"),[250] the conference was held to share information and responsibility, coordinate efforts and policies ("Parallelisierung der Linienführung"), and ensure that authority rested with Heydrich. There was also discussion about whether to include the German Mischlinge (half-Jews).[256] Heydrich told the meeting: "Another possible solution of the problem has now taken the place of emigration, i.e. the evacuation of the Jews to the East, provided that the Fuehrer gives the appropriate approval in advance."[250] He continued:
+
+Under proper guidance, in the course of the Final Solution, the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labor in the East. Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes.
+
+The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly because it is the product of natural selection and would, if released, act as the seed of a new Jewish revival. (See the experience of history.)
+
+In the course of the practical execution of the Final Solution, Europe will be combed through from west to east. Germany proper, including the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, will have to be handled first due to the housing problem and additional social and political necessities.
+
+The evacuated Jews will first be sent, group by group, to so-called transit ghettos, from which they will be transported to the East.[250]
+
+These evacuations were regarded as provisional or "temporary solutions" ("Ausweichmöglichkeiten").[257][x] The final solution would encompass the 11 million Jews living not only in territories controlled by Germany, but elsewhere in Europe and adjacent territories, such as Britain, Ireland, Switzerland, Turkey, Sweden, Portugal, Spain, and Hungary, "dependent on military developments".[257] There was little doubt what the final solution was, writes Longerich: "the Jews were to be annihilated by a combination of forced labour and mass murder."[259]
+
+At the end of 1941 in occupied Poland, the Germans began building additional camps or expanding existing ones. Auschwitz, for example, was expanded in October 1941 by building Auschwitz II-Birkenau a few kilometers away.[4] By the spring or summer of 1942, gas chambers had been installed in these new facilities, except for Chełmno, which used gas vans.
+
+Other camps sometimes described as extermination camps include Maly Trostinets near Minsk in the occupied Soviet Union, where 65,000 are thought to have died, mostly by shooting but also in gas vans;[278] Mauthausen in Austria;[279] Stutthof, near Gdańsk, Poland;[280] and Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück in Germany. The camps in Austria, Germany and Poland all had gas chambers to kill inmates deemed unable to work.[281]
+
+Chełmno, with gas vans only, had its roots in the Aktion T4 euthanasia program.[282] In December 1939 and January 1940, gas vans equipped with gas cylinders and a sealed compartment had been used to kill the handicapped in occupied Poland.[283] As the mass shootings continued in Russia, Himmler and his subordinates in the field feared that the murders were causing psychological problems for the SS,[284] and began searching for more efficient methods. In December 1941, similar vans, using exhaust fumes rather than bottled gas, were introduced into the camp at Chełmno,[267] Victims were asphyxiated while being driven to prepared burial pits in the nearby forests.[285] The vans were also used in the occupied Soviet Union, for example in smaller clearing actions in the Minsk ghetto,[286] and in Yugoslavia.[287] Apparently, as with the mass shootings, the vans caused emotional problems for the operators, and the small number of victims the vans could handle made them ineffective.[288]
+
+Christian Gerlach writes that over three million Jews were murdered in 1942, the year that "marked the peak" of the mass murder.[290] At least 1.4 million of these were in the General Government area of Poland.[291] Victims usually arrived at the extermination camps by freight train.[292] Almost all arrivals at Bełżec, Sobibór and Treblinka were sent directly to the gas chambers,[293] with individuals occasionally selected to replace dead workers.[294] At Auschwitz, about 20 percent of Jews were selected to work.[295] Those selected for death at all camps were told to undress and hand their valuables to camp workers.[40] They were then herded naked into the gas chambers. To prevent panic, they were told the gas chambers were showers or delousing chambers.[296]
+
+At Auschwitz, after the chambers were filled, the doors were shut and pellets of Zyklon-B were dropped into the chambers through vents,[297] releasing toxic prussic acid.[298] Those inside died within 20 minutes; the speed of death depended on how close the inmate was standing to a gas vent, according to the commandant Rudolf Höss, who estimated that about one-third of the victims died immediately.[299] Johann Kremer, an SS doctor who oversaw the gassings, testified that: "Shouting and screaming of the victims could be heard through the opening and it was clear that they fought for their lives."[300] The gas was then pumped out, and the Sonderkommando—work groups of mostly Jewish prisoners—carried out the bodies, extracted gold fillings, cut off women's hair, and removed jewellery, artificial limbs and glasses.[301] At Auschwitz, the bodies were at first buried in deep pits and covered with lime, but between September and November 1942, on the orders of Himmler, 100,000 bodies were dug up and burned. In early 1943, new gas chambers and crematoria were built to accommodate the numbers.[302]
+
+Bełżec, Sobibór and Treblinka became known as the Operation Reinhard camps, named after the German plan to murder the Jews in the General Government area of occupied Poland.[303] Between March 1942 and November 1943, around 1,526,500 Jews were gassed in these three camps in gas chambers using carbon monoxide from the exhaust fumes of stationary diesel engines.[4] Gold fillings were pulled from the corpses before burial, but unlike in Auschwitz the women's hair was cut before death. At Treblinka, to calm the victims, the arrival platform was made to look like a train station, complete with fake clock.[304] Most of the victims at these three camps were buried in pits at first. From mid-1942, as part of Sonderaktion 1005, prisoners at Auschwitz, Chelmno, Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka were forced to exhume and burn bodies that had been buried, in part to hide the evidence, and in part because of the terrible smell pervading the camps and a fear that the drinking water would become polluted.[305] The corpses—700,000 in Treblinka—were burned on wood in open fire pits and the remaining bones crushed into powder.[306]
+
+There was almost no resistance in the ghettos in Poland until the end of 1942.[308] Raul Hilberg accounted for this by evoking the history of Jewish persecution: compliance might avoid inflaming the situation until the onslaught abated.[309] Timothy Snyder noted that it was only during the three months after the deportations of July–September 1942 that agreement on the need for armed resistance was reached.[310]
+
+Several resistance groups were formed, such as the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) and Jewish Military Union (ŻZW) in the Warsaw Ghetto and the United Partisan Organization in Vilna.[311] Over 100 revolts and uprisings occurred in at least 19 ghettos and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. The best known is the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April 1943, when the Germans arrived to send the remaining inhabitants to extermination camps. Forced to retreat on 19 April from the ŻOB and ŻZW fighters, they returned later that day under the command of SS General Jürgen Stroop (author of the Stroop Report about the uprising).[312] Around 1,000 poorly armed fighters held the SS at bay for four weeks.[313] Polish and Jewish accounts stated that hundreds or thousands of Germans had been killed,[314] while the Germans reported 16 dead.[315] The Germans said that 14,000 Jews had been killed—7000 during the fighting and 7000 sent to Treblinka[316]—and between 53,000[317] and 56,000 deported.[315] According to Gwardia Ludowa, a Polish resistance newspaper, in May 1943:
+
+From behind the screen of smoke and fire, in which the ranks of fighting Jewish partisans are dying, the legend of the exceptional fighting qualities of the Germans is being undermined. ... The fighting Jews have won for us what is most important: the truth about the weakness of the Germans."[318]
+
+During a revolt in Treblinka on 2 August 1943, inmates killed five or six guards and set fire to camp buildings; several managed to escape.[319] In the Białystok Ghetto on 16 August, Jewish insurgents fought for five days when the Germans announced mass deportations.[320] On 14 October, Jewish prisoners in Sobibór attempted an escape, killing 11 SS officers, as well as two or three Ukrainian and Volksdeutsche guards. According to Yitzhak Arad, this was the highest number of SS officers killed in a single revolt.[321] Around 300 inmates escaped (out of 600 in the main camp), but 100 were recaptured and shot.[322] On 7 October 1944, 300 Jewish members, mostly Greek or Hungarian, of the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz learned they were about to be killed, and staged an uprising, blowing up crematorium IV.[323] Three SS officers were killed.[324] The Sonderkommando at crematorium II threw their Oberkapo into an oven when they heard the commotion, believing that a camp uprising had begun.[325] By the time the SS had regained control, 451 members of the Sonderkommando were dead; 212 survived.[326]
+
+Estimates of Jewish participation in partisan units throughout Europe range from 20,000 to 100,000.[327] In the occupied Polish and Soviet territories, thousands of Jews fled into the swamps or forests and joined the partisans,[328] although the partisan movements did not always welcome them.[329] An estimated 20,000 to 30,000 joined the Soviet partisan movement.[330] One of the famous Jewish groups was the Bielski partisans in Belarus, led by the Bielski brothers.[328] Jews also joined Polish forces, including the Home Army. According to Timothy Snyder, "more Jews fought in the Warsaw Uprising of August 1944 than in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April 1943."[331][ab]
+
+The Polish government-in-exile in London learned about Auschwitz from the Polish leadership in Warsaw, who from late 1940 "received a continual flow of information" about the camp, according to historian Michael Fleming.[337] This was in large measure thanks to Captain Witold Pilecki of the Polish Home Army, who allowed himself to be arrested in September 1940 and sent there. An inmate until he escaped in April 1943, his mission was to set up a resistance movement (ZOW), prepare to take over the camp, and smuggle out information about it.[338]
+
+On 6 January 1942, the Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs, Vyacheslav Molotov, sent out diplomatic notes about German atrocities. The notes were based on reports about mass graves and bodies surfacing from pits and quarries in areas the Red Army had liberated, as well as witness reports from German-occupied areas.[339] The following month, Szlama Ber Winer escaped from the Chełmno concentration camp in Poland and passed information about it to the Oneg Shabbat group in the Warsaw Ghetto. His report, known by his pseudonym as the Grojanowski Report, had reached London by June 1942.[268][340] Also in 1942, Jan Karski sent information to the Allies after being smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto twice.[341] By late July or early August 1942, Polish leaders in Warsaw had learned about the mass killing of Jews in Auschwitz, according to Fleming.[337][ac] The Polish Interior Ministry prepared a report, Sprawozdanie 6/42,[343] which said at the end:
+
+There are different methods of execution. People are shot by firing squads, killed by an "air hammer" /Hammerluft/, and poisoned by gas in special gas chambers. Prisoners condemned to death by the Gestapo are murdered by the first two methods. The third method, the gas chamber, is employed for those who are ill or incapable of work and those who have been brought in transports especially for the purpose /Soviet prisoners of war, and, recently Jews/.[337]
+
+Sprawozdanie 6/42 was sent to Polish officials in London by courier and had reached them by 12 November 1942, where it was translated into English and added to another, "Report on Conditions in Poland", dated 27 November. Fleming writes that the latter was sent to the Polish Embassy in the United States.[344] On 10 December 1942, the Polish Foreign Affairs Minister, Edward Raczyński, addressed the fledgling United Nations on the killings; the address was distributed with the title The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland. He told them about the use of poison gas; about Treblinka, Bełżec and Sobibór; that the Polish underground had referred to them as extermination camps; and that tens of thousands of Jews had been killed in Bełżec in March and April 1942.[345] One in three Jews in Poland were already dead, he estimated, from a population of 3,130,000.[346] Raczyński's address was covered by the New York Times and The Times of London. Winston Churchill received it, and Anthony Eden presented it to the British cabinet. On 17 December 1942, 11 Allies issued the Joint Declaration by Members of the United Nations condemning the "bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination".[347][348]
+
+The British and American governments were reluctant to publicize the intelligence they had received. A BBC Hungarian Service memo, written by Carlile Macartney, a BBC broadcaster and senior Foreign Office adviser on Hungary, stated in 1942: "We shouldn't mention the Jews at all." The British government's view was that the Hungarian people's antisemitism would make them distrust the Allies if their broadcasts focused on the Jews.[349] The US government similarly feared turning the war into one about the Jews; antisemitism and isolationism were common in the US before its entry into the war.[350] Although governments and the German public appear to have understood what was happening, it seems the Jews themselves did not. According to Saul Friedländer, "[t]estimonies left by Jews from all over occupied Europe indicate that, in contradistinction to vast segments of surrounding society, the victims did not understand what was ultimately in store for them." In Western Europe, he writes, Jewish communities seem to have failed to piece the information together, while in Eastern Europe, they could not accept that the stories they had heard from elsewhere would end up applying to them too.[351]
+
+The SS liquidated most of the Jewish ghettos of the General Government area of Poland in 1942–1943 and shipped their populations to the camps for extermination.[353] The only exception was the Lodz Ghetto, which was not liquidated until mid-1944.[354] About 42,000 Jews in the General Government were shot during Operation Harvest Festival (Aktion Erntefest) on 3–4 November 1943.[355] At the same time, rail shipments were arriving regularly from western and southern Europe at the extermination camps.[356] Shipments of Jews to the camps had priority on the German railways over anything but the army's needs, and continued even in the face of the increasingly dire military situation at the end of 1942.[357] Army leaders and economic managers complained about this diversion of resources and the killing of skilled Jewish workers,[358] but Nazi leaders rated ideological imperatives above economic considerations.[359]
+
+By 1943 it was evident to the armed forces leadership that Germany was losing the war.[360] The mass murder continued nevertheless, reaching a "frenetic" pace in 1944[361] when Auschwitz gassed nearly 500,000 people.[362] On 19 March 1944, Hitler ordered the military occupation of Hungary and dispatched Adolf Eichmann to Budapest to supervise the deportation of the country's Jews.[363] From 22 March Jews were required to wear the yellow star; were forbidden from owning cars, bicycles, radios or telephones; and were later forced into ghettos.[364] Between 15 May and 9 July, 437,000 Jews were deported from Hungary to Auschwitz II-Birkenau, almost all sent directly to the gas chambers.[ad] A month before the deportations began, Eichmann offered through an intermediary, Joel Brand, to exchange one million Jews for 10,000 trucks from the Allies, which the Germans would undertake not to use on the Western front.[367] The British leaked the proposal to the press; The Times called it "a new level of fantasy and self-deception".[368] By mid-1944 Jewish communities within easy reach of the Nazi regime had largely been exterminated.[369]
+
+As the Soviet armed forces advanced, the SS closed down the camps in eastern Poland and made efforts to conceal what had happened. The gas chambers were dismantled, the crematoria dynamited, and the mass graves dug up and corpses cremated.[370] From January to April 1945, the SS sent inmates westward on "death marches" to camps in Germany and Austria.[371][372] In January 1945, the Germans held records of 714,000 inmates in concentration camps; by May, 250,000 (35 percent) had died during death marches.[373] Already sick after months or years of violence and starvation, they were marched to train stations and transported for days at a time without food or shelter in open freight cars, then forced to march again at the other end to the new camp. Some went by truck or wagons; others were marched the entire distance to the new camp. Those who lagged behind or fell were shot.[374]
+
+The first major camp to be encountered by Allied troops, Majdanek, was discovered by the advancing Soviets, along with its gas chambers, on 25 July 1944.[375] Treblinka, Sobibór, and Bełżec were never liberated, but were destroyed by the Germans in 1943.[376] On 17 January 1945, 58,000 Auschwitz inmates were sent on a death march westwards;[377] when the camp was liberated by the Soviets on 27 January, they found just 7,000 inmates in the three main camps and 500 in subcamps.[378] Buchenwald was liberated by the Americans on 11 April;[379] Bergen-Belsen by the British on 15 April;[380] Dachau by the Americans on 29 April;[381] Ravensbrück by the Soviets on 30 April;[382] and Mauthausen by the Americans on 5 May.[383] The Red Cross took control of Theresienstadt on 3 May, days before the Soviets arrived.[384]
+
+The British 11th Armoured Division found around 60,000 prisoners (90 percent Jews) when they liberated Bergen-Belsen,[380][385] as well as 13,000 unburied corpses; another 10,000 people died from typhus or malnutrition over the following weeks.[386] The BBC's war correspondent Richard Dimbleby described the scenes that greeted him and the British Army at Belsen, in a report so graphic the BBC declined to broadcast it for four days, and did so, on 19 April, only after Dimbleby threatened to resign.[387] He said he had "never seen British soldiers so moved to cold fury":[388]
+
+Here over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could not see which was which. ... The living lay with their heads against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people, with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them ... Babies had been born here, tiny wizened things that could not live. A mother, driven mad, screamed at a British sentry to give her milk for her child, and thrust the tiny mite into his arms. ... He opened the bundle and found the baby had been dead for days. This day at Belsen was the most horrible of my life.
+
+The Jews killed represented around one third of world Jewry[394] and about two-thirds of European Jewry, based on a pre-war estimate of 9.7 million Jews in Europe.[395] According to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, "[a]ll the serious research" confirms that between five and six million Jews died.[396] Early postwar calculations were 4.2–4.5 million from Gerald Reitlinger;[397] 5.1 million from Raul Hilberg; and 5.95 million from Jacob Lestschinsky.[398] In 1990 Yehuda Bauer and Robert Rozett estimated 5.59–5.86 million,[399] and in 1991 Wolfgang Benz suggested 5.29 to just over 6 million.[400][af] The figures include over one million children.[401] Much of the uncertainty stems from the lack of a reliable figure for the number of Jews in Europe in 1939, border changes that make double-counting of victims difficult to avoid, lack of accurate records from the perpetrators, and uncertainty about whether to include post-liberation deaths caused by the persecution.[397]
+
+The death camps in occupied Poland accounted for half the Jews killed. At Auschwitz the Jewish death toll was 960,000;[402] Treblinka 870,000;[276] Bełżec 600,000;[266] Chełmno 320,000;[268] Sobibór 250,000;[274] and Majdanek 79,000.[273]
+
+Death rates were heavily dependent on the survival of European states willing to protect their Jewish citizens.[403] In countries allied to Germany, the control over Jewish citizens was sometimes seen as a matter of sovereignty; the continuous presence of state institutions prevented the Jewish communities' complete destruction.[403] In occupied countries, the survival of the state was likewise correlated with lower Jewish death rates: 75 percent of Jews died in the Netherlands, as did 99 percent of Jews who were in Estonia when the Germans arrived—the Nazis declared Estonia Judenfrei ("free of Jews") in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference—while 75 percent survived in France and 99 percent in Denmark.[404]
+
+The survival of Jews in countries where states survived demonstrates, writes Christian Gerlach, "that there were limits to German power" and that the influence of non-Germans—governments and others—was "crucial".[47] Jews who lived where pre-war statehood was destroyed (Poland and the Baltic states) or displaced (western USSR) were at the mercy of both German power and sometimes hostile local populations. Almost all Jews living in German-occupied Poland, Baltic states and the USSR were killed, with a 5 percent chance of survival on average.[403] Of Poland's 3.3 million Jews, about 90 percent were killed.[405]
+
+The Nazis regarded the Slavs as Untermenschen (subhuman).[24] German troops destroyed villages throughout the Soviet Union,[409] rounded up civilians for forced labor in Germany, and caused famine by taking foodstuffs.[410] In Belarus, Germany imposed a regime that deported 380,000 people for slave labor and killed hundreds of thousands. Over 600 villages had their populations killed and at least 5,295 Belarusian settlements were destroyed. According to Timothy Snyder, of nine million people in Soviet Belarus in 1941, around 1.6 million were killed by Germans away from the battlefield.[411] The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates that 3.3 million of 5.7 million Soviet POWs died in German custody.[412]
+
+Hitler made clear that Polish workers were to be kept in what Robert Gellately called a "permanent condition of inferiority".[413] In a memorandum to Hitler dated 25 May 1940, "A Few Thoughts on the Treatment of the Ethnically Alien Population in the East", Himmler stated that it was in German interests to foster divisions between the ethnic groups in the East. He wanted to restrict non-Germans in the conquered territories to an elementary-school education that would teach them how to write their names, count up to 500, work hard, and obey Germans.[414] The Polish political class became the target of a campaign of murder (Intelligenzaktion and AB-Aktion).[415] Between 1.8 and 1.9 million non-Jewish Polish citizens were killed by Germans during the war; about four-fifths were ethnic Poles and the rest Ukrainians and Belarusians.[406] At least 200,000 died in concentration camps, around 146,000 in Auschwitz. Others died in massacres or in uprisings such as the Warsaw Uprising, where 120,000–200,000 were killed.[416]
+
+Germany and its allies killed up to 220,000 Roma, around 25 percent of the community in Europe,[417] in what the Romani people call the Pořajmos.[418] Robert Ritter, head of the Rassenhygienische und Bevolkerungsbiologische Forschungsstelle called them "a peculiar form of the human species who are incapable of development and came about by mutation".[419] In May 1942 they were placed under similar laws to the Jews, and in December Himmler ordered that they be sent to Auschwitz, unless they had served in the Wehrmacht.[420] He adjusted the order on 15 November 1943 to allow "sedentary Gypsies and part-Gypsies" in the occupied Soviet areas to be viewed as citizens.[421] In Belgium, France and the Netherlands, the Roma were subject to restrictions on movement and confinement to collection camps,[422] while in Eastern Europe they were sent to concentration camps, where large numbers were murdered.[423] In the camps, they were usually counted among the asocials and required to wear brown or black triangles on their prison clothes.[424]
+
+German communists, socialists and trade unionists were among the earliest opponents of the Nazis[425] and among the first to be sent to concentration camps.[426] Nacht und Nebel ("Night and Fog"), a directive issued by Hitler on 7 December 1941, resulted in the disappearance,  torture and death of political activists throughout German-occupied Europe; the courts had sentenced 1,793 people to death by April 1944, according to Jack Fischel.[427] Because they refused to pledge allegiance to the Nazi party or serve in the military, Jehovah's Witnesses were sent to concentration camps, where they were identified by purple triangles and given the option of renouncing their faith and submitting to the state's authority.[428] The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates that between 2,700 and 3,300 were sent to the camps, where 1,400 died.[407] According to German historian Detlef Garbe, "no other religious movement resisted the pressure to conform to National Socialism with comparable unanimity and steadfastness."[429]
+
+Around 100,000 gay men were arrested in Germany and 50,000 jailed between 1933 and 1945; 5,000–15,000 are thought to have been sent to concentration camps, where they were identified by a pink triangle on their camp clothes. It is not known how many died.[408] Hundreds were castrated, sometimes "voluntarily" to avoid criminal sentences.[430] In 1936 Himmler created the Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion.[431] The police closed gay bars and shut down gay publications.[408] Lesbians were left relatively unaffected; the Nazis saw them as "asocials", rather than sexual deviants.[432]
+
+There were 5,000–25,000 Afro-Germans in Germany when the Nazis came to power.[433] Although blacks in Germany and German-occupied Europe were subjected to incarceration, sterilization and murder, there was no program to kill them as a group.[434]
+
+The Nuremberg trials were a series of military tribunals held after the war by the Allies in Nuremberg, Germany, to prosecute the German leadership. The first was the 1945–1946 trial of 22 political and military leaders before the International Military Tribunal.[435] Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels had committed suicide months earlier.[436] The prosecution entered indictments against 24 men (two were dropped before the end of the trial)[ag] and seven organizations: the Reich Cabinet, Schutzstaffel (SS), Sicherheitsdienst (SD), Gestapo, Sturmabteilung (SA), and the "General Staff and High Command".[437]
+
+The indictments were for participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace; war crimes; and crimes against humanity. The tribunal passed judgements ranging from acquittal to death by hanging.[437] Eleven defendants were executed, including Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Rosenberg, and Alfred Jodl. Ribbentrop, the judgement declared, "played an important part in Hitler's 'final solution of the Jewish question'".[438]
+
+The subsequent Nuremberg trials, 1946–1949, tried another 185 defendants.[439] West Germany initially tried few ex-Nazis, but after the 1958 Ulm Einsatzkommando trial, the government set up a dedicated agency.[440] Other trials of Nazis and collaborators took place in Western and Eastern Europe. In 1960 Mossad agents captured Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and brought him to Israel to stand trial on 15 indictments, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against the Jewish people. He was convicted in December 1961 and executed in June 1962. Eichmann's trial and death revived interest in war criminals and the Holocaust in general.[441]
+
+The government of Israel requested $1.5 billion from the Federal Republic of Germany in March 1951 to finance the rehabilitation of 500,000 Jewish survivors, arguing that Germany had stolen $6 billion from the European Jews. Israelis were divided about the idea of taking money from Germany. The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (known as the Claims Conference) was opened in New York, and after negotiations the claim was reduced to $845 million.[442][443]
+
+West Germany allocated another $125 million for reparations in 1988. Companies such as BMW, Deutsche Bank, Ford, Opel, Siemens, and Volkswagen faced lawsuits for their use of forced labor during the war.[442] In response, Germany set up the "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future" Foundation in 2000, which paid €4.45 billion to former slave laborers (up to €7,670 each).[444] In 2013 Germany agreed to provide €772 million to fund nursing care, social services, and medication for 56,000 Holocaust survivors around the world.[445] The French state-owned railway company, the SNCF, agreed in 2014 to pay $60 million to Jewish-American survivors, around $100,000 each, for its role in the transport of 76,000 Jews from France to extermination camps between 1942 and 1944.[446]
+
+In the early decades of Holocaust studies, scholars approached the Holocaust as a genocide unique in its reach and specificity; Nora Levin called the "world of Auschwitz" a "new planet."[447] This was questioned in the 1980s during the West German Historikerstreit ("historians' dispute"), an attempt to re-position the Holocaust within German historiography.[448][ah]
+
+Ernst Nolte triggered the Historikerstreit in June 1986 with an article in the conservative newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: "The past that will not pass: A speech that could be written but no longer delivered".[450][451][ai] Rather than being studied as an historical event, the Nazi era was suspended like a sword over Germany's present, he wrote. He compared "the guilt of the Germans" to the Nazi idea of "the guilt of the Jews", and argued that the focus on the Final Solution overlooked the Nazi's euthanasia program and treatment of Soviet POWs, as well as post-war issues such as the Vietnam War and Soviet–Afghan War. Comparing Auschwitz to the Gulag, he suggested that the Holocaust was a response to Hitler's fear of the Soviet Union: "Did the Gulag Archipelago not precede Auschwitz? Was the Bolshevik murder of an entire class not the logical and factual prius of the 'racial murder' of National Socialism? ... Was Auschwitz perhaps rooted in a past that would not pass?"[aj]
+
+Nolte's arguments were viewed as an attempt to normalize the Holocaust; one of the debate's key questions, according to historian Ernst Piper, was whether history should "historicize" or "moralize".[455][ak] In September 1986 in the left-leaning Die Zeit, Eberhard Jäckel responded that "never before had a state, with the authority of its leader, decided and announced that a specific group of humans, including the elderly, women, children and infants, would be killed as quickly as possible, then carried out this resolution using every possible means of state power."[i]
+
+Despite the criticism of Nolte, the Historikerstreit put "the question of comparison" on the agenda, according to Dan Stone in 2010. [448] He argued that the idea of the Holocaust as unique was overtaken by attempts to place it within the context of Stalinism, ethnic cleansing, and the Nazis' intentions for post-war "demographic reordering", particularly the Generalplan Ost, the plan to kill tens of millions of Slavs to create living space for Germans.[457] Jäckel's position continued nevertheless to inform the views of many specialists. Richard J. Evans argued in 2015:
+
+Thus although the Nazi "Final Solution" was one genocide among many, it had features that made it stand out from all the rest as well. Unlike all the others it was bounded neither by space nor by time. It was launched not against a local or regional obstacle, but at a world-enemy seen as operating on a global scale. It was bound to an even larger plan of racial reordering and reconstruction involving further genocidal killing on an almost unimaginable scale, aimed, however, at clearing the way in a particular region – Eastern Europe – for a further struggle against the Jews and those the Nazis regarded as their puppets. It was set in motion by ideologues who saw world history in racial terms. It was, in part, carried out by industrial methods. These things all make it unique.
+
+In September 2018, an online CNN–ComRes poll of 7,092 adults in seven European countries—Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Poland, and Sweden—found that one in 20 had never heard of the Holocaust. The figure included one in five people in France aged 18–34. Four in 10 Austrians said they knew "just a little" about it; 12 percent of young people there said they had never heard of it.[459] A 2018 survey in the United States found that 22 percent of 1,350 adults said they had never heard of it, while 41 percent of Americans and 66 percent of millennials did not know what Auschwitz was.[460][461] In 2019, a survey of 1,100 Canadians found that 49 percent could not name any of the concentration camps.[462]
+
+Yad Vashem (undated): "The Holocaust was the murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators. Between the German invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941 and the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, Nazi Germany and its accomplices strove to murder every Jew under their domination."[29]
+
+The Century Dictionary (1904): "a sacrifice or offering entirely consumed by fire, in use among the Jews and some pagan nations. Figuratively, a great slaughter or sacrifice of life, as by fire or other accident, or in battle."[11]
+
+Translation, Avalon Project: "These actions are, however, only to be considered provisional, but practical experience is already being collected which is of the greatest importance in relation to the future final solution of the Jewish question."[250]
+
+The speech that could not be delivered referred to a lecture Nolte had planned to give to the Römerberg-Gesprächen (Römerberg Colloquium) in Frankfurt; he said his invitation had been withdrawn, which the organizers disputed.[453] At that point, his lecture had the title "The Past That Will Not Pass: To Debate or to Draw the Line?".[454]
+
+"The Holocaust: Definition and Preliminary Discussion". Holocaust Resource Center, Yad Vashem. Archived from the original on 26 June 2015.
+
+German: "Wannsee-Protokoll". EuroDocs. Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University. Archived from the original on 22 June 2006.
+
+"Audio slideshow: Liberation of Belsen". BBC News. 15 April 2005. Archived from the original on 13 February 2009.
+
+For France, Gerlach 2016, p. 14; for Denmark and Estonia, Snyder 2015, p. 212; for Estonia (Estland) and the Wannsee Conference, "Besprechungsprotokoll" (PDF). Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz. p. 171. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2 February 2019.
+
+Davies, Lizzie (17 February 2009). "France responsible for sending Jews to concentration camps, says court". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 10 October 2017.
+
+Knowlton & Cates 1993, pp. 18–23; partly reproduced in "The Past That Will Not Pass" (translation), German History in Documents and Images.

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+Manga (US: /ˈmɑːŋɡə/, UK: /ˈmæŋɡə/; Japanese: 漫画 [maɲga]) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century,[1] though the art form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art.[2] The term manga (katakana: マンガ; hiragana: まんが) is used in Japan to refer to both comics and cartooning. Outside Japan, the word is typically used to refer to comics originally published in the country.[3]
+
+In Japan, people of all ages read manga. The medium includes works in a broad range of genres: action, adventure, business and commerce, comedy, detective, drama, historical, horror, mystery, romance, science fiction and fantasy, erotica (hentai), sports and games, and suspense, among others.[4][5] Many manga are translated into other languages.[6] Since the 1950s, manga has become an increasingly major part of the Japanese publishing industry.[7] By 1995, the manga market in Japan was valued at ¥586.4 billion ($6–7 billion),[8] with annual sales of 1.9 billion manga books and manga magazines in Japan (equivalent to 15 issues per person).[9] Manga have also gained a significant worldwide audience.[10] In 2008, in the U.S. and Canada, the manga market was valued at $175 million. Manga represented 38% of the French comics market in 2005[update], equivalent to approximately ten times that of the United States,[11] and was valued at about €460 million ($569 million).[12] In Europe and the Middle East, the market was valued at $250 million in 2012.[13]
+
+Manga stories are typically printed in black-and-white—due to time constraints, artistic reasons (as coloring could lessen the impact of the artwork)[14] and to keep printing costs low[15]—although some full-color manga exist (e.g., Colorful). In Japan, manga are usually serialized in large manga magazines, often containing many stories, each presented in a single episode to be continued in the next issue. Collected chapters are usually republished in tankōbon volumes, frequently but not exclusively paperback books.[16] A manga artist (mangaka in Japanese) typically works with a few assistants in a small studio and is associated with a creative editor from a commercial publishing company.[17] If a manga series is popular enough, it may be animated after or during its run.[18] Sometimes, manga are based on previous live-action or animated films.[19]
+
+Manga-influenced comics, among original works, exist in other parts of the world, particularly in Algeria ("DZ-manga"), China, Hong Kong, Taiwan ("manhua"), and South Korea ("manhwa").[20][21]
+
+The word "manga" comes from the Japanese word 漫画,[22] composed of the two kanji 漫 (man) meaning "whimsical or impromptu" and 画 (ga) meaning "pictures".[23] The same term is the root of the Korean word for comics, "manhwa", and the Chinese word "manhua".[24]
+
+The word first came into common usage in the late 18th century[25] with the publication of such works as Santō Kyōden's picturebook Shiji no yukikai (1798),[26][27] and in the early 19th century with such works as Aikawa Minwa's Manga hyakujo (1814) and the celebrated Hokusai Manga books (1814–1834)[28] containing assorted drawings from the sketchbooks of the famous ukiyo-e artist Hokusai.[29] Rakuten Kitazawa (1876–1955) first used the word "manga" in the modern sense.[30]
+
+In Japanese, "manga" refers to all kinds of cartooning, comics, and animation. Among English speakers, "manga" has the stricter meaning of "Japanese comics", in parallel to the usage of "anime" in and outside Japan. The term "ani-manga" is used to describe comics produced from animation cels.[31]
+
+The history of manga is said to originate from scrolls dating back to the 12th century, and it is believed they represent the basis for the right-to-left reading style. During the Edo period (1603–1867), Toba Ehon embedded the concept of manga.[32] The word itself first came into common usage in 1798,[25] with the publication of works such as Santō Kyōden's picturebook Shiji no yukikai (1798),[26][27] and in the early 19th century with such works as Aikawa Minwa's Manga hyakujo (1814) and the Hokusai Manga books (1814–1834).[29][33] Adam L. Kern has suggested that kibyoshi, picture books from the late 18th century, may have been the world's first comic books. These graphical narratives share with modern manga humorous, satirical, and romantic themes.[34] Some works were mass-produced as serials using woodblock printing.[9]
+
+Writers on manga history have described two broad and complementary processes shaping modern manga. One view represented by other writers such as Frederik L. Schodt, Kinko Ito, and Adam L. Kern, stress continuity of Japanese cultural and aesthetic traditions, including pre-war, Meiji, and pre-Meiji culture and art.[35] The other view, emphasizes events occurring during and after the Allied occupation of Japan (1945–1952), and stresses U.S. cultural influences, including U.S. comics (brought to Japan by the GIs) and images and themes from U.S. television, film, and cartoons (especially Disney).[36]
+
+Regardless of its source, an explosion of artistic creativity occurred in the post-war period,[37] involving manga artists such as Osamu Tezuka (Astro Boy) and Machiko Hasegawa (Sazae-san). Astro Boy quickly became (and remains) immensely popular in Japan and elsewhere,[38] and the anime adaptation of Sazae-san drawing more viewers than any other anime on Japanese television in 2011.[32] Tezuka and Hasegawa both made stylistic innovations. In Tezuka's "cinematographic" technique, the panels are like a motion picture that reveals details of action bordering on slow motion as well as rapid zooms from distance to close-up shots. This kind of visual dynamism was widely adopted by later manga artists.[39] Hasegawa's focus on daily life and on women's experience also came to characterize later shōjo manga.[40] Between 1950 and 1969, an increasingly large readership for manga emerged in Japan with the solidification of its two main marketing genres, shōnen manga aimed at boys and shōjo manga aimed at girls.[41]
+
+In 1969 a group of female manga artists (later called the Year 24 Group, also known as Magnificent 24s) made their shōjo manga debut ("year 24" comes from the Japanese name for the year 1949, the birth-year of many of these artists).[42] The group included Moto Hagio, Riyoko Ikeda, Yumiko Ōshima, Keiko Takemiya, and Ryoko Yamagishi.[16] Thereafter, primarily female manga artists would draw shōjo for a readership of girls and young women.[43] In the following decades (1975–present), shōjo manga continued to develop stylistically while simultaneously evolving different but overlapping subgenres.[44] Major subgenres include romance, superheroines, and "Ladies Comics" (in Japanese, redisu レディース, redikomi レディコミ, and josei 女性).[45]
+
+Modern shōjo manga romance features love as a major theme set into emotionally intense narratives of self-realization.[46] With the superheroines, shōjo manga saw releases such as Pink Hanamori's Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch Reiko Yoshida's Tokyo Mew Mew, And, Naoko Takeuchi's Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon, which became internationally popular in both manga and anime formats.[47] Groups (or sentais) of girls working together have also been popular within this genre. Like Lucia, Hanon, and Rina singing together, and Sailor Moon, Sailor Mercury, Sailor Mars, Sailor Jupiter, and Sailor Venus working together.[48]
+
+Manga for male readers sub-divides according to the age of its intended readership: boys up to 18 years old (shōnen manga) and young men 18 to 30 years old (seinen manga);[49] as well as by content, including action-adventure often involving male heroes, slapstick humor, themes of honor, and sometimes explicit sex.[50] The Japanese use different kanji for two closely allied meanings of "seinen"—青年 for "youth, young man" and 成年 for "adult, majority"—the second referring to pornographic manga aimed at grown men and also called seijin ("adult" 成人) manga.[51] Shōnen, seinen, and seijin manga share a number of features in common.
+
+Boys and young men became some of the earliest readers of manga after World War II. From the 1950s on, shōnen manga focused on topics thought to interest the archetypal boy, including subjects like robots, space-travel, and heroic action-adventure.[52] Popular themes include science fiction, technology, sports, and supernatural settings. Manga with solitary costumed superheroes like Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man generally did not become as popular.[53]
+
+The role of girls and women in manga produced for male readers has evolved considerably over time to include those featuring single pretty girls (bishōjo)[54] such as Belldandy from Oh My Goddess!, stories where such girls and women surround the hero, as in Negima and Hanaukyo Maid Team, or groups of heavily armed female warriors (sentō bishōjo)[55]
+
+With the relaxation of censorship in Japan in the 1990s, an assortment of explicit sexual material appeared in manga intended for male readers, and correspondingly continued into the English translations.[56] In 2010, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government considered a bill to restrict minors' access to such content.[57][needs update]
+
+The gekiga style of storytelling—thematically somber, adult-oriented, and sometimes deeply violent—focuses on the day-in, day-out grim realities of life, often drawn in a gritty and unvarnished fashion.[58][59] Gekiga such as Sampei Shirato's 1959–1962 Chronicles of a Ninja's Military Accomplishments (Ninja Bugeichō) arose in the late 1950s and 1960s partly from left-wing student and working-class political activism,[60] and partly from the aesthetic dissatisfaction of young manga artists like Yoshihiro Tatsumi with existing manga.[61]
+
+In Japan, manga constituted an annual 40.6 billion yen (approximately US$395 million) publication-industry by 2007.[63] In 2006 sales of manga books made up for about 27% of total book-sales, and sale of manga magazines, for 20% of total magazine-sales.[64] The manga industry has expanded worldwide, where distribution companies license and reprint manga into their native languages.
+
+Marketeers primarily classify manga by the age and gender of the target readership.[65] In particular, books and magazines sold to boys (shōnen) and girls (shōjo) have distinctive cover-art, and most bookstores place them on different shelves. Due to cross-readership, consumer response is not limited by demographics. For example, male readers may subscribe to a series intended for female readers, and so on. Japan has manga cafés, or manga kissa (kissa is an abbreviation of kissaten). At a manga kissa, people drink coffee, read manga and sometimes stay overnight.
+
+The Kyoto International Manga Museum maintains a very large website listing manga published in Japanese.[66]
+
+Manga magazines usually have many series running concurrently with approximately 20–40 pages allocated to each series per issue. Other magazines such as the anime fandom magazine Newtype featured single chapters within their monthly periodicals. Other magazines like Nakayoshi feature many stories written by many different artists; these magazines, or "anthology magazines", as they are also known (colloquially "phone books"), are usually printed on low-quality newsprint and can be anywhere from 200 to more than 850 pages thick. Manga magazines also contain one-shot comics and various four-panel yonkoma (equivalent to comic strips). Manga series can run for many years if they are successful. Manga artists sometimes start out with a few "one-shot" manga projects just to try to get their name out. If these are successful and receive good reviews, they are continued. Magazines often have a short life.[67]
+
+After a series has run for a while, publishers often collect the episodes together and print them in dedicated book-sized volumes, called tankōbon. These can be hardcover, or more usually softcover books, and are the equivalent of U.S. trade paperbacks or graphic novels. These volumes often use higher-quality paper, and are useful to those who want to "catch up" with a series so they can follow it in the magazines or if they find the cost of the weeklies or monthlies to be prohibitive. "Deluxe" versions have also been printed as readers have gotten older and the need for something special grew. Old manga have also been reprinted using somewhat lesser quality paper and sold for 100 yen (about $1 U.S. dollar) each to compete with the used book market.
+
+Kanagaki Robun and Kawanabe Kyōsai created the first manga magazine in 1874: Eshinbun Nipponchi. The magazine was heavily influenced by Japan Punch, founded in 1862 by Charles Wirgman, a British cartoonist. Eshinbun Nipponchi had a very simple style of drawings and did not become popular with many people. Eshinbun Nipponchi ended after three issues. The magazine Kisho Shimbun in 1875 was inspired by Eshinbun Nipponchi, which was followed by Marumaru Chinbun in 1877, and then Garakuta Chinpo in 1879.[68] Shōnen Sekai was the first shōnen magazine created in 1895 by Iwaya Sazanami, a famous writer of Japanese children's literature back then. Shōnen Sekai had a strong focus on the First Sino-Japanese War.[69]
+
+In 1905 the manga-magazine publishing boom started with the Russo-Japanese War,[70] Tokyo Pakku was created and became a huge hit.[71] After Tokyo Pakku in 1905, a female version of Shōnen Sekai was created and named Shōjo Sekai, considered the first shōjo magazine.[72] Shōnen Pakku was made and is considered the first children's manga magazine. The children's demographic was in an early stage of development in the Meiji period. Shōnen Pakku was influenced from foreign children's magazines such as Puck which an employee of Jitsugyō no Nihon (publisher of the magazine) saw and decided to emulate. In 1924, Kodomo Pakku was launched as another children's manga magazine after Shōnen Pakku.[71] During the boom, Poten (derived from the French "potin") was published in 1908. All the pages were in full color with influences from Tokyo Pakku and Osaka Puck. It is unknown if there were any more issues besides the first one.[70] Kodomo Pakku was launched May 1924 by Tokyosha and featured high-quality art by many members of the manga artistry like Takei Takeo, Takehisa Yumeji and Aso Yutaka. Some of the manga featured speech balloons, where other manga from the previous eras did not use speech balloons and were silent.[71]
+
+Published from May 1935 to January 1941, Manga no Kuni coincided with the period of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). Manga no Kuni featured information on becoming a mangaka and on other comics industries around the world. Manga no Kuni handed its title to Sashie Manga Kenkyū in August 1940.[73]
+
+Dōjinshi, produced by small publishers outside of the mainstream commercial market, resemble in their publishing small-press independently published comic books in the United States. Comiket, the largest comic book convention in the world with around 500,000 visitors gathering over three days, is devoted to dōjinshi. While they most often contain original stories, many are parodies of or include characters from popular manga and anime series. Some dōjinshi continue with a series' story or write an entirely new one using its characters, much like fan fiction. In 2007, dōjinshi sales amounted to 27.73 billion yen (US$245 million).[63] In 2006 they represented about a tenth of manga books and magazines sales.[64]
+
+Thanks to the advent of the internet, there have been new ways for aspiring mangaka to upload and sell their manga online. Before, there were two main ways in which a mangaka's work could be published: taking their manga drawn on paper to a publisher themselves, or submitting their work to competitions run by magazines.[74]
+
+In recent years, there has been a rise in manga released digitally. Web manga, as it's known in Japan, has a seen an increase thanks in part to image hosting websites where anyone can upload pages from their works for free. Although released digitally, almost all web manga stick to the conventional black-and-white format despite some never getting physical publications. Pixiv is the most popular site where a host of amateur and professional works get published on the site. It has grown to be the most visited site for artwork in Japan.[75] Twitter has also become a popular place for web manga with many artists releasing pages weekly on their accounts in the hopes of their works getting picked up or published professionally. One of the best examples of an amateur work becoming professional is One-Punch Man which was released online and later got a professional remake released digitally and an anime adaptation soon there after.[76]
+
+Many of the big print publishers have also released digital only magazines and websites where web manga get published alongside their serialized magazines. Shogakukan for instance has two websites, Sunday Webry and Ura Sunday, that release weekly chapters for web manga and even offer contests for mangaka to submit their work. Both Sunday Webry and Ura Sunday have become one of the top web manga sites in Japan.[77][78] Some have even released apps that teach how to draw professional manga and learn how to create them. Weekly Shōnen Jump released Jump Paint, an app that guides users on how to make their own manga from making storyboards to digitally inking lines. It also offers more than 120 types of pen tips and more than 1,000 screentones for artists to practice.[74] Kodansha has also used the popularity of web manga to launch more series and also offer better distribution of their officially translated works under Kodansha Comics thanks in part to the titles being released digitally first before being published physically.[79]
+
+The rise web manga has also been credited to smartphones and computers as more and more readers read manga on their phones rather than from a print publication. While paper manga has seen a decrease overtime, digital manga have been growing in sales each year. The Research Institute for Publications reports that sales of digital manga books excluding magazines jumped 27.1 percent to ¥146 billion in 2016 from the year before while sales of paper manga saw a record year-on-year decline of 7.4 percent to ¥194.7 billion. They have also said that if the digital and paper keep the same growth and drop rates, web manga will exceed their paper counterparts.[80]
+
+While webtoons have caught on in popularity as a new medium for comics in Asia, Japan has been slow to adopt webtoons as the traditional format and print publication still dominate the way manga is created and consumed. Despite this, one of the biggest webtoon publishers in the world, Comico, has had success in the traditional Japanese manga market. Comico was launched by NHN Japan, the Japanese subsidiary of Korean company, NHN Entertainment. As of now, there are only two webtoon publishers that publish Japanese webtoons: Comico and Naver Webtoon (under the name XOY in Japan). Kakao has also had success by offering licensed manga and translated Korean webtoons with their service Piccoma. All three companies credit their success to the webtoon pay model where users can purchase each chapter individually instead of having to buy the whole book while also offering some chapters for free for a period of time allowing anyone to read a whole series for free if they wait long enough.[81] The added benefit of having all of their titles in color and some with special animations and effects have also helped them succeed. Some popular Japanese webtoons have also gotten anime adaptations and print releases, the most notable being ReLIFE and Recovery of an MMO Junkie.[82][83]
+
+By 2007, the influence of manga on international comics had grown considerably over the past two decades.[84] "Influence" is used here to refer to effects on the comics markets outside Japan and to aesthetic effects on comics artists internationally.
+
+Traditionally, manga stories flow from top to bottom and from right to left. Some publishers of translated manga keep to this original format. Other publishers mirror the pages horizontally before printing the translation, changing the reading direction to a more "Western" left to right, so as not to confuse foreign readers or traditional comics-consumers. This practice is known as "flipping".[85] For the most part, criticism suggests that flipping goes against the original intentions of the creator (for example, if a person wears a shirt that reads "MAY" on it, and gets flipped, then the word is altered to "YAM"), who may be ignorant of how awkward it is to read comics when the eyes must flow through the pages and text in opposite directions, resulting in an experience that's quite distinct from reading something that flows homogeneously. If the translation is not adapted to the flipped artwork carefully enough it is also possible for the text to go against the picture, such as a person referring to something on their left in the text while pointing to their right in the graphic. Characters shown writing with their right hands, the majority of them, would become left-handed when a series is flipped. Flipping may also cause oddities with familiar asymmetrical objects or layouts, such as a car being depicted with the gas pedal on the left and the brake on the right, or a shirt with the buttons on the wrong side, but these issues are minor when compared to the unnatural reading flow, and some of them could be solved with an adaptation work that goes beyond just translation and blind flipping.[86]
+
+Manga has influenced European cartooning in a way that is somewhat different from in the U.S. Broadcast anime in France and Italy opened the European market to manga during the 1970s.[87] French art has borrowed from Japan since the 19th century (Japonism)[88] and has its own highly developed tradition of bande dessinée cartooning.[89] In France, beginning in the mid-1990s,[90] manga has proven very popular to a wide readership, accounting for about one-third of comics sales in France since 2004.[91] According to the Japan External Trade Organization, sales of manga reached $212.6 million within France and Germany alone in 2006.[87] France represents about 50% of the European market and is the second worldwide market, behind Japan.[13] In 2013, there were 41 publishers of manga in France and, together with other Asian comics, manga represented around 40% of new comics releases in the country,[92] surpassing Franco-Belgian comics for the first time.[93] European publishers marketing manga translated into French include Asuka, Casterman, Glénat, Kana, and Pika Édition, among others.[citation needed] European publishers also translate manga into Dutch, German, Italian, and other languages. In 2007, about 70% of all comics sold in Germany were manga.[94]
+
+Manga publishers based in the United Kingdom include Gollancz and Titan Books.[citation needed] Manga publishers from the United States have a strong marketing presence in the United Kingdom: for example, the Tanoshimi line from Random House.[citation needed]
+
+Manga made their way only gradually into U.S. markets, first in association with anime and then independently.[95] Some U.S. fans became aware of manga in the 1970s and early 1980s.[96] However, anime was initially more accessible than manga to U.S. fans,[97] many of whom were college-age young people who found it easier to obtain, subtitle, and exhibit video tapes of anime than translate, reproduce, and distribute tankōbon-style manga books.[98] One of the first manga translated into English and marketed in the U.S. was Keiji Nakazawa's Barefoot Gen, an autobiographical story of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima issued by Leonard Rifas and Educomics (1980–1982).[99] More manga were translated between the mid-1980s and 1990s, including Golgo 13 in 1986, Lone Wolf and Cub from First Comics in 1987, and Kamui, Area 88, and Mai the Psychic Girl, also in 1987 and all from Viz Media-Eclipse Comics.[100] Others soon followed, including Akira from Marvel Comics' Epic Comics imprint, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind from Viz Media, and Appleseed from Eclipse Comics in 1988, and later Iczer-1 (Antarctic Press, 1994) and Ippongi Bang's F-111 Bandit (Antarctic Press, 1995).
+
+In the 1980s to the mid-1990s, Japanese animation, like Akira, Dragon Ball, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Pokémon, made a bigger impact on the fan experience and in the market than manga.[101] Matters changed when translator-entrepreneur Toren Smith founded Studio Proteus in 1986. Smith and Studio Proteus acted as an agent and translator of many Japanese manga, including Masamune Shirow's Appleseed and Kōsuke Fujishima's Oh My Goddess!, for Dark Horse and Eros Comix, eliminating the need for these publishers to seek their own contacts in Japan.[102]
+Simultaneously, the Japanese publisher Shogakukan opened a U.S. market initiative with their U.S. subsidiary Viz, enabling Viz to draw directly on Shogakukan's catalogue and translation skills.[85]
+
+Japanese publishers began pursuing a U.S. market in the mid-1990s due to a stagnation in the domestic market for manga.[103] The U.S. manga market took an upturn with mid-1990s anime and manga versions of Masamune Shirow's Ghost in the Shell (translated by Frederik L. Schodt and Toren Smith) becoming very popular among fans.[104] An extremely successful manga and anime translated and dubbed in English in the mid-1990s was Sailor Moon.[105] By 1995–1998, the Sailor Moon manga had been exported to over 23 countries, including China, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, North America and most of Europe.[106] In 1997, Mixx Entertainment began publishing Sailor Moon, along with CLAMP's Magic Knight Rayearth, Hitoshi Iwaaki's Parasyte and Tsutomu Takahashi's Ice Blade in the monthly manga magazine MixxZine. Mixx Entertainment, later renamed Tokyopop, also published manga in trade paperbacks and, like Viz, began aggressive marketing of manga to both young male and young female demographics.[107]
+
+During this period, Dark Horse Manga was a major publisher of translated manga. In addition to Oh My Goddess!, the company published Akira, Astro Boy, Berserk, Blade of the Immortal, Ghost in the Shell, Lone Wolf and Cub, Yasuhiro Nightow's Trigun and Blood Blockade Battlefront, Gantz, Kouta Hirano's Hellsing and Drifters, Blood+, Multiple Personality Detective Psycho, FLCL, Mob Psycho 100, and Oreimo. The company received 13 Eisner Award nominations for its manga titles, and three of the four manga creators admitted to The Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame — Osamu Tezuka, Kazuo Koike, and Goseki Kojima — were published in Dark Horse translations.[108]
+
+In the following years, manga became increasingly popular, and new publishers entered the field while the established publishers greatly expanded their catalogues.[109] The Pokémon manga Electric Tale of Pikachu issue #1 sold over 1 million copies in the United States, making it the best-selling single comic book in the United States since 1993.[110] By 2008, the U.S. and Canadian manga market generated $175 million in annual sales.[111] Simultaneously, mainstream U.S. media began to discuss manga, with articles in The New York Times, Time magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired magazine.[112] As of 2017, manga distributor Viz Media is the largest publisher of graphic novels and comic books in the United States, with a 23% share of the market.[113] BookScan sales show that manga is one of the fastest-growing areas of the comic book and narrative fiction markets. From January 2019 to May 2019, the manga market grew 16%, compared to the overall comic book market's 5% growth. The NPD Group noted that, compared to other comic book readers, manga readers are younger (76% under 30) and more diverse, including a higher female readership (16% higher than other comic books).[114]
+
+A number of artists in the United States have drawn comics and cartoons influenced by manga. As an early example, Vernon Grant drew manga-influenced comics while living in Japan in the late 1960s and early 1970s.[115] Others include Frank Miller's mid-1980s Ronin, Adam Warren and Toren Smith's 1988 The Dirty Pair,[116] Ben Dunn's 1987 Ninja High School and Manga Shi 2000 from Crusade Comics (1997).
+
+By the 21st century several U.S. manga publishers had begun to produce work by U.S. artists under the broad marketing-label of manga.[117] In 2002 I.C. Entertainment, formerly Studio Ironcat and now out of business, launched a series of manga by U.S. artists called Amerimanga.[118] In 2004 eigoMANGA launched the Rumble Pak and Sakura Pakk anthology series. Seven Seas Entertainment followed suit with World Manga.[119] Simultaneously, TokyoPop introduced original English-language manga (OEL manga) later renamed Global Manga.[120]
+
+Francophone artists have also developed their own versions of manga (manfra), like Frédéric Boilet's la nouvelle manga. Boilet has worked in France and in Japan, sometimes collaborating with Japanese artists.[121]
+
+The Japanese manga industry grants a large number of awards, mostly sponsored by publishers, with the winning prize usually including publication of the winning stories in magazines released by the sponsoring publisher. Examples of these awards include:
+
+The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has awarded the International Manga Award annually since May 2007.[122]
+
+Kyoto Seika University in Japan has offered a highly competitive course in manga since 2000.[123][124] Then, several established universities and vocational schools (専門学校: Semmon gakkou) established a training curriculum.
+
+Shuho Sato, who wrote Umizaru and Say Hello to Black Jack, has created some controversy on Twitter. Sato says, "Manga school is meaningless because those schools have very low success rates. Then, I could teach novices required skills on the job in three months. Meanwhile, those school students spend several million yen, and four years, yet they are good for nothing." and that, "For instance, Keiko Takemiya, the then professor of Seika Univ., remarked in the Government Council that 'A complete novice will be able to understand where is "Tachikiri" (i.e., margin section) during four years.' On the other hand, I would imagine that, It takes about thirty minutes to completely understand that at work."[125]

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+A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry[1][2] – produced by several kinds of large herbaceous flowering plants in the genus Musa.[3] In some countries, bananas used for cooking may be called "plantains", distinguishing them from dessert bananas. The fruit is variable in size, color, and firmness, but is usually elongated and curved, with soft flesh rich in starch covered with a rind, which may be green, yellow, red, purple, or brown when ripe. The fruits grow in clusters hanging from the top of the plant. Almost all modern edible seedless (parthenocarp) bananas come from two wild species – Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana. The scientific names of most cultivated bananas are Musa acuminata, Musa balbisiana, and Musa × paradisiaca for the hybrid Musa acuminata × M. balbisiana, depending on their genomic constitution. The old scientific name for this hybrid, Musa sapientum, is no longer used.
+
+Musa species are native to tropical Indomalaya and Australia, and are likely to have been first domesticated in Papua New Guinea.[4][5] They are grown in 135 countries,[6] primarily for their fruit, and to a lesser extent to make fiber, banana wine, and banana beer and as ornamental plants. The world's largest producers of bananas in 2017 were India and China, which together accounted for approximately 38% of total production.[7]
+
+Worldwide, there is no sharp distinction between "bananas" and "plantains". Especially in the Americas and Europe, "banana" usually refers to soft, sweet, dessert bananas, particularly those of the Cavendish group, which are the main exports from banana-growing countries. By contrast, Musa cultivars with firmer, starchier fruit are called "plantains". In other regions, such as Southeast Asia, many more kinds of banana are grown and eaten, so the binary distinction is not useful and is not made in local languages.
+
+The term "banana" is also used as the common name for the plants that produce the fruit.[3] This can extend to other members of the genus Musa, such as the scarlet banana (Musa coccinea), the pink banana (Musa velutina), and the Fe'i bananas. It can also refer to members of the genus Ensete, such as the snow banana (Ensete glaucum) and the economically important false banana (Ensete ventricosum). Both genera are in the banana family, Musaceae.
+
+A banana corm, about 25 cm (10 in) across
+
+Female flowers have petals at the tip of the ovary
+
+Banana 'tree' showing fruit and inflorescence
+
+Banana tree with opening inflorescence
+
+Banana inflorescence, partially opened
+
+Wild banana with flowers and stem growing in reverse direction
+
+Extracted banana's DNA strands that can be seen with naked eyes
+
+The banana plant is the largest herbaceous flowering plant.[8] All the above-ground parts of a banana plant grow from a structure usually called a "corm".[9] Plants are normally tall and fairly sturdy, and are often mistaken for trees, but what appears to be a trunk is actually a "false stem" or pseudostem. Bananas grow in a wide variety of soils, as long as the soil is at least 60 centimetres (2.0 ft) deep, has good drainage and is not compacted.[10] The leaves of banana plants are composed of a "stalk" (petiole) and a blade (lamina). The base of the petiole widens to form a sheath; the tightly packed sheaths make up the pseudostem, which is all that supports the plant. The edges of the sheath meet when it is first produced, making it tubular. As new growth occurs in the centre of the pseudostem the edges are forced apart.[11] Cultivated banana plants vary in height depending on the variety and growing conditions. Most are around 5 m (16 ft) tall, with a range from 'Dwarf Cavendish' plants at around 3 m (10 ft) to 'Gros Michel' at 7 m (23 ft) or more.[12][13] Leaves are spirally arranged and may grow 2.7 metres (8.9 ft) long and 60 cm (2.0 ft) wide.[1] They are easily torn by the wind, resulting in the familiar frond look.[14]
+
+When a banana plant is mature, the corm stops producing new leaves and begins to form a flower spike or inflorescence. A stem develops which grows up inside the pseudostem, carrying the immature inflorescence until eventually it emerges at the top.[15] Each pseudostem normally produces a single inflorescence, also known as the "banana heart". (More are sometimes produced; an exceptional plant in the Philippines produced five.[16]) After fruiting, the pseudostem dies, but offshoots will normally have developed from the base, so that the plant as a whole is perennial. In the plantation system of cultivation, only one of the offshoots will be allowed to develop in order to maintain spacing.[17] The inflorescence contains many bracts (sometimes incorrectly referred to as petals) between rows of flowers. The female flowers (which can develop into fruit) appear in rows further up the stem (closer to the leaves) from the rows of male flowers. The ovary is inferior, meaning that the tiny petals and other flower parts appear at the tip of the ovary.[18]
+
+The banana fruits develop from the banana heart, in a large hanging cluster, made up of tiers (called "hands"), with up to 20 fruit to a tier. The hanging cluster is known as a bunch, comprising 3–20 tiers, or commercially as a "banana stem", and can weigh 30–50 kilograms (66–110 lb). Individual banana fruits (commonly known as a banana or "finger") average 125 grams (4 1⁄2 oz), of which approximately 75% is water and 25% dry matter (nutrient table, lower right).
+
+The fruit has been described as a "leathery berry".[19] There is a protective outer layer (a peel or skin) with numerous long, thin strings (the phloem bundles), which run lengthwise between the skin and the edible inner portion. The inner part of the common yellow dessert variety can be split lengthwise into three sections that correspond to the inner portions of the three carpels by manually deforming the unopened fruit.[20] In cultivated varieties, the seeds are diminished nearly to non-existence; their remnants are tiny black specks in the interior of the fruit.[21]
+
+As with all potassium-containing objects on Earth, including many common foods and people, bananas emit radioactivity at very low levels occurring naturally from potassium-40 (40K or K-40),[22] which is one of several isotopes of potassium.[23][24] The banana equivalent dose of radiation was developed in 1995 as a simple teaching-tool to educate the public about the natural, small amount of K-40 radiation occurring in every human and in common foods – where the banana was used as an example.[25][26] The K-40 in a banana contains about 15 becquerels or 0.1 micro-sieverts (units of radioactivity exposure),[27] an amount that does not add to the total body radiation dose when a banana is consumed.[22][26]
+The radiation exposure from consuming one banana is approximately 1% of the average daily exposure to radiation, or about 50 times less than a typical x-ray in a dental exam and 400 times less than taking a commercial flight across the United States.[27]
+
+The word banana is thought to be of West African origin, possibly from the Wolof word banaana, and passed into English via Spanish or Portuguese.[28]
+
+The genus Musa was created by Carl Linnaeus in 1753.[29] The name may be derived from Antonius Musa, physician to the Emperor Augustus, or Linnaeus may have adapted the Arabic word for banana, mauz.[30] The old biological name Musa sapientum = "Muse of the wise" arose because of homophony in Latin with the classical Muses.
+
+Musa is in the family Musaceae. The APG III system assigns Musaceae to the order Zingiberales, part of the commelinid clade of the monocotyledonous flowering plants. Some 70 species of Musa were recognized by the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families as of January 2013[update];[29] several produce edible fruit, while others are cultivated as ornamentals.[31]
+
+The classification of cultivated bananas has long been a problematic issue for taxonomists. Linnaeus originally placed bananas into two species based only on their uses as food: Musa sapientum for dessert bananas and Musa paradisiaca for plantains. More species names were added, but this approach proved to be inadequate for the number of cultivars in the primary center of diversity of the genus, Southeast Asia. Many of these cultivars were given names that were later discovered to be synonyms.[32]
+
+In a series of papers published from 1947 onwards, Ernest Cheesman showed that Linnaeus's Musa sapientum and Musa paradisiaca were cultivars and descendants of two wild seed-producing species, Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana, both first described by Luigi Aloysius Colla.[33] Cheesman recommended the abolition of Linnaeus's species in favor of reclassifying bananas according to three morphologically distinct groups of cultivars – those primarily exhibiting the botanical characteristics of Musa balbisiana, those primarily exhibiting the botanical characteristics of Musa acuminata, and those with characteristics of both.[32] Researchers Norman Simmonds and Ken Shepherd proposed a genome-based nomenclature system in 1955. This system eliminated almost all the difficulties and inconsistencies of the earlier classification of bananas based on assigning scientific names to cultivated varieties. Despite this, the original names are still recognized by some authorities, leading to confusion.[33][34]
+
+The accepted scientific names for most groups of cultivated bananas are Musa acuminata Colla and Musa balbisiana Colla for the ancestral species, and Musa × paradisiaca L. for the hybrid M. acuminata × M. balbisiana.[35]
+
+Synonyms of M. × paradisiaca include
+
+Generally, modern classifications of banana cultivars follow Simmonds and Shepherd's system. Cultivars are placed in groups based on the number of chromosomes they have and which species they are derived from. Thus the Latundan banana is placed in the AAB Group, showing that it is a triploid derived from both M. acuminata (A) and M. balbisiana (B). For a list of the cultivars classified under this system, see "List of banana cultivars".
+
+In 2012, a team of scientists announced they had achieved a draft sequence of the genome of Musa acuminata.[36]
+
+In regions such as North America and Europe, Musa fruits offered for sale can be divided into "bananas" and "plantains", based on their intended use as food. Thus the banana producer and distributor Chiquita produces publicity material for the American market which says that "a plantain is not a banana". The stated differences are that plantains are more starchy and less sweet; they are eaten cooked rather than raw; they have thicker skin, which may be green, yellow or black; and they can be used at any stage of ripeness.[37] Linnaeus made the same distinction between plantains and bananas when first naming two "species" of Musa.[38] Members of the "plantain subgroup" of banana cultivars, most important as food in West Africa and Latin America, correspond to the Chiquita description, having long pointed fruit. They are described by Ploetz et al. as "true" plantains, distinct from other cooking bananas.[39] The cooking bananas of East Africa belong to a different group, the East African Highland bananas,[13] so would not qualify as "true" plantains on this definition.
+
+An alternative approach divides bananas into dessert bananas and cooking bananas, with plantains being one of the subgroups of cooking bananas.[40] Triploid cultivars derived solely from M. acuminata are examples of "dessert bananas", whereas triploid cultivars derived from the hybrid between M. acuminata and M. balbinosa (in particular the plantain subgroup of the AAB Group) are "plantains".[41][42] Small farmers in Colombia grow a much wider range of cultivars than large commercial plantations. A study of these cultivars showed that they could be placed into at least three groups based on their characteristics: dessert bananas, non-plantain cooking bananas, and plantains, although there were overlaps between dessert and cooking bananas.[43]
+
+In Southeast Asia – the center of diversity for bananas, both wild and cultivated – the distinction between "bananas" and "plantains" does not work, according to Valmayor et al. Many bananas are used both raw and cooked. There are starchy cooking bananas which are smaller than those eaten raw. The range of colors, sizes and shapes is far wider than in those grown or sold in Africa, Europe or the Americas.[38] Southeast Asian languages do not make the distinction between "bananas" and "plantains" that is made in English (and Spanish). Thus both Cavendish cultivars, the classic yellow dessert bananas, and Saba cultivars, used mainly for cooking, are called pisang in Malaysia and Indonesia, kluai in Thailand and chuoi in Vietnam.[44] Fe'i bananas, grown and eaten in the islands of the Pacific, are derived from entirely different wild species than traditional bananas and plantains. Most Fe'i bananas are cooked, but Karat bananas, which are short and squat with bright red skins, very different from the usual yellow dessert bananas, are eaten raw.[45]
+
+In summary, in commerce in Europe and the Americas (although not in small-scale cultivation), it is possible to distinguish between "bananas", which are eaten raw, and "plantains", which are cooked. In other regions of the world, particularly India, Southeast Asia and the islands of the Pacific, there are many more kinds of banana and the two-fold distinction is not useful and not made in local languages. Plantains are one of many kinds of cooking bananas, which are not always distinct from dessert bananas.
+
+The earliest domestication of bananas (Musa spp.) were initially from naturally occurring parthenocarpic (seedless) individuals of Musa acuminata banksii in New Guinea. These were cultivated by Papuans before the arrival of Austronesian-speakers. Numerous phytoliths of bananas have been recovered from the Kuk Swamp archaeological site and dated to around 10,000 to 6,500 BP. From New Guinea, cultivated bananas spread westward into Island Southeast Asia through proximity (not migrations). They hybridized with other (possibly independently domesticated) subspecies of Musa acuminata as well as Musa balbisiana in the Philippines, northern New Guinea, and possibly Halmahera. These hybridization events produced the triploid cultivars of bananas commonly grown today. From Island Southeast Asia, they became part of the staple crops of Austronesian peoples and were spread during their voyages and ancient maritime trading routes into Oceania, East Africa, South Asia, and Indochina.[47][48][49]
+
+These ancient introductions resulted in the banana subgroup now known as the "true" plantains, which include the East African Highland bananas and the Pacific plantains (the Iholena and Maoli-Popo'ulu subgroups). East African Highland bananas originated from banana populations introduced to Madagascar probably from the region between Java, Borneo, and New Guinea; while Pacific plantains were introduced to the Pacific Islands from either eastern New Guinea or the Bismarck Archipelago.[47][48]
+
+Phytolith discoveries in Cameroon dating to the first millennium BCE[51] triggered an as yet unresolved debate about the date of first cultivation in Africa. There is linguistic evidence that bananas were known in Madagascar around that time.[52] The earliest prior evidence indicates that cultivation dates to no earlier than late 6th century CE.[53] It is likely, however, that bananas were brought at least to Madagascar if not to the East African coast during the phase of Malagasy colonization of the island from South East Asia c. 400 CE.[54]
+
+A second wave of introductions later spread bananas to other parts of tropical Asia, particularly Indochina and the Indian Subcontinent.[47][48] However, there is evidence that bananas were known to the Indus Valley Civilisation from phytoliths recovered from the Kot Diji archaeological site in Pakistan (although they are absent in other contemporary sites in South Asia). This may be a possible indication of very early dispersal of bananas by Austronesian traders by sea from as early as 2000 BCE. But this is still putative, as they may have come from local wild Musa species used for fiber or as ornamentals, not food.[49]
+
+Southeast Asia remains the region of primary diversity of the banana. Areas of secondary diversity are found in Africa, indicating a long history of banana cultivation in these regions.[55]
+
+The banana may also have been present in isolated locations elsewhere in the Middle East on the eve of Islam. The spread of Islam was followed by far-reaching diffusion. There are numerous references to it in Islamic texts (such as poems and hadiths) beginning in the 9th century. By the 10th century the banana appears in texts from Palestine and Egypt. From there it diffused into North Africa and Muslim Iberia. During the medieval ages, bananas from Granada were considered among the best in the Arab world.[56] In 650, Islamic conquerors brought the banana to Palestine. Today, banana consumption increases significantly in Islamic countries during Ramadan, the month of daylight fasting.[57]
+
+Bananas were certainly grown in the Christian Kingdom of Cyprus by the late medieval period. Writing in 1458, the Italian traveller and writer Gabriele Capodilista [it] wrote favourably of the extensive farm produce of the estates at Episkopi, near modern-day Limassol, including the region's banana plantations.[58]
+
+Bananas were introduced to the Americas by Portuguese sailors who brought the fruits from West Africa in the 16th century.[59]
+
+Many wild banana species as well as cultivars exist in extraordinary diversity in India, China, and Southeast Asia.
+
+There are fuzzy bananas whose skins are bubblegum pink; green-and-white striped bananas with pulp the color of orange sherbet; bananas that, when cooked, taste like strawberries. The Double Mahoi plant can produce two bunches at once. The Chinese name of the aromatic Go San Heong banana means 'You can smell it from the next mountain.' The fingers on one banana plant grow fused; another produces bunches of a thousand fingers, each only an inch long.
+
+In the 15th and 16th centuries, Portuguese colonists started banana plantations in the Atlantic Islands, Brazil, and western Africa.[61] North Americans began consuming bananas on a small scale at very high prices shortly after the Civil War, though it was only in the 1880s that the food became more widespread.[62] As late as the Victorian Era, bananas were not widely known in Europe, although they were available.[61] Jules Verne introduces bananas to his readers with detailed descriptions in Around the World in Eighty Days (1872).
+
+The earliest modern plantations originated in Jamaica and the related Western Caribbean Zone, including most of Central America. It involved the combination of modern transportation networks of steamships and railroads with the development of refrigeration that allowed more time between harvesting and ripening. North American shippers like Lorenzo Dow Baker and Andrew Preston, the founders of the Boston Fruit Company started this process in the 1870s, but railroad builders like Minor C. Keith also participated, eventually culminating in the multi-national giant corporations like today's Chiquita Brands International and Dole.[62] These companies were monopolistic, vertically integrated (meaning they controlled growing, processing, shipping and marketing) and usually used political manipulation to build enclave economies (economies that were internally self-sufficient, virtually tax exempt, and export-oriented that contribute very little to the host economy). Their political maneuvers, which gave rise to the term Banana republic for states like Honduras and Guatemala, included working with local elites and their rivalries to influence politics or playing the international interests of the United States, especially during the Cold War, to keep the political climate favorable to their interests.[63]
+
+The vast majority of the world's bananas today are cultivated for family consumption or for sale on local markets. India is the world leader in this sort of production, but many other Asian and African countries where climate and soil conditions allow cultivation also host large populations of banana growers who sell at least some of their crop.[64]
+
+Peasant sector banana growers produce for the world market in the Caribbean, however. The Windward Islands are notable for the growing, largely of Cavendish bananas, for an international market, generally in Europe but also in North America. In the Caribbean, and especially in Dominica where this sort of cultivation is widespread, holdings are in the 1–2 acre range. In many cases the farmer earns additional money from other crops, from engaging in labor outside the farm, and from a share of the earnings of relatives living overseas.[65]
+
+Banana crops are vulnerable to destruction by high winds, such as tropical storms or cyclones.[66]
+
+All widely cultivated bananas today descend from the two wild bananas Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana. While the original wild bananas contained large seeds, diploid or polyploid cultivars (some being hybrids) with tiny seeds are preferred for human raw fruit consumption.[67] These are propagated asexually from offshoots. The plant is allowed to produce two shoots at a time; a larger one for immediate fruiting and a smaller "sucker" or "follower" to produce fruit in 6–8 months.
+
+As a non-seasonal crop, bananas are available fresh year-round.[68]
+
+In global commerce in 2009, by far the most important cultivars belonged to the triploid AAA group of Musa acuminata, commonly referred to as Cavendish group bananas. They accounted for the majority of banana exports,[67] despite only coming into existence in 1836.[69] The cultivars Dwarf Cavendish and Grand Nain (Chiquita Banana) gained popularity in the 1950s after the previous mass-produced cultivar, Gros Michel (also an AAA group cultivar), became commercially unviable due to Panama disease, caused by the fungus Fusarium oxysporum which attacks the roots of the banana plant.[67] Cavendish cultivars are resistant to the Panama disease, but in 2013 there were fears that the black sigatoka fungus would in turn make Cavendish bananas unviable.[70]
+
+Even though it is no longer viable for large scale cultivation, Gros Michel is not extinct and is still grown in areas where Panama disease is not found.[71] Likewise, Dwarf Cavendish and Grand Nain are in no danger of extinction, but they may leave supermarket shelves if disease makes it impossible to supply the global market. It is unclear if any existing cultivar can replace Cavendish bananas, so various hybridisation and genetic engineering programs are attempting to create a disease-resistant, mass-market banana.[67]  One such strain that has emerged is the Taiwanese Cavendish, also known as the Formosana.[72]
+
+Export bananas are picked green, and ripen in special rooms upon arrival in the destination country. These rooms are air-tight and filled with ethylene gas to induce ripening. The vivid yellow color consumers normally associate with supermarket bananas is, in fact, caused by the artificial ripening process.[73] Flavor and texture are also affected by ripening temperature. Bananas are refrigerated to between 13.5 and 15 °C (56.3 and 59.0 °F) during transport. At lower temperatures, ripening permanently stalls, and the bananas turn gray as cell walls break down. The skin of ripe bananas quickly blackens in the 4 °C (39 °F) environment of a domestic refrigerator, although the fruit inside remains unaffected.
+
+Bananas can be ordered by the retailer "ungassed" (i.e. not treated with ethylene), and may show up at the supermarket fully green. Guineos verdes (green bananas) that have not been gassed will never fully ripen before becoming rotten. Instead of fresh eating, these bananas can be used for cooking, as seen in Jamaican cuisine.[74]
+
+A 2008 study reported that ripe bananas fluoresce when exposed to ultraviolet light. This property is attributed to the degradation of chlorophyll leading to the accumulation of a fluorescent product in the skin of the fruit. The chlorophyll breakdown product is stabilized by a propionate ester group. Banana-plant leaves also fluoresce in the same way. Green (under-ripe) bananas do not fluoresce.[75] That paper suggested that this fluorescence could be put to use "for optical in vivo monitoring of ripening and over-ripening of bananas and other fruit."
+
+Bananas must be transported over long distances from the tropics to world markets.[76] To obtain maximum shelf life, harvest comes before the fruit is mature. The fruit requires careful handling, rapid transport to ports, cooling, and refrigerated shipping. The goal is to prevent the bananas from producing their natural ripening agent, ethylene. This technology allows storage and transport for 3–4 weeks at 13 °C (55 °F). On arrival, bananas are held at about 17 °C (63 °F) and treated with a low concentration of ethylene. After a few days, the fruit begins to ripen and is distributed for final sale. Ripe bananas can be held for a few days at home. If bananas are too green, they can be put in a brown paper bag with an apple or tomato overnight to speed up the ripening process.[77]
+
+Carbon dioxide (which bananas produce) and ethylene absorbents extend fruit life even at high temperatures. This effect can be exploited by packing banana in a polyethylene bag and including an ethylene absorbent, e.g., potassium permanganate, on an inert carrier. The bag is then sealed with a band or string. This treatment has been shown to more than double lifespans up to 3–4 weeks without the need for refrigeration.[78][79][80]
+
+The excessive use of fertilizers often left in abandoned plantations contributes greatly to eutrophication in local streams and lakes, and harms aquatic life after algal blooms deprive fish of oxygen. It has been theorized that destruction of 60% of coral reefs along the coasts of Costa Rica is partially from sediments from banana plantations. Another issue is the deforestation associated with expanding banana production. As monocultures rapidly deplete soil nutrients plantations expand to areas with rich soils and cut down forests, which also affects soil erosion and degradation, and increases frequency of flooding. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) stated that banana production produced more waste than any other agricultural sector, mostly from discarded banana plants, bags used to cover the bananas, strings to tie them, and containers for transport.[81]
+
+In 2017, world production of bananas and plantains combined was 153 million tonnes, led by India and China with a combined total of 27% of global production[85][86]. Other major producers were the Philippines, Colombia, Indonesia, Ecuador, and  Brazil.
+
+As reported for 2013, total world exports were 20 million tonnes of bananas and 859,000 tonnes of plantains.[87] Ecuador and the Philippines were the leading exporters with 5.4 and 3.3 million tonnes, respectively, and the Dominican Republic was the leading exporter of plantains with 210,350 tonnes.[87]
+
+Bananas and plantains constitute a major staple food crop for millions of people in developing countries. In many tropical countries, green (unripe) bananas used for cooking represent the main cultivars. Most producers are small-scale farmers either for home consumption or local markets. Because bananas and plantains produce fruit year-round, they provide a valuable food source during the hunger season (when the food from one annual/semi-annual harvest has been consumed, and the next is still to come). Bananas and plantains are important for global food security.[88]
+
+While in no danger of outright extinction, the most common edible banana cultivar Cavendish (extremely popular in Europe and the Americas) could become unviable for large-scale cultivation in the next 10–20 years. Its predecessor 'Gros Michel', discovered in the 1820s, suffered this fate. Like almost all bananas, Cavendish lacks genetic diversity, which makes it vulnerable to diseases, threatening both commercial cultivation and small-scale subsistence farming.[89][90] Some commentators remarked that those variants which could replace what much of the world considers a "typical banana" are so different that most people would not consider them the same fruit, and blame the decline of the banana on monogenetic cultivation driven by short-term commercial motives.[63]
+
+Panama disease is caused by a fusarium soil fungus (Race 1), which enters the plants through the roots and travels with water into the trunk and leaves, producing gels and gums that cut off the flow of water and nutrients, causing the plant to wilt, and exposing the rest of the plant to lethal amounts of sunlight. Prior to 1960, almost all commercial banana production centered on "Gros Michel", which was highly susceptible.[91] Cavendish was chosen as the replacement for Gros Michel because, among resistant cultivars, it produces the highest quality fruit. However, more care is required for shipping the Cavendish,[92] and its quality compared to Gros Michel is debated.[93]
+
+According to current sources, a deadly form of Panama disease is infecting Cavendish. All plants are genetically identical, which prevents evolution of disease resistance. Researchers are examining hundreds of wild varieties for resistance.[91]
+
+Tropical race 4 (TR4), a reinvigorated strain of Panama disease, was first discovered in 1993. This virulent form of fusarium wilt destroyed Cavendish in several southeast Asian countries and spread to Australia and India.[94] As the soil-based fungi can easily be carried on boots, clothing, or tools, the wilt spread to the Americas despite years of preventive efforts.[94] Cavendish is highly susceptible to TR4, and over time, Cavendish is endangered for commercial production by this disease.[95] The only known defense to TR4 is genetic resistance.[94] This is conferred either by RGA2, a gene isolated from a TR4-resistant diploid banana, or by the nematode-derived Ced9.[96] Experts state the need to enrich banana biodiversity by producing diverse new banana varieties, not just having a focus on the Cavendish.[94]
+
+Black sigatoka is a fungal leaf spot disease first observed in Fiji in 1963 or 1964. Black Sigatoka (also known as black leaf streak) has spread to banana plantations throughout the tropics from infected banana leaves that were used as packing material. It affects all main cultivars of bananas and plantains (including the Cavendish cultivars[70]), impeding photosynthesis by blackening parts of the leaves, eventually killing the entire leaf. Starved for energy, fruit production falls by 50% or more, and the bananas that do grow ripen prematurely, making them unsuitable for export. The fungus has shown ever-increasing resistance to treatment, with the current expense for treating 1 hectare (2.5 acres) exceeding $1,000 per year. In addition to the expense, there is the question of how long intensive spraying can be environmentally justified.
+
+Banana bunchy top virus (BBTV) is a plant virus of the genus Babuvirus, family Nanonviridae affecting Musa spp. (including banana, abaca, plantain and ornamental bananas) and Ensete spp. in the family Musaceae.[97] Banana bunchy top disease (BBTD) symptoms include dark green streaks of variable length in leaf veins, midribs and petioles. Leaves become short and stunted as the disease progresses, becoming 'bunched' at the apex of the plant. Infected plants may produce no fruit or the bunch may not emerge from the pseudostem.[98] The virus is transmitted by the banana aphid Pentalonia nigronervosa and is widespread in SE Asia, Asia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Oceania and parts of Africa. There is no cure for BBTD, but it can be effectively controlled by the eradication of diseased plants and the use of virus-free planting material.[99] No resistant cultivars have been found, but varietal differences in susceptibility have been reported. The commercially important Cavendish subgroup is severely affected.[98]
+
+Banana bacterial wilt (BBW) is a bacterial disease caused by Xanthomonas campestris pv. musacearum.[100] After being originally identified on a close relative of bananas, Ensete ventricosum, in Ethiopia in the 1960s,[101] BBW occurred in Uganda in 2001 affecting all banana cultivars. Since then BBW has been diagnosed in Central and East Africa including the banana growing regions of Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Burundi, and Uganda.[102]
+
+Given the narrow range of genetic diversity present in bananas and the many threats via biotic (pests and diseases) and abiotic (such as drought) stress, conservation of the full spectrum of banana genetic resources is ongoing.[103] Banana germplasm is conserved in many national and regional gene banks, and at the world's largest banana collection, the International Musa Germplasm Transit Centre (ITC), managed by Bioversity International and hosted at KU Leuven in Belgium.[104] Musa cultivars are usually seedless, and options for their long-term conservation are constrained by the vegetative nature of the plant's reproductive system. Consequently, they are conserved by three main methods: in vivo (planted in field collections), in vitro (as plantlets in test tubes within a controlled environment), and by cryopreservation (meristems conserved in liquid nitrogen at −196 °C).[103] Genes from wild banana species are conserved as DNA and as cryopreserved pollen[103] and banana seeds from wild species are also conserved, although less commonly, as they are difficult to regenerate. In addition, bananas and their crop wild relatives are conserved in situ (in wild natural habitats where they evolved and continue to do so). Diversity is also conserved in farmers' fields where continuous cultivation, adaptation and improvement of cultivars is often carried out by small-scale farmers growing traditional local cultivars.[105]
+
+Raw bananas (not including the peel) are 75% water, 23% carbohydrates, 1% protein, and contain negligible fat. A 100-gram reference serving supplies 89 Calories, 31% of the US recommended Daily Value (DV) of vitamin B6, and moderate amounts of vitamin C, manganese and dietary fiber, with no other micronutrients in significant content (see table).
+
+Although bananas are commonly thought to contain exceptional potassium content,[26][106] their actual potassium content is not high per typical food serving, having only 8% of the US recommended Daily Value for potassium (considered a low level of the DV, see nutrition table), and their potassium-content ranking among fruits, vegetables, legumes, and many other foods is relatively moderate.[107][108] Vegetables with higher potassium content than raw dessert bananas (358 mg per 100 gm) include raw spinach (558 mg per 100 gm), baked potatoes without skin (391 mg per 100 gm), cooked soybeans (539 mg per 100 gm), grilled portabella mushrooms (437 mg per 100 gm), and processed tomato sauces (413–439 mg per 100 gm). Raw plantains contain 499 mg potassium per 100 gm. Dehydrated dessert bananas or banana powder contain 1491 mg potassium per 100 gm.[107]
+
+Individuals with a latex allergy may experience a reaction to bananas.[109]
+
+Bananas are a staple starch for many tropical populations. Depending upon cultivar and ripeness, the flesh can vary in taste from starchy to sweet, and texture from firm to mushy. Both the skin and inner part can be eaten raw or cooked. The primary component of the aroma of fresh bananas is isoamyl acetate (also known as banana oil), which, along with several other compounds such as butyl acetate and isobutyl acetate, is a significant contributor to banana flavor.[110][111][112]
+
+During the ripening process, bananas produce the gas ethylene, which acts as a plant hormone and indirectly affects the flavor. Among other things, ethylene stimulates the formation of amylase, an enzyme that breaks down starch into sugar, influencing the taste of bananas. The greener, less ripe bananas contain higher levels of starch and, consequently, have a "starchier" taste. On the other hand, yellow bananas taste sweeter due to higher sugar concentrations. Furthermore, ethylene signals the production of pectinase, an enzyme which breaks down the pectin between the cells of the banana, causing the banana to soften as it ripens.[113][114]
+
+Bananas are eaten deep fried, baked in their skin in a split bamboo, or steamed in glutinous rice wrapped in a banana leaf. Bananas can be made into fruit preserves. Banana pancakes are popular among travelers in South Asia and Southeast Asia. This has elicited the expression Banana Pancake Trail for those places in Asia that cater to these travelers. Banana chips are a snack produced from sliced dehydrated or fried banana or plantain, which have a dark brown color and an intense banana taste. Dried bananas are also ground to make banana flour. Extracting juice is difficult, because when a banana is compressed, it simply turns to pulp. Bananas feature prominently in Philippine cuisine, being part of traditional dishes and desserts like maruya, turón, and halo-halo or saba con yelo. Most of these dishes use the Saba Banana or Cardaba banana cultivar. Bananas are also commonly used in cuisine in the South-Indian state of Kerala, where they are steamed (puzhungiyathu), made into curries,[115] fried into chips, (upperi)[116] or fried in batter (pazhampori).[117] Pisang goreng, bananas fried with batter similar to the Filipino maruya or Kerala pazhampori, is a popular dessert in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. A similar dish is known in the United Kingdom and United States as banana fritters.
+
+Plantains are used in various stews and curries or cooked, baked or mashed in much the same way as potatoes, such as the pazham pachadi dish prepared in Kerala.[115]
+
+Banana hearts are used as a vegetable[118] in South Asian and Southeast Asian cuisine, either raw or steamed with dips or cooked in soups, curries and fried foods.[119][120] The flavor resembles that of artichoke. As with artichokes, both the fleshy part of the bracts and the heart are edible.[121]
+
+Banana leaves are large, flexible, and waterproof. They are often used as ecologically friendly disposable food containers or as "plates" in South Asia and several Southeast Asian countries.[122] In Indonesian cuisine, banana leaf is employed in cooking methods like pepes and botok; banana leaf packages containing food ingredients and spices are cooked in steam or in boiled water, or are grilled on charcoal. When used so for steaming or grilling, the banana leaves protect the food ingredients from burning and add a subtle sweet flavor.[123] In South India, it is customary to serve traditional food on a banana leaf. In Tamil Nadu (India), dried banana leaves are used as to pack food and to make cups to hold liquid food items.
+
+The tender core of the banana plant's trunk is also used in South Asian and Southeast Asian cuisine. Examples include the Burmese dish mohinga, and the Filipino dish inubaran.[124]
+
+Banana fiber harvested from the pseudostems and leaves of the plant has been used for textiles in Asia since at least the 13th century. Both fruit-bearing and fibrous varieties of the banana plant have been used.[125] In the Japanese system Kijōka-bashōfu, leaves and shoots are cut from the plant periodically to ensure softness. Harvested shoots are first boiled in lye to prepare fibers for yarn-making. These banana shoots produce fibers of varying degrees of softness, yielding yarns and textiles with differing qualities for specific uses. For example, the outermost fibers of the shoots are the coarsest, and are suitable for tablecloths, while the softest innermost fibers are desirable for kimono and kamishimo. This traditional Japanese cloth-making process requires many steps, all performed by hand.[126]
+
+In India, a banana fiber separator machine has been developed, which takes the agricultural waste of local banana harvests and extracts strands of the fiber.[127]
+
+Banana fiber is used in the production of banana paper. Banana paper is made from two different parts: the bark of the banana plant, mainly used for artistic purposes, or from the fibers of the stem and non-usable fruits. The paper is either hand-made or by industrial process.[128]
+
+Now I don't think much of the man that throws a banana peelin' on the sidewalk, and I don't think much of the banana peel that throws a man on the sidewalk neither ... my foot hit the bananer peelin' and I went up in the air, and I come down ker-plunk, jist as I was pickin' myself up a little boy come runnin' across the street ... he says, "Oh mister, won't you please do that agin? My little brother didn't see you do it."
+
+In India, bananas serve a prominent part in many festivals and occasions of Hindus. In South Indian weddings, particularly Tamil weddings, banana trees are tied in pairs to form an arch as a blessing to the couple for a long-lasting, useful life.[136][137]
+
+In Thailand, it is believed that a certain type of banana plants may be inhabited by a spirit, Nang Tani, a type of ghost related to trees and similar plants that manifests itself as a young woman.[138] Often people tie a length of colored satin cloth around the pseudostem of the banana plants.[139]
+
+In Malay folklore, the ghost known as Pontianak is associated with banana plants (pokok pisang), and its spirit is said to reside in them during the day.[140]
+
+There is a long racist history of describing people of African descent as being more like monkeys than humans, and due to the assumption in popular culture that monkeys like bananas, bananas have been used in symbolic acts of hate speech.[141][142]
+
+Particularly in Europe, bananas have long been commonly thrown at black footballers by racist spectators.[143] In April 2014, during a match at Villarreal's stadium, El Madrigal, Dani Alves was targeted by Villareal supporter David Campaya Lleo, who threw a banana at him.[144] Alves picked up the banana, peeled it and took a bite, and the meme went viral on social media in support of him.[145]  Racist taunts are an ongoing problem in football.[146][147]   Bananas were hung from nooses around the campus of American University in May 2017 after the student body elected its first black woman student government president.[148]
+
+The Unicode standard includes the emoji character U+1F34C 🍌 BANANA (HTML 🍌).[149]

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+Sicily (Italian: Sicilia [siˈtʃiːlja]; Sicilian: Sicilia [sɪˈʃiːlja]) is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the 20 regions of Italy. It is one of the five Italian autonomous regions and is officially referred to as Regione Siciliana. It has 5 million inhabitants.
+
+Sicily is located in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula, from which it is separated by the narrow Strait of Messina. Its most prominent landmark is Mount Etna, the tallest active volcano in Europe,[5] and one of the most active in the world, currently 3,329 m (10,922 ft) high. The island has a typical Mediterranean climate.
+
+The earliest archaeological evidence of human activity on the island dates from as early as 12,000 BC.[6][7] By around 750 BC, Sicily had three Phoenician and a dozen Greek colonies and it was later the site of the Sicilian Wars and the Punic Wars. After the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, Sicily was ruled during the Early Middle Ages by the Vandals, the Ostrogoths, the Byzantine Empire, and the Emirate of Sicily. The Norman conquest of southern Italy led to the creation of the Kingdom of Sicily, which was subsequently ruled by the Hohenstaufen, the Capetian House of Anjou, Spain, and the House of Habsburg.[8] It was unified under the House of Bourbon with the Kingdom of Naples as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. It became part of Italy in 1860 following the Expedition of the Thousand, a revolt led by Giuseppe Garibaldi during the Italian unification, and a plebiscite. Sicily was given special status as an autonomous region on 15 May 1946, 18 days before the Italian constitutional referendum of 1946. However, much of the autonomy still remains unapplied, especially financial autonomy, because the autonomy-activating laws have been deferred to be approved by the joint committee (50% Italian State, 50% Regione Siciliana), since 1946.[citation needed][disputed  – discuss]
+
+Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature, cuisine, and architecture. It is also home to important archaeological and ancient sites, such as the Necropolis of Pantalica, the Valley of the Temples, Erice and Selinunte.
+
+Sicily has a roughly triangular shape, earning it the name Trinacria.
+To the north-east, it is separated from Calabria and the rest of the Italian mainland by the Strait of Messina, about 3 km (1.9 mi) wide in the north, and about 16 km (9.9 mi) wide in the southern part.[9] The northern and southern coasts are each about 280 km (170 mi) long measured as a straight line, while the eastern coast measures around 180 km (110 mi); total coast length is estimated at 1,484 km (922 mi). The total area of the island is 25,711 km2 (9,927 sq mi),[10] while the Autonomous Region of Sicily (which includes smaller surrounding islands) has an area of 27,708 km2 (10,698 sq mi).[11]
+
+The terrain of inland Sicily is mostly hilly and is intensively cultivated wherever possible. Along the northern coast, the mountain ranges of Madonie, 2,000 m (6,600 ft), Nebrodi, 1,800 m (5,900 ft), and Peloritani, 1,300 m (4,300 ft), are an extension of the mainland Apennines. The cone of Mount Etna dominates the eastern coast. In the southeast lie the lower Hyblaean Mountains, 1,000 m (3,300 ft).[12] The mines of the Enna and Caltanissetta districts were part of a leading sulphur-producing area throughout the 19th century, but have declined since the 1950s.
+
+Sicily and its surrounding small islands have some highly active volcanoes. Mount Etna is the largest active volcano in Europe and still casts black ash over the island with its ever-present eruptions. It currently stands 3,329 metres (10,922 ft) high, though this varies with summit eruptions; the mountain is 21 m (69 ft) lower now than it was in 1981. It is the highest mountain in Italy south of the Alps. Etna covers an area of 1,190 km2 (459 sq mi) with a basal circumference of 140 km (87 mi). This makes it by far the largest of the three active volcanoes in Italy, being about two and a half times the height of the next largest, Mount Vesuvius. In Greek mythology, the deadly monster Typhon was trapped under the mountain by Zeus, the god of the sky. Mount Etna is widely regarded as a cultural symbol and icon of Sicily.
+
+Mount Etna rising over suburbs of Catania
+
+The Aeolian Islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea, to the northeast of mainland Sicily form a volcanic complex, and include Stromboli. 
+The three volcanoes of Vulcano, Vulcanello and Lipari are also currently active, although the latter is usually dormant. Off the southern coast of Sicily, the underwater volcano of Ferdinandea, which is part of the larger Empedocles volcano, last erupted in 1831. It is located between the coast of Agrigento and the island of Pantelleria (which itself is a dormant volcano).
+
+The autonomous region also includes several neighbouring islands: the Aegadian Islands, the Aeolian Islands, Pantelleria and Lampedusa.
+
+The island is drained by several rivers, most of which flow through the central area and enter the sea at the south of the island. The Salso flows through parts of Enna and Caltanissetta before entering the Mediterranean Sea at the port of Licata. To the east, the Alcantara flows through the province of Messina and enters the sea at Giardini Naxos, and the Simeto, which flows into the Ionian Sea south of Catania. Other important rivers on the island are the Belice and Platani in the southwest.
+
+Location of the Salso
+
+Simeto River
+
+The Simeto near Saraceni Bridge
+
+Location of the Alcantara
+
+Alcantara River
+
+Alcantara Canyon
+
+Sicily has a typical Mediterranean climate with mild and wet winters and hot, dry summers with very changeable intermediate seasons. On the coasts, especially in the south-west, the climate is affected by the African currents and summers can be scorching.
+
+Sicily is seen as an island of warm winters.
+
+Snow falls above 900–1000 metres, but it can fall in the hills. The interior mountains, especially Nebrodi, Madonie, and Etna, enjoy a full mountain climate, with heavy snowfalls during winter. The summit of Mount Etna is usually snow-capped from October to May.
+
+On the other hand, especially in the summer, it is not unusual that there is the sirocco, the wind from the Sahara. Rainfall is scarce, and water proves deficient in some provinces where a water crisis can happen occasionally.
+
+According to the Regional Agency for Waste and Water, on 10 August 1999, the weather station of Catenanuova (EN) recorded a maximum temperature of 48.5 °C (119 °F).[13] The official European record – measured by minimum/maximum thermometers – is held by Athens, Greece, which reported a maximum of 48.0 °C (118 °F) in 1977.[14] Total precipitation is highly variable, generally increasing with elevation. In general, the southern and southeast coast receives the least rainfall (less than 50 cm (20 in)), and the northern and northeastern highlands the most (over 100 cm (39 in)).
+
+Sicily is an often-quoted example of man-made deforestation, which has occurred since Roman times, when the island was turned into an agricultural region.[12] This gradually dried the climate, leading to a decline in rainfall and the drying of rivers. The central and southwest provinces are practically devoid of any forest.[15] In Northern Sicily, there are three important forests; near Mount Etna, in the Nebrodi Mountains and in the Bosco della Ficuzza's Natural Reserve near Palermo. The Nebrodi Mountains Regional Park, established on 4 August 1993 and covering 86,000 hectares (210,000 acres), is the largest protected natural area of Sicily; and contains the largest forest in Sicily, the Caronia. The Hundred Horse Chestnut (Castagno dei Cento Cavalli), in Sant'Alfio, on the eastern slopes of Mount Etna, is the largest and oldest known chestnut tree in the world at 2,000 – 4,000 years old.[16]
+
+Sicily has a wide variety of fauna. Species include red fox, least weasel, pine marten, roe deer, girgentana, wild boar, crested porcupine, European hedgehog, common toad, Vipera aspis, golden eagle, peregrine falcon, Eurasian hoopoe and black-winged stilt.[17]
+
+The Zingaro Natural Reserve is one of the best examples of unspoiled coastal wilderness in Sicily.[18]
+
+Surrounding waters including the Strait of Messina are home to varieties of birds and marine life, including larger species such as greater flamingo and fin whale.
+
+The name Sicilia was given to the Roman province in 241 BC. It is derived from the name of the Sikeloi, who inhabited the eastern part of the island.
+The ancient name of the island is Trinacria (Greek Τρινακρία "having three headlands") for its triangular shape, likely a re-interpretation of earlier (Homeric) Thrinacia. 
+The Greek name was rendered as Trīnācrĭa in classical Latin (Virgil, Ovid).[19][20]
+
+The original classical-era inhabitants of Sicily comprised three defined groups of the ancient peoples of Italy. The most prominent and by far the earliest of these, the Sicani, who (Thucydides writes) arrived from the Iberian Peninsula (perhaps Catalonia).[21][22] Some modern scholars, however, suggest classifying the Sicani as possibly an Illyrian tribe.[23] Important historical evidence has been discovered in the form of cave drawings by the Sicani, dated from the end of the Pleistocene epoch around 8000 BC.[24] The arrival of the first humans on the island correlates with the extinction of the Sicilian Hippopotamus and the dwarf elephant. The Elymians, thought to have come from the area of the Aegean Sea, became the next tribe to join the Sicanians on Sicily.[25]
+
+Recent discoveries of dolmens on the island (dating to the second half of the third millennium BC) seem to offer new insights into the culture of primitive Sicily. It is well known that the Mediterranean region went through a quite intricate prehistory, so much so that it is difficult to piece together the muddle of different peoples who have followed each other. The impact of two influences is clear, however: the European one coming from the Northwest, and the Mediterranean influence of a clear eastern heritage.[26][27]
+
+No evidence survives of any warring between the tribes, but the Sicanians moved eastwards when the Elymians settled in the northwest corner of the island. The Sicels are thought [24] to have originated in Liguria; they arrived from mainland Italy in 1200 BC and forced the Sicanians to move back across Sicily and to settle in the middle of the island.[24] Other minor Italic groups who settled in Sicily included the Ausones (Aeolian Islands, Milazzo) and the Morgetes of Morgantina.
+
+The Phoenician settlements in the western part of the island predate the Greeks.[28] From about 750 BC, the Greeks began to live in Sicily (Σικελία – Sikelia), establishing many important settlements. The most important colony was in Syracuse; others were located at Akragas, Selinunte, Gela, Himera and Zancle.[29] The native Sicani and Sicel peoples were absorbed into the Hellenic culture with relative ease, and the area became part of Magna Graecia along with the rest of southern Italy, which the Greeks had also colonised. Sicily was very fertile, and the successful introduction of olives and grape vines created a great deal of profitable trading.[30] A significant part of Greek culture on the island was that of the Greek religion, and many temples were built throughout Sicily, including several in the Valley of the Temples at Agrigento.[31]
+
+Politics on the island was intertwined with that of Greece; Syracuse became desired by the Athenians who set out on the Sicilian Expedition during the Peloponnesian War. Syracuse gained Sparta and Corinth as allies and, as a result, the Athenian expedition was defeated. The Athenian army and ships were destroyed, with most of the survivors being sold into slavery.[32]
+
+Greek Syracuse controlled eastern Sicily while Carthage controlled the West.[33] The two cultures began to clash, leading to the Greek-Punic wars. Greece had begun to make peace with the Roman Republic in 262 BC, and the Romans sought to annexe Sicily as their republic's first province. Rome attacked Carthage's holdings in Sicily in the First Punic War and won, making Sicily the first Roman province outside of the Italian Peninsula by 242 BC.[34]
+
+In the Second Punic War, the Carthaginians attempted to take back Sicily. Some of the Greek cities on the island sided with the Carthaginians. Archimedes, who lived in Syracuse, helped the Carthaginians, but was killed by the Romans after they invaded Syracuse in 213 BC.[35] They failed, and Rome was even more unrelenting in its annihilation of the invaders this time; Roman consul M. Valerian told the Roman Senate in 210 BC that "no Carthaginian remains in Sicily".[36]
+
+As the empire's granary, Sicily was an important province, divided into two quaestorships: Syracuse to the east and Lilybaeum to the west.[28] Some attempt was made under Augustus to introduce the Latin language to the island, but Sicily was allowed to remain largely Greek in a cultural sense.[28] The once prosperous and contented island went into sharp decline when Verres became governor of Sicily. In 70 BC, noted figure Cicero condemned the misgovernment of Verres in his oration In Verrem.[37]
+
+The island was used as a base of power numerous times, being occupied by slave insurgents during the First and Second Servile Wars, and by Sextus Pompey during the Sicilian revolt. Christianity first appeared in Sicily during the years following AD 200; between this time and AD 313, Constantine the Great finally lifted the prohibition on Christianity, but not before a significant number of Sicilians had become martyrs, including Agatha, Christina, Lucy, and Euplius.[38] Christianity grew rapidly in Sicily over the next two centuries. The period of history during which Sicily was a Roman province lasted for around 700 years.[38]
+
+The Western Roman Empire began falling apart after the great invasion of Vandals, Alans, and Sueves across the Rhine on the last day of 406. Eventually the Vandals, after roaming about western and southern Spain for 20 years moved to North Africa in 429. They occupied Carthage in 439 (The Franks moved south from Belgium. The Visigoths moved west and were eventually settled in Aquitaine in 418; the Burgundians were settled in Savoy in 443). This put them in a position to threaten Sicily only 100 miles away.[39] After taking Carthage the Vandals personally led by King Gaiseric laid siege to Palermo in 440 as the opening act in an attempt to wrest the island from Roman rule personally.[40] The Vandals made another attempt to take the island one year after the sack of Rome in 455, at Agrigento, but were defeated decisively by Ricimir in a naval victory off Corsica in 456.[41] The island remained under Roman rule until 469. The Vandal possession of the island was lost 8 years later in 477 to the East Germanic tribe Ostrogoths who were in control of Italy and Dalmatia.[39] The island was returned for payment of tribute to Odoacer, king of the Ostrogoths. He ruled Italy from 476–88 in the name of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Emperor. The Vandals kept a toehold in Lilybaeum, a port on the west coast. They lost this in 491 after making one last attempt to conquer the island from this port.[42] The Ostrogothic conquest of Sicily (and Italy as a whole) under Theodoric the Great began in 488. He had been appointed viceroy of the emperor to rule in Italy. The Goths were Germanic, but Theodoric was supportive of Roman culture and government and allowed freedom of religion.[43] In 461 from the age of seven or eight until 17 or 18 he was a hostage; he resided in the great palace of Constantinople and was favored by Leo I and where he learned to read and write and do arithmetic.[44]
+
+After taking areas occupied by the Vandals in North Africa, Justinian decided to retake Italy as an ambitious attempt to recover the lost provinces in the West. The re-conquests marked an end to over 150 years of accommodationist policies with tribal invaders. His first target was Sicily (known as the Gothic War (535–554) began between the Ostrogoths and the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as the Byzantine Empire). His general Belisarius was assigned the task.[45] Sicily was used as a base for the Byzantines to conquer the rest of Italy, with Naples, Rome, Milan. It took five years before the Ostrogoth capital Ravenna fell in 540.[46] However, the new Ostrogoth king Totila counterattacked, moving down the Italian peninsula, plundering and conquering Sicily in 550. Totila was defeated and killed in the Battle of Taginae by Byzantine general Narses in 552 but Italy was in ruins.[46]
+
+At the time of the reconquest Greek was still the predominant language spoken on the island. Sicily was invaded by the Arab forces of Caliph Uthman in 652, but the Arabs failed to make any permanent gains. They returned to Syria with their booty.[47] Raids seeking loot continued until the mid-8th century.[48]
+
+The Eastern Roman Emperor Constans II decided to move from Constantinople to Syracuse in 660. The following year he launched an assault from Sicily against the Lombard Duchy of Benevento, which occupied most of southern Italy.[49] Rumors that the capital of the empire was to be moved to Syracuse probably cost Constans his life, as he was assassinated in 668.[49] His son Constantine IV succeeded him. A brief usurpation in Sicily by Mezezius was quickly suppressed by this emperor. Contemporary accounts report that the Greek language was widely spoken on the island during this period.[50] In 740 Emperor Leo III the Isaurian transferred Sicily from the jurisdiction of the church of Rome to that of Constantinople, placing the island within the eastern branch of the Church.[51]
+
+In 826 Euphemius, the Byzantine commander in Sicily, having apparently killed his wife, forced a nun to marry him. Emperor Michael II caught wind of the matter and ordered general Constantine to end the marriage and cut off Euphemius' head. Euphemius rose up, killed Constantine, and then occupied Syracuse; he, in turn, was defeated and driven out to North Africa.[52] He offered the rule of Sicily to Ziyadat Allah, the Aghlabid Emir of Tunisia, in return for a position as a general and a place of safety. A Muslim army was then sent to the island consisting of Arabs, Berbers, Cretans, and Persians.[52]
+
+The Muslim conquest of Sicily was a see-saw affair and met with fierce resistance. It took over a century for Byzantine Sicily to be conquered; the largest city, Syracuse, held out until 878 and the Greek city of Taormina fell in 962. It was not until 965 that all of Sicily was conquered by the Arabs.[52] In the 11th-century Byzantine armies carried out a partial reconquest of the island under George Maniakes, but it was their Norman mercenaries who would eventually complete the island's reconquest at the end of the century.
+
+The Arabs initiated land reforms, which increased productivity and encouraged the growth of smallholdings, undermining the dominance of the latifundia. The Arabs further improved irrigation systems. The language spoken in Sicily under Arab rule was Siculo-Arabic and Arabic influence is still present in some Sicilian words today. Although the language is extinct in Sicily, it has developed into what is now the Maltese language on the islands of Malta today.[citation needed]
+
+A description of Palermo was given by Ibn Hawqal, an Arab merchant who visited Sicily in 950. A walled suburb, called the Al-Kasr (the palace), is the centre of Palermo to this day, with the great Friday mosque on the site of the later Roman cathedral. The suburb of al-Khalisa (modern Kalsa) contained the Sultan's palace, baths, a mosque, government offices, and a private prison. Ibn Hawqal reckoned 7,000 individual butchers trading in 150 shops. Palermo was initially ruled by the Aghlabids; later it was the centre of Emirate of Sicily under the nominal suzerainty of the Fatimid Caliphate.[citation needed] During the reign of this dynasty revolts by Byzantine Sicilians continuously occurred especially in the east where Greek-speaking Christians predominated. Parts of the island were re-occupied before revolts were being quashed. During Muslim rule agricultural products such as oranges, lemons, pistachio and sugarcane were brought to Sicily.[39] Under the Arab rule the island was divided in three administrative regions, or "vals", roughly corresponding to the three "points" of Sicily: Val di Mazara in the west; Val Demone in the northeast; and Val di Noto in the southeast. As dhimmis, that is as members of a protected class of approved monotheists the Eastern Orthodox Christians were allowed freedom of religion, but had to pay a tax, the jizya (in lieu of the obligatory alms tax, the zakat, paid by Muslims), and were restricted from active participation in public affairs.
+
+The Emirate of Sicily began to fragment as intra-dynastic quarreling fractured the Muslim regime.[52] During this time, there was also a small Jewish presence.[53]
+
+In 1038, seventy years after losing their last cities in Sicily, the Byzantines under the Greek general George Maniakes invaded the island together with their Varangian and Norman mercenaries. Maniakes was killed in a Byzantine civil war in 1043 before completing a reconquest and the Byzantines withdrew. The Normans invaded in 1061.[54] After taking Apulia and Calabria, Roger occupied Messina with an army of 700 knights. In 1068, Roger was victorious at Misilmeri. Most crucial  was the siege of Palermo, whose fall in 1071 eventually resulted in all Sicily coming under Norman control.[55] The conquest was completed in 1091 when they captured Noto the last Arab stronghold. Palermo continued to be the capital under the Normans.
+
+The Norman Hauteville family, descendants of Vikings, appreciated and admired the rich and layered culture in which they now found themselves. They also introduced their own culture, customs, and politics in the region. Many Normans in Sicily adopted the habits and comportment of Muslim rulers and their Byzantine subjects in dress, language, literature, even to the extent of having palace eunuchs and, according to some accounts, a harem.[56][57]
+
+Roger died in 1101. His wife Adelaide ruled until 1112 when their son Roger II of Sicily came of age.[54] Having succeeded his brother Simon as Count of Sicily, Roger II was ultimately able to raise the status of the island to a kingdom in 1130, along with his other holdings, which included the Maltese Islands and the Duchies of Apulia and Calabria.[55][58]
+
+Roger II appointed the powerful Greek George of Antioch to be his "emir of emirs" and continued the syncretism of his father. During this period, the Kingdom of Sicily was prosperous and politically powerful, becoming one of the wealthiest states in all of Europe—even wealthier than the Kingdom of England.[59]
+
+The court of Roger II became the most luminous centre of culture in the Mediterranean, both from Europe and the Middle East, like the multi-ethnic Caliphate of Córdoba, then only just eclipsed. This attracted scholars, scientists, poets, artists, and artisans of all kinds. Laws were issued in the language of the community to whom they were addressed in Norman Sicily, at the time when the culture was still heavily Arab and Greek.[60][61] Governance was by rule of law which promoted justice. Muslims, Jews, Byzantine Greeks, Lombards, and Normans worked together fairly amicably. During this time many extraordinary buildings were constructed.[60]
+
+However this situation changed as the Normans to secure the island imported immigrants from Normandy, England, Lombardy, Piedmont, Provence and Campania. Linguistically, the island shifted from being one-third Greek- and two-thirds Arabic-speaking at the time of the Norman conquest to becoming fully Latinised.[61] In terms of religion the island became completely Roman Catholic (bearing in mind that until 1054 the Churches owing allegiance to the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople belonged to one Church); Sicily before the Norman conquest was under Eastern Orthodox Patriarch.[62] After Pope Innocent III made him Papal Legate in 1098, Roger I created several Catholic bishoprics while still allowing the construction of 12 Greek-speaking monasteries (the Greek language, monasteries, and 1500 parishes continued to exist until the adherents of the Greek Rite were forced in 1585 to convert to Catholicism or leave; a small pocket of Greek-speakers still live in Messina).
+
+After a century, the Norman Hauteville dynasty died out; the last direct descendant and heir of Roger, Constance, married Emperor Henry VI.[63] This eventually led to the crown of Sicily being passed on to the Hohenstaufen Dynasty, who were Germans from Swabia. The last of the Hohenstaufens, Frederick II, the only son of Constance, was one of the greatest and most cultured men of the Middle Ages. His mother's will had asked Pope Innocent III to undertake the guardianship of her son.  Frederick was four when at Palermo, he was crowned King of Sicily in 1198. Frederick received no systematic education and was allowed to run free in the streets of Palermo. There he picked up the many languages he heard spoken, such as Arabic and Greek, and learned some of the lore of the Jewish community. At age twelve, he dismissed Innocent's deputy regent and took over the government; at fifteen he married Constance of Aragon, and began his reclamation of the imperial crown. Subsequently, due to Muslim rebellions, Frederick II destroyed the remaining Muslim presence in Sicily, estimated at 60,000 persons, moving all to the city of Lucera in Apulia between 1221 and 1226.[64]
+
+Conflict between the Hohenstaufen house and the Papacy led, in 1266, to Pope Innocent IV crowning the French prince Charles, count of Anjou and Provence, as the king of both Sicily and Naples.[63]
+
+Strong opposition to French officialdom due to mistreatment and taxation saw the local peoples of Sicily rise up, leading in 1282 to an insurrection known as the War of the Sicilian Vespers, which eventually saw almost the entire French population on the island killed.[63] During the war, the Sicilians turned to Peter III of Aragon, son-in-law of the last Hohenstaufen king, for support after being rejected by the Pope. Peter gained control of Sicily from the French, who, however, retained control of the Kingdom of Naples. A crusade was launched in August 1283 against Peter III and the Kingdom of Aragon by Pope Martin IV (a pope from Île-de-France), but it failed. The wars continued until the peace of Caltabellotta in 1302, which saw Peter's son Frederick III recognized as the king of the Isle of Sicily, while Charles II was recognized as the king of Naples by Pope Boniface VIII.[63] Sicily was ruled as an independent kingdom by relatives of the kings of Aragon until 1409 and then as part of the Crown of Aragon.[30] In October 1347, in Messina, Sicily, the Black Death first arrived in Europe.[65]
+
+Between the 15th-18th centuries, waves of Greeks from the Peloponnese (such as the Maniots) and Arvanites migrated to Sicily in large numbers to escape persecution after the Ottoman conquest of the Peloponnese. They brought with them Eastern Orthodoxy as well as the Greek and Arvanitika languages to the island, once again adding onto the extensive Byzantine/Greek influence.[citation needed]
+
+The onset of the Spanish Inquisition in 1492 led to Ferdinand II decreeing the expulsion of all Jews from Sicily.[63] The eastern part of the island was hit by very destructive earthquakes in 1542 and 1693. Just a few years before the latter earthquake, the island was struck by a ferocious plague.[63] The earthquake in 1693 took an estimated 60,000 lives.[66] There were revolts during the 17th century, but these were quelled with significant force, especially the revolts of Palermo and Messina.[30] North African slave raids discouraged settlement along the coast until the 19th century.[67][68] The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 saw Sicily assigned to the House of Savoy; however, this period of rule lasted only seven years, as it was exchanged for the island of Sardinia with Emperor Charles VI of the Austrian Habsburg Dynasty.[69]
+
+While the Austrians were concerned with the War of the Polish Succession, a Bourbon prince, Charles from Spain was able to conquer Sicily and Naples.[70] At first Sicily was able to remain as an independent kingdom under personal union, while the Bourbons ruled over both from Naples. However, the advent of Napoleon's First French Empire saw Naples taken at the Battle of Campo Tenese and Bonapartist King of Naples were installed. Ferdinand III the Bourbon was forced to retreat to Sicily which he was still in complete control of with the help of British naval protection.[71]
+
+Following this, Sicily joined the Napoleonic Wars, and subsequently the British under Lord William Bentinck established a military and diplomatic presence on the island to protect against a French invasion. After the wars were won, Sicily and Naples formally merged as the Two Sicilies under the Bourbons. Major revolutionary movements occurred in 1820 and 1848 against the Bourbon government with Sicily seeking independence; the second of which, the 1848 revolution resulted in a short period of independence for Sicily. However, in 1849 the Bourbons retook control of the island and dominated it until 1860.[72]
+
+The Expedition of the Thousand led by Giuseppe Garibaldi captured Sicily in 1860, as part of the Risorgimento.[73] The conquest started at Marsala, and native Sicilians joined him in the capture of the southern Italian peninsula. Garibaldi's march was completed with the Siege of Gaeta, where the final Bourbons were expelled and Garibaldi announced his dictatorship in the name of Victor Emmanuel II of Kingdom of Sardinia.[74] Sicily became part of the Kingdom of Sardinia after a referendum where more than 75% of Sicily voted in favour of the annexation on 21 October 1860 (but not everyone was allowed to vote). As a result of the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy, Sicily became part of the kingdom on 17 March 1861.
+
+The Sicilian economy (and the wider mezzogiorno economy) remained relatively underdeveloped after the Italian unification, in spite of the strong investments made by the Kingdom of Italy in terms of modern infrastructure, and this caused an unprecedented wave of emigration.[73] In 1894, organisations of workers and peasants known as the Fasci Siciliani protested against the bad social and economic conditions of the island, but they were suppressed in a few days.[75][76] The Messina earthquake of 28 December 1908 killed more than 80,000 people.[77]
+
+This period was also characterized by the first contact between the Sicilian mafia (the crime syndicate also known as Cosa Nostra) and the Italian government. The Mafia's origins are still uncertain, but it is generally accepted that it emerged in the 18th century initially in the role of private enforcers hired to protect the property of landowners and merchants from the groups of bandits (Briganti) who frequently pillaged the countryside and towns. The battle against the Mafia made by the Kingdom of Italy was controversial and ambiguous. The Carabinieri (the military police of Italy) and sometimes the Italian army were often involved in terrible fights against the mafia members, but their efforts were frequently useless because of the secret co-operation between the mafia and local government and also because of the weakness of the Italian judicial system.[78]
+
+In the 1920s, the Fascist regime began a stronger military action against the Mafia, which was led by prefect Cesare Mori, who was known as the "Iron Prefect" because of his iron-fisted campaigns. This was the first time in which an operation against the Sicilian mafia ended with considerable success.[73] There was an allied invasion of Sicily during World War II starting on 10 July 1943. In preparation for the invasion, the Allies revitalised the Mafia to aid them. The invasion of Sicily contributed to the 25 July crisis; in general, the Allied victors were warmly embraced by Sicily.[79]
+
+Italy became a Republic in 1946 and, as part of the Constitution of Italy, Sicily was one of the five regions given special status as an autonomous region.[80] Both the partial Italian land reform and special funding from the Italian government's Cassa per il Mezzogiorno (Fund for the South) from 1950 to 1984 helped the Sicilian economy. During this period, the economic and social condition of the island was generally improved thanks to important investments on infrastructures such as motorways and airports, and thanks to the creation of important industrial and commercial areas.[81] In the 1980s, the Mafia was deeply weakened by a second important campaign led by magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.[82] Between 1990 and 2005, the unemployment rate fell from about 23% to 11%.[83][84]
+
+The Cosa Nostra has traditionally been the most powerful group in Sicily, especially around Palermo.[85] A police investigation in summer 2019 also confirmed strong links between the Palermo area Sicilian Mafia and American organized crime, particularly the Gambino crime family.[86] According to La Repubblica, "Off they go, through the streets of Passo di Rigano, Boccadifalco, Torretta and at the same time, Brooklyn, Staten Island, New Jersey. Because from Sicily to the US, the old mafia has returned".[87]
+
+Sicily is a melting pot of a variety of different cultures and ethnicities, including the original Italic people, the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Swabians, Aragonese, Lombards, Spaniards, French, and Albanians, each contributing to the island's culture and genetic makeup. About five million people live in Sicily, making it the fourth most populated region in Italy. In the first century after the Italian unification, Sicily had one of the most negative net migration rates among the regions of Italy because of the emigration of millions of people to other European countries, North America, South America and Australia. Like the South of Italy and Sardinia, immigration to the island is very low compared to other regions of Italy because workers tend to head to Northern Italy instead, due to better employment and industrial opportunities. According to ISTAT figures from 2017,[88] show around 175,000 immigrants out of the total 5,029,615 population;[89] Romanians with more than 50,000 make up the most immigrants, followed by Tunisians, Moroccans, Sri Lankans, Albanians, and others mostly from Eastern Europe.[failed verification] As in the rest of Italy, the official language is Italian and the primary religion is Roman Catholicism.[90][91]
+
+Since the Italian unification, Sicily, along with the entire south of the Italian peninsula has been strongly marked by coerced emigration, partly induced by a planned de-industrialization of the south in order to favour the northern regions.[92]
+After Italian unification most of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies's former National Bank, the Banco delle Due Sicilie's assets were transferred to Piedmont.[93] During the first decades of the Risorgimento, a rising number of Sicilian and South Italian manufacturies were driven into ruin due to high taxation imposed by the central government. Furthermore, an embargo imposed on goods coming from South Italian manufacturers, that effectively barred them from exporting to the north and abroad, were also key factors that led to further impoverishment of the entire region. South Italian and Sicilian emigration started shortly after the Unification of Italy and has not stopped ever since. By the beginning of the 1900s, less than 40 years after the Unification, what was formerly known as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, one of Europe's most industrialized countries, became one of the poorest regions in Europe.[94]
+
+The aforementioned factors, along with a failed land reform, resulted in a never-before-seen wave of Sicilians emigrating, first to the United States between the 1880s and the 1920s, later to Northern Italy, and from the 1960s onwards also to Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, as well as Australia and South America.
+
+Today, Sicily is the Italian region with the highest number of expatriates:  as of 2017, 750,000 Sicilians, 14.4% of the island's population, lived abroad.[95]  For lack of employment, every year many Sicilians, especially young graduates, still leave the island to seek jobs abroad.[96] Today, an estimated 10 million people of Sicilian origins live around the world.
+
+The are the ten largest cities of Sicily:[97]
+
+As in most Italian regions, Christian Roman Catholicism is the predominant religious denomination in Sicily, and the church still plays an important role in the lives of most people. There is also a notable small minority of Eastern-rite Byzantine Catholics which has a mixed congregation of ethnic Albanians; it is operated by the Italo-Albanian Catholic Church. Most people still attend church weekly or at least for religious festivals, and many people get married in churches. There was a wide presence of Jews in Sicily for at least 1,400 years and possibly for more than 2,000 years. Some scholars believe that the Sicilian Jewry are partial ancestors of the Ashkenazi Jews.[98] However, much of the Jewish community faded away when they were expelled from the island in 1492. Islam was present during the Emirate of Sicily, although Muslims were also expelled. Today, mostly due to immigration to the island, there are also several religious minorities, such as Jehovah's Witnesses, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Sikhism. There are also a fair number of evangelical Christians who live on the island.
+
+The politics of Sicily takes place in a framework of a presidential representative democracy, whereby the President of Regional Government is the head of government, and of a pluriform multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the Regional Government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the Sicilian Regional Assembly. The capital of Sicily is Palermo.
+
+Traditionally, Sicily gives center-right results during elections.[99] From 1943 to 1951 there was also a separatist political party called Sicilian Independence Movement (Movimento Indipendentista Siciliano, MIS). Its best electoral result was in the 1946 general election, when MIS obtained 0.7% of national votes (8.8% of votes in Sicily), and four seats. However, the movement lost all its seats following the 1948 general election and the 1951 regional election. Even though it has never been formally disbanded, today the movement is no longer part of the politics of Sicily. After World War II Sicily became a stronghold of the Christian Democracy, in opposition to the Italian Communist Party. The Communists and their successors (the Democratic Party of the Left, the Democrats of the Left and the present-day Democratic Party) had never won in the region until 2012. Sicily is now governed by a center-right coalition. Nello Musumeci is the current President since 2017.
+
+Administratively, Sicily is divided into nine provinces, each with a capital city of the same name as the province. Small surrounding islands are also part of various Sicilian provinces: the Aeolian Islands (Messina), isle of Ustica (Palermo), Aegadian Islands (Trapani), isle of Pantelleria (Trapani) and Pelagian Islands (Agrigento).
+
+Thanks to the regular growth of the last years, Sicily is the eighth largest regional economy of Italy in terms of total GDP (see List of Italian regions by GDP). A series of reforms and investments on agriculture such as the introduction of modern irrigation systems have made this important industry competitive.[101] In the 1970s there was a growth of the industrial sector through the creation of some factories.[102] In recent years the importance of the service industry has grown for the opening of several shopping malls and for modest growth of financial and telecommunication activities.[103] Tourism is an important source of wealth for the island thanks to its natural and historical heritage. Today Sicily is investing a large amount of money on structures of the hospitality industry, in order to make tourism more competitive.[104] However, Sicily continues to have a GDP per capita below the Italian average and higher unemployment than the rest of Italy.[105] This difference is mostly caused by the negative influence of the Mafia that is still active in some areas although it is much weaker than in the past.[106]
+
+Sicily has long been noted for its fertile soil due to volcanic eruptions. The local agriculture is also helped by the pleasant climate of the island. The main agricultural products are wheat, citrons, oranges (Arancia Rossa di Sicilia IGP), lemons, tomatoes (Pomodoro di Pachino IGP), olives, olive oil, artichokes, prickly pear (Fico d'India dell'Etna DOP), almonds, grapes, pistachios (Pistacchio di Bronte DOP) and wine. Cattle and sheep are raised. The cheese productions are particularly important thanks to the Ragusano DOP and the Pecorino Siciliano DOP. Ragusa is noted for its honey (Miele Ibleo) and chocolate (Cioccolato di Modica IGP) productions.[107][108][109][110][111]
+
+Sicily is the third largest wine producer in Italy (the world's largest wine producer) after Veneto and Emilia Romagna.[112] The region is known mainly for fortified Marsala wines. In recent decades the wine industry has improved, new winemakers are experimenting with less-known native varietals, and Sicilian wines have become better known.[113] The best known local varietal is Nero d'Avola, named for a small town not far from Syracuse; the best wines made with these grapes come from Noto, a famous old city close to Avola. Other important native varietals are Nerello Mascalese used to make the Etna Rosso DOC wine, Frappato that is a component of the Cerasuolo di Vittoria DOCG wine, Moscato di Pantelleria (also known as Zibibbo) used to make different Pantelleria wines, Malvasia di Lipari used for the Malvasia di Lipari DOC wine and Catarratto mostly used to make the white wine Alcamo DOC. Furthermore, in Sicily high quality wines are also produced using non-native varietals like Syrah, Chardonnay and Merlot.[114]
+
+Sicily is also known for its liqueurs, such as the Amaro Averna produced in Caltanissetta and the local limoncello.
+
+Fishing is another fundamental resource for Sicily. There are important tuna, sardine, swordfish and European anchovy fisheries. Mazara del Vallo is the largest fishing centre in Sicily and one of the most important in Italy.[115]
+
+Improvements in Sicily's road system have helped to promote industrial development. The region has three important industrial districts:
+
+In Palermo there are important shipyards (such as Fincantieri), mechanical factories of famous Italian companies as Ansaldo Breda, publishing and textile industries. Chemical industries are also in the Province of Messina (Milazzo) and in the Province of Caltanissetta (Gela).[110]
+There are petroleum, natural gas and asphalt fields in the Southeast (mostly near Ragusa) and massive deposits of halite in Central Sicily.[119] The Province of Trapani is one of the largest sea salt producers in Italy.[120]
+
+A table showing Sicily's different GDP (nominal and per capita) growth between 2000 and 2008:[121][122]
+
+After the table which shows Sicily's GDP growth,[121] this table shows the sectors of the Sicilian economy in 2006:
+
+The unemployment rate stood at 21.5% in 2018 and was one of the highest in Italy and Europe.[123][124]
+
+Highways have been built and expanded in the last four decades. The most prominent Sicilian roads are the motorways (known as autostrade) in the north of the island. Much of the motorway network is elevated on pillars due to the island's mountainous terrain.[125][126][127][128] Other main roads in Sicily are the Strade Statali, such as the SS.113 that connects Trapani to Messina (via Palermo), the SS.114 Messina-Syracuse (via Catania) and the SS.115 Syracuse-Trapani (via Ragusa, Gela and Agrigento).
+
+The first railway in Sicily was opened in 1863 (Palermo-Bagheria) and today all of the Sicilian provinces are served by a network of railway services, linking to most major cities and towns; this service is operated by Trenitalia. Of the 1,378 km (856 mi) of railway tracks in use, over 60% has been electrified whilst the remaining 583 km (362 mi) are serviced by diesel engines. 88% of the lines (1.209 km) are single-track and only 169 km (105 mi) are double-track serving the two main routes, Messina-Palermo (Tyrrhenian) and Messina-Catania-Syracuse (Ionian), which are the main lines of this region. Of the narrow-gauge railways the Ferrovia Circumetnea is the only one that still operates, going round Mount Etna. From the major cities of Sicily, there are services to Naples, Rome and Milan; this is achieved by the trains being loaded onto ferries which cross the Strait.[129]
+
+In Catania there is an underground railway service (metropolitana di Catania); in Palermo the national railway operator Trenitalia operates a commuter rail (Palermo metropolitan railway service), the Sicilian Capital is also served by 4 AMAT (Comunal Public Transport Operator) tramlines; Messina is served by a tramline.
+
+Mainland Sicily has several airports that serve numerous Italian and European destinations and some extra-European.
+
+By sea, Sicily is served by several ferry routes and cargo ports, and in all major cities, cruise ships dock on a regular basis.
+
+Plans for a bridge linking Sicily to the mainland have been discussed since 1865. Throughout the last decade, plans were developed for a road and rail link to the mainland via what would be the world's longest suspension bridge, the Strait of Messina Bridge. Planning for the project has experienced several false starts over the past few years. On 6 March 2009, Silvio Berlusconi's government declared that the construction works for the Messina Bridge will begin on 23 December 2009, and announced a pledge of €1.3 billion as a contribution to the bridge's total cost, estimated at €6.1 billion.[132]
+The plan has been criticized by environmental associations and some local Sicilians and Calabrians, concerned with its environmental impact, economical sustainability and even possible infiltrations by organized crime.[133][134]
+
+Sicily's sunny, dry climate, scenery, cuisine, history, and architecture attract many tourists from mainland Italy and abroad. The tourist season peaks in the summer months, although people visit the island all year round. Mount Etna, the beaches, the archaeological sites, and major cities such as Palermo, Catania, Syracuse and Ragusa are the favourite tourist destinations, but the old town of Taormina and the neighbouring seaside resort of Giardini Naxos draw visitors from all over the world, as do the Aeolian Islands, Erice, Castellammare del Golfo, Cefalù, Agrigento, the Pelagie Islands and Capo d'Orlando. The last features some of the best-preserved temples of the ancient Greek period. Many Mediterranean cruise ships stop in Sicily, and many wine tourists also visit the island.
+
+Some scenes of several Hollywood and Cinecittà films were shot in Sicily. This increased the attraction of Sicily as a tourist destination.[135]
+
+There are seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites on Sicily. By the order of inscription:
+
+Because many different cultures settled, dominated or invaded the island, Sicily has a huge variety of archaeological sites. Also, some of the most notable and best preserved temples and other structures of the Greek world are located in Sicily.[citation needed]. Here is a short list of the major archaeological sites:
+
+The excavation and restoration of one of Sicily's best known archaeological sites, the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento, was at the direction of the archaeologist Domenico Antonio Lo Faso Pietrasanta, Fifth Duke of Serradifalco, known in archaeological circles simply as "Serradifalco". He also oversaw the restoration of ancient sites at Segesta, Selinunte, Siracusa and Taormina.
+
+In Sicily there are hundreds of castles, the most relevant are:
+
+The Coastal towers in Sicily (Torri costiere della Sicilia) are 218 old watchtowers along the coast. In Sicily, the first coastal towers date back to 1313 and 1345 of the Aragonese monarchy. From 1360 the threat came from the south, from North Africa to Maghreb, mainly to Barbary pirates and corsairs of Barbary Coast. In 1516, the Turks settled in Algiers, and from 1520, the corsair Hayreddin Barbarossa under the command of Ottoman Empire, operated from that harbor.
+
+Most existing towers were built on architectural designs of the Florentine architect Camillo Camilliani from [1583] to 1584 and involved the coastal periple of Sicily. The typology changed completely in '800, because of the new higher fire volumes of cannon vessels, the towers were built on the type of Martello towers that the British built in the UK and elsewhere in the British Empire. 
+The decline of Mediterranean piracy caused by the Second Barbary War led to a smaller number of coastal towers built during the 19th Century.[146]
+
+Torre-Capo-Rama (Terrasini)
+
+Torre di (Altavilla Milicia)
+
+Torre Spalmatore (Ustica)
+
+Torre Pozzillo (Cinisi)
+
+Ligny Tower - (Trapani)
+
+Torre Nubia (Paceco)
+
+Torre Manfria (Gela)
+
+Torre Cabrera (Marina di Ragusa) (Marina di Ragusa)
+
+Torre Cabrera (Pozzallo) (Pozzallo)
+
+Vignazza Tower (Giardini Naxos)
+
+To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is to not have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything.
+
+Sicily has long been associated with the arts; many poets, writers, philosophers, intellectuals, architects and painters have roots on the island. The history of prestige in this field can be traced back to Greek philosopher Archimedes, a Syracuse native who has gone on to become renowned as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time.[148] Gorgias and Empedocles are two other highly noted early Sicilian-Greek philosophers, while the Syracusan Epicharmus is held to be the inventor of comedy.[149][150]
+
+Terracotta ceramics from the island are well known, the art of ceramics on Sicily goes back to the original ancient peoples named the Sicanians, it was then perfected during the period of Greek colonisation and is still prominent and distinct to this day.[151] Nowadays, Caltagirone is one of the most important centres in Sicily for the artistic production of ceramics and terra-cotta sculptures. Famous painters include Renaissance artist Antonello da Messina, Bruno Caruso, Renato Guttuso and Greek born Giorgio de Chirico who is commonly dubbed the "father of Surrealist art" and founder of the metaphysical art movement.[152] The most noted architects are Filippo Juvarra (one of the most important figures of the Italian Baroque) and Ernesto Basile.
+
+The Sicilian Baroque has a unique architectural identity. Noto, Caltagirone, Catania, Ragusa, Modica, Scicli and particularly Acireale contain some of Italy's best examples of Baroque architecture, carved in the local red sandstone. Noto provides one of the best examples of the Baroque architecture brought to Sicily.
+The Baroque style in Sicily was largely confined to buildings erected by the church, and palazzi built as private residences for the Sicilian aristocracy.[153] The earliest examples of this style in Sicily lacked individuality and were typically heavy-handed pastiches of buildings seen by Sicilian visitors to Rome, Florence, and Naples. However, even at this early stage, provincial architects had begun to incorporate certain vernacular features of Sicily's older architecture. By the middle of the 18th century, when Sicily's Baroque architecture was noticeably different from that of the mainland, it typically included at least two or three of the following features, coupled with a unique freedom of design that is more difficult to characterize in words.
+
+Palermo hosts the Teatro Massimo which is the largest opera house in Italy and the third largest in all of Europe.[154]
+In Catania there is another important opera house, the Teatro Massimo Bellini with 1,200 seats, which is considered one of the best European opera houses for its acoustics.
+Sicily's composers vary from Vincenzo Bellini, Sigismondo d'India, Giovanni Pacini and Alessandro Scarlatti, to contemporary composers such as Salvatore Sciarrino and Silvio Amato.
+
+Many award-winning and acclaimed films of Italian cinema have been filmed in Sicily, amongst the most noted of which are: Visconti's "La Terra Trema" and "Il Gattopardo", Pietro Germi's "Divorzio all'Italiana" and "Sedotta e Abbandonata".
+
+The golden age of Sicilian poetry began in the early 13th century with the Sicilian School of Giacomo da Lentini, which was highly influential on Italian literature. Some of the most noted figures among writers and poets are Luigi Pirandello (Nobel laureate, 1934), Salvatore Quasimodo (Nobel laureate, 1959), Giovanni Verga (the father of the Italian Verismo), Domenico Tempio, Giovanni Meli, Luigi Capuana, Mario Rapisardi, Federico de Roberto, Leonardo Sciascia, Vitaliano Brancati, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Elio Vittorini, Vincenzo Consolo and Andrea Camilleri (noted for his novels and short stories with the fictional character Inspector Salvo Montalbano as protagonist). On the political side notable philosophers include Gaetano Mosca and Giovanni Gentile who wrote The Doctrine of Fascism. In terms of academic reflection, the historical and aesthetic richness as well as the multi-layered heterogeneity of Sicilian literature and culture have been first grasped methodologically and coined with the term of transculturality by German scholar of Italian studies Dagmar Reichardt who, after having published an extensive study on the literary work of Giuseppe Bonaviri,[155] was awarded the International Premio Flaiano ("Italianistica") for a trilingual (English, Italian, German) collection about the European liminality of Sicily, Sicilian literature and Sicilian Studies.[156]
+
+Today in Sicily most people are bilingual and speak both Italian and Sicilian, a distinct and historical Romance language. Some of the Sicilian words are loan words from Greek, Catalan, French, Arabic, Spanish and other languages.[157] Dialects related to Sicilian are also spoken in Calabria and Salento; it had a significant influence on the Maltese language. However the use of Sicilian is limited to informal contexts (mostly in family) and in a majority of cases it is replaced by the so-called regional Italian of Sicily, an Italian dialect that is a kind of mix between Italian and Sicilian.[158]
+
+Sicilian was an early influence in the development of the first Italian standard, although its use remained confined to an intellectual elite. This was a literary language in Sicily created under the auspices of Frederick II and his court of notaries, or Magna Curia, which, headed by Giacomo da Lentini, also gave birth to the Sicilian School, widely inspired by troubadour literature. Its linguistic and poetic heritage was later assimilated into the Florentine by Dante Alighieri, the father of modern Italian who, in his De vulgari eloquentia, claims that "In effect, this vernacular seems to deserve higher praise than the others since all the poetry written by Italians can be called Sicilian".[159] It is in this language that appeared the first sonnet, whose invention is attributed to Giacomo da Lentini himself.
+
+Catania has one of the four laboratories of the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (National Institute for Nuclear Physics) in which there is a cyclotron that uses protons both for nuclear physics experiments and for particle therapy to treat cancer (proton therapy).[160][161] Noto has one of the largest radio telescopes in Italy that performs geodetic and astronomical observations.[162] There are observatories in Palermo and Catania, managed by the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (National Institute for Astrophysics). In the Observatory of Palermo the astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi discovered the first and the largest asteroid to be identified Ceres (today considered a dwarf planet) on 1 January 1801;[163] Catania has two observatories, one of which is situated on Mount Etna at 1,800 metres (5,900 feet).[164]
+
+Syracuse is also an experimental centre for the solar technologies through the creation of the project Archimede solar power plant that is the first concentrated solar power plant to use molten salt for heat transfer and storage which is integrated with a combined-cycle gas facility. All the plant is owned and operated by Enel.[165][166] The touristic town of Erice is also an important science place thanks to the Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture which
+embraces 123 schools from all over the world, covering all branches of science, offering courses, seminars, workshops, and annual meetings. It was founded by the physicist Antonino Zichichi in honour of another scientist of the island, Ettore Majorana known for the Majorana equation and Majorana fermions.[167] Sicily's famous scientists include also Stanislao Cannizzaro (chemist), Giovanni Battista Hodierna and Niccolò Cacciatore (astronomers).
+
+Sicily has four universities:
+
+The island has a long history of producing a variety of noted cuisines and wines, to the extent that Sicily is sometimes nicknamed God's Kitchen because of this.[169] Every part of Sicily has its speciality (e.g. Cassata is typical of Palermo although available everywhere in Sicily, as is Granita). The ingredients are typically rich in taste while remaining affordable to the general public.[170] The savoury dishes of Sicily are viewed to be healthy, using fresh vegetables and fruits, such as tomatoes, artichokes, olives (including olive oil), citrus, apricots, aubergines, onions, beans, raisins commonly coupled with seafood, freshly caught from the surrounding coastlines, including tuna, sea bream, sea bass, cuttlefish, swordfish, sardines, and others.[171]
+
+The most well-known part of Sicilian cuisine is the rich sweet dishes including ice creams and pastries. Cannoli (singular: cannolo), a tube-shaped shell of fried pastry dough filled with a sweet filling usually containing ricotta, is strongly associated with Sicily worldwide.[172] Biancomangiare, biscotti ennesi (cookies native to Enna), braccilatte (a Sicilian version of doughnuts), buccellato, ciarduna, pignoli, Biscotti Regina, giurgiulena, frutta martorana, cassata, pignolata, granita, cuccidati (a variety of fig cookie; also known as buccellati) and cuccìa are some notable sweet dishes.[172]
+
+Like the cuisine of the rest of southern Italy, pasta plays an important part in Sicilian cuisine, as does rice; for example with arancine.[173] As well as using some other cheeses, Sicily has spawned some of its own, using both cow's and sheep's milk, such as pecorino and caciocavallo.[174] Spices used include saffron, nutmeg, clove, pepper, and cinnamon, which were introduced by the Arabs. Parsley is used abundantly in many dishes. Although Sicilian cuisine is commonly associated with sea food, meat dishes, including goose, lamb, goat, rabbit, and turkey, are also found in Sicily. It was the Normans and Swabians who first introduced a fondness for meat dishes to the island.[175] Some varieties of wine are produced from vines that are relatively unique to the island, such as the Nero d'Avola made near the baroque of town of Noto.[176]
+
+The most popular sport in Sicily is football, which came to the fore in the late 19th century under the influence of the English. Some of the oldest football clubs in Italy are from Sicily: the three most successful are Palermo, Catania, and Messina, which have played 29, 17 and 5 seasons in the Serie A respectively. No club from Sicily has ever won Serie A, but football is still deeply embedded in local culture and all over Sicily most towns have a representative team.[177]
+
+Palermo and Catania have a heated rivalry and compete in the Sicilian derby together. Palermo is the only team in Sicily to have played on the European stage, in the UEFA Cup. In the island, the most noted footballer is Salvatore Schillaci, who won the Golden Boot at the 1990 FIFA World Cup with Italy.[177] Other noted players include Giuseppe Furino, Pietro Anastasi, Francesco Coco, Christian Riganò, and Roberto Galia.[177] There have also been some noted managers from the island, such as Carmelo Di Bella and Franco Scoglio.
+
+Although football is the most popular sport in Sicily, the island also has participants in other fields. Amatori Catania have competed in the top Italian national rugby union league called National Championship of Excellence. They have even participated at the European level in the European Challenge Cup. Competing in the basketball variation of Serie A is Orlandina Basket from Capo d'Orlando in the province of Messina, where the sport has a reasonable following. Various other sports that are played to some extent include volleyball, handball, and water polo. Previously, in motorsport, Sicily held the prominent Targa Florio sports car race that took place in the Madonie Mountains, with the start-finish line in Cerda.[178] The event was started in 1906 by Sicilian industrialist and automobile enthusiast Vincenzo Florio, and ran until it was canceled due to safety concerns in 1977.[178]
+
+From 28 September to 9 October 2005 Trapani was the location of Acts 8 and 9 of the Louis Vuitton Cup. This sailing race featured, among other entrants, all boats that took part in the 2007 America's Cup.
+
+Each town and city has its own patron saint, and the feast days are marked by colourful processions through the streets with marching bands and displays of fireworks.
+
+Sicilian religious festivals also include the presepe vivente (living nativity scene), which takes place at Christmas time. Deftly combining religion and folklore, it is a constructed mock 19th-century Sicilian village, complete with a nativity scene, and has people of all ages dressed in the costumes of the period, some impersonating the Holy Family, and others working as artisans of their particular assigned trade. It is normally concluded on Epiphany, often highlighted by the arrival of the magi on horseback.
+
+Oral tradition plays a large role in Sicilian folklore. Many stories passed down from generation to generation involve a character named "Giufà". Anecdotes from this character's life preserve Sicilian culture as well as convey moral messages.
+
+Sicilians also enjoy outdoor festivals, held in the local square or piazza where live music and dancing are performed on stage, and food fairs or sagre are set up in booths lining the square. These offer various local specialties, as well as typical Sicilian food. Normally these events are concluded with fireworks. A noted sagra is the Sagra del Carciofo or Artichoke Festival, which is held annually in Ramacca in April. The most important traditional event in Sicily is the carnival. Famous carnivals are in Acireale, Misterbianco, Regalbuto, Paternò, Sciacca, Termini Imerese.
+
+The Opera dei Pupi (Opera of the Puppets; Sicilian: Òpira dî pupi) is a marionette theatrical representation of Frankish romantic poems such as the Song of Roland or Orlando furioso that is one of the characteristic cultural traditions of Sicily. The sides of donkey carts are decorated with intricate, painted scenes; these same tales are enacted in traditional puppet theatres featuring hand-made marionettes of wood. The opera of the puppets and the Sicilian tradition of cantastorî (singers of tales) are rooted in the Provençal troubadour tradition in Sicily during the reign of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, in the first half of the 13th century. A great place to see this marionette art is the puppet theatres of Palermo. The Sicilian marionette theatre Opera dei Pupi was proclaimed in 2001 and inscribed in 2008 in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists.[179]
+
+Today, there are only a few troupes that maintain the tradition. They often perform for tourists. However, there are no longer the great historical families of marionettists, such as the Greco of Palermo; the Canino of Partinico and Alcamo; Crimi, Trombetta and Napoli of Catania, Pennisi and Macri of Acireale, Profeta of Licata, Gargano and Grasso of Agrigento. One can, however, admire the richest collection of marionettes at the Museo Internazionale delle Marionette Antonio Pasqualino and at the Museo Etnografico Siciliano Giuseppe Pitrè in Palermo. Other elaborate marionettes are on display at the Museo Civico Vagliasindi in Randazzo.
+
+The Sicilian cart is an ornate, colourful style of a horse or donkey-drawn cart native to Sicily. Sicilian wood carver George Petralia states that horses were mostly used in the city and flat plains, while donkeys or mules were more often used in rough terrain for hauling heavy loads.[180] The cart has two wheels and is primarily handmade out of wood with iron components.
+
+The Sicilian coppola is a traditional kind of flat cap typically worn by men in Sicily. First used by English nobles during the late 18th century, the tascu began being used in Sicily in the early 20th century as a driving cap, usually worn by car drivers. The coppola is usually made in tweed. Today it is widely regarded as a definitive symbol of Sicilian heritage.[181]
+
+
+
+The Flag of Sicily, regarded as a regional icon, was first adopted in 1282, after the Sicilian Vespers of Palermo. It is characterised by the presence of the triskeles in the middle, depicting the head of Medusa and three wheat ears representing the extreme fertility of the land of Sicily.[182][additional citation(s) needed] In early mythology, when Medusa was slain and beheaded by Perseus, the Medusa head was placed in the centre of Athena's shield.[183] Palermo and Corleone were the first two cities to found a confederation against the Angevin rule. The triskeles symbol came to be on the Sicilian flag in 1943 during World War II when Andrea Finocchiaro Aprile led an independence movement, in collaboration with the allies. Their plan was to help Sicily become independent and form a free republic. The colours, likewise introduced in the 1940s, respectively represent the cities of Palermo and Corleone. The separatist behind the movement used a yellow and red flag with the Trinacria in the center of it. When World War II ended, Sicily was recognized as an autonomous region in the Italian Republic.
+
+The flag became the official public flag of the Regione Siciliana in January 2000, after the passing of an apposite regional law which advocates its use on public buildings, schools and city halls along with the national Italian flag and the European one.
+
+Familiar as an ancient symbol of the region, the Triskelion is also featured on Greek coins of Syracuse, such as coins of Agathocles (317–289 BC).The symbol dates back to when Sicily was part of Magna Graecia, the colonial extension of Greece beyond the Aegean.[184] The triskelion was revived, as a neoclassic – and non-Bourbon – emblem for the new Napoleonic Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, by Joachim Murat in 1808. In the case of Sicily, the triskelion symbol is said to represent the three capes (headlands or promontories of the island of Sicily, namely: Pelorus (Peloro, Tip of Faro, Messina: North-East); Pachynus (Passero, Syracuse: South); and Lilybæum (Lilibeo, Cape Boeo, Marsala: West), which form three points of a triangle.[185]
+
+Coordinates: 37°30′N 14°00′E / 37.500°N 14.000°E / 37.500; 14.000
+

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+Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).[9][10][11] Following initial infection a person may not notice any symptoms, or may experience a brief period of influenza-like illness.[4] Typically, this is followed by a prolonged period with no symptoms.[5] If the infection progresses, it interferes more with the immune system, increasing the risk of developing common infections such as tuberculosis, as well as other opportunistic infections, and tumors which are otherwise rare in people who have normal immune function.[4] These late symptoms of infection are referred to as acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).[5] This stage is often also associated with unintended weight loss.[5]
+
+HIV is spread primarily by unprotected sex (including anal and oral sex), contaminated blood transfusions, hypodermic needles, and from mother to child during pregnancy, delivery, or breastfeeding.[12] Some bodily fluids, such as saliva, sweat and tears, do not transmit the virus.[13] HIV is a member of the group of viruses known as retroviruses.[14]
+
+Methods of prevention include safe sex, needle exchange programs, treating those who are infected, and pre- & post-exposure prophylaxis.[4] Disease in a baby can often be prevented by giving both the mother and child antiretroviral medication.[4] There is no cure or vaccine; however, antiretroviral treatment can slow the course of the disease and may lead to a near-normal life expectancy.[5][6] Treatment is recommended as soon as the diagnosis is made.[15] Without treatment, the average survival time after infection is 11 years.[7]
+
+In 2018, about 37.9 million people were living with HIV and it resulted in 770,000 deaths.[8] An estimated 20.6 million of these live in eastern and southern Africa.[16] Between the time that AIDS was identified (in the early 1980s) and 2018, the disease caused an estimated 32 million deaths worldwide.[8] HIV/AIDS is considered a pandemic—a disease outbreak which is present over a large area and is actively spreading.[17] HIV made the jump from other primates to humans in west-central Africa in the early-to-mid 20th century.[18] AIDS was first recognized by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 1981 and its cause—HIV infection—was identified in the early part of the decade.[19]
+
+HIV/AIDS has had a large impact on society, both as an illness and as a source of discrimination.[20] The disease also has large economic impacts.[20] There are many misconceptions about HIV/AIDS, such as the belief that it can be transmitted by casual non-sexual contact.[21] The disease has become subject to many controversies involving religion, including the Catholic Church's position not to support condom use as prevention.[22] It has attracted international medical and political attention as well as large-scale funding since it was identified in the 1980s.[23]
+
+There are three main stages of HIV infection: acute infection, clinical latency, and AIDS.[1][24]
+
+The initial period following the contraction of HIV is called acute HIV, primary HIV or acute retroviral syndrome.[24][25] Many individuals develop an influenza-like illness or a mononucleosis-like illness 2–4 weeks after exposure while others have no significant symptoms.[26][27] Symptoms occur in 40–90% of cases and most commonly include fever, large tender lymph nodes, throat inflammation, a rash, headache, tiredness, and/or sores of the mouth and genitals.[25][27] The rash, which occurs in 20–50% of cases, presents itself on the trunk and is maculopapular, classically.[28] Some people also develop opportunistic infections at this stage.[25] Gastrointestinal symptoms, such as vomiting or diarrhea may occur.[27] Neurological symptoms of peripheral neuropathy or Guillain–Barré syndrome also occurs.[27] The duration of the symptoms varies, but is usually one or two weeks.[27]
+
+Owing to their nonspecific character, these symptoms are not often recognized as signs of HIV infection. Even cases that do get seen by a family doctor or a hospital are often misdiagnosed as one of the many common infectious diseases with overlapping symptoms. Thus, it is recommended that HIV be considered in people presenting with an unexplained fever who may have risk factors for the infection.[27]
+
+The initial symptoms are followed by a stage called clinical latency, asymptomatic HIV, or chronic HIV.[1] Without treatment, this second stage of the natural history of HIV infection can last from about three years[29] to over 20 years[30] (on average, about eight years).[31] While typically there are few or no symptoms at first, near the end of this stage many people experience fever, weight loss, gastrointestinal problems and muscle pains.[1] Between 50% and 70% of people also develop persistent generalized lymphadenopathy, characterized by unexplained, non-painful enlargement of more than one group of lymph nodes (other than in the groin) for over three to six months.[24]
+
+Although most HIV-1 infected individuals have a detectable viral load and in the absence of treatment will eventually progress to AIDS, a small proportion (about 5%) retain high levels of CD4+ T cells (T helper cells) without antiretroviral therapy for more than five years.[27][32] These individuals are classified as "HIV controllers" or long-term nonprogressors (LTNP).[32] Another group consists of those who maintain a low or undetectable viral load without anti-retroviral treatment, known as "elite controllers" or "elite suppressors". They represent approximately 1 in 300 infected persons.[33]
+
+Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is defined as an HIV infection with either a CD4+ T cell count below 200 cells per µL or the occurrence of specific diseases associated with HIV infection.[27] In the absence of specific treatment, around half of people infected with HIV develop AIDS within ten years.[27] The most common initial conditions that alert to the presence of AIDS are pneumocystis pneumonia (40%), cachexia in the form of HIV wasting syndrome (20%), and esophageal candidiasis.[27] Other common signs include recurrent respiratory tract infections.[27]
+
+Opportunistic infections may be caused by bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites that are normally controlled by the immune system.[34] Which infections occur depends partly on what organisms are common in the person's environment.[27] These infections may affect nearly every organ system.[35]
+
+People with AIDS have an increased risk of developing various viral-induced cancers, including Kaposi's sarcoma, Burkitt's lymphoma, primary central nervous system lymphoma, and cervical cancer.[28] Kaposi's sarcoma is the most common cancer, occurring in 10% to 20% of people with HIV.[36] The second-most common cancer is lymphoma, which is the cause of death of nearly 16% of people with AIDS and is the initial sign of AIDS in 3% to 4%.[36] Both these cancers are associated with human herpesvirus 8 (HHV-8).[36] Cervical cancer occurs more frequently in those with AIDS because of its association with human papillomavirus (HPV).[36] Conjunctival cancer (of the layer that lines the inner part of eyelids and the white part of the eye) is also more common in those with HIV.[37]
+
+Additionally, people with AIDS frequently have systemic symptoms such as prolonged fevers, sweats (particularly at night), swollen lymph nodes, chills, weakness, and unintended weight loss.[38] Diarrhea is another common symptom, present in about 90% of people with AIDS.[39] They can also be affected by diverse psychiatric and neurological symptoms independent of opportunistic infections and cancers.[40]
+
+HIV is spread by three main routes: sexual contact, significant exposure to infected body fluids or tissues, and from mother to child during pregnancy, delivery, or breastfeeding (known as vertical transmission).[12] There is no risk of acquiring HIV if exposed to feces, nasal secretions, saliva, sputum, sweat, tears, urine, or vomit unless these are contaminated with blood.[49] It is also possible to be co-infected by more than one strain of HIV—a condition known as HIV superinfection.[50]
+
+The most frequent mode of transmission of HIV is through sexual contact with an infected person.[12] However, an HIV-positive person who has an undetectable viral load as a result of long-term treatment has effectively no risk of transmitting HIV sexually.[51][52] The existence of functionally noncontagious HIV-positive people on antiretroviral therapy was controversially publicized in the 2008 Swiss Statement, and has since become accepted as medically sound.[53]
+
+Globally, the most common mode of HIV transmission is via sexual contacts between people of the opposite sex;[12] however, the pattern of transmission varies among countries. As of 2017[update], most HIV transmission in the United States occurred among men who had sex with men (82% of new HIV diagnoses among males aged 13 and older and 70% of total new diagnoses).[54][55] In the US, gay and bisexual men aged 13 to 24 accounted for an estimated 92% of new HIV diagnoses among all men in their age group and 27% of new diagnoses among all gay and bisexual men.[56] About 15% of gay and bisexual men have HIV, while 28% of transgender women test positive in the US.[56][57]
+
+With regard to unprotected heterosexual contacts, estimates of the risk of HIV transmission per sexual act appear to be four to ten times higher in low-income countries than in high-income countries.[58] In low-income countries, the risk of female-to-male transmission is estimated as 0.38% per act, and of male-to-female transmission as 0.30% per act; the equivalent estimates for high-income countries are 0.04% per act for female-to-male transmission, and 0.08% per act for male-to-female transmission.[58] The risk of transmission from anal intercourse is especially high, estimated as 1.4–1.7% per act in both heterosexual and homosexual contacts.[58][59] While the risk of transmission from oral sex is relatively low, it is still present.[60] The risk from receiving oral sex has been described as "nearly nil";[61] however, a few cases have been reported.[62] The per-act risk is estimated at 0–0.04% for receptive oral intercourse.[63] In settings involving prostitution in low-income countries, risk of female-to-male transmission has been estimated as 2.4% per act, and of male-to-female transmission as 0.05% per act.[58]
+
+Risk of transmission increases in the presence of many sexually transmitted infections[64] and genital ulcers.[58] Genital ulcers appear to increase the risk approximately fivefold.[58] Other sexually transmitted infections, such as gonorrhea, chlamydia, trichomoniasis, and bacterial vaginosis, are associated with somewhat smaller increases in risk of transmission.[63]
+
+The viral load of an infected person is an important risk factor in both sexual and mother-to-child transmission.[65] During the first 2.5 months of an HIV infection a person's infectiousness is twelve times higher due to the high viral load associated with acute HIV.[63] If the person is in the late stages of infection, rates of transmission are approximately eightfold greater.[58]
+
+Commercial sex workers (including those in pornography) have an increased likelihood of contracting HIV.[66][67] Rough sex can be a factor associated with an increased risk of transmission.[68] Sexual assault is also believed to carry an increased risk of HIV transmission as condoms are rarely worn, physical trauma to the vagina or rectum is likely, and there may be a greater risk of concurrent sexually transmitted infections.[69]
+
+The second-most frequent mode of HIV transmission is via blood and blood products.[12] Blood-borne transmission can be through needle-sharing during intravenous drug use, needle-stick injury, transfusion of contaminated blood or blood product, or medical injections with unsterilized equipment. The risk from sharing a needle during drug injection is between 0.63% and 2.4% per act, with an average of 0.8%.[70] The risk of acquiring HIV from a needle stick from an HIV-infected person is estimated as 0.3% (about 1 in 333) per act and the risk following mucous membrane exposure to infected blood as 0.09% (about 1 in 1000) per act.[49] This risk may, however, be up to 5% if the introduced blood was from a person with a high viral load and the cut was deep.[71] In the United States intravenous drug users made up 12% of all new cases of HIV in 2009,[72] and in some areas more than 80% of people who inject drugs are HIV-positive.[12]
+
+HIV is transmitted in about 90% of blood transfusions using infected blood.[41] In developed countries the risk of acquiring HIV from a blood transfusion is extremely low (less than one in half a million) where improved donor selection and HIV screening is performed;[12] for example, in the UK the risk is reported at one in five million[73] and in the United States it was one in 1.5 million in 2008.[74] In low-income countries, only half of transfusions may be appropriately screened (as of 2008),[75] and it is estimated that up to 15% of HIV infections in these areas come from transfusion of infected blood and blood products, representing between 5% and 10% of global infections.[12][76] It is possible to acquire HIV from organ and tissue transplantation, although this is rare because of screening.[77]
+
+Unsafe medical injections play a role in HIV spread in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2007, between 12% and 17% of infections in this region were attributed to medical syringe use.[78] The World Health Organization estimates the risk of transmission as a result of a medical injection in Africa at 1.2%.[78] Risks are also associated with invasive procedures, assisted delivery, and dental care in this area of the world.[78]
+
+People giving or receiving tattoos, piercings, and scarification are theoretically at risk of infection but no confirmed cases have been documented.[79] It is not possible for mosquitoes or other insects to transmit HIV.[80]
+
+HIV can be transmitted from mother to child during pregnancy, during delivery, or through breast milk, resulting in the baby also contracting HIV.[81][12] As of 2008, vertical transmission accounted for about 90% of cases of HIV in children.[82] In the absence of treatment, the risk of transmission before or during birth is around 20%, and in those who also breastfeed 35%.[82] Treatment decreases this risk to less than 5%.[83]
+
+Antiretrovirals when taken by either the mother or the baby decrease the risk of transmission in those who do breastfeed.[84] If blood contaminates food during pre-chewing it may pose a risk of transmission.[79] If a woman is untreated, two years of breastfeeding results in an HIV/AIDS risk in her baby of about 17%.[85] Due to the increased risk of death without breastfeeding in many areas in the developing world, the World Health Organization recommends either exclusive breastfeeding or the provision of safe formula.[85] All women known to be HIV-positive should be taking lifelong antiretroviral therapy.[85]
+
+HIV is the cause of the spectrum of disease known as HIV/AIDS. HIV is a retrovirus that primarily infects components of the human immune system such as CD4+ T cells, macrophages and dendritic cells. It directly and indirectly destroys CD4+ T cells.[86]
+
+HIV is a member of the genus Lentivirus,[87] part of the family Retroviridae.[88] Lentiviruses share many morphological and biological characteristics. Many species of mammals are infected by lentiviruses, which are characteristically responsible for long-duration illnesses with a long incubation period.[89] Lentiviruses are transmitted as single-stranded, positive-sense, enveloped RNA viruses. Upon entry into the target cell, the viral RNA genome is converted (reverse transcribed) into double-stranded DNA by a virally encoded reverse transcriptase that is transported along with the viral genome in the virus particle. The resulting viral DNA is then imported into the cell nucleus and integrated into the cellular DNA by a virally encoded integrase and host co-factors.[90] Once integrated, the virus may become latent, allowing the virus and its host cell to avoid detection by the immune system.[91] Alternatively, the virus may be transcribed, producing new RNA genomes and viral proteins that are packaged and released from the cell as new virus particles that begin the replication cycle anew.[92]
+
+HIV is now known to spread between CD4+ T cells by two parallel routes: cell-free spread and cell-to-cell spread, i.e. it employs hybrid spreading mechanisms.[93] In the cell-free spread, virus particles bud from an infected T cell, enter the blood/extracellular fluid and then infect another T cell following a chance encounter.[93] HIV can also disseminate by direct transmission from one cell to another by a process of cell-to-cell spread.[94][95] The hybrid spreading mechanisms of HIV contribute to the virus's ongoing replication against antiretroviral therapies.[93][96]
+
+Two types of HIV have been characterized: HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV-1 is the virus that was originally discovered (and initially referred to also as LAV or HTLV-III). It is more virulent, more infective,[97] and is the cause of the majority of HIV infections globally. The lower infectivity of HIV-2 as compared with HIV-1 implies that fewer people exposed to HIV-2 will be infected per exposure. Because of its relatively poor capacity for transmission, HIV-2 is largely confined to West Africa.[98]
+
+After the virus enters the body there is a period of rapid viral replication, leading to an abundance of virus in the peripheral blood. During primary infection, the level of HIV may reach several million virus particles per milliliter of blood.[99] This response is accompanied by a marked drop in the number of circulating CD4+ T cells. The acute viremia is almost invariably associated with activation of CD8+ T cells, which kill HIV-infected cells, and subsequently with antibody production, or seroconversion. The CD8+ T cell response is thought to be important in controlling virus levels, which peak and then decline, as the CD4+ T cell counts recover. A good CD8+ T cell response has been linked to slower disease progression and a better prognosis, though it does not eliminate the virus.[100]
+
+Ultimately, HIV causes AIDS by depleting CD4+ T cells. This weakens the immune system and allows opportunistic infections. T cells are essential to the immune response and without them, the body cannot fight infections or kill cancerous cells. The mechanism of CD4+ T cell depletion differs in the acute and chronic phases.[101] During the acute phase, HIV-induced cell lysis and killing of infected cells by CD8+ T cells accounts for CD4+ T cell depletion, although apoptosis may also be a factor. During the chronic phase, the consequences of generalized immune activation coupled with the gradual loss of the ability of the immune system to generate new T cells appear to account for the slow decline in CD4+ T cell numbers.[102]
+
+Although the symptoms of immune deficiency characteristic of AIDS do not appear for years after a person is infected, the bulk of CD4+ T cell loss occurs during the first weeks of infection, especially in the intestinal mucosa, which harbors the majority of the lymphocytes found in the body.[103] The reason for the preferential loss of mucosal CD4+ T cells is that the majority of mucosal CD4+ T cells express the CCR5 protein which HIV uses as a co-receptor to gain access to the cells, whereas only a small fraction of CD4+ T cells in the bloodstream do so.[104] A specific genetic change that alters the CCR5 protein when present in both chromosomes very effectively prevents HIV-1 infection.[105]
+
+HIV seeks out and destroys CCR5 expressing CD4+ T cells during acute infection.[106] A vigorous immune response eventually controls the infection and initiates the clinically latent phase. CD4+ T cells in mucosal tissues remain particularly affected.[106] Continuous HIV replication causes a state of generalized immune activation persisting throughout the chronic phase.[107] Immune activation, which is reflected by the increased activation state of immune cells and release of pro-inflammatory cytokines, results from the activity of several HIV gene products and the immune response to ongoing HIV replication. It is also linked to the breakdown of the immune surveillance system of the gastrointestinal mucosal barrier caused by the depletion of mucosal CD4+ T cells during the acute phase of disease.[108]
+
+HIV/AIDS is diagnosed via laboratory testing and then staged based on the presence of certain signs or symptoms.[25] HIV screening is recommended by the United States Preventive Services Task Force for all people 15 years to 65 years of age, including all pregnant women.[110] Additionally, testing is recommended for those at high risk, which includes anyone diagnosed with a sexually transmitted illness.[28][110] In many areas of the world, a third of HIV carriers only discover they are infected at an advanced stage of the disease when AIDS or severe immunodeficiency has become apparent.[28]
+
+Most people infected with HIV develop specific antibodies (i.e. seroconvert) within three to twelve weeks after the initial infection.[27] Diagnosis of primary HIV before seroconversion is done by measuring HIV-RNA or p24 antigen.[27] Positive results obtained by antibody or PCR testing are confirmed either by a different antibody or by PCR.[25]
+
+Antibody tests in children younger than 18 months are typically inaccurate, due to the continued presence of maternal antibodies.[111] Thus HIV infection can only be diagnosed by PCR testing for HIV RNA or DNA, or via testing for the p24 antigen.[25] Much of the world lacks access to reliable PCR testing, and people in many places simply wait until either symptoms develop or the child is old enough for accurate antibody testing.[111] In sub-Saharan Africa between 2007 and 2009, between 30% and 70% of the population were aware of their HIV status.[112] In 2009, between 3.6% and 42% of men and women in sub-Saharan countries were tested;[112] this represented a significant increase compared to previous years.[112]
+
+Two main clinical staging systems are used to classify HIV and HIV-related disease for surveillance purposes: the WHO disease staging system for HIV infection and disease,[25] and the CDC classification system for HIV infection.[113] The CDC's classification system is more frequently adopted in developed countries. Since the WHO's staging system does not require laboratory tests, it is suited to the resource-restricted conditions encountered in developing countries, where it can also be used to help guide clinical management. Despite their differences, the two systems allow comparison for statistical purposes.[24][25][113]
+
+The World Health Organization first proposed a definition for AIDS in 1986.[25] Since then, the WHO classification has been updated and expanded several times, with the most recent version being published in 2007.[25] The WHO system uses the following categories:
+
+The United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention also created a classification system for HIV, and updated it in 2008 and 2014.[113][114] This system classifies HIV infections based on CD4 count and clinical symptoms, and describes the infection in five groups.[114] In those greater than six years of age it is:[114]
+
+For surveillance purposes, the AIDS diagnosis still stands even if, after treatment, the CD4+ T cell count rises to above 200 per µL of blood or other AIDS-defining illnesses are cured.[24]
+
+Consistent condom use reduces the risk of HIV transmission by approximately 80% over the long term.[115] When condoms are used consistently by a couple in which one person is infected, the rate of HIV infection is less than 1% per year.[116] There is some evidence to suggest that female condoms may provide an equivalent level of protection.[117] Application of a vaginal gel containing tenofovir (a reverse transcriptase inhibitor) immediately before sex seems to reduce infection rates by approximately 40% among African women.[118] By contrast, use of the spermicide nonoxynol-9 may increase the risk of transmission due to its tendency to cause vaginal and rectal irritation.[119]
+
+Circumcision in Sub-Saharan Africa "reduces the acquisition of HIV by heterosexual men by between 38% and 66% over 24 months".[120] Owing to these studies, both the World Health Organization and UNAIDS recommended male circumcision in 2007 as a method of preventing female-to-male HIV transmission in areas with high rates of HIV.[121] However, whether it protects against male-to-female transmission is disputed,[122][123] and whether it is of benefit in developed countries and among men who have sex with men is undetermined.[124][125][126] The International Antiviral Society, however, does recommend it for all sexually active heterosexual males and that it be discussed as an option with men who have sex with men.[127] Some experts fear that a lower perception of vulnerability among circumcised men may cause more sexual risk-taking behavior, thus negating its preventive effects.[128]
+
+Programs encouraging sexual abstinence do not appear to affect subsequent HIV risk.[129] Evidence of any benefit from peer education is equally poor.[130] Comprehensive sexual education provided at school may decrease high-risk behavior.[131][132] A substantial minority of young people continues to engage in high-risk practices despite knowing about HIV/AIDS, underestimating their own risk of becoming infected with HIV.[133] Voluntary counseling and testing people for HIV does not affect risky behavior in those who test negative but does increase condom use in those who test positive.[134] Enhanced family planning services appear to increase the likelihood of women with HIV using contraception, compared to basic services.[135] It is not known whether treating other sexually transmitted infections is effective in preventing HIV.[64]
+
+Antiretroviral treatment among people with HIV whose CD4 count ≤ 550 cells/µL is a very effective way to prevent HIV infection of their partner (a strategy known as treatment as prevention, or TASP).[136] TASP is associated with a 10- to 20-fold reduction in transmission risk.[136][137] Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) with a daily dose of the medications tenofovir, with or without emtricitabine, is effective in people at high risk including men who have sex with men, couples where one is HIV-positive, and young heterosexuals in Africa.[118][138] It may also be effective in intravenous drug users, with a study finding a decrease in risk of 0.7 to 0.4 per 100 person years.[139] The USPSTF, in 2019, recommended PrEP in those who are at high risk.[140]
+
+Universal precautions within the health care environment are believed to be effective in decreasing the risk of HIV.[141] Intravenous drug use is an important risk factor, and harm reduction strategies such as needle-exchange programs and opioid substitution therapy appear effective in decreasing this risk.[142][143]
+
+A course of antiretrovirals administered within 48 to 72 hours after exposure to HIV-positive blood or genital secretions is referred to as post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP).[144] The use of the single agent zidovudine reduces the risk of a HIV infection five-fold following a needle-stick injury.[144] As of 2013[update], the prevention regimen recommended in the United States consists of three medications—tenofovir, emtricitabine and raltegravir—as this may reduce the risk further.[145]
+
+PEP treatment is recommended after a sexual assault when the perpetrator is known to be HIV-positive, but is controversial when their HIV status is unknown.[146] The duration of treatment is usually four weeks[147] and is frequently associated with adverse effects—where zidovudine is used, about 70% of cases result in adverse effects such as nausea (24%), fatigue (22%), emotional distress (13%) and headaches (9%).[49]
+
+Programs to prevent the vertical transmission of HIV (from mothers to children) can reduce rates of transmission by 92–99%.[82][142] This primarily involves the use of a combination of antiviral medications during pregnancy and after birth in the infant, and potentially includes bottle feeding rather than breastfeeding.[82][148] If replacement feeding is acceptable, feasible, affordable, sustainable and safe, mothers should avoid breastfeeding their infants; however, exclusive breastfeeding is recommended during the first months of life if this is not the case.[149] If exclusive breastfeeding is carried out, the provision of extended antiretroviral prophylaxis to the infant decreases the risk of transmission.[150] In 2015, Cuba became the first country in the world to eradicate mother-to-child transmission of HIV.[151]
+
+Currently there is no licensed vaccine for HIV or AIDS.[6] The most effective vaccine trial to date, RV 144, was published in 2009; it found a partial reduction in the risk of transmission of roughly 30%, stimulating some hope in the research community of developing a truly effective vaccine.[152] Further trials of the RV 144 vaccine are ongoing.[153][154]
+
+There is currently no cure, nor an effective HIV vaccine. Treatment consists of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) which slows progression of the disease.[155] As of 2010[update] more than 6.6 million people were receiving this in low- and middle-income countries.[156] Treatment also includes preventive and active treatment of opportunistic infections. As of March 2020[update], two persons have been successfully cleared of HIV.[157] Rapid initiation of anti-retroviral therapy within one week of diagnosis appear to improve treatment outcomes in low and medium-income settings.[158]
+
+Current HAART options are combinations (or "cocktails") consisting of at least three medications belonging to at least two types, or "classes", of antiretroviral agents.[159] Initially, treatment is typically a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI) plus two nucleoside analog reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs).[160] Typical NRTIs include: zidovudine (AZT) or tenofovir (TDF) and lamivudine (3TC) or emtricitabine (FTC).[160] As of 2019, dolutegravir/lamivudine/tenofovir is listed by the World Health Organization as the first-line treatment for adults, with tenofovir/lamivudine/efavirenz as an alternative.[161] Combinations of agents that include protease inhibitors (PI) are used if the above regimen loses effectiveness.[159]
+
+The World Health Organization and the United States recommend antiretrovirals in people of all ages (including pregnant women) as soon as the diagnosis is made, regardless of CD4 count.[15][127][162] Once treatment is begun, it is recommended that it is continued without breaks or "holidays".[28] Many people are diagnosed only after treatment ideally should have begun.[28] The desired outcome of treatment is a long-term plasma HIV-RNA count below 50 copies/mL.[28] Levels to determine if treatment is effective are initially recommended after four weeks and once levels fall below 50 copies/mL checks every three to six months are typically adequate.[28] Inadequate control is deemed to be greater than 400 copies/mL.[28] Based on these criteria treatment is effective in more than 95% of people during the first year.[28]
+
+Benefits of treatment include a decreased risk of progression to AIDS and a decreased risk of death.[163] In the developing world, treatment also improves physical and mental health.[164] With treatment, there is a 70% reduced risk of acquiring tuberculosis.[159] Additional benefits include a decreased risk of transmission of the disease to sexual partners and a decrease in mother-to-child transmission.[159][165] The effectiveness of treatment depends to a large part on compliance.[28] Reasons for non-adherence to treatment include poor access to medical care,[166] inadequate social supports, mental illness and drug abuse.[167] The complexity of treatment regimens (due to pill numbers and dosing frequency) and adverse effects may reduce adherence.[168] Even though cost is an important issue with some medications,[169] 47% of those who needed them were taking them in low- and middle-income countries as of 2010[update],[156] and the rate of adherence is similar in low-income and high-income countries.[170]
+
+Specific adverse events are related to the antiretroviral agent taken.[171] Some relatively common adverse events include: lipodystrophy syndrome, dyslipidemia, and diabetes mellitus, especially with protease inhibitors.[24] Other common symptoms include diarrhea,[171][172] and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease.[173] Newer recommended treatments are associated with fewer adverse effects.[28] Certain medications may be associated with birth defects and therefore may be unsuitable for women hoping to have children.[28]
+
+Treatment recommendations for children are somewhat different from those for adults. The World Health Organization recommends treating all children less than 5 years of age; children above 5 are treated like adults.[174] The United States guidelines recommend treating all children less than 12 months of age and all those with HIV RNA counts greater than 100,000 copies/mL between one year and five years of age.[175]
+
+Measures to prevent opportunistic infections are effective in many people with HIV/AIDS. In addition to improving current disease, treatment with antiretrovirals reduces the risk of developing additional opportunistic infections.[171] Adults and adolescents who are living with HIV (even on anti-retroviral therapy) with no evidence of active tuberculosis in settings with high tuberculosis burden should receive isoniazid preventive therapy (IPT); the tuberculin skin test can be used to help decide if IPT is needed.[176] Vaccination against hepatitis A and B is advised for all people at risk of HIV before they become infected; however, it may also be given after infection.[177] Trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole prophylaxis between four and six weeks of age, and ceasing breastfeeding of infants born to HIV-positive mothers, is recommended in resource-limited settings.[178] It is also recommended to prevent PCP when a person's CD4 count is below 200 cells/uL and in those who have or have previously had PCP.[179] People with substantial immunosuppression are also advised to receive prophylactic therapy for toxoplasmosis and MAC.[180] Appropriate preventive measures reduced the rate of these infections by 50% between 1992 and 1997.[181] Influenza vaccination and pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine are often recommended in people with HIV/AIDS with some evidence of benefit.[182][183]
+
+The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued recommendations regarding nutrient requirements in HIV/AIDS.[184] A generally healthy diet is promoted. Dietary intake of micronutrients at RDA levels by HIV-infected adults is recommended by the WHO; higher intake of vitamin A, zinc, and iron can produce adverse effects in HIV-positive adults, and is not recommended unless there is documented deficiency.[184][185][186][187] Dietary supplementation for people who are infected with HIV and who have inadequate nutrition or dietary deficiencies may strengthen their immune systems or help them recover from infections; however, evidence indicating an overall benefit in morbidity or reduction in mortality is not consistent.[188]
+
+Evidence for supplementation with selenium is mixed with some tentative evidence of benefit.[189]  For pregnant and lactating women with HIV, multivitamin supplement improves outcomes for both mothers and children.[190]  If the pregnant or lactating mother has been advised to take anti-retroviral medication to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission, multivitamin supplements should not replace these treatments.[190] There is some evidence that vitamin A supplementation in children with an HIV infection reduces mortality and improves growth.[191]
+
+In the US, approximately 60% of people with HIV use various forms of complementary or alternative medicine,[192] whose effectiveness has not been established.[193]  There is not enough evidence to support the use of herbal medicines.[194] There is insufficient evidence to recommend or support the use of medical cannabis to try to increase appetite or weight gain.[195]
+
+HIV/AIDS has become a chronic rather than an acutely fatal disease in many areas of the world.[196] Prognosis varies between people, and both the CD4 count and viral load are useful for predicted outcomes.[27] Without treatment, average survival time after infection with HIV is estimated to be 9 to 11 years, depending on the HIV subtype.[7] After the diagnosis of AIDS, if treatment is not available, survival ranges between 6 and 19 months.[197][198] HAART and appropriate prevention of opportunistic infections reduces the death rate by 80%, and raises the life expectancy for a newly diagnosed young adult to 20–50 years.[196][199][200] This is between two thirds[199] and nearly that of the general population.[28][201] If treatment is started late in the infection, prognosis is not as good:[28] for example, if treatment is begun following the diagnosis of AIDS, life expectancy is ~10–40 years.[28][196] Half of infants born with HIV die before two years of age without treatment.[178]
+
+The primary causes of death from HIV/AIDS are opportunistic infections and cancer, both of which are frequently the result of the progressive failure of the immune system.[181][202] Risk of cancer appears to increase once the CD4 count is below 500/μL.[28] The rate of clinical disease progression varies widely between individuals and has been shown to be affected by a number of factors such as a person's susceptibility and immune function;[203] their access to health care, the presence of co-infections;[197][204] and the particular strain (or strains) of the virus involved.[205][206]
+
+Tuberculosis co-infection is one of the leading causes of sickness and death in those with HIV/AIDS being present in a third of all HIV-infected people and causing 25% of HIV-related deaths.[207] HIV is also one of the most important risk factors for tuberculosis.[208] Hepatitis C is another very common co-infection where each disease increases the progression of the other.[209] The two most common cancers associated with HIV/AIDS are Kaposi's sarcoma and AIDS-related non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.[202] Other cancers that are more frequent include anal cancer, Burkitt's lymphoma, primary central nervous system lymphoma, and cervical cancer.[28][210]
+
+Even with anti-retroviral treatment, over the long term HIV-infected people may experience neurocognitive disorders,[211] osteoporosis,[212] neuropathy,[213] cancers,[214][215] nephropathy,[216] and cardiovascular disease.[172] Some conditions, such as lipodystrophy, may be caused both by HIV and its treatment.[172]
+
+HIV/AIDS is a global pandemic.[218] As of 2016[update] approximately 36.7 million people worldwide have HIV, the number of new infections that year being about 1.8 million.[219] This is down from 3.1 million new infections in 2001.[220] Slightly over half the infected population are women and 2.1 million are children.[219] It resulted in about 1 million deaths in 2016, down from a peak of 1.9 million in 2005.[219]
+
+Sub-Saharan Africa is the region most affected. In 2010, an estimated 68% (22.9 million) of all HIV cases and 66% of all deaths (1.2 million) occurred in this region.[221] This means that about 5% of the adult population is infected[222] and it is believed to be the cause of 10% of all deaths in children.[223] Here, in contrast to other regions, women comprise nearly 60% of cases.[221] South Africa has the largest population of people with HIV of any country in the world at 5.9 million.[221] Life expectancy has fallen in the worst-affected countries due to HIV/AIDS; for example, in 2006 it was estimated that it had dropped from 65 to 35 years in Botswana.[17] Mother-to-child transmission in Botswana and South Africa, as of 2013[update], has decreased to less than 5%, with improvement in many other African nations due to improved access to antiretroviral therapy.[224]
+
+South & South East Asia is the second most affected; in 2010 this region contained an estimated 4 million cases or 12% of all people living with HIV resulting in approximately 250,000 deaths.[222] Approximately 2.4 million of these cases are in India.[221]
+
+During 2008 in the United States approximately 1.2 million people were living with HIV, resulting in about 17,500 deaths. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that in that year, 20% of infected Americans were unaware of their infection.[225] As of 2016[update] about 675,000 people have died of HIV/AIDS in the US since the beginning of the HIV epidemic.[57] In the United Kingdom as of 2015[update], there were approximately 101,200 cases which resulted in 594 deaths.[226] In Canada as of 2008, there were about 65,000 cases causing 53 deaths.[227] Between the first recognition of AIDS (in 1981) and 2009, it has led to nearly 30 million deaths.[228] Rates of HIV are lowest in North Africa and the Middle East (0.1% or less), East Asia (0.1%), and Western and Central Europe (0.2%).[222] The worst-affected European countries, in 2009 and 2012 estimates, are Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Moldova, Portugal and Belarus, in decreasing order of prevalence.[229]
+
+The first news story on the disease appeared May 18, 1981 in the gay newspaper New York Native.[230][231] AIDS was first clinically reported on June 5, 1981, with five cases in the United States.[36][232] The initial cases were a cluster of injecting drug users and homosexual men with no known cause of impaired immunity who showed symptoms of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP), a rare opportunistic infection that was known to occur in people with very compromised immune systems.[233] Soon thereafter, an unexpected number of homosexual men developed a previously rare skin cancer called Kaposi's sarcoma (KS).[234][235] Many more cases of PCP and KS emerged, alerting U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and a CDC task force was formed to monitor the outbreak.[236]
+
+In the early days, the CDC did not have an official name for the disease, often referring to it by way of diseases associated with it, such as lymphadenopathy, the disease after which the discoverers of HIV originally named the virus.[237][238] They also used Kaposi's sarcoma and opportunistic infections, the name by which a task force had been set up in 1981.[239] At one point the CDC coined it the "4H disease", as the syndrome seemed to affect heroin users, homosexuals, hemophiliacs, and Haitians.[240][241] In the general press the term GRID, which stood for gay-related immune deficiency, had been coined.[242] However, after determining that AIDS was not isolated to the gay community,[239] it was realized that the term GRID was misleading, and the term AIDS was introduced at a meeting in July 1982.[243] By September 1982 the CDC started referring to the disease as AIDS.[244]
+
+In 1983, two separate research groups led by Robert Gallo and Luc Montagnier declared that a novel retrovirus may have been infecting people with AIDS, and published their findings in the same issue of the journal Science.[245][246] Gallo claimed a virus which his group had isolated from a person with AIDS was strikingly similar in shape to other human T-lymphotropic viruses (HTLVs) that his group had been the first to isolate. Gallo's group called their newly isolated virus HTLV-III. At the same time, Montagnier's group isolated a virus from a person presenting with swelling of the lymph nodes of the neck and physical weakness, two characteristic symptoms of AIDS. Contradicting the report from Gallo's group, Montagnier and his colleagues showed that core proteins of this virus were immunologically different from those of HTLV-I. Montagnier's group named their isolated virus lymphadenopathy-associated virus (LAV).[236] As these two viruses turned out to be the same, in 1986, LAV and HTLV-III were renamed HIV.[247]
+
+Both HIV-1 and HIV-2 are believed to have originated in non-human primates in West-central Africa and were transferred to humans in the early 20th century.[18] HIV-1 appears to have originated in southern Cameroon through the evolution of SIV(cpz), a simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) that infects wild chimpanzees (HIV-1 descends from the SIVcpz endemic in the chimpanzee subspecies Pan troglodytes troglodytes).[248][249] The closest relative of HIV-2 is SIV(smm), a virus of the sooty mangabey (Cercocebus atys atys), an Old World monkey living in coastal West Africa (from southern Senegal to western Ivory Coast).[98] New World monkeys such as the owl monkey are resistant to HIV-1 infection, possibly because of a genomic fusion of two viral resistance genes.[250] HIV-1 is thought to have jumped the species barrier on at least three separate occasions, giving rise to the three groups of the virus, M, N, and O.[251]
+
+There is evidence that humans who participate in bushmeat activities, either as hunters or as bushmeat vendors, commonly acquire SIV.[252] However, SIV is a weak virus which is typically suppressed by the human immune system within weeks of infection. It is thought that several transmissions of the virus from individual to individual in quick succession are necessary to allow it enough time to mutate into HIV.[253] Furthermore, due to its relatively low person-to-person transmission rate, SIV can only spread throughout the population in the presence of one or more high-risk transmission channels, which are thought to have been absent in Africa before the 20th century.
+
+Specific proposed high-risk transmission channels, allowing the virus to adapt to humans and spread throughout the society, depend on the proposed timing of the animal-to-human crossing. Genetic studies of the virus suggest that the most recent common ancestor of the HIV-1 M group dates back to c. 1910.[254] Proponents of this dating link the HIV epidemic with the emergence of colonialism and growth of large colonial African cities, leading to social changes, including a higher degree of sexual promiscuity, the spread of prostitution, and the accompanying high frequency of genital ulcer diseases (such as syphilis) in nascent colonial cities.[255] While transmission rates of HIV during vaginal intercourse are low under regular circumstances, they are increased manyfold if one of the partners suffers from a sexually transmitted infection causing genital ulcers. Early 1900s colonial cities were notable for their high prevalence of prostitution and genital ulcers, to the degree that, as of 1928, as many as 45% of female residents of eastern Kinshasa were thought to have been prostitutes, and, as of 1933, around 15% of all residents of the same city had syphilis.[255]
+
+An alternative view holds that unsafe medical practices in Africa after World War II, such as unsterile reuse of single-use syringes during mass vaccination, antibiotic and anti-malaria treatment campaigns, were the initial vector that allowed the virus to adapt to humans and spread.[253][256][257]
+
+The earliest well-documented case of HIV in a human dates back to 1959 in the Congo.[258] The earliest retrospectively described case of AIDS is believed to have been in Norway beginning in 1966.[259] In July 1960, in the wake of Congo's independence, the United Nations recruited Francophone experts and technicians from all over the world to assist in filling administrative gaps left by Belgium, who did not leave behind an African elite to run the country. By 1962, Haitians made up the second-largest group of well-educated experts (out of the 48 national groups recruited), that totaled around 4500 in the country.[260][261] Dr. Jacques Pépin, a Quebecer author of The Origins of AIDS, stipulates that Haiti was one of HIV's entry points to the United States and that one of them may have carried HIV back across the Atlantic in the 1960s.[261] Although the virus may have been present in the United States as early as 1966,[262] the vast majority of infections occurring outside sub-Saharan Africa (including the U.S.) can be traced back to a single unknown individual who became infected with HIV in Haiti and then brought the infection to the United States at some time around 1969.[263] The epidemic then rapidly spread among high-risk groups (initially, sexually promiscuous men who have sex with men). By 1978, the prevalence of HIV-1 among homosexual male residents of New York City and San Francisco was estimated at 5%, suggesting that several thousand individuals in the country had been infected.[263]
+
+AIDS stigma exists around the world in a variety of ways, including ostracism, rejection, discrimination and avoidance of HIV-infected people; compulsory HIV testing without prior consent or protection of confidentiality; violence against HIV-infected individuals or people who are perceived to be infected with HIV; and the quarantine of HIV-infected individuals.[20] Stigma-related violence or the fear of violence prevents many people from seeking HIV testing, returning for their results, or securing treatment, possibly turning what could be a manageable chronic illness into a death sentence and perpetuating the spread of HIV.[265]
+
+AIDS stigma has been further divided into the following three categories:
+
+Often, AIDS stigma is expressed in conjunction with one or more other stigmas, particularly those associated with homosexuality, bisexuality, promiscuity, prostitution, and intravenous drug use.[268]
+
+In many developed countries, there is an association between AIDS and homosexuality or bisexuality, and this association is correlated with higher levels of sexual prejudice, such as anti-homosexual or anti-bisexual attitudes.[269] There is also a perceived association between AIDS and all male-male sexual behavior, including sex between uninfected men.[266] However, the dominant mode of spread worldwide for HIV remains heterosexual transmission.[270]
+
+In 2003, as part of an overall reform of marriage and population legislation, it became legal for people with AIDS to marry in China.[271]
+
+In 2013, the U.S. National Library of Medicine developed a traveling exhibition titled Surviving and Thriving: AIDS, Politics, and Culture;[272] this covered medical research, the U.S. government's response, and personal stories from people with AIDS, caregivers, and activists.[273]
+
+HIV/AIDS affects the economics of both individuals and countries.[223] The gross domestic product of the most affected countries has decreased due to the lack of human capital.[223][274] Without proper nutrition, health care and medicine, large numbers of people die from AIDS-related complications. Before death they will not only be unable to work, but will also require significant medical care. It is estimated that as of 2007 there were 12 million AIDS orphans.[223] Many are cared for by elderly grandparents.[275]
+
+Returning to work after beginning treatment for HIV/AIDS is difficult, and affected people often work less than the average worker. Unemployment in people with HIV/AIDS also is associated with suicidal ideation, memory problems, and social isolation. Employment increases self-esteem, sense of dignity, confidence, and quality of life for people with HIV/AIDS. Anti-retroviral treatment may help people with HIV/AIDS work more, and may increase the chance that a person with HIV/AIDS will be employed (low-quality evidence).[276]
+
+By affecting mainly young adults, AIDS reduces the taxable population, in turn reducing the resources available for public expenditures such as education and health services not related to AIDS, resulting in increasing pressure on the state's finances and slower growth of the economy. This causes a slower growth of the tax base, an effect that is reinforced if there are growing expenditures on treating the sick, training (to replace sick workers), sick pay and caring for AIDS orphans. This is especially true if the sharp increase in adult mortality shifts the responsibility from the family to the government in caring for these orphans.[275]
+
+At the household level, AIDS causes both loss of income and increased spending on healthcare. A study in Côte d'Ivoire showed that households having a person with HIV/AIDS spent twice as much on medical expenses as other households. This additional expenditure also leaves less income to spend on education and other personal or family investment.[277]
+
+The topic of religion and AIDS has become highly controversial, primarily because some religious authorities have publicly declared their opposition to the use of condoms.[278][279] The religious approach to prevent the spread of AIDS, according to a report by American health expert Matthew Hanley titled The Catholic Church and the Global AIDS Crisis, argues that cultural changes are needed, including a re-emphasis on fidelity within marriage and sexual abstinence outside of it.[279]
+
+Some religious organizations have claimed that prayer can cure HIV/AIDS. In 2011, the BBC reported that some churches in London were claiming that prayer would cure AIDS, and the Hackney-based Centre for the Study of Sexual Health and HIV reported that several people stopped taking their medication, sometimes on the direct advice of their pastor, leading to a number of deaths.[280] The Synagogue Church Of All Nations advertised an "anointing water" to promote God's healing, although the group denies advising people to stop taking medication.[280]
+
+One of the first high-profile cases of AIDS was the American Rock Hudson, a gay actor who had been married and divorced earlier in life, who died on October 2, 1985, having announced that he was suffering from the virus on July 25 that year. He had been diagnosed during 1984.[281] A notable British casualty of AIDS that year was Nicholas Eden, a gay politician and son of the late prime minister Anthony Eden.[282] On November 24, 1991, the virus claimed the life of British rock star Freddie Mercury, lead singer of the band Queen, who died from an AIDS-related illness having only revealed the diagnosis on the previous day.[283] However, he had been diagnosed as HIV-positive in 1987. One of the first high-profile heterosexual cases of the virus was American tennis player Arthur Ashe. He was diagnosed as HIV-positive on August 31, 1988, having contracted the virus from blood transfusions during heart surgery earlier in the 1980s. Further tests within 24 hours of the initial diagnosis revealed that Ashe had AIDS, but he did not tell the public about his diagnosis until April 1992.[284] He died as a result on February 6, 1993, aged 49.[285]
+
+Therese Frare's photograph of gay activist David Kirby, as he lay dying from AIDS while surrounded by family, was taken in April 1990. Life magazine said the photo became the one image "most powerfully identified with the HIV/AIDS epidemic." The photo was displayed in Life, was the winner of the World Press Photo, and acquired worldwide notoriety after being used in a United Colors of Benetton advertising campaign in 1992.[286]
+
+Criminal transmission of HIV is the intentional or reckless infection of a person with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Some countries or jurisdictions, including some areas of the United States, have laws that criminalize HIV transmission or exposure.[287] Others may charge the accused under laws enacted before the HIV pandemic.
+
+In 1996, Ugandan-born Canadian Johnson Aziga was diagnosed with HIV; he subsequently had unprotected sex with 11 women without disclosing his diagnosis. By 2003, seven had contracted HIV; two died from complications related to AIDS.[288][289] Aziga was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.[290]
+
+There are many misconceptions about HIV and AIDS. Three of the most common are that AIDS can spread through casual contact, that sexual intercourse with a virgin will cure AIDS,[291][292][293] and that HIV can infect only gay men and drug users. In 2014, some among the British public wrongly thought one could get HIV from kissing (16%), sharing a glass (5%), spitting (16%), a public toilet seat (4%), and coughing or sneezing (5%).[294] Other misconceptions are that any act of anal intercourse between two uninfected gay men can lead to HIV infection, and that open discussion of HIV and homosexuality in schools will lead to increased rates of AIDS.[295][296]
+
+A small group of individuals continue to dispute the connection between HIV and AIDS,[297] the existence of HIV itself, or the validity of HIV testing and treatment methods.[298][299] These claims, known as AIDS denialism, have been examined and rejected by the scientific community.[300] However, they have had a significant political impact, particularly in South Africa, where the government's official embrace of AIDS denialism (1999–2005) was responsible for its ineffective response to that country's AIDS epidemic, and has been blamed for hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths and HIV infections.[301][302][303]
+
+Several discredited conspiracy theories have held that HIV was created by scientists, either inadvertently or deliberately. Operation INFEKTION was a worldwide Soviet active measures operation to spread the claim that the United States had created HIV/AIDS. Surveys show that a significant number of people believed—and continue to believe—in such claims.[304]
+
+HIV/AIDS research includes all medical research which attempts to prevent, treat, or cure HIV/AIDS, along with fundamental research about the nature of HIV as an infectious agent, and about AIDS as the disease caused by HIV.
+
+Many governments and research institutions participate in HIV/AIDS research. This research includes behavioral health interventions such as sex education, and drug development, such as research into microbicides for sexually transmitted diseases, HIV vaccines, and antiretroviral drugs. Other medical research areas include the topics of pre-exposure prophylaxis, post-exposure prophylaxis, and circumcision and HIV. Public health officials, researchers, and programs can gain a more comprehensive picture of the barriers they face, and the efficacy of current approaches to HIV treatment and prevention, by tracking standard HIV indicators.[305] Use of common indicators is an increasing focus of development organizations and researchers.[306][307]

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+Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).[9][10][11] Following initial infection a person may not notice any symptoms, or may experience a brief period of influenza-like illness.[4] Typically, this is followed by a prolonged period with no symptoms.[5] If the infection progresses, it interferes more with the immune system, increasing the risk of developing common infections such as tuberculosis, as well as other opportunistic infections, and tumors which are otherwise rare in people who have normal immune function.[4] These late symptoms of infection are referred to as acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).[5] This stage is often also associated with unintended weight loss.[5]
+
+HIV is spread primarily by unprotected sex (including anal and oral sex), contaminated blood transfusions, hypodermic needles, and from mother to child during pregnancy, delivery, or breastfeeding.[12] Some bodily fluids, such as saliva, sweat and tears, do not transmit the virus.[13] HIV is a member of the group of viruses known as retroviruses.[14]
+
+Methods of prevention include safe sex, needle exchange programs, treating those who are infected, and pre- & post-exposure prophylaxis.[4] Disease in a baby can often be prevented by giving both the mother and child antiretroviral medication.[4] There is no cure or vaccine; however, antiretroviral treatment can slow the course of the disease and may lead to a near-normal life expectancy.[5][6] Treatment is recommended as soon as the diagnosis is made.[15] Without treatment, the average survival time after infection is 11 years.[7]
+
+In 2018, about 37.9 million people were living with HIV and it resulted in 770,000 deaths.[8] An estimated 20.6 million of these live in eastern and southern Africa.[16] Between the time that AIDS was identified (in the early 1980s) and 2018, the disease caused an estimated 32 million deaths worldwide.[8] HIV/AIDS is considered a pandemic—a disease outbreak which is present over a large area and is actively spreading.[17] HIV made the jump from other primates to humans in west-central Africa in the early-to-mid 20th century.[18] AIDS was first recognized by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 1981 and its cause—HIV infection—was identified in the early part of the decade.[19]
+
+HIV/AIDS has had a large impact on society, both as an illness and as a source of discrimination.[20] The disease also has large economic impacts.[20] There are many misconceptions about HIV/AIDS, such as the belief that it can be transmitted by casual non-sexual contact.[21] The disease has become subject to many controversies involving religion, including the Catholic Church's position not to support condom use as prevention.[22] It has attracted international medical and political attention as well as large-scale funding since it was identified in the 1980s.[23]
+
+There are three main stages of HIV infection: acute infection, clinical latency, and AIDS.[1][24]
+
+The initial period following the contraction of HIV is called acute HIV, primary HIV or acute retroviral syndrome.[24][25] Many individuals develop an influenza-like illness or a mononucleosis-like illness 2–4 weeks after exposure while others have no significant symptoms.[26][27] Symptoms occur in 40–90% of cases and most commonly include fever, large tender lymph nodes, throat inflammation, a rash, headache, tiredness, and/or sores of the mouth and genitals.[25][27] The rash, which occurs in 20–50% of cases, presents itself on the trunk and is maculopapular, classically.[28] Some people also develop opportunistic infections at this stage.[25] Gastrointestinal symptoms, such as vomiting or diarrhea may occur.[27] Neurological symptoms of peripheral neuropathy or Guillain–Barré syndrome also occurs.[27] The duration of the symptoms varies, but is usually one or two weeks.[27]
+
+Owing to their nonspecific character, these symptoms are not often recognized as signs of HIV infection. Even cases that do get seen by a family doctor or a hospital are often misdiagnosed as one of the many common infectious diseases with overlapping symptoms. Thus, it is recommended that HIV be considered in people presenting with an unexplained fever who may have risk factors for the infection.[27]
+
+The initial symptoms are followed by a stage called clinical latency, asymptomatic HIV, or chronic HIV.[1] Without treatment, this second stage of the natural history of HIV infection can last from about three years[29] to over 20 years[30] (on average, about eight years).[31] While typically there are few or no symptoms at first, near the end of this stage many people experience fever, weight loss, gastrointestinal problems and muscle pains.[1] Between 50% and 70% of people also develop persistent generalized lymphadenopathy, characterized by unexplained, non-painful enlargement of more than one group of lymph nodes (other than in the groin) for over three to six months.[24]
+
+Although most HIV-1 infected individuals have a detectable viral load and in the absence of treatment will eventually progress to AIDS, a small proportion (about 5%) retain high levels of CD4+ T cells (T helper cells) without antiretroviral therapy for more than five years.[27][32] These individuals are classified as "HIV controllers" or long-term nonprogressors (LTNP).[32] Another group consists of those who maintain a low or undetectable viral load without anti-retroviral treatment, known as "elite controllers" or "elite suppressors". They represent approximately 1 in 300 infected persons.[33]
+
+Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is defined as an HIV infection with either a CD4+ T cell count below 200 cells per µL or the occurrence of specific diseases associated with HIV infection.[27] In the absence of specific treatment, around half of people infected with HIV develop AIDS within ten years.[27] The most common initial conditions that alert to the presence of AIDS are pneumocystis pneumonia (40%), cachexia in the form of HIV wasting syndrome (20%), and esophageal candidiasis.[27] Other common signs include recurrent respiratory tract infections.[27]
+
+Opportunistic infections may be caused by bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites that are normally controlled by the immune system.[34] Which infections occur depends partly on what organisms are common in the person's environment.[27] These infections may affect nearly every organ system.[35]
+
+People with AIDS have an increased risk of developing various viral-induced cancers, including Kaposi's sarcoma, Burkitt's lymphoma, primary central nervous system lymphoma, and cervical cancer.[28] Kaposi's sarcoma is the most common cancer, occurring in 10% to 20% of people with HIV.[36] The second-most common cancer is lymphoma, which is the cause of death of nearly 16% of people with AIDS and is the initial sign of AIDS in 3% to 4%.[36] Both these cancers are associated with human herpesvirus 8 (HHV-8).[36] Cervical cancer occurs more frequently in those with AIDS because of its association with human papillomavirus (HPV).[36] Conjunctival cancer (of the layer that lines the inner part of eyelids and the white part of the eye) is also more common in those with HIV.[37]
+
+Additionally, people with AIDS frequently have systemic symptoms such as prolonged fevers, sweats (particularly at night), swollen lymph nodes, chills, weakness, and unintended weight loss.[38] Diarrhea is another common symptom, present in about 90% of people with AIDS.[39] They can also be affected by diverse psychiatric and neurological symptoms independent of opportunistic infections and cancers.[40]
+
+HIV is spread by three main routes: sexual contact, significant exposure to infected body fluids or tissues, and from mother to child during pregnancy, delivery, or breastfeeding (known as vertical transmission).[12] There is no risk of acquiring HIV if exposed to feces, nasal secretions, saliva, sputum, sweat, tears, urine, or vomit unless these are contaminated with blood.[49] It is also possible to be co-infected by more than one strain of HIV—a condition known as HIV superinfection.[50]
+
+The most frequent mode of transmission of HIV is through sexual contact with an infected person.[12] However, an HIV-positive person who has an undetectable viral load as a result of long-term treatment has effectively no risk of transmitting HIV sexually.[51][52] The existence of functionally noncontagious HIV-positive people on antiretroviral therapy was controversially publicized in the 2008 Swiss Statement, and has since become accepted as medically sound.[53]
+
+Globally, the most common mode of HIV transmission is via sexual contacts between people of the opposite sex;[12] however, the pattern of transmission varies among countries. As of 2017[update], most HIV transmission in the United States occurred among men who had sex with men (82% of new HIV diagnoses among males aged 13 and older and 70% of total new diagnoses).[54][55] In the US, gay and bisexual men aged 13 to 24 accounted for an estimated 92% of new HIV diagnoses among all men in their age group and 27% of new diagnoses among all gay and bisexual men.[56] About 15% of gay and bisexual men have HIV, while 28% of transgender women test positive in the US.[56][57]
+
+With regard to unprotected heterosexual contacts, estimates of the risk of HIV transmission per sexual act appear to be four to ten times higher in low-income countries than in high-income countries.[58] In low-income countries, the risk of female-to-male transmission is estimated as 0.38% per act, and of male-to-female transmission as 0.30% per act; the equivalent estimates for high-income countries are 0.04% per act for female-to-male transmission, and 0.08% per act for male-to-female transmission.[58] The risk of transmission from anal intercourse is especially high, estimated as 1.4–1.7% per act in both heterosexual and homosexual contacts.[58][59] While the risk of transmission from oral sex is relatively low, it is still present.[60] The risk from receiving oral sex has been described as "nearly nil";[61] however, a few cases have been reported.[62] The per-act risk is estimated at 0–0.04% for receptive oral intercourse.[63] In settings involving prostitution in low-income countries, risk of female-to-male transmission has been estimated as 2.4% per act, and of male-to-female transmission as 0.05% per act.[58]
+
+Risk of transmission increases in the presence of many sexually transmitted infections[64] and genital ulcers.[58] Genital ulcers appear to increase the risk approximately fivefold.[58] Other sexually transmitted infections, such as gonorrhea, chlamydia, trichomoniasis, and bacterial vaginosis, are associated with somewhat smaller increases in risk of transmission.[63]
+
+The viral load of an infected person is an important risk factor in both sexual and mother-to-child transmission.[65] During the first 2.5 months of an HIV infection a person's infectiousness is twelve times higher due to the high viral load associated with acute HIV.[63] If the person is in the late stages of infection, rates of transmission are approximately eightfold greater.[58]
+
+Commercial sex workers (including those in pornography) have an increased likelihood of contracting HIV.[66][67] Rough sex can be a factor associated with an increased risk of transmission.[68] Sexual assault is also believed to carry an increased risk of HIV transmission as condoms are rarely worn, physical trauma to the vagina or rectum is likely, and there may be a greater risk of concurrent sexually transmitted infections.[69]
+
+The second-most frequent mode of HIV transmission is via blood and blood products.[12] Blood-borne transmission can be through needle-sharing during intravenous drug use, needle-stick injury, transfusion of contaminated blood or blood product, or medical injections with unsterilized equipment. The risk from sharing a needle during drug injection is between 0.63% and 2.4% per act, with an average of 0.8%.[70] The risk of acquiring HIV from a needle stick from an HIV-infected person is estimated as 0.3% (about 1 in 333) per act and the risk following mucous membrane exposure to infected blood as 0.09% (about 1 in 1000) per act.[49] This risk may, however, be up to 5% if the introduced blood was from a person with a high viral load and the cut was deep.[71] In the United States intravenous drug users made up 12% of all new cases of HIV in 2009,[72] and in some areas more than 80% of people who inject drugs are HIV-positive.[12]
+
+HIV is transmitted in about 90% of blood transfusions using infected blood.[41] In developed countries the risk of acquiring HIV from a blood transfusion is extremely low (less than one in half a million) where improved donor selection and HIV screening is performed;[12] for example, in the UK the risk is reported at one in five million[73] and in the United States it was one in 1.5 million in 2008.[74] In low-income countries, only half of transfusions may be appropriately screened (as of 2008),[75] and it is estimated that up to 15% of HIV infections in these areas come from transfusion of infected blood and blood products, representing between 5% and 10% of global infections.[12][76] It is possible to acquire HIV from organ and tissue transplantation, although this is rare because of screening.[77]
+
+Unsafe medical injections play a role in HIV spread in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2007, between 12% and 17% of infections in this region were attributed to medical syringe use.[78] The World Health Organization estimates the risk of transmission as a result of a medical injection in Africa at 1.2%.[78] Risks are also associated with invasive procedures, assisted delivery, and dental care in this area of the world.[78]
+
+People giving or receiving tattoos, piercings, and scarification are theoretically at risk of infection but no confirmed cases have been documented.[79] It is not possible for mosquitoes or other insects to transmit HIV.[80]
+
+HIV can be transmitted from mother to child during pregnancy, during delivery, or through breast milk, resulting in the baby also contracting HIV.[81][12] As of 2008, vertical transmission accounted for about 90% of cases of HIV in children.[82] In the absence of treatment, the risk of transmission before or during birth is around 20%, and in those who also breastfeed 35%.[82] Treatment decreases this risk to less than 5%.[83]
+
+Antiretrovirals when taken by either the mother or the baby decrease the risk of transmission in those who do breastfeed.[84] If blood contaminates food during pre-chewing it may pose a risk of transmission.[79] If a woman is untreated, two years of breastfeeding results in an HIV/AIDS risk in her baby of about 17%.[85] Due to the increased risk of death without breastfeeding in many areas in the developing world, the World Health Organization recommends either exclusive breastfeeding or the provision of safe formula.[85] All women known to be HIV-positive should be taking lifelong antiretroviral therapy.[85]
+
+HIV is the cause of the spectrum of disease known as HIV/AIDS. HIV is a retrovirus that primarily infects components of the human immune system such as CD4+ T cells, macrophages and dendritic cells. It directly and indirectly destroys CD4+ T cells.[86]
+
+HIV is a member of the genus Lentivirus,[87] part of the family Retroviridae.[88] Lentiviruses share many morphological and biological characteristics. Many species of mammals are infected by lentiviruses, which are characteristically responsible for long-duration illnesses with a long incubation period.[89] Lentiviruses are transmitted as single-stranded, positive-sense, enveloped RNA viruses. Upon entry into the target cell, the viral RNA genome is converted (reverse transcribed) into double-stranded DNA by a virally encoded reverse transcriptase that is transported along with the viral genome in the virus particle. The resulting viral DNA is then imported into the cell nucleus and integrated into the cellular DNA by a virally encoded integrase and host co-factors.[90] Once integrated, the virus may become latent, allowing the virus and its host cell to avoid detection by the immune system.[91] Alternatively, the virus may be transcribed, producing new RNA genomes and viral proteins that are packaged and released from the cell as new virus particles that begin the replication cycle anew.[92]
+
+HIV is now known to spread between CD4+ T cells by two parallel routes: cell-free spread and cell-to-cell spread, i.e. it employs hybrid spreading mechanisms.[93] In the cell-free spread, virus particles bud from an infected T cell, enter the blood/extracellular fluid and then infect another T cell following a chance encounter.[93] HIV can also disseminate by direct transmission from one cell to another by a process of cell-to-cell spread.[94][95] The hybrid spreading mechanisms of HIV contribute to the virus's ongoing replication against antiretroviral therapies.[93][96]
+
+Two types of HIV have been characterized: HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV-1 is the virus that was originally discovered (and initially referred to also as LAV or HTLV-III). It is more virulent, more infective,[97] and is the cause of the majority of HIV infections globally. The lower infectivity of HIV-2 as compared with HIV-1 implies that fewer people exposed to HIV-2 will be infected per exposure. Because of its relatively poor capacity for transmission, HIV-2 is largely confined to West Africa.[98]
+
+After the virus enters the body there is a period of rapid viral replication, leading to an abundance of virus in the peripheral blood. During primary infection, the level of HIV may reach several million virus particles per milliliter of blood.[99] This response is accompanied by a marked drop in the number of circulating CD4+ T cells. The acute viremia is almost invariably associated with activation of CD8+ T cells, which kill HIV-infected cells, and subsequently with antibody production, or seroconversion. The CD8+ T cell response is thought to be important in controlling virus levels, which peak and then decline, as the CD4+ T cell counts recover. A good CD8+ T cell response has been linked to slower disease progression and a better prognosis, though it does not eliminate the virus.[100]
+
+Ultimately, HIV causes AIDS by depleting CD4+ T cells. This weakens the immune system and allows opportunistic infections. T cells are essential to the immune response and without them, the body cannot fight infections or kill cancerous cells. The mechanism of CD4+ T cell depletion differs in the acute and chronic phases.[101] During the acute phase, HIV-induced cell lysis and killing of infected cells by CD8+ T cells accounts for CD4+ T cell depletion, although apoptosis may also be a factor. During the chronic phase, the consequences of generalized immune activation coupled with the gradual loss of the ability of the immune system to generate new T cells appear to account for the slow decline in CD4+ T cell numbers.[102]
+
+Although the symptoms of immune deficiency characteristic of AIDS do not appear for years after a person is infected, the bulk of CD4+ T cell loss occurs during the first weeks of infection, especially in the intestinal mucosa, which harbors the majority of the lymphocytes found in the body.[103] The reason for the preferential loss of mucosal CD4+ T cells is that the majority of mucosal CD4+ T cells express the CCR5 protein which HIV uses as a co-receptor to gain access to the cells, whereas only a small fraction of CD4+ T cells in the bloodstream do so.[104] A specific genetic change that alters the CCR5 protein when present in both chromosomes very effectively prevents HIV-1 infection.[105]
+
+HIV seeks out and destroys CCR5 expressing CD4+ T cells during acute infection.[106] A vigorous immune response eventually controls the infection and initiates the clinically latent phase. CD4+ T cells in mucosal tissues remain particularly affected.[106] Continuous HIV replication causes a state of generalized immune activation persisting throughout the chronic phase.[107] Immune activation, which is reflected by the increased activation state of immune cells and release of pro-inflammatory cytokines, results from the activity of several HIV gene products and the immune response to ongoing HIV replication. It is also linked to the breakdown of the immune surveillance system of the gastrointestinal mucosal barrier caused by the depletion of mucosal CD4+ T cells during the acute phase of disease.[108]
+
+HIV/AIDS is diagnosed via laboratory testing and then staged based on the presence of certain signs or symptoms.[25] HIV screening is recommended by the United States Preventive Services Task Force for all people 15 years to 65 years of age, including all pregnant women.[110] Additionally, testing is recommended for those at high risk, which includes anyone diagnosed with a sexually transmitted illness.[28][110] In many areas of the world, a third of HIV carriers only discover they are infected at an advanced stage of the disease when AIDS or severe immunodeficiency has become apparent.[28]
+
+Most people infected with HIV develop specific antibodies (i.e. seroconvert) within three to twelve weeks after the initial infection.[27] Diagnosis of primary HIV before seroconversion is done by measuring HIV-RNA or p24 antigen.[27] Positive results obtained by antibody or PCR testing are confirmed either by a different antibody or by PCR.[25]
+
+Antibody tests in children younger than 18 months are typically inaccurate, due to the continued presence of maternal antibodies.[111] Thus HIV infection can only be diagnosed by PCR testing for HIV RNA or DNA, or via testing for the p24 antigen.[25] Much of the world lacks access to reliable PCR testing, and people in many places simply wait until either symptoms develop or the child is old enough for accurate antibody testing.[111] In sub-Saharan Africa between 2007 and 2009, between 30% and 70% of the population were aware of their HIV status.[112] In 2009, between 3.6% and 42% of men and women in sub-Saharan countries were tested;[112] this represented a significant increase compared to previous years.[112]
+
+Two main clinical staging systems are used to classify HIV and HIV-related disease for surveillance purposes: the WHO disease staging system for HIV infection and disease,[25] and the CDC classification system for HIV infection.[113] The CDC's classification system is more frequently adopted in developed countries. Since the WHO's staging system does not require laboratory tests, it is suited to the resource-restricted conditions encountered in developing countries, where it can also be used to help guide clinical management. Despite their differences, the two systems allow comparison for statistical purposes.[24][25][113]
+
+The World Health Organization first proposed a definition for AIDS in 1986.[25] Since then, the WHO classification has been updated and expanded several times, with the most recent version being published in 2007.[25] The WHO system uses the following categories:
+
+The United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention also created a classification system for HIV, and updated it in 2008 and 2014.[113][114] This system classifies HIV infections based on CD4 count and clinical symptoms, and describes the infection in five groups.[114] In those greater than six years of age it is:[114]
+
+For surveillance purposes, the AIDS diagnosis still stands even if, after treatment, the CD4+ T cell count rises to above 200 per µL of blood or other AIDS-defining illnesses are cured.[24]
+
+Consistent condom use reduces the risk of HIV transmission by approximately 80% over the long term.[115] When condoms are used consistently by a couple in which one person is infected, the rate of HIV infection is less than 1% per year.[116] There is some evidence to suggest that female condoms may provide an equivalent level of protection.[117] Application of a vaginal gel containing tenofovir (a reverse transcriptase inhibitor) immediately before sex seems to reduce infection rates by approximately 40% among African women.[118] By contrast, use of the spermicide nonoxynol-9 may increase the risk of transmission due to its tendency to cause vaginal and rectal irritation.[119]
+
+Circumcision in Sub-Saharan Africa "reduces the acquisition of HIV by heterosexual men by between 38% and 66% over 24 months".[120] Owing to these studies, both the World Health Organization and UNAIDS recommended male circumcision in 2007 as a method of preventing female-to-male HIV transmission in areas with high rates of HIV.[121] However, whether it protects against male-to-female transmission is disputed,[122][123] and whether it is of benefit in developed countries and among men who have sex with men is undetermined.[124][125][126] The International Antiviral Society, however, does recommend it for all sexually active heterosexual males and that it be discussed as an option with men who have sex with men.[127] Some experts fear that a lower perception of vulnerability among circumcised men may cause more sexual risk-taking behavior, thus negating its preventive effects.[128]
+
+Programs encouraging sexual abstinence do not appear to affect subsequent HIV risk.[129] Evidence of any benefit from peer education is equally poor.[130] Comprehensive sexual education provided at school may decrease high-risk behavior.[131][132] A substantial minority of young people continues to engage in high-risk practices despite knowing about HIV/AIDS, underestimating their own risk of becoming infected with HIV.[133] Voluntary counseling and testing people for HIV does not affect risky behavior in those who test negative but does increase condom use in those who test positive.[134] Enhanced family planning services appear to increase the likelihood of women with HIV using contraception, compared to basic services.[135] It is not known whether treating other sexually transmitted infections is effective in preventing HIV.[64]
+
+Antiretroviral treatment among people with HIV whose CD4 count ≤ 550 cells/µL is a very effective way to prevent HIV infection of their partner (a strategy known as treatment as prevention, or TASP).[136] TASP is associated with a 10- to 20-fold reduction in transmission risk.[136][137] Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) with a daily dose of the medications tenofovir, with or without emtricitabine, is effective in people at high risk including men who have sex with men, couples where one is HIV-positive, and young heterosexuals in Africa.[118][138] It may also be effective in intravenous drug users, with a study finding a decrease in risk of 0.7 to 0.4 per 100 person years.[139] The USPSTF, in 2019, recommended PrEP in those who are at high risk.[140]
+
+Universal precautions within the health care environment are believed to be effective in decreasing the risk of HIV.[141] Intravenous drug use is an important risk factor, and harm reduction strategies such as needle-exchange programs and opioid substitution therapy appear effective in decreasing this risk.[142][143]
+
+A course of antiretrovirals administered within 48 to 72 hours after exposure to HIV-positive blood or genital secretions is referred to as post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP).[144] The use of the single agent zidovudine reduces the risk of a HIV infection five-fold following a needle-stick injury.[144] As of 2013[update], the prevention regimen recommended in the United States consists of three medications—tenofovir, emtricitabine and raltegravir—as this may reduce the risk further.[145]
+
+PEP treatment is recommended after a sexual assault when the perpetrator is known to be HIV-positive, but is controversial when their HIV status is unknown.[146] The duration of treatment is usually four weeks[147] and is frequently associated with adverse effects—where zidovudine is used, about 70% of cases result in adverse effects such as nausea (24%), fatigue (22%), emotional distress (13%) and headaches (9%).[49]
+
+Programs to prevent the vertical transmission of HIV (from mothers to children) can reduce rates of transmission by 92–99%.[82][142] This primarily involves the use of a combination of antiviral medications during pregnancy and after birth in the infant, and potentially includes bottle feeding rather than breastfeeding.[82][148] If replacement feeding is acceptable, feasible, affordable, sustainable and safe, mothers should avoid breastfeeding their infants; however, exclusive breastfeeding is recommended during the first months of life if this is not the case.[149] If exclusive breastfeeding is carried out, the provision of extended antiretroviral prophylaxis to the infant decreases the risk of transmission.[150] In 2015, Cuba became the first country in the world to eradicate mother-to-child transmission of HIV.[151]
+
+Currently there is no licensed vaccine for HIV or AIDS.[6] The most effective vaccine trial to date, RV 144, was published in 2009; it found a partial reduction in the risk of transmission of roughly 30%, stimulating some hope in the research community of developing a truly effective vaccine.[152] Further trials of the RV 144 vaccine are ongoing.[153][154]
+
+There is currently no cure, nor an effective HIV vaccine. Treatment consists of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) which slows progression of the disease.[155] As of 2010[update] more than 6.6 million people were receiving this in low- and middle-income countries.[156] Treatment also includes preventive and active treatment of opportunistic infections. As of March 2020[update], two persons have been successfully cleared of HIV.[157] Rapid initiation of anti-retroviral therapy within one week of diagnosis appear to improve treatment outcomes in low and medium-income settings.[158]
+
+Current HAART options are combinations (or "cocktails") consisting of at least three medications belonging to at least two types, or "classes", of antiretroviral agents.[159] Initially, treatment is typically a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI) plus two nucleoside analog reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs).[160] Typical NRTIs include: zidovudine (AZT) or tenofovir (TDF) and lamivudine (3TC) or emtricitabine (FTC).[160] As of 2019, dolutegravir/lamivudine/tenofovir is listed by the World Health Organization as the first-line treatment for adults, with tenofovir/lamivudine/efavirenz as an alternative.[161] Combinations of agents that include protease inhibitors (PI) are used if the above regimen loses effectiveness.[159]
+
+The World Health Organization and the United States recommend antiretrovirals in people of all ages (including pregnant women) as soon as the diagnosis is made, regardless of CD4 count.[15][127][162] Once treatment is begun, it is recommended that it is continued without breaks or "holidays".[28] Many people are diagnosed only after treatment ideally should have begun.[28] The desired outcome of treatment is a long-term plasma HIV-RNA count below 50 copies/mL.[28] Levels to determine if treatment is effective are initially recommended after four weeks and once levels fall below 50 copies/mL checks every three to six months are typically adequate.[28] Inadequate control is deemed to be greater than 400 copies/mL.[28] Based on these criteria treatment is effective in more than 95% of people during the first year.[28]
+
+Benefits of treatment include a decreased risk of progression to AIDS and a decreased risk of death.[163] In the developing world, treatment also improves physical and mental health.[164] With treatment, there is a 70% reduced risk of acquiring tuberculosis.[159] Additional benefits include a decreased risk of transmission of the disease to sexual partners and a decrease in mother-to-child transmission.[159][165] The effectiveness of treatment depends to a large part on compliance.[28] Reasons for non-adherence to treatment include poor access to medical care,[166] inadequate social supports, mental illness and drug abuse.[167] The complexity of treatment regimens (due to pill numbers and dosing frequency) and adverse effects may reduce adherence.[168] Even though cost is an important issue with some medications,[169] 47% of those who needed them were taking them in low- and middle-income countries as of 2010[update],[156] and the rate of adherence is similar in low-income and high-income countries.[170]
+
+Specific adverse events are related to the antiretroviral agent taken.[171] Some relatively common adverse events include: lipodystrophy syndrome, dyslipidemia, and diabetes mellitus, especially with protease inhibitors.[24] Other common symptoms include diarrhea,[171][172] and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease.[173] Newer recommended treatments are associated with fewer adverse effects.[28] Certain medications may be associated with birth defects and therefore may be unsuitable for women hoping to have children.[28]
+
+Treatment recommendations for children are somewhat different from those for adults. The World Health Organization recommends treating all children less than 5 years of age; children above 5 are treated like adults.[174] The United States guidelines recommend treating all children less than 12 months of age and all those with HIV RNA counts greater than 100,000 copies/mL between one year and five years of age.[175]
+
+Measures to prevent opportunistic infections are effective in many people with HIV/AIDS. In addition to improving current disease, treatment with antiretrovirals reduces the risk of developing additional opportunistic infections.[171] Adults and adolescents who are living with HIV (even on anti-retroviral therapy) with no evidence of active tuberculosis in settings with high tuberculosis burden should receive isoniazid preventive therapy (IPT); the tuberculin skin test can be used to help decide if IPT is needed.[176] Vaccination against hepatitis A and B is advised for all people at risk of HIV before they become infected; however, it may also be given after infection.[177] Trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole prophylaxis between four and six weeks of age, and ceasing breastfeeding of infants born to HIV-positive mothers, is recommended in resource-limited settings.[178] It is also recommended to prevent PCP when a person's CD4 count is below 200 cells/uL and in those who have or have previously had PCP.[179] People with substantial immunosuppression are also advised to receive prophylactic therapy for toxoplasmosis and MAC.[180] Appropriate preventive measures reduced the rate of these infections by 50% between 1992 and 1997.[181] Influenza vaccination and pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine are often recommended in people with HIV/AIDS with some evidence of benefit.[182][183]
+
+The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued recommendations regarding nutrient requirements in HIV/AIDS.[184] A generally healthy diet is promoted. Dietary intake of micronutrients at RDA levels by HIV-infected adults is recommended by the WHO; higher intake of vitamin A, zinc, and iron can produce adverse effects in HIV-positive adults, and is not recommended unless there is documented deficiency.[184][185][186][187] Dietary supplementation for people who are infected with HIV and who have inadequate nutrition or dietary deficiencies may strengthen their immune systems or help them recover from infections; however, evidence indicating an overall benefit in morbidity or reduction in mortality is not consistent.[188]
+
+Evidence for supplementation with selenium is mixed with some tentative evidence of benefit.[189]  For pregnant and lactating women with HIV, multivitamin supplement improves outcomes for both mothers and children.[190]  If the pregnant or lactating mother has been advised to take anti-retroviral medication to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission, multivitamin supplements should not replace these treatments.[190] There is some evidence that vitamin A supplementation in children with an HIV infection reduces mortality and improves growth.[191]
+
+In the US, approximately 60% of people with HIV use various forms of complementary or alternative medicine,[192] whose effectiveness has not been established.[193]  There is not enough evidence to support the use of herbal medicines.[194] There is insufficient evidence to recommend or support the use of medical cannabis to try to increase appetite or weight gain.[195]
+
+HIV/AIDS has become a chronic rather than an acutely fatal disease in many areas of the world.[196] Prognosis varies between people, and both the CD4 count and viral load are useful for predicted outcomes.[27] Without treatment, average survival time after infection with HIV is estimated to be 9 to 11 years, depending on the HIV subtype.[7] After the diagnosis of AIDS, if treatment is not available, survival ranges between 6 and 19 months.[197][198] HAART and appropriate prevention of opportunistic infections reduces the death rate by 80%, and raises the life expectancy for a newly diagnosed young adult to 20–50 years.[196][199][200] This is between two thirds[199] and nearly that of the general population.[28][201] If treatment is started late in the infection, prognosis is not as good:[28] for example, if treatment is begun following the diagnosis of AIDS, life expectancy is ~10–40 years.[28][196] Half of infants born with HIV die before two years of age without treatment.[178]
+
+The primary causes of death from HIV/AIDS are opportunistic infections and cancer, both of which are frequently the result of the progressive failure of the immune system.[181][202] Risk of cancer appears to increase once the CD4 count is below 500/μL.[28] The rate of clinical disease progression varies widely between individuals and has been shown to be affected by a number of factors such as a person's susceptibility and immune function;[203] their access to health care, the presence of co-infections;[197][204] and the particular strain (or strains) of the virus involved.[205][206]
+
+Tuberculosis co-infection is one of the leading causes of sickness and death in those with HIV/AIDS being present in a third of all HIV-infected people and causing 25% of HIV-related deaths.[207] HIV is also one of the most important risk factors for tuberculosis.[208] Hepatitis C is another very common co-infection where each disease increases the progression of the other.[209] The two most common cancers associated with HIV/AIDS are Kaposi's sarcoma and AIDS-related non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.[202] Other cancers that are more frequent include anal cancer, Burkitt's lymphoma, primary central nervous system lymphoma, and cervical cancer.[28][210]
+
+Even with anti-retroviral treatment, over the long term HIV-infected people may experience neurocognitive disorders,[211] osteoporosis,[212] neuropathy,[213] cancers,[214][215] nephropathy,[216] and cardiovascular disease.[172] Some conditions, such as lipodystrophy, may be caused both by HIV and its treatment.[172]
+
+HIV/AIDS is a global pandemic.[218] As of 2016[update] approximately 36.7 million people worldwide have HIV, the number of new infections that year being about 1.8 million.[219] This is down from 3.1 million new infections in 2001.[220] Slightly over half the infected population are women and 2.1 million are children.[219] It resulted in about 1 million deaths in 2016, down from a peak of 1.9 million in 2005.[219]
+
+Sub-Saharan Africa is the region most affected. In 2010, an estimated 68% (22.9 million) of all HIV cases and 66% of all deaths (1.2 million) occurred in this region.[221] This means that about 5% of the adult population is infected[222] and it is believed to be the cause of 10% of all deaths in children.[223] Here, in contrast to other regions, women comprise nearly 60% of cases.[221] South Africa has the largest population of people with HIV of any country in the world at 5.9 million.[221] Life expectancy has fallen in the worst-affected countries due to HIV/AIDS; for example, in 2006 it was estimated that it had dropped from 65 to 35 years in Botswana.[17] Mother-to-child transmission in Botswana and South Africa, as of 2013[update], has decreased to less than 5%, with improvement in many other African nations due to improved access to antiretroviral therapy.[224]
+
+South & South East Asia is the second most affected; in 2010 this region contained an estimated 4 million cases or 12% of all people living with HIV resulting in approximately 250,000 deaths.[222] Approximately 2.4 million of these cases are in India.[221]
+
+During 2008 in the United States approximately 1.2 million people were living with HIV, resulting in about 17,500 deaths. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that in that year, 20% of infected Americans were unaware of their infection.[225] As of 2016[update] about 675,000 people have died of HIV/AIDS in the US since the beginning of the HIV epidemic.[57] In the United Kingdom as of 2015[update], there were approximately 101,200 cases which resulted in 594 deaths.[226] In Canada as of 2008, there were about 65,000 cases causing 53 deaths.[227] Between the first recognition of AIDS (in 1981) and 2009, it has led to nearly 30 million deaths.[228] Rates of HIV are lowest in North Africa and the Middle East (0.1% or less), East Asia (0.1%), and Western and Central Europe (0.2%).[222] The worst-affected European countries, in 2009 and 2012 estimates, are Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Moldova, Portugal and Belarus, in decreasing order of prevalence.[229]
+
+The first news story on the disease appeared May 18, 1981 in the gay newspaper New York Native.[230][231] AIDS was first clinically reported on June 5, 1981, with five cases in the United States.[36][232] The initial cases were a cluster of injecting drug users and homosexual men with no known cause of impaired immunity who showed symptoms of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP), a rare opportunistic infection that was known to occur in people with very compromised immune systems.[233] Soon thereafter, an unexpected number of homosexual men developed a previously rare skin cancer called Kaposi's sarcoma (KS).[234][235] Many more cases of PCP and KS emerged, alerting U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and a CDC task force was formed to monitor the outbreak.[236]
+
+In the early days, the CDC did not have an official name for the disease, often referring to it by way of diseases associated with it, such as lymphadenopathy, the disease after which the discoverers of HIV originally named the virus.[237][238] They also used Kaposi's sarcoma and opportunistic infections, the name by which a task force had been set up in 1981.[239] At one point the CDC coined it the "4H disease", as the syndrome seemed to affect heroin users, homosexuals, hemophiliacs, and Haitians.[240][241] In the general press the term GRID, which stood for gay-related immune deficiency, had been coined.[242] However, after determining that AIDS was not isolated to the gay community,[239] it was realized that the term GRID was misleading, and the term AIDS was introduced at a meeting in July 1982.[243] By September 1982 the CDC started referring to the disease as AIDS.[244]
+
+In 1983, two separate research groups led by Robert Gallo and Luc Montagnier declared that a novel retrovirus may have been infecting people with AIDS, and published their findings in the same issue of the journal Science.[245][246] Gallo claimed a virus which his group had isolated from a person with AIDS was strikingly similar in shape to other human T-lymphotropic viruses (HTLVs) that his group had been the first to isolate. Gallo's group called their newly isolated virus HTLV-III. At the same time, Montagnier's group isolated a virus from a person presenting with swelling of the lymph nodes of the neck and physical weakness, two characteristic symptoms of AIDS. Contradicting the report from Gallo's group, Montagnier and his colleagues showed that core proteins of this virus were immunologically different from those of HTLV-I. Montagnier's group named their isolated virus lymphadenopathy-associated virus (LAV).[236] As these two viruses turned out to be the same, in 1986, LAV and HTLV-III were renamed HIV.[247]
+
+Both HIV-1 and HIV-2 are believed to have originated in non-human primates in West-central Africa and were transferred to humans in the early 20th century.[18] HIV-1 appears to have originated in southern Cameroon through the evolution of SIV(cpz), a simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) that infects wild chimpanzees (HIV-1 descends from the SIVcpz endemic in the chimpanzee subspecies Pan troglodytes troglodytes).[248][249] The closest relative of HIV-2 is SIV(smm), a virus of the sooty mangabey (Cercocebus atys atys), an Old World monkey living in coastal West Africa (from southern Senegal to western Ivory Coast).[98] New World monkeys such as the owl monkey are resistant to HIV-1 infection, possibly because of a genomic fusion of two viral resistance genes.[250] HIV-1 is thought to have jumped the species barrier on at least three separate occasions, giving rise to the three groups of the virus, M, N, and O.[251]
+
+There is evidence that humans who participate in bushmeat activities, either as hunters or as bushmeat vendors, commonly acquire SIV.[252] However, SIV is a weak virus which is typically suppressed by the human immune system within weeks of infection. It is thought that several transmissions of the virus from individual to individual in quick succession are necessary to allow it enough time to mutate into HIV.[253] Furthermore, due to its relatively low person-to-person transmission rate, SIV can only spread throughout the population in the presence of one or more high-risk transmission channels, which are thought to have been absent in Africa before the 20th century.
+
+Specific proposed high-risk transmission channels, allowing the virus to adapt to humans and spread throughout the society, depend on the proposed timing of the animal-to-human crossing. Genetic studies of the virus suggest that the most recent common ancestor of the HIV-1 M group dates back to c. 1910.[254] Proponents of this dating link the HIV epidemic with the emergence of colonialism and growth of large colonial African cities, leading to social changes, including a higher degree of sexual promiscuity, the spread of prostitution, and the accompanying high frequency of genital ulcer diseases (such as syphilis) in nascent colonial cities.[255] While transmission rates of HIV during vaginal intercourse are low under regular circumstances, they are increased manyfold if one of the partners suffers from a sexually transmitted infection causing genital ulcers. Early 1900s colonial cities were notable for their high prevalence of prostitution and genital ulcers, to the degree that, as of 1928, as many as 45% of female residents of eastern Kinshasa were thought to have been prostitutes, and, as of 1933, around 15% of all residents of the same city had syphilis.[255]
+
+An alternative view holds that unsafe medical practices in Africa after World War II, such as unsterile reuse of single-use syringes during mass vaccination, antibiotic and anti-malaria treatment campaigns, were the initial vector that allowed the virus to adapt to humans and spread.[253][256][257]
+
+The earliest well-documented case of HIV in a human dates back to 1959 in the Congo.[258] The earliest retrospectively described case of AIDS is believed to have been in Norway beginning in 1966.[259] In July 1960, in the wake of Congo's independence, the United Nations recruited Francophone experts and technicians from all over the world to assist in filling administrative gaps left by Belgium, who did not leave behind an African elite to run the country. By 1962, Haitians made up the second-largest group of well-educated experts (out of the 48 national groups recruited), that totaled around 4500 in the country.[260][261] Dr. Jacques Pépin, a Quebecer author of The Origins of AIDS, stipulates that Haiti was one of HIV's entry points to the United States and that one of them may have carried HIV back across the Atlantic in the 1960s.[261] Although the virus may have been present in the United States as early as 1966,[262] the vast majority of infections occurring outside sub-Saharan Africa (including the U.S.) can be traced back to a single unknown individual who became infected with HIV in Haiti and then brought the infection to the United States at some time around 1969.[263] The epidemic then rapidly spread among high-risk groups (initially, sexually promiscuous men who have sex with men). By 1978, the prevalence of HIV-1 among homosexual male residents of New York City and San Francisco was estimated at 5%, suggesting that several thousand individuals in the country had been infected.[263]
+
+AIDS stigma exists around the world in a variety of ways, including ostracism, rejection, discrimination and avoidance of HIV-infected people; compulsory HIV testing without prior consent or protection of confidentiality; violence against HIV-infected individuals or people who are perceived to be infected with HIV; and the quarantine of HIV-infected individuals.[20] Stigma-related violence or the fear of violence prevents many people from seeking HIV testing, returning for their results, or securing treatment, possibly turning what could be a manageable chronic illness into a death sentence and perpetuating the spread of HIV.[265]
+
+AIDS stigma has been further divided into the following three categories:
+
+Often, AIDS stigma is expressed in conjunction with one or more other stigmas, particularly those associated with homosexuality, bisexuality, promiscuity, prostitution, and intravenous drug use.[268]
+
+In many developed countries, there is an association between AIDS and homosexuality or bisexuality, and this association is correlated with higher levels of sexual prejudice, such as anti-homosexual or anti-bisexual attitudes.[269] There is also a perceived association between AIDS and all male-male sexual behavior, including sex between uninfected men.[266] However, the dominant mode of spread worldwide for HIV remains heterosexual transmission.[270]
+
+In 2003, as part of an overall reform of marriage and population legislation, it became legal for people with AIDS to marry in China.[271]
+
+In 2013, the U.S. National Library of Medicine developed a traveling exhibition titled Surviving and Thriving: AIDS, Politics, and Culture;[272] this covered medical research, the U.S. government's response, and personal stories from people with AIDS, caregivers, and activists.[273]
+
+HIV/AIDS affects the economics of both individuals and countries.[223] The gross domestic product of the most affected countries has decreased due to the lack of human capital.[223][274] Without proper nutrition, health care and medicine, large numbers of people die from AIDS-related complications. Before death they will not only be unable to work, but will also require significant medical care. It is estimated that as of 2007 there were 12 million AIDS orphans.[223] Many are cared for by elderly grandparents.[275]
+
+Returning to work after beginning treatment for HIV/AIDS is difficult, and affected people often work less than the average worker. Unemployment in people with HIV/AIDS also is associated with suicidal ideation, memory problems, and social isolation. Employment increases self-esteem, sense of dignity, confidence, and quality of life for people with HIV/AIDS. Anti-retroviral treatment may help people with HIV/AIDS work more, and may increase the chance that a person with HIV/AIDS will be employed (low-quality evidence).[276]
+
+By affecting mainly young adults, AIDS reduces the taxable population, in turn reducing the resources available for public expenditures such as education and health services not related to AIDS, resulting in increasing pressure on the state's finances and slower growth of the economy. This causes a slower growth of the tax base, an effect that is reinforced if there are growing expenditures on treating the sick, training (to replace sick workers), sick pay and caring for AIDS orphans. This is especially true if the sharp increase in adult mortality shifts the responsibility from the family to the government in caring for these orphans.[275]
+
+At the household level, AIDS causes both loss of income and increased spending on healthcare. A study in Côte d'Ivoire showed that households having a person with HIV/AIDS spent twice as much on medical expenses as other households. This additional expenditure also leaves less income to spend on education and other personal or family investment.[277]
+
+The topic of religion and AIDS has become highly controversial, primarily because some religious authorities have publicly declared their opposition to the use of condoms.[278][279] The religious approach to prevent the spread of AIDS, according to a report by American health expert Matthew Hanley titled The Catholic Church and the Global AIDS Crisis, argues that cultural changes are needed, including a re-emphasis on fidelity within marriage and sexual abstinence outside of it.[279]
+
+Some religious organizations have claimed that prayer can cure HIV/AIDS. In 2011, the BBC reported that some churches in London were claiming that prayer would cure AIDS, and the Hackney-based Centre for the Study of Sexual Health and HIV reported that several people stopped taking their medication, sometimes on the direct advice of their pastor, leading to a number of deaths.[280] The Synagogue Church Of All Nations advertised an "anointing water" to promote God's healing, although the group denies advising people to stop taking medication.[280]
+
+One of the first high-profile cases of AIDS was the American Rock Hudson, a gay actor who had been married and divorced earlier in life, who died on October 2, 1985, having announced that he was suffering from the virus on July 25 that year. He had been diagnosed during 1984.[281] A notable British casualty of AIDS that year was Nicholas Eden, a gay politician and son of the late prime minister Anthony Eden.[282] On November 24, 1991, the virus claimed the life of British rock star Freddie Mercury, lead singer of the band Queen, who died from an AIDS-related illness having only revealed the diagnosis on the previous day.[283] However, he had been diagnosed as HIV-positive in 1987. One of the first high-profile heterosexual cases of the virus was American tennis player Arthur Ashe. He was diagnosed as HIV-positive on August 31, 1988, having contracted the virus from blood transfusions during heart surgery earlier in the 1980s. Further tests within 24 hours of the initial diagnosis revealed that Ashe had AIDS, but he did not tell the public about his diagnosis until April 1992.[284] He died as a result on February 6, 1993, aged 49.[285]
+
+Therese Frare's photograph of gay activist David Kirby, as he lay dying from AIDS while surrounded by family, was taken in April 1990. Life magazine said the photo became the one image "most powerfully identified with the HIV/AIDS epidemic." The photo was displayed in Life, was the winner of the World Press Photo, and acquired worldwide notoriety after being used in a United Colors of Benetton advertising campaign in 1992.[286]
+
+Criminal transmission of HIV is the intentional or reckless infection of a person with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Some countries or jurisdictions, including some areas of the United States, have laws that criminalize HIV transmission or exposure.[287] Others may charge the accused under laws enacted before the HIV pandemic.
+
+In 1996, Ugandan-born Canadian Johnson Aziga was diagnosed with HIV; he subsequently had unprotected sex with 11 women without disclosing his diagnosis. By 2003, seven had contracted HIV; two died from complications related to AIDS.[288][289] Aziga was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.[290]
+
+There are many misconceptions about HIV and AIDS. Three of the most common are that AIDS can spread through casual contact, that sexual intercourse with a virgin will cure AIDS,[291][292][293] and that HIV can infect only gay men and drug users. In 2014, some among the British public wrongly thought one could get HIV from kissing (16%), sharing a glass (5%), spitting (16%), a public toilet seat (4%), and coughing or sneezing (5%).[294] Other misconceptions are that any act of anal intercourse between two uninfected gay men can lead to HIV infection, and that open discussion of HIV and homosexuality in schools will lead to increased rates of AIDS.[295][296]
+
+A small group of individuals continue to dispute the connection between HIV and AIDS,[297] the existence of HIV itself, or the validity of HIV testing and treatment methods.[298][299] These claims, known as AIDS denialism, have been examined and rejected by the scientific community.[300] However, they have had a significant political impact, particularly in South Africa, where the government's official embrace of AIDS denialism (1999–2005) was responsible for its ineffective response to that country's AIDS epidemic, and has been blamed for hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths and HIV infections.[301][302][303]
+
+Several discredited conspiracy theories have held that HIV was created by scientists, either inadvertently or deliberately. Operation INFEKTION was a worldwide Soviet active measures operation to spread the claim that the United States had created HIV/AIDS. Surveys show that a significant number of people believed—and continue to believe—in such claims.[304]
+
+HIV/AIDS research includes all medical research which attempts to prevent, treat, or cure HIV/AIDS, along with fundamental research about the nature of HIV as an infectious agent, and about AIDS as the disease caused by HIV.
+
+Many governments and research institutions participate in HIV/AIDS research. This research includes behavioral health interventions such as sex education, and drug development, such as research into microbicides for sexually transmitted diseases, HIV vaccines, and antiretroviral drugs. Other medical research areas include the topics of pre-exposure prophylaxis, post-exposure prophylaxis, and circumcision and HIV. Public health officials, researchers, and programs can gain a more comprehensive picture of the barriers they face, and the efficacy of current approaches to HIV treatment and prevention, by tracking standard HIV indicators.[305] Use of common indicators is an increasing focus of development organizations and researchers.[306][307]

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+A century is a period of 100 years. Centuries are numbered ordinally in English and many other languages. The word century comes from the Latin centum, meaning one hundred.  Century is sometimes abbreviated as c.[1]
+
+A centenary is a hundredth anniversary, or a celebration of this, typically the remembrance of an event which took place a hundred years earlier.
+
+Although a century can mean any arbitrary period of 100 years, there are two viewpoints on the nature of standard centuries. One is based on strict construction, while the other is based on popular perspective (general usage).
+
+According to the strict construction of the Gregorian calendar, the 1st century AD began with 1 AD and ended with 100 AD, with the same pattern continuing onward. In this model, the n-th century started/will start on the year (100 × n) − 99 and ends in 100 × n. Because of this, a century will only include one year, the centennial year, that starts with the century's number (e.g. 1900 was the last year of the 19th century).[2]
+
+In general usage, centuries are built by grouping years based on their shared digits. In this model, the 'n' -th century started/will start on the year (100 x n) - 100 and ends in (100 x n) - 1. For example, the 20th century is generally regarded as from 1900 to 1999, inclusive. This is sometimes known as the odometer effect.[citation needed] The astronomical year numbering and ISO 8601 systems both contain a year zero, so the first century begins with the year zero, rather than the year one.[3]
+
+Informally, years may be referred to in groups based on the hundreds part of the year. In this system, the years 1900–1999 are referred to as the nineteen hundreds (1900s). Aside from English usage, this system is used in Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Finnish and Hungarian. The Swedish nittonhundratalet (or 1900-talet), Danish nittenhundredetallet (or 1900-tallet), Norwegian nittenhundretallet (or  1900-tallet), Finnish tuhatyhdeksänsataaluku (or 1900-luku) and Hungarian ezerkilencszázas évek (or 1900-as évek) refer unambiguously to the years 1900–1999.
+
+Italian also has a quite similar alternative naming system but it only expresses the hundreds and omits the word for “thousand”. This system mainly functions from the 11th to the 20th century:
+
+Such Italian namings are borrowed in many other languages when referring to the history of Italy.
+
+While the century has been commonly used in the West, other cultures and calendars have utilized differently sized groups of years in a similar manner. The Hindu calendar, in particular, summarizes its years into groups of 60,[4] while the Aztec calendar considers groups of 52.[5]

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+A century is a period of 100 years. Centuries are numbered ordinally in English and many other languages. The word century comes from the Latin centum, meaning one hundred.  Century is sometimes abbreviated as c.[1]
+
+A centenary is a hundredth anniversary, or a celebration of this, typically the remembrance of an event which took place a hundred years earlier.
+
+Although a century can mean any arbitrary period of 100 years, there are two viewpoints on the nature of standard centuries. One is based on strict construction, while the other is based on popular perspective (general usage).
+
+According to the strict construction of the Gregorian calendar, the 1st century AD began with 1 AD and ended with 100 AD, with the same pattern continuing onward. In this model, the n-th century started/will start on the year (100 × n) − 99 and ends in 100 × n. Because of this, a century will only include one year, the centennial year, that starts with the century's number (e.g. 1900 was the last year of the 19th century).[2]
+
+In general usage, centuries are built by grouping years based on their shared digits. In this model, the 'n' -th century started/will start on the year (100 x n) - 100 and ends in (100 x n) - 1. For example, the 20th century is generally regarded as from 1900 to 1999, inclusive. This is sometimes known as the odometer effect.[citation needed] The astronomical year numbering and ISO 8601 systems both contain a year zero, so the first century begins with the year zero, rather than the year one.[3]
+
+Informally, years may be referred to in groups based on the hundreds part of the year. In this system, the years 1900–1999 are referred to as the nineteen hundreds (1900s). Aside from English usage, this system is used in Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Finnish and Hungarian. The Swedish nittonhundratalet (or 1900-talet), Danish nittenhundredetallet (or 1900-tallet), Norwegian nittenhundretallet (or  1900-tallet), Finnish tuhatyhdeksänsataaluku (or 1900-luku) and Hungarian ezerkilencszázas évek (or 1900-as évek) refer unambiguously to the years 1900–1999.
+
+Italian also has a quite similar alternative naming system but it only expresses the hundreds and omits the word for “thousand”. This system mainly functions from the 11th to the 20th century:
+
+Such Italian namings are borrowed in many other languages when referring to the history of Italy.
+
+While the century has been commonly used in the West, other cultures and calendars have utilized differently sized groups of years in a similar manner. The Hindu calendar, in particular, summarizes its years into groups of 60,[4] while the Aztec calendar considers groups of 52.[5]

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+Swarm behaviour, or swarming, is a collective behaviour exhibited by entities, particularly animals, of similar size which aggregate together, perhaps milling about the same spot or perhaps moving en masse or migrating in some direction. It is a highly interdisciplinary topic.[1] As a term, swarming is applied particularly to insects, but can also be applied to any other entity or animal that exhibits swarm behaviour. The term flocking or murmuration can refer specifically to swarm behaviour in birds, herding to refer to swarm behaviour in tetrapods, and shoaling or schooling to refer to swarm behaviour in fish. Phytoplankton also gather in huge swarms called blooms, although these organisms are algae and are not self-propelled the way animals are. By extension, the term "swarm" is applied also to inanimate entities which exhibit parallel behaviours, as in a robot swarm, an earthquake swarm, or a swarm of stars.
+
+From a more abstract point of view, swarm behaviour is the collective motion of a large number of self-propelled entities.[2] From the perspective of the mathematical modeller, it is an emergent behaviour arising from simple rules that are followed by individuals and does not involve any central coordination. Swarm behaviour is also studied by active matter physicists as a phenomenon which is not in thermodynamic equilibrium, and as such requires the development of tools beyond those available from the statistical physics of systems in thermodynamic equilibrium.
+
+Swarm behaviour was first simulated on a computer in 1986 with the simulation program boids.[3] This program simulates simple agents (boids) that are allowed to move according to a set of basic rules. The model was originally designed to mimic the flocking behaviour of birds, but it can be applied also to schooling fish and other swarming entities.
+
+In recent decades, scientists have turned to modeling swarm behaviour to gain a deeper understanding of the behaviour.
+
+Early studies of swarm behaviour employed mathematical models to simulate and understand the behaviour. The simplest mathematical models of animal swarms generally represent individual animals as following three rules:
+
+The boids computer program, created by Craig Reynolds in 1986, simulates swarm behaviour following the above rules.[3] Many subsequent and current models use variations on these rules, often implementing them by means of concentric "zones" around each animal. In the "zone of repulsion", very close to the animal, the focal animal will seek to distance itself from its neighbours to avoid collision. Slightly further away, in the "zone of alignment", the focal animal will seek to align its direction of motion with its neighbours. In the outermost "zone of attraction", which extends as far away from the focal animal as it is able to sense, the focal animal will seek to move towards a neighbour.
+
+The shape of these zones will necessarily be affected by the sensory capabilities of a given animal. For example, the visual field of a bird does not extend behind its body. Fish rely on both vision and on hydrodynamic perceptions relayed through their lateral lines, while Antarctic krill rely both on vision and hydrodynamic signals relayed through antennae.
+
+However recent studies of starling flocks have shown that each bird modifies its position, relative to the six or seven animals directly surrounding it, no matter how close or how far away those animals are.[4] Interactions between flocking starlings are thus based on a topological, rather than a metric, rule. It remains to be seen whether this applies to other animals. Another recent study, based on an analysis of high-speed camera footage of flocks above Rome and assuming minimal behavioural rules, has convincingly simulated a number of aspects of flock behaviour.[5][6][7][8]
+
+In order to gain insight into why animals evolve swarming behaviours, scientists have turned to evolutionary models that simulate populations of evolving animals. Typically these studies use a genetic algorithm to simulate evolution over many generations. These studies have investigated a number of hypotheses attempting to explain why animals evolve swarming behaviours, such as the selfish herd theory[9][10][11][12] the predator confusion effect,[13][14] the dilution effect,[15][16] and the many eyes theory.[17]
+
+The concept of emergence—that the properties and functions found at a hierarchical level are not present and are irrelevant at the lower levels–is often a basic principle behind self-organizing systems.[18] An example of self-organization in biology leading to emergence in the natural world occurs in ant colonies. The queen does not give direct orders and does not tell the ants what to do.[citation needed] Instead, each ant reacts to stimuli in the form of chemical scents from larvae, other ants, intruders, food and buildup of waste, and leaves behind a chemical trail, which, in turn, provides a stimulus to other ants. Here each ant is an autonomous unit that reacts depending only on its local environment and the genetically encoded rules for its variety. Despite the lack of centralized decision making, ant colonies exhibit complex behaviours and have even been able to demonstrate the ability to solve geometric problems. For example, colonies routinely find the maximum distance from all colony entrances to dispose of dead bodies.
+
+A further key concept in the field of swarm intelligence is stigmergy.[19][20] Stigmergy is a mechanism of indirect coordination between agents or actions. The principle is that the trace left in the environment by an action stimulates the performance of a next action, by the same or a different agent. In that way, subsequent actions tend to reinforce and build on each other, leading to the spontaneous emergence of coherent, apparently systematic activity. Stigmergy is a form of self-organization. It produces complex, seemingly intelligent structures, without need for any planning, control, or even direct communication between the agents. As such it supports efficient collaboration between extremely simple agents, who lack any memory, intelligence or even awareness of each other.[20]
+
+Swarm intelligence is the collective behaviour of decentralized, self-organized systems, natural or artificial. The concept is employed in work on artificial intelligence. The expression was introduced by Gerardo Beni and Jing Wang in 1989, in the context of cellular robotic systems.[21]
+
+Swarm intelligence systems are typically made up of a population of simple agents such as boids interacting locally with one another and with their environment. The agents follow very simple rules, and although there is no centralized control structure dictating how individual agents should behave, local, and to a certain degree random, interactions between such agents lead to the emergence of intelligent global behaviour, unknown to the individual agents.
+
+Swarm intelligence research is multidisciplinary. It can be divided into natural swarm research studying biological systems and artificial swarm research studying human artefacts. There is also a scientific stream attempting to model the swarm systems themselves and understand their underlying mechanisms, and an engineering stream focused on applying the insights developed by the scientific stream to solve practical problems in other areas.[22]
+
+Swarm algorithms follow a Lagrangian approach or an Eulerian approach.[23] The Eulerian approach views the swarm as a field, working with the density of the swarm and deriving mean field properties. It is a hydrodynamic approach, and can be useful for modelling the overall dynamics of large swarms.[24][25][26] However, most models work with the Lagrangian approach, which is an agent-based model following the individual agents (points or particles) that make up the swarm. Individual particle models can follow information on heading and spacing that is lost in the Eulerian approach.[23][27]
+
+Ant colony optimization is a widely used algorithm which was inspired by the behaviours of ants, and has been effective solving discrete optimization problems related to swarming.[29] The algorithm was initially proposed by Marco Dorigo in 1992,[30][31] and has since been diversified to solve a wider class of numerical problems. Species that have multiple queens may have a queen leaving the nest along with some workers to found a colony at a new site, a process akin to swarming in honeybees.[32][33]
+
+The concept of self-propelled particles (SPP) was introduced in 1995 by Tamás Vicsek et al.[35] as a special case of the boids model introduced in 1986 by Reynolds.[3] An SPP swarm is modelled by a collection of particles that move with a constant speed and respond to random perturbations by adopting at each time increment the average direction of motion of the other particles in their local neighbourhood.[36]
+
+Simulations demonstrate that a suitable "nearest neighbour rule" eventually results in all the particles swarming together, or moving in the same direction. This emerges, even though there is no centralized coordination, and even though the neighbours for each particle constantly change over time.[35] SPP models predict that swarming animals share certain properties at the group level, regardless of the type of animals in the swarm.[37] Swarming systems give rise to emergent behaviours which occur at many different scales, some of which are both universal and robust. It has become a challenge in theoretical physics to find minimal statistical models that capture these behaviours.[38][39]
+
+Particle swarm optimization is another algorithm widely used to solve problems related to swarms. It was developed in 1995 by Kennedy and Eberhart and was first aimed at simulating the social behaviour and choreography of bird flocks and fish schools.[40][41] The algorithm was simplified and it was observed to be performing optimization. The system initially seeds a population with random solutions. It then searches in the problem space through successive generations using stochastic optimization to find the best solutions. The solutions it finds are called particles. Each particle stores its position as well as the best solution it has achieved so far. The particle swarm optimizer tracks the best local value obtained so far by any particle in the local neighbourhood. The remaining particles then move through the problem space following the lead of the optimum particles. At each time iteration, the particle swarm optimiser accelerates each particle toward its optimum locations according to simple mathematical rules. Particle swarm optimization has been applied in many areas. It has few parameters to adjust, and a version that works well for a specific applications can also work well with minor modifications across a range of related applications.[42] A book by Kennedy and Eberhart describes some philosophical aspects of particle swarm optimization applications and swarm intelligence.[43] An extensive survey of applications is made by Poli.[44][45]
+
+Researchers in Switzerland have developed an algorithm based on Hamilton's rule of kin selection. The algorithm shows how altruism in a swarm of entities can, over time, evolve and result in more effective swarm behaviour.[46][47]
+
+The earliest evidence of swarm behaviour in animals dates back about 480 million years. Fossils of the trilobite Ampyx priscus have been recently described as clustered in lines along the ocean floor. The animals were all mature adults, and were all facing the same direction as though they had formed a conga line or a peloton. It has been suggested they line up in this manner to migrate, much as spiny lobsters migrate in single-file queues.[48] Or perhaps they are getting together for mating,[49] as with the fly Leptoconops torrens. The findings suggest animal collective behaviour has very early evolutionary origins.[50]
+
+Examples of biological swarming are found in bird flocks,[51] fish schools,[52][53] insect swarms,[54] bacteria swarms,[55][56] molds,[57] molecular motors,[58] quadruped herds[59] and people.[60][61][62]
+
+The behaviour of insects that live in colonies, such as ants, bees, wasps and termites, has always been a source of fascination for children, naturalists and artists. Individual insects seem to do their own thing without any central control, yet the colony as a whole behaves in a highly coordinated manner.[63] Researchers have found that cooperation at the colony level is largely self-organized. The group coordination that emerges is often just a consequence of the way individuals in the colony interact. These interactions can be remarkably simple, such as one ant merely following the trail left by another ant. Yet put together, the cumulative effect of such behaviours can solve highly complex problems, such as locating the shortest route in a network of possible paths to a food source. The organised behaviour that emerges in this way is sometimes called swarm intelligence.[63] The genus Culicoides also known as biting midges have displayed swarming behavior which can cause predatory confusion.[64]
+
+Individual ants do not exhibit complex behaviours, yet a colony of ants collectively achieves complex tasks such as constructing nests, taking care of their young, building bridges and foraging for food. A colony of ants can collectively select (i.e. send most workers towards) the best, or closest, food source from several in the vicinity.[65] Such collective decisions are achieved using positive feedback mechanisms. Selection of the best food source is achieved by ants following two simple rules. First, ants which find food return to the nest depositing a pheromone chemical. More pheromone is laid for higher quality food sources.[66] Thus, if two equidistant food sources of different qualities are found simultaneously, the pheromone trail to the better one will be stronger. Ants in the nest follow another simple rule, to favor stronger trails, on average. More ants then follow the stronger trail, so more ants arrive at the high quality food source, and a positive feedback cycle ensures, resulting in a collective decision for the best food source. If there are two paths from the ant nest to a food source, then the colony usually selects the shorter path. This is because the ants that first return to the nest from the food source are more likely to be those that took the shorter path. More ants then retrace the shorter path, reinforcing the pheromone trail.[67]
+
+The successful techniques used by ant colonies have been studied in computer science and robotics to produce distributed and fault-tolerant systems for solving problems. This area of biomimetics has led to studies of ant locomotion, search engines that make use of "foraging trails", fault-tolerant storage and networking algorithms.[68]
+
+Midge flies, such as Tokunagayusurika akamusi, form swarms, dancing in the air. Swarming serves multiple purposes, including the facilitation of mating by attracting females to approach the swarm, a phenomenon known as lek mating. Such cloud-like swarms often form in early evening when the sun is getting low, at the tip of a bush, on a hilltop, over a pool of water, or even sometimes above a person. The forming of such swarms is not out of instinct, but an adaptive behavior – a "consensus" – between the individuals within the swarms. It is also suggested that swarming is a ritual, because there is rarely any male midge by itself and not in a swarm. This could have formed due to the benefit of lowering inbreeding by having males of various genes gathering in one spot.[69]
+
+In temperate climates, honey bees usually form swarms in late spring. A swarm typically contains about half the workers together with the old queen, while the new queen stays back with the remaining workers in the original hive. When honey bees emerge from a hive to form a swarm, they may gather on a branch of a tree or on a bush only a few meters from the hive. The bees cluster about the queen and send out 20–50 scouts to find suitable new nest locations. The scouts are the most experienced foragers in the cluster. If a scout finds a suitable location, she returns to the cluster and promotes it by dancing a version of the waggle dance. This dance conveys information about the quality, direction, and distance of the new site. The more excited she is about her findings, the more vigorously she dances. If she can convince others they may take off and check the site she found. If they approve they may promote it as well. In this decision-making process, scouts check several sites, often abandoning their own original site to promote the superior site of another scout. Several different sites may be promoted by different scouts at first. After some hours and sometimes days, a preferred location eventually emerges from this decision-making process. When all scouts agree on the final location, the whole cluster takes off and swarms to it. Sometimes, if no decision is reached, the swarm will separate, some bees going in one direction; others, going in another. This usually results in failure, with both groups dying. A new location is typically a kilometre or more from the original hive, though some species, e.g., Apis dorsata,[70] may establish new colonies within as little as 500 meters from the natal nest. This collective decision making process is remarkably successful in identifying the most suitable new nest site and keeping the swarm intact. A good hive site has to be large enough to accommodate the swarm (about 15 litres in volume), has to be well-protected from the elements, receive an optimal amount of sunshine, be some height above the ground, have a small entrance and be capable of resisting ant infestation - that is why tree cavities are often selected.[71][72][73][74][75]
+
+Similar to ants, cockroaches leave chemical trails in their faeces as well as emitting airborne pheromones for swarming and mating. Other cockroaches will follow these trails to discover sources of food and water, and also discover where other cockroaches are hiding. Thus, cockroaches can exhibit emergent behaviour,[76] in which group or swarm behaviour emerges from a simple set of individual interactions.
+
+Cockroaches are mainly nocturnal and will run away when exposed to light. A study tested the hypothesis that cockroaches use just two pieces of information to decide where to go under those conditions: how dark it is and how many other cockroaches there are. The study conducted by José Halloy and colleagues at the Free University of Brussels and other European institutions created a set of tiny robots that appear to the roaches as other roaches and can thus alter the roaches' perception of critical mass. The robots were also specially scented so that they would be accepted by the real roaches.[77]
+
+Locusts are the swarming phase of the short-horned grasshoppers of the family Acrididae. Some species can breed rapidly under suitable conditions and subsequently become gregarious and migratory. They form bands as nymphs and swarms as adults—both of which can travel great distances, rapidly stripping fields and greatly damaging crops. The largest swarms can cover hundreds of square miles and contain billions of locusts. A locust can eat its own weight (about 2 grams) in plants every day. That means one million locusts can eat more than one ton of food each day, and the largest swarms can consume over 100,000 tonnes each day.[78]
+
+Swarming in locusts has been found to be associated with increased levels of serotonin which causes the locust to change colour, eat much more, become mutually attracted, and breed much more easily. Researchers propose that swarming behaviour is a response to overcrowding and studies have shown that increased tactile stimulation of the hind legs or, in some species, simply encountering other individuals causes an increase in levels of serotonin. The transformation of the locust to the swarming variety can be induced by several contacts per minute over a four-hour period.[79][80][81][82] Notably, an innate predisposition to aggregate has been found in hatchlings of the desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria, independent of their parental phase.[83]
+
+An individual locust's response to a loss of alignment in the group appears to increase the randomness of its motion, until an aligned state is again achieved. This noise-induced alignment appears to be an intrinsic characteristic of collective coherent motion.[84]
+
+Insect migration is the seasonal movement of insects, particularly those by species of dragonflies, beetles, butterflies, and moths. The distance can vary from species to species, but in most cases these movements involve large numbers of individuals. In some cases the individuals that migrate in one direction may not return and the next generation may instead migrate in the opposite direction. This is a significant difference from bird migration.
+
+Monarch butterflies are especially noted for their lengthy annual migration. In North America they make massive southward migrations starting in August until the first frost. A northward migration takes place in the spring. The monarch is the only butterfly that migrates both north and south as the birds do on a regular basis. But no single individual makes the entire round trip. Female monarchs deposit eggs for the next generation during these migrations.[85] The length of these journeys exceeds the normal lifespan of most monarchs, which is less than two months for butterflies born in early summer. The last generation of the summer enters into a non-reproductive phase known as diapause and may live seven months or more.[86] During diapause, butterflies fly to one of many overwintering sites. The generation that overwinters generally does not reproduce until it leaves the overwintering site sometime in February and March. It is the second, third and fourth generations that return to their northern locations in the United States and Canada in the spring. How the species manages to return to the same overwintering spots over a gap of several generations is still a subject of research; the flight patterns appear to be inherited, based on a combination of the position of the sun in the sky[87] and a time-compensated Sun compass that depends upon a circadian clock that is based in their antennae.[88][89]
+
+Approximately 1800 of the world's 10,000 bird species are long-distance migrants.[90] The primary motivation for migration appears to be food; for example, some hummingbirds choose not to migrate if fed through the winter. Also, the longer days of the northern summer provide extended time for breeding birds to feed their young. This helps diurnal birds to produce larger clutches than related non-migratory species that remain in the tropics. As the days shorten in autumn, the birds return to warmer regions where the available food supply varies little with the season. These advantages offset the high stress, physical exertion costs, and other risks of the migration such as predation.
+
+Many birds migrate in flocks. For larger birds, it is assumed that flying in flocks reduces energy costs. The V formation is often supposed to boost the efficiency and range of flying birds, particularly over long migratory routes. All the birds except the first fly in the upwash from one of the wingtip vortices of the bird ahead. The upwash assists each bird in supporting its own weight in flight, in the same way a glider can climb or maintain height indefinitely in rising air. Geese flying in a V formation save energy by flying in the updraft of the wingtip vortex generated by the previous animal in the formation. Thus, the birds flying behind do not need to work as hard to achieve lift. Studies show that birds in a V formation place themselves roughly at the optimum distance predicted by simple aerodynamic theory.[91] Geese in a V-formation may conserve 12–20% of the energy they would need to fly alone.[92][93] Red knots and dunlins were found in radar studies to fly 5 km per hour faster in flocks than when they were flying alone.[94] The birds flying at the tips and at the front are rotated in a timely cyclical fashion to spread flight fatigue equally among the flock members. The formation also makes communication easier and allows the birds to maintain visual contact with each other.
+
+Other animals may use similar drafting techniques when migrating. Lobsters, for example, migrate in close single-file formation "lobster trains", sometimes for hundreds of miles.
+
+The Mediterranean and other seas present a major obstacle to soaring birds, which must cross at the narrowest points. Massive numbers of large raptors and storks pass through areas such as Gibraltar, Falsterbo, and the Bosphorus at migration times. More common species, such as the European honey buzzard, can be counted in hundreds of thousands in autumn. Other barriers, such as mountain ranges, can also cause funnelling, particularly of large diurnal migrants. This is a notable factor in the Central American migratory bottleneck. This concentration of birds during migration can put species at risk. Some spectacular migrants have already gone extinct, the most notable being the passenger pigeon. During migration the flocks were a mile (1.6 km) wide and 300 miles (500 km) long, taking several days to pass and containing up to a billion birds.
+
+The term "shoal" can be used to describe any group of fish, including mixed-species groups, while "school" is used for more closely knit groups of the same species swimming in a highly synchronised and polarised manner.
+
+Fish derive many benefits from shoaling behaviour including defence against predators (through better predator detection and by diluting the chance of capture), enhanced foraging success, and higher success in finding a mate.[96] It is also likely that fish benefit from shoal membership through increased hydrodynamic efficiency.[97]
+
+Fish use many traits to choose shoalmates. Generally they prefer larger shoals, shoalmates of their own species, shoalmates similar in size and appearance to themselves, healthy fish, and kin (when recognised). The "oddity effect" posits that any shoal member that stands out in appearance will be preferentially targeted by predators. This may explain why fish prefer to shoal with individuals that resemble them. The oddity effect would thus tend to homogenise shoals.[98]
+
+One puzzling aspect of shoal selection is how a fish can choose to join a shoal of animals similar to themselves, given that it cannot know its own appearance. Experiments with zebrafish have shown that shoal preference is a learned ability, not innate. A zebrafish tends to associate with shoals that resemble shoals in which it was reared, a form of imprinting.[99]
+
+Other open questions of shoaling behaviour include identifying which individuals are responsible for the direction of shoal movement. In the case of migratory movement, most members of a shoal seem to know where they are going. In the case of foraging behaviour, captive shoals of golden shiner (a kind of minnow) are led by a small number of experienced individuals who knew when and where food was available.[100]
+
+Radakov estimated herring schools in the North Atlantic can occupy up to 4.8 cubic kilometres with fish densities between 0.5 and 1.0 fish/cubic metre. That's several billion fish in one school.[101]
+
+Between May and July huge numbers of sardines spawn in the cool waters of the Agulhas Bank and then follow a current of cold water northward along the east coast of South Africa. This great migration, called the sardine run, creates spectacular feeding frenzies along the coastline as marine predators, such as dolphins, sharks and gannets attack the schools.
+
+Most krill, small shrimp-like crustaceans, form large swarms, sometimes reaching densities of 10,000–60,000 individual animals per cubic metre.[103][104][105] Swarming is a defensive mechanism, confusing smaller predators that would like to pick out single individuals. The largest swarms are visible from space and can be tracked by satellite.[106] One swarm was observed to cover an area of 450 square kilometers (175 square miles) of ocean, to a depth of 200 meters (650 feet) and was estimated to contain over 2 million tons of krill.[107] Recent research suggests that krill do not simply drift passively in these currents but actually modify them.[107] Krill typically follow a diurnal vertical migration. By moving vertically through the ocean on a 12-hour cycle, the swarms play a major part in mixing deeper, nutrient-rich water with nutrient-poor water at the surface.[107] Until recently it has been assumed that they spend the day at greater depths and rise during the night toward the surface. It has been found that the deeper they go, the more they reduce their activity,[108] apparently to reduce encounters with predators and to conserve energy.
+
+Later work suggested that swimming activity in krill varied with stomach fullness. Satiated animals that had been feeding at the surface swim less actively and therefore sink below the mixed layer.[109] As they sink they produce faeces which may mean that they have an important role to play in the Antarctic carbon cycle. Krill with empty stomachs were found to swim more actively and thus head towards the surface. This implies that vertical migration may be a bi- or tri-daily occurrence. Some species form surface swarms during the day for feeding and reproductive purposes even though such behaviour is dangerous because it makes them extremely vulnerable to predators.[110] Dense swarms may elicit a feeding frenzy among fish, birds and mammal predators, especially near the surface. When disturbed, a swarm scatters, and some individuals have even been observed to moult instantaneously, leaving the exuvia behind as a decoy.[111] In 2012, Gandomi and Alavi presented what appears to be a successful stochastic algorithm for modelling the behaviour of krill swarms. The algorithm is based on three main factors: " (i) movement induced by the presence of other individuals (ii) foraging activity, and (iii) random diffusion."[112]
+
+Copepods are a group of tiny crustaceans found in the sea and lakes. Many species are planktonic (drifting in sea waters), and others are benthic (living on the ocean floor). Copepods are typically 1 to 2 millimetres (0.04 to 0.08 in) long, with a teardrop shaped body and large antennae. Although like other crustaceans they have an armoured exoskeleton, they are so small that in most species this thin armour, and the entire body, is almost totally transparent. Copepods have a compound, median single eye, usually bright red, in the centre of the transparent head.
+
+Copepods also swarm. For example, monospecific swarms have been observed regularly around coral reefs and sea grass, and in lakes. Swarms densities were about one million copepods per cubic metre. Typical swarms were one or two metres in diameter, but some exceeded 30 cubic metres. Copepods need visual contact to keep together, and they disperse at night.[113]
+
+Spring produces blooms of swarming phytoplankton which provide food for copepods. Planktonic copepods are usually the dominant members of the zooplankton, and are in turn major food organisms for many other marine animals. In particular, copepods are prey to forage fish and jellyfish, both of which can assemble in vast, million-strong swarms. Some copepods have extremely fast escape responses when a predator is sensed and can jump with high speed over a few millimetres (see animated image below).
+
+Photo: School of herrings ram feeding on a swarm of copepods.
+
+Animation showing how herrings hunting in a synchronised way can capture the very alert and evasive copepod (click to view).
+
+Swarms of jellyfish also prey on copepods
+
+Planktonic copepods are important to the carbon cycle. Some scientists say they form the largest animal biomass on earth.[114] They compete for this title with Antarctic krill. Because of their smaller size and relatively faster growth rates, however, and because they are more evenly distributed throughout more of the world's oceans, copepods almost certainly contribute far more to the secondary productivity of the world's oceans, and to the global ocean carbon sink than krill, and perhaps more than all other groups of organisms together. The surface layers of the oceans are currently believed to be the world's largest carbon sink, absorbing about 2 billion tons of carbon a year, the equivalent to perhaps a third of human carbon emissions, thus reducing their impact. Many planktonic copepods feed near the surface at night, then sink into deeper water during the day to avoid visual predators. Their moulted exoskeletons, faecal pellets and respiration at depth all bring carbon to the deep sea.
+
+Many single-celled organisms called phytoplankton live in oceans and lakes. When certain conditions are present, such as high nutrient or light levels, these organisms reproduce explosively. The resulting dense swarm of phytoplankton is called an algal bloom. Blooms can cover hundreds of square kilometres and are easily seen in satellite images. Individual phytoplankton rarely live more than a few days, but blooms can last weeks.[115][116]
+
+Scientists have attributed swarm behavior to plants for hundreds of years. In his 1800 book, Phytologia: or, The philosophy of agriculture and gardening, Erasmus Darwin wrote that plant growth resembled swarms observed elsewhere in nature.[117] While he was referring to more broad observations of plant morphology, and was focused on both root and shoot behavior, recent research has supported this claim.
+
+Roots, in particular, display observable swarm behavior, growing in patterns that exceed the statistical threshold for random probability, and indicate the presence of communication between individual root apexes. The primary function of plant roots is the uptake of soil nutrients, and it is this purpose which drives swarm behavior. Plants growing in close proximity have adapted their growth to assure optimal nutrient availability. This is accomplished by growing in a direction that optimizes the distance between nearby roots, thereby increasing their chance of exploiting untapped nutrient reserves. The action of this behavior takes two forms: maximization of distance from, and repulsion by, neighboring root apexes.[118] The transition zone of a root tip is largely responsible for monitoring for the presence of soil-borne hormones, signaling responsive growth patterns as appropriate. Plant responses are often complex, integrating multiple inputs to inform an autonomous response. Additional inputs that inform swarm growth includes light and gravity, both of which are also monitored in the transition zone of a root's apex.[119] These forces act to inform any number of growing "main" roots, which exhibit their own independent releases of inhibitory chemicals to establish appropriate spacing, thereby contributing to a swarm behavior pattern. Horizontal growth of roots, whether in response to high mineral content in soil or due to stolon growth, produces branched growth that establish to also form their own, independent root swarms.[120]
+
+Swarming also describes groupings of some kinds of predatory bacteria such as myxobacteria. Myxobacteria swarm together in "wolf packs", actively moving using a process known as bacterial gliding and keeping together with the help of intercellular molecular signals.[55][121]
+
+A collection of people can also exhibit swarm behaviour, such as pedestrians[124] or soldiers swarming the parapets[dubious  – discuss]. In Cologne, Germany, two biologists from the University of Leeds demonstrated flock like behaviour in humans. The group of people exhibited similar behavioural pattern to a flock, where if five percent of the flock changed direction the others would follow. If one person was designated as a predator and everyone else was to avoid him, the flock behaved very much like a school of fish.[125][126] Understanding how humans interact in crowds is important if crowd management is to effectively avoid casualties at football grounds, music concerts and subway stations.[127]
+
+The mathematical modelling of flocking behaviour is a common technology, and has found uses in animation. Flocking simulations have been used in many films[128] to generate crowds which move realistically. Tim Burton's Batman Returns was the first movie to make use of swarm technology for rendering, realistically depicting the movements of a group of bats using the boids system. The Lord of the Rings film trilogy made use of similar technology, known as Massive, during battle scenes. Swarm technology is particularly attractive because it is cheap, robust, and simple.
+
+An ant-based computer simulation using only six interaction rules has also been used to evaluate aircraft boarding behaviour.[129] Airlines have also used ant-based routing in assigning aircraft arrivals to airport gates. An airline system developed by Douglas A. Lawson uses swarm theory, or swarm intelligence—the idea that a colony of ants works better than one alone. Each pilot acts like an ant searching for the best airport gate. "The pilot learns from his experience what's the best for him, and it turns out that that's the best solution for the airline," Lawson explains. As a result, the "colony" of pilots always go to gates they can arrive and depart quickly. The program can even alert a pilot of plane back-ups before they happen. "We can anticipate that it's going to happen, so we'll have a gate available," says Lawson.[130]
+
+Swarm behaviour occurs also in traffic flow dynamics, such as the traffic wave. Bidirectional traffic can be observed in ant trails.[131][132] In recent years this behaviour has been researched for insight into pedestrian and traffic models.[133][134] Simulations based on pedestrian models have also been applied to crowds which stampede because of panic.[135]
+
+Herd behaviour in marketing has been used to explain the dependencies of customers' mutual behaviour. The Economist reported a recent conference in Rome on the subject of the simulation of adaptive human behaviour.[136] It shared mechanisms to increase impulse buying and get people "to buy more by playing on the herd instinct." The basic idea is that people will buy more of products that are seen to be popular, and several feedback mechanisms to get product popularity information to consumers are mentioned, including smart card technology and the use of Radio Frequency Identification Tag technology. A "swarm-moves" model was introduced by a Florida Institute of Technology researcher, which is appealing to supermarkets because it can "increase sales without the need to give people discounts."
+
+The application of swarm principles to robots is called swarm robotics, while swarm intelligence refers to the more general set of algorithms.
+
+Partially inspired by colonies of insects such as ants and bees, researchers are modelling the behaviour of swarms of thousands of tiny robots which together perform a useful task, such as finding something hidden, cleaning, or spying. Each robot is quite simple, but the emergent behaviour of the swarm is more complex.[1] The whole set of robots can be considered as one single distributed system, in the same way an ant colony can be considered a superorganism, exhibiting swarm intelligence. The largest swarms so far created is the 1024 robot Kilobot swarm.[138] Other large swarms include the iRobot swarm, the SRI International/ActivMedia Robotics Centibots project,[139] and the Open-source Micro-robotic Project swarm, which are being used to research collective behaviours.[140][141] Swarms are also more resistant to failure. Whereas one large robot may fail and ruin a mission, a swarm can continue even if several robots fail. This could make them attractive for space exploration missions, where failure is normally extremely costly.[142] In addition to ground vehicles, swarm robotics includes also research of swarms of aerial robots[137][143] and heterogeneous teams of ground and aerial vehicles.[144][145]
+
+Military swarming is a behaviour where autonomous or partially autonomous units of action attack an enemy from several different directions and then regroup. Pulsing, where the units shift the point of attack, is also a part of military swarming. Military swarming involves the use of a decentralized force against an opponent, in a manner that emphasizes mobility, communication, unit autonomy and coordination or synchronization.[146] Historically military forces used principles of swarming without really examining them explicitly, but now active research consciously examines military doctrines that draw ideas from swarming.
+
+Merely because multiple units converge on a target, they are not necessarily swarming. Siege operations do not involve swarming, because there is no manoeuvre; there is convergence but on the besieged fortification. Nor do guerrilla ambushes constitute swarms, because they are "hit-and-run". Even though the ambush may have several points of attack on the enemy, the guerillas withdraw when they either have inflicted adequate damage, or when they are endangered.
+
+In 2014 the U. S. Office of Naval Research released a video showing tests of a swarm of small autonomous drone attack boats that can steer and take coordinated offensive action as a group.[147]
+
+A swarm of migrating herrings
+
+A swarm of bees
+
+Salps arranged in chains form huge swarms.[148]
+
+People swarming through an exit do not always behave like a fluid.[149][150]
+
+A swarm of ladybirds
+
+A swarm of robots
+
+A swarm of earthquakes
+
+A swarm of ancient stars

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+Subtraction is an arithmetic operation that represents the operation of removing objects from a collection. The result of a subtraction is called a difference. Subtraction is signified by the minus sign, −. For example, in the adjacent picture, there are 5 − 2 apples—meaning 5 apples with 2 taken away, which is a total of 3 apples. Therefore, the difference of 5 and 2 is 3, that is, 5 − 2 = 3. Subtraction represents removing or decreasing physical and abstract quantities using different kinds of objects including negative numbers, fractions, irrational numbers, vectors, decimals, functions, and matrices.
+
+Subtraction follows several important patterns. It is anticommutative, meaning that changing the order changes the sign of the answer. It is also not associative, meaning that when one subtracts more than two numbers, the order in which subtraction is performed matters. Because 0 is the additive identity, subtraction of it does not change a number. Subtraction also obeys predictable rules concerning related operations such as addition and multiplication. All of these rules can be proven, starting with the subtraction of integers and generalizing up through the real numbers and beyond. General binary operations that continue these patterns are studied in abstract algebra.
+
+Performing subtraction is one of the simplest numerical tasks. Subtraction of very small numbers is accessible to young children. In primary education, students are taught to subtract numbers in the decimal system, starting with single digits and progressively tackling more difficult problems.
+
+In advanced algebra and in computer algebra, an expression involving subtraction like A − B is generally treated as a shorthand notation for the addition A + (−B). Thus, A − B contains two terms, namely A and −B. This allows an easier use of associativity and commutativity.
+
+Subtraction is usually written using the minus sign "−" between the terms; that is, in infix notation. The result is expressed with an equals sign. For example,
+
+There are also situations where subtraction is "understood" even though no symbol appears:
+
+Formally, the number being subtracted is known as the subtrahend,[1][2] while the number it is subtracted from is the minuend.[1][2] The result is the difference.[1][2]
+
+All of this terminology derives from Latin. "Subtraction" is an English word derived from the Latin verb subtrahere, which is in turn a compound of sub "from under" and trahere "to pull"; thus to subtract is to draw from below, take away.[3] Using the gerundive suffix -nd results in "subtrahend", "thing to be subtracted".[a] Likewise from minuere "to reduce or diminish", one gets "minuend", "thing to be diminished".
+
+Imagine a line segment of length b with the left end labeled a and the right end labeled c.
+Starting from a, it takes b steps to the right to reach c. This movement to the right is modeled mathematically by addition:
+
+From c, it takes b steps to the left to get back to a. This movement to the left is modeled by subtraction:
+
+Now, a line segment labeled with the numbers 1, 2, and 3. From position 3, it takes no steps to the left to stay at 3, so 3 − 0 = 3. It takes 2 steps to the left to get to position 1, so 3 − 2 = 1. This picture is inadequate to describe what would happen after going 3 steps to the left of position 3. To represent such an operation, the line must be extended.
+
+To subtract arbitrary natural numbers, one begins with a line containing every natural number (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, ...). From 3, it takes 3 steps to the left to get to 0, so 3 − 3 = 0. But 3 − 4 is still invalid since it again leaves the line. The natural numbers are not a useful context for subtraction.
+
+The solution is to consider the integer number line (..., −3, −2, −1, 0, 1, 2, 3, ...). From 3, it takes 4 steps to the left to get to −1:
+
+Subtraction of natural numbers is not closed. The difference is not a natural number unless the minuend is greater than or equal to the subtrahend. For example, 26 cannot be subtracted from 11 to give a natural number. Such a case uses one of two approaches:
+
+Subtraction of real numbers is defined as addition of signed numbers. Specifically, a number is subtracted by adding its additive inverse. Then we have 3 − π = 3 + (−π). This helps to keep the ring of real numbers "simple" by avoiding the introduction of "new" operators such as subtraction. Ordinarily a ring only has two operations defined on it; in the case of the integers, these are addition and multiplication. A ring already has the concept of additive inverses, but it does not have any notion of a separate subtraction operation, so the use of signed addition as subtraction allows us to apply the ring axioms to subtraction without needing to prove anything.
+
+Subtraction is anti-commutative, meaning that if one reverses the terms in a difference left-to-right, the result is the negative of the original result. Symbolically, if a and b are any two numbers, then
+
+Subtraction is non-associative, which comes up when one tries to define repeated subtraction. Should the expression
+
+be defined to mean (a − b) − c or a − (b − c)? These two possibilities give different answers. To resolve this issue, one must establish an order of operations, with different orders giving different results.
+
+In the context of integers, subtraction of one also plays a special role: for any integer a, the integer (a − 1) is the largest integer less than a, also known as the predecessor of a.
+
+When subtracting two numbers with units of measurement such as kilograms or pounds, they must have the same unit. In most cases the difference will have the same unit as the original numbers.
+
+Changes in percentages can be reported in at least two forms, percentage change and percentage point change. Percentage change represents the relative change between the two quantities as a percentage, while percentage point change is simply the number obtained by subtracting the two percentages.[4][5][6]
+
+As an example, suppose that 30% of widgets made in a factory are defective. Six months later, 20% of widgets are defective. The percentage change is 20% − 30%/30% = −1/3 = −33+1/3%, while the percentage point change is −10 percentage points.
+
+The method of complements is a technique used to subtract one number from another using only addition of positive numbers. This method was commonly used in mechanical calculators and is still used in modern computers.
+
+To subtract a binary number y (the subtrahend) from another number x (the minuend), the ones' complement of y is added to x and one is added to the sum. The leading digit "1" of the result is then discarded.
+
+The method of complements is especially useful in binary (radix 2) since the ones' complement is very easily obtained by inverting each bit (changing "0" to "1" and vice versa). And adding 1 to get the two's complement can be done by simulating a carry into the least significant bit. For example:
+
+becomes the sum:
+
+Dropping the initial "1" gives the answer: 01001110 (equals decimal 78)
+
+Methods used to teach subtraction to elementary school vary from country to country, and within a country, different methods are in fashion at different times. In what is, in the United States, called traditional mathematics, a specific process is taught to students at the end of the 1st year or during the 2nd year for use with multi-digit whole numbers, and is extended in either the fourth or fifth grade to include decimal representations of fractional numbers.
+
+Almost all American schools currently teach a method of subtraction using borrowing or regrouping (the decomposition algorithm) and a system of markings called crutches.[7][8] Although a method of borrowing had been known and published in textbooks previously, the use of crutches in American schools spread after William A. Brownell published a study claiming that crutches were beneficial to students using this method.[9] This system caught on rapidly, displacing the other methods of subtraction in use in America at that time.
+
+Some European schools employ a method of subtraction called the Austrian method, also known as the additions method. There is no borrowing in this method. There are also crutches (markings to aid memory), which vary by country.[10][11]
+
+Both these methods break up the subtraction as a process of one digit subtractions by place value. Starting with a least significant digit, a subtraction of subtrahend:
+
+from minuend
+
+where each si and mi is a digit, proceeds by writing down m1 − s1, m2 − s2, and so forth, as long as si does not exceed mi. Otherwise, mi is increased by 10 and some other digit is modified to correct for this increase. The American method corrects by attempting to decrease the minuend digit mi+1 by one (or continuing the borrow leftwards until there is a non-zero digit from which to borrow). The European method corrects by increasing the subtrahend digit si+1 by one.
+
+Example: 704 − 512.
+
+−
+1
+
+
+
+
+
+
+C
+
+
+D
+
+
+U
+
+
+
+
+
+7
+
+
+0
+
+
+4
+
+
+
+
+
+5
+
+
+1
+
+
+2
+
+
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+9
+
+
+2
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+⟵
+
+
+c
+a
+r
+r
+y
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+⟵
+
+
+
+M
+i
+n
+u
+e
+n
+d
+
+
+
+
+
+
+⟵
+
+
+
+S
+u
+b
+t
+r
+a
+h
+e
+n
+d
+
+
+
+
+
+
+⟵
+
+
+R
+e
+s
+t
+
+o
+r
+
+D
+i
+f
+f
+e
+r
+e
+n
+c
+e
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+{\displaystyle {\begin{array}{rrrr}&\color {Red}-1\\&C&D&U\\&7&0&4\\&5&1&2\\\hline &1&9&2\\\end{array}}{\begin{array}{l}{\color {Red}\longleftarrow {\rm {carry}}}\\\\\longleftarrow \;{\rm {Minuend}}\\\longleftarrow \;{\rm {Subtrahend}}\\\longleftarrow {\rm {Rest\;or\;Difference}}\\\end{array}}}
+
+The minuend is 704, the subtrahend is 512. The minuend digits are m3 = 7, m2 = 0 and m1 = 4. The subtrahend digits are s3 = 5, s2 = 1 and s1 = 2. Beginning at the one's place, 4 is not less than 2 so the difference 2 is written down in the result's one's place. In the ten's place, 0 is less than 1, so the 0 is increased by 10, and the difference with 1, which is 9, is written down in the ten's place. The American method corrects for the increase of ten by reducing the digit in the minuend's hundreds place by one. That is, the 7 is struck through and replaced by a 6. The subtraction then proceeds in the hundreds place, where 6 is not less than 5, so the difference is written down in the result's hundred's place. We are now done, the result is 192.
+
+The Austrian method does not reduce the 7 to 6. Rather it increases the subtrahend hundred's digit by one. A small mark is made near or below this digit (depending on the school). Then the subtraction proceeds by asking what number when increased by 1, and 5 is added to it, makes 7. The answer is 1, and is written down in the result's hundred's place.
+
+There is an additional subtlety in that the student always employs a mental subtraction table in the American method. The Austrian method often encourages the student to mentally use the addition table in reverse. In the example above, rather than adding 1 to 5, getting 6, and subtracting that from 7, the student is asked to consider what number, when increased by 1, and 5 is added to it, makes 7.
+
+Example:
+
+1 + ... = 3
+
+The difference is written under the line.
+
+9 + ... = 5The required sum (5) is too small.
+
+So, we add 10 to it and put a 1 under the next higher place in the subtrahend.
+
+9 + ... = 15Now we can find the difference like before.
+
+(4 + 1) + ... = 7
+
+The difference is written under the line.
+
+The total difference.
+
+Example:
+
+7 − 4 = 3This result is only penciled in.
+
+Because the next digit of the minuend is smaller than the subtrahend, we subtract one from our penciled-in-number and mentally add ten to the next.
+
+15 − 9 = 6
+
+Because the next digit in the minuend is not smaller than the subtrahend, We keep this number.
+
+3 − 1 = 2
+
+In this method, each digit of the subtrahend is subtracted from the digit above it starting from right to left. If the top number is too small to subtract the bottom number from it, we add 10 to it; this 10 is "borrowed" from the top digit to the left, which we subtract 1 from. Then we move on to subtracting the next digit and borrowing as needed, until every digit has been subtracted.
+Example:
+
+3 − 1 = ...
+
+We write the difference under the line.
+
+5 − 9 = ... The minuend (5) is too small!
+
+So, we add 10 to it. The 10 is "borrowed" from the digit on the left, which goes down by 1.
+
+15 − 9 = ... Now the subtraction works, and we write the difference under the line.
+
+6 − 4 = ...
+
+We write the difference under the line.
+
+The total difference.
+
+A variant of the American method where all borrowing is done before all subtraction.[12]
+
+Example:
+
+1 − 3 = not possible.We add a 10 to the 1. Because the 10 is "borrowed" from the nearby 5, the 5 is lowered by 1.
+
+4 − 9 = not possible.So we proceed as in step 1.
+
+Working from right to left:11 − 3 = 8
+
+14 − 9 = 5
+
+6 − 4 = 2
+
+The partial differences method is different from other vertical subtraction methods because no borrowing or carrying takes place. In their place, one places plus or minus signs depending on whether the minuend is greater or smaller than the subtrahend. The sum of the partial differences is the total difference.[13]
+
+Example:
+
+The smaller number is subtracted from the greater:700 − 400 = 300Because the minuend is greater than the subtrahend, this difference has a plus sign.
+
+The smaller number is subtracted from the greater:90 − 50 = 40Because the minuend is smaller than the subtrahend, this difference has a minus sign.
+
+The smaller number is subtracted from the greater:3 − 1 = 2Because the minuend is greater than the subtrahend, this difference has a plus sign.
+
++300 − 40 + 2 = 262
+
+Instead of finding the difference digit by digit, one can count up the numbers between the subtrahend and the minuend.[14]
+
+Example:
+1234 − 567 = can be found by the following steps:
+
+Add up the value from each step to get the total difference: 3 + 30 + 400 + 234 = 667.
+
+Another method that is useful for mental arithmetic is to split up the subtraction into small steps.[15]
+
+Example:
+1234 − 567 = can be solved in the following way:
+
+The same change method uses the fact that adding or subtracting the same number from the minuend and subtrahend does not change the answer. One adds the amount needed to get zeros in the subtrahend.[16]
+
+Example:
+
+"1234 − 567 =" can be solved as follows:
+
+Addition (+)
+
+Subtraction (−)
+
+Multiplication (× or ·)
+
+Division (÷ or /)

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+
+
+Chert ( /ˈtʃɜːrt/) is a hard, fine-grained sedimentary rock composed of crystals of quartz (silica) that are very small (microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline).[1] Quartz is the mineral form of silicon dioxide (SiO2).[2]  Chert is often of biological origin (organic) but may also occur inorganically as a chemical precipitate or a diagenetic replacement (e.g., petrified wood).[3] Geologists use chert as a generic name for any type of microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline quartz.
+
+Chert is usually of biological origin, being the petrified remains of siliceous ooze, the biogenic sediment that covers large areas of the deep ocean floor, and which contains the silicon skeletal remains of diatoms, silicoflagellates, and radiolarians. Depending on its origin, it can contain either microfossils, small macrofossils, or both. It varies greatly in color (from white to black), but most often manifests as gray, brown, grayish brown and light green to rusty red (occasionally dark green too); its color is an expression of trace elements present in the rock, and both red and green are most often related to traces of iron (in its oxidized and reduced forms respectively).
+
+Chert occurs in carbonate rocks as oval to irregular nodules in greensand, limestone, chalk, and dolomite formations as a replacement mineral, where it is formed as a result of some type of diagenesis. Where it occurs in chalk or marl, it is usually called flint. It also occurs in thin beds, when it is a primary deposit (such as with many jaspers and radiolarites). Thick beds of chert occur in deep marine deposits.  These thickly bedded cherts include the novaculite of the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas, Oklahoma, and similar occurrences in Texas and South Carolina[4] in the United States. The banded iron formations of Precambrian age are composed of alternating layers of chert and iron oxides.
+
+Chert also occurs in diatomaceous deposits and is known as diatomaceous chert. Diatomaceous chert consists of beds and lenses of diatomite which were converted during diagenesis into dense, hard chert. Beds of marine diatomaceous chert comprising strata several hundred meters thick have been reported from sedimentary sequences such as the Miocene Monterey Formation of California and occur in rocks as old as the Cretaceous.[5]
+
+In petrology the term "chert" is used to refer generally to all rocks composed primarily of microcrystalline, cryptocrystalline and microfibrous quartz. The term does not include quartzite. Chalcedony is a microfibrous (microcrystalline with a fibrous structure) variety of quartz.
+
+Strictly speaking, the term "flint" is reserved for varieties of chert which occur in chalk and marly limestone formations.[6][7] Among non-geologists, the distinction between "flint" and "chert" is often one of quality – chert being lower quality than flint. This usage of the terminology is prevalent in North America and is likely caused by early immigrants who brought the terms from England where most true flint (that found in chalk formations) was indeed of better quality than "common chert" (from limestone formations).[citation needed]
+
+Among petrologists e.g. Philip King, Robert B. Neuman, Jarvis B. Hadley,[8] chalcedony is sometimes considered separately from chert due to its fibrous structure. Since many cherts contain both microcrystalline and microfibrous quartz, it is sometimes difficult to classify a rock as completely chalcedony, thus its general inclusion as a variety of chert.[citation needed]
+
+The cryptocrystalline nature of chert, combined with its above average ability to resist weathering, recrystallization and metamorphism has made it an ideal rock for preservation of early life forms.[9]
+
+For example:
+
+In prehistoric times, chert was often used as a raw material for the construction of stone tools. Like obsidian, as well as some rhyolites, felsites, quartzites, and other tool stones used in lithic reduction, chert fractures in a Hertzian cone when struck with sufficient force. This results in conchoidal fractures, a characteristic of all minerals with no cleavage planes. In this kind of fracture, a cone of force propagates through the material from the point of impact, eventually removing a full or partial cone; this result is familiar to anyone who has seen what happens to a plate-glass window when struck by a small object, such as an air gun projectile. The partial Hertzian cones produced during lithic reduction are called flakes, and exhibit features characteristic of this sort of breakage, including striking platforms, bulbs of force, and occasionally eraillures, which are small secondary flakes detached from the flake's bulb of force.
+
+When a chert stone is struck against an iron-bearing surface, sparks result. This makes chert an excellent tool for starting fires, and both flint and common chert were used in various types of fire-starting tools, such as tinderboxes, throughout history. A primary historic use of common chert and flint was for flintlock firearms, in which the chert striking a metal plate produces a spark that ignites a small reservoir containing black powder, discharging the firearm.[2]
+
+Cherts are subject to problems when used as concrete aggregates. Deeply weathered chert develops surface pop-outs when used in concrete that undergoes freezing and thawing because of the high porosity of weathered chert. The other concern is that certain cherts undergo an alkali-silica reaction with high-alkali cements. This reaction leads to cracking and expansion of concrete and ultimately to failure of the material.[14]
+
+In some areas, chert is ubiquitous as stream gravel and fieldstone and is currently used as construction material and road surfacing. Part of chert's popularity in road surfacing or driveway construction is that rain tends to firm and compact chert while other fill often gets muddy when wet.
+
+Chert has been used in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century headstones or grave markers in Tennessee and other regions.[citation needed]
+
+There are numerous varieties of chert, classified based on their visible, microscopic and physical characteristics.[15][16] Some of the more common varieties are:
+
+Other lesser used terms for chert (most of them archaic) include firestone, silex, silica stone, chat, and flintstone.

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+Silicon Valley is a region in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology, innovation, venture capital, and social media. It corresponds roughly to the geographical Santa Clara Valley.[1][2][3] San Jose is Silicon Valley's largest city, the third-largest in California, and the tenth-largest in the United States; other major Silicon Valley cities include Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Redwood City, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and Cupertino. The San Jose Metropolitan Area has the third-highest GDP per capita in the world (after Zurich, Switzerland and Oslo, Norway), according to the Brookings Institution.[4]
+
+The word "silicon" in the name originally referred to the large number of innovators and manufacturers in the region specializing in silicon-based MOS transistors and integrated circuit chips. The area is now home to many of the world's largest high-tech corporations, including the headquarters of more than 30 businesses in the Fortune 1000, and thousands of startup companies. Silicon Valley also accounts for one-third of all of the venture capital investment in the United States, which has helped it to become a leading hub and startup ecosystem for high-tech innovation and scientific development. It was in Silicon Valley that the silicon-based integrated circuit, the microprocessor, and the microcomputer, among other technologies, were developed. As of 2013, the region employed about a quarter of a million information technology workers.[5]
+
+As more high-tech companies were established across San Jose and the Santa Clara Valley, and then north towards the Bay Area's two other major cities, San Francisco and Oakland, the term "Silicon Valley" has come to have two definitions: a narrower geographic one, referring to Santa Clara County and southeastern San Mateo County, and a metonymical definition referring to high-tech businesses in the entire Bay Area. The term Silicon Valley is often used as a synecdoche for the American high-technology economic sector. The name also became a global synonym for leading high-tech research and enterprises, and thus inspired similar named locations, as well as research parks and technology centers with a comparable structure all around the world.
+
+Due to the personal connection between people and computer technology, many headquarters of companies in Silicon Valley are a hotspot for tourism.[6][7][8]
+
+The popularization of the name is credited to Don Hoefler.[1] He first used it in the article "Silicon Valley USA", which appeared in the January 11, 1971 issue of the weekly trade newspaper Electronic News.[9] However, it took about a decade before the term came into common use.[1] The term gained widespread use in the early 1980s, at the time of the introduction of the IBM PC and numerous related hardware and software products to the consumer market.
+
+Silicon Valley was born through the intersection of several contributing factors including a skilled science research base housed in area universities, plentiful venture capital, and steady U.S. Department of Defense spending. Stanford University leadership was especially important in the valley's early development. Together these elements formed the basis of its growth and success.[10]
+
+On August 23, 1899, the first ship-to-shore wireless telegraph message to be received in the US was from the San Francisco lightship outside the Golden Gate, signaling the return of the American fleet from the Philippines after their victory in the Spanish–American War in 1898.[11] The ship had been outfitted with a wireless telegraph transmitter by a local newspaper, so that they could prepare a celebration on the return of the American sailors.[12] Local historian Clyde Arbuckle states in Clyde Arbuckle's History of San Jose[13] that "California first heard the click of a telegraph key on September 11, 1853.  It marked completion of an enterprise begun by a couple of San Francisco Merchants' Exchange members named George Sweeney and Theodore E. Baugh…"  He says, "In 1849, the gentleman established a wigwag telegraph station a top a high hill overlooking Portsmouth Squares for signaling arriving ships… The operator at the first station caught these signals by telescope and relayed them to the Merchant's Exchange for the waiting business community."  Arbuckle points to the historic significance the Merchants Exchange Building (San Francisco) and Telegraph Hill, San Francisco when he goes on to say "The first station gave the name Telegraph to the hill on which it was located.  It was known as the Inner Station; the second, as the Outer Station.  Both used their primitive mode of communication until Messrs. Sweeney and Baugh connected the Outer Station directly with the Merchants's Exchange by electric telegraph Wire."
+
+According to Arbuckle (p. 380–381) Sweeney and Baugh's line was strictly an intra-city, San Francisco-based service; that is until California State Telegraph Company enfranchised on May 3, 1852; whereas, O.E. Allen and C. Burnham led the way to "build a line from San Francisco to Marysville via San Jose, Stockton, and Sacramento".  Delays to construction occurred until September 1853; but, "…San Jose became the first station on the line when the wire arrived here on October 15.  The line was completed when [James] Gamble's northbound crew met a similar crew working southward from Marysville on October 24."
+
+The Bay Area had long been a major site of United States Navy research and technology. In 1909, Charles Herrold started the first radio station in the United States with regularly scheduled programming in San Jose. Later that year, Stanford University graduate Cyril Elwell purchased the U.S. patents for Poulsen arc radio transmission technology and founded the Federal Telegraph Corporation (FTC) in Palo Alto. Over the next decade, the FTC created the world's first global radio communication system, and signed a contract with the Navy in 1912.[14]
+
+In 1933, Air Base Sunnyvale, California, was commissioned by the United States Government for use as a Naval Air Station (NAS) to house the airship USS Macon in Hangar One. The station was renamed NAS Moffett Field, and between 1933 and 1947, U.S. Navy blimps were based there.[15] A number of technology firms had set up shop in the area around Moffett Field to serve the Navy. When the Navy gave up its airship ambitions and moved most of its west coast operations to San Diego, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA, forerunner of NASA) took over portions of Moffett Field for aeronautics research. Many of the original companies stayed, while new ones moved in. The immediate area was soon filled with aerospace firms, such as Lockheed, which was Silicon Valley's largest employer from the 1950s into 1980s.[16]
+
+The Bay Area was an early center of ham radio with about 10% of the operators in the United States. William Eitel, Jack McCullough, and Charles Litton, who together pioneered vacuum tube manufacturing in the Bay Area, were hobbyists with training in technology gained locally who participated in the development of shortwave radio by the ham radio hobby. High frequency, and especially, Very high frequency, VHF, transmission in the 10-meter band, required higher quality power tubes than were manufactured by the consortium of RCA, Western Electric, General Electric, Westinghouse which controlled vacuum tube manufacture. Litton, founder of Litton Industries, pioneered manufacturing techniques which resulted in the award of wartime contracts to manufacture transmitting tubes for radar to Eitel-McCullough, a San Bruno firm, which manufactured power-grid tubes for radio amateurs and aircraft radio equipment.[17]
+
+A union organizing drive in 1939–1940 at Eitel-McCullough by the strong Bay Area labor movement was fought off by adoption of a strategy of welfare capitalism which included pensions and other generous benefits, profit sharing, and such extras as a medical clinic and a cafeteria. An atmosphere of cooperation and collaboration was established.[18] Successes have been few and far between[19] for union organizing drives by UE and others in subsequent years.[20]
+
+On October 4, 1957 the Soviet Union launched the first space satellite, Sputnik, which sparked fear that the Soviet Union was pulling ahead technologically. After President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act (NASA), he turned to Fairchild Semiconductor,[further explanation needed] then the only company in the world that was able to make transistors. The president funded Fairchild's project,[further explanation needed] which was highly successful.[21]
+
+Stanford University, its affiliates, and graduates have played a major role in the development of this area.[22] Some examples include the work of Lee De Forest with his invention of a pioneering vacuum tube called the Audion and the oscilloscopes of Hewlett-Packard.
+
+A very powerful sense of regional solidarity accompanied the rise of Silicon Valley. From the 1890s, Stanford University's leaders saw its mission as service to the (American) West and shaped the school accordingly. At the same time, the perceived exploitation of the West at the hands of eastern interests fueled booster-like attempts to build self-sufficient local industry. Thus, regionalism helped align Stanford's interests with those of the area's high-tech firms for the first fifty years of Silicon Valley's development.[23]
+
+After World War II, Frederick Terman, as Stanford University's dean of the school of engineering, encouraged faculty and graduates to start their own companies. In 1951, Terman spearheaded the creation of Stanford Industrial Park (now Stanford Research Park, an area surrounding Page Mill Road, south west of El Camino Real and extending beyond Foothill Expressway to Arastradero Road), whereby the University leased portions of its land to high-tech firms.[24] He is credited with nurturing companies like Hewlett-Packard, Varian Associates, Eastman Kodak, General Electric, Lockheed Corporation, and other high-tech firms, until what would become Silicon Valley grew up around the Stanford University campus.
+
+In 1956, William Shockley, the co-inventor of the first working transistor (with John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain), moved from New Jersey to Mountain View, California, to start Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory to live closer to his ailing mother in Palo Alto. Shockley's work served as the basis for many electronic developments for decades.[25][26] Both Fredrick Terman and William Shockley are often called "the father of Silicon Valley".[27][28]
+
+During 1955–1985, solid state technology research and development at Stanford University followed three waves of industrial innovation made possible by support from private corporations, mainly Bell Telephone Laboratories, Shockley Semiconductor, Fairchild Semiconductor, and Xerox PARC. In 1969, the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International), operated one of the four original nodes that comprised ARPANET, predecessor to the Internet.[29]
+
+After World War II, universities were experiencing enormous demand due to returning students. To address the financial demands of Stanford's growth requirements, and to provide local employment opportunities for graduating students, Frederick Terman proposed the leasing of Stanford's lands for use as an office park, named the Stanford Industrial Park (later Stanford Research Park) in the year 1951. Leases were limited to high technology companies. Its first tenant was Varian Associates, founded by Stanford alumni in the 1930s to build military radar components. However, Terman also found venture capital for civilian technology start-ups. One of the major success stories was Hewlett-Packard. Founded in Packard's garage by Stanford graduates Bill Hewlett and David Packard, Hewlett-Packard moved its offices into the Stanford Research Park shortly after 1953. In 1954, Stanford created the Honors Cooperative Program to allow full-time employees of the companies to pursue graduate degrees from the University on a part-time basis. The initial companies signed five-year agreements in which they would pay double the tuition for each student in order to cover the costs. Hewlett-Packard has become the largest personal computer manufacturer in the world, and transformed the home printing market when it released the first thermal drop-on-demand ink jet printer in 1984.[30] Other early tenants included Eastman Kodak, General Electric, and Lockheed.[31]
+
+Up until the late 1950s, germanium was the dominant semiconductor material for transistors and other semiconductor devices. Germanium was initially considered the more effective semiconductor material, as it was able to demonstrate better performance due to higher carrier mobility.[32][33] The relative lack of performance in early silicon semiconductors was due to electrical conductivity being limited by unstable quantum surface states,[34] preventing electricity from reliably penetrating the surface to reach the semiconducting silicon layer.[35][36]
+
+In 1953, William Shockley left Bell Labs in a disagreement over the handling of the invention of the bipolar transistor. After returning to California Institute of Technology for a short while, Shockley moved to Mountain View, California, in 1956, and founded Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory. Unlike many other researchers who used germanium as the semiconductor material, Shockley believed that silicon was the better material for making transistors. Shockley intended to replace the current transistor with a new three-element design (today known as the Shockley diode), but the design was considerably more difficult to build than the "simple" transistor. In 1957, Shockley decided to end research on the silicon transistor. As a result of Shockley's abusive management style, eight engineers left the company to form Fairchild Semiconductor; Shockley referred to them as the "traitorous eight". Two of the original employees of Fairchild Semiconductor, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, would go on to found Intel.[37][38]
+
+In 1957, Mohamed Atalla at Bell Labs developed the process of silicon surface passivation by thermal oxidation,[39][40][33] which electrically stabilized silicon surfaces[41] and reduced the concentration of electronic states at the surface.[40] This enabled silicon to surpass the conductivity and performance of germanium, leading to silicon replacing germanium as the dominant semiconductor material,[33][34] and paving the way for the mass-production of silicon semiconductor devices.[42] This led to Atalla inventing the MOSFET (metal-oxide-silicon field-effect transistor), also known as the MOS transistor, with his colleague Dawon Kahng in 1959.[43] It was the first truly compact transistor that could be miniaturised and mass-produced for a wide range of uses,[44] and is credited with starting the silicon revolution.[34]
+
+The MOSFET was initially overlooked and ignored by Bell Labs in favour of bipolar transistors, which led to Atalla resigning from Bell Labs and joining Hewlett-Packard in 1961.[45] However, the MOSFET generated significant interest at RCA and Fairchild Semiconductor. In late 1960, Karl Zaininger and Charles Meuller fabricated a MOSFET at RCA, and Chih-Tang Sah built an MOS-controlled tetrode at Fairchild. MOS devices were later commercialized by General Microelectronics and Fairchild in 1964.[43] The development of MOS technology became the focus of startup companies in California, such as Fairchild and Intel, fuelling the technological and economic growth of what would later be called Silicon Valley.[46]
+
+On April 23, 1963, J.C.R. Licklider, the first director of the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) at The Pentagon's ARPA issued an office memorandum addressed to Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network. It rescheduled a meeting in Palo Alto regarding his vision of a computer network, which he imagined as an electronic commons open to all, the main and essential medium of informational interaction for governments, institutions, corporations, and individuals.[47][48][49][50] As head of IPTO from 1962 to 1964, "Licklider initiated three of the most important developments in information technology: the creation of computer science departments at several major universities, time-sharing, and networking."[50] By the late 1960s, his promotion of the concept had inspired a primitive version of his vision called ARPANET, which expanded into a network of networks in the 1970s that became the Internet.[49]
+
+The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and other factors such as the mass exodus by Vietnamese boat people resulted in significant immigration, particularly by Asians, Latinos, and Portuguese, to Silicon Valley where they contributed to both the high-tech and production workforce.[51] The Asian-American population in Santa Clara County rose from 43,000 in 1970 to 430,000 in 2000. During the same period the Latino population grew to 24% in the county and 30% in San Jose. The African-American population in the county remained steady but grew slightly to about 5%.[52] Expansion of the H-1B visa in 1990 also played a role.[53]
+
+Following the 1959 inventions of the monolithic integrated circuit (IC) chip by Robert Noyce at Fairchild, and the MOSFET (MOS transistor) by Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs,[43] Atalla first proposed the concept of the MOS integrated circuit (MOS IC) chip in 1960,[44] and then the first commercial MOS IC was introduced by General Microelectronics in 1964.[54] The development of the MOS IC led to the invention of the microprocessor,[55] incorporating the functions of a computer's central processing unit (CPU) on a single integrated circuit.[56] The first single-chip microprocessor was the Intel 4004,[57] designed and realized by Federico Faggin along with Ted Hoff, Masatoshi Shima and Stanley Mazor at Intel in 1971.[55][58] In April 1974, Intel released the Intel 8080,[59] a "computer on a chip", "the first truly usable microprocessor".
+
+The Homebrew Computer Club was an informal group of electronic enthusiasts and technically minded hobbyists who gathered to trade parts, circuits, and information pertaining to DIY construction of computing devices.[60] It was started by Gordon French and Fred Moore who met at the Community Computer Center in Menlo Park. They both were interested in maintaining a regular, open forum for people to get together to work on making computers more accessible to everyone.[61]
+
+The first meeting was held as of March 1975 at French's garage in Menlo Park, San Mateo County, California; which was on occasion of the arrival of the MITS Altair microcomputer, the first unit sent to the area for review by People's Computer Company.  Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs credit that first meeting with inspiring them to design the original Apple I and (successor) Apple II computers. As a result, the first preview of the Apple I was given at the Homebrew Computer Club.[62] Subsequent meetings were held at an auditorium at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.[63]
+
+By the early 1970s, there were many semiconductor companies in the area, computer firms using their devices, and programming and service companies serving both. Industrial space was plentiful and housing was still inexpensive. Growth during this era was fueled by the emergence of venture capital on Sand Hill Road, beginning with Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital in 1972; the availability of venture capital exploded after the successful $1.3 billion IPO of Apple Computer in December 1980. Since the 1980s, Silicon Valley has been home to the largest concentration of venture capital firms in the world.[64]
+
+In 1971 Don Hoefler traced the origins of Silicon Valley firms, including via investments from Fairchild's eight co-founders.[9][65] The key investors in Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital were from the same group, directly leading to Tech Crunch 2014 estimate of 92 public firms of 130 related listed firms then worth over US$2.1 Trillion with over 2,000 firms traced back to them.[66]
+
+Prior to 1970, most Northern California lawyers were based in San Francisco, especially the experienced patent attorneys whom the high-tech industry needed to protect its intellectual property.  During the 1970s, lawyers began to follow venture capitalists down the Peninsula to serve the booming high-tech industry in Silicon Valley.  One sign of the rapid expansion of Silicon Valley legal services was that Palo Alto law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati "expanded from a dozen attorneys in 1975 to more than 700 by 2000".[67]  During this era, law firms evolved from their "conventional role" as protectors of intellectual property into business advisers, intermediaries, and dealmakers, and thereby acquired "unusual prominence" in Silicon Valley.[64]
+
+Although semiconductors are still a major component of the area's economy, Silicon Valley has been most famous in recent years for innovations in software and Internet services. Silicon Valley has significantly influenced computer operating systems, software, and user interfaces.
+
+Using money from NASA, the US Air Force, and ARPA, Doug Engelbart invented the mouse and hypertext-based collaboration tools in the mid-1960s and 1970s while at Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International), first publicly demonstrated in 1968 in what is now known as The Mother of All Demos.  Engelbart's Augmentation Research Center at SRI was also involved in launching the ARPANET (precursor to the Internet) and starting the Network Information Center (now InterNIC). Xerox hired some of Engelbart's best researchers beginning in the early 1970s. In turn, in the 1970s and 1980s, Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) played a pivotal role in object-oriented programming, graphical user interfaces (GUIs), Ethernet, PostScript, and laser printers.
+
+While Xerox marketed equipment using its technologies, for the most part its technologies flourished elsewhere. The diaspora of Xerox inventions led directly to 3Com and Adobe Systems, and indirectly to Cisco, Apple Computer, and Microsoft. Apple's Macintosh GUI was largely a result of Steve Jobs' visit to PARC and the subsequent hiring of key personnel.[68] Cisco's impetus stemmed from the need to route a variety of protocols over Stanford University's Ethernet campus network.[69]
+
+Commercial use of the Internet became practical and grew slowly throughout the early 1990s.
+
+In 1995, commercial use of the Internet grew substantially and the initial wave of internet startups, Amazon.com, eBay, and the predecessor to Craigslist began operations.[70]
+
+Silicon Valley is generally considered to have been the center of the dot-com bubble, which started in the mid-1990s and collapsed after the NASDAQ stock market began to decline dramatically in April 2000. During the bubble era, real estate prices reached unprecedented levels. For a brief time, Sand Hill Road was home to the most expensive commercial real estate in the world, and the booming economy resulted in severe traffic congestion.
+
+After the dot-com crash, Silicon Valley continues to maintain its status as one of the top research and development centers in the world. A 2006 The Wall Street Journal story found that 12 of the 20 most inventive towns in America were in California, and 10 of those were in Silicon Valley.[71] San Jose led the list with 3,867 utility patents filed in 2005, and number two was Sunnyvale, at 1,881 utility patents.[72] Silicon Valley is also home to a significant number of "Unicorn" ventures, referring to startup companies whose valuation has exceeded $1 billion dollars.[73] However, taxes and the cost of living in Silicon Valley have prompted some corporations to gradually transfer their operations to the Midwest or Sun Belt states.[74]
+
+The San Francisco Bay Area has the largest concentration of high-tech companies in the United States, at 387,000 high-tech jobs, of which Silicon Valley accounts for 225,300 high-tech jobs. Silicon Valley has the highest concentration of high-tech workers of any metropolitan area, with 285.9 out of every 1,000 private-sector workers. Silicon Valley has the highest average high-tech salary in the United States at $144,800.[75] Largely a result of the high technology sector, the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area has the most millionaires and the most billionaires in the United States per capita.[76]
+
+The region is the biggest high-tech manufacturing centre in the United States.[77][78] The unemployment rate of the region was 9.4% in January 2009 and has decreased to a record low of 2.7% as of August 2019.[79] Silicon Valley received 41% of all U.S. venture investment in 2011, and 46% in 2012.[80] More traditional industries also recognize the potential of high-tech development, and several car manufacturers have opened offices in Silicon Valley to capitalize on its entrepreneurial ecosystem.[81]
+
+Manufacture of transistors is, or was, the core industry in Silicon Valley. The production workforce[82] was for the most part composed of Asian and Latino immigrants who were paid low wages and worked in hazardous conditions due to the chemicals used in the manufacture of integrated circuits. Technical, engineering, design, and administrative staffs were in large part[83] well compensated.[84]
+
+Silicon Valley has a severe housing shortage, caused by the market imbalance between jobs created and housing units built: from 2010 to 2015, many more jobs have been created than housing units built. (400,000 jobs, 60,000 housing units)[85] This shortage has driven home prices extremely high, far out of the range of production workers.[86] As of 2016 a two-bedroom apartment rented for about $2,500 while the median home price was about $1 million.[85] The Financial Post called Silicon Valley the most expensive U.S. housing region.[87] Homelessness is a problem with housing beyond the reach of middle-income residents; there is little shelter space other than in San Jose which, as of 2015, was making an effort to develop shelters by renovating old hotels.[88]
+
+The Economist also attributes the high cost of living to the success of the industries in this region. Although, this rift between high and low salaries is driving many residents out who can no longer afford to live there. In the Bay Area, the number of residents planning to leave within the next several years has had an increase of 12% since 2016, from 34% to 46%.[89][90]
+
+Thousands of high technology companies are headquartered in Silicon Valley. Among those, the following are in the Fortune 1000:
+
+Additional notable companies headquartered (or with a significant presence) in Silicon Valley include (some defunct or subsumed):
+
+Depending on what geographic regions are included in the meaning of the term, the population of Silicon Valley is between 3.5 and 4 million. A 1999 study by AnnaLee Saxenian for the Public Policy Institute of California reported that a third of Silicon Valley scientists and engineers were immigrants and that nearly a quarter of Silicon Valley's high-technology firms since 1980 were run by Chinese (17 percent) or Indian descent CEOs (7 percent).[98] There is a stratum of well-compensated technical employees and managers, including 10s of thousands of "single-digit millionaires". This income and range of assets will support a middle-class lifestyle in Silicon Valley.[99]
+
+In November 2006, the University of California, Davis released a report analyzing business leadership by women within the state.[100] The report showed that although 103 of the 400 largest public companies headquartered in California were located in Santa Clara County (the most of all counties), only 8.8% of Silicon Valley companies had women CEOs.[101]:4,7 This was the lowest percentage in the state.[102] (San Francisco County had 19.2% and Marin County had 18.5%.)[101]
+
+Silicon Valley tech leadership positions are occupied almost exclusively by men.[103] This is also represented in the number of new companies founded by women as well as the number of women-lead startups that receive venture capital funding. Wadhwa said he believes that a contributing factor is a lack of parental encouragement to study science and engineering.[104] He also cited a lack of women role models and noted that most famous tech leaders—like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg—are men.[103]
+
+In 2014, tech companies Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, Apple, and others, released corporate transparency reports that offered detailed employee breakdowns. In May, Google said 17% of its tech employees worldwide were women, and, in the U.S., 1% of its tech workers were black and 2% were Hispanic.[105] June 2014 brought reports from Yahoo! and Facebook. Yahoo! said that 15% of its tech jobs were held by women, 2% of its tech employees were black and 4% Hispanic.[106] Facebook reported that 15% of its tech workforce was female, and 3% was Hispanic and 1% was black.[107] In August, Apple reported that 80% of its global tech staff was male and that, in the U.S., 54% of its tech jobs were staffed by Caucasians and 23% by Asians.[108] Soon after, USA Today published an article about Silicon Valley's lack of tech-industry diversity, pointing out that it is largely white or Asian, and male. "Blacks and Hispanics are largely absent," it reported, "and women are underrepresented in Silicon Valley—from giant companies to start-ups to venture capital firms."[109] Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson said of improving diversity in the tech industry, "This is the next step in the civil rights movement"[110] while T.J. Rodgers has argued against Jackson's assertions.
+
+As of October 2014, some high-profile Silicon Valley firms were working actively to prepare and recruit women. Bloomberg reported that Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft attended the 20th annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference to actively recruit and potentially hire female engineers and technology experts.[111] The same month, the second annual Platform Summit was held to discuss increasing racial and gender diversity in tech.[112] As of April 2015 experienced women were engaged in creation of venture capital firms which leveraged women's perspectives in funding of startups.[113]
+
+After UC Davis published its Study of California Women Business Leaders in November 2006,[101] some San Jose Mercury News readers dismissed the possibility that sexism contributed in making Silicon Valley's leadership gender gap the highest in the state. A January 2015 issue of Newsweek magazine featured an article detailing reports of sexism and misogyny in Silicon Valley.[114] The article's author, Nina Burleigh, asked, "Where were all these offended people when women like Heidi Roizen published accounts of having a venture capitalist stick her hand in his pants under a table while a deal was being discussed?"[115]
+
+Silicon Valley firms' board of directors are composed of 15.7% women compared with 20.9% in the S&P 100.[116]
+
+The 2012 lawsuit Pao v. Kleiner Perkins was filed in San Francisco County Superior Court by executive Ellen Pao for gender discrimination against her employer, Kleiner Perkins.[117] The case went to trial in February 2015. On March 27, 2015 the jury found in favor of Kleiner Perkins on all counts.[118] Nevertheless, the case, which had wide press coverage, resulted in major advances in consciousness of gender discrimination on the part of venture capital and technology firms and their women employees.[119][120] Two other cases have been filed against Facebook and Twitter.[121]
+
+Funding for public schools in upscale Silicon Valley communities such as Woodside is often supplemented by grants from private foundations set up for that purpose and funded by local residents. Schools in less affluent areas such as East Palo Alto must depend on state funding.[122]
+
+The following Santa Clara County cities are traditionally considered to be in Silicon Valley (in alphabetical order):[citation needed]
+
+The geographical boundaries of Silicon Valley have changed over the years, traditionally Silicon Valley is known as Santa Clara County, southern San Mateo County and southern Alameda county.[123] However, over the years this geographical area has been expanded to include San Francisco County, Contra Costa County, and the northern parts of Alameda County and San Mateo County, this shift has occurred due to the expansion in the local economy and the development of new technologies.[123][124]
+
+The United States Department of Labor's Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) program defined Silicon Valley as the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz.[125]
+
+In 2015, MIT researchers developed a novel method for measuring which towns are home to startups with higher growth potential and this defines Silicon Valley to center on the municipalities of Menlo Park, Mountain View, Palo Alto, and Sunnyvale.[126][127]
+
+In 1980, Intelligent Machines Journal changed its name to InfoWorld, and, with offices in Palo Alto, began covering the emergence of the microcomputer industry in the valley.[136]
+
+Local and national media cover Silicon Valley and its companies. CNN, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg News operate Silicon Valley bureaus out of Palo Alto. Public broadcaster KQED (TV) and KQED-FM, as well as the Bay Area's local ABC station KGO-TV, operate bureaus in San Jose. KNTV, NBC's local Bay Area affiliate "NBC Bay Area", is located in San Jose. Produced from this location is the nationally distributed TV Show "Tech Now" as well as the CNBC Silicon Valley bureau. San Jose-based media serving Silicon Valley include the San Jose Mercury News daily and the Metro Silicon Valley weekly.
+
+Specialty media include El Observador and the San Jose / Silicon Valley Business Journal. Most of the Bay Area's other major TV stations, newspapers, and media operate in San Francisco or Oakland. Patch.com operates various web portals, providing local news, discussion and events for residents of Silicon Valley.  Mountain View has a public nonprofit station, KMVT-15.  KMVT-15's shows include Silicon Valley Education News (EdNews)-Edward Tico Producer.
+
+Some appearances in media, in order by release date:
+
+Coordinates: 37°24′N 122°00′W / 37.4°N 122.0°W / 37.4; -122.0

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@@ -0,0 +1,78 @@
+
+
+sister: Tarsiiformes
+
+Anthropoids
+monkeys (cladistically incl. apes)
+
+The simians or anthropoids or higher primates are an infraorder (Simiiformes) of primates containing the parvorders Platyrrhini and Catarrhini, which consist of the superfamilies Cercopithecoidea and Hominoidea (including the genus Homo).
+
+The simians are sister to the tarsiers, together forming the haplorhines. The radiation occurred about 60 million years ago (during the Cenozoic era); 40 million years ago, simians from Afro-Arabia colonized South America, giving rise to the New World monkeys. The remaining simians (catarrhines) split 25 million years ago into Old World monkeys and apes (including humans).
+
+In earlier classification, New World and Old World monkeys, apes, and humans – collectively known as simians or anthropoids – were grouped under Anthropoidea (/ˌænθrəˈpɔɪdiə/; Ancient Greek: άνθρωπος, romanized: anthropos, lit. 'human'; also called anthropoids), while the strepsirrhines and tarsiers were grouped under the suborder "Prosimii". Under modern classification, the tarsiers and simians are grouped under the suborder Haplorhini, while the strepsirrhines are placed in suborder Strepsirrhini.[3] Strong genetic evidence for this is that five SINEs are common to all haplorhines whilst absent in strepsirrhines - even one being coincidental between tarsiers and simians would be quite unlikely.[4] Despite this preferred taxonomic division, "prosimian" is still regularly found in textbooks and the academic literature because of familiarity, a condition likened to the use of the metric system in the sciences and the use of customary units elsewhere in the United States.[5] In the Anthropoidea, evidence indicates that the Old World and New World primates went through parallel evolution.[6]
+
+Primatology, paleoanthropology, and other related fields are split on their usage of the synonymous infraorder names, Simiiformes and Anthropoidea. According to Robert Hoffstetter (and supported by Colin Groves), the term Simiiformes has priority over Anthropoidea because the taxonomic term Simii by van der Hoeven, from which it is constructed, dates to 1833.[1][7] In contrast, Anthropoidea by Mivart dates to 1864,[8] while Simiiformes by Haeckel dates to 1866, leading to counterclaims of priority.[1] Hoffstetter also argued that Simiiformes is also constructed like a proper infraorder name (ending in "iformes"), whereas Anthropoidea ends in -"oidea", which is reserved for superfamilies. He also noted that Anthropoidea is too easily confused with "anthropoïdes", which translates to "apes" from several languages.[7]
+
+Extant simians are split into three distinct groups. The New World monkeys in parvorder Platyrrhini split from the rest of the simian line about 40 million years ago (Mya), leaving the parvorder Catarrhini occupying the Old World. This group split about 25 Mya between the Cercopithecidae and the apes.
+
+Some lines of extinct simian also are either placed into the Eosimiidae (to reflect their Eocene origin) and sometimes in Amphipithecidae, thought to originate in the Early Oligocene. Additionally, Phileosimias is sometimes placed in the Eosimiidae and sometimes categorised separately.[9]
+
+Hominoidea
+
+Cercopithecoidea
+
+Platyrrhini
+
+Tarsiiformes
+
+Strepsirrhini
+
+The following is the listing of the various simian families, and their placement in the order Primates:[1][2]
+
+Below is a cladogram with some of the extinct simian species with the more modern species emerging within the Eosimiidae. The simians originated in Asia, while the crown simians were in Afro-Arabia.[10][11][12][13][14] It is indicated approximately how many Mya the clades diverged into newer clades.
+
+Tarsiiformes
+
+Muangthanhinius (†32 Mya)
+
+Gatanthropus micros (†30)
+
+Bugtilemur (†29)
+
+Ekgmowechashala
+
+Eosimias (†40)
+
+Phenocopethicus (†42)
+
+Bahinia [fr] (†32)
+
+Nosmips aenigmaticus (†37)
+
+Phileosimias (†46)
+
+Amphipithecidae (†35)
+
+Parapithecoidea (†30)
+
+Proteopithecidae (†34)
+
+Perupithecus (†)
+
+Chilecebus (†20)
+
+Tremacebus (†20)
+
+Homunculus (†16)
+
+Dolichocebus (†20)
+
+Branisella (†26)
+
+Crown Platyrrhini (New World Monkeys)
+
+Catarrhini
+
+Usually the Ekgmowechashalidae are considered to be Strepsirrhini, not Haplorhini.[15] A 2018 study places Eosimiidae as a sister to the crown haplorhini.[16]
+
+In a section of their 2010 assessment of the evolution of anthropoids (simians) entitled "What Is An Anthropoid", Williams, Kay, and Kirk set out a list of biological features common to all or most anthropoids, including genetic similarities, similarities in eye location and the muscles close to the eyes, internal similarities between ears, dental similarities, and similarities on foot bone structure.[4] The earliest anthropods were small primates with varied diets, forward-facing eyes, acute color vision for daytime lifestyles, and brains devoted more to vision and less to smell.[4] Living simians in both the New World and the Old World have larger brains than other primates, but they evolved these larger brains independently.[4]

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+
+
+Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios Ponte-Andrade y Blanco[1] (24 July 1783 – 17 December 1830), generally known as Simón Bolívar (Spanish: [siˈmom boˈliβaɾ] (listen),[a] English: /ˈbɒlɪvər, -vɑːr/ BOL-iv-ər, -⁠ar[2] also US: /ˈboʊlɪvɑːr/ BOH-liv-ar[3]) and also colloquially as El Libertador,[4]  or the Liberator, was a Venezuelan military and political leader who led what are currently the countries of Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Panama to independence from the Spanish Empire.
+
+Bolívar was born into a wealthy family and as was common for the heirs of upper-class families in his day, was sent to be educated abroad at a young age, arriving in Spain when he was 16 and later moving to France. While in Europe he was introduced to the ideas of the Enlightenment, which later motivated him to overthrow the reigning Spanish in colonial South America. Taking advantage of the disorder in Spain prompted by the Peninsular War, Bolívar began his campaign for independence in 1808.[5] The campaign for the independence of New Granada was consolidated with the victory at the Battle of Boyacá on 7 August 1819. He established an organized national congress within three years. Despite a number of hindrances, including the arrival of an unprecedentedly large Spanish expeditionary force, the revolutionaries eventually prevailed, culminating in the patriot victory at the Battle of Carabobo in 1821, which effectively made Venezuela an independent country.
+
+Following this triumph over the Spanish monarchy, Bolívar participated in the foundation of the first union of independent nations in Latin America, Gran Colombia, of which he was president from 1819 to 1830. Through further military campaigns, he ousted Spanish rulers from Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, the last of which was named after him. He was simultaneously president of Gran Colombia (present-day Venezuela, Colombia, Panama and Ecuador), Peru, and Bolivia, but soon after, his second-in-command, Antonio José de Sucre, was appointed president of Bolivia. Bolívar aimed at a strong and united Spanish America able to cope not only with the threats emanating from Spain and the European Holy Alliance but also with the emerging power of the United States. At the peak of his power, Bolívar ruled over a vast territory from the Argentine border to the Caribbean Sea.
+
+Bolívar fought 100 battles, of which 79 were important ones, and during his campaigns rode on horseback 70,000 kilometers, which is 10 times more than Hannibal, three times more than Napoleon, and twice as much as Alexander the Great.[6] Bolívar is viewed as a national icon in much of modern South America, and is considered one of the great heroes of the Hispanic independence movements of the early 19th century, along with José Miguel Carrera, José de San Martín, Francisco de Miranda and others. Towards the end of his life, Bolívar despaired of the situation in his native region, with the famous quote "all who served the revolution have plowed the sea".[7]:450 In an address to the Constituent Congress of the Republic of Colombia, Bolívar stated "Fellow citizens! I blush to say this: Independence is the only benefit we have acquired, to the detriment of all the rest."[8]
+
+The surname Bolívar originated with aristocrats from La Puebla de Bolívar, a small village in the Basque Country of Spain.[9] Bolívar's father came from the female line of the Ardanza family.[10][11] His maternal grandmother was descended from families from the Canary Islands.[b]
+
+The Bolívars settled in Venezuela in the 16th century. Bolívar's first South American ancestor was Simón de Bolívar (or Simon de Bolibar; the spelling was not standardized until the 19th century), who lived and worked in Santo Domingo (present-day Dominican Republic) from 1559 to 1560 and where his son Simón de Bolívar y Castro was born. When the governor was reassigned to Venezuela by the Spanish Crown in 1569, Simón de Bolívar went with him. As an early settler in Spain's Venezuela Province, he became prominent in the local society, and he and his descendants were granted estates, encomiendas, and positions in the local cabildo.[12]
+
+When Caracas Cathedral was built in 1569, the Bolívar family had one of the first dedicated side chapels. The majority of the wealth of Simón de Bolívar's descendants came from the estates. The most important was a sugar plantation with an encomienda that provided the labor needed to run the estate.[13] Another portion of the Bolívars' wealth came from silver, gold, and copper mines. Small gold deposits were first mined in Venezuela in 1669, leading to the discovery of much more extensive copper deposits. From his mother's side (the Palacios family), Bolívar inherited the Aroa copper mines at Cocorote. Native American and African slaves provided the majority of the labor in these mines.[14]
+
+Toward the end of the 17th century, copper mining became so prominent in Venezuela that the metal became known as cobre Caracas ("Caracas copper"). Many of the mines became the property of the Bolívar family. Bolívar's grandfather, Juan de Bolívar y Martínez de Villegas, paid 22,000 ducats to the monastery at Santa Maria de Montserrat in 1728 for a title of nobility that had been granted by King Philip V of Spain for its maintenance. The crown never issued the patent of nobility, and so the purchase became the subject of lawsuits that were still in progress during Bolívar's lifetime, when independence from Spain made the point moot. (If the lawsuits had been successful, Bolívar's older brother, Juan Vicente, would have become the Marquess of San Luis and Viscount of Cocorote.) Bolívar ultimately devoted his personal fortune to the revolution. Having been one of the wealthiest persons within the Spanish American world at the beginning of the revolution, he died in poverty.[7]
+
+Simón Bolívar was born in a house in Caracas, Captaincy General of Venezuela, on 24 July 1783.[7]:6 He was baptized as Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios. His mother was María de la Concepción Palacios y Blanco, and his father was Colonel Don Juan Vicente Bolívar y Ponte. He had two older sisters and a brother: María Antonia, Juana, and Juan Vicente. Another sister, María del Carmen, died at birth.[1]
+
+When Bolívar was an infant, he was cared for by Doña Ines Manceba de Miyares and the family's slave, Hipólita. A couple of years later, he returned to the care of his parents, but this experience would have a major effect on his life. His father died before Bolívar's third birthday to tuberculosis,[1] and his mother died when he was almost nine.
+
+After his mother's death, Bolívar was placed in the custody of an instructor, Miguel José Sanz, but this relationship did not work out and he was sent back home. He went on to receive private lessons from the renowned professors Andrés Bello, Guillermo Pelgrón, Jose Antonio Negrete, Fernando Vides, Father Andújar, and Don Simón Rodríguez, formerly known as Simón Carreño. Don Simón Rodríguez became Bolívar's teacher, friend and mentor. He taught him how to swim and ride horses, as well as about liberty, human rights, politics, history, and sociology.[15] Later in life, Rodríguez was pivotal in Bolívar's decision to start the revolution, instilling in him the ideas of liberty, enlightenment, and freedom.[15] In the meantime, Bolívar was mostly cared for by his nurse, the slave Hipólita, whom he later called "the only mother I have known".[16]
+
+When Bolívar was fourteen, Don Simón Rodríguez was forced to leave the country after being accused of involvement in a conspiracy against the Spanish government in Caracas. Bolívar then entered the military academy of the Milicias de Aragua.[15] In 1800, he was sent to Spain to follow his military studies in Madrid, where he remained until 1802. Back in Europe in 1804, he lived in France and traveled to different countries. While in Milan, Bolívar witnessed the coronation of Napoleon as King of Italy (a kingdom in personal union with France in modern northern Italy), an event that left a profound impression on him. Even if he disagreed with the crowning, he was highly sensitive to the popular veneration inspired by the hero.[15]
+
+Bolívar returned to Venezuela in 1807. After a coup on 19 April 1810, Venezuela achieved de facto independence when the Supreme Junta of Caracas was established and the colonial administrators deposed. The Supreme Junta sent a delegation to Great Britain to get British recognition and aid. This delegation presided by Bolívar also included two future Venezuelan notables Andrés Bello and Luis López Méndez. The trio met with Francisco de Miranda and persuaded him to return to his native land.
+
+In 1811, a delegation from the Supreme Junta, also including Bolívar, and a crowd of commoners enthusiastically received Miranda in La Guaira.[17]  During the insurgence war conducted by Miranda, Bolívar was promoted to colonel and was made commandant of Puerto Cabello the following year, 1812. As Royalist Frigate Captain Domingo de Monteverde was advancing into republican territory from the west, Bolívar lost control of San Felipe Castle along with its ammunition stores on 30 June 1812. Bolívar then retreated to his estate in San Mateo.
+
+Miranda saw the republican cause as lost and signed a capitulation agreement with Monteverde on 25 July, an action that Bolívar and other revolutionary officers deemed treasonous. In one of Bolívar's most morally dubious acts, he and others arrested Miranda and handed him over to the Spanish Royal Army at the port of La Guaira.[18] For his apparent services to the Royalist cause, Monteverde granted Bolívar a passport, and Bolívar left for Curaçao on 27 August.[19] It must be said, though, that Bolívar protested to the Spanish authorities about the reasons why he handled Miranda, insisting that he was not lending a service to the Crown but punishing a defector.[citation needed] In 1813, he was given a military command in Tunja, New Granada (modern-day Colombia), under the direction of the Congress of United Provinces of New Granada, which had formed out of the juntas established in 1810.
+
+This was the beginning of the Admirable Campaign. On 24 May, Bolívar entered Mérida, where he was proclaimed El Libertador ("The Liberator").[20] This was followed by the occupation of Trujillo on 9 June. Six days later, and as a result of Spanish massacres on independence supporters,  Bolívar dictated his famous "Decree of War to the Death", allowing the killing of any Spaniard not actively supporting independence. Caracas was retaken on 6 August 1813, and Bolívar was ratified as El Libertador, establishing the Second Republic of Venezuela. The following year, because of the rebellion of José Tomás Boves and the fall of the republic, Bolívar returned to New Granada, where he commanded a force for the United Provinces.
+
+His forces entered Bogotá in 1814 and recaptured the city from the dissenting republican forces of Cundinamarca. Bolívar intended to march into Cartagena and enlist the aid of local forces in order to capture the Royalist town of Santa Marta. In 1815, however, after a number of political and military disputes with the government of Cartagena, Bolívar fled to Jamaica, where he was denied support. After an assassination attempt in Jamaica,[21] he fled to Haiti, where he was granted protection. He befriended Alexandre Pétion, the president of the recently independent southern republic (as opposed to the Kingdom of Haiti in the north), and petitioned him for aid.[20] He provided the South American leader with a multitude of provisions consisting of ships, men and weapons; only demanding in return that Bolívar promise to abolish slavery in any of the lands he took back from Spain. The pledge would indeed be upheld, and the abolition of slavery in the liberated territories would be regarded as one Bolívar's main achievements.[22]
+
+—Simón Bolívar[23][24]
+
+In 1816, with Haitian soldiers and vital material support, Bolívar landed in Venezuela and fulfilled his promise to Pétion to free Spanish America's slaves on 2 June 1816.[7]:186
+
+The Expedition of the Keys was led by Bolivar and fought for Venezuela in the east, while the Guyana Campaign started in the west and was led by Manuel Piar.
+
+In July 1817, on a second expedition, he captured Angostura after defeating the counter-attack of Miguel de la Torre.[7]:192–201 However, Venezuela remained a captaincy of Spain after the victory in 1818 by Pablo Morillo in the Second Battle of La Puerta (es).[7]:212
+
+After capturing Angostura, and an unexpected victory in New Grada, Bolivar set up a temporary government in Venezuela. This was the start of the Third Republic of Venezuela. With this Bolivar created the Congress of Angostura which following the wars would establish Gran Colombia, a state which includes today's territories of Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela.
+
+To honor Bolivar's efforts to help Venezuela during its independence movement, the city of Angostura was renamed to Ciudad Bolivar in 1846.
+
+On 15 February 1819, Bolívar was able to open the Venezuelan Second National Congress in Angostura, in which he was elected president and Francisco Antonio Zea was elected vice president.[7]:222–25 Bolívar then decided that he would first fight for the independence of New Granada, to gain resources of the viceroyalty, intending later to consolidate the independence of Venezuela.[25]
+
+The campaign for the independence of New Granada, which included the crossing of the Andes mountain range, one of history's great military feats, was consolidated with the victory at the Battle of Boyacá on 7 August 1819.[7]:233  Bolívar returned to Angostura, when congress passed a law forming a greater Republic of Colombia on 17 December, making Bolívar president and Zea vice president, with Francisco de Paula Santander vice president on the New Granada side, and Juan Germán Roscio vice president on the Venezuela side.[7]:246–47
+
+Morillo was left in control of Caracas and the coastal highlands.[7]:248 After the restoration of the Cádiz Constitution, Morillo ratified two treaties with Bolívar on 25 November 1820, calling for a six-month armistice and recognizing Bolívar as president of the republic.[7]:254–55  Bolívar and Morillo met in San Fernando de Apure on 27 November, after which Morillo left Venezuela for Spain, leaving La Torre in command.[7]:255–57
+
+From his newly consolidated base of power, Bolívar launched outright independence campaigns in Venezuela and Ecuador. These campaigns concluded with the victory at the Battle of Carabobo, after which Bolívar triumphantly entered Caracas on 29 June 1821.[7]:267 On 7 September 1821, Gran Colombia (a state covering much of modern Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela) was created, with Bolívar as president and Santander as vice president.
+
+Bolívar followed with the Battle of Bombona and the Battle of Pichincha, after which he entered Quito on 16 June 1822.[7]:287 On 26 and 27 July 1822, Bolívar held the Guayaquil Conference with the Argentine General José de San Martín, who had received the title of "Protector of Peruvian Freedom" in August 1821 after partially liberating Peru from the Spanish.[7]:295 Thereafter, Bolívar took over the task of fully liberating Peru.
+
+The Peruvian congress named him dictator of Peru on 10 February 1824, which allowed Bolívar to reorganize completely the political and military administration. Assisted by Antonio José de Sucre, Bolívar decisively defeated the Spanish cavalry at the Battle of Junín on 6 August 1824. Sucre destroyed the still numerically superior remnants of the Spanish forces at Ayacucho on 9 December 1824.
+
+According to British historian Robert Harvey:
+
+Bolívar's achievements in Peru had been as staggering as any in his career of a year, from holding a strip of the country's north coast while himself nearly moribund, he and Sucre had taken on and defeated an army of 18,000 men and secured a country the size of nearly all of Western Europe...the investment of personal energy, the distances covered and the four army expeditions across supposedly impassable mountain ranges had qualified him for superhuman status...His stamina and military achievements put him at the forefront of the global heroes of history.[26]
+
+Writing to United States Secretary of State John Quincy Adams in 1824, United States Consul in Peru William Tudor stated:
+
+Unfortunately for Peru, the invaders who came to proclaim liberty and independence were cruel, rapacious, unprincipled and incapable. Their mismanagement, their profligacy, and their thirst for plunder soon alienated the affections of the inhabitants.[27]
+
+Even though Bolívar condemned the corrupt practices of the Spanish, he ordered some churches stripped of their decorations.[28] On 19 March 1824, José Gabriel Pérez wrote to Antonio José de Sucre about the orders given to him by Bolívar;[29] Pérez talked about "all the ordinary and extraordinary means" that should be applied to assure the subsistence of the patriot army. Indeed, Pérez said that Bolívar issued instructions to take from churches "all golden and silver jewels" in order to coin them and pay war expenditures. Days later, Bolívar himself said to Sucre that there would be a complete lack of resources unless severe actions were taken against "the jewels of the churches, everywhere".[30]
+
+On 6 August 1825, at the Congress of Upper Peru, the "Republic of Bolivia" was created.[7]:346 Bolívar is thus one of the few people to have a country named after him. Bolívar returned to Caracas on 12 January 1827, and then back to Bogotá.[7]:369, 378, 408
+
+Bolívar had great difficulties maintaining control of the vast Gran Colombia. In 1826, internal divisions sparked dissent throughout the nation, and regional uprisings erupted in Venezuela. The new South American union had revealed its fragility and appeared to be on the verge of collapse. To preserve the union, an amnesty was declared and an arrangement was reached with the Venezuelan rebels, but this increased the political dissent in neighboring New Granada. In an attempt to keep the nation together as a single entity, Bolívar called for a constitutional convention at Ocaña in March 1828.[31]
+
+Bolívar thought that a federation like the one founded in the United States was unworkable in the Spanish America.[7]:106, 166 For this reason, and to prevent a break-up, Bolívar sought to implement a more centralist model of government in Gran Colombia, including some or all of the elements of the Bolivian constitution he had written, which included a lifetime presidency with the ability to select a successor (although this presidency was to be held in check by an intricate system of balances).[7]:351
+
+This move was considered controversial in New Granada and was one of the reasons for the deliberations, which met from 9 April to 10 June 1828. The convention almost ended up drafting a document which would have implemented a radically federalist form of government, which would have greatly reduced the powers of a central administration. The federalist faction was able to command a majority for the draft of a new constitution which has definite federal characteristics despite its ostensibly centralist outline. Unhappy with what would be the ensuing result, pro-Bolívar delegates withdrew from the convention, leaving it moribund.[32]
+
+Two months after the failure of this congress to write a new constitution, Bolívar was declared president-liberator in Colombia's "Organic Decree".[7]:394 He considered this a temporary measure, as a means to reestablish his authority and save the republic, although it increased dissatisfaction and anger among his political opponents.[7]:408 An assassination attempt on 25 September 1828 failed (in Spanish it is indeed known as the Noche Septembrina), thanks to the help of his lover, Manuela Sáenz.[7]:399–405 Bolívar afterward described Manuela as "Liberatrix of the Liberator".[7]:403 Dissent continued, and uprisings occurred in New Granada, Venezuela, and Ecuador during the next two years.[32]
+
+Bolivar initially tried to forgive those who were considered conspirators, members of the "Santander" faction. Eventually it was decided to submit them to martial justice, after which those accused of being directly involved were executed, some without having their guilt fully established. Santander, who had known in advance of the conspiracy and had not directly opposed it because of his differences with Bolivar, was condemned to death. Bolivar, though, commuted the sentence.
+
+After the facts, Bolivar continued to govern in a rarefied environment, cornered by fractional disputes. Uprisings occurred in New Granada, Venezuela, and Ecuador during the following two years. The separatists accused him of betraying republican principles and of wanting to establish a permanent dictatorship.[32] Gran Colombia declared war against Peru when president General La Mar invaded Guayaquil. He was later defeated by Marshall Antonio José de Sucre in the Battle of the Portete de Tarqui, 27 February 1829. Sucre was killed on 4 June 1830.[33] General Juan José Flores wanted to separate the southern departments (Quito, Guayaquil, and Azuay), known as the District of Ecuador, from Gran Colombia to form an independent country and become its first President. Venezuela was proclaimed independent on 13 January 1830 and José Antonio Páez maintained the presidency of that country, banishing Bolivar.
+
+For Bolívar, Hispanic America was the fatherland. He dreamed of a united Spanish America and in the pursuit of that purpose he not only created Gran Colombia but also the Confederation of the Andes whose aim was to unite the aforementioned with Peru and Bolivia. Moreover, he promoted a network of treaties keeping the newly liberated South American countries together. Nonetheless, he was unable to control the centrifugal process which pushed outwards in all directions.
+
+On 20 January 1830, as his dream fell apart, Bolívar delivered his final address to the nation, announcing that he would be stepping down from the presidency of Gran Colombia. In his speech, a distraught Bolívar urged the people to maintain the union and to be wary of the intentions of those who advocated for separation. (At the time, "Colombians" referred to the people of Gran Colombia (Venezuela, New Granada, and Ecuador), not modern-day Colombia):
+
+Bogotá, 20 January 1830.
+
+Simón Bolívar
+
+Colombians! Today I cease to govern you. I have served you for twenty years as soldier and leader. During this long period we have taken back our country, liberated three republics, fomented many civil wars, and four times I have returned to the people their omnipotence, convening personally four constitutional congresses. These services were inspired by your virtues, your courage, and your patriotism; mine is the great privilege of having governed you.
+
+The constitutional congress convened on this day is charged by Providence with the task of giving the nation the institutions she desires, following the course of circumstances and the nature of things.
+
+Fearing that I may be regarded as an obstacle to establishing the Republic on the true base of its happiness, I personally have cast myself down from the supreme position of leadership to which your generosity had elevated me.
+
+Colombians! I have been the victim of ignominious suspicions, with no possible way to defend the purity of my principles. The same persons who aspire to the supreme command have conspired to tear your hearts from me, attributing to me their own motives, making me seem to be the instigator of projects they themselves have conceived, representing me, finally, as aspiring to a crown which they themselves have offered on more than one occasion and which I have rejected with the indignation of the fiercest republican. Never, never, I swear to you, has it crossed my mind to aspire to a kingship that my enemies have fabricated in order to ruin me in your regard.
+
+Do not be deceived, Colombians! My only desire has been to contribute to your freedom and to be the preservation of your peace of mind. If for this I am held guilty, I deserve your censure more than any man. Do not listen, I beg you, to the vile slander and the tawdry envy stirring up discord on all sides. Will you allow yourself to be deceived by the false accusations of my detractors? Please don't be foolish!
+
+Colombians! Gather around the constitutional congress. It represents the wisdom of the nation, the legitimate hope of the people, and the final point of reunion of the patriots. Its sovereign decrees will determine our lives, the happiness of the Republic, and the glory of Colombia. If dire circumstances should cause you to abandon it, there will be no health for the country, and you will drown in the ocean of anarchy, leaving as your children's legacy nothing but crime, blood, and death.
+
+Fellow Countrymen! Hear my final plea as I end my political career; in the name of Colombia I ask you, beg you, to remain united, lest you become the assassins of the country and your own executioners.
+
+Bolívar[34]
+
+Bolívar ultimately failed in his attempt to prevent the collapse of the union. Gran Colombia was dissolved later that year and was replaced by the republics of Venezuela, New Granada, and Ecuador. Ironically, these countries were established as centralist nations, and would be governed for decades this way by leaders who, during Bolívar's last years, had accused him of betraying republican principles and of wanting to establish a permanent dictatorship. These separatists, among them José Antonio Páez and Francisco de Paula Santander, had justified their opposition to Bolívar for this reason and publicly denounced him as a monarch. Some of them had in the past been accused of plotting against Bolívar's life (Santander, who governed the second centralist government of New Granada, was associated with the September Conspiracy [es]).
+
+José María Obando, the first President of the Republic of New Granada (that succeeded the Gran Colombia), had been directly linked to the assassination of Antonio José de Sucre in 1830. Sucre was regarded by some as a political threat because of his popularity after he led a resounding patriot victory at the Battle of Ayacucho, ending the war against the Spanish Empire in South America. Bolívar also considered him his direct successor and had attempted to make him vice president of Gran Colombia after Francisco de Paula Santander was exiled in 1828.[35]
+
+For the rest of the 19th century and into the early 20th century, the political environment of Latin America was fraught with civil wars and characterized by a sociopolitical phenomenon known as caudillismo, which became very common in Venezuela, especially after 1830.[36]
+
+Indeed, such struggles already existed shortly after the patriot victory over the loyalists because the former Spanish colonies created new nations that proclaimed their own autonomous states, which produced military confrontations with political conspirations that sent some of the former independence heroes into exile.[37] Moreover, there were attempts by the Spanish monarchy to reconquer their former settlements in the Americas through expeditions that would help the remaining loyalist forces and advocates. However, the attempts generally failed in Venezuela, Perú and Mexico; thus, the loyalist resistance forces against the republic were finally defeated.[38]
+
+The main characteristic of caudillismo was the arrival of authoritarian but charismatic political figures who would typically rise to power in an unconventional way, often legitimizing their right to govern through undemocratic processes. These caudillos maintained their control primarily on the basis of their personalities, as well as skewed interpretations of their popularity and what constituted a majority among the masses. On his deathbed, Bolívar envisaged the emergence of countless caudillos competing for the pieces of the great nation he once dreamed about.
+
+Saying that "all who served the revolution have plowed the sea",[7]:450 Bolívar finally resigned the presidency on 27 April 1830, intending to leave the country for exile in Europe.[7]:435 He had already sent several crates containing his belongings and writings ahead of him to Europe,[39] but he died before setting sail from Cartagena.
+
+It is said that before Simón Bolívar had passed away, he had declared that "America is ungovernable." Bolívar was a man who had seen the negative in things. This negativity had grown from the distances that had separated the large continent or from  the differences in the cultures, languages, ethnicities and the races of the people. Another factor could have been from the lack of political unity, but it is unclear what had led him to being pessimistic. These factors had caused Bolívar to put his hope on hold of uniting the sovereign territory. Old colonial cities had been separated and new trading centers had been separated by great geographical features such as mountains, high deserts and arid plains. These were all factors in which played a role and were responsible for the broken states during a time where wars of independence had risen.[40]
+
+On 17 December 1830, at the age of 47, Simón Bolívar died of tuberculosis[41] in the Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino in Santa Marta, Gran Colombia (now Colombia). On his deathbed, Bolívar asked his aide-de-camp, General Daniel F. O'Leary, to burn the remaining extensive archive of his writings, letters, and speeches. O'Leary disobeyed the order and his writings survived, providing historians with a wealth of information about Bolívar's liberal philosophy and thought, as well as details of his personal life, such as his long love affair with Manuela Sáenz. Shortly before her own death in 1856, Sáenz augmented this collection by giving O'Leary her own letters from Bolívar.[39]
+
+Bolívar's remains were buried in the cathedral of Santa Marta. Twelve years later, in 1842, at the request of President José Antonio Páez, they were moved from Santa Marta to Caracas, where they were buried in the cathedral of Caracas together with the remains of his wife and parents. In 1876, he was moved to a monument set up for his interment at the National Pantheon of Venezuela. The Quinta near Santa Marta has been preserved as a museum with numerous references to his life. In 2010, symbolic remains of Bolívar's later-years lover, Manuela Sáenz, were also interred in Venezuela's National Pantheon.[42]
+
+In January 2008, then-President of Venezuela Hugo Chávez set up a commission[43] to investigate theories that Bolívar was the victim of an assassination. On several occasions, Chávez has claimed that Bolívar was in fact poisoned by "New Granada traitors".[44] In April 2010, infectious diseases specialist Paul Auwaerter studied records of Bolívar's symptoms and concluded that he might have suffered from chronic arsenic poisoning, but that both acute poisoning and murder were unlikely.[45][46] In July 2010, Bolívar's body was ordered to be exhumed to advance the investigations.[47] In July 2011, international forensics experts released their report, claiming there was no proof of poisoning or any other unnatural cause of death.[48]
+
+In 1799, following the early deaths of his father Juan Vicente (dead since 1786) and his mother Concepción (who died in 1792), Bolívar traveled to Mexico, France, and Spain, at the age of 16 years, to complete his education. While in Madrid during 1802 and after a two-year courtship, he married María Teresa Rodríguez del Toro y Alaiza, who was to be his only wife. She was related to the aristocratic families of the marquis del Toro of Caracas and the marquis de Inicio of Madrid.[15]
+
+Eight months after returning to Venezuela with him, she died from yellow fever on 22 January 1803. Bolívar was so devastated by this loss that his relatives feared for his life. He swore never to marry again, a promise he kept. Many years later Bolívar would refer to the death of his wife as the turning point of his life. Indeed, in 1828, he told Luis Perú de Lacroix the following words:
+
+You then [...] got married at the age of 45; [...] I was not even 18 years old when I did the same, and I was not even nearly 19 years old when I was widowed; I loved my wife dearly, and her death made me swear not to get married again, and I kept my word. Look the way things are: if I were not widowed, my life would have maybe been different; I would not be the General Bolívar nor the Libertador, though I agree that my temper is not suitable for being the landlord of San Mateo.[49]
+
+Not surprisingly, Spanish historian Salvador de Madariaga refers to the death of Bolivar's wife as one of the key moments in Hispanic America's history.[50] In 1804, he traveled again to Europe in an attempt to ease his pain and began falling into a dissolute life. It was then that he met again with his old teacher Simón Rodríguez in Paris, who little by little was able to transform his acute depression into a sense of commitment towards a greater cause: the independence of Venezuela. He lived in Napoleonic France for a while and undertook the Grand Tour.[51] During this time in Europe, Bolívar met the intellectual explorer, Alexander von Humboldt in Rome. Humboldt later wrote: "I was wrong back then, when I judged him a puerile man, incapable of realizing so grand an ambition."[7]:64
+
+Bolívar had several love affairs. Most of them were ephemeral and did not last long. Historians, scholars and biographers often agree with the names of the most prominent women who stood with Bolívar, such as Josefina "Pepita" Machado, Fanny du Villars and Manuela Sáenz.
+
+Manuela Sáenz was the most important of those women. She was more than a lover in Bolívar's later life; she became a trustworthy confidant and advisor. Moreover, Manuela saved Bolívar's life during the September Conspiracy of 1828 in which Bolívar was about to be killed. During this assassination attempt, Manuela diverted the assassins and thus gave Bolívar enough time to escape from his room.[52]
+
+Bolívar and Manuela met in Quito on 22 June 1822 and they began a long-term affair. The relationship was controversial at the time, because Manuela was already married to James Thorne, but they became estranged in 1822 due to irreconcilable differences.[53] The emotional ties between Manuela and Bolívar were strong, and Manuela attempted suicide when she received the news of Bolívar's death.
+
+Despite sometimes living in the same South American cities (such as Bogotá, Quito and Lima), Bolívar and Manuela did not always have a face-to-face relationship. This romance was clear in their letters, but few of them have survived.  Most of her letters were destroyed after Manuela's death.[54][55] Contrary to the arguments exposed by Heinz Dieterich, Carlos Álvarez Saá, and a book edited by Fundación Editorial El Perro y la Rana publishing house in 2007, several letters attributed to both Bolívar and Manuela are intentional forgeries.[56]
+
+In his Memoirs of Simón Bolívar, Henri La Fayette Villaume Ducoudray Holstein (who himself has been called a "not-always-reliable and never impartial witness"[57]) described the young Bolívar as he was attempting to seize power in Venezuela and New Granada in 1814–1816. Ducoudray Holstein joined Bolívar and served on his staff as an officer during this period.
+
+He describes Bolívar as a coward who repeatedly abandoned his military commission in front of the enemy, and also as a great lover of women, being accompanied at all times by two or more of his mistresses during the military operations. He would not hesitate to stop the fleet transporting the whole army and bound for Margarita Island during two days in order to wait for his mistress to join his ship. According to Ducoudray Holstein, Bolívar behaved essentially as an opportunist preferring intrigues and secret manipulation to an open fight. He was also deemed incompetent in military matters, systematically avoiding any risks and permanently anxious for his own safety.
+
+In the Diario de Bucaramanga, Bolívar's opinion of Ducoudray is presented when Louis Peru de Lacroix asked who had been Bolívar's aides-de-camp since he had been general; he mentioned Charles Eloi Demarquet and Ducoudray. Bolívar confirmed the first but denied the second, saying that he had met him in 1815 and accepted his services, even admitting him to his General Staff, but "I never trusted him enough to make him my aide-de-camp; to the contrary, I had a very unfavorable idea of his person and his services", and that Ducoudray's departure after only a brief stay had been a "real pleasure."[58]
+
+Karl Marx[59]
+
+According to Beddow and Thibodeaux, Karl Marx dismissed Bolívar as a "falsifier, deserter, conspirator, liar, coward and looter", and a "false liberator who merely sought to preserve the power of the old Creole nobility to which he belonged".[60]
+
+In an unsympathetic biography titled Bolívar y Ponte, Simón,[61] published in the New American Cyclopedia, Karl Marx criticized much of Bolívar's life. Marx begins by saying that Bolívar was born to a family of "creole nobility in Venezuela" and that similar to the "custom of wealthy Americans of those times, at the early age of 14 he was sent to Europe". At several points in Marx's piece, he complains that Bolívar abandoned his troops multiple times and writes that Bolívar had to be persuaded by his cousin Ribas to return to fight against the Spanish after staying in Cartagena. Marx then penned that after arriving in Caracas in 1813, Bolívar's "dictatorship soon proved a military anarchy, leaving the most important affairs in the hands of favorites, who squandered the finances of the country, and then resorted to odious means in order to restore them". At the conclusion of the biography, Marx uses Ducoudray Holstein's description of Bolívar.[59]
+
+Bolívar had no children, possibly because of infertility caused by having contracted measles and mumps as a child. His closest living relatives descend from his sisters and brother. One of his sisters died in infancy. His sister Juana Bolívar y Palacios married their maternal uncle, Dionisio Palacios y Blanco, and had two children, Guillermo and Benigna. Guillermo Palacios died fighting alongside his uncle Simón in the battle of La Hogaza on 2 December 1817. Benigna had two marriages, the first to Pedro Briceño Méndez and the second to Pedro Amestoy.[62] Their great-grandchildren, Bolívar's closest living relatives, Pedro, and Eduardo Mendoza Goiticoa lived in Caracas as of 2009.
+
+His eldest sister, María Antonia, married Pablo Clemente Francia and had four children: Josefa, Anacleto, Valentina, and Pablo. María Antonia became Bolívar's agent to deal with his properties while he served as president of Gran Colombia and she was an executrix of his will. She retired to Bolívar's estate in Macarao, which she inherited from him.[63]
+
+His older brother, Juan Vicente, who died in 1811 on a diplomatic mission to the United States, had three children born out of wedlock whom he recognized: Juan, Fernando Simón, and Felicia Bolívar Tinoco. Bolívar provided for the children and their mother after his brother's death. Bolívar was especially close to Fernando and in 1822 sent him to study in the United States, where he attended the University of Virginia. In his long life, Fernando had minor participation in some of the major political events of Venezuelan history and also traveled and lived extensively throughout Europe. He had three children, Benjamín Bolívar Gauthier, Santiago Hernández Bolívar, and Claudio Bolívar Taraja. Fernando died in 1898 at the age of 88.[64]
+
+Simón Bolívar was an admirer of both the U.S. and French Revolutions.[7]:35, 52–53 Bolívar even enrolled his nephew, Fernando Bolívar, in a private school in Philadelphia, Germantown Academy, and paid for his education, including attendance at Thomas Jefferson's University of Virginia.[7]:71–72, 369 While he was an admirer of U.S. independence, he did not believe that its governmental system could work in Latin America.[65] Thus, he claimed that the governance of heterogeneous societies like Venezuela "will require a firm hand".[66]
+
+Bolívar felt that the U.S. had been established in land especially fertile for democracy. By contrast, he referred to Spanish America as having been subject to the "triple yoke of ignorance, tyranny, and vice".[7]:224 If a republic could be established in such a land, in his mind, it would have to make some concessions in terms of liberty. This is shown when Bolívar blamed the fall of the first republic on his subordinates trying to imitate "some ethereal republic" and in the process, not paying attention to the gritty political reality of South America.[67]
+
+Among the books accompanying him as he traveled were Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, Voltaire's Letters and, when he was writing the Bolivian constitution, Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws.[68] His Bolivian constitution placed him within the camp of what would become Latin American conservatism in the later nineteenth century. The Bolivian constitution intended to establish a lifelong presidency and a hereditary senate, essentially recreating the British unwritten constitution, as it existed at the time.
+
+According to Carlos Fuentes:
+
+How to govern ourselves after winning independence. It can be said that the Liberator exhausted his soul trying to find an answer to that question...Bolívar tried to avoid the extremes that would overwhelm Spanish America all along the nineteenth century and part of the twentieth. Tyranny or anarchy? 'Do not aim at what is impossible to attain, because in the quest for liberty we may fall into tyranny. Absolute liberty always leads to absolute power and among these two extremes is social liberty'. In order to find this equilibrium, Bolívar proposed a 'clever despotism', a strong executive power able to impose equality there where racial inequality prevailed. Bolívar warned against an 'aristocracy of rank, employment and fortune' that while 'referring to liberty and guarantee' it would just be for themselves but not for levelling with members of lower classes'...He is the disciple of Montesquieu in his insistence that institutions have to be adapted to culture.
+
+Similarly to some others in the history of American Independence (George Washington, Miguel Hidalgo, José de San Martín, Bernardo O'Higgins, Francisco de Paula Santander, Antonio Nariño, and Francisco de Miranda), Simón Bolívar was a Freemason. He was initiated in 1803 in the Masonic Lodge Lautaro, which operated in Cádiz, Spain,.[69][70] It was in this lodge that he first met some of his revolutionary peers, such as José de San Martín. In May 1806 he was conferred the rank of Master Mason in the "Scottish Mother of St. Alexander of Scotland" in Paris. During his time in London, he frequented "The Great American Reunion" lodge in London, founded by Francisco de Miranda. In April 1824, Simón Bolívar was given the 33rd degree of Inspector General Honorary.[71]
+
+He founded the Masonic Lodge No. 2 of Peru, named "Order and Liberty".[72][73]
+
+Due to the historical relevance of Bolívar as a key element during the process of independence in Hispanic America, his memory has been strongly attached to sentiments of nationalism and patriotism, being a recurrent theme of rhetoric in politics. Since the image of Bolívar became an important part to the national identities of Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, his mantle is often claimed by Hispanic American politicians all across the political spectrum.[citation needed]
+
+In Venezuela, Bolívar left behind a militarist legacy[74] with multiple governments utilizing the memory, image and written legacy of Bolívar as important parts of their political messages and propaganda.[75] Bolívar disapproved of the excesses of "party spirit" and "factions", which led to an anti-political environment in Venezuela.[76] For much of the 1800s, Venezuela was ruled by caudillos, with six rebellions occurring to take control of Venezuela between 1892 and 1900 alone.[76] The militarist legacy was then used by the nationalist dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez[75] and more recently the socialist political movement led by Hugo Chávez.[77]
+
+The nations of Bolivia and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and their respective currencies (the Bolivian boliviano and the Venezuelan bolívar), are all named after Bolívar. Additionally, most cities and towns in Colombia and Venezuela are built around a main square known as Plaza Bolívar, as is the case with Bogotá.[78] In this example, most governmental buildings and public structures are located on or around the plaza, including the National Capitol and the Palace of Justice. Besides Quito and Caracas, there are monuments to Bolívar in the Latin American capitals of Lima,[79] Buenos Aires,[80] Havana,[81] Mexico City,[82] Panama City,[83] Paramaribo,[84] San José,[85] Santo Domingo[86] and Sucre.[87] In Bogotá, the Simón Bolívar Park has hosted many concerts.[88]
+
+Outside of Latin America, the variety of monuments to Simón Bolívar are a continuing testament to his legacy. These include statues in many capitals around the world, including Algiers,[89] Ankara,[citation needed] Bucharest,[90] London,[91] Minsk,[92] Moscow,[93] New Delhi,[94] Ottawa,[95] Paris,[96] Prague,[97] Port-au-Prince,[98] Rome,[99] Sofia,[100] Tehran,[101] Vienna[102] and Washington, D.C..[103] Several cities in Spain, especially in the Basque Country, have constructed monuments to Bolívar, including a large monument in Bilbao[104] and a comprehensive Venezuelan government-funded museum in Cenarruza-Puebla de Bolívar,[105] his ancestral hometown. In the US, an imposing bronze equestrian statue of Simón Bolívar stands at the southern entrance to Central Park at the Avenue of the Americas in New York City which also celebrates Bolívar's contributions to Latin America.[106] The Bolivar Peninsula in Texas, Bolivar County, Mississippi, Bolivar, New York, Bolivar, West Virginia and Bolivar, Tennessee are also named in his honor.
+
+Monuments to Bolívar's military legacy also comprise one of Venezuelan Navy's sail training barques, which is named after him, and the USS Simon Bolivar, a Benjamin Franklin-class fleet ballistic missile submarine which served with the U.S. Navy between 1965 and 1995.
+
+Minor planet 712 Boliviana discovered by Max Wolf is named in his honor. The name was suggested by Camille Flammarion.[107] The first Venezuelan satellite, Venesat-1, was given the alternative name Simón Bolívar after him.
+
+His birthday is a public holiday in Venezuela and Bolivia.
+
+Simón Bolívar Memorial Monument, standing in Santa Marta (Colombia) at the Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino
+
+Statue of Bolívar in Plaza Bolívar in Caracas by Adamo Tadolini
+
+Simón Bolívar's statue in Paris
+
+A monument in honor of Simón Bolívar in Sofia, Bulgaria
+
+Statue of Simón Bolívar in Lisbon, Portugal.
+
+Statue of Simón Bolívar in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain.
+
+Statue of Simón Bolívar in Bucharest, Romania.
+
+Statue of Simón Bolívar in Trinity Bellwoods Park, Toronto, Canada.
+
+Bolívar has been depicted in opera, literature, film, and other media, and continues to be a part of the popular culture in many countries. In 1883, to celebrate 100 years since his birth, the Italian musician Nicolò Gabrielli composed the triumphal march Simón Bolívar and dedicated it to then president of Venezuela Antonio Guzmán Blanco. In 1943 Darius Milhaud composed the opera Bolívar. He is also the central character in Gabriel García Márquez's 1989 novel The General in His Labyrinth, in which he is portrayed in a less heroic but more humane manner than in most other parts of his legacy. In 1969 Maximilian Schell played the role of Simón Bolívar in the film of the same name by director Alessandro Blasetti, which also featured actress Rosanna Schiaffino. Bolívar's life was also the basis of the 2013 film Libertador, starring Édgar Ramírez and directed by Alberto Arvelo. In an episode of the Spanish TV series The Ministry of Time, "Tiempo de ilustrados (Time of the Enlightened)", the time agents help him win the heart of his future wife, as this was considered fundamental for Bolívar to fulfil his destiny. Later in the second season of the series the time agents will find him again in 1828 (two years before his death) to avoid his murder, planned by Santander's followers. As of 2019, a Netflix series has been released depicting Bolívar's life and the major events surrounding it. The Netflix series is a Colombian production with Spanish as the main language.
+
+Simón Bolívar leads Gran Colombia in the video game Civilization VI. Gran Colombia was added to the game as part of the New Frontier Pass.[108]
+
+Cited sources

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+Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios Ponte-Andrade y Blanco[1] (24 July 1783 – 17 December 1830), generally known as Simón Bolívar (Spanish: [siˈmom boˈliβaɾ] (listen),[a] English: /ˈbɒlɪvər, -vɑːr/ BOL-iv-ər, -⁠ar[2] also US: /ˈboʊlɪvɑːr/ BOH-liv-ar[3]) and also colloquially as El Libertador,[4]  or the Liberator, was a Venezuelan military and political leader who led what are currently the countries of Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Panama to independence from the Spanish Empire.
+
+Bolívar was born into a wealthy family and as was common for the heirs of upper-class families in his day, was sent to be educated abroad at a young age, arriving in Spain when he was 16 and later moving to France. While in Europe he was introduced to the ideas of the Enlightenment, which later motivated him to overthrow the reigning Spanish in colonial South America. Taking advantage of the disorder in Spain prompted by the Peninsular War, Bolívar began his campaign for independence in 1808.[5] The campaign for the independence of New Granada was consolidated with the victory at the Battle of Boyacá on 7 August 1819. He established an organized national congress within three years. Despite a number of hindrances, including the arrival of an unprecedentedly large Spanish expeditionary force, the revolutionaries eventually prevailed, culminating in the patriot victory at the Battle of Carabobo in 1821, which effectively made Venezuela an independent country.
+
+Following this triumph over the Spanish monarchy, Bolívar participated in the foundation of the first union of independent nations in Latin America, Gran Colombia, of which he was president from 1819 to 1830. Through further military campaigns, he ousted Spanish rulers from Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, the last of which was named after him. He was simultaneously president of Gran Colombia (present-day Venezuela, Colombia, Panama and Ecuador), Peru, and Bolivia, but soon after, his second-in-command, Antonio José de Sucre, was appointed president of Bolivia. Bolívar aimed at a strong and united Spanish America able to cope not only with the threats emanating from Spain and the European Holy Alliance but also with the emerging power of the United States. At the peak of his power, Bolívar ruled over a vast territory from the Argentine border to the Caribbean Sea.
+
+Bolívar fought 100 battles, of which 79 were important ones, and during his campaigns rode on horseback 70,000 kilometers, which is 10 times more than Hannibal, three times more than Napoleon, and twice as much as Alexander the Great.[6] Bolívar is viewed as a national icon in much of modern South America, and is considered one of the great heroes of the Hispanic independence movements of the early 19th century, along with José Miguel Carrera, José de San Martín, Francisco de Miranda and others. Towards the end of his life, Bolívar despaired of the situation in his native region, with the famous quote "all who served the revolution have plowed the sea".[7]:450 In an address to the Constituent Congress of the Republic of Colombia, Bolívar stated "Fellow citizens! I blush to say this: Independence is the only benefit we have acquired, to the detriment of all the rest."[8]
+
+The surname Bolívar originated with aristocrats from La Puebla de Bolívar, a small village in the Basque Country of Spain.[9] Bolívar's father came from the female line of the Ardanza family.[10][11] His maternal grandmother was descended from families from the Canary Islands.[b]
+
+The Bolívars settled in Venezuela in the 16th century. Bolívar's first South American ancestor was Simón de Bolívar (or Simon de Bolibar; the spelling was not standardized until the 19th century), who lived and worked in Santo Domingo (present-day Dominican Republic) from 1559 to 1560 and where his son Simón de Bolívar y Castro was born. When the governor was reassigned to Venezuela by the Spanish Crown in 1569, Simón de Bolívar went with him. As an early settler in Spain's Venezuela Province, he became prominent in the local society, and he and his descendants were granted estates, encomiendas, and positions in the local cabildo.[12]
+
+When Caracas Cathedral was built in 1569, the Bolívar family had one of the first dedicated side chapels. The majority of the wealth of Simón de Bolívar's descendants came from the estates. The most important was a sugar plantation with an encomienda that provided the labor needed to run the estate.[13] Another portion of the Bolívars' wealth came from silver, gold, and copper mines. Small gold deposits were first mined in Venezuela in 1669, leading to the discovery of much more extensive copper deposits. From his mother's side (the Palacios family), Bolívar inherited the Aroa copper mines at Cocorote. Native American and African slaves provided the majority of the labor in these mines.[14]
+
+Toward the end of the 17th century, copper mining became so prominent in Venezuela that the metal became known as cobre Caracas ("Caracas copper"). Many of the mines became the property of the Bolívar family. Bolívar's grandfather, Juan de Bolívar y Martínez de Villegas, paid 22,000 ducats to the monastery at Santa Maria de Montserrat in 1728 for a title of nobility that had been granted by King Philip V of Spain for its maintenance. The crown never issued the patent of nobility, and so the purchase became the subject of lawsuits that were still in progress during Bolívar's lifetime, when independence from Spain made the point moot. (If the lawsuits had been successful, Bolívar's older brother, Juan Vicente, would have become the Marquess of San Luis and Viscount of Cocorote.) Bolívar ultimately devoted his personal fortune to the revolution. Having been one of the wealthiest persons within the Spanish American world at the beginning of the revolution, he died in poverty.[7]
+
+Simón Bolívar was born in a house in Caracas, Captaincy General of Venezuela, on 24 July 1783.[7]:6 He was baptized as Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios. His mother was María de la Concepción Palacios y Blanco, and his father was Colonel Don Juan Vicente Bolívar y Ponte. He had two older sisters and a brother: María Antonia, Juana, and Juan Vicente. Another sister, María del Carmen, died at birth.[1]
+
+When Bolívar was an infant, he was cared for by Doña Ines Manceba de Miyares and the family's slave, Hipólita. A couple of years later, he returned to the care of his parents, but this experience would have a major effect on his life. His father died before Bolívar's third birthday to tuberculosis,[1] and his mother died when he was almost nine.
+
+After his mother's death, Bolívar was placed in the custody of an instructor, Miguel José Sanz, but this relationship did not work out and he was sent back home. He went on to receive private lessons from the renowned professors Andrés Bello, Guillermo Pelgrón, Jose Antonio Negrete, Fernando Vides, Father Andújar, and Don Simón Rodríguez, formerly known as Simón Carreño. Don Simón Rodríguez became Bolívar's teacher, friend and mentor. He taught him how to swim and ride horses, as well as about liberty, human rights, politics, history, and sociology.[15] Later in life, Rodríguez was pivotal in Bolívar's decision to start the revolution, instilling in him the ideas of liberty, enlightenment, and freedom.[15] In the meantime, Bolívar was mostly cared for by his nurse, the slave Hipólita, whom he later called "the only mother I have known".[16]
+
+When Bolívar was fourteen, Don Simón Rodríguez was forced to leave the country after being accused of involvement in a conspiracy against the Spanish government in Caracas. Bolívar then entered the military academy of the Milicias de Aragua.[15] In 1800, he was sent to Spain to follow his military studies in Madrid, where he remained until 1802. Back in Europe in 1804, he lived in France and traveled to different countries. While in Milan, Bolívar witnessed the coronation of Napoleon as King of Italy (a kingdom in personal union with France in modern northern Italy), an event that left a profound impression on him. Even if he disagreed with the crowning, he was highly sensitive to the popular veneration inspired by the hero.[15]
+
+Bolívar returned to Venezuela in 1807. After a coup on 19 April 1810, Venezuela achieved de facto independence when the Supreme Junta of Caracas was established and the colonial administrators deposed. The Supreme Junta sent a delegation to Great Britain to get British recognition and aid. This delegation presided by Bolívar also included two future Venezuelan notables Andrés Bello and Luis López Méndez. The trio met with Francisco de Miranda and persuaded him to return to his native land.
+
+In 1811, a delegation from the Supreme Junta, also including Bolívar, and a crowd of commoners enthusiastically received Miranda in La Guaira.[17]  During the insurgence war conducted by Miranda, Bolívar was promoted to colonel and was made commandant of Puerto Cabello the following year, 1812. As Royalist Frigate Captain Domingo de Monteverde was advancing into republican territory from the west, Bolívar lost control of San Felipe Castle along with its ammunition stores on 30 June 1812. Bolívar then retreated to his estate in San Mateo.
+
+Miranda saw the republican cause as lost and signed a capitulation agreement with Monteverde on 25 July, an action that Bolívar and other revolutionary officers deemed treasonous. In one of Bolívar's most morally dubious acts, he and others arrested Miranda and handed him over to the Spanish Royal Army at the port of La Guaira.[18] For his apparent services to the Royalist cause, Monteverde granted Bolívar a passport, and Bolívar left for Curaçao on 27 August.[19] It must be said, though, that Bolívar protested to the Spanish authorities about the reasons why he handled Miranda, insisting that he was not lending a service to the Crown but punishing a defector.[citation needed] In 1813, he was given a military command in Tunja, New Granada (modern-day Colombia), under the direction of the Congress of United Provinces of New Granada, which had formed out of the juntas established in 1810.
+
+This was the beginning of the Admirable Campaign. On 24 May, Bolívar entered Mérida, where he was proclaimed El Libertador ("The Liberator").[20] This was followed by the occupation of Trujillo on 9 June. Six days later, and as a result of Spanish massacres on independence supporters,  Bolívar dictated his famous "Decree of War to the Death", allowing the killing of any Spaniard not actively supporting independence. Caracas was retaken on 6 August 1813, and Bolívar was ratified as El Libertador, establishing the Second Republic of Venezuela. The following year, because of the rebellion of José Tomás Boves and the fall of the republic, Bolívar returned to New Granada, where he commanded a force for the United Provinces.
+
+His forces entered Bogotá in 1814 and recaptured the city from the dissenting republican forces of Cundinamarca. Bolívar intended to march into Cartagena and enlist the aid of local forces in order to capture the Royalist town of Santa Marta. In 1815, however, after a number of political and military disputes with the government of Cartagena, Bolívar fled to Jamaica, where he was denied support. After an assassination attempt in Jamaica,[21] he fled to Haiti, where he was granted protection. He befriended Alexandre Pétion, the president of the recently independent southern republic (as opposed to the Kingdom of Haiti in the north), and petitioned him for aid.[20] He provided the South American leader with a multitude of provisions consisting of ships, men and weapons; only demanding in return that Bolívar promise to abolish slavery in any of the lands he took back from Spain. The pledge would indeed be upheld, and the abolition of slavery in the liberated territories would be regarded as one Bolívar's main achievements.[22]
+
+—Simón Bolívar[23][24]
+
+In 1816, with Haitian soldiers and vital material support, Bolívar landed in Venezuela and fulfilled his promise to Pétion to free Spanish America's slaves on 2 June 1816.[7]:186
+
+The Expedition of the Keys was led by Bolivar and fought for Venezuela in the east, while the Guyana Campaign started in the west and was led by Manuel Piar.
+
+In July 1817, on a second expedition, he captured Angostura after defeating the counter-attack of Miguel de la Torre.[7]:192–201 However, Venezuela remained a captaincy of Spain after the victory in 1818 by Pablo Morillo in the Second Battle of La Puerta (es).[7]:212
+
+After capturing Angostura, and an unexpected victory in New Grada, Bolivar set up a temporary government in Venezuela. This was the start of the Third Republic of Venezuela. With this Bolivar created the Congress of Angostura which following the wars would establish Gran Colombia, a state which includes today's territories of Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela.
+
+To honor Bolivar's efforts to help Venezuela during its independence movement, the city of Angostura was renamed to Ciudad Bolivar in 1846.
+
+On 15 February 1819, Bolívar was able to open the Venezuelan Second National Congress in Angostura, in which he was elected president and Francisco Antonio Zea was elected vice president.[7]:222–25 Bolívar then decided that he would first fight for the independence of New Granada, to gain resources of the viceroyalty, intending later to consolidate the independence of Venezuela.[25]
+
+The campaign for the independence of New Granada, which included the crossing of the Andes mountain range, one of history's great military feats, was consolidated with the victory at the Battle of Boyacá on 7 August 1819.[7]:233  Bolívar returned to Angostura, when congress passed a law forming a greater Republic of Colombia on 17 December, making Bolívar president and Zea vice president, with Francisco de Paula Santander vice president on the New Granada side, and Juan Germán Roscio vice president on the Venezuela side.[7]:246–47
+
+Morillo was left in control of Caracas and the coastal highlands.[7]:248 After the restoration of the Cádiz Constitution, Morillo ratified two treaties with Bolívar on 25 November 1820, calling for a six-month armistice and recognizing Bolívar as president of the republic.[7]:254–55  Bolívar and Morillo met in San Fernando de Apure on 27 November, after which Morillo left Venezuela for Spain, leaving La Torre in command.[7]:255–57
+
+From his newly consolidated base of power, Bolívar launched outright independence campaigns in Venezuela and Ecuador. These campaigns concluded with the victory at the Battle of Carabobo, after which Bolívar triumphantly entered Caracas on 29 June 1821.[7]:267 On 7 September 1821, Gran Colombia (a state covering much of modern Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela) was created, with Bolívar as president and Santander as vice president.
+
+Bolívar followed with the Battle of Bombona and the Battle of Pichincha, after which he entered Quito on 16 June 1822.[7]:287 On 26 and 27 July 1822, Bolívar held the Guayaquil Conference with the Argentine General José de San Martín, who had received the title of "Protector of Peruvian Freedom" in August 1821 after partially liberating Peru from the Spanish.[7]:295 Thereafter, Bolívar took over the task of fully liberating Peru.
+
+The Peruvian congress named him dictator of Peru on 10 February 1824, which allowed Bolívar to reorganize completely the political and military administration. Assisted by Antonio José de Sucre, Bolívar decisively defeated the Spanish cavalry at the Battle of Junín on 6 August 1824. Sucre destroyed the still numerically superior remnants of the Spanish forces at Ayacucho on 9 December 1824.
+
+According to British historian Robert Harvey:
+
+Bolívar's achievements in Peru had been as staggering as any in his career of a year, from holding a strip of the country's north coast while himself nearly moribund, he and Sucre had taken on and defeated an army of 18,000 men and secured a country the size of nearly all of Western Europe...the investment of personal energy, the distances covered and the four army expeditions across supposedly impassable mountain ranges had qualified him for superhuman status...His stamina and military achievements put him at the forefront of the global heroes of history.[26]
+
+Writing to United States Secretary of State John Quincy Adams in 1824, United States Consul in Peru William Tudor stated:
+
+Unfortunately for Peru, the invaders who came to proclaim liberty and independence were cruel, rapacious, unprincipled and incapable. Their mismanagement, their profligacy, and their thirst for plunder soon alienated the affections of the inhabitants.[27]
+
+Even though Bolívar condemned the corrupt practices of the Spanish, he ordered some churches stripped of their decorations.[28] On 19 March 1824, José Gabriel Pérez wrote to Antonio José de Sucre about the orders given to him by Bolívar;[29] Pérez talked about "all the ordinary and extraordinary means" that should be applied to assure the subsistence of the patriot army. Indeed, Pérez said that Bolívar issued instructions to take from churches "all golden and silver jewels" in order to coin them and pay war expenditures. Days later, Bolívar himself said to Sucre that there would be a complete lack of resources unless severe actions were taken against "the jewels of the churches, everywhere".[30]
+
+On 6 August 1825, at the Congress of Upper Peru, the "Republic of Bolivia" was created.[7]:346 Bolívar is thus one of the few people to have a country named after him. Bolívar returned to Caracas on 12 January 1827, and then back to Bogotá.[7]:369, 378, 408
+
+Bolívar had great difficulties maintaining control of the vast Gran Colombia. In 1826, internal divisions sparked dissent throughout the nation, and regional uprisings erupted in Venezuela. The new South American union had revealed its fragility and appeared to be on the verge of collapse. To preserve the union, an amnesty was declared and an arrangement was reached with the Venezuelan rebels, but this increased the political dissent in neighboring New Granada. In an attempt to keep the nation together as a single entity, Bolívar called for a constitutional convention at Ocaña in March 1828.[31]
+
+Bolívar thought that a federation like the one founded in the United States was unworkable in the Spanish America.[7]:106, 166 For this reason, and to prevent a break-up, Bolívar sought to implement a more centralist model of government in Gran Colombia, including some or all of the elements of the Bolivian constitution he had written, which included a lifetime presidency with the ability to select a successor (although this presidency was to be held in check by an intricate system of balances).[7]:351
+
+This move was considered controversial in New Granada and was one of the reasons for the deliberations, which met from 9 April to 10 June 1828. The convention almost ended up drafting a document which would have implemented a radically federalist form of government, which would have greatly reduced the powers of a central administration. The federalist faction was able to command a majority for the draft of a new constitution which has definite federal characteristics despite its ostensibly centralist outline. Unhappy with what would be the ensuing result, pro-Bolívar delegates withdrew from the convention, leaving it moribund.[32]
+
+Two months after the failure of this congress to write a new constitution, Bolívar was declared president-liberator in Colombia's "Organic Decree".[7]:394 He considered this a temporary measure, as a means to reestablish his authority and save the republic, although it increased dissatisfaction and anger among his political opponents.[7]:408 An assassination attempt on 25 September 1828 failed (in Spanish it is indeed known as the Noche Septembrina), thanks to the help of his lover, Manuela Sáenz.[7]:399–405 Bolívar afterward described Manuela as "Liberatrix of the Liberator".[7]:403 Dissent continued, and uprisings occurred in New Granada, Venezuela, and Ecuador during the next two years.[32]
+
+Bolivar initially tried to forgive those who were considered conspirators, members of the "Santander" faction. Eventually it was decided to submit them to martial justice, after which those accused of being directly involved were executed, some without having their guilt fully established. Santander, who had known in advance of the conspiracy and had not directly opposed it because of his differences with Bolivar, was condemned to death. Bolivar, though, commuted the sentence.
+
+After the facts, Bolivar continued to govern in a rarefied environment, cornered by fractional disputes. Uprisings occurred in New Granada, Venezuela, and Ecuador during the following two years. The separatists accused him of betraying republican principles and of wanting to establish a permanent dictatorship.[32] Gran Colombia declared war against Peru when president General La Mar invaded Guayaquil. He was later defeated by Marshall Antonio José de Sucre in the Battle of the Portete de Tarqui, 27 February 1829. Sucre was killed on 4 June 1830.[33] General Juan José Flores wanted to separate the southern departments (Quito, Guayaquil, and Azuay), known as the District of Ecuador, from Gran Colombia to form an independent country and become its first President. Venezuela was proclaimed independent on 13 January 1830 and José Antonio Páez maintained the presidency of that country, banishing Bolivar.
+
+For Bolívar, Hispanic America was the fatherland. He dreamed of a united Spanish America and in the pursuit of that purpose he not only created Gran Colombia but also the Confederation of the Andes whose aim was to unite the aforementioned with Peru and Bolivia. Moreover, he promoted a network of treaties keeping the newly liberated South American countries together. Nonetheless, he was unable to control the centrifugal process which pushed outwards in all directions.
+
+On 20 January 1830, as his dream fell apart, Bolívar delivered his final address to the nation, announcing that he would be stepping down from the presidency of Gran Colombia. In his speech, a distraught Bolívar urged the people to maintain the union and to be wary of the intentions of those who advocated for separation. (At the time, "Colombians" referred to the people of Gran Colombia (Venezuela, New Granada, and Ecuador), not modern-day Colombia):
+
+Bogotá, 20 January 1830.
+
+Simón Bolívar
+
+Colombians! Today I cease to govern you. I have served you for twenty years as soldier and leader. During this long period we have taken back our country, liberated three republics, fomented many civil wars, and four times I have returned to the people their omnipotence, convening personally four constitutional congresses. These services were inspired by your virtues, your courage, and your patriotism; mine is the great privilege of having governed you.
+
+The constitutional congress convened on this day is charged by Providence with the task of giving the nation the institutions she desires, following the course of circumstances and the nature of things.
+
+Fearing that I may be regarded as an obstacle to establishing the Republic on the true base of its happiness, I personally have cast myself down from the supreme position of leadership to which your generosity had elevated me.
+
+Colombians! I have been the victim of ignominious suspicions, with no possible way to defend the purity of my principles. The same persons who aspire to the supreme command have conspired to tear your hearts from me, attributing to me their own motives, making me seem to be the instigator of projects they themselves have conceived, representing me, finally, as aspiring to a crown which they themselves have offered on more than one occasion and which I have rejected with the indignation of the fiercest republican. Never, never, I swear to you, has it crossed my mind to aspire to a kingship that my enemies have fabricated in order to ruin me in your regard.
+
+Do not be deceived, Colombians! My only desire has been to contribute to your freedom and to be the preservation of your peace of mind. If for this I am held guilty, I deserve your censure more than any man. Do not listen, I beg you, to the vile slander and the tawdry envy stirring up discord on all sides. Will you allow yourself to be deceived by the false accusations of my detractors? Please don't be foolish!
+
+Colombians! Gather around the constitutional congress. It represents the wisdom of the nation, the legitimate hope of the people, and the final point of reunion of the patriots. Its sovereign decrees will determine our lives, the happiness of the Republic, and the glory of Colombia. If dire circumstances should cause you to abandon it, there will be no health for the country, and you will drown in the ocean of anarchy, leaving as your children's legacy nothing but crime, blood, and death.
+
+Fellow Countrymen! Hear my final plea as I end my political career; in the name of Colombia I ask you, beg you, to remain united, lest you become the assassins of the country and your own executioners.
+
+Bolívar[34]
+
+Bolívar ultimately failed in his attempt to prevent the collapse of the union. Gran Colombia was dissolved later that year and was replaced by the republics of Venezuela, New Granada, and Ecuador. Ironically, these countries were established as centralist nations, and would be governed for decades this way by leaders who, during Bolívar's last years, had accused him of betraying republican principles and of wanting to establish a permanent dictatorship. These separatists, among them José Antonio Páez and Francisco de Paula Santander, had justified their opposition to Bolívar for this reason and publicly denounced him as a monarch. Some of them had in the past been accused of plotting against Bolívar's life (Santander, who governed the second centralist government of New Granada, was associated with the September Conspiracy [es]).
+
+José María Obando, the first President of the Republic of New Granada (that succeeded the Gran Colombia), had been directly linked to the assassination of Antonio José de Sucre in 1830. Sucre was regarded by some as a political threat because of his popularity after he led a resounding patriot victory at the Battle of Ayacucho, ending the war against the Spanish Empire in South America. Bolívar also considered him his direct successor and had attempted to make him vice president of Gran Colombia after Francisco de Paula Santander was exiled in 1828.[35]
+
+For the rest of the 19th century and into the early 20th century, the political environment of Latin America was fraught with civil wars and characterized by a sociopolitical phenomenon known as caudillismo, which became very common in Venezuela, especially after 1830.[36]
+
+Indeed, such struggles already existed shortly after the patriot victory over the loyalists because the former Spanish colonies created new nations that proclaimed their own autonomous states, which produced military confrontations with political conspirations that sent some of the former independence heroes into exile.[37] Moreover, there were attempts by the Spanish monarchy to reconquer their former settlements in the Americas through expeditions that would help the remaining loyalist forces and advocates. However, the attempts generally failed in Venezuela, Perú and Mexico; thus, the loyalist resistance forces against the republic were finally defeated.[38]
+
+The main characteristic of caudillismo was the arrival of authoritarian but charismatic political figures who would typically rise to power in an unconventional way, often legitimizing their right to govern through undemocratic processes. These caudillos maintained their control primarily on the basis of their personalities, as well as skewed interpretations of their popularity and what constituted a majority among the masses. On his deathbed, Bolívar envisaged the emergence of countless caudillos competing for the pieces of the great nation he once dreamed about.
+
+Saying that "all who served the revolution have plowed the sea",[7]:450 Bolívar finally resigned the presidency on 27 April 1830, intending to leave the country for exile in Europe.[7]:435 He had already sent several crates containing his belongings and writings ahead of him to Europe,[39] but he died before setting sail from Cartagena.
+
+It is said that before Simón Bolívar had passed away, he had declared that "America is ungovernable." Bolívar was a man who had seen the negative in things. This negativity had grown from the distances that had separated the large continent or from  the differences in the cultures, languages, ethnicities and the races of the people. Another factor could have been from the lack of political unity, but it is unclear what had led him to being pessimistic. These factors had caused Bolívar to put his hope on hold of uniting the sovereign territory. Old colonial cities had been separated and new trading centers had been separated by great geographical features such as mountains, high deserts and arid plains. These were all factors in which played a role and were responsible for the broken states during a time where wars of independence had risen.[40]
+
+On 17 December 1830, at the age of 47, Simón Bolívar died of tuberculosis[41] in the Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino in Santa Marta, Gran Colombia (now Colombia). On his deathbed, Bolívar asked his aide-de-camp, General Daniel F. O'Leary, to burn the remaining extensive archive of his writings, letters, and speeches. O'Leary disobeyed the order and his writings survived, providing historians with a wealth of information about Bolívar's liberal philosophy and thought, as well as details of his personal life, such as his long love affair with Manuela Sáenz. Shortly before her own death in 1856, Sáenz augmented this collection by giving O'Leary her own letters from Bolívar.[39]
+
+Bolívar's remains were buried in the cathedral of Santa Marta. Twelve years later, in 1842, at the request of President José Antonio Páez, they were moved from Santa Marta to Caracas, where they were buried in the cathedral of Caracas together with the remains of his wife and parents. In 1876, he was moved to a monument set up for his interment at the National Pantheon of Venezuela. The Quinta near Santa Marta has been preserved as a museum with numerous references to his life. In 2010, symbolic remains of Bolívar's later-years lover, Manuela Sáenz, were also interred in Venezuela's National Pantheon.[42]
+
+In January 2008, then-President of Venezuela Hugo Chávez set up a commission[43] to investigate theories that Bolívar was the victim of an assassination. On several occasions, Chávez has claimed that Bolívar was in fact poisoned by "New Granada traitors".[44] In April 2010, infectious diseases specialist Paul Auwaerter studied records of Bolívar's symptoms and concluded that he might have suffered from chronic arsenic poisoning, but that both acute poisoning and murder were unlikely.[45][46] In July 2010, Bolívar's body was ordered to be exhumed to advance the investigations.[47] In July 2011, international forensics experts released their report, claiming there was no proof of poisoning or any other unnatural cause of death.[48]
+
+In 1799, following the early deaths of his father Juan Vicente (dead since 1786) and his mother Concepción (who died in 1792), Bolívar traveled to Mexico, France, and Spain, at the age of 16 years, to complete his education. While in Madrid during 1802 and after a two-year courtship, he married María Teresa Rodríguez del Toro y Alaiza, who was to be his only wife. She was related to the aristocratic families of the marquis del Toro of Caracas and the marquis de Inicio of Madrid.[15]
+
+Eight months after returning to Venezuela with him, she died from yellow fever on 22 January 1803. Bolívar was so devastated by this loss that his relatives feared for his life. He swore never to marry again, a promise he kept. Many years later Bolívar would refer to the death of his wife as the turning point of his life. Indeed, in 1828, he told Luis Perú de Lacroix the following words:
+
+You then [...] got married at the age of 45; [...] I was not even 18 years old when I did the same, and I was not even nearly 19 years old when I was widowed; I loved my wife dearly, and her death made me swear not to get married again, and I kept my word. Look the way things are: if I were not widowed, my life would have maybe been different; I would not be the General Bolívar nor the Libertador, though I agree that my temper is not suitable for being the landlord of San Mateo.[49]
+
+Not surprisingly, Spanish historian Salvador de Madariaga refers to the death of Bolivar's wife as one of the key moments in Hispanic America's history.[50] In 1804, he traveled again to Europe in an attempt to ease his pain and began falling into a dissolute life. It was then that he met again with his old teacher Simón Rodríguez in Paris, who little by little was able to transform his acute depression into a sense of commitment towards a greater cause: the independence of Venezuela. He lived in Napoleonic France for a while and undertook the Grand Tour.[51] During this time in Europe, Bolívar met the intellectual explorer, Alexander von Humboldt in Rome. Humboldt later wrote: "I was wrong back then, when I judged him a puerile man, incapable of realizing so grand an ambition."[7]:64
+
+Bolívar had several love affairs. Most of them were ephemeral and did not last long. Historians, scholars and biographers often agree with the names of the most prominent women who stood with Bolívar, such as Josefina "Pepita" Machado, Fanny du Villars and Manuela Sáenz.
+
+Manuela Sáenz was the most important of those women. She was more than a lover in Bolívar's later life; she became a trustworthy confidant and advisor. Moreover, Manuela saved Bolívar's life during the September Conspiracy of 1828 in which Bolívar was about to be killed. During this assassination attempt, Manuela diverted the assassins and thus gave Bolívar enough time to escape from his room.[52]
+
+Bolívar and Manuela met in Quito on 22 June 1822 and they began a long-term affair. The relationship was controversial at the time, because Manuela was already married to James Thorne, but they became estranged in 1822 due to irreconcilable differences.[53] The emotional ties between Manuela and Bolívar were strong, and Manuela attempted suicide when she received the news of Bolívar's death.
+
+Despite sometimes living in the same South American cities (such as Bogotá, Quito and Lima), Bolívar and Manuela did not always have a face-to-face relationship. This romance was clear in their letters, but few of them have survived.  Most of her letters were destroyed after Manuela's death.[54][55] Contrary to the arguments exposed by Heinz Dieterich, Carlos Álvarez Saá, and a book edited by Fundación Editorial El Perro y la Rana publishing house in 2007, several letters attributed to both Bolívar and Manuela are intentional forgeries.[56]
+
+In his Memoirs of Simón Bolívar, Henri La Fayette Villaume Ducoudray Holstein (who himself has been called a "not-always-reliable and never impartial witness"[57]) described the young Bolívar as he was attempting to seize power in Venezuela and New Granada in 1814–1816. Ducoudray Holstein joined Bolívar and served on his staff as an officer during this period.
+
+He describes Bolívar as a coward who repeatedly abandoned his military commission in front of the enemy, and also as a great lover of women, being accompanied at all times by two or more of his mistresses during the military operations. He would not hesitate to stop the fleet transporting the whole army and bound for Margarita Island during two days in order to wait for his mistress to join his ship. According to Ducoudray Holstein, Bolívar behaved essentially as an opportunist preferring intrigues and secret manipulation to an open fight. He was also deemed incompetent in military matters, systematically avoiding any risks and permanently anxious for his own safety.
+
+In the Diario de Bucaramanga, Bolívar's opinion of Ducoudray is presented when Louis Peru de Lacroix asked who had been Bolívar's aides-de-camp since he had been general; he mentioned Charles Eloi Demarquet and Ducoudray. Bolívar confirmed the first but denied the second, saying that he had met him in 1815 and accepted his services, even admitting him to his General Staff, but "I never trusted him enough to make him my aide-de-camp; to the contrary, I had a very unfavorable idea of his person and his services", and that Ducoudray's departure after only a brief stay had been a "real pleasure."[58]
+
+Karl Marx[59]
+
+According to Beddow and Thibodeaux, Karl Marx dismissed Bolívar as a "falsifier, deserter, conspirator, liar, coward and looter", and a "false liberator who merely sought to preserve the power of the old Creole nobility to which he belonged".[60]
+
+In an unsympathetic biography titled Bolívar y Ponte, Simón,[61] published in the New American Cyclopedia, Karl Marx criticized much of Bolívar's life. Marx begins by saying that Bolívar was born to a family of "creole nobility in Venezuela" and that similar to the "custom of wealthy Americans of those times, at the early age of 14 he was sent to Europe". At several points in Marx's piece, he complains that Bolívar abandoned his troops multiple times and writes that Bolívar had to be persuaded by his cousin Ribas to return to fight against the Spanish after staying in Cartagena. Marx then penned that after arriving in Caracas in 1813, Bolívar's "dictatorship soon proved a military anarchy, leaving the most important affairs in the hands of favorites, who squandered the finances of the country, and then resorted to odious means in order to restore them". At the conclusion of the biography, Marx uses Ducoudray Holstein's description of Bolívar.[59]
+
+Bolívar had no children, possibly because of infertility caused by having contracted measles and mumps as a child. His closest living relatives descend from his sisters and brother. One of his sisters died in infancy. His sister Juana Bolívar y Palacios married their maternal uncle, Dionisio Palacios y Blanco, and had two children, Guillermo and Benigna. Guillermo Palacios died fighting alongside his uncle Simón in the battle of La Hogaza on 2 December 1817. Benigna had two marriages, the first to Pedro Briceño Méndez and the second to Pedro Amestoy.[62] Their great-grandchildren, Bolívar's closest living relatives, Pedro, and Eduardo Mendoza Goiticoa lived in Caracas as of 2009.
+
+His eldest sister, María Antonia, married Pablo Clemente Francia and had four children: Josefa, Anacleto, Valentina, and Pablo. María Antonia became Bolívar's agent to deal with his properties while he served as president of Gran Colombia and she was an executrix of his will. She retired to Bolívar's estate in Macarao, which she inherited from him.[63]
+
+His older brother, Juan Vicente, who died in 1811 on a diplomatic mission to the United States, had three children born out of wedlock whom he recognized: Juan, Fernando Simón, and Felicia Bolívar Tinoco. Bolívar provided for the children and their mother after his brother's death. Bolívar was especially close to Fernando and in 1822 sent him to study in the United States, where he attended the University of Virginia. In his long life, Fernando had minor participation in some of the major political events of Venezuelan history and also traveled and lived extensively throughout Europe. He had three children, Benjamín Bolívar Gauthier, Santiago Hernández Bolívar, and Claudio Bolívar Taraja. Fernando died in 1898 at the age of 88.[64]
+
+Simón Bolívar was an admirer of both the U.S. and French Revolutions.[7]:35, 52–53 Bolívar even enrolled his nephew, Fernando Bolívar, in a private school in Philadelphia, Germantown Academy, and paid for his education, including attendance at Thomas Jefferson's University of Virginia.[7]:71–72, 369 While he was an admirer of U.S. independence, he did not believe that its governmental system could work in Latin America.[65] Thus, he claimed that the governance of heterogeneous societies like Venezuela "will require a firm hand".[66]
+
+Bolívar felt that the U.S. had been established in land especially fertile for democracy. By contrast, he referred to Spanish America as having been subject to the "triple yoke of ignorance, tyranny, and vice".[7]:224 If a republic could be established in such a land, in his mind, it would have to make some concessions in terms of liberty. This is shown when Bolívar blamed the fall of the first republic on his subordinates trying to imitate "some ethereal republic" and in the process, not paying attention to the gritty political reality of South America.[67]
+
+Among the books accompanying him as he traveled were Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, Voltaire's Letters and, when he was writing the Bolivian constitution, Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws.[68] His Bolivian constitution placed him within the camp of what would become Latin American conservatism in the later nineteenth century. The Bolivian constitution intended to establish a lifelong presidency and a hereditary senate, essentially recreating the British unwritten constitution, as it existed at the time.
+
+According to Carlos Fuentes:
+
+How to govern ourselves after winning independence. It can be said that the Liberator exhausted his soul trying to find an answer to that question...Bolívar tried to avoid the extremes that would overwhelm Spanish America all along the nineteenth century and part of the twentieth. Tyranny or anarchy? 'Do not aim at what is impossible to attain, because in the quest for liberty we may fall into tyranny. Absolute liberty always leads to absolute power and among these two extremes is social liberty'. In order to find this equilibrium, Bolívar proposed a 'clever despotism', a strong executive power able to impose equality there where racial inequality prevailed. Bolívar warned against an 'aristocracy of rank, employment and fortune' that while 'referring to liberty and guarantee' it would just be for themselves but not for levelling with members of lower classes'...He is the disciple of Montesquieu in his insistence that institutions have to be adapted to culture.
+
+Similarly to some others in the history of American Independence (George Washington, Miguel Hidalgo, José de San Martín, Bernardo O'Higgins, Francisco de Paula Santander, Antonio Nariño, and Francisco de Miranda), Simón Bolívar was a Freemason. He was initiated in 1803 in the Masonic Lodge Lautaro, which operated in Cádiz, Spain,.[69][70] It was in this lodge that he first met some of his revolutionary peers, such as José de San Martín. In May 1806 he was conferred the rank of Master Mason in the "Scottish Mother of St. Alexander of Scotland" in Paris. During his time in London, he frequented "The Great American Reunion" lodge in London, founded by Francisco de Miranda. In April 1824, Simón Bolívar was given the 33rd degree of Inspector General Honorary.[71]
+
+He founded the Masonic Lodge No. 2 of Peru, named "Order and Liberty".[72][73]
+
+Due to the historical relevance of Bolívar as a key element during the process of independence in Hispanic America, his memory has been strongly attached to sentiments of nationalism and patriotism, being a recurrent theme of rhetoric in politics. Since the image of Bolívar became an important part to the national identities of Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, his mantle is often claimed by Hispanic American politicians all across the political spectrum.[citation needed]
+
+In Venezuela, Bolívar left behind a militarist legacy[74] with multiple governments utilizing the memory, image and written legacy of Bolívar as important parts of their political messages and propaganda.[75] Bolívar disapproved of the excesses of "party spirit" and "factions", which led to an anti-political environment in Venezuela.[76] For much of the 1800s, Venezuela was ruled by caudillos, with six rebellions occurring to take control of Venezuela between 1892 and 1900 alone.[76] The militarist legacy was then used by the nationalist dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez[75] and more recently the socialist political movement led by Hugo Chávez.[77]
+
+The nations of Bolivia and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and their respective currencies (the Bolivian boliviano and the Venezuelan bolívar), are all named after Bolívar. Additionally, most cities and towns in Colombia and Venezuela are built around a main square known as Plaza Bolívar, as is the case with Bogotá.[78] In this example, most governmental buildings and public structures are located on or around the plaza, including the National Capitol and the Palace of Justice. Besides Quito and Caracas, there are monuments to Bolívar in the Latin American capitals of Lima,[79] Buenos Aires,[80] Havana,[81] Mexico City,[82] Panama City,[83] Paramaribo,[84] San José,[85] Santo Domingo[86] and Sucre.[87] In Bogotá, the Simón Bolívar Park has hosted many concerts.[88]
+
+Outside of Latin America, the variety of monuments to Simón Bolívar are a continuing testament to his legacy. These include statues in many capitals around the world, including Algiers,[89] Ankara,[citation needed] Bucharest,[90] London,[91] Minsk,[92] Moscow,[93] New Delhi,[94] Ottawa,[95] Paris,[96] Prague,[97] Port-au-Prince,[98] Rome,[99] Sofia,[100] Tehran,[101] Vienna[102] and Washington, D.C..[103] Several cities in Spain, especially in the Basque Country, have constructed monuments to Bolívar, including a large monument in Bilbao[104] and a comprehensive Venezuelan government-funded museum in Cenarruza-Puebla de Bolívar,[105] his ancestral hometown. In the US, an imposing bronze equestrian statue of Simón Bolívar stands at the southern entrance to Central Park at the Avenue of the Americas in New York City which also celebrates Bolívar's contributions to Latin America.[106] The Bolivar Peninsula in Texas, Bolivar County, Mississippi, Bolivar, New York, Bolivar, West Virginia and Bolivar, Tennessee are also named in his honor.
+
+Monuments to Bolívar's military legacy also comprise one of Venezuelan Navy's sail training barques, which is named after him, and the USS Simon Bolivar, a Benjamin Franklin-class fleet ballistic missile submarine which served with the U.S. Navy between 1965 and 1995.
+
+Minor planet 712 Boliviana discovered by Max Wolf is named in his honor. The name was suggested by Camille Flammarion.[107] The first Venezuelan satellite, Venesat-1, was given the alternative name Simón Bolívar after him.
+
+His birthday is a public holiday in Venezuela and Bolivia.
+
+Simón Bolívar Memorial Monument, standing in Santa Marta (Colombia) at the Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino
+
+Statue of Bolívar in Plaza Bolívar in Caracas by Adamo Tadolini
+
+Simón Bolívar's statue in Paris
+
+A monument in honor of Simón Bolívar in Sofia, Bulgaria
+
+Statue of Simón Bolívar in Lisbon, Portugal.
+
+Statue of Simón Bolívar in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain.
+
+Statue of Simón Bolívar in Bucharest, Romania.
+
+Statue of Simón Bolívar in Trinity Bellwoods Park, Toronto, Canada.
+
+Bolívar has been depicted in opera, literature, film, and other media, and continues to be a part of the popular culture in many countries. In 1883, to celebrate 100 years since his birth, the Italian musician Nicolò Gabrielli composed the triumphal march Simón Bolívar and dedicated it to then president of Venezuela Antonio Guzmán Blanco. In 1943 Darius Milhaud composed the opera Bolívar. He is also the central character in Gabriel García Márquez's 1989 novel The General in His Labyrinth, in which he is portrayed in a less heroic but more humane manner than in most other parts of his legacy. In 1969 Maximilian Schell played the role of Simón Bolívar in the film of the same name by director Alessandro Blasetti, which also featured actress Rosanna Schiaffino. Bolívar's life was also the basis of the 2013 film Libertador, starring Édgar Ramírez and directed by Alberto Arvelo. In an episode of the Spanish TV series The Ministry of Time, "Tiempo de ilustrados (Time of the Enlightened)", the time agents help him win the heart of his future wife, as this was considered fundamental for Bolívar to fulfil his destiny. Later in the second season of the series the time agents will find him again in 1828 (two years before his death) to avoid his murder, planned by Santander's followers. As of 2019, a Netflix series has been released depicting Bolívar's life and the major events surrounding it. The Netflix series is a Colombian production with Spanish as the main language.
+
+Simón Bolívar leads Gran Colombia in the video game Civilization VI. Gran Colombia was added to the game as part of the New Frontier Pass.[108]
+
+Cited sources

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+
+
+Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand Beauvoir (UK: /də ˈboʊvwɑːr/, US: /də boʊˈvwɑːr/;[2][3] French: [simɔn də bovwaʁ] (listen); 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist and social theorist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory.[4]
+
+Beauvoir wrote novels, essays, biographies, autobiography and monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues. She was known for her 1949 treatise The Second Sex, a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism; and for her novels, including She Came to Stay and The Mandarins. She was also known for her open, lifelong relationship with French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
+
+Simone Beauvoir was born on 9 January 1908[5] into a bourgeois Parisian family in the 6th arrondissement.[6][7][8] Her parents were Georges Bertrand Beauvoir, a legal secretary who once aspired to be an actor,[9] and Françoise Beauvoir (née Brasseur), a wealthy banker's daughter and devout Catholic. Simone's sister, Hélène, was born two years later. The family struggled to maintain their bourgeois status after losing much of their fortune shortly after World War I, and Françoise insisted that the two daughters be sent to a prestigious convent school. Beauvoir herself was deeply religious as a child, at one point intending to become a nun. She shed her faith in her early teens and remained an atheist for the rest of her life.[10]
+
+Beauvoir was intellectually precocious, fueled by her father's encouragement; he reportedly would boast, "Simone thinks like a man!"[11] Because of her family's straitened circumstances, Beauvoir could no longer rely on her dowry, and like other middle-class girls of her age, her marriage opportunities were put at risk. Beauvoir took this opportunity to take steps towards earning a living for herself.[12]
+
+After passing baccalaureate exams in mathematics and philosophy in 1925, she studied mathematics at the Institut Catholique de Paris and literature/languages at the Institut Sainte-Marie [fr]. She then studied philosophy at the Sorbonne and after completing her degree in 1928, she wrote her diplôme d'études supérieures [fr] (roughly equivalent to an MA thesis) on Leibniz for Léon Brunschvicg (the topic was "Le concept chez Leibniz" ["The Concept in Leibniz"]).[13]
+
+Beauvoir first worked with Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Claude Lévi-Strauss, when all three completed their practice teaching requirements at the same secondary school. Although not officially enrolled, she sat in on courses at the École Normale Supérieure in preparation for the agrégation in philosophy, a highly competitive postgraduate examination which serves as a national ranking of students. It was while studying for the agrégation that she met École Normale students Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Nizan, and René Maheu (who gave her the lasting nickname "Castor", or "beaver").[9] The jury for the agrégation narrowly awarded Sartre first place instead of Beauvoir, who placed second and, at age 21, was the youngest person ever to pass the exam.[14]
+
+Writing of her youth in Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter she said:
+"...my father's individualism and pagan ethical standards were in complete contrast to the rigidly moral conventionalism of my mother's teaching. This disequilibrium, which made my life a kind of endless disputation, is the main reason why I became an intellectual."[15]
+
+From 1929 to 1943, Beauvoir taught at the lycée level until she could support herself solely on the earnings of her writings. She taught at the Lycée Montgrand [fr] (Marseille), the Lycée Jeanne-d'Arc (Rouen) [fr], and the Lycée Molière (Paris) [fr] (1936–39).[16]
+
+During October 1929, Jean-Paul Sartre and Beauvoir became a couple and, after they were confronted by her father, Sartre asked her to marry him on a provisional basis: one day while they were sitting on a bench outside the Louvre, he said, "Let's sign a two-year lease".[17] Though Beauvoir wrote , "Marriage was impossible. I had no dowry", scholars point out that her ideal relationships described in The Second Sex and elsewhere bore little resemblances to the marriage standards of the day.[18] Instead, they entered into a lifelong "soul partnership", which was sexual but not exclusive, nor did it involve living together.[19] See "Personal life" below.
+
+Sartre and Beauvoir always read each other's work. Debate continues about the extent to which they influenced each other in their existentialist works, such as Sartre's Being and Nothingness and Beauvoir's She Came to Stay and "Phenomenology and Intent". However, recent studies of Beauvoir's work focus on influences other than Sartre, including Hegel and Leibniz.[4] The Neo-Hegelian revival led by Alexandre Kojève and Jean Hyppolite in the 1930s inspired a whole generation of French thinkers, including Sartre, to discover Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit.[20][21]  However, Beauvoir, reading Hegel in German during the war, produced an original critique of his dialectic of consciousness.
+
+Beauvoir's prominent open relationships at times overshadowed her substantial academic reputation. A scholar lecturing with Beauvoir [22]chastised their "distinguished [Harvard] audience [because] every question asked about Sartre concerned his work, while all those asked about Beauvoir concerned her personal life."[23] Beginning in 1929, Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre were partners and remained so for fifty-one years, until his death in 1980.[24]  Beauvoir chose never to marry or set up a joint household and she never had children. This gave her the time to advance her education and engage in political causes, to write and teach, and to have lovers.[25]
+
+Perhaps her most famous lover was American author Nelson Algren whom she met in Chicago in 1947, and to whom she wrote across the Atlantic as "my beloved husband."[26] Algren won the National Book Award for The Man with the Golden Arm in 1950, and in 1954, Beauvoir won France's most prestigious literary prize for The Mandarins in which Algren is the character Lewis Brogan. Algren vociferously objected to their intimacy becoming public. Years after they separated, she was buried wearing his gift of a silver ring.[27] However, she lived with Claude Lanzmann from 1952 to 1959.[28]
+
+Beauvoir was bisexual, and her relationships with young women were controversial.[29] Former student Bianca Lamblin (originally Bianca Bienenfeld) wrote in her book Mémoires d'une jeune fille dérangée (English: Memoirs of a Disturbed Young Lady), that, while she was a student at Lycée Molière, she had been sexually exploited by her teacher Beauvoir, who was in her 30s at the time.[30] In 1943, Beauvoir was suspended from her teaching job, due to an accusation that she had seduced her 17-year-old lycée pupil Natalie Sorokine in 1939.[31] Sorokine's parents laid formal charges against Beauvoir for debauching a minor and as a result she had her license to teach in France revoked, although she was subsequently reinstated. [32]
+
+In 1977, Beauvoir, Sartre, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and much of the era's intelligentsia signed a petition seeking to abrogate the age of consent in France.[33][34]
+
+Beauvoir published her first novel She Came to Stay in 1943.[35] It has been assumed that it is inspired by her and Sartre's sexual relationship with Olga Kosakiewicz and Wanda Kosakiewicz. Olga was one of her students in the Rouen secondary school where Beauvoir taught during the early 1930s. She grew fond of Olga. Sartre tried to pursue Olga but she rejected him, so he began a relationship with her sister Wanda. Upon his death, Sartre was still supporting Wanda. He also supported Olga for years, until she met and married Jacques-Laurent Bost, a lover of Beauvoir. However, the main thrust of the novel is philosophical, a scene in which to situate Beauvoir's abiding philosophical pre-occupation - the relationship between the self and the other.
+
+In the novel, set just before the outbreak of World War II, Beauvoir creates one character from the complex relationships of Olga and Wanda. The fictionalised versions of Beauvoir and Sartre have a ménage à trois with the young woman. The novel also delves into Beauvoir and Sartre's complex relationship and how it was affected by the ménage à trois.
+
+She Came to Stay was followed by many others, including The Blood of Others, which explores the nature of individual responsibility, telling a love story between two young French students participating in the Resistance in World War II.[36]
+
+In 1944 Beauvoir wrote her first philosophical essay, Pyrrhus et Cinéas, a discussion on existentialist ethics. She continued her exploration of existentialism through her second essay The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947); it is perhaps the most accessible entry into French existentialism. In the essay, Beauvoir clears up some inconsistencies that many, Sartre included, have found in major existentialist works such as Being and Nothingness. In The Ethics of Ambiguity, Beauvoir confronts the existentialist dilemma of absolute freedom vs. the constraints of circumstance.[4]
+
+At the end of World War II, Beauvoir and Sartre edited Les Temps modernes, a political journal which Sartre founded along with Maurice Merleau-Ponty and others. Beauvoir used Les Temps Modernes to promote her own work and explore her ideas on a small scale before fashioning essays and books. Beauvoir remained an editor until her death.
+
+The Second Sex, first published in 1949 in French as Le Deuxième Sexe, turns the existentialist mantra that existence precedes essence into a feminist one: "One is not born but becomes a woman" (French: "On ne naît pas femme, on le devient").[37] With this famous phrase, Beauvoir first articulated what has come to be known as the sex-gender distinction, that is, the distinction between biological sex and the social and historical construction of gender and its attendant stereotypes.[38] Beauvoir argues that "the fundamental source of women's oppression is its [femininity's] historical and social construction as the quintessential" Other.[39]
+
+Beauvoir defines women as the "second sex" because women are defined in relation to men. She pointed out that Aristotle argued women are "female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities", while St. Thomas referred to woman as "imperfect man" and the "incidental" being.[40] Beauvoir asserted that women are as capable of choice as men, and thus can choose to elevate themselves, moving beyond the "immanence" to which they were previously resigned and reaching "transcendence", a position in which one takes responsibility for oneself and the world, where one chooses one's freedom.
+
+Chapters of The Second Sex were originally published in Les Temps modernes,[41] in June 1949. The second volume came a few months after the first in France.[42] It was quickly published in America due to the quick translation by Howard Parshley, as prompted by Blanche Knopf, wife of publisher Alfred A. Knopf. Because Parshley had only a basic familiarity with the French language, and a minimal understanding of philosophy (he was a professor of biology at Smith College), much of Beauvoir's book was mistranslated or inappropriately cut, distorting her intended message.[43] For years, Knopf prevented the introduction of a more accurate retranslation of Beauvoir's work, declining all proposals despite the efforts of existentialist scholars.[43] Only in 2009 was there a second translation, to mark the 60th anniversary of the original publication. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier produced the first integral translation in 2010, reinstating a third of the original work.[44]
+
+In the chapter "Woman: Myth and Reality" of The Second Sex,[45] Beauvoir argued that men had made women the "Other" in society by application of a false aura of "mystery" around them. She argued that men used this as an excuse not to understand women or their problems and not to help them, and that this stereotyping was always done in societies by the group higher in the hierarchy to the group lower in the hierarchy. She wrote that a similar kind of oppression by hierarchy also happened in other categories of identity, such as race, class, and religion, but she claimed that it was nowhere more true than with gender in which men stereotyped women and used it as an excuse to organize society into a patriarchy.
+
+Despite her contributions to the feminist movement, especially the French women's liberation movement, and her beliefs in women's economic independence and equal education, Beauvoir was initially reluctant to call herself a feminist.[12] However, after observing the resurgence of the feminist movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Beauvoir stated she no longer believed a socialist revolution to be enough to bring about women's liberation. She publicly declared herself a feminist in 1972 in an interview with Le Nouvel Observateur.[46]
+
+In 2018 the manuscript pages of Le Deuxième Sexe were published. At the time her adopted daughter, Sylvie Le Bon-Beauvoir, a philosophy professor, described her mother's writing process: Beauvoir wrote every page of her books longhand first and only after that would hire typists.[47]
+
+Published in 1954, The Mandarins won her France's highest literary prize, the Prix Goncourt. The book is set after the end of World War II and follows the personal lives of philosophers and friends among Sartre's and Beauvoir's intimate circle, including her relationship with American writer Nelson Algren, to whom the book was dedicated. Algren was outraged by the frank way Beauvoir described their sexual experiences in both The Mandarins and her autobiographies. Algren vented his outrage when reviewing American translations of Beauvoir's work. Much material bearing on this episode in Beauvoir's life, including her love letters to Algren, entered the public domain only after her death.
+
+In 2020 it was announced that a previously unpublished Beauvoir novel would be published by Vintage in 2021, to be translated by Lauren Elkin.[48] The novel was written in 1954 and details the "passionate and tragic" real life friendship she had as a young girl with Elisabeth "Zaza" Lacoin, depicted by two characters named Andrée and Sylvie. The novel was deemed "too intimate" to be published during Beauvoir's lifetime.
+
+Beauvoir wrote popular travel diaries about time spent in the United States[49] and China and published essays and fiction rigorously, especially throughout the 1950s and 1960s. She published several volumes of short stories, including The Woman Destroyed, which, like some of her other later work, deals with aging.
+
+1980 saw the publication of When Things of the Spirit Come First, a set of short stories centred around and based upon women important to her earlier years[ambiguous].[36] Though written long before the novel She Came to Stay, Beauvoir did not at the time consider the stories worth publishing, allowing some forty years to pass before doing so.[clarification needed]
+
+Sartre and Merleau-Ponty had a longstanding feud, which led Merleau-Ponty to leave Les Temps Modernes. Beauvoir sided with Sartre and ceased to associate with Merleau-Ponty. In Beauvoir's later years, she hosted the journal's editorial meetings in her flat and contributed more than Sartre, whom she often had to force[clarification needed] to offer his opinions.[citation needed]
+
+Beauvoir also wrote a four-volume autobiography, consisting of: Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter; The Prime of Life; Force of Circumstance (sometimes published in two volumes in English translation: After the War and Hard Times); and All Said and Done.[36] In 1964 Beauvoir published a novella-length autobiography, A Very Easy Death, covering the time she spent visiting her ageing mother, who was dying of cancer. The novella brings up questions of ethical concerns with truth-telling in doctor-patient relationships.[50]
+
+In the 1970s Beauvoir became active in France's women's liberation movement. She wrote and signed the Manifesto of the 343 in 1971, a manifesto that included a list of famous women who claimed to have had an abortion, then illegal in France. Some[who?] argue most of the women had not had abortions, including Beauvoir. Signatories were diverse[clarification needed] as Catherine Deneuve, Delphine Seyrig, and Beauvoir's sister Poupette. In 1974, abortion was legalised in France.
+
+Her 1970 long essay La Vieillesse (The Coming of Age) is a rare instance of an intellectual meditation on the decline and solitude all humans experience if they do not die before about the age of 60.[51]
+
+In an interview with Betty Friedan, Beauvoir said: "No, we don’t believe that any woman should have this choice. No woman should be authorised to stay at home to bring up her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one. It is a way of forcing women in a certain direction."[52][clarification needed]
+
+In about 1976 Beauvoir and Sylvie Le Bon made a trip to New York City in the United States to visit Kate Millett on her farm.[53][clarification needed]
+
+In 1981 she wrote La Cérémonie Des Adieux (A Farewell to Sartre), a painful account of Sartre's last years. In the opening of Adieux, Beauvoir notes that it is the only major published work of hers which Sartre did not read before its publication.
+
+She contributed the piece "Feminism – alive, well, and in constant danger" to the 1984 anthology Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women's Movement Anthology, edited by Robin Morgan.[54]
+
+After Sartre died in 1980, Beauvoir published his letters to her with edits to spare the feelings of people in their circle who were still living. After Beauvoir's death, Sartre's adopted daughter and literary heir Arlette Elkaïm would not let many of Sartre's letters be published in unedited form. Most of Sartre's letters available today have Beauvoir's edits, which include a few omissions but mostly the use of pseudonyms. Beauvoir's adopted daughter and literary heir Sylvie Le Bon, unlike Elkaïm, published Beauvoir's unedited letters to both Sartre and Algren.
+
+Beauvoir died of pneumonia on 14 April 1986 in Paris, aged 78.[55] She is buried next to Sartre at the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris.

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+
+
+The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company.[1][2][3] The series is a satirical depiction of working-class life, epitomized by the Simpson family, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie. The show is set in the fictional town of Springfield and parodies American culture and society, television, and the human condition.
+
+The family was conceived by Groening shortly before a solicitation for a series of animated shorts with producer James L. Brooks. Groening created a dysfunctional family and named the characters after his own family members, substituting Bart for his own name, he thought Simpson was a funny name in that it had the word "simp" in it, which is short for "simpleton".[4] The shorts became a part of The Tracey Ullman Show on April 19, 1987. After three seasons, the sketch was developed into a half-hour prime time show and became Fox's first series to land in the Top 30 ratings in a season (1989–1990).
+
+Since its debut on December 17, 1989, 684 episodes of The Simpsons have been broadcast. It is the longest-running American sitcom, and the longest-running American scripted primetime television series, both in terms of seasons and number of episodes. A feature-length film, The Simpsons Movie, was released in theaters worldwide on July 27, 2007, and grossed over $527 million. Then on October 30, 2007, a video game was released. The Simpsons was renewed on February 6, 2019 for a thirty-first and thirty-second season.[5] The former began airing September 29, 2019 and concluded on May 17, 2020, and the latter of which will contain the 700th episode. The Simpsons is a joint production by Gracie Films and 20th Century Fox Television and syndicated by 20th Television.[6]
+
+The Simpsons received acclaim throughout its first nine[7][8] or ten[9][10] seasons, which are generally considered its "Golden Age", though it has also been criticized for a perceived decline in quality since then. Time named it the 20th century's best television series,[11] and Erik Adams of The A.V. Club named it "television's crowning achievement regardless of format".[12] On January 14, 2000, the Simpson family was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It has won dozens of awards since it debuted as a series, including 34 Primetime Emmy Awards, 34 Annie Awards, and 2 Peabody Awards. Homer's exclamatory catchphrase "D'oh!" has been adopted into the English language, while The Simpsons has influenced many other later adult-oriented animated sitcoms.
+
+The Simpsons is known for its wide ensemble of main and supporting characters (ensemble cast).
+
+The main characters are the Simpson family, who live in a fictional "Middle America" town of Springfield.[13] Homer, the father, works as a safety inspector at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, a position at odds with his careless, buffoonish personality. He is married to Marge Bouvier, a stereotypical American housewife and mother. They have three children: Bart, a ten-year-old troublemaker and prankster; Lisa, a precocious eight-year-old activist; and Maggie, the baby of the family who rarely speaks, but communicates by sucking on a pacifier. Although the family is dysfunctional, many episodes examine their relationships and bonds with each other and they are often shown to care about one another.[14] Homer's dad Grampa Simpson lives in the Springfield Retirement Home after Homer forced his dad to sell his house so that his family could buy theirs. Grampa Simpson has had starring roles in several episodes.
+
+The family also owns a dog, Santa's Little Helper, and a cat, Snowball V, renamed Snowball II in "I, (Annoyed Grunt)-Bot".[15] Both pets have had starring roles in several episodes.
+
+The show includes an array of quirky supporting characters, which include Homer's co-workers (also friends) Lenny Leonard and Carl Carlson, the school principal Seymour Skinner and teachers Edna Krabappel and Elizabeth Hoover, neighbor Ned Flanders, friends Barney Gumble, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, Moe Szyslak, Milhouse Van Houten, and Nelson Muntz, extended relatives Patty and Selma Bouvier, townspeople such as Mayor Quimby, Chief Clancy Wiggum, tycoon Charles Montgomery Burns and his executive assistant Waylon Smithers, and local celebrities Krusty the Clown and news reporter Kent Brockman.
+
+The creators originally intended many of these characters as one-time jokes or for fulfilling needed functions in the town. A number of them have gained expanded roles and subsequently starred in their own episodes. According to Matt Groening, the show adopted the concept of a large supporting cast from the comedy show SCTV.[16]
+
+Despite the depiction of yearly milestones such as holidays or birthdays passing, the characters do not age between episodes (either physically or in stated age), and generally appear just as they did when the series began. The series uses a floating timeline in which episodes generally take place in the year the episode is produced even though the characters do not age. Flashbacks and flashforwards do occasionally depict the characters at other points in their lives, with the timeline of these depictions also generally floating relative to the year the episode is produced. For example, in the 1991 episode "I Married Marge", Bart (who is always 10 years old) appears to be born in 1980 or 1981. But in the 1995 episode "And Maggie Makes Three", Maggie (who always appears to be around 1 year old) appears to be born in 1993 or 1994. In the 1992 episode "Lisa's First Word", Lisa (who is always 8) is shown to have been born in 1984.
+
+A canon of the show does exist, although Treehouse of Horror episodes and any fictional story told within the series are typically non-canon. However, continuity is inconsistent and limited in The Simpsons. For example, Krusty the Clown may be able to read in one episode, but may not be able to read in another – however he is consistently portrayed as being Jewish and that his Rabbi father has since died. Lessons learned by the family in one episode may be forgotten in the next. Some examples of limited continuity include Sideshow Bob's appearances where Bart and Lisa flashback at all the crimes he committed in Springfield or when the characters try to remember things that happened in previous episodes.
+
+The Simpsons takes place in the fictional American town of Springfield in an unknown and impossible-to-determine U.S. state. The show is intentionally evasive in regard to Springfield's location.[17] Springfield's geography, and that of its surroundings, contains coastlines, deserts, vast farmland, tall mountains, or whatever the story or joke requires.[18] Groening has said that Springfield has much in common with Portland, Oregon, the city where he grew up.[19] The name "Springfield" is a common one in America and appears in at least 29 states.[20] Groening has said that he named it after Springfield, Oregon, and the fictitious Springfield which was the setting of the series Father Knows Best. He "figured out that Springfield was one of the most common names for a city in the U.S. In anticipation of the success of the show, I thought, 'This will be cool; everyone will think it's their Springfield.' And they do."[21]
+
+When producer James L. Brooks was working on the television variety show The Tracey Ullman Show, he decided to include small animated sketches before and after the commercial breaks. Having seen one of cartoonist Matt Groening's Life in Hell comic strips, Brooks asked Groening to pitch an idea for a series of animated shorts. Groening initially intended to present an animated version of his Life in Hell series.[22] However, Groening later realized that animating Life in Hell would require the rescinding of publication rights for his life's work. He therefore chose another approach while waiting in the lobby of Brooks's office for the pitch meeting, hurriedly formulating his version of a dysfunctional family that became the Simpsons.[22][23] He named the characters after his own family members, substituting "Bart" for his own name, adopting an anagram of the word brat.[22]
+
+The Simpson family first appeared as shorts in The Tracey Ullman Show on April 19, 1987.[24] Groening submitted only basic sketches to the animators and assumed that the figures would be cleaned up in production. However, the animators merely re-traced his drawings, which led to the crude appearance of the characters in the initial shorts.[22] The animation was produced domestically at Klasky Csupo,[25][26] with Wes Archer, David Silverman, and Bill Kopp being animators for the first season.[27] Colorist Georgie Peluse was the person who decided to make the characters yellow.[27]
+
+In 1989, a team of production companies adapted The Simpsons into a half-hour series for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The team included the Klasky Csupo animation house. Brooks negotiated a provision in the contract with the Fox network that prevented Fox from interfering with the show's content.[28] Groening said his goal in creating the show was to offer the audience an alternative to what he called "the mainstream trash" that they were watching.[29] The half-hour series premiered on December 17, 1989, with "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire".[30] "Some Enchanted Evening" was the first full-length episode produced, but it did not broadcast until May 1990, as the last episode of the first season, because of animation problems.[31] In 1992, Tracey Ullman filed a lawsuit against Fox, claiming that her show was the source of the series' success. The suit said she should receive a share of the profits of The Simpsons[32]—a claim rejected by the courts.[33]
+
+List of showrunners throughout the series' run:
+
+Matt Groening and James L. Brooks have served as executive producers during the show's entire history, and also function as creative consultants. Sam Simon, described by former Simpsons director Brad Bird as "the unsung hero" of the show,[34] served as creative supervisor for the first four seasons. He was constantly at odds with Groening, Brooks and the show's production company Gracie Films and left in 1993.[35] Before leaving, he negotiated a deal that sees him receive a share of the profits every year, and an executive producer credit despite not having worked on the show since 1993,[35][36] at least until his passing in 2015.[37] A more involved position on the show is the showrunner, who acts as head writer and manages the show's production for an entire season.[27]
+
+The first team of writers, assembled by Sam Simon, consisted of John Swartzwelder, Jon Vitti, George Meyer, Jeff Martin, Al Jean, Mike Reiss, Jay Kogen and Wallace Wolodarsky.[38] Newer Simpsons' writing teams typically consist of sixteen writers who propose episode ideas at the beginning of each December.[39] The main writer of each episode writes the first draft. Group rewriting sessions develop final scripts by adding or removing jokes, inserting scenes, and calling for re-readings of lines by the show's vocal performers.[40] Until 2004,[41] George Meyer, who had developed the show since the first season, was active in these sessions. According to long-time writer Jon Vitti, Meyer usually invented the best lines in a given episode, even though other writers may receive script credits.[40] Each episode takes six months to produce so the show rarely comments on current events.[42]
+
+Credited with sixty episodes, John Swartzwelder is the most prolific writer on The Simpsons.[43] One of the best-known former writers is Conan O'Brien, who contributed to several episodes in the early 1990s before replacing David Letterman as host of the talk show Late Night.[44] English comedian Ricky Gervais wrote the episode "Homer Simpson, This Is Your Wife", becoming the first celebrity to both write and guest star in the same episode.[45] Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, writers of the film Superbad, wrote the episode "Homer the Whopper", with Rogen voicing a character in it.[46]
+
+At the end of 2007, the writers of The Simpsons went on strike together with the other members of the Writers Guild of America, East. The show's writers had joined the guild in 1998.[47]
+
+The Simpsons has six main cast members: Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Hank Azaria, and Harry Shearer. Castellaneta voices Homer Simpson, Grampa Simpson, Krusty the Clown, Groundskeeper Willie, Mayor Quimby, Barney Gumble, and other adult, male characters.[48] Julie Kavner voices Marge Simpson and Patty and Selma, as well as several minor characters.[48] Castellaneta and Kavner had been a part of The Tracey Ullman Show cast and were given the parts so that new actors would not be needed.[49] Cartwright voices Bart Simpson, Nelson Muntz, Ralph Wiggum and other children.[48] Smith, the voice of Lisa Simpson, is the only cast member who regularly voices only one character, although she occasionally plays other episodic characters.[48] The producers decided to hold casting for the roles of Bart and Lisa. Smith had initially been asked to audition for the role of Bart, but casting director Bonita Pietila believed her voice was too high,[50] so she was given the role of Lisa instead.[51] Cartwright was originally brought in to voice Lisa, but upon arriving at the audition, she found that Lisa was simply described as the "middle child" and at the time did not have much personality. Cartwright became more interested in the role of Bart, who was described as "devious, underachieving, school-hating, irreverent, [and] clever".[52] Groening let her try out for the part instead, and upon hearing her read, gave her the job on the spot.[53] Cartwright is the only one of the six main Simpsons cast members who had been professionally trained in voice acting prior to working on the show.[43] Azaria and Shearer do not voice members of the title family, but play a majority of the male townspeople. Azaria, who has been a part of the Simpsons regular voice cast since the second season,[54] voices recurring characters such as Moe Szyslak, Chief Wiggum, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon and Professor Frink. Shearer provides voices for Mr. Burns, Mr. Smithers, Principal Skinner, Ned Flanders, Reverend Lovejoy and Dr. Hibbert.[48] Every main cast member has won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance.[55][56]
+
+With one exception, episode credits list only the voice actors, and not the characters they voice. Both Fox and the production crew wanted to keep their identities secret during the early seasons and, therefore, closed most of the recording sessions while refusing to publish photos of the recording artists.[57] However, the network eventually revealed which roles each actor performed in the episode "Old Money", because the producers said the voice actors should receive credit for their work.[58] In 2003, the cast appeared in an episode of Inside the Actors Studio, doing live performances of their characters' voices.
+
+The six main actors were paid $30,000 per episode until 1998, when they were involved in a pay dispute with Fox. The company threatened to replace them with new actors, even going as far as preparing for casting of new voices, but series creator Groening supported the actors in their action.[59] The issue was soon resolved and, from 1998 to 2004, they were paid $125,000 per episode. The show's revenue continued to rise through syndication and DVD sales, and in April 2004 the main cast stopped appearing for script readings, demanding they be paid $360,000 per episode.[60][61] The strike was resolved a month later[62] and their salaries were increased to something between $250,000[63] and $360,000 per episode.[64] In 2008, production for the twentieth season was put on hold due to new contract negotiations with the voice actors, who wanted a "healthy bump" in salary to an amount close to $500,000 per episode.[64] The negotiations were soon completed, and the actors' salary was raised to $400,000 per episode.[65] Three years later, with Fox threatening to cancel the series unless production costs were cut, the cast members accepted a 30 percent pay cut, down to just over $300,000 per episode.[66]
+
+In addition to the main cast, Pamela Hayden, Tress MacNeille, Marcia Wallace, Maggie Roswell, and Russi Taylor voice supporting characters.[48] From 1999 to 2002, Roswell's characters were voiced by Marcia Mitzman Gaven. Karl Wiedergott has also appeared in minor roles, but does not voice any recurring characters.[67] Wiedergott left the show in 2010, and since then Chris Edgerly has appeared regularly to voice minor characters. Repeat "special guest" cast members include Albert Brooks, Phil Hartman, Jon Lovitz, Joe Mantegna, Maurice LaMarche, and Kelsey Grammer.[68]  Following Hartman's death in 1998, the characters he voiced (Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz) were retired;[69] Wallace's character of Edna Krabappel was retired as well after her death in 2013. Following Taylor's death in 2019, her characters (including Sherri, Terri, and Martin Prince) are now voiced by Grey Griffin.[70]
+
+Episodes will quite often feature guest voices from a wide range of professions, including actors, athletes, authors, bands, musicians and scientists. In the earlier seasons, most of the guest stars voiced characters, but eventually more started appearing as themselves. Tony Bennett was the first guest star to appear as himself, appearing briefly in the season two episode "Dancin' Homer".[71] The Simpsons holds the world record for "Most Guest Stars Featured in a Television Series".[72]
+
+The Simpsons has been dubbed into several other languages, including Japanese, German, Spanish, and Portuguese. It is also one of the few programs dubbed in both standard French and Quebec French.[73] The show has been broadcast in Arabic, but due to Islamic customs, numerous aspects of the show have been changed. For example, Homer drinks soda instead of beer and eats Egyptian beef sausages instead of hot dogs. Because of such changes, the Arabized version of the series met with a negative reaction from the lifelong Simpsons fans in the area.[74]
+
+Several different U.S. and international studios animate The Simpsons. Throughout the run of the animated shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show, the animation was produced domestically at Klasky Csupo.[25] With the debut of the series, because of an increased workload, Fox subcontracted production to several local and foreign studios.[25] These are AKOM,[75] Anivision,[76] Rough Draft Studios,[77] USAnimation,[78] and Toonzone Entertainment.[79]
+
+For the first three seasons, Klasky Csupo animated The Simpsons in the United States. In 1992, the show's production company, Gracie Films, switched domestic production to Film Roman,[80] who continued to animate the show until 2016. In Season 14, production switched from traditional cel animation to digital ink and paint.[81] The first episode to experiment with digital coloring was "Radioactive Man" in 1995. Animators used digital ink and paint during production of the season 12 episode "Tennis the Menace", but Gracie Films delayed the regular use of digital ink and paint until two seasons later. The already completed "Tennis the Menace" was broadcast as made.[82]
+
+The production staff at the U.S. animation studio, Film Roman, draws storyboards, designs new characters, backgrounds, props and draws character and background layouts, which in turn become animatics to be screened for the writers at Gracie Films for any changes to be made before the work is shipped overseas. The overseas studios then draw the inbetweens, ink and paint, and render the animation to tape before it is shipped back to the United States to be delivered to Fox three to four months later.[83]
+
+The series began high-definition production in Season 20; the first episode, "Take My Life, Please", aired February 15, 2009. The move to HDTV included a new opening sequence.[84] Matt Groening called it a complicated change because it affected the timing and composition of animation.[85]
+
+The Simpsons uses the standard setup of a situational comedy, or sitcom, as its premise. The series centers on a family and their life in a typical American town,[13] serving as a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle.[86] However, because of its animated nature, The Simpsons' scope is larger than that of a regular sitcom. The town of Springfield acts as a complete universe in which characters can explore the issues faced by modern society. By having Homer work in a nuclear power plant, the show can comment on the state of the environment.[87] Through Bart and Lisa's days at Springfield Elementary School, the show's writers illustrate pressing or controversial issues in the field of education. The town features a vast array of media channels—from kids' television programming to local news, which enables the producers to make jokes about themselves and the entertainment industry.[88]
+
+Some commentators say the show is political in nature and susceptible to a left-wing bias.[89] Al Jean acknowledged in an interview that "We [the show] are of liberal bent."[90] The writers often evince an appreciation for progressive leanings, but the show makes jokes across the political spectrum.[91] The show portrays government and large corporations as evil entities that take advantage of the common worker.[90] Thus, the writers often portray authority figures in an unflattering or negative light. In The Simpsons, politicians are corrupt, ministers such as Reverend Lovejoy are dismissive to churchgoers, and the local police force is incompetent.[92] Religion also figures as a recurring theme.[93] In times of crisis, the family often turns to God, and the show has dealt with most of the major religions.[94]
+
+The Simpsons' opening sequence is one of the show's most memorable hallmarks. The standard opening has gone through three iterations (a replacement of some shots at the start of the second season, and a brand new sequence when the show switched to high-definition in 2009).[95]
+
+Each has the same basic sequence of events: the camera zooms through cumulus clouds, through the show's title towards the town of Springfield. The camera then follows the members of the family on their way home. Upon entering their house, the Simpsons settle down on their couch to watch television. The original opening was created by David Silverman, and was the first task he did when production began on the show.[96] The series' distinctive theme song was composed by musician Danny Elfman in 1989, after Groening approached him requesting a retro style piece. This piece has been noted by Elfman as the most popular of his career.[97]
+
+One of the most distinctive aspects of the opening is that three of its elements change from episode to episode: Bart writes different things on the school chalkboard,[96] Lisa plays different solos on her saxophone (or occasionally a different instrument), and different gags accompany the family as they enter their living room to sit on the couch.[98]
+
+The special Halloween episode has become an annual tradition. "Treehouse of Horror" first broadcast in 1990 as part of season two and established the pattern of three separate, self-contained stories in each Halloween episode.[99] These pieces usually involve the family in some horror, science fiction, or supernatural setting and often parody or pay homage to a famous piece of work in those genres.[100] They always take place outside the normal continuity of the show. Although the Treehouse series is meant to be seen on Halloween, this changed by the 2000s, when new installments have premiered after Halloween due to Fox's current contract with Major League Baseball's World Series,[101] however, since 2011, every Treehouse of Horror episode has aired in October.
+
+The show's humor turns on cultural references that cover a wide spectrum of society so that viewers from all generations can enjoy the show. Such references, for example, come from movies, television, music, literature, science, and history.[102] The animators also regularly add jokes or sight gags into the show's background via humorous or incongruous bits of text in signs, newspapers, billboards, and elsewhere. The audience may often not notice the visual jokes in a single viewing. Some are so fleeting that they become apparent only by pausing a video recording of the show or viewing it in slow motion.[103] Kristin Thompson argues that The Simpsons uses a "flurry of cultural references, intentionally inconsistent characterization, and considerable self-reflexivity about television conventions and the status of the programme as a television show."[104]
+
+One of Bart's early hallmarks was his prank calls to Moe's Tavern owner Moe Szyslak in which Bart calls Moe and asks for a gag name. Moe tries to find that person in the bar, but soon realizes it is a prank call and angrily threatens Bart. These calls were apparently based on a series of prank calls known as the Tube Bar recordings, though Groening has denied any causal connection.[105]
+Moe was based partly on Tube Bar owner Louis "Red" Deutsch, whose often profane responses inspired Moe's violent side.[106] As the series progressed, it became more difficult for the writers to come up with a fake name and to write Moe's angry response, and the pranks were dropped as a regular joke during the fourth season.[107][108] The Simpsons also often includes self-referential humor.[109] The most common form is jokes about Fox Broadcasting.[110] For example, the episode "She Used to Be My Girl" included a scene in which a Fox News Channel van drove down the street while displaying a large "Bush Cheney 2004" banner and playing Queen's "We Are the Champions", in reference to the 2004 U.S. presidential election and claims of conservative bias in Fox News.[111][112]
+
+The show uses catchphrases, and most of the primary and secondary characters have at least one each.[113] Notable expressions include Homer's annoyed grunt "D'oh!", Mr. Burns' "Excellent" and Nelson Muntz's "Ha-ha!" Some of Bart's catchphrases, such as "¡Ay, caramba!", "Don't have a cow, man!" and "Eat my shorts!" appeared on T-shirts in the show's early days.[114] However, Bart rarely used the latter two phrases until after they became popular through the merchandising. The use of many of these catchphrases has declined in recent seasons. The episode "Bart Gets Famous" mocks catchphrase-based humor, as Bart achieves fame on the Krusty the Clown Show solely for saying "I didn't do it."[115]
+
+The Simpsons has gained notoriety for jokes that eventually became reality. Perhaps the most famous example comes from the episode "Bart to the Future", which mentions billionaire Donald Trump having been President of the United States at one time and leaving the nation broke. The episode first aired in 2000, sixteen years before Trump was elected.[116] Another episode, "When You Dish Upon a Star", lampooned 20th Century Fox as a division of The Walt Disney Company. Nineteen years later, Disney purchased Fox.[117] Other examples of The Simpsons predicting the future include the introduction of the Smartwatch, video chat services, autocorrection technology, and Lady Gaga's acrobatic performance at the Super Bowl LI halftime show.[118] Conversely, some fact-checking sources such as Snopes have debunked many of these claims,[119] including the aforementioned Lady Gaga one.[120]
+
+A number of neologisms that originated on The Simpsons have entered popular vernacular.[121][122] Mark Liberman, director of the Linguistic Data Consortium, remarked, "The Simpsons has apparently taken over from Shakespeare and the Bible as our culture's greatest source of idioms, catchphrases and sundry other textual allusions."[122] The most famous catchphrase is Homer's annoyed grunt: "D'oh!" So ubiquitous is the expression that it is now listed in the Oxford English Dictionary, but without the apostrophe.[123] Dan Castellaneta says he borrowed the phrase from James Finlayson, an actor in many Laurel and Hardy comedies, who pronounced it in a more elongated and whining tone. The staff of The Simpsons told Castellaneta to shorten the noise, and it went on to become the well-known exclamation in the television series.[124]
+
+Groundskeeper Willie's description of the French as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" was used by National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg in 2003, after France's opposition to the proposed invasion of Iraq. The phrase quickly spread to other journalists.[122][125] "Cromulent" and "embiggen", words used in "Lisa the Iconoclast", have since appeared in the Dictionary.com's 21st Century Lexicon,[126] and scientific journals respectively.[122][127] "Kwyjibo", a fake Scrabble word invented by Bart in "Bart the Genius", was used as one of the aliases of the creator of the Melissa worm.[128] "I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords", was used by Kent Brockman in "Deep Space Homer" and has become a snowclone,[129] with variants of the utterance used to express obsequious submission. It has been used in media, such as New Scientist magazine.[130] The dismissive term "Meh", believed to have been popularized by the show,[122][131][132] entered the Collins English Dictionary in 2008.[133] Other words credited as stemming from the show include "yoink" and "craptacular".[122]
+
+The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations includes several quotations from the show. As well as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys", Homer's lines, "Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is never try", from "Burns' Heir" (season five, 1994) as well as "Kids are the best, Apu. You can teach them to hate the things you hate. And they practically raise themselves, what with the Internet and all", from "Eight Misbehavin'" (season 11, 1999), entered the dictionary in August 2007.[134]
+
+Many quotes/scenes have become popular internet memes, including Jasper Beardley‘s quote "That's a paddlin’" from The PTA Disbands (season 6, 1995) and Steamed Hams from 22 Short Films About Springfield (season 7, 1996).
+
+The Simpsons was the first successful animated program in American prime time since Wait Till Your Father Gets Home in the 1970s.[135] During most of the 1980s, US pundits considered animated shows as appropriate only for children, and animating a show was too expensive to achieve a quality suitable for prime-time television. The Simpsons changed this perception,[25] initially leading to a short period where networks attempted to recreate prime-time cartoon success with shows like Capitol Critters, Fish Police, and Family Dog, which were expensive and unsuccessful.[136] The Simpsons' use of Korean animation studios for tweening, coloring, and filming made the episodes cheaper. The success of The Simpsons and the lower production cost prompted US television networks to take chances on other adult animated series.[25] This development led US producers to a 1990s boom in new, animated prime-time shows for adults, such as Beavis and Butt-Head, South Park, Family Guy, King of the Hill, Futurama and The Critic.[25] For Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, "The Simpsons created an audience for prime-time animation that had not been there for many, many years ... As far as I'm concerned, they basically re-invented the wheel. They created what is in many ways—you could classify it as—a wholly new medium."[137]
+
+The Simpsons has had crossovers with four other shows. In the episode "A Star Is Burns", Marge invites Jay Sherman, the main character of The Critic, to be a judge for a film festival in Springfield. Matt Groening had his name removed from the episode since he had no involvement with The Critic.[138] South Park later paid homage to The Simpsons with the episode "Simpsons Already Did It".[139] In "Simpsorama", the Planet Express crew from Futurama come to Springfield in the present to prevent the Simpsons from destroying the future.[140] In the Family Guy episode "The Simpsons Guy", the Griffins visit Springfield and meet the Simpsons.[141]
+
+The Simpsons has also influenced live-action shows like Malcolm in the Middle, which featured the use of sight gags and did not use a laugh track unlike most sitcoms.[142][143] Malcolm in the Middle debuted January 9, 2000, in the time slot after The Simpsons. Ricky Gervais called The Simpsons an influence on The Office,[144] and fellow British sitcom Spaced was, according to its director Edgar Wright, "an attempt to do a live-action The Simpsons."[145] In Georgia, the animated television sitcom The Samsonadzes, launched in November 2009, has been noted for its very strong resemblance with The Simpsons, which its creator Shalva Ramishvili has acknowledged.[146][147]
+
+The Simpsons was the Fox network's first television series to rank among a season's top 30 highest-rated shows.[157] In 1990, Bart quickly became one of the most popular characters on television in what was termed "Bartmania".[158][159][160][161] He became the most prevalent Simpsons character on memorabilia, such as T-shirts. In the early 1990s, millions of T-shirts featuring Bart were sold;[162] as many as one million were sold on some days.[163] Believing Bart to be a bad role model, several American public schools banned T-shirts featuring Bart next to captions such as "I'm Bart Simpson. Who the hell are you?" and "Underachiever ('And proud of it, man!')".[164][165][166] The Simpsons merchandise sold well and generated $2 billion in revenue during the first 14 months of sales.[164] Because of his popularity, Bart was often the most promoted member of the Simpson family in advertisements for the show, even for episodes in which he was not involved in the main plot.[167]
+
+Due to the show's success, over the summer of 1990 the Fox Network decided to switch The Simpsons' time slot from 8:00 p.m. ET on Sunday night to the same time on Thursday, where it competed with The Cosby Show on NBC, the number one show at the time.[168][169] Through the summer, several news outlets published stories about the supposed "Bill vs. Bart" rivalry.[163][168] "Bart Gets an F" (season two, 1990) was the first episode to air against The Cosby Show, and it received a lower Nielsen ratings, tying for eighth behind The Cosby Show, which had an 18.5 rating. The rating is based on the number of household televisions that were tuned into the show, but Nielsen Media Research estimated that 33.6 million viewers watched the episode, making it the number one show in terms of actual viewers that week. At the time, it was the most watched episode in the history of the Fox Network,[170] and it is still the highest rated episode in the history of The Simpsons.[171] The show moved back to its Sunday slot in 1994 and has remained there ever since.[172]
+
+The Simpsons has received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics, and it has been noted for being described as "the most irreverent and unapologetic show on the air."[173] In a 1990 review of the show, Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly described it as "the American family at its most complicated, drawn as simple cartoons. It's this neat paradox that makes millions of people turn away from the three big networks on Sunday nights to concentrate on The Simpsons."[174] Tucker also described the show as a "pop-cultural phenomenon, a prime-time cartoon show that appeals to the entire family."[175]
+
+On February 9, 1997, The Simpsons surpassed The Flintstones with the episode "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show" as the longest-running prime-time animated series in the United States.[176] In 2004, The Simpsons replaced The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952 to 1966) as the longest-running sitcom (animated or live action) in the United States.[177] In 2009, The Simpsons surpassed The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet's record of 435 episodes and is now recognized by Guinness World Records as the world's longest running sitcom (in terms of episode count).[178][179] In October 2004, Scooby-Doo briefly overtook The Simpsons as the American animated show with the highest number of episodes (albeit under several different iterations).[180] However, network executives in April 2005 again cancelled Scooby-Doo, which finished with 371 episodes, and The Simpsons reclaimed the title with 378 episodes at the end of their seventeenth season.[181] In May 2007, The Simpsons reached their 400th episode at the end of the eighteenth season. While The Simpsons has the record for the number of episodes by an American animated show, other animated series have surpassed The Simpsons.[182] For example, the Japanese anime series Sazae-san has over 7,000 episodes to its credit.[182]
+
+In 2009, Fox began a year-long celebration of the show titled "Best. 20 Years. Ever." to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the premiere of The Simpsons. One of the first parts of the celebration is the "Unleash Your Yellow" contest in which entrants must design a poster for the show.[183] The celebration ended on January 10, 2010 (almost 20 years after "Bart the Genius" aired on January 14, 1990), with The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special – In 3-D! On Ice!, a documentary special by documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock that examines the "cultural phenomenon of The Simpsons".[184][185]
+
+As of the twenty-first season (2009–2010), The Simpsons became the longest-running American scripted primetime television series, having surpassed the 1955–1975 run of Gunsmoke.  On April 29, 2018, The Simpsons also surpassed Gunsmoke's 635-episode count with the episode "Forgive and Regret."[177][186]
+
+On February 6, 2019, it was announced that The Simpsons has been renewed for Seasons 31 and 32.[187]
+
+The Simpsons has won dozens of awards since it debuted as a series, including 34 Primetime Emmy Awards,[72] 34 Annie Awards[188] and a Peabody Award.[189] In a 1999 issue celebrating the 20th century's greatest achievements in arts and entertainment, Time magazine named The Simpsons the century's best television series.[190] In that same issue, Time included Bart Simpson in the Time 100, the publication's list of the century's 100 most influential people.[191] Bart was the only fictional character on the list. On January 14, 2000, the Simpsons were awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.[192] Also in 2000, Entertainment Weekly magazine TV critic Ken Tucker named The Simpsons the greatest television show of the 1990s. Furthermore, viewers of the UK television channel Channel 4 have voted The Simpsons at the top of two polls: 2001's 100 Greatest Kids' TV shows,[193] and 2005's The 100 Greatest Cartoons,[194] with Homer Simpson voted into first place in 2001's 100 Greatest TV Characters.[195] Homer also placed ninth on Entertainment Weekly's list of the "50 Greatest TV icons".[196] In 2002, The Simpsons ranked #8 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time,[197] and was ranked the #6 cult show in 2004.[198] In 2007, it moved to #8 on TV Guide's cult shows list[199] and was included in Time's list of the "100 Best TV Shows of All Time".[200] In 2008 the show was placed in first on Entertainment Weekly's "Top 100 Shows of the Past 25 Years".[201] Empire named it the greatest TV show of all time.[202] In 2010, Entertainment Weekly named Homer "the greatest character of the last 20 years",[203] while in 2013 the Writers Guild of America listed The Simpsons as the 11th "best written" series in television history.[204] In 2013, TV Guide ranked The Simpsons as the greatest TV cartoon of all time[205] and the tenth greatest show of all time.[206] A 2015 The Hollywood Reporter survey of 2,800 actors, producers, directors, and other industry people named it as their #10 favorite show.[207] In 2015, British newspaper The Telegraph named The Simpsons as one of the 10 best TV sitcoms of all time.[208] Television critics Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz ranked The Simpsons as the greatest American TV series of all time in their 2016 book TV (The Book).[209]
+
+Bart's rebellious, bad boy nature, which underlies his misbehavior and rarely leads to any punishment, led some people to characterize him as a poor role model for children.[210][211] In schools, educators claimed that Bart was a "threat to learning" because of his "underachiever and proud of it" attitude and negative attitude regarding his education.[212] Others described him as "egotistical, aggressive and mean-spirited".[213] In a 1991 interview, Bill Cosby described Bart as a bad role model for children, calling him "angry, confused, frustrated". In response, Matt Groening said, "That sums up Bart, all right. Most people are in a struggle to be normal [and] he thinks normal is very boring, and does things that others just wished they dare do."[214] On January 27, 1992, then-President George H. W. Bush said, "We are going to keep on trying to strengthen the American family, to make American families a lot more like the Waltons and a lot less like the Simpsons."[164] The writers rushed out a tongue-in-cheek reply in the form of a short segment which aired three days later before a rerun of "Stark Raving Dad" in which Bart replied, "Hey, we're just like the Waltons. We're praying for an end to the Depression, too."[215][216]
+
+Various episodes of the show have generated controversy. The Simpsons visit Australia in "Bart vs. Australia" (season six, 1995) and Brazil in "Blame It on Lisa" (season 13, 2002) and both episodes generated controversy and negative reaction in the visited countries.[217] In the latter case, Rio de Janeiro's tourist board—which claimed that the city was portrayed as having rampant street crime, kidnappings, slums, and monkey and rat infestations—went so far as to threaten Fox with legal action.[218] Groening was a fierce and vocal critic of the episode "A Star Is Burns" (season six, 1995) which featured a crossover with The Critic. He felt that it was just an advertisement for The Critic, and that people would incorrectly associate the show with him. When he was unsuccessful in getting the episode pulled, he had his name removed from the credits and went public with his concerns, openly criticizing James L. Brooks and saying the episode "violates the Simpsons' universe." In response, Brooks said, "I am furious with Matt, ... he's allowed his opinion, but airing this publicly in the press is going too far. ... his behavior right now is rotten."[138][219]
+
+"The Principal and the Pauper" (season nine, 1997) is one of the most controversial episodes of The Simpsons. Many fans and critics reacted negatively to the revelation that Seymour Skinner, a recurring character since the first season, was an impostor. The episode has been criticized by Groening and by Harry Shearer, who provides the voice of Skinner. In a 2001 interview, Shearer recalled that after reading the script, he told the writers, "That's so wrong. You're taking something that an audience has built eight years or nine years of investment in and just tossed it in the trash can for no good reason, for a story we've done before with other characters. It's so arbitrary and gratuitous, and it's disrespectful to the audience."[220] In a subsequent interview in 2006, Shearer added, "Now, the writers refuse to talk about it. They realize it was a horrible mistake. They never mention it. It's like they're punishing the audience for paying attention."[221]
+
+The show has reportedly been taken off the air in several countries. China banned it from prime-time television in August 2006, "in an effort to protect China's struggling animation studios."[222] In 2008, Venezuela barred the show from airing on morning television as it was deemed "unsuitable for children".[223] The same year, several Russian Pentecostal churches demanded that The Simpsons, South Park and some other Western cartoons be removed from broadcast schedules "for propaganda of various vices" and the broadcaster's license to be revoked. However, the court decision later dismissed this request.[224]
+
+Critics' reviews of early Simpsons episodes praised the show for its sassy humor, wit, realism, and intelligence.[29][225] However, in the late 1990s, around the airing of season 10, the tone and emphasis of the show began to change. Some critics started calling the show "tired".[226] By 2000, some long-term fans had become disillusioned with the show, and pointed to its shift from character-driven plots to what they perceived as an overemphasis on zany antics.[227][228][229] Jim Schembri of The Sydney Morning Herald attributed the decline in quality to an abandonment of character-driven storylines in favor of celebrity cameo appearances and references to popular culture. Schembri wrote in 2011: "The central tragedy of The Simpsons is that it has gone from commanding attention to merely being attention-seeking. It began by proving that cartoon characters don't have to be caricatures; they can be invested with real emotions. Now the show has in essence fermented into a limp parody of itself. Memorable story arcs have been sacrificed for the sake of celebrity walk-ons and punchline-hungry dialogue."[230]
+
+In 2010, the BBC noted "the common consensus is that The Simpsons' golden era ended after season nine",[8] and Todd Leopold of CNN, in an article looking at its perceived decline, stated "for many fans ... the glory days are long past."[229] Similarly, Tyler Wilson of Coeur d'Alene Press has referred to seasons one to nine as the show's "golden age",[7] and Ian Nathan of Empire described the show's classic era as being "say, the first ten seasons."[9] Jon Heacock of LucidWorks stated that "for the first ten years [seasons], the show was consistently at the top of its game", with "so many moments, quotations, and references – both epic and obscure – that helped turn the Simpson family into the cultural icons that they remain to this day."[10]
+
+Mike Scully, who was showrunner during seasons nine through twelve, has been the subject of criticism.[231][232] Chris Suellentrop of Slate wrote that "under Scully's tenure, The Simpsons became, well, a cartoon ... Episodes that once would have ended with Homer and Marge bicycling into the sunset now end with Homer blowing a tranquilizer dart into Marge's neck. The show's still funny, but it hasn't been touching in years."[231] When asked in 2007 how the series' longevity is sustained, Scully joked: "Lower your quality standards. Once you've done that you can go on forever."[233]
+
+Al Jean, showrunner since season thirteen, has also been the subject of criticism, with some arguing that the show has continued to decline in quality under his tenure. Former writers have complained that under Jean, the show is "on auto-pilot", "too sentimental", and the episodes are "just being cranked out." Some critics believe that the show has "entered a steady decline under Jean and is no longer really funny."[234] John Ortved, author of The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History, characterized the Jean era as "toothless",[235] and criticized what he perceived as the show's increase in social and political commentary.[236] Jean responded: "Well, it's possible that we've declined. But honestly, I've been here the whole time and I do remember in season two people saying, 'It's gone downhill.' If we'd listened to that then we would have stopped after episode 13. I'm glad we didn't."[237]
+
+In 2004, cast member Harry Shearer criticized what he perceived as the show's declining quality: "I rate the last three seasons as among the worst, so season four looks very good to me now."[238] Cast member Dan Castellaneta responded: "I don't agree, ... I think Harry's issue is that the show isn't as grounded as it was in the first three or four seasons, that it's gotten crazy or a little more madcap. I think it organically changes to stay fresh."[239] Also in 2004 author Douglas Coupland described claims of declining quality in the series as "hogwash", saying "The Simpsons hasn't fumbled the ball in fourteen years, it's hardly likely to fumble it now."[240] In an April 2006 interview, Groening said: "I honestly don't see any end in sight. I think it's possible that the show will get too financially cumbersome ... but right now, the show is creatively, I think, as good or better than it's ever been. The animation is incredibly detailed and imaginative, the stories do things that we haven't done before, so creatively there's no reason to quit."[241]
+
+In 2016, popular culture writer Anna Leszkiewicz suggested that even though The Simpsons still holds cultural relevance, contemporary appeal is only for the first ten seasons, with recent episodes only garnering mainstream attention when a favorite character from the golden era is killed off, or when new information and shock twists are given for old characters.[242] The series' ratings have also declined; while the first season enjoyed an average of 13.4 million viewing households per episode in the U.S.,[157] the twenty-first season had an average of 7.2 million viewers.[243]
+
+Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz argued in their 2016 book titled TV (The Book) that the peak of The Simpsons are "roughly seasons [three through twelve]", and that despite the decline, episodes from the later seasons such as "Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind" and "Holidays of Future Passed" could be considered on par with the earlier classic episodes, further stating that "even if you want to call the show today a thin shadow of its former self, think about how mind-boggingly great its former self had to be for so-diminished a version to be watchable at all."[244][245]
+
+In a 2020 article, Uproxx writer Josh Kurp stated that while he agrees with the sentiment that The Simpsons is not as good as it used to be, it is because "it was working at a level of comedy and characterization that no show ever has". He felt there were still many reasons to watch the series, as it was "still capable of quality television, and even the occasional new classic" and the fact that the show was willing to experiment, giving examples such as bringing on guest animators like Don Hertzfeldt and Sylvain Chomet to produce couch gags, and guest writers like Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, Pete Holmes and Megan Amram to write episodes.[246]
+
+The stereotypical nature of the character Apu Nahasapeemapetilon has long been the subject of controversy. This was particularly highlighted by Indian-American comedian Hari Kondabolu's 2017 documentary The Problem with Apu. In the film, Kondabolu states that as a child he was a fan of The Simpsons and liked Apu, but he now finds the character's stereotypical nature troublesome. Defenders of the character responded that the show is built on comical stereotypes, with creator Matt Groening saying, "that's the nature of cartooning."[247] He added that he was "proud of what we do on the show", and "it's a time in our culture where people love to pretend they're offended".[248] In response to the controversy, Apu's voice actor, Hank Azaria, said he was willing to step aside from his role as Apu: "The most important thing is to listen to South Asian people, Indian people in this country when they talk about what they feel and how they think about this character."[249] In February 2020, he confirmed that he would no longer voice Apu. Groening stated at the same time that the character would remain in the show.
+
+The criticisms were referenced in the season 29 episode "No Good Read Goes Unpunished", when Lisa breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience by saying, "Something that started decades ago and was applauded and inoffensive is now politically incorrect. What can you do?" to which Marge replies, "Some things will be addressed at a later date." Lisa adds, "If at all." This reference was clarified by the fact that there was a framed photo of Apu with the caption on the photo saying "Don't have a cow, Apu", a play on Bart's catchphrase "Don't have a cow, man," as well as the fact that Hindus do not eat cows as they are considered sacred. In October 2018, it was reported that Apu would be written out of the show,[250] which Groening denied.[251]
+
+On June 26, 2020, in light of the various Black Lives Matter protests, Fox announced that non-white characters (such as Carl Carlson and Dr. Hibbert, among others) will no longer be voiced by white actors.[252]
+
+Numerous Simpson-related comic books have been released over the years. So far, nine comic book series have been published by Bongo Comics since 1993.[253] The first comic strips based on The Simpsons appeared in 1991 in the magazine Simpsons Illustrated, which was a companion magazine to the show.[254] The comic strips were popular and a one-shot comic book titled Simpsons Comics and Stories, containing four different stories, was released in 1993 for the fans.[255] The book was a success and due to this, the creator of The Simpsons, Matt Groening, and his companions Bill Morrison, Mike Rote, Steve Vance and Cindy Vance created the publishing company Bongo Comics.[255] Issues of Simpsons Comics, Bart Simpson's Treehouse of Horror and Bart Simpson have been collected and reprinted in trade paperbacks in the United States by HarperCollins.[256][257][258]
+
+20th Century Fox, Gracie Films, and Film Roman produced The Simpsons Movie, an animated film that was released on July 27, 2007.[259] The film was directed by long-time Simpsons producer David Silverman and written by a team of Simpsons writers comprising Matt Groening, James L. Brooks, Al Jean, George Meyer, Mike Reiss, John Swartzwelder, Jon Vitti, David Mirkin, Mike Scully, Matt Selman, and Ian Maxtone-Graham.[259] Production of the film occurred alongside continued writing of the series despite long-time claims by those involved in the show that a film would enter production only after the series had concluded.[259] There had been talk of a possible feature-length Simpsons film ever since the early seasons of the series. James L. Brooks originally thought that the story of the episode "Kamp Krusty" was suitable for a film, but he encountered difficulties in trying to expand the script to feature-length.[260] For a long time, difficulties such as lack of a suitable story and an already fully engaged crew of writers delayed the project.[241]
+
+On August 10, 2018, 20th Century Fox announced that a sequel is in development.[261]
+
+Collections of original music featured in the series have been released on the albums Songs in the Key of Springfield, Go Simpsonic with The Simpsons and The Simpsons: Testify.[262] Several songs have been recorded with the purpose of a single or album release and have not been featured on the show. The album The Simpsons Sing the Blues was released in September 1990 and was a success, peaking at #3 on the Billboard 200[263] and becoming certified 2× platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.[264] The first single from the album was the pop rap song "Do the Bartman", performed by Nancy Cartwright and released on November 20, 1990. The song was written by Michael Jackson, although he did not receive any credit.[265] The Yellow Album was released in 1998, but received poor reception and did not chart in any country.[266][267][268]
+
+In 2007, it was officially announced that The Simpsons Ride, a simulator ride, would be implemented into the Universal Studios Orlando and Universal Studios Hollywood.[269] It officially opened May 15, 2008 in Florida[270] and May 19, 2008, in Hollywood.[271] In the ride, patrons are introduced to a cartoon theme park called Krustyland built by Krusty the Clown. However, Sideshow Bob is loose from prison to get revenge on Krusty and the Simpson family.[272] It features more than 24 regular characters from The Simpsons and features the voices of the regular cast members, as well as Pamela Hayden, Russi Taylor and Kelsey Grammer.[273] Harry Shearer did not participate in the ride, so none of his characters has vocal parts.[274]
+
+Numerous video games based on the show have been produced. Some of the early games include Konami's arcade game The Simpsons (1991) and Acclaim Entertainment's The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants (1991).[275][276] More modern games include The Simpsons: Road Rage (2001), The Simpsons: Hit & Run (2003) and The Simpsons Game (2007).[277][278][279] Electronic Arts, which produced The Simpsons Game, has owned the exclusive rights to create video games based on the show since 2005.[280] In 2010, they released a game called The Simpsons Arcade for iOS.[281] Another EA-produced mobile game, Tapped Out, was released in 2012 for iOS users, then in 2013 for Android and Kindle users.[282][283][284] Two Simpsons pinball machines have been produced: one that was available briefly after the first season, and another in 2007, both out of production.[285]
+
+The cable television network FXX has exclusive cable and digital syndication rights for The Simpsons. Original contracts had previously stated that syndication rights for The Simpsons would not be sold to cable until the series conclusion, at a time when cable syndication deals were highly rare. The series has been syndicated to local broadcast stations in nearly all markets throughout the United States since September 1993.[286]
+
+FXX premiered The Simpsons on their network on August 21, 2014 by starting a twelve-day marathon which featured the first 552 episodes (every single episode that had already been released at the time) aired chronologically, including The Simpsons Movie, which FX Networks had already owned the rights to air. It was the longest continuous marathon in the history of television (until VH1 Classic aired a 433-hour, nineteen-day, marathon of Saturday Night Live in 2015; celebrating that program's 40th anniversary).[287][288] The first day of the marathon was the highest rated broadcast day in the history of the network so far, the ratings more than tripled that those of regular prime time programming for FXX.[289] Ratings during the first six nights of the marathon grew night after night, with the network ranking within the top 5 networks in basic cable each night.[290] In Australia, a marathon of every episode of the show (at the time) aired from 16 December 2019 to 5 January 2020 on Fox8 (a cable network operated on pay TV provider Foxtel and a corporate sibling to the American Fox network).[291]
+
+On May 14, 2019, it was announced that FX Networks would share The Simpsons with Freeform starting October 2, 2019.[292]
+
+On October 21, 2014, a digital service courtesy of the FXNOW app, called Simpsons World, launched. Simpsons World with every episode of the series accessible to authenticated FX subscribers, and is available on game consoles such as Xbox One, streaming devices such as Roku and Apple TV, and online via web browser.[293][294] There was early criticism of both wrong aspect ratios for earlier episodes and the length of commercial breaks on the streaming service, but that problem was soon amended with fewer commercial breaks during individual episodes.[295] Later it was announced that Simpsons World would now let users watch all of the SD episodes in their original format.[296] Simpsons World was discontinued after the launch of Disney+ on November 12, 2019, where the series streams exclusively.[297] Initially, the series was only available cropped to 16:9 without the option to view the original 4:3 versions, reigniting criticisms of cropping old episodes.[298] In response, Disney announced that "...in early 2020, Disney+ will make the first 19 seasons (and some episodes from Season 20) of The Simpsons available in their original 4:3 aspect ratio, giving subscribers a choice of how they prefer to view the popular series."[299][300] On May 28, 2020, Disney+ made the first 19 seasons, along with some episodes from season 20, of The Simpsons available in both 16:9 and the original 4:3 aspect ratio.[301]
+
+The season 3 premiere "Stark Raving Dad", which features Michael Jackson as the voice of Leon Kompowsky, was pulled out of rotation in 2019 by Matt Groening, James L. Brooks and Al Jean after HBO aired the documentary Leaving Neverland, in which two men share details into how Jackson allegedly abused them as children.[302][303] It is therefore unavailable on Disney+. However, the episode is still available on The Complete Third Season DVD box set released on August 26, 2003.[304]
+
+In July 2017, all episodes from seasons 4 to 19 were made available for purchase on the iTunes Store in Canada.[305]
+
+The popularity of The Simpsons has made it a billion-dollar merchandising industry.[164] The title family and supporting characters appear on everything from T-shirts to posters. The Simpsons has been used as a theme for special editions of well-known board games, including Clue, Scrabble, Monopoly, Operation, and The Game of Life, as well as the trivia games What Would Homer Do? and Simpsons Jeopardy!. Several card games such as trump cards and The Simpsons Trading Card Game have also been released. Many official or unofficial Simpsons books such as episode guides have been published. Many episodes of the show have been released on DVD and VHS over the years. When the first season DVD was released in 2001, it quickly became the best-selling television DVD in history, although it was later overtaken by the first season of Chappelle's Show.[306] In particular, seasons one through seventeen were released on DVD for 13 years between September 2001 to December 2014 in the U.S./Canada (Region 1), Europe (Region 2) and Australia/New Zealand/Latin America (Region 4). However, on April 19, 2015, Al Jean announced that the Season 17 DVD would be the last one ever produced, leaving the collection from Seasons 1 to 17, Season 20 (released out of order in 2010), with Seasons 18, 19, and 21 onwards unreleased.[307][308] Jean also stated that the deleted scenes and commentaries would try to be released to the Simpsons World app, and that they were pushing for Simpsons World to be expanded outside of the U.S.[307] Two years later, however, on July 22, 2017, it was announced that Season 18 would be released on December 5, 2017 on DVD.[309] Another two years later, on July 20, 2019, it was announced that Season 19 would be released on December 3, 2019 on DVD.[310]
+
+In 2003, about 500 companies around the world were licensed to use Simpsons characters in their advertising.[311] As a promotion for The Simpsons Movie, twelve 7-Eleven stores were transformed into Kwik-E-Marts and sold The Simpsons related products. These included "Buzz Cola", "Krusty-O" cereal, pink doughnuts with sprinkles, and "Squishees".[312]
+
+In 2008, consumers around the world spent $750 million on merchandise related to The Simpsons, with half of the amount originating from the United States. By 2009, 20th Century Fox had greatly increased merchandising efforts.[313] On April 9, 2009, the United States Postal Service unveiled a series of five 44-cent stamps featuring Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie, to commemorate the show's twentieth anniversary.[314] The Simpsons is the first television series still in production to receive this recognition.[315][316] The stamps, designed by Matt Groening, were made available for purchase on May 7, 2009.[317] Approximately one billion were printed, but only 318 million were sold, costing the Postal Service $1.2 million.[318][319]
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+Singapore (/ˈsɪŋ(ɡ)əpɔːr/ (listen)), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude (137 kilometres or 85 miles) north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bordering the Straits of Malacca to the west, the Riau Islands to the south, and the South China Sea to the east. The country's territory is composed of one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet, the combined area of which has increased by 25% since the country's independence as a result of extensive land reclamation projects. The country is home to 5.7 million residents, 61% (3.4 million) of whom are Singaporean citizens. There are four official languages of Singapore: English, Malay, Chinese, and Tamil; with English being the lingua franca. This reflects in its rich cultural diversity and extensive ethnic cuisine and major festivals. Multiracialism is enshrined in the constitution, and continues to shape national policies in education, housing, and politics.
+
+Although its history stretches back millennia, modern Singapore was founded in 1819 by Sir Stamford Raffles as a trading post of the British Empire. In 1867, the colonies in East Asia were reorganised and Singapore came under the direct control of Britain as part of the Straits Settlements. During the Second World War, Singapore was occupied by Japan in 1942 but returned to British control as a separate crown colony following Japan's surrender in 1945. Singapore gained self-governance in 1959, and in 1963 became part of the new federation of Malaysia, alongside Malaya, North Borneo, and Sarawak. Ideological differences led to Singapore being expelled from the federation two years later, thereby becoming an independent country.
+
+After early years of turbulence and despite lacking natural resources and a hinterland, the nation rapidly developed to become one of the Four Asian Tigers based on external trade, becoming a highly developed country; it is ranked ninth on the UN Human Development Index, and has the seventh-highest GDP per capita in the world. Singapore is the only country in Asia with an AAA sovereign rating from all major rating agencies. It is a major financial and shipping hub, consistently ranked the most expensive city to live in since 2013, and has been identified as a tax haven. Singapore is placed highly in key social indicators: education, healthcare, quality of life, personal safety and housing, with a home-ownership rate of 91%. Singaporeans enjoy one of the world's longest life expectancies, fastest Internet connection speeds and one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world.
+
+Singapore is a unitary parliamentary republic with a Westminster system of unicameral parliamentary government. Singapore is widely regarded to have an incorrupt and meritocratic government, with a fair judiciary and strong rule of law. While the country practices parliamentary democracy, the government has significant control over politics and society, and the People's Action Party has ruled continuously since independence. One of the five founding members of ASEAN, Singapore is also the headquarters of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Secretariat and Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) Secretariat, as well as many international conferences and events. Singapore is also a member of the United Nations, World Trade Organization, East Asia Summit, Non-Aligned Movement and the Commonwealth of Nations.
+
+The English name of Singapore is an anglicisation of the native Malay name for the country, Singapura, which was in turn derived from the Sanskrit word for lion city (romanised: Siṃhapura; Brahmi: 𑀲𑀺𑀁𑀳𑀧𑀼𑀭; literally "lion city"; siṃha means "lion", pura means "city" or "fortress").[8] A Chinese account from the third century referred to a place as Pú Luó Zhōng (Chinese: 蒲 羅 中), which sounds like Malay for "island at the end of a peninsula".[9] Early references to the name Temasek (or Tumasik) are found in the Nagarakretagama, a Javanese epic poem written in 1365, and a Vietnamese source from the same time period. The name possibly means "Sea Town", being derived from the Malay tasek, meaning "sea" or "lake".[10]  The Chinese traveller Wang Dayuan visited a place around 1330 named Danmaxi (Chinese: 淡馬錫; pinyin: Dānmǎxí; Wade–Giles: Tan Ma Hsi) or Tam ma siak, depending on pronunciation. Danmaxi may be a transcription of Temasek, alternatively, it may be a combination of the Malay Tanah meaning "land", and Chinese Xi meaning "tin", which was traded on the island.[11][10]
+
+Variations of the name Siṃhapura were used for a number of cities throughout the region prior to the establishment of the Kingdom of Singapura. In Hindu-Buddhist culture, lions were associated with power and protection, which may explain the attraction of such a name.[12][13] The name Singapura supplanted Temasek sometime before the 15th century, after the establishment of the Kingdom of Singapura on the island by a fleeing Srivijayan Raja (prince) from Palembang. However, the precise time and reason for the name change is unknown. The semi-historical Malay Annals state that Temasek was christened Singapura by Sang Nila Utama, a 13th-century Srivijayan Raja from Palembang. The Annals state that Sang Nila Utama encountered a strange beast on the island that he took to be a lion. Seeing this as an omen, he established the town of Singapura where he encountered the beast. The second hypothesis, drawn from Portuguese sources, postulates that this mythical story is based on the real life Parameswara of Palembang. Parameswara declared independence from Majapahit and mounted a Lion Throne, thus claiming the Srivijaya Empire. After then being driven into exile by the Javanese, he usurped control over Temasek. It is possible that he rechristened the area as Singapura, recalling the throne he had been driven from.[14]
+
+Under Japanese occupation, Singapore was renamed Syonanto (Japanese: 昭 南 島, Hepburn: Shōnan-tō), meaning "Light of the South".[15][16] Singapore is sometimes referred to by the nickname the "Garden City", in reference to its parks and tree-lined streets.[17] Another name, the "Little Red Dot", was adopted after Indonesian President B. J. Habibie dismissed Singapore by referring to a red dot on a map.[18][19][20]
+
+In 1299, according to the Malay Annals, the Kingdom of Singapura was founded on the island by Sang Nila Utama.[21] Although the historicity of the accounts as given in the Malay Annals is the subject of academic debates,[22] it is nevertheless known from various documents that Singapore in the 14th century, then known as Temasek, was a trading port under the influence of both the Majapahit Empire and the Siamese kingdoms[23] and was a part of the Indosphere[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][29] These Indianised Kingdoms were characterised by surprising resilience, political integrity and administrative stability.[31] Historical sources also indicate that around the end of the 14th century, its ruler Parameswara was attacked by either the Majapahit or the Siamese, forcing him to move to Malacca where he founded the Sultanate of Malacca.[32] Archaeological evidence suggests that the main settlement on Fort Canning was abandoned around this time, although a small trading settlement continued in Singapore for some time afterwards.[14] In 1613, Portuguese raiders burned down the settlement, and the island faded into obscurity for the next two centuries.[33] By then Singapore was nominally part of the Johor Sultanate.[34] The wider maritime region and much trade was under Dutch control for the following period after the Dutch conquest of Malacca.[35]
+
+The British governor Stamford Raffles arrived in Singapore on 28 January 1819 and soon recognised the island as a natural choice for the new port.[36] The island was then nominally ruled by Tengku Abdul Rahman, the Sultan of Johor, who was controlled by the Dutch and the Bugis.[37] However, the Sultanate was weakened by factional division: the Temenggong (Chief Minister) of Tengku Abdul Rahman, as well as his officials, were loyal to the Sultan's elder brother Tengku Long, who was living in exile in Riau. With the Temenggong's help, Raffles managed to smuggle Tengku Long back into Singapore. Raffles offered to recognise Tengku Long as the rightful Sultan of Johor, under the title of Sultan Hussein, as well as provide him with a yearly payment of $5000 and another $3000 to the Temenggong; in return, Sultan Hussein would grant the British the right to establish a trading post on Singapore.[38] A formal treaty was signed on 6 February 1819.[39][40]
+
+In 1824, a further treaty with the Sultan led to the entire island becoming a British possession.[41] In 1826, Singapore became part of the Straits Settlements, then under the jurisdiction of British India. Singapore became the regional capital in 1836.[42] Prior to Raffles' arrival, there were only about a thousand people living on the island, mostly indigenous Malays along with a handful of Chinese.[43] By 1860 the population had swelled to over 80,000, more than half being Chinese.[41] Many of these early immigrants came to work on the pepper and gambier plantations.[44] In 1867, the Straits Settlements were separated from British India, coming under the direct control of Britain.[45] Later, in the 1890s, when the rubber industry became established in Malaya and Singapore,[46] the island became a global centre for rubber sorting and export.[41]
+
+Singapore was not greatly affected by the First World War (1914–18), as the conflict did not spread to Southeast Asia. The only significant event during the war was the 1915 Singapore Mutiny by Muslim sepoys from British India, who were garrisoned in Singapore.[47] After hearing rumours that they were to be sent to fight the Ottoman Empire, a Muslim state, the soldiers rebelled, killing their officers and several British civilians before the mutiny was suppressed by non-Muslim troops arriving from Johore and Burma.[48]
+
+After the First World War, the British built the large Singapore Naval Base as part of the defensive Singapore strategy.[49] Originally announced in 1921, the construction of the base proceeded at a slow pace until the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. Costing $60 million and not fully completed in 1938, it was nonetheless the largest dry dock in the world, the third-largest floating dock, and had enough fuel tanks to support the entire British navy for six months.[49][50][51] The base was defended by heavy 15-inch naval guns stationed at Fort Siloso, Fort Canning and Labrador, as well as a Royal Air Force airfield at Tengah Air Base. Winston Churchill touted it as the "Gibraltar of the East", and military discussions often referred to the base as simply "East of Suez". However, the British Home Fleet was stationed in Europe, and the British could not afford to build a second fleet to protect their interests in Asia. The plan was for the Home Fleet to sail quickly to Singapore in the event of an emergency. As a consequence, after World War II broke out in 1939, the fleet was fully occupied with defending Britain, leaving Singapore vulnerable to Japanese invasion.[52][53]
+
+During the Second World War, the Japanese invasion of Malaya culminated in the Battle of Singapore. When the British force of 60,000 troops surrendered on 15 February 1942, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called the defeat "the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history.[54] British and Empire losses during the fighting for Singapore were heavy, with a total of nearly 85,000 personnel captured.[55] About 5,000 were killed or wounded,[56] of which Australians made up the majority.[57][58][59] Japanese casualties during the fighting in Singapore amounted to 1,714 killed and 3,378 wounded.[55][Note 2] The occupation was to become a major turning point in the histories of several nations, including those of Japan, Britain, and Singapore. Japanese newspapers triumphantly declared the victory as deciding the general situation of the war.[60][61] Between 5,000 and 25,000 ethnic Chinese people were killed in the subsequent Sook Ching massacre.[62] British forces had planned to liberate Singapore in 1945; however, the war ended before these operations could be carried out.[63][64]
+
+After the Japanese surrender to the Allies on 15 August 1945, Singapore fell into a brief state of violence and disorder; looting and revenge-killing were widespread. British, Australian, and Indian troops led by Lord Louis Mountbatten returned to Singapore to receive the formal surrender of Japanese forces in the region from General Itagaki Seishiro on behalf of General Hisaichi Terauchi on 12 September 1945.[63][64] Meanwhile, Tomoyuki Yamashita was tried by a US military commission for war crimes, but not for crimes committed by his troops in Malaya or Singapore. He was convicted and hanged in the Philippines on 23 February 1946.[65][66]
+
+Much of Singapore's infrastructure had been destroyed during the war, including those needed to supply utilities. A shortage of food led to malnutrition, disease, and rampant crime and violence. A series of strikes in 1947 caused massive stoppages in public transport and other services. However, by late 1947 the economy began to recover, facilitated by a growing international demand for tin and rubber.[67] The failure of Britain to successfully defend changed its image in the eyes of Singaporeans. British Military Administration ended on 1 April 1946, with Singapore becoming a separate Crown Colony.[67] In July 1947, separate Executive and Legislative Councils were established and the election of six members of the Legislative Council was scheduled in the following year.[68]
+
+During the 1950s, Chinese communists with strong ties to the trade unions and Chinese schools waged a guerrilla war against the government, leading to the Malayan Emergency. The 1954 National Service riots, Hock Lee bus riots, and Chinese middle schools riots in Singapore were all linked to these events.[69] David Marshall, pro-independence leader of the Labour Front, won Singapore's first general election in 1955. He led a delegation to London, but Britain rejected his demand for complete self-rule. He resigned and was replaced by Lim Yew Hock in 1956, and after further negotiations Britain to grant Singapore full internal self-government for all matters except defence and foreign affairs.[70] During the subsequent May 1959 elections, the People's Action Party (PAP) won a landslide victory.[71] Governor Sir William Allmond Codrington Goode served as the first Yang di-Pertuan Negara (Head of State).[72]
+
+PAP leaders believed that Singapore's future lay with Malaya, due to strong ties between the two. It was thought that reuniting with Malaya would benefit the economy by creating a common market, alleviating ongoing unemployment woes in Singapore. However, a sizeable pro-communist wing of the PAP was strongly opposed to the merger, fearing a loss of influence, and hence formed the Barisan Sosialis, splitting from the PAP.[73][74] The ruling party of Malaya, United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), was staunchly anti-communist, and it was suspected UMNO would support the non-communist factions of PAP. UMNO, initially sceptical of the idea of a merger due to distrust of the PAP government and concern that the large ethnic Chinese population in Singapore would alter the racial balance in Malaya on which their political power base depended, became supportive of the idea of merger due to joint fear of communists takeover.[75]
+
+On 27 May 1961, Malaya's Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, made a surprise proposal for a new Federation called Malaysia, which would unite the current and former British possessions in the region: the Federation of Malaya, Singapore, Brunei, North Borneo, and Sarawak.[75] UMNO leaders believed that the additional Malay population in the Bornean territories would balance Singapore's Chinese population.[70] The British government, for its part, believed that the merger would prevent Singapore from becoming a haven for communism.[76] To obtain a mandate for a merger, the PAP held a referendum on the merger. This referendum included a choice of different terms for merger with Malaysia, but had no option for avoiding merger altogether. On 16 September 1963, Singapore joined with Malaya, the North Borneo, and Sarawak to form the new Federation of Malaysia under the terms of the Malaysia Agreement. Under this Agreement, Singapore had a relatively high level of autonomy compared to the other states of Malaysia.[77]
+
+Indonesia opposed the formation of Malaysia due to its own claims over Borneo and launched konfrontasi (Confrontation in Indonesian) in response to the formation of Malaysia.[78] On 10 March 1965, a bomb planted by Indonesian saboteurs on a mezzanine floor of MacDonald House exploded, killing three people and injuring 33 others. It was the deadliest of at least 42 bomb incidents which occurred during the confrontation.[79] Two members of the Indonesian Marine Corps, Osman bin Haji Mohamed Ali and Harun bin Said, were eventually convicted and executed for the crime.[80] The explosion caused US$250,000 (equivalent to US$2,028,247 in 2019) in damages to MacDonald House.[81][82]
+
+Even after the merger, the Singaporean government and the Malaysian central government disagreed on many political and economic issues. Despite an agreement to establish a common market, Singapore continued to face restrictions when trading with the rest of Malaysia. In retaliation, Singapore did not extend to Sabah and Sarawak the full extent of the loans agreed to for economic development of the two eastern states. Talks soon broke down, and abusive speeches and writing became rife on both sides. This led to communal strife in Singapore, culminating in the 1964 race riots.[83] On 7 August 1965, Malaysian Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman, seeing no alternative to avoid further bloodshed, advised the Parliament of Malaysia that it should vote to expel Singapore from Malaysia.[84] On 9 August 1965, the Malaysian Parliament voted 126 to 0 to move a bill to amend the constitution, expelling Singapore from Malaysia, which left Singapore as a newly independent country.[85][86][70][87]
+
+Singapore became independent as the Republic of Singapore on 9 August 1965, with Lee Kuan Yew and Yusof bin Ishak as the first prime minister and president respectively.[88][89] In 1967, the country co-founded the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).[90] Race riots broke out once more in 1969.[91] Lee Kuan Yew's emphasis on rapid economic growth, support for business entrepreneurship, and limitations on internal democracy shaped Singapore's policies for the next half-century.[92][93] Economic growth continued throughout the 1980s, with the unemployment rate falling to 3% and real GDP growth averaging at about 8% up until 1999. During the 1980s, Singapore began to shift towards high-tech industries, such as the wafer fabrication sector, in order to remain competitive as neighbouring countries began manufacturing with cheaper labour. Singapore Changi Airport was opened in 1981 and Singapore Airlines was formed.[94] The Port of Singapore became one of the world's busiest ports and the service and tourism industries also grew immensely during this period.[95][96]
+
+The PAP, which has remained in power since independence, is believed to rule in an authoritarian manner by some activists and opposition politicians who see the strict regulation of political and media activities by the government as an infringement on political rights.[97] In response, Singapore has seen several significant political changes, such as the introduction of the Non-Constituency members of parliament in 1984 to allow up to three losing candidates from opposition parties to be appointed as MPs. Group Representation Constituencies (GRCs) were introduced in 1988 to create multi-seat electoral divisions, intended to ensure minority representation in parliament.[98] Nominated members of parliament were introduced in 1990 to allow non-elected non-partisan MPs.[99] The Constitution was amended in 1991 to provide for an Elected President who has veto power in the use of national reserves and appointments to public office.[100]
+
+In 1990, Goh Chok Tong succeeded Lee and became Singapore's second Prime Minister.[101] During Goh's tenure, the country went through the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the 2003 SARS outbreak.[102][103] In 2004, Lee Hsien Loong, the eldest son of Lee Kuan Yew, became the country's third Prime Minister.[103] Lee Hsien Loong's tenure included the 2008 global financial crisis, the resolution of a dispute over land ownership at Tanjong Pagar railway station between Singapore and Malaysia, and the introduction of the 2 integrated resorts (IRs), located at the Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa.[104] The People's Action Party (PAP) suffered its worst ever electoral results in 2011, winning just 60% of votes, amidst debate over issues including the influx of foreign workers and the high cost of living.[105] On 23 March 2015, Lee Kuan Yew died, and a one-week period of public mourning was observed nationwide.[93] Subsequently, the PAP regained its dominance in Parliament through the September general election, receiving 69.9% of the popular vote, although this remained lower than the 2001 tally of 75.3%[106] and the 1968 tally of 86.7%.[107] The 2020 election saw the PAP drop to 61% of the vote, while the opposition Workers' Party took 10 of the 93 seats, the highest number ever won by an opposition party.[108]
+
+Singapore is a parliamentary republic based on the Westminster system. The Constitution of Singapore is the supreme law of the country, establishing the structure and responsibility of government. The president is head of state and exercises executive power on the advice of her ministers. The prime minister is head of government and is appointed by the president as the person most likely to command the confidence of a majority of Parliament. Cabinet is chosen by the prime minister and formally appointed by the president.[109]
+
+The government is separated into three branches:
+
+The president is directly elected by popular vote for a renewable six-year term. Requirements for this position are extremely stringent, such that no more than several thousand people qualify for candidacy.[114] Presidential elections may be declared "reserved" for a racial community if no one from that ethnic group has been elected to the presidency in the five most recent terms. Only members of that community may qualify as candidates in a reserved presidential election.[115]
+
+Members of Parliament (MPs) are chosen to serve for a term lasting up to five years. The current Parliament has 100 members; 88 were directly elected from the 29 constituencies, nine are nonpartisan nominated members appointed by the president, and three are non-constituency members from opposition parties who were not elected in the last general election but appointed to the legislature to increase opposition party representation. In group representation constituencies (GRCs), political parties assemble teams of candidates (rather than nominate individuals) to contest elections. At least one MP in a GRC must be of an ethnic minority background. All elections are held using first-past-the-post voting.[116] The People's Action Party (PAP) occupies a dominant position in Singaporean politics, having won large parliamentary majorities in every election since self-governance was granted in 1959.[117] Even its candidates who lose elections are often turned to by constituency residents for assistance. The most effective opposition party is the Workers' Party.[108]
+
+The judicial system is based on English common law, continuing the legal tradition established during British rule but with substantial local differences. Criminal law is based on the Indian Penal Code originally intended for British India, but was at the time as a crown colony also adopted by the British colonial authorities in Singapore and remains the basis of the criminal code in the country with a few exceptions, amendments and repeals since it came into force.[118] Trial by jury was abolished in 1970,[119] and both caning[120][121] and capital punishment continue to be administered as penalties for severe offences.[122]
+
+Singapore's stated foreign policy priority is maintaining security in Southeast Asia and surrounding territories. An underlying principle is political and economic stability in the region.[123] It has diplomatic relations with more than 180 sovereign states.[124]
+
+As one of the five founding members of ASEAN,[125] it is a strong supporter of the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) and the ASEAN Investment Area as Singapore's economy is closely linked to that of the region as a whole. Former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong has proposed the formation of an ASEAN Economic Community, a step beyond the AFTA, bringing it closer to a common market. This was agreed to in 2007 for implementation by 2015. Other regional organisations are important to Singapore, and it is the host of the APEC Secretariat.[126] Singapore maintains membership in other regional organisations, such as Asia–Europe Meeting, the Forum for East Asia-Latin American Cooperation, the Indian Ocean Rim Association, and the East Asia Summit.[123] It is also a member of the Non-Aligned Movement,[127] the United Nations and the Commonwealth.[128][129] While Singapore is not a formal member of the G20, it has been invited to participate in G20 processes in most years since 2010.[130] Singapore is also the location of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) Secretariat.[131]
+
+In general, bilateral relations with other ASEAN members are strong; however, disagreements have arisen,[132] and relations with neighbouring Malaysia and Indonesia have sometimes been strained.[133] Malaysia and Singapore have clashed over the delivery of fresh water to Singapore,[134] and access by the Singapore Armed Forces to Malaysian airspace.[133] Border issues exist with Malaysia and Indonesia, and both have banned the sale of marine sand to Singapore over disputes about Singapore's land reclamation.[135] Some previous disputes, such as the Pedra Branca dispute, have been resolved by the International Court of Justice.[136] Piracy in the Strait of Malacca has been a cause of concern for all three countries.[134] Close economic ties exist with Brunei, and the two share a pegged currency value, through a Currency Interchangeability Agreement between the two countries which makes both Brunei dollar and Singapore dollar banknotes and coins legal tender in either country.[137][138]
+
+The first diplomatic contact with China was made in the 1970s, with full diplomatic relations established in the 1990s. Since then the two countries have been major players in strengthening the ASEAN–China relationship, and has maintained a long-standing and greatly prioritised close relationship partly due to China's growing influence and essentiality in the Asia-Pacific region, specifying that "its common interest with China is far greater than any differences". Furthermore, Singapore has positioned itself as a strong supporter of China's constructive engagement and peaceful development in the region. In addition, China has been Singapore's largest trading partner since 2013, after surpassing Malaysia.[139][140][141][142][143] Singapore and the United States share a long-standing close relationship, in particular in defence, the economy, health, and education. Singapore has also pushed regional counter-terrorism initiatives, with a strong resolve to deal with terrorists inside its borders. To this end, the country has stepped up co-operation with ASEAN members and China to strengthen regional security and fight terrorism, as well as participating in the organisation's first joint maritime exercise with the latter.[144] It has also given support to the US-led coalition to fight terrorism, with bilateral co-operation in counter-terrorism and counter-proliferation initiatives, and joint military exercises.[132]
+
+As Singapore has diplomatic relations with both the United States and North Korea, and was one of the few countries that have relationships with both countries,[145] on 12 June 2018, Singapore hosted a historic summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the first-ever meeting between the sitting leaders of the two nations.[146][147] It has also hosted the Ma–Xi meeting on 7 November 2015, the first meeting between the political leaders of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1950.[148][149][150]
+
+The Singaporean military, arguably the most technologically advanced in Southeast Asia,[151] consists of the army, navy, and the air force. It is seen as the guarantor of the country's independence,[152] translating into Singapore culture, involving all citizens in the country's defence.[153] The government spends 4.9% of the country's GDP on the military—high by regional standards[151]—and one out of every four dollars of government spending is spent on defence.[154]
+
+After its independence, Singapore had only two infantry regiments commanded by British officers. Considered too small to provide effective security for the new country, the development of its military forces became a priority.[155] In addition, in October 1971, Britain pulled its military out of Singapore, leaving behind only a small British, Australian and New Zealand force as a token military presence.[156] A great deal of initial support came from Israel,[155] a country unrecognised by Singapore's neighbouring Muslim-majority nations of Malaysia and Indonesia.[157][158][159] The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) commanders were tasked by the Singapore government to create the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) from scratch, and Israeli instructors were brought in to train Singaporean soldiers. Military courses were conducted according to the IDF's format, and Singapore adopted a system of conscription and reserve service based on the Israeli model.[155] Singapore still maintains strong security ties with Israel and is one of the biggest buyers of Israeli arms and weapons systems[160] with one recent example being the MATADOR anti-tank weapon.[161]
+
+The SAF is being developed to respond to a wide range of issues in both conventional and unconventional warfare. The Defence Science and Technology Agency is responsible for procuring resources for the military.[162] The geographic restrictions of Singapore mean that the SAF must plan to fully repulse an attack, as they cannot fall back and re-group. The small size of the population has also affected the way the SAF has been designed, with a small active force but a large number of reserves.[153]
+
+Singapore has conscription for all able-bodied males at age 18, except those with a criminal record or who can prove that their loss would bring hardship to their families. Males who have yet to complete pre-university education or are awarded the Public Service Commission scholarship can opt to defer their draft.[163] Though not required to perform military service, the number of women in the SAF has been increasing: since 1989 they have been allowed to fill military vocations formerly reserved for men. Before induction into a specific branch of the armed forces, recruits undergo at least 9 weeks of basic military training.[164]
+
+Because of the scarcity of open land on the main island, training involving activities such as live firing and amphibious warfare are often carried out on smaller islands, typically barred to civilian access. However, large-scale drills, considered too dangerous to be performed in the country, have been performed in Taiwan since 1975[164] and in about a dozen other countries. In general, military exercises are held with foreign forces once or twice per week.[153] Due to airspace and land constraints, the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) maintains a number of overseas bases in Australia, the United States, and France. The RSAF's 130 Squadron is based in RAAF Base Pearce, Western Australia,[165] and its 126 Squadron is based in the Oakey Army Aviation Centre, Queensland.[166] The RSAF has one squadron—the 150 Squadron—based in Cazaux Air Base in southern France.[167][168] The RSAF also has a few overseas detachments in the United States, in San Diego, California, Marana, Arizona, Grand Prairie, Texas and Luke Air Force Base, among others.[169][170]
+
+The SAF has sent forces to assist in operations outside the country, in areas such as Iraq[171] and Afghanistan,[172][173] in both military and civilian roles. In the region, they have helped to stabilise East Timor and have provided aid to Aceh in Indonesia following the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. In 2014, the RSN deployed two ships, the RSS Resolute and the Tenacious to the Gulf of Aden to aid in counter piracy efforts as part of Task Force 151. The SAF also helped in relief efforts during Hurricane Katrina and Typhoon Haiyan.[174] Singapore is part of the Five Power Defence Arrangements, a military alliance with Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.[153] In 2019, the nation was placed 7th most peaceful country on the Global Peace Index.[175]
+
+In 2020, Singapore was ranked 158th out of 180 nations by Reporters Without Borders in the Worldwide Press Freedom Index.[176] Historically, the government has restricted freedom of speech and freedom of the press and has limited some civil and political rights.[177] The right to freedom of speech and association guaranteed by Article 14(1) of the Constitution of Singapore is restricted by the subsequent subsection (2) of the same Article.[178] Freedom House ranks Singapore as "partly free" in its Freedom in the World report,[117] and The Economist Intelligence Unit ranks Singapore as a "flawed democracy", the second best rank of four, in its "Democracy Index".[179][180] In the 2015 Singaporean general election, the People's Action Party (PAP) won 83 of 89 seats contested with 70% of the popular vote.[181] The latest elections were in July 2020, with the People's Action Party (PAP) winning 83 of 93 seats contested with 61% of the popular vote.
+
+Amnesty International has said that some legal provisions of the Singapore system conflict with "the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty".[182] The government has disputed Amnesty's claims, stating that their "position on abolition of the death penalty is by no means uncontested internationally" and that the Report contains "grave errors of facts and misrepresentations".[183] Singapore's judicial system is considered one of the most reliable in Asia.[184] Sex trafficking in Singapore is a significant problem. Singaporean and foreign women and girls have been forced into prostitution in brothels and been physically and psychologically abused.[185][186][187] A law dating back from 1938 (Penal Code, s. 377A) bans sexual relations between men. However, the law is rarely enforced and sexual relations between women are legal.[188]
+
+In the Corruption Perceptions Index which ranks countries by "perceived levels of public sector corruption", Singapore has consistently ranked as one of the least corrupt.[189] Singapore's unique combination of a strong almost authoritarian government with an emphasis on meritocracy and good governance is known as the "Singapore model", and is regarded as a key factor behind Singapore's political stability, economic growth, and harmonious social order.[190][191] In 2019, the World Justice Project's Rule of Law Index ranked Singapore as 13th overall among the world's 126 countries for adherence to the rule of law. Singapore ranked high on the factors of order and security (#1), absence of corruption (#3), regulatory enforcement (#3), civil justice (#5), and criminal justice (#6), but ranked significantly lower on factors of open government (#25), constraints on government powers (#27), and fundamental rights (#30).[192] All public gatherings of five or more people require police permits, and protests may legally be held only at the Speakers' Corner.[193]
+
+Singapore consists of 63 islands, including the main island, Pulau Ujong.[194] There are two-man-made connections to Johor, Malaysia: the Woodlands 1st Link in the north and the Tuas 2nd Link in the west. Jurong Island, Pulau Tekong, Pulau Ubin and Sentosa are the largest of Singapore's smaller islands. The highest natural point is Bukit Timah Hill at 163.63 m (537 ft).[195] Under British rule, Christmas Island and the Cocos Islands were part of Singapore, but both were transferred to Australia in 1957.[196][197][198] Pedra Branca is the nation's easternmost point.[199]
+
+Land reclamation projects had increased Singapore's land area from 580 km2 (220 sq mi) in the 1960s to 710 km2 (270 sq mi) by 2015, an increase of some 22% (130 km2).[200] The country is projected to reclaim another 766 km2 (300 sq mi) by 2030.[201] Some projects involve merging smaller islands through land reclamation to form larger, more functional islands, as has been done with Jurong Island.[202] The type of sand used in reclamation is found in rivers and beaches, rather than deserts, and is in great demand worldwide. In 2010 Singapore imported almost 15 million tons of sand for its projects, the demand being such that Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam have all restricted or barred the export of sand to Singapore in recent years. As a result, in 2016 Singapore switched to using polders for reclamation, in which an area is enclosed and then pumped dry.[203]
+
+Singapore's urbanisation means that it has lost 95% of its historical forests,[204] and now over half of the naturally occurring fauna and flora in Singapore is present in nature reserves, such as the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve and the Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve, which comprise only 0.25% of Singapore's land area.[204] In 1967, to combat this decline in natural space, the government introduced the vision of making Singapore a "garden city",[205] aiming to improve quality of life.[206] Since then, nearly 10% of Singapore's land has been set aside for parks and nature reserves.[207] The government has created plans to preserve the country's remaining wildlife.[208] Singapore's well known gardens include the Singapore Botanic Gardens, a 161-year-old tropical garden and Singapore's first UNESCO World Heritage Site.[209]
+
+Singapore has a tropical rainforest climate (Köppen: Af) with no distinctive seasons, uniform temperature and pressure, high humidity, and abundant rainfall.[210][211] Temperatures usually range from 23 to 32 °C (73 to 90 °F). While temperature does not vary greatly throughout the year, there is a wetter monsoon season from November to February.[212]
+
+From July to October, there is often haze caused by bush fires in neighbouring Indonesia, usually from the island of Sumatra.[213] Singapore follows the GMT+8 time zone, one hour ahead of the typical zone for its geographical location.[214] This causes the sun to rise and set particularly late during February, where the sun rises at 7:15 am and sets around 7:20 pm. During July, the sun sets at around 7:15 pm. The earliest the sun rises and sets is in late October and early November when the sun rises at 6:46 am and sets at 6:50 pm.[215]
+
+Singapore recognises that climate change and rising sea levels in the decades ahead will have major implications for its low-lying coastline. It estimates that the nation will need to spend $100 billion over the course of the next century to address the issue. In its 2020 budget, the government set aside an initial $5 billion towards a Coastline and Flood Protection Fund.[216][217] Singapore is the first country in Southeast Asia to levy a carbon tax on its largest carbon-emitting corporations producing more than 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year, at $5 per ton.[218]
+
+Singapore has a highly developed market economy, based historically on extended entrepôt trade. Along with Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan, Singapore is one of the Four Asian Tigers, but has surpassed its peers in terms of GDP per capita. Between 1965 and 1995, growth rates averaged around 6 per cent per annum, transforming the living standards of the population.[221] It has the 7th highest GDP per capita in the world.[222][223] The Singaporean economy is regarded as free,[224] innovative,[225] competitive,[226] dynamic[227] and business-friendly.[228] The 2015 Index of Economic Freedom ranks Singapore as the second freest economy in the world and the Ease of doing business index has ranked Singapore as the easiest place to do business for the past decade.[229] The currency of Singapore is the Singapore dollar (SGD or S$), issued by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).[230] It is interchangeable with the Brunei dollar at par value since 1967.[231] MAS manages its monetary policy by allowing the Singapore dollar exchange rate to rise or fall within an undisclosed trading band. This is different from most central banks, which use interest rates to manage policy.[232] The city is a popular location for conferences and events.[233]
+
+For several years, Singapore has been one of the few[234] countries with an AAA credit rating from the big three, and the only Asian country to achieve this rating.[235] Singapore attracts a large amount of foreign investment as a result of its location, skilled workforce, low tax rates, advanced infrastructure and zero-tolerance against corruption.[236] Singapore has the world's eleventh largest foreign reserves,[237] and one of the highest net international investment position per capita.[238][239] There are more than 7,000 multinational corporations from the United States, Japan, and Europe in Singapore. There are also approximately 1,500 companies from China and a similar number from India. Roughly 44 percent of the Singaporean workforce is made up of non-Singaporeans.[240] Despite market freedom, Singapore's government operations have a significant stake in the economy, contributing 22% of the GDP.[241]
+
+In recent years, the country has been identified as an increasingly popular tax haven[242] for the wealthy due to the low tax rate on personal income and tax exemptions on foreign-based income and capital gains. Australian millionaire retailer Brett Blundy and multi-billionaire Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin are two examples of wealthy individuals who have settled in Singapore (Blundy in 2013 and Saverin in 2012).[243] In 2009, Singapore was removed from the OCDE "liste grise" of tax havens,[244] but ranked fourth on the Tax Justice Network's 2015 Financial Secrecy Index of the world's off-shore financial service providers, banking one-eighth of the world's offshore capital, while "providing numerous tax avoidance and evasion opportunities".[245] In August 2016, The Straits Times reported that Indonesia had decided to create tax havens on two islands near Singapore to bring Indonesian capital back into the tax base.[246] In October 2016, the Monetary Authority of Singapore admonished and fined UBS and DBS and withdrew Falcon Private Bank's banking licence for their alleged role in the Malaysian Sovereign Fund scandal.[247][248]
+
+Singapore has the world's highest percentage of millionaires, with one out of every six households having at least one million US dollars in disposable wealth. This excludes property, businesses, and luxury goods, which if included would increase the number of millionaires, especially as property in Singapore is among the world's most expensive.[249] In 2016, Singapore was rated the world's most expensive city for the third consecutive year by the Economist Intelligence Unit,[250][251] and this remained true in 2018.[252] The government provides numerous assistance programmes to the homeless and needy through the Ministry of Social and Family Development, so acute poverty is rare. Some of the programmes include providing between S$400 and S$1000 of financial assistance per month to needy households, providing free medical care at government hospitals, and paying for children's tuition.[253][254][255] Other benefits include compensation for gym fees to encourage citizens to exercise,[256] up to S$166,000 as a baby bonus for each citizen,[257] heavily subsidised healthcare, financial aid for the disabled, the provision of reduced-cost laptops for poor students,[258] rebates for costs such as public transport[259] and utility bills, and more.[260][261] As of 2018 Singapore's ranking in the Human Development Index is 9th in the world, with a HDI value of 0.935.[262]
+
+Singapore has a low unemployment rate for a developed country, with the rate not exceeding 4% from 2005 to 2014, and reaching highs of 3.1% in 2005 and 3% during the 2009 global financial crisis; it fell to 1.8% in the first quarter of 2015.[272] Singapore does not have a minimum wage, believing that it would lower its competitiveness. It also has one of the highest income inequalities among developed countries.[273][274] Although recognising that foreign workers are crucial to the country's economy, the government has considered placing limits on inflows of these workers,[275] as foreign workers make up 80% of the construction industry and up to 50% of the service industry.[276][277]
+
+Singapore is the world's 3rd-largest foreign exchange centre, 3rd-largest financial centre,[279][280] 2nd-largest casino gambling market,[281] 3rd-largest oil-refining and trading centre, largest oil-rig producer and hub for ship repair services,[282][283][284] and largest logistics hub.[285] The economy is diversified, with its top contributors being financial services, manufacturing, and oil-refining. Its main exports are refined petroleum, integrated circuits, and computers,[286] which constituted 27% of the country's GDP in 2010. Other significant sectors include electronics, chemicals, mechanical engineering, and biomedical sciences. In 2019, there were more than 60 semiconductor companies in Singapore, which together constituted 11% of the global market share. The semiconductor industry alone contributes around 7% of Singapore's GDP.[287]
+
+Singapore's largest companies are in the telecommunications, banking, transportation, and manufacturing sectors, many of which started as state-run statutory corporations but have since been publicly listed on the Singapore Exchange. Such companies include Singapore Telecommunications (Singtel), Singapore Technologies Engineering, Keppel Corporation, Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC), Development Bank of Singapore (DBS), and United Overseas Bank (UOB). In 2011, amidst the global financial crisis, OCBC, DBS and UOB were ranked by Bloomberg Businessweek as the world's 1st, 5th, and 6th strongest banks in the world, respectively.[288]
+
+The nation's best known global companies include Singapore Airlines, Changi Airport, and the Port of Singapore, all of which are among the most-awarded in their respective fields. Singapore Airlines was ranked as Asia's most-admired company, and the world's 19th most-admired company in 2015 by Fortune’s annual "50 most admired companies in the world" industry surveys. Other awards it has received include the US-based Travel + Leisure’s Best International Airline award, which it has won for 20 consecutive years.[289][290] Changi Airport connects over 100 airlines to more than 300 cities. The strategic international air hub has more than 480 World's Best Airport awards as of 2015[update], and is known as the most-awarded airport in the world.[291] Over ten free-trade agreements have been signed with other countries and regions.[132] Singapore is the second-largest foreign investor in India.[292] It is the 14th largest exporter and the 15th largest importer in the world.[293][294]
+
+Tourism is a major industry and contributor to the Singaporean economy, attracting 18.5 million international tourists in 2018, more than three times Singapore's total population.[295] Singapore is the 5th most visited city in the world, and 2nd in the Asia-Pacific.[296] In 2019 tourism contributed directly to about 4% of Singapore's GDP,[297] down from 2016, when tourism contributed, directly and indirectly, to around 9.9% of Singapore's GDP.[298] Altogether, the sector generated approximately 8.6%  of Singapore's employment in 2016.[298]
+
+The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) is the statutory board under the Ministry of Trade and Industry which is tasked with the promotion of the country's tourism industry. In August 2017 the STB and the Economic Development Board (EDB) unveiled a unified brand, Singapore – Passion Made Possible, to market Singapore internationally for tourism and business purposes.[299] The Orchard Road district, which contains multi-storey shopping centres and hotels, can be considered the centre of shopping and tourism in Singapore.[300] Other popular tourist attractions include the Singapore Zoo, River Safari and Night Safari. The Singapore Zoo has embraced the open zoo concept whereby animals are kept in enclosures, separated from visitors by hidden dry or wet moats, instead of caging the animals, and the River Safari has 300 species of animals, including numerous endangered species.[301] Singapore promotes itself as a medical tourism hub, with about 200,000 foreigners seeking medical care there each year. Singapore medical services aim to serve at least one million foreign patients annually and generate US$3 billion in revenue.[302] In 2015, Lonely Planet and The New York Times listed Singapore as their top and 6th-best world destinations to visit, respectively.[303]
+
+Well-known landmarks include the Merlion,[304] Marina Bay Sands,[305] Gardens by the Bay,[306] the Jewel,[307] the Orchard Road shopping belt,[300] the resort island of Sentosa,[308] and the Singapore Botanic Gardens, Singapore's first UNESCO World Heritage Site.[309]
+
+Singapore has a road system covering 3,356 kilometres (2,085 mi), which includes 161 kilometres (100 mi) of expressways.[310][311] The Singapore Area Licensing Scheme, implemented in 1975, became the world's first congestion pricing scheme, and included other complementary measures such as stringent car ownership quotas and improvements in mass transit.[312][313] Upgraded in 1998 and renamed Electronic Road Pricing, the system introduced electronic toll collection, electronic detection, and video surveillance technology.[314] A Global Navigation Satellite System will replace the physical gantries by 2020.[315] As Singapore is a small island with a high population density, the number of private cars on the road is restricted to curb pollution and congestion. Car buyers must pay for duties one-and-a-half times the vehicle's market value, and bid for a Singaporean Certificate of Entitlement (COE), which allows the car to run on the road for a decade. Car prices are generally significantly higher in Singapore than in other English-speaking countries.[316] As with most Commonwealth countries, vehicles on the road and people walking on the streets keep to the left.[317]
+
+Common alternatives to private vehicles include bicycles, bus, taxis and train (MRT or LRT). Two companies run the train transport system—SBS Transit and SMRT Corporation. Four companies, Go-Ahead, Tower-Transit, SBS Transit and SMRT Corporation run the public buses under a 'Bus Contracting Model' where operators bid for routes. There are six taxi companies, who together put out over 28,000 taxis on the road.[318] Taxis are a popular form of public transport as the fares are relatively cheap compared to many other developed countries.[319]
+
+Singapore is a major international transport hub in Asia, serving some of the busiest sea and air trade routes. Changi Airport is an aviation centre for Southeast Asia and a stopover on the Kangaroo Route between Sydney and London.[320] There are three civilian airports in Singapore, Singapore Changi Airport, Seletar Airport[321][322] and Kallang Airport (which is not open to public). Singapore Changi Airport hosts a network of over 100 airlines connecting Singapore to some 300 cities in about 70 countries and territories worldwide.[323] It has been rated one of the best international airports by international travel magazines, including being rated as the world's best airport for the first time in 2006 by Skytrax.[324] The national airline is Singapore Airlines.[325] The Port of Singapore, managed by port operators PSA International and Jurong Port, was the world's second-busiest port in 2019 in terms of shipping tonnage handled, at 2.85 billion gross tons (GT), and in terms of containerised traffic, at 37.2 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs).[326] It is also the world's second-busiest, behind Shanghai, in terms of cargo tonnage with 626 million tons handled. In addition, the port is the world's busiest for transshipment traffic and the world's biggest ship refuelling centre.[327]
+
+Access to water is universal, affordable, efficient and of high quality. Singapore relies on four main water sources, or "four national taps" – water imported from neighbouring Malaysia, urban rainwater catchments, reclaimed water (NEWater) and seawater desalination.[328] Singapore's approach does not rely only on physical infrastructure, but it also emphasises proper legislation and enforcement, water pricing, public education as well as research and development.[329] Singapore has declared that it will be water self-sufficient by the time its 1961 long-term water supply agreement with Malaysia expires in 2061. However, according to official forecasts, water demand in Singapore is expected to double from 380 to 760 million US gallons (1.4 to 2.8 billion litres; 1.4 to 2.8 million cubic meters) per day between 2010 and 2060. The increase is expected to come primarily from non-domestic water use, which accounted for 55% of water demand in 2010 and is expected to account for 70% of demand in 2060. By that time, water demand is expected to be met by reclaimed water at the tune of 50% and by desalination accounting for 30%, compared to only 20% supplied by internal catchments.[330][331]
+
+As of mid-2018, the estimated population of Singapore was 5,638,700 people, 3,471,900 (61.6%) of whom were citizens, while the remaining 2,166,800 (38.4%) were permanent residents (522,300) or international students/foreign workers/dependants (1,644,500).[4] According to the country's most recent census in 2010, nearly 23% of Singaporean residents (i.e. citizens and permanent residents) were foreign born; if non-residents were counted, nearly 43% of the total population were foreign born.[332][333]
+
+The same census also reports that about 74.1% of residents were of Chinese descent, 13.4% of Malay descent, 9.2% of Indian descent, and 3.3% of other (including Eurasian) descent.[332] Prior to 2010, each person could register as a member of only one race, by default that of his or her father, therefore mixed-race persons were solely grouped under their father's race in government censuses. From 2010 onward, people may register using a multi-racial classification, in which they may choose one primary race and one secondary race, but no more than two.[334]
+
+91% of resident households (i.e. households headed by a Singapore citizen or permanent resident) own the homes they live in, and the average household size is 3.43 persons (which include dependants who are neither citizens nor permanent residents).[335][336] However, due to scarcity of land, 78.7% of resident households live in subsidised, high-rise, public housing apartments developed by the (Housing and Development Board). Also, 75.9% of resident households live in properties that are equal to, or larger than, a four-room (i.e. three bedrooms plus one living room) HDB flat or in private housing.[337][338] Live-in foreign domestic workers are quite common in Singapore, with about 224,500 foreign domestic workers there, as of December 2013.[339]
+
+The median age of Singaporean residents was 40.5 in 2017,[340] and the total fertility rate is estimated to be 0.80 children per woman in 2014, the lowest in the world and well below the 2.1 needed to replace the population.[341] In February 2015, National University of Singapore launched the “New Age Institute” in conjunction with Washington University in St. Louis to conduct research on this issue.[342] To overcome this problem, the Singapore government has been encouraging foreigners to immigrate to Singapore for the past few decades. The large number of immigrants has kept Singapore's population from declining.[343]
+
+
+
+Buddhism is the most widely practised religion in Singapore, with 33% of the resident population declaring themselves adherents at the most recent census. The next-most practised religion is Christianity, followed by Islam, Taoism, and Hinduism. 17% of the population did not have a religious affiliation. The proportion of Christians, Taoists, and non-religious people increased between 2000 and 2010 by about 3 percentage points each, whilst the proportion of Buddhists decreased. Other faiths remained largely stable in their share of the population.[344]
+
+There are monasteries and Dharma centres from all three major traditions of Buddhism in Singapore: Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana. Most Buddhists in Singapore are Chinese and are of the Mahayana tradition,[345] with missionaries having come into the country from China for several decades. However, Thailand's Theravada Buddhism has seen growing popularity among the populace (not only the Chinese) during the past decade. The religion of Soka Gakkai International, a Japanese Buddhist organisation, is practised by many people in Singapore, but mostly by those of Chinese descent. Tibetan Buddhism has also made slow inroads into the country in recent years.[346]
+
+Singapore has four official languages: English, Malay, Mandarin, and Tamil.[347]
+
+English is the lingua franca[350][351][352][353][354] and the main language used in business, government, law and education.[355][356] The Constitution of Singapore and all government legislations are written in English, and interpreters are required if a language other than English is used in the Singaporean courts.[357][358] Statutory corporations conduct their businesses in English, while any official documents written in a non-English official language such as Malay, Mandarin, or Tamil are typically translated into English to be accepted for use.[359][351][360]
+
+Malay was designated as a national language by the Singaporean government after independence from Britain in the 1960s to avoid friction with Singapore's Malay-speaking neighbours of Malaysia and Indonesia.[361] It has a symbolic, rather than functional purpose.[347][362][363] It is used in the national anthem ‘’Majulah Singapura’’,[364] in citations of Singaporean orders and decorations and in military commands.[365][348] Singaporean Malay is officially written in the Latin-based Rumi script, though some Singaporean Malays also learn the Arabic-based Jawi script.[366] Jawi is considered an ethnic script for use on Singaporean identity cards.[367]
+
+Singaporeans are mostly bilingual, typically with English as their common language and their mother-tongue as a second language taught in schools, in order to preserve each individual's ethnic identity and values. English is the most spoken language at home at 36.9% of the population, just ahead of Mandarin.[348][368] Nearly half a million speak other varieties of Chinese, mainly Hokkien, Teochew, and Cantonese, as their home language, although the use of these is declining in favour of Mandarin or just English.[369] Singapore Chinese characters are written using simplified Chinese characters.[370]
+Singaporean English is largely based on British English, owing to the country's status as a former crown colony.[371][372] However, forms of English spoken in Singapore range from Standard Singapore English to a colloquial form known as Singlish, which is discouraged by the government as it claims it to be a substandard English creole that handicaps Singaporeans, presenting an obstacle to learning standard English and rendering the speaker incomprehensible to everyone except to another Singlish speaker.[373]
+
+Education for primary, secondary, and tertiary levels is mostly supported by the state. All institutions, private and public, must be registered with the Ministry of Education.[374] English is the language of instruction in all public schools,[375] and all subjects are taught and examined in English except for the "mother tongue" language paper.[376] While the term "mother tongue" in general refers to the first language internationally, in Singapore's education system, it is used to refer to the second language, as English is the first language.[377][378] Students who have been abroad for a while, or who struggle with their "Mother Tongue" language, are allowed to take a simpler syllabus or drop the subject.[379][380]
+
+Education takes place in three stages: primary, secondary, and pre-university education. Only the primary level is compulsory. Students begin with six years of primary school, which is made up of a four-year foundation course and a two-year orientation stage. The curriculum is focused on the development of English, the mother tongue, mathematics, and science.[381][382] Secondary school lasts from four to five years, and is divided between Special, Express, Normal (Academic), and Normal (Technical) streams in each school, depending on a student's ability level.[383] The basic coursework breakdown is the same as in the primary level, although classes are much more specialised.[384] Pre-university education takes place over two to three years at senior schools, mostly called Junior Colleges.[385] As alternatives to Pre-U education, however, courses are offered in other post-secondary education institutions, including 5 polytechnics and the Institutes of Technical Education (ITEs). Singapore has six public universities[386] of which the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University are among the top 20 universities in the world.[387]
+
+National examinations are standardised across all schools, with a test taken after each stage. After the first six years of education, students take the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE),[381] which determines their placement at secondary school. At the end of the secondary stage, GCE O-Level or N-level exams are taken;[388] at the end of the following pre-university stage, the GCE A-Level exams are taken.[389] Some schools have a degree of freedom in their curriculum and are known as autonomous schools, for secondary education level and above.[383]
+
+Singapore is also an education hub, with more than 80,000 international students in 2006.[390] 5,000 Malaysian students cross the Johor–Singapore Causeway daily to attend schools in Singapore.[391] In 2009, 20% of all students in Singaporean universities were international students—the maximum cap allowed, a majority from ASEAN, China and India.[392]
+
+Singapore students have excelled in many of the world education benchmarks in maths, science and reading. In 2015, both its primary and secondary students rank first in OECD's global school performance rankings across 76 countries—described as the most comprehensive map of education standards.[393][394] In 2016, Singapore students topped both the Program International Student Assessment (PISA)[395][396][397][398] and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).[399][400][401] In the 2016 EF English Proficiency Index taken in 72 countries, Singapore place 6th and has been the only Asian country in the top ten.[402][403][404][405]
+
+Singapore has a generally efficient healthcare system, even though health expenditures are relatively low for developed countries.[406] The World Health Organisation ranks Singapore's healthcare system as 6th overall in the world in its World Health Report.[407] In general, Singapore has had the lowest infant mortality rates in the world for the past two decades.[408] In 2019, Singaporeans have the longest life expectancy of any country at 84.8 years. Females can expect to live an average of 87.6 years with 75.8 years in good health. The averages are lower for men.[409] Singapore is ranked 1st on the Global Food Security Index.[410]
+
+As of December 2011 and January 2013, 8,800 foreigners and 5,400 Singaporeans were respectively diagnosed with HIV,[411] but there are fewer than 10 annual deaths from HIV per 100,000 people. There is a high level of immunisation.[412] Adult obesity is below 10%.[413] The Economist Intelligence Unit, in its 2013 Where-to-be-born Index, ranked Singapore as having the best quality of life in Asia and sixth overall in the world.[414]
+
+The government's healthcare system is based upon the "3M" framework. This has three components: Medifund, which provides a safety net for those not able to otherwise afford healthcare, Medisave, a compulsory national medical savings account system covering about 85% of the population, and Medishield, a government-funded health insurance program. Public hospitals in Singapore have a considerable autonomy in their management decisions, and notionally compete for patients, however they remain in government ownership and government appoints their boards and Chief Executive Officers and management reports and is responsible to these boards.[415] A subsidy scheme exists for those on low income.[416] In 2008, 32% of healthcare was funded by the government. It accounts for approximately 3.5% of Singapore's GDP.[417]
+
+Despite its small size, Singapore has a diversity of languages, religions, and cultures.[418] Former Prime Ministers of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong, have stated that Singapore does not fit the traditional description of a nation, calling it a society-in-transition, pointing out the fact that Singaporeans do not all speak the same language, share the same religion, or have the same customs.[418][419] Each Singaporean's behaviours and attitudes are influenced by, among other things, his or her home language and his religion. Singaporeans who speak English as their native language tend to lean toward Western culture, while those who speak Chinese as their native language tend to lean toward Chinese culture and Confucianism. Malay-speaking Singaporeans tend to lean toward Malay culture, which itself is closely linked to Islamic culture.[420][421] Racial and religious harmony is regarded by Singaporeans as a crucial part of Singapore's success, and played a part in building a Singaporean identity.[422][423]
+
+When Singapore became independent from the United Kingdom in 1963, most Singaporean citizens were transient labourers who had no intention of staying permanently.[424] There was also a sizeable minority of middle-class, locally born people—known as Peranakans or Baba-Nyonya—descendants of 15th- and 16th-century Chinese immigrants. With the exception of the Peranakans who pledged their loyalties to Singapore, most of the labourers' loyalties lay with their respective homelands of Malaysia, China and India. After independence, the government began a deliberate process of crafting a Singaporean identity and culture.[424] Singapore has a reputation as a nanny state.[425][426] The government also places heavy emphasis on meritocracy, where one is judged based on one's ability.[427]
+
+The national flower of Singapore is the hybrid orchid, Vanda 'Miss Joaquim', named in memory of a Singapore-born Armenian woman, who crossbred the flower in her garden at Tanjong Pagar in 1893.[428] Many national symbols such as the Coat of arms of Singapore and the Lion head symbol of Singapore make use of the lion, as Singapore is known as the Lion City. Major religious festivals are public holidays.[429]
+
+During the 1990s when the National Arts Council was created to spearhead the development of performing arts, along with visual and literary art forms.[430] The National Gallery Singapore is the nation's flagship museum with some 8,000 works from Singaporean and other Southeast Asian artists. The Singapore Art Museum focuses on contemporary art. The Red Dot Design Museum celebrates exceptional art and design of objects for everyday life, hosting more than 1,000 items from 50 countries. The lotus-shaped ArtScience Museum hosts touring exhibitions that combine art with the sciences. Other major museums include the Asian Civilisations Museum, the Peranakan Museum, and The Arts House.[431] The Esplanade is Singapore's largest performing arts centre. In 2016 alone, it was the site of 5,900 free art and culture events.[432][433]
+
+Literature of Singapore, or "SingLit", comprises a collection of literary works by Singaporeans written chiefly in the country's four official languages: English, Malay, Mandarin, and Tamil. Singapore is increasingly regarded as having four sub-literatures instead of one. Many significant works have been translated and showcased in publications such as the literary journal Singa, published in the 1980s and 1990s with editors including Edwin Thumboo and Koh Buck Song, as well as in multilingual anthologies such as Rhythms: A Singaporean Millennial Anthology Of Poetry (2000), in which the poems were all translated three times each. A number of Singaporean writers such as Tan Swie Hian and Kuo Pao Kun have contributed work in more than one language.[434][435]
+
+Singapore has a diverse music culture that ranges from pop and rock, to folk and classical. Western classical music plays a significant role in the cultural life in Singapore, with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) instituted in 1979. Other notable western orchestras in Singapore include Singapore National Youth Orchestra which is funded by the Ministry of Education[436] and the community-based Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra.[437] Many orchestras and ensembles are also found in secondary schools and junior colleges. Various communities have their own distinct ethnic musical traditions: Chinese, Malays, Indians, and Eurasians. With their traditional forms of music and various modern musical styles, the fusion of different forms account for the musical diversity in the country.[438] The nation's lively urban musical scene has made it a centre for international performances and festivals in the region. Some of Singapore's best known pop singers includes Stefanie Sun, JJ Lin, Liang Wern Fook, Taufik Batisah and Dick Lee, who is famous for composing National Day theme songs, including Home.[439][440]
+
+Singapore's diversity of cuisine is touted as a reason to visit the country, due to its combination of convenience, variety, quality, and price.[441] Local food items generally relate to a particular ethnicity – Chinese, Malay and Indian; but the diversity of cuisine has increased further by the hybridisation of different styles (e.g., the Peranakan cuisine, a mix of Chinese and Malay cuisine). In hawker centres, cultural diffusion is exemplified by traditionally Malay hawker stalls also selling Tamil food. Chinese stalls may introduce Malay ingredients, cooking techniques, or entire dishes into their range of catering.[441] Hainanese chicken rice, based on the Hainanese dish Wenchang chicken, is considered Singapore's national dish.[442][443]
+
+The city-state has a burgeoning food scene ranging from hawker centres (open-air), food courts (air-conditioned), coffee shops (open-air with up to a dozen hawker stalls), cafes, fast food, simple kitchens, casual, celebrity and high-end restaurants.[444] Cloud kitchens and food delivery are also on the rise, with 70% of residents ordering from delivery apps at least once a month.[445][446] Many international celebrity chef restaurants are located within the integrated resorts.[447] Religious dietary strictures exist (Muslims do not eat pork and Hindus do not eat beef), and there is also a significant group of vegetarians. The Singapore Food Festival which celebrates Singapore's cuisine is held annually in July.[448]
+
+Prior to the 1980s, street food was sold mainly by immigrants from China, India, and Malaysia to other immigrants seeking a familiar taste. In Singapore, street food has long been associated with hawker centres with communal seating areas. Typically, these centres have a few dozen to hundreds of food stalls, with each specialising in one or more related dishes.[449][444] While street food can be found in many countries, the variety and reach of centralised hawker centres that serve heritage street food in Singapore is unique.[450] In 2018, there were 114 hawker centres spread across the city centre and heartland housing estates. They are maintained by the National Environment Agency, which also grade each food stall for hygiene. The largest hawker centre is located on the second floor of Chinatown Complex, and contains over 200 stalls.[450] The complex is also home to the cheapest Michelin-starred meal in the world – a plate of soya-sauce chicken rice or noodles for S$2 (US$1.50). Two street food stalls in the city are the first in the world to be awarded a Michelin star, obtaining a single star each.[451]
+
+The development of private sports and recreation clubs began in the 19th century colonial Singapore, with clubs founded during this time including the Cricket Club, the Singapore Recreation Club, the Singapore Swimming Club, and the Hollandse Club.[453]
+
+Water sports are some of the most popular in Singapore. At the 2016 Rio Olympics, Joseph Schooling won Singapore's first Olympic gold medal, claiming the 100-metre butterfly in a new Olympic record time of 50.39 seconds.[452] Singapore sailors have had success on the international stage, with their Optimist team being considered among the best in the world.[454][455] Despite its size, the country has dominated swim meets in the Southeast Asia Games. Its men's water polo team won the SEA Games gold medal for the 27th time in 2017, continuing Singapore sport's longest winning streak.[456] Singapore hosted the inaugural 2010 Summer Youth Olympics, in which 3,600 athletes from 204 nations competed in 26 sports.[457] The island is home to ONE Championship, the biggest Mixed Martial Arts promotion in Asia.[458] Singapore's women's table tennis team were silver medalists at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.[459][460] They became world champions in 2010 when they beat China at the World Team Table Tennis Championships in Russia, breaking China's 19-year winning streak.[461] Weightlifter Tan Howe Liang was Singapore's first Olympic medalist, winning a silver at the 1960 Rome Games.[462]
+
+Singapore's football league, the Singapore Premier League, was launched in 1996 as the S.League and comprises nine clubs, including two foreign teams.[463][464] The Singapore Slingers, formerly the Hunter Pirates in the Australian National Basketball League, is one of the inaugural teams in the ASEAN Basketball League, which was founded in October 2009.[465] Kranji Racecourse is run by the Singapore Turf Club and hosts several meetings per week, including international races—notably the Singapore Airlines International Cup.[466]
+
+Singapore began hosting a round of the Formula One World Championship, the Singapore Grand Prix at the Marina Bay Street Circuit in 2008. It was the inaugural F1 night race,[467] and the first F1 street race in Asia.[468] It is considered a signature event on the F1 calendar.[469]
+
+Companies linked to the government control much of the domestic media in Singapore.[470] MediaCorp operates most free-to-air television channels and free-to-air radio stations in Singapore. There are a total of seven free-to-air TV channels offered by Mediacorp.[471][472] Starhub Cable Vision (SCV) also offers cable television with channels from all around the world,[473] and Singtel's Mio TV provides an IPTV service.[474] Singapore Press Holdings, a body with close links to the government, controls most of the newspaper industry in Singapore.[475]
+
+Singapore's media industry has sometimes been criticised for being overly regulated and lacking in freedom by human rights groups such as Freedom House.[470] Self-censorship among journalists is said to be common.[475] In 2014, Singapore dipped to its lowest ranking ever (153rd of 180 nations) on the Press Freedom Index published by the French Reporters Without Borders.[476] The Media Development Authority regulates Singaporean media, claiming to balance the demand for choice and protection against offensive and harmful material.[477] Private ownership of TV satellite dishes is banned.[475]
+
+Internet in Singapore is provided by state owned Singtel, partially state owned Starhub and M1 Limited as well as some other business internet service providers (ISPs) that offer residential service plans of speeds up to 2 Gbit/s as of spring 2015.[478] Equinix (332 participants) and also its smaller brother Singapore Internet Exchange (70 participants) are Internet exchange points where Internet service providers and Content delivery networks exchange Internet traffic between their networks (autonomous systems) in various locations in Singapore.[479][480] In the mid-1980s to 1990s, Singaporeans could also use the locally based videotext service Singapore Teleview to communicate with one another.[481] The phrase Intelligent Island arose in the 1990s in reference to the island nation's early adaptive relationship with the internet.[481][482]
+
+In 2016, there were an estimated 4.7 million internet users in Singapore, representing 82.5% of the population.[483] The Singapore government does not engage in widespread censoring of the internet,[484] but it maintains a list of one hundred websites—mostly pornographic—that it blocks as a "symbolic statement of the Singaporean community's stand on harmful and undesirable content on the Internet".[485] As the block covers only home internet access, users may still visit the blocked websites from their office computers.[486] Singapore has the world's highest smartphone penetration rates, in surveys by Deloitte[487][488] and Google Consumer Barometer – at 89% and 85% of the population respectively in 2014.[489] Overall mobile phone penetration rate is at 148 mobile phone subscribers per 100 people.[490]
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+Lat. and Long. 1°22′N 103°48′E / 1.367°N 103.800°E / 1.367; 103.800
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+Click on a coloured area to see an article about English in that country or region

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+Singapore (/ˈsɪŋ(ɡ)əpɔːr/ (listen)), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude (137 kilometres or 85 miles) north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bordering the Straits of Malacca to the west, the Riau Islands to the south, and the South China Sea to the east. The country's territory is composed of one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet, the combined area of which has increased by 25% since the country's independence as a result of extensive land reclamation projects. The country is home to 5.7 million residents, 61% (3.4 million) of whom are Singaporean citizens. There are four official languages of Singapore: English, Malay, Chinese, and Tamil; with English being the lingua franca. This reflects in its rich cultural diversity and extensive ethnic cuisine and major festivals. Multiracialism is enshrined in the constitution, and continues to shape national policies in education, housing, and politics.
+
+Although its history stretches back millennia, modern Singapore was founded in 1819 by Sir Stamford Raffles as a trading post of the British Empire. In 1867, the colonies in East Asia were reorganised and Singapore came under the direct control of Britain as part of the Straits Settlements. During the Second World War, Singapore was occupied by Japan in 1942 but returned to British control as a separate crown colony following Japan's surrender in 1945. Singapore gained self-governance in 1959, and in 1963 became part of the new federation of Malaysia, alongside Malaya, North Borneo, and Sarawak. Ideological differences led to Singapore being expelled from the federation two years later, thereby becoming an independent country.
+
+After early years of turbulence and despite lacking natural resources and a hinterland, the nation rapidly developed to become one of the Four Asian Tigers based on external trade, becoming a highly developed country; it is ranked ninth on the UN Human Development Index, and has the seventh-highest GDP per capita in the world. Singapore is the only country in Asia with an AAA sovereign rating from all major rating agencies. It is a major financial and shipping hub, consistently ranked the most expensive city to live in since 2013, and has been identified as a tax haven. Singapore is placed highly in key social indicators: education, healthcare, quality of life, personal safety and housing, with a home-ownership rate of 91%. Singaporeans enjoy one of the world's longest life expectancies, fastest Internet connection speeds and one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world.
+
+Singapore is a unitary parliamentary republic with a Westminster system of unicameral parliamentary government. Singapore is widely regarded to have an incorrupt and meritocratic government, with a fair judiciary and strong rule of law. While the country practices parliamentary democracy, the government has significant control over politics and society, and the People's Action Party has ruled continuously since independence. One of the five founding members of ASEAN, Singapore is also the headquarters of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Secretariat and Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) Secretariat, as well as many international conferences and events. Singapore is also a member of the United Nations, World Trade Organization, East Asia Summit, Non-Aligned Movement and the Commonwealth of Nations.
+
+The English name of Singapore is an anglicisation of the native Malay name for the country, Singapura, which was in turn derived from the Sanskrit word for lion city (romanised: Siṃhapura; Brahmi: 𑀲𑀺𑀁𑀳𑀧𑀼𑀭; literally "lion city"; siṃha means "lion", pura means "city" or "fortress").[8] A Chinese account from the third century referred to a place as Pú Luó Zhōng (Chinese: 蒲 羅 中), which sounds like Malay for "island at the end of a peninsula".[9] Early references to the name Temasek (or Tumasik) are found in the Nagarakretagama, a Javanese epic poem written in 1365, and a Vietnamese source from the same time period. The name possibly means "Sea Town", being derived from the Malay tasek, meaning "sea" or "lake".[10]  The Chinese traveller Wang Dayuan visited a place around 1330 named Danmaxi (Chinese: 淡馬錫; pinyin: Dānmǎxí; Wade–Giles: Tan Ma Hsi) or Tam ma siak, depending on pronunciation. Danmaxi may be a transcription of Temasek, alternatively, it may be a combination of the Malay Tanah meaning "land", and Chinese Xi meaning "tin", which was traded on the island.[11][10]
+
+Variations of the name Siṃhapura were used for a number of cities throughout the region prior to the establishment of the Kingdom of Singapura. In Hindu-Buddhist culture, lions were associated with power and protection, which may explain the attraction of such a name.[12][13] The name Singapura supplanted Temasek sometime before the 15th century, after the establishment of the Kingdom of Singapura on the island by a fleeing Srivijayan Raja (prince) from Palembang. However, the precise time and reason for the name change is unknown. The semi-historical Malay Annals state that Temasek was christened Singapura by Sang Nila Utama, a 13th-century Srivijayan Raja from Palembang. The Annals state that Sang Nila Utama encountered a strange beast on the island that he took to be a lion. Seeing this as an omen, he established the town of Singapura where he encountered the beast. The second hypothesis, drawn from Portuguese sources, postulates that this mythical story is based on the real life Parameswara of Palembang. Parameswara declared independence from Majapahit and mounted a Lion Throne, thus claiming the Srivijaya Empire. After then being driven into exile by the Javanese, he usurped control over Temasek. It is possible that he rechristened the area as Singapura, recalling the throne he had been driven from.[14]
+
+Under Japanese occupation, Singapore was renamed Syonanto (Japanese: 昭 南 島, Hepburn: Shōnan-tō), meaning "Light of the South".[15][16] Singapore is sometimes referred to by the nickname the "Garden City", in reference to its parks and tree-lined streets.[17] Another name, the "Little Red Dot", was adopted after Indonesian President B. J. Habibie dismissed Singapore by referring to a red dot on a map.[18][19][20]
+
+In 1299, according to the Malay Annals, the Kingdom of Singapura was founded on the island by Sang Nila Utama.[21] Although the historicity of the accounts as given in the Malay Annals is the subject of academic debates,[22] it is nevertheless known from various documents that Singapore in the 14th century, then known as Temasek, was a trading port under the influence of both the Majapahit Empire and the Siamese kingdoms[23] and was a part of the Indosphere[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][29] These Indianised Kingdoms were characterised by surprising resilience, political integrity and administrative stability.[31] Historical sources also indicate that around the end of the 14th century, its ruler Parameswara was attacked by either the Majapahit or the Siamese, forcing him to move to Malacca where he founded the Sultanate of Malacca.[32] Archaeological evidence suggests that the main settlement on Fort Canning was abandoned around this time, although a small trading settlement continued in Singapore for some time afterwards.[14] In 1613, Portuguese raiders burned down the settlement, and the island faded into obscurity for the next two centuries.[33] By then Singapore was nominally part of the Johor Sultanate.[34] The wider maritime region and much trade was under Dutch control for the following period after the Dutch conquest of Malacca.[35]
+
+The British governor Stamford Raffles arrived in Singapore on 28 January 1819 and soon recognised the island as a natural choice for the new port.[36] The island was then nominally ruled by Tengku Abdul Rahman, the Sultan of Johor, who was controlled by the Dutch and the Bugis.[37] However, the Sultanate was weakened by factional division: the Temenggong (Chief Minister) of Tengku Abdul Rahman, as well as his officials, were loyal to the Sultan's elder brother Tengku Long, who was living in exile in Riau. With the Temenggong's help, Raffles managed to smuggle Tengku Long back into Singapore. Raffles offered to recognise Tengku Long as the rightful Sultan of Johor, under the title of Sultan Hussein, as well as provide him with a yearly payment of $5000 and another $3000 to the Temenggong; in return, Sultan Hussein would grant the British the right to establish a trading post on Singapore.[38] A formal treaty was signed on 6 February 1819.[39][40]
+
+In 1824, a further treaty with the Sultan led to the entire island becoming a British possession.[41] In 1826, Singapore became part of the Straits Settlements, then under the jurisdiction of British India. Singapore became the regional capital in 1836.[42] Prior to Raffles' arrival, there were only about a thousand people living on the island, mostly indigenous Malays along with a handful of Chinese.[43] By 1860 the population had swelled to over 80,000, more than half being Chinese.[41] Many of these early immigrants came to work on the pepper and gambier plantations.[44] In 1867, the Straits Settlements were separated from British India, coming under the direct control of Britain.[45] Later, in the 1890s, when the rubber industry became established in Malaya and Singapore,[46] the island became a global centre for rubber sorting and export.[41]
+
+Singapore was not greatly affected by the First World War (1914–18), as the conflict did not spread to Southeast Asia. The only significant event during the war was the 1915 Singapore Mutiny by Muslim sepoys from British India, who were garrisoned in Singapore.[47] After hearing rumours that they were to be sent to fight the Ottoman Empire, a Muslim state, the soldiers rebelled, killing their officers and several British civilians before the mutiny was suppressed by non-Muslim troops arriving from Johore and Burma.[48]
+
+After the First World War, the British built the large Singapore Naval Base as part of the defensive Singapore strategy.[49] Originally announced in 1921, the construction of the base proceeded at a slow pace until the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. Costing $60 million and not fully completed in 1938, it was nonetheless the largest dry dock in the world, the third-largest floating dock, and had enough fuel tanks to support the entire British navy for six months.[49][50][51] The base was defended by heavy 15-inch naval guns stationed at Fort Siloso, Fort Canning and Labrador, as well as a Royal Air Force airfield at Tengah Air Base. Winston Churchill touted it as the "Gibraltar of the East", and military discussions often referred to the base as simply "East of Suez". However, the British Home Fleet was stationed in Europe, and the British could not afford to build a second fleet to protect their interests in Asia. The plan was for the Home Fleet to sail quickly to Singapore in the event of an emergency. As a consequence, after World War II broke out in 1939, the fleet was fully occupied with defending Britain, leaving Singapore vulnerable to Japanese invasion.[52][53]
+
+During the Second World War, the Japanese invasion of Malaya culminated in the Battle of Singapore. When the British force of 60,000 troops surrendered on 15 February 1942, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called the defeat "the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history.[54] British and Empire losses during the fighting for Singapore were heavy, with a total of nearly 85,000 personnel captured.[55] About 5,000 were killed or wounded,[56] of which Australians made up the majority.[57][58][59] Japanese casualties during the fighting in Singapore amounted to 1,714 killed and 3,378 wounded.[55][Note 2] The occupation was to become a major turning point in the histories of several nations, including those of Japan, Britain, and Singapore. Japanese newspapers triumphantly declared the victory as deciding the general situation of the war.[60][61] Between 5,000 and 25,000 ethnic Chinese people were killed in the subsequent Sook Ching massacre.[62] British forces had planned to liberate Singapore in 1945; however, the war ended before these operations could be carried out.[63][64]
+
+After the Japanese surrender to the Allies on 15 August 1945, Singapore fell into a brief state of violence and disorder; looting and revenge-killing were widespread. British, Australian, and Indian troops led by Lord Louis Mountbatten returned to Singapore to receive the formal surrender of Japanese forces in the region from General Itagaki Seishiro on behalf of General Hisaichi Terauchi on 12 September 1945.[63][64] Meanwhile, Tomoyuki Yamashita was tried by a US military commission for war crimes, but not for crimes committed by his troops in Malaya or Singapore. He was convicted and hanged in the Philippines on 23 February 1946.[65][66]
+
+Much of Singapore's infrastructure had been destroyed during the war, including those needed to supply utilities. A shortage of food led to malnutrition, disease, and rampant crime and violence. A series of strikes in 1947 caused massive stoppages in public transport and other services. However, by late 1947 the economy began to recover, facilitated by a growing international demand for tin and rubber.[67] The failure of Britain to successfully defend changed its image in the eyes of Singaporeans. British Military Administration ended on 1 April 1946, with Singapore becoming a separate Crown Colony.[67] In July 1947, separate Executive and Legislative Councils were established and the election of six members of the Legislative Council was scheduled in the following year.[68]
+
+During the 1950s, Chinese communists with strong ties to the trade unions and Chinese schools waged a guerrilla war against the government, leading to the Malayan Emergency. The 1954 National Service riots, Hock Lee bus riots, and Chinese middle schools riots in Singapore were all linked to these events.[69] David Marshall, pro-independence leader of the Labour Front, won Singapore's first general election in 1955. He led a delegation to London, but Britain rejected his demand for complete self-rule. He resigned and was replaced by Lim Yew Hock in 1956, and after further negotiations Britain to grant Singapore full internal self-government for all matters except defence and foreign affairs.[70] During the subsequent May 1959 elections, the People's Action Party (PAP) won a landslide victory.[71] Governor Sir William Allmond Codrington Goode served as the first Yang di-Pertuan Negara (Head of State).[72]
+
+PAP leaders believed that Singapore's future lay with Malaya, due to strong ties between the two. It was thought that reuniting with Malaya would benefit the economy by creating a common market, alleviating ongoing unemployment woes in Singapore. However, a sizeable pro-communist wing of the PAP was strongly opposed to the merger, fearing a loss of influence, and hence formed the Barisan Sosialis, splitting from the PAP.[73][74] The ruling party of Malaya, United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), was staunchly anti-communist, and it was suspected UMNO would support the non-communist factions of PAP. UMNO, initially sceptical of the idea of a merger due to distrust of the PAP government and concern that the large ethnic Chinese population in Singapore would alter the racial balance in Malaya on which their political power base depended, became supportive of the idea of merger due to joint fear of communists takeover.[75]
+
+On 27 May 1961, Malaya's Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, made a surprise proposal for a new Federation called Malaysia, which would unite the current and former British possessions in the region: the Federation of Malaya, Singapore, Brunei, North Borneo, and Sarawak.[75] UMNO leaders believed that the additional Malay population in the Bornean territories would balance Singapore's Chinese population.[70] The British government, for its part, believed that the merger would prevent Singapore from becoming a haven for communism.[76] To obtain a mandate for a merger, the PAP held a referendum on the merger. This referendum included a choice of different terms for merger with Malaysia, but had no option for avoiding merger altogether. On 16 September 1963, Singapore joined with Malaya, the North Borneo, and Sarawak to form the new Federation of Malaysia under the terms of the Malaysia Agreement. Under this Agreement, Singapore had a relatively high level of autonomy compared to the other states of Malaysia.[77]
+
+Indonesia opposed the formation of Malaysia due to its own claims over Borneo and launched konfrontasi (Confrontation in Indonesian) in response to the formation of Malaysia.[78] On 10 March 1965, a bomb planted by Indonesian saboteurs on a mezzanine floor of MacDonald House exploded, killing three people and injuring 33 others. It was the deadliest of at least 42 bomb incidents which occurred during the confrontation.[79] Two members of the Indonesian Marine Corps, Osman bin Haji Mohamed Ali and Harun bin Said, were eventually convicted and executed for the crime.[80] The explosion caused US$250,000 (equivalent to US$2,028,247 in 2019) in damages to MacDonald House.[81][82]
+
+Even after the merger, the Singaporean government and the Malaysian central government disagreed on many political and economic issues. Despite an agreement to establish a common market, Singapore continued to face restrictions when trading with the rest of Malaysia. In retaliation, Singapore did not extend to Sabah and Sarawak the full extent of the loans agreed to for economic development of the two eastern states. Talks soon broke down, and abusive speeches and writing became rife on both sides. This led to communal strife in Singapore, culminating in the 1964 race riots.[83] On 7 August 1965, Malaysian Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman, seeing no alternative to avoid further bloodshed, advised the Parliament of Malaysia that it should vote to expel Singapore from Malaysia.[84] On 9 August 1965, the Malaysian Parliament voted 126 to 0 to move a bill to amend the constitution, expelling Singapore from Malaysia, which left Singapore as a newly independent country.[85][86][70][87]
+
+Singapore became independent as the Republic of Singapore on 9 August 1965, with Lee Kuan Yew and Yusof bin Ishak as the first prime minister and president respectively.[88][89] In 1967, the country co-founded the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).[90] Race riots broke out once more in 1969.[91] Lee Kuan Yew's emphasis on rapid economic growth, support for business entrepreneurship, and limitations on internal democracy shaped Singapore's policies for the next half-century.[92][93] Economic growth continued throughout the 1980s, with the unemployment rate falling to 3% and real GDP growth averaging at about 8% up until 1999. During the 1980s, Singapore began to shift towards high-tech industries, such as the wafer fabrication sector, in order to remain competitive as neighbouring countries began manufacturing with cheaper labour. Singapore Changi Airport was opened in 1981 and Singapore Airlines was formed.[94] The Port of Singapore became one of the world's busiest ports and the service and tourism industries also grew immensely during this period.[95][96]
+
+The PAP, which has remained in power since independence, is believed to rule in an authoritarian manner by some activists and opposition politicians who see the strict regulation of political and media activities by the government as an infringement on political rights.[97] In response, Singapore has seen several significant political changes, such as the introduction of the Non-Constituency members of parliament in 1984 to allow up to three losing candidates from opposition parties to be appointed as MPs. Group Representation Constituencies (GRCs) were introduced in 1988 to create multi-seat electoral divisions, intended to ensure minority representation in parliament.[98] Nominated members of parliament were introduced in 1990 to allow non-elected non-partisan MPs.[99] The Constitution was amended in 1991 to provide for an Elected President who has veto power in the use of national reserves and appointments to public office.[100]
+
+In 1990, Goh Chok Tong succeeded Lee and became Singapore's second Prime Minister.[101] During Goh's tenure, the country went through the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the 2003 SARS outbreak.[102][103] In 2004, Lee Hsien Loong, the eldest son of Lee Kuan Yew, became the country's third Prime Minister.[103] Lee Hsien Loong's tenure included the 2008 global financial crisis, the resolution of a dispute over land ownership at Tanjong Pagar railway station between Singapore and Malaysia, and the introduction of the 2 integrated resorts (IRs), located at the Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa.[104] The People's Action Party (PAP) suffered its worst ever electoral results in 2011, winning just 60% of votes, amidst debate over issues including the influx of foreign workers and the high cost of living.[105] On 23 March 2015, Lee Kuan Yew died, and a one-week period of public mourning was observed nationwide.[93] Subsequently, the PAP regained its dominance in Parliament through the September general election, receiving 69.9% of the popular vote, although this remained lower than the 2001 tally of 75.3%[106] and the 1968 tally of 86.7%.[107] The 2020 election saw the PAP drop to 61% of the vote, while the opposition Workers' Party took 10 of the 93 seats, the highest number ever won by an opposition party.[108]
+
+Singapore is a parliamentary republic based on the Westminster system. The Constitution of Singapore is the supreme law of the country, establishing the structure and responsibility of government. The president is head of state and exercises executive power on the advice of her ministers. The prime minister is head of government and is appointed by the president as the person most likely to command the confidence of a majority of Parliament. Cabinet is chosen by the prime minister and formally appointed by the president.[109]
+
+The government is separated into three branches:
+
+The president is directly elected by popular vote for a renewable six-year term. Requirements for this position are extremely stringent, such that no more than several thousand people qualify for candidacy.[114] Presidential elections may be declared "reserved" for a racial community if no one from that ethnic group has been elected to the presidency in the five most recent terms. Only members of that community may qualify as candidates in a reserved presidential election.[115]
+
+Members of Parliament (MPs) are chosen to serve for a term lasting up to five years. The current Parliament has 100 members; 88 were directly elected from the 29 constituencies, nine are nonpartisan nominated members appointed by the president, and three are non-constituency members from opposition parties who were not elected in the last general election but appointed to the legislature to increase opposition party representation. In group representation constituencies (GRCs), political parties assemble teams of candidates (rather than nominate individuals) to contest elections. At least one MP in a GRC must be of an ethnic minority background. All elections are held using first-past-the-post voting.[116] The People's Action Party (PAP) occupies a dominant position in Singaporean politics, having won large parliamentary majorities in every election since self-governance was granted in 1959.[117] Even its candidates who lose elections are often turned to by constituency residents for assistance. The most effective opposition party is the Workers' Party.[108]
+
+The judicial system is based on English common law, continuing the legal tradition established during British rule but with substantial local differences. Criminal law is based on the Indian Penal Code originally intended for British India, but was at the time as a crown colony also adopted by the British colonial authorities in Singapore and remains the basis of the criminal code in the country with a few exceptions, amendments and repeals since it came into force.[118] Trial by jury was abolished in 1970,[119] and both caning[120][121] and capital punishment continue to be administered as penalties for severe offences.[122]
+
+Singapore's stated foreign policy priority is maintaining security in Southeast Asia and surrounding territories. An underlying principle is political and economic stability in the region.[123] It has diplomatic relations with more than 180 sovereign states.[124]
+
+As one of the five founding members of ASEAN,[125] it is a strong supporter of the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) and the ASEAN Investment Area as Singapore's economy is closely linked to that of the region as a whole. Former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong has proposed the formation of an ASEAN Economic Community, a step beyond the AFTA, bringing it closer to a common market. This was agreed to in 2007 for implementation by 2015. Other regional organisations are important to Singapore, and it is the host of the APEC Secretariat.[126] Singapore maintains membership in other regional organisations, such as Asia–Europe Meeting, the Forum for East Asia-Latin American Cooperation, the Indian Ocean Rim Association, and the East Asia Summit.[123] It is also a member of the Non-Aligned Movement,[127] the United Nations and the Commonwealth.[128][129] While Singapore is not a formal member of the G20, it has been invited to participate in G20 processes in most years since 2010.[130] Singapore is also the location of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) Secretariat.[131]
+
+In general, bilateral relations with other ASEAN members are strong; however, disagreements have arisen,[132] and relations with neighbouring Malaysia and Indonesia have sometimes been strained.[133] Malaysia and Singapore have clashed over the delivery of fresh water to Singapore,[134] and access by the Singapore Armed Forces to Malaysian airspace.[133] Border issues exist with Malaysia and Indonesia, and both have banned the sale of marine sand to Singapore over disputes about Singapore's land reclamation.[135] Some previous disputes, such as the Pedra Branca dispute, have been resolved by the International Court of Justice.[136] Piracy in the Strait of Malacca has been a cause of concern for all three countries.[134] Close economic ties exist with Brunei, and the two share a pegged currency value, through a Currency Interchangeability Agreement between the two countries which makes both Brunei dollar and Singapore dollar banknotes and coins legal tender in either country.[137][138]
+
+The first diplomatic contact with China was made in the 1970s, with full diplomatic relations established in the 1990s. Since then the two countries have been major players in strengthening the ASEAN–China relationship, and has maintained a long-standing and greatly prioritised close relationship partly due to China's growing influence and essentiality in the Asia-Pacific region, specifying that "its common interest with China is far greater than any differences". Furthermore, Singapore has positioned itself as a strong supporter of China's constructive engagement and peaceful development in the region. In addition, China has been Singapore's largest trading partner since 2013, after surpassing Malaysia.[139][140][141][142][143] Singapore and the United States share a long-standing close relationship, in particular in defence, the economy, health, and education. Singapore has also pushed regional counter-terrorism initiatives, with a strong resolve to deal with terrorists inside its borders. To this end, the country has stepped up co-operation with ASEAN members and China to strengthen regional security and fight terrorism, as well as participating in the organisation's first joint maritime exercise with the latter.[144] It has also given support to the US-led coalition to fight terrorism, with bilateral co-operation in counter-terrorism and counter-proliferation initiatives, and joint military exercises.[132]
+
+As Singapore has diplomatic relations with both the United States and North Korea, and was one of the few countries that have relationships with both countries,[145] on 12 June 2018, Singapore hosted a historic summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the first-ever meeting between the sitting leaders of the two nations.[146][147] It has also hosted the Ma–Xi meeting on 7 November 2015, the first meeting between the political leaders of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1950.[148][149][150]
+
+The Singaporean military, arguably the most technologically advanced in Southeast Asia,[151] consists of the army, navy, and the air force. It is seen as the guarantor of the country's independence,[152] translating into Singapore culture, involving all citizens in the country's defence.[153] The government spends 4.9% of the country's GDP on the military—high by regional standards[151]—and one out of every four dollars of government spending is spent on defence.[154]
+
+After its independence, Singapore had only two infantry regiments commanded by British officers. Considered too small to provide effective security for the new country, the development of its military forces became a priority.[155] In addition, in October 1971, Britain pulled its military out of Singapore, leaving behind only a small British, Australian and New Zealand force as a token military presence.[156] A great deal of initial support came from Israel,[155] a country unrecognised by Singapore's neighbouring Muslim-majority nations of Malaysia and Indonesia.[157][158][159] The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) commanders were tasked by the Singapore government to create the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) from scratch, and Israeli instructors were brought in to train Singaporean soldiers. Military courses were conducted according to the IDF's format, and Singapore adopted a system of conscription and reserve service based on the Israeli model.[155] Singapore still maintains strong security ties with Israel and is one of the biggest buyers of Israeli arms and weapons systems[160] with one recent example being the MATADOR anti-tank weapon.[161]
+
+The SAF is being developed to respond to a wide range of issues in both conventional and unconventional warfare. The Defence Science and Technology Agency is responsible for procuring resources for the military.[162] The geographic restrictions of Singapore mean that the SAF must plan to fully repulse an attack, as they cannot fall back and re-group. The small size of the population has also affected the way the SAF has been designed, with a small active force but a large number of reserves.[153]
+
+Singapore has conscription for all able-bodied males at age 18, except those with a criminal record or who can prove that their loss would bring hardship to their families. Males who have yet to complete pre-university education or are awarded the Public Service Commission scholarship can opt to defer their draft.[163] Though not required to perform military service, the number of women in the SAF has been increasing: since 1989 they have been allowed to fill military vocations formerly reserved for men. Before induction into a specific branch of the armed forces, recruits undergo at least 9 weeks of basic military training.[164]
+
+Because of the scarcity of open land on the main island, training involving activities such as live firing and amphibious warfare are often carried out on smaller islands, typically barred to civilian access. However, large-scale drills, considered too dangerous to be performed in the country, have been performed in Taiwan since 1975[164] and in about a dozen other countries. In general, military exercises are held with foreign forces once or twice per week.[153] Due to airspace and land constraints, the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) maintains a number of overseas bases in Australia, the United States, and France. The RSAF's 130 Squadron is based in RAAF Base Pearce, Western Australia,[165] and its 126 Squadron is based in the Oakey Army Aviation Centre, Queensland.[166] The RSAF has one squadron—the 150 Squadron—based in Cazaux Air Base in southern France.[167][168] The RSAF also has a few overseas detachments in the United States, in San Diego, California, Marana, Arizona, Grand Prairie, Texas and Luke Air Force Base, among others.[169][170]
+
+The SAF has sent forces to assist in operations outside the country, in areas such as Iraq[171] and Afghanistan,[172][173] in both military and civilian roles. In the region, they have helped to stabilise East Timor and have provided aid to Aceh in Indonesia following the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. In 2014, the RSN deployed two ships, the RSS Resolute and the Tenacious to the Gulf of Aden to aid in counter piracy efforts as part of Task Force 151. The SAF also helped in relief efforts during Hurricane Katrina and Typhoon Haiyan.[174] Singapore is part of the Five Power Defence Arrangements, a military alliance with Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.[153] In 2019, the nation was placed 7th most peaceful country on the Global Peace Index.[175]
+
+In 2020, Singapore was ranked 158th out of 180 nations by Reporters Without Borders in the Worldwide Press Freedom Index.[176] Historically, the government has restricted freedom of speech and freedom of the press and has limited some civil and political rights.[177] The right to freedom of speech and association guaranteed by Article 14(1) of the Constitution of Singapore is restricted by the subsequent subsection (2) of the same Article.[178] Freedom House ranks Singapore as "partly free" in its Freedom in the World report,[117] and The Economist Intelligence Unit ranks Singapore as a "flawed democracy", the second best rank of four, in its "Democracy Index".[179][180] In the 2015 Singaporean general election, the People's Action Party (PAP) won 83 of 89 seats contested with 70% of the popular vote.[181] The latest elections were in July 2020, with the People's Action Party (PAP) winning 83 of 93 seats contested with 61% of the popular vote.
+
+Amnesty International has said that some legal provisions of the Singapore system conflict with "the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty".[182] The government has disputed Amnesty's claims, stating that their "position on abolition of the death penalty is by no means uncontested internationally" and that the Report contains "grave errors of facts and misrepresentations".[183] Singapore's judicial system is considered one of the most reliable in Asia.[184] Sex trafficking in Singapore is a significant problem. Singaporean and foreign women and girls have been forced into prostitution in brothels and been physically and psychologically abused.[185][186][187] A law dating back from 1938 (Penal Code, s. 377A) bans sexual relations between men. However, the law is rarely enforced and sexual relations between women are legal.[188]
+
+In the Corruption Perceptions Index which ranks countries by "perceived levels of public sector corruption", Singapore has consistently ranked as one of the least corrupt.[189] Singapore's unique combination of a strong almost authoritarian government with an emphasis on meritocracy and good governance is known as the "Singapore model", and is regarded as a key factor behind Singapore's political stability, economic growth, and harmonious social order.[190][191] In 2019, the World Justice Project's Rule of Law Index ranked Singapore as 13th overall among the world's 126 countries for adherence to the rule of law. Singapore ranked high on the factors of order and security (#1), absence of corruption (#3), regulatory enforcement (#3), civil justice (#5), and criminal justice (#6), but ranked significantly lower on factors of open government (#25), constraints on government powers (#27), and fundamental rights (#30).[192] All public gatherings of five or more people require police permits, and protests may legally be held only at the Speakers' Corner.[193]
+
+Singapore consists of 63 islands, including the main island, Pulau Ujong.[194] There are two-man-made connections to Johor, Malaysia: the Woodlands 1st Link in the north and the Tuas 2nd Link in the west. Jurong Island, Pulau Tekong, Pulau Ubin and Sentosa are the largest of Singapore's smaller islands. The highest natural point is Bukit Timah Hill at 163.63 m (537 ft).[195] Under British rule, Christmas Island and the Cocos Islands were part of Singapore, but both were transferred to Australia in 1957.[196][197][198] Pedra Branca is the nation's easternmost point.[199]
+
+Land reclamation projects had increased Singapore's land area from 580 km2 (220 sq mi) in the 1960s to 710 km2 (270 sq mi) by 2015, an increase of some 22% (130 km2).[200] The country is projected to reclaim another 766 km2 (300 sq mi) by 2030.[201] Some projects involve merging smaller islands through land reclamation to form larger, more functional islands, as has been done with Jurong Island.[202] The type of sand used in reclamation is found in rivers and beaches, rather than deserts, and is in great demand worldwide. In 2010 Singapore imported almost 15 million tons of sand for its projects, the demand being such that Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam have all restricted or barred the export of sand to Singapore in recent years. As a result, in 2016 Singapore switched to using polders for reclamation, in which an area is enclosed and then pumped dry.[203]
+
+Singapore's urbanisation means that it has lost 95% of its historical forests,[204] and now over half of the naturally occurring fauna and flora in Singapore is present in nature reserves, such as the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve and the Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve, which comprise only 0.25% of Singapore's land area.[204] In 1967, to combat this decline in natural space, the government introduced the vision of making Singapore a "garden city",[205] aiming to improve quality of life.[206] Since then, nearly 10% of Singapore's land has been set aside for parks and nature reserves.[207] The government has created plans to preserve the country's remaining wildlife.[208] Singapore's well known gardens include the Singapore Botanic Gardens, a 161-year-old tropical garden and Singapore's first UNESCO World Heritage Site.[209]
+
+Singapore has a tropical rainforest climate (Köppen: Af) with no distinctive seasons, uniform temperature and pressure, high humidity, and abundant rainfall.[210][211] Temperatures usually range from 23 to 32 °C (73 to 90 °F). While temperature does not vary greatly throughout the year, there is a wetter monsoon season from November to February.[212]
+
+From July to October, there is often haze caused by bush fires in neighbouring Indonesia, usually from the island of Sumatra.[213] Singapore follows the GMT+8 time zone, one hour ahead of the typical zone for its geographical location.[214] This causes the sun to rise and set particularly late during February, where the sun rises at 7:15 am and sets around 7:20 pm. During July, the sun sets at around 7:15 pm. The earliest the sun rises and sets is in late October and early November when the sun rises at 6:46 am and sets at 6:50 pm.[215]
+
+Singapore recognises that climate change and rising sea levels in the decades ahead will have major implications for its low-lying coastline. It estimates that the nation will need to spend $100 billion over the course of the next century to address the issue. In its 2020 budget, the government set aside an initial $5 billion towards a Coastline and Flood Protection Fund.[216][217] Singapore is the first country in Southeast Asia to levy a carbon tax on its largest carbon-emitting corporations producing more than 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year, at $5 per ton.[218]
+
+Singapore has a highly developed market economy, based historically on extended entrepôt trade. Along with Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan, Singapore is one of the Four Asian Tigers, but has surpassed its peers in terms of GDP per capita. Between 1965 and 1995, growth rates averaged around 6 per cent per annum, transforming the living standards of the population.[221] It has the 7th highest GDP per capita in the world.[222][223] The Singaporean economy is regarded as free,[224] innovative,[225] competitive,[226] dynamic[227] and business-friendly.[228] The 2015 Index of Economic Freedom ranks Singapore as the second freest economy in the world and the Ease of doing business index has ranked Singapore as the easiest place to do business for the past decade.[229] The currency of Singapore is the Singapore dollar (SGD or S$), issued by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).[230] It is interchangeable with the Brunei dollar at par value since 1967.[231] MAS manages its monetary policy by allowing the Singapore dollar exchange rate to rise or fall within an undisclosed trading band. This is different from most central banks, which use interest rates to manage policy.[232] The city is a popular location for conferences and events.[233]
+
+For several years, Singapore has been one of the few[234] countries with an AAA credit rating from the big three, and the only Asian country to achieve this rating.[235] Singapore attracts a large amount of foreign investment as a result of its location, skilled workforce, low tax rates, advanced infrastructure and zero-tolerance against corruption.[236] Singapore has the world's eleventh largest foreign reserves,[237] and one of the highest net international investment position per capita.[238][239] There are more than 7,000 multinational corporations from the United States, Japan, and Europe in Singapore. There are also approximately 1,500 companies from China and a similar number from India. Roughly 44 percent of the Singaporean workforce is made up of non-Singaporeans.[240] Despite market freedom, Singapore's government operations have a significant stake in the economy, contributing 22% of the GDP.[241]
+
+In recent years, the country has been identified as an increasingly popular tax haven[242] for the wealthy due to the low tax rate on personal income and tax exemptions on foreign-based income and capital gains. Australian millionaire retailer Brett Blundy and multi-billionaire Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin are two examples of wealthy individuals who have settled in Singapore (Blundy in 2013 and Saverin in 2012).[243] In 2009, Singapore was removed from the OCDE "liste grise" of tax havens,[244] but ranked fourth on the Tax Justice Network's 2015 Financial Secrecy Index of the world's off-shore financial service providers, banking one-eighth of the world's offshore capital, while "providing numerous tax avoidance and evasion opportunities".[245] In August 2016, The Straits Times reported that Indonesia had decided to create tax havens on two islands near Singapore to bring Indonesian capital back into the tax base.[246] In October 2016, the Monetary Authority of Singapore admonished and fined UBS and DBS and withdrew Falcon Private Bank's banking licence for their alleged role in the Malaysian Sovereign Fund scandal.[247][248]
+
+Singapore has the world's highest percentage of millionaires, with one out of every six households having at least one million US dollars in disposable wealth. This excludes property, businesses, and luxury goods, which if included would increase the number of millionaires, especially as property in Singapore is among the world's most expensive.[249] In 2016, Singapore was rated the world's most expensive city for the third consecutive year by the Economist Intelligence Unit,[250][251] and this remained true in 2018.[252] The government provides numerous assistance programmes to the homeless and needy through the Ministry of Social and Family Development, so acute poverty is rare. Some of the programmes include providing between S$400 and S$1000 of financial assistance per month to needy households, providing free medical care at government hospitals, and paying for children's tuition.[253][254][255] Other benefits include compensation for gym fees to encourage citizens to exercise,[256] up to S$166,000 as a baby bonus for each citizen,[257] heavily subsidised healthcare, financial aid for the disabled, the provision of reduced-cost laptops for poor students,[258] rebates for costs such as public transport[259] and utility bills, and more.[260][261] As of 2018 Singapore's ranking in the Human Development Index is 9th in the world, with a HDI value of 0.935.[262]
+
+Singapore has a low unemployment rate for a developed country, with the rate not exceeding 4% from 2005 to 2014, and reaching highs of 3.1% in 2005 and 3% during the 2009 global financial crisis; it fell to 1.8% in the first quarter of 2015.[272] Singapore does not have a minimum wage, believing that it would lower its competitiveness. It also has one of the highest income inequalities among developed countries.[273][274] Although recognising that foreign workers are crucial to the country's economy, the government has considered placing limits on inflows of these workers,[275] as foreign workers make up 80% of the construction industry and up to 50% of the service industry.[276][277]
+
+Singapore is the world's 3rd-largest foreign exchange centre, 3rd-largest financial centre,[279][280] 2nd-largest casino gambling market,[281] 3rd-largest oil-refining and trading centre, largest oil-rig producer and hub for ship repair services,[282][283][284] and largest logistics hub.[285] The economy is diversified, with its top contributors being financial services, manufacturing, and oil-refining. Its main exports are refined petroleum, integrated circuits, and computers,[286] which constituted 27% of the country's GDP in 2010. Other significant sectors include electronics, chemicals, mechanical engineering, and biomedical sciences. In 2019, there were more than 60 semiconductor companies in Singapore, which together constituted 11% of the global market share. The semiconductor industry alone contributes around 7% of Singapore's GDP.[287]
+
+Singapore's largest companies are in the telecommunications, banking, transportation, and manufacturing sectors, many of which started as state-run statutory corporations but have since been publicly listed on the Singapore Exchange. Such companies include Singapore Telecommunications (Singtel), Singapore Technologies Engineering, Keppel Corporation, Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC), Development Bank of Singapore (DBS), and United Overseas Bank (UOB). In 2011, amidst the global financial crisis, OCBC, DBS and UOB were ranked by Bloomberg Businessweek as the world's 1st, 5th, and 6th strongest banks in the world, respectively.[288]
+
+The nation's best known global companies include Singapore Airlines, Changi Airport, and the Port of Singapore, all of which are among the most-awarded in their respective fields. Singapore Airlines was ranked as Asia's most-admired company, and the world's 19th most-admired company in 2015 by Fortune’s annual "50 most admired companies in the world" industry surveys. Other awards it has received include the US-based Travel + Leisure’s Best International Airline award, which it has won for 20 consecutive years.[289][290] Changi Airport connects over 100 airlines to more than 300 cities. The strategic international air hub has more than 480 World's Best Airport awards as of 2015[update], and is known as the most-awarded airport in the world.[291] Over ten free-trade agreements have been signed with other countries and regions.[132] Singapore is the second-largest foreign investor in India.[292] It is the 14th largest exporter and the 15th largest importer in the world.[293][294]
+
+Tourism is a major industry and contributor to the Singaporean economy, attracting 18.5 million international tourists in 2018, more than three times Singapore's total population.[295] Singapore is the 5th most visited city in the world, and 2nd in the Asia-Pacific.[296] In 2019 tourism contributed directly to about 4% of Singapore's GDP,[297] down from 2016, when tourism contributed, directly and indirectly, to around 9.9% of Singapore's GDP.[298] Altogether, the sector generated approximately 8.6%  of Singapore's employment in 2016.[298]
+
+The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) is the statutory board under the Ministry of Trade and Industry which is tasked with the promotion of the country's tourism industry. In August 2017 the STB and the Economic Development Board (EDB) unveiled a unified brand, Singapore – Passion Made Possible, to market Singapore internationally for tourism and business purposes.[299] The Orchard Road district, which contains multi-storey shopping centres and hotels, can be considered the centre of shopping and tourism in Singapore.[300] Other popular tourist attractions include the Singapore Zoo, River Safari and Night Safari. The Singapore Zoo has embraced the open zoo concept whereby animals are kept in enclosures, separated from visitors by hidden dry or wet moats, instead of caging the animals, and the River Safari has 300 species of animals, including numerous endangered species.[301] Singapore promotes itself as a medical tourism hub, with about 200,000 foreigners seeking medical care there each year. Singapore medical services aim to serve at least one million foreign patients annually and generate US$3 billion in revenue.[302] In 2015, Lonely Planet and The New York Times listed Singapore as their top and 6th-best world destinations to visit, respectively.[303]
+
+Well-known landmarks include the Merlion,[304] Marina Bay Sands,[305] Gardens by the Bay,[306] the Jewel,[307] the Orchard Road shopping belt,[300] the resort island of Sentosa,[308] and the Singapore Botanic Gardens, Singapore's first UNESCO World Heritage Site.[309]
+
+Singapore has a road system covering 3,356 kilometres (2,085 mi), which includes 161 kilometres (100 mi) of expressways.[310][311] The Singapore Area Licensing Scheme, implemented in 1975, became the world's first congestion pricing scheme, and included other complementary measures such as stringent car ownership quotas and improvements in mass transit.[312][313] Upgraded in 1998 and renamed Electronic Road Pricing, the system introduced electronic toll collection, electronic detection, and video surveillance technology.[314] A Global Navigation Satellite System will replace the physical gantries by 2020.[315] As Singapore is a small island with a high population density, the number of private cars on the road is restricted to curb pollution and congestion. Car buyers must pay for duties one-and-a-half times the vehicle's market value, and bid for a Singaporean Certificate of Entitlement (COE), which allows the car to run on the road for a decade. Car prices are generally significantly higher in Singapore than in other English-speaking countries.[316] As with most Commonwealth countries, vehicles on the road and people walking on the streets keep to the left.[317]
+
+Common alternatives to private vehicles include bicycles, bus, taxis and train (MRT or LRT). Two companies run the train transport system—SBS Transit and SMRT Corporation. Four companies, Go-Ahead, Tower-Transit, SBS Transit and SMRT Corporation run the public buses under a 'Bus Contracting Model' where operators bid for routes. There are six taxi companies, who together put out over 28,000 taxis on the road.[318] Taxis are a popular form of public transport as the fares are relatively cheap compared to many other developed countries.[319]
+
+Singapore is a major international transport hub in Asia, serving some of the busiest sea and air trade routes. Changi Airport is an aviation centre for Southeast Asia and a stopover on the Kangaroo Route between Sydney and London.[320] There are three civilian airports in Singapore, Singapore Changi Airport, Seletar Airport[321][322] and Kallang Airport (which is not open to public). Singapore Changi Airport hosts a network of over 100 airlines connecting Singapore to some 300 cities in about 70 countries and territories worldwide.[323] It has been rated one of the best international airports by international travel magazines, including being rated as the world's best airport for the first time in 2006 by Skytrax.[324] The national airline is Singapore Airlines.[325] The Port of Singapore, managed by port operators PSA International and Jurong Port, was the world's second-busiest port in 2019 in terms of shipping tonnage handled, at 2.85 billion gross tons (GT), and in terms of containerised traffic, at 37.2 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs).[326] It is also the world's second-busiest, behind Shanghai, in terms of cargo tonnage with 626 million tons handled. In addition, the port is the world's busiest for transshipment traffic and the world's biggest ship refuelling centre.[327]
+
+Access to water is universal, affordable, efficient and of high quality. Singapore relies on four main water sources, or "four national taps" – water imported from neighbouring Malaysia, urban rainwater catchments, reclaimed water (NEWater) and seawater desalination.[328] Singapore's approach does not rely only on physical infrastructure, but it also emphasises proper legislation and enforcement, water pricing, public education as well as research and development.[329] Singapore has declared that it will be water self-sufficient by the time its 1961 long-term water supply agreement with Malaysia expires in 2061. However, according to official forecasts, water demand in Singapore is expected to double from 380 to 760 million US gallons (1.4 to 2.8 billion litres; 1.4 to 2.8 million cubic meters) per day between 2010 and 2060. The increase is expected to come primarily from non-domestic water use, which accounted for 55% of water demand in 2010 and is expected to account for 70% of demand in 2060. By that time, water demand is expected to be met by reclaimed water at the tune of 50% and by desalination accounting for 30%, compared to only 20% supplied by internal catchments.[330][331]
+
+As of mid-2018, the estimated population of Singapore was 5,638,700 people, 3,471,900 (61.6%) of whom were citizens, while the remaining 2,166,800 (38.4%) were permanent residents (522,300) or international students/foreign workers/dependants (1,644,500).[4] According to the country's most recent census in 2010, nearly 23% of Singaporean residents (i.e. citizens and permanent residents) were foreign born; if non-residents were counted, nearly 43% of the total population were foreign born.[332][333]
+
+The same census also reports that about 74.1% of residents were of Chinese descent, 13.4% of Malay descent, 9.2% of Indian descent, and 3.3% of other (including Eurasian) descent.[332] Prior to 2010, each person could register as a member of only one race, by default that of his or her father, therefore mixed-race persons were solely grouped under their father's race in government censuses. From 2010 onward, people may register using a multi-racial classification, in which they may choose one primary race and one secondary race, but no more than two.[334]
+
+91% of resident households (i.e. households headed by a Singapore citizen or permanent resident) own the homes they live in, and the average household size is 3.43 persons (which include dependants who are neither citizens nor permanent residents).[335][336] However, due to scarcity of land, 78.7% of resident households live in subsidised, high-rise, public housing apartments developed by the (Housing and Development Board). Also, 75.9% of resident households live in properties that are equal to, or larger than, a four-room (i.e. three bedrooms plus one living room) HDB flat or in private housing.[337][338] Live-in foreign domestic workers are quite common in Singapore, with about 224,500 foreign domestic workers there, as of December 2013.[339]
+
+The median age of Singaporean residents was 40.5 in 2017,[340] and the total fertility rate is estimated to be 0.80 children per woman in 2014, the lowest in the world and well below the 2.1 needed to replace the population.[341] In February 2015, National University of Singapore launched the “New Age Institute” in conjunction with Washington University in St. Louis to conduct research on this issue.[342] To overcome this problem, the Singapore government has been encouraging foreigners to immigrate to Singapore for the past few decades. The large number of immigrants has kept Singapore's population from declining.[343]
+
+
+
+Buddhism is the most widely practised religion in Singapore, with 33% of the resident population declaring themselves adherents at the most recent census. The next-most practised religion is Christianity, followed by Islam, Taoism, and Hinduism. 17% of the population did not have a religious affiliation. The proportion of Christians, Taoists, and non-religious people increased between 2000 and 2010 by about 3 percentage points each, whilst the proportion of Buddhists decreased. Other faiths remained largely stable in their share of the population.[344]
+
+There are monasteries and Dharma centres from all three major traditions of Buddhism in Singapore: Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana. Most Buddhists in Singapore are Chinese and are of the Mahayana tradition,[345] with missionaries having come into the country from China for several decades. However, Thailand's Theravada Buddhism has seen growing popularity among the populace (not only the Chinese) during the past decade. The religion of Soka Gakkai International, a Japanese Buddhist organisation, is practised by many people in Singapore, but mostly by those of Chinese descent. Tibetan Buddhism has also made slow inroads into the country in recent years.[346]
+
+Singapore has four official languages: English, Malay, Mandarin, and Tamil.[347]
+
+English is the lingua franca[350][351][352][353][354] and the main language used in business, government, law and education.[355][356] The Constitution of Singapore and all government legislations are written in English, and interpreters are required if a language other than English is used in the Singaporean courts.[357][358] Statutory corporations conduct their businesses in English, while any official documents written in a non-English official language such as Malay, Mandarin, or Tamil are typically translated into English to be accepted for use.[359][351][360]
+
+Malay was designated as a national language by the Singaporean government after independence from Britain in the 1960s to avoid friction with Singapore's Malay-speaking neighbours of Malaysia and Indonesia.[361] It has a symbolic, rather than functional purpose.[347][362][363] It is used in the national anthem ‘’Majulah Singapura’’,[364] in citations of Singaporean orders and decorations and in military commands.[365][348] Singaporean Malay is officially written in the Latin-based Rumi script, though some Singaporean Malays also learn the Arabic-based Jawi script.[366] Jawi is considered an ethnic script for use on Singaporean identity cards.[367]
+
+Singaporeans are mostly bilingual, typically with English as their common language and their mother-tongue as a second language taught in schools, in order to preserve each individual's ethnic identity and values. English is the most spoken language at home at 36.9% of the population, just ahead of Mandarin.[348][368] Nearly half a million speak other varieties of Chinese, mainly Hokkien, Teochew, and Cantonese, as their home language, although the use of these is declining in favour of Mandarin or just English.[369] Singapore Chinese characters are written using simplified Chinese characters.[370]
+Singaporean English is largely based on British English, owing to the country's status as a former crown colony.[371][372] However, forms of English spoken in Singapore range from Standard Singapore English to a colloquial form known as Singlish, which is discouraged by the government as it claims it to be a substandard English creole that handicaps Singaporeans, presenting an obstacle to learning standard English and rendering the speaker incomprehensible to everyone except to another Singlish speaker.[373]
+
+Education for primary, secondary, and tertiary levels is mostly supported by the state. All institutions, private and public, must be registered with the Ministry of Education.[374] English is the language of instruction in all public schools,[375] and all subjects are taught and examined in English except for the "mother tongue" language paper.[376] While the term "mother tongue" in general refers to the first language internationally, in Singapore's education system, it is used to refer to the second language, as English is the first language.[377][378] Students who have been abroad for a while, or who struggle with their "Mother Tongue" language, are allowed to take a simpler syllabus or drop the subject.[379][380]
+
+Education takes place in three stages: primary, secondary, and pre-university education. Only the primary level is compulsory. Students begin with six years of primary school, which is made up of a four-year foundation course and a two-year orientation stage. The curriculum is focused on the development of English, the mother tongue, mathematics, and science.[381][382] Secondary school lasts from four to five years, and is divided between Special, Express, Normal (Academic), and Normal (Technical) streams in each school, depending on a student's ability level.[383] The basic coursework breakdown is the same as in the primary level, although classes are much more specialised.[384] Pre-university education takes place over two to three years at senior schools, mostly called Junior Colleges.[385] As alternatives to Pre-U education, however, courses are offered in other post-secondary education institutions, including 5 polytechnics and the Institutes of Technical Education (ITEs). Singapore has six public universities[386] of which the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University are among the top 20 universities in the world.[387]
+
+National examinations are standardised across all schools, with a test taken after each stage. After the first six years of education, students take the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE),[381] which determines their placement at secondary school. At the end of the secondary stage, GCE O-Level or N-level exams are taken;[388] at the end of the following pre-university stage, the GCE A-Level exams are taken.[389] Some schools have a degree of freedom in their curriculum and are known as autonomous schools, for secondary education level and above.[383]
+
+Singapore is also an education hub, with more than 80,000 international students in 2006.[390] 5,000 Malaysian students cross the Johor–Singapore Causeway daily to attend schools in Singapore.[391] In 2009, 20% of all students in Singaporean universities were international students—the maximum cap allowed, a majority from ASEAN, China and India.[392]
+
+Singapore students have excelled in many of the world education benchmarks in maths, science and reading. In 2015, both its primary and secondary students rank first in OECD's global school performance rankings across 76 countries—described as the most comprehensive map of education standards.[393][394] In 2016, Singapore students topped both the Program International Student Assessment (PISA)[395][396][397][398] and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).[399][400][401] In the 2016 EF English Proficiency Index taken in 72 countries, Singapore place 6th and has been the only Asian country in the top ten.[402][403][404][405]
+
+Singapore has a generally efficient healthcare system, even though health expenditures are relatively low for developed countries.[406] The World Health Organisation ranks Singapore's healthcare system as 6th overall in the world in its World Health Report.[407] In general, Singapore has had the lowest infant mortality rates in the world for the past two decades.[408] In 2019, Singaporeans have the longest life expectancy of any country at 84.8 years. Females can expect to live an average of 87.6 years with 75.8 years in good health. The averages are lower for men.[409] Singapore is ranked 1st on the Global Food Security Index.[410]
+
+As of December 2011 and January 2013, 8,800 foreigners and 5,400 Singaporeans were respectively diagnosed with HIV,[411] but there are fewer than 10 annual deaths from HIV per 100,000 people. There is a high level of immunisation.[412] Adult obesity is below 10%.[413] The Economist Intelligence Unit, in its 2013 Where-to-be-born Index, ranked Singapore as having the best quality of life in Asia and sixth overall in the world.[414]
+
+The government's healthcare system is based upon the "3M" framework. This has three components: Medifund, which provides a safety net for those not able to otherwise afford healthcare, Medisave, a compulsory national medical savings account system covering about 85% of the population, and Medishield, a government-funded health insurance program. Public hospitals in Singapore have a considerable autonomy in their management decisions, and notionally compete for patients, however they remain in government ownership and government appoints their boards and Chief Executive Officers and management reports and is responsible to these boards.[415] A subsidy scheme exists for those on low income.[416] In 2008, 32% of healthcare was funded by the government. It accounts for approximately 3.5% of Singapore's GDP.[417]
+
+Despite its small size, Singapore has a diversity of languages, religions, and cultures.[418] Former Prime Ministers of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong, have stated that Singapore does not fit the traditional description of a nation, calling it a society-in-transition, pointing out the fact that Singaporeans do not all speak the same language, share the same religion, or have the same customs.[418][419] Each Singaporean's behaviours and attitudes are influenced by, among other things, his or her home language and his religion. Singaporeans who speak English as their native language tend to lean toward Western culture, while those who speak Chinese as their native language tend to lean toward Chinese culture and Confucianism. Malay-speaking Singaporeans tend to lean toward Malay culture, which itself is closely linked to Islamic culture.[420][421] Racial and religious harmony is regarded by Singaporeans as a crucial part of Singapore's success, and played a part in building a Singaporean identity.[422][423]
+
+When Singapore became independent from the United Kingdom in 1963, most Singaporean citizens were transient labourers who had no intention of staying permanently.[424] There was also a sizeable minority of middle-class, locally born people—known as Peranakans or Baba-Nyonya—descendants of 15th- and 16th-century Chinese immigrants. With the exception of the Peranakans who pledged their loyalties to Singapore, most of the labourers' loyalties lay with their respective homelands of Malaysia, China and India. After independence, the government began a deliberate process of crafting a Singaporean identity and culture.[424] Singapore has a reputation as a nanny state.[425][426] The government also places heavy emphasis on meritocracy, where one is judged based on one's ability.[427]
+
+The national flower of Singapore is the hybrid orchid, Vanda 'Miss Joaquim', named in memory of a Singapore-born Armenian woman, who crossbred the flower in her garden at Tanjong Pagar in 1893.[428] Many national symbols such as the Coat of arms of Singapore and the Lion head symbol of Singapore make use of the lion, as Singapore is known as the Lion City. Major religious festivals are public holidays.[429]
+
+During the 1990s when the National Arts Council was created to spearhead the development of performing arts, along with visual and literary art forms.[430] The National Gallery Singapore is the nation's flagship museum with some 8,000 works from Singaporean and other Southeast Asian artists. The Singapore Art Museum focuses on contemporary art. The Red Dot Design Museum celebrates exceptional art and design of objects for everyday life, hosting more than 1,000 items from 50 countries. The lotus-shaped ArtScience Museum hosts touring exhibitions that combine art with the sciences. Other major museums include the Asian Civilisations Museum, the Peranakan Museum, and The Arts House.[431] The Esplanade is Singapore's largest performing arts centre. In 2016 alone, it was the site of 5,900 free art and culture events.[432][433]
+
+Literature of Singapore, or "SingLit", comprises a collection of literary works by Singaporeans written chiefly in the country's four official languages: English, Malay, Mandarin, and Tamil. Singapore is increasingly regarded as having four sub-literatures instead of one. Many significant works have been translated and showcased in publications such as the literary journal Singa, published in the 1980s and 1990s with editors including Edwin Thumboo and Koh Buck Song, as well as in multilingual anthologies such as Rhythms: A Singaporean Millennial Anthology Of Poetry (2000), in which the poems were all translated three times each. A number of Singaporean writers such as Tan Swie Hian and Kuo Pao Kun have contributed work in more than one language.[434][435]
+
+Singapore has a diverse music culture that ranges from pop and rock, to folk and classical. Western classical music plays a significant role in the cultural life in Singapore, with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) instituted in 1979. Other notable western orchestras in Singapore include Singapore National Youth Orchestra which is funded by the Ministry of Education[436] and the community-based Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra.[437] Many orchestras and ensembles are also found in secondary schools and junior colleges. Various communities have their own distinct ethnic musical traditions: Chinese, Malays, Indians, and Eurasians. With their traditional forms of music and various modern musical styles, the fusion of different forms account for the musical diversity in the country.[438] The nation's lively urban musical scene has made it a centre for international performances and festivals in the region. Some of Singapore's best known pop singers includes Stefanie Sun, JJ Lin, Liang Wern Fook, Taufik Batisah and Dick Lee, who is famous for composing National Day theme songs, including Home.[439][440]
+
+Singapore's diversity of cuisine is touted as a reason to visit the country, due to its combination of convenience, variety, quality, and price.[441] Local food items generally relate to a particular ethnicity – Chinese, Malay and Indian; but the diversity of cuisine has increased further by the hybridisation of different styles (e.g., the Peranakan cuisine, a mix of Chinese and Malay cuisine). In hawker centres, cultural diffusion is exemplified by traditionally Malay hawker stalls also selling Tamil food. Chinese stalls may introduce Malay ingredients, cooking techniques, or entire dishes into their range of catering.[441] Hainanese chicken rice, based on the Hainanese dish Wenchang chicken, is considered Singapore's national dish.[442][443]
+
+The city-state has a burgeoning food scene ranging from hawker centres (open-air), food courts (air-conditioned), coffee shops (open-air with up to a dozen hawker stalls), cafes, fast food, simple kitchens, casual, celebrity and high-end restaurants.[444] Cloud kitchens and food delivery are also on the rise, with 70% of residents ordering from delivery apps at least once a month.[445][446] Many international celebrity chef restaurants are located within the integrated resorts.[447] Religious dietary strictures exist (Muslims do not eat pork and Hindus do not eat beef), and there is also a significant group of vegetarians. The Singapore Food Festival which celebrates Singapore's cuisine is held annually in July.[448]
+
+Prior to the 1980s, street food was sold mainly by immigrants from China, India, and Malaysia to other immigrants seeking a familiar taste. In Singapore, street food has long been associated with hawker centres with communal seating areas. Typically, these centres have a few dozen to hundreds of food stalls, with each specialising in one or more related dishes.[449][444] While street food can be found in many countries, the variety and reach of centralised hawker centres that serve heritage street food in Singapore is unique.[450] In 2018, there were 114 hawker centres spread across the city centre and heartland housing estates. They are maintained by the National Environment Agency, which also grade each food stall for hygiene. The largest hawker centre is located on the second floor of Chinatown Complex, and contains over 200 stalls.[450] The complex is also home to the cheapest Michelin-starred meal in the world – a plate of soya-sauce chicken rice or noodles for S$2 (US$1.50). Two street food stalls in the city are the first in the world to be awarded a Michelin star, obtaining a single star each.[451]
+
+The development of private sports and recreation clubs began in the 19th century colonial Singapore, with clubs founded during this time including the Cricket Club, the Singapore Recreation Club, the Singapore Swimming Club, and the Hollandse Club.[453]
+
+Water sports are some of the most popular in Singapore. At the 2016 Rio Olympics, Joseph Schooling won Singapore's first Olympic gold medal, claiming the 100-metre butterfly in a new Olympic record time of 50.39 seconds.[452] Singapore sailors have had success on the international stage, with their Optimist team being considered among the best in the world.[454][455] Despite its size, the country has dominated swim meets in the Southeast Asia Games. Its men's water polo team won the SEA Games gold medal for the 27th time in 2017, continuing Singapore sport's longest winning streak.[456] Singapore hosted the inaugural 2010 Summer Youth Olympics, in which 3,600 athletes from 204 nations competed in 26 sports.[457] The island is home to ONE Championship, the biggest Mixed Martial Arts promotion in Asia.[458] Singapore's women's table tennis team were silver medalists at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.[459][460] They became world champions in 2010 when they beat China at the World Team Table Tennis Championships in Russia, breaking China's 19-year winning streak.[461] Weightlifter Tan Howe Liang was Singapore's first Olympic medalist, winning a silver at the 1960 Rome Games.[462]
+
+Singapore's football league, the Singapore Premier League, was launched in 1996 as the S.League and comprises nine clubs, including two foreign teams.[463][464] The Singapore Slingers, formerly the Hunter Pirates in the Australian National Basketball League, is one of the inaugural teams in the ASEAN Basketball League, which was founded in October 2009.[465] Kranji Racecourse is run by the Singapore Turf Club and hosts several meetings per week, including international races—notably the Singapore Airlines International Cup.[466]
+
+Singapore began hosting a round of the Formula One World Championship, the Singapore Grand Prix at the Marina Bay Street Circuit in 2008. It was the inaugural F1 night race,[467] and the first F1 street race in Asia.[468] It is considered a signature event on the F1 calendar.[469]
+
+Companies linked to the government control much of the domestic media in Singapore.[470] MediaCorp operates most free-to-air television channels and free-to-air radio stations in Singapore. There are a total of seven free-to-air TV channels offered by Mediacorp.[471][472] Starhub Cable Vision (SCV) also offers cable television with channels from all around the world,[473] and Singtel's Mio TV provides an IPTV service.[474] Singapore Press Holdings, a body with close links to the government, controls most of the newspaper industry in Singapore.[475]
+
+Singapore's media industry has sometimes been criticised for being overly regulated and lacking in freedom by human rights groups such as Freedom House.[470] Self-censorship among journalists is said to be common.[475] In 2014, Singapore dipped to its lowest ranking ever (153rd of 180 nations) on the Press Freedom Index published by the French Reporters Without Borders.[476] The Media Development Authority regulates Singaporean media, claiming to balance the demand for choice and protection against offensive and harmful material.[477] Private ownership of TV satellite dishes is banned.[475]
+
+Internet in Singapore is provided by state owned Singtel, partially state owned Starhub and M1 Limited as well as some other business internet service providers (ISPs) that offer residential service plans of speeds up to 2 Gbit/s as of spring 2015.[478] Equinix (332 participants) and also its smaller brother Singapore Internet Exchange (70 participants) are Internet exchange points where Internet service providers and Content delivery networks exchange Internet traffic between their networks (autonomous systems) in various locations in Singapore.[479][480] In the mid-1980s to 1990s, Singaporeans could also use the locally based videotext service Singapore Teleview to communicate with one another.[481] The phrase Intelligent Island arose in the 1990s in reference to the island nation's early adaptive relationship with the internet.[481][482]
+
+In 2016, there were an estimated 4.7 million internet users in Singapore, representing 82.5% of the population.[483] The Singapore government does not engage in widespread censoring of the internet,[484] but it maintains a list of one hundred websites—mostly pornographic—that it blocks as a "symbolic statement of the Singaporean community's stand on harmful and undesirable content on the Internet".[485] As the block covers only home internet access, users may still visit the blocked websites from their office computers.[486] Singapore has the world's highest smartphone penetration rates, in surveys by Deloitte[487][488] and Google Consumer Barometer – at 89% and 85% of the population respectively in 2014.[489] Overall mobile phone penetration rate is at 148 mobile phone subscribers per 100 people.[490]
+
+Lat. and Long. 1°22′N 103°48′E / 1.367°N 103.800°E / 1.367; 103.800
+
+Click on a coloured area to see an article about English in that country or region

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+Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting of another, usually a child, from that person's biological or legal parent or parents. Legal adoptions permanently transfer all rights and responsibilities, along with filiation, from the biological parent or parents.
+
+In many jurisdictions, the adopted person's full original birth certificate is cancelled and replaced with a fabricated post-adoption birth certificate that states that the child was born to the adoptive parents. This deception, when carried out, may continue with the adopted person for life and can be the cause for many well-documented traumas experienced by the adopted person, including loss of identity, family history, culture, biological family (including not only biological parents but also siblings and extended family), family medical history and records, and increased risk of suicide, homelessness, incarceration, PTSD, depression, and anxiety.
+
+Unlike guardianship or other systems designed for the care of the young, adoption is intended to effect a permanent change in status and as such requires societal recognition, either through legal or religious sanction. Historically, some societies have enacted specific laws governing adoption, while others used less formal means (notably contracts that specified inheritance rights and parental responsibilities without an accompanying transfer of filiation). Modern systems of adoption, arising in the 20th century, tend to be governed by comprehensive statutes and regulations.
+
+While the modern form of adoption emerged in the United States, forms of the practice appeared throughout history.[1] The Code of Hammurabi, for example, details the rights of adopters and the responsibilities of adopted individuals at length. The practice of adoption in ancient Rome is well-documented in the Codex Justinianus.[2][3]
+
+Markedly different from the modern period, ancient adoption practices put emphasis on the political and economic interests of the adopter,[4] providing a legal tool that strengthened political ties between wealthy families and created male heirs to manage estates.[5][6] The use of adoption by the aristocracy is well-documented: many of Rome's emperors were adopted sons.[6] Adrogation was a kind of Roman adoption in which the person adopted consented to be adopted by another.
+
+Infant adoption during Antiquity appears rare.[4][7] Abandoned children were often picked up for slavery[8] and composed a significant percentage of the Empire's slave supply.[9][10] Roman legal records indicate that foundlings were occasionally taken in by families and raised as a son or daughter. Although not normally adopted under Roman Law, the children, called alumni, were reared in an arrangement similar to guardianship, being considered the property of the father who abandoned them.[11]
+
+Other ancient civilizations, notably India and China, used some form of adoption as well. Evidence suggests the goal of this practice was to ensure the continuity of cultural and religious practices; in contrast to the Western idea of extending family lines. In ancient India, secondary sonship, clearly denounced by the Rigveda,[12] continued, in a limited and highly ritualistic form, so that an adopter might have the necessary funerary rites performed by a son.[13] China had a similar idea of adoption with males adopted solely to perform the duties of ancestor worship.[14]
+
+The practice of adopting the children of family members and close friends was common among the cultures of Polynesia including Hawaii where the custom was referred to as hānai.
+
+The nobility of the Germanic, Celtic, and Slavic cultures that dominated Europe after the decline of the Roman Empire denounced the practice of adoption.[15] In medieval society, bloodlines were paramount; a ruling dynasty lacking a "natural-born" heir apparent was replaced, a stark contrast to Roman traditions. The evolution of European law reflects this aversion to adoption. English common law, for instance, did not permit adoption since it contradicted the customary rules of inheritance. In the same vein, France's Napoleonic Code made adoption difficult, requiring adopters to be over the age of 50, sterile, older than the adopted person by at least 15 years, and to have fostered the adoptee for at least six years.[16] Some adoptions continued to occur, however, but became informal, based on ad hoc contracts. For example, in the year 737, in a charter from the town of Lucca, three adoptees were made heirs to an estate. Like other contemporary arrangements, the agreement stressed the responsibility of the adopted rather than adopter, focusing on the fact that, under the contract, the adoptive father was meant to be cared for in his old age; an idea that is similar to the conceptions of adoption under Roman law.[17]
+
+Europe's cultural makeover marked a period of significant innovation for adoption. Without support from the nobility, the practice gradually shifted toward abandoned children. Abandonment levels rose with the fall of the empire and many of the foundlings were left on the doorstep of the Church.[18] Initially, the clergy reacted by drafting rules to govern the exposing, selling, and rearing of abandoned children. The Church's innovation, however, was the practice of oblation, whereby children were dedicated to lay life within monastic institutions and reared within a monastery. This created the first system in European history in which abandoned children did not have legal, social, or moral disadvantages. As a result, many of Europe's abandoned and orphaned children became alumni of the Church, which in turn took the role of adopter. Oblation marks the beginning of a shift toward institutionalization, eventually bringing about the establishment of the foundling hospital and orphanage.[18]
+
+As the idea of institutional care gained acceptance, formal rules appeared about how to place children into families: boys could become apprenticed to an artisan and girls might be married off under the institution's authority.[19] Institutions informally adopted out children as well, a mechanism treated as a way to obtain cheap labor, demonstrated by the fact that when the adopted died their bodies were returned by the family to the institution for burial.[20]
+
+This system of apprenticeship and informal adoption extended into the 19th century, today seen as a transitional phase for adoption history. Under the direction of social welfare activists, orphan asylums began to promote adoptions based on sentiment rather than work; children were placed out under agreements to provide care for them as family members instead of under contracts for apprenticeship.[21] The growth of this model is believed to have contributed to the enactment of the first modern adoption law in 1851 by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, unique in that it codified the ideal of the "best interests of the child."[22][23] Despite its intent, though, in practice, the system operated much the same as earlier incarnations. The experience of the Boston Female Asylum (BFA) is a good example, which had up to 30% of its charges adopted out by 1888.[24] Officials of the BFA noted that, although the asylum promoted otherwise, adoptive parents did not distinguish between indenture and adoption: "We believe," the asylum officials said, "that often, when children of a younger age are taken to be adopted, the adoption is only another name for service."[25]
+
+The next stage of adoption's evolution fell to the emerging nation of the United States. Rapid immigration and the American Civil War resulted in unprecedented overcrowding of orphanages and foundling homes in the mid-nineteenth century. Charles Loring Brace, a Protestant minister, became appalled by the legions of homeless waifs roaming the streets of New York City. Brace considered the abandoned youth, particularly Catholics, to be the most dangerous element challenging the city's order.[26][27]
+
+His solution was outlined in The Best Method of Disposing of Our Pauper and Vagrant Children (1859), which started the Orphan Train movement. The orphan trains eventually shipped an estimated 200,000 children from the urban centers of the East to the nation's rural regions.[28] The children were generally indentured, rather than adopted, to families who took them in.[29] As in times past, some children were raised as members of the family while others were used as farm laborers and household servants.[30]The sheer size of the displacement—the largest migration of children in history—and the degree of exploitation that occurred, gave rise to new agencies and a series of laws that promoted adoption arrangements rather than indenture. The hallmark of the period is Minnesota's adoption law of 1917, which mandated investigation of all placements and limited record access to those involved in the adoption.[31][32]
+
+During the same period, the Progressive movement swept the United States with a critical goal of ending the prevailing orphanage system. The culmination of such efforts came with the First White House Conference on the Care of Dependent Children called by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1909,[33] where it was declared that the nuclear family represented "the highest and finest product of civilization" and was best able to serve as primary caretaker for the abandoned and orphaned.[34][35] Anti-institutional forces gathered momentum. As late as 1923, only two percent of children without parental care were in adoptive homes, with the balance in foster arrangements and orphanages. Less than forty years later, nearly one-third were in adoptive homes.[36]
+
+Nevertheless, the popularity of eugenic ideas in America put up obstacles to the growth of adoption.[37][38] There were grave concerns about the genetic quality of illegitimate and indigent children, perhaps best exemplified by the influential writings of Henry H. Goddard, who protested against adopting children of unknown origin, saying,
+
+Now it happens that some people are interested in the welfare and high development of the human race; but leaving aside those exceptional people, all fathers and mothers are interested in the welfare of their own families. The dearest thing to the parental heart is to have the children marry well and rear a noble family. How short-sighted it is then for such a family to take into its midst a child whose pedigree is absolutely unknown; or, where, if it were partially known, the probabilities are strong that it would show poor and diseased stock, and that if a marriage should take place between that individual and any member of the family the offspring would be degenerates.[39]
+
+The period 1945 to 1974, the baby scoop era, saw rapid growth and acceptance of adoption as a means to build a family.[40] Illegitimate births rose three-fold after World War II, as sexual mores changed. Simultaneously, the scientific community began to stress the dominance of nurture over genetics, chipping away at eugenic stigmas.[41][42] In this environment, adoption became the obvious solution for both unwed people and infertile couples.[43]
+
+Taken together, these trends resulted in a new American model for adoption. Following its Roman predecessor, Americans severed the rights of the original parents while making adopters the new parents in the eyes of the law. Two innovations were added: 1) adoption was meant to ensure the "best interests of the child," the seeds of this idea can be traced to the first American adoption law in Massachusetts,[16][23] and 2) adoption became infused with secrecy, eventually resulting in the sealing of adoption and original birth records by 1945. The origin of the move toward secrecy began with Charles Loring Brace, who introduced it to prevent children from the Orphan Trains from returning to or being reclaimed by their parents. Brace feared the impact of the parents' poverty, in general, and Catholic religion, in particular, on the youth. This tradition of secrecy was carried on by the later Progressive reformers when drafting of American laws.[44]
+
+The number of adoptions in the United States peaked in 1970.[45] It is uncertain what caused the subsequent decline. Likely contributing factors in the 1960s and 1970s include a decline in the fertility rate, associated with the introduction of the pill, the completion of legalization of artificial birth control methods, the introduction of federal funding to make family planning services available to the young and low-income, and the legalization of abortion. In addition, the years of the late 1960s and early 1970s saw a dramatic change in society's view of illegitimacy and in the legal rights[46] of those born outside of wedlock. In response, family preservation efforts grew[47] so that few children born out of wedlock today are adopted. Ironically, adoption is far more visible and discussed in society today, yet it is less common.[48]
+
+The American model of adoption eventually proliferated globally. England and Wales established their first formal adoption law in 1926. The Netherlands passed its law in 1956. Sweden made adoptees full members of the family in 1959. West Germany enacted its first laws in 1977.[49] Additionally, the Asian powers opened their orphanage systems to adoption, influenced as they were by Western ideas following colonial rule and military occupation.[50] In France, local public institutions accredit candidates for adoption, who can then contact orphanages abroad or ask for the support of NGOs. The system does not involve fees, but gives considerable power to social workers whose decisions may restrict adoption to "standard" families (middle-age, medium to high income, heterosexual, Caucasian).[51]
+
+Adoption is today practiced globally. The table below provides a snapshot of Western adoption rates. Adoption in the United States still occurs at rates nearly three times those of its peers even though the number of children awaiting adoption has held steady in recent years, between 100,000 and 125,000 during the period 2009 to 2018.[52]
+
+Contemporary adoption practices can be open or closed.
+
+Adoptions can occur either between related family members or between unrelated individuals. Historically, most adoptions occurred within a family. The most recent data from the U.S. indicates about half of adoptions are currently between related individuals.[78] A common example of this is a "step-parent adoption", where the new partner of a parent legally adopts a child from the parent's previous relationship. Intra-family adoption can also occur through surrender, as a result of parental death, or when the child cannot otherwise be cared for and a family member agrees to take over.
+
+Infertility is the main reason parents seek to adopt children they are not related to. One study shows this accounted for 80% of unrelated infant adoptions and half of adoptions through foster care.[79] Estimates suggest that 11–24% of Americans who cannot conceive or carry to term attempt to build a family through adoption, and that the overall rate of ever-married American women who adopt is about 1.4%.[80][81] Other reasons people adopt are numerous although not well documented. These may include wanting to cement a new family following divorce or death of one parent, compassion motivated by religious or philosophical conviction, to avoid contributing to overpopulation out of the belief that it is more responsible to care for otherwise parent-less children than to reproduce, to ensure that inheritable diseases (e.g., Tay–Sachs disease) are not passed on, and health concerns relating to pregnancy and childbirth. Although there are a range of reasons, the most recent study of experiences of women who adopt suggests they are most likely to be 40–44 years of age, to be currently married, to have impaired fertility, and to be childless.[82]
+
+Unrelated adoptions may occur through the following mechanisms:
+
+Although adoption is often described as forming a "forever" family, the relationship can be ended at any time. The legal termination of an adoption is called disruption. In U.S. terminology, adoptions are disrupted if they are ended before being finalized, and they are dissolved if the relationship is ended afterwards. It may also be called a failed adoption. After legal finalization, the disruption process is usually initiated by adoptive parents via a court petition and is analogous to divorce proceedings. It is a legal avenue unique to adoptive parents as disruption/dissolution does not apply to biological kin, although biological family members are sometimes disowned or abandoned.[91]
+
+Ad hoc studies performed in the U.S., however, suggest that between 10 and 25 percent of adoptions through the child welfare system (e.g., excluding babies adopted from other countries or step-parents adopting their stepchildren) disrupt before they are legally finalized and from 1 to 10 percent are dissolved after legal finalization. The wide range of values reflects the paucity of information on the subject and demographic factors such as age; it is known that teenagers are more prone to having their adoptions disrupted than young children.[91]
+
+Joint adoption by same-sex couples is legal in 26 countries, and additionally in various sub-national territories. LGBT adoption may also be in the form of step-child adoption, wherein one partner in a same-sex couple adopts the biological child of the other partner.
+
+The biological relationship between a parent and child is important, and the separation of the two has led to concerns about adoption. The traditional view of adoptive parenting received empirical support from a Princeton University study of 6,000 adoptive, step, and foster families in the United States and South Africa from 1968 to 1985; the study indicated that food expenditures in households with mothers of non-biological children (when controlled for income, household size, hours worked, age, etc.) were significantly less for adoptees, step-children, and foster children, causing the researchers to speculate that people are less interested in sustaining the genetic lines of others.[92] This theory is supported in another more qualitative study wherein adoptive relationships marked by sameness in likes, personality, and appearance, were associated with both adult adoptees and adoptive parents report being happier with the adoption.[93]
+
+Other studies provide evidence that adoptive relationships can form along other lines. A study evaluating the level of parental investment indicates strength in adoptive families, suggesting that parents who adopt invest more time in their children than other parents, and concludes "...adoptive parents enrich their children's lives to compensate for the lack of biological ties and the extra challenges of adoption."[94] Another recent study found that adoptive families invested more heavily in their adopted children, for example, by providing further education and financial support. Noting that adoptees seemed to be more likely to experience problems such as drug addiction, the study speculated that adoptive parents might invest more in adoptees not because they favor them, but because they are more likely than genetic children to need the help.[95]
+
+Psychologists' findings regarding the importance of early mother-infant bonding created some concern about whether parents who adopt older infants or toddlers after birth have missed some crucial period for the child's development. However, research on The Mental and Social Life of Babies suggested that the "parent-infant system," rather than a bond between biologically related individuals, is an evolved fit between innate behavior patterns of all human infants and equally evolved responses of human adults to those infant behaviors. Thus nature "ensures some initial flexibility with respect to the particular adults who take on the parental role."[96]
+
+Beyond the foundational issues, the unique questions posed for adoptive parents are varied. They include how to respond to stereotypes, answering questions about heritage, and how best to maintain connections with biological kin when in an open adoption.[97] One author suggests a common question adoptive parents have is: "Will we love the child even though he/she is not our biological child?"[98] A specific concern for many parents is accommodating an adoptee in the classroom.[99] Familiar lessons like "draw your family tree" or "trace your eye color back through your parents and grandparents to see where your genes come from" could be hurtful to children who were adopted and do not know this biological information. Numerous suggestions have been made to substitute new lessons, e.g., focusing on "family orchards."[100]
+
+Adopting older children presents other parenting issues.[101] Some children from foster care have histories of maltreatment, such as physical and psychological neglect, physical abuse, and sexual abuse, and are at risk of developing psychiatric problems.[102][103] Such children are at risk of developing a disorganized attachment.[104][105][106] Studies by Cicchetti et al. (1990, 1995) found that 80% of abused and maltreated infants in their sample exhibited disorganized attachment styles.[107][108] Disorganized attachment is associated with a number of developmental problems, including dissociative symptoms,[109] as well as depressive, anxious, and acting-out symptoms.[110][111] "Attachment is an active process—it can be secure or insecure, maladaptive or productive."[112] In the U.K., some adoptions fail because the adoptive parents do not get sufficient support to deal with difficult, traumatized children. This is a false economy as local authority care for these children is extremely expensive.[113]
+
+Concerning developmental milestones, studies from the Colorado Adoption Project examined genetic influences on adoptee maturation, concluding that cognitive abilities of adoptees reflect those of their adoptive parents in early childhood but show little similarity by adolescence, resembling instead those of their biological parents and to the same extent as peers in non-adoptive families.[114]
+
+Similar mechanisms appear to be at work in the physical development of adoptees. Danish and American researchers conducting studies on the genetic contribution to body mass index found correlations between an adoptee's weight class and his biological parents' BMI while finding no relationship with the adoptive family environment. Moreover, about one-half of inter-individual differences were due to individual non-shared influences.[115][116]
+
+These differences in development appear to play out in the way young adoptees deal with major life events. In the case of parental divorce, adoptees have been found to respond differently from children who have not been adopted. While the general population experienced more behavioral problems, substance use, lower school achievement, and impaired social competence after parental divorce, the adoptee population appeared to be unaffected in terms of their outside relationships, specifically in their school or social abilities.[117]
+
+Several factors affect the decision to release or raise the child. White adolescents tend to give up their babies to non-relatives, whereas black adolescents are more likely to receive support from their own community in raising the child and also in the form of informal adoption by relatives.[118] Studies by Leynes and by Festinger and Young, Berkman, and Rehr found that, for pregnant adolescents, the decision to release the child for adoption depended on the attitude toward adoption held by the adolescent's mother.[119] Another study found that pregnant adolescents whose mothers had a higher level of education were more likely to release their babies for adoption. Research suggests that women who choose to release their babies for adoption are more likely to be younger, enrolled in school, and have lived in a two-parent household at age 10, than those who kept and raised their babies.[120]
+
+There is limited research on the consequences of adoption for the original parents, and the findings have been mixed. One study found that those who released their babies for adoption were less comfortable with their decision than those who kept their babies. However, levels of comfort over both groups were high, and those who released their child were similar to those who kept their child in ratings of life satisfaction, relationship satisfaction, and positive future outlook for schooling, employment, finances, and marriage.[121] Subsequent research found that adolescent mothers who chose to release their babies for adoption were more likely to experience feelings of sorrow and regret over their decision than those who kept their babies. However, these feelings decreased significantly from one year after birth to the end of the second year.[122]
+
+More recent research found that in a sample of mothers who had released their children for adoption four to 12 years prior, every participant had frequent thoughts of their lost child. For most, thoughts were both negative and positive in that they produced both feelings of sadness and joy. Those who experienced the greatest portion of positive thoughts were those who had open, rather than closed or time-limited mediated, adoptions.[123]
+
+In another study that compared mothers who released their children to those who raised them, mothers who released their children were more likely to delay their next pregnancy, to delay marriage, and to complete job training. However, both groups reached lower levels of education than their peers who were never pregnant.[124] Another study found similar consequences for choosing to release a child for adoption. Adolescent mothers who released their children were more likely to reach a higher level of education and to be employed than those who kept their children. They also waited longer before having their next child.[122] Most of the research that exists on adoption effects on the birth parents was conducted with samples of adolescents, or with women who were adolescents when carrying their babies—little data exists for birth parents from other populations. Furthermore, there is a lack of longitudinal data that may elucidate long-term social and psychological consequences for birth parents who choose to place their children for adoption.
+
+Previous research on adoption has led to assumptions that indicate that there is a heightened risk in terms of psychological development and social relationships for adoptees. Yet, such assumptions have been clarified as flawed due to methodological failures. But more recent studies have been supportive in indicating more accurate information and results about the similarities, differences and overall lifestyles of adoptees.[125]
+
+Evidence about the development of adoptees can be supported in newer studies. It can be said that adoptees, in some respect, tend to develop differently from the general population. This can be seen in many aspects of life, but usually can be found as a greater risk around the time of adolescence. For example, it has been found that many adoptees experience difficulty in establishing a sense of identity.[126]
+
+There are many ways in which the concept of identity can be defined. It is true in all cases that identity construction is an ongoing process of development, change and maintenance of identifying with the self. Research has shown that adolescence is a time of identity progression rather than regression.[127] One's identity tends to lack stability in the beginning years of life but gains a more stable sense in later periods of childhood and adolescence. Typically associated with a time of experimentation, there are endless factors that go into the construction of one's identity. As well as being many factors, there are many types of identities one can associate with. Some categories of identity include gender, sexuality, class, racial and religious, etc. For transracial and international adoptees, tension is generally found in the categories of racial, ethnic and national identification. Because of this, the strength and functionality of family relationships play a huge role in its development and outcome of identity construction. Transracial and transnational adoptees tend to develop feelings of a lack of acceptance because of such racial, ethnic, and cultural differences. Therefore, exposing transracial and transnational adoptees to their "cultures of origin" is important in order to better develop a sense of identity and appreciation for cultural diversity.[128] Identity construction and reconstruction for transnational adoptees the instant they are adopted. For example, based upon specific laws and regulations of the United States, the Child Citizen Act of 2000 makes sure to grant immediate U.S. citizenship to adoptees.[128]
+
+Identity is defined both by what one is and what one is not. Adoptees born into one family lose an identity and then borrow one from the adopting family.
+The formation of identity is a complicated process and there are many factors that affect its outcome. From a perspective of looking at issues in adoption circumstances, the people involved and affected by adoption (the biological parent, the adoptive parent and the adoptee) can be known as the "triad members and state".
+Adoption may threaten triad members' sense of identity. Triad members often express feelings related to confused identity and identity crises because of differences between the triad relationships.
+Adoption, for some, precludes a complete or integrated sense of self. Triad members may experience themselves as incomplete, deficient, or unfinished. They state that they lack feelings of well-being, integration, or solidity associated with a fully developed identity.[129]
+
+Family plays a vital role in identity formation. This is not only true in childhood but also in adolescence. Identity (gender/sexual/ethnic/religious/family) is still forming during adolescence and family holds a vital key to this.
+The research seems to be unanimous; a stable, secure, loving, honest and supportive family in which all members feel safe to explore their identity is necessary for the formation of a sound identity. Transracial and International adoptions are some factors that play a significant role in the identity construction of adoptees. Many tensions arise from relationships built between the adoptee(s) and their family. These include being "different" from the parent(s), developing a positive racial identity, and dealing with racial/ethnic discrimination.[130] It has been found that multicultural and transnational youth tend to identify with their parents origin of culture and ethnicity rather than their residing location, yet it is sometimes hard to balance an identity between the two because school environments tend to lack diversity and acknowledgment regarding such topics.[131] These tensions also tend to create questions for the adoptee, as well as the family, to contemplate. Some common questions include what will happen if the family is more naïve to the ways of socially constructed life? Will tensions arise if this is the case? What if the very people that are supposed to be modeling a sound identity are in fact riddled with insecurities? Ginni Snodgrass answers these questions in the following way.
+The secrecy in an adoptive family and the denial that the adoptive family is different builds dysfunction into it. "... social workers and insecure adoptive parents have structured a family relationship that is based on dishonesty, evasions and exploitation. To believe that good relationships will develop on such a foundation is psychologically unsound" (Lawrence). Secrecy erects barriers to forming a healthy identity.[132]
+
+The research says that the dysfunction, untruths and evasiveness that can be present in adoptive families not only makes identity formation impossible, but also directly works against it. What effect on identity formation is present if the adoptee knows they are adopted but has no information about their biological parents? Silverstein and Kaplan's research states that adoptees lacking medical, genetic, religious, and historical information are plagued by questions such as "Who am I?" "Why was I born?" "What is my purpose?" This lack of identity may lead adoptees, particularly in adolescent years, to seek out ways to belong in a more extreme fashion than many of their non-adopted peers. Adolescent adoptees are overrepresented among those who join sub-cultures, run away, become pregnant, or totally reject their families.[133][134]
+
+Concerning developmental milestones, studies from the Colorado Adoption Project examined genetic influences on adoptee maturation, concluding that cognitive abilities of adoptees reflect those of their adoptive parents in early childhood but show little similarity by adolescence, resembling instead those of their biological parents and to the same extent as peers in non-adoptive families.[114]
+
+Similar mechanisms appear to be at work in the physical development of adoptees. Danish and American researchers conducting studies on the genetic contribution to body mass index found correlations between an adoptee's weight class and his biological parents' BMI while finding no relationship with the adoptive family environment. Moreover, about one-half of inter-individual differences were due to individual non-shared influences.[115][116]
+
+These differences in development appear to play out in the way young adoptees deal with major life events. In the case of parental divorce, adoptees have been found to respond differently from children who have not been adopted. While the general population experienced more behavioral problems, substance use, lower school achievement, and impaired social competence after parental divorce, the adoptee population appeared to be unaffected in terms of their outside relationships, specifically in their school or social abilities.[117]
+
+The adoptee population does, however, seem to be more at risk for certain behavioral issues. Researchers from the University of Minnesota studied adolescents who had been adopted and found that adoptees were twice as likely as non-adopted people to suffer from oppositional defiant disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (with an 8% rate in the general population).[135] Suicide risks were also significantly greater than the general population. Swedish researchers found both international and domestic adoptees undertook suicide at much higher rates than non-adopted peers; with international adoptees and female international adoptees, in particular, at highest risk.[136]
+
+Nevertheless, work on adult adoptees has found that the additional risks faced by adoptees are largely confined to adolescence. Young adult adoptees were shown to be alike with adults from biological families and scored better than adults raised in alternative family types including single parent and step-families.[137] Moreover, while adult adoptees showed more variability than their non-adopted peers on a range of psychosocial measures, adult adoptees exhibited more similarities than differences with adults who had not been adopted.[138] There have been many cases of remediation or the reversibility of early trauma. For example, in one of the earliest studies conducted, Professor Goldfarb in England concluded that some children adjust well socially and emotionally despite their negative experiences of institutional deprivation in early childhood.[139] Other researchers also found that prolonged institutionalization does not necessarily lead to emotional problems or character defects in all children. This suggests that there will always be some children who fare well, who are resilient, regardless of their experiences in early childhood.[140] Furthermore, much of the research on psychological outcomes for adoptees draws from clinical populations. This suggests that conclusions such that adoptees are more likely to have behavioral problems such as ODD and ADHD may be biased. Since the proportion of adoptees that seek mental health treatment is small, psychological outcomes for adoptees compared to those for the general population are more similar than some researchers propose.[141]
+
+In Western culture, many see that the common image of a family being that of a heterosexual couple with biological children. This idea places alternative family forms outside the norm. As a consequence, research indicates, disparaging views of adoptive families exist, along with doubts concerning the strength of their family bonds.[142][143]
+
+The most recent adoption attitudes survey completed by the Evan Donaldson Institute provides further evidence of this stigma. Nearly one-third of the surveyed population believed adoptees are less-well adjusted, more prone to medical issues, and predisposed to drug and alcohol problems. Additionally, 40–45% thought adoptees were more likely to have behavior problems and trouble at school. In contrast, the same study indicated adoptive parents were viewed favorably, with nearly 90% describing them as "lucky, advantaged, and unselfish."[144]
+
+The majority of people state that their primary source of information about adoption comes from friends and family and the news media. Nevertheless, most people report the media provides them a favorable view of adoption; 72% indicated receiving positive impressions.[145] There is, however, still substantial criticism of the media's adoption coverage. Some adoption blogs, for example, criticized Meet the Robinsons for using outdated orphanage imagery[146][147] as did advocacy non-profit The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute.[148]
+
+The stigmas associated with adoption are amplified for children in foster care.[149] Negative perceptions result in the belief that such children are so troubled it would be impossible to adopt them and create "normal" families.[150] A 2004 report from the Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care has shown that the number of children waiting in foster care doubled since the 1980s and now remains steady at about a half-million a year."[151]
+
+Attitude toward Adoption Questionnaire (ATAQ)[152]:this questionnaire was first developed by Abdollahzadeh, Chaloyi and Mahmoudi(2019). [153] Preliminary Edition: This questionnaire has 23 items based on the Likert scale of 1 (totally Disagree), up to 5 (Totally Agree) being obtained after refining the items designed to construct the present tool and per-study study. The analysis of item and initial psychometric analyses indicate that there are two factors in it. Items 3-10-11-12-14-15-16-17-19-20-21 are reversed and the rest are graded positively. The results of exploratory factor analysis by main components with varimax rotation indicated two components of attitude toward adoption being named respectively cognitive as the aspects of attitude toward adoption and behavioral-emotional aspects of attitude toward adoption. These two components explained 43.25% of the variance of the total sample. Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used to measure the reliability of the questionnaire. Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.709 for the whole questionnaire, 0.71 for the first component, and 0.713 for the second one. In addition, there was a significant positive relationship between desired social tendencies and the cognitive aspect of attitude toward adoption as well as the behavioral -emotional aspects of attitude toward adoption (P ≤ 0.01).
+
+Adoption practices have changed significantly over the course of the 20th century, with each new movement labeled, in some way, as reform.[154] Beginning in the 1970s, efforts to improve adoption became associated with opening records and encouraging family preservation. These ideas arose from suggestions that the secrecy inherent in modern adoption may influence the process of forming an identity,[155][156] create confusion regarding genealogy,[157] and provide little in the way of medical history.
+
+Family preservation: As concerns over illegitimacy began to decline in the early 1970s, social-welfare agencies began to emphasize that, if possible, mothers and children should be kept together.[158] In the U.S., this was clearly illustrated by the shift in policy of the New York Foundling Home, an adoption-institution that is among the country's oldest and one that had pioneered sealed records. It established three new principles including "to prevent placements of children...," reflecting the belief that children would be better served by staying with their biological families, a striking shift in policy that remains in force today.[159]
+
+Open records: Movements to unseal adoption records for adopted citizens proliferated along with increased acceptance of illegitimacy. In the United States, Jean Paton founded Orphan Voyage in 1954, and Florence Fisher founded the Adoptees' Liberty Movement Association (ALMA) in 1971, calling sealed records "an affront to human dignity.".[160] While in 1975, Emma May Vilardi created the first mutual-consent registry, the International Soundex Reunion Registry (ISRR), allowing those separated by adoption to locate one another.[161] and Lee Campbell and other birthmothers established CUB (Concerned United Birthparents). Similar ideas were taking hold globally with grass-roots organizations like Parent Finders in Canada and Jigsaw in Australia. In 1975, England and Wales opened records on moral grounds.[162]
+
+By 1979, representatives of 32 organizations from 33 states, Canada and Mexico gathered in Washington, DC, to establish the American Adoption Congress (AAC) passing a unanimous resolution: "Open Records complete with all identifying information for all members of the adoption triad, birthparents, adoptive parents and adoptee at the adoptee's age of majority (18 or 19, depending on state) or earlier if all members of the triad agree."[163] Later years saw the evolution of more militant organizations such as Bastard Nation (founded in 1996), groups that helped overturn sealed records in Alabama, Delaware, New Hampshire, Oregon, Tennessee, and Maine.[164][165] Simultaneously, groups such as Origins USA (founded in 1997) started to actively speak about family preservation and the rights of mothers.[166] The intellectual tone of these recent reform movements was influenced by the publishing of The Primal Wound by Nancy Verrier. "Primal wound" is described as the "devastation which the infant feels because of separation from its birth mother. It is the deep and consequential feeling of abandonment which the baby adoptee feels after the adoption and which may continue for the rest of his life."[155]
+
+Estimates for the extent of search behavior by adoptees have proven elusive; studies show significant variation.[167] In part, the problem stems from the small adoptee population which makes random surveying difficult, if not impossible.
+
+Nevertheless, some indication of the level of search interest by adoptees can be gleaned from the case of England and Wales which opened adoptees' birth records in 1975. The U.K. Office for National Statistics has projected that 33% of all adoptees would eventually request a copy of their original birth records, exceeding original forecasts made in 1975 when it was believed that only a small fraction of the adoptee population would request their records. The projection is known to underestimate the true search rate, however, since many adoptees of the era get their birth records by other means.[168]
+
+The research literature states adoptees give four reasons for desiring reunion: 1) they wish for a more complete genealogy, 2) they are curious about events leading to their conception, birth, and relinquishment, 3) they hope to pass on information to their children, and 4) they have a need for a detailed biological background, including medical information. It is speculated by adoption researchers, however, that the reasons given are incomplete: although such information could be communicated by a third-party, interviews with adoptees, who sought reunion, found they expressed a need to actually meet biological relations.[169]
+
+It appears the desire for reunion is linked to the adoptee's interaction with and acceptance within the community. Internally focused theories suggest some adoptees possess ambiguities in their sense of self, impairing their ability to present a consistent identity. Reunion helps resolve the lack of self-knowledge.[170]
+
+Externally focused theories, in contrast, suggest that reunion is a way for adoptees to overcome social stigma. First proposed by Goffman, the theory has four parts: 1) adoptees perceive the absence of biological ties as distinguishing their adoptive family from others, 2) this understanding is strengthened by experiences where non-adoptees suggest adoptive ties are weaker than blood ties, 3) together, these factors engender, in some adoptees, a sense of social exclusion, and 4) these adoptees react by searching for a blood tie that reinforces their membership in the community. The externally focused rationale for reunion suggests adoptees may be well adjusted and happy within their adoptive families, but will search as an attempt to resolve experiences of social stigma.[169]
+
+Some adoptees reject the idea of reunion. It is unclear, though, what differentiates adoptees who search from those who do not. One paper summarizes the research, stating, "...attempts to draw distinctions between the searcher and non-searcher are no more conclusive or generalizable than attempts to substantiate...differences between adoptees and nonadoptees."[171]
+
+In sum, reunions can bring a variety of issues for adoptees and parents. Nevertheless, most reunion results appear to be positive. In the largest study to date (based on the responses of 1,007 adoptees and relinquishing parents), 90% responded that reunion was a beneficial experience. This does not, however, imply ongoing relationships were formed between adoptee and parent nor that this was the goal.[172]
+
+The book "Adoption Detective: Memoir of an Adopted Child" by Judith and Martin Land provides insight into the mind of an adoptee from childhood through to adulthood and the emotions invoked when reunification with their birth mothers is desired.
+
+Reform and family preservation efforts have also been strongly associated with the perceived misuse of adoption. In some cases, parents' rights have been terminated when their ethnic or socio-economic group has been deemed unfit by society. Some of these practices were generally accepted but have later been considered abusive; others were uncontroversially reprehensible.
+
+Forced adoption based on ethnicity occurred during World War II. In German occupied Poland, it is estimated that 200,000 Polish children with purportedly Aryan traits were removed from their families and given to German or Austrian couples,[173] and only 25,000 returned to their families after the war.[174]
+
+The Stolen Generation of Aboriginal people in Australia were affected by similar policies,[175] as were Native Americans in the United States[176] and First Nations of Canada.[177]
+
+These practices have become significant social and political issues in recent years, and in many cases the policies have changed.[178][179] The United States, for example, now has the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, which allows the tribe and family of a Native American child to be involved in adoption decisions, with preference being given to adoption within the child's tribe.[180]
+
+From the 1950s through the 1970s, a period called the baby scoop era, adoption practices that involved coercion were directed against unwed mothers, as described for the U.S. in The Girls Who Went Away.
+
+More recently the military dictatorship in Argentina from 1976 to 1983 is known to have given hundreds of babies born to women captives who were then murdered to be brought up by military families.[181]
+
+In Spain under Francisco Franco’s 1939–75 dictatorship the newborns of some left-wing opponents of the regime, or unmarried or poor couples, were removed from their mothers and adopted. New mothers were frequently told their babies had died suddenly after birth and the hospital had taken care of their burials, when in fact they were given or sold to another family. It is believed that up to 300,000 babies were involved. These system – which allegedly involved doctors, nurses, nuns and priests – outlived Franco’s death in 1975 and carried on as an illegal baby trafficking network until 1987 when a new law regulating adoption was introduced.[182][183]
+
+With the increase in adoption rates over the many decades, the United States has been faced with a new immoral practice: rehoming. This is the act of caregivers posting an advertisement when they do not feel the child should be in their care any longer. Investigation of the child's new housing situation is not required in this practice, and this has created an underground market, one where child traffickers can thrive. There is a lack of regulation surrounding this practice and current legislation contradicts each other, making this harder to combat.
+
+When a parent adopts a child, they may not have been aware that the child has special needs and thus, are not equipped to help this child. The child may act out or not fit in with the family so the family turns to rehoming. Rehoming is not  adoption and because of that, the government does not have to be notified and adoption agencies are not involved. Thus, re-homing is a prime target for child and sex traffickers. There are laws set in place to protect children through adoption processes and against sex trafficking, but there are barely any laws regarding rehoming. The courts authorize this practice because the U.S. state law[184] may allow a parent, legal guardian or relative within the second degree to place out or board out a child. However, while the U.S. federal bill Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act would require the family to make rational decisions and prioritize the health of the child, the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children contradicts this. This states that the family only has to make sure children are placed in adequate care only when the re-homing process is done across state lines. There is no mention of maintaining the children’s safety when rehoming within the same state.
+
+The laws surrounding rehoming are basically non-existent which puts adopted children at the risk of unequipped parents and all other types of dysfunctional homes. This second-chance adoption, as some parents see it, has led to negative effects that failed adoptions have on children as they go through the process of readapting to a new home environment again. With the statute that allows second-degree legal guardians to put their adopted child in the care of someone else, and the rising of re-homing websites and ads on social media, the rehoming process highly exposes children to underground markets and other trafficking prospects. In that regard, laws and statutes concerning adoption and rehoming should be re-evaluated to ensure the full protection of adopted children.
+
+The language of adoption is changing and evolving, and since the 1970s has been a controversial issue tied closely to adoption reform efforts. The controversy arises over the use of terms which, while designed to be more appealing or less offensive to some persons affected by adoption, may simultaneously cause offense or insult to others. This controversy illustrates the problems in adoption, as well as the fact that coining new words and phrases to describe ancient social practices will not necessarily alter the feelings and experiences of those affected by them. Two of the contrasting sets of terms are commonly referred to as positive adoption language (PAL) (sometimes called respectful adoption language (RAL)), and honest adoption language (HAL).
+
+In the 1970s, as adoption search and support organizations developed, there were challenges to the language in common use at the time. As books like Adoption Triangle by Sorosky, Pannor and Baran were published, and support groups formed like CUB (Concerned United Birthparents), a major shift from "natural parent" to "birthparent"[185][186] occurred. Along with the change in times and social attitudes came additional examination of the language used in adoption.
+
+Social workers and other professionals in the field of adoption began changing terms of use to reflect what was being expressed by the parties involved. In 1979, Marietta Spencer wrote "The Terminology of Adoption" for The Child Welfare League of America (CWLA),[187] which was the basis for her later work "Constructive Adoption Terminology".[188] This influenced Pat Johnston's "Positive Adoption Language" (PAL) and "Respectful Adoption Language" (RAL).[189] The terms contained in "Positive Adoption Language" include the terms "birth mother" (to replace the terms "natural mother" and "real mother"), and "placing" (to replace the term "surrender"). These kinds of recommendations encouraged people to be more aware of their use of adoption terminology.
+
+"Honest Adoption Language" refers to a set of terms that proponents say reflect the point of view that: (1) family relationships (social, emotional, psychological or physical) that existed prior to the legal adoption often continue past this point or endure in some form despite long periods of separation, and that (2) mothers who have "voluntarily surrendered" children to adoption (as opposed to involuntary terminations through court-authorized child-welfare proceedings) seldom view it as a choice that was freely made, but instead describe scenarios of powerlessness, lack of resources, and overall lack of choice.[190][191] It also reflects the point of view that the term "birth mother" is derogatory in implying that the woman has ceased being a mother after the physical act of giving birth. Proponents of HAL liken this to the mother being treated as a "breeder" or "incubator".[192] Terms included in HAL include terms that were used before PAL, including "natural mother," "first mother," and "surrendered for adoption."
+
+There are supporters of various lists, developed over many decades, and there are persons who find them lacking, created to support an agenda, or furthering division. All terminology can be used to demean or diminish, uplift or embrace. In addressing the linguistic problem of naming, Edna Andrews says that using "inclusive" and "neutral" language is based upon the concept that "language represents thought, and may even control thought."[193]
+
+Advocates of inclusive language defend it as inoffensive-language usage whose goal is multi-fold:
+
+A common problem is that terms chosen by an identity group, as acceptable descriptors of themselves, can be used in negative ways by detractors. This compromises the integrity of the language and turns what was intended to be positive into negative or vice versa, thus often devaluing acceptability, meaning and use.
+
+Language at its best honors the self-referencing choices of the persons involved, uses inclusive terms and phrases, and is sensitive to the feelings of the primary parties. Language evolves with social attitudes and experiences.[194][195]
+
+Several religious organizations have resisted to allow adoption for same-sex couples. Catholic foster and adoption agencies have been criticized for not placing children with adults perceived to be living an immoral lifestyle in Catholic theology.[196]
+
+Attitudes and laws regarding adoption vary greatly. Whereas all cultures make arrangements whereby children whose birth parents are unavailable to rear them can be brought up by others, not all cultures have the concept of adoption, that is treating unrelated children as equivalent to biological children of the adoptive parents. Under Islamic Law, for example, adopted children must keep their original surname to be identified with blood relations,[197] and, traditionally, women wear a hijab in the presence of males in their adoptive households. In Egypt, these cultural distinctions have led to making adoption illegal opting instead for a system of foster care. [198] [199]
+
+As a reaction against the bans and hurdles affecting international adoption, scholars Elizabeth Bartholet and Paulo Barrozo claim that every child has a right to a family as a matter of basic human rights.[citation needed] This claim devalues heritage or "cultural" claims and emphasizes the child's existence as a human being rather than a "property" of specific nations or, for example, abusive caregivers.
+
+In some countries, such as the United States, "Homecoming Day" is the day when an adoptee is officially united with their new adoptive family.[200] In some adoptive families, this day marks an especially important event and is celebrated annually from thereafter. The term Gotcha Day is also used to refer to this day. Many adopted people and birth parents find this term to be offensive.
+
+1.Barbara Melosh, the American Way of Adoption page 10

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+Swarm behaviour, or swarming, is a collective behaviour exhibited by entities, particularly animals, of similar size which aggregate together, perhaps milling about the same spot or perhaps moving en masse or migrating in some direction. It is a highly interdisciplinary topic.[1] As a term, swarming is applied particularly to insects, but can also be applied to any other entity or animal that exhibits swarm behaviour. The term flocking or murmuration can refer specifically to swarm behaviour in birds, herding to refer to swarm behaviour in tetrapods, and shoaling or schooling to refer to swarm behaviour in fish. Phytoplankton also gather in huge swarms called blooms, although these organisms are algae and are not self-propelled the way animals are. By extension, the term "swarm" is applied also to inanimate entities which exhibit parallel behaviours, as in a robot swarm, an earthquake swarm, or a swarm of stars.
+
+From a more abstract point of view, swarm behaviour is the collective motion of a large number of self-propelled entities.[2] From the perspective of the mathematical modeller, it is an emergent behaviour arising from simple rules that are followed by individuals and does not involve any central coordination. Swarm behaviour is also studied by active matter physicists as a phenomenon which is not in thermodynamic equilibrium, and as such requires the development of tools beyond those available from the statistical physics of systems in thermodynamic equilibrium.
+
+Swarm behaviour was first simulated on a computer in 1986 with the simulation program boids.[3] This program simulates simple agents (boids) that are allowed to move according to a set of basic rules. The model was originally designed to mimic the flocking behaviour of birds, but it can be applied also to schooling fish and other swarming entities.
+
+In recent decades, scientists have turned to modeling swarm behaviour to gain a deeper understanding of the behaviour.
+
+Early studies of swarm behaviour employed mathematical models to simulate and understand the behaviour. The simplest mathematical models of animal swarms generally represent individual animals as following three rules:
+
+The boids computer program, created by Craig Reynolds in 1986, simulates swarm behaviour following the above rules.[3] Many subsequent and current models use variations on these rules, often implementing them by means of concentric "zones" around each animal. In the "zone of repulsion", very close to the animal, the focal animal will seek to distance itself from its neighbours to avoid collision. Slightly further away, in the "zone of alignment", the focal animal will seek to align its direction of motion with its neighbours. In the outermost "zone of attraction", which extends as far away from the focal animal as it is able to sense, the focal animal will seek to move towards a neighbour.
+
+The shape of these zones will necessarily be affected by the sensory capabilities of a given animal. For example, the visual field of a bird does not extend behind its body. Fish rely on both vision and on hydrodynamic perceptions relayed through their lateral lines, while Antarctic krill rely both on vision and hydrodynamic signals relayed through antennae.
+
+However recent studies of starling flocks have shown that each bird modifies its position, relative to the six or seven animals directly surrounding it, no matter how close or how far away those animals are.[4] Interactions between flocking starlings are thus based on a topological, rather than a metric, rule. It remains to be seen whether this applies to other animals. Another recent study, based on an analysis of high-speed camera footage of flocks above Rome and assuming minimal behavioural rules, has convincingly simulated a number of aspects of flock behaviour.[5][6][7][8]
+
+In order to gain insight into why animals evolve swarming behaviours, scientists have turned to evolutionary models that simulate populations of evolving animals. Typically these studies use a genetic algorithm to simulate evolution over many generations. These studies have investigated a number of hypotheses attempting to explain why animals evolve swarming behaviours, such as the selfish herd theory[9][10][11][12] the predator confusion effect,[13][14] the dilution effect,[15][16] and the many eyes theory.[17]
+
+The concept of emergence—that the properties and functions found at a hierarchical level are not present and are irrelevant at the lower levels–is often a basic principle behind self-organizing systems.[18] An example of self-organization in biology leading to emergence in the natural world occurs in ant colonies. The queen does not give direct orders and does not tell the ants what to do.[citation needed] Instead, each ant reacts to stimuli in the form of chemical scents from larvae, other ants, intruders, food and buildup of waste, and leaves behind a chemical trail, which, in turn, provides a stimulus to other ants. Here each ant is an autonomous unit that reacts depending only on its local environment and the genetically encoded rules for its variety. Despite the lack of centralized decision making, ant colonies exhibit complex behaviours and have even been able to demonstrate the ability to solve geometric problems. For example, colonies routinely find the maximum distance from all colony entrances to dispose of dead bodies.
+
+A further key concept in the field of swarm intelligence is stigmergy.[19][20] Stigmergy is a mechanism of indirect coordination between agents or actions. The principle is that the trace left in the environment by an action stimulates the performance of a next action, by the same or a different agent. In that way, subsequent actions tend to reinforce and build on each other, leading to the spontaneous emergence of coherent, apparently systematic activity. Stigmergy is a form of self-organization. It produces complex, seemingly intelligent structures, without need for any planning, control, or even direct communication between the agents. As such it supports efficient collaboration between extremely simple agents, who lack any memory, intelligence or even awareness of each other.[20]
+
+Swarm intelligence is the collective behaviour of decentralized, self-organized systems, natural or artificial. The concept is employed in work on artificial intelligence. The expression was introduced by Gerardo Beni and Jing Wang in 1989, in the context of cellular robotic systems.[21]
+
+Swarm intelligence systems are typically made up of a population of simple agents such as boids interacting locally with one another and with their environment. The agents follow very simple rules, and although there is no centralized control structure dictating how individual agents should behave, local, and to a certain degree random, interactions between such agents lead to the emergence of intelligent global behaviour, unknown to the individual agents.
+
+Swarm intelligence research is multidisciplinary. It can be divided into natural swarm research studying biological systems and artificial swarm research studying human artefacts. There is also a scientific stream attempting to model the swarm systems themselves and understand their underlying mechanisms, and an engineering stream focused on applying the insights developed by the scientific stream to solve practical problems in other areas.[22]
+
+Swarm algorithms follow a Lagrangian approach or an Eulerian approach.[23] The Eulerian approach views the swarm as a field, working with the density of the swarm and deriving mean field properties. It is a hydrodynamic approach, and can be useful for modelling the overall dynamics of large swarms.[24][25][26] However, most models work with the Lagrangian approach, which is an agent-based model following the individual agents (points or particles) that make up the swarm. Individual particle models can follow information on heading and spacing that is lost in the Eulerian approach.[23][27]
+
+Ant colony optimization is a widely used algorithm which was inspired by the behaviours of ants, and has been effective solving discrete optimization problems related to swarming.[29] The algorithm was initially proposed by Marco Dorigo in 1992,[30][31] and has since been diversified to solve a wider class of numerical problems. Species that have multiple queens may have a queen leaving the nest along with some workers to found a colony at a new site, a process akin to swarming in honeybees.[32][33]
+
+The concept of self-propelled particles (SPP) was introduced in 1995 by Tamás Vicsek et al.[35] as a special case of the boids model introduced in 1986 by Reynolds.[3] An SPP swarm is modelled by a collection of particles that move with a constant speed and respond to random perturbations by adopting at each time increment the average direction of motion of the other particles in their local neighbourhood.[36]
+
+Simulations demonstrate that a suitable "nearest neighbour rule" eventually results in all the particles swarming together, or moving in the same direction. This emerges, even though there is no centralized coordination, and even though the neighbours for each particle constantly change over time.[35] SPP models predict that swarming animals share certain properties at the group level, regardless of the type of animals in the swarm.[37] Swarming systems give rise to emergent behaviours which occur at many different scales, some of which are both universal and robust. It has become a challenge in theoretical physics to find minimal statistical models that capture these behaviours.[38][39]
+
+Particle swarm optimization is another algorithm widely used to solve problems related to swarms. It was developed in 1995 by Kennedy and Eberhart and was first aimed at simulating the social behaviour and choreography of bird flocks and fish schools.[40][41] The algorithm was simplified and it was observed to be performing optimization. The system initially seeds a population with random solutions. It then searches in the problem space through successive generations using stochastic optimization to find the best solutions. The solutions it finds are called particles. Each particle stores its position as well as the best solution it has achieved so far. The particle swarm optimizer tracks the best local value obtained so far by any particle in the local neighbourhood. The remaining particles then move through the problem space following the lead of the optimum particles. At each time iteration, the particle swarm optimiser accelerates each particle toward its optimum locations according to simple mathematical rules. Particle swarm optimization has been applied in many areas. It has few parameters to adjust, and a version that works well for a specific applications can also work well with minor modifications across a range of related applications.[42] A book by Kennedy and Eberhart describes some philosophical aspects of particle swarm optimization applications and swarm intelligence.[43] An extensive survey of applications is made by Poli.[44][45]
+
+Researchers in Switzerland have developed an algorithm based on Hamilton's rule of kin selection. The algorithm shows how altruism in a swarm of entities can, over time, evolve and result in more effective swarm behaviour.[46][47]
+
+The earliest evidence of swarm behaviour in animals dates back about 480 million years. Fossils of the trilobite Ampyx priscus have been recently described as clustered in lines along the ocean floor. The animals were all mature adults, and were all facing the same direction as though they had formed a conga line or a peloton. It has been suggested they line up in this manner to migrate, much as spiny lobsters migrate in single-file queues.[48] Or perhaps they are getting together for mating,[49] as with the fly Leptoconops torrens. The findings suggest animal collective behaviour has very early evolutionary origins.[50]
+
+Examples of biological swarming are found in bird flocks,[51] fish schools,[52][53] insect swarms,[54] bacteria swarms,[55][56] molds,[57] molecular motors,[58] quadruped herds[59] and people.[60][61][62]
+
+The behaviour of insects that live in colonies, such as ants, bees, wasps and termites, has always been a source of fascination for children, naturalists and artists. Individual insects seem to do their own thing without any central control, yet the colony as a whole behaves in a highly coordinated manner.[63] Researchers have found that cooperation at the colony level is largely self-organized. The group coordination that emerges is often just a consequence of the way individuals in the colony interact. These interactions can be remarkably simple, such as one ant merely following the trail left by another ant. Yet put together, the cumulative effect of such behaviours can solve highly complex problems, such as locating the shortest route in a network of possible paths to a food source. The organised behaviour that emerges in this way is sometimes called swarm intelligence.[63] The genus Culicoides also known as biting midges have displayed swarming behavior which can cause predatory confusion.[64]
+
+Individual ants do not exhibit complex behaviours, yet a colony of ants collectively achieves complex tasks such as constructing nests, taking care of their young, building bridges and foraging for food. A colony of ants can collectively select (i.e. send most workers towards) the best, or closest, food source from several in the vicinity.[65] Such collective decisions are achieved using positive feedback mechanisms. Selection of the best food source is achieved by ants following two simple rules. First, ants which find food return to the nest depositing a pheromone chemical. More pheromone is laid for higher quality food sources.[66] Thus, if two equidistant food sources of different qualities are found simultaneously, the pheromone trail to the better one will be stronger. Ants in the nest follow another simple rule, to favor stronger trails, on average. More ants then follow the stronger trail, so more ants arrive at the high quality food source, and a positive feedback cycle ensures, resulting in a collective decision for the best food source. If there are two paths from the ant nest to a food source, then the colony usually selects the shorter path. This is because the ants that first return to the nest from the food source are more likely to be those that took the shorter path. More ants then retrace the shorter path, reinforcing the pheromone trail.[67]
+
+The successful techniques used by ant colonies have been studied in computer science and robotics to produce distributed and fault-tolerant systems for solving problems. This area of biomimetics has led to studies of ant locomotion, search engines that make use of "foraging trails", fault-tolerant storage and networking algorithms.[68]
+
+Midge flies, such as Tokunagayusurika akamusi, form swarms, dancing in the air. Swarming serves multiple purposes, including the facilitation of mating by attracting females to approach the swarm, a phenomenon known as lek mating. Such cloud-like swarms often form in early evening when the sun is getting low, at the tip of a bush, on a hilltop, over a pool of water, or even sometimes above a person. The forming of such swarms is not out of instinct, but an adaptive behavior – a "consensus" – between the individuals within the swarms. It is also suggested that swarming is a ritual, because there is rarely any male midge by itself and not in a swarm. This could have formed due to the benefit of lowering inbreeding by having males of various genes gathering in one spot.[69]
+
+In temperate climates, honey bees usually form swarms in late spring. A swarm typically contains about half the workers together with the old queen, while the new queen stays back with the remaining workers in the original hive. When honey bees emerge from a hive to form a swarm, they may gather on a branch of a tree or on a bush only a few meters from the hive. The bees cluster about the queen and send out 20–50 scouts to find suitable new nest locations. The scouts are the most experienced foragers in the cluster. If a scout finds a suitable location, she returns to the cluster and promotes it by dancing a version of the waggle dance. This dance conveys information about the quality, direction, and distance of the new site. The more excited she is about her findings, the more vigorously she dances. If she can convince others they may take off and check the site she found. If they approve they may promote it as well. In this decision-making process, scouts check several sites, often abandoning their own original site to promote the superior site of another scout. Several different sites may be promoted by different scouts at first. After some hours and sometimes days, a preferred location eventually emerges from this decision-making process. When all scouts agree on the final location, the whole cluster takes off and swarms to it. Sometimes, if no decision is reached, the swarm will separate, some bees going in one direction; others, going in another. This usually results in failure, with both groups dying. A new location is typically a kilometre or more from the original hive, though some species, e.g., Apis dorsata,[70] may establish new colonies within as little as 500 meters from the natal nest. This collective decision making process is remarkably successful in identifying the most suitable new nest site and keeping the swarm intact. A good hive site has to be large enough to accommodate the swarm (about 15 litres in volume), has to be well-protected from the elements, receive an optimal amount of sunshine, be some height above the ground, have a small entrance and be capable of resisting ant infestation - that is why tree cavities are often selected.[71][72][73][74][75]
+
+Similar to ants, cockroaches leave chemical trails in their faeces as well as emitting airborne pheromones for swarming and mating. Other cockroaches will follow these trails to discover sources of food and water, and also discover where other cockroaches are hiding. Thus, cockroaches can exhibit emergent behaviour,[76] in which group or swarm behaviour emerges from a simple set of individual interactions.
+
+Cockroaches are mainly nocturnal and will run away when exposed to light. A study tested the hypothesis that cockroaches use just two pieces of information to decide where to go under those conditions: how dark it is and how many other cockroaches there are. The study conducted by José Halloy and colleagues at the Free University of Brussels and other European institutions created a set of tiny robots that appear to the roaches as other roaches and can thus alter the roaches' perception of critical mass. The robots were also specially scented so that they would be accepted by the real roaches.[77]
+
+Locusts are the swarming phase of the short-horned grasshoppers of the family Acrididae. Some species can breed rapidly under suitable conditions and subsequently become gregarious and migratory. They form bands as nymphs and swarms as adults—both of which can travel great distances, rapidly stripping fields and greatly damaging crops. The largest swarms can cover hundreds of square miles and contain billions of locusts. A locust can eat its own weight (about 2 grams) in plants every day. That means one million locusts can eat more than one ton of food each day, and the largest swarms can consume over 100,000 tonnes each day.[78]
+
+Swarming in locusts has been found to be associated with increased levels of serotonin which causes the locust to change colour, eat much more, become mutually attracted, and breed much more easily. Researchers propose that swarming behaviour is a response to overcrowding and studies have shown that increased tactile stimulation of the hind legs or, in some species, simply encountering other individuals causes an increase in levels of serotonin. The transformation of the locust to the swarming variety can be induced by several contacts per minute over a four-hour period.[79][80][81][82] Notably, an innate predisposition to aggregate has been found in hatchlings of the desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria, independent of their parental phase.[83]
+
+An individual locust's response to a loss of alignment in the group appears to increase the randomness of its motion, until an aligned state is again achieved. This noise-induced alignment appears to be an intrinsic characteristic of collective coherent motion.[84]
+
+Insect migration is the seasonal movement of insects, particularly those by species of dragonflies, beetles, butterflies, and moths. The distance can vary from species to species, but in most cases these movements involve large numbers of individuals. In some cases the individuals that migrate in one direction may not return and the next generation may instead migrate in the opposite direction. This is a significant difference from bird migration.
+
+Monarch butterflies are especially noted for their lengthy annual migration. In North America they make massive southward migrations starting in August until the first frost. A northward migration takes place in the spring. The monarch is the only butterfly that migrates both north and south as the birds do on a regular basis. But no single individual makes the entire round trip. Female monarchs deposit eggs for the next generation during these migrations.[85] The length of these journeys exceeds the normal lifespan of most monarchs, which is less than two months for butterflies born in early summer. The last generation of the summer enters into a non-reproductive phase known as diapause and may live seven months or more.[86] During diapause, butterflies fly to one of many overwintering sites. The generation that overwinters generally does not reproduce until it leaves the overwintering site sometime in February and March. It is the second, third and fourth generations that return to their northern locations in the United States and Canada in the spring. How the species manages to return to the same overwintering spots over a gap of several generations is still a subject of research; the flight patterns appear to be inherited, based on a combination of the position of the sun in the sky[87] and a time-compensated Sun compass that depends upon a circadian clock that is based in their antennae.[88][89]
+
+Approximately 1800 of the world's 10,000 bird species are long-distance migrants.[90] The primary motivation for migration appears to be food; for example, some hummingbirds choose not to migrate if fed through the winter. Also, the longer days of the northern summer provide extended time for breeding birds to feed their young. This helps diurnal birds to produce larger clutches than related non-migratory species that remain in the tropics. As the days shorten in autumn, the birds return to warmer regions where the available food supply varies little with the season. These advantages offset the high stress, physical exertion costs, and other risks of the migration such as predation.
+
+Many birds migrate in flocks. For larger birds, it is assumed that flying in flocks reduces energy costs. The V formation is often supposed to boost the efficiency and range of flying birds, particularly over long migratory routes. All the birds except the first fly in the upwash from one of the wingtip vortices of the bird ahead. The upwash assists each bird in supporting its own weight in flight, in the same way a glider can climb or maintain height indefinitely in rising air. Geese flying in a V formation save energy by flying in the updraft of the wingtip vortex generated by the previous animal in the formation. Thus, the birds flying behind do not need to work as hard to achieve lift. Studies show that birds in a V formation place themselves roughly at the optimum distance predicted by simple aerodynamic theory.[91] Geese in a V-formation may conserve 12–20% of the energy they would need to fly alone.[92][93] Red knots and dunlins were found in radar studies to fly 5 km per hour faster in flocks than when they were flying alone.[94] The birds flying at the tips and at the front are rotated in a timely cyclical fashion to spread flight fatigue equally among the flock members. The formation also makes communication easier and allows the birds to maintain visual contact with each other.
+
+Other animals may use similar drafting techniques when migrating. Lobsters, for example, migrate in close single-file formation "lobster trains", sometimes for hundreds of miles.
+
+The Mediterranean and other seas present a major obstacle to soaring birds, which must cross at the narrowest points. Massive numbers of large raptors and storks pass through areas such as Gibraltar, Falsterbo, and the Bosphorus at migration times. More common species, such as the European honey buzzard, can be counted in hundreds of thousands in autumn. Other barriers, such as mountain ranges, can also cause funnelling, particularly of large diurnal migrants. This is a notable factor in the Central American migratory bottleneck. This concentration of birds during migration can put species at risk. Some spectacular migrants have already gone extinct, the most notable being the passenger pigeon. During migration the flocks were a mile (1.6 km) wide and 300 miles (500 km) long, taking several days to pass and containing up to a billion birds.
+
+The term "shoal" can be used to describe any group of fish, including mixed-species groups, while "school" is used for more closely knit groups of the same species swimming in a highly synchronised and polarised manner.
+
+Fish derive many benefits from shoaling behaviour including defence against predators (through better predator detection and by diluting the chance of capture), enhanced foraging success, and higher success in finding a mate.[96] It is also likely that fish benefit from shoal membership through increased hydrodynamic efficiency.[97]
+
+Fish use many traits to choose shoalmates. Generally they prefer larger shoals, shoalmates of their own species, shoalmates similar in size and appearance to themselves, healthy fish, and kin (when recognised). The "oddity effect" posits that any shoal member that stands out in appearance will be preferentially targeted by predators. This may explain why fish prefer to shoal with individuals that resemble them. The oddity effect would thus tend to homogenise shoals.[98]
+
+One puzzling aspect of shoal selection is how a fish can choose to join a shoal of animals similar to themselves, given that it cannot know its own appearance. Experiments with zebrafish have shown that shoal preference is a learned ability, not innate. A zebrafish tends to associate with shoals that resemble shoals in which it was reared, a form of imprinting.[99]
+
+Other open questions of shoaling behaviour include identifying which individuals are responsible for the direction of shoal movement. In the case of migratory movement, most members of a shoal seem to know where they are going. In the case of foraging behaviour, captive shoals of golden shiner (a kind of minnow) are led by a small number of experienced individuals who knew when and where food was available.[100]
+
+Radakov estimated herring schools in the North Atlantic can occupy up to 4.8 cubic kilometres with fish densities between 0.5 and 1.0 fish/cubic metre. That's several billion fish in one school.[101]
+
+Between May and July huge numbers of sardines spawn in the cool waters of the Agulhas Bank and then follow a current of cold water northward along the east coast of South Africa. This great migration, called the sardine run, creates spectacular feeding frenzies along the coastline as marine predators, such as dolphins, sharks and gannets attack the schools.
+
+Most krill, small shrimp-like crustaceans, form large swarms, sometimes reaching densities of 10,000–60,000 individual animals per cubic metre.[103][104][105] Swarming is a defensive mechanism, confusing smaller predators that would like to pick out single individuals. The largest swarms are visible from space and can be tracked by satellite.[106] One swarm was observed to cover an area of 450 square kilometers (175 square miles) of ocean, to a depth of 200 meters (650 feet) and was estimated to contain over 2 million tons of krill.[107] Recent research suggests that krill do not simply drift passively in these currents but actually modify them.[107] Krill typically follow a diurnal vertical migration. By moving vertically through the ocean on a 12-hour cycle, the swarms play a major part in mixing deeper, nutrient-rich water with nutrient-poor water at the surface.[107] Until recently it has been assumed that they spend the day at greater depths and rise during the night toward the surface. It has been found that the deeper they go, the more they reduce their activity,[108] apparently to reduce encounters with predators and to conserve energy.
+
+Later work suggested that swimming activity in krill varied with stomach fullness. Satiated animals that had been feeding at the surface swim less actively and therefore sink below the mixed layer.[109] As they sink they produce faeces which may mean that they have an important role to play in the Antarctic carbon cycle. Krill with empty stomachs were found to swim more actively and thus head towards the surface. This implies that vertical migration may be a bi- or tri-daily occurrence. Some species form surface swarms during the day for feeding and reproductive purposes even though such behaviour is dangerous because it makes them extremely vulnerable to predators.[110] Dense swarms may elicit a feeding frenzy among fish, birds and mammal predators, especially near the surface. When disturbed, a swarm scatters, and some individuals have even been observed to moult instantaneously, leaving the exuvia behind as a decoy.[111] In 2012, Gandomi and Alavi presented what appears to be a successful stochastic algorithm for modelling the behaviour of krill swarms. The algorithm is based on three main factors: " (i) movement induced by the presence of other individuals (ii) foraging activity, and (iii) random diffusion."[112]
+
+Copepods are a group of tiny crustaceans found in the sea and lakes. Many species are planktonic (drifting in sea waters), and others are benthic (living on the ocean floor). Copepods are typically 1 to 2 millimetres (0.04 to 0.08 in) long, with a teardrop shaped body and large antennae. Although like other crustaceans they have an armoured exoskeleton, they are so small that in most species this thin armour, and the entire body, is almost totally transparent. Copepods have a compound, median single eye, usually bright red, in the centre of the transparent head.
+
+Copepods also swarm. For example, monospecific swarms have been observed regularly around coral reefs and sea grass, and in lakes. Swarms densities were about one million copepods per cubic metre. Typical swarms were one or two metres in diameter, but some exceeded 30 cubic metres. Copepods need visual contact to keep together, and they disperse at night.[113]
+
+Spring produces blooms of swarming phytoplankton which provide food for copepods. Planktonic copepods are usually the dominant members of the zooplankton, and are in turn major food organisms for many other marine animals. In particular, copepods are prey to forage fish and jellyfish, both of which can assemble in vast, million-strong swarms. Some copepods have extremely fast escape responses when a predator is sensed and can jump with high speed over a few millimetres (see animated image below).
+
+Photo: School of herrings ram feeding on a swarm of copepods.
+
+Animation showing how herrings hunting in a synchronised way can capture the very alert and evasive copepod (click to view).
+
+Swarms of jellyfish also prey on copepods
+
+Planktonic copepods are important to the carbon cycle. Some scientists say they form the largest animal biomass on earth.[114] They compete for this title with Antarctic krill. Because of their smaller size and relatively faster growth rates, however, and because they are more evenly distributed throughout more of the world's oceans, copepods almost certainly contribute far more to the secondary productivity of the world's oceans, and to the global ocean carbon sink than krill, and perhaps more than all other groups of organisms together. The surface layers of the oceans are currently believed to be the world's largest carbon sink, absorbing about 2 billion tons of carbon a year, the equivalent to perhaps a third of human carbon emissions, thus reducing their impact. Many planktonic copepods feed near the surface at night, then sink into deeper water during the day to avoid visual predators. Their moulted exoskeletons, faecal pellets and respiration at depth all bring carbon to the deep sea.
+
+Many single-celled organisms called phytoplankton live in oceans and lakes. When certain conditions are present, such as high nutrient or light levels, these organisms reproduce explosively. The resulting dense swarm of phytoplankton is called an algal bloom. Blooms can cover hundreds of square kilometres and are easily seen in satellite images. Individual phytoplankton rarely live more than a few days, but blooms can last weeks.[115][116]
+
+Scientists have attributed swarm behavior to plants for hundreds of years. In his 1800 book, Phytologia: or, The philosophy of agriculture and gardening, Erasmus Darwin wrote that plant growth resembled swarms observed elsewhere in nature.[117] While he was referring to more broad observations of plant morphology, and was focused on both root and shoot behavior, recent research has supported this claim.
+
+Roots, in particular, display observable swarm behavior, growing in patterns that exceed the statistical threshold for random probability, and indicate the presence of communication between individual root apexes. The primary function of plant roots is the uptake of soil nutrients, and it is this purpose which drives swarm behavior. Plants growing in close proximity have adapted their growth to assure optimal nutrient availability. This is accomplished by growing in a direction that optimizes the distance between nearby roots, thereby increasing their chance of exploiting untapped nutrient reserves. The action of this behavior takes two forms: maximization of distance from, and repulsion by, neighboring root apexes.[118] The transition zone of a root tip is largely responsible for monitoring for the presence of soil-borne hormones, signaling responsive growth patterns as appropriate. Plant responses are often complex, integrating multiple inputs to inform an autonomous response. Additional inputs that inform swarm growth includes light and gravity, both of which are also monitored in the transition zone of a root's apex.[119] These forces act to inform any number of growing "main" roots, which exhibit their own independent releases of inhibitory chemicals to establish appropriate spacing, thereby contributing to a swarm behavior pattern. Horizontal growth of roots, whether in response to high mineral content in soil or due to stolon growth, produces branched growth that establish to also form their own, independent root swarms.[120]
+
+Swarming also describes groupings of some kinds of predatory bacteria such as myxobacteria. Myxobacteria swarm together in "wolf packs", actively moving using a process known as bacterial gliding and keeping together with the help of intercellular molecular signals.[55][121]
+
+A collection of people can also exhibit swarm behaviour, such as pedestrians[124] or soldiers swarming the parapets[dubious  – discuss]. In Cologne, Germany, two biologists from the University of Leeds demonstrated flock like behaviour in humans. The group of people exhibited similar behavioural pattern to a flock, where if five percent of the flock changed direction the others would follow. If one person was designated as a predator and everyone else was to avoid him, the flock behaved very much like a school of fish.[125][126] Understanding how humans interact in crowds is important if crowd management is to effectively avoid casualties at football grounds, music concerts and subway stations.[127]
+
+The mathematical modelling of flocking behaviour is a common technology, and has found uses in animation. Flocking simulations have been used in many films[128] to generate crowds which move realistically. Tim Burton's Batman Returns was the first movie to make use of swarm technology for rendering, realistically depicting the movements of a group of bats using the boids system. The Lord of the Rings film trilogy made use of similar technology, known as Massive, during battle scenes. Swarm technology is particularly attractive because it is cheap, robust, and simple.
+
+An ant-based computer simulation using only six interaction rules has also been used to evaluate aircraft boarding behaviour.[129] Airlines have also used ant-based routing in assigning aircraft arrivals to airport gates. An airline system developed by Douglas A. Lawson uses swarm theory, or swarm intelligence—the idea that a colony of ants works better than one alone. Each pilot acts like an ant searching for the best airport gate. "The pilot learns from his experience what's the best for him, and it turns out that that's the best solution for the airline," Lawson explains. As a result, the "colony" of pilots always go to gates they can arrive and depart quickly. The program can even alert a pilot of plane back-ups before they happen. "We can anticipate that it's going to happen, so we'll have a gate available," says Lawson.[130]
+
+Swarm behaviour occurs also in traffic flow dynamics, such as the traffic wave. Bidirectional traffic can be observed in ant trails.[131][132] In recent years this behaviour has been researched for insight into pedestrian and traffic models.[133][134] Simulations based on pedestrian models have also been applied to crowds which stampede because of panic.[135]
+
+Herd behaviour in marketing has been used to explain the dependencies of customers' mutual behaviour. The Economist reported a recent conference in Rome on the subject of the simulation of adaptive human behaviour.[136] It shared mechanisms to increase impulse buying and get people "to buy more by playing on the herd instinct." The basic idea is that people will buy more of products that are seen to be popular, and several feedback mechanisms to get product popularity information to consumers are mentioned, including smart card technology and the use of Radio Frequency Identification Tag technology. A "swarm-moves" model was introduced by a Florida Institute of Technology researcher, which is appealing to supermarkets because it can "increase sales without the need to give people discounts."
+
+The application of swarm principles to robots is called swarm robotics, while swarm intelligence refers to the more general set of algorithms.
+
+Partially inspired by colonies of insects such as ants and bees, researchers are modelling the behaviour of swarms of thousands of tiny robots which together perform a useful task, such as finding something hidden, cleaning, or spying. Each robot is quite simple, but the emergent behaviour of the swarm is more complex.[1] The whole set of robots can be considered as one single distributed system, in the same way an ant colony can be considered a superorganism, exhibiting swarm intelligence. The largest swarms so far created is the 1024 robot Kilobot swarm.[138] Other large swarms include the iRobot swarm, the SRI International/ActivMedia Robotics Centibots project,[139] and the Open-source Micro-robotic Project swarm, which are being used to research collective behaviours.[140][141] Swarms are also more resistant to failure. Whereas one large robot may fail and ruin a mission, a swarm can continue even if several robots fail. This could make them attractive for space exploration missions, where failure is normally extremely costly.[142] In addition to ground vehicles, swarm robotics includes also research of swarms of aerial robots[137][143] and heterogeneous teams of ground and aerial vehicles.[144][145]
+
+Military swarming is a behaviour where autonomous or partially autonomous units of action attack an enemy from several different directions and then regroup. Pulsing, where the units shift the point of attack, is also a part of military swarming. Military swarming involves the use of a decentralized force against an opponent, in a manner that emphasizes mobility, communication, unit autonomy and coordination or synchronization.[146] Historically military forces used principles of swarming without really examining them explicitly, but now active research consciously examines military doctrines that draw ideas from swarming.
+
+Merely because multiple units converge on a target, they are not necessarily swarming. Siege operations do not involve swarming, because there is no manoeuvre; there is convergence but on the besieged fortification. Nor do guerrilla ambushes constitute swarms, because they are "hit-and-run". Even though the ambush may have several points of attack on the enemy, the guerillas withdraw when they either have inflicted adequate damage, or when they are endangered.
+
+In 2014 the U. S. Office of Naval Research released a video showing tests of a swarm of small autonomous drone attack boats that can steer and take coordinated offensive action as a group.[147]
+
+A swarm of migrating herrings
+
+A swarm of bees
+
+Salps arranged in chains form huge swarms.[148]
+
+People swarming through an exit do not always behave like a fluid.[149][150]
+
+A swarm of ladybirds
+
+A swarm of robots
+
+A swarm of earthquakes
+
+A swarm of ancient stars

en/5400.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,78 @@
+
+
+sister: Tarsiiformes
+
+Anthropoids
+monkeys (cladistically incl. apes)
+
+The simians or anthropoids or higher primates are an infraorder (Simiiformes) of primates containing the parvorders Platyrrhini and Catarrhini, which consist of the superfamilies Cercopithecoidea and Hominoidea (including the genus Homo).
+
+The simians are sister to the tarsiers, together forming the haplorhines. The radiation occurred about 60 million years ago (during the Cenozoic era); 40 million years ago, simians from Afro-Arabia colonized South America, giving rise to the New World monkeys. The remaining simians (catarrhines) split 25 million years ago into Old World monkeys and apes (including humans).
+
+In earlier classification, New World and Old World monkeys, apes, and humans – collectively known as simians or anthropoids – were grouped under Anthropoidea (/ˌænθrəˈpɔɪdiə/; Ancient Greek: άνθρωπος, romanized: anthropos, lit. 'human'; also called anthropoids), while the strepsirrhines and tarsiers were grouped under the suborder "Prosimii". Under modern classification, the tarsiers and simians are grouped under the suborder Haplorhini, while the strepsirrhines are placed in suborder Strepsirrhini.[3] Strong genetic evidence for this is that five SINEs are common to all haplorhines whilst absent in strepsirrhines - even one being coincidental between tarsiers and simians would be quite unlikely.[4] Despite this preferred taxonomic division, "prosimian" is still regularly found in textbooks and the academic literature because of familiarity, a condition likened to the use of the metric system in the sciences and the use of customary units elsewhere in the United States.[5] In the Anthropoidea, evidence indicates that the Old World and New World primates went through parallel evolution.[6]
+
+Primatology, paleoanthropology, and other related fields are split on their usage of the synonymous infraorder names, Simiiformes and Anthropoidea. According to Robert Hoffstetter (and supported by Colin Groves), the term Simiiformes has priority over Anthropoidea because the taxonomic term Simii by van der Hoeven, from which it is constructed, dates to 1833.[1][7] In contrast, Anthropoidea by Mivart dates to 1864,[8] while Simiiformes by Haeckel dates to 1866, leading to counterclaims of priority.[1] Hoffstetter also argued that Simiiformes is also constructed like a proper infraorder name (ending in "iformes"), whereas Anthropoidea ends in -"oidea", which is reserved for superfamilies. He also noted that Anthropoidea is too easily confused with "anthropoïdes", which translates to "apes" from several languages.[7]
+
+Extant simians are split into three distinct groups. The New World monkeys in parvorder Platyrrhini split from the rest of the simian line about 40 million years ago (Mya), leaving the parvorder Catarrhini occupying the Old World. This group split about 25 Mya between the Cercopithecidae and the apes.
+
+Some lines of extinct simian also are either placed into the Eosimiidae (to reflect their Eocene origin) and sometimes in Amphipithecidae, thought to originate in the Early Oligocene. Additionally, Phileosimias is sometimes placed in the Eosimiidae and sometimes categorised separately.[9]
+
+Hominoidea
+
+Cercopithecoidea
+
+Platyrrhini
+
+Tarsiiformes
+
+Strepsirrhini
+
+The following is the listing of the various simian families, and their placement in the order Primates:[1][2]
+
+Below is a cladogram with some of the extinct simian species with the more modern species emerging within the Eosimiidae. The simians originated in Asia, while the crown simians were in Afro-Arabia.[10][11][12][13][14] It is indicated approximately how many Mya the clades diverged into newer clades.
+
+Tarsiiformes
+
+Muangthanhinius (†32 Mya)
+
+Gatanthropus micros (†30)
+
+Bugtilemur (†29)
+
+Ekgmowechashala
+
+Eosimias (†40)
+
+Phenocopethicus (†42)
+
+Bahinia [fr] (†32)
+
+Nosmips aenigmaticus (†37)
+
+Phileosimias (†46)
+
+Amphipithecidae (†35)
+
+Parapithecoidea (†30)
+
+Proteopithecidae (†34)
+
+Perupithecus (†)
+
+Chilecebus (†20)
+
+Tremacebus (†20)
+
+Homunculus (†16)
+
+Dolichocebus (†20)
+
+Branisella (†26)
+
+Crown Platyrrhini (New World Monkeys)
+
+Catarrhini
+
+Usually the Ekgmowechashalidae are considered to be Strepsirrhini, not Haplorhini.[15] A 2018 study places Eosimiidae as a sister to the crown haplorhini.[16]
+
+In a section of their 2010 assessment of the evolution of anthropoids (simians) entitled "What Is An Anthropoid", Williams, Kay, and Kirk set out a list of biological features common to all or most anthropoids, including genetic similarities, similarities in eye location and the muscles close to the eyes, internal similarities between ears, dental similarities, and similarities on foot bone structure.[4] The earliest anthropods were small primates with varied diets, forward-facing eyes, acute color vision for daytime lifestyles, and brains devoted more to vision and less to smell.[4] Living simians in both the New World and the Old World have larger brains than other primates, but they evolved these larger brains independently.[4]

en/5401.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,78 @@
+
+
+sister: Tarsiiformes
+
+Anthropoids
+monkeys (cladistically incl. apes)
+
+The simians or anthropoids or higher primates are an infraorder (Simiiformes) of primates containing the parvorders Platyrrhini and Catarrhini, which consist of the superfamilies Cercopithecoidea and Hominoidea (including the genus Homo).
+
+The simians are sister to the tarsiers, together forming the haplorhines. The radiation occurred about 60 million years ago (during the Cenozoic era); 40 million years ago, simians from Afro-Arabia colonized South America, giving rise to the New World monkeys. The remaining simians (catarrhines) split 25 million years ago into Old World monkeys and apes (including humans).
+
+In earlier classification, New World and Old World monkeys, apes, and humans – collectively known as simians or anthropoids – were grouped under Anthropoidea (/ˌænθrəˈpɔɪdiə/; Ancient Greek: άνθρωπος, romanized: anthropos, lit. 'human'; also called anthropoids), while the strepsirrhines and tarsiers were grouped under the suborder "Prosimii". Under modern classification, the tarsiers and simians are grouped under the suborder Haplorhini, while the strepsirrhines are placed in suborder Strepsirrhini.[3] Strong genetic evidence for this is that five SINEs are common to all haplorhines whilst absent in strepsirrhines - even one being coincidental between tarsiers and simians would be quite unlikely.[4] Despite this preferred taxonomic division, "prosimian" is still regularly found in textbooks and the academic literature because of familiarity, a condition likened to the use of the metric system in the sciences and the use of customary units elsewhere in the United States.[5] In the Anthropoidea, evidence indicates that the Old World and New World primates went through parallel evolution.[6]
+
+Primatology, paleoanthropology, and other related fields are split on their usage of the synonymous infraorder names, Simiiformes and Anthropoidea. According to Robert Hoffstetter (and supported by Colin Groves), the term Simiiformes has priority over Anthropoidea because the taxonomic term Simii by van der Hoeven, from which it is constructed, dates to 1833.[1][7] In contrast, Anthropoidea by Mivart dates to 1864,[8] while Simiiformes by Haeckel dates to 1866, leading to counterclaims of priority.[1] Hoffstetter also argued that Simiiformes is also constructed like a proper infraorder name (ending in "iformes"), whereas Anthropoidea ends in -"oidea", which is reserved for superfamilies. He also noted that Anthropoidea is too easily confused with "anthropoïdes", which translates to "apes" from several languages.[7]
+
+Extant simians are split into three distinct groups. The New World monkeys in parvorder Platyrrhini split from the rest of the simian line about 40 million years ago (Mya), leaving the parvorder Catarrhini occupying the Old World. This group split about 25 Mya between the Cercopithecidae and the apes.
+
+Some lines of extinct simian also are either placed into the Eosimiidae (to reflect their Eocene origin) and sometimes in Amphipithecidae, thought to originate in the Early Oligocene. Additionally, Phileosimias is sometimes placed in the Eosimiidae and sometimes categorised separately.[9]
+
+Hominoidea
+
+Cercopithecoidea
+
+Platyrrhini
+
+Tarsiiformes
+
+Strepsirrhini
+
+The following is the listing of the various simian families, and their placement in the order Primates:[1][2]
+
+Below is a cladogram with some of the extinct simian species with the more modern species emerging within the Eosimiidae. The simians originated in Asia, while the crown simians were in Afro-Arabia.[10][11][12][13][14] It is indicated approximately how many Mya the clades diverged into newer clades.
+
+Tarsiiformes
+
+Muangthanhinius (†32 Mya)
+
+Gatanthropus micros (†30)
+
+Bugtilemur (†29)
+
+Ekgmowechashala
+
+Eosimias (†40)
+
+Phenocopethicus (†42)
+
+Bahinia [fr] (†32)
+
+Nosmips aenigmaticus (†37)
+
+Phileosimias (†46)
+
+Amphipithecidae (†35)
+
+Parapithecoidea (†30)
+
+Proteopithecidae (†34)
+
+Perupithecus (†)
+
+Chilecebus (†20)
+
+Tremacebus (†20)
+
+Homunculus (†16)
+
+Dolichocebus (†20)
+
+Branisella (†26)
+
+Crown Platyrrhini (New World Monkeys)
+
+Catarrhini
+
+Usually the Ekgmowechashalidae are considered to be Strepsirrhini, not Haplorhini.[15] A 2018 study places Eosimiidae as a sister to the crown haplorhini.[16]
+
+In a section of their 2010 assessment of the evolution of anthropoids (simians) entitled "What Is An Anthropoid", Williams, Kay, and Kirk set out a list of biological features common to all or most anthropoids, including genetic similarities, similarities in eye location and the muscles close to the eyes, internal similarities between ears, dental similarities, and similarities on foot bone structure.[4] The earliest anthropods were small primates with varied diets, forward-facing eyes, acute color vision for daytime lifestyles, and brains devoted more to vision and less to smell.[4] Living simians in both the New World and the Old World have larger brains than other primates, but they evolved these larger brains independently.[4]

en/5402.html.txt

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+Chinese characters are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese.[2][3][4]  They have been adapted to write a number of other Asian languages. They remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as kanji. Chinese characters constitute the oldest continuously used system of writing in the world.[5] By virtue of their widespread current use in East Asia, and historic use throughout the Sinosphere, Chinese characters are among the most widely adopted writing systems in the world by number of users. Chinese characters number in the tens of thousands, though most of them are minor graphic variants encountered only in historical texts. Unlike an alphabet, a character-based writing system associates each logogram with an entire sound and thus may be compared in some aspects to a syllabary.
+
+Functional literacy in written Chinese requires a knowledge of between three and four thousand characters.[6] In Japan, 2,136 are taught through secondary school (the Jōyō kanji); hundreds more are in everyday use. Due to post-WWII simplifications of characters in Japan as well as in China, the Chinese characters used in Japan today are distinct from those used in China in several respects. There are various national standard lists of characters, forms, and pronunciations. Simplified forms of certain characters are used in mainland China, Singapore, and Malaysia; the corresponding traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and to a limited extent in South Korea. In Japan, common characters are written in post-WWII Japan-specific simplified forms, while uncommon characters are written in Japanese traditional forms, which are virtually identical to Chinese traditional forms.
+
+In modern Chinese, the majority of Chinese words today consist of two or more characters.[7] A character almost always corresponds to a single syllable that is also a morpheme.[8] However, there are a few exceptions to this general correspondence, including bisyllabic morphemes (written with two characters), bimorphemic syllables (written with two characters) and cases where a single character represents a polysyllabic word or phrase.[9]
+
+Modern Chinese has many homophones; thus the same spoken syllable may be represented by many characters, depending on meaning. A single character may also have a range of meanings, or sometimes quite distinct meanings; occasionally these correspond to different pronunciations. Cognates in the several varieties of Chinese are generally written with the same character. In other languages, most significantly today in Japanese and sometimes in Korean, characters are used to represent Chinese loanwords, to represent native words independently of the Chinese pronunciation (e.g., kunyomi in Japanese), and as purely phonetic elements based on their pronunciation in the historical variety of Chinese from which they were acquired. These foreign adaptations of Chinese pronunciation are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations and have been useful in the reconstruction of Middle Chinese.
+
+When the script was first used in the late 2nd millennium BC, words of Old Chinese were generally monosyllabic, and each character denoted a single word.[10] Increasing numbers of polysyllabic words have entered the language from the Western Zhou period to the present day. It is estimated that about 25–30% of the vocabulary of classic texts from the Warring States period was polysyllabic, though these words were used far less commonly than monosyllables, which accounted for 80–90% of occurrences in these texts.[11]
+The process has accelerated over the centuries as phonetic change has increased the number of homophones.[12]
+It has been estimated that over two thirds of the 3,000 most common words in modern Standard Chinese are polysyllables, the vast majority of those being disyllables.[13]
+
+The most common process has been to form compounds of existing words, written with the characters of the constituent words. Words have also been created by adding affixes, reduplication and borrowing from other languages.[14]
+Polysyllabic words are generally written with one character per syllable.[15][a]
+In most cases the character denotes a morpheme descended from an Old Chinese word.[16]
+
+Many characters have multiple readings, with instances denoting different morphemes, sometimes with different pronunciations. In modern Standard Chinese, one fifth of the 2,400 most common characters have multiple pronunciations.
+For the 500 most common characters, the proportion rises to 30%.[17]
+Often these readings are similar in sound and related in meaning. In the Old Chinese period, affixes could be added to a word to form a new word, which was often written with the same character. In many cases the pronunciations diverged due to subsequent sound change. For example, many additional readings have the Middle Chinese departing tone, the major source of the 4th tone in modern Standard Chinese. Scholars now believe that this tone is the reflex of an Old Chinese *-s suffix, with a range of semantic functions.[18]
+For example,
+
+Another common alternation is between voiced and voiceless initials (though the voicing distinction has disappeared on most modern varieties).
+This is believed to reflect an ancient prefix, but scholars disagree on whether the voiced or voiceless form is the original root.
+For example,
+
+Chinese characters represent words of the language using several strategies. A few characters, including some of the most commonly used, were originally pictograms, which depicted the objects denoted, or ideograms, in which meaning was expressed iconically. The vast majority were written using the rebus principle, in which a character for a similarly sounding word was either simply borrowed or (more commonly) extended with a disambiguating semantic marker to form a phono-semantic compound character.[24]
+
+The traditional six-fold classification (liùshū 六书 / 六書 "six writings") was first described by the scholar Xu Shen in the postface of his dictionary Shuowen Jiezi in 100 AD.[25]
+While this analysis is sometimes problematic and arguably fails to reflect the complete nature of the Chinese writing system, it has been perpetuated by its long history and pervasive use.
+
+Pictograms are highly stylized and simplified pictures of material objects.  Examples of pictograms include 日 rì for "sun", 月 yuè for "moon", and 木 mù for "tree" or "wood". Xu Shen placed approximately 4% of characters in this category. 
+Though few in number and expressing literal objects, pictograms and ideograms are nonetheless the basis on which all the more complex characters such as associative idea characters  (会意字) and pictophonetic characters (形声字) are formed.
+
+Pictograms are primary characters in the sense that they, along with ideograms (indicative characters i.e. symbols), are the building blocks of compound characters (意意字) and picto-phonetic characters (形声字).
+
+Over time pictograms were increasingly standardized, simplified, and stylized to make them easier to write. Furthermore, the same kangxi radical character element can be used to depict different objects. 
+Thus, the image depicted by most pictograms is not often immediately evident. For example 口 may indicate the mouth, a window as in 高 which depicts a tall building as a symbol of the idea of "tall" or the lip of a vessel as in 富 a wine jar under a roof as symbol of wealth.  That is, pictograms extended from literal objects to take on symbolic or metaphoric meanings; sometimes even displacing the use of the character as a literal term, or creating ambiguity, which was resolved though character determinants, more commonly but less accurately known as "radicals" i.e. concept keys in the phono-semantic characters.
+
+Also called simple indicatives, this small category contains characters that are direct iconic illustrations. Examples include 上 shàng "up" and 下 xià "down", originally a dot above and below a line. Indicative characters are symbols for abstract concepts which could not be depicted literally but nonetheless can be expressed as a visual symbol e.g. convex 凸 ， concave 凹, flat-and-level 平
+
+Also translated as logical aggregates or associative compounds, these characters have been interpreted as combining two or more pictographic or ideographic characters to suggest a third meaning.  The canonical example is 明 bright. 明 is the association of the two brightest objects in the sky the sun 日 and moon 月, brought together to express the idea of "bright". It is canonical because the term 明白 in Chinese (lit. "bright white") means "to understand, understand". Other commonly cited examples include 休 "rest" (composed of the pictograms 人 "person" and 木 "tree") and 好 "good" (composed of 女 "woman" and 子 "child").
+
+Xu Shen placed approximately 13% of characters in this category, but many of his examples are now believed to be phono-semantic compounds whose origin has been obscured by subsequent changes in their form.[26] Peter Boodberg and William Boltz go so far as to deny that any of the compound characters devised in ancient times were of this type, maintaining that now-lost "secondary readings" are responsible for the apparent absence of phonetic indicators,[27] but their arguments have been rejected by other scholars.[28]
+
+In contrast, associative compound characters are common among characters coined in Japan. Also, a few characters coined in China in modern times, such as 鉑 platinum, "white metal" (see chemical elements in East Asian languages) belong to this category.
+
+Also called borrowings or phonetic loan characters, the rebus category covers cases where an existing character is used to represent an unrelated word with similar or identical pronunciation; sometimes the old meaning is then lost completely, as with characters such as 自 zì, which has lost its original meaning of "nose" completely and exclusively means "oneself", or 萬 wàn, which originally meant "scorpion" but is now used only in the sense of "ten thousand".
+
+Rebus was pivotal in the history of writing in China insofar as it represented the stage at which logographic writing could become purely phonetic (phonographic). Chinese characters used purely for their sound values are attested in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period manuscripts, in which zhi 氏 was used to write shi 是 and vice versa, just lines apart; the same happened with shao 勺 for Zhao 趙, with the characters in question being homophonous or nearly homophonous at the time.[29]
+
+Chinese characters are used rebus-like and exclusively for their phonetic value when transcribing words of foreign origin, such as ancient Buddhist terms or modern foreign names. For example, the word for the country "Romania" is 罗马尼亚 (Luó Mǎ Ní Yà), in which the Chinese characters are only used for their sounds and do not provide any meaning.[30] This usage is similar to that of the Japanese Katakana, although the Katakanas use a special set of simplified forms of Chinese characters, in order to advertize their value as purely phonetic symbols. The same rebus principle for names in particular has also been used in Egyptian hieroglyphs and Maya hieroglyphs.[31] In the Chinese usage, in a few instances, the characters used for pronunciation might be carefully chosen in order to connote a specific meaning, as regularly happens for brand names: Coca-Cola is translated phonetically as 可口可乐 (Kěkǒu Kělè), but the characters were carefully selected so as to have the additional meaning of "Delicious and Enjoyable".[30][31]
+
+Semantic-phonetic compounds or pictophonetic compounds are by far the most numerous characters. These characters are composed of at least two parts. A semantic component, often a character key as a clue to the topic to which the character refers, often in an abbreviated form, The semantic component suggests the general meaning of the compound character. The  phonetic component suggests the pronunciation of the compound character. In most cases the semantic indicator is also the 部首 radical under which the character is listed in dictionaries. Because Chinese is replete in homophones phonetic elements may also carry semantic content. In some rare examples phono-semantic characters may also convey pictorial content. Each Chinese character is an attempt to combine sound, image, and idea in a mutually reinforcing fashion.
+
+Examples of phono-semantic characters include 河 hé "river", 湖 hú "lake", 流 liú "stream", 沖 chōng "surge", 滑 huá "slippery". All these characters have on the left a radical of three short strokes (氵), which is a reduced form of the character 水 shuǐ meaning "water", indicating that the character has a semantic connection with water. The right-hand side in each case is a phonetic indicator. For example, in the case of 沖 chōng (Old Chinese *ɡ-ljuŋ[32]) "surge", the phonetic indicator is 中 zhōng (Old Chinese *k-ljuŋ[33]), which by itself means "middle". In this case it can be seen that the pronunciation of the character is slightly different from that of its phonetic indicator; the effect of historical sound change means that the composition of such characters can sometimes seem arbitrary today.
+
+In general, phonetic components do not determine the exact pronunciation of a character, but only give a clue as to its pronunciation. While some characters take the exact pronunciation of their phonetic component, others take only the initial or final sounds.[34] In fact, some characters' pronunciations may not correspond to the pronunciations of their phonetic parts at all, which is sometimes the case with characters after having undergone simplification. The 8 characters in the following table all take 也 for their phonetic part, however, as it is readily apparent, none of them take the pronunciation of 也, which is yě (Old Chinese *lajʔ).  As the table below shows, the sound changes that have taken place since the Shang/Zhou period when most of these characters were created can be dramatic, to the point of not providing any useful hint of the modern pronunciation.
+
+Xu Shen (c. 100 AD) placed approximately 82% of characters into this category, while in the Kangxi Dictionary (1716 AD) the number is closer to 90%, due to the extremely productive use of this technique to extend the Chinese vocabulary.[citation needed] The Chu Nom characters of Vietnam were created using this principle.
+
+This method is used to form new characters, for example 钚 / 鈈 bù ("plutonium") is the metal radical 金 jīn plus the phonetic component 不 bù, described in Chinese as "不 gives sound, 金 gives meaning". Many Chinese names of elements in the periodic table and many other chemistry-related characters were formed this way. In fact, it is possible to tell from a Chinese periodic table at a glance which elements are metal (金), solid nonmetal (石, "stone"), liquid (氵), or gas (气).
+
+Occasionally a bisyllabic word is written with two characters that contain the same radical, as in 蝴蝶 húdié "butterfly", where both characters have the insect radical 虫. A notable example is pipa (a Chinese lute, also a fruit, the loquat, of similar shape) – originally written as 批把 with the hand radical (扌), referring to the down and up strokes when playing this instrument, which was then changed to 枇杷 (tree radical 木), which is still used for the fruit, while the character was changed to 琵琶 when referring to the instrument (radical 玨) .[37] In other cases a compound word may coincidentally share a radical without this being meaningful.
+
+The smallest category of characters is also the least understood.[38] In the postface to the Shuowen Jiezi, Xu Shen gave as an example the characters 考 kǎo "to verify" and 老 lǎo "old", which had similar Old Chinese pronunciations (*khuʔ and *C-ruʔ respectively[39]) and may once have been the same word, meaning "elderly person", but became lexicalized into two separate words. The term does not appear in the body of the dictionary, and is often omitted from modern systems.[40]
+
+According to legend, Chinese characters were invented by Cangjie, a bureaucrat under the legendary Yellow Emperor. Inspired by his study of the animals of the world, the landscape of the earth and the stars in the sky, Cangjie is said to have invented symbols called zì (字) – the first Chinese characters. The legend relates that on the day the characters were created, grain rained down from the sky and that night the people heard ghosts wailing and demons crying because the human beings could no longer be cheated.[41]
+
+In recent decades, a series of inscribed graphs and pictures have been found at Neolithic sites in China, including Jiahu (c. 6500 BC), Dadiwan and Damaidi from the 6th millennium BC, and Banpo (5th millennium BC).  Often these finds are accompanied by media reports that push back the purported beginnings of Chinese writing by thousands of years.[42][43] However, because these marks occur singly, without any implied context, and are made crudely and simply, Qiu Xigui concluded that "we do not have any basis for stating that these constituted writing nor is there reason to conclude that they were ancestral to Shang dynasty Chinese characters."[44] They do however demonstrate a history of sign use in the Yellow River valley during the Neolithic through to the Shang period.[43]
+
+The earliest confirmed evidence of the Chinese script yet discovered is the body of inscriptions carved on  bronze vessels and oracle bones from the late Shang dynasty (c. 1250–1050 BC).[45][46] The earliest of these is dated to around 1200 BC.[47][48] In 1899, pieces of these bones were being sold as "dragon bones" for medicinal purposes, when scholars identified the symbols on them as Chinese writing. By 1928, the source of the bones had been traced to a village near Anyang in Henan Province, which was excavated by the Academia Sinica between 1928 and 1937. Over 150,000 fragments have been found.[45]
+
+Oracle bone inscriptions are records of divinations performed in communication with royal ancestral spirits.[45] The shortest are only a few characters long, while the longest are thirty to forty characters in length. The Shang king would communicate with his ancestors on topics relating to the royal family, military success, weather forecasting, ritual sacrifices, and related topics by means of scapulimancy, and the answers would be recorded on the divination material itself.[45]
+
+The oracle-bone script is a well-developed writing system,[49][50] suggesting that the Chinese script's origins may lie earlier than the late second millennium BC.[51]  Although these divinatory inscriptions are the earliest surviving evidence of ancient Chinese writing, it is widely believed that writing was used for many other non-official purposes, but that the materials upon which non-divinatory writing was done – likely wood and bamboo – were less durable than bone and shell and have since decayed away.[51]
+
+The traditional picture of an orderly series of scripts, each one invented suddenly and then completely displacing the previous one, has been conclusively demonstrated to be fiction by the archaeological finds and scholarly research of the later 20th and early 21st centuries.[52] Gradual evolution and the coexistence of two or more scripts was more often the case. As early as the Shang dynasty, oracle-bone script coexisted as a simplified form alongside the normal script of bamboo books (preserved in typical bronze inscriptions), as well as the extra-elaborate pictorial forms (often clan emblems) found on many bronzes.
+
+Based on studies of these bronze inscriptions, it is clear that, from the Shang dynasty writing to that of the Western Zhou and early Eastern Zhou, the mainstream script evolved in a slow, unbroken fashion, until assuming the form that is now known as seal script in the late Eastern Zhou in the state of Qin, without any clear line of division.[53][54] Meanwhile, other scripts had evolved, especially in the eastern and southern areas during the late Zhou dynasty, including regional forms, such as the gǔwén ("ancient forms") of the eastern Warring States preserved as variant forms in the Han dynasty character dictionary Shuowen Jiezi, as well as decorative forms such as bird and insect scripts.
+
+Seal script, which had evolved slowly in the state of Qin during the Eastern Zhou dynasty, became standardized and adopted as the formal script for all of China in the Qin dynasty (leading to a popular misconception that it was invented at that time), and was still widely used for decorative engraving and seals (name chops, or signets) in the Han dynasty period. However, despite the Qin script standardization, more than one script remained in use at the time. For example, a little-known, rectilinear and roughly executed kind of common (vulgar) writing had for centuries coexisted with the more formal seal script in the Qin state, and the popularity of this vulgar writing grew as the use of writing itself became more widespread.[55] By the Warring States period, an immature form of clerical script called "early clerical" or "proto-clerical" had already developed in the state of Qin[56] based upon this vulgar writing, and with influence from seal script as well.[57] The coexistence of the three scripts – small seal, vulgar and proto-clerical, with the latter evolving gradually in the Qin to early Han dynasties into clerical script – runs counter to the traditional belief that the Qin dynasty had one script only, and that clerical script was suddenly invented in the early Han dynasty from the small seal script.
+
+Proto-clerical script, which had emerged by the time of the Warring States period from vulgar Qin writing, matured gradually, and by the early Western Han period, it was little different from that of the Qin.[58] Recently discovered bamboo slips show the script becoming mature clerical script by the middle-to-late reign of Emperor Wu of the Western Han,[59] who ruled from 141 to 87 BC.
+
+Contrary to the popular belief of there being only one script per period, there were in fact multiple scripts in use during the Han period.[60] Although mature clerical script, also called 八分 (bāfēn)[61] script, was dominant at that time, an early type of cursive script was also in use by the Han by at least as early as 24 BC (during the very late Western Han period),[b] incorporating cursive forms popular at the time, well as many elements from the vulgar writing of the Warring State of Qin.[62] By around the time of the Eastern Jin dynasty, this Han cursive became known as 章草 zhāngcǎo (also known as 隶草 / 隸草 lìcǎo today), or in English sometimes clerical cursive, ancient cursive, or draft cursive. Some believe that the name, based on 章 zhāng meaning "orderly", arose because the script was a more orderly form[63] of cursive than the modern form, which emerged during the Eastern Jin dynasty and is still in use today, called 今草 jīncǎo or "modern cursive".[64]
+
+Around the mid-Eastern Han period,[63] a simplified and easier-to-write form of clerical script appeared, which Qiu terms "neo-clerical" (新隶体 / 新隸體, xīnlìtǐ).[65] By the late Eastern Han, this had become the dominant daily script,[63] although the formal, mature bāfēn (八分) clerical script remained in use for formal works such as engraved stelae.[63] Qiu describes this neo-clerical script as a transition between clerical and regular script,[63] and it remained in use through the Cao Wei and Jin dynasties.[66]
+
+By the late Eastern Han period, an early form of semi-cursive script appeared,[65] developing out of a cursively written form of neo-clerical script[c] and simple cursive.[67] This semi-cursive script was traditionally attributed to Liu Desheng c. 147–188 AD,[66][d] although such attributions refer to early masters of a script rather than to their actual inventors, since the scripts generally evolved into being over time. Qiu gives examples of early semi-cursive script, showing that it had popular origins rather than being purely Liu's invention.[68]
+
+Regular script has been attributed to Zhong Yao (c. 151–230 AD), during the period at the end of the Han dynasty in the state of Cao Wei. Zhong Yao has been called the "father of regular script". However, some scholars[69] postulate that one person alone could not have developed a new script which was universally adopted, but could only have been a contributor to its gradual formation. The earliest surviving pieces written in regular script are copies of Zhong Yao's works, including at least one copied by Wang Xizhi. This new script, which is the dominant modern Chinese script, developed out of a neatly written form of early semi-cursive, with addition of the pause (顿/頓 dùn) technique to end horizontal strokes, plus heavy tails on strokes which are written to the downward-right diagonal.[70] Thus, early regular script emerged from a neat, formal form of semi-cursive,  which had itself emerged from neo-clerical (a simplified, convenient form of clerical script). It then matured further in the Eastern Jin dynasty in the hands of the "Sage of Calligraphy", Wang Xizhi, and his son Wang Xianzhi. It was not, however, in widespread use at that time, and most writers continued using neo-clerical, or a somewhat semi-cursive form of it, for daily writing,[70] while the conservative bafen clerical script remained in use on some stelae, alongside some semi-cursive, but primarily neo-clerical.[71]
+
+Meanwhile, modern cursive script slowly emerged from the clerical cursive (zhāngcǎo) script during the Cao Wei to Jin period, under the influence of both semi-cursive and the newly emerged regular script.[72] Cursive was formalized in the hands of a few master calligraphers, the most famous and influential of whom was Wang Xizhi.[e]
+
+It was not until the Northern and Southern dynasties that regular script rose to dominant status.[73] During that period, regular script continued evolving stylistically, reaching full maturity in the early Tang dynasty. Some call the writing of the early Tang calligrapher Ouyang Xun (557–641) the first mature regular script. After this point, although developments in the art of calligraphy and in character simplification still lay ahead, there were no more major stages of evolution for the mainstream script.
+
+Although most of the simplified Chinese characters in use today are the result of the works moderated by the government of the People's Republic of China in the 1950s and 60s, character simplification predates the republic's formation in 1949.
+One of the earliest proponents of character simplification was Lufei Kui, who proposed in 1909 that simplified characters should be used in education. In the years following the May Fourth Movement in 1919, many anti-imperialist Chinese intellectuals sought ways to modernise China. In the 1930s and 1940s, discussions on character simplification took place within the Kuomintang government, and many Chinese intellectuals and writers have long maintained that character simplification would help boost literacy in China. In many world languages, literacy has been promoted as a justification for spelling reforms. The People's Republic of China issued its first round of official character simplifications in two documents, the first in 1956 and the second in 1964. In the 1950s and 1960s, while confusion about simplified characters was still rampant, transitional characters that mixed simplified parts with yet-to-be simplified parts of characters together appeared briefly, then disappeared.
+
+"Han unification" was an effort by the authors of Unicode and the Universal Character Set to map multiple character sets of the so-called CJK languages (Chinese/Japanese/Korean) into a single set of unified characters and was completed for the purposes of Unicode in 1991 (Unicode 1.0).
+
+Apart from Chinese ones, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese normative medium of record-keeping, written historical narratives and official communication are in adaptations and variations of Chinese script.[74]
+
+The Chinese script spread to Korea together with Buddhism from the 2nd century BC to 5th century AD (hanja).[75] This was adopted for recording the Japanese language from the 5th century AD.[f]
+
+Chinese characters were first used in Vietnam during the millennium of Chinese rule starting in 111 BC. They were used to write Classical Chinese and adapted around the 13th century to create the Nôm script to write Vietnamese.
+
+Currently, the only non-Chinese language outside of China that regularly uses the Chinese script is Japanese. Vietnam abandoned their use in the early 20th century in favour of a Latin-based script, and Korea in the late 20th century in favour of its homegrown hangul script, although as Korea switched much more recently, many Koreans still learn them to read texts written before then, or in some cases to disambiguate homophones.[citation needed]
+
+Chinese characters adapted to write Japanese words are known as kanji. Chinese words borrowed into Japanese could be written with Chinese characters, while native Japanese words could also be written using the character(s) for a Chinese word of similar meaning. Most kanji have both the native (and often multi-syllabic) Japanese pronunciation, known as kun'yomi, and the (mono-syllabic) Chinese-based pronunciation, known as on'yomi. For example, the native Japanese word katana is written as 刀 in kanji, which uses the native pronunciation since the word is native to Japanese, while the Chinese loanword nihontō (meaning "Japanese sword") is written as 日本刀, which uses the Chinese-based pronunciation. While nowadays loanwords from non-Sinosphere languages are usually just written in katakana, one of the two syllabary systems of Japanese, loanwords that were borrowed into Japanese before the Meiji Period were typically written with Chinese characters whose on'yomi had the same pronunciation as the loanword itself, words like Amerika (kanji: 亜米利加, katakana: アメリカ, meaning: America), karuta (kanji: 歌留多, 加留多, katakana: カルタ, meaning: card, letter), and tenpura (kanji: 天婦羅, 天麩羅, katakana: テンプラ, meaning: tempura), although the meanings of the characters used often had no relation to the words themselves. Only some of the old kanji spellings are in common use, like kan (缶, meaning: can). Kanji that are used to only represent the sounds of a word are called ateji (当て字).
+Because Chinese words have been borrowed from varying dialects at different times, a single character may have several on'yomi in Japanese.[76]
+
+Written Japanese also includes a pair of syllabaries known as kana, derived by simplifying Chinese characters selected to represent syllables of Japanese.
+The syllabaries differ because they sometimes selected different characters for a syllable, and because they used different strategies to reduce these characters for easy writing: the angular katakana were obtained by selecting a part of each character, while hiragana were derived from the cursive forms of whole characters.[77]
+Modern Japanese writing uses a composite system, using kanji for word stems, hiragana for inflectional endings and grammatical words, and katakana to transcribe non-Chinese loanwords as well as serve as a method to emphasize native words (similar to how italics are used in Latin-script languages).[78]
+
+In times past, until the 15th century, in Korea, Literary Chinese was the dominant form of written communication prior to the creation of hangul, the Korean alphabet. Much of the vocabulary, especially in the realms of science and sociology, comes directly from Chinese, comparable to Latin or Greek root words in European languages. However, due to the lack of tones in Modern Standard Korean,[79]  as the words were imported from Chinese, many dissimilar characters and syllables took on identical pronunciations, and subsequently identical spelling in hangul.[citation needed]  Chinese characters are sometimes used to this day for either clarification in a practical manner, or to give a distinguished appearance, as knowledge of Chinese characters is considered by many Koreans a high class attribute and an indispensable part of a classical education.[citation needed] It is also observed that the preference for Chinese characters is treated as being conservative and Confucian.
+
+In South Korea, hanja have become a politically contentious issue, with some urging a "purification" of the national language and culture by  abandoning their use. Efforts to re-extend Hanja education to elementary schools in the 2015 were met with generally negative reaction from the public and from teachers' organizations.[80]
+
+In South Korea, educational policy on characters has swung back and forth, often swayed by education ministers' personal opinions. At present, middle and high school students (grades 7 to 12) are taught 1,800 characters,[81] albeit with the principal focus on recognition, with the aim of achieving newspaper literacy.
+
+There is a clear trend toward the exclusive use of hangul in day-to-day South Korean society. Hanja are still used to some extent, particularly in newspapers, weddings, place names and calligraphy (although it is nowhere near the extent of kanji use in day-to-day Japanese society). Hanja is also extensively used in situations where ambiguity must be avoided,[citation needed] such as academic papers, high-level corporate reports, government documents, and newspapers; this is due to the large number of homonyms that have resulted from extensive borrowing of Chinese words.
+
+The issue of ambiguity is the main hurdle in any effort to "cleanse" the Korean language of Chinese characters.[citation needed] Characters convey meaning visually, while alphabets convey guidance to pronunciation, which in turn hints at meaning. As an example, in Korean dictionaries, the phonetic entry for 기사 gisa yields more than 30 different entries. In the past, this ambiguity had been efficiently resolved by parenthetically displaying the associated hanja. While hanja is sometimes used for Sino-Korean vocabulary, native Korean words are rarely, if ever, written in hanja.
+
+When learning how to write hanja, students are taught to memorize the native Korean pronunciation for the hanja's meaning and the Sino-Korean pronunciations (the pronunciation based on the Chinese pronunciation of the characters) for each hanja respectively so that students know what the syllable and meaning is for a particular hanja. For example, the name for the hanja 水 is 물 수 (mul-su) in which 물 (mul) is the native Korean pronunciation for "water", while 수 (su) is the Sino-Korean pronunciation of the character. The naming of hanja is similar to if "water" were named "water-aqua", "horse-equus", or "gold-aurum" based on a hybridization of both the English and the Latin names. Other examples include 사람 인 (saram-in) for 人 "person/people", 큰 대 (keun-dae) for 大 "big/large//great", 작을 소 (jakeul-so) for 小 "small/little", 아래 하 (arae-ha) for 下 "underneath/below/low", 아비 부 (abi-bu) for 父 "father", and 나라이름 한 (naraireum-han) for 韓 "Han/Korea".[82]
+
+In North Korea, the hanja system was once completely banned since June 1949 due to fears of collapsed containment of the country; during the 1950s, Kim Il Sung had condemned all sorts of foreign languages (even the newly proposed New Korean Orthography). The ban continued into the 21st century. However, a textbook for university history departments containing 3,323 distinct characters was published in 1971.  In the 1990s, school children were still expected to learn 2,000 characters (more than in South Korea or Japan).[83]
+
+After Kim Jong Il, the second ruler of North Korea, died in December 2011, Kim Jong Un stepped up and began mandating the use of Hanja as a source of definition for the Korean language. Currently, it is said that North Korea teaches around 3,000 Hanja characters to North Korean students, and in some cases, the characters appear within advertisements and newspapers. However, it is also said that the authorities implore students not to use the characters in public.[84] Due to North Korea's strict isolationism, accurate reports about hanja use in North Korea are hard to obtain.
+
+Chinese characters are thought to have been first introduced to the Ryukyu Islands in 1265 by a Japanese Buddhist monk.[85] After the Okinawan kingdoms became tributaries of Ming China, especially the Ryukyu Kingdom, Classical Chinese was used in court documents, but hiragana was mostly used for popular writing and poetry. After Ryukyu became a vassal of Japan's Satsuma Domain, Chinese characters became more popular, as well as the use of Kanbun. In modern Okinawan, which is labeled as a Japanese dialect by the Japanese government, katakana and hiragana are mostly used to write Okinawan, but Chinese characters are still used.
+
+Although Chinese characters in Vietnam are now limited to ceremonial uses, they were once in widespread use. Until the early 20th century, Literary Chinese was used in Vietnam for all official and scholarly writing. Around the 13th century, the Nôm script was developed to record folk literature in the Vietnamese language. The script used Chinese characters to represent both borrowed Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary and native words with similar pronunciation or meaning. In addition, thousands of new compound characters were created to write Vietnamese words. This process resulted in a highly complex system that was never mastered by more than 5% of the population.[86] Both Literary Chinese and Nôm were replaced in the early 20th century by Vietnamese written with the Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet.[87][88]
+
+Several minority languages of south and southwest China were formerly written with scripts based on Hanzi but also including many locally created characters.
+The most extensive is the sawndip script for the Zhuang language of Guangxi which is still used to this day.
+Other languages written with such scripts include Miao, Yao, Bouyei, Mulam, Kam, Bai and Hani.[89] All these languages are now officially written using Latin-based scripts, while Chinese characters are still used for the Mulam language.[citation needed] Even today for Zhuang, according to survey, the traditional sawndip script has twice as many users as the official Latin script.[90]
+
+The foreign dynasties that ruled northern China between the 10th and 13th centuries developed scripts that were inspired by Hanzi but did not use them directly: the Khitan large script, Khitan small script, Tangut script and Jurchen script.
+Other scripts in China that borrowed or adapted a few Chinese characters but are otherwise distinct include Geba script, Sui script, Yi script and the Lisu syllabary.[89]
+
+Along with Persian and Arabic, Chinese characters were also used as a foreign script to write the Mongolian language, where characters were used to phonetically transcribe Mongolian sounds. Most notably, the only surviving copies of The Secret History of the Mongols were written in such a manner; the Chinese characters 忙豁侖紐察 脫[卜]察安 is the rendering of Mongγol-un niγuca tobčiyan, the title in Mongolian.
+
+Hanzi was also used to phonetically transcribe the Manchu language in the Qing dynasty.
+
+According to the Rev. John Gulick:  "The inhabitants of other Asiatic nations, who have had occasion to represent the words of their several languages by Chinese characters, have as a rule used unaspirated characters for the sounds, g, d, b. The Muslims from Arabia and Persia have followed this method … The Mongols, Manchu, and Japanese also constantly select unaspirated characters to represent the sounds g, d, b, and j of their languages. These surrounding Asiatic nations, in writing Chinese words in their own alphabets, have uniformly used g, d, b, etc., to represent the unaspirated sounds."[91]
+
+Chinese character simplification is the overall reduction of the number of strokes in the regular script of a set of Chinese characters.
+
+The use of traditional Chinese characters versus simplified Chinese characters varies greatly, and can depend on both the local customs and the medium. Before the official reform, character simplifications were not officially sanctioned and generally adopted vulgar variants and idiosyncratic substitutions. Orthodox variants were mandatory in printed works, while the (unofficial) simplified characters would be used in everyday writing or quick notes. Since the 1950s, and especially with the publication of the 1964 list, the People's Republic of China has officially adopted simplified Chinese characters for use in mainland China, while Hong Kong, Macau, and the Republic of China (Taiwan) were not affected by the reform. There is no absolute rule for using either system, and often it is determined by what the target audience understands, as well as the upbringing of the writer.
+
+Although most often associated with the People's Republic of China, character simplification predates the 1949 communist victory. Caoshu, cursive written text, almost always includes character simplification, and simplified forms have always existed in print, albeit not for the most formal works. In the 1930s and 1940s, discussions on character simplification took place within the Kuomintang government, and a large number of Chinese intellectuals and writers have long maintained that character simplification would help boost literacy in China. Indeed, this desire by the Kuomintang to simplify the Chinese writing system (inherited and implemented by the Communist Party of China) also nursed aspirations of some for the adoption of a phonetic script based on the Latin script, and spawned such inventions as the Gwoyeu Romatzyh.
+
+The People's Republic of China issued its first round of official character simplifications in two documents, the first in 1956 and the second in 1964. A second round of character simplifications (known as erjian, or "second round simplified characters") was promulgated in 1977. It was poorly received, and in 1986 the authorities rescinded the second round completely, while making six revisions to the 1964 list, including the restoration of three traditional characters that had been simplified: 叠 dié, 覆 fù, 像 xiàng.
+
+The majority of simplified characters are drawn from conventional abbreviated forms, or ancient standard forms.[92] For example, the orthodox character 來 lái ("come") was written with the structure 来 in the clerical script (隶书 / 隸書, lìshū) of the Han dynasty. This clerical form uses one fewer stroke, and was thus adopted as a simplified form. The character 雲 yún ("cloud") was written with the structure 云 in the oracle bone script of the Shang dynasty, and had remained in use later as a phonetic loan in the meaning of "to say" while the 雨 radical was added to differentiate meanings. The simplified form adopts the original structure.
+
+In the years after World War II, the Japanese government also instituted a series of orthographic reforms. Some characters were given simplified forms called shinjitai (新字体, lit. "new character forms"); the older forms were then labelled the kyūjitai (旧字体, lit. "old character forms"). The number of characters in common use was restricted, and formal lists of characters to be learned during each grade of school were established, first the 1850-character tōyō kanji (当用漢字) list in 1945, the 1945-character jōyō kanji (常用漢字) list in 1981, and a 2136-character reformed version of the jōyō kanji in 2010. Many variant forms of characters and obscure alternatives for common characters were officially discouraged. This was done with the goal of facilitating learning for children and simplifying kanji use in literature and periodicals. These are simply guidelines, hence many characters outside these standards are still widely known and commonly used, especially those used for personal and place names (for the latter, see jinmeiyō kanji),[citation needed] as well as for some common words such as "dragon" (竜/龍, tatsu) in which both old and new forms of the character are both acceptable and widely known amongst native Japanese speakers.
+
+Singapore underwent three successive rounds of character simplification. These resulted in some simplifications that differed from those used in mainland China. It ultimately adopted the reforms of the People's Republic of China in their entirety as official, and has implemented them in the educational system. However, unlike in China, personal names may still be registered in traditional characters.
+
+Malaysia started teaching a set of simplified characters at schools in 1981, which were also completely identical to the Mainland China simplifications. Chinese newspapers in Malaysia are published in either set of characters, typically with the headlines in traditional Chinese while the body is in simplified Chinese.
+
+Although in both countries the use of simplified characters is universal among the younger Chinese generation, a large majority of the older Chinese literate generation still use the traditional characters. Chinese shop signs are also generally written in traditional characters.
+
+In the Philippines, most Chinese schools and businesses still use the traditional characters and bopomofo, owing from influence from the Republic of China (Taiwan) due to the shared Hokkien heritage. Recently, however, more Chinese schools now use both simplified characters and pinyin. Since most readers of Chinese newspapers in the Philippines belong to the older generation, they are still published largely using traditional characters.
+
+Public and private Chinese signage in the United States and Canada most often use traditional characters.[93] There is some effort to get municipal governments to implement more simplified character signage due to recent immigration from mainland China.[94] Most community newspapers printed in North America are also printed in traditional characters.
+
+The following is a comparison of Chinese characters in the Standard Form of National Characters, a common traditional Chinese standard used in Taiwan, the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters, the standard for Mainland Chinese jiantizi (simplified), and the jōyō kanji, the standard for Japanese kanji. Generally, the jōyō kanji are more similar to fantizi (traditional) than jiantizi  are to fantizi. "Simplified" refers to having significant differences from the Taiwan standard, not necessarily being a newly created character or a newly performed substitution. The characters in the Hong Kong standard and the Kangxi Dictionary are also known as "Traditional," but are not shown.
+
+There are numerous styles, or scripts, in which Chinese characters can be written, deriving from various calligraphic and historical models. Most of these originated in China and are now common, with minor variations, in all countries where Chinese characters are used.
+
+The Shang dynasty oracle bone script and the Zhou dynasty scripts found on Chinese bronze inscriptions are no longer used; the oldest script that is still in use today is the Seal Script (篆書(篆书), zhuànshū). It evolved organically out of the Spring and Autumn period Zhou script, and was adopted in a standardized form under the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. The seal script, as the name suggests, is now used only in artistic seals. Few people are still able to read it effortlessly today, although the art of carving a traditional seal in the script remains alive; some calligraphers also work in this style.
+
+Scripts that are still used regularly are the "Clerical Script" (隸書(隶书), lìshū) of the Qin dynasty to the Han dynasty, the Weibei (魏碑, wèibēi), the "Regular Script" (楷書(楷书), kǎishū), which is used mostly for printing, and the "Semi-cursive Script" (行書(行书), xíngshū), used mostly for handwriting.
+
+The cursive script (草書(草书), cǎoshū, literally "grass script") is used informally. The basic character shapes are suggested, rather than explicitly realized, and the abbreviations are sometimes extreme. Despite being cursive to the point where individual strokes are no longer differentiable and the characters often illegible to the untrained eye, this script (also known as draft) is highly revered for the beauty and freedom that it embodies. Some of the simplified Chinese characters adopted by the People's Republic of China, and some simplified characters used in Japan, are derived from the cursive script. The Japanese hiragana script is also derived from this script.
+
+There also exist scripts created outside China, such as the Japanese Edomoji styles; these have tended to remain restricted to their countries of origin, rather than spreading to other countries like the Chinese scripts.
+
+The art of writing Chinese characters is called Chinese calligraphy. It is usually done with ink brushes. In ancient China, Chinese calligraphy is one of the Four Arts of the Chinese Scholars. There is a minimalist set of rules of Chinese calligraphy. Every character from the Chinese scripts is built into a uniform shape by means of assigning it a geometric area in which the character must occur. Each character has a set number of brushstrokes; none must be added or taken away from the character to enhance it visually, lest the meaning be lost. Finally, strict regularity is not required, meaning the strokes may be accentuated for dramatic effect of individual style. Calligraphy was the means by which scholars could mark their thoughts and teachings for immortality, and as such, represent some of the most precious treasures that can be found from ancient China.
+
+There are three major families of typefaces used in Chinese typography:
+
+Ming and sans-serif are the most popular in body text and are based on regular script for Chinese characters akin to Western serif and sans-serif typefaces, respectively. Regular script typefaces emulate regular script.
+
+The Song typeface (宋体 / 宋體, sòngtǐ) is known as the Ming typeface (明朝, minchō) in Japan, and it is also somewhat more commonly known as the Ming typeface (明体 / 明體, míngtǐ) than the Song typeface in Taiwan and Hong Kong. The names of these styles come from the Song and Ming dynasties, when block printing flourished in China.
+
+Sans-serif typefaces, called black typeface (黑体 / 黑體, hēitǐ) in Chinese and Gothic typeface (ゴシック体) in Japanese, are characterized by simple lines of even thickness for each stroke, akin to sans-serif styles such as Arial and Helvetica in Western typography.
+
+Regular script typefaces are also commonly used, but not as common as Ming or sans-serif typefaces for body text. Regular script typefaces are often used to teach students Chinese characters, and often aim to match the standard forms of the region where they are meant to be used. Most typefaces in the Song dynasty were regular script typefaces which resembled a particular person's handwriting (e.g. the handwriting of Ouyang Xun, Yan Zhenqing, or Liu Gongquan), while most modern regular script typefaces tend toward anonymity and regularity.
+
+Just as Roman letters have a characteristic shape (lower-case letters mostly occupying the x-height, with ascenders or descenders on some letters), Chinese characters occupy a more or less square area in which the components of every character are written to fit in order to maintain a uniform size and shape, especially with small printed characters in Ming and sans-serif styles. Because of this, beginners often practise writing on squared graph paper, and the Chinese sometimes use the term "Square-Block Characters" (方块字 / 方塊字, fāngkuàizì), sometimes translated as tetragraph,[95] in reference to Chinese characters.
+
+Despite standardization, some nonstandard forms are commonly used, especially in handwriting. In older sources, even authoritative ones, variant characters are commonplace. For example, in the preface to the Imperial Dictionary, there are 30 variant characters which are not found in the dictionary itself.[96] A few of these are reproduced at right.
+
+The nature of Chinese characters makes it very easy to produce allographs (variants) for many characters, and there have been many efforts at orthographical standardization throughout history. In recent times, the widespread usage of the characters in several nations has prevented any particular system becoming universally adopted and the standard form of many Chinese characters thus varies in different regions.
+
+Mainland China adopted simplified Chinese characters in 1956. They are also used in Singapore and Malaysia. Traditional Chinese characters are used in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Postwar Japan has used its own less drastically simplified characters, Shinjitai, since 1946, while South Korea has limited its use of Chinese characters, and Vietnam and North Korea have completely abolished their use in favour of Vietnamese alphabet and Hangul, respectively.
+
+The standard character forms of each region are described in:
+
+In addition to strictness in character size and shape, Chinese characters are written with very precise rules. The most important rules regard the strokes employed, stroke placement, and stroke order. Just as each region that uses Chinese characters has standardized character forms, each also has standardized stroke orders, with each standard being different. Most characters can be written with just one correct stroke order, though some words also have many valid stroke orders, which may occasionally result in different stroke counts. Some characters are also written with different stroke orders due to character simplification.
+
+Chinese characters are primarily morphosyllabic, meaning that most Chinese morphemes are monosyllabic and are written with a single character, though in modern Chinese most words are disyllabic and dimorphemic, consisting of two syllables, each of which is a morpheme. In modern Chinese 10% of morphemes only occur as part of a given compound. However, a few morphemes are disyllabic, some of them dating back to Classical Chinese.[97] Excluding foreign loan words, these are typically words for plants and small animals. They are usually written with a pair of phono-semantic compound characters sharing a common radical. Examples are 蝴蝶 húdié "butterfly" and 珊瑚 shānhú "coral". Note that the 蝴 hú of húdié and the 瑚 hú of shānhú have the same phonetic, 胡, but different radicals ("insect" and "jade", respectively). Neither exists as an independent morpheme except as a poetic abbreviation of the disyllabic word.
+
+In certain cases compound words and set phrases may be contracted into single characters. Some of these can be considered logograms, where characters represent whole words rather than syllable-morphemes, though these are generally instead considered ligatures or abbreviations (similar to scribal abbreviations, such as & for "et"), and as non-standard. These do see use, particularly in handwriting or decoration, but also in some cases in print. In Chinese, these ligatures are called héwén (合文), héshū (合書) or hétǐzì (合体字), and in the special case of combining two characters, these are known as "two-syllable Chinese characters" (双音节汉字, 雙音節漢字).
+
+A commonly seen example is the double happiness symbol 囍, formed as a ligature of 喜喜 and referred to by its disyllabic name (simplified Chinese: 双喜; traditional Chinese: 雙喜; pinyin: shuāngxǐ). In handwriting, numbers are very frequently squeezed into one space or combined – common ligatures include 廿 niàn, "twenty", normally read as 二十 èrshí, 卅 sà, "thirty", normally read as 三十 sānshí, and 卌 xì "forty", normally read as 四十 "sìshí". Calendars often use numeral ligatures in order to save space;  for example, the "21st of March" can be read as 三月廿一. In some cases counters are also merged into one character, such as 七十人 qīshí rén "seventy people".[clarification needed] Another common abbreviation is 门 with a "T" written inside it, for 問題, 问题, wèntí ("question; problem"), where the "T" is from pinyin for the second syllable tí 题.[9] Since polysyllabic characters are often non-standard, they are often excluded in character dictionaries.
+
+Modern examples particularly include Chinese characters for SI units. In Chinese these units are disyllabic and standardly written with two characters, as 厘米 límǐ "centimeter" (厘 centi-, 米 meter) or 千瓦 qiānwǎ "kilowatt". However, in the 19th century these were often written via compound characters, pronounced disyllabically, such as 瓩 for 千瓦 or 糎 for 厘米 – some of these characters were also used in Japan, where they were pronounced with borrowed European readings instead. These have now fallen out of general use, but are occasionally seen. Less systematic examples include 圕 túshūguǎn "library", a contraction of 圖書館,[98][99]
+
+The use of such contractions is as old as Chinese characters themselves, and they have frequently been found in religious or ritual use. In the Oracle Bone script, personal names, ritual items, and even phrases such as 受又(祐) shòu yòu "receive blessings" are commonly contracted into single characters. A dramatic example is that in medieval manuscripts 菩薩 púsà "bodhisattva" (simplified: 菩萨) is sometimes written with a single character formed of a 2×2 grid of four 十 (derived from the grass radical over two 十).[9] However, for the sake of consistency and standardization, the CPC seeks to limit the use of such polysyllabic characters in public writing to ensure that every character only has one syllable.[100]
+
+Conversely, with the fusion of the diminutive -er suffix in Mandarin, some monosyllabic words may even be written with two characters, as in 花儿 huār "flower", which was formerly disyllabic.
+
+In most other languages that use the Chinese family of scripts, notably Korean, Vietnamese, and Zhuang, Chinese characters are typically monosyllabic, but in Japanese a single character is generally used to represent a borrowed monosyllabic Chinese morpheme (the on'yomi), a polysyllabic native Japanese morpheme (the kun'yomi), or even (in rare cases) a foreign loanword. These uses are completely standard and unexceptional.
+
+Often a character not commonly used (a "rare" or "variant" character) will appear in a personal or place name in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese (see Chinese name, Japanese name, Korean name, and Vietnamese name, respectively). This has caused problems as many computer encoding systems include only the most common characters and exclude the less often used characters. This is especially a problem for personal names which often contain rare or classical, antiquated characters.
+
+One man who has encountered this problem is Taiwanese politician Yu Shyi-kun, due to the rarity of the last character in his name. Newspapers have dealt with this problem in varying ways, including using software to combine two existing, similar characters, including a picture of the personality, or, especially as is the case with Yu Shyi-kun, simply substituting a homophone for the rare character in the hope that the reader would be able to make the correct inference. Taiwanese political posters, movie posters etc. will often add the bopomofo phonetic symbols next to such a character. Japanese newspapers may render such names and words in katakana instead, and it is accepted practice for people to write names for which they are unsure of the correct kanji in katakana instead.
+
+There are also some extremely complex characters which have understandably become rather rare. According to Joël Bellassen (1989), the most complex Chinese character is /𪚥 (U+2A6A5) zhé listen (help·info), meaning "verbose" and containing sixty-four strokes; this character fell from use around the 5th century. It might be argued, however, that while containing the most strokes, it is not necessarily the most complex character (in terms of difficulty), as it simply requires writing the same sixteen-stroke character 龍 lóng (lit. "dragon") four times in the space for one. Another 64-stroke character is /𠔻 (U+2053B) zhèng composed of 興 xīng/xìng (lit. "flourish") four times.
+
+One of the most complex characters found in modern Chinese dictionaries[g] is 齉 (U+9F49) (nàng, listen (help·info), pictured below, middle image), meaning "snuffle" (that is, a pronunciation marred by a blocked nose), with "just" thirty-six strokes. Another stroke-rich characters are 靐 (bìng), with 39 strokes and 䨻 (bèng), with 52 strokes, meaning the loud noise thunder. However, these are not in common use. The most complex character that can be input using the Microsoft New Phonetic IME 2002a for traditional Chinese is 龘 (dá, "the appearance of a dragon flying"). It is composed of the dragon radical represented three times, for a total of 16 × 3 = 48 strokes. Among the most complex characters in modern dictionaries and also in frequent modern use are 籲 (yù, "to implore"), with 32 strokes; 鬱 (yù, "luxuriant, lush; gloomy"), with 29 strokes, as in 憂鬱 (yōuyù, "depressed"); 豔 (yàn, "colorful"), with 28 strokes; and 釁 (xìn, "quarrel"), with 25 strokes, as in 挑釁 (tiǎoxìn, "to pick a fight"). Also in occasional modern use is 鱻 (xiān "fresh"; variant of 鮮 xiān) with 33 strokes.
+
+In Japanese, an 84-stroke kokuji exists: , normally read taito. It is composed of triple "cloud" character (䨺) on top of the abovementioned triple "dragon" character (龘). Also meaning "the appearance of a dragon in flight", it has been pronounced おとど otodo, たいと taito, and だいと daito.[101] The most elaborate character in the jōyō kanji list is the 29-stroke 鬱, meaning "depression" or "melancholy".
+
+The most complex Chinese character still in use may be[according to whom?] /𰻞 (U+30EDE) (biáng, pictured right, bottom), with 58 strokes, which refers to biangbiang noodles, a type of noodle from China's Shaanxi province. This character along with the syllable biáng cannot be found in dictionaries. The fact that it represents a syllable that does not exist in any Standard Chinese word means that it could be classified as a dialectal character.
+
+Zhé, "verbose"
+
+Zhèng (unknown meaning)
+
+Nàng, "poor enunciation due to snuffle"
+
+Taito, "the appearance of a dragon in flight"
+
+alternative form of Taito
+
+Biáng, a kind of noodle in Shaanxi
+
+The total number of Chinese characters from past to present remains unknowable because new ones are being developed all the time – for instance, brands may create new characters when none of the existing ones allow for the intended meaning – or they have been invented by whoever wrote them and have never been adopted as official characters. Chinese characters are theoretically an open set and anyone can create new characters, though such inventions are rarely included in official character sets.[102] The number of entries in major Chinese dictionaries is the best means of estimating the historical growth of character inventory.
+
+Even the Zhonghua Zihai does not include characters in the Chinese family of scripts created to represent non-Chinese languages, except the unique characters in use in Japan and Korea. Characters formed by Chinese principles in other languages include the roughly 1,500 Japanese-made kokuji given in the Kokuji no Jiten,[116] the Korean-made gukja, the over 10,000 Sawndip characters still in use in Guangxi, and the almost 20,000 Nôm characters formerly used in Vietnam.[citation needed] More divergent descendants of Chinese script include Tangut script, which created over 5,000 characters with similar strokes but different formation principles to Chinese characters.
+
+Modified radicals and new variants are two common reasons for the ever-increasing number of characters. There are about 300 radicals and 100 are in common use. Creating a new character by modifying the radical is an easy way to disambiguate homographs among xíngshēngzì pictophonetic compounds. This practice began long before the standardization of Chinese script by Qin Shi Huang and continues to the present day. The traditional 3rd-person pronoun tā (他 "he, she, it"), which is written with the "person radical", illustrates modifying significs to form new characters. In modern usage, there is a graphic distinction between tā (她 "she") with the "woman radical", tā (牠 "it") with the "animal radical", tā (它 "it") with the "roof radical", and tā (祂 "He") with the "deity radical", One consequence of modifying radicals is the fossilization of rare and obscure variant logographs, some of which are not even used in Classical Chinese. For instance, he 和  "harmony, peace", which combines the "grain radical" with the "mouth radical", has infrequent variants 咊 with the radicals reversed and 龢 with the "flute radical".
+
+Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words, as the majority of modern Chinese words, unlike their Old Chinese and Middle Chinese counterparts, are written with two or more characters, each character representing one syllable and/or morpheme. Knowing the meanings of the individual characters of a word will often allow the general meaning of the word to be inferred, but this is not always the case.
+
+Studies in China have shown that literate individuals know and use between 3,000 and 4,000 characters.  Specialists in classical literature or history, who would often encounter characters no longer in use, are estimated to have a working vocabulary of between 5,000 and 6,000 characters.[6]
+
+In China, which uses simplified Chinese characters, the Xiàndài Hànyǔ Chángyòng Zìbiǎo (现代汉语常用字表, Chart of Common Characters of Modern Chinese) lists 2,500 common characters and 1,000 less-than-common characters, while the Xiàndài Hànyǔ Tōngyòng Zìbiǎo (现代汉语通用字表, Chart of Generally Utilized Characters of Modern Chinese) lists 7,000 characters, including the 3,500 characters already listed above. GB2312, an early version of the national encoding standard used in the People's Republic of China, has 6,763 code points. GB18030, the modern, mandatory standard, has a much higher number. The New Hànyǔ Shuǐpíng Kǎoshì (汉语水平考试, Chinese Proficiency Test) covers approximately 2,600 characters at its highest level (level six).[118]
+
+In Taiwan, which uses traditional Chinese characters, the Ministry of Education's Chángyòng Guózì Biāozhǔn Zìtǐ Biǎo (常用國字標準字體表, Chart of Standard Forms of Common National Characters) lists 4,808 characters; the Cì Chángyòng Guózì Biāozhǔn Zìtǐ Biǎo (次常用國字標準字體表, Chart of Standard Forms of Less-Than-Common National Characters) lists another 6,341 characters. The Chinese Standard Interchange Code (CNS11643)—the official national encoding standard—supports 48,027 characters, while the most widely used encoding scheme, BIG-5, supports only 13,053.
+
+In Hong Kong, which uses traditional Chinese characters, the Education and Manpower Bureau's Soengjung Zi Zijing Biu (常用字字形表), intended for use in elementary and junior secondary education, lists a total of 4,759 characters.
+
+In addition, there are a number of dialect characters (方言字) that are not generally used in formal written Chinese but represent colloquial terms in nonstandard varieties of Chinese.  In general, it is common practice to use standard characters to transcribe Chinese dialects when obvious cognates with words in Standard Mandarin exist.  However, when no obvious cognate could be found for a word, due to factors like irregular sound change or semantic drift in the meanings of characters, or the word originates from a non-Chinese source like a substratum from an earlier displaced language or a later borrowing from another language family, then characters are borrowed and used according to the rebus principle or invented in an ad hoc manner to transcribe it.  These new characters are generally phonosemantic compounds (e.g., 侬, 'person' in Min), although a few are compound ideographs (e.g., 孬, 'bad', in Northeast Mandarin). Except in the case of Written Cantonese, there is no official orthography, and there may be several ways to write a dialectal word, often one that is etymologically correct and one or several that are based on the current pronunciation (e.g., 触祭 (etymological) vs. 戳鸡 (phonetic), 'eat' (low-register) in Shanghainese).  Speakers of a dialect will generally recognize a dialectal word if it is transcribed according to phonetic considerations, while the etymologically correct form may be more difficult or impossible to recognize.  For example, few Gan speakers would recognize the character meaning 'to lean' in their dialect, because this character (隑) has become archaic in Standard Mandarin. The historically "correct" transcription is often so obscure that it is uncovered only after considerable scholarly research into philology and historical phonology and may be disputed by other researchers.
+
+As an exception, Written Cantonese is in widespread use in Hong Kong, even for certain formal documents, due to the former British colonial administration's recognition of Cantonese for use for official purposes. In Taiwan, there is also a body of semi-official characters used to represent Taiwanese Hokkien and Hakka.  For example, the vernacular character 㓾, pronounced cii11 in Hakka, means "to kill".[119] Other varieties of Chinese with a significant number of speakers, like Shanghainese Wu, Gan Chinese, and Sichuanese, also have their own series of characters, but these are not often seen, except on advertising billboards directed toward locals and are not used in formal settings except to give precise transcriptions of witness statements in legal proceedings.  Written Standard Mandarin is the preference for all mainland regions.
+
+In Japanese there are 2,136 jōyō kanji (常用漢字, lit. "frequently used Chinese characters") designated by the Japanese Ministry of Education; these are taught during primary and secondary school. The list is a recommendation, not a restriction, and many characters missing from it are still in common use.[120]
+
+One area where character usage is officially restricted is in names, which may contain only government-approved characters. Since the jōyō kanji list excludes many characters that have been used in personal and place names for generations, an additional list, referred to as the  jinmeiyō kanji (人名用漢字, lit. "kanji for use in personal names"), is published.[121] It currently contains 983 characters.[citation needed]
+
+Today, a well-educated Japanese person may know upwards of 3,500 characters.[citation needed] The kanji kentei (日本漢字能力検定試験, Nihon Kanji Nōryoku Kentei Shiken or Test of Japanese Kanji Aptitude) tests a speaker's ability to read and write kanji. The highest level of the kanji kentei tests on approximately 6,000 kanji,[122][123] though in practice few people attain (or need to attain) this level.[citation needed]
+
+New characters can in principle be coined at any time, just as new words can be, but they may not be adopted. Significant historically recent coinages date to scientific terms of the 19th century. Specifically, Chinese coined new characters for chemical elements – see chemical elements in East Asian languages – which continue to be used and taught in schools in China and Taiwan. In Japan, in the Meiji era (specifically, late 19th century), new characters were coined for some (but not all) SI units, such as 粁 (米 "meter" + 千 "thousand, kilo-") for kilometer. These kokuji (Japanese-coinages) have found use in China as well – see Chinese characters for SI units for details.
+
+While new characters can be easily coined by writing on paper, they are difficult to represent on a computer – they must generally be represented as a picture, rather than as text – which presents a significant barrier to their use or widespread adoption. Compare this with the use of symbols as names in 20th century musical albums such as Led Zeppelin IV (1971) and Love Symbol Album (1993); an album cover may potentially contain any graphics, but in writing and other computation these symbols are difficult to use.
+
+Dozens of indexing schemes have been created for arranging Chinese characters in Chinese dictionaries. The great majority of these schemes have appeared in only a single dictionary; only one such system has achieved truly widespread use. This is the system of radicals (see for example, the 214 so-called Kangxi radicals).
+
+Chinese character dictionaries often allow users to locate entries in several ways. Many Chinese, Japanese, and Korean dictionaries of Chinese characters list characters in radical order: characters are grouped together by radical, and radicals containing fewer strokes come before radicals containing more strokes (radical-and-stroke sorting). Under each radical, characters are listed by their total number of strokes. It is often also possible to search for characters by sound, using pinyin (in Chinese dictionaries), zhuyin (in Taiwanese dictionaries), kana (in Japanese dictionaries) or hangul (in Korean dictionaries). Most dictionaries also allow searches by total number of strokes, and individual dictionaries often allow other search methods as well.
+
+For instance, to look up the character where the sound is not known, e.g., 松 (pine tree), the user first determines which part of the character is the radical (here 木), then counts the number of strokes in the radical (four), and turns to the radical index (usually located on the inside front or back cover of the dictionary). Under the number "4" for radical stroke count, the user locates 木, then turns to the page number listed, which is the start of the listing of all the characters containing this radical. This page will have a sub-index giving remainder stroke numbers (for the non-radical portions of characters) and page numbers. The right half of the character also contains four strokes, so the user locates the number 4, and turns to the page number given. From there, the user must scan the entries to locate the character he or she is seeking. Some dictionaries have a sub-index which lists every character containing each radical, and if the user knows the number of strokes in the non-radical portion of the character, he or she can locate the correct page directly.
+
+Another dictionary system is the four corner method, where characters are classified according to the shape of each of the four corners.
+
+Most modern Chinese dictionaries and Chinese dictionaries sold to English speakers use the traditional radical-based character index in a section at the front, while the main body of the dictionary arranges the main character entries alphabetically according to their pinyin spelling.[citation needed] To find a character with unknown sound using one of these dictionaries, the reader finds the radical and stroke number of the character, as before, and locates the character in the radical index. The character's entry will have the character's pronunciation in pinyin written down; the reader then turns to the main dictionary section and looks up the pinyin spelling alphabetically.
+
+This article incorporates text from The Chinese recorder and missionary journal, Volume 3, a  publication from 1871 now in the public domain in the United States.
+

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+Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle KStJ DL (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer and medical doctor. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 when he published A Study in Scarlet, the first of four novels and more than fifty short stories about Holmes and Dr. Watson. The Sherlock Holmes stories are generally considered milestones in the field of crime fiction.
+
+Doyle was a prolific writer; other than Holmes stories, his works include fantasy and science fiction stories about Professor Challenger and humorous stories about the Napoleonic soldier Brigadier Gerard, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction and historical novels. One of Doyle's early short stories, "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" (1884), helped to popularise the mystery of the Mary Celeste.
+
+Doyle is often referred to as "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle" or "Conan Doyle", implying that "Conan" is part of a compound surname rather than a middle name. His baptism entry in the register of St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh, gives "Arthur Ignatius Conan" as his given names and "Doyle" as his surname. It also names Michael Conan as his godfather.[1] The catalogues of the British Library and the Library of Congress treat "Doyle" alone as his surname.[2]
+
+Steven Doyle, editor of The Baker Street Journal, wrote, "Conan was Arthur's middle name. Shortly after he graduated from high school he began using Conan as a sort of surname. But technically his last name is simply 'Doyle'."[3] When knighted, he was gazetted as Doyle, not under the compound Conan Doyle.[4]
+
+Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 at 11 Picardy Place, Edinburgh, Scotland.[5][6] His father, Charles Altamont Doyle, was English, of Irish Catholic descent, and his mother, Mary (née Foley), was Irish Catholic. His parents married in 1855.[7] In 1864 the family scattered because of Charles's growing alcoholism, and the children were temporarily housed across Edinburgh. Arthur lodged with Mary Burton, the aunt of a friend, at Liberton Bank House on Gilmerton Road, while studying at Newington Academy.[8]
+
+In 1867, the family came together again and lived in squalid tenement flats at 3 Sciennes Place.[9] Doyle's father died in 1893, in the Crichton Royal, Dumfries, after many years of psychiatric illness.[10][11] Beginning at an early age, throughout his life, Doyle wrote letters to his mother, and many of them were preserved.[12]
+
+Supported by wealthy uncles, Doyle was sent to England, at the Jesuit preparatory school Hodder Place, Stonyhurst in Lancashire at the age of nine (1868–70). He then went on to Stonyhurst College, which he attended until 1875. While Doyle was not unhappy at Stonyhurst, he said he did not have any fond memories of it because the school was run on medieval principles: the only subjects covered were rudiments, rhetoric, Euclidean geometry, algebra and the classics.[13] Doyle commented later in his life that this academic system could only be excused "on the plea that any exercise, however stupid in itself, forms a sort of mental dumbbell by which one can improve one's mind."[13] He also found the school harsh, noting that, instead of compassion and warmth, it favoured the threat of corporal punishment and ritual humiliation.[14]
+
+From 1875 to 1876, he was educated at the Jesuit school Stella Matutina in Feldkirch, Austria.[9] His family decided that he would spend a year there in order to perfect his German and broaden his academic horizons.[15] He later rejected the Catholic faith and became an agnostic.[16] One source attributed his drift away from religion to the time he spent in the less strict Austrian school.[14] He also later became a spiritualist mystic.[17]
+
+From 1876 to 1881, Doyle studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School; during this period he spent time working in Aston (then a town in Warwickshire, now part of Birmingham), Sheffield and Ruyton-XI-Towns, Shropshire.[18] Also during this period, he studied practical botany at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh.[19] While studying, Doyle began writing short stories. His earliest extant fiction, "The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe", was unsuccessfully submitted to Blackwood's Magazine.[9] His first published piece, "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley", a story set in South Africa, was printed in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal on 6 September 1879.[9][20] On 20 September 1879, he published his first academic article, "Gelsemium as a Poison" in the British Medical Journal,[9][21][22] a study which The Daily Telegraph regarded as potentially useful in a 21st-century murder investigation.[23]
+
+Doyle was the doctor on the Greenland whaler Hope of Peterhead in 1880.[24] On 11 July 1880 John Gray's Hope and David Gray's Eclipse met up with the Eira and Leigh Smith. The photographer W.J.A. Grant took a photograph aboard the Eira of Doyle along with Smith, the Gray brothers, and ship's surgeon William Neale, who were members of the Smith expedition. That expedition explored Franz Josef Land, and led to the naming, on 18 August, of Cape Flora, Bell Island, Nightingale Sound, Gratton ("Uncle Joe") Island, and Mabel Island.[25]
+
+After graduating with Bachelor of Medicine and Master of Surgery (M.B. C.M.) degrees from the University of Edinburgh in 1881, he was ship's surgeon on the SS Mayumba during a voyage to the West African coast.[9] He completed his Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degree (an advanced degree beyond the basic medical qualification in the UK) with a dissertation on tabes dorsalis in 1885.[26]
+
+In 1882, Doyle partnered with his former classmate George Turnavine Budd in a medical practice in Plymouth, but their relationship proved difficult, and Doyle soon left to set up an independent practice.[9][27] Arriving in Portsmouth in June 1882, with less than £10 (£1000 today[28]) to his name, he set up a medical practice at 1 Bush Villas in Elm Grove, Southsea.[29] The practice was not successful. While waiting for patients, Doyle returned to writing fiction.
+
+Doyle was a staunch supporter of compulsory vaccination and wrote several articles advocating the practice and denouncing the views of anti-vaccinators.[30][31]
+
+In early 1891, Doyle embarked on the study of ophthalmology in Vienna. He had previously studied at the Portsmouth Eye Hospital in order to qualify to perform eye tests and prescribe glasses. Vienna has been suggested by his friend Vernon Morris as a place to spend six months and train to be an eye surgeon. But Doyle found it too difficult to understand the German medical terms being used in his classes in Vienna, and soon quit his studies there. For the rest of his two-month stay in Vienna, he pursued other activities, such as ice skating with his wife Louisa and drinking with Brinsley Richards of the London Times. He also wrote The Doings of Raffles Haw.
+
+After visiting Venice and Milan, he spent a few days in Paris observing Edmund Landolt, an expert on diseases of the eye. Within three months of his departure for Vienna, Doyle returned to London. He opened a small office and consulting room at 2 Upper Wimpole Street, or 2 Devonshire Place as it was then. (There is today a Westminster City Council commemorative plaque over the front door.) He had no patients, according to his autobiography, and his efforts as an ophthalmologist were a failure.[32][33][34]
+
+Doyle struggled to find a publisher for his work. His first work featuring Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, A Study in Scarlet, was written in 3 weeks when he was 27 and was accepted for publication by Ward Lock & Co on 20 November 1886, which gave Doyle £25 (equivalent to £2,700 in 2019) in exchange for all rights to the story. The piece appeared a year later in the Beeton's Christmas Annual and received good reviews in The Scotsman and the Glasgow Herald.[9]
+
+Holmes was partially modelled on his former university teacher Joseph Bell. In 1892, in a letter to Bell, Doyle wrote, "It is most certainly to you that I owe Sherlock Holmes ... round the centre of deduction and inference and observation which I have heard you inculcate I have tried to build up a man",[35] and in his 1924 autobiography he remarked, "It is no wonder that after the study of such a character [viz., Bell] I used and amplified his methods when in later life I tried to build up a scientific detective who solved cases on his own merits and not through the folly of the criminal."[36] Robert Louis Stevenson was able, even in faraway Samoa, to recognise the strong similarity between Joseph Bell and Sherlock Holmes: "My compliments on your very ingenious and very interesting adventures of Sherlock Holmes. ... can this be my old friend Joe Bell?"[37] Other authors sometimes suggest additional influences—for instance, the famous Edgar Allan Poe character C. Auguste Dupin.[38] Dr. (John) Watson owes his surname, but not any other obvious characteristic, to a Portsmouth medical colleague of Doyle's, Dr. James Watson.[39]
+
+A sequel to A Study in Scarlet was commissioned, and The Sign of the Four appeared in Lippincott's Magazine in February 1890, under agreement with the Ward Lock company. Doyle felt grievously exploited by Ward Lock as an author new to the publishing world, and so, after this, he left them.[9] Short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes were published in the Strand Magazine. Doyle wrote the first five Holmes short stories from his office at 2 Upper Wimpole Street (then known as Devonshire Place), which is now marked by a memorial plaque.[40]
+
+Doyle's attitude towards his most famous creation was ambivalent.[39] In November 1891 he wrote to his mother: "I think of slaying Holmes, ... and winding him up for good and all. He takes my mind from better things." His mother responded, "You won't! You can't! You mustn't!"[41] In an attempt to deflect publishers' demands for more Holmes stories, he raised his price to a level intended to discourage them, but found they were willing to pay even the large sums he asked.[39] As a result, he became one of the best-paid authors of his time.
+
+In December 1893, to dedicate more of his time to his historical novels, Doyle had Holmes and Professor Moriarty plunge to their deaths together down the Reichenbach Falls in the story "The Final Problem". Public outcry, however, led him to feature Holmes in 1901 in the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles. Holmes' fictional connection with the Reichenbach Falls is celebrated in the nearby town of Meiringen.
+
+In 1903, Doyle published his first Holmes short story in ten years, "The Adventure of the Empty House", in which it was explained that only Moriarty had fallen, but since Holmes had other dangerous enemies—especially Colonel Sebastian Moran—he had arranged to make it look like he too was dead. Holmes was ultimately featured in a total of 56 short stories—the last published in 1927—and four novels by Doyle, and has since appeared in many novels and stories by other authors.
+
+Jane Stanford compares some of Moriarty's characteristics to those of the Fenian John O'Connor Power. "The Final Problem" was published the year the Second Home Rule Bill passed through the House of Commons. "The Valley of Fear" was serialised in 1914, the year Home Rule, the Government of Ireland Act (18 September) was placed on the Statute Book.[42]
+
+Doyle's first novels were The Mystery of Cloomber, not published until 1888, and the unfinished Narrative of John Smith, published only posthumously, in 2011.[43] He amassed a portfolio of short stories, including "The Captain of the Pole-Star" and "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement", both inspired by Doyle's time at sea. The latter popularised the mystery of the Mary Celeste[44] and added fictional details such as that the ship was found in perfect condition (it had actually taken on water by the time it was discovered), and that its boats remained on board (the single boat was in fact missing). These fictional details have come to dominate popular accounts of the incident,[9][44] and Doyle's alternate spelling of the ship's name as the Marie Celeste has become more commonly used than the original spelling.[45]
+
+Between 1888 and 1906, Doyle wrote seven historical novels, which he and many critics regarded as his best work.[39] He also authored nine other novels, and—later in his career (1912–29)— five narratives (two of novel length) featuring the irascible scientist Professor Challenger. The Challenger stories include what is probably his best-known work after the Holmes oeuvre, The Lost World. His historical novels include The White Company and its prequel Sir Nigel, set in the Middle Ages. He was a prolific author of short stories, including two collections set in Napoleonic times and featuring the French character Brigadier Gerard.
+
+Doyle's works for the stage include: Waterloo, which centres on the reminiscences of an English veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, and features a character, Gregory Brewster, that was written for Henry Irving; The House of Temperley, the plot of which reflects his abiding interest in boxing; The Speckled Band, adapted from his earlier short story "The Adventure of the Speckled Band"; and an 1893 collaboration with J.M. Barrie on the libretto of Jane Annie.[46]
+
+While living in Southsea, the seaside resort of Portsmouth, Doyle played football as a goalkeeper for Portsmouth Association Football Club, an amateur side, under the pseudonym A. C. Smith.[47]
+
+Doyle was a keen cricketer, and between 1899 and 1907 he played 10 first-class matches for the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC).[48] He also played for the amateur cricket teams the Allahakbarries and the Authors XI alongside fellow writers J. M. Barrie, P. G. Wodehouse and A. A. Milne.[49][50] His highest score, in 1902 against London County, was 43. He was an occasional bowler who took just one first-class wicket, although one of the highest pedigree as it was W. G. Grace.[51]
+
+Doyle was an amateur boxer.[52] In 1909, he was invited to referee the James Jeffries–Jack Johnson heavyweight championship fight in Reno, Nevada. Doyle wrote, "I was much inclined to accept...though my friends pictured me as winding up with a revolver at one ear and a razor at the other. However, the distance and my engagements presented a final bar."[52]
+
+Also a keen golfer, Doyle was elected captain of the Crowborough Beacon Golf Club in Sussex for 1910. He had moved to Little Windlesham house in Crowborough with Jean Leckie, his second wife, and resided there with his family from 1907 until his death in July 1930.[53]
+
+He entered the English Amateur billiards championship in 1913.[54]
+
+In 1885 Doyle married Louisa (sometimes called "Touie") Hawkins (1857–1906). She was the youngest daughter of J. Hawkins, of Minsterworth, Gloucestershire, and the sister of one of Doyle's patients. Louisa suffered from tuberculosis.[55] In 1907, the year after Louisa's death, he married Jean Elizabeth Leckie (1874–1940). He had met and fallen in love with Jean in 1897, but had maintained a platonic relationship with her while his first wife was still alive, out of loyalty to her.[56] Jean survived him by ten years, and died in London.[57]
+
+Doyle fathered five children. He had two with his first wife: Mary Louise (1889–1976) and Arthur Alleyne Kingsley, known as Kingsley (1892–1918). He had an additional three with his second wife: Denis Percy Stewart (1909–1955), who became the second husband of Georgian Princess Nina Mdivani; Adrian Malcolm (1910–1970); and Jean Lena Annette (1912–1997).[58] All of Doyle's five children died without issue, so he has no direct descendants.[59][60]
+
+Doyle served as a volunteer doctor in the Langman Field Hospital at Bloemfontein between March and June 1900,[61] during the Second Boer War in South Africa (1899–1902). Later that same year, he wrote a book on the war, The Great Boer War, as well as a short work titled The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct, in which he responded to critics of the United Kingdom's role in that war, and argued that its role was justified. The latter work was widely translated, and Doyle believed it was the reason he was knighted (given the rank of Knight Bachelor) by King Edward VII in the 1902 Coronation Honours.[62] (He received the accolade from the King in person at Buckingham Palace on 24 October of that year.)[63]
+
+He stood for Parliament twice as a Liberal Unionist: in 1900 in Edinburgh Central; and in 1906 in the Hawick Burghs. He received a respectable share of the vote, but was not elected.[64] He served as a Deputy-Lieutenant of Surrey beginning in 1902,[65] and was appointed a Knight of Grace of the Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem in 1903.[66]
+
+Doyle was a supporter of the campaign for the reform of the Congo Free State that was led by the journalist E. D. Morel and diplomat Roger Casement. In 1909 he wrote The Crime of the Congo, a long pamphlet in which he denounced the horrors of that colony. He became acquainted with Morel and Casement, and it is possible that, together with Bertram Fletcher Robinson, they inspired several characters that appear in his 1912 novel The Lost World.[67] Later, after the Easter Rising, Casement was found guilty of treason against the Crown, and was sentenced to death. Doyle tried, unsuccessfully, to save him, arguing that Casement had been driven mad, and therefore should not be held responsible for his actions.[68]
+
+Doyle was also a fervent advocate of justice and personally investigated two closed cases, which led to two men being exonerated of the crimes of which they were accused. The first case, in 1906, involved a shy half-British, half-Indian lawyer named George Edalji who had allegedly penned threatening letters and mutilated animals in Great Wyrley. Police were set on Edalji's conviction, even though the mutilations continued after their suspect was jailed.[69] Apart from helping George Edalji, Doyle's work helped establish a way to correct other miscarriages of justice, as it was partially as a result of this case that the Court of Criminal Appeal was established in 1907.[70]
+
+The story of Doyle and Edalji was dramatised in an episode of the 1972 BBC television series, The Edwardians. In Nicholas Meyer's pastiche The West End Horror (1976), Holmes manages to help clear the name of a shy Parsi Indian character wronged by the English justice system. Edalji was of Parsi heritage on his father's side. The story was fictionalised in Julian Barnes's 2005 novel Arthur and George, which was adapted into a three-part drama by ITV in 2015.
+
+The second case, that of Oscar Slater—a Jew of German origin who operated a gambling den and was convicted of bludgeoning an 82-year-old woman in Glasgow in 1908–excited Doyle's curiosity because of inconsistencies in the prosecution's case and a general sense that Slater was not guilty. He ended up paying most of the costs for Slater's successful 1928 appeal.[71]
+
+Doyle had a longstanding interest in mystical subjects, and remained fascinated by the idea of paranormal phenomena, even though the strength of his belief in their reality waxed and waned periodically over the years.
+
+In 1887, in Southsea, influenced by Major-General Alfred Wilks Drayson, a member of the Portsmouth Literary and Philosophical Society, Doyle began a series of investigations into the possibility of psychic phenomena, and attended about 20 seances, experiments in telepathy, and sittings with mediums. Writing to Spiritualist journal Light that year, he declared himself to be a Spiritualist, describing one particular event that had convinced him psychic phenomena were real.[72] Also in 1887 (on 26 January), he was initiated as a Freemason at the Phoenix Lodge No. 257 in Southsea. (He resigned from the Lodge in 1889, returned to it in 1902, and resigned again in 1911.)[73]
+
+In 1889, he became a founding member of the Hampshire Society for Psychical Research; in 1893, he joined the London-based Society for Psychical Research; and in 1894, he collaborated with Sir Sidney Scott and Frank Podmore in a search for poltergeists in Devon.[74]
+
+In 1916, during the height of World War I, Doyle's belief in psychic phenomena was strengthened by what he took to be the psychic abilities of his children's nanny, Lily Loder Symonds.[75] This and the constant drumbeat of wartime deaths inspired him with the idea that Spiritualism was what he called a "New Revelation"[76] sent by God to bring solace to the bereaved. He wrote a piece in Light magazine about his faith and began lecturing frequently on Spiritualism. In 1918, he published his first Spiritualist work, The New Revelation.
+
+Some have mistakenly assumed that Doyle's turn to Spiritualism was prompted by the death of his son Kingsley, but Doyle began presenting himself publicly as a Spiritualist in 1916, and Kingsley died on 28 October 1918 (of pneumonia contracted during his convalescence after being seriously wounded in the 1916 Battle of the Somme).[76]
+
+Nevertheless, the war-related deaths of many people who were close to him appears to have even further strengthened his long-held belief in life after death and spirit communication.   Doyle's brother Brigadier-general Innes Doyle died, also from pneumonia, in February 1919. His two brothers-in-law (one of whom was E. W. Hornung, creator of the literary character Raffles), as well as his two nephews, also died shortly after the war. His second book on Spiritualism, The Vital Message, appeared in 1919.
+
+Doyle found solace in supporting Spiritualism's ideas and the attempts of Spiritualists to find proof of an existence beyond the grave. In particular, according to some,[77] he favoured Christian Spiritualism and encouraged the Spiritualists' National Union to accept an eighth precept – that of following the teachings and example of Jesus of Nazareth. He was a member of the renowned supernaturalist organisation The Ghost Club.[78]
+
+In 1919, the magician P. T. Selbit staged a séance at his flat in Bloomsbury, which Doyle attended. Although some later claimed that Doyle had endorsed the apparent instances of clairvoyance at that séance as genuine,[79][80] a contemporaneous report by the Sunday Express quoted Doyle as saying, "I should have to see it again before passing a definite opinion on it," and, "I have my doubts about the whole thing".[81] In 1920, Doyle and the noted sceptic Joseph McCabe held a public debate at Queen's Hall in London, with Doyle taking the position that the claims of Spiritualism were true. After the debate, McCabe published a booklet, entitled Is Spiritualism Based on Fraud?, in which he laid out evidence refuting Doyle's arguments and claimed that Doyle had been duped into believing in Spiritualism through deliberate mediumship trickery.[82]
+
+Doyle also debated the psychiatrist Harold Dearden, who vehemently disagreed with Doyle's belief that many cases of diagnosed mental illness were the result of spirit possession.[83]
+
+In 1920, Doyle travelled to Australia and New Zealand on Spiritualist missionary work, and over the next several years, until his death, he continued his mission, giving talks about his Spiritualist conviction in Britain, Europe, and the United States.[74]
+
+Doyle wrote a novel centered on Spiritualist themes, The Land of Mist, featuring the character Professor Challenger. He also wrote many non-fiction Spiritualist works. Perhaps his most famous of these was The Coming of the Fairies (1922),[84] in which Doyle described his beliefs about the nature and existence of fairies and spirits, reproduced the five Cottingley Fairies photographs, asserted that those who suspected they were faked were wrong, and expressed his conviction that they were authentic. Decades later, the photos were definitively shown to have been faked, and their creators admitted to the fakery.
+
+Doyle was friends for a time with the American magician Harry Houdini. Even though Houdini explained that his feats were based on illusion and trickery, Doyle was convinced that Houdini had supernatural powers, and said as much in his work, The Edge of the Unknown. Houdini's friend Bernard M. L. Ernst, recounted a time when Houdini had performed an impressive trick at his home in Doyle's presence. Houdini had assured Doyle that the trick was pure illusion, and had expressed the hope that this demonstration would persuade Doyle not to go around "endorsing phenomena" simply because he could think of no explanation for what he had seen other than supernatural power. But, according to Ernst, Doyle simply refused to believe it had been a trick.[85]
+
+Houdini became a prominent opponent of the Spiritualist movement in the 1920s, after the death of his beloved mother. He insisted that Spiritualist mediums employed trickery, and consistently exposed them as frauds. These differences between Houdini and Doyle eventually led to a bitter, public falling-out between them.[86]
+
+In 1922, the psychical researcher Harry Price accused the "spirit photographer" William Hope of fraud. Doyle defended Hope, but further evidence of trickery was obtained from other researchers.[87] Doyle threatened to have Price evicted from the National Laboratory of Psychical Research and predicted that, if he persisted in writing what he called "sewage" about Spiritualists, he would meet the same fate as Harry Houdini.[88] Price wrote "Arthur Conan Doyle and his friends abused me for years for exposing Hope."[89] In response to the exposure of frauds that had been perpetrated by Hope and other Spiritualists, Doyle led eighty-four members of the Society for Psychical Research to resign in protest from the society on the ground that they believed it was opposed to Spiritualism.[90]
+
+In another instance, Doyle and the Spiritualist William Thomas Stead were led to believe that Julius and Agnes Zancig had genuine psychic powers, and they claimed publicly that the Zancigs used telepathy. However, in 1924, the Zancigs confessed that their mind reading act had been a trick; they published the secret code and all other details of the trick method they had used under the title "Our Secrets!!" in a London newspaper.[91] Doyle also praised the psychic phenomena and spirit materializations that he believed had been produced by Eusapia Palladino and Mina Crandon, both of whom were also later exposed as frauds.[92]
+
+Doyle's two-volume book, The History of Spiritualism was published in 1926. W. Leslie Curnow, a Spiritualist, contributed much research to the book.[93][94] Later that year, Robert John Tillyard wrote a predominantly supportive review of it in the journal Nature.[95] This review provoked controversy: Several other critics, notably A. A. Campbell Swinton, pointed out the evidence of fraud in mediumship as well as Doyle's non-scientific approach to the subject.[96][97][98] In 1927, Doyle gave a filmed interview, in which he spoke about Sherlock Holmes and Spiritualism.[99]
+
+Richard Milner, an American historian of science, has presented a case that Doyle may have been the perpetrator of the Piltdown Man hoax of 1912, creating the counterfeit hominid fossil that fooled the scientific world for over 40 years. Milner noted that Doyle had a plausible motive—namely, revenge on the scientific establishment for debunking one of his favourite psychics—and said that The Lost World appeared to contain several clues referring cryptically to his having been involved in the hoax.[100][101] Samuel Rosenberg's 1974 book Naked is the Best Disguise purports to explain how, throughout his writings, Doyle had provided overt clues to otherwise hidden or suppressed aspects of his way of thinking that seemed to support the idea Doyle would be involved in such a hoax.[102]
+
+However, more recent research suggests that Doyle was not involved. In 2016, researchers at the Natural History Museum and Liverpool John Moores University analyzed DNA evidence showing that responsibility for the hoax lay with the amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson, who had originally "found" the remains. He had initially not been considered the likely perpetrator, because the hoax was seen as being too elaborate for him to have devised. However, the DNA evidence showed that a supposedly ancient tooth he had "discovered" in 1915 (at a different site) came from the same jaw as that of the Piltdown Man, suggesting he had planted them both. That tooth, too, was later proven to have been planted as part of a hoax.[103]
+
+Dr Chris Stringer, an anthropologist from the Natural History Museum, was quoted as saying: "Conan Doyle was known to play golf at the Piltdown site and had even given Dawson a lift in his car to the area, but he was a public man and very busy and it is very unlikely that he would have had the time [to create the hoax]. So there are some coincidences, but I think they are just coincidences. When you look at the fossil evidence you can only associate Dawson with all the finds, and Dawson was known to be personally ambitious. He wanted professional recognition. He wanted to be a member of the Royal Society and he was after an MBE. He wanted people to stop seeing him as an amateur".[104]
+
+Another of Doyle's longstanding interests was architectural design. In 1895, when he commissioned an architect friend of his, Joseph Henry Ball, to build him a home, he played an active part in the design process.[105][106] The home in which he lived from October 1897 to September 1907, known as Undershaw (near Hindhead, in Surrey),[107] was used as a hotel and restaurant from 1924 until 2004, when it was bought by a developer and then stood empty while conservationists and Doyle fans fought to preserve it.[55] In 2012, the High Court in London ruled in favor of those seeking to preserve the historic building, ordering that the redevelopment permission be quashed on the ground that it had not been obtained through proper procedures.[108] The building was later approved to become part of Stepping Stones, a school for children with disabilities and special needs.
+
+Doyle made his most ambitious foray into architecture in March 1912, while he was staying at the Lyndhurst Grand Hotel: He sketched the original designs for a third storey extension and for an alteration of the front facade of the building.[109] Work began later that year, and when it was finished, the building was a nearly exact manifestation of the plans Doyle had sketched. Superficial alterations have been subsequently made, but the essential structure is still clearly Doyle's.[110]
+
+In 1914, on a family trip to the Jasper National Park in Canada, he designed a golf course and ancillary buildings for a hotel. The plans were realised in full, but neither the golf course nor the buildings have survived.[111]
+
+In 1926, Doyle laid the foundation stone for a Spiritualist temple in Camden, London. Of the building's total £600 construction costs, he provided £500.[112]
+
+Doyle was found clutching his chest in the hall of Windlesham Manor, his house in Crowborough, East Sussex, on 7 July 1930. He died of a heart attack at the age of 71. His last words were directed toward his wife: "You are wonderful."[113] At the time of his death, there was some controversy concerning his burial place, as he was avowedly not a Christian, considering himself a Spiritualist. He was first buried on 11 July 1930 in Windlesham rose garden.
+
+He was later reinterred together with his wife in Minstead churchyard in the New Forest, Hampshire.[9] Carved wooden tablets to his memory and to the memory of his wife, originally from the church at Minstead, are on display as part of a Sherlock Holmes exhibition at Portsmouth Museum.[114][115] The epitaph on his gravestone in the churchyard reads, in part: "Steel true/Blade straight/Arthur Conan Doyle/Knight/Patriot, Physician and man of letters".[116]
+
+A statue honours Doyle at Crowborough Cross in Crowborough, where he lived for 23 years.[117] There is a statue of Sherlock Holmes in Picardy Place, Edinburgh, close to the house where Doyle was born.[118]

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+Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle KStJ DL (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer and medical doctor. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 when he published A Study in Scarlet, the first of four novels and more than fifty short stories about Holmes and Dr. Watson. The Sherlock Holmes stories are generally considered milestones in the field of crime fiction.
+
+Doyle was a prolific writer; other than Holmes stories, his works include fantasy and science fiction stories about Professor Challenger and humorous stories about the Napoleonic soldier Brigadier Gerard, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction and historical novels. One of Doyle's early short stories, "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" (1884), helped to popularise the mystery of the Mary Celeste.
+
+Doyle is often referred to as "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle" or "Conan Doyle", implying that "Conan" is part of a compound surname rather than a middle name. His baptism entry in the register of St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh, gives "Arthur Ignatius Conan" as his given names and "Doyle" as his surname. It also names Michael Conan as his godfather.[1] The catalogues of the British Library and the Library of Congress treat "Doyle" alone as his surname.[2]
+
+Steven Doyle, editor of The Baker Street Journal, wrote, "Conan was Arthur's middle name. Shortly after he graduated from high school he began using Conan as a sort of surname. But technically his last name is simply 'Doyle'."[3] When knighted, he was gazetted as Doyle, not under the compound Conan Doyle.[4]
+
+Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 at 11 Picardy Place, Edinburgh, Scotland.[5][6] His father, Charles Altamont Doyle, was English, of Irish Catholic descent, and his mother, Mary (née Foley), was Irish Catholic. His parents married in 1855.[7] In 1864 the family scattered because of Charles's growing alcoholism, and the children were temporarily housed across Edinburgh. Arthur lodged with Mary Burton, the aunt of a friend, at Liberton Bank House on Gilmerton Road, while studying at Newington Academy.[8]
+
+In 1867, the family came together again and lived in squalid tenement flats at 3 Sciennes Place.[9] Doyle's father died in 1893, in the Crichton Royal, Dumfries, after many years of psychiatric illness.[10][11] Beginning at an early age, throughout his life, Doyle wrote letters to his mother, and many of them were preserved.[12]
+
+Supported by wealthy uncles, Doyle was sent to England, at the Jesuit preparatory school Hodder Place, Stonyhurst in Lancashire at the age of nine (1868–70). He then went on to Stonyhurst College, which he attended until 1875. While Doyle was not unhappy at Stonyhurst, he said he did not have any fond memories of it because the school was run on medieval principles: the only subjects covered were rudiments, rhetoric, Euclidean geometry, algebra and the classics.[13] Doyle commented later in his life that this academic system could only be excused "on the plea that any exercise, however stupid in itself, forms a sort of mental dumbbell by which one can improve one's mind."[13] He also found the school harsh, noting that, instead of compassion and warmth, it favoured the threat of corporal punishment and ritual humiliation.[14]
+
+From 1875 to 1876, he was educated at the Jesuit school Stella Matutina in Feldkirch, Austria.[9] His family decided that he would spend a year there in order to perfect his German and broaden his academic horizons.[15] He later rejected the Catholic faith and became an agnostic.[16] One source attributed his drift away from religion to the time he spent in the less strict Austrian school.[14] He also later became a spiritualist mystic.[17]
+
+From 1876 to 1881, Doyle studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School; during this period he spent time working in Aston (then a town in Warwickshire, now part of Birmingham), Sheffield and Ruyton-XI-Towns, Shropshire.[18] Also during this period, he studied practical botany at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh.[19] While studying, Doyle began writing short stories. His earliest extant fiction, "The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe", was unsuccessfully submitted to Blackwood's Magazine.[9] His first published piece, "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley", a story set in South Africa, was printed in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal on 6 September 1879.[9][20] On 20 September 1879, he published his first academic article, "Gelsemium as a Poison" in the British Medical Journal,[9][21][22] a study which The Daily Telegraph regarded as potentially useful in a 21st-century murder investigation.[23]
+
+Doyle was the doctor on the Greenland whaler Hope of Peterhead in 1880.[24] On 11 July 1880 John Gray's Hope and David Gray's Eclipse met up with the Eira and Leigh Smith. The photographer W.J.A. Grant took a photograph aboard the Eira of Doyle along with Smith, the Gray brothers, and ship's surgeon William Neale, who were members of the Smith expedition. That expedition explored Franz Josef Land, and led to the naming, on 18 August, of Cape Flora, Bell Island, Nightingale Sound, Gratton ("Uncle Joe") Island, and Mabel Island.[25]
+
+After graduating with Bachelor of Medicine and Master of Surgery (M.B. C.M.) degrees from the University of Edinburgh in 1881, he was ship's surgeon on the SS Mayumba during a voyage to the West African coast.[9] He completed his Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degree (an advanced degree beyond the basic medical qualification in the UK) with a dissertation on tabes dorsalis in 1885.[26]
+
+In 1882, Doyle partnered with his former classmate George Turnavine Budd in a medical practice in Plymouth, but their relationship proved difficult, and Doyle soon left to set up an independent practice.[9][27] Arriving in Portsmouth in June 1882, with less than £10 (£1000 today[28]) to his name, he set up a medical practice at 1 Bush Villas in Elm Grove, Southsea.[29] The practice was not successful. While waiting for patients, Doyle returned to writing fiction.
+
+Doyle was a staunch supporter of compulsory vaccination and wrote several articles advocating the practice and denouncing the views of anti-vaccinators.[30][31]
+
+In early 1891, Doyle embarked on the study of ophthalmology in Vienna. He had previously studied at the Portsmouth Eye Hospital in order to qualify to perform eye tests and prescribe glasses. Vienna has been suggested by his friend Vernon Morris as a place to spend six months and train to be an eye surgeon. But Doyle found it too difficult to understand the German medical terms being used in his classes in Vienna, and soon quit his studies there. For the rest of his two-month stay in Vienna, he pursued other activities, such as ice skating with his wife Louisa and drinking with Brinsley Richards of the London Times. He also wrote The Doings of Raffles Haw.
+
+After visiting Venice and Milan, he spent a few days in Paris observing Edmund Landolt, an expert on diseases of the eye. Within three months of his departure for Vienna, Doyle returned to London. He opened a small office and consulting room at 2 Upper Wimpole Street, or 2 Devonshire Place as it was then. (There is today a Westminster City Council commemorative plaque over the front door.) He had no patients, according to his autobiography, and his efforts as an ophthalmologist were a failure.[32][33][34]
+
+Doyle struggled to find a publisher for his work. His first work featuring Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, A Study in Scarlet, was written in 3 weeks when he was 27 and was accepted for publication by Ward Lock & Co on 20 November 1886, which gave Doyle £25 (equivalent to £2,700 in 2019) in exchange for all rights to the story. The piece appeared a year later in the Beeton's Christmas Annual and received good reviews in The Scotsman and the Glasgow Herald.[9]
+
+Holmes was partially modelled on his former university teacher Joseph Bell. In 1892, in a letter to Bell, Doyle wrote, "It is most certainly to you that I owe Sherlock Holmes ... round the centre of deduction and inference and observation which I have heard you inculcate I have tried to build up a man",[35] and in his 1924 autobiography he remarked, "It is no wonder that after the study of such a character [viz., Bell] I used and amplified his methods when in later life I tried to build up a scientific detective who solved cases on his own merits and not through the folly of the criminal."[36] Robert Louis Stevenson was able, even in faraway Samoa, to recognise the strong similarity between Joseph Bell and Sherlock Holmes: "My compliments on your very ingenious and very interesting adventures of Sherlock Holmes. ... can this be my old friend Joe Bell?"[37] Other authors sometimes suggest additional influences—for instance, the famous Edgar Allan Poe character C. Auguste Dupin.[38] Dr. (John) Watson owes his surname, but not any other obvious characteristic, to a Portsmouth medical colleague of Doyle's, Dr. James Watson.[39]
+
+A sequel to A Study in Scarlet was commissioned, and The Sign of the Four appeared in Lippincott's Magazine in February 1890, under agreement with the Ward Lock company. Doyle felt grievously exploited by Ward Lock as an author new to the publishing world, and so, after this, he left them.[9] Short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes were published in the Strand Magazine. Doyle wrote the first five Holmes short stories from his office at 2 Upper Wimpole Street (then known as Devonshire Place), which is now marked by a memorial plaque.[40]
+
+Doyle's attitude towards his most famous creation was ambivalent.[39] In November 1891 he wrote to his mother: "I think of slaying Holmes, ... and winding him up for good and all. He takes my mind from better things." His mother responded, "You won't! You can't! You mustn't!"[41] In an attempt to deflect publishers' demands for more Holmes stories, he raised his price to a level intended to discourage them, but found they were willing to pay even the large sums he asked.[39] As a result, he became one of the best-paid authors of his time.
+
+In December 1893, to dedicate more of his time to his historical novels, Doyle had Holmes and Professor Moriarty plunge to their deaths together down the Reichenbach Falls in the story "The Final Problem". Public outcry, however, led him to feature Holmes in 1901 in the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles. Holmes' fictional connection with the Reichenbach Falls is celebrated in the nearby town of Meiringen.
+
+In 1903, Doyle published his first Holmes short story in ten years, "The Adventure of the Empty House", in which it was explained that only Moriarty had fallen, but since Holmes had other dangerous enemies—especially Colonel Sebastian Moran—he had arranged to make it look like he too was dead. Holmes was ultimately featured in a total of 56 short stories—the last published in 1927—and four novels by Doyle, and has since appeared in many novels and stories by other authors.
+
+Jane Stanford compares some of Moriarty's characteristics to those of the Fenian John O'Connor Power. "The Final Problem" was published the year the Second Home Rule Bill passed through the House of Commons. "The Valley of Fear" was serialised in 1914, the year Home Rule, the Government of Ireland Act (18 September) was placed on the Statute Book.[42]
+
+Doyle's first novels were The Mystery of Cloomber, not published until 1888, and the unfinished Narrative of John Smith, published only posthumously, in 2011.[43] He amassed a portfolio of short stories, including "The Captain of the Pole-Star" and "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement", both inspired by Doyle's time at sea. The latter popularised the mystery of the Mary Celeste[44] and added fictional details such as that the ship was found in perfect condition (it had actually taken on water by the time it was discovered), and that its boats remained on board (the single boat was in fact missing). These fictional details have come to dominate popular accounts of the incident,[9][44] and Doyle's alternate spelling of the ship's name as the Marie Celeste has become more commonly used than the original spelling.[45]
+
+Between 1888 and 1906, Doyle wrote seven historical novels, which he and many critics regarded as his best work.[39] He also authored nine other novels, and—later in his career (1912–29)— five narratives (two of novel length) featuring the irascible scientist Professor Challenger. The Challenger stories include what is probably his best-known work after the Holmes oeuvre, The Lost World. His historical novels include The White Company and its prequel Sir Nigel, set in the Middle Ages. He was a prolific author of short stories, including two collections set in Napoleonic times and featuring the French character Brigadier Gerard.
+
+Doyle's works for the stage include: Waterloo, which centres on the reminiscences of an English veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, and features a character, Gregory Brewster, that was written for Henry Irving; The House of Temperley, the plot of which reflects his abiding interest in boxing; The Speckled Band, adapted from his earlier short story "The Adventure of the Speckled Band"; and an 1893 collaboration with J.M. Barrie on the libretto of Jane Annie.[46]
+
+While living in Southsea, the seaside resort of Portsmouth, Doyle played football as a goalkeeper for Portsmouth Association Football Club, an amateur side, under the pseudonym A. C. Smith.[47]
+
+Doyle was a keen cricketer, and between 1899 and 1907 he played 10 first-class matches for the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC).[48] He also played for the amateur cricket teams the Allahakbarries and the Authors XI alongside fellow writers J. M. Barrie, P. G. Wodehouse and A. A. Milne.[49][50] His highest score, in 1902 against London County, was 43. He was an occasional bowler who took just one first-class wicket, although one of the highest pedigree as it was W. G. Grace.[51]
+
+Doyle was an amateur boxer.[52] In 1909, he was invited to referee the James Jeffries–Jack Johnson heavyweight championship fight in Reno, Nevada. Doyle wrote, "I was much inclined to accept...though my friends pictured me as winding up with a revolver at one ear and a razor at the other. However, the distance and my engagements presented a final bar."[52]
+
+Also a keen golfer, Doyle was elected captain of the Crowborough Beacon Golf Club in Sussex for 1910. He had moved to Little Windlesham house in Crowborough with Jean Leckie, his second wife, and resided there with his family from 1907 until his death in July 1930.[53]
+
+He entered the English Amateur billiards championship in 1913.[54]
+
+In 1885 Doyle married Louisa (sometimes called "Touie") Hawkins (1857–1906). She was the youngest daughter of J. Hawkins, of Minsterworth, Gloucestershire, and the sister of one of Doyle's patients. Louisa suffered from tuberculosis.[55] In 1907, the year after Louisa's death, he married Jean Elizabeth Leckie (1874–1940). He had met and fallen in love with Jean in 1897, but had maintained a platonic relationship with her while his first wife was still alive, out of loyalty to her.[56] Jean survived him by ten years, and died in London.[57]
+
+Doyle fathered five children. He had two with his first wife: Mary Louise (1889–1976) and Arthur Alleyne Kingsley, known as Kingsley (1892–1918). He had an additional three with his second wife: Denis Percy Stewart (1909–1955), who became the second husband of Georgian Princess Nina Mdivani; Adrian Malcolm (1910–1970); and Jean Lena Annette (1912–1997).[58] All of Doyle's five children died without issue, so he has no direct descendants.[59][60]
+
+Doyle served as a volunteer doctor in the Langman Field Hospital at Bloemfontein between March and June 1900,[61] during the Second Boer War in South Africa (1899–1902). Later that same year, he wrote a book on the war, The Great Boer War, as well as a short work titled The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct, in which he responded to critics of the United Kingdom's role in that war, and argued that its role was justified. The latter work was widely translated, and Doyle believed it was the reason he was knighted (given the rank of Knight Bachelor) by King Edward VII in the 1902 Coronation Honours.[62] (He received the accolade from the King in person at Buckingham Palace on 24 October of that year.)[63]
+
+He stood for Parliament twice as a Liberal Unionist: in 1900 in Edinburgh Central; and in 1906 in the Hawick Burghs. He received a respectable share of the vote, but was not elected.[64] He served as a Deputy-Lieutenant of Surrey beginning in 1902,[65] and was appointed a Knight of Grace of the Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem in 1903.[66]
+
+Doyle was a supporter of the campaign for the reform of the Congo Free State that was led by the journalist E. D. Morel and diplomat Roger Casement. In 1909 he wrote The Crime of the Congo, a long pamphlet in which he denounced the horrors of that colony. He became acquainted with Morel and Casement, and it is possible that, together with Bertram Fletcher Robinson, they inspired several characters that appear in his 1912 novel The Lost World.[67] Later, after the Easter Rising, Casement was found guilty of treason against the Crown, and was sentenced to death. Doyle tried, unsuccessfully, to save him, arguing that Casement had been driven mad, and therefore should not be held responsible for his actions.[68]
+
+Doyle was also a fervent advocate of justice and personally investigated two closed cases, which led to two men being exonerated of the crimes of which they were accused. The first case, in 1906, involved a shy half-British, half-Indian lawyer named George Edalji who had allegedly penned threatening letters and mutilated animals in Great Wyrley. Police were set on Edalji's conviction, even though the mutilations continued after their suspect was jailed.[69] Apart from helping George Edalji, Doyle's work helped establish a way to correct other miscarriages of justice, as it was partially as a result of this case that the Court of Criminal Appeal was established in 1907.[70]
+
+The story of Doyle and Edalji was dramatised in an episode of the 1972 BBC television series, The Edwardians. In Nicholas Meyer's pastiche The West End Horror (1976), Holmes manages to help clear the name of a shy Parsi Indian character wronged by the English justice system. Edalji was of Parsi heritage on his father's side. The story was fictionalised in Julian Barnes's 2005 novel Arthur and George, which was adapted into a three-part drama by ITV in 2015.
+
+The second case, that of Oscar Slater—a Jew of German origin who operated a gambling den and was convicted of bludgeoning an 82-year-old woman in Glasgow in 1908–excited Doyle's curiosity because of inconsistencies in the prosecution's case and a general sense that Slater was not guilty. He ended up paying most of the costs for Slater's successful 1928 appeal.[71]
+
+Doyle had a longstanding interest in mystical subjects, and remained fascinated by the idea of paranormal phenomena, even though the strength of his belief in their reality waxed and waned periodically over the years.
+
+In 1887, in Southsea, influenced by Major-General Alfred Wilks Drayson, a member of the Portsmouth Literary and Philosophical Society, Doyle began a series of investigations into the possibility of psychic phenomena, and attended about 20 seances, experiments in telepathy, and sittings with mediums. Writing to Spiritualist journal Light that year, he declared himself to be a Spiritualist, describing one particular event that had convinced him psychic phenomena were real.[72] Also in 1887 (on 26 January), he was initiated as a Freemason at the Phoenix Lodge No. 257 in Southsea. (He resigned from the Lodge in 1889, returned to it in 1902, and resigned again in 1911.)[73]
+
+In 1889, he became a founding member of the Hampshire Society for Psychical Research; in 1893, he joined the London-based Society for Psychical Research; and in 1894, he collaborated with Sir Sidney Scott and Frank Podmore in a search for poltergeists in Devon.[74]
+
+In 1916, during the height of World War I, Doyle's belief in psychic phenomena was strengthened by what he took to be the psychic abilities of his children's nanny, Lily Loder Symonds.[75] This and the constant drumbeat of wartime deaths inspired him with the idea that Spiritualism was what he called a "New Revelation"[76] sent by God to bring solace to the bereaved. He wrote a piece in Light magazine about his faith and began lecturing frequently on Spiritualism. In 1918, he published his first Spiritualist work, The New Revelation.
+
+Some have mistakenly assumed that Doyle's turn to Spiritualism was prompted by the death of his son Kingsley, but Doyle began presenting himself publicly as a Spiritualist in 1916, and Kingsley died on 28 October 1918 (of pneumonia contracted during his convalescence after being seriously wounded in the 1916 Battle of the Somme).[76]
+
+Nevertheless, the war-related deaths of many people who were close to him appears to have even further strengthened his long-held belief in life after death and spirit communication.   Doyle's brother Brigadier-general Innes Doyle died, also from pneumonia, in February 1919. His two brothers-in-law (one of whom was E. W. Hornung, creator of the literary character Raffles), as well as his two nephews, also died shortly after the war. His second book on Spiritualism, The Vital Message, appeared in 1919.
+
+Doyle found solace in supporting Spiritualism's ideas and the attempts of Spiritualists to find proof of an existence beyond the grave. In particular, according to some,[77] he favoured Christian Spiritualism and encouraged the Spiritualists' National Union to accept an eighth precept – that of following the teachings and example of Jesus of Nazareth. He was a member of the renowned supernaturalist organisation The Ghost Club.[78]
+
+In 1919, the magician P. T. Selbit staged a séance at his flat in Bloomsbury, which Doyle attended. Although some later claimed that Doyle had endorsed the apparent instances of clairvoyance at that séance as genuine,[79][80] a contemporaneous report by the Sunday Express quoted Doyle as saying, "I should have to see it again before passing a definite opinion on it," and, "I have my doubts about the whole thing".[81] In 1920, Doyle and the noted sceptic Joseph McCabe held a public debate at Queen's Hall in London, with Doyle taking the position that the claims of Spiritualism were true. After the debate, McCabe published a booklet, entitled Is Spiritualism Based on Fraud?, in which he laid out evidence refuting Doyle's arguments and claimed that Doyle had been duped into believing in Spiritualism through deliberate mediumship trickery.[82]
+
+Doyle also debated the psychiatrist Harold Dearden, who vehemently disagreed with Doyle's belief that many cases of diagnosed mental illness were the result of spirit possession.[83]
+
+In 1920, Doyle travelled to Australia and New Zealand on Spiritualist missionary work, and over the next several years, until his death, he continued his mission, giving talks about his Spiritualist conviction in Britain, Europe, and the United States.[74]
+
+Doyle wrote a novel centered on Spiritualist themes, The Land of Mist, featuring the character Professor Challenger. He also wrote many non-fiction Spiritualist works. Perhaps his most famous of these was The Coming of the Fairies (1922),[84] in which Doyle described his beliefs about the nature and existence of fairies and spirits, reproduced the five Cottingley Fairies photographs, asserted that those who suspected they were faked were wrong, and expressed his conviction that they were authentic. Decades later, the photos were definitively shown to have been faked, and their creators admitted to the fakery.
+
+Doyle was friends for a time with the American magician Harry Houdini. Even though Houdini explained that his feats were based on illusion and trickery, Doyle was convinced that Houdini had supernatural powers, and said as much in his work, The Edge of the Unknown. Houdini's friend Bernard M. L. Ernst, recounted a time when Houdini had performed an impressive trick at his home in Doyle's presence. Houdini had assured Doyle that the trick was pure illusion, and had expressed the hope that this demonstration would persuade Doyle not to go around "endorsing phenomena" simply because he could think of no explanation for what he had seen other than supernatural power. But, according to Ernst, Doyle simply refused to believe it had been a trick.[85]
+
+Houdini became a prominent opponent of the Spiritualist movement in the 1920s, after the death of his beloved mother. He insisted that Spiritualist mediums employed trickery, and consistently exposed them as frauds. These differences between Houdini and Doyle eventually led to a bitter, public falling-out between them.[86]
+
+In 1922, the psychical researcher Harry Price accused the "spirit photographer" William Hope of fraud. Doyle defended Hope, but further evidence of trickery was obtained from other researchers.[87] Doyle threatened to have Price evicted from the National Laboratory of Psychical Research and predicted that, if he persisted in writing what he called "sewage" about Spiritualists, he would meet the same fate as Harry Houdini.[88] Price wrote "Arthur Conan Doyle and his friends abused me for years for exposing Hope."[89] In response to the exposure of frauds that had been perpetrated by Hope and other Spiritualists, Doyle led eighty-four members of the Society for Psychical Research to resign in protest from the society on the ground that they believed it was opposed to Spiritualism.[90]
+
+In another instance, Doyle and the Spiritualist William Thomas Stead were led to believe that Julius and Agnes Zancig had genuine psychic powers, and they claimed publicly that the Zancigs used telepathy. However, in 1924, the Zancigs confessed that their mind reading act had been a trick; they published the secret code and all other details of the trick method they had used under the title "Our Secrets!!" in a London newspaper.[91] Doyle also praised the psychic phenomena and spirit materializations that he believed had been produced by Eusapia Palladino and Mina Crandon, both of whom were also later exposed as frauds.[92]
+
+Doyle's two-volume book, The History of Spiritualism was published in 1926. W. Leslie Curnow, a Spiritualist, contributed much research to the book.[93][94] Later that year, Robert John Tillyard wrote a predominantly supportive review of it in the journal Nature.[95] This review provoked controversy: Several other critics, notably A. A. Campbell Swinton, pointed out the evidence of fraud in mediumship as well as Doyle's non-scientific approach to the subject.[96][97][98] In 1927, Doyle gave a filmed interview, in which he spoke about Sherlock Holmes and Spiritualism.[99]
+
+Richard Milner, an American historian of science, has presented a case that Doyle may have been the perpetrator of the Piltdown Man hoax of 1912, creating the counterfeit hominid fossil that fooled the scientific world for over 40 years. Milner noted that Doyle had a plausible motive—namely, revenge on the scientific establishment for debunking one of his favourite psychics—and said that The Lost World appeared to contain several clues referring cryptically to his having been involved in the hoax.[100][101] Samuel Rosenberg's 1974 book Naked is the Best Disguise purports to explain how, throughout his writings, Doyle had provided overt clues to otherwise hidden or suppressed aspects of his way of thinking that seemed to support the idea Doyle would be involved in such a hoax.[102]
+
+However, more recent research suggests that Doyle was not involved. In 2016, researchers at the Natural History Museum and Liverpool John Moores University analyzed DNA evidence showing that responsibility for the hoax lay with the amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson, who had originally "found" the remains. He had initially not been considered the likely perpetrator, because the hoax was seen as being too elaborate for him to have devised. However, the DNA evidence showed that a supposedly ancient tooth he had "discovered" in 1915 (at a different site) came from the same jaw as that of the Piltdown Man, suggesting he had planted them both. That tooth, too, was later proven to have been planted as part of a hoax.[103]
+
+Dr Chris Stringer, an anthropologist from the Natural History Museum, was quoted as saying: "Conan Doyle was known to play golf at the Piltdown site and had even given Dawson a lift in his car to the area, but he was a public man and very busy and it is very unlikely that he would have had the time [to create the hoax]. So there are some coincidences, but I think they are just coincidences. When you look at the fossil evidence you can only associate Dawson with all the finds, and Dawson was known to be personally ambitious. He wanted professional recognition. He wanted to be a member of the Royal Society and he was after an MBE. He wanted people to stop seeing him as an amateur".[104]
+
+Another of Doyle's longstanding interests was architectural design. In 1895, when he commissioned an architect friend of his, Joseph Henry Ball, to build him a home, he played an active part in the design process.[105][106] The home in which he lived from October 1897 to September 1907, known as Undershaw (near Hindhead, in Surrey),[107] was used as a hotel and restaurant from 1924 until 2004, when it was bought by a developer and then stood empty while conservationists and Doyle fans fought to preserve it.[55] In 2012, the High Court in London ruled in favor of those seeking to preserve the historic building, ordering that the redevelopment permission be quashed on the ground that it had not been obtained through proper procedures.[108] The building was later approved to become part of Stepping Stones, a school for children with disabilities and special needs.
+
+Doyle made his most ambitious foray into architecture in March 1912, while he was staying at the Lyndhurst Grand Hotel: He sketched the original designs for a third storey extension and for an alteration of the front facade of the building.[109] Work began later that year, and when it was finished, the building was a nearly exact manifestation of the plans Doyle had sketched. Superficial alterations have been subsequently made, but the essential structure is still clearly Doyle's.[110]
+
+In 1914, on a family trip to the Jasper National Park in Canada, he designed a golf course and ancillary buildings for a hotel. The plans were realised in full, but neither the golf course nor the buildings have survived.[111]
+
+In 1926, Doyle laid the foundation stone for a Spiritualist temple in Camden, London. Of the building's total £600 construction costs, he provided £500.[112]
+
+Doyle was found clutching his chest in the hall of Windlesham Manor, his house in Crowborough, East Sussex, on 7 July 1930. He died of a heart attack at the age of 71. His last words were directed toward his wife: "You are wonderful."[113] At the time of his death, there was some controversy concerning his burial place, as he was avowedly not a Christian, considering himself a Spiritualist. He was first buried on 11 July 1930 in Windlesham rose garden.
+
+He was later reinterred together with his wife in Minstead churchyard in the New Forest, Hampshire.[9] Carved wooden tablets to his memory and to the memory of his wife, originally from the church at Minstead, are on display as part of a Sherlock Holmes exhibition at Portsmouth Museum.[114][115] The epitaph on his gravestone in the churchyard reads, in part: "Steel true/Blade straight/Arthur Conan Doyle/Knight/Patriot, Physician and man of letters".[116]
+
+A statue honours Doyle at Crowborough Cross in Crowborough, where he lived for 23 years.[117] There is a statue of Sherlock Holmes in Picardy Place, Edinburgh, close to the house where Doyle was born.[118]

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+An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in size from those that are so weak that they cannot be felt to those violent enough to propel objects and people into the air, and wreak destruction across entire cities. The seismicity, or seismic activity, of an area is the frequency, type, and size of earthquakes experienced over a period of time. The word tremor is also used for non-earthquake seismic rumbling.
+
+At the Earth's surface, earthquakes manifest themselves by shaking and displacing or disrupting the ground. When the epicenter of a large earthquake is located offshore, the seabed may be displaced sufficiently to cause a tsunami. Earthquakes can also trigger landslides and occasionally, volcanic activity.
+
+In its most general sense, the word earthquake is used to describe any seismic event—whether natural or caused by humans—that generates seismic waves. Earthquakes are caused mostly by rupture of geological faults but also by other events such as volcanic activity, landslides, mine blasts, and nuclear tests. An earthquake's point of initial rupture is called its hypocenter or focus. The epicenter is the point at ground level directly above the hypocenter.
+
+Tectonic earthquakes occur anywhere in the earth where there is sufficient stored elastic strain energy to drive fracture propagation along a fault plane. The sides of a fault move past each other smoothly and aseismically only if there are no irregularities or asperities along the fault surface that increase the frictional resistance. Most fault surfaces do have such asperities, which leads to a form of stick-slip behavior. Once the fault has locked, continued relative motion between the plates leads to increasing stress and therefore, stored strain energy in the volume around the fault surface. This continues until the stress has risen sufficiently to break through the asperity, suddenly allowing sliding over the locked portion of the fault, releasing the stored energy.[1] This energy is released as a combination of radiated elastic strain seismic waves,[2] frictional heating of the fault surface, and cracking of the rock, thus causing an earthquake. This process of gradual build-up of strain and stress punctuated by occasional sudden earthquake failure is referred to as the elastic-rebound theory. It is estimated that only 10 percent or less of an earthquake's total energy is radiated as seismic energy. Most of the earthquake's energy is used to power the earthquake fracture growth or is converted into heat generated by friction. Therefore, earthquakes lower the Earth's available elastic potential energy and raise its temperature, though these changes are negligible compared to the conductive and convective flow of heat out from the Earth's deep interior.[3]
+
+There are three main types of fault, all of which may cause an interplate earthquake: normal, reverse (thrust), and strike-slip. Normal and reverse faulting are examples of dip-slip, where the displacement along the fault is in the direction of dip and where movement on them involves a vertical component. Normal faults occur mainly in areas where the crust is being extended such as a divergent boundary. Reverse faults occur in areas where the crust is being shortened such as at a convergent boundary. Strike-slip faults are steep structures where the two sides of the fault slip horizontally past each other; transform boundaries are a particular type of strike-slip fault. Many earthquakes are caused by movement on faults that have components of both dip-slip and strike-slip; this is known as oblique slip.
+
+Reverse faults, particularly those along convergent plate boundaries, are associated with the most powerful earthquakes, megathrust earthquakes, including almost all of those of magnitude 8 or more. Strike-slip faults, particularly continental transforms, can produce major earthquakes up to about magnitude 8. Earthquakes associated with normal faults are generally less than magnitude 7. For every unit increase in magnitude, there is a roughly thirtyfold increase in the energy released. For instance, an earthquake of magnitude 6.0 releases approximately 32 times more energy than a 5.0 magnitude earthquake and a 7.0 magnitude earthquake releases 1,000 times more energy than a 5.0 magnitude of earthquake. An 8.6 magnitude earthquake releases the same amount of energy as 10,000 atomic bombs like those used in World War II.[4]
+
+This is so because the energy released in an earthquake, and thus its magnitude, is proportional to the area of the fault that ruptures[5] and the stress drop. Therefore, the longer the length and the wider the width of the faulted area, the larger the resulting magnitude. The topmost, brittle part of the Earth's crust, and the cool slabs of the tectonic plates that are descending down into the hot mantle, are the only parts of our planet that can store elastic energy and release it in fault ruptures. Rocks hotter than about 300 °C (572 °F) flow in response to stress; they do not rupture in earthquakes.[6][7] The maximum observed lengths of ruptures and mapped faults (which may break in a single rupture) are approximately 1,000 km (620 mi). Examples are the earthquakes in Alaska (1957), Chile (1960), and Sumatra (2004), all in subduction zones. The longest earthquake ruptures on strike-slip faults, like the San Andreas Fault (1857, 1906), the North Anatolian Fault in Turkey (1939), and the Denali Fault in Alaska (2002), are about half to one third as long as the lengths along subducting plate margins, and those along normal faults are even shorter.
+
+The most important parameter controlling the maximum earthquake magnitude on a fault, however, is not the maximum available length, but the available width because the latter varies by a factor of 20. Along converging plate margins, the dip angle of the rupture plane is very shallow, typically about 10 degrees.[8] Thus, the width of the plane within the top brittle crust of the Earth can become 50–100 km (31–62 mi) (Japan, 2011; Alaska, 1964), making the most powerful earthquakes possible.
+
+Strike-slip faults tend to be oriented near vertically, resulting in an approximate width of 10 km (6.2 mi) within the brittle crust.[9] Thus, earthquakes with magnitudes much larger than 8 are not possible. Maximum magnitudes along many normal faults are even more limited because many of them are located along spreading centers, as in Iceland, where the thickness of the brittle layer is only about six kilometres (3.7 mi).[10][11]
+
+In addition, there exists a hierarchy of stress level in the three fault types. Thrust faults are generated by the highest, strike-slip by intermediate, and normal faults by the lowest stress levels.[12] This can easily be understood by considering the direction of the greatest principal stress, the direction of the force that "pushes" the rock mass during the faulting. In the case of normal faults, the rock mass is pushed down in a vertical direction, thus the pushing force (greatest principal stress) equals the weight of the rock mass itself. In the case of thrusting, the rock mass "escapes" in the direction of the least principal stress, namely upward, lifting the rock mass up, and thus, the overburden equals the least principal stress. Strike-slip faulting is intermediate between the other two types described above. This difference in stress regime in the three faulting environments can contribute to differences in stress drop during faulting, which contributes to differences in the radiated energy, regardless of fault dimensions.
+
+Where plate boundaries occur within the continental lithosphere, deformation is spread out over a much larger area than the plate boundary itself. In the case of the San Andreas fault continental transform, many earthquakes occur away from the plate boundary and are related to strains developed within the broader zone of deformation caused by major irregularities in the fault trace (e.g., the "Big bend" region). The Northridge earthquake was associated with movement on a blind thrust within such a zone. Another example is the strongly oblique convergent plate boundary between the Arabian and Eurasian plates where it runs through the northwestern part of the Zagros Mountains. The deformation associated with this plate boundary is partitioned into nearly pure thrust sense movements perpendicular to the boundary over a wide zone to the southwest and nearly pure strike-slip motion along the Main Recent Fault close to the actual plate boundary itself. This is demonstrated by earthquake focal mechanisms.[13]
+
+All tectonic plates have internal stress fields caused by their interactions with neighboring plates and sedimentary loading or unloading (e.g., deglaciation).[14] These stresses may be sufficient to cause failure along existing fault planes, giving rise to intraplate earthquakes.[15]
+
+The majority of tectonic earthquakes originate at the ring of fire in depths not exceeding tens of kilometers. Earthquakes occurring at a depth of less than 70 km (43 mi) are classified as "shallow-focus" earthquakes, while those with a focal-depth between 70 and 300 km (43 and 186 mi) are commonly termed "mid-focus" or "intermediate-depth" earthquakes. In subduction zones, where older and colder oceanic crust descends beneath another tectonic plate, deep-focus earthquakes may occur at much greater depths (ranging from 300 to 700 km (190 to 430 mi)).[16] These seismically active areas of subduction are known as Wadati–Benioff zones. Deep-focus earthquakes occur at a depth where the subducted lithosphere should no longer be brittle, due to the high temperature and pressure. A possible mechanism for the generation of deep-focus earthquakes is faulting caused by olivine undergoing a phase transition into a spinel structure.[17]
+
+Earthquakes often occur in volcanic regions and are caused there, both by tectonic faults and the movement of magma in volcanoes. Such earthquakes can serve as an early warning of volcanic eruptions, as during the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.[18] Earthquake swarms can serve as markers for the location of the flowing magma throughout the volcanoes. These swarms can be recorded by seismometers and tiltmeters (a device that measures ground slope) and used as sensors to predict imminent or upcoming eruptions.[19]
+
+A tectonic earthquake begins by an initial rupture at a point on the fault surface, a process known as nucleation. The scale of the nucleation zone is uncertain, with some evidence, such as the rupture dimensions of the smallest earthquakes, suggesting that it is smaller than 100 m (330 ft) while other evidence, such as a slow component revealed by low-frequency spectra of some earthquakes, suggest that it is larger. The possibility that the nucleation involves some sort of preparation process is supported by the observation that about 40% of earthquakes are preceded by foreshocks. Once the rupture has initiated, it begins to propagate along the fault surface. The mechanics of this process are poorly understood, partly because it is difficult to recreate the high sliding velocities in a laboratory. Also the effects of strong ground motion make it very difficult to record information close to a nucleation zone.[20]
+
+Rupture propagation is generally modeled using a fracture mechanics approach, likening the rupture to a propagating mixed mode shear crack. The rupture velocity is a function of the fracture energy in the volume around the crack tip, increasing with decreasing fracture energy. The velocity of rupture propagation is orders of magnitude faster than the displacement velocity across the fault. Earthquake ruptures typically propagate at velocities that are in the range 70–90% of the S-wave velocity, which is independent of earthquake size. A small subset of earthquake ruptures appear to have propagated at speeds greater than the S-wave velocity. These supershear earthquakes have all been observed during large strike-slip events. The unusually wide zone of coseismic damage caused by the 2001 Kunlun earthquake has been attributed to the effects of the sonic boom developed in such earthquakes. Some earthquake ruptures travel at unusually low velocities and are referred to as slow earthquakes. A particularly dangerous form of slow earthquake is the tsunami earthquake, observed where the relatively low felt intensities, caused by the slow propagation speed of some great earthquakes, fail to alert the population of the neighboring coast, as in the 1896 Sanriku earthquake.[20]
+
+Tides may induce some seismicity. See tidal triggering of earthquakes for details.
+
+Most earthquakes form part of a sequence, related to each other in terms of location and time.[21] Most earthquake clusters consist of small tremors that cause little to no damage, but there is a theory that earthquakes can recur in a regular pattern.[22]
+
+An aftershock is an earthquake that occurs after a previous earthquake, the mainshock. An aftershock is in the same region of the main shock but always of a smaller magnitude. If an aftershock is larger than the main shock, the aftershock is redesignated as the main shock and the original main shock is redesignated as a foreshock. Aftershocks are formed as the crust around the displaced fault plane adjusts to the effects of the main shock.[21]
+
+Earthquake swarms are sequences of earthquakes striking in a specific area within a short period of time. They are different from earthquakes followed by a series of aftershocks by the fact that no single earthquake in the sequence is obviously the main shock, so none has a notable higher magnitude than another. An example of an earthquake swarm is the 2004 activity at Yellowstone National Park.[23] In August 2012, a swarm of earthquakes shook Southern California's Imperial Valley, showing the most recorded activity in the area since the 1970s.[24]
+
+Sometimes a series of earthquakes occur in what has been called an earthquake storm, where the earthquakes strike a fault in clusters, each triggered by the shaking or stress redistribution of the previous earthquakes. Similar to aftershocks but on adjacent segments of fault, these storms occur over the course of years, and with some of the later earthquakes as damaging as the early ones. Such a pattern was observed in the sequence of about a dozen earthquakes that struck the North Anatolian Fault in Turkey in the 20th century and has been inferred for older anomalous clusters of large earthquakes in the Middle East.[25][26]
+
+Quaking or shaking of the earth is a common phenomenon undoubtedly known to humans from earliest times. Prior to the development of strong-motion accelerometers that can measure peak ground speed and acceleration directly, the intensity of the earth-shaking was estimated on the basis of the observed effects, as categorized on various seismic intensity scales. Only in the last century has the source of such shaking been identified as ruptures in the Earth's crust, with the intensity of shaking at any locality dependent not only on the local ground conditions but also on the strength or magnitude of the rupture, and on its distance.[27]
+
+The first scale for measuring earthquake magnitudes was developed by Charles F. Richter in 1935. Subsequent scales (see seismic magnitude scales) have retained a key feature, where each unit represents a ten-fold difference in the amplitude of the ground shaking and a 32-fold difference in energy. Subsequent scales are also adjusted to have approximately the same numeric value within the limits of the scale.[28]
+
+Although the mass media commonly reports earthquake magnitudes as "Richter magnitude" or "Richter scale", standard practice by most seismological authorities is to express an earthquake's strength on the moment magnitude scale, which is based on the actual energy released by an earthquake.[29]
+
+It is estimated that around 500,000 earthquakes occur each year, detectable with current instrumentation. About 100,000 of these can be felt.[30][31] Minor earthquakes occur nearly constantly around the world in places like California and Alaska in the U.S., as well as in El Salvador, Mexico, Guatemala, Chile, Peru, Indonesia, Philippines, Iran, Pakistan, the Azores in Portugal, Turkey, New Zealand, Greece, Italy, India, Nepal and Japan.[32] Larger earthquakes occur less frequently, the relationship being exponential; for example, roughly ten times as many earthquakes larger than magnitude 4 occur in a particular time period than earthquakes larger than magnitude 5.[33] In the (low seismicity) United Kingdom, for example, it has been calculated that the average recurrences are:
+an earthquake of 3.7–4.6 every year, an earthquake of 4.7–5.5 every 10 years, and an earthquake of 5.6 or larger every 100 years.[34] This is an example of the Gutenberg–Richter law.
+
+The number of seismic stations has increased from about 350 in 1931 to many thousands today. As a result, many more earthquakes are reported than in the past, but this is because of the vast improvement in instrumentation, rather than an increase in the number of earthquakes. The United States Geological Survey estimates that, since 1900, there have been an average of 18 major earthquakes (magnitude 7.0–7.9) and one great earthquake (magnitude 8.0 or greater) per year, and that this average has been relatively stable.[36] In recent years, the number of major earthquakes per year has decreased, though this is probably a statistical fluctuation rather than a systematic trend.[37] More detailed statistics on the size and frequency of earthquakes is available from the United States Geological Survey (USGS).[38]
+A recent increase in the number of major earthquakes has been noted, which could be explained by a cyclical pattern of periods of intense tectonic activity, interspersed with longer periods of low intensity. However, accurate recordings of earthquakes only began in the early 1900s, so it is too early to categorically state that this is the case.[39]
+
+Most of the world's earthquakes (90%, and 81% of the largest) take place in the 40,000-kilometre-long (25,000 mi), horseshoe-shaped zone called the circum-Pacific seismic belt, known as the Pacific Ring of Fire, which for the most part bounds the Pacific Plate.[40][41] Massive earthquakes tend to occur along other plate boundaries too, such as along the Himalayan Mountains.[42]
+
+With the rapid growth of mega-cities such as Mexico City, Tokyo and Tehran in areas of high seismic risk, some seismologists are warning that a single quake may claim the lives of up to three million people.[43]
+
+While most earthquakes are caused by movement of the Earth's tectonic plates, human activity can also produce earthquakes. Activities both above ground and below may change the stresses and strains on the crust, including building reservoirs, extracting resources such as coal or oil, and injecting fluids underground for waste disposal or fracking.[44] Most of these earthquakes have small magnitudes. The 5.7 magnitude 2011 Oklahoma earthquake is thought to have been caused by disposing wastewater from oil production into injection wells,[45] and studies point to the state's oil industry as the cause of other earthquakes in the past century.[46] A Columbia University paper suggested that the 8.0 magnitude 2008 Sichuan earthquake was induced by loading from the Zipingpu Dam, though the link has not been conclusively proved.[47]
+
+The instrumental scales used to describe the size of an earthquake began with the Richter magnitude scale in the 1930s. It is a relatively simple measurement of an event's amplitude, and its use has become minimal in the 21st century. Seismic waves travel through the Earth's interior and can be recorded by seismometers at great distances. The surface wave magnitude was developed in the 1950s as a means to measure remote earthquakes and to improve the accuracy for larger events. The moment magnitude scale not only measures the amplitude of the shock but also takes into account the seismic moment (total rupture area, average slip of the fault, and rigidity of the rock). The Japan Meteorological Agency seismic intensity scale, the Medvedev–Sponheuer–Karnik scale, and the Mercalli intensity scale are based on the observed effects and are related to the intensity of shaking.
+
+Every tremor produces different types of seismic waves, which travel through rock with different velocities:
+
+Propagation velocity of the seismic waves through solid rock ranges from approx. 3 km/s (1.9 mi/s) up to 13 km/s (8.1 mi/s), depending on the density and elasticity of the medium. In the Earth's interior, the shock- or P-waves travel much faster than the S-waves (approx. relation 1.7:1). The differences in travel time from the epicenter to the observatory are a measure of the distance and can be used to image both sources of quakes and structures within the Earth. Also, the depth of the hypocenter can be computed roughly.
+
+In the upper crust, P-waves travel in the range 2–3 km (1.2–1.9 mi) per second (or lower) in soils and unconsolidated sediments, increasing to 3–6 km (1.9–3.7 mi) per second in solid rock. In the lower crust, they travel at about 6–7 km (3.7–4.3 mi) per second; the velocity increases within the deep mantle to about 13 km (8.1 mi) per second. The velocity of S-waves ranges from 2–3 km (1.2–1.9 mi) per second in light sediments and 4–5 km (2.5–3.1 mi) per second in the Earth's crust up to 7 km (4.3 mi) per second in the deep mantle. As a consequence, the first waves of a distant earthquake arrive at an observatory via the Earth's mantle.
+
+On average, the kilometer distance to the earthquake is the number of seconds between the P- and S-wave times 8.[48] Slight deviations are caused by inhomogeneities of subsurface structure. By such analyses of seismograms the Earth's core was located in 1913 by Beno Gutenberg.
+
+S-waves and later arriving surface waves do most of the damage compared to P-waves. P-waves squeeze and expand material in the same direction they are traveling, whereas S-waves shake the ground up and down and back and forth.[49]
+
+Earthquakes are not only categorized by their magnitude but also by the place where they occur. The world is divided into 754 Flinn–Engdahl regions (F-E regions), which are based on political and geographical boundaries as well as seismic activity. More active zones are divided into smaller F-E regions whereas less active zones belong to larger F-E regions.
+
+Standard reporting of earthquakes includes its magnitude, date and time of occurrence, geographic coordinates of its epicenter, depth of the epicenter, geographical region, distances to population centers, location uncertainty, a number of parameters that are included in USGS earthquake reports (number of stations reporting, number of observations, etc.), and a unique event ID.[50]
+
+Although relatively slow seismic waves have traditionally been used to detect earthquakes, scientists realized in 2016 that gravitational measurements could provide instantaneous detection of earthquakes, and confirmed this by analyzing gravitational records associated with the 2011 Tohoku-Oki ("Fukushima") earthquake.[51][52]
+
+The effects of earthquakes include, but are not limited to, the following:
+
+Shaking and ground rupture are the main effects created by earthquakes, principally resulting in more or less severe damage to buildings and other rigid structures. The severity of the local effects depends on the complex combination of the earthquake magnitude, the distance from the epicenter, and the local geological and geomorphological conditions, which may amplify or reduce wave propagation.[53] The ground-shaking is measured by ground acceleration.
+
+Specific local geological, geomorphological, and geostructural features can induce high levels of shaking on the ground surface even from low-intensity earthquakes. This effect is called site or local amplification. It is principally due to the transfer of the seismic motion from hard deep soils to soft superficial soils and to effects of seismic energy focalization owing to typical geometrical setting of the deposits.
+
+Ground rupture is a visible breaking and displacement of the Earth's surface along the trace of the fault, which may be of the order of several meters in the case of major earthquakes. Ground rupture is a major risk for large engineering structures such as dams, bridges, and nuclear power stations and requires careful mapping of existing faults to identify any that are likely to break the ground surface within the life of the structure.[54]
+
+Soil liquefaction occurs when, because of the shaking, water-saturated granular material (such as sand) temporarily loses its strength and transforms from a solid to a liquid. Soil liquefaction may cause rigid structures, like buildings and bridges, to tilt or sink into the liquefied deposits. For example, in the 1964 Alaska earthquake, soil liquefaction caused many buildings to sink into the ground, eventually collapsing upon themselves.[55]
+
+An earthquake may cause injury and loss of life, road and bridge damage, general property damage, and collapse or destabilization (potentially leading to future collapse) of buildings. The aftermath may bring disease, lack of basic necessities, mental consequences such as panic attacks, depression to survivors,[56] and higher insurance premiums.
+
+Earthquakes can produce slope instability leading to landslides, a major geological hazard. Landslide danger may persist while emergency personnel are attempting rescue.[57]
+
+Earthquakes can cause fires by damaging electrical power or gas lines. In the event of water mains rupturing and a loss of pressure, it may also become difficult to stop the spread of a fire once it has started. For example, more deaths in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake were caused by fire than by the earthquake itself.[58]
+
+Tsunamis are long-wavelength, long-period sea waves produced by the sudden or abrupt movement of large volumes of water—including when an earthquake occurs at sea. In the open ocean the distance between wave crests can surpass 100 kilometers (62 mi), and the wave periods can vary from five minutes to one hour. Such tsunamis travel 600–800 kilometers per hour (373–497 miles per hour), depending on water depth. Large waves produced by an earthquake or a submarine landslide can overrun nearby coastal areas in a matter of minutes. Tsunamis can also travel thousands of kilometers across open ocean and wreak destruction on far shores hours after the earthquake that generated them.[59]
+
+Ordinarily, subduction earthquakes under magnitude 7.5 do not cause tsunamis, although some instances of this have been recorded. Most destructive tsunamis are caused by earthquakes of magnitude 7.5 or more.[59]
+
+Floods may be secondary effects of earthquakes, if dams are damaged. Earthquakes may cause landslips to dam rivers, which collapse and cause floods.[60]
+
+The terrain below the Sarez Lake in Tajikistan is in danger of catastrophic flooding if the landslide dam formed by the earthquake, known as the Usoi Dam, were to fail during a future earthquake. Impact projections suggest the flood could affect roughly 5 million people.[61]
+
+One of the most devastating earthquakes in recorded history was the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake, which occurred on 23 January 1556 in Shaanxi province, China. More than 830,000 people died.[63] Most houses in the area were yaodongs—dwellings carved out of loess hillsides—and many victims were killed when these structures collapsed. The 1976 Tangshan earthquake, which killed between 240,000 and 655,000 people, was the deadliest of the 20th century.[64]
+
+The 1960 Chilean earthquake is the largest earthquake that has been measured on a seismograph, reaching 9.5 magnitude on 22 May 1960.[30][31] Its epicenter was near Cañete, Chile. The energy released was approximately twice that of the next most powerful earthquake, the Good Friday earthquake (March 27, 1964), which was centered in Prince William Sound, Alaska.[65][66] The ten largest recorded earthquakes have all been megathrust earthquakes; however, of these ten, only the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake is simultaneously one of the deadliest earthquakes in history.
+
+Earthquakes that caused the greatest loss of life, while powerful, were deadly because of their proximity to either heavily populated areas or the ocean, where earthquakes often create tsunamis that can devastate communities thousands of kilometers away. Regions most at risk for great loss of life include those where earthquakes are relatively rare but powerful, and poor regions with lax, unenforced, or nonexistent seismic building codes.
+
+Earthquake prediction is a branch of the science of seismology concerned with the specification of the time, location, and magnitude of future earthquakes within stated limits.[67] Many methods have been developed for predicting the time and place in which earthquakes will occur. Despite considerable research efforts by seismologists, scientifically reproducible predictions cannot yet be made to a specific day or month.[68]
+
+While forecasting is usually considered to be a type of prediction, earthquake forecasting is often differentiated from earthquake prediction. Earthquake forecasting is concerned with the probabilistic assessment of general earthquake hazard, including the frequency and magnitude of damaging earthquakes in a given area over years or decades.[69] For well-understood faults the probability that a segment may rupture during the next few decades can be estimated.[70][71]
+
+Earthquake warning systems have been developed that can provide regional notification of an earthquake in progress, but before the ground surface has begun to move, potentially allowing people within the system's range to seek shelter before the earthquake's impact is felt.
+
+The objective of earthquake engineering is to foresee the impact of earthquakes on buildings and other structures and to design such structures to minimize the risk of damage. Existing structures can be modified by seismic retrofitting to improve their resistance to earthquakes. Earthquake insurance can provide building owners with financial protection against losses resulting from earthquakes Emergency management strategies can be employed by a government or organization to mitigate risks and prepare for consequences.
+
+Individuals can also take preparedness steps like securing water heaters and heavy items that could injure someone, locating shutoffs for utilities, and being educated about what to do when shaking starts. For areas near large bodies of water, earthquake preparedness encompasses the possibility of a tsunami caused by a large quake.
+
+From the lifetime of the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras in the 5th century BCE to the 14th century CE, earthquakes were usually attributed to "air (vapors) in the cavities of the Earth."[72] Thales of Miletus (625–547 BCE) was the only documented person who believed that earthquakes were caused by tension between the earth and water.[72] Other theories existed, including the Greek philosopher Anaxamines' (585–526 BCE) beliefs that short incline episodes of dryness and wetness caused seismic activity. The Greek philosopher Democritus (460–371 BCE) blamed water in general for earthquakes.[72] Pliny the Elder called earthquakes "underground thunderstorms".[72]
+
+In recent studies, geologists claim that global warming is one of the reasons for increased seismic activity. According to these studies, melting glaciers and rising sea levels disturb the balance of pressure on Earth's tectonic plates, thus causing an increase in the frequency and intensity of earthquakes.[73]
+
+In Norse mythology, earthquakes were explained as the violent struggling of the god Loki. When Loki, god of mischief and strife, murdered Baldr, god of beauty and light, he was punished by being bound in a cave with a poisonous serpent placed above his head dripping venom. Loki's wife Sigyn stood by him with a bowl to catch the poison, but whenever she had to empty the bowl the poison dripped on Loki's face, forcing him to jerk his head away and thrash against his bonds, which caused the earth to tremble.[74]
+
+In Greek mythology, Poseidon was the cause and god of earthquakes. When he was in a bad mood, he struck the ground with a trident, causing earthquakes and other calamities. He also used earthquakes to punish and inflict fear upon people as revenge.[75]
+
+In Japanese mythology, Namazu (鯰) is a giant catfish who causes earthquakes. Namazu lives in the mud beneath the earth, and is guarded by the god Kashima who restrains the fish with a stone. When Kashima lets his guard fall, Namazu thrashes about, causing violent earthquakes.[76]
+
+In modern popular culture, the portrayal of earthquakes is shaped by the memory of great cities laid waste, such as Kobe in 1995 or San Francisco in 1906.[77] Fictional earthquakes tend to strike suddenly and without warning.[77] For this reason, stories about earthquakes generally begin with the disaster and focus on its immediate aftermath, as in Short Walk to Daylight (1972), The Ragged Edge (1968) or Aftershock: Earthquake in New York (1999).[77] A notable example is Heinrich von Kleist's classic novella, The Earthquake in Chile, which describes the destruction of Santiago in 1647. Haruki Murakami's short fiction collection After the Quake depicts the consequences of the Kobe earthquake of 1995.
+
+The most popular single earthquake in fiction is the hypothetical "Big One" expected of California's San Andreas Fault someday, as depicted in the novels Richter 10 (1996), Goodbye California (1977), 2012 (2009) and San Andreas (2015) among other works.[77] Jacob M. Appel's widely anthologized short story, A Comparative Seismology, features a con artist who convinces an elderly woman that an apocalyptic earthquake is imminent.[78]
+
+Contemporary depictions of earthquakes in film are variable in the manner in which they reflect human psychological reactions to the actual trauma that can be caused to directly afflicted families and their loved ones.[79] Disaster mental health response research emphasizes the need to be aware of the different roles of loss of family and key community members, loss of home and familiar surroundings, loss of essential supplies and services to maintain survival.[80][81] Particularly for children, the clear availability of caregiving adults who are able to protect, nourish, and clothe them in the aftermath of the earthquake, and to help them make sense of what has befallen them has been shown even more important to their emotional and physical health than the simple giving of provisions.[82] As was observed after other disasters involving destruction and loss of life and their media depictions, recently observed in the 2010 Haiti earthquake, it is also important not to pathologize the reactions to loss and displacement or disruption of governmental administration and services, but rather to validate these reactions, to support constructive problem-solving and reflection as to how one might improve the conditions of those affected.[83]

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+
+The Solar System[b] is the gravitationally bound system of the Sun and the objects that orbit it, either directly or indirectly.[c] Of the objects that orbit the Sun directly, the largest are the eight planets,[d] with the remainder being smaller objects, the dwarf planets and small Solar System bodies. Of the objects that orbit the Sun indirectly—the moons—two are larger than the smallest planet, Mercury.[e]
+
+The Solar System formed 4.6 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of a giant interstellar molecular cloud. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun, with the majority of the remaining mass contained in Jupiter. The four smaller inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, are terrestrial planets, being primarily composed of rock and metal. The four outer planets are giant planets, being substantially more massive than the terrestrials. The two largest planets, Jupiter and Saturn, are gas giants, being composed mainly of hydrogen and helium; the two outermost planets, Uranus and Neptune, are ice giants, being composed mostly of substances with relatively high melting points compared with hydrogen and helium, called volatiles, such as water, ammonia and methane. All eight planets have almost circular orbits that lie within a nearly flat disc called the ecliptic.
+
+The Solar System also contains smaller objects.[f] The asteroid belt, which lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, mostly contains objects composed, like the terrestrial planets, of rock and metal. Beyond Neptune's orbit lie the Kuiper belt and scattered disc, which are populations of trans-Neptunian objects composed mostly of ices, and beyond them a newly discovered population of sednoids. Within these populations, some objects are large enough to have rounded under their own gravity, though there is considerable debate as to how many there will prove to be.[9][10] Such objects are categorized as dwarf planets. The only certain dwarf planet is Pluto, with another trans-Neptunian object, Eris, expected to be, and the asteroid Ceres at least close to being a dwarf planet.[f] In addition to these two regions, various other small-body populations, including comets, centaurs and interplanetary dust clouds, freely travel between regions. Six of the planets, the six largest possible dwarf planets, and many of the smaller bodies are orbited by natural satellites, usually termed "moons" after the Moon. Each of the outer planets is encircled by planetary rings of dust and other small objects.
+
+The solar wind, a stream of charged particles flowing outwards from the Sun, creates a bubble-like region in the interstellar medium known as the heliosphere. The heliopause is the point at which pressure from the solar wind is equal to the opposing pressure of the interstellar medium; it extends out to the edge of the scattered disc. The Oort cloud, which is thought to be the source for long-period comets, may also exist at a distance roughly a thousand times further than the heliosphere. The Solar System is located in the Orion Arm, 26,000 light-years from the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
+
+For most of history, humanity did not recognize or understand the concept of the Solar System. Most people up to the Late Middle Ages–Renaissance believed Earth to be stationary at the centre of the universe and categorically different from the divine or ethereal objects that moved through the sky. Although the Greek philosopher Aristarchus of Samos had speculated on a heliocentric reordering of the cosmos, Nicolaus Copernicus was the first to develop a mathematically predictive heliocentric system.[11][12]
+
+In the 17th century, Galileo discovered that the Sun was marked with sunspots, and that Jupiter had four satellites in orbit around it.[13] Christiaan Huygens followed on from Galileo's discoveries by discovering Saturn's moon Titan and the shape of the rings of Saturn.[14] Edmond Halley realised in 1705 that repeated sightings of a comet were recording the same object, returning regularly once every 75–76 years. This was the first evidence that anything other than the planets orbited the Sun.[15] Around this time (1704), the term "Solar System" first appeared in English.[16] In 1838, Friedrich Bessel successfully measured a stellar parallax, an apparent shift in the position of a star created by Earth's motion around the Sun, providing the first direct, experimental proof of heliocentrism.[17] Improvements in observational astronomy and the use of unmanned spacecraft have since enabled the detailed investigation of other bodies orbiting the Sun.
+
+The principal component of the Solar System is the Sun, a G2 main-sequence star that contains 99.86% of the system's known mass and dominates it gravitationally.[18] The Sun's four largest orbiting bodies, the giant planets, account for 99% of the remaining mass, with Jupiter and Saturn together comprising more than 90%. The remaining objects of the Solar System (including the four terrestrial planets, the dwarf planets, moons, asteroids, and comets) together comprise less than 0.002% of the Solar System's total mass.[g]
+
+Most large objects in orbit around the Sun lie near the plane of Earth's orbit, known as the ecliptic. The planets are very close to the ecliptic, whereas comets and Kuiper belt objects are frequently at significantly greater angles to it.[22][23] As a result of the formation of the Solar System planets, and most other objects, orbit the Sun in the same direction that the Sun is rotating (counter-clockwise, as viewed from above Earth's north pole).[24] There are exceptions, such as Halley's Comet. Most of the larger moons orbit their planets in this prograde direction (with Triton being the largest retrograde exception) and most larger objects rotate themselves in the same direction (with Venus being a notable retrograde exception).
+
+The overall structure of the charted regions of the Solar System consists of the Sun, four relatively small inner planets surrounded by a belt of mostly rocky asteroids, and four giant planets surrounded by the Kuiper belt of mostly icy objects. Astronomers sometimes informally divide this structure into separate regions. The inner Solar System includes the four terrestrial planets and the asteroid belt. The outer Solar System is beyond the asteroids, including the four giant planets.[25] Since the discovery of the Kuiper belt, the outermost parts of the Solar System are considered a distinct region consisting of the objects beyond Neptune.[26]
+
+Most of the planets in the Solar System have secondary systems of their own, being orbited by planetary objects called natural satellites, or moons (two of which, Titan and Ganymede, are larger than the planet Mercury), and, in the case of the four giant planets, by planetary rings, thin bands of tiny particles that orbit them in unison. Most of the largest natural satellites are in synchronous rotation, with one face permanently turned toward their parent.
+
+Kepler's laws of planetary motion describe the orbits of objects about the Sun. Following Kepler's laws, each object travels along an ellipse with the Sun at one focus. Objects closer to the Sun (with smaller semi-major axes) travel more quickly because they are more affected by the Sun's gravity. On an elliptical orbit, a body's distance from the Sun varies over the course of its year. A body's closest approach to the Sun is called its perihelion, whereas its most distant point from the Sun is called its aphelion. The orbits of the planets are nearly circular, but many comets, asteroids, and Kuiper belt objects follow highly elliptical orbits. The positions of the bodies in the Solar System can be predicted using numerical models.
+
+Although the Sun dominates the system by mass, it accounts for only about 2% of the angular momentum.[27][28] The planets, dominated by Jupiter, account for most of the rest of the angular momentum due to the combination of their mass, orbit, and distance from the Sun, with a possibly significant contribution from comets.[27]
+
+The Sun, which comprises nearly all the matter in the Solar System, is composed of roughly 98% hydrogen and helium.[29] Jupiter and Saturn, which comprise nearly all the remaining matter, are also primarily composed of hydrogen and helium.[30][31] A composition gradient exists in the Solar System, created by heat and light pressure from the Sun; those objects closer to the Sun, which are more affected by heat and light pressure, are composed of elements with high melting points. Objects farther from the Sun are composed largely of materials with lower melting points.[32] The boundary in the Solar System beyond which those volatile substances could condense is known as the frost line, and it lies at roughly 5 AU from the Sun.[4]
+
+The objects of the inner Solar System are composed mostly of rock,[33] the collective name for compounds with high melting points, such as silicates, iron or nickel, that remained solid under almost all conditions in the protoplanetary nebula.[34] Jupiter and Saturn are composed mainly of gases, the astronomical term for materials with extremely low melting points and high vapour pressure, such as hydrogen, helium, and neon, which were always in the gaseous phase in the nebula.[34] Ices, like water, methane, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and carbon dioxide,[33] have melting points up to a few hundred kelvins.[34] They can be found as ices, liquids, or gases in various places in the Solar System, whereas in the nebula they were either in the solid or gaseous phase.[34] Icy substances comprise the majority of the satellites of the giant planets, as well as most of Uranus and Neptune (the so-called "ice giants") and the numerous small objects that lie beyond Neptune's orbit.[33][35] Together, gases and ices are referred to as volatiles.[36]
+
+The distance from Earth to the Sun is 1 astronomical unit [AU] (150,000,000 km; 93,000,000 mi). For comparison, the radius of the Sun is 0.0047 AU (700,000 km). Thus, the Sun occupies 0.00001% (10−5 %) of the volume of a sphere with a radius the size of Earth's orbit, whereas Earth's volume is roughly one millionth (10−6) that of the Sun. Jupiter, the largest planet, is 5.2 astronomical units (780,000,000 km) from the Sun and has a radius of 71,000 km (0.00047 AU), whereas the most distant planet, Neptune, is 30 AU (4.5×109 km) from the Sun.
+
+With a few exceptions, the farther a planet or belt is from the Sun, the larger the distance between its orbit and the orbit of the next nearer object to the Sun. For example, Venus is approximately 0.33 AU farther out from the Sun than Mercury, whereas Saturn is 4.3 AU out from Jupiter, and Neptune lies 10.5 AU out from Uranus. Attempts have been made to determine a relationship between these orbital distances (for example, the Titius–Bode law),[37] but no such theory has been accepted. The images at the beginning of this section show the orbits of the various constituents of the Solar System on different scales.
+
+Some Solar System models attempt to convey the relative scales involved in the Solar System on human terms. Some are small in scale (and may be mechanical—called orreries)—whereas others extend across cities or regional areas.[38] The largest such scale model, the Sweden Solar System, uses the 110-metre (361 ft) Ericsson Globe in Stockholm as its substitute Sun, and, following the scale, Jupiter is a 7.5-metre (25-foot) sphere at Stockholm Arlanda Airport, 40 km (25 mi) away, whereas the farthest current object, Sedna, is a 10 cm (4 in) sphere in Luleå, 912 km (567 mi) away.[39][40]
+
+If the Sun–Neptune distance is scaled to 100 metres, then the Sun would be about 3 cm in diameter (roughly two-thirds the diameter of a golf ball), the giant planets would be all smaller than about 3 mm, and Earth's diameter along with that of the other terrestrial planets would be smaller than a flea (0.3 mm) at this scale.[41]
+
+Distances of selected bodies of the Solar System from the Sun. The left and right edges of each bar correspond to the perihelion and aphelion of the body, respectively, hence long bars denote high orbital eccentricity. The radius of the Sun is 0.7 million km, and the radius of Jupiter (the largest planet) is 0.07 million km, both too small to resolve on this image.
+
+The Solar System formed 4.568 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of a region within a large molecular cloud.[h] This initial cloud was likely several light-years across and probably birthed several stars.[43] As is typical of molecular clouds, this one consisted mostly of hydrogen, with some helium, and small amounts of heavier elements fused by previous generations of stars. As the region that would become the Solar System, known as the pre-solar nebula,[44] collapsed, conservation of angular momentum caused it to rotate faster. The centre, where most of the mass collected, became increasingly hotter than the surrounding disc.[43] As the contracting nebula rotated faster, it began to flatten into a protoplanetary disc with a diameter of roughly 200 AU[43] and a hot, dense protostar at the centre.[45][46] The planets formed by accretion from this disc,[47] in which dust and gas gravitationally attracted each other, coalescing to form ever larger bodies. Hundreds of protoplanets may have existed in the early Solar System, but they either merged or were destroyed, leaving the planets, dwarf planets, and leftover minor bodies.
+
+Due to their higher boiling points, only metals and silicates could exist in solid form in the warm inner Solar System close to the Sun, and these would eventually form the rocky planets of Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. Because metallic elements only comprised a very small fraction of the solar nebula, the terrestrial planets could not grow very large. The giant planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) formed further out, beyond the frost line, the point between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter where material is cool enough for volatile icy compounds to remain solid. The ices that formed these planets were more plentiful than the metals and silicates that formed the terrestrial inner planets, allowing them to grow massive enough to capture large atmospheres of hydrogen and helium, the lightest and most abundant elements. Leftover debris that never became planets congregated in regions such as the asteroid belt, Kuiper belt, and Oort cloud. The Nice model is an explanation for the creation of these regions and how the outer planets could have formed in different positions and migrated to their current orbits through various gravitational interactions.
+
+Within 50 million years, the pressure and density of hydrogen in the centre of the protostar became great enough for it to begin thermonuclear fusion.[49] The temperature, reaction rate, pressure, and density increased until hydrostatic equilibrium was achieved: the thermal pressure equalled the force of gravity. At this point, the Sun became a main-sequence star.[50] The main-sequence phase, from beginning to end, will last about 10 billion years for the Sun compared to around two billion years for all other phases of the Sun's pre-remnant life combined.[51] Solar wind from the Sun created the heliosphere and swept away the remaining gas and dust from the protoplanetary disc into interstellar space, ending the planetary formation process. The Sun is growing brighter; early in its main-sequence life its brightness was 70% that of what it is today.[52]
+
+The Solar System will remain roughly as we know it today until the hydrogen in the core of the Sun has been entirely converted to helium, which will occur roughly 5 billion years from now. This will mark the end of the Sun's main-sequence life. At this time, the core of the Sun will contract with hydrogen fusion occurring along a shell surrounding the inert helium, and the energy output will be much greater than at present. The outer layers of the Sun will expand to roughly 260 times its current diameter, and the Sun will become a red giant. Because of its vastly increased surface area, the surface of the Sun will be considerably cooler (2,600 K at its coolest) than it is on the main sequence.[51] The expanding Sun is expected to vaporize Mercury and render Earth uninhabitable. Eventually, the core will be hot enough for helium fusion; the Sun will burn helium for a fraction of the time it burned hydrogen in the core. The Sun is not massive enough to commence the fusion of heavier elements, and nuclear reactions in the core will dwindle. Its outer layers will move away into space, leaving a white dwarf, an extraordinarily dense object, half the original mass of the Sun but only the size of Earth.[53] The ejected outer layers will form what is known as a planetary nebula, returning some of the material that formed the Sun—but now enriched with heavier elements like carbon—to the interstellar medium.
+
+The Sun is the Solar System's star and by far its most massive component. Its large mass (332,900 Earth masses),[54] which comprises 99.86% of all the mass in the Solar System,[55] produces temperatures and densities in its core high enough to sustain nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium, making it a main-sequence star.[56] This releases an enormous amount of energy, mostly radiated into space as electromagnetic radiation peaking in visible light.[57]
+
+The Sun is a G2-type main-sequence star. Hotter main-sequence stars are more luminous. The Sun's temperature is intermediate between that of the hottest stars and that of the coolest stars. Stars brighter and hotter than the Sun are rare, whereas substantially dimmer and cooler stars, known as red dwarfs, make up 85% of the stars in the Milky Way.[58][59]
+
+The Sun is a population I star; it has a higher abundance of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium ("metals" in astronomical parlance) than the older population II stars.[60] Elements heavier than hydrogen and helium were formed in the cores of ancient and exploding stars, so the first generation of stars had to die before the Universe could be enriched with these atoms. The oldest stars contain few metals, whereas stars born later have more. This high metallicity is thought to have been crucial to the Sun's development of a planetary system because the planets form from the accretion of "metals".[61]
+
+The vast majority of the Solar System consists of a near-vacuum known as the interplanetary medium. Along with light, the Sun radiates a continuous stream of charged particles (a plasma) known as the solar wind. This stream of particles spreads outwards at roughly 1.5 million kilometres per hour,[62] creating a tenuous atmosphere that permeates the interplanetary medium out to at least 100 AU (see § Heliosphere).[63] Activity on the Sun's surface, such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, disturbs the heliosphere, creating space weather and causing geomagnetic storms.[64] The largest structure within the heliosphere is the heliospheric current sheet, a spiral form created by the actions of the Sun's rotating magnetic field on the interplanetary medium.[65][66]
+
+Earth's magnetic field stops its atmosphere from being stripped away by the solar wind.[67] Venus and Mars do not have magnetic fields, and as a result the solar wind is causing their atmospheres to gradually bleed away into space.[68] Coronal mass ejections and similar events blow a magnetic field and huge quantities of material from the surface of the Sun. The interaction of this magnetic field and material with Earth's magnetic field funnels charged particles into Earth's upper atmosphere, where its interactions create aurorae seen near the magnetic poles.
+
+The heliosphere and planetary magnetic fields (for those planets that have them) partially shield the Solar System from high-energy interstellar particles called cosmic rays. The density of cosmic rays in the interstellar medium and the strength of the Sun's magnetic field change on very long timescales, so the level of cosmic-ray penetration in the Solar System varies, though by how much is unknown.[69]
+
+The interplanetary medium is home to at least two disc-like regions of cosmic dust. The first, the zodiacal dust cloud, lies in the inner Solar System and causes the zodiacal light. It was likely formed by collisions within the asteroid belt brought on by gravitational interactions with the planets.[70] The second dust cloud extends from about 10 AU to about 40 AU, and was probably created by similar collisions within the Kuiper belt.[71][72]
+
+The inner Solar System is the region comprising the terrestrial planets and the asteroid belt.[73] Composed mainly of silicates and metals, the objects of the inner Solar System are relatively close to the Sun; the radius of this entire region is less than the distance between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn. This region is also within the frost line, which is a little less than 5 AU (about 700 million km) from the Sun.[74]
+
+The four terrestrial or inner planets have dense, rocky compositions, few or no moons, and no ring systems. They are composed largely of refractory minerals, such as the silicates—which form their crusts and mantles—and metals, such as iron and nickel, which form their cores. Three of the four inner planets (Venus, Earth and Mars) have atmospheres substantial enough to generate weather; all have impact craters and tectonic surface features, such as rift valleys and volcanoes. The term inner planet should not be confused with inferior planet, which designates those planets that are closer to the Sun than Earth is (i.e. Mercury and Venus).
+
+Mercury (0.4 AU from the Sun) is the closest planet to the Sun and on average, all seven other planets.[75][76] The smallest planet in the Solar System (0.055 M⊕), Mercury has no natural satellites. Besides impact craters, its only known geological features are lobed ridges or rupes that were probably produced by a period of contraction early in its history.[77] Mercury's very tenuous atmosphere consists of atoms blasted off its surface by the solar wind.[78] Its relatively large iron core and thin mantle have not yet been adequately explained. Hypotheses include that its outer layers were stripped off by a giant impact, or that it was prevented from fully accreting by the young Sun's energy.[79][80]
+
+Venus (0.7 AU from the Sun) is close in size to Earth (0.815 M⊕) and, like Earth, has a thick silicate mantle around an iron core, a substantial atmosphere, and evidence of internal geological activity. It is much drier than Earth, and its atmosphere is ninety times as dense. Venus has no natural satellites. It is the hottest planet, with surface temperatures over 400 °C (752 °F), most likely due to the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.[81] No definitive evidence of current geological activity has been detected on Venus, but it has no magnetic field that would prevent depletion of its substantial atmosphere, which suggests that its atmosphere is being replenished by volcanic eruptions.[82]
+
+Earth (1 AU from the Sun) is the largest and densest of the inner planets, the only one known to have current geological activity, and the only place where life is known to exist.[83] Its liquid hydrosphere is unique among the terrestrial planets, and it is the only planet where plate tectonics has been observed. Earth's atmosphere is radically different from those of the other planets, having been altered by the presence of life to contain 21% free oxygen.[84] It has one natural satellite, the Moon, the only large satellite of a terrestrial planet in the Solar System.
+
+Mars (1.5 AU from the Sun) is smaller than Earth and Venus (0.107 M⊕). It has an atmosphere of mostly carbon dioxide with a surface pressure of 6.1 millibars (roughly 0.6% of that of Earth).[85] Its surface, peppered with vast volcanoes, such as Olympus Mons, and rift valleys, such as Valles Marineris, shows geological activity that may have persisted until as recently as 2 million years ago.[86] Its red colour comes from iron oxide (rust) in its soil.[87] Mars has two tiny natural satellites (Deimos and Phobos) thought to be either captured asteroids,[88] or ejected debris from a massive impact early in Mars's history.[89]
+
+Asteroids except for the largest, Ceres, are classified as small Solar System bodies[f] and are composed mainly of refractory rocky and metallic minerals, with some ice.[90][91] They range from a few metres to hundreds of kilometres in size. Asteroids smaller than one meter are usually called meteoroids and micrometeoroids (grain-sized), depending on different, somewhat arbitrary definitions.
+
+The asteroid belt occupies the orbit between Mars and Jupiter, between 2.3 and 3.3 AU from the Sun. It is thought to be remnants from the Solar System's formation that failed to coalesce because of the gravitational interference of Jupiter.[92] The asteroid belt contains tens of thousands, possibly millions, of objects over one kilometre in diameter.[93] Despite this, the total mass of the asteroid belt is unlikely to be more than a thousandth of that of Earth.[21] The asteroid belt is very sparsely populated; spacecraft routinely pass through without incident.
+
+Ceres (2.77 AU) is the largest asteroid, a protoplanet, and a dwarf planet.[f] It has a diameter of slightly under 1000 km, and a mass large enough for its own gravity to pull it into a spherical shape. Ceres was considered a planet when it was discovered in 1801, and was reclassified to asteroid in the 1850s as further observations revealed additional asteroids.[94] It was classified as a dwarf planet in 2006 when the definition of a planet was created.
+
+Asteroids in the asteroid belt are divided into asteroid groups and families based on their orbital characteristics. Asteroid moons are asteroids that orbit larger asteroids. They are not as clearly distinguished as planetary moons, sometimes being almost as large as their partners. The asteroid belt also contains main-belt comets, which may have been the source of Earth's water.[95]
+
+Jupiter trojans are located in either of Jupiter's L4 or L5 points (gravitationally stable regions leading and trailing a planet in its orbit); the term trojan is also used for small bodies in any other planetary or satellite Lagrange point. Hilda asteroids are in a 2:3 resonance with Jupiter; that is, they go around the Sun three times for every two Jupiter orbits.[96]
+
+The inner Solar System also contains near-Earth asteroids, many of which cross the orbits of the inner planets.[97] Some of them are potentially hazardous objects.
+
+The outer region of the Solar System is home to the giant planets and their large moons. The centaurs and many short-period comets also orbit in this region. Due to their greater distance from the Sun, the solid objects in the outer Solar System contain a higher proportion of volatiles, such as water, ammonia, and methane than those of the inner Solar System because the lower temperatures allow these compounds to remain solid.
+
+The four outer planets, or giant planets (sometimes called Jovian planets), collectively make up 99% of the mass known to orbit the Sun.[g] Jupiter and Saturn are together more than 400 times the mass of Earth and consist overwhelmingly of hydrogen and helium. Uranus and Neptune are far less massive—less than 20 Earth masses (M⊕) each—and are composed primarily of ices. For these reasons, some astronomers suggest they belong in their own category, ice giants.[98] All four giant planets have rings, although only Saturn's ring system is easily observed from Earth. The term superior planet designates planets outside Earth's orbit and thus includes both the outer planets and Mars.
+
+Jupiter (5.2 AU), at 318 M⊕, is 2.5 times the mass of all the other planets put together. It is composed largely of hydrogen and helium. Jupiter's strong internal heat creates semi-permanent features in its atmosphere, such as cloud bands and the Great Red Spot. Jupiter has 79 known satellites. The four largest, Ganymede, Callisto, Io, and Europa, show similarities to the terrestrial planets, such as volcanism and internal heating.[99] Ganymede, the largest satellite in the Solar System, is larger than Mercury.
+
+Saturn (9.5 AU), distinguished by its extensive ring system, has several similarities to Jupiter, such as its atmospheric composition and magnetosphere. Although Saturn has 60% of Jupiter's volume, it is less than a third as massive, at 95 M⊕. Saturn is the only planet of the Solar System that is less dense than water.[100] The rings of Saturn are made up of small ice and rock particles. Saturn has 82 confirmed satellites composed largely of ice. Two of these, Titan and Enceladus, show signs of geological activity.[101] Titan, the second-largest moon in the Solar System, is larger than Mercury and the only satellite in the Solar System with a substantial atmosphere.
+
+Uranus (19.2 AU), at 14 M⊕, is the lightest of the outer planets. Uniquely among the planets, it orbits the Sun on its side; its axial tilt is over ninety degrees to the ecliptic. It has a much colder core than the other giant planets and radiates very little heat into space.[102] Uranus has 27 known satellites, the largest ones being Titania, Oberon, Umbriel, Ariel, and Miranda.
+
+Neptune (30.1 AU), though slightly smaller than Uranus, is more massive (17 M⊕) and hence more dense. It radiates more internal heat, but not as much as Jupiter or Saturn.[103] Neptune has 14 known satellites. The largest, Triton, is geologically active, with geysers of liquid nitrogen.[104] Triton is the only large satellite with a retrograde orbit. Neptune is accompanied in its orbit by several minor planets, termed Neptune trojans, that are in 1:1 resonance with it.
+
+The centaurs are icy comet-like bodies whose orbits have semi-major axes greater than Jupiter's (5.5 AU) and less than Neptune's (30 AU). The largest known centaur, 10199 Chariklo, has a diameter of about 250 km.[105] The first centaur discovered, 2060 Chiron, has also been classified as comet (95P) because it develops a coma just as comets do when they approach the Sun.[106]
+
+Comets are small Solar System bodies,[f] typically only a few kilometres across, composed largely of volatile ices. They have highly eccentric orbits, generally a perihelion within the orbits of the inner planets and an aphelion far beyond Pluto. When a comet enters the inner Solar System, its proximity to the Sun causes its icy surface to sublimate and ionise, creating a coma: a long tail of gas and dust often visible to the naked eye.
+
+Short-period comets have orbits lasting less than two hundred years. Long-period comets have orbits lasting thousands of years. Short-period comets are thought to originate in the Kuiper belt, whereas long-period comets, such as Hale–Bopp, are thought to originate in the Oort cloud. Many comet groups, such as the Kreutz Sungrazers, formed from the breakup of a single parent.[107] Some comets with hyperbolic orbits may originate outside the Solar System, but determining their precise orbits is difficult.[108] Old comets that have had most of their volatiles driven out by solar warming are often categorised as asteroids.[109]
+
+Beyond the orbit of Neptune lies the area of the "trans-Neptunian region", with the doughnut-shaped Kuiper belt, home of Pluto and several other dwarf planets, and an overlapping disc of scattered objects, which is tilted toward the plane of the Solar System and reaches much further out than the Kuiper belt. The entire region is still largely unexplored. It appears to consist overwhelmingly of many thousands of small worlds—the largest having a diameter only a fifth that of Earth and a mass far smaller than that of the Moon—composed mainly of rock and ice. This region is sometimes described as the "third zone of the Solar System", enclosing the inner and the outer Solar System.[110]
+
+The Kuiper belt is a great ring of debris similar to the asteroid belt, but consisting mainly of objects composed primarily of ice.[111] It extends between 30 and 50 AU from the Sun. Though it is estimated to contain anything from dozens to thousands of dwarf planets, it is composed mainly of small Solar System bodies. Many of the larger Kuiper belt objects, such as Quaoar, Varuna, and Orcus, may prove to be dwarf planets with further data. There are estimated to be over 100,000 Kuiper belt objects with a diameter greater than 50 km, but the total mass of the Kuiper belt is thought to be only a tenth or even a hundredth the mass of Earth.[20] Many Kuiper belt objects have multiple satellites,[112] and most have orbits that take them outside the plane of the ecliptic.[113]
+
+The Kuiper belt can be roughly divided into the "classical" belt and the resonances.[111] Resonances are orbits linked to that of Neptune (e.g. twice for every three Neptune orbits, or once for every two). The first resonance begins within the orbit of Neptune itself. The classical belt consists of objects having no resonance with Neptune, and extends from roughly 39.4 AU to 47.7 AU.[114] Members of the classical Kuiper belt are classified as cubewanos, after the first of their kind to be discovered, 15760 Albion (which previously had the provisional designation 1992 QB1), and are still in near primordial, low-eccentricity orbits.[115]
+
+The dwarf planet Pluto (39 AU average) is the largest known object in the Kuiper belt. When discovered in 1930, it was considered to be the ninth planet; this changed in 2006 with the adoption of a formal definition of planet. Pluto has a relatively eccentric orbit inclined 17 degrees to the ecliptic plane and ranging from 29.7 AU from the Sun at perihelion (within the orbit of Neptune) to 49.5 AU at aphelion. Pluto has a 3:2 resonance with Neptune, meaning that Pluto orbits twice round the Sun for every three Neptunian orbits. Kuiper belt objects whose orbits share this resonance are called plutinos.[116]
+
+Charon, the largest of Pluto's moons, is sometimes described as part of a binary system with Pluto, as the two bodies orbit a barycentre of gravity above their surfaces (i.e. they appear to "orbit each other"). Beyond Charon, four much smaller moons, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra, orbit within the system.
+
+Makemake (45.79 AU average), although smaller than Pluto, is the largest known object in the classical Kuiper belt (that is, a Kuiper belt object not in a confirmed resonance with Neptune). Makemake is the brightest object in the Kuiper belt after Pluto. It was assigned a naming committee under the expectation that it would prove to be a dwarf planet in 2008.[6] Its orbit is far more inclined than Pluto's, at 29°.[117]
+
+Haumea (43.13 AU average) is in an orbit similar to Makemake, except that it is in a temporary 7:12 orbital resonance with Neptune.[118]
+It was named under the same expectation that it would prove to be a dwarf planet, though subsequent observations have indicated that it may not be a dwarf planet after all.[119]
+
+The scattered disc, which overlaps the Kuiper belt but extends out to about 200 AU, is thought to be the source of short-period comets. Scattered-disc objects are thought to have been ejected into erratic orbits by the gravitational influence of Neptune's early outward migration. Most scattered disc objects (SDOs) have perihelia within the Kuiper belt but aphelia far beyond it (some more than 150 AU from the Sun). SDOs' orbits are also highly inclined to the ecliptic plane and are often almost perpendicular to it. Some astronomers consider the scattered disc to be merely another region of the Kuiper belt and describe scattered disc objects as "scattered Kuiper belt objects".[120] Some astronomers also classify centaurs as inward-scattered Kuiper belt objects along with the outward-scattered residents of the scattered disc.[121]
+
+Eris (68 AU average) is the largest known scattered disc object, and caused a debate about what constitutes a planet, because it is 25% more massive than Pluto[122] and about the same diameter. It is the most massive of the known dwarf planets. It has one known moon, Dysnomia. Like Pluto, its orbit is highly eccentric, with a perihelion of 38.2 AU (roughly Pluto's distance from the Sun) and an aphelion of 97.6 AU, and steeply inclined to the ecliptic plane.
+
+The point at which the Solar System ends and interstellar space begins is not precisely defined because its outer boundaries are shaped by two separate forces: the solar wind and the Sun's gravity. The limit of the solar wind's influence is roughly four times Pluto's distance from the Sun; this heliopause, the outer boundary of the heliosphere, is considered the beginning of the interstellar medium.[63] The Sun's Hill sphere, the effective range of its gravitational dominance, is thought to extend up to a thousand times farther and encompasses the theorized Oort cloud.[123]
+
+The heliosphere is a stellar-wind bubble, a region of space dominated by the Sun, which radiates at roughly 400 km/s its solar wind, a stream of charged particles, until it collides with the wind of the interstellar medium.
+
+The collision occurs at the termination shock, which is roughly 80–100 AU from the Sun upwind of the interstellar medium and roughly 200 AU from the Sun downwind.[124] Here the wind slows dramatically, condenses and becomes more turbulent,[124] forming a great oval structure known as the heliosheath. This structure is thought to look and behave very much like a comet's tail, extending outward for a further 40 AU on the upwind side but tailing many times that distance downwind; evidence from Cassini and Interstellar Boundary Explorer spacecraft has suggested that it is forced into a bubble shape by the constraining action of the interstellar magnetic field.[125]
+
+The outer boundary of the heliosphere, the heliopause, is the point at which the solar wind finally terminates and is the beginning of interstellar space.[63] Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are reported to have passed the termination shock and entered the heliosheath, at 94 and 84 AU from the Sun, respectively.[126][127] Voyager 1 is reported to have crossed the heliopause in August 2012.[128]
+
+The shape and form of the outer edge of the heliosphere is likely affected by the fluid dynamics of interactions with the interstellar medium as well as solar magnetic fields prevailing to the south, e.g. it is bluntly shaped with the northern hemisphere extending 9 AU farther than the southern hemisphere.[124] Beyond the heliopause, at around 230 AU, lies the bow shock, a plasma "wake" left by the Sun as it travels through the Milky Way.[129]
+
+Due to a lack of data, conditions in local interstellar space are not known for certain. It is expected that NASA's Voyager spacecraft, as they pass the heliopause, will transmit valuable data on radiation levels and solar wind to Earth.[130] How well the heliosphere shields the Solar System from cosmic rays is poorly understood. A NASA-funded team has developed a concept of a "Vision Mission" dedicated to sending a probe to the heliosphere.[131][132]
+
+90377 Sedna (520 AU average) is a large, reddish object with a gigantic, highly elliptical orbit that takes it from about 76 AU at perihelion to 940 AU at aphelion and takes 11,400 years to complete. Mike Brown, who discovered the object in 2003, asserts that it cannot be part of the scattered disc or the Kuiper belt because its perihelion is too distant to have been affected by Neptune's migration. He and other astronomers consider it to be the first in an entirely new population, sometimes termed "distant detached objects" (DDOs), which also may include the object 2000 CR105, which has a perihelion of 45 AU, an aphelion of 415 AU, and an orbital period of 3,420 years.[133] Brown terms this population the "inner Oort cloud" because it may have formed through a similar process, although it is far closer to the Sun.[134] Sedna is very likely a dwarf planet, though its shape has yet to be determined. The second unequivocally detached object, with a perihelion farther than Sedna's at roughly 81 AU, is 2012 VP113, discovered in 2012. Its aphelion is only half that of Sedna's, at 400–500 AU.[135][136]
+
+The Oort cloud is a hypothetical spherical cloud of up to a trillion icy objects that is thought to be the source for all long-period comets and to surround the Solar System at roughly 50,000 AU (around 1 light-year (ly)), and possibly to as far as 100,000 AU (1.87 ly). It is thought to be composed of comets that were ejected from the inner Solar System by gravitational interactions with the outer planets. Oort cloud objects move very slowly, and can be perturbed by infrequent events, such as collisions, the gravitational effects of a passing star, or the galactic tide, the tidal force exerted by the Milky Way.[137][138]
+
+Much of the Solar System is still unknown. The Sun's gravitational field is estimated to dominate the gravitational forces of surrounding stars out to about two light years (125,000 AU). Lower estimates for the radius of the Oort cloud, by contrast, do not place it farther than 50,000 AU.[139] Despite discoveries such as Sedna, the region between the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud, an area tens of thousands of AU in radius, is still virtually unmapped. There are also ongoing studies of the region between Mercury and the Sun.[140] Objects may yet be discovered in the Solar System's uncharted regions.
+
+Currently, the furthest known objects, such as Comet West, have aphelia around 70,000 AU from the Sun, but as the Oort cloud becomes better known, this may change.
+
+The Solar System is located in the Milky Way, a barred spiral galaxy with a diameter of about 100,000 light-years containing more than 100 billion stars.[141] The Sun resides in one of the Milky Way's outer spiral arms, known as the Orion–Cygnus Arm or Local Spur.[142] The Sun lies between 25,000 and 28,000 light-years from the Galactic Centre,[143] and its speed within the Milky Way is about 220 km/s, so that it completes one revolution every 225–250 million years. This revolution is known as the Solar System's galactic year.[144] The solar apex, the direction of the Sun's path through interstellar space, is near the constellation Hercules in the direction of the current location of the bright star Vega.[145] The plane of the ecliptic lies at an angle of about 60° to the galactic plane.[i]
+
+The Solar System's location in the Milky Way is a factor in the evolutionary history of life on Earth. Its orbit is close to circular, and orbits near the Sun are at roughly the same speed as that of the spiral arms.[147][148] Therefore, the Sun passes through arms only rarely. Because spiral arms are home to a far larger concentration of supernovae, gravitational instabilities, and radiation that could disrupt the Solar System, this has given Earth long periods of stability for life to evolve.[147] The Solar System also lies well outside the star-crowded environs of the galactic centre. Near the centre, gravitational tugs from nearby stars could perturb bodies in the Oort cloud and send many comets into the inner Solar System, producing collisions with potentially catastrophic implications for life on Earth. The intense radiation of the galactic centre could also interfere with the development of complex life.[147] Even at the Solar System's current location, some scientists have speculated that recent supernovae may have adversely affected life in the last 35,000 years, by flinging pieces of expelled stellar core towards the Sun, as radioactive dust grains and larger, comet-like bodies.[149]
+
+The Solar System is in the Local Interstellar Cloud or Local Fluff. It is thought to be near the neighbouring G-Cloud but it is not known if the Solar System is embedded in the Local Interstellar Cloud, or if it is in the region where the Local Interstellar Cloud and G-Cloud are interacting.[150][151] The Local Interstellar Cloud is an area of denser cloud in an otherwise sparse region known as the Local Bubble, an hourglass-shaped cavity in the interstellar medium roughly 300 light-years (ly) across. The bubble is suffused with high-temperature plasma, that suggests it is the product of several recent supernovae.[152]
+
+There are relatively few stars within ten light-years of the Sun. The closest is the triple star system Alpha Centauri, which is about 4.4 light-years away. Alpha Centauri A and B are a closely tied pair of Sun-like stars, whereas the small red dwarf, Proxima Centauri, orbits the pair at a distance of 0.2 light-year. In 2016, a potentially habitable exoplanet was confirmed to be orbiting Proxima Centauri, called Proxima Centauri b, the closest confirmed exoplanet to the Sun.[153] The stars next closest to the Sun are the red dwarfs Barnard's Star (at 5.9 ly), Wolf 359 (7.8 ly), and Lalande 21185 (8.3 ly).
+
+The largest nearby star is Sirius, a bright main-sequence star roughly 8.6 light-years away and roughly twice the Sun's mass and that is orbited by a white dwarf, Sirius B. The nearest brown dwarfs are the binary Luhman 16 system at 6.6 light-years. Other systems within ten light-years are the binary red-dwarf system Luyten 726-8 (8.7 ly) and the solitary red dwarf Ross 154 (9.7 ly).[154] The closest solitary Sun-like star to the Solar System is Tau Ceti at 11.9 light-years. It has roughly 80% of the Sun's mass but only 60% of its luminosity.[155] The closest known free-floating planetary-mass object to the Sun is WISE 0855−0714,[156] an object with a mass less than 10 Jupiter masses roughly 7 light-years away.
+
+Compared to many other planetary systems, the Solar System stands out in lacking planets interior to the orbit of Mercury.[157][158] The known Solar System also lacks super-Earths (Planet Nine could be a super-Earth beyond the known Solar System).[157] Uncommonly, it has only small rocky planets and large gas giants; elsewhere planets of intermediate size are typical—both rocky and gas—so there is no "gap" as seen between the size of Earth and of Neptune (with a radius 3.8 times as large). Also, these super-Earths have closer orbits than Mercury.[157] This led to the hypothesis that all planetary systems start with many close-in planets, and that typically a sequence of their collisions causes consolidation of mass into few larger planets, but in case of the Solar System the collisions caused their destruction and ejection.[159][160]
+
+The orbits of Solar System planets are nearly circular. Compared to other systems, they have smaller orbital eccentricity.[157] Although there are attempts to explain it partly with a bias in the radial-velocity detection method and partly with long interactions of a quite high number of planets, the exact causes remain undetermined.[157][161]
+
+This section is a sampling of Solar System bodies, selected for size and quality of imagery, and sorted by volume. Some omitted objects are larger than the ones included here, notably Eris, because these have not been imaged in high quality.
+
+Venus, Earth (Pale Blue Dot), Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune (13 September 1996).
+
+Solar System → Local Interstellar Cloud → Local Bubble → Gould Belt → Orion Arm → Milky Way → Milky Way subgroup → Local Group → Local Sheet → Virgo Supercluster → Laniakea Supercluster → Observable universe → UniverseEach arrow (→) may be read as "within" or "part of".
+

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+Pompeii (/pɒmˈpeɪ(i)/, Latin: [pɔmˈpeːjjiː]) was an ancient city located in what is now the comune of Pompei near Naples in the Campania region of Italy. Pompeii, along with Herculaneum and many villas in the surrounding area (e.g. at Boscoreale, Stabiae), was buried under 4 to 6 m (13 to 20 ft) of volcanic ash and pumice in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.
+
+Largely preserved under the ash, the excavated city offered a unique snapshot of Roman life, frozen at the moment it was buried,[1] and an extraordinarily detailed insight into the everyday life of its inhabitants, although much of the evidence was lost in the early excavations. It was a wealthy town, enjoying many fine public buildings and luxurious private houses with lavish decorations, furnishings and works of art which were the main attractions for the early excavators. Organic remains, including wooden objects and human bodies, were entombed in the ash and decayed leaving
+voids which archaeologists found could be used as moulds to make plaster casts of unique and often gruesome figures in their final moments of life. The numerous graffiti carved on the walls and inside rooms provide a wealth of examples of the largely lost Vulgar Latin spoken colloquially at the time, contrasting with the formal language of the classical writers.
+
+Pompeii is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Italy, with approximately 2.5 million visitors annually.[2]
+
+After many excavations prior to 1960 that had uncovered most of the city but left it in decay,[3] further major excavations were banned and instead they were limited to targeted, prioritised areas. In 2018, these led to new discoveries in some previously unexplored areas of the city.[4][5][6][7]
+
+Pompeii (pronounced [pɔmˈpɛjjiː]) in Latin is a second declension plural noun (Pompeiī, -ōrum). According to Theodor Kraus, "The root of the word Pompeii would appear to be the Oscan word for the number five, pompe, which suggests that either the community consisted of five hamlets or perhaps it was settled by a family group (gens Pompeia)."[8]
+
+Pompeii was built about 40 metres (130 ft) above sea level on a coastal lava plateau created by earlier eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, (8 km (5.0 mi) distant). The plateau fell steeply to the south and partly the west and into the sea. Three sheets of sediment from large landslides lie on top of the lava, perhaps triggered by extended rainfall.[9] The city bordered the coastline, though today it is 700 metres (2,300 ft) away. The mouth of the navigable Sarno River, adjacent to the city, was protected by lagoons and served early Greek and Phoenician sailors as a safe haven and port which was developed further by the Romans.
+
+Pompeii covered a total of 64 to 67 hectares (160 to 170 acres) and was home to 11,000 to 11,500 people, based on household counts.[10]
+
+Although best known for its Roman remains visible today dating from AD 79, it was built upon a substantial city dating from much earlier times. Expansion of the city from an early nucleus (the old town) accelerated already from 450 BC under the Greeks after the battle of Cumae.[11]
+
+The first stable settlements on the site date back to the 8th century BC when the Oscans,[12] a people of central Italy, founded five villages in the area.
+
+With the arrival of the Greeks in Campania from around 740 BC, Pompeii entered the orbit of the Hellenic people and the most important building of this period is the Doric Temple, built away from the centre in what would later become the Triangular Forum.[13]:62 At the same time the cult of Apollo was introduced.[14] Greek and Phoenician sailors used the location as a safe port.
+
+In the early 6th century BC, the settlement merged into a single community centred on the important crossroad between Cumae, Nola, and Stabiae and was surrounded by a tufa city wall (the pappamonte wall).[15][16] The first wall (which was also used as a base for the later wall) unusually enclosed a much greater area than the early town together with much agricultural land.[17] That such an impressive wall was built at this time indicates that the settlement was already important and wealthy. The city began to flourish and maritime trade started with the construction of a small port near the mouth of the river.[13] The earliest settlement was focused in regions VII and VIII of the town (the old town) as identified from stratigraphy below the Samnite and Roman buildings, as well as from the different and irregular street plan.
+
+In 524 BC, the Etruscans arrived and settled in the area, including Pompeii, finding in the River Sarno a communication route between the sea and the interior. Like the Greeks, the Etruscans did not conquer the city militarily, but simply controlled it and Pompeii enjoyed a sort of autonomy.[13]:63 Nevertheless, Pompeii became a member of the Etruscan League of cities.[18] Excavations in 1980–1981 have shown the presence of Etruscan inscriptions and a 6th-century BC necropolis.[19] Under the Etruscans a primitive forum or simple market square was built, as well as the Temple of Apollo, in both of which objects including fragments of bucchero were found by Maiuri.[20] Several houses were built with the so-called Tuscan atrium, typical of this people.[13]:64
+
+The city wall was strengthened in the early-5th century BC with two façades of relatively thin, vertically set, slabs of Sarno limestone some four metres apart filled with earth (the orthostate wall).[21]
+
+In 474 BC the Greek city of Cumae, allied with Syracuse, defeated the Etruscans at the Battle of Cumae and gained control of the area.
+
+The period between about 450–375 BC witnessed large areas of the city being abandoned while important sanctuaries such as the Temple of Apollo show a sudden lack of votive material remains.[22]
+
+The Samnites, people from the areas of Abruzzo and Molise, and allies of the Romans, conquered Greek Cumae between 423 and 420 BC and it is likely that all the surrounding territory, including Pompeii, was already conquered around 424 BC. The new rulers gradually imposed their architecture and enlarged the town.
+
+From 343–341 BC in the Samnite Wars, the first Roman army entered the Campanian plain bringing with it the customs and traditions of Rome, and in the Roman Latin War from 340 BC the Samnites were faithful to Rome. Pompeii, although governed by the Samnites, entered the Roman orbit, to which it remained faithful even during the third Samnite war and in the war against Pyrrhus. In the late 4th century BC the city began to expand from its nucleus and into the open walled area. The street plan of the new areas was more regular and more conformal to Hippodamus's street plan. The city walls were reinforced in Sarno stone in the early 3rd century BC (the limestone enceinte, or the "first Samnite wall"). It formed the basis for the currently visible walls with an outer wall of rectangular limestone blocks as a terrace wall supporting a large agger, or earth embankment, behind it.
+
+After the Samnite Wars from 290 BC, Pompeii was forced to accept the status of socii of Rome, maintaining, however, linguistic and administrative autonomy.
+
+From the outbreak of the Second Punic War (218–201 BC) in which Pompeii remained faithful to Rome, an additional internal wall was built of tufa and the internal agger and outer façade raised resulting in a double parapet with wider wall-walk.[13] Despite the political uncertainty of these events and the progressive migration of wealthy men to quieter cities in the eastern Mediterranean, Pompeii continued to flourish due to the production and trade of wine and oil with places like Provence and Spain,[23] as well as to intensive agriculture on farms around the city.
+
+In the 2nd century BC, Pompeii enriched itself by taking part in Rome's conquest of the east as shown by a statue of Apollo in the Forum erected by Lucius Mummius in gratitude for their support in the sack of Corinth and the eastern campaigns. These riches enabled Pompeii to bloom and expand to its ultimate limits. The forum and many public and private buildings of high architectural quality were built, including Teatro Grande, the Temple of Jupiter, the Basilica, the Comitium, the Stabian Baths and a new two-story portico.[24]
+
+Pompeii was one of the towns of Campania that rebelled against Rome in the Social Wars  and in 89 BC it was besieged by Sulla, who targeted the strategically vulnerable Porta Ercolano with his artillery as can still be seen by the impact craters of thousands of ballista shots in the walls. Many nearby buildings inside the walls were also destroyed.[25] Although the battle-hardened troops of the Social League, headed by Lucius Cluentius, helped in resisting the Romans, Pompeii was forced to surrender after the conquest of Nola.
+
+The result was that Pompeii became a Roman colony with the name of Colonia Cornelia Veneria Pompeianorum. Many of Sulla's veterans were given land and property in and around the city, while many of those who opposed Rome were dispossessed of their property. Despite this, the Pompeians were granted Roman citizenship and they were quickly assimilated into the Roman world. The main language in the city became Latin,[26] and many of Pompeii's old aristocratic families Latinized their names as a sign of assimilation.[27]
+
+The city became an important passage for goods that arrived by sea and had to be sent toward Rome or Southern Italy along the nearby Appian Way. Many public buildings were built or refurbished and improved under the new order; new buildings included the Amphitheatre of Pompeii in 70 BC, the Forum Baths, and the Odeon, while the forum was embellished with the colonnade of Popidius before 80 BC.[28] These buildings raised the status of Pompeii as a cultural centre in the region as it outshone its neighbours in the number of places for entertainment which significantly enhanced the social and economic development of the city.
+
+Under Augustus, from about 30 BC a major expansion in new public buildings, as in the rest of the empire, included the Eumachia Building, the Sanctuary of Augustus and the Macellum. From about 20 BC, Pompeii was fed with running water by a spur from the Serino Aqueduct, built by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa.
+
+In AD 59, there was a serious riot and bloodshed in the amphitheatre between Pompeians and Nucerians (which is recorded in a fresco) and which led the Roman senate to send the Praetorian Guard to restore order and to ban further events for a period of ten years.[29][30]
+
+The inhabitants of Pompeii had long been used to minor earthquakes (indeed, the writer Pliny the Younger wrote that earth tremors "were not particularly alarming because they are frequent in Campania"), but on 5 February 62[31] a severe earthquake did considerable damage around the bay, and particularly to Pompeii. It is believed that the earthquake would have registered between about 5 and 6 on the Richter magnitude scale.[32]
+
+On that day in Pompeii, there were to be two sacrifices, as it was the anniversary of Augustus being named "Father of the Nation" and also a feast day to honour the guardian spirits of the city. Chaos followed the earthquake; fires caused by oil lamps that had fallen during the quake added to the panic. The nearby cities of Herculaneum and Nuceria were also affected.[32]
+
+Between 62 and the eruption in 79 most rebuilding was done in the private sector and older, damaged frescoes were often covered with newer ones, for example. In the public sector the opportunity was taken to improve buildings and the city plan e.g. in the forum.[33]
+
+An important field of current research concerns structures that were restored between the earthquake of 62 and the eruption. It was thought until recently that some of the damage had still not been repaired at the time of the eruption but this has been shown to be doubtful as the evidence of missing forum statues and marble wall-veneers are most likely due to robbers after the city's burial.[34][35] The public buildings on the east side of the forum were largely restored and were even enhanced by beautiful marble veneers and other modifications to the architecture.[36]
+
+Some buildings like the Central Baths were only started after the earthquake and were built to enhance the city with modern developments in their architecture, as had been done in Rome, in terms of wall-heating and window glass, and with well-lit spacious rooms. The new baths took over a whole insula by demolishing houses, which may have been made easier by the earthquake that had damaged these houses. This shows that the city was still flourishing rather than struggling to recover from the earthquake.[37]
+
+In about 64, Nero and his wife Poppaea visited Pompeii and made gifts to the temple of Venus, probably when he performed in the theatre of Naples.[38]
+
+By 79, Pompeii had a population of 20,000,[39] which had prospered from the region's renowned agricultural fertility and favourable location.
+
+The eruption lasted for two days.[40] The first phase was of pumice rain (lapilli) lasting about 18 hours, allowing most inhabitants to escape. That only approximately 1,150 bodies[41] have so far been found on site seems to confirm this theory and most escapees probably managed to salvage some of their most valuable belongings; many skeletons were found with jewellery, coins and silverware.
+
+At some time in the night or early the next day, pyroclastic flows began near the volcano, consisting of high speed, dense, and very hot ash clouds, knocking down wholly or partly all structures in their path, incinerating or suffocating the remaining population and altering the landscape, including the coastline. By evening of the second day, the eruption was over, leaving only haze in the atmosphere through which the sun shone weakly.
+
+A multidisciplinary volcanological and bio-anthropological study[42] of the eruption products and victims, merged with numerical simulations and experiments, indicates that at Pompeii and surrounding towns heat was the main cause of death of people, previously believed to have died by ash suffocation. The results of the study, published in 2010, show that exposure to at least 250 °C (480 °F) hot pyroclastic flows at a distance of 10 kilometres (6 miles) from the vent was sufficient to cause instant death, even if people were sheltered within buildings. The people and buildings of Pompeii were covered in up to twelve different layers of tephra, in total up to 6 metres (19.7 ft) deep.
+
+Pliny the Younger provided a first-hand account of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius from his position across the Bay of Naples at Misenum but written 25 years after the event.[43] His uncle, Pliny the Elder, with whom he had a close relationship, died while attempting to rescue stranded victims. As admiral of the fleet, Pliny the Elder had ordered the ships of the Imperial Navy stationed at Misenum to cross the bay to assist evacuation attempts. Volcanologists have recognised the importance of Pliny the Younger's account of the eruption by calling similar events "Plinian".  It had long been thought that the eruption was an August event based on one version of the letter but another version[44] gives a date of the eruption as late as 23 November. A later date is consistent with a charcoal inscription at the site, discovered in 2018, which includes the date of 17 October and which must have been recently written.[45]
+
+Clear support for an October/November eruption is found in the fact that people buried in the ash appear to have been wearing heavier clothing than the light summer clothes typical of August. The fresh fruit and vegetables in the shops are typical of October – and conversely the summer fruit typical of August was already being sold in dried, or conserved form. Nuts from chestnut trees were found at Oplontis which would not have been mature before mid-September.[46] Wine fermenting jars had been sealed, which would have happened around the end of October. Coins found in the purse of a woman buried in the ash include one with a 15th imperatorial acclamation among the emperor's titles. These coins could not have been minted before the second week of September.[44]
+
+Titus appointed two ex-consuls to organise a relief effort, while donating large amounts of money from the imperial treasury to aid the victims of the volcano.[47] He visited Pompeii once after the eruption and again the following year[48] but no work was done on recovery.
+
+Soon after the burial of the city, survivors and possibly thieves came to salvage valuables, including the marble statues from the forum and other precious materials from buildings. There is wide evidence of post-eruption disturbance, including holes made through walls. The city was not completely buried, and tops of larger buildings would have been above the ash making it obvious where to dig or salvage building material.[49] The robbers left traces of their passage, as in a house where modern archaeologists found a wall graffito saying "house dug".[50]
+
+Over the following centuries, its name and location were forgotten, though it still appeared on the Tabula Peutingeriana of the 4th century. Further eruptions particularly in 471–473 and 512 covered the remains more deeply. The area became known as the La Civita (the city) due to the features in the ground.[51]
+
+The next known date that any part was unearthed was in 1592, when architect Domenico Fontana while digging an underground aqueduct to the mills of Torre Annunziata ran into ancient walls covered with paintings and inscriptions. His aqueduct passed through and under a large part of the city[52] and would have had to pass though many buildings and foundations, as still can be seen in many places today, but he kept quiet and nothing more came of the discovery.
+
+In 1689, Francesco Picchetti saw a wall inscription mentioning decurio Pompeiis ("town councillor of Pompeii"), but he associated it with a villa of Pompey. Franceso Bianchini pointed out the true meaning and he was supported by Giuseppe Macrini, who in 1693 excavated some walls and wrote that Pompeii lay beneath La Civita.[53]
+
+Herculaneum itself was rediscovered in 1738 by workmen digging for the foundations of a summer palace for the King of Naples, Charles of Bourbon. Due to the spectacular quality of the finds, the Spanish military engineer Rocque Joaquin de Alcubierre made excavations to find further remains at the site of Pompeii in 1748, even if the city was not identified.[54] Charles of Bourbon took great interest in the finds, even after leaving to become king of Spain, because the display of antiquities reinforced the political and cultural prestige of Naples.[55] On 20 August 1763, an inscription [...] Rei Publicae Pompeianorum [...] was found and the city was identified as Pompeii.[56]
+
+Karl Weber directed the first scientific excavations.[57] He was followed in 1764 by military engineer Franscisco la Vega, who was succeeded by his brother, Pietro, in 1804.[58]
+
+There was much progress in exploration when the French occupied Naples in 1799 and ruled over Italy from 1806 to 1815. The land on which Pompeii lies was expropriated and up to 700 workers were used in the excavations. The excavated areas in the north and south were connected. Parts of the Via dell'Abbondanza were also exposed in west–east direction and for the first time an impression of the size and appearance of the ancient town could be appreciated. In the following years, the excavators struggled with lack of money and excavations progressed slowly, but with significant finds such as the houses of the Faun, of Menandro, of the Tragic Poet and of the Surgeon.
+
+Giuseppe Fiorelli took charge of the excavations in 1863 and made greater progress.[59] During early excavations of the site, occasional voids in the ash layer had been found that contained human remains. It was Fiorelli who realised these were spaces left by the decomposed bodies and so devised the technique of injecting plaster into them to recreate the forms of Vesuvius's victims. This technique is still in use today, with a clear resin now used instead of plaster because it is more durable, and does not destroy the bones, allowing further analysis.[60]
+
+Fiorelli also introduced scientific documentation. He divided the city into the present nine areas (regiones) and blocks (insulae) and numbered the entrances of the individual houses (domus), so that each is identified by these three numbers. Fiorelli also published the first periodical with excavation reports. Under Fiorelli's successors the entire west of the city was exposed.
+
+In the 1920s, Amedeo Maiuri excavated for the first time in older layers than that of 79 AD in order to learn about the settlement history. Maiuri made the last excavations on a grand scale in the 1950s, and the area south of the Via dell'Abbondanza and the city wall was almost completely uncovered, but they were poorly documented scientifically. Preservation was haphazard and presents today's archaeologists with great difficulty. Questionable reconstruction was done in the 1980s and 1990s after the severe earthquake of 1980, which caused great destruction. Since then, except for targeted soundings and excavations, work was confined to the excavated areas. Further excavations on a large scale are not planned and today archaeologists try to reconstruct, to document and, above all, to stop the ever faster decay.
+
+Under the 'Great Pompeii Project' over 2.5 km of ancient walls are being relieved of danger of collapse by treating the unexcavated areas behind the street fronts in order to increase drainage and reduce the pressure of ground water and earth on the walls, a problem especially in the rainy season. As of August 2019, these excavations have resumed on unexcavated areas of Regio V.[61]
+
+Objects buried beneath Pompeii were well-preserved for almost 2,000 years as the lack of air and moisture allowed little to no deterioration. However, once exposed, Pompeii has been subject to both natural and man-made forces, which have rapidly increased deterioration.
+
+Weathering, erosion, light exposure, water damage, poor methods of excavation and reconstruction, introduced plants and animals, tourism, vandalism and theft have all damaged the site in some way. The lack of adequate weather protection of all but the most interesting and important buildings has allowed original interior decoration to fade or be lost. Two-thirds of the city has been excavated, but the remnants of the city are rapidly deteriorating.[62]
+
+Furthermore, during World War II many buildings were badly damaged or destroyed by bombs dropped in several raids by the Allied forces.[63]
+
+The concern for conservation has continually troubled archaeologists. The ancient city was included in the 1996 World Monuments Watch by the World Monuments Fund, and again in 1998 and in 2000. In 1996 the organisation claimed that Pompeii "desperately need[ed] repair" and called for the drafting of a general plan of restoration and interpretation.[64] The organisation supported conservation at Pompeii with funding from American Express and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.[65]
+
+Today, funding is mostly directed into conservation of the site; however, due to the expanse of Pompeii and the scale of the problems, this is inadequate in halting the slow decay of the materials. A 2012 study recommended an improved strategy for interpretation and presentation of the site as a cost-effective method of improving its conservation and preservation in the short term.[66]
+
+In June 2013, UNESCO declared: If restoration and preservation works "fail to deliver substantial progress in the next two years," Pompeii could be placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger.[67]
+
+The 2,000-year-old Schola Armatorum ('House of the Gladiators') collapsed on 6 November 2010. The structure was not open to visitors, but the outside was visible to tourists. There was no immediate determination as to what caused the building to collapse, although reports suggested water infiltration following heavy rains might have been responsible. There has been fierce controversy after the collapse, with accusations of neglect.[68][69]
+
+Under the Romans after the conquest by Sulla in 89 BC, Pompeii underwent a process of urban development which accelerated in the Augustan period from about 30 BC. New public buildings include the amphitheatre with palaestra or gymnasium with a central natatorium (cella natatoria) or swimming pool, two theatres, the Eumachia Building and at least four public baths. The amphitheatre has been cited by scholars as a model of sophisticated design, particularly in the area of crowd control.[70]
+
+Other service buildings were the Macellum ("meat market"); the Pistrinum ("mill"); the Thermopolium (a fast food place that served hot and cold dishes and beverages), and cauponae ("cafes" or "dives" with a seedy reputation as hangouts for thieves and prostitutes). At least one building, the Lupanar, was dedicated to prostitution.[71] A large hotel or hospitium (of 1,000 square metres) was found at Murecine, a short distance from Pompeii, when the Naples-Salerno motorway was being built, and the Murecine Silver Treasure and the Tablets providing a unique record of business transactions were discovered.[72][73]
+
+An aqueduct provided water to the public baths, to more than 25 street fountains, and to many private houses (domūs) and businesses. The aqueduct was a branch of the great Serino Aqueduct built to serve the other large towns in the Bay of Naples region and the important naval base at Misenum. The castellum aquae is well preserved, and includes many details of the distribution network and its controls.[74]
+
+Modern archaeologists have excavated garden sites and urban domains to reveal the agricultural staples of Pompeii's economy. Pompeii was fortunate to have had fertile soil for crop cultivation. The soils surrounding Mount Vesuvius preceding its eruption have been revealed to have had good water-retention capabilities, implying productive agriculture. The Tyrrhenian Sea's airflow provided hydration to the soil despite the hot, dry climate.[75] Barley, wheat, and millet were all produced along with wine and olive oil, in abundance for export to other regions.[76]
+
+Evidence of wine imported nationally from Pompeii in its most prosperous years can be found from recovered artefacts such as wine bottles in Rome.[76] For this reason, vineyards were of utmost importance to Pompeii's economy. Agricultural policymaker Columella suggested that each vineyard in Rome produced a quota of three cullei of wine per jugerum, otherwise the vineyard would be uprooted. The nutrient-rich lands near Pompeii were extremely efficient at this and were often able to exceed these requirements by a steep margin, therefore providing the incentive for local wineries to establish themselves.[76] While wine was exported for Pompeii's economy, the majority of the other agricultural goods were likely produced in quantities sufficient for the city's consumption.
+
+Remains of large formations of constructed wineries were found in the Forum Boarium, covered by cemented casts from the eruption of Vesuvius.[76] It is speculated that these historical vineyards are strikingly similar in structure to the modern day vineyards across Italy.
+
+Carbonised food plant remains, roots, seeds and pollens, have been found from gardens in Pompeii, Herculaneum, and from the Roman villa at Torre Annunziata. They revealed that emmer wheat, Italian millet, common millet, walnuts, pine nuts, chestnuts, hazel nuts, chickpeas, bitter vetch, broad beans, olives, figs, pears, onions, garlic, peaches, carob, grapes, and dates were consumed. All but the dates could have been produced locally.[77]
+
+Town houses:
+
+Exterior villas:
+
+Other:
+
+The discovery of erotic art in Pompeii and Herculaneum left the archaeologists with a dilemma stemming from the clash of cultures between the mores of sexuality in ancient Rome and in Counter-Reformation Europe. An unknown number of discoveries were hidden away again. A wall fresco depicting Priapus, the ancient god of sex and fertility, with his grotesquely enlarged penis, was covered with plaster. An older reproduction was locked away "out of prudishness" and opened only on request – and only rediscovered in 1998 due to rainfall.[78] In 2018, an ancient fresco depicting an erotic scene of "Leda and the Swan" was discovered at Pompeii.[79]
+
+Many artefacts from the buried cities are preserved in the Naples National Archaeological Museum. In 1819, when King Francis visited the Pompeii exhibition there with his wife and daughter, he was so embarrassed by the erotic artwork that he had it locked away in a "secret cabinet" (gabinetto segreto), a gallery within the museum accessible only to "people of mature age and respected morals". Re-opened, closed, re-opened again and then closed again for nearly 100 years, the Naples "Secret Museum" was briefly made accessible again at the end of the 1960s (the time of the sexual revolution) and was finally re-opened for viewing in 2000. Minors are still allowed entry only in the presence of a guardian or with written permission.[80]
+
+Pompeii has been a popular tourist destination for over 250 years;[81] it was on the Grand Tour. By 2008, it was attracting almost 2.6 million visitors per year, making it one of the most popular tourist sites in Italy.[82] It is part of a larger Vesuvius National Park and was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1997. To combat problems associated with tourism, the governing body for Pompeii, the 'Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei', have begun issuing new tickets that allow tourists to visit cities such as Herculaneum and Stabiae as well as the Villa Poppaea, to encourage visitors to see these sites and reduce pressure on Pompeii.
+
+Pompeii is a driving force behind the economy of the nearby town of Pompei. Many residents are employed in the tourism and hospitality industry, serving as taxi or bus drivers, waiters, or hotel staff.[citation needed]
+
+Excavations at the site have generally ceased due to a moratorium imposed by the superintendent of the site, Professor Pietro Giovanni Guzzo. The site is generally less accessible to tourists than in the past, with less than a third of all buildings open in the 1960s being available for public viewing today.
+
+The 1954 film, Journey to Italy, starring George Sanders and Ingrid Bergman, includes a scene at Pompeii in which they witness the excavation of a cast of a couple that perished in the eruption.
+
+Pompeii was the setting for the British comedy television series Up Pompeii! and the movie of the series. Pompeii also featured in the second episode of the fourth season of revived BBC science fiction series Doctor Who, named "The Fires of Pompeii",[83] which featured Caecilius as a character.
+
+In 1971, the rock band Pink Floyd filmed a live concert titled Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii, in which they performed six songs in the ancient Roman amphitheatre in the city. The audience consisted only of the film's production crew and some local children.
+
+Siouxsie and the Banshees wrote and recorded the punk-inflected dance song "Cities in Dust", which describes the disaster that befell Pompeii and Herculaneum in AD 79. The song appears on their album Tinderbox, released in 1985, on Polydor Records. The jacket of the single remix of the song features the plaster cast of the chained dog killed in Pompeii.
+
+Pompeii is a novel written by Robert Harris (published in 2003) featuring the account of the aquarius's race to fix the broken aqueduct in the days leading up to the eruption of Vesuvius, inspired by actual events and people.
+
+"Pompeii" is a song by the British band Bastille, released 24 February 2013. The lyrics refer to the city and the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
+
+Pompeii is a 2014 German-Canadian historical disaster film produced and directed by Paul W. S. Anderson.[84]
+
+In 2016, 45 years after the Pink Floyd recordings, band guitarist David Gilmour returned to the Pompeii amphitheatre to perform a live concert for his Rattle That Lock Tour. This event was considered the first in the amphitheatre to feature an audience since the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius.[85][86]
+
+The Basilica
+
+Fresco from the Villa dei Misteri
+
+The Forum
+
+The Temple of Apollo
+
+The House of the Faun
+
+The Forum

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+
+Archaeology, or archeology,[1] is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts and cultural landscapes. Archaeology can be considered both a social science and a branch of the humanities.[2][3] In Europe it is often viewed as either a discipline in its own right or a sub-field of other disciplines, while in North America archaeology is a sub-field of anthropology.[4]
+
+Archaeologists study human prehistory and history, from the development of the first stone tools at Lomekwi in East Africa 3.3 million years ago up until recent decades.[5] Archaeology is distinct from palaeontology, which is the study of fossil remains. It is particularly important for learning about prehistoric societies, for whom there may be no written records to study. Prehistory includes over 99% of the human past, from the Paleolithic until the advent of literacy in societies across the world.[2] Archaeology has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time.[6] Derived from the Greek, the term archaeology literally means “the study of ancient history.”[7]
+
+The discipline involves surveying, excavation and eventually analysis of data collected to learn more about the past. In broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research.
+
+Archaeology developed out of antiquarianism in Europe during the 19th century, and has since become a discipline practiced across the world. Archaeology has been used by nation-states to create particular visions of the past.[8] Since its early development, various specific sub-disciplines of archaeology have developed, including maritime archaeology, feminist archaeology and archaeoastronomy, and numerous different scientific techniques have been developed to aid archaeological investigation. Nonetheless, today, archaeologists face many problems, such as dealing with pseudoarchaeology, the looting of artifacts,[9] a lack of public interest, and opposition to the excavation of human remains.
+
+In Ancient Mesopotamia, a foundation deposit of the Akkadian Empire ruler Naram-Sin (ruled circa 2200 BCE) was discovered and analysed by king Nabonidus, circa 550 BCE, who is thus known as the first archaeologist.[10][11][12] Not only did he lead the first excavations which were to find the foundation deposits of the temples of Šamaš the sun god, the warrior goddess Anunitu (both located in Sippar), and the sanctuary that Naram-Sin built to the moon god, located in Harran, but he also had them restored to their former glory.[10] He was also the first to date an archaeological artifact in his attempt to date Naram-Sin's temple during his search for it.[13] Even though his estimate was inaccurate by about 1,500 years, it was still a very good one considering the lack of accurate dating technology at the time.[10][13][11]
+
+The science of archaeology (from Greek ἀρχαιολογία, archaiologia from ἀρχαῖος, arkhaios, "ancient" and -λογία, -logia, "-logy")[14] grew out of the older multi-disciplinary study known as antiquarianism. Antiquarians studied history with particular attention to ancient artifacts and manuscripts, as well as historical sites. Antiquarianism focused on the empirical evidence that existed for the understanding of the past, encapsulated in the motto of the 18th-century antiquary, Sir Richard Colt Hoare, "We speak from facts not theory". Tentative steps towards the systematization of archaeology as a science took place during the Enlightenment era in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.[15]
+
+In Europe, philosophical interest in the remains of Greco-Roman civilization and the rediscovery of classical culture began in the late Middle Age. Flavio Biondo, an Italian Renaissance humanist historian, created a systematic guide to the ruins and topography of ancient Rome in the early 15th century, for which he has been called an early founder of archaeology. Antiquarians of the 16th century, including John Leland and William Camden, conducted surveys of the English countryside, drawing, describing and interpreting the monuments that they encountered.
+
+The OED first cites "archaeologist" from 1824; this soon took over as the usual term for one major branch of antiquarian activity. "Archaeology", from 1607 onwards, initially meant what we would call "ancient history" generally, with the narrower modern sense first seen in 1837.
+
+One of the first sites to undergo archaeological excavation was Stonehenge and other megalithic monuments in England. John Aubrey (1626–1697) was a pioneer archaeologist who recorded numerous megalithic and other field monuments in southern England. He was also ahead of his time in the analysis of his findings. He attempted to chart the chronological stylistic evolution of handwriting, medieval architecture, costume, and shield-shapes.[16]
+
+Excavations were also carried out by the Spanish military engineer Roque Joaquín de Alcubierre in the ancient towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, both of which had been covered by ash during the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. These excavations began in 1748 in Pompeii, while in Herculaneum they began in 1738. The discovery of entire towns, complete with utensils and even human shapes, as well the unearthing of frescos, had a big impact throughout Europe.
+
+However, prior to the development of modern techniques, excavations tended to be haphazard; the importance of concepts such as stratification and context were overlooked.[17]
+
+The father of archaeological excavation was William Cunnington (1754–1810). He undertook excavations in Wiltshire from around 1798,[18] funded by Sir Richard Colt Hoare. Cunnington made meticulous recordings of Neolithic and Bronze Age barrows, and the terms he used to categorize and describe them are still used by archaeologists today.[19]
+
+One of the major achievements of 19th-century archaeology was the development of stratigraphy. The idea of overlapping strata tracing back to successive periods was borrowed from the new geological and paleontological work of scholars like William Smith, James Hutton and Charles Lyell. The application of stratigraphy to archaeology first took place with the excavations of prehistorical and Bronze Age sites. In the third and fourth decades of the 19th-century, archaeologists like Jacques Boucher de Perthes and Christian Jürgensen Thomsen began to put the artifacts they had found in chronological order.
+
+A major figure in the development of archaeology into a rigorous science was the army officer and ethnologist, Augustus Pitt Rivers,[20] who began excavations on his land in England in the 1880s. His approach was highly methodical by the standards of the time, and he is widely regarded as the first scientific archaeologist. He arranged his artifacts by type or "typologically, and within types by date or "chronologically". This style of arrangement, designed to highlight the evolutionary trends in human artifacts, was of enormous significance for the accurate dating of the objects. His most important methodological innovation was his insistence that all artifacts, not just beautiful or unique ones, be collected and catalogued.[21]
+
+William Flinders Petrie is another man who may legitimately be called the Father of Archaeology. His painstaking recording and study of artifacts, both in Egypt and later in Palestine, laid down many of the ideas behind modern archaeological recording; he remarked that "I believe the true line of research lies in the noting and comparison of the smallest details." Petrie developed the system of dating layers based on pottery and ceramic findings, which revolutionized the chronological basis of Egyptology. Petrie was the first to scientifically investigate the Great Pyramid in Egypt during the 1880s.[22] He was also responsible for mentoring and training a whole generation of Egyptologists, including Howard Carter who went on to achieve fame with the discovery of the tomb of 14th-century BC pharaoh Tutankhamun.
+
+The first stratigraphic excavation to reach wide popularity with public was that of Hissarlik, on the site of ancient Troy, carried out by Heinrich Schliemann, Frank Calvert and Wilhelm Dörpfeld in the 1870s. These scholars individuated nine different cities that had overlapped with one another, from prehistory to the Hellenistic period.[23] Meanwhile, the work of Sir Arthur Evans at Knossos in Crete revealed the ancient existence of an equally advanced Minoan civilization.[24]
+
+The next major figure in the development of archaeology was Sir Mortimer Wheeler, whose highly disciplined approach to excavation and systematic coverage in the 1920s and 1930s brought the science on swiftly. Wheeler developed the grid system of excavation, which was further improved by his student Kathleen Kenyon.
+
+Archaeology became a professional activity in the first half of the 20th century, and it became possible to study archaeology as a subject in universities and even schools. By the end of the 20th century nearly all professional archaeologists, at least in developed countries, were graduates. Further adaptation and innovation in archaeology continued in this period, when maritime archaeology and urban archaeology became more prevalent and rescue archaeology was developed as a result of increasing commercial development.[25]
+
+The purpose of archaeology is to learn more about past societies and the development of the human race. Over 99% of the development of humanity has occurred within prehistoric cultures, who did not make use of writing, thereby no written records exist for study purposes. Without such written sources, the only way to understand prehistoric societies is through archaeology. Because archaeology is the study of past human activity, it stretches back to about 2.5 million years ago when we find the first stone tools – The Oldowan Industry. Many important developments in human history occurred during prehistory, such as the evolution of humanity during the Paleolithic period, when the hominins developed from the australopithecines in Africa and eventually into modern Homo sapiens. Archaeology also sheds light on many of humanity's technological advances, for instance the ability to use fire, the development of stone tools, the discovery of metallurgy, the beginnings of religion and the creation of agriculture. Without archaeology, we would know little or nothing about the use of material culture by humanity that pre-dates writing.[26]
+
+However, it is not only prehistoric, pre-literate cultures that can be studied using archaeology but historic, literate cultures as well, through the sub-discipline of historical archaeology. For many literate cultures, such as Ancient Greece and Mesopotamia, their surviving records are often incomplete and biased to some extent. In many societies, literacy was restricted to the elite classes, such as the clergy or the bureaucracy of court or temple. The literacy even of aristocrats has sometimes been restricted to deeds and contracts. The interests and world-view of elites are often quite different from the lives and interests of the populace. Writings that were produced by people more representative of the general population were unlikely to find their way into libraries and be preserved there for posterity. Thus, written records tend to reflect the biases, assumptions, cultural values and possibly deceptions of a limited range of individuals, usually a small fraction of the larger population. Hence, written records cannot be trusted as a sole source. The material record may be closer to a fair representation of society, though it is subject to its own biases, such as sampling bias and differential preservation.[27]
+
+Often, archaeology provides the only means to learn of the existence and behaviors of people of the past. Across the millennia many thousands of cultures and societies and billions of people have come and gone of which there is little or no written record or existing records are misrepresentative or incomplete. Writing as it is known today did not exist in human civilization until the 4th millennium BC, in a relatively small number of technologically advanced civilizations. In contrast, Homo sapiens has existed for at least 200,000 years, and other species of Homo for millions of years (see Human evolution). These civilizations are, not coincidentally, the best-known; they are open to the inquiry of historians for centuries, while the study of pre-historic cultures has arisen only recently. Even within a literate civilization many events and important human practices are not officially recorded. Any knowledge of the early years of human civilization – the development of agriculture, cult practices of folk religion, the rise of the first cities – must come from archaeology.
+
+In addition to their scientific importance, archaeological remains sometimes have political or cultural significance to descendants of the people who produced them, monetary value to collectors, or simply strong aesthetic appeal. Many people identify archaeology with the recovery of such aesthetic, religious, political, or economic treasures rather than with the reconstruction of past societies.
+
+This view is often espoused in works of popular fiction, such as Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Mummy, and King Solomon's Mines. When such unrealistic subjects are treated more seriously, accusations of pseudoscience are invariably levelled at their proponents (see Pseudoarchaeology). However, these endeavours, real and fictional, are not representative of modern archaeology.
+
+There is no one approach to archaeological theory that has been adhered to by all archaeologists. When archaeology developed in the late 19th century, the first approach to archaeological theory to be practiced was that of cultural-history archaeology, which held the goal of explaining why cultures changed and adapted rather than just highlighting the fact that they did, therefore emphasizing historical particularism.[28] In the early 20th century, many archaeologists who studied past societies with direct continuing links to existing ones (such as those of Native Americans, Siberians, Mesoamericans etc.) followed the direct historical approach, compared the continuity between the past and contemporary ethnic and cultural groups.[28] In the 1960s, an archaeological movement largely led by American archaeologists like Lewis Binford and Kent Flannery arose that rebelled against the established cultural-history archaeology.[29][30] They proposed a "New Archaeology", which would be more "scientific" and "anthropological", with hypothesis testing and the scientific method very important parts of what became known as processual archaeology.[28]
+
+In the 1980s, a new postmodern movement arose led by the British archaeologists Michael Shanks,[31][32][33][34] Christopher Tilley,[35] Daniel Miller,[36][37] and Ian Hodder,[38][39][40][41][42][43] which has become known as post-processual archaeology. It questioned processualism's appeals to scientific positivism and impartiality, and emphasized the importance of a more self-critical theoretical reflexivity.[citation needed] However, this approach has been criticized by processualists as lacking scientific rigor, and the validity of both processualism and post-processualism is still under debate. Meanwhile, another theory, known as historical processualism has emerged seeking to incorporate a focus on process and post-processual archaeology's emphasis of reflexivity and history.[44]
+
+Archaeological theory now borrows from a wide range of influences, including neo-evolutionary thought,[45][35] phenomenology, postmodernism, agency theory, cognitive science, structural functionalism, gender-based and feminist archaeology, and systems theory.
+
+An archaeological investigation usually involves several distinct phases, each of which employs its own variety of methods. Before any practical work can begin, however, a clear objective as to what the archaeologists are looking to achieve must be agreed upon. This done, a site is surveyed to find out as much as possible about it and the surrounding area. Second, an excavation may take place to uncover any archaeological features buried under the ground. And, third, the information collected during the excavation is studied and evaluated in an attempt to achieve the original research objectives of the archaeologists. It is then considered good practice for the information to be published so that it is available to other archaeologists and historians, although this is sometimes neglected.[46]
+
+Before actually starting to dig in a location, remote sensing can be used to look where sites are located within a large area or provide more information about sites or regions. There are two types of remote sensing instruments—passive and active. Passive instruments detect natural energy that is reflected or emitted from the observed scene. Passive instruments sense only radiation emitted by the object being viewed or reflected by the object from a source other than the instrument. Active instruments emit energy and record what is reflected. Satellite imagery is an example of passive remote sensing. Here are two active remote sensing instruments:
+
+Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging)
+A lidar uses a laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) to transmit a light pulse and a receiver with sensitive detectors to measure the backscattered or reflected light. Distance to the object is determined by recording the time between the transmitted and backscattered pulses and using the speed of light to calculate the distance travelled. Lidars can determine atmospheric profiles of aerosols, clouds, and other constituents of the atmosphere.
+
+Laser altimeter
+A laser altimeter uses a lidar (see above) to measure the height of the instrument platform above the surface. By independently knowing the height of the platform with respect to the mean Earth's surface, the topography of the underlying surface can be determined.
+[47]
+
+The archaeological project then continues (or alternatively, begins) with a field survey. Regional survey is the attempt to systematically locate previously unknown sites in a region. Site survey is the attempt to systematically locate features of interest, such as houses and middens, within a site. Each of these two goals may be accomplished with largely the same methods.
+
+Survey was not widely practiced in the early days of archaeology. Cultural historians and prior researchers were usually content with discovering the locations of monumental sites from the local populace, and excavating only the plainly visible features there. Gordon Willey pioneered the technique of regional settlement pattern survey in 1949 in the Viru Valley of coastal Peru,[48][49] and survey of all levels became prominent with the rise of processual archaeology some years later.[50]
+
+Survey work has many benefits if performed as a preliminary exercise to, or even in place of, excavation. It requires relatively little time and expense, because it does not require processing large volumes of soil to search out artifacts. (Nevertheless, surveying a large region or site can be expensive, so archaeologists often employ sampling methods.)[51] As with other forms of non-destructive archaeology, survey avoids ethical issues (of particular concern to descendant peoples) associated with destroying a site through excavation. It is the only way to gather some forms of information, such as settlement patterns and settlement structure. Survey data are commonly assembled into maps, which may show surface features and/or artifact distribution.
+
+The simplest survey technique is surface survey. It involves combing an area, usually on foot but sometimes with the use of mechanized transport, to search for features or artifacts visible on the surface. Surface survey cannot detect sites or features that are completely buried under earth, or overgrown with vegetation. Surface survey may also include mini-excavation techniques such as augers, corers, and shovel test pits. If no materials are found, the area surveyed is deemed sterile.
+
+Aerial survey is conducted using cameras attached to airplanes, balloons, UAVs, or even Kites.[52] A bird's-eye view is useful for quick mapping of large or complex sites. Aerial photographs are used to document the status of the archaeological dig. Aerial imaging can also detect many things not visible from the surface. Plants growing above a buried man made structure, such as a stone wall, will develop more slowly, while those above other types of features (such as middens) may develop more rapidly. Photographs of ripening grain, which changes colour rapidly at maturation, have revealed buried structures with great precision. Aerial photographs taken at different times of day will help show the outlines of structures by changes in shadows. Aerial survey also employs ultraviolet, infrared, ground-penetrating radar wavelengths, LiDAR and thermography.[53]
+
+Geophysical survey can be the most effective way to see beneath the ground. Magnetometers detect minute deviations in the Earth's magnetic field caused by iron artifacts, kilns, some types of stone structures, and even ditches and middens. Devices that measure the electrical resistivity of the soil are also widely used. Archaeological features whose electrical resistivity contrasts with that of surrounding soils can be detected and mapped. Some archaeological features (such as those composed of stone or brick) have higher resistivity than typical soils, while others (such as organic deposits or unfired clay) tend to have lower resistivity.
+
+Although some archaeologists consider the use of metal detectors to be tantamount to treasure hunting, others deem them an effective tool in archaeological surveying.[54] Examples of formal archaeological use of metal detectors include musketball distribution analysis on English Civil War battlefields, metal distribution analysis prior to excavation of a 19th-century ship wreck, and service cable location during evaluation. Metal detectorists have also contributed to archaeology where they have made detailed records of their results and refrained from raising artifacts from their archaeological context. In the UK, metal detectorists have been solicited for involvement in the Portable Antiquities Scheme.
+
+Regional survey in underwater archaeology uses geophysical or remote sensing devices such as marine magnetometer, side-scan sonar, or sub-bottom sonar.[55]
+
+Archaeological excavation existed even when the field was still the domain of amateurs, and it remains the source of the majority of data recovered in most field projects. It can reveal several types of information usually not accessible to survey, such as stratigraphy, three-dimensional structure, and verifiably primary context.
+
+Modern excavation techniques require that the precise locations of objects and features, known as their provenance or provenience, be recorded. This always involves determining their horizontal locations, and sometimes vertical position as well (also see Primary Laws of Archaeology). Likewise, their association, or relationship with nearby objects and features, needs to be recorded for later analysis. This allows the archaeologist to deduce which artifacts and features were likely used together and which may be from different phases of activity. For example, excavation of a site reveals its stratigraphy; if a site was occupied by a succession of distinct cultures, artifacts from more recent cultures will lie above those from more ancient cultures.
+
+Excavation is the most expensive phase of archaeological research, in relative terms. Also, as a destructive process, it carries ethical concerns. As a result, very few sites are excavated in their entirety. Again the percentage of a site excavated depends greatly on the country and "method statement" issued. Sampling is even more important in excavation than in survey. Sometimes large mechanical equipment, such as backhoes (JCBs), is used in excavation, especially to remove the topsoil (overburden), though this method is increasingly used with great caution. Following this rather dramatic step, the exposed area is usually hand-cleaned with trowels or hoes to ensure that all features are apparent.
+
+The next task is to form a site plan and then use it to help decide the method of excavation. Features dug into the natural subsoil are normally excavated in portions to produce a visible archaeological section for recording. A feature, for example a pit or a ditch, consists of two parts: the cut and the fill. The cut describes the edge of the feature, where the feature meets the natural soil. It is the feature's boundary. The fill is what the feature is filled with, and will often appear quite distinct from the natural soil. The cut and fill are given consecutive numbers for recording purposes. Scaled plans and sections of individual features are all drawn on site, black and white and colour photographs of them are taken, and recording sheets are filled in describing the context of each. All this information serves as a permanent record of the now-destroyed archaeology and is used in describing and interpreting the site.
+
+Once artifacts and structures have been excavated, or collected from surface surveys, it is necessary to properly study them. This process is known as post-excavation analysis, and is usually the most time-consuming part of an archaeological investigation. It is not uncommon for final excavation reports for major sites to take years to be published.
+
+At a basic level of analysis, artifacts found are cleaned, catalogued and compared to published collections. This comparison process often involves classifying them typologically and identifying other sites with similar artifact assemblages. However, a much more comprehensive range of analytical techniques are available through archaeological science, meaning that artifacts can be dated and their compositions examined. Bones, plants, and pollen collected from a site can all be analyzed using the methods of zooarchaeology, paleoethnobotany, palynology and stable isotopes[56] while any texts can usually be deciphered.
+
+These techniques frequently provide information that would not otherwise be known, and therefore they contribute greatly to the understanding of a site.
+
+Computer graphics are now used to build virtual 3D models of sites, such as the throne room of an Assyrian palace or ancient Rome.[57] Photogrammetry is also used as an analytical tool, and digital topographical models have been combined with astronomical calculations to verify whether or not certain structures (such as pillars) were aligned with astronomical events such as the sun's position at a solstice.[57] Agent-based modeling and simulation can be used to better understand past social dynamics and outcomes. Data mining can be applied to large bodies of archaeological 'grey literature'.
+
+Archaeologists around the world use drones to speed up survey work and protect sites from squatters, builders and miners. In Peru, small drones helped researchers produce three-dimensional models of Peruvian sites instead of the usual flat maps – and in days and weeks instead of months and years.[58]
+
+Drones costing as little as £650 have proven useful. In 2013, drones have flown over at least six Peruvian archaeological sites, including the colonial Andean town Machu Llacta 4,000 metres (13,000 ft) above sea level. The drones continue to have altitude problems in the Andes, leading to plans to make a drone blimp, employing open source software.[58]
+
+Jeffrey Quilter, an archaeologist with Harvard University said, "You can go up three metres and photograph a room, 300 metres and photograph a site, or you can go up 3,000 metres and photograph the entire valley."[58]
+
+In September 2014 drones weighing about 5 kg (11 lb) were used for 3D mapping of the above-ground ruins of the Greek city of Aphrodisias. The data are being analysed by the Austrian Archaeological Institute in Vienna.[59]
+
+As with most academic disciplines, there are a very large number of archaeological sub-disciplines characterized by a specific method or type of material (e.g., lithic analysis, music, archaeobotany), geographical or chronological focus (e.g. Near Eastern archaeology, Islamic archaeology, Medieval archaeology), other thematic concern (e.g. maritime archaeology, landscape archaeology, battlefield archaeology), or a specific archaeological culture or civilization (e.g. Egyptology, Indology, Sinology).[60]
+
+Historical archaeology is the study of cultures with some form of writing.
+
+In England, archaeologists have uncovered layouts of 14th century medieval villages, abandoned after crises such as the Black Death.[61] In downtown New York City, archaeologists have exhumed the 18th century remains of the African Burial Ground. When remnants of the WWII Siegfried Line were being destroyed, emergency archaeological digs took place whenever any part of the line was removed, to further scientific knowledge and reveal details of the line's construction.
+
+Ethnoarchaeology is the ethnographic study of living people, designed to aid in our interpretation of the archaeological record.[62][63][64][65][66][67] The approach first gained prominence during the processual movement of the 1960s, and continues to be a vibrant component of post-processual and other current archaeological approaches.[45][68][69][70][71] Early ethnoarchaeological research focused on hunter-gatherer or foraging societies; today ethnoarchaeological research encompasses a much wider range of human behaviour.
+
+Experimental archaeology represents the application of the experimental method to develop more highly controlled observations of processes that create and impact the archaeological record.[72][73][74][75][76] In the context of the logical positivism of processualism with its goals of improving the scientific rigor of archaeological epistemologies the experimental method gained importance. Experimental techniques remain a crucial component to improving the inferential frameworks for interpreting the archaeological record.
+
+Archaeometry aims to systematize archaeological measurement. It emphasizes the application of analytical techniques from physics, chemistry, and engineering. It is a field of research that frequently focuses on the definition of the chemical composition of archaeological remains for source analysis.[77] Archaeometry also investigates different spatial characteristics of features, employing methods such as space syntax techniques and geodesy as well as computer-based tools such as geographic information system technology.[78] Rare earth elements patterns may also be used.[79]  A relatively nascent subfield is that of archaeological materials, designed to enhance understanding of prehistoric and non-industrial culture through scientific analysis of the structure and properties of materials associated with human activity.[80]
+
+Archaeology can be a subsidiary activity within Cultural resources management (CRM), also called Cultural heritage management (CHM) in the United Kingdom.[81] CRM archaeologists frequently examine archaeological sites that are threatened by development. Today, CRM accounts for most of the archaeological research done in the United States and much of that in western Europe as well. In the US, CRM archaeology has been a growing concern since the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) of 1966, and most taxpayers, scholars, and politicians believe that CRM has helped preserve much of that nation's history and prehistory that would have otherwise been lost in the expansion of cities, dams, and highways. Along with other statutes, the NHPA mandates that projects on federal land or involving federal funds or permits consider the effects of the project on each archaeological site.
+
+The application of CRM in the United Kingdom is not limited to government-funded projects. Since 1990, PPG 16[82] has required planners to consider archaeology as a material consideration in determining applications for new development. As a result, numerous archaeological organizations undertake mitigation work in advance of (or during) construction work in archaeologically sensitive areas, at the developer's expense.
+
+In England, ultimate responsibility of care for the historic environment rests with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport[83] in association with English Heritage.[84] In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the same responsibilities lie with Historic Scotland,[85] Cadw[86] and the Northern Ireland Environment Agency[87] respectively.
+
+In France, the Institut national du patrimoine (The National Institute of Cultural Heritage) trains curators specialized in archaeology. Their mission is to enhance the objects discovered. The curator is the link between scientific knowledge, administrative regulations, heritage objects and the public.
+
+Among the goals of CRM are the identification, preservation, and maintenance of cultural sites on public and private lands, and the removal of culturally valuable materials from areas where they would otherwise be destroyed by human activity, such as proposed construction. This study involves at least a cursory examination to determine whether or not any significant archaeological sites are present in the area affected by the proposed construction. If these do exist, time and money must be allotted for their excavation. If initial survey and/or test excavations indicate the presence of an extraordinarily valuable site, the construction may be prohibited entirely.
+
+Cultural resources management has, however, been criticized. CRM is conducted by private companies that bid for projects by submitting proposals outlining the work to be done and an expected budget. It is not unheard-of for the agency responsible for the construction to simply choose the proposal that asks for the least funding. CRM archaeologists face considerable time pressure, often being forced to complete their work in a fraction of the time that might be allotted for a purely scholarly endeavour. Compounding the time pressure is the vetting process of site reports that are required (in the US) to be submitted by CRM firms to the appropriate State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO). From the SHPO's perspective there is to be no difference between a report submitted by a CRM firm operating under a deadline, and a multi-year academic project. The end result is that for a Cultural Resource Management archaeologist to be successful, they must be able to produce academic quality documents at a corporate world pace.
+
+The annual ratio of open academic archaeology positions (inclusive of post-doc, temporary, and non- tenure track appointments) to the annual number of archaeology MA/MSc and PhD students is disproportionate. Cultural Resource Management, once considered an intellectual backwater for individuals with "strong backs and weak minds,"[88] has attracted these graduates, and CRM offices are thus increasingly staffed by advance degreed individuals with a track record of producing scholarly articles but who also have extensive CRM field experience.
+
+The protection of archaeological finds for the public from catastrophes, wars and armed conflicts is increasingly being implemented internationally. This happens on the one hand through international agreements and on the other hand through organizations that monitor or enforce protection. United Nations, UNESCO and Blue Shield International deal with the protection of cultural heritage and thus also archaeological sites. This also applies to the integration of United Nations peacekeeping. Blue Shield International has undertaken various fact-finding missions in recent years to protect archaeological sites during the wars in Libya, Syria, Egypt and Lebanon. The importance of archaeological finds for identity, tourism and sustainable economic growth is repeatedly emphasized internationally.[89][90][91][92][93][94]
+
+The President of Blue Shield International, Karl von Habsburg, said during a cultural property protection mission in Lebanon in April 2019 with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon: “Cultural assets are part of the identity of the people who live in a certain place. If you destroy their culture, you also destroy their identity. Many people are uprooted, often have no prospects anymore and subsequently flee from their homeland."[95]
+
+Early archaeology was largely an attempt to uncover spectacular artifacts and features, or to explore vast and mysterious abandoned cities and was mostly done by upper class, scholarly men. This general tendency laid the foundation for the modern popular view of archaeology and archaeologists. Many of the public view archaeology as something only available to a narrow demographic. The job of archaeologist is depicted as a "romantic adventurist occupation".[96] and as a hobby more than a job in the scientific community. Cinema audiences form a notion of "who archaeologists are, why they do what they do, and how relationships to the past are constituted",[96] and is often under the impression that all archaeology takes place in a distant and foreign land, only to collect monetarily or spiritually priceless artifacts. The modern depiction of archaeology has incorrectly formed the public's perception of what archaeology is.
+
+Much thorough and productive research has indeed been conducted in dramatic locales such as Copán and the Valley of the Kings, but the bulk of activities and finds of modern archaeology are not so sensational. Archaeological adventure stories tend to ignore the painstaking work involved in carrying out modern surveys, excavations, and data processing. Some archaeologists refer to such off-the-mark portrayals as "pseudoarchaeology".[97]
+Archaeologists are also very much reliant on public support; the question of exactly who they are doing their work for is often discussed.[98]
+
+Motivated by a desire to halt looting, curb pseudoarchaeology, and to help preserve archaeological sites through education and fostering public appreciation for the importance of archaeological heritage, archaeologists are mounting public-outreach campaigns.[99] They seek to stop looting by combatting people who illegally take artifacts from protected sites, and by alerting people who live near archaeological sites of the threat of looting. Common methods of public outreach include press releases, and the encouragement of school field trips to sites under excavation by professional archaeologists.[citation needed] Public appreciation of the significance of archaeology and archaeological sites often leads to improved protection from encroaching development or other threats.
+
+One audience for archaeologists' work is the public. They increasingly realize that their work can benefit non-academic and non-archaeological audiences, and that they have a responsibility to educate and inform the public about archaeology. Local heritage awareness is aimed at increasing civic and individual pride through projects such as community excavation projects, and better public presentations of archaeological sites and knowledge.[citation needed] The U.S.Dept. of Agriculture, Forest Service (USFS) operates a volunteer archaeology and historic preservation program called the Passport in Time (PIT). Volunteers work with professional USFS archaeologists and historians on national forests throughout the U.S. Volunteers are involved in all aspects of professional archaeology under expert supervision.[100]
+
+Television programs, web videos and social media can also bring an understanding of underwater archaeology to a broad audience. The Mardi Gras Shipwreck Project[101] integrated a one-hour HD documentary,[102] short videos for public viewing and video updates during the expedition as part of the educational outreach. Webcasting is also another tool for educational outreach. For one week in 2000 and 2001, live underwater video of the Queen Anne's Revenge Shipwreck Project was webcast to the Internet as a part of the QAR DiveLive[103] educational program that reached thousands of children around the world.[104] Created and co-produced by Nautilus Productions and Marine Grafics, this project enabled students to talk to scientists and learn about methods and technologies utilized by the underwater archaeology team.[105][106]
+
+In the UK, popular archaeology programs such as Time Team and Meet the Ancestors have resulted in a huge upsurge in public interest.[citation needed] Where possible, archaeologists now make more provisions for public involvement and outreach in larger projects than they once did, and many local archaeological organizations operate within the Community archaeology framework to expand public involvement in smaller-scale, more local projects. Archaeological excavation, however, is best undertaken by well-trained staff that can work quickly and accurately. Often this requires observing the necessary health and safety and indemnity insurance issues involved in working on a modern building site with tight deadlines. Certain charities and local government bodies sometimes offer places on research projects either as part of academic work or as a defined community project.[citation needed] There is also a flourishing industry selling places on commercial training excavations and archaeological holiday tours.[citation needed]
+
+Archaeologists prize local knowledge and often liaise with local historical and archaeological societies, which is one reason why Community archaeology projects are starting to become more common. Often archaeologists are assisted by the public in the locating of archaeological sites, which professional archaeologists have neither the funding, nor the time to do.
+
+Archaeological Legacy Institute (ALI), is a registered 501[c] [3] non-profit, media and education corporation registered in Oregon in 1999. ALI founded a website, The Archaeology Channel to support the organization's mission "to nurturing and bringing attention to the human cultural heritage, by using media in the most efficient and effective ways possible."[107]
+
+Pseudoarchaeology is an umbrella term for all activities that falsely claim to be archaeological but in fact violate commonly accepted and scientific archaeological practices. It includes much fictional archaeological work (discussed above), as well as some actual activity. Many non-fiction authors have ignored the scientific methods of processual archaeology, or the specific critiques of it contained in post-processualism.
+
+An example of this type is the writing of Erich von Däniken. His 1968 book, Chariots of the Gods?, together with many subsequent lesser-known works, expounds a theory of ancient contacts between human civilization on Earth and more technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations. This theory, known as palaeocontact theory, or Ancient astronaut theory, is not exclusively Däniken's, nor did the idea originate with him. Works of this nature are usually marked by the renunciation of well-established theories on the basis of limited evidence, and the interpretation of evidence with a preconceived theory in mind.
+
+Looting of archaeological sites is an ancient problem. For instance, many of the tombs of the Egyptian pharaohs were looted during antiquity.[108] Archaeology stimulates interest in ancient objects, and people in search of artifacts or treasure cause damage to archaeological sites. The commercial and academic demand for artifacts unfortunately contributes directly to the illicit antiquities trade. Smuggling of antiquities abroad to private collectors has caused great cultural and economic damage in many countries whose governments lack the resources and or the will to deter it. Looters damage and destroy archaeological sites, denying future generations information about their ethnic and cultural heritage. Indigenous peoples especially lose access to and control over their 'cultural resources', ultimately denying them the opportunity to know their past.[109]
+
+In 1937, W. F. Hodge the Director of the Southwest Museum released a statement that the museum would no longer purchase or accept collections from looted contexts.[110] The first conviction of the transport of artifacts illegally removed from private property under the Archaeological Resources Protection Act (ARPA; Public Law 96-95; 93 Statute 721; 16 U.S.C. § 470aamm) was in 1992 in the State of Indiana.[111]
+
+Archaeologists trying to protect artifacts may be placed in danger by looters or locals trying to protect the artifacts from archaeologists who are viewed as looters by the locals.[112]
+
+Some historical archaeology sites are subjected to looting by metal detector hobbyists who search for artifacts using increasingly advanced technology. Efforts are underway among all major Archaeological organizations to increase education and legitimate cooperation between amateurs and professionals in the metal detecting community.[113]
+
+While most looting is deliberate, accidental looting can occur when amateurs, who are unaware of the importance of Archaeological rigor, collect artifacts from sites and place them into private collections.
+
+In the United States, examples such as the case of Kennewick Man have illustrated the tensions between Native Americans and archaeologists, which can be summarized as a conflict between a need to remain respectful toward sacred burial sites and the academic benefit from studying them. For years, American archaeologists dug on Indian burial grounds and other places considered sacred, removing artifacts and human remains to storage facilities for further study. In some cases human remains were not even thoroughly studied but instead archived rather than reburied. Furthermore, Western archaeologists' views of the past often differ from those of tribal peoples. The West views time as linear; for many natives, it is cyclic. From a Western perspective, the past is long-gone; from a native perspective, disturbing the past can have dire consequences in the present.
+
+As a consequence of this, American Indians attempted to prevent archaeological excavation of sites inhabited by their ancestors, while American archaeologists believed that the advancement of scientific knowledge was a valid reason to continue their studies. This contradictory situation was addressed by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA, 1990), which sought to reach a compromise by limiting the right of research institutions to possess human remains. Due in part to the spirit of postprocessualism, some archaeologists have begun to actively enlist the assistance of indigenous peoples likely to be descended from those under study.
+
+Archaeologists have also been obliged to re-examine what constitutes an archaeological site in view of what native peoples believe to constitute sacred space. To many native peoples, natural features such as lakes, mountains or even individual trees have cultural significance. Australian archaeologists especially have explored this issue and attempted to survey these sites to give them some protection from being developed. Such work requires close links and trust between archaeologists and the people they are trying to help and at the same time study.
+
+While this cooperation presents a new set of challenges and hurdles to fieldwork, it has benefits for all parties involved. Tribal elders cooperating with archaeologists can prevent the excavation of areas of sites that they consider sacred, while the archaeologists gain the elders' aid in interpreting their finds. There have also been active efforts to recruit aboriginal peoples directly into the archaeological profession.
+
+A new trend in the heated controversy between First Nations groups and scientists is the repatriation of native artifacts to the original descendants. An example of this occurred on 21 June 2005, when community members and elders from a number of the 10 Algonquian nations in the Ottawa area convened on the Kitigan Zibi reservation near Maniwaki, Quebec, to inter ancestral human remains and burial goods—some dating back 6,000 years. It was not determined, however, if the remains were directly related to the Algonquin people who now inhabit the region. The remains may be of Iroquoian ancestry, since Iroquoian people inhabited the area before the Algonquin. Moreover, the oldest of these remains might have no relation at all to the Algonquin or Iroquois, and belong to an earlier culture who previously inhabited the area.
+
+The remains and artifacts, including jewelry, tools and weapons, were originally excavated from various sites in the Ottawa Valley, including Morrison and the Allumette Islands. They had been part of the Canadian Museum of Civilization's research collection for decades, some since the late 19th century. Elders from various Algonquin communities conferred on an appropriate reburial, eventually deciding on traditional redcedar and birchbark boxes lined with redcedar chips, muskrat and beaver pelts.
+
+An inconspicuous rock mound marks the reburial site where close to 80 boxes of various sizes are buried. Because of this reburial, no further scientific study is possible. Although negotiations were at times tense between the Kitigan Zibi community and museum, they were able to reach agreement.[114]
+
+Kennewick Man is another repatriation candidate that has been the source of heated debate.
+
+Lists