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The_Wings_of_the_Dove_(1997_film) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wings_of_the_Dove_(1997_film) | [
563
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wings_of_the_Dove_(1997_film)"
] | The Wings of the Dove is a 1997 British-American romantic drama film directed by Iain Softley and starring Helena Bonham Carter, Linus Roache, and Alison Elliott. The screenplay by Hossein Amini is based on the 1902 novel by Henry James. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards and five BAFTAs, recognizing Bonham Carter's performance, the screenplay, the costume design, and the cinematography.
Plot
In 1910 London, Kate Croy (Helena Bonham Carter) lives under the careful watch of her domineering Aunt Maud (Charlotte Rampling). The wealthy Maud has taken the penniless Kate in as her ward, intending to marry her to a rich man and save her from the fate which befell her recently deceased mother when she married Kate's own dissolute father, Lionel (Michael Gambon). Lord Mark (Alex Jennings), a sophisticated aristocrat with a large estate, begins to court Kate with Maud's approval. However, Kate is secretly in love with a young muckraking journalist named Merton Densher (Linus Roache), whom her aunt has forbidden her from pursuing a relationship with because of his humble circumstances. Nonetheless, she has continued to meet with Merton in secret, though he is growing increasingly impatient for her to leave her aunt and marry him.
Aunt Maud confronts Kate about her continuing association with Merton and threatens to withdraw her financial support from Kate and her father. Kate reluctantly breaks with Merton and refuses to meet with him anymore. A few months later, at a dinner party given by her aunt, Kate is introduced to the wealthy American orphan and heiress Milly Theale (Allison Elliot), who is on an extended trip through Europe with her travelling companion Susan Stringham (Elizabeth McGovern). The cynical Kate is captivated by Milly's beauty, vivaciousness and humour, and the two form a strong friendship. Kate and Merton reconcile and resume their secret meetings; one day they run into Milly, and Kate introduces Merton as a family friend. Soon after, Milly invites Kate to accompany her and Susan to Venice.
Before leaving, Lord Mark secretly reveals to Kate that Milly is terminally ill and that although he desires Kate he needs to marry Milly and her fortune to avoid losing his estates. Aware that Milly is indifferent to Lord Mark but is smitten with Merton, Kate invites Merton to Venice and persuades him to show Milly affection in an effort to seduce her. Kate expects that the orphaned and lonely Milly will leave him her fortune after her death.
During Kate's, Milly's, and Merton's excursions through Venice, Kate gradually becomes jealous of Milly's attraction to Merton, so much so that she lures him away one night to have sex. Milly confronts her the next morning, though Kate denies that Merton is her lover. She realises that, if her scheme is to succeed, she must leave Venice without warning Merton. On their own in Venice, Merton's affection for Milly grows and the two form a strong bond, even as her condition worsens. One day Merton spots Lord Mark at a cafe; alarmed, he goes to visit Milly but is denied entry. Susan visits him and Merton realises that Kate has revealed their secret to Lord Mark to sabotage the whole scheme, knowing that Mark would tell Milly as revenge for her rejecting him. Nonetheless, Milly agrees to see Merton and the two share an intimate moment where she forgives him and says that she still loves both him and Kate, despite their actions. A few days later, Milly dies and Merton and Susan attend her funeral.
After Merton returns to London, Kate comes to Merton's flat. She asks why he has not come to see her in the weeks he has been back and finds a letter from Milly's lawyers, informing Merton that Milly did indeed bequeath a sizable portion of her estate to him. Merton tells Kate that he will not take the money, and she must marry him without it if they are to be together. They make love and afterwards Kate agrees, with the condition he tells her that he is not still in love with his memory of Milly. He cannot, and Kate leaves him for good, knowing that her conniving has backfired. Merton returns alone to Venice, while in the background we hear Milly's voice repeating her confident assertion that Merton will be coming into his own, and sooner than he thinks.
Cast
Helena Bonham Carter as Kate Croy
Alison Elliott as Milly Theale
Linus Roache as Merton Densher
Elizabeth McGovern as Susan Stringham
Charlotte Rampling as Aunt Maud
Michael Gambon as Lionel Croy
Alex Jennings as Lord Mark
Production
Filming for The Wings of the Dove took place over the summer of 1996, with eight weeks spent in London and six in Venice. London exterior locations include Brompton Cemetery on the Fulham Road; Carlton House Terrace in St. James's (Aunt Maud's house); Freemasons' Hall in Great Queen Street (Merton's newspaper office); Kensington Gardens; the National Liberal Club in Whitehall; the Richmond Fellowship; and the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich. Knebworth House in Hertfordshire stood in for Lord Mark's country estate, and Debenham House in Kensington for his London home. Syon House in London was used for the wedding reception scene early in the film. Shepperton Studios was used for the mock-ups of a platform tunnel and passageways representing both Dover Street and Knightsbridge tube stations.
Locations in Venice include St. Mark's Square and the Palazzo Barbaro. The Palazzo Barbaro was where Henry James wrote the original novel and is believed to have inspired Millie's palazzo as it is described in the book.
Costume designer Sandy Powell sought a clear distinction between the outfits the female characters wear in London and Venice, with the London costumes consisting of "chic outfits with the daring feeling of contemporary high fashion, clothes that herald the start of the more provocative "Twenties" fashion". In Venice, Powell sourced luxuriant, loose fitting gowns in lighter colors, reflecting a more "ethnic, North African look". Powell was inspired by the gowns of the early 20th century designer Fortuny; her goal was to reflect the freedom of the characters during their time in the city.
A notable departure from Henry James’ text is the inclusion of a sex scene late in the film, with Kate and Merton naked on a bed. “We went into that with our eyes open,” Iain Softley said. “We had no qualms. We felt it was essential in indicating the sort of scene it was, and making it relevant and familiar in the most stark way possible."
Release
Box office
The film grossed $13,718,385 in the United States and Canada. It grossed £2,142,932 ($3.6 million) in the United Kingdom for a worldwide total of over $17 million.
Critical reception
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 86%, based on 35 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The website's consensus reads, "The Wings of the Dove patiently explores class divisions in early 20th century Europe through the well-written and beautifully acted travails of star-crossed lovers." On Metacritic, the film holds a score of 73 out of 100, based on 18 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
In his review in The New York Times, Stephen Holden called the film a "spellbinding screen adaptation [that] succeeds where virtually every other film translation of a James novel has stumbled...This magnificent film conveys an intimation of what values count the most, of what really matters, but it is also far too intelligent and sympathetic to human frailty to spell them out. You feel them most of all in the characters' unbridgeable silences."
Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, "The Wings of the Dove was a minor literary work that manages on screen to upstage both Washington Square and The Portrait of a Lady, two superior Henry James novels that came across as stiff and deliberate in recent film translations. This is a breakthrough for Softley, whose earlier films Backbeat and Hackers only hinted at the style and complexity he displays here, and a wonderful showcase for Roache, Elliott and Bonham Carter, who gives her best performance yet."
In Entertainment Weekly, Owen Gleiberman graded the film A and observed it "has a lush yet aching beauty that seems to saturate you as you watch it. I'm not just talking about visual beauty. I'm speaking of dramatic beauty, the exquisite moment-to-moment tension of characters who reveal themselves layer by layer, flowing from thought to feeling and back again, until thought and feeling become drama. Director Iain Softley has made one of the rare movies that evokes not just the essence of a great novel but the experience of it...The Wings of the Dove is, I think, a great film ... that confirms the arrival of major screen talents: director Softley, who works with sublime sensitivity to the intricacies of self-deception; Bonham Carter and Roache, who create a dazzlingly intimate chemistry within the propriety of Jamesian manners; and The Spitfire Grill's Alison Elliott, who, with her beatific charm and Mona Lisa smile, does one of the most difficult things an actress can — she brings goodness itself to life."
David Stratton of Variety stated the film "gives Helena Bonham Carter one of her best opportunities in a while, one which she seizes with relish, looking vibrant and totally convincing in her pivotal role...The Wings of the Dove may be typical of the school of British literary cinema, but Softley's handling of several key elements, including an unusually frank love scene in the later stages, is always inventive. Production values are of the highest standard."
Andrew Johnston, writing in Time Out New York, noted that "Softley and Amini risk making their film seriously anachronistic by emphasizing the plot's pulpish qualities, but the able cast helps make it work." He also observed that "the immaculate production design makes turn-of-the-century London and Venice seem vibrant and real. Wings is a masterful and deeply haunting film; it adds genuine relevance to a genre that typically leans toward the static."
Accolades
References
External links
Official website
The Wings of the Dove at IMDb
The Wings of the Dove at Box Office Mojo
The Wings of the Dove at Rotten Tomatoes |
I_Think_I'm_Go_Go | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Think_I'm_Go_Go | [
564
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Think_I'm_Go_Go"
] | "I Think I'm Go Go" is a 1980 song by the British new wave band Squeeze, released on their third album Argybargy. The lyrics were written by Chris Difford and the music was written by Glenn Tilbrook.
Background
Chris Difford said about the lyrics, "This was a song about touring, which could be a very strange experiences. It would get to the stage where I'd think 'I don't know where I am, I don't know which county I am in, what time we're onstage, or who I'm sleeping with.' 'I think I'm go go' was the turn of phrase in the band at the time." Difford continued, "This song was very popular in America. The first verse is about being in Amsterdam because a lot of our early gigs were in Holland. Glenn's dad lived out there and he used to arrange gigs for us. It was always good fun playing there. The second verse is about New York and mentions liquor stores, rodeos and PIX, which was an American radio station. The last verse is about London."
Glenn Tilbrook said of the song, "This was a step forward in our imaginations. It was influenced lyrically by the fact we have been whopped around the head and rendered bewildered by the amount of traveling we'd been doing. We all found it bewildering, but I had the sense that Chris probably felt this more so than the rest of us." Tilbrook also said, "It's very Beatles-like and also has a similar sound to our song, 'The Knack'. There's a direct through line from 'The Knack' to 'I Think I'm Go Go', with that sense of other-worldness. The use of strings added to that feeling. I wanted to contrast real strings with synth strings and change the feel between the verses. This meant the listener got a sense of being jolted out of one mood or another."
Critical opinion
AllMusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine said that "the group stretches into some spacy territory on "I Think I'm Go Go[.]"
== References == |
E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial | [
564
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial"
] | E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (or simply E.T.) is a 1982 American science fiction film produced and directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Melissa Mathison. It tells the story of Elliott, a boy who befriends an extraterrestrial, dubbed E.T., who is left behind on Earth. Along with his friends and family, Elliott must find a way to help E.T. find his way home. The film stars Dee Wallace, Henry Thomas, Peter Coyote, Robert MacNaughton and Drew Barrymore.
The film's concept was based on an imaginary friend that Spielberg created after his parents' divorce. In 1980, Spielberg met Mathison and developed a new story from the unrealized project Night Skies. In less than two months, Mathison wrote the first draft of the script, titled E.T. and Me, which went through two rewrites. The project was rejected by Columbia Pictures, who doubted its commercial potential. Universal Pictures eventually purchased the script for $1 million. Filming took place from September to December 1981 on a budget of $10.5 million. Unlike most films, E.T. was shot in rough chronological order to facilitate convincing emotional performances from the young cast. The animatronics for the film were designed by Carlo Rambaldi.
E.T. premiered as the closing film of the Cannes Film Festival on May 26, 1982, and was released in the United States on June 11, 1982. The film was a smash hit at the box office, surpassing Star Wars to become the highest-grossing film of all time, a record it held for eleven years until Spielberg's own Jurassic Park surpassed it in 1993. E.T. was near–universally acclaimed by critics, and is regarded as one of the greatest films of all time. It received nine nominations at the 55th Academy Awards, winning Best Original Score, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound, and Best Sound Editing in addition to being nominated for Best Picture and Best Director. It also won five Saturn Awards and two Golden Globe Awards. The film was re-released in 1985 and again in 2002 to celebrate its 20th anniversary, with altered shots, visual effects, and additional scenes. It was also re-released in IMAX on August 12, 2022, to celebrate its 40th anniversary. In 1994, the film was added to the United States National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, who deemed it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Plot
A race of diminutive aliens visit Earth at night to gather plant specimens in a California forest. One alien, fascinated by the distant lights of a San Fernando Valley neighborhood, separates from the group, before U.S. government agents arrive and chase the startled creature. The aliens are forced to depart before the agents can find them, leaving their lone member behind. While the agents search the forest, the creature takes shelter in a shed belonging to the family of ten-year-old Elliott Taylor. Initially scared by the creature, who runs away, Elliott spends the following day leaving a trail of Reese's Pieces to lure it back to his home, where he hides it in his room.
The following morning, Elliott feigns illness to stay off school and play with the creature, whom he dubs E.T. Elliott eventually introduces E.T. to his older brother, Michael, and seven-year-old sister Gertie, who agree to keep it hidden from their hardworking, single mother, Mary. When the children ask about his origins, E.T. displays telekinetic abilities by levitating several balls to represent his planetary system, and later demonstrates other extraordinary abilities by reviving a dead chrysanthemum and instantly healing a cut on Elliott's finger. As Elliott bonds with the creature, he begins to feel E.T.'s thoughts and emotions, being startled simultaneously with E.T. when the creature accidentally opens an umbrella in a different room.
At school, Elliott becomes intoxicated because, at home, E.T. is drinking beer and watching television. Sensing E.T.'s desire to be rescued, Elliott impulsively frees the frogs about to be vivisected in his biology class, inspiring the other children to follow his lead, and romantically kisses a girl he likes because E.T. is watching John Wayne kiss Maureen O'Hara in The Quiet Man (1952); Elliott is sent to the principal's office for his disruptive behavior. Inspired by a Buck Rogers comic strip, depicting the character calling for help with a communication device, E.T. decides to build a makeshift device to "phone home", using various parts around the Taylor home. E.T. also learns to speak English, and requests the children's help to build the device. They agree to help find the missing components, unaware that the agents have become suspicious they are harboring the alien.
On Halloween, the children disguise E.T. as a ghost and Elliott sneaks it to the forest, where they set up the device to call its people. Elliott begs E.T. to stay on Earth with him, before falling asleep and waking alone in the forest the following morning. He returns home to his worried family, while Michael searches for E.T., finding it pale and weakened, lying by a culvert. He takes E.T. home, where Elliott is also growing weaker, and reveal the creature to Mary just before government agents invade and quarantine the house. The lead agent, Keys, asks for Elliott's help to save E.T., stating that meeting aliens was his childhood dream and he considers E.T's arrival a genuine miracle. However, as the psychic bond between Elliott and E.T. fades, E.T. dies while Elliott returns back to normal. Left alone with the deceased alien, Elliott expresses his love to E.T. and its heart begins to glow and it is revived and restored to health. E.T. tells Elliott that its people are returning.
Elliott and Michael flee with E.T. on their bikes, flanked by Michael's friends who help them evade the pursuing authorities. Heading towards a roadblock, E.T. levitates the boys to safety and lands them in the forest. E.T.'s ship arrives, and it says goodbye to Michael and Gertie, who gives E.T. the chrysanthemum it previously revived. Elliott tearfully asks E.T. to stay, but it places its glowing finger on Elliott's head, affirming it will always be with him. The children, Mary, and Keys observe as E.T. boards the ship, which blasts off into space, leaving a rainbow in the sky.
Cast
Dee Wallace as Mary Taylor, a single mother to Elliott, Michael and Gertie
Henry Thomas as Elliott Taylor, a 10-year-old boy who befriends E.T.
Peter Coyote as Keys, a government agent bent on capturing E.T.
Robert MacNaughton as Michael Taylor, Elliott and Gertie's older brother
Drew Barrymore as Gertie Taylor, Elliott and Michael's younger sister
K.C. Martel as Greg
Sean Frye as Steve
C. Thomas Howell as Tyler
Erika Eleniak as Pretty Girl
David O'Dell as Schoolboy
Richard Swingler as Science Teacher
Frank Toth as Policeman
Robert Barton as Ultra Sound Man
Michael Darrell as Van Man
Pat Welsh as E.T. (voice; uncredited)
Production
Development
After his parents' divorce in 1960, Spielberg filled the void with an imaginary alien companion that he later recalled as "a friend who could be the brother [he] never had and a father that [he] didn't feel [he] had anymore". In 1978, he announced that he would shoot a film entitled Growing Up, which he would film in four weeks. However, the project was set aside due to delays on 1941, but the concept of making a small autobiographical film about childhood would stay with him. He also thought about a follow-up to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and began to develop a darker project he had planned with John Sayles called Night Skies, in which malevolent aliens terrorize a family.
Filming Raiders of the Lost Ark in Tunisia caused a sense of loneliness in Spielberg, far from his family and friends, and made memories of his childhood creation resurface. He told screenwriter Melissa Mathison about Night Skies, and developed a subplot from the failed project in which Buddy, the only friendly alien, befriends an autistic child. Buddy's abandonment on Earth in the script's final scene inspired the concept of E.T. Mathison wrote a first draft titled E.T. and Me in eight weeks, which Spielberg considered perfect. The script went through two more drafts, one by Matthew Robbins which deleted an "Eddie Haskell"–esque friend of Elliott's, named Lance. Robbins helped create the chase sequence and he suggested the scene where E.T. got drunk.
In mid-1981, while Raiders of the Lost Ark was being promoted, Columbia Pictures met with Spielberg to discuss the script, after having to develop Night Skies with the director as the intended sequel to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. However, Marvin Atonowsky, the head of Columbia Pictures' marketing and research development, concluded that it had limited commercial potential, believing that it would appeal to mostly young children. John Veitch, president of Columbia's worldwide productions, also felt that the script was not good or scary enough to be financially viable. On the advice of Atonowsky and Veitch, Columbia CEO Frank Price, who had already funneled nearly $1 million into the film’s development (mostly on creature designer Rick Baker’s alien models), was now calling it "a wimpy Walt Disney movie". He informed Spielberg that the project was officially being put into turnaround; Spielberg took the project to Sid Sheinberg, president of MCA, then the parent company of Universal Pictures. Spielberg told Sheinberg to acquire the E.T. script from Columbia Pictures, which he did for $1 million and struck a deal with Price in which Columbia would retain 5% of the film's net profits. Veitch later recalled that "I think [in 1982] we made more on that picture than we did on any of our films."
Pre-production
Carlo Rambaldi, who designed the aliens for Close Encounters of the Third Kind, was hired to design the animatronics for E.T. Rambaldi's own painting Women of Delta led him to give the creature a unique, extendable neck. Its face was inspired by those of Carl Sandburg, Albert Einstein and Ernest Hemingway. Producer Kathleen Kennedy visited the Jules Stein Eye Institute to study real and glass eyes. She hired Institute staffers to create E.T.'s eyes, which she felt were particularly important in engaging the audience. Four heads were created for filming, one as the main animatronic and the others for facial expressions, as well as a costume. A team of puppeteers controlled E.T.'s face with animatronics. Two little people, Tamara De Treaux and Pat Bilon, as well as 12-year-old Matthew DeMeritt, who was born without legs, took turns wearing the costume, depending on what scene was being filmed. DeMeritt actually walked on his hands and played all scenes where E.T. walked awkwardly or fell over. The head was placed above that of the actors, and the actors could see through slits in its chest. Caprice Roth, a professional mime, filled prosthetics to play E.T.'s hands. The puppet was created in three months at the cost of $1.5 million. Spielberg declared that it was "something that only a mother could love".
Mars, Incorporated refused to allow M&M's to be used in the film, believing that E.T. would frighten children. The Hershey Company was asked if Reese's Pieces could be used, and it agreed. This product placement resulted in a large increase in Reese's Pieces sales. Science and technology educator Henry Feinberg created E.T.'s communicator device.
Casting
Having worked with Cary Guffey on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Spielberg felt confident in working with a cast composed mostly of child actors. For the role of Elliott, he auditioned hundreds of boys, including Keith Coogan; before Jack Fisk suggested Henry Thomas for the role because Henry had played the part of Harry in the film Raggedy Man, which Fisk had directed. Thomas, who auditioned in an Indiana Jones costume, did not perform well in the formal testing, but got the filmmakers' attention in an improvised scene. Thoughts of his dead dog inspired his convincing tears. Robert MacNaughton auditioned eight times to play Michael, sometimes with boys auditioning for Elliott. Spielberg felt that Drew Barrymore had the right imagination for the mischievous Gertie after she impressed him with a story that she led a punk rock band. To capture her character's frightened reaction to E.T., Spielberg had the crew members dress up as clowns to scare her during the scenes where she had to scream. He enjoyed working with the children, and he later said that the experience made him feel ready to be a father. Ralph Macchio was considered for the role of Tyler, before it went to his eventual The Outsiders co-star C. Thomas Howell.
The major voice work of E.T. for the film was performed by Pat Welsh. She smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, which gave her voice a quality that sound effects creator Ben Burtt liked. She spent nine-and-a-half hours recording her part, and was paid $380 by Burtt for her services. He also recorded 16 other people and various animals to create E.T.'s "voice". These included Spielberg, actress Debra Winger, his sleeping wife sick with a cold, a burp from his University of Southern California film professor, raccoons, otters, and horses.
Doctors working at the USC Medical Center were recruited to play the ones who try to save E.T. after government agents take over Elliott's house. Spielberg felt that actors in the roles, performing lines of technical medical dialogue, would come across as unnatural. During post-production, he decided to cut a scene featuring Harrison Ford as the principal at Elliott's school. It featured his character reprimanding Elliott for his behavior in biology class and warning of the dangers of underage drinking. He is then taken aback as Elliott's chair rises from the floor, while E.T. is levitating his "phone" equipment up the stairs with Gertie. Ford's face is never seen. The footage of this scene was included on the film's 1996 LaserDisc release as a bonus feature. It was not included on the DVD and Blu-ray releases that followed.
Filming
Principal photography began in neighborhoods in Los Angeles County and in the San Fernando Valley on September 8, 1981. The project was filmed under the cover name A Boy's Life, as Spielberg did not want anyone to discover and plagiarize the plot. The actors had to read the script behind closed doors, and everyone on set had to wear an ID card. The shoot began with two days at Culver City High School, and the crew spent the next 11 days moving between locations at Northridge and Tujunga. The next 42 days were spent at Laird International Studios in Culver City for the interiors of Elliott's home. The crew shot at a redwood forest near Crescent City in Northern California for the production's last six days. The exterior Halloween scene and the "flying bicycle" chase scenes were filmed in Porter Ranch.
Spielberg shot the film in roughly chronological order to achieve convincing emotional performances from his cast; it was also done to help the child actors with the workload. Spielberg calculated that the film would hit home harder if the children were really saying goodbye to E.T. at the end. In the scene in which Michael first encounters E.T., his appearance caused MacNaughton to jump back and knock down the shelves behind him. The chronological shoot gave the young actors an emotional experience as they bonded with E.T., making the quarantine sequences more moving. Spielberg ensured that the puppeteers were kept away from the set to maintain the illusion of a real alien. For the first time in his career, Spielberg did not storyboard most of the film, in order to facilitate spontaneity in the performances. The film was shot so adults, except for Dee Wallace, are never seen from the waist up in its first half, as a tribute to the cartoons of Tex Avery. According to Spielberg, the scene in which E.T. disguises himself as a stuffed toy in Elliott's closet was suggested by fellow director Robert Zemeckis after he read a draft of the screenplay that Spielberg had sent him. In between takes, the young actors spent time doing activities such as riding bicycles around the sound stages, playing Dungeons & Dragons, the game that Elliott, Michael, Steve, Tyler and Greg play in a scene early in the film, and attending school lessons. The shoot was completed in 61 days, four ahead of schedule.
In a 2022 interview, Sean Frye, who played Steve, revealed how the visual effect close-up shots for the climax of the "flying bicycle" chase scene were filmed and reflected on the experience, saying: "We were on these rigs ... They're pulling the trees backwards, past us on tracks, so it looks like we're going through and up and through and over to create this illusion that we're going forward when we're going nowhere. Then the pushing and pulling of the things so that the bike is up and down, and we can get the 'Whoaaaa' effects. That was great." BMX riders Robert Cardoza, Greg Maes, and David Lee served as stunt doubles for the scene.
Music
Spielberg's regular collaborator John Williams described the challenge of creating a score that would generate sympathy for such an odd-looking creature. As with their previous collaborations, Spielberg liked every theme Williams composed and had it included. Spielberg loved the music for the final chase so much that he edited the sequence to suit it. Williams took a modernist approach, especially with his use of polytonality, which refers to the sound of two different keys played simultaneously. The Lydian mode can also be used in a polytonal way. Williams combined polytonality and the Lydian mode to express a mystic, dreamlike and heroic quality. His theme, emphasizing coloristic instruments such as the harp, piano, celesta, and other keyboards, as well as percussion, suggests E.T.'s childlike nature and his "machine". The soundtrack album was first released on June 11, 1982, the same day as the film. An audiobook companion album featuring Williams's score, produced by Quincy Jones and narrated by Michael Jackson, was released on November 15, 1982, exactly two weeks prior to Jackson's acclaimed sixth studio album Thriller.
Themes
Spielberg drew the story of the film from his parents' divorce. Gary Arnold of The Washington Post called it "essentially a spiritual autobiography, a portrait of the filmmaker as a typical suburban kid set apart by an uncommonly fervent, mystical imagination." References to Spielberg's childhood occur throughout: Elliott fakes illness by holding a thermometer to the bulb in his lamp while covering his face with a heating pad, a trick frequently employed by the young Spielberg. Michael picking on Elliott echoes Spielberg's teasing of his younger sisters, and Michael's evolution from tormentor to protector reflects how Spielberg had to take care of his sisters after their father left.
Critics have focused on the parallels between the lives of E.T. and Elliott, who is "alienated" by the loss of his father. Pauline Kael noted that "Elliot (his name begins with an 'E' and ends with a T.') is a dutiful, too sober boy who never takes off his invisible thinking cap; the telepathic communication he develops with E.T. eases his cautious, locked-up worries, and he begins to act on his impulses." A. O. Scott of The New York Times wrote that while E.T. "is the more obvious and desperate foundling," Elliott "suffers in his own way from the want of a home." At the film's heart is the theme of growing up. Some critics have suggested that Spielberg's portrayal of suburbia is very dark, contrary to popular belief. According to A.O. Scott, "the suburban milieu, with its unsupervised children and unhappy parents, its broken toys and brand-name junk food, could have come out of a Raymond Carver story." Charles Taylor of Salon.com wrote that "Spielberg's movies, despite the way they're often characterized, are not Hollywood idealizations of families and the suburbs. The homes here bear what the cultural critic Karal Ann Marling called 'the marks of hard use'." Relatedly, scholarship has emerged on the film regarding its subversion of the nuclear family dynamic, in which Elliott is growing up with a physically absent father and an emotionally absent mother; this aspect of the movie offers an exploration of upbringing within a nontraditional family structure.
Other critics found religious parallels between E.T. and Jesus. Andrew Nigels described E.T.'s story as "crucifixion by military science" and "resurrection by love and faith." According to Spielberg biographer Joseph McBride, Universal Pictures appealed directly to the Christian market, with a poster reminiscent of Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam (more specifically the "fingers touching" detail) and a logo reading "Peace". Spielberg answered that he did not intend the film to be a religious parable, joking, "If I ever went to my mother and said, 'Mom, I've made this movie that's a Christian parable,' what do you think she'd say? She has a Kosher restaurant on Pico and Doheny in Los Angeles."
Several writers have seen the movie as a modern fairy tale. Critic Henry Sheehan described the film as a retelling of Peter Pan from the perspective of a Lost Boy (Elliott): E.T. cannot survive physically on Earth, as Pan could not survive emotionally in Neverland; government scientists take the place of Neverland's pirates. Furthering the parallels, there is a scene in the film where Mary reads Peter Pan to Gertie. Vincent Canby of The New York Times similarly observed that the film "freely recycles elements from" Peter Pan and The Wizard of Oz. Kael writes that "from the opening in the dense, vernal woodland that adjoins Elliot's suburb (it's where we first E.T.'s frightened sounds), the film has the soft, mysterious inexorability of the classic tale of enchantment. The little shed in the back of the house where Elliott tosses in a ball and E.T. sends it back is part of a dreamscape."
Producer Kathleen Kennedy noted that an important theme of the film is tolerance, which would be central to future Spielberg films such as Schindler's List. Having been a loner as a teenager, Spielberg described it as "a minority story". Spielberg's characteristic theme of communication is partnered with the ideal of mutual understanding; he has suggested that the story's central alien-human friendship is an analogy for how real-world adversaries can learn to overcome their differences.
Reception
Release and sales
E.T. was previewed in Houston, Texas, and premiered at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival's closing gala on May 26, 1982, and was released in the United States on June 11, 1982. It opened at number one at the US box office with a gross of $11 million, and stayed at the top of the box office for six weeks; it then fluctuated between the first and second positions until October, before returning to the top spot for the final time in December during a brief holiday season re-release. In its second weekend, it recorded the highest-grossing second weekend of all time, surpassing the record of $10,765,687 set by Superman II in 1981. In its fourth weekend, it recorded the highest-grossing weekend of all time, surpassing the record of $16,706,592 set earlier that year by Rocky III. It had a record eight weekends with a gross of over $10 million, a feat not matched until Home Alone (1990), and set a record for being at number one for 16 weeks in total.
The film began its international rollout in Australia on November 26, 1982, and grossed $839,992 in its first 10 days from nine theatres, setting five weekly house records and 43 daily records. In South Africa, it opened in late November and grossed $724,340 in eight days from 14 screens, setting 13 weekly highs. In France, it opened on December 1, and had 930,000 admission in its first five days on 250 screens, setting an all-time record in Paris for most daily admissions (Saturday, December 4). In Japan, it opened on December 4, and grossed $1,757,527 in two days from 35 theatres in 11 cities, setting 10 house records on Saturday and 14 on Sunday. In the United Kingdom, it opened on December 9 after a charity performance in London and grossed a record £1 million in its opening weekend. The film added another 138 screens in Japan on December 11, with advance sales of 1.3 million tickets. It later opened in the Philippines in January 1983. In Finland, Norway, and Sweden, the film had minimum age ratings of 8, 12, and 11, respectively, while Denmark had no minimum age limit. There were Swedish people who were opposed to the age limit.
In 1983, E.T. surpassed Star Wars to become the highest-grossing film of all time; by the end of its theatrical run, it had grossed $359 million in the United States and Canada and $619 million worldwide. Box Office Mojo estimates that the film sold over 120 million tickets in its initial U.S. theatrical run. Spielberg earned $500,000 a day from his share of the profits, while The Hershey Company's profits rose 65% due to the film's prominent placement of Reese's Pieces. The "Official E.T. Fan Club" offered photographs, a newsletter that let readers "relive the film's unforgettable moments [and] favorite scenes", and a vinyl record with "phone home" and other sound clips.
The film was also a merchandising success, with dolls selling 15 million units by September 1982 and becoming the best-selling toy that Christmas season. E.T. went on to generate over $1 billion in merchandise sales by 1998. Following the success of the film, Kuwahara, the company that created the BMX bikes featured in the film, began producing red and white "E.T." models in three price and quality levels. Kuwahara reissued the E.T. model in 2002, as part of the film's 20th anniversary, and again in 2022 as part of the film's 40th anniversary.
The film was re-released in 1985 and 2002, earning another $60 million and $68 million respectively, for a worldwide total of $792 million with $435 million from the United States and Canada. It held the global record until it was surpassed by Jurassic Park, another Spielberg film, in 1993, although it managed to hold on to the United States and Canada record for a further four years, until the release of the Special Edition of Star Wars.
It was re-released in IMAX on August 12, 2022, in the United States and Canada, to commemorate the film's 40th anniversary, alongside an IMAX and RealD 3D reissue of another Spielberg film Jaws scheduled for September 2. Jim Orr, Universal's president of distribution remarked "No filmmaker, it's fair to say, has had a greater or more enduring impact on American cinema or has created more indelible cinematic memories for tens of billions of people worldwide. We couldn't think of a more perfect way to celebrate the anniversary of E.T. and the first Universal-Spielberg summer blockbuster, Jaws, than to allow audiences to experience these films in a way they've never been able to before." The IMAX release grossed $490,000 on its first day from 389 theaters, for a three-day total of $1.07 million and a $438 million running total.
Home media
E.T. was eventually released on VHS and LaserDisc on October 27, 1988. The videos were priced with a recommended retail price of $24.95, the lowest initial price at the time for a major movie compared to the normal price of $89.95. To combat piracy, the tapeguards and tape hubs on the videocassettes were colored green, and the tape itself was affixed with a small, holographic sticker of the 1963 Universal logo (much like the holograms on a credit card), and encoded with Macrovision. The film doubled the record pre-orders of Cinderella released the same month and went on to sell over 15 million VHS units in the United States, and grossed over $250 million in video sales revenue. The VHS cassette was also rented over six million times during its first two weeks in 1988, a record it held until the VHS release of Batman the following year. Conservative Christians who were still angry about Universal's release of The Last Temptation of Christ earlier in the year called for a boycott of this release. Initial orders internationally exceeded $30 million despite the film often being sold at full price, setting records in the United Kingdom with over 81,000 units and Australia with 35,500 units. It initially shipped 152,000 units in Japan and 87,000 in Germany. In 1991, Sears began selling E.T. videocassettes exclusively at their stores as part of a holiday promotion. It was reissued on VHS and LaserDisc again in 1996, with the latter including a 90-minute documentary produced and directed by Laurent Bouzereau; it included interviews with Spielberg, producer Kathleen Kennedy, composer John Williams, and other cast and crew members, as well as two theatrical trailers, an isolated music score, deleted scenes, and still galleries. The VHS included a 10-minute version of the same documentary from the LaserDisc. Both 1996 home video releases of the film were also THX certfied as well. The 2012 release of E.T. on DVD and Blu-ray grossed $24.4 million in sales revenue as of 2017 in the United States.
Critical response
Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and wrote, "It works as science fiction, it's sometimes as scary as a monster movie, and at the end, when the lights go up, there's not a dry eye in the house." He later added it to his canon of "Great Movies", structuring the essay as a letter to his grandchildren about watching it with them. Of the scene with the flying bicycles, he writes: "I remember when I saw the movie at Cannes: Even the audience there, people who had seen thousands of movies, let out a whoop at that moment." Michael Sragow of Rolling Stone called Spielberg "a space age Jean Renoir. ... for the first time, [he] has put his breathtaking technical skills at the service of his deepest feelings". Derek Malcolm of The Guardian wrote that "E.T. is a superlative piece of popular cinema [...] a dream of childhood, brilliantly orchestrated to involve not only children but anyone able to remember being one". Leonard Maltin included it in his list of "100 Must-See Films of the 20th Century" as one of only two movies from the 1980s. Political commentator George Will was one of few to pan the film, feeling it spread subversive notions about childhood and science.
The film holds a 99% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 145 reviews, and an average rating of 9.3/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Playing as both an exciting sci-fi adventure and a remarkable portrait of childhood, Steven Spielberg's touching tale of a homesick alien remains a piece of movie magic for young and old." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 92/100 based on 30 reviews. In addition to the film's wide acclaim, President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan were moved by it after a screening at the White House on June 27, 1982. Princess Diana was in tears after watching it. On September 17, 1982, it was screened at the United Nations, and Spielberg received a UN Peace Medal. CinemaScore reported that audiences polled during the opening weekend gave the film a rare "A+" grade, the first film to earn that grade.
Accolades
The film was nominated for nine Oscars at the 55th Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Gandhi won that award, but its director, Richard Attenborough, said, "I was certain that not only would E.T. win, but that it should win. It was inventive, powerful, wonderful. I make more mundane movies." E.T. won four Academy Awards: Best Original Score, Best Sound (Robert Knudson, Robert Glass, Don Digirolamo, and Gene Cantamessa), Best Sound Effects Editing (Charles L. Campbell and Ben Burtt), and Best Visual Effects (Carlo Rambaldi, Dennis Muren, and Kenneth F. Smith). At the 40th Golden Globe Awards, the film won Best Picture in the Drama category and Best Original Score; it was also nominated for Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best New Male Star for Henry Thomas. The Los Angeles Film Critics Association awarded the film Best Picture, Best Director, and a "New Generation Award" for Melissa Mathison. The film won Saturn Awards for Best Science Fiction Film, Best Writing, Best Special Effects, Best Music, and Best Poster Art, while Henry Thomas, Robert McNaughton, and Drew Barrymore won Young Artist Awards. In addition to his Academy, Golden Globe and Saturn, composer John Williams won two Grammy Awards and a BAFTA for the score. The film's audiobook album also won the Grammy Award for Best Recording for Children at the 26th Annual Grammy Awards in 1984.
Legacy
In American Film Institute polls, the film has been voted the 24th greatest film of all time, the 44th most heart-pounding, and the sixth most inspiring. Other AFI polls rated it as having the 14th greatest music score and as the third greatest science-fiction one. The line "E.T. phone home" was ranked 15th on AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes list, and 48th on Premiere's top movie quote list. In 2005, it topped a Channel 4 poll in the UK of the 100 greatest family films, and was listed by Time as one of the 100 best movies ever made.
In 2003, Entertainment Weekly called the film the eighth most "tear-jerking"; in 2007, in a survey of both films and television series, the magazine declared it the seventh greatest work of science-fiction media in the past 25 years. The Times also named it as their ninth favorite alien in a film, calling it "one of the best-loved non-humans in popular culture". It is among the top ten in the BFI list of the 50 films you should see by the age of 14. In 1994, it was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2011, ABC aired Best in Film: The Greatest Movies of Our Time, revealing the results of a poll of fans conducted by ABC and People magazine: It was selected as the fifth best film of all time and the second best science fiction film. On October 22, 2012, Madame Tussauds unveiled wax likenesses of E.T. at six of its international locations.
A species of sponge, Advhena magnifica, was given the common name "E.T. sponge" due to its resemblance of the creature.
In 2023, actress Rita Moreno, who starred in Spielberg's 2021 film adaptation of the musical West Side Story, named E.T. as one of her top five favorite films, saying "Number one, it has superb child actors, which can really only happen because of Steven Spielberg. He is just great with children because he’s like a child himself. It’s a very interesting phenomenon."
20th anniversary version
An extended version of the film, dubbed the "Special Edition" (currently out of circulation), including altered dialogue and visual effects, premiered at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on March 16, 2002; it was released on home media six days later. Certain shots of E.T. had bothered Spielberg since 1982, as he did not have enough time to perfect the animatronics. Computer-generated imagery (CGI), provided by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), was used to modify several shots, including ones of E.T. running in the opening sequence and being spotted in the cornfield. The spaceship's design was also altered to include more lights. The first flying sequence where Elliott and E.T. fly on their bicycle through the forest now had the cape of Elliott's Halloween costume flap in the wind as it appeared to have originally been intended to be, a change done to have the sequence, particularly the iconic shot of them flying past the Moon, match the film's poster and the logo of Spielberg's production company Amblin Entertainment.
Scenes shot for but not included in the original version were introduced. These included E.T. taking a bath and Gertie telling Mary that Elliott went to the forest on Halloween. Mary's dialogue, during the offscreen argument with Michael about his Halloween costume, was altered to replace the word "terrorist" with "hippie" in response to the September 11th terrorist attacks. Spielberg did not add the scene featuring Harrison Ford, feeling that would reshape the film too drastically. He became more sensitive about the scene where gun-wielding federal agents confront Elliott and his escaping friends and had them digitally replaced with walkie-talkies. Spielberg later admitted that he regretted editing out the guns from the film, stating that the film should be left untouched to represent the culture of its time.
At the premiere, John Williams conducted a live performance of the score. The new release grossed $68 million in total, with $35 million coming from Canada and the United States. The changes to it, particularly the escape scene, were criticized as political correctness. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wondered "Remember those guns the feds carried? Thanks to the miracle of digital, they're now brandishing walkie-talkies. ... Is this what two decades have done to free speech?" Chris Hewitt of Empire wrote, "The changes are surprisingly low-key ... while ILM's CGI E.T. is used sparingly as a complement to Carlo Rambaldi's extraordinary puppet." South Park ridiculed many of the changes in the 2002 episode "Free Hat".
The two-disc DVD release which followed on October 22, 2002, contained the original theatrical and 20th Anniversary extended versions of the film. The features on disc one included deleted scenes, an introduction with Steven Spielberg, a "Reunion" featurette and a "Look Back" featurette. Disc two included a 24-minute documentary about the 20th Anniversary edition changes, a 20th Anniversary premiere featurette, John Williams' performance at the 2002 premiere, a Space Exploration game, a trailer, cast and filmmaker bios, production notes, and the still galleries ported from the 1996 LaserDisc set. The two-disc edition, as well as a three-disc collector's edition containing a "making of" book, a certificate of authenticity, a film cell, and special features that were unavailable on the two-disc edition, were placed in moratorium on December 31, 2002. Later, it was re-released on DVD as a single-disc re-issue in 2005, featuring only the 20th Anniversary version.
In a June 2011, interview, Spielberg said
[In the future,] ... There's going to be no more digital enhancements or digital additions to anything based on any film I direct. ... When people ask me which E.T. they should look at, I always tell them to look at the original 1982 E.T. If you notice, when we did put out E.T. we put out two E.T.s. We put out the digitally enhanced version with the additional scenes and for no extra money, in the same package, we put out the original '82 version. I always tell people to go back to the '82 version.
For the film's 30th anniversary release on Blu-ray in 2012 and for its 35th anniversary release on Ultra HD Blu-ray in 2017, as well as its corresponding digital releases, only the original theatrical edition was released, with the 20th anniversary edition now out of circulation.
Other portrayals
Atari, Inc. produced a video game based on the film for the Atari 2600 and hired Howard Scott Warshaw to program the game. The game was rushed in five weeks to release within the 1982 holiday season. Released in Christmas 1982, the game was critically panned, with nearly every aspect of the game facing heavy criticism. It has since been considered to be one of the worst video games ever made. It was also a commercial failure. It has been cited as a major contributing factor to the video game industry crash of 1983, and has been frequently referenced and mocked in popular culture as a cautionary tale about the dangers of rushed game development and studio interference. In what was initially deemed an urban legend, reports from 1983 stated that as a result of overproduction and returns, millions of unsold cartridges were secretly buried in an Alamogordo, New Mexico landfill and covered with a layer of concrete. In April 2014, diggers hired to investigate the claim confirmed that the Alamogordo landfill contained many E.T. cartridges, among other games.
William Kotzwinkle, author of the film's novelization, wrote a sequel, E.T.: The Book of the Green Planet, which was published in 1985. In the novel, E.T. returns home to the planet Brodo Asogi, but is subsequently demoted and sent into exile. He attempts to return to Earth by effectively breaking all of Brodo Asogi's laws.
E.T. Adventure, a theme park ride based on the film and drawing inspiration from The Book of the Green Planet, debuted at Universal Studios Florida on June 7, 1990. The $40 million attraction features the title character saying goodbye to visitors by name, along with his home planet. In 1998, E.T. was licensed to appear in television public service announcements produced by the Progressive Corporation. The announcements featured his voice reminding drivers to "buckle up" their seat belts. Traffic signs depicting a stylized E.T. wearing one were installed on selected roads around the United States. The following year, British Telecommunications launched the "Stay in Touch" campaign, with him as the star of various advertisements. The campaign's slogan was "B.T. has E.T.", with "E.T." also taken to mean "extra technology".
At Spielberg's suggestion, George Lucas included members of E.T.'s species as background characters in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. E.T. was one of the franchises featured in the 2015 crossover game Lego Dimensions. E.T. appears as one of the playable characters, and a world based on the film where players can receive side quests from the characters is available. During E.T.'s trailer in the sketch for the series known as Meet that Hero!, Supergirl explains his backstory and how they have many things in common, including being aliens that crashed down to Earth and how they both have superpowers that they use to help other people. In 2017, video game developer Zen Studios released a pinball adaptation as part of the Universal Classics add-on pack for the virtual pinball game Pinball FX 3. It features 3-D animated figures of Elliot, E.T. and his spacecraft.
Sequels
Cancelled sequel
In July 1982, during the film's first theatrical run, Spielberg and Mathison wrote a treatment for a sequel to be titled E.T. II: Nocturnal Fears, which would have shown Elliott and his friends getting kidnapped by evil aliens, and attempting to contact E.T. for help. Spielberg decided against pursuing it, feeling it "would do nothing but rob the original of its virginity. E.T. is not about going back to the planet". In 2022, Henry Thomas said that he hopes a feature-length sequel never gets made, but added "I guarantee you, there are a few men in a very big room now salivating and using their Abacus and slide rules to come up with some really, really big numbers."
Short film sequel
On November 28, 2019, during NBC's broadcast of the 93rd Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Xfinity released a four-minute commercial directed by Lance Acord, calling it a "short film sequel" to the original film, titled A Holiday Reunion. The commercial stars Henry Thomas, reprising his role as Elliott, now an adult with a family of his own. Julianne Hoyak played his wife, Grace, while Zebastin Borjeau and Alivia Drews played their children, Elliott Jr. and Maggie. The story follows E.T. as he returns to Earth for the holiday season, and focuses on the importance of bringing family together. References and nods to the original film are featured, such as a photo of the Taylors' family dog Harvey on the kitchen fridge and a replica of the makeshift Speak & Spell communication device.
The commercial utilizes a practical puppet for E.T. himself. In an interview with Deadline, Acord said that he went this route in order to elicit more realistic performances from the actors, the same way Spielberg did on the original film. John Williams' score from the original film is mixed into the commercial. Spielberg was consulted by Comcast (parent company of NBCUniversal, which itself owns Universal Pictures) before production on the commercial began.
Peter Intermaggio, SVP for Marketing Communications for Comcast remarked on the making of the commercial: "Our goal is to show how Xfinity and Sky technology connects family, friends and loved ones, which is so important during the holidays ... The classic friendship between E.T. and Elliott resonates around the world." Before the commercial was released, Thomas assured that viewers would "get everything they want out of a sequel without the messy bits that could destroy the beauty of the original and the special place it has in people's minds and hearts ... Looking at the storyboards, I could see exactly why Steven was really behind it, because the integrity of the story isn't lost in this retelling."
The full commercial also played on Syfy and theatrically during cinema pre-shows through January 5, 2020, and a two–minute version was edited for Comcast's British subsidiary, Sky UK.
See also
List of films set around Halloween
The Alien (unproduced film)
Notes
References
Bibliography
External links
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial at IMDb
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial at AllMovie
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial at Box Office Mojo
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial at Rotten Tomatoes
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial at the TCM Movie Database
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial essay by Daniel Eagan in America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, A&C Black, 2010 ISBN 0826429777, pages 774–775 America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry |
Rodney_Gordon | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_Gordon | [
565
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_Gordon"
] | Rodney H Gordon (2 February 1933 – 30 May 2008) was an English architect. He was the primary architect of the Tricorn Centre, Portsmouth, and Trinity Square, Gateshead. Architecturally, his works were primarily in concrete; he was said to be a Brutalist and his buildings have been described as "dramatic, sculptural and enormous" as well as "futuristic".
Biography
Gordon was born on 2 February 1933 in Wanstead, East London to Chilean-born Carmen F (Poirier) and East London-born Hyman Jacob Hyman. His mother was from the naval port of Punta Arenas, Tierra Del Fuego, the southernmost city on Earth, overlooking the Straits of Magellan. Situated astride one of the world's historic trade routes, its prosperity has risen and fallen with that trade. Gordon's mother left there sometime in the 1920s and returned to London, England, where her parents had been living sometime before they left for Chile around 1903. They had initially come to London in the 1880s or 1890s to escape the Pogroms of Russia and Eastern Europe.
He went to University College Hospital Medical School at the age of 16 but then, two years later inspired by the Festival of Britain, he switched to the Hammersmith School of Building, going on to the Architectural Association School of Architecture, where he studied under the distinguished German Jewish modernist architect and urban planner Arthur Korn, before graduating in 1957. He then went to work at the London County Council (LCC) architects department for which he designed his first great work, the Michael Faraday Memorial at Elephant and Castle. In 1959 he was introduced to Owen Luder by a colleague from the LCC and by the end of the year he was working for him in the Owen Luder Partnership for which he designed the Eros House. In the 1970s he founded Batir International Architects, which later became Tripos Architects, with Ray Baum and Larry Abbot. It was during this time, at the age of 42, that he suffered a heart attack from overwork. In 1979 he designed his last work for Batir, a bronze- and aluminium-clad commercial complex on St James's Street, London.
Personal life
He was married and had one child but was later divorced. He was a passionate skier and founded the Uphill Ski Club which helps teach the physically handicapped to ski.
He died on 30 May 2008 at the age of 75.
References
External links
Documentary snapshot of the Tricorn Center with comments by the architect Rodney Gordon |
Target_House,_London | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_House,_London | [
565
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_House,_London"
] | Target House is a modern commercial building designed by British modernist architect Rodney Gordon (1933–2008) of Tripos Architects. It is located at 66 St James's Street, London, at the junction with St James's Place.
Design and construction
The building was designed in 1979 and completed in 1984. It replaced Map House, designed by R.J. Worley. The anodised bronze and aluminum cladding of the building made it a departure from the "brutalist" concrete designs more usually produced by Gordon.
Reception
Charles McKean, the architecture correspondent for The Times, praised Target House, then known just as 66 St James's Street, for its boldness and panache but doubted the medieval credentials of the building claimed by the designers. He pointed out that the area had been developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and was not known for its medieval architecture apart from the faux medievalism of the nineteenth century.
McKean argued that the reference to the medieval was a red-herring and the building was in fact more notable for its modernity and affinity with the "space programme". He speculated that the chopped-off towers at roof-line, that made the spectator say "ouch" and were the least successful part of the design in his opinion, were really the result of planning regulations that restricted the height of new buildings in the area.
Occupancy
The design included retail premises, offices and flats and the building was used in that form for many years. The ground floor is still occupied by the Stern Pissarro Gallery, founded in 1964. In February 2013, a successful planning application was made to Westminster Council to allow a change of use of the first to fourth floors from B1 (offices) to C3 (residential) use.
Ownership
In 2012, the building was sold by Standard Life Investments to Albert Hay's Capital and City Group for £10.5 million.
References
External links
Colliers: 66 St James's Street, London, SW1. |
Super_Bowl | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl | [
565
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl"
] | The Super Bowl is the annual league championship game of the National Football League (NFL) of the United States. It has served as the final game of every NFL season since 1966, replacing the NFL Championship Game. Since 2022, the game has been played on the second Sunday in February. Prior Super Bowls were played on Sundays in early to mid-January from 1967 to 1978, late January from 1979 to 2003, and the first Sunday of February from 2004 to 2021. Winning teams are awarded the Vince Lombardi Trophy, named after the eponymous coach who won the first two Super Bowls. Because the NFL restricts the use of its "Super Bowl" trademark, it is frequently referred to as the "big game" or other generic terms by non-sponsoring corporations. The day the game is held is commonly referred to as "Super Bowl Sunday" or simply "Super Sunday".
The game was created as part of a 1966 merger agreement between the NFL and the competing American Football League (AFL) to have their 'best' teams compete for a championship. It was originally called the AFL–NFL World Championship Game until the "Super Bowl" moniker was adopted in 1969's Super Bowl III. The first four Super Bowls from 1967 to 1970 were played prior to the merger, with the NFL and AFL each winning two. After the merger in 1970, the 10 AFL teams and three of the NFL teams formed the American Football Conference (AFC) and the remaining 13 NFL teams formed the National Football Conference (NFC). All games since 1971's Super Bowl V have been played between the best team from each of the two conferences, with the AFC and NFC tied at 27 wins each.
Among the NFL's current 32 teams, 20 (11 NFC, nine AFC) have won a Super Bowl and 15 (eight AFC, seven NFC) hold multiple titles. The AFC's Pittsburgh Steelers and New England Patriots have the most Super Bowl titles at six each. The Patriots also have the most Super Bowl appearances at 11. The Patriots and the Denver Broncos of the AFC hold the record for the most defeats in the Super Bowl at five each. The Baltimore Ravens of the AFC and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the NFC are the only franchises to be undefeated in multiple Super Bowls, having each won two. Among the 12 teams who have not won a Super Bowl, the AFC's Cleveland Browns, Houston Texans, and Jacksonville Jaguars, and the NFC's Detroit Lions are the only four to have not appeared in the game.
The Super Bowl is among the world's most-watched single sporting events and frequently commands the largest audience among all American broadcasts during the year. It is second only to the UEFA Champions League final as the most watched annual club sporting event worldwide, and the seven most-watched broadcasts in American television history are Super Bowls. Commercial airtime during the Super Bowl broadcast is the most expensive of the year because of the high viewership, leading to companies regularly developing their most expensive advertisements for the broadcast and commercial viewership becoming an integral part of the event. The Super Bowl is also the second-largest event for American food consumption, behind Thanksgiving dinner.
Origin
Since the turn of the 20th century, college football teams from across the United States have scheduled "bowl games" against each other. The original "bowl game" was the Rose Bowl Game in Pasadena, California, which was first played in 1902 as the "Tournament East–West football game" as part of the Pasadena Tournament of Roses. In 1923, the Tournament East-West football game moved to the new Rose Bowl Stadium; the stadium got its name from the fact that the game played there was part of the Tournament of Roses and that it was shaped like a bowl, much like the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut. The Tournament of Roses football game thus eventually came to be known as the Rose Bowl Game. Exploiting the Rose Bowl Game's popularity, post-season college football contests were created for Miami (the Orange Bowl), New Orleans (the Sugar Bowl), and El Paso (the Sun Bowl) in 1935, and for Dallas (the Cotton Bowl) in 1937. By the time the first Super Bowl was played, the term "bowl" for any major American football game was well established.
For four decades after its 1920 inception, the NFL successfully fended off several rival leagues. In 1960, it encountered its most serious competitor when the American Football League (AFL) was formed. The AFL vied with the NFL for players and fans. After the AFL's inaugural season, AFL commissioner Joe Foss sent an invitation to the NFL on January 14, 1961, to schedule a "World Playoff" game between the two leagues' champions, beginning with the upcoming 1961 season. The first World Playoff game, if actually played, would have matched up the AFL champion Houston Oilers against the NFL champion Green Bay Packers.
In the mid-1960s, Lamar Hunt, owner of the AFL's Kansas City Chiefs, first used the term "Super Bowl" to refer to the AFL–NFL championship game in the merger meetings. Hunt later said the name was likely in his head because his children had been playing with a Super Ball toy; a vintage example of the ball is on display at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. In a July 25, 1966, letter to NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, Hunt wrote, "I have kiddingly called it the 'Super Bowl,' which obviously can be improved upon."
The leagues' owners chose the name "AFL–NFL Championship Game", but in July 1966 the Kansas City Star quoted Hunt in discussing "the Super Bowl—that's my term for the championship game between the two leagues", and the media immediately began using the term. Although the league stated in 1967 that "not many people like it", asking for suggestions and considering alternatives such as "Merger Bowl" and "The Game", the Associated Press reported that "Super Bowl" "grew and grew and grew—until it reached the point that there was Super Week, Super Sunday, Super Teams, Super Players, ad infinitum". "Super Bowl" became official beginning with the third annual game.
Roman numerals are used to identify each Super Bowl, rather than the year in which it is held, since the fifth edition, in January 1971. The sole exception to this naming convention tradition occurred with Super Bowl 50, which was played on February 7, 2016, following the 2015 regular season. The following year, the nomenclature returned to Roman numerals for Super Bowl LI, following the 2016 regular season.
After the NFL's Green Bay Packers won the first two Super Bowls, some team owners feared for the future of the merger. At the time, many doubted the competitiveness of AFL teams compared with their NFL counterparts, though that perception changed when the AFL's New York Jets defeated the heavily favored NFL contender Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III in Miami. One year later, the AFL's Kansas City Chiefs defeated the NFL's Minnesota Vikings 23–7 in Super Bowl IV in New Orleans, which was the final AFL–NFL World Championship Game played before the merger. Beginning with the 1970 season, the NFL realigned into two conferences; the former AFL teams plus three NFL teams (the Baltimore Colts, Pittsburgh Steelers, and Cleveland Browns) would constitute the American Football Conference (AFC), while the remaining NFL clubs would form the National Football Conference (NFC). The champions of the two conferences would play each other in the Super Bowl.
The winning team receives the Vince Lombardi Trophy, named after the former coach of the Green Bay Packers, who won the first two Super Bowl games as well as five NFL championships preceding the merger in 1961, 1962, 1965, 1966 and 1967. Following Lombardi's death in September 1970, the trophy was named after him. The first trophy awarded under the new name was presented to the Baltimore Colts following their win in Super Bowl V in Miami.
Game history
The Super Bowl was held in January from its inception in 1967 until 2001 But Return for one last super bowl in January in Super Bowl XXXVII, when the week of games following the September 11 attacks were postponed and rescheduled, extending the season by a week and Beginning with Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002, the Super Bowl was scheduled for the first Sunday in February until the schedule expansion of the 2021 season moved the game to the second Sunday.
The current NFL schedule begins on the weekend immediately after Labor Day (the first Monday in September). That weekend is the first of an 18-week regular season, followed by three weeks of playoff games and one week for the Pro Bowl. The Super Bowl is contested the week after the Pro Bowl. This schedule has been in effect since an 18th week (and 17th regular season game) were added to the NFL schedule for the 2021 season, with Super Bowl LVI on February 13, 2022, the first to be played under this format.
The Pittsburgh Steelers and New England Patriots are tied with a record six Super Bowl wins. The Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers have five victories each, while the Packers, Chiefs and New York Giants have four. Fourteen other NFL franchises have won at least one Super Bowl.
The Patriots own the record for most Super Bowl appearances with eleven. The Cowboys, Steelers, Broncos and the 49ers are tied for second with eight appearances apiece, reaching that milestone in this respective order. Bill Belichick owns the record for the most Super Bowl wins (eight) and appearances (twelve: nine times as head coach, once as assistant head coach, and twice as defensive coordinator) by an individual. Tom Brady has the most Super Bowl starts (ten) and wins as a player (seven), while Charles Haley has the second-most wins among players with five.
Eight teams have appeared in Super Bowl games without a win. The Minnesota Vikings were the first team to appear four times without a win, while the Buffalo Bills played in a record four consecutive Super Bowls, losing in each. The Patriots and Broncos are tied for the most Super Bowl losses at five.
The Cleveland Browns, Detroit Lions, Houston Texans, and Jacksonville Jaguars are the four teams to have never appeared in a Super Bowl, although the Browns and Lions both won NFL championships before the Super Bowl era. The Jaguars, who began play in 1995, and the Texans, who began play in 2002, are among the youngest franchises in the league.
1960s: Early history and Packers dominance
The Packers won the first two AFL–NFL World Championship Games, later renamed Super Bowls, defeating the Kansas City Chiefs and Oakland Raiders following the 1966 and 1967 seasons, respectively. The Packers were led by quarterback Bart Starr, who was named the Most Valuable Player (MVP) for both games. These two championships, coupled with the Packers' NFL championships in 1961, 1962, and 1965, amount to the most successful stretch in NFL History; five championships in seven years, and the second threepeat in NFL history (1965, 1966, and 1967). The Packers are the only team to threepeat, as they also accomplished the feat in the pre-playoff era (1929, 1930 and 1931). The first playoff game in the NFL was in 1932.
In Super Bowl III, the AFL's New York Jets defeated the 19.5-point favorite Baltimore Colts of the NFL, 16–7. The Jets were led by quarterback Joe Namath, who had famously guaranteed a Jets win before the game, and former Colts head coach Weeb Ewbank, and their victory proved that the AFL was the NFL's competitive equal. This was reinforced the following year when the Chiefs defeated the NFL's Vikings 23–7 in Super Bowl IV.
1970s: Dominant franchises
After the AFL–NFL merger was completed in 1970, three franchises—the Cowboys, Miami Dolphins, and Steelers—would go on to dominate the 1970s, winning a combined eight Super Bowls between them in the decade, with the Steelers winning four of the eight.
The Baltimore Colts, now a member of the AFC, would start the decade by defeating the Cowboys in Super Bowl V, a game which is notable as being the only Super Bowl to date in which a player from the losing team won the Super Bowl MVP (Cowboys' linebacker Chuck Howley). Beginning with this Super Bowl, all Super Bowls have served as the NFL's championship game.
The Cowboys, coming back from a loss the previous season, won Super Bowl VI over the Dolphins. However, this would be the Dolphins' final loss for over a year, as the next year, the Dolphins would go 14–0 in the regular season and eventually win all their playoff games, capped off with a 14–7 victory in Super Bowl VII, becoming the first and only team in the Super Bowl era to finish an entire perfect regular and postseason undefeated. The Dolphins would repeat as league champions by winning Super Bowl VIII a year later with a 24–7 win over the Minnesota Vikings.
In the mid to late 1970s, the Steelers became the first NFL dynasty of the post-merger era by winning four Super Bowls (IX, X, XIII, and XIV) in six years. They were led by head coach Chuck Noll, the play of offensive stars Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, Lynn Swann, John Stallworth, and Mike Webster, and their dominant "Steel Curtain" defense, led by "Mean" Joe Greene, L. C. Greenwood, Ernie Holmes, Mel Blount, Jack Ham, and Jack Lambert. Many of the team's key players were selected in the 1974 draft, in which Pittsburgh selected four future Hall of Famers, the most for any team in any sport in a single draft. A fifth player, Donnie Shell, was signed by Pittsburgh after going unselected in the 1974 NFL Draft; he too was later enshrined in the Hall of Fame. The Steelers were the first team to win three and then four Super Bowls and appeared in six AFC Championship Games during the decade, making the playoffs in eight straight seasons. Pittsburgh still remains the only team to win back-to-back Super Bowls twice and four Super Bowls in a six-year period.
The Steelers' 1970s dynasty was interrupted only by the Raiders' first Super Bowl win in Super Bowl XI and the Cowboys' second Super Bowl win in Super Bowl XII. Conversely, the Vikings, with their Purple People Eaters defense, were the only other team to appear in multiple Super Bowls (IV, VIII, IX and XI) during the decade but failed to win each one.
1981–1996: The NFC's winning streak
In the 1980s and 1990s, the tables turned for the AFC, as the NFC dominated the Super Bowls of the new decade and most of those in the 1990s. The NFC won 16 of the 20 Super Bowls during these two decades, including 13 straight from Super Bowl XIX to Super Bowl XXXI.
The most successful team of the 1980s was the 49ers, which featured the West Coast offense of Hall of Fame head coach Bill Walsh. This offense was led by three-time Super Bowl MVP and Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana, Super Bowl MVP and Hall of Fame wide receiver Jerry Rice, running back Roger Craig, and Hall of Fame defensive safety/cornerback Ronnie Lott. Under their leadership, the 49ers won four Super Bowls in the decade (XVI, XIX, XXIII, and XXIV) and made nine playoff appearances between 1981 and 1990, including eight division championships, becoming the second dynasty of the post-merger NFL. The 1984 San Francisco 49ers were the first team to achieve an 18–1 record, doing so under Walsh. The 1989 San Francisco 49ers, under first-year head coach George Seifert, posted the most lop-sided victory in Super Bowl history, defeating the Denver Broncos by a score of 55–10 in Super Bowl XXIV.
The 1980s also produced the 1985 Chicago Bears, who posted an 18–1 record under head coach Mike Ditka; quarterback Jim McMahon; and Hall of Fame running back Walter Payton. Their team won Super Bowl XX in dominant fashion. The Washington Redskins and New York Giants were also top teams of this period; Washington won Super Bowls XVII, XXII, and XXVI. The Giants claimed Super Bowls XXI and XXV. Both teams won multiple Super Bowls with different starting quarterbacks; Washington won with Joe Theismann (XVII), Doug Williams (XXII) and Mark Rypien (XXVI), and the Giants with Phil Simms (XXI) and Jeff Hostetler (XXV). As in the 1970s, the Raiders were the only AFC team to interrupt the Super Bowl dominance of NFC teams; they won Super Bowls XV and XVIII (the latter as the Los Angeles Raiders).
Conversely, the Cincinnati Bengals (XVI and XXIII), Dolphins, (XVII and XIX), and Broncos (XXI, XXII and XXIV) made multiple Super Bowls in the 1980s without winning one.
Following several seasons with poor records in the 1980s, the Cowboys rose back to prominence in the 1990s. During this decade, the Cowboys made post-season appearances every year except for the seasons of 1990 and 1997. From 1992 to 1996, the Cowboys won their division championship each year. In this same period, the Buffalo Bills had made their mark reaching the Super Bowl for a record four consecutive years, only to lose all four (XXV-XXVIII). After Super Bowl championships by division rivals New York (1990) and Washington (1991), the Cowboys won three of the next four Super Bowls (XXVII, XXVIII, and XXX) led by quarterback Troy Aikman, running back Emmitt Smith, and wide receiver Michael Irvin. All three of these players went to the Hall of Fame. The Cowboys' streak was interrupted by the 49ers, who were the first team to win their league-leading fifth title overall with Super Bowl XXIX with a dominant performance featuring the Super Bowl MVP and Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young (who threw a Super Bowl record 6 touchdown passes), Hall of Fame wide receiver Jerry Rice, and Hall of Fame cornerback Deion Sanders; however, the Cowboys' victory in Super Bowl XXX the next year also gave them five titles overall and they did so with Sanders after he won the Super Bowl the previous year with the 49ers. The NFC's winning streak was continued by the Packers led by Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre, won Super Bowl XXXI, their first championship since Super Bowl II in 1967.
The Patriots made their maiden Super Bowl appearances in XX (1985) and XXXI (1996) but lost both times. However, the turn of the century would soon bring hope and glory to the franchise.
1997–2009: AFC resurgence and the rise of the Patriots
Super Bowl XXXII saw quarterback John Elway and running back Terrell Davis lead the Denver Broncos to an upset victory over the defending champion Packers, snapping the NFC's thirteen-year winning streak. The following year, the Broncos defeated the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl XXXIII, Elway's fifth Super Bowl appearance, his second NFL championship, and his final NFL game. The back-to-back victories heralded a change in momentum in which AFC teams would win nine out of 12 Super Bowls. In the years between 1995 and 2018, five teams—the Steelers, Patriots, Broncos, Baltimore Ravens, and Indianapolis Colts—accounted for 22 of the 24 AFC Super Bowl appearances (including the last 16), with those same teams often meeting each other earlier in the playoffs. In contrast, the NFC saw a different representative in the Super Bowl every season from 2001 through 2010.
The New England Patriots became the dominant team throughout the early 2000s, winning the championship three out of four years early in the decade. They would become only the second team in the history of the NFL to do so (after the 1990s Dallas Cowboys). In Super Bowl XXXVI, first-year starting quarterback Tom Brady led his team to a 20–17 upset victory over the St. Louis Rams, who two seasons earlier won Super Bowl XXXIV. Brady would go on to win the MVP award for this game. The Patriots also won Super Bowls XXXVIII and XXXIX defeating the Carolina Panthers and the Philadelphia Eagles respectively. This four-year stretch of Patriot dominance was interrupted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' 48–21 Super Bowl XXXVII victory over the Oakland Raiders.
The Steelers and Colts continued the era of AFC dominance by winning Super Bowls XL and XLI in the 2005 and 2006 seasons, respectively defeating the Seattle Seahawks and Chicago Bears.
In the 2007 season, the Patriots became the fourth team in NFL history to have a perfect unbeaten and untied regular-season record, the second in the Super Bowl era after the 1972 Miami Dolphins, and the first to finish 16–0. They easily marched through the AFC playoffs and were heavy favorites in Super Bowl XLII. However, they lost that game to Eli Manning and the New York Giants 17–14, leaving the Patriots' 2007 record at 18–1.
The following season, the Steelers logged their record sixth Super Bowl title (XLIII) in a 27–23, final-minute victory against the Arizona Cardinals.
The 2009 season saw the New Orleans Saints defeat the Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl XLIV by a score of 31–17 to take home their first Championship. With this victory, the Saints joined the New York Jets as the only teams to have won in their sole Super Bowl appearance, a distinction the Ravens also enjoyed in winning Super Bowl XXXV after the 2000 season and the Buccaneers in 2002.
2010s: Patriots reign; parity in the NFC
In the AFC, this era was dominated by the Patriots, with the only four other teams to represent the conference being the Steelers, Ravens, Broncos, and Chiefs. The Patriots had tied a record with the 1970s Dallas Cowboys for most Super Bowl appearances in a decade with five appearances (2011, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018). The Patriots also had four Super Bowl appearances in five years. They also had eight consecutive AFC championship appearances spanning 2011–2018.
The Super Bowls of the 2000s and 2010s are notable for the performances (and the pedigrees) of several of the participating quarterbacks, especially on the AFC side in repeated appearances by the same teams and players. In particular, Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger, or Peyton Manning appeared as the AFC team's quarterback in all but two of the Super Bowls from 2001 through 2018. Conversely, the only NFC teams to make the Super Bowl multiple times with the same quarterback in this era were the Seahawks, led by quarterback Russell Wilson, and the Giants, led by quarterback Eli Manning.
One of these teams was featured in the culmination of the 2010 season, Super Bowl XLV, which brought the Packers their fourth Super Bowl victory and record thirteenth NFL championship overall with the defeat of the Steelers in February 2011. This became Aaron Rodgers' only Super Bowl victory so far.
The following year, in Super Bowl XLVI, the Patriots made their first appearance of the decade, a position where they would become a mainstay. The Patriots, however, lost to the Eli Manning-led Giants, 21–17, who had beaten the Patriots four years before. This was the Giants' fourth Super Bowl victory.
In Super Bowl XLVII, the NFC's 49ers were defeated by the Ravens 34–31. The game had been dubbed as the 'Harbaugh Bowl' in the weeks leading up to the game, due to the fact that the coaches of the two teams, John Harbaugh and Jim Harbaugh, are brothers. During the third quarter, the Ravens had a commanding 28–6 lead. However, there was a blackout in New Orleans, where the game was being played. The game was delayed for 34 minutes, and after play resumed, San Francisco stormed back with 17 straight points, but still lost.
Super Bowl XLVIII, played at New Jersey's MetLife Stadium in February 2014, was the first Super Bowl held outdoors in a cold-weather environment. The Seahawks won their first NFL title with a 43–8 defeat of the Broncos, in a highly touted matchup that pitted Seattle's top-ranked defense against a Peyton Manning-led Denver offense that had broken the NFL's single-season scoring record.
In Super Bowl XLIX, the Patriots beat the defending Super Bowl champions, the Seahawks, by a score of 28–24. Down by 10, the Patriots mounted a late fourth quarter comeback to win the game with Tom Brady scoring two touchdowns in the fourth quarter. In a key play in the final seconds of the game, then-rookie free agent Malcolm Butler would intercept a pass by Russell Wilson at the one-yard line, allowing the Patriots to run out the clock and end the game. Tom Brady was awarded his third Super Bowl MVP, tying Joe Montana for the most Super Bowl MVP awards.
In Super Bowl 50, the first Super Bowl to be branded with Arabic numerals, the Broncos, led by the league's top-ranked defense, defeated the Panthers, who had the league's top-ranked offense, in what became the final game of quarterback Peyton Manning's career. Von Miller dominated, totaling 2.5 sacks and forcing two Cam Newton fumbles; both fumbles leading to Broncos touchdowns.
In Super Bowl LI, the first Super Bowl to end in overtime, the Atlanta Falcons led 28–3 late in the third quarter, but the Patriots came back to tie the game 28–28 with back-to-back touchdowns and two-point conversions, and the Patriots went on to win 34–28 in overtime. This 25-point deficit was the largest comeback win for any team in a Super Bowl, breaking the previous of a 10-point deficit to come back and win. The Patriots never held the lead until the game-winning touchdown in overtime. It was Tom Brady's 5th Super Bowl win and he was awarded his record fourth Super Bowl MVP, throwing a then-record 466 yards for 43 completions.
In Super Bowl LII, the Philadelphia Eagles defeated the defending champion Patriots 41–33, ending a 57-year championship drought for the franchise. Nick Foles won the Super Bowl MVP. The Patriots totaled 613 yards in defeat, with Tom Brady breaking his previous Super Bowl record of 466 passing yards with an all-time playoff record of 505 passing yards in the high-scoring game; while the Eagles would gain 538 yards in the victory. The combined total for both teams of 1,151 yards of offense broke an NFL record (for any game) that had stood for nearly seven decades. The Patriots' 33 points were the highest losing score in Super Bowl history, a record held until 2023, when the Eagles lost Super Bowl LVII to the Kansas City Chiefs by a score of 38–35. It was the Eagles' third Super Bowl appearance and their first win in franchise history. With the Eagles' victory, the NFC East became the first division to have each team win at least one Super Bowl.
While Super Bowl LII produced the second highest-scoring Super Bowl, the following year's Super Bowl LIII became the lowest-scoring Super Bowl. The Patriots defeated the Los Angeles Rams, 13–3. In so doing, they became the team with the lowest point total by a winning team in Super Bowl history. Tom Brady would receive a record sixth Super Bowl championship, the most of any player in NFL history, surpassing his tie with Charles Haley for five wins. Brady would also become the oldest player to ever win a Super Bowl at age 41, while Bill Belichick would be the oldest coach to ever win a Super Bowl at age 66. Wide receiver Julian Edelman was named Super Bowl MVP.
2020s: Beginning of Chiefs' dominance
In Super Bowl LIV, the Chiefs defeated the 49ers in a comeback, 31–20, for their first Super Bowl title in 50 years. This victory marked the first time since 1991 that the NFC did not have more Super Bowl victories than the AFC. Notable was the absence of the Patriots, who after making it to the Super Bowl the last three years and winning two of them, had lost in the Wild Card round of the playoffs, being bested by the Tennessee Titans 20–13. That game represented Tom Brady's final game as a New England Patriot.
In Super Bowl LV, which took place in Tampa, Florida, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defeated the defending champion Chiefs, 31–9. No player on the Buccaneers who scored points (Rob Gronkowski, Antonio Brown, Leonard Fournette and Ryan Succop) was on the Buccaneers' roster the previous season. This marked a record seventh Super Bowl victory for Tom Brady, also more than any individual NFL franchise, and who would also break his own record for the oldest quarterback to win a championship at 43 years old. Tampa Bay head coach Bruce Arians would also break Bill Belichick's record for the oldest head coach to win a championship at 68. Super Bowl LV also marked the first time in the history of the modern league that a host city's professional football franchise got to play in a Super Bowl that was hosted in their home stadium.
A year later in Inglewood, California, the Los Angeles Rams defeated the Cincinnati Bengals 23–20 to win Super Bowl LVI, becoming the second team to win the Super Bowl in its home stadium.
On February 12, 2023, at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, the Chiefs overcame a 10-point deficit at halftime to defeat the Philadelphia Eagles 38–35, winning Super Bowl LVII on a last-minute field goal.
On February 11, 2024, the Chiefs won Super Bowl LVIII at Allegiant Stadium on an overtime touchdown. The first Super Bowl in Las Vegas, this was a rematch of Super Bowl LIV between the 49ers and the Chiefs, and was the Chiefs' fourth Super Bowl appearance in five years. The second Super Bowl to go into overtime, the Chiefs came back from another 10-point deficit to win their third Super Bowl in five years and secure back-to-back championships for the first time since the 2004 New England Patriots.
Television coverage and ratings
The Super Bowl is one of the most-watched annual sporting events in the world, with viewership overwhelmingly domestic. The only other annual event that gathers more viewers is the UEFA Champions League final. For many years, the Super Bowl has possessed a large US and global television viewership, and it is often the most-watched United States originating television program of the year. The game tends to have a high Nielsen television rating, which is usually around a 40 rating and 60 shares. This means that, on average, more than 100 million people from the United States alone are tuned into the Super Bowl at any given moment.
In press releases preceding the game, the NFL has claimed that the Super Bowl has a potential worldwide audience of around one billion people in over 200 countries. However, this figure refers to the number of people able to watch the game, not the number of people who will actually be watching. Regardless, the statements have been frequently misinterpreted in the media as referring to the latter figure, leading to a misperception about the game's actual global audience. The New York-based media research firm Initiative measured the global audience for the Super Bowl XXXIX at 93 million people, with 98 percent of that figure being viewers in North America, which meant roughly two million people outside North America watched the Super Bowl that year.
Super Bowl LVIII holds the record for average number of US viewers, with 123.7 million, making the game the most-viewed television broadcast of any kind in American history. The halftime show set a record with 129.2 million viewers tuning in.
The highest-rated game according to Nielsen was Super Bowl XVI in 1982, which was watched in 49.1% of households (73 shares), or 40,020,000 households at the time. Super Bowl XVI still ranks fourth on Nielsen's list of top-rated programs of all time, with three other Super Bowls (XVII, XX, and XLIX) in the top ten.
Famous Super Bowl commercials include the 1984 introduction of Apple's Macintosh computer, the Budweiser "Bud Bowl" campaign, and the dot-com ads aired during Super Bowl XXXIV. As the television ratings of the Super Bowl have steadily increased over the years, commercial prices have also increased, with advertisers paying as much as $7 million for a thirty-second spot during Super Bowl LVI in 2022. A segment of the audience tunes into the Super Bowl solely to view commercials. In 2010, Nielsen reported that 51 percent of Super Bowl viewers tune in for the commercials.
Since 1991, the Super Bowl has begun between 6:19 and 6:40 PM EST so that most of the game is played during the primetime hours on the East Coast.
US television rights
Throughout most of its history, the Super Bowl has been rotated annually between the same American television networks that broadcast the NFL's regular season and postseason games.
Super Bowl I, played in 1967, is the only Super Bowl to have been broadcast in the United States by two different broadcasters simultaneously. At the time, NBC held the rights to nationally televise AFL games while CBS had the rights to broadcast NFL games. Both networks were allowed to cover the game, and each network used its own announcers, but NBC was only allowed to use the CBS feed instead of producing its own.
Beginning with Super Bowl II, NBC televised the game in even years and CBS in odd years. This annual rotation between the two networks continued through the 1970 AFL–NFL merger when NBC was given the rights to televise AFC games and CBS winning the rights to broadcast NFC games. Although ABC began broadcasting Monday Night Football in 1970, it was not added to the Super Bowl rotation until Super Bowl XIX, played in 1985. ABC, CBS and NBC then continued to rotate the Super Bowl until 1994, when Fox replaced CBS as the NFC broadcaster. CBS then took NBC's place in the rotation after the former replaced the latter as the AFC broadcaster in 1998. As a result of new contracts signed in 2006, with NBC taking over Sunday Night Football from ESPN, and Monday Night Football moving from ABC to ESPN, NBC took ABC's place in the Super Bowl rotation. The rotation between CBS, Fox, and NBC will continue until the new contracts that will take effect for the first time with Super Bowl LVIII, allowing ABC to return and starting a four-network rotation.
The four-year rotation beginning with Super Bowl LVIII also allows each broadcaster to offer simulcasts or alternative broadcasts on its sister networks and platforms. CBS's sister network Nickelodeon is planning to air an alternate children-oriented telecast of Super Bowl LVIII. And ABC's rights include ESPN simulcasts and alternative broadcasts on other ESPN networks.
The NFL has broken the traditional broadcasting rotation if it can be used to bolster other major sporting events a network airs afterwards. For example, CBS was given Super Bowl XXVI (1992) after it won the rights to air the 1992 Winter Olympics, with NBC subsequently airing Super Bowl XXVII (1993) and Super Bowl XXVIII (1994) in consecutive years. Likewise, NBC aired Super Bowl LVI (2022) instead of CBS during the 2022 Winter Olympics, which were also aired by NBC. CBS received Super Bowl LV (2021) in return. Under the four-network rotation that will take effect beginning in 2024, the league will award NBC the Super Bowl during Winter Olympic years.
The first six Super Bowls were blacked out in the television markets of the host cities, due to league restrictions then in place. Super Bowl VII (1973) was telecast in Los Angeles on an experimental basis after all tickets were sold ten days before the game.
Game analyst John Madden is the only person to broadcast a Super Bowl for each of the four networks that have televised the game (five with CBS, three with Fox, two with ABC, and one with NBC).
Note: Years listed are the year the game was actually played (will be played) rather than what NFL season it is considered to have been.
^ *: The current TV contract with the networks expires after the 2033 season (or in early 2034). Under the deal, the Super Bowl is currently rotated annually between CBS, Fox, NBC, and ABC in that order. ABC will return to the rotation in the upcoming contract, which is scheduled to take effect at the start of the 2023 season.
^ **: The first Super Bowl was simultaneously broadcast by CBS and NBC, with each network using the same video feed (from CBS), but providing its own commentary.
Lead-out programming
The Super Bowl provides an extremely strong lead-in to programming following it on the same channel, the effects of which can last for several hours. For instance, in discussing the ratings of a local TV station, Buffalo television critic Alan Pergament noted that following Super Bowl XLVII, which aired on CBS: "A paid program that ran on CBS 4 (WIVB-TV) at 2:30 in the morning had a 1.3 rating. That's higher than some CW prime time shows get on WNLO-TV, Channel 4's sister station."
Because of this strong coattail effect, the network that airs the Super Bowl typically takes advantage of the large audience to air an episode of a hit series or to premiere the pilot of a promising new one in the lead-out slot, which immediately follows the Super Bowl and post-game coverage.
Ceremonies and entertainment
Initially, it was sort of a novelty and so it didn't quite feel right. But it was just like, this is the year ... Bands of our generation, you can sort of be seen on a stage like this or, like, not seen. There's not a lot of middle places. It is a tremendous venue.
Early Super Bowls featured a halftime show consisting of marching bands from local colleges or high schools; but as the popularity of the game increased, a trend emerged where popular singers and musicians performed during its pre-game ceremonies and the halftime show, or simply sang the national anthem of the United States, "America the Beautiful", or "Lift Every Voice and Sing".
The U.S. national anthem has been performed at all but one Super Bowl: Super Bowl XI in 1977 when Vikki Carr sang "America the Beautiful" in place of the anthem. Beginning with Super Bowl XLIII in 2009, "America the Beautiful" is sung before the national anthem every year and is followed by the presentation of the colors and a military flyover preceded the anthem. Beginning with Super Bowl LV in 2021, "Lift Every Voice and Sing" is sung prior to "America the Beautiful" in honor of Black History Month.
For many years, Whitney Houston's performance of the national anthem at Super Bowl XXV in 1991, during the Gulf War, had long been regarded as one of the best renditions of the anthem in history. Before Super Bowl XLVIII, soprano Renée Fleming became the first opera singer to perform the anthem.
Recently, the winner of the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award has been acknowledged before "America the Beautiful" and "The Star-Spangled Banner".
Since Super Bowl XII in 1978, a former football player, a celebrity, or another special guest participates in the coin toss ceremony to recognize their community involvement or significance.
The pre-game ceremonies usually go in the following order:
Presentation of the Most Valuable Players, occurred every ten years since 1986
"Lift Every Voice and Sing"
Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award presentation
"America the Beautiful"
Presentation of the Colors
"The Star-Spangled Banner" followed by flyover
Coin Toss
Unlike regular season or playoff games, thirty minutes are allocated for the Super Bowl halftime. After a special live episode of the Fox sketch comedy series In Living Color caused a drop in viewership for the Super Bowl XXVI halftime show, the NFL sought to increase the Super Bowl's audience by hiring A-list talent to perform. They approached Michael Jackson, whose performance the following year drew higher figures than the game itself. Another notable performance came during Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002, when U2 performed; during their third song, "Where the Streets Have No Name", the band played under a large projection screen which scrolled through names of the victims of the September 11 attacks.
The halftime show of Super Bowl XXXVIII attracted controversy, following an incident in which Justin Timberlake removed a piece of Janet Jackson's top, briefly exposing one of her breasts before the broadcast quickly cut away from the shot. The incident led to fines being issued by the FCC (and a larger crackdown over "indecent" content broadcast on television), and MTV (then a sister to the game's broadcaster that year, CBS, under Viacom) being banned by the NFL from producing the Super Bowl halftime show in the future. In an effort to prevent a repeat of the incident, the NFL held a moratorium on Super Bowl halftime shows featuring pop performers, and instead invited a single, headlining veteran act, such as Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Prince, and Bruce Springsteen. This practice ended at Super Bowl XLV, which returned to using current pop acts such as the Black Eyed Peas, Katy Perry, and Lady Gaga.
Minnesota Vikings announcer Alan Roach is the official public address announcer of the Super Bowl since Super Bowl XL in 2006, with the exceptions of Super Bowl XLVIII, XLIX and 50 when the Denver Broncos played in those games. Roach was also Denver's regular P.A. announcer during those years, and thus the league felt it was a potential competitive advantage. In those years, NFL on Westwood One host and NFL Films voice Scott Graham held the duties.
Excluding Super Bowl XXXIX, the famous "I'm going to Disney World!" advertising campaign took place in every Super Bowl since Super Bowl XXI in 1987, when quarterback Phil Simms from the Giants became the first player to say the tagline.
Venues
As of Super Bowl LVIII, 29 of 58 Super Bowls have been played in three metropolitan areas: the Greater Miami area (eleven times), New Orleans (ten times), and the Greater Los Angeles area (eight times). No market or region without an active NFL franchise has ever hosted a Super Bowl, and the presence of an NFL team in a market or region is now a de jure requirement for bidding on the game. For instance, while Los Angeles has been an eight-time host city, with its most recent being Super Bowl LVI in 2022, it did not host one from the departure of both its NFL teams in 1995 until the Rams and the Chargers subsequently came back to Los Angeles in 2016 and 2017 respectively. The Caesars Superdome in New Orleans has hosted seven Super Bowls, the most of any venue, with an eighth Super Bowl scheduled to take place in 2025. The Orange Bowl was the only AFL stadium to host a Super Bowl and the only stadium to host consecutive Super Bowls, hosting Super Bowls II and III.
Seven Super Bowls have been held in a stadium other than the one the NFL team in that city was using at the time, a situation that has not arisen after Super Bowl XXVII's host stadium was selected on March 19, 1991. This was as the winning market was previously not required to host the Super Bowl in the same stadium that its NFL team used, if the stadium in which the Super Bowl was held was perceived to be a better stadium for a large high-profile event than the existing NFL home stadium in the same city; for example, five of Los Angeles's Bowls were played at the Rose Bowl, which has never been used by any NFL franchise outside of the Super Bowl. Besides the Rose Bowl, the only other Super Bowl venues that were not the home stadium to NFL teams at the time were Rice Stadium (the Houston Oilers had played in Rice Stadium previously but moved to the Astrodome several years before Super Bowl VIII) and Stanford Stadium. Starting with the selection of the Super Bowl XXVIII venue on May 23, 1990, the league has given preference in awarding the Super Bowl to brand new or recently renovated NFL stadiums, alongside a trend of teams demanding public money or relocating to play in new stadiums.
To date only two teams have qualified for a Super Bowl at their home stadiums: the 2020 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who won Super Bowl LV hosted at Raymond James Stadium (selected on May 23, 2017), and the 2021 Los Angeles Rams the following season, who won Super Bowl LVI at SoFi Stadium. Before that, the closest any team had come to accomplishing this feat were the 2017 Minnesota Vikings, who reached the NFC Championship Game but lost to the Eagles. In that instance, U.S. Bank Stadium became the first Super Bowl host stadium (selected on May 20, 2014) to also host a Divisional Playoff Game in the same season (which the Vikings won); all previous times that the Super Bowl host stadium hosted another playoff game in the same postseason were all Wild Card games. Two teams have played the Super Bowl in their home market but at a different venue than their home stadium: the Los Angeles Rams, who lost Super Bowl XIV in the Rose Bowl instead of Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum; and the 49ers, who won Super Bowl XIX in Stanford Stadium instead of Candlestick Park, during a time when the league often picked a stadium that was not home to an NFL team to host the Super Bowl (see above).
Traditionally, the NFL does not award Super Bowls to stadiums that are located in climates with an expected average daily temperature less than 50 °F (10 °C) on game day unless the field can be completely covered by a fixed or retractable roof. Six Super Bowls have been played in northern cities: two in the Detroit area—Super Bowl XVI at Pontiac Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan, and Super Bowl XL at Ford Field in Detroit; two in Minneapolis—Super Bowl XXVI at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome and Super Bowl LII at the U.S. Bank Stadium; one in Indianapolis at Lucas Oil Stadium for Super Bowl XLVI; and one in New Jersey—Super Bowl XLVIII at MetLife Stadium. Only MetLife Stadium did not have a roof (be it fixed or retractable) but it was still picked as the host stadium for Super Bowl XLVIII in an apparent waiver of the warm-climate rule, with a contingency plan to reschedule the game in the event of heavy snowfall. MetLife Stadium's selection over Sun Life Stadium generated controversy as the league requested a roof to be added to Sun Life Stadium (a venue afflicted with a heavy rainstorm during Super Bowl XLI) in order to be considered for future Super Bowls, which was done during a remodeling from 2015 into 2016. It then hosted Super Bowl LIV, and is scheduled to host Super Bowl LXIV.
There have been a few instances where the league has rescinded the Super Bowl from cities. Super Bowl XXVII in 1993 was originally awarded to Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona, but after Arizona voters elected not to recognize Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as a paid state employees' holiday in 1990, the NFL moved the game to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. When voters in Arizona opted to create such a legal holiday in 1992, Super Bowl XXX in 1996 was awarded to Tempe. Super Bowl XXXIII was awarded first to Candlestick Park in San Francisco, but when plans to renovate the stadium fell through, the game was moved to Pro Player Stadium in greater Miami. Super Bowl XXXVII was awarded to a new stadium not yet built in San Francisco, but when that stadium failed to be built, the game was moved to Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego. Super Bowl XLIV, slated for February 7, 2010, was withdrawn from New York City's proposed West Side Stadium, because the city, state, and proposed tenants (New York Jets) could not agree on funding. Super Bowl XLIV was then eventually awarded to Sun Life Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. Super Bowl XLIX in 2015 was originally given to Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, but after two sales taxes failed to pass at the ballot box (a renovation proposal had passed successfully, but a second ballot question to add a rolling roof structure to be shared with Kaufmann Stadium critical for the game to be hosted was rejected), and opposition by local business leaders and politicians increased, Kansas City eventually withdrew its request to host the game. Super Bowl XLIX was then eventually awarded to University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.
Selection process
The location of the Super Bowl is chosen at a meeting of all NFL team owners, usually three to five years before the event. The game has never been played in a metropolitan area that lacked an NFL franchise at the time the game was played, although in 2007 NFL commissioner Roger Goodell suggested that a Super Bowl might be played in London, perhaps at Wembley Stadium.
Through Super Bowl LVI, teams were allowed to bid for the rights to host Super Bowls, where cities submitted proposals to host a Super Bowl and were evaluated in terms of stadium renovation and their ability to host, but this competition was rescinded in 2018. The league has made all decisions regarding hosting sites from Super Bowl LVII onward; the league chose a potential venue unilaterally, the chosen team put together a hosting proposal, and the league voted upon it to determine if it is acceptable.
In 2014, a document listing the specific requirements of Super Bowl hosts was leaked, giving a clear list of what was required for a Super Bowl host. Some of the host requirements include:
The host stadium must be in a market that hosts an NFL team and must have a minimum of 70,000 seats, with the media and electrical amenities necessary to produce the Super Bowl. Stadiums may include temporary seating for Super Bowls, but seating must be approved by the league. Stadiums where the average game day temperature is below 50 °F (10 °C) must either have a roof or a waiver given by the league. There must be a minimum of 35,000 parking spaces within one mile of the stadium.
The host stadium must have space for the Gameday Experience, a large pregame entertainment area, within walking distance of the stadium.
The host city must have space for the NFL Experience, the interactive football theme park which is operated the week before the Super Bowl. An indoor venue for the event must have a minimum of 850,000 square feet (79,000 m2), and an outdoor venue must have a minimum of 1,000,000 square feet (93,000 m2). Additionally, there must be space nearby for the Media Center, and space for all other events involved in the Super Bowl week, including golf courses and bowling alleys.
The necessary infrastructure must be in place around the stadium and other Super Bowl facilities, including parking, security, electrical needs, media needs, communication needs, and transportation needs.
There must be a minimum number of hotel spaces within one hour's drive of the stadium equaling 35% of the stadium's capacity, along with hotels for the teams, officials, media, and other dignitaries. (For Super Bowl XXXIX, the city of Jacksonville docked several luxury cruise liners at their port to act as temporary hotel space.)
There must be practice space of equal and comparable quality for both teams within a twenty-minute drive of the team hotels, and rehearsal space for all events within a reasonable distance to the stadium. The practice facilities must have one grass field and at least one field of the same surface as the host stadium.
The stadium must have a minimum of 70,000 fixed seats, including club and fixed suite seating, during regular season operations.
Much of the cost of a Super Bowl is to be assumed by the host community, although some costs are enumerated within the requirements to be assumed by the NFL. New Orleans, the site of Super Bowl XLVII in 2013, invested more than $1 billion in infrastructure improvements in the years leading up to the game.
The NFL allocates backup stadiums for the Super Bowl every year, in the event of a last-minute relocation of the game.
Home team designation
The designated "home team" alternates between the NFC team in odd-numbered games and the AFC team in even-numbered games. This alternation was initiated with the first Super Bowl, when the Packers were the designated home team. Regardless of being the home or away team of record, each team has their team logo and wordmark painted in one of the end zones. Designated away teams have won 32 of 58 Super Bowls to date (approximately 55%).
Since Super Bowl XIII in 1979, the home team is given the choice of wearing their colored or white jerseys. Originally, the designated home team had to wear their colored jerseys, which resulted in the Cowboys donning their less exposed dark blue jerseys for Super Bowl V. While most of the home teams in the Super Bowl have chosen to wear their colored jerseys, there have been seven exceptions: the Cowboys during Super Bowls XIII and XXVII, the Washington Redskins during Super Bowl XVII, the Steelers during Super Bowl XL, the Broncos during Super Bowl 50, the Patriots in Super Bowl LII, and the Buccaneers in Super Bowl LV. The Cowboys, since 1964, have worn white jerseys at home. The Washington Redskins wore white at home under coach Joe Gibbs starting in 1981 through 1992, continued by Richie Petitbon and Norv Turner through 2000, then again when Gibbs returned from 2004 through 2007. Meanwhile, the Steelers, who have always worn their black jerseys at home since the AFL–NFL merger in 1970, opted for the white jerseys after winning three consecutive playoff games on the road, wearing white. The Steelers' decision was compared with the Patriots in Super Bowl XX; the Patriots had worn white jerseys at home during the 1985 season, but after winning road playoff games against the Jets and Dolphins wearing red jerseys, New England opted to switch to scarlet for the Super Bowl as the designated home team. For the Broncos in Super Bowl 50, Denver general manager John Elway simply stated, "We've had Super Bowl success in our white uniforms"; they previously had been 0–4 in Super Bowls when wearing their orange jerseys. The Broncos' decision is also perceived to be made out of superstition, losing all Super Bowl games with the orange jerseys in terrible fashion. It is unclear why the Patriots chose to wear their white jerseys for Super Bowl LII. During the pairing of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, New England has mostly worn their blue jerseys for home games, but have worn white for a home game in the 2008, 2010, and 2011 seasons. The Patriots were 3–0 in their white uniforms in Super Bowls before Super Bowl LII with Belichick and Brady, and they may have been going on recent trends of teams who wear white for the Super Bowl game. For Super Bowl LV, when the Buccaneers became the first team to reach the Super Bowl that their own stadium hosted, the Bucs coincidentally were designated the home team as per AFC-NFC rotation and elected to wear their white jerseys, having previously won both their divisional and championship post-season games on the road in white jerseys. White-shirted teams have won 37 of 58 Super Bowls to date (approximately 64%). The only teams to win in their dark-colored uniform in more recent years are the Packers against the Steelers in Super Bowl XLV, the Eagles against the Patriots in Super Bowl LII, and the Chiefs against the 49ers in Super Bowls LIV and LVIII. Since Super Bowl XXXIX, teams in white jerseys have won 16 of the last 20 Super Bowls.
The 49ers, as part of the league's 75th Anniversary celebration, used their 1955 throwback uniform in Super Bowl XXIX, which for that year was their regular home jersey. The Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LIII wore their royal blue and yellow uniforms, which was a throwback uniform but then turned into their primary colors over the navy blue and metallic gold uniform, which they have previously worn for six home games including a home playoff game. No team has yet worn a third jersey or Color Rush uniform for the Super Bowl. The 49ers reportedly requested to wear an all-white third jersey ensemble for Super Bowl LIV, which the San Francisco Chronicle noted they could do with special permission from the league; the league never granted such permission, and the 49ers instead opted for their standard uniform of white jerseys with gold pants.
Host cities/regions
Fifteen different regions have hosted Super Bowls.
Note: Years listed are the year the game was actually played (or will be played; future games are denoted through italics) rather than what NFL season it is considered to have been.
Host stadiums
A total of 27 different stadiums have either hosted, or are scheduled to host, a Super Bowl, with 14 of the stadiums having hosted, or are scheduled to host, more than one Super Bowl. Seven of the Super Bowl hosting stadiums have been demolished.
The years listed in the table below are the years the game was actually played (will be played) rather than the NFL season it concluded.
^ ^: Stadium has since been demolished.
^ ‡: Prior to the incorporation of Miami Gardens in 2003, the stadium was in unincorporated Miami-Dade County.
^ ††: The original Stanford Stadium, which hosted Super Bowl XIX, was demolished and a new stadium constructed on the site in 2006.
^ ˇ: Future Super Bowls, also denoted by italics.
Future venues
The Super Bowl has not yet been played in any region that lacked an NFL or AFL franchise at the time the game was played.
San Diego is the only metropolitan area as of 2021 that has hosted past Super Bowls, but does not currently have an NFL franchise: San Diego Stadium hosted three Super Bowls before their NFL franchise relocated to Los Angeles. Also, London, England, has occasionally been mentioned as a host city for a Super Bowl in the near future. Wembley Stadium has hosted several NFL games as part of the NFL International Series and is specifically designed for large, individual events, and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has openly discussed the possibility on different occasions.
Time zone complications are a significant obstacle to a Super Bowl in London; a typical 6:30 p.m. EST start would result in the game beginning at 11:30 p.m. local time in London: this is an unusually late hour to be holding spectator sports, while the NFL has never in its history started a game later than 9:15 p.m. local time.
Although bids have been submitted for all Super Bowls through Super Bowl LIX, the soonest that any stadium outside the NFL's footprint could serve as host would be Super Bowl LXII in 2028.
Eight stadiums that hosted at least one Super Bowl no longer exist:
Tulane Stadium, on the Tulane University campus, which hosted three Super Bowls, was demolished in November 1979.
Tampa Stadium, which hosted two Super Bowls, was demolished in April 1999.
Stanford Stadium, which hosted one Super Bowl, was demolished and redeveloped in 2005–06.
The Orange Bowl, which hosted five Super Bowls, was demolished in May 2008.
The Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis, which hosted one Super Bowl, was demolished in March 2014.
The Georgia Dome in Atlanta, which hosted two Super Bowls, was demolished in November 2017.
The Pontiac Silverdome in suburban Detroit, which hosted one Super Bowl, was demolished in March 2018.
San Diego Stadium, which hosted three Super Bowls, closed in March 2020 and was demolished in early 2021.
Super Bowl trademark
The NFL very actively seeks to prevent what it calls unauthorized commercial use of its trademarked terms "NFL", "Super Bowl", and "Super Bowl Sunday". As a result, many events and promotions tied to the game, but not sanctioned by the NFL, are asked to refer to it as "The Big Game", or other generic descriptions. A radio spot for Planters nuts parodied this, by saying "it would be super ... to have a bowl ... of Planters nuts while watching the big game!" and comedian Stephen Colbert began referring to the game in 2014 as the "Superb Owl". In 2015, the NFL filed opposition with the USPTO Trademark Trial and Appeal Board to a trademark application submitted by an Arizona-based nonprofit for "Superb Owl". The NFL claims that the use of the phrase "Super Bowl" implies an NFL affiliation, and on this basis the league asserts broad rights to restrict how the game may be shown publicly; for example, the league says Super Bowl showings are prohibited in churches or at other events that "promote a message", while non-sporting event venues are also prohibited to show the Super Bowl on any television screen larger than 55 inches. Some critics say the NFL is exaggerating its ownership rights by stating that "any use is prohibited", as this contradicts the broad doctrine of fair use in the United States. Legislation was proposed by Utah Senator Orrin Hatch in 2008 "to provide an exemption from exclusive rights in copyright for certain nonprofit organizations to display live football games", and "for other purposes".
In 2004, the NFL started issuing cease-and-desist letters to casinos in Las Vegas that were hosting Super Bowl parties. "Super Bowl" is a registered trademark, owned by the NFL, and any other business using that name for profit-making ventures is in violation of federal law, according to the letters. In reaction to the letters, many Las Vegas resorts, rather than discontinue the popular and lucrative parties, started referring to them as "Big Game Parties".
In 2006, the NFL made an attempt to trademark "The Big Game" as well; however, it withdrew the application in 2007 due to growing commercial and public relations opposition to the move, mostly from Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley and their fans, as the Stanford Cardinal football and California Golden Bears football teams compete in the Big Game, which has been played since 1892 (28 years before the formation of the NFL and 75 years before Super Bowl I). Additionally, the Mega Millions lottery game was known as The Big Game (then The Big Game Mega Millions) from 1996 to 2002.
See also
List of Super Bowl champions
History of National Football League championship
List of NFL champions (1920–1969)
List of Super Bowl broadcasters
List of Super Bowl head coaches
List of Super Bowl officials
List of Super Bowl records
Grey Cup, the Canadian Football League (CFL) championship game
List of NFL franchise post-season droughts
List of NFL franchise post-season streaks
List of quarterbacks with multiple Super Bowl starts
List of players with most Super Bowl championships
NFL Honors
Super Bowl advertising
Super Bowl counterprogramming
Super Bowl curse
Super Bowl indicator
Notes and references
Notes
References
Further reading
2006 NFL Record and Fact Book. Time Inc. Home Entertainment. July 1, 2006. ISBN 1-933405-32-5.
Total Football II: The Official Encyclopedia of the National Football League. HarperCollins. July 1, 2006. ISBN 1-933405-32-5.
The Sporting News Complete Super Bowl Book 1995. Sporting News. February 1995. ISBN 0-89204-523-X.
The Super Bowl: An Official Retrospective with DVD. Ballantine Books. 2005. ISBN 0-345-48719-2.
MacCambridge, Michael (2004). America's Game. Random House. ISBN 0-375-50454-0.
Chris Jones (February 2, 2005). "NFL tightens restrictions on Super Bowl advertisements". Las Vegas Review-Journal.
John Branch (February 4, 2006). "Build It and They Will Come". The New York Times.
Super Bowl play-by-plays from USA Today. Retrieved September 28, 2005.
100 Greatest Super Bowl Moments by Kevin Jackson, Jeff Merron, and David Schoenfield; ESPN. Retrieved December 5, 2021.
SI's 25 Lost Treasures—Sports Illustrated, July 11, 2005, p. 114.
"The Super Bowl I–VII." Lost Treasures of NFL Films. ESPN2. January 26, 2001.
"MTV's Super Bowl Uncensored". MTV. January 27, 2001.
"Talk Shows." CBS: 50 Years from Television City. CBS. April 27, 2002.
Dee, Tommy (January 2007). "Super Bowl Halftime Jinx". Maxim. Archived from the original on February 8, 2009. Retrieved January 25, 2007.
Maher, Tod; Gill, Bob (September 2011). The Pro Football Playoff Encyclopedia. Maher Sports Media. ISBN 978-0-9835136-2-9.
External links
Official website
Super Bowl at Curlie |
Super_Bowl_XLVI | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_XLVI | [
565
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_XLVI"
] | Super Bowl XLVI was an American football game between the National Football Conference (NFC) champion New York Giants and the American Football Conference (AFC) champion New England Patriots to decide the National Football League (NFL) champion for the 2011 season. The Giants defeated the Patriots by the score of 21–17. The game was played on February 5, 2012, at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, the first time that the Super Bowl was played in Indiana.
In addition to winning their fourth Super Bowl in team history, the Giants set a new record for the lowest regular season record (9–7, win percentage of 56.3%) by a Super Bowl champion. The Patriots entered the game with a 13–3 regular season record, and were also seeking their fourth Super Bowl win. This was a rematch of Super Bowl XLII, which New York also won, spoiling New England's run at a perfect 2007 season. The Giants and the Patriots also played in Week 9 a few months earlier, with the Giants winning on the road 24–20.
The Giants jumped to a 9–0 lead in the first quarter of Super Bowl XLVI before the Patriots scored 17 unanswered points to take a 17–9 lead in the third quarter. But the Giants prevented the Patriots from scoring again, and two consecutive New York field goals chipped away New England's lead, 17–15, late in the third quarter. The Giants capped off an 88-yard drive with running back Ahmad Bradshaw's 6-yard game-winning touchdown with 57 seconds left in the game. Eli Manning, who completed 30 of 40 passes for 296 yards, one touchdown, and no interceptions, was named Super Bowl MVP for the second time in his career. He became the third consecutive quarterback to win the award after Aaron Rodgers in Super Bowl XLV and Drew Brees in Super Bowl XLIV. He was also the first Giants quarterback to start and win two championship games since Ed Danowski in 1938.
The broadcast of the game on NBC broke the then record for the most-watched program in American television history, previously set during the previous year's Super Bowl. Super Bowl XLVI was watched by an estimated average audience of 111.3 million US viewers and an estimated total audience of 166.8 million, according to Nielsen, meaning that over half of the American population watched at least some of the initial broadcast. The game also set the record for most tweets per second during a sporting event, with 13.7 million tweets from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. (PST).
Background
Per convention as an even-numbered Super Bowl, the Patriots as the AFC representatives had the home team designation. Super Bowl XLVI was the sixth Super Bowl in which the two teams had competed in a previous Super Bowl matchup, as the Giants and Patriots had previously met in Super Bowl XLII. Both head coaches (Tom Coughlin and Bill Belichick) and both starting quarterbacks (Eli Manning and Tom Brady) returned from Super Bowl XLII.
Host selection process
Three cities presented bids for the game:
On January 31, 2008, the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau announced their plans to host the game at Reliant Stadium, and holding events at the surrounding Reliant Park, hoping that their city would host the championship game for the second time since Reliant Stadium opened.
On February 19, 2008, the City of Indianapolis, led by Colts owner Jim Irsay and Indianapolis mayor Greg Ballard, officially announced details about their intentions to bid for Super Bowl XLVI. Part of the agreement included a proposal to build a practice facility on the campus of Arsenal Technical High School that would be utilized by the school after the Super Bowl.
On March 6, 2008, one month after hosting Super Bowl XLII at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, the second Super Bowl held in the Phoenix metropolitan area, the Arizona Super Bowl Host Committee led by Committee chair Mike Kennedy formally announced their intentions to bid for another one. Glendale would eventually win its bid for Super Bowl XLIX in February 2015.
NFL franchise owners selected the Indianapolis bid at their meeting on May 20, 2008, in Atlanta.
A labor dispute had threatened the postponement or cancellation of the game during the spring and summer of 2011; league officials had set contingency plans to postpone the game one week if it had been necessary to postpone regular season games into the second week of January. Since the dispute was resolved well before the start of the regular season, no postponements were implemented, and the game remained as originally scheduled.
This was the first Super Bowl to be played in Indianapolis, and only the fourth time that the Super Bowl has been played in a cold-weather city, after Detroit (XVI and XL) and Minneapolis (XXVI). Downtown Indianapolis, the home of Lucas Oil Stadium, featured an outdoor Super Bowl Village and other programs at the Indiana Convention Center.
Teams
New York Giants
Working around a series of injuries, the Giants ended with a 9–7 record during the regular season and returned to the playoffs for the first time since 2008, winning the NFC East and finishing the season as the NFC's No. 4 seed. Finally back to full strength, the Giants entered their week 17 matchup with the Dallas Cowboys with both teams tied for the division lead with 8–7 records. The Giants took a 21–0 first half lead and while the Cowboys closed the gap to make the score 21–14 early in the 4th quarter, the Giants held on to defeat the Cowboys 31–14, clinching the divisional title and a playoff berth.
New York's offense was led by Super Bowl XLII winning quarterback Eli Manning, in his seventh season as the team's starter. Manning set new career highs in nearly every statistical category in 2011, throwing for a franchise record 4,933 yards and 29 touchdowns, with 16 interceptions, giving him a 92.9 passer rating. His top target was receiver Victor Cruz, who caught 82 passes for a franchise record 1,536 yards (3rd in the NFL) and 9 touchdowns. He had plenty of other targets, including Hakeem Nicks (76 receptions, 1,192 yards, 7 touchdowns), Mario Manningham (39 receptions and 523 yards in 12 games) and tight end Jake Ballard (38 receptions, 604 yards).
Although not on the field for four games due to injury, running back Ahmad Bradshaw was the team's leading rusher with 659 yards and 9 touchdowns. He was also a reliable weapon in the passing game, hauling in 34 receptions for 267 yards and two touchdowns. Brandon Jacobs also made contributions on the ground, rushing for 571 yards and 7 touchdowns.
New York's defensive line was led by defensive ends Justin Tuck, Jason Pierre-Paul and Osi Umenyiora. Pierre-Paul racked up 86 combined tackles and ranked fourth in the NFL with 16.5 sacks, earning him the only Pro Bowl selection on the Giants defense, while Umenyiora, limited to 9 games because of injury, recorded 9 sacks and 2 forced fumbles. The Giants secondary was led by Corey Webster, who intercepted a career-high 6 passes. Defensive backs Kenny Phillips and Aaron Ross added four interceptions each, while safety Antrel Rolle picked off two passes and led the team in combined tackles with 96.
The Giants joined the 2008 Arizona Cardinals and 1979 Los Angeles Rams as the only other team to advance to the Super Bowl with fewer than ten victories since the NFL expanded to a 16-game season in 1978, and the only one of those three to win the Super Bowl they had advanced to. They have won six consecutive playoff games away from their home stadium, dating back to their victory over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the 2007 Wild Card round. That includes their Super Bowl XLII victory over these same Patriots, although that game was played at a neutral site (and the Giants were the designated "away" team for the game). The 2011 Giants are the first team in NFL history to reach the Super Bowl after having been outscored by their opponents in the regular season (394 points scored, 400 points allowed).
New England Patriots
The Patriots finished with a 13–3 record, winning the AFC East and clinching the AFC's No. 1 seed in the playoffs. New England lost 2 consecutive games to the Steelers and Giants in week 8 and 9 respectively, before rallying to win their remaining eight games.
Back at the helm of the offense was 12-year quarterback Tom Brady, who earned his 7th Pro Bowl selection. Starting every game of the season, Brady completed 65.6% of his passes for a career-high 5,235 yards (the second highest total in NFL history at the time) and 39 touchdown passes, with just 12 interceptions and a rating of 105.6. Brady also added 109 yards and three scores on the ground. His main weapon in the passing game was Pro Bowl receiver Wes Welker, who led the NFL with 122 receptions (22 receptions ahead of second place) for 1,569 yards and 9 touchdowns. New England also had two of the best tight ends in the NFL: Pro Bowler Rob Gronkowski, who set new tight end records for receiving (1,327 yards) and touchdown catches (17); and Aaron Hernandez, who caught 79 passes for 910 yards and 7 touchdowns, while also rushing for 45 yards. Another big element of the passing game was veteran receiver Deion Branch, who caught 51 passes for 702 yards and 5 scores. Receivers Chad Ochocinco, Tiquan Underwood, Julian Edelman, and Matthew Slater made minor contributions to the passing attack; the latter two also served as emergency defensive backs. Edelman was also a superb punt returner, returning 28 punts for 296 yards and a touchdown.
New England had several key contributors in the ground game. Their main rusher was BenJarvus Green-Ellis, who rushed for 667 yards and 11 touchdowns. Running back Stevan Ridley added 447 yards and a 5.1 yards per carry average. Danny Woodhead contributed 351 yards with a 4.6 YPC average, and gained another 437 yards returning kickoffs. New England also had a solid offensive line, which was anchored by Pro Bowl guards Logan Mankins and Brian Waters. With all these weapons, New England ranked third in the NFL with 513 points.
The Patriots' defensive line featured two Pro Bowl selections: Vince Wilfork, who generated 3.5 sacks, two interceptions, and one forced fumble; and Andre Carter, who contributed 10 sacks and forced two fumbles. Defensive End Mark Anderson was also a major force on the line, earning 10 sacks and two forced fumbles of his own. Behind them, Rob Ninkovich excelled at linebacker, gaining 74 tackles, 6.5 sacks, and two interceptions. In the secondary, cornerback Kyle Arrington had a breakout season. After recording just one interception in his first three years, Arrington picked off 7 passes in 2011 to lead the NFL in that category, while also making 88 tackles. Linebacker Jerod Mayo led the team in tackles with 95.
With the victory in the 2011 AFC Championship Game Brady and head coach Bill Belichick became the first quarterback-head coach combination to reach the Super Bowl five times, surpassing the record held by Terry Bradshaw and Chuck Noll of the Pittsburgh Steelers' 1970s Super Bowl teams. Belichick tied Tom Landry for second most appearances as a head coach in the Super Bowl, behind only Don Shula's six.
Season and playoffs
The Patriots and Giants faced each other in New England during the regular season; the Giants won that game, 24–20. Incidentally, the Giants and Patriots had also faced each other in New York during the regular season prior to Super Bowl XLII with the Patriots winning that regular season matchup and the Giants going on to win that Super Bowl. Super Bowl XLVI marked the 13th Super Bowl that was a rematch of a regular season game. The loser in the regular season had been 7–5 in these games prior to Super Bowl XLVI.
The Giants finished the season as the NFC East champion and the No. 4 seed in the conference. The Giants defeated the No. 5 seed Atlanta Falcons in the Wild Card round 24–2, the first playoff game at MetLife Stadium. Eli Manning threw for 277 yards and 3 touchdowns with no interceptions, while the Giants defense shut down the Falcons, with the only Falcons points coming from a safety given up by Manning's intentional grounding penalty in his end zone.
The Giants then moved on to face the No. 1 seed and the defending Super Bowl XLV champion Green Bay Packers in the divisional round. The Giants never trailed in the game, winning 37–20. One of the key plays in the game was a Hail Mary pass by Manning to Hakeem Nicks, giving the Giants a 20–10 lead at the end of the first half. As they did to 2007 MVP Tom Brady and the Patriots' record-breaking offense, the Giants generated significant pressure on Packers quarterback and season MVP Aaron Rodgers, sacking him four times and disrupting his talented receiving corps. This was the first time in NFL history a 15–1 team failed to make it past the divisional round in the playoffs.
The Giants then faced the No. 2 seeded San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship Game. After a series of defensive standoffs in the fourth quarter, the game went into overtime. Both teams continued to struggle on offense, until Giants linebacker Jacquian Williams stripped the ball from 49ers wide receiver Kyle Williams after a punt return. The Giants recovered the ball at the 49ers 24-yard line, setting up a 31-yard field goal attempt by Giants kicker Lawrence Tynes. Unlike Cundiff earlier that day, Tynes' kick was successful, giving the Giants a 20–17 victory.
As the No. 1 seed in the AFC, the Patriots earned a first-round bye and home field advantage throughout the AFC playoffs. In the divisional round, the Patriots defeated the Denver Broncos 45–10. The Patriots dominated the game throughout, setting new franchise postseason records for total yards (509), points (45), and margin of victory (35). Tom Brady completed 18 of 25 passes for 246 yards and a postseason record five touchdowns in the first half. The Patriots defense had a breakout performance: Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow was held to just 9 of 26 completions and was sacked five times.
In the AFC Championship Game, the Patriots faced off against the No. 2 seeded Baltimore Ravens. Brady was out-dueled by Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco, who threw for more yards and touchdowns on the same number of completions and attempts. Nevertheless, the Patriots managed to take a 23–20 lead in the fourth quarter on a 1-yard run by Brady. With 1:44 left in the quarter, The Ravens got the ball back with one last chance to tie or win the game, driving all the way to the Patriots 14-yard line. But the Patriots managed to hold them there, with cornerback Sterling Moore breaking up two consecutive Ravens pass attempts in the red zone, including one in the end zone. Facing fourth down, the Ravens attempted a 32-yard field goal by kicker Billy Cundiff that would tie the game and possibly bring it to overtime. Cundiff missed the kick wide left, allowing the Patriots to advance to the Super Bowl.
Super Bowl pre-game notes
The Patriots, as the designated home team, had a choice of wearing their home navy blue jerseys or their white away jerseys. Briefly, there was speculation that the Patriots might wear the white away jerseys in order to switch the jerseys from Super Bowl XLII, where the Patriots wore dark blue and the Giants wore white. Also, the Giants were 4–0 in playoff games in their white away jerseys since the 2007 season. However, the Patriots announced on the Monday following the Conference Championship Games that they would be wearing their customary navy blue home jerseys as the home team in Super Bowl XLVI.
Hospitality experts speculated that "Indianapolis will have seen the most severe hotel price gouging in Super Bowl history." The city has 6,000 hotel rooms, fewer than typical for a Super Bowl host city. Some rooms in downtown Indianapolis reportedly cost more than $4,000 a night. By contrast, rooms close to the stadium in previous Super Bowls were usually available for about $200. The room shortage and high prices caused some attendees to plan to stay in Chicago, 180 miles away, and ride buses to events.
Because the Giants and Patriots drew their fan bases from New York City and Boston respectively, the Super Bowl echoed the fierce rivalry between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox in Major League Baseball. Tom Brady said of the rivalry: "There is a great rivalry...between Boston and New York...When I got to the team, it was always Red Sox-Yankees. We've had some pretty meaningful games against the Giants over the past few years, so I don't think anyone is disappointed that it's the Giants."
Broadcasting
Television
United States
In the United States, the game was televised nationally by NBC.
Al Michaels called play-by-play for NBC, marking the eighth time that he was behind the microphone for a Super Bowl and the second time he called a Super Bowl for NBC (Michaels had previously done play-by-play for Super Bowls XXII, XXV, XXIX, XXXIV, XXXVII, and XL for ABC and Super Bowl XLIII for NBC). Cris Collinsworth was the color analyst for the game, his second Super Bowl as a game analyst and first since he was in the booth for Super Bowl XXXIX for Fox. Michele Tafoya was the sideline reporter. Bob Costas and Dan Patrick (who also presided over the trophy presentation ceremony) hosted the pregame, halftime, and postgame coverage for NBC with Football Night in America analysts Tony Dungy and Rodney Harrison and special guest analysts (who were seated next to Costas during the pre-game festivities), Aaron Rodgers and Hines Ward. Also helping out on NBC's broadcast were reporters Alex Flanagan, Liam McHugh, and Randy Moss and NFL insiders Mike Florio and Peter King.
Advertising
All commercials for the game sold out by Thanksgiving 2011, at an average price of $3.5 million per thirty-second ad, by far the highest rate for Super Bowl advertising in the event's history. At least one thirty-second advertisement commanded a price of $4 million.
Anti-abortion activist Randall Terry has said he was planning to run an advertisement featuring graphic photos of aborted fetuses during Super Bowl XLVI. Terry was not allowed to air the ad nationwide, given that the networks have a policy under equal time rules to reject all political and issue related advertising during the Super Bowl. He was able, however, under the then-current Federal Election Commission "reasonable access" rules, to force up to 35 local stations (those located in states in which the Democratic Party primaries are within 45 days of Super Bowl Sunday; Terry entered the primary as a dummy candidate primarily for the purpose of this advertisement) to run the advertisement uncensored, regardless of whether it meets Standards and Practices or Federal Communications Commission guidelines. The FCC ruled against Terry on February 3, two days before the game, when NBC owned-and-operated WMAQ-TV in Chicago refused to air the ad, citing the same equal-time statutes and the fact that Terry did not appear to be a bona fide candidate. The largest station to allow Terry to air his advertisement was WHDH in Boston, Massachusetts.
An advertisement from Pepsi featured Melanie Amaro, the winner of season one of the Fox series The X Factor. Other confirmed advertisers included Doritos (continuing its user-generated "Crash the Super Bowl" contest), Bridgestone, Volkswagen (a 60-second spot advertising the third-generation Beetle featuring dogs barking to the tune of "The Imperial March"), General Motors (four for Chevrolet; including a commercial featuring "We Are Young" by fun. that led to a massive sales spike; and one for Cadillac), Toyota, Hyundai, Acura (featuring Jerry Seinfeld in an ad for the NSX), Kia Motors (advertising the Optima with a spot starring Adriana Lima), Audi (parodying the Twilight series with an ad for the S7), Honda (starring Matthew Broderick in a reprisal of the lead role in Ferris Bueller's Day Off), newcomers Dannon Yogurt and Century 21 Real Estate, Teleflora, Mars, Incorporated (introducing the M&M's brown spokescandy), The Coca-Cola Company, CareerBuilder.com (reprising their chimp advertisement campaign), Cars.com, Skechers, Relativity Media (running four advertisements for Act of Valor), Paramount Pictures, Walt Disney Pictures, and Universal Pictures. Anheuser-Busch has purchased nine slots during the game. An ad for Old Milwaukee beer featuring Will Ferrell aired a single time on only one station in Nebraska.
Disney's ad for its upcoming John Carter was seen as exacerbating concerns about the expensive tentpole film's marketing that had been raised by its teaser the preceding August. While admitting he was "pleasantly surprised" by it, Collider's Adam Chitwood said he was "still not convinced that the general audience has a handle on what the film's about." An executive at a competing studio said the trailer strongly reinforced concerns that the film had experienced serious production problems that adversely affected its quality and box-office prospects. "It's like, 'Guys, this is your Hail Mary?'" The ad's ineffectiveness was cited as one of many reasons the movie failed upon its release the following month, leading Disney to take a $200 million writedown on the film.
Chrysler aired a two-minute half time advertisement titled "Half Time in America", produced by the Wieden+Kennedy agency and narrated by Clint Eastwood. The ad drew the criticism of several leading U.S. conservatives, who suggested that its messaging implied that President Obama deserved a second term and, as such, was political payback for Obama's support for the federal bailout of the company. Both Chrysler chief marketing officer Olivier François and Chrysler Chairman and CEO Sergio Marchionne denied that the ad was intended as a politically oriented message. Overall, the ad was considered one of the better ones that aired during the game.
There has also been some conjecture regarding the possible plagiarism of Australian band John Butler Trio's song "Zebra" by Yogurt giant Dannon. Spokesman for the band, Tom McNamara, commented that the band was currently exploring their proprietary rights with regards to the similarity of the tune to the band's hit single.
Matthew Broderick reprised his Ferris Bueller's Day Off role in a Honda commercial aired during this Super Bowl which featured the Oh Yeah song. A teaser for the ad had appeared two weeks prior to the Super Bowl, which had created rumors of a possible film sequel. It was produced by Santa Monica-based RPA and directed by Todd Phillips. AdWeek's Tim Nudd called the ad "a great homage to the original 1986 film, with Broderick this time calling in sick to a film shoot and enjoying another day of slacking." On the other hand, Jalopnik's Matt Hardigree called the spot "sacrilegious".
International
NFL International televised the game to viewers outside of North America, with Kenny Albert and Joe Theismann calling the English language feed.
Streaming
This was the first legal online streaming of a Super Bowl telecast in the United States, available on computers via NFL.com and NBCSports.com, and mobile devices via Verizon Wireless's NFL Mobile app.
As part of "Operation Fake Sweep", Immigration and Customs Enforcement, along with the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, seized and shut down 16 websites that had provided access to pirated Internet television feeds of NFL games on February 2, in an action similar to the crackdown they had implemented the previous year. For the first time, domains in the .tv top-level domain were also seized, despite that TLD's allocation to Tuvalu.
Radio
Super Bowl XLVI was carried nationwide on radio over the Dial Global radio network, with Kevin Harlan as play-by-play announcer, Boomer Esiason as color analyst, and James Lofton and Mark Malone as sideline reporters. Locally, the game was broadcast by the New York Giants Radio Network flagship (WFAN) and the New England Patriots Radio Network flagship (WBZ-FM). Bob Papa called the game for the Giants with Carl Banks as his analyst and Howard Cross as sideline reporter, while Gil Santos was at the microphone for the Patriots with Gino Cappelletti as analyst and Scott Zolak as sideline reporter. Santos and Cappelletti returned for their sixth Super Bowl as broadcast team for the Patriots while Papa and Banks called their third and second Super Bowls, respectively, for the Giants. This was the first Super Bowl broadcast for the Giants not to feature longtime analyst Dick Lynch, who had retired from the team's radio booth following the 2007 season and died in 2008. As per the NFL's rules, all the other stations in the Giants and Patriots radio networks (as well as WCBS-AM in New York, which serves as a preseason overflow station for the Giants) carried Dial Global's feed.
BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra produced its own radio broadcast, with Darren Fletcher, Rocky Boiman, and Greg Brady announcing.
Entertainment
Pregame
The Indiana University Marching Hundred performed during the pre-game show.
On January 12, 2012, it was reported that former American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson would sing the National Anthem at Super Bowl XLVI. It marks the fourth time in the previous five years that an American Idol contestant has performed the national anthem (joining Carrie Underwood, Jennifer Hudson and Jordin Sparks). Clarkson was accompanied by the Indianapolis Children's Choir. Husband-and-wife country musicians Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert performed "America the Beautiful" as part of the ceremonies. American Sign Language translation for both songs was performed by Rachel Mazique, the currently reigning Miss Deaf America.
The coin toss ceremony featured the recent inductees to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Curtis Martin, one of the inductees, was originally selected to toss the coin, but in what NESN described as "a rather awkward scene", referee John Parry ended up flipping the coin himself while Martin stood beside and watched. The Patriots won the toss, the first AFC team to do so in the Super Bowl in 15 years. Because the coin toss landed on heads, the pizza chain Papa John's offered free pizza to millions of Americans who participated in a promotional contest.
Halftime
Word had leaked as early as October 2011 that Madonna would be the performer for the Super Bowl halftime show, with M.I.A. and Nicki Minaj performing as well; all three are featured on Madonna's new single "Give Me All Your Luvin'" which was performed as part of the show. The league confirmed Madonna as the performer on December 4. Other collaborators on the project included LMFAO, Cee Lo Green, long time Madonna collaborator Jamie King, Cirque du Soleil, and Moment Factory.
The setlist included an Egyptian-themed "Vogue" with costumes by Givenchy, a medley of Madonna's "Music" and LMFAO's two largest hits ("Party Rock Anthem" and "Sexy and I Know It", with the LMFAO singers remaining fully clothed, unlike in the latter song's music video), followed by her then-current single "Give Me All Your Luvin'", excerpts from "Open Your Heart" and "Express Yourself" (in a duet with Green), and the finale, "Like a Prayer", also featuring Green. Green and Shelton (who sang "America the Beautiful" as part of the pregame show) are both judges on the NBC TV series The Voice, which the network broadcast after the game.
M.I.A. came under controversy for giving the middle finger during the performance of "Give Me All Your Luvin'", which was caught by the broadcast feed. The gesture was given when she appeared to sing "I don't give a shit", although it was hard to hear clearly if the expletive was said, stopped short, or cut off, as the censor unsuccessfully tried to blur the screen to cover the gesture.
The show broke the record for the most viewed Super Bowl halftime show ever, defeating Michael Jackson's previous record, with 114 million viewers throughout the world.
Game summary
First quarter
The Patriots won the coin toss and deferred. This ended a stretch of 14 consecutive Super Bowls in which the NFC team won the coin toss.
New York opened the game with a drive to the Patriots' 33-yard line, threatening to score first. After quarterback Eli Manning completed a 19-yard pass to wide receiver Hakeem Nicks, New England's defense stepped up to prevent a score. First, defensive end Brandon Deaderick sacked Manning for a 2-yard loss, then running back Ahmad Bradshaw was tackled behind the line of scrimmage on a blitz by cornerback Kyle Arrington. On third down, defensive end Mark Anderson sacked Manning for a 6-yard loss, pushing the Giants out of field goal range and forcing them to punt.
The Giants got a boost from punter Steve Weatherford, whose 36-yard kick pinned the Patriots back at their own 6-yard line. On the Patriots' first offensive play of the game, quarterback Tom Brady attempted a play action pass, but a heavy rush from defensive end Justin Tuck forced Brady to throw deep into the middle of the field, with no receiver anywhere near it. Brady was flagged for intentional grounding, and since he was in the end zone when he threw the pass, the play resulted in a safety, giving New York an early 2–0 lead. It was the first safety in a Super Bowl since the Arizona Cardinals scored one in Super Bowl XLIII. After receiving the free kick, New York drove 78 yards in 9 plays. Aided by a key 24-yard run by Bradshaw, the Giants increased their lead to 9–0 on Manning's 2-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Victor Cruz.
On the Patriots' following drive, Brady completed passes to running back BenJarvus Green-Ellis for 7 yards and wide receiver Deion Branch for 15, while wide receiver Wes Welker picked up 29 yards on a reception and a run on a reverse, moving the ball to the New York 17-yard line.
Second quarter
New York managed to stop the drive at their own 11-yard line, but Stephen Gostkowski kicked a 29-yard field goal to cut New England's deficit to 9–3 early in the second quarter.
After the next three possessions resulted in punts, Weatherford's 51-yard punt gave the Patriots possession on their 2-yard line with 4:03 left in the half. However, this punt did not affect the Patriots, as they stormed 96 yards down the field in 14 plays, tying the record for the longest drive in Super Bowl history. Brady completed a 20-yard pass to tight end Rob Gronkowski, then followed it up with four consecutive completions to tight end Aaron Hernandez for a total gain of 38 yards. The drive ended with Brady's 4-yard touchdown pass to running back Danny Woodhead, giving the Patriots their first lead of the game, 10–9, at halftime.
Third quarter
New England took the second half kickoff and started out strong; Brady completed a 21-yard pass to wide receiver Chad Johnson (his only reception of the postseason and Brady's longest pass of the game), and a reception and two runs by Green-Ellis gained 29 yards to the New York 24-yard line. Brady eventually finished the eight-play, 79-yard drive with a 12-yard touchdown pass to Hernandez, increasing New England's lead to 17–9.
Starting their first drive of the half from their own 35-yard line after wide receiver Jerrel Jernigan's 34-yard kickoff return, aided by Manning's two completions to Nicks for 19 yards, the Giants reached the New England 20-yard line, where kicker Lawrence Tynes made a 38-yard field goal, cutting their deficit to 17–12.
On New England's next drive, New York forced a three-and-out, and safety Will Blackmon returned Zoltán Meskó's 43-yard punt 10 yards to the Patriots' 47-yard line. The Giants subsequently drove back into scoring range on a drive that utilized several different players, including a 12-yard reception by seldom used tight end Bear Pascoe to reach the New England 9-yard line. On third down, however, a sack by Anderson and linebacker Rob Ninkovich forced New York to settle for a 33-yard field goal by Tynes, cutting the score to 17–15 with 35 seconds left in the third quarter.
Fourth quarter
On the second play of the fourth quarter, the game's only turnover occurred when Giants linebacker Chase Blackburn stepped in front of Gronkowski and picked off a deep Brady pass at the New York 8-yard line. The Giants then drove to the New England 43-yard line, but were stopped there and had to punt. The Patriots took the ball back at their own 8-yard line with less than 10 minutes left in the game. After Brady completed four consecutive passes for 34 yards to reach the New York 44-yard line, he threw to a wide-open Welker, but his pass was high and Welker was unable to reel it in while falling to the ground, crucially preventing a huge gain. Brady's next pass was incomplete, and the Patriots were forced to punt, after which Brady's wife supermodel Gisele Bündchen famously blamed Welker, saying her husband could not both "[T]hrow and catch the ball." The television footage of the game showed Bill Belichick exhorting his defense to focus on stopping Cruz and Nicks, and to force the Giants to go to secondary options Mario Manningham and Pascoe.
The Giants took possession from their own 12-yard line with 3:46 left in the game and one timeout. On the first play, in what would end up being one of the key plays of the game, Manning completed a deep pass along the left sideline to Manningham for a 38-yard gain to midfield (the longest play from scrimmage in the game), which would later draw comparisons to his pass to David Tyree in Super Bowl XLII. Belichick challenged the catch, but the call on the field stood and it cost him his team's first timeout. Two more completions from Manning to Manningham gained another 18 yards. Manning then completed a 14-yard pass to Nicks on the New England 18-yard line at the two-minute warning. Three plays later, New England called their second timeout with 1:03 left after Bradshaw's 1-yard run set up 2nd-and-goal on the 6-yard line.
On the second down play, which Sports Illustrated later called "perhaps the strangest play in Super Bowl history", Bradshaw's path to the end zone was clear as the Patriots chose to let him score. Once he realized what was happening, Bradshaw tried to stop running at the 1-yard line, but his forward momentum carried him over the goal line and the Giants took the lead on the uncontested touchdown run. The intentionally surrendered touchdown gave the Patriots 57 seconds to mount a game-winning drive, and they trailed 21–17 after Giants running back DJ Ware was stopped on the two-point conversion attempt.
The game's final drive began on the New England 20-yard line. Brady's first two passes fell incomplete and then he was sacked by Tuck for a 6-yard loss on third down, bringing up 4th-and-16 and forcing the Patriots to use their final timeout. Facing heavy pressure in the pocket, Brady eluded defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul and linebacker Mathias Kiwanuka, then threw a 19-yard bullet to wide receiver Deion Branch, who ran out of bounds at the 33-yard line for a first down. An 11-yard completion from Brady to Hernandez advanced the ball to the Patriots' 44, followed by a twelve-men-on-the-field penalty against the Giants, which moved the ball to the Patriots' 49 with nine seconds left. After an incomplete pass, Brady, on the game's final play, threw a Hail Mary pass intended for Hernandez in the end zone, but the ball was deflected by five Giants defenders. Gronkowski dove with outstretched arms toward the ball but was still a yard away when it hit the ground, giving the Giants their fourth Super Bowl title in franchise history.
Box score
Statistical overview
For the Giants, Manning completed 30 of 40 passes for 296 yards, one touchdown, and no interceptions. Bradshaw was the top rusher of the game with 72 yards and a touchdown, also catching two passes for 19 yards. Nicks was the top receiver with 10 receptions for 109 yards. Blackburn, who had been cut by the Giants earlier in the season before being re-signed, had 6 total tackles and an interception. Tuck made 3 tackles and two sacks. For New England, Brady completed 27 of 41 passes for 276 yards and two touchdowns, with one interception, becoming the first quarterback to throw a touchdown pass in five separate Super Bowls. His top target was Tight End/H-Back Aaron Hernandez, performing in a role similar to the one he played at Florida, catching 8 passes for 67 yards and one score. A 2010 4th-Round selection, Hernandez's stellar performance in the game would only add to the tragedy when his career was cut short by a self-destructive spiral into crime, resulting in his conviction in 2013 for the murder of Odin Lloyd. Fellow second-year TE Rob Gronkowski, who came into Super Bowl XLVI battling a severe ankle injury, tallied 2 catches for 26 yards and Welker, despite the infamous drop, finished with 7 receptions for 60 yards and two carries for 21. Defensively, linebackers Jerod Mayo and Brandon Spikes each had 8 solo tackles, 3 assists, and a forced fumble.
With the win the Giants became the fifth team to win at least four Super Bowls, while the Patriots became the fourth to lose four. At the time, Brady had yet to win in Lucas Oil Stadium and had not won a game in Indianapolis since 2007, when the Patriots defeated the Indianapolis Colts on their way to a perfect regular season. Belichick dropped to 3–2 as a head coach in the Super Bowl, while Tom Coughlin won his second Super Bowl in as many tries. Some news organizations, among them The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, said that their victory made them NFL's version of the 2011 World Series champion St. Louis Cardinals, saying that these two championship teams that had been given the last rites by many near the end of the season, emerged as champions at the end. Eli Manning was the only quarterback to throw for more than 4,900 yards and win a Super Bowl in the same season until Patrick Mahomes threw for 5,250 yards and won Super Bowl LVII during the 2022 NFL season.
The Giants became the first team to have won Super Bowl games broadcast on all four U.S. national networks (CBS, ABC, Fox, and NBC).
The Giants and Patriots became the 3rd and 4th teams (after the Oakland Raiders and Pittsburgh Steelers) to appear in Super Bowls in four different decades (both in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s) and the second and third to appear in Super Bowls in four consecutive decades (joining the Pittsburgh Steelers). The Giants became the first and only team in Super Bowl history to win Super Bowls in four different decades (1986, 1990, 2007, 2011). The Patriots became the first and only team in Super Bowl history to lose Super Bowls in four different decades (1985, 1996, 2007, 2011).
Dan Shaughnessy said in a piece in The Boston Globe about Boston on the loss to the Giants under the headline, "History Repeats": "Instead of celebrating a grand slam–championships in every major sport over a period of four years and four months–New Englanders are spitting out pieces of their broken luck, bracing for the avalanche of grief from the New Yorkers they envy so badly."
The Giants went into the half trailing 10–9. The Giants have trailed at halftime in all of their Super Bowl appearances, trailing 10–9 to the Broncos, 12–10 to the Bills, 10–0 to the Ravens, and 7–3 to the Patriots.
This would be the fourth time in the Giants' five Super Bowl appearances that they faced their AFC opponent earlier during the regular season. In every season in which the Giants have won the Super Bowl they have faced their AFC Super Bowl counterpart previously during the regular season.
The Giants are now 4–0 in Super Bowls in which Bill Belichick has been on the sidelines. Belichick was the Giants' defensive coordinator for their first two Super Bowl victories, and the opposing head coach in their last two. Three of the Giants' victories have come against AFC East teams, with the Giants having defeated the Buffalo Bills and Patriots twice.
The Giants continued their winning streak in road playoff games with their win in Super Bowl XLVI. The team won every playoff game they played away from their home stadium (Giants Stadium and MetLife Stadium) from 2007 to 2011. Prior to this run, last time the Giants were defeated in a game away from the Meadowlands was in 2006, when they were defeated by the Philadelphia Eagles in the Wild Card round. This streak came to an end in the 2016–17 NFL playoffs, where the Giants were defeated 38–13 by the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field in the Wild Card round. Two of the Giants' road playoff victories during this streak occurred at Lambeau.
This was the second Super Bowl, after Super Bowl X, resulting in a final score of 21–17 with the winning score including a safety and a missed extra point as part of its 21-point total (although in this case it was a failed 2-point attempt while in the earlier case it was a blocked kick).
This was the 5th set of teams to have a rematch in Super Bowl history and overall the 6th rematch. The others were the Miami Dolphins and Washington Redskins, who met in Super Bowl VII and Super Bowl XVII; the Dallas Cowboys and Pittsburgh Steelers, who met in Super Bowl X, Super Bowl XIII, and Super Bowl XXX and are the only teams to meet in the Super Bowl more than twice; the San Francisco 49ers and Cincinnati Bengals, who met in Super Bowl XVI and Super Bowl XXIII; and the Cowboys and Buffalo Bills, who met in Super Bowl XXVII and Super Bowl XXVIII and are the only teams to face each other in two consecutive Super Bowls; and later the Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles becoming the 6th set of teams to have a rematch in Super Bowl history and 7th overall, meeting in Super Bowl LII after previously meeting in Super Bowl XXXIX.
Final statistics
Sources: NFL.com Super Bowl XLVI, Super Bowl XLVI Play Finder NYG, Super Bowl XLVI Play Finder NE, The Football Database Super Bowl XLVI
Statistical comparison
Individual statistics
1Completions/attempts
2Carries
3Long gain
4Receptions
5Times targeted
Starting lineups
Source:
Officials
Referee – John Parry
Umpire – Carl Paganelli
Head Linesman – Tom Stabile
Line Judge – Gary Arthur
Field Judge – Gary Cavaletto
Side Judge – Laird Hayes
Back Judge – Tony Steratore
Alternate Referee - Alberto Riveron
Alternate Umpire - Bill Schuster
Alternate Flank - Wayne Mackie
Alternate Deep - Don Carlsen
Alternate Back Judge - Greg Wilson
This was the last game officials wore the traditional white knickers. Beginning the next season, officials wore the full-length black pants introduced in 2006 for cold-weather games full-time.
References
External links
Super Bowl XLVI: NFL Full Game on YouTube
Super Bowl XLVI page on NFL website
NFL.com
Super Bowl XLVI Host Committee
Super Bowl XLVI at ESPN
Super Bowl XLVI Box Score at Pro Football Reference
Super Bowl XLVI at IMDb |
Eli_Manning | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_Manning | [
565
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_Manning"
] | Elisha Nelson Manning (born January 3, 1981) is an American former professional football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 16 seasons with the New York Giants. A member of the Manning family, he is the youngest son of Archie and younger brother of Peyton. Manning played college football for the Ole Miss Rebels, where he won the Maxwell and Johnny Unitas Golden Arm awards as a senior. He was selected first overall in the 2004 NFL draft by the San Diego Chargers and traded to the Giants during the draft.
Manning's greatest professional success was twice leading the Giants to underdog Super Bowl victories against the New England Patriots dynasty in Super Bowl XLII and Super Bowl XLVI. The former, which saw the wild card Giants defeat a Patriots team that was the first to win all 16 regular season games, is regarded as one of the greatest sports upsets of all time. Manning was named Super Bowl MVP in both championships, making him one of six players to receive the award multiple times.
As the Giants starting quarterback from 2004 to 2019, Manning holds the franchise records for passing yards, passing touchdowns, and completions. Never missing a game due to injury, he started 210 consecutive games from 2004 to 2017, the third-longest consecutive starts streak by an NFL quarterback. Manning ranks 10th all-time in passing yards and 10th in touchdowns.
Early life
Manning was born in New Orleans, the youngest of three boys to Olivia (née Williams) and NFL quarterback Elisha Archibald "Archie" Manning III, both natives of Mississippi. His older brothers, Cooper and Peyton, both played football growing up.
Manning attended high school at the Isidore Newman School in New Orleans, where he played football and basketball for the Greenies. In his high school career, Manning passed for a school-record 7,389 yards and 89 touchdowns. Eli's passing mark was later broken by his nephew Arch. He committed to play college football at the University of Mississippi.
College career
Manning entered college in the shadow of his brother Peyton, quarterback of the Indianapolis Colts, and his father, who was considered a "folk hero" at Ole Miss. During his years with the Rebels, Manning set or tied numerous single-game, season and career records. His career numbers include 10,119 passing yards (fifth on the SEC career list), 81 touchdown passes (third on the SEC career list), and a passer rating of 137.7 (tied for sixth on the SEC career list).
2000 season
As a redshirt freshman, Manning competed with veteran Romaro Miller for the starting quarterback position and saw little playing time. He appeared in six games and passed for 170 total yards and one interception in the Rebels 7–5 season.
2001 season
With the departure of Miller, Manning became the Rebels' starting quarterback as a sophomore. In the first game, against Murray State, he converted 20-of-23 pass attempts for 271 yards and five passing touchdowns in the 49–14 victory. In the following game, a 27–21 loss to Auburn, he had 265 passing yards, one passing touchdown and one interception. Over the next few games, Manning helped lead the Rebels to victories over Kentucky, Alabama and LSU. On November 3, in a 58–56 7OT loss to Arkansas, Manning passed for 312 passing yards and six passing touchdowns. The game marked the longest game in major college football history at the time. Overall, Manning had a solid first year as the Rebels' starting quarterback with 2,948 passing yards, 31 touchdowns, and nine interceptions, as the Rebels finished with a 7–4 record.
2002 season
Manning's junior season started out promising with a 31–3 victory over Louisiana-Monroe and a 38–16 victory over Memphis. Manning had four passing touchdowns and one interception combined in those two games. In the next game, a 42–28 loss to Texas Tech, Manning passed for 374 yards, three touchdowns and one interception. The Rebels won their next three games, which were over Vanderbilt, #6 Florida and Arkansas State to earn Ole Miss a #21 ranking in the AP Poll. Manning had five touchdowns and one interception in that stretch. The Rebels' fortunes turned in the latter half of the season with a five-game losing streak. In the stretch was a 48–28 loss to Arkansas, in which Manning completed 42-of-56 passes for 414 yards, two touchdowns, and two interceptions. In addition, he had a rushing touchdown. Manning's 414 passing yards marked the most he threw for in college. After a 24–12 win over rival Mississippi State, the Rebels qualified for the Independence Bowl with a 6–6 record to face off against Nebraska. Manning passed for 313 yards and one touchdown in the 27–23 victory. Overall, Manning finished with 3,401 passing yards, 21 touchdowns, and 15 interceptions in his junior season.
2003 season
Manning started off his senior season with a 2–2 record. He played well in that stretch with 1,329 passing yards, 11 touchdowns and four interceptions, with victories over Vanderbilt and Louisiana-Monroe, but had losses to Memphis and Texas Tech. The Rebels went on a six-game winning streak that included victories over major SEC opponents #24 Florida, Alabama, #21 Arkansas, South Carolina, and Auburn. Manning passed for 1,552 yards, 12 touchdowns, and four interceptions in the winning streak. Overall, he led the Rebels to a 10–3 record, and a 31–28 SBC Cotton Bowl Classic victory over #21 Oklahoma State, with 259 passing yards and two touchdowns in 2003. Manning helped lead Ole Miss to their first ten-win season since 1971.
As his senior year came to a close, Manning won many awards, including the Maxwell Award as the nation's best all-around player, the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award, the National Football Foundation and College Football Hall of Fame Scholar-Athlete Award, the Sporting News Radio Socrates Award, and the SEC Most Valuable Player Award. He was also a candidate for the 2003 Heisman Trophy, finishing third in the voting after winning quarterback Jason White (University of Oklahoma) and wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald (University of Pittsburgh). Manning was a member of the Sigma Nu fraternity (as was his father), and he was named Sigma Nu Athlete of the Year in 2001 and 2003.
Manning graduated from the University of Mississippi with a degree in marketing and a GPA of 3.44 and was on the Dean's Honor Roll.
Awards
2001: Conerly Trophy – Best College Football Player in Mississippi
2001: Davey O'Brien Award (finalist) – Awarded to the Nation's Top Quarterback
2001: Honorable Mention All-American – The Football News
2002: Independence Bowl MVP
2003: Second Team All-American – The Associated Press
2003: Maxwell Award – Nation's Top Player
2003: Conerly Trophy – Best College Football Player in Mississippi
2003: SEC MVP – Birmingham Monday Morning Quarterback Club
2003: Sports Person of the Year in Mississippi – The Clarion-Ledger
2003: Mississippi Amateur Athlete of the Year – Jackson Touchdown Club
2003: National Scholar-Athlete Class – Division I-A QB
2003: Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award – Awarded to the Nation's Top Quarterback
2003: SEC Offensive Player of the Year – The Associated Press and the SEC Coaches
2004: Sporting News Radio Socrates Award
2004: SBC Cotton Bowl Classic MVP
Colonel Earl (Red) Blaik Leadership Award – All-American Football Foundation
USA Today Player of the Year in Louisiana
First team All-American – The All-American Foundation
SEC Player of the Year – The Commercial Appeal and the SEC Coaches
First Team All-SEC – Associated Press
SEC Top Offensive QB – Touchdown Club of Atlanta Wally Butts Award
College statistics
Professional career
The San Diego Chargers had the first overall pick in the 2004 NFL draft due to their 4–12 record in 2003. With Manning being the most coveted player in the draft, it appeared that the Chargers' intentions were to draft him first overall. Meanwhile, Manning and his father Archie Manning stated that he would refuse to play for the Chargers if drafted by them. Archie asked the father of former Chargers quarterback Ryan Leaf before the draft about his son's experience with the team. In hearing that the Chargers did not help Leaf with his personal problems, it then became part of why Eli refused to play for the team.
The Chargers selected Manning with the first pick overall nonetheless, as the team had a deal with the New York Giants, whereby the Giants would draft and then trade Philip Rivers and a 2004 third-round pick, used to select placekicker Nate Kaeding; a 2005 first-round pick, used to select linebacker Shawne Merriman; and a 2005 fifth-round pick (which was later traded away) to the Chargers for Manning. He signed a six-year, $45 million contract with the Giants.
Manning was one of 17 quarterbacks taken in the 2004 NFL Draft, along with Rivers and the Pittsburgh Steelers' Ben Roethlisberger. All three would enjoy lengthy and successful careers with the teams that signed them and have been compared favorably to the 1983 NFL draft, which included Hall of Fame quarterbacks John Elway, Jim Kelly, and Dan Marino. Manning posted the lowest passing yards, touchdowns, pass completions, completion percentage, TD–INT ratio, passer rating, wins, winning percentage, and Pro Bowl honors of the three, but cemented his legacy with his two upset Super Bowl victories against the New England Patriots' dynasty. While both Manning and Roethlisberger were part of two Super Bowl-winning teams, Manning is the only quarterback of the three to earn Super Bowl MVP honors, which he received in both victories.
2004 season
Manning made his NFL regular season debut in Week 1 against the Philadelphia Eagles. He came into the game toward the end the fourth quarter in relief of Kurt Warner. He finished the 31–17 loss 3-of-9 for 66 yards. Manning made his first career regular season start against the Atlanta Falcons at Giants Stadium on November 21, 2004. In the game, Manning threw his first career touchdown on a six-yard pass to Jeremy Shockey in the third quarter. In his fourth start, against the Baltimore Ravens at M&T Bank Stadium on December 12, 2004, he ended the day with a 0.0 passer rating and was benched in the second half in favor of Warner, but remained the Giants starter through the end of the season. In Week 15, against the Pittsburgh Steelers, he recorded his first multi-touchdown performance with 182 passing yards, two touchdowns, and one interception in the 33–30 loss in a duel with fellow rookie quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. In the regular season finale, Manning passed for 144 yards, three touchdowns, and one interception in the 28–24 victory over the Dallas Cowboys, getting his first win as a starter. The Giants finished with a 6–10 record and were 1–6 in games that Manning started in. He finished with 1,043 passing yards, six touchdowns, and nine interceptions.
2005 season: NFC East champions
Following 2004, Warner left the Giants, and Manning was named the starter for 2005. Manning led the Giants to a 2–0 record with victories against the Arizona Cardinals and New Orleans Saints, before traveling to the West Coast for a test in a road game against the San Diego Chargers. Chargers fans did not forget the snub, and on September 25, 2005, when Manning and the Giants made their first trip to San Diego for a game since that draft day, the crowd booed Manning loudly every time he touched the ball. San Diego defeated the Giants 45–23, but Manning displayed what may have been his most impressive performance of his young career, going 24-of-41 for 352 yards and two touchdowns.
Manning returned home to throw for almost 300 yards and a career-high four touchdowns against the St. Louis Rams at Giants Stadium in a 44–24 romp. Two games later, he led a last-minute drive against the Denver Broncos to secure a 24–23 victory for the Giants. The drive culminated in a two-yard touchdown to Amani Toomer with five seconds remaining. Two weeks later, Manning overcame a weak first half against the San Francisco 49ers to help his team secure their first official road victory of the season, 24–6. Despite a poor performance at home against the Minnesota Vikings, throwing four interceptions, he again led his team back to tie the game in the final minutes before the Vikings won on a late field goal.
Manning finished among the top five quarterbacks in both passing yards and touchdown passes, while leading an offense that finished third in the NFL in scoring with a total of 422 points. It was the most points the Giants scored in a single season since 1963. The Giants won the NFC East with an 11–5 record and advanced to the postseason as the #4-seed. In the Wild Card Round against the Carolina Panthers, Manning was 10-of-18 for 113 yards and three interceptions in the 23–0 loss.
2006 season
Manning's second full season was reminiscent of his 2005 season. He started off playing well and completed over 65 percent of his passes through the first four games. However, he struggled in the second half of the season and his production diminished towards the end of the regular season. After losing a tough game to his brother Peyton and the Indianapolis Colts on opening day, Manning and the Giants rebounded from a 24–7 fourth quarter deficit en route to a 30–24 overtime victory over the division rival Philadelphia Eagles in Week 2. Manning threw for a career-high 371 yards in the win with three touchdowns including a game-winning pass to Plaxico Burress in overtime to earn NFC Offensive Player of the Week. Following a poor performance against the Seattle Seahawks the next week, Manning and the Giants responded by winning five straight games including wins over the Washington Redskins, Dallas Cowboys and Atlanta Falcons, to push their record to 6–2.
Following this winning streak, key injuries including one to wide receiver Amani Toomer pushed Manning and the Giants into a downward slide. Playing against the Chicago Bears, Manning started well, but the Giants' offense was derailed by the loss of left tackle Luke Petitgout to a broken leg. Manning was held to only 141 yards passing with two interceptions. Petitgout's loss left a gaping hole at the crucial left tackle position, and Manning was unable to repeat his first-half success. Manning struggled the next week against the Jacksonville Jaguars and the week after that, a costly interception helped to culminate a huge collapse on the road against the Tennessee Titans, with the Giants seeing a 21-point fourth quarter lead simply evaporate. Manning improved the following week, throwing for 270 yards and two touchdowns against the Dallas Cowboys, but the Giants lost 23–20. Finally regaining momentum, Manning threw three touchdowns in a win on the road against the Carolina Panthers, but then he stumbled badly in the final three games. He threw two interceptions against the Philadelphia Eagles and tallied only 73 passing yards in a game against the New Orleans Saints. Although the Giants battled back to 8–8 the following week on the road against the Washington Redskins, Manning completed only 12 of 26 passes for 101 yards and one touchdown. The Giants qualified for the postseason as the #6-seed and met the Philadelphia Eagles. Although he did significantly better in this game than the 2005 playoff game against the Carolina Panthers, completing 16 of 27 passes for 161 yards and two touchdowns, the Giants lost in the Wild Card Round on a last-second field goal by the Eagles.
For the year, Manning threw for 3,244 yards, 24 touchdowns, and 18 interceptions. He completed 57.7 percent of his passes, a five-point improvement from 2005, but he again struggled badly in the second half of the season. Manning finished the season with a quarterback efficiency rating of 77.0 (18th in the league) with 6.2 yards per attempt.
2007 season: Super Bowl champions
Manning trained in the Meadowlands with offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride and new quarterbacks coach Chris Palmer prior to the 2007 regular season. For the first time ever, Plaxico Burress and Jeremy Shockey practiced in the off-season with Manning to perfect their timing and chemistry rather than training alone in Miami as they did in previous years.
2007 regular season
Manning opened the 2007 season with an outstanding personal performance against the Dallas Cowboys, completing 28 of 41 passing attempts for 312 yards, four touchdowns, and an interception in New York's 45–35 loss. However, he suffered a shoulder sprain and was removed from the game late in the second half. Although he did play against the Green Bay Packers in Week 2 while throwing for 211 yards with one touchdown, the Giants defense performed poorly again and the team dropped to 0–2 with Green Bay winning, 35–13. In week three, Manning got a come-from-behind victory as the Giants defense improved, pitching a shutout in the second half and stopping the Washington Redskins on a fourth and goal situation, winning the game 24–17. The Giants defense then shut down the Philadelphia Eagles with an NFL record-tying 12 sacks, holding the Eagles offense to one field goal. The Giants won with a score of 16–3. The following week, Manning overcame a dismal first half to throw for two second-half scores in a 35–24 win over their in-city rivals, the New York Jets.
Following two straight home victories, Manning and the Giants obtained their fourth consecutive victory with a 31–10 defeat of the Atlanta Falcons in the Georgia Dome on Monday Night Football. Manning performed well, completing 27 of 39 passes for 303 yards along with a pair of touchdowns while giving away two interceptions. Behind a dominant defensive effort, the Giants improved to 5–2 the next week with a 33–15 win over the San Francisco 49ers. Manning played well again, throwing for two touchdowns in the effort. In week 8, the Giants played a road game against the Miami Dolphins on October 28, 2007, in London's Wembley Stadium. Manning only threw for 59 yards in the rain and mud, but he scored the Giants' only touchdown on a 10-yard run. This touchdown was the first in an NFL regular season game that was played outside of North America. The Giants defeated the Dolphins, 13–10, bringing the Giants to a 6–2 record at the mid-way point of the 2007 season. After losing to their division rivals the Dallas Cowboys in Week 9, New York Giants co-owner John Mara publicly questioned Manning's ability to lead the Giants in 2007, but more importantly, in the future:
The only thing we evaluate is 'Can we win with this guy?' That's the one thing. When we talk about any player at the end of the season, the No.1 question is 'Will he help us win?' And to take it one step further, 'Can we win a championship with this guy?'
After a week of criticism in the New York media and being outplayed by Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, Manning had a bounce-back victory against their conference Wild Card competitors the Detroit Lions. Manning threw for 283 yards and one touchdown but most importantly, no interceptions in a critical road game.
The following week in a 41–17 loss to the Minnesota Vikings, Manning threw four interceptions and had three of them returned for touchdowns. He continued to struggle until the last game of the season, against the 15–0 New England Patriots. With a playoff spot secured, the Giants could have rested their starters for the playoffs, but they instead chose to keep in the regulars and attempt to stop New England's quest for an undefeated regular season. The Giants lost 38–35, with Manning completing 22 of 32 passes for 252 yards, with four touchdowns and one interception.
2007 playoffs
The Giants entered the playoffs as the #5-seed. On January 6, 2008, in the Wild Card Round, Manning went 20-of-27 for 185 yards playing on the road against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The underdog Giants won 24–14, and Manning had two touchdown passes.
On January 13, 2008, in the Divisional Round Manning led the Giants to an upset victory over the heavily favored Dallas Cowboys, the number one seed in the NFC. For the third straight game, Manning played well, completing 12 of 18 passes for 163 yards and two touchdowns with no interceptions. The Giants were the first team to beat an NFC number one seed in the Divisional Round since the start of the 12-team format in 1990. This victory secured an NFC Championship berth against the Green Bay Packers on January 20, 2008. In the NFC Championship, the Giants beat the Packers in overtime, with a score of 23–20 in one of the coldest postseason games in NFL history. The dramatic victory secured Manning and the Giants a trip to Super Bowl XLII. This was the first Super Bowl appearance for the New York Giants since Super Bowl XXXV in 2001.
Super Bowl XLII
In front of a record-setting American television audience and on the strength of a late fourth quarter drive led by Manning, the Giants beat the 12.5 point-favored, undefeated New England Patriots 17–14.
Manning takes the snap, back to throw, under pressure, avoids the rush and he's gonna...fight out of it, still fights out of it, now throws it deep down field, wide open Tyree who... MAKES THE CATCH! AT THE 24-YARD LINE! What a play by Manning!
Trailing 14–10 with 2:42 remaining, Manning led the Giants 83 yards on a game-winning touchdown drive. On a crucial third-and-5 at the Giants' 44-yard line, Manning connected with David Tyree on a play in which he avoided several sacks and Tyree caught the ball off his helmet for a large gain. Four plays later, Plaxico Burress caught a 13-yard touchdown pass with just 35 seconds remaining for the winning margin. Manning became only the second quarterback in NFL history to throw two go-ahead fourth quarter touchdowns in a Super Bowl (Joe Montana being the first in Super Bowl XXIII in 1989). Manning also became the first quarterback to throw a last-minute, championship-winning touchdown in the NFL title game (including the pre-Super Bowl era) when a field goal would not at least tie the game.
Manning was named the Most Valuable Player of Super Bowl XLII. He and his brother Peyton are the only brother combination to play at quarterback in the Super Bowl and the only set of brothers to win Super Bowl MVP, doing so in successive years.
For winning Super Bowl MVP, he was given his choice of any 2008 model Cadillac, and Manning chose an Escalade Hybrid. The Wednesday following the Super Bowl he appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman.
2008 season: NFC East champions
Manning and the Giants opened the 2008 season with a win over their division rivals, the Washington Redskins, 16–7. Manning completed 19 passes of 35 for 216 yards, and had one rushing touchdown and one interception. Post-match, he said: "It was a great opening to the season. There was a lot of emotion, a lot of excitement. You could feel it in the crowd." In the Giants' next game, against the St. Louis Rams, they won again, 41–13, behind a stellar Manning performance. Manning finished the game with 20 completions, 260 yards passing and threw three touchdowns to three different receivers. The victory also marked the team's fourth straight victory over the Rams. The following week, Manning rallied the Giants to more fourth-quarter magic, overcoming a late deficit to throw the go-ahead touchdown pass to tight end Kevin Boss, and then in overtime, throwing a clutch 31-yard pass to Amani Toomer in the Giants' 26–23 win over Cincinnati Bengals. The fourth week of the season saw the Giants score on each of their first six possessions and dominate the Seattle Seahawks, 44–6. Manning threw for two touchdowns, completing 19 of 25 passes for 267 yards as the Giants totaled 523 yards on offense, their most since 2002.
Following a poor team performance in a 35–14 loss on the road against the Cleveland Browns, Manning and the Giants responded with a 29–17 win over the 49ers and battled to a hard earned 21–14 win over the Pittsburgh Steelers at Pittsburgh's Heinz Field. Manning completed 19 of 32 passes for 199 yards and one touchdown in the crucial win, which pushed the Giants to a 6–1 record. The following week, the Giants beat the Dallas Cowboys at home 35–14 to get to 7–1 at the midway point of the regular season. Manning threw three touchdowns in the game. New York improved to 8–1 with a 36–31 win on the road against the Philadelphia Eagles. Manning threw two touchdowns in the victory, but the crucial play occurred in the third quarter. With the Giants trailing by four, Manning appeared to make an illegal forward pass to tight end Boss. After review, it was determined that the pass was legal. The Giants scored a touchdown two plays later. Week nine pitted the Giants in a battle with the visiting Baltimore Ravens. The Ravens had come into the game with the league's third-ranked defense; nevertheless, Manning led the Giants to a decisive 30–10 victory, improving to 9–1, which included a 200-yard rushing effort by running backs Brandon Jacobs, Derrick Ward and Ahmad Bradshaw. Two weeks later, the Giants faced the Redskins at Washington in their second encounter in the season. Manning threw his first 300-yard game of the season going 21-of-34 with an interception and a 40-yard touchdown pass to Toomer. The Giants beat the Redskins 23–7. In November, Manning was named the NFC Offensive Player of the Month. For the month, Manning threw for 1,036 yards and ten touchdowns, and compiled a 94.9 passer rating while leading the Giants to a perfect 5–0 record.
Manning was named to his first Pro Bowl on December 16, making him the first Giants quarterback to earn the honor since Phil Simms in 1993. In week 15, Manning and the Giants visited Texas Stadium, where Tony Romo battled through a lower back contusion and connected with nine different receivers, finishing 20-of-30 for 244 yards and two touchdowns leading the Dallas Cowboys to a 20–8 victory. In week 16 against the Carolina Panthers with NFC homefield advantage on the line, Manning had a passing day of 17 of 27 for 181 yards and no interceptions. Manning led the Giants back from deficits of 21–10 and 28–20 to tie the game with just over three minutes left, including a bullet pass to Domenik Hixon for a key two-point conversion to tie the game at 28. The game was played in freezing conditions.
After becoming the No. 1 seed in the NFC with a 12–4 record, the Giants had a first playoff round bye week and homefield advantage through the rest of the playoffs. In the Divisional Round, they faced their archrival Philadelphia Eagles at Giants Stadium with its signature windy conditions. Philadelphia went on to win the game 23–11. Manning completed 15 out of 29 passes for 169 yards with no touchdowns and two interceptions.
2009 season
On August 5, 2009, he signed a six-year US$97.5 million contract extension.
Manning and the Giants started the 2009 season with a 3–0 record. In Week 4, the Giants played the Kansas City Chiefs. Manning was playing well up until the start of the fourth quarter when on a play-action fake, he injured his heel while passing downfield to Steve Smith. He stayed in for the next play completing a 54-yard touchdown to Hakeem Nicks. It was discovered that Manning had plantar fasciitis (inflammation of connective tissue within the soles of the feet) and there was speculation he would not play against the Oakland Raiders in Week 5. However, in Week 5, Manning played well, completing eight of ten passes for 173 yards and two touchdowns with the Giants winning 44–7. This was the first time in his career that Manning had a posted a perfect passer rating.
After this five-game winning streak, the Giants fell to a four-game losing streak, losing to the New Orleans Saints, the Arizona Cardinals, the Philadelphia Eagles and the San Diego Chargers, before winning again after a bye week on Week 11 when they played the Atlanta Falcons, winning 34–31 in overtime. Against the Falcons, Manning posted a career-high 384 passing yards with three touchdowns and one interception.
On Thanksgiving, the Giants traveled to Denver to play the Denver Broncos where they lost 26–6. Manning completed 24 of 40 passes for 230 yards, with no touchdowns and an interception. In Week 14, they played their divisional rivals, the Philadelphia Eagles, and lost 45–38, where it was a close game from the start. Manning passed for a career-high 391 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions but was not able to win the game. Next week, on Monday Night Football, Manning and the Giants dominated the Washington Redskins, winning the game 45–12.
The next week, in the final game in Giants Stadium, Manning and the Giants lost 41–9 against the Carolina Panthers. The Giants did not fare better the next week on the road against the Minnesota Vikings in the final regular season game, losing 44–7 while down 38 points in the fourth quarter. After the games, Manning apologized to the fans for the team's performance. The Giants finished the 2009 season with an 8–8 record and missed the playoffs.
Manning ended the 2009 season with career highs including 4,021 passing yards, 27 touchdowns, a 62.3 completion percentage rating, and a passer rating of 93.1.
2010 season
On August 16 during a preseason game against the New York Jets, Manning was hit by Brandon Jacobs, then by Calvin Pace, which knocked off his helmet, then went face first into Jim Leonhard's face mask. As a result, Manning had a large gash that needed 12 stitches, and he left the game.
Manning and the Giants started the 2010 season with a 1–2 start followed by a five-game winning streak. In Week 15, he had 289 passing yards, four touchdowns, and one interception in the 38–31 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles. In Week 16, Manning connected on with Mario Manningham on a then-career-high 85-yard receiving touchdown in a 45–17 loss to the Green Bay Packers. The mark was broken the next week when Manning completed a 92-yard passing touchdown to Manningham in the 17–14 victory over the Washington Redskins. The Giants ended the 2010 NFL season with a 10–6 record. Manning led the Giants to a 17–14 win in the last game of the season against the Redskins, however, because of the Packers' 10–3 win over the Chicago Bears, the Giants did not make the playoffs. He ended the season with 4,002 yards, a career-high 31 touchdowns, but also a career-high 25 interceptions, which marked the most by a quarterback in the 2010 season, and a 62.5 completion percentage.
2011 season: Second Super Bowl championship
In August 2011, Manning generated mild controversy in the sports media during a radio interview on The Michael Kay Show. When asked by host Michael Kay whether he was an elite "Top 10, Top 5" quarterback in the same class as Tom Brady, he responded:
I consider myself in that class. Tom Brady is a great quarterback... I think now he's grown up and gotten better every year and that's what I'm trying to do. I kind of hope these next seven years of my quarterback days are my best.
Manning received criticism for the quote for trying to inflate his own status and skills, with critics pointing out his past inconsistent stats, including his 25 interceptions in the previous season, as evidence contradicting his claims. However, Manning also received support for his comments from Giants coach Tom Coughlin, and teammates such as wide receiver Hakeem Nicks. Later in the season, Dallas Cowboys defensive coordinator Rob Ryan commented on the quote, agreeing with Manning that he was an elite quarterback "for sure."
2011 regular season
The Giants opened the 2011 season with a slow start, losing to the rival Washington Redskins 28–14– in an emotional game for both fanbases on the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Manning completed 18 of 32 passes for 268 yards but threw a costly interception in the third quarter to linebacker Ryan Kerrigan, who returned it for a touchdown and swung the momentum of the game. However, the Giants recovered and won their next three games, including over the arch-rival Philadelphia Eagles, where he had 254 passing yards and four touchdowns in the 29–16 victory to earn NFC Offensive Player of the Week. During this streak, Manning improved, throwing for 266 yards per game with eight total touchdowns and one interception.
After a 6–2 start, including a 24–20 last-minute comeback by Manning over the New England Patriots that evoked comparisons to Super Bowl XLII, the Giants entered a tough stretch of their schedule, facing off against the San Francisco 49ers, the New Orleans Saints and the Green Bay Packers, the respective eventual NFC West, South and North champions. The Giants lost all three games as well as falling to the Philadelphia Eagles at home, leading them into a four-game skid and once again putting their postseason hopes in jeopardy. However, unlike the previous three seasons, the Giants finished strong, winning three of their last four games. This included a key win over their crosstown rival New York Jets, where Manning tied an NFL record by completing a 99-yard touchdown pass to Victor Cruz, as well as a sweep of their fellow division rival Dallas Cowboys. In the final regular-season game against the Dallas Cowboys, Manning threw for 346 yards and three touchdowns, giving the Giants the win, the NFC East title, and a playoff berth for the first time in three years. He earned a Pro Bowl nomination for his performance in the 2011 season. He threw for at least 400 yards in three separate games, setting a new franchise record.
2011 playoffs
The Giants entered the 2011 postseason as underdogs, with the worst record of any NFC playoff team. However, Manning and his team would once again demonstrate their endurance and durability late in the year. The Giants first easily routed the Atlanta Falcons 24–2 in the Wild Card Round and then stunned the defending Super Bowl champions and top-seeded Green Bay Packers in the Divisional Round to advance to the NFC Championship Game. In the win, Manning completed 21 out of 33 attempts and threw three touchdowns and one interception. The following week, the Giants avenged their regular season loss to the San Francisco 49ers with a dramatic 20–17 overtime win in the NFC Championship Game. In the game, Manning set franchise playoff records with 32 completions on 52 attempts, good enough for 316 yards and two touchdowns despite being sacked a franchise-record-tying six times. This victory secured Manning and the Giants a second trip in five years to the Super Bowl, setting up a highly anticipated Super Bowl XLII rematch against Tom Brady and the New England Patriots. The Giants also made history as the first Super Bowl team ever outscored in the regular season (394 points scored, 400 points allowed).
Super Bowl XLVI
In the most-watched program in the history of United States television, Manning once again led the Giants to an upset victory over the 2+1⁄2-point-favored Patriots 21–17, his second Super Bowl win and the fourth overall for the franchise.
I was yelling to [Bradshaw], "Don't score, don't score", Manning said. "He tried to stop, but he fell into the end zone."
While trailing the Patriots 15–17 in the final minutes, Manning led the Giants 88 yards down the field to a touchdown that many observers described as "accidental". With just over a minute of time left in the game, the Giants called a running play and Manning handed off the ball to Ahmad Bradshaw with the hopes of stopping short of the goal line and forcing the Patriots to use their final time out, thus allowing the Giants to run out the clock. The Patriots, in turn, did not attempt to tackle Bradshaw in his run, and he then fell over the goal line despite making an attempt to stop. However, the remaining time was not enough for Patriots quarterback Tom Brady to lead a comeback and the Giants held onto the lead to win. Manning was again named the Most Valuable Player of Super Bowl XLVI, becoming the third quarterback in a row to win the award. The Giants also became the first team ever with fewer than ten wins in a 16-game regular season to win the Super Bowl. Manning also became the first quarterback in NFL history to throw for 4,900+ yards and win a Super Bowl in the same season. The Giants were the first team with a running game ranked last (32nd) and a defense ranked as low as 27th to win a Super Bowl.
For winning the Super Bowl, Manning and the Giants received a victory parade in Manhattan and were honored with symbolic keys to the city by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He was ranked 31st by his fellow players on the NFL Top 100 Players of 2012.
2012 season
The Giants endured a disappointing season following their Super Bowl run in 2011. Manning led the Giants to a 6–2 record to begin their season, including a career-best 510 passing yards to go along with three passing touchdowns and three interceptions in a Week 2 41–34 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He finished second only to Phil Simms's game with 513 passing yards in 1985 for the franchise record. However, Manning averaged an anemic 204 yards per game and 74.3 passer rating from Week 8 to Week 16, including his lowest rating in five years (38.9) in a 34–0 loss to the Atlanta Falcons in Week 15. He ended the 2012 season on a high note, throwing a career-high five touchdown passes while completing 13 of 21 pass attempts and passing for 208 yards with no interceptions, in a 42–7 Giants win over the Philadelphia Eagles. He finished the season with 26 touchdown passes, 15 interceptions and 3,948 passing yards. As was typical for this phase of his career (2012–2016), Manning was exceptionally well-protected by his offensive line; he was sacked just 19 times for a league-lowest 3.4% of passing plays. Although the Giants did not qualify for the playoffs with a 9–7 season, Manning was selected to his third Pro Bowl as a second alternate. He was ranked 43rd by his fellow players on the NFL Top 100 Players of 2013.
2013 season
Manning started the 2013 season off with 450 passing yards, four touchdowns and three interceptions in a 36–31 loss to the Dallas Cowboys. Manning set a franchise record for most passing yards in a season opener, breaking Phil Simms's mark of 409 passing yards in the 1984 regular season opener. The loss was a sign of things to come as the Giants started the season with a 0–6 record, their worst regular season start since 1976. He threw 12 interceptions in his first five games. Manning fell to 0–3 against his older brother, Peyton in Week 2's 41–23 loss to the Denver Broncos. He was 28 of 39 for 362 yards, but was intercepted four times. Manning's four interceptions tied his career high and was the fourth time he threw four interceptions in a game. The game between Peyton and Eli was the final professional meeting of the two brothers. In Week 15, Manning threw for 156 yards and a career-high five interceptions in a 23–0 loss to the Seattle Seahawks. Manning ended the season with a career-high 27 interceptions, which were the most in one season by a quarterback since Brett Favre had 29 in 2005. The Giants finished the season 7–9, their first losing record since Manning's rookie year in 2004.
Manning passed Phil Simms to become the franchise's all-time leader in yards passing. Simms, who played 14 seasons with the Giants, finished his career with 33,462 yards in the air.
2014 season
After an 0–2 start, the Giants won three straight games but subsequently lost their next seven games including a 16–10 loss to the San Francisco 49ers in a game where Manning threw five interceptions, which tied his career high. The Giants won three of their last four games to end the season with a 6–10 record. Among Manning's highlights from the losing season was a Week 17 game where he had 429 passing yards, one touchdown and one interception in a 34–26 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles. Manning finished the season with 30 touchdown passes, 14 interceptions and 4,410 passing yards.
2015 season
A few days before the Giants' regular season opener against the Dallas Cowboys, Manning signed a four-year, US$84 million extension with the Giants. In Week 5, he had a franchise-record 41 completions for 441 passing yards, three touchdowns and one interception, in a 30–27 victory over the San Francisco 49ers to earn NFC Offensive Player of the Week. Through six games, he led the Giants to a 3–3 record and a tie for first place in the NFC East. In Week 8, Manning threw a career-high six touchdowns and 350 yards, but the Giants lost to the New Orleans Saints, 52–49. He became the first quarterback in NFL history to throw for six touchdowns and no interceptions in a game and lose. In Week 10, in a narrow 27–26 loss to the undefeated New England Patriots, Manning passed for 361 yards and two touchdowns, one of which was an 87-yard strike to Odell Beckham Jr. in the first quarter. In Week 14, in a 31–24 victory over the Miami Dolphins, he was 27-of-31 for 337 passing yards and four touchdowns to earn NFC Offensive Player of the Week. After starting the season 5–5, Giants fell to 1–5 the rest of the way to finish 6–10 for the second straight season. Manning's longtime coach in Tom Coughlin stepped down at the end of the season.
Manning finished the 2015 season with career highs in touchdown passes (35), completions (387), attempts (618) and passer rating (93.6). His 35 touchdowns were one shy of tying Y. A. Tittle for most in a single season in franchise history and ranked tied for second among quarterbacks that year. Manning also threw 4,432 yards in 2015, second most in his career. On January 22, 2016, Manning was selected to his fourth career Pro Bowl, replacing Ben Roethlisberger. Manning's fourth Pro Bowl berth ties Fran Tarkenton for most Pro Bowl selections by a New York Giants quarterback in franchise history. He was ranked 47th by his fellow players on the NFL Top 100 Players of 2016.
2016 season: Return to the playoffs
Manning had a new head coach in Ben McAdoo for the 2016 season. Manning and the Giants started the 2016 season with a 2–3 record over the first five games. In the next game, a 27–23 victory over the Baltimore Ravens, Manning threw for three touchdowns, reaching a career total of 302 touchdown passes and passing John Elway for seventh all time.
Coming off a bye week and on a two-game winning streak, beating the Ravens and the Los Angeles Rams, Manning threw a season-high four touchdowns as the Giants would halt a last-second game-winning drive by the Philadelphia Eagles to win 28–23. In a Week 16 loss against the Eagles on December 22, Manning set a franchise record with 63 pass attempts in a single game, while throwing one touchdown and three interceptions, surpassing Peyton Manning's record of 21 games with at least three interceptions with 22. Despite the loss, though, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers lost to the New Orleans Saints later that week 31–24, giving the Giants their first playoff berth since the 2011 season, when the team last won the Super Bowl.
By defeating the rival Washington Redskins in the final week of the NFL season on New Year's Day and, therefore, knocking the Redskins out of playoff contention and bringing their season record to 11–5 (their first winning season since 2012), Manning and the Giants faced the Green Bay Packers in Lambeau Field in the Wild Card Round of the NFL playoffs, as Manning completed 23 of 44 of his passes for 299 yards, while throwing for a touchdown. Manning was back to his playoff self in the game, but was let down by numerous drops by Odell Beckham Jr., and other star playmakers. The Packers would eventually rout the Giants 38–13, ending the Giants' season. Manning finished the season recording 4,027 passing, 26 touchdowns and 16 interceptions, with an 86.0 passer rating.
On February 4, 2017, Manning and Cardinals wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald both won the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award, making it the first time since the 2006 season that two players were co-winners of this award (Drew Brees and LaDainian Tomlinson).
2017 season
Manning and the Giants started the 2017 season with five consecutive losses. The Giants broke their losing streak with a 23–10 victory over the Denver Broncos in Week 6. The success was short-lived as the Giants lost the next game to the Seattle Seahawks by a score of 24–7 to set off a three-game losing streak. During Week 9 against the Los Angeles Rams, he became the seventh quarterback to reach 50,000 passing yards. On November 28, after a 2–9 start to the season, it was announced that Manning would be benched and replaced by Geno Smith in Week 13 against the Oakland Raiders, ending Manning's streak of 210 consecutive regular-season games started. The streak was second all-time for quarterbacks behind Brett Favre's 297. Head coach Ben McAdoo gave Manning the option of starting to keep the streak going but Manning declined, stating that "My feeling is that if you are going to play the other guys, play them. Starting just to keep the streak going and knowing you won't finish the game and have a chance to win it is pointless to me, and it tarnishes the streak." The move was met with backlash from former Giants players and coaches. On December 5, two days after the Week 13 game, Manning was renamed the starter by interim head coach Steve Spagnuolo, after McAdoo was fired as head coach. During Week 15 against the Philadelphia Eagles, Manning finished with 434 passing yards, three touchdowns and an interception. The Giants lost 34–29, allowing the Eagles to clinch a first-round bye. On December 24, against the Arizona Cardinals, Manning passed John Elway to take sole possession of sixth place on the NFL's all-time passing yard list. Manning started the regular-season finale against the Washington Redskins. In the 18–10 victory, he had 132 passing yards, one touchdown and one interception, as the Giants ended their disappointing season with a 3–13 record.
2018 season
Following speculation that Manning would be released, new Giants head coach Pat Shurmur put these rumors aside by saying "I think what's important is we have a guy here who has helped this organization win Super Bowls. He's an outstanding player and I'm really looking forward to working with him."
After losses to the Jacksonville Jaguars and Dallas Cowboys to the start the season, Manning and the Giants defeated the Houston Texans by a score of 27–22. Manning was efficient, going 25-of-29 for 297 passing yards and two touchdowns. The Giants lost the next five games, with Manning leading the leagues in sacks for most of that stretch despite an improved running game from rookie Saquon Barkley. Manning had 399 passing yards against the Atlanta Falcons, the fourth of these losses, but was sacked seven times and threw two interceptions in the following game against the Washington Redskins. Manning rebounded with three touchdowns and no interceptions in the following week's 27–23 victory over the San Francisco 49ers, and 17 completions on 18 attempts for two touchdowns in a 38–35 win the following week over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Giants went 4–4 over the last eight games of the season to finish 5–11 and last in the NFC East. Manning passed for 4,299 yards, 21 touchdowns and 11 interceptions in the 2018 season.
2019 season: Final year
The 2019 season was Manning's last remaining year on his contract. While the Giants had the option to release Manning in the offseason and save $17 million in both cash and cap space, the team opted to keep him on their roster. However, neither side held any discussions for a contract extension, causing doubt for Manning's future as the Giants' franchise quarterback beyond the upcoming season. The team selected quarterback Daniel Jones in the first round of that year's draft, which many saw as the Giants selecting Manning's successor while further cementing his own lame-duck status in the position. Manning was informed of the Giants' decision during their draft selection. Despite the pick, general manager Dave Gettleman said "the goal is for Eli to be our quarterback", while head coach Shurmur told Manning "it's your job to win games and keep [Jones] off the field".
Being on the Giants' roster meant that it would be Manning's 16th season with the team, marking a franchise record for the longest tenure for any player in its 94-year history. Manning started the Giants' first two games of the season, losses to the Dallas Cowboys and the Buffalo Bills. On September 17, 2019, the Giants announced that Manning would not start the team's Week 3 game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, instead opting for Jones. This was thought to be the end of Manning's time as the Giants' starting quarterback.
Due to an ankle injury suffered by Jones during Week 13 against the Green Bay Packers, Manning returned to the starting lineup the next week on December 9 against the Philadelphia Eagles. During the game, Manning threw for 203 yards and two touchdowns to rookie wide receiver Darius Slayton, but the game ended in a 23–17 overtime loss for the Giants. As the game was televised on Monday Night Football, it marked Manning's final primetime appearance. In the following week's game against the Miami Dolphins at home, Manning started again and threw for 283 yards, two touchdowns and three interceptions, leading the team to a 36–20 win. As the game ended, Manning was taken off the field and received a standing ovation from fans who believed this was his final home game as the starting quarterback. Jones returned to action in Week 16 and finished out the season. Manning finished the year with 1,042 passing yards, six touchdowns and five interceptions in four games, as the Giants finished the season 4–12.
With his contract expiring at the end of the season, Manning was set to become a free agent for the first time in his career. When discussing his future plans, Manning stated that he did not wish to be a backup quarterback or pursue coaching opportunities with the team, as he felt he served both roles throughout the year and did not enjoy either one of them. Regardless, he said he would weigh his options for the upcoming season, stating "I think I can still play". During a radio interview weeks later, team co-owner John Mara said that the Giants would welcome back Manning the next year as a backup quarterback or in a front-office role, but that newly hired head coach Joe Judge would need to give his approval to include Manning on the roster.
Retirement and honors
On January 22, 2020, Manning announced his retirement, with an official press conference scheduled for January 24. John Mara stated during the press conference that Manning would be inducted into the Giants Ring of Honor in 2020 and that Manning's number 10 jersey would be retired.
Manning rejoined the Giants in 2021 in a business operations and fan engagement role, according to the team. His jersey retirement and induction into the Giants' Ring of Honor took place on September 26, 2021, at halftime of the Giants-Atlanta Falcons game at Metlife Stadium. In 2021, he was named to the Louisiana High School Sports Hall of Fame. He will be eligible for Hall of Fame induction in 2025.
"The Manning Bowl"
Peyton and Eli Manning played against each other three times in the regular season during their professional careers. These encounters were colloquially dubbed "The Manning Bowl", and Peyton's teams, twice with the Colts and once with the Broncos, held a 3–0 record over Eli and the New York Giants. The first Manning Bowl was held on September 10, 2006, and Peyton's Colts defeated Eli's Giants by a score of 26–21. The second Manning Bowl was held on September 19, 2010, with Peyton and the Colts beating Eli's Giants again by a score of 38–14. The third and final Manning Bowl was held on September 15, 2013, and Peyton and the Broncos beat Eli's Giants 41–23. They faced each other in two Pro Bowls, in 2009 and 2013, both won by the NFC. However, they never faced each other in the playoffs as both always played in separate conferences and never made the Super Bowl at the same time.
Post-playing career
Eli and Peyton Manning joined ESPN as an NFL analyst for the 2021 season, calling nine games during the season on an alternate broadcast called the Manningcast. The show features segments with special guest stars from entertainment, politics, and sports while the Manning brothers watch the game. In addition, he currently hosts "Eli's Places" for ESPN+, where he "travel[s] to some of the most well-known and historic college football establishments and meet with giants in the sport to better understand what makes college football such a national sensation." He also received a nickname "Human Carbon Monoxide" or HCM from The Rock due to him not having a nickname unlike his brother Peyton "The Sheriff" Manning and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
NFL career statistics
Regular season
Postseason
Awards and accolades
2× Super Bowl champion (XLII, XLVI)
2× NFC champion (2007, 2011)
2× Super Bowl MVP (XLII, XLVI)
4× Pro Bowl (2008, 2011, 2012, 2015)
NFC passing touchdowns co-leader (2015)
Most consecutive completions to begin a Super Bowl: 9 (XLVI)
Third all-time for most consecutive starts by a National Football League quarterback: 210
Records
NFL
Tied NFL record for longest pass completion and touchdown: 99 yards (2011)
Most passing yards in a single postseason: 1,219 yards (2011)
Most pass completions and attempts in a single postseason: 103 completions and 163 attempts (2011)
Most fumbles lost (career): 56
New York Giants franchise records
Most pass attempts (career): 8,119
Most pass attempts (season): 618 (2015)
Most pass attempts (game): 63 (December 22, 2016, against the Philadelphia Eagles)
Most pass attempts (playoff career): 400
Most pass attempts (playoff season): 163 (2011)
Most pass attempts (playoff game): 58 (January 22, 2012, against the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship)
Most completions (career): 4,895
Most completions (season): 387 (2015)
Most completions (game): 41 (October 11, 2015, against the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship)
Most completions (playoff career): 242
Most completions (playoff season): 106 (2011)
Most completions (playoff game): 32 (January 22, 2012, against the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship)
Most passing yards (career): 57,023
Most passing yards (season): 4,933 (2011)
Most passing yards (playoff career): 2,815
Most passing yards (playoff season): 1,219 (2011)
Most passing touchdowns (career): 366
Most passing touchdowns (playoff career): 18
Most passing touchdowns (playoff season): 9 (2011)
Most intercepted (career): 244
Most intercepted (season): 27 (2013)
Most sacked (playoff career): 27
Most sacked (playoff season): 11 (2011)
Most sacked (playoff game): 6 (January 22, 2012, against the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship; tied with Phil Simms)
Most fumbles lost (career): 56
Longest completed pass: 99 yards (2011)
Most fourth quarter touchdown passes, season: 15
Most consecutive starts by a quarterback: 222 (210 regular season + 11 playoff games)
Most 300-yard passing games: 366
Other ventures
Eli co-starred with his brother Peyton in ads for NFLShop.com and Oreo.
Eli is a spokesman for Citizen Watch Co., Toyota of New Jersey, and Reebok. He reportedly received several more endorsement offers after reaching Super Bowl XLII.
On May 5, 2012, Eli hosted NBC's Saturday Night Live (season 37, episode 20), with musical guest Rihanna. His brother Peyton hosted the show five years earlier.
Eli began hosting The Eli Manning show in 2021 on the New York Giant's YouTube channel. The show has featured interviews with celebrity guests such as Derek Jeter, Tracy Morgan, and Bill Murray.
In 2022, he went undercover as "Chad Powers" and participated in Penn State University football tryouts as a walk-on, which was filmed as part of an ESPN project.
Personal life
In 2007, he proposed to Abby McGrew of Nashville, Tennessee. McGrew worked in fashion in New York City, and has been with Manning since their days at the University of Mississippi. The couple wed in a private ceremony held in San José del Cabo, Mexico, on April 19, 2008. Manning and Abby have three daughters and a son. They reside in Summit, New Jersey.
Eli and Peyton Manning volunteered in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The Mannings assisted in the delivery of 30,000 pounds (14,000 kg) of water, Gatorade, baby formula, pumice, and pillows to the people of New Orleans. After touring the University of Mississippi Medical Center's Blair E. Batson Hospital for Children, he undertook a five-year campaign in 2007 to raise US$2.5 million for the construction of "The Eli Manning Children's Clinics" at the children's hospital. Manning said in 2007, "I am humbled by the work they do and am honored to make this five-year commitment to help raise funds to build this state-of-the-art clinic that will serve Mississippi families for years to come." His father, Archie Manning, has also raised funds for Katrina relief efforts.
In 2009, Eli, Peyton, and Archie Manning co-authored a children's book entitled Family Huddle, which describes in simple text and pictures how the three Manning brothers played football as young boys (Scholastic Press; illustrations by Jim Madsen). In 2010, Manning helped raise funds for awareness of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, in wake of the catastrophe.
Since 2008, Manning has been the host of Guiding Eyes for the Blind's Golf Classic, the oldest and largest charity golf event in Westchester County, New York. Guiding Eyes is a nonprofit guide dog school serving the blind and visually impaired from around the world, as well as children on the autism spectrum. He is a former member of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports.
In 2014, Manning was sued in New Jersey Superior Court by sports memorabilia collectors who alleged that Manning and others conspired to sell them fraudulent memorabilia. Pretrial discovery included emails from Manning to Giants equipment manager Joe Skiba requesting "helmets that can pass as game-used." The suit alleged those helmets were eventually sold to the plaintiffs as game-used helmets. In May 2018, the suit was settled under confidential terms. According to lawyer and journalist Michael McCann, Manning settled before trial in order to avoid damage to his marketability as an endorser and discipline from the NFL.
In 2016, Manning was part of the 14th Annual BTIG Commissions for Charity Day, which was a fundraiser for hundreds of charities.
In August 2022, Manning joined the ownership group of the NWSL's NJ/NY Gotham FC.
See also
History of the New York Giants (1994–present)
List of 500-yard passing games in the National Football League
List of first overall National Football League draft picks
List of New York Giants players
List of most consecutive starts by National Football League players
Manning Passing Academy
References
External links
Career statistics and player information from NFL.com · ESPN · Yahoo! Sports · Pro Football Reference |
Wroc%C5%82aw | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wroc%C5%82aw | [
566
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wroc%C5%82aw"
] | Wrocław (Polish: [ˈvrɔt͡swaf] ; German: Breslau [ˈbʁɛslaʊ] ; also known by other names) is a city in southwestern Poland and the largest city in the historical region of Silesia. It lies on the banks of Oder in the Silesian Lowlands of Central Europe, roughly 40 kilometres (25 mi) from the Sudeten Mountains to the south. As of 2023, the official population of Wrocław is 674,132 making it the third largest city in Poland. The population of the Wrocław metropolitan area is around 1.25 million.
Wrocław is the historical capital of Silesia and Lower Silesia. Today, it is the capital of the Lower Silesian Voivodeship. The history of the city dates back over 1,000 years; at various times, it has been part of the Kingdom of Poland, the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Kingdom of Hungary, the Habsburg monarchy of Austria, the Kingdom of Prussia and Germany, until it became again part of Poland in 1945 as the result of territorial changes of Poland immediately after World War II.
Wrocław is a university city with a student population of over 130,000, making it one of the most youth-oriented cities in the country. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the University of Wrocław, previously the German Breslau University, has produced nine Nobel Prize laureates and is renowned for its high quality of teaching. Wrocław also possesses numerous historical landmarks, including the Main Market Square, Cathedral Island, Wrocław Opera, the National Museum and the Centennial Hall, which is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The city is also home to the Wrocław Zoo, the oldest zoological garden in Poland.
Wrocław is classified as a Sufficiency global city by GaWC. It is often featured in lists of the most livable places in the world, and was ranked 1st among all medium and small cities by fDi Intelligence in 2021. In 1989, 1995 and 2019 Wrocław hosted the European Youth Meetings of the Taizé Community, the Eucharistic Congress in 1997, and the 2012 European Football Championship. In 2016, the city was a European Capital of Culture and the World Book Capital. Also in that year, Wrocław hosted the Theatre Olympics, World Bridge Games and the European Film Awards. In 2017, the city was host to the IFLA Annual Conference and the World Games. In 2019, it was named a UNESCO City of Literature.
Etymology
The origin of the city's name is disputed. The city was believed to be named after Duke Vratislav I of Bohemia from the Czech Přemyslid dynasty, who supposedly ruled the region between 915 and 921. However, modern scholars and historians dispute this theory; recent archeological studies prove that even if Vratislav once ruled over the area, the city was not founded until at least 20 years after his death. They suggest that the founder of the city might have simply been a local prince who only shared the popular West Slavic name with the Bohemian Duke. Further evidence against Czech origin is that the oldest surviving documents containing the recorded name, such as the chronicle of Thietmar of Merseburg from the early 11th century, records the city's name as Wrotizlava and Wrotizlaensem, characteristic of Old Polish -ro-, unlike Old Czech -ra-. In the Polish language, the city's name Wrocław derives from the given name Wrocisław, which is the Polish equivalent of the Czech Vratislav. Also, the earliest variations of this name in the Old Polish language would have used the letter l instead of the modern Polish ł.
The Old Czech language version of the name was used in Latin documents, as Vratislavia or Wratislavia. The city's first municipal seal was inscribed with Sigillum civitatis Wratislavie. By the 15th century, the Early New High German variations of the name, Breslau, first began to be used. Despite the noticeable differences in spelling, the numerous German forms were still based on the original West Slavic name of the city, with the -Vr- sound being replaced over time by -Br-, and the suffix -slav- replaced with -slau-. These variations included Wrotizla, Vratizlau, Wratislau, Wrezlau, Breßlau or Bresslau among others. A Prussian description from 1819 mentions two names of the city – Polish and German – stating "Breslau (polnisch Wraclaw)”.
In other languages, the city's name is: German: Breslau [ˈbʁɛslaʊ] ; Silesian German: Brassel; Yiddish: ברעסלוי, romanized: Bresloi; Silesian: Wrocław; modern Czech: Vratislav; Hungarian: Boroszló; Hebrew: ורוצלב, romanized: Vrotsláv; and Latin: Wratislavia or Vratislavia.
People born or resident in the city are known as "Wrocławians" or "Vratislavians" (Polish: wrocławianie). The now little-used German equivalent is "Breslauer."
History
In ancient times, there was a place called Budorigum at or near the site of Wrocław. It was already mapped on Claudius Ptolemy's map of AD 142–147. Settlements in the area existed from the 6th century onward during the migration period. The Ślężans, a West Slavic tribe, settled on the Oder river and erected a fortified gord on Ostrów Tumski.
Wrocław originated at the intersection of two trade routes, the Via Regia and the Amber Road. Archeological research conducted in the city indicates that it was founded around 940. In 985, Duke Mieszko I of Poland conquered Silesia, and constructed new fortifcations on Ostrów. The town was mentioned by Thietmar explicitly in the year 1000 AD in connection with its promotion to an episcopal see during the Congress of Gniezno.
Middle Ages
During Wrocław's early history, control over it changed hands between the Duchy of Bohemia (1038–1054), the Duchy of Poland and the Kingdom of Poland (985–1038 and 1054–1320). Following the fragmentation of the Kingdom of Poland, the Piast dynasty ruled the Duchy of Silesia. One of the most important events during this period was the foundation of the Diocese of Wrocław in 1000. Along with the Bishoprics of Kraków and Kołobrzeg, Wrocław was placed under the Archbishopric of Gniezno in Greater Poland, founded by Pope Sylvester II through the intercession of Polish duke (and later king) Bolesław I the Brave and Emperor Otto III, during the Gniezno Congress. In the years 1034–1038 the city was affected by the pagan reaction in Poland.
The city became a commercial centre and expanded to Wyspa Piasek (Sand Island), and then onto the left bank of the River Oder. Around 1000, the town had about 1,000 inhabitants. In 1109 during the Polish-German war, Prince Bolesław III Wrymouth defeated the King of Germany Henry V at the Battle of Hundsfeld, stopping the German advance into Poland. The medieval chronicle, Gesta principum Polonorum (1112–1116) by Gallus Anonymus, named Wrocław, along with Kraków and Sandomierz, as one of three capitals of the Polish Kingdom. Also, the Tabula Rogeriana, a book written by the Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi in 1154, describes Wrocław as one of the Polish cities, alongside Kraków, Gniezno, Sieradz, Łęczyca and Santok.
By 1139, a settlement belonging to Governor Piotr Włostowic (also known as Piotr Włast Dunin) was built, and another on the left bank of the River Oder, near the present site of the university. While the city was largely Polish, it also had communities of Bohemians (Czechs), Germans, Walloons and Jews.
In the 13th century, Wrocław was the political centre of the divided Polish kingdom. In April 1241, during the first Mongol invasion of Poland, the city was abandoned by its inhabitants and burnt down for strategic reasons. During the battles with the Mongols Wrocław Castle was successfully defended by Henry II the Pious.
In 1245, in Wrocław, Franciscan friar Benedict of Poland, considered one of the first Polish explorers, joined Italian diplomat Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, on his journey to the seat of the Mongol Khan near Karakorum, the capital of the Mongol Empire, in what is considered the first such journey by Europeans.
After the Mongol invasion the town was partly populated by German settlers who, in the ensuing centuries, gradually became its dominant population. The city, however, retained its multi-ethnic character, a reflection of its importance as a trading post on the junction of the Via Regia and the Amber Road.
With the influx of settlers, the town expanded and in 1242 came under German town law. The city council used both Latin and German, and the early forms of the name Breslau, the German name of the city, appeared for the first time in its written records. Polish gradually ceased to be used in the town books, while it survived in the courts until 1337, when it was banned by the new rulers, the German-speaking House of Luxembourg. The enlarged town covered around 60 hectares (150 acres), and the new main market square, surrounded by timber-frame houses, became the trade centre of the town. The original foundation, Ostrów Tumski, became its religious centre. The city gained Magdeburg rights in 1261. While the Polish Piast dynasty remained in control of the region, the city council's ability to govern independently had increased. In 1274 prince Henry IV Probus gave the city its staple right. In the 13th century, two Polish monarchs were buried in Wrocław churches founded by them, Henry II the Pious in the St. Vincent church and Henryk IV Probus in the Holy Cross church.
Wrocław, which for 350 years had been mostly under Polish hegemony, fell in 1335, after the death of Henry VI the Good, to John of Luxembourg. His son Emperor Charles IV in 1348 formally incorporated the city into the Holy Roman Empire. Between 1342 and 1344, two fires destroyed large parts of the city. In 1387 the city joined the Hanseatic League. On 5 June 1443, the city was rocked by an earthquake, estimated at magnitude 6, which destroyed or seriously damaged many of its buildings.
Between 1469 and 1490, Wrocław was part of the Kingdom of Hungary, and king Matthias Corvinus was said to have had a Vratislavian mistress who bore him a son. In 1474, after almost a century, the city left the Hanseatic League. Also in 1474, the city was besieged by combined Polish-Czech forces. However, in November 1474, Kings Casimir IV of Poland, his son Vladislaus II of Bohemia, and Matthias Corvinus of Hungary met in the nearby village of Muchobór Wielki (present-day a district of Wrocław), and in December 1474 a ceasefire was signed according to which the city remained under Hungarian rule. The following year was marked by the publication in Wrocław of the Statuta Synodalia Episcoporum Wratislaviensium (1475) by Kasper Elyan, the first ever incunable in Polish, containing the proceedings and prayers of the Wrocław bishops.
Renaissance and the Reformation
In the 16th century, the Breslauer Schöps beer style was created in Breslau.
The Protestant Reformation reached the city in 1518 and it converted to the new rite. However, starting in 1526 Silesia was ruled by the Catholic House of Habsburg. In 1618, it supported the Bohemian Revolt out of fear of losing the right to religious freedom. During the ensuing Thirty Years' War, the city was occupied by Saxon and Swedish troops and lost thousands of inhabitants to the plague.
The Emperor brought in the Counter-Reformation by encouraging Catholic orders to settle in the city, starting in 1610 with the Franciscans, followed by the Jesuits, then Capuchins, and finally Ursuline nuns in 1687. These orders erected buildings that shaped the city's appearance until 1945. At the end of the Thirty Years' War, however, it was one of only a few Silesian cities to stay Protestant.
The Polish Municipal school opened in 1666 and lasted until 1766. Precise record-keeping of births and deaths by the city fathers led to the use of their data for analysis of mortality, first by John Graunt and then, based on data provided to him by Breslau professor Caspar Neumann, by Edmond Halley. Halley's tables and analysis, published in 1693, are considered to be the first true actuarial tables, and thus the foundation of modern actuarial science. During the Counter-Reformation, the intellectual life of the city flourished, as the Protestant bourgeoisie lost some of its dominance to the Catholic orders as patrons of the arts.
Enlightenment period
One of two main routes connecting Warsaw and Dresden ran through the city in the 18th century and Kings Augustus II the Strong and Augustus III of Poland often traveled that route. The city became the centre of German Baroque literature and was home to the First and Second Silesian school of poets. In 1742, the Schlesische Zeitung was founded in Breslau. In the 1740s the Kingdom of Prussia annexed the city and most of Silesia during the War of the Austrian Succession. Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa ceded most of the territory in the Treaty of Breslau in 1742 to Prussia. Austria attempted to recover Silesia during the Seven Years' War at the Battle of Breslau, but they were unsuccessful. The Venetian Italian adventurer, Giacomo Casanova, stayed in Breslau in 1766.
Napoleonic Wars
During the Napoleonic Wars, it was occupied by the Confederation of the Rhine army. The fortifications of the city were levelled, and monasteries and cloisters were seized. The Protestant Viadrina European University at Frankfurt an der Oder was relocated to Breslau in 1811, and united with the local Jesuit University to create the new Silesian Frederick-William University (German: Schlesische Friedrich-Wilhelm-Universität, now the University of Wrocław). The city became a centre of the German Liberation movement against Napoleon, and a gathering place for volunteers from all over Germany. The city was the centre of Prussian mobilisation for the campaign which ended at the Battle of Leipzig.
Industrial age
The Confederation of the Rhine had increased prosperity in Silesia and in the city. The removal of fortifications opened room for the city to expand beyond its former limits. Breslau became an important railway hub and industrial centre, notably for linen and cotton manufacture and the metal industry. The reconstructed university served as a major centre of science; Johannes Brahms later wrote his Academic Festival Overture to thank the university for an honorary doctorate awarded in 1879.
In 1821, the (Arch)Diocese of Breslau withdrew from dependence on the Polish archbishopric of Gniezno, and Breslau became an exempt see. In 1822, the Prussian police discovered the Polonia Polish youth resistance organization and carried out arrests of its members and searches of their homes. In 1848, many local Polish students joined the Greater Poland uprising against Prussia. On 5 May 1848, a convention of Polish activists from the Prussian and Austrian partitions of Poland was held in the city. On 10 October 1854, the Jewish Theological Seminary opened. The institution was the first modern rabbinical seminary in Central Europe. In 1863 the brothers Karl and Louis Stangen founded the travel agency Stangen, the second travel agency in the world.
The city was an important centre of the Polish secret resistance movement and the seat of a Polish uprising committee before and during the January Uprising of 1863–1864 in the Russian Partition of Poland. Local Poles took part in Polish national mourning after the Russian massacre of Polish protesters in Warsaw in February 1861, and also organized several patriotic Polish church services throughout 1861. Secret Polish correspondence, weapons, and insurgents were transported through the city. After the outbreak of the uprising in 1863, the Prussian police carried out mass searches of Polish homes, especially those of Poles who had recently come to the city. The city's inhabitants, both Poles and Germans, excluding the German aristocracy, largely sympathized with the uprising, and some Germans even joined local Poles in their secret activities. In June 1863 the city was officially confirmed as the seat of secret Polish insurgent authorities. In January 1864, the Prussian police arrested a number of members of the Polish insurgent movement.
The Unification of Germany in 1871 turned Breslau into the sixth-largest city in the German Empire. Its population more than tripled to over half a million between 1860 and 1910. The 1900 census listed 422,709 residents.
In 1890, construction began of Breslau Fortress as the city's defenses. Important landmarks were inaugurated in 1910, the Kaiser bridge (today Grunwald Bridge) and the Technical University, which now houses the Wrocław University of Technology.
The 1900 census listed 98% of the population as German-speakers, with 5,363 Polish-speakers (1.3%), and 3,103 (0.7%) as bilingual in German and Polish, although some estimates put the number of Poles in the city at the time at 20,000 to 30,000. The population was 58% Protestant, 37% Catholic (including at least 2% Polish) and 5% Jewish (totaling 20,536 in the 1905 census). The Jewish community of Breslau was among the most important in Germany, producing several distinguished artists and scientists.
From 1912, the head of the university's Department of Psychiatry and director of the Clinic of Psychiatry (Königlich Psychiatrischen und Nervenklinik) was Alois Alzheimer and, that same year, professor William Stern introduced the concept of IQ.
In 1913, the newly built Centennial Hall housed an exhibition commemorating the 100th anniversary of the historical German Wars of Liberation against Napoleon and the first award of the Iron Cross. The Centennial Hall was built by Max Berg (1870–1947), since 2006 it is part of the world heritage of UNESCO. The central station (by Wilhelm Grapow, 1857) was one of the biggest in Germany and one of the first stations with electrified railway services. Since 1900 modern department stores like Barasch (today "Feniks") or Petersdorff (built by architect Erich Mendelsohn) were erected.
During World War I, in 1914, a branch of the Organizacja Pomocy Legionom ("Legion Assistance Organization") operated in the city with the goal of gaining support and recruiting volunteers for the Polish Legion, but three Legions' envoys were arrested by the Germans in November 1914 and deported to Austria, and the organization soon ended its activities in the city. During the war, the Germans operated seven forced labour camps for Allied prisoners of war in the city.
Following the war, Breslau became the capital of the newly created Prussian Province of Lower Silesia of the Weimar Republic in 1919. After the war the Polish community began holding masses in Polish at the Church of Saint Anne, and, as of 1921, at St. Martin's and a Polish School was founded by Helena Adamczewska. In 1920 a Polish consulate was opened on the Main Square. In August 1920, during the Polish Silesian Uprising in Upper Silesia, the Polish Consulate and School were destroyed, while the Polish Library was burned down by a mob. The number of Poles as a percentage of the total population fell to just 0.5% after the re-emergence of Poland as a state in 1918, when many moved to Poland. Antisemitic riots occurred in 1923.
The city boundaries were expanded between 1925 and 1930 to include an area of 175 km2 (68 sq mi) with a population of 600,000. In 1929, the Werkbund opened WuWa (German: Wohnungs- und Werkraumausstellung) in Breslau-Scheitnig, an international showcase of modern architecture by architects of the Silesian branch of the Werkbund. In June 1930, Breslau hosted the Deutsche Kampfspiele, a sporting event for German athletes after Germany was excluded from the Olympic Games after World War I. The number of Jews remaining in Breslau fell from 23,240 in 1925 to 10,659 in 1933. Up to the beginning of World War II, Breslau was the largest city in Germany east of Berlin.
Known as a stronghold of left wing liberalism during the German Empire, Breslau eventually became one of the strongest support bases of the Nazi Party, which in the 1932 elections received 44% of the city's vote, their third-highest total in all Germany.
After Hitler's appointment as German Chancellor in 1933, political enemies of the Nazis were persecuted, and their institutions closed or destroyed. KZ Dürrgoy, one of the first concentration camps in Nazi Germany, was set up in the city in 1933. The Gestapo began actions against Polish and Jewish students (see: Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau), Communists, Social Democrats, and trade unionists. Arrests were made for speaking Polish in public, and in 1938 the Nazi-controlled police destroyed the Polish cultural centre. In June 1939, Polish students were expelled from the university. Also many other people seen as "undesirable" by Nazi Germany were sent to concentration camps. A network of concentration camps and forced labour camps was established around Breslau to serve industrial concerns, including FAMO, Junkers, and Krupp. Tens of thousands of forced laborers were imprisoned there.
The last big event organized by the National Socialist League of the Reich for Physical Exercise, called Deutsches Turn-und-Sportfest (Gym and Sports Festivities), took place in Breslau from 26 to 31 July 1938. The Sportsfest was held to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the German Wars of Liberation against Napoleon's invasion.
Second World War
During the invasion of Poland, which started World War II, in September 1939, the Germans carried out mass arrests of local Polish activists and banned Polish organizations, and the city was made the headquarters of the southern district of the Selbstschutz, whose task was to persecute Poles. For most of the war, the fighting did not affect the city. During the war, the Germans opened the graves of medieval Polish monarchs and local dukes to carry out anthropological research for propaganda purposes, wanting to demonstrate German "racial purity." The remains were transported to other places by the Germans, and they have not been found to this day. In 1941 the remnants of the pre-war Polish minority in the city, as well as Polish slave labourers, organised a resistance group called Olimp. The organisation gathered intelligence, carrying out sabotage and organising aid for Polish slave workers. In September 1941 the city's 10,000 Jews were expelled from their homes and soon deported to concentration camps. Few survived the Holocaust. As the war continued, refugees from bombed-out German cities, and later refugees from farther east, swelled the population to nearly one million, including 51,000 forced labourers in 1944, and 9,876 Allied PoWs. At the end of 1944 an additional 30,000–60,000 Poles were moved into the city after the Germans crushed the Warsaw Uprising.
During the war the Germans operated four subcamps of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp in the city. Approximately 3,400–3,800 men were imprisoned in three subcamps, among them Poles, Russians, Italians, Frenchmen, Ukrainians, Czechs, Belgians, Yugoslavs, Dutchmen, Chinese, and about 1,500 Jewish women were imprisoned in the fourth camp. Many prisoners died, and the remaining were evacuated to the main camp of Gross-Rosen in January 1945. There were also three subcamps of the Stalag VIII-B/344 prisoner-of-war camp, and two Nazi prisons in the city, including a youth prison, with multiple forced labour subcamps.
In 1945, the city became part of the front lines and was the site of the brutal Siege of Breslau. Adolf Hitler had in 1944 declared Breslau to be a fortress (Festung), to be held at all costs. An attempted evacuation of the city took place in January 1945, with 18,000 people freezing to death in icy snowstorms of −20 °C (−4 °F) weather. In February 1945, the Soviet Army approached the city and the German Luftwaffe began an airlift to the besieged garrison. A large area of the city centre was demolished and turned into an airfield by the defenders. By the end of the three-month siege in May 1945, half the city had been destroyed. Breslau was the last major city in Germany to surrender, capitulating only two days before the end of the war in Europe. Civilian deaths amounted to as many as 80,000. In August the Soviets placed the city under the control of German communists.
Following the Yalta Conference held in February 1945, where the new geopolitics of Central Europe were decided, the terms of the Potsdam Conference decreed that along with almost all of Lower Silesia, the city would again become part of Poland in exchange for Poland's loss of the city of Lwów along with the massive territory of Kresy in the east, which was annexed by the Soviet Union. The Polish name of Wrocław was declared official. There had been discussion among the Western Allies to place the southern Polish-German boundary on the Eastern Neisse, which meant post-war Germany would have been allowed to retain approximately half of Silesia, including those parts of Breslau that lay on the west bank of the Oder. However, the Soviet government insisted the border be drawn at the Lusatian Neisse farther west.
1945–present
The city's German inhabitants who had not fled, or who had returned to their home city after the war had ended, were expelled between 1945 and 1949 in accordance to the Potsdam Agreement and were settled in the Soviet occupation zone or in the Allied Occupation Zones in the remainder of Germany. The city's last pre-war German school was closed in 1963.
The Polish population was dramatically increased by the resettlement of Poles, partly due to postwar population transfers during the forced deportations from Polish lands annexed by the Soviet Union in the east region, some of whom came from Lviv (Lwów), Volhynia, and the Vilnius Region. However, despite the prime role given to re-settlers from the Kresy, in 1949, only 20% of the new Polish population actually were refugees themselves. A small German minority (about 1,000 people, or 2% of the population) remains in the city, so that today the relation of Polish to German population is the reverse of what it was a hundred years ago. Traces of the German past, such as inscriptions and signs, were removed. In 1948, Wrocław organized the Recovered Territories Exhibition and the World Congress of Intellectuals in Defense of Peace. Picasso's lithograph, La Colombe (The Dove), a traditional, realistic picture of a pigeon, without an olive branch, was created on a napkin at the Monopol Hotel in Wrocław during the World Congress of Intellectuals in Defense of Peace.
In 1963, Wrocław was declared a closed city because of a smallpox epidemic.
In 1982, during martial law in Poland, the anti-communist underground organizations Fighting Solidarity and Orange Alternative were founded in Wrocław. Wrocław's dwarves, made of bronze, famously grew out of and commemorate Orange Alternative.
In 1983 and 1997, Pope John Paul II visited the city.
PTV Echo, the first non-state television station in Poland and in the post-communist countries, began to broadcast in Wrocław on 6 February 1990.
In May 1997, Wrocław hosted the 46th International Eucharistic Congress.
In July 1997, the city was heavily affected by the Millennium Flood, the worst flooding in post-war Poland, Germany, and the Czech Republic. About one-third of the area of the city was flooded. The smaller Widawa River also flooded the city simultaneously, worsening the damage. An earlier, equally devastating flood of the Oder river had taken place in 1903.
A small part of the city was also flooded during the flood of 2010. From 2012 to 2015, the Wrocław water node was renovated and redeveloped to prevent further flooding.
Municipal Stadium in Wrocław, opened in 2011, hosted three matches in Group A of the UEFA Euro 2012 championship.
In 2016, Wrocław was declared the European Capital of Culture.
In 2017, Wrocław hosted the 2017 World Games.
Wrocław won the European Best Destination title in 2018.
Wrocław is now a unique European city of mixed heritage, with architecture influenced by Polish, Bohemian, Austrian, and Prussian traditions, such as Silesian Gothic and its Baroque style of court builders of Habsburg Austria (Fischer von Erlach). Wrocław has a number of notable buildings by German modernist architects including the famous Centennial Hall (1911–1913) designed by Max Berg.
Geography
Wrocław is located in the three mesoregions of the Silesian Lowlands (Wrocław Plain, Wrocław Valley, Oleśnica Plain) at an elevation of around 105–156 metres (Gajowe Hill and Maślickie Hill) above sea level. The city lies on the Oder River and its four tributaries, which supply it within the city limits – Bystrzyca, Oława, Ślęza and Widawa. In addition, the Dobra River and many streams flow through the city. The city has a sewage treatment plant on the Janówek estate.
Flora and fauna
There are 44 city parks and public green spaces covering around 800 hectares. The most notable are Szczytnicki Park, Park Południowy (South Park) and Anders Park. In addition, Wrocław University runs an historical Botanical garden (founded in 1811), with a salient Alpine garden, a lake and a valley.
In Wrocław, the presence of over 200 species of birds has been registered, of which over 100 have nesting places there. As in other large Polish cities, the most numerous are pigeons. Other common species are the sparrow, tree sparrow, siskin, rook, crow, jackdaw, magpie, swift, martin, swallow, kestrel, mute swan, mallard, coot, merganser, black-headed gull, great tit, blue tit, long-tailed tit, greenfinch, hawfinch, collared dove, common wood pigeon, fieldfare, redwing, common starling, grey heron, white stork, common chaffinch, blackbird, jay, nuthatch, bullfinch, cuckoo, waxwing, lesser spotted woodpecker, great spotted woodpecker, white-backed woodpecker, white wagtail, blackcap, black redstart, old world flycatcher, emberizidae, goldfinch, western marsh harrier, little bittern, common moorhen, reed bunting, remiz, great reed warbler, little crake, little ringed plover and white-tailed eagle.
In addition, the city is periodically plagued by the brown rat, especially in the Market Square and in the vicinity of eateries. Otherwise, due to the proximity of wooded areas, there are hedgehogs, foxes, wild boar, bats, martens, squirrels, deer, hares, beavers, polecats, otters, badgers, weasels, stoats and raccoon dogs. There are also occasional sightings of escaped muskrat, american mink and raccoon.
Climate
According to the Köppen climate classification, Wrocław has an oceanic climate (Cfb), bordering on a humid continental climate (Dfb) using the 0 °C (32 °F) isotherm. The position of Wrocław in the Silesian Lowlands, which are themselves located just north of the Sudetes and to the southwest of the Trzebnickie Hills, creates a favourable environment for accumulation of heat in the Oder river valley between Wrocław and Opole. Wrocław is therefore the warmest city in Poland, among those tracked by the Institute of Meteorology and Water Management (IMGW), with the mean annual temperature of 9.7 °C (49 °F).
The city experiences relatively mild and dry winters, but with the skies frequently overcast; summers are warm and generally sunny, however, that is the period when most precipitation occurs, which often falls during thunderstorms. The city also sometimes experiences foehn-like conditions, particularly when the wind blows from the south or the south-west. In addition to that, the temperatures in the city centre often tend to be higher than on the outskirts due to the urban heat island effect. Snow may fall in any month from October to May but normally does so in winter; the snow cover of at least 1 cm (0.39 in) stays on the ground for an average of 27.5 days per year – one of the lowest in Poland. The highest temperature in Wrocław recognised by IMGW was noted on 8 August 2015 (37.9 °C (100 °F)), though thermometers at the meteorological station managed by the University of Wrocław indicated 38.9 °C (102 °F) on that day. The lowest temperature was recorded on 11 February 1956 (−32 °C (−26 °F)).
Government and politics
Wrocław is the capital city of Lower Silesian Voivodeship, a province (voivodeship) created in 1999. It was previously the capital of Wrocław Voivodeship. The city is a separate urban gmina and city-county. It is also the seat of Wrocław County, which adjoins but does not include the city.
Districts
Wrocław was previously subdivided into five boroughs (Polish: dzielnice): Old Town, Downtown, Krzyki, Fabryczna, and Psie Pole. Although they were abolished in 1991 and have not existed as public administration units since then, areas of borders and names similar/identical to the former districts still exist in the practice of operation of various types of authorities and administrations (e.g. as divisions of territorial competencies of courts, prosecutors' offices, tax offices, etc.).
The present Wrocław districts (Polish: osiedla) were all created on 21 March 1991, and are a type of local government district.
Municipal government
Wrocław is currently governed by the city's mayor and a municipal legislature known as the city council. The city council is made up of 39 councilors and is directly elected by the city's inhabitants. The remit of the council and president extends to all areas of municipal policy and development planning, up to and including development of local infrastructure, transport and planning permission. However, it is not able to draw taxation directly from its citizens, and instead receives its budget from the Polish national government whose seat is in Warsaw.
The city's current mayor is Jacek Sutryk, who has served in this position since 2018. The first mayor of Wrocław after the war was Bolesław Drobner, appointed to the position on 14 March 1945, even before the surrender of Festung Breslau.
Economy
Wrocław is the second-wealthiest of the large cities in Poland after Warsaw. The city is also home to the largest number of leasing and debt collection companies in the country, including the largest European Leasing Fund as well as numerous banks. Due to the proximity of the borders with Germany and the Czech Republic, Wrocław and the region of Lower Silesia is a large import and export partner with these countries.
Wrocław is one of the most innovative cities in Poland with the largest number of R&D centers, due to the cooperation between the municipality, business sector and numerous universities. Currently, in Wrocław there are many organizations that are dealing with innovation–research institutions and technology transfer offices, incubators, technology and business parks, business support organizations, companies, start-ups and co-working spaces. The complex and varied infrastructure available in Wrocław facilitates the creation of innovative products and services and enables conducting research projects. The city has the biggest number of R&D centers in Poland, with many co-working spaces and business incubators offering great support to start a project fast and without high costs or too much paperwork.
Wrocław's industry manufactures buses, railroad cars, home appliances, chemicals, and electronics. The city houses factories and development centres of many foreign and domestic corporations, such as WAGO Kontakttechnik, Siemens, Bosch, Whirlpool Corporation, Nokia Networks, Volvo, HP, IBM, Google, Opera Software, Bombardier Transportation, WABCO and others. Wrocław is also the location of offices for large Polish companies including Getin Holding, AmRest, Polmos, and MCI Management SA. Additionally, Kaufland Poland has its main headquarters in the city.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, the city has had a developing high-tech sector.
Many high-tech companies are located in the Wrocław Technology Park, such as Baluff, CIT Engineering, Caisson Elektronik, ContiTech, Ericsson, Innovative Software Technologies, IBM, IT-MED, IT Sector, LiveChat Software, Mitsubishi Electric, Maas, PGS Software, Technology Transfer Agency Techtra and Vratis. In Biskupice Podgórne (Community Kobierzyce) there are factories of LG (LG Display, LG Electronics, LG Chem, LG Innotek), Dong Seo Display, Dong Yang Electronics, Toshiba, and many other companies, mainly from the electronics and home appliances sectors, while the Nowa Wieś Wrocławska factory and distribution centre of Nestlé Purina and factories a few other enterprises.
The city is the seat of Wrocław Research Centre EIT+, which contains, inter alia, geological research laboratories to the unconventional and Lower Silesian Cluster of Nanotechnology. The logistics centres DHL, FedEx and UPS are based in Wrocław. Furthermore, it is a major centre for the pharmaceutical industry (U.S. Pharmacia, Hasco-Lek, Galena, Avec Pharma, 3M, Labor, S-Lab, Herbapol, and Cezal).
Wrocław is home to Poland's largest shopping mall – Bielany Avenue (pl. Aleja Bielany) and Bielany Trade Center, located in Bielany Wrocławskie where stores such as Auchan, Decathlon, Leroy Merlin, Makro, IKEA, Jula, OBI, Castorama, Black Red White, Poco, E. Wedel, Cargill, Prologis and Panattoni can be found.
In February 2013, Qatar Airways launched its Wrocław European Customer Service.
Major corporations
Shopping malls
Wroclavia
Galeria Dominikańska
Arkady Wrocławskie
Galeria Handlowa Sky Tower
Pasaż Grunwaldzki
Centrum Handlowe Borek
Tarasy Grabiszyńskie
Magnolia Park
Wrocław Fashion Outlet
Factoria Park
Centrum Handlowe Korona
Renoma, a 1930s department store of architectural interest over and above its shopping value
Feniks
Wrocław Market Hall
Marino
Park Handlowy Młyn
Family Point
Ferio Gaj
Aleja Bielany in Bielany Wrocławskie (suburb of Wrocław) – the largest shopping mall in Poland
Transport
Wrocław is a major transport hub, situated at the crossroad of many routes linking Western and Central Europe with the rest of Poland. The city is skirted on the south by the A4 highway, which is part of the European route E40, extending from the Polish-German to the Polish-Ukrainian border across southern Poland.
The 672-kilometre highway beginning at Jędrzychowice connects Lower Silesia with Opole and the industrial Upper Silesian metropolis, Kraków, Tarnów and Rzeszów. It also provides easy access to German cities such as Dresden, Leipzig, Magdeburg and with the A18 highway Berlin, Hamburg.
The toll-free A8 bypass (Wrocław ring road) around the west and north of the city connects the A4 highway with three major routes – S5 expressway leading to Poznań, Bydgoszcz; the S8 express road towards Oleśnica, Łódź, Warsaw, Białystok; and the National Road 8 to Prague, Brno and other townships in the Czech Republic.
Traffic congestion is a significant issue in Wrocław as in most Polish cities; in early 2020 it was ranked as the fifth-most congested city in Poland, and 41st in the world. On average, a car driver in Wrocław annually spends seven days and two hours in a traffic jam. Roadblocks, gridlocks and narrow cobblestone streets around the Old Town are considerable obstacles for drivers. The lack of parking space is also a major setback; private lots or on-street pay bays are the most common means of parking. A study in 2019 has revealed that there are approximately 130 vehicles per each parking spot, and the search for an unoccupied bay takes on average eight minutes.
Aviation
The city is served by Wrocław Airport (IATA:WRO ICAO:EPWR) situated around 10 kilometres southwest from the city centre. The airport handles passenger flights with LOT Polish Airlines, Buzz, Ryanair, Wizz Air, Lufthansa, Eurowings, Air France, KLM, Scandinavian Airlines, Swiss International Air Lines and air cargo connections. In 2019 over a 3.5 million passengers passed through the airport, placing it fifth on the list of busiest airports in Poland. Among the permanent and traditional destinations are Warsaw, Amsterdam, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt am Main, Zürich and Budapest. Low-cost flights are common among British, Italian, Spanish and Ukrainian travellers, based on the number of destinations. Seasonal charter flights are primarily targeted at Polish holidaymakers travelling to Southern Europe and North Africa.
Rail and bus
The main rail station is Wrocław Główny, which is the largest railway station in Poland by the number of passengers served (21,2 million passengers a year), and perhaps the most important railroad junction alongside Warsaw Central station. The station is supported by PKP Intercity, Polregio, Koleje Dolnośląskie and Leo Express. There are direct connections to Szczecin, Poznań, and to Warsaw Central through Łódź Fabryczna station. There is also a regular connection to Berlin Hauptbahnhof and Wien Hauptbahnhof (Vienna), as well as indirect to Praha hlavní nádraží (Prague) and Budapest-Nyugati with one transfer depending on the carrier.
Adjacent to the railway station, is a central bus station located in the basement of the shopping mall Wroclavia, with services offered by PKS, Neobus, Flixbus, Sindbad, and others.
Public transport
The public transport in Wrocław comprises 99 bus lines and a well-developed network of 23 tram lines (with a length over 200 kilometres) operated by the Municipal Transport Company MPK (Miejskie Przedsiębiorstwo Komunikacyjne). Rides are paid for, tickets can be purchased in vending machines, which are located at bus stops, as well as in the vending machines located in the vehicle (payment contactless payment card, the ticket is saved on the card). The tickets are available for purchase in the electronic form via mobile app: mPay, Apple Pay, SkyCash, Mobill, Google Pay. Tickets are one-ride or temporary (0.25, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 24, 48, 72, or 168 hours).
All buses and big part of trams is low-floor.
Over a dozen traditional taxicab firms operate in the city as well as Uber, iTaxi, Bolt and Free Now.
Other
There are 1200 km of cycling paths including about 100 km paths on flood embankments. Wrocław has a bike rental network called the City Bike (Wrocławski Rower Miejski). It has 2000 bicycles and 200 self-service stations. In addition to regular bicycles, tandem, cargo, electric, folding, tricycles, children's, and handbikes are available, operating every year from 1 March to 30 November. During winter (December – February) 200 bikes are available in the system.
Wrocław possesses a scooter-sharing system of Lime, Bird, Bolt and Hive Free Now – motorized scooter rental is available using a mobile application.
Electronic car rental systems include Traficar, Panek CarSharing (hybrid cars), GoScooter and hop.city electric scooters using the mobile application.
A gondola lift over the Oder called Polinka began operation in 2013. Wrocław also has a river port on the Oder and several marinas.
Demographics
In December 2020, the population of Wrocław was estimated at 641,928 individuals, of which 342,215 were women and 299,713 were men. Since 2011, the population has been steadily rising, with a 0.142% increase between 2019 and 2020, and a 2.167% increase in the years 2011–2020. In 2018, the crude birth rate stood at 11.8 and the mortality rate at 11.1 per 1,000 residents. The median age in 2018 was 43 years. The city's population is aging significantly; between 2013 and 2018, the number of seniors (per Statistics Poland – men aged 65 or above and women aged 60 or above) surged from 21.5% to 24.2%.
Historically, the city's population grew rapidly throughout the 19th and 20th centuries; in the year 1900 approximately 422,709 people were registered as residents and by 1933 the population was already 625,000. The strongest growth was recorded from 1900 to 1910, with almost 100,000 new residents within the city limits. Although the city was overwhelmingly German-speaking, the ethnic composition based on heritage or place of birth was mixed. According to a statistical report from 2000, around 43% of all inhabitants in 1910 were born outside Silesia and migrated into the city, mostly from the contemporary regions of Greater Poland (then the Prussian Partition of Poland) or Pomerania. Poles and Jews were among the most prominent active minorities. Simultaneously, the city's territorial expansion and incorporation of surrounding townships further strengthened population growth.
Following the end of the Second World War and post-1945 expulsions of the remaining pre-war population, Wrocław became again predominantly Polish-speaking. New incomers were primarily resettled from areas in the east which Poland lost (Vilnius and Lviv), or from other provinces, notably the regions of Greater Poland, Lublin, Białystok and Rzeszów. At the end of 1947, the city's population was estimated at 224,800 individuals. In the following years, Wrocław had the largest rate of natural increase among the five largest Polish cities. German nationals who stayed were either resettled in the late 1940s and 1950s, or assimilated, though a cultural society now exists to promote German culture in the still-existing German minority. In the 1950s Greeks, refugees of the Greek Civil War, also settled in the city.
Contemporary Wrocław has one of the highest concentration of foreigners in Poland alongside Warsaw and Poznań; a significant majority are migrant workers from Ukraine; others came from Italy, Spain, South Korea, India, Russia and Turkey. No exact statistic exists on the number of temporary residents from abroad. Many are students studying at Wrocław's schools and institutions of higher learning.
Religion
Wrocław's population is predominantly Roman Catholic, like the rest of Poland. The diocese was founded in the city as early as 1000, it was one of the first dioceses in the country at that time. Now the city is the seat of a Catholic Archdiocese.
Prior to World War II, Breslau was mostly inhabited by Protestants, followed by a large Roman Catholic and a significant Jewish minority. In 1939, of 620,976 inhabitants 368,464 were Protestants (United Protestants; mostly Lutherans and minority Reformed; in the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union), 193,805 Catholics, 2,135 other Christians and 10,659 Jews. Wrocław had the third largest Jewish population of all cities in Germany before the war. Its White Stork Synagogue was completed in 1840, and rededicated in 2010. Four years later, in 2014, it celebrated its first ordination of four rabbis and three cantors since the Holocaust. The Polish authorities together with the German Foreign Minister attended the official ceremony.
Post-war resettlements from Poland's ethnically and religiously more diverse former eastern territories (known in Polish as Kresy) and the eastern parts of post-1945 Poland (see Operation Vistula) account for a comparatively large portion of Greek Catholics and Orthodox Christians of mostly Ukrainian and Lemko descent. Wrocław is also unique for its "Dzielnica Czterech Świątyń" (Borough of Four Temples) — a part of Stare Miasto (Old Town) where a synagogue, a Lutheran church, a Roman Catholic church and an Eastern Orthodox church stand near each other. Other Christian denominations present in Wrocław include Seventh Day Adventists, Baptists, Free Christians, Reformed (Clavinist), Methodists, Pentecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Non-christian congregations include Buddhists. There are also minor associations practicing and promoting Rodnovery neopaganism.
In 2007, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Wrocław established the Pastoral Centre for English Speakers, which offers Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation, as well as other sacraments, fellowship, retreats, catechesis and pastoral care for all English-speaking Catholics and non-Catholics interested in the Catholic Church. The Pastoral Centre is under the care of Order of Friars Minor, Conventual (Franciscans) of the Kraków Province in the parish of St Charles Borromeo (Św Karol Boromeusz).
Education
Wrocław is the third largest educational centre of Poland, with 135,000 students in 30 colleges which employ some 7,400 staff.
The city is home to ten public colleges and universities: University of Wrocław (Uniwersytet Wrocławski): over 47,000 students, ranked fourth among public universities in Poland by the Wprost weekly ranking in 2007; Wrocław University of Technology (Politechnika Wrocławska): over 40,000 students, the best university of technology in Poland by the Wprost weekly ranking in 2007; Wrocław Medical University (Uniwersytet Medyczny we Wrocławiu); University School of Physical Education in Wrocław; Wrocław University of Economics (Uniwersytet Ekonomiczny we Wrocławiu) over 18,000 students, ranked fifth best among public economic universities in Poland by the Wprost weekly ranking in 2007; Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences (Uniwersytet Przyrodniczy we Wrocławiu): over 13,000 students, ranked third best among public agricultural universities in Poland by the Wprost weekly ranking in 2007; Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław (Akademia Sztuk Pięknych we Wrocławiu); Karol Lipiński University of Music (Akademia Muzyczna im. Karola Lipińskiego we Wrocławiu); Ludwik Solski Academy for the Dramatic Arts, Wrocław Campus (Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Teatralna w Krakowie filia we Wrocławiu); and the Tadeusz Kościuszko Land Forces Military Academy (Wyższa Szkoła Oficerska Wojsk Lądowych).
Private universities in the city include Wyższa Szkoła Bankowa (University of Business in Wrocław); University of Social Sciences and Humanities (SWPS Uniwersytet Humanistycznospołeczny); University of Law (Wyższa Szkoła Prawa); and Coventry University Wrocław (Branch campus of the Coventry University, UK).
Other cultural institutions based in Wrocław are Alliance Française in Wrocław; Austrian Institute in Wrocław; British Council in Wrocław; Dante Alighieri Society in Wrocław and Grotowski Institute in Wrocław.
Culture and landmarks
Old Town
The Old Town of Wrocław is listed in the Registry of Objects of Cultural Heritage and is, since 1994, on Poland's prestigious list of National Monuments. Several architectural landmarks and edifices are one of the best examples of Brick Gothic and Baroque architecture in the country. Fine examples of Neoclassicism, Gründerzeit and Historicism are also scattered across the city's central precinct. The Wrocław Opera House, Monopol Hotel, University Library, Ossolineum, the National Museum and the castle-like District Court are among some of the grandest and most recognizable historic structures. There are several examples of Art Nouveau and Modernism in pre-war retail establishments such as the Barasch-Feniks, Petersdorff-Kameleon and Renoma department stores.
The Ostrów Tumski (Cathedral Island) is the oldest section of the city; it was once an isolated islet between the branches of the Oder River. The Wrocław Cathedral, one of the tallest churches in Poland, was erected in the mid 10th century and later expanded over the next hundreds of years. The island is also home to five other Christian temples and churches, the Archbishop's Palace, the Archdiocese Museum, a 9.5-metre 18th-century monument dedicated to Saint John of Nepomuk, historic tenements and the steel Tumski Bridge from 1889. A notable attraction are 102 original gas lanterns which are manually lit each evening by a cloaked lamplighter.
The early 13th-century Main Market Square (Rynek) is the oldest medieval public square in Poland, and also one of the largest (the area of the main square together with the auxiliary square is 48,500 m²). It features the ornate Gothic Old Town Hall, the oldest of its kind in the country. In the north-west corner of the square is St. Elisabeth's Church (Bazylika Św. Elżbiety) with its 91.5-metre-high tower and an observation deck at an altitude of 75 metres. Beneath the basilica are two small medieval houses connected by an arched gate that once led into a churchyard; these were reshaped into their current form in the 1700s. Today, the two connected buildings are known to the city's residents as "Jaś i Małgosia," named after the children's fairy tale characters from Hansel and Gretel. North of the church are so-called "shambles" (Polish: jatki), a former meat market with a Monument of Remembrance for Slaughtered Animals. The Salt Square (now a flower market) opened in 1242 is located at the south-western corner of the Market Square – close to the square, between Szewska and Łaciarska streets, is the domeless 13th-century St. Mary Magdalene Church, which during the Reformation (1523) was converted into Wrocław's first Protestant temple.
The Cathedral of St. Vincent and St. James and the Holy Cross and St. Bartholomew's Collegiate Church are burial sites of Polish monarchs, Henry II the Pious and Henry IV Probus, respectively.
The Pan Tadeusz Museum, open since May 2016, is located in the "House under the Golden Sun" at 6 Market Square. The manuscript of the national epos, Pan Tadeusz, is housed there as part of the Ossolineum National Institute, with multimedia and interactive educational opportunities.
Tourism and places of interest
The Tourist Information Centre (Polish: Centrum Informacji Turystycznej) is situated on the Main Market Square (Rynek) in building no 14. In 2011, Wrocław was visited by about 3 million tourists, and in 2016 about 5 million. Free wireless Internet (Wi-Fi) is available at a number of places around town.
Wrocław is a major attraction for both domestic and international tourists. Noteworthy landmarks include the Multimedia Fountain, Szczytnicki Park with its Japanese Garden, miniature park and dinosaur park, the Botanical Garden founded in 1811, Poland's largest railway model Kolejkowo, Hydropolis Centre for Ecological Education, University of Wrocław with Mathematical Tower, Church of the Name of Jesus, Wrocław water tower, the Royal Palace, ropes course on the Opatowicka Island, White Stork Synagogue, the Old Jewish Cemetery and the Cemetery of Italian Soldiers. An interesting way to explore the city is seeking out Wrocław's dwarfs – over 800 small bronze figurines can be found across the city, on pavements, walls and lampposts. They first appeared in 2005.
The Racławice Panorama is a monumental cycloramic painting, done by Jan Styka and Wojciech Kossak, depicting the Battle of Racławice during the Kościuszko Uprising in 1794. The 15×114 meter panorama was originally located in Lwów and following the end of World War II it was brought to Wrocław.
Wrocław Zoo is home to the Africarium – the only space devoted solely to exhibiting the fauna of Africa with an oceanarium. It is the oldest zoological garden in Poland established in 1865. It is also the third-largest zoo in the world in terms of the number of animal species on display.
Small passenger vessels on the Oder offer river tours, as do historic trams or the converted open-topped historic buses Jelcz 043. In 2021, the Odra Centrum has opened, an educational centre on the river which is offering workshops, a library and kayak rentals.
The Centennial Hall (Hala Stulecia), designed by Max Berg in 1911–1913, is a World Heritage Site listed by UNESCO in 2006.
Museums
The National Museum at Powstańców Warszawy Square, one of Poland's main branches of the National Museum system, holds one of the largest collections of contemporary art in the country.
Ossolineum is a National Institute and Library incorporating the Lubomirski Museum (pl), partially salvaged from the formerly Polish city of Lwów (now Lviv in Ukraine), containing items of international and national significance. It has a history of major World War II theft of collections after the invasion and takeover of Lwów by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Major museums also include the City Museum of Wrocław (pl), Museum of Bourgeois Art in the Old Town Hall, Museum of Architecture, Archaeological Museum (pl), Museum of Natural History at University of Wrocław, Museum of Contemporary Art in Wrocław, Archdiocese Museum (pl), Galeria Awangarda, the Arsenal, Museum of Pharmacy (pl), Post and Telecommunications Museum (pl), Geological Museum (pl), the Mineralogical Museum (pl), Ethnographic Museum (pl). Recent openings of museums were the Historical Centrum Zajezdnia (opened in 2016), the OP ENHEIM Gallery (opened in 2018), and the Museum of Illusions (opened in 2021).
Entertainment
The city is well known for its large number of nightclubs and pubs. Many are in or near the Market Square, and in the Niepolda passage, the railway wharf on the Bogusławskiego street. The basement of the old City Hall houses one of the oldest restaurants in Europe—Piwnica Świdnicka (operating since around 1273), while the basement of the new City Hall contains the brewpub Spiż. There are also 3 other brewpubs – Browar Stu Mostów, Browar Staromiejski Złoty Pies, Browar Rodzinny Prost. Every year on the second weekend of June the Festival of Good Beer takes place. It is the biggest beer festival in Poland.
Each year in November and December the Christmas market is held at the Main Market Square.
In literature
The history of Wrocław is described in minute detail in the monograph Microcosm: Portrait of a Central European City by Norman Davies and Roger Moorhouse. A number of books have been written about Wrocław following World War II.
Wrocław philologist and writer Marek Krajewski wrote a series of crime novels about detective Eberhard Mock, a fictional character from the city of Breslau. Accordingly, Michał Kaczmarek published Wrocław according to Eberhard Mock – Guide based on the books by Marek Krajewski. In 2011 appeared the 1104-page Lexicon of the architecture of Wrocław and in 2013 a 960-page Lexicon about the greenery of Wrocław. In March 2015 Wrocław filed an application to become a UNESCO City of Literature and received it in 2019. Wrocław was designated as the World Book Capital for 2016 by UNESCO.
Films, music and theatre
Wrocław is home to the Audiovisual Technology centre (formerly Wytwórnia Filmów Fabularnych), the Film Stuntman School, ATM Grupa, Grupa 13, and Tako Media.
Film directors Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Sylwester Chęciński, among others, made their film debuts in Wrocław. Numerous movies shot around the city include Ashes and Diamonds, The Saragossa Manuscript, Sami swoi, Lalka, A Lonely Woman, Character, Aimée & Jaguar, Avalon, A Woman in Berlin, Suicide Room, The Winner, 80 Million, Run Boy Run, Bridge of Spies and Breaking the Limits.
Numerous Polish TV-series were also shot in Wrocław, notably Świat według Kiepskich, Pierwsza miłość, Belfer, and Four Tank-Men and a Dog.
There are several theatres and theatre groups, including Polish Theatre (Teatr Polski) with three stages, and Contemporary Theatre (Wrocławski Teatr Współczesny). The International Theatre Festival Dialog-Wrocław is held every two years.
Wrocław's opera traditions are dating back to the first half of the seventeenth century and sustained by the Wrocław Opera, built between 1839 and 1841. Wrocław Philharmonic, established in 1954 by Wojciech Dzieduszycki is also important for music lovers. The National Forum of Music was opened in 2015 and is a famous landmark, designed by the Polish architectural firm, Kurylowicz & Associates.
Sport
The area of Wrocław is home to many popular professional sports teams; the most popular sport is football (Śląsk Wrocław club – Polish Champion in 1977 and 2012), followed by basketball (Śląsk Wrocław Basketball Club – award-winning men's basketball team and 17-time Polish Champion).
Matches of Group A UEFA Euro 2012's were held at Wrocław at the Municipal Stadium. Matches of EuroBasket 1963 and EuroBasket 2009, as well as 2009 Women's European Volleyball Championship, 2014 FIVB Volleyball Men's World Championship and 2016 European Men's Handball Championship were also held in Wrocław. Wrocław was the host of the 2013 World Weightlifting Championships and will the host World Championship 2016 of Duplicate bridge and World Games 2017, a competition in 37 non-Olympic sport disciplines.
The Olympic Stadium in Wrocław hosts the Speedway Grand Prix of Poland. It is also the home arena of the popular motorcycle speedway club WTS Sparta Wrocław, five-time Polish Champion.
A marathon takes place in Wrocław every year in September. Wrocław also hosts the Wrocław Open, a professional tennis tournament that is part of the ATP Challenger Tour.
Men's sports
Śląsk Wrocław: men's football team, Polish Championship in Football 1977, 2012; Polish Cup winner 1976, 1987; Polish SuperCup winner 1987, 2012; Polish League Cup winner 2009. Now in Ekstraklasa (Polish Premier League).
WTS Sparta Wrocław: motorcycle speedway team, five-time Polish Champion.
Śląsk Wrocław: men's basketball team, 18 times Polish Champion, six times runner-up, 15 times third place; 12 times Polish Cup winner.
Śląsk Wrocław: men's handball team, 15-time Polish Champion.
Gwardia Wrocław: volleyball team, three-time Polish Champion.
KS Rugby Wrocław: rugby union team.
Panthers Wrocław: American football team. Panthers joined European League of Football (ELF) which is an eight-team professional league, the first league in Europe since the demise of NFL Europe. The Panthers will start playing games against teams from Germany and Spain in June 2021.
Women's sports
Ślęza Wrocław: women's basketball team, two-times Polish Champion.
WKS Śląsk Wrocław (formerly KŚ AZS Wrocław): women's football team.
AZS AWF Wrocław: women's handball team.
AZS AE Wrocław: women's table tennis team.
People
International relations
Diplomatic missions
There are 2 general consulates in Wrocław – Germany and Ukraine, a Vice-Consulate of Hungary, and 23 honorary consulates – Austria, Bulgaria, Chile, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, India, Italy, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Norway, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, United Kingdom.
Twin towns – sister cities
Wrocław is twinned with:
See also
2003 Wrocław football riot
Jan (bishop of Wrocław)
Wrocław Global Forum
Microcosm: Portrait of a Central European City
Breslau, Ontario – former village (settled 1806, postal village 1857) and now community named after Wrocław
Notes
References
Bibliography
Davies, Norman; Roger Moorhouse (2002). Microcosm: Portrait of a Central European City. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 978-0-224-06243-5.
Till van Rahden, Jews and Other Germans: Civil Society, Religious Diversity, and Urban Politics in Breslau, 1860–1925 (2008. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press
Gregor Thum, Uprooted. How Breslau Became Wrocław During the Century of Expulsions (2011. Princeton: Princeton University Press
Strauchold, Grzegorz; Eysymontt, Rafał (2016). Wrocław/Breslau. Historical-Topographical Atlas of Silesian Towns. Vol. 5. Translated by Connor, William. Marburg: Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe. ISBN 978-3-87969-411-2.
Harasimowicz, Jan; Suleja, Włodzimierz (2006). Encyklopedia Wrocławia. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie. ISBN 978-83-7384-561-9.
Kulak, Teresa (2006). Wrocław. Przewodnik historyczny (A to Polska właśnie). Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie. ISBN 978-83-7384-472-8.
Gregor Thum, Obce miasto: Wrocław 1945 i potem, Wrocław: Via Nova, 2006
Scheuermann, Gerhard (1994). Das Breslau-Lexikon (2 vols.). Dülmen: Laumann n. BidVerlagsgesellschaft. ISBN 978-3-89960-132-9.
van Rahden, Till (2000). Judenbiskupln nund andere Breslauer: Die Beziehungen zwischen Juden, Protestanten und Katholiken in einer deutschen Großstadt von 1860 bis 1925. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. ISBN 978-3-525-35732-3.
Thum, Gregor (2002). Die fremde Stadt: Breslau 1945. Berlin: Siedler. ISBN 978-3-88680-795-6.
Weczerka, Hugo (2003). Handbuch der historischen Stätten: Schlesien. Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag. ISBN 978-3-520-31602-8.
Wrocław w liczbach 2000 (PDF) (in Polish). Wrocław: Urząd Statystyczny we Wrocławiu. 1999. ISBN 83-911967-7-1. Archived (PDF) from the original on 29 August 2020 – via Śląska Biblioteka Cyfrowa.
External links
Municipal website (in Polish, English, and French)
Tourist Information Centre website Archived 21 September 2013 at the Wayback Machine (in Polish and English)
MPK Wrocław (transport company website) (in Polish)
Christmas market Archived 5 October 2016 at the Wayback Machine (in Polish and English)
Wrocław in tripadvisor
Roadside assistance in Wrocław |
Wroc%C5%82aw_Dwarfs | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wroc%C5%82aw_Dwarfs | [
566
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wroc%C5%82aw_Dwarfs"
] | Wrocław Dwarves or Wrocław Gnomes (Polish: Wrocławskie krasnale) are small figurines (20–30 cm) that have appeared in the streets of Wrocław, Poland since 2005. The dwarves are a major tourist attraction for the city, which is the third largest in Poland. Tourists often walk around the city with a map trying to find all of them.
As of October 2017, there were over 400 dwarves in the city. Six of them are located outside the city at the LG plant in Biskupice Podgórne.
History
In 2001, a monument of a dwarf was placed on Świdnicka Street to commemorate the Orange Alternative, a Polish anti-communist movement, and its symbol. In 2003, the mayor of Wrocław, in an attempt to continue the new tradition, unveiled a small plaque on the door of The Dwarves’ Museum. It is found at knee height on the wall of a historic tenement called Jaś, which is situated between the Market Square and St. Elizabeth’s Church.
The dwarf figures, which are smaller than the Orange Alternative monument on Świdnicka Street, were placed in various locations throughout the city. The first five, designed by Tomasz Moczek, a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław, were installed in August 2005. These included the Fencer near the University of Wrocław, the Butcher in Stare Jatki arcade, two Sisyphuses on Świdnicka Street, and the Oder-Washer-Dwarf, near the Piasek Bridge. The last dwarf's name is related to Pracze Odrzańskie, a district on the outskirts of the city. The number of figures has continued to grow since then.
On June 18, 2008, a ceremony was held to unveil two new dwarves on Świdnicka Street, next to W-skers. The figures represent two disabled dwarves: the Deaf-Mute and the Blind. They are part of the Wrocław Without Barriers campaign, which aims to draw attention to handicapped people living in Wrocław. Five days later, another dwarf was erected at the Hematology and Pediatric Oncology Clinic in Wrocław. The design for this third female dwarf, Marzenka, was based on the logo of the Mam marzenie charity.
The Dwarves' Festival takes place in Wrocław every year in September.
Gallery
Wrocław Dwarfs in Other Cities
As a sign of friendship, sculptures of a dwarf are installed in Berlin, Kaunas and Lviv.
== References == |
List_of_Walt_Disney_Animation_Studios_films | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Walt_Disney_Animation_Studios_films | [
567
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Walt_Disney_Animation_Studios_films#ep29"
] | Walt Disney Animation Studios is an American animation studio headquartered in Burbank, California, the original feature film division of The Walt Disney Company. The studio's films are also often called "Disney Classics" (or "Classic Animated Features" in the case of the films with traditional hand drawn animation), or "Disney Animated Canon".
The studio has produced 62 films, beginning with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, one of the first full-length animated feature films, and the first produced in the United States. The studio's most recent release is Wish in 2023, with their upcoming slate of films including Moana 2 in 2024, Zootopia 2 in 2025, and Frozen III in 2027. Additionally, an unannounced film is scheduled to release on November 25, 2026.
Filmography
This list includes the films made by Walt Disney Animation Studios; originally Walt Disney Productions (1937–1985) and Walt Disney Feature Animation (1986–2007).
Released films
Upcoming films
Unspecified projects
In addition, an unannounced film is scheduled to release on November 25, 2026.
In-development projects
A fourth Frozen film is in development. In November 2023, Jennifer Lee revealed that ten projects are in development, including films based upon original ideas.
Cancelled projects
Related productions
Reception
Box office grosses
Critical response
Academy Award wins and nominations
See also
List of Walt Disney Animation Studios short films
List of Disney live-action adaptations and remakes of Disney animated films
List of Disney theatrical animated features
List of Pixar films
List of 20th Century Studios theatrical animated feature films
List of Blue Sky Studios productions
List of unproduced Disney animated projects
Disneytoon Studios
Notes
References
External links
Official website |
The_Lion_King | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lion_King | [
567
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lion_King"
] | The Lion King is a 1994 American animated musical coming-of-age drama film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Buena Vista Pictures Distribution under the Walt Disney Pictures banner. The film was directed by Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff (in their feature directorial debuts) and produced by Don Hahn, from a screenplay written by Irene Mecchi, Jonathan Roberts, and Linda Woolverton. The film features an ensemble voice cast that includes Matthew Broderick, Moira Kelly, James Earl Jones, Jeremy Irons, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Niketa Calame, Nathan Lane, Ernie Sabella, Whoopi Goldberg, Cheech Marin, Rowan Atkinson, and Robert Guillaume. Its original songs were written by composer Elton John and lyricist Tim Rice, with a score by Hans Zimmer. Inspired by African wildlife, the story is modelled primarily on William Shakespeare's stage play Hamlet with some influence from the Biblical stories of Joseph and Moses, and follows a young heir apparent who is forced to flee after his uncle kills his father and usurps the throne. After growing up in exile, the rightful king returns to challenge the usurper and end his tyrannical rule over the kingdom.
Initially, The Lion King was supposed to be a non-musical, leaning towards a style similar to that of a documentary. George Scribner, who had made his feature directorial debut with Oliver & Company (1988), was hired to direct, with Allers joining him soon after following his work as a story artist or head of story on Oliver & Company, The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), and Aladdin (1992). Allers brought in Brenda Chapman and Chris Sanders, whom he had worked with on Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, to serve as head of story and production designer, respectively.
Woolverton, who had just wrapped up work as screenwriter for Beauty and the Beast, wrote the initial draft of the screenplay for this film, but following her departure from the project to write the libretto for the Broadway adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, Mecchi and Roberts were brought on board to finish and revise the script. Six months into production, Scribner left the project due to creative differences with Allers, producer Hahn, and Chapman about changing it into a musical, and Minkoff was hired to replace him in April 1992. Additionally, Beauty and the Beast directors Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise were hired to perform some additional rewrites to the script and story. Throughout production, Allers, Scribner, Minkoff, Hahn, Chapman, Sanders, and several other animators visited Kenya to observe wildlife and get inspiration for the characters and setting.
The Lion King was released on June 15, 1994, receiving critical acclaim for its music, story, themes, and animation. With an initial worldwide gross of $763 million, it finished its theatrical run as the highest-grossing film of 1994 and the second-highest-grossing film of all time, behind Jurassic Park (1993). It also held the title of being the highest-grossing animated film, until it was overtaken by Finding Nemo (2003). The film remains the highest-grossing traditionally animated film of all time, as well as the best-selling film on home video, having sold over 55 million copies worldwide. It received two Academy Awards, as well as the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. It is considered by many to be among the greatest animated films ever made.
The film has led to many derived works, such as a Broadway adaptation in 1997; two direct-to-video follow-ups—the sequel, The Lion King II: Simba's Pride (1998), and the prequel/parallel, The Lion King 1½ (2004); two television series, The Lion King's Timon & Pumbaa (1995-1999) and The Lion Guard (2016-2019), the latter which premiered as a television film titled The Lion Guard: Return of the Roar in 2015; and a photorealistic remake in 2019, which also became the highest-grossing animated film at the time of its release. In 2016, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The Lion King is the first Disney film to have been dubbed in Zulu, the only African language aside from Egyptian Arabic to have been used for a feature-length Disney dub.
Plot
In the Pride Lands of Tanzania, a pride of lions rule over the kingdom from Pride Rock. King Mufasa and Queen Sarabi's newborn son, Simba, is presented to the gathering animals by Rafiki the mandrill, the kingdom's shaman and advisor. Mufasa's younger brother, Scar, covets the throne.
Mufasa shows Simba the Pride Lands and forbids him from exploring beyond its borders. He explains to Simba the responsibilities of kingship and the "circle of life", which connects all living things. Scar manipulates Simba into exploring an elephant graveyard beyond the Pride Lands. There, Simba and his best friend, Nala, are chased by three spotted hyenas named Shenzi, Banzai, and Ed. Mufasa is alerted by his majordomo, the hornbill Zazu, and rescues the cubs. Though disappointed with Simba for disobeying him and endangering himself and Nala, Mufasa forgives him. He explains that the great kings of the past watch over them from the night sky, from which he will one day watch over Simba. Scar visits the hyenas and convinces them to help him kill Mufasa and Simba in exchange for hunting rights in the Pride Lands.
Scar sets a trap for Simba and Mufasa. He lures Simba into a gorge and signals the hyenas to drive a large herd of wildebeest into a stampede to trample him. Scar alerts Mufasa, who saves Simba and tries to escape the gorge; he begs for Scar's help, but Scar throws Mufasa into the stampede to his death. Scar tricks Simba into believing that Mufasa's death was his fault and tells him to leave the kingdom and never return. He then orders the hyenas to kill Simba, who escapes. Unaware of Simba's survival, Scar tells the pride that the stampede killed both Mufasa and Simba, and steps forward as the new king, allowing the hyenas into the Pride Lands.
Simba collapses in a desert but is rescued by two outcasts, a meerkat and a warthog named Timon and Pumbaa. Simba grows up with his two new friends in their oasis, living a carefree life under their motto "hakuna matata" ("no worries" in Swahili). Years later, an adult Simba rescues Timon and Pumbaa from a hungry lioness, who is revealed to be Nala. Simba and Nala fall in love, and she urges him to return home, telling him that the Pride Lands have become drought-stricken under Scar's reign. Still feeling guilty over Mufasa's death, Simba refuses and leaves angrily. He encounters Rafiki, who tells Simba that Mufasa's spirit lives on in him. Simba is visited by the spirit of Mufasa in the night sky, who tells him that he must take his place as king. After Rafiki advises him to learn from the past instead of running from it, Simba decides to return to the Pride Lands.
Aided by his friends, Simba sneaks past the hyenas at Pride Rock and confronts Scar, who taunts Simba over his supposed role in Mufasa's death. Scar then whispers to Simba that he, Scar, killed Mufasa. Enraged, Simba retaliates and forces Scar to confess the truth to the pride. A battle ensues between Simba and his allies and the hyenas. Scar attempts to escape, but is cornered by Simba at a ledge near the top of Pride Rock. Scar begs for mercy and blames his actions on the hyenas. Simba spares Scar's life but orders him to leave the Pride Lands forever; Scar refuses and attacks Simba. Following a brief battle, Simba throws Scar off the ledge. Scar survives the fall, but the hyenas, who overheard him betraying them, attack and maul him to death.
With Scar and the hyenas gone, Simba takes his place as king, and Nala becomes his queen. With the Pride Lands restored, Rafiki presents Simba and Nala's newborn cub to the assembled animals, thus continuing the circle of life.
Voice cast
Matthew Broderick as Simba, son of Mufasa and Sarabi, who grows up to become King of the Pride Lands. Rock singer Joseph Williams provided adult Simba's singing voice.
Jonathan Taylor Thomas voiced young Simba, while Jason Weaver provided the cub's singing voice.
Jeremy Irons as Scar, Mufasa's younger brother and rival who seizes the throne.
James Earl Jones as Mufasa, Simba's father, King of the Pride Lands as the film begins.
Moira Kelly as Nala, Simba's best friend and later his mate and Queen of the Pride Lands. Sally Dworsky provided her singing voice.
Niketa Calame provided the voice of young Nala while Laura Williams provided her singing voice.
Nathan Lane as Timon, a wisecracking and self-absorbed yet loyal bipedal meerkat who becomes one of Simba's best friends.
Ernie Sabella as Pumbaa, a naïve warthog who suffers from flatulence and is Timon's best friend. He also becomes one of Simba's best friends.
Robert Guillaume as Rafiki, an old mandrill who serves as shaman of the Pride Lands and presents newborn cubs of the King and Queen to the animals of the Pride Lands.
Rowan Atkinson as Zazu, a hornbill who serves as the king's majordomo (or "Mufasa's little stooge", as Shenzi calls him).
Madge Sinclair as Queen Sarabi, Mufasa's mate, Simba's mother, and the leader of the lioness hunting party.
Whoopi Goldberg, Cheech Marin, and Jim Cummings as the three leaders of a clan of spotted hyenas, supposed "friends" of Scar who participate in his plot in the death of Mufasa and Simba.
Goldberg voices Shenzi, the sassy and short-tempered female leader of the trio.
Marin voices Banzai, an aggressive and hot-headed hyena prone to complaining and acting on impulse.
Cummings voices Ed, a dimwitted hyena who does not talk, only communicating through laughter.
Cummings also voiced a mole that talks with Zazu and sang as Scar in place of Irons for certain lines of "Be Prepared".
Zoe Leader as Sarafina, Nala's mother, who is shown briefly talking to Simba's mother, Sarabi.
Production
Development
The origin of the concept for The Lion King is widely disputed. According to Charlie Fink (then-Walt Disney Feature Animation's vice president for creative affairs), he approached Jeffrey Katzenberg, Roy E. Disney, and Peter Schneider with a "Bambi in Africa" idea with lions. Katzenberg balked at the idea at first, but nevertheless encouraged Fink and his writers to develop a mythos to explain how lions serviced other animals by eating them. Another anecdote states that the idea was conceived during a conversation between Katzenberg, Roy E. Disney, and Schneider on a flight to Europe during a promotional tour. During the conversation, the topic of a story set in Africa came up, and Katzenberg immediately jumped at the idea. Katzenberg decided to add elements involving coming of age and death, and ideas from personal life experiences, such as some of his trials in his career in politics, saying about the film, "It is a little bit about myself."
On October 11, 1988, Thomas Disch (the author of The Brave Little Toaster) had met with Fink and Roy E. Disney to discuss the idea, and within the next month, he had written a nine-paged treatment entitled King of the Kalahari. Throughout 1989, several Disney staff writers, including Jenny Tripp, Tim Disney, Valerie West and Miguel Tejada-Flores, had written treatments for the project. Tripp's treatment, dated on March 2, 1989, introduced the name "Simba" for the main character, who gets separated from his pride and is adopted by Kwashi, a baboon, and Mabu, a mongoose. He is later raised in a community of baboons. Simba battles an evil jackal named Ndogo, and reunites with his pride. Later that same year, Fink recruited his friend J. T. Allen, a writer, to develop new story treatments. Fink and Allen had earlier made several trips to a Los Angeles zoo to observe the animal behavior that was to be featured in the script. Allen completed his script, which was titled The Lion King, on January 19, 1990. However, Fink, Katzenberg, and Roy E. Disney felt Allen's script could benefit from a more experienced screenwriter, and turned to Ronald Bass, who had recently won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Rain Man (1988). At the time, Bass was preoccupied to rewrite the script himself, but agreed to supervise the revisions. The new script, credited to both Allen and Bass, was retitled King of the Beasts and completed on May 23, 1990.
Sometime later, Linda Woolverton, who was also writing Beauty and the Beast (1991), spent a year writing several drafts of the script, which was titled King of the Beasts and then King of the Jungle. The original version of the film was vastly different from the final product. The plot centered on a battle between lions and baboons, with Scar being the leader of the baboons, Rafiki being a cheetah, and Timon and Pumbaa being Simba's childhood friends. Simba would not only leave the kingdom but become a "lazy, slovenly, horrible character" due to manipulations from Scar, so Simba could be overthrown after coming of age. By 1990, producer Thomas Schumacher, who had just completed The Rescuers Down Under (1990), decided to attach himself to the project "because lions are cool". Schumacher likened the King of the Jungle script to "an animated National Geographic special".
George Scribner, who had directed Oliver & Company (1988), was the initial director of the film, being later joined by Roger Allers, who was the lead story man on Beauty and the Beast (1991). Allers worked with Scribner and Woolverton on the project, but temporarily left the project to help rewrite Aladdin (1992). Eight months later, Allers returned to the project, and brought Brenda Chapman and Chris Sanders with him. In October 1991, several of the lead crew members, including Allers, Scribner, Chapman, Sanders, and Lisa Keene visited Hell's Gate National Park in Kenya, in order to study and gain an appreciation of the environment for the film. After six months of story development work, Scribner decided to leave the project upon clashing with Allers and the producers over their decision to turn the film into a musical, since Scribner's intention was of making a documentary-like film more focused on natural aspects. By April 1992, Rob Minkoff had replaced Scribner as the new co-director.
Don Hahn joined the production as the film's producer because Schumacher was promoted to Vice President of Development for Walt Disney Feature Animation. Hahn found the script unfocused and lacking a clear theme, and after establishing the main theme as "leaving childhood and facing up to the realities of the world", asked for a final retool. Allers, Minkoff, Chapman, and Hahn then rewrote the story across two weeks of meetings with directors Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale, who had finished directing Beauty and the Beast (1991). One of the definite ideas that stemmed from the meetings was to have Mufasa return as a ghost. Allers also changed the character Rafiki from a more serious court advisor into a wacky shaman. The title was also changed from King of the Jungle to The Lion King, as the setting was not the jungle but the savannah. It was also decided to make Mufasa and Scar brothers, as the writers felt it was much more interesting if the threat came from someone within the family. Allers and Minkoff pitched the revised story to Katzenberg and Michael Eisner, to which Eisner felt the story "could be more Shakespearean"; he suggested modeling the story on King Lear. Maureen Donley, an associate producer, countered, stating that the story resembled Hamlet. Continuing on the idea, Allers recalled Katzenberg asking them to "put in as much Hamlet as you can". However, they felt it was too forced, and looked to other heroic archetypes such as the stories of Joseph and Moses from the Bible.
Not counting most of the segments from Fantasia (1940), Saludos Amigos (1942), The Three Caballeros (1944), Make Mine Music (1946), and Melody Time (1948); and The Rescuers Down Under (1990) (a sequel to The Rescuers (1977)), The Lion King was the first Disney animated feature to be an original story, rather than be based on pre-existing works and characters. The filmmakers have stated that the story of The Lion King was inspired by the lives of Joseph and Moses from the Bible, and Shakespeare's Hamlet, though the story has also drawn some comparisons to Shakespeare's lesser known plays Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2.
By this point, Woolverton had left the production to work on the Broadway adaptation of Beauty and the Beast. To replace her, Allers and Minkoff met with numerous screenwriters, including Billy Bob Thornton and Joss Whedon, to discuss writing the new screenplay. During the summer of 1992, Irene Mecchi was hired as the new screenwriter, and months later, she was joined by Jonathan Roberts. Mecchi and Roberts took charge of the revision process, fixing unresolved emotional issues in the script and adding comedic situations for Pumbaa, Timon, and the hyenas.
Lyricist Tim Rice worked closely with the screenwriting team, flying to California at least once a month, as his songs for the film needed to work in the narrative continuity. Rice's lyrics—which were reworked up to the production's end—were pinned to the storyboards during development. Rewrites were frequent, with animator Andreas Deja saying that completed scenes would be delivered, only for the response to be that parts needed to be reanimated because of dialogue changes. Due to the rewrites, The Lion King missed its initial release window for Thanksgiving 1993, with The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) assuming its release slot. Hahn stated the film was delayed to a summer 1994 release, "with much consternation, because people said you can't release animation in the summertime."
Casting
The voice actors were chosen for how they fit and could add to the characters; for instance, James Earl Jones was cast because the directors found his voice "powerful" and similar to a lion's roar. Jones remarked that during the years of production, Mufasa "became more and more of a dopey dad instead of [a] grand king".
Nathan Lane auditioned for Zazu, and Ernie Sabella for one of the hyenas. Upon meeting at the recording studio, Lane and Sabella – who were starring together in a Broadway production of Guys and Dolls at the time – were asked to record together as hyenas. The directors laughed at their performance and decided to instead cast them as Timon and Pumbaa. For the hyenas, the original intention was to reunite Cheech & Chong, but while Cheech Marin agreed to voice Banzai, Tommy Chong was unavailable. His role was changed into a female hyena, Shenzi, voiced by Whoopi Goldberg, who insisted on being in the film. The English double act Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer auditioned for roles as a pair of chipmunks; according to Mortimer, the producers were enthusiastic, but he and Reeves were uncomfortable with their corporate attitude and abandoned the film. Rowan Atkinson was initially uninterested in the studio's offer to voice Zazu, later explaining that "voice work is something I generally had never done and never liked [...] I'm a visual artist, if I'm anything, and it seemed to be a pointless thing to do". His friend and fellow Mr. Bean writer/actor Robin Driscoll convinced him to accept the role, and Atkinson retrospectively expressed that The Lion King became "a really, very special film".
Matthew Broderick was cast as adult Simba early during production. Broderick only recorded with another actor once over the three years he worked on the film, and only learned that Moira Kelly voiced Nala at the film's premiere. English actors Tim Curry, Malcolm McDowell, Alan Rickman, Patrick Stewart, and Ian McKellen were considered for the role of Scar, which eventually went to fellow Englishman Jeremy Irons. Irons initially turned down the part, as he felt uncomfortable going to a comedic role after his dramatic portrayal of Claus von Bülow in Reversal of Fortune (1990). His performance in that film inspired the writers to incorporate more of his acting as von Bülow in the script – adding one of that character's lines, "You have no idea" – and prompted animator Andreas Deja to watch Reversal of Fortune and Damage (1992) in order to incorporate Irons' facial traits and tics.
Animation
The development of The Lion King coincided with that of Pocahontas (1995), which most of the animators of Walt Disney Feature Animation decided to work on instead, believing it would be the more prestigious and successful of the two. The story artists also did not have much faith in the project, with Chapman declaring she was reluctant to accept the job "because the story wasn't very good", and Burny Mattinson telling his colleague Joe Ranft: "I don't know who is going to want to watch that one." Most of the leading animators either were doing their first major work supervising a character, or had much interest in animating an animal. Thirteen of these supervising animators, both in California and in Florida, were responsible for establishing the personalities and setting the tone for the film's main characters. The animation leads for the main characters included Mark Henn on young Simba, Ruben A. Aquino on adult Simba, Andreas Deja on Scar, Aaron Blaise on young Nala, Anthony DeRosa on adult Nala, and Tony Fucile on Mufasa. Nearly twenty minutes of the film, including the "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" sequence, was animated at the Disney-MGM Studios facility. More than 600 artists, animators, and technicians contributed to The Lion King. Weeks before the film's release, the 1994 Northridge earthquake shut down the studio and required the animators to complete via remote work.
The character animators studied real-life animals for reference, as was done for Bambi (1942). Jim Fowler, renowned wildlife expert, visited the studios on several occasions with an assortment of lions and other savannah inhabitants to discuss behavior and help the animators give their drawings authenticity. The animators also studied animal movements at the Miami MetroZoo under guidance from wildlife expert Ron Magill. The Pride Lands are modeled on the Kenyan national park visited by the crew. Varied focal lengths and lenses were employed to differ from the habitual portrayal of Africa in documentaries—which employ telephoto lenses to shoot the wildlife from a distance. The epic feel drew inspiration from concept studies by artist Hans Bacher—who, following Scribner's request for realism, tried to depict effects such as lens flare—and the works of painters Charles Marion Russell, Frederic Remington, and Maxfield Parrish. Art director Andy Gaskill and the filmmakers sought to give the film a sense of grand sweep and epic scale similar to Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Gaskill explained: "We wanted audiences to sense the vastness of the savannah and to feel the dust and the breeze swaying through the grass. In other words, to get a real sense of nature and to feel as if they were there. It's very difficult to capture something as subtle as a sunrise or rain falling on a pond, but those are the kinds of images that we tried to get." The filmmakers also watched the films of John Ford and other filmmakers, which also influenced the design of the film.
Because the characters were not anthropomorphized, all the animators had to learn to draw four-legged animals, and the story and character development was done through the use of longer shots following the characters.
Computers helped the filmmakers present their vision in new ways. For the "wildebeest stampede" sequence, several distinct wildebeest characters were created in a 3D computer program, multiplied into hundreds, cel shaded to look like drawn animation, and given randomized paths down a mountainside to simulate the real, unpredictable movement of a herd. Five specially trained animators and technicians spent more than two years creating the two-and-a-half-minute stampede. The Computer Animation Production System (CAPS) helped simulate camera movements such as tracking shots, and was employed in coloring, lighting, and particle effects.
Music
Lyricist Tim Rice, who was working with composer Alan Menken on songs for Aladdin (1992), was invited to write songs for The Lion King, and accepted on the condition of bringing in a composing partner. As Menken was unavailable, the producers accepted Rice's suggestion of Elton John, after Rice's invitation of ABBA fell through due to Benny Andersson's commitments to the stage musical Kristina från Duvemåla. John expressed an interest in writing "ultra-pop songs that kids would like; then adults can go and see those movies and get just as much pleasure out of them", mentioning a possible influence of The Jungle Book (1967), where he felt the "music was so funny and appealed to kids and adults".
Rice and John wrote five original songs for The Lion King ("Circle of Life", "I Just Can't Wait to Be King", "Be Prepared", "Hakuna Matata", and "Can You Feel the Love Tonight"), with John's performance of "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" playing over the end credits. The IMAX and DVD releases added another song, "The Morning Report", based on a song discarded during development that eventually featured in the live musical version of The Lion King. The score was composed by Hans Zimmer, who was hired based on his earlier work on two films in African settings, A World Apart (1988) and The Power of One (1992), and supplemented the score with traditional African music and choir elements arranged by Lebo M. Zimmer's partners Mark Mancina and Jay Rifkin helped with arrangements and song production.
The Lion King original motion picture soundtrack was released by Walt Disney Records on April 27, 1994. It was the fourth-best-selling album of the year on the Billboard 200 and the top-selling soundtrack. It is the only soundtrack to an animated film to be certified Diamond (10× platinum) by the Recording Industry Association of America. Zimmer's complete instrumental score for the film was never originally given a full release, until the soundtrack's commemorative twentieth anniversary re-release in 2014. The Lion King also inspired the 1995 release Rhythm of the Pride Lands, with eight songs by Zimmer, Mancina, and Lebo M.
The use of the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" in a scene with Timon and Pumbaa led to disputes between Disney and the family of South African Solomon Linda, who composed the song (originally titled "Mbube") in 1939. In July 2004, Linda's family filed a lawsuit, seeking $1.6 million in royalties from Disney. In February 2006, Linda's heirs reached a settlement with Abilene Music, who held the worldwide rights and had licensed the song to Disney for an undisclosed amount of money.
Marketing
For The Lion King's first film trailer, Disney opted to feature a single scene, the entire opening sequence with the song "Circle of Life". Buena Vista Pictures Distribution president Dick Cook said the decision was made for such an approach because "we were all so taken by the beauty and majesty of this piece that we felt like it was probably one of the best four minutes of film that we've seen", and Don Hahn added that "Circle of Life" worked as a trailer as it "came off so strong, and so good, and ended with such a bang". The trailer was released in November 1993, accompanying The Three Musketeers (1993) and Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993) in theaters; by then, only a third of The Lion King had been completed. Audience reaction was enthusiastic, causing Hahn to have some initial concerns as he became afraid of not living up to the expectations raised by the preview. Prior to the film's release, Disney did 11 test screenings.
Upon release, The Lion King was accompanied by an extensive marketing campaign which included tie-ins with Burger King, Mattel, Kodak, Nestlé, and Payless ShoeSource, and various merchandise, accounting 186 licensed products. In 1994, Disney earned approximately $1 billion with products based on the film, with $214 million for Lion King toys during Christmas 1994 alone.
Release
Theatrical
The Lion King had a limited release in the United States on June 15, 1994, playing in only two theaters, El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles and Radio City Music Hall in New York City, and featuring live shows with ticket prices up to $30.
The wide release followed on June 24, 1994, in 2,550 screens. The digital surround sound of the film led many of those theaters to implement Dolby Laboratories' newest sound systems.
Localization
When first released in 1994, The Lion King numbered 28 versions overall in as many languages and dialects worldwide, including a special Zulu version made specifically for the film in South Africa, where a Disney USA team went to find the Zulu voice-actors. This is not just the only Zulu dubbing ever made by Disney, but also the only one made in any African language, other than Arabic. The Lion King marks also the first time a special dubbing is released in honor of a Disney movie background, but not the last: in 2016 the film Moana (2016) received a special Tahitian language version, followed in 2017 by a Māori version, in 2018 by a Hawaiian version; and in 2019 the film Frozen II (2019) was dubbed into Northern Sami, even though Frozen (2013) was not. By 2022, 45 language adaptations of the film had been produced. The special Zulu dubbing was made available on the streaming platform Disney+ in October 2022, together with the Māori dubbing of Moana, and the special Arapaho dubbing of Bambi.
Following the success of the Māori dub of Moana, a Māori version of The Lion King was announced in 2021, and released theatrically on June 23, 2022, to align with the Māori holiday of Matariki. Much of the Matewa Media production team, including producer Chelsea Winstanley, director Tweedie Waititi, and co-musical director Rob Ruha had previously worked on the Māori language version of Moana. The Lion King Reo Māori is the first time a language adaptation has translated Elton John's "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" for the ending credits.
Re-releases
IMAX and large-format
The film was re-issued on December 25, 2002, for IMAX and large-format theaters. Don Hahn explained that eight years after The Lion King had its original release, "there was a whole new generation of kids who haven't really seen it, particularly on the big screen." Given the film had already been digitally archived during production, the restoration process was easier, while also providing many scenes with enhancements that covered up original deficiencies. An enhanced sound mix was also provided to, as Hahn explained, "make the audience feel like they're in the middle of the movie." On its first weekend, The Lion King made $2.7 million from 66 locations, a $27,664 per theater average. This run ended with $15.7 million on May 30, 2003.
3D conversion
In 2011, The Lion King was converted to 3D for a two-week limited theatrical re-issue and subsequent 3D Blu-ray release. The film opened at the number one spot on Friday, September 16, 2011, with $8.9 million and finished the weekend with $30.2 million, ranking number one at the box office. This made The Lion King the first re-issue release to earn the number-one slot at the American weekend box office since the re-issue of Return of the Jedi (1983) in March 1997. The film also achieved the fourth-highest September opening weekend of all time. It held off very well on its second weekend, again earning first place at the box office with a 27 percent decline to $21.9 million. Most box-office observers had expected the film to fall about 50 percent in its second weekend and were also expecting Moneyball (2011) to be at first place.
After its initial box-office success, many theaters decided to continue to show the film for more than two weeks, even though its 3D Blu-ray release was scheduled for two and a half weeks after its theatrical release. In North America, the 3D re-release ended its run in theaters on January 12, 2012, with a gross of $94.2 million. Outside North America, it earned $83.4 million. The successful 3D re-release of The Lion King made Disney and Pixar plan 3D theatrical re-releases of Beauty and the Beast, Finding Nemo (2003), Monsters, Inc. (2001), and The Little Mermaid (1989) during 2012 and 2013. However, none of the re-releases of the first three films achieved the enormous success of The Lion King 3D and the theatrical re-release of The Little Mermaid was ultimately cancelled. In 2012, Ray Subers of Box Office Mojo wrote that the reason why the 3D version of The Lion King succeeded was because, "the notion of a 3D re-release was still fresh and exciting, and The Lion King (3D) felt timely given the movie's imminent Blu-ray release. Audiences have been hit with three 3D re-releases in the year since, meaning the novelty value has definitely worn off."
Disney100
As part of Disney's 100th anniversary, The Lion King was re-released between September 29 to October 12, 2023 in selected Cinemark theaters across the United States as well as Helios theaters across Poland on October 8.
30th anniversary
In conjunction with the film's 30th anniversary, The Lion King was re-released on July 12, 2024. During its opening weekend, the film earned an estimated $1.08 million in the United States from 1,330 theaters.
Home media
The Lion King was first released on VHS and LaserDisc in the United States on March 3, 1995, under Disney's "Masterpiece Collection" video series. The VHS edition of this release contained a special preview for Walt Disney Pictures' then-upcoming animated feature film Pocahontas (1995), in which the title character (voiced by Judy Kuhn) sings the musical number "Colors of the Wind". In addition, Deluxe Editions of both formats were released. The VHS Deluxe Edition included the film, an exclusive lithograph of Rafiki and Simba (in some editions), a commemorative "Circle of Life" epigraph, six concept art lithographs, another tape with the half-hour TV special The Making of The Lion King, and a certificate of authenticity. The CAV laserdisc Deluxe Edition also contained the film, six concept art lithographs and The Making of The Lion King, and added storyboards, character design artwork, concept art, rough animation, and a directors' commentary that the VHS edition did not have, on a total of four double sided discs. The VHS tape quickly became the best-selling videotape of all time: 4.5 million tapes were sold on the first day and ultimately sales totaled more than 30 million before these home video versions went into moratorium in 1997. The VHS releases have sold a total of 32 million units in North America, and grossed $520 million in sales revenue. In addition, 23 million units were shipped overseas to international markets. In the Philippines, the film was released on VHS in March 1995 by Magnavision. The film sold more than 55 million video copies worldwide by August 1997, making it the best-selling home video title of all time.
On October 7, 2003, the film was re-released on VHS and released on DVD for the first time, titled The Lion King: Platinum Edition, as part of Disney's Platinum Edition line of DVDs. The DVD release featured two versions of the film on the first disc, a remastered version created for the 2002 IMAX release and an edited version of the IMAX release purporting to be the original 1994 theatrical version. A second disc, with bonus features, was also included in the DVD release. The film's soundtrack was provided both in its original Dolby 5.1 track and in a new Disney Enhanced Home Theater Mix, making this one of the first Disney DVDs so equipped. This THX certified two-disc DVD release also contains several games, Timon and Pumbaa's Virtual Safari, deleted scenes, music videos and other bonus features. By means of seamless branching, the film could be viewed either with or without a newly created scene – a short conversation in the film replaced with a complete song ("The Morning Report"). A Special Collector's Gift Set was also released, containing the DVD set, five exclusive lithographed character portraits (new sketches created and signed by the original character animators), and an introductory book entitled The Journey. The Platinum Edition of The Lion King featured changes made to the film during its IMAX re-release, including re-drawn crocodiles in the "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" sequence as well as other alterations. More than two million copies of the Platinum Edition DVD and VHS units were sold on the first day of release. A DVD box set of the three The Lion King films (in two-disc Special Edition formats) was released on December 6, 2004. In January 2005, the film, along with the sequels, went back into moratorium. The DVD releases have sold a total of 11.9 million units and grossed $220 million.
Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment released the Diamond Edition of The Lion King on October 4, 2011. This marks the first time that the film has been released in high-definition Blu-ray and on Blu-ray 3D. The initial release was produced in three different packages: a two-disc version with Blu-ray and DVD; a four-disc version with Blu-ray, DVD, Blu-ray 3D, and digital copy; and an eight-disc box set that also includes the sequels The Lion King II: Simba's Pride and The Lion King 1½. A standalone single-disc DVD release also followed on November 15, 2011. The Diamond Edition topped the Blu-ray charts with over 1.5 million copies sold. The film sold 3.83 million Blu-ray units in total, leading to a $101.14 million income.
The Lion King was once again released to home media as part of the Walt Disney Signature Collection first released on Digital HD on August 15, 2017, and on Blu-ray and DVD on August 29, 2017.
The Lion King was released on Ultra HD Blu-ray and 4K digital download on December 3, 2018.
Reception
Box office
As of July 23, 2024, The Lion King grossed $425 million in North America and $553.8 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $979 million. After its initial run, having earned $763.5 million, it ranked as the highest-grossing animated film of all time, the highest-grossing film of Walt Disney Animation Studios, and the highest-grossing film of 1994. It was the second-highest-grossing film of all time, behind Jurassic Park (1993). The film remained as the second-highest-grossing film until the spot was taken by Independence Day (1996) two years later. It finished as the 5th highest grossing film of the 1990s domestically.
It held the record for the highest-grossing animated feature film (in North America, outside North America, and worldwide) until it was surpassed by Finding Nemo (2003). With the earnings of the 3D run, The Lion King surpassed all the aforementioned films but Toy Story 3 (2010) to rank as the second-highest-grossing animated film worldwide—later dropping to ninth, and then tenth, surpassed by its photorealistic CGI remake counterpart—and it remains the highest-grossing hand-drawn animated film. It is also the biggest animated movie of the last 50 years in terms of estimated attendance. The Lion King was also the highest-grossing G-rated film in the United States from 1994 to 2003 and again from 2011 to 2019 until its total was surpassed by Toy Story 4 (2019) (unadjusted for inflation).
Original theatrical run
During the first two days of limited release in two theaters, The Lion King grossed $622,277, and for the weekend it earned nearly $1.6 million, placing the film in tenth place at the box office. The average of $793,377 per theater stands as the largest ever achieved during a weekend, and it was the highest-grossing opening weekend on under 50 screens, beating the record set by Star Wars (1977) from 43 screens. The film grossed nearly $3.8 million from the two theaters in just 10 days.
When it opened wide, The Lion King grossed $40.9 million—which at the time was the fourth biggest opening weekend ever and the highest sum for a Disney film—to top the weekend box office. It displaced the previous box office champion Wolf. At that time, it easily topped the previous biggest 1994 opening, which was the $37.2 million earned by The Flintstones during the four-day Memorial Day weekend. The film also produced the third-highest opening weekend gross of any film, trailing only behind Jurassic Park (1993) and Batman Returns (1992). For five years, the film held the record for having the highest opening weekend for an animated film until it was surpassed by Toy Story 2 (1999). It remained the number-one box office film for two weeks until it was displaced by Forrest Gump, followed by True Lies the week after.
In September 1994, Disney pulled the film from movie theaters and announced that it would be re-released during Thanksgiving in order to take advantage of the holiday season. At the time, the film had earned $267 million in the United States. Following its re-release, by March 1995, it had grossed $312.9 million, being the highest-grossing 1994 film in the United States and Canada, but was soon surpassed by Forrest Gump. Box Office Mojo estimates that the film sold over 74 million tickets in the US in its initial theatrical run, equivalent to $812.1 million adjusted for inflation in 2018.
Internationally, the film grossed $455.8 million during its initial run, for a worldwide total of $763.5 million. It had record openings in Sweden and Denmark.
Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, The Lion King has an approval rating of 93% with an average score of 8.4/10, based on 137 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "Emotionally stirring, richly drawn, and beautifully animated, The Lion King stands tall within Disney's pantheon of classic family films." It also ranked 56th on Rotten Tomatoes' "Top 100 Animation Movies". At Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, the film received a score of 88 out of 100 based on 30 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a rare "A+" grade on an A+ to F scale.
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three and a half stars out of a possible four and called it "a superbly drawn animated feature". He further wrote in his print review, "The saga of Simba, which in its deeply buried origins owes something to Greek tragedy and certainly to Hamlet, is a learning experience as well as an entertainment." On the television program Siskel & Ebert, the film was praised but received a mixed reaction when compared to the previous Disney films. Ebert and his partner Gene Siskel both gave the film a "Thumbs Up", but Siskel said that it was not as good as Beauty and the Beast and that it was "a good film, not a great one". Hal Hinson of The Washington Post called it "an impressive, almost daunting achievement" and felt that the film was "spectacular in a manner that has nearly become commonplace with Disney's feature-length animations". However, he was less enthusiastic toward the end of his review saying, "Shakespearean in tone, epic in scope, it seems more appropriate for grown-ups than for kids. If truth be told, even for adults it is downright strange."
Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly praised the film, writing that it "has the resonance to stand not just as a terrific cartoon but as an emotionally pungent movie".
Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers praised the film and felt that it was "a hugely entertaining blend of music, fun, and eye-popping thrills, though it doesn't lack for heart". James Berardinelli from Reelviews.net praised the film saying, "With each new animated release, Disney seems to be expanding its already-broad horizons a little more. The Lion King is the most mature (in more than one sense) of these films, and there clearly has been a conscious effort to please adults as much as children. Happily, for those of us who generally stay far away from 'cartoons', they have succeeded."
Some reviewers still had problems with the film's narrative. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times felt the film "is less of a piece than its revered predecessors and the first to have a core story noticeably less involving than its scintillating peripheral characters." TV Guide wrote that while The Lion King was technically proficient and entertaining, it "offers a less memorable song score than did the previous hits, and a hasty, unsatisfying dramatic resolution." The New Yorker's Terrence Rafferty considered that despite the good animation, the story felt like "manipulat[ing] our responses at will", as "Between traumas, the movie serves up soothingly banal musical numbers and silly, rambunctious comedy".
Accolades
Other honors
In 2008, The Lion King was ranked as the 319th greatest film ever made by Empire magazine, and in June 2011, TIME named it one of "The 25 All-TIME Best Animated Films". In June 2008, the American Film Institute listed The Lion King as the fourth best film in the animation genre in its AFI's 10 Top 10 list, having previously put "Hakuna Matata" as 99th on its AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs ranking.
In 2016, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Year-end lists
Criticisms
Protests were raised against one scene where it appears as if the word "SEX" might have been embedded into the dust flying in the sky when Simba flops down, which conservative activist Donald Wildmon asserted was a subliminal message intended to promote sexual promiscuity. Animator Tom Sito has stated that the letters spell "SFX" (a common abbreviation for "special effects"), not with an "E" instead of the "F", and were intended as an innocent "signature" created by the effects animation team.
Hyena biologists protested against the animal's portrayal, though the complaints may have been somewhat tongue-in-cheek. One hyena researcher, who had organized the animators' visit to the University of California, Berkeley, Field Station for the Study of Behavior, Ecology, and Reproduction, where they would observe and sketch captive hyenas, listed "boycott The Lion King" in an article listing ways to help preserve hyenas in the wild, and later "joke[d] that The Lion King set back hyena conservation efforts." Even so, the film was also credited with "spark[ing] an interest" in hyenas at the Berkeley center.
The film has been criticized for race and class issues, with the hyenas seen as reflecting negative stereotypes of black and Latino ethnic communities.
Claims of resemblance to Kimba the White Lion
Certain elements of the film were thought to bear a resemblance to Osamu Tezuka's 1960s Japanese anime television series Jungle Emperor (known as Kimba the White Lion in the United States), with some similarities between a number of characters and various individual scenes. The 1994 release of The Lion King drew a protest in Japan, where Kimba and its creator Osamu Tezuka are cultural icons. 488 Japanese cartoonists and animators, led by manga author Machiko Satonaka, signed a petition accusing Disney of plagiarism and demanding that they give due credit to Tezuka. Matthew Broderick believed initially that he was, in fact, working on an American version of Kimba since he was familiar with the Japanese original.
The Lion King director Roger Allers claimed complete unfamiliarity with the series until the movie was nearly completed, and did not remember it being ever mentioned during development. Madhavi Sunder has suggested that Allers might have seen the 1989 remake of Kimba on prime time television while living in Tokyo. However, while Allers did indeed move to Tokyo in 1983 in order to work on Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland (1989), he moved back to the United States in 1985, four years before the 1989 remake of Kimba began airing. Co-director Rob Minkoff also stated that he was unfamiliar with it. Minkoff also observed that whenever a story is based in Africa, it is "not unusual to have characters like a baboon, a bird, or hyenas."
Takayuki Matsutani, the president of Tezuka Productions which created Kimba the White Lion, said in 1994 that "quite a few staff of our company saw a preview of The Lion King, discussed this subject and came to the conclusion that you cannot avoid having these similarities as long as you use animals as characters and try to draw images out of them". Yoshihiro Shimizu of Tezuka Productions has refuted rumors that the studio was paid hush money by Disney and stated that they have no interest in suing Disney, explaining that "we think it's a totally different story". Shimizu further explained that they rejected urges from some American lawyers to sue because "we're a small, weak company... Disney's lawyers are among the top twenty in the world!" Tezuka's family and Tezuka Productions never pursued litigation.
Fred Ladd, who was involved early on with importing Kimba and other Japanese anime into America for NBC, expressed incredulity that Disney's people could remain ignorant. Ladd stated there was at least one animator remembered by his colleagues as being an avid Kimba fan and being quite vociferous about Disney's conduct during production. Animators Tom Sito and Mark Kausler have both stated that they had watched Kimba as children in the 1960s. However, Sito maintains there was "absolutely no inspiration" from Kimba during the production of The Lion King, and Kausler emphasized Disney's own Bambi as being their model during development.
The controversy surrounding Kimba and The Lion King was parodied in The Simpsons episode "'Round Springfield", where Mufasa appears through the clouds and says, "You must avenge my death, Kimba... I mean, Simba."
Legacy
Sequels and spin-offs
The first Lion King–related animated project was the spin-off television series, The Lion King's Timon & Pumbaa, which centers on the characters of Timon and Pumbaa, as they have their own (mis)adventures both within' and outside of the Serengeti. The show ran for three seasons and 85 episodes between 1995 and 1999. Ernie Sabella continued to voice Pumbaa, while Timon was voiced by Quinton Flynn and Kevin Schon in addition to Nathan Lane. One of the show's music video segments "Stand By Me", featuring Timon singing the eponymous song, was later edited into an animated short which was released in 1995, accompanying the theatrical release of Tom and Huck (1995).
Disney released two direct-to-video films related to The Lion King. The first was sequel The Lion King II: Simba's Pride, released in 1998 on VHS. The film centers around Simba and Nala's daughter, Kiara, who falls in love with Kovu, a male lion who was raised in a pride of Scar's followers, the Outsiders. The Lion King 1½, another direct-to-video Lion King film, saw its release in 2004. It is a prequel in showing how Timon and Pumbaa met each other, and also a parallel in that it also depicts what the characters were retconned to have done during the events of the original movie.
In June 2014, it was announced that a new TV series based on the film would be released called The Lion Guard, featuring Kion, the second-born cub of Simba and Nala. The Lion Guard is a sequel to The Lion King and takes place during the time-gap within The Lion King II: Simba's Pride, with the last 2 episodes of Season 3 taking place after the events of that film. It was first broadcast on Disney Channel as a television film titled The Lion Guard: Return of the Roar in November 2015 before airing as a series on Disney Junior in January 2016.
CGI remake
In September 2016, following the critical and financial success of The Jungle Book, Walt Disney Pictures announced that they were developing a CGI remake of The Lion King by the same name, with Jon Favreau directing. The following month, Jeff Nathanson was hired to write the script for the film. Favreau originally planned to shoot it back-to-back with the sequel to The Jungle Book. However, it was reported in early 2017 that the latter film was put on hold in order for Favreau to instead focus mainly on The Lion King. In February 2017, Favreau announced that Donald Glover had been cast as Simba and that James Earl Jones would be reprising the role of Mufasa. The following month, it was reported that Beyoncé was Favreau's top choice to voice Nala, but she had not accepted the role yet due to a pregnancy. In April 2017, Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen joined the film as Timon and Pumbaa, respectively. Two months later, John Oliver was cast as Zazu. At the end of July 2017, Beyoncé had reportedly entered final negotiations to play Nala and contribute a new soundtrack. The following month, Chiwetel Ejiofor entered talks to play Scar. Later on, Alfre Woodard and John Kani joined the film as Sarabi and Rafiki, respectively. On November 1, 2017, Beyoncé and Chiwetel Ejiofor were officially confirmed to voice Nala and Scar, with Eric André, Florence Kasumba, Keegan-Michael Key, JD McCrary, and Shahadi Wright Joseph joining the cast as the voices of Azizi, Shenzi, and Kamari, young Simba, and young Nala, respectively, while Hans Zimmer would return to score the film's music. On November 28, 2017, it was reported that Elton John had signed onto the project to rework his musical compositions from the original film.
Production for the film began in May 2017. It was released on July 19, 2019.
Black Is King
In June 2020, Parkwood Entertainment and Disney announced that a film titled Black Is King would be released on July 31, 2020, on Disney+. The live-action film is inspired by The Lion King (2019) and serves as a visual album for the tie-in album The Lion King: The Gift, which was curated by Beyoncé for the film. Directed, written and executive produced by Beyoncé, Black Is King is described as reimagining "the lessons of The Lion King for today's young kings and queens in search of their own crowns". The film chronicles the story of a young African king who undergoes a "transcendent journey through betrayal, love and self-identity" to reclaim his throne, utilizing the guidance of his ancestors and childhood love, with the story being told through the voices of present-day Black people. The cast includes Lupita Nyong'o, Naomi Campbell, Jay-Z, Kelly Rowland, Pharrell Williams, Tina Knowles-Lawson, Aweng Ade-Chuol, and Adut Akech.
Mufasa: The Lion King
On September 29, 2020, Deadline Hollywood reported that a follow-up film was in development with Barry Jenkins attached to direct. While The Hollywood Reporter said the film would be a prequel about Mufasa during his formative years, Deadline said it would be a sequel centering on both Mufasa's origins and the events after the first film, similar to The Godfather Part II. Jeff Nathanson, the screenwriter for the remake, has reportedly finished a draft. In August 2021, it was reported that Aaron Pierre and Kelvin Harrison Jr. had been cast as Mufasa and Scar respectively. The film will not be a remake of The Lion King II: Simba's Pride, the 1998 direct-to-video sequel to the original animated film. In September 2022 at the D23 Expo, it was announced that the film will be titled Mufasa: The Lion King and it will follow the titular character's origin story. Seth Rogen, Billy Eichner, and John Kani will reprise their roles as Pumbaa, Timon, and Rafiki, respectively. The film is scheduled for release on December 20, 2024.
Video games
Along with the film release, three different video games based on The Lion King were released by Virgin Interactive in December 1994. The main title was developed by Westwood Studios, and published for PC and Amiga computers and the consoles SNES and Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. Dark Technologies created the Game Boy version, while Syrox Developments handled the Master System and Game Gear version. The film and sequel Simba's Pride later inspired another game, Torus Games' The Lion King: Simba's Mighty Adventure (2000) for the Game Boy Color and PlayStation. Timon and Pumbaa also appeared in Timon & Pumbaa's Jungle Games, a 1995 PC game collection of puzzle games by 7th Level, later ported to the SNES by Tiertex.
The Square Enix series Kingdom Hearts features Simba as a recurring summon, as well as a playable in the Lion King world, known as Pride Lands, in Kingdom Hearts II. There the plotline is loosely related to the later part of the original film, with all of the main characters except Zazu and Sarabi. The Lion King also provides one of the worlds featured in the 2011 action-adventure game Disney Universe, and Simba was featured in the Nintendo DS title Disney Friends (2008). The video game Disney Magic Kingdoms includes some characters of the film and some attractions based on locations of the film as content to unlock for a limited time.
Stage adaptations
Walt Disney Theatrical produced a musical stage adaptation of the same name, which premiered in Minneapolis, Minnesota in July 1997, and later opened on Broadway in October 1997 at the New Amsterdam Theatre. The Lion King musical was directed by Julie Taymor and featured songs from both the movie and Rhythm of the Pride Lands, along with three new compositions by Elton John and Tim Rice. Mark Mancina did the musical arrangements and new orchestral tracks. To celebrate the African culture background the story is based on, there are six indigenous African languages sung and spoken throughout the show: Swahili, Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Tswana, Congolese. The musical became one of the most successful in Broadway history, winning six Tony Awards including Best Musical, and despite moving to the Minskoff Theatre in 2006, is still running to this day in New York, becoming the third longest-running show and highest grossing Broadway production in history. The show's financial success led to adaptations all over the world.
The Lion King inspired two attractions retelling the story of the film at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. The first, "The Legend of the Lion King", featured a recreation of the film through life-size puppets of its characters, and ran from 1994 to 2002 at Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World. Another that is still running is the live-action 30-minute musical revue of the movie, "Festival of the Lion King", which incorporates the musical numbers into gymnastic routines with live actors, along with animatronic puppets of Simba and Pumbaa and a costumed actor as Timon. The attraction opened in April 1998 at Disney World's Animal Kingdom, and in September 2005 in Hong Kong Disneyland's Adventureland. A similar version under the name "The Legend of the Lion King" was featured in Disneyland Paris from 2004 to 2009.
See also
Cultural depictions of lions
Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water controversy, a similar plagiarism controversy
References
Notes
Bibliography
External links
Official website
The Lion King at AllMovie
The Lion King at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
The Lion King at IMDb
The Lion King at the TCM Movie Database
The Lion King at Disney A to Z |
Simba | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simba | [
567
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simba"
] | Simba is a fictional character in Disney's The Lion King franchise. First appearing as a lion cub in The Lion King (1994), the character flees his homeland when his father, King Mufasa, is killed by his treacherous uncle, Scar. Several years later, Simba returns home as an adult to reconcile his childhood trauma, confront Scar, and reclaim his rightful place as King of the Pride Lands. He subsequently appears in sequels the The Lion King II: Simba's Pride and The Lion King 1½. Simba was originally voiced by actors Matthew Broderick and Jonathan Taylor Thomas as an adult and cub, respectively; various actors have voiced the character in sequels, spin-offs, and related media.
Created by screenwriters Irene Mecchi, Jonathan Roberts, and Linda Woolverton, Simba underwent several changes as the film's story was revised, including making him a more sympathetic character, and notably establishing his familial relation to Scar. Although conceived as an original character, Simba was inspired by Moses and Joseph from the Bible, and Prince Hamlet from William Shakespeare's Hamlet. Despite sharing several similarities with the title character from the anime television series Kimba the White Lion, Disney claims Simba was not inspired by Kimba. Mark Henn and Ruben A. Aquino were supervising animators for the cub and adult Simba, respectively, with both animators researching live lions and drawing inspiration from the character's voice actors.
Simba has received a mixed reception from film critics, some of whom praised his design but found him uninteresting as a main character. However, several publications have ranked Simba among Disney's most iconic characters, and consider him to be one of the most famous lions in popular culture. The character's likeness has been used in several tie-in products, including merchandise, television series, and video games. In 1997, The Lion King actors Scott Irby-Ranniar and Jason Raize originated the role on Broadway. In 2019, Donald Glover and JD McCrary voiced the character in a photorealistic remake of the film.
Development
Creation
The Lion King was conceived in 1988. Although considered an original story that follows a young lion, Simba, becoming an adult and learning to take responsibility for his actions, the film's creators drew inspiration for the character from various sources, namely several coming-of-age stories and the biblical figures Moses and Joseph. The film underwent several title changes, one of the earliest of which was King of the Jungle. According to producer Don Hahn, this title was intended to serve as an allegory about Simba needing to survive and grow up in both a literal and metaphorical jungle. However, they renamed it The Lion King upon realizing lions don't live in jungles, and wanting to shift focus to a simpler story about a lion becoming king. Some filmmakers nicknamed the film "Bambi in Africa" due to similarities between The Lion King and Disney's own Bambi (1942). The name "Simba" is the Swahili word for "lion". Unlike Disney's three previous romantic films The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), and Aladdin (1992), The Lion King focuses on Simba's relationship with his father.
In April 1992, the filmmakers hosted a "brainstorming session" in which much of the film, including Simba's personality, was re-written. Story supervisor Brenda Chapman realized they had written a proud, unlikeable character. Originally, Simba was intended to remain with his pride after Mufasa's death until this was revised to make him a more sympathetic character. Additionally, one of the earliest iterations of Scar was a rogue lion unrelated to Simba, whereas Simba was meant to be raised by Scar in another version. According to Disney Theatrical Group president Tom Schumacher, Scar was planned to kill Simba and Mufasa at the same time, only for other characters to mistake him for saving Simba from the stampede. Instead of meeting Timon and Pumbaa, this version of Simba would have grown up a slacker under Scar's reign, making him easier to overthrow. A short scene depicting a young Simba wandering the desert before meeting Timon and Pumbaa was also cut.
Screenwriter Linda Woolverton, one of the writers credited with creating the character, joined the film to revise its screenplay, which included providing Simba with a stronger adversary by changing the rogue lion into Simba's uncle. She felt the change contributed more Shakespearean elements to the story. The character has often been compared to Prince Hamlet from William Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet. In an earlier version of the script, Simba was meant to lose his final fight to Scar, being thrown from Pride Rock before his uncle ultimately dies in a fire. Nala's younger brother Mheetu, who Simba was to have rescued from a stampede, was also written out of the film, as well as a trio of Simba's childhood friends. For a while, the story team struggled to come up with a convincing reason as to why Simba would believe he was responsible for Mufasa's death, without killing him. Story artist Chris Sanders explained that the key to this was eventually accepting that a young child in an extremely emotional state would simply believe what their uncle told them.
Addressing online speculation that Simba and Nala could potentially be related since Mufasa and Scar are the only adult male lions identified in the film, Woolverton acknowledged that although it is possible, she had never written Simba and Nala as cousins or siblings. Although Woolverton admitted that songs such as "Hakuna Matata" were non-essential to the plot and arrived later during the writing process, she confirmed that it helps demonstrate Simba during his "lost boy" phase. Some of Disney's marketing team doubted Simba's marketability, since most of Disney's lead characters at the time were female or princesses.
Voice
Actor Matthew Broderick provided the speaking voice of adult Simba. The first actor cast for The Lion King, Broderick learned that Disney was interested in him for the lead role while he was vacationing in Ireland, to where Disney sent him sketches of Simba. The filmmakers hired him based on his performance in the teen comedy film Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986). According to Hahn, Broderick was cast because his voice invoked a character who could be irresponsible yet likeable enough to redeem himself "in a very heroic way". Minkoff recalled that the actor was able to humanize the character, preventing the hero from "becoming 2-dimensional" using a combination of sensitivity, thoughtfulness, and humor. The actor also lowered his pitch slightly to establish Simba's maturity once he decides to become king. Having been involved in the film since early development, Broderick said he had always assumed The Lion King was an adaptation of Hamlet, elements of which were most prominent when he was first cast. Broderick worked on the film on-and-off for two-three years, often re-recording his work to match what the animators had drawn several months later. Although Broderick recorded most of his lines alone, he briefly recorded with an actress who had originally been cast as Nala until she was ultimately replaced with Moira Kelly, which Broderick only learned had happened at the film's premiere. The actor said he sometimes felt left out when recording his lines, which were more somber in comparison to the film's supporting cast.
Disney auditioned dozens of child actors for the role of young Simba, searching for an actor who could embody "a scrappy young kid". Actor Jonathan Taylor Thomas was cast as the speaking voice of young Simba. He was 12 years-old at the time. Thomas did not alter his voice for the character, but simply spoke "with a real kid spirit" since Simba had been described to him by the film's directors as "energetically cocky". Thomas recorded his lines in hour-long sessions over the course of a year and a half. Because he was working by himself, he improvised much of what other characters were supposed to be saying to his character due to the lack of other actors on set. Due to his busy schedule, Thomas recorded some his dialogue on the Home Improvement set, the sitcom on which he was starring at the time, since both productions were filmed on Disney's Burbank lot. His recording sessions were video recorded, which animators used to incorporate some of Thomas' expressions and mannerisms into their drawings, namely the actor's "sly smile". His appearance and personality served as creative inspiration for supervising animator Mark Henn in particular. The actor found Simba's curiosity similar to his own. He also likened Simba to his Home Improvement character Randy Taylor, describing both as curious, intuitive, confident, and quick-witted. Hahn recalled "rough[ing Thomas] up" during certain recording sessions when his character was intended to sound active or out of breath, in order to deliver a convincing performance.
Although Broderick recorded his character's songs twice, the studio opted not to use his vocals in the final film, which the actor attributed to Disney being interested in a poppier sound than he was capable of delivering. Toto lead singer Joseph Williams and actor Jason Weaver provided the singing voices of adult and young Simba, respectively. Williams was originally hired to record all of Aladdin's vocals. However, Aladdin's songwriters preferred a more theatrical voice over Williams', and ultimately replaced him with actor Brad Kane. Several months later, Disney's music supervisor Chris Montan invited Williams back to record some demos, which ultimately became the songs used in The Lion King. Although Williams speculated that he would be replaced similar to Aladdin, all of his vocals were retained in the final film. Williams claims Broderick was upset that Disney had decided to dub him. He recorded "Hakuna Matata” and “Can You Feel the Love Tonight" for the film.
Impressed by Weaver's performance as a young Michael Jackson in the miniseries The Jacksons: An American Dream (1992), songwriters Elton John and Tim Rice recruited him to record "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" and "Hakuna Matata" while The Lion King was still in its early stages and little animation had been completed. Weaver recorded "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" only a few days after completing the miniseries, with John in particular vouching for his involvement in The Lion King. Impressed by his performance, the directors considered offering Weaver the speaking role as well before learning that negotiations with Thomas had already been finalized. Disney originally offered Weaver $2 million USD for his work on The Lion King, but Weaver's mother declined in favor of a deal securing $100,000 upfront and lifetime royalties. Weaver receives a portion of the film's revenue every time it is re-released, and his total earnings have since exceeded Disney's initial offer. Voice actor Frank Welker provided the roars of adult Simba and all other lions, simulating the effect using a trash can.
Personality and design
Disney has long denied that The Lion King is based on the anime series Kimba the White Lion, despite similarities between the names "Simba" and "Kimba", as well as some concept drawings depicting Simba as a white lion. The studio maintains that any parallels are coincidental. However, Broderick claims he thought he had originally been cast in an American remake of Kimba because the characters seemed so similar at first. Because Disney was prioritizing Pocahontas (1995) over The Lion King, the former of which most of their experienced animators gravitated towards since the studio considered it the more promising of the two films, Simba was one of the few Lion King characters animated at the studio's main California location. This proved challenging for the production team, since Simba shares several scenes with characters who were animated in Florida.
The role of Simba's supervising animator was divided between Ruben A. Aquino and Mark Henn, the former of whom was the first animator hired for The Lion King. Henn served as the supervising animator of Simba as a cub, and Aquino animated him as an adult. Aquino and Henn worked on the character from Disney's California and Florida studios, respectively. According to Aquino, animating four-legged creatures is difficult because artists are required to draw twice as many legs as human characters, while still incorporating human-like qualities. For assistance, Aquino drew inspiration from Disney's previous animal films such as Bambi, Lady and the Tramp (1955), and The Jungle Book (1967). Aquino based his early drawings of Simba on Broderick, whose voice he said offers the character "a lot of humor and vulnerability ... which really gave me something to go on and made it easier for me to flesh out my performance". Aquino would quietly sketch Broderick live during his sessions, which would end up informing each other's performances. Because the adult version of the character is introduced mildly depressed, Aquino originally drew him with sad, soulful eyes and a disheveled mane, but redesigned him to look more heroic at Hahn's request. As a result, Simba ended up resembling Mufasa. To make sure the character looked believable, Aquino studied live lions loaned to the studio and consulted with zoologists.
Henn animated Simba's scenes from the beginning of the film until approximately the "Hakuna Matata" sequence, including Simba's first appearance as an adult towards the end of the musical number. Before The Lion King, his experience as a supervising animator was limited to predominantly female characters, having previously worked on Ariel from The Little Mermaid (1989), Belle from Beauty and the Beast (1991), and Jasmine from Aladdin (1992). He initially campaigned heavily to animate the film's villain, Scar, because he wanted to do something different than the princesses he had become known for, but Hahn convinced him to work on Simba due to his experience with main characters. Hahn reminded Henn that the success of the entire film hinges on Simba's design, since he is considered the most important character in The Lion King, and the animator found it a welcome departure from leading ladies nonetheless. Aside from Andreas Deja who ultimately animated Scar, Henn was the most tenured animator on The Lion King, whose roster mostly consisted of newer or first-time animators. Simba proved to be a challenge because Henn was tasked with creating an animated character who would both appear and behave like a real lion cub for the first time. To achieve believability, Henn visited zoos, studied live lion cubs that were loaned to the studio for research, and consulted with wildlife professionals. Henn maintained that animators can not simply use their cats as reference models due to their different anatomies. Recalling their efforts to make his character as realistic as possible, Henn said that, unlike domestic cats, lion cubs “have a power ... underlying that seemingly soft exterior". He was also responsible for making sure Simba's appearance remained consistent between himself, the directors, and other animators.
When it came to animating the "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" musical sequence, Henn considered it essential that Simba remain on all-fours, despite the fact that the character is exhibiting human characteristics by dancing. The animators would often observe and film the voice actors' recording sessions, using their mannerisms as visual reference, with Thomas proving particularly influential on Simba's design and personality. Henn described his version of the character as a young, cocky, inexperienced cub who had yet to mature, which he hoped would remind viewers of their younger selves. Compared to adult Simba, Henn described him as "looser" and less physically assured, which allowed him to draw him "a little more awkward, his feet were a little bigger, they could be a little floppier than when he’s an adult". Although Henn and Aquino did not spend much time discussing the character's design with each other, both artists referenced live lions and received input from the same research team to determine how Simba should look and behave. Catherine Hinman of the Orlando Sentinel observed that the animators' extensive research resulted in "a lion cub who moves like his aristocratic cousins on the savannah but acts like the kid down the street". Tom Bancroft, an animator who worked on Simba under Henn, described his supervisor as the fastest animator at Disney at the time, making it difficult for other animators to acquire their own scenes to animate as Henn would typically do them himself. According to the Academy of Art University, Henn's work on Simba "further cemented his place in [animation] history".
Some journalists believe Simba's mane was based on how singer Jon Bon Jovi styled his hair during the 1980s. Simba spends 55% of his screen time as a cub, and the remaining 45% as an adult lion. At the time of the film's release, Simba had the most screen time of any Disney hero, appearing in 49.71% of the film (or 43 minutes and 51 seconds).
Appearances
Films series
Simba first appears in The Lion King (1994) as a cub, the son of King Mufasa and Queen Sarabi. As Mufasa's heir, Simba is destined to become the next King of the Pride Lands. However, Simba's jealous uncle Scar plots against him in order to seize the throne for himself, killing Mufasa after he rescues Simba from a wildebeest stampede, and convincing Simba that he is responsible for Mufasa's death. Crippled with guilt, Simba flees to the jungle where he befriends Timon and Pumbaa, a meerkat and warthog duo who raise him and teach him to live the carefree lifestyle, but Simba continuously struggles to ignore his past. Years later, Simba's childhood friend Nala finds him and convinces him to return to the Pride Lands, which has grown barren under Scar's rule. After being visited by Rafiki and Mufasa's spirit, who reminds him of his responsibilities, Simba confronts Scar, who finally admits to killing Mufasa, and defeats him, reclaiming his rightful place as king. With order restored, Simba and Nala have a child, ushering in hope for the future of the Pride Lands.
In The Lion King II: Simba's Pride (1998), Simba and Nala commemorate the birth of their daughter, Kiara, who Simba is overprotective of since she grows up to be adventurous and rebellious like he was as a cub. Simba discovers that Kiara has visited the forbidden Outlands – home to an enemy pride of Scar's exiled followers known as the Outsiders – and befriended Kovu, the younger son of the pride's leader, Zira. Unbeknownst to them, Zira is grooming Kovu to avenge Scar by usurping Simba. Several years later, Kovu rescues Kiara from a wildfire started by Kovu's siblings, Nuka and Vitani. Simba reluctantly lets Kovu, who claims to have left the Outsiders, live with them, but continues to act coldly towards him. Witnessing Kiara and Kovu's growing friendship, Simba decides to spend a day getting to know Kovu. Realizing that Kovu is beginning to side with Simba due to his feelings for Kiara, Zira ambushes Simba and convinces him that Kovu orchestrated the attack. After narrowly escaping with his life, Simba exiles Kovu and forbids Kiara from seeing him, prompting her to leave. When a battle ensues between the Pride Landers and Outsiders, Kiara and Kovu return to stop them, with Kiara helping Simba and the prides reconcile their differences peacefully. Zira attacks Simba as he is about to accept the Outsiders back into his pride, but he she is intercepted by Kiara, causing the pair of lionesses to tumble over the edge of a cliff. Having landed safely on a ledge, Kiara offers to help Zira, who is struggling to hang on. However, Zira, consumed by resentment, refuses help and falls to her death. Simba finally accepts Kovu into the pride and reconciles with his daughter.
In The Lion King 1½ (2004), Simba appears as a less prominent character because the film's primary focus is on Timon and Pumbaa's behind-the-scenes role and involvement in the events of The Lion King. Although the two films technically share the same story and timeline, the plot of The Lion King 1½ focuses more on Timon and Pumbaa. The meerkat and warthog unknowingly coexist alongside Simba, and the story fills in the two characters' backstories and events that led up to their long-lasting friendship, coinciding with and often initiating the events that affect Simba's life during the first film. These events include the commemorative bow that occurs during the opening "Circle of Life" musical number and the collapsing of the animal tower that takes place during "I Just Can't Wait to Be King". The film also explores, in further detail, the relationship among the three characters as Timon and Pumbaa struggle to raise Simba as adoptive "parents" and disapprove of his relationship with Nala, portraying Simba as he grows from an energetic young lion cub, into an incorrigible teenager and, finally, an independent young lion.
The Lion King (2019)
On July 19, 2019, Walt Disney Pictures released a CGI of the remake film. The film was directed and produced by Jon Favreau and written by Jeff Nathanson. In this film, Donald Glover was cast for the role of adult Simba.
Glover said that "[The Lion King is] a timeless story, but [he thinks] the way Favreau has constructed it, it's a very timely story as well" and said that "[he] just wanted to be a part of a global good". The actor had previously worked with Favreau on the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017). Glover said that the film will focus more on Simba's time growing up than the original film did, stating that "[Jon] was very keen in making sure we saw [Simba's] transition from boy to man and how hard that can be when there's been a deep trauma". On November 1, 2017, JD McCrary was cast as young Simba. McCrary said that "Donald Glover is so talented that [he] actually did have to take it into consideration, because if Simba is going to grow up to be some sort of figure and you know of it, you have to keep that motive".
Television
The Lion King's Timon & Pumbaa
The success of The Lion King and popularity of its characters led to the production of The Lion King's Timon & Pumbaa, an animated spin-off television series starring Timon and Pumbaa, which ran from 1995 to 1999. Simba makes several appearances, including the newly animated wraparound segment in the Around the World with Timon & Pumbaa international VHS tape and DVD, where Timon drags him out to try to revive Pumbaa's lost memory.
In the episode "Congo On Like This", upon discovering that a predator is on the loose, Timon and Pumbaa (especially Timon) suspect that Simba has reverted to his carnivorous nature due to a tarsier's warning, but the tarsier turns out to be a disguised wolf who has spent months trying to lure Timon and Pumbaa away from Simba, therefore turning out to be the real threat. In the episode "Shake Your Djibouti", Timon and Pumbaa are forced to train Simba to protect them from an escaped laboratory monster, fearing that he lost his confidence. Another episode, entitled "Rome Alone", shows Simba having been captured by Romans and is forced to either eat Timon and Pumbaa or get into a gladiatorial battle with another lion named Claudius. In "Once Upon a Timon", Zazu informs Rafiki about Simba's royal reputation being at stake and is concerned about Timon and Pumbaa's influence on him, telling him that Simba still only eats bugs. Simba later arrives to Rafiki's tree to confront Zazu, as Zazu had an appointment with him in which he neglected because he was so invested in Rafiki's story of Timon's past, but persuades Rafiki to finish telling the tale.
Simba also makes brief appearances in "Zazu's Off-By-One Day" and "Beethoven's Whiff". He also appears in the music video segment "The Lion Sleeps Tonight".
The Lion Guard
In January 2016, a new series called The Lion Guard premiered, following a television pilot film The Lion Guard: Return of the Roar in November 2015. Set within the time gap in The Lion King II: Simba's Pride (except the final episode titled "Return to The Pride Lands," which takes place after the film), it features Kion who is the son and youngest child of Simba and Nala, who as the second-born cub, is tasked with assembling a team to protect the Pride Lands.
The series shows Simba doing several royal duties, such as attending a funeral for his wise old elephant friend Aminifu, holding a "Savannah Summit" so that the other leaders within the Pride Lands can discuss unity between the diverse species and the future of the kingdom, and maintain relations to the Pride Lands' neighboring kingdoms. He also temporarily becomes the leader of the Lion Guard in the episode "The Trail to Udugu" as Kion goes on a journey with Nala and Kiara.
Other television series
Simba was featured as a guest in the animated series House of Mouse, in which he alternates between being a cub and an adult.
Broadway musical
The success of The Lion King led to the production of a Broadway musical based on the film. Directed by Julie Taymor, with a book by Irene Mecchi and Roger Allers, The Lion King premiered at the New Amsterdam Theatre on November 13, 1997, where it ran for nine years until being moved to the Minskoff Theatre on June 13, 2006. The role of Simba was originated by Scott Irby-Ranniar and Jason Raize, with Irby-Ranniar portraying young Simba and Raize portraying adult Simba.
Raize auditioned for the role of adult Simba after hearing that Taymor was looking to cast an actor who was of "unidentifiable ethnicity." Raize revealed in an interview that there was a lot of competition for the role because the musical required "triple-threat work – singing, dancing and acting – that you don't get to such an extent in other shows. It was more the sense of who can take the challenge and not be daunted by the task." Raize, who instantly felt that he "had a connection with Simba," eventually won the role with the approval of Taymor and choreographer Garth Fagan, with Fagan admiring the fact that Raize was "willing to try, to fail, and then to try again." Once cast, Raize found it difficult to maintain Taymor's "sense of duality" because Simba is "both man and beast." He said, "The tendency is to sacrifice one for the other, but you can't." Although hundreds of children auditioned for the role of young Simba, the casting process was far less grueling for Irby-Ranniar who, according to Taymor, simply "walked in and he had the part."
Miscellaneous
Books
In 1994, a six-volume book set titled The Lion King: Six New Adventures were released. Set after the events of the first film, they featured a cub named Kopa, who was the son of Simba and Nala.
Merchandising and video games
As an part of the franchise's merchandising, Simba has appeared in various The Lion King-related products. The character's likeness has been used in and adapted into a variety of items, including plush toys and figurines, clothing, bedding, household decor, and appliances. The success of the stage musical has also led to its own line of merchandising, including the Simba beanbag doll, based on the character's appearance and costume in the Broadway show.
Since the film's 1994 debut, Simba has appeared as a playable character in several video games, both directly and indirectly associated with the Lion King franchise. The character's first appearance as a video game character was in The Lion King (1994), which follows the plot of the original film and features Simba as both a cub and an adult. Simba appears in The Lion King: Simba's Mighty Adventure (2000), which encompasses 10 levels that incorporate the plot of both The Lion King and The Lion King II: Simba's Pride as "Simba ... matures from a precocious cub to an adult lion".
In the Kingdom Hearts video game franchise, Simba appears as a friend and ally of the series' main character, Sora, in Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts III, and as a companion in battle in Kingdom Hearts II.
Simba also appears as a playable character in Disney Interactive Studios' Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure, released on September 3, 2003, for Game Boy Advance, PlayStation 2, GameCube and Xbox,
Simba is one of the central characters in Disney Friends, released for Nintendo DS on February 26, 2008, where the player can interact with him.
Simba is a playable character to unlock for a limited time in Disney Magic Kingdoms.
Walt Disney Parks and Resorts
Live versions of Simba appear in the Lion King musical and in the parades and shows at the Walt Disney Parks and Resorts.
Simba was also the main character in "Legend of the Lion King," a former Fantasyland attraction in Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom, which retold the story of the film using fully articulated puppets. Other Disney attractions that have featured Simba include the Mickey's PhilharMagic 3D show and the Hong Kong Disneyland version of It's a Small World.
He appeared as one of the main characters at Epcot's Land Pavilion 12-minute edutainment film Circle of Life: An Environmental Fable, until its closure in 2018. He currently appears in animatronic form in Festival of the Lion King at Disney's Animal Kingdom.
Critical reception
Reception towards Simba has been generally mixed. The Christian Science Monitor's David Sterritt hailed him as "a superbly realized character". Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly described Simba as "marvelously expressive", to the point where he appears to be more human-like than Aladdin and The Little Mermaid's human characters. In a review for The Fresno Bee, author John Scalzi called Simba "the cutest little lion club you'd ever care to see", and film critic Roger Ebert described him as "cute" several times throughout his review of the film. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone and About.com's David Nusair were moved by Simba's relationship with Mufasa. James Berardinelli of ReelViews enjoyed that the film prioritizes Simba's personal growth over his romantic relationship with Nala, but found Broderick's performance "nondescript".
Vox described Simba as "the least compelling character in The Lion King", acknowledging this might be a controversial opinion. Hal Hinson of The Washington Post gave the character a negative review, questioning Simba as a hero and nicknaming him "the Lion Country incarnation of Fabio". Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times said Simba was outshone by his sidekicks, describing him as "irritatingly callow". Joshua Starnes of ComingSoon.net panned Simba as a main character, describing him as the film's "weak link being both blandly designed and blandly performed". Acknowledging the character's Shakespearean roots, The Baltimore Sun's Stephen Hunter called Simba a less compelling version of Hamlet, Morris the Cat, and Sylvester the Cat. Hunter also found adult Simba to be even less interesting than young Simba, while film critic Gene Siskel found the character boring. Johnny Brayson of Bustle described Simba as "not as great as you remember" despite the character's popularity, criticizing his privileged upbringing, arrogance, and immaturity. Jonathan Allford of The Guardian called Simba "a happy, slightly dislikable lion cub". In 2022, Rachel Ulatowski of Screen Rant wrote that despite differing opinions about the character, "Audiences cannot deny that Simba's design perfectly embodies his role as the tragic hero" with "an intriguing appearance that is heroic, bold, charming, but also weary and disheveled at times. The contrasting elements paint him perfectly as an exiled prince who has been through tragedy in his life".
Despite the character's mixed reviews, several critics have praised Broderick's performance, including The Washington Post's Desson Howe. Annette Basile of FilmInk described Broderick as "excellent" in the role, while Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian called him "sumptuous". Digital Spy's Mayer Nissim described Broderick's work as "wonderful". Several critics and publications have ranked The Lion King among his best films and performances. According to the actor's biography on PBS, Broderick's work in the film and its sequels ironically delivered him "his greatest screen success (to date) in relative anonymity". Gold Derby said the film earned Broderick legions of younger fans, ranking it his sixth best film. MovieWeb ranked Simba the greatest performance of Thomas' career, praising his "wide range of emotions". However, Janet M. Walker of the New York Amsterdam News criticized Disney for casting white actors as Simba, considering his parents are voiced by Black actors James Earl Jones and Madge Sinclair. Christopher Null of Contactmusic.com panned Weaver's performance, likening his singing to Michael Jackson and saying "You almost don't want him to succeed".
When the film was released, some viewers alleged that during one of Simba's scenes, he creates a dust cloud that appears to spell the word "SEX" in the night sky. In a lawsuit filed against Disney in Texas, the studio was accused of including sexual subliminal messages in a family-oriented film, while Catholic activist organization American Life League demanded an apology for including sexual material in its films. Animator Tom Sito claims the letters actually spelled "SFX", an abbreviation for special effects, and was an easter egg animated by the film's special effects department. Beginning in 2002, the letters were edited out of re-releases of The Lion King, and replaced with standard dust clouds.
Legacy
Impact and popularity
According to a Vox writer, Simba is not as iconic as Scar or Mufasa, which they attributed to the character's perceived lack of agency and tendency to rely on instructions from other characters. Contrarily, Marc Snetiker of Entertainment Weekly described Simba as an iconic character who has "spent nearly a quarter century etched into pop culture". Chhavi Puri of Pinkvilla said characters such as Simba "defined our childhood". The same publication named Simba the second-best Disney character of all-time and "undoubtedly one of the best male Disney characters", while The A.V. Club ranked him 29th. According Toons Mag, Simba is one of the 10 best Disney cartoon characters of all time and "one of Disney's most significant characters". Looper ranked Simba Disney's 37th best character of all-time. Variety named Simba one of Disney's 25 most iconic characters. According to Arunkumar Sekhar of Cinema Express and Rachel Ulatowski of Screen Rant, Simba is one of the studio's most iconic animated characters. In a 1995 article ranking "The most powerful people in entertainment", Entertainment Weekly likened Disney chairman Michael Eisner's success story to that of Simba. Publications such as World Animal Protection, the Los Angeles Times, Wilmington Star-News, and the Birmingham Mail consider Simba to be one of the most famous lions in popular culture. Richard Fink of MovieWeb declared him "the most famous lion in all of cinema".
Charlotte Cripps of The Independent ranked Simba Disney's second best role-model for children. Comic Book Resources ranked Simba Disney's 12th most likeable prince character, due to his relatability. Collider ranked Simba The Lion King's fourth-best character, as well as the best protagonist of the Disney Renaissance. Contributor Tyler B. Searle said Simba "has one of the strongest character arcs of any Disney protagonist". Writing for the same publication, Anas Yamin said Simba has the best character development of all Disney main characters. Comic Book Resources ranked Simba eighth in their ranking, including him among "some of the most beloved and iconic main characters in animation history".
Simba's appearance has also generated online debates discussing whether it is appropriate for fans to consider the character attractive, because he is a cartoon lion. Several publications, such as Refinery 29, HuffPost, Seventeen, The Edge, YourTango, The Daily Edge, Pride, and Thought Catalog, included Simba in listicles about their most memorable "cartoon crushes", while Elle ranked him the fourth most attractive Disney prince. Polygon ranked Simba the sixth "hottest animated animal character", and Mashable ranked him eighth. Refinery29's Anne Cohen lamented that the 2019 remake lacks the "Hot Simba Energy" of the original film. Kayla Cobb of Decider theorized that Disney wanted audiences to know that "in the lion world, Simba is a babe" by drawing him with traditionally attractive and masculine features. Louis Costello, a writer for Pedestrian, said "yes it’s okay to be attracted to adult Simba and yes you’re not the only one". In 2019, the pop culture website Punkee published an article asking readers "Why Are We All So Thirsty For Simba?", which author Jenna Guillaume attributed to the character's long mane, smile, "flirty eyebrow raise", and Broderick's voice. Senior lecturer Dr. Lauren Rosewarne theorized that Simba's story and character development throughout The Lion King offers several opportunities for viewers to find him attractive, progressing from wounded, ostracized cub to “potentially offers a bad boy, and then the hero appeal that some audiences will be drawn to".
Pop culture references
During the film's opening song, "Circle of Life", Rafiki introduces a newborn Simba to a large crowd of onlooking animals gathered at the foot of Pride Rock by standing towards the edge and holding the cub high above their heads, while Mufasa and Sarabi observe from behind them. The scene is considered to be one of the most famous from The Lion King, and has been parodied in several projects since the film's release. Several fans have recreated the image using their own children or pets, including, controversially, singer Michael Jackson in 1992, and Brendan Fraser at the end of the film George of the Jungle (1997). During the third season finale of Once Upon a Time, the main character Emma Swan asked her parents Snow White and David Nolan if they were going to hold up her yet unnamed baby brother like in The Lion King.
Since the release of The Lion King in 1994, the name "Simba" has increased in use and popularity among pet owners, specifically dogs and cats. According to Comcast in 2010, the use of Simba as a dog name reemerged in popularity in 2009 after experiencing a noticeable decline in 2001, ranking the name ninth out of 10 on its list of "Top 10 Trendiest Dog Names of the Year". In May 2013, Yahoo! Lifestyle included the name on its list of "Trendiest Dog Names". According to YouPet, Simba is the 17th most popular cat name out of 100 candidates. Care2 included Simba in its article "All-around Cool Cat Names," while DutchNews.nl reported that Simba ranks among the country's most popular cat names as of July 2013. In its list of "Top Popular Pet Names," BabyNames.com placed Simba at number 64 on its list of most popular dog names out of the 100 that were considered. Yahoo! News UK reported that Simba was one of the most popular pet names in Britain in 2016. Corresponding with the Lion King remake in 2019, Simba was that year's most popular male cat name. According to Daily Hive, Simba ranked among Toronto's 10 most popular dog names in 2021.
Notes
So the lion king is a great movie you should go watch it mostly because of Timon and Pumbaa
== References == |
Sebastian_Vettel | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Vettel | [
568
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Vettel"
] | Sebastian Vettel (German pronunciation: [zeˈbasti̯a(ː)n ˈfɛtl̩] ; born 3 July 1987) is a German racing driver, who most recently competed in Formula One from 2007 to 2022. Vettel is one of the most successful drivers in Formula One history; he won four Formula One World Drivers' Championship titles consecutively from 2010 to 2013 with Red Bull. Vettel holds the record for being the youngest World Champion in Formula One, has the fourth-most race victories (53), third-most podium finishes (122) and fourth-most pole positions (57).
Vettel started his Formula One career as a test driver for BMW Sauber in 2006, making a one-off racing appearance in 2007. As part of the Red Bull Junior Team, Vettel appeared for Toro Rosso later that year and was kept as a full-time driver for 2008, where he scored a victory in the Italian Grand Prix to become the then-youngest race winner. Vettel was promoted to Red Bull in 2009. With the team, Vettel won four consecutive titles from 2010 to 2013, the first of which made him the sport's youngest World Champion. In 2013, he set the then-record for the most consecutive race wins with nine. Vettel signed for Ferrari for 2015 replacing Fernando Alonso and became Mercedes' and Lewis Hamilton's closest challenger in two title fights in 2017 and 2018, although he finished both years as runner-up. He parted ways with Ferrari at the end of the 2020 season to race with Aston Martin for the 2021 and 2022 seasons, before retiring from Formula One at the end of the 2022 season.
Outside of Formula One, Vettel won the 2015 Race of Champions. He is also a climate activist and co-owner of the Germany SailGP Team.
Early life
Vettel was born on 3 July 1987 in Heppenheim, West Germany, to Norbert and Heike Vettel. He has one younger brother, Fabian, a racing driver, and two older sisters: Melanie, a dental technician, and Stefanie, a physiotherapist for children with disabilities. Vettel suggested in an interview that he was "terrible" at school, but he passed his Abitur at Heppenheim's Starkenburg-Gymnasium with a respectable grade. His childhood heroes were "The three Michaels": Michael Schumacher, Michael Jordan and Michael Jackson. He mentioned that he wanted to be a singer like Jackson, but realised that he did not have the voice. Vettel is also a fan of the Beatles, collecting several records, including Abbey Road and his favourite song being "Drive My Car". In an interview on Top Gear, he stated that he is a fan of British comedy such as Little Britain and Monty Python's Life of Brian.
Junior racing career
Karting
Vettel began karting at the age of three, and began racing in karts series in 1995 at the age of eight. He was accepted into the Red Bull Junior Team in 1998, and won various titles, such as the Junior Monaco Kart Cup in 2001.
Lower formulae
Formula BMW
Vettel was promoted to open-wheel cars in 2003, and was given a chance by Derrick Walker to test a Reynard Motorsport Champ Car in a two-day private test at the Homestead–Miami Speedway. A year later, he won the 2004 Formula BMW ADAC championship with 18 victories from 20 races.
Formula Three and Formula Renault
Vettel drove for ASL Mücke Motorsport in the 2005 Formula 3 Euro Series. He was placed fifth in the final standings with 63 points and won the Rookie Cup. He tested for the Williams Formula One team later that year as a reward for his Formula BMW success. Vettel then went on to test for the BMW Sauber Formula One team.
Vettel was promoted to test driver for BMW Sauber in 2006, and participated in the 2006 Formula 3 Euro Series, finishing as runner-up. He also competed in the 2006 Formula Renault 3.5 Series, where he finished first and second at Misano in his first two races. In the next round at Spa-Francorchamps, his finger was almost sliced off by flying debris following an accident, and he was expected to be out for several weeks. Nevertheless, he managed to compete in the 2006 Masters of Formula 3 at Zandvoort the following weekend, where he finished in sixth place.
Vettel competed in the 2007 Formula Renault 3.5 Series, and took his first win at the Nürburgring. He led the championship when he was called up permanently by the BMW Sauber Formula One team.
Formula One career
BMW Sauber (2006–2007)
2006: Test driver
Vettel became BMW Sauber's third driver at the 2006 Turkish Grand Prix, when former incumbent Robert Kubica replaced Jacques Villeneuve as second driver for the 2006 Hungarian Grand Prix. On his testing debut, Vettel set the fastest time in the second Friday free practice. Vettel became the then-youngest Formula One driver to participate in a Grand Prix weekend at 19 years and 53 days. He also set a record for collecting his first fine in nine seconds into his career, as Vettel exceeded the pitlane speed limit on the way to the track. In his second testing session at the 2006 Italian Grand Prix, he set the fastest time in both Friday practice sessions.
2007: Debut
Vettel was confirmed as BMW's test driver for 2007. Following Kubica's crash at the 2007 Canadian Grand Prix, Vettel was named his replacement at the 2007 United States Grand Prix. He started in seventh position and finished in eighth to become the then-youngest driver to score a point in Formula One.
Toro Rosso (2007–2008)
2007–2008: Maiden race win and rise to prominence
BMW released him in July 2007 to join Red Bull's Scuderia Toro Rosso, replacing Scott Speed from the 2007 Hungarian Grand Prix onwards, as Vettel was already under contract to Red Bull Racing. It was also announced that he would drive for Toro Rosso in 2008 alongside Sébastien Bourdais.
In the rain-affected Japanese Grand Prix at Fuji, Vettel worked his way up to third, behind Lewis Hamilton and Red Bull Racing's Mark Webber, and seemed to be on course for his and the team's maiden podium finish. However, Vettel crashed into Webber under safety car conditions, forcing both cars to retire. Webber said after the race: "It's kids isn't it. Kids with not enough experience – you do a good job and then they fuck it all up". Vettel was initially punished with a ten-place grid penalty for the following race, but this was lifted after a spectator video on YouTube showed the incident may have been caused by Hamilton's behaviour behind the safety car.
Vettel finished a career-best fourth a week later at the Chinese Grand Prix, having started 17th on the grid while in mixed conditions. He was tipped by Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz as one of the sport's big future stars: "Vettel is one of the young guys with extraordinary potential [...] He is fast, he is intelligent, and he is very interested in the technical side."
After four races of the 2008 season, Vettel was the only driver to have failed to finish a single race, having retired on the first lap in three of them. At the Monaco Grand Prix, Vettel scored his first points of the season with a fifth-place finish, after qualifying 17th. Toro Rosso's technical director Giorgio Ascanelli explained that something changed at the European Grand Prix in Valencia: "Suddenly Vettel understood something about how to drive an F1 car quickly. It made a huge difference – not only to the speed he could unlock but also to his ability to do so consistently."
At the wet Italian Grand Prix, Vettel became the youngest driver in history to win a Formula One Grand Prix, aged 21 years and 74 days. He led for the majority of the Grand Prix and crossed the finish line 12.5 seconds ahead of McLaren's Heikki Kovalainen. It would also be Toro Rosso's only win. Earlier in the weekend, he had already become the youngest pole-sitter. Toro Rosso team boss Gerhard Berger said: "As he proved today, he can win races, but he's going to win World Championships. He's a cool guy". His victory led the German media to dub him "Baby Schumi".
Vettel was named 2008 Rookie of the Year at the Autosport Awards.
Red Bull (2009–2014)
2009: Championship contender
At the start of the 2009 season, Vettel replaced the retired David Coulthard at Red Bull Racing. He began strongly at the Australian Grand Prix, running in second for the majority of the race. However, a clash with Robert Kubica over second place in the latter stages forced both to retire. He went on to take pole position and the race win at Chinese Grand Prix; Red Bull Racing's maiden pole and win.
Further wins followed in Great Britain, Japan and Abu Dhabi. He won the Japanese Grand Prix from pole position, leading every lap. Vettel won the inaugural Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the first ever day-night race, to finish second in the World Drivers' Championship standings behind Jenson Button. He also scored his third fastest lap of the year, drawing him level with teammate Mark Webber. However, as Vettel had more second fastest laps, he won the 2009 DHL Fastest Lap Award.
2010: Youngest World Champion
Vettel took the first pole position of the 2010 season at the Bahrain Grand Prix. He led most of the race but as a result of a spark plug failure, Vettel finished in fourth place. At the Australian Grand Prix, Vettel was appointed as a director of the Grand Prix Drivers' Association. He took his first win of the season in Malaysia.
In Monaco, Vettel made it a Red Bull 1–2 with him second and Webber first. Both were equal on points in the standings, with Webber first based on total wins. At the Turkish Grand Prix, Vettel was running second behind Webber when he made a passing move on his teammate. The two collided, putting Vettel out of the race, with neither driver accepting responsibility for the collision.
At the British Grand Prix, both Vettel and Webber's cars were fitted with a new front wing design. Vettel's wing was damaged in the third practice session, and Webber's sole surviving example was removed and given to his teammate. Vettel qualified in first place, but suffered a puncture. He finished seventh while Webber took the victory. In Japan, he qualified on pole ahead of Webber and went on to win with a lights-to-flag victory. Aged 23 years and 98 days, Vettel became the youngest Grand Prix driver to win at the same track on two occasions. At the inaugural Korean Grand Prix, Vettel led the first 45 laps before retiring with engine failure, handing victory to championship rival Fernando Alonso.
With the 1–2 finish at the Brazilian Grand Prix, Vettel and Webber secured Red Bull Racing's first World Constructors' Championship. Vettel went into the final race of the season in Abu Dhabi with a 15-point deficit to Alonso and a 7-point gap to Webber. He won the Grand Prix from pole to become the youngest World Drivers' Champion in the sport's history, as Alonso only finished in seventh place. Following John Surtees in the 1964 season and James Hunt in 1976, this was the third time in Formula One history that the title winner had not topped the championship table until after the last race.
2011: Dominant second title
Vettel started the 2011 season with wins in Australia and Malaysia, before a second-place finish at the Chinese Grand Prix due to poor tyre management, possibly related to his inability to properly communicate with his team, as his radio was broken. In Monaco, Vettel led the race but due to another radio malfunction, the Red Bull pit crew was not prepared when he came in. The pit stop was slow and he was sent out on the wrong tyres, handing the lead to Button. Vettel switched to a one-stop strategy and stuck with one set of soft tyres for 56 laps. He was caught by Alonso and Button as his tyres deteriorated, but neither were able to pass him. The race was red-flagged with few laps remaining, which allowed teams to change their tyres; when the race was restarted under the safety car, Vettel was able to retain the lead and win.
At the European Grand Prix, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) enforced a ban on engine mappings. It was believed by some in the press that this was an attempt by the FIA to thwart Vettel's early domination. Nevertheless, he took pole with the fastest qualifying lap in Valencia Street Circuit's history. Vettel dominated with his first hat-trick of 2011, and won his sixth race out of eight. The FIA implemented another rule change at the British Grand Prix, targeting the blown diffusers. Red Bull believed the changes would cost them about half a second per lap. During the race, Vettel held off Webber for second place, who ignored a radio message from team principal Christian Horner to hold position. It was only the second time in the sport's history that a driver had finished second or higher in each of the first nine races of a season and won at least six of them.
Vettel's run of fourteen successive front-row starts and eleven successive top two finishes ended at his home race, where he qualified third and finished fourth. In Italy, he took his tenth pole position of the year, in which he joined Ayrton Senna as the only driver to have taken ten pole positions in two separate seasons. A podium finish in Japan secured his second successive title with four races remaining, making him the youngest ever double and back-to-back champion. Vettel won the following race in Korea to become the second driver to take at least ten wins in a season after Michael Schumacher. He also helped to secure Red Bull's second successive World Constructors' Championship. Vettel took his eleventh victory of the season in the inaugural Indian Grand Prix, leading every lap from pole position, as well as setting the race's fastest lap to claim his first grand slam. Vettel broke the record for the most pole positions in a season at the season finale in Brazil, after he clinched his 15th pole of the year. He completed the year with 15 poles, 11 victories, and 17 podiums from 19 races; Vettel also earned a record total of 392 points.
2012: Triple World Champion
Vettel started the 2012 season with a second place at the Australian Grand Prix, before he finished outside the points in Malaysia following a collision with backmarker Narain Karthikeyan. Vettel and Horner criticised Karthikeyan's driving, with Vettel calling him an "idiot", and a "cucumber". Karthikeyan hit back, calling Vettel a "cry baby". Vettel crossed the line in first place at the Bahrain Grand Prix to go top of the championship standings. Three races without a podium place followed, before he retired at the European Grand Prix after an alternator failure, dropping him to fourth in the standings. In Germany, Vettel finished second behind Alonso but received a 20-second time penalty after the race, as he was off the track when he overtook Button; Vettel dropped back to fifth. He started in 10th place but finished second in Belgium to climb up to second place in the championship. Vettel then retired at the Italian Grand Prix due to an alternator failure, which saw the gap to leader Alonso grow to 39 points with seven races remaining. He won next race in Singapore, as he kept the lead until the 2-hour race limit was reached. At the Japanese Grand Prix he took his second career grand slam and coupled with Alonso's retirement, he cut the gap down to just four points. After winning at the Korean Grand Prix, the Indian Grand Prix brought another victory, as Vettel topped all three practice sessions before taking pole position and leading every lap of the race to win.
During qualifying at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Vettel was told to stop the car due to a fuel pump issue; he was forced to start from the pit lane. From last place, Vettel fought his way back to finish in third place. He started the last race in Brazil with a 13-point cushion against Alonso. On the opening lap, Vettel spun after an incident with Bruno Senna. Following changing weather conditions, Vettel climbed up to finish in sixth place to win the championship by three points and to become the youngest ever triple world champion. He also became the third driver to acquire three consecutive championships, after Juan Manuel Fangio and Schumacher.
2013–2014: Record-breaking season and departure from Red Bull
Vettel started the first two races of the 2013 season on pole position, and at the Malaysian Grand Prix, he lapped over 2.5 seconds faster than teammate Webber in qualifying during a wet session. He won the race, though not without controversy. Vettel ignored the team orders and passed Webber for the lead. Webber was furious after the race and said that Vettel "will have protection as usual and that's the way it goes". Team principal Horner, although unhappy with Vettel's actions, pointed out that Webber had defied team orders on several previous occasions. He acknowledged that the already fragile relationship between the two drivers had further broken down as a result of the incident. Vettel claimed that he was not sorry for winning and that if the situation presented itself again, he would have passed Webber despite the order, adding that he felt Webber did not deserve to win the race.
Following wins in Bahrain and Canada, his championship lead was cut at the British Grand Prix as he was denied a likely win due to gearbox failure. Vettel bounced back to win his home race in Germany for the first time. After he finished third in Hungary, Vettel won the last nine races of the season, including grand slams in Singapore and Korea. Vettel set the then-record for most consecutive race wins with nine and he became only the third man after Alberto Ascari and Jim Clark to take consecutive grand slams. He sealed his fourth world title at the Indian Grand Prix.
On several occasions during the season, spectators booed Vettel. The booing was widely condemned by fellow drivers, the media and others in the paddock, and Vettel later revealed that it had a negative impact on him.
For the 2014 season and beyond, drivers picked a unique car number to use for the remainder of their Formula One career; Vettel chose the number five. However, as reigning World Drivers' Champion, he carried number one throughout the season. Webber left the sport and was replaced by Daniel Ricciardo, who was promoted from Toro Rosso.
Vettel struggled with reliability issues throughout winter testing, which forced him to retire at the opening Australian Grand Prix. Reliability problems also forced Vettel to retire at the Monaco and Austrian Grands Prix. Vettel qualified on the front-row for the races in Malaysia, Great Britain and Hungary, and finished on the podium in Malaysia, Canada, Singapore and Japan. After the Russian Grand Prix, he had been outqualified by a teammate over a season for the first time in his Formula One career. In addition to suffering reliability problems, throughout 2014 Vettel struggled to get to grips with the Red Bull RB10, and the Pirelli tyres. He signed off the year by becoming the first defending champion to fail to win a race during a season since Jacques Villeneuve in 1998.
In October, Red Bull had announced that Vettel would be leaving the team at the end of the season to join Scuderia Ferrari, one year before his contract was due to expire. Vettel replaced Alonso and partnered his friend Kimi Räikkönen. Vettel mentioned he would like to drive for Ferrari at some point in his career and was already rumoured in 2012 to have a non-binding pre-contract, with options, to join them in 2014. He was denied an early release from his Red Bull contract to test the 2014 Ferrari car in Abu Dhabi. In spite of this, Vettel was present at the Ferrari test – although not driving the car – but Red Bull did not enforce any sanctions. Vettel instead made his first appearance in November, completing nearly 100 laps in the 2012 car around the test track of Fiorano.
Ferrari (2015–2020)
2015–2016: Returning to the top step
Vettel made his Ferrari debut by finishing third in the Australian Grand Prix. He followed that up with winning the Malaysian Grand Prix, his first race victory for over a year and the first win for Ferrari for almost two years. After the race, an emotional Vettel paid tribute to Schumacher, saying that his hero's achievements with Ferrari made the first win all the more special.
He won the Hungarian Grand Prix to remain a championship contender after he started from third on the grid. He dedicated his victory to the driver Jules Bianchi, who died the week prior from injuries sustained in 2014. At the halfway point of the season, Vettel was 42 points behind championship leader and Mercedes driver Hamilton. Vettel was in third place in Belgium when his right rear blew at high speed on the penultimate lap, likely ending any title chances given Hamilton's win. After the race, he ranted about the 'unacceptable' and 'unsafe' Pirelli tyres that could have caused him serious injury.
Vettel came home second in the Italian Grand Prix, his first race with Ferrari at the team's home soil. He then took his first pole with the team at the Singapore Grand Prix, Ferrari's first pole for three years. Vettel went on to win the race, and with Hamilton retiring, he closed to within 49 points with seven races remaining. Vettel ended the season in third place, however, with three wins and 13 podiums; he declared the season as a 'miracle'.
After a third-place finish at the 2016 Australian Grand Prix, Vettel's participation in Bahrain ended without starting as his car broke down on the formation lap. At the Chinese Grand Prix, Vettel collided with teammate Räikkönen on the first lap, but both were able to continue. He blamed Red Bull driver Daniil Kvyat for the collision, labelling him a "madman" and described his overtaking manoeuvre as "suicidal". At the Russian Grand Prix, Vettel retired on the first lap after two consecutive collisions with Kvyat. At the Mexican Grand Prix, Vettel attempted to overtake Red Bull driver Max Verstappen, but after Verstappen ran off the track and rejoined ahead of him, Vettel verbally attacked him and race director Charlie Whiting, for which he later apologised. Vettel then blocked Red Bull's Ricciardo by moving in the braking zone, and was given a ten-second penalty and two points on his licence. Although he achieved seven podium finishes during the season, Vettel did not win any races in 2016.
2017–2018: Title battles versus Hamilton
His third season at Ferrari started with victory in Australia, his first in 18 months. The early form continued the following races, winning in Bahrain and Monaco, and finishing second in China, Russia and Spain. In Russia, Vettel took his first pole position in 18 months and with Räikkönen alongside him, Ferrari had their first front row lock out since the 2008 French Grand Prix. Vettel's lead at the top of the standings increased to 25 points after the Monaco Grand Prix, Ferrari's first victory at the circuit since Schumacher won there in 2001.
In Azerbaijan, Vettel collided into the rear of race leader Hamilton under the safety car, accusing Hamilton of brake testing him. Moments later, Vettel pulled alongside and hit his Mercedes as they prepared for a restart, for which he received a ten-second stop-go penalty. The FIA investigated the Vettel-Hamilton incident further, but Vettel received no punishment. Vettel took full responsibility, issuing a public apology and committing to devote personal time over the next 12 months to educational activities across a variety of FIA championships and events.
Vettel's championship lead was cut to only a single point in Great Britain, as he suffered a puncture on the penultimate lap and dropped to seventh place. Vettel started from pole in Hungary and maintained the lead. He overcame steering issues and held on for victory, which gave him a 14-point lead over Hamilton. Mercedes dominated after the summer break and Vettel lost the championship lead at the Italian Grand Prix, which was followed by a first-lap retirement in Singapore after collision with Räikkönen and Verstappen. It was the first time in Formula One history that both Ferraris retired from the first lap of a Grand Prix. His title hopes were dealt another blow in Malaysia, as he started last following a turbo problem in qualifying. He finished in fourth place, but crashed with Williams' Lance Stroll on the cool-down lap; neither would be penalised. More reliability issues befell Ferrari in Japan as Vettel retired due to a spark plug failure. In Mexico, Vettel became the fourth driver in Formula One history to claim 50 pole positions. Verstappen took the lead from Vettel at the start, before Vettel collided with Hamilton, after which Hamilton won his fourth title. For the first time in his career, Vettel failed to win the World Drivers' Championship having led it at some stage during a season.
The 2018 season was dubbed the "Fight For Five" by the media, as for the first time in Formula One history, two quadruple world champions lined up at the start of a season. For the second consecutive year, Vettel began the season with victory in Australia, after he took the lead while pitting under the virtual safety car. It was his 100th podium, while he also became only the third man in Formula One history to have led 3,000 laps. In Bahrain, Vettel maintained the lead from pole through the first round of pit stops and held off Mercedes' Valtteri Bottas despite being on old soft tyres to take a fourth victory at the circuit. At the Chinese Grand Prix, he was hit by Verstappen in the latter stages of the race, which caused both to spin. Vettel limped home in eighth place, with his championship lead reduced to nine points. For the first time since 2013, Vettel took three consecutive pole positions as he qualified in first place in Azerbaijan. It was the 23rd different Grand Prix at which he had taken pole position, equalling Hamilton's then-record.
At the Canadian Grand Prix, Vettel won for the third time in 2018 and for the 50th time in his career, becoming only the fourth man to reach a half-century of wins. The following race in France, Vettel lost the championship lead following a collision with Bottas. He bounced back in Great Britain, after he passed Bottas in the last laps to take victory. Vettel led his home race until he slid off the track and hit the wall in the latter stages as rain started to fall, as he had clipped the sausage curb a few laps before, breaking a part of his front wing, causing understeer and loss of downforce; he won in Belgium, however, in which he passed Hamilton for the race victory. Contact on the opening lap with Hamilton in Italy saw Vettel damage his front wing and drop to the back of the field, but he recovered to cross the finishing line in fourth place. It left Vettel 30 points behind the Mercedes driver with seven races left. His championship hopes were dealt a further blow as Ferrari's upgrades introduced at the Singapore Grand Prix proved to be unsuccessful, making a step backwards on car development; Ferrari suffered a dip of form until the United States Grand Prix, where they reverted to their old package and successfully rediscovered their form. Vettel claimed his first ever podium in Mexico but the World Drivers' Championship went to Hamilton for a second consecutive year. Although Mercedes had been the more consistent and better team, fans and pundits criticised Vettel for making too many mistakes during the season.
2019–2020: Decline and departure from Ferrari
After showing impressive pace throughout pre-season testing in Barcelona, Vettel and his new teammate Charles Leclerc headed to Australia with many pundits believing they had the car to beat for the 2019 season. The opening weekend proved to be difficult, however, as Vettel qualified some seven tenths off pole position in third and finished the race in fourth place. Third-place finishes in China and Azerbaijan followed, as Mercedes continued to dominate. Vettel took pole position in Canada; his first pole in 17 races. Midway through the race, a snap of oversteer caused him to run wide onto the grass. Vettel received a five-second time penalty from the stewards, who believed he had returned to the track "in an unsafe manner and forced [Hamilton] off track". Vettel crossed the line in first place but lost his victory as a result of the penalty. After the race, he swapped the number one and two signs in front of Hamilton's Mercedes and the empty spot that was supposed for his own car, as Vettel parked his car at the start of the pit entry. At the German Grand Prix, Vettel was unable to qualify after a turbo issue, which meant he would start in last place. During a race with mixed weather conditions, Vettel climbed up to second place. In Italy, Vettel spun at the Ascari chicane and when he re-entered the track, he made contact with Racing Point's Stroll. Vettel received a 10-second stop-go penalty and finished in 13th place. At the Singapore Grand Prix, Vettel won on a circuit Ferrari were expected to struggle at. For the first time, Vettel had won five times at the same track. The following race, in Russia, Vettel went from third place on the grid to first place in the first corner. However, radio transmissions suggested that the team wanted to swap their drivers, but with Vettel the quicker driver, he remained in front. Vettel retired soon after with a MGU-K problem.
Vettel took pole position in Japan, but an abrupt start off the line caused him to momentarily stop before getting away, which allowed Bottas to take the lead; Vettel was not penalized for his jump start. After running in third at the Brazilian Grand Prix for the majority of the race, a safety car allowed Red Bull's Alexander Albon and an aggressive Leclerc to overtake him. He tried to pass his teammate immediately but the two Ferraris collided, resulting in another retirement for Vettel. He finished fifth in the World Drivers' Championship, and was outscored by a teammate for only the second time across a season.
Ferrari later announced they would not extend Vettel's contract beyond the 2020 season. Team principal Mattia Binotto explained there was "no specific reason" for the decision, though both parties noted it was an amicable agreement. The season was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic as the first ten races of the original calendar were either rescheduled, postponed or cancelled altogether. Ferrari discovered problems on their car following pre-season testing, forcing them to make a major redesign.
The SF1000 lacked pace as Vettel finished the season's opening race in Austria in 10th place. During the weekend, he was also given a warning for breaching the FIA's COVID-19 protocols after he was seen mixing with members of his former team Red Bull. The following race, at the Styrian Grand Prix, Vettel retired on the opening lap with rear wing damage following a collision with Leclerc. He ended the season in a disappointing 13th place in the Drivers' standings, with a third place in Turkey as his best result. Ferrari only finished sixth in the Constructors' standings, their worst result since 1980, while Vettel's total of 33 points was the lowest in a full campaign in his Formula One career.
Aston Martin (2021–2022)
Vettel joined Aston Martin for the 2021 season, replacing Sergio Pérez. In his debut race weekend in Bahrain, he received a grid penalty in qualifying, forcing him to start last. While Vettel started well, he had a collision with Esteban Ocon, giving him a time penalty and ended up finishing in 15th place. He received five penalty points on his superlicence. Aston Martin team principal Otmar Szafnauer reported no concerns, owing to this being a very different car from the Ferrari, lack of laps in pre-season testing and a very impressive race start. In the fifth race of the season, Vettel scored his first points for the team with a fifth-place finish in Monaco. At the following race, the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, he claimed Aston Martin's first podium with a second-place finish. Vettel also finished second in Hungary, but was later disqualified, after his car failed to provide the one litre sample of fuel required. He ended the season in 12th place in the Drivers' standings, ahead of teammate Stroll. During the season, Vettel made 132 overtakes—the most of any driver—and won the inaugural Overtake Award.
Vettel missed the first two races of the 2022 season in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia after testing positive for COVID-19; he was substituted by Aston Martin's reserve driver Nico Hülkenberg. In July 2022, Vettel announced his retirement from Formula One at the end of the 2022 season.
Driver profile
Comparison to Michael Schumacher
Vettel's unexpected win at the 2008 Italian Grand Prix led the media to dub him the "Baby Schumi". He was not just dubbed this for his nationality but also because of his driving style, his concentration and the hands-on role he plays behind the scenes with his team of engineers. Vettel played down the comparison stating he wanted to be the "New Vettel".
Nevertheless, the similarities were marked. Like Schumacher, Vettel grew up in a small town with an everyday background—Schumacher's father is a bricklayer and Vettel's is a carpenter. Both had their first taste of racing at the Kerpen karting track near Cologne, not far from the Nürburgring. Vettel began driving in his garden lapping the garden many times before he could legally take to the roads, and said his passion for cars was nurtured by watching Schumacher compete.
After winning his first championship in 2010, and being hailed as the "Next Schumacher", Vettel stated he did not want to aim for Schumacher's record after learning how hard it was to get one championship under his belt, though he would like to win more. In 2011, Pirelli director Paul Hembery was impressed when Vettel was the only driver to take the time to visit the factory and talk to the tyre manufacturer to gain a better insight. "The only other driver that asks us a lot of questions is Michael Schumacher. It is like seeing the master and the protégé at work."
After Schumacher was severely injured in a skiing accident in late 2013, Vettel was on hand to collect the Millennium-Bambi Award for Schumacher's life achievements on his behalf in 2014. In 2014, Vettel cited Schumacher as one of his inspirations in becoming a Scuderia Ferrari driver: "When I was a kid, Michael Schumacher in the red car was my greatest idol and now it's an incredible honour to finally get the chance to drive a Ferrari."
Helmet
From his karting days, Vettel worked with helmet designer Jens Munser. At the age of eight, Vettel wanted Sebastian the crab from The Little Mermaid on his helmet. Vettel's original helmet in Formula One, like most Red Bull-backed drivers, was heavily influenced by the energy drink company logo. New to Vettel's helmet at the start of 2008 was the incorporation of the red cross shape of the Kreis Bergstraße coat of arms on the front, just underneath the visor, in honour of the region of his birthplace, Heppenheim.
After switching to Red Bull in 2009, Vettel regularly used a variety of new helmet designs. Some designs were small changes to his original Red Bull design, while others were completely new designs, such as the one he used at the 2010 Japanese Grand Prix: Vettel had a special white-red helmet design, with black kanji and hiragana for "gives you wings". Several of his helmet designs also featured his team members. At the 2012 Italian Grand Prix, Vettel celebrated his 50th helmet design with a 'rusty' matte look and 50 tallies, indicating his 50 helmet designs in Formula One. Vettel started his 2013 campaign with a design in honour of Felix Baumgartner, for his world record Red Bull Stratos space jump in October 2012. By the end of the 2013 season, he had used 76 different helmet designs throughout his career.
For the 2017 Italian Grand Prix he changed the German flag stripe on his helmet to an Italian flag stripe in celebration of Ferrari's home race. Following the death of Niki Lauda, Vettel wore a special helmet based on Lauda's final Ferrari helmet at the 2019 Monaco Grand Prix. Vettel carried the German flag stripe design over to his helmet designs during his time at Aston Martin, with his final design for the 2022 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix nicknamed "The Final Lap".
Car names
Inspired by American bomber pilots in the Second World War, Vettel made it a tradition to name his cars. He said: "It's important to have a close relationship with a car. Like a ship, a car should be named after a girl as it's sexy". The car he drove for his first full season in 2008, the Toro Rosso STR3, was named Julie, followed by Kate and Kate's Dirty Sister (2009), Luscious Liz and Randy Mandy (2010), Kinky Kylie (2011), Abbey (2012) and Hungry Heidi (2013). Vettel's car for 2014, the Red Bull RB10, was baptised Suzie. Vettel continued this tradition with Ferrari and christened his 2015 Ferrari SF15-T Eva, followed by Margherita (2016) Gina (2017), Loria (2018), Lina (2019), and Lucilla (2020). In 2021, he named his Aston Martin AMR21 car after Honey Ryder, a character from the James Bond film, Dr. No. In 2022, Vettel said he would wait for the AMR22's performance to improve before he named it. No name for the AMR22 was ever publicised.
Awards and honours
Vettel was named Rookie of the Year at the 2008 Autosport Awards. In 2009, Vettel was awarded the Lorenzo Bandini Trophy, for his achievements in the 2008 season. He was also awarded the 2009 British Racing Drivers' Club Johnny Wakefield Trophy for "setting the fastest race lap of the season on the Silverstone Grand Prix Circuit". In 2010, Vettel was voted German Sportspersonality of the Year and won the Autosport International Racing Driver Award, which he also won in the following three years. In January 2012, Vettel was honoured with the Grands Prix de l'Academie des Sports, and in February, he was further honoured with the Silbernes Lorbeerblatt, in recognition of his world titles and his "exemplary character". Vettel was voted Formula One driver of the year in 2009, 2011 and 2013 by the team principals, initiated by the Autosport magazine. He additionally won the DHL Fastest Lap Award in 2009, 2012 and 2013. He was named European Sportsperson of the Year by the International Sports Press Association in 2010, and by the Polish Press Agency in 2012 and 2013. Furthermore, Vettel was named the BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year in 2013. He was named Sportsman of the Year at the 2014 Laureus World Sports Awards. In 2015, he received the Confartigianato Motori Award for Driver of the Year. After retiring from Formula One in 2022, Vettel received the Autosport Gregor Grant Award for his "achievement in motorsport".
Red Bull Racing sponsor Infiniti released a Sebastian Vettel edition of the Infiniti FX SUV for 2012. It featured increased engine power, revised bodywork and lower suspension than the standard model.
Race of Champions
Vettel competed in the 2007 Race of Champions at Wembley Stadium, representing the German team alongside Michael Schumacher, winning the Nations' Cup title. He also teamed up with Schumacher from 2008 to 2012, winning the Cup on every occasion.
Vettel returned to the 2015 Race of Champions, representing Germany together with Nico Hülkenberg. He won his first individual Race of Champions title that year, beating Tom Kristensen in the final. Vettel and Hülkenberg finished runner-up in the Nations Cup. In 2017, Vettel was eliminated in the first heat for the individual competition, but went on to win the Nations' Cup for Germany by himself with his seventh victory, after his teammate Pascal Wehrlein was injured earlier in a crash.
In the 2019 event, Vettel teamed up with Mick Schumacher, where they finished runners-up in the Nations' Cup to the Nordic team of Kristensen and Johan Kristoffersson. Vettel was eliminated in the group stages of the individual competition, although he won the ROC Skills Challenge. He reached the individual final in 2022 but was beaten by Sébastien Loeb.
Other ventures
Activism
Vettel has demonstrated an interest in the environment and other social justice issues. Following the 2021 British Grand Prix, he helped remove litter from the stands, and he also worked with children in Austria to build a hotel for bees. A second bee hotel would be erected at the Suzuka International Racing Course ahead of the 2023 Japanese Grand Prix. Furthermore, Vettel has been critical of how F1 races are scheduled, stating that races that are geographically proximate to each other should be held on consecutive weekends to reduce emissions from travelling. He also held an all-women karting event during the weekend of the 2021 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, and wore the pride flag at the 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix despite being reprimanded. Following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Vettel expressed an intent to boycott the September's Russian Grand Prix had the race gone ahead as planned.
In May 2022, Vettel appeared on the BBC One political topical debate programme Question Time to discuss a variety of issues including climate change, energy dependency, and Brexit. The following month, Vettel appeared on the cover of Attitude, voicing support for an LGBTQ driver competing in Formula One. In June 2022, while participating in the Canadian Grand Prix, Vettel denounced Canada's mining of the Alberta oil sands by wearing a T-shirt and helmet patch calling it "Canada's climate crime". Alberta Premier Jason Kenney called it "over-the-top hypocrisy" because Vettel's team, Aston Martin, is sponsored by petroleum company Saudi Aramco, which he said has "one of the worst climate-emissions records in the world". Vettel agreed with the "hypocritical" label but said those personal attacks risk missing what he called the "bigger picture" of the climate crisis.
SailGP
On 31 May 2023, Vettel announced his involvement with the Germany SailGP Team, as co-owner of the team alongside Thomas Riedel.
Personal life
Vettel lives in Thurgovia, Switzerland, amongst other racing drivers. Vettel has described himself as competitive, private and impatient. He also appeared in advertisements for Head & Shoulders, and provided the voice of character Sebastian Schnell in the German dub of the 2011 film Cars 2, and a voice command assistant in the German and Italian dubs of the 2017 film Cars 3. Vettel is a fan of German football team Eintracht Frankfurt.
Vettel married childhood friend Hanna Prater at a private ceremony in early 2019; they have three children. In 2016, Forbes estimated that his annual income was $41 million. Kimi Räikkönen, his teammate from 2015 to 2018, is a close friend. Besides his native German, Vettel speaks English, French, and Italian. In July 2022, he created his Instagram account, having long eschewed social media. Vettel's first Instagram post was to announce his retirement from Formula One at the end of the 2022 season.
Karting record
Karting career summary
Racing record
Racing career summary
Complete Formula BMW ADAC results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position, races in italics indicate fastest lap)
Complete Formula 3 Euro Series results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position, races in italics indicate fastest lap)
Complete Formula Renault 3.5 Series results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position, races in italics indicate fastest lap)
Complete Formula One results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap)
† Did not finish, but was classified as he had completed more than 90% of the race distance.
‡ Half points awarded as less than 75% of race distance was completed.
Formula One records
Vettel holds the following Formula One records:
Footnotes
References
External links
Official website
Sebastian Vettel at IMDb
Profile – from BBC F1
Sebastian Vettel career summary at DriverDB.com |
Michael_Schumacher | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Schumacher | [
568
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Schumacher"
] | Michael Schumacher (German: [ˈmɪçaːʔeːl ˈʃuːmaxɐ] ; born 3 January 1969) is a German former racing driver, who competed in Formula One from 1991 to 2006 and from 2010 to 2012. Schumacher won a record-setting seven Formula One World Drivers' Championship titles, a record which was tied by Lewis Hamilton in 2020. At the time of his retirement, Schumacher held the records for most wins (91), pole positions (68), and podium finishes (155), while he maintains the record for most fastest laps (77), among others.
Born to working-class parents, Schumacher started his racing career in karting. He won his first karting championship aged six in a kart built from discarded parts. After having enjoyed success in karting—such as winning the direct-drive Karting European Championship in 1987—and in several single-seater series, Schumacher made a one-off Formula One appearance with Jordan at the 1991 Belgian Grand Prix. He was signed by Benetton for the rest of the 1991 season, winning his first and second drivers' titles consecutively in 1994 and 1995 with the team. Schumacher moved to the struggling Ferrari team in 1996. During his first few years with the team, Schumacher lost out on the title in the final race of the season in 1997 and 1998, and suffered a broken leg from a brake failure in 1999. He and Ferrari won five consecutive titles from 2000 to 2004, including unprecedented sixth and seventh titles, while breaking several records. After finishing third in 2005 and second in 2006, Schumacher retired from the sport, although he later made a brief return with Mercedes from 2010 to 2012.
Schumacher was noted for pushing his car to the very limit for sustained periods during races, a pioneering fitness regimen, and ability to galvanise teams around him. He and his younger brother Ralf are the only siblings to win races in Formula One and the first siblings to finish first and second in the same race, a feat they repeated in four subsequent races. Schumacher was twice involved in collisions in the final race of a season that decided the title: first with Damon Hill at the 1994 Australian Grand Prix, and with Jacques Villeneuve at the 1997 European Grand Prix.
Appointed UNESCO Champion for Sport in 2002, Schumacher has been involved in humanitarian projects and has donated tens of millions of dollars to charity.
In December 2013, Schumacher suffered a severe brain injury in a skiing accident. He was placed in a medically induced coma until June 2014. He left the hospital in Grenoble for further rehabilitation at the Lausanne University Hospital, before being relocated to his home to receive medical treatment and rehabilitation privately in September 2014.
Early years
Michael Schumacher was born in the West German town of Hürth, North Rhine-Westphalia, on 3 January 1969, to working-class parents Rolf—a bricklayer who later ran the local kart track—and Elisabeth Schumacher (1948–2003), who operated the track's canteen. When Schumacher was four, his father modified his pedal kart by adding a small motorcycle engine. After he crashed it into a lamp post in Kerpen, his parents took him to the karting track at Kerpen-Horrem, where he became the youngest member of the karting club. His father built him a kart from discarded parts; at the age of six, Schumacher won his first club championship. To support his racing, Schumacher's father took on a second job renting and repairing karts, while his mother worked at the track's canteen. Nevertheless, when Schumacher needed a new engine costing 800 DM, his parents were unable to afford it; he was able to continue racing with support from local businessmen.
Regulations in Germany require a driver to be at least 14 years old to obtain a kart license. To get around this, Schumacher obtained a license in Luxembourg at the age of 12. In 1983, he obtained his German license, a year after he won the German Junior Kart Championship. Schumacher joined Eurokart dealer Adolf Neubert in 1985, and by 1987 was the German and European kart champion, then he quit school and began working as a mechanic. In 1988, he made his first step into single-seat car racing by participating in the German Formula Ford and Formula König series, winning the latter.
In 1989, Schumacher signed with Willi Weber's WTS Formula Three team. Funded by Weber, he competed in the German Formula Three Championship, winning the 1990 German Formula Three Championship. He also won the 1990 Macau Grand Prix under controversial circumstances. He placed second behind Mika Häkkinen in the first heat, three seconds behind. At the start of the second heat, he overtook Häkkinen, who only had to finish within three seconds of Schumacher to clinch the overall win. In the closing laps, Schumacher made a mistake, allowing Häkkinen to attempt to overtake. Schumacher changed his line immediately before Häkkinen did the same as the latter moved to overtake, and Häkkinen crashed into the back of Schumacher's car. While Häkkinen's race was ended, Schumacher drove to victory without a rear wing. Schumacher gave the prize money from winning the race to his family as they had debts.
During 1990, along with his Formula Three rivals Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Karl Wendlinger, Schumacher joined the Mercedes-Benz junior racing programme in the World Sportscar Championship. This was unusual for a young driver, as most of Schumacher's contemporaries competed in Formula 3000 on the way to Formula One. Weber advised Schumacher that being exposed to professional press conferences and driving powerful cars in long-distance races would help his career. In the 1990 World Sportscar Championship season, Schumacher won the season finale at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in a Sauber–Mercedes C11, and finished fifth in the Drivers' Championship despite only driving in three of the nine races. He continued with the team in the 1991 World Sportscar Championship season, winning again at the final race of the season at Autopolis in Japan with a Sauber–Mercedes-Benz C291, leading to a ninth-place finish in the Drivers' Championship. He also competed at the 1991 24 Hours of Le Mans, finishing fifth in a car shared with Wendlinger and Fritz Kreutzpointner. He further competed in one race in the 1991 Japanese Formula 3000 Championship, finishing second.
During the 1991 430 km of Nürburgring, Schumacher was involved in an incident with Derek Warwick. While trying to set his flying lap in qualifying, Schumacher encountered Warwick's Jaguar XJR-14 on a slow lap resulting in lost time for Schumacher. As retaliation for Warwick being in his way, Schumacher swerved his Sauber into Warwick's car, hitting the Jaguar's nose and front wheel. Enraged by Schumacher's attitude, Warwick drove to the pits and chased Schumacher on foot. He eventually caught up with Schumacher, and it took intervention from several mechanics and Schumacher's teammate Jochen Mass to prevent Warwick physically assaulting Schumacher.
Formula One career
Profile
Schumacher was noted throughout his career for his speed and racecraft, and his ability to produce fast laps at crucial moments in a race and to push his car to the very limit for sustained periods. He was also noted for his work ethic, pioneering fitness regimen, and ability to galvanise teams around him. In 2004, Slate magazine described Schumacher as "the ultimate driving machine" and "the most dominant athlete in the world" due to him having become "quicker, stronger, and fitter than the competition by outworking them in the weight room". The magazine also stated that Schumacher changed the sport as he set a new benchmark for other drivers and built the team and technologies around him. Schumacher exercised four hours a day, mostly to strengthen his neck muscles to better withstand G-forces during races. After his gym session, he would often head to the race track for testing. In 2003, Deutsche Welle highlighted Schumacher's "natural talent" for racing and his "discipline and leadership". In 2023, former Formula One rival Giancarlo Fisichella observed that Schumacher "did not even seem to have sweated" during races, adding that Schumacher is the greatest Formula One driver of all time and "rewrote the history of Formula One".
In 2003, F1 Racing magazine analysed Schumacher's driving style using telemetry data. It was observed that Schumacher was very sensitive and flexible on the gas and brakes. Compared with his Ferrari teammate Rubens Barrichello, who often either braked or accelerated in a corner, Schumacher usually braked later into a corner and stabilised his car by accelerating slightly, often using both the brake and accelerator pedals at the same time. Exiting a corner, Schumacher accelerated considerably and balanced his car by braking lightly. Martin Brundle talked about being in awe upon seeing Schumacher's telemetry showing he took turn one on full throttle at the Suzuka circuit. With his driving style, Schumacher also went 25 km/h faster through the hairpin corner of Suzuka compared to Barrichello, who lost 0.3 seconds to Schumacher in this corner. It was also observed that when needed, such as when the brakes started to overheat, Schumacher adapted his driving style to protect the brakes.
Motor Sport author Christopher Hilton observed in 2003 that a "measure of a driver's capabilities is his performance in wet races, because the most delicate car control and sensitivity are needed", and commented that, like other great drivers, Schumacher's record in wet conditions shows very few mistakes; up to the end of 2003, Schumacher won 17 of the 30 races in wet conditions he contested. Some of Schumacher's best performances occurred in such conditions, earning him the nicknames Regenkönig ("Rain King"), or Regenmeister ("Rain Master"), even in the non-German-language media. He is further known as "the Red Baron" because of his red Ferrari and in reference to the German Manfred von Richthofen, the famous flying ace of the First World War. Schumacher's nicknames also include "Schumi", "Schuey", and "Schu".
Schumacher has often been credited with popularising Formula One worldwide, especially in Germany, where it was formerly considered a fringe sport. In a 2006 FIA survey, he was voted the most popular driver of the season among Formula One fans. Throughout his career, Schumacher was subject to anti-German prejudices, especially from the British media. About his collision with Schumacher in 1994, British driver Damon Hill wrote: "There are two things that set Michael apart from the rest of the drivers in Formula One − his sheer talent and his attitude. I am full of admiration for the former, but the latter leaves me cold." In addition to Hill, Schumacher also had rivalries with Mika Häkkinen, whom he beat for his first World Championship at Ferrari and the team's first Drivers' Championship since the 1979 season, and Fernando Alonso, who ended Schumacher's five-consecutive titles in the 2000s. Despite only facing him during Schumacher's brief comeback in the 2010s, Lewis Hamilton is also seen a rival due to their similar achievements and driving styles, and cited him as inspiration.
When Schumacher first retired in 2006, three of the top ten drivers in that year's Drivers' standings were German, more than any other nationality. Younger German drivers, such as Sebastian Vettel, felt Schumacher was key in their becoming Formula One drivers. In 2020, Vettel named Schumacher the greatest Formula One driver of all time. During a large part of his Formula One career, Schumacher was the president of the Grand Prix Drivers' Association, a representative body originally set up in 1961 that had been disbanded in 1982 and Schumacher had helped to relaunch in 1994. In 2006, Formula One rival David Coulthard hailed Schumacher as the greatest all-round racing driver in the history of the sport, while three-time World Champion Niki Lauda stated: "He is the greatest. Nobody will ever beat him, as long as we are alive." In 2020, Schumacher was voted the most influential person in Formula One history.
Jordan (1991)
Schumacher made his Formula One debut with the Irish Jordan-Ford team at the Belgian Grand Prix, driving car number 32 as a replacement for the imprisoned Bertrand Gachot. Schumacher, still a contracted Mercedes driver, was signed by Eddie Jordan after Mercedes paid Jordan $150,000 for his debut.
The week before the race, Schumacher impressed Jordan designer Gary Anderson and team manager Trevor Foster during a test drive at the Silverstone circuit. Schumacher's manager Weber assured Jordan that Schumacher knew the challenging Spa-Francorchamps circuit well, although in fact he had only seen it as a spectator. During the race weekend, teammate Andrea de Cesaris was meant to show Schumacher the circuit but was held up with contract negotiations. Schumacher then learned the track on his own, by cycling around the track on a fold-up bike he brought with him.
In his debut, Schumacher impressed the paddock by qualifying seventh; he did so in a midfield car, the Jordan 191, which he drove half a day of testing and at a track he had never raced at. This also matched the team's season-best grid position, and Schumacher outqualified veteran de Cesaris. Motor Sport journalist Joe Saward reported that, after qualifying, "clumps of German journalists were talking about 'the best talent since Stefan Bellof'". Schumacher retired on the first lap of the race with clutch problems.
Benetton (1991–1995)
Following his Belgian Grand Prix debut, despite an agreement in principle between Jordan and Schumacher's Mercedes management that would see the German race for the Irish team for the remainder of the season, Schumacher was engaged by Benetton-Ford for the next race. Jordan applied for an injunction in the British courts to prevent Schumacher driving for Benetton but lost the case as they had not yet signed a final contract.
1991–1993: first points, podiums, and wins
Schumacher finished the 1991 season with four points out of six races. His best finish was fifth in his second race, the Italian Grand Prix, in which he finished ahead of his teammate and three-time World Champion Nelson Piquet. He also outqualified Piquet four times out of five in the season run-in, and scored only half a point less than him in the time they were together.
At the start of the 1992 season the Sauber team, planning their Formula One debut with Mercedes backing for the following year, invoked a clause in Schumacher's contract that stated that if Mercedes entered Formula One, Schumacher would drive for them. It was eventually agreed that Schumacher would stay with Benetton; Peter Sauber stated that "[Schumacher] didn't want to drive for us. Why would I have forced him?" The year was dominated by the Williams FW14B of Nigel Mansell and Riccardo Patrese, featuring powerful Renault engines, semi-automatic gearboxes, and active suspension to control the car's ride height. In the conventional Benetton B192, Schumacher took his place on the podium for the first time, finishing third in the Mexican Grand Prix. Through what has been described as a tactical masterstroke, he went on to take his first victory at the Belgian Grand Prix, in a wet race at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit, which by 2003 he would call "far and away my favourite track". That also marked as the last Formula One car to win a Grand Prix while sporting a H-pattern manual gearbox.
From the 1992 Portuguese Grand Prix to the 1998 Monaco Grand Prix, Schumacher was not beaten by his teammate when both cars finished. 1992 was also the first of many times that Schumacher beat his teammate through a full season, and Martin Brundle was fired as a result. Benetton team boss Flavio Briatore later regretted this decision, saying that he had underestimated the ability of both his drivers. Schumacher finished third in the Drivers' Championship in 1992 with 53 points, three points behind runner-up Patrese and three in front of the Brazilian Ayrton Senna. According to Jo Ramírez, a close friend of Senna, the Brazilian considered Schumacher "the next big threat, way ahead of all the other drivers around at the time".
The Williams FW15C of Damon Hill and Alain Prost dominated the 1993 season as well. Benetton introduced their own active suspension and traction control early in the season, last of the frontrunning teams to do so. Schumacher won one race, the Portuguese Grand Prix where he beat Prost, and had nine podium finishes; he retired in seven of the other 16 races. He finished the season in fourth, with 52 points, beating Patrese as teammate, so much so that Briatore and his team thought that Patrese was washed up and that they had no problem with their car.
1994–1995: back-to-back World Championship years
Schumacher won his first Drivers' Championship in 1994. Driving the Benetton B194, which has been called the worst car to have won a Formula One World Championship and was difficult to drive, so much so that Schumacher had three different teammates (JJ Lehto, Jos Verstappen, and Johnny Herbert) due to crashes, Schumacher won the first four races and finished the season with eight wins. He won six of the first seven races, including the Brazilian Grand Prix in which he lapped the entire field, and was leading the Spanish Grand Prix, before a gearbox failure left him stuck in fifth gear for most of the race. Schumacher made two pit stops without stalling and finished the race in second place. Benetton boss Flavio Briatore stated that Schumacher's drive was one of the best he had ever seen.
The 1994 season was marred by the death of Ayrton Senna, which was witnessed by Schumacher who was directly behind Senna, and that of Roland Ratzenberger during the San Marino Grand Prix; there were also allegations of cheating during the 1994 Formula One season involving several teams, most particularly Schumacher's Benetton, having allegedly broken the sport's technical regulations. Following the San Marino Grand Prix, the Benetton, Ferrari, and McLaren teams were investigated on suspicion of breaking the FIA-imposed ban on electronic aids. Benetton and McLaren initially refused to hand over their source code for investigation. When they did so, the FIA discovered hidden functionality in both teams' software but no evidence that it had been used in a race. Both teams were fined $100,000 for their initial refusal to cooperate. The McLaren software, which was a gearbox program that allowed automatic shifts, was deemed legal. By contrast, the Benetton software was deemed to be a form of launch control that would have allowed Schumacher to make perfect starts, which was explicitly outlawed by the regulations; Benetton and Willem Toet, a Formula One aerodynamicist for over thirty years who worked at Benetton until 1994, stated that traction control was legally achieved through rotational inertia. There was no evidence to suggest the software was used.
At the British Grand Prix, Schumacher was penalised for overtaking Hill on the formation lap. He and Benetton then ignored the penalty and the subsequent black flag, which indicates that the driver must immediately return to the pits, for which he was disqualified and later given a two-race ban. Benetton blamed the incident on a communication error between the stewards and the team. Schumacher was also disqualified after winning the Belgian Grand Prix, after his car was found to have illegal wear on its skid block, a measure used after the accidents at Imola to limit downforce and hence cornering speed. Benetton protested that the skid block had been damaged when Schumacher spun over a kerb; the FIA rejected their appeal because of the pattern of wear and damage visible on the block. The two-race ban punishment was seen by many observers as petty and insignificant, and that it was a result of Benetton feud with the FIA, with Schumacher being a victim and the FIA trying to deny him his first World Championship. These incidents helped Damon Hill close the points gap, and Schumacher led by a single point going into the final race at the Australian Grand Prix. On lap 36, Schumacher hit the guardrail on the outside of the track while leading. Hill attempted to pass but as Schumacher's car returned to the track there was a collision on the corner causing them both to retire. As a result, Schumacher won the Drivers' Championship, the first German to do so—Jochen Rindt (the only posthumous Drivers' Champion) was German but raced under the Austrian flag, and whose domination in 1970 was later equalled by Schumacher. The race stewards judged it as a racing accident and took no action against either driver. Although the Drivers' Championship had been decided in a similar manner in 1989 and 1990, public opinion was divided over the incident, and Schumacher was vilified in the British media. At the FIA conference after the race, Schumacher dedicated his title to Senna.
In 1995, Schumacher successfully defended his title with Benetton, which now had the same Renault engine as Williams; according to Motor Sport magazine, Benetton had the better team, while Williams had the superior car. Schumacher accumulated 33 more points than second-placed Hill. With Herbert as teammate, he took Benetton to its first Constructors' Championship, breaking the dominance of McLaren and Williams, and became the youngest two-time World Champion in Formula One history. The season was marred by several collisions with Hill, in particular an overtaking manoeuvre by Hill took them both out of the British Grand Prix on lap 45, and again on lap 23 of the Italian Grand Prix; it also saw one of his career's best ovetakes, with the one over Jean Alesi giving him the win at the European Grand Prix, after he reduced the half a minute gap in the final dozen laps. Schumacher won 9 of the 17 races, including the French Grand Prix, and finished on the podium 11 times. It was only once that he qualify worse than fourth; at the Belgian Grand Prix, he qualified 16th but nevertheless went on to win the wet-dry race, finishing 16 seconds ahead of Hill, with whom he had ferocious wheel-to-wheel racing and involved some crucial strategic calls. His bad qualifying was a result of a crash he had in the final free practice, and by the time his car was rebuilt, it had started to rain; this ended his 56-race streak of outqualifiyng his teammates that started in 1992, after he missed a gear in qualifying in Adelaide in 1991 and was outqualified by Nelson Piquet.
Ferrari (1996–2006)
In 1996, Schumacher joined Ferrari, a team that had last won the Drivers' Championship in 1979 and the Constructors' Championship in 1983, for a salary of $60 million over two years. He left Benetton a year before his contract with them expired; he later cited the team's damaging actions in 1994 as his reason for opting out of his deal. A year later, Schumacher lured Benetton employees Rory Byrne (designer) and Ross Brawn (technical director) to Ferrari. Ferrari had previously come close to the championship in 1982 and 1990. The team had suffered a disastrous downturn in the early 1990s, partially as its famous V12 engine was no longer competitive against the smaller, lighter, and more fuel-efficient V10s of its competitors. Various drivers, notably Alain Prost, had given the vehicles disparaging labels, such as "truck", "pig", and "accident waiting to happen". Furthermore, the poor performance of the Ferrari pit crews was considered a running joke. At the end of 1995, although the team had improved into a solid competitor, it was still considered inferior to front-running teams like Benetton and Williams. Schumacher declared the Ferrari F310 good enough to win a championship, although afterwards his teammate Eddie Irvine labelled the F310 "an awful car", a "piece of junk", and "almost undriveable", while designer John Barnard admitted that the car "wasn't very good". Irvine also later commented: "The '96 [Ferrari] car was a disaster and was nearly undriveable. Only someone of Michael Schumacher's ability − and maybe Senna – could have driven it."
During winter testing, Schumacher first drove a Ferrari, their 1995 Ferrari 412 T2, and was two seconds faster than former regulars Jean Alesi and Gerhard Berger had been. Alesi and Berger were allowed to drive Schumacher's Benetton B195 with which he won the World Championship in 1995, and they could not believe how Schumacher had won with it, calling it "the ugly ducking" for being so ugly to drive and having many crashes. In a 1999 interview with his 1994 and 1995 World Championship rival Damon Hill, Schumacher recalled: "You remember when I left Benetton, and [Jean] Alesi and [Gerhard] Berger took their first steps in that Benetton? You remember how many crashes they had? ... I mean, that car was really unbelievable. Really difficult to drive. It was so edgy. But it was fast when you just drove it exactly on that edge. Now, though, there have been a lot of aerodynamic improvements to the cars and so the cars I have driven have been a lot more stable. And that applies to most of the cars today."
Schumacher, Brawn, Byrne, and Jean Todt have been credited as turning the struggling team into the most successful team in Formula One history, Schumacher became the byword for Formula One and motorsports in general. Three-time World Champion Jackie Stewart believed the transformation of the Ferrari team was Schumacher's greatest feat. At Ferrari, Schumacher scored 72 Grand Prix wins and won five consecutive Drivers' titles from 2000 to 2004. As of 2022, only Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes, both of whom were Schumacher's successor and his career last team, were considered in the same ballpark in terms of dominance and sustained success. According to Brawn, had Schumacher not retired in 2012 and not suffered a ski injury in 2013, he would have had a chance at winning his eighth World Championship in 2014. In 2023, Williams team principal James Vowles, who was Mercedes chief strategist during Schumacher's time at the team between 2010 and 2012 and was instrumental in the team's success in the mid-to-late 2010s, said that Schumacher brought Mercedes together. Vowles added: "[Schumacher] also knew his performance was perhaps not quite at the same level, but he made up for it in terms of the amount of work and dedication he put in. From that, Nico learned a lot and conversely, Lewis learned a lot from Nico."
1996–1999: World Championship challenges
In 1996, Schumacher finished third in the Drivers' Championship and helped Ferrari to second place in the Constructors' Championship ahead of his old team Benetton. During the season, the car had reliability problems; Schumacher did not finish in 7 of the 16 races. At the French Grand Prix, Schumacher took pole position but suffered engine failure on the formation lap. He won three races, more than the team's total tally for the period from 1991 to 1995, despite a poor chassis. He took his first win for Ferrari at the Spanish Grand Prix, where he lapped the entire field up to third place in the wet. After a bad start, which saw him dropping from third to sixth place, before taking the lead on lap 19, he consistently lapped five seconds faster than the rest of the field in the difficult conditions. At the Belgian Grand Prix, he used well-timed pit stops to fend off Williams' Jacques Villeneuve. He also took first place at the Italian Grand Prix to win in front of the tifosi (Ferrari fans).
Schumacher and Villeneuve competed for the title in 1997, despite never sharing a podium and almost never battling directly on the track, in what has been described as the sport's most dramatic and controversial season finale. Villeneuve, driving the superior Williams FW19, led the championship in the early part of the season. Schumacher first win of the season came at the wet Monaco Grand Prix, in which he took a six-second lead after one lap. By mid-season, despite possibly driving not even the second-fastest car on the grid, Schumacher had taken the championship lead, winning five races, and entered the season's finale (the European Grand Prix at the Jerez circuit) with a one-point advantage. In qualifying, Schumacher set the same fastest lap as Villeneuve and Heinz-Harald Frentzen. He started in second position as Villeneuve set his fastest lap first but was able to jump him at the start. Towards the end of the race, Schumacher's Ferrari developed a coolant leak and loss of performance indicating he might not finish the race. As Villeneuve approached to pass his rival on lap 48, Schumacher turned in on him but retired from the race. Villeneuve went on and scored four points to take the championship. Despite public outcry, the race stewards did not initially award any penalty, as they had deemed it a racing incident; two weeks after the race, in an unprecedented move, Schumacher was disqualified from the entire 1997 Drivers' Championship after an FIA disciplinary hearing found that his "manoeuvre was an instinctive reaction and although deliberate not made with malice or premeditation, it was a serious error." Initially feeling wronged, Schumacher accepted the decision and admitted having made a mistake, upon seeing the footage when he got out of the car and adrenaline had worn off. His actions were widely condemned in British, German, and Italian newspapers. Another view is that Villeneuve went into the corner too fast; without Schumacher turning into him, he would have overshot the turn and ended up in the gravel. In later years, Villeneuve himself admitted that he "would never have made that corner without [Schumacher's] push", and Schumacher stated in 2009 that if he could have his career over again, he would "do some things differently", citing Jerez 1997 as something that he would have changed in his career.
In 1998, Finnish driver Mika Häkkinen became Schumacher's main title rival. Driving the superior McLaren MP4/13, Häkkinen won the first two races of the season, gaining a 16-point advantage over Schumacher, who then won the Argentine Grand Prix. With the Ferrari improving significantly in the second half of the season, Schumacher took six victories and had five other podium finishes. One of his victories was at the Hungarian Grand Prix, a track where overtaking is difficult and that favoured McLaren; Schumacher drove 19 consecutive qualifying-like laps to make Ross Brawn's alternative three-stop strategy work and to go from third to first place. Brawn had told him: "Michael, you have 19 laps to pull out 25 seconds. We need 19 qualifying laps from you." Schumacher ultimately came 9 seconds ahead of David Coulthard. Häkkinen, who started on pole, achieved only a point due to reliability issues. Ferrari took a 1–2 finish at the French Grand Prix, the first Ferrari 1–2 finish since 1990, and at the Italian Grand Prix, which tied Schumacher with Häkkinen for the lead of the Drivers' Championship with 80 points.
There were two controversies during the 1998 season. At the British Grand Prix, Schumacher was leading on the last lap when he turned into the pit lane, crossed the start-finish line, and stopped to serve his ten-second stop-go penalty, which was a result of overtaking the lapped car of Alexander Wurz during a safety car period. There was some doubt whether this counted as serving the penalty; because he had crossed the finish line when he came into the pit lane, the win was valid. The FIA rescinded the penalty due to taking 31 minutes, rather than within the 25 minutes limit, and rejected McLaren's protest. At the Belgian Grand Prix, Schumacher was leading the race by 40 seconds in heavy spray but collided with Coulthard's McLaren when the Scot, a lap down, slowed on the racing line in poor visibility to let Schumacher past. His Ferrari lost a wheel but could return to the pits, although he was forced to retire. Schumacher leaped out of his car and headed to McLaren's garage in an infuriated manner and accused Coulthard of "trying to kill" him. Coulthard admitted five years later that the accident had been his mistake. From a possible three-point lead, Schumacher was still seven points behind Häkkinen. Heading into the final race, the Japanese Grand Prix, Häkkinen held a four-point advantage over Schumacher, who started on pole but stalled and caused the start to be aborted, which meant he had to start from the back of the field. He made a comeback up to third but retired after hitting debris from an accident. Häkkinen won the Drivers' Championship by winning the final two races despite Schumacher being the polesitter both times, continuing Ferrari's longest World Championship drought.
In 1999, Schumacher's efforts helped Ferrari win the Constructors' Championship, the team's first title since 1983. He lost his chance to win the Drivers' Championship at the British Grand Prix at the high-speed Stowe Corner; his car's rear brake failed, sending him off the track into the barriers and resulting in a broken leg. During his 98-day absence, he was replaced by Finnish driver Mika Salo. About his return, Schumacher's Eddie Irvine teammate recalled: "It was amazing. I remember me and Mika Salo were testing at Mugello, which is one of the hardest circuits in the world – and he [Schumacher] hadn't driven for eight months. He got in the car and within a lap he was a tenth or two tenths slower than I was. How do you do that? And then of course a couple of laps later he's half a second quicker and – it's just impossible. It's really really annoying, but it was an honour to be able to see his telemetry and see the things he could do with a car." After missing six races, he made his return at the inaugural Malaysian Grand Prix, qualifying in pole position with his career's greatest pole margin, with his time faster than Eddie Irvine by almost a second. He then assumed the role of second driver, helping Irvine to victory and assisting his teammate's bid to win the Drivers' Championship for Ferrari, with Irvine leading the championship by one point. About Schumacher's role, Irvine stated: "He is not only the best driver in the world, he is also the best number two in the world." In the last race of the season, the Japanese Grand Prix, Häkkinen won his second consecutive title after he beat him off the line. Schumacher later said that Häkkinen was "the best opponent I've had" and the one he respected the most.
2000–2004: five consecutive World Championships
in 2000, Schumacher won his third Drivers' Championship, his first with Ferrari, after a year-long battle with Häkkinen. Schumacher won the first three races of the season and five of the first eight. Midway through the year, Schumacher's chances suffered with three consecutive non-finishes, allowing Häkkinen to close the gap in the standings. At the German Grand Prix qualifying session, which was largely decided in the opening 10 minutes of semi-dry weather, Schumacher was able to improve his time in the final seconds and qualified second. In the race, he retired after crashing out at the start, as his new teammate Rubens Barrichello took his maiden win from 18th. Häkkinen then took another two victories, before Schumacher won at the Italian Grand Prix, his 41st career win. At the post-race press conference, after equalling the number of wins won by his idol Ayrton Senna, Schumacher broke into tears. The championship fight came down to the penultimate race of the season, the Japanese Grand Prix. Starting from pole position, Schumacher lost the lead to Häkkinen at the start. After his second pit stop, Schumacher came out ahead of Häkkinen and went on to win the race and the Drivers' Championship; he later described it as the fight of his life. Although Schumacher won more than twice as many Grands Prix as Häkkinen, BBC Sport journalist Andrew Benson stated that "the challenge from Mika Hakkinen and McLaren-Mercedes was far stronger than the raw statistics suggest" and that the Adrian Newey-designed McLaren was "the fastest car in F1 for the third straight year". Benson also hailed Schumacher as "unquestionably the greatest driver of his era".
In 2001, Schumacher took his fourth Drivers' title. Four other drivers won races but none sustained a season-long challenge for the championship. Schumacher scored a record-tying nine wins and clinched the World Championship with four races yet to run. He finished the championship with 123 points, 58 ahead of runner-up Coulthard. Season highlights included the Spanish Grand Prix, where he won after Häkkinen retired on the last lap due to his car's engine blowing up leading Schumacher to say he was sorry for him and that they had been "bloody lucky"; Canadian Grand Prix, where Schumacher finished second to his brother Ralf, thus scoring the first-ever 1–2 finish by brothers in Formula One; and the Belgian Grand Prix, in which Schumacher scored his 52nd career win, breaking Alain Prost's record for most career wins that had stood since 1993.
In 2002, Schumacher retained his Drivers' Championship. In winning the Drivers' Championship, he equalled the record set by Juan Manuel Fangio of five World Championships. Ferrari won 15 out of 17 races, and Schumacher won the title with six races remaining in the season, which is still the earliest point in the season for a driver to be crowned World Champion. Schumacher broke his own record, shared with Nigel Mansell, of nine race wins in a season, by winning 11 times and finishing every race on the podium. He finished with 144 points, a record-breaking 67 points ahead of the runner-up, his teammate Barrichello. This pair finished nine of the 17 races in the first two places.
During the 2002 season, there was some controversy at the Austrian Grand Prix, where Barrichello was leading but in the final metres of the race, under team orders, slowed down to allow Schumacher to win the race. Although the switching of positions did not break any actual sporting or technical regulation, as Ferrari did the same at the Austrian Grand Prix the previous year where Schumacher finishe second and Barrichello third, it angered fans and it was claimed that the team's actions showed a lack of sportsmanship and respect to the spectators. Many argued that Schumacher did not need to be given wins in only the sixth race of the season, which he would have won anyway, a view also shared by Jean Todt and Ross Brawn in retrospect, particularly given that he had already won four of the previous five Grands Prix, and that Barrichello had dominated the race weekend up to that point. At the podium ceremony, Schumacher pushed Barrichello onto the top step, and the Ferrari team incurred a $1 million fine for this disturbance. Schumacher vowed to pay back Barrichello, and later that same year returned the favour in several races to help him finish second in the standings. At the United States Grand Prix, Schumacher returned the favour, by giving Barrichello the win by 0.011 seconds, the second-closest margin on the finishing line in Formula One history in a failed dead heat finish. In an unplanned finish, Schumacher's explanation varied between it being him "returning the favour" for Austria, or trying to engineer a formation finish—a feat derided as near-impossible in a sport where timings are taken to within a thousandth of a second. After the end of the season, the FIA banned "team orders which interfere with the race result"; the ban was lifted for the 2011 season because the ruling was difficult to enforce.
Schumacher broke Fangio's 46-year record of five Drivers' Championships by winning the drivers' title for the sixth time in 2003, after a closely contested battle with his main rivals, which was also a result of lobbying regarding the Michelin tyres. Before the season started, the FIA introduced new regulations and a new points system to make the championship more open. The biggest competition came from the McLaren-Mercedes and Williams-BMW teams. In the first race, Schumacher was run off track, and he was involved in collisions in the following two. He fell 16 points behind McLaren's Kimi Räikkönen. Despite the death of his mother Elisabeth just hours before the race, Schumacher won the San Marino Grand Prix despite losing the first position going into turn one. He also won the next two races and closed within two points of Räikkönen. Aside from Schumacher's victory at the Canadian Grand Prix and Barrichello's victory at the British Grand Prix, the mid-season was dominated by Williams drivers Ralf Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya, who each claimed two victories. After the Hungarian Grand Prix, Schumacher led Montoya and Räikkönen by only one and two points, respectively. Ahead of the next race, the FIA announced changes to the way tyre widths were to be measured: this forced Michelin, supplier to Williams and McLaren among others, to rapidly redesign their tyres before the Italian Grand Prix. Schumacher, running on Bridgestone tyres, won the next two races. After Montoya was penalised in the United States Grand Prix, only Schumacher and Räikkönen remained in contention for the title. At the final round, the Japanese Grand Prix, Schumacher needed only one point whilst Räikkönen needed to win. By finishing the race in eighth place, Schumacher took one point and assured his sixth Drivers' title, ending the season two points ahead of Räikkönen.
In 2004, Schumacher won a record 12 of the first 13 races of the season, including the inaugural Bahrain Grand Prix and the Japanese Grand Prix, only failing to finish in Monaco after an accident with Montoya during a safety car period. In August 2004, Schumacher's win at the Hungarian Grand Prix contributed to Ferrari's sixth consecutive Constructors' Championship, and he later clinched a seventh Drivers' Championship at the Belgian Grand Prix. Earlier in July at the French Grand Prix, Schumacher beat polesitter Fernando Alonso with a four-stop strategy. He finished the season with a record 148 points, 34 points ahead of the runner-up Barrichello, and set a new record of 13 race wins out of a possible 18, surpassing his previous best of 11 wins from the 2002 season. Between 2000 and 2004, Schumacher achieved five Drivers' Championships, 48 wins, and almost all Formula One records. With his fifth Drivers' Championship in a row, he also broke Fangio's record of consecutive titles that had stood for nearly fifty years.
2005–2006: rule changes and first retirement
Rule changes for the 2005 season required tyres to last an entire race, tipping the overall advantage to teams using Michelins over teams like Ferrari that relied on Bridgestone tyres. The rule changes were partly in an effort to dent Ferrari's dominance and make the series more interesting. The most notable moment of the early season for Schumacher was his battle with Renault R25 driver Fernando Alonso at the San Marino Grand Prix, where he started 13th and finished only 0.2 seconds behind Alonso. Less than halfway through the season, Schumacher stated: "I don't think I can count myself in this battle any more. It was like trying to fight with a blunted weapon. If your weapons are weak you don't have a chance." Schumacher's sole win in 2005 came at the United States Grand Prix in a 1–2 finish with Rubens Barrichello. Before that race, the Michelin tyres were found to have significant safety issues. When no compromise between the teams and the FIA could be reached, all but the three teams using Bridgestone tyres dropped out of the race after the formation lap, leaving only six drivers on the grid. Schumacher retired in 6 of the 19 races, and finished the season in third with 62 points, fewer than half the points of World Champion Alonso.
2006 became the last season of Schumacher's Ferrari career. After three races, Schumacher had just 11 points and was already 17 points behind Alonso. He won the following two races; his pole position at San Marino Grand Prix was his 66th, breaking Ayrton Senna's 12-year-old record, which was described as perhaps the greatest record that stood in the sport, and was a reversal of the 2005 race. Schumacher was stripped of pole position at the Monaco Grand Prix and started the race at the back of the grid, as he stopped his car and blocked part of the circuit while Alonso was on his qualifying lap; he still managed to work his way up to fifth place on the notoriously cramped Monaco circuit. Before the Turkish Grand Prix, the fourteenth race of the season, the FIA banned Renault's mass damper, with the superior Renault R26 suddenly no longer as competitive. By the Canadian Grand Prix, the ninth race of the season, Schumacher was 25 points behind Alonso; he then won the following three races, including at Hockenheim, to reduce his disadvantage to 11, and to 10 by Turkey. Since Canada, Ferrari won six out of seven races, including at Monza, with Schumacher winning in five of them. After further victories at the Italian Grand Prix, where he announced his retirement at the end of the season, and at the Chinese Grand Prix, in what would be his 91th and final career win, Schumacher led in the championship standings for the first time during the season. After his win in Italy, Ferrari issued a press release stating that Schumacher would retire from racing at the end of the 2006 season but would continue working for the team. The tifosi and the Italian press, who did not always take to Schumacher's relatively cold public persona, displayed an affectionate response after he announced his retirement.
After qualifying second, Schumacher led the Japanese Grand Prix in what could have seen him heading into the season finale with two points ahead of Alonso. With only 16 laps to go, his car suffered an engine failure for the first time since the French Grand Prix, ending a 58-race sequence without a mechanical retirement, handing Alonso the victory. He also conceded the title; to win the Drivers' Championship, Schumacher would have had to win the final race and Alonso had to fail to score any point, and he did not wish to win the title like that. During the pre-race ceremonies of the season's last race, the Brazilian Grand Prix, former football player Pelé presented a trophy to Schumacher for his achievements in Formula One. A fuel pressure problem prevented Schumacher from completing a single lap during the third qualifying session, forcing him to start the race in tenth position. Early in the race, Schumacher moved up to sixth place but suffered a puncture caused by the front wing of Giancarlo Fisichella's Renault. Schumacher fell to 19th place, 70 seconds behind teammate and race leader Felipe Massa. Schumacher recovered and overtook both Fisichella and Räikkönen, his successor at Ferrari following his retirement, to secure fourth place. His performance was praised, as he had the pace to win the race by a lap, and was variously classified in the press as "heroic", an "utterly breath-taking drive", and a "performance that ... sums up his career".
At the time, Schumacher's 91 wins were 40 more than Alain Prost, who was his nearest rival. Schumacher held at least thirty-one records, including for most championship titles (7), consecutive titles (5), race victories (91), consecutive wins 7 (2004), wins with one team (72, Ferrari), wins at same Grand Prix (8, France), wins at different Grands Prix (20), time between first and last wins (14 years, 1 month, and 2 days), second places (43), podiums (154), consecutive podium finishes (19, 2001–2002), points finishes (190), laps leading (4.741, or 22,155 km), pole positions (68), front row starts (115), fastest laps (76), doubles (pole and win, 40), hat-tricks (pole, fastest lap, and win, 22), championship points (1,369), consecutive race finishes (24, 2001–2003), consecutive points finishes (24), points in a season for the runner-up (121 out of 180, 2006), wins in a season for the runner-up (7, 2006), races for same car and engine builder (180, Ferrari), wins at Indianapolis (5), wins at Monza (5), wins in a season (13, 2004), fastest laps in a season (10, 2004), points scored in a season (148, 2004), podium finishes in a season (17, 2002), championship won with most races left (6, 2002), and consecutive years with a win (15).
2007–2009: new roles at Ferrari, motorcycle racing, and injury
During the 2007 season, Schumacher acted as Ferrari's adviser and Jean Todt's super assistant. Schumacher also helped Ferrari with their development programme at the Jerez circuit. He focused on testing electronics and tyres for the 2008 season. During 2008, Schumacher also competed in motorcycle racing in the IDM Superbike series. At a Superbike cup race at the Pannónia-Ring, Schumacher finished third out of twenty-seven—behind professional motorcycle racers Martin Bauer and Andreas Meklau—riding a Honda CBR1000RR.
At the Hungarian Grand Prix on 25 July 2009, Ferrari's Felipe Massa was seriously injured after being struck by a suspension spring during qualifying. Ferrari announced that they planned to draft in Schumacher for the European Grand Prix and subsequent Grands Prix until Massa was able to race again. Schumacher tested a modified Ferrari F2007 to prepare himself as he had been unable to test the Ferrari F60 due to testing restrictions. Ferrari appealed for special permission for Schumacher to test in a 2009 season spec car; Williams, Red Bull, and Toro Rosso were against this test. In the end, Schumacher was forced to call off his return due to the severity of the neck injury he had received in a motorcycle accident earlier in the year. Instead, Massa's place was first filled by Luca Badoer and later on by Giancarlo Fisichella. Schumacher described this aborted return to Formula One as his "toughest moment".
Mercedes (2010–2012)
In December 2009, Schumacher announced his return to Formula One for the 2010 season alongside fellow German driver and 24-years-old Nico Rosberg in the new Mercedes GP team. The 2009 season had ended with Brawn GP (taking over from Honda) winning both titles, after winning six of the first seven races. For the 2010 season, Mercedes returned to the sport as a constructor for the first time since 1955, and Schumacher rejoined team principal Ross Brawn, who was behind all of his seven World Championships. Schumacher stated that his preparations to replace the injured Massa had initiated a renewed interest in Formula One, which, combined with the opportunity to fulfil a long-held ambition to drive for Mercedes and to be working again with team principal Ross Brawn, led Schumacher to accept the offer once he was passed fit.
Schumacher signed a three-year contract, reportedly worth £20 million. Schumacher's comeback was the most high profile in Formula One since Niki Lauda came out of a two-year retirement for the 1982 season to race for McLaren and went on to win a third world title in 1984. He turned 41 in 2010, the same age Nigel Mansell won the 1994 Australian Grand Prix after having stepped in as a substitute following the death of Ayrton Senna, and his prospects with Mercedes were compared with Nigel Mansell, who had won a title at 39 and last competed aged 41; Damon Hill, who competed his final season at 39; and Juan Manuel Fangio, Formula One's oldest champion who was 46 when he won his fifth title.
Although Schumacher ultimately did not win any race or title, his conduct during his comeback was for the most part with humility and dignity, even as fans and pundits criticised Schumacher's lack of pace, wailed for him to stop, and argued that he should never have come back in the first place. In the three seasons before he retired again, Schumacher finished ninth, eighth, and 13th in the standings, led three laps, and notched one podium over 58 races. Despite a difficult start, which included adaptation to significant different regulations and new Pirelli tyres, as well as rust, and being bested by his teammate, he improved in the next two years where he arguably outraced Rosberg but bad luck and mechanical failures did not reflect it at the standings. Speaking to the BBC in December 2009, he said: "I want to have fun out there and I feel as fresh as ever. I've recharged myself after a three-year break. The challenge is what I look for – I want to know it." It has been argued that it was his 2009 motorcycle accident the reason why the comeback was not successful. In the words of Mark Hughes, "I believe his motorcycle accident, and the damaged neurons from a neck injury that in 90 per cent of cases is fatal, was probably more responsible for his lack of form second time around than age or length of absence."
2010: return from retirement
After having impressed in the free practices, Schumacher finished sixth in the first race of the season at the Bahrain Grand Prix, 1,239 days after his previous Formula One race. He finished behind teammate Nico Rosberg in each of the first four qualifying sessions and races; former driver Stirling Moss suggested that Schumacher might be "past it". Several other former Formula One drivers thought otherwise, including former rival Damon Hill, who warned "you should never write Schumacher off". GrandPrix.com identified the inherent understeer of the Mercedes car, exacerbated by the narrower front tyres introduced for the 2010 season, as contributing to Schumacher's difficulties. Jenson Button would later claim that Mercedes's car was designed for him, as he would initially drive for the team, and that their differing driving styles may have contributed to Schumacher's difficulties.
Mercedes upgraded their car for the Spanish Grand Prix where Schumacher finished fourth. At the Monaco Grand Prix, Schumacher finished sixth after passing Ferrari's Fernando Alonso on the final corner before the finish line when the safety car returned to the pits. Mercedes held that "the combination of the race control messages 'Safety Car in this lap' and 'Track Clear' and the green flags and lights shown by the marshals after safety car line one indicated that the race was not finishing under the safety car and all drivers were free to race." An FIA investigation found Schumacher guilty of breaching safety car regulations and awarded him a 20-seconds penalty, dropping him to 12th. In doing so, the FIA sought to clarify the regulations post-race, as the new and old rules appeared to be in conflict.
At the Turkish Grand Prix, Schumacher qualified fifth and finished fourth in the race, both his best results since his return. At the European Grand Prix in Valencia, Schumacher finished 15th, the lowest recorded finish in his career. At the Hungarian Grand Prix, Rubens Barrichello attempted to pass Schumacher down the inside on the main straight. Schumacher closed the inside line to force Barrichello onto the outside; Barrichello persisted on the inside at 180 mph (290 km/h) despite the close proximity of a concrete wall and Schumacher leaving him only inches to spare. Schumacher, who finished 12th, was found guilty of dangerous driving and was demoted ten places on the grid for the following race, the Belgian Grand Prix, where he finished seventh despite starting 21st after his grid penalty. At the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Schumacher was involved in a major accident on the first lap, after Vitantonio Liuzzi's car collided with Schumacher's, barely missing his head. Schumacher finished the season in ninth place with 72 points. For the first time since 1991, Schumacher finished a year without a win, pole position, podium, or fastest lap.
2011–2012: final podium and second retirement
After starting the 2011 season with a retirement, Schumacher's first points were scored at the Malaysian Grand Prix where he finished ninth; Schumacher later came sixth in Spain, and he took fourth place at the Canadian Grand Prix, after running as high as second in a wet race; his Canadian race was seen at the time as his most convincing performance since he came out of retirement. Despite starting last at the Belgian Grand Prix, twenty years after his debut, Schumacher finished fifth. The Japanese Grand Prix saw Schumacher lead three laps during the race, marking the first time he had led a race since 2006. In doing so, he became the oldest driver to lead a race since Jack Brabham in 1970. Schumacher finished the season in eighth place in the Drivers' Championship, with 76 points.
Schumacher was again partnered by Nico Rosberg at Mercedes for the 2012 season. After qualifying fourth in what was his best qualifying since his return, he retired from the season's inaugural Australian Grand Prix, and scored a point in the second round at the Malaysian Grand Prix with intermittent rain, after qualifying third. At the Chinese Grand Prix, Schumacher started on the front row but retired due to a loose wheel after a mechanic's error during a pit stop.
After causing a collision with Bruno Senna at the Spanish Grand Prix, Schumacher received a five-place grid penalty for the Monaco Grand Prix. Twenty-one years into his career, Schumacher was fastest in qualifying in Monaco but started sixth owing to his penalty. He later retired from seventh place in the race. At the European Grand Prix, Schumacher finished third, his only podium finish since his return to Formula One. At 43 years and 173 days, he became the oldest driver to achieve a podium since 1970, when Jack Brabham achieved second-place finish at the British Grand Prix. At the German Grand Prix, Schumacher set the fastest lap for the 77th time in his career. At the Belgian Grand Prix, Schumacher became the second driver in history (after Rubens Barrichello) to race in 300 Grands Prix; he took seventh place after starting 13th.
Schumacher's indecision over his future plans led to him being replaced by Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes for the 2013 season. In October 2012, days before the Japanese Grand Prix, Schumacher announced he would retire for a second time, stating: "There were times in the past few months in which I didn't want to deal with Formula One or prepare for the next Grand Prix." In what would be his 308th and last entry and 306th race start, Schumacher concluded the season with a seventh-place finish at the Brazilian Grand Prix, which was also the position he started his first Formula One race. During the race, he symbolically pulled over for fellow German Sebastian Vettel en route to his then third Drivers' Championship.
Schumacher never won a race and never finished higher than eighth in the overall Formula One standings during his comeback, placing 13th in the 2012 Drivers' Championship, and closed his career with 91 wins,155 podiums, and 68 pole positions, which at the time were all records. Before it was surpassed by Hamilton in 2020, Schumacher's 91 wins were one short of the combined win totals of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost; as of 2019, only 81 drivers in the history of the Formula One World Championship had started more races than he won. Although Schumacher did not win any race or title at Mercedes GP, which then went on to win a record-breaking (of Schumacher's Ferrari from 1999 to 2004) eight Constructors' Championships under Hamilton, Rosberg, and Valtteri Bottas from 2014 to 2021, Ross Brawn said that "Michael's contribution to our development and the future of our team has been significant", and observed: "In my opinion, he is the greatest Formula One driver, and the records which he holds in our sport speak volumes for his success and commitment."
Helmet
Schumacher, in conjunction with Schuberth, helped develop the first lightweight carbon fibre reinforced polymer helmet. In 2004, a prototype was publicly tested by being driven over by a tank; it survived intact. The helmet kept the driver cool by funneling directed airflow through fifty holes. Schumacher's original helmet sported the colours of the German flag and his sponsor's decals. On the top was a blue circle with white astroids. From the 2000 Monaco Grand Prix, in order to differentiate his colours from his new teammate Rubens Barrichello—whose helmet was predominantly white with a blue circle on top and a red ellipsis surrounding the visor—Schumacher changed the upper blue colour and some of the white areas to red. For the 2006 Brazilian Grand Prix, he wore an all-red helmet that included the names of his ninety-one Grand Prix victories. At the 2011 Belgian Grand Prix, Schumacher's 20th anniversary in Formula One, he wore a commemorative gold-leafed helmet, which included the year of his debut and the seasons of his seven Drivers' titles. During his 300th Grand Prix appearance at the 2012 Belgian Grand Prix, Schumacher wore a platinum-leafed helmet with a message of his achievement.
Legacy
Schumacher's career spanned three decades, or twenty-three years, and left a lasting impact on the sport, Formula One in particular but also motorsport as a whole, and his influence extended beyond his own racing career. By the time of his first retirement in 2006 and his final retirement in 2012, Schumacher was widely considered among the greatest Formula One drivers, a trend that continued into the 2020s. Several commentators and drivers, including among others multi-time World Champions Niki Lauda and Sebastian Vettel, former rival David Coulthard, former Formula One driver Giancarlo Fisichella, and Mercedes team bosses Ross Brawn and Toto Wolff, have at times described him as the greatest of his era and the greatest of all time. Schumacher was the sport's most dominant force in the 2000s, being described as statistically the most successful driver in Formula One history and the most complete Formula One driver ever. By 2004, Schumacher came to hold most major Formula One records, and by 2006 his name was inscribed in almost all of Formula One's record books, including for most World Championships (7), most wins (91), most podiums (155), most pole positions (68), and most fastest laps (77), the latter a record he still holds. Although several of his records were later equalled or beaten, such as the most wins in a season at 13 (a record he first broke in 1995 and then equalled in 2000 and 2001, and further improved in 2002 and 2004), by multiple-time World Champions like Vettel, Lewis Hamilton, and Max Verstappen, others remain his, such as his 100 percent podium finish in 2002 (17), which included eleven wins, five second places, and one third place.
As of 2006, Schumacher was the driver to have made the most starts with the same constructor (Ferrari, 180) and engine manufacturer (Ferrari, 180). He and Rubens Barrichello were the two drivers who have made the most starts as teammate (102, 2000–2005) and most 1–2 finishes (24 in the same period). In 2004, Schumacher tied Nigel Mansell for the record of most wins at the start of a season, and he tied Senna for most pole positions at the same circuit (eight, with Schumacher at Suzuka and Senna at Imola). At 15 seasons, he holds the record for most consecutive seasons of winning at least one race (shared with Hamilton), and he holds the record for most wins at the same venue (eight, at the Magny-Cours circuit in France) and also the record for the most wins in the same Grand Prix (eight, France). At the 2003 Italian Grand Prix, he set the record for the race win at the fastest ever average speed of 247.586 kph (153.843 mph). By 2006, he had spent a record 5,108 of his racing laps in the lead, and led 141 races. He also made the most starts from the front row (115), scored the most points (1,369) before the point-system was overhauled in 2010, finished the most races in the points consecutively (24, from 2001 to 2003), and held the record for most consecutive fastest laps at the same circuit (7). In 2002, he won the World Championship with six rounds to spare, which was earlier in the year than anyone before him (21 July). Objective mathematical models, such as Eichenberger and Stadelmann (2009, 3rd), original F1metrics (2014, 4th), Bell et al. (2015, 3rd), FiveThirtyEight (2018, 2nd), and updated F1metrics (2019, 1st), put Schumacher consistenly among the top 10 and top 5 greatest Formula One drivers ever.
Schumacher, who dominated the sport in the 1990s and early 2000s becoming in 1995 the youngest back-to-back World Champion at the time, was noted for his ability in the rain, winning many of the wet races he took part in, most notability Spain in 1996, and for his race pace, being able to set consecutive qualifying fastest laps; due to refuelling, he missed out several pole positions, having set his race strategy through more fuel on board (from his debut in 1991 through to the end of 2002 before the introduction of race-fuel qualifying from 2003 onwards, Schumacher was only outqualified 13 times in 178 race entries), and won 23 percent more than his pole positions. He also respectively won 51 and 24 times without starting first or from the front row, and had 48 wins with fastest lap, all three being more than any other driver, and converted 40 of his pole positions to wins at 58 percent, a record number that was later beaten by Hamilton. By the time he first retired in 2006, with 91 wins in 248 starts out of 250 entries (only behind Riccardo Patrese), Schumacher had a win ratio of 36 percent of starts, ahead of Formula One legends Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, both of them at 25 percent of starts. He also had 27 percent of pole positions, 30 percent of fastest laps, and the most victories from pole with fastest lap at 22. He also could have won even more races had he went to the dominant teams of the 1990s (Williams and McLaren) and not joined Ferrari in 1996, a view echoed by his former teammate Eddie Irvine, and could have become the first driver to win 100 races were it not for some situations that went beyond his control, such as reliability issues causing him to finish lower than first in 1994, one revoked win in 1994, two unfortunate collisions with Coulthard and Juan Pablo Montoya in 1998 and 2004, the two wins he gave to Irvine and Barrichello in 1999 and 2002, and retirements in 1994, 2006, and 2012.
Schumacher was noted for beating all his teammates during his Formula One career, except for his debuting not-fully season against three-time World Champion Nelson Piquet, once for 1999 World Championship runner-up Eddie Irvine due to missing six races after a leg injury, and future 2016 World Champion Nico Rosberg when he was in his 40s. Schumacher was also noted for outperforming his cars and for his ability to operate at his peak on every lap, having won significant more races than he had either pole positions or fastest laps. Apart from dominating the 1995, 2001, 2002, and 2004 World Championships (with 2002 and 2004 being the sole years where he drove the clear-cut fastest car as Barrichello was the runner-up both years), he won the competitive 2003 World Championship and either won (three times) or narrowly missed (two times) World Championships despite arguably driving an inferior car (1994, 1995, 1997, 1998, and 2000), and arguably would have won in 1999 had it been for the injury, as the performance gap from McLaren was far smaller than in 1998. Since the 1994 death of Senna, Schumacher was widely regarded as the fastest driver in Formula One and the most dominant driver of his era. During his long career, Schumacher was also involved in several controversies, most notability the 1994 and 1997 World Championship seasons finale and the 2006 Monaco qualifying. These episodes have been seen as a result of Schumacher's will-to-win mentality. In 2020, Martin Brundle commented: "The make-up of a champion is one of such inner self-belief that occasionally it shows up as flaws. The majority of the sporting greats I've met drive themselves forwards because they are always dissatisfied. But look at what Michael achieved, the speed at which he achieved it, and what he accomplished at two different teams. It's so hard to get to F1, to stay in it, to score podiums, and win races. And that guy won 91 of them, some of them in a class of one."
Honours
Schumacher has been honoured many times. In 1992, the German Motor Sport Federation awarded him the ONS Cup, the highest accolade in German motorsport; he also won the trophy in 1994, 1995, and 2002. In 1993, he won a Bambi Award (Sports) and was the first racing driver to receive the Golden Steering Wheel. In 1994 and from 2001 to 2003, Schumacher was voted European Sportsperson of the Year by the International Sports Press Association. He was voted by Polish Press Agency the European Sportsperson of the Year from 2001 to 2003. In 1995 and from 2000 to 2002, he was named Autosport International Racing Driver of the Year. Schumacher was voted German Sportspersonality of the Year in 1995 and 2004. During the latter year, he was voted Germany's greatest sportsperson of the 20th century, beating Birgit Fischer and Steffi Graf to the accolade. For his sports achievements and his commitment to road safety, Schumacher was awarded Germany's highest sporting accolade, the Silbernes Lorbeerblatt, in 1997. In 2002, for his contributions to sport and his contributions in raising awareness of child education, Schumacher was named as one of the UNESCO Champions for Sport.
Schumacher won the Laureus World Sportsman of the Year in 2002 and 2004, received the Marca Leylenda award in 2001, was named L'Équipe Champion of Champions three times (from 2001 to 2003), won the Gazzetta World Sports Award twice (2001 and 2002), and won the 2003 Lorenzo Bandini Trophy. In honour of Schumacher's racing career and his efforts to improve road safety and the sport, he was awarded an FIA Gold Medal for Motor Sport in 2006. The same year, ahead of his final race for Ferrari at Interlagos on 22 October, football player Pelé presented a "Lifetime Achievement Award" to Schumacher. In 2007, he received the Prince of Asturias Award for Sport for his sporting prowess and his humanitarian record. Together with Sebastian Vettel, Schumacher won the Race of Champions Nations' Cup six times in a row for Germany, from 2007 to 2012. In 2017, Schumacher was inducted into the FIA Hall of Fame and Germany's Sports Hall of Fame. In 2020, Jean Todt honoured Schumacher with the FIA President Award, in recognition of Schumacher's seven World Championships and the "inspiration his sporting and personal commitments brought to the world".
In Sarajevo, Schumacher was granted honorary citizenship, while the Assembly of the Sarajevo Canton renamed major city transversal street after him, and earlier a large street mural was painted in a city neighborhood of Dobrinja by a group of artists. Honorary citizenship was also granted by Maranello, Modena, and Spa. He was appointed Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur, was honoured with the Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, and was appointed an ambassador of San Marino. In 2008, the Swiss Football Association appointed Schumacher as the country's ambassador for UEFA Euro 2008, hosted by Switzerland and Austria. In recognition of his contribution to Formula One, the Nürburgring circuit renamed turns 9 and 10 as the Schumacher S in 2007. In 2014, the first corner of the Bahrain International Circuit was renamed in honour of Schumacher. He was awarded the State Prize of North Rhine-Westphalia in 2022.
Personal life and philanthropy
In August 1995, Schumacher married Corinna Betsch. They have two children, a daughter Gina-Maria (born 20 February 1997) and a son, Mick (born 22 March 1999). Schumacher has always been very protective of his private life and is known to dislike the celebrity spotlight. From 1992 to May 1996, Schumacher resided in the Fontvieille district in Monaco. The family moved to a newly built mansion near Gland, Switzerland, in 2007, covering an area of 650-square-metre (7,000 sq ft) with a private beach on Lake Geneva and featuring an underground garage and petrol station, with a vintage Shell fuel pump. Schumacher and his wife own horse ranches in Texas and Switzerland. Schumacher's younger brother Ralf, his son Mick, his nephew David and step-brother Sebastian Stahl have also been racing drivers. Ralf Schumacher competed in Formula One for ten years, starting from 1997 until the end of 2007. Mick became the third Schumacher to race in Formula One, having made his debut with Haas F1 Team in the 2021 season.
Before his skiing accident, Schumacher's main hobbies included horse riding, motorcycle racing, sky diving, and playing football for his local team FC Echichens. Schumacher appeared in several charity football games, and organised games between Formula One drivers. In 2008, Sammarinese football club SS Murata approached Schumacher to join their squad for their upcoming UEFA Champions League qualifying matches but he turned down the offer. He supports 1. FC Köln, his local football club when he grew up, naming Pierre Littbarski and Harald Schumacher his favourite players. He is a Roman Catholic.
In 2006, Schumacher had a voice role in the Disney/Pixar film Cars. His character is himself as a Ferrari F430 who visits the town of Radiator Springs to get new tires from Luigi and Guido at the recommendation of Lightning McQueen. During arrival, Luigi and Guido both faint in excitement when they see him. The French film Asterix at the Olympic Games features Schumacher in a cameo role as a chariot driver called Schumix. In 2009, Schumacher appeared on the BBC's motoring programme Top Gear as the Stig. Presenter Jeremy Clarkson hinted later in the programme that Schumacher was not the regular Stig, which the BBC subsequently confirmed. Schumacher was there because Ferrari would not allow anyone else to drive the unique black Ferrari FXX that was featured in the show. In July 2021, Netflix announced the first officially approved documentary film about Schumacher—called Schumacher—which was released on 15 September 2021.
Schumacher was a special ambassador to UNESCO and has donated €1.5 million to the organisation. Additionally, he paid for the construction of a school for poor children and for area improvements in Dakar, Senegal. He supported a hospital for child victims of the siege in Sarajevo, which specialises in caring for amputees. In Lima, Peru, he funded the Palace for the Poor, a centre for helping homeless street children obtain an education, clothing, food, medical attention, and shelter. Schumacher told F1 Magazine: "It's great if you can use your fame and the power your fame gives you to draw attention to things that really matter." For the 2002 European floods, Schumacher donated €1 million; years later, Schumacher did the same when he donated €500,000 after the 2013 European floods. He donated $10 million for aid after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, which surpassed that of any other sports person, most sports leagues, many worldwide corporations and even some countries. From 2002 to 2006, he donated at least $50 million to various charities. In 2008, he donated between $5 million and $10 million to the Clinton Foundation.
Since his participation in an FIA European road safety campaign, as part of his punishment after the collision at the 1997 European Grand Prix, Schumacher continued to support other campaigns, such as Make Roads Safe, which is led by the FIA Foundation and calls on G8 countries and the United Nations to recognise global road deaths as a major global health issue. In 2008, Schumacher was the figurehead of an advertising campaign by Bacardi to raise awareness about responsible drinking. He featured in an advertising campaign for television, cinema and online media, supported by consumer engagements, public relations and digital media across the world.
Finance and sponsorship
In 1999 and 2000, Forbes magazine listed him as the highest paid athlete in the world. In 2005, EuroBusiness magazine identified Schumacher as the world's first billionaire athlete. In 2005, Forbes ranked him 17th in its "The World's Most Powerful Celebrities" list. A significant share of his income came from advertising; Deutsche Vermögensberatung paid him $8 million over three years from 1999 for wearing a 10 by 8 centimetre advertisement on his post-race cap. In 2010, his personal fortune was estimated at £515 million. In 2017, Forbes designated Schumacher as the athlete with the fifth highest career earnings of all-time.
2013 skiing accident
On 29 December 2013, Schumacher was skiing with his then 14-year-old son Mick, descending the Combe de Saulire below the Dent de Burgin above Méribel in the French Alps. An experienced skier, while crossing an unsecured off-piste area between Piste Chamois and Piste Mauduit, he fell and hit his head on a rock, sustaining a serious head injury despite wearing a ski helmet. According to his physicians, he would most likely have died had he not been wearing a helmet. He was airlifted to Grenoble Hospital where he underwent two surgical interventions. Schumacher was put into a medically induced coma because of traumatic brain injury. By March 2014, there were small encouraging signs. In early April 2014, he was showing moments of consciousness as he was gradually withdrawn from the medically induced coma.
In June 2014, Schumacher left Grenoble Hospital for further rehabilitation at the Lausanne University Hospital, Switzerland. In September 2014, Schumacher left the hospital and was brought back to his home for further rehabilitation. Since Schumacher's accident, there was little public information about his condition or recovery, with his family asking for privacy. In November 2014, it was reported that Schumacher was "paralysed and in a wheelchair", and that he "cannot speak and has memory problems". In May 2015, Schumacher's manager Sabine Kehm stated that his condition was slowly improving "considering the severeness of the injury he had".
In September 2016, Felix Damm, lawyer for Schumacher, told a German court that his client "cannot walk", in response to reports from December 2015 in German publication Die Bunte that he could walk again. In July 2019, former Ferrari manager Jean Todt stated that Schumacher was making "good progress" but also "struggles to communicate". Todt also said that Schumacher was able to watch Formula One races on television at his home. In September 2019, Le Parisien reported that Schumacher had been admitted to the Hôpital Européen Georges-Pompidou in Paris for treatment by cardiovascular surgeon Philippe Menasché, described as a "pioneer in cell surgery". Following the treatment, which involved him receiving an anti-inflammatory stem cell perfusion, medical staff stated that Schumacher was "conscious".
Schumacher's family maintains strict privacy about his condition since his accident in 2013. In April 2023, Die Aktuelle published what it advertised as a "first interview" with Schumacher, including alleged quotes from him about his health and family; it soon emerged that these responses had been fabricated using generative artificial intelligence. Schumacher's family said that they would sue the magazine, which fired the editor responsible. In September 2024, Schumacher reportedly made a public appearance for the first time since his accident; it was rumoured he was present at the wedding of his daughter, Gina, in Spain.
Karting record
Karting career summary
Racing record
Career summary
Complete German Formula Three results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap)
Complete World Sportscar Championship results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap)
Complete Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft results
24 Hours of Le Mans results
Complete Japanese Formula 3000 Championship results
(key)
Complete Formula One results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap)
‡ Schumacher was disqualified from the 1997 World Drivers' Championship due to dangerous driving in the European Grand Prix, where he caused an avoidable accident with Jacques Villeneuve. His points tally would have placed him in second place in that year's standings.
† Driver did not finish the Grand Prix but was classified as he completed over 90% of the race distance.
Formula One records
Schumacher holds the following Formula One records:
Footnotes
See also
15761 Schumi
Forbes list of the world's highest-paid athletes
Häkkinen–Schumacher rivalry
Hill–Schumacher rivalry
List of career achievements by Michael Schumacher
Michael Schumacher Racing World Kart 2002
Schumacher
References
Specific
General
Allen, James (1999). Michael Schumacher: Driven to Extremes. Bantam Books. ISBN 978-0-553-81214-5.
Allen, James (2007). Edge of Greatness. Headline. ISBN 978-0-7553-1678-6.
Collings, Timothy (2004). The Piranha Club. Virgin Books. ISBN 978-0-7535-0965-4.
Collings, Timothy (2005). Team Schumacher. Highdown. ISBN 978-1-905156-03-0.
Domenjoz, Luc (2002). Michael Schumacher: Rise of a genius. Parragon. ISBN 978-0-7525-9228-2.
Henry, Alan, ed. (1992). Autocourse 1992–93. Hazleton Publishing. ISBN 978-0-905138-96-1.
Henry, Alan (1996). Wheel to Wheel: Great Duels of Formula One Racing. Weidenfeld Nicolson Illustrated. ISBN 978-0-7538-0522-0.
Hilton, Christopher (2003). Michael Schumacher: The greatest of all. Haynes. ISBN 978-1-84425-044-8.
Hilton, Christopher (2006). Michael Schumacher: The Whole Story. Haynes. ISBN 978-1-84425-008-0.
Kehm, Sabine (2003). Michael Schumacher. Driving Force. Random House. ISBN 978-0-09-189435-1.
Matchett, Steve (1995). Life in the Fast Lane: The Story of the Benetton Grand Prix Year. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 978-0-297-81610-2.
Matchett, Steve (1999). The Mechanic's Tale: Life in the Pit Lanes of Formula One. Osceola, Wisconsin: MBI Pub. ISBN 978-0-7603-0754-0.
Williams, Richard (1999). The Death of Ayrton Senna. Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-0-7475-4495-1.
External links
Official website
Michael Schumacher career summary at DriverDB.com
Michael Schumacher driver statistics at Racing-Reference
Kartcenter and Museum
Kartteam Kaiser-Schumacher-Muchow
Formula1.com Profile |
Cam_Plante | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cam_Plante | [
569
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cam_Plante"
] | Cam Plante (born March 12, 1964) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey defenceman. He was drafted in the seventh round, 128th overall, by the Toronto Maple Leafs in the 1983 NHL Entry Draft. He played two games in the National Hockey League with the Maple Leafs in the 1984–85 season.
Plante holds the Western Hockey League record for points in a season by a defenceman. He scored 140 points as a member of the Brandon Wheat Kings in the 1983–84 WHL season. During 72 games that season he scored 22 goals and had 118 assists.
He finished his playing career with the Wichita Thunder of the CHL, having returned to North America following four seasons on the United Kingdom. Most of that time was spent with the Peterborough Pirates, but also encompassed short spells with the Chelmsford Chieftains and Humberside Hawks.
He is the father of former Florida Panthers prospect Tyler Plante and former Edmonton Oilers prospect Alex Plante.
Career statistics
Regular season and playoffs
Awards
WHL East First All-Star Team – 1984
References
External links
Biographical information and career statistics from NHL.com, or Eliteprospects.com, or Hockey-Reference.com, or The Internet Hockey Database |
1984%E2%80%9385_NHL_season | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984%E2%80%9385_NHL_season | [
569
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984%E2%80%9385_NHL_season"
] | The 1984–85 NHL season was the 68th season of the National Hockey League. The Edmonton Oilers won their second straight Stanley Cup by beating the Philadelphia Flyers four games to one in the final series.
League business
Referee Andy Van Hellemond becomes the first on ice official in league history to wear a helmet. Soon, several officials would follow his lead and wear helmets before it became mandatory for all officials for the 2006–07 season.
Teams
Regular season
The Philadelphia Flyers had the best record in the NHL, four points ahead of second place Edmonton Oilers. Flyers goaltender Pelle Lindbergh went on to become the first European to win the Vezina Trophy. Oilers' star Wayne Gretzky once again won the Art Ross Trophy by reaching the 200 plateau for the third time in four years. He also set a new record for assists in a season with 135 and won his sixth straight Hart Memorial Trophy. Mario Lemieux made his NHL debut by scoring 100 points and winning the Calder Trophy for rookie of the year. On October 26, 1984, Paul Coffey of the Edmonton Oilers would be the last defenceman in the 20th century to score four goals in one game. It occurred in a game versus the Detroit Red Wings.
The last two players active in the 1960s, Butch Goring and Brad Park, retired after the playoffs. Goring was the last active, playing his last playoff game three days after Park's last game.
Final standings
Note: W = Wins, L = Losses, T = Ties, GF= Goals For, GA = Goals Against, Pts = Points, PIM = Penalties in minutes. Teams qualifying for the playoffs shown in bold.
Prince of Wales Conference
Clarence Campbell Conference
Playoffs
Bracket
The top four teams in each division qualified for the playoffs. In the division semifinals, the fourth seeded team in each division played against the division winner from their division. The other series matched the second and third place teams from the divisions. The two winning teams from each division's semifinals then met in the division finals. The two division winners of each conference then played in the conference finals. The two conference winners then advanced to the Stanley Cup Finals.
In the division semifinals, teams competed in a best-of-five series. In the other three rounds, teams competed in a best-of-seven series (scores in the bracket indicate the number of games won in each series).
Awards
Hart Memorial Trophy voting
James Norris Memorial Trophy voting
Jack Adams Award voting
Vezina Trophy voting
All-Star teams
Player statistics
Scoring leaders
Note: GP = Games played; G = Goals; A = Assists; Pts = Points
Source: NHL.
Leading goaltenders
Note: GP = Games played; W = Won; L = Lost; T = Tied; GA = Goals allowed; GAA = Goals against average; SO = Shutouts; SV% = Save percentage
Coaches
Patrick Division
New Jersey Devils: Doug Carpenter
New York Islanders: Al Arbour
New York Rangers: Herb Brooks and Craig Patrick
Philadelphia Flyers: Mike Keenan
Pittsburgh Penguins: Bob Berry
Washington Capitals: Bryan Murray
Adams Division
Boston Bruins: Gerry Cheevers and Harry Sinden
Buffalo Sabres: Scotty Bowman
Hartford Whalers: Jack Evans
Montreal Canadiens: Jacques Lemaire
Quebec Nordiques: Michel Bergeron
Norris Division
Chicago Black Hawks: Orval Tessier and Bob Pulford
Detroit Red Wings: Nick Polano
Minnesota North Stars: Glen Sonmor
St. Louis Blues: Jacques Demers
Toronto Maple Leafs: Dan Maloney
Smythe Division
Calgary Flames: Bob Johnson
Edmonton Oilers: Glen Sather
Los Angeles Kings: Pat Quinn
Vancouver Canucks: Bill LaForge and Harry Neale
Winnipeg Jets: Barry Long
Milestones
Debuts
The following is a list of players of note who played their first NHL game in 1984–85 (listed with their first team, asterisk(*) marks debut in playoffs):
Gino Cavallini, Calgary Flames
Joel Otto, Calgary Flames
Ed Olczyk, Chicago Black Hawks
Marc Bergevin, Chicago Black Hawks
Gerard Gallant, Detroit Red Wings
Esa Tikkanen*, Edmonton Oilers
Steve Smith, Edmonton Oilers
Kevin Dineen, Hartford Whalers
Ray Ferraro, Hartford Whalers
Sylvain Cote, Hartford Whalers
Ulf Samuelsson, Hartford Whalers
Garry Galley, Los Angeles Kings
Patrick Roy, Montreal Canadiens
Petr Svoboda, Montreal Canadiens
Stephane Richer, Montreal Canadiens
Greg Adams, New Jersey Devils
Kirk Muller, New Jersey Devils
Dave Gagner, New York Rangers
Grant Ledyard, New York Rangers
Kelly Miller, New York Rangers
Tomas Sandstrom, New York Rangers
Rick Tocchet, Philadelphia Flyers
Doug Bodger, Pittsburgh Penguins
Mario Lemieux, Pittsburgh Penguins
Steve Thomas, Toronto Maple Leafs
Todd Gill, Toronto Maple Leafs
Al Iafrate, Toronto Maple Leafs
Petri Skriko, Vancouver Canucks
Kevin Hatcher, Washington Capitals
Dave Ellett, Winnipeg Jets
Last games
The following is a list of players of note that played their last game in the NHL in 1984–85 (listed with their last team):
Terry O'Reilly, Boston Bruins
Butch Goring, Boston Bruins
Craig Ramsay, Buffalo Sabres
Jerry Korab, Buffalo Sabres
Jim Schoenfeld, Buffalo Sabres
Real Cloutier, Buffalo Sabres
Bob MacMillan, Chicago Black Hawks
Brad Park, Detroit Red Wings
Colin Campbell, Detroit Red Wings
Darryl Sittler, Detroit Red Wings
Ivan Boldirev, Detroit Red Wings
Steve Shutt, Los Angeles Kings
Paul Holmgren, Minnesota North Stars
Pierre Mondou, Montreal Canadiens
Anders Hedberg, New York Rangers
Robbie Ftorek, New York Rangers
Rick Kehoe, Pittsburgh Penguins
John Garrett, Vancouver Canucks
Note: Goring and Park were the last two players to have played in the NHL in the 1960s.
Broadcasting
This was the first season in more than a decade that CBC was not the lone Canadian national broadcaster. While Molson continued to present Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday nights, rival brewery Carling O'Keefe began airing Friday night games on CTV. The two networks also split the playoffs and finals. CTV had previously aired HNIC-produced telecasts in the 1960s.
This was the third and final season of the league's U.S. national broadcast rights deal with USA, covering a slate of regular season games and selected playoff games. ESPN then signed a three-year agreement with the league after bidding about twice as much as USA had been paying. USA would not televise the NHL again until after the network was acquired by NBCUniversal in the early 2000s, airing selected playoff games as part of NBC Sports' overall NHL coverage between 2015 and 2021.
See also
List of Stanley Cup champions
1984 NHL Entry Draft
1984–85 NHL transactions
37th National Hockey League All-Star Game
National Hockey League All-Star Game
NHL All-Rookie Team
1984 Canada Cup
1984 in sports
1985 in sports
References
Diamond, Dan, ed. (2008). Total Stanley Cup 2008. NHL.
Dinger, Ralph, ed. (2011). The National Hockey League Official Guide & Record Book 2012. Toronto, ON: Dan Diamond & Associates. ISBN 978-1-894801-22-5.
Dryden, Steve, ed. (2000). Century of hockey. Toronto, ON: McClelland & Stewart Ltd. ISBN 0-7710-4179-9.
Fischler, Stan; Fischler, Shirley; Hughes, Morgan; Romain, Joseph; Duplacey, James (2003). The Hockey Chronicle: Year-by-Year History of the National Hockey League. Lincolnwood, Illinois: Publications International Inc. ISBN 0-7853-9624-1.
Notes
External links
Hockey Database
NHL.com
Oiler playoff highlights
Diamond, Dan, ed. (2008). Total Stanley Cup 2008. NHL. |
Oprah_Winfrey | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oprah_Winfrey | [
570
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oprah_Winfrey"
] | Oprah Gail Winfrey (; born Orpah Gail Winfrey; January 29, 1954), known mononymously as Oprah, is an American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and media proprietor. She is best known for her talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, broadcast from Chicago, which ran in national syndication for 25 years, from 1986 to 2011. Dubbed the "Queen of All Media", she was the richest African-American of the 20th century and was once the world's only black billionaire. By 2007, she was often ranked as the most influential woman in the world.
Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a single teenage mother and later raised in inner-city Milwaukee. She has stated that she was molested during her childhood and early teenage years and became pregnant at 14; her son was born prematurely and died in infancy. Winfrey was then sent to live with the man she calls her father, Vernon Winfrey, a barber in Nashville, Tennessee, and landed a job in radio while still in high school. By 19, she was a co-anchor for the local evening news. Winfrey's often emotional, extemporaneous delivery eventually led to her transfer to the daytime talk show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place, she launched her own production company.
Credited with creating a more intimate, confessional form of media communication, Winfrey popularized and revolutionized the tabloid talk show genre pioneered by Phil Donahue. By the mid-1990s, Winfrey had reinvented her show with a focus on literature, self-improvement, mindfulness, and spirituality. Though she has been criticized for unleashing a confession culture, promoting controversial self-help ideas, and having an emotion-centered approach, she has also been praised for overcoming adversity to become a benefactor to others. Winfrey also emerged as a political force in the 2008 presidential race, with her endorsement of Barack Obama estimated to have been worth about one million votes during the 2008 Democratic primaries. In the same year, she formed her own network, the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). In 2013, Winfrey was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.
In 1994, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. She has received honorary doctorate degrees from multiple universities. Winfrey has won many awards throughout her career, including 19 Daytime Emmy Awards (including the Lifetime Achievement Award and the Chairman's Award), two Primetime Emmy Awards (including the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award), a Tony Award, a Peabody Award, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award awarded by the Academy Awards, in addition to two competitive Academy Award nominations. Winfrey was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021.
Early life
Orpah Gail Winfrey was born on January 29, 1954; her first name was spelled Orpah on her birth certificate after the biblical figure in the Book of Ruth, but people mispronounced it regularly and "Oprah" stuck. She was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi, to a teenaged mother, Vernita Lee, and father Vernon Winfrey. Winfrey's parents never married. Vernita Lee (1935–2018) was a housemaid. Vernon Winfrey (1933–2022) was a coal miner turned barber turned city councilman who was in the Armed Forces when she was born. A genetic test in 2006 determined that her matrilineal line originated among the Kpelle ethnic group, in the area that today is Liberia. Her genetic makeup was determined to be 89% Sub-Saharan African, 8% "Native American" (Indigenous peoples of the Americas), and 3% East Asian.
After Winfrey's birth, her mother traveled north, and Winfrey spent her first six years living in rural poverty with her maternal grandmother, Hattie Mae (Presley) Lee (April 15, 1900 – February 27, 1963). Her grandmother was so poor that Winfrey often wore dresses made of potato sacks, for which other children made fun of her. Her grandmother taught her to read before the age of three and took her to the local church, where she was nicknamed "The Preacher" for her ability to recite Bible verses. When Winfrey was a child, her grandmother was reportedly abusive.
At age six, Winfrey moved to an inner-city neighborhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with her mother, who was less supportive and encouraging than her grandmother had been, largely as a result of the long hours she worked as a maid. Around this time, Lee had given birth to another daughter, Winfrey's younger half-sister, Patricia, who died of causes related to cocaine addiction in February 2003 at age 43. By 1962, Lee was having difficulty raising both daughters, so Winfrey was temporarily sent to live with Vernon in Nashville, Tennessee. While Winfrey was in Nashville, Lee gave birth to a third daughter, who was put up for adoption in the hopes of easing the financial straits that had led to Lee's being on welfare, and was later also named Patricia. Winfrey did not know that she had a second half-sister until 2010. By the time Winfrey moved back with her mother, Lee had also given birth to Winfrey's half-brother Jeffrey, who died of AIDS-related causes in 1989. At the age of eight, she was baptized in a Baptist church.
Winfrey has stated she was molested by her cousin, uncle, and a family friend, starting when she was nine years old, something she first announced on a 1986 episode of her TV show regarding sexual abuse. A biographer alleged that when Winfrey discussed the alleged abuse with family members at age 24, they reportedly refused to believe her account. Winfrey once commented that she had chosen not to be a mother because she had not been mothered well. At 13, after suffering what she described as years of abuse, Winfrey ran away from home. When she was 14, she became pregnant, but her son was born prematurely and died shortly after birth. Winfrey later stated she felt betrayed by the family member who had sold the story of her son to the National Enquirer in 1990.
Winfrey attended Lincoln Middle and High School in Milwaukee, but after early success in the Upward Bound program, was transferred to the affluent suburban Nicolet High School. Upon transferring, she said she was continually reminded of her poverty as she rode the bus to school with fellow African-Americans, some of whom were servants of her classmates' families. She began to rebel and steal money from her mother in an effort to keep up with her free-spending peers. As a result, her mother once again sent her to live with Vernon in Nashville, although this time she did not take her back. Vernon was strict but encouraging, and made her education a priority. Winfrey became an honors student, was voted Most Popular Girl, and joined her high school speech team at East Nashville High School, placing second in the nation in dramatic interpretation. In 1986, Winfrey said, "'When my father took me, it changed the course of my life. He saved me. He simply knew what he wanted and expected. He would take nothing less'".
Winfrey's first job as a teenager was working at a local grocery store. At the age of 17, Winfrey won the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant. She also attracted the attention of the local black radio station, WVOL, which hired her to do the news part-time. She worked there during her senior year of high school and in her first two years of college. She had won an oratory contest, which secured her a full scholarship to Tennessee State University, a historically black institution, where she studied communication. However, she did not deliver her final paper and receive her degree until 1987, by which time she was a successful television personality.
Winfrey's career in media would not have surprised her grandmother, who once said that ever since Winfrey could talk, she was on stage. As a child, she played games interviewing her corncob doll and the crows on the fence of her family's property. Winfrey later acknowledged her grandmother's influence, saying it was Hattie Mae who had encouraged her to speak in public and "gave me a positive sense of myself".
Television
Working in local media, Winfrey was both the youngest news anchor and the first black female news anchor at Nashville's WLAC-TV (now WTVF-TV), where she often covered the same stories as John Tesh, who worked at a competing Nashville station. In 1976, she moved to Baltimore's WJZ-TV to co-anchor the six o'clock news. In 1977, she was removed as co-anchor and worked in lower profile positions at the station. She was then recruited to join Richard Sher as co-host of WJZ's local talk show People Are Talking, which premiered on August 14, 1978. She also hosted the local version of Dialing for Dollars.
In 1984, Winfrey relocated to Chicago to host WLS-TV's low-rated half-hour morning talk show, AM Chicago, after being hired by that station's general manager, Dennis Swanson. The first episode aired on January 2, 1984. Within months after Winfrey took over, the show went from last place in the ratings to overtaking Donahue as the highest-rated talk show in Chicago. The movie critic Roger Ebert persuaded her to sign a syndication deal with King World. Ebert predicted that she would generate 40 times as much revenue as his television show, At the Movies. It was then renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show and expanded to a full hour. The first episode was broadcast nationwide on September 8, 1986. Winfrey's syndicated show brought in double Donahue's national audience, displacing Donahue as the number-one daytime talk show in America. Their much-publicized contest was the subject of enormous scrutiny. According to Time magazine in August 1988:
Few people would have bet on Oprah Winfrey's swift rise to host of the most popular talk show on TV. In a field dominated by white males, she is a black female of ample bulk. As interviewers go, she is no match for, say, Phil Donahue ... What she lacks in journalistic toughness, she makes up for in plainspoken curiosity, robust humor and, above all empathy. Guests with sad stories to tell are apt to rouse a tear in Oprah's eye ... They, in turn, often find themselves revealing things they would not imagine telling anyone, much less a national TV audience. It is the talk show as a group therapy session.
TV columnist Howard Rosenberg said: "She's a roundhouse, a full course meal, big, brassy, loud, aggressive, hyper, laughable, lovable, soulful, tender, low-down, earthy, and hungry. And she may know the way to Phil Donahue's jugular." Newsday's Les Payne observed, "Oprah Winfrey is sharper than Donahue, wittier, more genuine, and far better attuned to her audience, if not the world" and Martha Bayles of The Wall Street Journal wrote, "It's a relief to see a gab-monger with a fond but realistic assessment of her own cultural and religious roots."
In the early years of The Oprah Winfrey Show, the program was classified as a tabloid talk show. In the mid-1990s, Winfrey began to host shows on broader topics such as heart disease, geopolitics, spirituality, and meditation. She interviewed celebrities on social issues they were directly involved with, such as cancer, charity work, or substance abuse, and hosted televised giveaways. The later years of the show faced accusations that Winfrey was promoting junk science. This has manifested as criticisms of Winfrey for promoting particular guests whose medical commentaries (both on her show and in the wider media) frequently lack supporting science. Common targets of this criticism include Dr. Oz's promotion of various "miracle pills" (especially those aimed at weight loss), Dr. Phil, Jenny McCarthy's unfounded assertions about vaccines, and Suzanne Somers's promotion of bioidenticals. Multiple publications have called on Oprah to denounce medical statements made by her former proteges long after her show ended. For example, there were calls for her to denounce Dr. Oz in 2020 reaction to his comments about coronavirus and his promotion of a poorly vetted drug as a cure.
In addition to her talk show, Winfrey also produced and co-starred in the drama miniseries The Women of Brewster Place (1989) and its short-lived spin-off, Brewster Place. As well as hosting and appearing on television shows, Winfrey co-founded the women's cable television network Oxygen which was the initial network for her Oprah After the Show program from 2002 to 2006 before moving to Oprah.com when Winfrey sold her stake in the network. She is also the president of Harpo Productions (Oprah spelled backwards), a film and TV production company behind The Oprah Winfrey Show, Dr. Phil, Rachael Ray, The Dr. Oz Show and many others. She also moderated three ABC Afterschool Specials from 1992 to 1994.
On January 15, 2008, Winfrey and Discovery Communications announced plans to change Discovery Health Channel into a new channel called OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network. It was scheduled to launch in 2009 but was delayed, and actually launched on January 1, 2011.
The series finale of The Oprah Winfrey Show aired on May 25, 2011.
In January 2017, CBS announced that Winfrey would join 60 Minutes as a special contributor on the Sunday evening news magazine program starting in September 2017. The National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2018 opened a special exhibit on Winfrey's cultural influence through television. Winfrey left 60 Minutes by the end of 2018.
In June 2018, Apple announced a multi-year content partnership with Winfrey, in which it was agreed that Winfrey would create new original programs exclusively for Apple's streaming service, Apple TV+. The first show under the deal, Oprah's Book Club, premiered on November 1, 2019. Oprah's Book Club is based on the segment of the same name from The Oprah Winfrey Show. The second show under the deal, Oprah Talks COVID-19, debuted on March 21, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. A third show, The Oprah Conversation debuted on July 30, 2020, with Winfrey "[continuing] to explore impactful and relevant topics with fascinating thought leaders from all over the world".
Celebrity interviews
In 1993, Winfrey hosted a rare prime-time interview called, Michael Jackson Talks ... to Oprah with Michael Jackson, which became the fourth most-watched event in American television history as well as the most watched interview ever, with an audience of 36.5 million. On December 1, 2005, Winfrey appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman for the first time in 16 years, to promote the new Broadway musical, The Color Purple, which she produced. The episode was hailed by some as the "television event of the decade" and helped Letterman attract his largest audience in more than 11 years: 13.45 million viewers. Although a much-rumored feud was said to have been the cause of the rift, both Winfrey and Letterman balked at such talk. "I want you to know, it's really over, whatever you thought was happening," said Winfrey. On September 10, 2007, Letterman made his first appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, as its season premiere was filmed in New York City.
In 2006, rappers Ludacris, 50 Cent, and Ice Cube criticized Winfrey for what they perceived as an anti-hip hop bias. In an interview with GQ magazine, Ludacris said that Winfrey gave him a "hard time" about his lyrics, and edited comments he made during an appearance on her show with the cast of the film Crash. He also said that he wasn't initially invited on the show with the rest of the cast. Winfrey responded by saying that she is opposed to rap lyrics that "marginalize women," but enjoys some artists, including Kanye West, who appeared on her show. She said she spoke with Ludacris backstage after his appearance to explain her position and said she understood that his music was for entertainment purposes, but that some of his listeners might take it literally. In September 2008, Winfrey received criticism after Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report reported that Winfrey refused to have Sarah Palin on her show, allegedly because of Winfrey's support for Barack Obama. Winfrey denied the report, maintaining that there never was a discussion regarding Palin's appearing on her show. She said that after she made public her support for Obama, she decided that she would not let her show be used as a platform for any of the candidates. Although Obama appeared twice on her show, those appearances were prior to his declaration as a presidential candidate. Winfrey added that Palin would make a fantastic guest and that she would love to have her on the show after the election, which she did on November 18, 2009.
In 2009, Winfrey was criticized for allowing actress Suzanne Somers to appear on her show to discuss hormone treatments that are not accepted by mainstream medicine. Critics have also suggested that Winfrey is not tough enough when questioning celebrity guests or politicians whom she appears to like. Lisa de Moraes, a media columnist for The Washington Post, stated: "Oprah doesn't do follow-up questions unless you're an author who's embarrassed her by fabricating portions of a supposed memoir she's plugged for her book club", referring to the controversy around James Frey's A Million Little Pieces.
In 2021, she conducted an interview with Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and her husband Prince Harry, which was broadcast globally and received international media attention.
In 2024, ABC announced an upcoming television special titled “AI and the Future of Us: An Oprah Winfrey Special”. Scheduled to air on September 12, the one-hour show aims to delve into the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on daily life. Notably, it will feature interviews with prominent figures from the tech industry, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Bill Gates.
Other media
Film
Winfrey co-starred in Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple (1985), as distraught housewife Sofia. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance. The Alice Walker novel later became a Broadway musical which opened in late 2005, with Winfrey credited as a producer. In October 1998, Winfrey produced and starred in the film Beloved, based on Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize–winning novel of the same name. To prepare for her role as Sethe, the protagonist and former slave, Winfrey experienced a 24-hour simulation of the experience of slavery, which included being tied up and blindfolded and left alone in the woods. Despite major advertising, including two episodes of her talk show dedicated solely to the film, and moderate to good critical reviews, Beloved opened to poor box-office results, losing approximately $30 million. While promoting the movie, co-star Thandie Newton described Winfrey as "a very strong technical actress and it's because she's so smart. She's acute. She's got a mind like a razor blade." Harpo Productions released a film adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston's 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God in 2005. The made-for-television film was based upon a teleplay by Suzan-Lori Parks and starred Halle Berry in the lead female role.
In late 2008, Winfrey's company Harpo Films signed an exclusive output pact to develop and produce scripted series, documentaries, and movies exclusively for HBO.
In 2013, Winfrey starred in the film The Butler directed by Lee Daniels. Though her performance garnered significant Oscar buzz, she was not nominated for the award.
Oprah voiced Gussie the goose in Charlotte's Web (2006) and voiced Judge Bumbleton in Bee Movie (2007), co-starring the voices of Jerry Seinfeld and Renée Zellweger. In 2009, Winfrey provided the voice for the character of Eudora, the mother of Princess Tiana, in Disney's The Princess and the Frog and in 2010, narrated the US version of the BBC nature program Life for Discovery.
In 2018, Winfrey starred as Mrs. Which in the film adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's novel A Wrinkle in Time. She also lent her voice to an animated virtual-reality short film written and directed by Eric Darnell, starring John Legend, titled Crow: The Legend, telling a Native American origin tale.
Publishing and writing
Winfrey has co-authored five books. At the announcement of a weight-loss book in 2005, co-authored with her personal trainer Bob Greene, it was said that her undisclosed advance fee had broken the record for the world's highest book advance fee, previously held by the autobiography of former U.S. President Bill Clinton.
In 2015, her memoir, The Life You Want, was announced following on her tour of the same name, and scheduled for publication in 2017, but was "indefinitely postponed" in 2016.
Winfrey publishes the magazine: O, The Oprah Magazine and from 2004 to 2008 also published a magazine called O At Home. In 2002, Fortune called O, the Oprah Magazine the most successful start-up ever in the industry. Although its circulation had declined by more than 10 percent 2.4 million from 2005 to 2008, the January 2009 issue was the best selling issue since 2006. The January 2009 issue was the best selling issue since 2006. The audience for her magazine is considerably more upscale than for her TV show; the average reader earns well above the median for U.S. women. In July 2020, it was announced that O Magazine would end its regular print publications after the December 2020 issue. In the December 2020 issue, Winfrey thanked readers and acknowledged it was the magazine's "final monthly print edition".
Online
Winfrey's company created the Oprah.com website to provide resources and interactive content related to her shows, magazines, book club, and public charity. Oprah.com averages more than 70 million page views and more than six million users per month, and receives approximately 20,000 e-mails each week. Winfrey initiated "Oprah's Child Predator Watch List", through her show and website, to help track down accused child molesters. Within the first 48 hours, two of the featured men were captured.
Radio
On February 9, 2006, it was announced that Winfrey had signed a three-year, $55-million contract with XM Satellite Radio to establish a new radio channel. The channel, Oprah Radio, features popular contributors to The Oprah Winfrey Show and O, The Oprah Magazine including Nate Berkus, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Bob Greene, Dr. Robin Smith, and Marianne Williamson. Oprah & Friends began broadcasting at 11:00 am ET, September 25, 2006, from a new studio at Winfrey's Chicago headquarters. The channel broadcasts 24 hours a day, seven days a week on XM Radio Channel 156. Winfrey's contract requires her to be on the air 30 minutes a week, 39 weeks a year.
Personal life
Homes
Oprah's extensive and continuously evolving real-estate portfolio has garnered heightened attention throughout her life and career, with many prominent industry outlets branding her a "tycoon" regarding her investments which as of 2022, are estimated to total approximately $127 million.
As her talk show was beginning, Oprah first purchased a condominium in Chicago's Water Tower Place in 1985, before purchasing the condos adjoining and directly below it in 1992, 1993, and 1994, respectively. In 1988, she purchased an 164-acre property including main and guest residences, orchard, and stables in Rolling Prairie, Indiana as her weekend refuge. In 1992, she purchased an 80-acre compound in Telluride, Colorado, which she would go on to sell in approximately late 2000. In 1994, she also purchased an apartment at the Four Seasons Hotel Chicago. Between 1996 and 2000 she purchased a total of five condos in different development areas of Fisher Island, Florida. In 2000, through her Chicago-based LLC Overground Railroad, Oprah purchased her friend Gayle King an estate in Greenwich, Connecticut. In 2001, Oprah sold all five of her Fisher Island condos and purchased what would become her "main home base" she has also called "The Promised Land" (where she currently lives as of 2022), a (then) 42-acre (17 ha) estate with ocean and mountain views in Montecito, California.
Additionally that year, she also purchased homes in both Elmwood Park, Illinois and Merrillville, Indiana for other family members and friends. Similarly, in 2002, she purchased her father's home in Franklin, Tennessee and a lakefront condo in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 2003 she listed her compound in Rolling Prairie, Indiana, and sold it in 2004. From 2003 to 2005, Oprah acquired several properties totaling 163 acres in Kula and Hana, Hawaii as well as a penthouse apartment in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2005, she purchased a home in Douglasville, Georgia which was gifted in 2011 to a family member.
In 2006, Oprah purchased a co-op apartment along Lake Shore Drive in downtown Chicago, reportedly with plans to permanently move there from her prior adjoined-condo unit in Water Tower Place for the duration of her show but for reasons unknown, the property sat entirely unused until she sold it in 2012. In 2008, she sold her penthouse apartment in Atlanta. That year, she also listed Gayle King's estate and purchased her (through her second LLC Sophie's Penthouse) a penthouse apartment in midtown Manhattan, New York City which would later be sold in 2012.
In early 2014, she listed her combined-unit Chicago duplex on the market. Later that year, Oprah came back to Telluride, Colorado to purchase a 60-acre lot with plans to build on the property. A lawsuit filed against her that year by a retired nuclear physicist living in the area regarding trail access rights was dismissed later that year with the judge citing little case law to support his case, among other issues. The extent of the agreement between all the parties and jurisdictions regarding her subsequent development on the property remains undisclosed.
In 2015, Oprah purchased another property in Telluride, and later that year, expanded her Montecito compound with another 23-acre estate and yet another 44-acre dedicated crop and equestrian preserve. That year she also sold both of her downtown Chicago homes.
In 2018, Oprah obtained two adjoining parcels of land totaling 23 acres including the Madroneagle compound on Orcas Island, Washington and sold her last home property in the Chicago area from Elmwood Park. In late 2019, Oprah yet again expanded her Montecito home-base compound, this time to 70 contiguous acres, with the purchase of a four-acre complex from actor Jeff Bridges. In 2021, she sold her Orcas Island compound as she said she was too busy to use it and purchased another compound in Montecito further away from her home-base compound, flipping the latter in 2022 with split properties, one of which was sold to her property manager and longtime personal trainer Bob Greene, and the other to actress Jennifer Aniston. In 2023, Winfrey also purchased 870 acres of land in Maui for $6.6 million.
Romantic history
Winfrey's high school sweetheart Anthony Otey recalled an innocent courtship that began in Winfrey's senior year of high school, from which he saved hundreds of love notes; Winfrey conducted herself with dignity and was a model student. The two spoke of getting married, but Otey claimed to have always secretly known that Winfrey was destined for a far greater life than he could ever provide. She broke up with him on Valentine's Day of her senior year.
In 1971, several months after breaking up with Otey, Winfrey met William "Bubba" Taylor at Tennessee State University. According to CBS journalist George Mair, Taylor was Winfrey's "first intense, to-die-for love affair". Winfrey helped get Taylor a job at WVOL, and according to Mair, "did everything to keep him, including literally begging him on her knees to stay with her". Taylor, however, was unwilling to leave Nashville with Winfrey when she moved to Baltimore to work at WJZ-TV in June 1976. "We really did care for each other," Winfrey would later recall. "We shared a deep love. A love I will never forget."
In the 1970s, Winfrey had a romantic relationship with John Tesh. Biographer Kitty Kelley claims that Tesh split with Winfrey over the pressures of an interracial relationship.
When WJZ-TV management criticized Winfrey for crying on air while reporting tragedies and were unhappy with her physical appearance (especially when her hair fell out as a result of a bad perm), Winfrey turned to reporter Lloyd Kramer for comfort. "Lloyd was just the best," Winfrey would later recall. "That man loved me even when I was bald! He was wonderful. He stuck with me through the whole demoralizing experience. That man was the most fun romance I ever had."
According to Mair, when Kramer moved to NBC in New York, Winfrey had a love affair with a married man who had no intention of leaving his wife. Winfrey would later recall: "I'd had a relationship with a man for four years. I wasn't living with him. I'd never lived with anyone—and I thought I was worthless without him. The more he rejected me, the more I wanted him. I felt depleted, powerless. At the end, I was down on the floor on my knees groveling and pleading with him". Winfrey became so depressed that on September 8, 1981, she wrote a suicide note to best friend Gayle King instructing King to water her plants. "That suicide note had been much overplayed" Winfrey told Ms. magazine. "I couldn't kill myself. I would be afraid the minute I did it, something really good would happen and I'd miss it."
According to Winfrey, her emotional turmoil gradually led to a weight problem: "The reason I gained so much weight in the first place and the reason I had such a sorry history of abusive relationships with men was I just needed approval so much. I needed everyone to like me, because I didn't like myself much. So I'd end up with these cruel self-absorbed guys who'd tell me how selfish I was, and I'd say 'Oh thank you, you're so right' and be grateful to them. Because I had no sense that I deserved anything else. Which is also why I gained so much weight later on. It was the perfect way of cushioning myself against the world's disapproval."
Winfrey later confessed to smoking crack cocaine with a man she was romantically involved with during the same era. She explained on her show: "I always felt that the drug itself is not the problem but that I was addicted to the man." She added: "I can't think of anything I wouldn't have done for that man."
Winfrey was allegedly involved in a second drug-related love affair. Self-proclaimed former boyfriend Randolph Cook said they lived together for several months in 1985 and did drugs. In 1997, Cook tried to sue Winfrey for $20 million for allegedly blocking a tell-all book about their alleged relationship.
In the mid-1980s, Winfrey briefly dated movie critic Roger Ebert, whom she credits with advising her to take her show into syndication.
In 1985, before Winfrey's Chicago talk show had gone national, Haitian filmmaker Reginald Chevalier claims he appeared as a guest on a look-alike segment and began a relationship with Winfrey involving romantic evenings at home, candlelit baths, and dinners with Michael Jordan and Danny Glover. Chevalier says Winfrey ended the relationship when she met Stedman Graham.
Winfrey and her partner Stedman Graham have been together since 1986. They were engaged to be married in November 1992, but the ceremony never took place.
Close friends
Winfrey's best friend since their early twenties is Gayle King. King was formerly the host of The Gayle King Show and is currently an editor of O, the Oprah Magazine. Since 1997, when Winfrey played the therapist on an episode of the sitcom Ellen in which Ellen DeGeneres came out of the closet, Winfrey and King have been the target of persistent rumors that they were gay. "I understand why people think we're gay," Winfrey says in the August 2006 issue of O magazine. "There isn't a definition in our culture for this kind of bond between women. So I get why people have to label it—how can you be this close without it being sexual?" "I've told nearly everything there is to tell. All my stuff is out there. People think I'd be so ashamed of being gay that I wouldn't admit it? Oh, please."
Winfrey has also had a long friendship with Maria Shriver, after they met in Baltimore. Winfrey considered Maya Angelou, author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, her mentor and close friend; she called Angelou her "mother-sister-friend". Winfrey hosted a week-long Caribbean cruise for Angelou and 150 guests for Angelou's 70th birthday in 1998, and in 2008, threw her "an extravagant 80th birthday celebration" at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
Personal wealth
Born in rural poverty, and raised by a mother dependent on government welfare payments in a poor urban neighborhood, Winfrey became a millionaire at the age of 32 when her talk show received national syndication. Winfrey negotiated ownership rights to the television program and started her own production company. At the age of 41, Winfrey had a net worth of $340 million and replaced Bill Cosby as the only African American on the Forbes 400. By 2000, with a net worth of $800 million, Winfrey is believed to have been the richest African American of the 20th century. There has been a course taught at the University of Illinois focusing on Winfrey's business acumen; namely, "History 298: Oprah Winfrey, the Tycoon". Winfrey was the highest-paid television entertainer in the United States in 2006, earning an estimated $260 million during the year, five times the sum earned by second-place music executive Simon Cowell. By 2008, her yearly income had increased to $275 million.
Forbes' list of The World's Billionaires has listed Winfrey as the world's only black billionaire from 2004 to 2006 and as the first black woman billionaire in the world that was achieved in 2003. As of 2014, Winfrey had a net worth in excess of 2.9 billion dollars and had overtaken former eBay CEO Meg Whitman as the richest self-made woman in America.
Religious views
Oprah was raised a Baptist. In her early life, she would speak at local, mostly African American congregations of the Southern Baptist Convention that were often deeply religious and familiar with such themes as evangelical Protestantism, the Black church, and being born-again.
She was quoted as saying: "I have church with myself: I have church walking down the street. I believe in the God force that lives inside all of us, and once you tap into that, you can do anything." She also stated, "Doubt means don't. When you don't know what to do, do nothing until you do know what to do. Because the doubt is your inner voice or the voice of God or whatever you choose to call it. It is your instinct trying to tell you something is off. That's how I have found myself to be led spiritually, because that's your spiritual voice saying to you, 'let's think about it.' So when you don't know what to do, do nothing."
Oprah has stated that she is a Christian and her favorite Bible verse is Acts 17:28.
Oprah attends The Potter's House, an Evangelical church in Dallas.
Other
After the loss of her infant child at age 14, Winfrey did not want more children. In a 2017 interview with Vanity Fair, she explained "I didn't want babies. I wouldn't have been a good mom for babies. I don't have the patience. I have the patience for puppies but that's a quick stage!"
Influence
Rankings
Winfrey was called "arguably the world's most powerful woman" by CNN and TIME, "arguably the most influential woman in the world" by The American Spectator, "one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th Century" and "one of the most influential people" from 2004 to 2011 by TIME. Winfrey is the only person to have appeared in the latter list on ten occasions.
At the end of the 20th century, Life listed Winfrey as both the most influential woman and the most influential black person of her generation, and in a cover story profile the magazine called her "America's most powerful woman". In 2007, USA Today ranked Winfrey as the most influential woman and most influential black person of the previous quarter-century. Ladies' Home Journal also ranked Winfrey number one in their list of the most powerful women in America and then Senator Barack Obama in 2007 said she "may be the most influential woman in the country". In 1998, Winfrey became the first woman and first African American to top Entertainment Weekly's list of the 101 most powerful people in the entertainment industry. Forbes named her the world's most powerful celebrity in 2005, 2007, 2008, 2010, and 2013.
As chairman of Harpo Inc., she was named the most powerful woman in entertainment by The Hollywood Reporter in 2008. She has been listed as one of the world's 100 most powerful women by Forbes, ranking 14th in 2014 and 31st in 2023. In 2010, Life magazine named Winfrey one of the 100 people who changed the world, alongside Jesus Christ, Elvis Presley, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Winfrey was the only living woman to make the list.
Columnist Maureen Dowd seems to agree with such assessments. Interviewed by The Guardian in 2006, Dowd said: "She is the top alpha female in this country. She has more credibility than the president. Other successful women, such as Hillary Clinton and Martha Stewart, had to be publicly slapped down before they could move forward. Even Condi has had to play the protégé with Bush. None of this happened to Oprah – she is a straight ahead success story." Vanity Fair wrote: "Oprah Winfrey arguably has more influence on the culture than any university president, politician, or religious leader, except perhaps the Pope. Bill O'Reilly said: "this is a woman that came from nothing to rise up to be the most powerful woman, I think, in the world. I think Oprah Winfrey is the most powerful woman in the world, not just in America. That's – anybody who goes on her program immediately benefits through the roof. I mean, she has a loyal following; she has credibility; she has talent; and she's done it on her own to become fabulously wealthy and fabulously powerful."
In 2005, Winfrey was named the greatest woman in American history as part of a public poll as part of The Greatest American. She was ranked No. 9 overall on the list of greatest Americans. However, polls estimating Winfrey's personal popularity have been inconsistent. A November 2003 Gallup poll estimated that 73% of American adults had a favorable view of Winfrey. Another Gallup poll in January 2007 estimated the figure at 74%, although it dropped to 66% when Gallup conducted the same poll in October 2007. A December 2007 Fox News poll put the figure at 55%. According to Gallup's annual most admired poll, Americans consistently rank Winfrey as one of the most admired women in the world. Her highest rating came in 2007 when she was statistically tied with Hillary Clinton for first place. In a list compiled by the British magazine New Statesman in September 2010, she was voted 38th in the list of "The World's 50 Most Influential Figures 2010".
In 1989, she was accepted into the NAACP Image Award Hall of Fame.
"Oprahfication"
The Wall Street Journal coined the term "Oprahfication", meaning public confession as a form of therapy. By confessing intimate details about her weight problems, tumultuous love life, and sexual abuse, and crying alongside her guests, Winfrey has been credited by Time magazine with creating a new form of media communication known as "rapport talk" as distinguished from the "report talk" of Phil Donahue: "Winfrey saw television's power to blend public and private; while it links strangers and conveys information over public airwaves, TV is most often viewed in the privacy of our homes. Like a family member, it sits down to meals with us and talks to us in the lonely afternoons. Grasping this paradox, ... She makes people care because she cares. That is Winfrey's genius, and will be her legacy, as the changes she has wrought in the talk show continue to permeate our culture and shape our lives."
Observers have also noted the "Oprahfication" of politics such as "Oprah-style debates" and Bill Clinton being described as "the man who brought Oprah-style psychobabble and misty confessions to politics". Newsweek stated: "Every time a politician lets his lip quiver or a cable anchor 'emotes' on TV, they nod to the cult of confession that Oprah helped create."
The November 1988 Ms. observed that "in a society where fat is taboo, she made it in a medium that worships thin and celebrates a bland, white-bread prettiness of body and personality [...] But Winfrey made fat sexy, elegant – damned near gorgeous – with her drop-dead wardrobe, easy body language, and cheerful sensuality."
Daytime talk show's impact on LGBT people
While Phil Donahue has been credited with pioneering the tabloid talk show genre, Winfrey's warmth, intimacy, and personal confession popularized and changed it. Her success at popularizing the tabloid talk show genre opened up a thriving industry that has included Ricki Lake, The Jenny Jones Show, and The Jerry Springer Show. In the book Freaks Talk Back, Yale sociology professor Joshua Gamson credits the tabloid talk show genre with providing much needed high-impact media visibility for gay, bisexual, transsexual, and transgender (LGBT) people and doing more to make them mainstream and socially acceptable than any other development of the 20th century. In the book's editorial review, Michael Bronski wrote, "In the recent past, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgendered people had almost no presence on television. With the invention and propagation of tabloid talk shows such as Jerry Springer, Jenny Jones, Oprah, and Geraldo, people outside the sexual mainstream now appear in living rooms across America almost every day of the week." Gamson credits the tabloid talk show with making alternative sexual orientations and identities more acceptable in mainstream society. Examples include a Time magazine article on early 21st-century gays coming out of the closet at an increasingly younger age and on plummeting gay suicide rates. Gamson also believes that tabloid talk shows caused gays to be accepted on more traditional forms of media.
In April 1997, Winfrey played the therapist in "The Puppy Episode" on the sitcom Ellen to whom the character (and the real-life Ellen DeGeneres) came out as a lesbian.
"The Oprah Effect"
The power of Winfrey's opinions and endorsement to influence public opinion, especially consumer purchasing choices, has been dubbed "the Oprah Effect". The effect has been documented or alleged in domains as diverse as book sales, beef markets, and election voting. Late in 1996, Winfrey introduced the Oprah's Book Club segment to her television show. The segment focused on new books and classics and often brought obscure novels to popular attention. The book club became such a powerful force that whenever Winfrey introduced a new book as her book-club selection, it instantly became a best-seller; for example, when she selected the classic John Steinbeck novel East of Eden, it soared to the top of the book charts. Being recognized by Winfrey often means a million additional book sales for an author. In Reading with Oprah: The Book Club that Changed America (2005), Kathleen Rooney describes Winfrey as "a serious American intellectual who pioneered the use of electronic media, specifically television and the Internet, to take reading – a decidedly non-technological and highly individual act – and highlight its social elements and uses in such a way to motivate millions of erstwhile non-readers to pick up books."
When author Jonathan Franzen's book was selected for the Book Club, he reportedly "cringed" and said selected books tend to be "schmaltzy". After James Frey's A Million Little Pieces was found to contain fabrications in 2006, Winfrey confronted him on her show over the breach of trust. In 2009, Winfrey apologized to Frey for the public confrontation. During a show about mad cow disease with Howard Lyman (aired on April 16, 1996), Winfrey said she was stopped cold from eating another burger. Texas cattlemen sued her and Lyman in early 1998 for "false defamation of perishable food" and "business disparagement," claiming that Winfrey's remarks sent cattle prices tumbling, costing beef producers $11 million. Winfrey was represented by attorney Chip Babcock and, on February 26, after a two-month trial in an Amarillo, Texas, court, a jury found Winfrey and Lyman were not liable for damages. Winfrey's ability to launch other successful talk shows such as Dr. Phil, The Dr. Oz Show, and Rachael Ray has also been cited as examples of "The Oprah Effect".
Politics
Matthew Baum and Angela Jamison performed an experiment testing their hypothesis, "Politically unaware individuals who consume soft news will be more likely to vote consistently than their counterparts who do not consume soft news". In their studies, they found that low-awareness individuals who watch soft news shows, such as The Oprah Winfrey Show are 14% more likely to vote consistently than low-awareness individuals who only watch hard news.
Winfrey states she is a political independent who has "earned the right to think for myself and to vote for myself". She endorsed presidential candidate Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. On September 25, 2006, Winfrey made her first endorsement of Obama for president on Larry King Live, the first time she endorsed a political candidate running for office. Two economists estimate that Winfrey's endorsement was worth over a million votes in the Democratic primary race and that without it, Obama would have lost the nomination. Winfrey held a fundraiser for Obama on September 8, 2007, at her Santa Barbara estate. In December 2007, Winfrey joined Obama for a series of rallies in the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. The Columbia, South Carolina, event on December 9, 2007, drew a crowd of nearly 30,000, the largest for any political event of 2007. An analysis by two economists at the University of Maryland, College Park estimated that Winfrey's endorsement was responsible for between 420,000 and 1,600,000 votes for Obama in the Democratic primary alone, based on a sample of states that did not include Texas, Michigan, North Dakota, Kansas, or Alaska. The results suggest that in the sampled states, Winfrey's endorsement was responsible for the difference in the popular vote between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, reported being so impressed by Winfrey's endorsement that he considered offering Winfrey Obama's vacant senate seat, describing Winfrey as "the most instrumental person in electing Barack Obama president," with "a voice larger than all 100 senators combined". Winfrey responded by stating that although she was absolutely not interested, she did feel she could be a senator. The Topps trading card company memorialized Oprah's involvement in the campaign by featuring her on a card in a set commemorating Obama's road to the White House.
In April 2014, Winfrey spoke for more than 20 minutes at a fundraiser in Arlington, Virginia, for Lavern Chatman, a candidate in a primary to nominate a Democratic Party candidate for election to the U.S. House of Representatives. Winfrey participated in the event even after reports had revealed that Chatman had been found liable in 2001 for her role in a scheme to defraud hundreds of District of Columbia nursing-home employees of at least $1.4 million in owed wages.
Winfrey endorsed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, and referred to Republican candidate Donald Trump as a "demagogue". In 2018, Winfrey canvassed door-to-door for Georgia gubernatorial Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams and donated $500,000 to the March for Our Lives student demonstration in favor of gun control in the United States.
Winfrey has at times been the subject of media speculation that she may run for president herself, most notably in the lead-up to the 2020 election in which some reports claimed that she was actively considering launching a campaign for the Democratic nomination. Winfrey ultimately denied any plans to run for president, saying in 2018 that while it was "a humbling thing to have people think you can run the country", she "would not be able to do it. It's not a clean business. It would kill me." Winfrey suggested that she would publicly endorse a candidate in the 2020 Democratic primaries, however she ultimately did not do so. She later campaigned for Joe Biden during the general election.
In early 2018, Winfrey met with Mohammad bin Salman, the crown prince and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, when he visited the United States.
In the 2022 Pennsylvania Senate election, Winfrey endorsed Democrat John Fetterman over Republican Mehmet Oz, whose show she promoted. In the 2022 Maryland gubernatorial election, she endorsed Baltimore author Wes Moore in the Democratic primary, co-hosting a virtual fundraiser for him in June. Winfrey later attended and spoke at Moore's gubernatorial inauguration on January 18, 2023.
In 2022, Winfrey set up OWN Your Vote, a nonpartisan group dedicated to voter registration and a get-out-the-vote campaign focused on providing Black women with tools and resources to vote in the November election. Their partners include Advancement Project, African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), Color Of Change, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, The King Center, The Lawyers' Committee, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, National Action Network, National Bar Association, National Council of Negro Women, Sigma Gamma Rho, Southern Poverty Law Center, VoteRunLead, Vote.org.
On August 21, 2024, Winfrey endorsed Kamala Harris in the 2024 United States presidential election at the 2024 Democratic National Convention.
Spiritual leadership
In 2000, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP. In 2002, Christianity Today published an article called "The Church of O" in which they concluded that Winfrey had emerged as an influential spiritual leader. "Since 1994, when she abandoned traditional talk-show fare for more edifying content, and 1998, when she began 'Change Your Life TV', Oprah's most significant role has become that of a spiritual leader. To her audience of more than 22 million mostly female viewers, she has become a postmodern priestess—an icon of church-free spirituality." The sentiment was echoed by Marcia Z. Nelson in her book The Gospel According to Oprah. Since the mid-1990s, Winfrey's show has emphasized uplifting and inspirational topics and themes and some viewers say the show has motivated them to perform acts of altruism such as helping Congolese women and building an orphanage. A scientific study by psychological scientists at the University of Cambridge, University of Plymouth, and University of California used an uplifting clip from The Oprah Winfrey Show in an experiment that discovered that watching the 'uplifting' clip caused subjects to become twice as helpful as subjects assigned to watch a British comedy or nature documentary.
In 1998, Winfrey began an ongoing conversation with Gary Zukav, an American spiritual teacher, who appeared on her television show 35 times. Winfrey has said she keeps a copy of Zukav's The Seat of the Soul at her bedside, a book that she says is one of her all-time favorites.
On the season premiere of Winfrey's 13th season, Roseanne Barr told Winfrey "you're the African Mother Goddess of us all" inspiring much enthusiasm from the studio audience. The animated series Futurama alluded to her spiritual influence by suggesting that "Oprahism" is a mainstream religion in 3000 AD. Twelve days after the September 11 attacks, New York mayor Rudy Giuliani asked Winfrey to serve as host of a Prayer for America service at New York City's Yankee Stadium, which was attended by former president Bill Clinton and New York senator Hillary Clinton. Leading up to the U.S.-led 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, less than a month after the September 11 attacks, Winfrey aired a controversial show called "Islam 101" in which she portrayed Islam as a religion of peace, calling it "the most misunderstood of the three major religions". In 2002, George W. Bush invited Winfrey to join a US delegation that included adviser Karen Hughes and Condoleezza Rice, planning to go to Afghanistan to celebrate the return of Afghan girls to school. The "Oprah strategy" was designed to portray the War on Terror in a positive light; however, when Winfrey refused to participate, the trip was postponed.
Leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Winfrey's show received criticism for allegedly having an anti-war bias. Ben Shapiro of Townhall.com wrote: "Oprah Winfrey is the most powerful woman in America. She decides what makes The New York Times Best Seller lists. Her touchy-feely style sucks in audiences at the rate of 14 million viewers per day. But Oprah is far more than a cultural force, she's a dangerous political force as well, a woman with unpredictable and mercurial attitudes toward the major issues of the day." In 2006, Winfrey recalled such controversies: "I once did a show titled Is War the Only Answer? In the history of my career, I've never received more hate mail – like 'Go back to Africa' hate mail. I was accused of being un-American for even raising the question." Filmmaker Michael Moore came to Winfrey's defense, praising her for showing antiwar footage no other media would show and begging her to run for president.
A February 2003 series, in which Winfrey showed clips from people all over the world asking America not to go to war, was interrupted in several East Coast markets by network broadcasts of a press conference in which President George W. Bush and Colin Powell summarized the case for war.
In 2007, Winfrey began to endorse the self-help program The Secret. The Secret claims that people can change their lives through positive thoughts or 'vibrations', which will then cause them to attract more positive vibrations that result in good things happening to them. Peter Birkenhead of Salon magazine argued that this idea is pseudoscience and psychologically damaging, as it trivializes important decisions and promotes a quick-fix material culture, and suggests Winfrey's promotion of it is irresponsible given her influence. In 2007, skeptic and magician James Randi accused Winfrey of being deliberately deceptive and uncritical in how she handles paranormal claims on her show. In 2008, Winfrey endorsed author and spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle and his book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, which sold several million extra copies after being selected for her book club. During a Webinar class, in which she promoted the book, Winfrey stated "God is a feeling experience and not a believing experience. If your religion is a believing experience [...] then that's not truly God." Frank Pastore, a Christian radio talk show host on KKLA, was among the many Christian leaders who criticized Winfrey's views, saying "if she's a Christian, she's an ignorant one because Christianity is incompatible with New Age thought".
Winfrey was named as the 2008 Person of the Year by animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) for using her fame and listening audience to help the less fortunate, including animals. PETA praised Winfrey for using her talk show to uncover horrific cases of cruelty to animals in puppy mills and on factory farms, and Winfrey even used the show to highlight the cruelty-free vegan diet that she tried.
In 2009, Winfrey filmed a series of interviews in Denmark highlighting its citizens as the happiest people in the world. In 2010, Bill O'Reilly of Fox News criticized these shows for promoting a left-wing society. Following the launch of the Super Soul Sunday and SuperSoul Sessions programs on Harpo Productions' SuperSoul TV, in 2016 Winfrey selected 100 people for the SuperSoul 100 list of "innovators and visionaries who are aligned on a mission to move humanity forward".
On using the N-word, Winfrey said, "You cannot be my friend and use that word around me. ... I always think of the...people who heard that as their last word as they were hanging from a tree."
Fan base
The viewership for The Oprah Winfrey Show was highest during the 1991–92 season, when about 13.1 million U.S. viewers were watching each day. By 2003, ratings declined to 7.4 million daily viewers. Ratings briefly rebounded to approximately 9 million in 2005 and then declined again to around 7.3 million viewers in 2008, though it remained the highest-rated talk show.
In 2008, Winfrey's show was airing in 140 countries internationally and seen by an estimated 46 million people in the US weekly. According to the Harris poll, Winfrey was America's favorite television personality in 1998, 2000, 2002–06, and 2009. Winfrey was especially popular among women, Democrats, political moderates, Baby Boomers, Generation X, Southern Americans, and East Coast Americans.
Outside the U.S., Winfrey has become increasingly popular in the Arab world. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2007 that MBC 4, an Arab satellite channel, centered its entire programming around reruns of her show because it was drawing record numbers of female viewers in Saudi Arabia. In 2008, The New York Times reported that The Oprah Winfrey Show, with Arabic subtitles, was broadcast twice each weekday on MBC 4. Winfrey's modest dress, combined with her attitude of triumph over adversity and abuse has caused some women in Saudi Arabia to idealize her.
Philanthropy
In 2004, Winfrey became the first black person to rank among the 50 most generous Americans and she remained among the top 50 until 2010. By 2012, she had given away about $400 million to educational causes.
As of 2012, Winfrey had also given over 400 scholarships to Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. Winfrey was the recipient of the first Bob Hope Humanitarian Award at the 2002 Emmy Awards for services to television and film. To celebrate two decades on national TV, and to thank her employees for their hard work, Winfrey took her staff and their families (1,065 people in total) on vacation to Hawaii in the summer of 2006.
In 2013, Winfrey donated $12 million to the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom later that same year.
Oprah's Angel Network
In 1998, Winfrey created Oprah's Angel Network, a charity that supported charitable projects and provided grants to nonprofit organizations around the world. Oprah's Angel Network raised more than $80 million ($1 million of which was donated by Jon Bon Jovi). Winfrey personally covered all administrative costs associated with the charity, so 100% of all funds raised went to charity programs. In May 2010, with Oprah's show ending, the charity stopped accepting donations and was shut down.
South Africa
In 2004, Winfrey and her team filmed an episode of her show, "Oprah's Christmas Kindness", in which Winfrey travelled to South Africa to bring attention to the plight of young children affected by poverty and AIDS. During the 21-day trip, Winfrey and her crew visited schools and orphanages in poverty-stricken areas, and distributed Christmas presents to 50,000 children, with dolls for the girls and soccer balls for the boys, and school supplies. Throughout the show, Winfrey appealed to viewers to donate money to Oprah's Angel Network for poor and AIDS-affected children in Africa. From that show alone, viewers around the world donated over $7 million. Winfrey invested $40 million and some of her time establishing the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in Henley on Klip south of Johannesburg, South Africa. The school, set over 22 acres, opened in January 2007 with an enrollment of 150 pupils (increasing to 450) and features state-of-the-art classrooms, computer and science laboratories, a library, a theatre, and a beauty salon. Nelson Mandela praised Winfrey for overcoming her own disadvantaged youth to become a benefactor for others. Critics considered the school elitist and unnecessarily luxurious. Winfrey rejected the claims, saying: "If you are surrounded by beautiful things and wonderful teachers who inspire you, that beauty brings out the beauty in you." Winfrey, who has no surviving biological children, described maternal feelings towards the girls at Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls. Winfrey teaches a class at the school via satellite.
Filmography
As actress
As herself
As producer only
1989 – The Oprah Winfrey Show (supervising producer – 8 episodes, 1989–2011)
1989 – The Women of Brewster Place (TV miniseries) (executive producer)
1992 – Nine (TV documentary) (executive producer)
1992 – Overexposed (TV movie) (executive producer)
1993 – ABC Afterschool Special (TV series) (producer – 1 episode "Shades of a Single Protein") (producer)
1993 – Michael Jackson Talks to... Oprah Live (TV special) (executive producer)
1997 – Before Women Had Wings (TV movie) (producer)
1998 – The Wedding (TV miniseries) (executive producer)
1998 – Beloved (producer)
1998 – David and Lisa (TV movie) (executive producer)
1999 – Tuesdays with Morrie (TV movie) (executive producer)
2001 – Amy & Isabelle (TV movie) (executive producer, producer)
2002 – Oprah After the Show (TV series) (executive producer)
2005 – Their Eyes Were Watching God (TV movie) (executive producer)
2006 – Legends Ball (TV documentary) (executive producer)
2007 – Oprah's Big Give (TV series) (executive producer)
2007 – The Oprah Winfrey Oscar Special (TV movie) (executive producer)
2007 – Building a Dream: The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy (TV documentary) (executive producer)
2007 – Oprah Winfrey Presents: Mitch Albom's For One More Day (TV movie) (executive producer)
2007 – The Great Debaters (producer)
2009 – The Dr. Oz Show (TV series) (executive producer)
2009 – Precious (executive producer)
2009 – Christmas at the White House: An Oprah Primetime Special (TV special) (executive producer)
2010 – The Oprah Winfrey Oscar Special (TV movie) (executive producer)
2011 – Your OWN Show (TV series) (executive producer)
2011 – Extraordinary Mom (TV documentary) (executive producer)
2011 – Serving Life (TV documentary) (executive producer)
2014 – The Hundred-Foot Journey (producer)
2014 – Selma (producer)
2016–present – Queen Sugar (co-creator and executive producer)
2016–2020 – Greenleaf (executive producer)
2017 – The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (TV movie) (executive producer)
2018 – Love Is (executive producer)
2019 – When They See Us (executive producer)
2019 – Oprah Winfrey Presents: After Neverland (executive producer)
2019 – David Makes Man (executive producer)
2020 – The Water Man (executive producer)
2022 – Sidney (documentary film) (producer)
2023 – The Color Purple (producer)
Bibliography
By Oprah Winfrey
Winfrey, Oprah (1996). The Uncommon Wisdom of Oprah Winfrey: A Portrait in Her Own Words
Winfrey, Oprah (1998). Journey to Beloved (Photography by Ken Regan)
Winfrey, Oprah (1998). Make the Connection: Ten Steps to a Better Body and a Better Life (co-authored with Bob Greene)
Winfrey, Oprah (2000). Oprah Winfrey: The Soul and Spirit of a Superstar
Winfrey, Oprah (2014). What I Know for Sure
Winfrey, Oprah (2016). Mr. or Ms. Just Right (co-authored with B. Grace)
Winfrey, Oprah (2017). Food, Health and Happiness
Winfrey, Oprah (2017). The Wisdom of Sundays: Life-Changing Insights from Super Soul Conversations
Winfrey, Oprah (2017). The Wisdom Journal: The Companion to The Wisdom of Sundays
Winfrey, Oprah (2019). The Path Made Clear: Discovering Your Life's Direction and Purpose
Winfrey, Oprah (2021). What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing (co-authored with B. Perry)
About Oprah Winfrey
Mair, George (2001). Oprah Winfrey: The Real Story. Citadel Press. ISBN 1-55972-250-9.
Cooper, Irene (2007). Oprah Winfrey. Viking. ISBN 0-670-06162-X.
Awards, honors, and recognition
American Library Association Honorary Membership (1997)
Honorary degrees from: Princeton University, Howard University, Duke University, Harvard University, University of Massachusetts Lowell, University of the Free State, Tennessee State University, Spelman College, Colorado College, Smith College, Skidmore College
Mural including her image by Shawn Michael Warren in Chicago (painted in 2020)
Portrait of her by Shawn Michael Warren for the National Portrait Gallery (unveiled in 2023)
See also
African Americans in Mississippi
Notes
References
External links
Official website
Oprah Winfrey at IMDb
NPR "Oprah: The Billionaire Everywoman". Audio file, video and biography. Retrieved September 17, 2010
Works by Oprah Winfrey at Open Library
Oprah Winfrey Archived February 16, 2013, at the Wayback Machine Video produced by Makers: Women Who Make America
Appearances on C-SPAN
Watching Oprah Archived April 17, 2021, at the Wayback Machine – Smithsonian exhibition on the Oprah Show and Winfrey |
Katie_Couric | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katie_Couric | [
570
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katie_Couric"
] | Katherine Anne Couric ( KURR-ik; born January 7, 1957) is an American journalist and presenter. She is founder of Katie Couric Media, a multimedia news and production company. She also publishes a daily newsletter, Wake Up Call. From 2013 to 2017, she was Yahoo's Global News Anchor. Couric has been a television host at all of the Big Three television networks in the United States, and in her early career she was an assignment editor for CNN. She worked for NBC News from 1989 to 2006, CBS News from 2006 to 2011, and ABC News from 2011 to 2014. She was the first solo female anchor of a major network (CBS) evening news program. In 2021, she appeared as a guest host for the game show Jeopardy!, the first woman to host the flagship American version of the show in its history.
In addition to her roles in television news, Couric hosted Katie, a syndicated daytime talk show produced by Disney–ABC Domestic Television from September 2012 to June 2014. Some of her most important presenting roles include co-host of Today, anchor of the CBS Evening News, and as a correspondent for 60 Minutes. Couric's 2011 book, The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons from Extraordinary Lives, was a New York Times bestseller. In 2004, Couric was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame.
Early life and career
Katherine Anne Couric was born in Arlington, Virginia, the daughter of Elinor Tullie (née Hene), a homemaker and part-time writer, and John Martin Couric Jr., a public relations executive and news editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the United Press in Washington, D.C. Her mother was Jewish, and converted to Presbyterianism before the marriage. Couric's maternal grandparents, Bert Hene and Clara L. Frohsin, were the children of Jewish emigrants from Germany. Couric's father had French, English, Scottish, and German ancestry. She was raised Presbyterian. In a report for Today, she traced her patrilineal ancestry back to a French orphan who immigrated to the U.S. in the 19th century, and became a broker in the cotton business.
Couric attended Arlington Public Schools: Jamestown Elementary, Williamsburg Middle School, and Yorktown High School, and was a cheerleader. As a high school student, she was an intern at Washington, D.C. all-news radio station WAVA. She enrolled at her father's alma mater, the University of Virginia, in 1975, and was a Delta Delta Delta sorority sister. Couric served in several positions at UVA's daily newspaper, The Cavalier Daily. During her fourth year at UVA, Couric was chosen to live as Senior Resident of The Lawn, the heart of Thomas Jefferson's Academical Village. She graduated in 1979, with a bachelor's degree in American Studies.
Television career
Career beginnings
Couric's first job in 1979 was at the ABC News bureau in Washington, D.C., later joining CNN as an assignment editor. Between 1984 and 1986, she worked as a general-assignment reporter for the then-CBS affiliate WTVJ in Miami, Florida.
During the following two years, she reported for WRC-TV, the NBC owned- and -operated station in Washington, D.C., work which earned her an Associated Press award and an Emmy.
NBC
Couric joined NBC News in 1989 as Deputy Pentagon Correspondent. From 1989 to 1991, Couric was an anchor substitute. She filled in for Bryant Gumbel as host of Today; Jane Pauley and Deborah Norville as co-anchor of Today; Boyd Matson, Garrick Utley, Mary Alice Williams, and Maria Shriver as co-host of Sunday Today; Chris Wallace, Garrick Utley and Tim Russert as anchor of Meet The Press, Scott Simon, Mike Schneider (news anchor) , Jack Ford, Jackie Nespral, Giselle Fernandez and Jodi Applegate as co-host of "Weekend Today; Connie Chung, Bob Jamieson, John Palmer, Norville, Faith Daniels, Margaret Larson, Ann Curry, and Linda Vester as anchor of the former NBC News program NBC News at Sunrise. She also subbed for Daniels, Norville, and John Palmer as the news anchor on Today.
During Couric's Today interview with presidential candidate Ross Perot on June 11, 1992, viewer phone calls were included. She deflected his bewilderment when a phone caller slipped the following question by the program's technical crew: “Have you ever had the desire to mind-meld with Howard Stern’s penis?”
Couric returned to NBC to co-host the 2018 Winter Olympics opening ceremonies with Mike Tirico, and to provide additional Winter Olympic coverage and athlete interviews. During the opening ceremony she suggested, erroneously, that the Dutch use their skates as a normal mode of transportation during wintertime, prompting criticism and bemusement from the U.S. Embassy in the Netherlands and others. Couric apologized that her intended compliment did not "come out" as intended, which the Embassy accepted, and invited her to the Netherlands for a tour.
Today (1991–2006)
In 1989, Couric joined Today as national political correspondent, becoming a substitute co-host in February 1991, when Norville went on maternity leave. Norville did not return and Couric became permanent co-anchor on April 5, 1991. In 1994, she became co-anchor of Now with Tom Brokaw and Katie Couric—an evening time weekly TV newsmagazine with Tom Brokaw—which was later terminated and folded into part of Dateline NBC, where her reports appeared regularly and she was named the anchor. She remained at Today and NBC News for fifteen years until May 31, 2006, when she announced that she would be going to CBS to anchor the CBS Evening News, becoming the first solo female anchor of the "Big Three" weekday nightly news broadcasts.
While at NBC, Couric occasionally filled in for Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams on NBC Nightly News. From 1989 to 1993, Couric also filled in for Connie Chung, Maria Shriver and for Garrick Utley and later Brian Williams and John Seigenthaler on the Weekend Edition of NBC Nightly News. In addition, during her time on Today, she served as a host of the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade for 14 years from 1991 to 2005. On June 17, 1997, Couric asked the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward about the Clinton "Chinagate" scandal: "Are members of the media, do you think, Bob, too scandal-obsessed, looking for something at every corner?"
Couric hosted or worked on a number of news specials, like Everybody's Business: America's Children in 1995. Similar entertainment specials were Legend to Legend Night: A Celebrity Cavalcade in 1993, and Harry Potter: Behind the Magic in 2001. Couric has also co-hosted the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games. She has broadcast with Bob Costas, beginning with the 2000 Summer Olympics.
Couric has interviewed many international political figures and celebrities, including presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and First Lady Barbara Bush. John F. Kennedy Jr. gave Couric his first and last interviews.
Couric has won multiple television reporting awards throughout her career, including the Peabody Award for her series Confronting Colon Cancer. Couric has also interviewed former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton (her first television interview), Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, and Laura Bush.
On May 28, 2008, Couric made a return visit to Today, since leaving almost two years to the very day back on May 31, 2006. She made this appearance alongside her evening counterparts, NBC Nightly News' Brian Williams & ABC World News' Charles Gibson, to promote an organization called Stand Up to Cancer and raise cancer awareness on all three major television networks; ABC, CBS & NBC. Couric, Gibson and Williams made appearances together on all three major network morning shows, first on CBS's Early Show, then on NBC's Today and finally on ABC's Good Morning America.
Couric returned for a week-long stint as co-host of Today in January 2017 to mark Matt Lauer's 20th anniversary as anchor of the program.
Move to CBS News
CBS Evening News (2006–2011)
Couric announced on April 5, 2006, that she would be leaving Today. CBS confirmed later the same day that Couric would become the new anchor and managing editor of CBS Evening News. Couric would also contribute to 60 Minutes and anchor prime-time news specials for CBS. Couric earned US$15 million per year while at CBS, a salary that made her the highest paid journalist in the world, a salary similar to Barbara Walters' at ABC. She made her first broadcast as anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric on September 5, 2006.
CBS heavily promoted Couric's arrival at the network, hoping to revive the evening news format, but there were suggestions that it backfired. Although there was much interest during her first week as anchor, CBS Evening News remained a distant third in viewership, behind ABC World News and NBC Nightly News. While Couric's ratings improved over her predecessor, Bob Schieffer, ABC's Charles Gibson widened World News' lead over Evening News.
Couric also announced CBS News's official projection for the 2008 United States Presidential Election.
The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric won the 2008 and 2009 Edward R. Murrow Award for best newscast. In 2009, Couric was awarded the Emmy Governor's Award for her broadcasting career.
She has interviewed presidents, cabinet members, celebrities, and business executives around the world, including President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Former President George W. Bush, Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, John Edwards just after the announcement that his then-wife Elizabeth's cancer had returned, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Norah Jones and Michael J. Fox.
Couric led CBS News' coverage of the 2006 midterm elections, the 2008 Presidential election and conventions, and 2010 midterm elections. Couric was the first network anchor on the ground in Port au Prince after the 2010 Haiti earthquake. After the BP oil spill, Couric anchored from the Gulf Coast weekly and brought much attention to the disaster. She reported from Cairo's Tahrir Square during the Egyptian Revolution in 2011. In April 2011, she led CBS News' coverage from London for the Wedding of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Catherine Middleton.
Couric was the only solo female evening news anchor in the United States, until December 21, 2009, when Diane Sawyer succeeded the retiring Charles Gibson for ABC World News. Couric and Sawyer were previous rivals as the hosts of Today and Good Morning America, respectively.
In early 2011, Couric announced that she would be leaving her anchor post at CBS Evening News when her contract expired. Couric made her final broadcast in the CBS Evening News chair on Thursday, May 19, 2011.
60 Minutes (2006–2011)
Couric was a 60 Minutes correspondent and contributed eight to ten stories a year for the program. She was the first to interview pilot Chesley Sullenberger after the "Miracle on the Hudson" airplane landing. She also interviewed Valerie Plame, Robert Gates and Michelle Rhee for the program.
Palin interviews (2008)
The Sarah Palin interviews with Katie Couric were a series of interviews Couric taped with 2008 U.S. Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin. The interviews were repeatedly broadcast on television before the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Couric received the Walter Cronkite Award for Journalism Excellence for the interviews. Steve Schmidt, McCain's senior campaign strategist and advisor, later reflected on the interview, saying "I think it was the most consequential interview from a negative perspective that a candidate for national office has gone through..."
CBS Reports (2009–2011)
Couric was the lead reporter for two CBS Reports series, which aired across all CBS News platforms. The first series, "CBS Reports: Children of the Recession", highlighted the pain suffered by the youngest of the then ongoing Great Recession's victims. The series won the Columbia School of Journalism's Alfred DuPont Award for Excellence in Journalism. The second series, which aired in early 2010, was "CBS Reports: Where America Stands", which featured veteran CBS News correspondents reporting on major issues facing the United States in the decade ahead with research by the CBS News Polling Unit.
@katiecouric (2009–2011)
Couric hosted a weekly, one-hour interview program on CBSNews.com. Her first guest was Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck. Subsequent interviews included former U.S. vice president Al Gore, actor Hugh Jackman, recording artist Shakira, First Lady Michelle Obama, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, singer Justin Bieber, actress Jane Lynch, talk show host Ellen DeGeneres, actor Daniel Radcliffe, Bill Gates, former White House Chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, national Tea Party movement leader Michael Johns, football player Drew Brees, and author Malcolm Gladwell.
Return to ABC News
ABC News (2011–2013)
From 2011 to 2013, Couric was a special correspondent for ABC News, a role she has incorporated into her talk show. Her first appearance on the network was a Sarah Jessica Parker interview on Nightline. Couric co-anchored coverage of the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, alongside Diane Sawyer, Christiane Amanpour, Barbara Walters, Elizabeth Vargas, George Stephanopoulos, and Robin Roberts. Couric was hosting Today on NBC at the time of the attacks, and led CBS News's coverage of the fifth anniversary. Couric also guest co-hosted The View and Live! with Regis and Kelly. Couric interviewed Lady Gaga in primetime on Thanksgiving as part of A Very Gaga Thanksgiving. In November 2011, Couric hosted a special primetime ABC news program highlighting Regis Philbin's retirement, after Philbin's 25-year tenure at ABC.
Similar to colleague Barbara Walters, Couric anchors specials for the network and for the newsmagazine 20/20. While she contributes to the news program all throughout the year, in 2011, Couric created her newly annual special The Year with Katie Couric, which is a program that marks the end of the year and covers some of the biggest newsmakers and news events of that year. This is a collaboration with People magazine, which also reflects events in the world of news, sports, politics, and major headlines that helped shape the world. This is very similar to that of Walters's iconic Barbara Walters' 10 Most Fascinating People, a year end program that marks the end of the year and acknowledges the people that had the most impact on the year at hand with interviews on their perspective of the year. As part of the special, Couric interviews fellow members of the media that can provide some insight on some events that occurred.
From April 2 to 6, 2012, Couric substituted for co-anchor Robin Roberts on ABC's Good Morning America, her first stint at hosting a morning news show since leaving Today.
Katie (2012–2014)
On June 6, 2011, ABC announced that Couric had signed a record US$40-million contract, and would begin hosting a daytime talk show for its Disney-ABC Domestic Television arm that would debut in September 2012; Couric would also contribute to ABC News programming. On August 22, 2011, it was announced that Couric's talk show would be called Katie. Katie is the second web show that Couric has been affiliated with, the first being @katiecouric on the CBS Evening News. The first episode aired on September 10, 2012.
Couric has incorporated her affiliation with the ABC News Division with her ABC Daytime show by having news colleagues Christiane Amanpour, Deborah Roberts, Mike Boettcher, Matt Gutman, Richard Besser, Marci Gonzalez, Jim Avila, Dan Abrams, Josh Elliott, Brian Ross, ABC News weather anchors Sam Champion and Ginger Zee, as well as ABC World News anchors Diane Sawyer and David Muir correspond on Katie for important news events. On the domestic end of her affiliation, Couric has had as guests The View co-host Whoopi Goldberg, Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan of Live! with Kelly and Michael, as well as some cast members of the soap opera General Hospital.
Disney-ABC Domestic Television renewed Katie for a second season starting in fall 2013. However, in October 2013, The Hollywood Reporter wrote that Katie was close to cancellation because of a low Q Score, low ratings, and a reported disdain of her core female audience. The syndicated show averaged a 1.7 household rating during its first season and a 1.8 in the 2013–14 season. In December 2013, Disney–ABC Domestic Television announced that Katie had been canceled. The last show was taped on June 12, 2014 and the series finale aired on July 30, 2014.
Yahoo! / ABC News (2014–2017)
In November 2013, Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer announced she had hired Couric as Global Anchor of Yahoo! News. Couric debuted in the new role on January 13, 2014, in an interview with former United States Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. She later interviewed United States Secretary of State John Kerry.
In March 2015, in an effort to collaborate and to consolidate their news pools, Yahoo News and ABC News has expanded their partnership to include specials and features, with Couric and other Yahoo editors to appear in daily segments on Good Morning America. The extended partnership secured Couric as having a spot in the ABC News division, as a special contributor.
In her book Going There, Couric admitted to editing a 2016 interview with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The edits included removing portions of Ginsburg's statements that were critical of NFL protestors kneeling during the national anthem. Couric stated that her intent was to "protect" Ginsburg from her potentially unpopular comments as they were "unworthy of a crusader for equality".
In June 2017, after Verizon purchased Yahoo! and combined it into Oath, Couric decided to end her contract at Yahoo! News, preferring to work with them on a "project basis" only, while she continues to expand her own production company.
Public image
Couric has been dubbed "America's Sweetheart," largely due to her co-anchor role for 15 years on The Today Show. On May 12, 2003, Couric guest-hosted The Tonight Show with Jay Leno as part of a swap campaign, and had 45 percent more viewers than on other nights. She has been the only guest host used by Jay Leno on either The Tonight Show or his short-lived The Jay Leno Show. Leno filled in for her on Today that same day. CNN and the New York Daily News noted that instead of using Leno's regular solid desk, "workers cut away the front of her desk to expose her legs while she interviewed American Idol judge Simon Cowell and Austin Powers star Mike Myers".
Other work
In a media crossover to animated film, Couric was the voice of news-reporter "Katie Current" in the US version of the film Shark Tale. She has also made cameo appearances in Austin Powers in Goldmember (as a Georgia State Prison guard) and an episode of General Hospital (as a journalist pretending to be a doctor: a storyline she helped create). She guest-starred as herself on the CBS sitcom Murphy Brown in 1992 and in the NBC sitcom Will & Grace in late 2002, and made a cameo appearance on a Pawn Stars episode. On May 12, 2003, she traded places for a day with Tonight Show host Jay Leno. Couric also co-hosted NBC's live coverage of Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade from 1991 until 2005. She received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 2005. Couric delivered the graduation speech at her alma mater University of Virginia on May 20, 2012, at Randolph-Macon College on June 1, 2013, and at Princeton University on June 1, 2009. She also works with Carmen Marc Valvo to help publicize the deadliness, yet preventability, of colorectal cancer. On May 16, 2010, Couric received an honorary doctor of science degree for her efforts in raising awareness of colorectal cancer and for her commitment to advancing medical research from Case Western Reserve University, and later gave the university's 2010 convocation keynote address. In 2016, she starred as herself in Sully to recreate the 60 Minutes interview for the film.
In 2011, she gave the university commencement speech at Boston University and was awarded another doctoral degree, Doctor of Humane Letters. She has also hosted a Sesame Street special, "When Families Grieve." The special, which aired on PBS on April 14, 2010, dealt with the issues that children go through when a parent dies. On February 6, 2011, Couric guest-starred on the post-Super Bowl episode of Glee, playing herself interviewing Sue Sylvester after the cheerleading team lost the championship. Sylvester sarcastically referred to Couric as "Diane Sawyer" during the segment.
Couric is the author of two children's books and a non-fiction collection of essays. Her children's books The Brand New Kid (2000) and The Blue Ribbon Day (2004) were illustrated by Marjorie Priceman and published by Doubleday. The Brand New Kid topped the New York Times best seller list for children's picture books, and was adapted into a 2006 musical by Melanie Marnich and Michael Friedman. Couric's third book, The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons from Extraordinary Lives, was published by Random House in 2011. The book is a collection of essays compiled over the past year by Couric; contributors include New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Queen Rania of Jordan, and former Today Show colleague Matt Lauer. Couric said that a 2010 convocation keynote address she gave inspired her to write the book. To this end, all profits of the book will be donated to Scholarship America.
In December 2013, Couric ran a segment on the HPV vaccine which critics accused of being too sympathetic to the scientifically unsupported claims that this vaccine was dangerous. For example, Seth Mnookin accused her broadcast of employing false balance. In addition, Alexandra Sifferlin, of Time magazine, compared Couric to Jenny McCarthy, a well-known anti-vaccine celebrity. On December 10, 2013, a week after the original segment was aired, Couric posted an article on The Huffington Post responding to this criticism, in which she stated:
I felt it was a subject well worth exploring. Following the show, and in fact before it even aired, there was criticism that the program was too anti-vaccine and anti-science, and in retrospect, some of that criticism was valid. We simply spent too much time on the serious adverse events that have been reported in very rare cases following the vaccine. More emphasis should have been given to the safety and efficacy of the HPV vaccines.
Throughout the 2010s, Couric served as executive producer on several films. In 2014, Couric was an executive producer and narrator for the documentary Fed Up, examining the food industry and obesity in the United States. In 2016, Couric was an executive producer and narrator for the documentary Under the Gun, examining gun violence and gun control in the United States. The documentary was criticized for having an eight-second pause for "dramatic effect" inserted instead of the answer given to a question Couric posed to a gun-rights group in Virginia. Couric posted a response on the documentary's website stating, "I take responsibility for a decision that misrepresented an exchange I had with members of the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL)", and she included a transcript of the response she received. Later that year, the VCDL filed a defamation lawsuit for $12 million against Couric and the film's director, Stephanie Soechtig, for continuing to promote and distribute the film without correcting the pause. The lawsuit was dismissed after a Virginia judge determined that the film scene was neither false nor defamatory. In 2015 Couric founded Katie Couric Media, a film production company which has partnered with National Geographic to produce several documentaries. The first of these, Gender Revolution, premiered in 2017. She was also an executive producer of Flint, a 2017 Lifetime drama about the Flint, Michigan, water crisis. In 2018, Couric hosted a docudrama series titled America Inside Out with Katie Couric, which was telecast on the National Geographic Channel.
Couric is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She is also a member of
the Peabody Awards board of directors, which is presented by the University of Georgia's Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.
In 2019, she served as executive producer on Netflix's true crime miniseries Unbelievable.
Couric signed on to serve as a substitute host of Jeopardy! in January 2021 following the death of Alex Trebek. Her episodes aired from March 8 to March 19.
Personal life and charitable work
Family and relationships
Couric married attorney John Paul "Jay" Monahan III in 1989. She gave birth to their first daughter, Elinor Tully "Ellie" Monahan, in Washington, D.C., on July 23, 1991; their second daughter, Caroline "Carrie" was born in New York City on January 5, 1996. Her husband died of colorectal cancer in 1998 at the age of 42. In September 2013, she became engaged to financier John Molner after a two-year relationship. Couric married Molner in a small, private ceremony at her home in The Hamptons on June 21, 2014. The two star in the online cooking series Full Plate with Katie & John, appearing on the Sur La Table website.
Her sister Emily Couric, a Virginia Democratic state senator, died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 54 on October 18, 2001. Couric gave a eulogy at the funeral. She pointed out that it irritated Emily when people asked her if she was Katie Couric's sister. She told the mourners, "I just want you to know I will always be proud to say 'I am Emily Couric's sister'." Couric has two other siblings, Clara Couric Batchelor and John M. Couric Jr.
During a January 15, 2021 appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher, Couric revealed that she is distantly related to William Henry Harrison, the ninth president of the United States.
Cancer and advocacy
On September 28, 2022, Couric revealed that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer on June 21 of that year after a routine screening. She underwent surgery for the disease in July and began radiation treatment on September 7.
Couric had become a spokeswoman for colon cancer awareness ever since her first husband had died from the disease. She underwent a colonoscopy on-air in March 2000, and, according to a study published in 2003 in Archives of Internal Medicine, may have inspired many others to get checked as well: "Katie Couric's televised colon cancer awareness campaign was temporarily associated with an increase in colonoscopy use in two different data sets. This illustrates the possibility that a well-known individual can draw attention and support to worthwhile causes." On October 7, 2005, as part of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Couric broadcast her own mammogram on the Today show, in the hopes of recreating the "Couric Effect" around the issue of breast cancer. She also was very active in the National Hockey League's Hockey Fights Cancer campaign, appearing in some public service announcements and doing voice-overs for several others.
Couric was the honored guest at the 2004 Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation fall gala. As the Guest of Honor for the inaugural American Cancer Society Discovery Ball, Couric was recognized for her leadership in increasing cancer awareness and screening. In 2011, Couric became the Honorary National Chair of the National Parkinson Foundation's Moving Day campaign, a grassroots campaign to spotlight Parkinson's disease awareness on a national level. Couric's father died in 2011 at age 90 from complications due to Parkinson's disease.
Bibliography
Couric, Katie (2000). The Brand New Kid. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0385500302.
Couric, Katie (2004). The Blue Ribbon Day. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0385512923.
Couric, Katie (2011). The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons From Extraordinary Lives. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-0812992779.
Couric, Katie (2021). Going There. New York: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 978-0316535861.
See also
New Yorkers in journalism
References
Sources
Klein, Edward (2007), Katie: The Real Story, New York: Crown, ISBN 978-0-307-35351-1
Weller, Sheila (2015). The News Sorority: Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, Christiane Amanpour—and the (Ongoing, Imperfect, Complicated) Triumph of Women in TV News.
NBC News April 26, 2011
External links
Official website
Katie Couric blog at The Huffington Post
Katie Couric at IMDb
Katie Couric at The Interviews: An Oral History of Television
Appearances on C-SPAN
Katie Couric on the Muck Rack journalist listing site |
Audible_(service) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audible_(service) | [
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audible_(service)"
] | Audible is an American online audiobook and podcast service that allows users to purchase and stream audiobooks and other forms of spoken word content. This content can be purchased individually or under a subscription model where the user receives "credits" that can be redeemed for content monthly and receive access to a curated on-demand library of content. Audible is the United States' largest audiobook producer and retailer. The service is owned by Audible, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc., headquartered in Newark, New Jersey.
History
The company's first product was an eponymous portable media player known as the Audible MobilePlayer; released in 1997, the device contained around four megabytes of on-board flash memory storage, which could hold up to two hours of audio. To use the player, consumers would download an audiobook from Audible website.
On March 11, 1999, Microsoft invested $11 million into the company. On October 24, 1999, Audible suffered a setback when its CEO, Andrew J. Huffman, died. Development proceeded, however, leading to Audible licensing the ACELP codec for its downloads in 2000, and Amazon bought a 5 percent stake in the then-publicly traded company the same year.
In 2003, Audible reached an agreement with Apple to be the exclusive provider of audiobooks for iTunes Music Store. This agreement ended in 2017 due to antitrust rulings in the European Union.
Two years later, the service released "Audible Air", which allowed users to download audiobooks directly to PDAs and smartphones. Its content would update automatically, downloading chapters as required that would then delete themselves after they had been listened to. In 2006, the company released its A-List collection, which had famous works read by Anne Hathaway and Annette Bening.
In 2007, CEO Donald Katz moved the company headquarters with 125 employees from suburban Wayne, New Jersey to Newark. The new headquarters was a high-rise building on One Washington Park.
On January 31, 2008, Amazon announced they would purchase Audible for about $300 million. In April of that year, Audible began producing exclusive science fiction and fantasy audiobooks under its "Audible Frontiers" imprint. At launch, 25 titles were released.
In May 2011, the service launched Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX), an online rights marketplace and production platform. The platform was so successful that in 2012, Audible reported it had received more titles from ACX than from its top three audio providers combined. In March 2012, Audible launched the A-List Collection, a series showcasing Hollywood stars including Claire Danes, Colin Firth, Anne Hathaway, Dustin Hoffman, Samuel L. Jackson, Diane Keaton, Nicole Kidman, and Kate Winslet performing great works of literature. Firth's performance of Graham Greene's The End of the Affair was named Audiobook of the Year at the Audie Awards in 2013.
The service began offering its narration workshops at acting schools, including Juilliard and Tisch School of the Arts; in 2013, Audible's CEO speculated that the company was the largest single employer of actors in the New York area.
In September 2012, Audible introduced a feature known as "Whispersync for Voice", which allows users to continue audiobooks from where they left off reading them on Amazon Kindle.
In 2016, the company announced that it would open a new facility in Newark, New Jersey, the "Innovation Cathedral", in a former Second Presbyterian Church, last used in 1995.
In July 2019, a new feature was announced called Audible Captions, in which machine-generated text would be displayed alongside the audio narration. The company was sued by the Association of American Publishers shortly thereafter for copyright violation. The lawsuit was settled in early 2020, with Audible agreeing not to implement the Captions feature without obtaining express permission.
In November 2020, Audible modified its return and exchange policy in response to concerns by authors, who felt that customers were abusing the policy to listen to audiobooks without paying.
Content and pricing
Audible's content includes more than 200,000 audio programs from audiobook publishers, broadcasters, entertainers, magazine and newspaper publishers and business information providers. Content includes books of all genres, as well as radio shows (classic and current), speeches, interviews, stand-up comedy, and audio versions of periodicals such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
The service offered two monthly subscription tiers, "Audible Gold" and "Audible Platinum", priced at US$14.95 and $22.95 respectively: Both services allow users to obtain credits which can be used to purchase audio books (one whole credit for Gold, and two whole credits on Platinum), while Platinum also included additional incentives such as exclusive discounts. On August 24, 2020, Audible replaced both plans with "Audible Premium Plus" (a renaming of Gold, though with the Platinum pricing and credits grandfathered for existing subscribers), and introduced a new $7.95 subscription tier known as "Audible Plus." Both tiers include access to a curated on-demand library of audiobooks, podcasts, and other original productions, while the Audible Plus tier does not include credits.
Once a customer has purchased a title, it remains in that person's library and can be downloaded or streamed at any time. As of April 1, 2019, credits expire one year after issue, and credits prior to this day expire after two years.
Original content
In May 2015, Audible hired Eric Nuzum, formerly VP of programming at NPR, as its SVP of original content development.
In 2016, the service introduced an on-demand service known as "Audible Channels", which features short-form audio programming from various outlets, including news and other original productions. Access is included as part of Audible's subscription, and also became available to Amazon Prime subscribers. Nuzum compared this strategy to original content created by HBO or Netflix, and stated that the service deliberately avoided use of the word "podcast" as to not alienate listeners unfamiliar with the concept.
Among its original productions are Where Should We Begin?—a relationship podcast with Esther Perel, Sincerely, X'—a podcast featuring anonymous TED Talks, Ponzi Supernova—a chronicle of the Madoff investment scandal, The Butterfly Effect—a podcast series by Jon Ronson chronicling the impact of PornHub on internet pornography, and West Cork, a true crime podcast investigating an unsolved 1996 murder in West Cork, Ireland.
In August 2018, it was reported that Nuzum was stepping down, and that Amazon had laid off most of the short-form content staff. This move came amid a shift in Audible's original content strategy, including a greater focus on "audiobook-first" deals with writers.
The service's new strategy for original content was announced in fall 2020 with the debut of a new lower-price tier providing access to "Audible Originals." The new tier, called Premium Plus, provided access at the time of introduction to 11,000 audio titles available only by subscription to Audible. These titles included earlier original material, plus new audio productions featuring such creators as Common, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kate Mara, Harvey Fierstein, Michael Caine and Jesse Eisenberg. More recent releases include Newark Mayor Ras Baraka's memoir and two works by Brown Sugar screenwriter Michael Elliot.
Device support
Audible audio files are compatible with hundreds of audio players, PDAs, mobile phones and streaming media devices. Devices that do not have AudibleAir capability (allowing users to download content from their library directly into their devices) require a Windows PC or Macintosh to download the files. Additionally, titles can be played on the PC (using iTunes or AudibleManager). Titles cannot be burned to CD with AudibleManager. According to Audible's website, they can be burned to CD using Apple's iTunes and some versions of Nero. (The DRM generally allows a title to be burned to CD once, although the resulting CDs can be played in any CD player and have no copy prevention.) Currently there is no support for Linux, although AudibleManager is known to work through Wine (though this is not officially supported by Audible).
Prospective buyers of media players can check the audible.com "Device Center" to verify whether the device will play .aa files, as well as play them at the desired level of audio fidelity. Audible players are available on Apple iPhones, iPods, Android, and Windows Phone devices.
The Audible App allows for the downloading and playing of audio books purchased via Audible.com and allows the user to store multiple titles for play on mobile devices using the AA file format developed by Audible.
Quality
The following qualities have been available from Audible. Currently, only the "Format 4" and "Enhanced" formats are available for download.
AAX files are encrypted M4B's. The audio is encoded in variable quality AAC format. While the vast majority of books are encoded at 64 kbit/s, 22.050 kHz, stereo, some are as low as 32k, mono. Radio plays are often encoded at 128 kbit/s and 44.1 kHz. Additionally, many audiobooks in Germany are encoded at the latter bitrate and are marketed as "AAX+"; however, there is no difference in the actual file format.
Digital rights management
Audible's .aa file format encapsulates sound encoded in either MP3 or the ACELP speech codec, but includes unauthorized-playback prevention by means of an Audible username and password, which can be used on up to four computers and three smartphones at a time. Licenses are available for schools and libraries.
Audible's content can only be played on selected mobile devices. Its software does enable users to burn a limited number of CDs for unrestricted playback, resulting in CDs that can be copied or converted to unrestricted digital audio formats.
Because of the CD issue, Audible's use of digital rights management on its .aa format has earned it criticism. While multiple software products are capable of removing the Audible DRM protection by re-encoding in other formats, Audible has been quick to threaten the software makers with lawsuits for discussing or promoting this ability, as happened with River Past Corp and GoldWave Inc. Responses have varied, with River Past removing the capability from their software, and GoldWave retaining the capability, but censoring discussions about the ability in its support forums. But there are still many other software tools from non-US countries which easily bypass the DRM control of Audible by various methods, including sound recording, virtual CD burning, and even using a media plugin library once provided by Audible themselves. After Apple's abandonment of most DRM measures, Amazon's downloads ceasing to use it, Audible's DRM system is one of the few remaining in place.
Many Audible listings displayed to non-U.S. customers are geo-blocked. According to Audible, this is because the publisher who has provided the title does not have the rights to distribute the file in a given region. Logged in are unable to see titles that are unavailable for purchase.
There were hopes that Amazon, after its purchase of Audible, would remove the DRM from its audiobook selection, in keeping with the current trend in the industry. Nevertheless, Audible's products continue to have DRM, similar to the policy of DRM-protecting their Kindle e-books, which have DRM that allows for a finite, yet undisclosed number of downloads at the discretion of the publisher, however Audible titles that are DRM free can be copied to the Kindle and made functional.
Audible is able to offer DRM-free titles for content providers who wish to do so. FFmpeg 2.8.1+ is capable of playing Audible's .aa and .aax file formats natively.
Market power
Audible operates the Audiobook Creation Exchange, which enables individual authors or publishers to work with professional actors and producers to create audiobooks, which are then distributed to Amazon and iTunes. Currently, the service is available to residents of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Ireland. Audible produces 10,000 titles a year and may be the largest employer of actors in New York City.
See also
RBMedia
LibriVox
Storytel
References
External links
Official website
Behind-the-Scenes Tour of Audible, by Katherine Kellgren |
Apple_Inc. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc. | [
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc."
] | Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered and incorporated in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976, the company was incorporated as Apple Computer, Inc. by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs the following year. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue, with US$383.29 billion in 2023.
The company was founded to produce and market Wozniak's Apple I personal computer. Its second computer, the Apple II, became a best seller as one of the first mass-produced microcomputers. Apple introduced the Lisa in 1983 and the Macintosh in 1984, as some of the first computers to use a graphical user interface and a mouse. By 1985, internal company problems led to Jobs leaving to form NeXT, Inc., and Wozniak withdrawing to other ventures; John Sculley served as long-time CEO for over a decade. In the 1990s, Apple lost considerable market share in the personal computer industry to the lower-priced Wintel duopoly of the Microsoft Windows operating system on Intel-powered PC clones. In 1997, Apple was weeks away from bankruptcy. To resolve its failed operating system strategy, it bought NeXT, effectively bringing Jobs back to the company, who guided Apple back to profitability over the next decade with the introductions of the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad devices to critical acclaim as well as the iTunes Store, launching the "Think different" advertising campaign, and opening the Apple Store retail chain. These moves elevated Apple to consistently be one of the world's most valuable brands since about 2010. Jobs resigned in 2011 for health reasons, and died two months later; he was succeeded as CEO by Tim Cook.
Apple's current product lineup includes portable and home hardware such as the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, and Apple TV; operating systems such as iOS, iPadOS, and macOS; and various software and services including Apple Pay, iCloud, and multimedia streaming services like Apple Music and Apple TV+. Apple is one of the Big Five American information technology companies; for the most part since 2011, Apple has been the world's largest company by market capitalization, and, as of 2023, is the largest manufacturing company by revenue, the fourth-largest personal computer vendor by unit sales, the largest vendor of tablet computers, and the largest vendor of mobile phones in the world.
Apple became the first publicly traded U.S. company to be valued at over $1 trillion in 2018, and, as of June 2024, is valued at just over $3.2 trillion. It has received criticism regarding its contractors' labor practices, its relationship with trade unions, its environmental practices, and its business ethics, including anti-competitive practices and materials sourcing. Nevertheless, the company has a large following and enjoys a high level of brand loyalty.
History
1976–1980: Founding and incorporation
Apple Computer Company was founded on April 1, 1976, by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne as a partnership. The company's first product is the Apple I, a computer designed and hand-built entirely by Wozniak. To finance its creation, Jobs sold his Volkswagen Bus, and Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator.: 57 Neither received the full selling price but in total earned $1,300 (equivalent to $7,000 in 2023). Wozniak debuted the first prototype Apple I at the Homebrew Computer Club in July 1976. The Apple I was sold as a motherboard with CPU, RAM, and basic textual-video chips—a base kit concept which was not yet marketed as a complete personal computer. It was priced soon after debut for $666.66 (equivalent to $3,600 in 2023).: 180 Wozniak later said he was unaware of the coincidental mark of the beast in the number 666, and that he came up with the price because he liked "repeating digits".
Apple Computer, Inc. was incorporated in Cupertino, California, on January 3, 1977, without Wayne, who had left and sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800 only twelve days after having co-founded it. Multimillionaire Mike Markkula provided essential business expertise and funding of $250,000 (equivalent to $1,257,000 in 2023) to Jobs and Wozniak during the incorporation of Apple. During the first five years of operations, revenues grew exponentially, doubling about every four months. Between September 1977 and September 1980, yearly sales grew from $775,000 to US$118 million, an average annual growth rate of 533%.
The Apple II, also designed by Wozniak, was introduced on April 16, 1977, at the first West Coast Computer Faire. It differs from its major rivals, the TRS-80 and Commodore PET, because of its character cell-based color graphics and open architecture. The Apple I and early Apple II models use ordinary audio cassette tapes as storage devices, which were superseded by the 5+1⁄4-inch floppy disk drive and interface called the Disk II in 1978.
The Apple II was chosen to be the desktop platform for the first killer application of the business world: VisiCalc, a spreadsheet program released in 1979. VisiCalc created a business market for the Apple II and gave home users an additional reason to buy an Apple II: compatibility with the office, but Apple II market share remained behind home computers made by competitors such as Atari, Commodore, and Tandy.
On December 12, 1980, Apple (ticker symbol "AAPL") went public selling 4.6 million shares at $22 per share ($.10 per share when adjusting for stock splits as of September 3, 2022), generating over $100 million, which was more capital than any IPO since Ford Motor Company in 1956. By the end of the day, 300 millionaires were created, including Jobs and Wozniak, from a stock price of $29 per share and a market cap of $1.778 billion.
1980–1990: Success with Macintosh
In December 1979, Steve Jobs and Apple employees, including Jef Raskin, visited Xerox PARC, where they observed the Xerox Alto, featuring a graphical user interface (GUI). Apple subsequently negotiated access to PARC's technology, leading to Apple's option to buy shares at a preferential rate. This visit influenced Jobs to implement a GUI in Apple's products, starting with the Apple Lisa. Despite being pioneering as a mass-marketed GUI computer, the Lisa suffered from high costs and limited software options, leading to commercial failure.
Jobs, angered by being pushed off the Lisa team, took over the company's Macintosh division. Wozniak and Raskin had envisioned the Macintosh as a low-cost computer with a text-based interface like the Apple II, but a plane crash in 1981 forced Wozniak to step back from the project. Jobs quickly redefined the Macintosh as a graphical system that would be cheaper than the Lisa, undercutting his former division. Jobs was also hostile to the Apple II division, which at the time, generated most of the company's revenue.
In 1984, Apple launched the Macintosh, the first personal computer without a bundled programming language. Its debut was signified by "1984", a US$1.5 million television advertisement directed by Ridley Scott that aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984. This was hailed as a watershed event for Apple's success and was called a "masterpiece" by CNN and one of the greatest TV advertisements of all time by TV Guide.
The advertisement created great interest in Macintosh, and sales were initially good, but began to taper off dramatically after the first three months as reviews started to come in. Jobs had required 128 kilobytes of RAM, which limited its speed and software in favor of aspiring for a projected price point of $1,000 (equivalent to $2,900 in 2023). The Macintosh shipped for $2,495 (equivalent to $7,300 in 2023), a price panned by critics due to its slow performance.: 195 In early 1985, this sales slump triggered a power struggle between Steve Jobs and CEO John Sculley, who had been hired away from Pepsi two years earlier by Jobs saying, "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?" Sculley removed Jobs as the head of the Macintosh division, with unanimous support from the Apple board of directors.
The board of directors instructed Sculley to contain Jobs and his ability to launch expensive forays into untested products. Rather than submit to Sculley's direction, Jobs attempted to oust him from leadership. Jean-Louis Gassée informed Sculley that Jobs had been attempting to organize a boardroom coup and called an emergency meeting at which Apple's executive staff sided with Sculley and stripped Jobs of all operational duties. Jobs resigned from Apple in September 1985 and took several Apple employees with him to found NeXT. Wozniak had also quit his active employment at Apple earlier in 1985 to pursue other ventures, expressing his frustration with Apple's treatment of the Apple II division and stating that the company had "been going in the wrong direction for the last five years". Wozniak remained employed by Apple as a representative, receiving a stipend estimated to be $120,000 per year. Jobs and Wozniak remained Apple shareholders following their departures.
After the departures of Jobs and Wozniak in 1985, Sculley launched the Macintosh 512K that year with quadruple the RAM, and introduced the LaserWriter, the first reasonably priced PostScript laser printer. PageMaker, an early desktop publishing application taking advantage of the PostScript language, was also released by Aldus Corporation in July 1985. It has been suggested that the combination of Macintosh, LaserWriter, and PageMaker was responsible for the creation of the desktop publishing market.
This dominant position in the desktop publishing market allowed the company to focus on higher price points, the so-called "high-right policy" named for the position on a chart of price vs. profits. Newer models selling at higher price points offered higher profit margin, and appeared to have no effect on total sales as power users snapped up every increase in speed. Although some worried about pricing themselves out of the market, the high-right policy was in full force by the mid-1980s, due to Jean-Louis Gassée's slogan of "fifty-five or die", referring to the 55% profit margins of the Macintosh II.: 79–80
This policy began to backfire late in the decade as desktop publishing programs appeared on IBM PC compatibles with some of the same functionality of the Macintosh at far lower price points. The company lost its dominant position in the desktop publishing market and estranged many of its original consumer customer base who could no longer afford Apple products. The Christmas season of 1989 was the first in the company's history to have declining sales, which led to a 20% drop in Apple's stock price.: 117–129 During this period, the relationship between Sculley and Gassée deteriorated, leading Sculley to effectively demote Gassée in January 1990 by appointing Michael Spindler as the chief operating officer. Gassée left the company later that year to set up a rival, Be Inc.
1990–1997: Decline and restructuring
The company pivoted strategy and, in October 1990, introduced three lower-cost models: the Macintosh Classic, the Macintosh LC, and the Macintosh IIsi, all of which generated significant sales due to pent-up demand. In 1991, Apple introduced the hugely successful PowerBook with a design that set the current shape for almost all modern laptops. The same year, Apple introduced System 7, a major upgrade to the Macintosh operating system, adding color to the interface and introducing new networking capabilities.
The success of the lower-cost Macs and PowerBook brought increasing revenue. For some time, Apple was doing very well, introducing fresh new products at increasing profits. The magazine MacAddict named the period between 1989 and 1991 as the "first golden age" of the Macintosh.
The success of lower-cost consumer Macs, especially the LC, cannibalized higher-priced machines. To address this, management introduced several new brands, selling largely identical machines at different price points, for different markets: the high-end Quadra series, the mid-range Centris series, and the consumer-marketed Performa series. This led to significant consumer confusion between so many models.
In 1993, the Apple II series was discontinued. It was expensive to produce, and the company decided it was still absorbing sales from lower-cost Macintosh models. After the launch of the LC, Apple encouraged developers to create applications for Macintosh rather than Apple II, and authorized salespersons to redirect consumers from Apple II and toward Macintosh. The Apple IIe was discontinued in 1993.
Apple experimented with several other unsuccessful consumer targeted products during the 1990s, including QuickTake digital cameras, PowerCD portable CD audio players, speakers, the Pippin video game console, the eWorld online service, and Apple Interactive Television Box. Enormous resources were invested in the problematic Newton tablet division, based on John Sculley's unrealistic market forecasts.
Throughout this period, Microsoft continued to gain market share with Windows by focusing on delivering software to inexpensive personal computers, while Apple was delivering a richly engineered but expensive experience. Apple relied on high profit margins and never developed a clear response; it sued Microsoft for making a GUI similar to the Lisa in Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp. The lawsuit dragged on for years and was finally dismissed. The major product flops and the rapid loss of market share to Windows sullied Apple's reputation, and in 1993 Sculley was replaced as CEO by Michael Spindler.
Under Spindler, Apple, IBM, and Motorola formed the AIM alliance in 1994 to create a new computing platform (the PowerPC Reference Platform or PReP), with IBM and Motorola hardware coupled with Apple software. The AIM alliance hoped that PReP's performance and Apple's software would leave the PC far behind and thus counter the dominance of Windows. That year, Apple introduced the Power Macintosh, the first of many computers with Motorola's PowerPC processor.
In the wake of the alliance, Apple opened up to the idea of allowing Motorola and other companies to build Macintosh clones. Over the next two years, 75 distinct Macintosh clone models were introduced. However, by 1996, Apple executives were worried that the clones were cannibalizing sales of its own high-end computers, where profit margins were highest.
In 1996, Spindler was replaced as CEO by Gil Amelio, who was hired for his reputation as a corporate rehabilitator. Amelio made deep changes, including extensive layoffs and cost-cutting.
This period was also marked by numerous failed attempts to modernize the Macintosh operating system (MacOS). The original Macintosh operating system (System 1) was not built for multitasking (running several applications at once). The company attempted to correct this by introducing cooperative multitasking in System 5, but still decided it needed a more modern approach. This led to the Pink project in 1988, A/UX that same year, Copland in 1994, and evaluated the purchase of BeOS in 1996. Talks with Be stalled when the CEO, former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassée, demanded $300 million in contrast to Apple's $125 million offer. Only weeks away from bankruptcy, Apple's board preferred NeXTSTEP and purchased NeXT in late 1996 for $400 million, retaining Steve Jobs.
1997–2007: Return to profitability
The NeXT acquisition was finalized on February 9, 1997, and the board brought Jobs back to Apple as an advisor. On July 9, 1997, Jobs staged a boardroom coup that resulted in Amelio's resignation after overseeing a three-year record-low stock price and crippling financial losses. The board named Jobs as interim CEO and he immediately reviewed the product lineup. Jobs canceled 70% of models, ending 3,000 jobs and paring to the core of its computer offerings.
The next month, in August 1997, Steve Jobs convinced Microsoft to make a $150 million investment in Apple and a commitment to continue developing Mac software. This was seen as an "antitrust insurance policy" for Microsoft which had recently settled with the Department of Justice over anti-competitive practices in the United States v. Microsoft Corp. case. Around then, Jobs donated Apple's internal library and archives to Stanford University, to focus more on the present and the future rather than the past. He ended the Mac clone deals and in September 1997, purchased the largest clone maker, Power Computing. On November 10, 1997, the Apple Store website launched, which was tied to a new build-to-order manufacturing model similar to PC manufacturer Dell's success. The moves paid off for Jobs; at the end of his first year as CEO, the company had a $309 million profit.
On May 6, 1998, Apple introduced a new all-in-one computer reminiscent of the original Macintosh: the iMac. The iMac was a huge success, with 800,000 units sold in its first five months, and ushered in major shifts in the industry by abandoning legacy technologies like the 3+1⁄2-inch diskette, being an early adopter of the USB connector, and coming pre-installed with Internet connectivity (the "i" in iMac) via Ethernet and a dial-up modem. Its striking teardrop shape and translucent materials were designed by Jonathan Ive, who had been hired by Amelio, and who collaborated with Jobs for more than a decade to reshape Apple's product design.
A little more than a year later on July 21, 1999, Apple introduced the iBook consumer laptop. It culminated Jobs's strategy to produce only four products: refined versions of the Power Macintosh G3 desktop and PowerBook G3 laptop for professionals, and the iMac desktop and iBook laptop for consumers. Jobs said the small product line allowed for a greater focus on quality and innovation.
Around then, Apple also completed numerous acquisitions to create a portfolio of digital media production software for both professionals and consumers. Apple acquired Macromedia's Key Grip digital video editing software project which was launched as Final Cut Pro in April 1999. Key Grip's development also led to Apple's release of the consumer video-editing product iMovie in October 1999. Apple acquired the German company Astarte in April 2000, which had developed the DVD authoring software DVDirector, which Apple repackaged as the professional-oriented DVD Studio Pro, and reused its technology to create iDVD for the consumer market. In 2000, Apple purchased the SoundJam MP audio player software from Casady & Greene. Apple renamed the program iTunes, and simplified the user interface and added CD burning.
In 2001, Apple changed course with three announcements. First, on March 24, 2001, Apple announced the release of a new modern operating system, Mac OS X. This was after numerous failed attempts in the early 1990s, and several years of development. Mac OS X is based on NeXTSTEP, OpenStep, and BSD Unix, to combine the stability, reliability, and security of Unix with the ease of use of an overhauled user interface. Second, in May 2001, the first two Apple Store retail locations opened in Virginia and California, offering an improved presentation of the company's products. At the time, many speculated that the stores would fail, but they became highly successful, and the first of more than 500 stores around the world. Third, on October 23, 2001, the iPod portable digital audio player debuted. The product was first sold on November 10, 2001, and was extremely successful, with over 100 million units sold within six years.
In 2003, the iTunes Store was introduced with music downloads for 99¢ a song and iPod integration. It quickly became the market leader in online music services, with over 5 billion downloads by June 19, 2008. Two years later, the iTunes Store was the world's largest music retailer.
In 2002, Apple purchased Nothing Real for its advanced digital compositing application Shake, and Emagic for the music productivity application Logic. The purchase of Emagic made Apple the first computer manufacturer to own a music software company. The acquisition was followed by the development of Apple's consumer-level GarageBand application. The release of iPhoto that year completed the iLife suite.
At the Worldwide Developers Conference keynote address on June 6, 2005, Jobs announced that Apple would move away from PowerPC processors, and the Mac would transition to Intel processors in 2006. On January 10, 2006, the new MacBook Pro and iMac became the first Apple computers to use Intel's Core Duo CPU. By August 7, 2006, Apple made the transition to Intel chips for the entire Mac product line—over one year sooner than announced. The Power Mac, iBook, and PowerBook brands were retired during the transition; the Mac Pro, MacBook, and MacBook Pro became their respective successors. Apple also introduced Boot Camp in 2006 to help users install Windows XP or Windows Vista on their Intel Macs alongside Mac OS X.
Apple's success during this period was evident in its stock price. Between early 2003 and 2006, the price of Apple's stock increased more than tenfold, from around $6 per share (split-adjusted) to over $80. When Apple surpassed Dell's market cap in January 2006, Jobs sent an email to Apple employees saying Dell's CEO Michael Dell should eat his words. Nine years prior, Dell had said that if he ran Apple he would "shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders".
2007–2011: Success with mobile devices
During his keynote speech at the Macworld Expo on January 9, 2007, Jobs announced the renaming of Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple Inc., because the company had broadened its focus from computers to consumer electronics. This event also saw the announcement of the iPhone and the Apple TV. The company sold 270,000 first-generation iPhone devices during the first 30 hours of sales, and the device was called "a game changer for the industry".
In an article posted on Apple's website on February 6, 2007, Jobs wrote that Apple would be willing to sell music on the iTunes Store without digital rights management, thereby allowing tracks to be played on third-party players if record labels would agree to drop the technology. On April 2, 2007, Apple and EMI jointly announced the removal of DRM technology from EMI's catalog in the iTunes Store, effective in May 2007. Other record labels eventually followed suit and Apple published a press release in January 2009 to announce that all songs on the iTunes Store are available without their FairPlay DRM.
In July 2008, Apple launched the App Store to sell third-party applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Within a month, the store sold 60 million applications and registered an average daily revenue of $1 million, with Jobs speculating in August 2008 that the App Store could become a billion-dollar business for Apple. By October 2008, Apple was the third-largest mobile handset supplier in the world due to the popularity of the iPhone.
On January 14, 2009, Jobs announced in an internal memo that he would be taking a six-month medical leave of absence from Apple until the end of June 2009 and would spend the time focusing on his health. In the email, Jobs stated that "the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well", and explained that the break would allow the company "to focus on delivering extraordinary products". Though Jobs was absent, Apple recorded its best non-holiday quarter (Q1 FY 2009) during the recession, with revenue of $8.16 billion and profit of $1.21 billion.
After years of speculation and multiple rumored "leaks", Apple unveiled a large screen, tablet-like media device known as the iPad on January 27, 2010. The iPad ran the same touch-based operating system as the iPhone, and all iPhone apps were compatible with the iPad. This gave the iPad a large app catalog on launch, though having very little development time before the release. Later that year on April 3, 2010, the iPad was launched in the U.S. It sold more than 300,000 units on its first day, and 500,000 by the end of the first week. In May 2010, Apple's market cap exceeded that of competitor Microsoft for the first time since 1989.
In June 2010, Apple released the iPhone 4, which introduced video calling using FaceTime, multitasking, and a new design with an exposed stainless steel frame as the phone's antenna system. Later that year, Apple again refreshed the iPod line by introducing a multi-touch iPod Nano, an iPod Touch with FaceTime, and an iPod Shuffle that brought back the clickwheel buttons of earlier generations. It also introduced the smaller, cheaper second-generation Apple TV which allowed the rental of movies and shows.
On January 17, 2011, Jobs announced in an internal Apple memo that he would take another medical leave of absence for an indefinite period to allow him to focus on his health. Chief operating officer Tim Cook assumed Jobs's day-to-day operations at Apple, although Jobs would still remain "involved in major strategic decisions". Apple became the most valuable consumer-facing brand in the world. In June 2011, Jobs surprisingly took the stage and unveiled iCloud, an online storage and syncing service for music, photos, files, and software which replaced MobileMe, Apple's previous attempt at content syncing. This would be the last product launch Jobs would attend before his death.
On August 24, 2011, Jobs resigned his position as CEO of Apple. He was replaced by Cook and Jobs became Apple's chairman. Apple did not have a chairman at the time and instead had two co-lead directors—Andrea Jung and Arthur D. Levinson—who continued with those titles until Levinson replaced Jobs as chairman of the board in November after Jobs's death.
2011–present: Post-Jobs era, Tim Cook
On October 5, 2011, Steve Jobs died, marking the end of an era for Apple. The next major product announcement by Apple was on January 19, 2012, when Apple's Phil Schiller introduced iBooks Textbooks for iOS and iBook Author for Mac OS X in New York City. Jobs stated in the biography Steve Jobs that he wanted to reinvent the textbook industry and education.
From 2011 to 2012, Apple released the iPhone 4s and iPhone 5, which featured improved cameras, an intelligent software assistant named Siri, and cloud-synced data with iCloud; the third- and fourth-generation iPads, which featured Retina displays; and the iPad Mini, which featured a 7.9-inch screen in contrast to the iPad's 9.7-inch screen. These launches were successful, with the iPhone 5 (released September 21, 2012) becoming Apple's biggest iPhone launch with over two million pre-orders and sales of three million iPads in three days following the launch of the iPad Mini and fourth-generation iPad (released November 3, 2012). Apple also released a third-generation 13-inch MacBook Pro with a Retina display and new iMac and Mac Mini computers.
On August 20, 2012, Apple's rising stock price increased the company's market capitalization to a then-record $624 billion. This beat the non-inflation-adjusted record for market capitalization previously set by Microsoft in 1999. On August 24, 2012, a US jury ruled that Samsung should pay Apple $1.05 billion (£665m) in damages in an intellectual property lawsuit. Samsung appealed the damages award, which was reduced by $450 million and further granted Samsung's request for a new trial. On November 10, 2012, Apple confirmed a global settlement that dismissed all existing lawsuits between Apple and HTC up to that date, in favor of a ten-year license agreement for current and future patents between the two companies. It is predicted that Apple will make US$280 million per year from this deal with HTC.
In May 2014, Apple confirmed its intent to acquire Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine's audio company Beats Electronics—producer of the "Beats by Dr. Dre" line of headphones and speaker products, and operator of the music streaming service Beats Music—for US$3 billion, and to sell their products through Apple's retail outlets and resellers. Iovine believed that Beats had always "belonged" with Apple, as the company modeled itself after Apple's "unmatched ability to marry culture and technology". The acquisition was the largest purchase in Apple's history.
During a press event on September 9, 2014, Apple introduced a smartwatch called the Apple Watch. Initially, Apple marketed the device as a fashion accessory and a complement to the iPhone, that would allow people to look at their smartphones less. Over time, the company has focused on developing health and fitness-oriented features on the watch, in an effort to compete with dedicated activity trackers. In January 2016, Apple announced that over one billion Apple devices were in active use worldwide.
On June 6, 2016, Fortune released Fortune 500, its list of companies ranked on revenue generation. In the trailing fiscal year of 2015, Apple was listed as the top tech company. It ranked third, overall, with US$233 billion in revenue. This represents a movement upward of two spots from the previous year's list.
In June 2017, Apple announced the HomePod, its smart speaker aimed to compete against Sonos, Google Home, and Amazon Echo. Toward the end of the year, TechCrunch reported that Apple was acquiring Shazam, a company that introduced its products at WWDC and specializing in music, TV, film and advertising recognition. The acquisition was confirmed a few days later, reportedly costing Apple US$400 million, with media reports that the purchase looked like a move to acquire data and tools bolstering the Apple Music streaming service. The purchase was approved by the European Union in September 2018.
Also in June 2017, Apple appointed Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg to head the newly formed worldwide video unit. In November 2017, Apple announced it was branching out into original scripted programming: a drama series starring Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, and a reboot of the anthology series Amazing Stories with Steven Spielberg. In June 2018, Apple signed the Writers Guild of America's minimum basic agreement and Oprah Winfrey to a multi-year content partnership. Additional partnerships for original series include Sesame Workshop and DHX Media and its subsidiary Peanuts Worldwide, and a partnership with A24 to create original films.
During the Apple Special Event in September 2017, the AirPower wireless charger was announced alongside the iPhone X, iPhone 8, and Watch Series 3. The AirPower was intended to wirelessly charge multiple devices, simultaneously. Though initially set to release in early 2018, the AirPower would be canceled in March 2019, marking the first cancellation of a device under Cook's leadership. On August 19, 2020, Apple's share price briefly topped $467.77, making it the first US company with a market capitalization of US$2 trillion.
During its annual WWDC keynote speech on June 22, 2020, Apple announced it would move away from Intel processors, and the Mac would transition to processors developed in-house. The announcement was expected by industry analysts, and it has been noted that Macs featuring Apple's processors would allow for big increases in performance over current Intel-based models. On November 10, 2020, the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and the Mac Mini became the first Mac devices powered by an Apple-designed processor, the Apple M1.
In April 2022, it was reported that Samsung Electro-Mechanics would be collaborating with Apple on its M2 chip instead of LG Innotek. Developer logs showed that at least nine Mac models with four different M2 chips were being tested.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple's effort to develop its own chips left it better prepared to deal with the semiconductor shortage that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to increased profitability, with sales of M1-based Mac computers rising sharply in 2020 and 2021. It also inspired other companies like Tesla, Amazon, and Meta Platforms to pursue a similar path.
In April 2022, Apple opened an online store that allowed anyone in the U.S. to view repair manuals and order replacement parts for specific recent iPhones, although the difference in cost between this method and official repair is anticipated to be minimal.
In May 2022, a trademark was filed for RealityOS, an operating system reportedly intended for virtual and augmented reality headsets, first mentioned in 2017. According to Bloomberg, the headset may come out in 2023. Further insider reports state that the device uses iris scanning for payment confirmation and signing into accounts.
On June 18, 2022, the Apple Store in Towson, Maryland, became the first to unionize in the U.S., with the employees voting to join the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.
On July 7, 2022, Apple added Lockdown Mode to macOS 13 and iOS 16, as a response to the earlier Pegasus revelations; the mode increases security protections for high-risk users against targeted zero-day malware.
Apple launched a buy now, pay later service called 'Apple Pay Later' for its Apple Wallet users in March 2023. The program allows its users to apply for loans between $50 and $1,000 to make online or in-app purchases and then repaying them through four installments spread over six weeks without any interest or fees.
In November 2023, Apple agreed to a $25 million settlement in a U.S. Department of Justice case that alleged Apple was discriminating against U.S. citizens in hiring. Apple created jobs that were not listed online and required paper submission to apply for, while advertising these jobs to foreign workers as part of recruitment for PERM.
In January 2024, Apple announced compliance with the European Union's competition law, with major changes to the App Store and other services, effective on March 7. This enables iOS users in the 27-nation bloc to use alternative app stores, and alternative payment methods within apps. This adds a menu in Safari for downloading alternative browsers, such as Chrome or Firefox. In June 2024, Apple introduced Apple Intelligence to incorporate on-device artificial intelligence capabilities.
Products
Mac
Mac, which is short for Macintosh—its official name until 1999—is Apple's line of personal computers that use the company's proprietary macOS operating system. Personal computers were Apple's original business line, but as of the end of 2023 they account for only about eight percent of the company's revenue.
There are six Mac computer families in production:
iMac: Consumer all-in-one desktop computer, introduced in 1998.
Mac Mini: Consumer sub-desktop computer, introduced in 2005.
MacBook Pro: Professional notebook, introduced in 2006.
Mac Pro: Professional workstation, introduced in 2006.
MacBook Air: Consumer ultra-thin notebook, introduced in 2008.
Mac Studio: Professional small form-factor workstation, introduced in 2022.
Often described as a walled garden, Macs use Apple silicon chips, run the macOS operating system, and include Apple software like the Safari web browser, iMovie for home movie editing, GarageBand for music creation, and the iWork productivity suite. Apple also sells pro apps: Final Cut Pro for video production, Logic Pro for musicians and producers, and Xcode for software developers. Apple also sells a variety of accessories for Macs, including the Pro Display XDR, Apple Studio Display, Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad, and Magic Keyboard.
iPhone
The iPhone is Apple's line of smartphones, which run the iOS operating system. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007. Since then, new iPhone models have been released every year. When it was introduced, its multi-touch screen was described as "revolutionary" and a "game-changer" for the mobile phone industry. The device has been credited with creating the app economy.
iOS is one of the two major smartphone platforms in the world, alongside Android. The iPhone has generated large profits for the company, and is credited with helping to make Apple one of the world's most valuable publicly traded companies. As of the end of 2023, the iPhone accounts for more than half of the company's revenue.
iPad
The iPad is Apple's line of tablets which run iPadOS. The first-generation iPad was announced on January 27, 2010. The iPad is mainly marketed for consuming multimedia, creating art, working on documents, videoconferencing, and playing games. The iPad lineup consists of several base iPad models, and the smaller iPad Mini, upgraded iPad Air, and high-end iPad Pro. Apple has consistently improved the iPad's performance, with the iPad Pro adopting the same M1 and M2 chips as the Mac; but the iPad still receives criticism for its limited OS.
As of September 2020, Apple has sold more than 500 million iPads, though sales peaked in 2013. The iPad still remains the most popular tablet computer by sales as of the second quarter of 2020, and accounted for seven percent of the company's revenue as of the end of 2023. Apple sells several iPad accessories, including the Apple Pencil, Smart Keyboard, Smart Keyboard Folio, Magic Keyboard, and several adapters.
Other products
Apple makes several other products that it categorizes as "Wearables, Home and Accessories". These products include the AirPods line of wireless headphones, Apple TV digital media players, Apple Watch smartwatches, Beats headphones, HomePod smart speakers, and the Vision Pro mixed reality headset. As of the end of 2023, this broad line of products comprises about ten percent of the company's revenues.
Services
Apple offers a broad line of services, including advertising in the App Store and Apple News app, the AppleCare+ extended warranty plan, the iCloud+ cloud-based data storage service, payment services through the Apple Card credit card and the Apple Pay processing platform, digital content services including Apple Books, Apple Fitness+, Apple Music, Apple News+, Apple TV+, and the iTunes Store. As of the end of 2023, services comprise about 22% of the company's revenue. In 2019, Apple announced it would be making a concerted effort to expand its service revenues.
Marketing
Branding
According to Steve Jobs, the company's name was inspired by his visit to an apple farm while on a fruitarian diet. Apple's first logo, designed by Ron Wayne, depicts Sir Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree. It was almost immediately replaced by Rob Janoff's "rainbow Apple", the now-familiar rainbow-colored silhouette of an apple with a bite taken out of it. This logo has been erroneously referred to as a tribute to Alan Turing, with the bite mark a reference to his method of suicide.
On August 27, 1999, Apple officially dropped the rainbow scheme and began to use monochromatic logos nearly identical in shape to the previous rainbow incarnation. An Aqua-themed version of the monochrome logo was used from 1998 until 2003, and a glass-themed version was used from 2007 until 2013.
Apple evangelists were actively engaged by the company at one time, but this was after the phenomenon had already been firmly established. Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki has called the brand fanaticism "something that was stumbled upon", while Ive claimed in 2014 that "people have an incredibly personal relationship" with Apple's products.
Fortune magazine named Apple the most admired company in the United States in 2008, and in the world from 2008 to 2012. On September 30, 2013, Apple surpassed Coca-Cola to become the world's most valuable brand in the Omnicom Group's "Best Global Brands" report. Boston Consulting Group has ranked Apple as the world's most innovative brand every year as of 2005. As of January 2021, 1.65 billion Apple products were in active use. In February 2023, that number exceeded 2 billion devices. In 2023, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)'s Madrid Yearly Review ranked Apple Inc.'s number of marks applications filled under the Madrid System as 10th in the world, with 74 trademarks applications submitted during 2023.
Apple has been ranked #3 company in the world in the Fortune 500 list for the year 2024.
Advertising
Apple's first slogan, "Byte into an Apple", was coined in the late 1970s. From 1997 to 2002, the slogan "Think different" was used in advertising campaigns, and is still closely associated with Apple. Apple also has slogans for specific product lines—for example, "iThink, therefore iMac" was used in 1998 to promote the iMac, and "Say hello to iPhone" has been used in iPhone advertisements. "Hello" was also used to introduce the original Macintosh, Newton, iMac ("hello (again)"), and iPod.
From the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984, with the 1984 Super Bowl advertisement to the more modern Get a Mac adverts, Apple has been recognized for its efforts toward effective advertising and marketing for its products. However, claims made by later campaigns were criticized, particularly the 2005 Power Mac ads. Apple's product advertisements gained significant attention as a result of their eye-popping graphics and catchy tunes. Musicians who benefited from an improved profile as a result of their songs being included on Apple advertisements include Canadian singer Feist with the song "1234" and Yael Naïm with the song "New Soul".
Stores
The first Apple Stores were originally opened as two locations in May 2001 by then-CEO Steve Jobs, after years of attempting but failing store-within-a-store concepts. Seeing a need for improved retail presentation of the company's products, he began an effort in 1997 to revamp the retail program to get an improved relationship to consumers, and hired Ron Johnson in 2000. Jobs relaunched Apple's online store in 1997, and opened the first two physical stores in 2001. The media initially speculated that Apple would fail, but its stores were highly successful, bypassing the sales numbers of competing nearby stores, and within three years reached US$1 billion in annual sales, becoming the fastest retailer in history to do so.
Over the years, Apple has expanded the number of retail locations and its geographical coverage, with 499 stores across 22 countries worldwide as of December 2017. Strong product sales have placed Apple among the top-tier retail stores, with sales over $16 billion globally in 2011. Apple Stores underwent a period of significant redesign, beginning in May 2016. This redesign included physical changes to the Apple Stores, such as open spaces and re-branded rooms, and changes in function to facilitate interaction between consumers and professionals.
Many Apple Stores are located inside shopping malls, but Apple has built several stand-alone "flagship" stores in high-profile locations. It has been granted design patents and received architectural awards for its stores' designs and construction, specifically for its use of glass staircases and cubes. The success of Apple Stores have had significant influence over other consumer electronics retailers, who have lost traffic, control and profits due to a perceived higher quality of service and products at Apple Stores. Due to the popularity of the brand, Apple receives a large number of job applications, many of which come from young workers. Although Apple Store employees receive above-average pay, are offered money toward education and health care, and receive product discounts, there are limited or no paths of career advancement.
Market power
On March 16, 2020, France fined Apple €1.1 billion for colluding with two wholesalers to stifle competition and keep prices high by handicapping independent resellers. The arrangement created aligned prices for Apple products such as iPads and personal computers for about half the French retail market. According to the French regulators, the abuses occurred between 2005 and 2017 but were first discovered after a complaint by an independent reseller, eBizcuss, in 2012.
On August 13, 2020, Epic Games, the maker of the popular game Fortnite, sued both Apple and Google after Fortnite was removed from Apple's and Google's app stores. The lawsuits came after Apple and Google blocked the game after it introduced a direct payment system that bypassed the fees that Apple and Google had imposed. In September 2020, Epic Games founded the Coalition for App Fairness together with thirteen other companies, which aims for better conditions for the inclusion of apps in the app stores. Later, in December 2020, Facebook agreed to assist Epic in their legal game against Apple, planning to support the company by providing materials and documents to Epic. Facebook had, however, stated that the company would not participate directly with the lawsuit, although did commit to helping with the discovery of evidence relating to the trial of 2021. In the months prior to their agreement, Facebook had been dealing with feuds against Apple relating to the prices of paid apps and privacy rule changes. Head of ad products for Facebook Dan Levy commented, saying that "this is not really about privacy for them, this is about an attack on personalized ads and the consequences it's going to have on small-business owners," commenting on the full-page ads placed by Facebook in various newspapers in December 2020.
Privacy
Apple has publicly taken a pro-privacy stance, actively making privacy-conscious features and settings part of its conferences, promotional campaigns, and public image. With its iOS 8 mobile operating system in 2014, the company started encrypting all contents of iOS devices through users' passcodes, making it impossible at the time for the company to provide customer data to law enforcement requests seeking such information. With the popularity rise of cloud storage solutions, Apple began a technique in 2016 to do deep learning scans for facial data in photos on the user's local device and encrypting the content before uploading it to Apple's iCloud storage system. It also introduced "differential privacy", a way to collect crowdsourced data from many users, while keeping individual users anonymous, in a system that Wired described as "trying to learn as much as possible about a group while learning as little as possible about any individual in it". Users are explicitly asked if they want to participate, and can actively opt-in or opt-out.
However, Apple has aided law enforcement in criminal investigations by providing iCloud backups of users' devices, and the company's commitment to privacy has been questioned by its efforts to promote biometric authentication technology in its newer iPhone models, which do not have the same level of constitutional privacy as a passcode in the United States.
With Apple's release of an update to iOS 14, Apple required all developers of iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch applications to directly ask iPhone users permission to track them. The feature, called "App Tracking Transparency", received heavy criticism from Facebook, whose primary business model revolves around the tracking of users' data and sharing such data with advertisers so users can see more relevant ads, a technique commonly known as targeted advertising. After Facebook's measures, including purchasing full-page newspaper advertisements protesting App Tracking Transparency, Apple released the update in early 2021. A study by Verizon subsidiary Flurry Analytics reported only 4% of iOS users in the United States and 12% worldwide have opted into tracking.
Prior to the release of iOS 15, Apple announced new efforts at combating child sexual abuse material on iOS and Mac platforms. Parents of minor iMessage users can now be alerted if their child sends or receives nude photographs. Additionally, on-device hashing would take place on media destined for upload to iCloud, and hashes would be compared to a list of known abusive images provided by law enforcement; if enough matches were found, Apple would be alerted and authorities informed. The new features received praise from law enforcement and victims rights advocates. However, privacy advocates, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, condemned the new features as invasive and highly prone to abuse by authoritarian governments.
Ireland's Data Protection Commission launched a privacy investigation to examine whether Apple complied with the EU's GDPR law following an investigation into how the company processes personal data with targeted ads on its platform.
In December 2019, security researcher Brian Krebs discovered that the iPhone 11 Pro would still show the arrow indicator –signifying location services are being used– at the top of the screen while the main location services toggle is enabled, despite all individual location services being disabled. Krebs was unable to replicate this behavior on older models and when asking Apple for comment, he was told by Apple that "It is expected behavior that the Location Services icon appears in the status bar when Location Services is enabled. The icon appears for system services that do not have a switch in Settings."
Apple later further clarified that this behavior was to ensure compliance with ultra-wideband regulations in specific countries, a technology Apple started implementing in iPhones starting with iPhone 11 Pro, and emphasized that "the management of ultra wideband compliance and its use of location data is done entirely on the device and Apple is not collecting user location data." Will Strafach, an executive at security firm Guardian Firewall, confirmed the lack of evidence that location data was sent off to a remote server. Apple promised to add a new toggle for this feature and in later iOS revisions Apple provided users with the option to tap on the location services indicator in Control Center to see which specific service is using the device's location.
According to published reports by Bloomberg News on March 30, 2022, Apple turned over data such as phone numbers, physical addresses, and IP addresses to hackers posing as law enforcement officials using forged documents. The law enforcement requests sometimes included forged signatures of real or fictional officials. When asked about the allegations, an Apple representative referred the reporter to a section of the company policy for law enforcement guidelines, which stated, "We review every data request for legal sufficiency and use advanced systems and processes to validate law enforcement requests and detect abuse."
Corporate affairs
Business trends
The key trends for Apple are, as of each financial year ending September 24:
Leadership
Senior management
As of March 16, 2021, the management of Apple Inc. includes:
Tim Cook (chief executive officer)
Jeff Williams (chief operating officer)
Luca Maestri (senior vice president and chief financial officer)
Katherine L. Adams (senior vice president and general counsel)
Eddy Cue (senior vice president – Internet Software and Services)
Craig Federighi (senior vice president – Software Engineering)
John Giannandrea (senior vice president – Machine Learning and AI Strategy)
Deirdre O'Brien (senior vice president – Retail + People)
John Ternus (senior vice president – Hardware Engineering)
Greg Josiwak (senior vice president – Worldwide Marketing)
Johny Srouji (senior vice president – Hardware Technologies)
Sabih Khan (senior vice president – Operations)
Board of directors
As of January 20, 2023, the board of directors of Apple Inc. includes:
Arthur D. Levinson (chairman)
Tim Cook (executive director and CEO)
James A. Bell
Al Gore
Alex Gorsky
Andrea Jung
Monica Lozano
Ronald Sugar
Susan Wagner
Previous CEOs
Michael Scott (1977–1981)
Mike Markkula (1981–1983)
John Sculley (1983–1993)
Michael Spindler (1993–1996)
Gil Amelio (1996–1997)
Steve Jobs (1997–2011)
Ownership
As of December 30, 2023, the largest shareholders of Apple were:
The Vanguard Group (1,317,966,471 shares, 8.54%)
BlackRock (1,042,391,808 shares, 6.75%)
Berkshire Hathaway (905,560,000 shares, 5.86%)
State Street Corporation (586,052,057 shares, 3.80%)
Geode Capital Management (300,822,623 shares, 1.95%)
Fidelity Investments (299,871,352 shares, 1.94%)
Morgan Stanley (217,961,227 shares, 1.41%)
T. Rowe Price (210,827,097 shares, 1.37%)
Norges Bank (176,141,203 shares, 1.14%)
Northern Trust (162,115,200 shares, 1.05%)
Corporate culture
Apple is one of several highly successful companies founded in the 1970s that bucked the traditional notions of corporate culture. Jobs often walked around the office barefoot even after Apple became a Fortune 500 company. By the time of the "1984" television advertisement, Apple's informal culture had become a key trait that differentiated it from its competitors. According to a 2011 report in Fortune, this has resulted in a corporate culture more akin to a startup rather than a multinational corporation. In a 2017 interview, Wozniak credited watching Star Trek and attending Star Trek conventions in his youth as inspiration for co-founding Apple.
As the company has grown and been led by a series of differently opinionated chief executives, it has arguably lost some of its original character. Nonetheless, it has maintained a reputation for fostering individuality and excellence that reliably attracts talented workers, particularly after Jobs returned. Numerous Apple employees have stated that projects without Jobs's involvement often took longer than others.
The Apple Fellows program awards employees for extraordinary technical or leadership contributions to personal computing. Recipients include Bill Atkinson, Steve Capps, Rod Holt, Alan Kay, Guy Kawasaki, Al Alcorn, Don Norman, Rich Page, Steve Wozniak, and Phil Schiller.
Jobs intended that employees were to be specialists who are not exposed to functions outside their area of expertise. For instance, Ron Johnson—Senior Vice President of Retail Operations until November 1, 2011—was responsible for site selection, in-store service, and store layout, yet had no control of the inventory in his stores. This was done by Tim Cook, who had a background in supply-chain management. Apple is known for strictly enforcing accountability. Each project has a "directly responsible individual" or "DRI" in Apple jargon. Unlike other major U.S. companies, Apple provides a relatively simple compensation policy for executives that does not include perks enjoyed by other CEOs like country club fees or private use of company aircraft. The company typically grants stock options to executives every other year.
In 2015, Apple had 110,000 full-time employees. This increased to 116,000 full-time employees the next year, a notable hiring decrease, largely due to its first revenue decline. Apple does not specify how many of its employees work in retail, though its 2014 SEC filing put the number at approximately half of its employee base. In September 2017, Apple announced that it had over 123,000 full-time employees.
Apple has a strong culture of corporate secrecy, and has an anti-leak Global Security team that recruits from the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the United States Secret Service. In December 2017, Glassdoor said Apple was the 48th best place to work, having originally entered at rank 19 in 2009, peaking at rank 10 in 2012, and falling down the ranks in subsequent years. In 2023, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman revealed the existence of Apple's Exploratory Design Group (XDG), which was working to add glucose monitoring to the Apple Watch. Gurman compared XDG to Alphabet's X "moonshot factory".
Offices
Apple Inc.'s world corporate headquarters are located in Cupertino, in the middle of California's Silicon Valley, at Apple Park, a massive circular groundscraper building with a circumference of one mile (1.6 km). The building opened in April 2017 and houses more than 12,000 employees. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs wanted Apple Park to look less like a business park and more like a nature refuge, and personally appeared before the Cupertino City Council in June 2011 to make the proposal, in his final public appearance before his death.
Apple also operates from the Apple Campus (also known by its address, 1 Infinite Loop), a grouping of six buildings in Cupertino that total 850,000 square feet (79,000 m2) located about 1 mile (1.6 km) to the west of Apple Park. The Apple Campus was the company's headquarters from its opening in 1993, until the opening of Apple Park in 2017. The buildings, located at 1–6 Infinite Loop, are arranged in a circular pattern around a central green space, in a design that has been compared to that of a university.
In addition to Apple Park and the Apple Campus, Apple occupies an additional thirty office buildings scattered throughout the city of Cupertino, including three buildings as prior headquarters: Stephens Creek Three from 1977 to 1978, Bandley One from 1978 to 1982, and Mariani One from 1982 to 1993. In total, Apple occupies almost 40% of the available office space in the city.
Apple's headquarters for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) are located in Cork in the south of Ireland, called the Hollyhill campus. The facility, which opened in 1980, houses 5,500 people and was Apple's first location outside of the United States. Apple's international sales and distribution arms operate out of the campus in Cork.
Apple has two campuses near Austin, Texas: a 216,000-square-foot (20,100 m2) campus opened in 2014 houses 500 engineers who work on Apple silicon and a 1.1-million-square-foot (100,000 m2) campus opened in 2021 where 6,000 people work in technical support, supply chain management, online store curation, and Apple Maps data management. The company also has several other locations in Boulder, Colorado; Culver City, California; Herzliya (Israel), London, New York, Pittsburgh, San Diego, and Seattle that each employ hundreds of people.
Litigation
Apple has been a participant in various legal proceedings and claims since it began operation. In particular, Apple is known for and promotes itself as actively and aggressively enforcing its intellectual property interests. Some litigation examples include Apple v. Samsung, Apple v. Microsoft, Motorola Mobility v. Apple Inc., and Apple Corps v. Apple Computer. Apple has also had to defend itself against charges on numerous occasions of violating intellectual property rights. Most have been dismissed in the courts as shell companies known as patent trolls, with no evidence of actual use of patents in question. On December 21, 2016, Nokia announced that in the U.S. and Germany, it has filed a suit against Apple, claiming that the latter's products infringe on Nokia's patents.
Most recently, in November 2017, the United States International Trade Commission announced an investigation into allegations of patent infringement in regards to Apple's remote desktop technology; Aqua Connect, a company that builds remote desktop software, has claimed that Apple infringed on two of its patents. In January 2022, Ericsson sued Apple over payment of royalty of 5G technology. On June 24, 2024, the European Commission accused Apple of violating the Digital Markets Act by preventing "app developers from freely steering consumers to alternative channels for offers and content".
Finances
As of 2023, Apple is the world's largest technology company by revenue, with US$394.33 billion; the world's largest technology company by total assets; the fourth-largest personal computer vendor by unit sales; and the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer.
In its fiscal year ending in September 2011, Apple Inc. reported a total of $108 billion in annual revenues—a significant increase from its 2010 revenues of $65 billion—and nearly $82 billion in cash reserves. On March 19, 2012, Apple announced plans for a $2.65-per-share dividend beginning in fourth quarter of 2012, per approval by their board of directors.
The company's worldwide annual revenue in 2013 totaled $170 billion. In May 2013, Apple entered the top ten of the Fortune 500 list of companies for the first time, rising 11 places above its 2012 ranking to take the sixth position. As of 2016, Apple has around US$234 billion of cash and marketable securities, of which 90% is located outside the United States for tax purposes.
Apple amassed 65% of all profits made by the eight largest worldwide smartphone manufacturers in quarter one of 2014, according to a report by Canaccord Genuity. In the first quarter of 2015, the company garnered 92% of all earnings.
On April 30, 2017, The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple had cash reserves of $250 billion, officially confirmed by Apple as specifically $256.8 billion a few days later.
As of August 3, 2018, Apple was the largest publicly traded corporation in the world by market capitalization. On August 2, 2018, Apple became the first publicly traded U.S. company to reach a $1 trillion market value, and as of June 2024, is valued at just over $3.2 trillion. Apple was ranked No. 4 on the 2018 Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by revenue.
In July 2022, Apple reported an 11% decline in Q3 profits compared to 2021. Its revenue in the same period rose 2% year-on-year to $83 billion, though this figure was also lower than in 2021, where the increase was at 36%. The general downturn is reportedly caused by the slowing global economy and supply chain disruptions in China. That year, Apple was one of the largest corporate spenders on research and development worldwide, with R&D expenditure amounting to over $27 billion.
In May 2023, Apple reported a decline in its sales for the first quarter of 2023. Compared to that of 2022, revenue for 2023 fell by 3%. This is Apple's second consecutive quarter of sales decline. This fall is attributed to the slowing economy and consumers putting off purchases of iPads and computers due to increased pricing. However, iPhone sales held up with a year-on-year increase of 1.5%. According to Apple, demands for such devices were strong, particularly in Latin America and South Asia.
Taxes
Apple has created subsidiaries in low-tax places such as Ireland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and the British Virgin Islands to cut the taxes it pays around the world. According to The New York Times, in the 1980s Apple was among the first tech companies to designate overseas salespeople in high-tax countries in a manner that allowed the company to sell on behalf of low-tax subsidiaries on other continents, sidestepping income taxes. In the late 1980s, Apple was a pioneer of an accounting technique known as the "Double Irish with a Dutch sandwich", which reduces taxes by routing profits through Irish subsidiaries and the Netherlands and then to the Caribbean.
British Conservative Party Member of Parliament Charlie Elphicke published research on October 30, 2012, which showed that some multinational companies, including Apple Inc., were making billions of pounds of profit in the UK, but were paying an effective tax rate to the UK Treasury of only 3 percent, well below standard corporate tax rates. He followed this research by calling on the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne to force these multinationals, which also included Google and The Coca-Cola Company, to state the effective rate of tax they pay on their UK revenues. Elphicke also said that government contracts should be withheld from multinationals who do not pay their fair share of UK tax.
According to a US Senate report on the company's offshore tax structure concluded in May 2013, Apple has held billions of dollars in profits in Irish subsidiaries to pay little or no taxes to any government by using an unusual global tax structure. The main subsidiary, a holding company that includes Apple's retail stores throughout Europe, has not paid any corporate income tax in the last five years. "Apple has exploited a difference between Irish and U.S. tax residency rules", the report said. On May 21, 2013, Apple CEO Tim Cook defended his company's tax tactics at a Senate hearing.
Apple says that it is the single largest taxpayer in the U.S., with an effective tax rate of approximately of 26% as of Q2 FY2016. In an interview with the German newspaper FAZ in October 2017, Tim Cook stated that Apple was the biggest taxpayer worldwide.
In 2016, after a two-year investigation, the European Commission claimed that Apple's use of a hybrid Double Irish tax arrangement constituted "illegal state aid" from Ireland, and ordered Apple to pay 13 billion euros ($14.5 billion) in unpaid taxes, the largest corporate tax fine in history. This was later annulled, after the European General Court ruled that the commission had provided insufficient evidence. In 2018, Apple repatriated $285 billion to America, resulting in a $38 billion tax payment spread over the following eight years.
Charity
Apple is a partner of Product Red, a fundraising campaign for AIDS charity. In November 2014, Apple arranged for all App Store revenue in a two-week period to go to the fundraiser, generating more than US$20 million, and in March 2017, it released an iPhone 7 with a red color finish.
Apple contributes financially to fundraisers in times of natural disasters. In November 2012, it donated $2.5 million to the American Red Cross to aid relief efforts after Hurricane Sandy, and in 2017 it donated $5 million to relief efforts for both Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Harvey, and for the 2017 Central Mexico earthquake. The company has used its iTunes platform to encourage donations in the wake of environmental disasters and humanitarian crises, such as the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the 2011 Japan earthquake, Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in November 2013, and the 2015 European migrant crisis. Apple emphasizes that it does not incur any processing or other fees for iTunes donations, sending 100% of the payments directly to relief efforts, though it also acknowledges that the Red Cross does not receive any personal information on the users donating and that the payments may not be tax deductible.
On April 14, 2016, Apple and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) announced that they have engaged in a partnership to, "help protect life on our planet". Apple released a special page in the iTunes App Store, Apps for Earth. In the arrangement, Apple has committed that through April 24, WWF will receive 100% of the proceeds from the applications participating in the App Store via both the purchases of any paid apps and the In-App Purchases. Apple and WWF's Apps for Earth campaign raised more than $8 million in total proceeds to support WWF's conservation work. WWF announced the results at WWDC 2016 in San Francisco.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Apple's CEO Cook announced that the company will be donating "millions" of masks to health workers in the United States and Europe. On January 13, 2021, Apple announced a $100 million Racial Equity and Justice Initiative to help combat institutional racism worldwide after the 2020 murder of George Floyd. In June 2023, Apple announced doubling this and then distributed more than $200 million to support organizations focused on education, economic growth, and criminal justice. Half is philanthropic grants and half is centered on equity.
Environment
Apple Energy
Apple Energy, LLC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Apple Inc. that sells solar energy. As of June 6, 2016, Apple's solar farms in California and Nevada have been declared to provide 217.9 megawatts of solar generation capacity. Apple has received regulatory approval to construct a landfill gas energy plant in North Carolina to use the methane emissions to generate electricity. Apple's North Carolina data center is already powered entirely by renewable sources.
Energy and resources
In 2010, Climate Counts, a nonprofit organization dedicated to directing consumers toward the greenest companies, gave Apple a score of 52 points out of a possible 100, which puts Apple in their top category "Striding". This was an increase from May 2008, when Climate Counts only gave Apple 11 points out of 100, which placed the company last among electronics companies, at which time Climate Counts also labeled Apple with a "stuck icon", adding that Apple at the time was "a choice to avoid for the climate-conscious consumer".
Following a Greenpeace protest, Apple released a statement on April 17, 2012, committing to ending its use of coal and shifting to 100% renewable clean energy. By 2013, Apple was using 100% renewable energy to power their data centers. Overall, 75% of the company's power came from clean renewable sources.
In May 2015, Greenpeace evaluated the state of the Green Internet and commended Apple on their environmental practices saying, "Apple's commitment to renewable energy has helped set a new bar for the industry, illustrating in very concrete terms that a 100% renewable Internet is within its reach, and providing several models of intervention for other companies that want to build a sustainable Internet."
As of 2016, Apple states that 100% of its U.S. operations run on renewable energy, 100% of Apple's data centers run on renewable energy and 93% of Apple's global operations run on renewable energy. However, the facilities are connected to the local grid which usually contains a mix of fossil and renewable sources, so Apple carbon offsets its electricity use. The Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) allows consumers to see the effect a product has on the environment. Each product receives a Gold, Silver, or Bronze rank depending on its efficiency and sustainability. Every Apple tablet, notebook, desktop computer, and display that EPEAT ranks achieves a Gold rating, the highest possible. Although Apple's data centers recycle water 35 times, the increased activity in retail, corporate and data centers also increase the amount of water use to 573 million US gal (2.2 million m3) in 2015.
During an event on March 21, 2016, Apple provided a status update on its environmental initiative to be 100% renewable in all of its worldwide operations. Lisa P. Jackson, Apple's vice president of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives who reports directly to CEO, Tim Cook, announced that as of March 2016, 93% of Apple's worldwide operations are powered with renewable energy. Also featured was the company's efforts to use sustainable paper in their product packaging; 99% of all paper used by Apple in the product packaging comes from post-consumer recycled paper or sustainably managed forests, as the company continues its move to all paper packaging for all of its products.
Apple announced on August 16, 2016, that Lens Technology, one of its major suppliers in China, has committed to power all its glass production for Apple with 100 percent renewable energy by 2018. The commitment is a large step in Apple's efforts to help manufacturers lower their carbon footprint in China. Apple also announced that all 14 of its final assembly sites in China are now compliant with UL's Zero Waste to Landfill validation. The standard, which started in January 2015, certifies that all manufacturing waste is reused, recycled, composted, or converted into energy (when necessary). Since the program began, nearly 140,000 metric tons of waste have been diverted from landfills.
On July 21, 2020, Apple announced its plan to become carbon neutral across its entire business, manufacturing supply chain, and product life cycle by 2030. In the next 10 years, Apple will try to lower emissions with a series of innovative actions, including: low carbon product design, expanding energy efficiency, renewable energy, process and material innovations, and carbon removal.
In June 2024, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a report about an electronic computer manufacturing facility leased by Apple in 2015 in Santa Clara, California, code named Aria. The EPA report stated that Apple was potentially in violation of federal regulations under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). According to a report from Bloomberg in 2018, the facility is used to develop microLED screens under the code name T159. The inspection found that Apple was potentially mistreating waste as only subject to California regulations and that they had potentially miscalculated the effectiveness of Apple's activated carbon filters, which filter volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from the air. The EPA inspected the facility in August 2023 due to a tip from a former Apple employee who posted the report on X.
Toxins
Following further campaigns by Greenpeace, in 2008, Apple became the first electronics manufacturer to eliminate all polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) in its complete product line. In June 2007, Apple began replacing the cold cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL) backlit LCD displays in its computers with mercury-free LED-backlit LCD displays and arsenic-free glass, starting with the upgraded MacBook Pro. Apple offers comprehensive and transparent information about the CO2e, emissions, materials, and electrical usage concerning every product they currently produce or have sold in the past (and which they have enough data needed to produce the report), in their portfolio on their homepage. Allowing consumers to make informed purchasing decisions on the products they offer for sale. In June 2009, Apple's iPhone 3GS was free of PVC, arsenic, and BFRs. Since 2009, all Apple products have mercury-free LED-backlit LCD displays, arsenic-free glass, and non-PVC cables. All Apple products have EPEAT Gold status and beat the latest Energy Star guidelines in each product's respective regulatory category.
In November 2011, Apple was featured in Greenpeace's Guide to Greener Electronics, which ranks electronics manufacturers on sustainability, climate and energy policy, and how "green" their products are. The company ranked fourth of fifteen electronics companies (moving up five places from the previous year) with a score of 4.6/10. Greenpeace praised Apple's sustainability, noting that the company exceeded its 70% global recycling goal in 2010. Apple continues to score well on product ratings, with all of their products now being free of PVC plastic and BFRs. However, the guide criticized Apple on the Energy criteria for not seeking external verification of its greenhouse gas emissions data, and for not setting any targets to reduce emissions. In January 2012, Apple requested that its cable maker, Volex, begin producing halogen-free USB and power cables.
Green bonds
In February 2016, Apple issued a US$1.5 billion green bond (climate bond), the first ever of its kind by a U.S. tech company. The green bond proceeds are dedicated to the financing of environmental projects.
Supply chain
Apple products were made in America in Apple-owned factories until the late 1990s; however, as a result of outsourcing initiatives in the 2000s, almost all of its manufacturing is now handled abroad. According to a report by The New York Times, Apple insiders "believe the vast scale of overseas factories, as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers, have so outpaced their American counterparts that 'Made in the U.S.A.' is no longer a viable option for most Apple products".
The company's manufacturing, procurement, and logistics enable it to execute massive product launches without having to maintain large, profit-sapping inventories. In 2011, Apple's profit margins were 40 percent, compared with between 10 and 20 percent for most other hardware companies. Cook's catchphrase to describe his focus on the company's operational arm is: "Nobody wants to buy sour milk."
In May 2017, the company announced a $1 billion funding project for "advanced manufacturing" in the United States, and subsequently invested $200 million in Corning Inc., a manufacturer of toughened Gorilla Glass technology used in Apple's iPhone devices. The following December, Apple's chief operating officer, Jeff Williams, told CNBC that the "$1 billion" amount was "absolutely not" the final limit on its spending, elaborating that "We're not thinking in terms of a fund limit... We're thinking about, where are the opportunities across the U.S. to help nurture companies that are making the advanced technology — and the advanced manufacturing that goes with that — that quite frankly is essential to our innovation."
During the Mac's early history, Apple generally refused to adopt prevailing industry standards for hardware, instead creating their own. This trend was largely reversed in the late 1990s, beginning with Apple's adoption of the PCI bus in the 7500/8500/9500 Power Macs. Apple has since joined the industry standards groups to influence the future direction of technology standards such as USB, AGP, HyperTransport, Wi-Fi, NVMe, PCIe and others in its products. FireWire is an Apple-originated standard that was widely adopted across the industry after it was standardized as IEEE 1394 and is a legally mandated port in all cable TV boxes in the United States.
Apple has gradually expanded its efforts in getting its products into the Indian market. In July 2012, during a conference call with investors, CEO Tim Cook said that he "[loves] India", but that Apple saw larger opportunities outside the region. India's requirement that 30% of products sold be manufactured in the country was described as "really adds cost to getting product to market". In May 2016, Apple opened an iOS app development center in Bangalore and a maps development office for 4,000 staff in Hyderabad. In March, The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple would begin manufacturing iPhone models in India "over the next two months", and in May, the Journal wrote that an Apple manufacturer had begun production of the iPhone SE in the country, while Apple told CNBC that the manufacturing was for a "small number" of units. In April 2019, Apple initiated manufacturing of the iPhone 7 at its Bengaluru facility, keeping in mind demand from local customers even as they seek more incentives from the government of India. At the beginning of 2020, Tim Cook announced that Apple schedules the opening of its first physical outlet in India for 2021, while an online store is to be launched by the end of the year. The opening of the Apple Store was postponed, and finally took place in April 2023, while the online store was launched in September 2020.
Worker organizations
Apple directly employs 147,000 workers including 25,000 corporate employees in Apple Park and across Silicon Valley. The vast majority of its employees work at the over 500 retail Apple Stores globally. Apple relies on a larger, outsourced workforce for manufacturing, particularly in China where Apple directly employs 10,000 workers across its retail and corporate divisions. In addition, one further million workers are contracted by Apple's suppliers to assemble Apple products, including Foxconn and Pegatron. Zhengzhou Technology Park alone employs 350,000 Chinese workers in Zhengzhou to exclusively work on the iPhone. As of 2021, Apple uses hardware components from 43 different countries. The majority of assembling is done by Taiwanese original design manufacturer firms Foxconn, Pegatron, Wistron and Compal Electronics in factories primarily located inside China, and, to a lesser extent, Foxconn plants in Brazil, and India.
Apple workers around the globe have been involved in organizing since the 1990s. Apple unions are made up of retail, corporate, and outsourced workers. Apple employees have joined trade unions or formed works councils in Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. In 2021, Apple Together, a solidarity union, sought to bring together the company's global worker organizations. The majority of industrial labor disputes (including union recognition) involving Apple occur indirectly through its suppliers and contractors, notably Foxconn plants in China and, to a lesser extent, in Brazil and India.
See also
List of Apple Inc. media events
Outline of Apple Inc.
Notes
References
Bibliography
Further reading
External links
Official website
Business data for Apple Inc.:
Apple Inc. companies grouped at OpenCorporates |
Condor_(mountain) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condor_(mountain) | [
572
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condor_(mountain)"
] | Condor (possibly from Quechua for condor) is a mountain in the Andes of Peru, about 5,200 metres (17,060 ft) high. It is located in the Arequipa Region, Caylloma Province, Choco District. It lies in the Chila mountain range north of the Colca River. Condor is situated at the Umaranra valley. Its stream flows to the Collpamayo (possibly from Quechua for "salpeter river") whose waters feed the Colca River.
== References == |
Mount_Rainier | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Rainier | [
572
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Rainier"
] | Mount Rainier ( ray-NEER), also known as Tahoma, is a large active stratovolcano in the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest in the United States. The mountain is located in Mount Rainier National Park about 59 miles (95 km) south-southeast of Seattle. With a summit elevation of 14,399.6 ft (4,389 m), it is the highest mountain in the U.S. state of Washington, the most topographically prominent mountain in the contiguous United States, and the tallest in the Cascade Volcanic Arc.
Due to its high probability of an eruption in the near future and proximity to a major urban area, Mount Rainier is considered one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world, and it is on the Decade Volcano list. The large amount of glacial ice means that Mount Rainier could produce massive lahars that could threaten the entire Puyallup River valley and other river valleys draining Mount Rainier, including the Carbon, White, Nisqually, and Cowlitz (above Riffe Lake). According to the United States Geological Survey, "about 80,000 people and their homes are at risk in Mount Rainier's lahar-hazard zones."
Between 1950 and 2018, 439,460 people climbed Mount Rainier. Approximately 84 people died in mountaineering accidents on Mount Rainier from 1947 to 2018.
Name
The many Indigenous peoples who have lived near Mount Rainier for millennia have many names for the mountain in their various languages.
Lushootseed speakers have several names for Mount Rainier, including xʷaq̓ʷ and təqʷubəʔ. xʷaq̓ʷ means "sky wiper" or "one who touches the sky" in English. The word təqʷubəʔ means "snow-covered mountain". təqʷubəʔ has been anglicized in many ways, including 'Tacoma' and 'Tacobet'.
Cowlitz speakers call the mountain təx̣ʷúma or təqʷúmen. Sahaptin speakers call the mountain Tax̱úma, which is borrowed from Cowlitz.
Another anglicized name is Pooskaus.
George Vancouver named Mount Rainier in honor of his friend, Rear Admiral Peter Rainier. The map of the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804–1806 refers to it as "Mt. Regniere". Although Rainier had been considered the official name of the mountain, Theodore Winthrop referred to the mountain as "Tacoma" in his posthumously published 1862 travel book The Canoe and the Saddle. For a time, both names were used interchangeably, although residents of the nearby city of Tacoma preferred Mount Tacoma.
In 1890, the United States Board on Geographic Names declared that the mountain would be known as Rainier. Following this in 1897, the Pacific Forest Reserve became the Mount Rainier Forest Reserve, and the national park was established three years later. Despite this, there was still a movement to change the mountain's name to Tacoma and Congress was still considering a resolution to change the name as late as 1924.
Geographical setting
Mount Rainier is the tallest mountain in Washington and the Cascade Range. This peak is located just east of Eatonville and just southeast of Tacoma and Seattle. Mount Rainier is ranked third of the 128 ultra-prominent mountain peaks of the United States. Mount Rainier has a topographic prominence of 13,210 ft (4,026 m), which is greater than that of K2, the world's second-tallest mountain, at 13,189 ft (4,020 m). On clear days it dominates the southeastern horizon in most of the Seattle-Tacoma metropolitan area to such an extent that locals sometimes refer to it simply as "the Mountain". On days of exceptional clarity, it can also be seen from as far away as Corvallis, Oregon (at Marys Peak), and Victoria, British Columbia.
With 26 major glaciers and 36 sq mi (93 km2) of permanent snowfields and glaciers, Mount Rainier is the most heavily glaciated peak in the lower 48 states. The summit is topped by two volcanic craters, each more than 1,000 ft (300 m) in diameter, with the larger east crater overlapping the west crater. Geothermal heat from the volcano keeps areas of both crater rims free of snow and ice, and has formed the world's largest volcanic glacier cave network within the ice-filled craters, with nearly 2 mi (3.2 km) of passages.
A small crater lake about 130 by 30 ft (39.6 by 9.1 m) in size and 16 ft (5 m) deep, the highest in North America with a surface elevation of 14,203 ft (4,329 m), occupies the lowest portion of the west crater below more than 100 ft (30 m) of ice and is accessible only via the caves.
The Carbon, Puyallup, Mowich, Nisqually, and Cowlitz Rivers begin at eponymous glaciers of Mount Rainier. The sources of the White River are Winthrop, Emmons, and Fryingpan Glaciers. The White, Carbon, and Mowich join the Puyallup River, which discharges into Commencement Bay at Tacoma; the Nisqually empties into Puget Sound east of Lacey; and the Cowlitz joins the Columbia River between Kelso and Longview.
Subsidiary peaks
The broad top of Mount Rainier contains three named summits. The highest of these named sub-summits is known as the Columbia Crest, at a recently determined height of 14,389.2 ft (4,386 m). The second highest named summit is Point Success, 14,158 ft (4,315 m), at the southern edge of the summit plateau, atop the ridge known as Success Cleaver. It has a topographic prominence of about 138 ft (42 m), so it is not considered a separate peak. The lowest of the three named summits is Liberty Cap, 14,112 ft (4,301 m), at the northwestern edge, which overlooks Liberty Ridge, the Sunset Amphitheater, and the dramatic Willis Wall. Liberty Cap has a prominence of 492 ft (150 m), and so would qualify as a separate peak under most strictly prominence-based rules. A prominence cutoff of 400 ft (122 m) is commonly used in Washington state.
High on the eastern flank of Mount Rainier is a peak known as Little Tahoma Peak, 11,138 ft (3,395 m), an eroded remnant of the earlier, much higher, Mount Rainier. It has a prominence of 858 ft (262 m), and it is almost never climbed in direct conjunction with Columbia Crest, so it is usually considered a separate peak. If considered separately from Mount Rainier, Little Tahoma Peak would be the third highest mountain peak in Washington.
Height
While the aforementioned Columbia Crest had long been believed to be the highest point on Mount Rainier, at 14,411 ft (4,392 m), a 2024 survey by Eric Gilbertson and Josh Spitzberg, utilizing a differential GPS unit and the NGVD of 1929, determined Columbia Crest's elevation, with a 0.1 ft (0.03 m) range of error, to be 14,389.2 ft (4,386 m). This revealed that the Crest, a permanent icecap, had melted down by about 21.8 ft (6.6 m) since 1999. Meanwhile, they discovered that a nearby point on Mount Rainier's Southwest Rim, with a solid rock surface as opposed to snow, had an elevation of 14,399.6 ft (4,389 m), within a 0.1 ft (0.03 m) range of error, making it the new highest point of the volcano and about 11.4 ft (3.5 m) lower than the previously accepted height of Mount Rainier.
Geology
Mount Rainier is a stratovolcano in the Cascade Volcanic Arc that consists of lava flows, debris flows, and pyroclastic ejecta and flows. Its early volcanic deposits are estimated at more than 840,000 years old and are part of the Lily Formation (about 2.9 million to 840,000 years ago). The early deposits formed a "proto-Rainier" or an ancestral cone prior to the present-day cone. The present cone is more than 500,000 years old.
The volcano is highly eroded, with glaciers on its slopes, and appears to be made mostly of andesite. Rainier likely once stood even higher than today at about 16,000 ft (4,900 m) before a major debris avalanche and the resulting Osceola Mudflow approximately 5,000 years ago.
In the past, Rainier has had large debris avalanches, and has also produced enormous lahars (volcanic mudflows), due to the large amount of glacial ice present. Its lahars have reached all the way to Puget Sound, a distance of more than 30 mi (48 km). Around 5,000 years ago, a large chunk of the volcano slid away and that debris avalanche helped to produce the massive Osceola Mudflow, which went all the way to the site of present-day Tacoma and south Seattle. This massive avalanche of rock and ice removed the top 1,600 ft (500 m) of Rainier, bringing its height down to around 14,100 ft (4,300 m). About 530 to 550 years ago, the Electron Mudflow occurred, although this was not as large-scale as the Osceola Mudflow.
After the major collapse approximately 5,000 years ago, subsequent eruptions of lava and tephra built up the modern summit cone until about as recently as 1,000 years ago. As many as 11 Holocene tephra layers have been found.
Soils on Mount Rainier are mostly gravelly ashy sandy loams developed from colluvium or glacial till mixed with volcanic tephra. Under forest cover their profiles usually have the banded appearance of a classic podzol but the E horizon is darker than usual. Under meadows a thick dark A horizon usually forms the topsoil.
Modern activity and threat
The most recent recorded volcanic activity was between 1820 and 1854, but many eyewitnesses reported eruptive activity in 1858, 1870, 1879, 1882, and 1894 as well. Additionally, the Smithsonian Institution's volcanism project records the last volcanic eruption as 1450 CE. The volcano has had a VEI of 2, 3, and 4 at least nine times.
Seismic monitors have been placed in Mount Rainier National Park and on the mountain itself to monitor activity. An eruption could be deadly for all living in areas within the immediate vicinity of the volcano and effects from an eruption could be noticed from Vancouver, British Columbia to San Francisco, California because of the massive amounts of ash blasting out of the volcano into the atmosphere.
Mount Rainier is located in an area that itself is part of the eastern rim of the Pacific Ring of Fire. This includes mountains and calderas like Mount Shasta and Lassen Peak in California, Crater Lake, Three Sisters, and Mount Hood in Oregon, Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams, Glacier Peak, and Mount Baker in Washington, and Mount Cayley, Mount Garibaldi, Silverthrone Caldera, and Mount Meager in British Columbia. Many of the above are dormant, but could return to activity, and scientists on both sides of the border gather research of the past eruptions of each in order to predict how mountains in this arc will behave and what they are capable of in the future, including Mount Rainier. Of these, two have erupted since the beginning of the twentieth century: Lassen in 1915 and St. Helens in 1980 and 2004. However, past eruptions in this volcanic arc have multiple examples of sub-plinian eruptions or higher: Crater Lake's last eruption as Mount Mazama was large enough to cause its cone to collapse, and Mount Rainier's closest neighbor, Mount St. Helens, produced the largest recorded eruption in the continental United States when it erupted in 1980. Statistics place the likelihood of a major eruption in the Cascade Range at 2–3 per century.
Mount Rainier is listed as a Decade Volcano, or one of the 16 volcanoes on Earth with the greatest likelihood of causing loss of life and property if eruptive activity resumes. If Mount Rainier were to erupt as powerfully as Mount St. Helens did in its May 18, 1980 eruption, the effect would be cumulatively greater, because of the far more massive amounts of glacial ice locked on the volcano compared to Mount St. Helens, the vastly more heavily populated areas surrounding Rainier, and the fact that Mount Rainier is almost twice the size of St. Helens. Lahars from Rainier pose the most risk to life and property, as many communities lie atop older lahar deposits. According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), about 150,000 people live on top of old lahar deposits of Rainier. Not only is there much ice atop the volcano, the volcano is also slowly being weakened by hydrothermal activity. According to Geoff Clayton, a geologist with a Washington State Geology firm, RH2 Engineering, a repeat of the 5000-year-old Osceola Mudflow would destroy Enumclaw, Orting, Kent, Auburn, Puyallup, Sumner and all of Renton. Such a mudflow might also reach down the Duwamish estuary and destroy parts of downtown Seattle, and cause tsunamis in Puget Sound and Lake Washington. Rainier is also capable of producing pyroclastic flows and expelling lava. A 2012 Washington State Department of Natural Resources estimate showed that a significant lahar could cause up to $40 billion in damage downriver.
According to Kevin Scott, a scientist with the USGS:
A home built in any of the probabilistically defined inundation areas on the new maps is more likely to be damaged or destroyed by a lahar than by fire... For example, a home built in an area that would be inundated every 100 years, on the average, is 27 times more likely to be damaged or destroyed by a flow than by fire. People know the danger of fire, so they buy fire insurance and they have smoke alarms, but most people are not aware of the risks of lahars, and few have applicable flood insurance.
The volcanic risk is somewhat mitigated by lahar warning sirens and escape route signs in Pierce County, part of the Mount Rainier Volcano Lahar Warning System, which was implemented by the USGS in 1998, and has been maintained by Pierce County since. The more populous King County is also in the lahar area, but has no zoning restrictions due to volcanic hazard. More recently (since 2001) funding from the federal government for lahar protection in the area has dried up, leading local authorities in at-risk cities like Orting to fear a disaster similar to the Armero tragedy. To prevent against such tragedies, authorities downriver from Rainier have conducted large-scale evacuation exercises in 2019 and 2024. The most recent of these exercises, conducted on March 21, 2024, involved the Puyallup, Sumner-Bonney Lake, Orting, White River, and Carbonado School Districts. During the exercise, emergency operations centers in the cities of Puyallup, Bonney Lake, and Buckley were activated to help the movement of school students and staff.
Seismic background
Typically, up to five earthquakes are recorded monthly near the summit. Swarms of five to ten shallow earthquakes over two or three days take place from time to time, predominantly in the region of 13,000 feet (4 km) below the summit. These earthquakes are thought to be caused by the circulation of hot fluids beneath Mount Rainier. Presumably, hot springs and steam vents within Mount Rainier National Park are generated by such fluids. Seismic swarms (not initiated with a mainshock) are common features at volcanoes, and are rarely associated with eruptive activity. Rainier has had several such swarms; there were days-long swarms in 2002, 2004, and 2007, two of which (2002 and 2004) included M 3.2 earthquakes. A 2009 swarm produced the largest number of events of any swarm at Rainier since seismic monitoring began over two decades earlier. Further swarms were observed in 2011 and 2021.
Glaciers
Glaciers are among the most conspicuous and dynamic geologic features on Mount Rainier. They erode the volcanic cone and are important sources of streamflow for several rivers, including some that provide water for hydroelectric power and irrigation. Together with perennial snow patches, the 29 named glacial features cover about 30.41 square miles (78.8 km2) of the mountain's surface in 2015 and have an estimated volume of about 0.69 cubic miles (2.9 km3).
Glaciers flow under the influence of gravity by the combined action of sliding over the rock on which they lie and by deformation, the gradual displacement between and within individual ice crystals. Maximum speeds occur near the surface and along the centerline of the glacier. During May 1970, Nisqually Glacier was measured moving as fast as 29 inches (74 cm) per day. Flow rates are generally greater in summer than in winter, probably due to the presence of large quantities of meltwater at the glacier base.
The size of glaciers on Mount Rainier has fluctuated significantly in the past. For example, during the last ice age, from about 25,000 to about 15,000 years ago, glaciers covered most of the area now within the boundaries of Mount Rainier National Park and extended to the perimeter of the present Puget Sound Basin.
Between the 14th century and 1850, many of the glaciers on Mount Rainier advanced to their farthest extent downvalley since the last ice age. Many advances of this sort occurred worldwide during this time period known to geologists as the Little Ice Age. During the Little Ice Age, the Nisqually Glacier advanced to a position 650 to 800 ft (200 to 240 m) downvalley from the site of the Glacier Bridge, Tahoma and South Tahoma Glaciers merged at the base of Glacier Island, and the terminus of Emmons Glacier reached within 1.2 mi (1.9 km) of the White River Campground.
Retreat of the Little Ice Age glaciers was slow until about 1920 when retreat became more rapid. The Williwakas Glacier was noted as extinct during the 1930s. Between the height of the Little Ice Age and 1950, Mount Rainier's glaciers lost about one-quarter of their length. Beginning in 1950 and continuing through the early 1980s, however, many of the major glaciers advanced in response to relatively cooler temperatures of the mid-century. The glaciers and snowfields of Mount Rainier also lost volume during this time, except for the Frying Pan and Emmons glaciers on the east flank and the small near-peak snowfields; the greatest volume loss was concentrated from ~1750 m (north) to ~2250 m (south) elevation. The largest single volume loss is from the Carbon Glacier, although it is to the north, due to its huge area at <2000 m elevation. The Carbon, Cowlitz, Emmons, and Nisqually Glaciers advanced during the late 1970s and early 1980s as a result of high snowfalls during the 1960s and 1970s.
Since the early-1980s, however, many glaciers have been thinning and retreating and some advances have slowed. In a study using data from 2021, National Park Service scientists removed Stevens Glacier from its inventory of Mount Rainier glaciers due to its dwindling size and lack of evidence that it was moving. Using satellite data in 2022, researchers at Nichols College determined that both Pyramid and Van Trump glaciers had also ceased to exist with only fragments of ice remaining. A significant decline had been noted between 2015 and 2022.
The glaciers on Mount Rainier can generate mudflows through glacial outburst floods not associated with an eruption. The South Tahoma Glacier generated 30 floods in the 1980s and early 1990s, and again in August 2015.
History
For thousands of years, the area surrounding Mount Rainier has been inhabited by several Indigenous peoples, who traditionally hunted and gathered animals and plants in Mount Rainier's forests and high elevation meadows. These peoples and their modern-day descendants are represented today by the members of the federally-recognized tribes which surround the mountain, including the Nisqually Indian Tribe, the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, the Puyallup Tribe of Indians, and the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, among others in the area. The archaeological record of human use of the mountain dates to over 8,500 years before present (BP). Sites related to seasonal use of Mount Rainier and its landscapes are reflected in chipped stone tool remains and settings suggesting functionally varied uses including task-specific sites, rockshelters, travel stops, and long-term base camps. Their distribution on the mountain suggest primary use of subalpine meadows and low alpine habitats that provided relatively high resource abundance during the short summer season. Evidence suggests that there existed a tradition of Native Americans setting fire to areas of the region each year as a way to encourage meadow development.
The first Europeans to reach the Pacific Northwest were the Spanish who arrived by sea in 1774 led by Juan Perez. The next year, under the direction of Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, a boat was sent ashore to Destruction island. Upon landing, the crew was attacked and killed by the local indigenous population. Although attempts were made in 1792 to create a permanent Spanish settlement at Neah Bay, the project was unsuccessful and by 1795, Spain had given up on the region. Although not documented anywhere, it is likely that Spanish sailors first observed Mount Rainier while sailing in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
Upon reaching what would become California in 1579, Sir Francis Drake claimed the entire northwest coast of North America for England. This claim to the coast of the Pacific Northwest was not further explored until in 1778 Captain James Cook sailed the coastline of modern-day Washington and British Columbia, stimulating a subsequent increase in English ships coming to the area as part of the fur trade. On July 22, 1793, Sir Alexander Mackenzie of the British Northwest Fur Company reached the Pacific Ocean via overland route that crossed the Rocky Mountains.
The first American, John Ledyard, reached the region aboard Captain Cook's ship in 1778. By 1787, six Americans from Boston formed a company which began trading along the northwest coast. The Lewis and Clark overland expedition reached the northwest coast in 1805 and observed Mount Rainier for the first time in the Spring of 1806.
The first documented sighting of Mt. Rainier by a European was by the crew of Captain George Vancouver on May 7, 1792, during the Vancouver Expedition (1790–1795). On May 8, 1792, Vancouver gave the name of Mt. Rainier to the observed peak in homage to Vancouver's friend Rear Admiral Peter Rainier.
At the outset of the 19th century, the region where Mt. Rainier was located was claimed by Spain, the U.S., Russia, and Great Britain, with most claims being based on instances of early naval exploration of the region's coast. Spain relinquished all remaining claims to the Pacific Northwest that had not already been handed over with the Louisiana Purchase in 1819 with the purchase and cession of Florida by the United States. In 1824, Russia ceded all land claims south of parallel 54°40′ north to the United States as part of the Russo-American Treaty. In 1818, the United States and the United Kingdom signed a treaty, agreeing upon the joint settlement and occupation of the Oregon country which consisted of the territory north of 42°N latitude, south of 54°40′N latitude, and west of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. The 1846 Oregon Treaty between the United States and United Kingdom set new borders between British and American territory along today's approximate borders. In 1853, the land between the Columbia river and the border with British Canada was organized into the Washington Territory, which was the administrative status of the region at the time of the first successful ascent of Mount Rainier.
In 1833, William Fraser Tolmie explored the area looking for medicinal plants. Hazard Stevens and P. B. Van Trump received a hero's welcome in the streets of Olympia after their successful summit climb in 1870. The first female ascent was made in 1890 by Fay Fuller, accompanied by Van Trump and three other teammates.
Descending from the summit in 1883, James Longmire discovered a mineral spring; this ultimately led to his establishment of a spa and hotel, drawing other visitors to the area to seek the benefits of the spring. Later, the headquarters of the national park would be established at Longmire, until flooding caused them to be relocated to Ashford. The area also became the site of features like a museum, a post office, and a gas station, with additions like a library and a gift shop soon following; many of these buildings were ultimately nominated to the national historic register of historic places. Longmire remains the second most popular place in the park. In 1924, a publication from the park described the area:
"A feature at Longmire Springs of great interest to everyone is the group of mineral springs in the little flat to the west of National Park Inn. There are some forty distinct springs, a half dozen of which are easily reached from the road. An analysis of the waters show that they all contain about the smae [sic] mineral salts but in slightly differing proportions. All the water is highly carbonated and would be classed as extremely "hard". Certain springs contain larger amounts of soda, iron and sulphur, giving them a distinct taste and color."
John Muir climbed Mount Rainier in 1888, and although he enjoyed the view, he conceded that it was best appreciated from below. Muir was one of many who advocated protecting the mountain. In 1893, the area was set aside as part of the Pacific Forest Reserve in order to protect its physical and economic resources, primarily timber and watersheds.
Citing the need to also protect scenery and provide for public enjoyment, railroads and local businesses urged the creation of a national park in hopes of increased tourism. On March 2, 1899, President William McKinley established Mount Rainier National Park as America's fifth national park. Congress dedicated the new park "for the benefit and enjoyment of the people" and "... for the preservation from injury or spoliation of all timber, mineral deposits, natural curiosities, or wonders within said park, and their retention in their natural condition."
On June 24, 1947, Kenneth Arnold reported seeing a formation of nine unidentified flying objects over Mount Rainier. His description led to the term "flying saucers".
In 1998, the United States Geological Survey began putting together the Mount Rainier Volcano Lahar Warning System to assist in the emergency evacuation of the Puyallup River valley in the event of a catastrophic debris flow. It is now run by the Pierce County Department of Emergency Management. Tacoma, at the mouth of the Puyallup, is only 37 mi (60 km) west of Rainier, and moderately sized towns such as Puyallup and Orting are only 27 and 20 mi (43 and 32 km) away, respectively.
Mount Rainier appears on four distinct United States postage stamp issues. In 1934, it was the 3-cent issue in a series of National Park stamps, and was also shown on a souvenir sheet issued for a philatelic convention. The following year, in 1935, both of these were reprinted by Postmaster General James A. Farley as special issues given to officials and friends. Because of complaints by the public, "Farley's Follies" were reproduced in large numbers. The second stamp issue is easy to tell from the original because it is imperforate. Both stamps and souvenir sheets are widely available.
The Washington state quarter, which was released on April 11, 2007, features Mount Rainier and a salmon.
Climbing
Mountain climbing on Mount Rainier is difficult, involving traversing the largest glaciers in the U.S. south of Alaska. Most climbers require two to three days to reach the summit, with a success rate of approximately 50%, with weather and physical conditioning of the climbers being the most common reasons for failure. About 8,000 to 13,000 people attempt the climb each year, about 90% via routes from Camp Muir on the southeast flank, and most of the rest ascend Emmons Glacier via Camp Schurman on the northeast. Climbing teams require experience in glacier travel, self-rescue, and wilderness travel. All climbers who plan to climb above the high camps, Camp Muir and Camp Schurman, are required to purchase a Mount Rainier Climbing Pass and register for their climb.
Additionally, solo climbers must fill out a solo climbing request form and receive written permission from the park superintendent before attempting to climb.
Climbing routes
All climbing routes on Mount Rainier require climbers to possess some level of technical climbing skill. This includes ascending and descending the mountain with the use of technical climbing equipment such as crampons, ice axes, harnesses, and ropes. Difficulty and technical challenge of climbing Mount Rainier can vary widely between climbing routes. Routes are graded in NCCS Alpine Climbing format.
The normal route to the summit of Mount Rainier is the Disappointment Cleaver Route, YDS grade II-III. As climbers on this route have access to the permanently established Camp Muir, it sees the significant majority of climbing traffic on the mountain. This route is also the most common commercially guided route. The term "cleaver" is used in the context of a rock ridge that separates two glaciers. The reason for naming this cleaver a "disappointment" is unrecorded, but it is thought to be due to climbers reaching it only to recognize their inability to reach the summit. An alternative route to the Disappointment Cleaver is the Ingraham Glacier Direct Route, grade II, and is often used when the Disappointment Cleaver route cannot be climbed due to poor route conditions.
The Emmons Glacier Route, grade II, is an alternative to the Disappointment Cleaver route and poses a lower technical challenge to climbers. The climbers on the route can make use of Camp Schurman (9,500 ft), a glacial camp site. Camp Schurman is equipped with a solar toilet and a ranger hut.
The Liberty Ridge Route, grade IV, is a considerably more challenging and objectively dangerous route than the normal route to the summit. It runs up the center of the North Face of Mount Rainier and crosses the very active Carbon Glacier. First climbed by Ome Daiber, Arnie Campbell and Jim Burrow in 1935, it is listed as one of the Fifty Classic Climbs of North America by Steve Roper and Allen Steck. This route only accounts for approximately 2% of climbers on the mountain, but approximately 25% of its deaths.
Dangers and accidents
About two mountaineering deaths each year occur because of rock and ice fall, avalanche, falls, and hypothermia. These incidents are often associated with exposure to very high altitude, fatigue, dehydration, and/or poor weather. 58 deaths on Mount Rainier have been reported from 1981 to 2010. Approximately 7 percent of mountaineering deaths and 6 percent of mountaineering accidents in the United States are attributed to Mount Rainier.
The first known climbing death on Mount Rainier was Edgar McClure, a professor of chemistry at the University of Oregon, on July 27, 1897. During the descent in darkness, McClure stepped over the edge of the rock and slid to his death on a rocky outcrop. The spot is now known as McClure Rock.
Willi Unsoeld, who reached the summit of Mount Everest in 1963, was killed, along with an Evergreen State College student, in an avalanche on Mount Rainier in 1979. He had climbed the mountain over 200 times.
The worst mountaineering accident on Mount Rainier occurred in 1981, when ten clients and a guide died in an avalanche/ice fall on the Ingraham Glacier.
This was the largest number of fatalities on Mount Rainier in a single incident since 32 people were killed in a 1946 plane crash on the South Tahoma Glacier.
In one of the worst disasters on the mountain in over thirty years, six climbers—two guides, and four clients—were killed on May 31, 2014, after the climbers fell 3,300 feet (1,000 m) while attempting the summit via the Liberty Ridge climbing route. Low-flying search helicopters pinged the signals from the avalanche beacons worn by the climbers, and officials concluded that there was no possible chance of survival. Searchers found tents and clothes along with rock and ice strewn across a debris field on the Carbon Glacier at 9,500 ft (2,900 m), possible evidence for a slide or avalanche in the vicinity where the team went missing, though the exact cause of the accident is unknown. The bodies of three of the client climbers were spotted on August 7, 2014, during a training flight and subsequently recovered on August 19, 2014. The bodies of the fourth client climber and two guides were never found.
Outdoor recreation
In addition to climbing, hiking, backcountry skiing, photography, and camping are popular activities in the park. Hiking trails, including the Wonderland Trail—a 93-mile (150 km) circumnavigation of the peak, provide access to the backcountry. Popular for winter sports include snowshoeing and cross-country skiing.
Climate
The summit of Mount Rainier has an ice cap climate (Köppen climate classification: EF)
Ecology
Mount Rainier's protected status as a national park protects its primeval Cascade ecosystem, providing a stable habitat for many species in the region, including endemic flora and fauna that are unique to the area, such as the Cascade red fox and Mount Rainier lousewort. The ecosystem on the mountain is very diverse, owing to the climate found at different elevations. Scientists track the distinct species found in the forest zone, the subalpine zone, and the alpine zone. They have discovered more than one thousand species of plants and fungi. The mountain is also home to 65 species of mammals, 5 reptiles, 182 birds, 14 amphibians, and 14 species of native fish, in addition to an innumerable amount of invertebrates.
Flora
Mount Rainier has regularly been described as one of the best places in the world to view wildflowers. In the subalpine region of the mountain, the snow often stays on the ground until summer begins, limiting plants to a much shorter growing season. This produces dramatic blooms in areas like Paradise. In 1924, the flowers were described by naturalist Floyd W. Schmoe:
Mount Rainier National Park is perhaps better known the world over for these wonderful flowers than for any one feature. The mountains, the glaciers, the cascading streams and the forests may be equalled if one looks far away enough, but no park has been so favored in the way of wild flowers.
Forests on the mountain span from as young as 100 years old to sections of old growth forest that are calculated to be 1000 years or more in age. The lower elevation consists mainly of western red-cedar, Douglas fir, and western hemlock. Pacific silver fir, western white pine, Alaska yellow cedar, and noble fir are found further up the mountain. In the alpine level, Alaskan yellow cedar, subalpine fir, and mountain hemlock grow.
Fauna
The mountain supports a wide variety of animal life, including several species that are protected on the state or federal level, like the Northern Spotted Owl. Efforts are also being made to reintroduce native species that had locally been hunted to extinction, like the Pacific fisher. There are sixty-five types of mammals living on the mountain, including cougars, mountain goats, marmots, and elk. Common reptiles and amphibians include garter snakes, frogs, and salamanders. There are many types of birds found throughout the different elevations on the mountain, but while some live there all year, many are migratory. Salmon and trout species use the rivers formed by the glaciers, and though the lakes stopped being stocked in 1972, thirty lakes still have reproducing populations.
See also
Notes
References
External links
Mount Rainier National Park (also used as a reference)
"Mount Rainier Volcano Lahar Warning System". Volcano Hazards Program. United States Geological Survey. Archived from the original on January 19, 2008. Retrieved October 30, 2008.
Mt. Rainier Eruption Task Force (pdf)
Mount Rainier stream drainage Archived April 27, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
Mount Rainier Trail Descriptions
"Mount Rainier". SummitPost.org. Retrieved May 7, 2011.
Mount Rainier National Park at Curlie
Doughton, Sandi (September 26, 2014), "Under Rainier's crater, a natural laboratory like no other", The Seattle Times: contains images and videos of the summit caves
University of Washington libraries and digital collections
Lawrence Denny Lindsley Photographs, Landscape and nature photography of Lawrence Denny Lindsley, including photographs of scenes around Mount Rainier.
The Mountaineers Collection, Photographic albums and text documenting the Mountaineers official annual outings undertaken by club members from 1907 to 1951, includes 3 Mt. Rainier albums (ca. 1912, 1919, 1924).
Henry M. Sarvant Photographs, photographs by Henry Mason Sarvant depicting his climbing expeditions to Mt. Rainier and scenes of the vicinity from 1892 to 1912.
Alvin H. Waite Photographs Photographs of Mt. Rainier by Alvin H. Waite, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. |
Monteiro-Mor_Palace | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monteiro-Mor_Palace | [
573
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monteiro-Mor_Palace"
] | The Monteiro-Mor Palace (Portuguese: Palácio do Monteiro-Mor) is a Portuguese palace located in Lisbon, Portugal.
History
Monteiro-Mor Palace is located in the Lumiar parish in Lisbon.
The name of the palace dates back to the 18th century when the High Huntsman of the Royal House (Portuguese: Monteiro-Mor) D. Henrique de Noronha and his wife D. Fernao Telles da Silva occupied the palace.
The Portuguese National Museum of Costume and Fashion is currently installed in the palace.
The palace is surrounded by an eleven hectare botanical garden.
Sources
Palácio do Monteiro-Mor |
Lumiar | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumiar | [
573
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumiar"
] | Lumiar (Portuguese pronunciation: [luˈmjaɾ]) is a freguesia (civil parish) and typical quarter of Lisbon, the capital city of Portugal. Located in northern Lisbon, Lumiar is east of Carnide, north of Alvalade, west of Olivais, and south of Santa Clara and partially of Lisbon's border with Odivelas. The population in 2021 was 46,334.
History
Located now within the municipality of Lisbon, it was established in the 13th century.The parish of Lumiar was established on April 2, 1266. In 1312, King Denis (D. Dinis) divided the assets of the Count of Barcelos, allocating to his illegitimate son and the Count's son-in-law, D. Afonso Sanches, a country estate in Lumiar, which came to be known as the Palace of the Infant D. Afonso Sanches (Paços do Infante D. Afonso Sanches). During the reign of King Afonso IV, this noble residence became known as the Lumiar Palace (Paço do Lumiar), a designation still in use today.
In the early 18th century, Lumiar was described as "a place of noble estates, olive groves, and vineyards," with the main agricultural products being wine, wheat, barley, and olive oil.
The parish, once a rural area, has witnessed a steady urban development since the beginning of the 19th century. Still, it was not uncommon for peasants to come to Lumiar up to the first half of the 20th century.
From 1852 to 1886, this parish was part of the Olivais municipality, finally being incorporated into the territory of the city of Lisbon on July 18, 1885.
In the 20th century, there was a significant population increase in the parish — from 2,840 inhabitants in 1900 to over 30,000 in 2000 — resulting in the almost definitive loss of the old village's characteristics due to various residential developments. The current major focus is the Alta de Lisboa neighborhood.
In the 21st century, on October 10, 2007, the final stretch of the North-South Axis (Eixo Norte-Sul) was inaugurated, facilitating traffic flow throughout the Portuguese capital.
The Lumiar Parish is served by the recreational park Quinta das Conchas e dos Lilases.
The parish is composed of 5 major neighbourhoods:
Alta de Lisboa: New neighborhood created as an ambitious real estate project that includes the old neighborhoods of Musgueira Norte and Sul and Calvanas; it is the commercial name of Alto do Lumiar
Calçada de Carriche
Quinta das Conchas
Paço do Lumiar: where its historical complex stands out
Telheiras (partially shared with Carnide)
Demographics
Historical resident population (before the 2012 Administrative Reform)
The resident population recorded according to Censuses carried over the years is shown in the following table for Lumiar. It is noteworthy that Lumiar gained 37,194 people from 1960 to 2021 or 406.94% of its 1960 population in just 60 years, not having recorded a single population loss since 1960.
Adjusting the 2011 data to the new 2012 boundaries, the population recorded for Lumiar in 2011 stood at 45,605, mainly people hailing from Carnide.
Correcting for the 2012 adjustment due to the new parish's limits, the demographic growth witnessed between 2011 and 2021 stood at +729, or +1.60%. Although at a slow pace, the population grew during the said decade, contrarily to the population of Lisbon as a whole.
Demographic statistics
Age
The last censuses show that the parish's population is ageing at a fast pace: in 2021 25.78% of the population was below 25 and, at the same time, more than a fifth (20.91%) of the residents was 65 or older.
Religion
The parish is predominantly catholic and 72.85% of the population aged 15 or above are followers of a Christian or Jeovah's Witness denomination as of 2021.
Interestingly, around 25.23% of the population doesn't practice a religion and is thus non religious.
The presence of minor religions such as Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism (1.92% of the population amongst the three) is probably due to an increasing community of people coming from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh or Nepal.
The Radha Krishna Temple of the Hindu community is located in the parish.
Immigration
In 2021, 5.08% of the population of the parish was constituted by foreigners. In particular, amongst women foreigners were 5.48% of the total. This means that in Lumiar there are 2,356 resident foreigners, a sharp increase from 2011, when there were 1,617 resident foreigners (3.55%). Since the foreign population increased by 739 people from 2011 to 2021 (adjusting for the new boundaries) and given that the total population of the parish (adjusting for the new boundaries) increased by 729 units in the same timespan, it is noteworthy that the total population would have decreased weren't it for the increase in immigration; it is also noteworthy that this number only takes into account foreign citizens, thus excluding people who have subsequently acquired Portuguese nationality. The largest group of foreigners is constituted by Brazilians (751 people or +89.17% since 2011), nationals of PALOP countries (527 people or +12.13% since 2011), Chinese (193 people or +46.21%), Spaniards (135 or +18.42% since 2011) and people from the Indian Subcontinent, most notably Nepalis and Indians, totaling 118 people, or recording an increase of +555.56% since 2011.
Dealing with the foreign-born population, 13.02% of the parish's population was born abroad as of 2021. The most common countries of birth were PALOP countries (2,777 people), Brazil (1,234 people), France (224 people), China (185 people), and the Indian Subcontinent (185 people). Of the Portuguese nationals born abroad, the most common countries of birth were PALOP countries (2,304 people) and Brazil (464 people), all countries having ancient historical ties with Portugal as well as a rooted migration history towards the country and who are, thus, more likely to have acquired Portuguese citizenship along the years.
Moreover, as of 2021 in the parish there were 3,939 people who have entered Portugal after 2010, constituting 8.50% of the population. Of those with recent migrant background, 26.20% were Portuguese nationals returning from a period of emigration abroad.
Amongst the Portuguese, 5,474 had already lived abroad as of 2021 (12.54% of the Portuguese population). The majority of those having lived in Angola and Mozambique (2,651 people) entered Portugal in the Seventies (1,625 people or 61.30%), following the independence of the two former colonies (so called retornados). Those coming from countries hosting large Portuguese emigrant communities such as France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg or Belgium (1,534 people) have mostly entered Portugal after 1991 (72.23%), probably due to the development of the Portuguese economy since its accession to the EU. Interestingly, 39.41% of the Portuguese nationals having lived in the UK and residing in the parish, has left the UK after 2016, (date of the Brexit referendum).
If the whole population (regardless of the nationality held) is taken into account, then 21.57% of the parish's population has already lived abroad for at least one year as of 2021, with PALOP countries, EU countries, Brazil the United Kingdom and China being the most commonly cited countries of previous residence.
Economy and Social conditions
Employement
In the parish of Lumiar there are 1,370 residents who, as of 2021, were unemployed. Of these, 39.85% received a state-fund subsidy or pension (41.34% in Lisbon). In 2021 the unemployment rate in the parish is considerably lower than the one recorded for Lisbon and for Portugal as a whole, standing at 5.95%. In the same year, Portugal as a whole had an unemployment rate of 8.13% that has progressively decreased to 6.1% in 2023. As the statistics dealing with unemployment at the parish level are available only every 10 years, the current (2023) unemployment rate in Lumiar is unknown. Amongst youth aged 15–24 the unemployment rate in 2021 in the parish stood at 18.19%, 2.62% lower than in the rest of the country.
On the other hand, in 2021 21,651 residents were employed, of which 75.76% were employees and 21.42% were independent workers. Below is the table showing the employment rate per age group. The low share of people aged 20–24 employed is due to the fact that many are still in education (e.g. university) while the low proportion of those in employment aged 60–64 is due to many being early pensioners.
Dealing with commuting, the residents of Lumiar spent 21.48 minutes of daily commuting, 1 minute less than the average inhabitant of Lisbon.
Social conditions
Dealing with overcrowding in the parish's households, 4.30% of the population lives in accommodations where they have less than 15 m2 per capita (8.71% for Lisbon and 5.65% in Portugal as a whole), while 49.99% live in houses with more than 40 m2 per capita (39.64% for Lisbon and 46.84% in Portugal as a whole). There are 3,668.2 dwellings per km2 (3,200.5 for Lisbon and 64.9 in Portugal as a whole).
67.6% of the population lives in owned dwellings as of 2021; this is significantly higher than the value recorded for Lisbon (50.3%) and slightly lower than the one recorded for Portugal (70%). The average height of a residential building in Lumiar is 6.2 floors as of 2021 and the average area of a dwelling stands at 111.94 m2 (with the average in Lisbon-city 93.07 m2 being and in Portugal 112.45 m2).
The average monthly rent value of leased dwellings recorded in 2021 stood at €512.04, 8.74% higher than the Lisbon average in the same year (€470.87). It is nonetheless important to notice that the value of the rents is quite low because of many contracts stipulated decades ago, with 28.17% (25.34% in Lisbon) of the dwellers paying less than €150/month because of the rent-freezing system that was adopted in Portugal in the late XX century, allowing that many people, now mostly elders, don't have to pay high rents. Due to the housing crisis and inflation, in 2023 the average rent for new contracts (frozen contracts aren't concerned) stood in fact at €12-€13/m2 in Lumiar, meaning that for the average 111.94 m2 dwelling are necessary around €1,399/month.
Dealing with housing prices, it is interesting to remark that if the median price per m2 stood at €1,993 for a house sold in early 2016, this value had risen to €2,748/m2 in early 2021 and to €3,483/m2 in 2023, experiencing a growth of +74.76% in just 7 years. In the same period the growth of house priced per m2 in Lisbon as a whole was +117.6%, from €1,875/m2 to €4,080/m2.
Of the 1,900 residential buildings listed in the parish, 4.32% were built before 1919, 6.68% from 1919 to 1960, 44.95% from 1961 to 1990, 20.53% from 1991 to 2000 and 23.53% after 2001. Of the buildings built before 1919 97.56% had 1 to 3 floors, while in buildings built between 1981 and 2010 the proportion of buildings with 6 stories or more is 72.18%. Interestingly, the newer and higher the building the higher the probability of it being served by an elevator. For homes built before 1946, only 0.81% have access to an elevator as of 2021; this percentage ascends to 82.65% for buildings dating from 1981 to 2010. Always with regard to amenities, 30.35% of the houses had access to air conditioning (20.98% in Lisbon), 79.23% to heating (69.62% in Lisbon) and 64.44% to a parking place (28.04% in Lisbon).
As of 2021 there were 2,030 vacant dwelling in the parish. Of the vacant dwellings, 887 are vacant for rental or with the purpose of being sold, while 1,143 are vacant for other reasons, often abandoned, awaiting their demolition or because a reason for conflict among heirs. Moreover, as of 2023 106 apartments are registered as "Alojamento Local", meaning they have the license to be rent on platforms such as Booking.com or Airbnb.
In the parish were also recorded 8 homeless people, of which 7 (87.5%) were males. The parish is thus actively promoting initiatives aiming at helping people in situation of permanent of temporal homelessness.
Landmarks
Local landmarks and interesting places include one of the biggest public greenspace/urban parks in the city Quinta das Conchas e dos Lilases, the Paço do Lumiar, and several old palaces are also scattered throughout the neighbourhood.
Alvalade Stadium (home of Sporting Lisbon)
National Museum of Costume
Colégio de Santa Doroteia
Conjunto do Paço do Lumiar, or ancient palaces of Lumiar: composed by Quinta dos Azulejos, Quinta das Hortênsias, Quinta do Marquês de Angeja, Palácio do Monteiro-Mor
Palácio do Monteiro-Mor
Quinta Alegre
Quinta dos Azulejos
Igreja de São João Baptista
Igreja e Convento de Santa Brígida
Igreja e Convento de Nossa Senhora das Portas do Céu
Igreja matriz do Lumiar
Monteiro-Mor Park
National Theatre and Dance Museum
Quinta da Musgueira
Villa Sousa, 1912 Valmor Prize winner (Prémio Valmor), designed by Manuel Joaquim Norte Júnior
Tobis Portuguesa S.A.
Culture
The parish hosts numerous cultural institutions, such as Orlando Ribeiro Municipal Library. Other notable institutions include:
Associação Juvenil IGNISTUNA - Tuna Académica do Lumiar
Academia Musical 1.º de Junho
Academia Musical Joaquim Xavier Pinheiro
Academia União Familiar de Telheiras
Académico Clube de Ciências
Associação de Cultura e Recreio da Musgueira Norte.
Associação Popular do Lumiar
Associação de Residentes de Telheiras
Associação Sociocultural "A Festa"
Associação Sociocultural Recreativa e Desportiva da Mugueira Sul
Atlético Clube da Musgueira Sul
Associação de Moradores do bairro da Cruz Vermelha no Lumiar
Comunidade Hindu (lit. Hindu community)
Sports
The freguesia is home to Academia do Lumiar, a basketball team of the Proliga (Portugal).
Other sports institutions include:
Grupo Desportivo e Recreativo Tunelense e Grupo Recreativo
Sporting Clube de Portugal
Grupo Recreativo e Desportivo Bairro da Cruz Vermelha
Grupo Desportivo das Calvanas
Clube Ténis Paço Lumiar
Centro Cultural Quinta de Nossa Senhora da Luz
Health
The parish is served by numerous hospitals, pharmacies and health centers.Examples of these facilities are, for instance:
Hospital da Força Aérea (lit. air force hospital)
Pulido Valente Hospital
Lumiar Health Center
Clínica CUF Alvalade
USF Alta de Lisboa
Centro de Medicina Subaquática e Hiperbárica (military hospital)
Campus de Saúde Militar (military hospital)
There are also numerous associations headquartered in the parish that deal with health, such as Sociedade Portuguesa Medicina Interna (Portuguese medical society)
Gardens and parks
The parish's largest public park is undoubtedly Quinta das Conchas e dos Lilases
Transportation
Lumiar is well connected by public transport. The Campo Grande interchange is one of the main transfer centers between public transport, with several metro, bus, tram and taxi lines.
Metro
The parish can be accessed through the following metro lines and stations:
Lisbon Metro Green Line (Linha verde)
Telheiras
Campo Grande
Lisbon Metro Yellow Line (Linha amarela)
Lumiar
Quinta das Conchas
Campo Grande
Bus
Urban bus services are carried out by the municipal company Carris
Air
The parish is delimited on its eastern side by Lisbon airport facilities
Politics
Presidential elections
Legislative elections
Local elections
Streets
The parish has 249 streets administered by the city council. They are:
Notes
References
External links
Media related to Lumiar (Lisbon) at Wikimedia Commons
Lumiar heraldry |
Hospital_Pulido_Valente | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospital_Pulido_Valente | [
573
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospital_Pulido_Valente"
] | Hospital Pulido Valente is a hospital located in the civil parish of Lumiar, in the Portuguese municipality of Lisbon. The hospital is dedicated mainly to Pulmonary care medicine, being the biggest hospital of this speciality in Portugal.
History
A plan by architectural landscaper Francisco Caldeira Cabral and an architectural project authored by Vasco Morais Palmeiro Regaleira was established in 1947. The DGEMN Direcção Geral dos Edifícios e Monumentos Nacionais (General Directorate for Buildings and National Monuments) was involved in public works between 25 April 1928 and 27 April 1953 resulting in the expansion, remodeling and adaption of the hospital.
As part of these plans, in 1951, construction began on a preventorium and re-organization of the operating block, by the Direcções dos Serviços de Construção e Conservação (Directorates for Construction and Conservation Services). Five years later, construction began on an experimental pavilion, that included 60 beds, in addition to conservation projects and work on the kitchen by the Directorates. The following year work began on the first wing of a new sanitorium, which continued in the next year. The completed work included the completion of a crematorium, the execution of the a major part of the civil construction work, remodeling and expansion of the Radiology Services and sanitarium's Surgery block. Work began on the Serviços Industriais (Industrial Service) block, that included laboratory, pharmacy services, and deposits; installation of the distribution channels for electricity to many of the buildings, including transformation post, along with accesses and exterior landscaping. In addition, the chapel in the sanitorium was refurbished.
In 1959, equipment and furniture were installed for the satellite unit of the sanitorium, by the Comissão para Aquisição de Mobiliário (Furniture Acquisition Commission).
In 1961, during phase two of the public project, saw expansion of pathological anatomy block, cardiology and operator rooms, improvements of the central heating and conservation work on the Lambert de Morais Pavilion, by the Serviços de Construção e de Conservação.
The extinction of the Pulmonary Emergency block, after a political decision in 1997, left the hospital without the possibility of using a specialized facility. The crisis in the Pulmonary Care Medicine Department, resulted in a reduction of staff and the exit of junior physicians caused by the restructuring in the National Health Care System in 2003.
On 24 August 2006, the building was undergoing heritage classification, under the terms of the transitional regime, under Article 1.1 of Decree 173/2006 (Diário da República, Série 1, 16), but it expired before the limits of Article 24, Decree 107/2001 (Diário da República, Série-1A, 209) on 8 September 2001.
References
Notes
Sources
Ministério das Obras Públicas, ed. (1952), Relatório da Actividade do Ministério no ano de 1951 (in Portuguese), Lisbon, Portugal{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Ministério das Obras Públicas, ed. (1953), Relatório da Actividade do Ministério no ano de 1952 (in Portuguese), Lisbon, Portugal{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Ministério das Obras Públicas, ed. (1957), Relatório da Actividade do Ministério no ano de 1956 (in Portuguese), Lisbon, Portugal{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Ministério das Obras Públicas, ed. (1959), Relatório da Actividade do Ministério nos anos de 1957 e 1958 (in Portuguese), vol. 1, Lisbon, Portugal{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Ministério das Obras Públicas, ed. (1960), Relatório da Actividade do Ministério nos Anos de 1959 (in Portuguese), vol. 1, Lisbon, Portugal{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Ministério das Obras Públicas, ed. (1962), Relatório da Actividade do Ministério no Ano de 1961 (in Portuguese), vol. 1, Lisbon, Portugal{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) |
SS_Edmund_Fitzgerald | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Edmund_Fitzgerald | [
574
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Edmund_Fitzgerald"
] | SS Edmund Fitzgerald was an American Great Lakes freighter that sank in Lake Superior during a storm on November 10, 1975, with the loss of the entire crew of 29 men. When launched on June 7, 1958, she was the largest ship on North America's Great Lakes and remains the largest to have sunk there. She was located in deep water on November 14, 1975, by a U.S. Navy aircraft detecting magnetic anomalies, and found soon afterwards to be in two large pieces.
For 17 years, Edmund Fitzgerald carried taconite (a variety of iron ore) from mines near Duluth, Minnesota, to iron works in Detroit, Michigan; Toledo, Ohio; and other Great Lakes ports. As a workhorse, she set seasonal haul records six times, often breaking her own record. Captain Peter Pulcer was known for piping music day or night over the ship's intercom while passing through the St. Clair and Detroit rivers (between Lake Huron and Lake Erie), and entertaining spectators at the Soo Locks (between Lakes Superior and Huron) with a running commentary about the ship. Her size, record-breaking performance, and "DJ captain" endeared Edmund Fitzgerald to boat watchers.
Carrying a full cargo of ore pellets with Captain Ernest M. McSorley in command, she embarked on her ill-fated voyage from Superior, Wisconsin, near Duluth, on the afternoon of November 9, 1975. En route to a steel mill near Detroit, Edmund Fitzgerald joined a second taconite freighter, SS Arthur M. Anderson. By the next day, the two ships were caught in a severe storm on Lake Superior, with near-hurricane-force winds and waves up to 35 feet (11 m) high. Shortly after 7:10 p.m., Edmund Fitzgerald suddenly sank in Canadian (Ontario) waters 530 feet (88 fathoms; 160 m) deep, about 17 miles (15 nautical miles; 27 kilometers) from Whitefish Bay near the twin cities of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario—a distance Edmund Fitzgerald could have covered in just over an hour at her top speed.
Edmund Fitzgerald previously reported being in significant difficulty to the saltwater vessel Avafors: "I have a bad list, lost both radars. And am taking heavy seas over the deck. One of the worst seas I've ever been in." However, no distress signals were sent before she sank; Captain McSorley's last (7:10 p.m.) message to Arthur M. Anderson was, "We are holding our own". Her crew of 29 perished, and no bodies were recovered. The exact cause of the sinking remains unknown, though many books, studies, and expeditions have examined it. Edmund Fitzgerald may have been swamped, suffered structural failure or topside damage, grounded on a shoal, or suffered from a combination of these.
The disaster is one of the best known in the history of Great Lakes shipping, in part because Canadian singer Gordon Lightfoot made it the subject of his 1976 popular ballad "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". Lightfoot wrote the hit song after reading an article, "The Cruelest Month", in the November 24, 1975, issue of Newsweek. The sinking led to changes in Great Lakes shipping regulations and practices that included mandatory survival suits, depth finders, positioning systems, increased freeboard, and more frequent inspection of vessels.
History
Design and construction
Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, invested in the iron and minerals industries on a large scale, including the construction of Edmund Fitzgerald, which represented the first such investment by any American life insurance company. In 1957, they contracted Great Lakes Engineering Works (GLEW), of River Rouge, Michigan, to design and construct the ship "within a foot of the maximum length allowed for passage through the soon-to-be completed Saint Lawrence Seaway." The ship's value at that time was $7 million (equivalent to $58.1 million in 2023). Edmund Fitzgerald was the first laker built to the maximum St. Lawrence Seaway size, which was 730 feet (222.5 m) long, 75 feet (22.9 m) wide, and with a 25 foot (7.6 m) draft. The moulded depth (roughly speaking, the vertical height of the hull) was 39 ft (12 m). The hold depth (the inside height of the cargo hold) was 33 ft 4 in (10.16 m). GLEW laid the first keel plate on August 7 the same year.
With a deadweight capacity of 26,000 long tons (29,120 short tons; 26,417 t), and a 729-foot (222 m) hull, Edmund Fitzgerald was the longest ship on the Great Lakes, earning her the title Queen of the Lakes until September 17, 1959, when the 730-foot (222.5 m) SS Murray Bay was launched. Edmund Fitzgerald's three central cargo holds were loaded through 21 watertight cargo hatches, each 11 by 48 feet (3.4 by 14.6 m) of 5⁄16-inch-thick (7.9 mm) steel. Originally coal-fired, her boilers were converted to burn oil during the 1971–72 winter layup. In 1969, the ship's maneuverability was improved by the installation of a diesel-powered bow thruster.
By ore freighter standards, the interior of Edmund Fitzgerald was luxurious. Her J.L. Hudson Company–designed furnishings included deep pile carpeting, tiled bathrooms, drapes over the portholes, and leather swivel chairs in the guest lounge. There were two guest staterooms for passengers. Air conditioning extended to the crew quarters, which featured more amenities than usual. A large galley and fully stocked pantry supplied meals for two dining rooms. Edmund Fitzgerald's pilothouse was outfitted with "state-of-the-art nautical equipment and a beautiful map room."
Name and launch
Northwestern Mutual wanted to name the ship after its president and chairman of the board, Edmund Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald's own grandfather and all great uncles had themselves been lake captains, and his father owned the Milwaukee Drydock Company, which built and repaired ships. Fitzgerald had attempted to dissuade the naming of the ship after himself, proposing the names Centennial, Seaway, Milwaukee and Northwestern. The board was resolute, and Edmund abstained from voting; the 36 board members voted unanimously to name her the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. More than 15,000 people attended Edmund Fitzgerald's christening and launch ceremony on June 7, 1958. The event was plagued by misfortunes. When Elizabeth Fitzgerald, wife of Edmund Fitzgerald, tried to christen the ship by smashing a champagne bottle over the bow, it took her three attempts to break it. A delay of 36 minutes followed while the shipyard crew struggled to release the keel blocks. Upon sideways launch, the ship created a large wave that doused the spectators and then crashed into a pier before righting herself. Other witnesses later said they swore the ship was "trying to climb right out of the water". On September 22, 1958, Edmund Fitzgerald completed nine days of sea trials.
Career
Northwestern Mutual's normal practice was to purchase ships for operation by other companies. In Edmund Fitzgerald's case, they signed a 25-year contract with Oglebay Norton Corporation to operate the vessel. Oglebay Norton immediately designated Edmund Fitzgerald the flagship of its Columbia Transportation fleet.
Edmund Fitzgerald was a record-setting workhorse, often beating her own milestones. The vessel's record load for a single trip was 27,402 long tons (30,690 short tons; 27,842 t) in 1969. For 17 years, Edmund Fitzgerald carried taconite from Minnesota's Iron Range mines near Duluth, Minnesota, to iron works in Detroit, Toledo, and other ports. She set seasonal haul records six different times. Her nicknames included "Fitz", "Pride of the American Side", "Mighty Fitz", "Toledo Express", "Big Fitz", and the "Titanic of the Great Lakes". Loading Edmund Fitzgerald with taconite pellets took about four and a half hours, while unloading took around 14 hours. A round trip between Superior, Wisconsin, and Detroit, Michigan, usually took her five days and she averaged 47 similar trips per season. The vessel's usual route was between Superior, Wisconsin, and Toledo, Ohio, although her port of destination could vary. By November 1975, Edmund Fitzgerald had logged an estimated 748 round trips on the Great Lakes and covered more than a million miles, "a distance roughly equivalent to 44 trips around the world."
Up until a few weeks before her loss, passengers had traveled on board as company guests. Frederick Stonehouse wrote:
Stewards treated the guests to the entire VIP routine. The cuisine was reportedly excellent and snacks were always available in the lounge. A small but well-stocked kitchenette provided the drinks. Once each trip, the captain held a candlelight dinner for the guests, complete with mess-jacketed stewards and special "clamdigger" punch.
Because of her size, appearance, string of records, and "DJ captain," Edmund Fitzgerald became a favorite of boat watchers throughout her career. Although Captain Peter Pulcer was in command of Edmund Fitzgerald on trips when cargo records were set, "he is best remembered ... for piping music day or night over the ship's intercom system" while passing through the St. Clair and Detroit Rivers. While navigating the Soo Locks he would often come out of the pilothouse and use a bullhorn to entertain tourists with a commentary on details about Edmund Fitzgerald.
In 1969, Edmund Fitzgerald received a safety award for eight years of operation without a time-off worker injury. The vessel ran aground in 1969, and she collided with SS Hochelaga in 1970. Later that same year, she struck the wall of a lock, an accident repeated in 1973 and 1974. During 1974, she lost her original bow anchor in the Detroit River. None of these mishaps were considered serious or unusual. Freshwater ships are built to last more than half a century, and Edmund Fitzgerald would have still had a long career ahead of her when she sank.
Final voyage and wreck
Edmund Fitzgerald left Superior, Wisconsin, at 2:15 p.m. on the afternoon of November 9, 1975, under the command of Captain Ernest M. McSorley. She was en route to the steel mill on Zug Island, near Detroit, Michigan, with a cargo of 26,116 long tons (29,250 short tons; 26,535 t) of taconite ore pellets and soon reached her full speed of 16.3 miles per hour (14.2 kn; 26.2 km/h). Around 5 p.m., Edmund Fitzgerald joined a second freighter under the command of Captain Jesse B. "Bernie" Cooper, Arthur M. Anderson, destined for Gary, Indiana, out of Two Harbors, Minnesota. The weather forecast was not unusual for November and the National Weather Service (NWS) predicted that a storm would pass just south of Lake Superior by 7 a.m. on November 10.
SS Wilfred Sykes loaded opposite Edmund Fitzgerald at the Burlington Northern Dock #1 and departed at 4:15 p.m., about two hours after Edmund Fitzgerald. In contrast to the NWS forecast, Captain Dudley J. Paquette of Wilfred Sykes predicted that a major storm would directly cross Lake Superior. From the outset, he chose a route that took advantage of the protection offered by the lake's north shore to avoid the worst effects of the storm. The crew of Wilfred Sykes followed the radio conversations between Edmund Fitzgerald and Arthur M. Anderson during the first part of their trip and overheard their captains deciding to take the regular Lake Carriers' Association downbound route. The NWS altered its forecast at 7:00 p.m., issuing gale warnings for the whole of Lake Superior. Arthur M. Anderson and Edmund Fitzgerald altered course northward, seeking shelter along the Ontario shore, where they encountered a winter storm at 1:00 a.m. on November 10. Edmund Fitzgerald reported winds of 52 knots (96 km/h; 60 mph) and waves 10 feet (3.0 m) high. Captain Paquette of Wilfred Sykes reported that after 1 a.m., he overheard McSorley say that he had reduced the ship's speed because of the rough conditions. Paquette said he was stunned to later hear McSorley, who was not known for turning aside or slowing down, state that "we're going to try for some lee from Isle Royale. You're walking away from us anyway … I can't stay with you."
At 2:00 a.m. on November 10, the NWS upgraded its warnings from gale to storm, forecasting winds of 35–50 knots (65–93 km/h; 40–58 mph). Until then, Edmund Fitzgerald had followed Arthur M. Anderson, which was travelling at a constant 14.6 miles per hour (12.7 kn; 23.5 km/h), but the faster Edmund Fitzgerald pulled ahead at about 3:00 a.m. As the storm center passed over the ships, they experienced shifting winds, with wind speeds temporarily dropping as wind direction changed from northeast to south and then northwest. After 1:50 p.m., when Arthur M. Anderson logged winds of 50 knots (93 km/h; 58 mph), wind speeds again picked up rapidly, and it began to snow at 2:45 p.m., reducing visibility; Arthur M. Anderson lost sight of Edmund Fitzgerald, which was about 16 miles (26 km) ahead at the time.
Shortly after 3:30 p.m., Captain McSorley radioed Arthur M. Anderson to report that Edmund Fitzgerald was taking on water and had lost two vent covers and a fence railing. The vessel had also developed a list. Two of Edmund Fitzgerald's six bilge pumps ran continuously to discharge shipped water. McSorley said that he would slow his ship down so that Arthur M. Anderson could close the gap between them. In a broadcast shortly afterward, the United States Coast Guard (USCG) warned all shipping that the Soo Locks had been closed and they should seek safe anchorage. Shortly after 4:10 p.m., McSorley called Arthur M. Anderson again to report a radar failure and asked Arthur M. Anderson to keep track of them. Edmund Fitzgerald, effectively blind, slowed to let Arthur M. Anderson come within a 10-mile (16 km) range so she could receive radar guidance from the other ship.
For a time, Arthur M. Anderson directed Edmund Fitzgerald toward the relative safety of Whitefish Bay; then, at 4:39 p.m., McSorley contacted the USCG station in Grand Marais, Michigan, to inquire whether the Whitefish Point light and navigation beacon were operational. The USCG replied that their monitoring equipment indicated that both instruments were inactive. McSorley then hailed any ships in the Whitefish Point area to report the state of the navigational aids, receiving an answer from Captain Cedric Woodard of Avafors between 5:00 and 5:30 p.m. that the Whitefish Point light was on but not the radio beacon. Woodard testified to the Marine Board that he overheard McSorley say, "Don't allow nobody on deck," as well as something about a vent that Woodard could not understand. Some time later, McSorley told Woodard, "I have a 'bad list', I have lost both radars, and am taking heavy seas over the deck in one of the worst seas I have ever been in."
By late in the afternoon of November 10, sustained winds of over 50 knots (93 km/h; 58 mph) were recorded by ships and observation points across eastern Lake Superior. Arthur M. Anderson logged sustained winds as high as 58 knots (107 km/h; 67 mph) at 4:52 p.m., while waves increased to as high as 25 feet (7.6 m) by 6:00 p.m. Arthur M. Anderson was also struck by 70-to-75-knot (130 to 139 km/h; 81 to 86 mph) gusts and rogue waves as high as 35 feet (11 m).
At approximately 7:10 p.m., when Arthur M. Anderson notified Edmund Fitzgerald of an upbound ship and asked how she was doing, McSorley reported, "We are holding our own" She was never heard from again. No distress signal was received, and ten minutes later, Arthur M. Anderson lost the ability either to reach Edmund Fitzgerald by radio or to detect her on radar.
Search
Captain Cooper of Arthur M. Anderson first called the USCG in Sault Ste. Marie at 7:39 p.m. on channel 16, the radio distress frequency. The USCG responders instructed him to call back on channel 12 because they wanted to keep their emergency channel open and they were having difficulty with their communication systems, including antennas blown down by the storm. Cooper then contacted the upbound saltwater vessel Nanfri and was told that she could not pick up Edmund Fitzgerald on her radar either. Despite repeated attempts to raise the USCG, Cooper was not successful until 7:54 p.m. when the officer on duty asked him to keep watch for a 16-foot (4.9 m) boat lost in the area. At about 8:25 p.m., Cooper again called the USCG to express his concern about Edmund Fitzgerald and at 9:03 p.m. reported her missing. Petty Officer Philip Branch later testified, "I considered it serious, but at the time it was not urgent."
Lacking appropriate search-and-rescue vessels to respond to Edmund Fitzgerald's disaster, at approximately 9:00 p.m., the USCG asked Arthur M. Anderson to turn around and look for survivors. Around 10:30 p.m., the USCG asked all commercial vessels anchored in or near Whitefish Bay to assist in the search. The initial search for survivors was carried out by Arthur M. Anderson, and a second freighter, SS William Clay Ford. The efforts of a third freighter, the Toronto-registered SS Hilda Marjanne, were foiled by the weather. The USCG sent a buoy tender, Woodrush, from Duluth, Minnesota, but it took two and a half hours to launch and a day to travel to the search area. The Traverse City, Michigan, USCG station launched an HU-16 fixed-wing search aircraft that arrived on the scene at 10:53 p.m. while an HH-52 USCG helicopter with a 3.8-million-candlepower searchlight arrived at 1:00 a.m. on November 11. Canadian Coast Guard aircraft joined the three-day search and the Ontario Provincial Police established and maintained a beach patrol all along the eastern shore of Lake Superior.
Although the search recovered debris, including lifeboats and rafts, none of the crew were found. On her final voyage, Edmund Fitzgerald's crew of 29 consisted of the captain; the first, second, and third mates; five engineers; three oilers; a cook; a wiper; two maintenance men; three watchmen; three deckhands; three wheelsmen; two porters; a cadet; and a steward. Most of the crew were from Ohio and Wisconsin; their ages ranged from 20 (watchman Karl A. Peckol) to 63 (Captain McSorley).
Edmund Fitzgerald is among the largest and best-known vessels lost on the Great Lakes, but she is not alone on the Lake Superior seabed in that area. In the years between 1816, when Invincible was lost, and 1975, when Edmund Fitzgerald sank, the Whitefish Point area had claimed at least 240 ships.
Wreck discovery and surveys
Wreck discovery
A U.S. Navy Lockheed P-3 Orion aircraft, piloted by Lt. George Conner and equipped to detect magnetic anomalies usually associated with submarines, found the wreck on November 14, 1975 in Canadian waters close to the international boundary at a depth of 530 feet (160 m). Edmund Fitzgerald lies about 15 miles (13 nmi; 24 km) west of Deadman's Cove, Ontario; about 8 miles (7.0 nmi; 13 km) northwest of Pancake Bay Provincial Park; and 17 miles (15 nmi; 27 km) from the entrance to Whitefish Bay to the southeast. A further November 14–16 survey by the USCG using a side scan sonar revealed two large objects lying close together on the lake floor. The U.S. Navy also contracted Seaward, Inc., to conduct a second survey between November 22 and 25.
Underwater surveys
From May 20 to 28, 1976, the U.S. Navy dived on the wreck using its unmanned submersible, CURV-III, and found Edmund Fitzgerald lying in two large pieces in 530 feet (160 m) of water. Navy estimates put the length of the bow section at 276 feet (84 m) and that of the stern section at 253 feet (77 m). The bow section stood upright in the mud, some 170 feet (52 m) from the stern section that lay capsized at a 50-degree angle from the bow. In between the two broken sections lay a large mass of taconite pellets and scattered wreckage lying about, including hatch covers and hull plating.
In 1980, during a Lake Superior research dive expedition, marine explorer Jean-Michel Cousteau, the son of Jacques Cousteau, sent two divers from RV Calypso in the first manned submersible dive to Edmund Fitzgerald. The dive was brief, and although the dive team drew no final conclusions, they speculated that Edmund Fitzgerald had broken up on the surface.
The Michigan Sea Grant Program organized a three-day dive to survey Edmund Fitzgerald in 1989. The primary objective was to record 3-D videotape for use in museum educational programs and the production of documentaries. The expedition used a towed survey system (TSS Mk1) and a self-propelled, tethered, free-swimming remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV). The Mini Rover ROV was equipped with miniature stereoscopic cameras and wide-angle lenses in order to produce 3-D images. The towed survey system and the Mini Rover ROV were designed, built and operated by Chris Nicholson of Deep Sea Systems International, Inc. Participants included the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Geographic Society, the United States Army Corps of Engineers, the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society (GLSHS), and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the latter providing RV Grayling as the support vessel for the ROV. The GLSHS used part of the five hours of video footage produced during the dives in a documentary and the National Geographic Society used a segment in a broadcast. Frederick Stonehouse, who wrote one of the first books on the Edmund Fitzgerald wreck, moderated a 1990 panel review of the video that drew no conclusions about the cause of Edmund Fitzgerald's sinking.
Canadian explorer Joseph B. MacInnis organized and led six publicly funded dives to Edmund Fitzgerald over a three-day period in 1994. Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution provided Edwin A. Link as the support vessel, and their manned submersible, Celia. The GLSHS paid $10,000 for three of its members to each join a dive and take still pictures. MacInnis concluded that the notes and video obtained during the dives did not provide an explanation why Edmund Fitzgerald sank. The same year, longtime sport diver Fred Shannon formed Deepquest Ltd., and organized a privately funded dive to the wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald, using Delta Oceanographic's submersible, Delta. Deepquest Ltd. conducted seven dives and took more than 42 hours of underwater video while Shannon set the record for the longest submersible dive to Edmund Fitzgerald at 211 minutes. Prior to conducting the dives, Shannon studied NOAA navigational charts and found that the international boundary had changed three times before its publication by NOAA in 1976. Shannon determined that based on GPS coordinates from the 1994 Deepquest expedition, "at least one-third of the two acres of immediate wreckage containing the two major portions of the vessel is in U.S. waters because of an error in the position of the U.S.–Canada boundary line shown on official lake charts."
Shannon's group discovered the remains of a crew member partly dressed in coveralls and wearing a life jacket alongside the bow of the ship, indicating that at least one of the crew was aware of the possibility of sinking. The life jacket had deteriorated canvas and "what is thought to be six rectangular cork blocks ... clearly visible." Shannon concluded that "massive and advancing structural failure" caused Edmund Fitzgerald to break apart on the surface and sink.
MacInnis led another series of dives in 1995 to salvage the bell from Edmund Fitzgerald. The Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians backed the expedition by co-signing a loan in the amount of $250,000. Canadian engineer Phil Nuytten's atmospheric diving suit, known as the Newtsuit, was used to retrieve the bell from the ship, replace it with a replica, and put a beer can in Edmund Fitzgerald's pilothouse. That same year, Terrence Tysall and Mike Zee set multiple records when they used trimix gas to scuba dive to Edmund Fitzgerald. The pair are the only people known to have touched the Edmund Fitzgerald wreck. They also set records for the deepest scuba dive on the Great Lakes and the deepest shipwreck dive, and were the first divers to reach Edmund Fitzgerald without the aid of a submersible. It took six minutes to reach the wreck, six minutes to survey it, and three hours to resurface to avoid decompression sickness, also known as "the bends".
Restrictions on surveys
Under the Ontario Heritage Act, activities on registered archeological sites require a license. In March 2005, the Whitefish Point Preservation Society accused the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society (GLSHS) of conducting an unauthorized dive to Edmund Fitzgerald. Although the director of the GLSHS admitted to conducting a sonar scan of the wreck in 2002, he denied such a survey required a license at the time it was carried out.
An April 2005 amendment to the Ontario Heritage Act allows the Ontario government to impose a license requirement on dives, the operation of submersibles, side scan sonars, or underwater cameras within a designated radius around protected sites. Conducting any of those activities without a license would result in fines of up to CA$1 million. On the basis of the amended law, to protect wreck sites considered "watery graves", the Ontario government issued updated regulations in January 2006, including an area with a 500-meter (1,640 ft) radius around Edmund Fitzgerald and other specifically designated marine archeological sites. In 2009, a further amendment to the Ontario Heritage Act imposed licensing requirements on any type of surveying device.
Hypotheses on the cause of sinking
Extreme weather and sea conditions play a role in all of the published hypotheses regarding Edmund Fitzgerald's sinking, but they differ on the other causal factors.
Waves and weather hypothesis
In 2005, NOAA and the NWS ran a computer simulation, including weather and wave conditions, covering the period from November 9, 1975, until the early morning of November 11. Analysis of the simulation showed that two separate areas of high-speed wind appeared over Lake Superior at 4:00 p.m. on November 10. One had speeds in excess of 43 knots (80 km/h; 49 mph) and the other winds in excess of 40 knots (74 km/h; 46 mph). The southeastern part of the lake, the direction in which Edmund Fitzgerald was heading, had the highest winds. Average wave heights increased to near 19 feet (5.8 m) by 7:00 p.m., November 10, and winds exceeded 50 mph (43 kn; 80 km/h) over most of southeastern Lake Superior.
Edmund Fitzgerald sank at the eastern edge of the area of high wind where the long fetch, or distance that wind blows over water, produced significant waves averaging over 23 feet (7.0 m) by 7:00 p.m. and over 25 feet (7.6 m) at 8:00 p.m. The simulation also showed one in 100 waves reaching 36 feet (11 m) and one out of every 1,000 reaching 46 feet (14 m). Since the ship was heading east-southeastward, it is likely that the waves caused Edmund Fitzgerald to roll heavily.
At the time of the sinking, the ship Arthur M. Anderson reported northwest winds of 57 mph (50 kn; 92 km/h), matching the simulation analysis result of 54 mph (47 kn; 87 km/h). The analysis further showed that the maximum sustained winds reached near hurricane force of about 70 mph (61 kn; 110 km/h) with gusts to 86 miles per hour (75 kn; 138 km/h) at the time and location where Edmund Fitzgerald sank.
Rogue wave hypothesis
A group of three rogue waves, often called "three sisters," was reported in the vicinity of Edmund Fitzgerald at the time she sank. The "three sisters" phenomenon is said to occur on Lake Superior and refers to a sequence of three rogue waves forming that are one-third larger than normal waves. The first wave introduces an abnormally large amount of water onto the deck. This water is unable to fully drain away before the second wave strikes, adding to the surplus. The third incoming wave again adds to the two accumulated backwashes, quickly overloading the deck with too much water.
Captain Cooper of Arthur M. Anderson reported that his ship was "hit by two 30 to 35 foot seas about 6:30 p.m., one burying the aft cabins and damaging a lifeboat by pushing it right down onto the saddle. The second wave of this size, perhaps 35 foot, came over the bridge deck." Cooper went on to say that these two waves, possibly followed by a third, continued in the direction of Edmund Fitzgerald and would have struck about the time she sank. This hypothesis postulates that the "three sisters" compounded the twin problems of Edmund Fitzgerald's known list and her lower speed in heavy seas that already allowed water to remain on her deck for longer than usual.
The "Edmund Fitzgerald" episode of the 2010 television series Dive Detectives features the wave-generating tank of the National Research Council's Institute for Naval Technology in St. John's, and the tank's simulation of the effect of a 17-meter (56 ft) rogue wave upon a scale model of Edmund Fitzgerald. The simulation indicated such a rogue wave could almost completely submerge the bow or stern of the ship with water, at least temporarily.
Cargo-hold flooding hypothesis
The July 26, 1977, USCG Marine Casualty Report suggested that the accident was caused by ineffective hatch closures. The report concluded that these devices failed to prevent waves from inundating the cargo hold. The flooding occurred gradually and probably imperceptibly throughout the final day, finally resulting in a fatal loss of buoyancy and stability. As a result, Edmund Fitzgerald plummeted to the bottom without warning. Video footage of the wreck site showed that most of her hatch clamps were in perfect condition. The USCG Marine board concluded that the few damaged clamps were probably the only ones fastened. As a result, ineffective hatch closure caused Edmund Fitzgerald to flood and founder.
From the beginning of the USCG inquiry, some of the crewmen's families and various labor organizations believed the USCG findings could be tainted because there were serious questions regarding their preparedness as well as licensing and rules changes. Paul Trimble, a retired USCG vice admiral and president of the Lake Carriers Association (LCA), wrote a letter to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) on September 16, 1977, that included the following statements of objection to the USCG findings:
The present hatch covers are an advanced design and are considered by the entire lake shipping industry to be the most significant improvement over the telescoping leaf covers previously used for many years … The one-piece hatch covers have proven completely satisfactory in all weather conditions without a single vessel loss in almost 40 years of use … and no water accumulation in cargo holds …
It was common practice for ore freighters, even in foul weather, to embark with not all cargo clamps locked in place on the hatch covers. Maritime author Wolff reported that, depending on weather conditions, all the clamps were eventually set within one to two days. Captain Paquette of Wilfred Sykes was dismissive of suggestions that unlocked hatch clamps caused Edmund Fitzgerald to founder. He said that he commonly sailed in fine weather using the minimum number of clamps necessary to secure the hatch covers.
The May 4, 1978, NTSB findings differed from the USCG. The NTSB made the following observations based on the CURV-III survey:
The No. 1 hatch cover was entirely inside the No. 1 hatch and showed indications of buckling from external loading. Sections of the coaming in way of the No. 1 hatch were fractured and buckled inward. The No. 2 hatch cover was missing and the coaming on the No. 2 hatch was fractured and buckled. Hatches Nos. 3 and 4 were covered with mud; one corner of hatch cover No. 3 could be seen in place. Hatch cover No. 5 was missing. A series of 16 consecutive hatch cover clamps were observed on the No. 5 hatch coaming. Of this series, the first and eighth were distorted or broken. All of the 14 other clamps were undamaged and in the open position. The No. 6 hatch was open and a hatch cover was standing on end vertically in the hatch. The hatch covers were missing from hatches Nos. 7 and 8 and both coamings were fractured and severely distorted. The bow section abruptly ended just aft of hatch No. 8 and the deck plating was ripped up from the separation to the forward end of hatch No. 7.
The NTSB conducted computer studies, testing and analysis to determine the forces necessary to collapse the hatch covers and concluded that Edmund Fitzgerald sank suddenly from flooding of the cargo hold "due to the collapse of one or more of the hatch covers under the weight of giant boarding seas" instead of flooding gradually due to ineffective hatch closures. The NTSB dissenting opinion held that Edmund Fitzgerald sank suddenly and unexpectedly from shoaling.
Shoaling hypothesis
The LCA believed that instead of hatch cover leakage, the more probable cause of Edmund Fitzgerald's loss was shoaling or grounding in the Six Fathom Shoal northwest of Caribou Island when the vessel "unknowingly raked a reef" during the time the Whitefish Point light and radio beacon were not available as navigation aids. This hypothesis was supported by a 1976 Canadian hydrographic survey, which disclosed that an unknown shoal ran a mile farther east of Six Fathom Shoal than shown on the Canadian charts. Officers from Arthur M. Anderson observed that Edmund Fitzgerald sailed through this exact area. Conjecture by proponents of the Six Fathom Shoal hypothesis concluded that Edmund Fitzgerald's downed fence rail reported by McSorley could occur only if the ship "hogged" during shoaling, with the bow and stern bent downward and the midsection raised by the shoal, pulling the railing tight until the cables dislodged or tore under the strain. Divers searched the Six Fathom Shoal after the wreck occurred and found no evidence of "a recent collision or grounding anywhere." Maritime authors Bishop and Stonehouse wrote that the shoaling hypothesis was later challenged on the basis of the higher quality of detail in Shannon's 1994 photography that "explicitly show[s] the devastation of the Edmund Fitzgerald". Shannon's photography of Edmund Fitzgerald's overturned stern showed "no evidence on the bottom of the stern, the propeller or the rudder of the ship that would indicate the ship struck a shoal."
Maritime author Stonehouse reasoned that "unlike the Lake Carriers, the Coast Guard had no vested interest in the outcome of their investigation." Author Bishop reported that Captain Paquette of Wilfred Sykes argued that through their support for the shoaling explanation, the LCA represented the shipping company's interests by advocating a hypothesis that held LCA member companies, the American Bureau of Shipping, and the U.S. Coast Guard Service blameless.
Paul Hainault, a retired professor of mechanical engineering from Michigan Technological University, promoted a hypothesis that began as a student class project. His hypothesis held that Edmund Fitzgerald grounded at 9:30 a.m. on November 10 on Superior Shoal. This shoal, charted in 1929, is an underwater mountain in the middle of Lake Superior about 50 miles (80 km) north of Copper Harbor, Michigan. It has sharp peaks that rise nearly to the lake surface with water depths ranging from 22 to 400 feet (6.7 to 121.9 m), making it a menace to navigation. Discovery of the shoal resulted in a change in recommended shipping routes. A seiche, or standing wave, that occurred during the low-pressure system over Lake Superior on November 10, 1975, caused the lake to rise 3 feet (0.91 m) over the Soo Locks's gates to flood Portage Avenue in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, with 1 foot (0.3 m) of water. Hainault's hypothesis held that this seiche contributed to Edmund Fitzgerald shoaling 200 feet (61 m) of her hull on Superior Shoal, causing the hull to be punctured mid-body. The hypothesis contended that the wave action continued to damage the hull, until the middle third dropped out like a box, leaving the ship held together by the center deck. The stern section acted as an anchor and caused Edmund Fitzgerald to come to a full stop, causing everything to go forward. The ship broke apart on the surface within seconds. Compressed air pressure blew a hole in the starboard bow, which sank 18 degrees off course. The rear kept going forward with the engine still running, rolled to port and landed bottom up.
Structural failure hypothesis
Another published hypothesis contends that an already weakened structure, and modification of Edmund Fitzgerald's winter load line (which allows heavier loading and travel lower in the water), made it possible for large waves to cause a stress fracture in the hull. This is based on the "regular" huge waves of the storm and does not necessarily involve rogue waves.
The USCG and NTSB investigated whether Edmund Fitzgerald broke apart due to structural failure of the hull and because the 1976 CURV III survey found Edmund Fitzgerald's sections were 170 feet (52 m) from each other, the USCG's formal casualty report of July 1977 concluded that she had separated upon hitting the lake floor. The NTSB came to the same conclusion as USCG because:
The proximity of the bow and stern sections on the bottom of Lake Superior indicated that the vessel sank in one piece and broke apart either when it hit bottom or as it descended. Therefore, Edmund Fitzgerald did not sustain a massive structural failure of the hull while on the surface ... The final position of the wreckage indicated that if the Edmund Fitzgerald had capsized, it must have suffered a structural failure before hitting the lake bottom. The bow section would have had to right itself and the stern portion would have had to capsize before coming to rest on the bottom. It is, therefore, concluded that the Edmund Fitzgerald did not capsize on the surface.
Other authors have concluded that Edmund Fitzgerald most likely broke in two on the surface before sinking due to the intense waves, like the ore carriers SS Carl D. Bradley and SS Daniel J. Morrell. After maritime historian Frederick Stonehouse moderated the panel reviewing the video footage from the 1989 ROV survey of Edmund Fitzgerald, he concluded that the extent of taconite coverage over the wreck site showed that the stern had floated on the surface for a short time and spilled taconite into the forward section; thus the two sections of the wreck did not sink at the same time. The 1994 Shannon team found that the stern and the bow were 255 feet (78 m) apart, leading Shannon to conclude that Edmund Fitzgerald broke up on the surface. He said:
This placement does not support the hypothesis that the ship plunged to the bottom in one piece, breaking apart when it struck bottom. If this were true, the two sections would be much closer. In addition, the angle, repose and mounding of clay and mud at the site indicate the stern rolled over on the surface, spilling taconite ore pellets from its severed cargo hold, and then landed on portions of the cargo itself.
The stress fracture hypothesis was supported by the testimony of former crewmen. Former Second Mate Richard Orgel, who served on Edmund Fitzgerald in 1972 and 1973, testified that "the ship had a tendency to bend and spring during storms 'like a diving board after somebody has jumped off.'" Orgel was quoted as saying that the loss of Edmund Fitzgerald was caused by hull failure, "pure and simple. I detected undue stress in the side tunnels by examining the white enamel paint, which will crack and splinter when submitted to severe stress." George H. "Red" Burgner, Edmund Fitzgerald's steward for ten seasons and winter ship-keeper for seven years, testified in a deposition that a "loose keel" contributed to the vessel's loss. Burgner further testified that "the keel and sister kelsons were only 'tack welded'" and that he had personally observed that many of the welds were broken. Burgner was not asked to testify before the Marine Board of Inquiry.
When Bethlehem Steel Corporation permanently laid up Edmund Fitzgerald's sister ship, SS Arthur B. Homer, just five years after going to considerable expense to lengthen her, questions were raised as to whether both ships had the same structural problems. The two vessels were built in the same shipyard using welded joints instead of the riveted joints used in older ore freighters. Riveted joints allow a ship to flex and work in heavy seas, while welded joints are more likely to break. Reports indicate that repairs to Edmund Fitzgerald's hull were delayed in 1975 due to plans to lengthen the ship during the upcoming winter layup. Arthur B. Homer was lengthened to 825 feet (251 m) and placed back in service by December 1975, not long after Edmund Fitzgerald foundered. In 1978, without explanation, Bethlehem Steel Corporation denied permission for the chairman of the NTSB to travel on Arthur B. Homer. Arthur B. Homer was permanently laid up in 1980 and broken for scrap in 1987.
Retired GLEW naval architect Raymond Ramsay, one of the members of the design team that worked on the hull of Edmund Fitzgerald, reviewed her increased load lines, maintenance history, along with the history of long ship hull failure and concluded that Edmund Fitzgerald was not seaworthy on November 10, 1975. He stated that planning Edmund Fitzgerald to be compatible with the constraints of the St. Lawrence Seaway had placed her hull design in a "straight jacket [sic?]." Edmund Fitzgerald's long-ship design was developed without the benefit of research, development, test, and evaluation principles while computerized analytical technology was not available at the time she was built. Ramsay noted that Edmund Fitzgerald's hull was built with an all-welded (instead of riveted) modular fabrication method, which was used for the first time in the GLEW shipyard. Ramsay concluded that increasing the hull length to 729 feet (222 m) resulted in an L/D slenderness ratio (the ratio of the length of the ship to the depth of her structure) that caused excessive multi-axial bending and springing of the hull, and that the hull should have been structurally reinforced to cope with her increased length.
Topside damage hypothesis
The USCG cited topside damage as a reasonable alternative reason for Edmund Fitzgerald sinking and surmised that damage to the fence rail and vents was possibly caused by a heavy floating object such as a log. Historian and mariner Mark Thompson believes that something broke loose from Edmund Fitzgerald's deck. He theorized that the loss of the vents resulted in flooding of two ballast tanks or a ballast tank and a walking tunnel that caused the ship to list. Thompson further conjectured that damage more extensive than Captain McSorley could detect in the pilothouse let water flood the cargo hold. He concluded that the topside damage Edmund Fitzgerald experienced at 3:30 p.m. on November 10, compounded by the heavy seas, was the most obvious explanation for why she sank.
Possible contributing factors
The USCG, NTSB, and proponents of alternative theories have all named multiple possible contributing factors to the foundering of Edmund Fitzgerald.
Weather forecasting
The NWS long-range forecast on November 9, 1975, predicted that a storm would pass just south of Lake Superior and over the Keweenaw Peninsula, extending into the Lake from Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Captain Paquette of Wilfred Sykes had been following and charting the low-pressure system over Oklahoma since November 8 and concluded that a major storm would track across eastern Lake Superior. He therefore chose a route that gave Wilfred Sykes the most protection and took refuge in Thunder Bay, Ontario, during the worst of the storm. Based on the NWS forecast, Arthur M. Anderson and Edmund Fitzgerald instead started their trip across Lake Superior following the regular Lake Carriers Association route, which placed them in the path of the storm. The NTSB investigation concluded that the NWS failed to accurately predict wave heights on November 10. After running computer models in 2005 using actual meteorological data from November 10, 1975, Hultquist of the NWS said of Edmund Fitzgerald's position in the storm, "It ended in precisely the wrong place at the absolute worst time."
Inaccurate navigational charts
After reviewing testimony that Edmund Fitzgerald had passed near shoals north of Caribou Island, the USCG Marine Board examined the relevant navigational charts. They found that the Canadian 1973 navigational chart for the Six Fathom Shoal area was based on Canadian surveys from 1916 and 1919 and that the 1973 U.S. Lake Survey Chart No. 9 included the notation, "Canadian Areas. For data concerning Canadian areas, Canadian authorities have been consulted." Thereafter, at the request of the Marine Board and the Commander of the USCG Ninth District, the Canadian Hydrographic Service conducted a survey of the area surrounding Michipicoten Island and Caribou Island in 1976. The survey revealed that the shoal ran about 1 mile (1.6 km) farther east than shown on Canadian charts. The NTSB investigation concluded that, at the time of Edmund Fitzgerald's foundering, Lake Survey Chart No. 9 was not detailed enough to indicate Six Fathom Shoal as a hazard to navigation.
Lack of watertight bulkheads
Mark Thompson, a merchant seaman and author of numerous books on Great Lakes shipping, stated that if her cargo holds had had watertight subdivisions, "the Edmund Fitzgerald could have made it into Whitefish Bay." Frederick Stonehouse also held that the lack of watertight bulkheads caused Edmund Fitzgerald to sink. He said:
The Great Lakes ore carrier is the most commercially efficient vessel in the shipping trade today. But it's nothing but a motorized barge! It's the unsafest commercial vessel afloat. It has virtually no watertight integrity. Theoretically, a one-inch puncture in the cargo hold will sink it.
Stonehouse called on ship designers and builders to design lake carriers more like ships rather than "motorized super-barges" making the following comparison:
Contrast this [the Edmund Fitzgerald] with the story of the SS Maumee, an oceangoing tanker that struck an iceberg near the South Pole recently. The collision tore a hole in the ship's bow large enough to drive a truck through, but the Maumee was able to travel halfway around the world to a repair yard, without difficulty, because she was fitted with watertight bulkheads.
After Edmund Fitzgerald foundered, Great Lakes shipping companies were accused of valuing cargo payloads more than human life, since the vessel's cargo hold of 860,950 cubic feet (24,379 m3) had been divided by two non-watertight traverse "screen" bulkheads. The NTSB Edmund Fitzgerald investigation concluded that Great Lakes freighters should be constructed with watertight bulkheads in their cargo holds.
The USCG had proposed rules for watertight bulkheads in Great Lakes vessels as early as the sinking of Daniel J. Morrell in 1966 and did so again after the sinking of Edmund Fitzgerald, arguing that this would allow ships to make it to refuge or at least allow crew members to abandon ship in an orderly fashion. The LCA represented the Great Lakes fleet owners and was able to forestall watertight subdivision regulations by arguing that this would cause economic hardship for vessel operators. A few vessel operators have built Great Lakes ships with watertight subdivisions in the cargo holds since 1975, but most vessels operating on the lakes cannot prevent flooding of the entire cargo hold area.
Lack of instrumentation
A fathometer was not required under USCG regulations, and Edmund Fitzgerald lacked one, even though fathometers were available at the time of her sinking. Instead, a hand line was the only method Edmund Fitzgerald had to take depth soundings. The hand line consisted of a piece of line knotted at measured intervals with a lead weight on the end. The line was thrown over the bow of the ship and the count of the knots measured the water depth. The NTSB investigation concluded that a fathometer would have provided Edmund Fitzgerald additional navigational data and made her less dependent on Arthur M. Anderson for navigational assistance.
Edmund Fitzgerald had no system to monitor the presence or amount of water in her cargo hold, even though there was always some present. The intensity of the November 10 storm would have made it difficult, if not impossible, to access the hatches from the spar deck (deck over the cargo holds). The USCG Marine Board found that flooding of the hold could not have been assessed until the water reached the top of the taconite cargo. The NTSB investigation concluded that it would have been impossible to pump water from the hold when it was filled with bulk cargo. The Marine Board noted that because Edmund Fitzgerald lacked a draft-reading system, the crew had no way to determine whether the vessel had lost freeboard (the level of a ship's deck above the water).
Increased load lines, reduced freeboard
The USCG increased Edmund Fitzgerald's load line in 1969, 1971, and 1973 to allow 3 feet 3.25 inches (997 mm) less minimum freeboard than Edmund Fitzgerald's original design allowed in 1958. This meant that Edmund Fitzgerald's deck was only 11.5 feet (3.5 m) above the water when she faced 35-foot (11 m) waves during the November 10 storm. Captain Paquette of Wilfred Sykes noted that this change allowed loading to 4,000 tons more than what Edmund Fitzgerald was designed to carry.
Concerns regarding Edmund Fitzgerald's keel-welding problem surfaced during the time the USCG started increasing her load line. This increase and the resultant reduction in freeboard decreased the vessel's critical reserve buoyancy. Prior to the load-line increases she was said to be a "good riding ship" but afterwards Edmund Fitzgerald became a sluggish ship with slower response and recovery times. Captain McSorley said he did not like the action of a ship he described as a "wiggling thing" that scared him. Edmund Fitzgerald's bow hooked to one side or the other in heavy seas without recovering and made a groaning sound not heard on other ships.
Maintenance
NTSB investigators noted that Edmund Fitzgerald's prior groundings could have caused undetected damage that led to major structural failure during the storm, since Great Lakes vessels were normally drydocked for inspection only once every five years. It was also alleged that when compared to Edmund Fitzgerald's previous captain (Peter Pulcer), McSorley did not keep up with routine maintenance and did not confront the mates about getting the requisite work done. After August B. Herbel Jr., president of the American Society for Testing and Materials, examined photographs of the welds on Edmund Fitzgerald, he stated, "the hull was just being held together with patching plates." Other questions were raised as to why the USCG did not discover and take corrective action in its pre-November 1975 inspection of Edmund Fitzgerald, given that her hatch coamings, gaskets, and clamps were poorly maintained.
Complacency
On the fateful evening of November 10, 1975, McSorley reported he had never seen bigger seas in his life. Paquette, master of Wilfred Sykes, out in the same storm, said, "I'll tell anyone that it was a monster sea washing solid water over the deck of every vessel out there." The USCG did not broadcast that all ships should seek safe anchorage until after 3:35 p.m. on November 10, many hours after the weather was upgraded from a gale to a storm.
McSorley was known as a "heavy weather captain" who "'beat hell' out of the Edmund Fitzgerald and 'very seldom ever hauled up for weather'". Paquette held the opinion that negligence caused Edmund Fitzgerald to founder. He said, "in my opinion, all the subsequent events arose because (McSorley) kept pushing that ship and didn't have enough training in weather forecasting to use common sense and pick a route out of the worst of the wind and seas." Paquette's vessel was the first to reach a discharge port after the November 10 storm; she was met by company attorneys who came aboard Sykes. He told them that Edmund Fitzgerald's foundering was caused by negligence. Paquette was never asked to testify during the USCG or NTSB investigations.
The NTSB investigation noted that Great Lakes cargo vessels could normally avoid severe storms and called for the establishment of a limiting sea state applicable to Great Lakes bulk cargo vessels. This would restrict the operation of vessels in sea states above the limiting value. One concern was that shipping companies pressured the captains to deliver cargo as quickly and cheaply as possible regardless of bad weather. At the time of Edmund Fitzgerald's foundering, there was no evidence that any governmental regulatory agency tried to control vessel movement in foul weather despite the historical record that hundreds of Great Lakes vessels had been wrecked in storms. The USCG took the position that only the captain could decide when it was safe to sail.
The USCG Marine Board issued the following conclusion:
The nature of Great Lakes shipping, with short voyages, much of the time in very protected waters, frequently with the same routine from trip to trip, leads to complacency and an overly optimistic attitude concerning the extreme weather conditions that can and do exist. The Marine Board feels that this attitude reflects itself at times in deferral of maintenance and repairs, in failure to prepare properly for heavy weather, and in the conviction that since refuges are near, safety is possible by "running for it." While it is true that sailing conditions are good during the summer season, changes can occur abruptly, with severe storms and extreme weather and sea conditions arising rapidly. This tragic accident points out the need for all persons involved in Great Lakes shipping to foster increased awareness of the hazards which exist.
Mark Thompson countered that "the Coast Guard laid bare [its] own complacency" by blaming the sinking of Edmund Fitzgerald on industry-wide complacency since it had inspected Edmund Fitzgerald just two weeks before she sank. The loss of Edmund Fitzgerald also exposed the USCG's lack of rescue capability on Lake Superior. Thompson said that ongoing budget cuts had limited the USCG's ability to perform its historical functions. He further noted that USCG rescue vessels were unlikely to reach the scene of an incident on Lake Superior or Lake Huron within 6 to 12 hours of its occurrence.
Legal settlement
Under maritime law, ships fall under the jurisdiction of the admiralty courts of their flag country. As Edmund Fitzgerald was sailing under the U.S. flag, even though she sank in foreign (Canadian) waters, she was subject to U.S. admiralty law. With a value of $24 million, Edmund Fitzgerald's financial loss was the greatest in Great Lakes sailing history. In addition to the crew, 26,116 long tons (29,250 short tons; 26,535 t) of taconite sank along with the vessel. Two widows of crewmen filed a $1.5 million lawsuit against Edmund Fitzgerald's owners, Northwestern Mutual, and its operators, Oglebay Norton Corporation, one week after she sank. An additional $2.1 million lawsuit was later filed. Oglebay Norton subsequently filed a petition in the U.S. District Court seeking to "limit their liability to $817,920 in connection with other suits filed by families of crew members". The company paid compensation to surviving families about 12 months in advance of official findings of the probable cause and on condition of imposed confidentiality agreements. Robert Hemming, a reporter and newspaper editor, reasoned in his book about Edmund Fitzgerald that the USCG's conclusions "were benign in placing blame on [n]either the company or the captain ... [and] saved the Oglebay Norton from very expensive lawsuits by the families of the lost crew."
Subsequent changes to Great Lakes shipping practice
The USCG investigation of Edmund Fitzgerald's sinking resulted in 15 recommendations regarding load lines, weathertight integrity, search and rescue capability, lifesaving equipment, crew training, loading manuals, and providing information to masters of Great Lakes vessels. NTSB's investigation resulted in 19 recommendations for the USCG, four recommendations for the American Bureau of Shipping, and two recommendations for NOAA. Of the official recommendations, the following actions and USCG regulations were put in place:
1. In 1977, the USCG made it a requirement that all vessels of 1,600 gross register tons and over use depth finders.
2. Since 1980, survival suits have been required aboard ship in each crew member's quarters and at their customary work station with strobe lights affixed to life jackets and survival suits.
3. A LORAN-C positioning system for navigation on the Great Lakes was implemented in 1980 and later replaced with Global Positioning System (GPS) in the 1990s.
4. Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons (EPIRBs) are installed on all Great Lakes vessels for immediate and accurate location in event of a disaster.
5. Navigational charts for northeastern Lake Superior were improved for accuracy and greater detail.
6. NOAA revised its method for predicting wave heights.
7. The USCG rescinded the 1973 Load Line Regulation amendment that permitted reduced freeboard loadings.
8. The USCG began the annual pre-November inspection program recommended by the NTSB. "Coast Guard inspectors now board all U.S. ships during the fall to inspect hatch and vent closures and lifesaving equipment."
Karl Bohnak, an Upper Peninsula meteorologist, covered the sinking and storm in a book on local weather history. In this book, Joe Warren, a deckhand on Arthur M. Anderson during the November 10, 1975, storm, said that the storm changed the way things were done. He stated, "After that, trust me, when a gale came up we dropped the hook [anchor]. We dropped the hook because they found out the big ones could sink." Mark Thompson wrote, "Since the loss of the Fitz, some captains may be more prone to go to anchor, rather than venturing out in a severe storm, but there are still too many who like to portray themselves as 'heavy weather sailors.'"
Memorials
The day after the wreck, Mariners' Church in Detroit rang its bell 29 times, once for each life lost. The church continued to hold an annual memorial, reading the names of the crewmen and ringing the church bell, until 2006 when the church broadened its memorial ceremony to commemorate all lives lost on the Great Lakes. After the death of singer Gordon Lightfoot on May 1, 2023, the church bell was ceremonially rung 29 times in memory of the crew, plus an additional ring in memory of Lightfoot who committed their deaths to posterity.
The ship's bell was recovered from the wreck on July 4, 1995. A replica engraved with the names of the 29 sailors who died replaced the original on the wreck. A legal document signed by 46 relatives of the deceased, officials of the Mariners' Church of Detroit and the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historic Society (GLSHS) "donated the custodian and conservatorship" of the bell to the GLSHS "to be incorporated in a permanent memorial at Whitefish Point, Michigan, to honor the memory of the 29 men of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald." The terms of the legal agreement made the GLSHS responsible for maintaining the bell, and forbade it from selling or moving the bell or using it for commercial purposes. It provided for transferring the bell to the Mariners' Church of Detroit if the terms were violated.
An uproar occurred in 1995 when a maintenance worker in St. Ignace, Michigan, refurbished the bell by stripping the protective coating applied by Michigan State University experts. The controversy continued when the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum tried to use the bell as a touring exhibit in 1996. Relatives of the crew halted this move, objecting that the bell was being used as a "traveling trophy." As of 2005, the bell is on display in the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in Whitefish Point near Paradise, Michigan.
An anchor from Edmund Fitzgerald lost on an earlier trip was recovered from the Detroit River and is on display at the Dossin Great Lakes Museum in Detroit, Michigan. The Dossin Great Lakes Museum also hosts a Lost Mariners Remembrance event each year on the evening of November 10. Artifacts on display in the Steamship Valley Camp museum in Sault Ste. Marie, include two lifeboats, photos, a movie of Edmund Fitzgerald and commemorative models and paintings. Every November 10, the Split Rock Lighthouse near Silver Bay, Minnesota, emits a light in honor of Edmund Fitzgerald.
On August 8, 2007, along a remote shore of Lake Superior on the Keweenaw Peninsula, a Michigan family discovered a lone life-saving ring that appeared to have come from Edmund Fitzgerald. It bore markings different from those of rings found at the wreck site, and was thought to be a hoax. Later it was determined that the life ring was not from Edmund Fitzgerald, but had been lost by the owner, whose father had made it as a personal memorial.
The Royal Canadian Mint commemorated Edmund Fitzgerald in 2015 with a colored silver collector coin, with a face value of $20.
Musical and theater tributes
Ontario singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot wrote, composed, and recorded the song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" for his 1976 album Summertime Dream. On NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday on February 14, 2015, Gordon Lightfoot said he was inspired to write the song when he saw the name misspelled "Edmond" in Newsweek magazine two weeks after the sinking; Lightfoot said he felt that it dishonored the memory of the 29 who died. Lightfoot's popular ballad made the sinking of Edmund Fitzgerald one of the best-known disasters in the history of Great Lakes shipping. The original lyrics of the song show a degree of artistic license compared to the events of the actual sinking: it states the destination as Cleveland instead of Detroit. Also, in light of new evidence about what happened, Lightfoot modified one line for live performances, the original stanza being:
Lightfoot changed the third line to "At 7 p.m. it grew dark, it was then", although possibly to "At 7 p.m. it grew dark, it was dim".
He also changed the word "musty" in the lines
to "rustic", as the building is not actually musty (it is also not a cathedral as it is not the seat of a bishop, and its name is actually Mariners' Church, but this line was never changed).
On May 2, 2023, at 3 p.m. the Mariners' Church of Detroit tolled its bell 30 times; 29 times in memory of the crew of the Fitzgerald, and a 30th time in memory of Lightfoot, who died at age 84, on May 1, 2023.
In 1986, writer Steven Dietz and songwriter/lyricist Eric Peltoniemi wrote the musical Ten November in memory of Edmund Fitzgerald's sinking. In 2005, the play was re-edited into a concert version called The Gales of November, which opened on the 30th anniversary of the sinking at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota.
In November 2000, Shelley Russell opened a production of her play, Holdin' Our Own: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, at the Forest Roberts Theatre on the campus of Northern Michigan University. The production featured a cast of 14, 11 set on board the Edmund Fitzgerald and three on the Arthur M. Anderson.
A piano concerto titled The Edmund Fitzgerald was composed by American composer Geoffrey Peterson in 2002; it was premiered by the Sault Symphony Orchestra in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, in November 2005 as another 30th-anniversary commemoration.
Commercialization
The fame of Edmund Fitzgerald's image and historical narrative have made it public domain and subject to commercialization. A "cottage industry" has evolved across the Great Lakes region from Two Harbors, Minnesota, to Whitefish Point, the incident's "ground zero". Memorabilia on sale include Christmas ornaments, T-shirts, coffee mugs, Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, videos, and other items commemorating the vessel and its loss.
See also
Graveyard of the Great Lakes
List of maritime disasters
List of shipwrecks in the Great Lakes
List of storms on the Great Lakes
MV Derbyshire, a British bulk carrier lost in 1980 under similar circumstances
Notes
References
External links
"40th Anniversary of the Launch" (PDF). Telescope. Vol. 46, no. 2. Detroit: Great Lakes Maritime Institute. May–August 1998. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 9, 2016.
Image gallery I and Image gallery II of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald from Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary collection
Images of the Edmund Fitzgerald from the Minnesota Historical Society
The sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, November 10, 1975, from the University of Wisconsin
Yesterday's news, November 10, 1975: Edmund Fitzgerald reported missing from the Minneapolis Star Tribune |
Edmund_Fitzgerald_(disambiguation) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Fitzgerald_(disambiguation) | [
574
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Fitzgerald_(disambiguation)"
] | SS Edmund Fitzgerald was an American freighter that sank in Lake Superior in 1975.
Edmund Fitzgerald may also refer to:
"The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald", a 1976 song about the shipwreck, by Gordon Lightfoot
Edmund Fitzgerald Fredericks (1874/75–1935), Guyanese lawyer and Pan-African activist
Edmund B. Fitzgerald (1926–2013), American businessman, and son of the namesake (1895–1986) of the ship
The Edmund Fitzgerald (band), a UK math rock group |
Benjamin_Franklin | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin | [
575
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin"
] | Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1705] – April 17, 1790) was an American polymath: a leading writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and political philosopher. Among the most influential intellectuals of his time, Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States; a drafter and signer of the Declaration of Independence; and the first postmaster general.
Franklin became a successful newspaper editor and printer in Philadelphia, the leading city in the colonies, publishing the Pennsylvania Gazette at age 23. He became wealthy publishing this and Poor Richard's Almanack, which he wrote under the pseudonym "Richard Saunders". After 1767, he was associated with the Pennsylvania Chronicle, a newspaper known for its revolutionary sentiments and criticisms of the policies of the British Parliament and the Crown. He pioneered and was the first president of the Academy and College of Philadelphia, which opened in 1751 and later became the University of Pennsylvania. He organized and was the first secretary of the American Philosophical Society and was elected its president in 1769. He was appointed deputy postmaster-general for the British colonies in 1753, which enabled him to set up the first national communications network.
He was active in community affairs and colonial and state politics, as well as national and international affairs. Franklin became a hero in America when, as an agent in London for several colonies, he spearheaded the repeal of the unpopular Stamp Act by the British Parliament. An accomplished diplomat, he was widely admired as the first U.S. ambassador to France and was a major figure in the development of positive Franco–American relations. His efforts proved vital in securing French aid for the American Revolution. From 1785 to 1788, he served as President of Pennsylvania. At some points in his life, he owned slaves and ran "for sale" ads for slaves in his newspaper, but by the late 1750s, he began arguing against slavery, became an active abolitionist, and promoted the education and integration of African Americans into U.S. society.
As a scientist, his studies of electricity made him a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics. He also charted and named the Gulf Stream current. His numerous important inventions include the lightning rod, bifocals, glass harmonica and the Franklin stove. He founded many civic organizations, including the Library Company, Philadelphia's first fire department, and the University of Pennsylvania.
Franklin earned the title of "The First American" for his early and indefatigable campaigning for colonial unity. He was the only person to sign the Declaration of Independence, Treaty of Paris, peace with Britain and the Constitution. Foundational in defining the American ethos, Franklin has been called "the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become".
His life and legacy of scientific and political achievement, and his status as one of America's most influential Founding Fathers, have seen Franklin honored for more than two centuries after his death on the $100 bill and in the names of warships, many towns and counties, educational institutions and corporations, as well as in numerous cultural references and a portrait in the Oval Office. His more than 30,000 letters and documents have been collected in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin. Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot said of him: "Eripuit fulmen cœlo, mox sceptra tyrannis" ("He snatched lightning from the sky and the scepter from tyrants").
Ancestry
Benjamin Franklin's father, Josiah Franklin, was a tallow chandler, soaper, and candlemaker. Josiah Franklin was born at Ecton, Northamptonshire, England, on December 23, 1657, the son of Thomas Franklin, a blacksmith and farmer, and his wife, Jane White. Benjamin's father and all four of his grandparents were born in England.
Josiah Franklin had a total of seventeen children with his two wives. He married his first wife, Anne Child, in about 1677 in Ecton and emigrated with her to Boston in 1683; they had three children before emigration and four after. Following her death, Josiah married Abiah Folger on July 9, 1689, in the Old South Meeting House by Reverend Samuel Willard, and had ten children with her. Benjamin, their eighth child, was Josiah Franklin's fifteenth child overall, and his tenth and final son.
Benjamin Franklin's mother, Abiah, was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts Bay Colony, on August 15, 1667, to Peter Folger, a miller and schoolteacher, and his wife, Mary Morrell Folger, a former indentured servant. Mary Folger came from a Puritan family that was among the first Pilgrims to flee to Massachusetts for religious freedom, sailing for Boston in 1635 after King Charles I of England had begun persecuting Puritans. Her father Peter was "the sort of rebel destined to transform colonial America." As clerk of the court, he was arrested on February 10, 1676, and jailed on February 19 for his inability to pay bail. He spent over a year and a half in jail.
Early life and education
Boston
Franklin was born on Milk Street in Boston, Province of Massachusetts Bay on January 17, 1706, and baptized at the Old South Meeting House in Boston. As a child growing up along the Charles River, Franklin recalled that he was "generally the leader among the boys."
Franklin's father wanted him to attend school with the clergy but only had enough money to send him to school for two years. He attended Boston Latin School but did not graduate; he continued his education through voracious reading. Although "his parents talked of the church as a career" for Franklin, his schooling ended when he was ten. He worked for his father for a time, and at 12 he became an apprentice to his brother James, a printer, who taught him the printing trade. When Benjamin was 15, James founded The New-England Courant, which was the third newspaper founded in Boston.
When denied the chance to write a letter to the paper for publication, Franklin adopted the pseudonym of "Silence Dogood," a middle-aged widow. Mrs. Dogood's letters were published and became a subject of conversation around town. Neither James nor the Courant's readers were aware of the ruse, and James was unhappy with Benjamin when he discovered the popular correspondent was his younger brother. Franklin was an advocate of free speech from an early age. When his brother was jailed for three weeks in 1722 for publishing material unflattering to the governor, young Franklin took over the newspaper and had Mrs. Dogood proclaim, quoting Cato's Letters, "Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech." Franklin left his apprenticeship without his brother's permission, and in so doing became a fugitive.
Move to Philadelphia
At age 17, Franklin ran away to Philadelphia, seeking a new start in a new city. When he first arrived, he worked in several printing shops there, but he was not satisfied by the immediate prospects in any of these jobs. After a few months, while working in one printing house, Pennsylvania governor Sir William Keith convinced him to go to London, ostensibly to acquire the equipment necessary for establishing another newspaper in Philadelphia. Discovering that Keith's promises of backing a newspaper were empty, he worked as a typesetter in a printer's shop in what is the present-day Church of St Bartholomew-the-Great in the Smithfield area of London. Following this, he returned to Philadelphia in 1726 with the help of Thomas Denham, a merchant who employed him as a clerk, shopkeeper, and bookkeeper in his business.
Junto and library
In 1727, at age 21, Franklin formed the Junto, a group of "like minded aspiring artisans and tradesmen who hoped to improve themselves while they improved their community." The Junto was a discussion group for issues of the day; it subsequently gave rise to many organizations in Philadelphia. The Junto was modeled after English coffeehouses that Franklin knew well and which had become the center of the spread of Enlightenment ideas in Britain.
Reading was a great pastime of the Junto, but books were rare and expensive. The members created a library, initially assembled from their own books, after Franklin wrote:
A proposition was made by me that since our books were often referr'd to in our disquisitions upon the inquiries, it might be convenient for us to have them altogether where we met, that upon occasion they might be consulted; and by thus clubbing our books to a common library, we should, while we lik'd to keep them together, have each of us the advantage of using the books of all the other members, which would be nearly as beneficial as if each owned the whole.
This did not suffice, however. Franklin conceived the idea of a subscription library, which would pool the funds of the members to buy books for all to read. This was the birth of the Library Company of Philadelphia, whose charter he composed in 1731.
Newspaperman
Upon Denham's death, Franklin returned to his former trade. In 1728, he set up a printing house in partnership with Hugh Meredith; the following year he became the publisher of The Pennsylvania Gazette, a newspaper in Philadelphia. The Gazette gave Franklin a forum for agitation about a variety of local reforms and initiatives through printed essays and observations. Over time, his commentary, and his adroit cultivation of a positive image as an industrious and intellectual young man, earned him a great deal of social respect. But even after he achieved fame as a scientist and statesman, he habitually signed his letters with the unpretentious 'B. Franklin, Printer.'
In 1732, he published the first German-language newspaper in America – Die Philadelphische Zeitung – although it failed after only one year because four other newly founded German papers quickly dominated the newspaper market. Franklin also printed Moravian religious books in German. He often visited Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, staying at the Moravian Sun Inn. In a 1751 pamphlet on demographic growth and its implications for the Thirteen Colonies, he called the Pennsylvania Germans "Palatine Boors" who could never acquire the "Complexion" of Anglo-American settlers and referred to "Blacks and Tawneys" as weakening the social structure of the colonies. Although he apparently reconsidered shortly thereafter, and the phrases were omitted from all later printings of the pamphlet, his views may have played a role in his political defeat in 1764.
According to Ralph Frasca, Franklin promoted the printing press as a device to instruct colonial Americans in moral virtue. Frasca argues he saw this as a service to God, because he understood moral virtue in terms of actions, thus, doing good provides a service to God. Despite his own moral lapses, Franklin saw himself as uniquely qualified to instruct Americans in morality. He tried to influence American moral life through the construction of a printing network based on a chain of partnerships from the Carolinas to New England. He thereby invented the first newspaper chain. It was more than a business venture, for like many publishers he believed that the press had a public-service duty.
When he established himself in Philadelphia, shortly before 1730, the town boasted two "wretched little" news sheets, Andrew Bradford's The American Weekly Mercury and Samuel Keimer's Universal Instructor in all Arts and Sciences, and Pennsylvania Gazette. This instruction in all arts and sciences consisted of weekly extracts from Chambers's Universal Dictionary. Franklin quickly did away with all of this when he took over the Instructor and made it The Pennsylvania Gazette. The Gazette soon became his characteristic organ, which he freely used for satire, for the play of his wit, even for sheer excess of mischief or of fun. From the first, he had a way of adapting his models to his own uses. The series of essays called "The Busy-Body," which he wrote for Bradford's American Mercury in 1729, followed the general Addisonian form, already modified to suit homelier conditions. The thrifty Patience, in her busy little shop, complaining of the useless visitors who waste her valuable time, is related to the women who address Mr. Spectator. The Busy-Body himself is a true Censor Morum, as Isaac Bickerstaff had been in the Tatler. And a number of the fictitious characters, Ridentius, Eugenius, Cato, and Cretico, represent traditional 18th-century classicism. Even this Franklin could use for contemporary satire, since Cretico, the "sowre Philosopher," is evidently a portrait of his rival, Samuel Keimer.
Franklin had mixed success in his plan to establish an inter-colonial network of newspapers that would produce a profit for him and disseminate virtue. Over the years he sponsored two dozen printers in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, New York, Connecticut, and even the Caribbean. By 1753, eight of the fifteen English language newspapers in the colonies were published by him or his partners. He began in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1731. After his second editor died, the widow, Elizabeth Timothy, took over and made it a success. She was one of the colonial era's first woman printers. For three decades Franklin maintained a close business relationship with her and her son Peter Timothy, who took over the South Carolina Gazette in 1746. The Gazette was impartial in political debates, while creating the opportunity for public debate, which encouraged others to challenge authority. Timothy avoided blandness and crude bias and, after 1765, increasingly took a patriotic stand in the growing crisis with Great Britain. Franklin's Connecticut Gazette (1755–68), however, proved unsuccessful. As the Revolution approached, political strife slowly tore his network apart.
Freemasonry
In 1730 or 1731, Franklin was initiated into the local Masonic lodge. He became a grand master in 1734, indicating his rapid rise to prominence in Pennsylvania. The same year, he edited and published the first Masonic book in the Americas, a reprint of James Anderson's Constitutions of the Free-Masons. He was the secretary of St. John's Lodge in Philadelphia from 1735 to 1738.
In January 1738, "Franklin appeared as a witness" in a manslaughter trial against two men who killed "a simple-minded apprentice" named Daniel Rees in a fake Masonic initiation gone wrong. One of the men "threw, or accidentally spilled, the burning spirits, and Daniel Rees died of his burns two days later." While Franklin did not directly participate in the hazing that led to Rees' death, he knew of the hazing before it turned fatal, and did nothing to stop it. He was criticized for his inaction in The American Weekly Mercury, by his publishing rival Andrew Bradford. Ultimately, "Franklin replied in his own defense in the Gazette."
Franklin remained a Freemason for the rest of his life.
Common-law marriage to Deborah Read
At age 17 in 1723, Franklin proposed to 15-year-old Deborah Read while a boarder in the Read home. At that time, Deborah's mother was wary of allowing her young daughter to marry Franklin, who was on his way to London at Governor Keith's request, and also because of his financial instability. Her own husband had recently died, and she declined Franklin's request to marry her daughter.
Franklin travelled to London, and after he failed to communicate as expected with Deborah and her family, they interpreted his long silence as a breaking of his promises. At the urging of her mother, Deborah married a potter named John Rogers on August 5, 1725. John soon fled to Barbados with her dowry in order to avoid debts and prosecution. Since Rogers' fate was unknown, bigamy laws prevented Deborah from remarrying.
Franklin returned in 1726 and resumed his courtship of Deborah. They established a common-law marriage on September 1, 1730. They took in his recently acknowledged illegitimate young son and raised him in their household. They had two children together. Their son, Francis Folger Franklin, was born in October 1732 and died of smallpox in 1736. Their daughter, Sarah "Sally" Franklin, was born in 1743 and eventually married Richard Bache.
Deborah's fear of the sea meant that she never accompanied Franklin on any of his extended trips to Europe; another possible reason why they spent much time apart is that he may have blamed her for possibly preventing their son Francis from being inoculated against the disease that subsequently killed him. Deborah wrote to him in November 1769, saying she was ill due to "dissatisfied distress" from his prolonged absence, but he did not return until his business was done. Deborah Read Franklin died of a stroke on December 14, 1774, while Franklin was on an extended mission to Great Britain; he returned in 1775.
William Franklin
In 1730, 24-year-old Franklin publicly acknowledged his illegitimate son William and raised him in his household. William was born on February 22, 1730, but his mother's identity is unknown. He was educated in Philadelphia and beginning at about age 30 studied law in London in the early 1760s. William himself fathered an illegitimate son, William Temple Franklin, born on the same day and month: February 22, 1760. The boy's mother was never identified, and he was placed in foster care. In 1762, the elder William Franklin married Elizabeth Downes, daughter of a planter from Barbados, in London. In 1763, he was appointed as the last royal governor of New Jersey.
A Loyalist to the king, William Franklin saw his relations with father Benjamin eventually break down over their differences about the American Revolutionary War, as Benjamin Franklin could never accept William's position. Deposed in 1776 by the revolutionary government of New Jersey, William was placed under house arrest at his home in Perth Amboy for six months. After the Declaration of Independence, he was formally taken into custody by order of the Provincial Congress of New Jersey, an entity which he refused to recognize, regarding it as an "illegal assembly." He was incarcerated in Connecticut for two years, in Wallingford and Middletown, and, after being caught surreptitiously engaging Americans into supporting the Loyalist cause, was held in solitary confinement at Litchfield for eight months. When finally released in a prisoner exchange in 1778, he moved to New York City, which was occupied by the British at the time.
While in New York City, he became leader of the Board of Associated Loyalists, a quasi-military organization chartered by King George III and headquartered in New York City. They initiated guerrilla forays into New Jersey, southern Connecticut, and New York counties north of the city. When British troops evacuated from New York, William Franklin left with them and sailed to England. He settled in London, never to return to North America. In the preliminary peace talks in 1782 with Britain, "... Benjamin Franklin insisted that loyalists who had borne arms against the United States would be excluded from this plea (that they be given a general pardon). He was undoubtedly thinking of William Franklin."
Success as an author
In 1732, Franklin began to publish the noted Poor Richard's Almanack (with content both original and borrowed) under the pseudonym Richard Saunders, on which much of his popular reputation is based. He frequently wrote under pseudonyms. The first issue published was for the upcoming year, 1733. He had developed a distinct, signature style that was plain, pragmatic and had a sly, soft but self-deprecating tone with declarative sentences. Although it was no secret that he was the author, his Richard Saunders character repeatedly denied it. "Poor Richard's Proverbs," adages from this almanac, such as "A penny saved is twopence dear" (often misquoted as "A penny saved is a penny earned") and "Fish and visitors stink in three days," remain common quotations in the modern world. Wisdom in folk society meant the ability to provide an apt adage for any occasion, and his readers became well prepared. He sold about ten thousand copies per year—it became an institution. In 1741, Franklin began publishing The General Magazine and Historical Chronicle for all the British Plantations in America. He used the heraldic badge of the Prince of Wales as the cover illustration.
Franklin wrote a letter, "Advice to a Friend on Choosing a Mistress," dated June 25, 1745, in which he gives advice to a young man about channeling sexual urges. Due to its licentious nature, it was not published in collections of his papers during the 19th century. Federal court rulings from the mid-to-late 20th century cited the document as a reason for overturning obscenity laws and against censorship.
Public life
Early steps in Pennsylvania
In 1736, Franklin created the Union Fire Company, one of the first volunteer firefighting companies in America. In the same year, he printed a new currency for New Jersey based on innovative anti-counterfeiting techniques he had devised. Throughout his career, he was an advocate for paper money, publishing A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency in 1729, and his printer printed money. He was influential in the more restrained and thus successful monetary experiments in the Middle Colonies, which stopped deflation without causing excessive inflation. In 1766, he made a case for paper money to the British House of Commons.
As he matured, Franklin began to concern himself more with public affairs. In 1743, he first devised a scheme for the Academy, Charity School, and College of Philadelphia; however, the person he had in mind to run the academy, Rev. Richard Peters, refused and Franklin put his ideas away until 1749 when he printed his own pamphlet, Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania.: 30 He was appointed president of the Academy on November 13, 1749; the academy and the charity school opened in 1751.
In 1743, he founded the American Philosophical Society to help scientific men discuss their discoveries and theories. He began the electrical research that, along with other scientific inquiries, would occupy him for the rest of his life, in between bouts of politics and moneymaking.
During King George's War, Franklin raised a militia called the Association for General Defense because the legislators of the city had decided to take no action to defend Philadelphia "either by erecting fortifications or building Ships of War." He raised money to create earthwork defenses and buy artillery. The largest of these was the "Association Battery" or "Grand Battery" of 50 guns.
In 1747, Franklin (already a very wealthy man) retired from printing and went into other businesses. He formed a partnership with his foreman, David Hall, which provided Franklin with half of the shop's profits for 18 years. This lucrative business arrangement provided leisure time for study, and in a few years he had made many new discoveries.
Franklin became involved in Philadelphia politics and rapidly progressed. In October 1748, he was selected as a councilman; in June 1749, he became a justice of the peace for Philadelphia; and in 1751, he was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly. On August 10, 1753, he was appointed deputy postmaster-general of British North America. His service in domestic politics included reforming the postal system, with mail sent out every week.
In 1751, Franklin and Thomas Bond obtained a charter from the Pennsylvania legislature to establish a hospital. Pennsylvania Hospital was the first hospital in the colonies. In 1752, Franklin organized the Philadelphia Contributionship, the Colonies' first homeowner's insurance company.
Between 1750 and 1753, the "educational triumvirate" of Franklin, Samuel Johnson of Stratford, Connecticut, and schoolteacher William Smith built on Franklin's initial scheme and created what Bishop James Madison, president of the College of William & Mary, called a "new-model" plan or style of American college. Franklin solicited, printed in 1752, and promoted an American textbook of moral philosophy by Samuel Johnson, titled Elementa Philosophica, to be taught in the new colleges. In June 1753, Johnson, Franklin, and Smith met in Stratford. They decided the new-model college would focus on the professions, with classes taught in English instead of Latin, have subject matter experts as professors instead of one tutor leading a class for four years, and there would be no religious test for admission. Johnson went on to found King's College (now Columbia University) in New York City in 1754, while Franklin hired Smith as provost of the College of Philadelphia, which opened in 1755. At its first commencement, on May 17, 1757, seven men graduated; six with a Bachelor of Arts and one with a Master of Arts. It was later merged with the University of the State of Pennsylvania to become the University of Pennsylvania. The college was to become influential in guiding the founding documents of the United States: in the Continental Congress, for example, over one-third of the college-affiliated men who contributed to the Declaration of Independence between September 4, 1774, and July 4, 1776, were affiliated with the college.
In 1754, he headed the Pennsylvania delegation to the Albany Congress. This meeting of several colonies had been requested by the Board of Trade in England to improve relations with the Indians and defense against the French. Franklin proposed a broad Plan of Union for the colonies. While the plan was not adopted, elements of it found their way into the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution.
In 1753, Harvard University and Yale awarded him honorary master of arts degrees. In 1756, he was awarded an honorary Master of Arts degree from the College of William & Mary. Later in 1756, Franklin organized the Pennsylvania Militia. He used Tun Tavern as a gathering place to recruit a regiment of soldiers to go into battle against the Native American uprisings that beset the American colonies.
Postmaster
Well known as a printer and publisher, Franklin was appointed postmaster of Philadelphia in 1737, holding the office until 1753, when he and publisher William Hunter were named deputy postmasters–general of British North America, the first to hold the office. (Joint appointments were standard at the time, for political reasons.) He was responsible for the British colonies from Pennsylvania north and east, as far as the island of Newfoundland. A post office for local and outgoing mail had been established in Halifax, Nova Scotia, by local stationer Benjamin Leigh, on April 23, 1754, but service was irregular. Franklin opened the first post office to offer regular, monthly mail in Halifax on December 9, 1755. Meantime, Hunter became postal administrator in Williamsburg, Virginia, and oversaw areas south of Annapolis, Maryland. Franklin reorganized the service's accounting system and improved speed of delivery between Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. By 1761, efficiencies led to the first profits for the colonial post office.
When the lands of New France were ceded to the British under the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the British province of Quebec was created among them, and Franklin saw mail service expanded between Montreal, Trois-Rivières, Quebec City, and New York. For the greater part of his appointment, he lived in England (from 1757 to 1762, and again from 1764 to 1774)—about three-quarters of his term. Eventually, his sympathies for the rebel cause in the American Revolution led to his dismissal on January 31, 1774.
On July 26, 1775, the Second Continental Congress established the United States Post Office and named Franklin as the first United States postmaster general. He had been a postmaster for decades and was a natural choice for the position. He had just returned from England and was appointed chairman of a Committee of Investigation to establish a postal system. The report of the committee, providing for the appointment of a postmaster general for the 13 American colonies, was considered by the Continental Congress on July 25 and 26. On July 26, 1775, Franklin was appointed postmaster general, the first appointed under the Continental Congress. His apprentice, William Goddard, felt that his ideas were mostly responsible for shaping the postal system and that the appointment should have gone to him, but he graciously conceded it to Franklin, 36 years his senior. Franklin, however, appointed Goddard as Surveyor of the Posts, issued him a signed pass, and directed him to investigate and inspect the various post offices and mail routes as he saw fit. The newly established postal system became the United States Post Office, a system that continues to operate today.
Decades in London
From the mid-1750s to the mid-1770s, Franklin spent much of his time in London.
Political work
In 1757, he was sent to England by the Pennsylvania Assembly as a colonial agent to protest against the political influence of the Penn family, the proprietors of the colony. He remained there for five years, striving to end the proprietors' prerogative to overturn legislation from the elected Assembly and their exemption from paying taxes on their land. His lack of influential allies in Whitehall led to the failure of this mission.
At this time, many members of the Pennsylvania Assembly were feuding with William Penn's heirs, who controlled the colony as proprietors. After his return to the colony, Franklin led the "anti-proprietary party" in the struggle against the Penn family and was elected Speaker of the Pennsylvania House in May 1764. His call for a change from proprietary to royal government was a rare political miscalculation, however: Pennsylvanians worried that such a move would endanger their political and religious freedoms. Because of these fears and because of political attacks on his character, Franklin lost his seat in the October 1764 Assembly elections. The anti-proprietary party dispatched him to England again to continue the struggle against the Penn family proprietorship. During this trip, events drastically changed the nature of his mission.
In London, Franklin opposed the 1765 Stamp Act. Unable to prevent its passage, he made another political miscalculation and recommended a friend to the post of stamp distributor for Pennsylvania. Pennsylvanians were outraged, believing that he had supported the measure all along, and threatened to destroy his home in Philadelphia. Franklin soon learned of the extent of colonial resistance to the Stamp Act, and he testified during the House of Commons proceedings that led to its repeal. With this, Franklin suddenly emerged as the leading spokesman for American interests in England. He wrote popular essays on behalf of the colonies. Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts also appointed him as their agent to the Crown.
During his lengthy missions to London between 1757 and 1775, Franklin lodged in a house on Craven Street, just off the Strand in central London. During his stays there, he developed a close friendship with his landlady, Margaret Stevenson, and her circle of friends and relations, in particular, her daughter Mary, who was more often known as Polly. The house is now a museum known as the Benjamin Franklin House. Whilst in London, Franklin became involved in radical politics. He belonged to a gentlemen's club (which he called "the honest Whigs"), which held stated meetings, and included members such as Richard Price, the minister of Newington Green Unitarian Church who ignited the Revolution controversy, and Andrew Kippis.
Scientific work
In 1756, Franklin had become a member of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (now the Royal Society of Arts), which had been founded in 1754. After his return to the United States in 1775, he became the Society's Corresponding Member, continuing a close connection. The Royal Society of Arts instituted a Benjamin Franklin Medal in 1956 to commemorate the 250th anniversary of his birth and the 200th anniversary of his membership of the RSA.
The study of natural philosophy (referred today as science in general) drew him into overlapping circles of acquaintance. Franklin was, for example, a corresponding member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham. In 1759, the University of St Andrews awarded him an honorary doctorate in recognition of his accomplishments. In October 1759, he was granted Freedom of the Borough of St Andrews. He was also awarded an honorary doctorate by Oxford University in 1762. Because of these honors, he was often addressed as "Dr. Franklin."
While living in London in 1768, he developed a phonetic alphabet in A Scheme for a new Alphabet and a Reformed Mode of Spelling. This reformed alphabet discarded six letters he regarded as redundant (c, j, q, w, x, and y), and substituted six new letters for sounds he felt lacked letters of their own. This alphabet never caught on, and he eventually lost interest.
Travels around Europe
Franklin used London as a base to travel. In 1771, he made short journeys through different parts of England, staying with Joseph Priestley at Leeds, Thomas Percival at Manchester and Erasmus Darwin at Lichfield. In Scotland, he spent five days with Lord Kames near Stirling and stayed for three weeks with David Hume in Edinburgh. In 1759, he visited Edinburgh with his son and later reported that he considered his six weeks in Scotland "six weeks of the densest happiness I have met with in any part of my life."
In Ireland, he stayed with Lord Hillsborough. Franklin noted of him that "all the plausible behaviour I have described is meant only, by patting and stroking the horse, to make him more patient, while the reins are drawn tighter, and the spurs set deeper into his sides." In Dublin, Franklin was invited to sit with the members of the Irish Parliament rather than in the gallery. He was the first American to receive this honor. While touring Ireland, he was deeply moved by the level of poverty he witnessed. The economy of the Kingdom of Ireland was affected by the same trade regulations and laws that governed the Thirteen Colonies. He feared that the American colonies could eventually come to the same level of poverty if the regulations and laws continued to apply to them.
Franklin spent two months in German lands in 1766, but his connections to the country stretched across a lifetime. He declared a debt of gratitude to German scientist Otto von Guericke for his early studies of electricity. Franklin also co-authored the first treaty of friendship between Prussia and America in 1785. In September 1767, he visited Paris with his usual traveling partner, Sir John Pringle, 1st Baronet. News of his electrical discoveries was widespread in France. His reputation meant that he was introduced to many influential scientists and politicians, and also to King Louis XV.
Defending the American cause
One line of argument in Parliament was that Americans should pay a share of the costs of the French and Indian War and therefore taxes should be levied on them. Franklin became the American spokesman in highly publicized testimony in Parliament in 1766. He stated that Americans already contributed heavily to the defense of the Empire. He said local governments had raised, outfitted and paid 25,000 soldiers to fight France—as many as Britain itself sent—and spent many millions from American treasuries doing so in the French and Indian War alone.
In 1772, Franklin obtained private letters of Thomas Hutchinson and Andrew Oliver, governor and lieutenant governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, proving that they had encouraged the Crown to crack down on Bostonians. Franklin sent them to America, where they escalated tensions. The letters were finally leaked to the public in the Boston Gazette in mid-June 1773, causing a political firestorm in Massachusetts and raising significant questions in England. The British began to regard him as the fomenter of serious trouble. Hopes for a peaceful solution ended as he was systematically ridiculed and humiliated by Solicitor-General Alexander Wedderburn, before the Privy Council on January 29, 1774. He returned to Philadelphia in March 1775, and abandoned his accommodationist stance.
In 1773, Franklin published two of his most celebrated pro-American satirical essays: "Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One," and "An Edict by the King of Prussia."
Agent for British and Hellfire Club membership
Franklin is known to have occasionally attended the Hellfire Club's meetings during 1758 as a non-member during his time in England. However, some authors and historians would argue he was in fact a British spy. As there are no records left (having been burned in 1774), many of these members are just assumed or linked by letters sent to each other. One early proponent that Franklin was a member of the Hellfire Club and a double agent is the historian Donald McCormick, who has a history of making controversial claims.
Coming of revolution
In 1763, soon after Franklin returned to Pennsylvania from England for the first time, the western frontier was engulfed in a bitter war known as Pontiac's Rebellion. The Paxton Boys, a group of settlers convinced that the Pennsylvania government was not doing enough to protect them from American Indian raids, murdered a group of peaceful Susquehannock Indians and marched on Philadelphia. Franklin helped to organize a local militia to defend the capital against the mob. He met with the Paxton leaders and persuaded them to disperse. Franklin wrote a scathing attack against the racial prejudice of the Paxton Boys. "If an Indian injures me," he asked, "does it follow that I may revenge that injury on all Indians?"
He provided an early response to British surveillance through his own network of counter-surveillance and manipulation. "He waged a public relations campaign, secured secret aid, played a role in privateering expeditions, and churned out effective and inflammatory propaganda."
Declaration of Independence
By the time Franklin arrived in Philadelphia on May 5, 1775, after his second mission to Great Britain, the American Revolution had begun at the Battles of Lexington and Concord the previous month, on April 19, 1775. The New England militia had forced the main British army to remain inside Boston. The Pennsylvania Assembly unanimously chose Franklin as their delegate to the Second Continental Congress. In June 1776, he was appointed a member of the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence. Although he was temporarily disabled by gout and unable to attend most meetings of the committee, he made several "small but important" changes to the draft sent to him by Thomas Jefferson.
At the signing, he is quoted as having replied to a comment by John Hancock that they must all hang together, saying, "Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."
Ambassador to France (1776–1785)
On October 26, 1776, Franklin was dispatched to France as commissioner for the United States. He took with him as secretary his 16-year-old grandson, William Temple Franklin. They lived in a home in the Parisian suburb of Passy, donated by Jacques-Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont, who supported the United States. Franklin remained in France until 1785. He conducted the affairs of his country toward the French nation with great success, which included securing a critical military alliance in 1778 and signing the 1783 Treaty of Paris.
Among his associates in France was Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau—a French Revolutionary writer, orator and statesman who in 1791 was elected president of the National Assembly. In July 1784, Franklin met with Mirabeau and contributed anonymous materials that the Frenchman used in his first signed work: Considerations sur l'ordre de Cincinnatus. The publication was critical of the Society of the Cincinnati, established in the United States. Franklin and Mirabeau thought of it as a "noble order," inconsistent with the egalitarian ideals of the new republic.
During his stay in France, he was active as a Freemason, serving as venerable master of the lodge Les Neuf Sœurs from 1779 until 1781. In 1784, when Franz Mesmer began to publicize his theory of "animal magnetism" which was considered offensive by many, Louis XVI appointed a commission to investigate it. These included the chemist Antoine Lavoisier, the physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, the astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly, and Franklin. In doing so, the committee concluded, through blind trials that mesmerism only seemed to work when the subjects expected it, which discredited mesmerism and became the first major demonstration of the placebo effect, which was described at that time as "imagination." In 1781, he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Franklin's advocacy for religious tolerance in France contributed to arguments made by French philosophers and politicians that resulted in Louis XVI's signing of the Edict of Versailles in November 1787. This edict effectively nullified the Edict of Fontainebleau, which had denied non-Catholics civil status and the right to openly practice their faith.
Franklin also served as American minister to Sweden, although he never visited that country. He negotiated a treaty that was signed in April 1783. On August 27, 1783, in Paris, he witnessed the world's first hydrogen balloon flight. Le Globe, created by professor Jacques Charles and Les Frères Robert, was watched by a vast crowd as it rose from the Champ de Mars (now the site of the Eiffel Tower). Franklin became so enthusiastic that he subscribed financially to the next project to build a manned hydrogen balloon. On December 1, 1783, Franklin was seated in the special enclosure for honored guests it took off from the Jardin des Tuileries, piloted by Charles and Nicolas-Louis Robert. Walter Isaacson describes a chess game between Franklin and the Duchess of Bourbon, "who made a move that inadvertently exposed her king. Ignoring the rules of the game, he promptly captured it. 'Ah,' said the duchess, 'we do not take Kings so.' Replied Franklin in a famous quip: 'We do in America.'"
Return to America
When he returned home in 1785, Franklin occupied a position second only to that of George Washington as the champion of American independence. He returned from France with an unexplained shortage of 100,000 pounds in Congressional funds. In response to a question from a member of Congress about this, Franklin, quoting the Bible, quipped, "Muzzle not the ox that treadeth out his master's grain." The missing funds were never again mentioned in Congress.
Le Ray honored him with a commissioned portrait painted by Joseph Duplessis, which now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. After his return, Franklin became an abolitionist and freed his two slaves. He eventually became president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society.
President of Pennsylvania and Delegate to the Constitutional convention
Special balloting conducted October 18, 1785, unanimously elected him the sixth president of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, replacing John Dickinson. The office was practically that of the governor. He held that office for slightly over three years, longer than any other, and served the constitutional limit of three full terms. Shortly after his initial election, he was re-elected to a full term on October 29, 1785, and again in the fall of 1786 and on October 31, 1787. In that capacity, he served as host to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia.
He also served as a delegate to the Convention. It was primarily an honorary position and he seldom engaged in debate.
According to James McHenry, a Mrs. Powel asked Franklin what kind of government they had wrought. He replied: "A republic, madam, if you can keep it."
Death
Franklin suffered from obesity throughout his middle age and elder years, which resulted in multiple health problems, particularly gout, which worsened as he aged. In poor health during the signing of the U.S. Constitution in 1787, he was rarely seen in public from then until his death.
Franklin died from pleuritic attack at his home in Philadelphia on April 17, 1790. He was aged 84 at the time of his death. His last words were reportedly, "a dying man can do nothing easy," to his daughter after she suggested that he change position in bed and lie on his side so he could breathe more easily. Franklin's death is described in the book The Life of Benjamin Franklin, quoting from the account of John Paul Jones:
... when the pain and difficulty of breathing entirely left him, and his family were flattering themselves with the hopes of his recovery, when an imposthume, which had formed itself in his lungs, suddenly burst, and discharged a quantity of matter, which he continued to throw up while he had power; but, as that failed, the organs of respiration became gradually oppressed; a calm, lethargic state succeeded; and on the 17th instant (April 1790), about eleven o'clock at night, he quietly expired, closing a long and useful life of eighty-four years and three months.
Approximately 20,000 people attended Franklin's funeral after which he was interred in Christ Church Burial Ground in Philadelphia. Upon learning of his death, the Constitutional Assembly in Revolutionary France entered into a state of mourning for a period of three days, and memorial services were conducted in honor of Franklin throughout the country.
In 1728, aged 22, Franklin wrote what he hoped would be his own epitaph:
The Body of B. Franklin Printer; Like the Cover of an old Book, Its Contents torn out, And stript of its Lettering and Gilding, Lies here, Food for Worms. But the Work shall not be wholly lost: For it will, as he believ'd, appear once more, In a new & more perfect Edition, Corrected and Amended By the Author.
Franklin's actual grave, however, as he specified in his final will, simply reads "Benjamin and Deborah Franklin."
Inventions and scientific inquiries
Franklin was a prodigious inventor. Among his many creations were the lightning rod, Franklin stove, bifocal glasses and the flexible urinary catheter. He never patented his inventions; in his autobiography he wrote, "... as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously."
Electricity
Franklin started exploring the phenomenon of electricity in the 1740s, after he met the itinerant lecturer Archibald Spencer, who used static electricity in his demonstrations. He proposed that "vitreous" and "resinous" electricity were not different types of "electrical fluid" (as electricity was called then), but the same "fluid" under different pressures. (The same proposal was made independently that same year by William Watson.) He was the first to label them as positive and negative respectively, which replaced the then current distinction made between 'vitreous' and 'resinous' electricity, and he was the first to discover the principle of conservation of charge. In 1748, he constructed a multiple plate capacitor, that he called an "electrical battery" (not a true battery like Volta's pile) by placing eleven panes of glass sandwiched between lead plates, suspended with silk cords and connected by wires.
In pursuit of more pragmatic uses for electricity, remarking in spring 1749 that he felt "chagrin'd a little" that his experiments had heretofore resulted in "Nothing in this Way of Use to Mankind," Franlkin planned a practical demonstration. He proposed a dinner party where a turkey was to be killed via electric shock and roasted on an electrical spit. After having prepared several turkeys this way, he noted that "the birds kill'd in this manner eat uncommonly tender." Franklin recounted that in the process of one of these experiments, he was shocked by a pair of Leyden jars, resulting in numbness in his arms that persisted for one evening, noting "I am Ashamed to have been Guilty of so Notorious a Blunder."
Franklin briefly investigated electrotherapy, including the use of the electric bath. This work led to the field becoming widely known. In recognition of his work with electricity, he received the Royal Society's Copley Medal in 1753, and in 1756, he became one of the few 18th-century Americans elected a fellow of the Society. The CGS unit of electric charge has been named after him: one franklin (Fr) is equal to one statcoulomb.
Franklin advised Harvard University in its acquisition of new electrical laboratory apparatus after the complete loss of its original collection, in a fire that destroyed the original Harvard Hall in 1764. The collection he assembled later became part of the Harvard Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, now on public display in its Science Center.
Kite experiment and lightning rod
Franklin published a proposal for an experiment to prove that lightning is electricity by flying a kite in a storm. On May 10, 1752, Thomas-François Dalibard of France conducted Franklin's experiment using a 40-foot-tall (12 m) iron rod instead of a kite, and he extracted electrical sparks from a cloud. On June 15, 1752, Franklin may possibly have conducted his well-known kite experiment in Philadelphia, successfully extracting sparks from a cloud. He described the experiment in his newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette, on October 19, 1752, without mentioning that he himself had performed it. This account was read to the Royal Society on December 21 and printed as such in the Philosophical Transactions. Joseph Priestley published an account with additional details in his 1767 History and Present Status of Electricity. Franklin was careful to stand on an insulator, keeping dry under a roof to avoid the danger of electric shock. Others, such as Georg Wilhelm Richmann in Russia, were indeed electrocuted in performing lightning experiments during the months immediately following his experiment.
In his writings, Franklin indicates that he was aware of the dangers and offered alternative ways to demonstrate that lightning was electrical, as shown by his use of the concept of electrical ground. He did not perform this experiment in the way that is often pictured in popular literature, flying the kite and waiting to be struck by lightning, as it would have been dangerous. Instead he used the kite to collect some electric charge from a storm cloud, showing that lightning was electrical. On October 19, 1752, in a letter to England with directions for repeating the experiment, he wrote:
When rain has wet the kite twine so that it can conduct the electric fire freely, you will find it streams out plentifully from the key at the approach of your knuckle, and with this key a phial, or Leyden jar, may be charged: and from electric fire thus obtained spirits may be kindled, and all other electric experiments [may be] performed which are usually done by the help of a rubber glass globe or tube; and therefore the sameness of the electrical matter with that of lightening [sic] completely demonstrated.
Franklin's electrical experiments led to his invention of the lightning rod. He said that conductors with a sharp rather than a smooth point could discharge silently and at a far greater distance. He surmised that this could help protect buildings from lightning by attaching "upright Rods of Iron, made sharp as a Needle and gilt to prevent Rusting, and from the Foot of those Rods a Wire down the outside of the Building into the Ground; ... Would not these pointed Rods probably draw the Electrical Fire silently out of a Cloud before it came nigh enough to strike, and thereby secure us from that most sudden and terrible Mischief!" Following a series of experiments on Franklin's own house, lightning rods were installed on the Academy of Philadelphia (later the University of Pennsylvania) and the Pennsylvania State House (later Independence Hall) in 1752.
Population studies
Franklin had a major influence on the emerging science of demography or population studies. In the 1730s and 1740s, he began taking notes on population growth, finding that the American population had the fastest growth rate on Earth. Emphasizing that population growth depended on food supplies, he emphasized the abundance of food and available farmland in America. He calculated that America's population was doubling every 20 years and would surpass that of England in a century. In 1751, he drafted Observations concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc. Four years later, it was anonymously printed in Boston and was quickly reproduced in Britain, where it influenced the economist Adam Smith and later the demographer Thomas Malthus, who credited Franklin for discovering a rule of population growth. Franklin's predictions on how British mercantilism was unsustainable alarmed British leaders who did not want to be surpassed by the colonies, so they became more willing to impose restrictions on the colonial economy.
Kammen (1990) and Drake (2011) say Franklin's Observations concerning the Increase of Mankind (1755) stands alongside Ezra Stiles' "Discourse on Christian Union" (1760) as the leading works of 18th-century Anglo-American demography; Drake credits Franklin's "wide readership and prophetic insight." Franklin was also a pioneer in the study of slave demography, as shown in his 1755 essay. In his capacity as a farmer, he wrote at least one critique about the negative consequences of price controls, trade restrictions, and subsidy of the poor. This is succinctly preserved in his letter to the London Chronicle published November 29, 1766, titled "On the Price of Corn, and Management of the poor."
Oceanography
As deputy postmaster, Franklin became interested in North Atlantic Ocean circulation patterns. While in England in 1768, he heard a complaint from the Colonial Board of Customs. British packet ships carrying mail had taken several weeks longer to reach New York than it took an average merchant ship to reach Newport, Rhode Island. The merchantmen had a longer and more complex voyage because they left from London, while the packets left from Falmouth in Cornwall. Franklin put the question to his cousin Timothy Folger, a Nantucket whaler captain, who told him that merchant ships routinely avoided a strong eastbound mid-ocean current. The mail packet captains sailed dead into it, thus fighting an adverse current of 3 miles per hour (5 km/h). Franklin worked with Folger and other experienced ship captains, learning enough to chart the current and name it the Gulf Stream, by which it is still known today.
Franklin published his Gulf Stream chart in 1770 in England, where it was ignored. Subsequent versions were printed in France in 1778 and the U.S. in 1786. The British original edition of the chart had been so thoroughly ignored that everyone assumed it was lost forever until Phil Richardson, a Woods Hole oceanographer and Gulf Stream expert, discovered it in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris in 1980. This find received front-page coverage in The New York Times. It took many years for British sea captains to adopt Franklin's advice on navigating the current; once they did, they were able to trim two weeks from their sailing time. In 1853, the oceanographer and cartographer Matthew Fontaine Maury noted that while Franklin charted and codified the Gulf Stream, he did not discover it:
Though it was Dr. Franklin and Captain Tim Folger, who first turned the Gulf Stream to nautical account, the discovery that there was a Gulf Stream cannot be said to belong to either of them, for its existence was known to Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, and to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, in the 16th century.An aging Franklin accumulated all his oceanographic findings in Maritime Observations, published by the Philosophical Society's transactions in 1786. It contained ideas for sea anchors, catamaran hulls, watertight compartments, shipboard lightning rods and a soup bowl designed to stay stable in stormy weather.
Theories and experiments
Franklin was, along with his contemporary Leonhard Euler, the only major scientist who supported Christiaan Huygens's wave theory of light, which was basically ignored by the rest of the scientific community. In the 18th century, Isaac Newton's corpuscular theory was held to be true; it took Thomas Young's well-known slit experiment in 1803 to persuade most scientists to believe Huygens's theory.
On October 21, 1743, according to the popular myth, a storm moving from the southwest denied Franklin the opportunity of witnessing a lunar eclipse. He was said to have noted that the prevailing winds were actually from the northeast, contrary to what he had expected. In correspondence with his brother, he learned that the same storm had not reached Boston until after the eclipse, despite the fact that Boston is to the northeast of Philadelphia. He deduced that storms do not always travel in the direction of the prevailing wind, a concept that greatly influenced meteorology. After the Icelandic volcanic eruption of Laki in 1783, and the subsequent harsh European winter of 1784, Franklin made observations on the causal nature of these two seemingly separate events. He wrote about them in a lecture series.
Though Franklin is famously associated with kites from his lightning experiments, he has also been noted by many for using kites to pull humans and ships across waterways. George Pocock in the book A Treatise on The Aeropleustic Art, or Navigation in the Air, by means of Kites, or Buoyant Sails noted being inspired by Benjamin Franklin's traction of his body by kite power across a waterway.
Franklin noted a principle of refrigeration by observing that on a very hot day, he stayed cooler in a wet shirt in a breeze than he did in a dry one. To understand this phenomenon more clearly, he conducted experiments. In 1758 on a warm day in Cambridge, England, he and fellow scientist John Hadley experimented by continually wetting the ball of a mercury thermometer with ether and using bellows to evaporate the ether. With each subsequent evaporation, the thermometer read a lower temperature, eventually reaching 7 °F (−14 °C). Another thermometer showed that the room temperature was constant at 65 °F (18 °C). In his letter Cooling by Evaporation, Franklin noted that, "One may see the possibility of freezing a man to death on a warm summer's day."
In 1761, Franklin wrote a letter to Mary Stevenson describing his experiments on the relationship between color and heat absorption. He found that darker color clothes got hotter when exposed to sunlight than lighter color clothes, an early demonstration of black body thermal radiation. One experiment he performed consisted of placing square pieces of cloth of various color out in the snow on a sunny day. He waited some time and then measured that the black pieces sank furthest into the snow of all the colors, indicating that they got the hottest and melted the most snow.
According to Michael Faraday, Franklin's experiments on the non-conduction of ice are worth mentioning, although the law of the general effect of liquefaction on electrolytes is not attributed to Franklin. However, as reported in 1836 by Franklin's great-grandson Alexander Dallas Bache of the University of Pennsylvania, the law of the effect of heat on the conduction of bodies otherwise non-conductors, for example, glass, could be attributed to Franklin. Franklin wrote, "... A certain quantity of heat will make some bodies good conductors, that will not otherwise conduct ..." and again, "... And water, though naturally a good conductor, will not conduct well when frozen into ice."
While traveling on a ship, Franklin had observed that the wake of a ship was diminished when the cooks scuttled their greasy water. He studied the effects on a large pond in Clapham Common, London. "I fetched out a cruet of oil and dropt a little of it on the water ... though not more than a teaspoon full, produced an instant calm over a space of several yards square." He later used the trick to "calm the waters" by carrying "a little oil in the hollow joint of [his] cane."
Decision-making
In a 1772 letter to Joseph Priestley, Franklin laid out the earliest known description of the Pro & Con list, a common decision-making technique, now sometimes called a decisional balance sheet:
... my Way is, to divide half a Sheet of Paper by a Line into two Columns, writing over the one Pro, and over the other Con. Then during three or four Days Consideration I put down under the different Heads short Hints of the different Motives that at different Times occur to me for or against the Measure. When I have thus got them all together in one View, I endeavour to estimate their respective Weights; and where I find two, one on each side, that seem equal, I strike them both out: If I find a Reason pro equal to some two Reasons con, I strike out the three. If I judge some two Reasons con equal to some three Reasons pro, I strike out the five; and thus proceeding I find at length where the Ballance lies; and if after a Day or two of farther Consideration nothing new that is of Importance occurs on either side, I come to a Determination accordingly.
Views on religion, morality, and slavery
Like the other advocates of republicanism, Franklin emphasized that the new republic could survive only if the people were virtuous. All his life, he explored the role of civic and personal virtue, as expressed in Poor Richard's aphorisms. He felt that organized religion was necessary to keep men good to their fellow men, but rarely attended religious services himself. When he met Voltaire in Paris and asked his fellow member of the Enlightenment vanguard to bless his grandson, Voltaire said in English, "God and Liberty," and added, "this is the only appropriate benediction for the grandson of Monsieur Franklin."
Franklin's parents were both pious Puritans. The family attended the Old South Church, the most liberal Puritan congregation in Boston, where Benjamin Franklin was baptized in 1706. Franklin's father, a poor chandler, owned a copy of a book, Bonifacius: Essays to Do Good, by the Puritan preacher and family friend Cotton Mather, which Franklin often cited as a key influence on his life. "If I have been," Franklin wrote to Cotton Mather's son seventy years later, "a useful citizen, the public owes the advantage of it to that book." His first pen name, Silence Dogood, paid homage both to the book and to a widely known sermon by Mather. The book preached the importance of forming voluntary associations to benefit society. Franklin learned about forming do-good associations from Mather, but his organizational skills made him the most influential force in making voluntarism an enduring part of the American ethos.
Franklin formulated a presentation of his beliefs and published it in 1728. He no longer accepted the key Puritan ideas regarding salvation, the divinity of Jesus, or indeed much religious dogma. He classified himself as a deist in his 1771 autobiography, although he still considered himself a Christian. He retained a strong faith in a God as the wellspring of morality and goodness in man, and as a Providential actor in history responsible for American independence.
At a critical impasse during the Constitutional Convention in June 1787, he attempted to introduce the practice of daily common prayer with these words:
... In the beginning of the contest with G. Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayer in this room for the Divine Protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a Superintending providence in our favor. ... And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? or do we imagine that we no longer need His assistance. I have lived, Sir, a long time and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs in the affairs of men....I therefore beg leave to move—that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that service.
The motion gained almost no support and was never brought to a vote.
Franklin was an enthusiastic admirer of the evangelical minister George Whitefield during the First Great Awakening. He did not himself subscribe to Whitefield's theology, but he admired Whitefield for exhorting people to worship God through good works. He published all of Whitefield's sermons and journals, thereby earning a lot of money and boosting the Great Awakening.
When he stopped attending church, Franklin wrote in his autobiography:
... Sunday being my studying day, I never was without some religious principles. I never doubted, for instance, the existence of the Deity; that He made the world, and governed it by His providence; that the most acceptable service of God was the doing good to man; that our souls are immortal; and that all crime will be punished, and virtue rewarded, either here or hereafter.
Franklin retained a lifelong commitment to the non-religious Puritan virtues and political values he had grown up with, and through his civic work and publishing, he succeeded in passing these values into the American culture permanently. He had a "passion for virtue." These Puritan values included his devotion to egalitarianism, education, industry, thrift, honesty, temperance, charity and community spirit. Thomas Kidd states, "As an adult, Franklin touted ethical responsibility, industriousness, and benevolence, even as he jettisoned Christian orthodoxy."
The classical authors read in the Enlightenment period taught an abstract ideal of republican government based on hierarchical social orders of king, aristocracy and commoners. It was widely believed that English liberties relied on their balance of power, but also hierarchal deference to the privileged class. "Puritanism ... and the epidemic evangelism of the mid-eighteenth century, had created challenges to the traditional notions of social stratification" by preaching that the Bible taught all men are equal, that the true value of a man lies in his moral behavior, not his class, and that all men can be saved. Franklin, steeped in Puritanism and an enthusiastic supporter of the evangelical movement, rejected the salvation dogma but embraced the radical notion of egalitarian democracy.
Franklin's commitment to teach these values was itself something he gained from his Puritan upbringing, with its stress on "inculcating virtue and character in themselves and their communities." These Puritan values and the desire to pass them on, were one of his quintessentially American characteristics and helped shape the character of the nation. Max Weber considered Franklin's ethical writings a culmination of the Protestant ethic, which ethic created the social conditions necessary for the birth of capitalism.
One of his characteristics was his respect, tolerance and promotion of all churches. Referring to his experience in Philadelphia, he wrote in his autobiography, "new Places of worship were continually wanted, and generally erected by voluntary Contribution, my Mite for such purpose, whatever might be the Sect, was never refused." "He helped create a new type of nation that would draw strength from its religious pluralism." The evangelical revivalists who were active mid-century, such as Whitefield, were the greatest advocates of religious freedom, "claiming liberty of conscience to be an 'inalienable right of every rational creature.'" Whitefield's supporters in Philadelphia, including Franklin, erected "a large, new hall, that ... could provide a pulpit to anyone of any belief." Franklin's rejection of dogma and doctrine and his stress on the God of ethics and morality and civic virtue made him the "prophet of tolerance." He composed "A Parable Against Persecution," an apocryphal 51st chapter of Genesis in which God teaches Abraham the duty of tolerance. While he was living in London in 1774, he was present at the birth of British Unitarianism, attending the inaugural session of the Essex Street Chapel, at which Theophilus Lindsey drew together the first avowedly Unitarian congregation in England; this was somewhat politically risky and pushed religious tolerance to new boundaries, as a denial of the doctrine of the Trinity was illegal until the 1813 Act.
Although his parents had intended for him a career in the church, Franklin as a young man adopted the Enlightenment religious belief in deism, that God's truths can be found entirely through nature and reason, declaring, "I soon became a thorough Deist." He rejected Christian dogma in a 1725 pamphlet A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain, which he later saw as an embarrassment, while simultaneously asserting that God is "all wise, all good, all powerful." He defended his rejection of religious dogma with these words: "I think opinions should be judged by their influences and effects; and if a man holds none that tend to make him less virtuous or more vicious, it may be concluded that he holds none that are dangerous, which I hope is the case with me." After the disillusioning experience of seeing the decay in his own moral standards, and those of two friends in London whom he had converted to deism, Franklin decided that deism was true but it was not as useful in promoting personal morality as were the controls imposed by organized religion. Ralph Frasca contends that in his later life he can be considered a non-denominational Christian, although he did not believe Christ was divine.
In a major scholarly study of his religion, Thomas Kidd argues that Franklin believed that true religiosity was a matter of personal morality and civic virtue. Kidd says Franklin maintained his lifelong resistance to orthodox Christianity while arriving finally at a "doctrineless, moralized Christianity." According to David Morgan, Franklin was a proponent of "generic religion." He prayed to "Powerful Goodness" and referred to God as "the infinite." John Adams noted that he was a mirror in which people saw their own religion: "The Catholics thought him almost a Catholic. The Church of England claimed him as one of them. The Presbyterians thought him half a Presbyterian, and the Friends believed him a wet Quaker." Adams himself decided that Franklin best fit among the "Atheists, Deists, and Libertines." Whatever else Franklin was, concludes Morgan, "he was a true champion of generic religion." In a letter to Richard Price, Franklin states that he believes religion should support itself without help from the government, claiming, "When a Religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and, when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support, so that its Professors are oblig'd to call for the help of the Civil Power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."
In 1790, just about a month before he died, Franklin wrote a letter to Ezra Stiles, president of Yale University, who had asked him his views on religion:
As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupt changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and I think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble. I see no harm, however, in its being believed, if that belief has the good consequence, as it probably has, of making his doctrines more respected and better observed; especially as I do not perceive that the Supreme takes it amiss, by distinguishing the unbelievers in his government of the world with any particular marks of his displeasure.
On July 4, 1776, Congress appointed a three-member committee composed of Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams to design the Great Seal of the United States. Franklin's proposal (which was not adopted) featured the motto: "Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God" and a scene from the Book of Exodus he took from the frontispiece of the Geneva Bible, with Moses, the Israelites, the pillar of fire, and George III depicted as pharaoh.
The design that was produced was not acted upon by Congress, and the Great Seal's design was not finalized until a third committee was appointed in 1782.
Franklin strongly supported the right to freedom of speech:
In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own. Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech ...
Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom, and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech, which is the right of every man ...
Thirteen Virtues
Franklin sought to cultivate his character by a plan of 13 virtues, which he developed at age 20 (in 1726) and continued to practice in some form for the rest of his life. His autobiography lists his 13 virtues as:
Temperance. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation."
Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation."
Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
Industry. Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
Justice. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
Moderation. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
Cleanliness. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.
Tranquility. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
Chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.
Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
Franklin did not try to work on them all at once. Instead, he worked on only one each week "leaving all others to their ordinary chance." While he did not adhere completely to the enumerated virtues, and by his own admission he fell short of them many times, he believed the attempt made him a better man, contributing greatly to his success and happiness, which is why in his autobiography, he devoted more pages to this plan than to any other single point and wrote, "I hope, therefore, that some of my descendants may follow the example and reap the benefit."
Slavery
Franklin's views and practices concerning slavery evolved over the course of his life. In his early years, Franklin owned seven slaves, including two men who worked in his household and his shop, but in his later years became an adherent of abolition. A revenue stream for his newspaper was paid ads for the sale of slaves and for the capture of runaway slaves and Franklin allowed the sale of slaves in his general store. He later became an outspoken critic of slavery. In 1758, he advocated the opening of a school for the education of black slaves in Philadelphia. He took two slaves to England with him, Peter and King. King escaped with a woman to live in the outskirts of London, and by 1758 he was working for a household in Suffolk. After returning from England in 1762, Franklin became more abolitionist in nature, attacking American slavery. In the wake of Somerset v Stewart, he voiced frustration at British abolitionists:
O Pharisaical Britain! to pride thyself in setting free a single Slave that happens to land on thy coasts, while thy Merchants in all thy ports are encouraged by thy laws to continue a commerce whereby so many hundreds of thousands are dragged into a slavery that can scarce be said to end with their lives, since it is entailed on their posterity!
Franklin refused to publicly debate the issue of slavery at the 1787 Constitutional Convention.
At the time of the American founding, there were about half a million slaves in the United States, mostly in the five southernmost states, where they made up 40% of the population. Many of the leading American founders – such as Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and James Madison – owned slaves, but many others did not. Benjamin Franklin thought that slavery was "an atrocious debasement of human nature" and "a source of serious evils." In 1787, Franklin and Benjamin Rush helped write a new constitution for the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and that same year Franklin became president of the organization. In 1790, Quakers from New York and Pennsylvania presented their petition for abolition to Congress. Their argument against slavery was backed by the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society.
In his later years, as Congress was forced to deal with the issue of slavery, Franklin wrote several essays that stressed the importance of the abolition of slavery and of the integration of African Americans into American society. These writings included:
An Address to the Public (1789)
A Plan for Improving the Condition of the Free Blacks (1789)
Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim on the Slave Trade (1790)
Vegetarianism
Franklin became a vegetarian when he was a teenager apprenticing at a print shop, after coming upon a book by the early vegetarian advocate Thomas Tryon. In addition, he would have also been familiar with the moral arguments espoused by prominent vegetarian Quakers in the colonial-era Province of Pennsylvania, including Benjamin Lay and John Woolman. His reasons for vegetarianism were based on health, ethics, and economy:
When about 16 years of age, I happen'd to meet with a book written by one Tryon, recommending a vegetable diet. I determined to go into it ... [By not eating meat] I presently found that I could save half what [my brother] paid me. This was an additional fund for buying books: but I had another advantage in it ... I made the greater progress from that greater clearness of head and quicker apprehension which usually attend temperance in eating and drinking.
Franklin also declared the consumption of meat to be "unprovoked murder." Despite his convictions, he began to eat fish after being tempted by fried cod on a boat sailing from Boston, justifying the eating of animals by observing that the fish's stomach contained other fish. Nonetheless, he recognized the faulty ethics in this argument and would continue to be a vegetarian on and off. He was "excited" by tofu, which he learned of from the writings of a Spanish missionary to Southeast Asia, Domingo Fernández Navarrete. Franklin sent a sample of soybeans to prominent American botanist John Bartram and had previously written to British diplomat and Chinese trade expert James Flint inquiring as to how tofu was made, with their correspondence believed to be the first documented use of the word "tofu" in the English language.
Franklin's "Second Reply to Vindex Patriae," a 1766 letter advocating self-sufficiency and less dependence on England, lists various examples of the bounty of American agricultural products, and does not mention meat. Detailing new American customs, he wrote that, "[t]hey resolved last spring to eat no more lamb; and not a joint of lamb has since been seen on any of their tables ... the sweet little creatures are all alive to this day, with the prettiest fleeces on their backs imaginable."
View on inoculation
The concept of preventing smallpox by variolation was introduced to colonial America by an African slave named Onesimus via his owner Cotton Mather in the early eighteenth century, but the procedure was not immediately accepted. James Franklin's newspaper carried articles in 1721 that vigorously denounced the concept.
However, by 1736 Benjamin Franklin was known as a supporter of the procedure. Therefore, when four-year-old "Franky" died of smallpox, opponents of the procedure circulated rumors that the child had been inoculated, and that this was the cause of his subsequent death. When Franklin became aware of this gossip, he placed a notice in the Pennsylvania Gazette, stating: "I do hereby sincerely declare, that he was not inoculated, but receiv'd the Distemper in the common Way of Infection ... I intended to have my Child inoculated." The child had a bad case of flux diarrhea, and his parents had waited for him to get well before having him inoculated. Franklin wrote in his Autobiography: "In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the small-pox, taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly, and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation. This I mention for the sake of parents who omit that operation, on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it; my example showing that the regret may be the same either way, and that, therefore, the safer should be chosen."
Interests and activities
Musical endeavors
Franklin is known to have played the violin, the harp, and the guitar. He also composed music, which included a string quartet in early classical style. While he was in London, he developed a much-improved version of the glass harmonica, in which the glasses rotate on a shaft, with the player's fingers held steady, instead of the other way around. He worked with the London glassblower Charles James to create it, and instruments based on his mechanical version soon found their way to other parts of Europe. Joseph Haydn, a fan of Franklin's enlightened ideas, had a glass harmonica in his instrument collection. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed for Franklin's glass harmonica, as did Beethoven. Gaetano Donizetti used the instrument in the accompaniment to Amelia's aria "Par che mi dica ancora" in the tragic opera Il castello di Kenilworth (1821), as did Camille Saint-Saëns in his 1886 The Carnival of the Animals. Richard Strauss calls for the glass harmonica in his 1917 Die Frau ohne Schatten, and numerous other composers used Franklin's instrument as well.
Chess
Franklin was an avid chess player. He was playing chess by around 1733, making him the first chess player known by name in the American colonies. His essay on "The Morals of Chess" in Columbian Magazine in December 1786 is the second known writing on chess in America. This essay in praise of chess and prescribing a code of behavior for the game has been widely reprinted and translated. He and a friend used chess as a means of learning the Italian language, which both were studying; the winner of each game between them had the right to assign a task, such as parts of the Italian grammar to be learned by heart, to be performed by the loser before their next meeting.
Franklin was able to play chess more frequently against stronger opposition during his many years as a civil servant and diplomat in England, where the game was far better established than in America. He was able to improve his playing standard by facing more experienced players during this period. He regularly attended Old Slaughter's Coffee House in London for chess and socializing, making many important personal contacts. While in Paris, both as a visitor and later as ambassador, he visited the famous Café de la Régence, which France's strongest players made their regular meeting place. No records of his games have survived, so it is not possible to ascertain his playing strength in modern terms.
Franklin was inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1999. The Franklin Mercantile Chess Club in Philadelphia, the second oldest chess club in the U.S., is named in his honor.
Legacy
Bequest
Franklin bequeathed £1,000 (about $4,400 at the time, or about $125,000 in 2021 dollars) each to the cities of Boston and Philadelphia, in trust to gather interest for 200 years. The trust began in 1785 when the French mathematician Charles-Joseph Mathon de la Cour, who admired Franklin greatly, wrote a friendly parody of Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack called Fortunate Richard. The main character leaves a smallish amount of money in his will, five lots of 100 livres, to collect interest over one, two, three, four or five full centuries, with the resulting astronomical sums to be spent on impossibly elaborate utopian projects. Franklin, who was 79 years old at the time, wrote thanking him for a great idea and telling him that he had decided to leave a bequest of 1,000 pounds each to his native Boston and his adopted Philadelphia.
By 1990, more than $2,000,000 (~$4.12 million in 2023) had accumulated in Franklin's Philadelphia trust, which had loaned the money to local residents. From 1940 to 1990, the money was used mostly for mortgage loans. When the trust came due, Philadelphia decided to spend it on scholarships for local high school students. Franklin's Boston trust fund accumulated almost $5,000,000 during that same time; at the end of its first 100 years a portion was allocated to help establish a trade school that became the Franklin Institute of Boston, and the entire fund was later dedicated to supporting this institute.
In 1787, a group of prominent ministers in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, proposed the foundation of a new college named in Franklin's honor. Franklin donated £200 towards the development of Franklin College (now called Franklin & Marshall College).
Likeness and image
As the only person to have signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Treaty of Alliance with France in 1778, Treaty of Paris in 1783, and U.S. Constitution in 1787, Franklin is considered one of the leading Founding Fathers of the United States. His pervasive influence in the early history of the nation has led to his being jocularly called "the only president of the United States who was never president of the United States."
Franklin's likeness is ubiquitous. Since 1914, it has adorned American $100 bills. From 1948 to 1963, Franklin's portrait was on the half-dollar. He has appeared on a $50 bill and on several varieties of the $100 bill from 1914 and 1918. Franklin also appears on the $1,000 Series EE savings bond.
On April 12, 1976, as part of a bicentennial celebration, Congress dedicated a 20-foot (6 m) tall marble statue in Philadelphia's Franklin Institute as the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller presided over the dedication ceremony. Many of Franklin's personal possessions are on display at the institute. In London, his house at 36 Craven Street, which is the only surviving former residence of Franklin, was first marked with a blue plaque and has since been opened to the public as the Benjamin Franklin House. In 1998, workmen restoring the building dug up the remains of six children and four adults hidden below the home. A total of 15 bodies have been recovered. The Friends of Benjamin Franklin House (the organization responsible for the restoration) note that the bones were likely placed there by William Hewson, who lived in the house for two years and who had built a small anatomy school at the back of the house. They note that while Franklin likely knew what Hewson was doing, he probably did not participate in any dissections because he was much more of a physicist than a medical man.
He has been honored on U.S. postage stamps many times. The image of Franklin, the first postmaster general of the United States, occurs on the face of U.S. postage more than any other American save that of George Washington. He appeared on the first U.S. postage stamp issued in 1847. From 1908 through 1923, the U.S. Post Office issued a series of postage stamps commonly referred to as the Washington–Franklin Issues, in which Washington and Franklin were depicted many times over a 14-year period, the longest run of any one series in U.S. postal history. However, he only appears on a few commemorative stamps. Some of the finest portrayals of Franklin on record can be found on the engravings inscribed on the face of U.S. postage.
See also
Notes
References
Bibliography
External links
Benjamin Franklin and Electrostatics Archived August 14, 2017, at the Wayback Machine experiments and Franklin's electrical writings from Wright Center for Science Education
Benjamin Franklin Papers, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania.
Franklin's impact on medicine – talk by medical historian, Dr. Jim Leavesley celebrating the 300th anniversary of Franklin's birth on Okham's Razor ABC Radio National – December 2006
Video with sheet music of Benjamin Franklin's string quartet
Biographical and guides
Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
"Special Report: Citizen Ben's Greatest Virtues" Time
"Writings of Benjamin Franklin" from C-SPAN's American Writers: A Journey Through History
Afsai, Shai (2019). "Benjamin Franklin's Influence on Mussar Thought and Practice: a Chronicle of Misapprehension." Review of Rabbinic Judaism 22, 2: 228–276.
Benjamin Franklin: A Documentary History by J.A. Leo Lemay
Benjamin Franklin: An extraordinary life PBS
Benjamin Franklin: First American Diplomat, 1776–1785 US State Department
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Franklin, Benjamin" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Finding Franklin: A Resource Guide Library of Congress
Guide to Benjamin Franklin Archived March 16, 2010, at the Wayback Machine By a history professor at the University of Illinois.
Online edition of Franklin's personal library
The Electric Benjamin Franklin ushistory.org
Online writings
"A Silence Dogood Sampler" – Selections from Franklin's Silence Dogood writings
Abridgement of the Book of Common Prayer (1773), by Benjamin Franklin and Francis Dashwood, transcribed by Richard Mammana
Franklin's Last Will & Testament Transcription.
Library of Congress web resource: Benjamin Franklin ... In His Own Words
Online Works by Franklin
Works by Benjamin Franklin at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
Works by Benjamin Franklin in eBook form at Standard Ebooks
Works by Benjamin Franklin at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Benjamin Franklin at the Internet Archive
Yale edition of complete works, the standard scholarly edition
Online, searchable edition
Autobiography
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin at Project Gutenberg
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin LibriVox recording
In the arts
Benjamin Franklin 300 (1706–2006) Archived August 20, 2008, at the Wayback Machine Official web site of the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary.
The Historical Society of Pennsylvania Collection of Benjamin Franklin Papers, including correspondence, government documents, writings and a copy of his will, are available for research use at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. |
Wolfgang_Amadeus_Mozart | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Amadeus_Mozart | [
575
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Amadeus_Mozart"
] | Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition resulted in more than 800 works representing virtually every Western classical genre of his time. Many of these compositions are acknowledged as pinnacles of the symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral repertoire. Mozart is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music, with his music admired for its "melodic beauty, its formal elegance and its richness of harmony and texture".
Born in Salzburg, Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. At age five, he was already competent on keyboard and violin, had begun to compose, and performed before European royalty. His father took him on a grand tour of Europe and then three trips to Italy. At 17, he was a musician at the Salzburg court but grew restless and travelled in search of a better position. Mozart's search for employment led to positions in Paris, Mannheim, Munich, and again in Salzburg, during which he wrote his five violin concertos, Sinfonia Concertante, and Concerto for Flute and Harp, as well as sacred pieces and masses, the motet Exsultate Jubilate, and the opera Idomeneo, among other works.
While visiting Vienna in 1781, Mozart was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He stayed in Vienna, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During Mozart’s early years in Vienna, he produced several notable works, such as the opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail, the Great Mass in C Minor, the "Haydn" Quartets and a number of symphonies. Throughout his Vienna years, Mozart composed over a dozen piano concertos, many considered some of his greatest achievements. In the final years of his life, Mozart wrote many of his best-known works, including his last three symphonies, culminating in the Jupiter Symphony, the serenade Eine kleine Nachtmusik, his Clarinet Concerto, the four operas Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte and The Magic Flute and his Requiem. The Requiem was largely unfinished at the time of his death at age 35, the circumstances of which are uncertain and much mythologised.
Life and career
Early life
Family and childhood
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on 27 January 1756 to Leopold Mozart and Anna Maria, née Pertl, at Getreidegasse 9 in Salzburg. Salzburg was the capital of the Archbishopric of Salzburg, an ecclesiastic principality in the Holy Roman Empire (today in Austria). He was the youngest of seven children, five of whom died in infancy. His elder sister was Maria Anna Mozart (1751–1829), nicknamed "Nannerl". Mozart was baptised the day after his birth, at St. Rupert's Cathedral in Salzburg. The baptismal record gives his name in Latinized form, as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart. He generally called himself "Wolfgang Amadè Mozart" as an adult, but his name had many variants.
Leopold Mozart, a native of Augsburg, then an Imperial Free City in the Holy Roman Empire, was a minor composer and an experienced teacher. In 1743, he was appointed as the fourth violinist in the musical establishment of Count Leopold Anton von Firmian, the ruling Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. Four years later, he married Anna Maria in Salzburg. Leopold became the orchestra's deputy Kapellmeister in 1763. During the year of his son's birth, Leopold published a violin textbook, Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule, which achieved success.
When Nannerl was seven, she began keyboard lessons with her father, while her three-year-old brother looked on. Years later, after her brother's death, she reminisced:
He often spent much time at the clavier, picking out thirds, which he was ever striking, and his pleasure showed that it sounded good. ... In the fourth year of his age his father, for a game as it were, began to teach him a few minuets and pieces at the clavier. ... He could play it faultlessly and with the greatest delicacy, and keeping exactly in time. ... At the age of five, he was already composing little pieces, which he played to his father who wrote them down.
These early pieces, K. 1–5, were recorded in the Nannerl Notenbuch. There is some scholarly debate about whether Mozart was four or five years old when he created his first musical compositions, though there is little doubt that Mozart composed his first three pieces of music within a few weeks of each other: K. 1a, 1b, and 1c.
In his early years, Wolfgang's father was his only teacher. Along with music, he taught his children languages and academic subjects. Biographer Solomon notes that, while Leopold was a devoted teacher to his children, there is evidence that Mozart was keen to progress beyond what he was taught. His first ink-spattered composition and his precocious efforts with the violin were of his initiative and came as a surprise to Leopold, who eventually gave up composing when his son's musical talents became evident.
1762–73: Travel
While Wolfgang was young, his family made several European journeys in which he and Nannerl performed as child prodigies. These began with an exhibition in 1762 at the court of Prince-elector Maximilian III of Bavaria in Munich, and at the Imperial Courts in Vienna and Prague. A long concert tour followed, spanning three and a half years, taking the family to the courts of Munich, Mannheim, Paris, London, Dover, The Hague, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Mechelen and again to Paris, and back home via Zürich, Donaueschingen, and Munich. During this trip, Wolfgang met many musicians and acquainted himself with the works of other composers. A particularly significant influence was Johann Christian Bach, whom he visited in London in 1764 and 1765. When he was eight years old, Mozart wrote his first symphony, most of which was probably transcribed by his father.
The family trips were often challenging, and travel conditions were primitive. They had to wait for invitations and reimbursement from the nobility, and they endured long, near-fatal illnesses far from home: first Leopold (London, summer 1764), then both children (The Hague, autumn 1765). The family again went to Vienna in late 1767 and remained there until December 1768.
After one year in Salzburg, Leopold and Wolfgang set off for Italy, leaving Anna Maria and Nannerl at home. This tour lasted from December 1769 to March 1771. As with earlier journeys, Leopold wanted to display his son's abilities as a performer and a rapidly maturing composer. Wolfgang met Josef Mysliveček and Giovanni Battista Martini in Bologna and was accepted as a member of the famous Accademia Filarmonica. There exists a myth, according to which, while in Rome, he heard Gregorio Allegri's Miserere twice in performance in the Sistine Chapel. Allegedly, he subsequently wrote it out from memory, thus producing the "first unauthorized copy of this closely guarded property of the Vatican". However, both origin and plausibility of this account are disputed.
In Milan, Mozart wrote the opera Mitridate, re di Ponto (1770), which was performed with success. This led to further opera commissions. He returned with his father twice to Milan (August–December 1771; October 1772 – March 1773) for the composition and premieres of Ascanio in Alba (1771) and Lucio Silla (1772). Leopold hoped these visits would result in a professional appointment for his son, and indeed ruling Archduke Ferdinand contemplated hiring Mozart, but owing to his mother Empress Maria Theresa's reluctance to employ "useless people", the matter was dropped and Leopold's hopes were never realized. Toward the end of the journey, Mozart wrote the solo motet Exsultate, jubilate, K.165.
1773–77: Employment at the Salzburg court
After finally returning with his father from Italy on 13 March 1773, Mozart was employed as a court musician by the ruler of Salzburg, Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo. The composer had many friends and admirers in Salzburg and had the opportunity to work in many genres, including symphonies, sonatas, string quartets, masses, serenades, and a few minor operas. Between April and December 1775, Mozart developed an enthusiasm for violin concertos, producing a series of five (the only ones he ever wrote), which steadily increased in their musical sophistication. The last three—K. 216, K. 218, K. 219—are now staples of the repertoire. In 1776, he turned his efforts to piano concertos, culminating in the E♭ concerto K. 271 of early 1777, considered by critics to be a breakthrough work.
Despite these artistic successes, Mozart grew increasingly discontented with Salzburg and redoubled his efforts to find a position elsewhere. One reason was his low salary, 150 florins a year; Mozart longed to compose operas, and Salzburg provided only rare occasions for these. The situation worsened in 1775 when the court theatre was closed, especially since the other theatre in Salzburg was primarily reserved for visiting troupes.
Two long expeditions in search of work interrupted this long Salzburg stay. Mozart and his father visited Vienna from 14 July to 26 September 1773, and Munich from 6 December 1774 to March 1775. Neither visit was successful, though the Munich journey resulted in a popular success with the premiere of Mozart's opera La finta giardiniera.
1777–78: Journey to Paris
In August 1777, Mozart resigned his position at Salzburg and on 23 September ventured out once more in search of employment, with visits to Augsburg, Mannheim, Paris, and Munich.
Mozart became acquainted with members of the famous orchestra in Mannheim, the best in Europe at the time. He also fell in love with Aloysia Weber, one of four daughters of a musical family. There were prospects of employment in Mannheim, but they came to nothing, and Mozart left for Paris on 14 March 1778 to continue his search. One of his letters from Paris hints at a possible post as an organist at Versailles, but Mozart was not interested in such an appointment. He fell into debt and took to pawning valuables. The nadir of the visit occurred when Mozart's mother was taken ill and died on 3 July 1778. There had been delays in calling a doctor—probably, according to Halliwell, because of a lack of funds. Mozart stayed with Melchior Grimm at Marquise d'Épinay's residence, 5 rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin.
While Mozart was in Paris, his father was pursuing opportunities of employment for him in Salzburg. With the support of the local nobility, Mozart was offered a post as court organist and concertmaster. The annual salary was 450 florins, but he was reluctant to accept. By that time, relations between Grimm and Mozart had cooled, and Mozart moved out. After leaving Paris in September 1778 for Strasbourg, he lingered in Mannheim and Munich, still hoping to obtain an appointment outside Salzburg. In Munich, he again encountered Aloysia, now a very successful singer, but she was no longer interested in him. Mozart finally returned to Salzburg on 15 January 1779 and took up his new appointment, but his discontent with Salzburg remained undiminished.
Among the better-known works which Mozart wrote on the Paris journey are the A minor piano sonata, K. 310/300d, the "Paris" Symphony (No. 31), which were performed in Paris on 12 and 18 June 1778; and the Concerto for Flute and Harp in C major, K. 299/297c.
Vienna
1781: Departure
In January 1781, Mozart's opera Idomeneo premiered with "considerable success" in Munich. The following March, Mozart was summoned to Vienna, where his employer, Archbishop Colloredo, was attending the celebrations for the accession of Joseph II to the Austrian throne. For Colloredo, this was simply a matter of wanting his musical servant to be at hand (Mozart indeed was required to dine in Colloredo's establishment with the valets and cooks). He planned a bigger career as he continued in the archbishop's service; for example, he wrote to his father:
My main goal right now is to meet the emperor in some agreeable fashion, I am absolutely determined he should get to know me. I would be so happy if I could whip through my opera for him and then play a fugue or two, for that's what he likes.
Mozart did indeed soon meet the Emperor, who eventually was to support his career substantially with commissions and a part-time position.
In the same letter to his father just quoted, Mozart outlined his plans to participate as a soloist in the concerts of the Tonkünstler-Societät, a prominent benefit concert series; this plan as well came to pass after the local nobility prevailed on Colloredo to drop his opposition.
Colloredo's wish to prevent Mozart from performing outside his establishment was in other cases carried through, raising the composer's anger; one example was a chance to perform before the Emperor at Countess Thun's for a fee equal to half of his yearly Salzburg salary.
The quarrel with the archbishop came to a head in May: Mozart attempted to resign and was refused. The following month, permission was granted, but in a grossly insulting way: the composer was dismissed literally "with a kick in the arse", administered by the archbishop's steward, Count Arco. Mozart decided to settle in Vienna as a freelance performer and composer.
The quarrel with Colloredo was more difficult for Mozart because his father sided against him. Hoping fervently that he would obediently follow Colloredo back to Salzburg, Mozart's father exchanged intense letters with his son, urging him to be reconciled with their employer. Mozart passionately defended his intention to pursue an independent career in Vienna. The debate ended when Mozart was dismissed by the archbishop, freeing himself both of his employer and of his father's demands to return. Solomon characterizes Mozart's resignation as a "revolutionary step" that significantly altered the course of his life.
Early years
Mozart's new career in Vienna began well. He often performed as a pianist, notably in a competition before the Emperor with Muzio Clementi on 24 December 1781, and he soon "had established himself as the finest keyboard player in Vienna". He also prospered as a composer, and in 1782 completed the opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail ("The Abduction from the Seraglio"), which premiered on 16 July 1782 and achieved considerable success. The work was soon being performed "throughout German-speaking Europe", and thoroughly established Mozart's reputation as a composer.
Near the height of his quarrels with Colloredo, Mozart moved in with the Weber family, who had moved to Vienna from Mannheim. The family's father, Fridolin, had died, and the Webers were now taking in lodgers to make ends meet.
Marriage and children
After failing to win the hand of Aloysia Weber, who was now married to the actor and artist Joseph Lange, Mozart's interest shifted to the third daughter of the family, Constanze.
The courtship did not go entirely smoothly; surviving correspondence indicates that Mozart and Constanze briefly broke up in April 1782, over an episode involving jealousy (Constanze had permitted another young man to measure her calves in a parlor game). Mozart also faced a very difficult task getting permission for the marriage from his father, Leopold.
The marriage took place in an atmosphere of crisis. Daniel Heartz suggests that eventually Constanze moved in with Mozart, which would have placed her in disgrace by the mores of the time. Mozart wrote to Leopold on 31 July 1782, "All the good and well-intentioned advice you have sent fails to address the case of a man who has already gone so far with a maiden. Further postponement is out of the question." Heartz relates, "Constanze's sister Sophie had tearfully declared that her mother would send the police after Constanze if she did not return home [presumably from Mozart's apartment]." On 4 August, Mozart wrote to Baroness von Waldstätten, asking: "Can the police here enter anyone's house in this way? Perhaps it is only a ruse of Madame Weber to get her daughter back. If not, I know no better remedy than to marry Constanze tomorrow morning or if possible today."
The couple were finally married on 4 August 1782 in St. Stephen's Cathedral, the day before his father's consenting letter arrived in the mail. In the marriage contract, Constanze "assigns to her bridegroom five hundred gulden which ... the latter has promised to augment with one thousand gulden", with the total "to pass to the survivor". Further, all joint acquisitions during the marriage were to remain the common property of both.
The couple had six children, of whom only two survived infancy:
Raimund Leopold (17 June – 19 August 1783)
Karl Thomas Mozart (21 September 1784 – 31 October 1858)
Johann Thomas Leopold (18 October – 15 November 1786)
Theresia Constanzia Adelheid Friedericke Maria Anna (27 December 1787 – 29 June 1788)
Anna Maria (died soon after birth, 16 November 1789)
Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart (26 July 1791 – 29 July 1844)
1782–87
In 1782 and 1783, Mozart became intimately acquainted with the work of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel as a result of the influence of Gottfried van Swieten, who owned many manuscripts of the Baroque masters. Mozart's study of these scores inspired compositions in Baroque style and later influenced his musical language, for example in fugal passages in Die Zauberflöte ("The Magic Flute") and the finale of Symphony No. 41.
In 1783, Mozart and his wife visited his family in Salzburg. His father and sister were cordially polite to Constanze, but the visit prompted the composition of one of Mozart's great liturgical pieces, the Mass in C minor. Though not completed, it was premiered in Salzburg, with Constanze singing a solo part.
Mozart met Joseph Haydn in Vienna around 1784, and the two composers became friends. When Haydn visited Vienna, they sometimes played together in an impromptu string quartet. Mozart's six quartets dedicated to Haydn (K. 387, K. 421, K. 428, K. 458, K. 464, and K. 465) date from the period 1782 to 1785, and are judged to be a response to Haydn's Opus 33 set from 1781. Haydn wrote, "posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years" and in 1785 told Mozart's father: "I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute, he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition."
From 1782 to 1785 Mozart mounted concerts with himself as a soloist, presenting three or four new piano concertos in each season. Since space in the theatres was scarce, he booked unconventional venues: a large room in the Trattnerhof apartment building, and the ballroom of the Mehlgrube restaurant. The concerts were very popular, and his concertos premiered there are still firm fixtures in his repertoire. Solomon writes that during this period, Mozart created "a harmonious connection between an eager composer-performer and a delighted audience, which was given the opportunity of witnessing the transformation and perfection of a major musical genre".
With substantial returns from his concerts and elsewhere, Mozart and his wife adopted a more luxurious lifestyle. They moved to an expensive apartment, with a yearly rent of 460 florins. Mozart bought a fine fortepiano from Anton Walter for about 900 florins, and a billiard table for about 300. The Mozarts sent their son Karl Thomas to an expensive boarding school and kept servants. During this period Mozart saved little of his income.
On 14 December 1784, Mozart became a Freemason, admitted to the lodge Zur Wohltätigkeit ("Beneficence"). Freemasonry played an essential role in the remainder of Mozart's life: he attended meetings, a number of his friends were Masons, and on various occasions, he composed Masonic music, e.g. the Maurerische Trauermusik.
1786–87: Return to opera
Despite the great success of Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Mozart did little operatic writing for the next four years, producing only two unfinished works and the one-act Der Schauspieldirektor. He focused instead on his career as a piano soloist and writer of concertos. Around the end of 1785, Mozart moved away from keyboard writing and began his famous operatic collaboration with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. The year 1786 saw the successful premiere of Le nozze di Figaro in Vienna. Its reception in Prague later in the year was even warmer, and this led to a second collaboration with Da Ponte: the opera Don Giovanni, which premiered in October 1787 to acclaim in Prague, but less success in Vienna during 1788. The two are among Mozart's most famous works and are mainstays of operatic repertoire today, though at their premieres their musical complexity caused difficulty both for listeners and for performers. These developments were not witnessed by Mozart's father, who had died on 28 May 1787.
In December 1787, Mozart finally obtained a steady post under aristocratic patronage. Emperor Joseph II appointed him as his "chamber composer", a post that had fallen vacant the previous month on the death of Gluck. It was a part-time appointment, paying just 800 florins per year, and required Mozart only to compose dances for the annual balls in the Redoutensaal (see Mozart and dance). This modest income became important to Mozart when hard times arrived. Court records show that Joseph aimed to keep the esteemed composer from leaving Vienna in pursuit of better prospects.
In 1787, the young Ludwig van Beethoven spent several weeks in Vienna, hoping to study with Mozart. No reliable records survive to indicate whether the two composers ever met.
Later years
1788–90
Toward the end of the decade, Mozart's circumstances worsened. Around 1786, he ceased to appear frequently in public concerts, and his income shrank. This was a difficult time for musicians in Vienna because of the Austro-Turkish War: both the general level of prosperity and the ability of the aristocracy to support music had declined. In 1788, Mozart saw a 66% decline in his income compared to his best years in 1781.
By mid-1788, Mozart and his family had moved from central Vienna to the suburb of Alsergrund. Although it has been suggested that Mozart aimed to reduce his rental expenses by moving to a suburb, as he wrote in his letter to Michael von Puchberg, Mozart had not reduced his expenses but merely increased the housing space at his disposal. Mozart began to borrow money, most often from his friend and fellow mason Puchberg; "a pitiful sequence of letters pleading for loans" survives. Maynard Solomon and others have suggested that Mozart was suffering from depression, and it seems his musical output slowed. Major works of the period include the last three symphonies (Nos. 39, 40, and 41, all from 1788), and the last of the three Da Ponte operas, Così fan tutte, premiered in 1790.
Around this time, Mozart made some long journeys hoping to improve his fortunes, visiting Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin in the spring of 1789, and Frankfurt, Mannheim, and other German cities in 1790.
1791
Mozart's last year was, until his final illness struck, a time of high productivity—and by some accounts, one of personal recovery. He composed a great deal, including some of his most admired works: the opera The Magic Flute; the final piano concerto (K. 595 in B♭); the Clarinet Concerto K. 622; the last in his series of string quintets (K. 614 in E♭); the motet Ave verum corpus K. 618; and the unfinished Requiem K. 626.
Mozart's financial situation, a source of anxiety in 1790, finally began to improve. Although the evidence is inconclusive, it appears that wealthy patrons in Hungary and Amsterdam pledged annuities to Mozart in return for the occasional composition. He is thought to have benefited from the sale of dance music written in his role as Imperial chamber composer. Mozart no longer borrowed large sums from Puchberg and began to pay off his debts.
He experienced great satisfaction in the public success of some of his works, notably The Magic Flute (which was performed several times in the short period between its premiere and Mozart's death) and the Little Masonic Cantata K. 623, premiered on 17 November 1791.
Final illness and death
Mozart fell ill while in Prague for the premiere, on 6 September 1791, of his opera La clemenza di Tito, which was written in that same year on commission for Emperor Leopold II's coronation festivities. He continued his professional functions for some time and conducted the premiere of The Magic Flute on 30 September. His health deteriorated on 20 November, at which point he became bedridden, suffering from swelling, pain, and vomiting.
Mozart was nursed in his final days by his wife and her youngest sister, and was attended by the family doctor, Thomas Franz Closset. He was mentally occupied with the task of finishing his Requiem, but the evidence that he dictated passages to his student Franz Xaver Süssmayr is minimal.
Mozart died in his home on 5 December 1791(1791-12-05) (aged 35) at 12:55 am. The New Grove describes his funeral:
Mozart was interred in a common grave, in accordance with contemporary Viennese custom, at the St. Marx Cemetery outside the city on 7 December. If, as later reports say, no mourners attended, that too is consistent with Viennese burial customs at the time; later Otto Jahn (1856) wrote that Salieri, Süssmayr, van Swieten and two other musicians were present. The tale of a storm and snow is false; the day was calm and mild.
The expression "common grave" refers to neither a communal grave nor a pauper's grave, but an individual grave for a member of the common people (i.e., not the aristocracy). Common graves were subject to excavation after ten years; the graves of aristocrats were not.
The cause of Mozart's death is not known with certainty. The official record of hitziges Frieselfieber ("severe miliary fever", referring to a rash that looks like millet seeds) is more a symptomatic description than a diagnosis. Researchers have suggested more than a hundred causes of death, including acute rheumatic fever, streptococcal infection, trichinosis, influenza, mercury poisoning, and a rare kidney ailment.
Mozart's modest funeral did not reflect his standing with the public as a composer; memorial services and concerts in Vienna and Prague were well attended. Indeed, in the period immediately after his death, his reputation rose substantially. Solomon describes an "unprecedented wave of enthusiasm" for his work; biographies were written first by Schlichtegroll, Niemetschek, and Nissen, and publishers vied to produce complete editions of his works.
Appearance and character
Mozart's physical appearance was described by tenor Michael Kelly in his Reminiscences: "a remarkably small man, very thin and pale, with a profusion of fine, fair hair of which he was rather vain". His early biographer Niemetschek wrote, "there was nothing special about [his] physique. ... He was small and his countenance, except for his large intense eyes, gave no signs of his genius." His facial complexion was pitted, a reminder of his childhood case of smallpox. Of his voice, his wife later wrote that it "was a tenor, rather soft in speaking and delicate in singing, but when anything excited him, or it became necessary to exert it, it was both powerful and energetic."
He loved elegant clothing. Kelly remembered him at a rehearsal: "[He] was on the stage with his crimson pelisse and gold-laced cocked hat, giving the time of the music to the orchestra." Based on paintings that researchers were able to find of Mozart, he seemed to wear a white wig for most of his formal occasions—researchers of the Salzburg Mozarteum declared that only one of his fourteen portraits they had found showed him without his wig.
Mozart usually worked long and hard, finishing compositions at a tremendous pace as deadlines approached. He often made sketches and drafts; unlike Beethoven's, these are mostly not preserved, as his wife sought to destroy them after his death.
Mozart lived at the center of the Viennese musical world, and knew a significant number and variety of people: fellow musicians, theatrical performers, fellow Salzburgers, and aristocrats, including some acquaintance with Emperor Joseph II. Solomon considers his three closest friends to have been Gottfried von Jacquin, Count August Hatzfeld, and Sigmund Barisani; others included his elder colleague Joseph Haydn, singers Franz Xaver Gerl and Benedikt Schack, and the horn player Joseph Leutgeb. Leutgeb and Mozart carried on a kind of friendly mockery, often with Leutgeb as the butt of Mozart's practical jokes.
He enjoyed billiards, dancing, and kept pets, including a canary, a starling, a dog, and a horse for recreational riding. He had a startling fondness for scatological humour, which is preserved in his surviving letters, notably those written to his cousin Maria Anna Thekla Mozart around 1777–1778, and in his correspondence with his sister and parents. Mozart also wrote scatological music, a series of canons that he sang with his friends. He had an ear for languages, and having traveled all over Europe as a boy, was fluent in Latin, Italian, and French in addition to his native Salzburg dialect of German. He possibly also understood and spoke some English, having jokingly written "You are an ass" after his 19-year-old student Thomas Attwood made a thoughtless mistake on his exercise papers.
Mozart was raised a Catholic and remained a devout member of the Church throughout his life. He embraced the teachings of Freemasonry in 1784.
Works, musical style, and innovations
Style
Mozart's music, like Haydn's, stands as an archetype of the Classical style. At the time he began composing, European music was dominated by the style galant, a reaction against the highly evolved intricacy of the Baroque. Progressively, and in large part at the hands of Mozart himself, the contrapuntal complexities of the late Baroque emerged once more, moderated and disciplined by new forms, and adapted to a new aesthetic and social milieu. Mozart was a versatile composer, and wrote in every major genre, including symphony, opera, the solo concerto, chamber music including string quartet and string quintet, and the piano sonata. These forms were not new, but Mozart advanced their technical sophistication and emotional reach. He almost single-handedly developed and popularized the Classical piano concerto. He wrote a great deal of religious music, including large-scale masses, as well as dances, divertimenti, serenades, and other forms of light entertainment.
The central traits of the Classical style are all present in Mozart's music. Clarity, balance, and transparency are the hallmarks of his work, but simplistic notions of its delicacy mask the exceptional power of his finest masterpieces, such as the Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491; the Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550; and the opera Don Giovanni. Charles Rosen makes the point forcefully:
It is only through recognizing the violence and sensuality at the center of Mozart's work that we can make a start towards a comprehension of his structures and an insight into his magnificence. In a paradoxical way, Schumann's superficial characterization of the G minor Symphony can help us to see Mozart's daemon more steadily. In all of Mozart's supreme expressions of suffering and terror, there is something shockingly voluptuous.
During his last decade, Mozart frequently exploited chromatic harmony. A notable instance is his String Quartet in C major, K. 465 (1785), whose introduction abounds in chromatic suspensions, giving rise to the work's nickname, the "Dissonance" quartet.
Mozart had a gift for absorbing and adapting the valuable features of others' music. His travels helped in the forging of a unique compositional language. In London as a child, he met J. C. Bach and heard his music. In Paris, Mannheim, and Vienna he met with other compositional influences, as well as the avant-garde capabilities of the Mannheim orchestra. In Italy, he encountered the Italian overture and opera buffa, both of which deeply affected the evolution of his practice. In London and Italy, the galant style was in the ascendent: simple, light music with a mania for cadencing; an emphasis on tonic, dominant, and subdominant to the exclusion of other harmonies; symmetrical phrases; and clearly articulated partitions in the overall form of movements. Some of Mozart's early symphonies are Italian overtures, with three movements running into each other; many are homotonal (all three movements having the same key signature, with the slow middle movement being in the relative minor). Others mimic the works of J. C. Bach, and others show the simple rounded binary forms turned out by Viennese composers.
As Mozart matured, he progressively incorporated more features adapted from the Baroque. For example, the Symphony No. 29 in A major K. 201 has a contrapuntal main theme in its first movement, and experimentation with irregular phrase lengths. Some of his quartets from 1773 have fugal finales, probably influenced by Haydn, who had included three such finales in his recently published Opus 20 set. The influence of the Sturm und Drang ("Storm and Stress") period in music, with its brief foreshadowing of the Romantic era, is evident in the music of both composers at that time. Mozart's Symphony No. 25 in G minor K. 183 is another excellent example.
Mozart would sometimes switch his focus between operas and instrumental music. He produced operas in each of the prevailing styles: opera buffa, such as Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte; opera seria, such as Idomeneo; and Singspiel, of which Die Zauberflöte is the most famous example by any composer. In his later operas, he employed subtle changes in instrumentation, orchestral texture, and tone colour, for emotional depth and to mark dramatic shifts. Here, his advances in opera and instrumental composing interacted: his increasingly sophisticated use of the orchestra in the symphonies and concertos influenced his operatic orchestration, and his developing subtlety in using the orchestra to psychological effect in his operas was in turn reflected in his later non-operatic compositions.
Köchel catalogue
For unambiguous identification of works by Mozart, a Köchel catalogue number is used. This is a unique number assigned, in regular chronological order, to every one of his known works. A work is referenced by the abbreviation "K." or "KV" followed by this number. The first edition of the catalogue was completed in 1862 by Ludwig von Köchel. It has since been repeatedly updated, as scholarly research improves knowledge of the dates and authenticity of individual works.
Instruments
Although some of Mozart's early pieces were written for harpsichord, he also became acquainted in his early years with fortepianos made by Regensburg builder Franz Jakob Späth. Later when Mozart was visiting Augsburg, he was impressed by Stein fortepianos and shared this in a letter to his father. On 22 October 1777, Mozart had premiered his triple-piano concerto, K. 242, on instruments provided by Stein. The Augsburg Cathedral organist Demmler was playing the first, Mozart the second and Stein the third part. In 1783, when living in Vienna he purchased an instrument by Walter. Leopold Mozart confirmed the attachment which Mozart had with his Walter fortepiano: "It is impossible to describe the hustle and bustle. Your brother's pianoforte has been moved at least twelve times from his house to the theatre or to someone else's house."
Influence
His most famous pupil was Johann Nepomuk Hummel, a transitional figure between the Classical and Romantic eras whom the Mozarts took into their Vienna home for two years as a child. More important is the influence Mozart had on composers of later generations. Ever since the surge in his reputation after his death, studying his scores has been a standard part of classical musicians' training.
Ludwig van Beethoven, Mozart's junior by fifteen years, was deeply influenced by his work, with which he was acquainted as a teenager. He is thought to have performed Mozart's operas while playing in the court orchestra at Bonn and travelled to Vienna in 1787 hoping to study with the older composer. Some of Beethoven's works have direct models in comparable works by Mozart, and he wrote cadenzas (WoO 58) to Mozart's D minor piano concerto K. 466.
Composers have paid homage to Mozart by writing sets of variations on his themes. Beethoven wrote four such sets (Op. 66, WoO 28, WoO 40, WoO 46). Others include Fernando Sor's Introduction and Variations on a Theme by Mozart (1821), Mikhail Glinka's Variations on a Theme from Mozart's Opera The Magic Flute (1822), Frédéric Chopin's Variations on "Là ci darem la mano" from Don Giovanni (1827), and Max Reger's Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart (1914), based on the variation theme in the piano sonata K. 331. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who revered Mozart, wrote his Orchestral Suite No. 4 in G, Mozartiana (1887), as a tribute to him.
References
Notes
Citations
Sources
Further reading
See Buch 2017 for an extensive bibliography
External links
Homepage for the Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation
"Discovering Mozart". BBC Radio 3.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at IMDb
Digitized documents
Works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at the Internet Archive
Works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
"Mozart" Titles; Mozart as author at Google Books
Digital Mozart Edition Archived 18 February 2017 at the Wayback Machine (Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum)
"Mozart" titles from Gallica (in French)
From the British Library
Mozart's Thematic Catalogue
Mozart's Musical Diary
Background information on Mozart and the Thematic Catalogue
Letters of Leopold Mozart und Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (in German) (Baden State Library)
Sheet music
Complete sheet music (scores) from the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe (Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum)
Mozart scores from the Munich Digitization Center (MDZ)
Mozart titles from the University of Rochester
Free scores by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
Free scores by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
Free typeset sheet music of Mozart's works from Cantorion.org
The Mutopia Project has compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at the Musopen project |
Erica_Rose_(television_personality) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erica_Rose_(television_personality) | [
576
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erica_Rose_(television_personality)"
] | Erica Rose (born April 6, 1983) is an American lawyer, and reality TV personality known for her roles in the American TV series The Bachelor, Bachelor Pad, Below Deck Sailing Yacht and You're Cut Off!.
Early life and career
Erica Rose was born in Houston, Texas, United States, and attended The Kinkaid School and graduated from Emory University where she graduated with a dual major in English and Creative Writing and a minor in Theater. While attending Emory, Rose was a member of the Alpha Epsilon Phi and was the sports editor and a staff writer for The Emory Wheel.
In 2012, she received a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree from University of Houston Law Center. also has an LLM degree in Entertainment and Media Law from the Southwestern Law School in California. Rose founded the Rose Sanders Law Firm, a Texas based family law and personal injury law firm.
Personal life
On December 3, 2017, after only three months of being engaged, she married Charles "Chuck" Sanders, whom she met in high school before her reality TV career started.
Erica and Charles lavish wedding featured Erica's friends and colleagues from the Bachelor franchise; including, Vienna Girardi, Tara Durr and her husband John Presser, Cory Shivar, Melissa Schreiber, Renee Simlak, Jeannette Pawula, AshLee Frazier Williams and even Prince Lorenzo Borghese who was the Bachelor on Erica's season. Erica and Charles have a daughter named Aspen Rose Sanders. Erica also has a daughter from a previous relationship named Holland Rose Madeleine.
Reality TV career
Rose made her reality TV debut in 2006 as a contestant on the 9th season of The Bachelor.
In 2010, Rose debuted on the TV series You're Cut Off!. The series focused on nine wealthy women who were told they were going to be featured on a fake television production called The Good Life. However, they were later told that their families had "cut them off" from their spending money, and that they were participating in an eight-week program, which introduced them to a simpler lifestyle.
In 2011, Rose debuted on the TV series Bachelor Pad. She was the subject of controversy as a result of the series involving an episode where eggs where thrown at her in a challenge on an episode of Bachelor Pad season 3.
Rose recalled a notable challenge she said was both emotionally traumatic and physically hurtful: "Target on Your Back." The challenge involved the men and then the women lining up blindfolded in either swim trunks or bikinis. With their backs turned, each member of the other group was given a question and tasked with answering by throwing a paint-filled egg at whichever contestant was their answer to the question. They received a point if they hit their target and the person with the most points won.
In 2021, Rose debuted on the TV series Below Deck Sailing Yacht. Rose appeared on season two with her friends. In 2022, Rose reappeared in season three alongside her husband, family and friends. Erica and Chuck's charter left a $6500 tip after criticizing chef Marcos Spaziani's food. Chuck complained that McDonald's tasted better than the chef's preparation. Some considered Erica and Chuck to be "the worst guests in Below Deck Sailing Yacht history."
Filmography
== References == |
The_Bachelor_(American_TV_series)_season_14 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bachelor_(American_TV_series)_season_14 | [
576
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bachelor_(American_TV_series)_season_14"
] | The Bachelor: On the Wings of Love is the fourteenth season of ABC reality television series The Bachelor. The season premiere aired on January 4, 2010. The show features 31-year-old Jake Pavelka, a pilot from Dallas, Texas, courting 25 women.
Pavelka finished in seventh place on season 5 of The Bachelorette featuring Jillian Harris. It is the first season of The Bachelor to be broadcast in high definition. The season concluded on March 1, 2010, with Pavelka choosing to propose to 23-year-old marketing rep Vienna Girardi. The couple ended their engagement in June 2010.
Contestants
Biographical information according to ABC official series site, plus footnoted additions
Future appearances
Dancing with the Stars
Jake Pavelka competed in the tenth season of Dancing with the Stars. He partnered with Chelsie Hightower and finished in 7th place.
The Bachelorette
Ali Fedotowsky was chosen as the bachelorette for the sixth season of The Bachelorette.
Bachelor Pad
Runner-up Tenley Molzahn, along with contestants Gia Allemand, Ashley Elmore, Elizabeth Kitt, Michelle Kujawa and Jessie Sulidis, returned for the inaugural season of Bachelor Pad. Kujawa was eliminated in week 1, Sulidis in week 2, Allemand in week 3, and Elmore in week 5. Kitt and her partner, Jesse Kovacs, were eliminated at the beginning of week 6, finishing in 3rd place. Molzahn and her partner, Kiptyn Locke, were eliminated at the end of week 6, finishing as the runners-up.
Pavelka, Allemand, Vienna Girardi, and Ella Nolan, returned for the second season of Bachelor Pad. Allemand quit in week 2, and Pavelka was eliminated in week 3. Nolan and her partner, Kirk DeWindt, were eliminated at the beginning of week 6, finishing in 4th place. Girardi and her partner, Kasey Kahl, were eliminated at the end of week 6, finishing in 3rd place.
Bachelor in Paradise
Season 1
Kujawa returned for the inaugural season of Bachelor in Paradise. She quit in week 1.
Season 2
Molzahn returned for the second season of Paradise. She broke up with Joshua Albers in week 6.
Other appearances
Outside of the Bachelor Nation franchise, Molzahn and Kujawa appeared as contestants in the Bachelors vs. Bachelorettes special on the season 7 of Wipeout.
Call-out order
The contestant received the first impression rose
The contestant received a rose during the date
The contestant was eliminated
The contestant was eliminated during the date
The contestant quit the competition
The contestant received a rose during the date but disqualified from the competition
The contestant moved on to the next week by default
The previously eliminated contestant asked for a chance to return the competition but denied
The contestant won the competition
Episodes
Post-show
Vienna miscarried twins, named Gia and Mia, in August 2017. She has one son, Enzo Orion (born September 6, 2021).
After the Final Rose
This is the special episode which airs after every finale. In season 14's segment, Jake told Chris Harrison about Bachelor Pad, Ali was chosen as the next bachelorette in the sixth season of The Bachelorette. Jake and Vienna were seen in a public appearance as a couple, Jeffrey Osborne sang "On the Wings of Love" at the closing of the show.
In June 2010, several months after their engagement, it was announced that Jake and Vienna Girardi had split.
Deaths
Gia Allemand
On August 14, 2013, third-place contestant Gia Allemand died after a reported suicide attempt. Several contestants as well as Pavelka expressed their condolences via Twitter, with Pavelka saying, "I am in complete shock and devastated to hear the news about Gia. She was one of the sweetest people I have ever known. And a very dear friend. My heart goes out to her family during this very difficult time. We have lost an angel today. I miss you Gia...".
Alexa McAllister
On 16 February 2016, Alexa (Lex) McAllister died after an apparent suicide attempt in Columbus, Ohio, as reported by TMZ. Per E!News, the local police said that on 13 February they'd received a call in which it was claimed that McAllister had overdosed on prescription drugs. While McAllister was in a stable condition on her way to Grant Medical Center, then E!News got access to a police report, which stated that she had taken "a lot" of pills. Her family took her off life support after her health began to deteriorate. McAllister was 31. Pavelka tweeted his condolences on Twitter, "I'm so sad to hear about Alexa. Such a beautiful girl. My heart breaks for her family. Covering them in prayer during this rough time".
Jake Pavelka
Jake Pavelka grew up in Denton, Texas, and attended University of North Texas and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. In his free time, he takes dancing lessons, woodworking, and has fun flying acrobatic planes and he is also a former child actor. Pavelka is an airline pilot, and took his first flying lessons at 12 years old. He also became a certified flight instructor when he was 23 years old.
Pavelka became a member of an ABC reality show for the third time when he appeared as a celebrity contestant on the tenth season of Dancing with the Stars, partnered with Chelsie Hightower he was the fifth competitor eliminated on April 27, 2010.
Notes
References
External links
Official website |
Bro%27Town | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bro%27Town | [
577
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bro%27Town"
] | bro'Town is a New Zealand adult animated comedy television series and sitcom that ran from 2004 to 2009. It starred David Fane, Mario Gaoa, Shimpal Lelisi and Oscar Kightley.
Overview
The main characters in the series are five 14 year old Polynesian New Zealand boys who live in Morningside, Auckland, New Zealand. They attend the local college, St Sylvester's. It was New Zealand's first primetime animated television show and was very popular when it started in 2004 with 33 per cent of the viewing audience during its 8-8.30pm time slot for the first season. bro'Town is heavy with popular culture references, and is based on the comedy theatre group The Naked Samoans. The series has faced criticism often for being racist, for example every episode of the first season received complaints. The writers often describe the humour as being 'not PC' (politically correct) and is satire with characters being sent-up. One of the series writers Oscar Kightley says of the humour, "The only reason we get away with that irreverence and edgy stuff is because on the flipside is heart."
bro'Town has left a lasting legacy on popular culture in New Zealand driven by its urban Pacific Island culture. It has been critically acclaimed "as hilarious and alarmingly true to life", studied at universities, and used for health messages in a cartoon booklet with information about rheumatic fever.
Production
Produced by New Zealand company Firehorse Films which was created by Elizabeth Mitchell for bro'Town and funded by New Zealand On Air. The lead designer was Ant Sang who was responsible for character, location and prop designs. bro'Town was made using three animation studios – two in New Zealand and one in India – and involved over 100 staff. The series was done in traditional ink and paint animation. The show satirises the boys' culture, with dialogue in the local vernacular. The series includes references to New Zealand literature, particularly the novels and short stories of Witi Ihimaera. The series has strong religious references, with most episodes starting with events between God, Jesus Christ and other historical figures, which leads to the theme of the episode and the subsequent events between the boys.
Characters
The Boys
Vale Pepelo (Oscar Kightley) – (Vale loosely translates to Dumb) Brother of Valea Pepelo. He has a strong social conscience. Contrary to his given name, Vale is considered the intelligent one of the group, frequently seen carrying a literary classic. (Samoan)
Valea Pepelo (Shimpal Lelisi) (Valea loosely translates to Dumber) – Brother of Vale Pepelo. He is more interested in girls than Vale. Whenever he sees an attractive girl, he does a rendition of the 'schwing!' gesture (peyow peyow!) Valea's name is an apt description. Valea has a description of "the pasher" after noting in a Bro' Town annual his goal in life is to "pash hot chicks" and his dream is for "hot chicks" that like to be "pashed". Although loosely translated to Dumber, Valea is known to be only slightly behind in the National Standards. Jeff da Māori is more likely to fail exams, and, if under correct conditions (getting hit by a bus, for example) Valea is amazingly intelligent. (Samoan)
Sione Tapili (Mario Gaoa) – From A Tongan Descent, his mother is known as a Sheman and is also Vale and Valea's best friend. Sione is considered the rich and smart one of the group and considers himself as a ladies' man, while he constantly looking for ways to impress the girl of his dreams, sixth former Mila Jizovich. He is also the "bro" likely to have dream sequences e.g. posing as a super hero and starring in famous movies. (Tongan)
Jeff da Māori (David Fane) – Jeff Da Māori lives with his mother and eight dads in a car shell outside the house. He is considered the clumsy and shy one by the group, He was brought up in the country by his aunt Queenie but then moved to the city for better TV reception and "because the thieving colonialist stole our land". He is often portrayed with a horribly runny nose. He is known for his catchphrase 'Not Even Ow!' (meaning 'that ain't right'). He is also known to call many people his cousin, and claims "everyone's my cousin, except Winston Peters he's a 'dick' ow". He is known to be actual cousins with famous actress Keisha Castle-Hughes and famous actor Cliff Curtis. (Māori)
Rodney David Damascus McCorkenstein-Taifule aka Mack (David Fane) – Mack rounds out the group as a heavyset boy with an effeminate demeanour and a knack for talking his way out of things. Although he does stand behind his word eventually. He is of Jewish and Samoan descent from his mother and father respectively. Mack is considered the tough guy of the group, claiming to have been raised in the streets. He actually lives in a high class mansion with a loving mother and father. Mack's homosexual tendencies and feminine behaviour are more and more obvious as the show develops, but his friends seem to choose to ignore it. He is also known to be a snob at school, probably excelling at most subjects, and noted to be reading Memoirs of a Geisha. (Tongan/Jewish)
Other characters of Morningside
Pepelo Pepelo (David Fane) – Vale and Valea's dad is a benefit abusing, occasional fork-lift driver with a love of beer, pornography and gambling (aka "The Town Drunk"). His catchphrase is "I'm going to the pub... I may be some time". Pepelo's wife died when the boys were young and they were entrusted to his care. However, his method of child rearing was ignoring them to fend for themselves. The closest he inadvertently gets to parenting is occasionally telling the boys a relevant and touching story from his own life. He is known to discriminate against other ethnic minorities in Morningside, have frequent drunk-driving crashes and blame his dysfunctions on the war in Vietnam.
Wong (David Fane) – Initially a Chinese exchange student from Hong Kong. After a rocky start he quickly became mates with the boys by sharing his wealth and letting them ride in his car. He once helped the Boys by joining in the St. Sylvester's rugby team in Get Rucked and bet a million dollars on Honky the Wonderhorse. Wong has a brother named White, who exists only to facilitate a racist pun about being unable to tell White from Wong.
Constable "Bobby" Bababiba (Mario Gaoa) – A cynical and unsympathetic policeman who, being the only police officer to appear on the show, has been involved with many of the boys' mishaps as he tries to restore order in Morningside. His image and name are based on actor Robbie Magasiva.
Rakeesh Maadkraklikka (Mario Gaoa) – A disgruntled Indo-Fijian dairy store owner. He is eager to shoot and zap any potential troublemaker or thief in his store. Pepelo owes a massive debt to Rakeesh's store due to his indulgence and improper spending. He is married to the beautiful Satisha.
Satisha Maadkraklikka – Rakeesh's spouse. She is not as brash as her husband, but Satisha is just as tough. However, she shows a sympathetic side as well: on two occasions Satisha helped The Boys with their problems and issues.
Reverend Minister (Vela Manusaute) – Stereotypical minister who heads a Samoan flock in Morningside. He frequently preaches about the local issues in very vivid and exaggerated ways (as was featured in Sione-rella and Touched by a Teacher). He is also quick to drive his flock on mindless angry mob sprees. As a sideline for his church he also sells 'authentic' holy items at high prices (like holy water and sheep-shaped caps). There seems to be an intimate relationship between him and Agnes. Agnes' youngest child has an uncanny resemblance to the minister, including his hairdo – for that matter, so do most of the very young children of his congregation. He is very similar to the Minister character in the recurring sketch Milburn Place, part of the Skitz comedy series in which several Naked Samoans were involved.
Mahari Stevens (Vela Manusaute) – A Social worker from CYPFS -Children and Young Person's Family Services (a reference to the NZ CYFS -Children Youth and Family Services). She appeared in the first episode when Pepelo disappeared for four days, responding to a ten-year-old complaint about his terrible parenting, and made the Pepelo brothers "Wards of the State". She also later interrogated Mack and inadvertently manipulated him into accusing Brother Ken of child molestation, and threatened to take him away from his parents when he revealed it was in fact false.
Tapili family
Agnes Esmeralda Beatrice fasi fufuTapili (David Fane) – Sione's mother and the Pepelos' neighbour. She is deeply religious and physically aggressive, especially to Sione (she refuses to show this side of her in public, though). Despite this, she seems to have intimate relations with the local minister. She serves as a caricature of the overbearing Polynesian mother who will not hesitate to humiliate her children. Willing for a husband, she is shown to have phone sex with Pepelo Pepelo, even though she is shown to hate him.
Sina Tapili – (Teuila Blakely) – Sione's older sister and Mila's friend. Sina views her brother and the boys disdainfully (constantly calling them losers), except for one time when Mack was crying. She attends St Cardinal's College for girls, known to the boys of neighbouring St. Sylvester's as 'Cardinal Knowledge.'
Timothy "Motorcycle Boy" Tapili – Agnes' eldest son. He is a delinquent who is a regular in the local delinquent centre (which Agnes euphemistically calls a "boarding school") and jail. His real name and nature were exposed in the episode "Go and ask Agnes", where it is revealed that his criminal record is not very impressive and he behaves more like a pretentious bully than the "hardcore" criminal he claims to be. He is shown to be a role model to Sione and Sione states he wants a bike like him.
Samson – Agnes' youngest son. He is the presumed son of the minister, though Agnes refers to him as "A miracle by Jesus".
School folk and students
Brother Ken (David Fane) – St. Sylvester's Fa’afafine principal. He is a personal childhood friend of many famous New Zealanders, including actress Lucy Lawless and former prime minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark. Brother Ken is a caring and reasonable principal, and once helped a then-young Mack (a nickname created by Brother Ken) to become friends with the boys. Because the concept of Fa’afafine, a person in Samoa, American Samoa and the Samoan diaspora who identifies themselves as having a third gender or non-binary role, which ranges from extravagantly feminine to conventionally masculine, does not readily translate, when the series was broadcast on Adult Swim Latin America, a decision was made not to translate Samoan words and just present them as part of the "cultural journey".
Rex Ruka – Rex is a typical sort of jock or alpha male in St. Sylvester's. He is regularly seen mocking the boys due to their supposed inferiority with Joost by his side. Rex is Sione's rival for Mila's hand.
Joost van der Van Van (Oscar Kightley) – A South African immigrant whose father Hansje manages the local zoo. As is expected, he acts as Rex's partner, providing appreciation for his many putdowns (often saying "Hilarious!"). However, it was revealed in "A Chicken Roll at My Table" that Joost's racism was an act and he only did it because he was discouraged by his grandfather from making friends with coloured people. His name is a nonsense parody of Dutch surnames and means 'of the of.' Although unknown, it has been suggested that his name may have been derived from Springbok player Joost van der Westhuizen.
Mila Jizovich – A Croatian student of St. Cardinal's, best friends with Sina Tapili and Sione’s crush. She is best known for helping Lucy Lawless with the birth control presentation in "Sionerella". Her name appears to be a combination of tribute to the actress Milla Jovovich and the word "jizz", a vulgar term in reference to semen.
Abo (Abercrombie Smith the Third) – An Aboriginal Australian who studies in St. Sylvester's. His nickname is either derived from a racial slur or his real name, Abercrombie. Abercrombie is known to celebrate every occasion with a (often very long) traditional song or dance. He is often seen riding an emu. Though Abercrombie has made political comments regarding Indigenous native title, the satirical point of this character is unclear as very few Aboriginal Australians live in New Zealand. As such, he is more surreal than satirical.
Ms. Lynn Grey – A teacher who manages The Boys' class at St. Sylvester's. She seems to have an affection for Māori men (as is shown in "A Māori at my Table"). A parody of well-meaning liberal Anglo-Saxon, she will carefully use Māori vocabulary but immediately follow it with a slightly patronising English explanation. Her name is a reference to the Auckland suburb of Grey Lynn.
Figures in Heaven
God (Mario Gaoa) – As the creator of the universe, God can choose to be anything he wants. Thus he is satirically portrayed as a well-built Pacific Islander in a lavalava. He appears mellow and easy-going, rather than strict and wrathful. God starts each episode in Heaven as if it were a fairy-tale, usually telling it to Jesus Christ and other famous, deceased notable figures.
Jesus (Shimpal Lelisi) – The Lord's only son. Unlike the past serious and solemn renditions of the Christian divinity, Bro'Town portrays him as young and naive (despite his past mortal life more than 2000 years ago). He generally seems like a somewhat wimpish teenager, who often needs to be gently taught a lesson by his Father.
There are also two female angels Angelina and Angelita.
Occasionally, deceased relatives such as Pepelo's wife (Vale and Valea's mother), or Jeff da Maori's Auntie Queenie are featured, appearing in dreams to communicate with the living.
Guest stars
bro'Town frequently features special guests – notable celebrities from politics, art, culture, music, the media, business and sport. The most regular cameos are John Campbell and Carol Hirschfeld, newsreaders from TV3 at the time. Former All Blacks and Manu Samoa player Michael Jones plays the P.E. teacher at St Sylvester's. Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark has appeared in all seasons except the last and rapper Scribe has been a guest on five seasons of bro'Town. A feature of the series are cameos of people playing themselves. This includes Russell Crowe, Rove McManus, Robyn Malcolm, Neil and Tim Finn, Lucy Lawless, Flight of the Conchords, H.R.H. Charles, Prince of Wales, Sir Howard Morrison, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Cliff Curtis and Madeline Sami.
Episodes
Season 1 (2004)
Season 2 (2005)
Season 3 (2006)
Season 4 (2007)
Season 5 (2009)
Awards
While it was running the series bro-Town was often nominated at New Zealand film and television awards in a range of categories. It won the following awards:
2005 New Zealand Screen Awards – Best Comedy Programme, Best Comedy Script – Television: episode 6, 'The Weakest Link' – Mario Gaoa, David Fane, Mario Gaoa, Oscar Kightley, Shimpal Lelisi and Elizabeth Mitchell
2005 Qantas Television Awards – Best Comedy Programme
2006 Air New Zealand Screen Awards – Best Comedy Programme, Comedy Script – Television: episode 2.6, 'Touched by a Teacher' – Oscar Kightley, Mario Gaoa, David Fane, Shimpal Lelisi, Elizabeth Mitchell, Production Design: Ant Sang
2007 Air New Zealand Screen Awards – Best Comedy Programme: Episode 3.2, 'Know Me Before'
2008 Qantas Film and Television Awards – Achievement in Production Design – Television: Ant Sang
Books
Firehorse Films (2005). The bro'Town Annual. Auckland: Random House New Zealand. ISBN 978-1-86941-747-5. OCLC 972704194.
——————— (2006). The bro'Town Annual 2. Auckland: Random House New Zealand. ISBN 978-1-86941-841-0. OCLC 156718397.
——————— (2007). The bro'Town Annual 3. Auckland: Random House New Zealand. ISBN 978-1-86941-946-2. OCLC 861382922.
DVD Releases
References
External links
The bro'Town official website
bro'Town at IMDb |
Outrageous_Fortune_(TV_series) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outrageous_Fortune_(TV_series) | [
577
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outrageous_Fortune_(TV_series)"
] | Outrageous Fortune is a New Zealand family comedy crime drama television series, which ran from 12 July 2005 to 9 November 2010 on TV3. The series followed the lives of the career criminal West family after the matriarch, Cheryl (Robyn Malcolm), decided the family should go straight and abide by the law. The show was created by James Griffin and Rachel Lang and produced by South Pacific Pictures.
Like the show itself, episodes took their names from Shakespeare quotations. The show concluded after 6 seasons and 107 episodes making it the longest running drama series made in New Zealand. The primary cast for the show's run consisted of Robyn Malcolm, Antony Starr, Siobhan Marshall, Antonia Prebble, Frank Whitten and Kirk Torrance; Grant Bowler appeared in a sporadic role throughout the show's first five seasons.
The show premiered on 12 July 2005 and was welcomed by high acclaim. It won many of the major categories in the New Zealand television awards for its first 4 years, with Malcolm's performance warmly recognised by most New Zealand reviewers. Following the show's success, Outrageous Fortune received worldwide interest and in 2008 was adapted for United Kingdom television as Honest and again in 2010 for United States residents as Scoundrels, neither of which were renewed after their debut seasons.
In 2014, TV3 announced a six-part prequel miniseries entitled Westside that chronicles the lives of Ted and Rita West in 1970s Auckland. Initially airing in May 2015, Westside was renewed for a second season in 2016; then repeatedly again up to the sixth and final series which concluded in November 2020.
Overview
The series followed the lives of the West family, headed by Cheryl (Robyn Malcolm) and Wolf West (Grant Bowler) in their working class West Auckland home. The family relied on crime for an income, with Cheryl working at a stolen goods shop. When Wolf is incarcerated, Cheryl informs her family, Van (Antony Starr), Jethro (Antony Starr), Pascalle (Siobhan Marshall), Loretta (Antonia Prebble) and Ted (Frank Whitten), that they will obey the law and avoid committing any more crimes. Show creator Rachel Lang described the series as an "upside down morality tale and a family story about a woman who tries to make her family go straight."
Cast and characters
The show's initial seasons focused primarily on the West family. However, as the seasons developed, the focus branched out onto the family's affiliates and enemies.
Robyn Malcolm as Cheryl West (seasons 1–6), the family matriarch who, after husband Wolf gets imprisoned, decides to make her family go straight. Throughout the series, she goes through numerous jobs before starting a lingerie business. While fiercely devoted to her loved ones, her stubborn and combative personality regularly leads them to butt heads.
Antony Starr as Jethro and Van West (seasons 1–6), identical twin brothers with extremely different personalities. While Jethro is a slick, amoral lawyer, Van is a dim but generally well-meaning stoner.
Siobhan Marshall as Pascalle West (seasons 1–6), the eldest daughter of the West family. She is a shallow-minded, statuesque blonde renowned throughout the West Auckland community for her beauty. Despite being introduced as spoiled and self-absorbed, she gradually grows into a strong, caring woman.
Antonia Prebble as Loretta West (seasons 1–6), the youngest member of the West family as well as the most intelligent. Calculating and remorseless, Loretta is utterly ruthless in pursuit of her goals. Despite her twisted nature, she is nonetheless devoted to her family and proves indispensable in saving them from dangers both from outside and within. By the series end, she is a mother and a wife.
Frank Whitten as Ted West (seasons 1–6), Wolf's retired safe cracker father who is eccentric to the point of foul
Kirk Torrance as Detective Sergeant Wayne Judd (seasons 1–6), initially the West family's nemesis, later one of the family
Stella King as Jane West (seasons 3–6), Loretta's daughter with Hayden Peters
Grant Bowler as Wolfgang West (seasons 1–2, 4; guest; 3, 5), the West family patriarch and the series' main antagonist. While he cares for his wife and kids, his fixation on foiling their attempts to go straight at any cost constantly brings them into harm's way.
Tammy Davis as Jared "Munter" Mason (recurring seasons 1–2, regular 3–6), Van's loyal best friend and co-owner of the handyman business, the Tool Guys
Nicole Whippy as Kasey (recurring seasons 1–2, regular 3–6), Cheryl's best friend and eventual wife of Munter.
Claire Chitham as Aurora Bay (seasons 2–3), Van West's girlfriend who dies after being hit by a bus
Shane Cortese as Hayden Peters (recurring seasons 2–3, regular seasons 4–6), Jane's father. Later business partner and husband of Loretta.
Tyler-Jane Mitchel as Sheree Greegan (guest seasons 3, 6, regular seasons 4–5), Wolfgang West's girlfriend
Rohan Glynn as Detective Glenn Hickey, Sergeant Judd's quirky sidekick (recurring series 1–3).
Production
Following the dwindling numbers on Rachel Lang's series Mercy Peak, she decided one way to attract an audience was to feature abrasive and in-your-face characters, something she promised herself would feature in her next show. When Lang heard a radio report on the low median number of women's income, she pondered why they did not turn to crime and realised the potential for a television show.
Ratings
Season synopsis
Season One (2005)
When career criminal Wolfgang "Wolf" West is jailed for four years for assorted criminal acts, his wife Cheryl makes the decision that the family will get honest employment, instead of continuing their life of crime. Wolf is not pleased about this, but there's not much he can do from jail. Cheryl is initially disillusioned by her attempts at earning a legal living, but she and a couple of her friends start a business called "Hoochie Mama" making and selling sexy underwear, all the while resisting the newly found attraction of policeman, Wayne Judd. The West children, Jethro, Van, Pascalle, and Loretta, all struggle to cope with the newfound rules in their own ways, while Ted struggles to come to terms with his late wife.
Season Two (2006)
Wolf has been released on home detention. He has no intention of keeping to Cheryl's new rules on life. Judd is determined to tear him away from Cheryl, and attempts to entice Wolf to break his parole so that he is returned to prison. Wolf escapes home detention and Judd moves in, much to the horror of the children. Pascalle starts to date Pakistani doctor Bruce, Van finds the love of his life, Aurora, and Loretta starts to date much older man Hayden. Jethro shocks his mother when he reveals he is still a criminal and only doing law to learn how to break the law more successfully. The season ends on Wolf framing Judd for a robbery he committed.
Outrageous Fortune: The Movie (2006 Telemovie)
This one-off two-hour TV movie followed on from season 2.
The West family, along with Aurora, Eric and Munter go camping at Tutaekuri Bay, a magical place where they have gone camping every year at Christmas. The Māori-language name Tutaekuri means "dog shit"; Tutaekuri Bay is a fictional place for the purpose of the movie.
Season Three (2007)
Cheryl is still battling to keep her family on the straight and narrow. Both the men in her life are inside – Wolf after turning himself in to the cops as part of his master plan to frame Judd; Judd from being framed by Wolf. She borrows money from Gary Savage to pay for a better lawyer for Judd, which results in his release, but the debt causes a strain in their relationship. Aurora dies in a road accident while trying to hide her ex-boyfriend's drugs after Van calls the police on him, spiraling Van into depression. Loretta is outraged when Hayden edits their film to be more explicit for commercial gain, breaks up with him as punishment, and harasses him after he flatly accepts it, instead of trying to win her back. This escalates until he leaves, and she burns down his house. After Hayden has left, she discovers she is pregnant by him. Bruce breaks up with Pascalle after he sees her (edited to be more explicit than she actually performed) porn movie. Jethro finds love with Danielle, a single mother and the ex-wife of Gary. Ted becomes suspicious of Gary and tracks down Wolf, only to find Gary is Wolf's half brother. Over the season Munter develops a relationship with Kasey and marries her in the season finale.
Season Four (2008)
The family is brought together when Cheryl talks Loretta out of adopting out her baby, whom she names Jane. Cheryl having broken up with Judd, starts to have feelings for Wolf again, who is in a rocky relationship with the much younger ex-stripper, named Sheree Greegan. Sheree's dodgy brother Nicky arrives and starts a relationship with Loretta. Pascalle returns from a trip abroad, having married the older and wealthy Milt. Milt eventually dies, leaving Pascalle a fortune. Sheree and Nicky conspire to get access to her money by having Nicky break up with Loretta and start a relationship with Pascalle. Wolf attempts to earn some money by facilitating a shipment of drugs for Nicky in a container, which Jethro steals to ransom, but Van and Munter destroy the drugs. Jethro is forced to run away when he takes the blame for the drugs being destroyed. Van starts an affair with Sheree. Loretta and Jethro set Wolf up for burglary, and Cheryl returns to Judd, becoming pregnant. Sheree also becomes pregnant, either by Van, Wolf, or Jethro (it is strongly implied that it is Jethro but not confirmed). After Hayden's sister Bernadette finds out about baby Jane, she forces Hayden to return to care for his child. Ted courts and at the end of the season, marries the scheming Ngaire Munroe, the widow of his former gang mate, Lefty. Pascalle becomes engaged to the dodgy Nicky much to her family's disbelief.
Season Five (2009)
Detective Sergeant Zane Gerard becomes a fixture in the West's lives, due to his past involvement with Sheree and Nicky Greegan. Van is pressured into becoming a police informant (behind the backs of all), infuriating Sheree when she finds out. Jethro starts up a business selling legal party pills. Nicky truly falls for Pascalle, enraging Sheree, who makes off with Pascalle's millions and attempts to murder Van (to claim life insurance). After a rogue job robbing a Chinese money lender, Pascalle breaks up with Nicky. Loretta gets back together with Hayden and the two decide to marry as so they get custody of Jane. Ted ends up in prison for robbery and is helped out by Nicky, causing him and Pascalle to get back together. Near the end of the season, Cheryl has a stillbirth. The season ends with Gerard trying to arrest Pascalle for offensive language, resulting in a brawl (in the midst of Loretta and Hayden's wedding), only to be stabbed in the neck by Cheryl and turning round to fire three bullets in her direction.
Season Six (2010)
Season 6 returned with TV presenter John Campbell appearing as a news reporter in a small cameo. The season was the last for the series, and the series reached its 100th episode. Ten-second promos started airing for the show on 14 June. The West family house set was on show in Auckland Museum for six months after the series ends.
In the aftermath of Loretta and Hayden's wedding, it was revealed that Pascalle was shot but survived, Cheryl was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon, Munter, Kasey, Van, and Ted were arrested for various crimes, and Eric, who returned in the previous series, had taken residence in the Wests' home. Over the course of the first episode, Detective Sergeant Zane Gerard dies, leaving Cheryl to be charged with his murder. Van starts to see his lawyer, Bailey, only to learn she is dating Jethro. Loretta opens up a brothel, while Nicky escapes prison and tries to convince Pascalle to run away with him. The two break up, and Sheree reveals where her children are, with Van becoming a part-time father to them. Judd and Pascalle develop feelings for each other and start an affair, disgusting Ted. Cheryl's charges are dropped and she is devastated to learn about Judd and Pascalle, finally forgiving him in the season finale. Pascalle and Judd leave town, while Van marries the Russian Elena. Loretta, Hayden, and Jane continue to be a happy family, and Jethro fulfills his mother's fixation.
International broadcasts
Australia
Outrageous Fortune was shown weekly on the Pay-TV channel W.
It was shown on the Nine Network during the summer non-ratings period.
Season 5 did screen on Network Ten at 21:30 on Friday nights over the summer period in early 2010 but was cancelled halfway through. In an interview with Andrew Mercado in April, Robyn Malcolm confirmed that this was because New Zealand-produced shows count against the quota of Australian-made shows that networks can show and series 5 was used as a filler during the non-rating season. Series 5 was later again show on ARENA in November 2010. Network 10 continued series 5 from 21 June 22:00 Monday nights.
Australia Network broadcasts Outrageous Fortune to a wide Pay-TV audience in the Asia/Pacific Region.
USA
Outrageous Fortune is currently available for viewing on Hulu and Amazon Prime.
Ireland
TV3 Ireland showed the first series during 2006 and started showing the second series in March 2007 (22:00 Thursdays).
Canada
Began airing in 2007 on Super Channel.
UK
Shown on Living in the United Kingdom starting on Tuesday 6 March 2007 at 10 pm. As of June 2012, it is currently being shown on CBS Drama.
Home media
Box sets
Other
Music
Two compilation soundtracks have been released for the show, and both draw on New Zealand music. The title track for the series is Hello Sailor's "Gutter Black".
Awards
New Zealand TV Awards for 2005
Best Actor: Antony Starr
Best Actress : Robyn Malcolm
Best Director: Mark Beesley
Best Drama
Best Editing: Nicola Smith
Best Script: Rachel Lang
TV GUIDE Best on the Box
Best Actress: Robyn Malcolm
Best Drama
Woman's Day Reader's Choice
Favourite Female Personality: Robyn Malcolm
Air NZ Screen Award 2006
Best Drama Programme for episode 4
Best Drama Series
Air New Zealand Screen Awards for 2007
Best Actor: Antony Starr
Best Actress: Robyn Malcolm
Best Drama Programme
Best Supporting Actor: Frank Whitten.
2008 Qantas Film and Television Awards
Achievement in Editing – Drama/Comedy Programme: Bryan Shaw
Best Script – Drama/Comedy Programme: Rachel Lang
Performance by an Actor in General Television: Antony Starr
Performance by an Actress in General Television: Robyn Malcolm
Performance by a Supporting Actor in General Television: Tammy Davis
Performance by a Supporting Actress in General Television: Antonia Prebble
Sony Achievement in Directing – Drama/Comedy Programme: Mark Beesley.
Adaptations
Versions of the series have been produced in the United Kingdom and United States. The UK remake, Honest was produced for ITV by the independent production company Greenlit. The first episode aired on 9 January 2008, and the show ran for a single season.
The U.S. remake, titled Scoundrels, premiered in June 2010 to mixed reviews. A previous adaptation developed by Rob Thomas, entitled Good Behavior, failed to be picked up for broadcast by any networks. After its initial 8-episode run, Scoundrels was not picked up for another season.
Westside, a prequel to Outrageous Fortune, screened its first season on TV3 in 2015 and the second season in 2016. Set in the 1970/80s, Antonia Prebble who played Loretta West stars as Rita West, Loretta's grandmother.
Westside ran for six seasons ending in November 2020.
References
External links
Network (TV3) Website
Production Website
South Pacific Pictures
Outrageous Fortune at IMDb
Episode One to view on NZ On Screen |
Walt_Disney_World | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney_World | [
578
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney_World"
] | The Walt Disney World Resort (also known as Walt Disney World or Disney World) is an entertainment resort complex located about 20 miles (32 km) southwest of Orlando, Florida, United States. Opened on October 1, 1971, the resort is operated by Disney Experiences, a division of The Walt Disney Company. The property covers nearly 25,000 acres (39 sq mi; 101 km2), of which half has been developed. Walt Disney World contains numerous recreational facilities designed to attract visitors for an extended stay, including four theme parks, two water parks, four golf courses, conference centers, a competitive sports complex and a shopping, dining, and entertainment complex. Additionally, there are 19 Disney-owned resort hotels and one camping resort on the property, and many other non-Disney-operated resorts on and near the property.
Designed to supplement Disneyland in Anaheim, California, which had opened in 1955, the complex was developed by Walt Disney in the 1960s. Walt wanted to build a new park because Disneyland in California was limited from expanding by the establishments that sprung up around it. "The Florida Project", as it was known, was intended to present a distinct vision with its own diverse set of attractions. Walt Disney's original plans also called for the inclusion of an "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow" (EPCOT), a planned community intended to serve as a testbed for new city-living innovations. Walt Disney died on December 15, 1966, during the initial planning of the complex. After his death, the company wrestled with the idea of whether to bring the Disney World project to fruition; however, Walt's older brother, Roy O. Disney, came out of retirement to ensure Walt's biggest dream was realized. Construction started in 1967, with the company instead building a resort similar to Disneyland, abandoning the planned community concept. Magic Kingdom was the first theme park to open in the complex in 1971, followed by Epcot (known then as EPCOT Center) in 1982, Disney's Hollywood Studios (known then as Disney-MGM Studios) in 1989, and Disney's Animal Kingdom in 1998. Roy insisted the name of the entire complex be changed from Disney World to Walt Disney World, to memorialize his brother.
In 2018, Walt Disney World was the most visited vacation resort in the world, with an average annual attendance of more than 58 million. The resort is the largest single-site employer in the United States, the flagship destination of Disney's worldwide corporate enterprise and has become a staple of American popular culture.
History
Planning and construction
Conception
In 1959, Walt Disney Productions began looking for land to house a second resort to supplement Disneyland in Anaheim, California, which had opened in 1955. Market surveys at the time revealed that only 5% of Disneyland's visitors came from east of the Mississippi River, where 75% of the population of the United States lived. Additionally, Walt Disney disliked the businesses that had sprung up around Disneyland and wanted more control over a larger area of land in the next project.
Walt Disney took a flight over a potential site in Orlando, Florida—one of many—in November 1963. After witnessing the well-developed network of roads and taking the planned construction of both Interstate 4 and Florida's Turnpike into account, with McCoy Air Force Base (later Orlando International Airport) to the east, Disney selected a centrally located site near Bay Lake. The development was referred to in-house as "The Florida Project". To avoid a burst of land speculation, Walt Disney Productions used various dummy corporations to acquire 27,443 acres (43 sq mi; 111 km2) of land. In May 1965, some of these major land transactions were recorded a few miles southwest of Orlando in Osceola County. In addition, two large tracts totaling $1.5 million were sold, and smaller tracts of flatlands and cattle pastures were purchased by exotically named companies, such as the "Ayefour Corporation", "Latin-American Development and Management Corporation", and the "Reedy Creek Ranch Corporation". Some are now memorialized on a window above Main Street, U.S.A. in the Magic Kingdom. The smaller parcels of land acquired were called "outs". They were five-acre (2 ha) lots platted in 1912 by the Munger Land Company and sold to investors. Most of the owners in the 1960s were happy to get rid of the land, which was mostly swamp at the time. Another issue was the mineral rights to the land, which were owned by Tufts University. Without the transfer of these rights, Tufts could come in at any time and demand the removal of buildings to obtain minerals. Eventually, Disney's team negotiated a deal with Tufts to buy the mineral rights for $15,000.
Working strictly in secrecy, real estate agents unaware of their client's identity began making offers to landowners in April 1964, in parts of southwest Orange and northwest Osceola counties. The agents were careful not to reveal the extent of their intentions. They were able to negotiate numerous land contracts with some landowners, including large tracts of land for as little as $100 an acre. With the understanding that the recording of the first deeds would trigger intense public scrutiny, Disney delayed the filing of paperwork until a large portion of the land was under contract.
Early rumors and speculation about the land purchases assumed possible development by NASA in support of the nearby Kennedy Space Center, as well as references to other famous investors, such as Ford, the Rockefellers, and Howard Hughes. An Orlando Sentinel news article published weeks later, on May 20, 1965, acknowledged a popular rumor that Disney was building an "East Coast" version of Disneyland. However, the publication denied its accuracy based on an earlier interview with Disney at Kennedy Space Center, in which he claimed a $50 million investment was in the works for Disneyland, and that he had no interest in building a new park. In October 1965, editor Emily Bavar from the Sentinel visited Disneyland during the park's 10th-anniversary celebration. In an interview with Disney, she asked him if he was behind recent land purchases in Central Florida. Bavar later described that Disney "looked like I had thrown a bucket of water in his face", before denying the story. His reaction, combined with other research obtained during her Anaheim visit, led Bavar to author a story on October 21, 1965, where she predicted that Disney was building a second theme park in Florida. Three days later, after gathering more information from various sources, the Sentinel published another article headlined, "We Say: 'Mystery' Industry Is Disney".
Walt Disney had originally planned to publicly reveal Disney World on November 15, 1965, but in light of the Sentinel story, Disney asked Florida Governor Haydon Burns to confirm the story on October 25. His announcement called the new theme park "the greatest attraction in the history of Florida". The official reveal was kept on the previously planned November 15 date, and Disney joined Burns in Orlando for the event.
Roy Disney's oversight of construction
Walt Disney died from circulatory collapse caused by smoking-related lung cancer on December 15, 1966, before his vision was realized. His brother and business partner, Roy O. Disney, postponed his retirement to oversee construction of the resort's first phase.
On February 2, 1967, Roy O. Disney held a press conference at the Park Theatres in Winter Park, Florida. The role of EPCOT was emphasized in the film that was played. After the film, it was explained that for Disney World, including EPCOT, to succeed, a special district would have to be formed: the Reedy Creek Improvement District with two cities inside it, Bay Lake and Reedy Creek, now Lake Buena Vista. In addition to the standard powers of an incorporated city, which include issuance of tax-free bonds, the district would have immunity from any current or future county or state land-use laws. The only areas where the district had to submit to the county and state would be property taxes and elevator inspections. The legislation forming the district and the two cities, one of which was the Reedy Creek Improvement Act, was signed into law by Florida Governor Claude R. Kirk, Jr. on May 12, 1967. The Supreme Court of Florida then ruled in 1968 that the district was allowed to issue tax-exempt bonds for public projects within the district, despite the sole beneficiary being Walt Disney Productions.
The district soon began construction of drainage canals, and Disney built the first roads and the Magic Kingdom. The Contemporary Resort Hotel was completed in time for the park's opening on October 1, 1971, and the Polynesian Village Resort opened shortly after. The Palm and Magnolia golf courses near the Magic Kingdom had opened a few weeks before, while Fort Wilderness opened one month later. Twenty-four days after the park opened, Roy O. Disney dedicated the property and declared that it would be known as "Walt Disney World", in his brother's honor. In his own words: "Everyone has heard of Ford cars. But have they all heard of Henry Ford, who started it all? Walt Disney World is in memory of the man who started it all, so people will know his name as long as Walt Disney World is here." After the dedication, Roy Disney asked Walt's widow, Lillian, what she thought of Walt Disney World. According to biographer Bob Thomas, she responded, "I think Walt would have approved." Roy Disney died at age 78 on December 20, 1971, less than three months after the property opened.
Admission prices in 1971 were $3.50 for adults, $2.50 for juniors under age 18, and one dollar for children under twelve.
1980s–2020
Much of Walt Disney's plans for his Progress City concept were abandoned after his death and after the company board decided that it did not want to be in the business of running a city. The concept evolved into the resort's second theme park, EPCOT Center, which opened in 1982 (renamed EPCOT in 1996). While still emulating Walt Disney's original idea of showcasing new technology, the park is closer to a world's fair than a "community of tomorrow". One of EPCOT's main attractions is the "World Showcase", which highlights 11 countries across the globe. Some of the urban planning concepts from the original idea of EPCOT would instead be integrated into the community of Celebration, Florida, much later. The resort's third theme park, Disney-MGM Studios (renamed Disney's Hollywood Studios in 2008), opened in 1989 and is inspired by show business.
In the early 1990s, the resort was seeking permits for expansion. There was considerable environmentalist push-back, and the resort was convinced to engage in mitigation banking. In an agreement with The Nature Conservancy and the state of Florida, Disney purchased 8,500 acres (3,400 ha) of land, adjacent to the park for the purpose of rehabilitating wetland ecosystems. The Disney Wilderness Preserve was established in April 1993, and the land was subsequently transferred to The Nature Conservancy. The Walt Disney Company provided additional funds for landscape restoration and wildlife monitoring.
The resort's fourth theme park, Disney's Animal Kingdom, opened in 1998.
In October 2009, Disney World announced a competition to find a town to become twinned with. In December 2009, after Rebecca Warren won the competition with a poem, they announced the resort will be twinned with the English town of Swindon.
George Kalogridis was named president of the resort in December 2012, replacing Meg Crofton, who had overseen the site since 2006.
As of October 27, 2014, Walt Disney World is covered by a permanent FAA prohibited airspace zone that restricts all airspace activities without approval from the federal government of the United States, including usage of drones.
On January 21, 2016, the resort's management structure was changed, with general managers within a theme park being in charge of an area or land, instead of on a functional basis, as previously configured. Theme parks have already had a vice-president overseeing them. Disney Springs and Disney Sports were also affected. Now hotel general managers manage a single hotel instead of some managing multiple hotels.
On October 18, 2017, it was announced that resort visitors could bring pet dogs to Disney's Yacht Club Resort, Disney's Port Orleans Resort – Riverside, Disney's Art of Animation Resort, and Disney's Fort Wilderness Resort & Campground.
In 2019, Josh D'Amaro replaced George Kalogridis as president of the resort. He had previously held the position of vice president of Animal Kingdom. D'Amaro was subsequently promoted to chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences and Products in May 2020, succeeding Bob Chapek, who was promoted to CEO of The Walt Disney Company in February 2020. Jeff Vahle, who served as president of Disney Signature Experiences subsequently took over as president of the resort.
March 2020–present
On March 12, 2020, a Disney spokesperson announced that Disney World and Disneyland Paris would temporarily shut due to the COVID-19 pandemic, beginning March 15, 2020.
In 2020, Disney World laid off 6,500 employees and only operated at 25% capacity after reopening during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In June 2020, Walt Disney World was chosen to host the NBA Bubble for play of the 2019–20 season of the National Basketball Association (NBA) to resume at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex. The ESPN Complex, hosts a variety of activities throughout the year, including runDisney marathon races and dance and cheer competitions in partnership with Varsity Cheer. It was also the site for the MLS is Back tournament.
On July 11, 2020, Disney World officially reopened, beginning operations at 25% capacity at the Magic Kingdom and Disney's Animal Kingdom, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in Florida. Four days later, Epcot and Disney's Hollywood Studios for operation at 25% capacity to the public. Masks were required at all times (including outdoors, on attractions, and while taking photos), all guests were required to have their temperature taken upon entry, plexiglass was installed on various attractions and transportation offerings, and shows that drew large crowds, such as parades and nighttime shows including Fantasmic! and Happily Ever After were not offered.
In November 2020, the resort increased the guest capacity to 35% at all four theme parks, and on May 13, 2021, CEO Bob Chapek announced a further increase of capacity, effective immediately; however, he did not say to what capacity level it would be raised. By mid-June 2021, temperature checks and mask mandates (except while on Disney transportation) had been lifted. In late July 2021, mask mandates were reinstated for all attractions and indoor areas in light of new guidance issued by the Centers for Disease Control as the delta variant drove a significant increase in local cases. These reinstated mandates were lifted in February 2022. In April 2022, following a court decision ending the federal mask mandate for public transportation, the mask mandates on Disney transportation were lifted.
Starting on October 1, 2021, the resort honored its 50th anniversary with "The World's Most Magical Celebration", which lasted for 18 consecutive months ending on March 31, 2023.
Disney's Magical Express, a complimentary transportation and luggage service offered to Walt Disney Resort guests that began in 2005, ended in January 2022. In August 2021, the Walt Disney Company announced that FastPass+, which had been free since its introduction in 1999, would be retired and replaced with Genie+, a system starting at $18 to $35 per day with the option of adding "Lightning Lane", which will be used for top-tier attractions, for an additional charge. The pricing range depends on the crowd and day of purchase.
On April 22, 2022, the self-governing status which the Walt Disney Company had in the area around Disney World for more than 50 years came to an end after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law legislation requiring the area to come under the legal jurisdiction of the state of Florida. The new law also officially abolished The Reedy Creek Improvement District which the Walt Disney Company has used to run the area since May 1967, when then Florida Governor Claude Kirk signed into law legislation which granted the company special status. The law went into effect in June 2023. Along with this, as of May 2023, Governor Ron DeSantis has also been planning to target Disney's monorail system and let Florida's Department of Transportation inspect the privately-owned system.
Timeline
Location
The Florida resort is not within Orlando city limits but is southwest of Downtown Orlando. Much of the resort is in southwestern Orange County, with the remainder in adjacent Osceola County. The property includes the cities of Lake Buena Vista and Bay Lake which are governed by the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District (formerly Reedy Creek Improvement District). The site is accessible from Central Florida's Interstate 4 via Exits 62B (World Drive), 64B (US 192 West), 65B (Osceola Parkway West), 67B (SR 536 West), and 68 (SR 535 North), Exit 6 on SR 417 South, the Central Florida GreeneWay and Exit 8 on SR 429, the Western Beltway. At its founding, the resort occupied approximately 27,443 acres (43 sq mi; 111 km2). Portions of the property have since been sold or de-annexed, including land now occupied by the Disney-built community of Celebration. By 2014, the resort occupied nearly 25,000 acres (39 sq mi; 101 km2) (larger than Manhattan, New York City, which is 22.7 sq mi).
The company acquired nearly 3,000 additional acres, in separate transactions, between December 2018 and April 2020.
12% of the site area is occupied by hotels and resorts, and 5% of the area is water.
Attractions
Theme parks
Magic Kingdom, opened October 1, 1971
Epcot, opened October 1, 1982
Disney's Hollywood Studios, opened May 1, 1989
Disney's Animal Kingdom, opened April 22, 1998
Water parks
Disney's Typhoon Lagoon, opened June 1, 1989
Disney's Blizzard Beach, opened April 1, 1995
Mini-golf courses
Fantasia Gardens, opened May 20, 1996
Winter Summerland, opened March 12, 1999
Shopping, dining, and entertainment areas
Disney Springs, opened March 22, 1975
Disney's BoardWalk, opened July 1, 1996
Flamingo Crossings, opened 2021, located off property but developed by Disney
Golf courses
Disney's property includes four golf courses open to the general public. The 18-hole golf courses are Disney's Palm (4.5 stars), Disney's Magnolia (4 stars), and Disney's Lake Buena Vista (4 stars). There is also a nine-hole walking course called Disney's Oak Trail, that features junior tees for younger golfers and a Footgolf course. Palm, Magnolia, and Oak Trail are connected and share one entrance near Shades of Green in the Magic Kingdom Resort Area, while the Lake Buena Vista course is located in the Disney Springs Resort Area. Walt Disney World golf courses are staffed by third-party Arnold Palmer Golf Management. The Magnolia and Palm courses played home to the PGA Tour's Walt Disney World Golf Classic from 1971 to 2012.
Additionally there is a fifth course, the Tranquilo Golf Course, located at the Four Seasons Resort on Disney property. The course is open only to guests staying at Four Seasons.
Other attractions and areas
ESPN Wide World of Sports, sports complex, opened March 28, 1997
Drawn to Life, resident Cirque du Soleil show, venue opened in Disney Springs on December 23, 1998
Tri-Circle D Ranch, a working ranch and stable, located at Fort Wilderness
Former attractions and areas
Discovery Island, an island and former ticketed attraction in Bay Lake that was home to many species of animals and birds. Guests would access the island via boat from Fort Wilderness. It opened on April 8, 1974, and closed on April 8, 1999.
Disney's River Country, the first water park at the Walt Disney World Resort. It opened on June 20, 1976, and closed on November 2, 2001.
Walt Disney World Speedway, a racetrack at Walt Disney World that included the Richard Petty Driving Experience, the track also held NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series and the IndyCar Series until the 2000's. It opened November 28, 1995, and closed on August 9, 2015.
Pleasure Island, a former gated section of Downtown Disney, centered on late-night entertainment. Most of the area was demolished upon the transformation of Downtown Disney into Disney Springs. It opened 1989 and closed in 2008.
Walt Disney World Airport, a small landing strip built for private aircraft. The airway stopped being used in the 1980s. It is located off Vista Blvd and World Drive and used as a storage area.
DisneyQuest, an indoor theme park that featured arcade games and virtual attractions, intended to be the first location in a chain of similar theme parks, which was unsuccessful. It opened June 19, 1998 and closed on July 2, 2017.
Crossroads Shopping Center, originally developed by Disney in the 1980s and located near Disney Springs, the shopping and dining center was popular for guests and cast-members, built at a time when there was few dining options in the area. Disney later sold the land, and in 2021 the entire center was demolished using eminent domain for the Interstate 4 reconstruction project.
Resorts
As of 2024, there are 19 Disney owned and operated resort hotels and Disney Vacation Club (DVC) villas at the Walt Disney World Resort, along with one camping resort, Fort Wilderness, which includes traditional campgrounds and wood cabins. Together, they have approximately 23,000 rooms, 3,600 DVC villas and 500,000 square feet (46,000 m2) of conference meeting space. They are organized into three categories—Deluxe, Moderate, and Value—and five resort areas: the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Wide World of Sports, Animal Kingdom, or Disney Springs. Informally known as the "Disney Bubble", staying on property is considered an immersive experience.
Additionally, 12 independently operated hotels are located on property leased from Disney, offering approximately 7,300 additional rooms. There is also an on-site pet hotel operated by Best Friends Pet Care for guests traveling with animals.
Disney-owned resorts
On-site non-Disney resorts
Former resorts
Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser – resort that offered a two-day immersive experience aboard a simulated cruise in outer space within the Star Wars galaxy. It opened on March 1, 2022, and closed on September 30, 2023.
Annual events
Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party (1995–present) – held at Magic Kingdom throughout the fall season.
Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party (1983–present) – held at Magic Kingdom throughout the holiday season.
Epcot International Food & Wine Festival (1995–present) – held at Epcot throughout the fall season. Includes the Eat To The Beat! concert series.
Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival (1994–present) – held at Epcot during the spring and summer. Includes the Garden Rocks! concert series.
Epcot International Festival of the Arts (2018–present) held at Epcot each February and March. Includes the Disney on Broadway concert series.
Epcot International Festival of the Holidays – held throughout the holiday season Epcot.
Disney's Candlelight Processional (1971–present) – held at Epcot throughout the holiday season.
runDisney – marathon races are conducted each year, including the Wine N Dine Half-Marathon and Disney Princess-Half Marathon.
H2O Glow Nights – a special ticket event held on select nights each summer at Typhoon Lagoon. A night-time glow party.
Disney After Hours – a special ticket event held at select parks on select nights.
Moonlight Magic – exclusive Disney Vacation Club-only nights at select parks on select days throughout the year.
Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade (1983–present) – filmed each year at Disney World and broadcast nationally Christmas Day.
Business segments
Walt Disney World has several departments that handle various activities and events that are offered throughout the year. These departments include:
Disney Imagination Campus – operates Magic Music Days, Disney Performing Arts, Festival Disney, The Dreamers Academy, and other youth programs providing opportunities for youth to learn and perform inside Walt Disney World.
Disney Meetings and Events – schedules large meetings, events, and conferences at Walt Disney World.
The Disney Institute – offers professional development, team-building and networking opportunities using Disney models and principles.
Disney Weddings – schedules and plans weddings at various locations inside Walt Disney World, including locations inside the parks or at the wedding pavilion.
Disney Internships and Programs – operates various internships geared toward college-age students, including the Disney College Program (DCP), Disney International Programs (ICP), Disney Hospitality Leadership Program (DHLP), Cultural Representative Program (CRP), Brazilian Summer Super Greeters, Disney Culinary Program, and Professional Internships (PI).
Campus
The campus of Walt Disney World includes numerous buildings and spaces used solely for corporate management, castmember only services, and castmember recreation. The Walt Disney Company also owns and operates a corporate office complex in Celebration, Florida, home to Disney Cruise Line and Adventures by Disney offices.
Team Disney – the central location of corporate offices at Walt Disney World.
Disney University – the central location of training for castmembers.
Walt Disney World Casting Center – the central location for human resources and employee recruitment and retention.
Partners Federal Credit Union – an internal bank system only for Disney employees, with several locations throughout Walt Disney World.
Disney Event Group – office complex for various business segments.
Maingate Office Complex – houses offices for various business segments.
Amateur Athletic Union – corporate office building located inside the historic preview center building on Hotel Plaza Blvd.
Central Florida Tourism Oversight District headquarters building, located near Disney Springs on Hotel Plaza Blvd.
Mickey's Retreat – a Disney-employee only recreational complex located on Little Lake Bryan.
AdventHealth – operates two emergency rooms, located on the east and west of property near Disney Springs and in Flamingo Crossings. Guests with serious conditions and injuries are transported to the larger AdventHealth Celebration.
YMCA of Central Florida – operates two locations on property that provide daycare and educational programs for children of Walt Disney World employees.
The Center for Living Well – provides health services for Disney employees, operated by Premise Health.
Flamingo Crossings Village – home of Disney Programs and Internship students.
Disney Aspire – offers free college tuition to eligible employees of Walt Disney World. Launched in 2018, the program offers select academic tracks in partnership with certain schools and degree programs.
Voluntears – Disney's in-house volunteer program. Disney cast members volunteer their time for local non-profit and environmental causes.
Employment
When the Magic Kingdom opened in 1971, the site employed about 5,500 "cast members". In 2020, Walt Disney World employed more than 77,000 cast members. Walt Disney World has more than 3,000 job classifications with a total 2019 payroll of over $3 billion.
Union representation
Almost all hourly guest-facing cast members work under union contracts. The most recent contract was negotiated and put in effect in 2023 and is valid through 2027, setting the starting hourly rate for part-time and full-time cast at 17 dollars per hour, with additional premiums available for select roles. Union membership is offered to all cast eligible at the start of employment. Each staff location on property has an official designated as shop steward, who bargains with Disney leadership when needed to defend the rights designated within the contract.
UNITE HERE Local 362 – Represents roles in Attractions, Custodial, and Vacation Planning.
Transportation Communications International Union
Local 737 – Represents housekeeping and food and beverage cast.
Local 1908 – Represents numerous roles including concierge, lifeguards, bell services, and monorail and watercraft cast.
United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1625 – Represents merchandise cast.
International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 385 – Represents entertainment, bus drivers, laundry cast and parking cast.
International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 361 – Represents costuming, cosmetologists, and entertainment technicians.
Actors' Equity Association Orlando Area Theatre – Represents members performing under contract at Walt Disney World, including casts of Festival of The Lion King, Voices of Liberty, The Dapper Dans, Mickey's Royal Friendship Faire, Beauty and the Beast: Live on Stage, Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular, the Hoop-Dee-Do Review, and Finding Nemo: The Big Blue and Beyond.
Attendance
In the first year of opening, the park attracted 10,712,991 visitors. In 2018, the resort's four theme parks all ranked in the top 9 on the list of the 25 most visited theme parks in the world: (1st) Magic Kingdom—20,859,000 visitors; (6th) Disney's Animal Kingdom—13,750,000 visitors; (7th) Epcot—12,444,000 visitors; and (9th) Disney's Hollywood Studios—11,258,000 visitors. By October 2020, maximum Disney World attendance was still allowed to only remain at 25% capacity due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A recent study found that reducing Magic Kingdom park capacity to 25% would result in a 54.1% reduction in annual attendance. This capacity limit causes less annual revenue, and may lower the number of visitors to the Orlando region.
Operations
Transportation
The Walt Disney World Resort is serviced by Disney Transport, a complimentary mass transportation system allowing guest access across the property. The fare-free system utilizes buses, monorails, gondola lifts, watercraft, and parking lot trams.
The Walt Disney World Monorail System provides free transportation at Walt Disney World; guests can board the monorail and travel between the Magic Kingdom and Epcot, including select on-property resorts such as The Grand Floridian and The Polynesian Village. The system operates on three routes that interconnect at the Transportation and Ticket Center (TTC), adjacent to the Magic Kingdom's parking lot. Disney Transport owns a fleet of Disney-operated buses on the property, that is also complimentary for guests.
A gondola lift system, dubbed Disney Skyliner, opened in 2019. The system's three lines connect Disney's Hollywood Studios and Epcot with four resort hotels.
Disney Transport also operates a fleet of watercraft, ranging in size from water taxis, up to the ferries that connect the Magic Kingdom to the Transportation and Ticket Center. Disney Transport is also responsible for maintaining the fleet of parking lot trams that are used for shuttling visitors between the various theme park parking lots and their respective main entrances.
In addition to its free transportation methods, in conjunction with Lyft, Walt Disney World also offers a vehicle for hire service for a fee. The Minnie Van Service are Chevy Traverses dressed in a Minnie Mouse red-and-white polka dot design that can accommodate up to six people and have two carseats available to anyone that is within the Walt Disney World Resort limits. Cast members can install the car seats. Some of the unique advantages that the Minnie Van Service offers over a normal ride share is the ability to be dropped off in the Magic Kingdom bus loop (instead of at the TTC like the other ride shares) and being able to ride to any point in Fort Wilderness.
Energy use
Walt Disney World requires an estimated 1 billion kilowatt-hours (3.6 billion megajoules) of electricity annually, costing the company nearly $100 million in annual energy consumption. In addition to relying primarily on fossil fuels and nuclear energy from the state's power grid, Walt Disney World has two solar energy facilities on property; a 22-acre (0.034 sq mi; 0.089 km2) Mickey Mouse-shaped solar panel farm near Epcot, and a 270-acre (0.42 sq mi; 1.1 km2) facility near Disney's Animal Kingdom. The larger facility produces enough solar energy to provide electricity to two of the resort's theme parks. The sites are operated by Duke Energy and the Reedy Creek Improvement District, respectively.
The entire Disney Transport bus fleet uses R50 renewable diesel fuel, obtained from used cooking oil and non-consumable food waste from the resort.
Self-Government and security
Disney's security personnel are generally dressed in typical security guard uniforms, though some of the personnel are dressed as tourists in plain clothes. Since September 11, 2001, uniformed security has been stationed outside each Disney park in Florida to search guests' bags as they enter the parks. Starting April 3, 2017, bag checkpoints have been placed at Magic Kingdom's resort monorail entryways and the Transportation and Ticket Center's ferry entry points prior to embarkation as well as the walkway from Disney's Contemporary Resort. Guests arriving at the Transportation and Ticket Center by tram or tour bus will be screened at the former tram boarding areas. Guests arriving by Disney Resort hotel bus or Minnie Van have their own bag check just outside the bus stops. Guests arriving via Magic Kingdom Resort boat launch are bag checked on the arrival dock outside Magic Kingdom.
The land where Walt Disney World resides is part of the Reedy Creek Improvement District (RCID), a governing jurisdiction created in May 1967 by the State of Florida at the request of Disney. RCID provides 911 services, fire, environmental protection, building code enforcement, utilities and road maintenance, but does not provide law enforcement services. The approximately 800 security staff are instead considered employees of the Walt Disney Company. Arrests and citations are issued by the Florida Highway Patrol along with the Orange County and Osceola County sheriffs deputies who patrol the roads. Disney security does maintain a fleet of security vans equipped with flares, traffic cones, and chalk commonly used by police officers. These security personnel are charged with traffic control by the RCID and may only issue personnel violation notices to Disney and RCID employees, not the general public.
Despite the appearance of the uniformed security personnel, they are not considered a legal law enforcement agency. Disney and the Reedy Creek Improvement District were sued for access to Disney Security records by Bob and Kathy Sipkema following the death of their son at the resort in 1994. The court characterized Disney security as a "night watchman" service, not a law enforcement agency, meaning it is not subject to Florida's open records laws. An appeals court later upheld the lower court's ruling.
In late 2015, Disney confirmed the addition of randomized secondary screenings and dogs trained to detect body-worn explosives within parks, in addition to metal detectors at entrances. It has also increased the number of uniformed security personnel at Walt Disney World and Disneyland properties.
Disney Security personnel in Florida have investigated traffic accidents and issued accident reports. The forms used by Disney Security may be confused with official, government forms by some.
The Orange County Sheriff maintains an office on Disney property, but this is primarily to process guests accused of shoplifting by Disney security personnel.
Although the scattering of ashes on Disney property is illegal, The Wall Street Journal reported in October 2018 that Walt Disney World parks were becoming a popular spot for families to scatter the ashes of loved ones, with the Haunted Mansion at Magic Kingdom being the favorite location. The practice is unlawful and prohibited on Disney property, and anyone spreading cremated remains is escorted from the park.
On April 22, 2022, the Walt Disney Company's self-governing authority of all the area surrounding Walt Disney World came to an end after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law legislation requiring Walt Disney World's Reedy Creek Improvement District to come under the legal jurisdiction of the state of Florida on June 1, 2023.
Corporate culture
Walt Disney World's corporate culture uses jargon based on theatrical terminology. For example, park visitors are always "guests", employees are called "cast members", rides are "attractions" or "experiences", cast members costumed as famous Disney characters in a way that does not cover their faces are known as "face characters", jobs are "roles", and public and nonpublic areas are respectively labeled "onstage" and "backstage".
Closures
Walt Disney World has had thirteen unscheduled closures, eleven of which have been due to hurricanes:
September 15, 1999, due to Hurricane Floyd
September 11, 2001, after the September 11 attacks in New York City and Washington D.C.
August 13, 2004, due to Hurricane Charley
September 4–5, 2004, due to Hurricane Frances
September 26, 2004, due to Hurricane Jeanne
October 25, 2005, in the morning, due to Hurricane Wilma
October 7, 2016, due to Hurricane Matthew
September 10–11, 2017, due to Hurricane Irma
September 3, 2019, for about half the day (with the exception of Epcot and Disney Springs), due to Hurricane Dorian
March 15 – July 11, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. (excluding Disney Springs, which reopened on May 19, 2020)
September 28–29, 2022, due to Hurricane Ian
November 9–10, 2022, phased closure from the evening of November 9 until noon of the next day, due to Hurricane Nicole
October 9–10, 2024, phased closure from afternoon of the 9th, due to Hurricane Milton
Like its sister resort, parks at the resort may close early to accommodate various special events, such as special press events, tour groups, VIP groups, and private parties. It is common for a corporation to rent entire parks for the evening. In such cases, special passes are issued which are valid for admission to all rides and attractions. At the ticket booths and on published schedules, the guests are notified of the early closures. Then, cast members announce that the parks are closing, sometime before the private event starts, and clear the parks of guests who do not have the special passes.
In October 2020, it was revealed that full capacity attendance was still not permitted, following the COVID-19 closure which occurred earlier in the year. In July 2021, Disney World announced that all its staff workers in the US would have to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to return to work. It also announced that those who are unvaccinated would have a period of time to get their shots and aimed to return to full capacity for people who are immunized.
Climate
See also
Large amusement railways
List of Disney attractions that were never built
List of Disney theme park attractions
List of incidents at Walt Disney World
Rail transport in Walt Disney Parks and Resorts
Walt Disney Travel Company
The Walt Disney World Explorer
Walt Disney World Hospitality and Recreation Corporation
References
External links
Official website |
Remy%27s_Ratatouille_Adventure | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remy%27s_Ratatouille_Adventure | [
578
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remy%27s_Ratatouille_Adventure"
] | Remy's Ratatouille Adventure, also known as Ratatouille: L'Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy (lit., 'Remy's Totally Zany Adventure'), is a motion-based trackless 3D dark ride, based on the 2007 Disney-Pixar animated film Ratatouille, located at Disney's Walt Disney Studios Park in France by Disneyland Paris and at Disney's France Pavilion at Epcot from Walt Disney World.
Disneyland Paris officially announced the attraction in March 2013.
In both versions, the ride's dialogue alternates between English and French.
History
The attraction was revealed as part of internet rumours of an expansion of Walt Disney Studios Park's Toon Studio area. Other rumours about the expansion included a reincarnation of the popular Toy Story Midway Mania attraction to be put in the operating Toy Story Playland. The ride is one of the biggest additions to Disneyland Paris; its show building is similar in height to that of the expansive Pirates of the Caribbean attraction at the neighbouring Disneyland Park, and cost an estimated US$270 million to complete. Following the initial rumours, articles on the Internet surfaced concept paintings, ride blueprints, and images of the first phases of construction, confirming that there would be such an attraction.
Construction of the attraction officially began in 2012. It was formally announced in March 2013 at the Euro Disney S.C.A. annual shareholders meeting, with construction completed in June 2014. On 21 June 2014, the attraction was officially inaugurated by then-president and CEO of The Walt Disney Company, Robert Iger. The attraction fully opened to the public on 10 July 2014.
On 15 July 2017, Disney Parks announced during its D23 Expo presentation that a duplicate of the ride would come to Epcot's France Pavilion at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida in 2020. Construction began in November of the same year with land clearing. After construction delays and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the attraction opened on 1 October 2021, on the 50th anniversary of the Walt Disney World Resort and the 39th anniversary of Epcot, along with a new restaurant, La Crêperie de Paris, located nearby the attraction.
On 27 August 2021, following Disneyland Paris' reopening, Walt Disney Studios Park announced that the attraction was set to become part of the Worlds of Pixar area.
Ride experience
The attraction's exterior is that of Gusteau's restaurant, and the surrounding buildings of a Parisian plaza, with the queue set in an artist's loft leading to the rooftops of Paris, where guests are "shrunk" to the size of a rat.
After guests board their "ratmobiles" on the roof of Gusteau's restaurant, Remy and the spirit of Chef Auguste Gusteau are deciding which meal to prepare for them. After deciding on their famous ratatouille dish, Remy and the guests fall through a swinging roof glass-pane, landing on the restaurant kitchen floor. This starts a chase sequence with Remy leading the guests and other rats away from the cooks, passing through the walk-in freezer and under a hot oven.
Guests eventually end up in the dining area, attracting attention from customers and causing a riot. Chef Skinner tries to get rid of the rats and the guests, while Alfredo Linguini tries to help them escape into a nearby vent. The escape through the vent in the walls is almost wrecked by Skinner, who angrily attempts to grab the guests through the venting grids. In the end, they make it safely to Remy's kitchen, where the cooking of the ratatouille is ongoing.
The guests are bid farewell by Remy and the spirit of Gusteau, while the rat colony is feasting on Remy's cooking. In Paris, the attraction exits at the restaurant Bistro Chez Rémy, unlike at Epcot.
Patton Oswalt, Peter Sohn, Lou Romano, and Brad Garrett reprise their voice roles from the original film as Remy, Emile, Linguini and Gusteau, respectively.
Technology
The attraction uses LPS trackless ride technology, similar to Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway and Mystic Manor. The ride uses rat-shaped vehicles to automatically slide across the ground with no track. It also contains 2D dome segments of the ride that the vehicles ride into. Different scent effects are employed in each room of the ride, similar to Soarin'.
Gallery
References
External links
Walt Disney Studios Park - Ratatouille: The Adventure site
Epcot - Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure site |
1844_Susilva | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1844_Susilva | [
579
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1844_Susilva"
] | 1844 Susilva, provisional designation 1972 UB, is a stony Eoan asteroid from the outer region of the asteroid belt, approximately 22 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 30 October 1972, by Swiss astronomer Paul Wild at Zimmerwald Observatory near Bern, Switzerland, and later named after a schoolfriend of the discoverer.
Classification and orbit
Susilva is a member of the Eos family, a collisional group of more than 4,000 asteroids, which are well known for mostly being of silicaceous composition. It orbits the Sun in the outer main-belt at a distance of 2.9–3.2 AU once every 5 years and 3 months (1,912 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.05 and an inclination of 12° with respect to the ecliptic.
First identified as 1943 EU at Turku Observatory, Susilva's first used observation was taken at Uccle Observatory in 1953, extending the body's observation arc by 19 years prior to its official discovery observation.
Physical characteristics
According to the survey carried out by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer with its subsequent NEOWISE mission, the asteroid measures between 19.0 and 26.8 kilometers in diameter, and its surface has an albedo of 0.118 to 0.236. The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes an albedo of 0.14, taken from 221 Eos, the family's largest member and namesake – and calculates a diameter of 22.4 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 11.0. Susilva's rotation period has not yet been measured.
Naming
The discoverer named a pair of asteroids after two of his former schoolmates, Susi and Helen, both from the small village of Wald, Zürich in Switzerland. This one was dedicated to Susi Petit–Pierre, while the subsequently numbered asteroid, 1845 Helewalda, was given to Helen Gachnang. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 18 April 1977 (M.P.C. 4156).
References
External links
Asteroid Lightcurve Database (LCDB), query form (info Archived 16 December 2017 at the Wayback Machine)
Dictionary of Minor Planet Names, Google books
Asteroids and comets rotation curves, CdR – Observatoire de Genève, Raoul Behrend
Discovery Circumstances: Numbered Minor Planets (1)-(5000) – Minor Planet Center
1844 Susilva at AstDyS-2, Asteroids—Dynamic Site
Ephemeris · Observation prediction · Orbital info · Proper elements · Observational info
1844 Susilva at the JPL Small-Body Database |
221_Eos | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/221_Eos | [
579
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/221_Eos"
] | 221 Eos is a large main-belt asteroid that was discovered by Austrian astronomer Johann Palisa on January 18, 1882, in Vienna. In 1884, it was named after Eos, the Greek goddess of the dawn, to honour the opening of a new observatory that was hoped to bring about a new dawn for Viennese astronomy.
The asteroid is orbiting the Sun with a semimajor axis of 3.01 AU, a period of 5.22 years, and an eccentricity of 0.1. The orbital plane is inclined by 10.9° to the plane of the ecliptic. It has a mean cross-section of 104 km, and is spinning with a rotation period of 10.4 hours. Based upon its spectral characteristics, this object is classified as a K-type asteroid. The orbital properties show it to be a member of the extensive Eos asteroid family, which is named after it. The spectral properties of the asteroid suggest it may have come from a partially differentiated parent body.
References
External links
The Asteroid Orbital Elements Database
Minor Planet Discovery Circumstances
Asteroid Lightcurve Data File
221 Eos at AstDyS-2, Asteroids—Dynamic Site
Ephemeris · Observation prediction · Orbital info · Proper elements · Observational info
221 Eos at the JPL Small-Body Database |
Miss_Venezuela_1970 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Venezuela_1970 | [
580
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Venezuela_1970"
] | Miss Venezuela (Spanish: Organización Miss Venezuela) is a Venezuelan beauty pageant operated by the Cisneros Group. Founded in 1952, it currently selects Venezuelan representatives to Miss Universe, Miss World, and Miss International. The current national director of Miss Venezuela is Miss Universe 2013 Gabriela Isler.
The current Miss Venezuela is Ileana Márquez of Amazonas who was crowned on 7 December 2023 at the Centro Comercial Líder in Caracas, Venezuela.
History
On 7 May 1905, Manuela Victoria Mujica Antich of Lara, was elected by popular vote as Miss Venezuela. Many authors and scholars in the history of the Miss Venezuela contest consider her as the first Miss Venezuela ever, and its vote as a precursor of the pageant that it is currently known.
Miss Venezuela (1952 - 1981)
The Miss Venezuela pageant was officially founded in 1952 by Pan Am and businesswoman Gloria Sánchez, with the purpose of sending a Venezuelan representative to the Miss Universe pageant in Long Beach, California.
The speed with which the contestants were chosen for that first contest would characterize its first editions, in which parades with different outfits were held over the course of a week or more in different locations in the country. Due to protests by religious organizations at the time, the swimsuit parades were held in private, for jurors only. Eventually, representatives to Miss World (since 1955) and Miss International (since 1960) would also begin to be elected.
After a first interruption in 1954 during the Marcos Pérez Jiménez dictatorship, Pan Am ceded the rights to the contest in 1955 to Venezuelan journalist and musicologist, Reinaldo Espinoza Hernández.
Hernández, who despite the triumph of Susana Duijm in Miss World 1955 (first Hispanic American to win at one of the Big Four international beauty pageants), faced protests by the Venezuelan Catholic Church and feminist movements, which added to the lack of interest by the press of the time. In addition, a second interruption in 1959 caused by the 1958 Venezuelan coup d'état, led to the sale of the contest to Edwin E. Acosta-Rubio, a Cuban-Venezuelan businessman in 1962.
Business-minded, Acosta-Rubio immediately changed the format of the competition. Turning the semi-improvised tourist pageant into an organized annual institution. In order to choose the contestants with professional and responsible criteria, Acosta-Rubio created the so-called Venezuelan Beauty Committee. Developed the publicity projection of the event and broadcast it for the first time on television in 1962, through the RCTV network, began to charge for tickets for the finals. With all these changes accomplished in the late 1960s, the Miss Venezuela contest began to be a favorite and traditional reference among Venezuelans, in the Venezuelan popular culture and more importantly, for Acosta-Rubio, as a profitable and appreciated business.
In 1968, the swimsuit and evening gown portions of the show were broadcast on television for the first time. Although it was not of great importance at the moment, Osmel Sousa began to work in those years as a graphic and fashion designer for the contest.
In 1969, Ignacio Font Coll, brother-in-law of Edwin Acosta-Rubio, who was the creator and president of OPPA Publicidad, appointed him as director of the current Miss Venezuela Organization.
Already in the 1960s, the Acosta-Rubio Organization had begun to obtain excellent results with Mercedes Revenga as first runner-up at the Miss Beauty Form 1964 contest and later on reaching the top 15 at Miss Universe 1964. The choice of Mariela Pérez and Peggy Kopp as first and third runners-up at Miss Universe 1967 and Miss Universe 1968, respectively. Adriana López with the Miss Planet Resort 1967 won, Judith Castillo, being first runner-up at Miss Universe 1976, and Zully Guilarte winning the 1968 Miss Tourism of Central America and the Caribbean pageant. Maritza Sayalero won Miss Universe 1979, being the first edition of Miss Universe to be televised in color in Venezuela. With her win, began what is considered the 'Golden age of Miss Venezuela'.
Since 1972, the Cisneros Organization acquired the rights to start producing and broadcasting the beauty contest on its channel, Venevisión. María Antonieta Cámpoli, Miss Venezuela 1972 at Miss Universe 1972 was second runner-up, and later at Miss Intercontinental 1974, María Emilia de los Ríos of Bolívar state.
Miss Venezuela Organization (1981 -)
In 1981, Irene Sáez won Miss Universe 1981, Pilín León won Miss World 1981, in addition to the death of Coll. Finally, in 1982, the Cisneros Group was placed at the helm of the beauty contest and the Miss Venezuela Organization was officially structured. After this, in February 1982, Cisneros and Acosta-Rubio appointed Osmel Sousa (a long time-worker at the empress) as Coll's successor, taking the charge of President. Besides, Joaquín Riviera, María Kallay and Mery Cortez, were appointed as official producer, coordinator and choreographer of the event, respectively.
Starting in 1984, the crowns used in the organization's pageants were made by jewelry designer, George Wittels. Until July 2018, Wittels was in charge of making the goldsmith pieces for the contest. George was succeeded by Mila Toledo, Miss Federal District in 1980.
In 1996, the beauty pageant launched its website, missvenezuela.com. Also, in the same year, the Mister Venezuela competition was founded, as well as, Miss Venezuela Mundo in 2000. In both cases, at the request of the Miss World Organization
In 2009, Venezuela entered the Guinness World Records for being the first and so far only representation in Miss Universe to be crowned by another winner from the same nation.
In 2010, the pageant acquired the Miss Earth franchise, which it maintained until 2015, obtaining Alyz Henrich a second crown for this contest as Miss Earth 2013.
Joaquín Riviera, Miss Venezuela executive producer, would be in charge of the event until his death in 2012. After María Kallay's death in 2013, the production of the event was realized by Peggy Navarro, Ricardo Di Salvatore, Vicente Alvarado and Erick Simonato, who were part of the original production team along with Riviera as General Producer. In 2015, Peggy left office, leaving three managers, who to date are still part of the Miss Venezuela Organization.
In 2016, Mery Cortez, announced her departure from the contest and from Venevisión network, after almost 45 years as the choreographic producer of the contest.
On 6 February 2018, Osmel Sousa, announced his retirement as President of the Miss Venezuela Organization, after being in charge of the contest for more than 40 years, leaving the presidency vacant.
On 17 April 2018, the organization announced that the contest would it be run by an executive committee, not a president. The next day, the committee members were announced: Gabriela Isler, Miss Universe 2013, Jacqueline Aguilera, Miss World 1995 and Nina Sicilia, Miss International 1985.
Contestant selection
List of state titles
There is an unofficial formula to determine the states and regions represented in Venezuela. The base number of contestants over the last decade has been 26–28, which can be increased or decreased by the contest management.
Official states (23)
* Denotes that state has a preliminary pageant – which may or may not still be held – as of 2005 only Táchira, Zulia-Falcón, Lara, Aragua and Sucre held preliminaries.
Official regions (3)
Costa Oriental (Eastern shore of Lake Maracaibo)
Distrito Capital (Capital District)
Dependencias Federales ("Federal Dependencies" Venezuelan islands)
Together, these 26 regions form the "base" of the Miss Venezuela contest. However, at times other regions and territories have been represented. If there are 27 sashes, the 27th candidate is Miss Peninsula Goajira. If there are 28 sashes, either Canaima (a national park in Bolivar state) or Peninsula de Paraguaná (a region of Falcon state) is represented. In 2003, additional titles of Península de Araya (a region of Sucre State) and Roraima (a national park in Bolivar State) were created to bring the pageant to its highest ever number of contestants: 32. Surprisingly, in 2008 Península de Araya was used again, and there was no Miss Península Goajira or Miss Costa Oriental that year. In the mid-1990s, the districts of Municipio Libertador and Municipio San Francisco were also represented, the last one only in 1997 and 1998. Also, only in 2003, Guayana Esequiba (part of Guyana that historically Venezuela claims as its own) was represented. Vargas State, the most recent modification to Venezuela's map (1999) was always present in the pageant, but with other names: Departamento Vargas (until 1986), Municipio Vargas (1987 to 1997), Territorio Federal Vargas (1998), and Vargas State since 1999. In 2009, only 20 delegates competed for the crown, the same number that competed on the final night in 2003, so some "traditional" states didn't have a representative.
Winners by state/region
Venezuelan representation
Venezuela's international titleholders represented the following states during their Miss Venezuela competition (indicates year of international victory):
Miss Universe: Departamento Vargas (1979), Miranda (1981), Trujillo (1986; 2009), Yaracuy (1996), Amazonas (2008) and Guárico (2013).
Miss World: Miranda (1955; 1984), Aragua (1981), Zulia (1991), Nueva Esparta (1995) and Amazonas (2011).
Miss International: Monagas (1985), Miranda (1997), Costa Oriental (2000), Carabobo (2003), Barinas (2006; 2018), Trujillo (2010), Anzoátegui (2015) and Portuguesa (2023).
Miss Earth: Nueva Esparta (2005), Falcón (2013).
Main pageant
Training
There are Miss Venezuela schools and "beauty factories" in which girls as young as 5 years old are trained to be the next potential Miss Venezuela. At both the schools and factories the young girls and women are taught how to walk properly, given beauty tips, and given lessons in proper etiquette.
Once a candidate is shortlisted for the pageant, she begins an intensive training program which can last for six months. She receives coaching in speech, physical fitness, make-up, modelling, and all the other skills required for the competition. Plastic surgery and cosmetic dentistry are optional, and some delegates elect to use padding. As the Miss Venezuela broadcast lasts up to four hours long, with countless musical numbers and dances, rehearsals require weeks of preparation. Contestants also participate in official photo-shoots and also fittings by fashion designers.
The evening gowns worn by candidates are a major source of politicking by Venezuela's domestic fashion houses, with top designers such as Mayela Camacho, Ángel Sanchez, Durant & Diego, Jose María Almeida, and Gionni Straccia selecting candidates that they will dress for the final night, while other, newer designers compete to present designs for the pageant. As a general rule the evening gowns are always custom-designed for each of the candidates on the final night, and always by a Venezuelan designer. By tradition, Nidal Nouaihed dresses the representatives of his home state of Zulia (Miss Costa Oriental, Miss Peninsula Goajira, Miss Zulia); Ángel Sanchez designs the gown for Miss Trujillo; Jose María Almeida designs the dress for Miss Mérida and the national costume for Miss Venezuela to Miss Universe. In 1999, 26 different designers took part in the evening gown competition, one candidate for each one. Also, in 2006, for the first time ever, the designers appeared on stage with the delegates, showing their fabulous creations. For the first time, in Miss Venezuela 2008, a "best evening gown" prize was given to a designer; the winner was Gionni Straccia for Miss Monagas' dress. He also made the gown for Dayana Mendoza in the Miss Universe finals.
The winners chosen to represent Venezuela in the major pageants undergo continuous preparation before they compete internationally. These efforts are funded by corporate sponsors like Pepsi-Cola, Palmolive, Colgate, Ebel and Lux who were attracted to the pageant by its high ratings.
Participation in international pageants
As of 2024, Venezuela has a total of 24 wins at Big Four international beauty pageants, the most by any country in the world, and consisting of seven Miss Universe titles, six Miss World titles, nine Miss International titles, and two Miss Earth titles.
Miss Venezuela reached the semifinals of Miss Universe each year from 1983 to 2003, and reached the question-and-answer round consistently from 1991 to 2003 (winning in 1986 and 1996), constituting the longest streak of Miss Universe finalists by any country. This streak was ended in 2004, when Ana Karina Áñez was not included in the semifinals at Miss Universe 2004. Venezuela has also held Miss Universe and Miss World titles simultaneously in 1981 (Irene Saez and Pilin Leon), and Miss Universe and Miss Earth titles simultaneously in 2013 (Gabriela Isler and Alyz Henrich). Henrich's Miss Earth victory made Venezuela the only country in the world to have won each of the Big Four pageants multiple times. Venezuela also holds the distinction of being the first, and so far only, country to win back-to-back Miss Universe titles when Dayana Mendoza, outgoing Miss Universe 2008, crowned Stefania Fernandez as Miss Universe 2009.
Success in other fields
Competing in the pageant can get a contestant noticed and launched on a successful television or print career. At least a dozen well-sought models come out of the pageant. Virtually all of Venezuela's female top models and television personalities are alumni of the pageant, including Maite Delgado (who competed in 1986 against future Miss Universe Bárbara Palacios and became the primary annual emcee of Miss Venezuela's live shows in recent decades), and Dominika van Santen (Top Model of the World 2005). In fact, only Gaby Espino and several other entertainment figures stand out as never having competed in the pageant. Many of today's top young models, such as Onelises Brochero and Wendy Medina, have repeatedly been rejected by Miss Venezuela; on the other hand, Goizeder Azua and Desiree Pallotta, who have variously been considered the top domestic supermodels in the country, joined the pageant after establishing their careers.
Nowadays, familiar faces on Spanish TV networks around the world, from Venezuela, include Ruddy Rodríguez, Catherine Fulop, Carolina Perpetuo, Norkys Batista, Daniela Kosán, Viviana Gibelli, Marjorie de Sousa, Chiquinquirá Delgado, Alicia Machado and Natalia Streignard. Two of the Latin world's best known people, supermodel Patricia Velásquez and singer/actress María Conchita Alonso, also participated, in 1989 and 1975, respectively.
Miss Universe 1981, Irene Sáez, became mayor of Chacao (Caracas), governor of Nueva Esparta State, and then a candidate in the 1998 Venezuelan presidential election. The Times of London ranked her 13th in its list of the 100 most powerful women in the world.
Alexandra Braun, Miss Earth 2005 became the most decorated international actress from Venezuela with the most acting awards when she won four international best actress awards in various film festivals all over the world for her portrayal of the lead role in the movie, "Uma" at the London Film Festival, Monaco International Film Festival, the Milan International Film Festival and the Georgia Latino Film Festival in Atlanta; the film also won recognition in the "Film of the World" category at the International Film Festival of India and won best foreign film at the Burbank International Film Festival in the United States.
Miss Venezuela and other countries
Some delegates in the pageant went on to win other national pageants. Natascha Börger became the first Venezuelan to switch countries, when she won the Miss Germany title in 2002 after placing 14th at Miss Venezuela 2000. She went on to place in the Top 10 at Miss Universe 2002 in Puerto Rico while Cynthia Lander, Miss Venezuela 2001, placed fifth in the same competition. Miss Trujillo 2005 Angelika Hernandez Dorendorf also placed fourth at Miss Germany 2007 and cancelled her participation at the Miss Intercontinental of that same year in order to continue her master's degree. In 2006, Francys Sudnicka, who placed in the Top 10 representing Trujillo in Miss Venezuela 2003, won the Miss Poland Universe title. She represented Poland at Miss Universe 2006, and later represented Poland in Miss Earth 2006, taking a place in the Top 8. The following Venezuelans who have won the Miss Italia nel Mondo (Miss World Italy) pageant placed in the final five of Miss Venezuela: Barbara Clara (Miss Amazonas 2004), Valentina Patruno (Miss Miranda 2003) and Silvana Santaella (Miss Península de Paraguaná 2003). Patruno, though born Venezuelan, represented the United States.
In the past, other countries have sent their titleholders to be trained by Osmel Sousa and the Miss Venezuela Organization. In 1999, Miriam Quiambao of the Philippines trained in Venezuela before competing at Miss Universe 1999 in Trinidad and Tobago and eventually placing second to Botswana, while Carolina Indriago, Miss Venezuela 1998, appeared in the Top 5. The Miss Venezuela Organization, however, ended its policy allowing training of foreign candidates after Amelia Vega of the Dominican Republic received training from them before eventually winning Miss Universe 2003 in Panama, while Mariangel Ruiz, Miss Venezuela 2002, placed second behind her.
In recent years the pageant organization has begun to "import" expatriates who have been working as international models. Miami has produced Valentina Patruno (Miss World Venezuela 2003), Andrea Gómez (Miss International Venezuela 2004), Mónica Spear (Miss Venezuela 2004 and 4th runner-up at Miss Universe 2005), Ileana Jiménez (Miss Portuguesa 2005), and María Alessandra Villegas (Miss Península de Paraguaná 2008).
Order of succession
There has been considerable controversy in a number of major national pageants as to how to direct their contestants to Miss Universe, Miss World, and the other international contests. The reason for this issue is the dispute between the international pageants, who generally desire that the winner of a national contest be sent. Although many nations such as Italy and Germany have completely separate pageants for Miss Universe and Miss World, in the case of Miss Venezuela the national pageant organization must field candidates to almost all of the major world contests.
Between 2000 and 2002, the Miss Venezuela pageant was split into two contests: the Miss World Venezuela pageant, to elect the representative to Miss World, from which a reduced group of contestants would go on to compete in Miss Venezuela to go to the Miss Universe contest. In 2002, the organization merged the Miss World Venezuela contest with the Gala de Belleza, making the final "state cut" before the election of the Miss World representative. The two pageants were rejoined in 2003. Using the most prominent format used in Miss Venezuela's entire run, the winners of the Miss Venezuela title (who goes to Miss Universe) and Miss World Venezuela are equal in rank. Nevertheless, the representative to Miss Universe is still announced last, and she is still considered the holder of the one single Miss Venezuela title. Nowadays, the final five finalists are announced during the telecast, followed by the elimination of the second and first runners-up, then Miss Venezuela to Miss International, Miss Venezuela to Miss World, and Miss Venezuela to Miss Universe. Since 2010, yet another new system has been introduced, with the fifth-place finisher as the 1st. runner-up, fourth place being designated as a "representative" to Miss Earth, the third place as a "representative" to Miss International and two 'equal' crowned winners—Miss Venezuela World and Miss Venezuela Universe.
While this system is similar to that of Mexico and India, in Mexico the first runner-up is known as the "substitute" and in the order of succession automatically fills into any title above her that is emptied. For example, if "Nuestra Belleza Mexico Mundo" (Miss Mexico to Miss World) is unable to fulfill her duties, the first runner-up assumes her title. While the Miss Universe representative is similarly considered the "greater of the two equals", if her position is vacated, the first runner-up ascends to her crown, instead of Miss Mexico-World becoming Miss Mexico-Universe and the first runner-up going to Miss World. In India, however, the succession does follow the other option: the top three titles go Earth->Universe->World in rising order of importance (although they are also emphasized as "equals").
In Venezuela, neither policy of succession is explicitly laid down. Osmel Sousa made the final decisions as to who is appointed when a vacancy arises; i.e. in 2003, there were significant rumors that Mariangel Ruiz might be replaced by Amara Barroeta, the first runner-up, to Miss Universe (and not Goizeder Azua, who was Miss World Venezuela). In fact, in 2003, the Miss International Pageant was concurrent with Miss Venezuela, meaning that it would be impossible to send a "fresh" contestant, and Osmel actually opted not to send Amara, who should have gone (as the first runner-up then was almost always automatically titled Miss Venezuela International) and instead replaced her with Goizeder Azua, who won Miss International 2003. Due to scheduling conflicts between Miss International and Miss Venezuela, a similar situation occurred in 2002 when Cynthia Lander, Miss Venezuela (Universe), gave up her crown to the next Miss Venezuela and immediately boarded a flight for Japan to participate in Miss International. The reasoning was that her first runner-up had already participated the year before, and it would have been ridiculous to crown a Miss Venezuela (International) and immediately send her on a plane to her contest with no specific preparation whatsoever. Incidentally in 2006 the Miss World pageant shifted its pageant date from its usual November–December timeframe to September when the organization announced Poland as the competition venue. Due to the change in dates; it resulted to a timing conflict with the Miss Venezuela pageant. The Miss Venezuela organization decided to hold a snap pageant called "Miss Venezuela Mundo" to elect a representative for Miss World 2006. The said competition was composed of former Miss Venezuela contestants from previous editions. At the end of the night Federica Guzman who represented the state of Miranda in 2001 was the winner. Thus, all four winners, Miss Earth Venezuela, Miss Venezuela International, Miss Venezuela World and Miss Venezuela Universe now compete in the year after their coronation.
Ironically, the only time in the "modern" pageant that the famous "if the winner should not fulfill her duties, the first runner-up will take over" statement was made for Miss Venezuela was in 1999. The decision was made to send whoever won to Miss World first, and then to Miss Universe if she did not win. This policy was adopted after the consecutive eliminations of Christina Dieckmann and Veronica Schneider in 1997 and 1998, both of whom were considered amongst the strongest Miss World Venezuelas in history and whose eliminations were seen by the organization as a signal that it needed to send its winner to Miss World. Therefore, in 1999, there were no Miss World Venezuela or Miss Venezuela International titles, only an official Miss Venezuela, who was Martina Thorogood. Her first runner-up, Norkys Batista, was told that she would become Miss Venezuela to Miss Universe only if Martina won the Miss World crown outright. Martina came in second at Miss World and she was expected continue on to Miss Universe 2000 the next year. However, due to a number of major controversies, she was barred from Miss Universe 2000 on the grounds that as the first runner-up to Miss World, Osmel also declared that Miss Universe demanded a winner from Venezuela, thereby barring Norkys Batista from succeeding to the title. The only option for Norkys to go was for Martina to renounce the Miss Venezuela title, which neither she or the organization was willing to do. Therefore, a new emergency (and temporary) pageant was held, called Miss Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which was conducted among ten former contestants (some semi-finalists and other non-finalists) from the previous five years. The winner, Claudia Moreno, had placed as seventh in the semi-finals behind Martina and Norkys in Miss Venezuela 1999, and she ended up performing excellently and becoming first runner-up to Miss Universe 2000. In years to come, 2002's first runner-up Amara Barroeta would join Norkys Batista as one of several runners-ups to be "denied" the chance to compete at a "big three" pageant.
In the US and many other countries, an occasion when the order of succession comes into play is when the reigning titleholder wins her international contest, e.g. in 1997 when Brook Mahealani Lee became Miss Universe and her first runner-up Brandi Sherwood became Miss USA. However, Venezuela does not have this official provision, even when the two "equal" winners both win Miss Universe and Miss World. In 1981, Miriam Quintana was considered somewhat unofficially as the serving Miss Venezuela, because both Irene Saez and Pilin Leon had won their respective pageants. However, in 1995–1996, when Alicia Machado took the Miss Universe title and Jacqueline Aguilera the Miss World crown, no new "Miss Venezuela" was appointed to hold the crown while they reigned internationally, though some newspapers said that Carla Steinkopf, Miss International Venezuela 1995, would give the crown to the 1996 winner. In general, all the times Venezuela has won the Miss Universe Pageant, it's Miss Universe herself who returns to crown the new Miss Venezuela, not Miss World Venezuela from the previous year or another finalist. Since 2013, the Miss World delegate is no longer crowned at the Miss Venezuela final but is crowned in a separate Miss Venezuela World pageant, and competes in the same year of her coronation. In 2014, Maira Alexandra Rodriguez was crowned as Miss Earth Venezuela to compete in the 2015 edition, but due to the destitution of her predecessor, Stephanie de Zorzi, she was sent to Miss Earth 2014, in which she ended as Miss Water (2nd runner-up).
From 2015 onwards, Miss Earth Venezuela will compete in the same year of her coronation. In 2017, the announcing was made as it was years before: Top 5 consisting of 2nd and 1st runners-up, then Miss Venezuela International, Miss World Venezuela and Miss Venezuela Universe, all three competing in 2018. This avoids the rumors of major pageants not allowing contestants to participate if they weren't in their current reign year. However, in 2018, Osmel's resignation coincided with the same year Miss Venezuela sent their winner, Isabella Rodríguez, to Miss World. As a result, since 2019, the organization switched to a separate Miss World Venezuela national pageant while retaining the Miss Universe and Miss International national titles under the main Miss Venezuela pageant for all succeeding candidates.
Controversies
Objectification
Esther Pineda, a Venezuelan women's studies expert, stated that the popularity of Miss Venezuela and other pageants in Venezuela reveals how the country is "deeply sexist". Despite controversies facing Miss Venezuela, the Me Too movement has not carried any significance in Venezuela. According to Pineda, in Venezuela "[p]hysical beauty is seen as a value. ... And it's given more importance than any other attribute".
Sexual exploitation
Miss Venezuela contestants are often subject to prostitution and sexual exploitation. Young contestants are passed to powerful individuals in Venezuelan society for sexual favors. In a poverty-filled country, vulnerable women turn to wealthy individuals for funds. With participation often costing tens of thousands of United States dollars, these participants perform sexual favors for their wardrobe, cosmetic surgery, photo shoots and for sponsorships in order to "create the illusion of 'perfect' beauty" that is held in esteem in Venezuelan culture. Some contestants allegedly involved in such acts include Miss Venezuela 1989 participant Patricia Velásquez and Miss Venezuela 2006 runner-up Claudia Suárez.
Recent titleholders
The following women have been recently crowned Miss Venezuela:
Big Four pageants representatives
The following women have represented Venezuela in the Big Four international beauty pageants.
Miss Venezuela Universe
Color key
The winner of Miss Venezuela represents her country at Miss Universe. On occasion, when the winner does not qualify (due to age) for either contest, a runner-up is sent.
Miss Venezuela World
Color key
In recent years Miss Venezuela Mundo under Miss Venezuela Organization holds a separate contest to select its winner to Miss World pageant.
Miss World Venezuela gallery
Miss Venezuela International
Color key
The 2nd Runner-Up of Miss Venezuela traditionally represented her country at Miss International. In recent years Miss Venezuela selects a runner-up or second position at Miss Venezuela pageant as Miss Venezuela Internacional winner. The winner goes to Miss International.
Miss International Venezuela gallery
Miss Venezuela Tierra
Color key
Since its establishment in 2001 Miss Earth Venezuela is chosen by another organization, called Sambil Model Organization. From 2010 to 2015 Miss Earth Venezuela was chosen by the beauty czar Osmel Sousa. In 2010, Miss Venezuela Organization acquired the franchise for Miss Earth Venezuela and the organization declared that Miss Earth, along with Miss Universe and Miss World contests, is one of the three largest beauty pageants in the world in terms of the number of participating countries. The organization conducted a selection process which attended by several former beauty queens and runners up to qualify for participation. Mariángela Bonanni who competed in the Miss Venezuela 2009 (placed as first runner up) representing the state of Táchira, was chosen by the organization to participate in Miss Earth 2010. Since 2016, Venezuela representatives at the Miss Earth are chosen in a separate pageant Miss Earth Venezuela. Although Miss Venezuela Organization is not related to Sambil Model Organization, here are Venezuela's Miss Earth representatives sent by the Sambil Model Organization, Miss Venezuela Organization and Miss Earth Venezuela Organization .
Gallery of Miss Earth Venezuela
Notes
Big Seven pageants historial
This is a list of Venezuela's representatives and their placements at the Big Seven international beauty pageants. Venezuela, widely considered a beauty pageant powerhouse with an extensive and successful history in beauty pageants, is also referred as the most powerful country in beauty pageants, winning multiple times, with a total of 181 placements and 30 victories, counting:
Seven — Miss Universe titles (1979 • 1981 • 1986 • 1996 • 2008 • 2009 • 2013)
Six — Miss World titles (1955 • 1981 • 1984 • 1991 • 1995 • 2011)
Nine — Miss International titles (1985 • 1997 • 2000 • 2003 • 2006 • 2010 • 2015 • 2018 • 2023)
Five — Miss Intercontinental titles (1974 • 2001 • 2005 • 2009 • 2012)
Two — Miss Earth titles (2005 • 2013)
One — Miss Grand International title (2019)
Hundreds of beauty pageants are conducted yearly, but the Big Seven are considered the most prestigious, widely covered and broadcast by media. Various news agencies collectively refer to the seven major pageants as "Big Seven" namely: the original Big Four (Miss Universe, Miss World, Miss International, Miss Earth); the sub-major competitions, aside the Big Four as the Big Six (Miss Supranational and Miss Grand International); and the oldest minor competition (Miss Intercontinental).
Summary
With Andrea Rubio's win on October 26, 2023 as Miss International 2023 there have been 30 winners from Venezuela in the Big Seven international beauty pageants by a total of 303 titleholders from around the world.
The following table details the placing of the Venezuela's representatives in the Big Seven pageants.
Color key
× Did not compete↑ No pageant held
Notes
Margarita Island competed in Miss Intercontinental twice. Inés Mujica Díaz placed as Top 12 in 2002 and Emily Fernández ended as 2nd Runner-Up in 2007.
Placements
Historic placement positions
Absences
Hosting
Venezuela first hosted its major international pageant in 1980 for Miss Intercontinental. It has also hosted Miss Grand International once.
Miss Venezuela Organization
The Miss Venezuela Organization is the organization that currently owns and runs the Miss Venezuela, Miss World Venezuela, Miss International Venezuela and Mister Venezuela beauty pageant competitions.
Based in Caracas, the organization is currently owned by the Venezuelan holding and conglomerate Cisneros Group since 1972. The current president is Gustavo Cisneros and Adriana Cisneros as CEO, co-directed by Jonathan Blum, Gabriela Isler, Jacqueline Aguilera and Nina Sicilia. The organization sells television rights mostly to Latin American countries and the US.
Current Miss Venezuela Organization titleholders
Since 1985, the Venezuelan representative chosen for Miss Universe and Miss World are titled individually, as well, since 1987 for Miss International. For this reason, since those editions, any finalist or other contestant who is selected to represent the country in said competitions without having initially the mentioned titles achieved in a competition run by the Miss Venezuela Organization is taken into account as a designation.
The following is a list of all Miss Venezuela Organization titleholders from the founding of each pageant.
Key
Past Miss Venezuela Organization titleholders
The following is a list of all past Miss Venezuela Organization titleholders from the founding of each pageant.
Key
Other titleholders
Until 1984, all the candidates who qualified below the 'Miss Venezuela' position were announced as 'runners-up' and officially are recognized as such. However, in a few editions, the same finalists were given saches (with the name or prefixing the preposition 'to') of the international contest they had to attend or in other cases it was simply announced by the presenter. In such cases we have:
See also
Mister Venezuela
List of Miss Venezuela titleholders
List of Miss Venezuela editions
List of beauty contests
Notes
References
External links
Miss Venezuela Official Website
Miss Venezuela La Nueva Era MB |
Bella_La_Rosa | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bella_La_Rosa | [
580
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bella_La_Rosa"
] | Bella Teresa De Jesus La Rosa De La Rosa (born November 1, 1949) is a Venezuelan model and beauty pageant titleholder who was crowned Miss Venezuela 1970 and was the official representative of Venezuela to the Miss Universe 1970 pageant held in Miami Beach, Florida, United States on July 11, 1970 when she classified in the Top 15 semifinalists.
References
External links
Miss Venezuela Official Website
Miss Universe Official Website |
68th_Academy_Awards | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68th_Academy_Awards | [
580
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68th_Academy_Awards"
] | The 68th Academy Awards ceremony, organized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best films of 1995 in the United States and took place on March 25, 1996, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles beginning at 6:00 p.m. PST / 9:00 p.m. EST. During the ceremony, AMPAS presented Academy Awards (commonly referred to as Oscars) in 24 categories. The ceremony, televised in the United States by ABC, was produced by David Salzman and Quincy Jones and directed by Jeff Margolis. Actress Whoopi Goldberg hosted the show for the second time, having previously presided over the 66th ceremony in 1994. Three weeks earlier, in a ceremony held at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, on March 2, the Academy Awards for Technical Achievement were presented by host Richard Dreyfuss.
Braveheart won five awards, including Best Picture. Other winners included Apollo 13, Pocahontas, Restoration, and The Usual Suspects with two awards and Anne Frank Remembered, Antonia's Line, Babe, A Close Shave, Dead Man Walking, Leaving Las Vegas, Lieberman in Love, Mighty Aphrodite, One Survivor Remembers, Il Postino: The Postman, and Sense and Sensibility with one. The telecast garnered almost 45 million viewers in the United States.
Winners and nominees
The nominees for the 68th Academy Awards were announced on February 13, 1996, at 5:38 a.m. PST (13:38 UTC) at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater by president of the academy, and the music producer Quincy Jones. Braveheart led all nominees with ten nominations; Apollo 13 came in second with nine.
The winners were announced during the awards ceremony on March 25, 1996. Braveheart was the ninth film to win Best Picture with no acting nominations. With her Best Supporting Actress win for Mighty Aphrodite, Mira Sorvino became the second consecutive actress to win the aforementioned category for a performance in a film directed by Woody Allen. Best Adapted Screenplay winner Emma Thompson was the first person to win Oscars for both acting and screenwriting. She had previously won Best Actress for her performance in the 1992 film Howards End. This was the first year since the 42nd Academy Awards—and last to date—that none of the acting winners appeared in Best Picture nominees.
Awards
Winners are listed first, highlighted in boldface, and indicated with a double dagger (‡).
Academy Honorary Awards
Chuck Jones
Kirk Douglas
Special Achievement Award
John Lasseter for Toy Story
Multiple nominations and awards
Presenters and performers
The following individuals, listed in order of appearance, presented awards or performed musical numbers.
Presenters
Performers
Ceremony information
As a result of the negative reception of David Letterman's stint as host from the preceding year's ceremony, veteran film and television director Gil Cates declined to helm the upcoming festivities. In November 1995, AMPAS recruited music producer and Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award recipient Quincy Jones as producer of the 1996 ceremony. Jones immediately selected actress and comedian Whoopi Goldberg to host the ceremony. In an interview with Los Angeles Times writer Susan King, Jones explained the decision to hire Goldberg saying, "She has all the qualifications to move on a dime, to carry the elegance and the dignity of the show and is very funny. She understands the street. She has everything."
One segment that was staged during the ceremony was an elaborate fashion show showcasing the nominees for Best Costume Design. Produced by fashion photographer Matthew Rolston, the production featured models such as Cameron Alborzian, Tyson Beckford, Tyra Banks, Marcus Schenkenberg and Joel West sporting various costumes from the five films nominated in the category. Initially, actor Jack Nicholson was approached to introduce the segment along with models Naomi Campbell and Claudia Schiffer. However, actor Pierce Brosnan accepted the role of presenter of the segment and award after Nicholson declined those respective duties.
Several other people and elements were also involved with the production of the ceremony. Jeff Margolis served as director for the program. Actress and talk show host Oprah Winfrey interviewed several nominees and other attendees during a seven-minute red carpet arrival segment shown at the beginning of the telecast. Musician and saxophonist Tom Scott served as musical director for the ceremony. Choreographer Jamie King supervised the performances of the Best Song nominees and two dance numbers. Babe, the pig from the eponymous film, and Miss Piggy participated in a comedy sketch during the proceedings. Actor Christopher Reeve, who was paralyzed in a horse riding accident nearly a year earlier, made a surprise appearance on the telecast urging filmmakers to make movies that face the world's most important issues head-on.
Rainbow Coalition protest
Several days before the ceremony, activist group Rainbow Coalition, led by Reverend Jesse Jackson, planned a protest regarding African Americans and other racial minorities in the film industry. The group was voicing its objections to unflattering portrayals of minorities in film and television and the fact that minorities were underemployed in the entertainment industry. Jackson further pointed out the disparity in racial minorities in Hollywood by noting that Best Live Action Short Film nominee Dianne Houston was the only African American nominated that year. Although the group initially planned to demonstrate outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, an agreement between Jackson and producer Jones caused the protest to be moved adjacent to the broadcast facilities of the local ABC affiliate KABC-TV. Nevertheless, Jones remarked that the Academy Awards were not the appropriate venue for such protest declaring "Why should the movie business be different from anything else in America? It's a problem that permeates everything in the country. Every facet of America discriminates."
Division of Best Original Score category
Beginning with this ceremony, the AMPAS music branch divided the category of Best Original Score into two categories: Best Dramatic Score and Best Musical or Comedy Score. This was seen as a response to the dominance of Walt Disney Feature Animation films in the Original Score and Original Song categories in recent years. Four years later, the two scoring categories were merged back into one category.
Christopher Reeve appearance
At the ceremony, Christopher Reeve presented a montage of films which tackled social issues. His appearance was a surprise to the majority of those present and occurred less than a year after the horse-riding accident in which he was paralyzed. Reeve's appearance was kept secret in part so that if any physical issue came about, he could drop out quietly. He attended an early morning closed-door rehearsal, during which he vetoed the idea of using John Williams' 1978 Superman Theme as entrance music. Reeve, along with Jones, had chosen the film clips used in the montage. Reeve received a two-minute standing ovation at during his appearance.
Box office performance of nominees
At the time of the nominations announcement on February 13, the combined gross of the five Best Picture nominees at the US box office was $333 million, with an average of $66.5 million per film. Apollo 13 was the highest earner among the Best Picture nominees with $172 million in domestic box office receipts. The film was followed by Braveheart ($67 million), Babe ($58.2 million), Sense and Sensibility ($24.6 million) and finally Il Postino: The Postman ($10.7 million).
Of the top 50 grossing movies of the year, 47 nominations went to 14 films on the list. Only Toy Story (2nd), Apollo 13 (3rd), Braveheart (23rd), Babe (29th), 12 Monkeys (31st), Casino (38th) and Mr. Holland's Opus (39th) were nominated for directing, acting, screenwriting, or Best Picture. The other box office hits that earned nominations were Batman Forever (1st), Pocahontas (4th), Seven (9th), Crimson Tide (10th), Waterworld (12th), The Bridges of Madison County (21st), The American President (27th) and Sabrina (34th).
Critical reviews
The show received a positive reception from most media publications. The New York Times film critic Janet Maslin raved, "Mr. Jones pointedly turned this year's ceremony into a showcase for Hollywood's new guard." She also praised host Goldberg's opening monologue, remarking that it "established the sharpness of this year's gag writing." People columnist Janice Min wrote that "the most egregious crime at the 68th Academy Awards on March 25 was–egad!–the relentless elegance and good taste that deprived viewers of genuine, Grade A snicker fodder. Television critic Howard Rosenberg of the Los Angeles Times applauded Goldberg's performance, noting that her "confident performance [...] was symbolic of her whopping improvement as host over her showing on the 1994 Oscars."
Some media outlets were more critical of the show. Chicago Tribune television critic Steve Johnson lamented that Goldberg "settled into bland script reading that made one long for David Letterman's cranky unpredictability in the role last year." He also stated that the "Best Costume Design fashion show" was the silliest opening Oscar production number since Rob Lowe and Snow White sang "Proud Mary" in 1989. Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly bemoaned that the dominance of Best Picture winner Braveheart and the lack of fashion glamour "had the makings of a tiresome evening."
Ratings and reception
The American telecast on ABC drew in an average of 44.81 million people over its length, which was a 9% decrease from the previous year's ceremony. The show also garnered lower Nielsen ratings compared to the previous ceremony, with 30.48% of households watching over a 48.88 share. It also earned a lower 18–49 demographic rating with an 18.76 rating over a 35.27 share among viewers in that demographic.
In July 1996, the ceremony presentation received seven nominations at the 48th Primetime Emmys. Two months later, the ceremony won one of those nominations for Greg Brunton's lighting design and direction during the telecast.
"In Memoriam"
The annual "In Memoriam" tribute was presented by Academy President Arthur Hiller. The montage featured an excerpt of the main title of The Prince of Tides composed by James Newton Howard.
A separate tribute to actor, dancer and veteran Oscar host Gene Kelly featured tap dancer Savion Glover dancing to the song "Singin' in the Rain" from the 1952 film of the same name.
See also
2nd Screen Actors Guild Awards
16th Golden Raspberry Awards
38th Grammy Awards
48th Primetime Emmy Awards
49th British Academy Film Awards
50th Tony Awards
53rd Golden Globe Awards
List of submissions to the 68th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film
References
Bibliography
External links
Official websites
Academy Awards Official website Archived March 4, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Official website Archived January 22, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
Oscar's Channel Archived October 2, 2018, at the Wayback Machine at YouTube (run by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences)
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Video Highlights
Analysis
1995 Academy Awards Winners and History Archived March 31, 2014, at the Wayback Machine Filmsite
Academy Awards, USA: 1996 Archived December 5, 2017, at the Wayback Machine Internet Movie Database
News resources
Academy Awards coverage Archived October 4, 2013, at the Wayback Machine CNN
Other resources
The 68th Annual Academy Awards at IMDb |
Aristotle | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle | [
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] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle"
] | Aristotle (Greek: Ἀριστοτέλης Aristotélēs; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, and the arts. As the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy in the Lyceum in Athens, he began the wider Aristotelian tradition that followed, which set the groundwork for the development of modern science.
Little is known about Aristotle's life. He was born in the city of Stagira in northern Greece during the Classical period. His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, and he was brought up by a guardian. At 17 or 18, he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of 37 (c. 347 BC). Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip II of Macedon, tutored his son Alexander the Great beginning in 343 BC. He established a library in the Lyceum, which helped him to produce many of his hundreds of books on papyrus scrolls.
Though Aristotle wrote many treatises and dialogues for publication, only around a third of his original output has survived, none of it intended for publication. Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him. His teachings and methods of inquiry have had a significant impact across the world, and remain a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion.
Aristotle's views profoundly shaped medieval scholarship. The influence of his physical science extended from late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages into the Renaissance, and was not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such as classical mechanics were developed. He influenced Judeo-Islamic philosophies during the Middle Ages, as well as Christian theology, especially the Neoplatonism of the Early Church and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church.
Aristotle was revered among medieval Muslim scholars as "The First Teacher", and among medieval Christians like Thomas Aquinas as simply "The Philosopher", while the poet Dante called him "the master of those who know". His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, and were studied by medieval scholars such as Peter Abelard and Jean Buridan. Aristotle's influence on logic continued well into the 19th century. In addition, his ethics, although always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics.
Life
In general, the details of Aristotle's life are not well-established. The biographies written in ancient times are often speculative and historians only agree on a few salient points.
Aristotle was born in 384 BC in Stagira, Chalcidice, about 55 km (34 miles) east of modern-day Thessaloniki. His father, Nicomachus, was the personal physician to King Amyntas of Macedon. While he was young, Aristotle learned about biology and medical information, which was taught by his father. Both of Aristotle's parents died when he was about thirteen, and Proxenus of Atarneus became his guardian. Although little information about Aristotle's childhood has survived, he probably spent some time within the Macedonian palace, making his first connections with the Macedonian monarchy.
At the age of seventeen or eighteen, Aristotle moved to Athens to continue his education at Plato's Academy. He probably experienced the Eleusinian Mysteries as he wrote when describing the sights one viewed at the Eleusinian Mysteries, "to experience is to learn" [παθεĩν μαθεĩν]. Aristotle remained in Athens for nearly twenty years before leaving in 348/47 BC. The traditional story about his departure records that he was disappointed with the Academy's direction after control passed to Plato's nephew Speusippus, although it is possible that he feared the anti-Macedonian sentiments in Athens at that time and left before Plato died. Aristotle then accompanied Xenocrates to the court of his friend Hermias of Atarneus in Asia Minor. After the death of Hermias, Aristotle travelled with his pupil Theophrastus to the island of Lesbos, where together they researched the botany and zoology of the island and its sheltered lagoon. While in Lesbos, Aristotle married Pythias, either Hermias's adoptive daughter or niece. They had a daughter, whom they also named Pythias. In 343 BC, Aristotle was invited by Philip II of Macedon to become the tutor to his son Alexander.
Aristotle was appointed as the head of the royal Academy of Macedon. During Aristotle's time in the Macedonian court, he gave lessons not only to Alexander but also to two other future kings: Ptolemy and Cassander. Aristotle encouraged Alexander toward eastern conquest, and Aristotle's own attitude towards Persia was unabashedly ethnocentric. In one famous example, he counsels Alexander to be "a leader to the Greeks and a despot to the barbarians, to look after the former as after friends and relatives, and to deal with the latter as with beasts or plants". By 335 BC, Aristotle had returned to Athens, establishing his own school there known as the Lyceum. Aristotle conducted courses at the school for the next twelve years. While in Athens, his wife Pythias died and Aristotle became involved with Herpyllis of Stagira. They had a son whom Aristotle named after his father, Nicomachus. If the Suda – an uncritical compilation from the Middle Ages – is accurate, he may also have had an erômenos, Palaephatus of Abydus.
This period in Athens, between 335 and 323 BC, is when Aristotle is believed to have composed many of his works. He wrote many dialogues, of which only fragments have survived. Those works that have survived are in treatise form and were not, for the most part, intended for widespread publication; they are generally thought to be lecture aids for his students. His most important treatises include Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, On the Soul and Poetics. Aristotle studied and made significant contributions to "logic, metaphysics, mathematics, physics, biology, botany, ethics, politics, agriculture, medicine, dance, and theatre."
Near the end of Alexander’s life, Aristotle and Alexander became estranged over Alexander's relationship with Persia and Persians, Aristotle having stronger racial prejudice. A widespread speculation in antiquity suggested that Aristotle played a role in Alexander's death, but the only evidence of this is an unlikely claim made some six years after the death. Following Alexander's death, anti-Macedonian sentiment in Athens was rekindled. In 322 BC, Demophilus and Eurymedon the Hierophant reportedly denounced Aristotle for impiety, prompting him to flee to his mother's family estate in Chalcis, on Euboea, at which occasion he was said to have stated: "I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy" – a reference to Athens's trial and execution of Socrates. He died in Chalcis, Euboea of natural causes later that same year, having named his student Antipater as his chief executor and leaving a will in which he asked to be buried next to his wife.
Theoretical philosophy
Logic
With the Prior Analytics, Aristotle is credited with the earliest study of formal logic, and his conception of it was the dominant form of Western logic until 19th-century advances in mathematical logic. Kant stated in the Critique of Pure Reason that with Aristotle, logic reached its completion.
Organon
Most of Aristotle's work is probably not in its original form, because it was most likely edited by students and later lecturers. The logical works of Aristotle were compiled into a set of six books called the Organon around 40 BC by Andronicus of Rhodes or others among his followers. The books are:
Categories
On Interpretation
Prior Analytics
Posterior Analytics
Topics
On Sophistical Refutations
The order of the books (or the teachings from which they are composed) is not certain, but this list was derived from analysis of Aristotle's writings. It goes from the basics, the analysis of simple terms in the Categories, the analysis of propositions and their elementary relations in On Interpretation, to the study of more complex forms, namely, syllogisms (in the Analytics) and dialectics (in the Topics and Sophistical Refutations). The first three treatises form the core of the logical theory stricto sensu: the grammar of the language of logic and the correct rules of reasoning. The Rhetoric is not conventionally included, but it states that it relies on the Topics.
What is today called Aristotelian logic with its types of syllogism (methods of logical argument), Aristotle himself would have labelled "analytics". The term "logic" he reserved to mean dialectics.
Metaphysics
The word "metaphysics" appears to have been coined by the first century AD editor who assembled various small selections of Aristotle's works to create the treatise we know by the name Metaphysics. Aristotle called it "first philosophy", and distinguished it from mathematics and natural science (physics) as the contemplative (theoretikē) philosophy which is "theological" and studies the divine. He wrote in his Metaphysics (1026a16):
If there were no other independent things besides the composite natural ones, the study of nature would be the primary kind of knowledge; but if there is some motionless independent thing, the knowledge of this precedes it and is first philosophy, and it is universal in just this way, because it is first. And it belongs to this sort of philosophy to study being as being, both what it is and what belongs to it just by virtue of being.
Substance
Aristotle examines the concepts of substance (ousia) and essence (to ti ên einai, "the what it was to be") in his Metaphysics (Book VII), and he concludes that a particular substance is a combination of both matter and form, a philosophical theory called hylomorphism. In Book VIII, he distinguishes the matter of the substance as the substratum, or the stuff of which it is composed. For example, the matter of a house is the bricks, stones, timbers, etc., or whatever constitutes the potential house, while the form of the substance is the actual house, namely 'covering for bodies and chattels' or any other differentia that let us define something as a house. The formula that gives the components is the account of the matter, and the formula that gives the differentia is the account of the form.
Immanent realism
Like his teacher Plato, Aristotle's philosophy aims at the universal. Aristotle's ontology places the universal (katholou) in particulars (kath' hekaston), things in the world, whereas for Plato the universal is a separately existing form which actual things imitate. For Aristotle, "form" is still what phenomena are based on, but is "instantiated" in a particular substance.
Plato argued that all things have a universal form, which could be either a property or a relation to other things. When one looks at an apple, for example, one sees an apple, and one can also analyse a form of an apple. In this distinction, there is a particular apple and a universal form of an apple. Moreover, one can place an apple next to a book, so that one can speak of both the book and apple as being next to each other. Plato argued that there are some universal forms that are not a part of particular things. For example, it is possible that there is no particular good in existence, but "good" is still a proper universal form. Aristotle disagreed with Plato on this point, arguing that all universals are instantiated at some period of time, and that there are no universals that are unattached to existing things. In addition, Aristotle disagreed with Plato about the location of universals. Where Plato spoke of the forms as existing separately from the things that participate in them, Aristotle maintained that universals exist within each thing on which each universal is predicated. So, according to Aristotle, the form of apple exists within each apple, rather than in the world of the forms.
Potentiality and actuality
Concerning the nature of change (kinesis) and its causes, as he outlines in his Physics and On Generation and Corruption (319b–320a), he distinguishes coming-to-be (genesis, also translated as 'generation') from:
growth and diminution, which is change in quantity;
locomotion, which is change in space; and
alteration, which is change in quality.
Coming-to-be is a change where the substrate of the thing that has undergone the change has itself changed. In that particular change he introduces the concept of potentiality (dynamis) and actuality (entelecheia) in association with the matter and the form. Referring to potentiality, this is what a thing is capable of doing or being acted upon if the conditions are right and it is not prevented by something else. For example, the seed of a plant in the soil is potentially (dynamei) a plant, and if it is not prevented by something, it will become a plant. Potentially, beings can either 'act' (poiein) or 'be acted upon' (paschein), which can be either innate or learned. For example, the eyes possess the potentiality of sight (innate – being acted upon), while the capability of playing the flute can be possessed by learning (exercise – acting). Actuality is the fulfilment of the end of the potentiality. Because the end (telos) is the principle of every change, and potentiality exists for the sake of the end, actuality, accordingly, is the end. Referring then to the previous example, it can be said that an actuality is when a plant does one of the activities that plants do.
For that for the sake of which (to hou heneka) a thing is, is its principle, and the becoming is for the sake of the end; and the actuality is the end, and it is for the sake of this that the potentiality is acquired. For animals do not see in order that they may have sight, but they have sight that they may see.
In summary, the matter used to make a house has potentiality to be a house and both the activity of building and the form of the final house are actualities, which is also a final cause or end. Then Aristotle proceeds and concludes that the actuality is prior to potentiality in formula, in time and in substantiality. With this definition of the particular substance (i.e., matter and form), Aristotle tries to solve the problem of the unity of the beings, for example, "what is it that makes a man one"? Since, according to Plato there are two Ideas: animal and biped, how then is man a unity? However, according to Aristotle, the potential being (matter) and the actual one (form) are one and the same.
Epistemology
Aristotle's immanent realism means his epistemology is based on the study of things that exist or happen in the world, and rises to knowledge of the universal, whereas for Plato epistemology begins with knowledge of universal Forms (or ideas) and descends to knowledge of particular imitations of these. Aristotle uses induction from examples alongside deduction, whereas Plato relies on deduction from a priori principles.
Natural philosophy
Aristotle's "natural philosophy" spans a wide range of natural phenomena including those now covered by physics, biology and other natural sciences. In Aristotle's terminology, "natural philosophy" is a branch of philosophy examining the phenomena of the natural world, and includes fields that would be regarded today as physics, biology and other natural sciences. Aristotle's work encompassed virtually all facets of intellectual inquiry. Aristotle makes philosophy in the broad sense coextensive with reasoning, which he also would describe as "science". However, his use of the term science carries a different meaning than that covered by the term "scientific method". For Aristotle, "all science (dianoia) is either practical, poetical or theoretical" (Metaphysics 1025b25). His practical science includes ethics and politics; his poetical science means the study of fine arts including poetry; his theoretical science covers physics, mathematics and metaphysics.
Physics
Five elements
In his On Generation and Corruption, Aristotle related each of the four elements proposed earlier by Empedocles, earth, water, air, and fire, to two of the four sensible qualities, hot, cold, wet, and dry. In the Empedoclean scheme, all matter was made of the four elements, in differing proportions. Aristotle's scheme added the heavenly aether, the divine substance of the heavenly spheres, stars and planets.
Motion
Aristotle describes two kinds of motion: "violent" or "unnatural motion", such as that of a thrown stone, in the Physics (254b10), and "natural motion", such as of a falling object, in On the Heavens (300a20). In violent motion, as soon as the agent stops causing it, the motion stops also: in other words, the natural state of an object is to be at rest, since Aristotle does not address friction. With this understanding, it can be observed that, as Aristotle stated, heavy objects (on the ground, say) require more force to make them move; and objects pushed with greater force move faster. This would imply the equation
F
=
m
v
{\displaystyle F=mv}
,
incorrect in modern physics.
Natural motion depends on the element concerned: the aether naturally moves in a circle around the heavens, while the 4 Empedoclean elements move vertically up (like fire, as is observed) or down (like earth) towards their natural resting places.
In the Physics (215a25), Aristotle effectively states a quantitative law, that the speed, v, of a falling body is proportional (say, with constant c) to its weight, W, and inversely proportional to the density, ρ, of the fluid in which it is falling:;
v
=
c
W
ρ
{\displaystyle v=c{\frac {W}{\rho }}}
Aristotle implies that in a vacuum the speed of fall would become infinite, and concludes from this apparent absurdity that a vacuum is not possible. Opinions have varied on whether Aristotle intended to state quantitative laws. Henri Carteron held the "extreme view" that Aristotle's concept of force was basically qualitative, but other authors reject this.
Archimedes corrected Aristotle's theory that bodies move towards their natural resting places; metal boats can float if they displace enough water; floating depends in Archimedes' scheme on the mass and volume of the object, not, as Aristotle thought, its elementary composition.
Aristotle's writings on motion remained influential until the Early Modern period. John Philoponus (in Late antiquity) and Galileo (in Early modern period) are said to have shown by experiment that Aristotle's claim that a heavier object falls faster than a lighter object is incorrect. A contrary opinion is given by Carlo Rovelli, who argues that Aristotle's physics of motion is correct within its domain of validity, that of objects in the Earth's gravitational field immersed in a fluid such as air. In this system, heavy bodies in steady fall indeed travel faster than light ones (whether friction is ignored, or not), and they do fall more slowly in a denser medium.
Newton's "forced" motion corresponds to Aristotle's "violent" motion with its external agent, but Aristotle's assumption that the agent's effect stops immediately it stops acting (e.g., the ball leaves the thrower's hand) has awkward consequences: he has to suppose that surrounding fluid helps to push the ball along to make it continue to rise even though the hand is no longer acting on it, resulting in the Medieval theory of impetus.
Four causes
Aristotle suggested that the reason for anything coming about can be attributed to four different types of simultaneously active factors. His term aitia is traditionally translated as "cause", but it does not always refer to temporal sequence; it might be better translated as "explanation", but the traditional rendering will be employed here.
Material cause describes the material out of which something is composed. Thus the material cause of a table is wood. It is not about action. It does not mean that one domino knocks over another domino.
The formal cause is its form, i.e., the arrangement of that matter. It tells one what a thing is, that a thing is determined by the definition, form, pattern, essence, whole, synthesis or archetype. It embraces the account of causes in terms of fundamental principles or general laws, as the whole (i.e., macrostructure) is the cause of its parts, a relationship known as the whole-part causation. Plainly put, the formal cause is the idea in the mind of the sculptor that brings the sculpture into being. A simple example of the formal cause is the mental image or idea that allows an artist, architect, or engineer to create a drawing.
The efficient cause is "the primary source", or that from which the change under consideration proceeds. It identifies 'what makes of what is made and what causes change of what is changed' and so suggests all sorts of agents, non-living or living, acting as the sources of change or movement or rest. Representing the current understanding of causality as the relation of cause and effect, this covers the modern definitions of "cause" as either the agent or agency or particular events or states of affairs. In the case of two dominoes, when the first is knocked over it causes the second also to fall over. In the case of animals, this agency is a combination of how it develops from the egg, and how its body functions.
The final cause (telos) is its purpose, the reason why a thing exists or is done, including both purposeful and instrumental actions and activities. The final cause is the purpose or function that something is supposed to serve. This covers modern ideas of motivating causes, such as volition. In the case of living things, it implies adaptation to a particular way of life.
Optics
Aristotle describes experiments in optics using a camera obscura in Problems, book 15. The apparatus consisted of a dark chamber with a small aperture that let light in. With it, he saw that whatever shape he made the hole, the sun's image always remained circular. He also noted that increasing the distance between the aperture and the image surface magnified the image.
Chance and spontaneity
According to Aristotle, spontaneity and chance are causes of some things, distinguishable from other types of cause such as simple necessity. Chance as an incidental cause lies in the realm of accidental things, "from what is spontaneous". There is also more a specific kind of chance, which Aristotle names "luck", that only applies to people's moral choices.
Astronomy
In astronomy, Aristotle refuted Democritus's claim that the Milky Way was made up of "those stars which are shaded by the earth from the sun's rays," pointing out partly correctly that if "the size of the sun is greater than that of the earth and the distance of the stars from the earth many times greater than that of the sun, then... the sun shines on all the stars and the earth screens none of them." He also wrote descriptions of comets, including the Great Comet of 371 BC.
Geology and natural sciences
Aristotle was one of the first people to record any geological observations. He stated that geological change was too slow to be observed in one person's lifetime.
The geologist Charles Lyell noted that Aristotle described such change, including "lakes that had dried up" and "deserts that had become watered by rivers", giving as examples the growth of the Nile delta since the time of Homer, and "the upheaving of one of the Aeolian islands, previous to a volcanic eruption."'
Meteorologica lends its name to the modern study of meteorology, but its modern usage diverges from the content of Aristotle's ancient treatise on meteors. The ancient Greeks did use the term for a range of atmospheric phenomena, but also for earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Aristotle proposed that the cause of earthquakes was a gas or vapor (anathymiaseis) that was trapped inside the earth and trying to escape, following other Greek authors Anaxagoras, Empedocles and Democritus.
Aristotle also made many observations about the hydrologic cycle. For example, he made some of the earliest observations about desalination: he observed early – and correctly – that when seawater is heated, freshwater evaporates and that the oceans are then replenished by the cycle of rainfall and river runoff ("I have proved by experiment that salt water evaporated forms fresh and the vapor does not when it condenses condense into sea water again.")
Biology
Empirical research
Aristotle was the first person to study biology systematically, and biology forms a large part of his writings. He spent two years observing and describing the zoology of Lesbos and the surrounding seas, including in particular the Pyrrha lagoon in the centre of Lesbos. His data in History of Animals, Generation of Animals, Movement of Animals, and Parts of Animals are assembled from his own observations, statements given by people with specialized knowledge, such as beekeepers and fishermen, and less accurate accounts provided by travellers from overseas. His apparent emphasis on animals rather than plants is a historical accident: his works on botany have been lost, but two books on plants by his pupil Theophrastus have survived.
Aristotle reports on the sea-life visible from observation on Lesbos and the catches of fishermen. He describes the catfish, electric ray, and frogfish in detail, as well as cephalopods such as the octopus and paper nautilus. His description of the hectocotyl arm of cephalopods, used in sexual reproduction, was widely disbelieved until the 19th century. He gives accurate descriptions of the four-chambered fore-stomachs of ruminants, and of the ovoviviparous embryological development of the hound shark.
He notes that an animal's structure is well matched to function so birds like the heron (which live in marshes with soft mud and live by catching fish) have a long neck, long legs, and a sharp spear-like beak, whereas ducks that swim have short legs and webbed feet. Darwin, too, noted these sorts of differences between similar kinds of animal, but unlike Aristotle used the data to come to the theory of evolution. Aristotle's writings can seem to modern readers close to implying evolution, but while Aristotle was aware that new mutations or hybridizations could occur, he saw these as rare accidents. For Aristotle, accidents, like heat waves in winter, must be considered distinct from natural causes. He was thus critical of Empedocles's materialist theory of a "survival of the fittest" origin of living things and their organs, and ridiculed the idea that accidents could lead to orderly results. To put his views into modern terms, he nowhere says that different species can have a common ancestor, or that one kind can change into another, or that kinds can become extinct.
Scientific style
Aristotle did not do experiments in the modern sense. He used the ancient Greek term pepeiramenoi to mean observations, or at most investigative procedures like dissection. In Generation of Animals, he finds a fertilized hen's egg of a suitable stage and opens it to see the embryo's heart beating inside.
Instead, he practiced a different style of science: systematically gathering data, discovering patterns common to whole groups of animals, and inferring possible causal explanations from these. This style is common in modern biology when large amounts of data become available in a new field, such as genomics. It does not result in the same certainty as experimental science, but it sets out testable hypotheses and constructs a narrative explanation of what is observed. In this sense, Aristotle's biology is scientific.
From the data he collected and documented, Aristotle inferred quite a number of rules relating the life-history features of the live-bearing tetrapods (terrestrial placental mammals) that he studied. Among these correct predictions are the following. Brood size decreases with (adult) body mass, so that an elephant has fewer young (usually just one) per brood than a mouse. Lifespan increases with gestation period, and also with body mass, so that elephants live longer than mice, have a longer period of gestation, and are heavier. As a final example, fecundity decreases with lifespan, so long-lived kinds like elephants have fewer young in total than short-lived kinds like mice.
Classification of living things
Aristotle distinguished about 500 species of animals, arranging these in the History of Animals in a graded scale of perfection, a nonreligious version of the scala naturae, with man at the top. His system had eleven grades of animal, from highest potential to lowest, expressed in their form at birth: the highest gave live birth to hot and wet creatures, the lowest laid cold, dry mineral-like eggs. Animals came above plants, and these in turn were above minerals. He grouped what the modern zoologist would call vertebrates as the hotter "animals with blood", and below them the colder invertebrates as "animals without blood". Those with blood were divided into the live-bearing (mammals), and the egg-laying (birds, reptiles, fish). Those without blood were insects, crustacea (non-shelled – cephalopods, and shelled) and the hard-shelled molluscs (bivalves and gastropods). He recognised that animals did not exactly fit into a linear scale, and noted various exceptions, such as that sharks had a placenta like the tetrapods. To a modern biologist, the explanation, not available to Aristotle, is convergent evolution. Philosophers of science have generally concluded that Aristotle was not interested in taxonomy, but zoologists who studied this question in the early 21st century think otherwise. He believed that purposive final causes guided all natural processes; this teleological view justified his observed data as an expression of formal design.
Psychology
Soul
Aristotle's psychology, given in his treatise On the Soul (peri psychēs), posits three kinds of soul ("psyches"): the vegetative soul, the sensitive soul, and the rational soul. Humans have all three. The vegetative soul is concerned with growth and nourishment. The sensitive soul experiences sensations and movement. The unique part of the human, rational soul is its ability to receive forms of other things and to compare them using the nous (intellect) and logos (reason).
For Aristotle, the soul is the form of a living being. Because all beings are composites of form and matter, the form of living beings is that which endows them with what is specific to living beings, e.g. the ability to initiate movement (or in the case of plants, growth and transformations, which Aristotle considers types of movement). In contrast to earlier philosophers, but in accordance with the Egyptians, he placed the rational soul in the heart, rather than the brain. Notable is Aristotle's division of sensation and thought, which generally differed from the concepts of previous philosophers, with the exception of Alcmaeon.
In On the Soul, Aristotle famously criticizes Plato's theory of the soul and develops his own in response. The first criticism is against Plato's view of the soul in the Timaeus that the soul takes up space and is able to come into physical contact with bodies. 20th-century scholarship overwhelmingly opposed Aristotle's interpretation of Plato and maintained that he had misunderstood him. Today's scholars have tended to re-assess Aristotle's interpretation and been more positive about it. Aristotle's other criticism is that Plato's view of reincarnation entails that it is possible for a soul and its body to be mis-matched; in principle, Aristotle alleges, any soul can go with any body, according to Plato's theory. Aristotle's claim that the soul is the form of a living being eliminates that possibility and thus rules out reincarnation.
Memory
According to Aristotle in On the Soul, memory is the ability to hold a perceived experience in the mind and to distinguish between the internal "appearance" and an occurrence in the past. In other words, a memory is a mental picture (phantasm) that can be recovered. Aristotle believed an impression is left on a semi-fluid bodily organ that undergoes several changes in order to make a memory. A memory occurs when stimuli such as sights or sounds are so complex that the nervous system cannot receive all the impressions at once. These changes are the same as those involved in the operations of sensation, Aristotelian 'common sense', and thinking.
Aristotle uses the term 'memory' for the actual retaining of an experience in the impression that can develop from sensation, and for the intellectual anxiety that comes with the impression because it is formed at a particular time and processing specific contents. Memory is of the past, prediction is of the future, and sensation is of the present. Retrieval of impressions cannot be performed suddenly. A transitional channel is needed and located in past experiences, both for previous experience and present experience.
Because Aristotle believes people receive all kinds of sense perceptions and perceive them as impressions, people are continually weaving together new impressions of experiences. To search for these impressions, people search the memory itself. Within the memory, if one experience is offered instead of a specific memory, that person will reject this experience until they find what they are looking for. Recollection occurs when one retrieved experience naturally follows another. If the chain of "images" is needed, one memory will stimulate the next. When people recall experiences, they stimulate certain previous experiences until they reach the one that is needed. Recollection is thus the self-directed activity of retrieving the information stored in a memory impression. Only humans can remember impressions of intellectual activity, such as numbers and words. Animals that have perception of time can retrieve memories of their past observations. Remembering involves only perception of the things remembered and of the time passed.
Aristotle believed the chain of thought, which ends in recollection of certain impressions, was connected systematically in relationships such as similarity, contrast, and contiguity, described in his laws of association. Aristotle believed that past experiences are hidden within the mind. A force operates to awaken the hidden material to bring up the actual experience. According to Aristotle, association is the power innate in a mental state, which operates upon the unexpressed remains of former experiences, allowing them to rise and be recalled.
Dreams
Aristotle describes sleep in On Sleep and Wakefulness. Sleep takes place as a result of overuse of the senses or of digestion, so it is vital to the body. While a person is asleep, the critical activities, which include thinking, sensing, recalling and remembering, do not function as they do during wakefulness. Since a person cannot sense during sleep, they cannot have desire, which is the result of sensation. However, the senses are able to work during sleep, albeit differently, unless they are weary.
Dreams do not involve actually sensing a stimulus. In dreams, sensation is still involved, but in an altered manner. Aristotle explains that when a person stares at a moving stimulus such as the waves in a body of water, and then looks away, the next thing they look at appears to have a wavelike motion. When a person perceives a stimulus and the stimulus is no longer the focus of their attention, it leaves an impression. When the body is awake and the senses are functioning properly, a person constantly encounters new stimuli to sense and so the impressions of previously perceived stimuli are ignored. However, during sleep the impressions made throughout the day are noticed as there are no new distracting sensory experiences. So, dreams result from these lasting impressions. Since impressions are all that are left and not the exact stimuli, dreams do not resemble the actual waking experience. During sleep, a person is in an altered state of mind. Aristotle compares a sleeping person to a person who is overtaken by strong feelings toward a stimulus. For example, a person who has a strong infatuation with someone may begin to think they see that person everywhere because they are so overtaken by their feelings. Since a person sleeping is in a suggestible state and unable to make judgements, they become easily deceived by what appears in their dreams, like the infatuated person. This leads the person to believe the dream is real, even when the dreams are absurd in nature. In De Anima iii 3, Aristotle ascribes the ability to create, to store, and to recall images in the absence of perception to the faculty of imagination, phantasia.
One component of Aristotle's theory of dreams disagrees with previously held beliefs. He claimed that dreams are not foretelling and not sent by a divine being. Aristotle reasoned naturalistically that instances in which dreams do resemble future events are simply coincidences. Aristotle claimed that a dream is first established by the fact that the person is asleep when they experience it. If a person had an image appear for a moment after waking up or if they see something in the dark it is not considered a dream because they were awake when it occurred. Secondly, any sensory experience that is perceived while a person is asleep does not qualify as part of a dream. For example, if, while a person is sleeping, a door shuts and in their dream they hear a door is shut, this sensory experience is not part of the dream. Lastly, the images of dreams must be a result of lasting impressions of waking sensory experiences.
Practical philosophy
Aristotle's practical philosophy covers areas such as ethics, politics, economics, and rhetoric.
Ethics
Aristotle considered ethics to be a practical rather than theoretical study, i.e., one aimed at becoming good and doing good rather than knowing for its own sake. He wrote several treatises on ethics, most notably including the Nicomachean Ethics.
Aristotle taught that virtue has to do with the proper function (ergon) of a thing. An eye is only a good eye in so much as it can see, because the proper function of an eye is sight. Aristotle reasoned that humans must have a function specific to humans, and that this function must be an activity of the psuchē (soul) in accordance with reason (logos). Aristotle identified such an optimum activity (the virtuous mean, between the accompanying vices of excess or deficiency) of the soul as the aim of all human deliberate action, eudaimonia, generally translated as "happiness" or sometimes "well-being". To have the potential of ever being happy in this way necessarily requires a good character (ēthikē aretē), often translated as moral or ethical virtue or excellence.
Aristotle taught that to achieve a virtuous and potentially happy character requires a first stage of having the fortune to be habituated not deliberately, but by teachers, and experience, leading to a later stage in which one consciously chooses to do the best things. When the best people come to live life this way their practical wisdom (phronesis) and their intellect (nous) can develop with each other towards the highest possible human virtue, the wisdom of an accomplished theoretical or speculative thinker, or in other words, a philosopher.
Politics
In addition to his works on ethics, which address the individual, Aristotle addressed the city in his work titled Politics. Aristotle considered the city to be a natural community. Moreover, he considered the city to be prior in importance to the family, which in turn is prior to the individual, "for the whole must of necessity be prior to the part". He famously stated that "man is by nature a political animal" and argued that humanity's defining factor among others in the animal kingdom is its rationality. Aristotle conceived of politics as being like an organism rather than like a machine, and as a collection of parts none of which can exist without the others. Aristotle's conception of the city is organic, and he is considered one of the first to conceive of the city in this manner.
The common modern understanding of a political community as a modern state is quite different from Aristotle's understanding. Although he was aware of the existence and potential of larger empires, the natural community according to Aristotle was the city (polis) which functions as a political "community" or "partnership" (koinōnia). The aim of the city is not just to avoid injustice or for economic stability, but rather to allow at least some citizens the possibility to live a good life, and to perform beautiful acts: "The political partnership must be regarded, therefore, as being for the sake of noble actions, not for the sake of living together." This is distinguished from modern approaches, beginning with social contract theory, according to which individuals leave the state of nature because of "fear of violent death" or its "inconveniences".
In Protrepticus, the character 'Aristotle' states:
For we all agree that the most excellent man should rule, i.e., the supreme by nature, and that the law rules and alone is authoritative; but the law is a kind of intelligence, i.e. a discourse based on intelligence. And again, what standard do we have, what criterion of good things, that is more precise than the intelligent man? For all that this man will choose, if the choice is based on his knowledge, are good things and their contraries are bad. And since everybody chooses most of all what conforms to their own proper dispositions (a just man choosing to live justly, a man with bravery to live bravely, likewise a self-controlled man to live with self-control), it is clear that the intelligent man will choose most of all to be intelligent; for this is the function of that capacity. Hence it's evident that, according to the most authoritative judgment, intelligence is supreme among goods.
As Plato's disciple Aristotle was rather critical concerning democracy and, following the outline of certain ideas from Plato's Statesman, he developed a coherent theory of integrating various forms of power into a so-called mixed state:
It is ... constitutional to take ... from oligarchy that offices are to be elected, and from democracy that this is not to be on a property-qualification. This then is the mode of the mixture; and the mark of a good mixture of democracy and oligarchy is when it is possible to speak of the same constitution as a democracy and as an oligarchy.
Economics
Aristotle made substantial contributions to economic thought, especially to thought in the Middle Ages. In Politics, Aristotle addresses the city, property, and trade. His response to criticisms of private property, in Lionel Robbins's view, anticipated later proponents of private property among philosophers and economists, as it related to the overall utility of social arrangements. Aristotle believed that although communal arrangements may seem beneficial to society, and that although private property is often blamed for social strife, such evils in fact come from human nature. In Politics, Aristotle offers one of the earliest accounts of the origin of money. Money came into use because people became dependent on one another, importing what they needed and exporting the surplus. For the sake of convenience, people then agreed to deal in something that is intrinsically useful and easily applicable, such as iron or silver.
Aristotle's discussions on retail and interest was a major influence on economic thought in the Middle Ages. He had a low opinion of retail, believing that contrary to using money to procure things one needs in managing the household, retail trade seeks to make a profit. It thus uses goods as a means to an end, rather than as an end unto itself. He believed that retail trade was in this way unnatural. Similarly, Aristotle considered making a profit through interest unnatural, as it makes a gain out of the money itself, and not from its use.
Aristotle gave a summary of the function of money that was perhaps remarkably precocious for his time. He wrote that because it is impossible to determine the value of every good through a count of the number of other goods it is worth, the necessity arises of a single universal standard of measurement. Money thus allows for the association of different goods and makes them "commensurable". He goes on to state that money is also useful for future exchange, making it a sort of security. That is, "if we do not want a thing now, we shall be able to get it when we do want it".
Rhetoric
Aristotle's Rhetoric proposes that a speaker can use three basic kinds of appeals to persuade his audience: ethos (an appeal to the speaker's character), pathos (an appeal to the audience's emotion), and logos (an appeal to logical reasoning). He also categorizes rhetoric into three genres: epideictic (ceremonial speeches dealing with praise or blame), forensic (judicial speeches over guilt or innocence), and deliberative (speeches calling on an audience to make a decision on an issue). Aristotle also outlines two kinds of rhetorical proofs: enthymeme (proof by syllogism) and paradeigma (proof by example).
Poetics
Aristotle writes in his Poetics that epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, dithyrambic poetry, painting, sculpture, music, and dance are all fundamentally acts of mimesis ("imitation"), each varying in imitation by medium, object, and manner. He applies the term mimesis both as a property of a work of art and also as the product of the artist's intention and contends that the audience's realisation of the mimesis is vital to understanding the work itself. Aristotle states that mimesis is a natural instinct of humanity that separates humans from animals and that all human artistry "follows the pattern of nature". Because of this, Aristotle believed that each of the mimetic arts possesses what Stephen Halliwell calls "highly structured procedures for the achievement of their purposes." For example, music imitates with the media of rhythm and harmony, whereas dance imitates with rhythm alone, and poetry with language. The forms also differ in their object of imitation. Comedy, for instance, is a dramatic imitation of men worse than average; whereas tragedy imitates men slightly better than average. Lastly, the forms differ in their manner of imitation – through narrative or character, through change or no change, and through drama or no drama.
While it is believed that Aristotle's Poetics originally comprised two books – one on comedy and one on tragedy – only the portion that focuses on tragedy has survived. Aristotle taught that tragedy is composed of six elements: plot-structure, character, style, thought, spectacle, and lyric poetry. The characters in a tragedy are merely a means of driving the story; and the plot, not the characters, is the chief focus of tragedy. Tragedy is the imitation of action arousing pity and fear, and is meant to effect the catharsis of those same emotions. Aristotle concludes Poetics with a discussion on which, if either, is superior: epic or tragic mimesis. He suggests that because tragedy possesses all the attributes of an epic, possibly possesses additional attributes such as spectacle and music, is more unified, and achieves the aim of its mimesis in shorter scope, it can be considered superior to epic. Aristotle was a keen systematic collector of riddles, folklore, and proverbs; he and his school had a special interest in the riddles of the Delphic Oracle and studied the fables of Aesop.
Gender and sexuality
Aristotle asserted that men were superior to women writing "the male is by nature superior and the female inferior, the male ruler and the female subject".
On this ground, proponents of feminist metaphysics have accused Aristotle of misogyny and sexism. However, Aristotle gave equal weight to women's happiness as he did to men's, and commented in his Rhetoric that the things that lead to happiness need to be in women as well as men.
Aristotle, like other Greek philosophers such Plato and Xenophon, rejected homosexuality, believing that it could lead people to become immoral due to the fact that he believed it went against nature's purpose.
Transmission
More than 2300 years after his death, Aristotle remains one of the most influential people who ever lived. He contributed to almost every field of human knowledge then in existence, and he was the founder of many new fields. According to the philosopher Bryan Magee, "it is doubtful whether any human being has ever known as much as he did".
Among countless other achievements, Aristotle was the founder of formal logic, pioneered the study of zoology, and left every future scientist and philosopher in his debt through his contributions to the scientific method. Taneli Kukkonen, observes that his achievement in founding two sciences is unmatched, and his reach in influencing "every branch of intellectual enterprise" including Western ethical and political theory, theology, rhetoric, and literary analysis is equally long. As a result, Kukkonen argues, any analysis of reality today "will almost certainly carry Aristotelian overtones ... evidence of an exceptionally forceful mind." Jonathan Barnes wrote that "an account of Aristotle's intellectual afterlife would be little less than a history of European thought".
Aristotle has been called the father of logic, biology, political science, zoology, embryology, natural law, scientific method, rhetoric, psychology, realism, criticism, individualism, teleology, and meteorology.
The scholar Taneli Kukkonen notes that "in the best 20th-century scholarship Aristotle comes alive as a thinker wrestling with the full weight of the Greek philosophical tradition." What follows is an overview of the transmission and influence of his texts and ideas into the modern era.
His successor, Theophrastus
Aristotle's pupil and successor, Theophrastus, wrote the History of Plants, a pioneering work in botany. Some of his technical terms remain in use, such as carpel from carpos, fruit, and pericarp, from pericarpion, seed chamber.
Theophrastus was much less concerned with formal causes than Aristotle was, instead pragmatically describing how plants functioned.
Later Greek philosophy
The immediate influence of Aristotle's work was felt as the Lyceum grew into the Peripatetic school. Aristotle's students included Aristoxenus, Dicaearchus, Demetrius of Phalerum, Eudemos of Rhodes, Harpalus, Hephaestion, Mnason of Phocis, Nicomachus, and Theophrastus. Aristotle's influence over Alexander the Great is seen in the latter's bringing with him on his expedition a host of zoologists, botanists, and researchers. He had also learned a great deal about Persian customs and traditions from his teacher. Although his respect for Aristotle was diminished as his travels made it clear that much of Aristotle's geography was clearly wrong, when the old philosopher released his works to the public, Alexander complained "Thou hast not done well to publish thy acroamatic doctrines; for in what shall I surpass other men if those doctrines wherein I have been trained are to be all men's common property?"
Hellenistic science
After Theophrastus, the Lyceum failed to produce any original work. Though interest in Aristotle's ideas survived, they were generally taken unquestioningly. It is not until the age of Alexandria under the Ptolemies that advances in biology can be again found.
The first medical teacher at Alexandria, Herophilus of Chalcedon, corrected Aristotle, placing intelligence in the brain, and connected the nervous system to motion and sensation. Herophilus also distinguished between veins and arteries, noting that the latter pulse while the former do not. Though a few ancient atomists such as Lucretius challenged the teleological viewpoint of Aristotelian ideas about life, teleology (and after the rise of Christianity, natural theology) would remain central to biological thought essentially until the 18th and 19th centuries. Ernst Mayr states that there was "nothing of any real consequence in biology after Lucretius and Galen until the Renaissance."
Revival
Following the decline of the Roman Empire, Aristotle's vast philosophical and scientific corpus lay largely dormant in the West. However, his works underwent a remarkable revival in the Abbasid Caliphate. Translated into Arabic alongside other Greek classics, Aristotle's logic, ethics, and natural philosophy ignited the minds of early Islamic scholars.
Through meticulous commentaries and critical engagements, figures like Al-Farabi and Ibn Sina (Avicenna) breathed new life into Aristotle's ideas. They harmonized his logic with Islamic theology, employed his scientific methodologies to explore the natural world, and even reinterpreted his ethics within the framework of Islamic morality. This revival was not mere imitation. Islamic thinkers embraced Aristotle's rigorous methods while simultaneously challenging his conclusions where they diverged from their own religious beliefs.
Byzantine scholars
Greek Christian scribes played a crucial role in the preservation of Aristotle by copying all the extant Greek language manuscripts of the corpus. The first Greek Christians to comment extensively on Aristotle were Philoponus, Elias, and David in the sixth century, and Stephen of Alexandria in the early seventh century. John Philoponus stands out for having attempted a fundamental critique of Aristotle's views on the eternity of the world, movement, and other elements of Aristotelian thought. Philoponus questioned Aristotle's teaching of physics, noting its flaws and introducing the theory of impetus to explain his observations.
After a hiatus of several centuries, formal commentary by Eustratius and Michael of Ephesus reappeared in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, apparently sponsored by Anna Comnena.
Medieval Islamic world
Aristotle was one of the most revered thinkers in early Islamic theology. Most of the still extant works of Aristotle, as well as a number of the original Greek commentaries, were translated into Arabic and studied by Muslim philosophers, scientists and scholars. Averroes, Avicenna and Alpharabius, who wrote on Aristotle in great depth, also influenced Thomas Aquinas and other Western Christian scholastic philosophers. Alkindus greatly admired Aristotle's philosophy, and Averroes spoke of Aristotle as the "exemplar" for all future philosophers. Medieval Muslim scholars regularly described Aristotle as the "First Teacher". The title was later used by Western philosophers (as in the famous poem of Dante) who were influenced by the tradition of Islamic philosophy.
Medieval Europe
With the loss of the study of ancient Greek in the early medieval Latin West, Aristotle was practically unknown there from c. CE 600 to c. 1100 except through the Latin translation of the Organon made by Boethius. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, interest in Aristotle revived and Latin Christians had translations made, both from Arabic translations, such as those by Gerard of Cremona, and from the original Greek, such as those by James of Venice and William of Moerbeke.
After the Scholastic Thomas Aquinas wrote his Summa Theologica, working from Moerbeke's translations and calling Aristotle "The Philosopher", the demand for Aristotle's writings grew, and the Greek manuscripts returned to the West, stimulating a revival of Aristotelianism in Europe that continued into the Renaissance. These thinkers blended Aristotelian philosophy with Christianity, bringing the thought of Ancient Greece into the Middle Ages. Scholars such as Boethius, Peter Abelard, and John Buridan worked on Aristotelian logic.
According to scholar Roger Theodore Lafferty, Dante built up the philosophy of the Comedy with the works of Aristotle as a foundation, just as the scholastics used Aristotle as the basis for their thinking. Dante knew Aristotle directly from Latin translations of his works and indirectly through quotations in the works of Albert Magnus. Dante even acknowledges Aristotle's influence explicitly in the poem, specifically when Virgil justifies the Inferno's structure by citing the Nicomachean Ethics. Dante famously refers to him as "he / Who is acknowledged Master of those who know".
Medieval Judaism
Moses Maimonides (considered to be the foremost intellectual figure of medieval Judaism) adopted Aristotelianism from the Islamic scholars and based his Guide for the Perplexed on it and that became the basis of Jewish scholastic philosophy. Maimonides also considered Aristotle to be the greatest philosopher that ever lived, and styled him as the "chief of the philosophers". Also, in his letter to Samuel ibn Tibbon, Maimonides observes that there is no need for Samuel to study the writings of philosophers who preceded Aristotle because the works of the latter are "sufficient by themselves and [superior] to all that were written before them. His intellect, Aristotle's is the extreme limit of human intellect, apart from him upon whom the divine emanation has flowed forth to such an extent that they reach the level of prophecy, there being no level higher".
Early Modern science
In the Early Modern period, scientists such as William Harvey in England and Galileo Galilei in Italy reacted against the theories of Aristotle and other classical era thinkers like Galen, establishing new theories based to some degree on observation and experiment. Harvey demonstrated the circulation of the blood, establishing that the heart functioned as a pump rather than being the seat of the soul and the controller of the body's heat, as Aristotle thought. Galileo used more doubtful arguments to displace Aristotle's physics, proposing that bodies all fall at the same speed whatever their weight.
18th and 19th-century science
The English mathematician George Boole fully accepted Aristotle's logic, but decided "to go under, over, and beyond" it with his system of algebraic logic in his 1854 book The Laws of Thought. This gives logic a mathematical foundation with equations, enables it to solve equations as well as check validity, and allows it to handle a wider class of problems by expanding propositions of any number of terms, not just two.
Charles Darwin regarded Aristotle as the most important contributor to the subject of biology. In an 1882 letter he wrote that "Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different ways, but they were mere schoolboys to old Aristotle". Also, in later editions of the book "On the Origin of Species', Darwin traced evolutionary ideas as far back as Aristotle; the text he cites is a summary by Aristotle of the ideas of the earlier Greek philosopher Empedocles.
Present science
The philosopher Bertrand Russell claims that "almost every serious intellectual advance has had to begin with an attack on some Aristotelian doctrine". Russell calls Aristotle's ethics "repulsive", and labelled his logic "as definitely antiquated as Ptolemaic astronomy". Russell states that these errors make it difficult to do historical justice to Aristotle, until one remembers what an advance he made upon all of his predecessors.
The Dutch historian of science Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis writes that Aristotle and his predecessors showed the difficulty of science by "proceed[ing] so readily to frame a theory of such a general character" on limited evidence from their senses. In 1985, the biologist Peter Medawar could still state in "pure seventeenth century" tones that Aristotle had assembled "a strange and generally speaking rather tiresome farrago of hearsay, imperfect observation, wishful thinking and credulity amounting to downright gullibility".
Zoologists have frequently mocked Aristotle for errors and unverified secondhand reports. However, modern observation has confirmed several of his more surprising claims. Aristotle's work remains largely unknown to modern scientists, though zoologists sometimes mention him as the father of biology or in particular of marine biology. Practising zoologists are unlikely to adhere to Aristotle's chain of being, but its influence is still perceptible in the use of the terms "lower" and "upper" to designate taxa such as groups of plants. The evolutionary biologist Armand Marie Leroi has reconstructed Aristotle's biology, while Niko Tinbergen's four questions, based on Aristotle's four causes, are used to analyse animal behaviour; they examine function, phylogeny, mechanism, and ontogeny. The concept of homology began with Aristotle; the evolutionary developmental biologist Lewis I. Held commented that he would be interested in the concept of deep homology.
Surviving works
Corpus Aristotelicum
The works of Aristotle that have survived from antiquity through medieval manuscript transmission are collected in the Corpus Aristotelicum. These texts, as opposed to Aristotle's lost works, are technical philosophical treatises from within Aristotle's school. Reference to them is made according to the organization of Immanuel Bekker's Royal Prussian Academy edition (Aristotelis Opera edidit Academia Regia Borussica, Berlin, 1831–1870), which in turn is based on ancient classifications of these works.
Loss and preservation
Aristotle wrote his works on papyrus scrolls, the common writing medium of that era. His writings are divisible into two groups: the "exoteric", intended for the public, and the "esoteric", for use within the Lyceum school. Aristotle's "lost" works stray considerably in characterization from the surviving Aristotelian corpus. Whereas the lost works appear to have been originally written with a view to subsequent publication, the surviving works mostly resemble lecture notes not intended for publication. Cicero's description of Aristotle's literary style as "a river of gold" must have applied to the published works, not the surviving notes. A major question in the history of Aristotle's works is how the exoteric writings were all lost, and how the ones now possessed came to be found. The consensus is that Andronicus of Rhodes collected the esoteric works of Aristotle's school which existed in the form of smaller, separate works, distinguished them from those of Theophrastus and other Peripatetics, edited them, and finally compiled them into the more cohesive, larger works as they are known today.
According to Strabo and Plutarch, after Aristotle's death, his library and writings went to Theophrastus (Aristotle's successor as head of the Lycaeum and the Peripatetic school). After the death of Theophrastus, the peripatetic library went to Neleus of Scepsis.: 5
Some time later, the Kingdom of Pergamon began conscripting books for a royal library, and the heirs of Neleus hid their collection in a cellar to prevent it from being seized for that purpose. The library was stored there for about a century and a half, in conditions that were not ideal for document preservation. On the death of Attalus III, which also ended the royal library ambitions, the existence of Aristotelian library was disclosed, and it was purchased by Apellicon and returned to Athens in about 100 BC.: 5–6
Apellicon sought to recover the texts, many of which were seriously degraded at this point due to the conditions in which they were stored. He had them copied out into new manuscripts, and used his best guesswork to fill in the gaps where the originals were unreadable.: 5–6
When Sulla seized Athens in 86 BC, he seized the library and transferred it to Rome. There, Andronicus of Rhodes organized the texts into the first complete edition of Aristotle's works (and works attributed to him). The Aristotelian texts we have today are based on these.: 6–8
Depictions in art
Paintings
Aristotle has been depicted by major artists including Lucas Cranach the Elder, Justus van Gent, Raphael, Paolo Veronese, Jusepe de Ribera, Rembrandt, and Francesco Hayez over the centuries. Among the best-known depictions is Raphael's fresco The School of Athens, in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace, where the figures of Plato and Aristotle are central to the image, at the architectural vanishing point, reflecting their importance. Rembrandt's Aristotle with a Bust of Homer, too, is a celebrated work, showing the knowing philosopher and the blind Homer from an earlier age: as the art critic Jonathan Jones writes, "this painting will remain one of the greatest and most mysterious in the world, ensnaring us in its musty, glowing, pitch-black, terrible knowledge of time."
Sculptures
Eponyms
The Aristotle Mountains in Antarctica are named after Aristotle. He was the first person known to conjecture, in his book Meteorology, the existence of a landmass in the southern high-latitude region, which he called Antarctica. Aristoteles is a crater on the Moon bearing the classical form of Aristotle's name. (6123) Aristoteles, an asteroid in the main asteroid belt is also bearing the classical form of his name.
See also
Aristotelian Society
Conimbricenses
Perfectionism
References
Notes
Citations
Sources
Further reading
The secondary literature on Aristotle is vast. The following is only a small selection.
External links
Aristotle at PhilPapers
2553 Aristotle at the Indiana Philosophy Ontology Project
At the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
At the Internet Classics Archive
From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
Turner, William (1907). "Aristotle" . Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 1.
Laërtius, Diogenes (1925). "The Peripatetics: Aristotle" . Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. Vol. 1:5. Translated by Hicks, Robert Drew (Two volume ed.). Loeb Classical Library.
Collections of works
Works by Aristotle in eBook form at Standard Ebooks
At Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Works by Aristotle at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Aristotle at the Internet Archive
Works by Aristotle at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
Works by Aristotle at Open Library
(in English and Greek) Perseus Project at Tufts University
At the University of Adelaide
(in Greek and French) P. Remacle
The 11-volume 1837 Bekker edition of Aristotle's Works in Greek (PDF Archived 24 November 2022 at the Wayback Machine · DJVU) |
Socrates | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates | [
581
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates"
] | Socrates (, Greek: Σωκράτης, translit. Sōkrátēs; c. 470 – 399 BC) was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and as among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought. An enigmatic figure, Socrates authored no texts and is known mainly through the posthumous accounts of classical writers, particularly his students Plato and Xenophon. These accounts are written as dialogues, in which Socrates and his interlocutors examine a subject in the style of question and answer; they gave rise to the Socratic dialogue literary genre. Contradictory accounts of Socrates make a reconstruction of his philosophy nearly impossible, a situation known as the Socratic problem. Socrates was a polarizing figure in Athenian society. In 399 BC, he was accused of impiety and corrupting the youth. After a trial that lasted a day, he was sentenced to death. He spent his last day in prison, refusing offers to help him escape.
Plato's dialogues are among the most comprehensive accounts of Socrates to survive from antiquity. They demonstrate the Socratic approach to areas of philosophy including epistemology and ethics. The Platonic Socrates lends his name to the concept of the Socratic method, and also to Socratic irony. The Socratic method of questioning, or elenchus, takes shape in dialogue using short questions and answers, epitomized by those Platonic texts in which Socrates and his interlocutors examine various aspects of an issue or an abstract meaning, usually relating to one of the virtues, and find themselves at an impasse, completely unable to define what they thought they understood. Socrates is known for proclaiming his total ignorance; he used to say that the only thing he was aware of was his ignorance, seeking to imply that the realization of our ignorance is the first step in philosophizing.
Socrates exerted a strong influence on philosophers in later antiquity and has continued to do so in the modern era. He was studied by medieval and Islamic scholars and played an important role in the thought of the Italian Renaissance, particularly within the humanist movement. Interest in him continued unabated, as reflected in the works of Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche. Depictions of Socrates in art, literature, and popular culture have made him a widely known figure in the Western philosophical tradition.
Sources and the Socratic problem
Socrates did not document his teachings. All that is known about him comes from the accounts of others: mainly the philosopher Plato and the historian Xenophon, who were both his pupils; the Athenian comic dramatist Aristophanes (Socrates's contemporary); and Plato's pupil Aristotle, who was born after Socrates's death. The often contradictory stories from these ancient accounts only serve to complicate scholars' ability to reconstruct Socrates's true thoughts reliably, a predicament known as the Socratic problem. The works of Plato, Xenophon, and other authors who use the character of Socrates as an investigative tool, are written in the form of a dialogue between Socrates and his interlocutors and provide the main source of information on Socrates's life and thought. Socratic dialogues (logos sokratikos) was a term coined by Aristotle to describe this newly formed literary genre. While the exact dates of their composition are unknown, some were probably written after Socrates's death. As Aristotle first noted, the extent to which the dialogues portray Socrates authentically is a matter of some debate.
Plato and Xenophon
An honest man, Xenophon was no trained philosopher. He could neither fully conceptualize nor articulate Socrates's arguments. He admired Socrates for his intelligence, patriotism, and courage on the battlefield. He discusses Socrates in four works: the Memorabilia, the Oeconomicus, the Symposium, and the Apology of Socrates. He also mentions a story featuring Socrates in his Anabasis. Oeconomicus recounts a discussion on practical agricultural issues. Like Plato's Apology, Xenophon's Apologia describes the trial of Socrates, but the works diverge substantially and, according to W. K. C. Guthrie, Xenophon's account portrays a Socrates of "intolerable smugness and complacency". Symposium is a dialogue of Socrates with other prominent Athenians during an after-dinner discussion, but is quite different from Plato's Symposium: there is no overlap in the guest list. In Memorabilia, he defends Socrates from the accusations of corrupting the youth and being against the gods; essentially, it is a collection of various stories gathered together to construct a new apology for Socrates.
Plato's representation of Socrates is not straightforward. Plato was a pupil of Socrates and outlived him by five decades. How trustworthy Plato is in representing the attributes of Socrates is a matter of debate; the view that he did not represent views other than Socrates's own is not shared by many contemporary scholars. A driver of this doubt is the inconsistency of the character of Socrates that he presents. One common explanation of this inconsistency is that Plato initially tried to accurately represent the historical Socrates, while later in his writings he was happy to insert his own views into Socrates's words. Under this understanding, there is a distinction between the Socratic Socrates of Plato's earlier works and the Platonic Socrates of Plato's later writings, although the boundary between the two seems blurred.
Xenophon's and Plato's accounts differ in their presentations of Socrates as a person. Xenophon's Socrates is duller, less humorous and less ironic than Plato's. Xenophon's Socrates also lacks the philosophical features of Plato's Socrates—ignorance, the Socratic method or elenchus—and thinks enkrateia (self-control) is of pivotal importance, which is not the case with Plato's Socrates. Generally, logoi Sokratikoi cannot help us to reconstruct the historical Socrates even in cases where their narratives overlap, as authors may have influenced each other's accounts.
Aristophanes and other sources
Writers of Athenian comedy, including Aristophanes, also commented on Socrates. Aristophanes's most important comedy with respect to Socrates is The Clouds, in which Socrates is a central character. In this drama, Aristophanes presents a caricature of Socrates that leans towards sophism, ridiculing Socrates as an absurd atheist. Socrates in Clouds is interested in natural philosophy, which conforms to Plato's depiction of him in Phaedo. What is certain is that by the age of 45, Socrates had already captured the interest of Athenians as a philosopher. It is not clear whether Aristophanes's work is useful in reconstructing the historical Socrates.
Other ancient authors who wrote about Socrates were Aeschines of Sphettus, Antisthenes, Aristippus, Bryson, Cebes, Crito, Euclid of Megara, Phaedo and Aristotle, all of whom wrote after Socrates's death. Aristotle was not a contemporary of Socrates; he studied under Plato at the latter's Academy for twenty years. Aristotle treats Socrates without the bias of Xenophon and Plato, who had an emotional tie with Socrates, and he scrutinizes Socrates's doctrines as a philosopher. Aristotle was familiar with the various written and unwritten stories of Socrates. His role in understanding Socrates is limited. He does not write extensively on Socrates; and, when he does, he is mainly preoccupied with the early dialogues of Plato. There are also general doubts on his reliability on the history of philosophy. Still, his testimony is vital in understanding Socrates.
The Socratic problem
In a seminal work titled "The Worth of Socrates as a Philosopher" (1818), the philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher attacked Xenophon's accounts; his attack was widely accepted. Schleiermacher criticized Xenophon for his naïve representation of Socrates. Xenophon was a soldier, argued Schleiermacher, and was therefore not well placed to articulate Socratic ideas. Furthermore, Xenophon was biased in his depiction of his former friend and teacher: he believed Socrates was treated unfairly by Athens, and sought to prove his point of view rather than to provide an impartial account. The result, said Schleiermacher, was that Xenophon portrayed Socrates as an uninspiring philosopher. By the early 20th century, Xenophon's account was largely rejected.
The philosopher Karl Joel, basing his arguments on Aristotle's interpretation of logos sokratikos, suggested that the Socratic dialogues are mostly fictional: according to Joel, the dialogues' authors were just mimicking some Socratic traits of dialogue. In the mid-20th century, philosophers such as Olof Gigon and Eugène Dupréel, based on Joel's arguments, proposed that the study of Socrates should focus on the various versions of his character and beliefs rather than aiming to reconstruct a historical Socrates. Later, ancient philosophy scholar Gregory Vlastos suggested that the early Socratic dialogues of Plato were more compatible with other evidence for a historical Socrates than his later writings, an argument that is based on inconsistencies in Plato's own evolving depiction of Socrates. Vlastos totally disregarded Xenophon's account except when it agreed with Plato's. More recently, Charles H. Kahn has reinforced the skeptical stance on the unsolvable Socratic problem, suggesting that only Plato's Apology has any historical significance.
Biography
Socrates was born in 470 or 469 BC to Sophroniscus and Phaenarete, a stoneworker and a midwife, respectively, in the Athenian deme of Alopece; therefore, he was an Athenian citizen, having been born to relatively affluent Athenians. He lived close to his father's relatives and inherited, as was customary, part of his father's estate, securing a life reasonably free of financial concerns. His education followed the laws and customs of Athens. He learned the basic skills of reading and writing and, like most wealthy Athenians, received extra lessons in various other fields such as gymnastics, poetry and music. He was married twice (which came first is not clear): his marriage to Xanthippe took place when Socrates was in his fifties, and another marriage was with a daughter of Aristides, an Athenian statesman. He had three sons with Xanthippe. Socrates fulfilled his military service during the Peloponnesian War and distinguished himself in three campaigns, according to Plato.
Another incident that reflects Socrates's respect for the law is the arrest of Leon the Salaminian. As Plato describes in his Apology, Socrates and four others were summoned to the Tholos and told by representatives of the Thirty Tyrants (which began ruling in 404 BC) to arrest Leon for execution. Again Socrates was the sole abstainer, choosing to risk the tyrants' wrath and retribution rather than to participate in what he considered to be a crime.
Socrates attracted great interest from the Athenian public and especially the Athenian youth. He was notoriously ugly, having a flat turned-up nose, bulging eyes and a large belly; his friends joked about his appearance. Socrates was indifferent to material pleasures, including his own appearance and personal comfort. He neglected personal hygiene, bathed rarely, walked barefoot, and owned only one ragged coat. He moderated his eating, drinking, and sex, although he did not practice full abstention. Although Socrates was attracted to youth, as was common and accepted in ancient Greece, he resisted his passion for young men because, as Plato describes, he was more interested in educating their souls. Socrates did not seek sex from his disciples, as was often the case between older and younger men in Athens. Politically, he did not take sides in the rivalry between the democrats and the oligarchs in Athens; he criticized both. The character of Socrates as exhibited in Apology, Crito, Phaedo and Symposium concurs with other sources to an extent that gives confidence in Plato's depiction of Socrates in these works as being representative of the real Socrates.
Socrates died in Athens in 399 BC after a trial for impiety and the corruption of the young. He spent his last day in prison among friends and followers who offered him a route to escape, which he refused. He died the next morning, in accordance with his sentence, after drinking poison hemlock. According to the Phaedo, his last words were: “Crito, we owe a rooster to Asclepius. Don't forget to pay the debt.”
Trial of Socrates
In 399 BC, Socrates was formally accused of corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens, and for asebeia (impiety), i.e. worshipping false gods and failing to worship the gods of Athens. At the trial, Socrates defended himself unsuccessfully. He was found guilty by a majority vote cast by a jury of hundreds of male Athenian citizens and, according to the custom, proposed his own penalty: that he should be given free food and housing by the state for the services he rendered to the city, or alternatively, that he be fined one mina of silver (according to him, all he had). The jurors declined his offer and ordered the death penalty.
Socrates was charged in a politically tense climate. In 404 BC, the Athenians had been crushed by Spartans at the decisive naval Battle of Aegospotami, and subsequently, the Spartans laid siege to Athens. They replaced the democratic government with a new, pro-oligarchic government, named the Thirty Tyrants. Because of their tyrannical measures, some Athenians organized to overthrow the Tyrants—and, indeed, they managed to do so briefly—until a Spartan request for aid from the Thirty arrived and a compromise was sought. When the Spartans left again, however, democrats seized the opportunity to kill the oligarchs and reclaim the government of Athens.
The accusations against Socrates were initiated by a poet, Meletus, who asked for the death penalty in accordance with the charge of asebeia. Other accusers were Anytus and Lycon. After a month or two, in late spring or early summer, the trial started and likely went on for most of one day. There were two main sources for the religion-based accusations. First, Socrates had rejected the anthropomorphism of traditional Greek religion by denying that the gods did bad things like humans do. Second, he seemed to believe in a daimonion—an inner voice with, as his accusers suggested, divine origin.
Plato's Apology starts with Socrates answering the various rumours against him that have given rise to the indictment. First, Socrates defends himself against the rumour that he is an atheist naturalist philosopher, as portrayed in Aristophanes's The Clouds; or a sophist. Against the allegations of corrupting the youth, Socrates answers that he has never corrupted anyone intentionally, since corrupting someone would carry the risk of being corrupted back in return, and that would be illogical, since corruption is undesirable. On the second charge, Socrates asks for clarification. Meletus responds by repeating the accusation that Socrates is an atheist. Socrates notes the contradiction between atheism and worshipping false gods. He then claims that he is "God's gift" to the Athenians, since his activities ultimately benefit Athens; thus, in condemning him to death, Athens itself will be the greatest loser. After that, he says that even though no human can reach wisdom, seeking it is the best thing someone can do, implying money and prestige are not as precious as commonly thought.
Socrates was given the chance to offer alternative punishments for himself after being found guilty. He could have requested permission to flee Athens and live in exile, but he did not do so. According to Xenophon, Socrates made no proposals, while according to Plato he suggested free meals should be provided for him daily in recognition of his worth to Athens or, more in earnest, that a fine should be imposed on him. The jurors favoured the death penalty by making him drink a cup of hemlock (a poisonous liquid). In return, Socrates warned jurors and Athenians that criticism of them by his many disciples was inescapable, unless they became good men. After a delay caused by Athenian religious ceremonies, Socrates spent his last day in prison. His friends visited him and offered him an opportunity to escape, which he declined.
The question of what motivated Athenians to convict Socrates remains controversial among scholars. There are two theories. The first is that Socrates was convicted on religious grounds; the second, that he was accused and convicted for political reasons. Another, more recent, interpretation synthesizes the religious and political theories, arguing that religion and state were not separate in ancient Athens.
The argument for religious persecution is supported by the fact that Plato's and Xenophon's accounts of the trial mostly focus on the charges of impiety. In those accounts, Socrates is portrayed as making no effort to dispute the fact that he did not believe in the Athenian gods. Against this argument stands the fact that many skeptics and atheist philosophers during this time were not prosecuted. According to the argument for political persecution, Socrates was targeted because he was perceived as a threat to democracy. It was true that Socrates did not stand for democracy during the reign of the Thirty Tyrants and that most of his pupils were against the democrats. The case for it being a political persecution is usually challenged by the existence of an amnesty that was granted to Athenian citizens in 403 BC to prevent escalation to civil war after the fall of the Thirty. However, as the text from Socrates's trial and other texts reveal, the accusers could have fuelled their rhetoric using events prior to 403 BC.
Philosophy
Socratic method
A fundamental characteristic of Plato's Socrates is the Socratic method, or the method of refutation (elenchus). It is most prominent in the early works of Plato, such as Apology, Crito, Gorgias, Republic I, and others. The typical elenchus proceeds as follows. Socrates initiates a discussion about a topic with a known expert on the subject, usually in the company of some young men and boys, and by dialogue proves the expert's beliefs and arguments to be contradictory. Socrates initiates the dialogue by asking his interlocutor for a definition of the subject. As he asks more questions, the interlocutor's answers eventually contradict the first definition. The conclusion is that the expert did not really know the definition in the first place. The interlocutor may come up with a different definition. That new definition, in turn, comes under the scrutiny of Socratic questioning. With each round of question and answer, Socrates and his interlocutor hope to approach the truth. More often, they continue to reveal their ignorance. Since the interlocutors' definitions most commonly represent the mainstream opinion on a matter, the discussion places doubt on the common opinion.
Socrates also tests his own opinions through the Socratic method. Thus Socrates does not teach a fixed philosophical doctrine. Rather, he acknowledges his own ignorance while searching for truth with his pupils and interlocutors.
Scholars have questioned the validity and the exact nature of the Socratic method, or indeed if there even was a Socratic method. In 1982, the scholar of ancient philosophy Gregory Vlastos claimed that the Socratic method could not be used to establish the truth or falsehood of a proposition. Rather, Vlastos argued, it was a way to show that an interlocutor's beliefs were inconsistent. There have been two main lines of thought regarding this view, depending on whether it is accepted that Socrates is seeking to prove a claim wrong. According to the first line of thought, known as the constructivist approach, Socrates indeed seeks to refute a claim by this method, and the method helps in reaching affirmative statements. The non-constructivist approach holds that Socrates merely wants to establish the inconsistency between the premises and conclusion of the initial argument.
Socratic priority of definition
Socrates starts his discussions by prioritizing the search for definitions. In most cases, Socrates initiates his discourse with an expert on a subject by seeking a definition—by asking, for example, what virtue, goodness, justice, or courage is. To establish a definition, Socrates first gathers clear examples of a virtue and then seeks to establish what they had in common. According to Guthrie, Socrates lived in an era when sophists had challenged the meaning of various virtues, questioning their substance; Socrates's quest for a definition was an attempt to clear the atmosphere from their radical skepticism.
Some scholars have argued that Socrates does not endorse the priority of definition as a principle, because they have identified cases where he does not do so. Some have argued that this priority of definition comes from Plato rather than Socrates. Philosopher Peter Geach, accepting that Socrates endorses the priority of definition, finds the technique fallacious. Αccording to Geach, one may know a proposition even if one cannot define the terms in which the proposition is stated.
Socratic ignorance
Plato's Socrates often claims that he is aware of his own lack of knowledge, especially when discussing ethical concepts such as arete (i.e., goodness, courage) since he does not know the nature of such concepts. For example, during his trial, with his life at stake, Socrates says: "I thought Evenus a happy man, if he really possesses this art (technē), and teaches for so moderate a fee. Certainly I would pride and preen myself if I knew (epistamai) these things, but I do not know (epistamai) them, gentlemen". In some of Plato's dialogues, Socrates appears to credit himself with some knowledge, and can even seem strongly opinionated for a man who professes his own ignorance.
There are varying explanations of the Socratic inconsistency (other than that Socrates is simply being inconsistent). One explanation is that Socrates is being either ironic or modest for pedagogical purposes: he aims to let his interlocutor to think for himself rather than guide him to a prefixed answer to his philosophical questions. Another explanation is that Socrates holds different interpretations of the meaning of "knowledge". Knowledge, for him, might mean systematic understanding of an ethical subject, on which Socrates firmly rejects any kind of mastery; or might refer to lower-level cognition, which Socrates may accept that he possesses. In any case, there is consensus that Socrates accepts that acknowledging one's lack of knowledge is the first step towards wisdom.
Socrates is known for disavowing knowledge, a claim encapsulated in the saying "I know that I know nothing". This is often attributed to Socrates on the basis of a statement in Plato's Apology, though the same view is repeatedly found elsewhere in Plato's early writings on Socrates. In other statements, though, he implies or even claims that he does have knowledge. For example, in Plato's Apology Socrates says: "...but that to do injustice and disobey my superior, god or man, this I know to be evil and base..." (Apology, 29b6–7). In his debate with Callicles, he says: "...I know well that if you will agree with me on those things which my soul believes, those things will be the very truth..."
Whether Socrates genuinely thought he lacked knowledge or merely feigned a belief in his own ignorance remains a matter of debate. A common interpretation is that he was indeed feigning modesty. According to Norman Gulley, Socrates did this to entice his interlocutors to speak with him. On the other hand, Terence Irwin claims that Socrates's words should be taken literally.
Gregory Vlastos argues that there is enough evidence to refute both claims. On his view, for Socrates, there are two separate meanings of "knowledge": Knowledge-C and Knowledge-E (C stands for "certain", and E stands for elenchus, i.e. the Socratic method). Knowledge-C is something unquestionable whereas Knowledge-E is the knowledge derived from Socrates's elenchus. Thus, Socrates speaks the truth when he says he knows-C something, and he is also truthful when saying he knows-E, for example that it is evil for someone to disobey his superiors, as he claims in Apology. Not all scholars have agreed with this semantic dualism. James H. Lesher has argued that Socrates claimed in various dialogues that one word is linked to one meaning (i.e. in Hippias Major, Meno, and Laches). Lesher suggests that although Socrates claimed that he had no knowledge about the nature of virtues, he thought that in some cases, people can know some ethical propositions.
Socratic irony
There is a widespread assumption that Socrates was an ironist, mostly based on the depiction of Socrates by Plato and Aristotle. Socrates's irony is so subtle and slightly humorous that it often leaves the reader wondering if Socrates is making an intentional pun. Plato's Euthyphro is filled with Socratic irony. The story begins when Socrates is meeting with Euthyphro, a man who has accused his own father of murder. When Socrates first hears the details of the story, he comments, "It is not, I think, any random person who could do this [prosecute one's father] correctly, but surely one who is already far progressed in wisdom". When Euthyphro boasts about his understanding of divinity, Socrates responds that it is "most important that I become your student". Socrates is commonly seen as ironic when using praise to flatter or when addressing his interlocutors.
Scholars are divided on why Socrates uses irony. According to an opinion advanced since the Hellenistic period, Socratic irony is a playful way to get the audience's attention. Another line of thought holds that Socrates conceals his philosophical message with irony, making it accessible only to those who can separate the parts of his statements which are ironic from those which are not. Gregory Vlastos has identified a more complex pattern of irony in Socrates. On Vlastos's view, Socrates's words have a double meaning, both ironic and not. One example is when he denies having knowledge. Vlastos suggests that Socrates is being ironic when he says he has no knowledge (where "knowledge" means a lower form of cognition); while, according to another sense of "knowledge", Socrates is serious when he says he has no knowledge of ethical matters. This opinion is not shared by many other scholars.
Socratic eudaimonism and intellectualism
For Socrates, the pursuit of eudaimonia motivates all human action, directly or indirectly. Virtue and knowledge are linked, in Socrates's view, to eudaimonia, but how closely he considered them to be connected is still debated. Some argue that Socrates thought that virtue and eudaimonia are identical. According to another view, virtue serves as a means to eudaimonia (the "identical" and "sufficiency" theses, respectively). Another point of debate is whether, according to Socrates, people desire what is in fact good—or, rather, simply what they perceive as good.
Moral intellectualism refers to the prominent role Socrates gave to knowledge. He believed that all virtue was based on knowledge (hence Socrates is characterized as a virtue intellectualist). He also believed that humans were guided by the cognitive power to comprehend what they desire, while diminishing the role of impulses (a view termed motivational intellectualism). In Plato's Protagoras (345c4–e6), Socrates implies that "no one errs willingly", which has become the hallmark of Socratic virtue intellectualism. In Socratic moral philosophy, priority is given to the intellect as being the way to live a good life; Socrates deemphasizes irrational beliefs or passions. Plato's dialogues that support Socrates's intellectual motivism—as this thesis is named—are mainly the Gorgias (467c–8e, where Socrates discusses the actions of a tyrant that do not benefit him) and Meno (77d–8b, where Socrates explains to Meno his view that no one wants bad things, unless they do not know what is good and bad in the first place). Scholars have been puzzled by Socrates's view that akrasia (acting because of one's irrational passions, contrary to one's knowledge or beliefs) is impossible. Most believe that Socrates left no space for irrational desires, although some claim that Socrates acknowledged the existence of irrational motivations, but denied they play a primary role in decision-making.
Religion
Socrates's religious nonconformity challenged the views of his times and his critique reshaped religious discourse for the coming centuries. In Ancient Greece, organized religion was fragmented, celebrated in a number of festivals for specific gods, such as the City Dionysia, or in domestic rituals, and there were no sacred texts. Religion intermingled with the daily life of citizens, who performed their personal religious duties mainly with sacrifices to various gods. Whether Socrates was a practicing man of religion or a 'provocateur atheist' has been a point of debate since ancient times; his trial included impiety accusations, and the controversy has not yet ceased.
Socrates discusses divinity and the soul mostly in Alcibiades, Euthyphro, and Apology. In Alcibiades Socrates links the human soul to divinity, concluding "Then this part of her resembles God, and whoever looks at this, and comes to know all that is divine, will gain thereby the best knowledge of himself." His discussions on religion always fall under the lens of his rationalism. Socrates, in Euthyphro, reaches a conclusion which takes him far from the age's usual practice: he considers sacrifices to the gods to be useless, especially when they are driven by the hope of receiving a reward in return. Instead he calls for philosophy and the pursuit of knowledge to be the principal way of worshipping the gods. His rejection of traditional forms of piety, connecting them to self-interest, implied that Athenians should seek religious experience by self-examination.
Socrates argued that the gods were inherently wise and just, a perception far from traditional religion at that time. In Euthyphro, the Euthyphro dilemma arises. Socrates questions his interlocutor about the relationship between piety and the will of a powerful god: Is something good because it is the will of this god, or is it the will of this god because it is good? In other words, does piety follow the good, or the god? The trajectory of Socratic thought contrasts with traditional Greek theology, which took lex talionis (the eye for an eye principle) for granted. Socrates thought that goodness is independent from gods, and gods must themselves be pious.
Socrates affirms a belief in gods in Plato's Apology, where he says to the jurors that he acknowledges gods more than his accusers. For Plato's Socrates, the existence of gods is taken for granted; in none of his dialogues does he probe whether gods exist or not. In Apology, a case for Socrates being agnostic can be made, based on his discussion of the great unknown after death, and in Phaedo (the dialogue with his students in his last day) Socrates gives expression to a clear belief in the immortality of the soul. He also believed in oracles, divinations and other messages from gods. These signs did not offer him any positive belief on moral issues; rather, they were predictions of unfavorable future events.
In Xenophon's Memorabilia, Socrates constructs an argument close to the contemporary teleological intelligent-design argument. He claims that since there are many features in the universe that exhibit "signs of forethought" (e.g., eyelids), a divine creator must have created the universe. He then deduces that the creator should be omniscient and omnipotent and also that it created the universe for the advance of humankind, since humans naturally have many abilities that other animals do not. At times, Socrates speaks of a single deity, while at other times he refers to plural "gods". This has been interpreted to mean that he either believed that a supreme deity commanded other gods, or that various gods were parts, or manifestations, of this single deity.
The relationship of Socrates's religious beliefs with his strict adherence to rationalism has been subject to debate. Philosophy professor Mark McPherran suggests that Socrates interpreted every divine sign through secular rationality for confirmation. Professor of ancient philosophy A. A. Long suggests that it is anachronistic to suppose that Socrates believed the religious and rational realms were separate.
Socratic daimonion
In several texts (e.g., Plato's Euthyphro 3b5; Apology 31c–d; Xenophon's Memorabilia 1.1.2) Socrates claims he hears a daimōnic sign—an inner voice heard usually when he was about to make a mistake. Socrates gave a brief description of this daimonion at his trial (Apology 31c–d): "...The reason for this is something you have heard me frequently mention in different places—namely, the fact that I experience something divine and daimonic, as Meletus has inscribed in his indictment, by way of mockery. It started in my childhood, the occurrence of a particular voice. Whenever it occurs, it always deters me from the course of action I was intending to engage in, but it never gives me positive advice. It is this that has opposed my practicing politics, and I think its doing so has been absolutely fine." Modern scholarship has variously interpreted this Socratic daimōnion as a rational source of knowledge, an impulse, a dream or even a paranormal experience felt by an ascetic Socrates.
Virtue and knowledge
Socrates's theory of virtue states that all virtues are essentially one, since they are a form of knowledge. For Socrates, the reason a person is not good is because they lack knowledge. Since knowledge is united, virtues are united as well. Another famous dictum—"no one errs willingly"—also derives from this theory. In Protagoras, Socrates argues for the unity of virtues using the example of courage: if someone knows what the relevant danger is, they can undertake a risk. Aristotle comments: " ... Socrates the elder thought that the end of life was knowledge of virtue, and he used to seek for the definition of justice, courage, and each of the parts of virtue, and this was a reasonable approach, since he thought that all virtues were sciences, and that as soon as one knew [for example] justice, he would be just..."
Love
Some texts suggest that Socrates had love affairs with Alcibiades and other young persons; others suggest that Socrates's friendship with young boys sought only to improve them and were not sexual. In Gorgias, Socrates claims he was a dual lover of Alcibiades and philosophy, and his flirtatiousness is evident in Protagoras, Meno (76a–c) and Phaedrus (227c–d). However, the exact nature of his relationship with Alcibiades is not clear; Socrates was known for his self-restraint, while Alcibiades admits in the Symposium that he had tried to seduce Socrates but failed.
The Socratic theory of love is mostly deduced from Lysis, where Socrates discusses love at a wrestling school in the company of Lysis and his friends. They start their dialogue by investigating parental love and how it manifests with respect to the freedom and boundaries that parents set for their children. Socrates concludes that if Lysis is utterly useless, nobody will love him—not even his parents. While most scholars believe this text was intended to be humorous, it has also been suggested that Lysis shows Socrates held an egoistic view of love, according to which we only love people who are useful to us in some way. Other scholars disagree with this view, arguing that Socrates's doctrine leaves room for non-egoistic love for a spouse; still others deny that Socrates suggests any egoistic motivation at all. In Symposium, Socrates argues that children offer the false impression of immortality to their parents, and this misconception yields a form of unity among them. Scholars also note that for Socrates, love is rational.
Socrates, who claims to know only that he does not know, makes an exception (in Plato's Symposium), where he says he will tell the truth about Love, which he learned from a 'clever woman'. Classicist Armand D'Angour has made the case that Socrates was in his youth close to Aspasia, and that Diotima, to whom Socrates attributes his understanding of love in Symposium, is based on her; however, it is also possible that Diotima really existed.
Socratic philosophy of politics
While Socrates was involved in public political and cultural debates, it is hard to define his exact political philosophy. In Plato's Gorgias, he tells Callicles: "I believe that I'm one of a few Athenians—so as not to say I'm the only one, but the only one among our contemporaries—to take up the true political craft and practice the true politics. This is because the speeches I make on each occasion do not aim at gratification but at what's best." His claim illustrates his aversion for the established democratic assemblies and procedures such as voting—since Socrates saw politicians and rhetoricians as using tricks to mislead the public. He never ran for office or suggested any legislation. Rather, he aimed to help the city flourish by "improving" its citizens. As a citizen, he abided by the law. He obeyed the rules and carried out his military duty by fighting wars abroad. His dialogues, however, make little mention of contemporary political decisions, such as the Sicilian Expedition.
Socrates spent his time conversing with citizens, among them powerful members of Athenian society, scrutinizing their beliefs and bringing the contradictions of their ideas to light. Socrates believed he was doing them a favor since, for him, politics was about shaping the moral landscape of the city through philosophy rather than electoral procedures. There is a debate over where Socrates stood in the polarized Athenian political climate, which was divided between oligarchs and democrats. While there is no clear textual evidence, one widely held theory holds that Socrates leaned towards democracy: he disobeyed the one order that the oligarchic government of the Thirty Tyrants gave him; he respected the laws and political system of Athens (which were formulated by democrats); and, according to this argument, his affinity for the ideals of democratic Athens was a reason why he did not want to escape prison and the death penalty. On the other hand, there is some evidence that Socrates leaned towards oligarchy: most of his friends supported oligarchy, he was contemptuous of the opinion of the many and was critical of the democratic process, and Protagoras shows some anti-democratic elements. A less mainstream argument suggests that Socrates favoured democratic republicanism, a theory that prioritizes active participation in public life and concern for the city.
Yet another suggestion is that Socrates endorsed views in line with liberalism, a political ideology formed in the Age of Enlightenment. This argument is mostly based on Crito and Apology, where Socrates talks about the mutually beneficial relationship between the city and its citizens. According to Socrates, citizens are morally autonomous and free to leave the city if they wish—but, by staying within the city, they also accept the laws and the city's authority over them. On the other hand, Socrates has been seen as the first proponent of civil disobedience. Socrates's strong objection to injustice, along with his refusal to serve the Thirty Tyrants' order to arrest Leon, are suggestive of this line. As he says in Critias, "One ought never act unjustly, even to repay a wrong that has been done to oneself." Ιn the broader picture, Socrates's advice would be for citizens to follow the orders of the state, unless, after much reflection, they deem them to be unjust.
Legacy
Hellenistic era
Socrates's impact was immense in philosophy after his death. With the exception of the Epicureans and the Pyrrhonists, almost all philosophical currents after Socrates traced their roots to him: Plato's Academy, Aristotle's Lyceum, the Cynics, and the Stoics. Interest in Socrates kept increasing until the third century AD. The various schools differed in response to fundamental questions such as the purpose of life or the nature of arete (virtue), since Socrates had not handed them an answer, and therefore, philosophical schools subsequently diverged greatly in their interpretation of his thought. He was considered to have shifted the focus of philosophy from a study of the natural world, as was the case for pre-Socratic philosophers, to a study of human affairs.
Immediate followers of Socrates were his pupils, Euclid of Megara, Aristippus, and Antisthenes, who drew differing conclusions among themselves and followed independent trajectories. The full doctrines of Socrates's pupils are difficult to reconstruct. Antisthenes had a profound contempt of material goods. According to him, virtue was all that mattered. Diogenes and the Cynics continued this line of thought. On the opposite end, Aristippus endorsed the accumulation of wealth and lived a luxurious life. After leaving Athens and returning to his home city of Cyrene, he founded the Cyrenaic philosophical school which was based on hedonism, and endorsing living an easy life with physical pleasures. His school passed to his grandson, bearing the same name. There is a dialogue in Xenophon's work in which Aristippus claims he wants to live without wishing to rule or be ruled by others. In addition, Aristippus maintained a skeptical stance on epistemology, claiming that we can be certain only of our own feelings. This view resonates with the Socratic understanding of ignorance. Euclid was a contemporary of Socrates. After Socrates's trial and death, he left Athens for the nearby town of Megara, where he founded a school, named the Megarians. His theory was built on the pre-Socratic monism of Parmenides. Euclid continued Socrates's thought, focusing on the nature of virtue.
The Stoics relied heavily on Socrates. They applied the Socratic method as a tool to avoid inconsistencies. Their moral doctrines focused on how to live a smooth life through wisdom and virtue. The Stoics assigned virtue a crucial role in attaining happiness and also prioritized the relation between goodness and ethical excellence, all of which echoed Socratic thought. At the same time, the philosophical current of Platonism claimed Socrates as its predecessor, in ethics and in its theory of knowledge. Arcesilaus, who became the head of the Academy about 80 years after its founding by Plato, radically changed the Academy's doctrine to what is now known as Academic Skepticism, centered on the Socratic philosophy of ignorance. The Academic Skeptics competed with the Stoics over who was Socrates's true heir with regard to ethics. While the Stoics insisted on knowledge-based ethics, Arcesilaus relied on Socratic ignorance. The Stoics' reply to Arcesilaus was that Socratic ignorance was part of Socratic irony (they themselves disapproved the use of irony), an argument that ultimately became the dominant narrative of Socrates in later antiquity.
While Aristotle considered Socrates an important philosopher, Socrates was not a central figure in Aristotelian thought. One of Aristotle's pupils, Aristoxenus even authored a book detailing Socrates's scandals.
The Epicureans were antagonistic to Socrates. They attacked him for superstition, criticizing his belief in his daimonion and his regard for the oracle at Delphi. They also criticized Socrates for his character and various faults, and focusing mostly on his irony, which was deemed inappropriate for a philosopher and unseemly for a teacher.
The Pyrrhonists were also antagonistic to Socrates, accusing him of being a prater about ethics, who engaged in mock humility, and who sneered at and mocked people.
Medieval world
Socratic thought found its way to the Islamic Middle East alongside that of Aristotle and the Stoics. Plato's works on Socrates, as well as other ancient Greek literature, were translated into Arabic by early Muslim scholars such as Al-Kindi, Jabir ibn Hayyan, and the Muʿtazila. For Muslim scholars, Socrates was hailed and admired for combining his ethics with his lifestyle, perhaps because of the resemblance in this regard with Muhammad's personality. Socratic doctrines were altered to match Islamic faith: according to Muslim scholars, Socrates made arguments for monotheism and for the temporality of this world and rewards in the next life. His influence in the Arabic-speaking world continues to the present day.
In medieval times, little of Socrates's thought survived in the Christian world as a whole; however, works on Socrates from Christian scholars such as Lactantius, Eusebius and Augustine were maintained in the Byzantine Empire, where Socrates was studied under a Christian lens. After the fall of Constantinople, many of the texts were brought back into the world of Roman Christianity, where they were translated into Latin. Overall, ancient Socratic philosophy, like the rest of classical literature before the Renaissance, was addressed with skepticism in the Christian world at first.
During the early Italian Renaissance, two different narratives of Socrates developed. On the one hand, the humanist movement revived interest in classical authors. Leonardo Bruni translated many of Plato's Socratic dialogues, while his pupil Giannozzo Manetti authored a well-circulated book, a Life of Socrates. They both presented a civic version of Socrates, according to which Socrates was a humanist and a supporter of republicanism. Bruni and Manetti were interested in defending secularism as a non-sinful way of life; presenting a view of Socrates that was aligned with Christian morality assisted their cause. In doing so, they had to censor parts of his dialogues, especially those which appeared to promote homosexuality or any possibility of pederasty (with Alcibiades), or which suggested that the Socratic daimon was a god. On the other hand, a different picture of Socrates was presented by Italian Neoplatonists, led by the philosopher and priest Marsilio Ficino. Ficino was impressed by Socrates's un-hierarchical and informal way teaching, which he tried to replicate. Ficino portrayed a holy picture of Socrates, finding parallels with the life of Jesus Christ. For Ficino and his followers, Socratic ignorance signified his acknowledgement that all wisdom is God-given (through the Socratic daimon).
Modern times
In early modern France, Socrates's image was dominated by features of his private life rather than his philosophical thought, in various novels and satirical plays. Some thinkers used Socrates to highlight and comment upon controversies of their own era, like Théophile de Viau who portrayed a Christianized Socrates accused of atheism, while for Voltaire, the figure of Socrates represented a reason-based theist. Michel de Montaigne wrote extensively on Socrates, linking him to rationalism as a counterweight to contemporary religious fanatics.
In the 18th century, German idealism revived philosophical interest in Socrates, mainly through Hegel's work. For Hegel, Socrates marked a turning point in the history of humankind by the introduction of the principle of free subjectivity or self-determination. While Hegel hails Socrates for his contribution, he nonetheless justifies the Athenian court, for Socrates's insistence upon self-determination would be destructive of the Sittlichkeit (a Hegelian term signifying the way of life as shaped by the institutions and laws of the State). Also, Hegel sees the Socratic use of rationalism as a continuation of Protagoras' focus on human reasoning (as encapsulated in the motto homo mensura: "man is the measure of all things"), but modified: it is our reasoning that can help us reach objective conclusions about reality. Also, Hegel considered Socrates as a predecessor of later ancient skeptic philosophers, even though he never clearly explained why.
Søren Kierkegaard considered Socrates his teacher, and authored his master's thesis on him, The Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates. There he argues that Socrates is not a moral philosopher but is purely an ironist. He also focused on Socrates's avoidance of writing: for Kierkegaard, this avoidance was a sign of humility, deriving from Socrates's acceptance of his ignorance. Not only did Socrates not write anything down, according to Kierkegaard, but his contemporaries misconstrued and misunderstood him as a philosopher, leaving us with an almost impossible task in comprehending Socratic thought. Only Plato's Apology was close to the real Socrates, in Kierkegaard's view. In his writings, he revisited Socrates quite frequently; in his later work, Kierkegaard found ethical elements in Socratic thought. Socrates was not only a subject of study for Kierkegaard, he was a model as well: Kierkegaard paralleled his task as a philosopher to Socrates. He writes, "The only analogy I have before me is Socrates; my task is a Socratic task, to audit the definition of what it is to be a Christian", with his aim being to bring society closer to the Christian ideal, since he believed that Christianity had become a formality, void of any Christian essence. Kierkegaard denied being a Christian, as Socrates denied possessing any knowledge.
Friedrich Nietzsche resented Socrates's contributions to Western culture. In his first book, The Birth of Tragedy (1872), Nietzsche held Socrates responsible for what he saw as the deterioration of ancient Greek civilization during the 4th century BC and after. For Nietzsche, Socrates turned the scope of philosophy from pre-Socratic naturalism to rationalism and intellectualism. He writes: "I conceive of [the Presocratics] as precursors to a reformation of the Greeks: but not of Socrates"; "with Empedocles and Democritus the Greeks were well on their way towards taking the correct measure of human existence, its unreason, its suffering; they never reached this goal, thanks to Socrates". The effect, Nietzsche proposed, was a perverse situation that had continued down to his day: our culture is a Socratic culture, he believed. In a later publication, The Twilight of the Idols (1887), Nietzsche continued his offensive against Socrates, focusing on the arbitrary linking of reason to virtue and happiness in Socratic thinking. He writes: "I try to understand from what partial and idiosyncratic states the Socratic problem is to be derived: his equation of reason = virtue = happiness. It was with this absurdity of a doctrine of identity that he fascinated: ancient philosophy never again freed itself [from this fascination]". From the late 19th century until the early 20th, the most common explanation of Nietzsche's hostility towards Socrates was his anti-rationalism; he considered Socrates the father of European rationalism. In the mid-20th century, philosopher Walter Kaufmann published an article arguing that Nietzsche admired Socrates. Current mainstream opinion is that Nietzsche was ambivalent towards Socrates.
Continental philosophers Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss and Karl Popper, after experiencing the horrors of World War II, amidst the rise of totalitarian regimes, saw Socrates as an icon of individual conscience. Arendt, in Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), suggests that Socrates's constant questioning and self-reflection could prevent the banality of evil. Strauss considers Socrates's political thought as paralleling Plato's. He sees an elitist Socrates in Plato's Republic as exemplifying why the polis is not, and could not be, an ideal way of organizing life, since philosophical truths cannot be digested by the masses. Popper takes the opposite view: he argues that Socrates opposes Plato's totalitarian ideas. For Popper, Socratic individualism, along with Athenian democracy, imply Popper's concept of the "open society" as described in his Open Society and Its Enemies (1945).
See also
Codex Vaticanus Graecus 64 - Socratic Letters
De genio Socratis
List of cultural depictions of Socrates
List of speakers in Plato's dialogues
Notes
Sources
Further reading
Brun, Jean (1978). Socrate (in French) (6th ed.). Presses universitaires de France. pp. 39–40. ISBN 978-2-13-035620-2.
Benson, Hugh (1992). Essays on the philosophy of Socrates. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-506757-6. OCLC 23179683.
Rudebusch, George (2009). Socrates. Chichester, UK; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4051-5085-9. OCLC 476311710.
Taylor, C. C. W. (1998). Socrates. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-287601-0.
Taylor, C. C. W. (2019). Socrates: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-883598-1.
Vlastos, Gregory (1994). Socratic Studies. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-44735-5.
External links
Socrates at the Indiana Philosophy Ontology Project
The Dialogues of Plato at Project Gutenberg |
Plato | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato | [
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato"
] | Plato ( PLAY-toe; Greek: Πλάτων, Plátōn), born Aristocles (Ἀριστοκλῆς; c. 427 – 348 BC), was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the written dialogue and dialectic forms. He raised problems for what became all the major areas of both theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy, and was the founder of the Platonic Academy, a philosophical school in Athens where Plato taught the doctrines that would later become known as Platonism.
Plato's most famous contribution is the theory of forms (or ideas), which has been interpreted as advancing a solution to what is now known as the problem of universals. He was decisively influenced by the pre-Socratic thinkers Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and Parmenides, although much of what is known about them is derived from Plato himself.
Along with his teacher Socrates, and Aristotle, his student, Plato is a central figure in the history of Western philosophy. Plato's entire body of work is believed to have survived intact for over 2,400 years—unlike that of nearly all of his contemporaries. Although their popularity has fluctuated, they have consistently been read and studied through the ages. Through Neoplatonism, he also greatly influenced both Christian and Islamic philosophy. In modern times, Alfred North Whitehead famously said: "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."
Names
Plato (Greek: Πλάτων, Plátōn, from Ancient Greek: πλατύς, romanized: platys, lit. 'broad') is actually a nickname. Although it is a fact that the philosopher called himself Platon in his maturity, the origin of this name remains mysterious. Platon was a fairly common name (31 instances are known from Athens alone), but the name does not occur in Plato's known family line.
The sources of Diogenes Laertius account for this by claiming his wrestling coach, Ariston of Argos, dubbed him "broad" on account of his chest and shoulders, or that Plato derived his name from the breadth of his eloquence, or his wide forehead. Philodemus, in extracts from the Herculaneum papyri, corroborates the claim that Plato was named for his "broad forehead".
While recalling a moral lesson about frugal living, Seneca mentions the meaning of Plato's name: "His very name was given him because of his broad chest." According to Diogenes Laertius, his birth name was Aristocles (Ἀριστοκλῆς), meaning 'best reputation'.
Biography
Plato, whose actual name was Aristocles, was born in Athens or Aegina, between 428 and 423 BC. He was a member of an aristocratic and influential family. His father was Ariston, who may have been a descendant of two kings—Codrus and Melanthus. His mother was Perictione, descendant of Solon, a statesman credited with laying the foundations of Athenian democracy. Plato had two brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus, a sister, Potone, and a half brother, Antiphon.
Plato may have travelled to Italy, Sicily, Egypt, and Cyrene. At 40, he founded a school of philosophy, the Academy. It was located in Athens, on a plot of land in the Grove of Hecademus or Academus, named after an Attic hero in Greek mythology. The Academy operated until it was destroyed by Sulla in 84 BC. Many philosophers studied at the Academy, the most prominent being Aristotle.
According to Diogenes Laertius, throughout his later life, Plato became entangled with the politics of the city of Syracuse, where he attempted to replace the tyrant Dionysius, with Dionysius's brother-in-law, Dion of Syracuse, whom Plato had recruited as one of his followers, but the tyrant himself turned against Plato. Plato almost faced death, but was sold into slavery. Anniceris, a Cyrenaic philosopher, bought Plato's freedom for twenty minas, and sent him home. Philodemus however states that Plato was sold as a slave as early as in 404 BC, when the Spartans conquered Aegina, or, alternatively, in 399 BC, immediately after the death of Socrates. After Dionysius's death, according to Plato's Seventh Letter, Dion requested Plato return to Syracuse to tutor Dionysius II, who seemed to accept Plato's teachings, but eventually became suspicious of their motives, expelling Dion and holding Plato against his will. Eventually Plato left Syracuse and Dion would return to overthrow Dionysius and rule Syracuse, before being usurped by Callippus, a fellow disciple of Plato.
A variety of sources have given accounts of Plato's death. One story, based on a mutilated manuscript, suggests Plato died in his bed, whilst a young Thracian girl played the flute to him. Another tradition suggests Plato died at a wedding feast. The account is based on Diogenes Laertius's reference to an account by Hermippus, a third-century Alexandrian. According to Tertullian, Plato simply died in his sleep. According to Philodemus, Plato was buried in the garden of his academy in Athens, close to the sacred shrine of the Muses. In 2024, a scroll found at Herculaneum was deciphered, that confirmed some previous theories. The papyrus says that before death Plato "retained enough lucidity to critique the musician for her lack of rhythm", and that he was buried "in his designated garden in the Academy of Athens".
Influences
Socrates
Plato never speaks in his own voice in his dialogues; every dialogue except the Laws features Socrates, although many dialogues, including the Timaeus and Statesman, feature him speaking only rarely. Leo Strauss notes that Socrates' reputation for irony casts doubt on whether Plato's Socrates is expressing sincere beliefs. Xenophon's Memorabilia and Aristophanes's The Clouds seem to present a somewhat different portrait of Socrates from the one Plato paints. Aristotle attributes a different doctrine with respect to Forms to Plato and Socrates. Aristotle suggests that Socrates' idea of forms can be discovered through investigation of the natural world, unlike Plato's Forms that exist beyond and outside the ordinary range of human understanding. The Socratic problem concerns how to reconcile these various accounts. The precise relationship between Plato and Socrates remains an area of contention among scholars.
Pythagoreanism
Although Socrates influenced Plato directly, the influence of Pythagoras, or in a broader sense, the Pythagoreans, such as Archytas also appears to have been significant. Aristotle and Cicero both claimed that the philosophy of Plato closely followed the teachings of the Pythagoreans. According to R. M. Hare, this influence consists of three points:
The platonic Republic might be related to the idea of "a tightly organized community of like-minded thinkers", like the one established by Pythagoras in Croton.
The idea that mathematics and, generally speaking, abstract thinking is a secure basis for philosophical thinking as well as "for substantial theses in science and morals".
They shared a "mystical approach to the soul and its place in the material world".
Pythagoras held that all things are number, and the cosmos comes from numerical principles. He introduced the concept of form as distinct from matter, and that the physical world is an imitation of an eternal mathematical world. These ideas were very influential on Heraclitus, Parmenides and Plato.
Heraclitus and Parmenides
The two philosophers Heraclitus and Parmenides, influenced by earlier pre-Socratic Greek philosophers such as Pythagoras and Xenophanes, departed from mythological explanations for the universe and began the metaphysical tradition that strongly influenced Plato and continues today. Heraclitus viewed all things as continuously changing, that one cannot "step into the same river twice" due to the ever-changing waters flowing through it, and all things exist as a contraposition of opposites. According to Diogenes Laertius, Plato received these ideas through Heraclitus' disciple Cratylus. Parmenides adopted an altogether contrary vision, arguing for the idea of a changeless, eternal universe and the view that change is an illusion. Plato's most self-critical dialogue is the Parmenides, which features Parmenides and his student Zeno, which criticizes Plato's own metaphysical theories. Plato's Sophist dialogue includes an Eleatic stranger. These ideas about change and permanence, or becoming and Being, influenced Plato in formulating his theory of Forms.
Philosophy
In Plato's dialogues, Socrates and his company of disputants had something to say on many subjects, including several aspects of metaphysics. These include religion and science, human nature, love, and sexuality. More than one dialogue contrasts perception and reality, nature and custom, and body and soul. Francis Cornford identified the "twin pillars of Platonism" as the theory of Forms, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the doctrine of immortality of the soul.
The Forms
In the dialogues Socrates regularly asks for the meaning of a general term (e. g. justice, truth, beauty), and criticizes those who instead give him particular examples, rather than the quality shared by all examples. "Platonism" and its theory of Forms (also known as 'theory of Ideas') denies the reality of the material world, considering it only an image or copy of the real world. According to this theory of Forms, there are these two kinds of things: the apparent world of material objects grasped by the senses, which constantly changes, and an unchanging and unseen world of Forms, grasped by reason (λογική). Plato's Forms represent types of things, as well as properties, patterns, and relations, which are referred to as objects. Just as individual tables, chairs, and cars refer to objects in this world, 'tableness', 'chairness', and 'carness', as well as e.g. justice, truth, and beauty refer to objects in another world. One of Plato's most cited examples for the Forms were the truths of geometry, such as the Pythagorean theorem. The theory of Forms is first introduced in the Phaedo dialogue (also known as On the Soul), wherein Socrates disputes the pluralism of Anaxagoras, then the most popular response to Heraclitus and Parmenides.
The Soul
For Plato, as was characteristic of ancient Greek philosophy, the soul was that which gave life. Plato advocates a belief in the immortality of the soul, and several dialogues end with long speeches imagining the afterlife. In the Timaeus, Socrates locates the parts of the soul within the human body: Reason is located in the head, spirit in the top third of the torso, and the appetite in the middle third of the torso, down to the navel.
Furthermore, Plato evinces a belief in the theory of reincarnation in multiple dialogues (such as the Phaedo and Timaeus). Scholars debate whether he intends the theory to be literally true, however. He uses this idea of reincarnation to introduce the concept that knowledge is a matter of recollection of things acquainted with before one is born, and not of observation or study. Keeping with the theme of admitting his own ignorance, Socrates regularly complains of his forgetfulness. In the Meno, Socrates uses a geometrical example to expound Plato's view that knowledge in this latter sense is acquired by recollection. Socrates elicits a fact concerning a geometrical construction from a slave boy, who could not have otherwise known the fact (due to the slave boy's lack of education). The knowledge must be of, Socrates concludes, an eternal, non-perceptible Form.
Epistemology
Plato also discusses several aspects of epistemology. In several dialogues, Socrates inverts the common man's intuition about what is knowable and what is real. Reality is unavailable to those who use their senses. Socrates says that he who sees with his eyes is blind. While most people take the objects of their senses to be real if anything is, Socrates is contemptuous of people who think that something has to be graspable in the hands to be real. In the Theaetetus, he says such people are eu amousoi (εὖ ἄμουσοι), an expression that means literally, "happily without the muses". In other words, such people are willingly ignorant, living without divine inspiration and access to higher insights about reality. Many have interpreted Plato as stating – even having been the first to write – that knowledge is justified true belief, an influential view that informed future developments in epistemology. Plato also identified problems with the justified true belief definition in the Theaetetus, concluding that justification (or an "account") would require knowledge of difference, meaning that the definition of knowledge is circular.
In the Sophist, Statesman, Republic, Timaeus, and the Parmenides, Plato associates knowledge with the apprehension of unchanging Forms and their relationships to one another (which he calls "expertise" in dialectic), including through the processes of collection and division. More explicitly, Plato himself argues in the Timaeus that knowledge is always proportionate to the realm from which it is gained. In other words, if one derives one's account of something experientially, because the world of sense is in flux, the views therein attained will be mere opinions. Meanwhile, opinions are characterized by a lack of necessity and stability. On the other hand, if one derives one's account of something by way of the non-sensible Forms, because these Forms are unchanging, so too is the account derived from them. That apprehension of Forms is required for knowledge may be taken to cohere with Plato's theory in the Theaetetus and Meno. Indeed, the apprehension of Forms may be at the base of the account required for justification, in that it offers foundational knowledge which itself needs no account, thereby avoiding an infinite regression.
Ethics
Several dialogues discuss ethics including virtue and vice, pleasure and pain, crime and punishment, and justice and medicine. Socrates presents the famous Euthyphro dilemma in the dialogue of the same name: "Is the pious (τὸ ὅσιον) loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" (10a) In the Protagoras dialogue it is argued through Socrates that virtue is innate and cannot be learned, that no one does bad on purpose, and to know what is good results in doing what is good; that knowledge is virtue. In the Republic, Plato poses the question, "What is justice?" and by examining both individual justice and the justice that informs societies, Plato is able not only to inform metaphysics, but also ethics and politics with the question: "What is the basis of moral and social obligation?" Plato's well-known answer rests upon the fundamental responsibility to seek wisdom, wisdom which leads to an understanding of the Form of the Good. Plato views "The Good" as the supreme Form, somehow existing even "beyond being". In this manner, justice is obtained when knowledge of how to fulfill one's moral and political function in society is put into practice.
Politics
The dialogues also discuss politics. Some of Plato's most famous doctrines are contained in the Republic as well as in the Laws and the Statesman. Because these opinions are not spoken directly by Plato and vary between dialogues, they cannot be straightforwardly assumed as representing Plato's own views.
Socrates asserts that societies have a tripartite class structure corresponding to the appetite/spirit/reason structure of the individual soul. The appetite/spirit/reason are analogous to the castes of society.
Productive (Workers) – the labourers, carpenters, plumbers, masons, merchants, farmers, ranchers, etc. These correspond to the "appetite" part of the soul.
Protective (Warriors or Guardians) – those who are adventurous, strong and brave; in the armed forces. These correspond to the "spirit" part of the soul.
Governing (Rulers or Philosopher Kings) – those who are intelligent, rational, self-controlled, in love with wisdom, well suited to make decisions for the community. These correspond to the "reason" part of the soul and are very few.
According to Socrates, a state made up of different kinds of souls will, overall, decline from an aristocracy (rule by the best) to a timocracy (rule by the honourable), then to an oligarchy (rule by the few), then to a democracy (rule by the people), and finally to tyranny (rule by one person, rule by a tyrant).
Rhetoric and poetry
Several dialogues tackle questions about art, including rhetoric and rhapsody. Socrates says that poetry is inspired by the muses, and is not rational. He speaks approvingly of this, and other forms of divine madness (drunkenness, eroticism, and dreaming) in the Phaedrus, and yet in the Republic wants to outlaw Homer's great poetry, and laughter as well. Scholars often view Plato's philosophy as at odds with rhetoric due to his criticisms of rhetoric in the Gorgias and his ambivalence toward rhetoric expressed in the Phaedrus. But other contemporary researchers contest the idea that Plato despised rhetoric and instead view his dialogues as a dramatization of complex rhetorical principles. Plato made abundant use of mythological narratives in his own work; It is generally agreed that the main purpose for Plato in using myths was didactic. He considered that only a few people were capable or interested in following a reasoned philosophical discourse, but men in general are attracted by stories and tales. Consequently, then, he used the myth to convey the conclusions of the philosophical reasoning. Notable examples include the story of Atlantis, the Myth of Er, and the Allegory of the Cave.
Definition of humanity
When considering the taxonomic definition of mankind, Plato proposed the term "featherless biped", and later ζῷον πολιτικόν (zōon politikon), a "political" or "state-building" animal (Aristotle's term, based on Plato's Statesman).
Diogenes the Cynic took issue with the former definition, reportedly producing a recently plucked chicken with the exclamation of "Here is Plato’s man!" (variously translated as "Behold, a man!"; "Here is a human!" etc.).
Works
Themes
Plato never presents himself as a participant in any of the dialogues, and with the exception of the Apology, there is no suggestion that he heard any of the dialogues firsthand. Some dialogues have no narrator but have a pure "dramatic" form, some dialogues are narrated by Socrates himself, who speaks in the first person. The Symposium is narrated by Apollodorus, a Socratic disciple, apparently to Glaucon. Apollodorus assures his listener that he is recounting the story, which took place when he himself was an infant, not from his own memory, but as remembered by Aristodemus, who told him the story years ago. The Theaetetus is also a peculiar case: a dialogue in dramatic form embedded within another dialogue in dramatic form. Some scholars take this as an indication that Plato had by this date wearied of the narrated form. In most of the dialogues, the primary speaker is Socrates, who employs a method of questioning which proceeds by a dialogue form called dialectic. The role of dialectic in Plato's thought is contested but there are two main interpretations: a type of reasoning and a method of intuition. Simon Blackburn adopts the first, saying that Plato's dialectic is "the process of eliciting the truth by means of questions aimed at opening out what is already implicitly known, or at exposing the contradictions and muddles of an opponent's position." Karl Popper, on the other hand, claims that dialectic is the art of intuition for "visualising the divine originals, the Forms or Ideas, of unveiling the Great Mystery behind the common man's everyday world of appearances".
Textual sources and history
During the early Renaissance, the Greek language and, along with it, Plato's texts were reintroduced to Western Europe by Byzantine scholars. Some 250 known manuscripts of Plato survive. In September or October 1484 Filippo Valori and Francesco Berlinghieri printed 1025 copies of Ficino's translation, using the printing press at the Dominican convent of San Jacopo di Ripoli. The 1578 edition of Plato's complete works published by Henricus Stephanus (Henri Estienne) in Geneva also included parallel Latin translation and running commentary by Joannes Serranus (Jean de Serres). It was this edition which established standard Stephanus pagination, still in use today. The text of Plato as received today apparently represents the complete written philosophical work of Plato, based on the first century AD arrangement of Thrasyllus of Mendes. The modern standard complete English edition is the 1997 Hackett Plato: Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper.
Authenticity
Thirty-five dialogues and thirteen letters (the Epistles) have traditionally been ascribed to Plato, though modern scholarship doubts the authenticity of at least some of these. Jowett mentions in his Appendix to Menexenus, that works which bore the character of a writer were attributed to that writer even when the actual author was unknown.
The works taken as genuine in antiquity but are now doubted by at least some modern scholars are: Alcibiades I (*), Alcibiades II (‡), Clitophon (*), Epinomis (‡), Letters (*), Hipparchus (‡), Menexenus (*), Minos (‡), Lovers (‡), Theages (‡)
The following works were transmitted under Plato's name in antiquity, but were already considered spurious by the 1st century AD: Axiochus, Definitions, Demodocus, Epigrams, Eryxias, Halcyon, On Justice, On Virtue, Sisyphus.
Chronology
No one knows the exact order Plato's dialogues were written in, nor the extent to which some might have been later revised and rewritten. The works are usually grouped into Early (sometimes by some into Transitional), Middle, and Late period; The following represents one relatively common division amongst developmentalist scholars.
Early: Apology, Charmides, Crito, Euthyphro, Gorgias, Hippias Minor, Hippias Major, Ion, Laches, Lysis, Protagoras
Middle: Cratylus, Euthydemus, Meno, Parmenides, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Republic, Symposium, Theatetus
Late: Critias, Sophist, Statesman, Timaeus, Philebus, Laws.
Whereas those classified as "early dialogues" often conclude in aporia, the so-called "middle dialogues" provide more clearly stated positive teachings that are often ascribed to Plato such as the theory of Forms. The remaining dialogues are classified as "late" and are generally agreed to be difficult and challenging pieces of philosophy. It should, however, be kept in mind that many of the positions in the ordering are still highly disputed, and also that the very notion that Plato's dialogues can or should be "ordered" is by no means universally accepted, though Plato's works are still often characterized as falling at least roughly into three groups stylistically.
Legacy
Unwritten doctrines
Plato's unwritten doctrines are, according to some ancient sources, the most fundamental metaphysical teaching of Plato, which he disclosed only orally, and some say only to his most trusted fellows, and which he may have kept secret from the public, although many modern scholars doubt these claims. A reason for not revealing it to everyone is partially discussed in Phaedrus where Plato criticizes the written transmission of knowledge as faulty, favouring instead the spoken logos: "he who has knowledge of the just and the good and beautiful ... will not, when in earnest, write them in ink, sowing them through a pen with words, which cannot defend themselves by argument and cannot teach the truth effectually." It is, however, said that Plato once disclosed this knowledge to the public in his lecture On the Good (Περὶ τἀγαθοῦ), in which the Good (τὸ ἀγαθόν) is identified with the One (the Unity, τὸ ἕν), the fundamental ontological principle.
The first witness who mentions its existence is Aristotle, who in his Physics writes: "It is true, indeed, that the account he gives there [i.e. in Timaeus] of the participant is different from what he says in his so-called unwritten teachings (Ancient Greek: ἄγραφα δόγματα, romanized: agrapha dogmata)." In Metaphysics he writes: "Now since the Forms are the causes of everything else, he [i.e. Plato] supposed that their elements are the elements of all things. Accordingly, the material principle is the Great and Small [i.e. the Dyad], and the essence is the One (τὸ ἕν), since the numbers are derived from the Great and Small by participation in the One". "From this account it is clear that he only employed two causes: that of the essence, and the material cause; for the Forms are the cause of the essence in everything else, and the One is the cause of it in the Forms. He also tells us what the material substrate is of which the Forms are predicated in the case of sensible things, and the One in that of the Forms – that it is this the duality (the Dyad, ἡ δυάς), the Great and Small (τὸ μέγα καὶ τὸ μικρόν). Further, he assigned to these two elements respectively the causation of good and of evil".
The most important aspect of this interpretation of Plato's metaphysics is the continuity between his teaching and the Neoplatonic interpretation of Plotinus or Ficino which has been considered erroneous by many but may in fact have been directly influenced by oral transmission of Plato's doctrine. A modern scholar who recognized the importance of the unwritten doctrine of Plato was Heinrich Gomperz who described it in his speech during the 7th International Congress of Philosophy in 1930. All the sources related to the ἄγραφα δόγματα have been collected by Konrad Gaiser and published as Testimonia Platonica.
Reception
Plato's thought is often compared with that of his most famous student, Aristotle, whose reputation during the Western Middle Ages so completely eclipsed that of Plato that the Scholastic philosophers referred to Aristotle as "the Philosopher". The only Platonic work known to western scholarship was Timaeus, until translations were made after the fall of Constantinople, which occurred during 1453. However, the study of Plato continued in the Byzantine Empire, the Caliphates during the Islamic Golden Age, and Spain during the Golden age of Jewish culture. Plato is also referenced by Jewish philosopher and Talmudic scholar Maimonides in his The Guide for the Perplexed.
The works of Plato were again revived at the times of Islamic Golden ages with other Greek contents through their translation from Greek to Arabic. Neoplatonism was revived from its founding father, Plotinus. Neoplatonism, a philosophical current that permeated Islamic scholarship, accentuated one facet of the Qur’anic conception of God—the transcendent—while seemingly neglecting another—the creative. This philosophical tradition, introduced by Al-Farabi and subsequently elaborated upon by figures such as Avicenna, postulated that all phenomena emanated from the divine source. It functioned as a conduit, bridging the transcendental nature of the divine with the tangible reality of creation. In the Islamic context, Neoplatonism facilitated the integration of Platonic philosophy with mystical Islamic thought, fostering a synthesis of ancient philosophical wisdom and religious insight. Inspired by Plato's Republic, Al-Farabi extended his inquiry beyond mere political theory, proposing an ideal city governed by philosopher-kings.
Many of these commentaries on Plato were translated from Arabic into Latin and as such influenced Medieval scholastic philosophers.
During the Renaissance, George Gemistos Plethon brought Plato's original writings to Florence from Constantinople in the century of its fall. Many of the greatest early modern scientists and artists who broke with Scholasticism, with the support of the Plato-inspired Lorenzo (grandson of Cosimo), saw Plato's philosophy as the basis for progress in the arts and sciences. The 17th century Cambridge Platonists, sought to reconcile Plato's more problematic beliefs, such as metempsychosis and polyamory, with Christianity. By the 19th century, Plato's reputation was restored, and at least on par with Aristotle's. Plato's influence has been especially strong in mathematics and the sciences. Plato's resurgence further inspired some of the greatest advances in logic since Aristotle, primarily through Gottlob Frege. Albert Einstein suggested that the scientist who takes philosophy seriously would have to avoid systematization and take on many different roles, and possibly appear as a Platonist or Pythagorean, in that such a one would have "the viewpoint of logical simplicity as an indispensable and effective tool of his research." British philosopher Alfred N. Whitehead is often misquoted of uttering the famous saying of "All of Western philosophy is a footnote to Plato."
Criticism
Many recent philosophers have also diverged from what some would describe as ideals characteristic of traditional Platonism. Friedrich Nietzsche notoriously attacked Plato's "idea of the good itself" along with many fundamentals of Christian morality, which he interpreted as "Platonism for the masses" in Beyond Good and Evil (1886). Martin Heidegger argued against Plato's alleged obfuscation of Being in his incomplete tome, Being and Time (1927). Karl Popper argued in the first volume of The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) that Plato's proposal for a "utopian" political regime in the Republic was prototypically totalitarian; this has been disputed. Edmund Gettier famously demonstrated the Gettier problem for the justified true belief account of knowledge. That the modern theory of justified true belief as knowledge, which Gettier addresses, is equivalent to Plato's is, however, accepted only by some scholars but rejected by others.
Notes
References
Works cited
Primary sources (Greek and Roman)
Secondary sources
Further reading
External links
Greek Wikisource has original text related to this article: Platon
Works available online:
Works by Plato in eBook form at Standard Ebooks
Works by Plato at Perseus Project – Greek & English hyperlinked text
Works by Plato at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Plato at the Internet Archive
Works by Plato at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Other resources:
Plato at the Indiana Philosophy Ontology Project
Plato at PhilPapers
"Plato and Platonism" . Catholic Encyclopedia. 1913. |
Alexander_the_Great | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_the_Great | [
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_the_Great"
] | Alexander III of Macedon (Ancient Greek: Ἀλέξανδρος, romanized: Alexandros; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), most commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip II to the throne in 336 BC at the age of 20 and spent most of his ruling years conducting a lengthy military campaign throughout Western Asia, Central Asia, parts of South Asia, and Egypt. By the age of 30, he had created one of the largest empires in history, stretching from Greece to northwestern India. He was undefeated in battle and is widely considered to be one of history's greatest and most successful military commanders.
Until the age of 16, Alexander was tutored by Aristotle. In 335 BC, shortly after his assumption of kingship over Macedon, he campaigned in the Balkans and reasserted control over Thrace and parts of Illyria before marching on the city of Thebes, which was subsequently destroyed in battle. Alexander then led the League of Corinth, and used his authority to launch the pan-Hellenic project envisaged by his father, assuming leadership over all Greeks in their conquest of Persia.
In 334 BC, he invaded the Achaemenid Persian Empire and began a series of campaigns that lasted for 10 years. Following his conquest of Asia Minor, Alexander broke the power of Achaemenid Persia in a series of decisive battles, including those at Issus and Gaugamela; he subsequently overthrew Darius III and conquered the Achaemenid Empire in its entirety. After the fall of Persia, the Macedonian Empire held a vast swath of territory between the Adriatic Sea and the Indus River. Alexander endeavored to reach the "ends of the world and the Great Outer Sea" and invaded India in 326 BC, achieving an important victory over Porus, an ancient Indian king of present-day Punjab, at the Battle of the Hydaspes. Due to the demand of his homesick troops, he eventually turned back at the Beas River and later died in 323 BC in Babylon, the city of Mesopotamia that he had planned to establish as his empire's capital. Alexander's death left unexecuted an additional series of planned military and mercantile campaigns that would have begun with a Greek invasion of Arabia. In the years following his death, a series of civil wars broke out across the Macedonian Empire, eventually leading to its disintegration at the hands of the Diadochi.
With his death marking the start of the Hellenistic period, Alexander's legacy includes the cultural diffusion and syncretism that his conquests engendered, such as Greco-Buddhism and Hellenistic Judaism. He founded more than twenty cities, with the most prominent being the city of Alexandria in Egypt. Alexander's settlement of Greek colonists and the resulting spread of Greek culture led to the overwhelming dominance of Hellenistic civilization and influence as far east as the Indian subcontinent. The Hellenistic period developed through the Roman Empire into modern Western culture; the Greek language became the lingua franca of the region and was the predominant language of the Byzantine Empire until its collapse in the mid-15th century AD.
Alexander became legendary as a classical hero in the mould of Achilles, featuring prominently in the historical and mythical traditions of both Greek and non-Greek cultures. His military achievements and unprecedented enduring successes in battle made him the measure against which many later military leaders would compare themselves, and his tactics remain a significant subject of study in military academies worldwide. Legends of Alexander's exploits coalesced into the third-century Alexander Romance which, in the premodern period, went through over one hundred recensions, translations, and derivations and was translated into almost every European vernacular and every language of the Islamic world. After the Bible, it was the most popular form of European literature.
Early life
Lineage and childhood
Alexander III was born in Pella, the capital of the Kingdom of Macedon, on the sixth day of the ancient Greek month of Hekatombaion, which probably corresponds to 20 July 356 BC (although the exact date is uncertain). He was the son of the erstwhile king of Macedon, Philip II, and his fourth wife, Olympias (daughter of Neoptolemus I, king of Epirus). Although Philip had seven or eight wives, Olympias was his principal wife for some time, likely because she gave birth to Alexander.Several legends surround Alexander's birth and childhood. According to the ancient Greek biographer Plutarch, on the eve of the consummation of her marriage to Philip, Olympias dreamed that her womb was struck by a thunderbolt that caused a flame to spread "far and wide" before dying away. Sometime after the wedding, Philip is said to have seen himself, in a dream, securing his wife's womb with a seal engraved with a lion's image. Plutarch offered a variety of interpretations for these dreams: that Olympias was pregnant before her marriage, indicated by the sealing of her womb; or that Alexander's father was Zeus. Ancient commentators were divided about whether the ambitious Olympias promulgated the story of Alexander's divine parentage, variously claiming that she had told Alexander, or that she dismissed the suggestion as impious.
On the day Alexander was born, Philip was preparing a siege on the city of Potidea on the peninsula of Chalcidice. That same day, Philip received news that his general Parmenion had defeated the combined Illyrian and Paeonian armies and that his horses had won at the Olympic Games. It was also said that on this day, the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, burnt down. This led Hegesias of Magnesia to say that it had burnt down because Artemis was away, attending the birth of Alexander. Such legends may have emerged when Alexander was king, and possibly at his instigation, to show that he was superhuman and destined for greatness from conception.
In his early years, Alexander was raised by a nurse, Lanike, sister of Alexander's future general Cleitus the Black. Later in his childhood, Alexander was tutored by the strict Leonidas, a relative of his mother, and by Lysimachus of Acarnania. Alexander was raised in the manner of noble Macedonian youths, learning to read, play the lyre, ride, fight, and hunt.
When Alexander was ten years old, a trader from Thessaly brought Philip a horse, which he offered to sell for thirteen talents. The horse refused to be mounted, and Philip ordered it away. Alexander, however, detecting the horse's fear of its own shadow, asked to tame the horse, which he eventually managed. Plutarch stated that Philip, overjoyed at this display of courage and ambition, kissed his son tearfully, declaring: "My boy, you must find a kingdom big enough for your ambitions. Macedon is too small for you", and bought the horse for him. Alexander named it Bucephalas, meaning "ox-head". Bucephalas carried Alexander as far as India. When the animal died (because of old age, according to Plutarch, at age 30), Alexander named a city after him, Bucephala.
Education
When Alexander was 13, Philip began to search for a tutor, and considered such academics as Isocrates and Speusippus, the latter offering to resign from his stewardship of the Academy to take up the post. In the end, Philip chose Aristotle and provided the Temple of the Nymphs at Mieza as a classroom. In return for teaching Alexander, Philip agreed to rebuild Aristotle's hometown of Stageira, which Philip had razed, and to repopulate it by buying and freeing the ex-citizens who were slaves, or pardoning those who were in exile.
Mieza was like a boarding school for Alexander and the children of Macedonian nobles, such as Ptolemy, Hephaistion, and Cassander. Many of these students would become his friends and future generals, and are often known as the "Companions". Aristotle taught Alexander and his companions about medicine, philosophy, morals, religion, logic, and art. Under Aristotle's tutelage, Alexander developed a passion for the works of Homer, and in particular the Iliad; Aristotle gave him an annotated copy, which Alexander later carried on his campaigns. Alexander was able to quote Euripides from memory.
In his youth, Alexander was also acquainted with Persian exiles at the Macedonian court, who received the protection of Philip II for several years as they opposed Artaxerxes III. Among them were Artabazos II and his daughter Barsine, possible future mistress of Alexander, who resided at the Macedonian court from 352 to 342 BC, as well as Amminapes, future satrap of Alexander, or a Persian nobleman named Sisines. This gave the Macedonian court a good knowledge of Persian issues, and may even have influenced some of the innovations in the management of the Macedonian state.
Suda writes that Anaximenes of Lampsacus was one of Alexander's teachers, and that Anaximenes also accompanied Alexander on his campaigns.
Heir of Philip II
Regency and ascent of Macedon
At the age of 16, Alexander's education under Aristotle ended. Philip II had waged war against the Thracians to the north, which left Alexander in charge as regent and heir apparent. During Philip's absence, the Thracian tribe of Maedi revolted against Macedonia. Alexander responded quickly and drove them from their territory. The territory was colonized, and a city, named Alexandropolis, was founded.
Upon Philip's return, Alexander was dispatched with a small force to subdue the revolts in southern Thrace. Campaigning against the Greek city of Perinthus, Alexander reportedly saved his father's life. Meanwhile, the city of Amphissa began to work lands that were sacred to Apollo near Delphi, a sacrilege that gave Philip the opportunity to further intervene in Greek affairs. While Philip was occupied in Thrace, Alexander was ordered to muster an army for a campaign in southern Greece. Concerned that other Greek states might intervene, Alexander made it look as though he was preparing to attack Illyria instead. During this turmoil, the Illyrians invaded Macedonia, only to be repelled by Alexander.
Philip and his army joined his son in 338 BC, and they marched south through Thermopylae, taking it after stubborn resistance from its Theban garrison. They went on to occupy the city of Elatea, only a few days' march from both Athens and Thebes. The Athenians, led by Demosthenes, voted to seek alliance with Thebes against Macedonia. Both Athens and Philip sent embassies to win Thebes's favour, but Athens won the contest. Philip marched on Amphissa (ostensibly acting on the request of the Amphictyonic League), capturing the mercenaries sent there by Demosthenes and accepting the city's surrender. Philip then returned to Elatea, sending a final offer of peace to Athens and Thebes, who both rejected it.
As Philip marched south, his opponents blocked him near Chaeronea, Boeotia. During the ensuing Battle of Chaeronea, Philip commanded the right wing and Alexander the left, accompanied by a group of Philip's trusted generals. According to the ancient sources, the two sides fought bitterly for some time. Philip deliberately commanded his troops to retreat, counting on the untested Athenian hoplites to follow, thus breaking their line. Alexander was the first to break the Theban lines, followed by Philip's generals. Having damaged the enemy's cohesion, Philip ordered his troops to press forward and quickly routed them. With the Athenians lost, the Thebans were surrounded. Left to fight alone, they were defeated.
After the victory at Chaeronea, Philip and Alexander marched unopposed into the Peloponnese, devastating much of Laconia and ejecting the Spartans from various parts of it. At Corinth, Philip established a "Hellenic Alliance" (modelled on the old anti-Persian alliance of the Greco-Persian Wars), which included most Greek city-states except Sparta. Philip was then named Hegemon (often translated as "Supreme Commander") of this league (known by modern scholars as the League of Corinth), and announced his plans to attack the Persian Empire.
Exile and return
When Philip returned to Pella, he fell in love with and married Cleopatra Eurydice in 338 BC, the niece of his general Attalus. The marriage made Alexander's position as heir less secure, since any son of Cleopatra Eurydice would be a fully Macedonian heir, while Alexander was only half-Macedonian. During the wedding banquet, a drunken Attalus publicly prayed to the gods that the union would produce a legitimate heir.
At the wedding of Cleopatra, whom Philip fell in love with and married, she being much too young for him, her uncle Attalus in his drink desired the Macedonians would implore the gods to give them a lawful successor to the kingdom by his niece. This so irritated Alexander that throwing one of the cups at his head, "You villain," said he, "what, am I then a bastard?" Then Philip, taking Attalus's part, rose up and would have run his son through; but by good fortune for them both, either his over-hasty rage, or the wine he had drunk, made his foot slip, so that he fell down on the floor, at which Alexander reproachfully insulted him: "See there," said he, "the man who makes preparations to pass out of Europe into Asia, overturned in passing from one seat to another."
In 337 BC, Alexander fled Macedon with his mother, dropping her off with her brother, King Alexander I of Epirus in Dodona, capital of the Molossians. He continued to Illyria where he sought refuge with one or more Illyrian kings, perhaps with Glaucias, and was treated as a guest, despite having defeated them in battle a few years before. However, it appears Philip never intended to disown his politically and militarily trained son. Accordingly, Alexander returned to Macedon after six months due to the efforts of a family friend, Demaratus, who mediated between the two parties.
In the following year, the Persian satrap (governor) of Caria, Pixodarus, offered his eldest daughter to Alexander's half-brother, Philip Arrhidaeus. Olympias and several of Alexander's friends suggested this showed Philip intended to make Arrhidaeus his heir. Alexander reacted by sending an actor, Thessalus of Corinth, to tell Pixodarus that he should not offer his daughter's hand to an illegitimate son, but instead to Alexander. When Philip heard of this, he stopped the negotiations and scolded Alexander for wishing to marry the daughter of a Carian, explaining that he wanted a better bride for him. Philip exiled four of Alexander's friends, Harpalus, Nearchus, Ptolemy and Erigyius, and had the Corinthians bring Thessalus to him in chains.
King of Macedon
Accession
In the 24th day of the Macedonian month Dios, which probably corresponds to 25 October 336 BC, while at Aegae attending the wedding of his daughter Cleopatra to Olympias's brother, Alexander I of Epirus, Philip was assassinated by the captain of his bodyguards, Pausanias. As Pausanias tried to escape, he tripped over a vine and was killed by his pursuers, including two of Alexander's companions, Perdiccas and Leonnatus. Alexander was proclaimed king on the spot by the nobles and army at the age of 20.
Consolidation of power
Alexander began his reign by eliminating potential rivals to the throne. He had his cousin, the former Amyntas IV, executed. He also had two Macedonian princes from the region of Lyncestis killed for having been involved in his father's assassination, but spared a third, Alexander Lyncestes. Olympias had Cleopatra Eurydice, and Europa, her daughter by Philip, burned alive. When Alexander learned about this, he was furious. Alexander also ordered the murder of Attalus, who was in command of the advance guard of the army in Asia Minor and Cleopatra's uncle.
Attalus was at that time corresponding with Demosthenes, regarding the possibility of defecting to Athens. Attalus also had severely insulted Alexander, and following Cleopatra's murder, Alexander may have considered him too dangerous to be left alive. Alexander spared Arrhidaeus, who was by all accounts mentally disabled, possibly as a result of poisoning by Olympias.
News of Philip's death roused many states into revolt, including Thebes, Athens, Thessaly, and the Thracian tribes north of Macedon. When news of the revolts reached Alexander, he responded quickly. Though advised to use diplomacy, Alexander mustered 3,000 Macedonian cavalry and rode south towards Thessaly. He found the Thessalian army occupying the pass between Mount Olympus and Mount Ossa, and ordered his men to ride over Mount Ossa. When the Thessalians awoke the next day, they found Alexander in their rear and promptly surrendered, adding their cavalry to Alexander's force. He then continued south towards the Peloponnese.
Alexander stopped at Thermopylae where he was recognized as the leader of the Amphictyonic League before heading south to Corinth. Athens sued for peace and Alexander pardoned the rebels. The famous encounter between Alexander and Diogenes the Cynic occurred during Alexander's stay in Corinth. When Alexander asked Diogenes what he could do for him, the philosopher disdainfully asked Alexander to stand a little to the side, as he was blocking the sunlight. This reply apparently delighted Alexander who is reported to have said, "But verily, if I were not Alexander, I would like to be Diogenes." At Corinth, Alexander took the title of Hegemon ("leader") and, like Philip, was appointed commander for the coming war against Persia. He also received news of a Thracian uprising.
Balkan campaign
Before crossing to Asia, Alexander wanted to safeguard his northern borders. In the spring of 335 BC, he advanced to suppress several revolts. Starting from Amphipolis, he travelled east into the country of the "Independent Thracians", and at Mount Haemus, the Macedonian army attacked and defeated the Thracian forces manning the heights. The Macedonians marched into the country of the Triballi and defeated their army near the Lyginus river (a tributary of the Danube). Alexander then marched for three days to the Danube, encountering the Getae tribe on the opposite shore. Crossing the river at night, he surprised them and forced their army to retreat after the first cavalry skirmish.
News then reached Alexander that the Illyrian chieftain Cleitus and King Glaukias of the Taulantii were in open revolt against his authority. Marching west into Illyria, Alexander defeated each in turn, forcing the two rulers to flee with their troops. With these victories, he secured his northern frontier.
Destruction of Thebes
While Alexander campaigned north, the Thebans and Athenians rebelled once again. Alexander immediately headed south. While the other cities again hesitated, Thebes decided to fight. The Theban resistance was ineffective and Alexander razed the city and divided its territory between the other Boeotian cities. The end of Thebes cowed Athens, leaving all of Greece temporarily at peace. Alexander then set out on his Asian campaign, leaving Antipater as regent.
Conquest of the Achaemenid Persian Empire
Asia Minor
After his victory at the Battle of Chaeronea (338 BC), Philip II began the work of establishing himself as hēgemṓn (Greek: ἡγεμών) of a league which according to Diodorus was to wage a campaign against the Persians for the sundry grievances Greece suffered in 480 and free the Greek cities of the western coast and islands from Achaemenid rule. In 336 he sent Parmenion, Amyntas, Andromenes, Attalus, and an army of 10,000 men into Anatolia to make preparations for an invasion. The Greek cities on the western coast of Anatolia revolted until the news arrived that Philip had been murdered and had been succeeded by his young son Alexander. The Macedonians were demoralized by Philip's death and were subsequently defeated near Magnesia by the Achaemenids under the command of the mercenary Memnon of Rhodes.
Taking over the invasion project of Philip II, Alexander's army crossed the Hellespont in 334 BC with approximately 48,100 soldiers, 6,100 cavalry, and a fleet of 120 ships with crews numbering 38,000 drawn from Macedon and various Greek city states, mercenaries, and feudally raised soldiers from Thrace, Paionia, and Illyria. He showed his intent to conquer the entirety of the Persian Empire by throwing a spear into Asian soil and saying he accepted Asia as a gift from the gods. This also showed Alexander's eagerness to fight, in contrast to his father's preference for diplomacy.
After an initial victory against Persian forces at the Battle of the Granicus, Alexander accepted the surrender of the Persian provincial capital and treasury of Sardis; he then proceeded along the Ionian coast, granting autonomy and democracy to the cities. Miletus, held by Achaemenid forces, required a delicate siege operation, with Persian naval forces nearby. Further south, at Halicarnassus, in Caria, Alexander successfully waged his first large-scale siege, eventually forcing his opponents, the mercenary captain Memnon of Rhodes and the Persian satrap of Caria, Orontobates, to withdraw by sea. Alexander left the government of Caria to a member of the Hecatomnid dynasty, Ada, who adopted Alexander.
From Halicarnassus, Alexander proceeded into mountainous Lycia and the Pamphylian plain, asserting control over all coastal cities to deny the Persians naval bases. From Pamphylia onwards, the coast held no major ports and Alexander moved inland. At Termessos, Alexander humbled and did not storm the Pisidian city. At the ancient Phrygian capital of Gordium, Alexander "undid" the hitherto unsolvable Gordian Knot, a feat said to await the future "king of Asia". According to the story, Alexander proclaimed that it did not matter how the knot was undone, and hacked it apart with his sword.
The Levant and Syria
In spring 333 BC, Alexander crossed the Taurus into Cilicia. After a long pause due to an illness, he marched on towards Syria. Though outmanoeuvered by Darius's significantly larger army, he marched back to Cilicia, where he defeated Darius at Issus. Darius fled the battle, causing his army to collapse, and left behind his wife, his two daughters, his mother Sisygambis, and a fabulous treasure. He offered a peace treaty that included the lands he had already lost, and a ransom of 10,000 talents for his family. Alexander replied that since he was now king of Asia, it was he alone who decided territorial divisions. Alexander proceeded to take possession of Syria, and most of the coast of the Levant. In the following year, 332 BC, he was forced to attack Tyre, which he captured after a long and difficult siege. The men of military age were massacred and the women and children sold into slavery.
Egypt
When Alexander destroyed Tyre, most of the towns on the route to Egypt quickly capitulated. However, Alexander was met with resistance at Gaza. The stronghold was heavily fortified and built on a hill, requiring a siege. When "his engineers pointed out to him that because of the height of the mound it would be impossible... this encouraged Alexander all the more to make the attempt". After three unsuccessful assaults, the stronghold fell, but not before Alexander had received a serious shoulder wound. As in Tyre, men of military age were put to the sword, and the women and children were sold into slavery.
Egypt was only one of a large number of territories taken by Alexander from the Persians. After his trip to Siwa, Alexander was crowned in the temple of Ptah at Memphis. It appears that the Egyptian people did not find it disturbing that he was a foreigner – nor that he was absent for virtually his entire reign. Alexander restored the temples neglected by the Persians and dedicated new monuments to the Egyptian gods. In the temple of Luxor, near Karnak, he built a chapel for the sacred barge. During his brief months in Egypt, he reformed the taxation system on the Greek models and organized the military occupation of the country, but in early 331 BC he left for Asia in pursuit of the Persians.
Alexander advanced on Egypt in later 332 BC where he was regarded as a liberator. To legitimize taking power and be recognized as the descendant of the long line of pharaohs, Alexander made sacrifices to the gods at Memphis and went to consult the famous oracle of Amun-Ra at the Siwa Oasis in the Libyan desert, at which he was pronounced the son of the deity Amun. Henceforth, Alexander often referred to Zeus-Ammon as his true father, and after his death, currency depicted him adorned with horns, using the Horns of Ammon as a symbol of his divinity. The Greeks interpreted this message – one that the gods addressed to all pharaohs – as a prophecy.
During his stay in Egypt, he founded Alexandria, which would become the prosperous capital of the Ptolemaic Kingdom after his death. Control of Egypt passed to Ptolemy I (son of Lagos), the founder of the Ptolemaic Dynasty (305–30 BC) after the death of Alexander.
Assyria and Babylonia
Leaving Egypt in 331 BC, Alexander marched eastward into Achaemenid Assyria in Upper Mesopotamia (now northern Iraq) and defeated Darius again at the Battle of Gaugamela. Darius once more fled the field, and Alexander chased him as far as Arbela. Gaugamela would be the final and decisive encounter between the two. Darius fled over the mountains to Ecbatana (modern Hamadan) while Alexander captured Babylon.
Babylonian astronomical diaries say that "the king of the world, Alexander" sent his scouts with a message to the people of Babylon before entering the city: "I shall not enter your houses".
Persia
From Babylon, Alexander went to Susa, one of the Achaemenid capitals, and captured its treasury. He sent the bulk of his army to the Persian ceremonial capital of Persepolis via the Persian Royal Road. Alexander himself took selected troops on the direct route to the city. He then stormed the pass of the Persian Gates (in the modern Zagros Mountains) which had been blocked by a Persian army under Ariobarzanes and then hurried to Persepolis before its garrison could loot the treasury.
On entering Persepolis, Alexander allowed his troops to loot the city for several days. Alexander stayed in Persepolis for five months. During his stay, a fire broke out in the eastern palace of Xerxes I and spread to the rest of the city. Possible causes include a drunken accident or deliberate revenge for the burning of the Acropolis of Athens during the Second Persian War by Xerxes; Plutarch and Diodorus allege that Alexander's companion, the hetaera Thaïs, instigated and started the fire. Even as he watched the city burn, Alexander immediately began to regret his decision. Plutarch claims that he ordered his men to put out the fires but the flames had already spread to most of the city. Curtius claims that Alexander did not regret his decision until the next morning. Plutarch recounts an anecdote in which Alexander pauses and talks to a fallen statue of Xerxes as if it were a live person:
Shall I pass by and leave you lying there because of the expeditions you led against Greece, or shall I set you up again because of your magnanimity and your virtues in other respects?
Fall of the Persian Empire and the East
Alexander then chased Darius, first into Media, and then Parthia. The Persian king no longer controlled his own destiny, and was taken prisoner by Bessus, his Bactrian satrap and kinsman. As Alexander approached, Bessus had his men fatally stab the Great King and then declared himself Darius's successor as Artaxerxes V, before retreating into Central Asia to launch a guerrilla campaign against Alexander. Alexander buried Darius's remains next to his Achaemenid predecessors in a regal funeral. He claimed that, while dying, Darius had named him as his successor to the Achaemenid throne. The Achaemenid Empire is normally considered to have fallen with Darius. However, as basic forms of community life and the general structure of government were maintained and resuscitated by Alexander under his own rule, he, in the words of the Iranologist Pierre Briant "may therefore be considered to have acted in many ways as the last of the Achaemenids."
Alexander viewed Bessus as a usurper and set out to defeat him. This campaign, initially against Bessus, turned into a grand tour of central Asia. Alexander founded a series of new cities, all called Alexandria, including modern Kandahar in Afghanistan, and Alexandria Eschate ("The Furthest") in modern Tajikistan. The campaign took Alexander through Media, Parthia, Aria (West Afghanistan), Drangiana, Arachosia (South and Central Afghanistan), Bactria (North and Central Afghanistan), and Scythia.
In 329 BC, Spitamenes, who held an undefined position in the satrapy of Sogdiana, betrayed Bessus to Ptolemy, one of Alexander's trusted companions, and Bessus was executed. However, at some point later when Alexander was on the Jaxartes dealing with an incursion by a horse nomad army, Spitamenes raised Sogdiana in revolt. Alexander personally defeated the Scythians at the Battle of Jaxartes and immediately launched a campaign against Spitamenes, defeating him in the Battle of Gabai. After the defeat, Spitamenes was killed by his own men, who then sued for peace.
Problems and plots
During this time, Alexander adopted some elements of Persian dress and customs at his court, notably the custom of proskynesis, either a symbolic kissing of the hand, or prostration on the ground, that Persians showed to their social superiors. This was one aspect of Alexander's broad strategy aimed at securing the aid and support of the Iranian upper classes. The Greeks however regarded the gesture of proskynesis as the province of deities and believed that Alexander meant to deify himself by requiring it. This cost him the sympathies of many of his countrymen, and he eventually abandoned it.
During the long rule of the Achaemenids, the elite positions in many segments of the empire including the central government, the army, and the many satrapies were specifically reserved for Iranians and to a major degree, Persian noblemen. The latter were in many cases additionally connected through marriage alliances with the royal Achaemenid family. This created a problem for Alexander as to whether he had to make use of the various segments and people that had given the empire its solidity and unity for a lengthy period of time. Pierre Briant explains that Alexander realized that it was insufficient to merely exploit the internal contradictions within the imperial system as in Asia Minor, Babylonia or Egypt; he also had to (re)create a central government with or without the support of the Iranians. As early as 334 BC he demonstrated awareness of this, when he challenged incumbent King Darius III "by appropriating the main elements of the Achaemenid monarchy's ideology, particularly the theme of the king who protects the lands and the peasants". Alexander wrote a letter in 332 BC to Darius III, wherein he argued that he was worthier than Darius "to succeed to the Achaemenid throne". However, Alexander's eventual decision to burn the Achaemenid palace at Persepolis in conjunction with the major rejection and opposition of the "entire Persian people" made it impracticable for him to pose himself as Darius' legitimate successor. Against Bessus (Artaxerxes V) however, Briant adds, Alexander reasserted "his claim to legitimacy as the avenger of Darius III".
A plot against his life was revealed, and one of his officers, Philotas, was executed for failing to alert Alexander. The death of the son necessitated the death of the father, and thus Parmenion, who had been charged with guarding the treasury at Ecbatana, was assassinated at Alexander's command, to prevent attempts at vengeance. Most infamously, Alexander personally killed the man who had saved his life at Granicus, Cleitus the Black, during a violent drunken altercation at Maracanda (modern day Samarkand in Uzbekistan), in which Cleitus accused Alexander of several judgmental mistakes and especially of having forgotten the Macedonian ways in favour of a corrupt oriental lifestyle.
Later, in the Central Asian campaign, a second plot against his life was revealed. This one was instigated by his own royal pages. His official historian, Callisthenes of Olynthus, was implicated in the plot, and in the Anabasis of Alexander, Arrian states that Callisthenes and the pages were then tortured on the rack as punishment, and likely died soon after. It remains unclear if Callisthenes was actually involved in the plot, for prior to his accusation he had fallen out of favour by leading the opposition to the attempt to introduce proskynesis.
Macedon in Alexander's absence
When Alexander set out for Asia, he left his general Antipater, an experienced military and political leader, and part of Philip II's "Old Guard", in charge of Macedon. Alexander's sacking of Thebes ensured that Greece remained quiet during his absence. The one exception was a call to arms by Spartan king Agis III in 331 BC, whom Antipater defeated and killed in the battle of Megalopolis. Antipater referred the Spartans' punishment to the League of Corinth, which then deferred to Alexander, who chose to pardon them. There was also considerable friction between Antipater and Olympias, and each complained to Alexander about the other.
In general, Greece enjoyed a period of peace and prosperity during Alexander's campaign in Asia. Alexander sent back vast sums from his conquest, which stimulated the economy and increased trade across his empire. However, Alexander's constant demands for troops and the migration of Macedonians throughout his empire depleted Macedon's strength, greatly weakening it in the years after Alexander, and ultimately led to its subjugation by Rome after the Third Macedonian War (171–168 BC).
Coinage
The conquest by Philip II of Pangaeum, and then of the island of Thasos between 356 and 342 BC brought rich gold and silver mines under Macedonian control.
Alexander appears to have introduced a new coinage in Cilicia in Tarsus, after the Battle of Issus in 333 BC, which went on to become the main coinage of the empire. Alexander minted gold staters, silver tetradrachms and drachims, and various fractional bronze coins. The types of these coins remained constant in his empire. The gold series had the head of Athena on the obverse and a winged Nike (Victory) on the reverse. The silver coinage had a beardless head of Heracles wearing a lionskin headdress on the obverse and Zeus aetophoros ('eagle bearer') enthroned with a scepter in his left hand, on the reverse. There are both Greek and non-Greek aspects to this design. Heracles and Zeus were important deities for the Macedonians, with Heracles considered to be the ancestor of the Temenid dynasty and Zeus the patron of the main Macedonian sanctuary, Dium. The lion was also the symbolic animal of the Anatolian god Sandas, worshipped at Tarsus. The reverse design of Alexander's tetradrachms is closely modelled on the depiction of the god Baaltars (Baal of Tarsus), on the silver staters minted at Tarsus by the Persian satrap Mazaeus before Alexander's conquest.
Alexander did not attempt to impose uniform imperial coinage throughout his new conquests. Persian coins continued to circulate in all the satrapies of the empire.
Indian campaign
Forays into the Indian subcontinent
After the death of Spitamenes and his marriage to Roxana (Raoxshna in Old Iranian) to cement relations with his new satrapies, Alexander turned to the Indian subcontinent. He invited the chieftains of the former satrapy of Gandhara (a region presently straddling eastern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan), to come to him and submit to his authority. Omphis (Indian name Ambhi), the ruler of Taxila, whose kingdom extended from the Indus to the Hydaspes (Jhelum), complied, but the chieftains of some hill clans, including the Aspasioi and Assakenoi sections of the Kambojas (known in Indian texts also as Ashvayanas and Ashvakayanas), refused to submit. Ambhi hastened to relieve Alexander of his apprehension and met him with valuable presents, placing himself and all his forces at his disposal. Alexander not only returned Ambhi his title and the gifts but he also presented him with a wardrobe of "Persian robes, gold and silver ornaments, 30 horses and 1,000 talents in gold". Alexander was emboldened to divide his forces, and Ambhi assisted Hephaestion and Perdiccas in constructing a bridge over the Indus where it bends at Hund, supplied their troops with provisions, and he received Alexander and his whole army in his capital city of Taxila, with every demonstration of friendship and the most liberal hospitality.
On the subsequent advance of the Macedonian king, Taxiles accompanied him with a force of 5,000 men and took part in the Battle of the Hydaspes. After that victory, he was sent by Alexander in pursuit of Porus, to whom he was charged to offer favourable terms, but narrowly escaped losing his life at the hands of his old enemy. Subsequently, the two rivals were reconciled by the personal mediation of Alexander; Taxiles contributed zealously to the equipment of the fleet on the Hydaspes and was entrusted by Alexander with the government of the whole territory between that river and the Indus. A considerable accession of power was granted him after the death of Philip, son of Machatas, and he was allowed to retain his authority at the death of Alexander himself (323 BC), as well as in the subsequent partition of the provinces at Triparadisus, 321 BC.
In the winter of 327/326 BC, Alexander personally led a campaign against the Aspasioi of the Kunar Valley, the Guraeans of the Guraeus Valley, and the Assakenoi of the Swat and Buner Valleys. A fierce contest ensued with the Aspasioi in which Alexander was wounded in the shoulder by a dart, but eventually the Aspasioi lost. Alexander then faced the Assakenoi who fought against him from the strongholds of Massaga, Ora, and Aornos.
The fort of Massaga was reduced after days of bloody fighting in which Alexander was seriously wounded in the ankle. According to Curtius, "Not only did Alexander slaughter the entire population of Massaga, but also did he reduce its buildings to rubble." A similar slaughter followed at Ora. In the aftermath of Massaga and Ora, numerous Assakenians fled to the fortress of Aornos. Alexander followed close behind and captured the strategic hill-fort after four bloody days.
After Aornos, Alexander crossed the Indus and won an epic battle against King Porus, who ruled a region lying between the Hydaspes and the Acesines (Chenab), in what is now the Punjab, in the Battle of the Hydaspes in 326 BC. Alexander was impressed by Porus's bravery and made him an ally. He appointed Porus as satrap, and added to Porus's territory land that he did not previously own, towards the south-east, up to the Hyphasis (Beas). Choosing a local helped him control these lands that were distant from Greece. Alexander founded two cities on opposite sides of the Hydaspes river, naming one Bucephala, in honour of his horse, who died around this time. The other was Nicaea (Victory), thought to be located at the site of modern-day Mong, Punjab. Philostratus the Elder in the Life of Apollonius of Tyana writes that in the army of Porus, there was an elephant who fought bravely against Alexander's army, and Alexander dedicated it to the Helios (Sun) and named it Ajax because he thought that such a great animal deserved a great name. The elephant had gold rings around its tusks and an inscription was on them written in Greek: "Alexander the son of Zeus dedicates Ajax to the Helios" (ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΣ Ο ΔΙΟΣ ΤΟΝ ΑΙΑΝΤΑ ΤΩΙ ΗΛΙΩΙ).
Revolt of the Hellenic army
East of Porus's kingdom, near the Ganges River, was the Nanda Empire of Magadha, and further east, the Gangaridai Empire of Bengal region of the Indian subcontinent. Fearing the prospect of facing other large armies and exhausted by years of campaigning, Alexander's army mutinied at the Hyphasis River (Beas), refusing to march farther east. This river thus marks the easternmost extent of Alexander's conquests.
As for the Macedonians, however, their struggle with Porus blunted their courage and stayed their further advance into India. For having had all they could do to repulse an enemy who mustered only twenty thousand infantry and two thousand horse, they violently opposed Alexander when he insisted on crossing the river Ganges also, the width of which, as they learned, was thirty-two furlongs [6.4 km], its depth one hundred fathoms [180 m], while its banks on the further side were covered with multitudes of men-at-arms and horsemen and elephants. For they were told that the kings of the Ganderites and Praesii were awaiting them with eighty thousand horsemen, two hundred thousand footmen, eight thousand chariots, and six thousand war elephants.
Alexander tried to persuade his soldiers to march farther, but his general Coenus pleaded with him to change his opinion and return; the men, he said, "longed to again see their parents, their wives and children, their homeland". Alexander eventually agreed and turned south, marching along the Indus. Along the way his army conquered the Malhi (in modern-day Multan) and other Indian tribes; while besieging the Mallian citadel, Alexander suffered a near-fatal injury when an arrow penetrated his armor and entered his lung.
Alexander sent much of his army to Carmania (modern southern Iran) with general Craterus, and commissioned a fleet to explore the Persian Gulf shore under his admiral Nearchus, while he led the rest back to Persia through the more difficult southern route along the Gedrosian Desert and Makran. Alexander reached Susa in 324 BC, but not before losing many men to the harsh desert.
Last years in Persia
Discovering that many of his satraps and military governors had misbehaved in his absence, Alexander executed several of them as examples on his way to Susa. As a gesture of thanks, he paid off the debts of his soldiers, and announced that he would send over-aged and disabled veterans back to Macedon, led by Craterus. His troops misunderstood his intention and mutinied at the town of Opis. They refused to be sent away and criticized his adoption of Persian customs and dress and the introduction of Persian officers and soldiers into Macedonian units.
After three days, unable to persuade his men to back down, Alexander gave Persians command posts in the army and conferred Macedonian military titles upon Persian units. The Macedonians quickly begged forgiveness, which Alexander accepted, and held a great banquet with several thousand of his men. In an attempt to craft a lasting harmony between his Macedonian and Persian subjects, Alexander held a mass marriage of his senior officers to Persian and other noblewomen at Susa, but few of those marriages seem to have lasted much beyond a year.
Meanwhile, upon his return to Persia, Alexander learned that guards of the tomb of Cyrus the Great in Pasargadae had desecrated it, and swiftly executed them. Alexander admired Cyrus the Great, from an early age reading Xenophon's Cyropaedia, which described Cyrus's heroism in battle and governance as a king and legislator. During his visit to Pasargadae, Alexander ordered his architect Aristobulus to decorate the interior of the sepulchral chamber of Cyrus's tomb.
Afterwards, Alexander travelled to Ecbatana to retrieve the bulk of the Persian treasure. There, his closest friend, Hephaestion, died of illness or poisoning. Hephaestion's death devastated Alexander and he ordered the preparation of an expensive funeral pyre in Babylon along with a decree for public mourning. Back in Babylon, Alexander planned a series of new campaigns, beginning with an invasion of Arabia.
Death and succession
On either 10 or 11 June 323 BC, Alexander died in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II, in Babylon, at age 32. There are two different versions of Alexander's death, differing slightly in details. Plutarch's account is that roughly 14 days before his death, Alexander entertained admiral Nearchus and spent the night and next day drinking with Medius of Larissa. Alexander developed a fever, which worsened until he was unable to speak. The common soldiers, anxious about his health, were granted the right to file past him as he silently waved at them. In the second account, Diodorus recounts that Alexander was struck with pain after downing a large bowl of unmixed wine in honour of Heracles followed by 11 days of weakness; he did not develop a fever, instead dying after some agony. Arrian also mentioned this as an alternative, but Plutarch specifically denied this claim.
Given the propensity of the Macedonian aristocracy to assassination, foul play featured in multiple accounts of his death. Diodorus, Plutarch, Arrian and Justin all mentioned the theory that Alexander was poisoned. Justin stated that Alexander was the victim of a poisoning conspiracy, Plutarch dismissed it as a fabrication, while both Diodorus and Arrian noted that they mentioned it only for the sake of completeness. The accounts were nevertheless fairly consistent in designating Antipater, recently removed as Macedonian viceroy, replaced by Craterus, as the head of the alleged plot. Perhaps taking his summons to Babylon as a death sentence and having seen the fate of Parmenion and Philotas, Antipater purportedly arranged for Alexander to be poisoned by his son Iollas, who was Alexander's wine-pourer. There was even a suggestion that Aristotle may have participated.
The strongest argument against the poison theory is the fact that twelve days passed between the start of his illness and his death; such long-acting poisons were probably not available. However, in a 2003 BBC documentary investigating the death of Alexander, Leo Schep from the New Zealand National Poisons Centre proposed that the plant white hellebore (Veratrum album), which was known in antiquity, may have been used to poison Alexander. In a 2014 manuscript in the journal Clinical Toxicology, Schep suggested Alexander's wine was spiked with Veratrum album, and that this would produce poisoning symptoms that match the course of events described in the Alexander Romance. Veratrum album poisoning can have a prolonged course and it was suggested that if Alexander was poisoned, Veratrum album offers the most plausible cause. Another poisoning explanation put forward in 2010 proposed that the circumstances of his death were compatible with poisoning by water of the river Styx (modern-day Mavroneri in Arcadia, Greece) that contained calicheamicin, a dangerous compound produced by bacteria.
Several natural causes (diseases) have been suggested, including malaria and typhoid fever. A 1998 article in the New England Journal of Medicine attributed his death to typhoid fever complicated by bowel perforation and ascending paralysis. A 2004 analysis suggested pyogenic (infectious) spondylitis or meningitis. Other illnesses fit the symptoms, including acute pancreatitis, West Nile virus, and Guillain-Barré syndrome. Natural-cause theories also tend to emphasize that Alexander's health may have been in general decline after years of heavy drinking and severe wounds. The anguish that Alexander felt after Hephaestion's death may also have contributed to his declining health.
Post-death events
Alexander's body was laid in a gold anthropoid sarcophagus that was filled with honey, which was in turn placed in a gold casket. According to Aelian, a seer called Aristander foretold that the land where Alexander was laid to rest "would be happy and unvanquishable forever". Perhaps more likely, the successors may have seen possession of the body as a symbol of legitimacy, since burying the prior king was a royal prerogative.
While Alexander's funeral cortege was on its way to Macedon, Ptolemy seized it and took it temporarily to Memphis. His successor, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, transferred the sarcophagus to Alexandria, where it remained until at least late antiquity. Ptolemy IX Lathyros, one of Ptolemy's final successors, replaced Alexander's sarcophagus with a glass one so he could convert the original to coinage. The 2014 discovery of an enormous tomb in northern Greece, at Amphipolis, dating from the time of Alexander the Great has given rise to speculation that its original intent was to be the burial place of Alexander. This would fit with the intended destination of Alexander's funeral cortege. However, the memorial was found to be dedicated to the dearest friend of Alexander the Great, Hephaestion.
Pompey, Julius Caesar and Augustus all visited the tomb in Alexandria where Augustus, allegedly, accidentally knocked the nose off. Caligula was said to have taken Alexander's breastplate from the tomb for his own use. Around AD 200, Emperor Septimius Severus closed Alexander's tomb to the public. His son and successor, Caracalla, a great admirer, visited the tomb during his own reign. After this, details on the fate of the tomb are hazy.
The so-called "Alexander Sarcophagus", discovered near Sidon and now in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum, is so named not because it was thought to have contained Alexander's remains, but because its bas-reliefs depict Alexander and his companions fighting the Persians and hunting. It was originally thought to have been the sarcophagus of Abdalonymus (died 311 BC), the king of Sidon appointed by Alexander immediately following the battle of Issus in 331. However, in 1969, it was suggested by Karl Schefold that it may date from earlier than Abdalonymus's death.
Demades likened the Macedonian army, after the death of Alexander, to the blinded Cyclops due to the many random and disorderly movements that it made. In addition, Leosthenes also likened the anarchy between the generals, after Alexander's death, to the blinded Cyclops "who after he had lost his eye went feeling and groping about with his hands before him, not knowing where to lay them".
Division of the Macedonian Empire
Alexander's death was so sudden that when reports of his death reached Greece, they were not immediately believed. Alexander had no obvious or legitimate heir, his son Alexander IV by Roxane being born after Alexander's death. According to Diodorus, Alexander's companions asked him on his deathbed to whom he bequeathed his kingdom; his laconic reply was "tôi kratistôi"—"to the strongest". Another theory is that his successors wilfully or erroneously misheard "tôi Kraterôi"—"to Craterus", the general leading his Macedonian troops home and newly entrusted with the regency of Macedonia.
Arrian and Plutarch claimed that Alexander was speechless by this time, implying that this was an apocryphal story. Diodorus, Curtius and Justin offered the more plausible story that Alexander passed his signet ring to Perdiccas, a bodyguard and leader of the companion cavalry, in front of witnesses, thereby nominating him.
Perdiccas initially did not claim power, instead suggesting that Roxane's baby would be king, if male, with himself, Craterus, Leonnatus, and Antipater as guardians. However, the infantry, under the command of Meleager, rejected this arrangement since they had been excluded from the discussion. Instead, they supported Alexander's half-brother Philip Arrhidaeus. Eventually, the two sides reconciled, and after the birth of Alexander IV, he and Philip III were appointed joint kings, albeit in name only.
Dissension and rivalry soon affected the Macedonians. The satrapies handed out by Perdiccas at the Partition of Babylon became power bases each general used to bid for power. After the assassination of Perdiccas in 321 BC, Macedonian unity collapsed, and 40 years of war between "The Successors" (Diadochi) ensued before the Hellenistic world settled into three stable power blocs: Ptolemaic Egypt, Seleucid Syria and East, and Antigonid Macedonia. In the process, both Alexander IV and Philip III were murdered.
Last plans
Diodorus stated that Alexander had given detailed written instructions to Craterus some time before his death, which are known as Alexander's "last plans". Craterus started to carry out Alexander's commands, but the successors chose not to further implement them, on the grounds they were impractical and extravagant. Furthermore, Perdiccas had read the notebooks containing Alexander's last plans to the Macedonian troops in Babylon, who voted not to carry them out.
According to Diodorus, Alexander's last plans called for military expansion into the southern and western Mediterranean, monumental constructions, and the intermixing of Eastern and Western populations. It included:
Construction of 1,000 ships larger than triremes, along with harbours and a road running along the African coast all the way to the Pillars of Hercules, to be used for an invasion of Carthage and the western Mediterranean;
Erection of great temples in Delos, Delphi, Dodona, Dium, Amphipolis, all costing 1,500 talents, and a monumental temple to Athena at Troy
Amalgamation of small settlements into larger cities ("synoecisms") and the "transplant of populations from Asia to Europe and in the opposite direction from Europe to Asia, in order to bring the largest continent to common unity and to friendship by means of intermarriage and family ties"
Construction of a monumental tomb for his father Philip, "to match the greatest of the pyramids of Egypt"
Conquest of Arabia
Circumnavigation of Africa
The enormous scale of these plans has led many scholars to doubt their historicity. Ernst Badian argued that they were exaggerated by Perdiccas in order to ensure that the Macedonian troops voted not to carry them out. Other scholars have proposed that they were invented by later authors within the tradition of the Alexander Romance.
Character
Generalship
Alexander perhaps earned the epithet "the Great" due to his unparalleled success as a military commander; he never lost a battle, despite typically being outnumbered. This was due to use of terrain, phalanx and cavalry tactics, bold strategy, and the fierce loyalty of his troops. The Macedonian phalanx, armed with the sarissa, a spear 6 metres (20 ft) long, had been developed and perfected by Philip II through rigorous training, and Alexander used its speed and manoeuvrability to great effect against larger but more disparate Persian forces. Alexander also recognized the potential for disunity among his diverse army, which employed various languages and weapons. He overcame this by being personally involved in battle, in the manner of a Macedonian king.
In his first battle in Asia, at Granicus, Alexander used only a small part of his forces, perhaps 13,000 infantry with 5,000 cavalry, against a much larger Persian force of 40,000. Alexander placed the phalanx at the center and cavalry and archers on the wings, so that his line matched the length of the Persian cavalry line, about 3 km (1.86 mi). By contrast, the Persian infantry was stationed behind its cavalry. This ensured that Alexander would not be outflanked, while his phalanx, armed with long pikes, had a considerable advantage over the Persians' scimitars and javelins. Macedonian losses were negligible compared to those of the Persians.
At Issus in 333 BC, his first confrontation with Darius, he used the same deployment, and again the central phalanx pushed through. Alexander personally led the charge in the center, routing the opposing army. At the decisive encounter with Darius at Gaugamela, Darius equipped his chariots with scythes on the wheels to break up the phalanx and equipped his cavalry with pikes. Alexander arranged a double phalanx, with the center advancing at an angle, parting when the chariots bore down and then reforming. The advance was successful and broke Darius's center, causing the latter to flee once again.
When faced with opponents who used unfamiliar fighting techniques, such as in Central Asia and India, Alexander adapted his forces to his opponents' style. Thus, in Bactria and Sogdiana, Alexander successfully used his javelin throwers and archers to prevent outflanking movements, while massing his cavalry at the center. In India, confronted by Porus's elephant corps, the Macedonians opened their ranks to envelop the elephants and used their sarissas to strike upwards and dislodge the elephants' handlers.
Physical appearance
Historical sources frequently give conflicting accounts of Alexander's appearance, and the earliest sources are the most scant in their detail. During his lifetime, Alexander carefully curated his image by commissioning works from famous and great artists of the time. This included commissioning sculptures by Lysippos, paintings by Apelles and gem engravings by Pyrgoteles. Ancient authors recorded that Alexander was so pleased with portraits of himself created by Lysippos that he forbade other sculptors from crafting his image; scholars today, however, find the claim dubious. Nevertheless, Andrew Stewart highlights the fact that artistic portraits, not least because of who they are commissioned by, are always partisan, and that artistic portrayals of Alexander "seek to legitimize him (or, by extension, his Successors), to interpret him to their audiences, to answer their critiques, and to persuade them of his greatness", and thus should be considered within a framework of "praise and blame", in the same way sources such as praise poetry are. Despite those caveats, Lysippos's sculpture, famous for its naturalism, as opposed to a stiffer, more static pose, is thought to be the most faithful depiction.
Curtius Rufus, a Roman historian from the first century AD, who wrote the Histories of Alexander the Great, gives this account of Alexander sitting on the throne of Darius III:
Then Alexander seating himself on the royal throne, which was far too high for his bodily stature. Therefore, since his feet did not reach its lowest step, one of the royal pages placed a table under his feet.
Both Curtius and Diodorus report a story that when Darius III's mother, Sisygambis, first met Alexander and Hephaestion, she assumed that the latter was Alexander because he was the taller and more handsome of the two.
The Greek biographer Plutarch (c. 45 – c. 120 AD) discusses the accuracy of his depictions:
The outward appearance of Alexander is best represented by the statues of him which Lysippus made, and it was by this artist alone that Alexander himself thought it fit that he should be modelled. For those peculiarities which many of his successors and friends afterwards tried to imitate, namely, the poise of the neck, which was bent slightly to the left, and the melting glance of his eyes, this artist has accurately observed. Apelles, however, in painting him as wielder of the thunder-bolt, did not reproduce his complexion, but made it too dark and swarthy. Whereas he was of a fair colour, as they say, and his fairness passed into ruddiness on his breast particularly, and in his face. Moreover, that a very pleasant odour exhaled from his skin and that there was a fragrance about his mouth and all his flesh, so that his garments were filled with it, this we have read in the Memoirs of Aristoxenus.
Historians have understood the detail of the pleasant fragrance attributed to Alexander as stemming from a belief in ancient Greece that pleasant scents are characteristic of gods and heroes.
The Alexander Mosaic and contemporary coins portray Alexander with "a straight nose, a slightly protruding jaw, full lips and eyes deep set beneath a strongly pronounced forehead". He is also described as having a slight upward tilt of his head to the left.
The ancient historian Aelian (c. 175 – c. 235 AD), in his Varia Historia (12.14), describes Alexander's hair color as "ξανθὴν" (xanthín), which at the time, could mean blond, brown, tawny (light brown) or auburn. It is sometimes claimed that Alexander had one blue and one brown eye, referring to the Alexander Romance, which is however a fictional account that also claims Alexander "had sharp teeth like fangs" and "did not look like Philip or Olympias". Reconstruction, based on remaining traces of paint of the original polychromy on his sarcophagus, indicates that he was depicted with brown eyes and chestnut brown hair. While the acropolis museum suggests that trace amounts of red paint on a head statue of Alexander were most likely a base coat for golden hues to be painted over for his hair.
Personality
Both of Alexander's parents encouraged his ambitions. His father Philip was probably Alexander's most immediate and influential role model, as the young Alexander watched him campaign practically every year, winning victory after victory while ignoring severe wounds. Alexander's relationship with his father "forged" the competitive side of his personality; he had a need to outdo his father, illustrated by his reckless behavior in battle. While Alexander worried that his father would leave him "no great or brilliant achievement to be displayed to the world", he also downplayed his father's achievements to his companions. Alexander's mother Olympia similarly had huge ambitions, and encouraged her son to believe it was his destiny to conquer the Persian Empire. She instilled a sense of destiny in him, and Plutarch tells how his ambition "kept his spirit serious and lofty in advance of his years".
According to Plutarch, Alexander also had a violent temper and rash, impulsive nature, which could influence his decision making. Although Alexander was stubborn and did not respond well to orders from his father, he was open to reasoned debate. He had a calmer side—perceptive, logical, and calculating. He had a great desire for knowledge, a love for philosophy, and was an avid reader. This was no doubt in part due to Aristotle's tutelage; Alexander was intelligent and quick to learn. His intelligent and rational side was amply demonstrated by his ability and success as a general. He had great self-restraint in "pleasures of the body", in contrast with his lack of self-control with alcohol.
Alexander was erudite and patronized both arts and sciences. However, he had little interest in sports or the Olympic Games (unlike his father), seeking only the Homeric ideals of honour (timê) and glory (kudos). He had great charisma and force of personality, characteristics which made him a great leader. His unique abilities were further demonstrated by the inability of any of his generals to unite Macedonia and retain the Empire after his death—only Alexander had the ability to do so.
During his final years, and especially after the death of Hephaestion, Alexander began to exhibit signs of megalomania and paranoia. His extraordinary achievements, coupled with his own ineffable sense of destiny and the flattery of his companions, may have combined to produce this effect. His delusions of grandeur are readily visible in his will and in his desire to conquer the world, in as much as he is by various sources described as having boundless ambition, an epithet, the meaning of which has descended into a historical cliché.
He appears to have believed himself a deity, or at least sought to deify himself. Olympias always insisted to him that he was the son of Zeus, a theory apparently confirmed to him by the oracle of Amun at Siwa. He began to identify himself as the son of Zeus-Ammon. Alexander adopted elements of Persian dress and customs at court, notably proskynesis, which was one aspect of Alexander's broad strategy aimed at securing the aid and support of the Iranian upper classes; however the practise of proskynesis was disapproved by the Macedonians, and they were unwilling to perform it. This behaviour cost him the sympathies of many of his countrymen. Alexander also was a pragmatic ruler who understood the difficulties of ruling culturally disparate peoples, many of whom lived in societies where the king was treated as divine. Thus, rather than megalomania, his behaviour may have been a practical attempt at strengthening his rule and keeping his empire together.
Personal relationships
Alexander married three times: Roxana, daughter of the Sogdian nobleman Oxyartes of Bactria, out of love; and the Persian princesses Stateira and Parysatis, the former a daughter of Darius III and the latter a daughter of Artaxerxes III, for political reasons. He apparently had two sons, Alexander IV of Macedon by Roxana and, possibly, Heracles of Macedon from his mistress Barsine. He lost another child when Roxana miscarried at Babylon.
Alexander also had a close relationship with his friend, general, and bodyguard Hephaestion, the son of a Macedonian noble. Hephaestion's death devastated Alexander. This event may have contributed to Alexander's failing health and detached mental state during his final months.
Sexuality
Alexander's sexuality has been the subject of speculation and controversy in modern times. The Roman era writer Athenaeus says, based on the scholar Dicaearchus, who was Alexander's contemporary, that the king "was quite excessively keen on boys", and that Alexander kissed the eunuch Bagoas in public. This episode is also told by Plutarch, probably based on the same source. None of Alexander's contemporaries, however, are known to have explicitly described Alexander's relationship with Hephaestion as sexual, though the pair was often compared to Achilles and Patroclus, who are often interpreted as a couple. Aelian writes of Alexander's visit to Troy where "Alexander garlanded the tomb of Achilles, and Hephaestion that of Patroclus, the latter hinting that he was a beloved of Alexander, in just the same way as Patroclus was of Achilles." Some modern historians (e.g., Robin Lane Fox) believe not only that Alexander's youthful relationship with Hephaestion was sexual, but also that their sexual contacts may have continued into adulthood, which went against the social norms of at least some Greek cities, such as Athens, though some modern researchers have tentatively proposed that Macedonia (or at least the Macedonian court) may have been more tolerant of homosexuality between adults.
Peter Green argues that there is little evidence in ancient sources that Alexander had much sexual interest in women; he did not produce an heir until the very end of his life. However, Ogden calculates that Alexander, who impregnated his partners thrice in eight years, had a higher matrimonial record than his father at the same age. Two of these pregnancies—Stateira's and Barsine's—are of dubious legitimacy.
According to Diodorus Siculus, Alexander accumulated a harem in the style of Persian kings, but he used it rather sparingly, "not wishing to offend the Macedonians", showing great self-control in "pleasures of the body". Nevertheless, Plutarch described how Alexander was infatuated by Roxana while complimenting him on not forcing himself on her. Green suggested that, in the context of the period, Alexander formed quite strong friendships with women, including Ada of Caria, who adopted him, and even Darius's mother Sisygambis, who supposedly died from grief upon hearing of Alexander's death.
Battle record
Legacy
Alexander's legacy extended beyond his military conquests, and his reign marked a turning point in European and Asian history. His campaigns greatly increased contacts and trade between East and West, and vast areas to the east were significantly exposed to Greek civilization and influence. Some of the cities he founded became major cultural centers, many surviving into the 21st century. His chroniclers recorded valuable information about the areas through which he marched, while the Greeks themselves got a sense of belonging to a world beyond the Mediterranean.
Hellenistic kingdoms
Alexander's most immediate legacy was the introduction of Macedonian rule to huge new swathes of Asia. At the time of his death, Alexander's empire covered some 5,200,000 km2 (2,000,000 sq mi), and was the largest state of its time. Many of these areas remained in Macedonian hands or under Greek influence for the next 200–300 years. The successor states that emerged were, at least initially, dominant forces, and these 300 years are often referred to as the Hellenistic period.
The eastern borders of Alexander's empire began to collapse even during his lifetime. However, the power vacuum he left in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent directly gave rise to one of the most powerful Indian dynasties in history, the Maurya Empire. Taking advantage of this power vacuum, Chandragupta Maurya (referred to in Greek sources as "Sandrokottos"), of relatively humble origin, took control of the Punjab, and with that power base proceeded to conquer the Nanda Empire.
Founding of cities
Over the course of his conquests, Alexander founded many cities that bore his name, most of them east of the Tigris. The first, and greatest, was Alexandria in Egypt, which would become one of the leading Mediterranean cities. The cities' locations reflected trade routes as well as defensive positions. At first, the cities must have been inhospitable, little more than defensive garrisons. Following Alexander's death, many Greeks who had settled there tried to return to Greece. However, a century or so after Alexander's death, many of the Alexandrias were thriving, with elaborate public buildings and substantial populations that included both Greek and local peoples.
Funding of temples
In 334 BC, Alexander the Great donated funds for the completion of the new temple of Athena Polias in Priene, in modern-day western Turkey. An inscription from the temple, now housed in the British Museum, declares: "King Alexander dedicated [this temple] to Athena Polias." This inscription is one of the few independent archaeological discoveries confirming an episode from Alexander's life. The temple was designed by Pytheos, one of the architects of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus.
Libanius wrote that Alexander founded the temple of Zeus Bottiaios (Ancient Greek: Βοττιαίου Δῖός), in the place where later the city of Antioch was built.
Suda wrote that Alexander built a big temple to Sarapis.
In 2023, British Museum experts have suggested the possibility that a Greek temple at Girsu in Iraq, was founded by Alexander. According to the researchers, recent discoveries suggest that "this site honours Zeus and two divine sons. The sons are Heracles and Alexander."
Hellenization
Hellenization was coined by the German historian Johann Gustav Droysen to denote the spread of Greek language, culture, and population into the former Persian empire after Alexander's conquest. This process can be seen in such great Hellenistic cities as Alexandria, Antioch and Seleucia (south of modern Baghdad). Alexander sought to insert Greek elements into Persian culture and to hybridize Greek and Persian culture, homogenizing the populations of Asia and Europe. Although his successors explicitly rejected such policies, Hellenization occurred throughout the region, accompanied by a distinct and opposite 'Orientalization' of the successor states.
The core of the Hellenistic culture promulgated by the conquests was essentially Athenian. The close association of men from across Greece in Alexander's army directly led to the emergence of the largely Attic-based "koine", or "common" Greek dialect. Koine spread throughout the Hellenistic world, becoming the lingua franca of Hellenistic lands, and eventually the ancestor of modern Greek. Furthermore, town planning, education, local government, and art current in the Hellenistic period were all based on Classical Greek ideals, evolving into distinct new forms commonly grouped as Hellenistic. Also, the New Testament was written in the Koine Greek language. Aspects of Hellenistic culture were still evident in the traditions of the Byzantine Empire in the mid-15th century.
Hellenization in South and Central Asia
Some of the most pronounced effects of Hellenization can be seen in Afghanistan and India, in the region of the relatively late-rising Greco-Bactrian Kingdom (250–125 BC) (in modern Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Tajikistan) and the Indo-Greek Kingdom (180 BC – 10 AD) in modern Afghanistan and India. On the Silk Road trade routes, Hellenistic culture hybridized with Iranian and Buddhist cultures. The cosmopolitan art and mythology of Gandhara (a region spanning the upper confluence of the Indus, Swat and Kabul rivers in modern Pakistan) of the ~3rd century BC to the ~5th century AD are most evident of the direct contact between Hellenistic civilization and South Asia, as are the Edicts of Ashoka, which directly mention the Greeks within Ashoka's dominion as converting to Buddhism and the reception of Buddhist emissaries by Ashoka's contemporaries in the Hellenistic world. The resulting syncretism known as Greco-Buddhism influenced the development of Buddhism and created a culture of Greco-Buddhist art. These Greco-Buddhist kingdoms sent some of the first Buddhist missionaries to China, Sri Lanka and Hellenistic Asia and Europe (Greco-Buddhist monasticism).
Some of the first and most influential figurative portrayals of The Buddha appeared at this time, perhaps modelled on Greek statues of Apollo in the Greco-Buddhist style. Several Buddhist traditions may have been influenced by the ancient Greek religion: the concept of Boddhisatvas is reminiscent of Greek divine heroes, and some Mahayana ceremonial practices (burning incense, gifts of flowers, and food placed on altars) are similar to those practised by the ancient Greeks; however, similar practices were also observed amongst the native Indic culture. One Greek king, Menander I, probably became Buddhist, and was immortalized in Buddhist literature as 'Milinda'. The process of Hellenization also spurred trade between the east and west. For example, Greek astronomical instruments dating to the 3rd century BC were found in the Greco-Bactrian city of Ai Khanoum in modern-day Afghanistan, while the Greek concept of a spherical Earth surrounded by the spheres of planets eventually supplanted the long-standing Indian cosmological belief of a disc consisting of four continents grouped around a central mountain (Mount Meru) like the petals of a flower. The Yavanajataka (lit. Greek astronomical treatise) and Paulisa Siddhanta texts depict the influence of Greek astronomical ideas on Indian astronomy.
Following the conquests of Alexander the Great in the east, Hellenistic influence on Indian art was far-reaching. In architecture, a few examples of the Ionic order can be found as far as Pakistan with the Jandial temple near Taxila. Several examples of capitals displaying Ionic influences can be seen as far as Patna, especially with the Pataliputra capital, dated to the 3rd century BC. The Corinthian order is also heavily represented in the art of Gandhara, especially through Indo-Corinthian capitals.
Influence on Rome
Alexander and his exploits were admired by many Romans, especially generals, who wanted to associate themselves with his achievements. Polybius began his Histories by reminding Romans of Alexander's achievements, and thereafter Roman leaders saw him as a role model. Pompey the Great adopted the epithet "Magnus" and even Alexander's anastole-type haircut, and searched the conquered lands of the east for Alexander's 260-year-old cloak, which he then wore as a sign of greatness. Julius Caesar dedicated a Lysippean equestrian bronze statue, but replaced Alexander's head with his own, while Octavian visited Alexander's tomb in Alexandria and temporarily changed his seal from a sphinx to Alexander's profile. The emperor Trajan also admired Alexander, as did Nero and Caracalla. The Macriani, a Roman family that in the person of Macrinus briefly ascended to the imperial throne, kept images of Alexander on their persons, either on jewellery or embroidered into their clothes.
On the other hand, some Roman writers, particularly Republican figures, used Alexander as a cautionary tale of how autocratic tendencies can be kept in check by republican values. Alexander was used by these writers as an example of ruler values such as amicitia (friendship) and clementia (clemency), but also iracundia (anger) and cupiditas gloriae (over-desire for glory).
Emperor Julian in his satire called "The Caesars", describes a contest between the previous Roman emperors, with Alexander the Great called in as an extra contestant, in the presence of the assembled gods.
The Itinerarium Alexandri is a 4th-century Latin description of Alexander the Great's campaigns. Julius Caesar went to serve his quaestorship in Hispania after his wife's funeral, in the spring or early summer of 69 BC. While there, he encountered a statue of Alexander the Great, and realised with dissatisfaction that he was now at an age when Alexander had the world at his feet, while he had achieved comparatively little.
Pompey posed as the "new Alexander" since he was his boyhood hero.
After Caracalla concluded his campaign against the Alamanni, it became evident that he was inordinately preoccupied with Alexander the Great. He began openly mimicking Alexander in his personal style. In planning his invasion of the Parthian Empire, Caracalla decided to arrange 16,000 of his men in Macedonian-style phalanxes, despite the Roman army having made the phalanx an obsolete tactical formation. The historian Christopher Matthew mentions that the term Phalangarii has two possible meanings, both with military connotations. The first refers merely to the Roman battle line and does not specifically mean that the men were armed with pikes, and the second bears similarity to the 'Marian Mules' of the late Roman Republic who carried their equipment suspended from a long pole, which were in use until at least the 2nd century AD. As a consequence, the Phalangarii of Legio II Parthica may not have been pikemen, but rather standard battle line troops or possibly Triarii.
Caracalla's mania for Alexander went so far that Caracalla visited Alexandria while preparing for his Persian invasion and persecuted philosophers of the Aristotelian school based on a legend that Aristotle had poisoned Alexander. This was a sign of Caracalla's increasingly erratic behaviour. But this mania for Alexander, strange as it was, was overshadowed by subsequent events in Alexandria.
In 39, Caligula performed a spectacular stunt by ordering a temporary floating bridge to be built using ships as pontoons, stretching for over two miles from the resort of Baiae to the neighbouring port of Puteoli. It was said that the bridge was to rival the Persian king Xerxes' pontoon bridge crossing of the Hellespont. Caligula, who could not swim, then proceeded to ride his favourite horse Incitatus across, wearing the breastplate of Alexander the Great. This act was in defiance of a prediction by Tiberius's soothsayer Thrasyllus of Mendes that Caligula had "no more chance of becoming emperor than of riding a horse across the Bay of Baiae".
The diffusion of Greek culture and language cemented by Alexander's conquests in West Asia and North Africa served as a "precondition" for the later Roman expansion into these territories and entire basis for the Byzantine Empire, according to Errington.
Letters
Alexander wrote and received numerous letters, but no originals survive. A few official letters addressed to the Greek cities survive in copies inscribed in stone and the content of others is sometimes reported in historical sources. These only occasionally quote the letters and it is an open question how reliable such quotations are. Several fictitious letters, some perhaps based on actual letters, made their way into the Romance tradition.
In legend
Many of the legends about Alexander derive from his own lifetime, probably encouraged by Alexander himself. His court historian Callisthenes portrayed the sea in Cilicia as drawing back from him in proskynesis. Writing shortly after Alexander's death, Onesicritus invented a tryst between Alexander and Thalestris, queen of the mythical Amazons. He reportedly read this passage to his patron King Lysimachus, who had been one of Alexander's generals and who quipped, "I wonder where I was at the time."
In the first centuries after Alexander's death, probably in Alexandria, a quantity of the legendary material coalesced into a text known as the Alexander Romance, later falsely ascribed to Callisthenes and therefore known as Pseudo-Callisthenes. This text underwent over one hundred recensions, translations, and derivations throughout the Islamic and European worlds in premodern times, containing many dubious stories, and was translated into twenty-five languages, for example Middle Persian, Syriac and Arabic.
In ancient and modern culture
Alexander the Great's accomplishments and legacy have been depicted in many cultures. Alexander has featured in both high and popular culture, beginning from his own era to the present day. The Alexander Romance, in particular, has had a significant impact on portrayals of Alexander in later cultures, from Persian to medieval European, to modern Greek.
Alexander features prominently in modern Greek folklore, more than any other ancient figure. The colloquial form of his name in modern Greek ("O Megalexandros") is a household name, and he is the only ancient hero to appear in the Karagiozis shadow play. One well-known fable among Greek seamen involves a solitary mermaid who would grasp a ship's prow during a storm and ask the captain, "Is King Alexander alive?" The answer should be "He is alive and well and rules the world!" causing the mermaid to vanish and the sea to calm. Any other answer would cause the mermaid to turn into a raging Gorgon who would drag the ship to the bottom of the sea, all hands aboard.
In pre-Islamic Middle Persian (Zoroastrian) literature, Alexander is referred to by the epithet gujastak, meaning "accursed", and is accused of destroying temples and burning the sacred texts of Zoroastrianism. In Islamic Persia, under the influence of the Alexander Romance (in Persian: اسکندرنامه Iskandarnameh), a more positive portrayal of Alexander emerges. Firdausi's Shahnameh ("The Book of Kings") includes Alexander in a line of legitimate Persian shahs, a mythical figure who explored the far reaches of the world in search of the Fountain of Youth. In the Shahnameh, Alexander's first journey is to Mecca to pray at the Kaaba. Alexander was depicted as performing a Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) many times in subsequent Islamic art and literature. Later Persian writers associate him with philosophy, portraying him at a symposium with figures such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, in search of immortality.
The figure of Dhu al-Qarnayn (Arabic: ذو القرنين; lit. "The Two-Horned One") is believed by the majority of modern researchers of the Qur'an as well as Islamic commentators to be a reference to Alexander. The figure is also believed by scholars to be based on later legends of Alexander. In this tradition, he was a heroic figure who built a wall to defend against the nations of Gog and Magog. He also travelled the known world in search of the Water of Life and Immortality, eventually becoming a prophet.
The Syriac version of the Alexander Romance portrays him as an ideal Christian world conqueror who prayed to "the one true God". In Egypt, Alexander was portrayed as the son of Nectanebo II, the last pharaoh before the Persian conquest. His defeat of Darius was depicted as Egypt's salvation, "proving" Egypt was still ruled by an Egyptian.
According to Josephus, Alexander was shown the Book of Daniel when he entered Jerusalem, which described a mighty Greek king who would conquer the Persian Empire. This is cited as a reason for sparing Jerusalem.
In Hindi and Urdu, the name "Sikandar", derived from the Persian name for Alexander, denotes a rising young talent, and the Delhi Sultanate ruler Alauddin Khalji stylized himself as "Sikandar-i-Sani" (the Second Alexander the Great). In medieval India, Turkic and Afghan sovereigns from the Iranian-cultured region of Central Asia brought positive cultural connotations of Alexander to the Indian subcontinent, resulting in the efflorescence of Sikandernameh (Alexander Romances) written by Indo-Persian poets such as Amir Khusrau and the prominence of Alexander the Great as a popular subject in Mughal-era Persian miniatures. In medieval Europe, Alexander the Great was revered as a member of the Nine Worthies; a group of heroes whose lives were believed to encapsulate all the ideal qualities of chivalry. During the first Italian campaign of the French Revolutionary Wars, in a question from Bourrienne, asking whether he gave his preference to Alexander or Caesar, Napoleon said that he places Alexander The Great in the first rank, the main reason being his campaign on Asia.
In the Greek Anthology, there are poems referring to Alexander.
Throughout time, art objects related to Alexander were being created. In addition to speech works, sculptures and paintings, in modern times Alexander is still the subject of musical and cinematic works. The song 'Alexander the Great' by the British heavy metal band Iron Maiden is indicative. Some films that have been shot with the theme of Alexander are:
Sikandar (1941), an Indian production directed by Sohrab Modi about the conquest of India by Alexander
Alexander the Great (1956), produced by MGM and starring Richard Burton
Sikandar-e-Azam (1965), an Indian production directed by Kedar Kapoor
Alexander (2004), directed by Oliver Stone, starring Colin Farrell
There are also many references to other movies and TV series.
Newer novels about Alexander are:
The trilogy "Alexander the Great" by Valerio Massimo Manfredi consisting of "The son of the dream", "The sand of Amon", and "The ends of the world".
The trilogy of Mary Renault consisting of "Fire from Heaven", "The Persian Boy" and "Funeral Games".
The Virtues of War, about Alexander the Great (2004), ISBN 978-0-385-50099-9 and "* The Afghan Campaign, about Alexander the Great's conquests in Afghanistan (2006), ISBN 978-0-385-51641-9" by Steven Pressfield.
Irish playwright Aubrey Thomas de Vere wrote Alexander the Great, a Dramatic Poem.
Historiography
Apart from a few inscriptions and fragments, texts written by people who actually knew Alexander or who gathered information from men who served with Alexander were all lost. Contemporaries who wrote accounts of his life included Alexander's campaign historian Callisthenes, Alexander's generals; Ptolemy and Nearchus, Aristobulus, a junior officer on the campaigns, and Onesicritus, Alexander's chief helmsman. Their works are lost, but later works based on these original sources have survived. The earliest of these is Diodorus Siculus (1st century BC), followed by Quintus Curtius Rufus (mid-to-late 1st century AD), Arrian (1st to 2nd century AD), the biographer Plutarch (1st to 2nd century AD), and finally Justin, whose work dated as late as the 4th century. Of these, Arrian is generally considered the most reliable, given that he used Ptolemy and Aristobulus as his sources, closely followed by Diodorus.
See also
Alexander the Great in Islamic tradition
Ancient Macedonian army
Bucephalus
Chronology of European exploration of Asia
Horns of Alexander
List of biblical figures identified in extra-biblical sources
List of people known as The Great
Gates of Alexander
Military tactics of Alexander the Great
Ptolemaic cult of Alexander the Great
Theories about Alexander the Great in the Quran
References
Notes
Citations
Sources
Primary sources
Secondary sources
Further reading
External links
Delamarche, Félix (1833). The Empire and Expeditions of Alexander the Great (Map).
Romm, James; Cartledge, Paul. "Two Great Historians on Alexander the Great". Forbes (conversations). Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.
Alexander the Great: An annotated list of primary sources. Livius. Archived from the original on 4 December 2016. Retrieved 26 March 2020.
In Our Time: "Alexander the Great" – BBC discussion with Paul Cartledge, Diana Spencer and Rachel Mairs hosted by Melvyn Bragg, first broadcast 1 October 2015. |
Bank_of_Credit_and_Commerce_International | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_Credit_and_Commerce_International | [
582
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_Credit_and_Commerce_International"
] | The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was an international bank founded in 1972 by Agha Hasan Abedi, a Pakistani financier. The bank was registered in Luxembourg with head offices in Karachi and London. A decade after opening, BCCI had over 4000 branches in 78 countries and assets in excess of US$20 billion, making it the seventh largest private bank in the world.
BCCI came under the scrutiny of financial regulators and intelligence agencies in the 1980s, due to concerns that it was poorly regulated. Subsequent investigations revealed that it was involved in massive money laundering and other financial crimes, and had illegally gained controlling interest in a major American bank. BCCI became the focus of a massive regulatory battle in 1991, and, on 5 July of that year, customs and bank regulators in seven countries raided and locked down records of its branch offices during Operation C-Chase.
Investigators in the United States and the UK determined that BCCI had been "set up deliberately to avoid centralized regulatory review, and operated extensively in bank secrecy jurisdictions. Its affairs were extraordinarily complex. Its officers were sophisticated international bankers whose apparent objective was to keep their affairs secret, to commit fraud on a massive scale, and to avoid detection".
The liquidators, Deloitte & Touche, filed a lawsuit against the bank's auditors, Price Waterhouse and Ernst & Young, which was settled for $175 million in 1998. By 2013, Deloitte & Touche claimed to have recovered about 75% of the creditors' lost money.
BCCI continues to be cited as a lesson to be heeded by leading figures in the world of finance and banking. In March 2023, the United States' Acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael J. Hsu stated that "there are strong parallels between FTX and the Bank of Credit and Commerce International – better known in bank regulatory circles as BCCI – which failed in 1991 and led to significant changes in how global banks are supervised."
History
BCCI's founder, Agha Hasan Abedi, established the bank in 1972. Abedi, a prolific banker, had previously set up the United Bank Limited in Pakistan in 1959 sponsored by Saigols. Preceding the nationalization of the United Bank in 1974, he sought to create a new supranational banking entity. BCCI was created with capital of which 25% was from Bank of America and the remaining 75% from Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the ruler of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.
BCCI expanded rapidly in the 1970s, pursuing long-term asset growth over profits, seeking high-net-worth individuals and regular large deposits. The company itself divided into BCCI Holdings with the bank under that splitting into BCCI SA (Luxembourg) and BCCI Overseas (Grand Cayman). BCCI also acquired parallel banks through acquisitions: buying the Banque de Commerce et Placements (BCP) of Geneva in 1976, and creating KIFCO (Kuwait International Finance Company), Credit & Finance Corporation Ltd, and a series of Cayman-based companies held together as ICIC (International Credit and Investment Company Overseas, International Credit and Commerce [Overseas], etc.). Overall, BCCI expanded from 19 branches in five countries in 1973 to 27 branches in 1974 and 108 branches by 1976, with assets growing from $200 million to $1.6 billion. This growth caused extensive underlying capital problems. The Guardian alleged that BCCI was using cash from deposits to fund operating expenses, rather than making investments. Investigative journalist and author Joseph J. Trento has argued that the bank's transformation was guided by the head of Saudi intelligence with a view to enabling it to finance covert American intelligence operations at a time, in the aftermath of Watergate, when the American intelligence agencies were defending themselves from investigations by domestic authorities.
In 1973, the BCCI applied for an offshore banking licence in Singapore that was rejected by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) on the basis that the bank was too new at just a year old and low in capitalisation. In 1980, they attempted to reapply but were yet again turned down by the MAS on the basis of its weak international regard.
BCCI entered the African markets in 1979, and Asia in the early 1980s. BCCI was among the first foreign banks awarded a license to operate in the Chinese Shenzhen Special Economic Zone which bore testament to Agha Hasan Abedi's public relations skills, a feat that had yet to be achieved by the likes of Citicorp and JP Morgan. Some of China's largest state banks were depositors in BCCI's Shenzhen branch.
There was rigid compartmentalization; the 248 managers and general managers reported directly to Abedi and the CEO Swaleh Naqvi. It was structured in such a way that no single country had overall regulatory supervision over it so as not to hinder potential growth and expansion opportunities. Its two holding companies were based in Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands – two jurisdictions where banking regulation was notoriously weak. It was also not regulated by a country that had a central bank. On several occasions, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a bureau within the U.S. Department of the Treasury that regulates national banks, told the Federal Reserve in no uncertain terms that BCCI must not be allowed to buy any American bank because it was poorly regulated.
By 1980, BCCI was reported to have assets of over $4 billion with over 150 branches in 46 countries. Bank of America was "bewildered" by BCCI and reduced its holding in 1980, and the company came to be held by a number of groups, with International Credit and Investment Corp ('ICIC') owning 70%. By 1989, ICIC's shareholding was reduced to 11% with Abu Dhabi groups holding almost 40%. However, large numbers of shares were held by BCCI nominees.
In 1982, 15 Middle Eastern investors bought Financial General Bankshares, a large bank holding company headquartered in Washington, D.C. All the investors were BCCI clients, but the Fed received assurances that BCCI would be in no way involved in the management of the company, which was renamed First American Bankshares. To alleviate regulators' concerns, Clark Clifford, an adviser to five presidents, was named First American's chairman. Clifford headed a board composed of himself and several other distinguished American citizens, including former United States Senator Stuart Symington. In truth, BCCI had been involved in the purchase of FGB/First American from the beginning. Abedi had been approached about buying it as early as 1977, but by this time BCCI's reputation in the United States was so poor that it could not hope to buy an American bank on its own (as mentioned above, the OCC was adamantly opposed to BCCI's being allowed to buy its way into the American banking industry). Rather, it used the First American investors as nominees. Moreover, Clifford's law firm was retained as general counsel, and also handled most of BCCI's American legal work. BCCI was also heavily involved in First American personnel matters. The relationship between the two was so close that rumors spread BCCI was the real owner of First American.
BCCI had an unusual annual auditing system: Price Waterhouse were the accountants for BCCI Overseas, while Ernst & Young audited BCCI and BCCI Holdings (London and Luxembourg). Other companies such as KIFCO and ICIC were audited by neither. In October 1985, the Bank of England and the Monetary Institute of Luxembourg (Luxembourg's bank regulator) ordered BCCI to change to a single accountant, alarmed at reported BCCI losses on the commodities and financial markets. Price Waterhouse became the bank's sole accountant in 1987.
In 1990, a Price Waterhouse audit of BCCI revealed an unaccountable loss of hundreds of millions of dollars. The bank approached Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who made good the loss in exchange for an increased shareholding of 78%. Much of BCCI's documentation was then transferred to Abu Dhabi. The audit also revealed numerous irregularities. Most seriously, BCCI had made a staggering $1.48 billion worth of loans to its own shareholders, who used BCCI stock as collateral.
The audit also confirmed what many Americans who watched BCCI long suspected – that BCCI secretly (and illegally) owned First American. When the Fed cleared the group of Arab investors to buy First American, it did so on condition that they supplement their personal funds with money borrowed from banks with no connection to BCCI. Contrary to that agreement, several stockholders had borrowed heavily from BCCI. Even more seriously, they pledged their First American stock as collateral. When they failed to make interest payments, BCCI took control of the shares. It was later estimated that in this manner, BCCI had ended up with 60% or more of First American's stock.
Despite these problems, Price Waterhouse signed BCCI's 1989 annual report, largely due to Zayed's firm commitment to propping up the bank. Abedi was succeeded by Swaleh Naqvi as the bank's chief, who, in the aftermath following controversy over BCCI, was replaced by Zafar Iqbal Chaudhry in the late 1980s.
Lending practices
BCCI contended that its growth was fueled by the increasingly large number of deposits by oil-rich states that owned stock in the bank as well as by sovereign developing nations. However, this claim failed to mollify the regulators. For example, the Bank of England ordered BCCI to cap its branch network in the United Kingdom at 45 branches.
There was particular concern over BCCI's loan portfolio, because of its roots in areas where modern banking was still an alien concept. For instance, a large number of its customers were devout Muslims who are against charging interest on loans – a major pillar of modern banking – because they consider it to be riba, or usury. In many third-world countries, a person's financial standing did not matter as much as his relationship with his banker. One particularly notable example is the Gokal family, a prominent family of shipping magnates. The three Gokal brothers, Abbas, Mustafa and Murtaza, were owners of the Gulf Group. They had a relationship with Abedi dating back to his days at United Bank. Abedi personally handled their loans, with little regard for details such as loan documents or creditworthiness. At one point, BCCI's loans to the Gokal companies were equivalent to US$1.2 billion, three times the bank's capital. The case of Nazmu Virani, the UK based property tycoon who borrowed £500 million unsecured, which was widely reported. Longstanding banking practice dictates that a bank not lend more than 10% of its capital to a single customer.
Money laundering
In addition to violations of lending laws, BCCI was also accused of opening accounts or laundering money for figures such as Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega, Hussain Muhammad Ershad, and Samuel Doe, and for criminal organizations such as the Medellin Cartel and Abu Nidal. Police and intelligence experts nicknamed BCCI the "Bank of Crooks and Criminals International" for its penchant for catering to customers who dealt in arms, drugs, and hot money. Both Syed A. Hussain (b. 1960 or 1961) and Amjad Awan, (b. 1946 or 1947) a Pakistani banker that headed the Panamanian branch of BCCI in the early 1980s, assisted Noriega with Noriega's accounts at BCCI.
William von Raab, a former U.S. Commissioner of Customs, also told the Kerry Committee that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency held "several" accounts at BCCI. According to a 1991 article in Time magazine, the National Security Council also had accounts at BCCI, which were used for a variety of covert operations, including transfers of money and weapons during the Iran–Contra affair.
Investigations begin
BCCI's demise began in 1986, when a U.S. Customs undercover operation led by Special Agent Robert Mazur infiltrated the bank's private client division at Tampa, Florida, and uncovered their active role soliciting deposits from drug traffickers and money launderers. This two-year undercover operation concluded in 1988 with a fake wedding that was attended by BCCI officers and drug dealers from around the world, who had established a personal friendship and working relationship with undercover agent Mazur. At the same time he was dealing undercover with BCCI executives, Mazur used his undercover operation to establish a relationship with the hierarchy of the Medellin Cartel as one of their sources for laundering drug proceeds. Mazur's and others' roles in the sting operation were highlighted in the film The Infiltrator (2016).
In 1988, the bank was implicated as the center of a major money laundering scheme. After a six-month trial, BCCI, under immense pressure from U.S. authorities, pleaded guilty in 1990, but only on the grounds of respondeat superior. While federal regulators took no action, Florida regulators forced BCCI to pull out of the state.
In 1990, U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch presented an impassioned defense of the bank in a speech on the Senate floor. He and his aide, Michael Pillsbury, were involved in efforts to counter the negative publicity that surrounded the bank, and Hatch solicited the bank to approve a $10 million loan to a close friend, Monzer Hourani.
The Sandstorm report
In March 1991, the Bank of England asked Price Waterhouse to carry out an inquiry. On 24 June 1991, using the code name "Sandstorm" for BCCI, Price Waterhouse submitted the Sandstorm report showing that BCCI had engaged in "widespread fraud and manipulation" that made it difficult, if not impossible, to reconstruct BCCI's financial history.
The Sandstorm report, parts of which were leaked to The Sunday Times, included details of how the Abu Nidal terrorist group had manipulated details and through using fake identities had opened accounts at BCCI's Sloane Street branch in London. Britain's internal security service, MI5, had signed up two sources inside the branch to hand over copies of all documents relating to Abu Nidal's accounts. One source was the Syrian-born branch manager, Ghassan Qassem, the second a young British employee.
The Abu Nidal link man for the BCCI accounts was a man based in Iraq named Samir Najmeddin or Najmedeen. Throughout the 1980s, BCCI had set up millions of dollars worth of letters of credit for Najmeddin, largely for arms deals with Iraq. Qassem later swore in an affidavit that Najmeddin was often accompanied by an American, whom Qassem subsequently identified as the financier Marc Rich. Rich was later indicted in the United States for tax evasion and racketeering in an apparently unrelated case and fled the country.
Qassem also told reporters that he had once escorted Abu Nidal, who was allegedly using the name Shakir Farhan, around town to buy a tie, without realizing who he was. This revelation led in 1991 to one of the London Evening Standard's best-known front-page headlines: "I Took Abu Nidal Shopping".
Forced closure
BCCI was awaiting final approval for a restructuring plan in which it would have re-emerged as the "Oasis Bank". However, after the Sandstorm report, regulators concluded BCCI was so fraught with problems that it had to be seized. It had already been ordered to shut down its American operations in March for its illegal control of First American.
On 5 July 1991, regulators persuaded a court in Luxembourg to order BCCI liquidated on the grounds that it was hopelessly insolvent. According to the court order, BCCI had lost more than its entire capital and reserves the year before. At 1 pm London time that day (8 am in New York City), regulators marched into BCCI's offices and shut them down. Around a million depositors were immediately affected by this action.
On 7 July 1991, Hong Kong Office of the Commissioner of Banking (predecessor
of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority) ordered BCCI to shut down its business in Hong Kong on the grounds that BCCI had problem loans and the Sheikh of Abu Dhabi, the major shareholder of BCCI, refused to provide funds to the Hong Kong BCCI. Hong Kong BCCI was liquidated on 17 July 1991.
A few weeks after the seizure, on 29 July, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau announced that a Manhattan grand jury had indicted BCCI, Abedi and Naqvi on twelve counts of fraud, money laundering, and larceny. Morgenthau, who had been investigating BCCI for over two years, claimed jurisdiction because millions of dollars laundered by the bank flowed through Manhattan. Also, Morgenthau cited BCCI's secret ownership of First American, which operated a subsidiary in New York City. Morgenthau said that all of BCCI's deposits had been fraudulently collected because the bank misled depositors about its ownership structure and financial condition. He described BCCI as "the largest bank fraud in world financial history".
On 15 November, BCCI, Abedi and Naqvi were indicted on federal charges that it had illegally bought control of another American bank, Independence Bank of Los Angeles, using Saudi businessman Ghaith Pharaon as the puppet owner.
Just a month later, BCCI's liquidators (Deloitte, PWC) pleaded guilty to all criminal charges pending against the bank in the United States (both those lodged by the federal government and by Morgenthau), clearing the way for BCCI's formal liquidation that fall. BCCI paid $10 million in fines and forfeited all $550 million of its American assets – at the time, the largest single criminal forfeiture ever obtained by federal prosecutors. The money was used to repay losses to First American and Independence and to make restitution to BCCI's depositors. None of this was enough to rescue both banks, however; Independence was seized later in 1992, while First American was forced into a sale to First Union in 1993.
Many of the major players in the scandal have never been brought to trial in American or UK courts. Abedi, for example, died in 1995. He was under indictment in the United States and UK for crimes related to BCCI, but Pakistani officials refused to give him up for extradition because they felt the charges were politically motivated. Even without this to consider, he had been in poor health since suffering a stroke in the 1980s. Pharaon remained a fugitive until his death in 2017.
In 2002, Denis Robert and Ernest Backes, former number three of financial clearing house Clearstream, discovered that BCCI had continued to maintain its activities after its official closure, with microfiches of Clearstream's illegal unpublished accounts.
American inquiries and legal actions
In 1991, Robert Mueller declared the government had been investigating BCCI since 1986 resulting in intense media coverage.
In 1992, United States Senators John Kerry and Hank Brown became the co-authors of a report on BCCI, which was delivered to the Committee on Foreign Relations. The BCCI scandal was one of a number of disasters that influenced thinking leading to the Public Interest Disclosure Act (PIDA) of 1998. The report found that Clifford and his legal/business partner Robert A. Altman had been closely involved with the bank from 1978, when they were introduced to BCCI by Bert Lance, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget, to 1991. Earlier, Pharaon was revealed to have been the puppet owner of National Bank of Georgia, a bank formerly owned by Lance before being sold back to First American (it had previously been an FGB subsidiary before Lance bought it). Clifford and Altman testified that they had never observed any suspicious activity, and had themselves been deceived about BCCI's control of First American. However, the federal government and Morgenthau contended that the two men knew, or should have known, that BCCI controlled First American. Pharaon also was revealed to be the puppet controlling owner of CenTrust Bank in Miami, Florida.
Morgenthau and the federal government brought indictments against Clifford and Altman, but did not pursue Clifford due to his age and deteriorating health (he died in 1998). Altman was indicted and tried in New York, though he was ultimately acquitted following a jury verdict of not guilty. Altman later accepted a de-facto lifetime ban from any role in the banking industry to settle a civil suit by the Fed.
British inquiry and litigation
The British government set up an independent inquiry, chaired by Lord Justice Bingham, in 1992. Its House of Commons Paper, Inquiry into the Supervision of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, was published in October of that year. Following the report, BCCI liquidators Deloitte Touche filed suit against the Bank of England for £850m, claiming that the Bank was guilty of misfeasance in public office. The suit lasted 12 years. It ended in November 2005, when Deloitte withdrew its claims after England's High Court ruled that it was "no longer in the best interests of creditors" for the litigation to continue. Deloitte eventually paid the Bank of England £73m for its legal costs. According to news reports at the time, it was the most expensive case in British legal history.
Litigation elsewhere
Although major litigation has ended in the case, suits and legal actions relating to the bank were still being brought in 2013, over 20 years after the bank's failure.
Former directors
Khalid bin Mahfouz – non-executive director. Mahfouz and his brothers owned a 20% stake in BCCI between 1986 and 1990.
Alfred Hartman
Shaikh Mohammed Ishaq
Legal cases involving BCCI
Bank of Credit and Commerce International SA v Aboody [1992] 4 All ER 955, pre-collapse case, later overturned, on the criteria for undue influence if someone is pressured into signing a mortgage agreement
Mahmud and Malik v Bank of Credit and Commerce International SA [1998] AC 20, where employees sued the bank for breach of mutual trust and confidence by carrying on unlawful activities and thereby tarnishing the employees' reputations.
Bank of Credit and Commerce International (Overseas) Ltd v Akindele [2000] EWCA Civ 502
See also
Agha Hasan Abedi
Kamal Adham
Danny Casolaro
Abbas Gokal
The Infiltrator (2016 film)
The International (2009 film)
American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders (2024 film)
Citations
General and cited references
Adams, James Ring; Frantz, Douglas (1991). A Full Service Bank. London.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Brisard, Jean-Charles; Dasquié, Guillaume (2002). Ben Laden: La Vérité interdite. Gallimard. pp. 166–168. ISBN 978-2-07-042377-4.
Ehrenfeld, Rachel (1992). Evil Money. Encounters along the Money Trail. Harper Business. ISBN 978-0-88730-560-3.
Kerry, John; Brown, Hank (December 1992). The BCCI Affair, Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations States Senate; held at FAS] – (A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations United States Senate by Senator John Kerry and Senator Hank Brown (Print ed.). 102d Congress 2d Session Senate. pp. 102–140.
Robert, Denis; Backes, Ernest (2001). Révélations. Arènes Editions. ISBN 978-2-912485-28-1.
External links
Price Waterhouse (24 June 1991). Report on Sandstorm SA [Part 1] (PDF) (Report). London: Bank of England. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 July 2021. Retrieved 10 March 2021 – via Association for Accountancy & Business Affairs. The so-called "Sandstorm report" produced by the liquidator Price Waterhouse for the Bank of England. The UK Government spent 20 years attempting to suppress parts of the document; these are highlighted in red boxes on this copy
Price Waterhouse (24 June 1991). Report on Sandstorm SA [Part 2] (PDF) (Report). London: Bank of England. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 July 2021. Retrieved 10 March 2021 – via Association for Accountancy & Business Affairs.
BCCI (in liquidation) homepage (17 May 2014)
"BCCI liquidators drop £1bn case". BBC News. Summary of Case and Administrators lawsuit against Bank of England
"Profile: Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI)]". Cooperativeresearch.org. Archived from the original on 6 March 2008. |
Robert_Vesco | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Vesco | [
582
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Vesco"
] | Robert Lee Vesco (December 4, 1935 – November 23, 2007) was an American criminal financier. After several years of risky investments and dubious credit dealings, Vesco was alleged to have committed securities fraud. He immediately fled the ensuing U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation by living in a number of Central American and Caribbean countries.
Vesco was notorious throughout his life, attempting to buy a Caribbean island from Antigua to create an autonomous country and having a national law in Costa Rica made to protect him from extradition. A 2001 Slate.com article termed Vesco "the undisputed king of the fugitive financiers." After settling in Cuba during 1982, Vesco was charged with drug smuggling in 1989. During the 1990s he was indicted by the Cuban government for "fraud and illicit economic activity" and "acts prejudicial to the economic plans and contracts of the state" in 1996.
Vesco was sentenced to 13 years in jail by Cuba. In November 2007 the New York Times reported that he had died of lung cancer at a hospital in Havana, Cuba, five months before, although it has been suggested that he faked his death.
Biography
Vesco was the son of a Detroit autoworker. He was born in Detroit, Michigan, where he grew up and attended, and then quit, Cass Technical High School. He quit engineering school during his early twenties to work for an investment company. With an $800 stake, Vesco began matching buyers and sellers in the aluminum market until he eventually acquired a portion of the profits of a floundering aluminum plant. By 1965, he could borrow enough money to acquire International Controls Corporation (ICC). Through aggressively hostile expansions and debt-financed takeovers of other businesses he increased ICC quickly. By 1968 the company owned an airline and several manufacturing plants, and Vesco had shares totaling US$50 million.
IOS scandal
In 1970, Vesco began a successful takeover bid for Investors Overseas Service, Ltd., a mutual fund investment company with holdings of $1.5 billion managed by financier Bernard Cornfeld, who were in trouble with the SEC. When his company began to experience financial difficulty, no "white knight" was willing to get involved. Vesco saw his chance and began a protracted battle to assume control of the company, opposed by Cornfeld and others. Cornfeld was jailed in Switzerland and Vesco was accused of looting the company of hundreds of millions of dollars. Many prominent figures in global business, finance, and royalty were associated with the mess, receiving money from one party or the other for their endorsement. Among the accusations against Vesco were that he parked funds belonging to IOS investors in a series of dummy corporations, one of which had an Amsterdam address that was later associated with Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, and that he broke into a Swiss bank vault to obtain shares. These allegations are unproven, as Vesco fled the country and spent the next fifteen years relocating between countries that lacked extradition treaties with the United States.
During February 1973, with criminal charges against him imminent, Vesco used the corporate jet to flee to Costa Rica along with about $200 million worth of IOS's investments, according to SEC allegations. Vesco would continue to wage a legal battle from Costa Rica and the Bahamas to try to maintain control of his 26 percent of ICC stock, but, with five outstanding indictments for securities fraud against him, he could not return to the United States. It was not until 1981 that ICC had completely become free of Vesco's control, after paying almost $12 million to him and his family.
Nixon scandal
Among the charges that emerged during the 1970s, the SEC accused Vesco of embezzling $220 million from four different IOS funds. During 1973, Vesco fled to Costa Rica. Shortly before his departure, hoping to end the SEC investigation into his activities, Vesco routed substantial contributions to Richard Nixon through Nixon's nephew Donald A. Nixon.
Vesco was also investigated for a secret $200,000 contribution made to the 1972 campaign to re-elect Nixon. As counsel to International Controls Corporation, New Jersey lawyer Harry L. Sears delivered the contribution to Maurice Stans, finance chairman for the Committee to Re-elect the President. Vesco had wanted Attorney General John N. Mitchell to intercede on his behalf with SEC chairman William J. Casey. While Vesco fled the country, Stans, Mitchell, and Sears were indicted for obstruction of justice, though charges against all three were dismissed.
"Vesco law"
In Costa Rica, Vesco donated $2.1 million to Sociedad Agricola Industrial San Cristobal, S.A., a company initiated by President José Figueres. Figueres passed a law to guarantee that Vesco would not be extradited. Figueres' constitutional term ended during 1974. Vesco remained in Costa Rica until 1978, when President Rodrigo Carazo (1978–1982) repealed what was popularly referred to as the "Vesco Law."
During 1978 Vesco relocated first to Nassau and then to Antigua.
While in Nassau in the seventies, Vesco's business ties with Lynden Pindling and Carlos Lehder were the subject of CIA investigations. It is believed that Bill Fairclough (ostensibly working for Coopers & Lybrand) investigated these ties. Despite Vesco's fall-out with Pindling, he still maintained a golden gated mansion staffed by armed guards situated North East of Nassau close to Paradise Island where one of his yachts was moored as noted in the autobiographical journal Beyond Enkription by Fairclough (a.k.a. Edward Burlington). On Vesco's orders, Fairclough was drugged and kidnapped whilst at The Pink Pussycat Club on Delancy Street in Nassau. He awoke on Vesco's yacht but managed to force the yacht back to shore and escaped after having stolen a revolver from one of Vesco's guards.
While in Antigua Vesco tried unsuccessfully to buy the sister island Barbuda and establish it as a sovereign state. The Costa Rican government refused his attempt to return during 1978, while Rodrigo Carazo was President. During 1982 Vesco tried again to return to Costa Rica, but President Luis A. Monge denied his entry.
He lived in Nicaragua for a while, while the Sandinista government was in power. Each of these countries accepted him, hoping that his great wealth would finance local development projects. However, this worked badly for everybody involved, although Vesco was reputed to have stolen more than $200 million, and appeared several times on the Forbes list of the wealthiest people in the world.
Nixon scandal, Pt. II
During 1982 he relocated to Cuba, a country that could provide him with treatment for his painful urinary tract infections and would not extradite him to the U.S. Cuban authorities accepted him on the condition that he not become involved in any financial deals. He married Lidia Alfonso Llauger.
Vesco was indicted during 1989 on drug smuggling charges.
During the 1990s, Vesco became involved once again with Donald Nixon after Nixon went to Cuba seeking to partner with the government in conducting clinical trials on a substance called trixolan or TX, which he claimed boosted the immune system. Vesco introduced Nixon to Fidel Castro and his brother, Raúl Castro, and the Cuban government agreed to provide laboratory facilities and doctors to conduct the trials. Results from the studies were claimed to be positive. In Cuba, Vesco joined forces with rogue former CIA operative Frank Terpil, and they offered their network of contacts to the Cuban government.
On or about May 31, 1995, Vesco attempted to defraud Nixon and Raúl Castro, and Cuban authorities seized control of the project and arrested Vesco, his wife, and Terpil.
At the time of Vesco's arrest the Cuban Foreign Ministry said he had been taken into custody "under suspicion of being a provocateur and an agent of foreign special services," or intelligence agencies. However, he was formally charged with "fraud and illicit economic activity" and "acts prejudicial to the economic plans and contracts of the state." During 1996 the Cuban government sentenced Vesco to 13 years in prison on charges resulting from the scandal. He was scheduled for release during 2009, when he would have been 74 years old. Vesco's wife Lidia was convicted on lesser charges and was released during 2005.
Reported death
Vesco reportedly died of lung cancer in November 2007 and was buried at Colon Cemetery in Havana. However, reports of his death have been disputed as his associate Frank Terpil said that he had fled to Sierra Leone.
In popular culture
A fictionalized version of Vesco is featured prominently in a sixth season episode of The Blacklist, titled "Robert Vesco (No. 9)", in which he is portrayed by actor Stacy Keach. The fictionalized Vesco is shown to have faked his own death in Cuba in 2007 and to be in pursuit of a legendary shipwreck from the Spanish treasure fleet.
Another fictionalized version of Vesco was featured in the 1980 movie, "The Return of Frank Cannon." Intended as a possible reboot pilot for the canceled detective series Cannon, the TV film featured the even more portly ex private eye enjoying sedate retirement as a gourmet restaurateur and fishing charter boat captain until he is lured by a still fetching old flame (from his presumably less obese post World War II army days) back into hefty gumshoe action to solve the murder of her husband, a retired CIA agent turned country horse breeder. Cannon winds up chasing down an expat financier similar to Vesco (played by Arthur Hill) along a still warm trail from Costa Rica back to the US after he finds out the murder victim had stumbled on a plot among other retired CIA agents to smuggle the fugitive back into the US following plastic surgery, where he had assumed a new identity as the dead man's inconspicuous neighborly horse vet.
References
Further reading
Herzog, A. (2003) Vesco: From Wall Street to Castro's Cuba. ISBN 0-595-27209-6
Eisenhauer, A.L., Moore, R. and Flood, R.J. (1976) The Flying Carpetbagger. ISBN 0-523-00985-2
Dyer, Dery (2006). "Robert Vesco: 'The Whale in the Puddle'" (The Tico Times on Vesco in Costa Rica), p. S9
Fairclough, Bill (2015). Beyond Enkription - The Burlington Files. Great Britain: Dolman Scott (Publishers). ISBN 978-1909204720. |
John_Wall_(philosopher) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wall_(philosopher) | [
584
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wall_(philosopher)"
] | John Wall is an American educator and theoretical ethicist who teaches at Rutgers University Camden. He is director of the Childism Institute and co-director of the Children's Voting Colloquium.
Research
Wall's research focuses on "the groundworks of moral life, particularly their relations to language, power, and childhood" and theoretical work where he argues that "ethical life is fundamentally creative", as well as for his concept of childism, or the empowerment of children by transforming norms.
Career
Wall was born in 1965 in Leeds, United Kingdom and moved to the United States as a teenager. He obtained a BA, MA, and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and taught for one year at DePaul University before taking up a permanent position at Rutgers University.
At Rutgers University, Wall teaches in the departments of philosophy, religion, and childhood studies. He is the founding director of the Childism Institute and is the co-founder of the Children’s Voting Colloquium. In 2006 Wall assisted in the creation of a childhood studies doctoral program at Rutgers. He was also chair of the Childhood Studies and Religion Group at the American Academy of Religion.
Bibliography
Books
Paul Ricoeur and Contemporary Moral Thought (2002, co-editor, Routledge)
Marriage, Health, and the Professions (2002, co-editor, Eerdmans)
Moral Creativity: Paul Ricoeur and the Poetics of Possibility (2005, Oxford University Press)
Ethics in Light of Childhood (2010, Georgetown University Press)
Children and Armed Conflict (2011, co-editor, Palgrave Macmillan)
Children’s Rights: Today’s Global Challenge (2017, Rowman & Littlefield)
Give Children the Vote: On Democratizing Democracy (2022, Bloomsbury Academic)
Exploring Children's Suffrage: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Ageless Voting (2022, editor, Palgrave Macmillan)
The Bloomsbury Handbook of Theories in Childhood Studies (2023, co-editor, Bloomsbury Academic)
Journal articles
Wall, John (2008). "Human Rights in Light of Childhood". International Journal of Children's Rights. 16 (4): 523–543. doi:10.1163/157181808X312122.
Wall, John (2014). "Why Children and Youth Should Have the Right to Vote: An Argument for Proxy-Claim Suffrage". Children, Youth and Environments. 24 (1): 108–123. doi:10.7721/chilyoutenvi.24.1.0108. JSTOR 10.7721/chilyoutenvi.24.1.0108.
Wall, John (2014). “Democratizing Democracy: The Road from Women’s to Children’s Suffrage”. International Journal of Human Rights, Special Issue, edited by Sonja Grover (2014) 18.6: 646–659.
Wall, John (2019). ""From Childhood Studies to Childism: Reconstructing Scholarly and Social Imaginations"". Children's Geographies. 17 (6): 1–15. doi:10.1080/14747731.2020.1736853. S2CID 216320258.
Wall, John (2019). “Theorizing Children’s Global Citizenship: Reconstructionism and the Politics of Deep Interdependence”. Global Studies of Childhood (March 2019) 9(1):5-17.
Wall, John and Jonathan Josefsson (2020). “Empowered Inclusion: Theorizing Global Justice for Children and Youth”. Globalizations, 2020:1-19. DOI: 10.1080/14747731.2020.1736853.
References
External links
Childism Institute
Children's Voting Colloquium |
1965_Leeds_City_Council_election | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1965_Leeds_City_Council_election | [
584
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1965_Leeds_City_Council_election"
] | The 1965 municipal elections for Leeds were held on Thursday 13 May 1965, with one third of the council and an extra vacancy in Allerton to be elected.
Building upon the previous year, the Conservatives fully reversed the downward trend they'd been on since 1960. With a whopping 10.2% swing their way, they defeated the Labour Party in a manner not seen since 1951, with Labour's share reduced to the thirties - surpassing even their record low then.
The Conservatives six gains were largely a regaining of Labour's 1963 gains, with the notable exceptions of Beeston, which they already held, and Kirkstall - a first for the ward, which had been monolithically Labour since the boundary changes in 1951.
The Conservatives also recovered Roundhay from Labour who gained it in a by-election in 1963.
Elsewhere, the Liberals continued their decline from the 1962 highs, now at near enough where they were pre-spike. In contrast, the Communists, having steadily raised their candidates in each election since the mid-1950s were now fielding a record of 12, achieving party records in both vote and share. Turnout fell again by just over two percent on last year's figure to 34.5%.
Election result
The result had the following consequences for the total number of seats on the council after the elections:
Ward results
== References == |
Artstetten_Castle | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artstetten_Castle | [
586
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artstetten_Castle"
] | Artstetten Castle (German: Schloss Artstetten, pronounced [ˌʃlɔs ˈaʁtʃtɛtn̩] ) is a historic Schloss near the Wachau valley in Lower Austria, in the municipality of Artstetten-Pöbring. It is the final resting place of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg.
History
Artstetten Castle was owned by a number of families over the centuries until it was purchased in 1823 by Emperor Francis I of Austria. In 1852, Archduke Franz Karl of Austria became the owner, then he gave it in 1861 to his third son, Archduke Karl Ludwig of Austria. In 1889, the property was given to Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, who made extensive renovations to the castle.
Formerly used as a summer residence by members of the Habsburg dynasty, the castle is now the final resting place of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his morganatic wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, who were assassinated in 1914. Emperor Franz Joseph I refused to allow them to be interred in the traditional Imperial Crypt at the Capuchin Church, Vienna, because of their morganatic marriage. It also houses the Archduke Franz Ferdinand Museum.
After Konopiště Castle was confiscated by Czechoslovakia in 1921 as part of the confiscation of Habsburg properties under the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Arstetten became the Hohenberg family's primary residence. The castle remains their private property, and parts of the castle are open to the public for visits.
After the Anschluss in 1938, Nazi Germany deported the Hohenbergs to Dachau concentration camp for their anti-Nazi views and confiscated the castle. After the Vienna offensive, the Soviet occupation authorities allowed the residents of Arstetten to elect Duke Maximilian as their mayor, and the Republic of Austria formally returned the castle to the family in 1949, being unable to retain ownership as the Hohenbergs were not covered by the Habsburg Law.
After the death of Franz, Duke of Hohenberg in 1977, the property was deeded to his eldest child, Princess Anita of Hohenberg. The Anita Hohenberg Trust was set up in 2003, and she and her family manage the property.
Coin
The castle was selected as a main motif for a high-value euro collectors' coin, the Austrian 10 euro Castle of Artstetten commemorative coin, minted on 13 October 2004.
The coin's obverse shows the castle of Artstetten standing above the Danube River on the threshold to the region of Wachau. The reverse shows the entrance to the crypt of the Hohenberg family. There are two portraits on the left, showing Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie.
Burials
Notable burials in the castle's crypt include:
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria (1863 – 1914), heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg (1868 – 1914), both assassinated by Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914
Stillborn third son of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie (1908)
Prince Ernst of Hohenberg (1904 – 1954), second son of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie
Marie-Thérèse Wood (1910 – 1985), wife of Ernst
Maximilian, 1st Duke of Hohenberg (1902 – 1962), eldest son of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie
Countess Maria von Waldburg zu Wolfegg und Waldsee, wife of Maximilian
Franz, 2nd Duke of Hohenberg (1927 – 1977), eldest son of Maximilian
Princess Elisabeth, Duchess of Hohenberg (1922 – 2011), wife of Franz and a member of the Grand Ducal Family of Luxembourg
Georg, 3rd Duke of Hohenberg (1929 – 2018), second son of Maximilian
Literature
Stefan Haderer: Artstetten Castle: Residence and final resting place of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Este (1863-1914), Heir-Presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian Throne, Royalty Digest Quarterly, Vol. 1/2014, Rosvall Royal Books, Falköping 2014
References
External links
Artstetten Castle website |
Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Austria | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Austria | [
586
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Austria"
] | Archduke Franz Ferdinand Carl Ludwig Joseph Maria of Austria (18 December 1863 – 28 June 1914) was the heir presumptive to the throne of Austria-Hungary. His assassination in Sarajevo was the most immediate cause of World War I.
Franz Ferdinand was the eldest son of Archduke Karl Ludwig of Austria, the younger brother of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria. Following the death of Crown Prince Rudolf in 1889 and the death of Karl Ludwig in 1896, Franz Ferdinand became the heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne. His courtship of Sophie Chotek, a lady-in-waiting, caused conflict within the imperial household, and their morganatic marriage in 1900 was only allowed after he renounced his descendants' rights to the throne. Franz Ferdinand held significant influence over the military, and in 1913 he was appointed inspector general of the Austro-Hungarian armed forces.
On 28 June 1914, Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo by the 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip, a member of Young Bosnia. Franz Ferdinand's assassination led to the July Crisis and precipitated Austria-Hungary's declaration of war against Serbia, which in turn triggered a series of events that eventually led – four weeks after his death – to Austria-Hungary's allies and Serbia's allies declaring war on each other, starting World War I.
Biography
Early life
Franz Ferdinand was born in Graz, Austria, the eldest son of Archduke Karl Ludwig of Austria (the younger brother of Franz Joseph and Maximilian) and of his second wife, Princess Maria Annunziata of Bourbon-Two Sicilies. In 1875, when he was eleven years old, his cousin Francis V, Duke of Modena, died, naming Franz Ferdinand his heir on condition that he add the name "Este" to his own. This inheritance made Franz Ferdinand one of the wealthiest men in Austria.
Heir presumptive
In 1889, Franz Ferdinand's life changed dramatically. His cousin Crown Prince Rudolf committed suicide at his hunting lodge in Mayerling. This left Franz Ferdinand's father, Karl Ludwig, first in line to the throne. When Karl Ludwig died of typhoid fever in 1896, Franz Ferdinand became the heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne.
Despite this burden, he found time for travel and personal pursuits, such as his circumnavigation of the world between 1892 and 1893. After visiting India he spent time hunting kangaroos and emus in Australia in 1893, then travelled on to Nouméa, New Hebrides, Solomon Islands, New Guinea, Sarawak, Hong Kong and Japan. After sailing across the Pacific on the RMS Empress of China from Yokohama to Vancouver he crossed the United States, arriving at the World's Columbian Exposition 1893 on the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad on a private Pullman car named Mascotte, and staying at the Lexington Hotel, before continuing through to New York and returning to Europe.
Franz Ferdinand had a fondness for trophy hunting that was excessive even by the standards of European nobility in his day. In his diaries he kept track of 272,511 game kills, 5,000 of which were deer. About 100,000 trophies were on exhibit at his Bohemian castle at Konopiště which he also stuffed with various antiquities, his other great passion.
Military career
Franz Ferdinand, like most males in the ruling Habsburg line, entered the Austro-Hungarian Army at a young age. He was frequently and rapidly promoted, given the rank of lieutenant at age fourteen, captain at twenty-two, colonel at twenty-seven, and major general at thirty-one. While never receiving formal staff training, he was considered eligible for command and at one point briefly led the primarily Hungarian 9th Hussar Regiment. In 1898 he was given a commission "at the special disposition of His Majesty" to make inquiries into all aspects of the military services and military agencies were commanded to share their papers with him.
He also held honorary ranks in the Austro-Hungarian Navy, and received the rank of admiral at the close of the Austro-Hungarian naval maneuvers in September 1902.
Franz Ferdinand exerted influence on the armed forces even when he did not hold a specific command through a military chancery that produced and received documents and papers on military affairs. This was headed by Alexander Brosch von Aarenau and eventually employed a staff of sixteen. His authority was reinforced in 1907 when he secured the retirement of the Emperor's confidant Friedrich von Beck-Rzikowsky as Chief of the General Staff. Beck's successor, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, was personally selected by Franz Ferdinand.
Franz in 1913, as heir-presumptive to the elderly emperor, had been appointed inspector general of all the armed forces of Austria-Hungary (Generalinspektor der gesamten bewaffneten Macht), a position superior to that previously held by Archduke Albrecht and including presumed command in wartime.
Marriage and family
In 1894, Franz Ferdinand met Countess Sophie Chotek, a lady-in-waiting to Archduchess Isabella, wife of Archduke Friedrich, Duke of Teschen. Franz began to visit Archduke Friedrich's villa in Pressburg (now Bratislava), and in turn Sophie wrote to Franz Ferdinand during his convalescence from tuberculosis on the island of Lošinj in the Adriatic. They kept their relationship a secret, until it was discovered by Isabella.
To be eligible to marry a member of the imperial House of Habsburg, one had to be a member of one of the reigning or formerly reigning dynasties of Europe. The Choteks were not one of these families. Deeply in love, Franz Ferdinand refused to consider marrying anyone else. Finally, in 1899, Emperor Franz Joseph agreed to permit Franz Ferdinand to marry Sophie, provided that the marriage would be morganatic and that their descendants would not have succession rights to the throne. Sophie would not share her husband's rank, title, precedence, or privileges, nor would she normally appear in public beside him. She would not be allowed to ride in the royal carriage or sit in the royal box in theaters.
The wedding took place on 1 July 1900, at Reichstadt (now Zákupy) in Bohemia; Franz Joseph did not attend the ceremony, nor did Franz Ferdinand's brothers or any other archduke. The only members of the imperial family present were Franz Ferdinand's stepmother, Princess Maria Theresa of Braganza, and her two daughters. Upon the marriage, Sophie was given the title "Princess of Hohenberg" (Fürstin von Hohenberg) with the style "Her Serene Highness" (Ihre Durchlaucht). In 1909, she was given the more senior title "Duchess of Hohenberg" (Herzogin von Hohenberg) with the style "Her Highness" (Ihre Hoheit). This raised her status considerably, but she was still required to yield precedence at court to all the archduchesses. Whenever a function required the couple to assemble with the other members of the imperial family, Sophie had to stand far down the line, separated from her husband.
Franz Ferdinand's children were:
Princess Sophie of Hohenberg (1901–1990), married Count Friedrich von Nostitz-Rieneck (1891–1973)
Maximilian, Duke of Hohenberg (1902–1962), married Countess Elisabeth von Waldburg zu Wolfegg und Waldsee (1904–1993)
Prince Ernst of Hohenberg (1904–1954), married Marie-Therese Wood (1910–1985)
Stillborn son (1908), buried in Artstetten Castle, near his parents
Franz Ferdinand and Sophie visited England in the autumn of 1913, spending a week with George V and Queen Mary at Windsor Castle before going to stay for another week with the Duke of Portland at Welbeck Abbey, Nottinghamshire, where they arrived on 22 November. He attended a service at the local Catholic church in Worksop. Franz Ferdinand and the Duke of Portland went game shooting on the Welbeck estate when, according to Portland's memoirs, Men, Women and Things:
One of the loaders fell down. This caused both barrels of the gun he was carrying to be discharged, the shot passing within a few feet of the archduke and myself. I have often wondered whether the Great War might not have been averted, or at least postponed, had the archduke met his death there and not in Sarajevo the following year.
Assassination
On Sunday, 28 June 1914, at about 10:45 am, Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian province of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The perpetrator was 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip, a member of Young Bosnia and one of a group of assassins organized and armed by the Black Hand.
Earlier in the day, the couple had been attacked by Nedeljko Čabrinović, also a Young Bosnia conspirator, who had thrown a grenade at their car. However, the bomb detonated behind them, injuring the occupants in the following car. On arriving at the Governor's residence, Franz asked "So you welcome your guests with bombs!"
After a short rest at the Governor's residence, the royal couple insisted on seeing all those who had been injured by the bomb at the local hospital. However, no one told the drivers that the itinerary had been changed. When the error was discovered, the drivers had to turn around. As the cars backed down the street and onto a side street, the line of cars stalled. At this time, Princip was sitting at a cafe across the street. He instantly seized his opportunity and walked across the street and shot the royal couple. He first shot Sophie in the abdomen and then shot Franz Ferdinand in the neck. Franz leaned over his crying wife. He was still alive when witnesses arrived to render aid. His dying words to Sophie were, "Don't die darling, live for our children." Princip's weapon was the pocket-sized FN Model 1910 pistol chambered for the .380 ACP cartridge provided him by Serbian Army Military Intelligence Lieutenant-Colonel and Black Hand leader Dragutin Dimitrijević. Franz Ferdinand's aides attempted to undo his coat but realized they needed scissors to cut it open: the outer lapel had been sewn to the inner front of the jacket for a smoother fit to improve his appearance to the public. Whether or not as a result of this obstacle, his wound could not be attended to in time to save him, and he died within minutes. Sophie also died en route to the hospital.
A detailed account of the shooting can be found in Sarajevo by Joachim Remak:
One bullet pierced Franz Ferdinand's neck while the other pierced Sophie's abdomen. ... As the car was reversing (to go back to the Governor's residence because the entourage thought the Imperial couple were unhurt) a thin streak of blood shot from the Archduke's mouth onto Count Harrach's right cheek (he was standing on the car's running board). Harrach drew out a handkerchief to still the gushing blood. The Duchess, seeing this, called: "For Heaven's sake! What happened to you?" and sank from her seat, her face falling between her husband's knees.
Harrach and Potoriek ... thought she had fainted ... only her husband seemed to have an instinct for what was happening. Turning to his wife despite the bullet in his neck, Franz Ferdinand pleaded: "Sopherl! Sopherl! Sterbe nicht! Bleibe am Leben für unsere Kinder! – Sophie dear! Don't die! Stay alive for our children!" Having said this, he seemed to sag down himself. His plumed hat ... fell off; many of its green feathers were found all over the car floor. Count Harrach seized the Archduke by the uniform collar to hold him up. He asked "Leiden Eure Kaiserliche Hoheit sehr? – Is Your Imperial Highness suffering very badly?" "Es ist nichts. – It is nothing." said the Archduke in a weak but audible voice. He seemed to be losing consciousness during his last few minutes, but, his voice growing steadily weaker, he repeated the phrase perhaps six or seven times more.
A rattle began to issue from his throat, which subsided as the car drew in front of the Konak bersibin (Town Hall).
Despite several doctors' efforts, the Archduke died shortly after being carried into the building while his beloved wife was almost certainly dead from internal bleeding before the motorcade reached the Konak.
The assassinations, along with the arms race, nationalism, imperialism, militarism of Imperial Germany and the alliance system all contributed to the origins of World War I, which began a month after Franz Ferdinand's death, with Austria-Hungary's declaration of war against Serbia. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand is considered the most immediate cause of World War I.
After his death, Archduke Karl became the heir presumptive of Austria-Hungary. Franz Ferdinand was buried with his wife Sophie in Artstetten Castle, Austria.
Character
The German historian Michael Freund described Franz Ferdinand as "a man of uninspired energy, dark in appearance and emotion, who radiated an aura of strangeness and cast a shadow of violence and recklessness ... a true personality amidst the amiable inanity that characterized Austrian society at this time." As his sometime admirer Karl Kraus put it, "he was not one who would greet you ... he felt no compulsion to reach out for the unexplored region which the Viennese call their heart." His relations with Emperor Franz Joseph were tense; the emperor's personal servant recalled in his memoirs that "thunder and lightning always raged when they had their discussions." The commentaries and orders which the heir to the throne wrote as margin notes to the documents of the Imperial central commission for architectural conservation (where he was Protector) reveal what can be described as "choleric conservatism." The Italian historian Leo Valiani provided the following description.
Francis Ferdinand was a prince of absolutist inclinations, but he had certain intellectual gifts and undoubted moral earnestness. One of his projects – though because of his impatient, suspicious, almost hysterical temperament, his commitment to it, and the methods by which he proposed to bring it about, often changed – was to consolidate the structure of the state and the authority and popularity of the Crown, on which he saw clearly that the fate of the dynasty depended, by abolishing, if not the dominance of the German Austrians, which he wished to maintain for military reasons, though he wanted to diminish it in the civil administration, certainly the far more burdensome sway of the Magyars over the Slav and Romanian nationalities which in 1848–49 had saved the dynasty in armed combat with the Hungarian revolution. Baron Margutti (de), Francis Joseph's aide-de-camp, was told by Francis Ferdinand in 1895 and – with a remarkable consistency in view of the changes that took place in the intervening years – again in 1913, that the introduction of the dual system in 1867 had been disastrous and that, when he ascended the throne, he intended to re-establish strong central government: this objective, he believed, could be attained only by the simultaneous granting of far-reaching administrative autonomy to all the nationalities of the monarchy. In a letter of February 1, 1913, to Berchtold, the Foreign Minister, in which he gave his reasons for not wanting war with Serbia, Franz Ferdinand said that "irredentism in our country ... will cease immediately if our Slavs are given a comfortable, fair and good life" instead of being trampled on (as they were being trampled on by the Hungarians). It must have been this which caused Berchtold, in a character sketch of Francis Ferdinand written ten years after his death, to say that, if he had succeeded to the throne, he would have tried to replace the dual system by a supranational federation.
After the tragic assassination of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie in 1914, Marie Valerie, the daughter of Emperor Franz Joseph, observed that her father had placed more trust in the newly designated heir, his grandnephew Archduke Charles. The emperor confessed to his daughter about the assassination, stating: "For me, it is a relief from a great worry."
Political views
"The three cornerstones of Ferdinand’s political conviction were clericalism, anti-democratic views, and anti-Hungarianism,” and the basis of his worldview was that “politics is a matter only for the ruler, while the people, the masses have to obey.” Franz Ferdinand often complained that in Hungary, the glorification of revolutionary hero Lajos Kossuth, the decline of the monarchical principle, and the dominance of the Freemasons and the Jewish people was prevalent. Historians have disagreed on how to characterize the political philosophies of Franz Ferdinand, some attributing generally liberal views on the empire's nationalities while others have emphasized his dynastic centralism, Catholic conservatism, and tendency to clash with other leaders.
He advocated granting greater autonomy to ethnic groups within the Empire and addressing their grievances, especially the Czechs in Bohemia and the south Slavic peoples in Croatia and Bosnia, who had been left out of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. Yet his feelings towards the Hungarians were less generous, often described as antipathy. For example, in 1904 he wrote that "The Hungarians are all rabble, regardless of whether they are minister or duke, cardinal or burgher, peasant, hussar, domestic servant, or revolutionary", and he regarded even István Tisza as a revolutionary and "patented traitor". He regarded Hungarian nationalism as a revolutionary threat to the Habsburg dynasty and reportedly became angry when officers of the 9th Hussars Regiment (which he commanded) spoke Hungarian in his presence – despite the fact that it was the official regimental language. He further regarded the Hungarian branch of the Dual Monarchy's army, the Honvédség, as an unreliable and potentially threatening force within the empire, complaining at the Hungarians' failure to provide funds for the joint army and opposing the formation of artillery units within the Hungarian forces.
He also advocated a cautious approach towards Serbia – repeatedly locking horns with Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, Vienna's hard-line Chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff, warning that harsh treatment of Serbia would bring Austria-Hungary into open conflict with Russia, to the ruin of both empires.
He was disappointed when Austria-Hungary failed to act as a great power, such as during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. Other nations, including, in his description, "dwarf states like Belgium and Portugal", had soldiers stationed in China, but Austria-Hungary did not. However, Austria-Hungary did participate in the Eight-Nation Alliance to suppress the Boxers, and sent soldiers as part of the "international relief force".
Franz Ferdinand was a prominent and influential supporter of the Austro-Hungarian Navy in a time when sea power was not a priority in Austrian foreign policy and the Navy was relatively little known or supported by the public. After his assassination in 1914, the Navy honoured Franz Ferdinand and his wife with a lying in state aboard SMS Viribus Unitis.
Commemorations
Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his Castle of Artstetten were selected as a main motif for the Austrian 10 euro The Castle of Artstetten commemorative coin, minted on 13 October 2004. The reverse shows the entrance to the crypt of the Hohenberg family. There are two portraits below, showing Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg.
Titles, styles, honours and arms
Titles and styles
18 December 1863 – 20 November 1875: His Imperial and Royal Highness Archduke and Prince Franz Ferdinand of Austria, Royal Prince of Hungary, Bohemia and Croatia
20 November 1875 – 28 June 1914: His Imperial and Royal Highness Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria-Este
Honours and awards
Domestic
Knight of the Golden Fleece, 1878
Grand Cross of the Royal Hungarian Order of St. Stephen, 1893
Military Merit Cross, in Diamonds
Silver Military Merit Medal on Red Ribbon
Long Service Cross for Officers, 2nd Class
1898 Jubilee Medal for the Armed Forces
1908 Military Jubilee Cross
Sea Voyage Medal 1892-1893
Foreign
See also
List of heirs to the Austrian throne
Footnotes
References
Further reading
Clark, Christopher (2013). The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-219922-5.
Fomenko, A. (2009). "There Was an Alternative! The Legacy of Franz Ferdinand" (PDF). International Affairs: A Russian Journal of World Politics, Diplomacy & International Relations. 55 (3): 177–184.
Fromkin, David (2004). Europe's last summer: who started the Great War in 1914?. A Borzoi book (1st ed.). New York: Knopf. ISBN 978-0-375-41156-4.
Ponting, Clive (2002). Thirteen days: the road to the First World War. London: Chatto & Windus. ISBN 978-0-7011-7293-0.
Williamson, Samuel R. (1991). Austria-Hungary and the origins of the First World War. The Making of the 20th century. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-05239-3.
External links
Video: Franz Ferdinand's Funeral on YouTube
Newsreels about Franz Ferdinand's assassination at www.europeanfilmgateway.eu
Pribram, Alfred Francis (1922). "Francis Ferdinand" . Encyclopædia Britannica (12th ed.).
Newspaper clippings about Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW |
Queen_Victoria | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Victoria | [
587,
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Victoria",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Victoria",
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] | Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 216 days—which was longer than those of any of her predecessors—constituted the Victorian era. It was a period of industrial, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom, and was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. In 1876, the British Parliament voted to grant her the additional title of Empress of India.
Victoria was the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn (the fourth son of King George III), and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. After the deaths of her father and grandfather in 1820, she was raised under close supervision by her mother and her comptroller, John Conroy. She inherited the throne aged 18 after her father's three elder brothers died without surviving legitimate issue. Victoria, a constitutional monarch, attempted privately to influence government policy and ministerial appointments; publicly, she became a national icon who was identified with strict standards of personal morality.
Victoria married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, in 1840. Their nine children married into royal and noble families across the continent, earning Victoria the sobriquet "grandmother of Europe". After Albert's death in 1861, Victoria plunged into deep mourning and avoided public appearances. As a result of her seclusion, British republicanism temporarily gained strength, but in the latter half of her reign, her popularity recovered. Her Golden and Diamond jubilees were times of public celebration. Victoria died at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, at the age of 81. The last British monarch of the House of Hanover, she was succeeded by her son Edward VII of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
Early life
Birth and ancestry
Victoria's father was Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, the fourth son of King George III and Queen Charlotte. Until 1817, King George's only legitimate grandchild was Edward's niece Princess Charlotte of Wales, the daughter of George, Prince Regent (who would become George IV). Princess Charlotte's death in 1817 precipitated a succession crisis that brought pressure on Prince Edward and his unmarried brothers to marry and have children. In 1818, the Duke of Kent married Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, a widowed German princess with two children—Carl (1804–1856) and Feodora (1807–1872)—by her first marriage to Emich Carl, 2nd Prince of Leiningen. Her brother Leopold was Princess Charlotte's widower and later the first king of Belgium. The Duke and Duchess of Kent's only child, Victoria was born at 4:15 a.m. on Monday 24 May 1819 at Kensington Palace in London.
Victoria was christened privately by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Manners-Sutton, on 24 June 1819 in the Cupola Room at Kensington Palace. She was baptised Alexandrina after one of her godparents, Tsar Alexander I of Russia, and Victoria, after her mother. Additional names proposed by her parents—Georgina (or Georgiana), Charlotte, and Augusta—were dropped on the instructions of the Prince Regent.
At birth, Victoria was fifth in the line of succession after the four eldest sons of George III: George, Prince Regent (later George IV); Frederick, Duke of York; William, Duke of Clarence (later William IV); and Victoria's father, Edward, Duke of Kent. Prince George had no surviving children, and Prince Frederick had no children; further, both were estranged from their wives, who were both past child-bearing age, so the two eldest brothers were unlikely to have any further legitimate children. William married in 1818, in a joint ceremony with his brother Edward, but both of William's legitimate daughters died as infants. The first of these was Princess Charlotte, who was born and died on 27 March 1819, two months before Victoria was born. Victoria's father died in January 1820, when Victoria was less than a year old. A week later her grandfather died and was succeeded by his eldest son as George IV. Victoria was then third in line to the throne after Frederick and William. She was fourth in line while William's second daughter, Princess Elizabeth, lived, from 10 December 1820 to 4 March 1821.
Heir presumptive
Prince Frederick died in 1827, followed by George IV in 1830; their next surviving brother succeeded to the throne as William IV, and Victoria became heir presumptive. The Regency Act 1830 made special provision for Victoria's mother to act as regent in case William died while Victoria was still a minor. King William distrusted the Duchess's capacity to be regent, and in 1836 he declared in her presence that he wanted to live until Victoria's 18th birthday, so that a regency could be avoided.
Victoria later described her childhood as "rather melancholy". Her mother was extremely protective, and Victoria was raised largely isolated from other children under the so-called "Kensington System", an elaborate set of rules and protocols devised by the Duchess and her ambitious and domineering comptroller, Sir John Conroy, who was rumoured to be the Duchess's lover. The system prevented the princess from meeting people whom her mother and Conroy deemed undesirable (including most of her father's family), and was designed to render her weak and dependent upon them. The Duchess avoided the court because she was scandalised by the presence of King William's illegitimate children. Victoria shared a bedroom with her mother every night, studied with private tutors to a regular timetable, and spent her play-hours with her dolls and her King Charles Spaniel, Dash. Her lessons included French, German, Italian, and Latin, but she spoke only English at home.
In 1830, the Duchess and Conroy took Victoria across the centre of England to visit the Malvern Hills, stopping at towns and great country houses along the way. Similar journeys to other parts of England and Wales were taken in 1832, 1833, 1834 and 1835. To the King's annoyance, Victoria was enthusiastically welcomed in each of the stops. William compared the journeys to royal progresses and was concerned that they portrayed Victoria as his rival rather than his heir presumptive. Victoria disliked the trips; the constant round of public appearances made her tired and ill, and there was little time for her to rest. She objected on the grounds of the King's disapproval, but her mother dismissed his complaints as motivated by jealousy and forced Victoria to continue the tours. At Ramsgate in October 1835, Victoria contracted a severe fever, which Conroy initially dismissed as a childish pretence. While Victoria was ill, Conroy and the Duchess unsuccessfully badgered her to make Conroy her private secretary. As a teenager, Victoria resisted persistent attempts by her mother and Conroy to appoint him to her staff. Once queen, she banned him from her presence, but he remained in her mother's household.
By 1836, Victoria's maternal uncle Leopold, who had been King of the Belgians since 1831, hoped to marry her to Prince Albert, the son of his brother Ernest I, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Leopold arranged for Victoria's mother to invite her Coburg relatives to visit her in May 1836, with the purpose of introducing Victoria to Albert. William IV, however, disapproved of any match with the Coburgs, and instead favoured the suit of Prince Alexander of the Netherlands, second son of the Prince of Orange. Victoria was aware of the various matrimonial plans and critically appraised a parade of eligible princes. According to her diary, she enjoyed Albert's company from the beginning. After the visit she wrote, "[Albert] is extremely handsome; his hair is about the same colour as mine; his eyes are large and blue, and he has a beautiful nose and a very sweet mouth with fine teeth; but the charm of his countenance is his expression, which is most delightful." Alexander, on the other hand, she described as "very plain".
Victoria wrote to King Leopold, whom she considered her "best and kindest adviser", to thank him "for the prospect of great happiness you have contributed to give me, in the person of dear Albert ... He possesses every quality that could be desired to render me perfectly happy. He is so sensible, so kind, and so good, and so amiable too. He has besides the most pleasing and delightful exterior and appearance you can possibly see." However at 17, Victoria, though interested in Albert, was not yet ready to marry. The parties did not undertake a formal engagement, but assumed that the match would take place in due time.
Accession and early reign
Victoria turned 18 on 24 May 1837, and a regency was avoided. Less than a month later, on 20 June 1837, William IV died at the age of 71, and Victoria became Queen of the United Kingdom. In her diary she wrote, "I was awoke at 6 o'clock by Mamma, who told me the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Conyngham were here and wished to see me. I got out of bed and went into my sitting-room (only in my dressing gown) and alone, and saw them. Lord Conyngham then acquainted me that my poor Uncle, the King, was no more, and had expired at 12 minutes past 2 this morning, and consequently that I am Queen." Official documents prepared on the first day of her reign described her as Alexandrina Victoria, but the first name was withdrawn at her own wish and not used again.
Since 1714, Britain had shared a monarch with Hanover in Germany, but under Salic law, women were excluded from the Hanoverian succession. While Victoria inherited the British throne, her father's unpopular younger brother, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, became King of Hanover. He was Victoria's heir presumptive until she had a child.
At the time of Victoria's accession, the government was led by the Whig prime minister Lord Melbourne. He at once became a powerful influence on the politically inexperienced monarch, who relied on him for advice. Charles Greville supposed that the widowed and childless Melbourne was "passionately fond of her as he might be of his daughter if he had one", and Victoria probably saw him as a father figure. Her coronation took place on 28 June 1838 at Westminster Abbey. Over 400,000 visitors came to London for the celebrations. She became the first sovereign to take up residence at Buckingham Palace and inherited the revenues of the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall as well as being granted a civil list allowance of £385,000 per year. Financially prudent, she paid off her father's debts.
At the start of her reign Victoria was popular, but her reputation suffered in an 1839 court intrigue when one of her mother's ladies-in-waiting, Lady Flora Hastings, developed an abdominal growth that was widely rumoured to be an out-of-wedlock pregnancy by Sir John Conroy. Victoria believed the rumours. She hated Conroy, and despised "that odious Lady Flora", because she had conspired with Conroy and the Duchess in the Kensington System. At first, Lady Flora refused to submit to an intimate medical examination, until in mid-February she eventually acquiesced, and was found to be a virgin. Conroy, the Hastings family, and the opposition Tories organised a press campaign implicating the Queen in the spreading of false rumours about Lady Flora. When Lady Flora died in July, the post-mortem revealed a large tumour on her liver that had distended her abdomen. At public appearances, Victoria was hissed and jeered as "Mrs. Melbourne".
In 1839, Melbourne resigned after Radicals and Tories (both of whom Victoria detested) voted against a bill to suspend the constitution of Jamaica. The bill removed political power from plantation owners who were resisting measures associated with the abolition of slavery. The Queen commissioned a Tory, Robert Peel, to form a new ministry. At the time, it was customary for the prime minister to appoint members of the Royal Household, who were usually his political allies and their spouses. Many of the Queen's ladies of the bedchamber were wives of Whigs, and Peel expected to replace them with wives of Tories. In what became known as the "bedchamber crisis", Victoria, advised by Melbourne, objected to their removal. Peel refused to govern under the restrictions imposed by the Queen, and consequently resigned his commission, allowing Melbourne to return to office.
Marriage and public life
Though Victoria was now queen, as an unmarried young woman she was required by social convention to live with her mother, despite their differences over the Kensington System and her mother's continued reliance on Conroy. The Duchess was consigned to a remote apartment in Buckingham Palace, and Victoria often refused to see her. When Victoria complained to Melbourne that her mother's proximity promised "torment for many years", Melbourne sympathised but said it could be avoided by marriage, which Victoria called a "schocking [sic] alternative". Victoria showed interest in Albert's education for the future role he would have to play as her husband, but she resisted attempts to rush her into wedlock.
Victoria continued to praise Albert following his second visit in October 1839. They felt mutual affection and the Queen proposed to him on 15 October 1839, just five days after he had arrived at Windsor. They were married on 10 February 1840, in the Chapel Royal of St James's Palace, London. Victoria was love-struck. She spent the evening after their wedding lying down with a headache, but wrote ecstatically in her diary:
I NEVER, NEVER spent such an evening!!! MY DEAREST DEAREST DEAR Albert ... his excessive love & affection gave me feelings of heavenly love & happiness I never could have hoped to have felt before! He clasped me in his arms, & we kissed each other again & again! His beauty, his sweetness & gentleness—really how can I ever be thankful enough to have such a Husband! ... to be called by names of tenderness, I have never yet heard used to me before—was bliss beyond belief! Oh! This was the happiest day of my life!
Albert became an important political adviser as well as the Queen's companion, replacing Melbourne as the dominant influential figure in the first half of her life. Victoria's mother was evicted from the palace, to Ingestre House in Belgrave Square. After the death of Victoria's aunt Princess Augusta in 1840, the Duchess was given both Clarence House and Frogmore House. Through Albert's mediation, relations between mother and daughter slowly improved.
During Victoria's first pregnancy in 1840, in the first few months of the marriage, 18-year-old Edward Oxford attempted to assassinate her while she was riding in a carriage with Prince Albert on her way to visit her mother. Oxford fired twice, but either both bullets missed or, as he later claimed, the guns had no shot. He was tried for high treason, found not guilty by reason of insanity, committed to an insane asylum indefinitely, and later sent to live in Australia. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Victoria's popularity soared, mitigating residual discontent over the Hastings affair and the bedchamber crisis. Her daughter, also named Victoria, was born on 21 November 1840. The Queen hated being pregnant, viewed breast-feeding with disgust, and thought newborn babies were ugly. Nevertheless, over the following seventeen years, she and Albert had a further eight children: Albert Edward, Alice, Alfred, Helena, Louise, Arthur, Leopold and Beatrice.
The household was largely run by Victoria's childhood governess, Baroness Louise Lehzen from Hanover. Lehzen had been a formative influence on Victoria and had supported her against the Kensington System. Albert, however, thought that Lehzen was incompetent and that her mismanagement threatened his daughter Victoria's health. After a furious row between Victoria and Albert over the issue, Lehzen was pensioned off in 1842, and Victoria's close relationship with her ended.
On 29 May 1842, Victoria was riding in a carriage along The Mall, London, when John Francis aimed a pistol at her, but the gun did not fire. The assailant escaped; the following day, Victoria drove the same route, though faster and with a greater escort, in a deliberate attempt to bait Francis into taking a second aim and catch him in the act. As expected, Francis shot at her, but he was seized by plainclothes policemen, and convicted of high treason. On 3 July, two days after Francis's death sentence was commuted to transportation for life, John William Bean also tried to fire a pistol at the Queen, but it was loaded only with paper and tobacco and had too little charge. Edward Oxford felt that the attempts were encouraged by his acquittal in 1840. Bean was sentenced to 18 months in jail. In a similar attack in 1849, unemployed Irishman William Hamilton fired a powder-filled pistol at Victoria's carriage as it passed along Constitution Hill, London. In 1850, the Queen did sustain injury when she was assaulted by a possibly insane ex-army officer, Robert Pate. As Victoria was riding in a carriage, Pate struck her with his cane, crushing her bonnet and bruising her forehead. Both Hamilton and Pate were sentenced to seven years' transportation.
Melbourne's support in the House of Commons weakened through the early years of Victoria's reign, and in the 1841 general election the Whigs were defeated. Peel became prime minister, and the ladies of the bedchamber most associated with the Whigs were replaced.
In 1845, Ireland was hit by a potato blight. In the next four years, over a million Irish people died and another million emigrated in what became known as the Great Famine. In Ireland, Victoria was labelled "The Famine Queen". In January 1847 she personally donated £2,000 (equivalent to between £230,000 and £8.5 million in 2022) to the British Relief Association, more than any other individual famine relief donor, and supported the Maynooth Grant to a Roman Catholic seminary in Ireland, despite Protestant opposition. The story that she donated only £5 in aid to the Irish, and on the same day gave the same amount to Battersea Dogs Home, was a myth generated towards the end of the 19th century.
By 1846, Peel's ministry faced a crisis involving the repeal of the Corn Laws. Many Tories—by then known also as Conservatives—were opposed to the repeal, but Peel, some Tories (the free-trade oriented liberal conservative "Peelites"), most Whigs and Victoria supported it. Peel resigned in 1846, after the repeal narrowly passed, and was replaced by Lord John Russell.
Internationally, Victoria took a keen interest in the improvement of relations between France and Britain. She made and hosted several visits between the British royal family and the House of Orleans, who were related by marriage through the Coburgs. In 1843 and 1845, she and Albert stayed with King Louis Philippe I at Château d'Eu in Normandy; she was the first British or English monarch to visit a French monarch since the meeting of Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France on the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. When Louis Philippe made a reciprocal trip in 1844, he became the first French king to visit a British sovereign. Louis Philippe was deposed in the revolutions of 1848, and fled to exile in England. At the height of a revolutionary scare in the United Kingdom in April 1848, Victoria and her family left London for the greater safety of Osborne House, a private estate on the Isle of Wight that they had purchased in 1845 and redeveloped. Demonstrations by Chartists and Irish nationalists failed to attract widespread support, and the scare died down without any major disturbances. Victoria's first visit to Ireland in 1849 was a public relations success, but it had no lasting impact or effect on the growth of Irish nationalism.
Russell's ministry, though Whig, was not favoured by the Queen. She found particularly offensive the Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, who often acted without consulting the Cabinet, the Prime Minister, or the Queen. Victoria complained to Russell that Palmerston sent official dispatches to foreign leaders without her knowledge, but Palmerston was retained in office and continued to act on his own initiative, despite her repeated remonstrances. It was only in 1851 that Palmerston was removed after he announced the British government's approval of President Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte's coup in France without consulting the Prime Minister. The following year, President Bonaparte was declared Emperor Napoleon III, by which time Russell's administration had been replaced by a short-lived minority government led by Lord Derby.
In 1853, Victoria gave birth to her eighth child, Leopold, with the aid of the new anaesthetic, chloroform. She was so impressed by the relief it gave from the pain of childbirth that she used it again in 1857 at the birth of her ninth and final child, Beatrice, despite opposition from members of the clergy, who considered it against biblical teaching, and members of the medical profession, who thought it dangerous. Victoria may have had postnatal depression after many of her pregnancies. Letters from Albert to Victoria intermittently complain of her loss of self-control. For example, about a month after Leopold's birth Albert complained in a letter to Victoria about her "continuance of hysterics" over a "miserable trifle".
In early 1855, the government of Lord Aberdeen, who had replaced Derby, fell amidst recriminations over the poor management of British troops in the Crimean War. Victoria approached both Derby and Russell to form a ministry, but neither had sufficient support, and Victoria was forced to appoint Palmerston as prime minister.
Napoleon III, Britain's closest ally as a result of the Crimean War, visited London in April 1855, and from 17 to 28 August the same year Victoria and Albert returned the visit. Napoleon III met the couple at Boulogne and accompanied them to Paris. They visited the Exposition Universelle (a successor to Albert's 1851 brainchild the Great Exhibition) and Napoleon I's tomb at Les Invalides (to which his remains had only been returned in 1840), and were guests of honour at a 1,200-guest ball at the Palace of Versailles. This marked the first time that a reigning British monarch had been to Paris in over 400 years.
On 14 January 1858, an Italian refugee from Britain called Felice Orsini attempted to assassinate Napoleon III with a bomb made in England. The ensuing diplomatic crisis destabilised the government, and Palmerston resigned. Derby was reinstated as prime minister. Victoria and Albert attended the opening of a new basin at the French military port of Cherbourg on 5 August 1858, in an attempt by Napoleon III to reassure Britain that his military preparations were directed elsewhere. On her return Victoria wrote to Derby reprimanding him for the poor state of the Royal Navy in comparison to the French Navy. Derby's ministry did not last long, and in June 1859 Victoria recalled Palmerston to office.
Eleven days after Orsini's assassination attempt in France, Victoria's eldest daughter married Prince Frederick William of Prussia in London. They had been betrothed since September 1855, when Princess Victoria was 14 years old; the marriage was delayed by the Queen and her husband Albert until the bride was 17. The Queen and Albert hoped that their daughter and son-in-law would be a liberalising influence in the enlarging Prussian state. The Queen felt "sick at heart" to see her daughter leave England for Germany; "It really makes me shudder", she wrote to Princess Victoria in one of her frequent letters, "when I look round to all your sweet, happy, unconscious sisters, and think I must give them up too – one by one." Almost exactly a year later, the Princess gave birth to the Queen's first grandchild, Wilhelm, who would become the last German emperor.
Widowhood and isolation
In March 1861, Victoria's mother died, with Victoria at her side. Through reading her mother's papers, Victoria discovered that her mother had loved her deeply; she was heart-broken, and blamed Conroy and Lehzen for "wickedly" estranging her from her mother. To relieve his wife during her intense and deep grief, Albert took on most of her duties, despite being ill himself with chronic stomach trouble. In August, Victoria and Albert visited their son, Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, who was attending army manoeuvres near Dublin, and spent a few days holidaying in Killarney. In November, Albert was made aware of gossip that his son had slept with an actress in Ireland. Appalled, he travelled to Cambridge, where his son was studying, to confront him.
By the beginning of December, Albert was very unwell. He was diagnosed with typhoid fever by William Jenner, and died on 14 December 1861. Victoria was devastated. She blamed her husband's death on worry over the Prince of Wales's philandering. He had been "killed by that dreadful business", she said. She entered a state of mourning and wore black for the remainder of her life. She avoided public appearances and rarely set foot in London in the following years. Her seclusion earned her the nickname "widow of Windsor". Her weight increased through comfort eating, which reinforced her aversion to public appearances.
Victoria's self-imposed isolation from the public diminished the popularity of the monarchy, and encouraged the growth of the republican movement. She did undertake her official government duties, yet chose to remain secluded in her royal residences—Windsor Castle, Osborne House, and the private estate in Scotland that she and Albert had acquired in 1847, Balmoral Castle. In March 1864, a protester stuck a notice on the railings of Buckingham Palace that announced "these commanding premises to be let or sold in consequence of the late occupant's declining business". Her uncle Leopold wrote to her advising her to appear in public. She agreed to visit the gardens of the Royal Horticultural Society at Kensington and take a drive through London in an open carriage.
Through the 1860s, Victoria relied increasingly on a manservant from Scotland, John Brown. Rumours of a romantic connection and even a secret marriage appeared in print, and some referred to the Queen as "Mrs. Brown". The story of their relationship was the subject of the 1997 movie Mrs. Brown. A painting by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer depicting the Queen with Brown was exhibited at the Royal Academy, and Victoria published a book, Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands, which featured Brown prominently and in which the Queen praised him highly.
Palmerston died in 1865, and after a brief ministry led by Russell, Derby returned to power. In 1866, Victoria attended the State Opening of Parliament for the first time since Albert's death. The following year she supported the passing of the Reform Act 1867 which doubled the electorate by extending the franchise to many urban working men, though she was not in favour of votes for women. Derby resigned in 1868, to be replaced by Benjamin Disraeli, who charmed Victoria. "Everyone likes flattery," he said, "and when you come to royalty you should lay it on with a trowel." With the phrase "we authors, Ma'am", he complimented her. Disraeli's ministry only lasted a matter of months, and at the end of the year his Liberal rival, William Ewart Gladstone, was appointed prime minister. Victoria found Gladstone's demeanour far less appealing; he spoke to her, she is thought to have complained, as though she were "a public meeting rather than a woman".
In 1870 republican sentiment in Britain, fed by the Queen's seclusion, was boosted after the establishment of the Third French Republic. A republican rally in Trafalgar Square demanded Victoria's removal, and Radical MPs spoke against her. In August and September 1871, she was seriously ill with an abscess in her arm, which Joseph Lister successfully lanced and treated with his new antiseptic carbolic acid spray. In late November 1871, at the height of the republican movement, the Prince of Wales contracted typhoid fever, the disease that was believed to have killed his father, and Victoria was fearful her son would die. As the tenth anniversary of her husband's death approached, her son's condition grew no better, and Victoria's distress continued. To general rejoicing, he recovered. Mother and son attended a public parade through London and a grand service of thanksgiving in St Paul's Cathedral on 27 February 1872, and republican feeling subsided.
On the last day of February 1872, two days after the thanksgiving service, 17-year-old Arthur O'Connor, a great-nephew of Irish MP Feargus O'Connor, waved an unloaded pistol at Victoria's open carriage just after she had arrived at Buckingham Palace. Brown, who was attending the Queen, grabbed him and O'Connor was later sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment, and a birching. As a result of the incident, Victoria's popularity recovered further.
Empress of India
After the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the British East India Company, which had ruled much of India, was dissolved, and Britain's possessions and protectorates on the Indian subcontinent were formally incorporated into the British Empire. The Queen had a relatively balanced view of the conflict, and condemned atrocities on both sides. She wrote of "her feelings of horror and regret at the result of this bloody civil war", and insisted, urged on by Albert, that an official proclamation announcing the transfer of power from the company to the state "should breathe feelings of generosity, benevolence and religious toleration". At her behest, a reference threatening the "undermining of native religions and customs" was replaced by a passage guaranteeing religious freedom.
In the 1874 general election, Disraeli was returned to power. He passed the Public Worship Regulation Act 1874, which removed Catholic rituals from the Anglican liturgy and which Victoria strongly supported. She preferred short, simple services, and personally considered herself more aligned with the presbyterian Church of Scotland than the episcopal Church of England. Disraeli also pushed the Royal Titles Act 1876 through Parliament, so that Victoria took the title "Empress of India" from 1 May 1876. The new title was proclaimed at the Delhi Durbar of 1 January 1877.
On 14 December 1878, the anniversary of Albert's death, Victoria's second daughter Alice, who had married Louis of Hesse, died of diphtheria in Darmstadt. Victoria noted the coincidence of the dates as "almost incredible and most mysterious". In May 1879, she became a great-grandmother (on the birth of Princess Feodora of Saxe-Meiningen) and passed her "poor old 60th birthday". She felt "aged" by "the loss of my beloved child".
Between April 1877 and February 1878, she threatened five times to abdicate while pressuring Disraeli to act against Russia during the Russo-Turkish War, but her threats had no impact on the events or their conclusion with the Congress of Berlin. Disraeli's expansionist foreign policy, which Victoria endorsed, led to conflicts such as the Anglo-Zulu War and the Second Anglo-Afghan War. "If we are to maintain our position as a first-rate Power", she wrote, "we must ... be Prepared for attacks and wars, somewhere or other, CONTINUALLY." Victoria saw the expansion of the British Empire as civilising and benign, protecting native peoples from more aggressive powers or cruel rulers: "It is not in our custom to annexe countries", she said, "unless we are obliged & forced to do so." To Victoria's dismay, Disraeli lost the 1880 general election, and Gladstone returned as prime minister. When Disraeli died the following year, she was blinded by "fast falling tears", and erected a memorial tablet "placed by his grateful Sovereign and Friend, Victoria R.I."
On 2 March 1882, Roderick Maclean, a disgruntled poet apparently offended by Victoria's refusal to accept one of his poems, shot at the Queen as her carriage left Windsor railway station. Gordon Chesney Wilson and another schoolboy from Eton College struck him with their umbrellas, until he was hustled away by a policeman. Victoria was outraged when he was found not guilty by reason of insanity, but was so pleased by the many expressions of loyalty after the attack that she said it was "worth being shot at—to see how much one is loved".
On 17 March 1883, Victoria fell down some stairs at Windsor, which left her lame until July; she never fully recovered and was plagued with rheumatism thereafter. John Brown died 10 days after her accident, and to the consternation of her private secretary, Sir Henry Ponsonby, Victoria began work on a eulogistic biography of Brown. Ponsonby and Randall Davidson, Dean of Windsor, who had both seen early drafts, advised Victoria against publication, on the grounds that it would stoke the rumours of a love affair. The manuscript was destroyed. In early 1884, Victoria did publish More Leaves from a Journal of a Life in the Highlands, a sequel to her earlier book, which she dedicated to her "devoted personal attendant and faithful friend John Brown". On the day after the first anniversary of Brown's death, Victoria was informed by telegram that her youngest son, Leopold, had died in Cannes. He was "the dearest of my dear sons", she lamented. The following month, Victoria's youngest child, Beatrice, met and fell in love with Prince Henry of Battenberg at the wedding of Victoria's granddaughter Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine to Henry's brother Prince Louis of Battenberg. Beatrice and Henry planned to marry, but Victoria opposed the match at first, wishing to keep Beatrice at home to act as her companion. After a year, she was won around to the marriage by their promise to remain living with and attending her.
Victoria was pleased when Gladstone resigned in 1885 after his budget was defeated. She thought his government was "the worst I have ever had", and blamed him for the death of General Gordon during the Siege of Khartoum. Gladstone was replaced by Lord Salisbury. Salisbury's government only lasted a few months, however, and Victoria was forced to recall Gladstone, whom she referred to as a "half crazy & really in many ways ridiculous old man". Gladstone attempted to pass a bill granting Ireland home rule, but to Victoria's glee it was defeated. In the ensuing election, Gladstone's party lost to Salisbury's and the government switched hands again.
Golden and Diamond Jubilees
In 1887, the British Empire celebrated Victoria's Golden Jubilee. She marked the fiftieth anniversary of her accession on 20 June with a banquet to which 50 kings and princes were invited. The following day, she participated in a procession and attended a thanksgiving service in Westminster Abbey. By this time, Victoria was once again extremely popular. Two days later on 23 June, she engaged two Indian Muslims as waiters, one of whom was Abdul Karim. He was soon promoted to "Munshi": teaching her Urdu and acting as a clerk. Her family and retainers were appalled, and accused Abdul Karim of spying for the Muslim Patriotic League, and biasing the Queen against the Hindus. Equerry Frederick Ponsonby (the son of Sir Henry) discovered that the Munshi had lied about his parentage, and reported to Lord Elgin, Viceroy of India, "the Munshi occupies very much the same position as John Brown used to do." Victoria dismissed their complaints as racial prejudice. Abdul Karim remained in her service until he returned to India with a pension, on her death.
Victoria's eldest daughter became empress consort of Germany in 1888, but she was widowed a little over three months later, and Victoria's eldest grandchild became German Emperor as Wilhelm II. Victoria and Albert's hopes of a liberal Germany would go unfulfilled, as Wilhelm was a firm believer in autocracy. Victoria thought he had "little heart or Zartgefühl [tact] – and ... his conscience & intelligence have been completely wharped [sic]".
Gladstone returned to power after the 1892 general election; he was 82 years old. Victoria objected when Gladstone proposed appointing the Radical MP Henry Labouchère to the Cabinet, so Gladstone agreed not to appoint him. In 1894, Gladstone retired and, without consulting the outgoing prime minister, Victoria appointed Lord Rosebery as prime minister. His government was weak, and the following year Lord Salisbury replaced him. Salisbury remained prime minister for the remainder of Victoria's reign.
On 23 September 1896, Victoria surpassed her grandfather George III as the longest-reigning monarch in British history. The Queen requested that any special celebrations be delayed until 1897, to coincide with her Diamond Jubilee, which was made a festival of the British Empire at the suggestion of the Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain. The prime ministers of all the self-governing Dominions were invited to London for the festivities. One reason for including the prime ministers of the Dominions and excluding foreign heads of state was to avoid having to invite Victoria's grandson Wilhelm II, who, it was feared, might cause trouble at the event.
The Queen's Diamond Jubilee procession on 22 June 1897 followed a route six miles long through London and included troops from all over the empire. The procession paused for an open-air service of thanksgiving held outside St Paul's Cathedral, throughout which Victoria sat in her open carriage, to avoid her having to climb the steps to enter the building. The celebration was marked by vast crowds of spectators and great outpourings of affection for the 78-year-old Queen.
Declining health and death
Victoria regularly holidayed in mainland Europe. In 1889, during a stay in Biarritz, she became the first reigning monarch from Britain to visit Spain by briefly crossing the border. By April 1900, the Boer War was so unpopular in mainland Europe that her annual trip to France seemed inadvisable. Instead, the Queen went to Ireland for the first time since 1861, in part to acknowledge the contribution of Irish regiments to the South African war.
In July 1900, Victoria's second son, Alfred ("Affie"), died. "Oh, God! My poor darling Affie gone too", she wrote in her journal. "It is a horrible year, nothing but sadness & horrors of one kind & another."
Following a custom she maintained throughout her widowhood, Victoria spent the Christmas of 1900 at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. Rheumatism in her legs had rendered her disabled, and her eyesight was clouded by cataracts. Through early January, she felt "weak and unwell", and by mid-January she was "drowsy [...] dazed, [and] confused". Her favourite pet Pomeranian, Turi, was laid on her bed as a last request. She died aged 81 on 22 January 1901, at half past six in the evening, in the presence of her eldest son, Albert Edward, and grandson Wilhelm II. Albert Edward immediately succeeded as Edward VII.
In 1897, Victoria had written instructions for her funeral, which was to be military as befitting a soldier's daughter and the head of the army, and white instead of black. On 25 January, Edward VII and Wilhelm II, together with Prince Arthur, helped lift her body into the coffin. She was dressed in a white dress and her wedding veil. An array of mementos commemorating her extended family, friends and servants were laid in the coffin with her, at her request, by her physician and dressers. One of Albert's dressing gowns was placed by her side, with a plaster cast of his hand, while a lock of John Brown's hair, along with a picture of him, was placed in her left hand concealed from the view of the family by a carefully positioned bunch of flowers. Items of jewellery placed on Victoria included the wedding ring of Brown's mother, which Brown gave Victoria in 1883. Her funeral was held on Saturday 2 February, in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, and after two days of lying-in-state, she was interred beside Prince Albert in the Royal Mausoleum, Frogmore, at Windsor Great Park.
With a reign of 63 years, seven months, and two days, Victoria was the longest-reigning British monarch and the longest-reigning queen regnant in world history, until her great-great-granddaughter Elizabeth II surpassed her on 9 September 2015. She was the last monarch of Britain from the House of Hanover; her son Edward VII belonged to her husband's House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
Legacy
Reputation
According to one of her biographers, Giles St Aubyn, Victoria wrote an average of 2,500 words a day during her adult life. From July 1832 until just before her death, she kept a detailed journal, which eventually encompassed 122 volumes. After Victoria's death, her youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice, was appointed her literary executor. Beatrice transcribed and edited the diaries covering Victoria's accession onwards, and burned the originals in the process. Despite this destruction, much of the diaries still exist. In addition to Beatrice's edited copy, Lord Esher transcribed the volumes from 1832 to 1861 before Beatrice destroyed them. Part of Victoria's extensive correspondence has been published in volumes edited by A. C. Benson, Hector Bolitho, George Earle Buckle, Lord Esher, Roger Fulford, and Richard Hough among others.
In her later years, Victoria was stout, dowdy, and about five feet (1.5 metres) tall, but she projected a grand image. She was unpopular during the first years of her widowhood, but was well liked during the 1880s and 1890s, when she embodied the empire as a benevolent matriarchal figure. Only after the release of her diary and letters did the extent of her political influence become known to the wider public. Biographies of Victoria written before much of the primary material became available, such as Lytton Strachey's Queen Victoria of 1921, are now considered out of date. The biographies written by Elizabeth Longford and Cecil Woodham-Smith, in 1964 and 1972 respectively, are still widely admired. They, and others, conclude that as a person Victoria was emotional, obstinate, honest, and straight-talking.
Through Victoria's reign, the gradual establishment of a modern constitutional monarchy in Britain continued. Reforms of the voting system increased the power of the House of Commons at the expense of the House of Lords and the monarch. In 1867, Walter Bagehot wrote that the monarch only retained "the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, and the right to warn". As Victoria's monarchy became more symbolic than political, it placed a strong emphasis on morality and family values, in contrast to the sexual, financial and personal scandals that had been associated with previous members of the House of Hanover and which had discredited the monarchy. The concept of the "family monarchy", with which the burgeoning middle classes could identify, was solidified.
Descendants and haemophilia
Victoria's links with Europe's royal families earned her the nickname "the grandmother of Europe". Of the grandchildren of Victoria and Albert, 34 survived to adulthood.
Victoria's youngest son, Leopold, was affected by the blood-clotting disease haemophilia B and at least two of her five daughters, Alice and Beatrice, were carriers. Royal haemophiliacs descended from Victoria included her great-grandsons, Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia; Alfonso, Prince of Asturias; and Infante Gonzalo of Spain. The presence of the disease in Victoria's descendants, but not in her ancestors, led to modern speculation that her true father was not the Duke of Kent, but a haemophiliac. There is no documentary evidence of a haemophiliac in connection with Victoria's mother, and as male carriers always had the disease, even if such a man had existed he would have been seriously ill. It is more likely that the mutation arose spontaneously because Victoria's father was over 50 at the time of her conception and haemophilia arises more frequently in the children of older fathers. Spontaneous mutations account for about a third of cases.
Titles, styles, honours, and arms
Titles and styles
At the end of her reign, the Queen's full style was: "Her Majesty Victoria, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Queen, Defender of the Faith, Empress of India".
Honours
British honours
Royal Family Order of George IV, 1826
Founder of the Victoria Cross 5 February 1856
Founder and Sovereign of the Order of the Star of India, 25 June 1861
Founder and Sovereign of the Royal Order of Victoria and Albert, 10 February 1862
Founder and Sovereign of the Order of the Crown of India, 1 January 1878
Founder and Sovereign of the Order of the Indian Empire, 1 January 1878
Founder and Sovereign of the Royal Red Cross, 27 April 1883
Founder and Sovereign of the Distinguished Service Order, 6 November 1886
Albert Medal of the Royal Society of Arts, 1887
Founder and Sovereign of the Royal Victorian Order, 23 April 1896
Foreign honours
Arms
As Sovereign, Victoria used the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom. As she could not succeed to the throne of Hanover, her arms did not carry the Hanoverian symbols that were used by her immediate predecessors. Her arms have been borne by all of her successors on the throne.
Family
Issue
Ancestry
Family tree
Red borders indicate British monarchs
Bold borders indicate children of British monarchs
Notes
References
Citations
Bibliography
Primary sources
Further reading
External links
Queen Victoria at the official website of the British monarchy
Queen Victoria at the official website of the Royal Collection Trust
Queen Victoria at BBC Teach
Portraits of Queen Victoria at the National Portrait Gallery, London
Queen Victoria's Journals, online from the Royal Archive and Bodleian Library
Works by Queen Victoria at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Queen Victoria at the Internet Archive
Works by Queen Victoria at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
Newspaper clippings about Queen Victoria in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW |
1900%E2%80%9301_Football_League | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1900%E2%80%9301_Football_League | [
587
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1900%E2%80%9301_Football_League#Final_league_tables"
] | The 1900–01 season was the 13th season of The Football League.
Final league tables
Beginning in the 1894–95 season, clubs finishing level on points were separated according to goal average (goals scored divided by goals conceded). In case one or more teams had the same goal difference, this system favoured those teams who had scored fewer goals. The goal average system was eventually scrapped beginning with the 1976–77 season.
During the first six seasons of the league, (up to the 1893–94 season), re-election process concerned the clubs which finished in the bottom four of the league. From the 1894–95 season and until the 1920–21 season the re-election process was required of the clubs which finished in the bottom three of the league.
First Division
Results
Maps
Second Division
Results
Maps
See also
1900–01 in English football
1900 in association football
1901 in association football
References
Ian Laschke: Rothmans Book of Football League Records 1888–89 to 1978–79. Macdonald and Jane's, London & Sydney, 1980. |
List_of_Liverpool_F.C._managers | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Liverpool_F.C._managers | [
587
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Liverpool_F.C._managers#Managers"
] | Liverpool Football Club is an English association football club based in Liverpool, Merseyside. Liverpool won the First Division title for the first time in 1901; since then, the club has won a further 18 league titles, along with eight FA Cups and ten Football League Cups. They have also been crowned champions of European football on six occasions by winning the European Cup/UEFA Champions League in 1977, 1978, 1981, 1984, 2005 and 2019. The club was one of 22 members of the Premier League when it was founded in 1992.
Liverpool have had 22 full-time managers. The most successful person to manage Liverpool is Bob Paisley, who won six Football League titles, six Charity Shields, three Football League Cups, three European Cups, one UEFA Super Cup and one UEFA Cup in his nine-year reign as manager. The club's longest-serving manager was Tom Watson, who managed the club from 1896 to 1915, totalling 19 years. Kenny Dalglish is the only person to have managed the club on two occasions. He first managed Liverpool from 1985 to February 1991, and then from January 2011 to June 2012.
This chronological list comprises all those who have held the position of manager of the first team of Liverpool since their foundation in 1892. Each manager's entry includes his dates of tenure and the club's overall competitive record (in terms of matches won, drawn and lost), honours won and significant achievements while under his care. Caretaker managers are included, where known, as well as those who have been in permanent charge.
Managerial history
1892–1959
The first Liverpool managers, William Edward Barclay and John McKenna, were appointed in 1892. Barclay acted as secretary-manager, overseeing the administrative side of the club, while McKenna took charge of matters on the field. The two worked in tandem as Liverpool won promotion from the Lancashire League in the club's first season. However, in 1896, McKenna appointed Tom Watson as manager. He went on to win two Football League championships. As the First World War broke out, Watson was embarking on his nineteenth season in charge at Anfield. It was to be his last, because he died in May 1915, aged 56. David Ashworth was appointed manager when football resumed after the War. Ashworth won one league title, but left for Oldham Athletic soon after this. He was replaced in February 1923 by a Liverpool director, Matt McQueen, who won one league title for the club. However, this marked the beginning of a barren spell spanning more than 20 years before Liverpool finally regained the title in 1947 under the stewardship of George Kay. Kay also led Liverpool to the FA Cup Final in 1950, but lost the game 2–0 to Arsenal. He retired the following year, owing to ill-health. The next manager, Don Welsh became the first Liverpool manager to be sacked after leading the club to relegation in 1954. His successor, Phil Taylor, also failed to win a trophy or gain promotion back to the top flight during his reign as boss.
1959–1991
On 1 December 1959, Bill Shankly was appointed manager, beginning a fifteen-year spell as manager that brought three league titles, two FA Cups and a first European trophy, the UEFA Cup, to Anfield. Shankly's reign as manager is famous for the establishment of the Anfield boot room as the location for his tactical discussions with his coaches. When he was not managing the club, Shankly was usually at his typewriter, personally replying to the letters which arrived at Melwood. Shankly even called some supporters at home to discuss the previous day's game, while the accounts of him providing tickets for fans are endless. When Shankly retired in 1974, he was replaced by his assistant, Bob Paisley. During the next nine seasons, Paisley proceeded to win six league titles and three European Cups to become the most successful manager in the history of the club. When Paisley retired in 1983, his assistant Joe Fagan took over, and continued the Boot Room tradition, and winning a treble of League, European Cup and League Cup in his first season. He again guided Liverpool to a European Cup Final, but the match was overshadowed by the Heysel Stadium disaster, and he retired soon after. Striker Kenny Dalglish was then made the club's first player-manager and in his first season in charge, Dalglish led the club to a League and FA Cup double. After that great first season, Dalglish led Liverpool to a further two league titles and another FA Cup. However, the Hillsborough disaster overshadowed his reign; it was one of the reasons for Dalglish resigning on 22 February 1991.
1991–2015
First-team coach Ronnie Moran took charge of team affairs for several weeks before Graeme Souness was named as Dalglish's successor. Under Souness, Liverpool won the FA Cup in 1992, but nothing else. He made way for Roy Evans, who also won just one trophy, the League Cup, before Gérard Houllier was appointed joint manager with Evans in 1998. This arrangement lasted only 18 games before Evans resigned, leaving Houllier—Liverpool's first non-British manager—in sole charge. Houllier won nothing until a treble in 2001, consisting of the FA Cup, League Cup and UEFA Cup. Houllier underwent major heart surgery during the 2001–02 season, but the squad was unaffected and managed to hold on to a second-place finish. Although Phil Thompson stepped in as temporary manager while Houllier was recovering from heart surgery, the matches played under Thompson are included in Houllier's record. Another League Cup was won in 2003, but this was to be Houllier's last trophy as Liverpool manager as he and the club parted by mutual consent at the end of the 2003–04 season, to be replaced by Valencia manager, Rafael Benítez.
In Benítez's first season in charge, Liverpool reached the UEFA Champions League Final, where they beat A.C. Milan on penalties, after the match finished 3–3 after extra time. The following season, Liverpool reached the FA Cup Final, where they beat West Ham United, again on penalties after a 3–3 draw. Benítez again guided Liverpool to a Champions League Final in 2007, but this time A.C. Milan beat them 2–1. On 3 June 2010, Benitez paid the price for a disappointing 2009–10 season when Liverpool announced he had left the club by mutual consent after six years in charge. Benitez, who was one year into a five-year contract, finalised his departure after agreeing a severance payment. Benitez's assistant Sammy Lee took over the reins at Liverpool until Managing director Christian Purslow and former manager Kenny Dalglish found a replacement. On 1 July 2010, former Fulham boss Roy Hodgson was confirmed as the new manager. After a poor tenure, which included Liverpool being 18th after 6 games, and only one away win during Hodgson's time in charge, Hodgson was sacked on 8 January 2011 and was replaced by former manager Kenny Dalglish the day before a 3rd Round FA Cup game against Manchester United. Dalglish signed a three-year contract as permanent manager in May, but was sacked a year later. Although the 2011–12 season ended with a poor 8th-place finish in the Premier League, Dalglish guided Liverpool to two Cup finals at Wembley, ending a six-year trophy drought by winning the League Cup. The second Cup final appearance was the FA Cup, which Liverpool lost to Chelsea. He was replaced by Brendan Rodgers on 1 June 2012.
Rodgers led them in the 2013–14 season to a surprise title challenge, however Liverpool ended the league season in second place, despite scoring 101 goals, the club's most since the 1895–96 season and the third-highest in Premier League history. Rodgers was the first Liverpool manager to win the LMA Manager of The Year Award. However, he was the first manager of the club not to win a major trophy in his first three years at the helm, and on 4 October 2015, he was sacked.
2015–2024
On 8 October 2015, Brendan Rodgers was replaced by former Borussia Dortmund manager Jürgen Klopp. Klopp made an instant impact on the club and guided them to a League Cup Final and a surprise Europa League Final in his first season at the club. During their Europa League campaign, he beat both English rivals Manchester United and his former club Borussia Dortmund en route to the final. However, they lost the League Cup Final to Manchester City via penalty shoot-out and they lost 1–3 to Spanish side Sevilla in the Europa League Final. They also finished 8th in the league, meaning they wouldn't qualify for European competition for the 2016–17 season. On 8 June 2016, Klopp and his coaching staff signed six-year contract extensions that ran until 2022. Klopp guided the club to a fourth-place finish in the 2016–17 season, qualifying them for the 2017–18 UEFA Champions League qualifying play-offs, where they beat German club, TSG 1899 Hoffenheim 6–3 on aggregate in a two-legged play-off to reach the group stage. Klopp led the team to finish top of their group and beat eventual English champions, Manchester City, and Italian club Roma in the knockout phase en route to the 2018 UEFA Champions League Final. Unfortunately for Liverpool, they lost 1–3 to Spanish giants Real Madrid.
During the 2018–19 season, Klopp guided Liverpool to their sixth Champions League triumph with a 2–0 win over fellow English club, Tottenham Hotspur, and also guided the club to a second-place finish in the league. At the start of the 2019–20 season, Klopp's Liverpool side played against Manchester City in the FA Community Shield and against Chelsea in the UEFA Super Cup. Both matches went into penalty shoot-outs, with Liverpool losing the former and winning the latter. Later in December, Klopp also guided Liverpool to their first ever FIFA club World Cup trophy, making it 3 trophies in 2019. In the 2019–20 season, Klopp secured Liverpool's first Premier League title and first top-flight title since 1990 by finishing on the most points in their history (99 points). The season was notable both for Liverpool's huge points lead over the rest of the league and for its interruption by the Coronavirus shutdown, meaning Liverpool won the Premier League at both the earliest (7 games to go) and the latest time (June) ever. On 26 January 2024, the club released a statement, sharing Klopp's announcement that he would step down as Liverpool manager at the end of the current season (2023–24). Arne Slot was announced as the head coach ahead of the 2024–25 season.
Key
Managers
Information correct as of 5 October 2024. Only competitive matches are counted.
Notes
References
General
"Managers". LFC History. Archived from the original on 4 October 2007. Retrieved 26 June 2024.
Specific
Bibliography
Liversedge, Stan (1991). Liverpool:The Official Centenary History. Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd. ISBN 0-600-57308-7.
Pead, Brian (1986). Liverpool A Complete Record. Derby: Breedon Books Sport. ISBN 0-907969-15-1. |
Mette_Solli | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mette_Solli | [
588
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mette_Solli"
] | Mette Solli (born 14 September 1974) is a Norwegian kickboxer.
Biography
Solli was born in Molde on 17 September 1974.
Her achievements include gold medal in light-contact at the W.A.K.O. World Championships 2001 (Maribor), a gold medal in full-contact at the W.A.K.O. European Championships 2004 (Budva), and a gold medal in full-contact at the W.A.K.O. World Championships 2007 (Coimbra).
She was awarded the Kongepokal (King's Cup) trophy at the national championships in 2007.
== References == |
Molde | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molde | [
588
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molde"
] | Molde (Norwegian pronunciation: [ˈmɔ̂ɫdə] ) is a town and municipality in Møre og Romsdal county, Norway. It is located in the traditional district of Romsdal. It is located on the Romsdal Peninsula, surrounding the Fannefjord and Moldefjord.
The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Molde which is also the administrative centre of Møre og Romsdal county, the commercial hub of the Romsdal region, and the seat of the Diocese of Møre. Other main population centres in the municipality include the villages of Hjelset, Kleive, Nesjestranda, Midsund, Nord-Heggdal, Eidsvåg, Rausand, Boggestranda, Myklebostad, Eresfjord, and Eikesdalen.
Molde has a maritime, temperate climate, with cool-to-warm summers, and relatively mild winters. The city is nicknamed The City of Roses.
Molde was originally the name of a farm by a natural harbour, which grew into a timber trading port in the late 16th century. Formal trading rights were introduced before 1604, and the town was incorporated through a royal charter in 1742. Molde was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838 (see formannskapsdistrikt law).
The town continued to grow throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, becoming a centre for Norwegian textile and garment industry, as well as the administrative centre for the region, and a major tourist destination. After World War II, Molde experienced accelerated growth, merging with Bolsøy Municipality and parts of Veøy Municipality on 1 January 1964, and has become a centre for not only administrative and public services, but also academic resources and industrial output.
The 1,503-square-kilometre (580 sq mi) municipality is the 56th largest by area out of the 356 municipalities in Norway. Molde is the 31st most populous municipality in Norway with a population of 32,446. The municipality's population density is 22.6 inhabitants per square kilometre (59/sq mi) and its population has increased by 4.9% over the previous 10-year period.
History
The city's current location dates from the late Medieval times but is preceded by an earlier Medieval township on Veøya, an island to the south of present-day Molde. The settlement at Veøya probably dates from the Migration Period, but is first mentioned in the sagas by Snorri Sturluson as the location of the Battle of Sekken in 1162, where king Håkon the Broad-shouldered was killed fighting the aristocrat Erling Skakke, during the Norwegian civil wars.
However, settlement in the area can be traced much further back in time—evidence given by two rock slabs carved with petroglyphs found at Bjørset, west of the city center.
At the eve of the 15th century, the influence of Veøya waned, and the island was eventually deserted.
Originating from the two farms Reknes and Molde (later Moldegård), a minor port called Moldefjæra (Molde Landing) emerged around 1600, based on trade with timber and herring.
The town gained formal trading rights before 1604 under the supervision of Trondheim. After the Treaty of Copenhagen in 1660, Molde became the administrative center of Romsdal amt, and was incorporated as a city through a royal charter in 1742. Molde continued to grow throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, becoming a center for the Norwegian textile and garment industry. Tourism later became a major industry, and Molde saw notabilities such as the German emperor Wilhelm II of Germany and the Prince of Wales as regular summer visitors. Molde consisted of luxurious hotels surrounding an idyllic township with quaint, wooden houses, lush gardens, and parks, esplanades, and pavilions, earning it the nickname the Town of Roses. This was interrupted when one-third of the city was destroyed in a fire on 21 January 1916. However, Molde recovered and continued to grow in the economically difficult interbellum period.
A second fire, or series of fires, struck from the German air-raids in April and May 1940, which destroyed about two-thirds of the town. Molde was in effect the capital of Norway for a week after King Haakon, Crown Prince Olav, and members of the government and parliament arrived at Molde on April 23, after a dramatic flight from Oslo. They were put up at Glomstua, then at the western outskirts of the town, and experienced the bombing raids personally. The Norwegian gold reserve was also conveyed to Molde, and was hidden in a clothing factory.
However, German intelligence was well aware of this, and on April 25 the Luftwaffe initiated a series of air-raids. For a week the air-raid siren on the chimney of the dairy building announced the repeated attacks. April 29 turned out to be the worst day in the history of Molde, as the city was transformed into a sea of flames by incendiary bombs. Until then the church had escaped undamaged, but in the final sortie a firebomb became stuck high up in the tower, and the wooden church was obliterated by fire.
After World War II, Molde experienced tremendous growth. As the modernization of the Norwegian society accelerated in the post-reconstruction years, Molde became a center for not only administrative and public services, but also academic resources and industrial output. After the consolidation of the town itself and its adjacent communities in 1964, Molde became a modern city, encompassing most branches of employment, from farming and fisheries to industrial production, banking, higher education, tourism, commerce, health care, and civil administration.
Municipality
The town of Molde was established as an urban municipality on 1 January 1838 (see formannskapsdistrikt law). It was surrounded by the rural municipality of Bolsøy. On 1 July 1915, a part of Bolsøy (population: 183) was transferred to the city of Molde. On 1 January 1952, another part of Bolsøy (population: 1,913) was transferred to Molde.
During the 1960s, there were many municipal mergers across Norway due to the work of the Schei Committee. On 1 January 1964, the Molde (town) (population: 8,289) merged with the Sekken, Veøya, and Nesjestranda parts of municipality of Veøy (population: 756), all of the municipality of Bolsøy (population: 7,996), and the Mordal area of Nord-Aukra municipality (population: 77) to form the present day municipality of Molde.
On 1 January 2020, the neighbouring municipalities of Midsund and Nesset merged with Molde to form a much larger municipality called Molde.
Name
The municipality (originally the town and parish) is named after the old Molde farmstead (Old Norse: Moldar) since this was where the town was built. The name's origin is somewhat uncertain. It could be the plural form is mold which means "fertile soil" or "earth". The other possibility is that it comes from the word moldr which means "skull" or "mold" (referring to the rounded peaks in Moldemarka). Pronunciation varies between the standard Molde and the rural Molle. A person from Molde will refer to themself as a Moldenser.
Coat of arms
The coat of arms was granted on 29 June 1742. The informal blazon is "a water spouting whale, which drives a barrel in front of itself" (Norwegian: en vannsprutende hvalfisk, som driver en tønne for seg). The arms have a blue field (background) and the charge is a whale and barrel floating on the ocean waves. It also has a mural crown above the escutcheon since the municipality includes a town. The exact design of the coat of arms is not formally depicted in law, so it has varied some over the centuries. The arms symbolize a whale chasing herring into a barrel, based on an old myth that the whales (guided by God) chased the schools of herring into the fjords at certain times. It also portrays the city's founding industries of herring fisheries and timber exports. Molde was never a whaling port, but the unusually bountiful fisheries in the early 1740s alleviated the city's suffering during a major famine. The sighting of whales, usually pods of orca, was commonly held to be the start of the spring herring fisheries. The municipal flag is a white flag with the coat of arms in the centre.
Moldesangen (The Song of Molde) is the semi-official anthem. It was written by Palle Godtfred Olaus Dørum (1818–1886) and composed by Karl Groos (1789–1861), supposedly in 1818, and is the same tune used the anthem of the German federal state Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Moldesangen)
Geography
Molde municipality includes part of the Romsdal peninsula as well as many islands including the islands of Otrøya and Midøya. To the southeast, Molde municipality stretches about 75 kilometres (47 mi) inland. The town of Molde consists of a 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) long and 1 to 2 kilometres (0.62 to 1.24 mi) wide strip of urban land running east–west along the north shore of the Moldefjord, an arm of the Romsdalsfjord, on the Romsdal peninsula. The city is sheltered by Bolsøya and the Molde archipelago, a chain of low-lying islands and islets, to the south, and the wood-clad hills of Moldemarka to the north. The city centre is located just west of the river Moldeelva, which runs into the city from the north, originating in the Moldevatnet lake, through the valley Moldedalen. Despite the river being minor and seasonal, it supported several sawmills in the 16th and 17th centuries. This gave rise to the original town itself through a combination of a good harbour, proximity to the sea routes, vast timber resources, and a river capable of supporting mills. In 1909, the river housed the first hydro electric power plant capable of providing sufficient electricity for the city, and the upper reaches of the river still provide drinking water for most of the city.
Its panoramic view of some 222 partly snow-clad peaks, usually referred to as the Molde panorama, is one of Molde's main attractions, and has drawn tourists to the city since the 19th century. Molde is nicknamed the Town of Roses, a name which originated during Molde's era as a tourist destination of international fame in the late 19th century.
Neighbouring municipalities are Aukra, Gjemnes, and Hustadvika (to the north); Ålesund (to the southwest); Vestnes and Rauma (to the south); and Tingvoll and Sunndal (to the east).
Points of interest
Salmon, sea trout and sea char are found in the rivers throughout the area, especially the Rauma, Driva, and Eira, already legendary among the British gentry in the mid-19th century. Trout is abundant in most lakes. Cod, pollock, saithe, mackerel and other species of saltwater fish are commonly caught in the Romsdalsfjord, both from land and from boat. Skiing is a common activity among the inhabitants of Molde in the winter, on groomed tracks, in resorts or by own trail. There are several rock climbing, ice climbing, bouldering, glacier and basejumping areas in the immediate vicinity of Molde.
The Atlantic road was voted the Norwegian Construction of the Century in 2005. It is built on bridges and landfills across small islands and skerries, and spans from the small communities of Vikan and Vevang to Averøy, an island with several historic landmarks, such as the Bremsnes cave with Mesolithic findings from the Fosna culture, the mediaeval Kvernes stave church, and Langøysund, now a remote fishing community, but once a bustling port along the main coastal route. Langøysund was the site of the compromise between King Magnus I and the farmers along the coast in 1040. The compromise is regarded as Norway's Magna Carta, and is commemorated though the Pilespisser (English: Arrowheads) monument.
Trollkirka (English: lit. Troll Church) is a marble grotto leading up to an underground waterfall. The grotto is situated 30 minutes outside Molde, followed by a 1-hour hike up a steep trail. Trollveggen is Europe's tallest vertical, overhanging mountain face, with several very difficult climbing routes. Trollstigen is the most visited tourist road in Norway. The road twists and turns its way up an almost vertical mountainside through 11 hairpin bends to an altitude of 858 m (2,814.96 ft). Mardalsfossen is the highest waterfall in Northern Europe and the fourth highest waterfall in the world, cascading 297 metres down into the valley. The total height of the waterfall is 655 m (2,148.95 ft).
Bud is a fishing village on the very tip of the Romsdal peninsula. It gained importance during the Middle Ages as a trading post, and hosted the last free Privy Council of Norway in 1533, a desperate attempt to save the country's independence and stave off the Protestant Reformation, led by Olav Engelbrektsson, archbishop of Nidaros (today Trondheim). The massive Ergan coastal defences, a restored German coastal fort from World War II, and a part of the Atlantic Wall, is situated in Bud. The fishing communities of Ona, Bjørnsund and Håholmen are located on remote islands off the coast, only accessible by boat or ferry.
Moldemarka
Moldemarka, the hilly woodland area north of the city, is public land. The area has an extensive network of paths, walking trails and skiing tracks. Forest roads enter the area from several directions. Bulletin boards and maps provide information regarding local plants and wildlife, as well as signposts along the trails. Marked trails lead to a number of peaks, sites and fishing lakes and rivers. A national fishing licence is required to fish in the lakes and streams.
Varden, 407 metres (1,335 ft) above sea level is a viewpoint directly above Molde, with a good view of the city, the fjord with the Molde archipelago and the Molde panorama.
Climate
Molde has a temperate oceanic climate (Cfb) also known as marine west coast climate. Molde holds the national high for the month of October, with 25.6 °C or 78.1 °F recorded on 11 October 2005. Due to its geographic location, Molde experiences frequent snowfalls in winter, but this snow is usually wet as the winters tend to be mild. The record high 31 °C or 88 °F was recorded in July 2018. The record low −17 °C or 1 °F was recorded in both January and February 2010.
A natural phenomenon occurring in Molde and the adjacent district, are frequent winter days with temperatures above 10 °C (50 °F), sometimes even above 14 °C (57 °F). This is due to the foehn wind from south and south-east. The sheltered location of the city, facing south with hills to the north, mountains to the east and mountainous islands to the west, contributes to Molde's climate and rich plant life, especially among species naturally growing on far lower latitudes, like chestnut, oak, tilia (lime or linden), beech, yew, and others.
Government
Molde Municipality is responsible for primary education (through 10th grade), outpatient health services, senior citizen services, welfare and other social services, zoning, economic development, and municipal roads and utilities. The municipality is governed by a municipal council of directly elected representatives. The mayor is indirectly elected by a vote of the municipal council. The municipality is under the jurisdiction of the Møre og Romsdal District Court and the Frostating Court of Appeal.
Municipal council
The municipal council (Kommunestyre) of Molde is made up of 49 representatives who are elected to four-year terms. The tables below show the current and historical composition of the council by political party.
Mayors
The mayors (Norwegian: ordfører) of Molde:
Culture
Three of the four great Norwegian authors are connected to Molde. Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson spent his childhood years at Nesset outside Molde, and attended school in the city. Henrik Ibsen frequently spent his vacations at the mansion Moldegård visiting the family Møller; and Alexander Kielland resided in the city as the governor of Romsdals amt. Ibsen's play Rosmersholm is generally thought to be inspired by life at the mansion Moldegård, and The Lady from the Sea is also believed to be set in the city of Molde, although never actually mentioned. Other authors from or with ties to Molde include Edvard Hoem, Jo Nesbø, Knut Ødegård, and Nini Roll Anker, a friend of Sigrid Undset.
The Romsdal Museum, one of Norway's largest folk museums, was established in 1912. Buildings originating from all over the region have been moved here to form a typical cluster of farm buildings including "open hearth" houses, sheds, outhouses, smokehouses and a small chapel. The "town street" with Mali's Café shows typical Molde town houses from the pre-World War I period. The Museum of the Fisheries is an open-air museum located on the island of Hjertøya, 10 minutes from the centre of Molde. A small fishing village with authentic buildings, boats and fishing equipment, the museum shows local coastal culture from 1850 onwards.
The local newspaper is Romsdals Budstikke.
Churches
The Church of Norway has ten parishes (sokn) within the municipality of Molde. It is part of the Molde domprosti (arch-deanery) in the Diocese of Møre.
Festivals
The Moldejazz jazz festival is held in Molde every July. Moldejazz is one of the largest and oldest jazz festivals in Europe, and one of the most important. An estimated 40,000 tickets are sold for the more than a hundred events during the festival. Between 80,000 and 100,000 visitors visit the city during the one-week-long festival.
Every August, Molde and Nesset are hosts to the Bjørnson Festival, an international literature festival. Established by the poet Knut Ødegård in connection with the 250-year anniversary of Molde, the festival is named in honour of the Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1832–1910). It is the oldest and the most internationally acclaimed literature festival in Norway.
In addition to the two major events, a number of minor festivals are held annually. Byfest, the city's celebration of incorporation, is an arrangement by local artists, coinciding with the anniversary of the royal charter of 29 June 1742.
Education
Molde University College offers a wide range of academic opportunities, from nursing and health-related studies, to economics and administrative courses. The school is Norway's leading college in logistics, and well established as a centre for research and academic programmes in information technology, with degrees up to and including PhD.
Transportation
Hurtigruta calls on Molde every day, on its journey between Bergen and Kirkenes. The nearest railway station is Åndalsnes, the terminus for the Rauma Line.
The local airport is Molde Airport which has several daily flights to Oslo, Bergen, and Trondheim, as well as weekly flights to other domestic and international destinations.
The European route E39 and Norwegian County Road 64 both pass through the municipality. The city of Molde is connected to Fræna Municipality (to the north) by the Tussen Tunnel. The city is connected to the Røvika and Nesjestranda part of the municipality by the Fannefjord Tunnel and Bolsøy Bridge, significantly shortening the drive by avoiding driving all the way around the Fannefjorden. The proposed Langfjord Tunnel would connect Molde Municipality to Rauma Municipality via a tunnel under the Langfjorden.
Sports
Molde hosts a variety of sports teams, most notably the football team, Molde FK, which plays in the Eliteserien, the top division in the Norwegian football league system. Their home matches are played at Aker stadion, inaugurated in 1998, which holds a record attendance of 13,308. The team is five-time league champions (2011, 2012, 2014, 2019 and 2022), five-time Norwegian Cup winners (1994, 2005, 2013, 2014 and 2021-22), and has made numerous appearances in European tournaments, including the UEFA Champions League. The club was founded in 1911, during Molde's period of great British and Continental influx, and was first named "International", since it predominantly played teams made up from crews of foreign vessels visiting the city.
In addition to a number of international players, the city has also produced several ski jumpers, cross-country skiers and alpine skiers of international merit.
Other sports include the accomplished team handball clubs (Molde Elite, SK Træff, SK Rival), athletics teams (IL Molde-Olymp), skiing clubs, basketball and volleyball teams.
International relations
Twin towns — sister cities
Molde has three sister cities. They are:
Borås, Sweden
Mikkeli, Finland
Vejle, Denmark
Notable residents
Public service & business
Nicholas Lawson (1790-1851) Vice governor of Galápagos for Ecuador, born on Sekken
Ole Anton Qvam (1834–1904) lawyer, politician and Prime Minister of Norway 1902/03
Dorothea Christensen (1847–1908) a domestic science proponent and politician
Jacob Tanner, (1865–1964) Norwegian American Lutheran educator and religious author
Johan Scharffenberg (1869–1965) a psychiatrist, politician, speaker and writer
Olav Kavli (1872–1958) a businessman who founded the Kavli company
Jens Arup Seip (1905–1992) medieval historian and interpreter of 1800's political history
Eystein Fjærli (1917–1987) lieutenant colonel, defence strategist, author and politician
Arne Solli (1938–2017) Norwegian Army general & Chief of Defence of Norway
Kjell Magne Bondevik (born 1947) politician, Prime Minister of Norway, 2001-2005
Bjørn T. Grydeland (born 1949) President of EFTASA & EU Ambassador
Torgeir Dahl (born 1953) politician and Mayor of Molde since 2011
Kjell Inge Røkke (born 1958) a Norwegian billionaire
The Arts
Karen Splid Møller (1800–1880) a Norwegian handwritten cookbook writer
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1832–1910) writer of noble, magnificent and versatile poetry, won the 1903 Nobel Prize in Literature, brought up in Nesset
Maurycy Gottlieb (1856–1879) a Polish realist painter of the Romantic period, lived in Molde
Hanna Hoffmann (1858–1917), Danish sculptor and silversmith
Rasmus Rasmussen (1862–1932) a Norwegian actor, folk singer and theatre director
Nini Roll Anker (1873–1942) novelist and playwright about women within different social classes
Kurt Schwitters, (1887–1948) German artist using dadaism, constructivism and surrealism, had a hut on Hjertøya pre-WWII
Terje Fjærn (1942-2016) musician, orchestra leader and musical conductor
Knut Ødegård (born 1945) poet, also lives in Reykjavík, Iceland
Terje Venaas (born 1947) a Norwegian jazz musician (upright bass)
Edvard Hoem (born 1949) a Norwegian novelist, dramatist, lyricist and psalmist
Jo Nesbø (born 1960) a Norwegian writer, musician and economist; grew up in Molde
Arne Nøst (born 1962) a Norwegian graphic artist and theatre director
John Arne Sæterøy (born 1965) pen name Jason, cartoonist of silent animal characters
Ann-Helen Moen (born 1969) a Norwegian lyric soprano
Paal Nilssen-Love (born 1974) a Norwegian drummer and composer in jazz and free improvisation
Ane Brun (born 1976) a Norwegian songwriter, guitarist, and vocalist of Sami origin
Ola Kvernberg (born 1981) a jazz violinist
Daniel Herskedal (born 1982) a Norwegian jazz tuba player
Hayden Powell (born 1983) a jazz trumpeter and composer, grew up in Molde
Mari Kvien Brunvoll (born 1984) a Norwegian folk and jazz singer
Linnéa Myhre (born 1990) a Norwegian author and blogger
Tuva Halse (born 1999) a Norwegian violinist, keyboard player, vocalist and composer
Sport
Otto Berg (1906–1991) a long jumper, competed at the 1936 Summer Olympics
Arne Legernes (born 1931) a retired Norwegian footballer with 41 caps for Norway
Einar Halle (born 1943) a Norwegian former UEFA football referee and referee observer
Harry Hestad (born 1944) a former footballer and coach with 412 club caps and 31 for Norway
Jan Fuglset (born 1945) a former footballer with over 288 club caps and 20 for Norway
Ingolf Mork (1947–2012) ski jumper, winner of Four Hills Tournament 1971/72
Arild Monsen (born 1962) cross-country skier, World Champion 1985
Kjetil Rekdal (born 1968) a football manager and a former player with 484 club caps and 83 for Norway
Trond Strande (born 1970) a former footballer with 275 caps with Molde FK
Petter Rudi (born 1973) a retired footballer with 350 club caps and 46 for Norway
Mette Solli (born 1974) a Norwegian kickboxer, World Champion 2001, 2004, 2007
Andrine Flemmen (born 1974) a retired giant slalom alpine skier, won three World Cup races
Kurt Asle Arvesen (born 1975) a Norwegian former professional road bicycle racer
Daniel Berg Hestad (born 1975) a football manager and a former player with 557 club caps
John Arne Riise (born 1980) a former footballer with 546 club caps and 110 for Norway
Christian Gauseth (born 1984) a Norwegian footballer with over 320 club caps
Johan Remen Evensen (born 1985) ski jumper, former world record-holder in ski flying
Magnus Wolff Eikrem (born 1990) footballer with over 220 club caps and 17 for Norway
Ragnhild Mowinckel (born 1992) alpine skier, twice silver medallist at the 2018 Winter Olympics
Ada Hegerberg (born 1995) a footballer with over 220 club caps and 80 for Norway
References
External links
Municipal fact sheet from Statistics Norway (in Norwegian)
Tourist information
Molde University college
Molde International Jazz Festival
Romsdals Budstikke
Molde F.K.
VS Molde Futsal
Molde Sports Association
Molde and the Molde Panorama
Images from Molde and Romsdal by Armin Burkhart |
List_of_Billboard_Hot_100_number_ones_of_2015 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Billboard_Hot_100_number_ones_of_2015 | [
589
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Billboard_Hot_100_number_ones_of_2015"
] | The Billboard Hot 100 is a chart that ranks the best-performing singles of the United States. Its data, compiled by Nielsen SoundScan and published by Billboard magazine, is based collectively on each single's weekly physical and digital sales, as well as airplay and streaming.
During 2015, eight singles reached number one on the Hot 100; a ninth single, "Blank Space" by Taylor Swift, began its run at number one in November 2014. Of those nine number-one singles, three were collaborations. In total, ten acts topped the chart as either lead or featured artists, with six—Mark Ronson, Charlie Puth, Kendrick Lamar, Omi, The Weeknd and Justin Bieber—achieving their first Hot 100 number-one single. Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars' "Uptown Funk" was the longest-running number-one of the year, leading the chart for fourteen weeks; it subsequently topped the Billboard Year-End Hot 100.
Chart history
Number-one artists
See also
2015 in American music
List of Billboard 200 number-one albums of 2015
List of Billboard Hot 100 top-ten singles in 2015
List of Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles of the 2010s
References
External links
"Hot 100 chart". Billboard.
"Archives: The Hot 100 (2015)". Billboard. |
List_of_Canadian_musicians | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_musicians | [
589
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_musicians"
] | This is a list of Canadian musicians. Only notable individuals appear here; bands are listed at List of bands from Canada.
0-9
347aidan – rapper
A
Lee Aaron – jazz and rock singer-songwriter, also known as "Metal Queen"
Abdominal – hip-hop musician
Adaline – singer-songwriter
Bryan Adams – singer-songwriter
Bernard Adamus – singer-songwriter
Susan Aglukark – folk-pop singer-songwriter
AHI – folk singer-songwriter
Lydia Ainsworth – composer/singer
Robert Aitken – composer, flute player
Chuckie Akenz – rapper, songwriter
Pierrette Alarie – opera singer
Emma Albani – opera singer
Coco Love Alcorn – pop singer
John Alcorn – jazz singer
Don Alder – fingerstyle guitarist, singer-songwriter, composer
Toya Alexis – R&B singer
Madeleine Allakariallak – Inuit throat singer, folk singer
Chad Allan – singer (the Guess Who)
Andrew Allen – singer
John P. Allen – bluegrass, country and rock fiddler
Lillian Allen – dub poet
Archie Alleyne – jazz drummer
a l l i e – R&B singer
Allie X – singer-songwriter
Tommy Alto – indie rock singer-songwriter
Don Amero – singer-songwriter
Barbra Amesbury – singer-songwriter
Ammoye – reggae singer
Amylie – pop singer-songwriter
Anachnid – pop/electronic singer-songwriter
Charlie Angus – alternative country singer-songwriter, writer, politician
Paul Anka – singer-songwriter, 1950s pop star
Matt Andersen – singer-songwriter
Kerri Anderson – pop singer
James Anthony – blues guitarist
Tafari Anthony – rhythm and blues singer
Alan Anton – bassist (Cowboy Junkies)
Natalie Appleton – singer (All Saints)
Aqyila – rhythm and blues singer
Violet Archer – composer
Jann Arden – pop singer-songwriter
Carolyn Arends – Contemporary Christian pop singer
Susie Arioli – jazz singer
Julian Armour – cellist
John Arpin – pianist, composer, recording artist, entertainer
Marie-Pierre Arthur – pop singer-songwriter
Talena Atfield – bassist (Kittie)
Athésia – pop/dance singer
Allison Au – jazz saxophonist
Rich Aucoin – indie rock singer-songwriter
Melissa Auf der Maur – rock bassist (Hole, the Smashing Pumpkins)
Shawn Austin – country singer and songwriter
Eva Avila – singer (winner of Canadian Idol, 2006)
Mike Ayley – singer, bass guitarist (Marianas Trench)
Jay Aymar – guitarist and singer-songwriter
Marcel Aymar – singer-songwriter
Aysanabee – singer-songwriter
Caroline Azar – singer-songwriter, keyboardist (Fifth Column)
B
Sebastian Bach – rock singer
Randy Bachman – rock singer, guitarist
Tal Bachman – singer (son of Randy Bachman)
Back Alley John – blues singer-songwriter, harmonica player
Backxwash – rapper
Bad News Brown – rapper
Michael Grey Bagpipes – musician, composer, and author
Bahamas – folk singer-guitarist
Jason Bajada – singer-songwriter
Carroll Baker – country music singer
Tim Baker – indie rock singer-songwriter
James Baley – rhythm and blues/dance singer
Gord Bamford – country singer
Buddy Banks – jazz double-bassist
Del Barber – singer-songwriter
Steve Barakatt – composer-pianist
Jill Barber – singer-songwriter
Matthew Barber – singer-songwriter
Barlow – composer, rock
Emilie-Claire Barlow – singer-songwriter
Kim Barlow – singer-songwriter
Alexis Baro – jazz, rhythm and blues trumpeter
Laura Barrett – singer-songwriter, kalimba player
Claudja Barry - disco singer
Mary Barry – singer-songwriter, composer, pianist, jazz, blues, chanson
Yank Barry – rock singer, composer, guitar, percussion
Miguel de la Bastide – flamenco guitarist
Isabel Bayrakdarian – soprano
Kevin Bazinet – pop singer
Bobby Bazini – singer-songwriter
Gary Beals – R&B singer
Martin Beaver – violinist
Dany Bédar – singer-songwriter
Gabriela Bee – singer-songwriter
Jaymz Bee – singer, music director
Begonia — singer
Dan Bejar – singer-songwriter (Destroyer; Swan Lake; Hello, Blue Roses; the New Pornographers)
Daniel Bélanger – pop, electro, rock, ambience singer
Steve Bell – guitarist, singer-songwriter
Clayton Bellamy – singer-songwriter
Belly – rapper, songwriter
Bbno$ – rapper, singer-songwriter
Quanteisha Benjamin – singer
Eli Bennett – saxophonist, composer
Willie P. Bennett – folk/alternative country singer-songwriter
Ridley Bent – country singer
Barney Bentall – rock singer-songwriter
Beppie – children's musician
Jennifer Berezan – singer-songwriter, producer
Moe Berg – singer-songwriter (Pursuit of Happiness)
Art Bergmann – punk/alternative singer-songwriter
Ruth Berhe – singer-songwriter
Camille Bernard – opera singer
Mario Bernardi – conductor, pianist
Geoff Berner – klezmer/folk accordionist, singer-songwriter
Larry Berrio – country singer-songwriter
Betty Moon – singer-songwriter
Salome Bey – blues/gospel/jazz singer
Amélie Beyries – pop singer-songwriter
Laila Biali – jazz singer/pianist
Ed Bickert – jazz guitarist
Charlie Biddle – jazz bassist
Dave Bidini – guitarist (Rheostatics)
Justin Bieber – pop singer-songwriter
Big Rude Jake – singer-songwriter, band leader, blues shouter, guitarist
Dan Bigras – singer-songwriter
Kim Bingham – rock/ska singer-songwriter
Heather Bishop – folk singer-songwriter
Jaydee Bixby – country singer
Annesley Black (born 1979) – composer
Gwendolyn Black – pianist, educator and activist
Jully Black – R&B musician
Stacey Blades – guitarist (L.A. Guns)
Jason Blaine – country singer
Jean-Michel Blais – composer and pianist
Forest Blakk – pop singer
Paul Bley – jazz pianist
Omar Blondahl – singer
George Blondheim – pianist, composer
Joe Bocan – pop singer
La Bolduc – singer-songwriter, harmonicist, violinist
Mars Bonfire – from Steppenwolf
Jonas Bonnetta – singer-songwriter
Bonky (Onno Borgen) – trance musician
Will Bonness – jazz pianist
Boogat – rapper
Dave Bookman – indie rock singer-songwriter
Brian Borcherdt – singer-songwriter
Bob Bossin - Folk singer-songwriter, activist. Co-founded the Canadian folk group Stringband with Marie-Lynn Hammond
Boslen – rapper
Robi Botos – jazz pianist
John Bottomley – singer-songwriter
Isabelle Boulay – pop singer
Gerry Boulet – rock singer
Bill Bourne – folk/alternative singer-songwriter
Pierre Bouvier – singer-songwriter, guitarist (Reset, Simple Plan)
Mitch Bowden – rock singer, guitarist (Don Vail, the Priddle Concern, Chore)
Benjamin Bowman – violinist
Jimmy Bowskill – blues guitarist, bassist and singer
Liona Boyd – classical guitarist
Philippe Brach – singer-songwriter
David Bradstreet – singer-songwriter
Tim Brady – electric guitarist, composer, improviser, working in contemporary classical, experimental, musique actuelle
Andru Branch – singer-songwriter, keyboardist (Andru Branch, Halfway Tree)
Paul Brandt – country singer-songwriter
Russell Braun – operatic baritone
Lenny Breau – guitarist
Beverly Breckenridge – bassist (Fifth Column and Phono-Comb)
Michael Breen – pop/rock singer and guitarist
Dean Brody – country singer-songwriter
Lisa Brokop – country singer-songwriter
Michael Brook – guitarist, producer, film scorer
Alma Faye Brooks – disco, soul and R&B singer
Jon Brooks – folk singer-songwriter
Colleen Brown – singer-songwriter
Divine Brown – R&B/soul singer
Edwin Orion Brownell – neo-classical composer, pianist
Chad Brownlee – country singer
Measha Brueggergosman – operatic soprano
Roxane Bruneau – pop singer
Paul Brunelle – country music guitarist, songwriter
Rod Bruno – singer-songwriter, guitarist
Billy Bryans – percussionist, record producer
Jon Bryant – singer-songwriter
Dan Bryk – singer-songwriter
Jim Bryson – singer-songwriter
Michael Bublé – singer
Buck 65 – hip-hop artist
Basia Bulat – singer-songwriter
George Burdi
Malcolm Burn – singer, record producer
Louise Burns – singer-songwriter
Jason Burnstick – folk singer-songwriter
Spencer Burton – indie rock and country singer-songwriter
Win Butler – member of Arcade Fire
Matthew Byrne – folk singer-songwriter
C
Meryn Cadell – rock singer-songwriter, performance artist
Cadence Weapon – rapper
Daniel Caesar – R&B, singer-songwriter
Buddy Cage – pedal steel guitar player
Shawna Cain – Christian R&B singer
Kathryn Calder – indie rock/pop singer-songwriter
John Allan Cameron – folk singer, guitarist
Steph Cameron – folk singer-songwriter
Cherie Camp – singer-songwriter
James Campbell – clarinetist
Torquil Campbell – singer-songwriter (Stars)
Brendan Canning – singer-songwriter (Broken Social Scene, Valley of the Giants)
Patricia Cano – jazz/Latin music singer and musical theatre actress
Lou Canon – singer-songwriter
George Canyon – country singer
Ben Caplan – folk musician
Alessia Cara – contemporary R&B
Craig Cardiff – singer-songwriter
Charlotte Cardin – pop singer
Celeigh Cardinal – singer-songwriter
Paul Cargnello – singer-songwriter
Marie Carmen – pop singer, musical theatre actor (Starmania)
Glory-Anne Carriere – country singer
Stef Carse — country and pop singer
Wilf Carter – country singer
Jazz Cartier – rapper
João Carvalho – recording and mastering engineer, producer and musician
Andrew Cash – singer-songwriter
Peter Cash – singer-songwriter
Barbara Cass-Beggs – singer
Andrew Cassara – pop singer-songwriter
Ian Casselman – singer, drummer (Marianas Trench)
Lou-Adriane Cassidy – pop singer-songwriter
Tory Cassis – folk and jazz singer
Micheal Castaldo – singer-songwriter, producer
France Castel – pop and blues singer, musical theatre actress
Jennifer Castle – singer-songwriter
Demo Cates – jazz/R&B saxophonist and singer
Rachel Cavalho – pianist, music educator
Cayouche – singer-songwriter
David Celia – singer-songwriter
CFCF – electronic musician
Tim Chaisson – singer-songwriter
Chantal Chamandy – pop/dance singer-songwriter
Champion – DJ, electronic musician
Keshia Chanté – urban/R&B singer
Robert Charlebois – rock and funk singer
Chloe Charles – soul pop singer
Gregory Charles – chorister and pianist
Nuela Charles – soul/pop/R&B/hip hop singer
Tanika Charles – soul and rhythm and blues singer
Régine Chassagne – member of Arcade Fire
Checkmate – rapper
Vern Cheechoo – country singer-songwriter
Brad Cheeseman – jazz bassist and composer
Rita Chiarelli – blues singer
Jane Child – pop and rock dance artist, songwriter, producer
Choclair – hip-hop artist
Charlene Choi – pop singer in Hong Kong
Gina Choi – South Korean singer
Tommy Chong – guitarist (Bobby Taylor & the Vancouvers), comedian
Timothy Chooi – violinist
Christophe – pop singer
Jarvis Church – R&B singer-producer (real name Gerald Eaton)
Annabelle Chvostek – folk singer
Cikwes - traditional Cree music singer
Clairmont the Second – rapper
Terri Clark – country singer-songwriter
Alanna Clarke – pop/rock singer-songwriter
Classified – rapper
Renée Claude – singer
David Clayton-Thomas – singer
Jim Clench – bassist, vocalist (April Wine, Bachman–Turner Overdrive)
Kevin Closs – singer-songwriter
William Cloutier – pop singer
Tom Cochrane – singer-songwriter
Bruce Cockburn – singer-songwriter
Code Pie – indie-pop/rock
Leonard Cohen – singer-songwriter, poet
Cold Specks – soul singer
Holly Cole – jazz singer
Naida Cole – pianist
Raquel Cole – country pop singer-songwriter
Don Coleman – rock singer
Jason Collett – singer-songwriter (also member of Broken Social Scene)
Dorothy Collins – pop singer
Simon Collins – pop/electronic musician
Chuck Comeau – drummer (Reset, Simple Plan)
Ray Condo – rockabilly singer
Chantal Condor – singer
Tyler Connolly – singer-songwriter, guitarist (Theory of a Deadman)
Stompin' Tom Connors – country singer-songwriter
Jesse Cook – guitarist, producer, composer
Spirit Cool – live-looping acoustic guitarist, singer
Bill Coon - guitarist, composer
Jim Corcoran – singer-songwriter, radio personality
J. P. Cormier – singer, guitarist
Jacinta Cormier – singer, pianist
Louis-Jean Cormier – rock singer-songwriter
Corneille – funk, R&B, soul singer-songwriter
Antoine Corriveau – singer-songwriter
Michel Corriveau – keyboardist, composer
Ève Cournoyer – pop and rock singer
Rose Cousins – singer-songwriter
Deborah Cox – pop/R&B singer
Jonny Craig – vocalist, songwriter, ex-front man for Dance Gavin Dance, front man for Emarosa and Isles and Glaciers
Sara Craig – singer-songwriter
Terri Crawford – rock singer, children's entertainer
Siobhan Crawley – pop singer
Jim Creeggan – singer-songwriter, member of the Barenaked Ladies and the Brothers Creeggan
Andy Creeggan – singer-songwriter, former member of the Barenaked Ladies and the Brothers Creeggan
CRi – electronic producer
Cold Specks (Ladan Hussein) – soul musician
Colin Cripps – rock guitarist, producer (Crash Vegas)
Julie Crochetière – singer-songwriter, pianist (jazz, pop, R&B, soul)
John Crossingham – rock singer (Raising the Fawn)
Allison Crowe – singer-songwriter
Alex Cuba – jazz/pop singer-songwriter
Jim Cuddy – rock singer (Blue Rodeo)
Eliana Cuevas – jazz/Latin singer
Lori Cullen – pop/jazz singer
Burton Cummings – rock musician (the Guess Who, solo artist)
Chris Cummings – country singer-songwriter
Amelia Curran – singer-songwriter
Andy Curran – rock singer and bassist
Bobby Curtola – singer
Isabelle Cyr – singer
D
Dax – rapper
Ryan Dahle – guitarist (Limblifter)
Gail Dahms – pop singer, musical theatre actress
Lisa Dalbello – singer-songwriter
Sean Dalton – drummer (the Trews)
France D'Amour – singer-songwriter
Leah Daniels – country singer-songwriter
Rick Danko – bassist, violinist, guitarist, singer (the Band)
Mychael Danna – film composer
D'Ari – rock singer-songwriter
Datsik – dubstep artist
Benoît David – singer (Mystery)
Marie Davidson – EDM singer and producer
Mark Davis – singer-songwriter
Stu Davis – singer-songwriter, guitarist
Tanya Davis – singer-songwriter, poet
Desirée Dawson – singer-songwriter, ukulele player
Sophie Day – jazz singer
Luc de Larochellière – singer-songwriter
deadmau5 – house artist, electronic music producer, real name Joel Zimmerman
Aselin Debison – Celtic pop
Art d'Ecco – indie rock, glam rock singer
Tony Dekker – folk rock singer-songwriter (Great Lake Swimmers)
Gordon Delamont – big-band conductor, arranger, teacher
Helena Deland – singer-songwriter
Mac DeMarco – indie rock musician
Kris Demeanor – singer-songwriter
Simone Denny – dance/house/pop/techno singer
Gisela Depkat – cellist
Richard Desjardins – singer
Shawn Desman – pop, R&B singer
Lorraine Desmarais – jazz pianist, composer
Dave "Rave" Desroches – singer-songwriter (Teenage Head, the Dave Rave Conspiracy)
David Desrosiers – bassist, singer (Reset, Simple Plan)
Marie-Michèle Desrosiers – pop and rock singer
Angela Desveaux – singer-songwriter
Devon – rapper
Devours – electronic musician
Alpha Yaya Diallo – guitarist, composer
Scott Dibble – singer-songwriter (Scott Dibble and Watertown)
Steffi DiDomenicantonio – pop singer, musical theatre actress
DijahSB – rapper
Hugh Dillon – frontman of Headstones and Hugh Dillon Redemption Choir
Natalie Di Luccio – singer, soprano
Céline Dion – pop singer
Carl Dixon – singer-songwriter, guitarist
DL Incognito – rapper
Creighton Doane - drummer, songwriter
Melanie Doane – guitarist, singer-songwriter
Bonnie Dobson – singer-songwriter, guitarist
Fefe Dobson – singer-songwriter
Dr. Draw – electronic violinist, composer
Denny Doherty – singer (the Mamas & the Papas)
Julie Doiron – singer-songwriter
Nicole Dollanganger – singer-songwriter
Luke Doucet – singer- songwriter
Jerry Doucette – guitarist, singer-songwriter
Gordon Downie – singer (Tragically Hip)
Aaryn Doyle – rapper, singer-songwriter
Alan Doyle – singer, guitarist (Great Big Sea)
Damhnait Doyle – pop singer-songwriter
Drake – rapper, singer, actor
Kevin Drew – guitarist, singer-songwriter
Glen Drover – guitarist (Megadeth, Eidolon)
Shawn Drover – drummer (Megadeth, Eidolon)
Ian D'Sa – songwriter, vocalist, guitarist (Billy Talent)
Dubmatix – reggae/electronic musician
Claude Dubois – pop singer-songwriter, musical theatre actor
Martin Dubreuil – tambourinist (Les Breastfeeders)
Annette Ducharme – singer, songwriter
Armond Duck Chief – country singer-songwriter
Victoria Duffield – singer-songwriter
Dumas – Québécois singer
Kyle Bobby Dunn – composer, musician, live performer
Élie Dupuis – singer, pianist
Shae Dupuy – country singer-songwriter
Melanie Durrant – R&B singer
Bill Durst – guitarist (Thundermug)
Matt Dusk – jazz singer-songwriter
Jeremy Dutcher – singer
DVBBS – DJ, producer
Paul Dwayne – country singer-songwriter
Phil Dwyer – jazz saxophonist
Jesse Aaron Dwyre – drummer
Howard Dyck – conductor, broadcaster
Félix Dyotte – singer-songwriter
E
Fred Eaglesmith – alternative country singer-songwriter
Jade Eagleson – country music singer-songwriter
Eddie Eastman – country music singer-songwriter, Juno Award winner
Chris Eaton – indie rock singer-songwriter
Gerald Eaton – R&B singer, producer (known as Jarvis Church)
Mike Edel – folk musician & guitarist
Jerry Edmonton – drummer (Steppenwolf); his brother wrote "Born to Be Wild" under the pseudonym Mars Bonfire
Kathleen Edwards – singer-songwriter
Efajemue – jazz drummer
Coral Egan – pop, jazz singer
James Ehnes – violin virtuoso
Eightcubed – electronic artist
Shirley Eikhard – singer-songwriter (known for Something to Talk About)
Elisapie – pop singer
Peter Elkas – singer-songwriter
Lindsay Ell – country singer
Emanuel – rhythm and blues singer
Emma-Lee – singer-songwriter, photographer
Rik Emmett – singer-songwriter (former member of Triumph)
Ariel Engle – indie pop singer (Broken Social Scene, La Force)
Matt Epp – singer-songwriter
Quique Escamilla – singer-songwriter
Esthero – singer-songwriter
Elise Estrada – pop singer
Emmalyn Estrada – pop singer (G.R.L)
Eternia – rapper
Quin Etheridge-Pedden – fiddler
Andre Ethier – rock singer-songwriter
Eric Ethridge – country singer-songwriter
George Evans – jazz vocalist
Gil Evans – pianist, arranger
Kellylee Evans – jazz/soul vocalist
Eva Everything – New Wave pop singer, television composer
Mike Evin – pop singer-songwriter
Excision – dubstep artist
Bob Ezrin – musician, producer of The Wall by Pink Floyd
F
Andrew F – singer-songwriter, pop rock singer
Lara Fabian – pop singer
Eria Fachin – dance/pop singer
Julie Fader – folk-pop singer-songwriter, keyboardist
Bruce Fairbairn – musician, rock band producer (Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, Loverboy)
Percy Faith – composer
Famous – rapper
Todd Fancey – bassist (the New Pornographers), singer-songwriter
Faouzia – singer-songwriter, musician
Mylène Farmer – singer
Robert Farnon – arranger, composer, conductor
Stephen Fearing – singer-songwriter
Leslie Feist – pop singer-songwriter
Christine Fellows – folk-pop singer-songwriter
Kate Fenner – singer-songwriter
Jay Ferguson – power pop singer-songwriter, guitarist (Sloan)
Maynard Ferguson – jazz band leader, trumpet
Danny Fernandes – pop singer
Ferron – folk singer-songwriter
Michael Feuerstack – singer-songwriter, guitarist (Wooden Stars, Snailhouse)
Janina Fialkowska – pianist
Dominique Fils-Aimé – jazz, rhythm and blues singer
Hank Fisher – known as Washboard Hank, singer-songwriter and multi-instrument entertainer
Jeremy Fisher – singer-songwriter
Brent Fitz – drummer, pianist (Slash, Theory of a Deadman, Alice Cooper, Vince Neil, Union)
Warren Dean Flandez – R&B, gospel singer
Jon-Rae Fletcher – rock singer-songwriter
Luca Fogale – pop singer
Peter Foldy – singer-songwriter
Sue Foley – blues singer-songwriter
Roy Forbes – folk music singer-songwriter
Frazey Ford – folk music guitarist, singer-songwriter (the Be Good Tanyas)
Angel Forrest – singer
Maureen Forrester – contralto
Judith Forst – operatic mezzo-soprano
Amanda Forsyth – cellist
Marc Fortier – singer-songwriter, EPIC guitarist
Fred Fortin – rock singer-songwriter, guitarist, drummer
J.D. Fortune – former INXS lead singer
David Foster – composer, producer, pianist, vocalist
FouKi – rapper
Jeanick Fournier – singer, Canada's Got Talent season 2 winner
George Fox – country singer-songwriter
Foxtrott – electronic/indie pop musician
David Francey – folk singer-songwriter
Angelique Francis – blues singer
Frankenstein – rapper and record producer
Allan Fraser – folk singer-songwriter (formerly of Fraser & DeBolt)
Matt Frenette – drummer (Headpins, Loverboy, Streetheart)
Fresh I.E. – Christian rapper
Alan Frew – singer-songwriter (Glass Tiger)
Debby Friday – electronic musician
Allen Froese – contemporary Christian singer
Lily Frost – singer/songwriter/performer and recording artist
Rhys Fulber – electronic musician/producer, Front Line Assembly, Delerium, Conjure One
Aaron Funk – breakcore artist
Lewis Furey – rock singer-songwriter, film music composer
Nelly Furtado – R&B/pop singer-songwriter, record producer, actress
G
B. B. Gabor – new wave artist
André Gagnon – pianist, composer
John Harvey Gahan – violinist
Jonathan Gallant – bassist (Billy Talent)
Lennie Gallant – singer-songwriter
Patsy Gallant – singer
Edward Gamblin – singer-songwriter
Daniel Gardner – electronic musician
Yoan Garneau – singer-songwriter
Gale Garnett – singer-songwriter of the 1964 Top 10 Hit "We'll Sing in the Sunshine"
Garou – singer
Amos Garrett – guitarist, singer
Ali Gatie – singer-songwriter
Nadia Gaudet – folk singer-songwriter
Karina Gauvin – soprano
Gayance - electronic/house DJ
Eric Genuis – composer, pianist
Hannah Georgas – singer-songwriter
Jian Ghomeshi – singer, broadcaster, writer, producer
Joel Gibb – singer-songwriter (the Hidden Cameras)
Tim Gilbertson – singer-songwriter
Nick Gilder – singer-songwriter, "Hot Child in the City"
Flora Gionest – singer-songwriter
Fernande Giroux – jazz singer
Martin Giroux – singer
Alice Glass – lyricist, vocalist (Crystal Castles)
Greg Godovitz – singer, bass guitarist
Gary Pig Gold – singer-songwriter, guitarist (Dave Rave), producer (Simply Saucer)
Roxanne Goldade – country singer
Rose Goldblatt – pianist
Kat Goldman – singer-songwriter
Anthony Gomes – guitarist, singer-songwriter
Adam Gontier – singer (Three Days Grace)
Chilly Gonzales – classical musician
Matthew Good – singer-songwriter (Matthew Good Band)
Myles Goodwyn – singer-songwriter, guitarist (April Wine)
James Gordon – singer-songwriter
Valery Gore – singer-songwriter
Rex Goudie – singer-songwriter (Canadian Idol runner-up, 2005)
Denis Gougeon – composer
Glenn Gould – pianist, composer, philosopher
Robert Goulet – singer
Lawrence Gowan – rock singer (solo, Styx)
Max Graham – house DJ
Sebastien Grainger – singer, drummer, percussionist (Death from Above 1979)
Gil Grand – country singer-songwriter
Jenn Grant – singer-songwriter
Dallas Green – singer-songwriter, guitarist (Alexisonfire, City and Colour)
Brian Greenway – guitarist, harmonicist, vocalist (April Wine, Mashmakhan)
Joey Gregorash
Adam Gregory – country musician
Grimes (Claire Boucher) – singer-songwriter, visual artist, music video director
Matthew Grimson – singer-songwriter
Paul Gross – singer, songwriter, actor, producer
Emm Gryner – singer, songwriter, pianist, guitarist
Jean "Guilda" Guida – cabaret pop singer
Molly Guldemond – singer, synthesizer player (Mother Mother)
Ryan Guldemond – singer, songwriter, guitarist (Mother Mother)
Jim Guthrie – singer-songwriter
Trevor Guthrie – singer-songwriter, formerly of SoulDecision
Bruce Guthro – singer-songwriter (lead vocalist of Runrig)
Caity Gyorgy – jazz singer
H
Emily Haines – singer-songwriter (also member of Metric, Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton and Broken Social Scene)
Nate Haller – country singer-songwriter
Marc-André Hamelin – pianist and composer
Mark Hamilton – frontman of Woodpigeon
Moshe Hammer – violinist
Marie-Lynn Hammond – folk singer
Handsome Ned – country singer
Gerry Hannah – bass player of Subhumans
Barbara Hannigan – soprano, conductor
Lynne Hanson – singer-songwriter
Buster Harding – jazz pianist, composer, arranger
Hagood Hardy – jazz vibraphonist, pianist, known for "The Homecoming"
Georgia Harmer – singer-songwriter
Sarah Harmer – singer-songwriter
Neil Harnett – blues-rock singer-songwriter
Ofra Harnoy – cellist
Barry Harris – dance music DJ, remixer, musician
Chris Harris - multi-instrumentalist
Harrison - electronic musician
Robin Harrison – pianist, composer
Corey Hart – singer
Joshua Haulli – singer-songwriter
Ron Hawkins – singer-songwriter
Ronnie Hawkins – American-born singer, naturalized Canadian
Richie Hawtin – techno musician-DJ, producer
Hayden – singer-songwriter, real name Paul Hayden Desser
Oliver Haze – singer-songwriter
Terra Hazelton – jazz singer
Jeff Healey – guitarist, trumpet player, singer
Kevin Hearn – singer-songwriter (Barenaked Ladies)
Tim Hecker – ambient/electronic musician
Coleman Hell – indie pop/electronic musician
Thomas Hellman – jazz/pop singer
Scott Helman – singer-songwriter
Wade Hemsworth – folk singer-songwriter
Bill Henderson – singer-songwriter (Chilliwack)
Sheila Henig – pianist, soprano
Carl Henry – R&B, reggae musician
Darcy Hepner – saxophonist, composer/arranger
Ben Heppner – operatic tenor
Mikey Heppner – guitarist, singer-songwriter (Priestess)
Angela Hewitt – pianist
Tim Hicks – country singer-songwriter
Jolene Higgins – folk and acoustic blues singer-songwriter known as "Little Miss Higgins"
Rebekah Higgs – singer-songwriter
Dan Hill – pop singer
Warren Hill – smooth jazz musician
Veda Hille – singer-songwriter
Florian Hoefner – jazz pianist
Jacob Hoggard – singer (Hedley)
Steve Holt – pianist, singer-songwriter
Matt Holubowski – singer-songwriter
Amy Honey – singer-songwriter
Jason Hook – guitarist
Chris Hooper – drummer
Tom Hooper – singer-songwriter
Charlie Hope – children's musician
Kelly Hoppe – harmonica player, multi-instrumentalist (Big Sugar)
Paul Horn – flute player
Luke Hoskin – guitar player (Protest the Hero)
Gregory Hoskins – singer-songwriter
Stuart Howe – operatic tenor
Andrew Huang – musician
Andrew Huculiak – drummer (We Are the City)
Garth Hudson – multi-instrumentalist (the Band)
Paul Humphrey – singer-songwriter (Blue Peter)
Alex Zhang Hungtai – indie rock singer-songwriter, performing as Dirty Beaches
Jimmy Hunt – singer-songwriter
Tommy Hunter – singer who had his own CBC TV show
Nate Husser – rapper
Timothy Hutchins – flute player
Andrew Hyatt – country singer
Paul Hyde – singer-songwriter (Payola$)
Ron Hynes – Newfoundland folk singer-songwriter
Hyper-T – rapper
Joshua Hyslop – singer-songwriter
I
Zaki Ibrahim – soul, R&B singer
Norman Iceberg – pop singer
Lucie Idlout – rock singer
Ill-esha – electronic, R&B vocalist, producer, songwriter
Joshua Ingram – rock drummer, percussionist
Chin Injeti – R&B singer
Paolo Iovannone – singer-songwriter, producer
May Irwin – vaudeville singer
Elisapie Isaac – singer-songwriter
Orin Isaacs – bandleader, bass guitarist
iskwē – pop, electronic music singer
J
Lenni Jabour – pop singer-songwriter
Susan Jacks – pop singer-songwriter
Terry Jacks – pop singer-songwriter, producer
Sammy Jackson – jazz and rhythm and blues singer
Jacynthe – pop singer
Emmanuel Jal – hip hop musician
Tara Jam - singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist
Colin James – blues and rock musician
Freddie James – R&B singer
John James – dance musician
Ryland James – pop singer
Reid Jamieson – pop and folk singer-songwriter (Vinyl Cafe)
Patti Jannetta – pop and rock singer
Paul Janz – singer-songwriter
Sterling Jarvis – R&B singer, musical theatre actor
Yves Jarvis – indie rock singer-songwriter
JayWood – indle funk-rock singer and songwriter
JBM (Jesse Marchant) – singer-songwriter
Anik Jean – rock and pop singer
Jelleestone – rapper
Jemeni – hip-hop, R&B singer
Drake Jensen – country singer
Ingrid Jensen – jazz trumpet player
Jeon So-mi – singer-songwriter, former member of I.O.I
Carly Rae Jepsen – singer-songwriter
Jhyve – rhythm and blues singer
Berk Jodoin – folk/country singer-songwriter
Mendelson Joe
Lyndon John X – reggae musician
Rita Johns – pop singer
Alexz Johnson – singer-songwriter, actress
Bill Johnson – blues and roots music performer
Carolyn Dawn Johnson – country singer-songwriter
Gordie Johnson – guitar player and singer (Big Sugar)
Martha Johnson – singer-songwriter (Martha and the Muffins)
Molly Johnson – rock and jazz singer
Rick Johnson – rock guitarist, children's entertainer
Taborah Johnson (Tabby Johnson) – jazz and rock singer
France Joli – disco singer
Danko Jones – singer-songwriter
G.B. Jones – guitarist, drummer (Fifth Column)
Jeff Jones – rock bassist, singer
Miles Jones – rapper, singer-songwriter, producer
Oliver Jones – jazz pianist
Jorane – cellist, singer-songwriter
Keven Jordan – pop/rock singer-songwriter
Marc Jordan – singer-songwriter
Sass Jordan – rock singer, judge on Canadian Idol
Michelle Josef – drummer
Leila Bronia Josefowicz – violinist
Martha Joy – singer
Junia-T – rapper
K
Florence K – pop singer-songwriter
K-Anthony – gospel singer
K-Bust – singer-songwriter
Todd Kerns – vocalist/bassist (Slash, Age of Electric)
Michael Kaeshammer
Connie Kaldor – singer-songwriter, poet
Kamau – hip-hop musician
Kevin Kane – singer-songwriter
Kanen – singer-songwriter
KAPRI – dance/pop singer
Kardinal Offishall – rapper
Kaia Kater – singer-songwriter
Cevin Key – songwriter, producer, and composer
Ethan Kath – producer (Crystal Castles)
Kathleen – Quebec pop singer
Katie B – singer-songwriter (formerly with Jakalope)
John Kay – singer (Steppenwolf)
Kaya – rock and pop singer, formerly known as Francis Martin
Kaytranada – electronic
Sherry Kean
James Keelaghan – singer-songwriter
Jesse F. Keeler – Death from Above 1979, MSTRKRFT
Greg Keelor – singer-songwriter, guitarist (Blue Rodeo, solo artist)
Simeonie Keenainak – accordionist
Joey Keithley – also known as Joey Shithead, Vancouver punk rock singer, guitarist (D.O.A.), political and environmental activist
Geoffrey Kelly – Celtic-folk musician, singer (Spirit of the West, the Paperboys)
Sean Kelly – singer, guitarist (Crash Kelly)
Roy Kenner – singer-songwriter
Mo Kenney – singer-songwriter
Lydia Képinski – singer-songwriter
Cassius Khan – ghazal player, tabla player, Indian classical musician
Khotin – house, downtempo electronic musician
Rich Kidd – hip hop artist
Brett Kissel – country singer
Kid Koala – hip-hop artist
Kiesza (Kiesa Rae Ellestad) – singer-songwriter
Andy Kim – singer-songwriter, pop musician ("Sugar, Sugar")
Kiva – harmonic overtone singer, keyboardist, worldbeat/jazz artist
Bryden Gwiss Kiwenzie – dance music
Francois Klark – pop singer-songwriter
Trish Klein – folk music guitarist, singer-songwriter (the Be Good Tanyas)
Billy Klippert – rock musician
K.Maro – R&B, rap musician, producer
K'naan – rapper
Aidan Knight – singer-songwriter
Chester Knight – singer-songwriter
Moe Koffman – jazz artist
Gwendolyn Koldofsky – piano accompanist and music educator
Ron Korb – composer, flutist
Koriass – rapper
k-os – rapper, hip-hop musician
Keith Kouna – punk rock singer
Benjamin Kowalewicz – frontman of Billy Talent
Dan and Ryan Kowarsky – singers (RyanDan and b4-4)
Nik Kozub – bassist (Veal), keyboardist (Shout Out Out Out Out), remixer (the Paronomasiac)
Serouj Kradjian – pianist, composer
Norbert Kraft – guitarist
Diana Krall – jazz singer, pianist
Chantal Kreviazuk – singer-songwriter
Nicholas Krgovich – indie rock, pop singer-songwriter
David Kristian – film composer, electronic musician
Kyrie Kristmanson – singer-songwriter
Chad Kroeger – singer, guitarist, Nickelback
Patricia Krueger – classical pianist with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra
Spencer Krug – singer-songwriter (Fifths of Seven, Frog Eyes, Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown, Swan Lake)
Pierre Kwenders – pop/world music singer, rapper
Kyprios – hip-hop musician
L
Jesse Labelle – country singer
James LaBrie – singer-songwriter (Dream Theater)
Kathryn Ladano – bass clarinetist
Elise LeGrow – singer-songwriter
Lanie Banks – Canadian-Ugandan rapper
Paul Laine – singer (solo, Danger Danger)
Corky Laing – drummer
Jon Lajoie – comedian, actor, rapper, singer, musician, Internet celebrity
Mary Jane Lamond – Gaelic singer
Willie Lamothe – country singer
Wendy Lands – pop and jazz singer
Tory Lanez – R&B
k.d. lang – country punk singer
Matt Lang – country singer
Steve Lang – bassist (April Wine, Mashmakhan)
Robert Langevin – flute player
Daniel Lanois – composer, producer
Jessy Lanza – electronic musician
Abigail Lapell – folk singer-songwriter
André Laplante – pianist
Eric Lapointe – rock singer
Pierre Lapointe – pop, rock, funk singer-songwriter
Steph La Rochelle – country/pop singer-songwriter, musical theatre actress
Thierry Larose – rock singer-songwriter
Grit Laskin – folk singer, luthier
Henry Lau – violinist, singer, dancer (Super Junior-M)
Michael Laucke – classical and flamenco guitarist, composer, producer
Carole Laure – pop/folk singer
Laurence-Anne – pop singer
Sherisse Laurence – country/pop singer, musical theatre actress
Wayne Lavallee – singer-songwriter, film, television and theatre composer
Avril Lavigne – singer-songwriter, musician, record producer
Daniel Lavoie – singer-songwriter
Barbara Law – pop and rock singer
Grant Lawrence – rock singer, radio personality
Marshall Lawrence – blues, rock
Dorothy Lawson – cellist, composer (ETHEL)
Lisa LeBlanc – singer-songwriter/banjoist
Félix Leclerc – singer-songwriter
Salomé Leclerc – singer-songwriter
Daniel Ledwell – singer-songwriter, record producer, keyboardist (In-Flight Safety)
Geddy Lee – singer, bassist, keyboardist (Rush)
Jess Lee – country singer-songwriter
Mark Lee – rapper, dancer of NCT, NCT 127, and SuperM, NCT Dream
Lee Kum-Sing – classical pianist
Ranee Lee – jazz singer, drummer, tenor saxophonist
Sook-Yin Lee – rock singer-songwriter, broadcaster
Sebastien Lefebvre – guitarist, singer (Simple Plan)
Ray Legere – bluegrass mandolinist and fiddler
Peter Leitch – jazz guitarist
Jean Leloup – singer-songwriter
Lynda Lemay – singer-songwriter
Michel Lemieux – experimental electronic music, performance art
Hubert Lenoir – rock singer
Exco Levi – reggae singer
Mike Levine – bassist and keyboardist
Andrea Lewis – singer
Glenn Lewis – R&B singer
Larnell Lewis – drummer
Neil Leyton – rock singer and guitarist
David Lickley – singer-songwriter
Alex Lifeson – guitarist (Rush)
Murray Lightburn – indie-rock singer-songwriter, guitarist
Gordon Lightfoot – singer-songwriter (voted Canada's favourite singer-songwriter)
Terra Lightfoot – singer-songwriter
LIGHTS – singer-songwriter
Andrea Lindsay – singer-songwriter
Aaron Lines – country musician
Bruce Liu – pianist
Liu Fang – pipa player
Guy Lombardo – big-band leader
Celine Lomez – pop singer
Rich London – rapper
Morley Loon – singer-songwriter
Loony – R&B singer
Oscar Lopez – Latin-folk guitarist
Myrna Lorrie – country singer-songwriter ("first lady of Canadian country music")
Louis Lortie – pianist
Loud – rapper
Russell Louder – pop singer, performance artist
Alexina Louie – pianist
Johnnie Lovesin – rock singer
Lowell – electropop singer-songwriter
Larissa Loyva – singer-songwriter
Luba – pop singer
Lederhosen Lucil – singer-songwriter
Zachary Lucky – singer-songwriter
Chris "Old Man" Luedecke – folk singer-songwriter
Todd Lumley – pianist, keyboardist
Sekou Lumumba – drummer
Corb Lund – country singer-songwriter
Rob Lutes – folk/blues singer-songwriter
Loma Lyns – country singer
Lysandre – pop singer-songwriter and pianist
M
Amanda Mabro – singer-songwriter
Mark Masri – tenor singer/gospel composer
Galt MacDermot – composer, musician, wrote the music for Hair
Colin MacDonald – singer, guitarist (the Trews)
Sarah MacDonald – conductor and organist
John-Angus MacDonald – guitarist (the Trews)
Maggie MacDonald – singer, keyboardist (the Hidden Cameras, Kids on TV)
Kris MacFarlane – independent drummer/multi-instrumentalist (Great Big Sea, the Paperboys)
Ryan MacGrath – singer-songwriter
Ashley MacIsaac – violinist
Gisele MacKenzie – singer, violinist
Jon McKiel – rock singer-songwriter
Tara MacLean – singer-songwriter
Catherine MacLellan – singer-songwriter
Gene MacLellan – singer-songwriter
Brian Macleod – songwriter, music producer (best known as a member of Chilliwack and the Headpins)
Buddy MacMaster – violinist
Natalie MacMaster – violinist, stepdancer
Kevin MacMichael – guitarist (Cutting Crew)
Rita MacNeil – country and folk singer
Rozalind MacPhail – singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist
Mad Child – rapper
Madagascar Slim – folk and blues guitarist
Ria Mae – singer-songwriter
Maestro Fresh Wes – hip-hop musician, singer of "Let Your Backbone Slide"
Matt Maher - contemporary Christian singer
Raine Maida – singer (Our Lady Peace)-songwriter, producer
Phyllis Mailing – mezzo-soprano
Catherine Major – singer-songwriter
Charlie Major – singer-songwriter
Kate Maki – country rock singer-songwriter
Ryan Malcolm – lead singer (Low Level Flight), first Canadian Idol winner
Manafest – hip-hop musician
Dan Mangan – singer-songwriter
Casey Manierka-Quaile (Casey MQ) – electronic musician, songwriter, producer
John Mann – rock singer (Spirit of the West)
Dayna Manning – singer-songwriter
Catherine Manoukian – violinist
Richard Manuel – pianist, vocalist, drummer (the Band)
Richard Margison – operatic tenor
Kristina Maria – pop singer-songwriter
Marie-Mai – singer
Frank Marino – guitarist, singer (Mahogany Rush)
Carolyn Mark – alt-country singer-songwriter
Gerry Markman – rock guitarist (the Lincolns)
Cory Marks – country rock singer-songwriter and guitarist
Hugh Marsh – violinist
Amanda Marshall – singer-songwriter
Lois Marshall – soprano
Béatrice Martin – singer-songwriter, pianist, also known as Cœur de pirate
Jeff Martin – singer-songwriter (the Tea Party)
Stephanie Martin – singer-songwriter, actress
Mia Martina – pop singer-songwriter
Masia One – rapper
Dutch Mason – blues artist
Jojo Mason – country singer-songwriter
Massari – R&B singer
Ken Masters – rapper
Andrew Matheson – punk rock singer and songwriter
Jake Mathews – country singer-songwriter
André Mathieu – pianist and composer
Matiu – singer-songwriter
Kalle Mattson – folk rock singer-songwriter
Romi Mayes – country singer
Matt Mays – singer-songwriter
Bill McBirnie – jazz/Latin flutist (Extreme Flute)
Maxwell McCabe-Lokos – keyboardist (the Deadly Snakes)
Séan McCann – singer-songwriter, guitarist (Great Big Sea)
Jay McCarrol – composer
Melissa McClelland – singer-songwriter
Jeremiah McDade – composer, saxophonist, Irish whistle (the McDadea)
Solon McDade – composer, bassist (the McDades)
Eileen McGann – folk singer-songwriter
Anna McGarrigle – folk singer-songwriter (Kate & Anna McGarrigle)
Kate McGarrigle – folk singer-songwriter (Kate & Anna McGarrigle)
Jay W. McGee – soul, R&B and hip hop singer/rapper
Wayne McGhie – soul, R&B, reggae singer
Blake McGrath – pop singer
Eamon McGrath – singer-songwriter
Kyle McKearney – alternative country singer-songwriter
Mike McKenna – rock/blues guitarist noted for his electric slide playing
Loreena McKennitt – Celtic-inspired musician, vocalist
Chris McKhool – violinist, guitarist, singer (Sultans of String)
Sarah McLachlan – singer-songwriter
Murray McLauchlan – singer-songwriter
Ambre McLean – singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist
Kelly McMichael – singer-songwriter
Holly McNarland – singer-songwriter
Suzie McNeil – pop rock singer-songwriter
Trevor McNevan – singer-songwriter (Thousand Foot Krutch, FM Static)
Colin McPhee – classical composer, musicologist
Linda McRae – singer-songwriter (Spirit of the West, solo artist)
Tate McRae – singer-songwriter
Glen Meadmore – punk/rock musician
Michie Mee – rapper
Tom Meikle – singer-songwriter who records as Mappe Of and Forest Moon
Brian Melo – singer (winner of Canadian Idol, 2007)
Shawn Mendes – singer-songwriter, guitarist
Dylan Menzie – singer-songwriter
Jerry Mercer – drummer, vocalist (April Wine, Mashmakhan, the Wackers)
Madeline Merlo – country singer-songwriter
Kathleen Ivaluarjuk Merritt – Inuit throat singer
Scott Merritt – singer-songwriter
Don Messer – fiddler
Patrice Michaud – singer-songwriter
Danny Michel – singer-songwriter, guitarist
Anthony J. Mifsud (Mif) – singer-songwriter (Slash Puppet)
Brandon Mig – pop singer
Haviah Mighty – rapper
Lynn Miles – singer-songwriter
Amy Millan – singer-songwriter (Stars, Broken Social Scene)
Tim Millar – rhythm guitar player (Protest the Hero)
Muriel Millard – singer-songwriter
Derek Miller – blues singer-songwriter, guitarist
Darby Mills – singer (the Headpins)
Frank Mills – pianist
Tyler Joe Miller – country music singer-songwriter
Millimetrik – electronic musician
Kenneth G. Mills – pianist, conductor, composer
Andy Milne – jazz pianist
Matt Minglewood – singer-songwriter, guitarist
Ben Mink – guitarist, violinist (k.d. lang, Geddy Lee, Rush, FM)
Ruth Minnikin – singer-songwriter
Joni Mitchell – folk and jazz artist, painter
Kim Mitchell – guitarist, singer-songwriter, radio personality
Lindsay Mitchell – guitarist, songwriter (Prism)
Taylor Mitchell – singer-songwriter
Willy Mitchell – singer, guitarist
Mitsou – pop singer
Dave Moffatt – pop/rock keyboardist, singer
Aviva Mongillo – singer, actress
Monsune – electronic musician
Montag – electronic musician
Betty Moon – singer-songwriter
Jacob Moon – singer-songwriter, guitarist
Kevin Moon – singer, main vocalist (the Boyz)
Darren Moore – member of Harlequin, founder of Living Under Venus, writer of themes for Tampa Bay Rays and Toronto Blue Jays
Gil Moore – drummer, vocalist (Triumph)
Katie Moore – singer-songwriter
Mae Moore – singer-songwriter
Rick Moranis – singer, actor
Ryland Moranz – folk/roots singer-songwriter
Carlos Morgan – R&B/soul singer
Jeffrey Morgan – singer-songwriter, rock critic
Alanis Morissette – rock singer
Johannes Moser – cellist
Jess Moskaluke – country pop singer
Mr. Roam – rapper
Geoffrey Moull – conductor, pianist
Art Murphy – singer-songwriter
Chris Murphy – power pop singer-songwriter, bassist (Sloan)
Matt Murphy – singer-songwriter, guitarist (the Super Friendz, the Flashing Lights, The Life and Hard Times of Guy Terrifico)
Anne Murray – country/pop singer
Alannah Myles – rock singer
David Myles – singer-songwriter
Ken Myhr – guitarist, composer
N
N Nao – dream-pop singer and songwriter
Kaveh Nabatian – trumpeter
Bif Naked – punk/pop singer
Nardwuar the Human Serviette
Nancy Nash – blues and pop singer
Narcy – rapper
Nash the Slash – multi-instrumental rock musician (FM)
Kamila Nasr – singer, composer and multi-instrumentalist
Nav – rapper
Haydain Neale – soul, R&B, jazz singer-songwriter
Nemahsis – pop singer
Laurence Nerbonne – pop singer
Richard Newell – also known as King Biscuit Boy, blues singer, songwriter, band leader and harmonica player
Carl Newman – guitarist, songwriter (the New Pornographers)
Billy Newton-Davis – R&B, jazz, gospel singer-songwriter
Yannick Nézet-Séguin – conductor
Luke Nicholson – singer-songwriter
Larry Nickel – composer
Dave Nicol – folk singer-songwriter
Chris Nielsen – country singer
Eliza Niemi – singer-songwriter, cellist
Laura Niquay – singer-songwriter
Graph Nobel – hip-hop artist, R&B rapper, singer-songwriter
Sierra Noble – singer-songwriter, fiddler
Bob Nolan – country singer-songwriter (the Sons of the Pioneers)
Faith Nolan – jazz singer-songwriter, guitarist
Safia Nolin – singer-songwriter
Craig Norris – rock singer, radio personality
Craig Northey – rock singer (Odds)
Aldo Nova – rock/pop artist
George Nozuka – singer
Justin Nozuka – singer, writer
Nyssa – singer-songwriter
O
OBUXUM – record producer
Patricia O'Callaghan – singer
Michael Occhipinti – jazz guitarist
Roberto Occhipinti – jazz/classical bassist
Nivek Ogre – industrial rock singer
Oh Susanna – alternative country singer
Maggie Blue O'Hara – singer, actress, voice artist
Mary Margaret O'Hara – pop/rock singer-songwriter
Jenny Omnichord – indie pop singer-songwriter
Melissa O'Neil – pop singer (winner of Canadian Idol, 2005)
Mike O'Neill – singer-songwriter and guitarist (the Inbreds)
Moka Only – rapper
Maren Ord – pop singer
Johnny Orlando – pop singer
Achilla Orru – lukembé player
Lindi Ortega – singer-songwriter
Robyn Ottolini – country singer-songwriter
Walter Ostanek – polka musician, accordionist
John Oswald – composer
Karim Ouellet – pop singer-songwriter
Peter Oundjian – violinist, conductor
Ouri – electronic-classical fusion composer
P
Dorothea Paas – singer-songwriter
Steven Page – singer-songwriter (formerly with the Barenaked Ladies)
Michel Pagliaro – bilingual singer, songwriter, guitarist
Doug Paisley – singer-songwriter
Owen Pallett – indie pop singer, violinist (Final Fantasy)
Bruce Palmer – bassist (Buffalo Springfield)
Alex Pangman – jazz singer
Charlie Panigoniak – Inuit singer-songwriter, guitarist
Gabrielle Papillon – singer-songwriter
Parichay – Bollywood/ Hip Hop/ R&B and Pop music producer and artist
Sarina Paris – techno singer
Jon Kimura Parker – classical pianist
Kathleen Parlow – classical violinist
Evalyn Parry – folk singer-songwriter
Mark Parry – guitarist
Samantha Parton – folk music multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter (the Be Good Tanyas)
Night Lovell – hip hop musician/rapper, songwriter
PartyNextDoor – rapper
Blaise Pascal – singer-songwriter
Meghan Patrick – country singer
Shan Vincent de Paul – pop/electronic/hip hop singer
Nico Paulo – singer-songwriter
Trevor W. Payne – gospel and R&B singer, composer
Matt Paxton – singer-songwriter
Peaches – electroclash/dance punk singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist
Ryan Peake – guitarist (Nickelback)
Neil Peart – drummer, percussionist, lyricist (Rush)
Orville Peck – country musician
Klô Pelgag – pop singer-songwriter
Bruno Pelletier – singer-songwriter
Fred Pellerin – folk singer
Fred Penner – children's music performer
Patrick Pentland – power pop singer-songwriter, guitarist (Sloan)
Yann Perreau – electro-rock musician
Anjulie Persaud – singer-songwriter
Colleen Peterson – country singer-songwriter
Oscar Peterson – jazz pianist
Billy Pettinger – singer-songwriter
Lou Phelps – rapper
Philémon Cimon – singer-songwriter
Stu Phillips – country singer
Pascale Picard – singer
Scott-Pien Picard – singer-songwriter
Paul Piché – singer
Jason Pierce – drummer (Our Lady Peace)
Lido Pimienta – electronic pop singer and producer
Grenville Pinto – violinist, recording artist, entertainer and composer
Nestor Pistor – country singer/comedy musician
Louise Pitre – musical theatre actor
Dany Placard – singer-songwriter
Dominique Plante - guitarist, composer
Bill Plaskett – folk/rock/jazz musician
Joel Plaskett – alternative rock musician
Jason Plumb – singer-songwriter
Poizunus – DJ, human beatbox
Steve Poltz – singer-songwriter (known for collaboration with Jewel)
poolblood – indie pop singer-songwriter
Carole Pope – new wave rock/pop singer
Kalan Porter – singer-songwriter (winner of Canadian Idol, 2004)
Shelley Posen – folklorist, songwriter
Catherine Potter – bansuri
Roxanne Potvin – blues singer-songwriter
Blake Pouliot – violinist
Tom Power – folk musician
Daniel Powter – singer-songwriter
Pressa – rapper
Chad Price - singer-songwriter
Garth Prince – children's entertainer
William Prince – singer-songwriter
Peter Pringle – pop and jazz singer, pianist, theremin player
Promise – hip-hop rapper, singer-songwriter
ThePropheC – singer-songwriter, producer
P'tit Belliveau
Adonis Puentes – jazz, world music
Don Pyle – drummer (Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, Fifth Column)
Q
Q052 – rapper
Charlotte Angugaattiaq Qamaniq – Inuit throat singer
Quanteisha – singer
Sara Quin – singer-songwriter, producer (Tegan and Sara)
Tegan Quin – singer-songwriter, producer (Tegan and Sara)
R
Raffi – folk/pop singer-songwriter
Billy Raffoul – rock singer, songwriter
Iceis Rain – pop/rock singer
Ralph – singer-songwriter
Alcvin Ramos – shakuhachi player (solo and ensemble)
Josh Ramsay – singer-songwriter, guitarist, pianist Marianas Trench
Jan Randall – film composer
Luv Randhawa – bhangra singer
Allan Rayman – rhythm and blues singer
Corin Raymond – singer-songwriter
Richard Raymond – pianist
Savannah Ré – soul/rhythm and blues singer
Lee Reed – rapper
Josh Reichmann – singer-songwriter (Tangiers, Jewish Legend)
Alyssa Reid – pop singer-songwriter
Noah Reid – singer-songwriter
Colleen Rennison – singer (No Sinner)
Ginette Reno – singer
Mike Reno – singer (Loverboy)
Jessie Reyez – singer
Donn Reynolds – yodeler; folk and country singer-songwriter
Isabelle Rezazadeh – DJ and record producer (Rezz)
Amanda Rheaume – folk singer-songwriter
Kyle Riabko – singer, guitarist
Alejandra Ribera – pop and jazz singer-songwriter
Jackie Richardson – blues, jazz and gospel singer
Sébastien Ricard – rapper (Loco Locass), actor
Charles Richard-Hamelin – pianist
Kim Richardson – pop, blues, jazz and gospel singer
River Tiber – rhythm and blues musician
Jesse Rivest – singer-songwriter
Ian Robb – folk musician
Vincent Roberge – indie-pop singer
Brad Roberts – singer (Crash Test Dummies)
Sam Roberts – rock musician
Ed Robertson – singer-songwriter (Barenaked Ladies)
Robbie Robertson – guitarist, singer (the Band)-songwriter
Alex J. Robinson – country singer-songwriter
Damien Robitaille – musician
Bob Rock – singer-songwriter (Payola$), producer (Metallica)
Andrew Rodriguez – singer-songwriter
Garnet Rogers – singer-songwriter
Kate Rogers – singer-songwriter
Nathan Rogers – singer-songwriter
Stan Rogers – folk musician
Daniel Romano – folk, country and indie rock musician
Don Ross – fingerstyle guitarist, musician, composer
Josh Ross – country singer and songwriter
Lukas Rossi – singer-songwriter, winner of Rockstar: Supernova
Adolphe-Basile Routhier – lyricist of the original French version of the Canadian national anthem "O Canada"
Ariane Roy – pop singer-songwriter
Jonathan Roy – pop singer-songwriter
Spookey Ruben – singer-songwriter
Paul Rudolph – guitarist, singer-songwriter (Pink Fairies, Hawkwind, Brian Eno)
Allison Russell - singer-songwriter, musician and activist
Brenda Russell – singer-songwriter, keyboardist
Justin Rutledge – alt-country singer-songwriter
Deric Ruttan – country singer-songwriter
Serena Ryder – folk/pop singer-songwriter
S
Shakura S'Aida – blues/jazz singer-songwriter
Julien Sagot – percussionist, singer-songwriter
Josh Sahunta - pop/R&B singer-songwriter
Martine St-Clair – pop singer
Jordan St Cyr - contemporary Christian singer
Samian – rapper
Gordie Sampson – blues, rock singer
Lance "Aquakultre" Sampson – soul, R&B singer and rapper
John K. Samson – indie rock singer and songwriter (the Weakerthans)
Chase Sanborn – jazz trumpeter
Curtis Santiago – dance rock singer-songwriter
Ivana Santilli – R&B singer
Sarahmée – rapper
SATE – rock singer
Saukrates – rapper
Andrew Scott – power pop singer-songwriter, drummer (Sloan)
Jack Scott – rock and roll singer
Jay Scøtt – folk/hip hop singer-songwriter
Jennifer Scott – jazz singer, pianist
Keith Scott- rock guitarist (Bryan Adams band)
Joyce Seamone – country singer
Lorraine Segato – singer-songwriter
Jacques Kuba Séguin – jazz trumpeter
Jay Semko – singer-songwriter, bassist
Matthew Seok – singer- (Zerobaseone)
Ron Sexsmith – singer-songwriter
Shad – rapper
Paul Shaffer – musical director
Remy Shand – R&B/soul singer
Jackie Shane – R&B singer
Jairus Sharif – experimental jazz saxophonist
Andy Shauf – singer-songwriter
Shauit – singer-songwriter
Bernie Shaw – rock singer (Uriah Heep)
Graham Shaw – rock singer, television composer
James Shaw – guitarist (Metric)
Tyler Shaw – singer-songwriter, cinematic composer
Crystal Shawanda – country singer
Shay Lia – singer
Shiloh – pop singer-songwriter
Shingoose – singer-songwriter
Stefie Shock – pop and funk singer-songwriter
Gabrielle Shonk – singer-songwriter
Howard Shore – composer (The Lord of the Rings trilogy and films of David Cronenberg)
Shotgun Jimmie – singer-songwriter
Edythe Shuttleworth – mezzo-soprano
Ali Siadat – drummer (Mother Mother)
Rosemary Siemens – violinist, vocalist
Jane Siberry – singer-songwriter
Lucas Silveira – rock singer, guitarist
Liberty Silver – R&B singer
Marie-Josée Simard – percussionist
Nathalie Simard – pop singer
René Simard – pop singer
Denis Simpson – singer
Shane Simpson – guitarist, singer-songwriter
Dylan Sinclair – rhythm and blues singer
Zal Sissokho – Kora) player, Griot
Sister Ray – singer-songwriter
Sixtoo – hip-hop DJ and MC
Skiifall – rapper
Ken Skinner – pianist/composer, record producer
Amy Sky – singer-songwriter
Slakah the Beatchild – soul and R&B singer, record producer
Sarah Slean – singer-songwriter, pianist
Alberta Slim – country music singer
Tannis Slimmon – folk singer-songwriter
Henry Small – singer-songwriter, radio personality
Dallas Smith – rock/country singer-songwriter
Laura Smith – folk singer
Maybe Smith – indie pop singer-songwriter
Meaghan Smith – singer
R. Harlan Smith – country singer
Samantha Savage Smith – singer-songwriter
Dan Snaith – songwriter
Floyd Sneed – rock drummer
Bob Snider – folk singer-songwriter
Jason Sniderman – keyboardist (Blue Peter)
Snow – reggae/rap/pop musician
Hank Snow – country and western singer
So Sus – electronic musician
Bryce Soderberg – bassist (Lifehouse)
Viviana Sofronitsky – pianist
Ana Sokolovic – composer
Theresa Sokyrka – singer (Canadian Idol semi-finalist, 2004)
Solitair – rapper
Lenny Solomon – pop and jazz singer
Maribeth Solomon – songwriter, composer
Aaron Solowoniuk – drummer (Billy Talent)
Harry Somers – composer
SonReal – rapper
Martina Sorbara – folk-pop singer
Arielle Soucy – singer-songwriter
Souldia - rapper
Jay Sparrow – rock singer-songwriter
Spek Won – rapper
Kevin Spencer – multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer
Spirit – guitarist and singer-songwriter
Rae Spoon – folk/indie singer-songwriter
Tony "Wild T" Springer – blues-rock guitarist
Frederick Squire – rock singer, guitarist (Shotgun & Jaybird)
Glen Stace – rock singer
Leeroy Stagger – singer-songwriter
Ethel Stark – violinist and conductor
Erroll Starr – rhythm and blues singer
Kinnie Starr – singer-songwriter
Lucille Starr – singer
Cassie Steele – singer-songwriter, actress
Chrissy Steele – rock singer
Emily Steinwall – singer, composer, saxophonist
Katie Stelmanis – singer-songwriter
Ian Stephens – punk rock musician
Martin Stevens – disco singer
Tyler Stewart – drummer
Craig Stickland – singer-songwriter
Jeff Stinco – singer-songwriter and rhythm-guitarist (Simple Plan)
Georgina Stirling – singer
Andy Stochansky – singer-songwriter, drummer (former drummer for Ani DiFranco)
Kim Stockwood – singer
Jayme Stone – banjoist, composer
Miranda Stone – singer-songwriter
Storry – pop, R&B singer-songwriter
Charlie Storwick – singer-songwriter
Amanda Stott – singer
Jeffery Straker – singer-songwriter
Byron Stroud – bassist (Strapping Young Lad, Fear Factory)
Mark Sultan – singer-songwriter, Sultan Records founder
Harold Sumberg – violinist
Cree Summer – rock/alternative singer
Richard Summerbell – singer-songwriter
Leonard Sumner – singer-songwriter
Terry Sumsion – country singer
Michelle Sweeney – jazz singer
Skye Sweetnam – singer-songwriter
Gwen Swick – singer-songwriter
Tomi Swick – singer-songwriter
Ember Swift – singer-songwriter
Kurt Swinghammer – singer-songwriter
T
2Rude – hip hop/R&B record producer
Tablo – rapper (Epik High)
Tanya Tagaq – Inuit throat singer, folk singer
Talk – indie rock singer
Tamia – R&B singer
Theo Tams – singer-songwriter (winner of Canadian Idol, 2008)
Eva Tanguay – vaudeville singer
Chaim Tannenbaum – folk singer
Tariq – singer-songwriter, radio personality
Tasha the Amazon – rapper
Bobby Taylor – R&B singer-songwriter
Dione Taylor – jazz singer
Julian Taylor – rock singer
R. Dean Taylor – singer-songwriter, producer for Motown
Lydia Taylor – rock singer
Tebey – country singer-songwriter
Tegan and Sara (band) – pop, indie pop, indie folk, synthpop, indie rock singer-songwriter
Mark Templeton – electro-acoustic musician
The Tenors – vocal trio tenor musician operatic gospel pop
Marie-Jo Thério – singer-songwriter
David Thibault – singer
David Clayton Thomas – singer (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
Ian Thomas – singer-songwriter, actor, author
T. Thomason – singer-songwriter
Don Thompson – jazz musician
Jamie Thompson – drummer, beat-maker
Nicholas Thorburn – frontman for Islands
Ian Thornley – singer-songwriter
Willie Thrasher – Inuit singer-songwriter
Thrust – rapper
Georges Thurston – soul singer
Martin Tielli – singer-songwriter (Rheostatics)
Margo Timmins – singer (Cowboy Junkies)
Tire le coyote – singer-songwriter
Brent Titcomb – musician, actor
Liam Titcomb – singer-songwriter
Ken Tobias – singer-songwriter
Maylee Todd – pop singer
Yvette Tollar – jazz singer, composer
Henri Tomasi – composer and conductor
Töme – reggae singer
Morgan Toney – folk singer-songwriter and fiddler
Tor – electronic musician
Marie-Chantal Toupin – Francophone pop singer
Theresa Tova – musical theatre actress
Tenille Townes – country singer-songwriter
Devin Townsend – multi-instrumentalist, metal guitarist, songwriter
Pete Traynor – rock guitarist and bassist, designer of Traynor Amplifiers
Pat Travers – rock guitarist
Tre Mission – rapper
Lucie Blue Tremblay – folk singer-songwriter
Domenic Troiano – guitarist
Valerie Tryon – pianist
Cynthia Johnston Turner – conductor
Kreesha Turner – R&B singer
Shania Twain – country/pop singer
Jessica Tyler – singer-songwriter and actress
Ian Tyson – folk singer
Sylvia Tyson – singer-songwriter, guitarist
U
Dave Ullrich – drummer, singer (the Inbreds, Egger)
Shari Ulrich – folk rock singer-songwriter
UpsideDown – DJ, producer
David Usher – rock singer-songwriter (Moist)
Terry Uyarak – singer-songwriter
V
Mathew V – pop singer
Vaï – hip-hop singer
Elizabeth Anka Vajagic – post-rock singer, guitarist
Valdy – singer-songwriter
Gilles Valiquette – rock singer, guitarist
Jim Vallance – songwriter, multi-instrumentalist
Rosie Valland – pop singer-songwriter
Diyet van Lieshout – singer-songwriter
Randy Vancourt – pop singer-songwriter, theatre and TV composer
Chad VanGaalen – singer-songwriter
Vanity – singer, model
Gino Vannelli – rock singer
Chris Velan – pop and rock singer-songwriter
Alx Veliz – singer-songwriter
Stéphane Venne – songwriter and composer
Reg Vermue – singer-songwriter ("Gentleman Reg")
Tim Vesely – singer, guitarist (Rheostatics)
Jon Vickers – operatic tenor
Daniel Victor – rock musician (Neverending White Lights)
Gilles Vigneault – singer-songwriter
Annie Villeneuve – singer-songwriter
Suzie Vinnick – folk and blues singer-songwriter, guitarist
Laura Vinson – country singer-songwriter
Jon Vinyl – R&B/soul singer
Virginia to Vegas – singer-songwriter
Claude Vivier – classical composer
Roch Voisine – singer-songwriter
Florent Vollant – aboriginal singer
Leif Vollebekk – singer-songwriter
Brian Vollmer – rock singer (Helix)
Lindy Vopnfjörð – singer-songwriter
W
Martha Wainwright – folk-pop singer
Rufus Wainwright – folk-pop singer
Frank Walker – EDM DJ
Rody Walker – singer (Protest the Hero)
Colter Wall – folk singer
Christopher Ward – songwriter
Chris Wardman – songwriter, guitarist (Blue Peter)
Andy Warren – singer-songwriter
Jackie Washington – blues and folk singer-songwriter, guitarist
Jeff Waters – guitarist and vocalist for heavy metal band Annihilator
Ruby Waters – singer-songwriter
Sneezy Waters – singer-songwriter
Dawn Tyler Watson – blues singer
Patrick Watson – singer-songwriter
Andrée Watters – singer-songwriter
The Weeknd – singer, songwriter, record producer, and actor born Abel Tesfaye
John Welsman – composer, songwriter
Zack Werner – artist, producer, entertainment lawyer, manager
Daniel Wesley – singer-songwriter
Wesli – world music guitarist
Jim West – guitarist for "Weird Al" Yankovic
Phil Western – drummer, programmer (Download)
Dawud Wharnsby-Ali – singer-songwriter
Deryck Whibley – singer-songwriter (Sum 41)
Bill White – composer, choral group leader
Nancy White – singer-songwriter, musical satirist
Portia White – operatic contralto
Rick White – singer-songwriter (Eric's Trip), guitarist
Alissa White-Gluz – metal vocalist and songwriter (Arch Enemy, The Agonist)
Jenny Whiteley – folk and country singer-songwriter
Andrew Whiteman – singer-songwriter, guitarist (Broken Social Scene, Bourbon Tabernacle Choir, Apostle of Hustle)
David Wiffen – folk singer-songwriter
David Wilcox – blues guitarist, singer
Richie Wilcox – singer
Simon Wilcox – singer-songwriter (daughter of David Wilcox)
JJ Wilde – rock singer
Healey Willan – organist, composer
Hal Willis – singer-songwriter
Charlotte Day Wilson – singer-songwriter
Tom Wilson – singer-songwriter
Jesse Winchester – singer-songwriter
Kurt Winter – guitarist, songwriter (the Guess Who)
Bob Wiseman – pianist, songwriter
Karl Wolf – R&B singer-songwriter
Royal Wood – singer-songwriter
Donovan Woods – singer-songwriter
Roy Woods – singer-songwriter, rapper
Hawksley Workman – singer-songwriter
Michelle Wright – country singer-songwriter
Kris Wu – rapper
Y
Tony Yike Yang – pianist
Jonah Yano – indie pop singer-songwriter
Nikki Yanovsky – singer
Zal Yanovsky – guitarist, singer (the Lovin' Spoonful)
Francesco Yates – singer-songwriter
Ken Yates – folk singer-songwriter
Lori Yates – country singer
Kathleen Yearwood – singer-songwriter, guitarist
d'bi Young – dub poet
Neil Young – singer-songwriter, guitarist
Young K – singer-songwriter, bass player Day6
Catalina Yue – singer-songwriter
Z
Jordon Zadorozny – singer, producer
Mary Lu Zahalan – rock singer
Zaho – R&B singer
Alfie Zappacosta – singer, actor
Maurice Zbriger – violinist, composer, conductor
Liping Zhang – soprano
Joel Zifkin – electric violinist, songwriter, composer
Brock Zeman – producer, singer-songwriter, touring musician
Gilles Zolty – singer-songwriter, composer, sound designer
Jesse Zubot – violinist, composer
See also
List of bands from Canada
List of diamond-certified albums in Canada
List of Indigenous musicians in Canada
Further reading
Toomey, Kathleen M., and Stephen Charles Willis. Musicians in Canada: a Bio-bibliographical Finding List. Ottawa, Ont.: Canadian Association of Music Libraries, 1981. N.B.: Title and introductory matter also in French.
== References == |
Dissolution_of_Czechoslovakia | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_Czechoslovakia | [
589
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_Czechoslovakia"
] | The dissolution of Czechoslovakia (Czech: Rozdělení Československa, Slovak: Rozdelenie Československa), which took effect on December 31, 1992, was the self-determined secession of the federal republic of Czechoslovakia into the independent countries of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Both mirrored the Czech Socialist Republic and the Slovak Socialist Republic, which had been created in 1969 as the constituent states of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic until the end of 1989.
It is sometimes known as the Velvet Divorce, a reference to the bloodless Velvet Revolution of 1989, which had led to the end of the rule of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.
Background
Czechoslovakia was created with the dissolution of Austria-Hungary at the end of World War I. In 1918, a meeting took place in the American city of Pittsburgh, at which the future Czechoslovak President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and other Czech and Slovak representatives signed the Pittsburgh Agreement, which promised a common state consisting of two equal nations: Slovaks and Czechs. However, the Czechoslovak Constitution of 1920 specified a single "Czechoslovak nation".
In subsequent years, there were political tensions in the new country between Czechoslovakists and those seeking greater autonomy for the Slovaks in particular.
In March 1939, with pressure from Adolf Hitler, the First Slovak Republic was created as a satellite state of Germany with limited sovereignty. The alignment with the Soviet Union after World War II oversaw the reunification into the Third Czechoslovak Republic.
In 1968, the Constitutional Law of Federation reinstated an official federal structure of the 1917 type, but during the Normalization Period in the 1970s, Gustáv Husák, despite being a Slovak himself, returned most control to Prague. That approach encouraged a regrowth of Slovak separatism after the fall of communism.
Partition into two entities
By 1991, the Czech Republic's GDP per capita was some 20% higher than Slovakia's. Transfer payments from the Czech budget to Slovakia, which had been the rule in the past, were stopped in January 1991.
Many Czechs and Slovaks desired the continued existence of a federal Czechoslovakia. Some major Slovak parties, however, advocated a looser form of coexistence and the Slovak National Party sought complete independence and sovereignty. For a few years, political parties re-emerged, but Czech parties had little or no presence in Slovakia and vice versa. To have a functioning state, the government demanded continued control from Prague, but Slovaks continued to ask for decentralisation.
In 1992, the Czech Republic elected Václav Klaus and others, who demanded either an even tighter federation ("viable federation") or two independent states. Vladimír Mečiar and other leading Slovak politicians wanted a kind of confederation. Both sides opened frequent and intense negotiations in June. On July 17, the Slovak parliament adopted the declaration of independence of the Slovak nation. Six days later, Klaus and Mečiar agreed to secede Czechoslovakia into two separate states at a meeting in Bratislava. Czechoslovak President Václav Havel resigned, rather than oversee the secession, which he had opposed. In a September 1992 opinion poll, only 37% of Slovaks and 36% of Czechs favoured dissolution.
The goal of negotiations switched to achieving a peaceful division. Peaceful division was prioritized as the process ran in parallel with the violent breakup of Yugoslavia (another formerly socialist, Slavic federal state created after the dissolution of Austria-Hungary). On November 13, the Federal Assembly passed Constitution Act 541, which settled the division of property between the Czech lands and Slovakia. With Constitution Act 542, passed on November 25, they agreed to the secession of Czechoslovakia into two entities as of December 31, 1992.
The partition occurred without violence and so was thus said to be "velvet", much like the "Velvet Revolution", which had preceded it and had been accomplished by massive peaceful demonstrations and actions. In contrast, other post-communist breakups (such as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia) involved violent conflict. Czechoslovakia is the only former Eastern Bloc state that had an entirely peaceful breakup. In the following years, as Slovakia's economy struggled, Slovaks began to describe the dissolution as a "sandpaper divorce".
Causes
A number of reasons have been given for the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, with the main debates focusing on whether dissolution was inevitable or whether dissolution occurred in conjunction with or even in contrast to the events that occurred between the Velvet Revolution of 1989 and the end of the joined state in 1992.
Those who argue from the inevitability stance tend to point to the differences between the two nations, which date back to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and to other issues. There are differences between the Czechs and Slovaks, such as problems with the shared state during communism, the success of the state in the Czech lands, its failure in the Slovak lands that still resulted in the adoption of communism since the Czechs were more influential in the running of the state than Slovaks, and the 1968 constitution with its minority veto.
Those who argue that events between 1989 and 1992 led to the dissolution point to international factors such as the breakaway of the Soviet satellite nations, the lack of unified media between the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and most importantly the actions of the political leaders of both nations like the disagreements between Prime Ministers Klaus and Mečiar.
Legal aspects
National symbols
Since the coat of arms of Czechoslovakia was a composition of those of the historic geographic areas forming the country, each republic simply kept its own symbol: the Czechs the lion and the Slovaks the double cross. The same principle was applied to the two-part bilingual Czechoslovak national anthem that comprised two separate pieces of music, the Czech stanza Kde domov můj and the Slovak stanza Nad Tatrou sa blýska. Disputes occurred only with respect to the Czechoslovak flag. During the 1992 negotiations on the details of dissolution of Czechoslovakia, as demanded by Vladimír Mečiar and Václav Klaus, a clause forbidding the use of the state symbols of Czechoslovakia by its successor states was inserted into the constitutional law on the dissolution of Czechoslovakia.
From 1990 to 1992, the red and white flag of Bohemia (differing only slightly from the Polish flag by proportion and tone) officially served as the flag of the Czech Republic. Eventually, after a search for new symbols, the Czech Republic unilaterally decided to ignore the aforementioned law and to keep the Czechoslovak flag, with an altered meaning. Slovakia, meanwhile, adopted its traditional flag; however, just before independence, on September 3, 1992, the coat of arms was added in order to prevent confusion with the similar flags of Russia and Slovenia.
Territory
The national territory was divided along the existing internal borders, but the border was not clearly defined at some points and, in some areas, the border cut across streets, access roads and communities that had coexisted for centuries. The most serious issues occurred around the following areas:
U Sabotů or Šance (cs:Šance (Vrbovce)) – historically part of Moravia, awarded to Slovakia in 1997
Sidonie or Sidónia (cs:Sidonie) – historically part of Hungary (which contained all present-day Slovak territory until 1918), awarded to the Czech Republic in 1997
Kasárna (cs:Kasárna (Makov)) recreational area – historically Moravian, disputed between Moravia and Hungary since the 16th century, formally part of Hungary since 1734; accessible by car only from the Czech side until early 2000s; remained in Slovakia despite heavy objections from the mostly-Czech property owners, whose real estate effectively fell into a foreign country.
The new countries were able to solve the difficulties via mutual negotiations, financial compensation and then an international treaty covering the border modifications.
People living or owning property in the border area, however, continued to experience practical problems until both new countries entered the Schengen Agreement Area in 2007, rendering the border less significant.
Division of national property
Most federal assets were divided in a ratio of two to one, the approximate ratio between the Czech and Slovak population in Czechoslovakia, including army equipment, rail and airliner infrastructure. Some minor disputes, such as gold reserves stored in Prague and federal know-how valuation, lasted for a few years after the dissolution.
Currency division
Initially, the old Czechoslovak currency, the Czechoslovak koruna, remained in use by both countries. Czech fears of an economic loss caused the adoption of two national currencies as early as February 8, 1993. On February 2, 1993 Act No. 60/1993 Coll. came in effect in the Czech Republic to create a separate currency that was already envisaged in the Czech Constitution and in Act No. 6/1993 Coll. that created the Czech National Bank by stamping Czechoslovak banknotes. The stamps had already been prepared in secret in 1992 after the decision about the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. In December 1992 some of the reserve banknotes started to be stamped in the selected banks in secret. From 8 February to 12 February old banknotes of 100, 500 and 1,000 Kčs (Czechoslovak crowns) were exchanged for the stamped ones in the Czech Republic and a new 200 Kč banknote was introduced. Each person over 15 could exchange banknotes up to 4,000 crowns, and minors below 15 years of age up to 1,000 crowns. Banknotes of lower denominations and coins remained until new ones were printed and minted. Banks in the Czech Republic converted all money on 8 February 1993 from Kčs to Kč. In Slovakia stamps were also applied on banknotes, and a new 10 SK coin was introduced. At the beginning, the currencies could be exchanged at par, but later the value of the Slovak koruna was usually lower than that of the Czech koruna (in 2004, around 25–27% lower). On August 2, 1993, both currencies were distinguished by different stamps that were first affixed to and then printed on old Czechoslovak koruna banknotes. New Czech and Slovak coins replaced old ones during 1993.
On January 1, 2009, Slovakia adopted the euro as its currency, with a conversion rate of 30.126 SK/€, and the €2 commemorative coin for 2009, Slovakia's first, featured the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution in remembrance of the common struggle of the Czechoslovaks for democracy. By a quirk of fate, the welcoming speech on the behalf of the European Union on the occasion of Slovakia's entry to the eurozone was delivered by Mirek Topolánek, the prime minister of the presiding country, the Czech Republic, naturally in his native language, but the other guest speakers used English. The Czech Republic continues to use the Czech koruna, or crown.
International law
Neither the Czech Republic nor Slovakia sought recognition as the sole successor state to Czechoslovakia. This can be contrasted to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when the Russian Federation was recognized as successor state not only to the Russian SFSR but also to the Soviet Union itself, and also contrasts with the dissolution of Yugoslavia, where the rump Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, dominated by Serbia and encompassing only it and Montenegro, unsuccessfully demanded recognition as the sole successor to the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, even though the four remaining ex-Yugoslav states, now independent, collectively encompassed around three-fifths of former Yugoslavia, both in population and in territory. Therefore, Czechoslovakia's membership in the United Nations ceased upon the dissolution of the country, but on January 19, 1993, the Czech Republic and Slovakia were admitted as new, separate states.
With respect to other international treaties, the Czechs and the Slovaks agreed to honour the treaty obligations of Czechoslovakia. The Slovaks transmitted a letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations on May 19, 1993, to express their intent to remain a party to all treaties signed and ratified by Czechoslovakia and to ratify treaties signed but not ratified before dissolution of Czechoslovakia. The letter acknowledged that under international law, all treaties signed and ratified by Czechoslovakia would remain in force. For example, both countries are recognized as signatories of the Antarctic Treaty from the date that Czechoslovakia had signed the agreement in 1962.
Both countries have ratified the Vienna Convention on Succession of States in respect of Treaties, but it was not a factor in the dissolution of Czechoslovakia since it did not come into force until 1996.
Aftermath
Economy
The dissolution had some negative impact on the two economies, especially in 1993, as traditional links were severed to accommodate the bureaucracy of international trade, but the impact was considerably less than expected by many people.
A customs union between the Czech Republic and Slovakia remained in place from the dissolution until May 1, 2004, when both countries entered the European Union (EU).
Many Czechs hoped that dissolution would quickly start an era of high economic growth in the Czech Republic, which no longer had to sponsor the "less-developed Slovakia". Similarly, others looked forward to an independent unexploited Slovakia that might become a new "economic tiger".
According to The Prague Post, "Slovak GDP reached 95 percent of the Czech GDP, and it is likely to draw level with it. The Slovak gross national product (GNP), which includes citizens' incomes abroad and deducts the money multinational companies move out of the country, is higher than the Czech one. Old-age pensions are more or less at the same level in both countries, and the consumption per capita is slightly higher in Slovakia. However, salaries are 10 percent lower on average in Slovakia than in the Czech Republic".
However, Martin Filko, the head of the Institute of Financial Policy of the Slovak Finance Ministry, pointed out that Slovakia is among the EU countries whose salaries form the lowest portion of their GDP. In other words, some of people's incomes come from sources other than their main employment, which reduces the real difference between the Czech and the Slovak salaries.
Slovaks have become a more integral part of the EU because of their adoption of the euro and are more resolved to take part in the banking and fiscal unions. In the Czech Republic, the right wing opened the economy, and the left wing privatised banks and attracted foreign investors.
Until 2005, the GDP of the two countries was growing at a similar rate. However, from 2005 to 2008, the Slovak economy grew faster than the Czech economy. Economists agree that this growth was caused by the right-wing reforms of the Mikuláš Dzurinda government and the promise to adopt the euro, which attracted investors.
When the left-wing populist Robert Fico replaced Dzurinda as Slovak prime minister after eight years in 2006, he reduced the right-wing reforms only moderately, but he did not abolish them, unlike the Czech Social Democrats (ČSSD).
Meanwhile, the Czechs had three ČSSD prime ministers in four years (2002–06), followed by a centre-right cabinet, which cut and simplified taxes but failed to push through other reforms and did not want to adopt the euro because of the financial crisis and the Civic Democrats' ideological stance.
Citizenship
Since federalisation in 1968, Czechoslovakia had divided citizenship, either of the Czech Socialist Republic or of the Slovak Socialist Republic, the word Socialist being dropped from both names shortly after the Velvet Revolution. That distinction, however, had little effect on citizens' life. On January 1, 1993, all Czechoslovak citizens automatically became citizens either of the Czech Republic or the Slovak Republic, based on their previous citizenship, permanent residence address, birthplace, family ties, job and other criteria. Additionally, people had one year's time to claim the other citizenship under certain conditions.
Slovak legislation allowed dual citizenship until 2010, when it was abolished under the Citizenship Act. Only a handful of people have exercised that right, but its significance is lessened by both nations' membership in the EU as the freedom of movement for workers, a policy that guarantees EU citizens the right to work and to live anywhere in the Union. In the case of movement between the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the policy took effect from 2004.
By contrast, the Czech Republic has prohibited dual citizenship for naturalized citizens and requires them to give up existing citizenship(s) prior to receiving citizenship of the Czech Republic. That requirement can be waived only if giving up an existing citizenship might put the applicant or their relatives in danger of persecution in their homeland, which was not the case of applicants from Slovakia. That situation changed with the new Citizenship Act of 2013 (186/2013 Sb.), in force since January 1, 2014. However, most Slovak citizens are still unable to become dual citizens of both the Czech Republic and Slovakia since they automatically lose Slovak citizenship upon voluntarily acquiring another one (see previous paragraph). Exempt from that law are only Slovak citizens who obtain a foreign citizenship by virtue of marriage with a foreign national. Some Slovak politicians have speculated in the media about softening the Citizenship Act, but no change has yet materialised as of January 2015.
Citizens of both countries were allowed to cross the border using an ID card instead of a passport and were allowed to work anywhere without the need to obtain an official permit. Border checks were completely removed on December 21, 2007, when both countries joined the Schengen Agreement.
Under the current European regulations, citizens of either country are entitled to the diplomatic protection of any other EU country and so both have been considering merging their embassies, together with nations of the Visegrád Group, to reduce costs.
Roma people
One of the problems not solved during dissolution was the question of a large number of Romani living in the Czech Republic born and officially registered in today's Slovakia. Most of them did not re-register their official place of stay during the months before dissolution and so the question of their citizenship was left open. The 1992 Czech Nationality Act allowed a grant of automatic citizenship only to those who were born on Czech territory. For others, the right to citizenship required proof of a five-year period of residence, an "unobjectionable" criminal record, significant fees and a complicated bureaucratic process, which reportedly excluded a rather large percentage of Roma.
The Slovak government did not want to grant citizenship to nonresidents. Significant numbers of Roma living in Czech orphanages did not have their legal status clarified and were released from care as adult noncitizens without any right to work or live in the Czech Republic. Under pressure from the European Union, the Czech government made amendments to its nationality law in 1999 and 2003, which effectively solved the problem, but compensation has not been provided to those rendered stateless in 1992.
Language contacts
In the former Czechoslovakia, the first television channel was a federal one, and the Czech and Slovak languages were used in equal ratios in the television news there, but foreign films and television series were almost exclusively dubbed into Czech, for example. That and the great similarity of the two languages made almost all people of both nations passively bilingual: they could understand but not necessarily speak the other language. After the dissolution in 1990s, the new television channels in the Czech Republic practically stopped using Slovak, and young Czech people now have a much lower understanding of Slovak. Also, the number of Slovak-language books and newspapers sold in the Czech Republic dropped drastically. The Czech television news, however, started to reintroduce Slovak-language coverage from Slovakia and Slovak television (STV2) rebroadcasts the Czech television newscast Události ČT daily, ten minutes after midnight.
On the public Radio and Television of Slovakia, it is common to have at least one daily newscast from the Czech Republic during prime time news. Furthermore, many programmes on Slovak television channels are still dubbed into Czech, some films in cinemas are subtitled in Czech and there are far more Czech-language books and periodicals on the market than there were before the dissolution. The major boost for the language interchange has come from private television channel providers like CS Link (Czech Republic) and Sky Link (Slovakia) that offer Slovak channels in the Czech Republic and vice versa. Additionally, several channels, regardless of their national origin, offer programs both in Czech and Slovak (CSFilm, TV Barrandov) or even mix like TV Nova's Nova Sport coverage of the English Premier League. New impulses to mutual contacts coming via television are also common shows like the Intelligence Test of Nations, Czechoslovakia's Got Talent, and Masked Singer broadcast by PRIMA and TV JOJ, and Czecho-Slovak SuperStar, the latter being the first international edition of the Pop Idol song contest broadcast by TV Nova and Markíza (both owned by CME), which also organized joint versions of MasterChef and The Voice in 2012. Also, the New Year's Eve Program for 2009 was prepared and broadcast jointly by ČT and STV and for 2010 by the Czech TV PRIMA and the Slovak TV JOJ, this time even including the singing of the Czechoslovak national anthem.
Young Slovak people still have the same knowledge of Czech as their predecessors, if not better. In Slovakia, Czech may still be used automatically in all judicial proceedings, and all documents written in Czech are acknowledged by Slovak authorities and vice versa. Further, the Slovak Official Language Act, passed in 2009, reconfirmed the right of Czechs to use their language in all official communication when dealing with Slovak authorities although it explicitly limited the use of Czech in Slovakia to persons with Czech as their mother tongue. The same is true about using Slovak in the Czech Republic under the Administration Procedure Act of 2004. Gustáv Slamečka, a Slovak citizen who was the Czech transport minister (2009–2010), used only Slovak exclusively during his official communication.
See also differences between Slovak and Czech languages.
Sport
The official breakup occurred right in the middle of the 1993 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships, which took place in Sweden. The team representing Czechoslovakia was renamed "Czech–Slovak" on January 1. In international ice hockey tournaments, the Czech Republic took over Czechoslovakia's place in the A-groups, and Slovakia had to start in the lower divisions.
During the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 1993 in Falun, Sweden, the ski jumping team competed as a combined Czech–Slovakia team in the team large hill event and won silver. The team had been selected before the dissolution. Jaroslav Sakala won two medals in the individual hill events for the Czech Republic at those games along with his silver in the team event.
In their qualifying section for the 1994 FIFA World Cup, the Czechoslovakia national football team competed under the name RCS, which stood for "Representation of Czechs and Slovaks". In their last game as "Representation of Czechs and Slovaks", the team failed to qualify after it got only a draw in its final match against Belgium, a match that it had to win to qualify. It was afterward that it was officially split up into Czech and Slovak national teams, with both being declared successors to Czechoslovakia.
The mutual encounters between the national teams of both countries in many sports are followed by most of the populations, and the number of players and coaches active in the other republic is significant. Martin Lipták, a Slovak handball coach, successfully led the Czech national team to the EHF 2010 Handball European Championship in Austria. A Slovak team under his coaching, Tatran Prešov, won the Czech national league in 2008 and 2009. Czech ice hockey coach Vladimír Vůjtek led the Slovak national team to the silver medal at the 2012 IIHF World Championship, having beaten the Czech team in the semifinals.
Several sports have featured a common league, and discussions about having a common football or ice hockey league continue.
The road cyclist Ján Svorada earned Slovak citizenship in 1993. In 1994, he became the first Slovak rider ever to win a Tour de France stage. Two years later, he earned Czech citizenship, and he became the first Czech rider ever to win another Tour de France stage in 1998.
Telecommunications
The two successor states continued to use the country code +42 until February 1997, when it was replaced by two separate codes: +420 for the Czech Republic and +421 for Slovakia. Since then, telephone calls between both countries have required international dialing.
Legacy
Referendum controversy
Soon after the dissolution, public contentment was at relatively low levels with high shares of the population on both sides of the border protesting the fact that the dissolution of the common state was not put towards a vote, as described by politologist Lubomír Kopeček of Masaryk University. A March 1993 study conducted by Martin Bútora and his wife Zora indicated that in case of a referendum about 50% of the population would've voted against the dissolution of the state with only about 30% in favour of the dissolution.
Former Slovak Minister of Culture Marek Maďarič, pointed out, in January 2023, that the dissolution without a referendum reflected the historic practice and a tradition of constitutional stately affairs decided without a referendum in Czechoslovak history. Namely, both the formation of the First Czechoslovak Republic from the rubbles of Austria-Hungary in 1918 as well as the reunion of the Protectorate and Slovak State to form a Third Republic in 1945 after the conclusion of the World War II were achieved without a referendum, solely through the pursuit of political representatives of the era.
Public polling
Public perception of the dissolution has not changed much, with a December 2017 poll showing that just 42% of Czechs and 40% of Slovaks agree with what happened (compared to 36% and 37% in 1992, respectively). Surveys from 2010 showed that the majority of the population of Prague (Czechs) still considers the division of the country a mistake; similarly, the general representative survey in Slovakia (from 2008) showed that society is still divided in opinion on the dissolution, with 47% favouring the dissolution and 44% considering it a mistake. A 2023 poll from the Czech republic has shown that 50% of Czechs consider the dissolution a correct decision, 39% consider it wrong and 11% are neutral or undecided.
Reactionary movements
In 2015, a Slovak movement called "Czechoslovakia 2018" was established to try to get a referendum by 2018. Its leader, Ladislav Zelinka, said that he had received thousands of emails and calls from supporters, but it was unable to reach the necessary 350,000 petition signatures. The younger generations of both countries are largely indifferent to the issue since they never experienced the previous period themselves, and older generations are more focused on present issues such as immigration and favour their own separate nationalism.
Governmental cooperation
Political influences between the countries are minimal, but social democrats tend to cooperate very closely on regional and European topics in recent years. Furthermore, it has become customary that the elected presidents pay their first and last official foreign visits during their term to the other republic of the former Czechoslovakia. Appointed foreign ministers tend to follow that unwritten rule. On October 29, 2012, to commemorate Czechoslovakia's declaration of independence, which occurred on October 28, 1918, the Czech and the Slovak governments held, for the first time, a joint cabinet meeting in the communities of Trenčín and Uherské Hradiště, near the common border.
Military cooperation
Peacekeeping troops stationed in the former Yugoslavia were put under joint command on several occasions. For example, from 2002 to July 2005, the Czech Armed Forces joined with the Armed Forces of the Slovak Republic to form a joint Czech–Slovak KFOR battalion in Kosovo, which contributed to the Multinational Brigade CENTRE.
Trade and tourism
Trade relations were re-established and stabilised, and the Czech Republic continues to be Slovakia's most important business partner. After a short interruption, Slovakia's resorts in the Carpathian mountains, especially High Tatras and Low Tatras are again the destination of a growing number of Czech tourists.
Commemorations
Following the death of the last Czechoslovak (and the first Czech) president, Václav Havel, on December 18, 2011, both the Czech Republic and Slovakia observed a day of national mourning. During the funeral mass in Prague's St. Vitus Cathedral, prayers were recited in an equal ratio in Czech and Slovak.
See also
Breakup of Yugoslavia
Dissolution of the Soviet Union
Hyphen War
Czech Republic–Slovakia relations
Dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden (another example of a peaceful dissolution)
References
Citations
Bibliography
Innes, Abby (2001). Czechoslovakia: the short goodbye. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-09063-5.
Rupnik, Jacques (2001). "Divorce à l'amiable ou guerre de sécession? (Tchécoslovaquie-Yougoslavie)". Transeuropéennes. 19/20.
Wehrle, Frédéric (1994). Le divorce tchéco-slovaque: vie et mort de la Tchécoslovaquie 1918-1992. Pays de l'Est. Paris: L'Harmattan. ISBN 978-2-7384-2609-3.
Hilde, Paal Sigurd (June 1999). "Slovak Nationalism and the Break-up of Czechoslovakia". Europe-Asia Studies. 51 (4): 647–665. doi:10.1080/09668139998831. ISSN 0966-8136. JSTOR 153565.
External links
(in Czech) Constitutional changes from Velvet revolution until dissolution, detailed overview at the Wayback Machine (archived February 5, 2005)
Krejčí, Oskar: "Geopolitics of the Central European Region. The view from Prague and Bratislava" Bratislava: Veda, 2005. 494 pp. |
Nintendo_Entertainment_System | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System | [
590
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System"
] | The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on July 15, 1983, as the Family Computer (Famicom). It was released in US test markets as the redesigned NES in October 1985, and fully launched in the US the following year. The NES was distributed in Europe, Australia, and parts of Asia throughout the 1980s under various names. As a third-generation console, it mainly competed with Sega's Master System.
The NES was designed by Masayuki Uemura. Nintendo's president, Hiroshi Yamauchi, called for a simple, cheap console that could run arcade games on cartridges. The controller design was reused from Nintendo's portable Game & Watch hardware. The western model was redesigned to resemble a video cassette recorder. Nintendo released add-ons such as the NES Zapper light gun for several shooting games, and R.O.B, a toy robot accessory.
The NES is regarded as one of the most influential consoles. It helped revitalise the American gaming industry following the video game crash of 1983, and pioneered a now-standard business model of licensing third-party developers to produce and distribute games. The NES features several groundbreaking games, including Super Mario Bros. (1985), The Legend of Zelda (1986), Metroid (1986), and Mega Man (1987) which have become major franchises.
The NES dominated Japanese and North American markets, but initially underperformed in Europe where it faced strong competition from the Sega Master System and microcomputers. With 61.91 million units sold, it is one of the best-selling consoles of all time. It was succeeded in 1990 by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.
History
Background
The video game industry experienced rapid growth and popularity from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, marked by the golden age of arcade games and the second generation of consoles. Games like Space Invaders (1978) became a phenomenon across arcades worldwide, while home consoles such as the Atari 2600 and the Intellivision gained footholds in the American market. Many companies emerged to capitalise on the growing industry, including the playing card manufacturer Nintendo.
Hiroshi Yamauchi, who had been Nintendo's president since 1949, realised that breakthroughs in the electronics industry meant that entertainment products could be produced at lower prices. Companies such as Atari and Magnavox were already selling gaming devices for use with television sets, to moderate success. Yamauchi negotiated a licence with Magnavox to sell its game console, the Magnavox Odyssey. Since Nintendo's operation was not yet sophisticated enough to design its own hardware, Yamauchi forged an alliance with Mitsubishi Electric and hired several Sharp Electronics employees to assist in developing the Color TV-Game 6 in Japan. This was followed by a more successful sequel, the Color TV-Game 15, and the handheld Game & Watch series. The successes of these machines gave Yamauchi the confidence to expand Nintendo's influence in the fledgling video game industry.
In 1978, Yamauchi split Nintendo into separate research and development divisions. He appointed Masayuki Uemura as head of Nintendo Research & Development 2, a division that focused solely on hardware. Yamauchi, through extensive discussions with Uemura and other engineers, recognised the potential of the developing console beyond gaming. He envisioned a home-computer system disguised as a toy, which could significantly expand Nintendo's reach if it became popular with children. This popularity would drive demand for games, with Nintendo as the sole provider. Indeed, by 1980 several systems had already been released in Japan by both American and Japanese companies. Yamauchi tasked Uemura with developing a system that would be superior to its competitors and difficult to replicate for at least a year. Uemura's main challenge was economic rather than technological; Yamauchi wanted the system to be affordable enough for widespread household adoption, aiming for a price of ¥9,800 (less than $75) compared to existing machines priced at ¥30,000 to ¥50,000 ($200 to $350). The new system had to outperform other systems, both Japanese and American, while being significantly more affordable.
Inception
As development progressed on the new video game system, engineers sought Yamauchi's guidance on its features. They questioned whether to include a disk drive, keyboard, data port, as well as the potential for a modem, expanded memory, and other computer-like capabilities. Yamauchi ultimately instructed Uemura to prioritise simplicity and affordability, omitting these peripherals entirely. Game cartridges, which Uemura saw as "less intimidating" to consumers was chosen as the format. The team designed the system to store 2,000 bytes of random-access memory (RAM), significantly more than Atari's 256 bytes. Larger cartridges also allowed for far more complex games, with thirty-two times the code capacity of Atari cartridges.
The console's hardware was largely based on arcade video games, particularly the hardware for Namco's Galaxian (1979) and Nintendo's Donkey Kong, with the goal of matching their powerful sprite and scrolling capabilities in a home system. A test model was constructed in October 1982 to verify the functionality of the hardware, and work began on programming tools. Because 65xx CPUs had not been manufactured or sold in Japan by that time, no cross-development software was available and it had to be developed from scratch. Early Famicom games were written on a NEC PC-8001 computer. LEDs on a grid were used with a digitizer to design graphics as no such software design tools existed at that time.
The codename for the project was "GameCom", but Masayuki Uemura's wife proposed the name "Famicom", arguing that "In Japan, 'pasokon' is used to mean a personal computer, but it is neither a home nor personal computer. Perhaps we could say it is a family computer." Meanwhile, Hiroshi Yamauchi decided that the console should use a red and white theme after seeing a billboard for DX Antenna (a Japanese antenna manufacturer) which used those colors.
Development
The Famicom was influenced by the ColecoVision, Coleco's competition against the Atari 2600 in the United States; the ColecoVision's top-seller was a port of Nintendo's Donkey Kong. The project's chief manager Takao Sawano brought a ColecoVision home to his family, impressed by its smooth graphics, which contrasts with the flicker and slowdown commonly seen on Atari 2600 games. Uemura said the ColecoVision set the bar for the Famicom. They wanted to surpass it and match the more powerful Donkey Kong arcade hardware; they took a Donkey Kong arcade cabinet to chip manufacturer Ricoh for analysis, which led to Ricoh producing the Picture Processing Unit (PPU) chip for the NES.
Original plans called for the Famicom's cartridges to be the size of a cassette tape, but ultimately they ended up being twice as big. Careful design attention was paid to the cartridge connectors because loose and faulty connections often plagued arcade machines. As it necessitated 60 connection lines for the memory and expansion, Nintendo decided to produce its own connectors.
The controllers are hard-wired to the console with no connectors for cost reasons. The controller designs were reused from the Game & Watch machines, although the Famicom design team originally wanted to use arcade-style joysticks, even dismantling some from American game consoles to see how they worked. There were concerns regarding the durability of the joystick design and that children might step on joysticks on the floor. Katsuya Nakawaka attached a Game & Watch D-pad to the Famicom prototype and found that it was easy to use and caused no discomfort. Ultimately though, they installed a 15-pin expansion port on the front of the console so that an optional arcade-style joystick could be used.
Gunpei Yokoi suggested an eject lever to the cartridge slot which is not necessary, but he believed that children could be entertained by pressing it. Uemura adopted his idea. Uemura added a microphone to the second controller with the idea that it could be used to make players voices sound through the TV speaker.
Japanese release
The console was released on July 15, 1983, as the Home Cassette Type Video Game: Family Computer, for ¥14,800 (equivalent to ¥18,400 in 2019) with three ports of Nintendo's successful arcade games Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., and Popeye. The Famicom was slow to gather success; a bad chip set caused the early revisions to crash. Following a product recall and a reissue with a new motherboard, the Famicom's popularity soared, becoming the bestselling game console in Japan by the end of 1984 in what came to be called the "Famicom Boom".: 279, 285
Nintendo launched the system with only first-party games, but after being approached by Namco and Hudson Soft in 1984, agreed to produce third-party games for a 30% fee for console licensing and production costs. This rate continued in the industry for consoles and digital storefront into the 21st Century.
North American release
Nintendo targeted the North American market, entering distribution negotiations with Atari, Inc. to release a redesigned Famicom with Atari's name as the Nintendo Advanced Video Gaming System. The deal was set to be finalized and signed at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in June 1983. However, Atari discovered at that show that its competitor Coleco was illegally demonstrating its Coleco Adam computer with Nintendo's Donkey Kong game. This violation of Atari's exclusive license with Nintendo to publish the game for its own computer systems delayed the implementation of Nintendo's game console marketing contract with Atari. Atari's CEO Ray Kassar was fired the next month, so the deal went nowhere, and Nintendo decided to market its system on its own.: 283–285
Subsequent plans for the Nintendo Advanced Video System likewise never materialized. It was privately demonstrated as a repackaged Famicom console featuring a keyboard, cassette data recorder, wireless joystick controller, and a special BASIC cartridge.: 287 By the beginning of 1985, more than 2.5 million Famicom units had been sold in Japan, and Nintendo soon announced plans to release it in North America as the Advanced Video Entertainment System (AVS) that year. The American video game press was skeptical that the console could have any success in the region, as the industry was still recovering from the video game crash of 1983. The March 1985 issue of Electronic Games magazine stated that "the videogame market in America has virtually disappeared" and that "this could be a miscalculation on Nintendo's part".
The Famicom hardware first made its North American debut in the arcades, in the form of the Nintendo VS. System in 1984. The system's success in arcades paved the way for the official release of the NES console. With US retailers refusing to stock game consoles, Yamauchi realized there was still a market for video games in the arcades, so he introduced the Famicom to North America through the arcade industry. The VS. System became a major success in North American arcades, becoming the highest-grossing arcade machine of 1985 in the United States. By the time the NES launched, nearly 100,000 VS. Systems had been sold to American arcades. The success of the VS. System gave Nintendo the confidence to release the Famicom in North America as a video game console, for which there was growing interest due to Nintendo's positive reputation in the arcades. It also gave Nintendo the opportunity to test new games as VS. Paks in the arcades, to determine which games to release for the NES launch.
At the 1985 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Nintendo unveiled the American version of the Famicom: a stripped-down and cost-reduced redesign of the Advanced Video System (AVS), having abandoned the home computer approach. Nintendo purposefully designed the system to avoid resembling a video game console and avoided terms associated with game consoles. Marketing manager Gail Tilden chose the term "Game Pak" for cartridges, "Control Deck" for the console, and "Entertainment System" for the whole platform. Renamed the "Nintendo Entertainment System" (NES), the new and cost-reduced version lacked most of the upscale features added in the AVS but retained many of its audiophile-inspired design elements, such as the grey colour scheme and boxy form factor. Disappointed with the cosmetically raw prototype part they received from Japan, which they nicknamed "the lunchbox", Nintendo of America designers Lance Barr and Don James added the two-tone gray, the black stripe, and the red lettering. To obscure the video game connotation, the NES replaced the top-loading cartridge slot of the Famicom and AVS with a front-loading chamber for software cartridges that kept the inserted cartridge out of view, reminiscent of a video cassette recorder. The Famicom's pair of hard-wired controllers and the AVS's wireless controllers were replaced with two custom 7-pin sockets for detachable wired controllers.
At June 1985's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Nintendo unveiled the American version of its Famicom, with a new case redesigned by Lance Barr and featuring a "zero insertion force" cartridge slot. The change from a top-loader in the Famicom to a front-loader was to make the new console more like a video cassette recorder, which had grown in popularity by 1985, and differentiate the unit from past video game consoles. Additionally, Uemura explained that Nintendo developers had feared that the console's electronics might face electrostatic hazards in dry American states such as Arizona and Texas, and a front-loading design would be safer if children handled the console carelessly.
This was deployed as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Nintendo seeded these first systems to limited American test markets starting in New York City on October 18, 1985, and followed up in Los Angeles in February 1986; the American nationwide release came on September 27, 1986. Nintendo released 17 launch games: 10-Yard Fight, Baseball, Clu Clu Land, Duck Hunt, Excitebike, Golf, Gyromite, Hogan's Alley, Ice Climber, Kung Fu, Pinball, Soccer, Stack-Up, Super Mario Bros., Tennis, Wild Gunman, and Wrecking Crew. Nintendo contracted Worlds of Wonder to distribute the console physically. WoW salesman Jim Whims distinctly recalled delivering an ultimatum: "if you want to sell Teddy Ruxpin and you want to sell Lazer Tag, you're gonna sell Nintendo as well. And if you feel that strongly about it, then you ought to just resign the line now." This marketing tactic led to the NES' financial success in North America in its first year; Nintendo of America would later terminate the contract and hired the company's sales staff (whom Atari offered them in 1983), while taking on physical distribution of the console itself.
The system's launch represented not only a new product, but also a reframing of the severely damaged home video game market in North America. The 1983 video game crash had occurred in large part due to a lack of consumer and retailer confidence in video games, which had been partially due to confusion and misrepresentation in video game marketing. Prior to the NES, the packaging of many video games presented bombastic artwork which did not represent a game's actual graphics. Furthermore, a single game such as Pac-Man appeared across consoles with substantial variations in graphics, sound, and general quality. In contrast, Nintendo's marketing strategy aimed to regain consumer and retailer confidence by delivering a singular platform whose graphics could be represented truthfully and whose qualities were clearly defined.
To differentiate Nintendo's new home platform from the perception of a troubled and shallow video game market still reeling from the 1983 crash, the company freshened its product nomenclature and established a strict product approval and licensing policy. The overall platform is referred to as "Entertainment System" instead of a "video game system", is centered upon a machine called a "Control Deck" instead of a "console", and features software cartridges called "Game Paks" instead of "video games". This allowed Nintendo to gain more traction in selling the system in toy stores. To deter production of games which had not been licensed by Nintendo, and to prevent copying, the 10NES lockout chip system acts as a lock-and-key coupling of each Game Pak and Control Deck. The packaging of the launch lineup of NES games bear pictures of close representations of actual onscreen graphics. To reduce consumer confusion, symbols on the games' packaging clearly indicate the genre of the game. A seal of quality is on all licensed game and accessory packaging. The initial seal states, "This seal is your assurance that Nintendo has approved and guaranteed the quality of this product". This text was later changed to "Official Nintendo Seal of Quality".
Unlike with the Famicom, Nintendo of America marketed the console primarily to children, instituting a strict policy of censoring profanity, sexual, religious, or political content. The most famous example is Lucasfilm Games's attempts to port the comedy-horror game Maniac Mansion to the NES, which Nintendo insisted be considerably watered down.
The optional Robotic Operating Buddy, or R.O.B., was part of a marketing plan to portray the NES's technology as being novel and sophisticated when compared to previous game consoles, and to portray its position as being within reach of the better established toy market. Though at first, the American public exhibited limited excitement for the console itself, peripherals such as the light gun and R.O.B. attracted extensive attention.
Other markets
In Europe and Oceania, the NES was released in two separate marketing regions. The first consisted of mainland Europe (excluding Italy) where distribution was handled by several different companies, with Nintendo responsible for manufacturing. The NES saw an early launch in Europe in 1986 although most of the European countries received the console in 1987. The release in Scandinavia was on September 1, 1986, where it was released by Bergsala. In the Netherlands, it was released in the last quarter of 1987 and was distributed by Bandai BV. In France, it was released in October 1987, and in Spain most likely in 1988 through distributor Spaco. Also in 1987, Mattel handled distribution for the second region, consisting of the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Australia and New Zealand. In other European countries, distribution was taken over by smaller companies like Bienengräber in Germany, ASD in France, Concentra in Portugal, Itochu in Greece and Cyprus, Stadlbauer in Austria, Switzerland and the former Eastern Bloc In November 1994, Nintendo signed an agreement with Steepler to permit the continued sale of the Dendy, an unauthorized hardware clone of the Famicom, in Russia in exchange for also distributing the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Nintendo anticipated the NES would have a 25 per cent share in these countries, and saw particular potential in the United Kingdom. It sold modestly in Europe, however.
In Brazil, the console was released late in 1993 by Playtronic, even after the SNES. But the Brazilian market had been dominated by unlicensed NES clones – both locally made, and smuggled from Taiwan. One of the most successful local clones was the Phantom System, manufactured by Gradiente, which licensed Nintendo products in the country for the following decade. The sales of officially licensed products were low, due to the cloning, the quite late official launch, and the high prices of Nintendo's licensed products.
Outside of Japan, regions in greater Asia received an "Asian Version" of the front-loader NES though imported Famicom systems were prevalent. Due to import restrictions, NES consoles in India and South Korea were rebranded and distributed by local licensees. The Indian version is called the Samurai Electronic TV Game System and the Korean version is called the Hyundai Comboy. The console sold very poorly in India due to affordability and lack of lacking consumer awareness.
Bundles and redesigns
For its complete North American release, the Nintendo Entertainment System was progressively released over the ensuing years in several different bundles, beginning with the Deluxe Set, the Basic Set, the Action Set, and the Power Set. The Deluxe Set was launched in the 1985 test markets, retailing at US$179.99 (equivalent to $550 in 2023), including R.O.B., a light gun called the NES Zapper, two controllers, and the two Game Paks Gyromite and Duck Hunt. The Control Deck bundle was first released in 1987 at $89.99 with no game, and $99.99 bundled with the Super Mario Bros. cartridge. The Action Set, released April 14, 1988, for $109.99, has the Control Deck, two controllers, an NES Zapper, and a dual Game Pak containing both Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt.
The Power Set of 1989 includes the console, two game controllers, an NES Zapper, a Power Pad, and a triple Game Pak containing Super Mario Bros, Duck Hunt, and World Class Track Meet. In 1990, a Sports Set bundle was released, including the console, an NES Satellite infrared wireless multitap adapter, four game controllers, and a dual Game Pak containing Super Spike V'Ball and Nintendo World Cup. Two more bundle packages were later released with the original model NES console. In 1992, the Challenge Set was released for $89.99 with the console, two controllers, and a Super Mario Bros. 3 Game Pak. The Basic Set retailed at US$89.99; it included only the console and two controllers, and no pack-in game. Instead, it contained a book called the Official Nintendo Player's Guide, which contained detailed information for every NES game made up to that point.
Finally, the console was redesigned for the Australian, North American, and Japanese markets, including the New-Style NES, or NES-101, and one redesigned "dogbone" game controller. In Australia, this console revision was released with a cartridge compiling Super Mario Bros, Tetris, and Nintendo World Cup. Released in October 1993 in North America and 1994 in Australia, this final bundle retailed for $49.99 and A$69.99 (A$79.99 with the pack-in game) respectively, and was discontinued with the NES in 1995.
Discontinuation
On August 14, 1995, Nintendo discontinued the Nintendo Entertainment System in both North America and Europe. In North America, replacements for the original front-loading NES were available for $25 in exchange for a broken system until at least December 1996, under Nintendo's Power Swap program. The Game Boy and Super NES were covered for $25 and $35 respectively.
On May 30, 2003, Nintendo announced the discontinuation of the Famicom in September alongside the Super Famicom and the disk rewriting services for the Famicom Disk System. The last Famicom, serial number HN11033309, was manufactured on September 25; it was kept by Nintendo and subsequently loaned to the organizers of Level X, a video game exhibition held from December 4, 2003, to February 8, 2004, at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, for a Famicom retrospective in commemoration of the console's 20th anniversary. Nintendo offered repair service for the Famicom in Japan until 2007, when it was discontinued due to a shortage of available parts.
Hardware
Configurations
Although all versions of the Famicom and NES include essentially similar hardware, they vary in physical characteristics. The original Famicom's design is predominantly white plastic, with dark red trim; it featured a top-loading cartridge slot, grooves on both sides of the deck in which the hardwired game controllers could be placed when not in use, and a 15-pin expansion port located on the unit's front panel for accessories. In contrast, the design of the original NES features a more subdued gray, black, and red color scheme; it includes a front-loading cartridge slot covered by a small, hinged door that can be opened to insert or remove a cartridge and closed at other times, and an expansion port on the bottom of the unit. The cartridge connector pinout was changed between the Famicom and NES.
In late 1993, Nintendo introduced a redesigned version of the Famicom and NES (officially named the New Famicom in Japan and the New-Style NES in the US) to complement the Super Famicom and SNES, to prolong interest in the console, and to reduce costs. The redesigned NES has a top-loading cartridge slot to avoid reliability issues with the original console; the redesign also omitted AV output. Conversely, the redesigned Famicom has such output and introduced detachable game controllers, though the microphone functionality was omitted as a result. The redesigned Famicom and NES models are cosmetically similar aside from the presence of a cartridge "bump" on the NES model, which the Famicom model lacks to accommodate its shorter cartridges and as the RAM Adapter for the Famicom Disk System.
Sharp Corporation produced three licensed variants of the Famicom in Japan, all of which prominently display the shortened moniker rather than the official name, Family Computer. One variant was a television set with an integrated Famicom; originally released in 1983 as the My Computer TV in 14-inch (36 cm) and 19-inch (48 cm) models, it was later released in the United States in 1989 as a 19-inch model named the Video Game Television. Another variant is the Twin Famicom console released in 1986 to combine a Famicom with a Famicom Disk System. Sharp then produced the Famicom Titler in 1989. Intended for video capture and production, it features internal RGB video generation and video output via S-Video, plus inputs for adding subtitles and voice-overs.
Hardware clones
A thriving market of unlicensed NES hardware clones emerged during the climax of the console's popularity. Initially, such clones were popular in markets where Nintendo issued a legitimate version of the console long time after unlicensed hardware. In particular, the Dendy (Russian: Де́нди), an unlicensed hardware clone produced in Taiwan and sold in the former Soviet Union, emerged as the most popular video game console of its time in that setting and it enjoyed a degree of fame roughly equivalent to that experienced by the NES/Famicom in North America and Japan. A range of Famicom clones was marketed in Argentina during the late 1980s and early 1990s with the name Family Game, resembling the original hardware design. Thailand got Family FR brand famiclones, the Micro Genius (Simplified Chinese: 小天才) was marketed in Southeast Asia as an alternative to the Famicom; and in Central Europe, especially Poland, the Pegasus was available. Since 1989, there were many Brazilian clones of the NES, and the very popular Phantom System (with hardware superior to the original console) caught the attention of Nintendo itself.
The unlicensed clone market has flourished following Nintendo's discontinuation of the NES. Some of the more exotic of these resulting systems surpass the functionality of the original hardware, such as a portable system with a color LCD (PocketFami). Others have been produced for certain specialized markets, such as a rather primitive personal computer with a keyboard and basic word processing software. These unauthorized clones have been helped by the invention of the so-called NES-on-a-chip.
As was the case with unlicensed games, Nintendo has typically gone to the courts to prohibit the manufacture and sale of unlicensed cloned hardware. Many of the clone vendors have included built-in copies of licensed Nintendo software, which constitutes copyright infringement in most countries.
Design flaws
Nintendo's design styling for US release was made deliberately different from that of other game consoles. Nintendo wanted to distinguish its product from those of competitors and to avoid the generally poor reputation that game consoles had acquired following the video game crash of 1983. One result of this philosophy is to disguise the cartridge slot design as a front-loading zero-insertion force (ZIF) cartridge socket, designed to resemble the front-loading mechanism of a VCR. The socket works well when both the connector and the cartridges are clean and the pins on the connector are new. However, the socket is not truly zero-insertion force. When a user inserts the cartridge into the NES, the force of pressing the cartridge into place bends the contact pins slightly and presses the cartridge's ROM board back into the cartridge. Frequent insertion and removal of cartridges wears out the pins, and the ZIF design proved more prone to interference by dirt and dust than an industry-standard card edge connector.
The design problems were exacerbated by Nintendo's choice of materials. The console slot nickel connector springs wear due to design and the game cartridge's brass plated nickel connectors are also prone to tarnishing and oxidation. Nintendo sought to fix these problems by redesigning the next generation Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) as a top loader similar to the Famicom. Many players try to alleviate issues in the game caused by this corrosion by blowing into the cartridges, then reinserting them, which actually speeds up the tarnishing due to moisture. One way to slow down the tarnishing process and extend the life of the cartridges is to use isopropyl alcohol and cotton swabs.
Users have attempted to solve these problems by blowing air onto the cartridge connectors, inserting the cartridge just far enough to get the ZIF to lower, licking the edge connector, slapping the side of the system after inserting a cartridge, shifting the cartridge from side to side after insertion, pushing the ZIF up and down repeatedly, holding the ZIF down lower than it should have been, and cleaning the connectors with alcohol. Many frequently used methods to fix this problem actually risk damaging gaming cartridges or the system. In 1989, Nintendo released an official NES Cleaning Kit to help users clean malfunctioning cartridges and consoles.
In response to these hardware flaws, "Nintendo Authorized Repair Centers" sprang up across the U.S. According to Nintendo, the authorization program was designed to ensure that the machines were properly repaired. Nintendo would ship the necessary replacement parts only to shops that had enrolled in the authorization program.
With the release of the top-loading NES-101 (New-Style NES) in 1993 toward the end of the NES's lifespan, Nintendo resolved the problems by switching to a standard card edge connector and eliminating the lockout chip. All of the Famicom systems use standard card edge connectors, as do Nintendo's two subsequent game consoles, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Nintendo 64.
Lockout
The Famicom as released in Japan contains no lockout hardware, which led to unlicensed cartridges (both legitimate and bootleg) becoming extremely common throughout Japan and East Asia. Nintendo tried to promote its "Seal of Quality" in these regions to identify licensed games to combat bootlegs, but bootleg Famicom games continued to be produced even after Nintendo moved production onto the Super Famicom, effectively extending the lifetime of the Famicom.
The original NES released for Western countries in 1985 contains the 10NES lockout chip, which prevents it from running cartridges unapproved by Nintendo. The inclusion of the 10NES was a direct influence from the 1983 video game crash in North America, partially caused by a market flooded with uncontrolled publishing of games of poor quality for the home consoles. Nintendo did not want to see that happen with the NES and used the lockout chip to restrict games to only those they licensed and approved for the system. This means of protection worked in combination with the Nintendo "Seal of Quality", which a developer had to acquire before they would be able to have access to the required 10NES information prior to publication of their game.
Initially, the 10NES chip proved a significant barrier to unlicensed developers seeking to develop and sell games for the console. However, hobbyists in later years discovered that disassembling the NES and cutting the fourth pin of the lockout chip would change the chip's mode of operation from "lock" to "key", removing all effects and greatly improving the console's ability to play legal games, bootlegs, and converted imports.
Original NES consoles sold in different regions have different lockout chips, thereby enforcing regional lockout (regardless of TV signal compatibility). Such regions include North America; most of continental Europe (PAL-B); Asia; and the British Isles, Italy, and Australasia (PAL-A).
Problems with the 10NES lockout chip frequently result in one of the console's most common issues: the blinking red power light, in which the system appears to turn itself on and off repeatedly because the 10NES would reset the console once per second. The lockout chip required constant communication with the chip in the game to work.: 247 Dirty, aging, and bent connectors often disrupt the communication, resulting in the blink effect. In other cases, the console turns on but only displays a solid white, gray, or green screen.
Technical specifications
The console's main central processing unit (CPU) was produced by Ricoh, which manufactured different versions between NTSC and PAL regions; NTSC consoles have a 2A03 clocked at 1.79 MHzTooltip megahertz, and PAL consoles have a 2A07 clocked at 1.66 MHz. Both CPUs are unlicensed variants of the MOS Technology 6502, an 8-bit microprocessor prevalent in contemporary home computers and consoles; Nintendo ostensibly disabled the 6502's binary-coded decimal mode on them to avoid patent infringement against or licensing fees towards MOS Technology, which was owned by then-rival Commodore International. The CPU has access to 2 KBTooltip kilobyte of onboard work RAMTooltip random-access memory.
The console's graphics are handled by a Ricoh 2C02, a processor known as the Picture Processing Unit (PPU) that is clocked at 5.37 MHz. A derivative of the Texas Instruments TMS9918—a video display controller used in the ColecoVision—the PPU features 2 KB of video RAM, 256 bytes of on-die "object attribute memory" (OAM) to store sprite display information on up to 64 sprites, and 28 bytes of RAM to store information on the YIQ-based color palette; the console can display up to 25 colors simultaneously out of 54 usable colors.
The console's standard display resolution is 256 × 240 pixels, though video output options vary between models. The original Famicom features only radio frequency (RF) modulator output, and the NES additionally supports composite video via RCA connectors. The redesigned Famicom omits the RF modulator entirely, only outputting composite video via a proprietary "multi-out" connector first introduced on the Super Famicom/SNES; conversely, the redesigned NES features RF modulator output only, though a version of the model including the "multi-out" connector was produced in rare quantities.
The console produces sound via an audio processing unit (APU) integrated into the processor. It supports a total of five sound channels: two pulse wave channels, one triangle wave channel, one white noise channel, and one DPCMTooltip differential pulse-code modulation channel for sample playback. Audio playback speed is dependent on the CPU clock rate, which is set by a crystal oscillator.
Accessories
Controllers
The game controller for both the NES and the Famicom has an oblong brick-like design with a simple four button layout: two round buttons labeled "A" and "B", a "START" button, and a "SELECT" button. Additionally, the controllers use the cross-shaped D-pad, designed by Nintendo employee Gunpei Yokoi for Nintendo Game & Watch systems, to replace the bulkier joysticks on controllers of earlier gaming consoles.: 279
The original model Famicom features two game controllers, both of which are hardwired to the back of the console. The second controller lacks the START and SELECT button, featuring a small microphone instead; however, few games use this feature. The earliest produced Famicom units have square A and B buttons; issues with them getting stuck when pressed down led Nintendo to change their shape to a circular design in subsequent units following the console's recall.
Instead of the Famicom's hardwired controllers, the NES has two proprietary seven-pin ports on the front of the console to support detachable controllers and third-party peripherals. The controllers bundled with the NES are identical and include the START and SELECT buttons, lacking the microphone on the original Famicom's second controller. The cables for NES controllers are also generally three times longer than their Famicom counterparts.
Several special controllers are intended for use with specific games, though are not commonly used. Such peripherals include the NES Zapper (a light gun), R.O.B. (a toy robot),: 297 and the Power Pad (a dance pad).: 226 The original Famicom has a deepened DA-15 expansion port on the front of the unit to accommodate them.
Two official advanced controllers were produced for the NES: the NES Advantage, an arcade controller produced by Asciiware and licensed by Nintendo of America; and the NES Max, a controller with grip handles and a "cycloid" sliding-disc D-pad in place of the traditional one. Both controllers have a "Turbo" feature, which simulates multiple rapid button presses, for the A and B buttons; the NES Max has manually pressed Turbo buttons, and the NES Advantage offers toggle buttons for Turbo functionality along with knobs that adjust the firing rate of each button. The latter also includes a "Slow" button that rapidly pauses games, though this function is not intended for games that invoke a pause menu or screen.
The standard game controller was redesigned upon the introduction of the redesigned console. Though the original button layout was retained, the shape of the redesigned controller—nicknamed the "dog bone" controller—resembles that of the Super Famicom and SNES. It retained NES-style detachable controller ports.
The original NES controller has become one of the most recognizable symbols of the console. Nintendo has mimicked the look of the controller in several other products, from promotional merchandise to limited edition versions of the Game Boy Advance.
Japanese accessories
Few of the numerous peripheral devices and software packages for the Famicom were released outside Japan.
The Famicom 3D System, an active shutter 3D headset peripheral released in 1987, enabled the ability to play stereoscopic video games. It was a commercial failure and never released outside Japan; users described the headset as bulky and uncomfortable. Seven games are compatible with the glasses, with three of them developed by Square; two titles received worldwide releases as Rad Racer and The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner.
Family BASIC is an implementation of BASIC for the Famicom, packaged with a keyboard. Similar in concept to the Atari 2600 BASIC cartridge, it allows the user to write programs, especially games, which can be saved on an included cassette recorder. Nintendo of America rejected releasing Famicom BASIC in the US in favor of its primary marketing demographic of children.: 162
The Famicom Modem connected a Famicom to a now defunct proprietary network in Japan which provided content such as financial services. A dial-up modem was never released for the NES after a partnership with Fidelity Investments.
Famicom Disk System
By 1986, the cost and size limitations of ROM chips used in the Famicom's ROM cartridges were apparent, with no new advancements present to address them. With this in mind, Nintendo looked at the personal computer (PC) market, where the floppy disk was gaining wide adoption as a computer data storage medium. Partnering with Mitsumi to develop a floppy disk add-on for the Famicom based on the latter's Quick Disk format, Nintendo officially released it as the Family Computer Disk System in Japan on February 21, 1986, at a retail price of ¥15,000.
The advantages of the format (called "Disk Card") were apparent on launch. It has more than triple the data storage capacity of the then-largest cartridge (used for Super Mario Bros.) and introduced game save capability and lower production costs compared to cartridges, which resulted in lower retail prices for consumers. The add-on also has a new wavetable synthesis sound channel and more data storage for the Famicom's audio sample channel. Taking advantage of the disk's re-writability, Nintendo set up Disk Writer interactive kiosks at retail stores throughout Japan; at each kiosk, consumers could buy new games to rewrite onto their old disks or onto new disks.: 75 Disk Fax kiosks allowed players to submit their high scores on special blue disks for contests and rankings, predating the online leaderboard by several years.
Although Nintendo committed to exclusively releasing games on the Disk System after its release, numerous external issues plagued its long-term viability. Just four months after launch, Capcom released a Famicom port of Makaimura (known as Ghosts 'n Goblins in the U.S.) on a cartridge with more data storage capacity than what was possible on Disk Cards, nullifying one of the Disk System's major advantages by using discrete logic chips to perform bank switching. Nintendo also demanded half of the copyright ownership for each game it selected for release on the Disk System, resulting in developers electing to remain on cartridge instead as the latter gained functionality previously considered unique to the former. Developers disliked the lower profit margin of the Disk Writer kiosks, and retailers complained of their use of valuable space as demand for the format waned.: 78
Usage of a floppy disk-based medium brought about further complications; Disk Cards were more fragile than cartridges and were prone to data corruption from magnetic exposure. Their unreliability was exacerbated by their lack of a shutter, which Nintendo substituted with a wax sleeve and clear keep case to reduce costs; blue disks and later Disk Cards included shutters. The rubber belt-based disk drives were also unreliable, with cryptic error codes complicating troubleshooting; even when fully functional, players accustomed to cartridges were annoyed with the introduction of loading times and disk flipping. Furthermore, the rewritable nature of the format resulted in rampant software piracy, with Nintendo's attempts at anti-piracy measures quickly defeated.
Though selling close to two million units for all of 1986, Nintendo only managed to increase the total to 4.4 million units by 1990, falling well short of internal projections.: 76 By then, the Disk System was rendered obsolete due to advancements in ROM cartridge production: memory mapping chips for expanded data storage capacity, battery-backed SRAMTooltip static random-access memory for game saving, and declining overall production costs. Nintendo alluded to a Western release for the Disk System, going so far as to successfully file a U.S. patent for it and having the Famicom's cartridge pins used by its RAM Adapter for enhanced audio rerouted to the NES's little-used bottom expansion port. However, such a release never materialized due to its reception in Japan. Most of its games were re-released with workarounds on cartridge for both the Famicom and NES, without the enhanced audio. Although the last game for the Disk System was released in December 1992, Nintendo continued repair and rewrite services for it until September 2003.
NES Test Station
The NES Test Station diagnostics machine was introduced in 1988. It is an NES-based unit designed for testing NES hardware, components, and games. It was only provided for use in World of Nintendo boutiques as part of the Nintendo World Class Service program. Visitors were to bring items to test with the station, and could be assisted by a store technician or employee.
The NES Test Station's front has a Game Pak slot and connectors for testing various components (AC adapter, RF switch, Audio/Video cable, NES Control Deck, accessories and games), with a centrally-located selector knob to choose which component to test. The unit itself weighs approximately 11.7 pounds without a TV. It connects to a television via a combined A/V and RF Switch cable. By actuating the green button, a user can toggle between an A/V Cable or RF Switch connection. The television it is connected to (typically 11" to 14") is meant to be placed atop it.
In 1991, Nintendo provided an add-on called the "Super NES Counter Tester" that tests Super NES components and games. The Super NES Counter Tester is a standard Control Deck on a metal fixture with the connection from the back of the unit re-routed to the front. These connections may be made directly to the test station or to the TV, depending on what is to be tested.
Games
Game Pak
The NES uses a 72-pin design, as compared with 60 pins on the Famicom. To reduce costs and inventory, some early games released in North America are simply Famicom cartridges attached to an adapter to fit inside the NES hardware. Early NES cartridges are held together with five small slotted screws. Games released after 1987 were redesigned slightly to incorporate two plastic clips molded into the plastic itself, removing the need for the top two screws.
The back of the cartridge bears a label with handling instructions. Production and software revision codes were imprinted as stamps on the back label to correspond with the software version and producer. All licensed NTSC and PAL cartridges are a standard shade of gray plastic, with the exception of The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, which were manufactured in gold-plastic carts. Unlicensed carts were produced in black, robin egg blue, and gold, and are all slightly different shapes than standard NES cartridges. Nintendo also produced yellow-plastic carts for internal use at Nintendo Service Centers, although these "test carts" were never made available for purchase. All licensed US cartridges were made by Nintendo, Konami, and Acclaim. For promotion of DuckTales: Remastered, Capcom sent 150 limited-edition gold NES cartridges with the original game, featuring the Remastered art as the sticker, to different gaming news agencies. The instruction label on the back includes the opening lyric from the show's theme song, "Life is like a hurricane".
Famicom cartridges are shaped slightly differently. Unlike NES games, official Famicom cartridges were produced in many colors of plastic. Adapters, similar in design to the popular accessory Game Genie, are available that allow Famicom games to be played on an NES. In Japan, several companies manufactured the cartridges for the Famicom.: 61 This allowed these companies to develop customized chips designed for specific purposes, such as superior sound and graphics.
Third-party licensing
Nintendo's near monopoly on the home video game market left it with a dominant influence over the industry. Unlike Atari, which never actively pursued third-party developers (and even went to court in an attempt to force Activision to cease production of Atari 2600 games), Nintendo had anticipated and encouraged the involvement of third-party software developers, though strictly on Nintendo's terms. Some of the Nintendo platform-control measures were adopted in a less stringent way by later console manufacturers such as Sega, Sony, and Microsoft.
To this end, a 10NES authentication chip is in every console and in every licensed cartridge. If the console's chip can not detect a counterpart chip inside the cartridge, the game does not load.: 247 Nintendo portrayed these measures as intended to protect the public against poor-quality games, and placed a golden seal of approval on all licensed games released for the system.
Nintendo found success with Japanese arcade manufacturers such as Konami, Capcom, Taito, and Namco, which signed on as third-party developers. However, they found resistance with US game developers including Atari Games, Activision, Electronic Arts, and Epyx refusing Nintendo's one-sided terms. Acclaim Entertainment, a fledgling game publisher founded by former Activision employees, was the first major third-party licensee in the United States to sign on with Nintendo in late 1987. Atari Games (through Tengen) and Activision signed on soon after.
Nintendo was not as restrictive as Sega, which did not permit third-party publishing until Mediagenic in late summer 1988. Nintendo's intention was to reserve a large part of NES game revenue for itself. Nintendo required that it be the sole manufacturer of all cartridges, and that the publisher had to pay in full before the cartridges for that game be produced. Cartridges could not be returned to Nintendo, so publishers assumed all the risk. As a result, some publishers lost more money due to distress sales of remaining inventory at the end of the NES era than they ever earned in profits from sales of the games. Because Nintendo controlled the production of all cartridges, it was able to enforce strict rules on its third-party developers, who were required to sign a contract that would obligate them to develop exclusively for the system, order at least 10,000 cartridges, and only make five games per year.: 214–215 The global 1988 shortage of DRAM and ROM chips reportedly caused Nintendo to only permit an average of 25% of publishers' requests for cartridges, with some receiving much higher amounts and others almost none. GameSpy noted that Nintendo's "iron-clad terms" made the company many enemies during the 1980s. Some developers tried to circumvent the five game limit by creating additional company brands like Konami's Ultra Games label; others tried circumventing the 10NES chip.
Nintendo was accused of antitrust violations because of the strict licensing requirements. The United States Department of Justice and several states began probing Nintendo's business practices, leading to the involvement of Congress and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC conducted an extensive investigation which included interviewing hundreds of retailers. During the FTC probe, Nintendo changed the terms of its publisher licensing agreements to eliminate the two-year rule and other restrictive terms. Nintendo and the FTC settled the case in April 1991, with Nintendo required to send vouchers giving a $5 discount off to a new game, to every person that had purchased an NES game between June 1988 and December 1990. GameSpy remarked that Nintendo's punishment was particularly weak given the case's findings, although it has been speculated that the FTC did not want to damage the video game industry in the United States.
With the NES near the end of its life, many third-party publishers such as Electronic Arts supported upstart competing consoles with less strict licensing terms such as the Sega Genesis and then the PlayStation, which eroded and then took over Nintendo's dominance in the home console market, respectively. Consoles from Nintendo's rivals in the post-SNES era had always enjoyed much stronger third-party support than Nintendo, which relied more heavily on first-party games.
Unlicensed games
Companies that refused to pay the licensing fee or were rejected by Nintendo found ways to circumvent the console's authentication system. Most of these companies created circuits that use a voltage spike to temporarily disable the 10NES chip.: 286 A few unlicensed games released in Europe and Australia are in the form of a dongle to connect to a licensed game, to use the licensed game's 10NES chip for authentication. To combat unlicensed games, Nintendo of America threatened retailers who sold them with losing their supply of licensed games, and multiple revisions were made to the NES PCBs to prevent unlicensed games from working.
Atari Games took a different approach with its line of NES products, Tengen. The company attempted to reverse engineer the lockout chip to develop its own "Rabbit" chip. Tengen also obtained a description of the lockout chip from the United States Patent and Trademark Office by falsely claiming that it was required to defend against present infringement claims. Nintendo successfully sued Tengen for copyright infringement. Tengen's antitrust claims against Nintendo were never decided.
Color Dreams made Christian video games under the subsidiary name Wisdom Tree. Historian Steven Kent wrote, "Wisdom Tree presented Nintendo with a prickly situation. The general public did not seem to pay close attention to the court battle with Atari Games, and industry analysts were impressed with Nintendo's legal acumen; but going after a tiny company that published innocuous religious games was another story.": 400
Game rentals
As the Nintendo Entertainment System grew in popularity and entered millions of American homes, some small video rental shops began buying their own copies of NES games, and renting them out to customers for around the same price as a video cassette rental for a few days. Nintendo received no profit from the practice beyond the initial cost of their game, and unlike movie rentals, a newly released game could hit store shelves and be available for rent on the same day. Nintendo took steps to stop game rentals, but did not take any formal legal action until Blockbuster Video began to make game rentals a large-scale service. Nintendo claimed that allowing customers to rent games would significantly hurt sales and drive up the cost of games. Nintendo lost the lawsuit, but did win on a claim of copyright infringement. Blockbuster was banned from including photocopies of original, copyrighted instruction booklets with its rented games. In compliance with the ruling, Blockbuster produced original short instructions—usually in the form of a small booklet, card, or label stuck on the back of the rental box—that explained the game's basic premise and controls. Video rental shops continued the practice of renting video games.
Reception
By 1988, industry observers stated that the NES's popularity had grown so quickly that the market for Nintendo cartridges was larger than that for all home computer software.: 347 Compute! reported in 1989 that Nintendo had sold seven million NES systems in 1988 alone, almost as many as the number of Commodore 64s sold in its first five years. "Computer game makers [are] scared stiff", the magazine said, stating that Nintendo's popularity caused most competitors to have poor sales during the previous Christmas and resulted in serious financial problems for some.
In June 1989, Nintendo of America's vice president of marketing Peter Main, said that the Famicom was present in 37% of Japan's households. By 1990, 30% of American households owned the NES, compared to 23% for all personal computers. By 1990, the NES had outsold all previously released consoles worldwide. The slogan for this brand was "It can't be beaten".: 345 The Nintendo Entertainment System was not available in the Soviet Union.
In the early 1990s, gamers predicted that competition from technologically superior systems such as the 16-bit Sega Genesis would mean the immediate end of the NES's dominance. Instead, during the first year of Nintendo's successor console the Super Famicom (named Super Nintendo Entertainment System outside Japan), the Famicom remained the second highest-selling video game console in Japan, outselling the newer and more powerful NEC PC Engine and Sega Mega Drive by a wide margin. The console remained popular in Japan and North America until late 1993, when the demand for new NES software abruptly plummeted. The final licensed Famicom game released in Japan is Takahashi Meijin no Bōken Jima IV (Adventure Island IV), in North America is Wario's Woods, and in Europe is The Lion King in 1995. In the wake of ever decreasing sales and the lack of new games, Nintendo of America officially discontinued the NES by 1995. Nintendo produced new Famicom units in Japan until September 25, 2003, and continued to repair Famicom consoles until October 31, 2007, attributing the discontinuation of support to insufficient supplies of parts.
The NES was initially not as successful in Europe during the late 1980s, when it was outsold by the Master System in the United Kingdom. By 1990, the Master System was the highest-selling console in Europe, though the NES was beginning to have a fast-growing user base in the United Kingdom. During the early 1990s, NES sales caught up with and narrowly overtook the Master System overall in Western Europe, though the Master System maintained its lead in several markets such as the United Kingdom, Belgium and Spain.
Legacy
The NES was released two years after the video game crash of 1983, when many retailers and adult consumers regarded electronic games as a passing fad,: 280 so many believed at first that the NES would soon fade. Before the NES and Famicom, Nintendo was known as a moderately successful Japanese toy and playing card manufacturer, but the consoles' popularity helped the company grow into an internationally recognized name almost synonymous with video games as Atari had been, and set the stage for Japanese dominance of the video game industry. With the NES, Nintendo also changed the relationship between console manufacturers and third-party software developers by restricting developers from publishing and distributing software without licensed approval. This led to higher-quality games, which helped change the attitude of a public that had grown weary from poorly produced games for earlier systems.: 306–307
The NES hardware design is also very influential. Nintendo chose the name "Nintendo Entertainment System" for the US market and redesigned the system so it would not give the appearance of a child's toy. The front-loading cartridge input allowed it to be used more easily in a TV stand with other entertainment devices, such as a videocassette recorder.
The system's hardware limitations led to design principles that still influence the development of modern video games. Many prominent game franchises originated on the NES, including Nintendo's own Super Mario Bros.,|: 57 The Legend of Zelda: 353 and Metroid,: 357 Capcom's Mega Man franchise, Konami's Castlevania: 358 franchise, Square's Final Fantasy,|: 95 and Enix's Dragon Quest|: 222 franchises.
NES imagery, especially its controller, has become a popular motif for a variety of products, including Nintendo's Game Boy Advance.
At the Tokyo Game Show in 2023, the Famicom was bestowed "The Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Award" in honour of the console's influence and laying down the foundations for the games industry.
The NES library includes some influential games. Super Mario Bros. is the forerunner of side-scrolling games, while The Legend of Zelda had mostly influenced action-adventure games and helped popularizing the save data in video games. Other two influential games are Metroid and Castlevania, which had established the Metroidvania genre.
In 2011, IGN named the NES the greatest video game console of all time.
Emulation
The NES can be emulated on many other systems. The first emulator was the Japanese-only Pasofami. It was soon followed by iNES, which is available in English and is cross-platform, in 1996. It was described as being the first NES emulation software that could be used by a non-expert. The first version of NESticle, an unofficial MS-DOS-based emulator, was released on April 3, 1997. Nintendo offers licensed emulation of some NES games via its Virtual Console service for the Wii, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii U, and via its Nintendo Switch Online service.
Re-release
On July 14, 2016, Nintendo announced the November 2016 launch of a miniature replica of the NES, named the Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition in the United States and Nintendo Classic Mini: Nintendo Entertainment System in Europe and Australia. The emulation-based console includes 30 permanently bundled games from the vintage NES library, including the Super Mario Bros. series and The Legend of Zelda series. The system has HDMI display output and a new replica controller, which can also connect to the Wii Remote for use with Virtual Console games. It was discontinued in North America on April 13, 2017, and worldwide on April 15, 2017. However, Nintendo announced in September 2017 that the NES Classic Mini would return to production on June 29, 2018, only to be discontinued again permanently by December of that year.
See also
History of Nintendo
Nintendo hard
Nintendo World Championships
Notes
Transliterations
References
Citations
Sources
Bibliography
External links
Famicom – Nintendo's Family Computer (video). FamicomDojo.TV. March 18, 2015. Retrieved November 19, 2021.
"Nintendo Entertainment System". Nintendo. Archived from the original on October 20, 2007.
"NES game list" (PDF). March 17, 2007. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 17, 2007.
Nintendo Entertainment System at Curlie
NES Classic Edition official website Archived August 12, 2020, at the Wayback Machine
Famicom official website (Japanese) |
Ricoh_2A03 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricoh_2A03 | [
590
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricoh_2A03"
] | The Ricoh 2A03 or RP2A03 (NTSC version) / Ricoh 2A07 or RP2A07 (PAL version) is an 8-bit microprocessor manufactured by Ricoh for the Nintendo Entertainment System video game console. It was also used as a sound chip and secondary CPU by Nintendo's arcade games Punch-Out!! and Donkey Kong 3.
Technical details
The Ricoh 2A03 contains an unlicensed derivative of the MOS Technology 6502 core, modified to disable the 6502's binary-coded decimal mode (possibly to avoid a MOS Technology patent). It also integrates a programmable sound generator (also known as APU, featuring twenty two memory-mapped I/O registers), rudimentary DMA, and game controller polling.
Sound hardware
The Ricoh 2A03's sound hardware has 5 channels, separated into two APUs (Audio Processing Units). The first APU contains two general purpose pulse channels with 4 duty cycles, and the second APU contains a triangle wave generator, an LFSR-based Noise generator, and a 1-bit Delta modulation-encoded PCM (DPCM) channel. While a majority of the NES library uses only 4 channels, later games use the 5th DPCM channel due to cartridge memory expansions becoming cheaper. For example, Super Mario Bros. 3 uses the DPCM channel for simple drum sounds, while Journey to Silius uses it for sampled basslines. An interesting quirk of the DPCM channel is that the bit order is reversed compared to what is normally expected for 1-bit PCM. Many developers were unaware of this detail, causing samples to be distorted during playback.
The output of each channel is mixed non-linearly in their respective APU before being combined. On Famicom and Dendy systems, expansion sound chips may add their own sound to the output via a pin on the game cartridge. Expansion audio capabilities were removed from international NES systems, but can be restored by modifying the expansion port located on the bottom of the system.
Regional variations
PAL versions of the NES (sold in Europe, Asia, and Australia) use the Ricoh 2A07 or RP2A07 processor, which is a 2A03 with modifications to better suit the 50 Hz vertical refresh rate used in the PAL television standard. However, most developers lacked the resources to properly adjust their games' music from NTSC to PAL, leading to many PAL games sounding slower, slightly lower-pitched, and in some cases, out-of-tune compared to their original NTSC releases.
See also
Nintendo Entertainment System technical specifications
== References == |
MOS_Technology_6502 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_6502 | [
590
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_6502"
] | The MOS Technology 6502 (typically pronounced "sixty-five-oh-two" or "six-five-oh-two") is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by a small team led by Chuck Peddle for MOS Technology. The design team had formerly worked at Motorola on the Motorola 6800 project; the 6502 is essentially a simplified, less expensive and faster version of that design.
When it was introduced in 1975, the 6502 was the least expensive microprocessor on the market by a considerable margin. It initially sold for less than one-sixth the cost of competing designs from larger companies, such as the 6800 or Intel 8080. Its introduction caused rapid decreases in pricing across the entire processor market. Along with the Zilog Z80, it sparked a series of projects that resulted in the home computer revolution of the early 1980s.
Home video game consoles and home computers of the 1970s through the early 1990s, such as the Atari 2600, Atari 8-bit computers, Apple II, Nintendo Entertainment System, Commodore 64, Atari Lynx, BBC Micro and others, use the 6502 or variations of the basic design. Soon after the 6502's introduction, MOS Technology was purchased outright by Commodore International, who continued to sell the microprocessor and licenses to other manufacturers. In the early days of the 6502, it was second-sourced by Rockwell and Synertek, and later licensed to other companies.
In 1981, the Western Design Center started development of a CMOS version, the 65C02. This continues to be widely used in embedded systems, with estimated production volumes in the hundreds of millions.
History and use
Origins at Motorola
The 6502 was designed by many of the same engineers that had designed the Motorola 6800 microprocessor family. Motorola started the 6800 microprocessor project in 1971 with Tom Bennett as the main architect. Motorola's engineers could run analog and digital simulations on an IBM 370-165 mainframe computer. The chip layout began in late 1972, the first 6800 chips were fabricated in February 1974 and the full family was officially released in November 1974.
John Buchanan was the designer of the 6800 chip and Rod Orgill, who later did the 6501, assisted Buchanan with circuit analyses and chip layout. Bill Mensch joined Motorola in June 1971 after graduating from the University of Arizona (at age 26). His first assignment was helping define the peripheral ICs for the 6800 family and later he was the principal designer of the 6820 Peripheral Interface Adapter (PIA). Bennett hired Chuck Peddle in 1973 to do architectural support work on the 6800 family products already in progress. He contributed in many areas, including the design of the 6850 ACIA (serial interface).
Motorola's target customers were established electronics companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Tektronix, TRW, and Chrysler. In May 1972, Motorola's engineers began visiting select customers and sharing the details of their proposed 8-bit microprocessor system with ROM, RAM, parallel and serial interfaces. In early 1974, they provided engineering samples of the chips so that customers could prototype their designs. Motorola's "total product family" strategy did not focus on the price of the microprocessor, but on reducing the customer's total design cost. They offered development software on a timeshare computer, the "EXORciser" debugging system, onsite training and field application engineer support. Both Intel and Motorola had initially announced a US$360 price for a single microprocessor. The actual price for production quantities was much less. Motorola offered a design kit containing the 6800 with six support chips for US$300.
Peddle, who would accompany the salespeople on customer visits, found that customers were put off by the high cost of the microprocessor chips. At the same time, these visits invariably resulted in the engineers he presented to producing lists of required instructions that were much smaller than "all these fancy instructions" that had been included in the 6800. Peddle and other team members started outlining the design of an improved feature, reduced size microprocessor. At that time, Motorola's new semiconductor fabrication facility in Austin, Texas, was having difficulty producing MOS chips, and mid-1974 was the beginning of a year-long recession in the semiconductor industry. Also, many of the Mesa, Arizona employees were displeased with the upcoming relocation to Austin.
Motorola's Semiconductor Products Division management showed no interest in Peddle's low-cost microprocessor proposal. Eventually Peddle was given an official letter telling him to stop working on the system. Peddle responded to the order by informing Motorola that the letter represented an official declaration of "project abandonment", and as such, the intellectual property he had developed to that point was now his. In a November 1975 interview, Motorola's Chairman, Robert Galvin, ultimately agreed that Peddle's concept was a good one and that the division missed an opportunity, "We did not choose the right leaders in the Semiconductor Products division." The division was reorganized and the management replaced. The new group vice-president John Welty said, "The semiconductor sales organization lost its sensitivity to customer needs and couldn't make speedy decisions."
MOS Technology
Peddle began looking outside Motorola for a source of funding for this new project. He initially approached Mostek CEO L. J. Sevin, but was declined. Sevin later admitted this was because he was afraid Motorola would sue them.
While Peddle was visiting Ford Motor Company on one of his sales trips, Bob Johnson, later head of Ford's engine automation division, mentioned that their former colleague John Paivinen had moved to General Instrument and taught himself semiconductor design. Paivinen then formed MOS Technology in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania in 1969 with two other executives from General Instrument, Mort Jaffe and Don McLaughlin. Allen-Bradley, a supplier of electronic components and industrial controls, acquired a majority interest in 1970. The company designed and fabricated custom ICs for customers and had developed a line of calculator chips.
After the Mostek efforts fell through, Peddle approached Paivinen, who "immediately got it". On 19 August 1974, Chuck Peddle, Bill Mensch, Rod Orgill, Harry Bawcom, Ray Hirt, Terry Holdt, and Wil Mathys left Motorola to join MOS. Mike Janes joined later. Of the seventeen chip designers and layout people on the 6800 team, eight left. The goal of the team was to design and produce a low-cost microprocessor for embedded applications and to target as wide as possible a customer base. This would be possible only if the microprocessor was low cost, and the team set the price goal for volume purchases at $5. Mensch later stated the goal was not the processor price itself, but to create a set of chips that could sell at $20 to compete with the recently introduced Intel 4040 that sold for $29 in a similar complete chipset.
Chips are produced by printing multiple copies of the chip design on the surface of a wafer, a thin disk of highly pure silicon. Smaller chips can be printed in greater numbers on the same wafer, decreasing their relative price. Additionally, wafers always include some number of tiny physical defects that are scattered across the surface. Any chip printed in that location will fail and has to be discarded. Smaller chips mean any single copy is less likely to be printed on a defect. For both of these reasons, the cost of the final product is strongly dependent on the size of the chip design.
The original 6800 chips were intended to be 180 by 180 mils (4.6 mm × 4.6 mm), but layout was completed at 212 by 212 mils (5.4 mm × 5.4 mm), or an area of 29.0 mm2. For the new design, the cost goal demanded a size goal of 153 by 168 mils (3.9 mm × 4.3 mm), or an area of 16.6 mm2. Several new techniques would be needed to hit this goal.
Moving to NMOS
Two significant advances arrived in the market just as the 6502 was being designed that provided to be significant cost reductions. The first was the move to depletion-load NMOS. The 6800 used an early NMOS process, enhancement mode, that required three supply voltages. One of the 6800's headlining features was an onboard voltage doubler that allowed a single +5 V supply be used for +5, −5 and +12 V internally, as opposed to other chips of the era like the Intel 8080 that required three separate supply pins. While this feature reduced the complexity of the power supply and pin layout, it still required separate power line to the various gates on the chip, driving up complexity and size. By moving to the new depletion-load design, a single +5 V supply was all that was needed, eliminating all of this complexity.
A further advantage was that depletion-load designs used less power while switching, thus running cooler and allowing higher operating speeds. Another practical offshoot is that the clock signal for earlier CPUs had to be strong enough to survive all the dissipation as it traveled through the circuits, which almost always required a separate external chip that could supply a powerful signal. With the reduced power requirements of depletion-load design, the clock could be moved onto the chip, simplifying the overall computer design. These changes greatly reduced complexity and the cost of implementing a complete system.
A wider change taking place in the industry was the introduction of projection masking. Previously, chips were patterned onto the surface of the wafer by placing a mask on the surface of the wafer and then shining a bright light on it. The masks often picked up tiny bits of dirt or photoresist as they were lifted off the chip, causing flaws in those locations on any subsequent masking. With complex designs like CPUs, 5 or 6 such masking steps would be used, and the chance that at least one of these steps would introduce a flaw was very high. In most cases, 90% of such designs were flawed, resulting in a 10% yield. The price of the working examples had to cover the production cost of the 90% that were thrown away.
In 1973, Perkin-Elmer introduced the Micralign system, which projected an image of the mask on the wafer instead of requiring direct contact. Masks no longer picked up dirt from the wafers and lasted on the order of 100,000 uses rather than 10. This eliminated step-to-step failures and the high flaw rates formerly seen on complex designs. Yields on CPUs immediately jumped from 10% to 60 or 70%. This meant the price of the CPU declined roughly the same amount and the microprocessor suddenly became a commodity device.
MOS Technology's existing fabrication lines were based on the older PMOS technology, they had not yet begun to work with NMOS when the team arrived. Paivinen promised to have an NMOS line up and running in time to begin the production of the new CPU. He delivered on the promise, the new line was ready by June 1975.
Design notes
Chuck Peddle, Rod Orgill, and Wil Mathys designed the initial architecture of the new processors. A September 1975 article in EDN magazine gives this summary of the design:
The MOS Technology 650X family represents a conscious attempt of eight former Motorola employees who worked on the development of the 6800 system to put out a part that would replace and outperform the 6800, yet undersell it. With the benefit of hindsight gained on the 6800 project, the MOS Technology team headed by Chuck Peddle, made the following architectural changes in the Motorola CPU…
The main change in terms of chip size was the elimination of the tri-state drivers from the address bus outputs. A three-state bus has states for "1", "0" and "high impedance". The last state is used to allow other devices to access the bus, and is typically used for multiprocessing, or more commonly in these roles, for direct memory access (DMA). While useful, this feature is very expensive in terms of on-chip circuitry. The 6502 simply removed this feature, in keeping with its design as an inexpensive controller being used for specific tasks and communicating with simple devices. Peddle suggested that anyone that actually required this style of access could implement it with a single 74158.
The next major difference was to simplify the registers. To start with, one of the two accumulators was removed. General-purpose registers like accumulators have to be accessed by many parts of the instruction decoder, and thus require significant amounts of wiring to move data to and from their storage. Two accumulators makes many coding tasks easier, but costs the chip design itself significant complexity. Further savings were made by reducing the stack register from 16 to 8 bits, meaning that the stack could only be 256 bytes long, which was enough for its intended role as a microcontroller.
The 16-bit IX index register was split in two, becoming X and Y. More importantly, the style of access changed. In the 6800, IX held a 16-bit address which was offset by an 8-bit number stored with the instruction, and added together. In the 6502 (and most other contemporary designs), the 16-bit base address was stored in the instruction, and the 8-bit X or Y was added to it.
Finally, the instruction set was simplified, freeing up room in the decoder and control logic. Of the original 72 instructions in the 6800, 56 were implemented. Among those removed were instructions that operated between the 6800's two accumulators, and several branch instructions inspired by the PDP-11.
The chip's high-level design had to be turned into drawings of transistors and interconnects. At MOS Technology, the "layout" was a very manual process done with color pencils and vellum paper. The layout consisted of thousands of polygon shapes on six different drawings; one for each layer of the fabrication process. Given the size limits, the entire chip design had to be constantly considered. Mensch and Paivinen worked on the instruction decoder while Mensch, Peddle and Orgill worked on the ALU and registers. A further advance, developed at a party, was a way to share some of the internal wiring to allow the ALU to be reduced in size.
In spite of their best efforts, the final design ended up being 5 mils too wide. The first 6502 chips were 168 by 183 mils (4.3 mm × 4.6 mm), for an area of 19.8 mm2. The original version of the processor had no rotate right (ROR) capability, so the instruction was omitted from the original documentation. The next iteration of the design shrank the chip and added the rotate right capability, and ROR was included in revised documentation.
Introducing the 6501 and 6502
MOS would introduce two microprocessors based on the same underlying design: the 6501 would plug into the same socket as the Motorola 6800, while the 6502 re-arranged the pinout to support an on-chip clock oscillator. Both would work with other support chips designed for the 6800. They would not run 6800 software because they had a different instruction set, different registers, and mostly different addressing modes. Rod Orgill was responsible for the 6501 design; he had assisted John Buchanan at Motorola on the 6800. Bill Mensch did the 6502; he was the designer of the 6820 Peripheral Interface Adapter (PIA) at Motorola. Harry Bawcom, Mike Janes and Sydney-Anne Holt helped with the layout.
MOS Technology's microprocessor introduction was different from the traditional months-long product launch. The first run of a new integrated circuit is normally used for internal testing and shared with select customers as "engineering samples". These chips often have a minor design defect or two that will be corrected before production begins. Chuck Peddle's goal was to sell the first run 6501 and 6502 chips to the attendees at the WESCON trade show in San Francisco beginning on September 16, 1975. Peddle was a very effective spokesman and the MOS Technology microprocessors were extensively covered in the trade press. One of the earliest was a full-page story on the MCS6501 and MCS6502 microprocessors in the July 24, 1975 issue of Electronics magazine. Stories also ran in EE Times (August 24, 1975), EDN (September 20, 1975), Electronic News (November 3, 1975), Byte (November 1975) and Microcomputer Digest (November 1975). Advertisements for the 6501 appeared in several publications the first week of August 1975. The 6501 would be for sale at Wescon for $20 each. In September 1975, the advertisements included both the 6501 and the 6502 microprocessors. The 6502 would cost only $25 (equivalent to $142 in 2023).
When MOS Technology arrived at Wescon, they found that exhibitors were not permitted to sell anything on the show floor. They rented the MacArthur Suite at the St. Francis Hotel and directed customers there to purchase the processors. At the suite, the processors were stored in large jars to imply that the chips were in production and readily available. The customers did not know the bottom half of each jar contained non-functional chips. The chips were $20 and $25 while the documentation package was an additional $10. Users were encouraged to make photocopies of the documents, an inexpensive way for MOS Technology to distribute product information. The preliminary data sheets listed just 55 instructions excluding the Rotate Right (ROR) instruction which was not supported on these early chips. The reviews in Byte and EDN noted the lack of the ROR instruction. The next revision of the layout fixed this problem and the May 1976 datasheet listed 56 instructions. Peddle wanted every interested engineer and hobbyist to have access to the chips and documentation, whereas other semiconductor companies only wanted to deal with "serious" customers. For example, Signetics was introducing the 2650 microprocessor and its advertisements asked readers to write for information on their company letterhead.
Motorola lawsuit
The 6501/6502 introduction in print and at Wescon was an enormous success. The downside was that the extensive press coverage got Motorola's attention. In October 1975, Motorola reduced the price of a single 6800 microprocessor from $175 to $69. The $300 system design kit was reduced to $150 and it now came with a printed circuit board. On November 3, 1975, Motorola sought an injunction in Federal Court to stop MOS Technology from making and selling microprocessor products. They also filed a lawsuit claiming patent infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets. Motorola claimed that seven former employees joined MOS Technology to create that company's microprocessor products.
Motorola was a billion-dollar company with a plausible case and expensive lawyers. On October 30, 1974, Motorola had filed numerous patent applications on the microprocessor family and was granted twenty-five patents. The first was in June 1976 and the second was to Bill Mensch on July 6, 1976, for the 6820 PIA chip layout. These patents covered the 6800 bus and how the peripheral chips interfaced with the microprocessor. Motorola began making transistors in 1950 and had a portfolio of semiconductor patents. Allen-Bradley decided not to fight this case and sold their interest in MOS Technology back to the founders. Four of the former Motorola engineers were named in the suit: Chuck Peddle, Will Mathys, Bill Mensch and Rod Orgill. All were named inventors in the 6800 patent applications. During the discovery process, Motorola found that one engineer, Mike Janes, had ignored Peddle's instructions and brought his 6800 design documents to MOS Technology. In March 1976, the now independent MOS Technology was running out of money and had to settle the case. They agreed to drop the 6501 processor, pay Motorola $200,000 and return the documents that Motorola contended were confidential. Both companies agreed to cross-license microprocessor patents. That May, Motorola dropped the price of a single 6800 microprocessor to $35. By November, Commodore had acquired MOS Technology.
Computers and games
With legal troubles behind them, MOS was still left with the problem of getting developers to try their processor, prompting Chuck Peddle to design the MDT-650 ("microcomputer development terminal") single-board computer. Another group inside the company designed the KIM-1, which was sold semi-complete and could be turned into a usable system with the addition of a 3rd party computer terminal and compact cassette drive. While it sold well to its intended market, the company found the KIM-1 also sold well to hobbyists and tinkerers. The related Rockwell AIM-65 control, training, and development system also did well. The software in the AIM 65 was based on that in the MDT. Another roughly similar product was the Synertek SYM-1.
One of the first "public" uses for the design was the Apple I microcomputer, introduced in 1976. The 6502 was next used in the Commodore PET and Apple II, both released in 1977. It was later used in the Atari 8-bit computers, Acorn Atom, BBC Micro, VIC-20 and other designs both for home computers and business, such as Ohio Scientific and Oric computers. The 6510, a direct successor of the 6502 with a digital I/O port and a tri-state address bus, was the CPU utilized in the best-selling Commodore 64 home computer.
Another important use of the 6500 family was in video games. The first to make use of the processor design was the 1977 Atari VCS, later renamed the Atari 2600. The VCS used a 6502 variant named the 6507, which had fewer pins, so it could address only 8 KB of memory. Millions of the Atari consoles would be sold, each with a MOS processor. Another significant use was by the Nintendo Entertainment System and Famicom. The 6502 used in the NES was a second source version by Ricoh, a partial system on a chip, that lacked the binary-coded decimal mode but added 22 memory-mapped registers and on-die hardware for sound generation, joypad reading, and sprite list DMA. Called 2A03 in NTSC consoles and 2A07 in PAL consoles (the difference being the clock frequency divider ratio and a lookup table for audio sample rates), this processor was produced exclusively for Nintendo.
6502 or variants were used in all of Commodore's floppy disk drives for all of their 8-bit computers, from the PET line through the Commodore 128D, including the Commodore 64. 8-inch PET drives had two 6502 processors. Atari used the same 6507 used in the Atari VCS for its 810 and 1050 disk drives used for all of their 8-bit computer line, from the 400/800 through the XEGS.
In the 1980s, a popular electronics magazine Elektor/Elektuur used the processor in its microprocessor development board Junior Computer.
The CMOS successor to the 6502, the WDC 65C02, also saw use in home computers and video game consoles. Apple used it in the Apple II line starting with the Apple IIc and later variants of the Apple IIe and also offered a kit to upgrade older IIe systems with the new processor. The Hudson Soft HuC6280 chip used in the TurboGrafx-16 was based on a 65C02 core. The Atari Lynx used a custom chip named "Mikey" designed by Epyx which included a VLSI VL65NC02 licensed cell. The G65SC12 by GTE Microcircuits (renamed California Micro Devices) variant was used in the BBC Master. Some models of the BBC Master also included an additional G65SC102 co-processor.
Home computers and video game consoles using the 6502 or its variants
Technical description
The 6502 is a little-endian 8-bit processor with a 16-bit address bus. The original versions were fabricated using an 8 µm process technology chip with a die size of 3.9 mm × 4.3 mm (153 by 168 mils), for a total area of 16.6 mm2.
The internal logic runs at the same speed as the external clock rate. It featured a simple pipeline; on each cycle, the processor fetches one byte from memory and processes another. This means that any single instruction can take as few as two cycles to complete, depending on the number of operands that instruction uses. For comparison, the Zilog Z80 required two cycles to fetch memory, and the miminum instruction time was four cycles. Thus, despite the lower clock speeds compared to competing designs, typically in the neighborhood of 1 to 2 MHz, the 6502's performance was competitive with CPUs using significantly faster clocks. This is partly due to a simple state machine implemented by combinational (clockless) logic to a greater extent than in many other designs; the two-phase clock (supplying two synchronizations per cycle) could thereby control the machine cycle directly.
This design also led to one useful design note of the 6502, and the 6800 before it. Because the chip only accessed memory during a certain part of the clock cycle, and this duration was indicated by the φ2-low clock-out pin, other chips in a system could access memory during those times when the 6502 was off the bus. This was sometimes known as "hidden access". This technique was widely used by computer systems; they would use memory capable of access at 2 MHz, and then run the CPU at 1 MHz. This guaranteed that the CPU and video hardware could interleave their accesses, with a total performance matching that of the memory device. Because this access was every other cycle, there was no need to signal the CPU to avoid using the bus, making this sort of access easy to implement without any bus logic.
When faster memories became available in the 1980s, newer machines could use this same technique while running at higher clock rates, the BBC Micro used newer RAM that allowed its CPU to run at 2 MHz while still using the same bus sharing techniques.
Like most simple CPUs of the era, the dynamic NMOS 6502 chip is not sequenced by microcode but decoded directly using a dedicated PLA. The decoder occupied about 15% of the chip area. This compares to later microcode-based designs like the Motorola 68000, where the microcode ROM and decoder engine represented about a third of the gates in the system.
Registers
Like its precursor, the 6800, the 6502 has very few registers. They include
A = 8-bit accumulator register
P = 7-bit status register
n = negative
v = overflow
b = break (only in stack values, not in hardware)
d = decimal
i = interrupt disable
z = zero
c = carry
PC = 16-bit program counter
S = 8-bit stack pointer
X = 8-bit index register
Y = 8-bit index register
This compares to a contemporaneous competitor, the Intel 8080, which likewise has one 8-bit accumulator and a 16-bit program counter, but has six more general-purpose 8-bit registers (which can be combined into three 16-bit pointers) and a larger 16-bit stack pointer.
In order to make up somewhat for the lack of registers, the 6502 includes a zero page addressing mode that uses one address byte in the instruction instead of the two needed to address the full 64 KB of memory. This provides fast access to the first 256 bytes of RAM by using shorter instructions. For instance, an instruction to add a value from memory to the value in the accumulator would normally be three bytes, one for the instruction and two for the 16-bit address. Using the zero page reduces this to an 8-byte address, reducing the total instruction length to two bytes, and thus improving instruction performance.
The stack address space is hardwired to memory page $01, i.e. the address range $0100–$01FF (256–511). Software access to the stack is done via four implied addressing mode instructions, whose functions are to push or pop (pull) the accumulator or the processor status register. The same stack is also used for subroutine calls via the JSR (jump to subroutine) and RTS (return from subroutine) instructions and for interrupt handling.
Addressing
The chip uses the index and stack registers effectively with several addressing modes, including a fast "direct page" or "zero page" mode, similar to that found on the PDP-8, that accesses memory locations from addresses 0 to 255 with a single 8-bit address (saving the cycle normally required to fetch the high-order byte of the address)—code for the 6502 uses the zero page much as code for other processors would use registers. On some 6502-based microcomputers with an operating system, the operating system uses most of zero page, leaving only a handful of locations for the user.
Addressing modes also include implied (1-byte instructions); absolute (3 bytes); indexed absolute (3 bytes); indexed zero-page (2 bytes); relative (2 bytes); accumulator (1); indirect,x and indirect,y (2); and immediate (2). Absolute mode is a general-purpose mode. Branch instructions use a signed 8-bit offset relative to the instruction after the branch; the numerical range −128..127 therefore translates to 128 bytes backward and 127 bytes forward from the instruction following the branch (which is 126 bytes backward and 129 bytes forward from the start of the branch instruction). Accumulator mode operates on the accumulator register and does not need any operand data. Immediate mode uses an 8-bit literal operand.
Indirect addressing
The indirect modes are useful for array processing and other looping. With the 5/6 cycle "(indirect),y" mode, the 8-bit Y register is added to a 16-bit base address read from zero page, which is located by a single byte following the opcode. The Y register is therefore an index register in the sense that it is used to hold an actual index (as opposed to the X register in the 6800, where a base address was directly stored and to which an immediate offset could be added). Incrementing the index register to walk the array byte-wise takes only two additional cycles. With the less frequently used "(indirect,x)" mode the effective address for the operation is found at the zero page address formed by adding the second byte of the instruction to the contents of the X register. Using the indexed modes, the zero page effectively acts as a set of up to 128 additional (though very slow) address registers.
The 6502 is capable of performing addition and subtraction in binary or binary-coded decimal. Placing the CPU into BCD mode with the SED (set D flag) instruction results in decimal arithmetic, in which $99 + $01 would result in $00 and the carry (C) flag being set. In binary mode (CLD, clear D flag), the same operation would result in $9A and the carry flag being cleared. Other than Atari BASIC, BCD mode was seldom used in home-computer applications.
See the Hello world! article for a simple but characteristic example of 6502 assembly language.
Instructions and opcodes
6502 instruction operation codes (opcodes) are 8 bits long and have the general form AAABBBCC, where AAA and CC define the opcode, and BBB defines the addressing mode. For example, the ORA instruction performs a bitwise OR on the bits in the accumulator with another value. The instruction opcode is of the form 000bbb01, where bbb may be 010 for an immediate mode value (constant), 001 for zero-page fixed address, 011 for an absolute address, and so on. This pattern is not universal, as there are exceptions, but it allows opcode values to be easily converted to assembly mnemonics for the majority of instructions, handling the edge cases with special-purpose code.
Of the 256 possible opcodes available using an 8-bit pattern, the original 6502 uses 151 of them, organized into 56 instructions with (possibly) multiple addressing modes. Depending on the instruction and addressing mode, the opcode may require zero, one or two additional bytes for operands. Hence 6502 machine instructions vary in length from one to three bytes. The operand is stored in the 6502's customary little-endian format.
The 65C816, the 16-bit CMOS descendant of the 6502, also supports 24-bit addressing, which results in instructions being assembled with three-byte operands, also arranged in little-endian format.
The remaining 105 opcodes are undefined. In the original design, instructions where the low-order 4 bits (nibble) were 3, 7, B or F were not used, providing room for future expansion. Likewise, the $2x column had only a single entry, LDX #constant. The remaining 25 empty slots were distributed. Some of the empty slots were used in the 65C02 to provide both new instructions and variations on existing ones with new addressing modes. The $Fx instructions were initially left free to allow 3rd-party vendors to add their own instructions, but later versions of the 65C02 standardized a set of bit manipulation instructions developed by Rockwell Semiconductor.
Assembly language
A 6502 assembly language statement consists of a three-character instruction mnemonic, followed by any operands. Instructions that do not take a separate operand but target a single register based on the addressing mode combine the target register in the instruction mnemonic, so the assembler uses INX as opposed to INC X to increment the X register.
Instruction table
Example code
The following 6502 assembly language source code is for a subroutine named TOLOWER, which copies a null-terminated character string from one location to another, converting upper-case letter characters to lower-case letters. The string being copied is the "source", and the string into which the converted source is stored is the "destination".
Detailed behavior
The processor's non-maskable interrupt (NMI) input is edge sensitive, which means that the interrupt is triggered by the falling edge of the signal rather than its level. The implication of this feature is that a wired-OR interrupt circuit is not readily supported. However, this also prevents nested NMI interrupts from occurring until the hardware makes the NMI input inactive again, often under control of the NMI interrupt handler.
The simultaneous assertion of the NMI and IRQ (maskable) hardware interrupt lines causes IRQ to be ignored. However, if the IRQ line remains asserted after the servicing of the NMI, the processor will immediately respond to IRQ, as IRQ is level sensitive. Thus a sort of built-in interrupt priority was established in the 6502 design.
The B flag is set by the 6502's periodically sampling its NMI edge detector's output and its IRQ input. The IRQ signal being driven low is only recognized though if IRQs are allowed by the I flag. If in this way a NMI request or (maskable) IRQ is detected the B flag is set to zero and causes the processor to execute the BRK instruction next instead of executing the next instruction based on the program counter.
The BRK instruction then pushes the processor status onto the stack, with the B flag bit set to zero. At the end of its execution the BRK instruction resets the B flag's value to one. This is the only way the B flag can be modified. If an instruction other than the BRK instruction pushes the B flag onto the stack as part of the processor status the B flag always has the value one.
A high-to-low transition on the SO input pin will set the processor's overflow status bit. This can be used for fast response to external hardware. For example, a high-speed polling device driver can poll the hardware once in only three cycles using a Branch-on-oVerflow-Clear (BVC) instruction that branches to itself until overflow is set by an SO falling transition. The Commodore 1541 and other Commodore floppy disk drives use this technique to detect when the serializer is ready to transfer another byte of disk data. The system hardware and software design must ensure that an SO will not occur during arithmetic processing and disrupt calculations.
Variations and derivatives
The 6502 was the most prolific variant of the 65xx series family from MOS Technology.
The 6501 and 6502 have 40-pin DIP packages; the 6503, 6504, 6505, and 6507 are 28-pin DIP versions, for reduced chip and circuit board cost. In all of the 28-pin versions, the pin count is reduced by leaving off some of the high-order address pins and various combinations of function pins, making those functions unavailable.
Typically, the 12 pins omitted to reduce the pin count from 40 to 28 are the three not connected (NC) pins, one of the two Vss pins, one of the clock pins, the SYNC pin, the set overflow (SO) pin, either the maskable interrupt or the non-maskable interrupt (NMI), and the four most-significant address lines (A12–A15). The omission of four address pins reduces the external addressability to 4 KB (from the 64 KB of the 6502), though the internal PC register and all effective address calculations remain 16-bit.
The 6507 omits both interrupt pins in order to include address line A12, providing 8 KB of external addressability but no interrupt capability. The 6507 was used in the popular Atari 2600 video game console, the design of which divides the 8 KB memory space in half, allocating the lower half to the console's internal RAM and peripherals, and the upper half to the Game Cartridge, so Atari 2600 cartridges have a 4 KB address limit (and the same capacity limit unless the cartridge contains bank switching circuitry).
One popular 6502-based computer, the Commodore 64, used a modified 6502 CPU, the 6510. Unlike the 6503–6505 and 6507, the 6510 is a 40-pin chip that adds internal hardware: a 6-bit parallel I/O port mapped to addresses 0000 and 0001. The 6508 is another chip that, like the 6510, adds internal hardware: 256 bytes of SRAM and an 8-bit I/O port similar to those featured by the 6510. Though these chips do not have reduced pin counts compared to the 6502, they need new pins for the added parallel I/O port. In this case, no address lines are among the removed pins.
16-bit derivatives
The Western Design Center designed and currently produces the WDC 65C816S processor, a 16-bit, static-core successor to the 65C02. The W65C816S is a newer variant of the 65C816, which is the core of the Apple IIGS computer and is the basis of the Ricoh 5A22 processor that powers the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The W65C816S incorporates minor improvements over the 65C816 that make the newer chip not an exact hardware-compatible replacement for the earlier one. Among these improvements was conversion to a static core, which makes it possible to stop the clock in either phase without the registers losing data. Available through electronics distributors, as of March 2020, the W65C816S is officially rated for 14 MHz operation.
The Western Design Center also designed and produced the 65C802, which was a 65C816 core with a 64-kilobyte address space in a 65(C)02 pin-compatible package. The 65C802 could be retrofitted to a 6502 board and would function as a 65C02 on power-up, operating in "emulation mode." As with the 65C816, a two-instruction sequence would switch the 65C802 to "native mode" operation, exposing its 16-bit accumulator and index registers, and other 65C816 features. The 65C802 was not widely used and production ended.
Bugs and quirks
The 6502 had several bugs and quirks, which had to be accounted for when programming it:
The earliest revisions of the 6502, such as those shipped with some KIM-1 computers, did not have a ROR (rotate right memory or accumulator) instruction. The operation of ROR in these chips is effectively an ASL (arithmetic shift left) instruction that does not affect the carry bit in the status register. MOS left the instruction out of chip documentation entirely, promising that ROR would appear on 6502 chips starting in 1976. The vast majority of 6502 chips in existence today do not exhibit this quirk.
The NMOS 6502 family has a variety of undocumented instructions, which vary from one chip manufacturer to another. The 6502 instruction decoding is implemented in a hardwired logic array (similar to a programmable logic array) that is only defined for 151 of the 256 available opcodes. The remaining 105 trigger strange and occasionally hard-to-predict actions, such as crashing the processor, performing two valid instructions consecutively, performing strange mixtures of two instructions, or simply doing nothing at all. Eastern House Software developed the "Trap65", a device that plugged between the processor and its socket to convert (trap) unimplemented opcodes into BRK (software interrupt) instructions. Some programmers utilized this feature to extend the 6502 instruction set by providing functionality for the unimplemented opcodes with specially written software intercepted at the BRK instruction's 0xFFFE vector. All of the undefined opcodes have been replaced with NOP instructions in the 65C02, an enhanced CMOS version of the 6502, although with varying byte sizes and execution times. In the 65C802/65C816, all 256 opcodes perform defined operations.
The 6502's memory indirect jump instruction, JMP (<address>), is partly broken. If <address> is hex xxFF (i.e., any word ending in FF), the processor will not jump to the address stored in xxFF and xxFF+1 as expected, but rather the one defined by xxFF and xx00 (for example, JMP ($10FF) would jump to the address stored in 10FF and 1000, instead of the one stored in 10FF and 1100). This defect continued through the entire NMOS line, but was corrected in the CMOS derivatives.
The NMOS 6502 indexed addressing across page boundaries will do an extra read of an invalid address. This characteristic may cause random issues by accessing hardware that acts on a read, such as clearing timer or IRQ flags, sending an I/O handshake, etc. This defect continued through the entire NMOS line, but was corrected in the CMOS derivatives, in which the processor does an extra read of the last instruction byte.
The 6502 read–modify–write instructions perform one read and two write cycles. First, the unmodified data that was read is written back, and then the modified data is written. This characteristic may cause issues by twice accessing hardware that acts on a write. This anomaly continued through the full NMOS line, but was fixed in the CMOS derivatives, in which the processor does two reads and one write cycle. Defensive programming practice will generally avoid this problem by not executing read/modify/write instructions on hardware registers.
The N (result negative), V (sign bit overflow) and Z (result zero) status flags are generally meaningless when performing arithmetic operations while the processor is in BCD mode, as these flags reflect the binary, not BCD, result. This limitation was removed in the CMOS derivatives. Therefore, this feature may be used to distinguish a CMOS processor from an NMOS version.
If the 6502 happens to be in BCD mode when a hardware interrupt occurs, it will not revert to binary mode. This characteristic could result in obscure bugs in the interrupt service routine if it fails to clear BCD mode before performing any arithmetic operations. For example, the Commodore 64's KERNAL did not correctly handle this processor characteristic, requiring that IRQs be disabled or re-vectored during BCD math operations. This issue was addressed in the CMOS derivatives also.
The 6502 instruction set includes BRK (opcode $00), which is technically a software interrupt (similar in spirit to the SWI mnemonic of the Motorola 6800 and ARM processors). BRK is most often used to interrupt program execution and start a machine language monitor for testing and debugging during software development. BRK could also be used to route program execution using a simple jump table (analogous to the manner in which the Intel 8086 and derivatives handle software interrupts by number). However, if a hardware interrupt occurs when the processor is fetching a BRK instruction, the NMOS version of the processor will fail to execute BRK and instead proceed as if only a hardware interrupt had occurred. This fault was corrected in the CMOS implementation of the processor.
When executing JSR (jump to subroutine) and RTS (return from subroutine) instructions, the return address pushed to the stack by JSR is that of the last byte of the JSR operand (that is, the most significant byte of the subroutine address), rather than the address of the following instruction. This is because the actual copy (from program counter to stack and then conversely) takes place before the automatic increment of the program counter that occurs at the end of every instruction. This characteristic would go unnoticed unless the code examined the return address in order to retrieve parameters in the code stream (a 6502 programming idiom documented in the ProDOS 8 Technical Reference Manual). It remains a characteristic of 6502 derivatives to this day.
The read access of the CPU can be delayed by setting the RDY pin to low temporarily. However, during write access, which can take up to three clock cycles for a BRK instruction, the CPU will stop only in the next read cycle. This quirk was corrected in the CMOS derivatives and also in the 6510 and its variants.
See also
List of 6502 assemblers
MOS Technology 6502-based home computers
Transistor count
Apple II accelerators
cc65 – 6502 macro assembler and C compiler
Notes
References
Citations
Bibliography
Peddle, Chuck (12 June 2014). "Oral History of Chuck Peddle" (Interview). Interviewed by Doug Fairbairn and Stephen Diamond. Archived from the original on 2021-11-18.
Bagnall, Brian (2010). Commodore, a company on the edge (2nd ed.). Winnipeg, Manitoba: Variant Press. ISBN 978-0-9738649-6-0.
Bennett, Thomas; Ekiss, John; Lattin, William (Bill); Lavell, Jeff (28 March 2008). "Motorola 6800 Oral History Panel" (PDF) (Interview). Interviewed by David Laws. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-04-13. Retrieved 2021-01-30.
Cushman, Robert H. (September 20, 1975). "2-1/2 Generation μP's -$10 Parts That Perform Like Low-End Mini's" (PDF). EDN. 20 (17). Boston: Cahners Publishing: 36–42. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 April 2016.
Interview with William Mensch Stanford and the Silicon Valley Project, October 9, 1995. Transcript
Further reading
Datasheets and manuals
6500 Series Datasheet; MOS Technology; 12 pages; 1976.
6500 Series Hardware Manual Archived 2011-09-13 at the Wayback Machine; 2nd Ed; MOS Technology; 182 pages; 1976.
6500 Series Programming Manual Archived 2011-09-13 at the Wayback Machine; 2nd Ed; MOS Technology; 262 pages; 1976.
Books
6502 Applications Book; 1st Ed; Rodnay Zaks; Sybex; 281 pages; 1979; ISBN 978-0895880154. (archive)
6502 Assembly Language Programming; 2nd Ed; Lance Leventhal; Osborne/McGraw-Hill; 650 pages; 1986; ISBN 978-0078812163. (archive)
6502 Assembly Language Subroutines; 1st Ed; Lance Leventhal and Winthrop Saville; Osborne/McGraw-Hill; 550 pages; 1982; ISBN 978-0931988592. (archive)
6502 Games; 1st Ed; Rodnay Zaks; Sybex; 292 pages; 1980; ISBN 978-0895880222. (archive)
6502 User's Manual; 1st Ed; Joseph Carr; Reston; 288 pages; 1984; ISBN 978-0835970020. (archive)
Advanced 6502 Programming; 1st Ed; Rodnay Zaks; John Wiley & Sons; 292 pages; 1982; ISBN 978-0895880895. (archive)
Machine Language For Beginners – Personal Computer Machine Language Programming For Atari, VIC, Apple, C64, and PET Computers; 1st Ed; Richard Mansfield; Compute! Publications; 350 pages; 1983; ISBN 978-0942386110. (archive) Archived 2016-08-10 at the Wayback Machine
Programming the 6502; 4th Ed; Rodnay Zaks; Sybex; 408 pages; 1983; ISBN 978-0895881359. (archive)
Programming the 65816 – including the 6502, 65C02, 65802; 1st Ed; David Eyes and Ron Lichty; Prentice Hall; 636 pages; 1986; ISBN 978-0893037895. (archive)
Microprocessors and Assembly Language; Turkish; 7th Ed; Nurettin Topaloglu; Seckin Yayinevi; 328 pages; 2021; ISBN 978-975-02-6663-8.
Reference cards
6502 Microprocessor Instant Reference Card; James Lewis; Micro Logic; 2 pages; 1980. (archive) Archived 2019-09-04 at the Wayback Machine
External links
6502.org – the 6502 microprocessor resource Archived 2020-11-29 at the Wayback Machine – repository
The Rise of MOS Technology & The 6502 – Commodore archive
650x information Archived 2020-03-11 at the Wayback Machine – Concise description, photos of MOS and second source chips; at cpu-collection.de
mdfs.net – 6502 instruction set
Clever, Eric. "6502 – the first RISC µP". Archived from the original on 24 May 2012.
Harrod, Dennette A. (October 1980). "6502 Gets Microprogrammable Instructions". Byte. Vol. 5, no. 10. McGraw Hill. pp. 282–285. ISSN 0360-5280. Archived from the original on 2006-05-25. Retrieved 2006-05-14.
Simulators, emulators
Online 6502 compatible assembler and emulator, written in JavaScript Archived 2011-02-08 at the Wayback Machine
List of 6502 software emulators Archived 2020-09-19 at the Wayback Machine – Zophar's Domain
6502 simulator for Windows Archived 2004-12-04 at the Wayback Machine – Atari Gaming Headquarters
Visual Transistor-level Simulation of 6502 CPU Archived 2011-03-14 at the Wayback Machine
MCL65 6502 CPU core, C code on GitHub – MicroCore Labs
Boards
Grant's 7/8-chip 6502 board Archived 2022-06-06 at the Wayback Machine
6502 microprocessor training board Archived 2019-07-14 at the Wayback Machine
Build your own KIM-1 training board Archived 2019-07-14 at the Wayback Machine – see KIM-1
6502 home computer on GitHub
PE6502 single board computer Archived 2020-05-03 at the Wayback Machine
BE6502 single board computer on GitHub – based on Ben Eater videos
FPGA
cpu6502_tc 6502 CPU core – VHDL source code – OpenCores
ag_6502 6502 CPU core – Verilog source code Archived 2020-08-04 at the Wayback Machine – OpenCores
M65C02 65C02 CPU core – Verilog source code Archived 2020-08-04 at the Wayback Machine – OpenCores
MCL65 6502 CPU core on GitHub – Verilog – MicroCore Labs |
List_of_Apple_products | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apple_products | [
590
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apple_products"
] | This timeline of Apple products is a list of all computers, phones, tablets, wearables, and other innovation made by Apple Inc. This list is ordered by the release date of the products. Macintosh Performa models were often physically identical to other models, in which case they are omitted in favor of the identical twin.
Detailed timeline
1970s
1980s
1980-1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990s
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000s
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010s
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020s
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
Chart
See also
Macintosh
List of Mac models grouped by CPU type
List of iPhone models
List of iPad models
Timeline of the Apple II family
List of Mac models
References
External links
Specifications, Apple Computer, Inc.
Mac Systems: Apple, EveryMac.com
Glen Sanford, Apple History, apple-history.com
Dan Knight, Computer Profiles, LowEndMac, Cobweb Publishing, Inc.
Steven Weyhrich, Apple II History, apple2history.org
Pictorial Timeline |
Apple_II_(original) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II_(original) | [
590
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II_(original)"
] | The Apple II (stylized as apple ][) is a personal computer released by Apple Inc. in June 1977. It was one of the first successful mass-produced microcomputer products and is widely regarded as one of the most important personal computers of all time due to its role in popularizing home computing and influencing later software development.
The Apple II was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak. The system is based around the 8-bit MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor. Jerry Manock designed the foam-molded plastic case, Rod Holt developed the switching power supply, while Steve Jobs was not involved in the design of the computer. It was introduced by Jobs and Wozniak at the 1977 West Coast Computer Faire, and marks Apple's first launch of a computer aimed at a consumer market—branded toward American households rather than businessmen or computer hobbyists.
Byte magazine referred to the Apple II, Commodore PET 2001, and TRS-80 as the "1977 Trinity". As the Apple II had the defining feature of being able to display color graphics, the Apple logo was redesigned to have a spectrum of colors.
The Apple II was the first in a series of computers collectively referred to by the Apple II name. It was followed by the Apple II+, Apple IIe, Apple IIc, Apple IIc Plus, and the 16-bit Apple IIGS—all of which remained compatible. Production of the last available model, the Apple IIe, ceased in November 1993.
History
By 1976, Steve Jobs had convinced product designer Jerry Manock (who had formerly worked at Hewlett Packard designing calculators) to create the "shell" for the Apple II—a smooth case inspired by kitchen appliances that concealed the internal mechanics. The earliest Apple II computers were assembled in Silicon Valley and later in Texas; printed circuit boards were manufactured in Ireland and Singapore. The first computers went on sale on June 10, 1977 with an MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor running at 1.023 MHz (2⁄7 of the NTSC color subcarrier), two game paddles (bundled until 1980, when they were found to violate FCC regulations), 4 KiB of RAM, an audio cassette interface for loading programs and storing data, and the Integer BASIC programming language built into ROMs. The video controller displayed 24 lines by 40 columns of monochrome, uppercase-only text on the screen (the original character set matches ASCII characters 20h to 5Fh), with NTSC composite video output suitable for display on a video monitor or on a regular TV set (by way of a separate RF modulator).
The original retail price of the computer with 4 KiB of RAM was US$1,298 (equivalent to $6,530 in 2023) and with the maximum 48 KiB of RAM, it was US$2,638 (equivalent to $13,260 in 2023) To reflect the computer's color graphics capability, the Apple logo on the casing has rainbow stripes, which remained a part of Apple's corporate logo until early 1998. Perhaps most significantly, the Apple II was a catalyst for personal computers across many industries; it opened the doors to software marketed at consumers.
Certain aspects of the system's design were influenced by Atari, Inc.'s arcade video game Breakout (1976), which was designed by Wozniak, who said: "A lot of features of the Apple II went in because I had designed Breakout for Atari. I had designed it in hardware. I wanted to write it in software now". This included his design of color graphics circuitry, the addition of game paddle support and sound, and graphics commands in Integer BASIC, with which he wrote Brick Out, a software clone of his own hardware game. Wozniak said in 1984: "Basically, all the game features were put in just so I could show off the game I was familiar with—Breakout—at the Homebrew Computer Club. It was the most satisfying day of my life [when] I demonstrated Breakout—totally written in BASIC. It seemed like a huge step to me. After designing hardware arcade games, I knew that being able to program them in BASIC was going to change the world."
Overview
In the May 1977 issue of Byte, Steve Wozniak published a detailed description of his design; the article began, "To me, a personal computer should be small, reliable, convenient to use, and inexpensive."
The Apple II used peculiar engineering shortcuts to save hardware and reduce costs, such as:
Taking advantage of the way the 6502 processor accesses memory: it occurs only on alternate phases of the clock cycle; video generation circuitry memory access on the otherwise unused phase avoids memory contention issues and interruptions of the video stream;
This arrangement simultaneously eliminated the need for a separate refresh circuit for DRAM chips, as video transfer accessed each row of dynamic memory within the timeout period. In addition, it did not require separate RAM chips for video RAM, while the PET and TRS-80 had SRAM chips for video;
Apart from the 6502 CPU and a few support chips, the vast majority of the semiconductors used were 74LS low-power Schottky chips;
Rather than use a complex analog-to-digital circuit to read the outputs of the game controller, Wozniak used a simple timer circuit, built around a quad 555 timer IC called a 558, whose period is proportional to the resistance of the game controller, and he used a software loop to measure the timers;
A single 14.31818 MHz master oscillator (fM) was divided by various ratios to produce all other required frequencies, including microprocessor clock signals (fM/14), video transfer counters, and color-burst samples (fM/4). A solderable jumper on the main board allowed to switch between European 50 Hz and USA 60 Hz video.
The text and graphics screens have a complex arrangement. For instance, the scanlines were not stored in sequential areas of memory. This complexity was reportedly due to Wozniak's realization that the method would allow for the refresh of dynamic RAM as a side effect (as described above). This method had no cost overhead to have software calculate or look up the address of the required scanline and avoided the need for significant extra hardware. Similarly, in high-resolution graphics mode, color is determined by pixel position and thus can be implemented in software, saving Wozniak the chips needed to convert bit patterns to colors. This also allowed to draw text with subpixel rendering, since orange and blue pixels appear half a pixel-width farther to the right on the screen than green and purple pixels.
The Apple II at first used data cassette storage, like most other microcomputers of the time. In 1978, the company introduced an external 5+1⁄4-inch floppy disk drive, called Disk II (stylized as Disk ][), attached through a controller card that plugs into one of the computer's expansion slots (usually slot 6). The Disk II interface, created by Wozniak, is regarded as an engineering masterpiece for its economy of electronic components.
The approach taken in the Disk II controller is typical of Wozniak's designs. With a few small-scale logic chips and a cheap PROM (programmable read-only memory), he created a functional floppy disk interface at a fraction of the component cost of standard circuit configurations.
Case design
The first production Apple II computers had hand-molded cases; these had visible bubbles and other lumps in them from the imperfect plastic molding process, which was soon switched to machine molding. In addition, the initial case design had no vent openings, causing high heat buildup from the PCB and resulting in the plastic softening and sagging. Apple added vent holes to the case within three months of production; customers with the original case could have them replaced at no charge.
PCB revisions
The Apple II's printed circuit board (PCB) underwent several revisions, as Steve Wozniak made modifications to it. The earliest version was known as Revision 0, and the first 6,000 units shipped used it. Later revisions added a color killer circuit to prevent color fringing when the computer was in text mode, as well as modifications to improve the reliability of cassette I/O. Revision 0 Apple IIs powered up in an undefined mode and had garbage on-screen, requiring the user to press Reset. This was eliminated in later board revisions. Revision 0 Apple IIs could display only four colors in hi-res mode, but Wozniak was able to increase this to six hi-res colors on later board revisions. (Technically it was eight, but only six were visible.)
The PCB had three RAM banks for a total of 24 RAM chips. Original Apple IIs had jumper switches to adjust RAM size, and RAM configurations could be 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 32, 36, or 48 KiB. The three smallest memory configurations used 4kx1 DRAMs, with larger ones using 16kx1 DRAMs, or mix of 4-kilobyte and 16-kilobyte banks (the chips in any one bank have to be the same size). The early Apple II+ models retained this feature, but after a drop in DRAM prices, Apple redesigned the circuit boards without the jumpers, so that only 16kx1 chips were supported. A few months later, they started shipping all machines with a full 48 KiB complement of DRAM.
Unlike most machines, all integrated circuits on the Apple II PCB were socketed; although this cost more to manufacture and created the possibility of loose chips causing a system malfunction, it was considered preferable to make servicing and replacement of bad chips easier.
The Apple II PCB lacks any means of generating an interrupt request, although expansion cards may generate one. Program code had to stop everything to perform any I/O task; like many of the computer's other idiosyncrasies, this was due to cost reasons and Steve Wozniak assuming interrupts were not needed for gaming or using the computer as a teaching tool.
Display and graphics
Color on the Apple II series uses a quirk of the NTSC television signal standard, which made color display relatively easy and inexpensive to implement. The original NTSC television signal specification was black and white. Color was added later by adding a 3.58-megahertz subcarrier signal that was partially ignored by black-and-white TV sets. Color is encoded based on the phase of this signal in relation to a reference color burst signal. The result is that the position, size, and intensity of a series of pulses define color information. These pulses can translate into pixels on the computer screen, with the possibility of exploiting composite artifact colors.
The Apple II display provides two pixels per subcarrier cycle. When the color burst reference signal is turned on and the computer attached to a color display, it can display green by showing one alternating pattern of pixels, magenta with an opposite pattern of alternating pixels, and white by placing two pixels next to each other. Blue and orange are available by tweaking the pixel offset by half a pixel-width in relation to the color-burst signal. The high-resolution display offers more colors by compressing more (and narrower) pixels into each subcarrier cycle.
The coarse, low-resolution graphics display mode works differently, as it can output a pattern of dots per pixel to offer more color options. These patterns are stored in the character generator ROM, and replace the text character bit patterns when the computer is switched to low-res graphics mode. The text mode and low-res graphics mode use the same memory region and the same circuitry is used for both.
A single HGR page occupied 8 KiB of RAM; in practice this meant that the user had to have at least 12 KiB of total RAM to use HGR mode and 20 KiB to use two pages. Early Apple II games from the 1977–79 period often ran only in text or low-resolution mode in order to support users with small memory configurations; HGR not being near universally supported by games until 1980.
Sound
Rather than a dedicated sound-synthesis chip, the Apple II contains a toggle circuit that can only emit a click through a built-in speaker or a line-out jack. More complex sounds, such as music or audio samples, are generated by software manually toggling the speaker at an appropriate frequency. This technique requires careful and precise timing, rendering it difficult to display moving graphics while sound is playing. Third party expansion cards were later released which addressed this problem.
A similar technique is used for cassette storage: cassette output works the same as the speaker, and input uses a simple zero-crossing detector as a 1-bit audio digitizer. Routines in machine ROM encode and decode data in frequency-shift keying for the cassette.
Programming languages
Initially, the Apple II was shipped with Integer BASIC encoded in the motherboard ROM chips. Written by Wozniak, the interpreter enabled users to write software applications without needing to purchase additional development utilities. Written with game programmers and hobbyists in mind, the language only supported the encoding of numbers in 16-bit integer format. Since it only supported integers between -32768 and +32767 (signed 16-bit integer), it was less suitable to business software, and Apple soon received complaints from customers. Because Steve Wozniak was busy developing the Disk II hardware, he did not have time to modify Integer BASIC for floating point support. Apple instead licensed Microsoft's 6502 BASIC to create Applesoft BASIC.
Disk users normally purchased a so-called Language Card, which had Applesoft in ROM, and was located below the Integer BASIC ROM in system memory. The user could switch between either BASIC by typing FP or INT in BASIC prompt. Apple also offered a different version of Applesoft for cassette users, which occupied low memory, and was started by using the LOAD command in Integer BASIC.
As shipped, Apple II incorporated a machine code monitor with commands for displaying and altering the computer's RAM, either one byte at a time, or in blocks of 256 bytes at once. This enabled programmers to write and debug machine code programs without further development software. The computer powers on into the monitor ROM, displaying a * prompt. From there, Ctrl+B enters BASIC, or a machine language program can be loaded from cassette. Disk software can be booted with Ctrl+P followed by 6, referring to Slot 6 which normally contained the Disk II controller.
A 6502 assembler was soon offered on disk, and later the UCSD compiler and operating system for the Pascal language were made available. The Pascal system requires a 16 KiB RAM card to be installed in the language card position (expansion slot 0) in addition to the full 48 KiB of motherboard memory.
Manual
The first 1,000 or so Apple IIs shipped in 1977 with a 68-page mimeographed "Apple II Mini Manual", hand-bound with brass paper fasteners. This was the basis for the Apple II Reference Manual, which became known as the Red Book for its red cover, published in January 1978. All existing customers who sent in their warranty cards were sent free copies of the Red Book. The Apple II Reference Manual contained the complete schematic of the entire computer's circuitry, and a complete source listing of the "Monitor" ROM firmware that served as the machine's BIOS.
An Apple II manual signed by Steve Jobs in 1980 with the inscription "Julian, your generation is the first to grow up with computers. Go change the world." sold at auction for $787,484 in 2021.
Operating system
The original Apple II came with an 8 KiB ROM containing a BASIC variant called Integer BASIC as well as a resident monitor called the Apple System Monitor. Initially, only cassette tape was available for storage, which was considered too slow and unreliable for business use. In late 1977, Apple began to develop the Disk II floppy disk drive and required an operating system to utilize it. The existing standard at the time was CP/M, but due to incompatibility with the 6502 processor and a perceived clunkiness, Apple contracted Shepardson Microsystems for $13,000 to write Apple DOS. At Shepardson, Paul Laughton developed the software in just 35 days, a remarkably short deadline, even for the time. The Disk II and Apple DOS were released in late 1978. The final and most popular version of this software was Apple DOS 3.3.
Apple DOS was superseded by ProDOS, which supported a hierarchical filesystem and larger storage devices. With an optional third-party Z80-based expansion card, the Apple II could boot into the CP/M operating system and run WordStar, dBase II, and other CP/M software.
Apple released Applesoft BASIC in 1977, a more advanced variant of the language which users could run instead of Integer BASIC for more capabilities, such as the ability to use floating point numbers.
Some commercial Apple II software came on self-booting disks and did not use standard DOS disk formats. This discouraged the copying or modifying of the software on the disks, and improved loading speed.
Third-party devices and applications
When the Apple II initially shipped in June 1977, no expansion cards were available for the slots. This meant that the user did not have any way of connecting a modem or a printer. One popular hack involved connecting a teletype machine to the cassette output.
Wozniak's open-architecture design and Apple II's multiple expansion slots permitted a wide variety of third-party devices, including peripheral cards, such as serial controllers, display controllers, memory boards, hard disks, networking components, and real-time clocks. There were plug-in expansion cards—such as the Z-80 SoftCard—that permitted Apple II to use the Z80 processor and run programs for the CP/M operating system, including the dBase II database and the WordStar word processor. The Z80 card also allowed the connection to a modem, and thereby to any networks that a user might have access to. In the early days, such networks were scarce. But they expanded significantly with the development of bulletin board systems in later years. There was also a third-party 6809 card that allowed OS-9 Level One to be run. Third-party sound cards greatly improved audio capabilities, allowing simple music synthesis and text-to-speech functions. Apple II accelerator cards doubled or quadrupled the computer's speed.
Early Apple IIs were often sold with a Sup'R'Mod, which allowed the composite video signal to be viewed in a television.
The Soviet Union radio-electronics industry designed Apple II-compatible computer Agat. Roughly 12,000 Agat 7 and 9 models were produced and they were widely used in Soviet schools. Agat 9 computers could run "Apple II" compatibility and native modes. "Apple II" mode allowed to run a wider variety of (presumably pirated) Apple II software, but at the expense of less RAM. Because of that Soviet developers preferred native mode over "Apple II" compatibility mode.
In 1978, Bob Bishop of Apple Computer, Inc. programmed 9 Apple II computers to run the gameboard on the TV game show Tic-Tac-Dough;. Each Apple was responsible for displaying various contents for each box of the gameboard (category, X, O, bonus game numbers and amounts, TIC, TAC or Dragon, as well displaying custom messages and an active screensaver), and in turn controlled by an Altair 8800 system. It was the first game show to use computerized graphics.
Reception
Jesse Adams Stein wrote, "As the first company to release a 'consumer appliance' micro-computer, Apple Computer offers us a clear view of this shift from a machine to an appliance." But the company also had "to negotiate the attitudes of its potential buyers, bearing in mind social anxieties about the uptake of new technologies in multiple contexts. The office, the home and the 'office-in-the-home' were implicated in these changing spheres of gender stereotypes and technological development." After seeing a crude, wire-wrapped prototype demonstrated by Wozniak and Steve Jobs in November 1976, Byte predicted in April 1977, that the Apple II "may be the first product to fully qualify as the 'appliance computer' ... a completed system which is purchased off the retail shelf, taken home, plugged in and used". The computer's color graphics capability especially impressed the magazine. The magazine published a favorable review of the computer in March 1978, concluding: "For the user that wants color graphics, the Apple II is the only practical choice available in the 'appliance' computer class."
Personal Computer World in August 1978 also cited the color capability as a strength, stating that "the prime reason that anyone buys an Apple II must surely be for the colour graphics". While mentioning the "oddity" of the artifact colors that produced output "that is not always what one wishes to do", it noted that "no-one has colour graphics like this at this sort of price". The magazine praised the sophisticated monitor software, user expandability, and comprehensive documentation. The author concluded that "the Apple II is a very promising machine" which "would be even more of a temptation were its price slightly lower ... for the moment, colour is an Apple II".
Although it sold well from the launch, the initial market was to hobbyists and computer enthusiasts. Sales expanded exponentially into the business and professional market, when the spreadsheet program VisiCalc was launched in mid-1979. VisiCalc is credited as the defining killer app in the microcomputer industry.
By the end of 1977 Apple had sales of $775,000 for the fiscal year, which included sales of the Apple I. This puts Apple clearly behind the others of the "holy trinity" of the TRS-80 and Commodore PET, even though the TRS-80 was launched last of the three. However, during the first five years of operations, revenues doubled about every four months. Between September 1977 and September 1980, annual sales grew from $775,000 to $118 million. During this period the sole products of the company were the Apple II and its peripherals, accessories, and software.
In 2006, PC World wrote that the Apple II was the greatest PC of all time.
References
External links
Additional documentation in Bitsavers PDF Document archive
Apple II on Old-computers.com
Online Apple II Resource
Apple2History.org
How the Apple ][ Works! – on YouTube by the 8-Bit Guy |
2018%E2%80%9319_Brisbane_Roar_FC_season | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%9319_Brisbane_Roar_FC_season | [
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] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%9319_Brisbane_Roar_FC_season"
] | The 2018–19 Brisbane Roar FC season was the club's 14th season participating in the A-League and in the FFA Cup for the fifth time.
Players
Squad information
Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.
Transfers
Transfers in
Transfers out
From youth squad
Contract extensions
Technical staff
Squad statistics
Appearances and goals
† = Scholarship or NPL/NYL-listed player
Pre-season and friendlies
Win
Draw
Loss
Friendlies
Competitions
Overall
A-League
League table
Results summary
Results by round
Matches
Win
Draw
Loss
FFA Cup
References
External links
Official Website |
Adam_Taggart | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Taggart | [
591
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Taggart"
] | Adam Jake Taggart (born 2 June 1993) is an Australian soccer player who plays as a striker for Perth Glory in the A-League Men competition. Taggart has also represented the Australia national U20 team, Australia national U23 team and Australia national team.
Taggart has won two golden boot awards in his playing career which is the A-League Golden Boot award, scoring 16 goals in 25 appearances for Newcastle Jets during the 2013–14 A-League season and K League Golden Boot award, scoring 20 goals in 33 appearances for Suwon Samsung Bluewings during the 2019 K League 1 season.
Club career
Perth Glory
Taggart made his senior debut in a 1–1 draw with Melbourne Heart in January 2011. He scored his first goal in a loss to Gold Coast United, 75 minutes into the game.
Newcastle Jets
On 2 March 2012, Taggart signed a two-year contract with A-League club Newcastle Jets. In November 2013, Taggart scored his first professional career hat-trick against Melbourne Heart with all three goals scored from outside the 18 yard box. Newcastle would go on and win the match 3–1. After a strong start to the season, Adam had a dry patch with a lack of goals around Christmas, before scoring a brace against the Wanderers to salvage a 2–2 draw. He became a focal point of the Newcastle Jets attack, heading the lineup alongside Emile Heskey, Joel Griffiths and Michael Bridges. In 2014, Taggart became the second Newcastle player to receive the golden boot of the A-League with 16 goals, after Joel Griffiths in 2008. He was also awarded the A-League Young Player of the Season Award at the same ceremony.
Fulham
On 24 June 2014, Fulham signed Taggart from Newcastle Jets for an undisclosed fee on a three-year contract but injury delayed his involvement with the first team by a number of months.
Loan to Dundee United
On 1 September 2015, Taggart signed for Scottish Premiership club Dundee United on a loan deal until January 2016.
Return to Perth Glory
On 26 January 2016, Taggart returned to Perth Glory again on a permanent deal. However, he was ineligible to play for Perth in the 2015–16 A-League under FIFA regulations preventing players from registering for more than two clubs in a single season. In the first game of the 2016–17 season, Taggart started in the number 11 role, scoring twice in the first half. After leading at half time 3–0, the Glory squandered the lead and the final result was a 3–3 draw.
Brisbane Roar
On 1 May 2018, Brisbane Roar announced the signing of Taggart as his contract at Perth Glory ended. He signed a contract with Brisbane contracting his services to them for the next two years. On 14 February 2019, Brisbane Roar announced Taggart had come to terms with an Asian club for his transfer.
Suwon Samsung Bluewings
On 18 February 2019, Taggart was sold to Korean giants, Suwon Samsung Bluewings for $150,000. Taggart made his debut on 1 March 2019 in a 2–1 defeat against Ulsan Hyundai where he came on as a substitute at half time scoring in the 63' minute. On 14 August 2019, he was named K League Player of the Month for July. Taggart was almost unplayable in July, scoring seven goals in just six league appearances to shoot to the top of the K-League scoring charts. On 17 August 2019, he scored his first K-League hat-trick against Gangwon FC. Taggart would finish the 2019 K-League 1 season as the league top goal scorer in his debut season and also winning the 2019 Korean FA Cup with the club.
On 26 August 2020, Taggart scored his second hat-trick for the club against FC Seoul in 3–1 win.
Cerezo Osaka
On 20 December 2020, Taggart was transferred to J1 League club Cerezo Osaka.
Third spell at Perth Glory
On 15 December 2022, Perth Glory announced that Taggart would be returning to the club on a three-and-a-half-year deal.
On 11 October 2023, Taggart was named as co-captain along with Mark Beevers ahead of the 2023–24 A-League season. His fine form throughout the season earned him a returned to the national team after a two years hiatus.
At the conclusion of the 2023–24 A-League season, Taggart became the first player in the A-League to win the golden boot whilst playing for a team who finished last.
International career
Taggart represented Australia at U-20 level at the 2012 AFC U-19 Championship in United Arab Emirates and at the 2013 FIFA U-20 World Cup in Turkey.
Senior
Taggart made his debut for Australia in late 2012, in the second preliminary round of the 2013 EAFF East Asian Cup against Hong Kong, coming off the bench in a narrow win. He scored his first two international goals days later in a win over Chinese Taipei.
In 2013, Taggart played in the 2013 EAFF East Asian Cup, scoring a goal in a loss to China.
Taggart was a part of the Socceroos squad for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, and played in matches against Netherlands and Spain.
In March 2024, Taggart returned to the national team after two years earning the called up with his stunning form for Perth Glory scoring 15 goals in 19 appearances in the 2023–24 A-League season.
Career statistics
Club
As of 17 May 2024
International
As of 11 June 2024
Scores and results list Australia's goal tally first.
Honours
Suwon Samsung Bluewings
Korean FA Cup: 2019
Individual
A-League Golden Boot: 2013–14, 2023–24
A-League Young Player of the Year: 2013–14
PFA A-League Team of the Season: 2013–14, 2023–24
K League 1 Golden Boot: 2019
K League 1 Best XI: 2019
Perth Glory A-League Men's Most Glorious Player: 2023–24
Perth Glory A-League Men's Players' Player of the Season: 2023–24
Perth Glory A-League Men's Members' Player of the Season: 2023–24
Perth Glory A-League Men's Goal of the Year: 2017–18, 2022–23
A-Leagues All Star: 2024
References
External links
Aussie Footballers Tabain to Tathem
Adam Taggart at Soccerway
Adam Taggart at J.League (archive) (in Japanese)
Adam Taggart – K League stats at kleague.com (in Korean) |
Yellowstone_National_Park | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_National_Park | [
592
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_National_Park"
] | Yellowstone National Park is a national park of the United States located in the northwest corner of Wyoming and extending into Montana and Idaho. It was established by the 42nd U.S. Congress with the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872. Yellowstone was the first national park in the U.S. and is also widely held to be the first national park in the world. The park is known for its wildlife and its many geothermal features, especially the Old Faithful geyser, one of its most popular. While it represents many types of biomes, the subalpine forest is the most abundant. It is part of the South Central Rockies forests ecoregion.
While Native Americans have lived in the Yellowstone region for at least 11,000 years, aside from visits by mountain men during the early-to-mid-19th century, organized exploration did not begin until the late 1860s. Management and control of the park originally fell under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of the Interior, the first Secretary of the Interior to supervise the park being Columbus Delano. However, the U.S. Army was eventually commissioned to oversee the management of Yellowstone for 30 years between 1886 and 1916. In 1917, the administration of the park was transferred to the National Park Service, which had been created the previous year. Hundreds of structures have been built and are protected for their architectural and historical significance, and researchers have examined more than a thousand indigenous archaeological sites.
Yellowstone National Park spans an area of 3,468.4 sq mi (8,983 km2), with lakes, canyons, rivers, and mountain ranges. Yellowstone Lake is one of the largest high-elevation lakes in North America and is centered over the Yellowstone Caldera, the largest super volcano on the continent. The caldera is considered a dormant volcano. It has erupted with tremendous force several times in the last two million years. Well over half of the world's geysers and hydrothermal features are in Yellowstone, fueled by this ongoing volcanism. Lava flows and rocks from volcanic eruptions cover most of the land area of Yellowstone. The park is the centerpiece of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the largest remaining nearly intact ecosystem in the Earth's northern temperate zone. In 1978, Yellowstone was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Hundreds of species of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians have been documented, including several that are either endangered or threatened. The vast forests and grasslands also include unique species of plants. Yellowstone Park is the largest and most famous megafauna location in the contiguous United States. Grizzly bears, cougars, wolves, and free-ranging herds of bison and elk live in this park. The Yellowstone Park bison herd is the oldest and largest public bison herd in the United States. Forest fires occur in the park each year; in the large forest fires of 1988, nearly one-third of the park was burnt. Yellowstone has numerous recreational opportunities, including hiking, camping, boating, fishing, and sightseeing. Paved roads provide close access to the major geothermal areas as well as some of the lakes and waterfalls. During the winter, visitors often access the park by way of guided tours that use either snow coaches or snowmobiles.
History
The park contains the headwaters of the Yellowstone River, from which it takes its historical name. Near the end of the 18th century, French trappers named the river Roche Jaune, which is probably a translation of the Hidatsa name Mi tsi a-da-zi ("Yellow Stone River"). Later, American trappers rendered the French name in English as "Yellow Stone". Although it is commonly believed that the river was named for the yellow rocks seen in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Native American name source is unclear.
The human history of the park began at least 11,000 years ago when Native Americans began to hunt and fish in the region. During the construction of the post office in Gardiner, Montana, in the 1950s, an obsidian point of Clovis origin was found that dated from approximately 11,000 years ago. These Paleo-Indians, of the Clovis culture, used the significant amounts of obsidian found in the park to make cutting tools and weapons. Arrowheads made of Yellowstone obsidian have been found as far away as the Mississippi Valley, indicating that a regular obsidian trade existed between local tribes and tribes farther east. When the Lewis and Clark Expedition entered present-day Montana in 1805 they encountered the Nez Perce, Crow, and Shoshone tribes who described to them the Yellowstone region to the south, but they chose not to investigate.
In 1806, John Colter, a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, left to join a group of fur trappers. After splitting up with the other trappers in 1807, Colter passed through a portion of what later became the park, during the winter of 1807–1808. He observed at least one geothermal area in the northeastern section of the park, near Tower Fall. After surviving wounds he suffered in a battle with members of the Crow and Blackfoot tribes in 1809, Colter described a place of "fire and brimstone" that most people dismissed as delirium; the supposedly mystical place was nicknamed "Colter's Hell". Over the next 40 years, numerous reports from mountain men and trappers told of boiling mud, steaming rivers, and petrified trees, yet most of these reports were believed at the time to be a myth.
After an 1856 exploration, mountain man Jim Bridger (also believed to be the first or second European American to have seen the Great Salt Lake) reported observing boiling springs, spouting water, and a mountain of glass and yellow rock. These reports were largely ignored because Bridger was a known "spinner of yarns". In 1859, a U.S. Army Surveyor named Captain William F. Raynolds embarked on a two-year survey of the southern central Rockies. After wintering in Wyoming, in May 1860, Raynolds and his party—which included geologist Ferdinand V. Hayden and guide Jim Bridger—attempted to cross the Continental Divide over Two Ocean Plateau from the Wind River drainage in northwest Wyoming. Heavy spring snows prevented their passage but had they been able to traverse the divide, the party would have been the first organized survey to enter the Yellowstone region. The American Civil War hampered further organized explorations until the late 1860s.
The first detailed expedition to the Yellowstone area was the Cook–Folsom–Peterson Expedition of 1869, which consisted of three privately funded explorers. The Folsom party followed the Yellowstone River to Yellowstone Lake. The members of the Folsom party kept a journal and based on the information it reported, a party of Montana residents organized the Washburn–Langford–Doane Expedition in 1870. It was headed by the surveyor-general of Montana Henry Washburn, and included Nathaniel P. Langford (who later became known as "National Park" Langford) and a U.S. Army detachment commanded by Lt. Gustavus Doane. The expedition spent about a month exploring the region, collecting specimens, and naming sites of interest.
A Montana writer and lawyer named Cornelius Hedges, who had been a member of the Washburn expedition, proposed that the region should be set aside and protected as a national park; he wrote detailed articles about his observations for the Helena Herald newspaper between 1870 and 1871. Hedges essentially restated comments made in October 1865 by acting Montana Territorial Governor Thomas Francis Meagher, who had previously commented that the region should be protected. Others made similar suggestions. An 1871 letter to Ferdinand V. Hayden from Jay Cooke, a businessman who wanted to bring tourists to the region, encouraged him to mention it in his official report of the survey. Cooke wrote that his friend, Congressman William D. Kelley had also suggested "Congress pass a bill reserving the Great Geyser Basin as a public park forever".
Park creation
In 1871, eleven years after his failed first effort, Ferdinand V. Hayden was finally able to explore the region. With government sponsorship, he returned to the region with a second, larger expedition, the Hayden Geological Survey of 1871. He compiled a comprehensive report, including large-format photographs by William Henry Jackson and paintings by Thomas Moran. The report helped to convince the U.S. Congress to withdraw this region from public auction. On March 1, 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed The Act of Dedication law that created Yellowstone National Park.
Hayden, while not the only person to have thought of creating a park in the region, was its first and most enthusiastic advocate. He believed in "setting aside the area as a pleasure ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people" and warned that there were those who would come and "make merchandise of these beautiful specimens". Worrying the area could face the same fate as Niagara Falls, he concluded the site should "be as free as the air or Water". In his report to the Committee on Public Lands, he concluded that if the bill failed to become law, "the vandals who are now waiting to enter into this wonder-land, will in a single season despoil, beyond recovery, these remarkable curiosities, which have required all the cunning skill of nature thousands of years to prepare".
Hayden and his 1871 party recognized Yellowstone as a unique place that should be available for further research. He also was encouraged to preserve it for others to see and experience it as well. In 1873, Congress authorized and funded a survey to find a wagon route to the park from the south which was completed by the Jones Expedition of 1873. Eventually the railroads and, sometime after that, the automobile would make that possible. The park was not set aside strictly for ecological purposes. Hayden imagined something akin to the scenic resorts and baths in England, Germany, and Switzerland.
THE ACT OF DEDICATION
AN ACT to set apart a certain tract of land lying near the headwaters of the Yellowstone River as a public park. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the tract of land in the Territories of Montana and Wyoming ... is hereby reserved and withdrawn from settlement, occupancy, or sale under the laws of the United States, and dedicated and set apart as a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people; and all persons who shall locate, or settle upon, or occupy the same or any part thereof, except as hereinafter provided, shall be considered trespassers and removed there from ...
Approved March 1, 1872.
Signed by:
ULYSSES S. GRANT, President of the United States.
SCHUYLER COLFAX, Vice-President of the United States and President of the Senate.
JAMES G. BLAINE, Speaker of the House.
There was considerable local opposition to Yellowstone National Park during its early years. Some of the locals feared that the regional economy would be unable to thrive if there remained strict federal prohibitions against resource development or settlement within park boundaries and local entrepreneurs advocated reducing the size of the park so that mining, hunting, and logging activities could be developed. To this end, numerous bills were introduced into Congress by Montana representatives who sought to remove the federal land-use restrictions.
After the park's official formation, Nathaniel Langford was appointed as the park's first superintendent in 1872 by the Secretary of Interior Columbus Delano, the first overseer and controller of the park. Langford served for five years but was denied a salary, funding, and staff. Langford lacked the means to improve the land or properly protect the park, and without formal policy or regulations, he had few legal methods to enforce such protection. This left Yellowstone vulnerable to poachers, vandals, and others seeking to raid its resources. He addressed the practical problems park administrators faced in the 1872 Report to the Secretary of the Interior and correctly predicted that Yellowstone would become a major international attraction deserving the continuing stewardship of the government. In 1874, both Langford and Delano advocated the creation of a federal agency to protect the vast park, but Congress refused. In 1875, Colonel William Ludlow, who had previously explored areas of Montana under the command of George Armstrong Custer, was assigned to organize and lead an expedition to Montana and the newly established Yellowstone Park. Observations about the lawlessness and exploitation of park resources were included in Ludlow's Report of a Reconnaissance to the Yellowstone National Park. The report included letters and attachments by other expedition members, including naturalist and mineralogist George Bird Grinnell.
Grinnell documented the poaching of buffalo, deer, elk, and antelope for hides: "It is estimated that during the winter of 1874–1875, not less than 3,000 buffalo and mule deer suffer even more severely than the elk, and the antelope nearly as much."
As a result, Langford was forced to step down in 1877.
Having traveled through Yellowstone and witnessed land management problems, Philetus Norris volunteered for the position following Langford's exit. Congress finally saw fit to implement a salary for the position, as well as to provide minimal funding to operate the park. Norris used these funds to expand access to the park, building numerous crude roads and facilities.
In 1880, Harry Yount was appointed as a gamekeeper to control poaching and vandalism in the park. Yount had previously spent decades exploring the mountain country of present-day Wyoming, including the Grand Tetons, after joining F V. Hayden's Geological Survey in 1873. Yount is the first national park ranger, and Yount's Peak, at the head of the Yellowstone River, was named in his honor. These measures still proved to be insufficient in protecting the park, as neither Norris nor the three superintendents who followed, were given sufficient manpower or resources.
During the 1870s and 1880s, Native American tribes were effectively excluded from the national park. Under a half-dozen tribes had made seasonal use of the Yellowstone area- the only year-round residents were small bands of Eastern Shoshone known as "Sheepeaters". They left the area under the assurances of a treaty negotiated in 1868, under which the Sheepeaters ceded their lands but retained the right to hunt in Yellowstone. The United States never ratified the treaty and refused to recognize the claims of the Sheepeaters or any other tribe that had used Yellowstone.
The Nez Perce band associated with Chief Joseph, numbering about 750 people, passed through Yellowstone National Park in thirteen days in late August 1877. They were being pursued by the U.S. Army and entered the national park about two weeks after the Battle of the Big Hole. Some of the Nez Perce were friendly to the tourists and other people they encountered in the park; some were not. Nine park visitors were briefly taken captive. Despite Joseph and other chiefs ordering that no one should be harmed, at least two people were killed and several wounded. One of the areas where encounters occurred was in Lower Geyser Basin and east along a branch of the Firehole River to Mary Mountain and beyond. That stream was named Nez Perce Creek in memory of their trail through the area. A group of Bannocks entered the park in 1878, alarming park Superintendent Philetus Norris. In the aftermath of the Sheepeater Indian War of 1879, Norris built a fort to prevent Native Americans from entering the national park.
The Northern Pacific Railroad built a train station in Livingston, Montana, as a gateway terminus to connect to the northern entrance area in 1883, which helped to increase visitation from 300 in 1872 to 5,000 in 1883. The spur line was completed in fall of that year from Livingston to Cinnabar for stage connection to Mammoth, then in 1902 extended to Gardiner station, where passengers also switched to stagecoach. Visitors in these early years faced poor and dusty roads plus limited services, with automobiles first admitted in phases beginning only in 1915. By 1901 a Chicago, Burlington & Quincy connection opened via Cody and in 1908 a Union Pacific Railroad connection to West Yellowstone, followed by a 1927 Milwaukee Road connection to Gallatin Gateway near Bozeman, also motorcoaching visitors via West Yellowstone. Rail visitation fell off considerably by World War II and ceased regular service in favor of the automobile around the 1960s, though special excursions occasionally continued into the early 1980s.
Ongoing poaching and destruction of natural resources continued unabated until the U.S. Army arrived at Mammoth Hot Springs in 1886 and built Camp Sheridan. Over the next 22 years, as the army constructed permanent structures, Camp Sheridan was renamed Fort Yellowstone. On May 7, 1894, the Boone and Crockett Club, acting through the personality of George G. Vest, Arnold Hague, William Hallett Phillips, W. A. Wadsworth, Archibald Rogers, Theodore Roosevelt, and George Bird Grinnell were successful in carrying through the Park Protection Act, which saved the park. The Lacey Act of 1900 provided legal support for the officials prosecuting poachers. With the funding and manpower necessary to keep a diligent watch, the army developed its own policies and regulations that permitted public access while protecting park wildlife and natural resources. When the National Park Service was created in 1916, many of the management principles developed by the army were adopted by the new agency. The army turned control over to the National Park Service on October 31, 1918.
In 1898, the naturalist John Muir described the park as follows: However orderly your excursions or aimless, again and again amid the calmest, stillest scenery you will be brought to a standstill hushed and awe-stricken before phenomena wholly new to you. Boiling springs and huge deep pools of purest green and azure water, thousands of them, are plashing and heaving in these high, cool mountains as if a fierce furnace fire were burning beneath each one of them; and a hundred geysers, white torrents of boiling water and steam, like inverted waterfalls, are ever and anon rushing up out of the hot, black underworld.
Automobiles and further development
By 1915, 1,000 automobiles per year were entering the park, resulting in conflicts with horses and horse-drawn transportation. Horse travel on roads was eventually prohibited.
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a New Deal relief agency for young men, played a major role between 1933 and 1942 in developing Yellowstone facilities. CCC projects included reforestation, campground development of many of the park's trails and campgrounds, trail construction, fire hazard reduction, and fire-fighting work. The CCC built the majority of the early visitor centers, campgrounds, and the current system of park roads.
During World War II, tourist travel fell sharply, staffing was cut, and many facilities fell into disrepair. By the 1950s, visitation increased tremendously in Yellowstone and other national parks. To accommodate the increased visitation, park officials implemented Mission 66, an effort to modernize and expand park service facilities. Planned to be completed by 1966, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the National Park Service, Mission 66 construction diverged from the traditional log cabin style with design features of a modern style. During the late 1980s, most construction styles in Yellowstone reverted to the more traditional designs. After the enormous forest fires of 1988 damaged much of Grant Village, structures there were rebuilt in the traditional style. The visitor center at Canyon Village, which opened in 2006, incorporates a more traditional design as well.
The 1959 Hebgen Lake earthquake just west of Yellowstone at Hebgen Lake damaged roads and some structures in the park. In the northwest section of the park, new geysers were found, and many existing hot springs became turbid. It was the most powerful earthquake to hit the region in recorded history.
In 1963, after several years of public controversy regarding the forced reduction of the elk population in Yellowstone, the United States Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall appointed an advisory board to collect scientific data to inform future wildlife management of the national parks. In a paper known as the Leopold Report, the committee observed that culling programs at other national parks had been ineffective, and recommended the management of Yellowstone's elk population.
The wildfires during the summer of 1988 were the largest in the history of the park. Approximately 793,880 acres (3,210 km2; 1,240 sq mi) or 36% of the parkland was impacted by the fires, leading to a systematic re-evaluation of fire management policies. The fire season of 1988 was considered normal until a combination of drought and heat by mid-July contributed to an extreme fire danger. On "Black Saturday", August 20, 1988, strong winds expanded the fires rapidly, and more than 150,000 acres (610 km2; 230 sq mi) burned.
On October 1, 2013, Yellowstone National Park closed due to the 2013 United States federal government shutdown.
Research and recognition
The expansive cultural history of the park has been documented by the 1,000 archeological sites that have been discovered. The park has 1,106 historic structures and features, and of these Obsidian Cliff and five buildings have been designated National Historic Landmarks. Yellowstone was designated an International Biosphere Reserve on October 26, 1976, and a UN World Heritage Site on September 8, 1978. The park was placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger from 1995 to 2003 due to the effects of tourism, infection of wildlife, and issues with invasive species. In 2010, Yellowstone National Park was honored with its own quarter under the America the Beautiful Quarters Program.
Justin Farrell explores three moral sensibilities that motivated activists in dealing with Yellowstone. First came the utilitarian vision of maximum exploitation of natural resources, a characteristic of developers in the late 19th century. Second was the spiritual vision of nature inspired by Romanticism and the transcendentalists in the mid-19th century. The twentieth century saw the biocentric moral vision that focuses on the health of the ecosystem as theorized by Aldo Leopold, which led to the expansion of federally protected areas and the surrounding ecosystems.
The Heritage and Research Center is located at Gardiner, Montana, near the north entrance to the park. The center is home to the Yellowstone National Park's museum collection, archives, research library, historian, archeology lab, and herbarium. The Yellowstone National Park Archives maintain collections of historical records of Yellowstone and the National Park Service. The collection includes the administrative records of Yellowstone, as well as resource management records, records from major projects, and donated manuscripts and personal papers. The archives are affiliated with the National Archives and Records Administration.
Geography
Yellowstone National Park occupies a roughly square parcel of volcanic complex that jogs slightly beyond the northwestern corner of Wyoming. Approximately 96 percent of the total land area of Yellowstone National Park is located within the state of Wyoming. Another three percent is within Montana, with the remaining one percent in Idaho. Montana's portion of Yellowstone contains multiple trails, facilities and swimming holes, while the Idaho portion of the park is completely undeveloped. The irregular eastern boundary of the national park follows the height of land along the Absaroka Range.
The park is 63 miles (101 km) north to south, and 54 miles (87 km) west to east by air. Yellowstone is 2,219,789 acres (8,983 km2; 3,468 sq mi) in area, larger than either of the states of Rhode Island or Delaware. Rivers and lakes cover five percent of the land area, with the largest water body being Yellowstone Lake at 87,040 acres (352 km2; 136 sq mi). Yellowstone Lake is up to 400 feet (120 m) deep and has 110 miles (180 km) of shoreline. At an elevation of 7,733 feet (2,357 m) above sea level, Yellowstone Lake is the largest high-elevation lake in North America. Forests comprise 80 percent of the land area of the park; most of the rest is grassland.
The Continental Divide of North America runs diagonally through the southwestern part of the park. The divide is a topographic feature that separates the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean water drainages. About one-third of the park lies on the west side of the divide. The origins of the Yellowstone and Snake Rivers are near each other but on opposite sides of the divide. As a result, the waters of the Snake River flow to the Pacific Ocean, while those of the Yellowstone find their way to the Gulf of Mexico.
The park sits on the Yellowstone Plateau, at an average elevation of 8,000 feet (2,400 m) above sea level. The plateau is bounded on nearly all sides by mountain ranges of the Middle Rocky Mountains, which range from 9,000 to 11,000 feet (2,700 to 3,400 m) in elevation. The highest point in the park is atop Eagle Peak (11,358 feet or 3,462 metres) and the lowest is along Reese Creek (5,282 feet or 1,610 metres). Nearby mountain ranges include the Gallatin Range to the northwest, the Beartooth Mountains in the north, the Absaroka Range to the east, the Teton Range to the south, and the Madison Range to the west. The most prominent summit on the Yellowstone Plateau is Mount Washburn at 10,243 feet (3,122 m).
Yellowstone National Park has one of the world's largest petrified forests, trees which were long ago buried by ash and soil and transformed from wood to mineral materials. This ash and other volcanic debris are believed to have come from the park area itself as the central part of Yellowstone is the massive caldera of a supervolcano. The park contains 290 waterfalls of at least 15 feet (4.6 m), the highest being the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River at 308 feet (94 m).
Three deep canyons are located in the park, cut through the volcanic tuff of the Yellowstone Plateau by rivers over the last 640,000 years. The Lewis River flows through Lewis Canyon in the south, and the Yellowstone River has carved two colorful canyons, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and the Black Canyon of the Yellowstone in its journey north.
Geology
Volcanism
Yellowstone is at the northeastern end of the Snake River Plain, a great bow-shaped arc through the mountains that extends roughly 400 miles (640 km) from the park to the Idaho-Oregon border.
The volcanism of Yellowstone is believed to be linked to the somewhat older volcanism of the Snake River Plain. Yellowstone is thus the active part of a hotspot that has moved northeast over time. The origin of this hotspot volcanism is disputed. One theory holds that a mantle plume has caused the Yellowstone hotspot to migrate northeast, while another theory explains migrating hotspot volcanism as the result of the fragmentation and dynamics of the subducted Farallon Plate in Earth's interior.
The Yellowstone Caldera is the largest volcanic system in North America, and worldwide it is only rivaled by the Lake Toba Caldera on Sumatra. It has been termed a "supervolcano" because the caldera was formed by exceptionally large explosive eruptions. The magma chamber that lies under Yellowstone is estimated to be a single connected chamber, about 37 miles (60 km) long, 18 miles (29 km) wide, and 3 to 7 miles (4.8 to 11.3 km) deep. The current caldera was created by a cataclysmic eruption that occurred 640,000 years ago, which released more than 240 cu mi (1,000 km3) of ash, rock and pyroclastic materials. This eruption was more than 1,000 times larger than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. It produced a caldera nearly 5⁄8 mi (1.0 km) deep and 45 by 28 miles (72 by 45 km) in area and deposited the Lava Creek Tuff, a welded tuff geologic formation. The most violent known eruption, which occurred 2.1 million years ago, ejected 588 cu mi (2,450 km3) of volcanic material and created the rock formation known as the Huckleberry Ridge Tuff and the Island Park Caldera. A smaller eruption ejected 67 cu mi (280 km3) of material 1.3 million years ago, forming the Henry's Fork Caldera and depositing the Mesa Falls Tuff.
Each of the three climactic eruptions released vast amounts of ash that blanketed much of central North America, falling many hundreds of miles away. The amount of ash and gases released into the atmosphere probably caused significant impacts on world weather patterns and led to the extinction of some species, primarily in North America.
A subsequent caldera-forming eruption occurred about 160,000 years ago. It formed the relatively small caldera that contains the West Thumb of Yellowstone Lake. Since the last supereruption, a series of smaller eruptive cycles between 640,000 and 70,000 years ago, has nearly filled in the Yellowstone Caldera with 80 different eruptions of rhyolitic lavas such as those that can be seen at Obsidian Cliffs and basaltic lavas which can be viewed at Sheepeater Cliff. Lava strata are most easily seen at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, where the Yellowstone River continues to carve into the ancient lava flows. The canyon is a classic V-shaped valley, indicative of river-type erosion rather than erosion caused by glaciation.
Each eruption is part of an eruptive cycle that climaxes with the partial collapse of the roof of the volcano's partially emptied magma chamber. This creates a collapsed depression, called a caldera, and releases vast amounts of volcanic material, usually through fissures that ring the caldera. The time between the last three cataclysmic eruptions in the Yellowstone area has ranged from 600,000 to 800,000 years; however, the small number of such climactic eruptions cannot be used to make an accurate prediction for future volcanic events.
Geysers and the hydrothermal system
The most famous geyser in the park, and perhaps the world, is Old Faithful geyser, located in Upper Geyser Basin. Castle Geyser, Lion Geyser, Beehive Geyser, Grand Geyser (the world's tallest predictable geyser), Giant Geyser (the world's most voluminous geyser), Riverside Geyser and numerous other geysers are in the same basin. The park contains the tallest active geyser in the world—Steamboat Geyser in the Norris Geyser Basin. A study that was completed in 2011 found that at least 1,283 geysers have erupted in Yellowstone. Of these, an average of 465 are active in a given year. Yellowstone contains at least 10,000 geothermal features altogether, including geysers, hot springs, mudpots, and fumaroles. Over half of the world's geysers and hydrothermal features are concentrated in Yellowstone.
In May 2001, the U.S. Geological Survey, Yellowstone National Park, and the University of Utah created the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO), a partnership for long-term monitoring of the geological processes of the Yellowstone Plateau volcanic field, for disseminating information concerning the potential hazards of this geologically active region.
In 2003, changes at the Norris Geyser Basin resulted in the temporary closure of some trails in the basin. New fumaroles were observed, and several geysers showed enhanced activity and increasing water temperatures. Several geysers became so hot that they were transformed into purely steaming features; the water had become superheated and they could no longer erupt normally. This coincided with the release of reports of a multiple year United States Geological Survey research project which mapped the bottom of Yellowstone Lake and identified a structural dome that had uplifted at some time in the past. Research indicated that these uplifts posed no immediate threat of a volcanic eruption, since they may have developed long ago, and there had been no temperature increase found near the uplifts. Most recently, in July 2024, a hydrothermal explosion occurred in Biscuit Basin.
On March 10, 2004, a biologist discovered 5 dead bison which apparently had inhaled toxic geothermal gases trapped in the Norris Geyser Basin by a seasonal atmospheric inversion. This was closely followed by an upsurge in earthquake activity in April 2004. In 2006, it was reported that the Mallard Lake Dome and the Sour Creek Dome—areas that have long been known to show significant changes in their ground movement—had risen at a rate of 1.5 to 2.4 inches (3.8 to 6.1 cm) per year from mid–2004 through 2006. As of late 2007, the uplift has continued at a reduced rate. These events inspired a great deal of media attention and speculation about the geologic future of the region. Experts responded to the conjecture by informing the public that there was no increased risk of a volcanic eruption in the near future. These changes demonstrate the dynamic nature of the Yellowstone hydrothermal system.
Earthquakes
Yellowstone experiences thousands of small earthquakes every year, virtually all of which are undetectable to people. About 2/3 of the earthquakes occur in an area between Hegben Lake and the Yellowstone Caldera along a buried fracture zone left from the 2.1 mya eruption.
There have been six earthquakes with at least magnitude 6 or greater in historical times, including the 7.2‑magnitude Hebgen Lake earthquake which occurred just outside the northwest boundary of the park in 1959. This quake triggered a huge landslide, which caused a partial dam collapse on Hebgen Lake; immediately downstream, the sediment from the landslide dammed the river and created a new lake, known as Earthquake Lake. Twenty-eight people were killed, and property damage was extensive in the immediate region. The earthquake caused some geysers in the northwestern section of the park to erupt, large cracks in the ground formed and emitted steam, and some hot springs that normally have clear water turned muddy. The stress created in the fracture zone by this quake is theorized to be responsible for the current quake activity in the northwestern section of Yellowstone. A 6.1‑magnitude earthquake struck inside the park on June 30, 1975, but the damage was minimal.
For three months in 1985, 3,000 minor earthquakes were detected in the northwestern section of the park, during what has been referred to as an earthquake swarm, and has been attributed to minor subsidence of the Yellowstone caldera. Beginning on April 30, 2007, 16 small earthquakes with magnitudes up to 2.7 occurred in the Yellowstone Caldera for several days. These swarms of earthquakes are common, and there have been 70 such swarms between 1983 and 2008. In December 2008, over 250 earthquakes were measured over four days under Yellowstone Lake, the largest measuring a magnitude of 3.9. In January 2010, more than 250 earthquakes were detected over two days. Seismic activity in Yellowstone National Park continues and is reported hourly by the Earthquake Hazards Program of the U.S. Geological Survey.
On March 30, 2014, a magnitude 4.8 earthquake struck almost the very middle of Yellowstone near the Norris Basin at 6:34 am; reports indicated no damage. This was the largest earthquake to hit the park since February 22, 1980.
Biology and ecology
Yellowstone National Park is the centerpiece of the 20 million acres (80,940 km2; 31,250 sq mi) Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, a region that includes Grand Teton National Park, adjacent National Forests and expansive wilderness areas in those forests. The ecosystem is the largest remaining continuous stretch of mostly undeveloped pristine land in the contiguous United States, considered the world's largest intact ecosystem in the northern temperate zone. With the successful wolf reintroduction program, which began in the 1990s, much of the original faunal and floral species known to inhabit the region when the first explorers entered the area can be found there. The site is home to a key field observation site for the National Ecological Observatory Network.
Flora
Over 69,000 species of trees and other vascular plants are native to the park. Another 170 species are considered to be exotic species and are non-native. Of the eight conifer tree species documented, lodgepole pine forests cover 80% of the total forested areas. Other conifers, such as subalpine fir, Engelmann spruce, Rocky Mountain Douglas-fir and whitebark pine, are found in scattered groves throughout the park. As of 2007, the whitebark pine is threatened by a fungus known as white pine blister rust; however, this is mostly confined to forests well to the north and west. In Yellowstone, about seven percent of the whitebark pine species have been impacted with the fungus, compared to nearly complete infestations in northwestern Montana. Quaking Aspen and willows are the most common species of deciduous trees. The aspen forests have declined significantly since the early 20th century, but scientists at Oregon State University attribute the recent recovery of the aspen to the reintroduction of wolves which has changed the grazing habits of local elk.
There are dozens of species of flowering plants that have been identified, most of which bloom between May and September. The Yellowstone sand verbena is a rare flowering plant found only in Yellowstone. It is closely related to species usually found in much warmer climates, making the sand verbena an enigma. The estimated 8,000 examples of this rare flowering plant all make their home in the sandy soils on the shores of Yellowstone Lake, well above the waterline.
In Yellowstone's hot waters, bacteria form mats of bizarre shapes consisting of trillions of individuals. These bacteria are some of the most primitive life forms on earth. Flies and other arthropods live on the mats, even in the middle of the bitterly cold winters. Initially, scientists thought that microbes there gained sustenance only from sulfur. In 2005 researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder discovered that the sustenance for at least some of the diverse hyperthermophilic species is molecular hydrogen.
Thermus aquaticus is a bacterium found in the Yellowstone hot springs that produces an important enzyme (Taq polymerase) that is easily replicated in the lab and is useful in replicating DNA as part of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) process. The retrieval of these bacteria can be achieved with no impact on the ecosystem. Other bacteria in the Yellowstone hot springs may also prove useful to scientists who are searching for cures for various diseases. In 2016, researchers from Uppsala University reported the discovery of a class of thermophiles, Hadesarchaea, in Yellowstone's Culex Basin. These organisms are capable of converting carbon monoxide and water to carbon dioxide and hydrogen.
Non-native plants sometimes threaten native species by occupying nutrient resources. Though exotic species are most commonly found in areas with the greatest human visitation, such as near roads and at major tourist areas, they have also spread into the backcountry. Generally, most exotic species are controlled by pulling the plants out of the soil or by spraying, both of which are time-consuming and expensive.
Fauna
Yellowstone is widely considered to be the finest megafauna wildlife habitat in the lower 48 states. There are almost 60 species of mammals in the park, including the Rocky Mountain wolf, coyote, the Canadian lynx, cougars, and black and grizzly bears. Other large mammals include the bison (often referred to as buffalo), elk, moose, mule deer, white-tailed deer, mountain goat, pronghorn, and bighorn sheep.
The Yellowstone Park bison herd is the largest public herd of American bison in the United States. Bison once numbered between 30 and 60 million individuals throughout North America, and Yellowstone remains one of their last strongholds. Their populations had increased from less than 50 in the park in 1902 to 4,000 by 2003. The Yellowstone Park bison herd reached a peak in 2005 with 4,900 animals. Despite a summer estimated population of 4,700 in 2007, the number dropped to 3,000 in 2008 after a harsh winter and controversial brucellosis management strategies which sent hundreds to slaughter.
The Yellowstone Park bison herd is believed to be one of only four free-roaming and genetically pure herds on public lands in North America. The other three herds are the Henry Mountains bison herd of Utah, at Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota, and in Elk Island National Park in Alberta.
The relatively large bison populations are a concern for ranchers, who fear that the species can transmit bovine diseases to their domesticated cousins. About half of Yellowstone's bison have been exposed to brucellosis, a bacterial disease that came to North America with European cattle that may cause cattle to miscarry. The disease has little effect on park bison, and no reported cases of transmission from wild bison to domestic livestock have been filed. Elk also carry the disease and are believed to have transmitted the infection to horses and cattle.
To combat the perceived threat of brucellosis transmission to cattle, national park personnel regularly corral bison herds back into the park when they venture outside of the area's borders. During the winter of 1996–1997, the bison herd was so large that 1,079 bison that had exited the park were either shot or sent to slaughter. Animal rights activists argue that this is a cruel practice and that the possibility for disease transmission is not as great as some ranchers maintain. Ecologists point out that the bison are merely traveling to seasonal grazing areas that lie within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem that have been converted to cattle grazing, some of which are within National Forests and are leased to private ranchers. APHIS has stated that with vaccinations and other means, brucellosis can be eliminated from the bison and elk herds throughout Yellowstone.
Starting in 1914, to protect elk populations, the U.S. Congress appropriated funds to be used for "destroying wolves, prairie dogs, and other animals injurious to agriculture and animal husbandry" on public lands. Park Service hunters carried out these orders, and by 1926 they had killed 136 wolves. Gradually, wolves were virtually eliminated from Yellowstone. Further exterminations continued until the National Park Service ended the practice in 1935. With the passing of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, the wolf was one of the first mammal species listed. After the wolves were extirpated from Yellowstone, the coyote then became the park's top canine predator. Since the coyote is not able to bring down large animals, this lack of an apex predator resulted in a marked increase in lame and sick megafauna.
By the 1990s, the Federal government had reversed its views on wolves. In a controversial decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (which oversees threatened and endangered species), northwestern wolves imported from Canada were reintroduced into the park. Reintroduction efforts have been successful, with populations remaining relatively stable. A survey conducted in 2005 reported that there were 13 wolf packs, totaling 118 individuals in Yellowstone and 326 in the entire ecosystem. These park figures were lower than those reported in 2004, but may be attributable to wolf migration to other nearby areas as suggested by the substantial increase in the Montana population during that interval. Almost all the wolves documented were descended from the 66 wolves reintroduced in 1995–96. The recovery of populations throughout the states of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho has been so successful that on February 27, 2008, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed the Northern Rocky Mountain wolf population from the endangered species list. As of January 2023, there are at least 108 wolves in the park in 10 packs. Wolves in Yellowstone sit at the core of a larger population connected throughout the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
Black bears are common in the park and were a park symbol due to visitor interaction with the bears starting in 1910. Feeding and close contact with bears has not been permitted since the 1960s to reduce their desire for human foods. Yellowstone is one of the few places in the United States where black bears can be seen coexisting with grizzly bears. Black bear observations occur most often in the park's northern ranges, and in the Bechler area which is in the park's southwestern corner.
As of 2017, an estimated 700 grizzly bears were living in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, with about 150 grizzlies living wholly or partially within Yellowstone National Park. The grizzly was initially listed as a threatened species in the contiguous United States on July 28, 1975, by the Fish and Wildlife Service. The grizzly bear was taken off the endangered species list in 2007. Opponents of delisting the grizzly expressed concerns that states might once again allow hunting and that better conservation measures were needed to ensure a sustainable population. A federal district judge overturned the delisting ruling in 2009, reinstating the grizzly. The grizzly was once again removed from the list in 2017. In September 2018, a U.S. district judge ruled that the grizzly's protections must be restored in full, arguing the Fish and Wildlife Service was mistaken in removing the bear from the threatened status list. Hunting is prohibited within Yellowstone National Park while hunters may transport the carcass through the park with a permit.
Population figures for elk are more than 30,000—the largest population of any large mammal species in Yellowstone. The northern herd has decreased enormously since the mid‑1990s; this has been attributed to wolf predation and causal effects such as elk using more forested regions to evade predation, consequently making it harder for researchers to accurately count them. The northern herd migrates west into southwestern Montana in the winter. The southern herd migrates southward, and the majority of this elk winter on the National Elk Refuge, immediately southeast of Grand Teton National Park. The southern herd migration is the largest mammalian migration remaining in the U.S. outside of Alaska.
In 2003 the tracks of one female lynx and her cub were spotted and followed for over 2 miles (3.2 km). Fecal material and other evidence obtained were tested and confirmed to be those of a lynx. No visual confirmation was made, however. Lynx have not been seen in Yellowstone since 1998, though DNA taken from hair samples obtained in 2001 confirmed that lynx were at least transient to the park. Other less commonly seen mammals include the mountain lion and wolverine. The mountain lion has an estimated population of only 25 individuals parkwide. Accurate population figures for the wolverine are not known. These uncommon and rare mammals provide insight into the health of protected lands such as Yellowstone and help managers make determinations as to how best to preserve habitats.
Eighteen species of fish live in Yellowstone, including the core range of the Yellowstone cutthroat trout—a fish highly sought by anglers. The Yellowstone cutthroat trout has faced several threats since the 1980s, including the suspected illegal introduction into Yellowstone Lake of lake trout, an invasive species which consume the smaller cutthroat trout. Although lake trout were established in Shoshone and Lewis lakes (on the Snake River drainage) after U.S. government stocking operations in 1890, it was never officially introduced into the Yellowstone River drainage. The cutthroat trout has also faced an ongoing drought, as well as the accidental introduction of a parasite—whirling disease—which causes a terminal nervous system disease in younger fish. Since 2001, all native sport fish species caught in Yellowstone waterways are subject to catch and release regulations.
Yellowstone is also home to seven species of reptiles, including the painted turtle, Rubber boa, and prairie rattlesnake, bullsnake, sagebrush lizard, valley garter snake and wandering garter snake and four species of amphibians, including the boreal chorus frog, tiger salamander, western toad and columbia spotted frog.
Three hundred eleven species of birds have been reported, almost half of which nest in Yellowstone. In 1999, twenty-six pairs of nesting bald eagle were documented. Extremely rare sightings of whooping cranes have been recorded; however, only three examples of this species are known to live in the Rocky Mountains out of 385 known worldwide. Other birds, considered to be species of special concern because of their rarity in Yellowstone, include the common loon, harlequin duck, osprey, peregrine falcon and the trumpeter swan.
Forest fires
As wildfire is a natural part of most ecosystems, plants that are indigenous to Yellowstone have adapted in a variety of ways. Douglas-fir have a thick bark that protects the inner section of the tree from most fires. Lodgepole Pines—the most common tree species in the park—generally have cones that are only opened by the heat of a fire. Their seeds are held in place by a tough resin, and fire assists in melting the resin, allowing the seeds to disperse. Fire clears out dead and downed wood, providing fewer obstacles for lodgepole pines to flourish. Subalpine Fir, Engelmann Spruce, Whitebark Pine, and other species tend to grow in colder and moister areas, where the fire is less likely to occur. Aspen trees sprout new growth from their roots, and even if a severe fire kills the tree above ground, the roots often survive unharmed because they are insulated from the heat by soil. The National Park Service estimates that in natural conditions, grasslands in Yellowstone burned an average of every 20 to 25 years, while forests in the park would experience fire about every 300 years.
About thirty-five natural forest fires are ignited each year by lightning, while another six to ten are started by people—in most cases by accident. Yellowstone National Park has three fire lookout towers, each staffed by trained firefighters. The easiest one to reach is atop Mount Washburn, which has interpretive exhibits and an observation deck open to the public. The park also monitors fire from the air and relies on visitor reports of smoke and/or flames. Fire towers are staffed almost continuously from late June to mid-September—the primary fire season. Fires burn with the greatest intensity in the late afternoon and evening. Few fires burn more than 100 acres (40 ha), and the vast majority of fires reach only a little over an acre (0.5 ha) before they burn themselves out. Fire management focuses on monitoring dead and down wood quantities, soil, and tree moisture, and the weather, to determine those areas most vulnerable to fire should one ignite. The current policy is to suppress all human-caused fires and to evaluate natural fires, examining the benefit or detriment they may pose to the ecosystem. If a fire is considered to be an immediate threat to people and structures, or will burn out of control, then fire suppression is performed.
To minimize the chances of out-of-control fires and threats to people and structures, park employees do more than just monitor the potential for fire. Controlled burns are prescribed fires that are deliberately started to remove dead timber under conditions that allow firefighters an opportunity to carefully control where and how much wood is consumed. Natural fires are sometimes considered prescribed fires if they are left to burn. In Yellowstone, unlike some other parks, there have been very few fires deliberately started by employees as prescribed burns. However, over the last 30 years, over 300 natural fires have been allowed to burn naturally. In addition, firefighters remove dead and down wood and other hazards from areas where they will be a potential fire threat to lives and property, reducing the chances of fire danger in these areas. Fire monitors also regulate fire through educational services to the public and have been known to temporarily ban campfires from campgrounds during periods of high fire danger. The common notion in early United States land management policies was that all forest fires were bad. The fire was seen as a purely destructive force and there was little understanding that it was an integral part of the ecosystem. Consequently, until the 1970s, when a better understanding of wildfire was developed, all fires were suppressed. This led to an increase in dead and dying forests, which would later provide the fuel load for fires that would be much harder, and in some cases, impossible to control. The latest Fire Management Plan (2014) allows natural fires to burn if they posed no immediate threat to lives and property.
The spring season of 1988 was wet, but by summer, drought began moving in throughout the northern Rockies, creating the driest year on record to that point. Grasses and plants which grew well in the early summer from the abundant spring moisture produced plenty of grass, which soon turned to dry tinder. The National Park Service began firefighting efforts to keep the fires under control, but the extreme drought made suppression difficult. Between July 15 and 21, 1988, fires quickly spread from 8,500 acres (3,400 ha; 13.3 sq mi) throughout the entire Yellowstone region, which included areas outside the park, to 99,000 acres (40,000 ha; 155 sq mi) on the park land alone. By the end of the month, the fires were out of control. Large fires burned together, and on August 20, 1988, the single worst day of the fires, more than 150,000 acres (61,000 ha; 230 sq mi) were consumed. Seven large fires were responsible for 95% of the 793,000 acres (321,000 ha; 1,239 sq mi) that were burned over the next couple of months. The cost of 25,000 firefighters and U.S. military forces participating in the suppression efforts was 120 million dollars. By the time winter brought snow that helped extinguish the last flames, the fires had destroyed 67 structures and caused several million dollars in damage. Though no civilians died, two personnel associated with the firefighting efforts were killed.
Contrary to media reports and speculation at the time, the fires killed very few park animals—surveys indicated that only about 345 elk (of an estimated 40,000–50,000), 36 deer, 12 moose, 6 black bears, and 9 bison had perished. Changes in fire management policies were implemented by land management agencies throughout the United States, based on knowledge gained from the 1988 fires and the evaluation of scientists and experts from various fields. By 1992, Yellowstone had adopted a new fire management plan which observed stricter guidelines for the management of natural fires.
Climate and weather
Yellowstone's climate is greatly influenced by altitude, with lower elevations generally found to be warmer year-round. The record high temperature was 99 °F (37 °C) in 2002, while the coldest temperature recorded is −66 °F (−54 °C) in 1933. During the summer months of June to early September, daytime highs are normally in the 70 to 80 °F (21 to 27 °C) range, while nighttime lows can go to below freezing (0 °C), especially at higher altitudes. Summer afternoons are frequently accompanied by thunderstorms. Spring and fall temperatures range between 30 and 60 °F (−1 and 16 °C) with nights in the teens to single digits (−5 to −20 °C). Winter in Yellowstone is accompanied by high temperatures usually between 0 and 20 °F (−18 and −7 °C) and nighttime temperatures below 0 °F (−18 °C) for most of the winter.
Precipitation in Yellowstone is highly variable and ranges from 15 inches (380 mm) annually near Mammoth Hot Springs, to 80 inches (2,000 mm) in the southwestern sections of the park. The precipitation of Yellowstone is greatly influenced by the moisture channel formed by the Snake River Plain to the west that was, in turn, formed by Yellowstone itself. Snow is possible in any month of the year, but most common between November and April, with averages of 150 inches (3,800 mm) annually around Yellowstone Lake, to twice that amount at higher elevations.
The climate at Yellowstone Lake is classified as subarctic (Dfc), according to Köppen-Geiger climate classification, while at the park headquarters, the classification is humid continental (Dfb).
Tornadoes in Yellowstone are rare; however, on July 21, 1987, the most powerful tornado recorded in Wyoming touched down in the Teton Wilderness of Bridger-Teton National Forest and hit Yellowstone National Park. Called the Teton–Yellowstone tornado, it was classified as an F4, with wind speeds estimated at between 207 and 260 miles per hour (333 and 418 km/h). The tornado left a path of destruction 1 to 2 miles (1.6 to 3.2 km) wide, and 24 miles (39 km) long, and leveled 15,000 acres (6,100 ha; 23 sq mi) of mature pine forest.
In June 2022, the park closed entrances and evacuated visitors after experiencing record-level rainfall and flooding that caused multiple road and bridge failures, power outages, and mudslides. A combination of heavy rain and rapid snow melt resulted in the Yellowstone River rising to a new record height at 13.88 feet (4.23 m), breaking a previous record of 11.5 feet (3.5 m) set in 1918. Flooding on the Lamar River reached 16.7 feet (5.1 m), beating a 1996 record of 12.15 feet (3.70 m). Damage from the flooding includes washed out roads and bridges, and damage to infrastructure systems including electricity, water and wastewater systems. It was initially forecasted that the park would not be able to reopen the north entrance by Gardiner, MT, or the northeast entrance near Cooke City, MT, during the 2022 season. The park partially reopened Wednesday, June 22, after a 9-day closure. The north entrance was opened on October 30, two days ahead of schedule. The northeast entrance was opened on October 15. To limit the nearly one million visitors per month that visit in the summer, the park temporarily restricted entry to cars based on license plates.
Recreation
Yellowstone ranks among the most popular national parks in the United States. Since the mid-1960s, at least 2 million tourists have visited the park almost every year. Average annual visitation increased to 3.5 million during the ten years from 2007 to 2016, with a record of 4,257,177 recreational visitors in 2016. 2023 surpassed this with 4.5 million people visiting the park. July is the busiest month for Yellowstone National Park. At peak summer levels, 3,700 employees work for Yellowstone National Park concessionaires. Concessionaires manage nine hotels and lodges, with a total of 2,238 hotel rooms and cabins available. They also oversee gas stations, stores, and most of the campgrounds. Another 800 employees work either permanently or seasonally for the National Park Service.
Park service roads lead to major features; however, road reconstruction has produced temporary road closures. Yellowstone is in the midst of a long-term road reconstruction effort, which is hampered by a short repair season. In the winter, all roads aside from the one which enters from Gardiner, Montana, and extends to Cooke City, Montana, are closed to wheeled vehicles. Park roads are closed to wheeled vehicles from early November to mid-April, but some park roads remain closed until mid-May. The park has 310 miles (500 km) of paved roads which can be accessed from five different entrances. There is no public transportation available inside the park, but several tour companies can be contacted for guided (including self-guided) motorized transport. In the winter, concessionaires operate guided snowmobile and snow coach tours, though their numbers and access are based on quotas established by the National Park Service. Facilities in the Old Faithful, Canyon and Mammoth Hot Springs areas of the park are very busy during the summer months. Traffic jams created by road construction or by people observing wildlife can result in long delays.
The National Park Service maintains nine visitor centers and museums and is responsible for the maintenance of historical structures and many of the other 2,000 buildings. These structures include National Historical Landmarks such as the Old Faithful Inn built from 1903 to 1904 and the entire Fort Yellowstone – Mammoth Hot Springs Historic District. A historical and educational tour is available at Fort Yellowstone which details the history of the National Park Service and the development of the park. Campfire programs, guided walks, and other interpretive presentations normally available at numerous locations in the summer, and on a limited basis during other seasons were suspended in 2021 as a response to COVID-19.
Camping is available at a dozen campgrounds with more than 2,000 campsites. Camping is also available in surrounding National Forests, as well as in Grand Teton National Park to the south. Backcountry campsites are accessible only by foot or by horseback and require a permit. There are 1,100 miles (1,800 km) of hiking trails available. The park is not considered to be a good destination for mountaineering because of the instability of volcanic rock which predominates. Visitors with pets are required to keep them on a leash at all times and are limited to areas near roadways and in "front country" zones such as drive-in campgrounds. Around thermal features, wooden and paved trails have been constructed to ensure visitor safety, and most of these areas are handicapped accessible. The National Park Service maintains a year-round clinic at Mammoth Hot Springs and provides emergency services throughout the year.
Hunting is not permitted, though it is allowed in the surrounding national forests during the open season. Fishing is a popular activity, and a Yellowstone Park fishing license is required to fish in park waters. Many park waters are fly fishing only and all native fish species are catch and release only. Boating is prohibited on rivers and creeks except for a 5 miles (8.0 km) stretch of the Lewis River between Lewis and Shoshone lakes, and it is open to non-motorized use only. Yellowstone Lake has a marina at Bridge Bay while there is a boat ramp at the Lewis lake campground.
In the early history of the park, visitors were allowed, and sometimes even encouraged, to feed the bears. Visitors welcomed the chance to get their pictures taken with the bears, who had learned to beg for food. This led to numerous injuries to humans each year. In 1970, park officials changed their policy and started a vigorous program to educate the public on the dangers of close contact with bears, and to try to eliminate opportunities for bears to find food in campgrounds and trash collection areas. Although it has become more difficult to observe bears in recent years, the number of human injuries and deaths has taken a significant drop and visitors are in less danger. The eighth recorded bear-related death in the park's history occurred in August 2015.
Other protected lands in the region include Caribou-Targhee, Gallatin, Custer, Shoshone and Bridger-Teton National Forests. The National Park Service's John D. Rockefeler, Jr. Memorial Parkway is to the south and leads to Grand Teton National Park. The famed Beartooth Highway provides access from the northeast and has spectacular high-altitude scenery. Nearby communities include West Yellowstone, Montana; Cody, Wyoming; Red Lodge, Montana; Ashton, Idaho; and Gardiner, Montana. The closest air transport is available by way of Bozeman, Montana; Billings, Montana; Jackson; Cody, Wyoming, or Idaho Falls, Idaho. Salt Lake City, 320 miles (510 km) to the south, is the closest large metropolitan area.
Legal jurisdiction
The entire park is within the jurisdiction of the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming, making it the only federal court district that includes portions of more than one state (Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming). Law professor Brian C. Kalt has argued that it may be impossible to impanel a jury in compliance with the Vicinage Clause of the Sixth Amendment for a crime committed solely in the unpopulated Idaho portion of the park (and that it would be difficult to do so for a crime committed solely in the lightly populated Montana portion). One defendant, who was accused of a wildlife-related crime in the Montana portion of the park, attempted to raise this argument but eventually pleaded guilty, with the plea deal including his specific agreement not to raise the issue in his appeal.
Education
As of 2022 residents (as in park employees) living the Mammoth, Wyoming area, around the outer edge of the park, may send their children to school in Gardiner Public Schools of Gardiner, Montana. The former Mammoth School has a preschool and a community center. Some families have one parent in Bozeman, Montana with the children attending school in Bozeman instead of in the Mammoth/Gardiner area. Not as many children live in locations in the interior of the park. Several families of park employees living in interior parts of the park have one parent in a city such as Cody, Wyoming or West Yellowstone, Montana so the children can go to school in those cities.
Circa the 1880s there were education programs for dependent children in the Mammoth area, involving a person hired to teach via money from parents or a soldier providing such services. Some residents chose to send their children to schools in locations towards the east of the country or in Bozeman. In 1921 the Mammoth School, created by the Park Service, opened. By 2008 more and more Yellowstone employees only were in Yellowstone during park season, and fewer employees had dependent children. Additionally, the interstate agreement to send Wyoming money to Montana was made circa that year. For those two reasons, in 2008 the Mammoth School closed.
See also
References
Further reading
Chittenden, Hiram Martin. The Yellowstone National Park (2018) online
Christiansen, Robert L., and H. Richard Blank Jr. "Geology of Yellowstone National Park." (US Geological Survey professional paper, 1972). online
Fournier, Robert O. "Geochemistry and dynamics of the Yellowstone National Park hydrothermal system." Annual review of earth and planetary sciences 17.1 (1989): 13–53. online
Gunther, Kerry A. "Bear management in Yellowstone National Park, 1960-93." in Bears: their biology and management (1994): 549–560. online
Keefer, William R. The geologic story of Yellowstone National Park (US Government Printing Office, 1971) online.
Haines, Aubrey L. Yellowstone National Park: its exploration and establishment (US National Park Service, 1974) online.
Jackson, W. Turrentine. "The Creation of Yellowstone National Park." Mississippi Valley Historical Review 29.2 (1942): 187–206. online
Whittlesey, Lee H. (2002), "Native Americans, the Earliest Interpreters: What is Known About Their Legends and Stories of Yellowstone National Park and the Complexities of Interpreting Them", The George Wright Forum, published by the George Wright Society, Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 40–51. JSTOR 43598916.
External links
Official website of the National Park Service
Travertine: Yellowstone's Hydrothermal Timekeeper USGS May 24, 2021
Act Establishing Yellowstone National Park from the Library of Congress
Congressional Acts Pertaining to Yellowstone
The Yellowstone magmatic system from the mantle plume to the upper crust at Science (registration required)
BYU Larsen Yellowstone collection at the L. Tom Perry Special Collections Library of Brigham Young University
Gannett, Henry (1888). "Yellowstone National Park" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. XXIV (9th ed.). p. 736-738.
"Yellowstone National Park" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 28 (11th ed.). 1911. pp. 912–913.
Yellowstone articles, photos and videos at National Geographic
Photographic library of the U.S. Geological Survey (archive)
The short film A Visit to Yellowstone National Park (c. 1932) is available for free viewing and download at the Internet Archive.
The short film Four Seasons of Yellowstone (1970) is available for free viewing and download at the Internet Archive.
The short film Fantastic Yellowstone (1997) is available for free viewing and download at the Internet Archive.
Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) documentation:
HAER No. MT-91, "West Entrance Road, West Yellowstone, Gallatin County, MT", 11 data pages
HAER No. MT-92, "Gallatin Entrance Road, West Yellowstone, Gallatin County, MT", 15 data pages
HAER No. MT-93, "North Entrance Road, Gardiner, Park County, MT", 1 color transparency, 10 data pages, 1 photo caption page |
List_of_extreme_temperatures_in_Canada | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extreme_temperatures_in_Canada | [
592
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extreme_temperatures_in_Canada"
] | The following is a list of the most extreme temperatures recorded in Canada.
Highest temperature readings (selected locations)
Highest temperatures ever recorded in Canada
Lowest temperature readings
The coldest place in Canada based on average yearly temperature is Eureka, Nunavut, where the temperature averages at −19.7 °C or −3.5 °F for the year.
Yearly Canadian temperature extremes
Note that minimum extremes are for the entire winter season ending in the year listed.
Occurrences by province
Extreme maximum occurrences by community
Extreme minimum occurrences by town
Yearly Canadian average mean temperatures
Occurrences by province
Extreme warmest year occurrences by location
Extreme coldest year occurrences by location
See also
Weather extremes in Canada
Temperature in Canada
References
3. Book of Lists, Scholastic Canada, 2005, Pages 80 and 81 and 69 |
Obie_Trice | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obie_Trice | [
593
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obie_Trice"
] | Obie Trice III (born November 14, 1977) is an American rapper. He signed with fellow Detroit rapper Eminem's Shady Records, an imprint of Interscope Records in 2000 to release his first two albums, Cheers (2003) and Second Round's on Me (2006). Both peaked within the top ten of the Billboard 200, while the former was supported by the singles "Got Some Teeth" and the Dr. Dre-produced "The Set Up (You Don’t Know)" (featuring Nate Dogg). Upon leaving the label, Trice formed his own record label, Black Market Entertainment to release his following albums, Bottoms Up (2012), The Hangover (2015) and The Fifth (2019).
Biography
Obie Trice III was born and raised on the west side of Detroit, Michigan, by his mother, along with three brothers. He is of African American and German descent. Trice was given a karaoke machine by his mother when he was 11 and he used it to rhyme over instrumentals from artists such as N.W.A. By the age of 14, he was attending rap battle gatherings around Detroit, including the Hip Hop Shop, where he and his friends would go on Saturday afternoons. The battles were hosted by Proof from D12. Positive response from watchers encouraged Trice to get into rap music seriously."
Trice was calling himself "Obie 1" at that time, but before Proof introduced him at the Hip Hop Shop, he asked him his real name and introduced him as "Obie Trice", which remains his rap name. Trice was introduced to Eminem through D12 member Bizarre. Later, Trice's manager arranged for him to have dinner and go to a Kid Rock party with Eminem.
Career
Shady Records (2000–2002)
Trice signed to Shady Records in 2000. He created a freestyle skit on the D12 album Devil's Night, following up with an intro snippet in Eminem's The Eminem Show lead single "Without Me", as well as the song "Drips". Later in 2002, Trice rapped on songs for the 8 Mile soundtrack, and also had a cameo appearance in the film as a rapper in a parking lot.
Cheers (2003–2004)
Trice's debut album, Cheers, was released on September 23, 2003, with its first single "Got Some Teeth" being well received on radio in a number of countries. "Got Some Teeth” peaked at number 54 on the Billboard Hot 100, and peaked within the top ten of the charts in Belgium (Flanders), Denmark, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. In the latter country, "Got Some Teeth" debuted and peaked at number eight on the UK Singles Chart in October 2003. He also released the singles "The Set Up" and "Don't Come Down". The album consists of 17 tracks with production from Eminem, Dr. Dre, Timbaland, Mike Elizondo, Emile, Fredwreck and Mr. Porter. Artists featured on Cheers include Busta Rhymes, Eminem, 50 Cent, Lloyd Banks, Dr. Dre, Nate Dogg, D12, Tony Yayo, and Timbaland. The album was eventually certified platinum by the RIAA.
Trice also featured on the track Hennessey on Tupac Shakur's posthumous album Loyal To The Game.
Second Round's on Me and shooting (2005–2007)
In 2005, Trice began work on his second album, entitled Second Round's on Me. The album was released on August 15, 2006. Following the release of Second Round's on Me, he released a mixtape called Bar Shots with G-Unit's DJ Whoo Kid.
Shortly after his label-mate Proof was shot to death in a Detroit nightclub, a song emerged on the mixtape circuit called "Ride Wit Me". The song was dedicated to Proof. Trice made a speech at Proof's funeral, addressing the problem of black-on-black violence:
I want to talk to those coming up in the 'hood, coming up in the struggle. We're killing each other, and it's about nothing. Nothing. Nothing. We're all dying... over nothing.
In the single "Cry Now" from his second album, Trice addresses his shooting, as well as Eminem's rumored retirement, referenced with the following line, "Rock City is my voice / The white boy has stepped down / So I will accept the crown." Trice also addresses the shooting in the song "Pistol Pistol" from the album Eminem Presents: The Re-Up claiming he's after revenge, "I solemnly swear on my daughters tears/The nigga that got him in the head will feel it before the year ends / Hope you inconspicuous my friend / `Cause once the word get back ya in a world of sin / Bullets will hurtle at him for tryin to murder what been determined as the first solo African " and later "I'm so sincere you seein' a hearse this year / it's not a verse it's curse for burstin' what's on ya person". He has since given insight as to why he feels the shooting occurred, and has labeled it "haterism", as well as a bad mind state by saying, "it's a lot of do-or-die type individuals. They want to get that plug and there's really more to the game than they think it is [...] it's competition on a real vicious level."
Departure from Shady Records (2008–2009)
In June 2008, Obie Trice departed from Shady Records due to concern that he was not being promoted properly. Contrary to public belief at the time of the announcement, Trice did not have a falling out with Eminem or Dr. Dre. Both contributed vocals and production to Trice's upcoming album. A misunderstanding was made where it was believed he was attacking the label and Eminem on a single titled "The Giant"; however, this was quickly dismissed.
Special Reserve (2009–2010)
On December 15, 2009, a compilation album, Special Reserve, by Obie Trice and MoSS, the first producer of DJ Premier's "Works of Mart" production company, was released. The album is a collection of eleven of Trice's tracks recorded with MoSS from 1997 to 2000. The album served as a preface to his next album, "Bottoms Up".
Move to Black Market Entertainment, Bottoms Up, The Hangover and The Fifth (2010–present)
In 2010, Rap Basement reported that Obie Trice would launch his own independent music label, Black Market Entertainment. The label would be owned by Universal. On May 4, he confirmed that Eminem would be a featured guest artist on his upcoming album, Bottoms Up. On August 24, 2010, he released the single "My Time 2011" via Myspace; the track was produced by Geno XO. The music video was released on March 22, 2011; footage for the video was filmed at the Black Market Ent. Launch Party.
In April 2011, Trice released another single called "Learn to Love". It was a remixed version of the song "Haters" from his Bar Shots mixtape. That August, Trice tweeted the release date for Bottoms Up, initially planned for October 25. The first official single, "Battle Cry" featuring Adrian Rezza and produced by Lucas Rezza was released on iTunes on August 23.
On April 3, 2012, Bottoms Up was released. On May 7, Trice released a new song from his upcoming mixtape The Hangover titled "Get Rich Die Tryin" featuring Bilal. In an interview with HipHopDX that August, Trice announced that he was working on an album that would also be also titled The Hangover, which features production by Warren G. On June 15, 2015, Trice released the single "Good Girls" which would appear on The Hangover. The track was produced by the Grammy award-winning producer Magnedo7, who was one of the producers of Eminem's seventh studio album, Recovery. The album was released on August 7.
In a 2016 interview with Mr. Wavvy, Trice announced that he was already working on his fifth studio album, which he planned to releasing later in the year. Additionally, he revealed plans of a box set that included all four of his previous studio albums, along with previously unreleased tour footage. On August 23, 2019, his fifth album aptly named The Fifth was released. It includes guest appearances from Magnedo7, Directorkasper, Xzibit, and others.
On December 10, 2019, Obie Trice released a diss track called "Spanky Hayes" against Nick Cannon after Cannon released two diss tracks against Eminem. In the track, Trice was rapping over the instrumental of "30 Something" by Jay-Z. On December 16, Trice released a second diss track against Cannon called "Spanky Hayes 2" and under original production by Dubmuzik, who has produced for Trice in the past. In the diss track, he also calls out Suge Knight for calling Cannon "the new 2Pac" on the latter's first diss track against Eminem.
Personal life
Trice's first child, a daughter, was born in 1998. He has credited her birth as motivation for him to get serious with music.
Shootings
On December 31, 2005, Trice's car was shot six times and while driving on the Lodge Expressway by Wyoming Avenue in Detroit; one of the bullets penetrated his head. Trice was able to drive off the expressway, where his girlfriend waved down the police. He was taken to Providence Hospital and released later that day. Doctors contemplated whether or not to remove the bullet. As it was too dangerous to operate, the bullet is still lodged in his skull.
TMZ reported on December 6, 2019, that Trice was arrested for shooting his girlfriend's son. On July 8, 2020, Trice was sentenced to 90 days in the Oakland County Jail in Michigan from charges related to the shooting.
Meeting with Michigan State Senator
On April 22, 2011, Trice met with Michigan State Senator Virgil Smith Jr. to discuss providing local artists with entertainment venues.
Michigan arrest
On June 16, 2022, Trice was arrested and jailed after an arraignment in District Court in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan on a charge of using a telephone to harass or threaten someone. Soon after, he posted the $10,000 bond in the case.
Discography
References
External links
Official Obie Trice website |
The_Hangover | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hangover | [
593
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hangover"
] | The Hangover is a 2009 American comedy film directed by Todd Phillips, and written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore. It is the first installment in The Hangover trilogy. The film stars Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Heather Graham, Justin Bartha, and Jeffrey Tambor. It tells the story of Phil Wenneck (Cooper), Stu Price (Helms), Alan Garner (Galifianakis), and Doug Billings (Bartha), who travel to Las Vegas for a bachelor party to celebrate Doug's impending marriage. However, Phil, Stu, and Alan wake up with Doug missing and no memory of the previous night's events, and must find Doug before the wedding can take place.
Lucas and Moore wrote the script after executive producer Chris Bender's friend disappeared and had a large bill after being sent to a strip club. After Lucas and Moore sold it to the studio for $2 million, Phillips and Jeremy Garelick rewrote the script to include a tiger as well as a subplot involving a baby and a police cruiser, and also including boxer Mike Tyson. Filming took place in Nevada for 15 days, and during filming, the three main actors (Cooper, Helms, and Galifianakis) formed a real friendship.
The Hangover was released on June 5, 2009, and was a critical and commercial success. The film became the tenth-highest-grossing film of 2009, with a worldwide gross of over $467 million. The film won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, and received multiple other accolades. It became the highest-grossing R-rated comedy ever in the United States, surpassing a record previously held by Beverly Hills Cop for almost 25 years.
The film was followed by two sequels: The Hangover Part II (2011) and The Hangover Part III (2013). Both were commercial success, but neither were well-received critically.
Plot
Two days before his wedding, bachelor Doug Billings travels to Las Vegas with his best friends Phil Wenneck, a sarcastic elementary school teacher, Stu Price, an apprehensive dentist, and Alan Garner, his odd future brother-in-law. Sid, the father of Doug's fiancée Tracy, loans Doug his vintage Mercedes-Benz W111 to drive to Vegas. They book a suite at Caesars Palace and celebrate by sneaking onto the hotel rooftop and taking shots of Jägermeister.
The next day, Phil, Stu and Alan awaken, unable to remember the previous night. Doug is nowhere to be found, Stu's tooth is missing, the suite is a mess, a Bengal tiger is in the bathroom, and a baby is in the closet. They see Doug's mattress impaled on a statue outside, and when they ask for their Mercedes, the valet delivers a Las Vegas police cruiser.
Retracing their steps, the trio travel to a hospital, discovering they were drugged with Rohypnol, causing their memory loss, and that they went there from a chapel the previous night. At the chapel, they learn that Stu married a call girl named Jade, despite his relationship with his shrewish girlfriend Melissa. Outside the chapel, the trio is attacked by a gang of men demanding to know where "he" is. Bewildered, they flee and track down Jade, who is revealed to be the baby's mother.
They are arrested by the police for having stolen the cruiser. To get the Mercedes out of impound and get released, the trio unwittingly volunteer to be targets for a taser demonstration. While driving the car, they discover a naked Chinese man named Leslie Chow in the trunk, who attacks the trio and flees. Alan confesses that he drugged their drinks to ensure they had a good night, believing the drug to be Ecstasy.
Returning to their suite, they find Mike Tyson, who knocks Alan unconscious and orders them to return his tiger to his mansion. After Stu drugs it, they load it into the Mercedes, and drive to Tyson's mansion. However, the tiger awakens and attacks them, scratching Phil on the neck and damaging the car's interior. They push the car the rest of the way to the mansion and deliver the tiger to Tyson, who shows them security camera footage indicating they did not lose Doug until after they got back to the hotel.
While driving back, their car is rammed by a black Cadillac Escalade manned by Chow and his gang from the chapel. Chow accuses them of kidnapping him and stealing $80,000 in poker chips. As they deny it, he tells them he has Doug, and threatens to kill him if the chips are not returned. Unable to find Chow's chips, Alan, with help from Stu and Jade, uses his knowledge of card counting to win $82,400 playing blackjack.
They meet Chow in the Mojave Desert to exchange the chips for Doug, only to find that the "Doug" in question is actually the drug dealer who accidentally sold the roofies to Alan. With the real Doug's wedding set to occur in five hours, Phil calls Tracy to tell her they cannot find him. Simultaneously, the other Doug's remarks that someone who takes roofies is more likely to end up on the floor than on the roof, causes Stu to realize where Doug is.
They return to Caesars Palace where they find a dazed and badly sunburned Doug on the roof. They moved him there on his mattress as a practical joke, but forgot when the roofies wore off; Doug threw the mattress onto the statue in an attempt to signal for help. Before leaving, Stu makes arrangements to meet Jade for a date the following week.
With no flights available, the four drive home in the mangled Mercedes, where Doug reveals that he has Chow's original $80,000 in his pocket. Despite their late arrival, Doug and Tracy are married. At the reception, Stu gleefully breaks up with Melissa. Alan finds Stu's digital camera containing photos of the debauchery from the night in Las Vegas, and the four agree to look at the pictures before deleting them.
Cast
Todd Phillips, the film's director, appears as Mr. Creepy, who appears briefly in an elevator. Professional skateboarder Mike Vallely portrays Neeco, the high-speed tuxedo delivery man. Las Vegas personalities Wayne Newton and Carrot Top appear as themselves in the photo slide show.
Production
Writing
The plot of The Hangover was inspired by a real event that happened to Tripp Vinson, a producer and friend of executive producer Chris Bender. Vinson had gone missing from his own Las Vegas bachelor party, blacking out and waking up "in a strip club being threatened with a very, very large bill I was supposed to pay".
Jon Lucas and Scott Moore sold the original script of The Hangover to Warner Bros. for over $2 million. The story was about three friends who lose the groom at his Las Vegas bachelor party and then must retrace their steps to figure out what happened.
It was then rewritten by Jeremy Garelick and director Todd Phillips, who added additional elements such as Mike Tyson and his tiger, the baby, and the police cruiser. However, Lucas and Moore retained writing credit in accordance with the Writers Guild of America, West's screenwriting credit system.
Casting
Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, and Bradley Cooper were all casual acquaintances before The Hangover was filmed, which Helms said he believed helped in establishing a rapport and chemistry amongst their characters. Helms credited Phillips for "bringing together three guys who are really different, but really appreciate each others' humor and sensibilities". Helms also said the fact that the story of the three characters growing closer and bonding forged the friendship between the three actors: "As you spend 14 hours a day together for three months, you see a lot of sides of somebody. We went through the wringer together, and that shared experience really made us genuine buddies."
Lindsay Lohan was in talks with Phillips for the role of Jade in the film but was ultimately not cast due to being considered too young for what was discussed.
Filming
On a budget of $35 million, principal photography took place in Nevada for fifteen days.
The Hangover was mostly filmed on location at Caesars Palace, including the front desk, lobby, suite, entrance drive, pools, corridors, elevators, and roof, but the suite damaged in the film was built on a soundstage. While the hospital, the police station, Mike Tyson's house and several interior scenes were filmed on soundstages in the Los Angeles area, other Vegas locations included the exteriors of Atomic Liquors and the El Cortez Hotel and Casino on Fremont Street. The Bungalows Hostel (then known as Hostel Cat) featured a facade built by the production team to appear as a wedding chapel. Jade's home was depicted at the Wild Wild West Gambling Hall & Hotel, and Alan is portrayed counting cards while playing blackjack at The Riviera; both buildings have since been demolished. The scene where Mr. Chow jumps out of the trunk of the Mercedes-Benz 220SE and assaults the protagonists with a crowbar was filmed at the intersection of East Mandalay Bay Road and Haven Street, which remains a dirt lot adjacent to the Las Vegas Strip.
Since there was a piano in the real suite, Phillips allowed Helms to improvise a scene with the piano on the soundstage, which became known as "Stu's song" in the film. According to Helms in a 2011 interview on The Graham Norton Show, he had to be tutored on how to use a piano for the scene.
Helms said filming The Hangover was more physically demanding than any other role he had done, and that he lost eight pounds while making the film. He said the most difficult day of shooting was the scene when Mr. Chow rams his car and attacks the main characters, which Helms said required many takes and was very painful, such as when a few of the punches and kicks accidentally landed and when his knees and shins were hurt while being pulled out of a window. The missing tooth was not created with prosthetics or visual effects, but is naturally occurring: Helms never had an adult incisor grow, and got a dental implant as a teenager, which was removed for filming.
Jeong stated that his jumping on Cooper's neck naked wasn't a part of the script, but rather improvisation on their part. It was added with Phillips' blessing. Jeong also stated that he had to receive his wife's permission to appear nude in the film.
Phillips tried to convince the actors to allow him to use a real Taser until Warner Bros. lawyers intervened.
Regarding the explicit shots in the final photo slide show in which his character is seen receiving fellatio in an elevator, Galifianakis confirmed that a prosthesis was used for the scene, and that he had been more embarrassed than anyone else during the creation of the shot. "You would think that I wouldn't be the one who was embarrassed; I was extremely embarrassed. I really didn't even want it in there. I offered Todd's assistant a lot of money to convince him to take it out of the movie. I did. But it made it in there."
The scenes involving animals were filmed mostly with trained animals. Trainers and safety equipment were digitally removed from the final version. Some prop animals were used, such as when the tiger was hidden under a sheet and being moved on a baggage cart. Such efforts were given an "Outstanding" rating by the American Humane Association for the monitoring and treatment of the animals.
Music
The film's score was composed by Christophe Beck. The film featured 20 songs, consisting of music by Kanye West, Danzig, The Donnas, Usher, Phil Collins, The Belle Stars, T.I., Wolfmother and The Dan Band, who tend to feature in Phillips' films as the inappropriate, bad-mouthed wedding band. The Dan Band's cover of the 50 Cent single "Candy Shop" appeared in Part I. Pro-skater and punk musician Mike Vallely was invited with his band, Revolution Mother, to write a song for the film and also makes a cameo appearance as the high speed tuxedo delivery guy.
"Right Round" by Flo Rida is played over the ending credits. The film uses the Kanye West song "Can't Tell Me Nothing" for which Zach Galifianakis made an alternative music video.
Release
Box office
The Hangover was a financial success. As of December 17, 2009, it had grossed $467,416,722, of which $277,322,503 was in Canada and the United States. It was the tenth-highest-grossing film of 2009 in the world, the sixth-highest-grossing film of 2009 in the United States and the highest-grossing R-rated comedy ever in the United States, surpassing a record previously held by Beverly Hills Cop for almost 25 years.
Out of all R-rated films, it is the sixth-highest-grossing ever in the United States, behind The Passion of the Christ, Deadpool, American Sniper, It and The Matrix Reloaded. However, adjusted for inflation The Hangover earned less than half the total earned by Beverly Hills Cop and is out grossed by several comedies, including Porky's.
On its first day of release in the United States, the film drew $16,734,033 on approximately 4,500 screens at 3,269 sites, and exceeded the big-budgeted Land of the Lost—the other major new release of the weekend—for first day's box office takings.
Although initial studio projections had the Disney·Pixar film Up holding on to the number one slot for a second consecutive weekend, final revised figures, bolstered by a surprisingly strong Sunday showing, ultimately had The Hangover finishing first for the weekend, with $44,979,319 from 3,269 theaters, averaging $13,759 per venue, narrowly edging out Up for the top spot, and more than twice that of Land of the Lost, which finished third with $18.8 million.
The film exceeded Warner Bros.' expectations—which had anticipated it would finish third behind Up and Land of the Lost—benefiting from positive word-of-mouth and critical praise, and a generally negative buzz for Land of the Lost. It stayed at the number one position in its second weekend, grossing another $32,794,387, from 3,355 theaters for an average of $9,775 per venue, and bringing the 10-day amount to $104,768,489.
Home media
The Hangover was released on DVD, Blu-ray, and UMD on December 15, 2009 by Warner Home Video. There is a single-disc theatrical version featuring both fullscreen and widescreen options (DVD only), as well as a widescreen two-disc unrated version of the film, also containing the theatrical version (DVD, Blu-ray, and UMD). The unrated version is approximately seven minutes longer than the theatrical version. The unrated version is on disc one and the theatrical version, digital copy, and the different features are on disc two.
The Hangover beat Inglourious Basterds and G-Force in first week DVD and Blu-ray sales, as well as rentals, selling more than 8.6 million units and making it the best-selling comedy ever on DVD and Blu-ray, beating the previous record held by My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
Reception
Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, The Hangover has an approval rating of 79% based on 240 reviews with an average rating of 6.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "With a clever script and hilarious interplay among the cast, The Hangover nails just the right tone of raunchy humor, and the non-stop laughs overshadow any flaw." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 73 out of 100 based on 31 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it three-and-a-half stars out of four and praised the film for its comedic approach. A. O. Scott of The New York Times praised Cooper, Helms and Galifianakis for their performances in the film as well as Todd Phillips for its direction. Scott later went on to say that the film is "safe as milk". Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle also praised Phillips' direction. LaSalle also praised the film's comedic scenes and called it "the funniest movie so far this year [2009]". Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times praised the film for its perverseness. Sharkey also said that the film is "filled with moments as softhearted as they are crude, as forgiving as unforgivable". Although Joe Leydon of Variety criticized the film's trailers and TV-spots for its "beer-and-boobs, party-hearty farce", he also praised the film for its cleverness.
Conversely, Richard Corliss of Time said that "virtually every joke [in the film] either is visible long before it arrives or extends way past its expiration date" and added, "Whatever the other critics say, this is a bromance so primitive it's practically Bro-Magnon."
In his review in The Baltimore Sun, Michael Sragow called the film a "foul mesh of cheap cleverness and vulgarity." Joe Neumaier of the Daily News gave the film two-and-a-half out of five stars and noted, "Amusing as it is, it never feels real. That may not seem like a big deal—a lot of funny movies play by their own rules—except that The Hangover keeps doubling-down on the outlandishness."
Family-oriented reviewers have harangued the film, noting that Galifianakis said he tried to forbid his own mother from seeing it and that he yells at parents of kids who tell him they like the film.
Anton Trees criticised the film for what he viewed as the weak character development, especially in its female characters. Critics also focused on misogyny and stereotyping, in particular the portrayal of the Asian gangster.
Ebert, despite his praise, stated, "I won't go so far as to describe it as a character study", and said that the film is more than the sum of its parts—parts that may at first seem generic or clichéd, since similar films (such as Very Bad Things) have already explored the idea of a weekend in Vegas gone wrong. The film's premise has several similarities to Dude, Where's My Car? Both films are about "a couple guys waking up after a night of getting trashed, only to find they are missing something important", whose adventures include "a trail of clues, a missing car, dubious encounters with strippers and wild animals, a brush with the law and gangs chasing them for something they don't realize they have".
Accolades
Impact and legacy
By depicting and celebrating Las Vegas as the "ultimate guys' getaway", The Hangover had a major impact on Caesars Palace and Las Vegas. It was reported in 2013 that as of that year, guests were still continuing to quote to Caesars Palace staff two lines from the film's check-in scene: "Did Caesar live here?" and "Do you know if the hotel is pager-friendly?" As a result of the film, Hangover-themed slot machines became popular at casinos throughout the Las Vegas Valley, the Caesars Palace gift shop sold tens of thousands of Hangover-related souvenirs, and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority received numerous inquiries from persons interested in recreating some of the film's most wild scenes, such as those involving a tiger.
The Las Vegas branch of Madame Tussauds added Hangover-themed rooms recreating the hotel room and the wedding chapel and a tie-in rooftop cocktail bar.
In 2018, Hasbro issued a parody version of their board game Clue where players have to locate a missing friend somewhere in the city after a wild night of carousing.
Sequels
Principal photography of The Hangover Part II began in October 2010, with Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Justin Bartha, and Zach Galifianakis returning, in addition to Ken Jeong who appears in a much larger role. The film was released on May 26, 2011.
Filming of The Hangover Part III began in September 2012, and was released on May 23, 2013.
See also
List of films set in Las Vegas
References
External links
Official website
The Hangover at AllMovie
The Hangover at IMDb
The Hangover on FilmAffinity
The Hangover at Metacritic
The Hangover at Box Office Mojo
The Hangover at Rotten Tomatoes
The Hangover – Behind-the-Scenes Secrets
The Hangover at the TCM Movie Database |
The_Hangover_Part_II | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hangover_Part_II | [
593
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hangover_Part_II"
] | The Hangover Part II is a 2011 American comedy film produced by Legendary Pictures and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. The sequel to the 2009 film The Hangover and the second installment in The Hangover trilogy, the film was directed by Todd Phillips, who co-wrote the script with Craig Mazin and Scot Armstrong, and stars Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Ken Jeong, Jeffrey Tambor, Justin Bartha, and Paul Giamatti.
It tells the story of Phil, Stu, Alan, and Doug, as they travel to Thailand. After the bachelor party in Las Vegas, Stu takes no chances and opts for a safe, subdued pre-wedding brunch. Things do not go as planned, resulting in another bad hangover with no memories of the previous night.
Development began in April 2009, two months before The Hangover was released. The principal actors were cast in March 2010 to reprise their roles from the first film. Production began in October 2010, in Ontario, California, before moving on location in Thailand. The film was released on May 26, 2011, and became the eighth-highest-grossing film of 2011 and the highest-grossing R-rated comedy during its theatrical run, but unlike the first film, The Hangover Part II received mixed reviews.
A third installment, The Hangover Part III, was released on May 23, 2013.
Plot
Two years after the events in Las Vegas, Stu Price is preparing to travel to Thailand for his upcoming wedding to Lauren, his fiancée. In order to avoid the events in Las Vegas, Stu initially doesn't allow his three best friends, Doug Billings, Phil Wenneck and especially Alan Garner to accompany him. He also hosts his bachelor party at IHOP with Phil and Doug.
Tracy gets Doug to convince Stu to allow her brother Alan to accompany them to Thailand. Stu reluctantly allows his friends (including Alan), Tracy and Phil's wife Stephanie to go with him. At the airport and much to Alan's dismay, they are joined by Lauren's 16-year-old brother Teddy, a Stanford University scholar.
At the rehearsal dinner, Lauren's father reveals his disapproval of Stu during a toast. Later that night, Stu hesitantly joins Phil, Doug, Alan and Teddy for a beer. Sitting at a campfire and roasting marshmallows, the group toast to Stu and Lauren's future happiness.
The next day, Phil, Stu and Alan awaken in a dilapidated hotel room in Bangkok with no memory of how they got there. Stu has a face tattoo similar to Mike Tyson's and Alan's head is completely shaved. They meet a chain-smoking capuchin monkey and discover that Leslie Chow followed them to Thailand on Alan's invitation. They cannot find Teddy, discovering only his severed finger. Chow begins to relate the events of the prior night, but he passes out after snorting a line of cocaine. Thinking he is dead, the panicked trio disposes of his body in the hotel's ice box.
Through a tip from Doug (who left the campfire earlier and stayed at the resort), they go to a police station to pick up Teddy, but are given a wheelchair containing an elderly Buddhist monk. He cannot reveal anything, having taken a vow of silence. After finding a business card, they travel to the smoldering ruins of a business, located in a ruined street, apparently destroyed in a riot the night before.
They enter a nearby tattoo parlor where Stu got his tattoo, and they learn that they started a fight that escalated into the riot. The trio returns the monk to his temple, where they are encouraged by the head monk to meditate. Alan manages to recall that they had been at a strip club, where they learn that Stu engaged in anal sex with a transsexual woman. Upon exiting, the trio is attacked by two Russian mobsters who take the monkey, and one shoots Phil in his arm.
After Phil is treated at a clinic, Alan confesses that he had drugged some of the marshmallows from the previous night with muscle relaxers and his ADHD medication in order to sedate Teddy, but accidentally mixed up the bags. A furious Stu blames Alan for ruining his life and attacks him, but Phil breaks it up and tells them that they have to stick together.
During the scuffle, they notice an address and a time for a meeting written on Alan's stomach. They meet a gangster named Kingsley, who demands Chow's bank account password by the following morning in exchange for Teddy. They return to the hotel to try to find Chow's password, only to discover that he is still alive. They steal the monkey, who had the code given to him and put inside his vest for safe-keeping by Chow, back through a violent car chase, during which the monkey is shot and injured.
After taking the code and leaving the monkey outside a veterinary, the group completes the deal with Kingsley the next morning. Interpol agents appear and arrest Chow. Kingsley turns out to be an undercover agent, who tells the trio that he does not actually know where Teddy is.
Desperate, Phil calls Doug's wife Tracy to tell her they cannot find Teddy. During a rolling blackout, Stu realizes where Teddy is. The trio rushes back to the hotel to find Teddy in the elevator (though he is still missing a finger). He had woken up earlier than the others, but became trapped after the power went out when he went out for ice for his finger. The four use Chow's speedboat to travel back to the wedding reception.
Arriving just as Lauren's father is about to cancel the wedding, Stu makes a defiant speech, and rejects being a boring dentist and instead insists he is quite wild. Impressed, Lauren's father gives the couple his blessing. Alan presents Stu with a special gift at the reception: a musical guest performance by Mike Tyson. Teddy later discovers that he had taken many pictures during the night on his cell phone before the battery died. The group, along with Tyson, agree to look at the pictures together once before deleting them.
Cast
Bradley Cooper as Phil Wenneck, a teacher, and the leader of the Wolfpack
Ed Helms as Dr. Stu Price, a dentist traveling to Thailand to get married
Zach Galifianakis as Alan Garner, brother-in-law to Doug, idolizes Phil
Ken Jeong as Leslie Chow, the Chinese gangster the trio encountered in Vegas
Jeffrey Tambor as Sid Garner, Alan and Tracy's father
Justin Bartha as Doug Billings the bachelor from the previous film and member of the Wolf Pack
Paul Giamatti as Kingsley/Detective Peters, an undercover Interpol agent
Jamie Chung as Lauren Srisai, Stu's fiancée
Sasha Barrese as Tracy Billings, Doug's wife
Mason Lee as Teddy Srisai, Lauren's brother
Gillian Vigman as Stephanie Wenneck, Phil's wife
Bryan Callen as Samir, a strip club owner in Bangkok
Sondra Currie as Linda Garner, Tracy's and Alan's mother
Yasmin Lee as Kimmy
Nirut Sirijanya as Fong Srisai, Lauren's father
Penpak Sirikul as Joi
Crystal the Monkey as The Drug-Dealing Monkey
Mike Tyson reprises his role as himself and sings a cover of the 1984 Murray Head song "One Night in Bangkok" for the movie.
The film is the Hollywood debut of Mason Lee, son of director Ang Lee.
Nick Cassavetes has a cameo appearance as a Bangkok tattoo artist. Liam Neeson was initially cast in that role, which was originally envisioned for Mel Gibson.
Production
Development and pre-production
In April 2009, Warner Bros. hired Todd Phillips, who directed The Hangover, to write a sequel with Scot Armstrong. The deal, reached two months before the release of The Hangover in June 2009, came as result of The Hangover's positive screen tests, and a trailer which drew a strong reaction from audiences at ShoWest. The writers from the first film, Scott Moore and Jon Lucas, decided not to come back to write the sequel because, according to Lucas, "they were done with that story…and didn't want to just write Hangover sequels their whole careers."
Variety reported in July 2009, that production on The Hangover 2 would begin in October 2010, for a May 26, 2011 release, following the same production schedule used for the first film. Also in July, Zach Galifianakis stated in an interview with Latino Review that the film will be set in Thailand, "Well, I think we're going to Thailand. The problem with Hangover 2 is that we have to live up to what we did which is very difficult. So we get, I think, kind of kidnapped. It has nothing to do with the bachelor party. We're definitely not doing that again but we do end up in an exotic place. That's all I know."
In January 2010, Phillips dismissed rumors that Zac Efron would join the cast of The Hangover 2, though Ed Helms stated that Efron would be a welcomed addition, commenting, "I love that guy. He's actually really funny."
In March 2010, Phillips denied reports that the film would take place in Mexico or Thailand stating, "I don't know. There's a lot of rumors. There was rumor also that it was going to Mexico or something and neither are true." Also by March, Galifianakis, Helms, Bradley Cooper, and Justin Bartha completed negotiations and signed deals to reprise their roles in the sequel.
Cooper stated that "we made [the] decision early on" to keep the same plot structure. "I remember we did this photo shoot for Vanity Fair and that was when we first talked about a sequel in a realistic way; and we were all in the room together afterwards and we were saying 'here's the choice: do we stray from the structure or do we run straight for it?' And we all agreed, no question about it, we hadn't earned the ability to take these 3 guys out and put them in a new structure. There needs to be a ticking clock, there needs to be a missed night and there needs to be someone who's gone and a woman who is waiting to get married and a guy who needs to get married."
In June 2010, before accepting the Guy Movie of the Year award on the Spike Guys Choice Awards, Phillips announced that there would be a Hangover 2 and that they were hoping to begin filming around October 15, 2010, for a July 4, 2011 weekend release.
In July 2010, it was confirmed that the film would indeed be set in Thailand and earlier comments made by Phillips denying such reports were a deliberate case of misdirection. The following month, Bradley Cooper stated he believed the rumors to be true and was looking forward to filming The Hangover 2 in Thailand.
In October 2010, Phillips confirmed that the film would take place in Bangkok and Los Angeles and that Galifianakis, Cooper, Helms and Ken Jeong would be returning.
Filming
On a budget of $80 million, principal photography began on October 8, 2010, in Ontario, California with the first images of production being released a few days later. It was also reported in October that actress Heather Graham would not be reprising her role as Jade from the first film. Later in the same month it was reported that Mel Gibson would have a cameo appearance in the film as a Bangkok tattoo artist. Four days later Warner Bros. Pictures, Legendary Pictures and director Todd Phillips confirmed that Gibson would not be appearing in the film. Phillips stated: "I thought Mel would have been great in the movie and I had the full backing of [WB president] Jeff Robinov and his team. But I realize filmmaking is a collaborative effort, and this decision ultimately did not have the full support of my entire cast and crew."
Liam Neeson replaced Gibson after being invited by Cooper, who worked with Neeson on The A-Team, to take the part. Neeson, a fan of the first film stated, "I just got a call to do a one-day shoot on 'Hangover 2' as a tattooist in Thailand, and that's all I know about it." Although, Neeson had filmed his scenes, his cameo was edited out when director Todd Phillips was forced to do reshoots and Neeson was not available. He was replaced by Nick Cassavetes.
In November 2010, it was reported that Jamie Chung had been cast in the film as Stu's fiancée as well as it being renamed, The Hangover Part II. In an interview director Todd Phillips revealed that Mike Tyson would be back in the sequel. Also in November, it was reported that Paul Giamatti had joined the cast. The next day it was reported that former U.S. President Bill Clinton filmed a cameo appearance for the film in Bangkok while he was in the city to deliver a speech on clean energy. Ed Helms clarified that Clinton merely visited the set and would be surprised if he appeared in the film.
In December 2010, it was reported that Bryan Callen, who played the owner of the wedding chapel in The Hangover, is working again in The Hangover Part II, as "a smarmy strip club owner in Bangkok." Also in December, Australian stuntman Scott McLean was seriously injured in a traffic accident while filming a stunt sequence near Bangkok. Warner Bros. issued a statement stating McLean was put into a medically-induced coma but is expected to recover.
Bradley Cooper said that "logistically, to get from point A to point B [was] incredibly difficult and the bureaucracy and getting things done. There are always tons of people around the set and Todd loves a lean set and it was always the opposite, so watching a director deal with that—especially when it was Todd Phillips—was interesting." He then went on to say, in a later part of the interview, that "it was the hardest shoot that I had ever done, that Zach had ever done, that Ed had ever done and that Todd had ever done."
Post-production
In February 2011, it was reported that Christophe Beck would be reteaming with director Todd Phillips to score the film. The project marks the fourth collaboration between Beck and Philips, who also worked together on School for Scoundrels, The Hangover and Due Date.
In April 2011, Variety reported that Liam Neeson's cameo as a Bangkok tattoo artist had been accidentally cut and Nick Cassavetes had been re-cast in the role. While editing, Phillips cut the scene that immediately followed Neeson's cameo, meaning it no longer had the information necessary to logically get the main characters to the situation in the next scene. Three weeks later, Phillips decided to reshoot the scene, but with Neeson in London filming Wrath of the Titans, the actor was no longer available. Phillips explained, "We were in a complete time crunch so I called up Nick and asked if he would do the part. He came in and crushed it and that is the scene that you will ultimately see in the film. [I'm excited for everyone] to see the film. It turned out great".
Soundtrack
The soundtrack was released on May 24, 2011, by WaterTower Music. The soundtrack contains 12 songs from the film, along with eight dialogue clips from the film. Though the song "Monster", by Kanye West featuring Jay-Z, Rick Ross, Bon Iver, and Nicki Minaj, was featured in the film, it does not appear on the soundtrack.
Among the songs included on the album is Ed Helms' version of the Billy Joel song "Allentown", rewritten in the spirit of his popular "Stu's Song" from the soundtrack of 2009's The Hangover. Additional music includes a song from Danzig, along with music from the Ska Rangers, Kanye West, Mark Lanegan, Deadmau5, Wolfmother, Billy Joel, and more.
Release
The Hangover Part II held its premiere on May 19, 2011, at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, California.
Marketing
The first teaser trailer was released online in February 2011. The first full trailer was released in April 2011. Later in the same month Warner Bros. pulled the trailer from theaters for violating an MPAA rule stating that films can only trailer before similarly rated movies. The trailer for the R-rated comedy was being promoted at screenings for the PG-13-rated Source Code against MPAA regulations. Warner Bros. released a statement saying, "In our haste to meet the placement schedule for this trailer, we failed to properly vet the final version with the MPAA. We acted immediately to correct the mistake and removed the trailer from screens".
Lawsuits
Tattoo
In the film, Stu wakes up with a copy of Mike Tyson's tattoo. In April 2011, tattoo artist S. Victor Whitmill, who designed and inked Tyson's tattoo, filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. for copyright infringement, requesting an injunction against using the tattoo in the movie or its promotional materials. Warner Bros. asserted several defenses, including that tattoos are not copyrightable. Judge Catherine D. Perry denied the injunction due to harm to other businesses but allowed the case to go forward, calling most of the arguments put forward by Warner Bros. were "just silly" and affirming the copyrightability of tattoos. Warner Bros. said it would digitally modify the tattoo in the home video release if no agreement was reached; it settled with Whitmill on June 20 under undisclosed terms.
Stuntman
In 2011, Scott McLean, an Australian stuntman who was injured and suffered brain damage while filming in Bangkok sued Warner Bros. The case was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum, though several years later McLean was still fighting Warner Bros, who were disputing ongoing medical costs incurred in treatment for the injuries he sustained at work.
Louis Vuitton luggage
In June 2012, Warner Bros. successfully defended a lawsuit brought against them by Louis Vuitton over the use of a fake case in one scene.
Home media
The Hangover Part II was released on DVD and Blu-ray on December 6, 2011, in the United States by Warner Home Video, on December 5 in the United Kingdom and on November 30 in the Netherlands. The film was made available in three formats: DVD, Blu-ray, and a Blu-ray combo pack which included both high- and standard-definition versions of the film and an UltraViolet digital copy of the film.
Reception
Box office
The Hangover Part II grossed $254.5 million in North America and $332.3 million in other territories for a worldwide gross of $586.8 million, against a budget of $80 million. It was the eighth-highest-grossing film of 2011. In its opening weekend, it earned $177.8 million, which was the highest-grossing worldwide opening for a comedy film. On the weekend of June 17–19, 2011, it out-grossed its predecessor in worldwide earnings to become the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time.
United States and Canada
The film was released on Thursday, May 26, 2011, in North America, coinciding with the U.S. Memorial Day weekend. During launch midnight showings in 2,600 theaters, the film earned $10.4 million, breaking the record for the biggest midnight opening for an R-rated film, replacing Paranormal Activity (2007) with $6.3 million. The film opened in a further 1,015 theaters during the launch day for a total of 3,615—becoming the widest opening ever for an R-rated film—and earned a further $21.2 million to accrue a launch-day total of $31.6 million; nearly doubling The Hangover's Friday launch opening ($16.7 million). By this point, it had the third-highest Thursday opening of any film, behind The Matrix Reloaded ($37.5 million) and Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith ($50 million).
This amount broke two further records; the highest-grossing opening day for a live-action comedy and the highest-grossing opening day for an R-rated comedy film, replacing Sex and the City (2008) with $26.7 million. According to exit polling, the launch day audience was 51 percent female and 41 percent were aged between 18 and 24. On May 27, the film took an additional $30.0 million, dropping only 5 percent from the takings of the previous day and becoming the highest-grossing Friday for a live-action comedy. The three-day (Friday–Sunday) opening weekend accumulated $85,946,294—an average of $23,923 per theater—becoming the highest-grossing opening weekend for a comedy film, the highest-grossing opening weekend for a live-action comedy, replacing Austin Powers in Goldmember ($73 million), the highest-grossing opening weekend for an R-rated comedy, replacing Sex and the City ($79 million) and the second-highest-grossing opening weekend of all time for an R-rated film, after The Matrix Reloaded ($91.7 million).
For the Memorial Day four-day weekend, the film amassed $103.4 million to become the fourth-highest-grossing Memorial Day weekend opening. In its second weekend the film gross dropped 64 percent from the previous weekend—while the original film dropped only 27 percent during its second weekend—and grossed $31.4 million.
The film ended its box office run on September 15, 2011, on 113th day of its release.
International market
The Hangover Part II debuted in 40 countries internationally over the weekend of May 26–29, 2011, across 5,170 screens. In total, the film accrued $60.3 million from its Friday-through-Monday opening weekend, more than tripling the international gross of The Hangover's debut in the same territories. The highest weekend gross came from the United Kingdom where the film earned £10,409,017 from 469 screens, breaking the record for the highest-grossing opening for a U.S. comedy, but this record was overtaken by The Inbetweeners Movie (£13,216,736). Australia accrued a gross of $12.1 million to replace Sex and the City in the country as the highest-grossing opening for an MA-rated film—no-one under the age of 15 permitted.
The film took $8.7 million in the Netherlands and $6.2 million in France and $3.1 million in Italy ($4.6 million with previews); a five-fold increase over the opening-weekend gross of The Hangover. On its second weekend, the film accrued $63.8 million from 53 territories, placing it second behind Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, the film having earned 79 percent of its predecessor's entire overseas run. On the weekend of June 10–12, 2011, it surpassed its predecessor and There's Something About Mary in international earnings to become the highest-grossing R-rated comedy overseas.
Critical reception
On Rotten Tomatoes The Hangover Part II has an approval rating of 34% based on 247 reviews with an average rating of 4.96/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "A crueler, darker, raunchier carbon copy of the first installment, The Hangover Part II lacks the element of surprise—and most of the joy—that helped make the original a hit." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 44 out of 100 based on 40 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.
Andrew Barker of Variety gave the film a negative review, stating, "The stock dismissal 'more of the same' has rarely been more accurately applied to a sequel than to The Hangover Part II, which ranks as little more than a faded copy of its predecessor superimposed on a more brightly colored background". Christy Lemire of the Associated Press said, "Giving the people what they want is one thing. Making nearly the exact same movie a second time, but shifting the setting to Thailand, is just … what, lazy? Arrogant? Maybe a combination of the two". Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film two stars out of four stating, "The Hangover Part II plays like a challenge to the audience's capacity for raunchiness. It gets laughs, but some of them are in disbelief".
Conversely, Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter gave The Hangover Part II a positive review remarking, "What happens in Bangkok isn't as much fun as when it happened in Vegas, but it's still worth the trip".
Controversy
Crystal, a capuchin monkey who also appeared in the Night at the Museum films, portrays the drug-dealing monkey. Director Todd Phillips raised concerns after he joked that Crystal had become addicted to cigarettes after learning to smoke them for the film. Philips later explained that Crystal never actually held a lit cigarette on the film's set and the smoke was added digitally in post-production. Despite this, PETA protested about Crystal's appearance in the film for use of exotic animals for entertainment purposes and the film does not carry the American Humane Association's disclaimer that "no animals were harmed" since the group was denied set visits.
In an interview with New York magazine, Ken Jeong responded to criticisms of the character Mr. Chow as an offensive caricature and stated doing the character was "very cathartic" for him and said the character "has the inflections of Vietnamese, with kind of the anger of my own Korean nature" although "it's definitely not about an accent, or a stereotype."
As the film comes to a close, many photos are revealed depicting the events of the previous night. Among them is a photo where Phil points a gun at Chow's head, mimicking Eddie Adams' famous photograph of the Execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém during the Vietnam War. Film critic Roger Ebert was amongst those who criticized use of the photo, calling it "a cruel shot that director Todd Phillips should never, ever have used."
Accolades
References
External links
Official website
The Hangover Part II at IMDb
The Hangover Part II at Metacritic
The Hangover Part II at Box Office Mojo
The Hangover Part II at Rotten Tomatoes |
Lose_Your_Way_(album) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lose_Your_Way_(album) | [
594
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lose_Your_Way_(album)"
] | Lose Your Way is the second studio album by the British rock band Love Amongst Ruin. It was released by Ancient B Records on 29 June 2015 and has been described as "an album from an artist over the hump, head high to the future and all engines gunning".
Background
Writing and recording
Writing for Love Amongst Ruin's second album began midway through the tour supporting their self-titled debut album in January 2011. Just prior to the end of the tour the following June, frontman Steve Hewitt revealed that the band had written nine songs and planned to begin recording in September 2011. In November, Hewitt revealed that the band had been recording at Moles Studio in Bath, the location of the majority of recording for the band's debut album. Writing was completed in March 2012 and recordings continued at Moles Studio, with Hewitt and guitarists Donald Ross Skinner and Steve Hove handling playing duties, with Paul Corkett engineering. Corkett later put Hewitt and Skinner in touch with producer Dan Austin, a frequent production partner of Gil Norton. Austin was given a trial run at producing the title track, which he "nailed" and was asked to produce the whole album. The entire process was completed in two-and-a-half months.
Perry Bamonte featured on bass on the album after being announced as having joined the band in September 2012. Early composition "Oh God" was recorded for the album, after having been performed live at the London Scala in June 2010 and prepared for an EP in 2012, which failed to see release. A cover of Six by Seven's "So Close" was recorded for the album, prior to Hewitt joining the said band in 2013. Despite initially not wishing to record a cover, Hewitt and Austin felt the track fitted the vibe of the album and set out "to make it the song it never really was". Former member Laurie Ross returned to provide cello and programming for the album. Hewitt recalled that the troublesome vocal melody for "Menace Ballad" was completed by local Bath musician Nick Walker.
Themes
Of the album's title and title track, Hewitt said "it’s how your perceptions change as you go through life. Do you actually know where you’re fucking going? It’s trying to explain life’s difficult path". Hewitt also revealed that he consciously made a decision to write about experiences outside the personal nature prevalent on the debut album, saying "it's a difficult thing to do and a huge departure mentally and it's something I find exciting. There are still personal songs on the record, but it's more about the human condition rather than what's being inflicted by others". Closing track "Oh God" was written by Hewitt as a reaction to the shock of hearing the news of the death of his friend Stuart Cable in 2010. "Modern War Song" deals with the subject of Western imperialism and how "revolting soldiers are treated when their service finishes after signing up and fighting for their country". Hewitt revealed that there isn't a constant theme running through the album, instead "the album is more of a soundscape".
Delay and release
Lose Your Way was put on the back burner after guitarist Steve Hove quit the band shortly before a comeback show at the London Barfly on 10 September 2012. Hewitt subsequently joined Six by Seven for its Love and Peace and Sympathy album and tour in 2013 and produced records by former Love Amongst Ruin opening bands Lys and Spiral 69. The Lose Your Way album title and track list were revealed in April 2015,> with a release date of 29 June 2015. The release of the album was preceded by the "Lose Your Way" EP on 11 May 2015 and was followed by the "Modern War Song" and "So Close" EPs respectively on 24 July and 6 November. By April 2021, the album had gone silver.
Reception
NME gave the album 7/10, saying that the album was "lovely, but ruinous". Cryptic Rock gave the album full marks and said Hewitt had achieved a "smorgasbord" and "cornucopia of sound". Kerrang! awarded the album 4/5, saying Hewitt's ejection from Placebo "may well have been a blessing in disguise".
Track listing
iTunes bonus tracks
Personnel
Steve Hewitt – vocals, drums, bass, guitar, piano
Donald Ross Skinner – guitar, bass, keyboards
Steve Hove – guitar
Laurie Ross – cello, programming
Beth Porter – cello
James SK Wān – glockenspiel
Perry Bamonte – bass
Production
Production, engineering – Dan Austin
Additional engineering – Paul Corkett
Mixing – Dan Austin, Steve Hewitt, Donald Ross Skinner
Mastering – Brian Gardner
Additional mastering – Paul Walton
Tour
On 3 September 2015, Love Amongst Ruin announced a European tour to support Lose Your Way. The tour included the band's debut shows in Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Norway and Sweden. Gizz Butt (guitar) and Ravi Kesavaram (drums) were brought in to support the core lineup of Hewitt, Skinner and Bamonte. An instrumental version of the off-album track "Amy's Prayer" was used as the band's walk-on music.
Cancelled dates
1 Cancelled due to circumstances beyond the band's control.
EPs
2015: "Lose Your Way" (11 May 2015)
2015: "Modern War Song" (23 July 2015)
2015: "So Close" (6 November 2015)
== References == |
Bath,_Somerset | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath,_Somerset | [
594
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath,_Somerset#Culture"
] | Bath (RP: ; local pronunciation: [ba(ː)θ]) is a city in the ceremonial county of Somerset in England, known for and named after its Roman-built baths. At the 2021 Census, the population was 94,092. Bath is in the valley of the River Avon, 97 miles (156 km) west of London and 11 miles (18 km) southeast of Bristol. The city became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987, and was later added to the transnational World Heritage Site known as the "Great Spa Towns of Europe" in 2021. Bath is also the largest city and settlement in Somerset.
The city became a spa with the Latin name Aquae Sulis ("the waters of Sulis") c. 60 AD when the Romans built baths and a temple in the valley of the River Avon, although hot springs were known even before then. Bath Abbey was founded in the 7th century and became a religious centre; the building was rebuilt in the 12th and 16th centuries. In the 17th century, claims were made for the curative properties of water from the springs, and Bath became popular as a spa town in the Georgian era. Georgian architecture, crafted from Bath stone, includes the Royal Crescent, Circus, Pump Room, and the Assembly Rooms, where Beau Nash presided over the city's social life from 1705 until his death in 1761.
Many of the streets and squares were laid out by John Wood, the Elder, and in the 18th century the city became fashionable and the population grew. Jane Austen lived in Bath in the early 19th century. Further building was undertaken in the 19th century and following the Bath Blitz in World War II. Bath became part of the county of Avon in 1974, and, following Avon's abolition in 1996, has been the principal centre of Bath and North East Somerset.
Bath has over 6 million yearly visitors, making it one of ten English cities visited most by overseas tourists. Attractions include the spas, canal boat tours, Royal Crescent, Bath Skyline, Parade Gardens and Royal Victoria Park which hosts carnivals and seasonal events. Shopping areas include SouthGate shopping centre, the Corridor arcade and artisan shops at Walcot, Milsom, Stall and York Streets. There are theatres, including the Theatre Royal, as well as several museums including the Museum of Bath Architecture, the Victoria Art Gallery, the Museum of East Asian Art, the Herschel Museum of Astronomy, Fashion Museum, and the Holburne Museum. The city has two universities – the University of Bath and Bath Spa University – with Bath College providing further education. Sporting clubs from the city include Bath Rugby and Bath City.
History
Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages
The hills in the locality such as Bathampton Down saw human activity from the Mesolithic period. Several Bronze Age round barrows were opened by John Skinner in the 18th century. A long barrow site believed to be from the Early Bronze Age Beaker people was flattened to make way for RAF Charmy Down. Solsbury Hill overlooking the current city was an Iron Age hill fort and the adjacent Bathampton Camp may also have been one.
Roman baths and town
Archaeological evidence shows that the site of the Roman baths' main spring may have been treated as a shrine by the Britons, and was dedicated to the goddess Sulis, whom the Romans identified with Minerva; the name Sulis continued to be used after the Roman invasion, appearing in the town's Roman name, Aquae Sulis (literally, "the waters of Sulis"). Messages to her scratched onto metal, known as curse tablets, have been recovered from the sacred spring by archaeologists. The tablets were written in Latin, and laid curses on personal enemies. For example, if a citizen had his clothes stolen at the baths, he might write a curse against the suspects on a tablet to be read by the goddess.
A temple was constructed in AD 60–70, and a bathing complex was built up over the next 300 years. Engineers drove oak piles into the mud to provide a stable foundation, and surrounded the spring with an irregular stone chamber lined with lead. In the 2nd century, the spring was enclosed within a wooden barrel-vaulted structure that housed the caldarium (hot bath), tepidarium (warm bath), and frigidarium (cold bath).
The town was later given defensive walls, probably in the 3rd century. After the failure of Roman authority in the first decade of the 5th century, the baths fell into disrepair and were eventually lost as a result of rising water levels and silting.
In March 2012, a hoard of 30,000 silver Roman coins, one of the largest discovered in Britain, was unearthed in an archaeological dig. The coins, believed to date from the 3rd century, were found about 150 m (490 ft) from the Roman baths.
Post-Roman and medieval
Bath may have been the site of the Battle of Badon (c. 500 AD), in which Arthur, the hero of later legends, is said to have defeated the Anglo-Saxons. The town was captured by the West Saxons in 577 after the Battle of Deorham; the Anglo-Saxon poem The Ruin may describe the appearance of the Roman site about this time. A monastery was founded at an early date – reputedly by Saint David although more probably in 675 by Osric, King of the Hwicce, perhaps using the walled area as its precinct. Nennius, a 9th-century historian, mentions a "Hot Lake" in the land of the Hwicce along the River Severn, and adds "It is surrounded by a wall, made of brick and stone, and men may go there to bathe at any time, and every man can have the kind of bath he likes. If he wants, it will be a cold bath; and if he wants a hot bath, it will be hot". Bede described hot baths in the geographical introduction to the Ecclesiastical History in terms very similar to those of Nennius. King Offa of Mercia gained control of the monastery in 781 and rebuilt the church, which was dedicated to St. Peter.
According to the Victorian churchman Edward Churton, during the Anglo-Saxon era Bath was known as Acemannesceastre ('Akemanchester'), or 'aching men's city', on account of the reputation these springs had for healing the sick.
By the 9th century, the old Roman street pattern was lost and Bath was a royal possession. King Alfred laid out the town afresh, leaving its south-eastern quadrant as the abbey precinct. In the Burghal Hidage, Bath is recorded as a burh (borough) and is described as having walls of 1,375 yards (1,257 m) and was allocated 1000 men for defence. During the reign of Edward the Elder coins were minted in Bath based on a design from the Winchester mint but with 'BAD' on the obverse relating to the Anglo-Saxon name for the town, Baðum, Baðan or Baðon, meaning "at the baths", and this was the source of the present name. Edgar of England was crowned king of England in Bath Abbey in 973, in a ceremony that formed the basis of all future English coronations.
William Rufus granted the town, abbey and mint to a royal physician, John of Tours, who became Bishop of Wells and Abbot of Bath, following the sacking of the town during the Rebellion of 1088. It was papal policy for bishops to move to more urban seats, and John of Tours translated his own from Wells to Bath. The bishop planned and began a much larger church as his cathedral, to which was attached a priory, with the bishop's palace beside it. New baths were built around the three springs. Later bishops returned the episcopal seat to Wells while retaining the name Bath in the title, Bishop of Bath and Wells. St John's Hospital was founded around 1180 by Bishop Reginald Fitz Jocelin and is among the oldest almshouses in England. The 'hospital of the baths' was built beside the hot springs of the Cross Bath, for their health-giving properties and to provide shelter for the poor infirm.
Administrative systems fell within the hundreds. The Bath Hundred had various names including the Hundred of Le Buri. The Bath Foreign Hundred or Forinsecum covered the area outside the city and was later combined into the Bath Forum Hundred. Wealthy merchants had no status within the hundred courts and formed guilds to gain influence. They built the first guildhall probably in the 13th century. Around 1200, the first mayor was appointed.
Early modern
By the 15th century, Bath's abbey church was dilapidated and Oliver King, Bishop of Bath and Wells, decided to rebuild it on a smaller scale in 1500. The new church was completed just a few years before Bath Priory was dissolved in 1539 by Henry VIII. The abbey church became derelict before being restored as the city's parish church in the Elizabethan era, when the city experienced a revival as a spa. The baths were improved and the city began to attract the aristocracy. A Royal charter granted by Queen Elizabeth I in 1590 confirmed city status. James Montagu, Bishop of Bath and Wells from 1608, spent considerable sums in restoring Bath Abbey and actively supported the Baths themselves, aware that the ‘towne liveth wholly by them’. In 1613, perhaps at his behest, Queen Anne visited the town to take the waters: the Queen’s Bath was named after her. The cue for the visit may have been the completion of the restoration work to Bath Abbey, the last instalment of which had been paid for two years previously. Anne of Denmark came to Bath in 1613 and 1615.
During the English Civil War, the city was garrisoned for Charles I. Seven thousand pounds was spent on fortifications, but on the appearance of parliamentary forces the gates were thrown open and the city surrendered. It became a significant post for the Western Association army under William Waller. Bath was retaken by the royalists in July 1643 following the Battle of Lansdowne and occupied for two years until 1645. Luckily, the city was spared the destruction of property and starvation of its inhabitants unlike nearby Bristol and Gloucester. During the occupation, the finances of the Bath City Council took a drubbing with council spending, rents and grants all falling. The billeting of soldiers in private houses also contributed to disorder and vandalism.
Normality to the city quickly recovered after the war when the city council achieved a healthy budget surplus. Thomas Guidott, a student of chemistry and medicine at Wadham College, Oxford, set up a practice in the city in 1668. He was interested in the curative properties of the waters, and he wrote A discourse of Bathe, and the hot waters there. Also, Some Enquiries into the Nature of the water in 1676. It brought the health-giving properties of the hot mineral waters to the attention of the country, and the aristocracy arrived to partake in them.
Several areas of the city were developed in the Stuart period, and more building took place during Georgian times in response to the increasing number of visitors who required accommodation. Architects John Wood the Elder and his son laid out the new quarters in streets and squares, the identical façades of which gave an impression of palatial scale and classical decorum. Much of the creamy gold Bath stone, a type of limestone used for construction in the city, was obtained from the Combe Down and Bathampton Down Mines owned by Ralph Allen (1694–1764). Allen, to advertise the quality of his quarried limestone, commissioned the elder John Wood to build a country house on his Prior Park estate between the city and the mines. Allen was responsible for improving and expanding the postal service in western England, for which he held the contract for more than forty years. Although not fond of politics, Allen was a civic-minded man and a member of Bath Corporation for many years. He was elected mayor for a single term in 1742.
In the early 18th century, Bath acquired its first purpose-built theatre, the Old Orchard Street Theatre. It was rebuilt as the Theatre Royal, along with the Grand Pump Room attached to the Roman Baths and assembly rooms. Master of ceremonies Beau Nash, who presided over the city's social life from 1704 until his death in 1761, drew up a code of behaviour for public entertainments. Bath had become perhaps the most fashionable of the rapidly developing British spa towns, attracting many notable visitors such as the wealthy London bookseller Andrew Millar and his wife, who both made long visits. In 1816, it was described as "a seat of amusement and dissipation", where "scenes of extravagance in this receptacle of the wealthy and the idle, the weak and designing" were habitual.
Late modern
The population of the city was 40,020 at the 1801 census, making it one of the largest cities in Britain. William Thomas Beckford bought a house in Lansdown Crescent in 1822, and subsequently two adjacent houses to form his residence. Having acquired all the land between his home and the top of Lansdown Hill, he created a garden more than 1⁄2 mile (800 m) in length and built Beckford's Tower at the top.
Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia spent four years in exile, from 1936 to 1940, at Fairfield House in Bath. During World War II, between the evening of 25 April and the early morning of 27 April 1942, Bath suffered three air raids in reprisal for RAF raids on the German cities of Lübeck and Rostock, part of the Luftwaffe campaign popularly known as the Baedeker Blitz. During the Bath Blitz, more than 400 people were killed, and more than 19,000 buildings damaged or destroyed.
Houses in Royal Crescent, Circus and Paragon were burnt out along with the Assembly Rooms. A 500-kilogram (1,100 lb) high explosive bomb landed on the east side of Queen Square, resulting in houses on the south side being damaged and the Francis Hotel losing 24 metres (79 ft) of its frontage. The buildings have all been restored although there are still signs of the bombing.
A postwar review of inadequate housing led to the clearance and redevelopment of areas of the city in a postwar style, often at variance with the local Georgian style. In the 1950s, the nearby villages of Combe Down, Twerton and Weston were incorporated into the city to enable the development of housing, much of it council housing. In 1965, town planner Colin Buchanan published Bath: A Planning and Transport Study, which to a large degree sought to better accommodate the motor car, including the idea of a traffic tunnel underneath the centre of Bath. Though criticised by conservationists, some parts of the plan were implemented.
In the 1970s and 1980s, it was recognised that conservation of historic buildings was inadequate, leading to more care and reuse of buildings and open spaces. In 1987, the city was selected by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, recognising its international cultural significance.
Between 1991 and 2000, Bath was the scene of a series of rapes committed by an unidentified man dubbed the "Batman rapist". The attacker remains at large and is the subject of Britain's longest-running serial rape investigation. He is said to have a tights fetish, have a scar below his bottom lip and resides in the Bath area or knows it very well. He has also been linked to the unsolved murder of Melanie Hall, which occurred in the city in 1996. Although the offender's DNA is known and several thousand men in Bath were DNA tested, the attacker continues to evade police.
Since 2000, major developments have included the Thermae Bath Spa, the SouthGate shopping centre, the residential Western Riverside project on the Stothert & Pitt factory site, and the riverside Bath Quays office and business development. In 2021, Bath become part of a second UNESCO World Heritage Site, a group of spa towns across Europe known as the "Great Spas of Europe". This makes it one of the only places to be formally recognised twice as a World Heritage site.
Government
Since 1996, the city has had a single tier of local government — Bath and North East Somerset Council.
Historical development
Bath had long been an ancient borough, having that status since 878 when it became a royal borough (burh) of Alfred the Great, and was reformed into a municipal borough in 1835. It has formed part of the county of Somerset since 878, when ceded to Wessex, having previously been in Mercia (the River Avon had acted as the border between the two kingdoms since 628). However, Bath was made a county borough in 1889, independent of the newly created administrative county and Somerset County Council. Bath became part of Avon when the non-metropolitan county was created in 1974, resulting in its abolition as a county borough, and instead became a non-metropolitan district with borough status.
With the abolition of Avon in 1996, the non-metropolitan district and borough were abolished too, and Bath has since been part of the unitary authority district of Bath and North East Somerset (B&NES). The unitary district included also the Wansdyke district and therefore includes a wider area than the city (the 'North East Somerset' element) including Keynsham which is home to many of the council's offices, though the council meets at the Guildhall in Bath.
Bath was returned to the ceremonial county of Somerset in 1996, though as B&NES is a unitary authority, it is not part of the area covered by Somerset County Council.
Charter trustees
Bath City Council was abolished in 1996, along with the district of Bath, and there is no longer a parish council for the city. The City of Bath's ceremonial functions, including its formal status as a city, its twinning arrangements, the mayoralty of Bath – which can be traced back to 1230 – and control of the city's coat of arms, are maintained by the charter trustees of the City of Bath.
The councillors elected by the electoral wards that cover Bath (see below) are the trustees, and they elect one of their number as their chair and mayor. The mayor holds office for one municipal year and in modern times the mayor begins their term in office on the first Saturday in June, at a ceremony at Bath Abbey with a civic procession from and to the Guildhall. The 794th mayor, who began her office on 6 May 2021, is June Player. A deputy mayor is also elected.
Coat of arms
The coat of arms includes a depiction of the city wall, and two silver stripes representing the River Avon and the hot springs. The sword of St. Paul is a link to Bath Abbey. The supporters, a lion and a bear, stand on a bed of acorns, a link to Bladud, the subject of the Legend of Bath. The knight's helmet indicates a municipality and the crown is that of King Edgar (referencing his coronation at the Abbey). A mural crown, indicating a city, is alternatively used instead of the helmet and Edgar's crown.
The Arms bear the motto "Aqvae Svlis", the Roman name for Bath in Latin script; although not on the Arms, the motto "Floreat Bathon" is sometimes used ("may Bath flourish" in Latin).
Bath Area Forum
Bath and North East Somerset Council has established the Bath City Forum, comprising B&NES councillors representing wards in Bath and up to 13 co-opted members drawn from the communities of the city. The first meeting of the Forum was held on 13 October 2015, at the Guildhall, where the first chair and vice-chair were elected. In 2021, this was re-launched as the Bath Area Forum.
Parliamentary elections
Bath is one of the oldest extant parliamentary constituencies in the United Kingdom, being in continuous existence since the Model Parliament of 1295. Before the Reform Act 1832, Bath elected two members to the unreformed House of Commons, as an ancient parliamentary borough. From 1832 until 1918 it elected two MPs and then was reduced to one.
Historically the constituency covered only the city of Bath; however, it was enlarged into some outlying areas between 1997 and 2010. The constituency since 2010 once again covers exactly the city of Bath and is currently represented by Liberal Democrat Wera Hobhouse who beat Conservative Ben Howlett at the 2017 general election and retained her seat at the 2019 general election. Howlett had replaced the retiring Liberal Democrat Don Foster at the 2015 general election. Foster's election was a notable result of the 1992 general election, as Chris Patten, the previous Member (and Cabinet Minister) played a major part, as Chairman of the Conservative Party, in re-electing the government of John Major, but failed to defend his marginal seat.
Electoral wards
The fifteen electoral wards of Bath are: Bathwick, Combe Down, Kingsmead, Lambridge, Lansdown, Moorlands, Newbridge, Odd Down, Oldfield Park, Southdown, Twerton, Walcot, Westmoreland, Weston and Widcombe & Lyncombe. These wards are co-extensive with the city, except that Newbridge includes also two parishes beyond the city boundary.
These wards return a total of 28 councillors to Bath and North East Somerset Council; all except two wards return two councillors (Moorlands and Oldfield Park return one each). The most recent elections were held on 4 May 2023 and all wards returned Liberal Democrats except for Lambridge and Westmoreland which returned Green Party and independent councillors respectively.
Boundary changes enacted from 2 May 2019 included the abolition of Abbey ward, the merger of Lyncombe and Widcombe wards, the creation of Moorlands ward, and the replacement of Oldfield with Oldfield Park, as well as considerable changes to boundaries affecting all wards.
Geography and environment
Physical geography
Bath is in the Avon Valley and is surrounded by limestone hills as it is near the southern edge of the Cotswolds, a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and the Mendip Hills rise around 7 miles (11 km) south of the city. The hills that surround and make up the city have a maximum altitude of 781 feet (238 metres) on the Lansdown plateau. Bath has an area of 11 square miles (28 square kilometres).
The floodplain of the Avon has an altitude of about 59 ft (18 m) above sea level, although the city centre is at an elevation of around 25 metres (82 ft) above sea level. The river, once an unnavigable series of braided streams broken up by swamps and ponds, has been managed by weirs into a single channel. Periodic flooding, which shortened the life of many buildings in the lowest part of the city, was normal until major flood control works were completed in the 1970s. Kensington Meadows is an area of mixed woodland and open meadow next to the river which has been designated as a local nature reserve.
Water bubbling up from the ground as geothermal springs originates as rain on the Mendip Hills. The rain percolates through limestone aquifers to a depth of between 9,000 to 14,000 ft (2,700 to 4,300 m) where geothermal energy raises the water's temperature to between 64 and 96 °C (approximately 147–205 °F). Under pressure, the heated water rises to the surface along fissures and faults in the limestone. Hot water at a temperature of 46 °C (115 °F) rises here at the rate of 1,170,000 litres (257,364 imp gal) daily, from the Pennyquick geological fault.
In 1983, a new spa-water bore-hole was sunk, providing a clean and safe supply for drinking in the Pump Room. There is no universal definition to distinguish a hot spring from a geothermal spring, although, by several definitions, the Bath springs can be considered the only hot springs in the UK. Three of the springs feed the thermal baths.
Climate
Along with the rest of South West England, Bath has a temperate climate which is generally wetter and milder than the rest of the country. The annual mean temperature is approximately 10 °C (50.0 °F). Seasonal temperature variation is less extreme than most of the United Kingdom because of the adjacent sea temperatures. The summer months of July and August are the warmest, with mean daily maxima of approximately 21 °C (69.8 °F). In winter, mean minimum temperatures of 1 or 2 °C (33.8 or 35.6 °F) are common. In the summer, the Azores high pressure affects the south-west of England bringing fair weather; however, convective cloud sometimes forms inland, reducing the number of hours of sunshine. Annual sunshine rates are slightly less than the regional average of 1,600 hours.
In December 1998 there were 20 days without sun recorded at Yeovilton. Most of the rainfall in the south-west is caused by Atlantic depressions or by convection. In summer, a large proportion of the rainfall is caused by sun heating the ground, leading to convection and to showers and thunderstorms. Average rainfall is around 700 mm (28 in). About 8–15 days of snowfall is typical. November to March have the highest mean wind speeds, and June to August have the lightest winds. The predominant wind direction is from the southwest.
Green belt
Bath is fully enclosed by green belt as a part of a wider environmental and planning policy first designated in the late 1950s, and this extends into much of the surrounding district and beyond, helping to maintain local green space, prevent further urban sprawl and unplanned expansion towards Bristol and Bradford-on-Avon, as well as protecting smaller villages in between. Suburbs of the city bordering the green belt include Batheaston, Bathford, Bathampton, the University of Bath campus, Ensleigh, Twerton, Upper Weston, Odd Down, and Combe Down.
Parts of the Cotswolds AONB southern extent overlap the green belt north of the city, with other nearby landscape features and facilities within the green belt including the River Avon, Kennet and Avon Canal, Bath Racecourse, Bath Golf Club, Bathampton Down, Bathampton Meadow Nature Reserve, Bristol and Bath Railway Path, the Cotswold Way, Limestone Link route, Pennyquick Park, Little Solsbury Hill, and Primrose Hill.
Demography
District
According to the 2021 census, Bath, together with North East Somerset, which includes areas around Bath as far as the Chew Valley, had a population of 193,400 (up 9.9% from 2011).
The district is largely non-religious and Christian at 47.9% and 42.2%, respectively, with no other religion reaching more than 1%. These figures generally compare with the national averages, though the non-religious, at 47.9%, are significantly more prevalent than the national 36.7%. 84.5% of residents rated their health as good or very good, higher than the national level (81.7%). Nationally, 17.7% of people identified as being disabled; in Bath it is 16.2%.
The table below compares the unitary authority district as a whole (including the city) and South West England and contrasts changes since the 2011 census. More detailed updated information, including figures specifically for the city of Bath, appear to be unavailable.
City
The 2011 census recorded a population of 94,782 for the Bath built-up area and 88,859 for the city, with the latter exactly corresponding to the boundaries of the parliament constituency. The Bath built-up area extends slightly beyond the boundaries of the city itself, taking in areas to the northeast such as Bathampton and Bathford. The 2001 census figure for the city was 83,992. By 2019, the population was estimated at 90,000.
An inhabitant of Bath is known as a Bathonian.
The table below compares the city of Bath with the unitary authority district as a whole (including the city) and South West England.
Economy
Industry
Bath once had an important manufacturing sector, particularly in crane manufacture, furniture manufacture, printing, brass foundries, quarries, dye works and Plasticine manufacture, as well as many mills. Significant Bath companies included Stothert & Pitt, Bath Cabinet Makers and Bath & Portland Stone.
During and after World War II Bath was a major location of Ministry of Defence offices, with three major sites on the outskirts of Bath (Ensleigh, Foxhill and Warminster Road) and a number of smaller central offices including the Empire Hotel. After the Cold War staff numbers declined, and from 2010 to 2013 about 2,600 remaining staff were moved to MoD Abbey Wood in Bristol. In 2013 the three major sites were sold for the development of over 1,000 new houses.
Nowadays, manufacturing is in decline, but the city boasts strong software, publishing and service-oriented industries, and the international manufacturing company Rotork has its headquarters in the city. The city's attraction to tourists has also led to a significant number of jobs in tourism-related industries. Important economic sectors in Bath include education and health (30,000 jobs), retail, tourism and leisure (14,000 jobs) and business and professional services (10,000 jobs).
Major employers are the National Health Service, the city's two universities, and Bath and North East Somerset Council. Growing employment sectors include information and communication technologies and creative and cultural industries where Bath is one of the recognised national centres for publishing, with the magazine and digital publisher Future plc employing around 650 people. Others include Buro Happold (400) and IPL Information Processing Limited (250). The city boasts over 400 retail shops, half of which are run by independent specialist retailers, and around 100 restaurants and cafes primarily supported by tourism.
Tourism
One of Bath's principal industries is tourism, with annually more than one million staying visitors and 3.8 million day visitors. The visits mainly fall into the categories of heritage tourism and cultural tourism, aided by the city's selection in 1987 as a World Heritage Site in recognition of its international cultural importance. All significant stages of the history of England are represented within the city, from the Roman Baths (including their significant Celtic presence), to Bath Abbey and the Royal Crescent, to the more recent Thermae Bath Spa.
The size of the tourist industry is reflected in the almost 300 places of accommodation – including more than 80 hotels, two of which have 'five-star' ratings, over 180 bed and breakfasts – many of which are located in Georgian buildings, and two campsites located on the western edge of the city. The city also has about 100 restaurants and a similar number of pubs and bars.
Several companies offer open top bus tours around the city, as well as tours on foot and on the river. Since the opening of Thermae Bath Spa in 2006, the city has attempted to recapture its historical position as the only town or city in the United Kingdom offering visitors the opportunity to bathe in naturally heated spring waters.
In the 2010 Google Street View Best Streets Awards, the Royal Crescent took second place in the "Britain's Most Picturesque Street" award, first place being given to The Shambles in York. Milsom Street was also awarded "Britain's Best Fashion Street" in the 11,000-strong vote.
Architecture
There are many Roman archaeological sites throughout the central area of the city. The baths themselves are about 6 metres (20 ft) below the present city street level. Around the hot springs, Roman foundations, pillar bases, and baths can still be seen; however, all the stonework above the level of the baths is from more recent periods.
Bath Abbey was a Norman church built on earlier foundations. The present building dates from the early 16th century and shows a late Perpendicular style with flying buttresses and crocketed pinnacles decorating a crenellated and pierced parapet. The choir and transepts have a fan vault by Robert and William Vertue. A matching vault was added to the nave in the 19th century. The building is lit by 52 windows.
Most buildings in Bath are made from the local, golden-coloured Bath stone, and many date from the 18th and 19th century. The dominant style of architecture in Central Bath is Georgian; this style evolved from the Palladian revival style that became popular in the early 18th century. Many of the prominent architects of the day were employed in the development of the city. The original purpose of much of Bath's architecture is concealed by the honey-coloured classical façades; in an era before the advent of the luxury hotel, these apparently elegant residences were frequently purpose-built lodging houses, where visitors could hire a room, a floor, or (according to their means) an entire house for the duration of their visit, and be waited on by the house's communal servants. The masons Reeves of Bath were prominent in the city from the 1770s to 1860s.
The Circus consists of three long, curved terraces designed by the elder John Wood to form a circular space or theatre intended for civic functions and games. The games give a clue to the design, the inspiration behind which was the Colosseum in Rome. Like the Colosseum, the three façades have a different order of architecture on each floor: Doric on the ground level, then Ionic on the piano nobile, and finishing with Corinthian on the upper floor, the style of the building thus becoming progressively more ornate as it rises. Wood never lived to see his unique example of town planning completed as he died five days after personally laying the foundation stone on 18 May 1754.
The most spectacular of Bath's terraces is the Royal Crescent, built between 1767 and 1774 and designed by the younger John Wood. Wood designed the great curved façade of what appears to be about 30 houses with Ionic columns on a rusticated ground floor, but that was the extent of his input: each purchaser bought a certain length of the façade, and then employed their own architect to build a house to their own specifications behind it; hence what appears to be two houses is in some cases just one. This system of town planning is betrayed at the rear of the crescent: while the front is completely uniform and symmetrical, the rear is a mixture of differing roof heights, juxtapositions and fenestration. The "Queen Anne fronts and Mary-Anne backs" architecture occurs repeatedly in Bath and was designed to keep hired women at the back of the house. Other fine terraces elsewhere in the city include Lansdown Crescent and Somerset Place on the northern hill.
Around 1770 the neoclassical architect Robert Adam designed Pulteney Bridge, using as the prototype for the three-arched bridge spanning the Avon an original, but unused, design by Andrea Palladio for the Rialto Bridge in Venice. Thus, Pulteney Bridge became not just a means of crossing the river, but also a shopping arcade. Along with the Rialto Bridge and the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, which it resembles, it is one of the very few surviving bridges in Europe to serve this dual purpose. It has been substantially altered since it was built. The bridge was named after Frances and William Pulteney, the owners of the Bathwick estate for which the bridge provided a link to the rest of Bath.
The Georgian streets in the vicinity of the river tended to be built high above the original ground level to avoid flooding, with the carriageways supported on vaults extending in front of the houses. This can be seen in the multi-storey cellars around Laura Place south of Pulteney Bridge, in the colonnades below Grand Parade, and in the grated coal holes in the pavement of North Parade. In some parts of the city, such as George Street, and London Road near Cleveland Bridge, the developers of the opposite side of the road did not match this pattern, leaving raised pavements with the ends of the vaults exposed to a lower street below.
The heart of the Georgian city was the Pump Room, which, together with its associated Lower Assembly Rooms, was designed by Thomas Baldwin, a local builder responsible for many other buildings in the city, including the terraces in Argyle Street and the Guildhall. Baldwin rose rapidly, becoming a leader in Bath's architectural history.
In 1776, he was made the chief City Surveyor, and Bath City Architect. Great Pulteney Street, where he eventually lived, is another of his works: this wide boulevard, constructed around 1789 and over 1,000 feet (305 m) long and 100 feet (30 m) wide, is lined on both sides by Georgian terraces.
In the 1960s and early 1970s some parts of Bath were unsympathetically redeveloped, resulting in the loss of some 18th- and 19th-century buildings. This process was largely halted by a popular campaign which drew strength from the publication of Adam Fergusson's The Sack of Bath. Controversy has revived periodically, most recently with the demolition of the 1930s Churchill House, a neo-Georgian municipal building originally housing the Electricity Board, to make way for a new bus station. This is part of the Southgate redevelopment in which an ill-favoured 1960s shopping precinct, bus station and multi-storey car park were demolished and replaced by a new area of neo-Georgian shopping streets.
As a result of this and other changes, notably plans for abandoned industrial land along the Avon, the city's status as a World Heritage Site was reviewed by UNESCO in 2009. The decision was made to let Bath keep its status, but UNESCO asked to be consulted on future phases of the Riverside development, saying that the density and volume of buildings in the second and third phases of the development need to be reconsidered. It also demanded Bath do more to attract world-class architecture in new developments.
In 2021, Bath received its second UNESCO World Heritage inscription, becoming part of a group of 11 spa towns across seven countries that were listed by UNESCO as the "Great Spas of Europe".
Culture
Bath became the centre of fashionable life in England during the 18th century when its Old Orchard Street Theatre and architectural developments such as Lansdown Crescent, the Royal Crescent, The Circus, and Pulteney Bridge were built.
Bath's five theatres – Theatre Royal, Ustinov Studio, the Egg, the Rondo Theatre, and the Mission Theatre – attract internationally renowned companies and directors and an annual season by Sir Peter Hall. The city has a long-standing musical tradition; Bath Abbey, home to the Klais Organ and the largest concert venue in the city, stages about 20 concerts and 26 organ recitals each year. Another concert venue, the 1,600-seat art deco The Forum, originated as a cinema. The city holds the annual Bath International Music Festival and Mozartfest, the annual Bath Literature Festival (and its counterpart for children), the Bath Film Festival, the Bath Digital Festival. the Bath Fringe Festival, the Bath Beer Festival and the Bath Chilli Festival. The Bach Festivals occur at two and a half-year intervals. An annual Bard of Bath competition aims to find the best poet, singer or storyteller.
The city is home to the Victoria Art Gallery, the Museum of East Asian Art, and Holburne Museum, numerous commercial art galleries and antique shops, as well as a number of other museums, among them Bath Postal Museum, the Fashion Museum, the Jane Austen Centre, the Herschel Museum of Astronomy and the Roman Baths. The Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution (BRLSI) in Queen Square was founded in 1824 from the Society for the encouragement of Agriculture, Planting, Manufactures, Commerce and the Fine Arts founded in 1777. In September 1864, BRLSI hosted the 34th annual meeting of the British Science Association, which was attended by explorers David Livingstone, Sir Richard Francis Burton, and John Hanning Speke. The history of the city is displayed at the Museum of Bath Architecture, which is housed in a building built in 1765 as the Trinity Presbyterian Church. It was also known as the Countess of Huntingdon's Chapel, as she lived in the attached house from 1707 to 1791.
The arts
During the 18th century Thomas Gainsborough and Sir Thomas Lawrence lived and worked in Bath. John Maggs, a painter best known for coaching scenes, was born and lived in Bath with his artistic family.
Jane Austen lived there from 1801 with her father, mother and sister Cassandra, and the family resided at four different addresses until 1806. Jane Austen never liked the city, and wrote to Cassandra, "It will be two years tomorrow since we left Bath for Clifton, with what happy feelings of escape." Bath has honoured her name with the Jane Austen Centre and a city walk. Austen's Northanger Abbey and Persuasion are set in the city and describe taking the waters, social life, and music recitals.
William Friese-Greene experimented with celluloid and motion pictures in his studio in the 1870s, developing some of the earliest movie camera technology. He is credited as being one of the inventors of cinematography.
Satirist and political journalist William Hone was born in Bath in 1780.
Taking the waters is described in Charles Dickens' novel The Pickwick Papers in which Pickwick's servant, Sam Weller, comments that the water has "a very strong flavour o' warm flat irons". The Royal Crescent is the venue for a chase between two characters, Dowler and Winkle. Moyra Caldecott's novel The Waters of Sul is set in Roman Bath in AD 72, and The Regency Detective, by David Lassman and Terence James, revolves around the exploits of Jack Swann investigating deaths in the city during the early 19th century. Richard Brinsley Sheridan's play The Rivals takes place in the city, as does Roald Dahl's chilling short story, The Landlady.
Many films and television programmes have been filmed using its architecture as the backdrop, including the 2004 film of Thackeray's Vanity Fair, The Duchess (2008), The Elusive Pimpernel (1950) and The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953). In 2012, Pulteney Weir was used as a replacement location during post production of the film adaptation of Les Misérables. Stunt shots were filmed in October 2012 after footage acquired during the main filming period was found to have errors. The ITV police drama McDonald and Dodds is set and mostly filmed in Bath using many of the city's famous sites.
In August 2003 The Three Tenors sang at a concert to mark the opening of the Thermae Bath Spa, a new hot water spa in the city centre, but delays to the project meant the spa actually opened three years later on 7 August 2006. In 2008, 104 decorated pigs were displayed around the city in a public art event called "King Bladud's Pigs in Bath". It celebrated the city, its origins and artists. Decorated pig sculptures were displayed throughout the summer and were auctioned to raise funds for Two Tunnels Greenway.
Parks
Royal Victoria Park, a short walk from the city centre, was opened in 1830 by the 11-year-old Princess Victoria, and was the first park to carry her name. The public park is overlooked by the Royal Crescent and covers 23 hectares (57 acres). It has a skatepark, tennis courts, a bowling green, a putting green and a 12- and 18-hole golf course, a pond, open-air concerts, an annual travelling funfair at Easter, and a children's play area. Much of its area is lawn; a notable feature is a ha-ha that segregates it from the Royal Crescent while giving the impression from the Crescent of uninterrupted grassland across the park to Royal Avenue. It has a "Green Flag Award", the national standard for parks and green spaces in England and Wales, and is registered by English Heritage as of National Historic Importance. The 3.84-hectare (9.5-acre) botanical gardens were formed in 1887 and contain one of the finest collections of plants on limestone in the West Country.
A replica Roman Temple was built at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in 1924, and, following the exhibition, was dismantled and rebuilt in Victoria Park in Bath. In 1987, the gardens were extended to include the Great Dell, a disused quarry with a collection of conifers.
Other parks include Alexandra Park on a hill overlooking the city; Parade Gardens, along the river near the abbey in the city centre; Sydney Gardens, an 18th-century pleasure garden; Henrietta Park; Hedgemead Park; and Alice Park. Jane Austen wrote "It would be pleasant to be near the Sydney Gardens. We could go into the Labyrinth every day." Alexandra, Alice and Henrietta parks were built into the growing city among the housing developments. Linear Park is built on the old Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway line, and connects with the Two Tunnels Greenway which contains the longest cycling and walking tunnel in the UK. Cleveland Pools were built around 1815 close to the River Avon, now the oldest surviving public outdoor lido in England. Restoration was completed in 2023, after a 20 year fund-raising campaign, with the lido opening for the first time in 40 years on 10 September.
Queen Victoria
Victoria Art Gallery and Royal Victoria Park are named after Queen Victoria, who wrote in her journal in 1837, "The people are really too kind to me." This feeling seemed to have been reciprocated by the people of Bath: "Lord James O'Brien brought a drawing of the intended pillar which the people of Bath are so kind as to erect in commemoration of my 18th birthday."
Food
Several foods have an association with the city. Sally Lunn buns (a type of teacake) have long been baked in Bath. They were first mentioned by name in verses printed in the Bath Chronicle, in 1772. At that time they were eaten hot at public breakfasts in Spring Gardens. They can be eaten with sweet or savoury toppings and are sometimes confused with Bath buns, which are smaller, round, very sweet and very rich. They were associated with the city following The Great Exhibition. Bath buns were originally topped with crushed comfits created by dipping caraway seeds repeatedly in boiling sugar; but today seeds are added to a 'London Bath Bun' (a reference to the bun's promotion and sale at the Great Exhibition). The seeds may be replaced by crushed sugar granules or 'nibs'.
Bath has lent its name to one other distinctive recipe – Bath Olivers – a dry baked biscuit invented by Dr William Oliver, physician to the Mineral Water Hospital in 1740. Oliver was an anti-obesity campaigner and author of a "Practical Essay on the Use and Abuse of warm Bathing in Gluty Cases". In more recent years, Oliver's efforts have been traduced by the introduction of a version of the biscuit with a plain chocolate coating. Bath chaps, the salted and smoked cheek and jawbones of the pig, takes its name from the city and is available from a stall in the daily covered market. Bath Ales brewery is located in Warmley and Abbey Ales are brewed in the city.
Twinning
Bath is twinned with four other cities in Europe. Twinning is the responsibility of the Charter Trustees and each twinning arrangement is managed by a Twinning Association.
There is also a historic connection with Manly, New South Wales, Australia, which is referred to as a sister city; a partnership arrangement with Beppu, Ōita Prefecture, Japan; and a friendship agreement with Oleksandriia, Kirovohrad Oblast, Ukraine.
Formal twinning
Aix-en-Provence, France
Alkmaar, Netherlands
Braunschweig, Germany
Kaposvár, Hungary
Education
Bath has two universities, the University of Bath and Bath Spa University. Established in 1966, the University of Bath was named University of the Year by The Sunday Times in 2011. It offers programs in politics, languages, the physical sciences, engineering, mathematics, architecture, management and technology.
Bath Spa University was first granted degree-awarding powers in 1992 as a university college before being granted university status in August 2005. It offers courses leading to a Postgraduate Certificate in Education. It has schools in the following subject areas: Art and Design, Education, English and Creative Studies, Historical and Cultural Studies, Music and the Performing Arts, Science and the Environment and Social Sciences.
Bath College offers further education, and Norland College provides education and training in childcare.
Sport
Rugby
Bath Rugby is a rugby union team in the Premiership league. It plays in blue, white and black kit at the Recreation Ground in the city, where it has been since the late 19th century, following its establishment in 1865. The team's first major honour was winning the John Player Cup, now sponsored as the LV Cup and also known as the Anglo-Welsh Cup, four years consecutively from 1984 until 1987. The team then led the Courage league in six seasons in eight years between 1988 and 1989 and 1995–96, during which time it also won the renamed Pilkington Cup in 1989, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1995 and 1996. It finally won the Heineken Cup in the 1997–98 season, and topped the Zürich Premiership (now Gallagher Premiership) in 2003–04. The team's squad includes several members who also play, or have played in the English national team, including Lee Mears, Rob Webber, Dave Attwood, Nick Abendanon and Matt Banahan. Colston's School, Bristol, has had a large input in the team over the past decade, providing several current 1st XV squad members. The former England Rugby Team Manager and former Scotland national coach Andy Robinson used to play for Bath Rugby team and was captain and later coach. Both of Robinson's predecessors, Clive Woodward and Jack Rowell, as well as his successor Brian Ashton, were also former Bath coaches and managers.
Football
Bath City F.C. is the semi-professional football team. Founded in 1889, the club has played their home matches at Twerton Park since 1932. Bath City's history is entirely in non-league football, predominantly in the 5th tier. Bath narrowly missed out on election to the Football League by a few votes in 1978 and again in 1985. The club have a good history in the FA Cup, reaching the third round six times. The record attendance, 18,020, at the ground was in 1960 against Brighton. The club's colours are black and white and their official nickname is "The Romans", stemming from Bath's Ancient Roman history. The club is sometimes called "The Stripes", referring to their striped kit.
Until 2009 Team Bath F.C. operated as an affiliate to the University Athletics programme. In 2002, Team Bath became the first university team to enter the FA Cup in 120 years, and advanced through four qualifying rounds to the first round proper. The university's team was established in 1999 while the city team has existed since before 1908 (when it entered the Western League). However, in 2009, the Football Conference ruled that Team Bath would not be eligible to gain promotion to a National division, nor were they allowed to participate in Football Association cup competitions. This ruling led to the decision by the club to fold at the end of the 2008–09 Conference South competition. In their final season, Team Bath F.C. finished 11th in the league.
Bath also has Non-League football clubs Odd Down F.C. who play at the Lew Hill Memorial Ground and Larkhall Athletic F.C. who play at Plain Ham.
Other sports
Many cricket clubs are based in the city, including Bath Cricket Club, who are based at the North Parade Ground and play in the West of England Premier League. Cricket is also played on the Recreation Ground, just across from the rugby club. The Recreation Ground is also home to Bath Croquet Club, which was re-formed in 1976 and is affiliated with the South West Federation of Croquet Clubs.
The Bath Half Marathon is run annually through the city streets, with over 10,000 runners.
TeamBath is the umbrella name for all of the University of Bath sports teams, including the aforementioned football club. Other sports for which TeamBath is noted are athletics, badminton, basketball, bob skeleton, bobsleigh, hockey, judo, modern pentathlon, netball, rugby union, swimming, tennis, triathlon and volleyball. The City of Bath Triathlon takes place annually at the university.
Bath Roller Derby Girls (BRDG) is a flat track roller derby club, founded in 2012, they compete in the British Roller Derby Championships Tier 3. As of 2015, they are full members of the United Kingdom Roller Derby Association (UKRDA.)
Bath is home to a table tennis League, made up of 3 divisions and a number of clubs based in Bath and the surrounding area.
Transport
Roads
Bath is approximately 11 miles (18 km) south-east of the larger city and port of Bristol, to which it is linked by the A4 road, which runs through Bath, and is a similar distance south of the M4 motorway at junction 18. The potential new junction 18a linking the M4 motorway with the A4174 Avon Ring Road will provide an additional direct route from Bath to the motorway.
In an attempt to reduce the level of car use, park and ride schemes have been introduced, with sites at Odd Down, Lansdown and Newbridge. A very large increase in city centre parking was also provided under the new SouthGate shopping centre development, which necessarily introduces more car traffic. In addition, a bus gate scheme in Northgate aims to reduce private car use in the city centre.
A transportation study (the Bristol/Bath to South Coast Study) was published in 2004 after being initiated by the Government Office for the South West and Bath and North East Somerset Council and undertaken by WSP Global as a result of the de-trunking in 1999 of the A36/A46 trunk road network from Bath to Southampton.
The Bath Clean Air Zone was introduced for central Bath on 15 March 2021. A Class C zone, it charges the most polluting commercial vehicles £9 per day (and up to £100 per day for coaches and HGVs). It is the first UK road pollution charging zone outside London, and reduced nitrogen dioxide levels in the city by 26% over the following two years, meeting legal standards.
Buses
National Express operates coach services from Bath bus station to a number of cities. Bath has a network of bus routes run by First West of England, with services to surrounding towns and cities, such as Bristol, Corsham, Chippenham, Devizes, Salisbury, Frome and Wells. Faresaver Buses also operate services to surrounding towns. The Bath Bus Company runs open-top double-decker bus tours around the city, as well as frequent services to Bristol Airport. Stagecoach West also provides services to Tetbury and the South Cotswolds. The suburbs of Bath are also served by the WESTlink on demand service, available Monday to Saturday.
Cycling
Bath is on National Cycle Route 4, with one of Britain's first cycleways, the Bristol and Bath Railway Path, to the west, and an eastern route toward London on the canal towpath. Bath is about 20 miles (30 km) from Bristol Airport. Bath also benefits from several bridleways and byways.
Rivers and canals
The city is connected to Bristol and the sea by the River Avon, navigable via locks by small boats. The river was connected to the River Thames and London by the Kennet and Avon Canal in 1810 via Bath Locks; this waterway – closed for many years but restored in the last years of the 20th century – is now popular with narrowboat users.
Railways
Bath is served by the Bath Spa railway station (designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel), which has regular connections to London Paddington, Bristol Temple Meads, Cardiff Central, Cheltenham, Exeter, Plymouth and Penzance (see Great Western Main Line), and also Westbury, Warminster, Weymouth, Salisbury, Southampton, Portsmouth and Brighton (see Wessex Main Line). Services are provided by Great Western Railway. There is a suburban station on the main line, Oldfield Park, which has a limited commuter service to Bristol as well as other destinations.
Green Park Station was once the terminus of the Midland Railway, and junction for the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway, whose line, always steam hauled, went through the Devonshire tunnel (under the Wellsway, St Luke's Church and the Devonshire Arms), through the Combe Down Tunnel and climbed over the Mendips to serve many towns and villages on its 71-mile (114 km) run to Bournemouth. This example of an English rural line was closed by Beeching in March 1966. Its Bath station building, now restored, houses shops, small businesses, the Saturday Bath Farmers Market and parking for a supermarket, while the route of the Somerset and Dorset within Bath has been reused for the Two Tunnels Greenway, a shared use path that extends National Cycle Route 24 into the city.
Trams
Historical
The Bath Tramways Company was introduced in the late 19th century, opening on 24 December 1880. The 4 ft (1,219 mm) gauge cars were horse-drawn along a route from London Road to the Bath Spa railway station, but the system closed in 1902. It was replaced by electric tram cars on a greatly expanded 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) gauge system that opened in 1904. This eventually extended to 18 miles (29 km) with routes to Combe Down, Oldfield Park, Twerton, Newton St Loe, Weston and Bathford. There was a fleet of 40 cars, all but 6 being double deck. The first line to close was replaced by a bus service in 1938, and the last went on 6 May 1939.
Possible re-introduction
In 2005, a detailed plan was created and presented to the council to re-introduce trams to Bath, but the plan did not proceed, reportedly due to the focus by the council on the government-supported busway planned to run from the Newbridge park and ride into the city centre. Part of the justification for the proposed tram reintroduction plan was the pollution from vehicles within the city, which was twice the legal levels, and the heavy traffic congestion due to high car usage. In 2015 another group, Bath Trams, building on the earlier tram group proposals, created interest in the idea of re-introducing trams with several public meetings and meetings with the council. In 2017, Bath and North East Somerset Council announced a feasibility study, due to be published by March 2018, into implementing a light rail or tram system in the city.
In November 2016, the West of England Local Enterprise Partnership began a consultation process on their Transport Vision Summary Document, outlining potential light rail/tram routes in the region, one of which being a route from Bristol city centre along the A4 road to Bath to relieve pressure on bus and rail services between the two cities.
Media
Bath's local newspaper is the Bath Chronicle, owned by Local World. Published since 1760, the Chronicle was a daily newspaper until mid-September 2007, when it became a weekly. Since 2018 its website has been operated by Trinity Mirror's Somerset Live platform.
The BBC Bristol website has featured coverage of news and events within Bath since 2003.
For television, Bath is served by the BBC West studios based in Bristol, and by ITV West Country, formerly HTV, also from studios in Bristol.
Radio stations broadcasting to the city include BBC Radio Bristol which has a studio in Kingsmead Square in the city centre, BBC Radio Somerset in Taunton, Greatest Hits Radio Bristol & The South West on 107.9FM and Heart West, formerly GWR FM, as well as The University of Bath's University Radio Bath, a student-focused radio station available on campus and also online.
Launched in 2019, BA1 Radio is an online community radio station.
See also
The Bathonian Age (168.3 – 166.1 million years ago), a Jurassic Period of geological time named after Bath
Grade I listed buildings in Bath and North East Somerset
List of people from Bath
List of spa towns in the United Kingdom
Bath, Ontario, named after Bath, Somerset, and now part of Loyalist, Ontario
References
External links
Bath travel guide from Wikivoyage
Official tourist information
Mayor of Bath
Bath at Curlie
Bath in the Domesday Book |
Sally_Lunn_bun | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Lunn_bun | [
594
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Lunn_bun"
] | A Sally Lunn is a large bun or teacake, a type of batter bread, made with a yeast dough including cream and eggs, similar to the sweet brioche breads of France. Sometimes served warm and sliced, with butter, it was first recorded in 1780 in the spa town of Bath in southwest England. As a tea cake it is popular in Canada and England. In New Zealand the bakery item known as the Sally Lunn is not the same as it has a thick layer of white icing and coconut on top and is also known as a Boston Bun.
There are many variations of Sally Lunn cake in American cuisine, some made with yeast, with variations that add cornmeal, sour cream or buttermilk to the basic recipe. The recipe was brought to the United States by British colonists, and new American variations were developed through the 18th and 19th centuries. It is claimed in one 1892 newspaper article that Sally Lunn bread became known as "Washington's breakfast bread" because it was so admired by George Washington.
Origins
The origins of the Sally Lunn are obscure. One theory is that it is an anglicisation of "Soleil et lune" (French for "sun and moon"), representing the golden crust and white base/interior. The Sally Lunn Eating House in Bath, England, claims that the recipe was brought to Bath in the 1680s by a Huguenot refugee called Solange Luyon, who became known as Sally Lunn, but there is no evidence to support this theory. "Food Britannia" repudiates the Solange Luyon theory. A 2015 report by The Daily Telegraph states "It is a charming tale, but, sadly, a fictitious one – there is little evidence for Mademoiselle Luyon, whatever the museum in the restaurant’s basement might tell you".
There is a passing mention of "Sally Lunn and saffron cake" in a 1776 poem about Dublin by the Irish poet William Preston. The first recorded mention of the bun in Somerset is as part of a detox regime in Philip Thicknesse's 1780 guidebook to taking the waters at Bath. Thicknesse describes how he would daily see visitors drinking 2–3 pints of Bath water and then "sit down to a meal of Sally Lunns or hot spungy rolls, made high by burnt butter!" He recommends against the practice as his brother died after this kind of breakfast:"Such a meal, few young men in full health can get over without feeling much inconvenience".
There is little historical evidence for Sally Lunn as a person. The Gentleman's Magazine of 1798 uses Sally Lunn as an example during a discussion of foods named after people—"a certain sort of hot rolls, now, or not long ago, in vogue at Bath, were gratefully and emphatically styled 'Sally Lunns'". But it is not until 1827 that a historical person is described by a correspondent of William Hone using the pseudonym "Jehoiada", who says she had sold the buns on the street "about thirty years ago". A baker called Dalmer had bought out her business and made it highly successful after he composed a special song for the vendors, who sold the buns from mobile ovens. The earliest evidence of commercial production is an 1819 advertisement for the Sally Lunn "cakes" sold by W. Needes of Bath, bread and biscuit maker to the Prince Regent.
Sally Lunns were mentioned together with muffins and crumpets by Charles Dickens in 1844 in his novel The Chimes. A year later, in 1845, Eliza Acton gave a recipe in Modern Cookery for Private Families, describing it as a version of "Solimemne – A rich French breakfast cake, or Sally Lunn". Solilemmes is a kind of brioche that is served warm which was popularised by the Parisian chef Marie-Antoine Carême in a book of 1815. Carême claimed the solilem originated in Alsace but there is no evidence to support that claim; he may have taken the idea from contacts in Bath and then tried to disguise the origins of a recipe that came from France's great enemy.
Sally Lunn's house
The building now known as the Sally Lunn Eating House is at 4 North Parade Passage (formerly Lilliput Alley) in Bath (51.3808°N 2.3582°W / 51.3808; -2.3582 (Sally Lunn Eating House)). The site was originally occupied by the south range of Bath Abbey, and the lowest floor level dates to the reconstruction of the abbey after a great fire in 1137. The masonry oven in the basement dates from that time.
Journals in the 17th century published accounts of visitors to the various coffee houses and several assembly rooms in and along Terrace Walk & North Parade, but Sally Lunn is not mentioned in any of those reports.
After the Reformation, the ruins came into the hands of the Colthurst family of Wardour Castle, who sold the site to John Hall of Bradford on Avon in 1612. In 1622, Hall leased the site to George Parker, a carpenter who built the current house. The Hall estate was later acquired by the 2nd Duke of Kingston, who sold the house to William Robinson in 1743. There may have been baking on a small scale during the 1700s, but it only became the main commercial use of the building around the turn of the 20th century.
In the mid-19th century, Sarah Fricker, a tallow maker, occupied the building. Subsequent owners include Edward Culverhouse, a cab proprietor, (1904–1921) and Mrs Griffiths, a grocer (1922–1930). The building fell into a bad state of repair and was vacant in 1932–33.
Marie Byng-Johnson, an artist, moved to Bath with her daughter, a violinist, c. 1926, taking up lodgings at 13 Abbey Churchyard and giving piano lessons. She moved to 4 North Parade passage in 1934, trading as "Sally Lunn Ltd".
Byng-Johnson opened the building as a tea-room specialising in Sally Lunn buns, promoting them with a story that she had discovered an ancient document in a secret panel above the fireplace, explaining that Sally Lunn was a young French Huguenot refugee who brought the recipe to Bath around 1680. Remarkably, despite the importance of this priceless and historic document, she lost it.
The property has been a Grade II* listed building since June 1950. The listing summary states that "Sally Lunn, a pastry cook and baker, was a tenant in 1680" but cites no source to confirm that information. It is possible that English Heritage saw the sign on the wall (erected c. 1970) and took the claim at face value.
See also
References
External links
History of the Sally Lunn Bun at Foods of England
The Sally Lunn Eating House |
HMS_Holland_1 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Holland_1 | [
595
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Holland_1"
] | Holland 1 (or HM submarine Torpedo Boat No 1) is the first submarine commissioned by the Royal Navy. The first in a five-boat batch of the Holland-class submarine, she was lost in 1913 while under tow to be scrapped following her decommissioning. Recovered in 1982, she was put on display at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum, Gosport. Her battery bank found in the boat was discovered to be functional after being cleaned and recharged.
History
She was ordered in 1901 from John Philip Holland and built at Barrow-in-Furness. Her keel was laid down 4 February 1901. In order to keep the boat's construction secret, she was assembled in a building labelled "Yacht Shed", and the parts that had to be fabricated in the general yard were marked for "pontoon no 1". She was launched on 2 October 1901 and dived for the first time (in an enclosed basin) on 20 March 1902. Her sea trials began in April 1902.
In September 1902 she arrived at Portsmouth, along with the other completed Holland boat and their tender, HMS Hazard. Together they made up the "First Submarine Flotilla", commanded by Captain Reginald Bacon. Holland 1 suffered an explosion 3 March 1903 that caused four injuries.
On 24 October 1904, with the rest of the Holland fleet and three A-class boats, Holland 1 sailed from Portsmouth to attack a Russian fleet that had mistakenly sunk a number of British fishing vessels in the North Sea in the Dogger Bank incident. The boats were recalled before any attack could take place.
The submarine was decommissioned and sold in 1913 to Thos. W. Ward for £410. By the time the submarine was sold she was considered so obsolete that she was sold with all fittings intact, and the only requirement put on the purchaser was that the torpedo tube be put out of action.
Loss
While being towed to the scrapyard, Holland 1 encountered very severe weather and sank about a mile and a half off Eddystone Lighthouse. No one was on board the submarine at the time, and, since the submarine had been seen to be sinking earlier in the journey, the crew of the tug were ready to release the tow rope, preventing any damage to the tug.
Recovery
The wreck was located in 1981 by Plymouth historian Michael Pearn and she was raised in November 1982. From 1983, after coating in anti-corrosion chemicals, she was displayed at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum. Work on restoring the submarine continued until September 1988. A talking figure was included to explain the details of the craft to visitors. However, by 1993 it was apparent that the treatment had proved inadequate. A fibreglass tank was built around her, and she was immersed in sodium carbonate solution from 1995. After four years the corrosive chloride ions had been removed, and she was able to be displayed again after restoration work.
Listed as part of the National Historic Fleet, in 2001, on her centenary, a new purpose-built climate-controlled building was opened by Countess Mountbatten. In the same year the Royal Mail put a photo of the submarine on a 65 pence stamp. In 2011 the submarine was given an Engineering Heritage Award by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers
The original bank of batteries, recovered with the wreckage, were submitted for testing by the original manufacturer, Chloride Industrial Batteries Ltd based in Swinton, Greater Manchester. Following the initial clean, the lead batteries were recharged and found to be in good working order. Some of the original batteries still remain in the possession of Enersys (ex-CIBL) at the Newport plant, in South Wales.
See also
Holland I
Fenian Ram
Royal Navy Submarine Service
Notes and references
External links
Own page on RNSM website
MaritimeQuest HMS Holland 1 Pages
Early Holland Submarines Archived 7 July 2012 at the Wayback Machine Photos of John Holland's Submarine No. 1 and the Fenian Ram at the Paterson Museum
The 'Talking Figure' from the Holland display in a video from a museum visit in 1989. |
1901 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1901 | [
595
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1901"
] | 1901 (MCMI) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar, the 1901st year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 901st year of the 2nd millennium, the 1st year of the 20th century, and the 2nd year of the 1900s decade. As of the start of 1901, the Gregorian calendar was 13 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.
Events
January
January 1
The British colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia federate as the Commonwealth of Australia; Edmund Barton becomes the first Prime Minister of Australia.
Nigeria becomes a British protectorate.
January 9 – Lord Kitchener reports that Christiaan de Wet has shot one of the "peace" envoys, and flogged two more, who had gone to his commando to ask the Burgher citizens of South Africa to halt fighting.
January 22 – Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom dies at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. She is 81 years old and, having ruled for nearly 64 years, will be the second longest-reigning monarch in British history. Her eldest son, Prince Albert Edward, "Bertie", the longest-serving Prince of Wales to this time, succeeds his mother at the age of 59, reigning as King Edward VII, of the United Kingdom and in innovation the British Dominions, Canada and Australia and also becoming Emperor of India.
January 31 – Anton Chekhov's play Three Sisters (Три сeстры, Tri sestry) is premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre.
February
February 2 – The State funeral of Queen Victoria, held at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, UK, is attended by many European royals, including Kaiser Wilhelm II and Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria.
February 12 – Viceroy of India Lord Curzon creates the new North-West Frontier Province in the north of the Punjab region, bordering Afghanistan.
February 14 – Edward VII opens his first parliament of the United Kingdom.
February 16 – Bulgaria: Macedonian demonstrators in Sofia demand independence from Turkey.
February 20 – The Hawaii Territory Legislature convenes for the first time.
February 22 – The Pacific Mail Steamship Company's SS City of Rio de Janeiro sinks entering San Francisco Bay, killing 128.
February 23 – The United Kingdom and Germany agree on the frontier between German East Africa and the British colony of Nyasaland.
February 25 – U.S. Steel is incorporated by industrialist J. P. Morgan, as the first billion-dollar corporation.
February 26
Chi-hsui and Hsu-cheng-yu, Boxer Rebellion leaders, are executed in Peking.
The Middelburg peace conference fails in South Africa, as Boers continue to demand autonomy.
February 27 – The Sultan of Turkey orders 50,000 troops to the Bulgarian frontier because of unrest in Macedonia.
March
March 1
The United Kingdom, Germany and Japan protest the Sino-Russian agreement on Manchuria.
The 1901 Census of India is taken, the fourth, and first reliable, census of the British Raj.
March 2 – The United States Congress passes the Platt Amendment, limiting the autonomy of Cuba as a condition for the withdrawal of American troops.
March 4 – Second inauguration of William McKinley as President of the United States.
March 5 – Irish nationalist demonstrators are ejected by police from the House of Commons of the United Kingdom in London.
March 6 – In Bremen, an assassination attempt is made on Wilhelm II, German Emperor.
March 17 – The first large-scale showing of Van Gogh's paintings in Paris as 71 are shown at the Bernheim-Jeune gallery, 11 years after his death, is influential.
March 31
A 7.2 Mw Black Sea earthquake occurs off the northeast coast of Bulgaria, with a maximum intensity of X (Extreme). A destructive tsunami affects the province of Dobrich.
The United Kingdom Census 1901 is taken. The number of people employed in manufacturing is at its highest-ever level.
April
April 29 – Anti-Semitic rioting breaks out in Budapest.
May
May 5 – The Caste War of Yucatán in Mexico officially ends, although Mayan skirmishers continue sporadic fighting for another decade.
May 9 – The first Australian Parliament opens in Melbourne.
May 17 – Panic of 1901: The New York Stock Exchange crashes.
May 24 – 81 miners are killed in an accident at Universal Colliery, Senghenydd in South Wales.
May 25 – The Club Atlético River Plate is founded in Argentina.
May 27 – In New Jersey, the Edison Storage Battery Company is founded.
May 28 – D'Arcy Concession: Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar of Persia grants British businessman William Knox D'Arcy a concession giving him an exclusive right to prospect for oil.
June
June 2 – Katsura Tarō becomes Prime Minister of Japan.
June 12 – Cuba becomes a United States protectorate.
June 15 – RMS Lucania is the first Cunard Line ship to receive a wireless radio set.
June 18 – British peace campaigner Emily Hobhouse reports on the high mortality and cruel conditions in the Second Boer War concentration camps.
June 24
The first showing of Picasso's paintings in Paris as the 19-year-old Spanish artist exhibits his work at Ambroise Vollard's gallery.
English Association Football Club Brighton & Hove Albion is formed by John Jackson to replace the amateur Brighton and Hove Rangers, following a meeting at the Seven Stars Hotel on Ship Street, Brighton.
July–August
July 1 – The first United Kingdom Fingerprint Bureau is established at Scotland Yard, the Metropolitan Police headquarters in London, by Edward Henry.
July 4
The 1,282 foot (390 m) covered bridge crossing the Saint John River at Hartland, New Brunswick, Canada opens. It is the longest covered bridge in the world.
William Howard Taft becomes Governor-General of the Philippines.
July 10 – The world's first passenger-carrying trolleybus in regular service operates on the Biela Valley Trolleybus route at Königstein, Germany.
August 5 – Peter O'Connor sets the first International Association of Athletics Federations recognised long jump world record, of 24 ft 11¾ ins (7.61m). The record will stand for 20 years.
August 6 – Discovery Expedition: Robert Falcon Scott sets sail from Britain on the RRS Discovery to explore the Ross Sea in Antarctica.
August 14 – The first claimed powered flight is made, by German-born American aviator Gustave Whitehead, in his Number 21, in Connecticut.
August 21 – The International Secretariat of National Trade Union Centres is founded in Copenhagen.
August 28 – Silliman University is founded in the Philippines, the first American private school in the country.
August 30 – Hubert Cecil Booth patents an electric vacuum cleaner, in the United Kingdom.
September
September 5 – The National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (later renamed Minor League Baseball), is formed in Chicago.
September 6 – William McKinley assassination: American anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots U.S. President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley dies 8 days later.
September 7 – The Boxer Rebellion in Qing dynasty China officially ends with the signing of the Boxer Protocol.
September 14 – Vice President Theodore Roosevelt becomes the 26th president of the United States, upon President William McKinley's death. Roosevelt is sworn in this afternoon.
September 28 – Philippine–American War: Balangiga massacre: Filipino guerrillas kill more than forty United States soldiers in a surprise attack in the town of Balangiga.
October
October 2 – The British Royal Navy's first submarine, Holland 1, is launched at Barrow-in-Furness.
October 4 – The American yacht Columbia defeats the British Shamrock in the America's Cup yachting race.
October 16 – U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt invites African American leader Booker T. Washington to the White House. The American South reacts angrily to the visit, and racial violence increases in the region.
October 23 – Yale University celebrates its bicentennial.
October 24 – Michigan schoolteacher Annie Edson Taylor goes over Niagara Falls in a barrel and survives.
October 29
Leon Czolgosz is executed for the assassination of William McKinley in Buffalo, New York on September 6.
In Amherst, New York, nurse Jane Toppan is arrested for murdering the Davis family of Boston with an overdose of morphine.
November
November 1 – The Sigma Phi Epsilon college fraternity is founded in Richmond, Virginia.
November 9
The Prince George, Duke of Cornwall (later George V of the United Kingdom) becomes Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester.
Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 is premiered in Moscow with the composer playing the solo part.
November 13 – 1901 Caister lifeboat disaster: a life-boat capsizes on service on the east coast of England during a great storm; nine of the twelve crew on board are killed. This gives ride to the lifeboatmen's motto "Never turn back."
November 15 – The Alpha Sigma Alpha fraternity is founded at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia.
November 18 – The Hay–Pauncefote Treaty is signed by the United Kingdom and United States, allowing the U.S. to build the Panama Canal under its sole control.
November 25 – Auguste Deter is first examined by German psychiatrist Dr. Alois Alzheimer, leading to a diagnosis of the condition that will carry Alzheimer's name.
November 28 – The new Constitution of Alabama requires voters in the state to have passed literacy tests.
December
December 3
U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt delivers a 20,000-word speech to the United States House of Representatives asking Congress to curb the power of trusts "within reasonable limits".
The Immigration Restriction Act 1901 is passed by the new Parliament of Australia as the basis of a White Australia policy. It is given royal assent on December 23.
December 10 – The first Nobel Prize ceremony is held in Stockholm, on the fifth anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death.
December 12 – Guglielmo Marconi receives the first trans-Atlantic radio signal, sent from Poldhu, England, to St. John's, Newfoundland; it is the letter "S" in Morse code.
December 20 – The final spike is driven into the Mombasa–Victoria–Uganda Railway, in modern-day Kisumu, Kenya.
December 22 – Charles Aked, a Baptist minister in Liverpool, says about the war in South Africa: "Great Britain cannot win the battles without resorting to the last despicable cowardice of the most loathsome cur on earth — the act of striking a brave man's heart through his wife's honour and his child's life. The cowardly war has been conducted by methods of barbarism... the concentration camps have been Murder Camps." A crowd follows him home and breaks the windows of his house.
Date unknown
The okapi is observed for the first time by Europeans (previously known only to African natives).
New Zealand inventor Ernest Godward invents the spiral hairpin.
German Oscar Troplowitz invents for German company Beiersdorf the medical plaster patch called "Leukoplast".
German engineer Richard Fiedler invents the modern flamethrower, the Kleinflammenwerfer.
American businessman William S. Harley draws up plans for his first prototype motorcycle.
AB Lux, as the predecessor of Electrolux, founded in Sweden.
American retail pharmacy Walgreens is founded in Chicago.
The Intercollegiate Prohibition Association is established in Chicago.
The Bulgarian Women's Union is founded.
Splošno slovensko žensko društvo , the first women's organisation in Slovenia, is founded.
Births
January
January 1 – George Karslidis, Greek Orthodox priest, elder and saint (d. 1959)
January 2 – Lew Landers, American director (d. 1962)
January 3 – Ngô Đình Diệm, 1st president of South Vietnam (d. 1963)
January 4
Salvatore Dell'Isola, Italian conductor (d. 1989)
C. L. R. James, Trinidad-born writer, journalist (d. 1989)
January 7 – Teodora Fracasso, Italian Roman Catholic religious professed (d. 1927)
January 9
Chic Young, American cartoonist (d. 1973)
Vilma Bánky, Hungarian-born American actress (d. 1991)
January 10 – Henning von Tresckow, German Wehrmacht Major General (d. 1944)
January 11 – Kwon Ki-ok, Korean pilot (d. 1988)
January 13
A. B. Guthrie, American novelist and historian (d. 1991)
Mieczysław Żywczyński, Polish historian, priest (d. 1978)
Wilhelm Hanle, German physicist (d. 1993)
January 14
Bebe Daniels, American actress (d. 1971)
Alfred Tarski, Polish logician and mathematician (d. 1983)
January 16
Fulgencio Batista, Cuban leader (d. 1973)
Frank Zamboni, American inventor (d. 1988)
January 17 – Susana Calandrelli, Argentine writer and teacher (d. 1978)
January 21 – Marcellus Boss, American politician, lawyer, member of Kansas Senate and 5th Civilian Governor of Guam (d. 1967)
January 22 – Alberto Hurtado, Chilean Jesuit priest and saint (d. 1952)
January 24
Hans Erich Apostel, Austrian composer (d. 1972)
Harry Calder, South African cricketer (d. 1995)
January 25 – Mildred Dunnock, American actress (d. 1991)
January 27 – Art Rooney, American football team owner (d. 1988)
January 29 – E. P. Taylor, Canadian business tycoon (d. 1989)
January 30
Samir Al-Rifai, 9th Prime Minister of Jordan (d. 1965)
Rudolf Caracciola, German race car driver (d. 1959)
February
February 1
Frank Buckles, last surviving American veteran of World War I (d. 2011)
Clark Gable, American actor (d. 1960)
February 2 – Jascha Heifetz, Lithuanian violinist (d. 1987)
February 3 – Arvid Wallman, Swedish diver (d. 1982)
February 6 – Pat Harrington Sr., Canadian actor (d. 1965)
February 9
Brian Donlevy, American actor (d. 1972)
Sebastiaan Matheus Sigismund de Ranitz, Dutch jurist and Nazi collaborator (d. 1987)
February 10
Stella Adler, American actress, acting teacher (d. 1992)
Anthony Prusinski, American politician (d. 1950)
February 15
João Branco Núncio, Portuguese bullfighter (d. 1976)
Kenneth Callow, British biochemist (d. 1983)
February 16 – Chester Morris, American actor (d. 1970)
February 19 – Florence Green, British Royal Air Force member, last surviving World War I veteran (d. 2012)
February 20 – Mohammed Naguib, 30th Prime Minister of Egypt and 1st President of Egypt (d. 1984)
February 22
Mildred Davis, American actress (d. 1969)
Charles Evans Whittaker, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (d. 1973)
February 23 – Ivar Lo-Johansson, Swedish writer (d. 1990)
February 25 – Zeppo Marx, American comedian (d. 1979)
February 27 – Horatio Luro, Argentine horse trainer (d. 1991)
February 28 – Linus Pauling, American chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and Peace (d. 1994)
March
March 3 – Claude Choules, British World War I veteran, last surviving combat veteran from any nation (d. 2011)
March 4 – Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, Malagasy-French poet (d. 1937)
March 9 – Joachim Hämmerling, German-Danish biologist (d. 1980)
March 13 – Paul Fix, American actor (d. 1983)
March 17 – Alfred Newman, American film composer (d. 1970)
March 21
Karl Arnold, German politician (d. 1958)
Carmelita Geraghty, American actress (d. 1966)
March 22 – Greta Kempton, American artist (d. 1991)
March 23 – Bon Maharaja, Indian guru, religious writer (d. 1982)
March 24 – Ub Iwerks, American cartoonist (d. 1971)
March 25 – Ed Begley, American actor (d. 1970)
March 26 – Teresa Demjanovich, American Roman Catholic religious professed and blessed (d. 1927)
March 27
Carl Barks, American cartoonist, screenwriter (d. 2000)
Erich Ollenhauer, German politician (d. 1963)
Enrique Santos Discépolo, Argentine tango, milonga musician and composer (d. 1951)
Eisaku Satō, Prime Minister of Japan, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1975)
Kenneth Slessor, Australian poet (d. 1971)
March 28 – Jack Weil, American entrepreneur (d. 2008)
April
April 1 – Whittaker Chambers, American spy (d. 1961)
April 5 – Melvyn Douglas, American actor (d. 1981)
April 13 – Jacques Lacan, French psychoanalyst, psychiatrist (d. 1981)
April 15
Joe Davis, English snooker, billiards player (d. 1978)
Ajoy Mukherjee, Indian politician, Chief Minister of West Bengal (d. 1986)
René Pleven, Prime Minister of France (d. 1993)
April 16 – Lajos Dinnyés, 41st prime minister of Hungary (d. 1961)
April 18 – Al Lewis, American songwriter (d. 1967)
April 19 – Kiyoshi Oka, Japanese mathematician (d. 1978)
April 29 – Hirohito, Emperor of Japan (d. 1989)
April 30 – Simon Kuznets, Ukrainian-born economist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1985)
May
May 3 – Gino Cervi, Italian actor (d. 1974)
May 7 – Gary Cooper, American actor (d. 1961)
May 11 – Rose Ausländer, German poet (d. 1988)
May 13 – Witold Pilecki, Polish resistance leader (executed 1948)
May 17
Werner Egk, German composer (d. 1983)
Max Lorenz, German tenor (d. 1975)
May 18 – Vincent du Vigneaud, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1978)
May 20 – Max Euwe, Dutch chess player (d. 1981)
May 21
Manfred Aschner, German-born Israeli microbiologist, entomologist and recipient of the Israel Prize (d. 1989).
Horace Heidt, American bandleader (d. 1986)
Sam Jaffe, American film producer (d. 2000)
Suzanne Lilar, Belgian essayist, novelist and playwright (d. 1992)
May 24 – Gustav Åkerman, Swedish army officer (d. 1988)
May 25 – Antônio de Alcântara Machado, Brazilian novelist (d. 1935)
May 30 – Mieczysław Fogg (Fogiel), Polish singer and artist (d. 1990)
May 31 – Alfredo Antonini, American conductor, composer (d. 1983)
June
June 3 – Zhang Xueliang, Chinese military leader (d. 2001)
June 6 – Sukarno, 1st president of Indonesia (d. 1970)
June 7 – Hugo Ballivián, Bolivian military officer, 44th President of Bolivia (d. 1993)
June 12 – Arnold Kirkeby, American hotelier, art collector, and real estate investor (d. 1962)
June 13
Tage Erlander, Swedish politician (social democrat), prime minister of Sweden for 23 years (1946–1969) (d. 1985)
Jean Prévost, French writer, journalist and member of the Maquis (d. 1944)
June 16 – Henri Lefebvre, French Marxist philosopher, sociologist (d. 1991)
June 17 – F. F. E. Yeo-Thomas, English World War II hero (d. 1964)
June 18
Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia (d. 1918)
Denis Johnston, Irish playwright (d. 1984)
June 20 – Princess Nina Georgievna of Russia (d. 1974)
June 23
Richard Ripley, British athlete (d. 1996)
Chuck Taylor, American basketball player, salesman (d. 1969)
June 24
Marcel Mule, French saxophonist (d. 2001)
Harry Partch, American composer (d. 1974)
June 25 – Giovanni Barbini, Italian naval officer (d. 1998)
June 26 – Stuart Symington, American politician (d. 1988)
June 27 – Merle Tuve, American physicist (d. 1982)
June 29 – Nelson Eddy, American singer, actor (d. 1967)
July
July 1 – Tom Gorman, Australian rugby league footballer (d. 1978)
July 7
Seán Clancy, oldest Irish War of Independence veteran (d. 2006)
Vittorio De Sica, Italian actor and film director (d. 1974)
Gustav Knuth, German film actor (d. 1987)
Eiji Tsuburaya, Japanese film director and special effects designer (d. 1970)
July 9
Barbara Cartland, English novelist (d. 2000)
Frank Finnigan, Canadian ice hockey player (d. 1991)
Lou Polli, Italian baseball pitcher (d. 2000)
July 13 – Eric Portman, English actor (d. 1969)
July 17 – Bruno Jasieński, Polish poet (d. 1938)
July 21 – Sue Wah Chin, Australian entrepreneur (d. 2000)
July 24
Mabel Albertson, American actress (d. 1982)
Igor Ilyinsky, Soviet and Russian actor, comedian and director (d. 1987)
July 28 – Rudy Vallée, American actor and jazz musician (d. 1986)
July 31 – Jean Dubuffet, French painter (d. 1985)
August
August 1 – Pancho Villa, Filipino boxer (d. 1925)
August 4 – Louis Armstrong, American jazz musician (d. 1971)
August 5 – Thomas J. Ryan, American admiral (d. 1970)
August 8 – Ernest Lawrence, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1958)
August 10 – Franco Dino Rasetti, Italian scientist (d. 2001)
August 14 – Alice Rivaz, Swiss writer (d. 1998)
August 18
Lucienne Boyer, French singer (d. 1983)
Jean Guitton, French writer and philosopher (d. 1999)
August 20 – Salvatore Quasimodo, Italian novelist, writer and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1968)
August 24 – Edmund Germer, German electrical engineer and inventor (d. 1987)
August 26
Maxwell D. Taylor, American general (d. 1987)
Chen Yi, Chinese military commander and politician (d. 1972)
Jan de Quay, Dutch politician, psychologist and 31st Prime Minister of the Netherlands (d. 1985)
August 28 – Babe London, American actress and comedian (d. 1980)
August 30
John Gunther, American writer (d. 1970)
Roy Wilkins, American civil rights activist (d. 1981)
September
September 2
Andreas Embirikos, Greek poet (d. 1975)
Adolph Rupp, American college basketball coach (d. 1977)
September 4 – William Lyons, British automobile engineer, designer (d. 1985)
September 5
Mario Scelba, 33rd prime minister of Italy (d. 1991)
Florence Eldridge, American actress (d. 1988)
September 7 – Abdallah El-Yafi, 7-time prime minister of Lebanon (d. 1986)
September 8 – Hendrik Verwoerd, 6th prime minister of South Africa (d. 1966)
September 9 – James Blades, English percussionist (d. 1999)
September 12 – Shmuel Horowitz, Russian-born Israeli agronomist (d. 1999)
September 13 – Claude Dupuy, French Roman Catholic priest and bishop (d. 1989)
September 14 – Gulbrand Lunde, Norwegian chemist and politician, Nazi collaborator (d. 1942)
September 15 – Sir Donald Bailey, British civil engineer (d. 1985)
September 16 – Andrée Brunet, French pair skater (d. 1993)
September 17 – Sir Francis Chichester, British sailor (d. 1972)
September 21 – Learie Constantine, Trinidad-born cricketer and race relations campaigner (d. 1971)
September 22
Charles Brenton Huggins, Canadian-born cancer researcher, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1997)
Nadezhda Alliluyeva-Stalin, second wife of Joseph Stalin (d. 1932)
September 23 – Jaroslav Seifert, Czech writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1986)
September 25 – Robert Bresson, French film director (d. 1999)
September 26 – George Raft, American film actor (d. 1980)
September 28
Ed Sullivan, American entertainer (d. 1974)
William S. Paley, American businessman, founder of CBS (d. 1990)
September 29
Enrico Fermi, Italian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1954)
Lanza del Vasto, Italian philosopher, poet, and activist (d. 1981)
October
October 2 – Alice Prin, French singer (d. 1953)
October 3 – Jean Grémillon, French film director (d. 1959)
October 10 – Alberto Giacometti, Swiss sculptor and painter (d. 1966)
October 17 – Cesare Bettarini, Italian actor (d. 1975)
October 19 – Arleigh Burke, American admiral (d. 1996)
October 20 – Adelaide Hall, American jazz singer, entertainer (d. 1993)
October 22 – Wijeyananda Dahanayake, 5th prime minister of Sri Lanka (d. 1997)
October 24
Gilda Gray, Polish-born dancer, actress (d. 1959)
Moultrie Kelsall, Scottish film, television actor (d. 1980)
October 28 – Hilo Hattie, native Hawaiian singer, actress (d. 1979)
October 29 – Ana María Vela Rubio, Spanish supercentenarian (d. 2017)
November
November 2 – James Dunn, American actor (d. 1967)
November 3
Prithviraj Kapoor, pioneer of Indian Cinema and Indian Theatre (d. 1972)
Leopold III of Belgium (d. 1983)
November 4
Yi Bangja, Crown Princess of Korea (d. 1989)
Max Wagner, Mexican-born American film actor (d. 1975)
November 7 – Norah McGuinness, Irish painter, illustrator (d. 1980)
November 8 – Xu Xiangqian, Communist military leader in the People's Republic of China, former defense minister (d. 1990)
November 11
Helen Reichert, American broadcaster and educator (d. 2011)
Magda Goebbels, wife of German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels (d. 1945)
November 13 – Arturo Jauretche, Argentine writer, politician, and philosopher (d. 1974)
November 17 – Lee Strasberg, Polish-born American actor, acting teacher and co-founder of method acting (d. 1982)
November 18 – George Gallup, American statistician, opinion pollster (d. 1984)
November 19 – Nina Bari, Soviet and Russian mathematician (d. 1961)
November 22
Lee Patrick, American actress (d. 1982)
Joaquín Rodrigo, Spanish composer (d. 1999)
November 25
Marziyya Davudova, Soviet and Azerbaijani actress (d. 1962)
Fernando Tambroni, Italian politician, 36th Prime Minister of Italy (d. 1963)
November 28
Walter Havighurst, American critic, novelist, literary and social historian of the Midwest, professor of English at Miami University (d. 1994)
Roy Urquhart, British general (d. 1988)
November 29 – Mildred Harris, American actress (d. 1944)
December
December 5
Walt Disney, American animator, film producer (d. 1966)
Milton Erickson, American psychiatrist (d. 1980)
Werner Heisenberg, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1976)
December 7 – Troy Sanders, American film score composer (d. 1959)
December 8 – Arthur Leslie, British actor (d. 1970)
December 9 – Jean Mermoz, French aviator (d. 1936)
December 12 – Fred Barker, American criminal, youngest son of Ma Barker (d. 1935)
December 16 – Margaret Mead, American cultural anthropologist (d. 1978)
December 19
Rudolf Hell, German inventor (d. 2002)
Vitorino Nemesio, Portuguese poet and author (d. 1978)
December 25 – Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester (d. 2004)
December 27 – Marlene Dietrich, German-American actress (d. 1992)
December 31
Julia Bathory, Hungarian glass designer (d. 2000)
Karl-August Fagerholm, Prime Minister of Finland (d. 1984)
Deaths
January–February
January 1 – Ignatius L. Donnelly, American politician and writer (b. 1831)
January 8 – John Barry, Irish recipient of the Victoria Cross (b. 1873)
January 10 – Sir James Dickson, Premier of Queensland, Australian Minister for Defence (b. 1832)
January 11 – Vasily Kalinnikov, Russian composer (b. 1866)
January 14 – Víctor Balaguer, Spanish politician, author (b. 1824)
January 16
Arnold Böcklin, Swiss artist (b. 1827)
Mahadev Govind Ranade, Indian reformer (b. 1842)
January 17
Leonard Fulton Ross, American Civil War general (b. 1823)
Frederic W. H. Myers, British poet and psychic researcher (b. 1843)
January 19 – Albert, 4th duc de Broglie, French politician, 28th Prime Minister of France (b. 1821)
January 21 – Elisha Gray, American inventor, appliance manufacturer (b. 1835)
January 22 – Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, Empress of India (b. 1819)
January 27 – Giuseppe Verdi, Italian composer (b. 1813)
January 28 – Iosif Gurko, Russian field marshal (b. 1828)
February 7 – Ana Betancourt, Cuban national heroine (b. 1832)
February 10 – Max von Pettenkofer, Bavarian chemist and hygienist (b. 1818)
February 11
King Milan I of Serbia (b. 1854)
Ramón de Campoamor, Spanish poet (b. 1817)
February 14 – Sir Edward Stafford, Scottish-New Zealand educator, politician and 3rd Prime Minister of New Zealand (b. 1819)
February 22 – George Francis FitzGerald, Irish mathematician (b. 1851)
February 26 – Lucyna Ćwierczakiewiczowa, Polish writer (b. 1829)
March–April
March 13 – Benjamin Harrison, 23rd President of the United States (b. 1833)
March 23 – Konstantin Stoilov, 8th Prime Minister of Bulgaria (b. 1853)
March 31 – Sir John Stainer, British composer and organist (b. 1840)
April 1 – François-Marie Raoult, French chemist (b. 1830)
April 3 – Richard D'Oyly Carte, English impresario (b. 1844)
April 9 – Shrimad Rajchandra, Indian Jain philosopher, scholar and poet, spiritual mentor of Mahatma Gandhi (b. 1867)
April 24 – Arvid Posse, 2nd prime minister of Sweden (b. 1820)
May–June
May 1 – Lewis Waterman, American inventor, businessman (b. 1837)
May 4 – Fritz Mayer van den Bergh, Belgian art collector and art historian (b. 1858)
May 5 – Mariano Ignacio Prado, Peruvian general and statesman, twice President of Peru (b. 1825)
May 7 – Dimitar Grekov, 10th Prime Minister of Bulgaria (b. 1847)
May 19 – Marthinus Wessel Pretorius, 1st President of South Africa (b. 1819)
May 21 – Sir John Commerell, British admiral of the fleet (b. 1829)
May 22 – Gaetano Bresci, Italian anarchist and assassin (b. 1869)
May 24 – Charlotte Mary Yonge, English novelist (b. 1823)
May 31 – Ernest de Sarzec, French archeologist (b. 1832)
June 2 – George Leslie Mackay, Canadian missionary (b. 1844)
June 4 – Charlotte Fowler Wells, American phrenologist (b. 1814)
June 9
Walter Besant, English writer (b. 1836)
Adolf Bötticher, German art historian (b. 1842)
June 13 – Leopoldo Alas, 'Clarín', Spanish novelist (b. 1852)
June 16 – Herman Grimm, German historian (b. 1828)
June 21 – Anthony Hoskins, British admiral (b. 1828)
June 25 – Alexandru Candiano-Popescu, Romanian general, lawyer, journalist, and poet (b. 1841)
July–August
July 4
John Fiske, American philosopher (b. 1842)
Johannes Schmidt, German linguist (b. 1843)
July 6
Chlodwig, Prince of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, Chancellor of Germany (b. 1819)
Joseph LeConte, American physician and geologist (b. 1823)
July 7 – Johanna Spyri, Swiss writer (b. 1827)
July 10 – Kliment of Tarnovo, 2nd Prime Minister of Bulgaria (b. 1841)
July 11 – Marietta Bones, American suffragist, social reformer, philanthropist (b. 1842)
July 18 – Jan ten Brink, Dutch writer (b. 1834)
August 5 – Victoria, Princess Royal (b. 1840)
August 12
Francesco Crispi, 11th Prime Minister of Italy (b. 1819)
Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld, Finnish-Swedish botanist, geologist, mineralogist, and explorer (b. 1832)
August 19 – Shō Tai, last king of the Ryūkyū Kingdom in Japan (b. 1843)
August 21 – Adolf Eugen Fick, German-born physician and physiologist (b. 1829)
September–October
September 9 – Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, French painter (b. 1864)
September 10 – Emanuella Carlbeck, Swedish educator and social reformer (b. 1829)
September 14 – William McKinley, 25th President of the United States (assassinated) (b. 1843)
September 15 – Sir Joseph Palmer Abbott, Australian politician and solicitor (b. 1842)
September 25 – Sir Arthur Fremantle, British army general (b. 1835)
October 1 – Abdur Rahman Khan, Emir of Afghanistan (b. 1844)
October 10 – Lorenzo Snow, 5th president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (b. 1814)
October 15 – Carlos María Fitz-James Stuart, 16th Duke of Alba, Spanish aristocrat (b. 1849)
October 19 – Carl Frederik Tietgen, Danish financier, industrialist (b. 1829)
October 28 – Paul Rée, German author and philosopher (b. 1849)
October 29
Leon Czolgosz, Polish-American assassin of U.S. President William McKinley (executed) (b. 1873)
John Kemp Starley, English bicycle inventor (b. 1854)
November–December
November 7 – Li Hongzhang, Chinese general (b. 1823)
November 13 – Sir William Stewart, British admiral (b. 1822)
November 27 – Clement Studebaker, American manufacturer (b. 1831)
November 29 – Francisco Pi y Margall, Spanish politician, former president of the Republic (b. 1824)
November 30 – Edward John Eyre, English explorer, Governor of Jamaica (b. 1815)
December 6 – Bertha Wehnert-Beckmann, German photographer (b. 1815)
December 11 – Lev Ivanov, Russian choreographer (b. 1834)
Nobel Prizes
Physics – Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen
Chemistry – Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff
Medicine – Emil Adolf von Behring
Literature – Sully Prudhomme
Peace – Jean Henri Dunant and Frédéric Passy
Significance of 1901 for modern computers
The date of Friday December 13 20:45:52 1901 is significant for modern computers because it is the earliest date representable with a signed 32-bit integer on systems that reference time in seconds since the Unix epoch. This corresponds to -2147483648 seconds from Thursday January 1 00:00:00 1970. For the same reason, many computers are also unable to represent an earlier date. For related reasons, many computer systems suffer from the Year 2038 problem. This is when the positive number of seconds since 1970 exceeds 2147483647 (01111111 11111111 11111111 11111111 in binary) and wraps to -2147483648. Hence the computer system erroneously displays or operates on the time Friday December 13 20:45:52 1901. In this way, the year 1900 is to the Year 2000 problem as the year 1901 is to the Year 2038 problem.
References
Further reading
Appletons' Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important Events. D. Appleton & Company. 1902.
Gilbert, Martin. A History of the Twentieth Century: vol. 1 1900–1933 (1997) pp 36–54; Global coverage of politics, diplomacy etc. |
William_IV | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_IV | [
595
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_IV"
] | William IV (William Henry; 21 August 1765 – 20 June 1837) was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and King of Hanover from 26 June 1830 until his death in 1837. The third son of George III, William succeeded his elder brother George IV, becoming the last king and penultimate monarch of Britain's House of Hanover.
William served in the Royal Navy in his youth, spending time in British North America and the Caribbean, and was later nicknamed the "Sailor King". In 1789, he was created Duke of Clarence and St Andrews. Between 1791 and 1811, he cohabited with the actress Dorothea Jordan, with whom he had ten children. In 1818, he married Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen. William remained faithful to Adelaide during their marriage. In 1827, he was appointed Britain's first Lord High Admiral since 1709.
As his two elder brothers died without leaving legitimate issue, William inherited the throne when he was 64 years old. His reign saw several reforms: the Poor Law was updated, child labour restricted, slavery abolished in nearly all of the British Empire, and the electoral system refashioned by the Reform Acts of 1832. Although William did not engage in politics as much as his brother or his father, he was the last British monarch to appoint a prime minister contrary to the will of Parliament. He granted his German kingdom a short-lived liberal constitution. William had no surviving legitimate children at the time of his death, so he was succeeded by his niece Victoria in the United Kingdom and his brother Ernest Augustus in Hanover.
Early life
William was born in the early hours of the morning on 21 August 1765 at Buckingham House, the third child and son of King George III and Queen Charlotte. He had two elder brothers, George, Prince of Wales, and Prince Frederick (later Duke of York and Albany), and was not expected to inherit the Crown. He was baptised in the Great Council Chamber of St James's Palace on 20 September 1765. His godparents were the King's siblings: Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh; Prince Henry (later Duke of Cumberland and Strathearn); and Princess Augusta, Hereditary Duchess of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel.
William spent most of his early life in Richmond and at Kew Palace, where he was educated by private tutors. At the age of thirteen, he joined the Royal Navy as a midshipman, in Admiral Digby's squadron. For four years the lieutenant of his watch was Richard Goodwin Keats, with whom he formed a life-long friendship and whom he described as the one to whom he owed all his professional knowledge. He was present at the Battle of Cape St Vincent in 1780, when the San Julián struck her colours to his ship. His experiences in the navy seem to have been little different from those of other midshipmen, though in contrast to other sailors he was accompanied on board ship by a tutor. He did his share of the cooking and got arrested with his shipmates after a drunken brawl in Gibraltar; he was hastily released from custody after his identity became known.
William served in New York during the American War of Independence, making him the only member of the British royal family to visit America up to and through the American Revolution. While William was in America, George Washington approved a plot to kidnap him, writing:
The spirit of enterprise so conspicuous in your plan for surprising in their quarters and bringing off the Prince William Henry and Admiral Digby merits applause; and you have my authority to make the attempt in any manner, and at such a time, as your judgment may direct. I am fully persuaded, that it is unnecessary to caution you against offering insult or indignity to the persons of the Prince or Admiral...
The plot did not come to fruition; the British heard of it and assigned guards to William, who had until then walked around New York unescorted. In September 1781, William held court at the Manhattan home of Governor Robertson. In attendance were Mayor David Mathews, Admiral Digby, and General Delancey.
William became a lieutenant in 1785 and captain of HMS Pegasus the following year, during which he spent time in the colonies of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. Later in 1786, he was stationed in the West Indies under Horatio Nelson, who wrote of William, "in his professional line, he is superior to two-thirds, I am sure, of the [naval] list; and in attention to orders, and respect to his superior officer, I hardly know his equal." The two were great friends, and dined together almost nightly. At Nelson's wedding, William insisted on giving the bride away. After touring Quebec in 1787, he was, the next year, given command of the frigate HMS Andromeda and promoted to rear-admiral while commanding HMS Valiant in 1790.
William sought to be made a duke like his elder brothers, and to receive a similar parliamentary grant, but his father was reluctant. To put pressure on him, William threatened to stand for the British House of Commons for the constituency of Totnes in Devon. Appalled at the prospect of his son making his case to the voters, the King created him Duke of Clarence and St Andrews and Earl of Munster on 19 May 1789, supposedly saying: "I well know it is another vote added to the Opposition." William's political record was inconsistent and, like many politicians of the time, cannot be ascribed to a single party. However, he allied himself publicly with the Whigs, as did his elder brothers, who were known to be in conflict with the political positions of their father.
Naval career
William ceased his active service in the Royal Navy in 1790. When Britain declared war on France in 1793, he was eager to serve his country and expected to be given a command but was not, perhaps at first because he had broken his arm by falling down some stairs drunk, but later perhaps because he gave a speech in the House of Lords opposing the war. The following year he spoke in favour of the war, and expected a command after his change of heart; none came. The Admiralty did not reply to his request. He did not lose hope of being appointed to an active post. In 1798 he was made an admiral, but the rank was purely nominal. Despite repeated petitions, he was never given a command throughout the Napoleonic Wars. In 1811, he was appointed to the honorary position of Admiral of the Fleet. In 1813, he came nearest to involvement in actual fighting, when he visited the British troops fighting in the Low Countries. Watching the bombardment of Antwerp from a church steeple, he came under fire, and a bullet pierced his coat.
Instead of serving at sea, William spent time in the House of Lords, where he spoke in opposition to the abolition of slavery, which still existed in the British colonies. Freedom would do the slaves little good, he argued. He had travelled widely and, in his eyes, the living standard among freemen in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland was worse than that among slaves in the West Indies. His experience in the Caribbean, where he "quickly absorbed the plantation owners' views about slavery", lent weight to his position, which was perceived as well-argued and just by some of his contemporaries. In his first speech before Parliament he called himself "an attentive observer of the state of the negroes" who found them well cared for and "in a state of humble happiness". Others thought it "shocking that so young a man, under no bias of interest, should be earnest in continuance of the slave trade". In his speech to the House, William insulted William Wilberforce, the leading abolitionist, saying: "the proponents of the abolition are either fanatics or hypocrites, and in one of those classes I rank Mr. Wilberforce". On other issues he was more liberal, such as supporting moves to abolish penal laws against dissenting Christians. He also opposed efforts to bar those found guilty of adultery from remarriage.
Relationships and marriage
William had an illegitimate son before 1791 whose mother is unknown; the son, also called William, drowned off Madagascar in HMS Blenheim in February 1807. Caroline von Linsingen, whose father was a general in the Hanoverian infantry, claimed to have had a son, Heinrich, by William in around 1790 but William was not in Hanover at the time that she claims, and the story is considered implausible by historians.
From 1791, William lived with an Irish actress, Dorothea Bland, better known by her stage name Mrs Jordan, the title "Mrs" being assumed at the start of her stage career to explain an inconvenient pregnancy and "Jordan" because she had "crossed the water" from Ireland to Britain. He appeared to enjoy the domesticity of his life with Mrs. Jordan, remarking to a friend: "Mrs Jordan is a very good creature, very domestic and careful of her children. To be sure she is absurd sometimes and has her humours. But there are such things more or less in all families." The couple, while living quietly, enjoyed entertaining, with Mrs. Jordan writing in late 1809: "We shall have a full and merry house this Christmas, 'tis what the dear Duke delights in." The King was accepting of his son's relationship with the actress (though recommending that he halve her allowance); in 1797, he created William the Ranger of Bushy Park, which included a large residence, Bushy House, for William's growing family. William used Bushy as his principal residence until he became king. His London residence, Clarence House, was constructed to the designs of John Nash between 1825 and 1827.
The couple had ten illegitimate children—five sons and five daughters—nine of whom were named after William's siblings; each was given the surname "FitzClarence". Their affair lasted for twenty years before ending in 1811. Mrs Jordan had no doubt about the reason for the break-up: "Money, money, my good friend, has, I am convinced made HIM at this moment the most wretched of men", adding, "With all his excellent qualities, his domestic virtues, his love for his lovely children, what must he not at this moment suffer?" She was given a financial settlement of £4,400 (equivalent to £403,300 in 2023) per year and custody of her daughters on condition that she did not resume the stage. When she resumed acting in an effort to repay debts incurred by the husband of one of her daughters from a previous relationship, William took custody of the daughters and stopped paying the £1,500 (equivalent to £132,500 in 2023) designated for their maintenance. After Mrs Jordan's acting career began to fail, she fled to France to escape her creditors and died, impoverished, near Paris in 1816.
Deeply in debt, William made several attempts at marrying a wealthy heiress, such as Catherine Tylney-Long, but his suits were unsuccessful. Following the death of William's niece Princess Charlotte of Wales, then second-in-line to the British throne, in 1817, George III was left with twelve children but no legitimate grandchildren. The race was on among his sons, the royal dukes, to marry and produce an heir. William had great advantages in this race—his two older brothers were both childless and estranged from their wives, who were both beyond childbearing age anyway, and William was the healthiest of the three. If he lived long enough, he would almost certainly ascend the British and Hanoverian thrones and have the opportunity to sire the next monarch. William's initial choices of potential wives either met with the disapproval of his eldest brother, the Prince of Wales, or turned him down. His younger brother Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, was sent to Germany to scout out the available Protestant princesses; he came up with Princess Augusta of Hesse-Kassel, but her father, Frederick, declined the match. Two months later Adolphus married Augusta himself. Eventually, however, a princess was found who was amiable, home-loving and willing to accept (even enthusiastically welcome) William's nine surviving children, several of whom had not yet reached adulthood. In the Drawing Room at Kew Palace on 11 July 1818, William married Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen.
William's marriage, which lasted almost twenty years until his death, was a happy one. Adelaide took both William and his finances in hand. For their first year of marriage the couple lived in economical fashion in Germany. William's debts were soon on the way to being paid, especially since Parliament had voted him an increased allowance, which he reluctantly accepted after his requests to have it increased further were refused. William is not known to have had mistresses after his marriage. The couple had two short-lived daughters and Adelaide suffered two miscarriages. Despite this, false rumours that she was pregnant persisted into William's reign—he dismissed them as "damned stuff".
Lord High Admiral
William's eldest brother, the Prince of Wales, had been Prince Regent since 1811 because of the mental illness of their father. In 1820, George III died and the Prince Regent became George IV. William was now second in the line of succession, preceded only by his brother Frederick. Reformed since his marriage, William walked for hours, ate relatively frugally, and the only drink he imbibed in quantity was barley water flavoured with lemon. Both of his older brothers were unhealthy, and it was considered only a matter of time before he became king. When Frederick died in 1827, William, then more than 60 years old, became heir presumptive. Later that year, the incoming prime minister, George Canning, appointed him to the office of Lord High Admiral, which had been in commission (that is, exercised by a board rather than by a single individual) since 1709. While in office, William had repeated conflicts with his Council, which was composed of Admiralty officers. Things finally came to a head in 1828 when, as Lord High Admiral, he put to sea with a squadron of ships, leaving no word of where they were going, and remained away for ten days. The King requested his resignation through the prime minister, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington; he complied.
Despite the difficulties William experienced, he did considerable good as Lord High Admiral. He abolished the cat o' nine tails for most offences other than mutiny, attempted to improve the standard of naval gunnery, and required regular reports of the condition and preparedness of each ship. He commissioned the first steam warship and advocated the construction of more. Holding the office permitted him to make mistakes and learn from them—a process that might have been far more costly if he had not learnt before becoming king that he should act only with the advice of his councillors.
William spent much of his remaining time during his brother's reign in the House of Lords. He supported the Catholic Emancipation Bill against the opposition of his younger brother Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, describing the latter's position on the Bill as "infamous", to Ernest's outrage. George IV's health was increasingly bad; it was obvious by early 1830 that he was near death. The King took his leave of William at the end of May, stating, "God's will be done. I have injured no man. It will all rest on you then." William's genuine affection for his older brother could not mask his rising anticipation that he would soon be king.
Reign
Early reign
When George IV died on 26 June 1830 without surviving legitimate issue, William succeeded him as William IV. Aged 64, he was the oldest person at that point to assume the British throne, a distinction he would hold until surpassed by Charles III in 2022.
Unlike his extravagant brother, William was unassuming, discouraging pomp and ceremony. In contrast to George IV, who tended to spend most of his time in Windsor Castle, William was known, especially early in his reign, to walk, unaccompanied, through London or Brighton. Until the Reform Crisis eroded his standing he was very popular among the people, who saw him as more approachable and down-to-earth than his brother.
The King immediately proved himself a conscientious worker. The prime minister, the Duke of Wellington, stated that he had done more business with King William in ten minutes than he had with George IV in as many days. Lord Brougham described him as an excellent man of business, asking enough questions to help him understand the matter—whereas George IV feared to ask questions lest he display his ignorance and George III would ask too many and then not wait for a response.
The King did his best to endear himself to the people. Charlotte Williams-Wynn wrote shortly after his accession: "Hitherto the King has been indefatigable in his efforts to make himself popular, and do good natured and amiable things in every possible instance." Emily Eden noted: "He is an immense improvement on the last unforgiving animal, who died growling sulkily in his den at Windsor. This man at least wishes to make everybody happy, and everything he has done has been benevolent."
William dismissed his brother's French chefs and German band, replacing them with English ones to public approval. He gave much of George IV's art collection to the nation and halved the royal stud. George had begun an extensive (and expensive) renovation of Buckingham Palace; William refused to reside there and twice tried to give the palace away, once to the Army as a barracks and once to Parliament after the Houses of Parliament burned down in 1834. His informality could be startling: when in residence at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, he used to send to the hotels for a list of their guests and invite anyone he knew to dinner, urging guests not to "bother about clothes. The Queen does nothing but embroider flowers after dinner."
Upon taking the throne, William did not forget his nine surviving illegitimate children, creating his eldest son, George, Earl of Munster and granting the other children the precedence of a daughter or a younger son of a marquess. Despite this his children importuned for greater opportunities, disgusting elements of the press who reported that the "impudence and rapacity of the FitzJordans is unexampled". The relationship between William and his sons "was punctuated by a series of savage and, for the King at least, painful quarrels" over money and honours. His daughters, on the other hand, proved an ornament to his court, as "They are all, you know, pretty and lively, and make society in a way that real princesses could not."
Reform crisis
At the time, the death of the monarch caused fresh Parliamentary elections and, in the general election of 1830, Wellington's Tories lost ground to the Whigs under Lord Grey, though the Tories still had the largest number of seats. With the Tories bitterly divided, Wellington was defeated in the House of Commons in November, and Lord Grey formed a government. Grey pledged to reform the electoral system, which had seen few changes since the fifteenth century. The inequities in the system were great; for example, large towns such as Manchester and Birmingham elected no members (though they were part of county constituencies), while small boroughs, known as rotten or pocket boroughs—such as Old Sarum with just seven voters—elected two members of Parliament each. Often, the rotten boroughs were controlled by great aristocrats, whose nominees were invariably elected by the constituents—who were, most often, their tenants—especially since the secret ballot was not yet used in Parliamentary elections. Landowners who controlled seats were even able to sell them to prospective candidates.
When the First Reform Bill was defeated in the House of Commons in 1831, Grey's ministry urged William to dissolve Parliament, which would lead to a new general election. At first, William hesitated to exercise his prerogative powers to dissolve Parliament because elections had just been held the year before and the country was in a state of high excitement which might boil over into violence. He was, however, irritated by the conduct of the Opposition, which announced its intention to move the passage of an Address, or resolution, in the House of Lords, against dissolution. Regarding the Opposition's motion as an attack on his prerogative, and at the urgent request of Lord Grey and his ministers, the King prepared to go in person to the House of Lords and prorogue Parliament. The monarch's arrival would stop all debate and prevent passage of the Address. When initially told that his horses could not be ready at such short notice, William is supposed to have said, "Then I will go in a hackney cab!" Coach and horses were assembled quickly and he immediately proceeded to Parliament. Said The Times of the scene before William's arrival, "It is utterly impossible to describe the scene ... The violent tones and gestures of noble Lords ... astonished the spectators, and affected the ladies who were present with visible alarm." Lord Londonderry brandished a whip, threatening to thrash the Government supporters, and was held back by four of his colleagues. William hastily put on the crown, entered the Chamber, and dissolved Parliament. This forced new elections for the House of Commons, which yielded a great victory for the reformers. But although the Commons was clearly in favour of parliamentary reform, the Lords remained implacably opposed to it.
The crisis saw a brief interlude for the celebration of the King's coronation on 8 September 1831. At first, William wished to dispense with the coronation entirely, feeling that his wearing the crown while proroguing Parliament answered any need. He was persuaded otherwise by traditionalists. He refused, however, to celebrate the coronation in the expensive way his brother had—the 1821 coronation had cost £240,000, of which £16,000 was merely to hire the jewels. At William's instructions, the Privy Council budgeted less than £30,000 for the coronation. When traditionalist Tories threatened to boycott what they called the "Half Crown-nation", the King retorted that they should go ahead, and that he anticipated "greater convenience of room and less heat".
After the rejection of the Second Reform Bill by the House of Lords in October 1831, agitation for reform grew across the country; demonstrations grew violent in so-called "Reform Riots". In the face of popular excitement, the Grey ministry refused to accept defeat, and re-introduced the Bill, despite the continued opposition of peers in the House of Lords. Frustrated by the Lords' obdurate attitude, Grey suggested that the King create a sufficient number of new peers to ensure the passage of the Reform Bill. The King objected—though he had the power to create an unlimited number of peers, he had already created 22 new peers in his Coronation Honours. William reluctantly agreed to the creation of the number of peers sufficient "to secure the success of the bill". However, the King, citing the difficulties with a permanent expansion of the peerage, told Grey that the creations must be restricted as much as possible to the eldest sons and collateral heirs of existing peers, so that the created peerages would eventually be absorbed as subsidiary titles. This time, the Lords did not reject the bill outright, but began preparing to change its basic character through amendments. Grey and his fellow ministers decided to resign if the King did not agree to an immediate and large creation to force the bill through in its entirety. The King refused, and accepted their resignations. The King attempted to restore the Duke of Wellington to office, but Wellington had insufficient support to form a ministry and the King's popularity sank to an all-time low. Mud was slung at his carriage and he was publicly hissed. The King agreed to reappoint Grey's ministry, and to create new peers if the House of Lords continued to pose difficulties. Concerned by the threat of the creations, most of the bill's opponents abstained and the 1832 Reform Act was passed. The mob blamed William's actions on the influence of his wife and brother, and his popularity recovered.
Foreign policy
William distrusted foreigners, particularly anyone French, which he acknowledged as a "prejudice". He also felt strongly that Britain should not interfere in the internal affairs of other states, which brought him into conflict with the interventionist foreign secretary, Lord Palmerston. William supported Belgian independence and, after unacceptable Dutch and French candidates were put forward, favoured Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the widower of his niece Charlotte, as a candidate for the newly created Belgian throne.
Though he had a reputation for tactlessness and buffoonery, William could be shrewd and diplomatic. He foresaw that the potential construction of a canal at Suez would make good relations with Egypt vital to Britain. Later in his reign, he flattered the American ambassador at a dinner by announcing that he regretted not being "born a free, independent American, so much did he respect that nation, which had given birth to George Washington, the greatest man that ever lived". By exercising his personal charm, William assisted in the repair of Anglo-American relations, which had been so deeply damaged during the reign of his father.
King of Hanover
Public perception in Germany was that Britain dictated Hanoverian policy. This was not the case. In 1832, Austrian chancellor Klemens von Metternich introduced laws that curbed fledgling liberal movements in Germany. Lord Palmerston opposed this, and sought William's influence to cause the Hanoverian government to take the same position. The Hanoverian government instead agreed with Metternich, much to Palmerston's dismay, and William declined to intervene. The conflict between William and Palmerston over Hanover was renewed the following year when Metternich called a conference of the German states, to be held in Vienna, and Palmerston wanted Hanover to decline the invitation. Instead, William's brother Prince Adolphus, Viceroy of Hanover, accepted, backed fully by William. In 1833, William signed a new constitution for Hanover, which empowered the middle class, gave limited power to the lower classes, and expanded the role of the parliament. The constitution would later be revoked by his brother and successor in Hanover, King Ernest Augustus.
Later reign and death
For the remainder of his reign, William interfered actively in politics only once, in 1834, when he became the last British sovereign to choose a prime minister contrary to the will of Parliament. In 1834, the ministry was facing increasing unpopularity and Lord Grey retired; the home secretary, William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, replaced him. Melbourne retained most Cabinet members, and his ministry retained an overwhelming majority in the House of Commons. Some members of the Government, however, were anathema to the King, and increasingly left-wing policies concerned him. The previous year Grey had already pushed through legislation reforming the Protestant Church of Ireland. The Church collected tithes throughout Ireland, supported multiple bishoprics and was wealthy. However, barely an eighth of the Irish population belonged to the Church of Ireland. In some parishes, there were no Church of Ireland members at all, but there was still a priest paid for by tithes collected from the local Catholics and Presbyterians, leading to charges that idle priests were living in luxury at the expense of Irish people living at the level of subsistence. Grey's Act had reduced the number of bishoprics by half, abolished some of the sinecures and overhauled the tithe system. Further measures to appropriate the surplus revenues of the Church of Ireland were mooted by the more radical members of the Government, including Lord John Russell. The King had an especial dislike for Russell, calling him "a dangerous little Radical."
In November 1834, the leader of the House of Commons and chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Althorp, inherited a peerage, thus removing him from the Commons to the Lords. Melbourne had to appoint a new Commons leader and a new Chancellor (who by long custom, must be drawn from the Commons), but the only candidate whom Melbourne felt suitable to replace Althorp as Commons leader was Lord John Russell, whom William (and many others) found unacceptable due to his radical politics. William claimed that the ministry had been weakened beyond repair and used the removal of Lord Althorp—who had previously indicated that he would retire from politics upon becoming a peer—as the pretext for the dismissal of the entire ministry. With Lord Melbourne gone, William chose to entrust power to a Tory, Sir Robert Peel. Since Peel was then in Italy, the Duke of Wellington was provisionally appointed prime minister. When Peel returned and assumed leadership of the ministry for himself, he saw the impossibility of governing because of the Whig majority in the House of Commons. Consequently, Parliament was dissolved to force fresh elections. Although the Tories won more seats than in the previous election, they were still in the minority. Peel remained in office for a few months but resigned after a series of parliamentary defeats. Melbourne was reappointed as prime minister, remaining there for the rest of William's reign, and the King was forced to accept Russell as Commons leader.
The King had a mixed relationship with Lord Melbourne. Melbourne's government mooted more ideas to introduce greater democracy, such as the devolution of powers to the Legislative Council of Lower Canada, which greatly alarmed the King, who feared it would eventually lead to the loss of the colony. At first, the King bitterly opposed these proposals. William exclaimed to Lord Gosford, Governor General-designate of Canada: "Mind what you are about in Canada ... mind me, my Lord, the Cabinet is not my Cabinet; they had better take care or by God, I will have them impeached." When William's son Augustus enquired of his father whether the King would be entertaining during Ascot week, William gloomily replied, "I cannot give any dinners without inviting the ministers, and I would rather see the devil than any one of them in my house." Nevertheless, William approved the Cabinet's recommendations for reform. Despite his disagreements with Melbourne, the King wrote warmly to congratulate the prime minister when he triumphed in the adultery case brought against him concerning Caroline Norton—he had refused to permit Melbourne to resign when the case was first brought. The King and Lord Melbourne eventually found a modus vivendi, with Melbourne applying tact and firmness when called for and William realising that his prime minister was far less radical in his politics than the King had feared.
Both the King and Queen were fond of their niece, Princess Alexandrina Victoria of Kent. Their attempts to forge a close relationship with the girl were frustrated by the conflict between the King and Victoria's widowed mother, the Duchess of Kent and Strathearn. The King, angered at what he took to be disrespect from the Duchess to his wife, took the opportunity at what proved to be his final birthday banquet in August 1836 to settle the score. Speaking to those assembled at the banquet, who included the Duchess and Princess Victoria, William expressed his hope that he would survive until Victoria was 18 so that the Duchess would never be regent. He said, "I trust to God that my life may be spared for nine months longer ... I should then have the satisfaction of leaving the exercise of the Royal authority to the personal authority of that young lady, heiress presumptive to the Crown, and not in the hands of a person now near me, who is surrounded by evil advisers and is herself incompetent to act with propriety in the situation in which she would be placed." The speech was so shocking that Victoria burst into tears, while her mother sat in silence and was only with difficulty persuaded not to leave immediately after dinner (the two left the next day). William's outburst undoubtedly contributed to Victoria's tempered view of him as "a good old man, though eccentric and singular". William survived, though mortally ill, to the month after Victoria's coming of age. "Poor old man!", Victoria wrote as he was dying, "I feel sorry for him; he was always personally kind to me."
William was "very much shaken and affected" by the death of his eldest daughter, Sophia, Lady de L'Isle and Dudley, in childbirth in April 1837. William and his eldest son, the Earl of Munster, were estranged at the time, but William hoped that a letter of condolence from Munster signalled a reconciliation. His hopes were not fulfilled and Munster, still thinking he had not been given sufficient money or patronage, remained bitter to the end.
Queen Adelaide attended the dying William devotedly, not going to bed herself for more than ten days. William died in the early hours of the morning of 20 June 1837 at Windsor Castle, where he was buried in the Royal Vault at St George's Chapel.
Legacy
As William had no living legitimate issue, the British throne passed to his niece Victoria, the only legitimate child of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, George III's fourth son. Under Salic Law, a woman could not rule Hanover and so the Hanoverian throne went to George III's fifth son, Ernest Augustus. William's death thus ended the personal union of Britain and Hanover, which had persisted since 1714. The main beneficiaries of his will were his eight surviving children by Mrs Jordan. Although William is not the direct ancestor of the later monarchs of the United Kingdom, he has many notable descendants through his illegitimate children with Mrs Jordan, including British prime minister David Cameron, TV presenter Adam Hart-Davis, and author and statesman Duff Cooper.
William IV had a short but eventful reign. In Britain, the Reform Crisis marked the ascendancy of the House of Commons and the corresponding decline of the House of Lords, and the King's unsuccessful attempt to remove the Melbourne ministry indicated a reduction in the political influence of the Crown and of the King's influence over the electorate. During the reign of George III, the king could have dismissed one ministry, appointed another, dissolved Parliament, and expected the electorate to vote in favour of the new administration. Such was the result of a dissolution in 1784, after the dismissal of the Fox-North Coalition, and in 1807, after the dismissal of Lord Grenville. But when William dismissed the Melbourne ministry, the Tories under Peel failed to win the ensuing elections. The monarch's ability to influence the opinion of the electorate, and therefore national policy, had been reduced. None of William's successors has attempted to remove a government or to appoint another against the wishes of Parliament. William understood that as a constitutional monarch he had no power to act against the opinion of Parliament. He said, "I have my view of things, and I tell them to my ministers. If they do not adopt them, I cannot help it. I have done my duty."
During William's reign, the British Parliament enacted major reforms, including the Factory Act of 1833 (preventing child labour), the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 (emancipating slaves in the colonies), and the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 (standardising provision for the destitute). William attracted criticism both from reformers, who felt that reform did not go far enough, and from reactionaries, who felt that reform went too far. A modern interpretation sees him as failing to satisfy either political extreme by trying to find a compromise between two bitterly opposed factions, but in the process proving himself more capable as a constitutional monarch than many had supposed.
Honours and arms
British and Hanoverian honours
5 April 1770: Knight of the Thistle (KT)
19 April 1782: Knight of the Garter (KG)
23 June 1789: Member of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom (PC)
2 January 1815: Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB)
12 August 1815: Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Hanoverian Guelphic Order
26 April 1827: Royal Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS)
Foreign honours
Kingdom of Prussia: 11 April 1814: Knight of the Black Eagle
Kingdom of France: 24 April 1814: Knight of the Holy Spirit
Russian Empire:
9 June 1814: Knight of St. Andrew
9 June 1814: Knight of St. Alexander Nevsky
Denmark: 15 July 1830: Knight of the Elephant
Baden:
1831: Knight of the House Order of Fidelity
1831: Knight Grand Cross of the Zähringer Lion
Spain: 21 February 1834: Knight of the Golden Fleece
Württemberg: Knight Grand Cross of the Württemberg Crown
Arms
Before becoming king, William, as a son of the sovereign, was granted the use of the royal arms (without the electoral inescutcheon in the Hanoverian quarter) in 1781, differenced by a label of three points argent, the centre point bearing a cross gules, the outer points each bearing an anchor azure. In 1801 his arms altered with the royal arms, however the marks of difference remained the same.
As king, William used the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom undifferenced: Quarterly, I and IV Gules three lions passant guardant in pale Or (for England); II Or a lion rampant within a tressure flory-counter-flory Gules (for Scotland); III Azure a harp Or stringed Argent (for Ireland); overall an escutcheon tierced per pale and per chevron (for Hanover), I Gules two lions passant guardant Or (for Brunswick), II Or a semy of hearts Gules a lion rampant Azure (for Lüneburg), III Gules a horse courant Argent (for Westphalia), overall an inescutcheon Gules charged with the crown of Charlemagne Or, the whole escutcheon surmounted by a crown.
Issue
Ancestry
Family tree
: Red borders indicate British monarchs
: Bold borders indicate legitimate children of British monarchs
See also
Cultural depictions of William IV
References
Sources
Allen, W. Gore (1960). King William IV. London: Cresset Press.
Brock, Michael (2004). "William IV (1765–1837)"". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/29451. Retrieved 6 July 2007. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
Fulford, Roger (1973). Royal Dukes (revised ed.). London: Collins.
Grant, James (1836). Random Recollections of the House of Lords. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
Hochschild, Adam (2005). Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
Molloy, Fitzgerald (1903). The Sailor King: William the Fourth, His Court and His Subjects. London: Hutchinson & Co.
Prothero, George Walter (1911). "William IV., King of England" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 28 (11th ed.). pp. 664–665.
Somerset, Anne (1980). The Life and Times of William IV. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 978-0-297-83225-6.
Van der Kiste, John (1994). George III's Children. Stroud: Sutton Publishing Ltd.
Van der Kiste, John (2022). William IV: The last Hanoverian King of Britain. Barnsley: Pen & Sword.
Weir, Alison (1996). Britain's Royal Families: The Complete Genealogy, Revised edition. Random House. ISBN 978-0-7126-7448-5.
Ziegler, Philip (1971). King William IV. London: Collins. ISBN 978-0-00-211934-4.
External links
William IV at the official website of the British monarchy
William IV at the official website of the Royal Collection Trust
William IV at BBC History
Portraits of King William IV at the National Portrait Gallery, London
Digitised private and official papers of William IV at the Royal Collection
Works related to William IV at Wikisource |
BoA | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BoA | [
596
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BoA#Discography"
] | Kwon Bo-ah (Korean: 권보아; born November 5, 1986), known professionally as BoA and often referred to as the "Queen of K-pop", is a South Korean singer, songwriter, dancer, producer, and actress.
Born and raised in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, BoA was discovered by SM Entertainment talent agents when she accompanied her older brother, a music video director, to a talent search in 1998. She was trained for two years and made her debut with ID; Peace B (2000). BoA has since released twenty studio albums, including ten in Korean, nine in Japanese, and one in English. On television, she appeared as a judge on the reality competition show K-pop Star (2011–2013), as an actress on the television drama Listen to Love (2016), as a host for the second season of Produce 101 (2017), and as a coach for the third season of The Voice of Korea (2020).
With the release of her debut Japanese studio album, Listen to My Heart (2002), BoA became the first South Korean pop star to break through in Japan following the fall of barriers that had restricted the import and export of entertainment between the countries since the end of World War II. Her Japanese albums Valenti (2003) and Best of Soul (2005) went on to sell over one million copies each according to Oricon; the latter of which remained the last album to do so by a non-Japanese artist for 16 years. Her self-titled English album (2009) became the first record by a K-pop artist to appear on the Billboard 200, debuting at number 127.
BoA has sold over ten million albums throughout her career and is one of only three female artists with six consecutive number-one studio albums on the Oricon Albums Chart since her debut, alongside Japanese singers Ayumi Hamasaki and Hikaru Utada. She is the recipient of numerous awards in South Korea and Japan, including eight MAMA Awards, six SBS Music Awards, five Japan Record Awards, and five Japan Gold Disc Awards. In 2013, Mnet included her in their Legend 100 Artists list of the most influential artists in South Korea.
Life and career
2000–2003: Debut and commercial success in South Korea and Japan
Kwon Bo-ah was born on November 5, 1986. At the age of eleven, BoA accompanied her older brother to an SM Entertainment talent search. Though her brother was the one who auditioned as a break-dancer, SM talent scouts instead took notice of BoA and offered her a contract on the same night as the auditions. Her parents initially opposed the notion of BoA leaving school to enter the entertainment business but eventually consented at her older brothers' persuasion. She has said that her early influence as a singer was Seo Taiji.
BoA underwent two years of training (involving vocal, dance, English, and Japanese lessons), and at the age of thirteen she released her debut album ID; Peace B in South Korea on August 25, 2000. The album was moderately successful; it entered the Top 10 of the South Korean charts and sold around 156,000 units. Meanwhile, her Korean record label, SM Entertainment, made arrangements with Japanese label Avex Trax to launch her music career in Japan. She was forced to quit school to prepare and in early 2001, BoA released her first mini-album, Don't Start Now; it sold around 90,000 units. After its release, she took a hiatus from the Korean music industry to focus on the Japanese market at which time she worked to solidify her skills in Japanese.
BoA began her Japanese music career singing at the Avex-owned club Velfarre. Her debut Japanese album, Listen to My Heart, was released on March 13, 2002. The album was a breakthrough in BoA's career, becoming an RIAJ-certified million-seller and debuted atop the Oricon, the first album by a Korean artist to do so. It was promoted with several singles: the Top 20 hit "ID; Peace B" (originally from the eponymous album), "Amazing Kiss", "Kimochi wa Tsutawaru", the Top 5 hit "Listen to My Heart", and the Top 10 "Every Heart: Minna no Kimochi". After the September 11, 2001 attacks, BoA recorded the charity single "The Meaning of Peace" with Kumi Koda as part of Avex's Song Nation project to raise funds for charity. From 2001 to 2007, BoA hosted Beat it BoA's World, a radio program on the Japan FM Network.
After the release of Listen to My Heart, BoA released her second Korean studio album, No. 1, a month later on April 12, 2002. The album sold around 544,853 units and became the fourth-best-selling record of the year in South Korea. Jumping into the World (a Japanese re-release of the mini-album Don't Start Now) and the Japanese single "Don't Start Now" were released a month later on the same day. At the end of the year, BoA released her second Korean mini-album Miracle.
BoA's second Japanese studio album, Valenti (January 2003), became her best-selling album, with over 1,249,000 copies sold. Three singles preceded its release: "Valenti", which peaked at the number-two position on the Oricon chart, "Kiseki / No.1" and "Jewel Song / Beside You: Boku o Yobu Koe", both which also peaked at the number-three position. In support of the album, BoA launched BoA 1st Live Tour Valenti, her first Japanese concert tour. Later in the same year, BoA released her third Korean-language studio album, Atlantis Princess on May 30, 2003, and then released a mini-album Shine We Are! on December 4, 2003. The former was the fifth-best-selling South Korean record of the year with around 345,000 units sold; the latter sold around 58,000 units.
2004–2008: New image, foray into China, and creative control
Her third Japanese studio album, Love & Honesty (January 2004) was a musical "change in direction": it contained a rock-dance song ("Rock with You") and "harder" R&B. Though the album failed to match Valenti in sales, it topped the Oricon chart for two weeks and became RIAJ-certified triple-platinum. In support of the album, BoA held a tour, Live Concert Tour 2004: Love & Honesty, spanning nine performances and attracted approximately 105,000 attendants. In contrast with 1st Live Tour, which "emphasized exotic Asian design", the Love & Honesty tour had an "outer-space, sci-fi" theme; among the props were a three-storey-high space ship and the robot Asimo. Her first compilation album, Best of Soul (February 2005), however, sold over a million copies, making BoA the first non-Japanese Asian singer to have two million-selling albums in Japan. It remained the last album by a foreign artist to have sold over a million copies in Japan for 16 years, until BTS in 2021.
BoA reinvented her image for her fourth and fifth Korean albums, My Name (June 2004) and Girls on Top (June 2005), shedding the "cute" and "youthful" style that had characterized previous years and adopted a more "sexy" and "sultry" look. The sales of BoA's Korean albums began to decline: My Name sold 191,000 units and became the eleventh-best-selling South Korean album in 2004 while Girls on Top ranked fourteenth in 2005 with 113,000 units sold. In September 2004, BoA instigated controversy in Japan when she donated ₩50 million to a memorial project for Korean independence activist and nationalist An Jung-geun.
Her fourth Japanese studio album, Outgrow, (February 2006) reached the number-one spot on the Oricon chart for its first week of release, making it her fourth consecutive original Japanese album to do so. With 220,000 copies sold, it became her lowest-selling first-week debut for a studio album at that point. "Do the Motion", the first single from the album, reached the top spot, making her the fourth non-Japanese Asian to have a number-one single on the Oricon charts. "Merry Christmas from BoA" (2005), the album's last single, was the singer's first digital single. That May, BoA renewed her contract with SM Entertainment until 2012. At the time it was noted that she had a shareholding in the company of 100,000 (Approximately worth $1m USD). She performed "Everlasting", the image song for Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist (2005 film). She also voiced Heather the possum in the Korean and Japanese version of the animated film Over the Hedge. On September 21, 2006, she released her first digital single in Korea, a Korean version of "Key of Heart". In support of Outgrow, BoA launched a special Zepp tour, B0A The Live, on September 29, 2006, which lasted until October 29. She staged her first Christmas concert on December 7, 2006.
Three singles preceded BoA's fifth Japanese studio album, Made in Twenty (January 2007): the Top 3 "Nanairo no Ashita (Brand New Beat)/Your Color," the Top 10 "Key of Heart", and the No. 2 hit "Winter Love". The album, which contained R&B and dance songs as well as ballads, debuted at the top of the weekly Oricon charts, making the album her sixth in a row to do so (including one compilation). Having previously compose the song "No More Make Me Sick" for Made in Twenty, BoA assumed creative control over her sixth Japanese album, The Face (February 2008). The album debuted at the top of the weekly Oricon charts, making BoA one of only two artists in Japan to have six consecutive studio albums top the Oricon weekly charts (the other is Ayumi Hamasaki, who has eight consecutive number-one albums). On June 9, 2008, BoA and nine other artists from around the world recorded an English cover of Wei Wei's "Dedication of Love". Produced by Roald Hoffmann and Brian Alan, the single was used to raise funds for victims of the Sichuan earthquake. But due to a tight schedule, BoA was pulled back from this project. Korean jewelry brand Ramee also released, "Ramee by BoA", a line of jewelry designed by the singer herself.
2008–2012: American expansion and return to Asia
On September 2, 2008, it was announced that BoA would make her American debut under a new subsidiary label, SM Entertainment USA. Hoping to become a "world-renowned entertainer" in the vein of Janet Jackson, BoA's debut American single "Eat You Up", was produced by Thomas Troelsen, and released on October 21, 2008. It charted at No. 9 on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart. To promote the single, BoA performed "Eat You Up" as well as other songs at YouTube's Tokyo Live concert, and performed in New York City on December 3, 2008, as well as the Jingle Ball at the Anaheim Honda Center on December 6, 2008. The following year, she released "Eien/Universe/Believe in Love" and was also featured in Ravex's single "Believe in Love".
BoA's self-titled English album was released in the U.S. on March 17 and featured tracks by producers Bloodshy and Avant as well as a duet with Sean Garrett. Her second Japanese compilation album, Best & USA was released on March 18 tying together a compilation of recent hits in Japan with her English-language debut. Though she stated that "[i]t has always been my dream to debut in America," she found English tougher to learn than Japanese and despite living in West Beverly Hills, found it difficult to make friends. BoA later headlined the San Francisco Pride Festival on June 28, 2009, alongside Solange Knowles and The Cliks, where she also performed the song "Energetic" for the first time in public, in addition to "Eat You Up" and "I Did It for Love". On August 31, SM USA released BoA Deluxe, a repackaged version of her debut English album. The album contained two new tracks and the radio edit version of "Energetic".
With her U.S. career struggling to gain traction, BoA returned to East Asia to release her seventh Japanese album, Identity (February 2010). Promoted by the singles "Bump Bump!" featuring Verbal from M-Flo and "Mamoritai: White Wishes" (December 2009), the album only charted at No. 4, selling 37,606 copies in its first week. With little promotion from her label, it ended her run of six consecutive No. 1 albums, suggesting that it would be impossible for her to sustain her career in three territories simultaneously. Her first Korean album in five years, Hurricane Venus, was released on August 5, 2010, and sold 55,776 units making it the 22nd best selling album in South Korea for 2010. She also represented South Korea and performed at the 7th Asia Song Festival, organized by Korea Foundation for International Culture Exchange, at the Seoul Olympic Stadium.
BoA made her Hollywood movie debut in the dance film Make Your Move 3D, playing the character Aya opposite Derek Hough. Although production ended in 2011, the film was released in 2013. The movie received mixed reviews, with Inkoo Kang of the Los Angeles Times praising the choreography but stating that "[w]henever actor Derek Hough and BoA stop leaping and twirling, [it] is an underwritten mess." To celebrate the 10th anniversary of her Japanese debut, BoA released "Milestone", which ranked at No. 4 on the Oricon Weekly Music-DVD charts. She also held her 10th anniversary concert on December 10–11 at Tokyo International Forum.
Following the concert, BoA shifted her activities to her native county, joining the judging panel on SBS's audition program K-pop Star as a representative of S.M. Entertainment, alongside Yang Hyun-suk from YG Entertainment and Park Jin-young from JYP Entertainment. BoA received praise for her ability as a judge with her insightful comments and discerning eyes, and also sang the theme song "One Dream". For her seventh Korean album, Only One (July 2012), BoA wrote and composed its title track, while its dance steps choreographed by NappyTabs, who has previously worked with BoA in Cobu. Upon its release, "Only One" achieved an all-kill on several music charts. She followed this up with the second "The Shadow", was released August 18, 2012. Additionally, she recorded the song "Lookin'" featuring The Quiett for Hyundai's 'Premium Younique Lifestyle' campaign.
2013–2015: Music production, television role, and 15th anniversary
BoA launched her first Korean tour with BoA Special Live 2013: Here I Am tour at the Olympic Hall, and released the song "Disturbance", which she wrote and composed, to commemorate her first concert tour in South Korea. In September 2013, BoA starred in KBS' two-episode drama special Expect to Date alongside Choi Daniel and Im Si-wan, her full first role in a drama, following a string of cameo appearances. She received praise for her acting performance. She also participated in Infinity Challenge's bi-annual song festival and was paired with Leessang's Gil, with the two co-produced the song "G.A.B". In March 2014, BoA was appointed as a de facto creative director in S.M. Entertainment, alongside labelmate Kangta; she was placed in charge of mental care of artists who debut at a young age.
The singles for BoA's eighth Japanese album, Who's Back? (September 2014), were released over a span of four years prior to the album's release:"Woo Weekend" and "I See Me" in 2010, "Milestone" in 2011, Only One", "Tail of Hope" and "Message / Call My Name" in 2013, and "Shout It Out" and "Masayume Chasing" in 2014. To promote the album, she embarked on her BoA Live Tour 2014 Who's Back? tour in September, her first Japanese tour in four years. After the tour concluded, BoA starred in her first Korean film, Big Match alongside Lee Jung-jae and Shin Ha-kyun though a Japanese single "Fly" was released on December 3, 2014.
Her eighth Korean album Kiss My Lips (May 2015) became her first entirely self-written, self-produced album, working alongside American producers The Underdogs and Stereotypes. The single "Who Are You" (feat. Gaeko) was released prior to the album's unveiling, along with its accompanying music video, which starred EXO's Sehun as the male lead. The rest of the album was unveiled on May 12 along with an official music video of the eponymous title track. Billboard called the singer a promising songwriter despite moments of musical blandness.
In July, she performed at the BoA Special Live 2015: Nowness to commemorate her 15th anniversary. The concert took place on August 22 and 23 at the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts in South Korea, making BoA the first female idol to hold a solo concert at the venue. This was followed by BoA Special Live 2015: Nowness in Japan which took place on December 11, 2015, at Tokyo International Forum Hall-A. Her 15th anniversary in Japan the following year was celebrated in a similar fashion, including the release of the song "Lookbook", and a 15th anniversary edition of BoA's Japanese Winter hit, "Meri Kuri". As part of S.M. Entertainment's special winter project, Winter Garden, BoA released a digital single entitled "Christmas Paradise".
2016–present: Musical projects, television production, and acting debut
On January 12, 2016, BoA released an English-language single "Make Me Complete", which serves as the theme song for the Fuji TV special drama Ooku, starring Sawajiri Erika and Watanabe Mayu. In June, she collaborated with Korean rapper Beenzino for S.M. Entertainment's SM Station project. The duo released the single "No Matter What", which ranked atop five domestic charts. BoA worked with BeatBurger for another SM Station single titled "Music Is Wonderful", where she participated in the composing and writing of the track. From October to November 2016, BoA starred in JTBC's romance melodrama Listen to Love, returning to the small screen after three years.
The following year, BoA became one of the producers for Mnet's boy group survival reality show, Produce 101 Season 2, which aired from April 7 to June 16. BoA later released another song for SM Station, "Spring Rain", an R&B number produced by Kenzie. In May, BoA embarked on her BoA The live in Billboard Live Tour, held in Tokyo and Osaka. She also released the single "Camo," a dance song with a heavy emphasis on bass and synthesizer sounds, which was a change in sound from her previous materials and produced by The Underdogs. In July, she released the Japanese single "Right Here, Right Everywhere" for the soundtrack of drama Yaneura no Koibito. She later starred in the film Autumn Sonata alongside Lee Hak-joo, playing a terminally ill patient.
In 2018, BoA returned to Japan and released her ninth Japanese album Watashi Konomama de Iinokana on February 14, 2018, followed by EP Unchained in March. To accompany the release of the EP, she embarked on the BoA The Live 2018: Unchained Tour from March 15 to April 4. People who attend the concerts received a copy of Unchained. On January 31, she released "Nega Dola", which served as a single for BoA's then-upcoming first extended play. The EP, One Shot, Two Shot, was released on February 20, alongside its titular lead single and the song's music video. The EP peaked at number six at the South Korean Gaon Album Chart and number seven at the Billboard World Albums Chart. On October 24, she released her ninth Korean album Woman alongside a lead single of the same name. The album peaked at number six at the Gaon Album Chart, number eleven at the Billboard World Albums Chart.
On June 4, 2019, she released the single "Feedback", which features rapper Nucksal, alongside the song's music video. BoA embarked on her #Mood Tour, which had six dates in Japan and two dates in Seoul, from September to October 2019. On October 23, she released a new Japanese single, "Wishing Well", which she earlier debuted on the tour. On December 11, 2019, she released her second extended play Starry Night.
In May 2020, BoA was featured as one of the coaches for the third season of The Voice of Korea, alongside Dynamic Duo, Sung Si-kyung, and Kim Jong-kook. On December 1, 2020, she released her tenth Korean album Better. SpoTV News shared BoA to join as a judge for Mnet Dance program "Street Woman Fighter". It is a female dance crew competition premiering in August 2021. On November 5, 2021, BoA released the Japanese single, "My Dear", to commemorate her 20th anniversary.
BoA was revealed as a member of the supergroup Got the Beat on December 27, 2021. The group debuted on January 3, 2022. To celebrate her 20th anniversary, BoA released the Japanese compilation album The Greatest on May 30, 2022. On November 8, 2022, BoA announced her third EP Forgive Me along with the title track on the same name on November 22, 2022. In 2024, BoA appeared in the drama Marry My Husband, where she played Oh Yu-ra. Her performance in the drama was met with negative reviews.
Image and artistry
BoA lists hip hop as her main musical influence, though she also enjoys R&B. Her favorite musicians are Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Justin Timberlake, and Ne-Yo; as a result, much of BoA's music is either dance-pop or R&B. Because she also sings ballads, she is often compared to Japanese singers Namie Amuro and Ayumi Hamasaki. Her debut album, ID; Peace B, contained urban pop, "slickly produced" ballads, and "upbeat dance tunes". As her career went on, she began experimenting with different styles: Valenti contained mostly ballads; Love and Honesty was an experiment with "harder" R&B and rock music.
Though her earlier releases were marked by a "cute" and "youthful" style, BoA began to present a more "mature" image starting from the album My Name. In a Talk Asia interview, Anjali Rao noted that some felt that My Name marked the beginning of BoA's decline in popularity and asked if the public would always see the singer as "Little Baby BoA"; BoA replied, "So while I apologize to those people who still want the baby BoA, in fact, what can I do? I just keep growing up! I can't stop that from happening."
The Face was influenced by electropop and included "happy spring" songs ("Sweet Impact" and "Bad Drive"), a guitar-driven "groovy dance" song ("Lose Your Mind"), and ballads. Because the composition and writing of BoA's songs is handled mostly by her staff, BoA has been criticized as being a "manufactured pop star". In response to such criticism, BoA said that "if one person were to force their own will on something, then things that should have gone right could easily go wrong" and that she is "not all that unhappy with the expression that [she is] a manufactured star. In a way, that is true. Because SM Entertainment created the environment and all the surrounding conditions, [she is] able to be successful in the way [she is] now." She later assumed creative control with The Face, while Kiss My Lips became her first entirely self-written, self-produced album.
BoA has collaborated with high-profile artists. Among the Japanese artists she has performed with are the hip hop group M-Flo (for the single "The Love Bug"), pop singer Kumi Koda, and house DJ Mondo Grosso. She has performed with Western artists: the song "Flying Without Wings" from her album Next World was a collaboration with Irish band Westlife covering the original song; the Bratz single "Show Me What You Got" was performed with Howie D of the American band Backstreet Boys. She also worked with Akon, singing the song "Beautiful", which was featured on the Japanese release of his third album, Freedom. Other artists she has collaborated with are Soul'd Out, Dabo, Verbal (of M-Flo), Rah-D, Seamo, TVXQ, Yutaka Furakawa (of the band Doping Panda), and Crystal Kay (for her single "After Love: First Boyfriend/Girlfriend"). American rock band Weezer covered "Meri Kuri" on the Japanese version of their album Weezer.
Cultural impact and legacy
BoA is regarded as one of South Korea's most influential and prominent singers and is widely referred to as the "Queen of K-pop", in recognition of her contributions in spearheading the Korean wave into Japan. BoA's success in the Japanese market has been deemed a catalyst in the Japanese interest in Korean pop music beginning in the early 2000s, when the two countries began promoting cultural exchanges since the end of World War II. Music critics have recognized BoA for improving "civil relations between the Korean and Japanese public through her music and appearances in Japanese radio and television", with Oxford Political Review noting "BoA's role in strengthening Japan-South Korea ties as a cultural envoy". In Alisa Freedman's Introducing Japanese Pop Culture, BoA was noted for "herald[ing] a new phase of Japanese engagement with Korean singers", registering "remarkable success during the first half of the 2000s in Japan". She highlighted that the timing of her success coincided with several political and cultural developments; these of which include the implementation of Korea's Open-Door Policy, the Korea Japan 2002 FIFA World Cup, and the popularity of the drama series Winter Sonata. Freedman evaluated BoA's career path and localization strategies in Japan for having set "the first trend" of the Korean wave into the country.
Vox hailed BoA as "one of South Korea's best-known exports" in the years after her debut while The Korea Times called BoA "the forerunner of the new generation of idols who popularized K-pop in Japan and elsewhere." In 2004, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism honored BoA with the Asian Cultural Exchange Merit Award for her contributions in raising the status of K-pop throughout Asia. The Diplomat stated that BoA "paved the way" for future K-pop artists "to later captivate Japanese fans despite souring relations between Seoul and Tokyo." Music critic Lim Jin-mo wrote that BoA "opened many doors for pop acts from her country in the second largest music market in the world", acting "as a figurehead for breakthroughs in Japan for South Korean acts" and became "a pivotal figure in K-pop's history". Yim Hyun-su from The Korea Herald viewed her for "forever changing the landscape of South Korea's music industry". In 2016, she was honored with the Presidential Commendation at the Korean Popular Culture and Arts Awards for her contributions to the spread of the Korean wave, and for laying "the foundation for the revival of K-pop".
In 2013, 50 music experts, professors and critics organized by Mnet named BoA one of the 100 most influential artists in South Korean music. "No. 1" was ranked number 27 in a 2006 Gallup Korea survey of 100 all-time favorite Korean songs and was included in Mnet's Legend 100 list of popular Korean songs since the 1960s. In 2021, a panel of 35 music experts organized by Melon and Seoul Shinmun ranked "No. 1" and "Atlantis Princess" number 1 and number 93 in their list of the greatest K-pop songs of all time. Critic Rhian Daly for The Forty-Five ranked "Atlantis Princess" number 1 in her list of the best K-pop songs of all-time. Rolling Stone ranked "No. 1" at number 18 in their list of the greatest songs in the history of K-pop, writing it represents "her most emblematic crossover hit".
BoA has been cited by many artists in the South Korean music industry as an influence and role model, including Aespa, Girls' Generation's Taeyeon, Sunny, Tiffany, Hyoyeon, Seohyun, Shinee's Key, Exo's Sehun, Red Velvet's Irene, Ailee, Chungha, Yukika Teramoto, Kwon Eun-bi, Baek A-yeon, Mamamoo's Solar, f(x)'s Luna, Kiss of Life's Natty, Lovelyz's Kei, and Billlie's Tsuki. Aespa's Giselle said in a Rolling Stone interview that "Everyone knows her. She's not just famous — she's a legend".
Other ventures
Endorsements
Because of her wide appeal, BoA has appeared in advertisements for many brands. Among the brands she has promoted are Olympus, Lotte, Nike, L'Oréal, Japanese cosmetic company Kosé, Skechers, Audio-Technica, GM Daewoo and L'Occitane. Several of her songs have been used in affiliation with television shows. "Every Heart: Minna no Kimochi" was used as the ending theme for the anime InuYasha; "Beside You: Boku o Yobu Koe" was used as the opening theme for the anime Monkey Typhoon; "Key of Heart" was the theme song for the Japanese release of Over the Hedge; "Your Color" was the theme song of the video game Ninety-Nine Nights; "Mamoritai: White Wishes" was the theme song of the video game Tales of Graces. "Tail of Hope" was used as the theme for the Japanese drama Hakui no Namida, and "Masayume Chasing" was used as the 15th opening theme song for the anime Fairy Tail.
In 2007, Anycall (a Samsung brand) signed BoA, Xiah (of TVXQ), Tablo (of Epik High), and jazz pianist Jin Bora onto "Anyband", a band created specifically to promote Anycall. The band released only one single, "AnyBand". In December 2010, she recorded "I See Me" for to promote Audio Technica headphones in Japan. The song "Woo Weekend" was used to promote Disney on Ice's 25th Anniversary in Japan while "Lookbook" served as the ending theme for the NTV Kei program Tokui to Goto to Uruwashi no Shelley ga Konya Kurabete Mimashita. BoA served as ambassador for Asia Youth Day in 2014. In August 2017, it was announced that BoA was chosen as promotional ambassador for Jeju Biennale, an inaugural international art event on the resort island of Jeju. In Her widespread popularity has also made her a "cultural ambassador"; she has represented South Korea in inter-Asian musical events and has appeared in an Oxford University Press-published English-language textbook.
Discography
Filmography
Film
Television series
Television shows
Concerts and tours
Concert participation
2002: SM China
2003: SMTOWN Smile Concert 2003
2007: 2007 SMTOWN Summer Concert
2008: SMTown Live '08
2009: BEST & USA Release Party: Thank Your For Your Support!
2010–11: SMTown Live '10 World Tour
2012–13: SMTown Live World Tour III
2014–2015: SM Town Live World Tour IV
2016: SM Town Live World Tour V
2017: SM Town Live World Tour VI
2022: SM Town Live 2022: SMCU Express at Kwangya
2022: SM Town Live 2022: SMCU Express
2023: SM Town Live 2023: SMCU Palace at Kwangya
Awards and nominations
See also
Contemporary culture of South Korea
Korean Wave
J-pop
Footnotes
References
External links
BoA at IMDb |
ID;_Peace_B | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID;_Peace_B | [
596
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID;_Peace_B"
] | ID; Peace B is the debut Korean-language studio album by South Korean singer BoA, released on August 25, 2000 by SM Entertainment. It saw moderate levels of success in South Korea upon its release, peaking at number 16 on the Recording Industry Association of Korea's monthly album chart in October 2000. The album sold 156,354 copies in 2000 and was the 59th best-selling album of the year. The album was released on May 29, 2002 in Japan, where it reached number 30 on the Oricon Albums Chart.
Production and lyrics
The song "Sara" is about a cat, "I'm Sorry" is about the tragedy of loving the lover of her older sister, and "ID; Peace B" is about the generation gap due to the use of the internet.
Track listing
Charts
Release history
== References == |
Jimin | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimin | [
596
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimin"
] | Park Ji-min (Korean: 박지민; born October 13, 1995), known mononymously as Jimin, is a South Korean singer, songwriter and dancer. In 2013, he made his debut as a member of the South Korean boy band BTS, under the record label Big Hit Entertainment.
Jimin has released three solo tracks under BTS' name—"Lie" in 2016, "Serendipity" in 2017, and "Filter" in 2020—all of which have charted on South Korea's Gaon Digital Chart. He released his first credited solo song, the digital track "Promise", which he co-wrote, in 2018 and recorded the duet "With You" with Ha Sung-woon for the soundtrack for the TvN drama Our Blues in 2022. Jimin released his debut solo album, Face in 2023, which debuted at number one in South Korea and Japan and number two on the US Billboard 200, making him the highest-charting Korean solo artist on the latter chart. The album's single "Like Crazy" became the first song by a Korean solo artist to debut at number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 in history. Jimin also became the first Korean solo artist to top the Billboard Artist 100 chart. In 2024, he released his second album, Muse, and its lead single "Who", which debuted at number one on the Billboard Global 200.
Early life and education
Park Ji-min was born on October 13, 1995, in Geumjeong District, Busan, South Korea. He is of the Milyang Park clan. His immediate family includes his mother, father, and younger brother.
When he was a child, he attended Busan's Hodong Elementary School and Yonsan Middle School. In middle school, he attended Just Dance Academy, where he learned popping and locking. Prior to becoming a trainee, Jimin studied contemporary dance at Busan High School of Arts and was a top student in the modern dance department. A teacher suggested that he join an entertainment company, leading him to Big Hit Entertainment. Once he passed the auditions in 2012, he transferred to Korean Arts High School, graduating in 2014.
Jimin graduated from Global Cyber University in August 2020 with a major in Broadcasting and Entertainment. He was awarded the President's Award, the school's highest honor. As of 2021, he is enrolled at Hanyang Cyber University, pursuing a Master of Business Administration in Advertising and Media.
Career
2013–present: BTS
Jimin was the last Big Hit trainee to be added to the lineup that would eventually become BTS. Of the band's seven members, he spent the shortest period of time—six months—as a trainee prior to debuting. On June 13, 2013, he debuted as a vocalist and dancer in BTS with the song "No More Dream" from their first single 2 Cool 4 Skool. Under the band's name, he released three solo songs: "Lie", "Serendipity", and "Filter". "Lie" was released in 2016, as part of the band's second Korean studio album, Wings. It was described as stunning and dramatic, conveying dark undertones and emotions in line with the overall concept of the album. In contrast, "Serendipity", from the band's Love Yourself: Her (2017) extended play (EP), was soft and sensual, expressing the joy, conviction, and curiosity of love. "Filter", a track from BTS' 2020 studio album Map of the Soul: 7, had a Latin pop flair, with lyrics reflecting the different sides of Jimin that he shows to the world and those around him. Jimin additionally co-wrote and co-produced another track included on that album, "Friends", which was later featured in the Marvel Studios film Eternals.
"Serendipity" and "Lie" both surpassed fifty million streams on Spotify in 2018, followed shortly thereafter by the former's full length version from BTS' Love Yourself: Answer (2018) compilation album, which achieved the milestone in early 2019. Jimin became the first Korean artist to have three solo tracks accumulate over 50 million streams each, surpassing Psy, who previously crossed the 50 million streams mark twice with "Gangnam Style" (2012) and "Gentleman" (2013). Both songs were also the only solos by a BTS member included in the Official Charts Company's (OCC) list of the top 20 most streamed BTS songs in the United Kingdom as of October 2018, ranking at number 17 and 19 respectively. In April 2019, the list was expanded to reflect the top 40, and both tracks were the highest ranked solos included that year, at numbers 18 and 20 respectively.
In May 2019, Jimin became the first BTS member to have a solo music video achieve 100 million views on YouTube when "Serendipity" surpassed the milestone. He remained the only BTS member with multiple solo songs in the January 2020 update of the OCC's top 40 list: "Lie" and "Serendipity" were the second and third most-streamed solos, at numbers 24 and 29 respectively, with the full-length version of the latter at number 38. The following month, Jimin earned his first entry on the Billboard Hot 100 with "Filter", which debuted at number 87 on the chart, as well his first number one on the World Digital Song Sales chart. The song set the record for the biggest streaming debut among all Korean songs on Spotify, accruing over 2.2 million streams in its first 24 hours of release, and went on to become the fastest Korean solo in the platform's history to surpass 20–60 million streams. It was also the only solo album track by BTS to receive a Song of the Year nomination at the Gaon Chart Music Awards. In March 2021, "Filter" became the 15th BTS song to spend a full year on Billboard's World Digital Song Sales chart. It was the longest-charting Korean song released in 2020 on the ranking, having spent 80 weeks on the chart as of the issue dated October 9, 2021.
Jimin was awarded the fifth-class Hwagwan Order of Cultural Merit in 2018, alongside his bandmates, by the President of South Korea, Moon Jae-in, for their contributions to the promotion of Korean culture. Three years later, Moon appointed him Special Presidential Envoy for Future Generations and Culture, alongside his bandmates, to help "lead the global agenda for future generations" and "expand South Korea's diplomatic efforts and global standing" in the international community.
2014–present: Solo work
In 2014, Jimin collaborated with bandmate Jungkook on a song called "Christmas Day", a Korean rendition of Justin Bieber's "Mistletoe"; Jimin wrote the Korean lyrics himself. The two collaborated again in 2017, on a cover of Charlie Puth's "We Don't Talk Anymore" featuring Selena Gomez. Jungkook previously released a solo version of the song in February, and the two prepared the duet as a special gift to the band's fandom, releasing it on June 2, during BTS' fourth anniversary celebrations. Teen Vogue wrote that "adding Jimin's voice to the mix makes the rendition all the more lovely", while the Canadian outlet Flare magazine stated that "it honestly might be better than the original". Elite Daily described the cover as "nothing short of flawless".
Jimin appeared on several variety shows such as Hello Counselor, Please Take Care of My Refrigerator, and God's Workplace in 2016. He also served as a special MC on domestic television music programs such as Show! Music Core and M Countdown. In December 2016, he participated in a dance duet at the KBS Song Festival with Taemin from Shinee.
On December 30, 2018, Jimin released "Promise", his first credited song as a solo artist, for free on BTS' SoundCloud page. It earned the biggest 24-hour debut in SoundCloud history with 8.5 million streams, surpassing previous record holder Drake's "Duppy Freestyle" which received 4.9 million streams, and would go on to become the most streamed song on the platform by December 2021, with over 300 million streams. Described by Billboard as a "mellow pop ballad", the song was composed by Jimin and Big Hit producer Slow Rabbit, who also produced the track, and features lyrics written by Jimin and bandmate RM. Jimin released his second solo song "Christmas Love", about his childhood memories of the holidays, on December 24, 2020. In 2022, he contributed the single "With You", a duet with Ha Sung-woon, to the soundtrack of the TvN drama Our Blues; the single was released on April 24.
In January 2023, Jimin co-wrote and featured on the single "Vibe" by Taeyang. His first official solo project since BTS announced an increased focus on individual music endeavors a year prior, the single earned Jimin his debut entry on the Billboard Hot 100 as a solo artist, at number 76. He was announced as a global ambassador for Dior later that month, and for Tiffany & Co. in March. "Promise" and "Christmas Love" were made available on streaming platforms worldwide as official singles under Jimin's name on March 6. His debut solo album Face was released on March 24. It set several chart and sales records, debuting at number one in South Korea and Japan, and number two in the US, making Jimin the highest-charting Korean solo artist of all time on the Billboard 200. The album's two singles, "Set Me Free Pt. 2" and "Like Crazy", released on March 17 and 24 respectively, both entered the Hot 100: the former debuted at number 30, while the latter debuted at number one, making Jimin the first South Korean solo artist in history to top the chart. The album's release led Jimin to become the first Korean solo artist to reach number one on the Billboard Artist 100. In May, he appeared as a featured artist, alongside Jvke and Muni Long, on the single "Angel Pt. 1" by Kodak Black and NLE Choppa, as part of the soundtrack for the film Fast X. The digital single "Closer Than This" was released on December 22, shortly after Jimin enlisted in the South Korean Army. Originally recorded during the production of Face, it is a song dedicated to the BTS fandom in gratitude for their support.
Big Hit announced an eight-episode travel reality series, Are You Sure?!, featuring Jimin and Jungkook on July 2, 2024. Available for streaming exclusively on Disney+, the premiere episode aired August 8, with subsequent episodes following weekly through September 19. The label released Jimin's second solo album, Muse, on July 19, while he was carrying out his mandatory military service. It was supported by the singles "Smeraldo Garden Marching Band" and "Who". "Who" became Jimin's first song to debut atop both of Billboard's global charts.
Artistry
Jimin's vocals have been described as delicate and sweet. He is regarded as an exceptional dancer among the members of BTS and in K-pop in general, often praised for his "smooth and elegant movements" and charm on stage. In the documentary Burn the Stage released in 2018, Jimin addressed his perfectionism. In 2023, Jimin stated that as a pop artist, he "aims to excel at both dancing and singing and perform a diverse range of musical genres and themes" while "taking a healthy and sustainable approach to do so".
He has cited singer Rain as an inspiration and one of the reasons why he wanted to become a singer and performer.
Impact and influence
In 2016, Jimin was ranked as the 14th most popular idol in an annual survey conducted by Gallup Korea. He subsequently ranked seventh in 2017, and then consecutively ranked first in 2018 and 2019, as the only idol to top the survey for two consecutive years. In 2018, Jimin was the ninth most-tweeted about celebrity and the eighth most-tweeted about musician globally. He was named the 17th best boy band member in history by The Guardian. From January to May 2018, Jimin won the monthly "Top K-Pop Artist–Individual" award for Peeper x Billboard, a collaboration between the Peeper social media app and Billboard Korea that collects fan votes for their favorite K-pop artists. The prize was a donation to UNICEF in his name.
The Cultural Conservation Society awarded Jimin a plaque of appreciation in 2019, for performing buchaechum, a traditional Korean fan dance, during the 2018 Melon Music Awards and helping spread the dance outside of Korea. In October 2021, he became the first idol to spend 34 consecutive months atop the brand reputation ranking for individual boy group idols and the only one to top the overall ranking for three consecutive years.
Jimin is often cited as a role model by various idols in the K-pop industry, many of whom try to emulate his style of dance, mannerisms, and stage presence; media outlets have called him the "Idol of Idols", "Idol's Bible", and "Rookies' Bible". Artists who have cited him as an influence include Arthur of Kingdom, Bic of MCND, Kim Si-hun of BDC, Woochul of Newkidd, Hyunjin of Stray Kids, Wooyoung of Ateez, Lim Se-jun of Victon, Huening Kai and Beomgyu of Tomorrow X Together, and Ni-ki and Jay of Enhypen. British internet personality Oli London underwent 15 cosmetic surgeries by 2020 to resemble Jimin.
Jimin has also been acknowledged beyond the K-pop industry. In 2019, Award-winning director and photographer Gus Van Sant named Jimin as the artist he wished to work with.
In 2021, Olympic figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu shared being a BTS fan and mentioned Jimin as a source of inspiration for his dance movements on the rink. In 2023, Ryan Gosling gifted Jimin the guitar his character Ken used in the movie Barbie. Gosling gave Jimin the custom guitar as homage for jimin's Permission to Dance outfit serving as inspiration for one of the outfits Gosling wore for his role as Ken.
Forbes Korea included Jimin on the Forbes Korea Power Celebrity 40 for 2024, at number seven, making him the highest ranking K-pop soloist and second-highest ranking soloist on the list.
Philanthropy
Jimin is a supporter of education and the arts. From 2016 to 2018, he covered uniform expenses of students at his alma mater, Busan Hodong Elementary School. After the school's closing was announced, he donated summer and winter middle school uniforms to the final graduates and gifted autographed albums to the entire student body. In early 2019, Jimin donated ₩100 million (US$85,810.58) to the Busan Department of Education to help support students from low income families. Of the total, ₩30 million (US$25,743.17) went to his alma mater, Busan Arts High School. In July 2020, he donated ₩100 million (US$84,726.68) to the Jeonnam Future Education Foundation to fund the creation of a scholarship fund for talented students from South Jeolla Province who were struggling financially.
In July 2021, Jimin donated ₩100 million (US$87,416.41) to Rotary International to help polio patients. As with previous donations, the benefaction was made privately but became public in September, when the Go-seong Rotary Club displayed a banner thanking him for the donation. He was announced as a member of the Green Noble Club, a group of major donors to the Green Umbrella Children's Foundation who have contributed ₩100 million or more, on October 12.
In September 2022, Jimin made a donation to the Gangwon Provincial Office of Education. In February 2023, he donated ₩100 million (US$87,416.41) through the Korean UNICEF Committee toward emergency relief for children affected by the Turkey–Syria earthquake. In March, he donated ₩100 million (US$87,416.41) to the North Chungcheong Provincial Office of Education to fund books and reading education programs for students. In August, Jimin participated in the "Hometown Love Donation System", a program allowing non-residents to donate to support welfare in the district of Nam-gu, Busan. He donated the maximum allowed donation amount of ₩5 million (US$4,370.82) and proceeded to re-donate his campaign's donor return gifts to people in need in the region. In February 2024, Jimin was inducted in the Nam-gu Hometown Love Donation System Donor Hall of Fame for his contribution to the district welfare programs. In May, he made a donation of ₩100 million (US$87,416.41) to the South Gyeongsang Provincial Office of Education to create a scholarship for underprivileged students.
Personal life
Jimin used to live in Hannam-dong, Seoul, South Korea, with his bandmates. In 2021, he purchased a property in the area worth ₩5.9 billion (US$5.16 million).
Health
In 2017, during BTS' Wings Tour, Jimin was unable to participate in the show in Macau due to neck and shoulder cramping. The following year, while in London for the Love Yourself World Tour, he withdrew from the band's scheduled performance on The Graham Norton Show because of "severe muscle pain in his neck and back", according to a statement released by Big Hit Entertainment.
In 2022, Jimin was hospitalized after having abdominal pain and a mild sore throat. He underwent appendicitis surgery on January 31, and received a positive COVID-19 diagnosis.
Military service
On November 22, 2023, Big Hit announced through Weverse that Jimin, along with bandmates RM, V, and Jungkook, had started the enlistment process to carry out his mandatory military service. He enlisted as an active duty soldier on December 12 at the Army 5th Division Recruit Training Center in Yeoncheon. He completed his five weeks of basic training in January 2024, placing first as an outstanding trainee and received the Best trainee commendation award from the Division Commander, taking an oath as the representative of all trainees in his unit. He was then appointed to an Artillery Unit in the 5th Infantry Division.
Discography
Studio albums
Singles
As lead artist
As featured artist
Other charted songs
Other songs
Writing credits
All song credits are adapted from the Korea Music Copyright Association's database, unless otherwise noted.
Filmography
Television
Music videos
Jimin also appeared in the short film Lie released in September 2016 in promotion of BTS' fourth studio album Wings.
Awards and nominations
World records
Notes
References
== External links == |
Interstate_94_in_Michigan | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_94_in_Michigan | [
597
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_94_in_Michigan#"
] | Interstate 94 (I-94) is a part of the Interstate Highway System that runs from Billings, Montana, to the Lower Peninsula of the US state of Michigan. In Michigan, it is a state trunkline highway that enters the state south of New Buffalo and runs eastward through several metropolitan areas in the southern section of the state. The highway serves Benton Harbor–St. Joseph near Lake Michigan before turning inland toward Kalamazoo and Battle Creek on the west side of the peninsula. Heading farther east, I-94 passes through rural areas in the middle of the southern Lower Peninsula, crossing I-69 in the process. I-94 then runs through Jackson, Ann Arbor, and portions of Metro Detroit, connecting Michigan's largest city to its main airport. Past the east side of Detroit, the Interstate angles northeasterly through farmlands in The Thumb to Port Huron, where the designation terminates on the Blue Water Bridge at the Canada–United States border.
The first segment of what later became I-94 within the state, the Willow Run Expressway, was built near Ypsilanti and Belleville in 1941, with an easterly extension to Detroit in 1945. This expressway was initially numbered M-112. In the mid-1950s, state and federal officials planned an Interstate to replace the original route of US Highway 12 (US 12). By 1960, the length of I-94 was completed from Detroit to New Buffalo. Two years later, the US 12 designation was dropped from the freeway. Subsequent extensions in the 1960s completed most of the rest of the route, including the remaining sections between Detroit and Port Huron which superseded the routing of US 25. The last segment opened to the public in 1972 when Indiana completed its connection across the state line. Since completion, I-94 has remained relatively unchanged; a few interchanges have been rebuilt, a second span was constructed for the Blue Water Bridge, and, in 1987, a plane crashed on the freeway during takeoff from the airport in Detroit. The routing of I-94 is notable for containing the first full freeway-to-freeway interchange in the United States, connecting to the Lodge Freeway (M-10), and for comprising the first complete border-to-border toll-free freeway in a state in the United States. The highway has one auxiliary route, I-194, which serves downtown Battle Creek, and eight business routes. Various segments have been dedicated to multiple people and places.
Route description
The entire length of I-94 is listed on the National Highway System, a network of roadways important to the country's economy, defense, and mobility. The freeway carried 168,200 vehicles on average between I-75 and Chene Street in Detroit, which is the peak traffic count in 2015, and it carried 12,554 vehicles immediately west of the Blue Water Bridge in Port Huron, the lowest traffic count in 2015. As the state trunkline highway closest to the lake shore in these areas, I-94 carries the Lake Michigan Circle Tour south of Benton Harbor–St. Joseph and the Lake Huron Circle Tour in the Port Huron area. Sections through the Detroit area are named the Detroit Industrial and Edsel Ford freeways. I-94 in the state is either a four- or six-lane freeway for most of its length; one segment in the Detroit area has up to 10 lanes total near the airport.
Southwestern Michigan
I-94 enters Michigan from Indiana south of New Buffalo. The freeway runs northeasterly through rural Michiana farmland in the southwestern corner of the Lower Peninsula and parallels the Lake Michigan shoreline about three miles (4.8 km) inland. I-94 traverses an area just east of the Warren Dunes State Park as the freeway runs parallel to the Red Arrow Highway, a former routing of US 12 named after the 32nd Infantry Division (Red Arrow Division). The freeway crosses its companion highway south of St. Joseph; Red Arrow turns northward carrying the business loop for Benton Harbor and St. Joseph (Business Loop I-94, [BL I-94]). The Interstate curves further inland to bridge the St. Joseph River near Riverview Park. East of Benton Harbor, I-94 meets the other end of BL I-94 at an interchange where US 31 merges onto the freeway. East of the Southwest Michigan Regional Airport, I-94/US 31 meets the southern end of I-196; US 31 departs the I-94 freeway to follow I-196, and I-94 continues its course away from Lake Michigan.
South of Coloma, the trunkline turns eastward and roughly follows the Paw Paw River on a course that takes it south of Watervliet and Hartford. Between the latter two cities, the freeway transitions from northeastern Berrien County into western Van Buren County. It curves around and between Lake Cora and Threemile Lake near the junction with the northern end of M-51. About four miles (6.4 km) further east, I-94 crosses M-40 south of Paw Paw. Continuing eastward, the Interstate runs through Mattawan before entering western Kalamazoo County.
In Texas Township, the freeway enters the western edges of the Kalamazoo suburbs. South of the campus for Western Michigan University's College of Engineering & Applied Sciences in Portage, I-94 intersects US 131. Near the Kalamazoo/Battle Creek International Airport, the Interstate passes into the southeastern corner of Kalamazoo before entering Comstock Township. The freeway intersects the eastern end of Business Spur I-94 (BS I-94) at a partial interchange near Morrow Lake in the township. I-94 continues out of the eastern Kalamazoo suburbs, paralleling the Kalamazoo River through the Galesburg area. Before crossing into Calhoun County on the west side of Battle Creek, I-94 has the only driveway on any of Michigan's Interstate Highways for a gate providing access for military vehicles into the Fort Custer Training Center.
The Interstate enters Calhoun County southwest of the W. K. Kellogg Airport and enters the city of Battle Creek. Immediately east of the county line, the freeway has an interchange with the western end of Battle Creek's business loop. Next to Lakeview Square Mall, I-94 meets its only auxiliary Interstate in Michigan: I-194. I-94 turns to the northwest to round Beadle Lake, intersecting M-294 before spanning the Kalamazoo River. East of the river crossing, the freeway meets an interchange for M-96, M-311, and the eastern end of the Battle Creek business loop near FireKeepers Casino Hotel in Emmett Township. Turning back eastward, the Interstate exits the eastern Battle Creek suburbs and continues to an interchange with I-69 near Marshall; the business loop for Marshall follows I-69 southward.
Into Metro Detroit
Continuing eastward, I-94 traverses rural land on the north side of Marshall. The freeway runs north of, and parallel to, the Kalamazoo River through eastern Calhoun County. It angles southeasterly toward Albion before returning to an easterly course on the north side of town. I-94 crosses into western Jackson County before intersecting M-99. From there, it runs generally due east with a jog around Parma. West of the county airport, the Jackson business loop follows M-60 southward, and I-94 travels through the north side of Jackson. North of downtown, US 127 merges in from the north and runs concurrently with I-94 around the city. Southeast of Michigan State Prison, US 127 departs to the south, and I-94 continues eastward through the rest of the county.
The freeway runs north of the Chrysler Chelsea Proving Grounds in Chelsea next to the M-52 interchange. As I-94 continues easterly, it passes into the western edge of the Ann Arbor area. West of downtown, the M-14 freeway splits off to the northeast, and the Interstate turns to the south and southeast to curve around the south side of the city. The freeway passes between Briarwood Mall and Ann Arbor Municipal Airport. On the southeastern corner of Ann Arbor, I-94 intersects US 23 and continues around the south side of Ypsilanti. South of that city, the freeway also carries US 12 and crosses the Huron River north of the river's mouth at Ford Lake. I-94 jogs southeasterly around the south side of Willow Run Airport complex, separating from US 12 and entering Wayne County.
South of Willow Run, the Interstate parallels the north shore of Belleville Lake. East of the water body, it intersects I-275 near the northwest corner of Detroit Metropolitan Airport and angles northeasterly through the southwestern Detroit suburbs along the Detroit Industrial Freeway. I-94 uses the Gateway Bridge over the single-point urban interchange (SPUI) at US 24 (Telegraph Road) in Taylor; these bridges were inspired by Super Bowl XL and provide a western entrance to the city. Further east, the Interstate intersects M-39 (Southfield Freeway) and passes the Uniroyal Giant Tire in Allen Park. I-94 then turns to the northeast through the Ford River Rouge complex in Dearborn before turning back easterly on the Edsel Ford Freeway into Detroit.
I-94 traverses Detroit in an east–west direction well inland of, and parallel to, the Detroit River. The freeway intersects I-96 (Jeffries Freeway) and M-10 (Lodge Freeway) on the West Side, passing the main campus of Wayne State University before entering the East Side at M-1 (Woodward Avenue). Immediately east of the interchange with I-75 (Chrysler Freeway), I-94 forms the southern border of the Milwaukee Junction district. The Edsel Ford Freeway continues through residential neighborhoods of Detroit's East Side. The Interstate turns more northerly, mimicking the shoreline of Lake St. Clair, and exits Detroit for Harper Woods. Just north of the interchange for M-102 (Vernier Road), the freeway crosses 8 Mile Road and enters Macomb County.
North to Canada
Running northward through Macomb County, I-94 meets the eastern end of I-696 (Reuther Freeway) about three miles (4.8 km) north of the county line in St. Clair Shores. The freeway continues to parallel the lakeshore and travels to the west of Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Harrison Township. It turns back to the northeast at 23 Mile Road at the interchange with M-3 and M-29. North of 26 Mile Road, the freeway exits the northern suburbs and passes into farmland in The Thumb region.
South of Michigan Meadows Golf Course, I-94 crosses County Line Road and enters St. Clair County. The freeway continues northeasterly as far as Marysville before turning northward near St. Clair County International Airport. From there, it runs roughly parallel to the St. Clair River. The Interstate travels along the western edge of residential areas for Marysville and Port Huron as it continues northward. Immediately west of downtown Port Huron, it intersects I-69; the two freeways merge and turn first east and then north through an interchange that also features connections to BL I-69.
I-94/I-69 turns back to the east about a mile (1.6 km) north of their confluence to span the Black River north of downtown. On the eastern bank of the river, there is one final interchange for M-25 and BL I-69/BL I-94 before the freeway reaches the toll and customs plazas for the twin-span Blue Water Bridge. Past these plazas, I-94/I-69 ascends the approach to the bridge which crosses the St. Clair River to Point Edward (Sarnia), Ontario. At the international boundary at the center of the river, the Interstate designations jointly terminate, becoming Ontario Highway 402.
History
Predecessor highways
The first major overland transportation corridors in the future state of Michigan were the Indian foot trails. One of these, the St. Joseph Trail, followed the general route of the modern I-94 across the state from the Benton Harbor–St. Joseph area east to the Ann Arbor area. The State Trunkline Highway System was created on May 13, 1913, by an act of the Michigan Legislature; at the time, Division 6 corresponded to the rough path of today's I-94. In 1919, the Michigan State Highway Department (MSHD) signposted the highway system for the first time, and three different highways followed sections of the modern I-94 corridor. The original M-11 ran from the Indiana state line north to Coloma where M-17 connected easterly to Detroit. The third highway was M-19 from Detroit northeast to Port Huron.
On November 11, 1926, the United States Numbered Highway System was approved by the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO), and the original route of US 12 replaced the highways from the state line northeasterly to Detroit; US 31 overlapped the highway between St. Joseph and Watervliet. The remainder of the future I-94 corridor was served by US 25 between Detroit and Port Huron. The first span of the Blue Water Bridge opened between Port Huron and Point Edward, Ontario, in 1938.
Early conversions to freeways
The first segments of upgraded highways along the future route of I-94 were added during World War II. Construction on the Willow Run Expressway started in 1941 before the US entered the war. It was opened on September 12, 1942, to provide improved access to Ford Motor Company's Willow Run bomber plants. The highway was given the M-112 designation at the time. The expressway was extended eastward as the Detroit Industrial Expressway into Detroit; the first section opened in 1943 and the remainder was completed in March 1945. Land acquisition for the Edsel Ford Freeway started in 1945. Originally referred to as the Crosstown Freeway, the freeway became known as the Edsel Ford Freeway following an April 1946 petition. The interchange between the Lodge Freeway and the Edsel Ford Freeway was built in 1953 as the first full freeway-to-freeway interchange in the US. In mid-1956, the M-112 designation was decommissioned and replaced by a rerouted US 12. During the mid-1950s, the Detroit Streets and Rails campaign proposed a high-speed rail line in the median of the Willow Run, Detroit Industrial and Edsel Ford freeways; instead of building the rail line, special boarding stations adjacent to dedicated bus lanes in the interchanges along the highway were used.
In other parts of the state, other segments of highway were built to bypass the cities along the future I-94 corridor. In 1940, a southern bypass of Battle Creek opened along Columbia Avenue, and the former routing through downtown on Michigan Avenue became Business US 12 (Bus. US 12). In late 1951 or early 1952, a northerly bypass of Jackson opened, and the former route through downtown on Michigan Avenue became another Bus. US 12. By the next year, the western half of the Jackson bypass opened, including a bypass of Parma. In 1954, a new bypass of Kalamazoo and Galesburg opened; US 12 was rerouted to follow the new highway while M-96 replaced part of the old route and US 12A in the area.
The first planning maps from 1947 for what later became the Interstate Highway System included a highway along I-94's route in Michigan. This highway was included on the 1955 plan for the "National System of Interstate and Defense Highways" with a proposed spur in the Battle Creek area. The modern I-94 was numbered I-92 between Benton Harbor–St. Joseph and Detroit with I-77 from Detroit to Port Huron in the August 1957 plans.
In April 1958, the MSHD wanted to provide a single number for a more direct routing of a Detroit–Chicago freeway; the state proposed rerouting I-94 to replace I-92 in the state, but retained the I-77 designation. On June 27, 1958, AASHO adopted their original numbering plan for Michigan, minus the state's proposed changes. Around the same time, a section of M-146 near Port Huron was converted into an approach freeway for the Blue Water Bridge.
Interstate Highway era
In January 1959, officials announced that sections of US 12, the Willow Run, Detroit Industrial and Edsel Ford expressways were to be given the I-94 designation, temporarily co-designated with US 12. These sections connected Ann Arbor to Detroit, along with a bypass of Kalamazoo to Galesburg and a bypass of Jackson. Later that year, additional segments of I-94 were opened, starting with a 10-mile (16 km) section from Hartford to Coloma, then another from Paw Paw to Kalamazoo which connected with a segment between Galesburg to Battle Creek. The overall 45-mile (72 km) section from Paw Paw to Battle Creek was dedicated on December 7, 1959. In addition, a new northwest–southeast section of freeway was built east of Ypsilanti to create a more gradual curve in the routing between present-day exits 185 and 186, the original routing of the Willow Run Expressway having followed present-day Wiard Road. Signage for the state's Interstate Highways was placed on hold pending finalization of the numbering scheme, and by late 1959 that signage was being added starting with I-75 and followed by the other open segments of freeway in the state.
Sections of freeway opened in southwestern Michigan in 1960 between the Benton Harbor–St Joseph area and between Jackson and Ann Arbor; the latter was built over existing portions of US 12. In this year, Michigan became the first state to complete a border-to-border toll-free Interstate within their state, running for 205 miles (330 km) from Detroit toward New Buffalo, creating the longest toll-free freeway in the country at the time.
In January 1962, the US 12 designation was removed from the I-94 freeway. In the process, the designation was transferred to replace the US 112 designation in its entirety. After this transfer, I-94 was no longer concurrent with US 12, except for the Ypsilanti bypass. In 1963, the freeway was extended south of New Buffalo to end at M-239. Traffic was diverted down M-239 into Indiana where State Road 39 carried traffic the rest of the way to the Indiana Toll Road. By the end of the year, a section of highway opened between Mount Clemens and Marysville, and US 25 was rerouted to run concurrently along the freeway from the New Baltimore area northward.
The eastern terminus of I-94 in the Port Huron area was dedicated on October 14, 1964, signaling the completion of the highway between Marysville and the Blue Water Bridge. This completion displaced part of the M-146 bypass of Port Huron, the southern leg of which was retained as a connector to present-day Lapeer Road. Two years later, the gap between the Wayne–Macomb county line and the end of the freeway near Mount Clemens was filled in when another section of freeway opened. In late 1964, a plan was approved to improve the interchange with Telegraph Road (US 24), as the original interchange did not feature access in all directions. North of Albion, the route of the freeway previously crossed a branch of the New York Central Railroad at-grade; the crossing was eliminated when the tracks were removed in 1968.
The sections originally designated as the Willow Run Expressway were rebuilt from Rawsonville Road in Belleville to Ozga Road in Romulus starting in 1972. As part of this reconstruction, the segment between Haggerty and Ozga roads was widened from four to six lanes, and the eastbound lanes were realigned to facilitate construction of an interchange with I-275, a western bypass of Detroit which was under construction at the time. The Willow Run segment was also resurfaced at this point, as the old road bed did not contain steel mesh. Construction of this interchange also obliterated a partial interchange with Huron River Drive.
The final section of I-94 in Michigan opened to traffic on November 2, 1972, when the connection across the state line into Indiana was dedicated. This last segment in Michigan between M-239 and the state line opened when Indiana completed an 18-mile (29 km) segment of freeway in their state.
Since completion
The interchange with the Southfield Freeway (M-39) was closed entirely in 1985 to replace the original exit design, which included four on-ramps that sharply merged into the left lanes of I-94. Reconstruction added new on-ramps that merge into the freeway's right lane, while also moving the carriageways of I-94 closer together.
On August 16, 1987, Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashed after attempting to take off from Detroit Metropolitan Airport, killing all but one passenger upon exploding at the I-94 overpass over Middlebelt Road; that overpass was not damaged in the crash. The freeway was closed until August 18, and a memorial was later installed near the interchange between I-94 and Middlebelt Road.
The completion of I-69 in the 1980s, and the approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement, increased traffic at the Blue Water Bridge. A new toll and customs plaza was built in 1991, and, later the next year, an international task force determined that traffic on the existing structure was exceeding capacity. Environmental planning started in 1993, and construction started on the second span between Port Huron and Point Edward, Ontario in 1995. In July 1997, the second span opened. The original span was closed for rehabilitation, and both were opened to traffic in 1999.
The interchange with US 24 (Telegraph Road) following its mid-1960s redesign had only two bridges, and left-hand exits were used throughout. This interchange was reconfigured in 2005 to a SPUI design that was completed in December of that year. A pair of bridges called the Gateway Arch Bridges (alternately "Gateway to Detroit") was incorporated in the new interchange.
In 2011, construction was started to widen I-94/I-69 approaching the Blue Water Bridge and to allow for dedicated local traffic and bridge traffic lanes. The lane configuration changes confused drivers in the area, especially motorists with outdated GPS devices; because of this, MDOT installed updated signs complete with American and Canadian flags to help prevent drivers from heading to Canada by mistake.
Additional construction in the Port Huron area started in late 2013 to rebuild and reconfigure the I-94/I-69 interchange outside the city. The project improved 3.7 miles (6.0 km) of freeway, replaced several bridges and ramps and cost $76 million (equivalent to $98 million in 2023). In June 2014, MDOT closed the ramps from I-69 eastbound to BL I-69 through the interchange until later in the year. The project was completed in September 2015.
In 2016, the sections of I-94 from the Indiana state line to the M-63 interchange was designated as part of the West Michigan Pike Pure Michigan Byway. The West Michigan Pike originated in efforts in the 1910s to improve a highway along the western part of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan and to increase tourism along the Lake Michigan shore. The auto trail was eventually superseded by US 12 and US 31 after the creation of the United States Numbered Highway System in 1926.
In 2020, work began on the final link of the St. Joseph Valley Parkway to connect the US 31 freeway to I-94 east of Benton Harbor. The project cost $121.5 million and involved reconstructing the interchange with the eastern terminus of BL I-94 and 3.5 miles (5.6 km) of I-94 in the area. US 31 was rerouted to follow its new freeway section for 1.8 miles (2.9 km) from the previous end of the freeway at Napier Avenue that opened in 2003 to I-94 at BL I-94, where US 31 then followed I-94 to the I-196 interchange as before. This new routing opened on November 9, 2022.
In December 2022, the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) procured a statewide tolling study. Under the study, I-94 would be the first highway to be converted into a toll road starting in 2028. Lawmakers have not yet acted upon the department's recommendation in the proposal.
Construction began on August 7, 2023, on a privately funded three-mile (4.8 km) MDOT pilot project to upgrade the left lane for connected and autonomous vehicles between Ann Arbor and Detroit.
Memorial highway names
As the original expressway through the center of Detroit was being planned in the 1940s, it was unofficially named the Harper–McGraw Expressway after the streets along which it was to run. There was some initial support to name it after Roy D. Chapin, the late president of the Hudson Motor Car Company and a former US secretary of commerce under President Herbert Hoover. On April 23, 1946, the Detroit Common Council voted instead to name the highway after Edsel Ford, the son of Henry Ford and president of the Ford Motor Company from 1918 until his death in 1943.
Two other original sections of I-94's predecessor highways in the Detroit area were given early names. The westernmost of these is the Willow Run Expressway, named for the Willow Run complex. The plants at Willow Run produced B-24 Liberator bombers for Ford Motor Company during World War II. The second, the Detroit Industrial Expressway, continued the route of the Willow Run Expressway eastward into Detroit. Both highways were built to move workers from Detroit to the industrial plants at Willow Run during the war and were later incorporated into I-94 in the 1950s as part of a Detroit–Chicago highway.
The section of I-94 northeast of Detroit was named after former Congressman James G. O'Hara by the Michigan Legislature. O'Hara was a World War II veteran who served in the US House of Representatives from 1959 until 1977. During his tenure in Congress, he procured federal funds for the construction of I-94 through his district. The first attempt to name the highway after him failed in 1991, but the honor was included in a budget bill passed in 1997. The section of I-94 was dedicated on October 16, 1998, after donors privately raised nearly $10,000 (equivalent to $17,000 in 2023) to pay for the highway signs.
A segment of I-94 in Battle Creek between the exits for BL I-94 and I-194 was named the 94th Combat Infantry Division Memorial Highway by the Michigan Legislature in 2002. The name honors the US Army's 94th Infantry Division, which was activated at nearby Fort Custer in 1942 and served with distinction in the European theater of World War II. Because the unit originated in Battle Creek, and its number matched that of the freeway, the Legislature added the designation by passing Public Act 305 of 2002. The name was dedicated in ceremonies at a rest stop along the section of I-94 on September 28, 2002.
Another piece of I-94 in Calhoun County was designated in 2004 as part of the Underground Railroad Memorial Highway. Starting in 1990, the National Park Service started working to identify routes of the Underground Railroad. The Battle Creek area was active in the railroad during the Civil War, and the section of I-94 between exits 98 and 110 east of Battle Creek was included in the memorial designation.
In June 2012, after a resolution passed by the Michigan Legislature was signed by Governor Rick Snyder, a portion of I-94 in Taylor between Inkster and Pelham roads was named the Auxiliary Lt. Dan Kromer Memorial Highway after a 20-year veteran of the Taylor Police Department, who was killed in 2010 while helping motorists who had car trouble.
Exit list
Related trunklines
There are nine highways related to I-94 in Michigan. The first is the spur into downtown Battle Creek numbered I-194 and nicknamed "The Penetrator" and officially called the "Sojourner Truth Downtown Parkway". This auxiliary Interstate Highway runs for about three miles (4.8 km) to connect I-94 northward into downtown. The other eight highways are business loops of I-94 that connect various cities' downtowns with the main freeway. Unlike I-194, these loops are not freeways. Located from west to east along I-94's routing in Michigan, they serve Benton Harbor–St. Joseph, Kalamazoo, Battle Creek, Marshall, Albion, Jackson, Ann Arbor, and Port Huron.
See also
Michigan Highways portal
Notes
References
External links
Geographic data related to I-94 in Michigan at OpenStreetMap
I-94 at Michigan Highways
M-112 at Michigan Highways
Early Willow Run, Detroit Industrial & Edsel Ford Expressways at Michigan Highways |
Ypsilanti,_Michigan | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ypsilanti,_Michigan | [
597
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ypsilanti,_Michigan"
] | Ypsilanti ( IP-sə-LAN-tee), commonly shortened to Ypsi ( IP-see), is a college town and city located on the Huron River in Washtenaw County in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2020 census, the city's population was 20,648. The city is bounded to the north by Superior Township and on the west, south, and east by Ypsilanti Township. Ypsilanti is a part of the Ann Arbor metropolitan area, the Huron River Valley, the Detroit-Warren-Ann Arbor combined statistical area, and the Great Lakes megalopolis. The city is also the home of Eastern Michigan University (EMU).
Ypsilanti is known mostly for being the home of Eastern Michigan University (formerly the Michigan State Normal College) since the university's founding as Michigan's first normal school (teachers' college) in 1849, its location on the historic Detroit-Chicago Road (now US Highway 12), its historic Depot Town commercial district, and for its distinctive Ypsilanti Water Tower constructed in 1890. The city is closely associated with Ford Motor Company's Willow Run Bomber Plant which manufactured over 8,000 Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bombers during World War II. Ford Motor Company is also known for damming the Huron River to generate hydroelectric power which created Ypsilanti's Ford Lake. Ypsilanti is conveniently located on the intersection of US Highway 23 (North-South) and Interstate 94 (East-West), and is a short 15 to 20 minute drive to Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW). The city is located 8 miles east of Ann Arbor and is 35 miles west of Downtown Detroit. It is also home to the first Domino's Pizza location, located near EMU's McKenny Student Union in South Campus.
History
Originally a trading post established in 1809 by a French-Canadian fur trader from Montreal, a permanent settlement was established on the east side of the Huron River in 1823 by Major Thomas Woodruff. It was incorporated into the Territory of Michigan as the village Woodruff's Grove. A separate community a short distance away on the west side of the river was established in 1825 under the name "Ypsilanti", after Demetrios Ypsilantis, a hero in the Greek War of Independence. Woodruff's Grove changed its name to Ypsilanti in 1829, the year its namesake effectively won the war for Greek Independence at the Battle of Petra, with the two communities eventually merging. A bust of Demetrios Ypsilantis by Greek sculptor Christopher Nastos stands between a Greek and a US flag at the base of the landmark Ypsilanti Water Tower.
Ypsilanti has played an important role in the automobile industry. From 1920 to 1922, Apex Motors produced the "ACE" car. The quarter mile stretch of land along Michigan Avenue became a hub for car dealerships starting in 1912 when the first car dealership opened, and ending in the 1990s when the last dealership closed. This area has been referred to as "The Amazing Quarter Mile" and was eventually added to the Ypsilanti Historic District. This site is part of a collection of parcels known as the Water Street Redevelopment Area. It was in Ypsilanti that Preston Tucker (whose family owned the Ypsilanti Machine Tool Company) designed and built the prototypes for his Tucker '48. Tucker's story was related in the film Tucker: The Man and His Dream, directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
In 1945, Henry J. Kaiser and Joseph W. Frazer bought the nearby Willow Run B-24 Liberator bomber plant from Ford Motor Company, and started to make Kaiser and Frazer model cars in 1947. The last Kaiser car made in Ypsilanti rolled off the assembly line in 1953, when the company merged with Willys–Overland and moved production to Toledo, Ohio. General Motors purchased the Kaiser Frazer plant, and converted it into its Hydramatic Division (now called its Powertrain division), beginning production in November 1953. The GM Powertrain Division ceased production at this facility in 2010.
Ypsilanti is also the location of the last Hudson automobile dealership. Today, the former dealership is the site of the Ypsilanti Automotive Heritage Collection. The museum is the home to an original Fabulous Hudson Hornet race car, which inspired the character Doc Hudson in the 2006 Pixar animated film Cars.
In the early 1970s, the citizens reduced the penalty for the use and sale of marijuana to $5 (the Ypsilanti Marijuana Initiative; see also the Human Rights Party).
In 1979, Faz Husain was elected to the Ypsilanti city council, the first Muslim and the first native of India to win elected office in Michigan.
In the 1990s Ypsilanti became the first city in Michigan to pass a living wage ordinance.
On July 23, 2007, Governor Jennifer Granholm announced that Ypsilanti, along with the cities of Caro and Clio, was chosen by the Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA) to take part in the Blueprints for Michigan's Downtowns program. The award provides for an economic development consultant to assist Ypsilanti in developing a growth and job creation strategy for the downtown area.
On June 23, 2020, Mayor Beth Bashert resigned after a controversial comment she made about race during a Zoom meeting.
Timeline
1809 – Trading post established by French-Canadian Gabriel Godfroy from Montreal
1823 – Village of Woodruff's Grove platted
1825 – April 21, Plat recorded under the name Ypsilanti
1827 – Ypsilanti Township organized
1832 – June 19, Woodruff's Grove re-organized and incorporated as the Village of Ypsilanti
1849 – Eastern Michigan University founded as Michigan State Normal School
1858 – February 4, the Village of Ypsilanti reincorporated as a city
1890 – Michigan's first interurban, the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti Street Railway, begins service
1890 – The Ypsilanti Water Tower is completed
1929 – Miller Motors Hudson opens, it eventually becomes the last Hudson dealership in the world
1931 – McKenny Union opens as the first student union on the campus of a teachers' college.
1959 – Eastern Michigan becomes a university
1960 – Tom Monaghan and James Monaghan found Domino's Pizza as DomiNick's Pizza at 507 W. Cross St, Ypsilanti.
1967 – Ypsilanti resident John Norman Collins is suspected of being the perpetrator of the Michigan murders, a series of murders of female students at the University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University. He was convicted in 1969, but of only one of the murders.
1990 – Eastern Michigan University achieves its highest student enrollment of 26,000
1998 – The Michigan Firehouse Museum is established preserving a firehouse built in 1898.
Geography
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 4.47 square miles (11.58 km2), of which 4.29 square miles (11.11 km2) is land and 0.18 square miles (0.47 km2) (4.02%) is water.
The Huron River flows through Ypsilanti with Ford Lake on the southern edge of the city. Paint Creek also runs through the city. The Border-to-Border Trail runs through the city.
Demographics
2020 census
2010 census
As of the census of 2010, there were 19,435 people, 8,026 households, and 2,880 families residing in the city. The population density was 4,488.5 inhabitants per square mile (1,733.0/km2). There were 9,271 housing units at an average density of 2,141.1 per square mile (826.7/km2). The racial makeup of the city was 61.5% White, 29.2% African American, 0.6% Native American, 3.4% Asian, 1.1% from other races, and 4.3% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race were 3.9% of the population.
There were 8,026 households, of which 18.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 19.7% were married couples living together, 12.1% had a female householder with no husband present, 4.0% had a male householder with no wife present, and 64.1% were non-families. 42.9% of all households were made up of individuals, and 7.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.06 and the average family size was 2.92.
The median age in the city was 25 years. 14.1% of residents were under the age of 18; 35.8% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 25.3% were from 25 to 44; 16.6% were from 45 to 64; and 8.3% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 49.7% male and 50.3% female.
2000 census
As of the census of 2000, there were 22,362 people, 8,551 households, and 3,377 families residing in the city. The population density was 5,081.5 inhabitants per square mile (1,962.0/km2). There were 9,215 housing units at an average density of 2,094.0 per square mile (808.5/km2). The racial makeup of the city was 61.40% White, 30.58% African American, 0.44% Native American, 3.18% Asian, 0.07% Pacific Islander, 1.32% from other races, and 3.01% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race were 2.47% of the population. 13.6% were of German ancestry, 6.8% Irish, 6.4% English and 5.5% Polish heritage according to Census 2000.
There were 8,551 households, out of which 19.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 23.0% were married couples living together, 13.2% had a female householder with no husband present, and 60.5% were non-families. 40.4% of all households were made up of individuals, and 6.2% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.15 and the average family size was 2.96.
In the city, 15.9% of the population was under the age of 18, 38.2% was from 18 to 24, 26.4% from 25 to 44, 12.4% from 45 to 64, and 7.0% was 65 years of age or older. The median age was 24 years. For every 100 females, there were 89.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 86.2 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $28,610, and the median income for a family was $40,793. Males had a median income of $30,328 versus $26,745 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,692. About 16.9% of families and 25.8% of the population were below the poverty line, including 30.1% of those under age 18 and 15.3% of those age 65 or over.
Arts and culture
The Martha Washington Theatre opened in 1915. It was initially operated by Florence W. Signor, who was the only woman theatre operator in Michigan at the time. It was sold to W. S. Butterfield Theatres in 1925. It was converted to an adult theatre in 1971, then to a strip club in 1982. It closed in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and was damaged in a fire three months later.
Domino's Pizza was founded in Ypsilanti in 1960 near the campus of Eastern Michigan University.
By 1963, Clara Owens established the Ypsilanti Greek Theater in Ypsilanti, Michigan for the performance of Greek theater productions.
In 1966 the Ypsilanti Greek Theater opened at the EMU Baseball field. Bert Lahr and Dame Judith Anderson starred in two productions, The Oresteia, a trilogy of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus and The Birds by playwright Aristophanes.
Since 1979, the city has become known for summer festivals in the part of the city called "Depot Town", which is adjacent to both Riverside and Frog Island Parks along the banks of the Huron River. Festivals include the annual Ypsilanti Heritage Festival, Michigan ElvisFest, the Orphan Car Festival, the Michigan Brewers Guild Summer Beer Festival, the former Frog Island Festival, and a Latino festival.
Painter Fay Kleinman moved to Ypsilanti in the late 1980s with her husband, pianist Emanuel Levenson.
Overlooking Riverside Park is the non-profit Riverside Arts Center. Established in 1994 through the efforts of the Ypsilanti Downtown Development Authority and several public spirited citizens, the Riverside boasts a 115-seat black box theater, a sizable art gallery and some meeting rooms and offices. In 2006 the adjacent DTE building was renovated with "Cool Cities Initiative" money and is in the process of being incorporated into the center's activities.
Since 2013, Ypsilanti has participated in First Fridays, an arts and culture-based monthly event that features a self-guided tour of participating businesses highlighting local artists, and often free samples of food and drink. The same organization that coordinates the Ypsilanti First Friday event series coordinates Ypsi Pride, established in 2017, and the Festival of the Honey Bee. Ypsi Pride takes place on the first Friday in June and seeks to celebrate LGBTQ+ culture across the community by hosting a variety of family friendly programming, entertainment, and educational content.
Sites of interest
Ypsilanti has the second largest contiguous historic district in the state of Michigan, behind only the much larger city of Grand Rapids. The Ypsilanti Historic District includes both downtown Ypsilanti, along Michigan Avenue, and the Depot Town area adjacent to Frog Island Park and Riverside Park, which features many specialty shops, bars and grills, and a farmers' market.
The Tridge is a three-way wooden footbridge under the Cross Street bridge over the Huron River at 42.24561°N 83.61160°W / 42.24561; -83.61160. The Tridge connects Riverside Park, Frog Island Park, and Depot Town.
The Ypsilanti Water Tower, adjacent to the campus of Eastern Michigan University, holds the unique distinction of being the winner of the Most Phallic Building contest.
Other sites of interest include:
Ypsilanti District Library
Ypsilanti Historical Museum (housed in a Victorian mansion built in 1860)
Automotive Heritage Museum
Michigan Firehouse Museum
Ypsilanti Water Tower, built in 1890
Ypsilanti Food Co-op
Highland Cemetery, founded in 1864
Pease Auditorium, built in 1914 (on the campus of Eastern Michigan University)
Starkweather House, built circa 1840
Starkweather Hall, built in 1896 as a student religious center
Peninsular Paper Dam
Ladies' Literary Club Building, built in approximately 1843
Brinkerhoff–Becker House, built in 1863–1869
Parks and recreation
There are many parks within the city limits of Ypsilanti, including:
Border to Border Trail
Prospect Park
Riverside Park, which hosts the Ypsilanti Heritage Festival, Michigan ElvisFest, and Michigan Summer Beer Festival
Frog Island Park
Rutherford Municipal Pool, which re-opened in 2014 after community members raised $1 million for reconstruction
Education
K–12 education
Ypsilanti Community Schools serve residents of the city, as well as parts of Ypsilanti Township and Superior Township. Ypsilanti Public Schools and Willow Run Community Schools merged to form a new, united district on July 1, 2013. Charter schools in the city include Arbor Preparatory High School.
It also was the setting of a well known and long running High/Scope Perry Preschool Study regarding the effects of early childhood education in children. The study researched the effects of preschool on the later lives of low income children from the area.
Global Educational Excellence operates the Global Tech Academy (PreK-5) in nearby Ypsilanti Township.
Higher education
A college town, Ypsilanti is home to Eastern Michigan University, founded in 1849 as Michigan State Normal School. Today, Eastern Michigan University has 17,500+ undergraduate and more than 4,800 graduate students. As well, Ypsilanti is home to Washtenaw Community College (WCC) sponsored off-site extension center.
Media
Ypsilanti is served by daily newspapers from Detroit. Ypsilanti once had its own daily newspaper, the Ypsilanti Press, but that paper closed June 28, 1994, after 90 years in business. Upon closing, the Press sold its masthead, archives and subscriber list to The Ann Arbor News, which then began publishing an Ypsilanti edition. The Ann Arbor News ceased publication on July 23, 2009; it was replaced by a new Internet-based news operation, AnnArbor.com, which also produces print editions on Thursdays and Sundays. A weekly newspaper, the Ypsilanti Courier, is published every Thursday by Heritage Media from their Saline, Michigan offices. The only newspaper currently operating in Ypsilanti is Eastern Michigan University's independent newspaper The Eastern Echo.
Local radio stations include:
WEMU FM (89.1 FM), a public radio station, which broadcasts jazz and blues music and NPR news from Eastern Michigan University
WQBR (610 AM carrier-current and University Cable Channel 10), EMU's student-run radio station
WDEO (990 AM), a Catholic religious radio station targeting the Detroit area
WSDS (1480 AM), licensed to nearby Salem and a former longtime country-music station, now broadcasts Spanish-language popular music as "La Explosiva" and has studios in Ypsilanti.
WAAM (1600 AM), a conservative Talk and News station serving Washtenaw County. Broadcasting local talk, sports and music shows. Owned by First Broadcasting.
Infrastructure
Major highways
I-94 forms part of the southern boundary of the city.
US 12 (Michigan Avenue) runs concurrently with I-94 through the city.
Bus. US 12 is a business loop route through downtown Ypsilanti.
M-17 (Washtenaw Avenue) runs though the city and connects to Ann Arbor.
The Border-to-Border Trail winds through Ypsilanti, linking the city to Ann Arbor and (eventually) Dexter.
Bus
The Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority operates bus service in the area, with ten routes serving the Ypsilanti Transit Center on Pearl Street. A new Ypsilanti Transit Center is scheduled to open in 2026 to accommodate additional services.
Notable people
Blanch Ackers – folk artist and painter
Queen Naija – R&B artist and YouTuber
Ella Anderson – actress known for her role on Henry Danger as Henry's overreactive sister Piper Hart
Nickolas Ashford – songwriter and singer in the duo Ashford & Simpson
BabyTron – rapper
Samiya Bashir – American poet and author, born in Ypsilanti
Mike Bass – NFL player, defensive back for Detroit Lions (1967) and Washington Redskins (1969–1975), scored touchdown in Super Bowl VII
Walter Briggs Sr. – owner of Detroit Tigers 1919–1952, born in Ypsilanti
John Burton (1910–1992), first African-American mayor and one of three African-American mayors elected in 1967 prior to which none had served in Michigan
Emor L. Calkins – State president of the Michigan Woman's Christian Temperance Union for 25 years
Jalen Chatfield – professional ice hockey player
Byron M. Cutcheon – American Civil War general and U.S. Congressman
Brandon Denson – professional Canadian Football League player who plays defensive end for the Ottawa Redblacks
Amy Devers – furniture designer and TV personality (Freeform Furniture, Designer People, Trading Spaces, Fix This Yard, Home Made Simple)
Ron Fernandes – American football player
Adam Gase – former New York Jets head coach
Kyle Gupton – Basketball player
Rodney Holman – NFL player, tight end for the Cincinnati Bengals (1982–1992), and the Detroit Lions (1993–1995)
Zeke Jones – American olympic wrestler
Doug Kalitta – racing driver and owner of Kalitta Charters
Colby Keller – American visual artist, blogger and former pornographic film actor
Charles S. Kettles – retired United States Army lieutenant colonel and a Medal of Honor recipient.
Carolyn King – one of first girls to play Little League baseball; centerpiece of landmark lawsuit in 1973 that led to Little League dropping boys-only policy
Janae Marie Kroc – record-setting powerlifter and transgender model
Alfred Lucking – U.S. Congressman
Helen Walker McAndrew (1825–1906) – Washtenaw County's first female physician and participant in the Underground Railroad
William McAndrew (1863–1937), educator who served as the superintendent of Chicago Public Schools
Elijah McCoy – inventor and participant in the Underground Railroad in Ypsilanti
Shara Nova – lead singer and songwriter for My Brightest Diamond
K. J. Osborn – NFL player, wide receiver for the Minnesota Vikings
Russell C. Ostrander – former mayor of Lansing and Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court
Frank Owen – pitcher for 1906 World Series champion Chicago White Sox
Lowell Perry – NFL football player, first African American hired to be assistant coach in the NFL
Iggy Pop – rock star, "Godfather of Punk" – grew up in the Coachville trailer park, lot 963423, on Carpenter Road in Pittsfield Township (near Ypsilanti) during his teenage years at the start of his music career.
Anthony Sugent – Vocalist for the band SycAmour
Charles Ramsey – former Eastern Michigan Eagles men's basketball head coach; he played on the YHS baseball, basketball and football teams
Victor Roache – left fielder for Milwaukee Brewers
Bob Schneider – prolific songwriter and musician – The Ugly Americans, The Scabs, Joe Rockhead, Texas Bluegrass Massacre, Lonelyland
Don Schwall – former MLB player (Boston Red Sox, Pittsburgh Pirates, Atlanta Braves)
Ryan Shay (1979–2007) – long-distance runner
Michael Joseph Sobran Jr. – known professionally as Joseph Sobran, conservative writer and syndicated columnist
Bob Sutton – defensive coordinator for NFL's Kansas City Chiefs, New York Jets – head coach for Army 1991–1999
Marie Tharp (1920–2006) – geologist who pioneered understanding of plate tectonics and continental drift
Preston Tucker (September 21, 1903 – December 26, 1956) – American automobile entrepreneur, owned the Ypsilanti Tool & Dye Company.
Edwin F. Uhl – mayor of Grand Rapids, ambassador, U.S. Secretary of State
In popular culture
It has been said that Ypsilanti is the Brooklyn to Ann Arbor's Manhattan. Comparable to the gentrification causing many artists, poets, musicians, and hipsters to flee the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City to areas like Bushwick, Brooklyn, nearby Ann Arbor has experienced massive increases in land value and taxes over the last several decades. Despite Ann Arbor's reputation in the region as a bohemian cultural center, many creative people have been driven out of the city to Ypsilanti due to these changes. A vibrant, underground arts scene has begun to emerge as a result. This community gathered semiannually at the juried Shadow Art Fair held at the Arbor Brewing Company Microbrewery, which has now evolved into DIYpsi.
Milton Rokeach's 1964 psychiatric case study, The Three Christs of Ypsilanti, inspired a stage play and two operas. Poet W. H. Auden described it as "a very funny book... about a hospital in which there are three gents, all of whom believe themselves to be the Lord. Which is common enough, except in the case of one—who had actually found a disciple!"
The 2017 feature film Three Christs, directed by Jon Avnet, and starring Richard Gere and Peter Dinklage, is based on Milton Rokeach's book and set in Ypsilanti. Though the film was primarily shot in New York, several scenes were shot in downtown Ypsilanti.
Author Kurt Vonnegut has a chapter titled "A Sappy Girl From Ypsilanti" in his 2005 book A Man Without a Country.
Elizabeth Meriwether's 2006 play Heddatron is largely set in Ypsilanti.
The Ypsilanti City Council declared Lee Osler's "Back To Ypsilanti" the city's official song in 1983.
Ypsilanti is the subject of Sufjan Stevens' song, "For The Widows in Paradise, For The Fatherless in Ypsilanti", on his 2003 album Michigan.
A portrait of jazz guitarist Randy Napoleon, painted by his grandmother, Fay Kleinman, is part of the permanent art collection of the Ypsilanti District Library. Napoleon performed his first public gig as leader at the age of twelve under a tent at the Ypsilanti Heritage Festival, an event sponsored by WEMU radio.
The Emmanuel Lutheran Church of Ypsilanti hosted filming for two days of the Movie Stone, starring Robert De Niro. The funeral service and a few outside scenes were filmed at the Church, with locals posing as extras.
In the 2004 cartoon Superior Defender Gundam Force, in the intro for the eighth episode "A Princess, A Cake, and A Winged Knight" a character named Shute goes on to describe his hometown and claims it to be Ypsilanti, Michigan, shortly after he says he was "just kidding" and introduces the city as Neotopia.
The 2009 film Whip It, directed by Drew Barrymore, was partly filmed in Ypsilanti.
Ypsilanti is the setting of Season 3, Episode 8 of the television series, Supernatural, entitled "A Very Supernatural Christmas".
Linguist List
Ypsilanti was also the home to the main editing site of the Linguist List, a major online resource for the field of linguistics. It was mostly staffed by graduate students who attend Eastern Michigan University and runs several database websites and mailing lists.
Nicknames
Ypsilanti is often shortened to "Ypsi", particularly in spoken conversation and local/regional usage.
Because a large number of residents or their ancestors migrated from Appalachia, certain neighborhoods (particularly on the far east side of the city and into Ypsilanti Township) are sometimes called "Ypsitucky". Harriette Arnow's book The Dollmaker, which was made into a film starring Jane Fonda, focused on the lives of these "Ypsituckians".
Recently, the use of the term "Ypsitucky" has come under increased scrutiny due to its historically derogatory connotation. In 2008, the issue was raised after a dinner being held in Ann Arbor to honor Harriette Arnow was described as an "Ypsitucky Supper" in some of the event organizer's media releases. In 2009, planning began for the "Ypsitucky Jamboree", a new music festival celebrating bluegrass music to be held in Ypsilanti in September 2009; this resulted in objections from some area residents and some members of the City Council, leading to renaming the event as simply "The Jamboree".
Sister cities
Nafplio, Greece
See also
Michigan portal
References
Further reading
Beakes, Samuel Willard (1906). Past and present of Washtenaw County, Michigan. Chicago: The S.J. Clarke Publishing Co. (1906)
Bien, Laura (2010). Tales of the Ypsilanti Archives. Charleston, S. C.: The History Press.
Bien, Laura (2011). Hidden History of Ypsilanti. Charleston, S. C.: The History Press. Archival stories on many topics giving insight into Ypsilanti's history in the 19th and 20th centuries.
External links
City of Ypsilanti Official Website
Ypsilanti Area Chamber of Commerce
"Ypsilanti, a city of Washtenaw county, Michigan, U.S.A." . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911. |
Grammy_Award_for_Song_of_the_Year | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammy_Award_for_Song_of_the_Year | [
598
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammy_Award_for_Song_of_the_Year#2000s"
] | The Grammy Award for Song of the Year is an honor presented at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards. The Song of the Year award is one of the four most prestigious categories at the awards (alongside Best New Artist, Record of the Year and Album of the Year), presented annually since the 1st Grammy Awards in 1959. According to the 54th Grammy Awards description guide, the award is presented: to honor artistic achievement, technical proficiency and overall excellence in the recording industry, without regard to album sales or chart position.
If a winning song contains samples or interpolations of existing material, the publisher and songwriter(s) of the original song(s) can apply for a Winners Certificate.
Song of the Year is related to but is conceptually different from Record of the Year or Album of the Year:
Song of the Year is awarded for a single or for one track from an album. This award goes to the songwriter who actually wrote the lyrics and/or melodies to the song. "Song" in this context means the song as composed, not its recording.
Record of the Year is also awarded for a single or individual track, but the recipient of this award is the performing artist, the producer, recording engineer and/or mixer for that song. In this sense, "record" means a particular recorded song, not its composition or an album of songs.
Album of the Year is awarded for a whole album, and the award is presented to the artist, songwriter, producer, recording engineer, and mastering engineer for that album. In this context, "album" means a recorded collection of songs (a multi-track LP, CD, or download package), not the individual songs or their compositions.
History and description
The Song of the Year awards have been awarded since 1959. It is one of the four most prestigious Grammy Awards. Despite both the Record of the Year award and Song of the Year being awarded for a single or for one track from an album, this award goes only to the composer(s) of the song whereas the Record of the Year award goes to the performer(s) and production team for a particular recording of the song. According to the 54th Grammy Awards description guide, the award is given to the songwriter(s) of a song that "must contain melody and lyrics and must be either a new song or a song first achieving prominence during the eligibility year. Songs containing prominent samples or interpolations are not eligible".
The award has not always been restricted to new or newly prominent songs; for instance, in 1992, when the winner was Natalie Cole's cover of "Unforgettable" (a song that had first been recorded by Nat King Cole and achieved prominence in the 1950s), the rule was merely that the song had to have been recorded during the eligibility year and not previously nominated for the award.
Since the late 1960s other songwriter's awards have been presented for genre-specific categories, including Grammy Award for Best Country Song (since 1965), Grammy Award for Best R&B Song (since 1969), Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media (since 1988), Grammy Award for Best Rock Song (since 1992), and most recently Grammy Award for Best Rap Song (since 2004), Grammy Award for Best Gospel Song (from 2006 to 2014), Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Christian Music Song (from 2012 to 2014), Grammy Award for Best American Roots Song (since 2014), Grammy Award for Best Gospel Performance/Song (since 2015), and Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song (since 2015).
The category was expanded to include eight nominees in 2019 and 10 nominees in 2022. The number of nominees was reverted to eight starting with the 2024 ceremony.
As of 2023, a distinct category to honor songwriters was established: Songwriter of the Year, Non-Classical.
Achievements
In many cases, the songwriters were also the performers (Domenico Modugno, Henry Mancini, John Lennon & Paul McCartney, Joe South, Paul Simon, Carole King, Barbra Streisand, Billy Joel, Michael McDonald, Christopher Cross, Sting, Michael Jackson & Lionel Richie, Bobby McFerrin, Eric Clapton, Bruce Springsteen, Seal, Shawn Colvin, Rob Thomas, U2, Alicia Keys, Luther Vandross, John Mayer, Dixie Chicks, Amy Winehouse, Coldplay, Beyoncé, Lady Antebellum, Adele, Fun, Lorde, Sam Smith, Ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, Childish Gambino, Billie Eilish, H.E.R., Anderson .Paak, and Bonnie Raitt).
Dernst Emile II is the only songwriter to win Song of the Year in two consecutive years: in 2021 ("I Can't Breathe") and 2022 ("Leave the Door Open").
Other multiple winners in this category include Henry Mancini ("Moon River" and "Days of Wine and Roses"); Johnny Mercer ("Moon River" and "Days of Wine and Roses"); James Horner ("Somewhere Out There" and "My Heart Will Go On"); Will Jennings ("Tears in Heaven" and "My Heart Will Go On"); U2 ("Beautiful Day" and "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own"); Adele ("Rolling in the Deep" and "Hello"); Christopher Brody Brown ("That's What I Like" and "Leave the Door Open"); Bruno Mars ("That's What I Like" and "Leave the Door Open"); Billie Eilish ("Bad Guy" and "What Was I Made For?"); and Finneas O'Connell ("Bad Guy" and "What Was I Made For?"), winning two times each. However, songs written for Andy Williams, Roberta Flack, Barbra Streisand and Bette Midler have received this award twice.
American singer/songwriter Taylor Swift is the most nominated songwriter in this category with seven nominations. Swift has never won the award.
The first woman to win the award was Carole King in 1972, for "You've Got a Friend". Adele was the first female songwriter to win the award twice, winning for "Rolling in the Deep" and "Hello".
Lorde is the youngest songwriter to win in the category, winning for "Royals" in 2014 at the age of 17.
Irving Gordon is the oldest songwriter to win the award, winning for "Unforgettable" in 1992 at age 77.
Christopher Cross and Billie Eilish are the only artists to receive the Grammys for Song of the Year as well as Record of the Year, Album of the Year, and Best New Artist in a single ceremony. Adele was the first artist to win the awards for Song of the Year, Record of the Year, Album of the Year, and Best New Artist on separate occasions. Only six artists have won the Song of the Year and Best New Artist awards the same year: Christopher Cross ("Sailing" in 1981), Alicia Keys ("Fallin'" in 2002), Amy Winehouse ("Rehab" in 2008), Fun ("We Are Young" in 2013), Sam Smith ("Stay with Me (Darkchild Version)" in 2015) and Billie Eilish ("Bad Guy" in 2020); Marvin Hamlisch is the only composer to win the Song of the Year and Best New Artist awards the same year in 1975, for "The Way We Were".
John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Lionel Richie, Diane Warren, Billie Eilish, H.E.R, and Finneas O'Connell are the only songwriters to receive three consecutive nominations for Song of the Year.
The song "Nel blu, dipinto di blu (Volare)", winner in 1959, written by Domenico Modugno and performed in Italian, is the only foreign-language song to win this award, although the 1967 winner "Michelle" penned by Lennon–McCartney for The Beatles to perform, has a critical part of its lyrics in French.
The Ernest Gold song "Theme of Exodus", which won in 1961, is the only instrumental song to ever receive this award.
The first and only tie in this category in Grammy history took place in 1978, when both Barbra Streisand's & Paul Williams' "Evergreen (Love Theme from A Star Is Born)" and Joe Brooks' "You Light Up My Life" won the award.
The first time in Grammy history that two different songs with the same title have been nominated in this category happened with "Hello" written by Lionel Richie in 1985 and "Hello" by Adele & Greg Kurstin in 2017.
The song with the most writers to win this award is "That's What I Like", which won in 2018 with eight writers. The song with the most writers nominated in this category is "Peaches", which had 11 co-writers nominated for the 2022 ceremony.
Thirty-two of the winning songs have also won the award for Record of the Year.
Process
From 1995 to 2018, members of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences nominated their choices for song of the year. A list of the top twenty records was given to the Nominations Review Committee, a specially selected group of anonymous members, who then selected the top five records to gain a nomination in the category in a special ballot. The rest of the members then vote a winner from the five nominees. In 2018, it was announced the number of nominated tracks would be increased to eight. In 2021, it was announced that the Nomination Review Committees would be disbanded, and the final nominees for song of the year would be decided by votes from members. Starting in 2022, the number of nominees in the category increased to 10. However, the decision to expand the number of nominees in this category was made 24 hours before the nominees were announced after an early version of the nominations list had already been circulated. This allowed "Kiss Me More" by Doja Cat featuring SZA and "Right on Time" by Brandi Carlile to be nominated as they were the songs that received the most votes besides the other eight nominees. As of the 2024 ceremony, the number of nominees has been reduced back to eight.
Recipients
An asterisk (*) indicates this recording also won Record of the Year.
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
2020s
^[I] Each year is linked to the article about the Grammy Awards held that year.
^[II] The performing artist is only listed but does not receive the award.
Songwriters with multiple awards
Two awards
Adele
Bono
Brody Brown
Adam Clayton
D'Mile (consecutive)
The Edge
Billie Eilish
James Horner
Will Jennings
Henry Mancini
Bruno Mars
Johnny Mercer
Larry Mullen Jr.
Finneas O' Connell
Songwriters with multiple nominations
2 nominations
See also
Grammy Award for Record of the Year
Grammy Award for Best Country Song
Grammy Award for Best R&B Song
Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media
Grammy Award for Best Rock Song
Grammy Award for Best Rap Song
Grammy Award for Best Gospel Song
Grammy Award for Best Gospel Performance/Song
Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Christian Music Song
Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song
Grammy Award for Best American Roots Song
References
External links
Official site |
Nelson_Mandela | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela | [
598,
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] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela#Imprisonment"
] | Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela ( man-DEH-lə; Xhosa: [xolíɬaɬa mandɛ̂ːla]; born Rolihlahla Mandela; 18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African anti-apartheid activist and politician who served as the first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country's first black head of state and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid by fostering racial reconciliation. Ideologically an African nationalist and socialist, he served as the president of the African National Congress (ANC) party from 1991 to 1997.
A Xhosa, Mandela was born into the Thembu royal family in Mvezo, South Africa. He studied law at the University of Fort Hare and the University of Witwatersrand before working as a lawyer in Johannesburg. There he became involved in anti-colonial and African nationalist politics, joining the ANC in 1943 and co-founding its Youth League in 1944. After the National Party's white-only government established apartheid, a system of racial segregation that privileged whites, Mandela and the ANC committed themselves to its overthrow. He was appointed president of the ANC's Transvaal branch, rising to prominence for his involvement in the 1952 Defiance Campaign and the 1955 Congress of the People. He was repeatedly arrested for seditious activities and was unsuccessfully prosecuted in the 1956 Treason Trial. Influenced by Marxism, he secretly joined the banned South African Communist Party (SACP). Although initially committed to non-violent protest, in association with the SACP he co-founded the militant uMkhonto we Sizwe in 1961 that led a sabotage campaign against the apartheid government. He was arrested and imprisoned in 1962, and, following the Rivonia Trial, was sentenced to life imprisonment for conspiring to overthrow the state.
Mandela served 27 years in prison, split between Robben Island, Pollsmoor Prison and Victor Verster Prison. Amid growing domestic and international pressure and fears of racial civil war, President F. W. de Klerk released him in 1990. Mandela and de Klerk led efforts to negotiate an end to apartheid, which resulted in the 1994 multiracial general election in which Mandela led the ANC to victory and became president. Leading a broad coalition government which promulgated a new constitution, Mandela emphasised reconciliation between the country's racial groups and created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate past human rights abuses. Economically, his administration retained its predecessor's liberal framework despite his own socialist beliefs, also introducing measures to encourage land reform, combat poverty and expand healthcare services. Internationally, Mandela acted as mediator in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial and served as secretary-general of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1998 to 1999. He declined a second presidential term and was succeeded by his deputy, Thabo Mbeki. Mandela became an elder statesman and focused on combating poverty and HIV/AIDS through the charitable Nelson Mandela Foundation.
Mandela was a controversial figure for much of his life. Although critics on the right denounced him as a communist terrorist and those on the far left deemed him too eager to negotiate and reconcile with apartheid's supporters, he gained international acclaim for his activism. Globally regarded as an icon of democracy and social justice, he received more than 250 honours, including the Nobel Peace Prize. He is held in deep respect within South Africa, where he is often referred to by his Thembu clan name, Madiba, and described as the "Father of the Nation".
Early life
Childhood: 1918–1934
Mandela was born on 18 July 1918, in the village of Mvezo in Umtata, then part of South Africa's Cape Province. He was given the forename Rolihlahla, a Xhosa term colloquially meaning "troublemaker", and in later years became known by his clan name, Madiba. His patrilineal great-grandfather, Ngubengcuka, was ruler of the Thembu Kingdom in the Transkeian Territories of South Africa's modern Eastern Cape province. One of Ngubengcuka's sons, named Mandela, was Nelson's grandfather and the source of his surname. Because Mandela was the king's child by a wife of the Ixhiba clan, a so-called "Left-Hand House", the descendants of his cadet branch of the royal family were morganatic, ineligible to inherit the throne but recognised as hereditary royal councillors.
Nelson Mandela's father, Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa Mandela, was a local chief and councillor to the monarch; he was appointed to the position in 1915, after his predecessor was accused of corruption by a governing white magistrate. In 1926, Gadla was also sacked for corruption, but Nelson was told that his father had lost his job for standing up to the magistrate's unreasonable demands. A devotee of the god Qamata, Gadla was a polygamist with four wives, four sons and nine daughters, who lived in different villages. Nelson's mother was Gadla's third wife, Nosekeni Fanny, daughter of Nkedama of the Right Hand House and a member of the amaMpemvu clan of the Xhosa.
Mandela later stated that his early life was dominated by traditional Xhosa custom and taboo. He grew up with two sisters in his mother's kraal in the village of Qunu, where he tended herds as a cattle-boy and spent much time outside with other boys. Both his parents were illiterate, but his mother, being a devout Christian, sent him to a local Methodist school when he was about seven. Baptised a Methodist, Mandela was given the English forename of "Nelson" by his teacher. When Mandela was about nine, his father came to stay at Qunu, where he died of an undiagnosed ailment that Mandela believed to be lung disease. Feeling "cut adrift", he later said that he inherited his father's "proud rebelliousness" and "stubborn sense of fairness".
Mandela's mother took him to the "Great Place" palace at Mqhekezweni, where he was entrusted to the guardianship of the Thembu regent, Chief Jongintaba Dalindyebo. Although he did not see his mother again for many years, Mandela felt that Jongintaba and his wife Noengland treated him as their own child, raising him alongside their children. As Mandela attended church services every Sunday with his guardians, Christianity became a significant part of his life. He attended a Methodist mission school located next to the palace, where he studied English, Xhosa, history and geography. He developed a love of African history, listening to the tales told by elderly visitors to the palace, and was influenced by the anti-imperialist rhetoric of a visiting chief, Joyi. Nevertheless, at the time he considered the European colonizers not as oppressors but as benefactors who had brought education and other benefits to southern Africa. Aged 16, he, his cousin Justice and several other boys travelled to Tyhalarha to undergo the ulwaluko circumcision ritual that symbolically marked their transition from boys to men; afterwards he was given the name Dalibunga.
Clarkebury, Healdtown, and Fort Hare: 1934–1940
Intending to gain skills needed to become a privy councillor for the Thembu royal house, Mandela began his secondary education in 1933 at Clarkebury Methodist High School in Engcobo, a Western-style institution that was the largest school for black Africans in Thembuland. Made to socialise with other students on an equal basis, he claimed that he lost his "stuck up" attitude, becoming best friends with a girl for the first time; he began playing sports and developed his lifelong love of gardening. He completed his Junior Certificate in two years, and in 1937 he moved to Healdtown, the Methodist college in Fort Beaufort attended by most Thembu royalty, including Justice. The headmaster emphasised the superiority of European culture and government, but Mandela became increasingly interested in native African culture, making his first non-Xhosa friend, a speaker of Sotho, and coming under the influence of one of his favourite teachers, a Xhosa who broke taboo by marrying a Sotho. Mandela spent much of his spare time at Healdtown as a long-distance runner and boxer, and in his second year he became a prefect.
In 1939, with Jongintaba's backing, Mandela began work on a BA degree at the University of Fort Hare, an elite black institution of approximately 150 students in Alice, Eastern Cape. He studied English, anthropology, politics, "native administration", and Roman Dutch law in his first year, desiring to become an interpreter or clerk in the Native Affairs Department. Mandela stayed in the Wesley House dormitory, befriending his own kinsman, K. D. Matanzima, as well as Oliver Tambo, who became a close friend and comrade for decades to come. He took up ballroom dancing, performed in a drama society play about Abraham Lincoln, and gave Bible classes in the local community as part of the Student Christian Association. Although he had friends who held connections to the African National Congress (ANC) who wanted South Africa to be independent of the British Empire, Mandela avoided any involvement with the nascent movement, and became a vocal supporter of the British war effort when the Second World War broke out. At the end of his first year he became involved in a students' representative council (SRC) boycott against the quality of food, for which he was suspended from the university; he never returned to complete his degree.
Arriving in Johannesburg: 1941–1943
Returning to Mqhekezweni in December 1940, Mandela found that Jongintaba had arranged marriages for him and Justice; dismayed, they fled to Johannesburg via Queenstown, arriving in April 1941. Mandela found work as a night watchman at Crown Mines, his "first sight of South African capitalism in action", but was fired when the induna (headman) discovered that he was a runaway. He stayed with a cousin in George Goch Township, who introduced Mandela to realtor and ANC activist Walter Sisulu. The latter secured Mandela a job as an articled clerk at the law firm of Witkin, Sidelsky and Eidelman, a company run by Lazar Sidelsky, a liberal Jew sympathetic to the ANC's cause. At the firm, Mandela befriended Gaur Radebe—a Hlubi member of the ANC and Communist Party—and Nat Bregman, a Jewish communist who became his first white friend. Mandela attended Communist Party gatherings, where he was impressed that Europeans, Africans, Indians, and Coloureds mixed as equals. He later stated that he did not join the party because its atheism conflicted with his Christian faith, and because he saw the South African struggle as being racially based rather than as class warfare. To continue his higher education, Mandela signed up to a University of South Africa correspondence course, working on his bachelor's degree at night.
Earning a small wage, Mandela rented a room in the house of the Xhoma family in the Alexandra township; despite being rife with poverty, crime and pollution, Alexandra always remained a special place for him. Although embarrassed by his poverty, he briefly dated a Swazi woman before unsuccessfully courting his landlord's daughter. To save money and be closer to downtown Johannesburg, Mandela moved into the compound of the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association, living among miners of various tribes; as the compound was visited by various chiefs, he once met the Queen Regent of Basutoland. In late 1941, Jongintaba visited Johannesburg—there forgiving Mandela for running away—before returning to Thembuland, where he died in the winter of 1942. After he passed his BA exams in early 1943, Mandela returned to Johannesburg to follow a political path as a lawyer rather than become a privy councillor in Thembuland.
Early revolutionary activity
Law studies and the ANC Youth League: 1943–1949
Mandela began studying law at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he was the only black African student and faced racism. There, he befriended liberal and communist European, Jewish and Indian students, among them Joe Slovo and Ruth First. Becoming increasingly politicised, Mandela marched in August 1943 in support of a successful bus boycott to reverse fare rises. Joining the ANC, he was increasingly influenced by Sisulu, spending time with other activists at Sisulu's Orlando house, including his old friend Oliver Tambo. In 1943, Mandela met Anton Lembede, an ANC member affiliated with the "Africanist" branch of African nationalism, which was virulently opposed to a racially united front against colonialism and imperialism or to an alliance with the communists. Despite his friendships with non-blacks and communists, Mandela embraced Lembede's views, believing that black Africans should be entirely independent in their struggle for political self-determination. Deciding on the need for a youth wing to mass-mobilise Africans in opposition to their subjugation, Mandela was among a delegation that approached ANC president Alfred Bitini Xuma on the subject at his home in Sophiatown; the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) was founded on Easter Sunday 1944 in the Bantu Men's Social Centre, with Lembede as president and Mandela as a member of its executive committee.
At Sisulu's house, Mandela met Evelyn Mase, a trainee nurse and ANC activist from Engcobo, Transkei. Entering a relationship and marrying in October 1944, they initially lived with her relatives until moving into a rented house in the township of Orlando in early 1946. Their first child, Madiba "Thembi" Thembekile, was born in February 1945; a daughter, Makaziwe, was born in 1947 but died of meningitis nine months later. Mandela enjoyed home life, welcoming his mother and his sister, Leabie, to stay with him. In early 1947, his three years of articles ended at Witkin, Sidelsky and Eidelman, and he decided to become a full-time student, subsisting on loans from the Bantu Welfare Trust.
In July 1947, Mandela rushed Lembede, who was ill, to hospital, where he died; he was succeeded as ANCYL president by the more moderate Peter Mda, who agreed to co-operate with communists and non-blacks, appointing Mandela ANCYL secretary. Mandela disagreed with Mda's approach, and in December 1947 supported an unsuccessful measure to expel communists from the ANCYL, considering their ideology un-African. In 1947, Mandela was elected to the executive committee of the ANC's Transvaal Province branch, serving under regional president C. S. Ramohanoe. When Ramohanoe acted against the wishes of the committee by co-operating with Indians and communists, Mandela was one of those who forced his resignation.
In the South African general election in 1948, in which only whites were permitted to vote, the Afrikaner-dominated Herenigde Nasionale Party under Daniel François Malan took power, soon uniting with the Afrikaner Party to form the National Party. Openly racialist, the party codified and expanded racial segregation with new apartheid legislation. Gaining increasing influence in the ANC, Mandela and his party cadre allies began advocating direct action against apartheid, such as boycotts and strikes, influenced by the tactics already employed by South Africa's Indian community. Xuma did not support these measures and was removed from the presidency in a vote of no confidence, replaced by James Moroka and a more militant executive committee containing Sisulu, Mda, Tambo and Godfrey Pitje. Mandela later related that he and his colleagues had "guided the ANC to a more radical and revolutionary path." Having devoted his time to politics, Mandela failed his final year at Witwatersrand three times; he was ultimately denied his degree in December 1949.
Defiance Campaign and Transvaal ANC Presidency: 1950–1954
Mandela took Xuma's place on the ANC national executive in March 1950, and that same year was elected national president of the ANCYL. In March, the Defend Free Speech Convention was held in Johannesburg, bringing together African, Indian and communist activists to call a May Day general strike in protest against apartheid and white minority rule. Mandela opposed the strike because it was multi-racial and not ANC-led, but a majority of black workers took part, resulting in increased police repression and the introduction of the Suppression of Communism Act, 1950, affecting the actions of all protest groups. At the ANC national conference of December 1951, he continued arguing against a racially united front, but was outvoted.
Thereafter, Mandela rejected Lembede's Africanism and embraced the idea of a multi-racial front against apartheid. Influenced by friends like Moses Kotane and by the Soviet Union's support for wars of national liberation, his mistrust of communism broke down and he began reading literature by Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Mao Zedong, eventually embracing the Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism. Commenting on communism, he later stated that he "found [himself] strongly drawn to the idea of a classless society which, to [his] mind, was similar to traditional African culture where life was shared and communal." In April 1952, Mandela began work at the H.M. Basner law firm, which was owned by a communist, although his increasing commitment to work and activism meant he spent less time with his family.
In 1952, the ANC began preparation for a joint Defiance Campaign against apartheid with Indian and communist groups, founding a National Voluntary Board to recruit volunteers. The campaign was designed to follow the path of nonviolent resistance influenced by Mahatma Gandhi; some supported this for ethical reasons, but Mandela instead considered it pragmatic. At a Durban rally on 22 June, Mandela addressed an assembled crowd of 10,000 people, initiating the campaign protests for which he was arrested and briefly interned in Marshall Square prison. These events established Mandela as one of the best-known black political figures in South Africa. With further protests, the ANC's membership grew from 20,000 to 100,000 members; the government responded with mass arrests and introduced the Public Safety Act, 1953 to permit martial law. In May, authorities banned Transvaal ANC president J. B. Marks from making public appearances; unable to maintain his position, he recommended Mandela as his successor. Although Africanists opposed his candidacy, Mandela was elected to be regional president in October.
In July 1952, Mandela was arrested under the Suppression of Communism Act and stood trial as one of the 21 accused—among them Moroka, Sisulu and Yusuf Dadoo—in Johannesburg. Found guilty of "statutory communism", a term that the government used to describe most opposition to apartheid, their sentence of nine months' hard labour was suspended for two years. In December, Mandela was given a six-month ban from attending meetings or talking to more than one individual at a time, making his Transvaal ANC presidency impractical, and during this period the Defiance Campaign petered out. In September 1953, Andrew Kunene read out Mandela's "No Easy Walk to Freedom" speech at a Transvaal ANC meeting; the title was taken from a quote by Indian independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru, a seminal influence on Mandela's thought. The speech laid out a contingency plan for a scenario in which the ANC was banned. This Mandela Plan, or M-Plan, involved dividing the organisation into a cell structure with a more centralised leadership.
Mandela obtained work as an attorney for the firm Terblanche and Briggish, before moving to the liberal-run Helman and Michel, passing qualification exams to become a full-fledged attorney. In August 1953, Mandela and Tambo opened their own law firm, Mandela and Tambo, operating in downtown Johannesburg. The only African-run law firm in the country, it was popular with aggrieved black people, often dealing with cases of police brutality. Disliked by the authorities, the firm was forced to relocate to a remote location after their office permit was removed under the Group Areas Act; as a result, their clientele dwindled. As a lawyer of aristocratic heritage, Mandela was part of Johannesburg's elite black middle-class, and accorded much respect from the black community. Although a second daughter, Makaziwe Phumia, was born in May 1954, Mandela's relationship with Evelyn became strained, and she accused him of adultery. He may have had affairs with ANC member Lillian Ngoyi and secretary Ruth Mompati; various individuals close to Mandela in this period have stated that the latter bore him a child. Disgusted by her son's behaviour, Nosekeni returned to Transkei, while Evelyn embraced the Jehovah's Witnesses and rejected Mandela's preoccupation with politics.
Congress of the People and the Treason Trial: 1955–1961
After taking part in the unsuccessful protest to prevent the forced relocation of all black people from the Sophiatown suburb of Johannesburg in February 1955, Mandela concluded that violent action would prove necessary to end apartheid and white minority rule. On his advice, Sisulu requested weaponry from the People's Republic of China, which was denied. Although the Chinese government supported the anti-apartheid struggle, they believed the movement insufficiently prepared for guerrilla warfare. With the involvement of the South African Indian Congress, the Coloured People's Congress, the South African Congress of Trade Unions and the Congress of Democrats, the ANC planned a Congress of the People, calling on all South Africans to send in proposals for a post-apartheid era. Based on the responses, a Freedom Charter was drafted by Rusty Bernstein, calling for the creation of a democratic, non-racialist state with the nationalisation of major industry. The charter was adopted at a June 1955 conference in Kliptown, which was forcibly closed down by police. The tenets of the Freedom Charter remained important for Mandela, and in 1956 he described it as "an inspiration to the people of South Africa".
Following the end of a second ban in September 1955, Mandela went on a working holiday to Transkei to discuss the implications of the Bantu Authorities Act, 1951 with local Xhosa chiefs, also visiting his mother and Noengland before proceeding to Cape Town. In March 1956, he received his third ban on public appearances, restricting him to Johannesburg for five years, but he often defied it. Mandela's marriage broke down and Evelyn left him, taking their children to live with her brother. Initiating divorce proceedings in May 1956, she claimed that Mandela had physically abused her; he denied the allegations and fought for custody of their children. She withdrew her petition of separation in November, but Mandela filed for divorce in January 1958; the divorce was finalised in March, with the children placed in Evelyn's care. During the divorce proceedings, he began courting a social worker, Winnie Madikizela, whom he married in Bizana in June 1958. She later became involved in ANC activities, spending several weeks in prison. Together they had two children: Zenani, born in February 1959, and Zindziswa (1960–2020).
In December 1956, Mandela was arrested alongside most of the ANC national executive and accused of "high treason" against the state. Held in Johannesburg Prison amid mass protests, they underwent a preparatory examination before being granted bail. The defence's refutation began in January 1957, overseen by defence lawyer Vernon Berrangé, and continued until the case was adjourned in September. In January 1958, Oswald Pirow was appointed to prosecute the case, and in February the judge ruled that there was "sufficient reason" for the defendants to go on trial in the Transvaal Supreme Court. The formal Treason Trial began in Pretoria in August 1958, with the defendants successfully applying to have the three judges—all linked to the governing National Party—replaced. In August, one charge was dropped, and in October the prosecution withdrew its indictment, submitting a reformulated version in November which argued that the ANC leadership committed high treason by advocating violent revolution, a charge the defendants denied.
In April 1959, Africanists dissatisfied with the ANC's united front approach founded the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC); Mandela disagreed with the PAC's racially exclusionary views, describing them as "immature" and "naïve". Both parties took part in an anti-pass campaign in early 1960, in which Africans burned the passes that they were legally obliged to carry. One of the PAC-organised demonstrations was fired upon by police, resulting in the deaths of 69 protesters in the Sharpeville massacre. The incident brought international condemnation of the government and resulted in rioting throughout South Africa, with Mandela publicly burning his pass in solidarity.
Responding to the unrest, the government implemented state of emergency measures, declaring martial law and banning the ANC and PAC; in March, they arrested Mandela and other activists, imprisoning them for five months without charge in the unsanitary conditions of the Pretoria Local prison. Imprisonment caused problems for Mandela and his co-defendants in the Treason Trial; their lawyers could not reach them, and so it was decided that the lawyers would withdraw in protest until the accused were freed from prison when the state of emergency was lifted in late August 1960. Over the following months, Mandela used his free time to organise an All-In African Conference near Pietermaritzburg, Natal, in March 1961, at which 1,400 anti-apartheid delegates met, agreeing on a stay-at-home strike to mark 31 May, the day South Africa became a republic. On 29 March 1961, six years after the Treason Trial began, the judges produced a verdict of not guilty, ruling that there was insufficient evidence to convict the accused of "high treason", since they had advocated neither communism nor violent revolution; the outcome embarrassed the government.
MK, the SACP, and African tour: 1961–62
Disguised as a chauffeur, Mandela travelled around the country incognito, organising the ANC's new cell structure and the planned mass stay-at-home strike. Referred to as the "Black Pimpernel" in the press—a reference to Emma Orczy's 1905 novel The Scarlet Pimpernel—a warrant for his arrest was put out by the police. Mandela held secret meetings with reporters, and after the government failed to prevent the strike, he warned them that many anti-apartheid activists would soon resort to violence through groups like the PAC's Poqo. He believed that the ANC should form an armed group to channel some of this violence in a controlled direction, convincing both ANC leader Albert Luthuli—who was morally opposed to violence—and allied activist groups of its necessity.
Inspired by the actions of Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement in the Cuban Revolution, in 1961 Mandela, Sisulu and Slovo co-founded Umkhonto we Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation", abbreviated MK). Becoming chairman of the militant group, Mandela gained ideas from literature on guerrilla warfare by Marxist militants Mao and Che Guevara as well as from the military theorist Carl von Clausewitz. Although initially declared officially separate from the ANC so as not to taint the latter's reputation, MK was later widely recognised as the party's armed wing. Most early MK members were white communists who were able to conceal Mandela in their homes; after hiding in communist Wolfie Kodesh's flat in Berea, Mandela moved to the communist-owned Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, there joined by Raymond Mhlaba, Slovo and Bernstein, who put together the MK constitution. Although in later life Mandela denied, for political reasons, ever being a member of the Communist Party, historical research published in 2011 strongly suggested that he had joined in the late 1950s or early 1960s. This was confirmed by both the SACP and the ANC after Mandela's death. According to the SACP, he was not only a member of the party, but also served on its Central Committee.
Operating through a cell structure, MK planned to carry out acts of sabotage that would exert maximum pressure on the government with minimum casualties; they sought to bomb military installations, power plants, telephone lines, and transport links at night, when civilians were not present. Mandela stated that they chose sabotage because it was the least harmful action, did not involve killing, and offered the best hope for racial reconciliation afterwards; he nevertheless acknowledged that should this have failed then guerrilla warfare might have been necessary. Soon after ANC leader Luthuli was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, MK publicly announced its existence with 57 bombings on Dingane's Day (16 December) 1961, followed by further attacks on New Year's Eve.
The ANC decided to send Mandela as a delegate to the February 1962 meeting of the Pan-African Freedom Movement for East, Central and Southern Africa (PAFMECSA) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Leaving South Africa in secret via Bechuanaland, on his way Mandela visited Tanganyika and met with its president, Julius Nyerere. Arriving in Ethiopia, Mandela met with Emperor Haile Selassie I, and gave his speech after Selassie's at the conference. After the symposium, he travelled to Cairo, Egypt, admiring the political reforms of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, and in April 1962 he went to Morocco where asked El Khatib to meet the king to ask him to give him £5,000. The next day he got the £5,000 along with some weapons and training to Mandela's soldier, and then went to Tunis, Tunisia, where President Habib Bourguiba gave him £5,000 for weaponry. He proceeded to Morocco, Mali, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Senegal, receiving funds from Liberian president William Tubman and Guinean president Ahmed Sékou Touré. He left Africa for London, England, where he met anti-apartheid activists, reporters and prominent politicians. Upon returning to Ethiopia, he began a six-month course in guerrilla warfare, but completed only two months before being recalled to South Africa by the ANC's leadership.
Imprisonment
Arrest and Rivonia trial: 1962–1964
On 5 August 1962, police captured Mandela along with fellow activist Cecil Williams near Howick. Many MK members suspected that the authorities had been tipped off with regard to Mandela's whereabouts, although Mandela himself gave these ideas little credence. In later years, Donald Rickard, a former American diplomat, revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency, which feared Mandela's associations with communists, had informed the South African police of his location. Jailed in Johannesburg's Marshall Square prison, Mandela was charged with inciting workers' strikes and leaving the country without permission. Representing himself with Slovo as legal advisor, Mandela intended to use the trial to showcase "the ANC's moral opposition to racism" while supporters demonstrated outside the court. Moved to Pretoria, where Winnie could visit him, he began correspondence studies for a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree from the University of London International Programmes. His hearing began in October, but he disrupted proceedings by wearing a traditional kaross, refusing to call any witnesses, and turning his plea of mitigation into a political speech. Found guilty, he was sentenced to five years' imprisonment; as he left the courtroom, supporters sang "Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika".
On 11 July 1963, police raided Liliesleaf Farm, arresting those that they found there and uncovering paperwork documenting MK's activities, some of which mentioned Mandela. The Rivonia Trial began at Pretoria Supreme Court in October, with Mandela and his comrades charged with four counts of sabotage and conspiracy to violently overthrow the government; their chief prosecutor was Percy Yutar. Judge Quartus de Wet soon threw out the prosecution's case for insufficient evidence, but Yutar reformulated the charges, presenting his new case from December 1963 until February 1964, calling 173 witnesses and bringing thousands of documents and photographs to the trial.
Although four of the accused denied involvement with MK, Mandela and the other five accused admitted sabotage but denied that they had ever agreed to initiate guerrilla war against the government. They used the trial to highlight their political cause; at the opening of the defence's proceedings, Mandela gave his three-hour "I Am Prepared to Die" speech. That speech—which was inspired by Castro's "History Will Absolve Me"—was widely reported in the press despite official censorship. The trial gained international attention; there were global calls for the release of the accused from the United Nations and World Peace Council, while the University of London Union voted Mandela to its presidency. On 12 June 1964, justice De Wet found Mandela and two of his co-accused guilty on all four charges; although the prosecution had called for the death sentence to be applied, the judge instead condemned them to life imprisonment.
Robben Island: 1964–1982
In 1964, Mandela and his co-accused were transferred from Pretoria to the prison on Robben Island, remaining there for the next 18 years. Isolated from non-political prisoners in Section B, Mandela was imprisoned in a damp concrete cell measuring 8 feet (2.4 m) by 7 feet (2.1 m), with a straw mat on which to sleep. Verbally and physically harassed by several white prison wardens, the Rivonia Trial prisoners spent their days breaking rocks into gravel, until being reassigned in January 1965 to work in a lime quarry. Mandela was initially forbidden to wear sunglasses, and the glare from the lime permanently damaged his eyesight. At night, he worked on his LLB degree, which he was obtaining from the University of London through a correspondence course with Wolsey Hall, Oxford, but newspapers were forbidden, and he was locked in solitary confinement on several occasions for the possession of smuggled news clippings. He was initially classified as the lowest grade of prisoner, Class D, meaning that he was permitted one visit and one letter every six months, although all mail was heavily censored.
The political prisoners took part in work and hunger strikes—the latter considered largely ineffective by Mandela—to improve prison conditions, viewing this as a microcosm of the anti-apartheid struggle. ANC prisoners elected him to their four-man "High Organ" along with Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and Raymond Mhlaba, and he involved himself in a group, named Ulundi, that represented all political prisoners (including Eddie Daniels) on the island, through which he forged links with PAC and Yu Chi Chan Club members. Initiating the "University of Robben Island", whereby prisoners lectured on their own areas of expertise, he debated socio-political topics with his comrades.
Though attending Christian Sunday services, Mandela studied Islam. He also studied Afrikaans, hoping to build a mutual respect with the warders and convert them to his cause. Various official visitors met with Mandela, most significantly the liberal parliamentary representative Helen Suzman of the Progressive Party, who championed Mandela's cause outside of prison. In September 1970, he met British Labour Party politician Denis Healey. South African Minister of Justice Jimmy Kruger visited in December 1974, but he and Mandela did not get along with each other. His mother visited in 1968, dying shortly after, and his firstborn son Thembi died in a car accident the following year; Mandela was forbidden from attending either funeral. His wife was rarely able to see him, being regularly imprisoned for political activity, and his daughters first visited in December 1975. Winnie was released from prison in 1977 but was forcibly settled in Brandfort and remained unable to see him.
From 1967 onwards, prison conditions improved. Black prisoners were given trousers rather than shorts, games were permitted, and the standard of their food was raised. In 1969, an escape plan for Mandela was developed by Gordon Bruce, but it was abandoned after the conspiracy was infiltrated by an agent of the South African Bureau of State Security (BOSS), who hoped to see Mandela shot during the escape. In 1970, Commander Piet Badenhorst became commanding officer. Mandela, seeing an increase in the physical and mental abuse of prisoners, complained to visiting judges, who had Badenhorst reassigned. He was replaced by Commander Willie Willemse, who developed a co-operative relationship with Mandela and was keen to improve prison standards.
By 1975, Mandela had become a Class A prisoner, which allowed him greater numbers of visits and letters. He corresponded with anti-apartheid activists like Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Desmond Tutu. That year, he began his autobiography, which was smuggled to London, but remained unpublished at the time; prison authorities discovered several pages, and his LLB study privileges were revoked for four years. Instead, he devoted his spare time to gardening and reading until the authorities permitted him to resume his LLB degree studies in 1980.
By the late 1960s, Mandela's fame had been eclipsed by Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM). Seeing the ANC as ineffectual, the BCM called for militant action, but, following the Soweto uprising of 1976, many BCM activists were imprisoned on Robben Island. Mandela tried to build a relationship with these young radicals, although he was critical of their racialism and contempt for white anti-apartheid activists. Renewed international interest in his plight came in July 1978, when he celebrated his 60th birthday. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in Lesotho, the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding in India in 1979, and the Freedom of the City of Glasgow, Scotland in 1981. In March 1980, the slogan "Free Mandela!" was developed by journalist Percy Qoboza, sparking an international campaign that led the UN Security Council to call for his release. Despite increasing foreign pressure, the government refused, relying on its Cold War allies US president Ronald Reagan and British prime minister Margaret Thatcher; both considered Mandela's ANC a terrorist organisation sympathetic to communism and supported its suppression.
Pollsmoor Prison: 1982–1988
In April 1982, Mandela was transferred to Pollsmoor Prison in Tokai, Cape Town, along with senior ANC leaders Walter Sisulu, Andrew Mlangeni, Ahmed Kathrada and Raymond Mhlaba; they believed that they were being isolated to remove their influence on younger activists at Robben Island. Conditions at Pollsmoor were better than at Robben Island, although Mandela missed the camaraderie and scenery of the island. Getting on well with Pollsmoor's commanding officer, Brigadier Munro, Mandela was permitted to create a roof garden; he also read voraciously and corresponded widely, now being permitted 52 letters a year. He was appointed patron of the multi-racial United Democratic Front (UDF), founded to combat reforms implemented by South African president P. W. Botha. Botha's National Party government had permitted Coloured and Indian citizens to vote for their own parliaments, which had control over education, health and housing, but black Africans were excluded from the system. Like Mandela, the UDF saw this as an attempt to divide the anti-apartheid movement on racial lines.
The early 1980s witnessed an escalation of violence across the country, and many predicted civil war. This was accompanied by economic stagnation as various multinational banks—under pressure from an international lobby—had stopped investing in South Africa. Numerous banks and Thatcher asked Botha to release Mandela—then at the height of his international fame—to defuse the volatile situation. Although considering Mandela a dangerous "arch-Marxist", Botha offered him, in February 1985, a release from prison if he "unconditionally rejected violence as a political weapon". Mandela spurned the offer, releasing a statement through his daughter Zindzi stating, "What freedom am I being offered while the organisation of the people [ANC] remains banned? Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts."
In 1985, Mandela underwent surgery on an enlarged prostate gland before being given new solitary quarters on the ground floor. He was met by an international delegation sent to negotiate a settlement, but Botha's government refused to co-operate, calling a state of emergency in June and initiating a police crackdown on unrest. The anti-apartheid resistance fought back, with the ANC committing 231 attacks in 1986 and 235 in 1987. The violence escalated as the government used the army and police to combat the resistance and provided covert support for vigilante groups and the Zulu nationalist movement Inkatha, which was involved in an increasingly violent struggle with the ANC. Mandela requested talks with Botha but was denied, instead secretly meeting with Minister of Justice Kobie Coetsee in 1987, and having a further 11 meetings over the next three years. Coetsee organised negotiations between Mandela and a team of four government figures starting in May 1988; the team agreed to the release of political prisoners and the legalisation of the ANC on the condition that they permanently renounce violence, break links with the Communist Party, and not insist on majority rule. Mandela rejected these conditions, insisting that the ANC would end its armed activities only when the government renounced violence.
Mandela's 70th birthday in July 1988 attracted international attention, including a tribute concert at London's Wembley Stadium that was televised and watched by an estimated 200 million viewers. Although presented globally as a heroic figure, he faced personal problems when ANC leaders informed him that Winnie had set herself up as head of a gang, the "Mandela United Football Club", which had been responsible for torturing and killing opponents—including children—in Soweto. Though some encouraged him to divorce her, he decided to remain loyal until she was found guilty by trial.
Victor Verster Prison and release: 1988–1990
Recovering from tuberculosis exacerbated by the damp conditions in his cell, Mandela was moved to Victor Verster Prison, near Paarl, in December 1988. He was housed in the relative comfort of a warder's house with a personal cook, and he used the time to complete his LLB degree. While there, he was permitted many visitors and organised secret communications with exiled ANC leader Oliver Tambo.
In 1989, Botha suffered a stroke; although he retained the state presidency, he stepped down as leader of the National Party, to be replaced by F. W. de Klerk. In a surprise move, Botha invited Mandela to a meeting over tea in July 1989, an invitation Mandela considered genial. Botha was replaced as state president by de Klerk six weeks later; the new president believed that apartheid was unsustainable and released a number of ANC prisoners. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, de Klerk called his cabinet together to debate legalising the ANC and freeing Mandela. Although some were deeply opposed to his plans, de Klerk met with Mandela in December to discuss the situation, a meeting both men considered friendly, before legalising all formerly banned political parties in February 1990 and announcing Mandela's unconditional release. Shortly thereafter, for the first time in 20 years, photographs of Mandela were allowed to be published in South Africa.
Leaving Victor Verster Prison on 11 February, Mandela held Winnie's hand in front of amassed crowds and the press; the event was broadcast live across the world. Driven to Cape Town's City Hall through crowds, he gave a speech declaring his commitment to peace and reconciliation with the white minority, but he made it clear that the ANC's armed struggle was not over and would continue as "a purely defensive action against the violence of apartheid". He expressed hope that the government would agree to negotiations, so that "there may no longer be the need for the armed struggle", and insisted that his main focus was to bring peace to the black majority and give them the right to vote in national and local elections. Staying at Tutu's home, in the following days Mandela met with friends, activists, and press, giving a speech to an estimated 100,000 people at Johannesburg's FNB Stadium.
End of apartheid and elections
Early negotiations: 1990–91
Mandela proceeded on an African tour, meeting supporters and politicians in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Libya and Algeria, and continuing to Sweden, where he was reunited with Tambo, and London, where he appeared at the Nelson Mandela: An International Tribute for a Free South Africa concert at Wembley Stadium. Encouraging foreign countries to support sanctions against the apartheid government, he met President François Mitterrand in France, Pope John Paul II in the Vatican, and Thatcher in the United Kingdom. In the United States, he met President George H. W. Bush, addressed both Houses of Congress and visited eight cities, being particularly popular among the African American community. In Cuba, he became friends with President Castro, whom he had long admired. He met President R. Venkataraman in India, President Suharto in Indonesia, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in Malaysia, and Prime Minister Bob Hawke in Australia. He visited Japan, but not the Soviet Union, a longtime ANC supporter.
In May 1990, Mandela led a multiracial ANC delegation into preliminary negotiations with a government delegation of 11 Afrikaner men. Mandela impressed them with his discussions of Afrikaner history, and the negotiations led to the Groot Schuur Minute, in which the government lifted the state of emergency. In August, Mandela—recognising the ANC's severe military disadvantage—offered a ceasefire, the Pretoria Minute, for which he was widely criticised by MK activists. He spent much time trying to unify and build the ANC, appearing at a Johannesburg conference in December attended by 1,600 delegates, many of whom found him more moderate than expected. At the ANC's July 1991 national conference in Durban, Mandela admitted that the party had faults and wanted to build a task force for securing majority rule. At the conference, he was elected ANC President, replacing the ailing Tambo, and a 50-strong multiracial, mixed gendered national executive was elected.
Mandela was given an office in the newly purchased ANC headquarters at Shell House, Johannesburg, and moved into Winnie's large Soweto home. Their marriage was increasingly strained as he learned of her affair with Dali Mpofu, but he supported her during her trial for kidnapping and assault. He gained funding for her defence from the International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa and from Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, but, in June 1991, she was found guilty and sentenced to six years in prison, reduced to two on appeal. On 13 April 1992, Mandela publicly announced his separation from Winnie. The ANC forced her to step down from the national executive for misappropriating ANC funds; Mandela moved into the mostly white Johannesburg suburb of Houghton. Mandela's prospects for a peaceful transition were further damaged by an increase in "black-on-black" violence, particularly between ANC and Inkatha supporters in KwaZulu-Natal, which resulted in thousands of deaths. Mandela met with Inkatha leader Buthelezi, but the ANC prevented further negotiations on the issue. Mandela argued that there was a "third force" within the state intelligence services fuelling the "slaughter of the people" and openly blamed de Klerk—whom he increasingly distrusted—for the Sebokeng massacre. In September 1991, a national peace conference was held in Johannesburg at which Mandela, Buthelezi and de Klerk signed a peace accord, though the violence continued.
CODESA talks: 1991–92
The Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) began in December 1991 at the Johannesburg World Trade Centre, attended by 228 delegates from 19 political parties. Although Cyril Ramaphosa led the ANC's delegation, Mandela remained a key figure. After de Klerk used the closing speech to condemn the ANC's violence, Mandela took to the stage to denounce de Klerk as the "head of an illegitimate, discredited minority regime". Dominated by the National Party and ANC, little negotiation was achieved. CODESA 2 was held in May 1992, at which de Klerk insisted that post-apartheid South Africa must use a federal system with a rotating presidency to ensure the protection of ethnic minorities; Mandela opposed this, demanding a unitary system governed by majority rule. Following the Boipatong massacre of ANC activists by government-aided Inkatha militants, Mandela called off the negotiations, before attending a meeting of the Organisation of African Unity in Senegal, at which he called for a special session of the UN Security Council and proposed that a UN peacekeeping force be stationed in South Africa to prevent "state terrorism". Calling for domestic mass action, in August the ANC organised the largest-ever strike in South African history, and supporters marched on Pretoria.
Following the Bisho massacre, in which 28 ANC supporters and one soldier were shot dead by the Ciskei Defence Force during a protest march, Mandela realised that mass action was leading to further violence and resumed negotiations in September. He agreed to do so on the conditions that all political prisoners be released, that Zulu traditional weapons be banned, and that Zulu hostels would be fenced off; de Klerk reluctantly agreed. The negotiations agreed that a multiracial general election would be held, resulting in a five-year coalition government of national unity and a constitutional assembly that gave the National Party continuing influence. The ANC also conceded to safeguarding the jobs of white civil servants; such concessions brought fierce internal criticism. The duo agreed on an interim constitution based on a liberal democratic model, guaranteeing separation of powers, creating a constitutional court, and including a US-style bill of rights; it also divided the country into nine provinces, each with its own premier and civil service, a concession between de Klerk's desire for federalism and Mandela's for unitary government.
The democratic process was threatened by the Concerned South Africans Group (COSAG), an alliance of black ethnic-secessionist groups like Inkatha and far-right Afrikaner parties; in June 1993, one of the latter—the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB)—attacked the Kempton Park World Trade Centre. Following the murder of ANC activist Chris Hani, Mandela made a publicised speech to calm rioting, soon after appearing at a mass funeral in Soweto for Tambo, who had died of a stroke. In July 1993, both Mandela and de Klerk visited the United States, independently meeting President Bill Clinton, and each receiving the Liberty Medal. Soon after, Mandela and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway. Influenced by Thabo Mbeki, Mandela began meeting with big business figures, and he played down his support for nationalisation, fearing that he would scare away much-needed foreign investment. Although criticised by socialist ANC members, he had been encouraged to embrace private enterprise by members of the Chinese and Vietnamese Communist parties at the January 1992 World Economic Forum in Switzerland.
General election: 1994
With the election set for 27 April 1994, the ANC began campaigning, opening 100 election offices and orchestrating People's Forums across the country at which Mandela could appear, as a popular figure with great status among black South Africans. The ANC campaigned on a Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) to build a million houses in five years, introduce universal free education and extend access to water and electricity. The party's slogan was "a better life for all", although it was not explained how this development would be funded. With the exception of the Weekly Mail and the New Nation, South Africa's press opposed Mandela's election, fearing continued ethnic strife, instead supporting the National or Democratic Party. Mandela devoted much time to fundraising for the ANC, touring North America, Europe and Asia to meet wealthy donors, including former supporters of the apartheid regime. He also urged a reduction in the voting age from 18 to 14; rejected by the ANC, this policy became the subject of ridicule.
Concerned that COSAG would undermine the election, particularly in the wake of the conflict in Bophuthatswana and the Shell House massacre—incidents of violence involving the AWB and Inkatha, respectively—Mandela met with Afrikaner politicians and generals, including P. W. Botha, Pik Botha and Constand Viljoen, persuading many to work within the democratic system. With de Klerk, he also convinced Inkatha's Buthelezi to enter the elections rather than launch a war of secession. As leaders of the two major parties, de Klerk and Mandela appeared on a televised debate; Mandela's offer to shake his hand surprised him, leading some commentators to deem it a victory for Mandela. The election went ahead with little violence, although an AWB cell killed 20 with car bombs. As widely expected, the ANC won a sweeping victory, taking 63% of the vote, just short of the two-thirds majority needed to unilaterally change the constitution. The ANC was also victorious in seven provinces, with Inkatha and the National Party each taking one. Mandela voted at the Ohlange High School in Durban, and though the ANC's victory assured his election as president, he publicly accepted that the election had been marred by instances of fraud and sabotage.
Presidency of South Africa: 1994–1999
The newly elected National Assembly's first act was to formally elect Mandela as South Africa's first black chief executive. His inauguration took place in Pretoria on 10 May 1994, televised to a billion viewers globally. The event was attended by four thousand guests, including world leaders from a wide range of geographic and ideological backgrounds. Mandela headed a Government of National Unity dominated by the ANC—which had no experience of governing by itself—but containing representatives from the National Party and Inkatha. Under the Interim Constitution, Inkatha and the National Party were entitled to seats in the government by virtue of winning at least 20 seats. In keeping with earlier agreements, both de Klerk and Thabo Mbeki were given the position of Deputy President. Although Mbeki had not been his first choice for the job, Mandela grew to rely heavily on him throughout his presidency, allowing him to shape policy details. Moving into the presidential office at Tuynhuys in Cape Town, Mandela allowed de Klerk to retain the presidential residence in the Groote Schuur estate, instead settling into the nearby Westbrooke manor, which he renamed "Genadendal", meaning "Valley of Mercy" in Afrikaans. Retaining his Houghton home, he also had a house built in his home village of Qunu, which he visited regularly, meeting with locals, and judging tribal disputes.
Aged 76, he faced various ailments, and although exhibiting continued energy, he felt isolated and lonely. He often entertained celebrities, such as Michael Jackson, Whoopi Goldberg and the Spice Girls, and befriended ultra-rich businessmen, like Harry Oppenheimer of Anglo American. He also met with Queen Elizabeth II on her March 1995 state visit to South Africa, which earned him strong criticism from ANC anti-capitalists. Despite his opulent surroundings, Mandela lived simply, donating a third of his R 552,000 annual income to the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund, which he had founded in 1995. Although dismantling press censorship, speaking out in favour of freedom of the press and befriending many journalists, Mandela was critical of much of the country's media, noting that it was overwhelmingly owned and run by middle-class whites and believing that it focused too heavily on scaremongering about crime.
In December 1994, Mandela published Long Walk to Freedom, an autobiography based around a manuscript he had written in prison, augmented by interviews conducted with American journalist Richard Stengel. In late 1994, he attended the 49th conference of the ANC in Bloemfontein, at which a more militant national executive was elected, among them Winnie Mandela; although she expressed an interest in reconciling, Nelson initiated divorce proceedings in August 1995. By 1995, he had entered into a relationship with Graça Machel, a Mozambican political activist 27 years his junior who was the widow of former president Samora Machel. They had first met in July 1990 when she was still in mourning, but their friendship grew into a partnership, with Machel accompanying him on many of his foreign visits. She turned down Mandela's first marriage proposal, wanting to retain some independence and dividing her time between Mozambique and Johannesburg.
National reconciliation
Presiding over the transition from apartheid minority rule to a multicultural democracy, Mandela saw national reconciliation as the primary task of his presidency. Having seen other post-colonial African economies damaged by the departure of white elites, Mandela worked to reassure South Africa's white population that they were protected and represented in "the Rainbow Nation". Although his Government of National Unity would be dominated by the ANC, he attempted to create a broad coalition by appointing de Klerk as Deputy President and appointing other National Party officials as ministers for Agriculture, Environment, and Minerals and Energy, as well as naming Buthelezi as Minister for Home Affairs. The other cabinet positions were taken by ANC members, many of whom—like Joe Modise, Alfred Nzo, Joe Slovo, Mac Maharaj and Dullah Omar—had long been comrades of Mandela, although others, such as Tito Mboweni and Jeff Radebe, were far younger. Mandela's relationship with de Klerk was strained; Mandela thought that de Klerk was intentionally provocative, and de Klerk felt that he was being intentionally humiliated by the president. In January 1995, Mandela heavily chastised de Klerk for awarding amnesty to 3,500 police officers just before the election, and later criticised him for defending former Minister of Defence Magnus Malan when the latter was charged with murder.
Mandela personally met with senior figures of the apartheid regime, including lawyer Percy Yutar and Hendrik Verwoerd's widow, Betsie Schoombie, also laying a wreath by the statue of Afrikaner hero Daniel Theron. Emphasising personal forgiveness and reconciliation, he announced that "courageous people do not fear forgiving, for the sake of peace." He encouraged black South Africans to get behind the previously hated national rugby team, the Springboks, as South Africa hosted the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Mandela wore a Springbok shirt at the final against New Zealand, and after the Springboks won the match, Mandela presented the trophy to captain Francois Pienaar, an Afrikaner. This was widely seen as a major step in the reconciliation of white and black South Africans; as de Klerk later put it, "Mandela won the hearts of millions of white rugby fans." Mandela's efforts at reconciliation assuaged the fears of white people, but also drew criticism from more militant black people. Among the latter was his estranged wife, Winnie, who accused the ANC of being more interested in appeasing the white community than in helping the black majority.
Mandela oversaw the formation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate crimes committed under apartheid by both the government and the ANC, appointing Tutu as its chair. To prevent the creation of martyrs, the commission granted individual amnesties in exchange for testimony of crimes committed during the apartheid era. Dedicated in February 1996, it held two years of hearings detailing rapes, torture, bombings and assassinations before issuing its final report in October 1998. Both de Klerk and Mbeki appealed to have parts of the report suppressed, though only de Klerk's appeal was successful. Mandela praised the commission's work, stating that it "had helped us move away from the past to concentrate on the present and the future".
Domestic programmes
Mandela's administration inherited a country with a huge disparity in wealth and services between white and black communities. Of a population of 40 million, around 23 million lacked electricity or adequate sanitation, and 12 million lacked clean water supplies, with 2 million children not in school and a third of the population illiterate. There was 33% unemployment, and just under half of the population lived below the poverty line. Government financial reserves were nearly depleted, with a fifth of the national budget being spent on debt repayment, meaning that the extent of the promised Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) was scaled back, with none of the proposed nationalisation or job creation. In 1996, the RDP was replaced with a new policy, Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR), which maintained South Africa's mixed economy but placed an emphasis on economic growth through a framework of market economics and the encouragement of foreign investment; many in the ANC derided it as a neo-liberal policy that did not address social inequality, no matter how Mandela defended it. In adopting this approach, Mandela's government adhered to the "Washington consensus" advocated by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
Under Mandela's presidency, welfare spending increased by 13% in 1996/97, 13% in 1997/98, and 7% in 1998/99. The government introduced parity in grants for communities, including disability grants, child maintenance grants and old-age pensions, which had previously been set at different levels for South Africa's different racial groups. In 1994, free healthcare was introduced for children under six and pregnant women, a provision extended to all those using primary level public sector health care services in 1996. By the 1999 election, the ANC could boast that due to their policies, 3 million people were connected to telephone lines, 1.5 million children were brought into the education system, 500 clinics were upgraded or constructed, 2 million people were connected to the electricity grid, water access was extended to 3 million people, and 750,000 houses were constructed, housing nearly 3 million people.
The Land Reform Act 3 of 1996 safeguarded the rights of labour tenants living on farms where they grew crops or grazed livestock. This legislation ensured that such tenants could not be evicted without a court order or if they were over the age of 65. Recognising that arms manufacturing was a key industry for the South African economy, Mandela endorsed the trade in weapons but brought in tighter regulations surrounding Armscor to ensure that South African weaponry was not sold to authoritarian regimes. Under Mandela's administration, tourism was increasingly promoted, becoming a major sector of the South African economy.
Critics like Edwin Cameron accused Mandela's government of doing little to stem the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the country; by 1999, 10% of South Africa's population were HIV positive. Mandela later admitted that he had personally neglected the issue, in part due to public reticence in discussing issues surrounding sex in South Africa, and that he had instead left the issue for Mbeki to deal with. Mandela also received criticism for failing to sufficiently combat crime; South Africa had one of the world's highest crime rates, and the activities of international crime syndicates in the country grew significantly throughout the decade. Mandela's administration was also perceived as having failed to deal with the problem of corruption.
Further problems were caused by the exodus of thousands of skilled white South Africans from the country, who were escaping the increasing crime rates, higher taxes and the impact of positive discrimination toward black people in employment. This exodus resulted in a brain drain, and Mandela criticised those who left. At the same time, South Africa experienced an influx of millions of illegal migrants from poorer parts of Africa; although public opinion toward these illegal immigrants was generally unfavourable, characterising them as disease-spreading criminals who were a drain on resources, Mandela called on South Africans to embrace them as "brothers and sisters".
Foreign affairs
Mandela expressed the view that "South Africa's future foreign relations [should] be based on our belief that human rights should be the core of international relations". Following the South African example, Mandela encouraged other nations to resolve conflicts through diplomacy and reconciliation. In September 1998, Mandela was appointed secretary-general of the Non-Aligned Movement, who held their annual conference in Durban. He used the event to criticise the "narrow, chauvinistic interests" of the Israeli government in stalling negotiations to end the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and urged India and Pakistan to negotiate to end the Kashmir conflict, for which he was criticised by both Israel and India. Inspired by the region's economic boom, Mandela sought greater economic relations with East Asia, in particular with Malaysia, although this was prevented by the 1997 Asian financial crisis. He extended diplomatic recognition to the People's Republic of China (PRC), who were growing as an economic force, and initially also to Taiwan, who were already longstanding investors in the South African economy. However, under pressure from the PRC, he cut recognition of Taiwan in November 1996, and he paid an official visit to Beijing in May 1999.
Mandela attracted controversy for his close relationship with Indonesian president Suharto, whose regime was responsible for mass human rights abuses, although on a July 1997 visit to Indonesia he privately urged Suharto to withdraw from the occupation of East Timor. He also faced similar criticism from the West for his government's trade links to Syria, Cuba and Libya and for his personal friendships with Castro and Gaddafi. Castro visited South Africa in 1998 to widespread popular acclaim, and Mandela met Gaddafi in Libya to award him the Order of Good Hope. When Western governments and media criticised these visits, Mandela lambasted such criticism as having racist undertones, and stated that "the enemies of countries in the West are not our enemies." Mandela hoped to resolve the long-running dispute between Libya and the United States and Britain over bringing to trial the two Libyans, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, who were indicted in November 1991 and accused of sabotaging Pan Am Flight 103. Mandela proposed that they be tried in a third country, which was agreed to by all parties; governed by Scots law, the trial was held at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in April 1999, and found one of the two men guilty.
Mandela echoed Mbeki's calls for an "African Renaissance", and he was greatly concerned with issues on the continent. He took a soft diplomatic approach to removing Sani Abacha's military junta in Nigeria but later became a leading figure in calling for sanctions when Abacha's regime increased human rights violations. In 1996, he was appointed chairman of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and initiated unsuccessful negotiations to end the First Congo War in Zaire. He also played a key role as a mediator in the ethnic conflict between Tutsi and Hutu political groups in the Burundian Civil War, helping to initiate a settlement which brought increased stability to the country but did not end the ethnic violence. In South Africa's first post-apartheid military operation, troops were ordered into Lesotho in September 1998 to protect the government of Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili after a disputed election had prompted opposition uprisings. The action was not authorised by Mandela himself, who was out of the country at the time, but by Buthelezi, who was serving as acting president during Mandela's absence, with the approval of Mandela and Mbeki.
Withdrawing from politics
The new Constitution of South Africa was agreed upon by parliament in May 1996, enshrining a series of institutions to place checks on political and administrative authority within a constitutional democracy. De Klerk opposed the implementation of this constitution, and that month he and the National Party withdrew from the coalition government in protest, claiming that the ANC were not treating them as equals. The ANC took over the cabinet positions formerly held by the Nationals, with Mbeki becoming sole Deputy President. Inkatha remained part of the coalition, and when both Mandela and Mbeki were out of the country in September 1998, Buthelezi was appointed "Acting President", marking an improvement in his relationship with Mandela. Although Mandela had often governed decisively in his first two years as president, he had subsequently increasingly delegated duties to Mbeki, retaining only a close personal supervision of intelligence and security measures. During a 1997 visit to London, he said that "the ruler of South Africa, the de facto ruler, is Thabo Mbeki" and that he was "shifting everything to him".
Mandela stepped down as ANC President at the party's December 1997 conference. He hoped that Ramaphosa would succeed him, believing Mbeki to be too inflexible and intolerant of criticism, but the ANC elected Mbeki regardless. Mandela and the Executive supported Jacob Zuma, a Zulu who had been imprisoned on Robben Island, as Mbeki's replacement for Deputy President. Zuma's candidacy was challenged by Winnie, whose populist rhetoric had gained her a strong following within the party, although Zuma defeated her in a landslide victory vote at the election.
Mandela's relationship with Machel had intensified; in February 1998, he publicly stated that he was "in love with a remarkable lady", and under pressure from Tutu, who urged him to set an example for young people, he organised a wedding for his 80th birthday, in July that year. The following day, he held a grand party with many foreign dignitaries. Although the 1996 constitution allowed the president to serve two consecutive five-year terms, Mandela had never planned to stand for a second term in office. He gave his farewell speech to Parliament on 29 March 1999 when it adjourned prior to the 1999 general elections, after which he retired. Although opinion polls in South Africa showed wavering support for both the ANC and the government, Mandela himself remained highly popular, with 80% of South Africans polled in 1999 expressing satisfaction with his performance as president.
Post-presidency and final years
Continued activism and philanthropy: 1999–2004
Retiring in June 1999, Mandela aimed to lead a quiet family life, divided between Johannesburg and Qunu. Although he set about authoring a sequel to his first autobiography, to be titled The Presidential Years, it remained unfinished and was only published posthumously in 2017. Mandela found such seclusion difficult and reverted to a busy public life involving a daily programme of tasks, meetings with world leaders and celebrities, and—when in Johannesburg—working with the Nelson Mandela Foundation, founded in 1999 to focus on rural development, school construction, and combating HIV/AIDS. Although he had been heavily criticised for failing to do enough to fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic during his presidency, he devoted much of his time to the issue following his retirement, describing it as "a war" that had killed more than "all previous wars"; affiliating himself with the Treatment Action Campaign, he urged Mbeki's government to ensure that HIV-positive South Africans had access to anti-retrovirals. Meanwhile, Mandela was successfully treated for prostate cancer in July 2001.
In 2002, Mandela inaugurated the Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture, and in 2003 the Mandela Rhodes Foundation was created at Rhodes House, University of Oxford, to provide postgraduate scholarships to African students. These projects were followed by the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory and the 46664 campaign against HIV/AIDS. He gave the closing address at the XIII International AIDS Conference in Durban in 2000, and in 2004, spoke at the XV International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, Thailand, calling for greater measures to tackle tuberculosis as well as HIV/AIDS. Mandela publicised AIDS as the cause of his son Makgatho's death in January 2005, to defy the stigma about discussing the disease.
Publicly, Mandela became more vocal in criticising Western powers. He strongly opposed the 1999 NATO intervention in Kosovo and called it an attempt by the world's powerful nations to police the entire world. In 2003, he spoke out against the plans for the United States to launch a war in Iraq, describing it as "a tragedy" and lambasting US president George W. Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair (whom he referred to as an "American foreign minister") for undermining the UN, saying, "All that (Mr. Bush) wants is Iraqi oil". He attacked the United States more generally, asserting that "If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America", citing the atomic bombing of Japan; this attracted international controversy, although he later improved his relationship with Bush. Retaining an interest in the Lockerbie suspect, he visited Megrahi in Barlinnie prison and spoke out against the conditions of his treatment, referring to them as "psychological persecution".
"Retiring from retirement": 2004–2013
In June 2004, aged 85 and amid failing health, Mandela announced that he was "retiring from retirement" and retreating from public life, remarking, "Don't call me, I will call you." Although continuing to meet with close friends and family, the foundation discouraged invitations for him to appear at public events and denied most interview requests.
He retained some involvement in international affairs. In 2005, he founded the Nelson Mandela Legacy Trust, travelling to the United States to speak before the Brookings Institution and the NAACP on the need for economic assistance to Africa. He spoke with US senator Hillary Clinton and President George W. Bush and first met the then-senator Barack Obama. Mandela also encouraged Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe to resign over growing human rights abuses in the country. When this proved ineffective, he spoke out publicly against Mugabe in 2007, asking him to step down "with residual respect and a modicum of dignity." That year, Mandela, Machel and Desmond Tutu convened a group of world leaders in Johannesburg to contribute their wisdom and independent leadership to some of the world's toughest problems. Mandela announced the formation of this new group, The Elders, in a speech delivered on his 89th birthday.
Mandela's 90th birthday was marked across the country on 18 July 2008; a tribute concert was held in Hyde Park, London. Throughout Mbeki's presidency, Mandela continued to support the ANC, usually overshadowing Mbeki at any public events that the two attended. Mandela was more at ease with Mbeki's successor, Zuma, although the Nelson Mandela Foundation was upset when his grandson, Mandla Mandela, flew him out to the Eastern Cape to attend a pro-Zuma rally in the midst of a storm in 2009.
In 2004, Mandela successfully campaigned for South Africa to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup, declaring that there would be "few better gifts for us" in the year marking a decade since the fall of apartheid. Despite maintaining a low profile during the event due to ill health, Mandela made his final public appearance during the World Cup closing ceremony, where he received much applause. Between 2005 and 2013, Mandela, and later his family, were embroiled in a series of legal disputes regarding money held in family trusts for the benefit of his descendants. In mid-2013, as Mandela was hospitalised for a lung infection in Pretoria, his descendants were involved in an intra-family legal dispute relating to the burial place of Mandela's children, and ultimately Mandela himself.
Illness and death: 2011–2013
In February 2011, Mandela was briefly hospitalised with a respiratory infection, attracting international attention, before being re-admitted for a lung infection and gallstone removal in December 2012. After a successful medical procedure in early March 2013, his lung infection recurred and he was briefly hospitalised in Pretoria. In June 2013, his lung infection worsened and he was readmitted to a Pretoria hospital in serious condition. The Archbishop of Cape Town Thabo Makgoba visited Mandela at the hospital and prayed with Machel, while Zuma cancelled a trip to Mozambique to visit him the following day. In September 2013, Mandela was discharged from hospital, although his condition remained unstable.
After suffering from a prolonged respiratory infection, Mandela died on 5 December 2013 at the age of 95, at around 20:50 local time at his home in Houghton, surrounded by his family. Zuma publicly announced his death on television, proclaiming ten days of national mourning, a memorial service held at Johannesburg's FNB Stadium on 10 December 2013, and 8 December as a national day of prayer and reflection. Mandela's body lay in state from 11 to 13 December at the Union Buildings in Pretoria and a state funeral was held on 15 December in Qunu. Approximately 90 representatives of foreign states travelled to South Africa to attend memorial events. It was later revealed that 300 million rand (about 20 million dollars) originally earmarked for humanitarian development projects had been redirected to finance the funeral. The media was awash with tributes and reminiscences, while images of tributes to Mandela proliferated across social media. His US$4.1 million estate was left to his widow, other family members, staff, and educational institutions.
Political ideology
Mandela identified as both an African nationalist, an ideological position he held since joining the ANC, and as a socialist. He was a practical politician, rather than an intellectual scholar or political theorist. According to biographer Tom Lodge, "for Mandela, politics has always been primarily about enacting stories, about making narratives, primarily about morally exemplary conduct, and only secondarily about ideological vision, more about means rather than ends."
The historian Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni described Mandela as a "liberal African nationalist–decolonial humanist", while political analyst Raymond Suttner cautioned against labelling Mandela a liberal and stated that Mandela displayed a "hybrid socio-political make-up". Mandela adopted some of his political ideas from other thinkers—among them Indian independence leaders like Gandhi and Nehru, African American civil rights activists, and African nationalists like Nkrumah—and applied them to the South African situation. At the same time, he rejected other aspects of their thought, such as the anti-white sentiment of many African nationalists. In doing so he synthesised both counter-cultural and hegemonic views, for instance by drawing upon ideas from the then-dominant Afrikaner nationalism in promoting his anti-apartheid vision.
His political development was strongly influenced by his legal training and practice, in particular his hope to achieve change not through violence but through "legal revolution". Over the course of his life, he began by advocating a path of non-violence, later embracing violence, and then adopting a non-violent approach to negotiation and reconciliation. When endorsing violence, he did so because he saw no alternative, and was always pragmatic about it, perceiving it as a means to get his opponent to the negotiating table. He sought to target symbols of white supremacy and racist oppression rather than white people as individuals and was anxious not to inaugurate a race war in South Africa. This willingness to use violence distinguishes Mandela from the ideology of Gandhism, with which some commentators have sought to associate him.
Democracy
Although he presented himself in an autocratic manner in several speeches, Mandela was a devout believer in democracy and abided by majority decisions even when deeply disagreeing with them. He had exhibited a commitment to the values of democracy and human rights since at least the 1960s. He held a conviction that "inclusivity, accountability and freedom of speech" were the fundamentals of democracy, and was driven by a belief in natural and human rights. Suttner argued that there were "two modes of leadership" that Mandela adopted. On one side he adhered to ideas about collective leadership, although on the other believed that there were scenarios in which a leader had to be decisive and act without consultation to achieve a particular objective.
According to Lodge, Mandela's political thought reflected tensions between his support for liberal democracy and pre-colonial African forms of consensus decision making. He was an admirer of British-style parliamentary democracy, stating that "I regard the British Parliament as the most democratic institution in the world, and the independence and impartiality of its judiciary never fail to arouse my admiration." In this he has been described as being committed to "the Euro-North American modernist project of emancipation", something which distinguishes him from other African nationalist and socialist leaders like Nyerere who were concerned about embracing styles of democratic governance that were Western, rather than African, in origin. Mandela nevertheless also expressed admiration for what he deemed to be indigenous forms of democracy, describing Xhosa traditional society's mode of governance as "democracy in its purest form".
Socialism and Marxism
Mandela advocated the ultimate establishment of a classless society, with Sampson describing him as being "openly opposed to capitalism, private land-ownership and the power of big money". Mandela was influenced by Marxism, and during the revolution he advocated scientific socialism. He denied being a communist at the Treason Trial, and maintained this stance both when later talking to journalists, and in his autobiography, where he outlined that the cooperation with the SACP was pragmatic, asking rhetorically, "who is to say that we were not using them?" According to the sociologist Craig Soudien, "sympathetic as Mandela was to socialism, a communist he was not." Conversely, the biographer David Jones Smith stated that Mandela "embraced communism and communists" in the late 1950s and early 1960s, while the historian Stephen Ellis commented that Mandela had assimilated much of the Marxist–Leninist ideology by 1960.
Ellis also found evidence that Mandela had been an active member of the South African Communist Party (SACP) during the late 1950s and early 1960s, something that was confirmed after his death by both the ANC and the SACP, the latter of which claimed that he was not only a member of the party, but also served on its Central Committee. His membership had been hidden by the ANC, aware that knowledge of Mandela's former SACP involvement might have been detrimental to his attempts to attract support from Western countries. Mandela's view of these Western governments differed from those of Marxist–Leninists, for he did not believe that they were anti-democratic or reactionary and remained committed to democratic systems of governance.
The 1955 Freedom Charter, which Mandela had helped create, called for the nationalisation of banks, gold mines and land, to ensure equal distribution of wealth. Despite these beliefs, Mandela initiated a programme of privatisation during his presidency in line with trends in other countries of the time. It has been repeatedly suggested that Mandela would have preferred to develop a social democratic economy in South Africa but that this was not feasible as a result of the international political and economic situation during the early 1990s. This decision was in part influenced by the fall of the socialist states in the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc during the early 1990s.
Personality and personal life
Mandela was widely considered a charismatic leader, described by biographer Mary Benson as "a born mass leader who could not help magnetizing people". He was highly image conscious and throughout his life always sought out fine quality clothes, with many commentators believing that he carried himself in a regal manner. His aristocratic heritage was repeatedly emphasised by supporters, thus contributing to his "charismatic power". While living in Johannesburg in the 1950s, he cultivated the image of the "African gentleman", having "the pressed clothes, correct manners, and modulated public speech" associated with such a position. In doing so, Lodge argued that Mandela became "one of the first media politicians ... embodying a glamour and a style that projected visually a brave new African world of modernity and freedom". Mandela was known to change his clothes several times a day, and he became so associated with highly coloured Batik shirts after assuming the presidency that they came to be known as "Madiba shirts".
For political scientists Betty Glad and Robert Blanton, Mandela was an "exceptionally intelligent, shrewd, and loyal leader". His official biographer, Anthony Sampson, commented that he was a "master of imagery and performance", excelling at presenting himself well in press photographs and producing sound bites. His public speeches were presented in a formal, stiff manner, and often consisted of clichéd set phrases. He typically spoke slowly, and carefully chose his words. Although he was not considered a great orator, his speeches conveyed "his personal commitment, charm and humour".
Mandela was a private person who often concealed his emotions and confided in very few people. Privately, he lived an austere life, refusing to drink alcohol or smoke, and even as president made his own bed. Renowned for his mischievous sense of humour, he was known for being both stubborn and loyal, and at times exhibited a quick temper. He was typically friendly and welcoming, and appeared relaxed in conversation with everyone, including his opponents. A self-described Anglophile, he claimed to have lived by the "trappings of British style and manners". Constantly polite and courteous, he was attentive to all, irrespective of their age or status, and often talked to children or servants. He was known for his ability to find common ground with very different communities. In later life, he always looked for the best in people, even defending political opponents to his allies, who sometimes thought him too trusting of others. He was fond of Indian cuisine, and had a lifelong interest in archaeology and boxing.
He was raised in the Methodist denomination of Christianity; the Methodist Church of Southern Africa claimed that he retained his allegiance to them throughout his life. On analysing Mandela's writings, the theologian Dion Forster described him as a Christian humanist, although added that his thought relied to a greater extent on the Southern African concept of Ubuntu than on Christian theology. According to Sampson, Mandela never had "a strong religious faith" however, while Elleke Boehmer stated that Mandela's religious belief was "never robust".
Mandela was very self-conscious about being a man and regularly made references to manhood. He was heterosexual, and biographer Fatima Meer said that he was "easily tempted" by women. Another biographer, Martin Meredith, characterised him as being "by nature a romantic", highlighting that he had relationships with various women. Mandela was married three times, fathered six children, and had seventeen grandchildren and at least seventeen great-grandchildren. He could be stern and demanding of his children, although he was more affectionate with his grandchildren. His first marriage was to Evelyn Ntoko Mase in October 1944; they divorced in March 1958 under the multiple strains of his alleged adultery and constant absences, devotion to revolutionary agitation, and the fact that she was a Jehovah's Witness, a religion requiring political neutrality. Mandela's second wife was the social worker Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, whom he married in June 1958. They divorced in March 1996. Mandela married his third wife, Graça Machel, on his 80th birthday in July 1998.
Reception and legacy
By the time of his death, within South Africa Mandela was widely considered both "the father of the nation" and "the founding father of democracy". Outside of South Africa, he was a "global icon", with the scholar of South African studies Rita Barnard describing him as "one of the most revered figures of our time". One biographer considered him "a modern democratic hero". Some have portrayed Mandela in messianic terms, in contrast to his own statement that "I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances." He is often cited alongside Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. as one of the 20th century's exemplary anti-racist and anti-colonial leaders. Boehmer described him as "a totem of the totemic values of our age: toleration and liberal democracy" and "a universal symbol of social justice".
Mandela's international fame emerged during his incarceration in the 1980s, when he became the world's most famous political prisoner, a symbol of the anti-apartheid cause, and an icon for millions who embraced the ideal of human equality. In 1986, Mandela's biographer characterised him as "the embodiment of the struggle for liberation" in South Africa. Meredith stated that in becoming "a potent symbol of resistance" to apartheid during the 1980s, he had gained "mythical status" internationally. Sampson commented that even during his life, this myth had become "so powerful that it blurs the realities", converting Mandela into "a secular saint". Within a decade of the end of his presidency, Mandela's era was widely thought of as "a golden age of hope and harmony", with much nostalgia being expressed for it. His name was often invoked by those criticising his successors like Mbeki and Zuma. Across the world, Mandela earned international acclaim for his activism in overcoming apartheid and fostering racial reconciliation, coming to be viewed as "a moral authority" with a great "concern for truth". Mandela's iconic status has been blamed for concealing the complexities of his life.
Mandela generated controversy throughout his career as an activist and politician, having detractors on both the right and the radical left. During the 1980s, Mandela was widely labelled a terrorist by prominent political figures in the Western world for his embrace of political violence. According to Thatcher, for instance, the ANC was "a typical terrorist organisation". The US government's State and Defense departments officially designated the ANC as a terrorist organisation, resulting in Mandela remaining on their terrorism watch-list until 2008. On the left, some voices in the ANC—among them Frank B. Wilderson III—accused him of selling out for agreeing to enter negotiations with the apartheid government and for not implementing the reforms of the Freedom Charter during his presidency. According to Barnard, "there is also a sense in which his chiefly bearing and mode of conduct, the very respect and authority he accrued in representing his nation in his own person, went against the spirit of democracy", and concerns were similarly expressed that he placed his own status and celebrity above the transformation of his country. His government would be criticised for its failure to deal with both the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the high levels of poverty in South Africa.
Orders, decorations, monuments, and honours
Over the course of his life, Mandela was given over 250 awards, accolades, prizes, honorary degrees and citizenships in recognition of his political achievements. Among his awards were the Nobel Peace Prize, the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Soviet Union's Lenin Peace Prize, and the Libyan Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights. In 1990, India awarded him the Bharat Ratna, and in 1992 Pakistan gave him their Nishan-e-Pakistan. The same year, he was awarded the Atatürk Peace Award by Turkey; he at first refused the award, citing human rights violations committed by Turkey at the time, but later accepted the award in 1999. He was appointed to the Order of Isabella the Catholic and the Order of Canada, and was the first living person to be made an honorary Canadian citizen. Queen Elizabeth II appointed him as a Bailiff Grand Cross of the Order of St. John and granted him membership in the Order of Merit.
In 2004, Johannesburg granted Mandela the Freedom of the City, and in 2008 a Mandela statue was unveiled at the spot where Mandela was released from prison. On the Day of Reconciliation 2013, a bronze statue of Mandela was unveiled at Pretoria's Union Buildings. In November 2009, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed Mandela's birthday, 18 July, as "Mandela Day", marking his contribution to the anti-apartheid struggle. It called on individuals to donate 67 minutes to doing something for others, commemorating the 67 years that Mandela had been a part of the movement. In 2015 the UN General Assembly named the amended Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners as "the Mandela Rules" to honour his legacy. Subsequently, the years 2019 to 2028 were also designated the United Nations Nelson Mandela Decade of Peace.
Biographies and popular media
The first biography of Mandela was based on brief interviews with him that the author, Mary Benson, had conducted in the 1960s. Two authorised biographies were later produced by friends of Mandela. The first was Fatima Meer's Higher Than Hope, which was heavily influenced by Winnie and thus placed great emphasis on Mandela's family. The second was Anthony Sampson's Mandela, published in 1999. Other biographies included Martin Meredith's Mandela, first published in 1997, and Tom Lodge's Mandela, brought out in 2006.
Since the late 1980s, Mandela's image began to appear on a proliferation of items, among them "photographs, paintings, drawings, statues, public murals, buttons, t-shirts, refrigerator magnets, and more", items that have been characterised as "Mandela kitsch". In the 1980s he was the subject of several songs, such as The Specials' "Free Nelson Mandela", Hugh Masekela's "Bring Him Back Home (Nelson Mandela)", and Johnny Clegg's "Asimbonanga (Mandela)", which helped to bring awareness of his imprisonment to an international audience.
Mandela has also been depicted in films on multiple occasions. Some of these, such as the 2013 feature film Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, the 2017 miniseries Madiba and the 1996 documentary Mandela, have focused on covering his adult life in entirety or until his inaugural as president. Others, such as the 2009 feature film Invictus and the 2010 documentary The 16th Man, have focused on specific events in his life. Lukhele has argued that in Invictus and other films, "the America film industry" has played a significant part in "the crafting of Mandela's global image".
See also
List of peace activists
Mandela effect
References
Footnotes
Bibliography
External links
Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory
Nelson Mandela Children's Fund
Nelson Mandela Foundation (archived)
Mandela Rhodes Foundation
The Elders
Nelson Mandela Museum
Nelson Mandela Day (archived)
Nelson Mandela's family tree
Nelson Mandela at Curlie
Nelson Mandela at IMDb
Appearances on C-SPAN
Nelson Mandela on Nobelprize.org |
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XIV"
] | Louis XIV (Louis-Dieudonné; 5 September 1638 – 1 September 1715), also known as Louis the Great (Louis le Grand) or the Sun King (le Roi Soleil), was King of France from 1643 until his death in 1715. His verified reign of 72 years and 110 days is the longest of any sovereign. An emblematic character of the Age of Absolutism in Europe, Louis XIV's legacy is widely characterized by French colonial expansion, the conclusion of Eighty Years' War involving the Habsburgs, and his architectural bequest, marked by commissioned works of art and buildings. His pageantry, opulent lifestyle and ornate cultivated image earned him enduring admiration. Louis XIV raised France to be the exemplar nation-state of the early modern period, and established a cultural prestige which lasted through the subsequent centuries until today.
Louis began his personal rule of France in 1661, after the death of his chief minister Cardinal Mazarin, when the King famously declared that he would take over the job himself. An adherent of the divine right of kings, Louis continued his predecessors' work of creating a centralised state governed from the capital. He sought to eliminate the remnants of feudalism persisting in parts of France; by compelling many members of the nobility to reside at his lavish Palace of Versailles, he succeeded in pacifying the aristocracy, many of whom had participated in the Fronde rebellions during his minority. He thus became one of the most powerful French monarchs and consolidated a system of absolute monarchy in France that endured until the French Revolution. Louis also enforced uniformity of religion under the Catholic Church. His revocation of the Edict of Nantes abolished the rights of the Huguenot Protestant minority and subjected them to a wave of dragonnades, effectively forcing Huguenots to emigrate or convert, virtually destroying the French Protestant community.
During Louis's long reign, France emerged as the leading European power and regularly made war. A conflict with Spain marked his entire childhood, while during his personal rule, Louis fought three major continental conflicts, each against powerful foreign alliances: the Franco-Dutch War, the Nine Years' War, and the War of the Spanish Succession. In addition, France contested shorter wars such as the War of Devolution and the War of the Reunions. Warfare defined Louis's foreign policy, impelled by his personal ambition for glory and power: "a mix of commerce, revenge, and pique". His wars strained France's resources to the utmost, while in peacetime he concentrated on preparing for the next war. He taught his diplomats that their job was to create tactical and strategic advantages for the French military. Upon his death in 1715, Louis XIV left his great-grandson and successor, Louis XV, a powerful but war-weary kingdom, in major debt after the War of the Spanish Succession that had raged on since 1701.
Some of his other notable achievements include the construction of the Canal du Midi, the patronage of artists, and the founding of the French Academy of Sciences.
Early years
Louis XIV was born on 5 September 1638 in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, to Louis XIII and Anne of Austria. He was named Louis Dieudonné (Louis the God-given) and bore the traditional title of French heirs apparent: Dauphin. At the time of his birth, his parents had been married for 23 years. His mother had experienced four stillbirths between 1619 and 1631. Leading contemporaries thus regarded him as a divine gift and his birth a miracle of God.
Louis's relationship with his mother was uncommonly affectionate for the time. Contemporaries and eyewitnesses claimed that the Queen would spend all her time with Louis. Both were greatly interested in food and theatre, and it is highly likely that Louis developed these interests through his close relationship with his mother. This long-lasting and loving relationship can be evidenced by excerpts in Louis's journal entries, such as:
"Nature was responsible for the first knots which tied me to my mother. But attachments formed later by shared qualities of the spirit are far more difficult to break than those formed merely by blood."
It was his mother who gave Louis his belief in the absolute and divine power of his monarchical rule.
During his childhood, he was taken care of by the governesses Françoise de Lansac and Marie-Catherine de Senecey. In 1646, Nicolas V de Villeroy became the young king's tutor. Louis XIV became friends with Villeroy's young children, particularly François de Villeroy, and divided his time between the Palais-Royal and the nearby Hotel de Villeroy.
Minority and the Fronde
Accession
Sensing imminent death in the spring of 1643, King Louis XIII decided to put his affairs in order for his four-year-old son Louis XIV. Not trusting the judgement of his Spanish wife Queen Anne, who would normally have become the sole regent of France, the king decreed that a regency council would rule on his son's behalf, with Anne at its head.
Louis XIII died on 14 May 1643. On 18 May Queen Anne had her husband's will annulled by the Parlement de Paris, a judicial body of nobles and high clergymen, and she became sole regent. She exiled her husband's ministers Chavigny and Bouthilier and appointed the Count of Brienne as her minister of foreign affairs. Anne kept the direction of religious policy strongly in hand until her son's majority in 1661.
She appointed Cardinal Mazarin as chief minister, giving him the daily administration of policy. She continued the policies of her late husband and Cardinal Richelieu, despite their persecution of her, in order to win absolute authority in France and victory abroad for her son. Anne protected Mazarin by exiling her followers the Duke of Beaufort and Marie de Rohan, who conspired against him in 1643.
The best example of Anne's loyalty to France was her treatment of one of Richelieu's men, the Chancellor Pierre Séguier. Séguier had brusquely interrogated Anne in 1637 (like a "common criminal", as she recalled) following the discovery that she was giving military secrets to her father in Spain, and Anne was virtually under house arrest for years. By keeping the effective Séguier in his post, Anne sacrificed her own feelings for the interests of France and her son Louis.
The Queen sought a lasting peace between Catholic nations, but only after a French victory over her native Spain. She also gave a partial Catholic orientation to French foreign policy. This was felt by the Netherlands, France's Protestant ally, which negotiated a separate peace with Spain in 1648.
In 1648, Anne and Mazarin successfully negotiated the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years' War. Its terms ensured Dutch independence from Spain, awarded some autonomy to the various German princes of the Holy Roman Empire, and granted Sweden seats on the Imperial Diet and territories controlling the mouths of the Oder, Elbe, and Weser Rivers. France, however, profited most from the settlement. Austria, ruled by the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand III, ceded all Habsburg lands and claims in Alsace to France and acknowledged her de facto sovereignty over the Three Bishoprics of Metz, Verdun, and Toul. Moreover, many petty German states sought French protection, eager to emancipate themselves from Habsburg domination. This anticipated the formation of the 1658 League of the Rhine, which further diminished Imperial power.
Early acts
As the Thirty Years' War came to an end, a civil war known as the Fronde erupted in France. It effectively checked France's ability to exploit the Peace of Westphalia. Anne and Mazarin had largely pursued the policies of Cardinal Richelieu, augmenting the Crown's power at the expense of the nobility and the Parlements. Anne was more concerned with internal policy than foreign affairs; she was a very proud queen who insisted on the divine rights of the King of France.
All this led her to advocate a forceful policy in all matters relating to the King's authority, in a manner that was much more radical than the one proposed by Mazarin. The Cardinal depended totally on Anne's support and had to use all his influence on the Queen to temper some of her radical actions. Anne imprisoned any aristocrat or member of parliament who challenged her will; her main aim was to transfer to her son an absolute authority in the matters of finance and justice. One of the leaders of the Parlement of Paris, whom she had jailed, died in prison.
The Frondeurs, political heirs of the disaffected feudal aristocracy, sought to protect their traditional feudal privileges from the increasingly centralized royal government. Furthermore, they believed their traditional influence and authority was being usurped by the recently ennobled bureaucrats (the Noblesse de Robe, or "nobility of the robe"), who administered the kingdom and on whom the monarchy increasingly began to rely. This belief intensified the nobles' resentment.
In 1648, Anne and Mazarin attempted to tax members of the Parlement de Paris. The members refused to comply and ordered all of the king's earlier financial edicts burned. Buoyed by the victory of Louis, duc d'Enghien (later known as le Grand Condé) at the Battle of Lens, Mazarin, on Queen Anne's insistence, arrested certain members in a show of force. The most important arrest, from Anne's point of view, concerned Pierre Broussel, one of the most important leaders in the Parlement de Paris.
People in France were complaining about the expansion of royal authority, the high rate of taxation, and the reduction of the authority of the Parlement de Paris and other regional representative entities. Paris erupted in rioting as a result, and Anne was forced, under intense pressure, to free Broussel. Moreover, on the night of 9–10 February 1651, when Louis was twelve, a mob of angry Parisians broke into the royal palace and demanded to see their king. Led into the royal bed-chamber, they gazed upon Louis, who was feigning sleep, were appeased, and then quietly departed. The threat to the royal family prompted Anne to flee Paris with the king and his courtiers.
Shortly thereafter, the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia allowed Condé's army to return to aid Louis and his court. Condé's family was close to Anne at that time, and he agreed to help her attempt to restore the king's authority. The queen's army, headed by Condé, attacked the rebels in Paris; the rebels were under the political control of Anne's old friend Marie de Rohan. Beaufort, who had escaped from the prison where Anne had incarcerated him five years before, was the military leader in Paris, under the nominal control of Conti. After a few battles, a political compromise was reached; the Peace of Rueil was signed, and the court returned to Paris.
Unfortunately for Anne, her partial victory depended on Condé, who wanted to control the queen and destroy Mazarin's influence. It was Condé's sister who pushed him to turn against the queen. After striking a deal with her old friend Marie de Rohan, who was able to impose the nomination of Charles de l'Aubespine, marquis de Châteauneuf as minister of justice, Anne arrested Condé, his brother Armand de Bourbon, Prince of Conti, and the husband of their sister Anne Genevieve de Bourbon, duchess of Longueville. This situation did not last long, and Mazarin's unpopularity led to the creation of a coalition headed mainly by Marie de Rohan and the duchess of Longueville. This aristocratic coalition was strong enough to liberate the princes, exile Mazarin, and impose a condition of virtual house arrest on Queen Anne.
All these events were witnessed by Louis and largely explained his later distrust of Paris and the higher aristocracy. "In one sense, Louis's childhood came to an end with the outbreak of the Fronde. It was not only that life became insecure and unpleasant – a fate meted out to many children in all ages – but that Louis had to be taken into the confidence of his mother and Mazarin on political and military matters of which he could have no deep understanding". "The family home became at times a near-prison when Paris had to be abandoned, not in carefree outings to other chateaux but in humiliating flights". The royal family was driven out of Paris twice in this manner, and at one point Louis XIV and Anne were held under virtual arrest in the royal palace in Paris. The Fronde years planted in Louis a hatred of Paris and a consequent determination to move out of the ancient capital as soon as possible, never to return.
Just as the first Fronde (the Fronde parlementaire of 1648–1649) ended, a second one (the Fronde des princes of 1650–1653) began. Unlike that which preceded it, tales of sordid intrigue and half-hearted warfare characterized this second phase of upper-class insurrection. To the aristocracy, this rebellion represented a protest for the reversal of their political demotion from vassals to courtiers. It was headed by the highest-ranking French nobles, among them Louis's uncle Gaston, Duke of Orléans and first cousin Anne Marie Louise d'Orléans, Duchess of Montpensier, known as la Grande Mademoiselle; Princes of the Blood such as Condé, his brother Armand de Bourbon, Prince of Conti, and their sister the Duchess of Longueville; dukes of legitimised royal descent, such as Henri, Duke of Longueville, and François, Duke of Beaufort; so-called "foreign princes" such as Frédéric Maurice, Duke of Bouillon, his brother Marshal Turenne, and Marie de Rohan, Duchess of Chevreuse; and scions of France's oldest families, such as François de La Rochefoucauld.
Queen Anne played the most important role in defeating the Fronde because she wanted to transfer absolute authority to her son. In addition, most of the princes refused to deal with Mazarin, who went into exile for a number of years. The Frondeurs claimed to act on Louis's behalf, and in his real interest, against his mother and Mazarin.
Queen Anne had a very close relationship with the Cardinal, and many observers believed that Mazarin became Louis XIV's stepfather by a secret marriage to Queen Anne. However, Louis's coming-of-age and subsequent coronation deprived them of the Frondeurs' pretext for revolt. The Fronde thus gradually lost steam and ended in 1653, when Mazarin returned triumphantly from exile. From that time until his death, Mazarin was in charge of foreign and financial policy without the daily supervision of Anne, who was no longer regent.
During this period, Louis fell in love with Mazarin's niece Marie Mancini, but Anne and Mazarin ended the king's infatuation by sending Mancini away from court to be married in Italy. While Mazarin might have been tempted for a short time to marry his niece to the King of France, Queen Anne was absolutely against this; she wanted to marry her son to the daughter of her brother, Philip IV of Spain, for both dynastic and political reasons. Mazarin soon supported the Queen's position because he knew that her support for his power and his foreign policy depended on making peace with Spain from a strong position and on the Spanish marriage. Additionally, Mazarin's relations with Marie Mancini were not good, and he did not trust her to support his position. All of Louis's tears and his supplications to his mother did not make her change her mind. The Spanish marriage would be very important both for its role in ending the war between France and Spain, because many of the claims and objectives of Louis's foreign policy for the next 50 years would be based upon this marriage, and because it was through this marriage that the Spanish throne would ultimately be delivered to the House of Bourbon.
Personal reign and reforms
Coming of age and early reforms
Louis XIV was declared to have reached the age of majority on the 7th of September 1651. On the death of Mazarin, in March 1661, Louis personally took the reins of government and astonished his court by declaring that he would rule without a chief minister: "Up to this moment I have been pleased to entrust the government of my affairs to the late Cardinal. It is now time that I govern them myself. You [secretaries and ministers] will assist me with your counsels when I ask for them. I request and order you to seal no orders except by my command . . . I order you not to sign anything, not even a passport . . . without my command; to render account to me personally each day and to favor no one". Capitalizing on the widespread public yearning for peace and order after decades of foreign and civil strife, the young king consolidated central political authority and at the expense of the feudal aristocracy. Praising his ability to choose and encourage men of talent, the historian Chateaubriand noted: "it is the voice of genius of all kinds which sounds from the tomb of Louis".
Louis began his personal reign with administrative and fiscal reforms. In 1661, the treasury verged on bankruptcy. To rectify the situation, Louis chose Jean-Baptiste Colbert as Controller-General of Finances in 1665. However, Louis first had to neutralize Nicolas Fouquet, the powerful Superintendent of Finances. Although Fouquet's financial indiscretions were not very different from Mazarin's before him or Colbert's after him, his ambition worried Louis. He lavishly entertained the king at the opulent château of Vaux-le-Vicomte, flaunting a wealth which could hardly have accumulated except through embezzlement of government funds.
Fouquet appeared eager to succeed Mazarin and Richelieu in power, and he indiscreetly purchased and privately fortified the remote island of Belle Île. These acts sealed his doom. Fouquet was charged with embezzlement; the Parlement found him guilty and sentenced him to exile; and finally Louis altered the sentence to life imprisonment.
Fouquet's downfall gave Colbert a free hand to reduce the national debt through more efficient taxation. The principal taxes included the aides and douanes (both customs duties), the gabelle (salt tax), and the taille (land tax). The taille was reduced at first, and certain tax-collection contracts were auctioned instead of being sold privately to a favoured few. Financial officials were required to keep regular accounts, revising inventories and removing unauthorized exemptions: up to 1661 only 10 per cent of income from the royal domain reached the king. Reform had to overcome vested interests: the taille was collected by officers of the Crown who had purchased their post at a high price, and punishment of abuses necessarily lowered the value of the purchase. Nevertheless, Colbert achieved excellent results, with the deficit of 1661 turning into a surplus by 1666, with interest on the debt decreasing from 52 million to 24 million livres. The taille was reduced to 42 million in 1661 and 35 million in 1665, while revenue from indirect taxation progressed from 26 million to 55 million. The revenues of the royal domain were raised from 80,000 livres in 1661 to 5.5 million in 1671. In 1661, the receipts were equivalent to 26 million British pounds, of which 10 million reached the treasury. The expenditure was around 18 million pounds, leaving a deficit of 8 million. In 1667, the net receipts had risen to 20 million pounds sterling, while expenditure had fallen to 11 million, leaving a surplus of 9 million pounds.
Money was the essential support of the reorganized and enlarged army, the panoply of Versailles, and the growing civil administration. Finance had always been the weakness of the French monarchy: tax collection was costly and inefficient; direct taxes dwindled as they passed through the hands of many intermediate officials; and indirect taxes were collected by private contractors called tax farmers who made a handsome profit. The state coffers leaked at every joint.
The main weakness arose from an old bargain between the French crown and nobility: the king might raise taxes on the nation without consent if only he exempted the nobility. Only the "unprivileged" classes paid direct taxes, which came to mean the peasants only, as most bourgeois finagled exemptions in one way or another. The system laid the whole burden of state expenses on the backs of the poor and powerless. After 1700, with the support of Louis's pious secret wife Madame de Maintenon, the king was persuaded to change his fiscal policy. Though willing enough to tax the nobles, Louis feared the political concessions which they would demand in return. Only towards the close of his reign under the extreme exigency of war, was he able, for the first time in French history, to impose direct taxes on the aristocracy. This was a step toward equality before the law and toward sound public finance, though it was predictably diminished by concessions and exemptions won by the insistent efforts of nobles and bourgeois.
Louis and Colbert also had wide-ranging plans to grow French commerce and trade. Colbert's mercantilist administration established new industries and encouraged manufacturers and inventors, such as the Lyon silk manufacturers and the Gobelins tapestry manufactory. He invited manufacturers and artisans from all over Europe to France, such as Murano glassmakers, Swedish ironworkers, and Dutch shipbuilders. He aimed to decrease imports while increasing French exports, hence reducing the net outflow of precious metals from France.
Louis instituted reforms in military administration through Michel le Tellier and his son François-Michel le Tellier, successive Marquis de Louvois. They helped to curb the independent spirit of the nobility, imposing order on them at court and in the army. Gone were the days when generals protracted war at the frontiers while bickering over precedence and ignoring orders from the capital and the larger strategic picture, with the old military aristocracy (noblesse d'épée, nobility of the sword) monopolizing senior military positions and the higher ranks. Louvois modernized the army and reorganised it into a professional, disciplined, well-trained force. He was devoted to the soldiers' material well-being and morale, and even tried to direct campaigns.
Relations with the major colonies
Louis's legal reforms were enacted in his numerous Great Ordinances. Prior to that, France was a patchwork of legal systems, with as many traditional legal regimes as there were provinces, and two co-existing legal systems—customary law in the north and Roman civil law in the south. The Grande Ordonnance de Procédure Civile of 1667, the Code Louis, was a comprehensive legal code imposing a uniform regulation of civil procedure throughout the kingdom. Among other things, it prescribed baptismal, marriage and death records in the state's registers, not the church's, and it strictly regulated the right of the Parlements to remonstrate. The Code Louis later became the basis for the Napoleonic code, which in turn inspired many modern legal codes.
One of Louis's more infamous decrees was the Grande Ordonnance sur les Colonies of 1685, the Code Noir (black code). Although it sanctioned slavery, it attempted to humanise the practice by prohibiting the separation of families. Additionally, in the colonies, only Roman Catholics could own slaves, and these had to be baptised.
Louis ruled through a number of councils:
Conseil d'en haut ("High Council", concerning the most important matters of state)—composed of the king, the crown prince, the controller-general of finances, and the secretaries of state in charge of various departments. The members of that council were called ministers of state.
Conseil des dépêches ("Council of Messages", concerning notices and administrative reports from the provinces).
Conseil de Conscience ("Council of Conscience", concerning religious affairs and episcopal appointments).
Conseil royal des finances ("Royal Council of Finances") headed by the "chef du conseil des finances" (an honorary post in most cases)—this was one of the few posts in the council available to the high aristocracy.
Early wars in the Low Countries
Spain
The death of Louis's maternal uncle King Philip IV of Spain in 1665 precipitated the War of Devolution. In 1660, Louis had married Philip IV's eldest daughter, Maria Theresa, as one of the provisions of the 1659 Treaty of the Pyrenees. The marriage treaty specified that Maria Theresa was to renounce all claims to Spanish territory for herself and all her descendants. Mazarin and Lionne, however, made the renunciation conditional on the full payment of a Spanish dowry of 500,000 écus. The dowry was never paid and would later play a part persuading his maternal first cousin Charles II of Spain to leave his empire to Philip, Duke of Anjou (later Philip V of Spain), the grandson of Louis XIV and Maria Theresa.
The War of Devolution did not focus on the payment of the dowry; rather, the lack of payment was what Louis XIV used as a pretext for nullifying Maria Theresa's renunciation of her claims, allowing the land to "devolve" to him. In Brabant (the location of the land in dispute), children of first marriages traditionally were not disadvantaged by their parents' remarriages and still inherited property. Louis's wife was Philip IV's daughter by his first marriage, while the new king of Spain, Charles II, was his son by a subsequent marriage. Thus, Brabant allegedly "devolved" to Maria Theresa, justifying France to attack the Spanish Netherlands.
Relations with the Dutch
During the Eighty Years' War with Spain, France supported the Dutch Republic as part of a general policy of opposing Habsburg power. Johan de Witt, Dutch Grand Pensionary from 1653 to 1672, viewed this as crucial for Dutch security and a counterweight against his domestic Orangist opponents. Louis provided support in the 1665-1667 Second Anglo-Dutch War but used the opportunity to launch the War of Devolution in 1667. This captured Franche-Comté and much of the Spanish Netherlands; French expansion in this area was a direct threat to Dutch economic interests.
The Dutch opened talks with Charles II of England on a common diplomatic front against France, leading to the Triple Alliance, between England, the Dutch and Sweden. The threat of an escalation and a secret treaty to divide Spanish possessions with Emperor Leopold, the other major claimant to the throne of Spain, led Louis to relinquish many of his gains in the 1668 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.
Louis placed little reliance on his agreement with Leopold and as it was now clear French and Dutch aims were in direct conflict, he decided to first defeat the Republic, then seize the Spanish Netherlands. This required breaking up the Triple Alliance; he paid Sweden to remain neutral and signed the 1670 Secret Treaty of Dover with Charles, an Anglo-French alliance against the Dutch Republic. In May 1672, France invaded the Republic, supported by Münster and the Electorate of Cologne.
Rapid French advance led to a coup that toppled De Witt and brought William III to power. Leopold viewed French expansion into the Rhineland as an increasing threat, especially after they seized the strategic Duchy of Lorraine in 1670. The prospect of Dutch defeat led Leopold to an alliance with Brandenburg-Prussia on 23 June, followed by another with the Republic on 25th. Although Brandenburg was forced out of the war by the June 1673 Treaty of Vossem, in August an anti-French alliance was formed by the Dutch, Spain, Emperor Leopold and the Duke of Lorraine.
The French alliance was deeply unpopular in England, and only more so after the disappointing battles against Michiel de Ruyter's fleet. Charles II of England made peace with the Dutch in the February 1674 Treaty of Westminster. However, French armies held significant advantages over their opponents; an undivided command, talented generals like Turenne, Condé and Luxembourg and vastly superior logistics. Reforms introduced by Louvois, the Secretary of War, helped maintain large field armies that could be mobilised much more quickly, allowing them to mount offensives in early spring before their opponents were ready.
The French were nevertheless forced to retreat from most of the Dutch Republic, which deeply shocked Louis; he retreated to St Germain for a time, where no one, except a few intimates, was allowed to disturb him. French military advantages allowed them however to hold their ground in Alsace and the Spanish Netherlands while retaking Franche-Comté. By 1678, mutual exhaustion led to the Treaty of Nijmegen, which was generally settled in France's favour and allowed Louis to intervene in the Scanian War. Despite the military defeat, his ally Sweden regained much of what it had lost under the 1679 treaties of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Fontainebleau and Lund imposed on Denmark–Norway and Brandenburg. Yet Louis's two primary goals, the destruction of the Dutch Republic and the conquest of the Spanish Netherlands, had failed.
Louis was at the height of his power, but at the cost of uniting his opponents; this increased as he continued his expansion. In 1679, he dismissed his foreign minister Simon Arnauld, marquis de Pomponne, because he was seen as having compromised too much with the allies. Louis maintained the strength of his army, but in his next series of territorial claims avoided using military force alone. Rather, he combined it with legal pretexts in his efforts to augment the boundaries of his kingdom. Contemporary treaties were intentionally phrased ambiguously. Louis established the Chambers of Reunion to determine the full extent of his rights and obligations under those treaties.
Cities and territories, such as Luxembourg and Casale, were prized for their strategic positions on the frontier and access to important waterways. Louis also sought Strasbourg, an important strategic crossing on the left bank of the Rhine and theretofore a Free Imperial City of the Holy Roman Empire, annexing it and other territories in 1681. Although a part of Alsace, Strasbourg was not part of Habsburg-ruled Alsace and was thus not ceded to France in the Peace of Westphalia.
Following these annexations, Spain declared war, precipitating the War of the Reunions. However, the Spanish were rapidly defeated because the Emperor (distracted by the Great Turkish War) abandoned them, and the Dutch only supported them minimally. By the Truce of Ratisbon, in 1684, Spain was forced to acquiesce in the French occupation of most of the conquered territories, for 20 years.
Louis's policy of the Réunions may have raised France to its greatest size and power during his reign, but it alienated much of Europe. This poor public opinion was compounded by French actions off the Barbary Coast and at Genoa. First, Louis had Algiers and Tripoli, two Barbary pirate strongholds, bombarded to obtain a favourable treaty and the liberation of Christian slaves. Next, in 1684, a punitive mission was launched against Genoa in retaliation for its support for Spain in previous wars. Although the Genoese submitted, and the Doge led an official mission of apology to Versailles, France gained a reputation for brutality and arrogance. European apprehension at growing French might and the realisation of the extent of the dragonnades' effect (discussed below) led many states to abandon their alliances with France. Accordingly, by the late 1680s, France became increasingly isolated in Europe.
Non-European relations and the colonies
French colonies multiplied in Africa, the Americas, and Asia during Louis's reign, and French explorers made important discoveries in North America. In 1673, Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette discovered the Mississippi River. In 1682, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, followed the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico and claimed the vast Mississippi basin in Louis's name, calling it Louisiane. French trading posts were also established in India, at Chandernagore and Pondicherry, and in the Indian Ocean at Île Bourbon. Throughout these regions, Louis and Colbert embarked on an extensive program of architecture and urbanism meant to reflect the styles of Versailles and Paris and the 'gloire' of the realm.
Meanwhile, diplomatic relations were initiated with distant countries. In 1669, Suleiman Aga led an Ottoman embassy to revive the old Franco-Ottoman alliance. Then, in 1682, after the reception of the Moroccan embassy of Mohammed Tenim in France, Moulay Ismail, Sultan of Morocco, allowed French consular and commercial establishments in his country. In 1699, Louis once again received a Moroccan ambassador, Abdallah bin Aisha, and in 1715, he received a Persian embassy led by Mohammad Reza Beg.
From farther afield, Siam dispatched an embassy in 1684, reciprocated by the French magnificently the next year under Alexandre, Chevalier de Chaumont. This, in turn, was succeeded by another Siamese embassy under Kosa Pan, superbly received at Versailles in 1686. Louis then sent another embassy in 1687, under Simon de la Loubère, and French influence grew at the Siamese court, which granted Mergui as a naval base to France. However, the death of Narai, King of Ayutthaya, the execution of his pro-French minister Constantine Phaulkon, and the siege of Bangkok in 1688 ended this era of French influence.
France also attempted to participate actively in Jesuit missions to China. To break the Portuguese dominance there, Louis sent Jesuit missionaries to the court of the Kangxi Emperor in 1685: Jean de Fontaney, Joachim Bouvet, Jean-François Gerbillon, Louis Le Comte, and Claude de Visdelou. Louis also received a Chinese Jesuit, Michael Shen Fu-Tsung, at Versailles in 1684. Furthermore, Louis's librarian and translator Arcadio Huang was Chinese.
Height of power
Centralisation of power
By the early 1680s, Louis had greatly augmented French influence in the world. Domestically, he successfully increased the influence of the crown and its authority over the church and aristocracy, thus consolidating absolute monarchy in France.
Louis initially supported traditional Gallicanism, which limited papal authority in France, and convened an Assembly of the French clergy in November 1681. Before its dissolution eight months later, the Assembly had accepted the Declaration of the Clergy of France, which increased royal authority at the expense of papal power. Without royal approval, bishops could not leave France, and appeals could not be made to the pope. Additionally, government officials could not be excommunicated for acts committed in pursuance of their duties. Although the king could not make ecclesiastical law, all papal regulations without royal assent were invalid in France. Unsurprisingly, the Pope repudiated the Declaration.
By attaching nobles to his court at Versailles, Louis achieved increased control over the French aristocracy. According to historian Philip Mansel, the king turned the palace into:
an irresistible combination of marriage market, employment agency and entertainment capital of aristocratic Europe, boasting the best theatre, opera, music, gambling, sex and (most important) hunting.
Apartments were built to house those willing to pay court to the king. However, the pensions and privileges necessary to live in a style appropriate to their rank were only possible by waiting constantly on Louis. For this purpose, an elaborate court ritual was created wherein the king became the centre of attention and was observed throughout the day by the public. With his excellent memory, Louis could then see who attended him at court and who was absent, facilitating the subsequent distribution of favours and positions. Another tool Louis used to control his nobility was censorship, which often involved the opening of letters to discern their author's opinion of the government and king. Moreover, by entertaining, impressing, and domesticating them with extravagant luxury and other distractions, Louis not only cultivated public opinion of him, but he also ensured the aristocracy remained under his scrutiny.
Louis's extravagance at Versailles extended far beyond the scope of elaborate court rituals. He took delivery of an African elephant as a gift from the king of Portugal. He encouraged leading nobles to live at Versailles. This, along with the prohibition of private armies, prevented them from passing time on their own estates and in their regional power bases, from which they historically waged local wars and plotted resistance to royal authority. Louis thus compelled and seduced the old military aristocracy (the "nobility of the sword") into becoming his ceremonial courtiers, further weakening their power. In their place, he raised commoners or the more recently ennobled bureaucratic aristocracy (the "nobility of the robe"). He judged that royal authority thrived more surely by filling high executive and administrative positions with these men because they could be more easily dismissed than nobles of ancient lineage and entrenched influence. It is believed that Louis's policies were rooted in his experiences during the Fronde, when men of high birth readily took up the rebel cause against their king, who was actually the kinsman of some. This victory over the nobility may thus have ensured the end of major civil wars in France until the French Revolution about a century later.
France as the pivot of warfare
Under Louis, France was the leading European power, and most wars pivoted around its aggressiveness. No European state exceeded it in population, and no one could match its wealth, central location, and very strong professional army. It had largely avoided the devastation of the Thirty Years' War. Its weaknesses included an inefficient financial system that was hard-pressed to pay for its military adventures, and the tendency of most other powers to gang up against it.
During Louis's reign, France fought three major wars: the Franco-Dutch War, the Nine Years' War, and the War of the Spanish Succession. There were also two lesser conflicts: the War of Devolution and the War of the Reunions. The wars were very expensive but defined Louis XIV's foreign policy, and his personality shaped his approach. Impelled "by a mix of commerce, revenge, and pique", Louis sensed that war was the ideal way to enhance his glory. In peacetime, he concentrated on preparing for the next war. He taught his diplomats that their job was to create tactical and strategic advantages for the French military. By 1695, France retained much of its dominance but had lost control of the seas to England and Holland, and most countries, both Protestant and Catholic, were in alliance against it. Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, France's leading military strategist, warned Louis in 1689 that a hostile "Alliance" was too powerful at sea. He recommended that France fight back by licensing French merchant ships to privateer and seize enemy merchant ships while avoiding its navies:
France has its declared enemies Germany and all the states that it embraces; Spain with all its dependencies in Europe, Asia, Africa and America; the Duke of Savoy [in Italy], England, Scotland, Ireland, and all their colonies in the East and West Indies; and Holland with all its possessions in the four corners of the world where it has great establishments. France has ... undeclared enemies, indirectly hostile, hostile, and envious of its greatness, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Portugal, Venice, Genoa, and part of the Swiss Confederation, all of which states secretly aid France's enemies by the troops that they hire to them, the money they lend them and by protecting and covering their trade.
Vauban was pessimistic about France's so-called friends and allies:
For lukewarm, useless, or impotent friends, France has the Pope, who is indifferent; the King of England [James II] expelled from his country; the Grand Duke of Tuscany; the Dukes of Mantua, Modena, and Parma [all in Italy]; and the other faction of the Swiss. Some of these are sunk in the softness that comes of years of peace, the others are cool in their affections....The English and Dutch are the main pillars of the Alliance; they support it by making war against us in concert with the other powers, and they keep it going by means of the money that they pay every year to... Allies.... We must therefore fall back on privateering as the method of conducting war which is most feasible, simple, cheap, and safe, and which will cost least to the state, the more so since any losses will not be felt by the King, who risks virtually nothing....It will enrich the country, train many good officers for the King, and in a short time force his enemies to sue for peace.
Edict of Fontainebleau
Louis decided to persecute Protestants and revoke the 1598 Edict of Nantes, which awarded Huguenots political and religious freedom. He saw the persistence of Protestantism as a disgraceful reminder of royal powerlessness. After all, the Edict was the pragmatic concession of his grandfather Henry IV to end the longstanding French Wars of Religion. An additional factor in Louis's thinking was the prevailing contemporary European principle to assure socio-political stability, cuius regio, eius religio ("whose realm, his religion"), the idea that the religion of the ruler should be the religion of the realm (as originally confirmed in central Europe in the Peace of Augsburg of 1555).
Responding to petitions, Louis initially excluded Protestants from office, constrained the meeting of synods, closed churches outside of Edict-stipulated areas, banned Protestant outdoor preachers, and prohibited domestic Protestant migration. He also disallowed Protestant-Catholic intermarriages to which third parties objected, encouraged missions to the Protestants, and rewarded converts to Catholicism. This discrimination did not encounter much Protestant resistance, and a steady conversion of Protestants occurred, especially among the noble elites.
In 1681, Louis dramatically increased his persecution of Protestants. The principle of cuius regio, eius religio generally also meant that subjects who refused to convert could emigrate, but Louis banned emigration and effectively insisted that all Protestants must be converted. Secondly, following the proposal of René de Marillac and the Marquis of Louvois, he began quartering dragoons in Protestant homes. Although this was within his legal rights, the dragonnades inflicted severe financial strain on Protestants and atrocious abuse. Between 300,000 and 400,000 Huguenots converted, as this entailed financial rewards and exemption from the dragonnades.
On 15 October 1685, Louis issued the Edict of Fontainebleau, which cited the redundancy of privileges for Protestants given their scarcity after the extensive conversions. The Edict of Fontainebleau revoked the Edict of Nantes and repealed all the privileges that arose therefrom. By his edict, Louis no longer tolerated the existence of Protestant groups, pastors, or churches in France. No further churches were to be constructed, and those already existing were to be demolished. Pastors could choose either exile or secular life. Those Protestants who had resisted conversion were now to be baptised forcibly into the established church.
Historians have debated Louis's reasons for issuing the Edict of Fontainebleau. He may have been seeking to placate Pope Innocent XI, with whom relations were tense and whose aid was necessary to determine the outcome of a succession crisis in the Electorate of Cologne. He may also have acted to upstage Emperor Leopold I and regain international prestige after the latter defeated the Turks without Louis's help. Otherwise, he may simply have desired to end the remaining divisions in French society dating to the Wars of Religion by fulfilling his coronation oath to eradicate heresy.
Many historians have condemned the Edict of Fontainebleau as gravely harmful to France. In support, they cite the emigration of about 200,000 highly skilled Huguenots (roughly one quarter of the Protestant population, or 1% of the French population) who defied royal decrees and fled France for various Protestant states, weakening the French economy and enriching that of Protestant states. On the other hand, some historians view this as an exaggeration. They argue that most of France's preeminent Protestant businessmen and industrialists converted to Catholicism and remained.
What is certain is that the reaction to the Edict was mixed. Even while French Catholic leaders exulted, Pope Innocent XI still argued with Louis over Gallicanism and criticized the use of violence. Protestants across Europe were horrified at the treatment of their co-religionists, but most Catholics in France applauded the move. Nonetheless, it is indisputable that Louis's public image in most of Europe, especially in Protestant regions, was dealt a severe blow.
In the end, however, despite renewed tensions with the Camisards of south-central France at the end of his reign, Louis may have helped ensure that his successor would experience fewer instances of the religion-based disturbances that had plagued his forebears. French society would sufficiently change by the time of his descendant, Louis XVI, to welcome tolerance in the form of the 1787 Edict of Versailles, also known as the Edict of Tolerance. This restored to non-Catholics their civil rights and the freedom to worship openly. With the advent of the French Revolution in 1789, Protestants were granted equal rights with their Roman Catholic counterparts.
Nine Years' War
Causes and conduct of the war
The Nine Years' War, which lasted from 1688 to 1697, initiated a period of decline in Louis's political and diplomatic fortunes. It arose from two events in the Rhineland. First, in 1685, the Elector Palatine Charles II died. All that remained of his immediate family was Louis's sister-in-law, Elizabeth Charlotte. German law ostensibly barred her from succeeding to her brother's lands and electoral dignity, but it was unclear enough for arguments in favour of Elizabeth Charlotte to have a chance of success. Conversely, the princess was clearly entitled to a division of the family's personal property. Louis pressed her claims to land and chattels, hoping the latter, at least, would be given to her. Then, in 1688, Maximilian Henry of Bavaria, Archbishop of Cologne, an ally of France, died. The archbishopric had traditionally been held by the Wittelsbachs of Bavaria, but the Bavarian claimant to replace Maximilian Henry, Prince Joseph Clemens of Bavaria, was at that time not more than 17 years old and not even ordained. Louis sought instead to install his own candidate, Wilhelm Egon von Fürstenberg, to ensure the key Rhenish state remained an ally.
In light of his foreign and domestic policies during the early 1680s, which were perceived as aggressive, Louis's actions, fostered by the succession crises of the late 1680s, created concern and alarm in much of Europe. This led to the formation of the 1686 League of Augsburg by the Holy Roman Emperor, Spain, Sweden, Saxony, and Bavaria. Their stated intention was to return France to at least the borders agreed to in the Treaty of Nijmegen. Emperor Leopold I's persistent refusal to convert the Truce of Ratisbon into a permanent treaty fed Louis's fears that the Emperor would turn on France and attack the Reunions after settling his affairs in the Balkans.
Another event Louis found threatening was England's Glorious Revolution of 1688. Although King James II was Catholic, his two Anglican daughters, Mary and Anne, ensured the English people a Protestant succession. But when James II's son James Francis Edward Stuart was born, he took precedence in succession over his sisters. This seemed to herald an era of Catholic monarchs in England. Protestant lords called on the Dutch Prince William III of Orange, grandson of Charles I of England, to come to their aid. He sailed for England with troops despite Louis's warning that France would regard it as a provocation. Witnessing numerous desertions and defections, even among those closest to him, James II fled England. Parliament declared the throne vacant, and offered it to James's daughter Mary II and his son-in-law and nephew William. Vehemently anti-French, William (now William III of England) pushed his new kingdoms into war, thus transforming the League of Augsburg into the Grand Alliance. Before this happened, Louis expected William's expedition to England to absorb his energies and those of his allies, so he dispatched troops to the Rhineland after the expiry of his ultimatum to the German princes requiring confirmation of the Truce of Ratisbon and acceptance of his demands about the succession crises. This military manoeuvre was also intended to protect his eastern provinces from Imperial invasion by depriving the enemy army of sustenance, thus explaining the preemptive scorched earth policy pursued in much of southwestern Germany (the "Devastation of the Palatinate").
French armies were generally victorious throughout the war because of Imperial commitments in the Balkans, French logistical superiority, and the quality of French generals such as Condé's famous pupil, François Henri de Montmorency-Bouteville, duc de Luxembourg. He triumphed at the Battles of Fleurus in 1690, Steenkerque in 1692, and Landen in 1693, although, the battles proved to be of little of strategic consequence, mostly due to the nature of late 17th-century warfare.
Although an attempt to restore James II failed at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, France accumulated a string of victories from Flanders in the north, Germany in the east, and Italy and Spain in the south, to the high seas and the colonies. Louis personally supervised the captures of Mons in 1691 and Namur in 1692. Luxembourg gave France the defensive line of the Sambre by capturing Charleroi in 1693. France also overran most of the Duchy of Savoy after the battles of Marsaglia and Staffarde in 1693. While naval stalemate ensued after the French victory at the Battle of Beachy Head in 1690 and the Allied victory at Barfleur-La Hougue in 1692, the Battle of Torroella in 1694 exposed Catalonia to French invasion, culminating in the capture of Barcelona. The Dutch captured Pondichéry in 1693, but a 1697 French raid on the Spanish treasure port of Cartagena, Spain, yielded a fortune of 10,000,000 livres.
In July 1695, the city of Namur, occupied for three years by the French, was besieged by an allied army led by William III. Louis XIV ordered the surprise destruction of a Flemish city to divert the attention of these troops. This led to the bombardment of Brussels, in which more than 4,000 buildings were destroyed, including the entire city centre. The strategy failed, as Namur fell three weeks later, but harmed Louis XIV's reputation: a century later, Napoleon deemed the bombardment "as barbarous as it was useless".
Peace was broached by Sweden in 1690. By 1692, both sides evidently wanted peace, and secret bilateral talks began, but to no avail. Louis tried to break up the alliance against him by dealing with individual opponents but did not achieve his aim until 1696 when the Savoyards agreed to the Treaty of Turin and switched sides. Thereafter, members of the League of Augsburg rushed to the peace table, and negotiations for a general peace began in earnest, culminating in the Peace of Ryswick of 1697.
Peace of Ryswick
The Peace of Ryswick ended the War of the League of Augsburg and disbanded the Grand Alliance. By manipulating their rivalries and suspicions, Louis divided his enemies and broke their power.
The treaty yielded many benefits for France. Louis secured permanent French sovereignty over all of Alsace, including Strasbourg, and established the Rhine as the Franco-German border (as it is to this day). Pondichéry and Acadia were returned to France, and Louis's de facto possession of Saint-Domingue was recognised as lawful. However, he returned Catalonia and most of the Reunions.
French military superiority might have allowed him to press for more advantageous terms. Thus, his generosity to Spain with regard to Catalonia has been read as a concession to foster pro-French sentiment and may ultimately have induced King Charles II to name Louis's grandson Philip, Duke of Anjou, heir to the Spanish throne. In exchange for financial compensation, France renounced its interests in the Electorate of Cologne and the Palatinate. Lorraine, which had been occupied by the French since 1670, was returned to its rightful Duke Leopold, albeit with a right of way to the French military. William and Mary were recognised as joint sovereigns of the British Isles, and Louis withdrew support for James II. The Dutch were given the right to garrison forts in the Spanish Netherlands that acted as a protective barrier against possible French aggression. Though in some respects the Treaty of Ryswick may appear a diplomatic defeat for Louis since he failed to place client rulers in control of the Palatinate or the Electorate of Cologne, he did fulfil many of the aims laid down in his 1688 ultimatum. In any case, peace in 1697 was desirable to Louis, since France was exhausted from the costs of the war.
War of the Spanish Succession
Causes and build-up to the war
By the time of the Peace of Ryswick, the Spanish succession had been a source of concern to European leaders for well over forty years. King Charles II ruled a vast empire comprising Spain, Naples, Sicily, Milan, the Spanish Netherlands, and numerous Spanish colonies. He produced no children, however, and consequently had no direct heirs.
The principal claimants to the throne of Spain belonged to the ruling families of France and Austria. The French claim derived from Louis XIV's mother Anne of Austria (the older sister of Philip IV of Spain) and his wife Maria Theresa (Philip IV's eldest daughter). Based on the laws of primogeniture, France had the better claim as it originated from the eldest daughters in two generations. However, their renunciation of succession rights complicated matters. In the case of Maria Theresa, nonetheless, the renunciation was considered null and void owing to Spain's breach of her marriage contract with Louis. In contrast, no renunciations tainted the claims of Emperor Leopold I's son Charles, Archduke of Austria, who was a grandson of Philip III's youngest daughter Maria Anna. The English and Dutch feared that a French or Austrian-born Spanish king would threaten the balance of power and thus preferred the Bavarian Prince Joseph Ferdinand, a grandson of Leopold I through his first wife Margaret Theresa of Spain (the younger daughter of Philip IV).
In an attempt to avoid war, Louis signed the Treaty of the Hague with William III of England in 1698. This agreement divided Spain's Italian territories between Louis's son le Grand Dauphin and Archduke Charles, with the rest of the empire awarded to Joseph Ferdinand. William III consented to permitting the Dauphin's new territories to become part of France when the latter succeeded to his father's throne. The signatories, however, omitted to consult the ruler of these lands, and Charles II was passionately opposed to the dismemberment of his empire. In 1699, he re-confirmed his 1693 will that named Joseph Ferdinand as his sole successor.
Six months later, Joseph Ferdinand died. Therefore, in 1700, Louis and William III concluded a fresh partitioning agreement, the Treaty of London. This allocated Spain, the Low Countries, and the Spanish colonies to the Archduke. The Dauphin would receive all of Spain's Italian territories. Charles II acknowledged that his empire could only remain undivided by bequeathing it entirely to a Frenchman or an Austrian. Under pressure from his German wife, Maria Anna of Neuburg, Charles II named Archduke Charles as his sole heir.
Acceptance of the will of Charles II and consequences
On his deathbed in 1700, Charles II of Spain unexpectedly changed his will. The clear demonstration of French military superiority for many decades before this time, the pro-French faction at the court of Spain, and even Pope Innocent XII convinced him that France was more likely to preserve his empire intact. He thus offered the entire empire to the Dauphin's second son Philip, Duke of Anjou, provided it remained undivided. Anjou was not in the direct line of French succession, thus his accession would not cause a Franco-Spanish union. If Anjou refused, the throne would be offered to his younger brother Charles, Duke of Berry. If the Duke of Berry declined it, it would go to Archduke Charles, then to the distantly related House of Savoy if Charles declined it.
Louis was confronted with a difficult choice. He could agree to a partition of the Spanish possessions and avoid a general war, or accept Charles II's will and alienate much of Europe. He may initially have been inclined to abide by the partition treaties, but the Dauphin's insistence persuaded him otherwise. Moreover, Louis's foreign minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, marquis de Torcy, pointed out that war with the Emperor would almost certainly ensue whether Louis accepted the partition treaties or Charles II's will. He emphasised that, should it come to war, William III was unlikely to stand by France since he "made a treaty to avoid war and did not intend to go to war to implement the treaty". Indeed, in the event of war, it might be preferable to be already in control of the disputed lands. Eventually, therefore, Louis decided to accept Charles II's will. Philip, Duke of Anjou, thus became Philip V, King of Spain.
Most European rulers accepted Philip as king, some reluctantly. Depending on one's views of the war's inevitability, Louis acted reasonably or arrogantly. He confirmed that Philip V retained his French rights despite his new Spanish position. Admittedly, he may only have been hypothesising a theoretical eventuality and not attempting a Franco-Spanish union. But his actions were certainly not read as disinterested. Moreover, Louis sent troops to the Spanish Netherlands to evict Dutch garrisons and secure Dutch recognition of Philip V. In 1701, Philip transferred the asiento (the right to supply slaves to Spanish colonies) to France, as a sign of the two nations' growing connections. As tensions mounted, Louis decided to acknowledge James Stuart, the son of James II, as King of England, Scotland and Ireland on the latter's death, infuriating William III. These actions enraged Britain and the Dutch Republic. With the Holy Roman Emperor and the petty German states, they formed another Grand Alliance and declared war on France in 1702. French diplomacy secured Bavaria, Portugal, and Savoy as Franco-Spanish allies.
Commencement of fighting
Even before war was officially declared, hostilities began with Imperial aggression in Italy. Once finally declared, the War of the Spanish Succession lasted almost until Louis's death, at great cost to him and France.
The war began with French successes, but the talents of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, and Eugene of Savoy checked these victories and broke the myth of French invincibility. The duo allowed the Palatinate and Austria to occupy Bavaria after their victory at the Battle of Blenheim. Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria, had to flee to the Spanish Netherlands. The impact of this victory won the support of Portugal and Savoy. Later, the Battle of Ramillies delivered the Low Countries to the Allies, and the Battle of Turin forced Louis to evacuate Italy, leaving it open to Allied forces. Marlborough and Eugene met again at the Battle of Oudenarde, which enabled them to invade France.
France established contact with Francis II Rákóczi and promised support if he took up the cause of Hungarian independence.
Defeats, famine, and mounting debt greatly weakened France. Between 1693 and 1710, over two million people died in two famines, made worse as foraging armies seized food supplies from the villages. In desperation, Louis ordered a disastrous invasion of the English island of Guernsey in the autumn of 1704 with the aim of raiding their successful harvest. By the winter of 1708–09, he was willing to accept peace at nearly any cost. He agreed that the entire Spanish empire should be surrendered to Archduke Charles, and also consented to return to the frontiers of the Peace of Westphalia, giving up all the territories he had acquired over 60 years. But he could not promise that Philip V would accept these terms, so the Allies demanded that Louis single-handedly attack his grandson to force these terms on him. If he could not achieve this within the year, the war would resume. Louis would not accept these terms.
Turning point
The final phases of the War of the Spanish Succession demonstrated that the Allies could not maintain Archduke Charles in Spain just as surely as France could not retain the entire Spanish inheritance for Philip V. The Allies were definitively expelled from central Spain by the Franco-Spanish victories at the Battles of Villaviciosa and Brihuega in 1710. French forces elsewhere remained obdurate despite their defeats. The Allies suffered a Pyrrhic victory at the Battle of Malplaquet with 21,000 casualties, twice that of the French. Eventually, France recovered its military pride with the decisive victory at Denain in 1712.
French military successes near the end of the war took place against the background of a changed political situation in Austria. In 1705, Emperor Leopold I died. His elder son and successor, Joseph I, followed him in 1711. His heir was none other than Archduke Charles, who secured control of all of his brother's Austrian landholdings. If the Spanish empire then fell to him, it would have resurrected a domain as vast as Holy Roman Emperor Charles V's in the 16th century. To the maritime powers of Great Britain and the Dutch Republic, this would have been as undesirable as a Franco-Spanish union.
Conclusion of peace
As a result of the fresh British perspective on the European balance of power, Anglo-French talks began, culminating in the 1713 Peace of Utrecht between Louis, Philip V of Spain, Anne of Great Britain, and the Dutch Republic. In 1714, after losing Landau and Freiburg, the Holy Roman Emperor also made peace with France in the Treaties of Rastatt and Baden.
In the general settlement, Philip V retained Spain and its colonies, while Austria received the Spanish Netherlands and divided Spanish Italy with Savoy. Britain kept Gibraltar and Menorca. Louis agreed to withdraw his support for James Stuart, son of James II and pretender to the thrones of Great Britain and Ireland, and ceded Newfoundland, Rupert's Land, and Acadia in the Americas to Anne. Britain gained the most from the treaty, but the final terms were much more favourable to France than those being discussed in peace negotiations in 1709 and 1710. France retained Île-Saint-Jean and Île Royale, and Louis acquired a few minor European territories, such as the Principality of Orange and the Ubaye Valley, which covered transalpine passes into Italy. Thanks to Louis, his allies the Electors of Bavaria and Cologne were restored to their prewar status and returned their lands.
Personal life
Marriages and children
Louis and his wife Maria Theresa of Spain had six children from the marriage contracted for them in 1660. However, only one child, the eldest, survived to adulthood: Louis, le Grand Dauphin, known as Monseigneur. Maria Theresa died in 1683, whereupon Louis remarked that she had never caused him unease on any other occasion.
Despite evidence of affection early on in their marriage, Louis was never faithful to Maria Theresa. He took a series of mistresses, both official and unofficial. Among the better documented are Louise de La Vallière (with whom he had five children; 1661–1667), Bonne de Pons d'Heudicourt (1665), Catherine Charlotte de Gramont (1665), Françoise-Athénaïs, Marquise de Montespan (with whom he had seven children; 1667–1680), Anne de Rohan-Chabot (1669–1675), Claude de Vin des Œillets (one child born in 1676), Isabelle de Ludres (1675–1678), and Marie Angélique de Scorailles (1679–1681), who died at age 19 in childbirth. Through these liaisons, he produced numerous illegitimate children, most of whom he married to members of cadet branches of the royal family.
Louis proved relatively more faithful to his second wife, Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon. He first met her through her work caring for his children by Madame de Montespan, noting the care she gave to his favourite, Louis Auguste, Duke of Maine. The king was, at first, put off by her strict religious practice, but he warmed to her through her care for his children.
When he legitimized his children by Madame de Montespan on 20 December 1673, Françoise d'Aubigné became the royal governess at Saint-Germain. As governess, she was one of very few people permitted to speak to him as an equal, without limits. It is believed that they were married secretly at Versailles on or around 10 October 1683 or January 1684. This marriage, though never announced or publicly discussed, was an open secret and lasted until his death.
Piety and religion
Louis was a pious and devout king who saw himself as the head and protector of the Catholic Church in France. He made his devotions daily regardless of where he was, following the liturgical calendar regularly. Under the influence of his very religious second wife, he became much stronger in the practice of his Catholic faith. This included banning opera and comedy performances during Lent.
Towards the middle and the end of his reign, the centre for the King's religious observances was usually the Chapelle Royale at Versailles. Ostentation was a distinguishing feature of daily Mass, annual celebrations, such as those of Holy Week, and special ceremonies. Louis established the Paris Foreign Missions Society, but his informal alliance with the Ottoman Empire was criticised for undermining Christendom.
Patronage of the arts
Louis generously supported the royal court of France and those who worked under him. He brought the Académie Française under his patronage and became its "Protector". He allowed Classical French literature to flourish by protecting such writers as Molière, Racine, and La Fontaine, whose works remain influential to this day. Louis also patronised the visual arts by funding and commissioning artists such as Charles Le Brun, Pierre Mignard, Antoine Coysevox, and Hyacinthe Rigaud, whose works became famous throughout Europe. Composers and musicians such as Jean-Baptiste Lully, Jacques Champion de Chambonnières, and François Couperin thrived. In 1661, Louis founded the Académie Royale de Danse, and in 1669, the Académie d'Opéra, important driving events in the evolution of ballet. He also attracted, supported and patronized such artists as André Charles Boulle, who revolutionised marquetry with his art of inlay, today known as "Boulle work". Always on the lookout for new talent, the king launched music competitions: in 1683, Michel-Richard de Lalande thus became deputy master of the Royal Chapel, composing his Symphonies for the Soupers du Roy along with 77 large scale Grand Motets.
Over the course of four building campaigns, Louis converted a hunting lodge built by Louis XIII into the spectacular Palace of Versailles. Except for the current Royal Chapel (built near the end of his reign), the palace achieved much of its current appearance after the third building campaign, which was followed by an official move of the royal court to Versailles on 6 May 1682. Versailles became a dazzling, awe-inspiring setting for state affairs and the reception of foreign dignitaries. At Versailles, the king alone commanded attention.
Several reasons have been suggested for the creation of the extravagant and stately palace, as well as the relocation of the monarchy's seat. The memoirist Saint-Simon speculated that Louis viewed Versailles as an isolated power centre where treasonous cabals could be more readily discovered and foiled. There has also been speculation that the revolt of the Fronde caused Louis to hate Paris, which he abandoned for a country retreat, but his sponsorship of many public works in Paris, such as the establishment of a police force and of street-lighting, lend little credence to this theory. As a further example of his continued care for the capital, Louis constructed the Hôtel des Invalides, a military complex and home to this day for officers and soldiers rendered infirm either by injury or old age. While pharmacology was still quite rudimentary in his day, the Invalides pioneered new treatments and set new standards for hospice treatment. The conclusion of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1668 also induced Louis to demolish Paris's northern walls in 1670 and replace them with wide tree-lined boulevards.
Louis also renovated and improved the Louvre and other royal residences. Gian Lorenzo Bernini was originally to plan additions to the Louvre; however, his plans would have meant the destruction of much of the existing structure, replacing it with an Italian summer villa in the centre of Paris. Bernini's plans were eventually shelved in favour of the elegant Louvre Colonnade designed by three Frenchmen: Louis Le Vau, Charles Le Brun, and Claude Perrault. With the relocation of the court to Versailles, the Louvre was given over to the arts and the public.
During his visit from Rome, Bernini also executed a renowned portrait bust of the king.
Image and depiction
Few rulers in world history have commemorated themselves in as grand a manner as Louis. He cultivated his image as the Sun King (le Roi Soleil), the centre of the universe "without equal". Louis used court ritual and the arts to validate and augment his control over France. With his support, Colbert established from the beginning of Louis's personal reign a centralised and institutionalised system for creating and perpetuating the royal image. The King was thus portrayed largely in majesty or at war, notably against Spain. This portrayal of the monarch was to be found in numerous media of artistic expression, such as painting, sculpture, theatre, dance, music, and the almanacs that diffused royal propaganda to the population at large.
Evolution of royal portraiture
Over his lifetime, Louis commissioned numerous works of art to portray himself, among them over 300 formal portraits. The earliest portrayals of Louis already followed the pictorial conventions of the day in depicting the child king as the majestically royal incarnation of France. This idealisation of the monarch continued in later works, which avoided depictions of the effect of smallpox that Louis contracted in 1647. In the 1660s, Louis began to be shown as a Roman emperor, the god Apollo, or Alexander the Great, as can be seen in many works of Charles Le Brun, such as sculpture, paintings, and the decor of major monuments.
The depiction of the king in this manner focused on allegorical or mythological attributes, instead of attempting to produce a true likeness. As Louis aged, so too did the manner in which he was depicted. Nonetheless, there was still a disparity between realistic representation and the demands of royal propaganda. There is no better illustration of this than in Hyacinthe Rigaud's frequently-reproduced Portrait of Louis XIV of 1701, in which a 63-year-old Louis appears to stand on a set of unnaturally young legs.
Rigaud's portrait exemplified the height of royal portraiture during Louis's reign. Although Rigaud crafted a credible likeness of Louis, the portrait was neither meant as an exercise in realism nor to explore Louis's character. Certainly, Rigaud was concerned with detail and depicted the king's costume with great precision, down to his shoe buckle.
However, Rigaud intended to glorify the monarchy. Rigaud's original, now housed in the Louvre, was originally meant as a gift to Louis's grandson, Philip V of Spain. However, Louis was so pleased with the work that he kept the original and commissioned a copy to be sent to his grandson. That became the first of many copies, both in full and half-length formats, to be made by Rigaud, often with the help of his assistants. The portrait also became a model for French royal and imperial portraiture down to the time of Charles X over a century later. In his work, Rigaud proclaims Louis's exalted royal status through his elegant stance and haughty expression, the royal regalia and throne, rich ceremonial fleur-de-lys robes, as well as the upright column in the background, which, together with the draperies, serves to frame this image of majesty.
Other works of art
In addition to portraits, Louis commissioned at least 20 statues of himself in the 1680s, to stand in Paris and provincial towns as physical manifestations of his rule. He also commissioned "war artists" to follow him on campaigns to document his military triumphs. To remind the people of these triumphs, Louis erected permanent triumphal arches in Paris and the provinces for the first time since the decline of the Roman Empire.
Louis's reign marked the birth and infancy of the art of medallions. Sixteenth-century rulers had often issued medals in small numbers to commemorate the major events of their reigns. Louis, however, struck more than 300 to celebrate the story of the king in bronze, that were enshrined in thousands of households throughout France.
He also used tapestries as a medium of exalting the monarchy. Tapestries could be allegorical, depicting the elements or seasons, or realist, portraying royal residences or historical events. They were among the most significant means to spread royal propaganda prior to the construction of the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.
Ballet
Louis loved ballet and frequently danced in court ballets during the early half of his reign. In general, Louis was an eager dancer who performed 80 roles in 40 major ballets. This approaches the career of a professional ballet dancer.
His choices were strategic and varied. He danced four parts in three of Molière's comédies-ballets, which are plays accompanied by music and dance. Louis played an Egyptian in Le Mariage forcé in 1664, a Moorish gentleman in Le Sicilien in 1667, and both Neptune and Apollo in Les Amants magnifiques in 1670.
He sometimes danced leading roles that were suitably royal or godlike (such as Neptune, Apollo, or the Sun). At other times, he would adopt mundane roles before appearing at the end in the lead role. It is considered that, at all times, he provided his roles with sufficient majesty and drew the limelight with his flair for dancing. For Louis, ballet may not have merely been a tool for manipulation in his propaganda machinery. The sheer number of performances he gave as well as the diversity of roles he played may serve to indicate a deeper understanding and interest in the art form.
Ballet dancing was used by Louis as a political tool to hold power over his state. He integrated ballet deeply into court social functions and fixated his nobles' attention on upholding standards in ballet dancing, effectively distracting them from political activities. In 1661, the Royal Academy of Dance was founded by Louis to further his ambition. Pierre Beauchamp, his private dance instructor, was ordered by Louis to come up with a notation system to record ballet performances, which he did with great success. His work was adopted and published by Feuillet in 1700 as Choregraphie. This major development in ballet played an important role in promoting French culture and ballet throughout Europe during Louis's time.
Louis greatly emphasized etiquettes in ballet dancing, evidently seen in "La belle danse" (the French noble style). More challenging skills were required to perform this dance with movements very much resembling court behaviours, as a way to remind the nobles of the king's absolute power and their own status. All the details and rules were compressed in five positions of the bodies codified by Beauchamp.
Unofficial image
Besides the official depiction and image of Louis, his subjects also followed a non-official discourse consisting mainly of clandestine publications, popular songs, and rumours that provided an alternative interpretation of Louis and his government. They often focused on the miseries arising from poor government, but also carried the hope for a better future when Louis escaped the malignant influence of his ministers and mistresses, and took the government into his own hands. On the other hand, petitions addressed either directly to Louis or to his ministers exploited the traditional imagery and language of monarchy. These varying interpretations of Louis abounded in self-contradictions that reflected the people's amalgamation of their everyday experiences with the idea of monarchy.
In fiction
Literature
Alexandre Dumas portrayed Louis in his two sequels to his 1844 novel The Three Musketeers: first as a child in Twenty Years After (1845), then as a young man in The Vicomte de Bragelonne (1847–1850), in which he is a central character. The final part of the latter novel recounts the legend that a mysterious prisoner in an iron mask was actually Louis's twin brother and has spawned numerous film adaptations generally titled The Man in the Iron Mask.
In 1910, the American historical novelist Charles Major wrote "The Little King: A Story of the Childhood of King Louis XIV".
Louis is a major character in the 1959 historical novel Angélique et le Roy ("Angélique and the King"), part of the Angélique series. The protagonist, a strong-willed lady at Versailles, rejects the King's advances and refuses to become his mistress. A later book, the 1961 Angélique se révolte ("Angélique in Revolt"), details the dire consequences of her defying this powerful monarch.
A character based on Louis plays an important role in The Age of Unreason, a series of four alternate history novels written by American science fiction and fantasy author Gregory Keyes.
Louis features significantly in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, specifically in the 2003 novel The Confusion, the greater part of which takes place at Versailles.
In the 39 Clues series universe, it has been noted that Louis was part of the Cahill branch, Tomas.
He is called the son of Apollo in Rick Riordan's Trials of Apollo series.
Louis XIV is portrayed in Vonda N. McIntyre's 1997 novel The Moon and the Sun.
Films
The film, The Taking of Power by Louis XIV (1966), directed by Roberto Rossellini, shows Louis's rise to power after the death of Cardinal Mazarin.
The film Man in the Iron Mask (1998), directed by Randall Wallace, focused on the identity of an anonymous masked prisoner who spent decades in the Bastille and other French prisons, and his true identity remains somewhat a mystery till date. The monarch was played by Leonardo DiCaprio.
The film, Le Roi Danse (2000; translated: The King Dances), directed by Gérard Corbiau, reveals Louis through the eyes of Jean-Baptiste Lully, his court musician.
Julian Sands portrayed Louis in Roland Jaffe's Vatel (2000).
Alan Rickman directed, co-wrote, and stars as Louis XIV in the film, A Little Chaos, which centres on construction in the gardens of Versaille, at the time immediately before and after the death of Queen Maria Theresa.
The 2016 film The Death of Louis XIV, directed by Albert Serra, is set during the last two weeks of Louis XIV's life before dying of gangrene, with the monarch played by Jean-Pierre Léaud.
Television
Louis XIV is portrayed by Thierry Perkins-Lyautey in the British television film Charles II: The Power and the Passion.
The 15-year-old Louis XIV, as played by the Irish actor Robert Sheehan, is a major character of the short-lived historical fantasy series Young Blades from January to June 2005.
George Blagden portrays Louis XIV in the Canal+ series Versailles which aired for three seasons from 2015.
Musicals
Emmanuel Moire portrayed Louis XIV in the 2005-07 Kamel Ouali musical Le Roi Soleil.
Health and death
Despite the image of a healthy and virile king that Louis sought to project, evidence exists to suggest that his health was not very good. He had many ailments: for example, symptoms of diabetes, as confirmed in reports of suppurating periostitis in 1678, dental abscesses in 1696, along with recurring boils, fainting spells, gout, dizziness, hot flushes, and headaches.
From 1647 to 1711, the three chief physicians to the king (Antoine Vallot, Antoine d'Aquin, and Guy-Crescent Fagon) recorded all of his health problems in the Journal de Santé du Roi (Journal of the King's Health), a daily report of his health. On 18 November 1686, Louis underwent a painful operation for an anal fistula that was performed by the surgeon Charles Felix de Tassy, who prepared a specially shaped curved scalpel for the occasion. The wound took more than two months to heal.
Louis died of gangrene at Versailles on 1 September 1715, four days before his 77th birthday, after 72 years on the throne. Enduring much pain in his last days, he finally "yielded up his soul without any effort, like a candle going out", while reciting the psalm Deus, in adjutorium me festina (O Lord, make haste to help me). His body was laid to rest in Saint-Denis Basilica outside Paris. It remained there undisturbed for about 80 years until revolutionaries exhumed and destroyed all of the remains found in the Basilica. In 1848, at Nuneham House, a piece of Louis's mummified heart, taken from his tomb and kept in a silver locket by Lord Harcourt, Archbishop of York, was shown to the Dean of Westminster, William Buckland, who ate it.
Cardinal Armand Gaston Maximilien de Rohan gave Last Rites (confession, viaticum, and unction) to king Louis XIV.
Succession
Louis outlived most of his immediate legitimate family. His last surviving legitimate son, Louis, Dauphin of France, died in 1711. Barely a year later, the Duke of Burgundy, the eldest of the Dauphin's three sons and then heir-apparent to Louis, followed his father. Burgundy's elder son, Louis, Duke of Brittany, joined them a few weeks later. Thus, on his deathbed, Louis's heir-apparent was his five-year-old great-grandson, Louis, Duke of Anjou, Burgundy's younger son.
Louis foresaw an underaged successor and sought to restrict the power of his nephew Philip II, Duke of Orléans, who, as his closest surviving legitimate relative in France, would probably become regent to the prospective Louis XV. Accordingly, the king created a regency council as Louis XIII had in anticipation of Louis XIV's own minority, with some power vested in his illegitimate son Louis-Auguste de Bourbon, Duke of Maine. Orléans, however, had Louis's will annulled by the Parlement of Paris after his death and made himself sole regent. He stripped Maine and his brother, Louis-Alexandre, Count of Toulouse, of the rank of Prince of the Blood, which Louis had granted them, and significantly reduced Maine's power and privileges.
Line of succession in 1715
Line of succession to the French throne upon the death of Louis XIV in 1715. Louis XIV's only surviving legitimate grandson, Philip V, was not included in the line of succession due to having renounced the French throne after the war of the Spanish Succession, which lasted for 13 years after the death of Charles II of Spain in 1700.
Further down the French line of succession in 1715 was the House of Condé, followed by the House of Conti (a cadet branch of the House of Condé). Both of these royal houses were descended in the male line from Henri II, Prince of Condé, a second cousin of French King Louis XIII (the father of Louis XIV) in the male line.
Legacy
Reputation
According to Philippe de Courcillon's Journal, Louis on his deathbed advised his heir with these words: Do not follow the bad example which I have set you; I have often undertaken war too lightly and have sustained it for vanity. Do not imitate me, but be a peaceful prince, and may you apply yourself principally to the alleviation of the burdens of your subjects.
Some historians point out that it was a customary demonstration of piety in those days to exaggerate one's sins. Thus they do not place much emphasis on Louis's deathbed declarations in assessing his accomplishments. Rather, they focus on military and diplomatic successes, such as how he placed a French prince on the Spanish throne. This, they contend, ended the threat of an aggressive Spain that historically interfered in domestic French politics. These historians also emphasise the effect of Louis's wars in expanding France's boundaries and creating more defensible frontiers that preserved France from invasion until the Revolution.
Arguably, Louis also applied himself indirectly to "the alleviation of the burdens of [his] subjects." For example, he patronised the arts, encouraged industry, fostered trade and commerce, and sponsored the founding of an overseas empire. Moreover, the significant reduction in civil wars and aristocratic rebellions during his reign are seen by these historians as the result of Louis's consolidation of royal authority over feudal elites. In their analysis, his early reforms centralised France and marked the birth of the modern French state. They regard the political and military victories as well as numerous cultural achievements as how Louis helped raise France to a preeminent position in Europe. Europe came to admire France for its military and cultural successes, power, and sophistication. Europeans generally began to emulate French manners, values, goods, and deportment. French became the universal language of the European elite.
Louis's detractors have argued that his considerable foreign, military and domestic expenditure impoverished and bankrupted France. His supporters, however, distinguish the state, which was impoverished, from France, which was not. As supporting evidence, they cite the literature of the time, such as the social commentary in Montesquieu's Persian Letters.
Alternatively, Louis's critics attribute the social upheaval culminating in the French Revolution to his failure to reform French institutions while the monarchy was still secure. Other scholars counter that there was little reason to reform institutions that largely worked well under Louis. They also maintain that events occurring almost 80 years after his death were not reasonably foreseeable to Louis and that in any case, his successors had sufficient time to initiate reforms of their own.
Louis has often been criticised for his vanity. The memoirist Saint-Simon, who claimed that Louis slighted him, criticised him thus: There was nothing he liked so much as flattery, or, to put it more plainly, adulation; the coarser and clumsier it was, the more he relished it. For his part, Voltaire saw Louis's vanity as the cause for his bellicosity:It is certain that he passionately wanted glory, rather than the conquests themselves. In the acquisition of Alsace and half of Flanders, and of all of Franche-Comté, what he really liked was the name he made for himself.
Nonetheless, Louis has also received praise. The anti-Bourbon Napoleon described him not only as "a great king", but also as "the only King of France worthy of the name". Leibniz, the German Protestant philosopher, commended him as "one of the greatest kings that ever was". And Lord Acton admired him as "by far the ablest man who was born in modern times on the steps of a throne". The historian and philosopher Voltaire wrote: "His name can never be pronounced without respect and without summoning the image of an eternally memorable age". Voltaire's history, The Age of Louis XIV, named Louis's reign as not only one of the four great ages in which reason and culture flourished, but the greatest ever.
Quotes
Numerous quotes have been attributed to Louis XIV by legend.
The well-known "I am the state" ("L'État, c'est moi.") was reported from at least the late 18th century. It was widely repeated but also denounced as apocryphal by the early 19th century.
He did say, "Every time I appoint someone to a vacant position, I make a hundred unhappy and one ungrateful." Louis is recorded by numerous eyewitnesses as having said on his deathbed: "Je m'en vais, mais l'État demeurera toujours." ("I depart, but the State shall always remain.")
Arms
Order of Saint Louis
On 5 April 1693, Louis also founded the Royal and Military Order of Saint Louis (French: Ordre Royal et Militaire de Saint-Louis), a military order of chivalry. He named it after Louis IX and intended it as a reward for outstanding officers. It is notable as the first decoration that could be granted to non-nobles and is roughly the forerunner of the Légion d'honneur, with which it shares the red ribbon (though the Légion d'honneur is awarded to military personnel and civilians alike).
Family
Ancestry
Patrilineal descent
Issue
This is an incomplete list of Louis XIV's illegitimate children. He reputedly had more, but the difficulty in fully documenting all such births restricts the list only to the better-known and/or legitimised.
See also
Charles de Lorme, personal medical doctor to Louis XIV
Fundamental laws of the Kingdom of France
House of France
Levée (ceremony)
List of French monarchs
Outline of France
Louis XIV style
Nicolas Fouquet
French forestry Ordinance of 1669
Potager du Roi
Éléphante de Louis XIV
Notes
References
Works cited
Further reading
External links
Ranum, Orest, ed. (1972). The Century of Louis XIV. Archived from the original on 7 February 2018. Retrieved 7 July 2017.
Works by or about Louis XIV at the Internet Archive
Works by Louis XIV at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
Louis XIV Archived 22 June 2017 at the Wayback Machine at History.com
Full text of marriage contract, France National Archives transcription (in French)
Le Siècle de Louis XIV by Voltaire, 1751, hosted by French Wikisource |
Louis_XV | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XV | [
599
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XV"
] | Louis XV (15 February 1710 – 10 May 1774), known as Louis the Beloved (French: le Bien-Aimé), was King of France from 1 September 1715 until his death in 1774. He succeeded his great-grandfather Louis XIV at the age of five. Until he reached maturity (then defined as his 13th birthday) in 1723, the kingdom was ruled by his grand-uncle Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, as Regent of France. Cardinal Fleury was chief minister from 1726 until his death in 1743, at which time the king took sole control of the kingdom.
His reign of almost 59 years (from 1715 to 1774) was the second longest in the history of France, exceeded only by his predecessor, Louis XIV, who had ruled for 72 years (from 1643 to 1715). In 1748, Louis returned the Austrian Netherlands, won at the Battle of Fontenoy of 1745. He ceded New France in North America to Great Britain and Spain at the conclusion of the disastrous Seven Years' War in 1763. He incorporated the territories of the Duchy of Lorraine and the Corsican Republic into the Kingdom of France. Historians generally criticize his reign, citing how reports of his corruption embarrassed the monarchy, while his wars drained the treasury and produced little gain. However, a minority of scholars argue that he was popular during his lifetime, but that his reputation was later blackened by revolutionary propaganda. His grandson and successor Louis XVI inherited a large kingdom in need of financial and political reform which would ultimately lead to the French Revolution of 1789.
Early life and the Regency (1710–1723)
Louis XV was the great-grandson of Louis XIV and the third son of the Duke of Burgundy (1682–1712), and his wife Marie Adélaïde of Savoy, who was the eldest daughter of Victor Amadeus II, Duke of Savoy. He was born in the Palace of Versailles on 15 February 1710 and was immediately styled the Duke of Anjou. At this time, the possibility of the Duke of Anjou becoming the next king seemed rather remote as Louis XIV's eldest son and heir, Louis's paternal grandfather Louis Le Grand Dauphin, was expected to assume the throne upon the old king's death. Next in line to the throne behind the Grand Dauphin was his eldest son- Louis's father Le Petit Dauphin and then Louis's elder brother, a child named Louis Duke of Brittany. Disease, however, steered the line of succession forward three generations and sideways: on 14 April 1711 the Grand Dauphin, died of smallpox, and less than a year later, on 12 February 1712 the future king's mother, Marie Adélaïde, who had been stricken with measles, died, followed six days later by Louis's father, her devoted husband who would not leave her side during her illness. With the death of both the Grand and Petit dauphins, Louis's elder brother immediately became Dauphin of France, but just over two weeks further still, on 7 March, it was found that both the elder Louis and the younger Louis had also contracted measles. The two brothers were treated in the traditional way, with bloodletting. On the night of 8–9 March, the new Dauphin, age five, died from the combination of the disease and the treatment. The governess of Louis, Madame de Ventadour, forbade the doctors to bleed the two year old Duke of Anjou by hiding him in a palace closet where she cared for him alone; where he survived despite being very ill. When Louis XIV himself finally died on 1 September 1715, Louis, at the age of five, trembling and crying and against all probability, inherited the throne as Louis XV.
According to Charles V's royal ordinance of 1374 the Kingdom of France must be governed by a regent until a given king had reached the age of 13. The title of regent was customarily assigned to an under-aged king's nearest adult living relative, often his mother or an uncle. But as Louis's mother had been struck down by disease, and as his only uncle had already been enthroned as King of Spain, the job fell to his great-uncle Philippe II, Duke of Orléans. However Louis XIV had distrusted Philippe, who was a renowned soldier but was regarded by the late King as an atheist and libertine. The King referred privately to Philippe as a Fanfaron des crimes ("braggart of crimes"). Louis XIV had desired for France to be ruled by his favorite but illegitimate son, the Duke of Maine (illegitimate son of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan), who was in the council and who, because of a dramatic change in the laws of succession instituted by Louis XIV, and, as his oldest surviving male descendant, could now legally become king if the legitimate direct line of succession became extinguished. In August 1714, shortly before his own death, the King rewrote his will to restrict the powers of the regent; it stipulated that the nation was to be governed by a Regency Council made up of fourteen members until the new king reached the age of majority. Philippe, nephew of Louis XIV, was named president of this Council, but other members included the Duke of Maine and at least seven of his well-known allies. According to the will, all decisions were to be made by majority vote, meaning that the president could always be outvoted by Maine's party and effectively allowing Maine to rule France for the next eight years.
Philippe saw the trap. The Parlement of Paris, an assembly of French nobles among whom Philippe had many friends, was the only judicial body in France with the authority to have this portion of the deceased King's will annulled, and immediately after the King's death Philippe approached the Parlement requesting that they do just this. In exchange for their support he agreed to restore to the Parlement its droit de remontrance (right of remonstrance) – the right to challenge a king's decisions – which had been removed by Louis XIV. The droit de remontrance would impair the monarchy's functioning and marked the beginning of a conflict between the Parlement and King which contributed to the French Revolution in 1789. In the mean time, however, the will was annulled and Philippe was installed as Regent with full powers to act in the name of the King in all matters.
On 9 September 1715, Philippe had the young King transported away from the court in Versailles to Paris, where the Regent had his own residence in the Palais Royal. On 12 September, the King performed his first official act, opening the first lit de justice of his reign at the Palais Royal. From September 1715 until January 1716 he lived in the Château de Vincennes, before moving to the Tuileries Palace. In February 1717, when he had reached the age of seven, the King was taken away in tears from his beloved governess Madame Ventadour and placed in the care of François de Villeroy, the 73-year-old Duke and Maréchal de France, named as his governor in Louis XIV's will of August 1714. Villeroy instructed the young King in court etiquette, taught him how to review a regiment, and how to receive royal visitors. His guests included the Russian Tsar Peter the Great in 1717; at their first meeting and contrary to ordinary protocol between such great rulers, the two-meter-tall Tsar greeted Louis by picking him up under the arms and giving him a kiss. Louis also learned the skills of horseback riding and hunting, which became great passions. In 1720, following the example of Louis XIV, Villeroy had the young Louis dance in public in two ballets—once at the Tuileries Palace on 24 February 1720, and then again in The Ballet des Elements on 31 December 1721. The shy Louis was terrified of these performances, and never danced in another ballet.
The King's tutor was the Abbé André-Hercule de Fleury, the bishop of Fréjus (and later to become Cardinal de Fleury), who saw that he was instructed in Latin, Italian, history and geography, astronomy, mathematics and drawing, and cartography. The King had charmed the visiting Russian Tsar in 1717 by identifying the major rivers, cities and geographic features of Russia. In his later life the King retained his passion for science and geography; he created departments in physics (1769) and mechanics (1773) at the Collège de France, and he sponsored the first complete and accurate map of France, the Cartes de Cassini. Besides his academic studies, he received a practical education in government. Beginning in 1720 he attended the regular meetings of the Regency Council.
One economic crisis disrupted the Regency; the Scottish economist and banker John Law was named controller-general of finances. In May 1716, he opened the Banque Générale Privée ("General Private Bank"), which soon became the Banque Royal. It was mostly funded by the government, and was one of the earliest banks to issue paper money, which he promised could be exchanged for gold. He also persuaded wealthy Parisians to invest in the Mississippi Company, a scheme for the colonization of the French territory of Louisiana. The stock of the company first soared and then collapsed in 1720, taking the bank with it. Law fled France, and wealthy Parisians became reluctant to make further investments or trust any currency but gold.
In 1719, France, in alliance with Britain and the Dutch Republic, declared war on Spain. Spain was defeated on both land and sea, and quickly sought peace. A Franco-Spanish treaty was signed on 27 March 1721. The two governments proposed to unite their royal families by marrying Louis to his cousin, Mariana Victoria of Spain, the three-year-old daughter of Philip V of Spain, who was himself a grandson of Louis XIV. The marriage contract was signed on 25 November 1721, and the future bride came to France and took up residence in the Louvre. However, after the death of the Regent, in 1725, the new Prime Minister decided she was too young to have children soon enough, and she was sent back to Spain. During the rest of the Regency, France was at peace, and in 1720, the Regent decreed an official silence on religious conflicts. Montesquieu and Voltaire published their first works, and the Age of Enlightenment in France quietly began.
Government of the Duke of Bourbon (1723–1726)
On 15 June 1722, as Louis approached his thirteenth birthday, the year of his majority, he left Paris and moved back to Versailles, where he had happy memories of his childhood, but where he was far from the reach of public opinion. On 25 October, Louis was crowned King at the Cathedral of Reims. On 15 February 1723, the king's majority was declared by the Parlement of Paris, officially ending the regency. Philippe continued to manage the government, and took the title of Prime Minister in August 1723, but while visiting his mistress, far from the court and medical care, he died in December of the same year. Following the advice of his preceptor Fleury, Louis XV appointed his cousin Louis Henri, Duke of Bourbon, to replace the late Duke of Orléans as prime minister.
Marriage and children
One of the first priorities of the Duke of Bourbon was to find a bride for the King, to assure the continuity of the monarchy, and especially to prevent the succession to the throne of the Orléans branch of the family, the rivals of his branch. A list of 99 princesses was prepared, among them being Princess Anne of Great Britain, Barbara of Portugal, Princess Charlotte Amalie of Denmark, Elisabeth Therese of Lorraine, Enrichetta d'Este and the Duke's own sisters Henriette Louise de Bourbon and Élisabeth Alexandrine de Bourbon. In the end, the 21-year-old Marie Leszczyńska, daughter of Stanislaus I, the deposed king of Poland, was chosen.
The marriage was celebrated in September 1725 when the king was 15 and Marie was 22. Louis was said to have fallen in love with Marie instantly, and consummated his marriage to her seven times on their wedding night. From 1727 to 1737, Marie gave Louis XV ten children: eight girls and two boys. Of the boys, only the elder, the Dauphin Louis (1729–1765), survived childhood. While he did not live to rule, his birth as the awaited heir was welcomed with celebration in all spheres of French society. (The Dauphin Louis would go on to marry Maria Josephina of Saxony in 1747, who gave birth to the next three Kings of France: Louis XVI, Louis XVIII, and Charles X). Louis XV's second son, the Duke of Anjou, was born in 1730 and died in 1733. Of the daughters only the two oldest daughters, who were fraternal twins, were raised at Versailles; the others were sent away to be raised at the Abbey of Fontevrault.
Marie was a pious and timid Queen who spent most of her time secluded with her own courtiers. She was a musician, read extensively, and played social games with her courtiers. After 1737, she did not share her bed with the King. She was deeply upset by the death of her son the Dauphin in 1765, and died on 24 June 1768.
Unigenitus, Jansenism and religious conflict
One of the first serious conflicts that disturbed the early reign of Louis XV was a battle within the Catholic Church over a Papal Bull called Unigenitus. The Bull was requested by Louis XIV of Pope Clement XI and granted on 8 September 1713. It was a fierce condemnation of Jansenism, a Catholic doctrine based largely on the teachings of Saint Augustine. Jansenism had attracted many important followers in France, including the philosopher Blaise Pascal, the poet Racine, aristocrats including Madame de Sévigné and Madame de Lafayette. The faculty of the Sorbonne, then primarily a theological college and a center of Jansenism, demanded clarification from the government. The Jansenists were allied with the Gallicans, theologians who wanted the Catholic Church in France to be distinctly French. The opposition to Unigenitus was particularly strong among the members of the Parlement of Paris, the assembly of the nobles. Despite the protests, on 24 March 1730 Cardinal Fleury persuaded the King to issue a decree that Unigenitus was the law of France as well as that of the Church.
The government and church imposed repressive measures. On 27 April 1732, the Archbishop of Paris threatened to excommunicate any member of the Church who read the Jansenist journal, Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques. The Parlement was strictly forbidden to discuss religious questions, preventing them from opposing the Unigenitus bull. Priests who did not accept Unigenitus were denied the authority to administer last rites to the dying. A new tax, the cinquantième, was levied against religious figures who had previously been exempted from taxation. Jansenists and Protestants were threatened with prison and banishment. As a result of these repressive acts, religious dissent remained an issue throughout the King's reign.
Tension grew between the Duke of Bourbon and Cardinal de Fleury over the King's favor. The Duke's rigid and cold personality did not appeal to the young King, who turned to his old tutor for advice on how to run the affairs of state. When the King insisted that Fleury was to be included in all meetings between himself and the Duke of Bourbon, the Duke was infuriated and began to undermine Fleury's position at court. When the King became aware of the Duke's intrigue, he abruptly dismissed him and replaced him with Fleury.
Rule with Cardinal de Fleury (1726–1743)
Finances and control of dissent
From 1726 until his death in 1743, Fleury effectively ruled France with the king's assent. Fleury dictated the choices to be made, and encouraged the king's indecision and flattered his pride. He forbade the king to discuss politics with the Queen. In order to save on court expenses, he sent the youngest four daughters of the king to be educated at the Abbey of Fontevrault. On the surface it was the most peaceful and prosperous period of the reign of Louis XV, but it was built upon a growing volcano of opposition, particularly from the noble members of the Parlements, who saw their privileges and power reduced. Fleury made the papal doctrine Unigenitus part of French law and forbade any debate in Parlement, which caused the silent opposition to grow. He also downplayed the importance of the French Navy, which would prove be a fatal mistake in future conflicts.
Fleury showed the King the virtues of a stable government; he kept the same Minister of War, Bauyn d'Angervilliers, and controller of the currency, Philibert Orry, for twelve years, and his minister of foreign affairs, Germain Louis Chauvelin, for ten years. His minister of the Navy and household of the King, the Conte de Maurepas, was in office the entire period. In all he had just thirteen ministers over the course of nineteen years, while the King, in his last thirty-one years, employed forty-three.
Louis's Controller-General of Finances Michel Robert Le Peletier des Forts (1726–1730), stabilized the French currency, though he was expelled for enriching himself in 1730. His successor, Philibert Orry, substantially reduced the debt caused by the War of the Spanish Succession, and simplified and made more fair the tax system, though he still had to depend upon the unpopular dixieme, or tax of the tenth of the revenue of every citizen. Orry managed, in the last two years of Fleury's government, to balance the royal budget, an accomplishment never again repeated during the rest of the reign.
Fleury's government expanded commerce, both within France and with the rest of the world. Transportation and shipping were improved with the completion of the Saint-Quentin canal (linking the Oise and Somme rivers) in 1738, which was later extended to the Escaut River and the Low Countries, and the systematic building of a national road network. By the middle of the 18th century, France had the most modern and extensive road network in the world. The Council of Commerce stimulated trade, and French foreign maritime trade increased from 80 to 308 million livres between 1716 and 1748.
The Government continued its policy of religious repression, aimed at the Jansenists and the so-called "Gallicans" in Parlements of nobles. After the dismissal of 139 members of provincial parlements for opposing the official government and papal doctrine of Unigenitus, the Parlement of Paris had to register the Unigenitus papal bull and was forbidden to hear religious cases in the future.
Foreign relations – New alliances; the War of the Polish Succession
In the first years of his governance, Fleury and his foreign minister Germain Louis Chauvelin sought to maintain the peace by maintaining the French alliance with Great Britain, despite their colonial rivalry in North America and the West Indies. They also rebuilt the alliance with Spain, which had been shaken by the anger of the Spanish King when Louis refused to marry the Spanish infanta. The birth of the king's male heir in 1729 dispelled the risks of a succession crisis in France. However, new powers were emerging on the European stage, particularly Russia under Peter the Great and his successor, Catherine. The Habsburg monarchy under Charles VI was assembling a scattered but impressive empire as far as Serbia in southeastern Europe with territories taken from the Ottoman Empire, and from Spain, acquiring the Austrian Netherlands, Milan and the Kingdom of Naples.
A new coalition against France began to assemble in eastern Europe, sealed by a defensive treaty signed on 6 August 1726 between Prussia, Russia and Austria. In 1732 the coalition came into direct conflict with France over the succession to the Polish throne. The King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, Augustus II, was dying, and the favoured candidate to succeed him was Stanislaus I Leszczyński, the father of the Queen of France. In the same year Russia, Prussia and Austria signed a secret agreement to exclude Stanislaus from the throne, and put forward another candidate, Augustus III, son of the deceased Polish king. The death of Augustus on 1 February 1733, with two heirs claiming the throne, sparked the War of the Polish Succession. Stanislaus traveled to Warsaw, where he was elected and crowned on 12 September. Empress Anna of Russia immediately marched her regiments into Poland to support her candidate. Stanislaus was forced to flee to the fortified port of Danzig, while on 5 October Augustus III was crowned in Warsaw.
Cardinal Fleury responded with a carefully orchestrated campaign of diplomacy. He first won assurances from Britain and Holland that they would not interfere in the war, while lining up alliances with Spain and Charles Emmanuel III of Sardinia in exchange for pieces of the Habsburg monarchy. On 10 October 1733, Louis formally declared war against Austria. A French army occupied the Duchy of Lorraine, while another crossed the Alps and captured Milan on 3 November, handing it over to the King of Sardinia. Fleury was less energetic in his actions to restore the Polish throne to Stanislaus, who was blockaded by the Russian navy and army in Danzig. Instead of sending the largest part of the French fleet from its station off Copenhagen to Danzig, he ordered it to return to Brest and sent only a small squadron with two thousand soldiers, which after a fierce action was sunk by the Russians. On 3 July Stanislaus was forced to flee again, in disguise, to Prussia, where he became the guest of King Frederick William I of Prussia in the castle of Königsberg.
To bring the war to an end, Fleury and Charles VI negotiated an ingenious diplomatic solution. Francis III, Duke of Lorraine, left Lorraine for Vienna, where he married Maria Theresa, the heir presumptive to the Habsburg thrones. The vacant throne of Lorraine was to be occupied by Stanislaus, who abandoned his claim to the Polish throne. Upon the death of Stanislaus, the Duchy of Lorraine and Bar would become part of France. Francis, as the future emperor, would be compensated for the loss of Lorraine by the granting of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. The King of Sardinia would be compensated with certain territories in Lombardy. The marriage of Francis of Lorraine and Maria Theresa took place in 1736, and the other exchanges took place in turn. With the death of Stanislaus in 1766, Lorraine and the neighboring Duchy of Bar became part of France.
In September 1739, Fleury scored another diplomatic success. France's mediation in the war between the Holy Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire led to the Treaty of Belgrade (September 1739), which favoured the Ottoman Empire, beneficiary of a Franco-Ottoman alliance against the Habsburgs since the early 16th century. As a result, the Ottoman Empire in 1740 renewed the French capitulations, which marked the supremacy of French trade in the Middle East. With these successes, Louis XV's prestige reached its highest point. In 1740 Frederick William I of Prussia declared "Since the Treaty of Vienna France is the arbiter of Europe."
War of the Austrian Succession
On 29 October 1740, a courier brought the news to the King, who was hunting in Fontainebleau, that the Emperor Charles VI was dead, and his daughter Maria Theresa was set to succeed him. After two days of reflection, Louis declared, "In these circumstances, I don't want to get involved at all. I will remain with my hands in my pockets, unless of course they want to elect a Protestant emperor." This attitude did not please France's allies, who saw an opportunity to take parts of the Habsburg empire, or Louis's generals, who for a century had won glory fighting Austria. The King in Prussia had died on 31 May and was succeeded by his son Frederick the Great, a military genius with ambitions to expand Prussia's borders. The Elector Charles Albert of Bavaria, supported by Frederick, challenged the succession of Maria Theresa, and on 17 December 1740 Frederick invaded the Austrian province of Silesia. The elderly Cardinal Fleury had too little energy left to oppose this war.
Fleury sent his highest ranking general, Charles Louis Auguste Fouquet, duc de Belle-Isle, the Maréchal de Belle-Isle, the grandson of Nicolas Fouquet, the famous disgraced controller of finances of Louis XIV, as his ambassador to the Diet of Frankfurt, with instructions to avoid a war by supporting the candidacy of the Elector of Bavaria to the Austrian throne. Instead, the Maréchal, who detested the Austrians, made an agreement to join with the Prussians against Austria, and the war began. French and Bavarian armies quickly captured Linz and laid siege to Prague. On 10 April 1741 Frederick won a major victory over the Austrians at the Battle of Mollwitz. On 18 May, Fleury assembled a new alliance combining France, Prussia, Spain and Bavaria, later joined by Poland and Sardinia. However, in 1742, the balance of the war shifted against France. The German-born British King, George II, who was also the Elector of Hanover, joined the war on the side of Austria and personally took charge of his soldiers fighting the French in Germany. Maria Theresa's Hungarian army recaptured Linz and marched into Bavaria as far as Munich. In June, Frederick of Prussia withdrew from the alliance with France, after gaining the Duchies of Silesia from the Austrians. Belleville had to abandon Prague, with a loss of eight thousand men. For seven years, France was engaged in a costly war with constantly shifting alliances. Orry, the superintendent of French finance, was forced to reinstate the highly unpopular dixieme tax to fund the war. Cardinal de Fleury did not live to see the end of the conflict; he died on 29 January 1743, and thereafter Louis ruled alone.
The war in Germany was not going well; the French and Bavarian forces were faced with the combined armies of Austria, Saxony, Holland, Sardinia and Hanover. The army of the Duke of Noailles was defeated by a force of British, Hessian and Hanover soldiers led by George II at the Battle of Dettingen, and in September French forces were compelled to abandon Germany.
In 1744, the Austrian Netherlands became the primary battlefield of the war, and the French position began to improve. Frederick the Great decided to rejoin the war on the French side. Louis XV left Versailles to lead his armies in the Netherlands in person, and French field command was given to the German-born Maréchal Maurice de Saxe, a highly competent general. At the Battle of Fontenoy on 11 May 1745, Louis, accompanied by his young son the Dauphin, came under fire for the first time and witnessed a French victory over combined British, Dutch and Austrian forces. When the Dauphin became excited at the sight of so many dead enemy soldiers, the King told him, "You see what a victory costs. The blood of our enemies is still the blood of men. The true glory is to spare it." Saxe went on to win further victories at Rocoux (1746) and Lauffeld (1747). In 1746 French forces besieged and occupied Brussels, which Louis entered in triumph. The King gave de Saxe the Chateau de Chambord in the Loire Valley as a reward for his victories.
Personal government (1743–1757)
After Fleury's death in January 1743, his war minister, the Duke of Noailles, showed the King a letter that Louis XIV had written to his grandson, Philip V of Spain; it counseled: "Don't allow yourself to be governed; be the master. Never have a favorite or a prime minister. Listen, consult your Council, but decide yourself. God, who made you King, will give you all the guidance you need, as long as you have good intentions." Louis followed this advice and decided to govern without a prime minister. Two of his ministers took the most prominent positions in his government; the finance minister, Jean Baptiste de Machault D'Arnouville, and the minister of the armies, Comte d'Argenson.
With the end of the war, Louis decided to take the opportunity to reduce the debt and modernize the system of taxation of the Kingdom. The package of reforms was put together by his finance minister D'Arnouville and was approved by the King and presented in two decrees issued in May 1749. The first measure was an issue of bonds, paying five percent interest, to pay off the 36 million livres of debt caused by the cost of the war. This new measure was an immediate success. The second measure was the abolition of the dixième, a tax of ten percent of revenue, which had been created to finance the war, and its replacement by the vingtième, a tax of five percent on net revenue, which, unlike the dixième, taxed the income of all French citizens, including for the first time the income from the property of the clergy and the nobility.
While the new tax was supported by many, including Voltaire, it met immediate and fierce resistance from both the nobility and the church. When on 5 May 1749 it was presented for formal registration to the Parlement of Paris, the assembly composed of high nobles and wealthy Parisians who had purchased seats, it was rejected by a vote of one hundred and six to forty nine; the majority asked for more time to consider the project. The King responded by demanding immediate registration, which the Parlement reluctantly granted on 19 May. Resistance to the new measures grew with the church and in the provinces, which had their own parlements. While the Parlements of Burgundy, Provence and Artois bowed to the King's demands, Brittany and Languedoc refused. The royal government closed down the Parlement of Brittany, ordered the members of the Parlement of Languedoc to return to their estates and parishes, and took direct control of the Provence.
Within Paris, the battle between the King and Parlement was fought over the status of the Hôpital Général, a semi-religious organization which operated six different hospitals and shelters in Paris, with a staff of some five thousand persons. Many of the hospital staff and officials were Jansenists, while the board of directors of the hospital included many prominent members of the Parlement of Paris. In 1749, the King decided to purge the hospital of Jansenists and corruption, appointed a new "Supérieure" against the will of the administrators, who resigned, then appointed four temporary administrators, and asked the First President of the Parlement of Paris, René Nicolas Charles Augustin de Maupeou, to implement his decree for the reorganization of the hospital. De Maupeou refused to carry out the decree without the authorization of the Parlement, and the Parlement, without taking any action, went on vacation. On 20 November, when the Parlement returned, the King again summoned de Maupeou for an audience and again demanded action without delay. This time the Parlement members met but refused to discuss the Hospital. On 28 January 1752, the King instructed the Grand Council to change the administration of the Hospital without the approval of the Parlement. Voltaire, describing the affair, wrote, "Never before has such a small affair caused such a great emotion of the spirit." It was the first overt disobedience of the legislature against the King, and one of the first signs that the Parlement believed it, not the King, was the legitimate source of laws in the nation.
The King's original plans to tax the church also ran into difficulty. A royal decree ordered all the clergy to submit a declaration of their revenue by 17 February 1751, but that day passed without any declarations given. Instead it became known that the King had quietly issued a new decree in December 1750, canceling the tax and relying again, entirely, on the "don gratuit", the voluntary donation by the church of 1,500,000 livres. Under the new decree, instead of a tax, the church would each year collect a comparable sum and donate it freely to the government. His support for the church came both from the teachings of his tutor, Cardinal Fleury, and his gratitude to Archbishop de Beaumont, who defended him against the attacks of the Jansenists and the criticisms of the Parlement, and the Archbishop's tolerance of the King's own personal life and mistresses.
Despite the French victories, the war dragged on both in the Netherlands and in Italy, where Maréchal Belle-Isle was besieging the Austrians in Genoa. By the summer of 1747 France occupied the entire Austrian Netherlands (modern-day Belgium). In March 1748, Louis proposed a conference in Aix-la-Chapelle to bring the war to an end. The process was advanced by the capture of Maastricht by the Maréchal de Saxe on 10 April 1748. Britain, pressed by the threat of a French invasion of the rest of the Netherlands, urged a quick settlement, despite objections from Austria and Sardinia. The Treaty was quickly negotiated and signed by all the parties in September and October 1748. Louis was also eager for a quick settlement, because the naval war with Britain was extremely costly to French maritime trade. The proposition of Louis was surprisingly generous; in the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, Louis offered to return all of the territories he had conquered in the Netherlands to the Austrians, Maastricht to the Dutch, Nice and Savoy to the Sardinians, and Madras in India to the English. The Austrians would give the Duchy of Parma and some other territory to the Spanish Infante, Philip, while Britain would return to France Louisbourg and the island of Cape Breton. France also agreed to expel the Stuart pretender Charles Edward Stuart from its territory.
The end of the war had caused celebration in Paris, but the publication of the details of the treaty on 14 January 1749 caused dismay and anger. The Stuart pretender Charles Edward Stuart refused to leave Paris and was acclaimed by the Parisians. He was finally arrested on 10 December 1748, and transported by force to Switzerland. The French military commanders, including de Saxe, were furious about giving up the Austrian Netherlands. The King's defense of his action was practical: he did not want the Netherlands to be a permanent source of contention between France and other powers; he also felt that France had already reached its proper borders, and it was better to cultivate its prosperity rather than make it larger. His basis was also religious; he had been taught by Fleury that the Seventh Commandment forbade taking the property of others by fraud or violence. Louis often cited a Latin maxim declaring, "if anyone who asks by what means he can best defend a kingdom, the answer is, by never wishing to augment it." He also received support from Voltaire, who wrote, "It seems better, and even more useful for the court of France to think about the happiness of its allies, rather than to be given two or three Flemish towns which would have been the eternal object of jealousy." Louis lacked the communicative skills to explain his decision to the French public, and further, did not see any need to do so. The news that the King had returned the Southern Netherlands to Austria was met with disbelief and bitterness. The French obtained so little of what they had fought for that they adopted the expressions Bête comme la paix ("Stupid as the peace") and Travailler pour le roi de Prusse ("To work for the king of Prussia", i.e. working for nothing).
First mistresses
The de Mailly-Nesle sisters
Louis had been very much in love with the Queen, and they were inseparable in the early years of his reign, but as his family grew, and the Queen was constantly pregnant or exhausted by her maternities, he began to look elsewhere. He first became attached to one of the ladies of the Queen's court, Louise Julie de Mailly, who was the same age as he and from an ancient noble family. Without courtship or ceremony, he made her his mistress, and raised her to the rank of Duchess. The Duke of Luynes commented on the King's behavior: "The King loves women, and yet there is absolutely no gallantry in his spirit." In 1738, after the Queen lost an unborn child, her doctors forbade her to have relations with the King for a time. The King was offended by her refusal and thereafter never shared her bed. Acknowledging that he was committing adultery, Louis refused thereafter to go to confession and to take the sacrament. The Cardinal de Fleury tried to persuade him to confess and to give up his mistress, but without success.
In 1738, the King turned his attentions to the sister of Louise Julie, Pauline Félicité de Mailly. Pauline Félicité became pregnant in 1740, allegedly by the King, and subsequently died during childbirth (The illegitimate son of the King and Pauline Félicité came to be known as "Demi-Louis" due to his visual resemblance to his father who took care of his financial needs but gave him little attention.). Pauline Félicité's death caused the King to go into mourning and for a time he turned to religion for consolation. When the King finally recovered his spirits, Louise Julie introduced the King to her youngest sister, Marie Anne de Mailly. The King was immediately attracted to Marie Anne, however she insisted that he expel her older sister from the Court before she would become his mistress. The King gave in, and on 4 October 1742, Marie Anne was named a Lady of the Court of the Queen, and a month later the King ordered her older sister to leave the Court and to live in Paris. The King made his new mistress the Duchess of Châteauroux. The King's relationships with the sisters became a subject of gossip in the court and in Paris, where a popular comic poem was recited, ending: "Choosing an entire family – is that being unfaithful, or constant?"
In June 1744, the King left Versailles in order to take personal command of his armies fighting in the War of the Austrian Succession. This otherwise popular move was marred by the King's indiscreet decision to bring along Marie Anne. When Marie Anne visited the King in Metz in August 1744 she was accompanied by her sister Diane Adélaïde de Mailly. While an amiable companion, Marie Anne did not consider her simple sister to be much of a rival, however it was rumored at the time that one of the methods by which Marie Anne kept the interest of the king was to periodically offer him a ménage à trois with Diane Adélaïde. These widespread rumors made the sisters' visit to the King in Metz a national scandal and during their notorious visit the King suddenly fell gravely ill. Death appeared imminent, yet the King's chaplain refused him absolution unless he renounced his mistress, which he did. Marie Anne left The Court and after the King recovered he made a triumphal entry into Paris. On 25 November, Minister Maurepas was obliged to recall Marie Anne to Versailles, but she soon fell sick with convulsive pains and died on 8 December 1744. Following her death the King consoled himself with Diane Adélaïde until he met Madame de Pompadour in 1745.
The King's adultery confession, which was distributed publicly, embarrassed him and tarnished the prestige of the monarchy. Although Louis XV's recovery earned him the epithet "well-beloved" from a public relieved by his survival, the events at Metz diminished his standing. The military successes of the War of the Austrian Succession inclined the French public to overlook Louis' adulteries, but after 1748, in the wake of the anger over the terms of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, pamphlets against the king's mistresses were widely distributed and read.
Second mistress
Madame de Pompadour
Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, better known as Madame de Pompadour, was the most famous and influential of the mistresses of Louis XV. She was the illegitimate daughter of a Paris fermier-general, and was married to a banker, Charles Guillaume Lenormant d'Étoiles. She was noticed by the King following one of his hunts, and formally met him at a costume ball celebrating carnival in 1745. By July, she was the King's mistress and was formally given the title of the Marquise de Pompadour. For the next twenty years, she was the King's confidante and advisor, helping him choose or demote ministers. Her opinions led to the downfall of some very competent ministers, including Machault d'Aurnouville and the Marquis d'Argenson, and to the promotion of a number of incompetent military commanders. Her most successful choice was the promotion of the Duke de Choiseul, who became one of the King's most effective ministers. She ceased to be sexually active with the King in 1750, but remained his closest advisor and titular mistress. She was promoted to Duchess in 1752, and Dame of the Queen's Palace in 1756, and was an important patron of music and the arts, as well as religious establishments. She remained close to the King until her death in 1764. He was devastated, and remained in seclusion for several weeks after she died.
Beginning of the Seven Years' War
The peace achieved by Louis with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle lasted only seven years. At the end of August 1755, Marie Therese, the Empress of Austria, discreetly wrote a letter to Louis XV, which was passed by the Austrian ambassador in Paris to Madame de Pompadour for delivery to the King. She proposed a secret alliance between Austria and France, to meet the threats of the growing power of Prussia, which was still formally an ally of France, and Britain.
In the New World, conflict had already begun between Great Britain and France. New France was at an enormous demographic disadvantage vis-à-vis its British counterparts; there were about 70,000 French colonists spread over a territory from the St. Lawrence River to the Great Lakes and extending down the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys to Louisiana, compared with a population of one million settlers in the British 13 Colonies. To defend its territories, France had constructed Fort Duquesne to defend its frontier against the indigenous Americans; Britain sent the young George Washington with a small force to construct his own fortification, Fort Necessity, nearby. In 1754, after the killing of French envoy, Joseph Coulon de Jumonville, the French sent reinforcements and compelled Washington and his men to withdraw.
The undeclared French and Indian War followed, with British and French colonies in North America engaging in open conflict. By the end of 1755, British ships had captured over 300 French merchantmen. In January 1756, Louis sent an ultimatum to London, which was rejected by the British government. A few months later, on 16 January 1756, Frederick the Great of Prussia signed the Treaty of Westminster, allying himself with Britain. Louis responded immediately on 1 May 1756 by sealing a formal defensive treaty with Austria, the first Treaty of Versailles, offering to defend Austria in case of a Prussian attack – a reversal of France's historic conflict with Austria.
Louis declared war on Great Britain on 9 June 1756, confident of success. The French navy quickly defeated a British fleet in the Mediterranean and captured Minorca from Britain. Meanwhile, the French army greatly outnumbered its British and Prussian counterparts on the continent, and after some fighting France signed the Convention of Klosterzeven with the Duke of Cumberland, which resulted in French troops occupying parts of Hanover and the Hanoverians withdrawing from the conflict entirely. Another French army had already invaded Saxony and Hanover, the ancestral home of George II. However, the best French commander, Maurice de Saxe, had died two years after the War of the Austrian Succession, and his successors, the Prince de Soubise, the Duke D'Estrees and the Duke de Broglie detested each other, and were rarely willing to cooperate.
In August Frederick of Prussia made a lightning strike into Saxony and on 5 November 1757, though outnumbered by the French nearly two to one, decisively defeated the army of the Prince de Soubise at the Battle of Rossbach. The new British Prime Minister, William Pitt, named a new commander, Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, and the French armies were gradually pushed back to the Rhine, and defeated again at the Battle of Krefeld on 23 June. Thereafter, Britain and Prussia held the upper hand, tying down the French army in the German states along the Rhine.
British naval supremacy prevented France from reinforcing its colonies overseas, and British naval squadrons raided the French coast at Cancale and Le Havre and landed on the Ile d'Aix and Le Havre. In 1759 the British attacked Martinique and Guadeloupe in the French West Indies, and captured Port Louis and Quebec. A series of French naval defeats forced Louis to abandon plans for invasion of Britain. In India, the French colony at Pondicherry was besieged by the British, and surrendered the following year. On 8 September 1760, Montreal surrendered, bringing to an end French rule in Canada. Martinique fell to the British in 1762.
Assassination attempt
On 5 January 1757, as the King was getting into his carriage in the courtyard of the Grand Trianon Versailles, a demented man, Robert-François Damiens, pushed through the King's guards and attacked the King, stabbing him in the side with a small knife. The King's guards seized Damiens, and the King ordered them to hold him but not harm him. The King walked up the steps to his rooms at the Trianon, where he found he was bleeding profusely. He summoned his doctor and a priest, and then fainted. Louis was saved from greater harm by the thickness of the winter clothing he was wearing. When the news reached Paris, anxious crowds gathered in the streets. The Pope, the Archduchess of Austria, and King George II, with whom France was at war, sent messages hoping for his swift recovery. Damiens was tortured to see if he had accomplices, and was tried before the Parlement of Paris, which had been the most vocal critic of the King. The Parlement demonstrated its loyalty to the King by sentencing Damiens to the most severe possible penalty. On 28–29 March 1757 Damiens was executed on the Place de Grève in Paris by drawing and quartering, following which his body was burned on a bonfire. The house where he was born was burned down, his father, wife and daughter were banished from France, and his brothers and sisters were required to change their name. The King recovered physically very quickly, but the attack had a depressive effect on his spirits. One of his chief courtiers, Duford de Cheverny, wrote afterwards: "it was easy to see that when members of the court congratulated him on his recovery, he replied, 'yes, the body is going well', but touched his head and said, 'but this goes badly, and this is impossible to heal.'" After the assassination attempt, the King invited his heir, the Dauphin, to attend all of the Royal Council meetings, and quietly closed down the château at Versailles where he had met with his short-term mistresses."
Rebellion of the Parlements
The Parlements were assemblies of nobles in Paris and older regions of France, whose members served as magistrates and judged civil cases. Their members included both hereditary nobles and wealthy citizens who had purchased their seats. Several of the Parlements, such as those of Rouen and Provence, had been in existence for centuries, and saw themselves as the legitimate governments in their provinces. As Louis reorganized the government and appointed his own intendants in the provinces, the authority and prestige of the Parlements decreased, and the price of the seats dropped. In Franche-Comté, Bordelaise and Rouen, the Parlements refused to follow the decrees of the royal intendants. When the intendants attempted to assert their authority and collect taxes from all classes, the Parlements went on strike, refusing to proceed with the judgment of civil cases. The civil justice system came to a halt. In 1761, the provincial Parlement of Normandy in Rouen wrote a protest to the King, explaining that the King had the exclusive power to tax, but the Parlement had the exclusive right to collect the money. The King rejected the explanation and overruled the Parlement, banished some of his most provocative Parlement members to their estates. For the rest of his reign, the Parlements swore allegiance to the King, but took every opportunity to resist his new taxes and the King's authority. This was one of the seeds of resistance to the King's authority that was to turn into a Revolution less than thirty years later.
Achievements and dismissal of the government
The Comte d'Argenson served as the Minister of War from 1743 until 1747. He was an advocate of the continuation of the absolute monarchy in the style of Louis XIV. He was responsible for creating the first school for engineers in France at Mézières (1749–50); thanks to the trained engineers, France had the finest system of roads and bridges in Europe. He also established the military academy, the École Militaire, and, following the model of the Prussians, established military training camps and exercises, and helped rebuild French military power.
Machaud D'Arnouville was brought into the government with the sponsorship of d'Argenson, but the two men gradually became rivals and enemies. D'Arnouville was the Controller of Finances from 1745 to 1754, then Minister of Navy from 1754 to 1757. He was the creator of the unpopular "Vingtieme" tax (1749), which taxed all citizens, including the nobility, at the same rate, and also freed the prices of grain (1754), which initially greatly increased agricultural production. The fluctuation of grain prices would eventually become a factor in the French Revolution.
On 1 February 1757, the King abruptly dismissed both d'Arnouville and d'Argenson, and exiled them to their estates. The King held them responsible for not preventing the assassination attempt, and their government displeased Madame de Pompadour.
Government of the Duke de Choiseul (1758–1770)
Louis named the Duke de Choiseul as his minister of foreign affairs on 3 December 1758, following the recommendation of Madame de Pompadour. In 1763, he became Minister of War, giving the role of minister of foreign affairs to his cousin, the Duc de Praslin. A few months later, he also became the Minister of the Navy, and became the most influential and powerful member of the government. In the council and circles of government, he was the leader of the philosophe faction, which included Madame de Pompadour, which sought to appease the Parlements and the Jansenists. On the diplomatic front, he negotiated a "Family Pact" with the Bourbon monarch of Spain (1761); negotiated the Treaty of Paris in 1761, and completed the integration of Lorraine into France (1766) upon the death of the King's father-in-law Stanislaus I Leszczyński, Duke of Lorraine. He incorporated Corsica into France (1768), and negotiated the marriage of his grandson, the future Louis XVI, with Marie Antoinette (1770).
His most notable accomplishment was the modernization of the French military, based on the lessons learned during the Seven Years' War. Under Choiseul, the government, rather than the officers, took the responsibility of training, giving uniforms, and training soldiers. The artillery was standardized, and new tactics, based on the Prussian model, were adopted and taught. The Navy in 1763 had been reduced to just 47 vessels and twenty frigates, three times smaller than the British Royal Navy fleet. He launched a major shipbuilding program to construct eighty vessels and forty-five new frigates, which would allow the French fleet, combined with the allied Spanish fleet, to outnumber the Royal Navy.
Suppression of the Jesuits (1764)
In 1764, at the urging of the Parlement, Madame de Pompadour and his foreign minister, the Duc de Chosieul, Louis decided upon the Suppression of Jesuit Order in France. The Jesuits in France numbered 3,500; they had 150 establishments in France, including 85 colleges, which were considered the best in France; their graduates included Voltaire and Diderot. The Confessor of the King, by a tradition dating back to Henry IV, was a Jesuit. Agitation against the Jesuits began in 1760 in the provincial Parlements, where the Gallicans, supporters of a specifically French version of Catholicism, were strong. The complaint against the Jesuits was that they were independent of the authority of the King and the hierarchy of the church in France. The Jesuits had already been expelled from Portugal and its colony of Brazil in 1759, because of conflicts with the government and church hierarchy there.
In France, the Parlements had taken the lead in attacking the Jesuits. On 12 February 1762, the Parlement of Rouen declared the Jesuits outside the law, forbid them to hold public positions or to teach, and demanded that they take an oath repudiating their beliefs. Between April and September 1762, the Parlements of Rennes, Bordeaux, Paris and Metz joined in the condemnation, followed in 1763 by Aix, Toulouse, Pau, Dijon and Grenoble. By the end of the year only the Parlements of Besançon, Douai, and the governments of Colmar, Flanders, Alsace and Franche-Comté, plus the Duchy of Lorraine, run by the Queen's father, the former King Stanislaus, permitted the Jesuits to function.
The campaign against the Jesuits divided the royal household; his son the Dauphin, his daughters and the Queen supported the Jesuits, while Madame de Pompadour, whose influence in the court was criticized by the Jesuits, wanted them gone. The indecisive King declared two years later that he had made the decision against his own feelings. The Jesuits departed, and were welcomed in Prussia and in Russia. The departure of the Jesuits weakened the church in France, and especially weakened the authority of the King, who, like a constitutional monarch, acted on behalf of the Parlements against his own beliefs.
Resistance from Parlements
Under the government of Choiseul, the Parlements of several French provinces continued to swear obedience to the King, while refusing to obey his intendents or to accept his new taxes. The Parlement of Franche-Comté in Besançon refused to collect the vingtieme tax imposed by the King to finance the war, claiming that only the Parlement could impose taxes. The King's government immediately dismissed the leaders of the Parlement and confined them to their residences. The Parlement of Normandy immediately supported that of Besançon; it wrote a remonstrance to the King on 5 July 1760, declaring that the Parlements represented all classes: "One King, one law, one Parlement; the law of the kingdom is a sacred pact of your alliance with the French nation; it is a kind of contract which destines the King to reign and the people to obey. In truth, no one except God can compel you to obey this sacred pact… but we can ask you, with respect, with submission… to keep your promises." This was too much for the King. He responded on 31 January 1761 that the Parlement's complaint "contained principles so false and so contrary to my authority and with expressions so indecent, particularly in connection with my Chancellor who only explained to you my wishes… that I send your letter back to you." The Parlement members of Besançon remained in exile.
The Parlement of Bordeaux went even further in its resistance to the royal government; in 1757 it brought accusations of corruption against the members of the government of the city of Bergerac, named by the Royal Council of the King. When the Royal Council blocked the pursuits of the Parlement, the Parlement wrote a protest to the King, declaring, "Sire, your Parlement cannot recognize any intermediate power between it and your person; no, your Council has over the Parlement no authority, superiority, or jurisdiction."
Finances and the brief ministry of Silhouette
The prolonged war drained the treasury of the Kingdom; France paid not only for its own army, but subsidized the armies of its allies; in 1759 France paid 19 million livres to its allies, an amount which Choiseul reduced by one-third in 1761. His new finance minister, Étienne de Silhouette imposed new taxes aimed at the wealthy; taxes on horses, carriages, silk, paintings, coffee and furs, and other luxury goods. The new taxes were extremely unpopular with the aristocracy and wealthy; Silhouette was dismissed after eight months, and his name became the common expression for paper cutouts made from a shadow, which, like his ministry, lasted only a moment. The King announced that he was giving his silver service to the mint, to be melted down and made into money.
The new Controller of Finances, Henri Bertin, a protege of Madame de Pompadour named on 23 November 1759, reduced the luxury taxes of his predecessor, and instead proposed a broadening of the tax base to include those classes which had long been excluded, and a new survey of the wealth of the nobility. Once again the Parliaments rebelled. When the Lieutenant General of Normandy appeared before the Parliament to register the decree, it refused to register or collect the new taxes. The same scene was reproduced in the other Parlements. Once again the King yielded to Madame de Pomapdour and her allies; the new decrees were withdrawn, Bertin was moved to a different position, the tax rolls were not enlarged, and no new taxes were collected; the debt remained.
Diplomacy – end of the Seven Years' War
The war with Great Britain continued, despite the death of King George II on 25 October 1760; the British Prime Minister William Pitt rejected French proposals for suggestions for negotiations. On 15 August 1761, France, Spain, Naples and Parma, all ruled by monarchs of the Bourbon family, signed the first "Family Pact" with a system of reciprocal guarantees of support if one or the other were attacked. At the same time, they signed a secret treaty with Charles III of Spain engaging Spain to declare war on Great Britain if the war was not over by May 1762. Learning of this pact, William Pitt wanted to declare an immediate war on Spain, but the new British King, George III, rejected the idea. The military forces of Frederick the Great in Prussia had been nearly exhausted in the long war against the combined forces of Austria and Russia; but Frederick was saved by the sudden death of the Tsarina Elizabeth in 1762, and her replacement by Peter III of Russia, a fervent admirer of the Prussian King.
Choiseul had taken over direction of the French navy as well as the army in October 1761, and he pressed for an offensive to bring the war to a successful end. He persuaded the Parlements and the chambers of commerce of the major French cities to sponsor the construction of warships, and rebuilt the French Navy. The French army launched a new offensive against the Prussians and Spain, as promised by its agreement with France, launched an invasion in Portugal, an ally of Britain. However, once again the French initiatives were not enough. The French offensive in Hesse-Kassel was defeated by the Prussians, the Spanish army in Portugal made little progress, and the British took the opportunity to land on Martinique and to invade Spain's colony Cuba. Choiseul decided it was time to end the war. The preliminary negotiations opened at the Palace of Fontainebleau on 3 November 1762, and ended hostilities between Great Britain, France and Spain. The final treaty was signed in Paris on 10 February 1763. As a result of the War, France gave up its minor possessions in the West Indies; Marie Galante, Tobago and La Desiderade, but received back Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Santa Lucia, which, because of their sugar plantations, were considered of more value than all of its territories in Canada; France kept only the Iles of Saint Pierre and Miquelon. The valley of the Ohio, and the territories along the west bank of the Mississippi River were ceded to Spain. Louis formally ratified the treaty on 23 February, on the same day that his statue was unveiled on the Place Louis XV (today the Place de la Concorde)
Deaths of mistress, son and wife
The winter of 1763–64 was particularly harsh; Madame de Pompadour contracted pneumonia, and died on 15 April. The King was deeply affected, but, strictly observing court protocol, he did not attend her funeral, because she was too far below his rank, and, though mourning, carried on court business as usual. Maneuvering immediately began within the court to replace Madame de Pompadour; a leading candidate was the Duchess of Gramont, the sister of Choiseul, but the King showed no interest in a new mistress, and in February 1765 he closed down the Parc-aux-Cerfs, where he had previously met his petites maitresses.
The resistance of the Parlements to the King's authority continued. The Parlements of the provinces began to quarrel with the Parlement of Paris over which more truly represented the nation. In March 1764, the Parlement of Navarre in Pau, the smallest province, refused to accept the taxation authority of the Grand Council of the King. This time the King took action, arresting and replacing the President and leading officers of the Parlement, and replacing them with officers loyal to the King. The Parlements of Toulouse, Besançon and Rouen protested, but the King persisted. In 1765 the Parlement of Rennes in Rennes denied the authority of the King's officers to impose taxes without its permission, and went on strike. The King summoned the Parlement to Versailles, where he had his lecture read to them. This had little effect; when the King had his decree to the Parlement posted on the walls of Rennes, the Parlement ordered that the posters with the King's proclamation be taken down. The King issued letters of cachet that forbade the Parlement members to leave Rennes, but the judicial system remained on strike.
The end of 1765 brought another personal tragedy; his son and heir Louis contracted tuberculosis. He travelled with the King to the Palace of Fontainebleau. The King distracted himself by secluding himself with the astronomer César-François Cassini de Thury and making astronomic calculations, while the doctors tried, without success, to treat his son. The Dauphin died on 20 December 1765. The succession was assured, since the Dauphin had a son, the future Louis XVI, who was of age to rule, but the death put him into a deep depression. He drafted his own will, writing: "If I made errors, it was not from a lack of will, but from a lack of talents, and for not having been supported as I wished to have been, particularly in matters of religion."
The Queen, who was deeply affected by the death of the Dauphin in 1765, followed by the death of her father in 1766 and, finally, that of her daughter-in-law, died on 24 June 1768.
"Flagellation" of the Parlement
In January 1766, while the King was still mourning the death of the Dauphin, the Parlement of Rennes issued another rejection of the King's authority to collect taxes. When he ignored it, both the Parlement of Rennes and the Parlement of Rouen wrote him again, complaining that he was ignoring "the oath that you took to the nation when accepting the crown." When this part of the letter was read to the King, he interrupted the reading and declared that this accusation was false; he had taken an oath to God alone, not to the nation. On 3 March 1766, with only a few hours notice, he traveled in person from Versailles to the meeting of the Parlement of Paris at the Palais de la Cité and appeared before the members. In his message, read to them by one of his ministers, he declared, "It is in my person alone that sovereign power resides...To me alone belongs the legislative power, without dependence and without sharing...The public order emanates entirely from me...Confusion and anarchy are taking the place of legitimate order, and the scandalous spectacle of a contradictory rivaling my sovereign power reduces me to the sad necessity to use all the power that I received from God to preserve my peoples from the sad consequences of these enterprises." The speech, immediately termed "the flagellation", was published in official press, and circulated to all levels of government. It became his political testament. The conflict between the Parlements and King was muted for a time, but not resolved.
Third mistress
Madame du Barry
After the death of the Madame de Pompadour, several women in the court sought to replace her, including the Duchess of Gramont, the sister of the Duke of Choiseul, the King's chief minister. However, the King's favor turned to Jeanne Bécu, the comtesse du Barry. She was thirty-three years younger than the King. She was the illegitimate daughter of Anne Bécu, a seamstress. She was raised by the Dames de Sacre-Coeur, and had various jobs as a shop assistant and designer of dresses before she became the mistress of Jean du Barry, the brother of a count. She began to hold a salon, which attracted writers and aristocrats. Since Jean du Barry was already married, to give her legitimacy he arranged for her to become engaged to his brother, Comte Guillaume du Barry, a retired soldier. They were married on 1 September 1768, and then, without consummating the marriage, Guillaume retired to his home in Languedoc. Through her acquaintances with the nobility, she was invited to Versailles, where the King saw her and was immediately attracted to her. He invited her to Fontainebleau, and then asked her to live in the Palace of Versailles. Her appearance at the Court scandalized the Duke de Choiseul, but pleased the enemies of the Duke within the Court.
For du Barry to be presented at Court, she had to be formally presented by a member of the nobility. The elderly Contesse de Béarn was persuaded to make the presentation for a large fee, and she was presented on 22 April 1769. None of the ladies of the Court attended, and Choiseul himself, to show his displeasure, hosted a large reception the following day, which all the Court, except du Barry, attended.
The King soon installed her in the Palace of Versailles, and in 1771 gave her the new Pavillon de Louveciennes. Choiseul sowed a strong dislike for du Barry, as did Marie Antoinette, who arrived in Versailles and married the Dauphin on 16 May 1770. She described the Comtesse as "the most stupid and impertinent creature imaginable". However, the King kept du Barry close to him until the final days before his death, when he sent her away before he made confession. The presence of du Barry at the court scandalized the high members of the aristocracy. Outside the Court, the opponents of the King in the Parlements used her presence to ridicule and attack the King. She was the target of dozens of scandalous pamphlets accusing her of every possible immoral act. Decades later, during the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution, the Comtesse was targeted by the Jacobins as a symbol of the hated old regime; she was guillotined on 8 December 1793.
France enlarged: Lorraine and Corsica
The borders of France were enlarged for the last time before the Revolution by two additions; the Duchy of Lorraine, ruled by the King's father-in-law, Stanislaus, reverted to France after his death, and was officially joined to the kingdom 27–28 March 1766. The acquisition of Corsica was more complicated. The island formally belonged to the Republic of Genoa, but an independent Republic of Corsica had been proclaimed in 1755 by Pasquale Paoli, and the rebels controlled most of the island. The Republic of Genoa did not have the military forces to conquer the island, and permitted Louis to send French troops to occupy the ports and major cities, to keep the island from falling into British hands. When the war ended, the island was formally granted to France by Treaty of Versailles on 19 May 1768. Louis sent the army to subdue the Corsican rebels; the army on the island eventually numbered twenty-seven thousand soldiers. In May 1769 the Corsican rebels were defeated at the Battle of Ponte Novu, and Paoli took refuge in England. In 1770 the island formally became a Province of France.
Commerce, agriculture and the "Starvation Pact" rumor
Two men had an enormous influence on the economic policies of the King. François Quesnay was the best-known economist in France. He was the King's doctor, and treated Madame de Pompadour, but was also a celebrated economic theorist, whose collected writings, "Tableau Économique" (1758), were avidly read by the King and his Court: Louis referred to him as "my thinker." His students included the Marquis de Mirabeau and Adam Smith. He was a critic of government regulation, and coined the term "bureaucracy" (literally, "A government of desks"). The other was his disciple, the Minister of the Commerce of the King, Jacques Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay. The two men advocated removing as many restrictions as possible from the economy, to encourage greater production and trade. De Gournay's famous expression, laissez faire, laissez passer ("let it be done, let it pass") was later adopted as the slogan of a whole school of free market economics.
De Gournay and Quesnay proposed in particular the liberalization of agricultural markets, which were strictly controlled, to encourage greater production, competition and lower prices. Following the doctrines of Quesnay and de Gournay, Louis's controller of finances, Henri Bertin, created a new Society of Agriculture and an Agricultural Committee within the government, comparable to those existing to support commerce. In May 1763, Bertin issued a decree permitting the tax-free circulation of grain. In August 1764, Bertin permitted the export of grain from twenty-seven French ports, later expanded to thirty-six. At the same time he established a large zone around Paris, where grain was reserved exclusively for feeding the Parisians, and established a cap on the grain price, which, if it was passed, would cause the exports to cease.
The policy of freeing grain prices was effective in good years, and resulted in increased trade and lower prices, but during years with poor harvests, 1766, 1767 and 1768, prices went up. Most of the Parlements, in regions which produced grain, supported the policy, but others, including Paris and Rouen, were highly critical. In those cities rumors began to circulate of a mythical "Starvation Pact", a supposed plot by the government to deliberately starve and eliminate the poor. These rumors eventually became one of the factors that provoked the French Revolution.
Preparations for a new war with Great Britain
The Duc de Choiseul devoted all of his considerable energy and talents to preparing a new war against Britain. In 1764, in a former Jesuit school he had closed, he created a new military preparatory school, to prepare students for the recently founded Military Academy. In 1769 he raised the Naval school to the level of a royal academy, to train officers for his new fleet. In the same year he established a military engineering school. He provided the army with hundreds of new cannon, which would be used with great success decades later during the French Revolution and by Napoleon. Using the Prussian army as a model, he reformed French military doctrine, making the state and not the officers responsible for training and equipping soldiers. A large part of the French Navy had been sunk or captured by the British in the Seven Years' War. In addition to the existing naval arsenals in Toulon, Brest and Rochefort, he opened two more in Marseille (1762) and Lorient (1764). The arsenals began building new ships; by 1772 the Navy had sixty-six ships of the line, thirty-five frigates, and twenty-one new corvettes. He and his allies in the government began planning for an invasion of England, and his government looked for new ways to challenge Great Britain. When the Duc de Broglie learned that the British were planning to tax the citizens of the British colonies in America, he wrote to the King: "It will be very curious to know what the result will be, and if their execution doesn't result in a Revolution in those states."
Choiseul combined his military preparations for war with a diplomatic alliance, the Pacte de Famille or Pact of the Family, which united with other countries ruled by Kings of the Bourbon dynasty: Spain, ruled by Louis's cousin Charles III of Spain, the Naples and Tuscany. Choiseul was so entirely focused on Great Britain as his future enemy that he almost entirely neglected the rest of Europe. He had no accredited Ambassadors in Poland, Prussia or Russia during most of the period, and stood by while Russia imposed its own candidate for King of Poland, and when Turkey and Russia went to war in 1768–70.
Dismissal of Choiseul
A new conflict between Great Britain and Spain over the remote Falkland Islands in 1770 brought about Choiseul's downfall. The British had established a settlement in the islands, which were also claimed by Spain. In early 1770 the Spanish governor of Buenos Aires sent five warships full of troops to the islands, ordering the British to leave. The British prepared to depart. When the news reached London, the British government demanded that the Spanish leave. Both sides began to prepare for war.
The possibility of a new war came just as France was undergoing a new confrontation between the King's government and the Parlement of Rennes, which once again refused to recognize the power of the King's government to impose taxes. The King wrote immediately to his cousin, the King of Spain, who wrote back that Spain did not want a war. Louis replied, "Gentleness and patience have guided me to the present, but my parlements, pushing to limit, have forgotten themselves to the point of disputing the sovereign authority that we possess only from the will of God. I am resolved to make myself obeyed by all available means..." On 24 December, the King sent a short note to Choiseul dismissing him from his post and ordering him to return to his home in Chanteloup and to remain there. A similar note went to his cousin. Choiseul asked for two days to manage his affairs, but the King refused. Explaining the decision later to the Duke de Broglie, the King wrote, "The principles of the Choiseuls are too contrary to religion, and therefore to royal authority."
Government of Maupeou and the Triumvirate (1770–1774)
The King passed the leadership of the government to a triumvirate of three conservative ministers, led by his Chancellor, René de Maupeou, who had been President of the Parlement from 1763 to 1768. Maupeou and two other conservative ministers, Abbot Terray for finance and the Duc d'Aiguillon for foreign affairs and war, took charge of the government. They became known as "The Triumvirate".
Suppression of the Parlements
The first priority of Maupeou was to bring the unruly Parlements under control, and to continue with his program for the modernization of the state. Most of the members of the Parlement of Paris were on a virtual strike, refusing to render justice or approve the King's decrees. On 21 January 1771, royal agents and musketeers arrived at the homes of each of the Parlement members, informing them that their positions were confiscated and ordering them to leave Paris and return to their home provinces, and not to leave them. This was followed in February by an even more radical measure: the regional Parlements were replaced as the high courts of civil justice by six new regional high councils, to judge serious criminal and civil cases. Another decree announced the abolition of the high fees demanded by the Parlements for resolving civil cases, which were the source of their members' income; civil justice was to be rendered without charge. The powers of the Parlement of Paris alone were largely unchanged. Without the provincial parliaments, the government was able enact new laws and taxes without opposition. However, after the King's death, the nobility demanded and received the restoration of the regional parlements.
Finances
Abbot Terray was nominally a priest, though his government career was entirely secular, and his personal life was considered scandalous. He was an efficient and relentless tax collector; he opened a school to train tax inspectors, and worked to see that taxes were imposed and collected with the same precision and vigor in all regions, without interference from the local nobility. When he first took his position, the state had a budget deficit of 60 million livres, and a long-term debt of 100 million livres. By 1774, revenues had been increased by 60 million livres and the debt reduced to 20 million livres. He also reimposed the regulation of the price of grain, which had been freed in 1763 and 1764; these controls were an issue which would disturb the government and provoke agitation until the French Revolution.
Foreign affairs
The foreign affairs post had been left vacant by Choiseul, who acted as his own foreign minister. Following the dismissal of Choiseul, the King encouraged his cousin and ally Charles III of Spain to settle the crisis over the Falkland Islands with the aim of avoiding a war. Due to Choiseul's sole focus on a war with Britain, he had completely ignored the rest of Europe. France did not even have an ambassador in Vienna. In 1772 Austria, Russia and Prussia took territory from an old French ally, Poland, without protest from France. Another ally of France, Sweden, also risked being divided between Russia and Prussia upon the death of its King in 1771. The Prince Royal, Gustav III of Sweden, was staying in Paris at the time. He had a long meeting with Louis XV, who promised to support him. With French funding, and assistance from Louis's personal secret intelligence service, the Secret du Roi, Gustave III returned to Stockholm. On 19 August 1772, at his command, the Swedish royal guard imprisoned the Swedish Senate, and two days later he was proclaimed King by the Diet. Russia and Prussia, occupied with the division of Poland, protested but did not intervene.
Last years in Versailles
In the last years of his reign, the court of Versailles was a theater of manners. Marie Antoinette, a resident since her marriage, had difficulty disguising her dislike for the King's mistress, Madame du Barry. The King constructed a set of luxurious rooms for Madame du Barry on the floor above his offices; Madame du Barry also reigned in the Petit Trianon, which the King had built for Madame de Pompadour, and in the Pavillon de Louveciennes, also built for Madame de Pompadour. The Court was divided between those who welcomed Madame du Barry, and those of the older aristocracy, such as the Duc de Choiseul plus Marie Antoinette, who scorned her. The King continued his grand construction projects, including the opera theater of the Palace of Versailles, completed for the celebration of the wedding of the Dauphin and Marie Antoinette, and the new Place Louis XV (now Place de la Concorde) in Paris, whose centerpiece was an equestrian statue of the King, modeled after that of Louis XIV on the Place Vendôme.
Death
On 26 April 1774, the King left for the Petit Trianon with Madame du Barry and several nobles from his entourage, and reported that he felt ill. He participated in the hunt the next day, but rode in his carriage instead of on horseback. That evening he was still feeling ill, and sent for the Court physician, Le Mariniére. At the surgeon's insistence, the King was brought back to the Palace of Versailles for treatment, along with Madame du Barry and the others. The King was attended by six physicians, six surgeons, each of whom took his pulse and gave his diagnosis. He was bled three times by the surgeons, without effect. When some red eruptions appeared on his skin, the doctors first diagnosed petite variole, or smallpox, which caused optimism, since the patient and doctors both believed he had already had the illness. The members of the family, particularly the Dauphin and Marie Antoinette, were asked to leave, since they had not already had the illness, and had no immunity. Madame du Barry remained with him. As the hours passed, the red eruptions of the disease grew worse, and the doctors began to fear for his life. On the morning of 1 May, the Archbishop of Paris arrived, but was kept out of the King's room to avoid alarming him. The King remained conscious and cheerful. However, on 3 May, he studied the eruptions on his hands, summoned the Archbishop, and announced, "I have the petite variole." The Archbishop instructed him to prepare for the final rites. That night, the King summoned Madame du Barry, informed her of the diagnosis, and said, "We cannot recommence the scandal of Metz. If I had known what I know now, you would not have been admitted. I owe it to God and to my people. Therefore, you have to leave tomorrow." On 7 May, he summoned his confessor and was given the final rites. The illness continued its course; one visitor on 9 May, the Duc de Croy, said the King's face resembled, with the darkening of the eruptions of the smallpox, "a mask of bronze". Louis died at 3:15 in the morning on 10 May 1774, with his daughters Adélaïde, Victoire, Sophie and Louise at his bedside.
Personality
Several of his contemporaries who worked closely with him tried to describe the personality of Louis XV. The Duke de Croy wrote: "He had a memory, presence, and justness of spirit that was unique. He was gentle, an excellent father, and the most honest individual in the world. He was well informed in the sciences...but with a modesty which, with him, was almost a vice. He always saw more correctly than others, but he always believed he was wrong.... He had the greatest bravery, but a bravery that was too modest. He never dared to decide for himself, but always, out of modesty, turned for advice to others, even when he saw more accurately than they did...Louis XIV had been too proud, but Louis XV was not proud enough. Other than his excessive modesty, his great and sole vice was women; He believed that only his mistresses loved him enough to tell him the truth. For that reason he allowed them to lead him, which contributed to his failure with finance, which was the worse aspect of his reign."
Others, like d'Argenson, his Minister of War commented on his extreme shyness and timidity; his inability to make conversation with others. The Duke of Luynes remarked that he often seemed to want to speak, but "his timidity stopped him and the expressions did not come; one felt that he wanted to say something obliging, but he often ended by simply asking a frivolous question."
Another characteristic remarked by contemporaries was his penchant for secrecy. "No one was a greater expert at dissimulation than the King", wrote d'Argenson. "He worked from morning to night to dissimulate; he did not say a word, make a gesture or demarche except to hide what he really wanted."
"He was the most excellent of men", wrote another contemporary, Duffort de Cheverny, "but, in defiance of himself, he spoke about the affairs of state as if someone else was governing."
Legends: "After us the deluge" and the Parc-aux-Cerfs
The most famous remark attributed to Louis XV (or sometimes to Madame de Pompadour) is Après nous, le déluge ("After us, the deluge"). It is commonly explained as his indifference to financial excesses, and a prediction of the French Revolution to come. The remark is usually taken out of its original context. It was made in 1757, a year which saw the crushing defeat of the French army by the Prussians at the Battle of Rossbach and the assassination attempt on the King. The "Deluge" the King referred to was not a revolution, but the arrival of Halley's Comet, which was predicted to pass by the earth in 1757, and which was commonly blamed for having caused the flood described in the Bible, with predictions of a new deluge when it returned. The King was a proficient amateur astronomer, who collaborated with the best French astronomers. Biographer Michel Antoine wrote that the King's remark "was a manner of evoking, with his scientific culture and a good dose of black humor, this sinister year beginning with the assassination attempt by Damiens and ending with the Prussian victory". Halley's Comet finally passed the earth in April 1759, and attracted enormous public attention and anxiety, but caused no floods.
Another popular legend concerned the Maison-aux-Cerfs, the house in Versailles where, when he was no longer having sexual relations with Madame de Pompadour, he sometimes slept with his petites maitresses, young women recruited for that purpose. Popular legends at the time described it as a kind of harem, organized by Madame de Pompadour, where a group of women were kidnapped and kept for the King's pleasure. The legend circulated widely in pamphlets with lurid illustrations, and made its way into some later biographies of the King. In reality it had only one occupant at a time, for brief periods. Madame de Pompadour herself accepted it as a preferable alternative to a rival at court, as she stated: "It is his heart I want! All these little girls with no education will not take it from me. I would not be so calm if I saw some pretty woman of the court or the capital trying to conquer it." In February 1765, after the death of Madame de Pompadour, it was closed.
Patron of architecture and arts
Louis was a major patron of architecture; he spent more money on buildings over the course of his reign than Louis XIV. His major architectural projects were the work of his favorite court architect, Ange-Jacques Gabriel. They included the Ecole Militaire (1751–1770); the Place Louis XV (now Place de la Concorde (1763–83); the Petit Trianon at Versailles (1762–64), and the opera theater of the Palace of Versailles. Louis began construction of the Church of Saint-Geneviève, now the Pantheon (1758–90). He also constructed monumental squares and surrounding buildings in the centers of Nancy, Bordeaux, and Rennes. His workshops produced fine furniture, porcelain, tapestries and other goods in the Louis XV Style which were exported to all the capital cities of Europe.
The King, the Queen and her daughters were major patrons of music. The queen and her children played the clavecin, under the instruction of François Couperin. The young Mozart came to Paris and wrote two sonatas for clavecin and violin which he dedicated to Madame Victoire, the King's daughter. Jean-Marie Leclair was appointed Director of the Music of the Chapel and the Apartments in 1733, Leclair resigned in 1736 following a dispute with another royal appointee Jean-Pierre Guignon. The most important musical figure of the reign was Jean Philippe Rameau, who was the court composer through the 1740s and 1750s, and wrote more than thirty operas for Louis and his court. The King himself, like his grandfather Louis XIV, was taught to dance ballet but danced only once in public, in 1725.
Louis XV, guided largely by Madame de Pompadour, was the most important art patron of the period. He commissioned François Boucher to paint pastoral scenes for his apartments in Versailles, and gave him the title of First Painter of the King in 1765. Other artists patronized by the King included Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Maurice Quentin de la Tour, Jean Marc Nattier, and the sculptor Edme Bouchardon. Bouchardon created the monumental statue of Louis XV on horseback which was the centerpiece of Place Louis XV until it was pulled down during the Revolution.
King and the Enlightenment
The French philosophical movement later called the Enlightenment began and gathered force during the reign of Louis XV; in 1746 Diderot published his Pensées philosophiques, followed in 1749 by his Lettres sur les Aveugles and the first volume of the Encyclopédie, in 1751. Montesquieu published De l'esprit des Lois, in 1748. Voltaire published le Siecle de Louis XIV and l'Essai sur les moeurs et l'esprit des nations, in 1756. Rousseau became known in 1750 by the publication of Discours sur les sciences et les arts, followed in 1755 by Discours sur les origins et les fondaments de l'inégalité. These were accompanied by new works on economics, finance, and commerce by the elder Mirabeau, François Quesnay and other scientific thinkers which undermined all of the standard assumptions of royal government, economics and fiscal policy.
The censors of Louis XV at first permitted these publications; the first volume of the Encyclopédie received official permission because the government censors believed it was purely a collection of scientific articles. The project soon included a multitude of authors, including Rousseau, and had four thousand subscribers. Only later did the government and King himself take notice, after the church attacked the Encylopédie for questioning official church doctrines. The King personally removed Diderot from the list of those nominated for the Académie française, and in 1759 the Encyclopédie was formally banned.
Rousseau had a resounding success in 1756 with his opera Devin du Village, and was invited to Versailles to meet the King, but he refused. Instead, he wrote the Contrat Social calling for a new system based upon political and economic equality, published in 1762. Increasingly solitary and unstable, he wandered from province to province, before returning to Paris, where he died in solitude in 1778. His ideas, composed during the reign of Louis XV, were adopted by the revolutionaries who overthrew Louis XVI in 1789.
In the 1740s Voltaire was welcomed to the court as a playwright and poet, but his low rank as the son of a notary and the fact his father was also a Jansenist soon displeased the King and the Queen, and he was finally forced to depart Versailles. He went to Berlin, where he became a counselor to Frederick the Great, before living in Geneva and Savoy, far from Paris. On one issue in particular Voltaire took the side of Louis XV; when the King suppressed the parlements of nobles, demanded that all classes be taxed equally, and removed the charges which plaintiffs had to pay in order to have their cases heard. He wrote: "Parlements of the King! You are charged with rendering justice to the people! Render justice upon yourselves!... There is in the entire world no judicial court which has ever tried to share the power of the sovereign." However, the King's lack of further reforms in his last years disappointed Voltaire. When the King died, Voltaire wrote of his reign, "Fifty-six years, consumed with fatigues and wanderings."
Legacy and historical judgements
E. H. Gombrich writes, "Louis XV and Louis XVI, the Sun King's successors, were incompetent, and content merely to imitate their great predecessor's outward show of power. The pomp and magnificence remained.... Finance ministers soon became expert swindlers, cheating and extorting on a grand scale. The peasants worked till they dropped and citizens were forced to pay huge taxes." Louis was blamed for significant diplomatic, military and economic reverses. His reign was marked by ministerial instability, while his "prestige was ruined by military failure and colonial losses". Despite Louis' failings in administration and war, many historians agree that France reached a high point of culture and art under his reign.
Louis inherited a French monarchy at the zenith of its cultural influence and political power, a position it kept during the first half of the eighteenth century. However most scholars agree that Louis XV's decisions weakened France, depleted the treasury, discredited the absolute monarchy, and unsettled the trust and respect of the French and foreigners alike. Scholars point to the French Revolution, which broke out 15 years after his death. Norman Davies characterizes Louis XV's reign as "one of debilitating stagnation", characterized by a costly defeat in the Seven Years' War, endless clashes between the Court and the Parlements, and religious feuds. Jerome Blum described the king as "a perpetual adolescent called to do a man's job."
The view of many historians is that Louis was unequal to the high expectations of his subjects. Robert Harris writes that, "Historians have depicted this ruler as one of the weakest of the Bourbons, a do-nothing king who left affairs of state to ministers while indulging in his hobbies of hunting and womanizing." Ministers rose and fell according to his mistresses' opinions, seriously undermining the confidence in the monarchy.
For much of his lifetime Louis XV was celebrated as a national hero. Edmé Bouchardon's equestrian statue of Louis was originally conceived to commemorate the monarch's victorious role in the War of the Austrian Succession, portrayed the king as peacemaker. Fifteen years later in 1763, following France's defeat in the Seven Years' War, it was unveiled in a patriotic spectacle staged to restore public confidence in a monarchy in decline. Located on the Place Louis XV, the statue was torn down during the Revolution.
Some scholars have turned away from the king's own actions to his image in the mind of the public. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, the leader of the Annales School, noted that the king was handsome, athletic, intelligent and an excellent hunter, but that he disappointed the people. However, he did not keep up the practice of attending Mass, and the people felt he had shirked his religious obligations and diminished the sacred nature of the monarchy.
According to Kenneth N. Jassie and Jeffrey Merrick, contemporary songs, poems, and public declarations typically portrayed a king as a "master", an unblemished "Christian", and a benevolent provider ("baker"). Young Louis' failings were attributed to inexperience and manipulation by his advisors. Jassie and Merrick argue that the king's troubles mounted steadily, and the people blamed and ridiculed his debauchery. The king was a notorious womaniser; the monarch's virility was supposed to reflect his power. Nevertheless, popular faith in the monarchy was shaken by the scandals of Louis' private life and by the end of his life he had become despised. The king ignored the famines and crises of the nation, until the people reviled him in protest, and finally celebrated his death. The monarchy survived—for a while—but Louis XV left his successor with a smoldering legacy of popular resentment.
Some sermons on his death in 1774 praised the monarch and went out of their way to excuse his faults. Jeffrey Merrick writes: "But those ecclesiastics who not only raised their eyebrows over the sins of the Beloved but also expressed doubts about his policies reflected the corporate attitude of the First Estate more accurately." They prayed the new king would restore morality at court and better serve the will of God.
The financial strain imposed by the wars and excesses of the royal court, and the consequent dissatisfaction with the monarchy, contributed to the national unrest that culminated in the French Revolution of 1789. The historian Colin Jones argues that Louis XV left France with serious financial difficulties: "The military disasters of the Seven Years' War led to acute state financial crisis.". Ultimately, Louis XV failed to overcome these fiscal problems, mainly because he was incapable of resolving conflicts among the parties and interests in his entourage. Although aware of the forces of anti-monarchism threatening his family's rule, he did not act effectively to stop them.
Trends in 20th-century French historiography, especially the Annales School, have deprecated biography and minimized the role of the King. English historian William Doyle wrote:
The political story....of the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI, by contrast, had too often been scorned, and therefore neglected, as a meaningless succession of petty intrigues in boudoirs and bedrooms, unworthy of serious attention when there were economic cycles, demographic fluctuations, rising and falling classes, and deep-seated shifts in cultural values to analyse.
A few scholars have defended Louis, arguing that his highly negative reputation was based on propaganda meant to justify the French Revolution. Olivier Bernier argued that Louis le Bien-aimé (the well-beloved) was a popular leader who reformed France. During his 59-year reign, France was never threatened by foreign conquest, though some of its overseas colonies were lost. Many of his subjects prayed for his recovery during his serious illness in Metz in 1744. His dismissal of the Parlement of Paris and his chief minister, Choiseul, in 1771, were attempts to wrest control of government from those Louis considered corrupt. He changed the tax code to try to balance the national budget. Bernier argued that these acts would have avoided the French Revolution if his successor Louis XVI had not reversed them. Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret claims that Louis XV's tarnished reputation was created fifteen years after his death, to justify the Revolution, and that the nobility during his reign were competent.
Arms
Issue
Louise Élisabeth (14 August 1727 – 6 December 1759), Duchess of Parma, had issue
Anne Henriette (14 August 1727 – 10 February 1752)
Marie-Louise (28 July 1728 – 19 February 1733)
Louis, Dauphin of France (4 September 1729 – 20 December 1765), married to Infanta Maria Teresa Rafaela of Spain and had issue, then married to Duchess Marie-Josèphe of Saxony and had issue including Louis XVI
Philippe of France, Duke of Anjou (30 August 1730 – 17 April 1733)
Marie Adélaïde (23 March 1732 – 27 February 1800)
Victoire Louise Marie Thérèse (11 May 1733 – 7 June 1799)
Sophie Philippine Élisabeth Justine (27 July 1734 – 3 March 1782)
Marie Thérèse Félicité (16 May 1736 – 28 September 1744)
Louise Marie (15 July 1737 – 23 December 1787)
Illegitimate issue
Louis XV had several illegitimate children, although the exact number is unknown. Historiography suggest the following as possible issue of the King:
With Pauline Félicité de Mailly (1712 – 9 September 1741), by marriage marquise de Vintimille. She died after giving birth to a son:
Charles Emmanuel Marie Magdelon de Vintimille (Versailles, 2 September 1741 – Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 24 February 1814), marquis du Luc. Recognized by his mother's husband, although was highly probable that his biological father was Louis XV, especially in adulthood, when he was called Demi-Louis ("Small Louis") for his exceptional resemblance with the King. He was appointed Maréchal de camp and Governor of Porquerolles. Married to Adélaïde de Castellane on 26 November 1764, he fathered three children.
With Jeanne Perray:
Amélie Florimond de Norville (Saint-Eustache, Paris, 11 January 1753 – 27 September 1790). Registered one day after her birth (12 January 1753) as a daughter of a certain bourgeois from Paris, called Louis Florimond de Norville, a non-existent person; the paternity of the King is suggested by later evidence. Married to Ange de Faure (1739–1824) on 1 June 1780, with whom she had two children.
With Marie-Louise O'Murphy (21 October 1737 – 11 December 1814), an Irish adventuress:
Agathe Louise de Saint-Antoine de Saint-André (Paris, 20 May 1754 – Paris, 6 September 1774). The first illegitimate child of the King whose parentage was certain, but she was never officially recognized; in fact, she was registered as a daughter of a Louis de Saint-André, Old official of infantry and Louise-Marie de Berhini, resident of Saint-Antoine street, non-existent persons. In November 1773 she received from the King her letters of Official Recognition of Nobility (which enabled her to marry a nobleman), and funds of 223,000 livres. One month later, on 27 December 1773, she married René Jean de La Tour-du-Pin, marquis de la Charce, and died after only nine months of marriage as a consequence of a miscarriage.
Marguerite Victoire Le Normant de Flaghac (Riom, Puy-de-Dôme, 5 January 1768 – 25 January 1830). Officially recognized by her mother's second husband, she was probably also an illegitimate child of the King. Married firstly on 24 February 1786 to Jean-Didier Mesnard, comte de Chousy, with whom she had two children; after her divorce following the incarceration of her husband in 1793, she then married Constant Lenormant d'Étiolles (a son of the husband of Madame de Pompadour) in November 1794, with whom she had another child.
With Françoise de Châlus (24 February 1734 – 7 July 1821), by marriage Duchesse de Narbonne-Lara:
Philippe Louis Marie Innocent Christophe Juste de Narbonne-Lara (Parma, 28 December 1750 – Paris, 10 May 1834), Duc de Narbonne-Lara. Captain of the Dragons Regiment of the Queen, Colonel of the Regiment of Forez and Field Marshal in 1790. Married on 3 February 1771 to Antoinette-Françoise-Claudine de La Roche-Aymon. No issue.
Louis Marie Jacques Amalric de Narbonne-Lara (Colorno, 23 August 1755 – Torgau, 17 November 1813), called Comte de Narbonne-Lara. Colonel of the Army and Honorary Chamberlain of Princess Madame Marie Adélaïde of France. In 1786 he was appointed a commander of an infantry regiment and remained in that post until the eve of the French Revolution and later served under Napoleon. Married on 16 April 1782 to Marie Adélaïde de Montholon, with whom he had two daughters. He also fathered two other children out of wedlock.
With Marguerite Catherine Haynault (11 September 1736 – 17 March 1823):
Agnès Louise de Montreuil (Saint-Sulpice, Paris, 20 May 1760 – Montmelas, 2 September 1837). Registered as a daughter of a certain Louis de Montreuil, old Official of cavalry, a non-existent person, the paternity of the King is supported by other evidence. Married on 9 December 1778 to Gaspard d'Arod de Montmelas (brother-in-law of her own mother), with whom she had four children.
Anne Louise de La Réale (Saint-Paul, Paris, 17 November 1762 – Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 30 April 1831). Registered as a daughter of Antoine Louis de la Réale, old Captain of cavalry, a non-existent person, the paternity of the King is supported by further evidence. Married on 28 August 1780 to René Guillaume Paul Gabriel Etienne de Geslin, Comte de Geslin, with whom she had six children.
With Lucie Madeleine d'Estaing (10 May 1743 – 7 April 1826), a half-sister of the Admiral d'Estaing:
Agnès Lucie Auguste (Paris, 14 April 1761 – Boysseulh, 4 July 1822). Married on 5 December 1777 to Charles de Boysseulh, vicomte de Boysseuilh, with whom she had three children.
Aphrodite Lucie Auguste (Versailles, 8 March 1763 – Artonne (Puy-de-Dôme), 22 February 1819). Married on 21 December 1784 to Jules de Boysseulh (her step-brother; son of the first marriage of her mother's husband), with whom she had one daughter.
With Anne Coppier de Romans (19 June 1737 – 27 December 1808), Baroness de Meilly-Coulonge:
Louis Aimé of Bourbon (Passy, Paris, 13 January 1762 – Rome, 28 February 1787), called the Abbot of Bourbon; he was the only one of the illegitimate children of Louis XV who was officially recognized. Abbot of Saint Vincent de Metz, French Ambassador in Rome from 1785. He died of smallpox.
With Jeanne Louise Tiercelin de La Colleterie (26 November 1746 – 5 July 1779), called Madame de Bonneval:
Benoît Louis Le Duc (7 February 1764 – 1837). Registered as a son of Louis Le Duc, old cavalry official and lady Julie de la Colleterie, both non-existent persons; his royal parentage was supported by later evidence.
With Marie Thérèse Françoise Boisselet (1731 – 1800):
Charles Louis Cadet de Gassicourt (23 January 1769 – 21 November 1821). Officially recognized by her mother's husband, Louis Claude Cadet de Gassicourt as his own; this story, recorded by Charles Louis' personal friend, Baron Paul Thiébault in his Memoirs, was challenged by later historiography, but later reasserted by modern works.
Ancestry
Portrayal in film and television
See also
Louis XV Style
Louis XV furniture
Rocaille
List of French monarchs
Persecution of Huguenots under Louis XV
Kingdom of Navarre
Cabriole leg
Étienne François, Duc de Choiseul
Suppression of the Jesuits
Louis heel, a shoe heel shape named after Louis XV.
Mesdames de France
Madame du Barry
Outline of France
List of famous big game hunters
Notes
References
Sources
Duke of Saint-Simon, Mémoires, Book 12, Chapter 15. [1]
Marquis Philippe de Dangeau, Journal; 1856–60, Paris; XVI, 136; in Olivier Bernier, Louis the Beloved, The Life of Louis XV: 1984, Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company. p. 3.
The scene is described in Olivier Bernier, Louis the Beloved, The Life of Louis XV: 1984, Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company. p. 17.
Bibliography
Adams, Tracy (2014). Christine de Pizan and the Fight for France. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 978-0-2710-6457-4.
Algrant, Christine Pevitt (2002). Madame de Pompadour: Mistress of France. New York: Grove Press. ISBN 978-0-8021-4035-7.
Antoine, Michel (1989). Louis XV (in French). Paris: Hachette Pluriel. ISBN 2-0101-7818-1.
Backhouse, Roger E. (1994). Economists and the Economy: The Evolution of Economic Ideas (2nd ed.). New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. ISBN 1-5600-0715-X.
Bernier, Olivier (1984). Louis the Beloved: the Life of Louis XV. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-3851-8402-1.
Black, Jeremy (2013). From Louis XIV to Napoleon: The Fate of a Great Power. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-1353-5764-1.
Bluche, François (2003). Louis XV (in French). Paris: Éditions Perrin. ISBN 978-2-2620-2021-7.
Blum, Jerome (1970). The European World: A History (2nd ed.). Boston: Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-3161-0027-4.
Chaussinard-Nogaret, Guy (1985). The French Nobility in the Eighteenth Century: From Feudalism to Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-5212-7590-3.
Cornette, Joël (1993). Histoire de la France: Absolutisme et Lumières 1652-1783 (in French). Paris: Hachette. ISBN 978-2-0102-1185-0.
de Castries, René de La Croix duc (1979). The Lives of the Kings & Queens of France. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-3945-0734-7.
Davies, Norman (1996). Europe: A History. London: The Bodley Head. ISBN 978-0-1982-0171-7.
Flahaut, Jean (2002). Charles-Louis Cadet de Gassicourt, Bâtard Royal, Pharmacien de l'Empereur (in French). Paris: Teissèdre. ISBN 978-2-9122-5960-8.
Flahaut, Simone (1980). Le pharmacien Charles-Louis Cadet de Gassicourt, bâtard de Louis XV, et sa famille (in French). Paris: Société d'histoire de la pharmacie. ISBN 978-2-9122-5960-8.
de Goncourt, Edmond et Jules (1906). La Duchesse de Châteauroux et Ses Soeurs (in French). Paris: Bibliotheque Nationale.
Ducher, Robert (1988). Caractéristique des Styles (in French). Paris: Flammarion. ISBN 2-0801-1539-1.
Gombrich, E.H. (2005). A Little History of the World. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-3001-3207-6.
Guéganic, Anne-Laure (2008). Louis XV: Le Règne fastueux (in French). Paris: Éditions Atlas. ISBN 978-2-7312-3798-6.
Haslip, Joan (1992). Madame du Barry: The Wages of Beauty. New York: Grove Weidenfeld. ISBN 978-1-8504-3753-6.
Herbermann, Charles George (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: The Enyclopedia Press.
HRH Princess Michael of Kent (2005). Cupid and the King. New York: Touchstone. ISBN 978-0-7432-7086-1.
Jones, Colin (2003). The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-1401-3093-5.
Latour, Louis Therese (1927). Princesses Ladies And Salonnieres of The Reign of Louis XV.
Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel (1998). The Ancien Régime: A History of France, 1610–1774. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-6312-1196-9.
Lepage, Jean-Denis G. G. (2009). French Fortifications, 1715–1815: An Illustrated History. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-5807-3.
Lever, Evelyne (2013). Le Crépuscule des Rois – Chronique 1757–1789 (in French). Paris: Fayard. ISBN 978-2-2136-6837-6.
Rogister, John (1998). Louis XV and the Parlement of Paris, 1737–55. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-5214-0395-5.
Pascal, Camille (2006). Le goût du roi, Louis XV et Marie-Louise O'Murphy (in French). Paris: Perrin. ISBN 2-2620-1704-2.
Shennan, J.H. (1995). France Before the Revolution. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-4151-1945-0.
Viguerie, Jean de (1995). Histoire et Dictionnaire du Temps des Lumières (in French). Paris: Robert Lafont. ISBN 978-2-2210-4810-8.
Vrignault, Henri (1950). Les Enfants de Louis XV: Descendance Illégitime (in French). Paris: éditions Perrin.
Further reading
Engels, Jens Ivo. "Denigrer, Esperer, Assumer La Realite. Le Roi de France perçu par ses Sujets, 1680–1750" ["Disparaging, Hoping, Taking on Reality: the French King as Perceived by His Subjects, 1680–1750"]. Revue D'histoire Moderne et Contemporaine 2003 50(3): 96–126, in French
Gooch, G.P. Louis XV (1976), scholarly biography
Justus, Kevin Lane. "A Fractured Mirror: The Royal Portraiture of Louis XV and the Search for a Successful Image through Architecture, or, Versailles Is the Thing in Which We Will Catch the Character of the King." PhD dissertation U. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 2002. DAI 2003 63(11): 3766-A. DA3070864 Fulltext: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
Perkins, James Breck. France under Louis XV (2 vol 1897) online vol 1 Archived 29 June 2011 at the Wayback Machine; online vol 2 Archived 29 June 2011 at the Wayback Machine
Treasure, Geoffrey. The Making of Modern Europe, 1648–1780 (3rd ed. 2003). pp 297–331. online
Woodbridge, John D. Revolt in Prerevolutionary France: The Prince de Conti's Conspiracy against Louis XV (1995).
Scholarly bibliography by Colin Jones (2002)
Mistresses
Jones, Colin. Madame de Pompadour: Images of a Mistress. London: National Gallery Publ., 2002.
Lever, Evelyne. Madame de Pompadour. (2002)
Mitford, Nancy. Madame de Pompadour (1954)
Primary sources
Du Barry, Jeanne Vaubernier, Jeanne Baecu. Memoirs of the Comtesse Du Barry: With Minute Details of Her Entire Career as Favorite of Louis XV (1903) ISBN 1-4069-2313-3 |
Olgivanna_Lloyd_Wright | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olgivanna_Lloyd_Wright | [
600
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olgivanna_Lloyd_Wright"
] | Olgivanna Lloyd Wright (born Olga Ivanovna Lazović; December 27, 1898 – March 1, 1985) was the third and final wife of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. They first met in November 1924 and married in 1928. In 1932, the couple established Wright's architectural apprentice program and Taliesin Fellowship. In 1940, Olgivanna and Frank, along with their son-in-law William Wesley Peters, co-founded the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. Following her husband's death in 1959, Olgivanna assumed the role of President of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, a position she held until a month prior to her death in 1985.
Early life
Olga Ivanovna (Olgivanna) Lazović was born on December 27, 1898, in Montenegro. Her parents were, Jovan Lazović, who served as Montenegro's first Chief Justice, and Milica Miljanov. Milica was the daughter of Marko Miljanov, a renowned Montenegrin writer, Voivode, and leader of the Kuči tribe. Marko Miljanov had achieved the rank of general in the Montenegrin army. Olgivanna was the youngest of five children, having two brothers and two sisters. When her father lost his sight, Olgivanna would read court documents to him.
At the age of nine, Olgivanna went to live with her sister Julia and her husband, Constantin Siberakov, in Russia.
Career
In Russia, Olgivanna met Vladimar Hinzenberg. They were married in 1917 when Olgivanna was 19.
After the birth of daughter Svetlana in 1917, Olgivanna met and became a devotee of G. I. Gurdjieff. She left her husband and child to follow Gurdjieff and his group to France at the Prieuré des Basses Loges in what was known as Gurdjieff's Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. Olgivanna spent roughly seven years working under Gurdjieff. She began her career with Gurdjieff as a student of sacred dance, which she later taught to students of her own, including Diana Huebert. In 1923, while in France, Olgivanna nursed Katherine Mansfield on her deathbed.
In August 1924, Gurdjieff suffered a car accident, disbanded the group, and encouraged Olgivanna to go to the United States to save her marriage (she and Vladimar had not lived together for years, and their daughter was in New Jersey at her brother's home). After a short while, Olgivanna felt that her marriage to Vladimar was over, so she went to Chicago. There, she persuaded her friends to allow her to teach their children the sacred dance (or "Movements", as they were known). While in Chicago, in late November 1924, she attended a Sunday matinee of dancer Tamara Karsavina, where she met Frank Lloyd Wright. The two sat in the box seat and began talking. According to architectural writer Walt Lockley, "The Foundation and the Fellowship would not exist in any form if Wright had not gone to the [ballet] with a friend one Sunday afternoon in 1924 Chicago and sat near to the dark-haired Montenegrin dancer." Wright wrote about this chance meeting in the 1943 edition of his autobiography:In a sentence or two she criticized Karsavina from our point of view, showing unusual familiarity with dancing and dancers. No longer quite so strange, the emissary of Fate, mercy on my soul, from the other side of the known world, bowed her head to my invitation to tea at the nearby Congress. She accepted with perfect ease and without artificial hesitation.
I was in love with her.
It was as simple as that.
The two quickly initiated a romantic relationship. Embroiled in scandal and controversy from the beginning of their relationship (since both were married at its start), she and her daughter came to live at Wright's Wisconsin home, Taliesin. By February 1925, Olgivanna was pregnant with their daughter, Iovanna. In April 1925, a major fire due to electrical problems destroyed Taliesin's living quarters. The end of 1925 also brought problems for the two as Wright's estranged second wife began a vindictive campaign to deny Wright the ability to divorce her, which he could not do until 1927 (Olgivanna and her first husband had divorced years before). In October 1926, Olgivanna and Wright were accused of violating the Mann Act and arrested in Tonka Bay, Minnesota, but the charges were later dropped. Wright and Olgivanna married on August 25, 1928, in Rancho Santa Fe, California, and honeymooned in Phoenix, Arizona.
The Taliesin Fellowship
In 1932, the two initiated the Taliesin Fellowship, an architectural apprentice program. Former apprentice Edgar Tafel described Olgivanna's influence on the Taliesin Fellowship in his book, Apprentice to Genius: Years With Frank Lloyd Wright. Tafel wrote that "His [Wright's] marriage to Olgivanna was a tremendous stabilizing element for him - her devotion and strength brought his genius forward again. She knew how to take care of him." Beyond Olgivanna's effect on Wright personally, Tafel (who was in the Fellowship from 1932 to 1941) wrote that her background with Gurdjieff had a positive effect on the organization of the Taliesin Fellowship, which regularly had dozens of men and women living with the Wrights at Taliesin in Wisconsin and his winter home, Taliesin West, in Arizona:This experience [with the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man] gave her the background to organize the operation of Taliesin and to bring another dimension to the life of the Fellowship. In this way, her experience with Gurdjieff did influence the form of the Fellowship and some of the activities envisioned from the beginning. Mrs. Wright was the force that kept the Fellowship in working order, from the very start. A remarkable woman.
In 1970, Olgivanna invited Svetlana Alliluyeva, the youngest child and only daughter of Joseph Stalin to Taliesin West, the winter compound of the Taliesin Fellowship. Alliluyeva and William Wesley "Wes" Peters married three weeks after they met. After having a daughter named Olga during a marriage that lasted 20 months, Alliluyeva came away with a less than glowing impression of the matriarch and her management of Taliesin:
This hierarchical system was appalling: the widow at the top, then the board of directors (a formality); then her own close inner circle, making all the real decisions; then working architects—the real working horses; at the bottom, students who paid high sums to be admitted, only to be sent the next day to work in the kitchen to peel potatoes ... Mrs. Wright's word was law. She had to be adored and worshipped and flattered as often as possible; flowers sent by mail and presented by hand she enjoyed and encouraged. She gave advice to the architects, guided a drama circle, a dance group and a choir, and counselling on private lives and relationships, expecting everyone to make personal confessions to her. She was a "spiritual leader" and self-appointed minister, preaching on Sunday mornings on matters of God and man, when everyone was supposed to be in her large living room.
Olgivanna continued to run the Taliesin Fellowship after Wright's death on April 9, 1959, almost until her own death in Scottsdale, Arizona, on March 1, 1985. The last quarter-century of Wright's life (1935–59)—when he, Olgivanna and the Taliesin Fellowship spent their winters in Arizona building Taliesin West—were arguably his most productive, representing "more than half of [Wright's] building".
Legacy
Olgivanna planned the removal of Wright's body from its Wisconsin grave, which was then "cremated, mixed with her ashes and used in the walls of a memorial garden to be built on the grounds of their home at Taliesin West." Iovanna Lloyd Wright was Olgivanna's only child with Wright. Olgivanna's only other daughter, Svetlana Hinzenberg, adopted the surname Wright. Svetlana married one of Wright's apprentices, Fellowship member Wes Peters, when she turned 18 in 1935.
Bibliography
Books by Olgivanna Lloyd Wright
Olgivanna Lloyd Wright wrote a weekly newspaper column starting in the 1950s entitled, "Our House". The newspaper columns were published the Arizona Republic in Phoenix, Arizona and The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. "Our House" was published as a book of the same name. In addition, she wrote four other books, published by Horizon Books in the 1960s with the last one, The Struggle Within published in 1971:
The Shining Brow: Frank Lloyd Wright (1960)
The Roots of Life (1963)
Frank Lloyd Wright: His Life, His Work, His Words (1966)
The Struggle Within (1971)
Books about Olgivanna and the Taliesin Fellowship
The Faraway Music by Svetlana Allilueva (also known as Distant Music.) Edition: 1st. New Delhi: Lancer International, 1984.
The Fellowship: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship by Roger Friedland and Harold Zellman, 2006, includes especially extensive and strong documentation on Olgivanna, her relationship with Wright, including "the strong influence the occultist Georgi Gurdjieff had on Wright and especially his wife Olgivanna"
Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography by Meryle Secrest, 1992. New York: HarperCollins.
From Crna Cora to Taliesin Black Mountain to Shining Brow: The Life of Olgivanna Lloyd Wright, by Maxine Fawcett-Yeske and Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer. ODO Editions, 2017. ISBN 978-1939621597
Reflections from the Shining Brow: My Years with Frank Lloyd Wright and Olgivanna Lazovich, by Kamal Amin. Fithian Press. 2004.
A Taliesin Legacy: The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright's Apprentices (Architecture Series) by Tobias S. Guggenheimer. Wiley, 1995. "[A]n encyclopedia study of the projects planned and/or built by these students, who eagerly embraced Wright's ethic of organic design." (Book Review)
Taliesin Reflections: My Years Before, During and After Living with Frank Lloyd Wright by Earl Nisbet, 2006. (Book Review)
Further Teachings of Gurdjieff - Journey Through This World, by C. S. Nott, Routledge & Kegan Paul, includes a chapter Taliesin and the Frank Lloyd Wrights describing a summer spent by Nott at Taliesin, 1969, ISBN 0-7100-6225-7 (cloth), ISBN 0-7100-8938-4 (paper)
Videography
Frank Lloyd Wright – A film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. (1998). PBS Home Video, August 28, 2001 (153 minutes). ASIN B00005MEPO.
Partner to Genius: A Biography of Olgivanna Lloyd Wright. PBS Home Video, VHS, May 13, 1997. ASIN B00000JKXH.
== References == |
Frank_Lloyd_Wright | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Lloyd_Wright | [
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Lloyd_Wright"
] | Frank Lloyd Wright Sr. (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements of the twentieth century, influencing architects worldwide through his works and mentoring hundreds of apprentices in his Taliesin Fellowship. Wright believed in designing in harmony with humanity and the environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. This philosophy was exemplified in Fallingwater (1935), which has been called "the best all-time work of American architecture".
Wright was a pioneer of what came to be called the Prairie School movement of architecture and also developed the concept of the Usonian home in Broadacre City, his vision for urban planning in the United States. He also designed original and innovative offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels, museums, and other commercial projects. Wright-designed interior elements (including leaded glass windows, floors, furniture and even tableware) were integrated into these structures. He wrote several books and numerous articles and was a popular lecturer in the United States and in Europe. Wright was recognized in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects as "the greatest American architect of all time". In 2019, a selection of his work became a listed World Heritage Site as The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Raised in rural Wisconsin, Wright studied civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin and then apprenticed in Chicago, briefly with Joseph Lyman Silsbee, and then with Louis Sullivan at Adler & Sullivan. Wright opened his own successful Chicago practice in 1893 and established a studio in his Oak Park, Illinois home in 1898. His fame increased and his personal life sometimes made headlines: leaving his first wife Catherine "Kitty" Tobin for Mamah Cheney in 1909; the murder of Mamah and her children and others at his Taliesin estate by a staff member in 1914; his tempestuous marriage with second wife Miriam Noel (m. 1923–1927); and his courtship and marriage with Olgivanna Lazović (m. 1928–1959).
Early life and education
Childhood (1867–1885)
Wright was born on June 8, 1867, in the town of Richland Center, Wisconsin, but maintained throughout his life that he was born in 1869. In 1987 a biographer of Wright suggested that he may have been christened as "Frank Lincoln Wright" or "Franklin Lincoln Wright" but these assertions were not supported by any documentation.
Wright's father, William Cary Wright (1825–1904), was a "gifted musician, orator, and sometime preacher who had been admitted to the bar in 1857." He was also a published composer. Originally from Massachusetts, William Wright had been a Baptist minister, but he later joined his wife's family in the Unitarian faith.
Wright's mother, Anna Lloyd Jones (1838/39–1923) was a teacher and a member of the Lloyd Jones clan; her parents had emigrated from Wales to Wisconsin. One of Anna's brothers was Jenkin Lloyd Jones, an important figure in the spread of the Unitarian faith in the Midwest.
According to Wright's autobiography, his mother declared when she was expecting that her first child would grow up to build beautiful buildings. She decorated his nursery with engravings of English cathedrals torn from a periodical to encourage the infant's ambition.
Wright grew up in an "unstable household, [...] constant lack of resources, [...] unrelieved poverty and anxiety" and had a "deeply disturbed and obviously unhappy childhood". His father held pastorates in McGregor, Iowa (1869), Pawtucket, Rhode Island (1871), and Weymouth, Massachusetts (1874). Because the Wright family struggled financially also in Weymouth, they returned to Spring Green, where the supportive Lloyd Jones family could help William find employment. In 1877, they settled in Madison, where William gave music lessons and served as the secretary to the newly formed Unitarian society. Although William was a distant parent, he shared his love of music with his children.
In 1876, Anna saw an exhibit of educational blocks called the Froebel Gifts, the foundation of an innovative kindergarten curriculum. Anna, a trained teacher, was excited by the program and bought a set with which the 9-year old Wright spent much time playing. The blocks in the set were geometrically shaped and could be assembled in various combinations to form two- and three-dimensional compositions. In his autobiography, Wright described the influence of these exercises on his approach to design: "For several years, I sat at the little kindergarten table-top... and played... with the cube, the sphere and the triangle – these smooth wooden maple blocks... All are in my fingers to this day... "
In 1881, soon after Wright turned 14, his parents separated. In 1884, his father sued for a divorce from Anna on the grounds of "... emotional cruelty and physical violence and spousal abandonment". Wright attended Madison High School, but there is no evidence that he graduated. His father left Wisconsin after the divorce was granted in 1885. Wright said that he never saw his father again.
Education (1885–1887)
In 1886, at age 19, Wright was admitted to the University of Wisconsin–Madison as a special student. He worked under Allan D. Conover, a professor of civil engineering, before leaving the school without taking a degree; in 1955, the university presented Wright, then 88 years old, with an honorary doctorate of fine arts.
Wright's uncle Jenkin Lloyd Jones had commissioned the Chicago architectural firm of Joseph Lyman Silsbee to design the All Souls Church in Chicago in 1885. In 1886, the Silsbee firm was commissioned by Jones to design the Unity Chapel as his private family chapel in Wyoming, Wisconsin.
Although not officially employed by Silsbee, Wright was an accomplished draftsman and "looked after the interior [drawings and construction]" in Wisconsin. This chapel is thus Wright's earliest known work.
After the chapel was finished, Wright moved to Chicago.
Early career
Silsbee and other early work experience (1887–1888)
In 1887, Wright arrived in Chicago in search of employment. As a result of the devastating Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and a population boom, new development was plentiful. Wright later recorded in his autobiography that his first impression of Chicago was as an ugly and chaotic city. Within days of his arrival, and after interviews with several prominent firms, he was hired as a draftsman with Joseph Lyman Silsbee. While with the firm, he also worked on two other family projects: All Souls Church in Chicago for his uncle, Jenkin Lloyd Jones, and the Hillside Home School I in Spring Green for two of his aunts. Others working in Silsbee's office at the time included Cecil S. Corwin (1860-1941), George W. Maher (1864-1926), and George G. Elmslie (1869-1952). Corwin, who was seven years older than Wright, soon took his young colleague under his wing and the two became close friends.
Feeling underpaid and looking to earn more, Wright briefly left Silsbee to work for architect William W. Clay (1849-1926). However, Wright soon felt overwhelmed by his new level of responsibility and returned to Silsbee, but this time with a raise in salary. Although Silsbee adhered mainly to Victorian and Revivalist architecture, Wright found his work to be more "gracefully picturesque" than the other "brutalities" of the period. Wright remained with Silsbee for a little less than a year, leaving to work for Adler & Sullivan around November 1887.
Adler & Sullivan (1888–1893)
Wright learned that the Chicago firm of Adler & Sullivan was "... looking for someone to make the finished drawings for the interior of the Auditorium Building". Wright demonstrated that he was a competent impressionist of Louis Sullivan's ornamental designs and two short interviews later, was an official apprentice in the firm. Wright did not get along well with Sullivan's other draftsmen; he wrote that several violent altercations occurred between them during the first years of his apprenticeship. For that matter, Sullivan showed very little respect for his own employees as well. In spite of this, "Sullivan took [Wright] under his wing and gave him great design responsibility." As an act of respect, Wright would later refer to Sullivan as lieber Meister (German for "dear master"). He also formed a bond with office foreman Paul Mueller. Wright later engaged Mueller in the construction of several of his public and commercial buildings between 1903 and 1923.
By 1890, Wright had an office next to Sullivan's that he shared with friend and draftsman George Elmslie, who had been hired by Sullivan at Wright's request. Wright had risen to head draftsman and handled all residential design work in the office. As a general rule, the firm of Adler & Sullivan did not design or build houses, but would oblige when asked by the clients of their important commercial projects. Wright was occupied by the firm's major commissions during office hours, so house designs were relegated to evening and weekend overtime hours at his home studio. He later claimed total responsibility for the design of these houses, but a careful inspection of their architectural style (and accounts from historian Robert Twombly) suggests that Sullivan dictated the overall form and motifs of the residential works; Wright's design duties were often reduced to detailing the projects from Sullivan's sketches. During this time, Wright was assigned to work on the Sullivan's bungalow (1890) and the James A. Charnley bungalow (1890) in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, the Berry-MacHarg House, James A. Charnley House (both 1891), and the Albert Sullivan House (1892), all in Chicago.
Despite Sullivan's loan and overtime salary, Wright was constantly short on funds. Wright admitted that his poor finances were likely due to his expensive tastes in wardrobe and vehicles, and the extra luxuries he designed into his house. To supplement his income and repay his debts, Wright accepted independent commissions for at least nine houses. These "bootlegged" houses, as he later called them, were conservatively designed in variations of the fashionable Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles. Nevertheless, unlike the prevailing architecture of the period, each house emphasized simple geometric massing and contained features such as bands of horizontal windows, occasional cantilevers, and open floor plans, which would become hallmarks of his later work. Eight of these early houses remain today, including the Thomas Gale, Robert Parker, George Blossom, and Walter Gale houses.
As with the residential projects for Adler & Sullivan, he designed his bootleg houses on his own time. Sullivan knew nothing of the independent works until 1893, when he recognized that one of the houses was unmistakably a Frank Lloyd Wright design. This particular house, built for Allison Harlan, was only blocks away from Sullivan's townhouse in the Chicago community of Kenwood. Aside from the location, the geometric purity of the composition and balcony tracery in the same style as the Charnley House likely gave away Wright's involvement. Since Wright's five-year contract forbade any outside work, the incident led to his departure from Sullivan's firm. Several stories recount the break in the relationship between Sullivan and Wright; even Wright later told two different versions of the occurrence. In An Autobiography, Wright claimed that he was unaware that his side ventures were a breach of his contract. When Sullivan learned of them, he was angered and offended; he prohibited any further outside commissions and refused to issue Wright the deed to his Oak Park house until after he completed his five years. Wright could not bear the new hostility from his master and thought that the situation was unjust. He "... threw down [his] pencil and walked out of the Adler & Sullivan office never to return". Dankmar Adler, who was more sympathetic to Wright's actions, later sent him the deed. However, Wright told his Taliesin apprentices (as recorded by Edgar Tafel) that Sullivan fired him on the spot upon learning of the Harlan House. Tafel also recounted that Wright had Cecil Corwin sign several of the bootleg jobs, indicating that Wright was aware of their forbidden nature. Regardless of the correct series of events, Wright and Sullivan did not meet or speak for 12 years.
Transition and experimentation (1893–1900)
After leaving Adler & Sullivan, Wright established his own practice on the top floor of the Sullivan-designed Schiller Building on Randolph Street in Chicago. Wright chose to locate his office in the building because the tower location reminded him of the office of Adler & Sullivan. Cecil Corwin followed Wright and set up his architecture practice in the same office, but the two worked independently and did not consider themselves partners.
In 1896, Wright moved from the Schiller Building to the nearby and newly completed Steinway Hall building. The loft space was shared with Robert C. Spencer, Jr., Myron Hunt, and Dwight H. Perkins. These young architects, inspired by the Arts and Crafts Movement and the philosophies of Louis Sullivan, formed what became known as the Prairie School. They were joined by Perkins' apprentice Marion Mahony, who in 1895 transferred to Wright's team of drafters and took over production of his presentation drawings and watercolor renderings. Mahony, the third woman to be licensed as an architect in Illinois and one of the first licensed female architects in the U.S., also designed furniture, leaded glass windows, and light fixtures, among other features, for Wright's houses. Between 1894 and the early 1910s, several other leading Prairie School architects and many of Wright's future employees launched their careers in the offices of Steinway Hall.
Wright's projects during this period followed two basic models. His first independent commission, the Winslow House, combined Sullivanesque ornamentation with the emphasis on simple geometry and horizontal lines. The Francis Apartments (1895, demolished 1971), Heller House (1896), Rollin Furbeck House (1897) and Husser House (1899, demolished 1926) were designed in the same mode. For his more conservative clients, Wright designed more traditional dwellings. These included the Dutch Colonial Revival style Bagley House (1894), Tudor Revival style Moore House I (1895), and Queen Anne style Charles E. Roberts House (1896). While Wright could not afford to turn down clients over disagreements in taste, even his most conservative designs retained simplified massing and occasional Sullivan-inspired details.
Soon after the completion of the Winslow House in 1894, Edward Waller, a friend and former client, invited Wright to meet Chicago architect and planner Daniel Burnham. Burnham had been impressed by the Winslow House and other examples of Wright's work; he offered to finance a four-year education at the École des Beaux-Arts and two years in Rome. To top it off, Wright would have a position in Burnham's firm upon his return. In spite of guaranteed success and support of his family, Wright declined the offer. Burnham, who had directed the classical design of the World's Columbian Exposition and was a major proponent of the Beaux Arts movement, thought that Wright was making a foolish mistake. Yet for Wright, the classical education of the École lacked creativity and was altogether at odds with his vision of modern American architecture.
Wright relocated his practice to his home in 1898 to bring his work and family lives closer. This move made further sense as the majority of the architect's projects at that time were in Oak Park or neighboring River Forest. The birth of three more children prompted Wright to sacrifice his original home studio space for additional bedrooms and necessitated his design and construction of an expansive studio addition to the north of the main house. The space, which included a hanging balcony within the two-story drafting room, was one of Wright's first experiments with innovative structure. The studio embodied Wright's developing aesthetics and would become the laboratory from which his next 10 years of architectural creations would emerge.
Prairie Style houses (1900–1914)
By 1901, Wright had completed about 50 projects, including many houses in Oak Park. As his son John Lloyd Wright wrote:
William Eugene Drummond, Francis Barry Byrne, Walter Burley Griffin, Albert Chase McArthur, Marion Mahony, Isabel Roberts, and George Willis were the draftsmen. Five men, two women. They wore flowing ties, and smocks suitable to the realm. The men wore their hair like Papa, all except Albert, he didn't have enough hair. They worshiped Papa! Papa liked them! I know that each one of them was then making valuable contributions to the pioneering of the modern American architecture for which my father gets the full glory, headaches, and recognition today!
Between 1900 and 1901, Frank Lloyd Wright completed four houses, which have since been identified as the onset of the "Prairie Style". Two, the Hickox and Bradley Houses, were the last transitional step between Wright's early designs and the Prairie creations. Meanwhile, the Thomas House and Willits House received recognition as the first mature examples of the new style. At the same time, Wright gave his new ideas for the American house widespread awareness through two publications in the Ladies' Home Journal. The articles were in response to an invitation from the president of Curtis Publishing Company, Edward Bok, as part of a project to improve modern house design. "A Home in a Prairie Town" and "A Small House with Lots of Room in it" appeared respectively in the February and July 1901 issues of the journal. Although neither of the affordable house plans was ever constructed, Wright received increased requests for similar designs in following years. Wright came to Buffalo and designed homes for three of the company's executives: the Darwin D. Martin House (1904), the William R. Heath House 1905), and the Walter V. Davidson House (1908). Other Wright houses considered to be masterpieces of the Prairie Style are the Frederick Robie House in Chicago and the Avery and Queene Coonley House in Riverside, Illinois. The Robie House, with its extended cantilevered roof lines supported by a 110-foot-long (34 m) channel of steel, is the most dramatic. Its living and dining areas form virtually one uninterrupted space. With this and other buildings, included in the publication of the Wasmuth Portfolio (1910), Wright's work became known to European architects and had a profound influence on them after World War I.
Wright's residential designs of this era were known as "prairie houses" because the designs complemented the land around Chicago. Prairie Style houses often have a combination of these features: one or two stories with one-story projections, an open floor plan, low-pitched roofs with broad, overhanging eaves, strong horizontal lines, ribbons of windows (often casements), a prominent central chimney, built-in stylized cabinetry, and a wide use of natural materials – especially stone and wood.
By 1909, Wright had begun to reject the upper-middle-class Prairie Style single-family house model, shifting his focus to a more democratic architecture. Wright went to Europe in 1909 with a portfolio of his work and presented it to Berlin publisher Ernst Wasmuth. Studies and Executed Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright, published in 1911, was the first major exposure of Wright's work in Europe. The work contained more than 100 lithographs of Wright's designs and is commonly known as the Wasmuth Portfolio.
Notable public works (1900–1917)
Wright designed the house of Cornell University's chapter of Alpha Delta Phi literary society (1900), the Hillside Home School II (built for his aunts) in Spring Green, Wisconsin (1901) and the Unity Temple (1905) in Oak Park, Illinois. As a lifelong Unitarian and member of Unity Temple, Wright offered his services to the congregation after their church burned down, working on the building from 1905 to 1909. Wright later said that Unity Temple was the edifice in which he ceased to be an architect of structure, and became an architect of space.
Some other early notable public buildings and projects in this era: the Larkin Administration Building (1905); the Geneva Inn (Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, 1911); the Midway Gardens (Chicago, Illinois, 1913); the Banff National Park Pavilion (Alberta, Canada, 1914).
Designing in Japan (1917–1922)
While working in Japan, Wright left an impressive architectural heritage. The Imperial Hotel, completed in 1923, is the most important. Thanks to its solid foundations and steel construction, the hotel survived the Great Kanto Earthquake almost unscathed. The hotel was damaged during the bombing of Tokyo and by the subsequent US military occupation of it after World War II. As land in the center of Tokyo increased in value the hotel was deemed obsolete and was demolished in 1968, but the lobby was saved and later re-constructed at the Meiji Mura architecture museum in Nagoya in 1976.
Jiyu Gakuen was founded as a girls' school in 1921. The construction of the main building began in 1921 under Wright's direction and, after his departure, was continued by Endo. The school building, like the Imperial Hotel, is covered with Ōya stones.
The Yodoko Guesthouse (designed in 1918 and completed in 1924) was built as the summer villa for Tadzaemon Yamamura.
Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture had a strong influence on young Japanese architects. The Japanese architects Wright commissioned to carry out his designs were Arata Endo, Takehiko Okami, Taue Sasaki and Kameshiro Tsuchiura. Endo supervised the completion of the Imperial Hotel after Wright's departure in 1922 and also supervised the construction of the Jiyu Gakuen Girls' School and the Yodokō Guest House. Tsuchiura went on to create so-called "light" buildings, which had similarities to Wright's later work.
Textile concrete block system
In the early 1920s, Wright designed a "textile" concrete block system. The system of precast blocks, reinforced by an internal system of bars, enabled "fabrication as infinite in color, texture, and variety as in that rug." Wright first used his textile block system on the Millard House in Pasadena, California, in 1923. Typically Wrightian is the joining of the structure to its site by a series of terraces that reach out into and reorder the landscape, making it an integral part of the architect's vision. With the Ennis House and the Samuel Freeman House (both 1923), Wright had further opportunities to test the limits of the textile block system, including limited use in the Arizona Biltmore Hotel in 1927. The Ennis house is often used in films, television, and print media to represent the future. Wright's son, Lloyd Wright, supervised construction for the Storer, Freeman, and Ennis Houses. Architectural historian Thomas Hines has suggested that Lloyd's contribution to these projects is often overlooked.
After World War II, Wright updated the concrete block system, calling it the Usonian Automatic system, resulting in the construction of several notable homes. As he explained in The Natural House (1954), "The original blocks are made on the site by ramming concrete into wood or metal wrap-around forms, with one outside face (which may be pattered), and one rear or inside face, generally coffered, for lightness."
Midlife problems
Family turmoil
In 1903, while Wright was designing a house for Edwin Cheney (a neighbor in Oak Park), he became enamored with Cheney's wife, Mamah Borthwick Cheney. Mamah was a modern woman with interests outside the home. She was an early feminist, and Wright viewed her as his intellectual equal. Their relationship became the talk of the town; they often could be seen taking rides in Wright's automobile through Oak Park. In 1909, Wright and Mamah Cheney met up in Europe, leaving their spouses and children behind. Wright remained in Europe for almost a year, first in Florence, Italy (where he lived with his eldest son Lloyd) and, later, in Fiesole, Italy, where he lived with Mamah. During this time, Edwin Cheney granted Mamah a divorce, although Frank's wife Catherine refused to grant him one. After Wright returned to the United States in October 1910, he persuaded his mother to buy land for him in Spring Green, Wisconsin. The land, bought on April 10, 1911, was adjacent to land held by his mother's family, the Lloyd-Joneses. Wright began to build himself a new home, which he called Taliesin, by May 1911. The recurring theme of Taliesin also came from his mother's side: Taliesin was a Welsh poet, magician, and priest. The family motto, "Y Gwir yn Erbyn y Byd" ("The Truth Against the World"), was taken from the Welsh poet Iolo Morganwg, who also had a son named Taliesin. The motto is still used today as the cry of the druids and chief bard of the Eisteddfod in Wales.
Tragedy at Taliesin
On August 15, 1914, while Wright was working in Chicago, Julian Carlton, a servant, set fire to the living quarters of Taliesin and then murdered seven people with an axe as the fire burned. The dead included Mamah; her two children, John and Martha Cheney; a gardener (David Lindblom); a draftsman (Emil Brodelle); a workman (Thomas Brunker); and another workman's son (Ernest Weston). Two people survived, one of whom, William Weston, helped to put out the fire that almost completely consumed the residential wing of the house. Carlton swallowed hydrochloric acid following the attack in an attempt to kill himself. He was nearly lynched on the spot, but was taken to the Dodgeville jail. Carlton died from starvation seven weeks after the attack.
Divorces
In 1922, Kitty Wright finally granted Wright a divorce. Under the terms of the divorce, Wright was required to wait one year before he could marry his then-mistress, Maude "Miriam" Noel. In 1923, Wright's mother, Anna (Lloyd Jones) Wright, died. Wright wed Miriam Noel in November 1923, but her addiction to morphine led to the failure of the marriage in less than one year. In 1924, after the separation, but while still married, Wright met Olga (Olgivanna) Lazovich Hinzenburg. They moved in together at Taliesin in 1925, and soon after Olgivanna became pregnant. Their daughter, Iovanna, was born on December 3, 1925.
On April 20, 1925, another fire destroyed the bungalow at Taliesin. Crossed wires from a newly installed telephone system were deemed to be responsible for the blaze, which destroyed a collection of Japanese prints that Wright estimated to be worth $250,000 to $500,000 ($4,343,000 to $8,687,000 in 2023). Wright rebuilt the living quarters, naming the home "Taliesin III".
In 1926, Olga's ex-husband, Vlademar Hinzenburg, sought custody of his daughter, Svetlana. In October 1926, Wright and Olgivanna were accused of violating the Mann Act and were arrested in Tonka Bay, Minnesota. The charges were later dropped.
The divorce of Wright and Miriam Noel was finalized in 1927. Wright was again required to wait for one year before remarrying. Wright and Olgivanna married in 1928.
Later career
Taliesin Fellowship
In 1932, Wright and his wife Olgivanna put out a call for students to come to Taliesin to study and work under Wright while they learned architecture and spiritual development. Olgivanna Wright had been a student of G. I. Gurdjieff who had previously established a similar school. Twenty-three came to live and work that year, including John (Jack) H. Howe, who would become Wright's chief draftsman. A total of 625 people joined The Fellowship in Wright's lifetime. The Fellowship was a source of workers for Wright's later projects, including: Fallingwater; The Johnson Wax Headquarters; and The Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
Considerable controversy exists over the living conditions and education of the fellows. Wright was reputedly a difficult person to work with. One apprentice wrote: "He is devoid of consideration and has a blind spot regarding others' qualities. Yet I believe, that a year in his studio would be worth any sacrifice." The Fellowship evolved into The School of Architecture at Taliesin which was an accredited school until it closed under acrimonious circumstances in 2020. Taking on the name "The School of Architecture" in June 2020, the school moved to the Cosanti Foundation, which it had worked with in the past.
Usonian Houses
Wright is responsible for a series of concepts of suburban development united under the term Broadacre City. He proposed the idea in his book The Disappearing City in 1932 and unveiled a 12-square-foot (1.1 m2) model of this community of the future, showing it in several venues in the following years. Concurrent with the development of Broadacre City, also referred to as Usonia, Wright conceived a new type of dwelling that came to be known as the Usonian House. Although an early version of the form can be seen in the Malcolm Willey House (1934) in Minneapolis, the Usonian ideal emerged most completely in the Herbert and Katherine Jacobs First House (1937) in Madison, Wisconsin. Designed on a gridded concrete slab that integrated the house's radiant heating system, the house featured new approaches to construction, including walls composed of a "sandwich" of wood siding, plywood cores and building paper – a significant change from typically framed walls. Usonian houses commonly featured flat roofs and were usually constructed without basements or attics, all features that Wright had been promoting since the early 20th century.
Usonian houses were Wright's response to the transformation of domestic life that occurred in the early 20th century when servants had become less prominent or completely absent from most American households. By developing homes with progressively more open plans, Wright allotted the woman of the house a "workspace", as he often called the kitchen, where she could keep track of and be available for the children and/or guests in the dining room. As in the Prairie Houses, Usonian living areas had a fireplace as a point of focus. Bedrooms, typically isolated and relatively small, encouraged the family to gather in the main living areas. The conception of spaces instead of rooms was a development of the Prairie ideal. The built-in furnishings related to the Arts and Crafts movement's principles that influenced Wright's early work. Spatially and in terms of their construction, the Usonian houses represented a new model for independent living and allowed dozens of clients to live in a Wright-designed house at relatively low cost. His Usonian homes set a new style for suburban design that influenced countless postwar developers. Many features of modern American homes date back to Wright: open plans, slab-on-grade foundations, and simplified construction techniques that allowed more mechanization and efficiency in construction.
Significant later works
Fallingwater, one of Wright's most famous private residences (completed 1937), was built for Mr. and Mrs. Edgar J. Kaufmann, Sr., at Mill Run, Pennsylvania. Constructed over a 30-foot waterfall, it was designed according to Wright's desire to place the occupants close to the natural surroundings. The house was intended to be more of a family getaway, rather than a live-in home. The construction is a series of cantilevered balconies and terraces, using limestone for all verticals and concrete for the horizontals. The house cost $155,000 (equivalent to $3,285,000 in 2023), including the architect's fee of $8,000 (equivalent to $170,000 in 2023). It was one of Wright's most expensive pieces. Kaufmann's own engineers argued that the design was not sound. They were overruled by Wright, but the contractor secretly added extra steel to the horizontal concrete elements. In 1994, Robert Silman and Associates examined the building and developed a plan to restore the structure. In the late 1990s, steel supports were added under the lowest cantilever until a detailed structural analysis could be done. In March 2002, post-tensioning of the lowest terrace was completed.
Taliesin West, Wright's winter home and studio complex in Scottsdale, Arizona, was a laboratory for Wright from 1937 to his death in 1959. It is now the home of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.
The design and construction of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City occupied Wright from 1943 until 1959 and is probably his most recognized masterpiece. The building's unique central geometry allows visitors to experience Guggenheim's collection of nonobjective geometric paintings by taking an elevator to the top level and then viewing artworks by walking down the slowly descending, central spiral ramp.
The only realized skyscraper designed by Wright is the Price Tower, a 19-story tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. It is also one of the two existing vertically oriented Wright structures (the other is the S.C. Johnson Wax Research Tower in Racine, Wisconsin). The Price Tower was commissioned by Harold C. Price of the H. C. Price Company, a local oil pipeline and chemical firm. On March 29, 2007, Price Tower was designated a National Historic Landmark by the United States Department of the Interior, one of only 20 such properties in Oklahoma.
Monona Terrace, originally designed in 1937 as municipal offices for Madison, Wisconsin, was completed in 1997 on the original site, using a variation of Wright's final design for the exterior, with the interior design altered by its new purpose as a convention center. The "as-built" design was carried out by Wright's apprentice Tony Puttnam. Monona Terrace was accompanied by controversy until the structure was completed.
Florida Southern College, located in Lakeland, Florida, constructed 12 (out of 18 planned) Frank Lloyd Wright buildings between 1941 and 1958 as part of the Child of the Sun project. It is the world's largest single-site collection of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture.
Personal style and concepts
Design elements
His Prairie houses use themed, coordinated design elements (often based on plant forms) that are repeated in windows, carpets, and other fittings. He made innovative use of new building materials such as precast concrete blocks, glass bricks, and zinc cames (instead of the traditional lead) for his leadlight windows, and he famously used Pyrex glass tubing as a major element in the Johnson Wax Headquarters. Wright was also one of the first architects to design and install custom-made electric light fittings, including some of the first electric floor lamps, and his very early use of the then-novel spherical glass lampshade (a design previously not possible due to the physical restrictions of gas lighting). In 1897, Wright received a patent for "Prism Glass Tiles" that were used in storefronts to direct light toward the interior. Wright fully embraced glass in his designs and found that it fit well into his philosophy of organic architecture. According to Wright's organic theory, all components of the building should appear unified, as though they belong together. Nothing should be attached to it without considering the effect on the whole. To unify the house to its site, Wright often used large expanses of glass to blur the boundary between the indoors and outdoors. Glass allowed for interaction and viewing of the outdoors while still protecting from the elements. In 1928, Wright wrote an essay on glass in which he compared it to the mirrors of nature: lakes, rivers and ponds. One of Wright's earliest uses of glass in his works was to string panes of glass along whole walls in an attempt to create light screens to join solid walls. By using this large amount of glass, Wright sought to achieve a balance between the lightness and airiness of the glass and the solid, hard walls. Arguably, Wright's best-known art glass is that of the Prairie style. The simple geometric shapes that yield to very ornate and intricate windows represent some of the most integral ornamentation of his career. Wright also designed some of his own clothing.
Influences and collaborations
Wright, an individualist, did not affiliate with the American Institute of Architects during his career; he called the organization "a harbor of refuge for the incompetent" and "a form of refined gangsterism". When an associate referred to him as "an old amateur" Wright confirmed, "I am the oldest." Wright rarely credited any influences on his designs, but most architects, historians and scholars agree he had five major influences:
Louis Sullivan, whom he considered to be his lieber Meister (dear master)
Nature, particularly shapes/forms and colors/patterns of plant life
Music (his favorite composer was Ludwig van Beethoven)
Japanese art, prints and buildings
Froebel gifts
Wright was given a set of Froebel gifts at about age nine, and in his autobiography he cited them indirectly in explaining that he learned the geometry of architecture in kindergarten play: For several years I sat at the little kindergarten table-top ruled by lines about four inches apart each way making four-inch squares; and, among other things, played upon these 'unit-lines' with the square (cube), the circle (sphere) and the triangle (tetrahedron or tripod)—these were smooth maple-wood blocks. All are in my fingers to this day.: 359 Wright later wrote, "The virtue of all this lay in the awakening of the child-mind to rhythmic structures in Nature… I soon became susceptible to constructive pattern evolving in everything I saw.": 25 : 205
He routinely claimed the work of architects and architectural designers who were his employees as his own designs, and believed that the rest of the Prairie School architects were merely his followers, imitators, and subordinates. As with any architect, though, Wright worked in a collaborative process and drew his ideas from the work of others. In his earlier days, Wright worked with some of the top architects of the Chicago School, including Sullivan. In his Prairie School days, Wright's office was populated by many talented architects, including William Eugene Drummond, John Van Bergen, Isabel Roberts, Francis Barry Byrne, Albert McArthur, Marion Mahony Griffin, and Walter Burley Griffin. The Czech-born architect Antonin Raymond worked for Wright at Taliesin and led the construction of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. He subsequently stayed in Japan and opened his own practice. Rudolf Schindler also worked for Wright on the Imperial Hotel and his own work is often credited as influencing Wright's Usonian houses. Schindler's friend Richard Neutra also worked briefly for Wright. In the Taliesin days, Wright employed many architects and artists who later become notable, such as Aaron Green, John Lautner, E. Fay Jones, Henry Klumb, William Bernoudy, and Paolo Soleri.
Japanese art
Wright was a passionate Japanophile — he once proclaimed Japan to be "the most romantic, artistic, nature-inspired country on earth." He was particularly interested in ukiyo-e woodblock prints, to which he claimed he was "enslaved." Wright spent much of his free time selling, collecting, and appreciating these prints. He held parties and other events centered around them, proclaiming their pedagogical value to his guests and students. Before arriving in Japan, his impressions of the nation were based almost entirely on them.
Wright found particular inspiration in the formal aspects of Japanese art. He described ukiyo-e prints as "organic," because of their understated qualities, their harmony, and their ability to be appreciated on a purely aesthetic level. Additionally, he cherished their free-form compositions, where elements of the scene would frequently breach in front of one another, and their lack of extraneous detail, which he called a "gospel of elimination." His interpretation of chashitsu (tea ceremony venues), mediated by the ideas of Okakura Kakuzō, was that of an architecture which emphasized openness, the "vacant space between the roof and walls." Wright applied these principles on a large scale, and they became trademarks of his practice.
Wright's floor plans exhibit strong similarities to their presumed Japanese forebears. The open living spaces of his early homes were likely appropriated from the World's Columbian Exposition's Ho-O-Den Pavilion, whose sliding-screen dividers were removed in preparation for the event. Likewise, Unity Temple follows a gongen-zukuri layout, characteristic of Shinto shrines and likely inspired by his 1905 visit to the Rinnō-ji temple complex, and the shape of many of his cantilevered towers, including the Johnson Research Tower, may have been inspired by Japanese pagodas. Wright's ornamental flourishes, as seen in his leaded glass windows and lively architectural drawings, demonstrate a technical indebtedness to ukiyo-e. One modern commentator, discussing the Robie House, suggests that such elements combined allow Wright's architecture to exhibit iki, a particularly Japanese aesthetic value marked by a subdued stylishness.
His ideas about the art of Japan appear to have drawn greatly from the activities of Ernest Fenollosa, whose work he likely first encountered between 1890 and 1893. Many of Fenollosa's ideas are quite similar to those of Wright: these include his view of architecture as a "mother art," his condemnation of the West's "separation of construction and decoration," and his identification of an "organic wholeness" within ukiyo-e prints. Also like Wright, Fenollosa perceived a "degeneracy" in Western architecture, with particular emphasis on Renaissance architecture; Wright himself admitted that Japanese prints helped to "vulgarize" the Renaissance for him. Wright's art criticism treatise, The Japanese Print: An Interpretation, may be read as a straightforward expansion upon Fenollosa's ideas.
Though Wright always acknowledged his indebtedness to Japanese art and architecture, he took offense to claims that he copied or adapted it. In his view, Japanese art simply validated his personal principles especially well, and as such it was not a source of special inspiration. Responding to a claim by Charles Robert Ashbee that he was "trying to adapt Japanese forms to the United States," Wright said that such borrowing was "against [his] very religion." Nonetheless, his insistence did not stop others from observing the same throughout his life.
Art collecting and dealing
Wright was also an active dealer in Japanese art, primarily ukiyo-e. He frequently served as both architect and art dealer to the same clients: he designed a home, then provided the art to fill it. For a time, Wright made more from selling art than from his work as an architect. He also kept a personal collection, which he used as a teaching aid with his apprentices in what were called "print parties"; to better suit his taste, he sometimes modified these personal prints using colored pencils and crayons. Wright owned prints from masters such as Okumura Masanobu, Torii Kiyomasu I, Katsukawa Shunshō, Utagawa Toyoharu, Utagawa Kunisada, Katsushika Hokusai, and Utagawa Hiroshige; he was especially fond of Hiroshige, whom he considered "the greatest artist in the world."
Wright first traveled to Japan in 1905, where he bought hundreds of prints. The following year, he helped organize the world's first retrospective exhibition on Hiroshige, held at the Art Institute of Chicago, a job which strengthened his reputation as an expert in Japanese art. Wright continued buying prints in his return trips to Japan and for many years he was a major presence in the art world, selling a great number of works both to prominent private collectors and to museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In sum, Wright spent over five hundred thousand dollars on prints between 1905 and 1923. He penned a book on Japanese art, The Japanese Print: An Interpretation, in 1912.
In 1920, many of the prints Wright sold had been found to exhibit signs of retouching, including pinholes and unoriginal pigments. These retouched prints were likely made in retribution by some of his Japanese dealers, who were disgruntled by the architect's under-the-table sales. In an attempt to clear his name, Wright took one of his dealers, Kyūgo Hayashi, to court over the issue; Hayashi was subsequently sentenced to one year in prison, and barred from selling prints for an extended period of time.
Though Wright protested his innocence, and provided his clients with genuine prints as replacements for those he was accused of retouching, the incident marked the end of the high point of his career as an art dealer. He was forced to sell off much of his art collection to pay off outstanding debts: in 1928, the Bank of Wisconsin claimed Taliesin and sold thousands of his prints — for only one dollar a piece — to collector Edward Burr Van Vleck. Nonetheless, Wright continued to collect and deal in prints until his death in 1959, using them as bartering chips and collateral for loans; he often relied upon his art business to remain financially solvent. He once claimed that Taliesin I and II were "practically built" by his prints.
The extent of his dealings in Japanese art went largely unknown, or underestimated, among art historians for decades. In 1980, Julia Meech, then associate curator of Japanese art at the Metropolitan Museum, began researching the history of the museum's collection of Japanese prints. She discovered "a three-inch-deep 'clump of 400 cards' from 1918, each listing a print bought from the same seller — 'F. L. Wright'" — and a number of letters exchanged between Wright and the museum's first curator of Far Eastern Art, Sigisbert C. Bosch Reitz. These discoveries and subsequent research led to a renewed understanding of Wright's career as an art dealer.
Community planning
Frank Lloyd Wright's commissions and theories on urban design began as early as 1900 and continued until his death. He had 41 commissions on the scale of community planning or urban design.
His thoughts on suburban design started in 1900 with a proposed subdivision layout for Charles E. Roberts entitled the "Quadruple Block Plan". This design strayed from traditional suburban lot layouts and set houses on small square blocks of four equal-sized lots surrounded on all sides by roads instead of straight rows of houses on parallel streets. The houses, which used the same design as published in "A Home in a Prairie Town" from the Ladies' Home Journal, were set toward the center of the block to maximize the yard space and included private space in the center. This also allowed for far more interesting views from each house. Although this plan was never realized, Wright published the design in the Wasmuth Portfolio in 1910.
The more ambitious designs of entire communities were exemplified by his entry into the City Club of Chicago Land Development Competition in 1913. The contest was for the development of a suburban quarter section. This design expanded on the Quadruple Block Plan and included several social levels. The design shows the placement of the upscale homes in the most desirable areas and the blue collar homes and apartments separated by parks and common spaces. The design also included all the amenities of a small city: schools, museums, markets, etc. This view of decentralization was later reinforced by theoretical Broadacre City design. The philosophy behind his community planning was decentralization. The new development must be away from the cities. In this decentralized America, all services and facilities could coexist "factories side by side with farm and home".
Notable community planning designs:
1900–03 – Quadruple Block Plan, 24 homes in Oak Park, Illinois (unbuilt);
1909 – Como Orchard Summer Colony, town site development for new town in the Bitterroot Valley, Montana;
1913 – Chicago Land Development competition, suburban Chicago quarter section;
1934–59 – Broadacre City, theoretical decentralized city plan, exhibits of large-scale model;
1938 – Suntop Homes, also known as Cloverleaf Quadruple Housing Project – commission from Federal Works Agency, Division of Defense Housing, a low-cost multifamily housing alternative to suburban development;
1942 – Cooperative Homesteads, commissioned by a group of auto workers, teachers and other professionals, 160-acre farm co-op was to be the pioneer of rammed earth and earth berm construction (unbuilt);
1945 – Usonia Homes, 47 homes (three designed by Wright) in Pleasantville, New York;
1949 – Parkwyn Village, a plat in Kalamazoo, Michigan, developed by Wright containing mostly Usonian houses by other architects with four by Wright. The community was planned to be on circular lots but was re-platted and squared off.
1949 – The Acres, also known as Galesburg Country Homes, with five houses (four designed by Wright) in Charleston Township, Michigan; The Acres remains the sole example of a planned community that has not had its circular lots squared off or been sub-divided.
Legacy
Death
On April 4, 1959, Wright was hospitalized for abdominal pains and was operated upon. Wright seemed to be recovering but he died quietly on April 9 at the age of 91 years. The New York Times then reported he was 89.
After his death, Wright's legacy was engulfed in turmoil for years. His third wife Olgivanna's dying wish had been that she, Wright, and her daughter by her first marriage would all be cremated and interred together in a memorial garden being built at Taliesin West. According to his own wishes, Wright's body had lain in the Lloyd-Jones cemetery, next to the Unity Chapel, within view of Taliesin in Wisconsin. Although Olgivanna had taken no legal steps to move Wright's remains (and against the wishes of other family members and the Wisconsin legislature), his remains were removed from his grave in 1985 by members of the Taliesin Fellowship. They were cremated and sent to Scottsdale where they were later interred as per Olgivanna's instructions. The original grave site in Wisconsin is now empty but is still marked with Wright's name.
Archives
After Wright's death, most of his archives were stored at the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation in Taliesin (in Wisconsin), and Taliesin West (in Arizona). These collections included more than 23,000 architectural drawings, some 44,000 photographs, 600 manuscripts, and more than 300,000 pieces of office and personal correspondence. It also contained about 40 large-scale architectural models, most of which were constructed for MoMA's retrospective of Wright in 1940. In 2012, to guarantee a high level of conservation and access, as well as to transfer the considerable financial burden of maintaining the archive, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation partnered with the Museum of Modern Art and the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library of Columbia University to move the archive's content to New York. Wright's furniture and art collection remains with the foundation, which will also have a role in monitoring the archive. These three parties established an advisory group to oversee exhibitions, symposiums, events, and publications.
Photographs and other archival materials are held by the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries at the Art Institute of Chicago. The architect's personal archives are located at Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona. The Frank Lloyd Wright archives include photographs of his drawings, indexed correspondence beginning in the 1880s and continuing through Wright's life, and other ephemera. The Getty Research Center, Los Angeles, also has copies of Wright's correspondence and photographs of his drawings in their Frank Lloyd Wright Special Collection. Wright's correspondence is indexed in An Index to the Taliesin Correspondence, ed. by Professor Anthony Alofsin, which is available at larger libraries.
Destroyed Wright buildings
Wright designed over 400 built structures of which about 300 survived as of 2023. At least five have been lost to forces of nature: the waterfront house for W. L. Fuller in Pass Christian, Mississippi, destroyed by Hurricane Camille in August 1969; the Louis Sullivan Bungalow of Ocean Springs, Mississippi, destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005; and the Arinobu Fukuhara House (1918) in Hakone, Japan, destroyed in the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake. In January 2006, the Wilbur Wynant House in Gary, Indiana was destroyed by fire. In 2018 the Arch Oboler complex in Malibu, California was gutted in the Woolsey Fire.
Many other notable Wright buildings were intentionally demolished: Midway Gardens (built 1913, demolished 1929), the Larkin Administration Building (built 1903, demolished 1950), the Francis Apartments and Francisco Terrace Apartments (Chicago, built 1895, demolished 1971 and 1974, respectively), the Geneva Inn (Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, built 1911, demolished 1970), and the Banff National Park Pavilion (built 1914, demolished 1934). The Imperial Hotel (built 1923) survived the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, but was demolished in 1968 due to urban developmental pressures. The Hoffman Auto Showroom in New York City (built 1954) was demolished in 2013.
Unbuilt and posthumously built
Several of Wright's projects were either built after his death, or remain unbuilt. These include:
Crystal Heights, a large mixed-use development in Washington, D.C., 1940 (unbuilt)
The Illinois, mile-high tower in Chicago, 1956 (unbuilt)
Marin County Civic Center, a municipal complex in San Rafael, California; groundbreaking occurred just one year after Wright's death
Monona Terrace, convention center in Madison, Wisconsin; designed 1938–1959, built in 1997
Clubhouse at the Nakoma Golf Resort, Plumas County, California; designed in 1923, opened in 2000
Passive Solar Hemi-Cycle Home in Hawaii; designed in 1954, built in 1995
Recognition
Later in his life (and after his death in 1959), Wright was accorded significant honorary recognition for his lifetime achievements. He received a Gold Medal award from The Royal Institute of British Architects in 1941. The American Institute of Architects awarded him the AIA Gold Medal in 1949. That medal was a symbolic "burying the hatchet" between Wright and the AIA. In a radio interview, he commented, "Well, the AIA I never joined, and they know why. When they gave me the gold medal in Houston, I told them frankly why. Feeling that the architecture profession is all that's the matter with architecture, why should I join them?" He was awarded the Franklin Institute's Frank P. Brown Medal in 1953. He received honorary degrees from several universities (including his alma mater, the University of Wisconsin), and several nations named him as an honorary board member to their national academies of art and/or architecture. In 2000, Fallingwater was named "The Building of the 20th century" in an unscientific "Top-Ten" poll taken by members attending the AIA annual convention in Philadelphia. On that list, Wright was listed along with many of the USA's other greatest architects including Eero Saarinen, I.M. Pei, Louis Kahn, Philip Johnson, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; he was the only architect who had more than one building on the list. The other three buildings were the Guggenheim Museum, the Frederick C. Robie House, and the Johnson Wax Building.
In 1992, the Madison Opera in Madison, Wisconsin, commissioned and premiered the opera Shining Brow, by composer Daron Hagen and librettist Paul Muldoon based on events early in Wright's life. The work has since received numerous revivals, including a June 2013 revival at Fallingwater, in Bull Run, Pennsylvania, by Opera Theater of Pittsburgh. In 2000, Work Song: Three Views of Frank Lloyd Wright, a play based on the relationship between the personal and working aspects of Wright's life, debuted at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater.
In 1966, the United States Postal Service honored Wright with a Prominent Americans series 2¢ postage stamp.
"So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright" is a song written by Paul Simon. Art Garfunkel has stated that the origin of the song came from his request that Simon write a song about the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Simon himself stated that he knew nothing about Wright, but proceeded to write the song anyway.
In 1957, Arizona made plans to construct a new capitol building. Believing that the submitted plans for the new capitol were tombs to the past, Frank Lloyd Wright offered Oasis as an alternative to the people of Arizona. In 2004, one of the spires included in his design was erected in Scottsdale.
The city of Scottsdale, Arizona renamed a portion of Bell Road, a major east–west thoroughfare in the Phoenix metropolitan area, in honor of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Eight of Wright's buildings – Fallingwater, the Guggenheim Museum, the Hollyhock House, the Jacobs House, the Robie House, Taliesin, Taliesin West, and the Unity Temple – were inscribed on the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites under the title The 20th-century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright in July 2019. UNESCO stated that these buildings were "innovative solutions to the needs for housing, worship, work or leisure" and "had a strong impact on the development of modern architecture in Europe".
Family
Frank Lloyd Wright was married three times, fathering four sons and three daughters. He also adopted Svetlana Milanoff, the daughter of his third wife, Olgivanna Lloyd Wright.
His wives/partners were:
Catherine "Kitty" (Tobin) Wright (1871–1959); social worker, socialite (married in June 1889; divorced November 1922)
Martha Bouton "Mamah" Borthwick (June 19, 1869 – August 15, 1914) was an American translator who had a romantic relationship with architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1909–1914), which ended when she was murdered after a male servant set fire to the living quarters of Taliesin and murdered seven people with an axe as they fled the burning structure.
Maude "Miriam" (Noel) Wright (1869–1930), artist (married in November 1923; divorced August 1927)
Olga Ivanovna "Olgivanna" (Lazovich Milanoff) Lloyd Wright (1897–1985), dancer and writer (married in August 1928)
His children with Catherine were:
Frank Lloyd Wright Jr., known as Lloyd Wright (1890–1978), became a notable architect in Los Angeles. Lloyd's son, Eric Lloyd Wright (1929–2023), was an architect in Malibu, California, specializing in residences, but also designed civic and commercial buildings.
John Lloyd Wright (1892–1972), invented Lincoln Logs in 1918, and practiced architecture extensively in the San Diego area. John's daughter, Elizabeth Wright Ingraham (1922–2013), was an architect in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She was the mother of Christine, an interior designer in Connecticut, and Catherine, an architecture professor at the Pratt Institute.
Catherine Wright Baxter (1894–1979) was a homemaker and the mother of Oscar-winning actress Anne Baxter. Anne Baxter is the mother of Melissa Galt, an interior designer in Scottsdale, Arizona.
David Samuel Wright (1895–1997) was a building-products representative for whom Wright designed the David & Gladys Wright House, which was rescued from demolition and given to the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture.
Frances Wright Caroe (1898–1959) was an arts administrator.
Robert Llewellyn Wright (1903–1986) was an attorney for whom Wright designed a house in Bethesda, Maryland.
His children with Olgivanna were:
Svetlana Peters (1917–1946, adopted daughter of Olgivanna) was a musician who died in an automobile accident with her son Daniel. After Svetlana's death her other son, Brandoch Peters (1942– ), was raised by Frank and Olgivanna. Svetlana's widower, William Wesley Peters, was later briefly married to Svetlana Alliluyeva, the youngest child and only daughter of Joseph Stalin. William Wesley Peters served as chairman of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation from 1985 to 1991.
Iovanna Lloyd Wright (1925–2015) was an artist and musician.
Selected works
Books
Ausgeführte Bauten und Entwürfe von Frank Lloyd Wright (Wasmuth Portfolio) (1910)
An Organic Architecture: The Architecture of Democracy (1939)
In the Cause of Architecture: Essays by Frank Lloyd Wright for Architectural Record 1908–1952 (1987)
Visions of Wright: Photographs by Farrell Grehan, Introduction by Terence Riley ISBN 0-8212-2470-0 (1997)
Buildings
Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio, Oak Park, Illinois, 1889–1909
Winslow House, River Forest, Illinois, 1894
Frank Thomas House, Oak Park, Illinois, 1901
Ward Winfield Willits Residence, and Gardener's Cottage and Stables, Highland Park, Illinois, 1901
Dana–Thomas House, Springfield, Illinois, 1902
Larkin Administration Building, Buffalo, New York, 1903 (demolished, 1950)
Darwin D. Martin House, Buffalo, New York, 1903–1905
Unity Temple, Oak Park, Illinois, 1904
Dr. G.C. Stockman House, Mason City, Iowa, 1908
Edward E. Boynton House, Rochester, New York, 1908
Frederick C. Robie Residence, Chicago, Illinois, 1909
Park Inn Hotel, the last standing Wright designed hotel, Mason City, Iowa, 1910
Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin, 1911 & 1925
Midway Gardens, Chicago, Illinois, 1913 (demolished, 1929)
Hollyhock House (Aline Barnsdall Residence), Los Angeles, 1919–1921
Ennis House, Los Angeles, 1923
Imperial Hotel, Tokyo, Japan, 1923 (demolished, 1968; entrance hall reconstructed at Meiji Mura near Nagoya, Japan, 1976)
Westhope (Richard Lloyd Jones Residence, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1929
Malcolm Willey House 1934, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Fallingwater (Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr. Residence), Mill Run, Pennsylvania, 1935–1937
Johnson Wax Headquarters, Racine, Wisconsin, 1936
First Jacobs House, Madison, Wisconsin, 1936–1937
Usonian homes, various locations, 1930s–1950s
Taliesin West, Scottsdale, Arizona, 1937
Wingspread, Herbert F. Johnson Residence in Wind Point, Wisconsin, 1937
Pope–Leighey House, Alexandria, Virginia, 1941
Child of the Sun, Florida Southern College, Lakeland, Florida, 1941–1958, site of the largest collection of the architect's work
First Unitarian Society of Madison, Shorewood Hills, Wisconsin, 1947
V. C. Morris Gift Shop, San Francisco, 1948
Kenneth and Phyllis Laurent House, Rockford, Illinois, only home Wright designed to be handicapped accessible, 1951
Price Tower, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, 1952–1956
Beth Sholom Synagogue, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, 1954
Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, 1956–1961
Kentuck Knob, Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania, 1956
Marshall Erdman Prefab Houses, various locations, 1956–1960
Marin County Civic Center, San Rafael, California, 1957–1966
R. W. Lindholm Service Station, Cloquet, Minnesota, 1958
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, 1956–1959
Gammage Memorial Auditorium, Tempe, Arizona, 1959–1964
See also
Richard Bock
Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy
Frank Lloyd Wright-Prairie School of Architecture Historic District
George Mann Niedecken
List of Frank Lloyd Wright works
List of Frank Lloyd Wright works by location
Jaroslav Joseph Polivka
Roman brick
The 20th-century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright (UNESCO World Heritage site)
Category:Frank Lloyd Wright buildings
References
Further reading
Wright's philosophy
Hoffmann, Donald. Understanding Frank Lloyd Wright's Architecture. New York: Dover Publications, 1995. ISBN 0-486-28364-X
Kienitz, John Fabian. "Fifty-two years of Frank Lloyd Wright's progressivism, 1893–1945". Wisconsin Magazine of History, vol. 29, no. 1 (September 1945):61–71.
Laseau, Paul and Tice, James. Frank Lloyd Wright: Between Principle and Form, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1992. ISBN 0-442-23478-3
McCarter, Robert (ed.). Frank Lloyd Wright: A Primer on Architectural Principles. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1991. ISBN 1-878271-26-1
Meehan, Patrick, ed. Truth Against the World: Frank Lloyd Wright Speaks for an Organic Architecture. New York: Wiley, 1987. ISBN 0-471-84509-4
Rosenbaum, Alvin. Usonia : Frank Lloyd Wright's Design for America. Washington, DC: Preservation Press, 1993. ISBN 0-89133-201-4
Sergeant, John. Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian Houses: The Case for Organic Architecture. New York: Watson-Guptill, 1984. ISBN 0-8230-7178-2
Wright, Frank Lloyd (1947). Heywood, Robert B. (ed.). The Works of the Mind: The Architect. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. OCLC 752682744.
Wright, Frank Lloyd. "In the Cause of Architecture", Architectural Record, March 1908. Reprinted in Frank Lloyd Wright: Collected Writings, vol. 1: 1894–1930. New York: Rizzoli, 1992. ISBN 0-8478-1546-3
Wright, Frank Lloyd. The Natural House. New York: Horizon Press, 1954.
Biographies
Alofsin, Anthony (1993). Frank Lloyd Wright: the Lost Years, 1910–1922: A Study of Influence. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226013664.
Alofsin, Anthony (2019). Wright and New York: The Making of America's Architect. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-23885-3.
Farr, Finis (1961). Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography. New York: Scribner.
Friedland, Roger; Zellman, Harold (2006). The Fellowship: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship. New York: Regan Books. ISBN 0-06-039388-2.
Gill, Brendan (1987). Many Masks: A Life of Frank Lloyd Wright. New York: Putnam. ISBN 0-399-13232-5.
Hoag, Edwin; Hoag, Joy (1977). Masters of Modern Architecture: Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and Walter Gropius. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merill Company. ISBN 0-672-52365-5.
Huxtable, Ada Louise (2004). Frank Lloyd Wright. New York: Lipper/Viking. ISBN 0-670-03342-1.
Nisbet, Earl (2006). Taliesin Reflections: My Years Before, During, and After Living with Frank Lloyd Wright. Petaluma, CA: Meridian Press. ISBN 0-9778951-0-6.
Russell, Virginia L. (2001). "You Dear Old Prima Donna: The Letters of Frank Lloyd Wright and Jens Jensen". Landscape Journal. 20 (2): 141–155.
Seckel, Harry (1938). "Frank Lloyd Wright". The North American Review. 246 (1): 48–64.
Secrest, Meryle (1992). Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0-394-56436-7.
Treiber, Daniel (2008). Frank Lloyd Wright (Second ed.). Basel: Birkhäuser. ISBN 978-3-7643-8697-9.
Twombly, Robert C. (1979). Frank Lloyd Wright: His Life and Architecture. New York: Wiley. ISBN 0-471-03400-2.
Wright, Frank Lloyd (1943). Frank Lloyd Wright: An Autobiography. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce.
Wright, Iovanna Lloyd (1962). Architecture: Man in Possession of His Earth. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Wright, John Lloyd. My Father Who Is On Earth. New York: G.P. Putnam's sons, 1946. ISBN 0-8093-1749-4
The Life of Frank Lloyd Wright – Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation
Frank Lloyd Wright – American Architect
Surveys of Wright's work
Clearly, Richard; Levine, Neil; Marefat, Mina; Pfeiffer, Bruce Brooks; Siry, Joseph M.; Stipe, Margo (2009). Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward. New York: Skira Rizzoli. ISBN 978-0-8478-3263-7.
Betsky, Aaron; Shapiro, Gideon Fink; Pielage, Andrew (2021). 50 Lessons to Learn from Frank Lloyd Wright. New York: Rizzoli. ISBN 978-0-8478-6536-9.
Aguar, Charles; Aguar, Berdeana (2002). Wrightscapes: Frank Lloyd Wright's Landscape Designs. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-140953-X.
Blake, Peter (1964). Frank Lloyd Wright: Architecture and Space. Baltimore: Penguin Books.
Fell, Derek (2009). The Gardens of Frank Lloyd Wright. London: Frances Lincoln. ISBN 978-0-7112-2967-9.
Heinz, Thomas A. Frank Lloyd Wright Field Guide. Chichester, West Sussex: Academy Editions, 1999. ISBN 0-8101-2244-8
Hildebrand, Grant. The Wright Space: Pattern and Meaning in Frank Lloyd Wright's Houses. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991. ISBN 0-295-97005-7
Larkin, David and Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer. Frank Lloyd Wright: The Masterworks. New York: Rizzoli, 1993. ISBN 0-8478-1715-6
Levine, Neil. The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-691-03371-4
Lind, Carla. Frank Lloyd Wright's Glass Designs. San Francisco: Pomegranate Artbooks, 1995. ISBN 0-87654-468-5
McCarter, Robert. Frank Lloyd Wright. London: Phaidon Press, 1997. ISBN 0-7148-3148-4
Pfeiffer, Bruce Brooks. Frank Lloyd Wright, 1867–1959: Building for Democracy. Los Angeles: Taschen, 2004. ISBN 3-8228-2757-6
Pfeiffer, Bruce Brooks and Peter Gössel (eds.). Frank Lloyd Wright: The Complete Works. Los Angeles: Taschen, 2009. ISBN 978-3-8228-5770-0
Riley, Terence and Peter Reed (eds.). Frank Lloyd Wright: Architect. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1994. ISBN 0-87070-642-X
Smith, Kathryn. Frank Lloyd Wright: America's Master Architect. New York: Abbeville Press, 1998. ISBN 0-7892-0287-5
Storrer, William Allin. The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright: A Complete Catalog. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. ISBN 0-226-77620-4
Storrer, William Allin. The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. ISBN 0-226-77621-2
Selected books about specific Wright projects
Lind, Carla. Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian Houses. San Francisco: Promegranate Artbooks, 1994. ISBN 1-56640-998-5
Toker, Franklin. Fallingwater Rising: Frank Lloyd Wright, E. J. Kaufmann, and America's Most Extraordinary House. New York: Alford A. Knopf, 2003. ISBN 1-4000-4026-4
Whiting, Henry, II. At Nature's Edge: Frank Lloyd Wright's Artist Studio. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-87480-877-3
The women in his life
Boyle, T. Coraghessan (2009). The women: a novel. New York: Viking. ISBN 978-0-670-02041-6. OCLC 233548516.
External links
Frank Lloyd Wright at archINFORM
Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation official website
Guide to the Photographs of Frank Lloyd Wright 1950 May 16
Taliesin Preservation, stewards of Wright's home Taliesin
The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives Archived December 21, 2018, at the Wayback Machine at Columbia University
Frank Lloyd Wright documents at the Wisconsin Historical Society
Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy
Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust – FLW Home and Studio, Robie House
Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture
Frank Lloyd Wright Wisconsin Heritage Tourism Program
Frank Lloyd Wright – PBS documentary by Ken Burns and resources
Frank Lloyd Wright. Designs for an American Landscape 1922–1932
Frank Lloyd Wright Buildings Recorded by the Historic American Buildings Survey
Frank Lloyd Wright – Famous Interior Designers Archived April 17, 2019, at the Wayback Machine
Complete list of Wright buildings by location Archived April 30, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
Sullivan, Wright, Prairie School, & Organic Architecture
Audio interview with Martin Filler on Frank Lloyd Wright from The New York Review of Books
Frank Lloyd Wright and Quebec
Frank Lloyd Wright Archived January 19, 2013, at the Wayback Machine interviewed by Mike Wallace on The Mike Wallace Interview recorded September 1 & 28, 1957
Interactive Map of Frank Lloyd Wright Buildings, created in the Harvard WorldMap Platform
Map of the Frank Lloyd Wright works – Wikiartmap, the art map of the public space Archived November 4, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
Fay Jones and Frank Lloyd Wright: Organic Architecture Comes to Arkansas digital exhibit, University of Arkansas Libraries
Frank Lloyd Wright's Personal Manuscripts and Letters
Passive Solar Hemi-Cycle Home in Hawaii, designed in 1954, built in 1995; only Wright home in Hawaii. Interactive Tour.
Taylor A. Woolley Papers at University of Utah Digital Library, Marriott Library Special Collections
Wright's Tokaido – FLW's annotated Hiroshige album – documentary at hiroshige.org.uk |
Gammage_Memorial_Auditorium | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gammage_Memorial_Auditorium | [
600
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gammage_Memorial_Auditorium"
] | ASU Gammage (formerly known as Grady Gammage Memorial Auditorium) is a multipurpose performing arts center at 1200 South Forest Avenue at East Apache Boulevard in Tempe, Arizona, within the main campus of Arizona State University (ASU). The auditorium, which bears the name of former ASU President Grady Gammage, is considered to be one of the last public commissions of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. It was built from 1962 to 1964.
ASU Gammage stands as one of the largest exhibitors of performing arts among university venues in the world, featuring a wide range of genres and events.
ASU Gammage was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.
History
The process that led to construction of the auditorium began in 1957 when incumbent university President Grady Gammage desired a unique facility for the ASU campus. In 1956, a collapsed roof rendered the school’s combination auditorium/gymnasium unusable. Gammage recruited his friend Frank Lloyd Wright to design the new building. He would, with various budget related alterations, base its design on a circular opera house that he had conceptualized for the city of Baghdad sometime prior upon the invitation of Iraqi King Faisal II. Plans for that opera house were abandoned after Faisal’s assassination in the 14 July Revolution. Wright is also said to be responsible for siting the auditorium, selecting an athletic field at 1200 South Forest Avenue which had formerly held on-campus G.I. housing units.
Wright and Gammage both died in 1959, leaving Wright's protégé William Wesley Peters to undertake completion of the auditorium. Spearheaded by the Robert E. McKee Company, construction of the facility commenced in 1962 and was completed twenty-five months later, officially opening on September 18, 1964, in time to host The Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy.
The auditorium was used for the funeral of Arizona Senator and 1964 Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater on June 3, 1998.
On October 13, 2004, the auditorium was the site of the third and closing debate between George W. Bush and John Kerry in the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election.
Structure
The structure measures 300 feet (91 m) long by 250 feet (76 m) wide by 80 feet (24 m) high. Fifty concrete columns support the round roof with its pattern of interlocking circles. Twin "flying buttress" pedestrian ramps extending 200 feet (61 m) from the north and east sides of the structure connect the building to the parking lot. The auditorium seats 3,017 people on its main floor, grand tier and balcony. The stage can be adapted for opera, theatricals, musicals, concerts, and lectures.
Performance and other spaces
Auditorium
The auditorium has a maximum seating capacity of 3,017. It is wheelchair accessible and has an infrared system for 100 hearing-impaired people (in addition to signers).
Stage
Type: proscenium
Playing space dimensions: 64'x33' or 64'x40'
Proscenium opening: 64'x30'
Height grid/ceiling: 78'
Floor type: Canadian hard rock maple
Rigging system type: 58 double purchase, 40 hydraulic (98 lines total)
Backstage
Loading dock
Door dimensions: 10'x11'6
Dressing rooms: 9
Maximum capacity: 54
Deck
Permanent installations: traps in stage, orchestra shell, hydraulic orchestra pit, electricity in pit, music stands, pianos
Pit
Dimensions: 76'x9'
Number of stands: 85
Chairs for pit: 90
Electrics/Sound
Building electrics current: 9 panels-3-600/3-200/2-100/1-100 = 2700 total
Lighting board: computer memory
Lighting equipment: 32-8x13, 22-10x12, 55-6x9, 30 8" Fresnels, 12 Par Cans, 12 Mini Strips
See also
List of Frank Lloyd Wright works
Broadway Across America
References
Notes
Bibliography
Storrer, William Allin. The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion. University of Chicago Press, 2006, ISBN 0-226-77621-2 (S.432)
External links
ASU Gammage
Page with photos of the Gammage Auditorium
Gammage Auditorium on waymarking.com
Gammage Auditorium on peterbeers.net
Lion King at ASU Gammage
Photos on Arcaid |
Marion_Couthouy_Smith | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Couthouy_Smith | [
601
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Couthouy_Smith"
] | Marion Couthouy Smith (1853–1931) was a poet from the United States. She published three books of poetry between 1906 and 1918 and individual poems through the Harper's Magazine, Century Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, and The New England Magazine.
Biography
Marion Couthouy Smith was born in 1853 the daughter of Henry Pratt of Philadelphia (father) and Maria Couthouy Williams. She graduated 1871 from Miss A. M. Anable's school in Philadelphia.
Books
Chorister No. 13, a poem, cover by Lee Baker, James Pott & Company, Publishers, c1891.
A Working Woman published in serial in The Living Church
Dr. Marks, Socialist, 1897 Online text
The Electric Spirit and Other Poems, 1906 Online text
The Road of Life and Other Poems, 1909 Online text
The Final Star, poems, 1918 Online text
References
External links
Pages with poems from Harpers Magazine
Her poem, The City
Her poem, Chicago, with biography for Chicago Worlds Fair |
Harper%27s_Magazine | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper%27s_Magazine | [
601
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper%27s_Magazine"
] | Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. Launched in New York City in June 1850, it is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the United States. Harper's Magazine has won 22 National Magazine Awards.
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the magazine published works of prominent authors and political figures, including Herman Melville, Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill. Willie Morris's resignation as editor in 1971 was considered a major event, and many other employees of the magazine resigned with him. The magazine has developed into the 21st century, adding several blogs.
History
19th century
Harper's Magazine began as Harper's New Monthly Magazine in New York City in June 1850, by publisher Harper & Brothers. The company also founded the magazines Harper's Weekly and Harper's Bazaar, and grew to become HarperCollins. The first press run of Harper's Magazine included 7,500 copies and sold out almost immediately. Six months later, the magazine's circulation had grown to 50,000.
The early issues reprinted material pirated from English authors such as Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, and the Brontë sisters. The magazine soon was publishing the work of American artists and writers, and in time commentary by the likes of Winston Churchill and Woodrow Wilson. Portions of Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick were first published in the October 1851 issue of Harper's under the title, "The Town-Ho's Story", named after Chapter 54 of Moby-Dick.
20th century
In 1962, Harper & Brothers merged with Row, Peterson & Company, becoming Harper & Row (now HarperCollins). In 1965, the magazine was separately incorporated, and became a division of the Minneapolis Star and Tribune Company, owned by the Cowles Media Company.
In the 1970s, Harper's Magazine published Seymour Hersh's reporting of the My Lai Massacre by United States forces in Vietnam. In 1971, editor Willie Morris resigned under pressure from owner John Cowles Jr., prompting resignations from many of the magazine's star contributors and staffers, including Norman Mailer, David Halberstam, Robert Kotlowitz, Marshall Frady, and Larry L. King:
Morris's departure jolted the literary world. Mailer, William Styron, Gay Talese, Bill Moyers, and Tom Wicker declared that they would boycott Harper's as long as the Cowles family owned it, and the four staff writers hired by Morris—Frady among them—resigned in solidarity with him.
Robert Shnayerson, a senior editor at Time magazine, was hired to replace Morris as Harper's ninth editor, serving in that position from 1971 until 1976.
Lewis H. Lapham served as managing editor from 1976 until 1981, when the job was taken over by Michael Kinsley. Lapham returned to the position again from 1983 until 2006. On June 17, 1980, the Star Tribune announced it would cease publishing Harper's Magazine after the August 1980 issue, but on July 9, 1980, John R. MacArthur (who goes by the name Rick) and his father, Roderick, obtained pledges from the directorial boards of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Atlantic Richfield Company, and CEO Robert Orville Anderson to amass the $1.5 million needed to establish the Harper's Magazine Foundation. It now publishes the magazine.
In 1984, Lapham and MacArthur, now publisher and president of the foundation, respectively, along with new executive editor Michael Pollan, redesigned Harper's and introduced the "Harper's Index" with statistics arranged for, "Readings", and the "Annotation" departments to complement its fiction, essays, reportage, and reviews.
21st century
Under the Lapham and MacArthur's leadership, Harper's Magazine continued publishing literary fiction by John Updike, George Saunders, and others. Politically, Harper's has been a vocal critic of U.S. domestic and foreign policies. Editor Lapham's monthly "Notebook" columns have lambasted the Clinton and the George W. Bush administrations. Beginning in 2003, the magazine concentrated on reportage the Iraq War, including long articles on the battle for Fallujah, and the cronyism of the American reconstruction of Iraq. Other reporting has covered abortion issues, cloning, and global warming.
In 2007, Harper's added the No Comment blog by attorney Scott Horton about legal controversies, Central Asian politics, and German studies. In April 2006, Harper's began publishing the Washington Babylon blog on its website, written by Washington, D.C. editor Ken Silverstein about American politics; and in 2008, Harper's added the Sentences blog by contributing editor Wyatt Mason, about literature and belles lettres. Since that time, these two blogs have ceased publication. Another website feature, featuring a rotating set of authors, is the "Weekly Review", a three-paragraph distillation of the week's political, scientific, and bizarre news. Like "Harper's Index" and "Findings" in the print edition of the magazine, "Weekly Review" items are typically arranged for ironic contrast.
As of the December 2019 issue, Julian Lucas writes the print edition's "New Books" column.
Controversies
Editor Lewis H. Lapham was criticized for his reportage of the 2004 Republican National Convention, which had yet to occur, in his essay "Tentacles of Rage: The Republican Propaganda Mill, a Brief History", published in the September 2004 issue, which implied that he had attended the convention. He apologized in a note. Lapham left two years later, after 28 years as Harper's editor-in-chief, and launched Lapham's Quarterly.
The August 2004 issue contained a photo essay by noted photojournalist Peter Turnley, who was hired to do a series of photo essays for the magazine. The eight-page spread in August 2004 showed images of death, grieving, and funerals from both sides of the war in Afghanistan. On the U.S. side, Turnley visited the funeral of an Oklahoma National Guard member, Spc. Kyle Brinlee, 21, who was killed when his vehicle ran over an improvised explosive device (IED) in Afghanistan. During his funeral, Turnley photographed the open casket as it lay in the back of the high school auditorium where the funeral was held to accommodate 1,200 mourners, and the photo was used in the photo essay. Brinlee's family subsequently sued the magazine in federal court. The case ended in 2007 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the unauthorized publication was in "poor taste" but upheld the ruling of the Tenth Circuit that the magazine had not violated the privacy rights of the family, since the family had invited the press and, according the court, "opened up the funeral scene to the public eye".
The March 2006 issue included an article by Celia Farber, "Out of Control: AIDS and the Corruption of Medical Science", presenting Peter Duesberg's theory that HIV does not cause AIDS. It was strongly criticized by AIDS activists, scientists and physicians, the Columbia Journalism Review, and others as inaccurate and promoting a scientifically discredited theory. The Treatment Action Campaign, a South African organization working for greater popular access to HIV treatments, posted a response by eight researchers documenting more than 50 errors in the article.
In 2006, Lapham was succeeded as Harper's editor by Roger Hodge. Since that time, the magazine has had a number of shorter-termed editors in chief, several of whom were fired amid various controversies. On January 25, 2010, the firing of the magazine's editor, Roger Hodge, by publisher John R. MacArthur was met with criticism among the magazine's subscribers and staff. MacArthur initially claimed Hodge was stepping down for "personal reasons", but later disclosed that he fired Hodge.
Ellen Rosenbush served as editor from 2010 to 2015. She returned in January 2016 when MacArthur fired Christopher Cox, who had been named editor only three months prior in October 2015.
James Marcus assumed the post of editor in 2016. In March 2018, an essay by Katie Roiphe on the #MeToo movement excited controversy both online and inside Harper's. Marcus had complained about the piece, suggesting the critique of #MeToo was inappropriate in light of Harper's "longtime reputation as a gentleman's smoking club"; he attributed this disagreement as a primary cause of his firing in 2018. In April 2018, Ellen Rosenbush assumed the title of editorial director. In October 2019, the magazine announced that novelist and essayist Christopher Beha would be taking over as editor, with Rosenbush remaining as editor-at-large.
In July 2020, Harper's published an open letter called "A Letter on Justice and Open Debate" criticizing "illiberalism" and promoting a tolerance of different viewpoints. The letter received a mixed response on Twitter with some remarking that the prominent signatories had "bigger platforms and more resources than most other humans" and were unlikely to face repercussions for anything they said, and others taking umbrage at particular signatories such as J. K. Rowling, who faced recent criticism for her comments on transgender issues.
Notable contributors
Gallery
Posters by Edward Penfield
Notes
References
Further reading
Gabler-Hover, Janet; Robert Sattelmeyer, eds. (2006). "Book and Periodical Illustration in America, 1820–1870". American History Through Literature, 1820–1870. Vol. 1. Detroit: Thomson/Gale. pp. 144–48. ISBN 9780684314600. OCLC 1102155210.
Lilly, Thomas (2005). "The National Archive: Harper's New Monthly Magazine and the Civic Responsibilities of a Commercial Literary Periodical, 1850–1853". American Periodicals. Vol. 15, no. 2. pp. 142–162. JSTOR 20771182.
External links
Official website
Official archive (subscription required)
Guide to Harper's Magazine on the Internet (from the Online Books Page)
Harper's Magazine at the Internet Archive
Harper's New Monthly Magazine digital archive at Hathi Trust
"1842 illustrations from Harper's Magazine". NYPL Digital Gallery. |
The_Century_Magazine | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_Magazine | [
601
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_Magazine"
] | The Century Magazine was an illustrated monthly magazine first published in the United States in 1881 by The Century Company of New York City, which had been bought in that year by Roswell Smith and renamed by him after the Century Association. It was the successor of Scribner's Monthly Magazine. It was merged into The Forum in 1930.
History
The initial editor was to have been Scribner's editor and co-owner Josiah G. Holland, but he died prior to the appearance of the first issue. He was succeeded by Richard Watson Gilder, the managing editor of Scribner's, who would go on to helm The Century for 28 years. Gilder largely continued the mixture of literature, history, current events, and high-quality illustrations that Holland had used at Scribner's.
The magazine was very successful during the 19th century, most notably for a series of articles about the American Civil War which ran for three years during the 1880s. It included reminiscences of 230 participants from all ranks of the service on both sides of the conflict. According to an author writing in The New York Times, the publication of The Century "made New-York, instead of London, the centre of the illustrated periodicals published in the English language…" The magazine was also a notable publisher of fiction, presenting excerpts of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1884 and 1885 and Henry James' The Bostonians.
Upon Gilder's death in 1909, Robert Underwood Johnson replaced him as editor. According to Arthur John, the magazine's "later history was marked by sudden shifts in content, format, and editorial direction." Glenn Frank was editor from 1921 to 1925, a period during which The Century was known for its editorials on current events and began to cut back on illustrations, which were eliminated after Frank left the magazine. In 1929, due to competition from cheaper magazines and newspapers, The Century became a quarterly, and in 1930 it was merged with The Forum. At the time it folded, The Century had 20,000 subscribers, less than a tenth of its peak circulation of the late nineteenth century. Scribner's Monthly Magazine, the periodical that became The Century in 1881, should not be confused with the Scribner's Magazine that began publication in 1887.
The noted critic and editor Frank Crowninshield briefly served as the magazine's art editor.
Philosophy and political positions
The tone and content of The Century changed over its long history. It began as an Evangelical Christian publication, but over time began to speak to a more general educated audience as it developed into the largest periodical in the country.
Religion
Novelist and poet Josiah G. Holland was one of the three original founders of Scribner's Monthly and wrote regular editorials for the periodical, setting the tone for the magazine's content. As Holland was deeply religious, Scribner's to a great extent reflected the views and concerns of the Evangelical Christian community. While hostile towards sectarianism within Protestantism, Scribner's initially took a strong stand against both Catholicism and those who doubted the divinity of Christ. In the first issue, under the heading "Papa and the Dogma", Holland claimed that it was freedom that made the Protestant nations of Europe strong while their Catholic neighbors were, as a result of their religion, in a state of decay. Less than one year later, the magazine attacked the skepticism of Henry David Thoreau. Mormon polygamy was also a frequent target. One contributor traveled to Utah to observe the Mormon settlement there and argued that the new sect would have to end its practice of plural marriage if it were to survive and American control could be exercised over the western territories.
At the same time, Scribner's Monthly, being non-dogmatic in its Protestantism, expressed little hostility towards modern science. For example, a three-part series discussed how believing Christians should meet the intellectual challenges of religious skepticism, and in 1874 two writers engaged one another in a debate over whether Christians should attempt to prove the divinity of Christ through science.
By the end of the 1870s, however, Scribner's had departed from its original Evangelical orientation. An April 1879 editorial declared all seekers of truth, whether believing Christians or not, to be allies, regarding this new view as simply an application of the Golden Rule. Catholics were said to have just as much to teach Protestants as Protestants had to teach Catholics. After the magazine became The Century in 1881, it continued to hold onto this secular outlook under Gilder. The break with the past was reflected in the magazine's changing treatment of the question of evolution. In 1875, Scribner's argued that there was insufficient evidence to conclude that Darwinism was true and attributed its wide acceptance to a contemporary bias towards novel ideas, even though the author did not on principle reject the idea that proof could be forthcoming. Upon the death of Charles Darwin in 1883, however, The Century published a laudatory tribute to the scientist written by Alfred Wallace. The magazine remained secular into its later days, in 1923 criticizing the "poisonous dogmatism" of the thought of William Jennings Bryan and what the magazine saw as his religious fundamentalism. Over the years, The Century published works by a large number of writers who were agnostics or atheists, including famous skeptic Bertrand Russell.
American nationalism
From the very beginning of his tenure as editor in 1881 to his death in 1909, The Century reflected the ideals of Gilder. He sought to create and help shape a "refined" American high culture, often contributing his own poetry to that end Everything from its historical memoirs to political commentary reflected the influence of nineteenth century romanticism.
An unsigned May 1885 editorial expressed pride over the belief of the staff that the periodical had achieved wide circulation while remaining a quality product. This reflected the view that as a general matter there was usually a tradeoff between quality and quantity. The Century was generally seen as a conservative magazine and hoped to promote reconciliation between the North and South after the trauma of the Civil War. According to J. Arthur Bond, the magazine was instrumental in creating and shaping post-war American nationalism. In the words of one contemporary, Gilder's "spirited and tireless endeavor [ ] was to give the organic life of the American people purity of character and nobility of expression." During his tenure as editor, he promoted patriotism and the glorification of American historical figures. Seeing itself as having an "elevating" mission, its "mixture of nationalism and cultural advocacy informed even the most 'ordinary' of the magazine's articles." Often touching on many of these themes, Theodore Roosevelt wrote as a regular contributor to the magazine over three decades, a span which included one article he published while serving as president. Gilder developed relationships with several contemporary prominent figures, including a close friendship with Grover Cleveland which he wrote about upon the death of the former president. It has been argued that the decline in the popularity of the magazine from the 1890s on was connected to the general triumph of more egalitarian ideologies and the collapse of nineteenth century romanticism and idealism.
Concerns over national unity and the preservation of traditional American culture were reflected in the magazine's writings on immigration. An 1884 article discussed the composition and geographical distribution of immigrant populations, and expressed optimism over the prospect of the newer Americans assimilating into the larger population. At the same time, the article warned that measures should be taken against potential threats to national unity through fractionalization. As immigration increased over the next few decades, however, The Century became more alarmed over its effects on the future of the country, citing concerns over, among other matters, crime, illiteracy, and the overpopulation of cities. In 1904, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge took to the pages of the magazine to argue for the importance of keeping out "undesirable" immigrants. Twenty years later, editor Glenn Frank attacked the Ku Klux Klan and other nativists, but nonetheless wrote that "[t]he hour for very severe restrictions on immigration has come…" The same author returned to some of the same themes when he again attacked the KKK several months later for both its religious and racial doctrines.
Reconstruction and civil rights
In the immediate post-Reconstruction era, contributors to The Century debated what should be done about the postwar South and the newly free slaves, generally advocating for amicable relations between the regions and national unity. In 1873 and 1874, Scribner's ran a number of articles under the title "The Great South," a series which lasted fourteen issues. Based on Edward King's travels, the author's accounts generally portrayed the region in a sympathetic light and the series was warmly received by Southerners.
In 1876, Scribner's published a eulogy to Robert E. Lee, along with an editorial postscript praising the spirit of "sectional friendliness" of the piece.
On the question of the freedmen, a wide variety of contemporary views were represented. Writing for Scribner's in 1874, one author argued that blacks were unfit to be schooled with white children. On the other hand, an 1885 article by George W. Cable despaired over what he saw as the failure to protect the rights of southern blacks after the Civil War and argued that this was the result of the former confederate states evading federal law. Henry W. Grady, responding a few months later, disputed the earlier author's characterization of the situation, claiming that while legal rights had been granted, southern whites would never accept social integration between the races. Cable's criticisms of the ex-Confederacy also drew a rebuke by Robert Lewis Dabney.
Even when sympathetic to the cause of the newly freed slaves, writers who argued for helping them usually did so on paternalistic grounds. Bishop T. U. Dudley, for example, expressed doubt that much could be done to elevate the status of American blacks, but argued that Christian principles required helping them to the greatest extent possible.
The question of how much government policy could do to improve the circumstances of the former slaves continued to be debated over the decades. By the turn of the century, the debates were conducted in the language of science. Robert Bennett Bean, a medical doctor, published a 1906 article arguing that social policy should be based on realistic assessments of the relative mental capacities of blacks and whites. He claimed that blacks had, on average, smaller brains than Asians or Caucasians, a finding he attributed to heredity. Similarly, Charles Francis Adams Jr. spent two years in Egypt and the Sudan and referenced his experiences to argue in 1906 that the unfortunate circumstances of American blacks were mainly due to inherently low capabilities rather than history. In the same issue, however, the editors felt it necessary to mention the dissenting view of Franz Boas, who had painted a more optimistic picture of the potential of Africans in a different periodical two years earlier.
Booker T. Washington contributed four articles to the magazine in the first decade of the twentieth century, including one on "Heroes in Black Skins." and another that discussed efforts of blacks to become homeowners. A 1903 editorial sang the praises of Washington, calling him the "Moses of his people" and contrasting him favorably with W.E.B. Du Bois.
Reflecting the magazine's later shift leftward, Du Bois himself contributed an article to The Century in 1923. Several editorials around that time criticized the revived Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. Frank Tannenbaum, for example, wrote that the Klan of the Reconstruction era "was a reflex of the vindictiveness of Northern politicians and of the unscrupulous carpet-baggers who swooped down upon the South as a vulture upon a wounded and stricken victim." But the contemporary Klan, according to Tannenbaum, had no such justification and simply reflected fears of change and other pathologies of segments of the white population.
Progressive causes
The magazine championed several Progressive causes popular in its time. Among these were several civil service reforms including competitive examinations for public offices, which its writers saw as a way to promote good governance and reduce class privilege. Similarly, in 1894 Henry Cabot Lodge attacked the "un-American" practice of patronage. The Century also took up some of the environmental causes of its day, expressing satisfaction over the first attempts by the federal government to preserve the nation's forests, and in its later days supported women's suffrage. Finally, the magazine occasionally published articles in favor of eugenics. Frank, for example, while disparaging the racism of the KKK, encouraged what he called the better individuals of every race to use the tools of modern science to focus on improving the genetic quality of all populations.
Socialism and the labor movement
Scribner's generally defended the principles of classical economics and opposed socialism. William Graham Sumner wrote an article for the magazine in this vein praising traditional capitalist virtues such as self-reliance and individualism and attributing poverty to laziness and vice. On the other hand, Holland occasionally directed his ire towards "soulless" corporations that he accused of exploiting workers. In the view of the magazine, both capitalists and workers had moral obligations.
In its early days, The Century tended to adopt the same views as its predecessor. It defended capitalism, but refrained from unreflectively denouncing all forms of regulation. For example, an 1886 article opposed socialism but argued that in the future there would be more need for government activism than there had been in the past. Over the next few decades, The Century published several forceful denunciations of socialist theories and practice. In the 1890s Gilder and his editors took the position that labor unions were a foreign imposition, one of the many negative consequences of a relatively open immigration policy. Similarly, socialism was said to punish success, a concept that was anathema to the philosophy of his magazine.
Despite its conservative leanings, the magazine was open to dissenting views on economic issues in a way that it was not on deeper philosophical matters. The March 1904 issue allowed workers to publish contributions making the case for labor unions as appropriate checks on big business. Two years later, an editorial praised some of the accomplishments of the labor movement, while still maintaining that it needed to be reformed.
In its later years, after the Russian Revolution had brought the issue to the attention of the public, The Century opposed the spread of Communism. Employing Nietzschean terminology, Lothrop Stoddard in 1919 called Bolshevism "the heresy of the Underman," in contrast to Prussianism, the "heresy of the Overman," which had been defeated in World War I. He went on to argue that the Bolshevik Revolution had only been the local manifestation of a phenomenon that would have to be defeated worldwide and that Vladimir Lenin was "a modern Jenghiz Khan plotting the plunder of a world."
Turn-of-the-20th-century decline
While remaining extremely influential and well-regarded among the American elite, the popularity of The Century began to decline in the 1890s and never regained the prominence it had enjoyed as the leading American periodical of the late nineteenth century. By 1900, it had about 125,000 subscribers, half of the circulation it had in the 1880s. The Century suffered due to competition from other cheaper magazines, many of which Gilder and his staff considered vulgar.
Although Gilder had been a zealous reformer, as a conservative in politics and values he never embraced the Progressive movement. As its circulation declined, the magazine took a more pessimistic tone and began to write less and less about current events. An 1898 editorial criticized "the profusion in the literary and pictorial 'output' which has a tendency to befog the intellect and lower the standards of taste." A few months later the magazine lamented that the "age of reflection" had given way to the "age of agitation" spread by "[f]ast trains and cheap print…" Similarly, a 1902 editorial argued that divorce was a threat to civilization, and nothing would be more likely to cure this ill than literature "celebrating the sanctive and ever-lasting virtues of self-control, forbearance, devotion, and honor." Gilder characteristically saw a connection between a decline in morals and contemporary social problems and believed, conversely, that ennobling art could be a solution.
Even in an artistic sense, The Century of the late nineteenth century was slow to adapt to the times. In 1889, after much resistance it became the last major periodical to include photographic illustrations. The editors remained attached to painted drawings, which The Century had become renowned for. In the pages of the magazine Gilder explained this preference by complaining of the trend toward the "minute and literal representation of the visible world" seen in photography, as opposed to painting, which preserved only that which deserved to be recorded for posterity. He went on to argue that the spread of printing and writing would have a similar vulgarizing and cheapening effect on the written word.
Thus, the magazine maintained a great deal of self-awareness about the causes of its declining influence. According to one modern author, in the first decade of the twentieth century, Gilder and the other editors "continued to bear aloft the flame of the ideal" in a changing era and gave "no thought of cheapening the magazine to slow the steady drifting away of subscribers." After Gilder's death in 1909, The Century survived another two decades, but never regained its position as the leading American periodical.
Later years, 1909-1930
Robert Underwood Johnson was editor of The Century from Gilder's death in 1909 until his resignation in 1913. The 1910s were marked by financial difficulties and a further decline, as the magazine competed with other periodicals of both similar and lesser quality. The Century still attracted some of the best fiction authors of the day, however. H. G. Wells' "prophetic trilogy" The World Set Free was serialized in the magazine in the first three issues of 1914.
Glenn Frank became editor of The Century in 1921, until he left this position in 1925 to become president of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He wrote a series of editorials in which he laid out his thoughts on the future of Western civilization. The editorials used colorful language and usually stressed the idea that contemporary social problems had created a need for social engineering and government activism in both domestic and international affairs. For example, in 1923, Frank wrote that Senator Lodge and his isolationist supporters were "the amoeba of politics, strange survivals from a prehistoric era of the lowest form of political intelligence." He later argued for what he called "an intelligently flexible conservatism." While warning of what he referred to as the dangers of reactionaries on the right and radicals on the left, Frank was also known for expressing a great deal of optimism over the prospect of using the social sciences to improve human affairs. This kind of enthusiasm for reform through science rather than moral progress was a noticeable break from the philosophy of the magazine during the eras of Holland and Gilder.
Other writers stressed similar themes throughout the Frank era. Reflecting the magazine's tilt to the left, a 1924 article called for "industrial democracy" to be adopted in American factories. Even the magazine's opposition to socialism was tempered, with Benjamin Stolberg arguing that the Red Scare had been an overreaction and that the Bolshevik threat to the United States had failed to materialize. The leftward shift during this time was not total, however, and, despite the tone that Frank's editorials gave to the magazine, The Century remained open to a wide variety of views. Noted conservative G.K. Chesterton, for example, contributed an essay that was highly critical of contemporary art.
Frank was succeeded in 1925 by Hewitt H. Howland, who remained as editor until the magazine merged with The Forum in 1930.
Historical memoirs and major reporting
Civil War series
In 1877, Scribner's published a series of short accounts from those who took part in the Battle of Mobile Bay. The parent publishing house released a series of books, The Army in the Civil War, in 13 volumes penned by U.S. Army veterans who had participated in the operations that they wrote about. This series became a best-seller. The Century continued this kind of historical reporting with Alexander R. Boteler's first-person account of John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry it published in 1883, followed in the same issue by a rejoinder from Frank B. Sanborn, a self-described "radical abolitionist" who had helped finance the mission.
Gilder, himself a Union veteran, soon began regularly running the reflections of major Civil War figures. Originally planned to run for twelve months, the series drew so much interest that it lasted for three years and eventually led to a four-volume book. Among the contributors to the series were Union generals Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, Philip Sheridan, and George B. McClellan. As The Century tried to avoid bias and promote American unity, it also sought out and accepted accounts from those on the Confederate side, including the generals James Longstreet and P. G. T. Beauregard The contributions led readers who had served in the war to submit unsolicited recollections and previously unpublished documents to the magazine, in addition to criticisms and rebuttals of published pieces. These submissions were so numerous that in 1885 The Century began to include them in a section titled "Memoranda on the Civil War." The magazine had in effect become a forum for those who had fought each other in battle two decades earlier. In the pages of The Century, they could discuss their battles and mutually celebrate the bravery and heroism of both sides.
The idea for soliciting recollections of the Civil War originally came from assistant editor Clarence Buel, who later wrote of the difficulties he had in going about convincing former military leaders to share their experiences. In fact, Grant would not agree to contribute to the series until the former general and president had run into financial difficulties. The editors became engrossed in the Civil War project, and sometimes took tours of the famous battle sites, bringing along commanders to explain their exploits and artists to draw sketches of the scenes for the magazine. The Century office became a regular meeting place for former comrades and adversaries, as reflected in a letter an excited Gilder sent to his wife exclaiming "Grant one day and Beauregard the next!"
Before the publication of the series, Sherman was the only major figure of the war who had written a first-person account. Afterwards, the works that Grant, Sheridan, and McClellan contributed to The Century led to books by each of those generals.
As a result of the Civil War recollections, the number of subscribers to the magazine jumped to 250,000, a then unprecedented number for a magazine of its kind. Edward Weeks wrote that even by 1950 no "quality magazine" had ever had as many subscribers as The Century did in the 1880s, even though by that time the reading public had tripled in size. As of 1892, it was also the most widely circulated periodical of its price in England, with 20,000 subscribers.
Lincoln biography
The Century also acquired the rights to publish excerpts from the manuscript of a biography of President Abraham Lincoln written by his former secretaries John Hay and John G. Nicolay. The result was a series titled Abraham Lincoln: A History, which ran over three years. Decades later, The Century returned to Abraham Lincoln as a symbol of the republic's lost virtue. The February 1909 issue had a drawing of Lincoln on its cover and included twenty-two portraits of the former president within its pages along with pictures of his life mask and a cast of his hands. Gilder's contribution to the issue, "Lincoln the Leader", held the subject up as an ideal for modern statesmen to emulate.
Russian dissidents
In the late 1880s, George Kennan traveled to Russia and wrote a series of reports on the revolutionaries who had opposed Tsar Alexander II and been sent to prisons in Siberia. Seeing him as a writer sympathetic to the autocratic regime and hostile towards its opponents, the Russian government granted Kennan relative freedom to travel around the country. During his travels, however, the author changed his mind and wrote accounts that were highly critical of the regime. His reports included detailed illustrations of the suffering of those who suffered on account of their opposition to the government. In one article, Kennan told the story of how when the decision to assassinate the Tsar was made, 47 individuals volunteered to carry out the mission. Arguing that individuals fighting for civil liberties were rarely as fanatical as the Russian revolutionaries, Kennan wrote that he believed that it was the treatment of prisoners that led to such stringent opposition to the government. He noted that "playing upon the deepest and most intense of human emotions as a means of extorting information from unwilling witnesses" was routine in prisons holding political offenders. For example, a young woman was led to incriminate her loved ones by being told that they had already confessed. Sometimes, a revolutionary would be told that he was going to meet his mother, taken to her, and then stopped and later informed that he would only see her if he answered questions about his past activities. A twenty-two-year-old mother was falsely led to believe that if she did not cooperate with the authorities her infant could be taken from her. The author also reported that it was common practice for prisoners to be left in solitary confinement for years while government officials searched the empire for evidence with which the offenders could be charged. Kennan came to see himself as a voice for the Russian liberals and was subsequently banned from the country. His writings on Russia were eventually published in a two-volume book.
A representative of the Russian government replied to Kennan's arguments in The Century in 1893. and the magazine subsequently published a rebuttal by the author.
Kennan's writings on Russia and his subsequent activism were perhaps the main causes behind the rise of anti-Tsar sentiment and sympathy for the revolutionary cause among late nineteenth-century American elites. In addition to publishing magazine articles and books, the author also began to give popular lectures on the subject, including dozens of speeches in Chicago, New York City, and Boston. In order to make an impression on the crowd, Kennan would often appear in front of them in the ragged clothes and shackles of a Russian prisoner. This advocacy inspired the formation of a number of American organizations that took up the cause of the exiles, the most prominent of them being the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom.
Other histories and recollections
In the early 1900s, The Century continued to publish the writings of some of the most famous historians of the era along with first-person accounts of those who had worked in the highest levels of government.
Justin Harvey Smith published four articles on the American Revolution in The Century in 1902 and 1903. The next year, S. Weir Mitchell contributed a series on the life of George Washington as a young man.
In addition to Theodore Roosevelt, The Century claimed a handful of other presidents as contributors. Grover Cleveland provided an account of perhaps the tensest moment of his two presidential administrations, the 1895 Venezuela border controversy with Britain. Andrew D. White contributed a series titled "Chapters from My Diplomatic Life" on his experiences serving in Germany and Russia. In September 1901, Woodrow Wilson wrote "Edmund Burke and the French Revolution" while still a professor at Princeton. In 1907 future President William Howard Taft wrote about the Panama Canal while serving as Secretary of War.
Over the years, The Century also published first person accounts of individuals who had worked for various presidents. Col. William H. Cook, a bodyguard who served for over 50 years in the White House, shared his memories of the administrations of Andrew Johnson and Rutherford B. Hayes. Historian James Ford Rhodes also contributed an article on the Hayes Administration, which the editors called a kind of postscript to the last-published volume of his history of the United States.
Science
In its early years, Scribner's Monthly published a regular feature titled "Nature and Science." Remaining consistent with its broad mission to educate the public, The Century published articles by some of the most prominent scientists and inventors of the day. Thomas Edison contributed to a symposium on roentgen rays and also once sat for an interview with the magazine. In the June 1900 issue, Nikola Tesla contributed a long article on "the problem of increasing human energy." In a piece that combined the magazine's interests in political and scientific issues, geneticist and Marxist J.B.S. Haldane published a 1923 article on the societal implications of technological progress.
Literature and the arts
Gilder has been called the "literary arbiter of his time." Support for artistic excellence reflected his belief in the importance of self-improvement and the celebration of high standards. The works that appeared in his time also reflected the magazine's moralism, as they banned references to sex, vulgarity, and insults to Christianity.
The Century published the works of a number of major literary figures. In addition to the aforementioned works of Mark Twain and Henry James, pulp magazine author Ellis Parker Butler contributed 30 stories, articles and poems to the magazine between 1896 and 1913, including "My Cyclone-proof House", which appeared in the November 1896 issue. This short story was Butler's first piece published in a major magazine. His works were illustrated by such famous artists as Jay Hambidge, May Wilson Preston, Florence Scovel Shinn, Frederic Dorr Steele, and Frederic R. Gruger. The Century published a full-color portrait of Butler (with his wife Ada and daughter Elsie) in the December 1909 issue. The portrait was drawn by family friend Ernest L. Blumenschein. The magazine also published the work of Jack London and the first-person account and ink drawings from Tierra del Fuego of American painter Rockwell Kent.
Noted engraver Alexander Wilson Drake was a long-time contributor to both The Century Magazine and its earlier incarnation as Scribner's Monthly. The Century Company produced a memorial edition of Alexander Wilson Drake's fiction and art titled Three Midnight Stories in 1916. The Century also employed many notable editorial cartoonists, including Oscar Cesare.
Bohemian composer Antonín Dvořák was another noted contributor to The Century Magazine, writing during his stay at the National Conservatory in New York in the 1890s. In 1894, The Century Magazine published his fine tribute to fellow composer Franz Schubert.
During the 1900s and 1910s the Anglo-Canadian poet, story writer and essayist Marjorie Pickthall was a regular contributor to The Century Magazine.
See also
Century Dictionary
Century type family
Footnotes
Citations
References
External links
Works by or about The Century Magazine at the Internet Archive
The Century illustrated monthly magazine at the HathiTrust
The Century at the HathiTrust
Holland Collection of Literary Letters, University of Colorado Boulder |
The_Atlantic | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Atlantic | [
601
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Atlantic"
] | The Atlantic is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher based in Washington, D.C. It features articles on politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science.
It was founded in 1857 in Boston as The Atlantic Monthly, a literary and cultural magazine that published leading writers' commentary on education, the abolition of slavery, and other major political issues of that time. Its founders included Francis H. Underwood and prominent writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and John Greenleaf Whittier. James Russell Lowell was its first editor. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the magazine also published the annual The Atlantic Monthly Almanac. The magazine was purchased in 1999 by businessman David G. Bradley, who fashioned it into a general editorial magazine primarily aimed at serious national readers and "thought leaders"; in 2017, he sold a majority interest in the publication to Laurene Powell Jobs's Emerson Collective.
The magazine was published monthly until 2001, when 11 issues were produced; since 2003, it has published 10 per year. It dropped "Monthly" from the cover with the January/February 2004 issue, and officially changed the name in 2007.
In 2016, the periodical was named Magazine of the Year by the American Society of Magazine Editors. In 2022, its writers won Pulitzer Prizes for feature writing and, in 2022, 2023, and 2024 The Atlantic won the award for general excellence by the American Society of Magazine Editors. In 2024, it was reported that the magazine had crossed one million subscribers and become profitable, three years after losing $20 million in a single year and laying off 17% of its staff.
As of 2024, the website's executive editor is Adrienne LaFrance, the editor-in-chief is Jeffrey Goldberg, and the CEO is Nicholas Thompson.
Founding
19th century
In the autumn of 1857, Moses Dresser Phillips, a publisher from Boston, created The Atlantic Monthly. The plan for the magazine was launched at a dinner party, which was described in a letter by Phillips:
I must tell you about a little dinner-party I gave about two weeks ago. It would be proper, perhaps, to state the origin of it was a desire to confer with my literary friends on a somewhat extensive literary project, the particulars of which I shall reserve till you come. But to the Party: My invitations included only R. W. Emerson, H. W. Longfellow, J. R. Lowell, Mr. Motley (the 'Dutch Republic' man), O. W. Holmes, Mr. Cabot, and Mr. Underwood, our literary man. Imagine your uncle as the head of such a table, with such guests. The above named were the only ones invited, and they were all present. We sat down at three P.M., and rose at eight. The time occupied was longer by about four hours and thirty minutes than I am in the habit of consuming in that kind of occupation, but it was the richest time intellectually by all odds that I have ever had. Leaving myself and 'literary man' out of the group, I think you will agree with me that it would be difficult to duplicate that number of such conceded scholarship in the whole country besides... Each one is known alike on both sides of the Atlantic, and is read beyond the limits of the English language.
At that dinner he announced his idea for the magazine:
Mr. Cabot is much wiser than I am. Dr. Holmes can write funnier verses than I can. Mr. Motley can write history better than I. Mr. Emerson is a philosopher and I am not. Mr. Lowell knows more of the old poets than I. But none of you knows the American people as well as I do.
The Atlantic's first issue was published in November 1857, and quickly gained notability as one of the finest magazines in the English-speaking world.
In 1878, the magazine absorbed The Galaxy, a competitor monthly magazine founded a dozen years previously by William Conant Church and his brother Francis P. Church; it had published works by Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Ion Hanford Perdicaris and Henry James.
In 1879, The Atlantic had offices in Winthrop Square in Boston and at 21 Astor Place in New York City.
Literary history
A leading literary magazine, The Atlantic has published many significant works and authors. It was the first to publish pieces by the abolitionists Julia Ward Howe ("Battle Hymn of the Republic" on February 1, 1862), and William Parker, whose slave narrative, "The Freedman's Story" was published in February and March 1866. It also published Charles W. Eliot's "The New Education", a call for practical reform that led to his appointment to the presidency of Harvard University in 1869, works by Charles Chesnutt before he collected them in The Conjure Woman (1899), and poetry and short stories, and helped launch many national literary careers. In 2005, the magazine won a National Magazine Award for fiction.
Editors have recognized major cultural changes and movements. For example, of the emerging writers of the 1920s, Ernest Hemingway had his short story "Fifty Grand" published in the July 1927 edition. Harking back to its abolitionist roots, in its August 1963 edition, at the height of the civil rights movement, the magazine published Martin Luther King Jr.'s defense of civil disobedience, "Letter from Birmingham Jail", under the headline "The Negro Is Your Brother".
The magazine has published speculative articles that inspired the development of new technologies. The classic example is Vannevar Bush's essay "As We May Think" (July 1945), which inspired Douglas Engelbart and later Ted Nelson to develop the modern workstation and hypertext technology.
The Atlantic Monthly founded the Atlantic Monthly Press in 1917; for many years, it was operated in partnership with Little, Brown and Company. Its published books included Drums Along the Mohawk (1936) and Blue Highways (1982). The press was sold in 1986; today it is an imprint of Grove Atlantic.
In addition to publishing notable fiction and poetry, The Atlantic has emerged in the 21st century as an influential platform for longform storytelling and newsmaker interviews. Influential cover stories have included Anne Marie Slaughter's "Why Women Still Can't Have It All" (2012) and Ta-Nehisi Coates's "A Case for Reparations" (2014). In 2015, Jeffrey Goldberg's "Obama Doctrine" was widely discussed by American media and prompted response by many world leaders.
As of 2022, writers and frequent contributors to the print magazine included James Fallows, Jeffrey Goldberg, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Caitlin Flanagan, Jonathan Rauch, McKay Coppins, Gillian White, Adrienne LaFrance, Vann R. Newkirk II, Derek Thompson, David Frum, Jennifer Senior, George Packer, Ed Yong, and James Parker.
On August 2, 2023, it was announced that Jeffrey Goldberg, who had served as editor-in-chief of The Atlantic since 2016, had been named as Washington Week's tenth moderator, and that the politics and culture publication would also enter into an editorial partnership with the television program – which was retitled accordingly as Washington Week with The Atlantic – similar to the earlier collaboration with the National Journal. The first episode under the longer title, and with Goldberg as moderator, was the one broadcast on August 11, 2023.
Political viewpoint
In 1860, three years into publication, The Atlantic's then-editor James Russell Lowell endorsed Republican Abraham Lincoln for his first run for president and also endorsed the abolition of slavery.
In 1964, Edward Weeks wrote on behalf of the editorial board in endorsing Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson and rebuking Republican Barry Goldwater's candidacy.
In 2016, during the 2016 presidential campaign, the editorial board endorsed a candidate for the third time in the magazine's history, urging readers to support Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in a rebuke of Republican Donald Trump's candidacy.
After Trump prevailed in the November 2016 election, the magazine became a strong critic of him. In March 2019, a cover article by editor Yoni Appelbaum called for the impeachment of Donald Trump: "It's time for Congress to judge the president's fitness to serve."
In September 2020, it published a story, citing several anonymous sources, reporting that Trump referred to dead American soldiers as "losers". Trump called it a "fake story", and suggested the magazine would soon be out of business.
In 2020, The Atlantic endorsed the Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, and urged its readers to oppose Trump's re-election bid. The Atlantic published a special 24-article issue "If Trump Wins" in early 2024 in which they warn of a potential second term for Trump being worse than his first.
Format
Aspen Ideas Festival
In 2005, The Atlantic and the Aspen Institute launched the Aspen Ideas Festival, a ten-day event in and around the city of Aspen, Colorado. The annual conference features 350 presenters, 200 sessions, and 3,000 attendees. The event has been called a "political who's who" as it often features policymakers, journalists, lobbyists, and think tank leaders.
On January 22, 2008, TheAtlantic.com dropped its subscriber wall and allowed users to freely browse its site, including all past archives. By 2011 The Atlantic's web properties included TheAtlanticWire.com, a news- and opinion-tracking site launched in 2009, and TheAtlanticCities.com, a stand-alone website started in 2011 that was devoted to global cities and trends. According to a Mashable profile in December 2011, "traffic to the three web properties recently surpassed 11 million uniques per month, up a staggering 2500% since The Atlantic brought down its paywall in early 2008."
The Atlantic Wire
In 2009, the magazine launched The Atlantic Wire as a stand-alone news aggregator site. It was intended as a curated selection of news and opinions from online, print, radio, and television outlets. At its launch, it published op-eds from across the media spectrum and summarized significant positions in each debate. It later expanded to feature news and original reporting.
Regular features in the magazine included "What I Read", describing the media diets of people from entertainment, journalism, and politics; and "Trimming the Times", the feature editor's summary of the best content in The New York Times. The Atlantic Wire rebranded itself as The Wire in November 2013, and was folded back into The Atlantic the following year.
In August 2011, it created its video channel. Initially created as an aggregator, The Atlantic's video component, Atlantic Studios, has since evolved in an in-house production studio that creates custom video series and original documentaries.
CityLab
In September 2011, The Atlantic launched CityLab, a separate website. Its co-founders included Richard Florida, urban theorist and professor. The stand-alone site has been described as exploring and explaining "the most innovative ideas and pressing issues facing today's global cities and neighborhoods." In 2014, it was rebranded as CityLab.com, and covers transportation, environment, equity, life, and design. Among its offerings are Navigator, "a guide to urban life"; and Solutions, which covers solutions to problems in a dozen topics.
In December 2011, a new Health Channel launched on TheAtlantic.com, incorporating coverage of food, as well as topics related to the mind, body, sex, family, and public health. Its launch was overseen by Nicholas Jackson, who had previously been overseeing the Life channel and initially joined the website to cover technology. TheAtlantic.com has also expanded to visual storytelling, with the addition of the "In Focus" photo blog, curated by Alan Taylor.
In 2015, TheAtlantic.com launched a dedicated Science section and in January 2016 it redesigned and expanded its politics section in conjunction with the 2016 U.S. presidential race.
In 2015, CityLab and Univision launched CityLab Latino, which features original journalism in Spanish as well as translated reporting from the English language edition of CityLab.com. The site has not been updated since 2018.
In early December 2019, Atlantic Media sold CityLab to Bloomberg Media, which promptly laid off half the staff. The site was relaunched on June 18, 2020, with few major changes other than new branding and linking the site with other Bloomberg verticals and its data terminal.
In September 2019, TheAtlantic.com introduced a digital subscription model, restricting unsubscribed readers' access to five free articles per month.
In June 2020, The Atlantic released its first full-length documentary, White Noise, a film about three alt-right activists.
Praise, retractions, legal issues, and controversies
In June 2006, the Chicago Tribune named The Atlantic one of the top ten English-language magazines, describing it as the "150-year-old granddaddy of periodicals" because "it keeps us smart and in the know" with cover stories on the then-forthcoming fight over Roe v. Wade. It also lauded regular features such as "Word Fugitives" and "Primary Sources" as "cultural barometers".
On January 14, 2013, The Atlantic's website published "sponsor content" promoting David Miscavige, the leader of the Church of Scientology. While the magazine had previously published advertising looking like articles, this was widely criticized. The page comments were moderated by the marketing team, not by editorial staff, and comments critical of the church were being removed. Later that day, The Atlantic removed the piece from its website and issued an apology.
In 2019, the magazine published an expose on the allegations against movie director Bryan Singer that "sent Singer's career into a tailspin". It was originally contracted to Esquire magazine, but the writers moved it there due to what New York Times reporter Ben Smith described as Hearst magazines' "timid" nature. "There's not a lot of nuance here", Jeffrey Goldberg said. "They spiked a story that should have been published in the public interest for reasons unknown."
In June 2020, The Atlantic faced legal action in Japan that claimed defamation and invasion of privacy in the article "When the Presses Stop" by Molly Ball, published in the January/February 2018 edition, which led to numerous removals, corrections and clarifications after a settlement was reached in January 2024. The lawsuit highlighted fact-checking and ethical concerns, bringing attention to the magazine's editorial practices.
On November 1, 2020, The Atlantic retracted an article, "The Mad, Mad World of Niche Sports Among Ivy League–Obsessed Parents", after an inquiry by The Washington Post. An 800-word editor's note said, "We cannot attest to the trustworthiness and credibility of the author, and therefore we cannot attest to the veracity of the article." The article's author, freelancer Ruth Shalit Barrett, had left the staff of The New Republic in 1999 amid allegations of plagiarism. On January 7, 2022, Barrett sued the magazine for defamation. The lawsuit claimed The Atlantic misrepresented Barrett's background and destroyed her journalistic career through what it publicly said about her. In legal filings, Barrett argued that The Atlantic's handling of allegations and errors in another article written by Molly Ball demonstrated inconsistency in the magazine's editorial standards and accountability measures. Barrett asserted that the factual inaccuracies and ethical violations in Ball's piece, as highlighted by a separate defamation lawsuit that resulted in a settlement and numerous retractions and corrections to Ball's story, were “transgressions far more numerous and incomparably worse” than any mistakes attributed to her own work.
On February 5, 2024, The Atlantic cut ties with contributor Yascha Mounk after he was accused of rape. He called the allegation "categorically untrue."
On May 17, 2024, The Atlantic published the opinion piece "The UN’s Gaza Statistics Make No Sense", questioning the accuracy of the UN OCHA's estimate of 34,000+ fatalities of Palestinian citizens in the Israel-Hamas war, alleging the numbers were inflated and relayed directly from Hamas without confirmation. The article and its writer, Graeme Wood, were condemned for undermining the severity of the ongoing humanitarian crisis, with readers taking Wood's statement regarding the thousands of child fatalities that "it is possible to kill children legally" as a justification for Israeli war crimes and genocide against the Palestinian people.
Ownership and editors
By its third year, it was published by Boston publishing house Ticknor and Fields, which later became part of Houghton Mifflin, based in the city known for literary culture. The magazine was purchased in 1908 by editor at the time, Ellery Sedgwick, and remained in Boston.
In 1980, the magazine was acquired by Mortimer Zuckerman, property magnate and founder of Boston Properties, who became its chairman. On September 27, 1999, Zuckerman transferred ownership of the magazine to David G. Bradley, owner of the National Journal Group, which focused on Washington, D.C. and federal government news. Bradley had promised that the magazine would stay in Boston for the foreseeable future, as it did for the next five-and-a-half years.
In April 2005, however, the publishers announced that the editorial offices would be moved from their longtime home at 77 North Washington Street in Boston to join the company's advertising and circulation divisions in Washington, D.C. Later in August, Bradley told The New York Observer that the move was not made to save money—near-term savings would be $200,000–$300,000, a relatively small amount that would be swallowed by severance-related spending—but instead would serve to create a hub in Washington, D.C., where the top minds from all of Bradley's publications could collaborate under the Atlantic Media Company umbrella. Few of the Boston staff agreed to move, and Bradley then commenced an open search for a new editorial staff.
In 2006, Bradley hired James Bennet, the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times, as editor-in-chief. Bradley also hired Jeffrey Goldberg and Andrew Sullivan as writers for the magazine.
In 2008, Jay Lauf joined the organization as publisher and vice-president; as of 2017, he was publisher and president of Quartz.
In early 2014, Bennet and Bob Cohn became co-presidents of The Atlantic, and Cohn became the publication's sole president in March 2016 when Bennet was tapped to lead The New York Times's editorial page. Jeffrey Goldberg was named editor-in-chief in October 2016.
On July 28, 2017, The Atlantic announced that billionaire investor and philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs (the widow of former Apple Inc. chairman and CEO Steve Jobs) had acquired majority ownership through her Emerson Collective organization, with a staff member of Emerson Collective, Peter Lattman, being immediately named as vice chairman of The Atlantic. David G. Bradley and Atlantic Media retained a minority share position in this sale.
In May 2019, technology journalist Adrienne LaFrance became executive editor.
In December 2020, former Wired editor-in-chief Nicholas Thompson was named CEO of The Atlantic.
List of editors
See also
United States portal
Media portal
References
External links
Official website
"A History of The Atlantic" (archived 23 October 1997)
The Atlantic archival writings by topic
Online archive of The Atlantic (earliest issues 1857 up to 2016) at the Internet Archive
Hathi Trust. Atlantic Monthly digitized issues, 1857–1928, plus search of 1929–1963, 1971, and 1976 (partial)
An early history of The Atlantic from The Literary Digest (1897)
Atlantic Monthly records, at the University of Maryland libraries |
The_New_England_Magazine | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_England_Magazine | [
601
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_England_Magazine"
] | The New England Magazine was a monthly literary magazine published in Boston, Massachusetts, from 1884 to 1917. It was known as The Bay State Monthly from 1884 to 1886.
The magazine was published by J. N. McClinctock and Company.
The magazine has no connection to the 1830s publication The New-England Magazine.
References
The New England Magazine, Online Books Page
External links
The Bay State Monthly: PDF copies (Cornell University)
The New England Magazine (1886–1900): PDF copies (Cornell University)
New England magazine and Bay State monthly at the HathiTrust |
Aerith_Gainsborough | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerith_Gainsborough | [
602
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerith_Gainsborough"
] | Aerith Gainsborough (Japanese: エアリス・ゲインズブール, Hepburn: Earisu Geinzubūru), transliterated as Aeris Gainsborough in the English releases of Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy Tactics, is a character in Square's (now Square Enix) role-playing video game Final Fantasy VII. She was designed by Tetsuya Nomura with influence from Yoshinori Kitase, Hironobu Sakaguchi and Yoshitaka Amano.
She is one of the main characters of Final Fantasy VII, a young woman allied with the eco-terrorist organization AVALANCHE. Over the course of the story, AVALANCHE begin to pursue the game's antagonist Sephiroth, and the player learns that she is the last surviving Cetra, or "Ancient", one of the planet's oldest races. She is ultimately murdered by Sephiroth. She has also appeared in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII and Kingdom Hearts series.
She is voiced in Japanese by Maaya Sakamoto. In English, she is voiced by Mandy Moore in Kingdom Hearts, Mena Suvari in Kingdom Hearts II and Final Fantasy VII Advent Children, Andrea Bowen in Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII and the Re Mind DLC of Kingdom Hearts III, and Briana White in Final Fantasy VII Remake, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Aerith and the events surrounding her death in Final Fantasy VII have been met with overall positive reception from critics and fans.
Concept and creation
Aerith was designed by Tetsuya Nomura, with influence from director and scenario writer Yoshinori Kitase and Hironobu Sakaguchi, whilst Yoshitaka Amano created conceptual artwork which helped to influence her design. She has green eyes and long brown hair tied in a braid with a pink ribbon. She wears a long pink dress, a bolero jacket, and brown hiking boots. The long dress was designed to appear ladylike and contrast with Tifa Lockhart's miniskirt. During development, Aerith was supposed to be Sephiroth's sister, as their designs resembled each other. However, they were made former lovers, with Aerith remembering Sephiroth when meeting Cloud as both are ex-SOLDIERS. Late during development, Aerith's first love was changed to Zack Fair.
Her green eyes were meant to symbolize nature and contrast with Tifa's brown eyes. Nomura did not change much of Aerith's design for Advent Children, but her design was updated in Kingdom Hearts with the removal of her bolero jacket, which made her attire resemble how Amano had originally drawn her. Other changes included the addition of bracelets and a belt. Nomura modified her dress in Before Crisis, adding white and green colors; this version was also used as the basis for her design in Kingdom Hearts II.
Aerith's original Japanese name is Earisu (エアリス) pronounced [eaɾisɯ] . This was transliterated to "Aeris" in Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy Tactics and "Aerith" in later products. Both transliterations have basis, as the Japanese "su" (ス) is used when transcribing "s" (/s/) and "th" (/θ/) to Japanese. However, official Japanese material uses the spelling "Aerith", and developers stated that "Aerith" is a near-anagram of "Earth".
In early planning stages of Final Fantasy VII, Aerith was to be one of only three protagonists alongside Cloud and Barret. During a phone call to Kitase, it was suggested that at some point in the game, one of the main characters should die, and after much discussion as to whether it should be Barret or Aerith, the producers chose Aerith. Nomura stated in a 2005 Electronic Gaming Monthly interview: "Cloud's the main character, so you can't really kill him. And Barrett... [sic] well, that's maybe too obvious". While designing Final Fantasy VII, Nomura was frustrated with the "perennial cliché where the protagonist loves someone very much and so has to sacrifice himself and die in a dramatic fashion to express that love". He found this trope appeared in both films and video games from North America and Japan, and asked "Is it right to set such an example to people?" Kitase concluded: "In the real world things are very different. You just need to look around you. Nobody wants to die that way. People die of disease and accident. Death comes suddenly and there is no notion of good or bad. It leaves, not a dramatic feeling but great emptiness. When you lose someone you loved very much you feel this big empty space and think, 'If I had known this was coming I would have done things differently'. These are the feelings I wanted to arouse in the players with Aerith's death relatively early in the game. Feelings of reality and not Hollywood".
According to Nomura, "death should be something sudden and unexpected, and Aerith's death seemed more natural and realistic". He said: "When I reflect on Final Fantasy VII, the fact that fans were so offended by her sudden death probably means that we were successful with her character. If fans had simply accepted her death, that would have meant she wasn't an effective character". From the original release of the game, rumors have circulated that Aerith can be resurrected in or that the original plan was to have her come back, but this was scrapped in development. Nomura has categorically stated that neither of these rumors were ever true, as he said that "the world was expecting us to bring her back to life, as this is the classic convention". A lengthy petition asking for Aerith's revival by Japanese players was sent to Kitase, but he dismissed it, pointing out that "there are many meanings in Aerith's death and [her revival] could never happen". Mena Suvari explained that for Advent Children, Aerith was given a mothering feel with an ephemeral presence, and expressed joy for her role.
In Remake, Briana White studied Sakamoto's acting to appeal to fans.
Musical theme
A leitmotif associated with Aerith is played several times throughout Final Fantasy VII, and was composed by Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu. it is first heard during the flashback scenes with Aerith's mother at her house, and also plays as she is killed by Sephiroth. The piece "Flowers Blooming in the Church" is based on it.
"Aerith's Theme" is very popular among Final Fantasy fans, and has inspired an orchestral version, a piano version, and a vocal version performed by the artist Rikki, who also performed "Suteki Da Ne" for Final Fantasy X. A piano arrangement of the theme appears twice in Advent Children, and the track "Water" shares similarities with it. The opening phrase of "Aerith's Theme" appears prior to the climax of the track "Divinity II", which also includes as its final line the Latin phrase "Sola Dea fatum novit" ("Only the goddess knows fate"), and is also featured during the end credits of the film. It has been reinterpreted on the OverClocked ReMix Final Fantasy VII compilation Voices of the Lifestream. In 2013, "Aerith's Theme" achieved the third place in the Classic FM Hall of Fame.
Appearances
Final Fantasy VII
Aerith Gainsborough is first introduced as a flower seller, when she briefly converses with Cloud Strife, a mercenary working for the anti-government group AVALANCHE, who are fleeing from the bombing of a Mako reactor. The two later meet in Aerith's church in the Sector 5 slums, where she is faced with the possibility of capture by the Turks. Aerith asks Cloud to be her bodyguard for the cost of a date. She is eventually apprehended, but is ultimately rescued by Cloud and his allies. Aerith then joins them in the pursuit of Sephiroth, while also embarking on her own journey of self-discovery.
After a failed attempt to foil Sephiroth's theft of the Black Materia, Aerith ventures alone into the Forgotten City. Cloud and his companions pursue her and eventually find her praying at an altar. As Aerith looks up to smile at Cloud, Sephiroth appears and kills her by impaling her through the torso. Cloud carries Aerith's body out into a lake in the Forgotten City and releases her back to the Planet. Reeve Tuesti, the head of Shinra Urban and Development, brings the news of her death to Elmyra Gainsborough, Aerith's adoptive mother. The party later learns why Aerith was in the Forgotten City; through her White Materia, Aerith was able to summon Holy, the only force capable of repelling the ultimate destructive magic, Meteor, which Sephiroth has summoned. Although Aerith successfully cast Holy before her death, it is being held back by the power of Sephiroth's will. When Sephiroth is finally defeated and Holy is released, it appears that it is too late to function effectively, as Meteor is approaching the Planet's surface. While Holy clashes with Meteor and attempts to prevent its impact, the gravity of both Meteor and the Planet pulling on Holy in opposite directions weakens it. Aerith is seen praying whilst urging the Lifestream to defend the planet. The Planet's Lifestream then flows forth, intervening between Holy and Meteor and aiding in the destruction of Meteor.
Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
In Before Crisis, which is set several years prior to the events of Final Fantasy VII, Aerith becomes the target of the original incarnation of AVALANCHE, led by Elfé, who seek to prevent Shinra from acquiring the last surviving Cetra. Instead, AVALANCHE intend to use her to learn the whereabouts of the Promised Land for their own purposes, although a member of the Turks tries to protect her.
Aerith makes several appearances in the CGI film Advent Children as Cloud's spiritual guide, urging him to move on with his life and forgive himself for the tragedies that were beyond his control, telling him that she never blamed him for her death. During their spiritual reunion, Aerith speaks to Cloud in an open meadow laden with flowers, poking fun at how he needlessly burdens himself with the past, but she acknowledges his suffering and offers kind words of support. One of Aerith's interactions with Cloud comes when each member of the original game's party helps in Cloud's final attack against Bahamut SIN; she appears as the last party member to assist Cloud. She appears again in the final scene of the film, along with Zack Fair, where she gives Cloud more words of encouragement before she and Zack walk into the light. Near the end of the film, it is discovered that water mixed with the Lifestream flows beneath the flowerbed in Aerith's church, which manifests itself as a cure for Geostigma.
The On the Way to a Smile novella "Case of the Lifestream – Black & White" focuses on Aerith and Sephiroth's respective journeys through the Lifestream after the end of the game but before the events of the film. The "Black" section deals with Sephiroth, and the "White" with Aerith.
Aerith appears in the prequel game Crisis Core, where she is 16 years old. She meets Zack, whom she develops feelings for during his stay in Midgar. Aerith and Zack develop a romantic relationship, but Zack is killed after escaping from being held in a Mako chamber for four years in the Shinra Mansion basement and defending Cloud from Shinra soldiers. During those years, Aerith helped her adopted mother earn a living by growing and selling flowers, a job that results in her meeting Cloud at the beginning of Final Fantasy VII.
Aerith is featured prominently in Final Fantasy VII Remake, which covers the Midgar portion of the original game. Unlike in the original localization, the remake gives her name as the more widely-accepted Aerith rather than Aeris.
Other appearances
Aerith's character has appeared in several games outside of the Final Fantasy VII continuity. In Final Fantasy Tactics, she appears as a flower girl; when a group of criminals harasses her, Cloud appears and the player engages in battle with the group, letting her escape. Itadaki Street Special features a playable version of Aerith, as well as other Final Fantasy VII characters Tifa Lockhart, Cloud Strife, and Sephiroth. She also appears in Itadaki Street Portable with the same characters from Special, with the addition of Yuffie Kisaragi. Aerith appears in the fighting game Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy as an assistant character. She is also featured in the rhythm game Theatrhythm Final Fantasy as a sub-character representing Final Fantasy VII. In LittleBigPlanet 2, Aerith is featured as a downloadable character model. Aerith also appears as a Mii costume and Spirit in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Aerith appears in the Kingdom Hearts series as a member of a group dedicated to defeating the Heartless, which includes fellow Final Fantasy VII characters Yuffie and Cid, and Leon of Final Fantasy VIII. In the plot of Kingdom Hearts, Aerith suggests a method for defeating the Heartless to protagonists Donald Duck, Goofy and Sora, and gives advice to the player throughout the game. She also appears in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories as a perceptive figment of Sora's memories. Aerith returns in Kingdom Hearts II, wearing a modified version of her dress from Before Crisis. She, Leon, Cid and Yuffie run a restoration committee for the town of Hollow Bastion. Aerith and the restoration committee return in the Kingdom Hearts III Re Mind expansion, helping Riku search for the missing Sora.
Hoshi o Meguru Otome, a novella written by Benny Matsuyama which appears in the Final Fantasy VII Ultimania Ω guide, follows Aerith's journey through the Lifestream following her death in Final Fantasy VII. Aerith is mentioned on a graffiti in a subway station early in the animated film Wreck-It Ralph, which reads "Aerith Lives".
Reception
Aerith has received an overall positive reception from critics. GamesTM referred to her as a "gaming legend". RPGamer's Stuart Hoggan opined that although Aerith "represented the token damsel in distress", she "broke the mould in terms of personality", possessing "an admirable pluck that was not brassy nor off-putting". In a This American Life episode, titled "Save the Girl", reporter Lina Misitzis described the character as one-dimensional and lacking in personality. She and Kotaku writer Mike Fahey conclude that had the character been anything other than a pretty girl she would have needed much more development in order to elicit an emotional response from the player. Aerith's romantic relationship with Cloud was also praised though some sites noted there were arguments between fans about whether or not Tifa was more suitable to be Cloud's love interest. In a retrospective, Polygon analyzed several arguments fans have made about Cloud's preferred partner and how each side misrepresents the other's chosen heroine. Polygon concludes that there is no winning couple as, after killing Sephiroth, Cloud has a vision of Aerith when Tifa tries to help him and the duo agrees to meet her again. In contrast to this, Aerith's relationship with Zack Fair was noted to be a more impactful based on her role in Crisis Core. Cloud is also seen as a Messiah with Tifa and Aerith being one of his main supporters to help progress and defeat Sephiroth, though the end of the narrative has Cloud appreciating the victory thanks to his "pillars".
Aerith's death in Final Fantasy VII has received a great deal of attention. According to GamesTM, her death helped establish the popularity of Final Fantasy VII. Players commented on message boards and blogs about the emotional impact the scene held. Fans submitted a petition to Yoshinori Kitase requesting her return. Tom's Games called the scene "one of the most powerful and memorable scenes of the Final Fantasy series—or any other game, for that matter". Edge called her death the "dramatic highpoint" of Final Fantasy VII, and suggested that reintroducing her through the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII titles "arguably undermines this great moment". Said death has also been cited as the defining moment of a star-crossed love story, between her and main character Cloud Strife. Brian Taylor, writing for Kill Screen, described a cottage industry of fan theories for how to return Aerith to life or prevent her death. He compared these efforts to the letter-writing campaign to convince Charles Dickens not to let Nell, the endearing protagonist of The Old Curiosity Shop, die at the end of the book. Taylor affirmed that the acts of discussing these fan theories and dissecting the game code to test them comprise a valid and important part of the experience of the game. In A Feeling of Wrongness: Pessimistic Rhetoric on the Fringes of Popular Culture, Aerith is seen a highly developed character due to Cloud visiting her mother and how often the protagonist and the heroine often talk. As Aerith plays a more active role in combat, her death is also noted to affect the gamer as a result of how useful she is. Benjamin Banasik from Heidelberg University noted the impact of Aerith's death is mostly seen in Cloud's characterization in Advent Children as he seeks redemption for her, leading him to his transformation into a heroic leader in the process. In The World of Final Fantasy VII: Essays on the Game and Its Legacy, Aerith's death is described as a disastrous traumatic reminder of the eventual war. Game journalist Mike Fahey expressed concern in regards to this event being repeated in the Remake chronology as he saw the original Aerith as the least developed heroine in the game.
The character's traits in the remake were praised by Siliconera due to how caring she is and how developed she becomes across the narrative. Despite criticizing for not doing wrong things that balance her, Siliconera still enjoyed the scene where she volunteers for Don Corneo. Nevertheless, the site enjoyed how enigmatic she is for the way she interacts with the members from the cast. The Escapist noted that while the player primarily controls Cloud, Aerith remains as the actual hero of the game. Despite being seen as a damsel in distress at first, Aerith proves herself to be capable of showing notable strength which made a massive impact in the gamer when Sephiroth kills her. As a result, when the Remake was released, gamers wondered
if in this game it was possible to save her. In the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, Aerith's role in Remake and comments in the ending are noted to build up the apparent message of the installment in regards to how the same narrative should not be repeated with Aerith's quote "boundless, terrifying freedom" which is made in response to Sephiroth's values. Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences also wrote about Aerith's characterization in Remake and its comparisons with the original one; Aerith's specter that interacts with a confused Cloud about their potential relationship was noted to stand out in the game as the former tells the latter not to fall in love with him as if Square Enix is reacting to the player's constricted conditions, potential desires, and narrative expectations when compared with the original Final Fantasy VII where the player could have dates with most of the early characters.
In "More Than Just a Flower Girl: A Personal Thank You to Aerith Gainsborough", Alana Hagues from RPGFan expresses multiple feelings involving her Aerith's characterization; Despite being initially bothered by the idea of Aerith by a "girl" or weak, Hagues' noticed that she saw the character in a different light upon deciding to fully complete Final Fantasy VII. Rather than being a damsel in distress, Aerith appeared to challenge gender stereotypes as while faces too many problems in life like dealing with the death of Zack or being the final Cetra, she manages to deal with them and remains strong enough to appreciate life. This is highly notable when Aerith interacts with Cloud or Barret and expresses comfort to them or she lives inside the dangerous areas from Midgar. Aerith also serves as a major contrast to the first three playable characters: Cloud, Barret and Tifa and manages to fit. Aerith's death at the hands of Sephiroth hit the writer further when Cloud says ""Aerith will no longer talk, no longer laugh, cry…or get angry…". From this point, Hagues started having several thoughts about Aerith, how she would no longer assist Cloud and contrast the other love interest Tifa. She realized Aerith was further stronger in Final Fantasy VII over Kingdom Hearts and Crisis Core which delighted her when seeing her again in Remake as it "understands her spirit in the original, but it also does one better, giving her more agency and power throughout".
When it comes to Rebirth, Digital Trend wrote "In defense of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s polarizing ending" where Cloud's failures to save Aerith in the story comes across dealing with trauma; The returning player find a possible way to stop Aerith's death like Cloud attempts and instead ends in tragedy again. As Remake ends with Zack surviving his death while going to Midgar, Aerith appears to also be able to challenge her fate. In penultimate chapter, Aerith's fate begins to feel more inevitable; Rebirth starts feeling like a role-playing game based on An American in Paris due to the surrealism employed in the alternate timeline where Cloud tries to make Aerith survive but it is impossible in his world. Eventually, Aerith tells Cloud that she is going to die just like Zack dies in the original timeline and it is her choice. This scene helps Cloud not feel the event to feel like a personal failure and that he can improve himself.
See also
List of Final Fantasy VII characters
References
External links
Media related to Aerith Gainsborough at Wikimedia Commons |
Final_Fantasy_VII | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VII | [
602
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VII"
] | Final Fantasy VII is a 1997 role-playing video game developed by Square for the PlayStation console and the seventh main installment in the Final Fantasy series. Square published the game in Japan, and it was released in other regions by Sony Computer Entertainment, becoming the first game in the main series to have a PAL release. The game's story follows Cloud Strife, a mercenary who joins an eco-terrorist organization to stop a world-controlling megacorporation from using the planet's life essence as an energy source. Ensuing events send Cloud and his allies in pursuit of Sephiroth, a superhuman who seeks to wound the planet and harness its healing power in order to be reborn as a god. Throughout their journey, Cloud bonds with his party members, including Aerith Gainsborough, who holds the secret to saving their world.
Development began in 1994, originally for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. After delays and technical difficulties from experimenting with several platforms, most notably the Nintendo 64, Square moved production to the PlayStation, largely due to the advantages of the CD-ROM format. Veteran Final Fantasy staff returned, including series creator and producer Hironobu Sakaguchi, director Yoshinori Kitase, and composer Nobuo Uematsu. The title was the first in the series to use full motion video and 3D computer graphics, featuring 3D character models superimposed over 2D pre-rendered backgrounds. Although the gameplay remained mostly unchanged from previous entries, Final Fantasy VII introduced more widespread science fiction elements and a more realistic presentation. The combined development and marketing budget amounted to approximately US$80 million.
Final Fantasy VII received widespread commercial and critical success. It remains widely regarded as a landmark title and one of the greatest and most influential video games ever made. The title won numerous Game of the Year awards and was acknowledged for boosting the sales of the PlayStation and popularizing Japanese role-playing games worldwide. Critics praised its graphics, gameplay, music, and story, although some criticism was directed towards the original English localization. Its success has led to enhanced ports on various platforms, a multimedia subseries called the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, and a high definition remake trilogy currently comprising Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020), and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (2024).
Gameplay
The gameplay of Final Fantasy VII is similar to earlier Final Fantasy titles and Japanese role-playing games. The game features three modes of play: the world map, the field, and the battle screen.: 15, 20 At its grandest scale, players explore the world of Final Fantasy VII on a 3D world map. The world map contains representations of areas for the player to enter, including towns, environments, and ruins. Natural barriers—such as mountains, deserts, and bodies of water—block access by foot to some areas; as the story progresses, the player receives vehicles that help traverse these obstacles, thus opening more of the game world for exploration.: 44 Chocobos can be found in certain spots on the map and, if caught, can be ridden to areas inaccessible on foot or by vehicle.: 46 In field mode, the player navigates fully scaled versions of the areas represented on the world map. VII marks the first time in the series that the mode is represented in a three-dimensional space. In this mode, the player can explore the environment, talk with characters, advance the story, and initiate event games.: 15 Event games are short minigames that use special control functions and are often tied to the story.: 18 While in field mode, the player can also make use of shops and inns. Shops allow the player to buy and sell items that can aid Cloud and his party, such as weapons, armor, and accessories. Inns restore the hit points and mana points of characters who rest at them and cure abnormalities contracted during battles.: 17
At random intervals on the world map and in field mode, and at specific moments in the story, the game will enter the battle screen, which places the player characters on one side and the enemies on the other. It employs an "Active Time Battle" (ATB) system, in which the characters exchange moves until one side is defeated. The damage or healing dealt by either side is quantified on screen. Characters have several statistics that determine their effectiveness in battle; for example, hit points determine how much damage they can take, and magic determines how much damage they can inflict with spells. Each character on the screen has a time gauge; when a character's gauge is full, the player can input a command for them to perform. The commands change as the game progresses, and are dependent on the characters in the player's party and on the abilities, spells, etc., the player has added to their equipment. Commands include attacking with a weapon, casting magic, using items, summoning monsters, and other actions that either damage the enemy or aid the player characters. Final Fantasy VII also features powerful, character-specific commands called Limit Breaks, which can be used only after a special gauge is charged by taking enemy attacks. After being attacked, characters can be afflicted by one or more abnormal "statuses", such as poison or paralysis. These statuses and their adverse effects can be removed by special items or abilities or by resting at an inn. Once all enemies are defeated, the battle ends and the player is rewarded with money, items, and experience points. If the player is defeated, it is game over and the game must be loaded from the last save point.: 20–27
When not in battle, the player can use the menu screen, where they can review each character's status and statistics, use items and abilities, change equipment, save the game when on the world map or at a save point, and manage orbs called Materia. Materia are the main method of customizing characters in Final Fantasy VII, and can be added to equipment to provide characters with new magic spells, monsters to summon, commands, statistical upgrades, and other benefits. Materia level up through their own experience point system and can be combined to create different effects.: 30–42
Synopsis
Setting and characters
Final Fantasy VII takes place on a world referred to in-game as the "Planet" and retroactively named "Gaia". The planet's lifeforce, called the Lifestream, is a flow of spiritual energy that gives life to everything on the Planet; its processed form is known as "Mako". On a societal and technological level, the game has been defined as an industrial or post-industrial science fiction setting. During Final Fantasy VII, the Shinra Electric Power Company, a world-dominating megacorporation headquartered in the city of Midgar, is draining the Planet's Lifestream for energy, weakening the Planet and threatening its existence and all life. Significant factions within the game include AVALANCHE, an eco-terrorist group seeking Shinra's downfall so the Planet can recover; the Turks, a covert branch of Shinra's security forces; SOLDIER, an elite Shinra fighting force created by enhancing humans with Mako; and the Cetra, a near-extinct human tribe which maintains a strong connection to the Planet and the Lifestream.
The main protagonist is Cloud Strife, an aloof mercenary who claims to be a former 1st Class SOLDIER. Early on, he works with two members of AVALANCHE: Barret Wallace, its brazen but fatherly leader; and Tifa Lockhart, a shy yet nurturing martial artist and his childhood friend. During their journey, they meet Aerith Gainsborough, a carefree flower merchant and one of the last surviving Cetra; Red XIII, an intelligent feline from a tribe that protects the planet; Cait Sith, a fortune-telling robotic cat controlled by repentant Shinra staff member Reeve; and Cid Highwind, a pilot whose dream of being the first human in outer space was unrealized. The group can also recruit Yuffie Kisaragi, a young ninja and skilled Materia thief; and Vincent Valentine, a former Turk and victim of Shinra's experiments. The game's main antagonists are Rufus Shinra, the son of President Shinra and the later leader of the Shinra Corporation; Sephiroth, a former SOLDIER who reappears several years after being presumed dead; and Jenova, a hostile extraterrestrial life-form who the Cetra imprisoned 2,000 years ago and who Sephiroth was created from. A key character in Cloud's backstory is Zack Fair, a member of SOLDIER and Aerith's first love.
Plot
AVALANCHE destroys a Shinra Mako reactor in Midgar, but an attack on another reactor goes wrong and Cloud falls into the city's slums. There, he meets Aerith and protects her from Shinra. Meanwhile, Shinra finds AVALANCHE's base of operations and intentionally collapses part of the upper city level in retaliation for the Mako reactor being destroyed, killing many AVALANCHE members and innocent bystanders as collateral damage. Aerith is also captured since Shinra believes that as a Cetra, she can potentially reveal the "Promised Land", which they believe is overflowing with Lifestream energy they can exploit. Cloud, Barret, and Tifa rescue Aerith, and during their escape from Midgar, discover that Sephiroth murdered President Shinra despite being presumed dead five years earlier. The party pursues Sephiroth across the Planet, with now-President Rufus on their trail; they are soon joined by the rest of the playable characters.
At a Cetra temple, Sephiroth reveals he intends to use a powerful magical artifact known as "Black Materia" to cast the spell "Meteor", which would have a devastating impact on the Planet. Sephiroth claims he will absorb the Lifestream as it attempts to heal the wound caused by Meteor, and become a god-like being in the process. The party retrieves the Black Materia, but Sephiroth manipulates Cloud into surrendering it. Aerith departs alone to stop Sephiroth and follows him to an abandoned Cetra city. While Aerith prays to the Planet for help, Sephiroth attempts to force Cloud to kill her; after this fails, he kills her himself before fleeing, leaving the White Materia behind. The party then learns of Jenova, a hostile alien lifeform who landed on the Planet two thousand years prior to the game's events. Upon arrival on the Planet, Jenova began infecting the Cetra with a virus, and they were nearly wiped out. However, a small group managed to seal away Jenova in a tomb, which Shinra later unearthed. At Nibelheim, Jenova's cells were used in experiments which led to the creation of Sephiroth. Five years before the game's events, Sephiroth and Cloud visited Nibelheim, where Sephiroth learned of his origins and was driven insane as a result. He murdered the townspeople, and then vanished after Cloud confronted him.
At the Northern Crater, the party learns that the "Sephiroths" they have encountered are Jenova clones who the insane Shinra scientist Hojo created. Cloud confronts the real Sephiroth as he is killing his clones to reunite Jenova's cells, but is again manipulated into giving him the Black Materia. Sephiroth then taunts Cloud by showing another SOLDIER in his place in his memories of Nibelheim, suggesting that Cloud is a failed clone of Sephiroth. Sephiroth summons Meteor and seals the Crater as Cloud falls into the Lifestream and Rufus captures the party.
After escaping Shinra, the party discovers Cloud at an island hospital in a catatonic state from Mako poisoning, and Tifa decides to stay as his caretaker. When a planetary defense force called Weapon attacks the island, the two fall into the Lifestream, where Tifa helps Cloud reconstruct his memories. Cloud was a mere infantryman who was never accepted into SOLDIER; the SOLDIER in his memories was his friend Zack. At Nibelheim, Cloud ambushed and wounded Sephiroth after the latter's mental breakdown, but Jenova preserved Sephiroth's life. Hojo experimented on Cloud and Zack for four years, injecting them with Jenova's cells and Mako. They managed to escape, but Zack was killed in the process. The trauma of these events triggered an identity crisis in Cloud, and he constructed a false persona based around Zack's stories and his own fantasies. Cloud accepts his past and reunites with the party, who learn that Aerith's prayer to the Planet had been successful: the Planet had attempted to summon Holy to prevent Meteor's impact, but Sephiroth prevented it from having any effect.
Shinra fails to destroy Meteor, but manages to defeat a Weapon and puncture the Northern Crater, seemingly killing Rufus and several other personnel. After killing Hojo, who is revealed to be Sephiroth's biological father, the party descends to the Planet's core through the opening in the Northern Crater and defeats both Jenova and Sephiroth. The party escapes and Holy is summoned once again, destroying Meteor with help from the Lifestream. Five hundred years later, Red XIII is seen with two cubs looking out over the ruins of Midgar, which are now covered in greenery, showing that the planet has healed.
Development
Initial concept talks for Final Fantasy VII began in 1994 at Square studio, following the completion of Final Fantasy VI. As with the previous installment, series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi reduced his role to producer and granted others a more active role in development: these included Yoshinori Kitase, one of the directors of FFVI. The next installment was planned as a 2D game for Nintendo's Super Nintendo Entertainment System (Super NES). After creating an early 2D prototype of it, the team postponed development to help finish Chrono Trigger. Once Chrono Trigger was completed, the team resumed discussions for Final Fantasy VII in 1995.
The team discussed continuing the 2D strategy, which would have been the safe and immediate path just prior to the imminent industry shift toward 3D gaming; such a change would require radical new development models. The team decided to take the riskier option and make a 3D game on new generation hardware but had yet to choose between the cartridge-based Nintendo 64 or the CD-ROM-based PlayStation from Sony Computer Entertainment. The team also considered the Sega Saturn console and Microsoft Windows. Their decision was influenced by two factors: a highly successful tech demo based on Final Fantasy VI using the new Softimage 3D software, and the escalating price of cartridge-based games, which was limiting Square's audience. Tests were made for a Nintendo 64 version, which would use the planned 64DD peripheral despite the lack of 64DD development kits and the prototype device's changing hardware specifications. This version was discarded during early testing, as the 2000 polygons needed to render the Behemoth monster placed excessive strain on the Nintendo 64 hardware, causing a low frame rate. It would have required an estimated thirty 64DD discs to run Final Fantasy VII properly with the data compression methods of the day. Faced with both technical and economic issues on Nintendo's current hardware, and impressed by the increased storage capacity of CD-ROM when compared to the Nintendo 64 cartridge, Square shifted development of Final Fantasy VII, and all other planned projects, onto the PlayStation.
In contrast to the visuals and audio, the overall gameplay system remained mostly unchanged from Final Fantasy V and VI, but with an emphasis on player control. The initial decision was for battles to feature shifting camera angles. Battle arenas had a lower polygon count than field areas, which made creating distinctive features more difficult. The summon sequences benefited strongly from the switch to the cinematic style, as the team had struggled to portray their scale using 2D graphics. In his role as producer, Sakaguchi placed much of his effort into developing the battle system. He proposed the Materia system as a way to provide more character customization than previous Final Fantasy games: battles no longer revolved around characters with innate skills and roles in battle, as Materia could be reconfigured between battles. Artist Tetsuya Nomura also contributed to the gameplay; he designed the Limit Break system as an evolution of the Desperation Attacks used in Final Fantasy VI. The Limit Breaks served a purpose in gameplay while also evoking each character's personality in battle.
Square retained the passion-based game development approach from their earlier projects, but now had the resources and ambition to create the game they wanted. This was because they had extensive capital from their earlier commercial successes, which meant they could focus on quality and scale rather than obsessing over and working around their budget. Final Fantasy VII was at the time one of the most expensive video game projects ever, costing an estimated US$40 million, which adjusted for inflation came to $61 million in 2017. Development of the final version took a staff of between 100 and 150 people just over a year to complete. As video game development teams were usually only 20 people, the game had what was described as the largest development team of any game up to that point. The development team was split between both Square's Japanese offices and its new American office in Los Angeles; the American team worked primarily on city backgrounds.
Art design
The game's art director was Yusuke Naora, who had previously worked as a designer for Final Fantasy VI. With the switch into 3D, Naora realized that he needed to relearn drawing, as 3D visuals require a very different approach than 2D. With the massive scale and scope of the project, Naora was granted a team devoted entirely to the game's visual design. The department's duties included illustration, modeling of 3D characters, texturing, the creation of environments, visual effects, and animation. The Shinra logo, which incorporated a kanji symbol, was drawn by Naora personally. Promotional artwork, in addition to the logo artwork, was created by Yoshitaka Amano, an artist whose association with the series went back to its inception. While he had taken a prominent role in earlier entries, Amano was unable to do so for Final Fantasy VII, due to commitments at overseas exhibitions. His logo artwork was based on Meteor: when he saw images of Meteor, he was not sure how to turn it into suitable artwork. In the end, he created multiple variations of the image and asked staff to choose which they preferred. The green coloring represents the predominant lighting in Midgar and the color of the Lifestream, while the blue reflected the ecological themes present in the story. Its coloring directly influenced the general coloring of the game's environments.
Another prominent artist was Nomura. Having impressed Sakaguchi with his proposed ideas, which were handwritten and illustrated rather than simply typed on a PC, Nomura was brought on as main character designer. Nomura stated that when he was brought on, the main scenario had not been completed, but he "went along like, 'I guess first off you need a hero and a heroine', and from there drew the designs while thinking up details about the characters. After [he'd] done the hero and heroine, [he] carried on drawing by thinking what kind of characters would be interesting to have. When [he] handed over the designs [he'd] tell people the character details [he'd] thought up, or write them down on a separate sheet of paper". Something that could not be carried over from earlier titles was the chibi sprite art, as that would not fit with the new graphical direction. Naora, in his role as an assistant character designer and art director, helped adjust each character's appearance so the actions they performed were believable. When designing Cloud and Sephiroth, Nomura was influenced by his view of their rivalry mirroring the legendary animosity between Miyamoto Musashi and Sasaki Kojirō, with Cloud and Sephiroth being Musashi and Kojirō respectively. Sephiroth's look was defined as "kakkoii", a Japanese term combining good looks with coolness. Several of Nomura's designs evolved substantially during development. Cloud's original design of slicked-back black hair with no spikes was intended to save polygons and contrast with Sephiroth's long, flowing silver hair. However, Nomura feared that such masculinity could prove unpopular with fans, so he redesigned Cloud to feature a shock of spiky, bright blond hair. Vincent's occupation changed from researcher to detective to chemist, and finally to a former Turk with a tragic past.
Scenario
Sakaguchi was responsible for writing the initial plot, which was quite different from the final version. In this draft for the planned SNES version, the game's setting was envisioned as New York City in 1999. Similar to the final story, the main characters were part of an organization trying to destroy Mako reactors, but they were pursued by a hot-blooded detective named Joe. The main characters would eventually blow up the city. An early version of the Lifestream concept was present at this stage. According to Sakaguchi, his mother had died while Final Fantasy III was being developed, and choosing life as a theme helped him cope with her passing in a rational and analytical manner. Square eventually used the New York setting in Parasite Eve (1998). While the planned concept was dropped, Final Fantasy VII still marked a drastic shift in setting from previous entries, dropping the Medieval fantasy elements in favor of a world that was "ambiguously futuristic".
When Kitase was put in charge of Final Fantasy VII, he and Nomura reworked the entire initial plot. Scenario writer Kazushige Nojima joined the team after finishing work on Bahamut Lagoon. While Final Fantasy VI featured an ensemble cast of numerous playable characters that were equally important, the team soon decided to develop a central protagonist for FFVII. The pursuit of Sephiroth that formed most of the main narrative was suggested by Nomura, as nothing similar had been done in the series before. Kitase and Nojima conceived AVALANCHE and Shinra as opposing organizations and created Cloud's backstory as well as his relationship to Sephiroth. Among Nojima's biggest contributions to the plot were Cloud's memories and split personality; this included the eventual conclusion involving his newly created character of Zack. The crew helped Kitase adjust the specifics of Sakaguchi's original Lifestream concept.
Regarding the overall theme of the game, Sakaguchi said it was "not enough to make 'life' the theme, you need to depict living and dying. In any event, you need to portray death". Consequently, Nomura proposed killing off the heroine. Aerith had been the only heroine, but the death of a female protagonist would necessitate a second; this led to the creation of Tifa. The developers decided to kill Aerith, as her death would be the most devastating and consequential. Kitase wanted to depict it as very sudden and unexpected, leaving "not a dramatic feeling but great emptiness", "feelings of reality and not Hollywood". The script for the scene was written by Nojima. Kitase and Nojima then planned that most of the main cast would die shortly before the final battle; Nomura vetoed the idea because he felt it would undermine the impact of Aerith's death. Several character relations and statuses underwent changes during development. Aerith was to be Sephiroth's sister, which influenced the design of her hair. The team then made Sephiroth a previous love interest of hers to deepen her backstory, but later swapped him with Zack. Vincent and Yuffie were to be part of the main narrative, but due to time constraints, they were nearly cut and eventually relegated to being optional characters.
Nojima was charged with writing the scenario and unifying the team's ideas into a cohesive narrative, as Kitase was impressed with his earlier work on the mystery-like Heracles no Eikō III: Kamigami no Chinmoku, an entry in the Glory of Heracles series. To make the characters more realistic, Nojima wrote scenes in which they would occasionally argue and raise objections: while this inevitably slowed down the pace of the story, it added depth to the characters. The graphical improvements allowed even relatively bland lines of dialogue to be enhanced with reactions and poses from the 3D character models. Voice acting would have led to significant load times, so it was omitted. Masato Kato wrote several late-game scenes, including the Lifestream sequence and Cloud and Tifa's conversation before the final battle. Initially unaffiliated with the project, Kato was called on to help flesh out less important story scenes. He wrote his scenes to his own tastes without outside consultation, something he later regretted.
Graphics
With the shift from the SNES to the next generation consoles, Final Fantasy VII became the first project in the series to use 3D computer graphics. Aside from the story, Final Fantasy VI had many details undecided when development began; most design elements were hashed out along the way. In contrast, with Final Fantasy VII, the developers knew from the outset it was going to be "a real 3D game", so from the earliest planning stage, detailed designs were in existence. The script was also finalized, and the image for the graphics had been fleshed out. This meant that when actual development work began, storyboards for the game were already in place. The shift from cartridge ROM to CD-ROM posed some problems: according to lead programmer Ken Narita, the CD-ROM had a slower access speed, delaying some actions during the game, so the team needed to overcome this issue. Certain tricks were used to conceal load times, such as offering animations to keep players from getting bored. When it was decided to use 3D graphics, there was a discussion among the staff whether to use sprite-based characters on 3D backgrounds or fully rendered polygonal models. While sprites proved more popular with the staff, the polygon models were chosen as they could better express emotion. This decision was influenced by the team's exposure to the 3D character models used in Alone in the Dark. Sakaguchi decided to use deformed models for field navigation and real-time event scenes, for better expression of emotion, while realistically proportioned models would be used in battles. The team purchased Silicon Graphics Onyx supercomputers and related workstations, and accompanying software including Softimage 3D, PowerAnimator, and N-World for an estimated total of $21 million. Many team members had never seen the technology before.
The transition from 2D graphics to 3D environments overlaid on pre-rendered backgrounds was accompanied by a focus on a more realistic presentation. In previous entries, the sizes for characters and environments were fixed, and the player saw things from a scrolling perspective. This changed with Final Fantasy VII; environments shifted with camera angles, and character model sizes shifted depending on both their place in the environment and their distance from the camera, giving a sense of scale. The choice of this highly cinematic style of storytelling, contrasting directly with Square's previous games, was attributed to Kitase, who was a fan of films and had an interest in the parallels between film and video game narrative. Character movement during in-game events was done by the character designers in the planning group. While designers normally cooperate with a motion specialist for such animations, the designers taught themselves motion work, resulting in each character's movements differing depending on their creators—some designers liked exaggerated movements, while others went for subtlety. Much of the time was spent on each character's day-to-day, routine animations. Motion specialists were brought in for the game's battle animations. The first characters the team worked with were Cloud and Barret. Some of the real-time effects, such as an explosion near the opening, were hand-drawn rather than computer-animated.
The main creative force behind the overall 3D presentation was Kazuyuki Hashimoto, the general supervisor for these sequences. Being experienced in the new technology the team had brought on board, he accepted the post at Square as the team aligned with his own creative spirit. One of the major events in development was when the real-time graphics were synchronized to computer-generated full motion video (FMV) cutscenes for some story sequences, notably an early sequence where a real-time model of Cloud jumps onto an FMV-rendered moving train. The backgrounds were created by overlaying two 2D graphic layers and changing the motion speed of each to simulate depth perception. While this was not a new technique, the increased power of the PlayStation enabled a more elaborate version of this effect. The biggest issue with the 3D graphics was the large memory storage gap between the development hardware and the console: while the early 3D tech demo had been developed on a machine with over 400 megabytes of total memory, the PlayStation only had two megabytes of system memory and 500 kilobytes for texture memory. The team needed to figure out how to shrink the amount of data while preserving the desired effects. This was aided with reluctant help from Sony, who had hoped to keep Square's direct involvement limited to a standard API package, but they eventually relented and allowed the team direct access to the hardware specifications.
Final Fantasy VII features two types of cutscenes: real-time cutscenes featuring polygon models on pre-rendered backgrounds, and FMV cutscenes. The game's computer-generated imagery (CGI) FMVs were produced by Visual Works, a then-new subsidiary of Square that specialized in computer graphics and FMVs creation. Visual Works had created the initial movie concept for a 3D game project. The FMVs were created by an international team, covering both Japan and North America and involving talent from the gaming and film industry; Western contributors included artists and staff who had worked on the Star Wars film series, Jurassic Park, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and True Lies. The team tried to create additional optional CGI content which would bring optional characters Vincent and Yuffie into the ending. As this would have further increased the number of discs the game needed, the idea was discarded. Kazuyuki Ikumori, a future key figure at Visual Works, helped with the creation of the CGI cutscenes, in addition to general background design. The CGI FMV sequences total around 40 minutes of footage, something only possible with the PlayStation's extra memory space and graphical power. This innovation brought with it the added difficulty of ensuring that the inferiority of the in-game graphics in comparison to the FMV sequences was not too obvious. Kitase has described the process of making the in-game environments as detailed as possible to be "a daunting task".
Music
The musical score of Final Fantasy VII was composed, arranged, and produced by Nobuo Uematsu, who had served as the sole composer for the six previous Final Fantasy games. Originally, Uematsu had planned to use CD quality music with vocal performances to take advantage of the console's audio capabilities but found that it resulted in the game having much longer loading times for each area. Uematsu then decided that the higher-quality audio was not worth the trade-off with performance, and opted instead to use MIDI-like sounds produced by the console's internal sound sequencer, similar to how his soundtracks for the previous games in the series on the Super NES were implemented. While the Super NES only had eight sound channels to work with, the PlayStation had twenty-four. Eight were reserved for sound effects, leaving sixteen available for the music. Uematsu's approach to composing the game's music was to treat it like a film soundtrack and compose music that reflected the mood of the scenes, rather than trying to make strong melodies to "define the game", as he felt that approach would come across too strong when placed alongside the game's new 3D visuals. As an example, he composed the track intended for the scene in the game where Aerith Gainsborough is killed to be "sad but beautiful", rather than more overtly emotional, creating what he felt was a more understated feeling. Uematsu additionally said that the soundtrack had a feel of "realism", which also prevented him from using "exorbitant, crazy music".
The first piece that Uematsu composed for the game was the opening theme; game director Yoshinori Kitase showed him the opening cinematic and asked him to begin the project there. The track was well received in the company, which gave Uematsu "a sense that it was going to be a really good project". Final Fantasy VII was the first game in the series to include a track with high-quality digitized vocals, "One-Winged Angel", which accompanies a section of the final battle of the game. The track has been called Uematsu's "most recognizable contribution" to the music of the Final Fantasy series, which Uematsu agrees with. Inspired by The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky to make a more "classical" track, and by rock and roll music from the late 1960s and early 1970s to make an orchestral track with a "destructive impact", he spent two weeks composing short unconnected musical phrases, and then arranged them together into "One-Winged Angel", an approach he had never used before.
Music from the game has been released in several albums. Square released the main soundtrack album, Final Fantasy VII Original Soundtrack, on four Compact Discs through its DigiCube subsidiary in 1997. A limited edition release was also produced, containing illustrated liner notes. The regular edition of the album reached third on the Japan Oricon charts, while the limited edition reached #19. Overall, the album had sold nearly 150,000 copies by January 2010. A single-disc album of selected tracks from the original soundtrack, along with three arranged pieces, titled Final Fantasy VII Reunion Tracks, was also released by DigiCube in 1997, reaching #20 on the Japan Oricon charts. A third album, Piano Collections Final Fantasy VII, was released by DigiCube in 2003, and contains one disc of piano arrangements of tracks from the game. It was arranged by Shirō Hamaguchi and performed by Seiji Honda, and reached #228 on the Oricon charts.
Release
Final Fantasy VII was announced in February 1996. Square president and chief executive officer Tomoyuki Takechi were fairly confident about Japanese players making the game a commercial success despite it being on a new platform. A playable demo was included on a disc giveaway at the 1996 Tokyo Game Show, dubbed Square's Preview Extra: Final Fantasy VII & Siggraph '95 Works. The disc also included the early test footage Square created using characters from Final Fantasy VI. The initial release date was at some point in 1996, but to properly realize their vision, Square postponed the release date almost a full year. Final Fantasy VII was released on January 31, 1997. It was published in Japan by Square. A re-release of the game based on its Western version, titled Final Fantasy VII International, was released on October 2 the same year. This improved International version would kickstart the trend for Square to create an updated version for the Japanese release, based on the enhanced Western versions. The International version was re-released as a physical disc as part of the Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary Ultimate Box Japanese package on December 18, 2012.
While its success in Japan had been taken for granted by Square executives, North America and Europe were another matter, as up to that time the Japanese role-playing genre was still a niche market in Western territories. Sony, due to the PlayStation's struggles against Nintendo and Sega's home consoles, lobbied for the publishing rights in North America and Europe following Final Fantasy VII's transfer to PlayStation—to further persuade Square, Sony offered a lucrative royalties deal with profits potentially equaling those Square would get by self-publishing the game. Square accepted Sony's offer as Square itself lacked Western publishing experience. Square was uncertain about the game's success, as other JRPGs including Final Fantasy VI had met with poor sales outside Japan. To help with promoting the title overseas, Square dissolved their original Washington offices and hired new staff for fresh offices in Costa Mesa. It was first exhibited to the Western public at Electronic Entertainment Expo 1996 (E3).
To promote the game overseas, Square and Sony launched a widespread three-month advertising campaign in August 1997. Beginning with a television commercial that ran alongside popular shows such as Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons by TBWA\Chiat\Day, the campaign included numerous articles in both gaming and general interest magazines, advertisements in comics from publishers such as DC Comics and Marvel Comics, a special collaboration with Pepsi, media events, sample discs, and merchandise. According to estimations by Takechi, the total worldwide marketing budget came to US$40 million; $10 million had been spent in Japan, $10 million in Europe, and $20 million in North America. Unlike its predecessors, Final Fantasy VII did not have its numeral adjusted to account for the lack of a Western release for Final Fantasy II, III, and V — while only the fourth Final Fantasy released outside Japan, its Japanese title was retained. It was released in North America on September 7, 1997. The game was released in Europe on November 17, becoming the first Final Fantasy game to be released in Europe. The Western version included additional elements and alterations, such as streamlining of the menu and Materia system, reducing the health of enemies, new visual cues to help with navigation across the world map, and additional cutscenes relating to Cloud's past.
PC version
A version for PC was developed by Square's Costa Mesa offices. Square invested in a PC version to reach as wide a player base as possible; many Western consumers did not own a PlayStation, and Square's deal with Sony did not prohibit such a port. Having never released a title for PC, Square decided to treat the port as a sales experiment. The port was handled by a team of 15 to 20 people, mostly from Costa Mesa but with help from Tokyo. Square did not begin the port until the console version was finished. The team needed to rewrite an estimated 80% of the game's code, due to the need to unify what had been a custom build for a console written by multiple staff members. Consequently, programmers faced problems such as having to unify the original PlayStation version's five different game engines, leading to delays. The PC version came with a license for Yamaha Corporation's software synthesizer S-YXG70, allowing high-quality sequenced music despite varying sound hardware setups on different user computers. The conversion of the nearly 100 original musical pieces to XG format files was done by Yamaha.
To maximize their chances of success, Square searched for a Western company to assist with releasing the PC version. Eidos Interactive, whose release of Tomb Raider had turned them into a publishing giant, agreed to market and publish the port. The port was announced in December 1997, along with Eidos' exclusivity deal for North America and Europe at the time, though the port was rumored to happen as early as December 1996, prior to the PlayStation version's release. To help the product stand out in stores, Eidos chose a trapezoidal shape for the cover and box. They agreed on a contract price of $1.8 million, making initial sales forecasts of 100,000 units based on that outlay. The PC version was released in North America and Europe on June 25, 1998; the port was not released in Japan. Within one month, sales of the port exceeded the initial forecasts. The PC version would end up providing the source code for subsequent ports.
Localization
Localization of Final Fantasy VII was handled internally by Square. The English localization, led by Seth Luisi, was completed by a team of about fifty people and faced a variety of problems. According to Luisi, the biggest hurdle was making "the direct Japanese-to-English text translation read correctly in English. The sentence structure and grammar rules for the Japanese language is very different from English", making it difficult for the translation to read like native English without distorting the meaning. Michael Basket was the sole translator for the project, though he received the help of native Japanese speakers from the Tokyo office. The localization was taxing for the team due to their inexperience, lack of professional editors, and poor communication between the North American and Japanese offices. A result of this disconnect was the original localization of Aerith's name—which was intended as a conflation of "air" and "earth"—as "Aeris" due to a lack of communication between localization staff and the QA team.
The team also faced several technical issues due to programming practices which took little account of subsequent localization, such as dealing with a fixed-width font and having to insert kanji through language input keys to add special characters (for example, vowels with diacritics) to keep the code working. Consequently, the text was still read as Japanese by the word processor; the computer's spellcheck could not be used, and mistakes had to be caught manually. The code used obscure kanji to refer to main character's names, which made unintuitive for the translators to identify characters. Translated text usually takes up more space than the Japanese text, though still had to fit to the screen appropriately without overusing page breaks (for example, item names, which are written in kanji in Japanese language, could overflow message windows in translated text); to mitigate this problem, a proportional typeface was implemented into the source code to fit more text into the screen. Swear words were used frequently in the localization to help convey the original Japanese meaning, though most profanities were censored in a manner described by Square employee Richard Honeywood as the "old comic book '@#$%!'-type replacement". The European release was described as being in a worse condition, as the translations into multiple European languages were outsourced by Sony to another company, further hindering communication. For the PC port, Square attempted to fix translation and grammar mistakes for the North American and European versions but did not have the time and budget to retranslate all the text. According to Honeywood, the success of Final Fantasy VII in the West encouraged Square to focus more on localization quality; on future games, Square hired additional translators and editors, while also streamlining communication between the development and localization teams.
Some months prior to the game's North American release, Sony publicly stated that it was considering cutting the scene at the Honey Bee Inn due to the salacious content, prompting numerous online petitions and letters of protest from RPG fans. Square subsequently stated that it would never allow Sony to localize the game in any way. In addition to translating the text, the North American localization team made tweaks to the gameplay, including reducing the enemy encounter rate, simplifying the Materia menu, and adding new boss fights.
Later releases
The International version of Final Fantasy VII was released on PlayStation Network (PSN) as a PSOne Classic in Japan on April 10, 2009. This version was compatible with both PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable with support for PlayStation Vita and PlayStation TV coming later. Final Fantasy VII was later released as a PSOne Classic in North America, Europe, and Australia on June 2. The PC version was updated by DotEmu for use on modern operating systems and released via Square Enix's North American and European online stores on August 14, 2012. It included high-resolution support, cloud saves, achievements and a character booster. It would later be released via Steam on July 4, 2013, replacing the version available on Square Enix's North American and European online stores. The PC version would be released in Japan for the first time on May 16, 2013, exclusively via Square Enix's Japanese online store with the International version title. It has features unavailable in the western version including high-speed mode, no random encounters mode, and a max stats command. A release for iOS, based on the PC version and adjusted for mobile devices by D4 Enterprise, was released on August 19, 2015, with an auto-save feature. The PC version was released for PlayStation 4 on December 5, 2015. DotEmu developed the PS4 version. The game was also released for Android on July 7, 2016, for the PlayStation Classic on December 3, 2018, and for the Nintendo Switch and Xbox One worldwide on March 26, 2019.
Reception and sales
Within three days of its release in Japan, Final Fantasy VII sold over two million copies. This popularity inspired thousands of retailers in North America to break street dates in September to meet public demand for the title. In the game's debut weekend in North America, it sold 330,000 copies, and had reached sales of 500,000 copies in less than three weeks. The momentum established in the game's opening weeks continued for several months; Sony announced the game had sold one million copies in North America by early December, prompting business analyst Edward Williams from Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co. to comment that "Sony redefined the role-playing game (RPG) category and expanded the conventional audience with the launch of Final Fantasy VII". According to Weekly Famitsu, Final Fantasy VII sold 3.27 million units in Japan by the end of 1997. By the end of 2005, the PlayStation version had sold 9.8 million copies including 4 million sales in Japan, making it the highest-selling game in the Final Fantasy series. By the end of 2006, The Best, the bargain reissue of the game, had sold over 158,000 copies in Japan. By May 2010, it had sold over 10 million copies worldwide, making it the most popular title in the series in terms of units sold. The original PC version surpassed Eidos' expectations: while initially forecast to sell 100,000 units, it quickly exceeded sales of one million units, garnering royalties of over $2 million for Square. By August 2015, the PlayStation and PC versions had sold over 11 million units worldwide. Steam Spy estimated the game to have sold over 1.2 million downloads on Steam as of April 2018, with a later Steam leak estimating it had 1.14 million players on the platform as of July 2018. As of June 2020, the game has sold more than 13.3 million units worldwide. As of September 2023, the original version of the game has sold over 14.4 million units worldwide.
The game received widespread acclaim from critics upon release. It was referred to by GameFan as "quite possibly the greatest game ever made", a quote selected for the back cover of the game's jewel case. GameSpot commented that "never before have technology, playability, and narrative combined as well as in Final Fantasy VII", expressing particular favor toward the game's graphics, audio, and story. The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly unanimously gave it a 9.5 out of 10 and their "Game of the Month" award, lauding its rendered backgrounds, use of FMV, battles, and especially the story line, though they expressed disappointment that the ending didn't resolve all of the loose ends. They also considered the North American localization a dramatic improvement over the original Japanese version. GamePro gave it a perfect 5.0 out of 5 in all four categories (graphics, sound, control, and fun factor), calling the storytelling "dramatic, sentimental, and touching in a way that draws you into the characters", who "come alive thanks to sweetly subtle body movements". Both GamePro and Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine (OPM) said the ATB system gives battles a tension and urgency not usually seen in RPGs, and OPM called the summon animations "absolutely awe-inspiring". IGN's Jay Boor insisted the game's graphics were "light years beyond anything ever seen on the PlayStation", and regarded its battle system as its strongest point.
Computer and Video Games's Alex C praised the dramatic story and well-developed characters. In addition to calling the graphics "bar none the best the PlayStation has ever seen", Next Generation said of the story that "while FFVII may take a bit to get going, as in every entry in the series, moments of high melodrama are blended with scenes of sheer poetry and vision". Edge noted that Final Fantasy VII had come close to being an interactive movie in playable form, praising its combination of a complex story that went against Western graphic adventures trends and "excellently orchestrated chip music". RPGamer praised the game's soundtrack, both in variety and sheer volume, stating that "Uematsu has done his work exceptionally well" and saying that it was potentially his best work. Final Fantasy VII has received some negative criticism. OPM and GameSpot questioned the game's linear progression. OPM considered the game's translation "a bit muddy". Similarly, RPGamer cited its translation as "packed with typos and other errors which further obscure what is already a very confusing plot". GamePro also considered the Japanese-to-English translation a significant weakness in the game, and IGN regarded the ability to use only three characters at a time as "the game's only shortcoming".
Reviewers gave similar praise to the PC version but criticized its various technical faults. Computer Games Magazine said that no other recent game had the same "tendency to fail to work in any capacity on multiple [computers]". Computer Gaming World complained that the music quality suffered on PC sound cards, and Next Generation found the game's pre-rendered backgrounds significantly less impressive than those of the PlayStation version. However, the latter magazine found the higher-resolution battle visuals "absolutely stunning", and Computer Games Magazine said that they showed off the potential graphical power of PCs. All three magazines concluded by praising the game despite its technical flaws, and PC Gamer summarized that, while "Square apparently did only what was required to get its PlayStation game running under Windows", Final Fantasy VII is "still a winner on the PC".
Awards
Final Fantasy VII was given numerous Game of the Year awards in 1997. At the second CESA Awards, it won the Grand Prize, Scenario Award and Sound Award. During the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences' inaugural Interactive Achievement Awards, Final Fantasy VII won in the categories of "Console Adventure Game of the Year" and "Console Role-Playing Game of the Year"; it also received nominations for "Interactive Title of the Year", "Console Game of the Year", "Outstanding Achievement in Art/Graphics", and "Outstanding Achievement in Interactive Design". In the Origins Awards, it won in the category "Best Roleplaying Computer Game of 1997". Final Fantasy VII was awarded Game of the Year by magazines including Game Informer, GamePro, and Hyper. It was also awarded the "Readers' Choice All Systems Game of the Year", "Readers' Choice PlayStation Game of the Year" and "Readers' Choice Role-Playing Game of the Year" by Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM), which gave it Editors' Choice Awards for "Role-Playing Game of the Year" and "Best Graphics" (plus a runner-up slot for "Game of the Year"), and also gave it awards for "Hottest Video Game Babe" (for Tifa Lockhart), "Most Hype for a Game", "Best Ending", and "Best Print Ad".
Since 1997, it has been selected by many game magazines as one of the top video games of all time, listed as 91st in EGM's 2001 "100 Best Games of All Time", and as fourth in Retro Gamer's "Top 100 Games" in 2004. In 2018, it was ranked 99th in IGN's "Top 100 Games of All Time" and as third in PALGN's "The Greatest 100 Games Ever". Final Fantasy VII was included in "The Greatest Games of All Time" list by GameSpot in 2006, and ranked as second in Empire's 2006 "100 Greatest Games of All Time", as third in Stuff's "100 Greatest Games" in 2008 and as 15th in Game Informer's 2009 "Top 200 Games of All Time" (down five places from its previous best games of all-time list). GameSpot placed it as the second most influential game ever made in 2002; in 2007, GamePro ranked it 14th on the list of the most important games of all time, and in 2009 it finished in the same place on their list of the most innovative games of all time. In 2012, Time named it one of their "All-Time 100 Video Games". In March 2018, Game Informer's "Readers Choice Top 300 Games of All Time", Final Fantasy VII ranked in seventh place. In March 2018, GamesRadar+ rated "The 25 best PS1 games of all time", Final Fantasy VII was ranked in 12th place.
It has also appeared in numerous other greatest game lists. In 2007, Dengeki PlayStation gave it the "Best Story", "Best RPG" and "Best Overall Game" retrospective awards for games on the original PlayStation. GamePro named it the best RPG title of all time in 2008, and featured it in their 2010 article "The 30 Best PSN Games". In 2012, GamesRadar also ranked it as the sixth saddest game ever. On the other hand, GameSpy ranked it seventh on their 2003 list of the most overrated games.
Final Fantasy VII has often placed at or near the top of many reader polls of all-time best games. It was voted the "Reader's Choice Game of the Century" in an IGN poll in 2000, and placed second in the "Top 100 Favorite Games of All Time" by Japanese magazine Famitsu in 2006 (it was also voted as ninth in Famitsu's 2011 poll of most tear-inducing games of all time). Users of GameFAQs voted it the "Best Game Ever" in 2004 and in 2005, and placed it second in 2009. In 2008, readers of Dengeki magazine voted it the best game ever made, as well as the ninth most tear-inducing game of all time.
Legacy
The game inspired an unofficial version for the NES by Chinese company Shenzhen Nanjing Technology. This port features the Final Fantasy VII game scaled back to 2D, with some of the side quests removed. The game's popularity and open-ended nature also led director Kitase and scenario writer Nojima to establish a plot-related connection between Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy X-2. The character Shinra from X-2 proposes the concept of extracting the life energy from within the planet Spira. Nojima has stated that Shinra and his proposal are a deliberate nod to the Shinra Company and that he envisioned the events of Final Fantasy X-2 as a prequel to those in VII. The advances in technology used to create the FMV sequences and computer graphics for Final Fantasy VII allowed Sakaguchi to begin production on the first Final Fantasy film, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. The game introduced a particular aesthetic to the series—fantasy suffused with modern-to-advanced technology—that was explored further in Final Fantasy VIII, The Spirits Within, and XV. Re-releases of Square games in Japan with bonus features would occur frequently after the release of Final Fantasy VII International. Later titles that would be re-released as international versions include Final Fantasy X and other follow-ups from the franchise, as well as the Kingdom Hearts series.
Final Fantasy VII is credited as having the largest impact of the Final Fantasy series, and with allowing console role-playing games to gain mass-market appeal outside of Japan. Aerith's death in the game has often been referred to as one of the most significant moments from any video game. In addition, Final Fantasy VII is also noted for its use of the unreliable narrator literary concept, drawing comparisons to films such as Fight Club (1999), The Sixth Sense (1999), American Psycho (2000) and Memento (2000). Patrick Holleman and Jeremy Parish argue that the game takes the unreliable narrator concept a step further, with its interactivity establishing a connection between the player and the protagonist Cloud, setting Final Fantasy VII apart from films as well as other video games. According to Holleman, "no RPG has ever deliberately betrayed the connection between protagonist and player like FFVII does". Harry Mackin writing for Paste called the game "a subversion that deconstructs and comments meaningfully on how we think about heroism, masculinity and identity in videogame storytelling". Ric Manning of The Courier-Journal noted elements of psychoanalysis in the game. The game is also noted for its cyberpunk themes; GamesRadar+ called it one of the best games of the genre, and Paste Magazine compared its cyberpunk city of Midgar to Akira and Blade Runner. According to Comic Book Resources, the game's climate change theme is more meaningful in 2019 than it was in 1997.
Several characters from Final Fantasy VII have made cameo appearances in other Square Enix titles, most notably the fighting game Ehrgeiz and the popular Final-Fantasy-to-Disney crossover series Kingdom Hearts. Additionally, fighting video game Dissidia Final Fantasy includes Final Fantasy VII characters such as Cloud and Sephiroth, and allows players to fight with characters from throughout the Final Fantasy series, and its follow-up, Dissidia 012, included Tifa as well. Cloud is also a playable character in Final Fantasy Tactics. In December 2015, Cloud was released as a downloadable content character for the Nintendo crossover fighting game Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, along with a stage based on Midgar. He returned in the 2018 sequel, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, with Sephiroth being added as downloadable content in December 2020.
Related media and merchandise
The world of Final Fantasy VII is explored further in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, a series of games, animated features, and short stories. The first title in the Compilation is the mobile game Before Crisis, a prequel focusing on the Turks' activities six years before the original game. The CGI film sequel Advent Children, set two years after the game, was the first title announced but the second to be released. Special DVD editions of the film included Last Order, an original video animation that recounts the destruction of Nibelheim. Dirge of Cerberus and its mobile phone counterpart, Dirge of Cerberus Lost Episode: Final Fantasy VII, are third-person shooters set one year after Advent Children. Dirge focuses on the backstory of Vincent Valentine, whose history was left mostly untold in Final Fantasy VII. The most recent title is the PlayStation Portable game Crisis Core, an action role-playing game that centers on Zack's past.
Releases not under the Compilation label include Maiden Who Travels the Planet, which follows Aerith's journey in the Lifestream after her death, taking place concurrently with the second half of the original game. In 1998, the Official Final Fantasy VII Strategy Guide was licensed by SquareSoft and published by Brady Games. Final Fantasy VII Snowboarding is a mobile port of the snowboard minigame featured in the original game, featuring different courses for the player to tackle. The game is downloadable on V Cast-compatible mobile phones and was first made available in 2005 in Japan and North America.
Final Fantasy VII G-Bike is a mobile game released for iOS and Android in December 2014, based on the motorbike minigame featured in the original game. In September 2007, Square Enix published Final Fantasy VII 10th Anniversary Ultimania. This book is an in-depth compilation of FFVII story-line and artwork. The Universal Studios Theme Park in Japan is developing a Final Fantasy VII themed virtual reality attraction.
Remakes
With the announcement and development of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, speculation spread that a remake of the original Final Fantasy VII would be released for the PlayStation 3. This conjecture was sparked by the release of a video featuring the opening sequence of FFVII recreated using the PlayStation 3's graphical capabilities at E3 2005. After a decade of speculation, a remake was announced at E3 2015. The game saw changes made to its story and combat system. The game is planned to be released over three installments, with the first part being released for the PlayStation 4 in 2020. The follow-up, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, was released for PlayStation 5 in February 2024. Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion, a remaster of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, which was released in December 2022, is also considered a prequel to the larger Final Fantasy VII Remake project.
Notes
References
External links
Official website |
Barret_Wallace | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barret_Wallace | [
602
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barret_Wallace"
] | Barret Wallace (Japanese: バレット・ウォーレス, Hepburn: Baretto Wōresu) is a character in Square Enix's role-playing video game Final Fantasy VII. He was created by character designer Tetsuya Nomura, and has since appeared in the CGI film sequel, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children as well as other games and media in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII series. As of Advent Children, Barret is voiced by Masahiro Kobayashi and Masato Funaki in Japanese, while Beau Billingslea and John Eric Bentley voice him in English.
Barret is first introduced in Final Fantasy VII as an eco-terrorist, leading the group AVALANCHE to bomb Mako reactors in Midgar as to avenge the losses dealt him by the megacorporation Shinra Electric Power Company, the Planet's de facto world government, who operate under the pretense of saving the Planet. Over the course of the story, Barret re-examines his efforts and focuses on pursuing the villain Sephiroth in an effort to protect the planet and the future of his adopted daughter, Marlene. Elements of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII would later expand upon his character, detailing the character's history before and after the events of the original game.
The first black playable character in the Final Fantasy series, Barret's appearance and sometimes profane speech has been compared to that of Mr. T. He is also considered to be the first true father figure in the series, for his relationship with his adoptive daughter Marlene. His character arc is also considered a deconstruction of a revenge story, as a former coal miner seeking vengeance through eco-terrorism before eventually realizing revenge is not the right motivation. The character has earned praise, but also criticism and accusations of racism by some.
Conception and design
Barret was designed by Tetsuya Nomura, and was present in Final Fantasy VII from its early development. Initially the game was to only have three characters: Barret, the protagonist Cloud Strife, and the heroine Aerith Gainsborough. During a phone call to project director Yoshinori Kitase, it was suggested that at some point in the game, one of the main characters should die. After much discussion as to whether it should be Barret or Aerith, the producers chose Aerith, as they felt Barret's death would be "too obvious".
Originally called Blow in the early planning stages of the game, Barret's name is based on the Japanese transliteration of the English word "bullet", and he was developed with the "Gunner" character class in mind. During an early demonstration of the game, Nomura felt his original design made Barret appear too short, and revised it. He stands at 6 feet 5 inches (196 cm) tall, and is the first black playable character in the series. He has a high and tight haircut and full beard, and wears an earring in his left ear. His attire consists of a jacket with torn sleeves, dark green pants, boots, a fingerless glove on his left hand, and metal bands surrounding his abdomen and left wrist. Nomura wanted to give each character in the game a striking feature on their character design, and in Barret's case it was the scars on his cheek.
Barret was a concept Nomura had wanted to introduce since the beginning of the game's development, a character with an arm replaced with a weapon. His right hand is replaced with a prosthetic gatling gun called a "Gimmick Arm", which he refers to as his "partner" in-game. When they were still planning out the technological aspects of the game's world however, early designs of his character had a bowgun on his arm instead. He was originally planned to have a medallion around his neck, described as a gift from his deceased wife, but this was later changed to a set of dog tags.
Post-Final Fantasy VII
When developing Advent Children, Nomura stated that because of the comparisons between Barret's original design and Mr. T, they decided to take it in a different direction for the film, implementing co-director Takeshi Nozue's suggestion to give him cornrows for his hair, while Nomura designed his face. Artist Yusuke Naora also influenced the design, developing his attire, which originally consisted of white overalls, before instead having him wear him a down vest. Other aspects of his design included the removal of the metal bands around his body, a white sleeve extending from the middle of his right forearm to his elbow which is fastened by straps, a black band on his left forearm surrounded by a pink string and bow, and a fishnet shirt that ends in torn fibers below his waist. The dog tags were altered to a bullet and medallion supported by a chain around his neck, and three rings covered his left hand. His Gimmick Arm was modified into a robotic prosthetic hand, developed by Nomura, with the only guideline being "a huge, over-the-top gun that transforms in a huge, over-the-top way". Nozue stated that these specifics made it difficult to work with, and decided to conceal the hand's transformation sequence into the gun as much as possible. Barret's arm tattoo was changed as well, but retained the "skull and fire" motif of the original. It was redesigned by Brazilian tattoo artist and fashion designer Jun Matsui, featuring a stylized black skull surrounded by flames, meant to give a strong impression of "masculinity and power". While the skull was done in black, the flames were in red to represent his "hot-headed personality", and utilized a tribal pattern as they had become popular in Japan at the time to represent vitality.
For Final Fantasy VII Remake, Square wanted to show Barret as a mature person, contrasting him with the younger Cloud when interacting with others. While they originally planned to use his Advent Children design, the staff later decided to give every party member a new look. The team noted that his design was the one most significantly changed from the original game, but tried to keep aspects of his original design in mind to give him a strong and stalwart appearance. Main character modeler Dan Suzuki commented that they went through several drafts on Barret's face before modeling him. Barret's shoulders and the back of his neck were also changed halfway through development to help "bring out his dependable, fatherly nature". His gun arm also went through significant changes, adding a motor and mapping out the internals to invoke a sense of realism, but also the mental image of Barret being able to disassemble and maintenance the weapon after missions. His melee weapons were designed to reflect his "blunt, no-nonsense personality". In the English dub of Final Fantasy VII Remake, John Eric Bentley voiced Barret. During localization, Bentley did not know the exact media in which he would portray Barret, but figured it had to do with the remake. Bentley researched in order to portray Barret properly, and was aided by the translators for the Japanese version, who gave him the context of the scenes he had to record. For him, one of the biggest challenges in his work was "representation", and claimed that Barret was more than a one-dimensional character. In regards to the story's mission to destroy the Mako Reactor 5, Square aimed to show Barret as a fitting leader for AVALANCHE and show how his relationship with Cloud is improved.
Appearances
Final Fantasy VII
In Final Fantasy VII, Barret is introduced as the leader of the eco-terrorist organization AVALANCHE, which is situated in the city of Midgar and opposes the ruling company, Shinra, and their use of "Mako" energy as a power source, believing it to be killing the Planet. To this end, AVALANCHE bombs their Mako reactors, with the specific goal of saving the Planet. At the game's beginning, they have hired the mercenary Cloud Strife at the behest of his childhood friend and AVALANCHE member Tifa Lockhart, nicknaming him "Spiky" in reference to his hairstyle. After the deaths of several AVALANCHE members, Barret follows Cloud out of Midgar in pursuit of the game's villain, Sephiroth.
Along the way, he encounters a former friend of his, Dyne, who is armed similarly to him and forces Barret to fight him. After Barret defeats Dyne, Dyne kills himself. Later flashbacks reveal that Shinra wanted to build a Mako reactor in his hometown of Corel, an idea Barret advocated for. However, due to an accident at the plant, Shinra razed the town, killing Barret's wife in the process and causing Barret and Dyne to flee with Dyne's daughter, Marlene. Cornered, Dyne slipped off a cliff; Barret grabbed his hand, but Shinra soldiers opened fire and destroyed Barret's and Dyne's right and left hands respectively, causing the latter to fall to his presumed death. Barret adopted Marlene as his own daughter, had an "adapter" graft to his arm to interface with prosthetic weapons to aid in his combat against Shinra, and founded AVALANCHE. Dyne's death causes him to admit his grudge with Shinra is solely for revenge, with his earlier claims of "saving the world" meant to convince himself he was fighting for the greater good. Barret eventually shifts his goal to wanting to save the Planet for Marlene's sake, and he helps Cloud and his allies defeat Sephiroth to prevent the Planet's destruction.
Early drafts of Barret's background featured subtle differences, such as Marlene being as Barret's biological daughter and his wife being executed in front of him by a then-undecided Shinra executive. The attack on Corel was initially written to be due to the discovery of Mako energy and Shinra's desire to keep its existence a secret. His reunion with Dyne was also different, being written to culminate in a duel between the two in Corel's ruins, while Cloud and the others fought to investigate Shinra soldiers.
Other appearances
Barret appears in Before Crisis, a 2005 mobile phone-based prequel which shows the events prior to Corel's destruction. He helps the game's protagonists, the Turks, defend the Mako reactor, believing it to be the town's future. It is revealed that the reactor is under attack by the original AVALANCHE group, who are the cause of Shinra's attack upon the town. Unaware of their involvement, Barret uses their ideals to form his own branch of the group. He was also one of the characters included in Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call, utilizing his classic appearance.
In 2005, Barret appeared in the CGI film Advent Children, which is set two years after the events of the game. Barret places Marlene in Tifa's care and travels the world to rebuild the planet's infrastructure and find alternate power sources to replace Mako. He returns later to assist in combating the film's villains, the Remnants, and fight the summon creature Bahamut SIN. He later appears in a minor role in the 2006 video game Dirge of Cerberus, which is set one year after Advent Children, where he helps the protagonist Vincent Valentine prevent Omega WEAPON from destroying the planet. When choosing a voice actor for the film, Nomura was initially unsure of whether to have Masahiro Kobayashi do the role of Barret or another character, Loz. Kobayashi described his performance as treating Barret as "unrefined [...] but also dependable and unique", trying to keep his "upbeat character and good outlook in mind". He tried to give him a booming, confident-sounding voice, though at times was instructed to "take it up a notch". For Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Mahito Funaki took over the role after Kobayashi retired from voice acting.
A novella entitled "Case of Barret" was released in 2007 exclusively for the "Limited Edition Collector's Set" DVD edition of Advent Children. Written by Kazushige Nojima as part of the On the Way to a Smile series, it details the events between Final Fantasy VII and Advent Children, examining Barret's reaction to his weapon and his belief that it made him a monster. At the conclusion of the story, Barret visits the creator of the adapter on his wrist and receives the prosthetic hand/gun combination seen in the film, reasoning that although he needs a hand, he also still needs a weapon to prevent others from having to fight. He then decides to return to Marlene. Barret was also added as a costume for the Mii "gunner"-class character and optional opponent in an update for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Critical reception
Prior to the game's North American release, initial reactions to the character were positive, for representing African-Americans in a role-playing game, a genre where they were rarely represented. Following its North American release, Barret's comparisons to Mr. T in the media has resulted in both praise and criticism, with most of the criticism accusing the character of serving as a negative racial stereotype of African Americans. IGN argued in favor of this point, citing his use of "stilted slang" and stating that the character stands out amongst the cast because "his dialog is written as if it was run through a broken ebonic translator", further noting a trend in Japanese games to apply such dialogue to characters based on their skin color. Journalist Jeremy Parish and Next Generation reader Russell Merritt viewed the character as a racist representation, although both also argued that cultural gaps between Japan and the United States, plus the lack of American translators for Final Fantasy VII may have been contributing factors, highlighting that the localization of Barret's character presents him in a more stereotypical manner, drawing parallels to Mr. T. He felt this likeness could be seen as an effort to create a character that resonated with American audiences, given the popularity of the actor among Americans. Kotaku's Gita Jackson expressed concern over his portrayal in Final Fantasy VII Remake, expressing a desire to see the character's dialogue and voice modernized from what she saw as a negative stereotype, and cited fan and even fellow Kotaku contributor interest in the same.
However in contrast on 1UP, Parish argued in favor of Barret, noting that while on the surface he appeared to be the "worst kind of stereotype", he was a great character with complexity, having made "difficult decisions in his life, and agonized over his losses". Parish went further to describe Barret as the "first true father figure the [Final Fantasy] series had ever seen", through his relationship with his adopted daughter and how much he doted on her. RPGamer's content manager Shawn Bruckner took the discussion further, arguing that claims of Barret's presentation being racist was oversimplification of the character's portrayal, and stated that while he was in some aspects a stereotype, in others, such as his compassion towards his daughter or guilt regarding his past actions, he was not. He added that Barret "shows us that a black man speaking in 'ebonics' is not something to fear" and that his portrayal was not racist, but instead the opposite. Andron Smith in the same publication meanwhile praised his paternal role for not only his daughter but the other characters, with his advice often reaching "the realm of philosophy" with concepts such as "A good man who serves a great evil is not without sin".
His characterization in the remakes also received positive reception. Siliconera's Jenni Lada stated that while early on in Remake he came across having "only has one volume and he only sees one side of things", the agony over losing his friends and concern over his daughter, namely trying to cling to any hope of her survival, showed Barret's actual heart and made her excited to see more of his portrayal in the future. Ash Parrish for Kotaku also commented on him, stating that while she had conflicted feelings about his portrayal and citing Jackson's earlier article for the site, she praised the fact Barret went against the archetype of a father with a violent past, noting that similar characters routinely seemed incapable or unwilling to be gentle with their children. By comparison Parrish praised Barret's affection towards his daughter and his refusal to let his past or who he was affect his relationship with her, adding that "Barret did the reading from day one and said the inherited trauma stops with me". She further noted that Barret went against the myth of Black absentee fathers, being "utterly devoted to a child that wasn't even his own blood way back in 1997" and expressed disdain that his role as a father was commonly overlooked by other publications. Gen Gumachi of Inside Games praised Rebirth for expanding on his character, portraying him as considering the views of the other party members while still retaining his "manly" personality as someone they could depend on. He also noted Barret's reflection his shortcomings of a father, and it presented an interesting duality to Barret's character: someone that had the wisdom of age, while also being a novice when it came to parenthood.
Pat Holleman, in his book Reverse Design: Final Fantasy VII (2018), considers Barrett's story to be the clearest illustration of the game's central "theme of tragic survivorship" and "a deconstruction of a revenge story" in the sense that it "dismantles the idea of revenge in an insightful way". This is presented through Shinra's destruction of his coal mining hometown, Barrett seeking vengeance through militant environmentalism before eventually realizing revenge isn't the right motivation, and safeguarding a future for his adoptive daughter Marlene who is the only surviving connection to his past. William Hughes of The A.V. Club notes that Barret and his terrorist cell AVALANCHE are one of the few examples of "heroic pop culture terrorists" in video games, keeping the game politically relevant in a post-9/11 world.
On the other hand, Jervon Perkins of DualShockers expressed that while he liked Barret as a character and as a person of color enjoyed representation within the franchise, he felt far too often the Final Fantasy franchise treated black characters as a comedic relief archetype. He stated that in the context of the game, Barret's behavior was often a good contrast to Cloud's stoicism, and acted as a driving force to help push the game's plot of saving the world. Additionally he was glad to see these elements retained in the Final Fantasy VII remake titles, quickly becoming Perkins' favorite character in the cast, and enjoyed how they also built upon his relationship with Marlene and Dyne, particularly the tragedy of the latter. However, he was often also the butt of the game's jokes, "reacting to situations in loud and overreactive ways" much to the rest of the cast's humor. In light of the other black male character in the franchise at the time, Sazh from Final Fantasy XIII, he felt both men in part represented a stereotype of black individuals as "loud and aggressive", and while strong characters were essentially cut from the same cloth. Perkins instead wished to see a character in the series that was by contrast "introverted and quiet" and exemplified the "quiet strength exhibited by many characters in the series" such as Final Fantasy X's Auron, and felt such would bring more diversity to the franchise while also respecting the legacy of characters such as Barret and Sazh.
== References == |
Tifa_Lockhart | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tifa_Lockhart | [
602
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tifa_Lockhart"
] | Tifa Lockhart (Japanese: ティファ・ロックハート, Hepburn: Tifa Rokkuhāto) is a character who debuted in Square's (now Square Enix) 1997 role-playing video game Final Fantasy VII and is one of the heroines and main party member. She was created by members of the development team, including director Yoshinori Kitase and writers Kazushige Nojima and Tetsuya Nomura, who also contributed to her visual design. She has since appeared as a playable fighter in Ehrgeiz and the Dissidia Final Fantasy series and made cameo appearances in several other titles, such as Kingdom Hearts II and Itadaki Street. Beginning in 2005, she has been featured in sequels and spin-offs as part of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII series, including the animated film Advent Children and Final Fantasy VII Remake.
Tifa is the childhood friend of Cloud Strife, the protagonist of Final Fantasy VII. She is the owner of the 7th Heaven bar in the slums of Midgar and a member of the eco-terrorist group AVALANCHE. She convinces Cloud to join the group to keep him close and safe, and later assists him in saving the Planet from the game's villain, Sephiroth. Titles in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII later expanded upon her character, such as in Advent Children, where she attempts to convince Cloud to let go of his self-imposed guilt and move on with his life after Sephiroth's defeat.
Tifa has been named the pin-up girl of the "cyber generation" by The New York Times, and has been compared to Lara Croft as an example of a strong, independent and attractive female character in video games. Media have repeatedly praised her strength and appearance and described her as one of the best female characters in gaming. The heavy emphasis on sex appeal in her reception has also seen frequent discussion, though has also received some criticism for overshadowing other aspects of her character.
Conception and design
Tifa was designed by Tetsuya Nomura, and was not present in early versions of Final Fantasy VII, as initially, the game was to have only three playable characters; the protagonist Cloud Strife, Aerith Gainsborough and Barret Wallace. However, during a phone call to project director Yoshinori Kitase, it was suggested that at some point in the game, one of the main characters should die and after much discussion as to whether it should be Barret or Aerith, the producers chose Aerith. Nomura later joked that this was his idea, so as to enable him to introduce Tifa into the game. The notion of having two concurrent heroines and having the hero waver between them was something Kitase liked, describing it as something new in the Final Fantasy series. Tifa was designed to use the "monk" character class that appeared in previous games in the series, and many aspects of her personality were taken from those originally planned for Aerith to have.
In a change from previous entries in the Final Fantasy series, the development team worked off of Nomura's character designs, while series Yoshitaka Amano contributed his own artwork, wanting to depict the characters in futuristic clothing. Her outfit consists of a white crop top and a black miniskirt held up by a pair of narrow black suspenders. She also wears red boots and gloves, with black sleeves extending from wrist to elbow; a metal guard covers her left elbow. She stands about 5 feet 6 inches (167 cm) tall. Tifa has long, black hair in a style resembling a dolphin's tail at the tip, styled in a way to help set her apart from Aerith, but also because the longer fixed hairstyle was easier to animate.
Unlike most other characters for Final Fantasy VII, Nomura wrote down her bust/waist/hip measurements in his concept art for her, defined as 36-24-35" (92-60-88 cm). Nomura wanted each character to have one striking feature, and in Tifa's case it was her large breasts. Internally in the game, the development team jokingly referred to her as "Boing-chan", an allusion to her bust. In an interview with Japanese magazine Jugemu they discussed her character design, with composer Nobuo Uematsu commenting that her breasts were "a bit...overly ample." Cutscene director Motonari Sakakibara countered that the rest of the team insisted he not reduce their size. Nomura himself added "at the end of the day we all like them. [...] If I made them smaller, everyone would get angry at me."
Initially, Nomura had difficulty deciding whether to go with a miniskirt or long pants. Seeking input, he passed his sketches around Square's offices and the majority of the staff members approved of the miniskirt design. This additionally served as a contrast to Aerith, whose "long skirt" was her trademark. The attire was explained as giving her freedom of movement, due to her hand-to-hand combat specialty and the skirt, referred to as "quite short [...] giving a considerable degree of exposure", was kept as a staple of her alternate costumes. The developers noted that due to her figure, her otherwise plain garments took on a pleasant appearance. The development team later clarified in an issue of V-Jump that the miniskirt was more akin to a skort instead of bare underwear, to keep her from being exposed during combat.
Post-Final Fantasy VII
When producing Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, co-director Takeshi Nozue had difficulty developing a framework for Tifa's body that was "balanced, yet showed off her feminine qualities". Her outfit was redesigned with emphasis on expressing those qualities, while still being pleasing to the eye. Nomura describes Tifa's character in Advent Children as having several dimensions, calling her "like a mother, a sweetheart and a close ally in battle" and "remarkably strong, not only emotionally, but physically as well". In the film, she wears a white tank top with a black zipped up vest, a pink ribbon around her left bicep, and boots. She also wears a black buttoned-up skirt that covers her thighs and wears shorts beneath it, with a piece of cloth similar to a coattail extending from the back of the skirt's waistband and ending at her ankles. She no longer uses suspenders to hold up her skirt and she wears her gloves during the film's fight scenes. Her hairstyle was changed to end at the middle of her back, with the removal of the dolphin tail from her original design. This alteration was because of the difficulty of animating her original length of hair, as well as problems that arose due to its black color and lighting.
For the Final Fantasy VII Remake series, the development team worked heavily with Nomura to refine her design, working with artist Roberto Ferrari and character modeler Dan Suzuki. Details like charms were added around her wrists, and roughly twenty hair colors were considered before settling on ashen brown. The development team wanted to avoid favoring either Tifa or Aerith so they deliberately tried to give them equal screen time, as they wanted both to be positioned as heroines, and emphasized Eastern aesthetics and the cuteness of her face to contrast with Aerith's Western aesthetics. They additionally wanted to emphasize her athletic physique, so they gave her visibly defined abdominal muscles. In an interview with Weekly Famitsu Square revealed they modified Tifa's outfit at the request of their Ethics Department, giving her a black sports bra and longer shorts, mainly "tightening" her chest so "as not to get unnatural during all the intense action", with main Suzuki considering the shorts an improvement to her design. This information led to North American fans voicing concern that her breast size had been reduced, but sources such as gameindustry.biz confirmed through multiple translators this was not the case. The development team later illustrated that when creating her character model, a padded Japanese G70 cup size (95 cm) bra was used on a real-life model to portray her bust accurately.
Ferrari meanwhile created the multiple outfit options included in Remake for Tifa, aiming for designs that would be easier on the animation team but would also homage outfits she had in the original game. Various ideas were thrown around during development for clothing options, including a maid outfit and a bikini modelled after a chocobo, one of the Final Fantasy series' mascosts. They ultimately settled on a black cheongsam with her hair worn in pigtail buns, as well as a black kimono, both of which are worn with stockings. Ferrari commented that the latter was particularly difficult to create, as several of his design submissions were rejected during the process. In Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, the followup game to Remake, two swimsuit options were added for the character, consisting of a blue tied up shirt and short shorts with her hair in a bun adorned with a flower, and a white and blue frilled bikini with a similar hairstyle and the frills on the lower half forming a makeshift miniskirt.
Casting
Nomura noted that he liked Ayumi Ito as an actress and wished to work with her on Advent Children. With Aerith's voice actor already decided, Nomura asked Ito to voice Tifa, feeling her "husky voice" would offer a good contrast to Maaya Sakamoto's soft-spoken Aerith. Although Tifa's updated design had already been finalized, Ito's casting motivated them to blend many traits from the voice actress into the character's appearance. Cloud's voice actor Takahiro Sakurai said that while he recorded most of his work individually, he performed alongside Ito for a few scenes. These recordings left him feeling "deflated", as the "exchanges he has with Tifa [could] be pretty painful". Ayaka Mitsumoto voiced Tifa in the flashback from the remake where a teenage Tifa interacts with Cloud. Finding a voice suitable for the young Tifa made Nomura and the staff worried in the recording of the title.
English voice actress Rachael Leigh Cook stated in an interview for Kingdom Hearts II that she enjoys playing Tifa and described her as "very strong physical and emotionally, but also very sensitive" and "very multi-dimensional". In voicing the character, Cook listened to Ito's recording as a guide to how the character sounds. Following Advent Children, Cook thanked Nomura for the film he created as she enjoyed it. Britt Baron voiced Tifa in Final Fantasy VII Remake and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and Tifa as a child is voiced by Glory Curda.
Appearances
Final Fantasy VII
Tifa is introduced in Final Fantasy VII as the childhood friend of Cloud Strife and owner of the 7th Heaven bar in the slums of Midgar, a technologically advanced metropolis owned by the Shinra Electric Power Company. She is also a member of the eco-terrorist organization AVALANCHE, who opposes Shinra's extraction and use of Mako, the planet's spiritual energy, as a power source. She convinces Cloud to join the group to keep a closer eye on him after noticing his personality has changed, and follows him in pursuit of the game's antagonist, Sephiroth. While she is unable to keep him from being manipulated by Sephiroth, she helps him recover after his mind becomes fractured and they realize their mutual feelings for one another, working together to defeat Sephiroth.
When they were children, Tifa and Cloud followed a path to a mountain near their hometown of Nibelheim. However, they were both injured and Tifa was in a coma for a week, with her father holding Cloud responsible for the incident. Cloud eventually left to join Shinra's SOLDIER program to become stronger, but it is later revealed that he did it primarily to attract her attention. In response, she requested if she were ever in danger, he would return to save her. Years later, during Sephiroth's rampage in Nibelheim, Cloud rescued Tifa after she was wounded by Sephiroth. Tifa was taken to safety by her martial arts instructor and eventually arrived in Midgar, meeting AVALANCHE's leader, Barret Wallace. She joined AVALANCHE to get revenge for the destruction of her home. Shortly before the beginning of Final Fantasy VII, she encountered an incoherent Cloud at the city's train station and convinced him to work for Barret, to keep him close and watch over him.
Her character changed significantly during development, with an early relationship chart during the planning phase intending her to be Sephiroth's sibling. In early drafts of Final Fantasy VII, Tifa was a background character, with role in AVALANCHE was to add support behind the scenes and to cheer everyone up after missions, as well as having a particular fondness for Cloud. She was supposed to have a large scar on her back caused by Cloud, and partial amnesia from the incident when she had received it. A scene intended to imply she and Cloud had sex was proposed by Masato Kato, one of the event planners, but it was replaced with a toned-down version by Kitase in which a risqué line is followed by a fade to black. In an interview, Nojima stated that none of the staff thought the scene would become an issue at the time. When developing the International edition of Final Fantasy VII, an additional cutscene was added to showcase an enemy in the game, Ultima Weapon, and featured Tifa in it due to how popular her character had become.
Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Tifa appears in the 2005 film Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, which is set two years after the events of the game. She tries to give emotional support to Cloud, urging him to come to terms with the unwarranted guilt he places upon himself. She also takes care of Barret's adopted daughter Marlene and an orphan, Denzel. During the film, she duels against Loz and she battles the summoned creature Bahamut SIN alongside the team. Script writer Kazushige Nojima described her role in the film as "very much like any woman who's been left behind by a man", stating that while they did not want her to appear clingy, they wanted to portray that she was emotionally hurt by Cloud's departure. In the film's initial draft, she was intended to have a more central role in the then-short film, which only featured herself, Cloud and several children, with the story revolving around a note being delivered to him.
Tifa is also featured in the prequel games Before Crisis and Crisis Core, as well as the OVA Last Order, which each show different perspectives on the destruction of Nibelheim. The novella "Case of Tifa", written as part of the On the Way to a Smile series, is a story set between the original game and Advent Children that is told from her point of view. The story details how she creates a new 7th Heaven bar in the city of Edge and attempts to hold onto the concept of a normal family with herself and Cloud, despite him beginning to isolate himself from others. Tifa also appears in the game Dirge of Cerberus, which is set one year after the events of Advent Children, in which she helps the protagonist Vincent Valentine defend the planet against the monster Omega WEAPON; in the game's epilogue, she discuss Vincent's disappearance.
Tifa is featured prominently as a playable character in Final Fantasy VII Remake, which covers the Midgar portion of the original game. By focusing solely on Midgar, the development team was able to include additional scenes that developed the relationship between Tifa and Aerith. Trace of Two Pasts, a tie-in novel to the remake, depicts the childhoods of Tifa and Aerith. Tifa's section details her upbringing in Nibelheim, her meeting and tutelage under her martial arts master, and her life in the slums of Midgar following her near-death experience during the Nibelheim incident.
Other appearances
Outside of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Tifa is featured in the fighting game Ehrgeiz as an unlockable character and an optional boss. She is a playable character in the electronic board games Itadaki Street Special and Itadaki Street Portable. In Kingdom Hearts II, she appears in her Advent Children attire, searching for Cloud and later fighting various Heartless. She was originally planned to appear in the Final Mix version of the original Kingdom Hearts, but due to time constraints the staff members chose to incorporate Sephiroth instead. Whereas in the game Cloud goes missing after a battle with Sephiroth, in the manga adaptation, Tifa finds him in Hollow Bastion. In 2015, she was added to the mobile game Final Fantasy: Record Keeper as a playable character.
Tifa is one of the playable characters in the fighting game Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy, which features characters from various Final Fantasy games. She is featured in her Final Fantasy VII outfit, but the player has access to her Advent Children form and a third costume that is shown during her appearances in Nibelheim. The first print run of the game features another form based on artwork by Yoshitaka Amano. In LittleBigPlanet 2, Tifa is featured as a downloadable character model, and as a Mii costume and Spirit in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Critical reception
Since her introduction critics and fans reacted positively to Tifa, often appearing near the top of fan polls. The New York Times featured her as the pin-up girl of for the "cyber generation", while The Beaumont Enterprise cited Tifa as an example of a strong female character in video games in the wake of Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider series. Holly Bonson of Polygon described Tifa as defined by her "brittle confidence and supportiveness", further stating her belief that in the context of Final Fantasy VII she represents forcefulness and sexuality. Den of Geek's Matthew Byrd cited her popularity a result of her character's warmth, strength, and the ability to act both supportive and as a leader depending on when the situation called for it in VII's storyline, but also noted her vulnerability and how it made her a well-rounded character "who is more than worthy of her fan-favorite status". Jenni Lada of Siliconera called her an iconic heroine, echoing the sentiments of the other critiques, while praising how future installments such as Remake built upon her character.
Tifa has often been compared and contrasted with the other female protagonist of Final Fantasy VII, Aerith. Gus Turner of Complex described her as standing out as "one of gaming's most independent and empowered females ever", and further described her as a feminine foil to the more "girlish" Aerith, further praising her appearance. In a retrospective, journalist Leigh Alexander argued that Tifa is the heroine of VII's story, there since the beginning and being indispensable during the course of events, calling her "a partner for a grown-up player" and questioned how many of them didn't properly appreciate her on their first playthrough of the game may do so now. Fans of the series meanwhile have heavily debated which character was a better relationship for Cloud since the initial game's release, comparing the pros and cons of each.
RPGamer editor Marie Freed found that when examining Tifa as a character, she came to appreciate her more than fellow character Aerith in the years since VII's release. Emphasizing that Aerith represented more of an ideal of a character, Tifa being portrayed as someone who was "insecure, lonely, and hides her true emotions" may have led to her being perceived negatively by fans, but in Freed's eyes made her the most human of the pair. Freed further expressed that as a symbol of the series, critics often perceived her as a "slut" due to her attire and breasts, and felt it was reasonable for her to be portrayed as insecure in light of such hostility. But further though as a character she saw Tifa's loyalty and love for Cloud even in the light of having to relive her own traumas as admirable, and a welcome contrast to the "destined" romance seen in previous title Final Fantasy IV. She closed by stating that while people had aspects of both characters in them, Tifa ultimately represented "reality" over the "ideal".
On the other hand Patrick Holleman in his book Reverse Design: Final Fantasy VII described Tifa as having "the most typical story of a near-death experience and the loss of a world she belonged to" of the game's cast, despite how atypical Cloud was by comparison. Cloud in turn represented her only living connection to her past, and to this end Holleman felt she ignores the discrepancies in how he remembers events bordering on psychosis not as a matter of romance but as a means to hold onto what she lost. He added that while Tifa does care about Cloud, her desire was more of a selfish one in turn, one that does her more harm than good in Holleman's eyes. However, he also praised a particular moment for her character later in the game where when confronting the character Scarlet. Despite the scene appearing to lead into a boss battle against Scarlet, Tifa instead engages in a slap fight with her, something he felt subverted player's expectations well.
As a sex symbol
A significant part of Tifa's reception has focused on her sex appeal, with some third-party merchandise leaning heavily into this aspect. Electronic Gaming Monthly awarded her the "Hottest Game Babe" of 1997, calling her "as well-proportioned as they come" and heavily praising her sexual attributes, but also noting her physical and emotional strength as a character. UGO.com shared similar sentiments, complimenting her outfit as well and describing her as a "bona-fide sex symbol", while further noting that she was a rarity among female characters in video games at the time of VII' release. IGN's Phil Pirrello attributed a significant part of her popularity to her large breasts, nothing that she was an example of how series tried to add real sex appeal with Final Fantasy VII, and while her model in the original game was primitive by today's standards, he suggested it had a significant impact on the teenage demographic at its time. Fellow contributor Dave Smith suggested similar, stating it was hard to sing her praises "without sounding just a little teeny-weeny bit sexist", but further added that she helped define "tough, independent" roleplaying game heroines that came after her too due to her character.
The character has also been a frequent subject of fan-made pornography, cited in particular as a frequent search topic on Pornhub. Meanwhile, a study of such content on Rule 34 websites such as Rule 34.xxx and Sankaku Channel additionally cited her as the most frequent subject of such content by a wide margin across multiple franchises. In January 2022, a Zoom videoconference meeting done in the Italian Senate was interrupted by a user displaying 3D rendered pornography featuring Tifa engaging in sexual intercourse. The user was quickly removed, but due to the conference being televised, knowledge of the event quickly went viral. While Tifa's use in it was coincidental, it led to a surge in the character's popularity. Jade King of TheGamer noted however that while much reaction to it revolved around fan art of a sexual nature, it also resulted in a large amount of what they saw as "wholesome" art celebrating the character and the humor of the situation, usually portraying her in an awkward or comedic manner in association with the event or the country itself. King attributed it in part to Remake's recent release, but also the enduring nature of the character, calling it wholesome and an "aspect of Tifa's character that will now be ingrained into her history, and there's something brilliant about that".
Other articles however examined that the emphasis on her sex appeal sometimes overshadowed her other aspects. In another article for IGN the staff noted that while her design was meant to emphasize physical beauty, er "awe-inspiring strength, complex background, strong will and her attachment to Cloud" defined her as more than "just an eye-catching woman", further calling her a legendary heroine in the series. The book The Legend of Final Fantasy VII noted that while Tifa has many attributes of a seductive woman, specifically emphasizing her large breasts, she "thwarts the stereotypes associated with her appearance", due to being an independent and strong character, further calling her often the most "leveled headed" and pragmatic character in the game's cast. Philip Bloom of RPGamer felt that fans and critics alike both overemphasized the size of her breasts, to the point she set a perceived standard for other attractive roleplaying game female protagonists to be compared to, she "isn't that absurd of figure" and was instead "quite strong as far as female heroes go, often saving the day. But you wouldn't know it to listen to talks about her."
References
== External links == |
The_Gods_Must_Be_Crazy | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gods_Must_Be_Crazy | [
603
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gods_Must_Be_Crazy"
] | The Gods Must Be Crazy is a 1980 comedy film written, produced, edited and directed by Jamie Uys. An international co-production of South Africa and Botswana, it is the first film in The Gods Must Be Crazy series. Set in Southern Africa, the film stars Namibian San farmer Nǃxau ǂToma as Xi, a hunter-gatherer of the Kalahari Desert whose tribe discovers a glass Coca-Cola bottle dropped from an aeroplane, and believe it to be a gift from their gods. When Xi sets out to return the bottle to the gods, his journey becomes intertwined with that of a biologist (Marius Weyers), a newly hired village school teacher (Sandra Prinsloo), and a band of guerrilla terrorists.
The Gods Must Be Crazy was released in South Africa on 10 September 1980 by Ster-Kinekor, and broke several box office records in the country, becoming the most financially successful South African film ever produced at the time. The film was a commercial and critical success in most other countries, but took longer to find success in the United States, where it was eventually re-released in 1984 by 20th Century Fox, with its original Afrikaans dialogue being dubbed into English. Despite its success, the film attracted criticism for its depiction of race and perceived ignorance of discrimination and apartheid in South Africa.
In 1989, it was followed by a sequel The Gods Must Be Crazy II.
Plot
Xi and his San tribe live happily in the Kalahari Desert, away from industrial civilization. One day, a glass Coca-Cola bottle is thrown out of an aeroplane by a pilot and falls to the ground unbroken. Initially, Xi's people assume the bottle to be a gift from their gods, just as they believe plants and animals are, and find many uses for it. Unlike other gifts, however, there is only one glass bottle, which causes unforeseen conflict within the tribe. As a result, Xi, wearing only a loincloth, decides to make a pilgrimage to the edge of the world and dispose of the divisive object.
Along the way, Xi encounters biologist Andrew Steyn, who is studying the manure of wildlife; Steyn's assistant and mechanic, M'pudi; Kate Thompson, a woman who quit her job as a journalist in Johannesburg to become a village school teacher; and eventually a band of guerrillas led by Sam Boga, who are being pursued by government troops after a failed assassination attempt. In a fictitious town called Biryani, northwest of Botswana, Boga's men kill three cabinet members and injure two others in an attempt on the president's life, sending the military in hot pursuit.
Steyn is tasked with bringing Thompson to the village where she will teach, but he is awkward and clumsy around her. Their Land Rover stalls while trying to ford a deep river; he hoists it out with a winch, but it continues lifting the vehicle to a very high treetop level while a forgetful Steyn is distracted extricating Thompson from a wait-a-bit tree. She more than once mistakes his attempts to evade wild animals, and putting out an evening campfire, as advances towards her. Eventually, a snobbish safari tour guide named Jack Hind arrives, and takes Thompson the rest of the way to the village.
One day, Xi happens upon a herd of goats, and shoots one with a tranquilizer arrow, planning to eat it. He is arrested and sentenced to jail. M'pudi, who once lived with the San and can speak the San language, is discontent with the verdict. He and Steyn arrange to hire Xi as a tracker for the remainder of his sentence in lieu of prison time, and teach Xi how to drive Steyn's Land Rover. Meanwhile, the guerrillas invade Thompson's school, taking her and the students as hostages as they make their escape to a neighbouring country.
Steyn, M'pudi and Xi, immersed in their fieldwork, find that they are along the terrorists' and children's path, and observe their movements with a telescope. They manage to immobilize six of the eight guerrillas using makeshift tranquilizer darts launched by Xi with a miniature bow, allowing Thompson and the children to confiscate the guerillas' firearms. Steyn and M'pudi apprehend the remaining two guerrillas by frightening one with a snake and by shooting at a tree above the other, causing latex to drip from the tree and irritate his skin. Jack Hind arrives and takes Thompson and the children away, taking credit for the rescue that Steyn, M'pudi and Xi had actually planned and executed.
Later, with Xi's term over, Steyn pays his wages and sends him on his way. Xi has never seen paper money (banknotes) before, and throws them on the ground. Steyn and M'pudi then drive from their camp to visit Thompson, where Steyn attempts to explain his tendency to be uncoordinated in her presence, but accidentally and repeatedly knocks over a number of objects in the process. Thompson finds his efforts endearing, and kisses Steyn.
Xi eventually arrives at God's Window, the top of a cliff with a solid layer of low-lying clouds obscuring the landscape below. Convinced that he has reached the edge of the world, he throws the bottle off the cliff, and returns to his family.
Cast
Director Jamie Uys appears in an uncredited role as the Reverend.
Production
Development and casting
Jamie Uys conceived the premise of The Gods Must Be Crazy while making the 1974 documentary Animals Are Beautiful People. The documentary was filmed partially on the Kalahari Desert, where Uys first encountered the San people and "fell in love with them". Uys chose a Coca-Cola bottle as the object that the San people would discover and covet in The Gods Must Be Crazy because he felt that the bottle was representative of "our plastic society", and because it "is a beautiful thing, if you've never seen glass before".
Uys noted that he modelled the character of Andrew Steyn after himself: "I used to be awkward like that, especially with women. But then, I think most young guys knock things over with their first girl".
After writing the script for The Gods Must Be Crazy, Uys reportedly spent three months traversing the Kalahari Desert with an interpreter, searching for a San person to play the role of Xi in the film. Visiting areas of the desert inhabited by the San, Uys took photographs of individuals he felt he might cast, and then "marked the longitude and latitude, so we could find them again".
Uys decided to cast Namibian San farmer Nǃxau ǂToma as Xi, and later recalled that "At first [Nǃxau] didn't understand, because they have no word for work. Then the interpreter asked, 'Would you like to come with us for some days?'" N!xau agreed and flew with Uys by aeroplane to Windhoek, Namibia, which served as a base for the film's production. Uys stated that "the airplane didn't impress him at all. He thinks we are magicians, so he believes we can do anything. Nothing impressed him". In his hotel room, N!xau agreed to use the toilet, but slept on the floor rather than on the provided bed.
However, according to author Josef Gugler, Uys "[fictionalized] the production of the film. The stories he told reviewers varied". Unlike what was presented in The Gods Must Be Crazy, N!xau did not lead a hunter-gatherer lifestyle; he grew up as a herder on a farm in Botswana, before moving to Namibia to work as a cook. In the 1980 documentary film Nǃai, the Story of a ǃKung Woman, directed by John Marshall, footage of the filming of The Gods Must Be Crazy is used. The documentary shows San restricted to living in a reservation established by South African authorities in Tsumkwe, Namibia. The San there are shown to not be hunter-gatherers; they are instead dependent on the government for food and other aid, with some suffering from tuberculosis.
Filming
The Gods Must Be Crazy was shot in Tsumkwe, Namibia, as well as in Botswana.
According to Uys, N!xau would be flown back to his home in the Kalahari Desert every three or four weeks to prevent him from suffering from culture shock. During his time in urban areas, N!xau learned to smoke and acquired an affinity for liquor and sake. Uys said that he paid N!xau $300 for his first 10 days of work, but that the money was reportedly blown away by wind. N!xau was then compensated with 12 head of cattle. In 1985, Uys said that he had sent N!xau $100 a month since filming, which N!xau used at a trading store 100 km (60 miles) from his hunting ground; Uys also stated that a $20,000 trust account in N!xau's name had been established.
A scene in which a rhinoceros stomps out a fire is based in a Burmese legend about fire-eating rhinos, which is not widely known in Africa and appears not to be based in fact.
Soundtrack
Release
Box office
The Gods Must Be Crazy was initially released in South Africa on 10 September 1980 by Ster-Kinekor Pictures.Within its first four days of its release, the film broke box office records in every city in South Africa. It became the highest-grossing film of 1982 in Japan, where it was released under the title Bushman. Executive producer Boet Troskie sold the distribution rights to the film to 45 countries.
For its release in the United States, the original Afrikaans dialogue was dubbed into English, and voiceover work was provided for !Kung and Tswana lines. The film initially received a limited American release through Jensen Farley Pictures in 1982, but performed poorly in at least half a dozen test cities. However, the film would eventually find critical and commercial success when it was re-released by 20th Century Fox on 9 July 1984, becoming the highest-grossing foreign film released in the United States at the time. The film also played at the Music Hall Theater in Beverly Hills, California for at least eight months.
Within its first four years of release, The Gods Must Be Crazy had grossed $90 million worldwide. As of 2014, the film has grossed R 1.8 billion (approx. $200 million) worldwide, including over $60 million in the United States.
Critical reception
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of four, concluding that "it might be easy to make a farce about screwball happenings in the desert, but it's a lot harder to create a funny interaction between nature and human nature. This movie's a nice little treasure". Variety stated that the film's "main virtues are its striking, widescreen visuals of unusual locations, and the sheer educational value of its narration".
In his review of the film for The New York Times, critic Vincent Canby wrote that "watching Jamie Uys's Gods Must Be Crazy, [...] one might suspect that there were no such things as apartheid or the Immorality Act or even South Africa". Though he called the film "often genuinely, nonpolitically funny", he noted that "there's also something disturbing about the film", in that "we tend to feel that any South African work that doesn't actively condemn apartheid has the secondary effect of condoning it, if only through silence".
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, The Gods Must Be Crazy has an approval rating of 86% based on 28 reviews, with an average rating of 7.4/10. On Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, the film has a score of 73 out of 100 based on six reviews, indicating "generally favourable reviews".
Home media
In mid-November 1986, The Gods Must Be Crazy was released on VHS in the U.S. by CBS/Fox on its Playhouse Video label.
In 2004, The Gods Must Be Crazy was released on DVD by Sony Pictures Entertainment. It was also released on DVD as a double feature with The Gods Must Be Crazy II.
Controversies
The Gods Must Be Crazy attracted criticism for its perpetuation of racial stereotypes and ignorance of discrimination and apartheid in South Africa. In the U.S., the film was reportedly picketed by the National Conference of Black Lawyers and other anti-apartheid groups when it screened at the 68th Street Playhouse in New York City.
Accusations of patronization
Both New York Times critic Vincent Canby and author Josef Gugler called the film "patronizing" towards the San people. Canby wrote that the San in the film "are seen to be frightfully quaint if not downright cute", and compared the film's narrator's statement that the San "must be the most contented people in the world" to "exactly the sort of thing that Mussolini might have said when he got those trains running on time". Gugler considered both the film's narrator and the character of Mpudi condescending, writing that "even if Mpudi feels for the San people, he is just as patronizing as the narrator: 'They are the sweetest little buggers'". In response to accusations of patronization, Uys said that "I don't think the film is patronizing. When the Bushman is with us in the city, I do patronize him, because he's stupid. But in the desert, he patronizes me, because I'm stupid and he's brilliant".
Criticisms related to apartheid
In 1985, cultural anthropologist Toby Alice Volkman wrote that money was "a pressing concern" for the San when The Gods Must Be Crazy was filmed, with many of them dependent on government aid and purchased food; she noted that many San enlisted in the South African Army due to the high wages it paid. She wrote: "Because the myth of Bushman innocence and bliss underlies the popularity of The Gods Must Be Crazy, it is no surprise that Mr. Uys would like us to believe in it. There is, however, little to laugh about in Bushmanland: 1,000 demoralized, formerly independent foragers crowd into a squalid, tubercular homeland, getting by on handouts of cornmeal and sugar, drinking Johnny Walker or home brew, fighting with one another and joining the South African Army".
The following year, Canadian anthropologist Richard Borshay Lee called the film "an amusing but thinly disguised piece of South African propaganda in which a peculiar element of South African white mythology receives prominent attention". Lee wrote that "the notion that some San in the 1980s remain untouched by 'civilization' is a cruel joke. The San have been the subject of a century of rapid social change and especially in the last twenty years have been forced to endure all the 'benefits' of South Africa's apartheid policies in Namibia".
Gugler wrote that the guerrillas in the film are depicted as "bad Africans [...] dangerous and destructive all right, but they are also indolent and inept. In the end, even Kate Thompson gets to disarm one of them. Their leader, Sam Boga, articulates what the film is showing us about African guerrillas: 'Why do I have to work with amateurs?' He, in turn, serves to confirm the apartheid credo that Africans would be happy with the White dispensation were it not for foreigners fomenting discontent and making trouble". Gugler goes on to state that Uys "[perpetuates] the myths of apartheid: an ordered world with Whites on top, a world where Africans are content but for the interference of outsiders".
When asked about his thoughts on apartheid, Uys commented that "I think it's a mess. We've done some silly, naughty things that we're ashamed of. We're trying to dismantle it, but it's a very complicated thing. If you go too slow, it's bad, and if you go too fast, it will ruin the economy and everyone will starve. I hope I'm not a racist, but everybody likes to think of himself as not racist, and I don't think that any of us can swear we're not racist. If it means you hate the coloured man, I'm not racist. If it means you choose to marry a girl of your own colour, is that racist, too? If the two are in love, it doesn't matter. But I chose a white girl as my wife".
Sequel and related films
The Gods Must Be Crazy was followed by an official sequel, The Gods Must Be Crazy II, released by Columbia Pictures in 1989. It was written and directed by Uys, and again stars N!xau.
An unofficial sequel, Crazy Safari (also titled The Gods Must Be Crazy III), followed, a Hong Kong film starring N!xau. Other unofficial sequels include Crazy Hong Kong (The Gods Must Be Crazy IV) and The Gods Must Be Funny in China (The Gods Must Be Crazy V). Two other unrelated films, Jewel of the Gods and There's a Zulu On My Stoep, were marketed in some territories as sequels to The Gods Must Be Crazy.
Legacy
Irish Spring soap had a 1989 commercial parodying the film.
The video for the song "Take Me to Your Leader" by American rock band Incubus pays homage to the film.
Notes
References
Bibliography
Lee, Richard (2003). The Dobe Juǀʼhoansi. Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology (3rd ed.). Wadsworth Publishing. ISBN 0-03-032284-7.
Gugler, Josef (2004). African Film: Re-Imagining a Continent. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0253216434.
Further reading
Gorelik, Boris (April 2015). "The Gods Must Be Crazy: Sorry, but it's still funny". Journal of African Cinemas.
External links
The Gods Must Be Crazy at AllMovie
The Gods Must Be Crazy at Box Office Mojo
The Gods Must Be Crazy at IMDb
The Gods Must Be Crazy at Metacritic
The Gods Must Be Crazy at Rotten Tomatoes
"The Gods Must Be Crazy broke box-office records worldwide. The story behind it is even crazier." in Slate |
Blyde_River_Canyon_Nature_Reserve | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blyde_River_Canyon_Nature_Reserve | [
603,
603
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blyde_River_Canyon_Nature_Reserve#God.27s_Window",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blyde_River_Canyon_Nature_Reserve"
] | Blyde River Canyon Nature Reserve (or Motlatse Canyon Provincial Nature Reserve) is situated in the Drakensberg escarpment region of eastern Mpumalanga, South Africa. The reserve protects the Blyde River Canyon, including sections of the Ohrigstad and Blyde Rivers and the geological formations around Bourke's Luck Potholes, where the Treur River tumbles into the Blyde below. Southwards of the canyon, the reserve follows the escarpment, to include the Devil's and God's Window, the latter a popular viewpoint to the lowveld at the reserve's southern extremity.
The Mogologolo (1,794 m), Mariepskop (1,944 m) and Hebronberg (1,767 m) massifs are partially included in the reserve. Elevation varies from 560 m to 1,944 m above sea level. Its resort areas are F.H. Odendaal and Swadeni, the latter only accessible from Limpopo province. The area of approximately 29,000 hectares (290 km2) is administered by the Mpumalanga Parks Board.
Bourke's Luck Potholes
This geological feature and day visitors' attraction, named after prospector Bernard Thomas Bourke (brother of Eddie Bourke), is situated at the confluence of the Treur and Blyde Rivers, on the reserve's western boundary 24°40′28″S 30°48′39″E. The reserve's nature conservation headquarters is located here, beside the village of Moremela, at the canyon's southern, or upper reaches. Bourke's Luck Potholes marks the beginning of the Blyde River Canyon.
Sustained kolks in the Treur River's plunge pools have eroded a number of cylindrical potholes or giant's kettles, which can be viewed from the crags above. It was named after a local prospector, Tom Bourke, who predicted the presence of gold, though he found none himself. The pedestrian bridges connect the various overlooks of the potholes and the gorge downstream.
The Three Rondavels
The Three Rondavels are three round, grass-covered mountain tops with somewhat pointed peaks. They quite closely resemble the traditional round or oval rondavels or African homesteads, which are made with local materials. Sometimes they are also called the Three Sisters, though this may confuse them with a similar threesome visible from the N1 road in the Northern Cape, very far to the south.
The names of the peaks commemorate a 19th-century chief, Maripi, and three of his wives. The flat-topped peak adjacent to the rondavels is Mapjaneng, "the chief", who is remembered for opposing invading Swazis in a memorable battle. The three rondavels are named for three of his more troublesome wives – Magabolle, Mogoladikwe and Maseroto. Behind the rondavels the distant high plateau of Mariepskop may be visible. Beside the dam, the isolated Thabaneng hill is known as the "sundial" or "mountain with a shadow that moves". It is said that the position of its shadow indicates the time of day.
On a clear day the lookout point provides extensive views. From here one looks over the canyon to the Three Rondavels on the other side, which is flanked on various sides by promontories of the northern Drakensberg range.
The formation of the attractive sedimentary formations are explained geologically as the slow erosion of underlying soft stone, leaving exposed the more resistant quartzite and shale that form the rondavels.
God's Window
God's Window 24°52′28″S 30°53′29″E is a popular vantage point along the Drakensberg escarpment, at the southern extremity of the Nature Reserve.
Here, sheer cliffs plunge over 700 metres to the Lowveld. From this escarpment—a mostly unbroken rampart of cliffs—opens a vista into the Lowveld expanse and escarpment forests, the Eden-like aesthetic appearance of which prompted the name. On a clear day it is possible to see over the Kruger National Park towards the Lebombo Mountains on the border with Mozambique.
God's Window features prominently in the plot of the 1980 cult film The Gods Must Be Crazy. Near the end of the movie, the Bushman character Xi (played by Namibian bush farmer N!xau) travels to God's Window, and due to some low-lying cloud cover believes it to be the end of the Earth.
The original Window is a rock that is set further back on a private farm and due to quarry operations and tree plantation farming, this actual rock that looks like a square window could not be used. The site was moved by the government to the edge of the escarpment.
A viewing platform 24°52′35.8″S 30°53′19.6″E near the car park gives extensive views down the gorge to the plain below.
Fauna
The high plateaus are inhabited by mountain reedbuck, baboon troops and rock hyraxes. Impala, kudu, blue wildebeest, waterbuck and zebra roam the wooded lowveld area. Hippo and crocodile are present in the Blyderivierpoort Dam.
Three species of flat gecko were described in 2014 from the reserve and its vicinity. The Blyde River flat gecko, discovered in 1991, is as yet only known from the cliff face of one of the three rondavels, while the Mariepskop flat gecko was discovered on nearby Mariepskop in 1982. The Abel Erasmus flat gecko is known to occur at Bourke's Luck inside the reserve.
Exotic fish like smallmouth bass, brown and rainbow trout occur in the river, which have reduced the range of the local Treur river barb to upper catchments of the Blyde River system. Thanks to reintroductions after its rediscovery in the 1970s, it now flourishes here. The Natal mountain catfish occurs as an isolated population in the Limpopo system, and the Belvedere creek is the only place in the Limpopo system where the Rosefin barb is found.
African fish eagle and African finfoot are found along the Blyde River. The lowveld woodlands harbour purple-crested lourie, emerald cuckoo, red-backed mannikin, golden-tailed woodpecker, gorgeous bushshrike, white-faced owl and a number of raptors like white-backed vulture, gymnogene, black-chested snake eagle, Wahlberg's eagle and long-crested eagle. A number of raptors frequent the mountains and cliffs, including cape vulture, black eagle, jackal buzzard, peregrine falcon, lanner falcon and rock kestrel.
Birds associated with flowering plants of the higher slopes include Gurney's sugarbird and malachite sunbird. A breeding colony of bald ibis occurs in the grassy uplands, besides small numbers of cape eagle-owl and red-breasted sparrowhawk. Forest birds include crowned eagle, Knysna lourie, cinnamon dove, olive bushshrike, green twinspot and wood owl.
Flora
The reserve's vegetation is classified as the Northeastern Drakensberg High-Mountain Sourveld ecoregion, an area prone to lightning-induced burning. Its very diverse flora is ascribed to the variation in altitude and rainfall (541 mm to 2,776 mm p.a.), and the extremes in geology and pedology. It is topographically complex with a variety of habitats which include grassland plateaus, wetlands and sponge areas, grassland slopes, afromontane forest, riparian forest, moist woodlands, dry woodlands and shrublands. Its four veld types are Afromontane Forest, North-eastern Mountain Sour Grassland, Sour Lowveld Bushveld and Mixed Lowveld Bushveld.
Around a 1,000 plant species have been recorded. This includes cycads, of which the Blyde river cycad is almost endemic to the reserve, with some 200 individuals remaining. A variety of orchid, lily and protea (genera Protea, Faurea and Leucospermum) species occur, including the Blyde river protea which is endemic to the canyon, and the escarpment pincushion of which about 30 plants are present. Tree ferns grow along seepages in the uplands.
Indigenous forest covers 2,111 ha of the nature reserve, or 7.3% of its surface area. These are fragmented into some 60 patches between 0.21 ha and 567 ha in extent. They are assigned to two forest communities, high altitude moist and low altitude dry afromontane forest. The altitudinal gradient accounts for most of their variation in plant communities.
General area
The reserve is fringed to the east by the Mariepskop and Klaserie Waterfall Nature Reserves, and the Mapulaneng forestry region, below the escarpment. National Park status had been considered, if some adjacent areas were to be incorporated and their forestry activities discontinued.
Percy FitzPatrick and George Fullerton's summer quarters as transport riders during the 1880s was situated at Paradise Camp 24°55′24″S 30°52′08″E, some 6 km south of God's Window, and similarly perched on the edge of the escarpment. Close to God's Window are several waterfalls, including Berlin Falls and Lisbon Falls.
References
External links
Media related to Blyde River Canyon Nature Reserve at Wikimedia Commons
God’s Window
http://tabsolutions.co.za/bron2/index.php/toeka-se-dae-mainmenu-76/2851-karakters-op-n-kruising-stories-oor-ou-pretoria-se-winkeliers |
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