The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 17% of Earth's surface and about 24% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the "Old World" of Africa, Europe, and Asia from the "New World" of the Americas in the European perception of the World.

Through its separation of Europe, Africa, and Asia from the Americas, the Atlantic Ocean has played a central role in the development of human society, globalization, and the histories of many nations. While the Norse were the first known humans to cross the Atlantic, it was the expedition of Christopher Columbus in 1492 that proved to be the most consequential. Columbus' expedition ushered in an age of exploration and colonization of the Americas by European powers, most notably Portugal, Spain, France, and the United Kingdom. From the 16th to 19th centuries, the Atlantic Ocean was the center of both an eponymous slave trade and the Columbian exchange while occasionally hosting naval battles. Such naval battles, as well as growing trade from regional American powers like the United States and Brazil, both increased in degree during the early 20th century, and while no major military conflicts took place in the Atlantic in the present day, the ocean remains a core component of trade around the world.

The Atlantic Ocean occupies an elongated, S-shaped basin extending longitudinally between Europe and Africa to the east, and the Americas to the west. As one component of the interconnected World Ocean, it is connected in the north to the Arctic Ocean, to the Pacific Ocean in the southwest, the Indian Ocean in the southeast, and the Southern Ocean in the south (other definitions describe the Atlantic as extending southward to Antarctica). The Atlantic Ocean is divided in two parts, the Northern and Southern Atlantic, by the Equator.

Toponymy

The oldest known mentions of an "Atlantic" sea come from Stesichorus around mid-sixth century BC (Sch. A. R. 1. 211):  (Greek: ; English: 'the Atlantic sea'; etym. 'Sea of Atlas') and in The Histories of Herodotus around 450 BC (Hdt. 1.202.4):  (Greek: ; English: 'Sea of Atlas' or 'the Atlantic sea') where the name refers to "the sea beyond the pillars of Heracles" which is said to be part of the sea that surrounds all land. In these uses, the name refers to Atlas, the Titan in Greek mythology, who supported the heavens and who later appeared as a frontispiece in medieval maps and also lent his name to modern atlases. On the other hand, to early Greek sailors and in ancient Greek mythological literature such as the Iliad and the Odyssey, this all-encompassing ocean was instead known as Oceanus, the gigantic river that encircled the world; in contrast to the enclosed seas well known to the Greeks: the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. In contrast, the term "Atlantic" originally referred specifically to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco and the sea off the Strait of Gibraltar and the North African coast. The Greek word  has been reused by scientists for the huge Panthalassa ocean that surrounded the supercontinent Pangaea hundreds of millions of years ago.

The term "Aethiopian Ocean", derived from Ancient Ethiopia, was applied to the Southern Atlantic as late as the mid-19th century. During the Age of Discovery, the Atlantic was also known to English cartographers as the Great Western Ocean.

The pond is a term often used by British and American speakers in reference to the Northern Atlantic Ocean, as a form of meiosis, or ironic understatement. It is used mostly when referring to events or circumstances "on this side of the pond" or "on the other side of the pond", rather than to discuss the ocean itself. The term dates to 1640, first appearing in print in pamphlet released during the reign of Charles I, and reproduced in 1869 in Nehemiah Wallington's Historical Notices of Events Occurring Chiefly in The Reign of Charles I, where "great Pond" is used in reference to the Atlantic Ocean by Francis Windebank, Charles I's Secretary of State.

Extent and data

The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) defined the limits of the oceans and seas in 1953, but some of these definitions have been revised since then and some are not used by various authorities, institutions, and countries, see for example the CIA World Factbook. Correspondingly, the extent and number of oceans and seas vary.

The Atlantic Ocean is bounded on the west by North and South America. It connects to the Arctic Ocean through the Denmark Strait, Greenland Sea, Norwegian Sea and Barents Sea. To the east, the boundaries of the ocean proper are Europe: the Strait of Gibraltar (where it connects with the Mediterranean Seaone of its marginal seasand, in turn, the Black Sea, both of which also touch upon Asia) and Africa.

In the southeast, the Atlantic merges into the Indian Ocean. The 20° East meridian, running south from Cape Agulhas to Antarctica defines its border. In the 1953 definition it extends south to Antarctica, while in later maps it is bounded at the 60° parallel by the Southern Ocean.

The Atlantic has irregular coasts indented by numerous bays, gulfs and seas. These include the Baltic Sea, Black Sea, Caribbean Sea, Davis Strait, Denmark Strait, part of the Drake Passage, Gulf of Mexico, Labrador Sea, Mediterranean Sea, North Sea, Norwegian Sea, almost all of the Scotia Sea, and other tributary water bodies. Including these marginal seas the coast line of the Atlantic measures  compared to  for the Pacific.

Including its marginal seas, the Atlantic covers an area of  or 23.5% of the global ocean and has a volume of  or 23.3% of the total volume of the earth's oceans. Excluding its marginal seas, the Atlantic covers  and has a volume of . The North Atlantic covers  (11.5%) and the South Atlantic  (11.1%). The average depth is  and the maximum depth, the Milwaukee Deep in the Puerto Rico Trench, is .

Biggest seas in Atlantic Ocean
Top large seas:

 Sargasso Sea3.5 million km2
 Caribbean Sea2.754 million km2
 Mediterranean Sea2.510 million km2
 Gulf of Guinea2.35 million km2
 Gulf of Mexico1.550 million km2
 Norwegian Sea1.383 million km2
 Hudson Bay1.23 million km2
 Greenland Sea1.205 million km2
 Argentine Sea1 million km2
 Labrador Sea841,000 km2
 Irminger Sea780,000 km2
 Baffin Bay689,000 km2
 North Sea575,000 km2
 Black Sea436,000 km2
 Baltic Sea377,000 km2
 Libyan Sea350,000 km2
 Levantine Sea320,000 km2
 Celtic Sea300,000 km2
 Tyrrhenian Sea275,000 km2
 Gulf of Saint Lawrence226,000 km2
 Bay of Biscay223,000 km2
 Aegean Sea214,000 km2
 Ionian Sea169,000 km2
 Balearic Sea150,000 km2
 Adriatic Sea138,000 km2
 Gulf of Bothnia116,300 km2
 Sea of Crete95,000 km2
 Gulf of Maine93,000 km2
 Ligurian Sea80,000 km2
 English Channel75,000 km2
 James Bay68,300 km2
 Bothnian Sea66,000 km2
 Gulf of Sidra57,000 km2
 Sea of the Hebrides47,000 km2
 Irish Sea46,000 km2
 Sea of Azov39,000 km2
 Bothnian Bay36,800 km2
 Gulf of Venezuela17,840 km2
 Bay of Campeche16,000 km2
 Gulf of Lion15,000 km2
 Sea of Marmara11,350 km2
 Wadden Sea10,000 km2
 Archipelago Sea8,300 km2

Bathymetry

The bathymetry of the Atlantic is dominated by a submarine mountain range called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR). It runs from 87°N or  south of the North Pole to the subantarctic Bouvet Island at 54°S. Expeditions to explore the bathymertry of the Atlantic include the Challenger expedition and the German Meteor expedition; , Columbia University's Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory and the United States Navy Hydrographic Office conduct research on the ocean.

Mid-Atlantic Ridge

The MAR divides the Atlantic longitudinally into two halves, in each of which a series of basins are delimited by secondary, transverse ridges. The MAR reaches above  along most of its length, but is interrupted by larger transform faults at two places: the Romanche Trench near the Equator and the Gibbs Fracture Zone at 53°N. The MAR is a barrier for bottom water, but at these two transform faults deep water currents can pass from one side to the other.

The MAR rises  above the surrounding ocean floor and its rift valley is the divergent boundary between the North American and Eurasian plates in the North Atlantic and the South American and African plates in the South Atlantic. The MAR produces basaltic volcanoes in Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland, and pillow lava on the ocean floor. The depth of water at the apex of the ridge is less than  in most places, while the bottom of the ridge is three times as deep.

The MAR is intersected by two perpendicular ridges: the Azores–Gibraltar Transform Fault, the boundary between the Nubian and Eurasian plates, intersects the MAR at the Azores Triple Junction, on either side of the Azores microplate, near the 40°N. A much vaguer, nameless boundary, between the North American and South American plates, intersects the MAR near or just north of the Fifteen-Twenty Fracture Zone, approximately at 16°N.

In the 1870s, the Challenger expedition discovered parts of what is now known as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, or:
 The remainder of the ridge was discovered in the 1920s by the German Meteor expedition using echo-sounding equipment. The exploration of the MAR in the 1950s led to the general acceptance of seafloor spreading and plate tectonics.

Most of the MAR runs under water but where it reaches the surfaces it has produced volcanic islands. While nine of these have collectively been nominated a World Heritage Site for their geological value, four of them are considered of "Outstanding Universal Value" based on their cultural and natural criteria: Þingvellir, Iceland; Landscape of the Pico Island Vineyard Culture, Portugal; Gough and Inaccessible Islands, United Kingdom; and Brazilian Atlantic Islands: Fernando de Noronha and Atol das Rocas Reserves, Brazil.

Ocean floor

Continental shelves in the Atlantic are wide off Newfoundland, southernmost South America, and north-eastern Europe.
In the western Atlantic carbonate platforms dominate large areas, for example, the Blake Plateau and Bermuda Rise.
The Atlantic is surrounded by passive margins except at a few locations where active margins form deep trenches: the Puerto Rico Trench ( maximum depth) in the western Atlantic and South Sandwich Trench () in the South Atlantic. There are numerous submarine canyons off north-eastern North America, western Europe, and north-western Africa. Some of these canyons extend along the continental rises and farther into the abyssal plains as deep-sea channels.

In 1922, a historic moment in cartography and oceanography occurred. The USS Stewart used a Navy Sonic Depth Finder to draw a continuous map across the bed of the Atlantic. This involved little guesswork because the idea of sonar is straightforward with pulses being sent from the vessel, which bounce off the ocean floor, then return to the vessel. The deep ocean floor is thought to be fairly flat with occasional deeps, abyssal plains, trenches, seamounts, basins, plateaus, canyons, and some guyots. Various shelves along the margins of the continents constitute about 11% of the bottom topography with few deep channels cut across the continental rise.

The mean depth between 60°N and 60°S is , or close to the average for the global ocean, with a modal depth between .

In the South Atlantic the Walvis Ridge and Rio Grande Rise form barriers to ocean currents.
The Laurentian Abyss is found off the eastern coast of Canada.

Water characteristics

Surface water temperatures, which vary with latitude, current systems, and season and reflect the latitudinal distribution of solar energy, range from below  to over . Maximum temperatures occur north of the equator, and minimum values are found in the polar regions. In the middle latitudes, the area of maximum temperature variations, values may vary by .

From October to June the surface is usually covered with sea ice in the Labrador Sea, Denmark Strait, and Baltic Sea.

The Coriolis effect circulates North Atlantic water in a clockwise direction, whereas South Atlantic water circulates counter-clockwise. The south tides in the Atlantic Ocean are semi-diurnal; that is, two high tides occur every 24 lunar hours. In latitudes above 40° North some east–west oscillation, known as the North Atlantic oscillation, occurs.

Salinity
On average, the Atlantic is the saltiest major ocean; surface water salinity in the open ocean ranges from 33 to 37 parts per thousand (3.3–3.7%) by mass and varies with latitude and season. Evaporation, precipitation, river inflow and sea ice melting influence surface salinity values. Although the lowest salinity values are just north of the equator (because of heavy tropical rainfall), in general, the lowest values are in the high latitudes and along coasts where large rivers enter. Maximum salinity values occur at about 25° north and south, in subtropical regions with low rainfall and high evaporation.

The high surface salinity in the Atlantic, on which the Atlantic thermohaline circulation is dependent, is maintained by two processes: the Agulhas Leakage/Rings, which brings salty Indian Ocean waters into the South Atlantic, and the "Atmospheric Bridge", which evaporates subtropical Atlantic waters and exports it to the Pacific.

Water masses

The Atlantic Ocean consists of four major, upper water masses with distinct temperature and salinity. The Atlantic Subarctic Upper Water in the northernmost North Atlantic is the source for Subarctic Intermediate Water and North Atlantic Intermediate Water. North Atlantic Central Water can be divided into the Eastern and Western North Atlantic central Water since the western part is strongly affected by the Gulf Stream and therefore the upper layer is closer to underlying fresher subpolar intermediate water. The eastern water is saltier because of its proximity to Mediterranean Water. North Atlantic Central Water flows into South Atlantic Central Water at 15°N.

There are five intermediate waters: four low-salinity waters formed at subpolar latitudes and one high-salinity formed through evaporation. Arctic Intermediate Water, flows from north to become the source for North Atlantic Deep Water south of the Greenland-Scotland sill. These two intermediate waters have different salinity in the western and eastern basins. The wide range of salinities in the North Atlantic is caused by the asymmetry of the northern subtropical gyre and the large number of contributions from a wide range of sources: Labrador Sea, Norwegian-Greenland Sea, Mediterranean, and South Atlantic Intermediate Water.

The North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) is a complex of four water masses, two that form by deep convection in the open oceanClassical and Upper Labrador Sea Waterand two that form from the inflow of dense water across the Greenland-Iceland-Scotland sillDenmark Strait and Iceland-Scotland Overflow Water. Along its path across Earth the composition of the NADW is affected by other water masses, especially Antarctic Bottom Water and Mediterranean Overflow Water.
The NADW is fed by a flow of warm shallow water into the northern North Atlantic which is responsible for the anomalous warm climate in Europe. Changes in the formation of NADW have been linked to global climate changes in the past. Since human-made substances were introduced into the environment, the path of the NADW can be traced throughout its course by measuring tritium and radiocarbon from nuclear weapon tests in the 1960s and CFCs.

Gyres

The clockwise warm-water North Atlantic Gyre occupies the northern Atlantic, and the counter-clockwise warm-water South Atlantic Gyre appears in the southern Atlantic.

In the North Atlantic, surface circulation is dominated by three inter-connected currents: the Gulf Stream which flows north-east from the North American coast at Cape Hatteras; the North Atlantic Current, a branch of the Gulf Stream which flows northward from the Grand Banks; and the Subpolar Front, an extension of the North Atlantic Current, a wide, vaguely defined region separating the subtropical gyre from the subpolar gyre. This system of currents transport warm water into the North Atlantic, without which temperatures in the North Atlantic and Europe would plunge dramatically.

North of the North Atlantic Gyre, the cyclonic North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre plays a key role in climate variability. It is governed by ocean currents from marginal seas and regional topography, rather than being steered by wind, both in the deep ocean and at sea level.
The subpolar gyre forms an important part of the global thermohaline circulation. Its eastern portion includes eddying branches of the North Atlantic Current which transport warm, saline waters from the subtropics to the north-eastern Atlantic. There this water is cooled during winter and forms return currents that merge along the eastern continental slope of Greenland where they form an intense (40–50 Sv) current which flows around the continental margins of the Labrador Sea. A third of this water becomes part of the deep portion of the North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW). The NADW, in its turn, feeds the meridional overturning circulation (MOC), the northward heat transport of which is threatened by anthropogenic climate change. Large variations in the subpolar gyre on a decade-century scale, associated with the North Atlantic oscillation, are especially pronounced in Labrador Sea Water, the upper layers of the MOC.

The South Atlantic is dominated by the anti-cyclonic southern subtropical gyre. The South Atlantic Central Water originates in this gyre, while Antarctic Intermediate Water originates in the upper layers of the circumpolar region, near the Drake Passage and the Falkland Islands. Both these currents receive some contribution from the Indian Ocean. On the African east coast, the small cyclonic Angola Gyre lies embedded in the large subtropical gyre.
The southern subtropical gyre is partly masked by a wind-induced Ekman layer. The residence time of the gyre is 4.4–8.5 years. North Atlantic Deep Water flows southward below the thermocline of the subtropical gyre.

Sargasso Sea

The Sargasso Sea in the western North Atlantic can be defined as the area where two species of Sargassum (S. fluitans and natans) float, an area  wide and encircled by the Gulf Stream, North Atlantic Drift, and North Equatorial Current. This population of seaweed probably originated from Tertiary ancestors on the European shores of the former Tethys Ocean and has, if so, maintained itself by vegetative growth, floating in the ocean for millions of years.

Other species endemic to the Sargasso Sea include the sargassum fish, a predator with algae-like appendages which hovers motionless among the Sargassum. Fossils of similar fishes have been found in fossil bays of the former Tethys Ocean, in what is now the Carpathian region, that were similar to the Sargasso Sea. It is possible that the population in the Sargasso Sea migrated to the Atlantic as the Tethys closed at the end of the Miocene around 17 Ma. The origin of the Sargasso fauna and flora remained enigmatic for centuries. The fossils found in the Carpathians in the mid-20th century often called the "quasi-Sargasso assemblage", finally showed that this assemblage originated in the Carpathian Basin from where it migrated over Sicily to the Central Atlantic where it evolved into modern species of the Sargasso Sea.

The location of the spawning ground for European eels remained unknown for decades. In the early 19th century it was discovered that the southern Sargasso Sea is the spawning ground for both the European and American eel and that the former migrate more than  and the latter . Ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream transport eel larvae from the Sargasso Sea to foraging areas in North America, Europe, and Northern Africa. Recent but disputed research suggests that eels possibly use Earth's magnetic field to navigate through the ocean both as larvae and as adults.

Climate

Climate is influenced by the temperatures of the surface waters and water currents as well as winds. Because of the ocean's great capacity to store and release heat, maritime climates are more moderate and have less extreme seasonal variations than inland climates. Precipitation can be approximated from coastal weather data and air temperature from water temperatures.

The oceans are the major source of the atmospheric moisture that is obtained through evaporation. Climatic zones vary with latitude; the warmest zones stretch across the Atlantic north of the equator. The coldest zones are in high latitudes, with the coldest regions corresponding to the areas covered by sea ice. Ocean currents influence the climate by transporting warm and cold waters to other regions. The winds that are cooled or warmed when blowing over these currents influence adjacent land areas.

The Gulf Stream and its northern extension towards Europe, the North Atlantic Drift is thought to have at least some influence on climate. For example, the Gulf Stream helps moderate winter temperatures along the coastline of southeastern North America, keeping it warmer in winter along the coast than inland areas. The Gulf Stream also keeps extreme temperatures from occurring on the Florida Peninsula. In the higher latitudes, the North Atlantic Drift, warms the atmosphere over the oceans, keeping the British Isles and north-western Europe mild and cloudy, and not severely cold in winter, like other locations at the same high latitude. The cold water currents contribute to heavy fog off the coast of eastern Canada (the Grand Banks of Newfoundland area) and Africa's north-western coast. In general, winds transport moisture and air over land areas.

Natural hazards

Every winter, the Icelandic Low produces frequent storms. Icebergs are common from early February to the end of July across the shipping lanes near the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. The ice season is longer in the polar regions, but there is little shipping in those areas.

Hurricanes are a hazard in the western parts of the North Atlantic during the summer and autumn. Due to a consistently strong wind shear and a weak Intertropical Convergence Zone, South Atlantic tropical cyclones are rare.

Geology and plate tectonics
The Atlantic Ocean is underlain mostly by dense mafic oceanic crust made up of basalt and gabbro and overlain by fine clay, silt and siliceous ooze on the abyssal plain. The continental margins and continental shelf mark lower density, but greater thickness felsic continental rock that is often much older than that of the seafloor. The oldest oceanic crust in the Atlantic is up to 145 million years and situated off the west coast of Africa and east coast of North America, or on either side of the South Atlantic.

In many places, the continental shelf and continental slope are covered in thick sedimentary layers. For instance, on the North American side of the ocean, large carbonate deposits formed in warm shallow waters such as Florida and the Bahamas, while coarse river outwash sands and silt are common in shallow shelf areas like the Georges Bank. Coarse sand, boulders, and rocks were transported into some areas, such as off the coast of Nova Scotia or the Gulf of Maine during the Pleistocene ice ages.

Central Atlantic

The break-up of Pangaea began in the Central Atlantic, between North America and Northwest Africa, where rift basins opened during the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic. This period also saw the first stages of the uplift of the Atlas Mountains. The exact timing is controversial with estimates ranging from 200 to 170 Ma.

The opening of the Atlantic Ocean coincided with the initial break-up of the supercontinent Pangaea, both of which were initiated by the eruption of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP), one of the most extensive and voluminous large igneous provinces in Earth's history associated with the Triassic–Jurassic extinction event, one of Earth's major extinction events.
Theoliitic dikes, sills, and lava flows from the CAMP eruption at 200 Ma have been found in West Africa, eastern North America, and northern South America. The extent of the volcanism has been estimated to  of which  covered what is now northern and central Brazil.

The formation of the Central American Isthmus closed the Central American Seaway at the end of the Pliocene 2.8 Ma ago. The formation of the isthmus resulted in the migration and extinction of many land-living animals, known as the Great American Interchange, but the closure of the seaway resulted in a "Great American Schism" as it affected ocean currents, salinity, and temperatures in both the Atlantic and Pacific. Marine organisms on both sides of the isthmus became isolated and either diverged or went extinct.

North Atlantic

Geologically, the Northern Atlantic is the area delimited to the south by two conjugate margins, Newfoundland and Iberia, and to the north by the Arctic Eurasian Basin. The opening of the Northern Atlantic closely followed the margins of its predecessor, the Iapetus Ocean, and spread from the Central Atlantic in six stages: Iberia–Newfoundland, Porcupine–North America, Eurasia–Greenland, Eurasia–North America. Active and inactive spreading systems in this area are marked by the interaction with the Iceland hotspot.

Seafloor spreading led to the extension of the crust and formations of troughs and sedimentary basins. The Rockall Trough opened between 105 and 84 million years ago although along the rift failed along with one leading into the Bay of Biscay.

Spreading began opening the Labrador Sea around 61 million years ago, continuing until 36 million years ago. Geologists distinguish two magmatic phases. One from 62 to 58 million years ago predates the separation of Greenland from northern Europe while the second from 56 to 52 million years ago happened as the separation occurred.

Iceland began to form 62 million years ago due to a particularly concentrated mantle plume. Large quantities of basalt erupted at this time period are found on Baffin Island, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and Scotland, with ash falls in Western Europe acting as a stratigraphic marker.  The opening of the North Atlantic caused significant uplift of continental crust along the coast. For instance, in spite of 7 km thick basalt, Gunnbjorn Field in East Greenland is the highest point on the island, elevated enough that it exposes older Mesozoic sedimentary rocks at its base, similar to old lava fields above sedimentary rocks in the uplifted Hebrides of western Scotland.

The North Atlantic Ocean contains about 810 seamounts, most of them situated along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The OSPAR database (Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic) mentions 104 seamounts: 74 within the national Exclusive economic zone. Of these seamounts, 46 are located close to the Iberian Peninsula.

South Atlantic

West Gondwana (South America and Africa) broke up in the Early Cretaceous to form the South Atlantic. The apparent fit between the coastlines of the two continents was noted on the first maps that included the South Atlantic and it was also the subject of the first computer-assisted plate tectonic reconstructions in 1965. This magnificent fit, however, has since then proven problematic and later reconstructions have introduced various deformation zones along the shorelines to accommodate the northward-propagating break-up. Intra-continental rifts and deformations have also been introduced to subdivide both continental plates into sub-plates.

Geologically the South Atlantic can be divided into four segments: Equatorial segment, from 10°N to the Romanche Fracture Zone (RFZ); Central segment, from RFZ to Florianopolis Fracture Zone (FFZ, north of Walvis Ridge and Rio Grande Rise); Southern segment, from FFZ to the Agulhas-Falkland Fracture Zone (AFFZ); and Falkland segment, south of AFFZ.

In the southern segment the Early Cretaceous (133–130 Ma) intensive magmatism of the Paraná–Etendeka Large Igneous Province produced by the Tristan hotspot resulted in an estimated volume of . It covered an area of  in Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay and  in Africa. Dyke swarms in Brazil, Angola, eastern Paraguay, and Namibia, however, suggest the LIP originally covered a much larger area and also indicate failed rifts in all these areas. Associated offshore basaltic flows reach as far south as the Falkland Islands and South Africa. Traces of magmatism in both offshore and onshore basins in the central and southern segments have been dated to 147–49 Ma with two peaks between 143 and 121 Ma and 90–60 Ma.

In the Falkland segment rifting began with dextral movements between the Patagonia and Colorado sub-plates between the Early Jurassic (190 Ma) and the Early Cretaceous (126.7 Ma). Around 150 Ma sea-floor spreading propagated northward into the southern segment. No later than 130 Ma rifting had reached the Walvis Ridge–Rio Grande Rise.

In the central segment rifting started to break Africa in two by opening the Benue Trough around 118 Ma. Rifting in the central segment, however, coincided with the Cretaceous Normal Superchron (also known as the Cretaceous quiet period), a 40 Ma period without magnetic reversals, which makes it difficult to date sea-floor spreading in this segment.

The equatorial segment is the last phase of the break-up, but, because it is located on the Equator, magnetic anomalies cannot be used for dating. Various estimates date the propagation of seafloor spreading in this segment and consequent opening of the Equatorial Atlantic Gateway (EAG) to the period 120–96 Ma. This final stage, nevertheless, coincided with or resulted in the end of continental extension in Africa.

About 50 Ma the opening of the Drake Passage resulted from a change in the motions and separation rate of the South American and Antarctic plates. First, small ocean basins opened and a shallow gateway appeared during the Middle Eocene. 34–30 Ma a deeper seaway developed, followed by an Eocene–Oligocene climatic deterioration and the growth of the Antarctic ice sheet.

Closure of the Atlantic

An embryonic subduction margin is potentially developing west of Gibraltar. The Gibraltar Arc in the western Mediterranean is migrating westward into the Central Atlantic where it joins the converging African and Eurasian plates. Together these three tectonic forces are slowly developing into a new subduction system in the eastern Atlantic Basin. Meanwhile, the Scotia Arc and Caribbean Plate in the western Atlantic Basin are eastward-propagating subduction systems that might, together with the Gibraltar system, represent the beginning of the closure of the Atlantic Ocean and the final stage of the Atlantic Wilson cycle.

History

Human origin
Humans evolved in Africa; around 7 mya; then developing stone tools around 2.6 mya; to finally evolve as modern humans around 200 kya. The earliest evidence for the complex behavior associated with this behavioral modernity has been found in the Greater Cape Floristic Region (GCFR) along the coast of South Africa. During the latest glacial stages, the now-submerged plains of the Agulhas Bank were exposed above sea level, extending the South African coastline farther south by hundreds of kilometers. A small population of modern humansprobably fewer than a thousand reproducing individualssurvived glacial maxima by exploring the high diversity offered by these Palaeo-Agulhas plains. The GCFR is delimited to the north by the Cape Fold Belt and the limited space south of it resulted in the development of social networks out of which complex Stone Age technologies emerged. Human history thus begins on the coasts of South Africa where the Atlantic Benguela Upwelling and Indian Ocean Agulhas Current meet to produce an intertidal zone on which shellfish, fur seal, fish and sea birds provided the necessary protein sources.
The African origin of this modern behaviour is evidenced by 70,000 years-old engravings from Blombos Cave, South Africa.

Old World
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) studies indicate that 80–60,000 years ago a major demographic expansion within Africa, derived from a single, small population, coincided with the emergence of behavioral complexity and the rapid MIS 5–4 environmental changes. This group of people not only expanded over the whole of Africa, but also started to disperse out of Africa into Asia, Europe, and Australasia around 65,000 years ago and quickly replaced the archaic humans in these regions. During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) 20,000 years ago humans had to abandon their initial settlements along the European North Atlantic coast and retreat to the Mediterranean. Following rapid climate changes at the end of the LGM this region was repopulated by Magdalenian culture. Other hunter-gatherers followed in waves interrupted by large-scale hazards such as the Laacher See volcanic eruption, the inundation of Doggerland (now the North Sea), and the formation of the Baltic Sea. The European coasts of the North Atlantic were permanently populated about 9–8.5 thousand years ago.

This human dispersal left abundant traces along the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean. 50 kya-old, deeply stratified shell middens found in Ysterfontein on the western coast of South Africa are associated with the Middle Stone Age (MSA). The MSA population was small and dispersed and the rate of their reproduction and exploitation was less intense than those of later generations. While their middens resemble 12–11 kya-old Late Stone Age (LSA) middens found on every inhabited continent, the 50–45 kya-old Enkapune Ya Muto in Kenya probably represents the oldest traces of the first modern humans to disperse out of Africa.

The same development can be seen in Europe. In La Riera Cave (23–13 kya) in Asturias, Spain, only some 26,600 molluscs were deposited over 10 kya. In contrast, 8–7 kya-old shell middens in Portugal, Denmark, and Brazil generated thousands of tons of debris and artefacts. The Ertebølle middens in Denmark, for example, accumulated  of shell deposits representing some 50 million molluscs over only a thousand years. This intensification in the exploitation of marine resources has been described as accompanied by new technologiessuch as boats, harpoons, and fish-hooksbecause many caves found in the Mediterranean and on the European Atlantic coast have increased quantities of marine shells in their upper levels and reduced quantities in their lower. The earliest exploitation, however, took place on the now submerged shelves, and most settlements now excavated were then located several kilometers from these shelves. The reduced quantities of shells in the lower levels can represent the few shells that were exported inland.

New World

During the LGM the Laurentide Ice Sheet covered most of northern North America while Beringia connected Siberia to Alaska. In 1973, late American geoscientist Paul S. Martin proposed a "blitzkrieg" colonization of the Americas by which Clovis hunters migrated into North America around 13,000 years ago in a single wave through an ice-free corridor in the ice sheet and "spread southward explosively, briefly attaining a density sufficiently large to overkill much of their prey." Others later proposed a "three-wave" migration over the Bering Land Bridge. These hypotheses remained the long-held view regarding the settlement of the Americas, a view challenged by more recent archaeological discoveries: the oldest archaeological sites in the Americas have been found in South America; sites in north-east Siberia report virtually no human presence there during the LGM; and most Clovis artefacts have been found in eastern North America along the Atlantic coast. Furthermore, colonisation models based on mtDNA, yDNA, and atDNA data respectively support neither the "blitzkrieg" nor the "three-wave" hypotheses but they also deliver mutually ambiguous results. Contradictory data from archaeology and genetics will most likely deliver future hypotheses that will, eventually, confirm each other. A proposed route across the Pacific to South America could explain early South American finds and another hypothesis proposes a northern path, through the Canadian Arctic and down the North American Atlantic coast.
Early settlements across the Atlantic have been suggested by alternative theories, ranging from purely hypothetical to mostly disputed, including the Solutrean hypothesis and some of the Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact theories.

The Norse settlement of the Faroe Islands and Iceland began during the 9th and 10th centuries. A settlement on Greenland was established before 1000 CE, but contact with it was lost in 1409 and it was finally abandoned during the early Little Ice Age. This setback was caused by a range of factors: an unsustainable economy resulted in erosion and denudation, while conflicts with the local Inuit resulted in the failure to adapt their Arctic technologies; a colder climate resulted in starvation, and the colony got economically marginalized as the Great Plague harvested its victims on Iceland in the 15th century.
Iceland was initially settled 865–930 CE following a warm period when winter temperatures hovered around  which made farming favorable at high latitudes. This did not last, however, and temperatures quickly dropped; at 1080 CE summer temperatures had reached a maximum of . The  (Book of Settlement) records disastrous famines during the first century of settlement"men ate foxes and ravens" and "the old and helpless were killed and thrown over cliffs"and by the early 1200s hay had to be abandoned for short-season crops such as barley.

Atlantic World

Christopher Columbus reached the Americas in 1492 under Spanish flag. Six years later Vasco da Gama reached India under the Portuguese flag, by navigating south around the Cape of Good Hope, thus proving that the Atlantic and Indian Oceans are connected. In 1500, in his voyage to India following Vasco da Gama, Pedro Alvares Cabral reached Brazil, taken by the currents of the South Atlantic Gyre. Following these explorations, Spain and Portugal quickly conquered and colonized large territories in the New World and forced the Amerindian population into slavery in order to exploit the vast quantities of silver and gold they found. Spain and Portugal monopolized this trade in order to keep other European nations out, but conflicting interests nevertheless led to a series of Spanish-Portuguese wars. A peace treaty mediated by the Pope divided the conquered territories into Spanish and Portuguese sectors while keeping other colonial powers away. England, France, and the Dutch Republic enviously watched the Spanish and Portuguese wealth grow and allied themselves with pirates such as Henry Mainwaring and Alexandre Exquemelin. They could explore the convoys leaving the Americas because prevailing winds and currents made the transport of heavy metals slow and predictable.

In the colonies of the Americas, depredation, smallpox and others diseases, and slavery quickly reduced the indigenous population of the Americas to the extent that the Atlantic slave trade had to be introduced to replace thema trade that became the norm and an integral part of the colonization. Between the 15th century and 1888, when Brazil became the last part of the Americas to end the slave trade, an estimated ten million Africans were exported as slaves, most of them destined for agricultural labour. The slave trade was officially abolished in the British Empire and the United States in 1808, and slavery itself was abolished in the British Empire in 1838 and in the United States in 1865 after the Civil War.

From Columbus to the Industrial Revolution Trans-Atlantic trade, including colonialism and slavery, became crucial for Western Europe. For European countries with direct access to the Atlantic (including Britain, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain) 1500–1800 was a period of sustained growth during which these countries grew richer than those in Eastern Europe and Asia. Colonialism evolved as part of the Trans-Atlantic trade, but this trade also strengthened the position of merchant groups at the expense of monarchs. Growth was more rapid in non-absolutist countries, such as Britain and the Netherlands, and more limited in absolutist monarchies, such as Portugal, Spain, and France, where profit mostly or exclusively benefited the monarchy and its allies.

Trans-Atlantic trade also resulted in increasing urbanization: in European countries facing the Atlantic, urbanization grew from 8% in 1300, 10.1% in 1500, to 24.5% in 1850; in other European countries from 10% in 1300, 11.4% in 1500, to 17% in 1850. Likewise, GDP doubled in Atlantic countries but rose by only 30% in the rest of Europe. By end of the 17th century, the volume of the Trans-Atlantic trade had surpassed that of the Mediterranean trade.

Economy

The Atlantic has contributed significantly to the development and economy of surrounding countries. Besides major transatlantic transportation and communication routes, the Atlantic offers abundant petroleum deposits in the sedimentary rocks of the continental shelves.

The Atlantic harbors petroleum and gas fields, fish, marine mammals (seals and whales), sand and gravel aggregates, placer deposits, polymetallic nodules, and precious stones.
Gold deposits are a mile or two under water on the ocean floor, however, the deposits are also encased in rock that must be mined through. Currently, there is no cost-effective way to mine or extract gold from the ocean to make a profit.

Various international treaties attempt to reduce pollution caused by environmental threats such as oil spills, marine debris, and the incineration of toxic wastes at sea.

Fisheries
The shelves of the Atlantic hosts one of the world's richest fishing resources. The most productive areas include the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, the Scotian Shelf, Georges Bank off Cape Cod, the Bahama Banks, the waters around Iceland, the Irish Sea, the Bay of Fundy, the Dogger Bank of the North Sea, and the Falkland Banks.
Fisheries have, however, undergone significant changes since the 1950s and global catches can now be divided into three groups of which only two are observed in the Atlantic: fisheries in the Eastern Central and South-West Atlantic oscillate around a globally stable value, the rest of the Atlantic is in overall decline following historical peaks. The third group, "continuously increasing trend since 1950", is only found in the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific.

UN FAO partitioned Atlantic in major fishing areas:

North-East Atlantic
North-East Atlantic is schematically limited to the 40°00' west longitude (except around Greenland), south to the 36°00' north latitude, and to the 68°30' east longitude, with both the west and east longitude limits reaching to the north pole. The Atlantic's subareas include: Barents Sea; Norwegian Sea, Spitzbergen, and Bear Island; Skagerrak, Kattegat, Sound, Belt Sea, and Baltic Sea; North Sea; Iceland and Faroes Grounds; Rockall, Northwest Coast of Scotland, and North Ireland; Irish Sea, West of Ireland, Porcupine Bank, and Eastern and Western English Channel; Bay of Biscay; Portuguese Waters; Azores Grounds and Northeast Atlantic South; North of Azores; and East Greenland. There are also two defunct subareas.

 In the North-East Atlantic total catches decreased between the mid-1970s and the 1990s and reached 8.7 million tons in 2013. Blue whiting reached a 2.4 million tons peak in 2004 but was down to 628,000 tons in 2013. Recovery plans for cod, sole, and plaice have reduced mortality in these species. Arctic cod reached its lowest levels in the 1960s–1980s but is now recovered. Arctic saithe and haddock are considered fully fished; Sand eel is overfished as was capelin which has now recovered to fully fished. Limited data makes the state of redfishes and deep-water species difficult to assess but most likely they remain vulnerable to overfishing. Stocks of northern shrimp and Norwegian lobster are in good condition. In the North-East Atlantic 21% of stocks are considered overfished.

 This zone makes almost three quarters (72.8 %) of European Union fishing catches in 2020. Main fishing EU countries are Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Spain. Most common species include herring, mackerel and sprats.

North-West Atlantic  In the North-West Atlantic landings have decreased from 4.2 million tons in the early 1970s to 1.9 million tons in 2013. During the 21st century some species have shown weak signs of recovery, including Greenland halibut, yellowtail flounder, Atlantic halibut, haddock, spiny dogfish, while other stocks shown no such signs, including cod, witch flounder, and redfish. Stocks of invertebrates, in contrast, remain at record levels of abundance. 31% of stocks are overfished in the North-west Atlantic.

In 1497, John Cabot became the first Western European since the Vikings to explore mainland North America and one of his major discoveries was the abundant resources of Atlantic cod off Newfoundland. Referred to as "Newfoundland Currency" this discovery yielded some 200 million tons of fish over five centuries. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries new fisheries started to exploit haddock, mackerel, and lobster. From the 1950s to the 1970s the introduction of European and Asian distant-water fleets in the area dramatically increased the fishing capacity and the number of exploited species. It also expanded the exploited areas from near-shore to the open sea and to great depths to include deep-water species such as redfish, Greenland halibut, witch flounder, and grenadiers. Overfishing in the area was recognised as early as the 1960s but, because this was occurring on international waters, it took until the late 1970s before any attempts to regulate was made. In the early 1990s, this finally resulted in the collapse of the Atlantic northwest cod fishery. The population of a number of deep-sea fishes also collapsed in the process, including American plaice, redfish, and Greenland halibut, together with flounder and grenadier.

Eastern Central Atlantic  In the Eastern Central Atlantic small pelagic fishes constitute about 50% of landings with sardine reaching 0.6–1.0 million tons per year. Pelagic fish stocks are considered fully fished or overfished, with sardines south of Cape Bojador the notable exception. Almost half of the stocks are fished at biologically unsustainable levels. Total catches have been fluctuating since the 1970s; reaching 3.9 million tons in 2013 or slightly less than the peak production in 2010.

Western Central Atlantic In the Western Central Atlantic, catches have been decreasing since 2000 and reached 1.3 million tons in 2013. The most important species in the area, Gulf menhaden, reached a million tons in the mid-1980s but only half a million tons in 2013 and is now considered fully fished. Round sardinella was an important species in the 1990s but is now considered overfished. Groupers and snappers are overfished and northern brown shrimp and American cupped oyster are considered fully fished approaching overfished. 44% of stocks are being fished at unsustainable levels.

South-East Atlantic In the South-East Atlantic catches have decreased from 3.3 million tons in the early 1970s to 1.3 million tons in 2013. Horse mackerel and hake are the most important species, together representing almost half of the landings. Off South Africa and Namibia deep-water hake and shallow-water Cape hake have recovered to sustainable levels since regulations were introduced in 2006 and the states of Southern African pilchard and anchovy have improved to fully fished in 2013.

South-West Atlantic In the South-West Atlantic, a peak was reached in the mid-1980s and catches now fluctuate between 1.7 and 2.6 million tons. The most important species, the Argentine shortfin squid, which reached half a million tons in 2013 or half the peak value, is considered fully fished to overfished. Another important species was the Brazilian sardinella, with a production of 100,000 tons in 2013 it is now considered overfished. Half the stocks in this area are being fished at unsustainable levels: Whitehead's round herring has not yet reached fully fished but Cunene horse mackerel is overfished. The sea snail perlemoen abalone is targeted by illegal fishing and remain overfished.

Environmental issues

Endangered species

Endangered marine species include the manatee, seals, sea lions, turtles, and whales. Drift net fishing can kill dolphins, albatrosses and other seabirds (petrels, auks), hastening the fish stock decline and contributing to international disputes.

Waste and pollution
Marine pollution is a generic term for the entry into the ocean of potentially hazardous chemicals or particles. The biggest culprits are rivers and with them many agriculture fertilizer chemicals as well as livestock and human waste. The excess of oxygen-depleting chemicals leads to hypoxia and the creation of a dead zone.

Marine debris, which is also known as marine litter, describes human-created waste floating in a body of water. Oceanic debris tends to accumulate at the center of gyres and coastlines, frequently washing aground where it is known as beach litter. The North Atlantic garbage patch is estimated to be hundreds of kilometers across in size.

Other pollution concerns include agricultural and municipal waste. Municipal pollution comes from the eastern United States, southern Brazil, and eastern Argentina; oil pollution in the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, Lake Maracaibo, Mediterranean Sea, and North Sea; and industrial waste and municipal sewage pollution in the Baltic Sea, North Sea, and Mediterranean Sea.

A USAF C-124 aircraft from Dover Air Force Base, Delaware was carrying three nuclear bombs over the Atlantic Ocean when it experienced a loss of power. For their own safety, the crew jettisoned two nuclear bombs, which were never recovered.

Climate change

North Atlantic hurricane activity has increased over past decades because of increased sea surface temperature (SST) at tropical latitudes, changes that can be attributed to either the natural Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) or to anthropogenic climate change.
A 2005 report indicated that the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) slowed down by 30% between 1957 and 2004. If the AMO were responsible for SST variability, the AMOC would have increased in strength, which is apparently not the case. Furthermore, it is clear from statistical analyses of annual tropical cyclones that these changes do not display multidecadal cyclicity. Therefore, these changes in SST must be caused by human activities.

The ocean mixed layer plays an important role in heat storage over seasonal and decadal time-scales, whereas deeper layers are affected over millennia and have a heat capacity about 50 times that of the mixed layer. This heat uptake provides a time-lag for climate change but it also results in thermal expansion of the oceans which contributes to sea level rise. 21st-century global warming will probably result in an equilibrium sea-level rise five times greater than today, whilst melting of glaciers, including that of the Greenland ice-sheet, expected to have virtually no effect during the 21st century, will probably result in a sea-level rise of 3–6 m over a millennium.

See also

 List of countries and territories bordering the Atlantic Ocean

 Seven Seas
 Gulf Stream shutdown
 Shipwrecks in the Atlantic Ocean
 Atlantic hurricanes
 Atlantic history
 Piracy in the Atlantic World
 Transatlantic crossing
 South Atlantic Peace and Cooperation Zone
 Atlantic Revolutions
 Natural delimitation between the Pacific and South Atlantic oceans by the Scotia Arc

References

Sources

  map

Further reading

External links

 Atlantic Ocean. Cartage.org.lb (archived)
 "Map of Atlantic Coast of North America from the Chesapeake Bay to Florida" from 1639 via the Library of Congress

Oceans

Articles containing video clips
Oceans surrounding Antarctica

Atlantic Ocean


After it was established on most of the territory of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union remained the world's largest country until it collapsed in 1991. It covered a large part of Eastern Europe while also spanning the entirety of the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Northern Asia. During this time, Islam was the country's second-largest religion; 90% of Muslims in the Soviet Union were adherents of Sunni Islam, with only around 10% adhering to Shia Islam. Excluding the Azerbaijan SSR, which had a Shia-majority population, all of the Muslim-majority Union Republics had Sunni-majority populations. In total, six Union Republics had Muslim-majority populations: the Azerbaijan SSR, the Kazakh SSR, the Kyrgyz SSR, the Tajik SSR, the Turkmen SSR, and the Uzbek SSR. There was also a large Muslim population across Volga–Ural and in the northern Caucasian regions of the Russian SFSR. Across Siberia, Muslims accounted for a significant proportion of the population, predominantly through the presence of Tatars. Many autonomous republics like the Karakalpak ASSR, the Chechen-Ingush ASSR, the Bashkir ASSR and others also had Muslim majorities.

Following their seizure of power, the Bolsheviks wanted to include as much territory of the former Russian Empire as possible into the nascent Soviet Union. However, they experienced difficulties during their attempts to impose communism within regions that had been under traditionalist Islamic influence for centuries (i.e., onto the Turkic peoples). While the communist state actively pursued a policy of state atheism, Soviet authorities allowed limited religious activities to continue in the six Muslim-majority Union Republics. Mosques operated in most large cities within these territories, though their numbers decreased dramatically; there were 25,000 mosques across the Russian Empire at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, and only 500 mosques across the Soviet Union in the 1970s.

In 1989, as part of new Soviet policies that relaxed religious restrictions throughout the country, a number of new Muslim associations were formed and many of the mosques that had been closed by the government were reopened. The Soviet government also announced plans to permit the education of a limited number of imams in the cities of Ufa and Baku.

In the years leading up to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, between 45 and 50 million Soviet citizens identified as Muslims, though only around 500 mosques were in operation across the country; Soviet law forbade all Islamic religious activities outside of mosques and madrasas. All Islamic religious facilities were supervised by four "Spiritual Directorates" established by the Soviet government in order to provide oversight. Sunni Muslims were overseen by the Spiritual Directorate for Central Asia and Kazakhstan, the Spiritual Directorate for the European Soviet Union and Siberia, and the Spiritual Directorate for the Northern Caucasus and Dagestan. Shia Muslims were overseen by the Spiritual Directorate for Transcaucasia, though this establishment served Sunni Muslims as well.

Lenin's rule
In 1917, Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Lenin published Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, a highly influential text that shaped communist attitudes towards anti-capitalist struggles, and led to a policy of cultivating left-wing nationalists within the Muslim communities of the Russian Empire and in foreign colonies. Before the Bolshevik Revolution, the first Muslim All-Russian Congress was held in Moscow in May 1917, celebrating the end of Tsarism.

Compared to the Christians (who comprised the state majority), Muslims in the Soviet Union were initially given more religious autonomy. This was in contrast to life under the tsars, when Muslims were suppressed and the Eastern Orthodox Church served in an official capacity in the Russian Empire, an erstwhile Christian state. On 24 November 1917, weeks after the Bolshevik Revolution, the Bolsheviks issued an appeal to "All the Muslim Workers of Russia and the East" under Lenin:
Muslims of Russia… all you whose mosques and prayer houses have been destroyed, whose beliefs and customs have been trampled upon by the tsars and oppressors of Russia: your beliefs and practices, your national and cultural institutions are forever free and inviolate. Know that your rights, like those of all the peoples of Russia, are under the mighty protection of the Revolution.

Lenin further oversaw the return of certain Islamic artifacts, such as the Uthman Quran (to the Uzbek SSR). Furthermore, some principles of Islamic law were instituted alongside the communist legal system, Jadids and other Islamic socialists were given positions of power within the government, and an affirmative action system called korenizatsiya was implemented to help local Muslim populations develop an ideological harmony with Soviet communism. In the Union Republics of Central Asia, all of which hosted overwhelmingly Muslim-majority populations, Soviet law mandated Friday as a legal day of rest.

Basmachi movement

Muslim national communism
Left-wing socialist Muslims began to develop a distinct variant of communism (i.e., national communism), which continued in the Soviet Union until 1928. National communists believed that the fate of the worldwide communist revolution ultimately depended on events within Asia and not within Europe. They also argued that alliances with the Russian bourgeoisie were necessary for the success of such a revolution; the overarching fear was that the failure to lessen class divisions would lead the bourgeoisie to ally with the Western world and thus ensure the collapse of the Soviet Union and the communist ideology.

The Soviet government believed that such variation from the traditional doctrines of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union would draw the attention of capitalist Western powers, inviting foreign intervention. It prompted the communist establishment to reject the arguments of the national communists as impractical at the Congress of the Peoples of the East, held in Baku in September 1920. Later, the perceived lack of united ideals also triggered further action against the larger national communist movement.

In 1928, a large-scale purging of the Muslim-majority Union Republics' leadership began with the execution of Veli İbraimov of the Tatar Communist Party and Milliy Firqa, which sought to push a nationalist ideology in favour of the Crimean Tatars. These were followed by the elimination of the leaders of the Muslim Social Democratic Party, the Tatar Communist Party, the Tatar Union of the Godless, and the Young Bukharans.

Stalin's rule
When Joseph Stalin consolidated power in the second half of the 1920s, his policies regarding religion had changed. Mosques began to be closed or turned into warehouses throughout Central Asia, religious leaders were persecuted, religious schools were closed down, and waqfs were outlawed. The Soviet government interpreted the paranja (a traditional Central Asian female robe) as an embodiment of Muslim oppression against women; Stalin's policies led to the initiation of Hujum, a Soviet campaign that sought to strong-arm Islamic systems in Central Asia in order to eliminate practices that were seen as perpetuating male–female inequality, particularly the practice of pardah, which directed the large-scale seclusion of women from society. However, the campaign was unsuccessful, and Islamic veiling practices became more popular than ever among Muslim workers, whereas it had formerly been worn only by Muslim bourgeoisie. In the 1930s, during the period of Stalin's Great Purge, thousands of Muslim religious clerics were arrested and executed. Between 1929 and 1941, the vast majority of the country's mosques were shut down.

In addition to his anti-religion policies, Stalin's cult of personality effectively shut out Soviet citizens' freedom to practice Islam, Christianity, or any other religions.

Ethnic cleansing of Crimean Tatars

During World War II, particularly in 1943–1944, the Soviet government carried out a series of deportations to Siberia and the Union Republics of Central Asia. Collaboration with Nazi Germany was cited as the official reason for this policy, but this has been disputed by individuals and organizations who characterize them as Soviet attempts at ethnic cleansing. Among the ethnicities subject to deportation policies (excluding non-Muslims) were the Crimean Tatars, the Chechens, the Ingush, the Balkars, the Karachays, and the Meskhetian Turks. The Soviet deportation campaign resulted in a massive loss of life, in addition to widespread displacement.

Formally, the mass deportation of Crimean Tatars began on 17 May 1944. More than 32,000 officers of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) participated in displacing over 193,865 Crimean Tatars; 151,136 were sent to the Uzbek SSR, 8,597  were sent to the Mari ASSR, 4,286 were sent to the Kazakh SSR, and the remaining 29,846 were sent to various regions within the Russian SFSR. According to official NKVD figures, nearly 20% of the deportees died over the following year and a half, while Crimean Tatar activists have instead placed the casualty rate at around 46%.

See also

 Deportation of the Crimean Tatars
 Operation Lentil (Caucasus)
 Persecution of Muslims in the Soviet Union
 Population transfer in the Soviet Union
 Shami-Damulla
 Soviet Orientalist studies in Islam
 Hujum

References

Further reading
 Nahaylo, Bohdan and Victor Swoboda. Soviet Disunion: A History of the nationalities Nationalities problem in the USSR (1990)  excerpt
 Rashid, Ahmed. The Resurgence of Central Asia: Islam or Nationalism? (2017)
 Smith, Graham,  ed. The Nationalities Question in the Soviet Union (2nd ed. 1995)
 Tasar, Eren. Soviet and Muslim: The Institutionalization of Islam in Central Asia. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Religion in Central Asia
Articles containing video clips
Religious persecution by communists

Islam in the Soviet Union


"To the Death" is the 95th episode of the television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the 22nd episode of the fourth season. "To the Death" achieved a Nielsen rating of 6 points when it originally premiered.

Set in the 24th century, the series follows the adventures of the crew of the Starfleet-managed space station Deep Space Nine, located adjacent to a wormhole that leads to the distant Gamma Quadrant. The Gamma Quadrant is controlled by an expansionist empire known as the Dominion, ruled by the shape-shifting Changelings, who have genetically engineered the relentless Jem'Hadar to be their soldiers. In this episode, the Deep Space Nine crew join a Jem'Hadar team to prevent renegade Jem'Hadar from using a gateway that could transport them anywhere in the galaxy.

This episode marks the debut of the recurring character Weyoun, played by Jeffrey Combs.

Plot
After Deep Space Nine is attacked by a group of Jem'Hadar, Captain Sisko and his crew pursue them into the Gamma Quadrant aboard the Defiant. They find a disabled Jem'Hadar warship transmitting a distress signal and rescue the survivors: six Jem'Hadar soldiers and Weyoun, their Vorta master.

Weyoun tells Sisko that the Jem'Hadar who attacked Deep Space Nine are renegades who have turned against the Dominion and are trying to restore an ancient Iconian Gateway—a sophisticated transporter that would give them the power to go anywhere in the galaxy instantaneously. Sisko agrees to join forces with Weyoun to destroy the Gateway before the renegade Jem'Hadar can use it. The Defiant crew forms an uneasy alliance with Weyoun and his Jem'Hadar, led by Omet'iklan. It soon becomes clear that Weyoun and Omet'iklan hold each other in contempt.

The Defiant crew try to learn to fight alongside the Jem'Hadar, who do not fear death or value their own lives. Their alliance is tested when Toman'torax, the Jem'Hadar second-in-command, picks a fight with Lieutenant Commander Worf. After breaking up the fight, Sisko and Omet'iklan discipline their men for brawling: Omet'iklan executes Toman'torax on the spot, while Sisko confines Worf to quarters. Omet'iklan is disgusted by what he perceives as lax discipline, and warns Sisko he will kill him when the mission is over. Meanwhile, Weyoun attempts to convince Odo, a renegade Changeling who opposes the Dominion, to rejoin the Dominion's Founders, whom the Vorta and Jem'Hadar alike revere as gods.

When they arrive on the planet where the Gateway is located, they find that the presence of the Gateway disables their phasers. They are attacked by a team of renegade Jem'Hadar. After a short but vicious battle, the group makes its way to the Gateway, engaging in sword and hand-to-hand combat all the way. In the fighting, Sisko saves Omet'iklan's life while risking his own; Omet'iklan does not understand why Sisko would save his life.

They destroy the Gateway with an explosive, which allows their weapons to function again. Omet'iklan kills Weyoun for questioning the Jem'Hadar's loyalty to the Founders.  He compliments Sisko for the way they fought together, but reminds him that the next time they meet, they will be enemies again. Omet'iklan and his soldiers stay behind to hunt down the remaining Jem'Hadar for their disloyalty.

Connections to other episodes
The Iconian gateway was first introduced in "Contagion", a 1989 episode from season 2 of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Although the character of Weyoun is killed in this episode, the writers were impressed enough by Jeffrey Combs's performance in the role that they had the character return in the later episode "Ties of Blood and Water", establishing that the Vorta are clones who can be replaced when killed.

Reception
In 2015, Geek.com recommended this episode as "essential watching" for their abbreviated Star Trek: Deep Space Nine binge-watching guide.

References

External links

1996 American television episodes
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (season 4) episodes
Television episodes directed by LeVar Burton

To the Death (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)


Highfields is a historic house in East Amwell Township, Hunterdon County, New Jersey that served as the home of Charles and Anne Lindbergh, the famous aviators.  It was the location of the Lindbergh kidnapping, after which it was turned into a rehabilitation center.  The home was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1994.

Construction

The Lindberghs built Highfields in 1931 on a secluded spot of the Sourland Mountain so as to escape the spotlight brought on by their celebrity status.  After his pioneering solo flight from New York to Paris in 1927, four million people had attended the ticker tape parade in Charles Lindbergh's honor, and he had received two million congratulatory telegrams, making him one of the most famous Americans of the century. The Sourland Mountain location, while secluded, afforded easy access by air and automobile to the Lindberghs' offices in New York City and to the laboratories of nearby Princeton University, to which they had been granted access.

Lindbergh kidnapping

The home was the site of one of the most notorious crimes of the 20th century, the Lindbergh kidnapping, often called the "Crime of the Century".  On the evening of March 1, 1932, the Lindberghs' oldest son, 20-month-old Charles Lindbergh, Jr., was abducted by means of a ladder from a second floor window of Highfields, aided by a warped shutter which could not be closed. Over two months later, the baby's body was discovered a short distance from Highfields in Hopewell Township with a massive skull fracture.  After a more than two-year investigation, Bruno Richard Hauptmann was arrested, tried in one of the so-called trials of the century, and convicted of the crime. He was executed by electric chair at New Jersey State Prison on April 3, 1936. Nevertheless, speculation has continued to run rampant, as most investigators at the time of the initial investigation, as well as contemporary researchers, believe there was inside help.

Rehabilitation center

The headquarters of the search for Charles Lindbergh, Jr. was in the garage of Highfields.  After Lindbergh identified the body of his son they left the house never to spend another night there, returning to Anne's family home in Englewood, New Jersey. The attention from the trial led the Lindberghs to a self-imposed exile in Europe from 1935 to 1939. In June 1933, Anne wrote that the house would be turned over to a board of trustees, and she named it "Highfields," saying the name carried some secret meaning. One biographer has speculated that it commemorates the young Lindbergh's special greeting to his father.

In 1941 the home was conveyed to the State of New Jersey by the Highfields Association, in memory of Charles Lindbergh, Jr. It has been used since July 1, 1952 as a juvenile rehabilitation center by the New Jersey Department of Corrections.

See also
National Register of Historic Places listings in Hunterdon County, New Jersey

References

National Register of Historic Places in Hunterdon County, New Jersey
Houses in Hunterdon County, New Jersey
East Amwell Township, New Jersey
Charles Lindbergh
New Jersey Register of Historic Places
Houses completed in 1931
1931 establishments in New Jersey

Highfields (Amwell and Hopewell, New Jersey)


Gerdy's tubercle is a lateral tubercle of the tibia, located where the iliotibial tract inserts. It was named after French surgeon Pierre Nicolas Gerdy (1797–1856).

Gerdy's tubercle is a smooth facet on the lateral aspect of the upper part of the tibia, just below the knee joint and adjacent to the proximal tibio-fibular joint, where the iliotibial tract runs down the outside part of the thigh. It is the point of insertion for the Iliotibial band of the lateral thigh.

It is used as a site for the insertion of a periosteal needle by which intramedullary fluids may be infused in neonates. It can be fractured along with the tibial tuberosity. It has been used as a source for bone grafts.

The peroneal nerve runs near to it.

References

Tibia

Gerdy's tubercle


Gabriel von Hackl (24 March 1843 – 5 June 1926) was a German-Austrian artist and art teacher. Most of his paintings were of historical subjects.

Hackl was born in Marburg an der Drau. At that time the town was part of Austria. Today it is part of Slovenia.  His father was a surgeon. He learned anatomy from his father. He then studied art in Vienna. In 1865 he moved to Munich and studied at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. He became a professor of drawing at the academy in 1880 and taught there until 1919. Hackl was a strict teacher. He wanted his students' drawings to be anatomically accurate. They learned by drawing plaster casts of ancient sculptures. His own drawings were very skillful and detailed.

Hackl died in Munich at the age of 83. His famous pupils included Anton Ažbe and Giorgio de Chirico.

References

1843 births
1926 deaths
Austrian painters
Austrian nobility

Gabriel von Hackl


Canutus Hahn (1633-1687) was a Swedish clergyman who served as bishop of Lund 1680–1687.

Hahn was born on 13 November 1633 in Skye in Uråsa parish (Kronoberg County), son of a farmer Abraham Knutsson Hahn. He went to school in Kalmar and Växjö, enrolled at the universities of Greifswald in 1652 and studied there and at Wittenberg and Rostock until 1654. He enrolled at Uppsala, and graduated as a magister in 1661.

He became professor of philosophy at the gymnasium in Lund (now Katedralskolan) in 1662, and professor of logic and metaphysics at the newly established University of Lund in 1667, and was its rector 1669–1670. Ordained a clergyman in 1671, he served as vicar in Ronneby and Backaryd parishes in Blekinge 1671–1679. In 1679, he was appointed vicar of Landskrona parish and vice bishop of Lund, to assist the aging bishop Peder Winstrup (who was also regarded as politically unreliable by the Swedish authorities). In 1680, after Winstrup's death, Hahn succeeded him as bishop of Lund (and pro-chancellor of Lund University).

Hahn has been characterized (Olsson, see below) as a man less suited to learning than to practical issues, and his main achievement was as leader of the Swedification of the provinces Skåne and Blekinge. Through the Treaty of Lund in 1679, the former Danish provinces had been allowed the right to keep their Danish laws and customs. The realization of "uniformity" in church language, liturgy and education was a violation of the treaty but the war had convinced the Swedish authorities that it was necessary to push it through in order to retain the provinces. Hahn called in an assembly of parish priests from the diocese in 1681 and convinced them to send a request to Governor-General Rutger von Ascheberg for the realization of uniformity throughout the provinces. According to Hahn's biographer Bror Olsson, the Swedification went smoothly and was largely completed by his death in 1687.

He was appointed bishop of Växjö in 1687 but died on 29 December of that year, before he could take office.

References
Bror Olsson, "Hahn, Canutus", Svenskt biografiskt lexikon vol. 17, pp 758 f.

1633 births
1687 deaths
Lutheran bishops of Lund
17th-century Swedish Lutheran bishops
17th-century Swedish clergy

Canutus Hahn


Barfield Allotments Nature Park is a small Site of Local Importance for Nature Conservation in Whetstone in the London Borough of Barnet. It was formerly used as allotments, and when these were abandoned there were plans to turn it into a formal play area, but this met with local opposition when slow worms and common lizards were found, showing its value for wildlife. A small playground was installed in the north-east corner, while the remainder became a wildlife site.

Some plum and apple trees remain from the time when it was allotments, but it has now changed from grassland to scrub. The site has been partially cleared to create a species-rich mosaic, and a native hedgerow has been planted along the boundary. A pond and marshy area have also been created for amphibians, taking advantage of a natural spring.

The entrance to the site is in the playground off Barfield Avenue, but there is no public access, apart from school parties by arrangement.

See also

 Nature reserves in Barnet

References

Nature reserves in the London Borough of Barnet

Barfield Allotments Nature Park


Joseph Coles Kirby (10 June 1837 – 1 August 1924) was an English flour miller who migrated to Sydney, Australia in 1854. In 1864, Kirby was ordained in the Congregational Churches and then ministered to rural and city congregations in Queensland and South Australia and supported or led many causes for social reform such as the temperance movement, women's suffrage and raising the age of consent to 16 in Australia.

Early life
Kirby was born on 10 June 1837 at Castle Mills, Buckingham, Buckinghamshire, England to John and Mary (née Coles) Kirby. Educated at Sibford School, a Quaker boarding school in Oxfordshire, the young Kirby inherited his mothers concern for social reform which would shape his later life. At 13 he entered his father's flour-milling business but always loved reading and had a passion for self-improvement.

Migration to Sydney
The family migrated to Sydney in 1854 when his father's business went bankrupt but the 17-year-old Kirby was able to find work at another flour-mill in Sydney. It was in Sydney that he joined the Pitt Street Congregational Church where the members at that time included David Jones (founder of David Jones Limited), John Fairfax and Rev. John West. Here Kirby criticised the dominant social groups in New South Wales and advocated total abstinence.

Ministry

Early Ministry in Queensland
Kirby received his ministerial training from Rev. B. Quaife and was called as assistant minister at Ipswich, Queensland in 1863. In 1864 he was ordained and became a Congregational Minister at Dalby in Queensland. It was here in Dalby that he married Margaretta Hall.

Ministry in New South Wales
From 1871 to 1877, Kirby was the pastor of the Congregational Church in Woollahra, New South Wales. During this time he was active within the community, supporting the Public Schools League's campaign for free, compulsory secular education and campaigning for the temperance movement. Kirby took over the church extension work of the Congregational Union of New South Wales in 1877 and was chairman of the Union in for two years in 1879-80. As chairman he attacked academicism in the ministry and advocated stronger central initiative in home missions and acceptance of land from the government to build new churches.

Ministry in South Australia
In 1880 he was called to the Port Adelaide Congregational Church after the previous minister died of tuberculosis. Kirby started the Young Christians' Union, the Young Men's Christian Society here and, through his assiduous work campaigning and ministry, was able to bring his denomination solidly behind temperance, Women's Suffrage and social reform.

While still the minister of the Port Adelaide church, Kirby became secretary of the Social Purity Society in 1882 and spent time in Melbourne and Sydney advocating temperance and women's suffrage. In 1885 he won ecumenical support in a campaign to raise the age of consent in Australia from 13 to 16.

In 1886 and 1906 Kirby was the chairman of the Congregational Union of South Australia and from 1910 to 1913 was the chairman of the Congregation Union of Australia and New Zealand. In 1891 he had been an Australian representative at the first International Congregational Council in London. During this trip he travelled Europe and India.

Final Years
In 1915 Kirby was the leader in the successful campaign for 6 o'clock closing of hotel bars. Kirby also supported religious instruction in state schools and helped persuade the South Australian Congregational Union to abandon its insistence upon purely secular instruction. Later, he promoted Aboriginal protection and was an advocate of an Aboriginal reserve in Arnhem land. Although deeply devoted to the Bible and opposing any criticism of it, Kirby was open minded towards Darwinism and eugenics.

Kirby died 1 August 1924 in Semaphore, South Australia, survived by two sons and three daughters.

Since 1986, the Port Dock Brewery Hotel in Port Adelaide has produced an ale named Old Preacher, in memory of Kirby, who successfully campaigned for the original hotel to be closed down in 1909.

See also
Temperance movement
Port Adelaide Uniting Church
Six o'clock swill

References

Australian suffragists
History of South Australia
English emigrants to colonial Australia
People from Buckingham
1837 births
1924 deaths
People educated at Sibford School
Male feminists
Australian flour millers and merchants
Australian temperance activists

Joseph Coles Kirby


A banana split is a type of dessert. It is made with ice cream, sliced bananas, and usually toppings. The toppings often include flavored sauces, whipped cream, nuts, and most notably a cherry on top of the dessert.

One banana split has 893 calories.

History

There are a few different stories about the first banana split. People in Chicago, Illinois; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Wilmington, Ohio say that the first banana split was made in their city. However, most people say that David "Doc" Strickler made the first banana split in the city of Latrobe, Pennsylvania in 1904. He sold the first banana splits for ten cents. Many students at St. Vincent College, a school in Latrobe, liked the banana splits and told their friends in other cities about them. After a few years, the banana split was popular in many cities in the United States.

References

Other websites

Ice cream

Banana split


There are 4 arrondissements in the Lot-et-Garonne department. The French departments, and in other countries, are divided into arrondissements, which may be translated into English as districts (in some cases, as boroughs).  The capital of an arrondissement is called a subprefecture.

If the prefecture (capital) of the department is in an arrondissement, that prefecture is the capital of the arrondissement, acting both as a prefecture and as a subprefecture.

Arrondissements are further divided into cantons and communes.

The 4 arrondissements of Lot-et-Garonne are:

 Arrondissement of Agen, (prefecture: Agen), with 71 communes.
 Arrondissement of Marmande, (subprefecture of the Lot-et-Garonne department: Marmande), with 98 communes.
 Arrondissement of Villeneuve-sur-Lot, (subprefecture of the Lot-et-Garonne department: Villeneuve-sur-Lot), with 92 communes.
 Arrondissement of Nérac, (subprefecture of the Lot-et-Garonne department: Nérac), with 58 communes.

History
Since its creation, the Lot-et-Garonne department has had some changes:
 1790 : creation of the Lot-et-Garonne department with nine districts: Agen, Nérac, Marmande, Tonneins, Villeneuve, Lauzun, Monflanquin, Casteljaloux and Valence; the capital was Agen
 1800 : creation of the arrondissements: Agen, Marmande, Nérac, Villeneuve-sur-Lot
 1926 : the arrondissement of Nérac is eliminated
 1942 : Nérac is again an arrondissement

On 4 November 1808, several of the original southeastern cantons in the arrondissements of Agen and Villeneuve-sur-Lot were separated from the Lot-et-Garonne to become a part of the newly created department of Tarn-et-Garonne.

References

Arrondissements of Lot-et-Garonne

Arrondissements of the Lot-et-Garonne department


Robert Coles (born October 12, 1929) is an American author, child psychiatrist, and professor emeritus at Harvard University.

Early life, education, and military service
Born Martin Robert Coles in Boston, Massachusetts, on October 12, 1929, to Philip Coles, an immigrant from Leeds, England, United Kingdom, and Sandra Young Coles, originally from Sioux City, Iowa. Robert Coles attended Boston Latin School where he played tennis, ran track, and edited the school literary magazine. He entered Harvard College in 1946, where he studied English literature and helped to edit the undergraduate literary magazine, The Harvard Advocate. He graduated magna cum laude and earned Phi Beta Kappa honors in 1950.

Coles originally intended to become a teacher or professor, but as part of his senior honors thesis, he interviewed the poet and physician William Carlos Williams, who promptly persuaded him to go into medicine. He studied medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, graduating in 1954. After residency training at the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois (the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine), Coles moved on to psychiatric residencies at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, and McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts (the two hospitals are affiliates of Harvard University and the Harvard University Medical School in Cambridge, Massachusetts).

Knowing that he was to be called into the U.S. Armed Forces under the Doctor Draft, Coles joined the Air Force in 1958 and was assigned the rank of captain. His field of specialization was psychiatry, his intention eventually to sub-specialize in child psychiatry. He served as chief of neuropsychiatric services at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi, and was honorably discharged in 1960. He returned to Boston and finished his child psychiatry training at the Children's Hospital. In July 1960, he was married to Jane Hollowell, and the couple moved to New Orleans.

Ruby Bridges
In New Orleans, Coles witnessed 6-year-old Ruby Bridges, protected by U.S. Federal marshals, "walking through a screaming mob to integrate a public school." He volunteered to support and counsel Ruby and her family during this difficult period. Coles wrote a series of articles for The Atlantic Monthly on Ruby and other black children, who, along with their white classmates and their families, were targets of daily public protests, intimidation, and even death threats during the desegregation of public schools in New Orleans. These articles led to his first book, Children of Crisis: A Study of Courage and Fear, and ultimately to his decision to develop that book into a series of books documenting how children and their parents deal with profound change, a series that won him the Pulitzer prize in 1973. In 1995 he returned to his original material and wrote The Story of Ruby Bridges, a popular children's book, published by Scholastic Corporation.

Career
In addition to working with children in New Orleans and Atlanta, Coles wrote non-technical articles for a number of national publications, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, Saturday Review, and The Times of London.  By 1969, Coles wrote in-depth profiles for The New Yorker and contributed regular columns to The New Republic, New Oxford Review, America, and the American Poetry Review.

At the urging of Erik Erikson, in 1963 Coles became affiliated with the University Health Services at Harvard as a research psychiatrist. Gradually, he began teaching in the Harvard Medical School, eventually becoming Professor of Psychiatry and Medical Humanities in 1977. He taught courses in various schools across Harvard University, including the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Business School, the Law School, the Extension School, and the School of Education, where in 1995 he was given a newly established position as James Agee Professor of Social Ethics. He came to teach courses not only in the moral, spiritual, and social sensibilities of children but also in those phenomena generally, especially as expressed in stories, both literary fictions and oral narratives, and as affected by conditions of poverty and social injustice. As a longtime professor, Coles has influenced generations of Harvard undergraduates and graduate students. In 2007, Harvard University named an annual Call of Service lecture in honor of Coles.

His work has been recognized with numerous awards, including election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1971, a Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1973 for his series of books Children of Crisis, a MacArthur Award in 1981, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998, and the National Humanities Medal in 2001. He later co-founded the magazine DoubleTake, which documented the lives of ordinary people with photographs, articles, essays, poetry, and short stories.  The magazine won several awards, including the 1998 National Magazine Award for Editorial Excellence in the category of General Excellence.

Many of Coles' works draw heavily on quoted conversations with ordinary people, as well as insights from prominent thinkers and leaders — often people Coles has encountered personally in his career — such as William Carlos Williams, Dorothy Day, Walker Percy, William Shawn, Anna Freud, Paul Tillich, Erik Erikson, and Robert F. Kennedy. Starting with the Children of Crisis series, Coles's approach to his subjects involves a difficult balancing act at the heart of the documentary enterprise.  His methods combine techniques of participant observation (tape recordings, field notes, drawings, etc.), clinical interpretation, academic social research, and literary narrative. Coles has never been diffident about the economic, social, and racial injustices he has observed in the field.  He is a spokesperson for his subjects, a sounding board for their public voices.  Coles describes his own literary methods and goals as an effort "to blend poetic insight with a craft and unite ultimately the rational and the intuitive, the aloof stance of the scholar with the passion and affection of the friend who cares and is moved."  (The Mind's Fate, p. 10)

In a 2003 review of Coles' book on musician Bruce Springsteen, music critic David Hajdu questioned the truthfulness and accuracy of Coles's reports of the opinions on Springsteen held by various people, suggesting that some source quotations may have been fabricated:

The fact that William Carlos Williams and Walker Percy had such extensive conversations with Robert Coles on the subjects of the New Jersey pop singers Frank Sinatra and Bruce Springsteen and that those discussions yielded insights so parallel and neatly suited to Coles's own take on Springsteen is incredible--utterly incredible. I was not there to overhear them, of course, and it is impossible to check with Williams and Percy, or with the late Erikson and Shawn, whom Coles's other deceased sources quotes in his book's opening sections. But I did ask Will Percy about the comments on Springsteen that Coles attributes to his uncle, and he called them "outrageous". Walker Percy "definitely didn't talk like that", according to his nephew.

While "the facts of his subjects' lives are indisputable," one Coles' scholar cautions that "some distortion is perhaps inevitable given Coles' method and purposes and expectations of his readers.  The portraits are not written as true documentary accounts of the lives of his subjects but are presented as composite views of many [subjects] designed to highlight certain features of American social life neglected in other accounts of the poor.  And if they are not true, neither are they false.  In some respects . . . they have the status of fiction based very firmly on the transcription of life.  They examine the range of human possibility beyond category and social stereotype. . . ."  (Steven Weiland,  Intellectual Craftsmen:  Ways and Works in American Scholarship, New Jersey: Transactions Publishers (1991): 86; and Handing One Another Along Literature and Social Reflection, 2010.)

Coles authored more than eighty books and 1300 articles, nearly all of them centrally concerned with human moral, spiritual, and social sensibility and reasoning, mainly in children but also in adults, writers especially, including the novelist Walker Percy (who dedicated his final novel, The Thanatos Syndrome, to Coles), the poet William Carlos Williams, writer James Agee, novelist Flannery O'Connor, and others, such as Dorothy Day, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Simone Weil, and Dorothea Lange.

Personal life
In 1960, Coles married Jane Erin Hallowell, a graduate of Radcliffe College and a high school teacher of English and history. They had three sons. Coles and Hallowell Coles co-authored the 1978 book Women of Crisis: Lives of struggle and hope.

Honors
Pulitzer Prize in general non-fiction, 1973
Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1998
National Humanities Medal, 2001

Bibliography
 A Study in Courage and Fear, Volume 1 of Children of Crisis (Boston: Atlantic-Little, Brown, 1967)
 Dead End School, with illustrations by Norman Rockwell (Boston: Little, Brown, 1968)
 The Image Is You, children's photos organized by Donald Erceg with text by Coles (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1969)
 Still Hungry in America, with photos by Al Clayton (New York: World Publishing Company, 1969)
 The Grass Pipe, young adult novel (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969)
 Erik H. Erikson: the Growth of His Work (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970)
 Uprooted Children: The Early Life of Migrant Farm Workers (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970)
 Migrants, Sharecroppers, Mountaineers, Volume 2 of Children of Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971)
 The South Goes North, Volume 3 of Children of Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971)
 The Middle Americans; Proud and Uncertain, with photos by Jon Erikson (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971)
 Farewell to the South (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972)
 The Buses Roll, with photos by Carol Baldwin and Peter T. Whitney (New York: Norton, 1974)
 William Carlos Williams: The knack of survival in America (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1975)
 The Mind's Fate: Ways of Seeing Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis, (Boston : Little, Brown, 1975).
 Eskimos, Indians, Chicanos, Volume 4 of Children of Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977)
 The Privileged Ones: The Well-off and the Rich in America, Volume 5 of Children of Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977)
 A Festering Sweetness: Poems of American People (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1978)
 The Last and First Eskimos, with photos by Alex Harris (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1978)
 Women of Crisis: Lives of struggle and hope, with Jane Hallowell Coles (New York: Delacorte Press, 1978)
 Walker Percy: An American Search (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979)
 Flannery O'Connor's South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980)
 I Will Always Stay Me: Writings of Migrant Children, edited by Sherry Kafka and Robert Coles (Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1982)
 Photographs of a Lifetime, photos by Dorothea Lange with an essay by Coles (Millerton, New York: Aperture, 1982)
 The Doctor Stories, by William Carlos Williams, compiled and with an introduction by Robert Coles (New York: New Directions Publishing, 1984)
 The Moral Life of Children (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986)
 The Political Life of Children (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986)
 Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1987)
 Simone Weil; A Modern Pilgrimage (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1987)
 Harvard Diary: Reflections of the Sacred and the Secular (New York: Crossroad, 1988)
 Times of Surrender: Selected Essays (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1988)
 The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1989)
 Rumors of Separate Worlds: Poems (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1989)
 The Spiritual Life of Children (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990)
 Anna Freud: The Dream of Psychoanalysis (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1992)
 Their Eyes Meeting the World: The Drawings and Paintings of Children, edited by Margaret Sartor (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992)
 The Call of Service: A Witness to Idealism (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993)
 The Story of Ruby Bridges, illustrated by George Ford (New York: Scholastic, 1995)
 Doing Documentary Work (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997)
 The Moral Intelligence of Children (New York: Random House, 1997)
 Old and On Their Own, with photos by Alex Harris and Thomas Roma (New York: Center for Documentary Studies/Norton, 1997)
 The Youngest Parents: Teenage pregnancy as it shapes lives, with Robert E. Coles, Daniel A. Coles, Michael H. Coles, and photos by Jocelyn Lee and John Moses (New York: Center for Documentary Studies, 1997)
 The Secular Mind (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999)
 The Erik Erikson Reader, selected and edited by Coles (New York: Norton, 2000)
 Lives of Moral Leadership (New York: Random House, 2000)
 Growing Up Poor: A Literary Anthology, edited by Robert Coles, Randy Testa, and Michael Coles (New York: New Press, 2001)
 A Life in Medicine: A Literary Anthology, edited by Coles and Randy Testa (New York: New Press, 2002)
 When They Were Young: A photographic retrospective of childhood from the Library of Congress (Carlsbad, California: Kales Press/Library of Congress, 2002)
 Bruce Springsteen's America: The People Listening, a Poet Singing (New York: Random House, 2003)
 Teaching Stories: An Anthology on the Power of Learning and Literature, selected by Coles (New York: Modern Library, 2004)
 Minding the Store: Great Writing About Business from Tolstoy to Now, edited by Coles and Albert LaFarge (New York: The New Press, 2008)

Contributions
 Steve Lehman The Tibetans: A Struggle to Survive, pgs. 14-15, Introduction by Robert Coles (New York: How Town / Umbrage, 1998)
 Steve Lehman, Mark Bailey, and Rory Kennedy, American Hollow, pp. 6–7, Foreword by Robert Coles (New York: Bulfinch Press, 1999) .
 Michael Johnston, In the Deep Heart's Core, Foreword by Robert Coles (New York: Grove Press, 2002)

Notes

References
 Keillor, Garrison. The Writer's Almanac. October 12, 2006.
 London, Scott. "A Way of Seeing: The Work of Robert Coles". Scott London. (Retrieved October 19, 2006).

Further reading
 Ronda, Bruce A. Intellect and Spirit: The Life and Work of Robert Coles. New York: Continuum, 1989.
Woodruff, Jay, and Sarah Carew (eds.). Conversations with Robert Coles. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1992.
 Baird-Middleton B.  Robert Coles: An Intimate Biographical Interview. Harvard University Press, 1988. "Robert Coles: An Intimate Biographical Interview".
Basbanes, Nicholas A. Every Book Its Reader: The Power of the Printed Word to Stir the World. HarperCollins, New York, 2005, Chap. 11, "The Healing Art," pp. 255–281.

External links
 On Being: Robert Coles, Diane Komp and Carol Dittberner on Children and God
 Inventory of the Robert Coles Papers, 1954-1999, in the Southern Historical Collection, UNC-Chapel Hill
 Oral History Interview with Robert Coles at Oral Histories of the American South

1929 births
American psychiatrists
American psychology writers
American male non-fiction writers
Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons alumni
Harvard College alumni
Harvard Medical School faculty
Living people
MacArthur Fellows
Milton Academy alumni
Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction winners
National Humanities Medal recipients
Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
McLean Hospital physicians
Members of the National Academy of Medicine

Robert Coles (psychiatrist)


Roy V. Young is an American fantasy writer.  His novels are set in the comedy world of Leiblein, and spoof various common fantasy themes.  The hero is a certain Count Yor, and his associates Dword and Trebor.  Yor's inability to avoid rumour of his own exploits, especially the "Ballad of Count Yor" is a constant theme through the novels.

In the 1990s publisher TSR commissioned a number of standalone fantasy novels, some of which were humorous or light fantasy.  Young's first volume was endorsed by Roger Zelazny, and sold well enough to justify a second.  The collapse of TSR meant that no more were commissioned. A third novel exists in manuscript, provisionally titled "Year of the Thogs."

Bibliography

 Captains Outrageous.  TSR, 1994.
 Yor's Revenge.  TSR, 1995.

External links
 Review of Captains Outrageous

20th-century American novelists
American fantasy writers
American male novelists
Living people
20th-century American male writers
Year of birth missing (living people)

Roy V. Young