Anzac Avenue is a heritage-listed major arterial road lined with trees in the City of Moreton Bay, Queensland, Australia. It runs  from Petrie to Redcliffe, with most of the route signed as state route 71. The route was formerly the main route to the Redcliffe peninsula, until the Hornibrook Bridge was opened in 1935.

Opened in 1925, Anzac Memorial Avenue (as it was originally named) is the longest World War I memorial avenue in Queensland and was the first bitumen motor road connecting Brisbane to the popular holiday resort of Redcliffe, and reflects the growth in car usage in the early 1920s. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 5 February 2009.

The road provides the quickest access to the Peninsula Fair Shopping Centre, as well as being the main access road for the Redcliffe Hospital.

History

Early access to the Redcliffe peninsula
The first road along the route was an Aboriginal track used to access Kippa Ring, then the site of a prominent bora ring located about  north-west of Redcliffe.

Tom Petrie guided a picnic party to the Redcliffe seashore from Petrie (then known as North Pine) in 1859. A road from Bald Hills to Redcliffe was formed by the early 1860s, but by 1864 this was almost impassable. Tom Petrie marked a track from the Hays Inlet crossing and in the early 1870s assisted in surveying the road. Known as the "Brisbane Road" it became the primary way of accessing the Redcliffe Peninsula by road.

Redcliffe's growth as a seaside resort occurred from the late 1870s. In this era, frequenting seaside resorts became increasingly popular in Australia. Taking in sea air and bathing in saltwater were promoted for their health giving properties. From 1876 a weekly mail service began to Redcliffe via North Pine (Petrie) and a passenger and goods service to Brisbane was established by 1880. The opening of the Redcliffe Jetty in 1885 enabled people from Brisbane to visit in large numbers on steamers, bringing 10,000 passengers in 1889-1890. By the end of the 1880s, the Redcliffe Peninsula was the largest tourist resort area between Sandgate and Noosa Heads. Guest houses and hotels were built to cater to the burgeoning tourist trade.

By the turn of the century, coaches ran three times a week to North Pine. The poor condition of the road made the trip between Brisbane and Redcliffe difficult, impassable in wet weather. 1885 marked the first of many attempts to pressure the Queensland Government for a railway branch off the North Coast railway line. A potential route was surveyed in 1893, but various lobbying attempts up until 1915 were unsuccessful. By the start of the 1920s, a trip to Brisbane for Redcliffe residents was by road via Petrie or a boat/train connection from Sandgate, both long journeys of up to four hours.

Redcliffe's future prosperity depended on reducing its isolation from Brisbane. Its small permanent population grew little between 1900 and 1921. While large steamships brought thousands of people to the area, much of their time and money was spent onboard rather than locally. The growth in motor touring soon determined Redcliffe's linkage to Brisbane.

Memorial avenue

The loss of lives during World War I had a profound impact upon the Australian population and memorials became a prominent feature in communities throughout the nation. Monumental memorials were the most common expressions of remembrance. Memorials with a utilitarian function, such as a hospital or hall were also erected. This practical emphasis also extended to roads, often built with the aid of public subscriptions, additionally providing work for returned soldiers. Anzac Avenue is an example, as is Memorial Drive in Adelaide (1925) and the Great Ocean Road in Victoria (begun in 1918). Over 200 Avenues of Honour were planted along roads and in parks, a type of memorial found throughout Australia from 1917. Victoria planted more avenues than any other state. While "digger" statues were ubiquitous throughout Queensland, memorial avenues appeared to be less common.

Anzac Memorial Avenue was Queensland's largest construction of an avenue, an ambitious project achieved through public subscription. Most war memorials in Queensland towns and shires honoured servicemen from a specific area. Anzac Memorial Avenue had a wider memorial dedication, not only for residents of the Redcliffe and Petrie areas, but for Brisbane's population, whose support enabled the plantings to occur.

The early 1920s saw the beginnings of increasing car popularity in Queensland. The number of people driving cars between 1921 and 1923 more than doubled. Such considerable growth increased calls for adequate roads in both urban and rural areas, not only for economic purposes, but also as routes for motor tourists.

In response to these pressures, the Queensland government established the Main Roads Board in 1920. Prior to this, the onus was on local shire councils to fund road construction and management. They were largely unable to provide the finances or technical skills to respond to challenges posed by increased car use. After the Board's establishment, co-operative funding arrangements occurred with local councils, who largely maintained roads after their construction. The policy of the Main Roads Board was to construct roads that operated as feeders to railway networks and aided the development of newly settled and existing districts.

Prior to and after the Board's establishment, the Royal Automobile Club of Queensland (RACQ) occupied a central role in advocating for better roads for Queensland motorists. Thomas James Rothwell, President of the RACQ from 1921 to 1923, was the key protagonist in establishing the Petrie to Redcliffe Anzac Memorial Avenue. From 1914, the RACQ allied itself to the war time effort, raising funds and holding numerous benefits. Rothwell, a successful men's outfitter in Brisbane, was actively involved in such causes. During the war, he was secretary of the Queensland Patriotic Fund and coordinator of the Returned Soldiers Transport Corps, eventually awarded an OBE for his services.

Rothwell's initial impetus in advocating for the road came from a referral of the Brisbane Motor Traders Association, who "desired one good road in the vicinity of Brisbane", for motor touring purposes. This push also coincided with the Returned Services League's public appeal of "Work Not Charity" in support of the large number of ex-soldiers unemployed at the time. Rothwell saw the opportunity for these causes to coalesce, by constructing a good road for motorists that would provide employment to returned servicemen. Planting an avenue of trees along such a road would also create a significant Queensland war memorial.

The gazettal of the Brisbane-Gympie Rd between Kedron and Petrie as a main road informed the decision to choose the Petrie-Redcliffe road for Rothwell's proposal. By designating the Petrie-Redcliffe route as a main road, Brisbane motorists would gain a high quality motoring road from the city to a seaside resort, while reducing Redcliffe's isolation.

On 21 June 1922, the RACQ presented the case for the road to Harry Coyne, the Queensland Minister for Lands. Coyne agreed the road would likely be gazetted as a main road on the undertaking that non-government capital would be raised to begin its initial construction, while also suggesting the name of "Anzac Memorial Avenue". The Anzac Avenue Memorial Committee was established with Rothwell as chairman. A fundraising figure of  was set. This amount would provide for the wages of ex-servicemen employed on the road, while the Main Roads Board would bear the cost of construction materials.

Publicity for the fundraising appeal for the Anzac Memorial Avenue appeared in the Brisbane press on 1 July with the rationale for supporting the proposal:"Every motorist is interested in this scheme. It is surely worth at least 5 pounds to a motorist to have one good road. Every business man is interested. It is surely worth a good deal to relieve the labour market of its unemployed. Every citizen is interested. It is surely worth something to you to have a Memorial Avenue that will at once connect one of Brisbane's beauty spots and commemorate for all time the valour of our soldiers."As part of the public fundraising effort, a progress board was erected outside the premises of the Commonwealth Bank in Queen Street, Brisbane. A figure of a car moved forward in increments of 1000, towards the end goal of . 8 August was proclaimed as "Anzac Avenue Badge Day" with car badges sold to raise funds. Other events included social functions at Redcliffe. By December 1922,  had been pledged by public subscription.

The target of  received a significant boost through government funding. In July 1922, the Australian Government, announced a National Main Roads Policy, allocating money to the state's road building schemes on a 4/8 federal, 3/8 state, and 1/8 local government funding arrangement. The objective of the policy was to "develop and open up the country, and promote land settlement, and aid temporarily unemployed soldiers".

Through this funding, the Redcliffe road was allocated , a larger proportion of funding than any other of the first roads built under this funding agreement in Queensland. The combined public fundraising () and government contributions () meant that within six months of the appeal's inception, the goal of  was close to being realised. Of the  subscribed, a final amount of  had been received by 1926, with the Main Roads Board making up the difference.

The route was officially gazetted as the "Redcliffe Road" on 21 October 1922. Anzac Memorial Avenue was one of the earliest examples of Main Roads Boards' involvement in facilitating car-driven tourism in Queensland. The Board promoted Anzac Memorial Avenue for its dual purpose, as a road to a seaside resort that offered health benefits from a change of climate and scenic beauty, while providing developmental opportunities for the area. Until improvements to the South Coast and North Coast roads, Anzac Memorial Avenue was the premier road to a tourist resort from Brisbane.

By December 1922, 25 returned servicemen had begun work on the road. By March 1923, this number had increased to 50. A number were engaged in clearing the road and undertaking associated earth works. Others were constructing reinforced concrete culverts and the bridge over Hayes Inlet, cutting and bending steel for the reinforcing bars and preparing timber for form work. Eleven men were working at the quarry within the Beerburrum Soldier Settlement to source road materials.

The importance of the avenue was underscored by the decision to seal the road. In the early 1920s, few roads throughout Queensland were sealed, especially outside of urban areas. Different materials were trialled by Main Roads to determine their suitability as a top metal surface to dress with tar and bitumen. Anzac Memorial Avenue featured the use of trachyte, a fine grained igneous volcanic rock sourced from the Beerburrum quarry.

Work included constructing culverts to cross over Hays Inlet and Saltwater Creek, and associated earthworks to provide a stable base for the roadway in the often low-lying areas that the route passed through.

In early 1923, Pine Rivers Shire Council and Redcliffe Town Council were granted control of the road's construction in their respective areas. Main Roads maintained responsibility for dressing the top surface with tar and bitumen, this process occurring through 1924 and 1925.

Anzac Memorial Avenue was officially opened for traffic on 5 December 1925 by the acting Premier William Forgan Smith. A floral arch was erected in Petrie for the occasion, with the Mayor of Redcliffe, J.B. Dunn and Pine Shire Chairman, W Bradley, providing welcome speeches and thanking the government for its assistance. The party, in a long procession of cars, continued on to Redcliffe which was "en fete" for the occasion. The avenue was proclaimed as the best road to a tourist resort yet conducted in Queensland.

In the week the road was opened, Rothwell wrote to the Brisbane Courier to draw attention to the tree-planting aspect of the memorial avenue. Rothwell noted the road was already utilised by hundreds of motorists on Sundays and public holidays. He called on the public to assist financially in making the road an avenue from Kedron Brook in Brisbane to Redcliffe, "a glorious asset to the State of Queensland". The first plantings were to be concentrated on the Anzac Memorial Avenue section between Redcliffe and Petrie.

The tree planting operations came more into focus in 1925 as the road works neared completion. An Anzac Avenue Memorial Tree Planting Committee had been established by early 1923. In December 1925, the committee comprised Rothwell, Ernest Walter Bick (curator of Brisbane Botanic Gardens), Edward Swain (Queensland Director of Forestry), Cyril Tenison White (Queensland Government Botanist), Henry John Moore (park superintendent of the Brisbane City Council) and Colonel DA Parsons (representing the Queensland Governor Matthew Nathan). The committee considered the types of trees that would be suitable and an estimate of the number of trees that would be required. Placing the trees  apart, it was estimated 1760 trees were needed for each  of the avenue and the cost of planting the trees, preparing the ground and making suitable guards would be less than  per tree. The committee selected a mixture of native and introduced sub-tropical species for the avenue.

The inaugural planting occurred at Petrie on 28 February 1925. Two Cocos palms (Arecastrum romanzooffianum) were planted at the front of the North Pine School of Arts in Petrie, by Governor Nathan. The trees were donated by Elizabeth Petrie, widow of local pioneer Tom Petrie. The palms were sourced from the extensive gardens of their nearby property "Murrumba".

During the ceremony, Rothwell discussed particulars of the tree-planting operations. Approximately  was needed for planting trees along the avenue between Redcliffe and Kedron, "but for that purpose only £50 was in hand". Donors of trees would receive a certificate for their contribution. For a further small donation, a plaque could be attached on or near the tree with the donor's name or the name of the soldier in whose memory the tree was planted. Mrs Petrie was presented with the certificate for tree No.1, a firewheel tree (Stenocarpus sinuatus) planted on the corner of Anzac Memorial Avenue and White's Road, opposite the School of Arts. This tree has not survived.

On 7 July 1926 Rothwell and the president of the RACQ, Mr JE Carter, led a motorcade of guests from Brisbane for the official opening of Anzac Memorial Avenue, marked by a tree planting ceremony in Redcliffe. About 1000 invited guests, along with the general public, braved inclement weather to attend the ceremony.

The Australian Governor-General, Lord Stonehaven planted the first tree, a Hoop Pine (Araucaria cunninghamii) on the northern side of the Avenue, at the Humbybong Street corner. Granting local school children a holiday, Stonehaven hoped they would be "guardians of the trees" realising that they are guarding not only a Queensland memorial, but one that will be recognised throughout Australia. Lady Stonehaven, William Jolly (Mayor of Brisbane), JB Dunn, W Bradley and Mr Fraser East, President of the Returned Soldiers and Sailors Imperial League of Australia also planted trees.

Rothwell's speech highlighted the need for contributions, especially from the motoring public, to make the tree-lined avenue a reality. Rothwell also announced that the Memorial Committee had decided not to offer individual plate names to be associated with particular trees as the Avenue was considered a memorial for all the soldiers and sailors who had lost their lives, especially to commemorate "the deeds of valour performed by the heroes who went from our state".

By mid-1927, 1000 trees had been planted, encased in triangular wooden guards. The scale of the project provided challenges for the tree planting committee. While 2000 had been planted by 1933, unsuitable species and soil conditions, bushfires, human and animal impacts, borers and white ants, had damaged and destroyed some of the original plantings. With assistance from Main Roads, the committee were employing a man "with expert knowledge" to look after the trees. By this time, a shortage of funds meant the committee were unable to extend the planting scheme from Petrie to Kedron as proposed originally. Nevertheless, the avenue was still the largest of its kind in the state, made possible through public and private involvement.

Thomas Rothwell died on 28 January 1928 and his involvement with the Avenue was honoured on Sunday 9 April 1933 with the unveiling of the Rothwell monument by the Queensland governor, Sir Leslie Wilson. This stone obelisk was placed on a small triangular piece of land at the intersection of Anzac Memorial Avenue and the Deception Bay Road, later moving to a nearby park () when a roundabout was placed on the site. Rothwell bequeathed the substantial sum of  to the tree planting committee, which was acknowledged at the unveiling as having maintained the project.

Subsequent years
The building of Anzac Memorial Avenue reduced Redcliffe's isolation from Brisbane and consolidated its position as the city's seaside resort of choice. In 1928, the Brisbane Courier remarked, "Petrie is today notable for the traffic which passes through it day and night". By the mid-1930s, the Brisbane-Redcliffe bus ran five trips daily, with extra services on weekends. A 1933 tourist brochure described the recent progress of Redcliffe as "remarkable", evidenced by the erection of new villas and cottages on the peninsula. In the same year Redcliffe Mayor Alfred Henry Langdon praised the construction of the road for advancing Redcliffe "beyond the expectations of the most sanguine". The opening of the Hornibrook Bridge in 1935 further reduced the distance between Brisbane and Redcliffe, a catalyst for the area's permanent population growth.

Until the late 1950s, when developers first began purchasing properties for subdivision, the landscape between Petrie and Redcliffe on Anzac Memorial Avenue remained predominantly rural, characterised by small mixed farms and sections of native vegetation. A number of farms capitalised on passing tourist trade by operating roadside fruit and vegetable stalls. Since this time, residential areas have extended along the avenue from both Petrie and Redcliffe, as northern commuter suburbs of Brisbane. Redcliffe's most westerly suburb was named Rothwell in 1971 by the Queensland Place Names Board in honour of the man who did much to bring the road to fruition.

Over time, Anzac Memorial Avenue has been widened to accommodate increased car usage. During the 1980s and 1990s, sections of the avenue were duplicated to form a dual carriageway. Some trees were removed during this time. In Pine Rivers Shire, the council and the Department of Transport adopted a design to preserve the Avenue during roadworks; however a number of trees were removed. In March 1993, Anzac Memorial Avenue was officially reopened by Queensland RSL President SW Kay and Pine Rivers Shire Chairman Rob Akers. Following the removal of a number of trees in 2006 for a transit lane, Queensland Transport and the Redcliffe RSL planted a memorial grove in Henry Pieper Park on the avenue at Kippa-Ring, with trees propagated from the slash pines. While originally named Anzac Memorial Avenue, the road is more widely known and signed as Anzac Avenue.

Other older trees have also not survived and records relating to the avenue once held by the RACQ and Main Roads Department no longer exist. The Cocos palms planted at Petrie by Governor Nathan in 1925 and the Hoop Pine planted in Redcliffe by Lord Stonehaven in 1926 still remain.

Despite alterations, the idea of the road as a Memorial Avenue has been perpetuated by later plantings. While not all the trees are from the original planting list, they are an intrinsic component of the avenue's overall composition. The Mango Hill section of the Avenue is notable for its  section of Mango trees (Magnifera indica). There is a substantial section of mature Slash Pines (Pinus eliottii) between Kippa Ring and Rothwell, plus smaller sections at Kallangur. The first Slash Pines in Queensland were grown in Beerwah and Beerburrum from 1924. Director of Forestry Edward Swain, who introduced the trees from the United States, was a member of the tree planting committee in 1925.

Since the 1990s, along the Pine Rivers section of the road, different memorials commemorating theatres of war since 1945 have been erected.

Despite the construction of the Hornibrook Bridge in 1935 providing an alternative route by car to the Redcliffe peninsula, traffic volumes along Anzac Avenue steadily increased as the years went by, necessitating duplication of some sections of the road in the 1980s and the 1990s. This widening, although required in order to manage traffic congestion, resulted in the need to remove or relocate some of the tree plantings along the route, a move that was not without controversy at the time.

Although originally primarily a rural route, increasing population growth in the area, most notably the development of entirely new suburbs such as Rothwell and North Lakes, has meant that much of the route has taken on a suburban character, providing everyday access to residents, rather than being a tourist drive, as originally planned. The road was inducted onto the Queensland Heritage Register in 2009.

Description
The significant elements of the listing comprise the route of the road, the vistas experienced within the route and the tree plantings noted in the description below.

Approximately  in length, Anzac Memorial Avenue travels from its intersection with Gympie Road at Petrie to its intersection with the roundabout at Redcliffe Parade, Redcliffe. It travels north-east through Kallangur, North Lakes and Mango Hill to Deception Bay Road at Rothwell, then turns east through Kippa-Ring and travels south-east for a further  before tracking east again and travelling as a straight avenue to Redcliffe.

The present road incorporates the original route with widenings to accommodate changed traffic conditions.

The Avenue incorporates culverts and bridge crossings, a memorial obelisk to Thomas Rothwell, memorials commemorating Australian participation in various war zones and a number of other public structures; these are not considered to be of heritage significance.

Plantings
The Avenue incorporates memorial plantings and other plantings including a number of mature trees. Notable plantings include:
 Two Cocos palms (Syagrus romanzoffiana) at the entrance to the North Pine School of Arts
 Eucalyptus trees east and west of Lerose Avenue
  Mango tree (Mangifera indica) avenue between the Bruce Highway and Kinsellas Road, Mango Hill
 Slash Pines (Pinus elliottii) at the intersection with Deception Bay Road and immediately west of the intersection
 Norfolk Island Pines (Araucaria cunninghamii) along the Avenue through Rothwell
 Cotton trees and Eucalyptus trees in the median strip through Kippa Ring particularly between Klingner and Bremner Roads
 Slash Pines west of Bremner Road
 Pine trees in the median strip from Nathan Street to the Klingner Road intersection
 A Hoop Pine (Araucaria cunninghamii) to the west side of the corner with Humpybong Street
 Poinciana trees (Delonix regia) along the road through Redcliffe, particularly between John Street and Victoria Avenue
 The Fig tree at the roundabout terminating Anzac Memorial Avenue at Redcliffe.
 Firewheel Trees (Stenocarpus sinuatus)

Vistas
In addition to the amenity provided by the range of plantings along the road, the drive along Anzac Avenue provides many opportunities to enjoy vistas and views along and from the road including the vista east from Tilley Street to Redcliffe Parade towards Moreton Bay and towards the Fig tree terminating the Avenue at Redcliffe, and the vista west from Ashmole Street over the low area of Hay's Inlet and Pine Rivers towards Mount D'Aguilar, Mt Samson and Brisbane Forest Park.

Heritage listing
Anzac Memorial Avenue (former) was listed on the Queensland Heritage Register on 5 February 2009 having satisfied the following criteria.

The place is important in demonstrating the evolution or pattern of Queensland's history.

Gazetted in 1922 and opened in 1925, following an earlier route established in the 1860s, Anzac Memorial Avenue was one of the earliest roads in Queensland constructed by the Main Roads Board. The Board was established in 1920 to respond to the greater demands on the road network posed by increased motor vehicle usage in the interwar period. Anzac Memorial Avenue is important in illustrating the early stages of this phase in the development of Queensland's road network.

As the first bitumen motor road from a major urban centre to a seaside resort, Anzac Memorial Avenue is important in demonstrating the growth of car based tourism in Queensland in the 1920s and illustrates the growing importance of car access to the development of tourist resorts. Anzac Memorial Avenue catalysed the growth of Redcliffe as a major seaside resort for south-east Queensland during the interwar period.

Built under a government policy designed to promote the development of roads that opened up areas for economic development, the Avenue demonstrates the increasing importance of tourism to the Queensland economy at the time. The Avenue was allocated a larger proportion of government funding than any other of the roads built under this funding agreement in Queensland at the time.

The longest WWI memorial avenue in Queensland, Anzac Memorial Avenue is important for commemorating Queenslanders' involvement in a major world event. The avenue has maintained its role as a place of memorial by subsequent additions commemorating later twentieth century theatres of war.

As a road constructed by returned servicemen, Anzac Memorial Avenue is a good example of a substantial scheme to assist ex-soldiers following WWI. Other initiatives included the state government soldier settlement schemes and other Main Roads projects. The construction of the road is important in demonstrating the involvement of government, civic bodies and the general public in addressing high levels of unemployment among ex-soldiers after WWI.

The place is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of a particular class of cultural places.

In its route, and as an extensive tree-lined avenue of planned and evenly spaced plantings, Anzac Memorial Avenue is important in demonstrating the characteristics of a memorial avenue.

The place is important because of its aesthetic significance.

A landmark road in southeast Queensland, Anzac Memorial Avenue is important for vistas experienced while progressing along the route and the visual delight of stretches of striking plantings including poincianas, pines, cotton trees, eucalypts and the lush mango section.

The place has a special association with the life or work of a particular person, group or organisation of importance in Queensland's history.

Anzac Memorial Avenue is important for its association with Thomas Rothwell and the Royal Automobile Club Queensland (RACQ), an organisation that has made a major contribution to the development of motoring in Queensland. As president of the RACQ from 1921-1923, Rothwell was the key protagonist in the establishment of Anzac Memorial Avenue. Rothwell's contribution to the Avenue is commemorated by a memorial cairn standing at the road edge of Rothwell Park and a nearby suburb that bears his name.

Route description
The current route begins in Petrie, at a roundabout intersection with state route 58 at Gympie Road and Dayboro Road. It proceeds north, then north-east, through Kallangur, before crossing the Bruce Highway near North Lakes. After passing the Westfield North Lakes shopping centre, it proceeds north-east again through developing urban areas near Mango Hill, before crossing Hays Inlet at Saltwater Creek, and intersecting with state route 26 at Deception Bay Road. Signed as both routes 71 and 26, it then turns eastward and proceeds through the suburbs of Rothwell and Kippa-Ring, reverting to route 71 only at an intersection with Elizabeth Avenue, before proceeding to Redcliffe, crossing state route 27 at Oxley Avenue, and terminating at a roundabout with Redcliffe Parade on the waterfront.

Upgrades

Petrie intersection upgrade
A project to upgrade the intersection with Gympie Road and Dayboro Road at Petrie, at a cost of $30 million, was completed in March 2022.

Redcliffe safety works
A project to provide safety works at five intersections in Redcliffe, two of which are on Anzac Avenue, were underway at March 2022.

Major intersections

The entire road is in the City of Moreton Bay local government area.

See also

 Harry Coyne

References

Attribution

External links

Roads in Queensland
Queensland Heritage Register
ANZAC (Australia)
1925 establishments in Australia
Buildings and structures in the City of Moreton Bay
Articles incorporating text from the Queensland Heritage Register
Petrie, Queensland
Kallangur, Queensland
North Lakes, Queensland
Mango Hill, Queensland
Rothwell, Queensland
Redcliffe, Queensland

Anzac Avenue


The TurnTable Top 50 (also known as  TurnTable Nigeria Top 50 Albums chart) is the official album streaming chart in Nigeria. It is compiled every Tuesday by a Nigeria-based music digital streaming tracking company and published every Tuesday by TurnTable magazine. The list shows the 50 best-streaming music albums of the moment in Nigeria. The first issue of the Nigeria Top 50, was launched on Tuesday, 8 November 2022, and the first number-one album was Mr. Money with the Vibe by Asake.

History
On 31 March 2022, TurnTable announce the expansion of the TurnTable Top 50 songs chart, into Top 100. According to the co-founder, and editor-in-chief of the magazine, Ayomide Oriowo, "The chart expansion will be supported by TurnTable Top 200, as the official album-based chart". On 8 November 2022, the album's official chart, began operation as the current TurnTable Top 50 chart.

The chart rankings are based on streams data from YouTube, Boomplay Music, Audiomack, Apple Music, Deezer, and Spotify in Nigeria. On 11 November 2022, the chart eventually became the one main all-genre albums chart, following the launch of the seven genre component of the TurnTable Nigerian Top 50 Albums chart; which include:
Afro-Pop Albums:
Afro-R&B Albums:
Hip-Hop/Rap Albums:
Street-Pop Albums:
Gospel Albums:
Traditional Albums:
Alternative Albums:

Policy
The chart retains a similar system to the existing Top Streaming Songs chart, which is a point-per-play system that determines the values of streams on different streaming platforms. Paid streams will be weighted as one point per play value, freemium streams will be weighted as 0.75 points per play, ad-supported video streams from YouTube will be weighted as 0.66 points per play while ad-supported streams will be weighted as 0.5 points per play. The album chart as well as other genre-based consumption-ranked album charts will employ a single tier (equating 1,500 streams as one album unit) for on-demand audio streams (paid or ad-supported) from subscription services. Video streams will also contribute to the Top 50 Albums Chart.

Number ones

2022

2023

References

Nigerian record charts
2022 establishments in Nigeria

TurnTable Top 50


Fernand Ledoux (born Jacques Joseph Félix Fernand Ledoux, 24 January 1897, Tirlemont – 21 September 1993, Villerville) was a French film and theatre actor of Belgian origin. He studied with Raphaël Duflos at the CNSAD, and began his career with small roles at the Comédie-Française.  He appeared in close to eighty films, with his best remembered role being the stationmaster Roubaud in Jean Renoir's La Bête humaine (1938), but he remained primarily a theatrical actor for the duration of his career.

Married to Fernande Thabuy, with whom he had four children, Ledoux was an amateur painter, and lived for many years at Pennedepie in Normandy.  Later he moved to Villerville, where he died and where he is buried.

Selected filmography

 L'homme à la barbiche (1933)
  (1934) as Flick
 L'homme des Folies Bergère (1935) as François
 Mayerling (1936) as Philippe de Cobourg
 Taras Bulba (1936) as Tovkatch
 The Beloved Vagabond (1936) as Major Walters
  (1938) as Le doctuer
 Alert in the Mediterranean (1938) as Martin
 La Bête Humaine (1938) as Roubaud
 Volpone (1941) as Corvino
  (1941) as Nicolas Rougemont
 First Ball (1941) as Michel Noblet
 L'assassinat du Père Noël (1941) as Noirgoutte, le maire
 Stormy Waters (1941) as Kerlo, le bosco
 Le Lit à colonnes (1942) as Porey-Cave
 Les Visiteurs du Soir (1942) as Le baron Hugues - le châtelain, père d'Anne
 La grande marnière  (1943) as Carvajan
  (1943) as Le maire
 It Happened at the Inn (1943) as Léopold Goupi dit Goupi-Mains-Rouges
  (1943) as Auguste
 The Man from London (1943) as Maloin
 Behold Beatrice (1944) as Le docteur Mauléon
 Girl with Grey Eyes (1945) as Le père Christophe
 The Bellman (1945) as Fabret, le 'lièvre'
 La fille du diable (1946) as Le docteur / The doctor
 The Sea Rose (1946) as Romain Jardehu
  (1947) as Le pharmacien Loiseau
 Eternal Conflict (1948) as Le professeur Janvier
 The Shadow (1948) as Firmin Blache
 White Paws (1949) as Jock Le Guen
 The Barton Mystery (1949) as Beverley
 Histoires extraordinaires à faire peur ou à faire rire... (1949) as Montrésor
 Monseigneur (1949) as Piétrefond
 Wolves Hunt at Night (1952) as Thomas Mollert - un membre du Deuxième Bureau
 La Bergère et le ramoneur (1952) as Le roi (voice)
 Act of Love (1953) as Fernand Lacaud
 Papa, maman, la bonne et moi (1954) as Fernand Langlois
  (1955) as Le Cadi
 Men in White (1955) as Dr. Delpuech
 Papa, maman, ma femme et moi (1955) as Fernand Langlois
 On ne badine pas avec l'amour (1955)
 Law of the Streets (1956) as Père Blain
 Les Aventures de Até L'Espiegle (1957) as Claes
 He Who Must Die (1957) as Priest Grigoris
  (1957) as Pierre Tiercelin
 Les Misérables (1958) as Monseigneur Myriel
 Christine (1958) as Weiring as le père de Christine
 J'irai cracher sur vos tombes (1959) as Horace Chandley
 Cartagine in fiamme (1960)
 Recours en grâce (1960) as Le curé
 The Truth (1960) as Le médecin légiste
 The Big Gamble (1961) as Customs Official
 The Longest Day (1962) as Louis
 Freud: The Secret Passion (1962) as Dr. Charcot
 The Trial (1962) as Chief Clerk of the Law Court
 Le Glaive et la Balance (1963) as Le procureur
 Up from the Beach (1965) as Barrelmaker
 La Communale (1965) as L'inspecteur
 Under the Sign of the Bull (1969) as Le juge
 Peau d'Âne (1970) as Le roi rouge, le seconde roi
 Moi y'en a vouloir des sous (1973) as Sauveur Chouras
 Bel Ordure (1973) as Le gardien de prison
 Les Granges brûlées (1973) as Le doyen des juges
 Les Chinois à Paris (1974) as Abel Frugebelle, de l'Acamédie Française
 Alice ou la Dernière Fugue (1977) as Le Vieil Homme et le Docteur
 À chacun son enfer (1977) as Le père
 Mille milliards de dollars (1982) as Guérande
 Les Misérables (1982) as Gillenormand

References

1897 births
1993 deaths
Belgian emigrants to France
Belgian male film actors
Belgian male silent film actors
20th-century Belgian male actors
French male film actors
French male silent film actors
French male stage actors
People from Tienen
Sociétaires of the Comédie-Française
20th-century French male actors

Fernand Ledoux


Semantic memory refers to general world knowledge that humans have accumulated throughout their lives. This general knowledge (word meanings, concepts, facts, and ideas) is intertwined in experience and dependent on culture. New concepts are learned by applying knowledge learned from things in the past.

Semantic memory is distinct from episodic memory—the memory of experiences and specific events that occur in one's life that can be recreated at any given point. For instance, semantic memory might contain information about what a cat is, whereas episodic memory might contain a specific memory of stroking a particular cat.

Semantic memory and episodic memory are both types of explicit memory (or declarative memory), or memory of facts or events that can be consciously recalled and "declared". The counterpart to declarative or explicit memory is implicit memory (also known as nondeclarative memory).

History
The idea of semantic memory was first introduced following a conference in 1972 between Endel Tulving and W. Donaldson on the role of organization in human memory. Tulving constructed a proposal to distinguish between episodic memory and what he termed semantic memory. He was mainly influenced by the ideas of Reiff and Scheers, who in 1959 made the distinction between two primary forms of memory. One form was entitled remembrances, and the other memoria. The remembrance concept dealt with memories that contained experiences of an autobiographic index, whereas the memoria concept dealt with memories that did not reference experiences having an autobiographic index. Semantic memory reflects the knowledge of the world, and the term general knowledge is often used. It holds generic information that is more than likely acquired across various contexts and is used across different situations. According to Madigan in his book titled Memory, semantic memory is the sum of all knowledge one has obtained—vocabulary, understanding of math, or all the facts one knows. In his book titled Episodic and Semantic Memory, Tulving adopted the term semantic from linguists to refer to a system of memory for "words and verbal symbols, their meanings and referents, the relations between them, and the rules, formulas, or algorithms for influencing them". The use of semantic memory differs from episodic memory: semantic memory refers to general facts and meanings one shares with others, while episodic memory refers to unique and concrete personal experiences. Tulving's proposal of this distinction was widely accepted, primarily because it allowed the separate conceptualization of world knowledge. Tulving discusses conceptions of episodic and semantic memory in his book titled Precise of Elements of Episodic Memory, in which he states that several factors differentiate between episodic memory and semantic memory in ways that include

 the characteristics of their operations,
 the kind of information they process, and
 their application to the real world as well as the memory laboratory.

In a recent work, researchers Felipe De Brigard, Sharda Umanath, and Muireann Irish argue that Tulving conceptualized semantic memory to be different from episodic memory in that "episodic memories were viewed as supported via spatiotemporal relations while information in semantic memory was mediated through conceptual, meaning-based associations".

Recent research has focused on the idea that when people access a word's meaning, sensorimotor information that is used to perceive and act on the concrete object the word suggests is automatically activated. In the theory of grounded cognition, the meaning of a particular word is grounded in the sensorimotor systems. For example, when one thinks of a pear, knowledge of grasping, chewing, sights, sounds, and tastes used to encode episodic experiences of a pear are recalled through sensorimotor simulation. A grounded simulation approach refers to context-specific re-activations that integrate the important features of episodic experience into a current depiction. Such research has challenged previously utilized amodal views. The brain encodes multiple inputs such as words and pictures to integrate and create a larger conceptual idea by using amodal views (also known as amodal perception). Instead of being representations in modality-specific systems, semantic memory representations had previously been viewed as redescriptions of modality-specific states. Some accounts of category-specific semantic deficits that are amodal remain even though researchers are beginning to find support for theories in which knowledge is tied to modality-specific brain regions. The concept that semantic representations are grounded across modality-specific brain regions can be supported by episodic and semantic memory appearing to function in different yet mutually dependent ways. The distinction between semantic and episodic memory has become a part of the broader scientific discourse. For example, researchers speculate that semantic memory captures the stable aspects of our personality while episodes of illness may have a more episodic nature.

Empirical evidence

Jacoby and Dallas (1981)

This study was not created to solely provide evidence for the distinction of semantic and episodic memory stores. However, they did use the experimental dissociation method which provides evidence for Tulving's hypothesis.

In the first part, subjects were presented with a total of 60 words (one at a time) and were asked different questions.

 Some questions asked were to cause the subject to pay attention to the visual appearance: Is the word typed in bold letters?
 Some questions caused the participants to pay attention to the sound of the word: Does the word rhyme with ball?
 Some questions caused the subjects to pay attention to the meaning of the word: Does the word refer to a form of communication?
 Half of the questions were "no" answers and the other half "yes"

In the second phase of the experiment, 60 "old words" seen in stage one and 20 "new words" not shown in stage one were presented to the subjects one at a time.

The subjects were given one of two tasks:

 Perceptual identification task: The words were flashed on a video-screen for 35 milliseconds and the subjects were required to say what the word was.
 Episodic recognition task: Subjects were presented with each word and had to decide whether they had seen the word in the previous stage of the experiment.
Results showed that the percentage of correct answers in the semantic task (perceptual identification) did not change with the encoding conditions of appearance, sound, or meaning. The percentage of correct answers for the episodic task increased from the appearance condition (.50), to the sound condition (.63), to the meaning condition (.86). The effect was also greater for the "yes" encoding words than the "no" encoding words, which suggested a strong distinction of performance of episodic and semantic tasks, supporting Tulving's hypothesis.

Models
Semantic memory's contents are not tied to any particular instance of experience, as in episodic memory. Instead, what is stored in semantic memory is the "gist" of experience, an abstract structure that applies to a wide variety of experiential objects and delineates categorical and functional relationships between such objects. There are numerous sub-theories related to semantic memory that have developed since Tulving initially posited his argument on the differences between semantic and episodic memory; an example is the belief in hierarchies of semantic memory, in which different information one has learned with specific levels of related knowledge is associated. According to this theory, brains are able to associate specific information with other disparate ideas despite not having unique memories that correspond to when that knowledge was stored in the first place. This theory of hierarchies has also been applied to episodic memory, as in the case of work by William Brewer on the concept of autobiographical memory.

Network models
Networks of various sorts play an integral part in many theories of semantic memory. Generally speaking, a network is composed of a set of nodes connected by links. The nodes may represent concepts, words, perceptual features, or nothing at all. The links may be weighted such that some are stronger than others or, equivalently, have a length such that some links take longer to traverse than others. All these features of networks have been employed in models of semantic memory.

Teachable language comprehender
One of the first examples of a network model of semantic memory is the teachable language comprehender (TLC).  In this model, each node is a word, representing a concept (like bird). Within each node is stored a set of properties (like "can fly" or "has wings") as well as links to other nodes (like chicken). A node is directly linked to those nodes of which it is either a subclass or superclass (i.e., bird would be connected to both chicken and animal). Properties are stored at the highest category level to which they apply; for example, "is yellow" would be stored with canary, "has wings" would be stored with bird (one level up), and "can move" would be stored with animal (another level up). Nodes may also store negations of the properties of their superordinate nodes (i.e., "NOT-can fly" would be stored with "penguin").

Processing in TLC is a form of spreading activation.  When a node becomes active, that activation spreads to other nodes via the links between them. In that case, the time to answer the question "Is a chicken a bird?" is a function of how far the activation between the nodes for chicken and bird must spread, or the number of links between those nodes.

The original version of TLC did not put weights on the links between nodes. This version performed comparably to humans in many tasks, but failed to predict that people would respond faster to questions regarding more typical category instances than those involving less typical instances. Allan Collins and Quillian later updated TLC to include weighted connections to account for this effect, which allowed it to explain both the familiarity effect and the typicality effect. Its biggest advantage is that it clearly explains priming: information from memory is more likely to be retrieved if related information (the "prime") has been presented a short time before. There are still a number of memory phenomena for which TLC has no account, including why people are able to respond quickly to obviously false questions (like "is a chicken a meteor?") when the relevant nodes are very far apart in the network.

Semantic networks
TLC is an instance of a more general class of models known as semantic networks. In a semantic network, each node is to be interpreted as representing a specific concept, word, or feature; each node is a symbol. Semantic networks generally do not employ distributed representations for concepts, as may be found in a neural network. The defining feature of a semantic network is that its links are almost always directed (that is, they only point in one direction, from a base to a target) and the links come in many different types, each one standing for a particular relationship that can hold between any two nodes.

Semantic networks see the most use in models of discourse and logical comprehension, as well as in artificial intelligence. In these models, the nodes correspond to words or word stems and the links represent syntactic relations between them.

Feature models
Feature models view semantic categories as being composed of relatively unstructured sets of features. The semantic feature-comparison model describes memory as being composed of feature lists for different concepts. According to this view, the relations between categories would not be directly retrieved, and would be indirectly computed instead. For example, subjects might verify a sentence by comparing the feature sets that represent its subject and predicate concepts. Such computational feature-comparison models include the ones proposed by Meyer (1970), Rips (1975), and Smith et al. (1974).

Early work in perceptual and conceptual categorization assumed that categories had critical features and that category membership could be determined by logical rules for the combination of features. More recent theories have accepted that categories may have an ill-defined or "fuzzy" structure and have proposed probabilistic or global similarity models for the verification of category membership.

Associative models
The set of associations among a collection of items in memory is equivalent to the links between nodes in a network, where each node corresponds to a unique item in memory. Indeed, neural networks and semantic networks may be characterized as associative models of cognition. However, associations are often more clearly represented as an N×N matrix, where N is the number of items in memory; each cell of the matrix corresponds to the strength of the association between the row item and the column item.

Learning of associations is generally believed to be a Hebbian process, where whenever two items in memory are simultaneously active, the association between them grows stronger, and the more likely either item is to activate the other. See below for specific operationalizations of associative models.

Search of associative memory
A standard model of memory that employs association in this manner is the search of associative memory (SAM) model. Though SAM was originally designed to model episodic memory, its mechanisms are sufficient to support some semantic memory representations. The model contains a short-term store (STS) and long-term store (LTS), where STS is a briefly activated subset of the information in the LTS. The STS has limited capacity and affects the retrieval process by limiting the amount of information that can be sampled and limiting the time the sampled subset is in an active mode. The retrieval process in LTS is cue dependent and probabilistic, meaning that a cue initiates the retrieval process and the selected information from memory is random.  The probability of being sampled is dependent on the strength of association between the cue and the item being retrieved, with stronger associations being sampled before one is chosen. The buffer size is defined as r, and not a fixed number, and as items are rehearsed in the buffer the associative strengths grow linearly as a function of the total time inside the buffer. In SAM, when any two items simultaneously occupy a working memory buffer, the strength of their association is incremented; items that co-occur more often are more strongly associated. Items in SAM are also associated with a specific context, where the strength of that association determined by how long each item is present in a given context. In SAM, memories consist of a set of associations between items in memory and between items and contexts. The presence of a set of items and/or a context is more likely to evoke some subset of the items in memory. The degree to which items evoke one another—either by virtue of their shared context or their co-occurrence—is an indication of the items' semantic relatedness.

In an updated version of SAM, pre-existing semantic associations are accounted for using a semantic matrix. During the experiment, semantic associations remain fixed showing the assumption that semantic associations are not significantly impacted by the episodic experience of one experiment.  The two measures used to measure semantic relatedness in this model are latent semantic analysis (LSA) and word association spaces (WAS). The LSA method states that similarity between words is reflected through their co-occurrence in a local context. WAS was developed by analyzing a database of free association norms, and is where "words that have similar associative structures are placed in similar regions of space".

ACT-R: a production system model
The adaptive control of thought (ACT) (and later ACT-R (Adaptive Control of Thought-Rational)) theory of cognition represents declarative memory (of which semantic memory is a part) as "chunks", which consist of a label, a set of defined relationships to other chunks (e.g., "this is a _", or "this has a _"), and any number of chunk-specific properties. Chunks can be mapped as a semantic network, given that each node is a chunk with its unique properties, and each link is the chunk's relationship to another chunk. In ACT, a chunk's activation decreases as a function of the time from when the chunk was created, and increases with the number of times the chunk has been retrieved from memory. Chunks can also receive activation from Gaussian noise and from their similarity to other chunks. For example, if chicken is used as a retrieval cue, canary will receive activation by virtue of its similarity to the cue. When retrieving items from memory, ACT looks at the most active chunk in memory; if it is above threshold, it is retrieved; otherwise an "error of omission" has occurred and the item has been forgotten. There is also retrieval latency, which varies inversely with the amount by which the activation of the retrieved chunk exceeds the retrieval threshold. This latency is used to measure the response time of the ACT model and compare it to human performance.

Statistical models
Some models characterize the acquisition of semantic information as a form of statistical inference from a set of discrete experiences, distributed across a number of contexts. Though these models differ in specifics, they generally employ an (Item × Context) matrix where each cell represents the number of times an item in memory has occurred in a given context. Semantic information is gleaned by performing a statistical analysis of this matrix.

Many of these models bear similarity to the algorithms used in search engines, though it is not yet clear whether they really use the same computational mechanisms.

Latent semantic analysis
One of the more popular models is latent semantic analysis (LSA). In LSA, a T × D matrix is constructed from a text corpus, where T is the number of terms in the corpus and D is the number of documents (here "context" is interpreted as "document" and only words—or word phrases—are considered as items in memory). Each cell in the matrix is then transformed according to the equation:

where  is the probability that context  is active, given that item  has occurred (this is obtained simply by dividing the raw frequency,  by the total of the item vector, ).

Hyperspace Analogue to Language (HAL)
The Hyperspace Analogue to Language (HAL) model considers context only as the words that immediately surround a given word. HAL computes an NxN matrix, where N is the number of words in its lexicon, using a 10-word reading frame that moves incrementally through a corpus of text. Like SAM, any time two words are simultaneously in the frame, the association between them is increased, that is, the corresponding cell in the NxN matrix is incremented. The bigger the distance between the two words, the smaller the amount by which the association is incremented (specifically, , where  is the distance between the two words in the frame).

Location of semantic memory in the brain
The cognitive neuroscience of semantic memory is a controversial issue with two dominant views.

Many researchers and clinicians believe that semantic memory is stored by the same brain systems involved in episodic memory, that is, the medial temporal lobes, including the hippocampal formation. In this system, the hippocampal formation "encodes" memories, or makes it possible for memories to form at all, and the neocortex stores memories after the initial encoding process is completed. Recently, new evidence has been presented in support of a more precise interpretation of this hypothesis. The hippocampal formation includes, among other structures: the hippocampus itself, the entorhinal cortex, and the perirhinal cortex. These latter two make up the parahippocampal cortices. Amnesiacs with damage to the hippocampus but some spared parahippocampal cortex were able to demonstrate some degree of intact semantic memory despite a total loss of episodic memory, which strongly suggests that information encoding leading to semantic memory does not have its physiological basis in the hippocampus.

Other researchers believe the hippocampus is only involved in episodic memory and spatial cognition, which raises the question of where semantic memory may be located. Some believe semantic memory lives in the temporal cortex, while others believe that it is widely distributed across all brain areas.

Neural correlates and biological workings
The hippocampal areas associate semantic memory with declarative memory. The left inferior prefrontal cortex and the left posterior temporal areas are other areas involved in semantic memory use. Temporal lobe damage affecting the lateral and medial cortexes have been related to semantic impairments. Damage to different areas of the brain affect semantic memory differently.

Neuroimaging evidence suggests that left hippocampal areas show an increase in activity during semantic memory tasks. During semantic retrieval, two regions in the right middle frontal gyrus and the area of the right inferior temporal gyrus similarly show an increase in activity. Damage to areas involved in semantic memory result in various deficits, depending on the area and type of damage. For instance, Lambon Ralph, Lowe, & Rogers (2007) found that category-specific impairments can occur where patients have different knowledge deficits for one semantic category over another, depending on location and type of damage. Category-specific impairments might indicate that knowledge may rely differentially upon sensory and motor properties encoded in separate areas (Farah and McClelland, 1991).

Category-specific impairments can involve cortical regions where living and nonliving things are represented and where feature and conceptual relationships are represented. Depending on the damage to the semantic system, one type might be favored over the other. In many cases, there is a point where one domain is better than the other (such as the representation of living and nonliving things over feature and conceptual relationships or vice versa).

Different diseases and disorders can affect the biological workings of semantic memory. A variety of studies have been done in an attempt to determine the effects on varying aspects of semantic memory. For example, Lambon, Lowe, & Rogers studied the different effects semantic dementia and herpes simplex virus encephalitis have on semantic memory. They found that semantic dementia has a more generalized semantic impairment. Additionally, deficits in semantic memory as a result of herpes simplex virus encephalitis tend to have more category-specific impairments. Other disorders that affect semantic memory, such as Alzheimer's disease, has been observed clinically as errors in naming, recognizing, or describing objects. Whereas researchers have attributed such impairment to degradation of semantic knowledge.

Various neural imaging and research points to semantic memory and episodic memory resulting from distinct areas in the brain. Other research suggests that both semantic memory and episodic memory are part of a singular declarative memory system, yet represent different sectors and parts within the greater whole. Different areas within the brain are activated depending on whether semantic or episodic memory is accessed.

Disorders

Category-specific semantic impairments
Category-specific semantic impairments are a neuropsychological occurrence in which an individual ability to identify certain categories of objects is selectively impaired while other categories remain undamaged. This condition can result in brain damage that is widespread, patchy, or localized. Research suggests that the temporal lobe, more specifically the structural description system, might be responsible for category specific impairments of semantic memory disorders.

Theories on category-specific semantic deficits tend to fall into two different groups based on their underlying principles. Theories based on the correlated structure principle, which states that conceptual knowledge organization in the brain is a reflection of how often an object's properties occur, assume that the brain reflects the statistical relation of object properties and how they relate to each other. Theories based on the neural structure principle, which states that the conceptual knowledge organization in the brain is controlled by representational limits imposed by the brain itself, assume that organization is internal. These theories assume that natural selective pressures have caused neural circuits specific to certain domains to be formed, and that these are dedicated to problem-solving and survival. Animals, plants, and tools are all examples of specific circuits that would be formed based on this theory.

Impairment categories
Category-specific semantic deficits tend to fall into two different categories, each of which can be spared or emphasized depending on the individual's specific deficit. The first category consists of animate objects with, animals being the most common deficit. The second category consists of inanimate objects with two subcategories: fruits and vegetables (biological inanimate objects), and artifacts being the most common deficits. The type of deficit does not indicate a lack of conceptual knowledge associated with that category, as the visual system used to identify and describe the structure of objects functions independently of an individual's conceptual knowledge base.

Most of the time, these two categories are consistent with case-study data. However, there are a few exceptions to the rule. Categories like food, body parts, and musical instruments have been shown to defy the animate/inanimate or biological/non-biological categorical division. In some cases, it has been shown that musical instruments tend to be impaired in patients with damage to the living things category despite the fact that musical instruments fall in the non-biological/inanimate category. However, there are also cases of biological impairment where musical instrument performance is at a normal level. Similarly, food has been shown to be impaired in those with biological category impairments. The category of food specifically can present some irregularities though because it can be natural, but it can also be highly processed, such as in a case study of an individual who had impairments for vegetables and animals, while their category for food remained intact.

The role of modality
Modality refers to a semantic category of meaning that has to do with necessity and probability expressed through language. In linguistics, certain expressions are said to have modal meanings. A few examples of this include conditionals, auxiliary verbs, adverbs, and nouns. When looking at category-specific semantic deficits, there is another kind of modality that looks at word relationships which is much more relevant to these disorders and impairments.

For category-specific impairments, there are modality-specific theories that are based on a few general predictions. These theories state that damage to the visual modality will result in a deficit of biological objects, while damage to the functional modality will result in a deficit of non-biological objects (artifacts). Modality-based theories assume that if there is damage to modality-specific knowledge, then all the categories that fall under it will be damaged. In this case, damage to the visual modality would result in a deficit for all biological objects with no deficits restricted to the more specific categories. For example, there would be no category specific semantic deficits for just "animals" or just "fruits and vegetables".

Category-specific semantic deficit causes

Semantic dementia
Semantic dementia is a semantic memory disorder that causes patients to lose the ability to match words or images to their meanings. It is fairly rare for patients with semantic dementia to develop category specific impairments, though there have been documented cases of it occurring. Typically, a more generalized semantic impairment results from dimmed semantic representations in the brain.

Alzheimer's disease is a subcategory of semantic dementia which can cause similar symptoms. The main difference between the two is that Alzheimer's is categorized by atrophy to both sides of the brain, while semantic dementia is categorized by loss of brain tissue in the front portion of the left temporal lobe. With Alzheimer's disease in particular, interactions with semantic memory produce different patterns in deficits between patients and categories over time which is caused by distorted representations in the brain. For example, in the initial onset of Alzheimer's disease, patients have mild difficulty with the artifacts category. As the disease progresses, the category specific semantic deficits progress as well, and patients see a more concrete deficit with natural categories. In other words, the deficit tends to be worse with living things as opposed to non-living things.

Herpes simplex virus encephalitis
Herpes simplex virus encephalitis (HSVE) is a neurological disorder which causes inflammation of the brain. Early symptoms include headache, fever, and drowsiness, but over time symptoms including diminished ability to speak, memory loss, and aphasia develop. HSVE can also cause category-specific semantic deficits to occur. When this happens, patients typically have damage temporal lobe damage that affects the medial and lateral cortex as well as the frontal lobe. Studies have also shown that patients with HSVE have a much higher incidence of category-specific semantic deficits than those with semantic dementia, though both cause a disruption of flow through the temporal lobe.

Brain lesions
A brain lesion refers to any abnormal tissue in or on the brain, most often caused by a trauma or infection. In one case study, a patient underwent surgery to remove an aneurysm, and the surgeon had to clip the anterior communicating artery which resulted in basal forebrain and fornix lesions. Before surgery, this patient was completely independent and had no semantic memory issues. However, after the operation and the lesions developed, the patient reported difficulty with naming and identifying objects, recognition tasks, and comprehension. The patient had a much more significant amount of trouble with objects in the living category which could be seen in the drawings of animals which the patient was asked to do and in the data from the matching and identification tasks. Every lesion is different, but in this case study researchers suggested that the semantic deficits presented themselves as a result of disconnection of the temporal lobe. The findings led to the conclusion that any type of lesion in the temporal lobe, depending on severity and location, has the potential to cause semantic deficits.

Semantic differences in gender
The following table summarizes conclusions from the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology.

These results give a baseline for the differences in semantic knowledge across gender for healthy subjects. Experimental data observes that males with category-specific semantic deficits are mainly impaired with fruits and vegetables while women with category specific semantic deficits are mainly impaired with animals and artifacts. It has been concluded that there are significant gender differences when it comes to category-specific semantic deficits, and that the patient will tend to be impaired in categories that had less existing knowledge to begin with.

Modality-specific impairments
Semantic memory is also discussed in reference to modality. Different components represent information from different sensorimotor channels. Modality specific impairments are divided into separate subsystems on the basis of input modality. Examples of different input modalities include visual, auditory, and tactile input. Modality-specific impairments are also divided into subsystems based on the type of information. Visual vs. verbal and perceptual vs. functional information are examples of information types.

Semantic memory disorders
Semantic memory disorders fall into two groups. Semantic refractory access disorders are contrasted with semantic storage disorders according to four factors: temporal factors, response consistency, frequency, and semantic relatedness. A key feature of semantic refractory access disorders is temporal distortions, where decreases in response time to certain stimuli are noted when compared to natural response times. In access disorders there are inconsistencies in comprehending and responding to stimuli that have been presented many times. Temporal factors impact response consistency. In storage disorders, an inconsistent response to specific items is not observed. Stimulus frequency determines performance at all stages of cognition. Extreme word frequency effects are common in semantic storage disorders while in semantic refractory access disorders word frequency effects are minimal. The comparison of close and distant groups tests semantic relatedness. Close groupings have words that are related because they are drawn from the same category, such as a list of clothing types. Distant groupings contain words with broad categorical differences, such as unrelated words. Comparing close and distant groups shows that in access disorders semantic relatedness had a negative effect, which is not observed in semantic storage disorders. Category-specific and modality-specific impairments are important components in access and storage disorders of semantic memory.

Present and future research
Positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) allow cognitive neuroscientists to explore different hypotheses concerning the neural network organization of semantic memory. By using these neuroimaging techniques researchers can observe the brain activity of participants while they perform cognitive tasks. These tasks can include, but are not limited to, naming objects, deciding if two stimuli belong in the same object category, or matching pictures to their written or spoken names.

A developing theory is that semantic memory, like perception, can be subdivided into types of visual information—color, size, form, and motion. Thompson-Schill (2003) found that the left or bilateral ventral temporal cortex appears to be involved in retrieval of knowledge of color and form, the left lateral temporal cortex in knowledge of motion, and the parietal cortex in knowledge of size.

Neuroimaging studies suggest a large, distributed network of semantic representations that are organized minimally by attribute, and perhaps additionally by category. These networks include "extensive regions of ventral (form and color knowledge) and lateral (motion knowledge) temporal cortex, parietal cortex (size knowledge), and premotor cortex (manipulation knowledge). Other areas, such as more anterior regions of temporal cortex, may be involved in the representation of nonperceptual (e.g. verbal) conceptual knowledge, perhaps in some categorically-organized fashion."

See also
 Memory semantics
 Sparse distributed memory
 Semantic similarity

References

Further reading

 William Damon, Richard M. Lerner, Nancy Eisenberg. 2006. Handbook of Child Psychology, Social, Emotional, and Personality Development. Publisher John Wiley & Sons. , 9780471272908
 John Hart, Michael A. Kraut. 2007. Neural Basis of Semantic Memory. Publisher-Cambridge University Press. , 9780521848701
 Frank Krüger. 2000. Coding of temporal relations in semantic memory. Publisher-Waxmann Verlag. , 9783893259434
 Sarí Laatu. 2003. Semantic memory deficits in Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis: impairments in conscious understanding of concept meanings and visual object recognition. Publisher-Turun Yliopisto
 Laura Eileen Matzen. 2008. Semantic and Phonological Influences on Memory, False Memory, and Reminding. Publisher-ProQuest. , 9780549909958
 Rosale McCarthy. 1995. Semantic Knowledge And Semantic Representations: A Special Issue Of Memory. Publisher	Psychology Press. , 9780863779367

 Wietske Vonk. 1979. Retrieval from semantic memory. Publisher	Springer-Verlag.
 Sandra L. Zoccoli. 2007. Object Features and Object Recognition: Semantic Memory Abilities During the Normal Aging Process. Publisher-ProQuest. , 9780549321071

External links
 http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn10012
 http://diodor.eti.pg.gda.pl  An application of computational semantic memory model. Plays 20 questions game on animals domain
 S-Space Package, an open source Java library that includes several semantic memory implementations, such as PEN and IS for generating Statistical semantics from a text corpus
 http://www.semantikoz.com/blog/2008/02/25/hyperspace-analogue-to-language-hal-introduction/ Hyperspace Analogue to Language (HAL) variation of semantic memory explained in detail

Memory
Semantics

Semantic memory


William Avery Rockefeller Jr. (May 31, 1841 – June 24, 1922) was an American businessman and financier. Rockefeller was a co-founder of Standard Oil along with his elder brother John Davison Rockefeller. He was also a part owner of Anaconda Copper, which was the fourth-largest company in the world by the late 1920s. Rockefeller started his business career as a clerk at 16. In 1867, he joined his brother's company, Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler, which later became Standard Oil. The company was eventually split up by the Supreme Court in 1911. Rockefeller also had a significant involvement in the copper industry. In 1899, Rockefeller and Standard Oil principal Henry H. Rogers joined with Anaconda Company founder Marcus Daly to create the Amalgamated Copper Mining Company, which later returned to the name Anaconda Copper.

He married Almira Geraldine Goodsell in 1864, and they had six children. Rockefeller died in 1922, leaving a gross estate of $102 million, significantly reduced by debts and taxes. He was a prominent member of the Rockefeller family, contributing to its reputation as a leading American business dynasty.

Early years
William Avery Rockefeller Jr. was born in Richford, New York. He was the middle son of con artist William Avery Rockefeller Sr. and Eliza Davison. In addition to elder brother John, William Jr.'s siblings were Lucy, Mary, and twins Franklin (Frank) and Frances (who died young). He also had two elder half-sisters, Clorinda (who died young) and Cornelia, through his father's affairs with mistress and housekeeper Nancy Brown. In 1853 his family moved to Strongsville, Ohio. As a young pupil in public school, he was inspired and motivated by his teacher-mentor, Rufus Osgood Mason, whom Rockefeller later named "A Rockefeller Patron."

Business career
At the age of sixteen, he began work as a clerk for a miller in Cleveland, Ohio. About two years later, he joined his older brother's produce commission business, Clark and Rockefeller, which later supplied provisions to the Union Army.

Oil business

Rockefeller was very adept in business matters. When John D. formed Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler in 1867, he invited William to take charge of the company's export business in New York. In 1867, William Rockefeller and Co. was formed as a subsidiary to Rockefeller and Andrews. In 1870, that company became Standard Oil. In 1911 Standard Oil of New Jersey was split up by the United States Supreme Court.

Copper mining
In 1899, Rockefeller joined fellow Standard Oil principal Henry H. Rogers and Anaconda Copper Company founder Marcus Daly in forming the Amalgamated Copper Mining Company, a holding company that intended to control the copper industry. With Daly as company president and Rogers as Vice-President, Rockefeller and Rogers devised a scheme which earned them a profit of $36 million. First, they purchased Anaconda Properties from Daly for $39 million, with the understanding that the check was to be deposited in the bank and remain there for a definite time (National City Bank was run by Rockefeller's friends). Rogers and Rockefeller then set up a paper organization, known as the Amalgamated Copper Mining Company, with their own clerks as dummy directors, saying the company was worth $75 million.

They had Amalgamated Copper Company buy Anaconda from them for $75 million in capital stock, which was conveniently printed for the purpose. Then, they borrowed $39 million from the bank using Amalgamated Copper as collateral. They paid back Daly for Anaconda and sold $75 million worth of stock in Amalgamated Copper to the public. They paid back the bank's $39 million and had a profit of $36 million in cash.

After Daly died in November 1900, banker John Dennis Ryan rose to head Amalgamated's Montana operations. Amalgamated acquired two large competitors, and soon controlled all the mines of Butte, Montana. The company returned to the name Anaconda in 1915, and by the late 1920s Anaconda Copper Company was the fourth-largest company in the world.

From 1912 to 1913, the Pujo Committee investigated Rockefeller and others for allegedly earning $30 million in profit through cornering the copper market and "synchronizing with artificially enforced activity" in Amalgamated Copper stock in the New York Stock Exchange.

When the newly formed Mutual Alliance Trust Company opened for business in New York on the Tuesday after June 29, 1902, there were 13 directors, including Emanuel Lehman and Rockefeller.

Personal life

Rockefeller married Almira Geraldine Goodsell (March 19, 1844 – January 17, 1920) on May 25, 1864, in Fairfield, Connecticut. There were many connections among this and other elite families. Her sister Esther Judson Goodsell was married to Oliver Burr Jennings, who became one of the original stockholders of Standard Oil. Together, William and Almira had:
Lewis Edward Rockefeller (March 2, 1865 – August 3, 1866)
Emma Rockefeller (June 8, 1868 – August 11, 1934), who married Dr. David Hunter McAlpin
William Goodsell Rockefeller (May 21, 1870 – November 30, 1922), who married Sarah Elizabeth "Elsie" Stillman
John Davison Rockefeller II (March 8, 1872 – 1877)
Percy Avery Rockefeller (February 27, 1878 – September 25, 1934), who married Isabel Goodrich Stillman
Ethel Geraldine Rockefeller (April 3, 1882 – August 13, 1973), who married Marcellus Hartley Dodge Sr.
William Rockefeller Jr. died of pneumonia on June 24, 1922, in Rockwood Hall. He had caught a cold during a car trip he took with brother John and nephew John Jr. to visit his childhood home in Richford, New York. He was interred in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Sleepy Hollow, New York.

The New York Times, in discussing a trust that Rockefeller set up for his born and yet-to-be born great-grandchildren, stated that he "left a gross estate of $102,000,000 which was reduced to $50,000,000 principally by $30,000,000 of debts and $18,600,000 of inheritance and estate taxes."

Rockefeller was a regular attendee of the Saint Mary's Episcopal Church in Scarborough in the last few years of his life.

Family and descendants
Rockefeller and Almira's second son, William Goodsell Rockefeller, married Sarah Elizabeth "Elsie" Stillman, the elder daughter of James Jewett Stillman and Sarah Elizabeth Stillman; her father was National City Bank president. The new couple's family included James Stillman Rockefeller. He became a member of the Jekyll Island Club (aka The millionaires Club) on Jekyll Island, Georgia, along with J. P. Morgan, Joseph Pulitzer, and other business moguls of the day.

Residences

In 1886, Rockefeller bought property in Westchester County along the Hudson River from General Lloyd Aspinwall. He renovated or rebuilt the mansion Rockwood Hall.

The Rockefeller Cottage is a house on Jekyll Island, Georgia. It is also called Indian Mound and is next to the Jekyll Island Club. The house was built by Gordon McKay in 1892. McKay died in 1903 and the house was bought by William Rockefeller in 1905, who used it as a winter home. It was evacuated in 1942, along with the rest of the island. The house remained in the Rockefeller family until 1947, when the Jekyll Island Authority bought the property. It was open as a museum from 1950 until 1968, when it was closed for badly needed repairs. It is now a public museum. Decades later the former "Indian Mound" Cottage was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Rockefeller Cottage.

References

External links

William Rockefeller Archives

American businesspeople in the oil industry
American financiers
Rockefeller family
Standard Oil
1841 births
1922 deaths
People from Butte, Montana
People from Briarcliff Manor, New York
Burials at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery
People from Strongsville, Ohio
American people of English descent
American people of German descent
American people of Scotch-Irish descent
Deaths from pneumonia in New York (state)
People from Richford, New York
Mutual Alliance Trust Company people
Baptists from New York (state)

William Rockefeller Jr.


The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey is one of the largest professional Shakespeare companies in North America, serving over 100,000 adults and children annually.  Located in Madison, New Jersey, it is the state's largest theatre company dedicated to the works of Shakespeare and other classic masterworks, including rarely-produced epics.

Bonnie J. Monte has been artistic director since 1990.
The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey is one of the longest-running Shakespeare theatres on the east coast, and is listed as a "major festival" in the book Shakespeare Festivals Around the World by Marcus D. Gregio (Editor), 2004.

In both 2002 and 2006, the Star-Ledger named the company "Regional Theatre of the Year."  In 2002, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation awarded the theatre a $1 million strategic partnership grant "in recognition of the artistry, achievements and leadership of this acclaimed Madison, New Jersey-based performing arts and education organization."

The company's annual main stage season runs from May to December, presented at the F.M. Kirby Shakespeare Theatre on the campus of Drew University in Madison.  An outdoor stage production is presented each summer at the Greek Theatre, an open-air grass-and-stone amphitheatre inspired by the Theatre of Dionysos in Athens, and one of the only theatres of its kind in the United States to host a professional company. It is located on the St. Elizabeth University campus in nearby Florham Park, New Jersey.

The company employs over 250 members during the season and through its main stage, outdoor stage, and touring productions plays to approximately 100,000 audience members each year, primarily from the New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania region.

Financial support comes from more than 1,500 individuals, government agencies, corporations and foundations.

It is a member company of the New Jersey Theatre Alliance.

History
The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey was founded by Paul Barry in 1963 as the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival, part of a summer-stock season at the Cape May Playhouse in the resort town of Cape May, N.J.  The festival was relocated in 1972 to a permanent home on the campus of Drew University.

In October 1990, the board hired Bonnie J. Monte as artistic director.  Monte, along with former managing director Michael Stotts, oversaw the renovation of the old Bowne Gymnasium, which was reopened in June 1998 as the F.M. Kirby Shakespeare Theatre.

References

External links

Drew University
Buildings and structures in Morris County, New Jersey
Madison, New Jersey
Theatres in New Jersey
Theatre companies in New Jersey
Shakespearean theatre companies
Tourist attractions in Morris County, New Jersey
1963 establishments in New Jersey

Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey


The Dornier Aerodyne (also referred to as "Lippisch-Dornier Aerodyne") was a wingless VTOL unmanned aircraft. Conceived by Alexander Lippisch, it was developed and built by Dornier on behalf of the Federal German Ministry of Defence (BMVg). Lippisch was part of the team. The first flight took place on 18 September 1972. The development ended on 30 November 1972 after successful hovering-flight testing with the aircraft. Experimentation did not continue due to lack of interest by the Bundeswehr (German Armed Forces).

Description
The principle behind the Aerodyne is the combination of lift and thrust production in a single construction unit and flow channel, i.e. a ducted fan. Flaps at the end of the fan divert the outflowing air to produce lift, thrust, or a combination of both. As a result, the Aerodyne could be steered and flown in the entire range between hovering and full-forward flight.

For forward flight, the Aerodyne had a conventional tail unit at the rear, which allowed for pitch and yaw control. The equipment was unmanned and operated by remote control.

It was intended to be a land- or ship-supported drone (UAV) for aerial reconnaissance.

Specifications
Length:
Width:
Fan Diameter:
Engine: 1 MTU 6022 A-3,
Total Weight:

References

Bibliography
"Eine Dokumentation zur Geschichte des Hauses Dornier", Ed. Dornier GmbH, 1983, bound, 214 pp.
Patents US2918230; US2918233.

1970s German experimental aircraft
Tailsitter aircraft
Aerodyne
Aircraft first flown in 1972
Ducted fan-powered aircraft

Dornier Aerodyne


Douglas Ross Hyde  (; 17 January 1860 – 12 July 1949), known as  (), was an Irish academic, linguist, scholar of the Irish language, politician and diplomat who served as the first President of Ireland from June 1938 to June 1945. He was a leading figure in the Gaelic revival, and the first President of the Gaelic League, one of the most influential cultural organisations in Ireland at the time.

Background

Hyde was born at Longford House in Castlerea, County Roscommon, while his mother, Elizabeth (née Oldfield; 1834–1886), was on a short visit. His father, Arthur Hyde, whose family were originally from Castlehyde near Fermoy, County Cork, was Church of Ireland rector of Kilmactranny, County Sligo, from 1852 to 1867, and it was here that Hyde spent his early years. Arthur Hyde and Elizabeth Oldfield married in County Roscommon, in 1852, and had three other children: Arthur Hyde (1853–79 in County Leitrim), John Oldfield Hyde (1854–96 in County Dublin), and Hugh Hyde (1856).

In 1867, his father was appointed prebendary and rector of Tibohine, and the family moved to neighbouring Frenchpark, in County Roscommon. He was home schooled by his father and his aunt due to a childhood illness. While a young man, he became fascinated with hearing the old people in the locality speak the Irish language. He was influenced in particular by the gamekeeper Séamus Hart and his friend's wife, Mrs. Connolly. Aged 14, Hyde was devastated when Hart died, and his interest in the Irish language—the first language he began to study in any detail, as his own undertaking—flagged for a while. However, he visited Dublin a number of times and realised that there were groups of people, just like him, interested in Irish, a language looked down on at the time by many and seen as backward and old-fashioned.

Rejecting family pressure that, like past generations of Hydes, he would follow a career as an Anglican clergyman, Hyde instead became an academic. He entered Trinity College Dublin, where he became fluent in French, Latin, German, Greek and Hebrew, graduating in 1884 as a moderator in modern literature. A medallist of the College Historical Society, he was elected its president in 1931. His passion for the language revival of Irish, which was already in severe decline, led him to help found the Gaelic League, or in Irish, , in 1893.

Hyde married German-born but British-raised Lucy Kurtz in 1893. The couple had two daughters, Nuala and Úna.

Conradh na Gaeilge/Gaelic League

Hyde joined the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language around 1880, and between 1879 and 1884, he published more than a hundred pieces of Irish verse under the pen name  ().

Initially derided, the Irish language movement gained a mass following. Hyde helped establish the Gaelic Journal in 1892; in November, he wrote a manifesto called The necessity for de-anglicising the Irish nation, arguing that Ireland should follow its own traditions in language, literature and dress.

In 1893, he helped found Conradh na Gaeilge (the Gaelic League) to encourage the preservation of Irish culture, music, dance and language. A new generation of Irish republicans (including Pádraig Pearse, Éamon de Valera, Michael Collins and Ernest Blythe), became politicised through their involvement in Conradh na Gaeilge. Hyde filled out the 1911 census form in Irish.

Uncomfortable at the growing politicisation of the movement, Hyde resigned the presidency in 1915. He was succeeded by the League's co-founder Eoin MacNeill.

Senator

Hyde had no association with Sinn Féin and the independence movement. He was elected to Seanad Éireann, the upper house of the Irish Free State's Oireachtas (parliament), at a by-election on 4 February 1925, replacing Sir Hutcheson Poë.

In the 1925 Seanad election, Hyde placed 28th of the 78 candidates, with 19 seats available. The Catholic Truth Society opposed him for his Protestantism and publicised his supposed support for divorce. Historians have suggested that the CTS campaign was ineffective, and that Irish-language advocates performed poorly, with all those endorsed by the Gaelic League losing.

He returned to academia as Professor of Irish at University College Dublin, where one of his students was future Attorney General of Ireland, Chief Justice of Ireland and President of Ireland, Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh.

President of Ireland

Nomination

In April 1938, by now retired from academia, Hyde was plucked from retirement by Taoiseach Éamon de Valera and again appointed to Seanad Éireann. Again his tenure proved short, even shorter than before; however, this time it was because Hyde was chosen, after inter-party negotiations—following an initial suggestion by Fine Gael—to be the first President of Ireland, to which office he was elected unopposed. He was selected for a number of reasons:

Both the Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera, and the Leader of the Opposition, W. T. Cosgrave, admired him;
Both wanted a President with universal prestige to lend credibility to the new office, especially since the new 1937 Constitution made it unclear whether the President or the British monarch was the official head of state;
Both wanted to purge the humiliation that had occurred when Hyde lost his Senate seat in 1925;
Both wanted a President who would prove there was no danger that the holder of the office would become an authoritarian dictator, a widespread fear when the new constitution was being discussed in 1937;
Both wanted to pay tribute to Hyde's role in promoting the Irish language.
Both wanted to choose a non-Catholic to disprove the assertion that the State was a "confessional state", although on 11 May 1937 Seán MacEntee, the Fianna Fáil Minister of Finance, had described the 1937 Constitution in Dáil Éireann as "the Constitution of a Catholic State".

Inauguration

Hyde was inaugurated as the first President of Ireland, on 26 June 1938. The Irish Times reported it as follows:

Hyde set a precedent by reciting the Presidential Declaration of Office in Irish. His recitation, in Roscommon Irish, is one of a few recordings of a dialect of which Hyde was one of the last speakers. Upon inauguration, he moved into the long-vacant Viceregal Lodge in Phoenix Park, since known as Áras an Uachtaráin.

Hyde's selection and inauguration received worldwide media attention and was covered by newspapers in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina, and even Egypt. Hitler "ordered" the Berlin newspapers "to splash" on the Irish presidential installation ceremony. However, the British government ignored the event. The Northern Ireland Finance Minister, J. M. Andrews, described Hyde's inauguration as a "slight on the King" and "a deplorable tragedy".

Presidency

Despite being placed in a position to shape the office of the presidency via precedent, Hyde by and large opted for a quiet, conservative interpretation of the office. His age and health obligated him to schedule periods of rest throughout his days, and his lack of political experience caused him to defer to his advisers on questions of policy and discretionary powers, especially to his Secretary, Michael McDunphy. On 13 November 1938, just months after Hyde's inauguration, Hyde attended an international soccer match between Ireland and Poland at Dalymount Park in Dublin. This was seen as breaching the GAA's ban on 'foreign games' and he was subsequently removed as patron of the GAA, an honour he had held since 1902.

After a massive stroke in April 1940, plans were made for his lying-in-state and state funeral. However, Hyde survived, albeit paralysed and having to use a wheelchair.

Although the role of the President of Ireland is largely ceremonial, the president has the authority under the Constitution to refuse to grant a dissolution of the Dáil where the Taoiseach has ceased to retain the support of a majority of the Dáil, and to refer legislation to the Supreme Court before signing it into law.

Hyde was confronted with a crisis in 1944, when de Valera's government unexpectedly collapsed in a vote on the Transport Bill and the President had to decide whether or not to grant a dissolution of the Dáil. If a dissolution is granted, a general election is proclaimed to fill the seats thereby vacated. This means that for four to six weeks, until the new Dáil assembles, there is no Dáil. Fearing this gap might facilitate an invasion during World War II, during which no parliament could be called upon to act, the Oireachtas enacted the General Elections (Emergency Powers) Act 1943, legislation under the emergency provisions of Article 28.3.3°), which allowed an election to be called separate from a dissolution, with the Dáil only being dissolved just before new Dáil would assemble. This ensured the gap between Dála (plural of Dáil) would be too short to cause a vacuum in major decision-making. Under the Act the President could "refuse to proclaim a general election on the advice of a Taoiseach who had ceased to retain the support of a majority in Dáil Éireann". Hyde had that option but, after considering it with his senior advisor Michael McDunphy, he opted to grant de Valera his election request.

Hyde twice used his power under Article 26 of the Constitution, having consulted the Council of State, to refer a Bill or part of a Bill to the Supreme Court, for the court's decision on whether the Bill or part referred is repugnant to the Constitution (so that the Bill in question cannot be signed into law). On the first occasion, the court held that the Bill referred – Offences Against the State (Amendment) Bill 1940 – was not repugnant to the Constitution. In response to the second reference, the Court decided that the particular provision referred – section 4 of the School Attendance Bill 1942 – was repugnant to the Constitution. Because of Article 34.3.3° of the Constitution, the constitutional validity of the Offences Against the State (Amendment) Act, 1940 cannot be challenged in any court, since the Bill which became that Act was found by the Supreme Court not to be repugnant in the context of an Article 26 reference.

One of Hyde's last presidential acts was a visit to the German Ambassador Eduard Hempel, on 3 May 1945, to offer his formal condolences on the death of Adolf Hitler. The visit remained a secret until 2005.

Retirement and death

Hyde left office on 25 June 1945, opting not to nominate himself for a second term. Owing to his ill-health he did not return to his Roscommon home, Ratra, empty since the death of his wife early in his term. He moved into the former residence of the Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, in the grounds of Áras an Uachtaráin, which he renamed Little Ratra, where he lived out the remaining four years of his life. He died at 10pm on 12 July 1949, aged 89.

State funeral

As a former President of Ireland, Hyde was accorded a state funeral. As he was a member of the Church of Ireland, his funeral service took place in Dublin's Church of Ireland St. Patrick's Cathedral. However, contemporary rules of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland prohibited its members from attending services in non-Catholic churches. As a result, all but one member of the Catholic cabinet, Noël Browne, remained outside the cathedral grounds while the funeral service took place. They then joined the cortège when his coffin left the cathedral. Éamon de Valera, by now Leader of the Opposition, also did not attend. He was represented instead by a senior Fianna Fáil figure who was a member of the Church of Ireland, Erskine H. Childers, a future President of Ireland himself. Hyde was buried in Frenchpark, County Roscommon at Portahard Church, (where he had spent most of his childhood life) beside his wife Lucy, his daughter Nuala, his sister Annette, mother Elizabeth and father Arthur.

In memoriam

References

External links

Biography at Áras an Uachtaráin website
Oireachtas Members Database – Profile
Dunleavy, Janet Egleson and Gareth W. Dunleavy. Douglas Hyde: A Maker of Modern Ireland. Berkeley et al.: Univ. of California Press, 1991. Available from eScholarship.
Hyde, Douglas. The Love Songs of Connacht: Being the Fourth Chapter of the Songs of Connacht. Dundrum, Ireland: Dun Emer Press, 1904. Available from Google Books.

1860 births
1949 deaths
Academics of University College Dublin
Alumni of Trinity College Dublin
19th-century Anglo-Irish people
20th-century Anglo-Irish people
Celtic studies scholars
Conradh na Gaeilge people
Independent members of Seanad Éireann
Irish Anglicans
Irish folklorists
Irish language activists
Irish-language writers
19th-century Irish poets
20th-century Irish poets
Members of the 1922 Seanad
Members of the 2nd Seanad
Nominated members of Seanad Éireann
Patrons of the Gaelic Athletic Association
People from Castlerea
Scholars and academics from County Sligo
Presidents of Ireland
Scholars and academics from County Roscommon
People from Frenchpark

Douglas Hyde